When we recite this vow for arousing the mind, excuse me, this verse for arousing the vow, to practice the Bodhisattva way, I'm often struck by it. This morning I was struck by it. There's just a beginning where it says, we vow with all sentient beings from this life on through our countless lives to hear the true Dharma. this may not be true for any of you, but I get the impression that some Zen students think, to practice Zen you go and you sit in meditation and then you sit in meditation and then you, you know, you accomplish the way. That's true. However, there's a thing missing there and that is

[01:22]

this thing about hearing the true Dharma. It's actually not just that you sit, but that you hear the true Dharma and you sit. Or you sit and you hear the true Dharma, and then you sit, and then you hear the true Dharma. So in the beginning of the Samadhi chant that we do at noon service, it says, from the first time you meet a master, just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind. So you meet the teacher, listen to the Dharma, and then sit and drop away body and mind. And then, after sitting and dropping away body and mind, you listen to the true Dharma, and then sit and drop away body and mind. And then listen to the true Dharma, and then sit and drop away body and mind. So Zen practice isn't just sitting and dropping away body and mind. It's listening to the Dharma, the true Dharma, sitting and dropping away body and mind, and then listening to the true Dharma some more and sitting and dropping body and mind.

[02:33]

In other words, you don't practice all by yourself. You're practicing with the teaching of the Buddha. And the Buddha did the same. And then it goes on, this vow goes on to say, upon hearing it, no doubt will arise in us. That seems a bit extreme. But I think some doubt will arise, but then you're supposed to work on that doubt by talking to the talking to the source of what you're doubting. You consult the scripture that you're doubting. You consult the teacher that you're doubting. Not the teacher, but you consult the teacher about the dharma that the teacher's saying to you. And you discuss it until you resolve your doubt. So it says, upon hearing it, no doubt will arise. In other words, you work to the point where you can hear it, having worked through your doubt, so you can really let it in.

[03:36]

And then it says, no, we lack in faith, in confidence, confidence in this teaching. And then it says, upon meeting it, we will renounce worldly affairs and maintain the Buddhadharma. So after hearing it, clarifying doubts, having confidence, now that you've really heard it, And then you just sit and wholeheartedly drop away body and mind. I add that in. And it says, upon doing so, the great earth and all, oh, excuse me, renounce all worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma. You'll maintain it. You'll take care of it, which means you share it, which means you recite it for yourself and for others and teach it and practice it with everybody. That's what maintaining it is. And then in doing so, the great earth and all living beings together will attain the Buddha way. So it's not just that you sit and drop away body and mind.

[04:44]

You sit and drop away body and mind and then maintain the Buddhadharma which you have heard, and then maintain the Buddhadharma. The great earth and all living beings together will attain the Buddha way. That's the vow of the bodhisattva. And to recontextualize again, I'm devoted this year to studying Samadhi and the Buddhist tradition. Buddhism grew out of a samadhi tradition, practicing meditation, practicing concentration. And then the Buddha, who was a samadhi expert, a samadhi adept, finally came to the time when he, coming out of his samadhi, he started to see the truths.

[06:00]

he started to see truths. For example, he saw the Four Noble Truths, and he saw the Twofold Truth. And seeing these truths and understanding these truths in samadhi, he became the Buddha. And he said that before he understood these truths, he was not fully enlightened. But after he understood these truths, he was fully enlightened. Then this fully enlightened person, when he started teaching, the students listened. And when the scholars look at what he said, when the philologists and the linguists look at what he said, they see, well, the first thing he talked about was truths. the first way he expressed himself was about truths.

[07:09]

In other words, the first way he was talking about, the first way he was relating to people from this enlightened place was to offer them truths which they could know. In other words, he was presenting himself like a philosopher, teaching people how to be wise, first of all. Now, he was a yogi expert in samadhi who had realized these truths, and his first students pretty much were yogis. So he didn't mention the yoga practice of samadhi. He just went right to the truth practice, the wisdom practice. And he didn't exactly put it this way at the beginning, but anyway he said there's the truth of suffering and there's the truth of origin of suffering. And then all the schools, all the different varieties of teachings, of wisdom schools that followed from the Buddha in the years after Buddha died, all those schools agree

[08:24]

to a certain extent on the truth of suffering and on the origin of suffering. They all agree that ignorance in its subtlest form, in its subtlest and deepest form, is the root of all misery. So Buddha said that suffering has an origin, has a source, and then he said what the source was, and he also said the source is ignorance. But it's not just ignorance, it's the deepest ignorance that's the source. As I mentioned yesterday, there's layers of coarser and coarser ignorance built up from the fundamental ignorance. Once you're ignorant, at the deepest level you can elaborate that ignorance nicely.

