I was just thinking that while I was sitting here, that this is the practice of the Yogacara teaching, is to spend time with your mind and see what you find, see what's in there. And this whole system of thinking and study has been the result of monastics for centuries doing what we were just doing, sitting watching their minds and then afterward they would talk about it like we're gonna do like well what did you see what did you see and then they could make some notes and eventually they had a whole system that's what we're looking at now so um i had thought that i would begin this evening with chapter three of ben connelly's book of inside vasubandhu's yogachara a practitioner's guide And then I realized after I was reviewing my own notes, I thought, I think I'm going to review my notes again of the first two chapters of the first two verses.

[01:15]

And that's because I get it and I went through it and how challenging it is to make sense of this text. You know, it's so terse. It's a little bit like Nagarjuna. You know, each verse is like, the words are fine, but it's like, what are they talking about? What's the meaning of this? How can I use this for my practice? I think it's there. In fact, I have noticed since I began looking at the Yogacara again that I'm having the same feeling of interest and excitement about this study as I had 20 years ago when we first were introduced to it through some translations. So for many years, from the beginning of my Buddhist practice, there wasn't much on Yogacara available. And then a lot of translations have happened, a lot of books have now been written, some really good ones. I think the one I recommended to you, Making Sense of Mind Only, by William Waldron, is exceptionally good in looking at this mind-only teaching and why it matters, why it's important and how helpful it is.

[02:19]

And I'm convinced, you know, I am convinced. And the more I study it, the more I feel that this is a very helpful, ongoing, daily practice understanding. for us. Keep track of your mind. Where's your mind? What's it doing? Kind of like your teenagers. Where are they? What are they doing? Anyway, so I'm going to look at chapter 1 and 2 again, verse 1 and 2. And as we're told in Ben Conley's introduction to his text, that Vasubandhu basically is giving us a two-fold model of the mind. And the first model is for practicing. So that's the first part of these 30 verses. The first 15 verses are about the practice, practicing with the mind. And then the other model is for understanding. So there's a model for practice and a model for understanding. And that's kind of different. Practicing is almost experiential.

[03:19]

And understanding what you're experiencing is a lot of language, a lot of talking or writing, thinking, studying, and so on. So for the practice, there's this mind-only theory of how the mind works, the clockwork of the mind. Like, what is going on here? Is there a pattern? Are there parts? I mean, what's happening? When you just look at your own mind, it kind of seems like a giant bouillabaisse. I mean, it's hard to figure out if there are parts or everything's moving. It's all kind of like in flux. So it's kind of an amazing thing that they were able to analyze their minds. in such a careful way, in a way that we can recognize. So the first, the practice part, is understanding the clockwork of the mind, of consciousness, and also of unconscious, our unconscious life, and have some understanding about how that must be so. There must be a great bit of us that is not conscious, that is not available to us in every moment of the day. In fact, most of what we are is not available to our conscious mind.

[04:22]

And then the second part for understanding, is how we study those things that are appearing in our minds. You know, things like images and thoughts and stories. You know, how they're made and what they're made from. In other words, how we think and what it is that we think about. So in the first half of the 30 verses, Basubando uses this map that I've showed you now a couple of times, and I'm going to show you again, of the Eightfold Consciousness's model. of the mind in order to teach us how to practice with the workings of the mind, you know, how to work with the patterns of all too familiar thinking. I mean, we all are familiar with thinking. We do it all the time. But what is it? What's it made out of? What are you thinking about? You know, we don't spend so much time in our lives looking at thinking itself, trying to understand what it is. What is thinking? You know, tricky. I've tried that many times in my meditation, and it's very challenging to study thinking while you're thinking in particular.

[05:30]

And the point is to help liberate us from these afflictive psychological emotions that are carried in our thinking, and they're based on erroneous thinking. The three pathological emotions are greed, I've got to have it, Hate, I don't want it. And delusion, I don't know if I want it or not. You know, so those are the big three that the Buddha talked about and that we study about and that we can see in our own daily lives. The wanting, the not wanting, and the being confused. You know, that's kind of mainly what we do, mainly what we're up to. So, you know, I'm going to once again show you quickly that eightfold model of the senses. Let's see, I'm going to do that. How do I do that? Yeah. So here it is again. I think I sent it to you in the chat. Maybe I'll try to do that again so you can have a copy for yourself.

[06:35]

So this is the illustration of the eight consciousnesses model of the mind. Eight consciousnesses. And the first five are sort of easy. You've known those since you were a kid. You were taught how to point to your eye and say eye and ear and nose and mouth. So you got four out of five. And then touch the skin, the things that happen that we feel. So there's smell, taste, sound, sight, and touch, the five senses. That's most commonly how we think of our senses is just those five. What's been added here by the Buddhists, centuries ago, was this sixth sense consciousness, which is the awareness of concepts. So just as the nose is aware of odors, the eye is aware of visual objects, and the ear of sounds, the sixth sense consciousness is aware of ideas, of concepts, of stories. So that's considered a sense.

