Namo Tassa Bhagavato Rahato Samma Sambuddhassa Namo Tassa Bhagavato Rahato Samma Sambuddhassa Namo Tassa Bhagavato Rahato Samma Sambuddhassa As announced, we are going to talk about the Buddhist psychology or Abhidhamma but as it is a very big subject

[01:03]

and during my stay here I do not have sufficient text so that my lectures will be only introduction to Abhidhamma which is the higher teaching of the Buddha as appeared in Theravada Pali Canon in the Thai arrangement of the scriptures we have 12 volumes of this Abhidhamma and it is a very difficult subject normally it is not very easy to learn but for those of you who have been practicing Satsang for some time

[02:11]

I think it is easier to understand but for those who haven't had any contact with meditation or Satsang it would be rather difficult to appreciate the teaching so I think to begin with I would like to tell you the story as the source of Abhidhamma or how it came to be in the time of the Buddha he had a very great challenge by those who are outside of his order

[03:20]

his community or the teachers in his contemporary time said that if the Buddha had some supernatural power he should show himself in the public otherwise the people will not follow him so all the followers, the disciples or the enlightened disciples who had supernatural power didn't want the Buddha to do it himself but they would like to do it for him and each one of them explained to the Buddha

[04:23]

what they would do the Buddha listened to all the disciples and then he said he appreciated their intention and their good wishes but at that time it was essential for him to do it himself because if he didn't do it those people would still have doubt and make propaganda that the Buddha didn't have any supernatural power so it would be dangerous to the teaching and we can see the Buddha when he sees that something dangerous is going to happen to the teaching then he will show himself

[05:24]

so that he performed what we call twin miracle by inventing two artificial Buddhas walking in the sky discussing about the Dharma and that gave a great surprise to those who were against him because they themselves didn't have power such a power to do so they all gave in to the Buddha so that the Buddha could continue his teaching in a very prosperous way

[06:28]

after doing that he didn't come back to the human world it was said he went to the heaven to observe the land in the Dosita heaven the third class of the heaven where his mother was living there as a Deva a shining being and it was said that the Buddha gave sermons on Abhidhamma, the Buddhist psychology for the first time to his mother and the idea of the Buddha's thought was that

[07:34]

human beings would find it difficult to understand his teaching so only the Devas can understand it better and also he would like to repay his debt to his mother who gave him milk and brought him up and he said the best thing to repay the things the mother had done to him is to give sermons on this very difficult profound subject of psychology and philosophy which is the highest teaching of his so the Buddha felt very deep gratitude for his mother and he did this for he gave the sermons on Abhidhamma for three months

[08:41]

and when he came back after three months he came down to the earth and for the first time he opened all the worlds the world of heavens the world of hell and the world of human beings so all the people and Devas and suffering beings could see one another for the first time because of the Buddha opening the world and the worlds so then he gave he repeated all the sermons to his chief disciple Sariputta Sariputta was a disciple of great wisdom so he could understand what the Buddha means

[09:49]

or what the teaching means so that we don't really have the direct teaching from the Buddha himself but from Sariputta who explained the Abhidhamma to other monks and it was written down so that it forms the third collection of the Buddha's teaching as you might have known that we have three collections according to Pali Canon the collection of Vinaya or the Book of Discipline it means the monastic rules for the monks and nuns and for lay people and according to Thai arrangement there are eight volumes of the Book of Discipline

[10:49]

and then the second collection is the collection of the Sutas or Sutras in Sanskrit there are discourses the Buddha gave to different people at different places and on different locations we have about 25 volumes of this collection the largest one and then the third collection is the collection of Abhidhamma so this we call Tipitaka in Pali three baskets in the former time they classified things by putting them in the baskets in different baskets

[11:52]

in the Indian time in the ancient time so that we have three baskets for collecting the teaching of Sakkayamuni Buddha this is the brief story about the Abhidhamma so that if we would explain the meaning of the word Abhidhamma Abhid means extra higher Abhidhamma is teaching so extra or higher teaching in the Abhidhamma we talk about four things citta, mind or consciousness

