Good evening. How many of you are here for the first time, who are not in the class? I want you to keep your hands up so I can talk to you. So this is a continuation of the first class we had earlier and during our practice period. And so Ron opened it up to people who haven't been in the class before. So I think it's okay. I think probably the people that were in the first class don't remember what we did anyway. Tonight I will reiterate, bring us up to speed so that we all know what it is that we're studying, even though we may know that.

[01:19]

that there's so much commentary in the book that we'll never access it all. So the parts that I gave you to study, which were Xeroxed, I hope you have. It's best just to have the book. It's not very expensive, because if you have the book, then you can study the book and then have all that background. But anyway, we should all have a Xerox copy of what we were supposed to study. Does anybody just not have that? With them. In front of them. Accessible. Good. It's 7.30.

[02:59]

We're supposed to go to 8.45. Basically, we're studying the eight levels of consciousness that were prepared for us by Nagarjuna, one of the old Indian patriarchs around the

[04:00]

And I'm not going to talk about that because you can find it, you can find the biography, the history, in the introduction to the book. Yes? Excuse me, I think you meant Vasubandhu, not Vigarchana. I'm sorry, Vasubandhu, thank you. So the Eight Levels of Consciousness was presented to us in the 30 verses by Vasubandhu called the Trinsika. The Trimsekha was brought to China from India by Master Xuanzang in around the 6th century, 7th century, with many commentaries.

[05:21]

number of verses, which is presented by Thich Nhat Hanh in his book, Transformation at the Base, which was republished as something else. Understanding the Mind? Understanding the Mind. But in order to vindicate Ram, I am going to use the 30 verses to help us understand the 50 verses. So, both the 30 verses and the 50 verses are delighted. is called The Nature of Consciousness, 50 verses on The Nature of Consciousness.

[06:48]

The first part is the part which concerns the atlaya vijnana, which is the storehouse consciousness. The second section is called the manas, The third part is the mind consciousness, which is the nature of consciousness which separates or distinguishes between the various is the section on the sense consciousnesses.

[07:57]

And the fifth section is the section on the path of practice. So this is both in So I'm going to read the first part, which is about the alaya vijnana, because that's what we're going to study tonight, is the first section, alaya vijnana, the storehouse consciousness. So this is a kind of introduction to, this will be a kind of introduction to Thich Nhat Hanh's version of the 15 verses. So it says, starts out, concepts. So, Atman means self.

[09:06]

The Sanskrit term for a self. Concept and dharmas are things, right? Our dharmas are constructions. Everything that we see around us is a construction. There is nothing that has its own inherent nature. No construction do not imply the existence of real atman or self, or a real dhamma. Real meaning self-existent, self-existent entities. There is no such thing as self-existent entities, even though things seem to be circular, singular.

[10:16]

There is a singular aspect, but the singular aspect is an illusion, even though it's a singular aspect. So we live in a world of illusions. This is called the illusory world, because we take what is something self-existent, not self-existent, as self-existent. So he says, concepts of Atman and Dharmas do not imply the existence of a real Atman and a real Dharmas. but are merely fictitious constructions produced by numerous causes. So in order for something to exist, there has to be at least two causes. If you think about it, there is something called unconditioned dharmas. Unconditioned, things which are not subject to conditions because everything is subject, everything that we see in our world is a subject of conditions, conditioned by many causes and conditions.

[11:24]

Except there are dharmas which are considered unconditioned by empty space. of appearances, equalities, arise because of this interplay of based on the manifestation and transformation of consciousness.

[12:35]

So, to actually see something as it is, is not so easy because of our conditioned responses If when we examine a phenomena in its true sense, its reality would be illusion. So we call this topsy-turvy understanding, upside-down understanding. What we think of as real is not exactly real, and what we think of as not real can be actually real. So reality, to see something as real is to see it as non-substantial.

