Good evening to beautiful summer evening. A few things by way of housekeeping. First of all, I want to thank people. Quite a few people have paid or made a donation for the class and. We really, BCC really appreciates that. Sojin and I do not receive any compensation for these classes because we're paid in a regular way. So all of your donations to this class goes to support BCC, which is great at a time when some of our income streams have been really limited. We're doing okay financially, but we really need to pay attention to that. So thank you for your donations, and if

[01:02]

Any of you who have not done that, you are welcome to go to the BCC website and you can make a donation via PayPal or you can send a check to Berkley Zen Center. So thank you for that. As I said, this is the third of four classes, which is basically an introduction to Yogacara. and hopefully a practical introduction. Today's class is going to discuss something that Sogen Roshi brought up in lecture on Saturday. He talked about the seventh consciousness, manas, and he had a very simple and elegant formulation for it, and we're going to take that a little further in the course of tonight.

[02:09]

To me, it's one of the most interesting and mysterious aspects of this this kind of Buddhist psychology that we're doing. And so we'll have a chance to explore it from a number of different directions, see how it fits into the overall system, and see what you make of it, what your thoughts and perspectives are as we go on. Before I do that, first thing I want to do is just see if there are any holdover questions from last week. If you have any questions, let's address them now. And as usual, you can raise your hand digitally, or you can just raise your hand physically, and I will track that.

[03:12]

Please, let's begin with any questions. If and slash when you have a question, also, and when I call on you, please unmute yourself. So is there anything that continues to be on your mind or that you feel is unclear from last week or the week before? Good question. Thank you. I've had this question for actually a few years and sometimes I think I get it, most of the times I don't. And it says, the way is not difficult if you are not picking and choosing. It isn't directly the subject of your talk, but it came up during the last class. I guess that's from the Sandokan. But then does that give... No, it's actually from the Xin Xin Ming, which is a poem by the fourth ancestor of Zen.

[04:22]

Okay. Thank you. But then I've also heard conflicting things, which actually may be complimentary, and I'm just not getting it, is that great doubt leads to great faith that we want to discern? Because it's not trying to say not picking and choosing, it's not encouraging us to be sponge mind where we just mop things up, right? Can you say something about that for us, please? Sure. It is connected to what we're talking about and what we're going to talk about. But you should always remember that every Buddhist teaching is like a medicine. And the objective of a teaching is to bring one into balance. So one thing, it's like medicine, it's not food, right?

[05:24]

Uh, you just, so it's like a homeopathic medicine. You take, you take some to bring you back into a proper balance. So if you take anything, if you take that teaching as absolute, then you're going to have a problem living. You know, you have to pick and choose. Uh, we're constantly moment by moment making choices. Uh, and the other side of that is to recognize the choice and to be free in the midst of it, uh, to be free in how we choose. So, you know, you could make a choice, for example, you know, I might choose every, every night you could say, well, here I am with my toothbrush. And I think I'm not gonna pick and choose.

[06:29]

So I'm not gonna choose to brush my teeth, or I'm not gonna choose to take a shower. Those are choices. So long as we have a body, we have to make a choice. But I think what this is getting at, and what that teaching is getting at is to recognize that there is a perspective in which things unfold in ways that are beyond our choice. And part of what the method is, and this is what we will talk about, I think, tonight and next week more, is how we see our lives in the midst of this if you will, psychological construction that we're doing. And what is then put forward in the field of as wisdoms.

[07:34]

So Manas when we'll get to this, but when Manas is when there's transformation at the base, in other words, when you when you have. really let go of a self-centered view of the world, then Manas manifests as the wisdom of equality, where each being, each thing is equal, and you're not separating yourself and other. You're not making that distinction. And same way, the Alaya Vishnayan of the storehouse consciousness, which we'll talk about next week, is the great mirror wisdom. So it just reflects everything. So that's a perspective. The function of that, the medicinal function of that, if you will, is to get us to recognize that ultimately,

[08:38]

we are not caught in this bubble of self concern. And that that's what we'll talk about today. But that's, that's the way that that teaching dovetails with, uh, with, uh, what we're going to study. And I think that the hazard of that teaching is, um, That you can. You can fall into oneness. You know you can think. Everything is one. Everything is acceptable. Killing, giving life. It's all the same, you know, and actually. There's there's a moral and ethical perspective that also applies, and that's also a stream that runs through the through the Dharma so. It's great to think of these things as medicinal, and it's also really important to recognize that medicine, if you ate a lot of medicine because you think a little is good for you and a lot's gonna be much better, then you're gonna get sick.

