Good evening. I don't know if that sign is going to go away. Hello? Goodbye. Let's see. What can I do about that? There we go. Great. Hello. Welcome. Welcome. Nice to see you. Great. I'm going to look around the screen. I don't do that enough. Kendo, thank you for coming to help. Appreciate it. Great. Okay, so we'll start with a few minutes of sitting together. I'll ring the bell, and then I'm going to continue on with the Yogacara teachings, Vasubandhu. We've been sitting together today.

[21:29]

It's a one-day sitting at Green Gulch. And really, I highly recommend if you have a chance to do some longer sittings. It really is like fine sandpaper. It starts to smooth out some of those rough spots that accumulate. So anyway, it was very nice to be in the Zendo. We've been sitting with all the doors and windows open, and it's been great. It's quite chilly in the morning, so folks are all muffled up and got their blankets and hats and masks and so on. It's very sweet. So here we are, nice warm spaces. I hope you're all in warm spaces right now, safe spaces. So before I begin to talk about the 30 verses again, I wanted to ask you for some... not exactly tolerance, but I think patience, as we walk through these verses, they're really bare bones.

[22:31]

In fact, they are the bones of the Buddha's body. And until we put some flesh and clothing on them, they're really kind of hard to look at. It's like, that's it? There's not a lot that's being offered, but there's a tremendous amount that can be unpacked and lots of commentary. And they really, once you dig in, There's so much there and it really is a pathway to awakening. I mean, it is the plumbing or the mechanism by which one awakens or understands what that experience is talking about. So I hope you can I hope you can stand it. I'm just going to plod through. And I wanted to offer you some material that might be supportive of your own study of the mind only teachings if you're inclined to do that. Because there really is not any way to understand them until you put your attention on your own mind. What does this have to do with me? And how these teachings might help you to understand yourself.

[23:32]

That's what they're for. So I wanted to repeat the little quote I offered last week from Dogen, which I think is kind of to the point. related to the mind only. And as I said before, you're going to see as we look at Zen teachings and Zen, you know, koans and historic teachings of the big names like Bodhidharma and Dogen and Dongshan and so on, that you're going to see both the emptiness teachings, the middle way teachings, and you're going to see the Yogacara teachings. So they kind of appear in equal measure and sort of depending on what medicine is being called for in any given situation. So Dogen has this to say, the one great matter is nothing other than Buddha's darshana, meaning Buddha's vision. And that is opening, displaying, realizing, and entering the reality of all beings. You must now believe that the Buddha's insight is nothing other than your own mind. Dogen, you must now believe that the Buddha's insight is nothing other than your own mind.

[24:39]

So I wanted to add to Dogen's teaching about the mind with this very lovely poem, Chinese poet Po Chuyi, probably not pronouncing that right. It's P-O and then C-H-U dash I, Po Chuyi, 1722 to 1846. And this is a translation by the award-winning translator David Hinton. And if you haven't read any translations of Chinese poetry by David Hinton, I also hope Highly recommend. He's got a wonderful collection of Chinese poetry. Beautifully, beautifully translated. He also wrote a book of his own work called Hunger Mountain, which is quite delicious. David Hinton. This is the poem. Lee, the mountain recluse, stays the night on our boat. Lee, the mountain recluse, stays the night on our boat. It's dusk. My boat, such tranquil silence. mist rising over waters deep and still.

[25:42]

And to welcome a guest for the night, there's evening wine, an autumn chin in. A master at the gate of way, my visitor arrives from exalted mountain peaks. Lofty cloud swept face, raised all delight, heart, all sage, clarity, spacious and free. Our thoughts begin where words end, refining dark enigmatic depths. We gaze quite mystery into each other and smile, sharing the mind that's forgotten mind. One more time. Lee, the mountain recluse, stays the night on our boat. It's dusk, my boat, such tranquil silence, mist rising over waters deep and still. And to welcome a guest for the night, there's evening wine, an autumn churi. A master at the gate of way, my visitor arrives from exalted mountain peaks.

[26:47]

Lofty, cloud-swept face, raised all delight, heart, all sage, clarity, spacious and free. Our thoughts begin where words end, refining, dark, enigma depths. We gaze quiet mystery into each other and smile, sharing the mind that's forgotten mind. So a few weeks ago, I began talking about the mind only or the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism, which is, as you have heard, the second major school underpinning the Zen tradition, the other being the middle way with its focus on emptiness. So this great genius and champion of mine only is Vasubandhu, the focus of our current study, fifth century scholar monk who had converted from the old wisdom or Theravadan tradition of early Buddhism to the Mahayana and who had written major texts in both of these traditions.