[07:37]

And that sense is the one that's picking up on what you're thinking. And then, so these six are conscious. They're in the conscious level, like above the water. You think of ourselves as having a water line that divides us, and above the water, above the waves, I'm aware, and I have my six senses in order to be aware of the world. And below the water line, I'm not aware, and that's where the unconscious is where the alaya, the storehouse of all of our conscious, of all of our past, conditioning, all of the things we've ever learned, all of the things that we know, all the things we've studied, all the places we've been, you know, it's kind of like our iCloud is under, it's unconscious. We don't have access to that little bag of stuff, but it pops up. Things pop up from there, and they pop up by virtue of the lover. The lover, manas, is a little aspect of our mind, consciousness, number seven, that

[08:42]

is in love with the bag, with the cloud of stuff that thinks it's me. That's me. And Manas is in love with me and all the stuff that I've stuffed for my life, you know. So this is the story that the Yogacarans have come up with of how the mind works, the clockwork of the mind. And as you see here on the bottom, there's all of the influences from the past are creating the Alaya. Everything that has ever been done to us or we've inherited from ancestors, from evolution, from all the different ways we've been made, those are the past. They're stored in the aliyah. And then the present is stuff that pops up from the aliyah. Whatever you went through today, all of that was popping up from your unconscious. Maybe you played the piano. Where'd that come from? Maybe you talked to somebody. How'd you learn English? All of that stuff is popping up all the time from your storehouse. And then in the future, which is the very important part, we can recondition the cloud, the iCloud.

[09:49]

We can recondition it by how we behave in the present. If we transform ourselves by being kind and thoughtful and aware and all these kind of virtues that we talk about in Dharma, if we can begin to really practice with those virtues, then in the future, that's what's going to pop up. You know, the old stuff will still be around to pop up too, but even then we'll have this discernment, like, oh, that's the old junk. You know, I'm not really going with that. I'm going to plant some new seeds, and I'm going to care for those seeds of kindness and so on. There is this story that I've told so many times that Karina keeps telling me. Well, don't tell that one again, but it's so good. So there's this story. It's attributed to the Native Americans. I'm sure it's not. Somebody made it up. But there's a grandfather talking to his granddaughter, and he says to her, I have two wolves inside of me. One of them is a good wolf, and the other is a very bad wolf. And I don't know exactly what's happening.

[10:55]

I don't know which one is going to... I'm going to win. And then the granddaughter says, well, how will you know? How will you know? And the grandfather says, well, I think the one that's going to win is the one that I feed. You know, I'm going to feed the good wolf. And somebody asked in the class when I told that story, what about the bad wolves? You know, we're kind of animal lovers. And I said, I think the good wolf will take care of his brother. You know, we don't have to worry about that. So that's the eight consciousnesses model of the mind. Okay. So, So that's a big part of what this first half of Yogacara is going to be talking about, are these eight aspects of our conscious mind. And that's really what you can look forward to in the first 15 of the 30 verses. And then in the second half of the 30 verses, the final 15 chapters, there's a real shift. and the understanding. And there's a reason for that, and we'll be talking about that too.

[11:59]

So in the second half, there's another model, a different model, which I'll show you when we get there. And that model is called the three characteristics of the mind, or the three natures of the mind, and how the mind relates to objects, so-called objects. And the point of that is to teach us about letting go of delusions. What we normally think about the world and how we've been taught to see the world is basically delusional. I think by now you probably know that. And you certainly know that about other people. But the more we understand that about ourselves, the more we can begin to take the cure. Like, I'm just making up stories. I really don't know. You know, not knowing is considered nearest in Zen. Not knowing is nearest. Knowing is not so good, not so close oftentimes. So it's by means of these two models of understanding of the mind that the Yogacara aims to treat what it sees as two primary barriers to the cessation of suffering for us human beings.

[13:10]

I mean, why are we doing this? Because this is a model. These are models for helping us to break through the barriers that are causing us suffering, unnecessary suffering. There's some sort of suffering we can't do much about, breaking your leg. It's just pain. But the kind of suffering of like, why me? Why did this? It was your fault. That kind of suffering we can take care of in a different way by how we think. So that's what this is about, optional suffering and how to kind of reduce it. reduce that load. So the two barriers, the first barrier to the relief of suffering are called these afflictive emotions, greed, hate, and delusion. So those emotions are blocking us from looking at reality in a very realistic way. And these delusions, these afflictive emotions, are the product of relative truths, you know. Stories we've heard from our relatives, family members that nobody likes or whatever.

[14:15]

You know, they're relative truths. They're stories. They're about how things either do or don't match or do or don't belong. So most of the world's suffering comes from these relative truths that we've come to believe about ourselves and about the world. So that's the first barrier, the barrier of afflictive emotions, greed, hate, and delusion. And the second barrier... to our relief of our suffering, to our freedom, is the barrier of delusions themselves. Delusions about ourself as isolated individuals, which can be overcome by a realization of the ultimate truth. So the first barrier of emotions is overcome by realization of relative truth. The second barrier... of delusions is overcome by realization of the ultimate truth. And we've talked a lot about those two truths. I just did a four-week class on the two truths. Some of you were there. Thank you. It's a very important aspect of the Buddhist teaching is to have some working understanding of the two truths, the relative truth, the ultimate truth, and also how they are beneficial, where they apply.

[15:22]

You know, one applying to emotions, the other one applying to understanding, to how we see the world. So the first verse of Vasubhanda's 30 is, again, simply said, everything, everything conceived, thought of, as a self or an other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. That map that I just showed you. So everything conceived as a self or as an other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. So this is the big, bold claim. of the mind-only school. It's your mind. It's your mind that's causing you all this grief. So it's called turn the light around and point it this way. We're so good at pointing it out there. But what happens when you start to look at yourself, self-reflect? I think I've said to you that as teachers at the Zen Center, one of the ways we would begin to talk about the new students over time was whether or not they had started to self-reflect.

[16:26]

That was a really big shift. They're starting to notice something about themselves. It's not all about them and what they've done to me. So this is a really important moment for practitioners to begin to self-reflect, begin to look at your own behavior and your own mind. This one is all about that, your own mind. So this transformation of consciousness, which is mentioned in the first verse, is the principal focus of consciousness. the 30 verses. And this is a really radical teaching, you know, a radical contrast to the usual way that we think about ourselves and about the world. You know, the usual way we think, which you know, but maybe you haven't thought about it, is that consciousness is myself, that my awareness is myself, that's me, and that the world around me, the other... That's you. That's what it is. My consciousness is me, and what I'm conscious of is outside of me, is the other.