[13:45]

But the opposite, when we look at it, we're not going to say, oh, that's real, that's a real bell, that's the real floor, this is the real thing. That's the opposite of reality. That's just true reality. But there are two aspects of reality. One is conventional reality, and the other is absolute reality. So conventionally, yes, things do exist. I'm here, you're here, the floor is here, the bell is there. That's conventional reality. But absolute reality is that there's nothing substantial. It's just logic. So consciousness, consciousnesses capable of unfolding or manifesting themselves may be grouped in three general categories.

[14:48]

So these are the categories of consciousness. Aside from the first one, well, he has three categories. The consciousness whose fruits, fruits is like phala, it's called phala, the result of karma. Karma means a volitional action and every action has a consequence. Whatever we do has a consequence. Whatever action that we take volitionally as a consequence. Even if it's not volitional, it has a consequence. So that's called volitional action. It's called karma. Karma is not necessarily all conditioned activity, but it really applies to human volitional action.

[16:01]

whatever we do has a consequence. So good actions, wholesome actions, create karma, which have fruitful, or happy, or whatever you want to call it, consequences. And when we do evil things, it has evil consequences. So that's just the law of karma, which is indifferent as to whether you like yourself or not. whose fruits, consequences, mature at various times. That's the eighth consciousness, called storehouse consciousness, or alaya vijnana.

[17:05]

Vijnana means consciousness, and alaya means storehouse, something like storage. The consciousness that, number two, is the consciousness that cogitates or deliberates. And then there's the seventh, that is the seventh, I'm sorry, the seventh or thought center consciousness called manas. And three, the consciousness that perceives and discriminates between spheres of objects, that is the sixth or sense center consciousness or mano vijnana, and the five sense consciousnesses, which are seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, consciousnesses are our window to the world.

[18:10]

We receive all of our information through seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, the sense consciousnesses. So that's where, if those sense consciousnesses are cut off, there is the thinking consciousness, Mano Vajra. make sense out of what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. So the first is the alaya vijnana, the storehouse or repository of consciousness. So it is also called vipaka vijnana. Vipaka means, it uses the term But I don't like retribution because it sounds like there's somebody making a judgment.

[19:20]

I call it consequential. bijas means seeds, sarva means all, everything, all of them. So sarva bijaka means all the seeds, consciousness. You can break down these Indian words, they're very long, they put them all together, they get very long, but if you break them all down, you can see how they logically go together, and so that helps. So in We have to understand what it means by seeing.

[20:24]

A lot of this is very important. Consciousness, because... which is like the repository of everything that we've ever thought or experienced. So all of our experience is contained there as a seed. So it has no special shape or form because it will accept whatever, it has to accept whatever is happening every single moment of your life. And we say, well, I can't remember this, and I can't remember that. But it's all there. It's all accessible in some way.

[21:25]

Unfortunately, when we have Alzheimer's or some kind of age-old problem, then I don't know whether things get lost or not, but it seems like, according to the understanding, nothing's lost. It may not be dependent on our ability to access it, because the energy which is contained in the alaya continues after death, so to speak, after the body-mind is no longer working in the fundamental way, that consciousness continues.

[22:32]

Whether that's so or not, that's another conversation. So, this is... When we study the Alaya Vijnana, we study how the seeds are deposited, how they're accessed, how they create habit energy. Our habit energy is produced from the seeds in the Alaya Vijnana because we keep watering seeds and they keep sprouting and this creates a habit energy which is very difficult to hop off of. in a certain way through our habit energies and it hinders us often from opening up our mind to new understandings. So it is impossible to comprehend completely what it holds.

[23:41]

its place or locality, and its power of perceptions and discrimination. I'm sorry. It's impossible to comprehend completely, one, what it holds and receives. Two, its place or locality. We don't know where it is exactly. And three, its powers of perception and discrimination. It is at all times associated attention, sensation, conception, and volition. But it is always associated with the sensation of indifference. Indifference is not quite the right word. It's an old way of speaking. Equanimity, even-mindedness. In other words, it's not biased in any way. Your library has no... It has no... But it is always associated with the sensation of indifference, so we can use indifference in that way.