[12:58]

cetasika, the mental states or mental properties rupa, the material form and the material energies or the qualities of the body and nibbana, the highest goal so there are four things and all are put into the detail together with the ways and the means for achieving the goal in the teaching now first of all I think we should understand the meaning of mind there are two words which are often used in Pali Canon

[14:00]

or in the Theravada literature citta and vijnana citta is normally translated into mind and vijnana is consciousness in our English words we find it difficult to give definition to mind and consciousness people use mind in different meanings or people use consciousness in different meanings perhaps we can understand mind in the sense that it is the something which thinks, remembers, reasons and wills

[15:12]

so the mind has the capacity or the function of thinking, remembering, understanding or knowing and willing but in the Vedama they gave a very short meaning that the mind is that which thinks but thinking in the sense of knowing knowing the subject in this aspect we can see also in the Dhammapada when the Buddha talked about mind you might have read some stanzas, some verses in the Dhammapada

[16:17]

the first one is that the mind is forerunner of all conditioned things or perhaps in the Christian sense we can say in the beginning was the mind the beginning was the mind not in the beginning was the world the mind is the forerunner the foregoer of all the conditioned things things are created by mind mind is the chief the chief so mind is something very powerful in man when man does not understand mind he becomes the problem of himself

[17:21]

so when we understand mind in this sense we will see that myself, I like to explain mind in three ways mind is the knowing mind is the process of knowing knowing object which is one of the meanings in the Vedama and mind as thinking the capacity to think not just to know but to think about things including imagination speculation or reasoning and the third meaning of mind is something which has the nature of wonder

[18:33]

the mind can produce wonderful things because it is wondrous it has the nature of wonder in this connection the Buddha had a very interesting conversation with Mahavira's disciple named Upali you know Mahavira was the founder of Jainism the Jain people observed the nakedness of the body they don't wear anything and they are wandering monks Mahavira was in the same time as the Buddha in fact he was only one year older than the Buddha

[19:38]

and they went out to search for truth at the same time but Mahavira spent about 12 years practicing self-mortification he believed that by tormenting the body one will achieve ultimate truth so the kind of self-torture was practiced very strictly by Mahavira and his disciples so they don't drink water if there is any insect or any animal so they have to be very careful not to kill any living beings and his teaching about the karma

[20:43]

was different from the Buddha's teaching Mahavira said that the physical action is more important than the mental action that's why he emphasizes the physical exercises tormenting the body and Upali who was a very wealthy man the supporter of Mahavira and his disciples one day he would like to see the Gautama Buddha in order to discuss with him this matter of karma in order to defeat the Gautama Buddha because Upali was a very good fine speaker

[21:45]

he could defeat many scholars easily so Mahavira was very happy that his disciple would like to defeat Gautama so he allowed him to go and when he came to the Buddha and had discussion he was convinced of the mental action as most important through this conversation with Gautama Buddha and then he asked the Buddha to accept him as his disciple the Buddha said no he should not take such easy decision to change the teachers easily the Buddha didn't accept

[22:47]

so he asked the Buddha three times and then the Buddha said ok if you like to be my disciple you could be but you have to accept that you will not give up the support to the Mahavira and his disciples you should continue supporting him so we can see now how tolerant the Buddha was how open-minded he was so he didn't have the idea of collecting disciples or followers and this speech also said that the tolerance is very essential in the Buddhist practice

[23:49]

so after that things became smoother in relationship between Jainism and Buddhism so the Buddha convinced Upali of the mental action by saying that the mind with its power can produce wonderful things so that we can see the beauty of things or the arts, architectures are produced by mind human mind but some other things which are beyond

[24:55]

the superficial already mind can also be produced by the deeper mind the more powerful mind so that this character of mind is quite essential so that we have the three meanings thinking, knowing and having the nature of wonder then we come to consciousness now consciousness, when we say I am conscious consciousness is always connected with the subject the consciousness is the knower perceiver, thinker, feeler the subject to be conscious is to know