[09:45]

So the Zen sickness is to get stuck on one side or the other. And the challenge of living is actually to be able to fall out of balance, bring yourself back, recognize that we're always in motion. So that's a tentative answer to your good question. Julianne. OK. Can you hear me? Yeah. OK. I was a little confused about the concept of karma in the readings, and just sort of, I guess just- No, I'd be confused about that. Okay. Okay. Go ahead, go ahead. I mean, it just seems to be introducing a different kind of, a different function or definition of karma than what I'm typically used to hearing of it as.

[10:51]

And I know we discussed this a little bit last week too, but, Is it, would you say that the way that karma is dealt with in the Yogacara is like totally something separate from what we normally think of as like our ancient twisted karma, or is it the same? Well, I'm curious to know what you think is different. What is it that you're seeing that's different? It, well, in Ben Connolly's book, it seems, he talks about karma being neutral. And it seems, I don't know, it just seems different to me. It seems like karma is, I don't know if it feels neutral. See, I don't think that, to me, I don't think that, it's not that karma is neutral, it's that karma exists. Karma is simply action.

[11:51]

by definition, what we tend to think of as karma, you know, in sort of vernacular contemporary terms, you know, is basically negative. And in fact, what Yogacara is talking about and most and all Buddhist systems are talking about that I that I understand is that Karma, there's wholesome karma and unwholesome karma. And there are activities that are essentially seen as non-karmic, if you will. They're neither wholesome nor unwholesome. So in a, let's say in a, in the sense of, Seeing Yogachara and seeing our practice as a path, we are cultivating, we make an effort to cultivate wholesome karma, not unwholesome karma.

[13:05]

If we cultivate unwholesome karma, then we're leading ourselves deeper into kind of swamp of delusion. And if we're cultivating wholesome karma, then we're leading ourself in the direction of awakening. But awakening itself is beyond karma. But you can't be beyond karma. And so these states of mind, these states of being that the Yogacara system talks about as kind of its objective ultimately, these wisdoms, these wisdoms are non-karmic. They transcend that. And really what Suzuki Roshi says and what Sojin Roshi says is that For the most part, zazen is non-karmic. It takes us, while we are sitting, it takes us out of the realm of doing good or bad.

[14:14]

It's beyond that, which is actually just the activity of, it's just awakened activity. Now, we could talk about that forever, but that's my understanding of the way you're talking about, the way that the Yogacara system and other Buddhist systems basically talk about karma. And it's very different. Here's the distinction that I make. It's very different from earlier or other Indian systems that use the same words, that use the words of karma. So in many ways, in other Indian religious approaches, and also in kind of in vernacular, we tend to think of karma as like fate.

[15:18]

And what Buddhist system is talking about is karma is not fate. Karma is the initial action. That action has a fruit. That fruit, you know, then it bears fruit in our lives, whether in this life or future lives, whatever. And the great opportunity which radical about Buddhism is that in the other systems, Karma is basically what is determined by your birth. So your gender, your race, your physical abilities, all of those things are seen in a kind of deterministic universe. And your responsibility in some of these religious systems is to live out the place that you have been born into and not to try to transcend it.

[16:30]

And what the Buddha said, which is radical, was it has nothing to do with your birth. Your karma and your karmic position has to do with your action. And if I have a a vengeful or hateful thought about somebody and I can see it, step away from it and not enact it, then the karmic result of that, I can transform what might potentially have a negative fruit into one that has a wholesome fruit. Does that make any sense? Yeah, thank you very much. Okay. Anything else before we go on? I'm not seeing any hands. Am I missing anyone? Let me look over here. No. Okay. So I want to do a little review briefly.

[17:35]

And just to say, I'm going to share a screen here if I can. Can you see that? Are you seeing that now? Yes. Okay. Um, so this is a model. It's not necessarily the greatest model, but it's the best that I found online where we're talking about eight kinds of knowledge or eight consciousnesses. And if I had it, if I had some way of altering this easily, what I would say is that the entire box that contains these four circles, the entire box is what we're calling mind. And all of these eight manifestations of consciousness are part of the entity that we would call, I've used it before, we'd call it mind king.