[25:32]

It belongs to the non-defiled, non-defined moral species. This is a kind of way of determining, of talking about, non-defiled means it's not good or And non-defiled means it's not evil or good. That's the same, pretty much the same thing. Non-defiled means that it's not subject, it doesn't discriminate between which is Ultimate Reality and Comparative Reality. So it is always associated with the sensation of Nirvana. It belongs to the non-defiled, non-defined moral species.

[26:34]

So the same is true The seeds are continually being watered and cultivated, and the seeds are manifesting as manifestation. You know, a seed is like All the seeds carry the information, like a gene carries all the information that's needed to create a person or an animal.

[27:45]

All the information is put in each gene and actually within each atom of our being. It can be obscured by the other levels of consciousness, but basically it's innocent. It is perpetually manifesting like a torrent and it is renowned. in the state of arhatship, the state of the arhat who attains nirvana. You know, the arhats were the Buddha's early disciples who attained enlightenment. And so the arhat is used here as one of pure mind.

[28:51]

In other words, it is turned when one attains nirvana, and then it becomes, it's called the wisdom of, and written around mirror wisdom. So mirror wisdom is like a big mirror, and whatever passes in front of the mirror is seen exactly as it is, without bias and without conditions. without conditioning. It simply sees things as it is and without any opinion or idea about it. This is called direct perception. So direct perception is pure existence. Pure existence sees pure existence.

[29:56]

Yes. It simply mirrors things as it is. So it's not like that koan of the hand that reaches for a pillow in the middle of the night instinctively? That's a different analogy. When you look in the mirror, you look in the mirror and you see yourself. Then you look again and you see your idea of yourself. Second time you look, you see your idea of yourself, because you saw yourself first without any idea. You're walking down the street in downtown, and there's the shoe store, and you see this person walking down the street, and you say, God, that looks like me. That is me. So the first time you see it, you see it just as it is. The second time you see it, oh, that's me.

[30:59]

So then that's already conditioned. So the picture of yourself and the picture of things is the way we usually see things. We usually see things... We have a pictorial, we create a picture and we take that for reality. There is a certain reality in the picture, but it's not an accurate reality of the thing itself. So, this is called discriminating mind. So, the mirror sees without discriminating mind. No discrimination. Discrimination means to divide, to compartmentalize. So, when the alaya vijnana, the seed consciousness is purified,

[32:03]

What would it mean, natural response? Well, I mean, like in physics, you know, light shines on a mirror's surface, and the mirror's function is to reflect that light, sometimes to bring it to a focus, depending on its shape. So it serves a function. The mirror is serving a function. There's nothing but pure cognition. You can talk about it in many ways, you know, you can talk about light, physics, and all this, but the mirror's just reflecting as it is. Just look in the mirror and see what it's talking about. You can't fool the mirror. You can fool yourself. The mirror has no... there are no consequences.

[33:13]

As soon as you start talking about consequences, then you're talking about something else. So, as soon as you add something, you defile the mirror. Put lipstick on the mirror. So this is called purity. The difference between purity and impurity. Purity means that's all there is. You can't add anything or take anything away. Impurity means you try to add something or you take something away. And any interference with the pure aspect of the mirror is called defilement. So we live, that's what we call Samsara is the world of defilement. You may not think it's defilement, but according to that level of understanding, this is the realm of defilement, which is called Samsara.

[34:22]

Because although the mirror and its objects are one, we divide them into two. That's called defilement. So the absolute and the relative are really one. but we divide them and we go about our life in a defiled arena because we're not aware of the oneness of things. We're not aware of our essence of mind. We don't pay attention to that. We're only concerned with what we want. So that's a kind of introduction between the 30 verses, which is very lean and sparse and has to be unfolded in order to understand. What were you reading from? The 30 verses. That's a bunch of 30 verses.

