This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. And welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Are some of you here for the first time today? Anybody? Okay. Good. Well, welcome particularly to you. I hope you find something useful. My name is Rosalie Curtis, and I have been a resident at Zen Center since 1984, and I was ordained in 2005 by my teacher, Michael Wenner. And I think that some of you who know me may have heard me say before how much I appreciate the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.

[01:16]

And specifically the thing that I appreciate so much about him is his ability and willingness to take some really dense, difficult, complicated text, usually a classic Buddhist text, that I would have a really hard time slogging through and finding anything to practice with and making it accessible for me and people like me who aren't very interested in philosophy and who aren't scholars. So I love that in Thich Nhat Hanh. And this morning, I want to talk about a book of his called Transformation at the Base, 50 Verses on the Nature of Consciousness. And I was attracted to that book because of its title.

[02:21]

Given all of my interest and most people's interest in Western psychology, I was interested in knowing more about Eastern psychology or Buddhist psychology, rather. And also the title, Transformation at the Base, seemed to me to hold some kind of... promise that even I could transform myself in a deep way from the ground up. And that was a very appealing idea. So I was a little bit disappointed when I heard that the book had been republished with a new title. And the new title is Understanding Our Mind. 50 verses in Buddhist psychology. But when I think about it, what the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree on the eve of his enlightenment was cultivate his understanding of his mind and delve deeply into his consciousness to see how his own mind worked and how the universe worked.

[03:38]

And I think that's our practice, too, that if we have any hope of enlightenment or improving our lives, it will come through understanding how our mind works. So I'm okay with the title. And this teaching is a simplification of... the Yogacara teachings, the teachings of the Yogacara school of Buddhism, and specifically the texts, the classic texts written by the monk scholar Vasubandhu in the 4th century CE. And these texts are very... complicated categorizations and systematizations of Buddhist philosophy and psychology.

[04:44]

And I doubt if I would be very interested in them, frankly. And when students study them, they memorize lists of dharmas and wholesome dharmas and all different kinds of things. It's that kind of work. So I'm particularly grateful for this version by Thich Nhat Hanh, which is really quite accessible. And I just hope that in this very brief time I can do it any justice at all and communicate anything of why I like these teachings so much. So this is a description of reality. It's a model. And it's an antidote to our usual way of thinking, which is to see ourself

[05:44]

as separate from everything else, and to discriminate between self and other, and subject and object, inside and outside, birth and death, what's good for me and what's bad for me. And this teaching posits eight consciousnesses that human beings have. And usually they're described starting with number eight, which is because it's the base and foundation of all the other consciousnesses. They all arise out of this one. And it's called store consciousness. And sometimes it's called all the seeds because its function is to store and maintain the All of our seeds, which are both the cause and the result of everything that's ever happened to us in our lives, all our experiences, thoughts, actions, feelings, perceptions, everything that we've ever experienced leaves a seed in our consciousness or waters a seed that's already there.

[07:11]

And we also have innate seeds that we inherited from our parents and our ancestors. And even while we were tiny babies, and in fact, even while we were in the room, our seeds were being watered and we were collecting seeds from things that were happening that we were conscious of. Our storehouse is both individual and collective, so we have cultural seeds from our nation and our society, our friends and enemies, and the things that we expose ourselves to, like books and movies and television and the Internet. all of these things that affect us affect the seeds in our story consciousness and water our seeds for better or for worse we have wholesome and unwholesome seeds so we have seeds of joy

[08:22]

and loving kindness and compassion. And we also have seeds of hatred and anger and jealousy and fear. We have seeds of enlightenment and delusion. And the seed of our Buddha nature is in our store consciousness. So we have the capacity to be a Buddha. So everything in the cosmos comes from and causes these seeds. And our storehouse consciousness contains the potential for everything in the cosmos that's ever happened or ever could happen. So its potential and scope are what should I say, inconceivably vast.

