Good evening. So welcome, everyone. Tonight at 745, we are going to begin our seven-day Rohatsu Sashin. And this is a kind of a big deal since we've been just going back into the Zendo recently. We have all the doors and windows open. There's a little bit of a wind tunnel in there. People are bundled up, but still, it's really sweet to be sitting together. So we'll be sitting together for seven days, kind of modified schedule, lots of time to air out the room between our sits. But I think we're all feeling the same kind of excitement that one does feel when you're about to enter into a retreat. So I'm seeing you on the cusp of the retreat, and then I'll see you again at just the very end of it next Sunday. See if you see any changes. What happened to her?

[01:04]

Anyway, so I'm talking about the 30 verses with you, the Yogacara teachings, the mind only teachings. And I'll start with about five minutes of quiet meditation that some other people arrive. And then I will begin talking about Vasubandhu. See, I'm going to just glance around for a minute.

[06:02]

Hello, hello. See, lots of names, some faces. Well, I think as those of you who have been coming for a while know, we are talking about the book of the transmission of light, which is Kezon Jokin's stories of Dharma transmission, starting with Shakyamuni Buddha and then going all through the names of the familiar Buddhists and ancestors, the ones that we chant in morning service at the Zen Center. And then I sort of skipped ahead from Shakyamuni through Ananda and Mahakashapa, to Nagarjuna, who is one of the big names. He's one of the great philosophers of Buddhism. Two of the great philosophies underpinning Zen are Nagarjuna's middle way teachings based on the Prajnaparamita, for example, the Heart Sutra, perfection of wisdom teachings, emptiness. And then the other big school is the mind-only school.

[07:06]

So I went from Nagarjuna some centuries forward to Vasubandhu, And so I'm basically offering as best I can a summary of Asubandhu's mind-only teaching using what are his 30 verses on these teachings. So I basically just started with the first three of the 30 verses, and I'm going to sort of hover around there for a while. So I think familiarity really helps with some of these things because at first blush, it's like, what? It's a pretty complicated system, it sounds like. But actually, it's a map of your own body and mind. So as complicated as that may be, this is an effort to clarify what's going on between the impulses which come into your awareness and the actions that you take. And the whole reason that matters is because the choices we make are called karma. And when we make choices that are not skillful,

[08:08]

then we get negative outcome. And if we make skillful choices, we get more positive outcome. And that's kind of the basic strategy that the Buddha's working with for himself and for us. It's like, you need to know how it is that you're making these choices. What are the forces that are compelling you to do certain things in your life? And is there any way you can change that? Or are we just basically fated? Does karma mean fate? And I think it doesn't. It's not my understanding of what karma means. So, you know, if we really want to be well, the Buddha said that we need to learn to see and to take care of our mental states. You know, this is what's going on up here. And then to cultivate our beneficial qualities and to let the other ones kind of shrivel up and go away as best we can. So the method centers on simply being aware and attentive to who we are and what's going on here. Which of the elements is being stimulated at the moment?

[09:09]

Maybe for you it's hearing and seeing and feeling. Wherever you're sitting, you're feeling something. So your senses are on right now. They're always on. Some are dominating. Visual sense is often the most dominant. That's one reason when we sit that we lower our eyelids so that visual field is not dominating. You can begin to, if you sit in a darkened room, your ears start to open. We begin to have more of an auditory sense, and we eat in the same room, and so on and so forth. So we're inviting all of our senses to heighten, to be more heightened and aware, which, because they're in the present, brings us into a sense of what it means to be in the present. This is in the present. Your senses are in the present. So are your thoughts, but your thoughts can be of the past and then you think you're in the past or they can be of the future and you think you're in the future. So this is the tricky part is how to deal with the mind that imagines itself to be just about anywhere. And we have this great Imaginarium, which I like to call the Imaginarium.

[10:12]

So, you know, these are our parts and learning our parts, just like we did as kids. You know, this is your nose. This is your ear. This is your mouth. And then to relearn them in a sense, but as a mindfulness focus is how to focus ourselves so that we might be more aware of ourselves and then make better choices, you know, hopefully better choices. So. You know, who we are and how we feel in the present moment, the right here and right now is, you know, that old hippie thing right here, right now. This is still true. It's still being offered as the slogan, be here now. And so, you know, how to find that? What does that mean to be here now? You know, what is that location? What is here? And who am I? And it begs more questions, right? Greater mystery is open when we begin to inquire into where, who, why, how. All of these, what's the answer? So these have become classic koans in the Zen tradition. Who are you? It's a stumper.

[11:15]

So then we think, well, maybe I could be somewhere else or I could be a better me. And then pretty soon we find wherever else is, there we are. That's an old trick. You can't go anywhere else because you packed yourself and took yourself along with it. So wherever you end up, you're there. And so it's best to try and work with the material that's traveling, the traveler, the pilgrim. How is the pilgrim moving through space and time? And with what kind of intention? What do you hear for? What do you hear for? So Dogen says, here is the place, here the way unfolds. So manifesting awareness of our mind without trying to control it is a hallmark of Soto Zen. That's what Suzuki Roshi said is excellent way to practice, as he told his students, is give your cow a wide pasture and then watch her. Don't abandon her. You know, keep an eye on her. What's she doing over there? How's she behaving?

[12:16]

How's she treating the other cows? What's her relationship to you? You know, so how do we care for that? Don't let her get hurt and don't let her hurt others and don't let her wander off. You know, so that's the relationship with the mind. So again, I want to repeat these first few verses of the 30 verses. The first one, again, is everything conceived as self. So here we are pointing to the self. Everything conceived, mind-only school, whatever you conceive of, you think of as self or as other. So these are conceptions. Self, other, conceptions, occurs in the transformation of consciousness, mind-only. So this is the big assertion. Second verse, this transformation of consciousness has three aspects. And, you know, I showed you the diagram and I have another little one here that I'll keep popping up when I talk about these. So it occurs in these three aspects.

[13:16]

There's the ripening of karma. So you might ask yourself right now, which of the three is that? Can you remember? It's the alaya, the storehouse consciousness. So that's this one here. Looks like a cloud. Now, this diagram is of the unconscious. The unconscious. So the ripening of karma, these are all little seeds that are ripening. And this is the past influences. This is the present. And this is the future. So whatever is going on in here is going to be carried as seeds into the future. So that's the theory. This is your unconscious. So this transformation has three aspects, the ripening of karma, karmic seeds, little seeds in that big kind of bag called alaya. There's the consciousness of a self. And I think you remember that one, the lover, the manas, consciousness number seven. So just to briefly mention again, this is a consciousness that has eight components.

