Good morning. Can you hear me? Okay How about now is that any better Blake is not committal here Um, is it is it distorted it's better it's not fine it's fine we can hear you Okay All right, well Um Here we are on a beautiful late spring day in berkeley and we are Well into our practice period A couple things I would say before I start this lecture uh, one is that it's a pleasure i'm broadcasting today from What was sojin roshi's office? And I've been working with maria winston in there for the last

[01:03]

couple months going through sojin's papers and looking at books and uh Really enjoying slowly moving into this space Uh and having a place to meet with people uh privately and uh, what I find is it's For whatever reason it's It's very quiet here. It's uh it's Somewhat more peaceful than being in my house and uh So i'm appreciating that Um I think I posted earlier in the week Uh, there's a wonderful Burma spring benefit film festival that's going on uh And I'll try to find you the link for that but it's it's really remarkable and the films are great and also it's it's raising money for the

[02:04]

The democracy movement in in burma and so far we've so far we've raised More than twenty four thousand dollars and the Festival is only in open for a day. So we're doing really great Okay, let's take a rest Today i'd like to talk about the five skandhas and Open up some ways to think about it that are new For me and hopefully new for you The word skandha means aggregate or collection or heap And what it represents are the the physical Nature of our of our bodily existence

[03:09]

And then four mental factors. So there's five skandhas And they're always changing that's the one thing that they have in common is that uh They are changing from moment to moment And that includes both your body and the activities of your mind Um The five skandhas are Applied from the beginning, uh there you find them in the first The first sermon of the buddha he speaks of it when he speaks of the middle way for noble truths and dependent origination And the notion that we have of the five skandhas is that It's what we take to be

[04:11]

Ourself And so to investigate the five skandhas is to investigate the question Who am I But I would say from for me and for most of us our first encounter with this word skandha is In our daily recitation of the heart sutra So in the very first lines it says avalokiteshvara bodhisattva when practicing deeply the prajnaparamita Perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty And was saved from all suffering So um We'll talk a little about what that what emptiness what that emptiness Is that applies to the skandhas?

[05:12]

but What I notice is that our first encounter with the skandhas is in the realm of negation of negating them and then A few lines later. He says therefore in emptiness No form, no feelings. No perceptions No formations no consciousness So there you have a list of the five skandhas form feelings perceptions formations and consciousness But they're all negated Uh, and so we'll we'll talk about why that is So As I said our investigation of the five skandhas is an investigation of Uh, you could say who am I or Who do I think I am

[06:13]

Or How is it that I think I am me Especially when we investigate and see that Who I am There are aspects of who I am that seem quite fixed and we want to We have a leaning towards wanting to see that See something unchanging fixed But as we investigate we see that it's always Flowing like a river or a stream But it's important to reckon to recognize that Like everything else in the dharma The five skandhas are not an absolute truth They're not a concrete model or a detailed map

[07:20]

What they are is a tool For introspection And the point of that introspection Is not some abstract philosophical Approach, but actually the point is So we can be free So we can be our true self And As we investigate All those ever-changing aspects We can find a way to release Ourself from bondage to the self I think that's what the implication is of the heart sutra when it says Recognizing that all Five skandhas in their own being are empty And this was relieved from all suffering what what that means is

[08:23]

The key word is own being So there's not Something essential that I can boil down to as this form uh as me If I look at a photograph of myself if you look at my my image on the screen right now, it's like Wow, who's this old guy? You know, that's not the way I think of myself internally, but that's what it looks like for me outside now Um, and it didn't look like that 15 or 20 years ago And it didn't look like that 50 years ago And yet I I project some continuity But even there that's that's really questionable my thoughts from one moment to another are not continuous This wonderful, uh lecture by Sojan Roshi

[09:24]

that he gave in Chapel Hill in I think 1997 I think this lecture is actually in his in this upcoming book And I just want to quote from it a little it's a lecture that he gave on the heart sutra And he says the heart sutra goes through the five skandhas Therefore in emptiness no form no feelings No perceptions, no formations, no consciousness Then the sutra goes through the senses No eyes, no ears, no nose No tongue, no body, no mind Uh, he says in emptiness There is no Qualification there's no no thing that says nose Noses or no our noses like i've got my nose Doesn't look like