[35:24]

Schwantz songs, consciousness only, it's called consciousness only, or a representation So, representation means one step back from the mirror. We start interpreting. And when we start interpreting, then it's called defilement. It's okay. Defilement's okay. Don't worry about it. Except it keeps us from seeing things as it is. You know, it's really interesting.

[36:47]

Everything that we invent is a picture of our mind. We invent the camera, which is a picture of our mind. We're always taking pictures and collecting them. That's all afterthought, right? It's all a picture. And then we invent the computer, which is a picture of our alive Vishnanda, in a sense. It's the computer. It holds all the information, and we access the information. And then there's certain things that we repeat over and over again, and we get very Facebook-y. And we can't stop. We can't stop looking at Facebook. Yes? If you could refresh my memory, I think there are three wisdoms. There's a wisdom of things as it is. which is a great mirror of wisdom. There's four wisdoms.

[37:49]

Four. Four. But we have to reason why I'm not talking about that is because we haven't talked about the other three. We haven't talked about... I'm going to present those one by one. Okay. So, because we're talking about alaya, I can talk about the mirror. But when we talk about manas, then we talk about equality. Can you comment a little on how this relates to sitting zazen? Sitting zazen? Yes, when we sit zazen, we let go, I don't want to say we stop, we let go of the discriminating mind. In other words, We don't get caught by good and bad, right and wrong, like and dislike, this and that, and so on.

[38:59]

When you sit in zazen, when your zazen becomes mature, it's actually the mirror of wisdom. Because you're seeing everything as it is, The permanence example of distortion. Distortion means, well first we have a sensation. Say, we'll pick out a sensation. And then we say, this sensation is, I call it pain. And then I call it, this shouldn't be here. And then we call it, I don't like it. And then we call it, I don't want it. So these are all distortions. This is discriminating mind, which smears the mirror.

[40:01]

So when you're not discriminating, you don't get beyond sensation. This is sensation. You call it pain. Okay, that's, you can call it pain, but you don't have to. It's just because you conditioned to going with that. And then you say, I don't like it. That's a conditioned response. So, in order to actually be able to sit still, you have to open your mind. And you have to open up, Body and mind are not two things. We say body, we say mind, but body and mind are the same. They're two aspects of the same thing. So, we think it's our body that's hurting, but it's really our mind, our consciousness.

[41:07]

We think it's our eye that's seeing, but it's really the consciousness that's seeing. So, the body's a vehicle, for certain sensations. And one of those sensations is what we call pain. That's okay, we can name it. But then comes the discriminating mind which says, I like it or I don't like it, it's good or it's bad. So when we stop, not succumb to the discriminating mind, and just open to the sensation, and just keep opening to the sensation, It never gets to that place where you stop suffering. So that's non-discrimination. Discrimination is to keep breaking it down into where you can't take it. You become the victim of the sensation. And then, when you're totally open to it, you experience oneness.

[42:14]

But it takes time to be one with it, because it's hard to let go of our discriminating mind, which we've depended on for so long, and we're not even aware of. We're not even aware of how our discriminating mind controls us. So, what we call freedom, we sit in the most confined, You could sit with your legs behind your neck, and some of the other postures are maybe more confined. But basically it's the most confined posture. And to find your true freedom, you have to find your freedom within the most confined posture. So when you can do that, then you feel total freedom, strangely enough. So, you know, often we have to go through a kind of period of not knowing how to deal with this difficulty.

[43:31]

But if we continue to work with it, you come out the other end. Or you die. I remember back in the 50s or 60s when I first started practicing, there was this kind of a joke that went around, that in Chinese monasteries, you know, it was so difficult, you know, people would die on the tan, and then they just kind of roll them underneath the tan, you know. We also thought about cutting holes in it and set it under your seat, you know, so you could put your legs in Japanese restaurants. Anyway. Dying on a cushion is actually necessary. But it's coming to life. Dying on a cushion is the same as coming to life. So now, I'm going to start with a book, and the 15 verses on the nature of consciousness.