[09:28]

I give example like, you can have strange views of national groups, or races, or animals, or plants. You can have ignorant views of many things, but they're based on the fundamental, on the deepest one, If you remove the superficial ones, that improves your relationship with whatever you had an ignorant view of. But until you remove the deepest one, you're always afflicted by that deep ignorance. So the deepest one is the root of all the misery that follows. And ignorance is a psychological phenomenon. Ignorance is a misconception, it's a misunderstanding.

[10:31]

It's ignoring the truth and looking at something in a misconstrued, erroneous way. So it's a psychological phenomenon. So then Buddha, after introducing truths, then moves on to introduce psychological phenomena and psychological practices. So The issue of wisdom and seeing the truths, coming to be able to see the truths like the Buddha did, is presented in psychological terms. And one of the ways to present things in psychological terms is in terms of consciousnesses and objects of consciousnesses, or subjects and objects. And then we have these various schools of wisdom.

[11:39]

And the first school I talked about a little yesterday. And I mentioned that in the first school, called the Vaibhashika, they say that we need to learn how to meditate on what's happening in order to see the non-existence of what they consider to be the subtlest kind of ignorance. And some of them say that the subtlest kind of ignorance is a view of a partless, permanent and independent self.

[12:42]

But most of them say that a more subtle version of ignorance is the conception or the belief in the image, the image and the belief in the image of a self that substantially exists. As the grossness of ignorance increases, less and less people share the ignorance.

[14:03]

So for example, in certain parts of the world, people do not have certain kind of ignorant views. of Italians in other parts of the world. Some people do and some people don't. So that's a kind of a very gross kind of ignorance. But in most parts of the world people do have a belief in a substantially existing self of a person. And actually, most people have a belief in a permanent, partless, independent self. But if you got over the view of you — you, the person that you are — if you got over the view and the belief that you have a permanent, partless self to this person,

[15:12]

or that this person has a permanent, heartless, independent self, if you got over that, you would join a larger group of people, some of whom have also gotten over that view, who hold a more subtle view, more subtle ignorance, and that is of the substantially existing self. And if you got over that view, then you would join an even larger group who have even a more subtle. So almost everybody, except very enlightened people, share the most subtle form of ignorance. And smaller numbers of people share varieties of grosser ignorance. Little demographics of ignorance for you. And yesterday I think Maya asked, well, what does a substantially existent self mean?

[16:25]

And so I don't know what I said in answer to it, but basically I deferred the conversation to today to look at what that would be. So now I try to address what that looks like. But before I go any further, I just want to say that basically what that is, is actually to think that there's a self, that you knew the person has a self that exists ultimately, that has an ultimate existence. Which we don't, but we actually do think so. I wonder which way to go, and I think maybe I'll just, I'll say this once and come back to it, to give you the definition, a definition of a member of this first school of Buddhist philosophy called the Vaibhashika school.

[18:21]

a member of this school is a person propounding the individual vehicle who does not accept self-consciousness and who truly, and who asserts the existence of external objects, or who asserts external objects as truly existent. That's the definition. So there's two points, or three points, that they're interested in individual liberation They're interested in a path of wisdom which produces liberation for the yogi.

[19:29]

Second point is they do not accept self-consciousness. The third point is they assert that external objects as being truly existent are truly existent. of the three points. And again, they still accept that all component things are impermanent and that all phenomena are selfless. So it's in that context that they say, say this. And self-consciousness, what self-consciousness means is that they don't accept this, okay?