[27:50]

I also have recommended several times to you A Practitioner's Guide Inside Vasubhamdu's Yogacara by Ben Connolly, a really excellent and accessible introduction to these teachings. And there's a few other useful books that I'd like to recommend on the mind-only teaching. One is by Tenchin Reb Anderson, my teacher, who wrote a book in 2012 called The Third Turning of the Wheel, Wisdom of the Samdhinirmojana Sutra. Samdhinirmojana Sutra. It takes a while to learn how to say that. Reb's book is focused on a study that he made with several of us over quite a number of years in which we read through and discussed the Samdhi Nirmantana Sutra, which means the Sutra explaining the profound secrets. Also has been translated as the Sutra unraveling the thoughts of the Buddha. So this sutra, along with another one that you'll hear about when we start to talk about Bodhidharma and the first five of the Zen ancestors who were Chinese Zen ancestors, is the Lankavatara Sutra, which Bodhidharma brought with him and was the primary text which was shared with the Chinese when he arrived.

[29:03]

So we'll talk about the Lankavatara a little bit when we arrive at discussion of Bodhidharma. So these are the two most important sutras. of this tradition. There's the Lankavatara Sutra and there's the Sandhinirmarachana Sutra. So I want to spend a few minutes just summarizing the first three chapters of the Sandhinirmarachana Sutra, which lay the groundwork for what Vasubandhu is working with in his 30 verses. So he's, in other words, Vasubandhu is commenting on these mind-only sutras in the same way that Nagarjuna was commenting on the Prajnaparamita sutras. So Nagarjuna was studying and writing his commentary on the Heart Sutra and the Prajnaparamita 8009, Prajnaparamita, Wisdom Beyond Wisdom, when he wrote his verses on the fundamental wisdom of the middle way. So just like Vasubhanda is doing with these sutras, he's commenting on them and producing his own commentary, which is what these 30 verses are about.

[30:08]

So I wanted to stop for a minute and ask if you have any questions so far before I plot on. I'd like to know if any of that was confusing or you wanted some clarification or anything. Please don't hesitate to ask. Sometimes I feel like I wait to the end and maybe I missed a chance to hear what you wanted to ask. If I see a little blue hand, I will call on you. If not, I will go ahead. for now. Okay, great. So the Sandi Nirmajana Sutra, which I just said I'm going to summarize the first three chapters, as basically it's a series of conversations between bodhisattvas, some of them with each other and some of them with the Buddha himself. In order to clarify each of these conversations, each chapter has the name of a bodhisattva is the name of the chapter and the question that they're bringing.

[31:10]

So that's why it's called unraveling the knots or, you know, coming to understand the deep meaning of the Buddhist teaching. Each of them is asking questions about the two truths. So the relative truth, the ultimate truth. So the setting for the sutra is established in the first chapter. which is an immeasurably large and brilliantly decorated celestial palace filled with innumerable beings, enlightened sages and bodhisattvas, you know, just the kind of place you would imagine the Buddha would be hanging out. And then the second chapter focuses on the ultimate truth, the paramartha, ultimate truth, which, as you know from the emptiness teachings, such as the Heart Sutra, is said to be ineffable. and non-dual, just as is the mind of the Buddha. Ineffable and non-dual. Therefore, it cannot be seen through concepts and language, which, as with all things, are simply empty of inherent existence.

[32:15]

So words can't reach it. Words are just fingers pointing at the moon, the moon of enlightenment. However, in this chapter, focuses on the teaching and that these words and concepts are merely provisional, and therefore they're relative, they're relative truths. Words and language are just relative truths, just talking. However, in this sutra, unlike in the Prajnaparamita sutras, that doesn't, they don't stop by saying, well, you can't say the words, so just no words, no Buddha, no eyes, no ears. That's the Prajnaparamita approach. Sani Nirmachana Sutra says, well, even though The ultimate truth is ineffable, beyond language. The Buddha invented linguistic conventions. That is, he utilized relative truths in order to lead us suffering beings away from suffering and onto the path of liberation. In other words, he made things up.

[33:16]

And those things are called skillful means. So this whole thing, this whole tradition of the Yogacara mind only is all made up. by the Buddha as a skillful means, as a device to help us to become free of devices. So these creations or verbal fabrications are like magic tricks or like magical spells, which only appear to create external visions or realities as though they're independent, but in fact are not. They are not what they appear. They are actually non-dual. Reality is non-dual. But he's doing this thing. He's conjuring up these images for us in order to then bring us back to what's true, what's real. So in this chapter, second chapter, there's this very famous story of the magician at the crossroads, which I think makes this point really well. So suppose there's a magician standing at the crossroads of four great roads. After gathering grasses and leaves, twigs, pebbles and stones, displays various magical forms.