[10:27]

Carol's nose uh It probably has it has generally the same function but It looks different Uh, it's probably in a different state of congestion Who knows? No nose, but the nose Is only nose Because it has a location on my face You know, uh You know, it's not like a picasso painting where the nose will be over here You know nose is generally in the same place Um So We move from the That the nose is an object um If it's also it's an organ that smells but right now i'm looking at it And you can look at your nose very closely

[11:29]

and the reason That you can See your nose is because you have an eye Because you have an organ That's called the eye And that organ so it says the eye organ The object of sight which is the nose and the consciousness All come together they work together those three so this is a Um This is an abidamic Analysis of the way our senses work There's an object There's an organ And then there's a consciousness. There's an eye consciousness So, um Mutiligen says An object is not an object

[12:31]

An object is part of consciousness because consciousness creates the object An ant which is crawling on the book that's in front of me Does not cognize it as a book Only human beings cognize This book as a book so consciousness creates objects And so it says the five skandhas Form feelings perceptions mental formations and consciousness Are the five categories that constitute a human being? Or I would say it's the five categories that we think We put together To constitute a human being We call them five streams because they are always changing So to writes they are like running streams continually transforming

[13:39]

As soon as we say now It's already gone Except that we can continually say now We are always saying now But as soon as we as we say now It's already not now so the Skandhas are in the nature of being in constant change So, I hope you'll just hold on because uh Ultimately I want to get to where this is useful to us I want to reassure you but first Uh, let's go through the five skandhas very briefly. So you have some understanding of what they are The five skandhas consist of Form And then three functions Feelings perceptions formations and consciousness, which is also a mental function

[14:48]

To my mind form and consciousness are They sort of bracket these these three mental functionings and i'll explain why Why I think that way So form is matter or the body And it is Composed of the four great elements Skandhas Dogen when he talks about the skandhas, he also he often says the four great elements in the five skandhas uh, so those Elements, of course are the earth's solidity water Which is flowing Fire, which is heat and wind which is motion So this is our body our body is the location in which all of our mental activity takes place

[15:53]

Without a body We're not thinking at least in the terms in the only terms that that we can imagine for ourselves So then we come to the three mental factors First of this is feeling Uh You could call it sensations bare sensations, uh, by the way the word for form in uh Pali is uh rupa r-u-p-a And the word for feelings as we're framing them here is vedana v-e-d-a-n-a And it's it's really the bare contact Uh, so when you touch something The first level of discrimination that comes with that contact is simply Pleasant unpleasant and neutral

[16:56]

Uh, nothing more elaborate than that that's just the first point of contact pleasant unpleasant and neutral But it moves very very quickly To the second mental factor which we call perceptions Samjna is the aggregate of recognition or labeling So This skanda of perception um Very quickly forms a concept Or a thought and names the experience that our contact is having uh and so Uh

[17:59]

It's drawing this from we won't go into this in such detail. It's drawing this from our experience Uh We might start with a blank slate, but really instantly uh the miracle of our mind Or of our consciousness if you will is it starts sorting and categorizing and filing our experiences so that when we Experience something like them We can draw on that. So uh Um If I put my hand on a hot stove, you know It's it's unpleasant very quickly. It's also it's heat It's hot and uh The same thing is true of almost anything that we Cognize We recognize and put a label on it hot cold

[19:03]

the shape of a tree the colored green Emotion Fear joy all of those things these are labels that that go on our experience and probably There are labels that are Mostly well, I'm sorry mostly we experience these labels as as arising with words But certainly there are pre-verbal Kinds of labeling that we come to before we have the language and certainly uh animals are responsive to whatever Labeling mechanism they may have that is certainly distinct probably distinct from our particular words But labeling is an activity of the mind

[20:05]