[14:19]

This is number eight, alaya, and number seven is the lover. And the lover is the one who thinks isn't in love with. With this big bag of tricks. So the manas is created by the big bag of tricks. It's one of its tricks. And it turns around. It's like narcissists, right? And falls in love with itself. So that's us. We're in love with ourselves. Conceit, ignorance, self-concern, self-love. Self-hate. That's another form of self-obsession. Either way you go, it's all about you. So that's what the Buddha said. Okay. So... The third transformation is the imagery of the sense. The third of these transformations is a set of six called the other side, the conscious side. Is that upside down? It is. No. So it's the six sense consciousnesses. Your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and your mind consciousness. You know, the consciousness, the sense consciousness of the mind, it's almost like the nose smells, the mind smells.

[15:24]

is a mind reader. It reads thoughts. So that's the organ for thoughts. The nose is the organ for smell, the ear for sound, the tongue for taste, the eyes for sights, and the mind for thoughts. So everybody's got something that's perceiving the object. So I'll do this over and over again. It's what the Yogacara is all about, is this little diagram. It's the first half of the 30 verses. So those are the two first verses. The transformation has these three aspects, the alaya, the manas, the lover, and the six sense consciousnesses. For a total of eight. There are no more. Just eight. Just eight. That's it. So the first transformation, now he goes on to talk a little bit about the bag of tricks, the alaya. The first transformation of consciousness, the alaya, verse number three, the first of these three is called alaya.

[16:24]

meaning the storehouse consciousness, which contains all those little karmic seeds, full of seeds, potential, potential for conscious moments. From the past, something pops up there like a blade of grass, some memory, all of a sudden, there it is, some association and there it comes. It's like triggers or past trauma. That stuff is really strong and it just comes back with full force and we feel it again. There's a re-feeling of those old memories. So that's kind of how we know what's the power that's residing in our storehouse consciousness. So the storehouse has all those seeds, karmic seeds, result of your past actions and your conditioning from the past and what it holds in the bag and its perception of its location or unknown. So we don't know where the unconscious is. You know? We don't know. Is it inside, outside, somewhere else?

[17:25]

We have no idea. We just see the influence of it. It can't be found. You couldn't surgically find the alaya. But we can theorize based on the outcome of this unconscious process, which is so familiar to us. And we can guess something's going on down there, or up there, wherever. So this concept of our consciousness both explains why we do what we do, But more importantly, how we can transform or let go of our afflictive emotions. You know, it is possible to change our reactions to events. It's possible. I mean, we've all done it. We're grownups. You know, we've done many of that since we were in junior high. We've done a lot of changing of our reactions to events that we don't like. You know, we've learned to be kind of stoic in certain ways or at least hide from our embarrassments or whatever. So because it's possible to change our reactions to events, it's through this repeated receding of the unconscious.

[18:28]

So we send better responses down into the bag. Instead of rage, I just got a little miffed. Instead of green, jealous, and so on, I just said, congratulations. Gee, I wish I'd gotten that. That sounds so nice, you know, lucky you. So we've really learned to modify some of those responses, which then feed down and give us a better outcome next time one of these things is triggered, you know, instead of the more feral responses we may have had as small children. Instead, we start to seed our unconscious with kindness and generosity. So these are Buddhist practices, which we take in through our senses, through our hearing and our reading of the Dharma. are looking at the various icons, you know, the beautiful Buddha figures. I just saw a film on the Silk Road that was just amazing. And this guy traveled all from Venice to Peking along the Silk Road and showed us all of these amazing oases, which had been part of a Buddhist empire for centuries.

[19:30]

And it was very touching to me to see these Buddha figures inside these caves and all of the paintings and all of the very familiar signs that Buddhists have been here. lots of carvings and figures and paintings, beautiful paintings and things. So we kind of plant. We use visual, auditory and reading and thinking about these teachings of kindness and of generosity and of patience, right? Compassion. I was really struck by this story that I heard from Norman Fisher. Some of you may know Norman. It wasn't too many years ago. But he was driving on the highway, Highway 1 up here, which is kind of a tricky road if you've ever been on it. A lot of people don't like Highway 1. And so he was driving out of Green Gulch. And there was a young woman as he came around the corner who she just happened to look up as he was coming. And she had bent over to change some disc or something. And she hit his car head on.

[20:31]

So she saw him. And he saw her just as their cars. They were looking at each other as the two cars. collided. And then Norman said, I said, what'd you do, Norman? He said, I jumped out of the car to see if she was all right. It's like, what an instinct, you know, he was just, are you okay? And she came over and he put his arms around her and the two of them cried. And I thought, well, that's a redo of what might otherwise be, you know, a lawsuit or something. Anyway, I was very impressed by our Abbott at the time, you know. So how you recede depends on what choices you make right now. During the event, you know, what happens? What's your instinct right now when this thing is happening? Karma is intention, intentional actions. It's not just any old thing. You know, oh, that's my karma. I got bad karma. Karma has to do with things you've done on purpose, not things you've done by accident. It's like, I did that. And I know I did that. And I intended to do that. And therefore, I'm sorry. Or I'm great.

[21:33]

It turned out well. Either way. But you're aware of your intention to take action. You don't sort of hide behind the outcomes and say, well, that didn't go too well, so it wasn't my fault. I think I've also told you this common experience of going to the work meeting here at Zen Center. As long as I've been here, there'll be announcements about missing tools, particularly the garden carts often go missing. And the head gardener will say, has anyone taken the garden cart? In dead silence. I have never seen anyone admit it. And then later in the afternoon, the cart's back where it was supposed to be. And it's like, huh, how mysterious. Who was that? I'm just waiting. One of these days, someone's going, I took it. I did that. It was me. What a good boy. What a good girl. So having intended, one does karma through actions of body, speech, and mind. So we can choose between selflessness and selfishness.

