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. One is that it's a pleasure broadcasting today from what was Sojin Roshi's office. I've been working with Maria Winston in there for the last couple months, going through Sojin's papers and looking at books and really enjoying slowly moving into this space and having a place to meet with people privately. And what I find is it's, for whatever reason, it's... It's very quiet here. It's somewhat more peaceful than being in my house.

[01:05]

And so I'm appreciating that. I think I posted earlier in the week, there's a wonderful Burma Spring Benefit Film Festival that's going on. 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 raising money for the democracy movement in Burma, and so far we've raised more than $24,000, and the festival's only been open for a day, so we're doing really great. Okay, let's take a breath. 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.

[02:18]

The word skanda means aggregate or collection or heap. And what it represents are the physical, nature of our bodily existence, 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 they are changing from moment to moment. And that includes both your body and the activities of your mind. the five skandhas are applied from the beginning. You find them in the first sermon of the Buddha.

[03:22]

He speaks of it when he speaks of the Middle Way, Four Noble Truths, and dependent origination. And the notion that we have of the five skandhas is that It's what we take to be ourself. And so to investigate the five skandhas is to investigate the question, who am I? But I would say for me and for most of us, our first encounter with this word skanda is... In our daily recitation of the Heart Sutra. So in the very first lines it says. When practicing deeply. The Prajnaparamita. Perceived that all five skandhas.

[04:24]

In their own being are empty. And was saved from all suffering. So. We'll talk a little about what that. what that emptiness is that applies to the skandhas. 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. And so we'll talk about why that is. So as I said, our investigation of the five skandhas is an investigation of, you could say, who am I?

[05:37]

Or who do I think I am? 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. we have a leaning towards wanting to see that, see something unchanging and fixed. But as we investigate, we see that it's always flowing like a river or a stream. But it's important to recognize that, like everything else in the Dharma, The five skandhas are not an absolute truth.

[06:43]

They're not a concrete model or a detailed map. 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.

[07:49]

What that means is the key word is own being. So there's not something essential that I can boil down to as this form, as me. If I look at a photograph of myself, if you look at 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 from the outside now. 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 project some continuity. But even there, that's really questionable. My thoughts from one moment to another are not continuous. There's a wonderful lecture by Sojin Roshi that he gave in Chapel Hill in 1997.

[08:58]

I think this lecture is actually in his 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. And he says, in emptiness, There is no qualification. There's no thing that says noses are noses. Like I've got my nose doesn't look like Carol's nose.

[09:59]

It probably has, it has generally the same function, but it looks different. It's probably in a different state of congestion. Who knows? No nose. But the nose is only a nose because it has a location on my face. You know, it's not like a Picasso painting where the nose will be over here. You know, the nose is generally in the same place. Um... So we move from the, that the nose is an object. It's also, it's an organ, it smells, but right now I'm looking at it. And you can look at your nose very closely. And the reason that you can see your nose is because you have an eye.

[11:10]

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, this is Abhidhamic 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, Matildjian says, an object is not an object. 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.

[12:18]

Only human beings cognize this book as a book. So consciousness creates objects. And Sojin 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're always changing. So to writes, they are like running streams continually transforming. As soon as we say now, it's already gone. Except that we can continually say now. We are always saying now.

[13:23]

But as soon 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 ultimately I want to get to where this is useful to us. I want to reassure you. But first, 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. To my mind, form and consciousness are, they sort of bracket these three mental functionings, and I'll explain why, why I think that way.

[14:32]

So form is matter, or the body, And it is composed of the four great elements. Dogen, when he talks about the skandhas, he often says the four great elements in the five skandhas. So those elements, of course, are the earth, 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. Without a body, we're not thinking, at least in the terms, in the only terms that we can imagine for ourselves. So then we come to the three mental factors.