[34:23]

such as a herd of elephants, the cavalry, chariots, and infantry. When the sentient beings who have foolish natures or confused natures see this herd of elephants, cavalry, chariots, and so forth, and do not realize that these are leaves, pebbles, and twigs, they think that these things exist. Having thought this, they emphatically apprehend and emphatically assert, in accordance with how they see and hear, making the conventional designation that this is true and other explanations are false. Sound familiar? Those sentient beings, on the other hand, who do not have foolish natures, who have natures endowed with wisdom, when they see and hear these things, this herd of elephants, cavalry, and so forth, they recognize that these are in fact grasses, pebbles, and twigs, and therefore they make the conventional designation that these things do not exist, that only a perception of them has occurred.

[35:28]

And therefore, that these perceptions are of magical illusions, of mere appearances. And moreover, that these mere appearances, these illusions, do exist. The mirage actually exists. There is a mirage. There is an illusion. There is a magical city. Okay? So this is mind only. What exists is mind only, illusion only, concepts only, tricks of the mind only. And that's this teaching. So although the magician and the wise person see what the foolish person sees, so they all see the same thing. They see the elephants and whatever they said, tigers and giraffes and cavalry. So they, yeah, the elephants and cavalry and so on. They know that it's a trick. They see the same thing, but the non-foolish, the wise people know it's a trick. That what appears is like a dream or an echo, like space or a magic spell, like the moon reflected in the water, like a shadow or like a mirage or like a fairy castle.

[36:34]

And they know that these magical illusions are there, but also not there. And that if they reach out for them, they will find nothing whatsoever to hold on to, nothing outside of their own vivid imaginations. That's chapter two. Chapter three, the Buddha begins describing the mind as experienced by sentient beings by using relative truths, such as I showed you last week and how he establishes the structure of consciousness in eight aspects. And I'm going to show you again. It's called the diagram of the eight consciousnesses. OK, so so be my is my trick is called screen share. Let's see if I can do it. Here we go. Okay. All I have to do is share it. Screen share. Share. There it is.

[37:37]

Okay. Can you see that? Good. All right. Okay. So just to refresh what this is all about, this is an illustration of the eight consciousnesses model of the mind. This is kind of the bedrock. of the mind only teaching. You know, this is like a kind of a, what do you call it? Like, what is it called? You do diagramming sentences. You kind of take apart a sentence and put all the different parts and where they belong. So in this case, we have this line. Sorry, I can use my arrow, can I? So there's a line. Here's the line dividing conscious and unconscious realms. So most of what we are is unconscious. Most of how we exist is unconscious. And we are not aware of just about most of everything. We're not aware of it. We have very little range of what we're conscious of at any given time. So the things that we're conscious of are above this line. We are conscious of these six sense consciousnesses.

[38:41]

We're conscious of smell, taste, sound, sight, touch. And then there's awareness of concepts. So in Buddhism, awareness of concepts is considered a sense. Like there's a sense organ. So the nose is the organ for smelling. This organ of the mind is the organ that apprehends words or concepts. Just like the nose apprehends odors, the mind apprehends language or concepts. So that's why it's treated like a sense organ in that way. So that's number six. So these are the six sense consciousnesses. we're conscious of. We're conscious of our thoughts. We're conscious of odors and so on. So that's all we know. These are our senses. Come to your senses. This is what we got right up here. And pretty much one at a time. We jump around, but mostly you'll hear a sound and your attention goes over there.

[39:43]

And then something brushes against your shoulder. Your attention goes over there. So we're moving around all the time. We're shooting a focus of our awareness from one to the other and back again. but almost all day long. It's pretty exhausting. And that's what's nice about meditating. You just get to focus on, you know, kind of the end of your nose for a while. It's very pleasant. So below the line is the unconscious realm. And the most important feature of the unconscious realm is this alaya. You know, Himalaya, Himalayas or Himalayas or however you say it, Himalaya is the storehouse of snow. Hem is snow and alaya is where the snow is. So it's the same word, aliyah, is the storehouse consciousness. So this is where all your stuff is stored. All of the memories and all of your conditioning, all of the kind of skills that you have. If you play the flute, that's stored in there. If you speak French, that's stored in there. If you went to the third grade, that's stored in there.