[18:46]

Or Cheetah. And. So maybe perhaps you could argue also that outside of mind King. Because we don't deny that we don't. We don't argue that. Everything that you perceive. Exists in your mind. In other words, it's not an idealist position. There are things out there. You know, there's this computer, there's a table, there's my children. But the only way that, what it is saying is that the only way I can perceive or think about them is by way of mind. And so it begins with the five consciousnesses which are, which, are sight, touch, hearing, taste, smell and those consciousnesses are our awareness or our consciousness of objects and they also include the sixth consciousness which is in the second ring in which is ideation.

[20:08]

That's what we talked about last week as mono-vijnana. And mono-Vijnana is also, it has a double function. It functions as a sense consciousness. So our thoughts are objects of our mind at the same time as it has a a sorting and distributive function, which is taking the sense information that's coming through your sense organs and it's organizing it, you know, it's saying, oh, this one goes to, you know, this one goes to the sight consciousness and this one goes to the hearing consciousness. And that's kind of, it's sort of like a switchboard. So, it's what you call ... it has this double function of being both a sense consciousness and also a mental functioning.

[21:26]

What we're going to talk about today is the seventh consciousness, which is this kind of blue-gray circle. And that is what we're calling Manas. And Manas is where ego and self are created. It's kind of a filter. And I'm going to go into that in greater detail. And it is an intermediary and a kind of messenger between the larger mind, the mind of senses, the mind of thought, the mind of ideas, and the root or the base consciousness, which here is called seed consciousness, and it's what is technically known as the alaya vijnana, which pretty much translates as storehouse consciousness.

[22:30]

It's where all of the experiences that one has had in one's life are stored. very close to what Western psychology might call the unconscious. So. I'm just reviewing reviewing those eight consciousnesses, it just to say it took me. It took me a long time to get this straight, and I think that in part it took me time because I had I had some resistance to what I was seeing as a mechanical or mechanistic depiction of mind, but I think I finally have it straight in my head. I encourage you to do that to the extent that it's useful.

[23:32]

I'm not arguing that this is exactly the way the mind works and that it goes step by step from one into the other and then back and up. It's not so neat but it's a way of looking at yourself that you can find helpful. particularly find helpful, as Christian was asking, you can find very helpful in making your choices, and also ultimately helpful in being beyond choice. So that's kind of an overall review. And before I take off into Manas. Are there any questions about that structure? Okay.

[24:41]

So, let me read you, there's three verses in Vasubandhu's 30 verses that are relevant, directly relevant to Manas, where he speaks about Manas. And if you have a copy of the text, or if you have Ben Connolly's book, they are number five, six, and seven. So five, Vasubandhu says, dependent on the store consciousness, and taking it up as its object, manas, the consciousness of self, arises, which consists of thinking. Six. Manas, it is it, is always associated with four afflictions.

[25:45]

Manas is always associated with four afflictions. self-view, self-deception, self-pride, and self-love. And it is obstructed, but karmically neutral. And I think we'll unpack that. Along with these four, seven, from where manas is born, come self-sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition. It, manas, is not found in enlightenment, nor the meditation of cessation, or the supra-mundane path, the enlightened path, the path of being awake, the path that's beyond everyday awareness.

[26:48]

So those are the three directly relevant verses. Let me talk about them a little in their own terms. So dependent upon the store consciousness, in other words, the manas as the self-constructing uh, mind, the self-centered mind, uh, is drawing its references, its information from the store consciousness. So, you know, like, uh, we talked about this before. So, uh, I hold up this bottle of water and my mind is, I'm perceiving it as a bottle of water because I already, I have experience of this that's been in my, that's been in my mind, deeply in my mind.

[28:05]

And it's, there's a seed for that. So I can recognize this as a bottle and it's got a clear liquid in it. And basically I'm assuming that that's water. because I am aware of all the causes and conditions. I'm aware from looking at the memory which is also in the store consciousness that I filled this bottle with water from the sink and put it in the refrigerator and got it out. I would have been very surprised if that was just a chug of vodka. that wouldn't have accorded, that doesn't accord with what my store consciousness is telling me it probably is. So, when you look at the workings of Manas, in everything that I just said, Manas is functioning.