[15:38]

First of this is feeling. You could call it sensations, bare sensations. By the way, the word for form in Pali is rupa, R-U-P-A. And the word for feelings, as we're framing them here, is vedana, V-E-D-A-N-A. It's really the bare contact. So when you touch something, the first level of discrimination that comes with that contact is simply pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. 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

[16:44]

mental factor, which we call perceptions. Samjana is the aggregate of recognition or labeling. So this skanda of perception very quickly forms a concept or a thought and names the experience that our contact is having. And so it's drawing this from, we won't go into this in such detail, it's drawing this from our experience. We might start with a blank slate, but really instantly, 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.

[18:04]

So 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 the same thing is true of almost anything that we cognize. We recognize and put a label on it. Hot, cold, the shape of a tree, the color green. Emotion, fear, joy. All of those things, these are labels that go on our experience. And probably there are labels that are mostly, well, I'm sorry, mostly we experience these labels as arising with words. But certainly there are pre-verbal kinds of labeling that we come to before we have the language.

[19:13]

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. 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 experience something. This is called the aggregate of volitional formations. And I would say I think of it as sort of the story-making mechanism that is constructing our perceptions and is putting them into a larger context, and it also includes karmic activities.

[20:38]

So all types of mental imprints or conditioning that are triggered by the perception of an object includes a process that will initiate an action for a person. So those are what I'm calling the three mental factors. The fifth Skanda is more complicated. Laurie and I have been having sort of arguments about it. It's the hardest to categorize. And what you find in Buddhist philosophy is that they wrestled a lot with the nature of consciousness and kept reframing the mechanism and ways of looking at it. But it's not, strictly speaking, that consciousness is not a single thing.

[21:50]

It's a collection of consciousnesses that are constantly changing. So those consciousnesses are the five sense consciousnesses. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting. What am I missing? Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind. Anyway, those are the five senses. And then you have the sense of the mind sense, which is our thinking, which is also an A. an organ of consciousness, it's a sense organ as well as a 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.

[23:04]

So in the, in the first sutra, in the first, in the Dhamma Chakravatara Sutra, 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, 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, upadana skanda, are suffering. And there's some ambiguity, at least to my mind, about what that means, the five claiming skandhas.

[24:28]

I think of the skandhas as they cling to us. We grasp for them. And their nature is sticky. it's like they have some adhesive on their surface, and when we touch them, we kind of get stuck, like on, you know, like the way we used to see people get tangled up in flypaper in cartoons. And so... When we stick to them, that's when we're in the process of framing those clinging skandhas as me. And we suffer.

[25:35]

But one thing that I came across in my studying is all skandhas are not clinging. or we do not cling to all skandhas. And that's where we can practice. There's one of the things such as an example of skanda clinging. It says, if one believes this body is mine, or I exist within 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.

[26:40]

So in the Nikayas, this kind of activity is likened to shooting oneself with a second arrow. 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 not a good thing. But the second arrow is 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,

[27:46]

come to is how do we practice with the five skandhas? How are they useful to us? And I do find them very useful. First of all, again, without going into a lot of detail, I've often felt that they map onto the wheel of of conditioned co-arising. 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 in delusion, or it can go the other way and lead to another in liberation. So here, thinking about breaking the chain of the Skandhas, wherever is possible.

[28:47]

So sensations or feelings or sensations are unavoidable. They happen. Perhaps if you're a Buddha, you can intervene right at that point and not create perceptions or mental formations. I think it's really hard. 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 Skanda. After we've labeled something. can we break the chain there and just say, okay, this is it.

[29:51]

Hot. Remove my hand from the stove. Or anything else. This goes for emotional issues as well. If we can do that, that's also really good. Third point. where we can intervene is in the skanda of mental formations. So can I intervene? And 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, a couple months ago, I was helping two people in another community that were having a conflict.

[30:59]

And the nature of the conflict has gone on for a while. And so they both had pretty elaborate stories about the other. and also elaborate stories about how they categorized the experience that 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 an accurate interpretation of what had happened.

[32:08]

And so I think what we had to do was to lead back from the story, at least lead back from the story to the realm of the perception, to just how did this feel? Not necessarily what this other person may have done, or you think he or she may have done to you, but 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

[33:16]

a, 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 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.