[40:44]

Whatever happened in the past is stored in the aliyahs from the past. And it's only aware of it when it comes up in the present. So this whole big, you can think of it as a bag, but it's not really a bag. But you can think of it as a big bag of stuff. And that big bag, every now and then, shoots something up into awareness. Like those memories. Or like you pick up your flute and all of a sudden you know how to play it. So that stuff can pop up into the present from here. Things that you've carried from the past will pop up in the present. And then whatever pops down from the experience you're having now, how you behave when things pop up, which is why this is very important, determines what goes back down and gets stored. So if you kick the dog, then that goes back down in here. And then in the future, it's not going to be such a good thing, not such a good outcome for you. If you're being mean and unkind and treating your friends badly and not returning for whatever you do, to not be generous, disrespectful, that goes back down in here and gets stored for future.

[41:49]

And the next time you get stressed, you do the same thing. Now you've got a habit. This is how we build our habits. So these are the habits from your past are stored in there. And then you're building your habits, which will become your future by how you behave in the present. Does that make sense? So this is the mechanism of transformation. You know, by how you behave, you're able to actually change the outcome here by reconditioning your bad habits. That's pretty much what the theory of Buddhist discipline is all about. We're going to redo some of this stuff, less reactive, more patient, more generous, more ethical. And then you get better outcome in the future. It's kind of for our benefit. There's a poem, or not a poem, but a story of the monk who's watching these two birds fighting over a frog. And the monk says to his teacher, why does it always come to this? We can ask that about the news right now.

[42:50]

Why does it always come to this? And the teacher says, it's for your benefit, Acharya. It's for your benefit. Are you building new habits? Are you creating a compassionate response? Or are you creating more hatred in the world? What are you doing now? How are you benefiting from the hatred and the violence? And what are you learning? How are you going to transform your corner of the world? And then how are you going to help transform the world for others as well? So this is our big challenge. So the alaya, the storehouse, is this unconscious layer, provides support or ground for humans in order that we can appear in these many guises. So each of us is an appearance. based on what's stored in our aliyah. You get a good clue about what you got in there by what you're looking at right now. It's like, oh, that's what I've been storing in there is what kind of hat you like, what kind of stuff you like to eat.

[43:51]

This is all how we show up as a result of what's going on in here, what language we're speaking and so on and so forth. So each of our guises as human beings are as a result of the conditioning that's being held in the storehouse. In other words, due to what the storehouse is storing from the past, we are what we are right now. So the storehouse appropriates a body. This is part of the theory, right? It's theory. And I wouldn't want to try to explain the science of it. But the storehouse consciousness appropriates a body and images and words. And out of those, it's like a little alchemistry thing that goes on. fabricates these six sense consciousnesses. So these are all made out from alaya. They're products of alaya. These consciousnesses. So the alaya separates, makes a world, makes the possibility of something outside of itself by, by appropriating these sense organs, a body. So the alaya appropriates the body.

[44:52]

It's the ground for the body. It's the substrata of the body. And, and then it, this, It pops us into the conscious realm, the realm of where causes and conditions now hold sway. Causes and conditions like suffering and the causes of suffering and the cessation of suffering and the causes for the cessation of suffering. All of that is happening. We're aware of it. It's all the stuff that we're aware of. And it's the very place that the Buddha focused his beginning teachings, right where we know it. He said, they're suffering. And we all went, okay. You have my attention. He said, there's a cause of your suffering. Okay, I want to know what it is. He said, it's ignorance of non-separation. It's ignorance of how this whole thing works. We're falling for the magic trick. You're ignoring non-separation. And as a result, you're suffering. You're isolated. You're separated from objects of desire. So the cause of your suffering is ignoring.

[45:55]

You've already got everything. It's already here. It's already yours. As soon as you see it or think it or smell it or taste it, you got it. It's non-dual. What you smell and you are the same, are one and the same. So you don't, you forget that. You don't know that. You're ignorant of that. And so you want things that you think you don't have already. You longing all the time is the cause of your suffering. Cessation of suffering is how you live your life. The eightfold path, right view. This is right view. Understanding how the mind works is right view. Right intention is intending to do better with my conditioning. I actually want to work on this. That's my intention. And then there's how you live your life, how you speak, how you conduct yourself. Those are all part of the Eightfold Path. Your effort. Are you trying really hard? Are you really making an effort? Then your mindfulness, being aware of what you're doing with your hands, with your feet, with your voice.