[20:33]

But self-consciousness that they do not accept is that a mind can be aware of itself simultaneously with the awareness of its object. They don't accept that. And some people feel like maybe that's the case. They feel like, well, I'm looking at somebody's face, and simultaneously with being aware of that face, I can be aware of my mind knowing the face. They don't accept that. So you see what's being stated here is they have a view about subjects and they have a view about objects. They say objects, external objects, are truly existent.

[21:41]

Now I'll come back to this again by reading you the Abhidharma Kosha. So this is the Abhidharma Kosha written by Vasubandhu. an Indian, sometimes called, sometimes they call him the second Buddha. Sometimes he's called the doctor of philosophy, the Buddhist doctor of philosophy. No, Buddhist doctor of psychology. Wrote lots of books about Buddhist psychology. And so one story about him is he was originally of Aibashika. He was of this school that I'm talking about. Later he switched to the second school. the Satrantika, and then later he switched to the Yogacara.

[22:54]

And that story of him depicts a kind of evolution of sophistication and understanding of what is the most subtle form of ignorance to be abandoned. And the chapter I was thinking of reading a little bit to you from is chapter 6. And this chapter is called The Path of the Saints. The saints are the people, it's the path of those who become arhats or become liberated, who attain nirvana, who have nirvana as their goal. And who get there? And so it's a path to nirvana for the sake of the saint.

[24:01]

Of course, once the saints get to nirvana, they're very nice to have around, and they're very kind to everybody, and they teach Dharma, and so they're not just for themselves, but their goal is primarily to attain this state. And this is the chapter which particularly describes that path. This chapter on the path of the saints, or the path and the saints, it follows the chapter, which is the chapter on latent defilements. So in chapter 5, they talk about all the kind of latent defilements in the mind. So in following this chapter, It says, homage to Buddha. And it says, we have said in the previous chapter how the abandoning of the defilements receives the name perfect knowledge.

[25:14]

And then it says, as for abandoning — and here comes the first verse — and this book, the way this Abhidharma Kosha is constructed is that — this is the story about it — is that — I don't know exactly what happened, but anyway — either Vasubandhu was — he was a very knowledgeable Vaibhashika. So the leaders of the Vaibhashika school said, would you please write a little summary of our whole system. So the Vibhasha, the Mahavibhasha, is a very big book. Did you get the impression yesterday? That's the book which is the commentary on the biggest Abhidharma book. So it's like the biggest Abhidharma book of the seven Abhidharma books. Then the scholars of 18 schools made commentaries on on various teachings in this big Abhidharma book.

[26:22]

So if you have a various teaching, then comments of 18 schools are put in. Then you go to the next teaching and then the commentary of 18 schools is put in. So it's a huge book. I was actually kind of, found it quite pleasing and interesting to hear that the Mahavibhasha this big book, the foundation of the Vaibhashika school, was translated into Tibetan around 1950. However, Tibetans have been studying this book, the Abhidharma Kosha, since probably the 10th century. This book is couple thousand pages in English, but it's very small compared with the Mahavibhasha. So anyway, the Vaibhashikas asked Vastu Bandhu to write a commentary or a summary of this huge book, and he wrote 600 verses, which is a high level of condensation.

[27:34]

And then he sent it to the headquarters of the school. And they were astounded. They thought it was so beautiful the way he encapsulated in poetic form so beautifully and so correctly their teaching. So that's called the Abhidharma Kosha Karikas. Karika means verses. It's a verse form. So he wrote these 600 verses, and that's the core of this text. Then as the story goes, they said, well now that you've condensed this huge commentary down to these very beautiful verses, would you write a commentary? But not as long as the one that you condensed. So then he wrote a commentary, which is something like, I don't know what, five times as long as the original text, but still not so long. So he sent him the commentary, and his commentary they got very upset about because when they saw the commentary they realized his commentary refuted a lot of the stuff in the 600 verses.

[28:46]

Not all of it, but a lot of it he refuted. So in the commentary after the verse he would say, well, the Vaibhashikas say this, but I disagree. And he would say what he thought. And his point of view of the way he thought is one of our main sources for what we call the Satrantika school. So in this text you can learn Vaibhashika from the verses and from what Vasubandhu says about the Vaibhashika. And then you can hear the Satrantika in terms of what he now has grown to think. So now we come to the first verse in the chapter 6, and he says, what about abandoning these defilements? And he says, it has been said that the defilements are abandoned through seeing the truths and through meditation. So some of the defilements...