[09:26]

And the next consciousness is called manas. And manas, the function of manas, is discriminating, thinking, measuring, cognizing. It arises from store consciousness because store consciousness contains seeds for the perceiver and the perceived. So we have this dichotomy of subject and object that we fall prey to built into our store consciousness. It's there. Of course, we also have seeds for unity and harmony. But... Manus latches on to this seed of the perceiver and sets it up and calls it a self and sets about defending it with all its strength and power. And it craves continuation and blind satisfaction.

[10:43]

sort of like an ego, and it's our survival instinct. It's always operating day and night. So if you're asleep and you suddenly wake up because of a loud noise, that's manas taking care of you. So while manas is... its purpose is to protect us, it often actually causes us a lot of harm and suffering because it doesn't perceive reality correctly. The perceptions of manas are inherently wrong, mistaken, not just some of the time, but all of the time, because manas... sees this self as something separate from everything else in the cosmos, and that's not how things really are. So it's misperceiving all the time.

[11:45]

Then we have our five sense consciousnesses, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body. And the sixth consciousness is mind consciousness, which is very similar to the sense consciousnesses, except that its object is ideas, concepts, thoughts, perceptions, things that we call mental formations or mental constructions. So when conditions are right, seeds from our store consciousness manifest in our mind consciousness, and then they become mental formations. And when they manifest in our mind consciousness, they're strengthened.

[12:50]

They become stronger, they're nourished, and they're more apt to arise again. So I want to give an example of what it would be like for a negative seed to go from our store consciousness to our mind consciousness. So let's say that somewhere in my career, maybe 20 years ago, someone told me that I wasn't very well organized and that was a problem. And I... still remember this. So I have a seed for this in my store consciousness. And it has a lot of charge around it. It has a lot of pain around it, either because the person who said this to me was someone really important to me, or maybe the circumstances were humiliating in some way. I'm not sure. But anyway, this seed is a strong seed that has a lot of habit energy connected with it.

[13:52]

And so in the course of my work, one of my colleagues comes along, and we're working on a project together, and she suggests some small way in which I might improve the way I've organized my work on this project. And that seed... pops up immediately with all its surround, with all its pain and charge. And I think she's telling me once again that I'm not well organized and I may even generalize it and think that this person is telling me that I just don't know what I'm doing. And if I have a strong seed of anger also, I may get angry and I may act out that anger immediately. or I may act out my hurt feelings. And then we have a mess on our hands because we have this ugly scene going on.

[14:56]

And this person was just trying to help, you know? She doesn't know what's the big problem, why I'm so upset. So this is what can happen when seeds that are strong and old... come up from our store consciousness. They can cause a lot of trouble. We can be playing out some situation that happened many years ago that's no longer current. So although mind consciousness is capable of perceiving the manifestations of store consciousness correctly and directly, Since all the phenomena that come into mind consciousness are filtered through manas, which is always wrong, which is inherently wrong, much of what we perceive in mind consciousness is also wrong.

[15:57]

So we have a seed analogy going here. And our practice... the practice way to work with this is to take good care of our garden. Mind consciousness is the gardener and trusts the seeds to the soil and tends them carefully. So the gardener... nourishes and waters the wholesome seeds, and tries not to water the negative seeds in self and others. And actually, this becomes a moral obligation that we have if we're on the Bodhisattva path. Our Bodhisattva vow is to save all beings, and I believe that when we take care of of the situation with our seeds, when we're loving and nourishing to our wholesome seeds and when we try not to water our negative seeds, when we do that moment to moment and day in and day out, that that is saving all beings.

[17:13]

And that's our Buddhists have a vow. So, store consciousness is the soil. And Thich Nhat Hanh says several times in this book that with care and nourishment, the soil will produce a flower or fruit, symbolic of enlightenment and understanding. He says this will happen if we practice in this way. He doesn't say, if it happens... or it might happen. He says, if we practice in this way, it will happen. So I find that encouraging, that he's willing to put himself on the line in that way about this. So one question we would have is how to practice with our negative seeds. As we've discussed, when

[18:18]

a seed manifests in our mind consciousness, that is, when we become aware of it, it is stronger. And if we act on it in some kind of way, it is even stronger. So these things nourish those negative seeds, which we don't want to do. We want them to just stay dormant in our store consciousness forever, if possible. So we can't keep seeds from manifesting, but we need to learn how to take care of the negative seeds once they manifest. And we do this through mindfulness, by cultivating our awareness of what kind of seeds we have in us and when they come up, when and how they arise. So if we're just mindful and watchful of all of our emotions and interactions during the day, we will learn what seeds we have.