[29:15]

The reason I recognize this is I went to the sink and filled this with water. I put it in the refrigerator to cool it. I know this because I did it. You know, not because Laurie did it or not because it magically appeared, but in everything that one does, there is this underground sense of I, which is also the flowing sense, the illusion that there's continuity. There's a continuity that I filled this bottle with water and put it in the refrigerator. If I had left it for four months, I'd come to the refrigerator, I might open the bottle and it would be empty and I would think, where's the water that I put in it?

[30:24]

I didn't remove that. How does that happen? Manas is constantly using this eye reference and it's going down into the alaya vijnana, getting up the relevant seeds and projecting it onto the perceptions that I have. And that's thinking. And it brings us to number six. It is always associated with four afflictions. Self-view, self-deception, self-pride, and self-love. And those are four primary afflictions that we have that tend to arise before we even think of them.

[31:28]

They're really part of our, you could say it's part of our neurological functioning. That's an interesting discussion. One of the commentaries I have says that these four afflictions, the word for affliction is klesha. Now, klesha is an interesting word. I think it means in Sanskrit, it tends to mean its derivation or etymology is that it's a kind of obscuration or it's a covering and it's a really interesting way of putting it. In Buddhist terms, it's like a covering over the true nature of things and the true nature of things are not

[32:38]

afflicted. So this is what this commentary says, that the four afflictions are always present, except when one is deeply engaged in the path. So that's what I was saying about Zazen being non-karmic, it's non-afflicted. Or, one has attained the kind of transformation that Yogachara talks about, transformation at the base, where the consciousnesses are transformed into wisdoms. Or, one is, you could also put it, one is enlightened. But usually, going to the seventh verse, from where Manas is born comes sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition. These are steps on the Eightfold Path of Being.

[33:40]

And that once we enter that wheel, then it flows from self and flows into self. It's all about the wheel of, it's the wheel of becoming. So that's looking at those verses. I see Heiko's hand is up. So go ahead, Heiko and Kentjens. Thank you. I wanted to point out something that you pointed out, but that in a way that it came to me was. I could see that bottle of water as plastic. capitalistic values dominating our world and the fluoride and the chlorine in it as somebody else ruling my body chemistry, you know, it's just as easy to go one way as the other and I'm drawing on my storehouse consciousness, but what is the twist or would you talk about the twist that causes me to

[34:47]

choose it's not so much water as it's a political issue or for example a poison or like that. I would like to hold that question because I want you guys to discuss that question. One thing I want to say is just to point to an assumption that you made from your storehouse consciousness which is interesting. This is not plastic. This is glass. It's understandable why you made that assumption, because mostly we're using plastic bottles, right? Yeah, anyway, I want to talk about that. This is why I find Manas to me is the most interesting and mysterious part of this Buddhist anatomy of mind.

[35:54]

And I want to just give you a whole bunch of different perspectives about it before we talk about it, because I'm curious to know what you think. Where does this come from? That's what you're asking, right? Yeah, okay, Kenshin. I'm thinking about the three poisons, greed, hatred, and delusion. And I don't know if these are exactly the same as kleshas. I'm wondering if they come with the territory of Alaia, if they're, sort of innate productions of manas, how they fit in here? Right. I think that's the same question really. And I want to come back to that. I don't think there in, you should remember in verse six,

[37:03]

It says, Manas is always associated with the four afflictions, self-view, self-deception, self-pride, and self-love. All of those are expressions. It's another way of framing greed, hate, and delusion. Then it says, it's obstructed, meaning it's tangled, it's complicated, but it's karmically neutral. It's karmically neutral because it can be transformed. And this manas can become a wisdom. And so it's just like the question that Julianne was asking at the beginning, that karma is not necessarily negative. Karma can go in either direction and can be transcended. So ordinary mind, and we'll get to this in some of the commentary in the middle, ordinary mind keeps leading us in the direction of delusion.

[38:13]

But it doesn't have to be so. So let's look at that. Let's come back after I read more of these pieces here. I see a couple of hands. Let's try to keep the questions brief. Joel? Yeah, thanks. Okay, two kind of, the sense contact in verse seven, sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, volition. That sounds to me awfully like the skandhas. Yes, it's, well, and we could get into a, you know, a sideline here. There are parallels between the skandhas There's overlapping systems in Buddhism that are, they're not interlocking, they're sort of overlapping and sometimes one is redundant with the other. But yes, these are, you can think of them as quite resonant with the skandhas and that they're also,

[39:23]

Another way of looking at it is the 12-fold wheel-dependent origination. And both of those systems, the skandhas and the 12-fold wheel-dependent origination, are systems by which we create something that I call me. And so that's what this is referring to. Okay, thank you. Manas is the me creating function of mind. Okay. Gary? Thanks. I just wanted to make a comment that last night I picked up the What the Buddha Taught book and I read right to the Doctrine of No-Self and it was like spot on with what you're teaching.

