that it prevails, it occurs in the transformations of consciousness, but transformation in its pre-pol, the resultant, what is called a communication, what is the concept of the object. Herein, the consciousness is called a laia, and all it sees is the resultant It is unidentified in terms of concepts of object and location and is always possessed by activities such as contact, attention, feeling, perception, and volition. In that context, the neutral feeling is uninterrupted and is not defined. So are contact and so on. And it proceeds like the current of the stream. Aliyah's dissipation or devolvement occurs in Arhat's ships.

[01:03]

Associated with this process and depending upon it occur in the consciousness called Monarch, which is of the nature of mentation. Thinking. Endowed with the four types of defilement, constantly concealed and undefined, involving self-view, self-confusion, self-esteem, and self-love, and also possessed of other forms of contact and so on, born of such and made of such, it is not found in the worthy one, nor in the state of cessation, nor in the super-mundane path. Such is the second transformation of consciousness. The third represents the acquisition of the six-fold object and is either good, bad, or indeterminate. That acquisition of the six-fold object is associated with fulsome psychological conditions, both universal and particular, and similarly with primary as well as secondary defilements that include the three-fold feelings.

[02:22]

And then our 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 are listing all these different diamonds that arise with the acquisition of the sixfold. object. So now we have a situation in which we have this basically this phenomenal world phenomenal and empirical and non-empirical consciousness have been described as arising and with this setup plus the this sense of self which arises in conjunction with its ability to think or reflect.

[03:30]

The more this process goes on, the more that this sense of self can be projected out onto everything. And that pretty much sets up the situation with all the kinds of clean and belief that we have in these substantial reality of phenomena which we are empirically and non-empirically aware of. In other words, we can cling to things that we're not even conscious of in the sense of objects of knowledge. Is there anything more to say about that? Yeah, one thing to say is that it also mentions that in a state of our hardship, There is a development of this aliyah that the arhat burns out the dispositions which tend to cause a holding, a clinging to aliyah or make aliyah cling to its own beaches.

[04:53]

And so the Arhat path is, in a sense, different from the path of the Bodhisattva, which this treatise is addressed to. The Bodhisattva does not burn out this situation, but lives in the world as described by this situation. And then he goes on to understand the additional teaching, which is given later in this treatise, in this teaching. bodhisattva's liberation occurs right in the midst of this mess by seeing what kind of a mess it is, whereas the arhat actually seems to eliminate the mess. But by eliminating the mess, the arhat's enlightenment is different from the bodhisattvas. The difference being that the arhat is liberated by burning out a certain range of phenomena which give rise to illusions, whereas the bodhisattva does not spend time burning out

[06:20]

the dispositions which give rise to phenomenal appearances, rather understands the emptiness of the phenomenal appearances. So in one case, it is proposed that the liberation of the arhat is not really liberation, because as soon as they're the reactivation of these dispositions, they will again have trouble with them. Whereas the Bodhisattva finds a way of liberation while the dispositions are still there and functioning and producing illusions. It's not true that for the Arhat it is to work it out. According to Mahayan wisdom, the Arhats do not really have a final, that they do actually get me going.

[07:24]

Eventually. The idea, anyway, that By rooting out the disposition, Alaya will not lead then to another birth incentive. Part of the confusion here is that Shakyamuni Buddha was an Arhat. However, he was also a Samyaksam Buddha. And other Arhats are not Samyaksam Buddhas. In order to realize you not only need to realize the emptiness of all these illusions, but you also have to realize that there is a production of illusion. There is a production of these things that don't exist. Just to actually arrive at a situation where these things, these empty things,

[08:33]

which are caused to appear, don't appear. Just to practice in such a way that these empty things, these illusions, don't even come up is not the life of the Buddha. The Buddha can live in a situation where these illusions do appear. So that's the difference. Now, of course, there's some debate about this. A never-returner is someone who is not yet an Arhat, but they won't come back. They will achieve Arhat-ship after they die. Arhat, before they die, achieve nirvana.

[09:36]

Never return or dies not having achieved nirvana, but will achieve nirvana in a heaven after death. But the Mahayana scriptures are saying that this liberation of the arhats is not final, that they will again slip into birth among sentient beings. And bodhisattvas are interested in recycling through sentientness until the time comes when everybody is ready to check out. And that would mean when everybody, I guess, could be an Arhat, in other words, not take further birth, and also be a Samyak Sam Bodhi, Samyak Sam Buddha. then bodhisattvas won't necessarily recycle them anymore to birth and death. But it is proposed by the Mahayana that unless you attain samyaksambodhi, arhatship is not really a permanent abode.

[10:48]

So in the Lotus Sutra, there is a chapter on the magical city, and the magical city is a city halfway to the goal or some way to the goal, and that's arhatship. Some people will refuse to embark on the Bodhisattva path, hearing how long it is. Therefore, the Arhat and Prajega Buddha goal is set up as a skillful device to get them to practice. And in fact, they can get to the city. And when you get to the city, you can have a picnic for some period of time where you actually don't have any problems. But then the word will come to those who are picnicking at this city that actually they must now embark on the Bodhisattva path. In other words, they must again be born among beings until all beings are purified. And then when all beings are purified, when all beings have that kind of facility to quell the dispositions,

[11:52]

and also understand that even if the dispositions were activated, they still would not be fooled by them, then we can all together, one, two, three, it would be Samyak, Sambuddhi, Bodhis, and also Arhas. Let's see. I think you're next. One thing I want to mention is that We've got to be careful here because if we start entertaining questions, there's a tendency for people to lose track of what we're talking about, including me. I'm just bouncing around after a while. So I could keep presenting longer or I could start entertaining questions. What do you want to do? Huh? Can you remember your question? Or do you think your question will not be? Why don't I free out and you can answer it? A serious question. People can decide whether they want me to answer it. Because it's right, I think we're... Yeah, what's the question?