[46:55]

Highly recommended. So that you have a chance to watch the working of the mind by slowing it down. Get off the horse. Stop the car. Look under the hood. That's what this practice is all about. So the Buddha focused on the magical act of creation that I call myself. And that the self calls the world. So that's where the Buddha was teaching. He knew what we were up to because he was one of us. He came from us. And then he began the work of deconstruction, of deconstructing the singularity of a self with this notion of the five aggregates, right? We talked about those form, feeling, perception, impulse, consciousness. There's no singularity there. There's just this kind of processes all working together and creating a sense of though there is somebody here. It's kind of a sense we have, but you can't really prove it. No one's ever found the self. And we've all been looking. But so far, no one has found one. There is no such thing as a self.

[47:59]

So the storehouse as the base also produces the lover. This is my favorite part of myself is the lover, the manas. Manas is thinking, both just normal thinking and defiled thinking, delusional thinking. So both of those are happening here with the lover. Now, the lover is kind of interesting. The lover is also a product of alaya. So everything is basically coming out of the bag of conditioning, of past conditioning. So that's where it's all coming from. But the lover turns around and looks back at the bag or senses the bag and is in love with it. It's like, oh, my beloved, my sweetie. So it's basically in love with the maker, the one who made it. like Pinocchio with Geppetto. Oh, I love my daddy. I love my mommy. So he turns back at the maker in awe, calling it the beloved self, resulting in this fundamental illusion of ignorance that there is this self.

[49:06]

There's got to be. I feel it. I feel it. So this is an ancient, mythical, and modern psychotherapeutic term called basic narcissism. We all know about that. And when it's toxic, it is really bad news. So we have this narcissist over here. This is not a good part of us, even though we can feel some affection for it. But this guy's got to go. It's really got to go. So the perception of the six senses, the imagery of sense objects, or in other words, our conscious experience is all that we're aware of. This is all that we know. So these five sense consciousnesses arise from the alaya, as I said, They can come up together, all five, or they can come up separately. It can just be sound, or they can be sound and taste and touch, or they can be all five, or they can be one at a time. So they can actually pop up in different combinations, depending on conditions.

[50:07]

And they are likened to waves coming up from the water. So these are waves in the water. The water is basically the non-dual nature of reality. There's just one reality. It's not in parts. But these waves come up, right? So these senses, these sense organs are like waves in water. They come up, they look around, they go, whoa, you know, I'm separate from water. And then they go back down. So they emerge impermanent, transient, momentary. Just think about your senses. You know, what sense can you ever hold on to? How long does the bird go on tweeting? You know, it's like tweet. And then there's a blank. Like music, you know, without the spaces between the notes, you don't have music. And visuals. Everything goes through us. It goes past us. It happens, and then you walk on. Either you walk on or it goes away, one or the other. You know, every night when I come out of the Zendo, there's this, well, right now, there's this star-filled sky, and I stand there for a while, you know.

[51:15]

But how long can you stand there when, you know, at some point you've got to go home? So all of these experiences, sensory experiences, are transient. They're just moving through us, like waves coming out of the water and going back down. Or porpoises, however you want to think of it. But there's just these events that happen, come up, and go away. And we get very attached. That's the problem. These aren't the problem. The problem is our attachment. We don't want them to go away. We don't want our sensations to come to an end. Whatever those pleasures are, we want them to last and last. And we grieve. We grieve as things pass away, even though that's their nature. The nature of reality is impermanence, suffering, and no self. And we don't like that. Those are the facts of life. And they cause us a lot of stress until we accept them. Oh, no self, suffering, and impermanence. I get it. And then you can relax.

[52:17]

You don't have to fight with the facts of life. That's part of what's going on with the Buddhist teaching. It's not so popular. People go, isn't that a dark religion? Aren't you guys into death and impermanency? Yeah, kind of. We're into not denying it. We actually want to be calling it like it is. So because of the way this whole thing thing is rigged this whole illusory magic show is rigged we actually do not see the world at all we see projections of the interaction of our senses i'm going to ask my friend the neurobiologist later if this is not the case that we're really just seeing these images of what our senses have picked up and projected into our consciousness you know to our mental conditioning and so ultimately what ultimately is knowable about external conditions is nothing.

[53:18]

There's nothing we can actually say about the external conditions. There is thingness, but there are no things that we haven't created through our projections, through our naming. They're nominal. They're pulled out of the reality as if they are separable, as if the waves could be separated from the water. So the project, as you can see, of the second half of the 30 verses is to show us how the apparently real level of our experience, the relative, this real, what we actually experience is real of sight, sound, smells, taste, and touch, which is the relative truth. And that what we experience is deeply karmically conditioned, just like the waves in the water, and yet at the level of Ultimate reality, the level of how we experience the world, we do not know what the world really is. It's a tremendous mystery. It's a great mystery. We're a great mystery. I know we sense that. I sense that.