[17:30]

So self and other, subject, object. And of course, me is at the center of it all. I am in the middle, and what we call self-centered. It's a self-centered universe. Does that sound right? Does that sound even likely? Maybe not be likely, but it's the way we see it. We think, each of us thinks, we're at the center. That's how it looks. So Vasu's pointing out in verse 1 is this radically different view, that all of those, that self and that other that you believe is separate, is taking place in the transformation of consciousness. It's all going on, and it's going on inside each of us as we look at the world and as we're aware of the world. So consciousness, So what I'm trying to say is that consciousness is neither self or other. Consciousness is neither self or other.

[18:33]

Both are merely conceptions or images or stories that are taking place within a process of continuous change. So if we try thinking of our minds as a river, you know, as a verb, rather than as a procession of nouns, that's getting closer to what this teaching is all about. Mind like a river. It's flowing, not like a road. Mind like a river. A river in which the self and the other are simply images in the ongoing flow of conscious awareness. It's just going down the river together. There's all kinds of aspects of the river that we are. We are. We are the river. And the funny thing is that... Within that flow of consciousness, the self, this image of the self, tries to get a hold of the others as they're floating by. You know, there's another that I'd like to get a hold of, or there goes another I'd like to get rid of. And so there's this constant sense, self-centering of the self.

[19:37]

This is kind of what we are, trying to grab a hold or reject the other, you know. And then when you do that, imagine getting a hold of the other, whatever you've gotten a hold of lately. You know, where is it now? So we try to get a hold of things, but they fade. They just fade away in our hands, meaning our grabbers, our mental grabbers that really want that. And I really want that chocolate cheesecake. And I get a hold of it. I eat it. It's gone. And everything's like that. And I got a new car. And then where is it? It's not a new car anymore. It's long gone. So all of these ways that we torture ourselves by trying to get a hold and hold and have things belong to us is our suffering. This is the very seeds of our suffering. So because both the grabber and what is trying to be grabbed have no substantial existence, they're mind only. It's just our story. It's just the way we roll. It's the way we're made, and it's okay that we're made that way, but we believe it.

[20:41]

That's the problem. We're trying to kind of discredit some of these processes that we have so firmly come to believe. So this continuous and frustrating effort leads to an inherent dissatisfaction. with this transient self grasping after impermanent objects. It's kind of like a bad game that you played as a kid where you never get a turn, you never win, and you're always trying to hit the ball and you're always missing and so on and so forth. It's a familiar feeling of frustration. And those are the first and second noble truth. Noble truth number one, suffering is caused by noble truth number two, the imagined self suffering. grabbing after the imagined objects of our senses. So this is classic teaching. So the Heart Sutra mentions this pattern of chasing our dreams in that verse that begins the Heart Sutra. And then it also talks about these upside-down views, or inverted views, which I mentioned a couple classes ago.

[21:45]

That, as it says in the Heart Sutra, beyond all inverted views, one dwells in nirvana, in perfect peace. Beyond all upside-down views, you dwell in peace. Well, that's what we want. We want to dwell in peace. Maybe not all the time, but quite a lot of the time it would be nice to be dwelling in peace. So those four upside-down views that are mentioned in the heart suture are a classic teaching. And the first of the upside-down views is the one I've just mentioned, this imaginary self that we've conjured up. out of not a lot of evidence, but some. And then the second upside-down view is the imagined permanent objects that the self wants to get a hold of, wants to grab a hold of, you know, grasping. And third upside-down view is that if I acquire those objects, I'm going to be happy. And then lastly, the fourth upside-down view is the great confidence that we have that indeed those first three are true.

[22:46]

You know, the self getting permanent stuff is going to make me happy. I think I've told you I call that the shopping model. You know, just go shopping and get that stuff and you'll be happy. Right. And so it didn't work that well. So I'll try it again. We do a lot of shopping. You know, it's one of our I think it's called shopping therapy. Right. It's one of the ways to try and make ourselves feel better is to go get some stuff. So what the Buddha taught is actually true is that there is no abiding self. There's no separate self. There are no permanent objects for the self to acquire. There is suffering that comes from that process of chasing our dreams, not happiness, but suffering, frustration. And only enlightenment, only awakening will bring true peace. So these are the actual facts of life, not the ones that we've been trained to believe. So as I also have mentioned, the main focus of the earliest teachings in the realm of practice was to sort out the elements of existence that they called small dharmas, dharmas, tiny dharmas.

[23:54]

So there were a whole list of these dharmas that make up the world, and the job of the practitioner was to sort them out and get rid of the bad ones and promote the good ones so that basically you end up with a good outcome, a good product, a good self. So it's kind of the sorting of these dharmas was primary practice of the early teaching. And so one of the problems of that was that, well, one of the good things about that is as you're sorting through the dharmas, you come to a realization that there's no self hiding in there. There's just more dharmas. There's just these little things swirling around, you know, like lying around the cosmos. There's just... star systems and molecules and photons. It's all that's going on, all these little things. So because there was no self hiding in the swarm of dharmas, then that realization of no self was the primary realization of the early teaching. There's no self, so I'm good.