[46:36]

And the first 15 verses are about the Eli and his Nana, the story I was going to tell. So I'm going to go through we can comment on the verses. And I'm happy to have your questions. You should be asking questions. What page are you on? I'm afraid of anybody. What page are you on? Well, in my book, it's nine. OK. But it's the page that has the verses. I'm not sure. So I'm just going to read and make a comment, and you can ask questions.

[47:45]

So part one is, the mind is a field. So that's what we were talking about. The lion doesn't have any special shape. Its shape is the shape of what's in it. So it's kind of like a pie, you know, and you look at the pie, and you look at the crust, and the crust holds the pie. This is a meringue pie. But the crust is also a pie.

[48:47]

So the seeds, whatever the seeds are is what the shape of the pot is. So in us are infinite varieties of seeds. Seeds of samsara, nirvana, delusion, and enlightenment. Seeds of suffering and happiness. Seeds of perceptions, names, and words. So in other words, everything is there. of seeds, right? So good seed, good actions, bad actions, whatever. Elijah has no discriminating mind. Seeds of suffering and happiness. Seeds of perceptions, names, and words. So this is, in a sense, when we identify ourselves, we say, who are you?

[49:49]

The seventh consciousness is manas. Manas is the thought consciousness, thinking consciousness, illuminating consciousness that we usually identify with ourself. Who are you? Well, I'm my feelings, I'm my thinking, I'm my actions, and all this. That's how we identify ourself. But actually, these are simply moving parts, nothing stands still. So manas is what we associate as our self. In other words, it's our ego consciousness, the seventh consciousness, seventh level of consciousness, ego. Ego meaning the idea of self. It's a little different than self, I think, in psychology. of self.

[51:11]

It's not an inherent sense of self. There is no real inherent self. It's simply moving parts that are continually interacting with each other. Yes? So when Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, who are you, who stands before me, and he says, I don't know, is he operating or expressing that because of the moving parts, there's no fixed part that he can identify with to say, I am. Yeah, there's no fixed self. So when you say, I don't know, that's closer to knowing. If you say, I do know, that's not knowing, that's a delusion. I do know would be like a sense of a fixed, whereas I don't know gives space for this flux of things that are us. Yes, and it's also true, because you are more than you can know.

[52:15]

But in another sense, you should know who you are. This is the problem we come to that's so difficult, is the non-duality of is and isn't, right and wrong. Right doesn't eliminate wrong. Wrong doesn't eliminate right. Right and wrong are the two aspects of one thing. So if you try to kill all your enemies, you can't do it. You think you're killing your enemies, but you're simply killing yourself. Knowing who you are doesn't mean being rigid. No, who you are. The people who know who they are the most, it seems to me, have the most flexibility. Yes, that's right. The people who are rigid have the need to maintain a fixed self.

[53:20]

That's called rigidity. When you have a fixed self, you have no space to move. And so you have to act in a certain way that protects your senses. So yes, when you know who you are by not knowing, you have perfect freedom. Then you can become anything. You don't have anything to protect or defend, so to speak. So there are infinite varieties of seeds. The seeds that manifest as body and mind We usually think that if the seeds are related to our psyche, that's true, but also related to our body, because body and mind are not two things.

[54:24]

So the seeds that manifest as body and mind, as realms of being, all stored in our consciousness. That is why it's called store. He's going through this rather slowly. Some seeds are innate, which are handed down by our ancestors. Some were sown while we were still in the womb. Others were sown when we were children. So those two, I'm going to think together, In other words, we're continually being constructed. You know, it's said that every cell in our body is renewed every seven years. So, there's nothing but this movement and this reconstruction of our body-mind.

[55:28]

So the mind plays a big part in the construction of our body. And the body plays big part in the construction of our minds and in the way that we act and feel. We can see how our mind, how psychologically our mind affects our body. And the body actually is a product of the mind. So to maintain a healthy mind contributes to taking care of a healthy body. And vice versa. Although they can exist seemingly independently, but they're not independent. And some seeds are in there. So we carry the seeds of the human race. We carry all the seeds of the human race within us.