[54:19]

I think I'm a great mystery, you know, and I'm being tricked into falling for some identity that just doesn't quite fit, you know, my experience of what I am. You know, like, what am I? Where are we? So this is not a model of the actual world, but rather of how we know the world, how it is we've come to know the world. So that's what this, and this 30 verses goes into some detail about these. But what I think is interesting or important for us is that within the detail, there's a lot of very helpful Dharmic narrative that I think helps us to unpack some of the ways that these different points can be understood in our actual life. And one of the things I like about Yogacara is it's really about the juicy day-to-day life that we're having looked at from a different way than we're normally trained to look at it, where we tend to think is like, oh, you know, this is what things are really like.

[55:20]

This is reality. And it's like, actually, reality is so much more interesting than what we've been trained to think and what we've been trained to see. So that's just another reminder about these eight consciousnesses. And I will refer to them a couple more times as we go along because they are core or key. And actually, I'm going to send you all this. I don't have, personally, I don't have the skills to do things like put things in your chat box and so on. But my tech friend who helps most days, who is now sitting, she's in the one day sitting. will be here next week. So I'm going to have her put the references to the books I mentioned and this diagram and also the 30 verses into the chat box. So if you'd like to have them for yourselves, they'll be there. So let's see what time we got. Oh, a little bit of time.

[56:21]

Well, let me see if there are questions now. How about now? Okay. All right. Go a little further. I was reading some of this to my partner, and I said, well, what do you think? She said, I don't know what you're talking about. I said, oh, dear. Oh, well. I'll just straighten my collar. Here we go. I'll keep trying. Eventually, I think it comes clear, but it does take a bit of, you know, this is the initial contact with this material. I think for most of us, we're like, what? But little by little, it starts to come in. And if it weren't so helpful, you know, I mean, I think a lot of us found it so helpful.

[57:23]

You know, I probably wouldn't be doing this to you. Okay. So the Buddha goes on to emphasize that that these processes he describes in the eight consciousness are themselves dependent on conditions and therefore as with all things they're empty of inherent existence so even though he's made this model he wants to reassure us this too is empty of inherent existence it's just causes and conditions creating some words and some language and some a little drawing you know that's just me with my computer you know fooling around that's all this is so we don't Take it too seriously. I mean, part of understanding the emptiness teachings is you don't have to get too worked up about stuff. You know, you can just go, okay, okay, that's just language. These are just explanations. That's just a map of the territory. The territory itself isn't bothered by maps, you know. This isn't bothered by maps. None of you are either. But they can be helpful. They can help to orient us if we're feeling a little bit.

[58:25]

like confused or alienated or sad, which I think a lot of people are. There's something to do, something to do while we're at home. So the ultimate meaning that the bodhisattvas understand, as we saw with the cavalry and the elephants, is that we're just looking and studying appearances. We're studying how things appear to us. And when we see the elephants at the crossroads, we know it's the trick of our own eight consciousnesses. That's the trick that's being played. So this, anyway, I won't go over it again, but that's what's going on. So as you may recall, the being that tormented the Buddha while he sat under the Bodhi tree, who sent armies and elephants and dancing nymphs and his own fearful visage was called Mara, the evil one. And his nickname was the master of illusions. Mara, the evil one, the master of illusions.

[59:26]

So what the Buddha saw while he was sitting there under the tree was his own imagination, his own eight consciousnesses playing like waves coming up out of the water. And they scared him. He saw an army. He saw dancing girls and boys. And he was drawn. He was recoiled from the army and he was drawn to the lustful figures. And he didn't move. I mean, the trick that Buddha learned, which is the one we practice in our zendo every day, is don't move. Watch how your imaginarium is trying all of these tricks to get you to get up and run around like a crazy person doing stuff. And it's like, you have to wait till you get home. You can't do it in the zendo. You have to sit there and wait patiently. while the imagination does its play. And then eventually, the acrobats calm down. If you sit long enough, it doesn't take too long, half an hour, 40 minutes, and then you do it again, and then you really can calm down. You can find yourself like, oh, I feel so relieved.

[60:29]

I don't know what had changed. Well, you just let it change. You let things settle. That's what the meditation is really good for. It's helping us to come into more of a tranquil state. Shamatha, tranquility. And from there, vipassana, insight. Oh, this is my imagination that's running around, hysterical. There may be something we need to do. I'm not trying to say there's not something out there that's dangerous or needs to be taken care of. There is. But the only way we can do that is from a position of calm and insight. What would be the best thing to do right now that would be nonviolent, kind, You know, how are we going to do that? How are we going to have those conversations that will change the world? Well, the Buddha did. He had those conversations and they've been passed along to us. So if we can learn to use these tools and help others, I think that's the strategy. That's the only one I'm aware.