[24:55]

I mean, I'm cut off from samsara, I'm cut off from suffering. And there's a poem by a 5th century Theravadan monk named Buddha Gosar, a very famous monk, who wrote some very famous texts, The Path of Purification, a very important text in Theravadan tradition. And he said, there is suffering, but there is none who suffers. There's no self. And there is doing. Doing exists, although there's no doer. So they've got the suffering and they've got the doing, but there's no doer and there's no sufferer. So that's kind of the main accomplishment, you could say, of that approach is that the self has basically evaporated from the scene. And then Mahayana Buddhism comes along, the tradition that I've been trained in and that I study and want to also understand better this transition of these two. But Mahayana Buddhism... meaning the great vehicle, arose partly from a concern that the Abhidharmists, the ones who came up with this Dharma theory, had gotten stuck in the investigation of dharmas, of these small d dharmas.

[26:04]

That somehow, by memorizing these systems and believing in those systems, in some cases, those systems began to function as a self, a no-self self. So then now you had a system that was replacing this other way that you used to think about yourself. Now you think about yourself in terms of a system, a system of dharmas. So that was one of the criticisms that was made about that particular approach to practice. And so the tradition that developed into the Mahayana, the great vehicle, viewed that study as a hindrance to liberation. That there was kind of a... maybe blocking some kind of next steps that might have happened if you weren't working on your system. So, therefore, that Zen saying, forget the fish trap, the psychological systems, the philosophical systems, and go after the fish, awakening itself. Forget the fish trap and go after the fish. That's kind of a little more, that sounds kind of Zanda, yeah.

[27:07]

So for this reason, the Mahayana literature taught that not only is there no self, but that the small dharmas of the Abhidharma system also had no self. They also have no inherent existence. You know, these little sparkling things, they don't last either. They don't have any. You can't separate them out from the rest of reality. Everything is all-inclusive reality. So where are they going to reside? Where are you going to put the unwholesome dharmas once you find them? Where are they going to go? Because they're all included. Everything's included. So there's no other place to put stuff. So we're kind of stuck. We're going to have to deal with all of it coming into our lives, whether it's from my own delusional practice or from somebody else's. It's going to come. I'm going to be running into unwholesomeness and cruelty and sadness and so on for all of my life. I can't get rid of any of it, but I need to practice with it. And I need to find ways of practicing that are wholesome. and are caring, and so on.

[28:09]

So it's just an added challenge of, you can't get rid of anything, but you have to work with it. You know, you have to learn how to be skillful. Skillful means, that's a big part of the Mahayana, is skillful means. So if there's no inherent existence to these little dharmas, and there's no inherent existence to the self made up of little dharmas, then what is there to sort out, and who is it that's doing the sorting? You know, these are kind of Questions that are hard to answer. So again, from the Heart Sutra, a foundational text in the Mahayana system of thinking, it says in that introductory statement, Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing, Prajnaparamita, wisdom beyond wisdom, clearly saw that all five aggregates made up of dharmas, of these tiny dharmas, are empty and thereby relieved all suffering. The bodhisattva of compassion saw that all those little dharmas were empty of separate or inherent existence and as a result was relieved of all suffering.

[29:18]

They weren't real. What we're seeing isn't real, but it's very powerful. So it's not like we want it to go away. We want to learn about the power of what we see and what we think and not to be fooled, not to be drawn in to these... you know, false notions or false belief systems or whatever. You have to be very careful, you know, how we behave. So as I said earlier, Yogacara is the tradition that endeavored to reconcile these two divisions that had taken place in Buddhist history, Buddhist thought, you know, the earlier teachings with the Mahayana teachings. So they kind of got a little bit, I don't know if they were hostile. I hope not, being Buddhist, that they weren't hostile to each other, but they argued. There's a lot of arguing going on. I don't think so. There's a lot of back and forth in the tradition. There still is a good conversation to have, a really good conversation to have.

[30:20]

So Yogacara is attempting, or didn't attempt, it did reconcile these two traditions by making our... an understanding of how they both contributed to the welfare of human beings, that both of these approaches contribute to our welfare. So they use both of them. They use the little Dharma studies and they use the emptiness teachings. So what we're looking at first is Dharma study. So within the transformation of consciousness, which is the term that Vasubhamdu uses in his 30 verses, the practitioner can both realize by means of Dharma study, that there is no singular self, you know, that's still good. Like you look in there and all this swarm of like a beehive and you're looking in there for the solidity and there's no solidity. There's just a lot of bees and there's no singularity in there. And just like us, there's no singularity called a self in the middle of the swarm of events that we actually are.

[31:20]

And we know that, but we kind of forget that we're just not solid. We're not a thing. You know, we're not a thing. And so by Dharma study, you realize you're not a thing. You're not a singular self. So that's the Abhidharma emphasis of the Yogacara teaching. And then by means of the emptiness teachings, like the Heart Sutra and Agarjuna, each of these singular dharmas that make up the illusion of a singular self also have no singularity. So there's nothing that exists by itself. So that's the Mahayana emphasis is emptiness. Emptiness, it's all empty of inherent existence. And yet, what is it that's empty? Well, all this stuff is what's empty. So we got to deal with this stuff. And then we have to have a realization of what it means that it's empty of inherent existence. So this is our challenge as Dharma students. I'm sorry, it's so complicated. But that's what we're doing is trying to figure out how to understand ourselves without falling into too simple an answer or something that's so complicated that it's just not going to help us.

[32:27]

in any way. So, okay. So, the point of Vasubhanda's teaching is to offer a third view of reality based on the Buddha's awakened vision. You know, a very radical view, which they call the mind-only. This was radical, you know. Not even the emptiness guys were going that far, you know. So, here we have mind-only, in which we're taught that everything that we think... of, as a self, or as an other, is taking place, as I said, in the transformation of consciousness. Self and other, transformation of consciousness. The mind-only teaching came to call itself the third turning of the wheel. As a result of this reconciling of the first two approaches, the emptiness teachings and the Dharma studies, so the first turning of the wheel, as you may recall, was based on the Buddha's first sermon, which she gave, and which she expressed the four noble truths, and he also taught the non-dual nature, the middle way.