[12:56]

Which is, you said that as a result of this process, we develop a belief in the inherent nature of things. But how that happens isn't explicitly laid out there. Okay. Okay, so that would be part of... So how is it that the process, as we followed it so far up to Karaka, well, basically, Karaka 14, how is it that that leads to the belief in the existence of self and elements? We'll all develop that some more. Any other questions before I do that? Yes. This story of the Arkha going to treat the dead returning like a pattern, is this the same kind of story as the magic for you? No. It's a kind of a, you know. After they become an arhat, it's the same as the Magic City. Yes? I just want to pick up another one. It might be time about words, but anyway, back to your concept of emptiness.

[13:59]

And in reading a song about the Yuvachara, they have this something in it. Something remains is that in suchness there are two things that really exist. One thing that really exists is that things don't have an inherent existence. That's really true. The lack of inherent existence of things is the way things really exist. That's number one. The other thing that really exists is it really is true that illusions appear. It really is true that things that don't really exist seem to exist. It really is true that people walk around thinking that this world that they imagine is there. It really is true also that it really is true that they believe in that. It is really true that people believe in wrongdoing.

[15:03]

There is no wrongdoing and there is no rightdoing either. that people believe in these illusions. That's what remains even in the face of emptiness. So there's not just emptiness, there's also the constant production of that which doesn't exist. And those two truths are what makes suchness, which is different from just suppressing and annihilating everything. which is what the arhats actually want to do, and it creates a saint. It creates a holy person. The bodhisattva is not a saint. The bodhisattva is also not a bad guy. The bodhisattva steers away from saintliness, holiness, and, of course, worldliness. But some people actually want to attain saintliness, and they set their heart on it, and they achieve it.

[16:06]

That's the Arhat goal. That's the Arhat success. And it is a wonderful thing. It's a saint. And in the Bodhisattva community, even, there are some people who play the Arhat role. So hopefully these are Arhat Bodhisattvas. In other words, they act like an Arhat, and they've attained Arhatship, but they really are still working as Bodhisattvas. In other words, even though they've attained the arhat understanding, they will take rebirth until all beings are saved. The bodhisattva vow will continue to function, but they take the form of a saint. No, samyaksan bodhi is when suchness interacts with a living creature. Suchness is present all the time, everywhere. But Samyakambodhi enlightenment is not necessarily manifest completely and realized completely by all beings.

[17:17]

OK, so now, how does it happen that once you've got this sense of self, what happens then? What's the process? Well, again, there's a sense of self, and because it's accompanied by self-ignorance and self-view, what gradually accumulates is a stronger and stronger sense that it exists. And there is actually, okay, so any extent of how that happens? Yeah.

[18:34]

Not quite. I mean, it can't quite confirm that. It can't quite confirm it now. So it has to defend against the absence of confirmation. And that's what gets it thick. And another thing that happens along this line is that there is a, you know, the word aliyah has the root, one root it has, the it's interpreted sometimes as having three meat, you know, aliyah, the Chinese character that they use for aliyah. This character reads, you know, hold, but also can be read as a verb. You can put a... a verb out in front of it. Anyway, between a verb out in front, which means the ability, and a verb which is an active marker, and then it is the ability to hold, or the ability to contain.

[19:55]

So one aspect of a laia is it holds. You can put another character out here which means it's a passive marker, makes it passive, and that is that which does hold. You can put another marker out, not a marker, but then put another sort of adjective out there which speaks of that which is hell. So a laia can be the ability to hold, it can be that which is hell, and it can also be that which is that which is dragged, or that which is clung to. So part of what happens then is that this process of self-projection also turns back on Alaya. So it turns out to objects which are said to be external, which are made external by the functioning of this acquisition of the concept of objects. The self-projection happens out that way, but it also turns back on on even the areas of your mind that aren't known to you.

[20:57]

Because a lie isn't known to you. So this process of projecting a self goes back even below the level of knowing. So it happens very deeply. And it's a good place to project it because a lie is very dependable. that it's something that's always appearing. So it's a good place to put it. It's already anchored, right? It already holds. So it's good then to project self onto that. So you always have this nice underground stream of sense of self to back you up then. Plus then projecting that out on external object. Then you get this double patchment. However, as Gary said, it doesn't quite work, so you have to keep doing it. And it gets stronger and stronger and stronger. And the stronger it gets, the better. Because the stronger it gets, the more the world will tell you that something's wacko.

[22:03]

The more disharmony will occur. Because you're holding on to something which actually isn't really there. and also the whole, the thing that you use to make it into being really there, that isn't there either. The basic prototype of this isolated, independent thing, which Mana set the original example of, its original reflective ability, which created a separation, that original pattern That wasn't really there. It really wasn't separate. It was just a little cleft made in one thing. And this basic fracture, this basic separation, this basic thing which sets up isolation, then it gets ramified all over the place. Again, what's a liar like?

[23:20]

A liar is nothing other than these seeds, right? It is the holding of these seeds. So then this ocean of held seeds can be bifurcated again. And then again, in association with this bifurcation, occurs the concept of external object. And then there occurs with that this sense of self. The sense of self, then, goes back into a liar. How does it go back into a liar? How does it get projected back into a liar? I appeal to your intuition here.

[24:23]

Yes? Is it perhaps an interaction with the projected object that some impression comes up inside, or they reflect back on some lasting impression that then tells you, oh, I'm the kind of person that responds this way to this? In other words, with interaction with the object, then you have like a whole set of responses to that that come out of a lie, potentially. And then you reflect back on the responses and you say, oh yeah, that meat. Those responses are characteristic of meat. That happens. I don't know if that's quite what I was looking for, but I think what you're saying does happen. What you're describing seems more at the level, again, of conscious knowledge.

[25:29]

We seem to know about this thing. But the response we have comes up beforehand. It sounds like what you're describing is the response is due to some dispositions or the maturing of certain seeds in a lia. I think Pam was wondering, how does this sense of self get projected back on a lia? How do you then cling to a lia? itself, which is not, you know, it's not an external object. And if you apply the ability of mind to make a thing an external object, then what's happened is that a lie has been reflected, the mind has called it external, and then we'll definitely call external objects, and we know those things. Okay? That's part of the process, and maybe most people are clear about now, I don't know. I thought you were asking, and I said it, that actually you can actually cling to aliyah itself directly, rather than cling to aliyah through the maturation of these seeds, which is our ordinary clinging to the so-called external world.