[26:03]

so that the consciousness must have object because it becomes the subject itself we can see now we are conscious of our body we are conscious of the external things we are conscious of the mind to the mental activities and in fact the consciousness is the relation between subject and object if there is no relation between subject and object there is no knowing in this ornery sense of the word so that object is essential

[27:12]

and buddhism emphasizes object buddhism does not lay emphasis on the subject we will go into detail later that's why buddhism is objective way of looking and perceiving things but you will say that the subject as we perceive in buddhism is not self same permanent entity but a transitory a transitory state of consciousness what we call subject this should be very clear and you will say now, why do we have self sameness or we have personal identity personal identity arises because of the constancy of relation between subject and object

[28:26]

the relation is constant, continuous like the river we perceive the sameness of the river and the water but according to the shape of the river perhaps the river has the same shape but its shape is also subject to change and decay it is not permanent but it may change slowly but surely the water is never the same you look at the water running running water is never the same for any moment so we human beings are not the same for any consecutive moment

[29:30]

we are in the constant state of flux but because of constancy of relation between subject and object we have personal identity that's why personal identity is only image this is not our true being in other words, it is not our real self if you use the word self in the sense of being so we must not be deluded deluded or deceived by personal identity which is only self-image but we will go into the detail of this later we start with understanding the meaning of words

[30:34]

the definition of the words and then the question arises, what is the object? you will say the object is something perceived by consciousness or by mind but we will give the meaning here that object is a relating thing relating thing and subject is a related thing this object of consciousness is either the object of sense or the object of thought you understand we have five physical senses the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue and the body, the touch

[31:40]

the consciousness can arise through the physical sense organs and also it can arise through the object of thought and the object of sense is called paripancaramana so we have five objects according to the five physical senses so the eyes will have sight or light as its object the ears will have sound, the nose will have smell and the tongue will have taste and the body will have touch

[32:45]

now talking about touch this particularly refers to the qualities of the body there are three elements in the body element of extension, element of heat or temperature and element of motion or vibration so what we see is only the extension in the space occupation of space so we cannot really see anything apart from this extension the house is not a house that's only something extended mountain is not mountain

[33:47]

occupation in space and the temperature, heat also is connected with our energy heat exists in everything, in every cell of the body and the vibration, motion can create pressure in our body if all the elements are not working in harmony so that we will say the extension is kind of localization localization or extension of locality so object is not object

[34:52]

in the sense when we touch we just feel the extension so surely heat can be touched and motion can be touched by physical body, the motion of the wind the motion of even the wind inside ourselves but perhaps the sudden motion cannot be touched by the rough body but it can be touched by the bodily sensations, bodily consciousness and then now we talk about the object of thought the object of thought refers to mind so mind becomes the object but it is regarded as subject in our ordinary language because we can say that mind is the consciousness of an object

[36:00]

mind is the consciousness of an object but it becomes the object of thought mind and mental properties and the sensitive and subtle qualities of the body sensitive qualities, sensitive parts of the body become the object of consciousness, the object of thought or even the subtle qualities of the body which have to be talked about later on and the next one is panyati name, idea, notion, concept we have the word panyati panyati is name or idea or notion or concept

[37:06]

so these are the object of thought and nibbana too nibbana, the ultimate truth is the object of thought in the sense that it becomes the object of consciousness transcendental consciousness we will deal with later on so when a person becomes enlightened his consciousness is awareness of nibbana nibbana or the Pali term nibbana so that we can see so many things involved then Buddhism talks about objects then we can go on to another object it's called the karma object this refers to different classes of consciousness roaming about in the world of desires

[38:08]

together with the mental properties and the qualities of the body 28 in number the very small, subtle qualities of the body and then we have another object which is called mahakata object and this refers to the classes of higher consciousness the consciousness roaming about in the world of form and in the formless world which is produced by meditative states meditative absorptions or jhana and the object is higher mahakata literally means great god becoming large becoming extensive