[33:30]

So that first sermon was the first turning of the wheel. Nagarjuna, in the teaching of the emptiness teachings, in the emptiness sutras, in the Mahayana, was the second turning of the wheel. So that was a big overturn, in a way. So you have the first turning of the wheel, and then kind of an overturning of the first wheel by the second wheel. So now you have these two wheels, not a very stable situation. And along comes the third turning of the wheel, which hooked them all together again. So the good news is Yogacara had this really important impact on Buddhist history, reunification. So in the third turning, as it says in verse 1 again, everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. Mind only. And in this view, as I said earlier, consciousness is experienced as a continuous and mysterious flow with no fixed elements or identities. Just simply an ever-changing process that is translated in verse 1 by whoever translated Vasubandhu is called transformation.

[34:41]

It's transformation. That's what we are. Change. Continuous change. So rather than seeing consciousness as a self, you know, my own self, separate from all the objects around me, although it seems like that, both the self and objects are simply conceptions within a process of continuous change. Like a river, once again, like a river, in which the images of self and other is merely the way that consciousness flows. These are aspects of what we are. So as Ben Conley says in this chapter, this first verse gives us a ground on which to do our practice, including the practice of realizing there is no ground. That's Yogacara. So no self, no object, no ground, as separate from everything else. Just this is it. All of it. This is the Buddha's awakened insight, his darsana. That includes everything.

[35:42]

includes the Buddha's teaching, and includes the Buddha talking after he had his insight, his all-inclusive insight, about how he did that, how he saw that, and how we might do that as well. So Ben goes on to say that what this verse also gives us is the opportunity to experience a sense of wonder about what we are experiencing right now, a sense of our most basic understanding of where and what we are in the world, is not quite right. We're kind of misinterpreting what we're seeing. That's what he's saying. But instead, seeing that we are involved in this mysterious, ongoing unfolding, the awesomeness. If you're not in awe, you're distracted. That's kind of the summary of what's going on here. So, in a... a set of practices called the 37 practices of the Bodhisattva.

[36:43]

Ben mentions in his book, which was written in the 14th century by Zhang Bo, it says that whatever arises in experience is your own mind. Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations. Know that and don't generate self-other fixations. This is the practice of the Bodhisattva. Whatever arises in experience is your own mind. Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations. Can you feel that? What concepts could interfere with your mind? Know that and don't generate self-other fixations. This is the practice of a bodhisattva. So the assignment and the challenge to us from the Yogacara tradition is to engage in decentering. By seeing through this split that we are conjuring out of the flow, the self and other split.

[37:47]

It's almost like a swimming stroke. I'm putting self over here. I'm putting the other over there. But really, it's just water. It's just flow. There's no split. There's no split. And so we have to work this. We have to work it because we don't see it. It's not how we see things. So I think you've heard of the epithet of the Buddha called the tathagata. Tathagata means that which comes and goes. So again, they're talking about the flow. That which comes and goes. Buddha means tathagata. That which comes and goes. Buddha means awake. The mind that's awake sees the coming and going. That's what the mind does. The Buddha comes and goes. So there's no splitting of the stream. you know, into parts, into self and other, which is just a fantasy. So in chapter two, which we looked at two weeks ago, Ben talks about the second of the 30 verses in which we are introduced to these three primary aspects or elements that make up the yoga charm map of the human mind.

[38:53]

And so first, first, we heard about the transformation of consciousness. That's the overarching theme of... of the 30 verses. And now in this next verse, verse number two, we're going to be learning a little bit about how that consciousness is being mapped. You know, that map that we just looked at, this is the steps that we go through in order to have more understanding of the different elements of the map. So the next verse, verse two, is talking about consciousness as having three aspects. Three aspects. So the first of them, I'll just read the verse. This transformation has three aspects. The ripening of karma, that's one aspect. The consciousness of a self, that's another aspect. And the imagery, images, of sense objects, that's another aspect. Okay, so we saw that on the map. There's imagery of sense objects, that's a conscious level. And then there's the ripening of karma, which goes on in the unconscious level.

[39:56]

And then there's this consciousness of a self. which is also pretty much on the unconscious level. We don't really see how that ego tunnel is being drilled and how we're climbing through it. Most of our life we're in the ego tunnel and believing ourselves to be exactly what we see and think. So, okay, we're beginning to... Oops, something happened there. Okay, so... So what I've said before, and I'm going to repeat, is that the Yogacara is about experiential learning. That's the primary emphasis, is how we experience the world. They really want us to be, you know, not just reading about some theory, but actually applying whatever this theory is to our experience as we go about in the day. It's kind of hard to remember. I think that's probably the biggest challenge for anyone trying to practice anything is to practice.

[40:59]

It's just to do it. So, you know, trying to put some time into your day when you're actually going to pay attention to your mind and not just be riding on it like a bicycle, you know, but actually get off and look at it and figure out what's going on with it and how it works and that sort of thing. So that's the main thing is this is about, you know, trying to understand your own experience. And it's calling to us to attend to the actual workings of our day-to-day conscious experience through a kind of nonjudgmental moment-to-moment awareness. That in itself is hard. It's not about judging, oh, that's better and that's worse and I like green and I don't like yellow. It's not allowing ourselves to indulge in that judgmental picking and choosing aspect that we are so good at. But really just noticing when the thing that you don't like is comes to the table on a plate, and there it is, you know. What is it? I think you've heard me talk about John Cage. I'm a big John Cage fan. And one of the things he said about sounds, you know, unpleasant sounds or unpleasant sights, he said, if I think something is not beautiful, then I look at it or I listen to it for a long time.

