The theory of the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism, which has to do with the tree-like design of the production of consciousness. And we went into the similarity between the symbol of the tree and the symbol of the river, where the direction of the tree seems to be the trunk, the branches, and the direction of the river from the branches to the trunk. And there was an aspect of this that I didn't complete and that I want to complete before we go on, which is to say something more about the stem or the trunk in this theory. Just to refresh your memories, there were these words, kshetra, which means in Sanskrit

[01:10]

the field of the senses. In other words, the kshetra is contrasted with the ayatama, which means gate. That is the sense organ itself, the eye. Then there is the field of the eye, what we call in our ordinary English the visual field. And so there's likewise the sonic field. Then behind the ayatama is the vijnana, corresponding to each of the five senses. V-I-J-N-A-N-A, that's how it's romanized, vijnana. And then behind each vijnana corresponding to each sense there is mano-vijnana, the mind sense, which is the sixth sense, which coordinates all the others. Under the supposition you see that all the senses are simply differentiations of one

[02:17]

sense, a fundamental kind of touch. Then behind mano-vijnana is manas, which is the mind, manas having the same root as the word man. And then, to go on, something I didn't cover yesterday, manas is considered as rooted in the alaya-vijnana, A-L-A-Y-A, again vijnana. And the word alaya means store. So, underneath is the store consciousness. And the nearest thing that we have to this in our Western ideas is Jung's notion of the collective unconscious. Because the alaya-vijnana is supposed to be a kind of repository of the seeds of all possibilities

[03:26]

of consciousness and life. So as you go into this tree, you stop being individually you at the level of manas. You see, that manas is pretty much what we would call the ego-consciousness. Below that, in alaya-vijnana, you come to a level of human existence where you can't be said to be the particular you anymore. For example, each one of us shares in common two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two arms, two legs. And at that level, you see, we are not individual, because we all have that in common.

[04:28]

Then, likewise, when we go further in to things that are not at all under our conscious control, the functioning of the heart, the machinations of the stomach, the shaping of the bones and all that sort of thing, this goes on at a level of life which we all share as human beings, but we don't control from voluntary power. And so, everything like that is in the domain of the alaya-vijnana, which you can call the collective. Now, the funny thing is, they say, not if you translate the Sanskrit literally, it isn't the unconscious, vijnana means conscious. And it's a very curious thing that we have used the word the unconscious as designating

[05:32]

the deeper levels of the psyche, because the disadvantage of this word is that it leaves out of consideration the fact that it is the unconscious that is conscious. In other words, underneath consciousness is something you're not conscious of, true, but it is what enables you to be conscious. Nobody knows how he manages to be conscious. You can be conscious of all sorts of things, and you suddenly find yourself doing this, that, and the other, and knowing this, understanding that, but how the devil do you do it, you don't know. And this is one of the weirdest things, if you sit down to contemplate it, think it out.

[06:37]

How do you manage to be you? And so we get this funny sense of self-estrangement, represented in the common notion that what I really am is a soul, which has been given a body and all sorts of capacities. I've been given intelligence, I've been given the power of consciousness, etc., but I am not any of these things, I'm the recipient of these gifts. And this has become, you see, for a Western man, a kind of common sense embedded in language. As when we say, I have a body, my mind, you know, as if it was something, a kind of engine

[07:43]

that I possessed. So it goes back, you see, to the whole notion that most of us, our body, our unconscious, our various powers of will, and so on, are given to us by a God who has created them and understands how they work, and you're put in charge of them and you're responsible for them for the time being. So you see, when you think that way, you don't feel responsible for, or one with, your full organism. And insofar as you don't feel at one with your organism, very naturally, you don't feel

[08:44]

at one with everything else. But this is simply a way of figuring life, you don't have to figure it that way. And the advantage of figuring it this way has been, of course, to develop this strong Western sense of the value of the individual person. And this indeed has in it, you see, something very great and fascinating. Just as, in the same way, the Westerners developed a sense of interpreting nature as a mechanism, and thinking about nature and about all living beings as machines, was the essential step