[40:27]

That's a comment. If people want to read it on the side, it's great. Go ahead. It's, you know, Buddhadharma has one taste. It's the taste of liberation. And you can split hairs about doctrine, but... Really, it's about what we do and how we act with ourselves and how we act with others and with the world around us. And the doctrine is supposed to be helpful. And where it's not helpful, throw it out. OK, I'm going to go on a little here. So what Sojan said, which I like quite a bit. His expression was, Manas thinks it's the boss.

[41:31]

And that's true. So Manas thinks, you know, it's the boss because really it's all about me. You know, And part of the problem that we have in this world is you think it's about you, but it's actually about me. Because Manas is the boss. And so Manas is distorting, Manas is carrying these experiences, it's carrying them in both directions. It's getting the sense information through the sixth consciousness, And it's drawing, it's kind of bringing material back and forth between the store consciousness and the sense consciousness to see what fits, what perception or what memory or what experience one has had is in concordance with what one thinks one is perceiving at the moment.

[42:44]

But every time it does that, it puts me in the middle. And every time it does that, it's creating you in terms of me. So I'll read you a couple of quotations. This is from D.T. Suzuki. Manas roughly corresponds to mind as an organ of thought, but in fact it is more than that, for it is a strong power of attaching itself to the result of thinking. Manas first wills, then it discriminates to judge. To judge is to divide, and this dividing ends in viewing existence dualistically. Hence Manas is tenacious attachment to the dualistic interpretation of existence.

[43:45]

Will and thinking are inextricably woven into the texture of Manas. Now Thich Nhat Hanh has a slightly different, really interesting perspective as he usually does. When he says we speak of the seventh consciousness, manas, as the self-center. Manas represents grasping, loving, appropriating. In Vietnamese, we call it the lover. That's really interesting. The lover, the consciousness of love. But this is not true love because there is delusion in it. In the seventh consciousness, there are four basic afflictions, which we mentioned, self-delusion, self-love, self-view, and self-conceit.

[44:49]

The basic illusion inherent in all four afflictions is the illusion about self. This body is mine, is me. This feeling is me. These emotions are me. This consciousness is me, and I am independent from everything else. We call Manas the lover. And the victim, of course, is the eighth consciousness. So what Manas does is it It casts, there's a term that's used for the seeds that are in the Laya Vijnana, the term called perfuming. And I'm not so sure it's about perfuming as kind of just raising a stink, you know, but that can be transformed.

[45:57]

It's, you know, it's, it's imposing the smell of me on things that were just perceptions and bare experiences. So the things that one experienced, in an ultimate sense, in the alaya, they're not about me, they're just bare experiences. But as soon as we access them, We've perfumed them with that sense of me. That's another, well, there I found, I encourage you, go look at the, actually, the Wikipedia page about Manas.

[47:09]

There's a variety of descriptions. And in those descriptions, one of the things it says is that Manas is not consciously controllable. It's said to be a mind of a realm that gives rise to the illusion of conscious decisions and to incessant self-love. The other thing that I would say about Manas is it's the agency that gives us the sense of continuity. Uh, the illusion of continuity, the. This sense of I. That there's an eye that is here today that is identical in some way identical with what.

[48:16]

We encountered last week. Um and. It's not, but that's that is the illusion that's cast by. By this sense of this, this filter. And to me, what's really interesting is to speculate on. Never get to it, speculate, where does it come from? I was talking with a friend on Saturday who happened here, so just talk, who is His religious background is Sufi. And he said, oh, this is very much like the notion that you find in the Quran of something that's called nafs, N-A-F-S. Nafs is also self or ego.