[29:51]

When you see the truth, some of the defilements just drop away. However, other defilements must be brought into meditation after seeing the truths. So some defilements drop away as soon as you see the truth, and other defilements have to be brought into samadhi with seeing the truths, and then they drop away. And then the next carcass says, and then is the question, the question is, well, is the path of seeing the truths, or considering the path of seeing the truth and the path of meditation, are those paths pure or impure? And the answer is, the path of seeing the truth is pure. The path of meditation is pure and impure. The path of meditation is impure prior to the path of seeing the truth.

[30:58]

So the samadhi practice you do prior to seeing the truth is impure. That's samadhi number two. You're concentrated, you're in samadhi, but it's impure because you still have ignorance. of the nature of self. It's nice, it's a samadhi, basically, and the afflictions are like cooled out, so you're at peace, I mean you're comfortable, but you still have these latent tendencies which arise from ignorance and which can lead to more trouble. Once you see the truth, a lot of the defilements drop away, And then when you start meditating again, your samadhi then is pure because it's connected with right view. And then the combination of the right view and the samadhi then clear up all the other defilements. Okay?

[32:04]

Is that all right? I mean, is that simple or hard? And then there's some question, I guess, about... Oh, so some defilements are abandoned by seeing the truth and some are abandoned by meditation. And then it says, after the commentary says, we have said, quotes, through seeing the truth. What are the truths? And then it says, the next verse says, the formidable truths have been mentioned. and they were mentioned earlier, and it tells you where they were mentioned. So I'll just tell you they were mentioned. And the way they refer to them is interesting, but I won't get into it right now. Maybe later. Is that okay? Can we just skip over the Four Noble Truths for now?

[33:08]

Just say that these Four Noble Truths were mentioned. suffering, origin, cessation, and path. Those are the Four Noble Truths. They were mentioned earlier. That's part of the way he summarized it. You see, when asked questions like that, he said they were mentioned earlier. That makes it more condensed rather than bringing them all out again and telling you about them. And then the next verse says, Their order... Oh, the next is a question which says... Sort of, why are they in that order of suffering?

[34:15]

What's the next one? Origin. What's the next one? What's the next one? Why are they mentioned in that order? Do you know? No way of diagnosing illness. That's one answer. What do you think it says here? They're in that order because that's the order in which they're understood. First you understand suffering. Then you understand its origin or its root. Then you understand the cessation. And then you understand the path. That's the order in which you comprehend them. That's why they're in that order. And now I'm going to skip a few karakas, not too many, just a few, and go up to karaka verse number Four. That was two, I skipped three, okay? But three is pretty complicated, so I'm just going to go to four and just say, the Blessed One also mentioned, in addition to the Four Noble Truths, the Blessed One also mentioned the two truths.

[35:31]

And the two truths are conventional truths, Samvritti Satya and ultimate truth, Paramartha Satya. What are these two truths? And the verse says, I'm going to tell you what a conventional truth is, okay? According to this school, this is a conventional truth. A conventional truth, the idea of a jug or a pot, the idea of a pot or a jug ends when the jug is broken. The idea of water ends when in the mind one analyzes the water.

[36:34]

the jug and the water, and all that resemble them exist conventionally. The rest exist ultimately. Another translation is, a thing which, if broken or mentally separated into others or parts, is then no longer understood by the mind to be that thing, such as a pot or water is conventionally existent.

[37:40]

Or another translation would be, a conventional truth is a phenomena which is such that if it were physically destroyed or mentally separated into parts, the consciousness apprehending it would be cancelled. Cancelled. So, going over that, so they said like a pot or like water. Okay, so like If there's an awareness of a pot, if there's a consciousness of a pot, and you break the pot, that consciousness, which was knowing the pot, is cancelled.