That's the third skanda the fourth skanda is called mental formations or samskara and It takes a little longer To emerge the first two happen very quickly when we have an experience something uh This is called the aggregate of Volitional formations And I would say uh I think of it as sort of the the story making mechanism Uh That It Is constructing our Perceptions and is putting them Into a larger context and it also includes karmic activities

[21:09]

So all types of of mental imprints Or conditioning that are triggered by the perception of an object Includes a process that will make That will initiate an action for a person So those are put upon the three mental factors uh the fifth skanda Is More complicated lori and I have been having uh Um sort of arguments About it. It's the hardest to to categorize and what you find in buddhist philosophy is that Um, they they wrestled a lot With the nature of consciousness and kept reframing the mechanism And ways of looking at it um

[22:12]

But it's not strictly speaking That consciousness is not a single thing It's a collection of consciousnesses that are constantly changing Um, so those consciousness are the five sense consciousnesses Um seeing hearing touching Tasting What am I listening what am I missing I Eyes ears nose tongue body mind anyway, those are those are the The five senses and then you have the sense of the mind sense which is our thinking which is also an arm and a an organ of consciousness It's an it's a sense organ as well as a

[23:16]

Synthesizing organ and I don't want to get stuck on that too much but to me Unless you have consciousness And unless you have a body Then you can't have those other three Mental factors Um So in the In the first sutra In the first in the dhammacakkappattara sutra uh The buddha says he's in the first noble truth he says The noble truth of suffering is this Birth is suffering sickness is suffering

[24:16]

Death is suffering Association with the unpleasant is suffering Dissociation from the pleasant is suffering not to receive one's desires is suffering In brief the five aggregates subject to Grasping are suffering in other words or sometimes it's translated the five clinging skandhas Uh upadana skandha Are suffering And what I there's some ambiguity At least to my mind About what that means the five clinging skandhas um I think of the skandhas as They cling to us We grasp for them and their nature uh is

[25:18]

sticky It's like they have some some adhesive On their on their surface and when we touch them we kind of get stuck like on you know, like uh The way we used to see people get tangled up in flypaper in cartoons Uh And so When we stick to them Um We're that's when we're in the process of uh framing those clinging skandhas as me And we suffer But one thing that I was that I came across in my studying is All skandhas are not clinging

[26:20]

Or we do not cling to all skandhas and that's That's where we can practice Uh There's one of the things such as an example of skandha clinging says If one believes this body is mine Or I exist within one this body then as one's body ages Becomes ill approaches death one will likely experience longing for youth or health or eternal life Will dread aging and sickness and death and will spend much time and energy lost in fears fantasies and futile activities So in the nikayas This kind of activity is likened to Shooting oneself with a second arrow

[27:21]

The first arrow is the physical phenomenon which is Say a bodily manifestation related to aging or illness and you know, it's like Okay, that's being shot with an arrow that's being wounded that's that's not a good thing but the second arrow Arrow is the mental anguish That we spend on The fact that we've been shot on the yearning for The circumstance of somehow being unshot and so we wound ourselves again So The question that Come to is how do we practice with the five skandhas? How are they useful to us?

[28:23]

And I've I do find them very useful um First of all Again without going into a lot of detail i've often felt that they map onto the wheel of conditioned co-arising uh and that's been confirmed in some of what i've been reading so You know one thing leads to another It can lead to another intolusion Or it can go the other way and lead to another in liberation so here Thinking about breaking the chain of the skandhas wherever it's possible So Sensations or percept or feelings or sensations are unavoidable they happen

[29:31]

Uh Perhaps if you're a buddha you can intervene right at that point and not create uh Perceptions or mental formations. I think it's really hard um If we can break the chain there then we're free from the process of creating a self The next place of course is to break the chain after the third skandha After we've labeled something Um Can we break the chain there and just say okay, this is it hot remove my hand from the stove Uh Uh or anything else this goes for for for emotional issues as well

[30:36]

If we can do that That's also really good Third point Where we can intervene Is In the skandha of mental formations So Can I intervene and and it's it's easier here because It's easier to see I am making up a story about this And i've experienced this, you know, um a couple months ago I was helping two people in another community that were having a conflict And the nature of the conflict is it had gone on for a while and so they both had Pretty elaborate stories