[09:58]

necessary for the production of our technology. This was Newton, this was Descartes, this was their idea of the world as a mechanical system more or less based on the game of billiards, where atoms are balls which knock each other around and obey certain laws. Now you understand those laws, you analyze, you understand everything by taking it apart. This is something, you see, that mankind had not really done before. Take it apart and see how it works. Then, when you understand that, you can develop surgery, you can develop microbiology, etc., etc. But then, having done that, you come to another stage where you realize that the mechanical

[11:08]

image of nature is not adequate. And you drop it, and you go on, say, to an organic or a quantum-like image. And so, the mechanical stage of thinking about the world becomes what Descartes now calls a peduncle. A peduncle, that is a junction system which disappears when you've gone over it. A stalk which is required to pass from one situation to another, but when you've used the stalk, it dries up and vanishes. That's a peduncle. And so, in this way, the Western mechanistic view of the world is the peduncle that leads

[12:08]

us into our high technological civilization. But in this high technological civilization, we have to realize that the organic model of nature is, in the long run, more effective than the mechanical model. The Chinese always had the organic model of nature, and therefore they didn't develop a technology, in our sense, because they never thought about understanding things by taking them to bits. They understand things by seeing them in context, which is the exact opposite approach to analysis. In analysis, you take any thing and you reduce it to smaller things to understand how it works. But in a context or organic way of thinking, you understand a given thing not by taking

[13:10]

it apart, but by considering its relationships to all the other things around it. See? So, the West, having developed analysis to such a fine degree of perfection, then discovers that that's not the whole story. That you may press analysis a long, long way, but then you have to retract yourself and consider what things are in context. And, therefore, the Chinese way of thinking becomes relevant to a scientific technological culture. Now, these are two ways of motion. Well, now, let me go back. The alaya-vijnana, or store consciousness, which I called the collective unconscious,

[14:20]

is, therefore, the level of ourselves at which we are not individual, where we can say we are just human. And beneath alaya-vijnana, there's still another, which they call amala, A-M-A-L-A, which means taintless. I don't know that really this word taint, in English, is quite adequate. Maybe if you call it tint, rather than taint, is better, without a tint in it. Because, you see, the mirror itself has no color. And this is pure. But you see, the trouble is, when we use the notion of purity in our kind of religious

[15:27]

background, we mean sexless. And we've forgotten that the original notion of purity, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God, has nothing to do with having no sexual desires. It means clarity. It means pure like clear water, like a clean window, like a crystal. Yes, but I mean... And so, pure-mindedness is simply clear-mindedness. But you see, a clear mind is one that isn't hung up on something. When you consider, say, a crystal. If it is not clear, it's distorted.

[16:28]

It has a flaw in it. So that when you look through glass that has a flaw in it, you see something happens to the landscape every time it goes by. You see? It suddenly goes, blup, like this. And so you notice the glass is there too much. Now, the reason why God is invisible is that God has no flaw. Do you see that? And therefore doesn't appear. It's total transparency, in other words, that does not make any difference to anything at all. So the poem in Zen says, entering the forest he does not bend a blade of grass. Entering the water he does not make a ripple. And the track of the wise is described as the track of birds in the sky.

[17:35]

They leave no contrail. Actually they do. It can be photographed with infrared cameras, but so far as you'd know, they don't leave any traces. So, purity, the pure mind, means the one where you finally get down to it's making no difference to anything at all. And this then, from one point of view, is the most unimportant mind that you have, because it doesn't make a difference. But from another point of view, it is the most important, because without that you wouldn't have anything. Now here comes one of the most fantastic philosophical problems of today. There has been a development in Western philosophy, which we call by several names, scientific

[18:42]

empiricism, logical positivism, logical analysis. And this is the prevailing philosophical school in the Anglo-Saxon world. It completely captured Cambridge, Oxford, then most American universities. And you will find almost all serious philosophical practitioners today belong to this school. Now, logical positivism completely demolishes any kind of interest in metaphysics by saying, not that metaphysical statements are untrue, but that they're meaningless. That is to say, any proposition which says, for example, all things are the will of God, contains no information whatsoever. Because whatever you state about everything is a statement which is a tautology.