[38:53]

Follow that? You don't have that consciousness anymore. Now you have consciousness maybe broken, of shards. So that pot is what we call a conventional truth. It's a conventional existent, conventional existent, and it's also a conventional truth. It appears to a certain kind of consciousness. A certain kind of consciousness sees it. And this kind of consciousness is called a worldly consciousness. But it does appear. Okay? But if you would physically break it, and the consciousness which saw that would no longer be there when you physically broke it, then it would be a conventional truth.

[39:58]

Or it's like water. If you break water up in, you know, then the consciousness which sees the water can still see the water, right? Does that make sense? In other words, in those days they didn't know how to break water other than, you know, pour part of it out or spill it all over the floor. But still, if you spill the water on the floor, then you still see the water. The consciousness which sees the water hasn't been cancelled. Does that make sense? But if you mentally analyze the water into parts, like into H2O or something, into oxygen, hydrogen, or whatever, if you mentally analyze the water, the consciousness which knows the water is cancelled. Now, of course, this can be applied to a person. If you see a person, most people see persons, and I said before we had this naive realism that we see a person, we exaggerate the person into like, we got a person, okay, got a person, we go zap.

[41:14]

We have this kind of like thing, we go zap, and we make the person into like this whole thing. We make this person into this like substantial unit. We make it into a product. and we say this is a whole thing. Okay? And then it looks kind of permanent, too. It looks like it's sitting there like, and you can hold it like, read, read, read, read. But if you actually, if the person gets broken sufficiently, you can't see the person anymore. And if you had a view of the self of the person as the whore of the person, you wouldn't be able to keep seeing that self. And therefore, that kind of wholeness of the person is a conventional truth.

[42:21]

There is that image, that wholeness of the person, and it does really exist according to this school. It doesn't really appear there, but it doesn't substantially exist because if you would break it or if you would analyze it in your mind, the consciousness which sees the person is canceled. You don't see it anymore. I think of little kids, and Like one of my psychology professors told me one time he was going to, I think, a Halloween party or a costume party, and he put on his, like, a mustache and a funny hat, and he walked into his kid's room to say goodnight, and the kid totally freaked. Because... you know, the kid couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The consciousness which knew Daddy was canceled.

[43:31]

They couldn't figure out how to make, how to do that thing again. The reifying abilities of the child were frustrated. Therefore, no Daddy, no substantial Daddy, no really existing Daddy, just as some kind of like, whoa, whoa. And should I make this into like a new man, some other man who looks like this, who's all whole, but then I don't have daddy, or should I try — you know, so that's the kind of thing we do. So that's a conventional truth. When you break it down, an ultimate truth or an ultimate existent is that when you break something apart, when it's physically broken or mentally analyzed, the consciousness which knows it is not canceled. That's an ultimate truth. So from this early presentation of the two truths, they're presented as, not as two kinds of truth, but as two kinds of objects.

[44:37]

And the objects are defined in terms of subjects. Namely, these kinds of objects, when manipulated, when broken or analyzed, will cancel the consciousness which knows them. And these kind of objects, when broken or analyzed, will not cancel the object. Those are ultimate and conventional truths. And these are the truths which, when you see both of them, not just one, but when you see both, you attain perfect knowledge, according to this school. This is wisdom, is to see these two truths. It's not just to see the ultimate one. It's not just to see, okay, I'm looking at this person and when this person's broken, excuse me, I'm looking at this person, but the way I look at this person is such that

[45:47]

when this person's broken, what I'm looking at doesn't get broken. In other words, the way I see this person holds up to analysis. And the way to see a person that holds up to analysis is to not make the person too real, because if you make them too real, they won't hold up to analysis. But if you make them a little bit, just a little bit real, like conventionally real, that you expect not to hold up to analysis. So what would be the way the person would be that you would see them that would hold up to analysis? Impermanent. Impermanent would be good, yeah, but not selfless. If you saw the person as selfless, then when the person got analyzed, you'd still be able to see the selflessness of the person. The knowing of the person wouldn't be changed when you took away the wholeness or the permanence or the independence.