[22:33]

That's the cusp. That's the line. Between more suffering or more kindness, and in terms of what you can do with your life, your choice in this moment is all that really matters. That's what matters. That's the matter, what makes matter. Things that matter. And this is an endless point of return for Buddhist practice. You're always coming back to, right now, right here, choices I'm making. You know, it's alive. It's not like, oh, I got it all down now. I'm a good scout. You know, I've got all the rules. You never get there. You're always reacting, as one teacher said, you know, what's the Buddha's teaching of a lifetime? And the master responded, an appropriate response. An appropriate response. So there's lots of options there to what's an appropriate response. We get to be very creative about that. And then also check the outcome. How'd that go? You know? How'd that go? So in keeping the storehouse in mind, we can remember the ability that we have to plant healthy seeds.

[23:37]

Otherwise, in our usual way of thinking, we might imagine we can't ever change. We just keep noticing ourselves repeating the same patterns or the same habits, you know. And then it looks like unless we change things outside of ourselves, we can't ever be happy. If I don't get that thing I need or if I don't get that relationship or that house or that car or that job or whatever, we're always imagining it's something from outside that's going to bring us our happiness. And that's never going to work. Never, never, never. You can't import enough stuff and have a big enough warehouse or a pile of money high enough to take care of what's in your heart. And of how you feel, how your character, building your character, what kind of a person are you? How do you do when you're met with events, with challenging events? So that kind of thinking that it's based on my conditions is conditional thinking. It's the endless search for satisfaction by acquisition.

[24:39]

If I just get, if I just get, if I just get. And the Buddha said it's the opposite. It's when you stop trying to get. When you stop, just stop, slow down, sit down, take a break, breathe, listen, wait, do it again, do it again. You start to wear out after a while. Some of that grabbing begins to seem like a lot of energy. It takes a lot of energy to keep shopping. So maybe you get to take a few weeks off or something. So the second half of the verse introduces us to some characteristics of the eighth consciousness of alaya. And this will also be done later on in the later verses for the seventh manas, the lover, and for those six that are at the top, the ones we're aware of, the sixth sense consciousness is. So for the alaya, there is this characteristic... of holding the body. So the alaya is understood to be the kind of possessor of the body.

[25:40]

It got this body somehow. We don't know how exactly that happened, but it's sort of like the puppeteer underneath the floorboards that's got the body and is sending it little signals of things it can do, choices it can make. So the sense that we have a body and our consciousness is attached to a physical form And much of what our body does is not directed by our conscious awareness. Of course not. We couldn't, if we had to pay attention to our beating hearts and our blood flow and our blood pressure and our healing of our wounds and of our whatever else, the mucus in our eyes, name any single function of your body that's going on without sure having to attend to it. You know, if we had to take care of all of that, we probably wouldn't have evolved better. I mean, it would have been way too much trouble to imagine how many parts and how many functions and how many, you know, so we're pretty complicated. And that's because our unconscious is managing most of the body. Most of what goes on with the body is just going on with the body. It doesn't need us to attend to it.

[26:41]

We can be listening to music, driving the car and talking to somebody and it's just fine. And somehow our eyes keep on the road and our hands turn at the right moment and so on. So it's kind of amazing actually. Actually, how much we get away with that we're not having to be aware of. So one awareness that's very important to practice is the awareness of breathing. And in fact, that's the first instruction I think many of us got as meditators is, why don't you just turn your attention to your breathing? And one of the nice things about breathing is you're always doing it. I mean, if you're alive. So the first thing you did when you were born, and it'll be the last thing you do when you die, is breathe. So this breathing is very handy as an object of meditation. You can be aware of it, and you can somewhat, not control it, but you can modify deepening your breath, letting it really fill, let your body relax enough to take a deep breath, and the exhalation as well, allowing a full exhalation and a full inhalation.

[27:49]

And that's part of the basic meditation is to really fill the cavities, lungs, and allow your abdomen as if it were a bellows to open out. So this wonderful air coming in. It's one of the nicest thing about the Zendo right now is the air is really cool. And we're wearing masks. So this air coming through is so wonderful. and just be breathing and aware of the breathing. The mask really helps to be aware of the breathing because it's a little challenging, you know? So it's a very ancient practice for tranquility is to attend to your breathing. And also your breathing is a bridge between your conscious awareness. You can be aware of your breathing and the alaya, which is doing the unconscious activity of making sure you don't stop. So even if you get distracted, You keep on breathing. You come back to your breathing. Thank you, Alaya. It kept on breathing for you while you were off there doing daydreaming for a little while.

[28:50]

So it's a nice bridge between conscious awareness and the body, that maintaining of the body by this unconscious zone realm of the storehouse. So we don't know what the storehouse consciousness perceives. You know, if it has perceptions, they're not ours. We can't perceive what the storehouse perceives. We don't know how it keeps our bodies healthy and balanced. However, the state of our unconscious, based on our karmic conditioning, either produces this bright, shiny image of a world or a very smoky, distorted image of a world. So there's something really significant about this dynamic between the alaya, what it's producing, what has been stored in there, and how you see the world in your conscious moments. What a nice day, you know, or not. It goes either way. We all know that. It can go either way. So we actually believe that we perceive the world to be a direct perception and not a result of our karmic conditioning.

[29:58]

So, you know, that's part of our delusion. We all think we're seeing the way it is. It's really a rotten day. There's no doubt about it. You know, it's clear. It's clear to me. But then my friend doesn't agree. So that's kind of odd. So to begin to doubt that how you see the world is actually the world is part of the mind only too. They're really inviting us to see that how you see the world is how your mind is working, how your mind is projecting and imagining and declaring things to be, how you're pointing out the problems out there. I was at Tassajara I met years ago. Some of these things stand out because they're like, whoa, I never thought of that before. And I was cooking down there as one of the cooks. And I had gone to my cabin for a break. And I was coming back. And I was in a, I don't know, in a kind of the squeeze of cooking or something. And I looked down at the ground. For those of you who've been to Tassajara, it's a quite beautiful place.

[31:00]

But I wasn't particularly tuned into that. I saw a cigarette butt on the ground. And the whole world was this garbage pile. I couldn't believe that someone had put a cigarette bite on the ground in paradise, you know. And I just noticed how overwhelmed I became with this tiny little thing that was in my field of vision. And it made me laugh. It's like, whoa, you can really shrink. All of a sudden, I went from kind of a neutral or could have been heaven if I'd been looking around a little more, but like... Those people, who are they? What are they doing here? You know, that kind of turning into kind of a little monster. So anyway, that was good to see. When you turn into a monster, it's good to notice that. See if you can make other choices. So we actually believe that how we are perceiving the world is a direct perception rather than our karmic conditioning. This is a really important point. Okay. So the next thing I want to do is not exactly off-target or topic, but I think it's a missing piece of how I hope to help you to understand what the Yogacara is up to.