[26:49]

External world means also, if I look at myself and see anger here, or confusion, or lust, or doubt, or faith, if I look that way, that's an external object. in a sense that I'm conscious of it, and there's an acquisition of it as something I can be aware of outside consciousness, and therefore I can know it, okay? So my own inner states that I know about and the external world that I know about, these are all things which are the result of these threefold transformations, and these are the things I believe in, okay? These are things I know about and believe in as existed. But I'm suggesting there also is a projection back onto the unconscious material, the unknown realm, and his attachment there too. But that attachment is not revealed to us in conscious knowledge.

[27:54]

And there's two ways it can happen. One way it happens is that the activity of attachment that occurs in terms of external objects, things we're aware of and know, that type of activity makes seeds, which makes perfumes alaya. Both types of patterns are in alaya. So the results of attachments and belief in inherent existence are registered in alaya. But alaya is also... You know, we actually hold on to that, too. We have some sense of this. We do. We have some sense of an ongoing thing. Which we believe in. And that could be an example, although you can't know it. Because as soon as you know it, you brought it up into a concept, and that's not it. But there's some reason why we create that concept. And that concept is related to this ongoing thing, which is always there, as long as we're alive. How that happens, I somehow don't quite find a way to express it, how that projection happens back sort of down into there.

[29:03]

But it seems to occur that we actually attach to a liar. We attach to something which we don't know about. grasping by the light of the body. Yeah. And things like that, in a way, by the imputation of itself. Yeah, right. Feel that kind of, you know, a kind of marriage of the body. Right. So I hear what you're saying as evidence of what I'm proposing happens, but you haven't explained how it happens. But in other words, you project a self out onto your body as an external object, like arms and legs, like you think your body is arms and legs. That's a projection of some identity out onto the physical world, right?

[30:07]

That's one body you believe in. But there's another body you don't know about that you believe in also. That's why being coming free of your bodily attachments is not just in the realm of external objects that you can be aware of. It's also in this other level. And that's another reason. You seem to feel that way. And I agree that the attachment is subconscious and also sub-knowledge and also a level of knowledge vis-a-vis the body. Yes. Also, I was thinking that in 22 talks about impermanence and that we inferred the impermanence from our experience of the impermanence . have some cruity of knowledge in this connection back to Orion because we do have the experience of other perspectives.

[31:15]

I couldn't quite follow your question. Could you simplify it or without referring to the character, just to say what you feel without referring to the text? All right. Well, just that we do experience all these other projections. So an object out there, you can do it all the time. We have some experience of that. We have some experience of how we think things are solid. Right. And that they're not. It doesn't quite work. But we have that experience. Yes. And so that perhaps there's some imprints that we, or the intuitive sense that we draw from that experience that we somehow enlarge it out to the Well, I sort of understand what you're saying.

[32:25]

Are you saying that we actually do think that things are real? And all the little particular things we do. Is that what you're saying? Well, we, yeah, we do like that. Yeah. And now what's the next step? Well, but we, well, we're always, that's, but that's on projection. That's so. In our mind, it's, we cling to those things. As a general, we imagine that there are. you know but it doesn't ever hear what things i'm saying sort of it doesn't quite it doesn't quite work because we're pointing to something we in some way we kind of know that we know it doesn't we keep experiencing that it doesn't work if you want trying and um but that that's the process of this and keeping .

[33:26]

And maybe that we keep doing it, doing it, doing it, and experiencing it. That is our experience. And that somehow we, the process, the similar process with the bio comes because we generalize that. What I'm having trouble with is how the generalization actually happens. Something like that happened, but how? I'm having trouble. But I think it does happen. Michael? Tell me, could you open that door? Is it warm enough to open that door? Is that okay? Michael? Yeah. Can you speak up, please?

[34:28]

I have to have first, like I have twice, when a baby, it's firstly the whole world, and then it reduces it down to understanding its body. Maybe what happens first? Maybe it starts out a generalization. Like a baby believes that the whole world hurts and then slowly comes to a different realization that it's just a body. Well, we do begin, in a sense, we begin with a broad sense of Aliyah, but that beginning, that one I'm sure of, but that beginning is before this consciousness transforms. We don't know about that.

[35:29]

In this scenario here, what seems to be happening is that Aliyah is broken up. Aliyah is broken. Consciousness is broken, and by breaking it, it then, one side of the break is said to be outside. And that's a specific part of a lie that's broken off. Part of it's considered to be outside itself. And in conjunction with this split, in conjunction with separation, At the occasion of separation and splitting, at that time, the sense of self is born. The sense of self is born by breaking the mind, by cracking the mind, by hurting the mind. The self is born from that wound. But this wound has to happen because without this wound, there's no knowledge. And the psyche of the human being

[36:31]

in some animals, performs the, has evolved to the point of being able to have knowledge. But knowledge is based on damaging the reality of the mind by splitting it. And by splitting it and then acquiring a concept which says that this is outside, we have knowledge. And at that time the sense of self is born. Then this sense of self is projected back on the thing which has now been discovered and known. So the known thing is said to be a unitary, self-existent, autonomous operating, independent thing. And then that process continues to happen with all the future objects. In addition to which, the basic mind itself, cracked or uncracked, is also said to be a substantial existent thing.

[37:38]

That's what I'm proposing. But certainly the text is saying that what I said before is so. But I don't want to spend too much time on that right now, this thing about the Elias. Maybe it's time to move forward. Tia? The movement? What movement? Can you describe this movement in terms of the transformations that we're talking about here? It's a movement of what? Where's the movement? Here's the organ. Here's the sensitive materiality.

[38:42]

Here's the field. Where's the movement? What's happening now? Nothing. Okay, what's happening now? What's [...] happening now? Okay, where's the movement? Because the conscious happened right at that time, right? So where's the movement? Yes, but... Okay, the conscious appears at that moment, though, so there's no movement right then, right? Right. Now what's the turn? Now we have consciousness. Where's the movement? What's the turning? Reflection. So you have consciousness. Now you have the consciousness transformed. Reflection means it's broken. Right. It doesn't just go like this.