[42:13]

I just look at it. I hear it. And after a while, I realize there's no reason that I think it's not beautiful. There's no reason. Try that. Try that the next time that thing arrives on your plate or in your ear. Do I really think it's not beautiful? And what does that mean? What does that mean? And then if it happens for you, I've tried it quite a few times and it's pretty amazing, that feeling goes away. And there's just this object, the parent object there, just not hurting anybody. It's just sitting there, just a piece of lettuce or whatever it is. So just noticing our sensory experiences and our thoughts and our sensations as they come and go in transformation of consciousness. Simply a process of endless change, you know, this flowing river of the mind. So...

[43:14]

And again, in the second verse, this first aspect of the transformation of consciousness is named, which is called the ripening of karma, is referring to alaya, A-L-A-Y-A, the alaya, the iCloud or the bag of unconscious tricks that we carry around. The ripening of karma means that that's how our old habits come to fruition. They're little seeds of our past actions. And in order for them to arrive in the present, they kind of ripen in there. They spend time in the incubator. And then at some point, they come up. When the time is right and the occasion is right, they kind of arise right there in response to something that may be happening in the present. So these old habits have a habit of coming in. It's like, whoa, I haven't had that one for a while, but there it is. There it is. So the alaya is the storehouse, and that's where our karma, our actions from the past, ripen.

[44:16]

And the second aspect of the transformation of consciousness is manas, the lover. So these two, alaya and manas, had been added to an old traditional. The earlier Buddhist practices didn't have these two. This is an alaya... This is a Yogacara invention. They've added this to mind theory. So the earlier Buddhists had these six sense consciousnesses. They had the sense organs and then the mind. Those were all there. But Yogacara adds these two new features to the great vehicle. They add the alaya, the storehouse, and they add manas, the lover. So this verse calls those six sense consciousnesses the imagery of sense objects. And the importance of that term, of the translation of that term as imagery, again, has to do with it's in your mind.

[45:24]

It's something appearing as an image in your mind. You know, that our sense experience is primarily a creation. It's made out of this... unconscious story-making machinery in the alaya, which connects with our emotions and then paints a picture of what we think is happening. So we have our old stories and our old habits and our old opinions and preferences that are down there cooking away. And then you have a current experience. You know, you're there at a restaurant and you've got the menu and you're going through the list of things you like and things you don't like, right? And then we kind of paint a picture of what we're going to order based on all of that cooking together. And then we kind of can tend, I tend to order the same thing. See, I tried to break that habit, but it's pretty hard to break. Try something you've never tried before. I don't know. I'm going to go with spaghetti, you know. So we have these pictures that we kind of repeat. They're habits. They're habits that we have. So in the practices of the 30 verses offers us the possibility of replanting those karmic seeds, of drawing something new, of entering into the process of unconscious machinery in order to have a different outcome or a different experience, something fresh.

[46:38]

And by choosing some positive seeds for wholesome storytelling rather than being continuously swept along... by our old habits of mind. So we're really trying to become more creative, to refreshen ourselves so that it's not just repeating patterns, like we say, stuck in the mud or stuck in my habits or stuck in anything. We want to get unstuck. That's kind of our main thing. So the practice of being mindful of mental states is the antidote to this usual tendency we have to to externalize our problems, to judge what's going on, and to try and control objects and other people in order to feel safe and to feel good about ourselves. So that's our habit. So this is kind of going the other way, turning the light around and going the other direction, you know, away from self-centering. So manifesting awareness of the mind without trying to control it is a very excellent way to practice.

[47:44]

So being aware of the mind without trying to control what you notice in there. As Suzuki Roshi said to his students, give your cow a big pasture, but watch her. Don't let her get hurt. Don't let her hurt others. And don't let her wander off. So this is about the mind. Give your mind a big pasture and watch her. Don't let her get hurt. Don't let her hurt others. And don't let her wander off. That's the first two verses, and the next verse, which I will talk about next week, and just pick it up and then move right along, is the third verse says that the first of these, now I'm naming the ones that they said there are three aspects. The third verse says the first of these aspects is called the alaya, the storehouse where the seeds are ripened. And it... The alaya contains all the karmic seeds, the verse says. What it holds and its perception of location are unknown.

[48:44]

So this verse number three is really going to focus, as chapter number three in Ben's book, is going to focus on the alaya, the storehouse. So this is the first of the building blocks of the eight consciousness model that we're going to learn more about. And I will start there next week. So if you would read Chapter 3 and bring any questions you might have from reading what Ben has to say, that would be very helpful. And then we can kind of start together in that way. Okay, so that was it. That was the review. I would very much like to hear anything you all have to say. And just raise your hand. Oh, yeah, I'm going to say hello to everyone. That's right. Hello, Dean. Hello, Kathy and Jerry and Helene. Lisa and David. Hello, Amr, Chris, Drew, Jifu, Jacqueline. Dean, again, you move.

[49:45]

You square move, Dean. That's kind of tricky. Griffin, Helen, Kosan, Kakwan, Millicent, Carmina, Marianne, Paul and Kate. Senko, iPad, Adrian Brenner, Caroline, Jacqueline Sherman. Hi, Jackie. Judy, Justin, Tom, S, Roy, Stephen, and Shozan. Welcome, everyone. Okay. Someone had a hand up. Dean. Hi, Flu. Hi, Dean. A couple weeks ago... either during or after your class, a phrase sort of stuck in my mind. It was, don't believe yourself. Not yourself. Don't believe yourself. And it wasn't ignore myself. It wasn't, oh, bad, bad self. It was just simply, don't believe myself.