[32:11]

And so I thought I would pause for a minute. So you have these three consciousnesses, these three aspects of consciousness that I've gone over just now. And then I thought, well, I don't think you know, or maybe you know, where consciousness appears in the Buddhist teaching. I mean, what's the location for this study of consciousness? There's actually a rather important context for the study of consciousness, and that's what I want to share with you now. So I'm going to show you a picture, too, which is a really nifty picture, but in a sec. So the Buddha gets enlightened. We know that story. He's sitting under a tree. He looks up at a star. Something happens. Many days later, he's contemplating what happened. And then he comes up with an explanation of what he saw. And he gives a sermon, the first sermon, to these five ascetics. So he goes and finds these five ascetics.

[33:13]

And he says, avoid the extremes of luxury or asceticism and find the middle way. between the extremes. So his first statement is the middle way, which as Nagarjuna teaches us, means the non-dual nature of reality. It's not this one. It's not this one. It's together. All of these dualistic propositions are basically require one another to make any sense. And all of these things are concepts. So this and that, this and that are concepts. We make stories from this and that, is and isn't, right and wrong, left and right, men and women, up and down. We've got them all. You know, we've got every single dualistic proposition that has been created out of language. We know them. We use them all the time. And we don't look at that. What did you just do? You just split light and dark? You know, how did you do that? How did you split right from wrong?

[34:14]

How are you so sure about right and wrong? How did you so sure about... Me and you, the separation between me and you. So these are all the presumptions that language makes which are mistaken. So the Buddha saw the star was not over there or over here. It was dependently co-arising. There and here come up together. They're not separate. The star and himself and his awareness of the star and the planet Earth and the universe are all arising simultaneously together in every moment. All together. That was his great illuminated insight, his awakening. And then he tried to explain it. I mean, you know, so he knew that was going to be hard. He said, this will be a vexation. I don't think people will understand. And then the gods encouraged him. Oh, give them a chance. You know, try. Try to explain it. So he said, avoid the extremes. First thing he said was non-duality. The first major teaching in his first sermon and the second major teaching in his first sermon.

[35:16]

was causality, dependent co-arising. Things happen together. Nothing exists by itself. Not the star, not me, not the earth, not the plants or the rain. It all comes up depending on one another. It's all dependently co-arising, which is the same thing as it's empty of independent existence. Empty means dependently co-arising. So that was his big philosophical... insight and statement. And he said that teaching was the Four Noble Truths, which I'm sure you all have heard many, many times. Because when we all start teaching, we start with the Four Noble Truths. There's Four Noble Truths. And they are suffering. That's got everyone's attention. And the cause of suffering. So causal, causal relations. Suffering is caused. And then the cessation of suffering is caused. by the Eightfold Path, by how you live your life.

[36:17]

So suffering is caused by desire based in ignorance, and cessation of suffering is caused by right understanding of reality, four noble truths, non-duality, basically. Intention, karmic actions, that's number two of the Eightfold Path. Speech, livelihood, conduct, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. So that's the Eightfold Path. aspects of living that will really help you to recondition your alaya. So all of these things hook together. It's like a puzzle. You can put them all together and they make a pretty clear set. But when you hear each of them as a one-off, it's sort of like, where does that go? How does that fit? So the reason I wanted to come back a little bit with the consciousness teaching of the mind only is because it does fit and it fits in an old picture. that has been around a long time of the Four Noble Truths. And I'm going to show you that picture right now. So this picture, I'll make it a little bigger, and then I'll do screen share.

[37:23]

Okay. All right. This is... lost you and I'm gonna get you back again all right screen share okay you see that you see that yeah okay so I think you probably are familiar with this I would imagine you've seen this one before it's very common iconography This happens to be a Tibetan depiction of the 12-fold chain. The 12-fold chain of dependent core rising, everything comes up together. The Buddha articulated in these 12 particular what are called links.

[38:24]

Each one depends on the next. And this is how he explained suffering. This is the wheel of birth and death, also known as samsara, endless circling. So it's a wheel. Samsara means endless circling. This is a drawing of your mind and how it operates when the unconscious is just driving the car. It's the way we humans tend to do based on two very big factors, which I want to go through a little bit with you. So the name of this wheel in Sanskrit is pratitya samudpada, the 12-fold chain of dependent origination or dependent arising. And this is a key doctrine of Buddhist philosophy. This is one of the most important things the Buddha said. This is the summary or elaboration of the first and second noble truth. And I'm going to tell you how that's so. So basically, this philosophy states that all phenomena, everything you experience, arises in dependence on other phenomena.

[39:29]

That's the basis. Everything depends on other things. Everything depends. And so there's a very famous saying that the Buddha made that actually enlightened one of his disciples when they heard this. So, you know, I don't know. Could happen. Here we go. He said, if this exists, that exists. If this ceases to exist, that ceases to exist. If this, then that. If not this, then not that. That saying is carved on stone walls. Apparently, I've never been, but I'd love to go all over Southeast Asia. If this, then that. If not this, then that. It's like people bow to that. That is the basic summary or the shorthand for what you're looking at right now. If this, then that. If this, then that. If not this, then not that. If you don't do that, then that won't happen to you. The principle is expressed in these links of dependent origination.

[40:34]

There's 12 elements, which the Buddhist teaching said that each one arises dependent on the previous one. So, as I said, it's an elaboration of the first and second noble truth, suffering and the cause of suffering. That's what you're looking at right now. Suffering and the cause of suffering. So, I'm just going to go through these 12. And I think... this depiction is so helpful because basically there's little drawings and a lot of Tibetan teachings are particularly wonderful. It was like, I think it was Chekhov who did a lot of theater in order to teach principles of communism to the peasants who couldn't read. So they weren't literate. So he did all these kind of theater ways of describing principles. These are also done for people who don't necessarily know how to read, but they can see the pictures. They can get it from the, So if you're a visual learner, this is a really great way to learn, which I happen to be.