[39:47]

Okay, but at that moment that it goes like that, you have like this, okay? Then you have like that. Where's the movement? Move from this to that? That's called a transformation too, right? But why do you call it a movement? Why isn't it just a transformation from this into a different kind of consciousness which is broken? It's the next moment, right? What? It feels like a movement, but I propose it to you. The reason why it feels like a movement to us as human beings is because of impulse. What? Because we have impulse in every moment of sort of knowledgeable consciousness, known consciousness, we see movement there. But actually, the transformation is not from an unbroken into a broken.

[40:48]

The transformation is that the consciousness is broken. That's a transformation. And that happens in a given moment. You have a broken consciousness. That's a transformation. And this broken consciousness, or reflected upon consciousness, the same thing, also happens simultaneously with that, is that this reflection, or this crack, is considered to be outside of that which is cracked. which of course doesn't make any sense, but that concept is there. Concepts don't necessarily make sense, like unicorns, for example. So we also have a concept of something, about something, which is one thing as being two things. All right? So you call that movement, but the reason why you call it movement is because if you take a snapshot of that, and you take another snapshot of another one, you can create the illusion of movement. And you know that, so you see movement. But it's actually just a pattern, which is, it's an impulse, or whatever else you want to call it, it's Chaitana.

[41:49]

And this Alaya has Chaitana before it's cracked also. Okay? Before the crack occurs is Chaitana too, but the Chaitana before, you can't see it doing anything because there's no crack. As soon as it's cracked, it's more possible to see, oh, this seems to be going somewhere. And then the illusion of movement becomes easier and easier to imagine, and therefore karma becomes easier and easier to become involved in until finally you do get involved in karma. But I'm proposing there's no karma in Alaya. And the reason why there's no karma in Alaya is because or I would say it's indeterminate coming. You can never say what it's doing. Yes? I was just going to say about movement. It seems to me that we see movement because that's the at-hand vehicle or pattern that's there to describe that activity. We see movement because what's at hand... It's the handy illusion.

[42:54]

The handy illusion is there's a pattern. There's always a pattern available. Okay? And so we like to see the pattern. Movement is sort of how we translate what we see into an understandable entity that we can handle. Well, I would say that the definition of movement is the pattern that we translate what we see into something we can understand. Because you can see, you can translate this stuff which really has no particular nature, namely your experience, conscious and unconscious. You translate, you can't understand it. So because the mind wants to understand, the mind says it has a pattern. And if there's going to be any movement, that's the definition of the movement. That's the type of movement which it is. But that itself is not movement. Impulse or volition is not movement. Impulse is the definition of the movement.

[43:54]

The movement is according to that pattern. Yes. That brings up to a confusing point, but up to, say, the phenomenon of aliyah, this seems to be an involuntary or autonomic process of some sort, how Chris calls hardwiring in people. Aliyah is involuntary? I'm getting to a point where there's a... Aliyah is unconscious, and is it autonomic? It's pretty much autonomic. There's no conscious control of a liar. There seems to be some kind of crossover place at the point of awareness or the ability to reflect upon experience. That becomes voluntary, yes, that God, choosing to do certain things or choosing certain paths, as it were. But where I get confused is what the crossover is, where the time of community begins to explore. There's always a lie going on, right? Yeah. And in the realm of conscious life, or what we call, what we know of things, the way we conduct our life there, the decisions that are made moment by moment in that realm have effects.

[45:06]

And one of the main effects that it has is that it affects a lie. And in the next moment, a lie will be different based on what you do in the realm of concepts. So the volitional is the aspect of a lie? The volitional is what? Yeah, effective. The volitional is a pattern describing what's happening. The whole thing is what affects a lie, not just the volitional. For lens issues, the pattern. Where do we get the pattern? The pattern is just an imagined shape that you see in a given moment of consciousness. But to say the pattern is an imagined shape means that it has been created somehow rather than exist. The volitional act. No, it's not the volitional act. The splitting is also automatic. The activity of splitting is called manas. It's rather like a cell dividing? It's like a cell dividing, except that it's not really two cells.

[46:09]

You just imagine to be a cell because it's a mental thing. It's Elias Doe, one piece. It's more like a cell that someone imagines is cut into two. But that imagination in mental life is extremely important. Because, and also, at that imagination of this one cell being split into two, at that imagination, a sense of self is born. So it's not like twins or a mirror, not two, not one. It's like this. It's like, you have this room and we put a mirror up, okay? And one person in this room is reflected in the mirror. Okay? That's what it's like. So all other exists except. It must appear that there is one or whatever else. The rest of the room is existing, but one part of the room is being reflected or thought about. So it's specific? It's specific. One seed is being shined on. So is it one at a time? One at a time. Only? Only. And then another function of the consciousness, which is not one of these seeds, another function is that from these seeds,

[47:19]

One of the seeds is pulled up and said to be a concept, an external concept of something being outside. That seed is pulled up constantly. Outside. One of the seeds here is the idea of outside or external. Outside of reflections. No, outside of all this. Outside of the mind. I don't get that part. Well, one way to get it is that when the bifurcation occurs, a sense of self occurs, okay? The self feels like it's here. The self is with this thing, right? Now the self then gets paired up with an idea of something outside of itself. It seems to know that, something that's not part of that identity. That's a creation, not the self civilian. No, it's the activity of mind which is to acquire a concept of things being outside. It's an intellectual capability?

[48:21]

It's an intellectual capability, yes. The mind has the ability to imagine that something is outside of itself. Right, so it isn't an organic process necessarily. It's an organic process. It's also an intellectual process. Intellectual processes are organic processes. The intellect is an organic process. Okay, then that divided... The human organism, the human organism... Involuntary process. Involuntary process. So, that gets back to my questions where I get confused as to which becomes volitional as to... Overlaid by, or under, or tempted by the involuntary, or the inherent nature of human faith ability. There's some kind of cross over there, some kind of time of community that I don't confuse. Maybe the point of the land is sort of cracking my mind. trying to understand something in a logical linear process. This is a logical presentation, so that's the way you should end it.