[50:49]

And it wasn't ever really... where that came from, but it made sense to me because I kept thinking when something would pop into my head, it was, oh, Dean, you might not want to believe that. And then today, the word vigilance popped up and has been repeating itself, and I think that came from and I can't remember what it was you said, but how do we do this? And it's by being, I've got this idea, it's by being vigilant. But often I think of the word vigilant as a little bit of a harsh word, but it feels like that's kind of what I need to do. And recently someone asked me, so what is it that happens that,

[51:54]

you have that moment where you feel like you've dropped into your practice and you sense freedom. And I think what you're saying is there's a need for vigilance that we have to keep paying attention. But I'm not sure if I've got it quite right. I mean, this is very rich. This whole class has been really fascinating. And I think, okay. And then it doesn't take any time and all. I think, oh my gosh, what was that? What was that I thought? Why did that make sense? And where's it gone? And it's just a matter of waiting for it to come back. And it does, which I'm massively thrilled about that I've gotten into. I've gotten a habit somewhere. It lets something happen where I drop down into this practice.

[52:59]

But it's still very perplexing to me how I participate. Because it's just something. Someone asked me not that long ago, who is a Nagarjuna? And I have not stopped thinking about that. And this whole thing we're doing here has really pushed me into this idea that I just feel something and I don't do anything. And then maybe the feeling goes away and maybe the feeling comes back. And I think what this Yogachara is, it's giving a way, a path. For that to happen. But I can't quite. I'm so used to just.

[54:00]

Oh wow. You can't get a hold of it. I can't get a hold of it. I'm kind of okay with it. Because it keeps coming back. But it would be really cool to. Participate in the return. Well. Okay. Well, a couple of thoughts occurred. You know, one is from a roomy poem. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell. Don't go back to sleep. So it's not so much that sleeping is bad. It's just you're going to miss out. You know, if you drift off into dreams, which is kind of what we're being induced into dream states by marketing, by laws, by... news by each other. You know, that's kind of the way we've been raised, and that's our culture. But if you break that, if you take up this radical practice, don't go back to sleep. It is kind of intense.

[55:03]

I mean, you know, one Zen master was asked, well, what's the secret of practice? And the teacher says, attention. And the monk says, yeah, yeah, I know that, but what's the secret? And he says, attention. Yeah, I understand. I understand about that. But what's the real secret? And the master says, attention. So, you know, being able to stay in the presence of what's happening, you know, to not go back to sleep, to not be dreaming about the past or the future and being lost in that kind of reverie, as we all can do, is hard. It's really hard. You know, we need to practice. We need to make a discipline of it without having it be a harsh word. You know, discipline kind of bothers us too. Sounds like punishment or something. But it's more like a training. I want to. You know, I want to be a mind athlete. I want to do my exercises.

[56:05]

And I want to develop some strength in my ability to pay attention to what's happening. Discipline. Discipline. That's similar to vigilance. They're all in the same. If you look in the thesaurus, you'll find all of those packaged together, you know. Soft visions. Thank you. Hello, Griffin. Hello. So opening to my thinking this week, what I've been seeing is that there's more and more Subtle layers of bias or fixed idea. And I'm having, you know, sort of a new question about what is a clear thought or what is truly new? A mind that's awake, you know, you brought up the heart suture, you know, clearly seeing all five skandhas.

[57:09]

I mean, what I've seen is that I think perhaps I'm being, you know, patient and kind and not rejecting, but perhaps I'm really upside down and that even, I mean, not that it isn't a better choice to be, you know, kind and generous, but even an impulse for genuine, you know, generosity, has a certain kickback to reifying the ego or protecting something that I don't really know necessarily, but is beneficial to all parts of myself or to another. So that's where my mind has been. Yeah.

[58:13]

Yeah, thank you. I think it's kind of best guess. You don't know if what you're doing is beneficial to others. I mean, that's your idea. Oh, I just did something really nice. You know, I did something so generous. Man, man, am I good. You know, that's my idea. That's a nice idea. It's a nice way to feel. But you don't know. You don't know. And so part of the work... that we do is not to work alone. You know, we have teachers for a reason or mentors or Dharma friends because, you know, and if they're good Dharma friends, they'll be honest with us. And, of course, we need to ask because a lot of people won't offer their opinions if you're not asked, you know. And then the whole test of kindness and honesty and so on comes forth. But it takes a while to build that kind of trusting relationship, as you know. So I have a teacher, you have a teacher. I've made very good use of my teacher for very many years to bring in my pile of dirty laundry and kind of go, you know, unwind and do all kinds of tricks until I began to find questions that I really did want to explore more than just the relative truths that were irritating me.

[59:32]

So it takes some time, it takes some study to find those questions. And as you find them, then you bring them. bring them out and ask somebody. How about this question? And I think little by little, you begin to pull out from your own bag of storage those things which have been hurting you and that you can get some clarity. And then maybe they don't hurt you again. Kind of the bag of tricks. When I was a new student, I thought of that... process of being like a garbage disposal that had been turned on the other way. All this garbage I had stuffed for my whole life was just spewing out. And it really was awful. And I just felt like, I don't like meditating. It's just more and more garbage being revealed. But at some point, you get unstuffed. A lot of it is quieted. And then you make new stuff, just so you want to keep current. make sure you're taking care of each day of whatever it is you might have overlooked you know so it's a job it's a job life you know lifelong learning well yeah hi hello chris you're muted i can read your lips but hi

[60:59]