[49:21]

is the aspect of the psyche that can be viewed along a continuum and has the potential of functioning from the grossest to the highest level. The self at the lowest level refers to our negative traits and tendencies controlled by emotions, desires, and gratification. Sufi psychology identifies seven levels of nafs, which comes from the Quran. And you work through these levels. The levels are, they're interesting. The tyrannical self, the regretful self, the inspired self, the serene self, the pleased self, the pleasing self, and the pure self. And I just think that's a lovely concordance between that mystical tradition and ours.

[50:24]

I think it's pretty close. And when I was talking with my friend and we were playing this out, it was very close. Where does it come from? You know, one of the things about Buddhism that I appreciate is that it doesn't really deal with beginnings and ends. It doesn't get into the impossible question about where things come from. What it tends to look at is how things work or how things unfold. And I'm comfortable with that. At the same time, I'm intrigued by the mystery of why it is that this manas is so powerful.

[51:31]

So there's a bunch of questions here, and I think this is a good place to take them. I'm going to start with Bud. Thank you. You know, I spent many years training as a biologist and this whole model to me is a perfect example of evolution. It's what would arise in my mind from evolutionary pressures that the survival value of monists I think is obvious. But the rest of my question is maybe a little premature because what confounds me is our ability to step beyond this, our ability to, well, transformation of base is the expression. That to me, it's amazing that we could evolve this capacity and at the same time,

[52:41]

what would be the survival value of stepping beyond it? That just, I find totally amazing. Yeah, well, I think that's a wonderful question. I mean, what the manifestation of that realization is, we can spend a lot of time talking about. But what I would argue is that all of us, have moments and glimpses where we step beyond this. Whether you know, and this gets back to the Christians question at the beginning about picking and choosing, you know. I haven't met anybody who didn't. take a shower or brush their teeth or put on clean clothes.

[53:43]

I just have never met anybody like that, certainly. And I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of great teachers, if you will, or so-called realized people. And they had lives in the real world as well. But they were also, I think, particularly in their interactions with others, Uh, one thing that they were able to do, and this is the manifestation, this like when Manas is transformed, it transforms into the wisdom of equality. And that's really powerful. That means when I am talking to you, uh, I may have some residual self sense of myself, but I also have a sense that, uh, I may not be able to express, but that in that moment, we are one entity. This is why I like this image of the bodhisattvas embrace, that when bodhisattvas embrace beings, you can't tell where one begins and the other one ends.

[55:01]

And then they have to step back. But all of us have moments like this. The challenge is that often we don't see them. And the self-centered moments are very powerful. The negative moments are powerful. The, if you will, the hardwired survival instinct is really powerful. But it's not all powerful. So let's see, what else do we have? Hi, Hozon. Thank you so much for this class. I especially really appreciate the Ben Connolly book. I really, really enjoy it. I guess my question is, when in Connolly's book, when he talks about manas, he at one point describes it as a sense organ, so to speak. And I don't want to get too caught up, because at that point he's talking about the 18 Datus, which I don't quite understand.

[56:05]

But it's interesting to me to see it as a sense organ. Like, it's like an eye or an ear, but in thought. And that makes me see it at a slightly different angle in his formulation. I just want to interrupt. Are you sure? I'm not convinced that he says that. I just wonder if you're confusing Manas and Mano-Vijnana. No, he actually has them lined up. So on page 116. Oh, let's see. He has this chart of 18 Datus and it's And I don't want to derail where the conversation is going, because there's so much to say about Manas, as you keep saying. But to me, it felt a little fresh and interesting. He has, you know, body, has body consciousness, and the sense object is touch. Manas is the, so to speak, organ of thought. Mano is the thinking consciousness itself, and the objects are thoughts.

[57:08]

And I guess I found that intriguing. I'm still sort of sitting with it, but one thing that came up as the conversation has been unfolding is that it might sort of talk, it might relate to us talking about where does Manas come from or really what its function is. And I find it interesting that it seems to, this formulation seems to point to it being neutral. and sort of essential to the functioning of thought, and that when it's transformed, it's into the wisdom of equality, that it's in that transformed state, that it's operating as a perceptive mechanism in the mind in some different unobstructed way. I don't know if any of that is tracking with anyone, but I just wanted to bring out that part and share. Thank you. I mean, this is partly where Yogachara gets really complicated in terms of the different interpretations and commentaries.