[34:21]

So you could say this is a parallel process. And one of the things that, in what I was reading, it said, well, even arhats and bodhisattvas, so long as you have a body, you have five skandhas. 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, and I think, and you can do this, is with any experience that may come to mind, particularly if it's an experience that has a charge,

[35:44]

an unpleasant or pleasant, a pleasurable or an unpleasurable charge. I try to work it backwards. I try to turn that unfolding of the skandhas backwards, like, okay, here's the story I'm telling about it. And just to say, how does this... What's the feeling? And here I'm using a Western notion of feeling, not the bare feeling. But what label on this experience, what label fits this experience before I make up a story about it? And I guess I would couple that with in this story making machinery.

[36:53]

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 her own story. And our stories could, they could intertwine, they could clash. It's just a story, but I would be curious to know what she is experiencing. I'm curious, 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.

[37:57]

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 dharma. And this goes with Glassman's first standard, or with Suzuki Roshi's principal teaching, which is... Beginner's mind. Really the mind that doesn't know. The beginner's mind, the mind that doesn't know, not knowing, is the mind before we've locked down on a story.

[38:59]

So as soon as we've locked down on the story, which is what happens 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 know that won't work, but somehow secretly we think it will, you know, and often secretly we think if everybody just thought like me, things would work really well. That's probably not true. So I think that's where I want to open up for questions and discussion.

[40:05]

And I really, let's just say I really enjoyed studying Nasconda's because they opened themselves up to me in a way that just I hadn't entered them for many years. And I see them as part of the Buddhist toolkits that we have, you know, also in the context of the other things that we've been learning during this practice period. So I'm going to go back to Blake, I believe, who's going to call on people and floor is open for a while. Oh, I wanted to say again, as I said last week, be concise in your comments or questions. Try to ask a question.

[41:07]

A comment is not out of bounds. but be concise and think about, keep in mind the people who might not so easily speak as you might and give them some space. So let's take a minute and then to breathe and settle ourselves and let our question rise and then Blake will call on you. So just a minute and I'll bow to close it. Good, Sangha.

[42:12]

Please raise your digital hand. And as I call on you, just take a pause until I have time to co-highlight you. I invite Steph to unmute herself and ask a question. Thank you, Blake. Good morning, Hozan. 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, I'm going to try to be brief. Consciousness is both an organ and a function. And this is where it got divided out in the Yogacara school, actually. It got divided out into several pieces, but... you have the organ is just the mind that thinks.

[43:22]

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, a thought is an object. So those are in the same way that me seeing your little box with the yellow around it, is coming to me via my eye consciousness. So same thing, your mind has a function like that, but it also has the integrative function of pulling all this information together and making it, miraculously making it 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, what I feel on my skin.

[44:22]

And, you know, there's also some part of my brain that is spewing words. Where do those come from? Where? You know, how, what, so the brain is doing this incredible, Coordinating function. So that's also. So consciousness is very hard to. To get your head around. And also. It's almost impossible. I mean. I think there's a big question. In Buddhist philosophy. But. 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 now not using it, but you're not seeing it, but you're using it. It's really complex. We can't really see our thoughts.

[45:26]

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 letting go of consciousness? Well, I don't think we have to worry about letting go of consciousness. What we have to let go of is the product of consciousness. The stories that we tell. And we don't have to let go of all of them. The idea is not to make oneself blank. The idea is to... you know, follow our vow to liberate all beings. So consciousness, consciousness, it's a pretty good thing, I think. But the consciousness, what we try to see through is the story of I, 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,

[46:37]

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 all kinds of other things hazards emerge. Thank you. Pauline, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question. Morning, Hozan. I was wondering if you could say something about the skantas and the practice of zazet. It certainly seems to me that 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.

[47:38]

Is that how it is for you? Yeah. I mean, the practice of Zazen. Around it. What? Continue, please. Yes, there was. I hadn't muted somebody. Continue, please. The act of zazen is letting go of this idea of ourself as it arises moment by moment, which it 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 meant to be sitting upright and breathing. So I'll just return to that. And, you know, if an interesting story comes up, I just think, okay, 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.