[49:22]

Again, you have this awareness, which is not known. It's unidentified in terms of objects and location. It has in it a pattern. which is called impulse or volition. It has all the other dharmas. It's a consciousness, regular old consciousness. All the possible seeds of awareness are there. And then what happens is it gets bifurcated and it gets reflected upon. The consciousness, in addition to being this ocean of seeds, an ocean of awareness, also has an additional trick in that it can split itself and say, okay, now part of this Tia has been one of the seeds. She is now being reflected over here. She's over there, but she's really reflected over here. Now we have Tia up in this picture. We have a picture of Tia. We have a picture of Tia here. This is not Tia. This is a picture of her. In other words, this is a thought about her. This is an image about her.

[50:22]

This is a maturing of the seed into an image. The seed has now been matured into an image. This image then, another capability of mine is concept, external, object. Match to that, now this is outside of it. She's still over there in a way, or she used to be. Can she see that? She's not a person. That thing, no. That thing does not see it. That's like Greene or Anger or Abraham Lincoln or something. But it's not able to comprehend this. No, it does not comprehend this. As a matter of fact, the Laia, which is an awareness, it is a consciousness, It is consciousness, but it's not consciousness in terms of knowing things as objects. It is conscious, but it's like what we call the unconscious. It's a consciousness, but it does not have knowledge. Well, it's subconscious from the point of view of conceptual consciousness.

[51:28]

It's sub-conceptual consciousness. It's the realm of direct experience. It's an unknown. It's not voluntary. But it is volitional. It has volition. It has a pattern. It keeps evolving, changing all the time. Then, at this time, you have the picture of something in it. Something in it gets matured into an image. In other words, something in it is thought about as an image. And it's also called external. But aside from being called external, at the point of thinking about something in the mind, which when it's said to be external, that combination makes it known, sense of self arises. This whole process is natural, organic, automatic. So it's only after it's named and thought of as appetite that this is itself, right? That's right.

[52:28]

All this is simultaneous. Sense of self, bifurcation, and grasping the object as outside happens simultaneously. Knowledge. Separation. Knowledge, separation. Knowledge, separation. Separation, knowledge. Separation, knowledge. In other words, the price of knowledge is separation. We don't like separation, we like knowledge. We want knowledge, but we also don't want the separation that comes with knowledge because We are also an unseparated awareness. Fundamentally, we are unseparated, unbifurcated awareness. That's where we come from. That's our basis. That's the way we always are. So when we're in deep, dreamless sleep, or if we enter into certain kinds of special trances, in that state, this undivided, unseparated consciousness is there. So it is our baseline.

[53:29]

We don't want to lose touch with that. We don't lose touch with it. Or we die. Because that's the realm of direct conscious awareness of a living being. However, when this magical thing happens which creates separation and therefore creates knowledge, we get this goody called knowledge. And we get another goody with knowledge called a sense of self and identity and location and here and there. We get all that stuff. And a sense of time. And a sense of time. We get all these goodies but we lose We don't really lose it, but we get all these goodies. We enter a realm that has all these goodies. It has knowledge. It has a sense of self. It has a sense of self-love. It has a sense of other. It has a sense of time. It has all these goodies. But in that realm, we don't understand what it means not to be separated. And in that realm, we yearn for non-separation. Which means we yearn for reintegration with this other realm, which this realm can't know.

[54:36]

Plus, in this realm, because of the way it was cooked up, we project self-existence onto everything we see, which causes all these problems. So again, the long-range project that I see is that we want to achieve reintegration with this We want this conceptual realm to somehow be reintegrated with the non-conceptual realm. That's what we actually are. We're not just a non-conceptual realm. We're not just a realm of where everything's connected and there's no separation. We are also a being of separation. We are a knowing separate being. That's part of it too. So we're both of those things. So how do we achieve integration? That's what this treatise is about. We're now at the phase of describing how we become sort of beyond this, we're sort of become a full-fledged human being now, a full-fledged sentient being that we've been born into sentientness and we've now developed most sort of the full-scale problems of a sentient being, if everything goes well.

[55:53]

everything doesn't go well we don't have enough problems to motivate us so we have to keep striving to develop a full set of problems so that's why sometimes they say you have to have a self before you can forget the self and some people come to buddhism and haven't yet fully formed the self so they have to do more self-forming work before they can realize the unfortunate effects of having a nicely formed cell. Namely, you don't just let the nicely formed cell sit there, you project it all over the place, which causes all this disharmony. But you sort of have to have that down before you can see how that works. If you have a partially formed cell, you project that too, but it's not so clear. This is all this slippage. So it's better to go back, form yourself fully, and then go back and cause trouble again and start over. Can't you just start when you feel deep inside you that there's something fundamentally wrong? I mean, how far do you have to go?

[56:55]

No, you can start then, but in fact, after you start, if you find out that you really haven't formed yourself well, you need to go back and form yourself well. So part of Buddhist practice in cases like that is to do a kind of moral therapy or psychotherapy to form the self better so that you can get a better foothold on what the problem is. The self that's already there or that you already think is there? Not that you actually create one, but... No, some people don't form their self very well because of various reasons. along the way of forming it, it gets the shape of it or the pattern of it is such that when they project it out, it's not really their self. For example, sometimes they incorporate other selves into them because of various things that happen to them when they're young. And as a result, they can't verify that the problem is self-projection. Once you've got a nice clear self, you can see, oh, that is the problem.

[57:56]

Because I really think that, and that's the template that I use to project out on everything else. And you're in good shape to analyze that and to approach, then the enemy has been cited. You know? Because the enemy is this fixed thing that you're holding on to. But if you're not holding on to it as tightly, it's harder to focus on what you believe in. It's your beliefs. that we're focusing in on. It's the belief in self and element that we're trying to identify and see how that pervades and then look and then bring our meditation to that. So the sense solidifies? It has been, yeah. If it hasn't been solidified, then it's kind of like a hit and miss attempt at solidifying it and projecting this hit and miss solidity all over the place so you have hit and miss problems. The target that keeps disappearing and changing. Right. it's better to sort of form a clear one and then try to find that. This program here is describing a successful formation of a self and therefore a successful projection of self on the things and therefore successful misery.