[31:42]

About the other and also elaborate stories about What they How they categorize the experience that they were they were having And I thought it was really interesting to note that At least initially they were caught in The realm of their story And of believing their story and of not seeing it as a story Seeing it as a uh an accurate Interpretation of what had happened And so I think what we had to do

[32:46]

Was to lead back from the story At least lead back from the story to the Realm of the perception so just how did this feel Not necessarily what this other person May have done Or you think he he or she may have done to you, but how how did this feel to you? And to do that for both people But I really in my thinking about it I Pretty much thought about the skandhas So I want to come back to this question of Two kinds of skandhas There's just the five skandhas Which are a

[33:48]

What can I say a diagram of the way our mental activities Usually work in this body That doesn't necessarily imply a fixed self And then there's the five clinging skandhas Same skandhas This is very much like what I was talking about Last week when we talked about the different versions of the of the three marks of existence So one version traditional version as I said was Three marks are impermanence non-self and suffering And A Mahayana version is impermanence non-self and nirvana

[34:52]

So you could say this is a parallel process Uh, and one of the things that in what I was reading that said well even arhats and bodhisattvas So long as you have a body you have five skandhas um But if you have Purified or if you've clarified your practice Then those five skandhas They don't if they're clinging skandhas then It's the three marks that are going to lead to suffering If they are skandhas that are taken just as the natural operation of mind That doesn't imply Oneself then They can lead to freedom And one way that I do this

[35:56]

And I think and and you can do this is With any experience That May come to mind particularly if it's an experience that has a charge of an unpleasant or pleasant a pleasurable or unpleasurable charge I try to work it backwards I try to turn that unfolding of the skandhas backwards like Uh, okay. Here's the story i'm telling about it And Just to say how does this What's what's the in What's the feeling and here i'm using a western notion of feeling not not the bare feeling But what label On this experience what label fits this experience?

[37:01]

Before I make up a story about it You And I guess I would couple that with In this story making machinery, uh I don't know what the other person is thinking You know, if I look at jerry, I don't know what jerry's thinking But I bet that she has she has her own story And our story is good. They could intertwine they could clash uh it's just a story but I would be curious to know what What

[38:03]

She is experiencing I'm curious of the thing that I don't discount stories stories are fantastic. We are story making animals And this is not something that we want to get rid of This is something we take great pleasure in I think however that It's really important you should we should take pleasures in stories And at the same time we should be able to see through them We should be free to see through them and just You know enjoy the story But don't feel that it's the truth. There's no absolute truth in In dharma, uh Uh And this is this goes with um

[39:04]

Glassman's first first standard always suzuki roshi's, uh principal teaching which is Beginner's mind Really the mind that doesn't know The beginner's mind the mind that doesn't not knowing is the mind before We've locked down on a story So as soon as we've locked down on the story which is what happens in the in the conjunction of the fourth and fifth skanda then We are shaping The world we're attempting in vain to shape the world in our image And We We know that won't work But somehow secretly we think it will You know and often secretly we think

[40:10]

If everybody just thought like me things would work really well That's probably not true So I think um That's where I want to open up for uh for questions and discussion uh And I I really I just say I really enjoyed studying the skandas This week because they they opened themselves up to me in a way that uh Just I hadn't entered them for many years and I see them as as part of the of the buddhist toolkits That we that we have you know in Also in the context of the other things that we've been learning uh During this practice period

[41:12]

so i'm gonna go back to Blake, I believe who's going to call on people and um Floor is open for a while Oh, I want to say again as I said last week, um Be concise in your comments or questions Try to ask the question a comment is not out of bounds uh, but be concise and think about uh Keep in mind people Who might not so easily speak? As as you might give them some space so let's take let's take a minute and then Uh to to breathe and settle ourselves and let our question rise and then blake will call on you. So just a Just a minute and i'll bow to close it Good sangha, uh, please raise your digital hand