Good evening. So I wanted to get some clarity on, I think earlier you mentioned what comes onto your plate. Like what is ripening at this moment? And when sitting, the way I'm viewing it, so when I sit, something will come up. Something will be on my plate eventually. And it's what my mind wraps itself around and believes it to be all that i am right it's it's it's fully absorbed into not fully absorbed that's that's what it believes it is and it's like hitting hitting a wall that's the only thing that i know and and so that alaya is producing whatever's on the plate at any given moment and that changes and the monas is the the real the connection between myself my identity and whatever this is that that is this that's on my plate or that's in front of me on this wall and then by sitting with that um the eventually it disappears right and something else comes the mind settles the mind starts to eventually calm itself down gathers itself and becomes more concentrated and

[62:23]

another thing arrives on the plate, right? And the process begins again and again. And that seems to be very similar to the process of emptiness practice. And so to recognize the inherent emptiness of everything as the mind settles, that process continues again and again. And I'm curious... Is the Yogacara teaching, is this saying that practice, that is one form of practice, but then there's also the process of seeing what arrives on the plate and then actively working with that to transform it into... A purer state, perhaps, or a more refined state or a more handsome state. Where am I not seeing things correctly on this?

[63:26]

Well, I think where I started, I was with you until the one point where you were going to purify something or do something to it. And I thought, no, I think that's maybe where you might just stop. and notice what's on the plate, study what's on the plate, and be entertained by what's on the plate. Like, wow, look what's on my plate. Oh, now my plate's empty. Oh my God, so I put a dog on my plate. So you're going to be getting these offerings from the Aliyah that you're not making them, you're not bringing them forward. They're coming forward. They're your inheritance. From your past, from your parents' past, from the past of human species, you're an inheritor of that. And we have, since we were children, been horrified by what comes on our plates. I was terrified by the images in my mind when I was a child. They scared me. They were ugly faces that would show up in my dreams and I'd wake up as nightmares. I had no friendliness with the images in my mind. They were frightening to me. And I would make up stories about, you know, they're jealous or they're angry or I'm jealous or, you know, it was just a hell realm to be a child and a teenager and a young adult because of all the ways I was interpreting the images in my mind.

[64:43]

You know, and after years of sitting with those images, as you have done, many of us have done, you know, it's more like a flea circus. You know, I'm like really interested, like... Oh, God, look, here are some elephants, and then there's a giant tarantula. I mean, it's really fascinating, the imaginarium and what's produced. By not taking it as substance, by not making it substantive or interpreting it in some way that makes the truth out of it, you just let them flow, tathagata. You let these images flow. And then sometimes you respond in a certain way, depending on the image of a friend coming, and you have a clock. cup of tea or you talk, you know, about stuff, chat away and then they go away and then something else arises. So we're in a flow and we're not trying to, you know, narrow the flow or widen the flow or whatever. We're really in relationship with what's going on in our minds and befriending.

[65:45]

I think making friends with your mind is the job rather than change it, you know, or make it better. something like that you could try but i'm not sure that that's um that you actually have that power you know i think maybe you have the power to to watch to watch your mind i think that we have that power okay rather rather than um so there's that but there's also then the cultivation of of traits right of of qualities of mind of the um of of of the precepts of how we live our life of of seeding our mind with qualities that we wish to embody that help enable that uh ability to watch the mind more clearly so there's there's two things there's the the process of being aware um and

[66:47]

being friend, which is very helpful. I'm glad you said that. But there's also this process, this generative process that we go through as well to cultivate aspects and qualities that are conducive to that. So there's two things here, right? Well, when I say befriend, the way you befriend your mind is the way you befriend anybody. Don't kill it. Don't steal from it. Don't lie to it. sexualize it, don't slander it. So how you treat yourself and how you treat others is the cultivation of that understanding that the other is not separate from me. So the realization of non-separation is kind of an automatic cure. It's like if you actually realize that you're not separate from me, I'm going to take care of you as myself. World as self, as Joanna Macy called her book. World is lover, world is self. So that if we actually get that feeling about everything is my responsibility to care for, then you've got plenty to do.

[67:55]

And precepts are good guidelines. They're not rules. They're more guidelines for seeing how the mind really is. Because your mind really is Buddha, according to this school. You are Buddha. So Buddha wants to act on... what you see. Your kindness wants to act. You don't have to make it. You don't have to create it. It's there. Your compassion is there. The less fear, the more open, you know. If I'm not afraid, I'm more open to what's coming and what's happening. So I think the precepts work very well with attention. You know, it's kind of the backstory. And sometimes we need to bring the backstory forward because we get a little disoriented. Thank you very much. Welcome. Hello, Stephen. I can hear you, Stephen. You're muted.

[68:57]

Did you want to say something? Okay. All right. Hello? Hello? Well, if you do, this is the time to unmute. Anyone else have any last words? I think it's getting close to time. All right. Well, very nice to see you all again. And God willing, as they say, I will be back next Sunday, and I hope you all will too. And please take a look at chapter three of Ben's book. I'm not going to talk as long as I did today. I really wanted to catch up with doing a review.

[69:57]

So next time, I'll talk less and ask you to please participate more around this next chapter and what you see there. And maybe review what we've just talked about. And so part of the way... the way to study these verses is to keep reading them over again. Because as we get in the weeds, so to speak, it's kind of like, what is this related to? Well, it's related to the whole set. It's one set, unlike keys on a piano, and they work together. So it's really important to keep bringing the larger picture back into play as we're looking at the different parts. Okay. Well, thank you all very, very much. If you'd like to unmute and say goodnight, you're welcome to do that. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Fu. Take good care. Thank you, Fu. Namaste. Namaste. Good night. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Senko.

[70:58]

Thank you. Thank you.

[71:04]

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