[39:13]

and then we have transcendental object this refers to different classes of transcendental consciousness which is in the realm of enlightenment there are 40 classes of this form of consciousness perhaps you don't need to care for the numbers just mentally mentally so Nibbana is included in this transcendental object for the transcendental consciousness but this should not be mixed with transcendental meditation because we don't really know whether they go to transcendental consciousness so we should understand the meaning of panjati

[40:26]

a little bit more there are two main meanings first is that which makes known and the second is that which is made known so you can see that the thing which makes known refers to the name and sign the name and sign can tell us what it is so it makes known it makes the meaning known to us it makes the meaning known to us and the second thing is

[41:26]

the thing which is made known that refers to the idea and notion but the very very good word for panjati in Buddhism is concept we use concept as the meaning of panjati so in short we can say panjati is the idea or notion of a thing denoted by and of its attributes connoted by a term which is expressed in words

[42:27]

or represented by a sign so words and sign can make us know the meaning or can make the meaning known to us can convey the idea and notion to us but we have to be careful too that word is only a symbol word is not the truth even the word truth is not the truth that's the symbol of truth that's why very essential for us to understand the inward content of the word so in Mahayana Sutra I don't remember it is said that don't get stuck in words like an elephant in the mud you can see when an elephant gets stuck in the mud

[43:31]

it would find it very difficult to get out the same thing if it gets stuck in words we become completely confused then the word must be clear we must understand the meaning every word we use we must have the meaning we must not use the words without having the clear meaning of it and also we must not say oh this, this word it must be this like talking about nirvana yes, nirvana is this according to its meaning without seeing it it's not enough this is essential now you see the object of sense is always present

[44:33]

that's why in the Jungian psychology they take they talk about the four types four types of man one is sensation another one is thinking another one is intuition and the other one is feeling sensation, thinking, intuition, feeling so we say the sensation types of people will be able to live in reality because they are living in the present they are living in contact with what is at the moment like we are in contact with the mountains, with the river, with anything which we can sense and the thinking type is analytical mind

[45:38]

so those who are thinking analyzing like a psychologist or psychotherapist analyst all these people are the thinking type the Buddha was the thinking type if we put it in the Jung's term because the Buddha was the master of analysis but he didn't get stuck in words and the intuition type is the people who can see something very deeply they have some kind of knowing something in advance sometimes these people are very psychic and normally they like ceremonies and rituals the intuition type

[46:39]

of people and the feeling type has strong faith in anything so too much faith without sufficient knowledge or understanding or wisdom these people can be artists the artists and all the poets are in this type of feeling people feeling people and scientists are in the thinking type thinking people so that the in order to be completely full man

[47:41]

all four must be fully developed so man is the nucleus sitting in the middle the center of the four so the four must the four are the functions of man but he has to function in the harmonious way so that he will not go to any extreme I think that is not too bad according to Jung if we develop our feeling our sensation intuition and thinking in the right way what did I talk about? coming to or the feeling the object of sense is always present but nibbana nirvana and concept

[48:43]

is out of time it's called parikaravimutta out of time akarika so nirvana can fight this all of time because it can be realized anytime not at any specific time it can happen any moment and concept is out of time because concept is immediate mental impression so mental impression is not something which can be put in can be discovered in time it does not have the fixed time for it to happen and now we should

[49:51]

be clear about the buddhist view of life according to the things we have explained here we talk about two levels of our consciousness the level of conscious consciousness which is thought or thinking or reality and the level of unconscious consciousness which is the stream of becoming the stream of becoming so now we can see that life is in the constant state of flux it can never stop

[50:52]

it's like the water the water of life if you like to say so the water of life is flowing and running on according to the conditions so that the nature of impermanence as we talked about last night and suffering and the emptiness come to be because of constancy of flow so I like to talk about the sunyata which is the main thing in all these aspects and connect it with our practice so when we understand that there is no or abiding entity which controls life