[19:38]

We'll learn that some seeds come up over and over again, and we'll learn what triggers them, what kind of situations bring them up. And then we'll know that we have a strong seed of that sort. We may know that we have a strong anger seed. And it may come up over and over again. And we see the pattern. And then we can develop the ability to catch it quickly. So as soon as it comes up, we say, oh, there's that anger seed. I have to be careful that something bad doesn't happen. So the best thing to do at that time is to pause, to stop, and to resolve not to act on the flood of feelings that may come up for us when a negative seed manifests in our mind consciousness.

[20:41]

And then I think we have to be compassionate with ourselves. We should know that It isn't our fault that we have this seed. Everybody has this seed. We just have to take care of it in this moment right now. And one way that I think that we can do that is to treat the negative seed kindly. Maybe put it back in our store consciousness in the same way that you'd put your baby to bed for a nap. Just put it down and hope that it remains dormant and peaceful. Another thing that we have to keep in mind is not making it worse. It may be that the best we can do is to just not

[21:44]

react, not act out, not do anything in a situation like this that's going to make it worse. And if day after day, time after time, we don't make it worse, over a long period of time, we've made our life much, much better. I think it's also helpful to be mindful of anything that's refreshing and beautiful in the present moment, even if it's small. There is always, in almost any circumstances, there's always something you can find to be appreciative of, I think. So I also want to give an example of what it's like when a positive seed comes up. And I want to tell a story that my teacher, Michael Wenger, has told many times. And so I've heard it a number of times, and probably you have too, some of you.

[22:50]

So Michael was in his 20s, and he was in New York. And he was coming home from a baseball game. and it was a hot New York summer day, and he had been playing baseball, so he was probably sweaty and dirty. And he was a hippie, and he had long, you know, toe-headed blonde hair, and he's a big guy. So I can imagine that he was kind of a sight, frankly. And he passed this well-dressed woman And she made a nasty comment about his appearance. But Michael, ever since he left the baseball game, had been saying a mantra to himself as he walked. And so at this point, he was pretty mellow.

[23:54]

He was feeling pretty peaceful and contented. And so he just cheerily said good afternoon to her. And she looked a little surprised, and she said, well, at least you're polite. And I love this story because it was so small and so unpremeditated, and yet... It seems to me like there's some magnitude in what happened, that it had some really lasting, meaningful effect. I know it did for Michael because he's still telling this story. I wonder how it was for her. I wonder if she ever thought about it again, if it meant something to her. I bet she has no idea that she is so famous at Zen Center.

[24:55]

LAUGHTER But anyway, you know, the little things we do, positive or negative, can have really untold effects, and I think it's really useful to keep that in mind. So I am thrilled to be one of the five, a team of five teachers who's helping to lead EPP this year. And EPP means establishing the path of practice. And this is a program that was designed by Paul Haller and Christina Lane here. And it's directed to the target audience for this program is people who don't live at a Zen Center, people who practice at home alone. And it's a program designed to help them develop

[25:56]

a daily sitting practice. And the people in the program have done that. It's a year-long program. It's not over yet. It's meeting this afternoon, actually. And every month, the group is assigned a mindfulness activity. It's been really wonderful for me to watch how useful these activities have been in the lives of these people. And in a certain way, I feel like they're very similar to what's asked in this teaching of transformation at the base. It's mindful awareness of various things, and these people are given exercises that help them develop their mindfulness muscle. So the very first one was to be aware of their physical sensations in eating and drinking and getting dressed in the morning. And then we asked them to pause at transition points in their activities during the day and take three deep breaths and see how that felt and record it.