[61:29]

I know. That's the only one I'm trying. It's like, well, these teachings are valuable and good and have brought a lot of relief to a lot of people. Some of my best friends. and me, that I will be so happy if it can bring relief to others, you know. So those three chapters that I just summarized from the Sandhya Nirmarachana Sutra correspond to the first 15 of the 30 verses of Vasubhandha's work that we are looking at in Ben Connolly's book. And of course, you're welcome and encouraged to also read the Sandhya Nirmarachana Sutra, which is actually quite amazing. takes a little while to get in first the first chapter with all the celestial beans is a little hard to read you could skip that if you want just presume it's a magical space and go right into chapter two where the logical discourse begins um and if you have questions you're more than happy to bring them here or we can talk privately whatever you like so along with these seminal texts the sandhya namarachana sutra

[62:34]

There are also these very important commentaries on the mind-only teachings that were written by, of all people, Vasubandhu's brother, whose name was Asanga. So Asanga is the one who's said to be responsible for converting Vasubandhu to the Mahayana. So his brother was already a mind-only teacher and a great author in his own right. He wrote a wonderful text, which is actually also... somewhat accessible. It's nice to have companions to read these things with because sometimes you get a little stuck, but a lot of it is really quite readable and quite helpful. So his work, Asanga's major work, again, commenting on the Sandi Nimurtana Sutra, is called The Summary of the Great Vehicle. Summary of the Great Vehicle. And it yields even more exquisite detail about the clockwork of the mind and how we create illusions that bring about suffering. And also, it's reversal. It's liberative wisdom, which is the whole point.

[63:37]

Not just to see the clockwork, but to take it apart, to stop falling for it. So, like I said, I will put these references into the chat next week so you can decide if you would like to follow up on any of these. We have Reb's book, we have Ben's book from this 21st century, and then we have these other ones going back to the 5th century and the 4th century and so on. So it's quite a span of time. So what I thought I would do now is just read to you some of the 30 verses, which will give you a taste of what, like I said, they're bones. These are bones. And then I'm going to be spending some time talking about each of these bones as Ben does in his book, and which is what makes it such a great book. Like he introduces two verses and then he talks about them and adds some elaborations from Zen teachings, from this common sense and so on to help us to understand. So the first of the 30 verses is everything conceived as self or other occurs in

[64:48]

in the transformation of consciousness. Everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. So this is the mind only. That whatever is going on here, whatever you imagine is happening, is taking place in this transformation of your consciousness. That's where the self is. That's where the other is. They're in the mind. They're in the mind. And then the second verse. This transformation has three aspects, which I just introduced you to in the drawing. The three aspects are the first is the ripening of karma. That's the alaya, the big bag. So your karma ripens your past actions. The second of the three aspects is the consciousness of a self. That's manas, the lover. And the third is the imagery of the sense objects. Those are the six at the top, the conscious realm.

[65:49]

So these are the three aspects of the transformation of concept. You already know that. You've got that. That's the second verse. The third verse, he says, elaborating, the first of these is called alaya, the store consciousness, which contains all the karmic seeds, what it holds... And its perception of location are unknown. So we don't know where it is. We can't find it. It's not a location. It's just a function, the ocean, the ocean of reality that is creating us. Out of that comes us. Somebody said, if you want to make, what was it, Carl Sagan said? If you want to make an apple pie, first you have to make a universe. So all of that, All of this that we are comes from the formation called the universe or reality. And then the Vasubandhu says, Alaya, the storehouse, is always associated with sense contact, with attention and sensations and perceptions and volitions.

[66:55]

Basically, the five skandhas, it's always in connection with those. So it's feeding our consciousness. And it's unobstructed and it's karmically neutral. The bag itself has no, it doesn't really have a position. It isn't boating. It doesn't, it isn't holding a position. It's just there. It's just neutral. Like a river flowing. Like a river flowing. So this is the nature of reality. The nature of our awareness is actually like a river. And then these little ripples in the river, the waves in the river. Like a river flowing. In enlightenment, it is overturned at its root. So in enlightenment, a laya vanishes. All of that conditioning that's creating us in the present moment, all of those habits dissipate. That's the fourth verse. The fifth verse, dependent on the store consciousness and taking it as its object...