[56:32]

We are Adam and Eve. basically, and we are also each other. So, the seeds that manifest as body-mind, as realms of beings, stages and worlds, are all stored in our consciousness. That is why it's called store. Some seeds are innate, handed down by our ancestors, while some are sown while we are still in the womb. The seeds of our ancestors, we all come out according to the patterns that we're set. And we are actually our ancestors. You are your mother, you are your father, you are your grandparents. They all exist within you. Often, but, you know, we say, well, how can that be? I can't see it. But you can see it. It's like, You know, how can you put music on a little plastic disc and have it play like a symphony orchestra in your living room?

[57:41]

There's imprint. Imprint can be carried in all kinds of ways. It's carried in little resistors. So imprint is, when we talk about rebirth, we're not talking about reincarnation. Reincarnation means something different. But rebirth means that everything is being born new on each moment. It's due to imprint. It's like a seal which imprints itself in a piece of clay, which imprints itself in a piece of clay, which imprints itself, and it's always changing. So this imprinting is going on constantly, and we exist moment to moment. It looks like We exist over a long period of time in a big swell, which is an appearance, but if you look at it closely, it's one picture frame at a time, which is constantly being revealed.

[58:48]

And each thing we do now determines what the next thing will be, which determines what the next thing will be. So all the seeds in our consciousness and the alaya, we water them with our actions and our thoughts. And this watering, it's called perfuming, actually. We perfume the seeds. Seeds are perfumed through our thoughts and actions and reinforced through habit energy. And that's called imprinting. And so each moment, the imprinting appears. So each moment is a moment of letting go and a moment of continuation. So letting go is called death. Continuation is called life. Or birth, actually. Life contains both birth and death.

[59:52]

So I don't think of life as the opposite of death. Life is an aspect of both birth and death. The disappearance of one moment is the appearance of the next moment. It contains the appearance of the next moment. So the past is always necessary to produce the present. But the past is gone. But it lives in the present. The present contains the past. The future is an idea. You can't get a hold of the future. Matter of fact, you can't get a hold of the present. Matter of fact, you can't get a hold of the past. You cannot get a hold of the past, the future, or the present, because everything is continually falling away and appearing.

[60:55]

So the seeds in a alaya are continually creating. We are continually watering, perfuming the seeds, which are continually producing our actions in the moment, moment by moment. So we contain all the seeds of the history of the answer. That's why sometimes someone will come out, you know, But it's not necessarily that Mozart was reincarnated as some musician of the past. But the imprint of the music itself, the energy, appears in some representation or some vehicle called the person.

[62:01]

And he's the one that has it. It just appears in him, in this person. What do you want to say? Can we go into what the seed is a little bit? Well, the seed is, you know... It's a cognitive unit. You know, we want to know what it looks like. It's a metaphor. We're using a metaphor to describe something, and I'm trying to... It's a unit, let's say, of the mind. It's a unit that holds the memory, or the kernel. But this is every instant, every instant has a cognitive

[63:04]

dimensionality to it. And it's not necessarily a thing. It's more like an energy, like an energy ball, where the parts are not solid, but they're moving around each other in a pattern that, you know, like when we look at a seed and a plant, small seed, It looks solid, but it's not actually solid. It just appears to be solid. It's a representation of our mind. But as we study, this becomes a little more clear. But it is a... we're in a way building a cognitive model. That's what this is, is a model.

[64:19]

You shouldn't believe it. Literally, right? But you take it as a model, which is what it is. Yes, yes. So the quality of our life depends on the quality of the seeds that lie deep in our consciousness. And seven is the function of store consciousness is to receive and maintain seeds in their habit energies so they can manifest in the world or remain dormant. So if they're not watered, they just remain dormant. And if they're never watered, they can atrophy. So we're always cultivating something in our conscious mind. the Xerox copy, section 7, page 45.