[41:35]

So I find it really easy to remember the 12 links by remembering what's in the picture. So the first of the 12 is a picture of a blind person crossing a chasm on a log with a stick. And this is ignorance. That's us. We are walking in the blind. We are using this kind of our feelers to go forward. We are ignoring. What we are ignoring are cause and effect. We're ignoring that our actions are going to have a big outcome later on, you know, that what we're doing matters. We're ignoring that. We're ignoring the non-dual nature of reality. So we're ignoring the Buddha's awakened insight, that there's nothing actually outside, all-inclusive universe. We're ignoring that. So ignorance is the first step in the chain causing us to suffer. And that's a really tough one. It's a very hard one to break. Ignorance is sort of maybe the last thing to go. So we don't have a lot of choice.

[42:36]

We got to kind of take this, go around the wheel because that's what happens. We're conditioned for that. So that ignorance is number one. Number two, see this person's making little pots that are all kind of alike. And this one's called karmic conditioning. What you did before, you're going to do again. You did it last week. You're going to do it this week and you're going to do it next week. So karmic conditioning is repeating patterns over and over from the past. So this is part of our inheritance. It's our conditioning. And number three, so that's conditioning. Number three is, oh, and by the way, the conditioning is volitional. It means you're doing that on purpose. It's not just habits that are kind of, you're not really into it. It's ones you're doing on purpose. This potter is pretty good at it. They've been doing this for a while. So volitional impulses from the past. that leave karmic imprints into the future. This is the trail, the trail of tears. So the third one is consciousness.

[43:37]

And you see there's a little monkey there. So consciousness is grabbing. It's just the grabber going after stuff. It's like, okay, I'm here and I can see there's stuff and I'm going to get it as much fast as I can. So this is the monkey mind. So it's basically... And the Yogacara school, this is the location for the eight consciousnesses right here that I've been talking about. The reason that Vasubandhu and the Yogacarans added this because this was really hard to explain. Like consciousness then becomes this five skandhas and it does all this stuff. And it's like, well, how does that work? Where's the past? Where's the future? How is it conditioned? And so the Yogacara basically spent a lot of time explaining this third link. So this is where it goes. It goes right in here. The eight consciousnesses is an elaboration of what is meant by the third link of the 12-fold chain. Okay? That's the main thing I wanted to tell you. It goes right there. So number four, you might recognize that little boat.

[44:41]

That's the little boat with the three passengers, you know, the five skandhas. So there's the boat on the ocean of consciousness. The boat is the body. Three passengers are feelings, perceptions, impulses. We talked about those a lot during the Heart Sutra. So those passengers are just rowing the boat. And based on whether they like something or don't like something or whether they go toward it or not, this all happens to do with perception, feelings, and then impulses. So now what's happening here is we're getting a body. We're beginning to build a person. You've got the consciousness. You've got habits. And you've got this five skandhas. So you've got a pretty active agent right now. The next one is a little castle, and that's called the ayatmas. Basically, all that means is that our sense perceptions are a perceiving of the world is perceiving what's outside. So visual consciousness is perceiving visual forms. Auditory consciousness is perceiving noises.

[45:45]

It's not that complicated, but they make it kind of complicated. What you smell is something that's being, you know, is an odor. What you hear is a sound and what you see is a sight. So that's really all it's saying, that you're like a castle. Each of us is like a castle. When we're fully formed, we're like a castle and we have a moat and we decide whether what's coming, we like it or not. And we let the drawbridge down if we like what's coming and we pull it up if we don't. So we all have our own castle and we all decide whether or not we want to say hello or not. You know, we're doing that all day long. So these little castles are pretty much you got a person now. Pretty strong incarnation of a person. Okay. Now the next one, after making your castle, this is a little hard to see, but basically it's two people kissing. It's true. Okay. It's called contact. Contact. You know, Tibetans, let's not mince words, you know. Here's contact.

[46:46]

This castle likes that castle, so they're kissing. And contact is how we get connected to the sensory world, connects with the objects, okay? I like that thing. I like that apple, and I'm actually, now I've got it. I make contact with it. I'm tasting it. I like that music. I'm listening to it. So these are the drivers. Contact is what drives us to try and make contact with something. So the next one, so the contact is a biggie. And then after that, there is this character by himself or herself with an arrow in their eye. And that one is called feelings. So you had contact. From contact, you got a big feeling. You got a big feeling. Like either that was amazing. I can't wait to do that again. Or, oh, my God, I got to get out of here. So you either like it or you don't like it. But you know whether you like it or not. It's a feeling.

[47:47]

It's an arrow in the eye. So you can't miss it. So it's pretty dramatic. But that's the reason they use that image. All right. Now, the important thing to know about. That particular link. So we started with ignorance. We've gone all the way around here now. Got a person. You've got a person making contact with another person. You have a big feeling about them. Now, if you just stopped there, the wheel collapses. And you are just fine. Nothing happens. There's no intention. You haven't taken an intentional action. You haven't acted on your feelings. You haven't taken this next step. But a lot of us don't do that. A lot of us get a feeling, and then we do this next thing. So this next link is really kind of fun, too. The next link is this person has gone to a bar, and he's in the sake shop or whatever drinking sake. So you say, oh, I'll have one. You have one. And then you say, oh, I think I have another. That was good. And then pretty soon you're kind of intoxicated.

[48:49]

So the feeling leads to desire. This link is desire. And if you remember... Cause of suffering is ignorance, number one on the 12-fold chain, and desire, which is this one, number eight. So those two together are kind of a summary of what just happened here. You were ignorant of you really didn't have to get anything out there to make yourself happy. You got driven by your feelings, and now you're acting on your feelings, and now you're intoxicated with desire. And after desire, basically once you've fallen into desire, you're kind of cooked. There's no way back out. You just got to go around the wheel. So after desire, you have now this next image is a little hard to tell, but it's a monkey picking all the fruit off the tree. So it's an intensification of desire. Desire is called trisna, which means thirst. But once you got the thirst, now you got the hunger. So you're basically taking all the fruit off the tree. All you can get.