[42:45]

and as I call on you just take a pause until I have time to um Co highlight you I in that I invite, uh, stef To unmute herself and ask a question Thank you blake good morning hosan morning really enjoying your talk Could you say more about the fifth skanda consciousness, please? What do you want to know? That's a good question Okay, so consciousness Uh, i'm going to try to be brief Consciousness is both an organ and a function Uh, and this is where it's got divided out in the yoga chara school, actually it got divided out into several pieces, but you have The organ

[43:46]

Is just the mind that thinks And so that's creative, you know, it's like that's creating objects like a dream is an object an idea is an object The thought is an object so those are in the same way that uh me seeing You are your your little box with the yellow around it is Is coming to me via my eye consciousness So same thing your your mind has a function like that, but it also has the integrative function of Pulling all this information together and and uh Making it miraculously making it Uh so that it all works together so that we have a larger idea that is integrating You know right now it's integrating what I see what I hear

[44:50]

uh what I feel on my skin and You know, there's also some part of my brain that is that is uh spewing words Where did those come from? Where you know, how what so the the brain is is doing this incredible Coordinating function so that's also so consciousness is very hard to to get your head around and also, uh It's almost impossible I mean this I think is a big question in in buddhist philosophy about Can you see it, you know, can you see your awareness? Or In the instant that you think you see it have you turned it into an object and you're no longer You know, you're you're now Not using it, but you're not seeing it, but you're using it. It's It's really complex

[45:51]

Well, we we can't really see our thoughts So thoughts are But we can hear our thoughts in our heads or we can talk about our thoughts So how do we let go of acknowledging and let go letting go of consciousness Well I don't think we have to worry about letting go of consciousness when we have to let go of our Is is the product of consciousness? the stories that we tell And we don't have to let go of all of them. It's the idea is not to make oneself blank the idea is to uh, you know follow our vow to liberate all beings so Consciousness consciousness is it's pretty good thing. I think um but the consciousness what we what we try to See through is the story of I

[46:55]

the story of me That's what we're looking. That's What we try to notice when that's coming up because Then we're turning everything into ourself and That is the big problem that we have in this world is we think that there's a difference between you and me And If we're all part of one thing Then that's a really different way to look at it. But as soon as I separate myself then Uh all kinds of other hazards emerge Thank you Pauline I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question Morning, how's that? I uh, I was wondering if you could say something about the uh skandas and the practice of zazen

[47:58]

It uh, it certainly seems to me that um One of the things we get in zazen is practice in breaking that early chain from forms to feelings perceptions And also perhaps the later story making is that how it is for you? Yeah, I mean the practice of the frame on it around it what Continue please. Yes, there was uh, I uh hadn't muted somebody continue. I was on please. Um So The act of zazen is is letting go of this idea of ourself as As it arises moment by moment which incessantly does We don't act punitively towards it Towards me, you know, it's like oh, okay There I am again. Oh, but wait, I I meant to be sitting upright and breathing So i'll just return to that and uh

[48:59]

You know if an interesting story comes up I just think Okay, there's 23 and there's 23 other hours in the day And if that's really an interesting story, then it'll come back and i'll take some time to think about it But that's not what my intention is now So it's constantly Setting aside and returning Just returning to that No point returning to that breath and posture and starting over again with that and not judging oneself Thank you There's a question about how to deal with this story Uh, might you speak a bit more to how it lands, um in the body, uh to lock down In a story instead of fully inhabiting a story And how to connect with the associated pain of disconnecting

[50:03]

as for example in psychological quote unquote disassociation or freeze response Right. Well I think it's good to come back to What I was saying about this not being the absolute truth And that uh Certain circumstances in our lives call for Other kinds of intervention Uh zazen may not be the proper intervention, uh You know We've been discussing we've been We've been sort of traveling around the perimeter of uh issues of trauma for for a while, I mean some we've been talking about it here and in other places in the sangha and

[51:08]