[59:07]

A misery is successful in the sense that it's vulnerable to Buddhist practice. It's a setup for Buddhist practice. Buddhist practice is set up particularly for people who have a nice, healthy ego. And if you have a nice, healthy ego, you suffer well. If your ego's not formed very well, your suffering is not, is maybe, you maybe have a sense of it, but when you try to apply Buddhist practice to it, you may not know where to put the Buddhist practice. You may put it in the holes in the self, and you know instruing that for the Buddhist teaching or something. So that's why part of it is part of what we need to do is understand for ourselves what it's like to have an ego and also be able to identify whether other people have one fully formed and if they don't help them find what the shape of the self they have is and then help them form it up so that they can actually see what they're doing and therefore then focus on that and bring our practice to this tendency to project self-existence onto everything.

[60:17]

Everybody does that with whatever self they've got. It's just that it's easier to admit it when you're doing it fully. People have a hard time admitting it. Even in the case where they do it fully, people have a hard time admitting that this is what they're up to. But it's easier to admit it when you're completely guilty. So you're lucky if you can see that you're completely guilty of this, that you're really into it. And then you can see, oh, that's the real cause of my suffering. And partially doing it is also the cause of your suffering, but it's just harder to identify what your problem is in that case. So that's why sometimes people have to do a kind of moral preparation for this kind of practice. And part of the moral preparation is devotional activities. You know, like following the schedule and stuff like that.

[61:19]

That will help you illuminate your ego. And you can find out maybe the shape of it and whether you really think it's a unitary thing or not. But other people can also tell by the way you follow the schedule whether you have a well-formed self. That's why we're rather strict about following the schedule, because the stricter we are, the easier it is to see what the self is. Once we see what it is, then we find out how it actually is, the way we feel about that is the way we feel about everything. Namely, we really think it exists. And we really want the self to exist, therefore we want everything else to exist. And that's the problem. And aliyah, then, also can be finally seen as something that really exists. But aliyah doesn't really exist.

[62:21]

The seeds don't really exist. The self doesn't really exist. And the projection of the self out onto these images which are created up from aliyah don't really exist. Therefore, we have problems if we believe in the existence of things. So the approach is to try to see if you can notice that you are projecting self all over the place. That's really important, first step. And this, what we've done so far, is saying, this does happen. This is the ideal scenario for the development of a suffering human being. This is the ideal scenario for the development of belief in self and others. So up to this point, Caracus 6 or Caracus 14, up to this point of the text, basically half the text is to establish the ground upon which even suffering is based, namely the belief in self and elements. So I wonder if we have enough of a foothold now to destroy this.

[63:24]

Because that's what's going to happen next, right? And now he's going to study this situation in such a way as to liberate us from this problem. But I wonder, so the question is, do we have enough of a foothold now to really feel like this is there, and we do do this, and now we should look at this and actually go into what we ordinarily do? Yeah. I feel like we've been operating on the impression that, say, that one would come across your seat, but certain of these capabilities or sensibilities shut down is sight. Sensibility, sense. Sight and speech are, excuse me, let's erase that. Anyway, a comatose person's alias still functions. My impression is that one still hears. You still hear, you still see, you still taste, you still touch, you still smell, but you don't know it.

[64:35]

Because the mind is not reflecting on this Ramana. So, okay. There's no Manas. Manas isn't working in the comatose person. Manas isn't working in the person in dreamless sleep. Manas isn't working in the person in certain trances. And Manas isn't working in the Har Haas. Oh. Purposeful. As a result of their practice. So they're in good shape. But they're not in a coma. But they're not in a coma. Right. Monas can click back in later and pick up some... By the way, there's a debate about whether Monas doesn't work in AHA. Yes. Well, when Monas comes back on, as it were, after this comatose state, it can read out some of the experience that happened, as it were, through these other faculties. There seems to be... Well, you say that, but it also reads out...

[65:40]

In ordinary function, it's reading out what's happened from beginningless time. So of course it reads out what happened between the time of going into the trance or into the sleep and what comes up, because what happened between those two points is registered in a lie-out. So it doesn't read out, it reads out a lie-out, just like it always does. But it's synthesized, you know? You just hear a read-out, it's a synthesis of what strength it is. It's not really a read-out even, it's just thinking of one thing that happened. The monist just cuts someplace in this field and wherever it cuts, whatever's on the reflection side, that's what the object is going to be for that moment. And these things are happening very fast, you know, so you can very quickly see a big picture of a lot of stuff on it. But anyway, the mind is being cut constantly, and constantly means extremely rapidly, every moment changing, new cuts being made, which means a new reflection is being offered, which means a new external object is being said, which means a new piece of information is known, and we construct then all these images out of images.

[66:49]

to create a world for ourselves, and this is all swell. Okay? Now, so that's an end. Concomitant with this process, this wonderful process, born at each moment like that is a sense of self, which then gets mixed up with and defiles all these nice little images, all these little external images, get defiled with self. In other words, all these little images get defiled with a sense that they exist independently, identity-like. They're little selves, right? They're little, I'm it kind of thing. And they have as much solidity as identity has. Identity is a solid thing. And again, a human being really has an identity. That's an important thing. And therefore, we make the whole universe have an identity. But identity, things really are not identity. One of the, what do you call it, one of the translations of Shunyata is identity-less-ness.

[67:53]

I like that, but today I like it. Excuse me, but I just want to know, once the hall goes, where? Right here, right here. Two times. What did you say? What? What? It doesn't go to hell, it goes to heaven. Yes, no. What the hell? Goes to something called heaven. Well, what the hell goes in? Nothing goes there. And it's called... Nothing goes anywhere else. Nothing goes anyplace. There's nothing there. Why did you say no to it being the same story as the Magic City? What? Why did you say no to it being the good story of the Magic City? Because it's the story of a waiting room before the Magic City. That's what they're story about. It's a little anti-chamber to the Magic City. They don't feel good there. But it's in a nice neighborhood.