[49:50]

This is grasping. It's mine. Possessiveness. Okay. And then after grasping, you have becoming. You have now entered into this consequences of these choices you've been making. And now you're in this situation. And other people are involved. And God knows what. All kinds of things are happening. So it's becoming what's happening to your life. You are now incarnated, in a sense, in that state as a result of acting on your desire. And after becoming, this next one is called birth. And there's actually a woman giving birth. In that picture. So the fruition of your karmic actions are born. The consequences are here. They're in your face. You've got the baby. You can have about 25 years there. Work this one out. And then after that, the next step, the last final step is old age, sickness and death. So whatever you did, whatever that thing was, it was so important and you had to have and you had to do it and you did all of that stuff.

[50:56]

Eventually, it all goes away because it's impermanent. So the law of the universe is impermanence. Nothing lasts. You are fated not to succeed. This is kind of more like Russian roulette than actual roulette. This is not a good game. And it basically is an endless circling around and around. This person is called Lord Yama. Lord Yama is behind the scenes. holding onto the wheel. And this is kind of an interesting thing, part of the teaching. Lord Yama, obviously, from the skulls and so on, and the fangs, represents death. Lord Yama is the king of death. So what's driving us, really, at the kind of core, I mean, you know, the Jungians can tell you that. What's really underneath it all is this death, fear of death, of our passing away. That we, that this one... You don't mean me. You know that we all will die is driving our ambition, our craving, or is this my last chance to do whatever it is?

[52:02]

So the wheel is being really held and manipulated by fear of death. So the other features of the wheel I wanted to point out to you are what happens based on your actions. So if when you are, if when, first of all, If you stop at feelings, which is the recommendation from the practice camps, stop at feelings. Don't act on your feelings. Wait. It doesn't mean don't have them, and it doesn't mean don't eventually do something. But give yourself some time to consider. What happens if you allow the feelings to really fill you completely? Anger, whatever it is, lust, you know, just fill you up completely. Like, really good time to do that. Just let it all come in, like, you know. like a bagpipe just fill yourself up with all that noise and then exhale and inhale and exhale and by 40 minutes pretty much it's hard to hold on to much of a feeling i mean you can but it's you know it's hard and after three days is really hard and after a week you're kind of done with it you know is that you got an opportunity to practice patience with your feelings which is really part of what we're doing by repeating these practices

[53:18]

Pretty much daily, like flossing. Calm down. Don't be reactive. Don't just be impulsive. Give yourself time and see if there's really something here to cultivate. If this is a wholesome effort you're doing here. There's no grasping involved. So these characters in the center, the hub, are basically the drivers of the whole thing. There's a snake, hatred. There's a rooster. I mean, there's a boar or a pig as greed. There's a snake as hatred. And the rooster as confusion. So greed, hate, and delusion are the hub. I want it, I don't want it, I don't know. I want it, I don't want it, I don't know. Over and over and again, we're driven by those feelings, their primary feelings. And around the hub are these reactions. how you feel now if you're practicing like see these on this side they're monks so they're and they're you know merchants who are not cheating people and what that kind of thing so these are all good behavior if you behave well then you move up if you behave badly you move down so this is really where the significant outcome is right here and how what's the appropriate response now how do you

[54:43]

handle your feelings. So up means that you go into one of these upper regions. So these are destinations. There aren't six here, but normally there are six. They've put these two together and I'll tell you what they are. So the six realms or the six destinations are kind of like destinations, not exactly resorts, but they are destinations and they're psychological outcomes, which we all know every one of these I know I've been many times to all of them. I know them by heart. I know when I'm in them. I know their names, you know, and so do you. So the ones up top, we have the very top, the apex is the gods, the wealthy, the beautiful, the, you know, you name them, the Hollywood stars. If you've been watching The Crown, you know, those people when they're out in public. So it's the gods. or up in heaven.

[55:44]

And over here are the fighting gods. And I don't know if you can see that, but the fighting gods are attacking the gods, which is what they do, right? The Mongols invaded, and then the Chinese invaded back, and then the French invaded, and then the English invaded. Everyone's invading to try and get what those guys have. So this has never ended. Humans are really into this. These are the jealous gods. They want it. They want it. They get the hunger to get what the gods have. And then when you get it and you're up here, there is this unfortunate law of the universe called impermanence. So what happens to the gods, as we've seen, as we watch them age, is when it all goes away, they go right down here to hell. It's like a fireman's pole to hell. It's very hard to lose everything. If you had all that stuff, it's really painful for a lot of people. If they don't have heaven, they built their character when the stock market crashes. It's like right to hell.

[56:45]

So they have a very intimate relationship between heaven and hell. And over here, again, above the line are better destinations. So these are actually considered better than other alternatives, which are down here. This is the human realm. And it looks a little bit like Green Gulch. You know, there's a Zendo and there's a farm and there's a little stuff going on. It's like kind of masomenos. Some days are good. Some days are not so good. But you also can practice in the human realm because it's not so great. It's not so awful. You can actually find your way to practice in your day and part of your day. So this is the most desirable. People think it's this one. It's not. It's this one. This is where you want to go. You want to be a human. Now, if you act badly when things challenge you, you'll come down here to one of these. I already mentioned hell and there's all the terrible, just like Dante's got all these terrible, there's icy hells and there's hot hells and there's being roasted and stabbed and all that kind of stuff.

[57:48]

So, you know, terrible things happen to you. The only virtue in hell or the only benefit, let's say, in hell is that people will try to help you. You know, when people are in hell, Your friends will try and support you. You okay? You want to go to the movies? Whatever. So people will try, like porpoises, to come up and help you. That's the one consolation in hell. And then on the right side of hell, we have the hungry ghosts. And the hungry ghosts are states, again, these are states of mind, where you can never get enough. You're always starving. No matter what, never enough praise, never enough food, never enough money, never enough love. It's just constant starvation. And these folks have really tiny necks and really big abdomens because they're always hungry. It's terrible. And then on the other side are the animals. And the animals sounds pretty good, except the animals have no conscience. They just like... You know, teenagers, kind of.

[58:48]

I don't mean to malign teenagers. But whatever you want, whatever you're into, you just kind of go for it. You have impulses. You're impulsive. You know, drugs, sex, rock and roll, as we said in the 60s. So this is kind of the animal realm. And there's not a lot of karmic consciousness about your behavior. So that's basically the story that the Buddha told about suffering. He said, suffering starts with ignorance. This is the first link. It continues until you get to feelings. If you continue after feelings and you get into grasping, then you will go around and around and around. And that's the story. And so once again, I really wanted to share this because of the Yogacara, which is basically elaborating on this one link, consciousness. It's like helping us to understand how do we work with this? Is there any hope? I mean, is there anything we can do? to improve our lot in terms of this functioning. And the Buddhist philosophers and teachers and practitioners said, yes, there are things you can do.