[19:50]

That means it is simply saying, everything is everything, only you've said it in another way. So this is a very powerful critique of the whole past history of philosophy. That it was all meaningless. People were hung up on words and were fighting with words and purely verbal problems. And so that you can only talk meaningfully about things that can be said. That is to say, you can only talk about whatever is classifiable. If in other words, a certain experience, a sensation, is not differentiable from any

[21:01]

other one, you can't talk about it. The thing to be manifest, to be definable, to be describable, to be experienced at all, has to have a boundary. And so you can see what is inside the boundary and differentiate it from what is outside. And so these philosophers are arguing that you can only describe what has boundaries. This is their fundamental assumption. And of course, in a way, that's quite true. But the difficulty is that this has reduced philosophy to an extremely pedestrian pursuit. The professional academic philosopher in the United States, or in England today, has condemned

[22:07]

himself to a kind of wonderless attitude. The ancient philosopher, you see, lies awake at night wondering about the meaning of existence. The modern philosopher would find it, that would be extremely unscholarly to do anything like that. Because he must realize that when you wonder about the nature of being, you are simply suffering from an intellectual neurosis. You're out of order. Your logic has all gone wrong and you've become bugged with words. And in a way, you have. He's quite right up to a point. But then, on the other hand, you see, when you study the relationship of categories to

[23:15]

each other, and you see that every inside has to have an outside, then you begin to suspect that there's something in common between insides and outsides. They always go together. Now what is it that they have in common? Well then you see very soon that there is no word for that, because it's not a class. It's like a glass instead of a class. In other words, it is the transparent medium in which it all happens. In the same way as all sight, all shapes and colors, are in the medium of optics. Or all bodies are in the medium of space. So we come to something which doesn't matter. It doesn't make any difference. And yet it is fundamentally important.

[24:17]

Now this notion, you see, of there being something fundamentally important, which makes no difference at all to anything, is a very subtle idea that has to be absorbed by Western philosophy if it is to redeem itself from being totally boring. And I will illustrate it in this way. I want to illustrate it by the image of the usefulness of useless things. This goes by analogy, you see, with the tremendous importance of that which doesn't make any difference at all. Useless, see? Well now, we often say that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

[25:22]

In other words, if you don't spend any time wasting time doing useless things, you will not be healthy. And so in this country, where we have a very utilitarian aspect of things, we are above all practical people, we only allow people to be in a playful state if we are quite sure that it will improve them. And for this reason, we never really succeed in playing. We always justify it. You go to the concert because it is good for you, you know? There's wives who have a great idea about the opera and the concert, drag their husbands out and who are totally bored by the whole thing, but they feel somehow or other that this is culture and it's, you know.

[26:26]

Now, so in the same way, it is very important, but you must not make it important, you see, to have, along with one's ordinary regulated everyday life, which is practical and conducive to survival and all that, you must have a certain amount of insanity in your life. That's the real reason for having Sunday. Everyday, every seventh day is a day off. And it's a day off from making sense. I have to make sense all the time, you see? I'm making sense to you now. But sometimes I would like this to go blibblibblibblibblibbliblibliblibliblibliblibliblibliblibliblah instead. it because I need to loosen up my my intellect I call it to randomize the

[27:42]

intellect actually before I ever give a lecture instead of sitting down carefully and thinking out what I'm going to say I randomize my intellect completely and let everything for be forgotten and then start because this limbers you it's just like a person who was going to do something like surgery could do this with his fingers first to feel that everything is is working you see well this doesn't make any sense at all this is just this is just motion but he's got the himself limbered you see and he is ready then to do something very precise so in the same way a steel bridge has to be limber it has to give and sway in the wind otherwise it would crack the slightest earthquake or storm would knock it down and so with people people have to be limber to be sane and