[46:59]

And seeing that is being free of ignorance. But you can't just see the ultimate truth, you have to also be able to see conventional truths. Namely, you have to be able to see that when you see a pot and that the consciousness which knows the pot will be broken when the pot is broken. You need to understand that when you don't see pots anymore. You need to understand that. And you need to be able to tell when you're looking at the pot that this is a conventional truth. If you can't understand that, which is actually not that difficult to understand, but it's Well, I shouldn't say it's not that difficult. But anyway, if you can see the pot and understand that this pot will not hold up to analysis, you're seeing a conventional truth. But even if you don't understand that, the pot still is a conventional truth.

[48:06]

You just haven't understood it yet. So actually some people actually think pots are ultimate truths and that people are ultimate truths, that the self is an ultimate truth. But if you can see that a pot is a conventional truth, then you're ready to see an ultimate truth. In other words, you're ready to see something about what's in front of you that holds up to analysis. And in this system, The examples of ultimate truths are, one of them is space. And another one, this is really kind of a big difficult thing to mention to you, but another one is physical matter in the form of atoms.

[49:11]

They're ultimate truths in this system. But also, the five aggregates are ultimate truths. So, for example, if you take a smell and break it up into parts, you still have the smell. If you take a color and break it up into parts, you still have a color, and so on. So actually the five aggregates are things that, according to the system, will stand up to analysis. The ultimate truth is what, when you look at, you get freed of the ignorance of exaggerating the reality of a phenomenon. Bob had his hand raised, but I just want to read the next karaka.

[50:23]

And it says, the truths have been mentioned. Now we must explain how they are seen. Consequently, beginning from the beginning, we would say that these truths are seen from hearing, reflection, and meditation, those three levels of wisdom. That's how these truths are seen. Whoever desires to see the truths should first of all keep the precepts. Then you read or listen to the teachings. upon which the seeing of the truths depend. Or you hear their meaning.

[51:26]

Having heard, then you correctly reflect and analyze. Having reflected, then you give yourself up to cultivation and meditation. With the prajna arisen from the teaching or hearing, For its support there arises a wisdom arisen from reflection or reasoning, and with this for its support there arises a wisdom arisen from meditation." And then goes into order the characteristics of these three kinds of wisdom. But to understand this first level of wisdom, the wisdom of hearing, probably there needs to be a little bit more information about the truth that we're going to try to be able to see, but maybe need to hear some more and discuss some more, so we have the first level of wisdom about these truths.

[52:34]

And then after we have the first level of wisdom about these truths, which I have a feeling has not yet arisen here all over the place, maybe a few it's arisen, but maybe not universally, then we could take that, based on that wisdom, we could develop the wisdom of reasoning, the wisdom which comes from checking out what we understood with other scriptures that we've read and heard, and also by reasoning, I was talking to someone and I realized that one way to do this second type of wisdom is like to have kind of like your own variant of Doksan. You know, Doksan in your head. Have a conversation with a teacher in your head over what you learned from the teacher. Or have a conversation with Buddha over what you heard from the Buddhist scripture. If you hear a teaching and you understand it, or if you hear a teaching and you didn't understand it, then you asked questions of the teacher and then the teacher gave you an answer and then you understood.

[53:42]

And then there was another point that you didn't quite understand and you brought it up and asked the teacher and the teacher gave you an answer and then you understood. You had the first level of insight, right? First level of wisdom. But then to be able to walk away from the teacher and go walk in the hills and recreate that conversation in your head, you have a deeper understanding. Plus, maybe to ask some new questions that you didn't think of to ask the teacher, and then to have the teacher in your head answer the questions. And then, after you get the answer from the teacher in your head, to go back and to go look in the sutras to see if the teacher asked the right question and if you gave the right answer, or to go back and ask the teacher, in my head you asked me this question and I gave this answer. Would you have asked me a question like that? The teacher said, no, but that would have been good if I, I wish I had. And this is my answer, what do you say? And the teacher says, good. But to be able to carry that conversation on in your head, to have the thing going on in your head is like the reflective kind of analysis.

[54:47]

So you say to yourself, have you analyzed this thoroughly enough? And you say, yes. And you go back to ask the teacher, I said yes. What do you say? The teacher says, no, you should do more. You didn't go far enough. Or then you might say, and then you do some other kind of analysis and say, I think I went all the way. You go ask the teacher and you say, I think I went all the way. What do you say? The teacher said, you did. So you go back and forth actually between the two probably, but you need to be able to actually like have the teacher inside you and be able to talk to it to develop the this thing. So Buddhist disciples, in order to develop Buddhist wisdom, actually listen to the Buddhist teaching and talk to teachers who know the Buddhist teaching and go back and forth until they have an understanding of Buddhist teaching through the other. Then you actually can inwardly carry on and develop the craft of the teaching in your own mind. And this is, of course, much deeper.