[68:55]

Assuming they've got to be in the magic city. Yes? I'm trying to understand this process of what is the belief on the self? What is the belief? It's not an intellectual process, belief. It's something else. No, that's right. The intellectual part is the concept of the object. That's the intellectual part. The belief in the self is not intellectual. However, it can be mapped onto intellectual things. But it's not intellectual things. It is simply a sense of identity, a sense of autonomy, a sense of reifying the sense of separation. It's that kind of thing. It's something, but it's not necessarily on. It's something. It's like a concept. Again, if you reach for it, it can be any of the five skandas. That's what I would say about the sense of self. It can be a smell. It could be a concept.

[69:56]

It can be a taste. It can be a color. It can be a feeling. It must be one part of the Phi Ascanist, otherwise it has no relevance to experience. This is how it validates. This is how it validates. What's how it validates? This is how the sense of self is validated through one of... Supported, yeah. There is something to it, and it must be one of the Phi. But whenever you reach for the sense of self, if you bring back and look what it is, you say, Okay, there's my sense of self. I got it. Look at it. Blue? Salty? No. More than the word. S-E-L-F. S-E-L-F, I think so. Or W-A-G-A. No, that's it. Or, you know, whatever. What's it in Spanish? Anyway, the sense of self is there. And as soon as you grab it, what you bring back is the five scundas. If you can get a hold of it at all. But you know that's not it. Obviously it's not it, because how could you be blue one day and green the next, and the word self the next? It's not that, right? So when I'm working in myself, I see that it's not by the view of the intellectual process, but something else.

[71:06]

Then what I found is that there is a tendency. What makes me feel that I am what I am, is all these tendencies I stuck with in a process of communication. I'm really afraid to take back a few words. I had no insight that distracted me. You will need to repeat this. If you want me to understand what you say, you have to go back. That's what I understand, my feeling, is that it's more a tendency. What makes me understand me as something is that because I have these processes in myself, and by itself, I erase. I have this tendency, impulse. What is a tendency you're talking about right now? For instance, my... My tendency when I see somebody, my first tendency is I need to grasp, I need to reject.

[72:15]

This is my movement. I would say that's my movement. That's maybe what makes me think that I am here. It's not maybe the movement, but the tendency. That tendency, not grasping or rejecting, is what we call impulse. And the tendency is rooted in somewhere. I mean, in this position, you see it rooted somewhere, yes. And where is it rooted? And that's what I try to understand. Where is this rooted, my tendency? This, in Alaya, you were going to say, Alaya. Okay, then Alaya is also an identity. That's what I'm working on, trying to work. The tendency is not the sense of self. The tendency is the pattern of all the things that are appearing to consciousness at a given moment.

[73:20]

In Alaya, there's no sense of self. It's rooted, but the sense of self is rooted. Well, there's images of self. What are the possible images of self, folks? Endless, endlessly. Salty, sweet, anything can be an image of self. All the seeds of possible senses of self are in a lie. At any given moment, you have all possible things you could sense of a self. Every moment. An infinite possible selection of sense of self are available to you every moment. That infinite possibility of resource is what we call a lie and you always have it there. However, you do not take one of those things as yourself in a lie itself undisturbed. The sense of identity appears when

[74:22]

Before a lie is disturbed, nobody's talking about self, nobody's looking for a self, the self is not an issue. However, there are all possible things which selves can be made out of are in there. And also the results of past selves that have been dreamed up are in there. But still there's no concern about self in this undisturbed lie. In dreamless sleep, there's no self. However, All the results of all the cells you've dreamed are registered there. Now, this is not a human being in a sense at that time. And this, let's say this parenthetically, this is what makes it difficult to do. This is one of the ethical problems about people who are in comas. About whether a person in a coma is actually a human being is partly a problem. Anyway. In a sense, a person in a deep dreamless sleep is not a human being.

[75:26]

Why? Because although all possible seeds or the image of self are there, there's no self appearing. When the ally is disturbed, when this ocean of possible images is disturbed, then the sense of identity is born at that time. It's cut. It's cut in two. It's disturbed by the capacity of mind to disturb itself by making itself into two things. The mind is fundamentally first of all disturbed. The basic thing that disturbs the mind is the creation of separateness. Without the creation of separateness There is no sense of self. And with the creation of separateness, of bifurcating the mind into not two parts, but one tiny part and a huge other part, that bifurcation is the occasion for the birth of identity. His birth of identity is part and parcel of being a human being.

[76:31]

And then, in addition to that, this is the birth of the self, in addition to that, this This concept, this thing that has been separated out, is said to be an outside, or an object, and then you have not only a sense of self, you also have knowledge. That's the birth of this sense of self. Now, what is that self? That self is, at that moment, is simply the maturing or a reflected seed from the wire. It's not felt. It's any seed in Eliya. Anything in Eliya could be the justification for the sense of self. But the sense of self is not that seed. It's the sense of self arose at the time of that seed. The seed is not the Eliya, obviously, because it could be anything. But the sense of self, the identity, occurs in conjunction with separation. So what is the sense of self? The sense of self is something that appears Just like you have the meeting of object and organ, right?

[77:38]

This gross and subtle materiality meet, boom, and consciousness is there. As soon as you cut that consciousness, sense of self is there. What is that? It's just that. It's a sense of identity. What is it? You cannot get a hold of it. But what happens to it? It gets associated with whatever's available. That's why if you grab for whatever it gets associated with, you will soon be convinced that it couldn't possibly be that, because what's associated with is whatever got reflected, which is, you know, colors, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, all kinds of content. That's the content of the experience. If you're going to map the self onto something, you go, oh, that's always available, but that doesn't make any sense. Therefore, you will soon find out that it's not that. What is it? It's not nothing, because without it, we're not really a human being, but it's not something.