[58:21]

But let me show you another map here, okay? I'm going to share the screen. And it'd be great to have Ben here and discuss it with him because I think there's some things about that particular chart that I'm not sure about. Let's see. Share screen. Hang on. Okay. There we go. Okay. This is, can you see this now? No. Are you seeing it? Yes. So this is another, this is another chart and Again, there's some challenges in that, but you can see that mono vision. Yana is in the middle and actually I drew these arrows because the the arrows are going.

[59:26]

Everything is going both ways. So minus is a function is part of mind. As is a liar. Whether it's a. It's a consciousness. And I think it takes as its object the self. That's what it keeps seeing as its object. The alaya, its objects are the seeds of experience that are embedded in it. Mono-Vishyana is taking as its objects the five senses and also thoughts. And it's connected to Manas, which as the object of its consciousness is constantly self-referring. So that's the object of it, I think.

[60:28]

Yeah. That makes sense. That's what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. If I could just say one quick follow-up. I find that really powerful, that line in the 30 verses when it says, it takes the store consciousness as its object. And it just makes me think like all these seeds we have, right? Like that's what the Manas thinks is us. It's like, that's a self. It converts these raw experiences, memories, everything into self. Right. And the seeds being more of the self and the sense objects being more of the other, usually. And then just one more quick thing, what comes to mind is like, why does Manas become the wisdom of equality when the consciousness has become the four wisdoms? It's like maybe at that point it sees the equality of inside and outside. So it no longer sees the seed bed as this is mine, this is myself. It sees all phenomena as itself.

[61:31]

Well, I think it's because it's in contradistinction to the effect of Manas, the effect of that self-centered mechanism of Manas. When you create a self, right away you create other. You cannot have the self without there being something outside the self. Whereas the wisdom of equality is inclusive, non-distinctive and that points to the higher reality which is the great mirror wisdom which just reflects everything as it occurs or as it's happening. Can you show this again? I missed the bottom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, hang on a second. I'm just gonna put it up and, Heiko, you can ask your question while I'm doing this.

[62:32]

Actually, I'm glad you're putting it up because my question is about this. The I'm trying to simplify it in order to digest it. But, you know, when we have touch, the senses is picking up pressure, temperature. And when we have sight, it's picking up color and maybe texture as well. And in the manas, it's picking up, well, is picking up experience and tagging it as with a tag of self and then collecting those into an identity. The same way a burn feels at first like maybe pressure and then heat, the sense of, for example, I'm a self-loathing person, the sense of self-hatred is built up from the storehouse consciousness coming into my body

[63:45]

and I'm selecting it out and interpreting it, but that's whatever, however I'm bringing it in, not the raw experience, but how I'm bringing it in is really the mind, that's what, I'm trying to talk about what Manas does, that's what Manas is doing. Manas is always afflictive. In its state as Manas, before it's transformed, It is where we create the sense of suffering. And that suffering, it can be self-hatred, it can be self-love, all of those things, those are all manifestations of suffering in the sense that they create the separation of oneself from others. the world around one and others around one.

[64:46]

That's the afflictive nature. The afflictive nature is separation. And as Doug was saying, there also could be, you could see an evolutional or biological functionality to that, of course. Excuse me. Yeah. I'm going to put this down now so I can see everyone. I forgot what I was going to say. Thank you. Okay. Uh, Jesse was, oh, this is a chat or is it? Hi, thank you so much. I put the question that I didn't know the best way. So, uh, you made a comment last week, um, regarding race that I'm thinking about in this conversation that was so compelling, um, that related to the black lives matter movement. And even what Heiko was saying about the, assumptions about your water bottle. And you had said that when we look at somebody, we don't know their story.

[65:51]

And that you and Lori were discussing this. I don't know you. I don't know your story. And I that really sat with me. Can you talk about because it feels rooted in so much compassion. and it kind of turns the whole thing on its head. And I don't know if that makes sense to this discussion, but. Well, I think it does because what I want to, what I think part of what my job is, is I think about quite a number of us have had lay ordination here. have rock soos. And on the rock zoo, you know, on the on the lineage paper that we receive, there's there's a text. And in that text, it says, basically, we remember that the perceptual preceptual vein of the ethical moral vein of the Buddha's is the one great causal condition of enlightenment.