[55:50]

And then you join that with the samadhi. Then your understanding on the first two levels becomes a basis for the third level, where you join that understanding with your concentration practice. So that's what it says here in the first part of the Abhidharma Kosha, Chapter 6, on the path. And that took much longer than I thought. Or did you have a question, Bob? Yeah. Desperately, you identified one of the schools as maintaining that there is no self that is permanent, heartless, and independent. And it sounded like the example that they were getting about the joke addressed that question in terms of it's permanent and it's part of it. It might be the very end of the piece that I don't really think that part doesn't have a part of it.

[56:54]

I don't know. And I have another question that I kind of boil down at the table. And one is, what about the question independent? How is a jug or how is the self independent? And then the second question is, this relates to the self as a person. Could I relate to that first part right there? You said, how is the jug independent, did you say? The jug is, well, first of all, the jug is not independent, and the person is not independent, doesn't have an independent self, but a lot of us do think we have a person that has an independent self. We have that idea. We have that conception. And there's neurological reasons for that, and evolutionary reasons for that, I would say. Anyway, we have this misconception, and it's innate. Most of us have it.

[57:55]

So we feel, most of us, or a lot of us feel, that we're independent of other people, that we're not in relationship to them, we don't need them, and so on. We don't depend on them. We feel like that. Maybe not all the time, but I would say sometimes even when you don't feel it, deep down you really do think it. Because a lot of people... have been educated about interdependence and all that, so they know it's unreasonable to feel independent. But they're simultaneously holding this idea of independent self in the darkness in their mind, that they really do feel like they're independent. They have that view. And that view of independence, when you hold that view, that's a root for feeling anxious. Because if you're independent, all the others are a threat. Now, of course, if you think about it, well, if I was really independent, they wouldn't be able to touch me.

[59:00]

But, you know, this view has not really been brought up because if you bring it out and you see that it doesn't make sense that you would be anxious if you really were independent and gave it up, then you wouldn't be anxious. So how are we not independent? Do you want to know how we're not independent? Because the idea of self depends on the five aggregates, for example. You can't have a self that's independent of the five aggregates. But you can have an idea of a self that's independent of the five aggregates. Okay? Does that make sense? Did you follow that part? It's not so much that the jug loses its identity, it's that the thing that knows it is cancelled. A comparable simile for the issue of independence? Pardon?

[60:22]

The fact that we need to eat? Yeah. Yeah. That might do it. Does that do it? Yeah. Well, somehow I feel like before we... You said the pot's clear, but I just wanted to see how you understood the pot. The pot... is what we call... This school says the pot truly exists, but doesn't substantially exist. Okay? It doesn't have a substantial exist, but it truly exists. In other words, it really is established as a pot. Now, when you break the pot, you could say you lose that pot, right? But that's not the point. The point is... that the consciousness that knows it is eliminated. Because the consciousness actually is part of the reason why the pot's not independent.

[61:35]

So it has to be consciousness, no company. Yeah, but actually, I switched schools. I shouldn't have done that. I should give a different reason. Anyway, so how is the pot? not independent. Well, one of the ways it's not independent is that when it breaks, the consciousness which knew it is cancelled. That the breaking of the pot cancels the consciousness. And when you think the pot's independent you don't recognize that that pot and the consciousness which knows it are interdependent.

[63:00]

And if you would break that pot you would lose the consciousness that knew it. If you think it's independent you wouldn't be thinking that, you wouldn't be feeling that way. And if you had an idea of self as a whole kind of thing and you broke it into parts If you thought it was independent, you wouldn't think that breaking into pods, you would lose the consciousness of it. If you knew that the consciousness depended on that wholeness, that idea of wholeness, then you realize that this kind of wholeness thing is not independent. It's not independent wholeness.

[63:34]

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