[78:39]

It's just something that appears, that is conjured out of the cutting of consciousness. It's like electricity or something that happens when you put two different kinds of metals together. What is it? We know it happens, but you can't get a hold of it. And then on top of that, this sense of identity gets mapped onto whatever it can get mapped onto. And the closest thing at hand is whatever thing's been reflected. So it gets mapped over onto that. And that thing then, in succeeding moments, creates memory impressions and all these little images that have been created out of these scenes get put into patterns and then the self can get projected out into each one of them plus the pattern of them. You can project self onto anything. And it's always right there. So it infects everything. It infects every little part and all the big patterns. And it also, very nicely, it can reflect it back in the place where it wasn't in the first place. It's not really in a layah, it's just that when we think about a layah, when we start talking about a layah as a concept, then when we think about a layah, we keep trying to make a layah into a thing.

[79:47]

Concepts do not have to be made into things, but whenever we see a concept, we naturally slap an identity on it, slap a self on it. So in a layah, there is no self, but there's all possible concepts of self, including a better one than some others. But in a lie, the self is not activated. But when we talk about a lie as Buddhist students, we have, as Buddhist students and as human beings, we want to make a lie into a thing so we can get a hold of it and take it home to us, take it home with us and say, well, we finally understood a lie and it was this. So we do that with a laya, we do that with manas, we do that with manavajnana, we do that with buddha dharma, we do that with zazen, we do that with kihini, we do that with people, everything we do that with because it's always there and it's looking for a home. But its only home is simply at difference, at separation. That's its only home, which is not much of a home at all, because even the separation isn't real.

[80:50]

This is very slippery stuff. It seemed to me that you were talking about a related issue with what you just said, which is that those tendencies are associated with desire to end suffering. the projection of the self is an illusory way of ending suffering. He was talking about where is the tendency rooted? Do you tend to see the project self or the tendency of self? It seems to me that it is. that the tendency to project self is really, or is closely related to the desired end of suffering.

[81:56]

It's related to the desired, yeah. That was the insight I had when he was talking to them. There's also a self, which is actually the way things are, which is trying to express itself. And it uses this sense of self as a foil. But there is, and one of the illusions of ending suffering. One of the illusory ways of ending suffering is to keep reinforcing that projection of self. Those tendencies do it more. Right. So, this wonderful magical thing called identity that appears on this occasion of separation. Could you just say that there really is a self? Yeah. There's a real self. The real self is suchness. That's what the self really is. It's a real self that tends to differentiate from everything else. It's the way things really are. And the real self is trying to realize itself in this world.

[82:58]

And this poor little guy or gal or whatever it is that is conjured up at the moment of separation gets to be the place where this whole immense enterprise in the realization of reality gets to crush down on. So that's why we put all this focus here because it is at this place that the realization of suchness happens. And partly it's a good place to pick it because the place where this self is manifested is a place where the self can have no existence. It's the most, of all the things we talked about so far, except for consciousness itself, it's the most elusive, most unsubstantiated thing. And it's unavoidable. So then you start to see, well, it looks like consciousness and self are quite similar. Because what happens when these two things come together? Boom, and there's consciousness. What was that in addition to these? And then you take this thing which appeared magically from the meeting of two kinds of material.

[84:02]

Two kinds of material produced mind. And you cut this mind, this elusive, ungraspable mind, you cut it. It cuts itself and then this identity. So you have this illusory, ungraspable thing based on this solid thing happens, which is not other than these solid things. It doesn't happen later. And then it has the ability coming along with it to cut itself. And when it cuts itself, this sense of self arises, which is also completely ungraspable, unidentifiable, and elusive, and necessary. And then this unidentifiable identity gets mapped all over the place, causes all this trouble, and the whole thing, the nature of the consciousness and the nature of the self are the same. What's the nature of consciousness? What's the nature of self? The nature of consciousness is that it seems to appear, and it's empty. It's a codependently produced happening. and you can never get a hold of it.

[85:03]

What's the self? The self is a codependently produced appearance that you can't get a hold of. It's kind of like, can you see where we're supposed to be? You see where to look? We should go sit after this class. We should go sit down pretty soon. And you know where to sit down? Sit down your seat. Sit down your seat. Sit down your consciousness. Sit down in your self. Settle down in the consciousness. Settle down in the split in the self. Settle down in the self. Don't go into a coma.

[86:06]

Don't go into a coma. But if you sit down, if you go into this, if you settle into the self, it appears that this split, you won't be in a coma. Okay. Two more questions. Commentary. One more commentary. If we are in a deep dream... If we are in a deep dream... If we are in a deep dream, or more, we come from a deep dream. We come from a deep dream, yes. And suddenly we wake up. And I'm trying to understand... What happens in the present, that's what happens with what happens. Someday, I come from a deep dream. And I wake up. Do you mean a deep dream or you mean a dreamless sleep? No. Dreamless sleep. No dream. No dream and no karmic situation.

[87:10]

No karmic. There is a definition of karma, but no karmic. No karmic situation. And then I wake up. And when I wake up, I have this sensation of my surrounding that's very confused. The moment I wake up, I'm confused. I cannot understand. I cannot even say, oh, sometimes I don't know where I am. Where is the door? But you do have a center eye. Then, what I have is confusion and maybe fear. Confusion, but I have confusion. And then, I don't know how, maybe what I'm trying to understand is if this confusion and fear is the source of my idea. And I am late. I mean, There are two moments.

[88:13]

The real moment, the self, the real self growing up, and then me late. I'm late. Always late. You know? I mean, my self is late to the other one. I have a rush. Your self is also early, though. Mine, my personal. Yeah, it's early and late. I'm not going to tell you the answer. That's a good place to study, right there. Look at that. That's a good image, meditation image, right there. Investigate that. Investigate your commentary. Your comment. Okay, now... Anyway, I don't know... Hopefully, we have a foothold now. Now, we could go on next class study part of 15, 16, and 17. OK, 15, 16, 17.

[89:17]

Please study those characters. Now, you see, based on this situation which we've described, hopefully, you can identify. If we now plunge into another part, we're starting to reverse the process. All right? These three characters are puppies. So please study those next three characters, and that'll be our next class. Study those next three. All right?

[89:45]

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