[65:29]

It's called Habit Energy. So the function of store consciousness is to receive and maintain seeds in their habit energies, so they can manifest in the world or remain dormant. Okay, that's the verse. This, and Thich Nhat Hanh is, he's not saying it, but this would be the place of karmic. Yes, oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, this is our karmic.

[66:30]

Abba energy is karmic. Smoke. Yes. Multiple rebirths are all here. Yes. That's it. So this is the realm of karma. So the seeds that we receive from our ancestors, friends, and society are held in our consciousness just as the earth holds the seeds that fall upon it. Like the seeds in the earth, the seeds in our store consciousness are hidden from us. We are seldom in contact with them. Only when they manifest in our mind consciousness do we become aware of them. So they're all there, but we don't see them. When we feel happy, we may believe that there's no seed of anger in us. But as soon as something irritates us, our seed of anger will make itself known. Habit energy is an important term in Buddhist psychology.

[67:34]

Our seeds carry the habit energies of thousands of years. The Sanskrit term for habit energy, vashana, means to permeate, to impregnate. We don't use that term because somebody complained. Please, that's a good one. So if you want to make some jasmine tea, you pick jasmine flowers. close it tightly, and leave it for several weeks. The fragrant jasmine penetrates deeply into the tea leaves. The tea will then smell of jasmine because it has absorbed the perfume of the jasmine blossoms. Our store consciousness always has a strong capacity to receive and absorb fragrances and scents. This impregnation of our consciousness, the habit energies carried by the seeds, affects our patterns of seeing, feeling, and being.

[68:36]

The scenes in our consciousness manifest not only in a psychological form, but also as the objects of our perception. Mountains, rivers, other people, One is to see directly, the other is to see as representation, and the other is to elaborate on the representation. So the first view is direct perception, which is no thought, but simply seeing sees, hearing hears, tasting tastes. I hear the airplane.

[69:45]

I, I, I. So when I arises, that's discrimination. And so we use words as representations. Words are called signs. And signs take the place of the thing itself. You say, oh, there's Second Street. But it's not second street. We have a sign that says second street, and then we assign the sign to our mind, cognition, and then we say, oh, that's second street. But it's just a sign. It's not second street. It gives us some orientation. It's true. The sign gives us some orientation. But it's not the thing in itself. The thing in itself is to just keep your mouth shut and walk down the street, your eyes open. And then the third, cognition. is, oh, that's such and such a store, and the street is dirty, or the street is clean, and all the people.

[70:51]

And then we fall into our usual pattern of thinking. And we think that's normal, which it is. It is normal. But it's normal because we're used to it. What's normal for the baby is direct perception without naming. or without discriminator. It puts anything in its mouth. Of course that's, you know, we're not babies, right? So we start out as a baby, but then we learn how to discriminate, which is necessary. And then we forget about direct perception. And then later, when we realize something's missing, we start practicing. So we can see things as, we don't know why we start practicing, mostly. But when we start practicing, we have the ability, we have the opportunity to be able to see beyond the realm of representation.

[71:54]

So, the impregnation of our consciousness, the habit energies carried by the seeds, affects our patterns of seeing, feeling, and behaving. The seeds in our consciousness manifest not only in a psychological form, but also as the objects of our perception. Mountains, rivers, other people. Because of habit energies, we are not able to perceive things as they are, truly. We interpret everything we see or hear in terms of our habit energies. That's representation. If you crumple a sheet of paper, it is difficult to make it flat again. It has the habit energy of being crumpled. And we are the same. Yes. How do you see that in terms of, you know, I'm standing by the river, how I'm experiencing the river? I guess the distinction between experiencing as an object and being one with it.

[73:02]

Yes. If you're standing by the river with awareness, then you and the river are not separate. Even though the river is the river, So this allows you to be one with your surroundings without discriminating and separating. So next time, if you're still interested in coming back, next time we'll continue with Alaya. and start to study.

[73:49]

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