[67:59]

So that's what I was saying. The lover, manas, takes alaya as its object. It looks back and thinks that that's its object. So the manas, the lover, is the self, belief in the self. And the self thinks of itself as its lover. So now we've got the split. That's where the split happens. Manas, the consciousness of a self arises, which consists of thinking. So this whole thing... We can blame on thinking, how we think. I think, therefore, I am. That's what I think. And manas, the lover, is always associated with four afflictions. And this explains the problem in a nutshell. This is our inheritance. It's not our fault. It's just when we're born, we are born with this manas, with this lover that loves itself, this primal narcissism. And the four afflictions that Manas bears are self-view, belief there is a self, self-view, self-delusion, self-pride, and self-love.

[69:15]

So we're kind of overwhelmed with ourselves. And it's good to say or remember that it's not just always positive regard. In fact, for a lot of people, It's a negative regard. But it's still narcissism. It's still like big poor me or big great me. Either way, it's all about me. It's me-centered, self-centered, we say, self-centered. So this self-centering is our illness. And we're born that way. It's kind of just part of being a human. So it's a big deal to overturn this. It's not obvious to us that we can do away with this trick of the mind. You know, it's really convincing. Okay. So from where manas is born comes our sense contact, attention. So these five skandhas from where it's born, manas is not found in enlightenment either, or it's not found in the meditation of cessation when you're able to stop the thinking mind, even briefly.

[70:20]

There's no more manas. Manas goes away temporarily. Or in the super mundane path, the path of enlightenment. There's no more manas there. So I'm going to stop there. And then next week, I'm going to take each of those one at a time and begin to tell you more about what's the teaching there? What are we talking about? How do we understand these teachings in a way that actually seem to be either A, you can remember them, or B, you may be able to put them to some good use. So that's that. And I see Bill's hand. Great. Hello, Bill. Hey, this is Finn. Finn. Hi, Finn. So I was wondering about when the manas goes away and that instance of mindfulness, the...

[71:22]

the alaya would still be active in that, in that sort of moment. Like you would still be, well, I guess like what I'm asking is like, would you still be sort of enacting your past karma, even though you might not be thinking like I'm doing this, but still sort of acting based on that habit? Yeah. Well, that was the whole reason that this theory was elaborated was that they couldn't really explain meditators who would have the experience of going away of cessation. So there is a possibility of entering into some of these really high trances, concentration trances, where there is no longer a sense of the self. You're there and you're not there. There's kind of this razor's edge between there is something and there isn't something. It's a very high bliss state, meditation, concentration state. So what they couldn't explain was how someone could be in one of those. for some, I think I said last week, it was a maximum of a couple of days.

[72:24]

I mean, you've got to eat, you've got to do things. You will come back. These, like everything, they're impermanent. But why didn't the person, why do they come back? How can you come back? What carried you through that time of cutting it off? If you cut off manas, if the self was actually cut off for a time, How did you come back and remember your name and your friends and how to eat and, you know, what your room was and all that? So they couldn't explain that. There was a kind of a vacancy for some centuries in explaining how you come back. And so then this theory basically filled in the gap. So Aliyah is just bubbling along, carrying all your habits and your knowledge and your unconsciously. So even though you're not conscious any longer, you've cut off the conscious awareness of self, you're still being carried by the alaya. So then in that, you still might be sort of slamming doors and stuff, even though you might not be sort of like in your... No, you'd be sitting still.

[73:40]

Okay, okay. So you're... no you're not you'd be in a meditative trance yeah they yeah i have some friends who did some uh trance practices in in burma and thailand and stuff and boy they came back and they looked like they had had their you know their brains blown out or just these big eyes one of them one friend is i think i may mention he was going to drive the drive the car some of you may know gil fonsdale he's He used to be a young farm apprentice here in Green College. And he went off to Burma, I think, for a while. I don't know how long he was there. But he was sitting up in one of those tree platforms. And he said he got to these states of meditation where it would have been way too much work to clear the cobwebs out of his living space. It was way too much activity. So when he came home, he really was odd. He said, Gil, I don't know if I can let you drive this car. I am not at all sure you have anything in there, you know.

[74:45]

So it does have an impact when you basically drop the self-belief. And, you know, it made him pretty happy, too. He's a pretty happy guy. He seems to have stayed happy. He drives better now. I think he kind of recovered some of that, you know, concentration practice. Thanks. Yeah, something to do. Yeah, yeah. Excuse me, Fu. Yeah, Bill. So if, as Finn said, what occurs at that point, am I taking it too literal to think that perhaps during being gone, the store conscious, the karmic seeds are being developed in a new direction?

[75:38]

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