[51:55]

life is controller life controls itself according to its conditions so that the buddhism does not think about or the buddha does not talk about the creator of life life comes to be because of the conditions when certain conditions are combined together then life arises and flows on and then buddhism does not speak about the first cause of things because if we understand the law of cause and effect then there is no first cause there is no principle if there is first cause then the law of cause and effect does not exist but in fact the law of cause and effect

[52:58]

exists and governs life of all beings so it should be clear that buddhism is rather scientific religion in a way and it cannot be really said to be a religion in the sense of relationship between man and supreme being because buddhism does not talk about supreme being apart from man himself so that this doctrine of sunyata or anatta in Pali is the denial of a permanent entity existing in man or outside of man man is his own creator through his own karmic forces

[53:58]

and also that we can see that we we look into ourselves as I talked in the beginning that our personal identity is only relation between subject and object which is consciousness so we don't have such personal identity apart from this image but we have we have being we can come to this real being which is not the image which is not the relation between subject and object and that is the state of non-duality so non-duality is the real state of being when we come to a dualistic world we see subject and object the two we see good and bad we see right and wrong man and woman

[55:05]

so all the dualistic things or concepts arise because of the relation between subject and object so when we go beyond this relation we come to non-duality there is no man there is no woman there is no right there is no wrong so nothing can be said that is always the middle way what Buddha talked about the middle way means that we cannot say everything exists or we cannot say nothing exists so when you say everything exists you have an extreme idea or when you say nothing exists you have another extreme idea so Buddhism would say that things come to be

[56:09]

because of certain conditions without conditions things disappear so we don't say whether they exist or do not exist and also now we observe ourselves Buddhism would say there is no thinker apart from thinking the thinker is only image the relation but the thinking is the process there is no feeler apart from feeling there is no there is no observer apart from observing no perceiver apart from perceiving so Buddhism is really involved with the here and now what is really happening now without creating image

[57:11]

then we will not be deceived or deluded by the image or then we will say that is there anything like ego so in the true sense in the ultimate sense surely there is no ego but according to consciousness ego arises the concept of ego arises now we say what is the position of Buddhism in regard to this concept of ego the Buddha made it clear in one of his discourses which I could

[58:15]

summarize to you that what we call ego in the West has three meanings according to Buddhism the first meaning is identification identifying with the names with the forms with the nation with the race with the color with anything identification of any form is the matter of ego so when you identify yourself with the thinker you are creating ego when you identify yourself with the feeler the ego comes to be so there is no identification and then we just see things as it is then everything is a process feeling is a process

[59:18]

thinking is a process observing is a process by this way we will not make mistakes about identity and then the second meaning of ego is possessiveness possessiveness and this implies attachment when we say this is my lamp this is my paper this is my sandal so if we put anything like mine before the object we have the idea of possessing belonging to belonging to that is the sense of ego that is the ego so that is why non-attachment is important when we can possess certain things which we don't really mean

[60:19]

we may have non-attachment we may have a house we may have clothes we may have something but we don't really mean it we understand just only that they are essential for the needs of life the needs for existence but the mind is free because it is detached detached then the third meaning of ego is becoming this is the process of becoming wanting to become to become somebody who will have name and fame and honor to become somebody powerful somebody important

[61:22]

to become something then we talk about the wanting to become enlightened is that a matter of ego? surely if we want to become the Buddha with a very strong desire and we make a struggle we make a struggle we are struggling to become then it is the ego plan ego plan ego is planning to become so that it will find it very difficult to become the Buddha because ego can never become the Buddha to become the Buddha to become the Buddha desire must go desire must come to an end but ego can never

[62:26]

give up desire so in the same step ego must die away before Buddha appears enlightenment appears at the moment the ego is suspended and transformed sorry that is why arriving at the enlightenment or satori you come to this non-duality which is the ending of relation between subject and object

[63:01]

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