[27:09]

They were keeping journals. And to take some activity that they did regularly and slow it down for a few minutes and do it really super slow, like sweeping or doing the dishes. And then we ask them to be aware of the relationship between their... physical and mental and emotional states, both in meditation and at various times during the day, to see how those three facets of their being related to each other and influenced each other. And we asked them to keep a journal of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral experiences. Most recently, they've been practicing with intention. And the last time or two that we met, we worked with Mary Oliver's poem, When Death Comes, and asked them to make a list.

[28:15]

First of all, make a list of their priorities. That was before we started with the poem, their life goals. And then after we read this poem, they made lists. in response to the question, when death comes, I want to say, and when death comes, I don't want to say. So it was very interesting for them, I think, to work with their intentions and priorities in this way. And this afternoon, we're going to begin practicing with the precepts and right speech. So there's been this progression, this development of the ability to be mindful. And I think that same kind of practice happens in this transformation of the base, that we just start doing it. And we don't beat ourselves up if we don't remember every time. We just do it when we remember to do it. And pretty soon, it's a habit, and it's a strong habit.

[29:20]

And it really helps our lives and helps other people's lives. So I went to... just kind of go over and review what I think are some of the takeaway messages from this teaching of transformation at the base. One of them is that enlightenment is present in our store consciousness all the time. When delusion is seen through, enlightenment is there. And We usually think of the sense organ and its object as two different things. But Thich Nhat Hanh says that there is just consciousness, which is the union of the organ and the eye, for example, and the form and mind consciousness, or the ear and the sound and mind consciousness.

[30:28]

And these produce hearing or sight or awareness. So there is no consciousness of any kind without a unity of subject and object and mind consciousness. There has to be that union and harmony. Our usual way of understanding things, though, is that there's me and there's everything else. There's me and there are the objects of my awareness. So Thich Nhat Hanh says there's just awareness. And awareness is always awareness of something. And there has to be this unity of subject and object and mind consciousness. We think that there is inside and outside, but when we pay close attention to our eye form, sight, or nose, odor, smell, we see that we can't locate it anywhere.

[31:41]

We can't locate it inside or outside. It's just experience manifesting. Dogen Zenji says, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. Norman Fisher taught a series of classes on transformation at the base in conjunction with a sitting practice, zazen practice, and he recommended that the participants during zazen focus on listening, just passive attentive listening, just being open to sound. And he said, what you discover is that

[32:46]

There is no substantive difference between a thought in your mind and your awareness of the song of a bird. You may think that the thought resides in your skull and the song of the bird resides out there wherever the bird is. But that's not true. It's all just manifesting in your consciousness. And if you really think Pay attention to listening and make that a practice that will become clearer and more familiar to you. So our consciousness, our consciousnesses, our mind consciousness and our store consciousness and manas are always evolving and changing. Birth and death and coming and going are continuous and intermingled.

[33:49]

And this is very close to us at City Center lately because we've had three deaths in our community recently. And these were major, important deaths, people who are pillars of the City Center community, people that we all know and care about a lot. And here's how I see that. Even though there is a moment when we say that death occurs, from the point of view of losing our loved one, it happens gradually. At some point long before they die, they are no longer who they were. And after death... they continue to live on in us. I'm sure that Darlene is alive in me in a way that happened through her dying, because her whole process of preparing for death was a teaching for me about letting people in and sharing intimacy.

[35:07]

was very powerful for me, and it will stay with me. And when I think of Lou, I see his sweet, smiling face and his sharp mind. Yet he experienced a lot of frustration as he lost his mobility over the years. I know that he mourned that. The agile loo, who at 75 I would run into outside taking a walk, and who at 80 was still running up and down stairs here, gave way to the loo of 90 with the sweet face and the sweeter and sweeter smile. So as one loo died, another one appeared. over and over again. And this happens to all beings and all things all the time.

[36:10]

This is the nature of our existence. Our store consciousness is empty of an independent self, but it's full of everything in the cosmos. It has the nature of inner being, How can we look at our store consciousness with its continual evolution and change and not see that we are not separate from our world? I think of Walt Whitman's wonderful, famous line from Song of Myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. So I want to see if I have time to read any of the verses or not. I don't. So that's it. Thank you very much.

[37:13]

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

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