[67:10]

And so, to me, these doctrines, what we're studying is not just abstract. It has direct implications for how we act in the world. And I could say, by imputation, by guess, or by opinion, I think I know this is a bottle of water and I safely lift it to my lips and drink it. I think I know that about it, but I know that because there are a whole, there's a whole set of causes and conditions that I'm accessing from my Alaya Vishnayana that give me more than just the visual information. If I had just the visual information, I wouldn't know what was in this bottle, right? If I have just the visual information of any person that I see in the street, I don't know anything about them.

[68:22]

So I start looking at, you know, what are their clothes like? How are they walking? All of this. And out of that, I start creating a story. but I have to realize I still don't really know anything about that person. And, um, it's not that we can't make reasonable guesses, but those guesses are just imputation. And what the wisdom of equality here is, can I meet things without assumptions? As Bernie Glassman said, and I think, you know, I finally made this connection. You know, Bernie was, Bernie was very into the Big Lebowski. And he used to quote the dude who would say, well, that's just like your opinion, man.

[69:24]

And I finally realized last week that What Bernie was talking about when he took that up, it was like, that was his formulation of Yogacara Buddhism. That anything that I perceive is my opinion. And what behooves us to do is to really look at where those opinions come from. That's why we have to study implicit bias. We have to study our own histories. We have to study what's going on because if we don't see those things, those things are really deep in the alaya-vijnana. They're going to come up and Manas is going to use it in its programmed way and we're going to act as if not it's an opinion, not as if it's transparent but as if it actually is a story that has some sense of reality to it. And we do this all the time. We're not going to stop doing it, but we have to.

[70:30]

The thing about this method of Buddhist practice to me is it gives you tools for looking at yourself, for looking at, oh, how is my mind working right now? What is this mechanism of imputation? And also, just for today, what is this self-creating organ of consciousness that is always chugging away inside me. And it's not that I reject it, or have or am disdainful or hate, you know, hate it or want to get can't, you can't cut it out. But you can really, you can more and more see it working, so that it is not the it's not the the mechanism that that connect, the mechanism that drives us. We don't believe that our opinions are the truth.

[71:32]

So I don't know if that gets to your question. Thank you. Yes. It's an ongoing discussion. I think it's a big one. It's both a personal discussion for each of us, and it's a community discussion. It's a collective discussion. Thank you. You know, it really is amazing how this study of self seems so modern, even though it comes from thousands of years ago. And I'm wondering, though, in the context of of cultures and communities. And I think of my grandparents, you know, came from a village and thought about the village. And I mean, people who didn't conceive of themselves as their own. I'm just wondering, is there a different kind of self?

[72:36]

I mean, is this the modern self that seems so relevant for us and seems like individualism and, you know, self-made man, et cetera. But what about a cultures where they didn't even see themselves as themselves? They were part of a lineage, whatever. Well, that's a wonderful question. This is gonna be the last question. This is a good place to end. And I think it's a good place where we can begin next week as well. My narrative about Buddhist history is that when the Buddha came on the scene, He entered a culture where virtually every aspect of life was socially determined. Who you were was determined by your gender, your caste, your occupation, where you were from, et cetera.

[73:41]

And I was talking about this earlier. So you had a reality that was socially determined. And there are ways in which that that make that's a very stable social form. It also is a generally it can be a very oppressive. Some some people are carrying much more the weight of that society than others. What the Buddha did that I think is remarkable is he he created a. a system of interlocking views. One thing that he created was a Sangha. So within that community, he created community. Within a larger communal sense, he created a Sangha, which was a community. But within his Sangha, nothing was determined by birth. Within his Sangha,

[74:42]

Your value, your worth was determined by. Your actions. What you said and what you did. And so to me. What the Buddha was doing that that is kind of remarkable, you could say it was a. A very radical individualism. but it's an individualism that was embedded within an interdependent social system. So he was allowing for both of those dimensions to express themselves fully. And that's the way I think of it. There's a big debate, you know, in kind of international ethical analysis between so-called Asian systems of rights and Western systems of rights.

[75:50]

You know, of course, to some extent, the Western systems are hegemonic and they don't look what's happening in this country right now. This is completely insane. We have we have a death rate that's going to the ceiling because we have this ridiculous, bogus idea of ideology. But it's not all bogus. It has also has value and truth. We just don't throw it out. But. I think that's a that's a really interesting. It's an interesting question and it. Kind of dovetails, I think, with with how we think of and talk about a lie of visionary on a next week if that's OK. So we're going to end there. Let's end with the four vows and say goodnight.

[76:44]

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