Those are you know, this gets to a much more A much deeper Level of psychological or even buddhist psychological analysis and uh Some seeds are planted really deep And they're really strong and we have to have We may need other modes of addressing them. So it's not so simple as saying you can just Unreel that story I think where you can do that great where where the where it feels like there's A place that's really that's stopped for you And maybe understandably so then uh We need other kinds of intervention And we really we need We need to do that work ourselves, but we also need help

[52:10]

help from friends teachers healers uh And I I take that I take that pretty seriously uh I don't think It may not be enough For someone in that circumstance just just to say, okay, i'm going to return to my breath and posture uh If you can do that fine But If that's not working do not judge yourself for that not working So, I don't know I don't I don't think I can go much further than that, uh here anyway Marybeth lamb, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question or make a comment I'm kind of piggybacking off of pauline's question um I'm wondering When do we look deeply at these skandhas if during zazen mainly we're saying?

[53:15]

Oh, i'm in one of these i'm going back to my breath Do you see what i'm saying yes, and what I would say is You are distinguishing Between zazen and the rest of your life Zazen Flows through our whole life It's not that our whole life is sitting in this cross-legged posture But zazen mind or the mind of practice Has all kinds of elements in it That are suitable to particular moments uh, one of the factors of enlightenment is investigation There's time for investigating you need to see the whole picture But the whole picture is grounded in zazen what zazen does I think is

[54:20]

It cultivates Our capacity to include everything And that means I think That as you're going through your day or as you're sitting in your easy chair You might investigate your stories And that's part of the process of the larger manifestation of zazen mind Okay, thank you there's time for everything Okay I think uh rondy rondy, I invite you To unmute yourself and ask a question or charlie Uh, it was it was me blake uh hosan, uh I went to uh see sultan um many times with a story

[55:24]

and I asked him, um How to change that story and he always said the same thing shine a light on it and that's what you call investigation I guess yeah I also would like to offer the fact that art can change our perception think about Kurosawa the seventh samurai the same story told from the perspective of three different people four different people actually um So that's all I want to say is it Is that russian Oh, yes, you're absolutely right. I I was thinking about arrows earlier, so I confused them. But anyway, yeah, um What can I say I really like the whole idea of art And

[56:27]

And we should be about francis bacon what what about francis bacon Do you like him not so much I don't either but it's but it's but the work is brilliant I can admire something that I don't necessarily like But that's okay let's not get tangled in that Let's not let's bring home the bacon Okay I got one you were talking about the nose. I couldn't help but thinking about duranty. He said the nose knows that n-o-s-e-k-n-o-w Yes, yes uh schnauzer But when I was in japan the first time was a Challenging experience whenever I went out in public

[57:30]

Kids would gather around me and point at my nose and laugh Okay enough of that Mark capithorn, I invite you to uh, unmute yourself and ask a question Um Pose on thank you, uh a contemporary vocabulary of aggregates might be a sensing body a feeling heart and a thinking mind do you think we could substitute the content of the aggregates or is it these five specific ones that You want to share the value of? Um, no, I think that well, I think that makes sense uh my Again None of these this is not a direct model or map Uh, and I think what you're suggesting uh Makes sense and it sounds like it works for you

[58:32]

my point or my What i'm trying to do in this practice period is Uh convey we're trying to convey some of the teachings in language that uh that we have that we've inherited then it's up to us to Uh reframe and reinterpret, you know, I I see this Working in the upaya chaplaincy program, uh There are quite a number of of systems that are not Sort of orthodox or traditional buddhist systems that are extremely useful to people uh that I understand as as Reframing but also they're not just reframing there. They're also folding in uh some of the insights of Western psychology western philosophy

[59:35]

That are not in any way in contradiction to to what I Read in the traditional teachings. I just this is This is my way my way And it's the same thing with music. I'm sort of a neo-traditionalist uh I really like learning what The tradition says and then finding a way To make it my own to make it authentic not to make it be uh You know an imitation or copying so, uh, i'm, you know That's fine with me but what you're saying and I and I I do that. I'm not doing it today, but I do it in other realms and I think we all do Thank you Well, maybe this is time to end

[60:36]

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