[48:47]

So it's constantly setting aside and returning, just returning to that null point, returning to that breath and posture, and starting over again and not judging oneself. Thank you. Hosan, there's a question about how to deal with this story. Might you speak a bit more to how it lands in the body to lock down in a story instead of fully inhabiting a story? and how to connect with the associated pain of disconnecting, 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...

[49:56]

certain circumstances in our lives call for other kinds of intervention. Zazen may not be the proper intervention. You know, we've been discussing, we've been sort of traveling around the, perimeter of issues of trauma for a while. I mean, we've been talking about it here and in other places in the Sangha. And those are, you know, this gets to a much more, a much deeper level of psychological or even Buddhist psychological analysis. And Some seeds are planted really deep, and they're really strong, and we have to have, we may need other modes of addressing them.

[51:07]

So it's not so simple as saying you can just unreal that story. I think where you can do that, great. Where it feels like there's a place that's really stuck for you, and maybe understandably so, then we need other kinds of intervention. And we need to do that work ourselves, but we also need help from friends, teachers, healers. And I take that pretty seriously. I don't think it may not be enough for someone in that circumstance is just to say, okay, I'm gonna return to my breath and posture. If you can do that, fine. But if that's not working, do not judge yourself for that not working.

[52:12]

So I don't know, I don't think I can go much further than that here anyway. Mary Beth 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. I'm wondering when do we look deeply at these skandhas if during Zazen mainly we're saying, 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.

[53:16]

But Zazen mind... where the mind of practice has all kinds of elements in it that are suitable to particular moments. 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... It cultivates our capacity to include everything. And that means, I think, 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.

[54:21]

Okay, thank you. It's time for everything. Okay. Rondi, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question, or Charlie. It was me, Blake. Hosan, I went to see Sojan many times with a story. And I asked him 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. 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. So that's all I want to say.

[55:27]

That's Rashomon, isn't it? Is that Rashomon you said? Oh, yes, you're absolutely right. I was thinking about arrows earlier, so I confused them. But anyway, yeah. What can I say? I really like the whole idea of art. And we should be. What about Francis Bacon? What? What about Francis Bacon? Do you like him? Not so much. Right. I don't either. 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 bring home the bacon. Okay.

[56:32]

I got one. You were talking about the nose. I couldn't help but thinking about Durante. He said the nose knows that N-O-S-E-K-N-O-W. Yes. Yes. When I was in Japan the first time was a challenging experience. Whenever I went out in public, the kids would gather around me and point at my nose and laugh. Okay, enough of that. Mark Capathorn, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question. Thank you. 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?

[57:36]

No, I think that, well, I think that makes sense. My, again, none of these, this is not a direct model or map. And I think what you're suggesting make sense and it sounds like it works for you. My point or my, what I'm trying to do in this practice period is convey, we're trying to convey some of the teachings in language that we have, that we've inherited. Then it's up to us to reframe and reinterpret. You know, I'd I see this working in the Upaya chaplaincy program. There are quite a number of systems that are not sort of orthodox or traditional Buddhist systems that are extremely useful to people that I understand as reframing, but also they're not just reframing, they're

[58:56]

They're also folding in some of the insights of Western psychology, Western philosophy, that are not in any way in contradiction to what I read in the traditional teachings. This is my way. My way, and it's the same thing with music. I'm sort of a neo-traditionalist. 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, you know, an imitation or copying. So, you know, that's fine with me, what you're saying. And I... I do that. I'm not doing it today, but I do it in other realms.

[59:57]

And I think we all do. Thank you. Well, maybe this is time to end. Is there any more immediate questions? Thank you all. And is Peter speaking next week? Yes. Good. And. I believe that Ross is giving a Monday morning talk. Yes. So let's just keep on, keep on showing up. It's wonderful to be here with you.

[60:33]

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