[59:53]

And then they elaborated on what those things are. Okay. So, well, it's six o'clock. How about that? So I'm happy to... Have any questions you have or a few clarifications you would like or comments or anything like that. And, of course, those of you who need to go, please sign off. Say goodbye if you like. And if I see a hand, I don't know which of you it is, but please go ahead. Bill, Kelly, Vinian. Bill, you're not unmuted yet. There we go. Okay. I've been reading the text and memorizing the verses. It's been very helpful. Great. I'm curious about it's written either pleasant or unpleasant.

[60:59]

It is unobstructed. So what is, what would be an obstruction? What is? Is that, are you describing Aliyah? Is that the verse on Aliyah? That's Aliyah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I would imagine that because we have no, I'm going to make this up and then I'll look it up. But I would think because we have no conscious control over Aliyah, it's really nothing's getting, you know, what could get in its way? It's really, it's like a flow. So there's no impediments to the flow. There is an engagement with it. It's engaging with us, and we can also engage with it. But it's a little bit like sending messages in a bottle. We're sending messages down, but we don't know if – did they get received? We only know because later on things go better. We planted some seeds, and it's like, wow, I'm not falling for that same thing that I used to.

[62:07]

I actually feel better. And people tell me that. I'm always so excited when somebody says, I feel so much better. You know, someone's been here six months. And, you know, I thought, well, that's great. You know, just something has started to open. So is it, I would say, we could say that you're a liar. You've been reseeding your aliyah. That's a nice story. And then there's more to that. It's encouraging. If you feel like you can actually do something like that, then there's enthusiasm to continue to practice. I think that's part of the purpose of it, you know. But I'll look that up too and see if there's anything more to say about obstructions. That makes sense because then when manas is discussed, they say it's obstructed. So I think it has something to do with our ability to cause We're able to engage with our physical body, but not with our karma.

[63:14]

Yeah. Vamanas is the troublemaker. You know, it's so convinced of the truth of self. It's the self-maker. So that is obstructed. That's obstructing reality. It's like, ah. Wow. It's like a wall between me and you. Othering. Me and reality. Yeah. Mirror, mirror. I've been trying this practice of seeing so-called reality or whatever I'm seeing right now, like all of you in my room and everything, as my actual face. That's more me than anything I can perceive looking inward. I don't see anything. But looking at this is, oh, that's me. That's what's making me. What I see in here, it's like without that, there's nothing. Take away your senses and your thoughts and you've got, you know, zip.

[64:16]

So it's kind of a fun thing to, you know, turn the light around as an instruction that has to do with looking at your mental processes, right? But turn it back around again and look at, you know, who are you? Is this who you are? Of course, you know. But we don't tend to do that. We don't tend to see that. It's called the great mirror wisdom, where what you see in the mirror is the face, is your face. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I had a quick question just about the wheel. I was wondering if the 12-fold chain corresponds with the realms and everything and their placement on the wheel, or is it... No, their outcomes, like the wheel is sort of independent. However, what you do, you know, the outcome of, of your actions on the wheel, depending on how you behave, if you don't fall for feelings, if you don't do that, you take a wholesome, you know, you, you, you wait, you do some courtship or whatever it is, it would be wholesome.

[65:23]

Talk to your friends, don't tell lies, you know, all of that wholesome stuff. Well, then you might end up over here in the animal realm. I mean, in the human realm, where you can have a very nice relationship with someone. And, you know, raise a couple of kids or whatever you do when you have a nice relationship. And so there's this human thing that can be quite nice for us. It's sort of like the culmination of our time on earth could be a flower garden and a family and, you know, friends and neighbors and so on and right livelihood and that kind of thing. So that can be an outcome of your wholesomeness. And if you... You know, obviously, if you're driven in other directions, you can end up in a very bad state. And we do. We have. We probably all have at some point. I don't want to be here. You know, how do I get stuck here? So you have to kind of back yourself out and try another avenue. Try wholesomeness.

[66:27]

Should be our national motto. Try wholesomeness. Possumness sells the... You think it sells? Snowflakes. They make fun of us. Hi, Lisa. There you go. There you go. Good. I'm not sure I've got the... Yeah, you're good. You're good. I'm good now? Yeah. So I'm not sure how... I'm not sure I'm pulling the words together for this one yet. But you did... When you were talking about Alaya, you were talking... At one point, you talked about including physiological processes. You know, sort of the thinking about, you know, the mucus in your eyes.

[67:35]

the workings of your body. And it's a very, that becomes a very materialistic model. You know, and so I've been trying to, I've been trying to shove these concepts into a model of what our brain does and, you know, alaya and consciousness as being, um, sort of strengthening of synapses, how our brain works. And does that work? I'm not sure yet. It probably isn't a perfect fit. Yeah. It's got to be a perfect fit because we're talking about the same species. Yes. And these guys had brains, right? So, I mean, it is a perfect fit. It's like you've got a conceptual map. Yeah. that has to do with science and neurobiology and all kinds of things that didn't exist in the, you know.

[68:37]

The meditators are going with, well, what did I notice when I was sitting this morning? You know, all they had was their experiential knowledge. And what they could tell was that they were not able to control their bodily functions with conscious intention. They couldn't control their heart or their blood flow or their saliva. All of those things were not under their conscious control, nor were they needed to be. So they posited this unconscious form, like you might say neurons that are doing weird stuff too. That's pretty weird. So they had this unconscious thing that was doing something together to make this thing. This looks like it's a real thing. It's kind of a trick. I've been formed by millions of years of evolutionary transformation. Yeah. And most of it is not conscious. If we had to be conscious of all of that, we would die instantly. Too much. Yeah. Too much work. Too much.

[69:38]

Way too much work. Way too. No one would sign up. Yeah. So the question becomes, given that we're thinking in, in some ways, we're thinking in models. Yeah. And there's this materialist model. And is it useful? Yeah. And then there's the, if you will, the Yogacara model. And, you know, which of these models are skillful, can be used for skillful means? Well, I don't think the scientists are necessarily bound to ethics. I mean, they are. No. Well, some. The point of this is to bring joy to humankind. No. So the scientists are doing their own little mission, right? You've got a truth or something or overturning someone else's theory. Greed, hate, and delusion are popular there. Yeah, very popular. Yeah, outpublishing your competitors.

[70:39]

So, you know, that's a different mission than compassion, wisdom, bringing kindness to the world and so on. So the Buddha, his whole thing was to end suffering. He was a physician. more than he was a philosopher. You know, he saw suffering and he saw a way to free himself from the suffering. He saw that it was mental. He saw that if he did certain things, understood his mind and how it worked, then he could explain it. So here's the map. Here's a map. Now see if it fits. You know, and he said, don't listen to me, try it. And if it doesn't fit, throw it away. If it fits, try it and see how it works for you to think this way. So it is pharmaceutical more than, you know, like metaphysics or something. He also said enlightenment is beyond all argumentation. And it's beyond language and it's beyond models. Yeah.

[71:41]

It includes them. They're just fine. There's no objection. There's no argument about models. There's just no fight. There's no wish to fight. And, you know, wouldn't that be nice? Thank you. You're welcome. A few more minutes. Anyone else want to? Hey, Guy. Here we go. Hi. Hi. Thank you so much. You're welcome. It was great listening to your talk today. And it's interesting because I was actually going off of what Lisa said as well. I was thinking similarly in those terms where I do think at least something that I consider as well as the constant evolution of what we consider science and facts and how it is exactly what you said, where it's constantly being proven and disproven. And that in itself is something that I consider when trying to apply these models.

[72:43]

I thought was very interesting when you were talking about Aliyah, our belief of that we're in control and how Aliyah is the fundamental, is what is really under there controlling so much more. It reminded me of something I learned years back in class of how scientists were able to determine small decisions that you're that you make before you actually make them. So if it's two buttons, they can actually tell you, I think it was a few seconds before they can actually detect that you're going to press this button. So at the moment it was an examination of free will, but the moment you, you spoke of a lie, it was just this instant. So, so I feel like, like you said, it is, it's all inclusive. It is a perfect fit, but it's all in a, Yeah, it includes the models, but like you said, there's no fight necessarily.

[73:49]

I feel like that's what's so interesting about the approach is that it accepts the unknown as well, instead of trying to imply that all is known or that all can be known. I think that. Yeah. to share that it was really great to hear that and the and the connection of how things slowly really really do you know and through experiencing as well there's nothing more powerful than than hearing and then experiencing so yeah thank you so much oh you're welcome gi yeah i know i think i think you'll for those of you who stick it out this teaching as we get further and further into the verses gets more and more liberative I mean, the first half is kind of the model and explaining how it works. And the second half is where it kind of takes off and begins to give you some very clear and palpable ways of seeing what you're doing to make the world the way you think it is.

[74:54]

You know, how are you doing that? What is the trick of the mind? And there are these three elements that we'll look at once we get to verse 4. 15, which is a pretty long way off, but maybe I'll get to verse 3 next time. I did want to do this 12-fold chain. So I think it's really important to know where we are on the big map of the territory of the Dharma. You know, we're going through the transmission of light. That's a big map. That's a historical kind of time map. And then we also have within the teaching itself, there are these transformations like... The Mahayana was a big change. And then we have Zen. That's a big change. And that's coming when we get to China. It's like, ooh, something else really big and transformational happens there. And then on to California. And oh, my God, we don't know what we're doing with it. It's going to be really interesting. I hope for those of you who are young that you forgive us for whatever we've done to the blessed Dharma.

[75:56]

Yeah. Hi. Yes. I'm sorry, I don't know your first name. There's a C though. You're going to need to unmute. There you go. Great. I just wanted to say you forgot about New York. New York? Yes. What did I forget? You're right. You're right. No, you're actually right. Because you came from that way, east to California. Yeah, I think it came from both directions, actually. Well, it depends on your point of view, right? Where you are is your reality. That's right. We're all guilty. We'll be guilty together. but you covered so much in this little amount of time. I was just thinking that you can't think it out.

[77:01]

You have to experience it in order to understand it. And like, I still, I'm, I did a lot of sitting in, with Chogam Trump's group. And, and now that, we have the pandemic, I'm able to sit with your group. I'm in New York and I just think it's like such a great opportunity to go, you know, for me. And I'm just enjoying listening to you and you're conveying so much heart. Welcome, all of you, wherever you are. One of these days, you should just go around in Neymar, where we are. Well, actually, I was on Route 1 at one time, many, many years ago. An immigrant.

[78:04]

We got stuck, and we couldn't go any further. We wound up sleeping on the beach. That was the hippie days. Yeah, yeah, those were the good days, weren't they? Just put yourself up. Yeah. A lot of trust there. Nothing bad ever happened. Nothing bad happened, although it seemed like it might, but it all worked out. It all worked out. Here we are. It always does. So nice to have you. What's your C stand for? Cheryl. Cheryl. So you're doing this as a class every Sunday? It's a long class. It's never in class. I just keep talking and talking and talking. And then I run out of that topic and I start on another one. So eventually we'll finish the Yogacara. And then I'm thinking I'm going to go to Bodhidharma, who went to China and see what happens there, which is really fun. It's all those great teachers and what they taught and the Zen, the birth of Zen and how the Yogacara shows up and how the Majamaka shows up and

[79:12]

Yeah, it's wonderful. It's like the blood vein of our practice is through these stories. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. So nice to be with you again. And please take care. We'll see you in a week. And thank you very much. Feel free to unmute yourself if you'd like to say goodbye. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye everyone. Bye. [...] Bye everyone. Bye. Take care. You too. See ya. Bye. You too. Bye guys. Everything okay? Did you get snow? A little bit.

[80:13]

No, it's not great. No smoke? Smoke gone? Smoke is gone. But there's usually not that much snow by Thanksgiving, even in the old days. Oh, yeah. See what happens in December. That's when it's supposed to start. Yeah. We're going to do machines. Too bad you guys aren't here. We're doing our own sashims. I know, I know. The kind I'm headed for myself. Year long sashims. I know. It's unbelievable. I'm going like, really? Yes. Anyway, don't tell anyone I said that. Okay. Thank you. See you guys. Bye-bye.

[81:02]

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