[28:45]

therefore every seventh day you should go crazy and at least once a day in every 24 hours you know there should be a crazy time for complete limbering up of the mind now this kind of crazy time has been handled by human beings in very many different ways many what we think today are religious rights are actually crazy they are they've acquired that you see an air of solemnity because people forgot what they were really about and they parents said to the children you ought to do this thing it's good for you and the children said on now you know

[29:50]

because the parents said you ought to do it it's good for you and so the children over many generations did these things because they felt it was good for them and therefore got all the wrong spirit into it and so this for this reason then you go into a church whether it is Buddhist or Christian it doesn't matter what it is and everybody's going like this and looking as if this was desperately serious this is a complete reversal now one of the things that is coming into being now today is a new religious spirit which is non-serious religion one of the great exponents of this is a man called James Broughton who

[30:51]

is a local poet and he has written the most fantastically amusing poems about religion and the funny thing about his attitude is that it is respectful serious all at once but but not in other words it is a kind of religious humor I may outplay some to you this afternoon but he has this wonderful double take where he is really respecting religion he's a very religious man but he treats it in this light touch I remember when I was a priest I still have this attitude because it's been with me for many many years and we used to have a great gorgeous service in the Episcopal Church in Northwestern where of course

[31:53]

because this thing is essentially joyous we had candles and vestments and incense and the works you know and I remember I had a special student who was called the apprentice and he always carried the incense thing and I remember one day we arrived at the altar you know the service was beginning the organ was going full blast the choir was singing and in this very solemn way we arrived at the altar and made the profound bow you know which you make because you're in the presence of God and we both started laughing because it was just delightful you see the thing was swinging and you see this this really is the religious attitude people who are not initiates think it's irreverence you're not laughing at the deity and saying oh you all so-and-so well you might be just a

[32:58]

little bit but the deity appreciates this you see what you're doing is you are limbering your mind you're letting it all go you see whammo because if you do that then you've got something to work with later but you mustn't do it with later in mind you see then you're not doing it and so this is the meaning that in a meditation exercise in a religious exercise take no thought for the moral you see because then so long as you have got the notion in mind that this religious exercise is going to be useful is going to come out practical that is to say help you to survive you haven't let go

[34:02]

and therefore just so long as you don't let go your survival chances go down care killed the cat on the other hand watch and pray you know be on your guard all those Christian hymns about brethren be sober be vigilant your adversary the devil as a walking as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour resist steadfast in the faith and so that the office of comp line which is said at the end of the day they have a him which asked God to protect one during the night because you're going to go to sleep and you're going to be unconscious and therefore anything might happen you see so please God watch over

[35:14]

us that we don't have any naughty thoughts in the night and all that sort of thing see that the devil may get you while you're asleep so always Christian dust I'll see them on the holy ground how the powers of darkness prowl and prowl around Christian up and smite so this attitude you see a bird on guard always like this well that's all right you know you have to be life is requires work and effort and all sorts of things like that but you mustn't have it all the time you've got to take time off from that and the secret of that is you see once you really get into the secret of taking time off from being on guard then you can eventually get into the deeper secret that being on guard to isn't serious that too is play only the moment I've said it that too is play I seem to have

[36:33]

abolished any distinction between play and seriousness in which case if I've done that play doesn't mean anything anymore from the logical point of view but do you see do you see that underneath all logical distinctions but we say well it's either this or that there is something in common between now I said that thing in common let's go back you quite clear about this I said I was going to explain the thing that lies in common and that is of no importance because it makes no difference by the image of the useless and how important the useless things in life are so in this way we would say then basically the universe has no purpose isn't serious is just you go out

[37:44]

and look at the trees and the trees are doing this [...] and having seeds and more trees coming along so we're doing and I have to say well should I take some sort of attitude to this let's do it but it isn't serious it's what's called in Mahayana Buddhism that aspect of things is called the Sambhogakaya Sambhoga S-A-M-B-O-G-H-A wait a minute B-H-O-G-A Bhoga means bliss enjoyment delight Sambhoga means complete delight Sam means us like the Latin suma and the English sum total delight body

[38:48]

so in the in what is called the trikaya t-r-i-k-a-y-a the three bodies of Buddha you have the dharmakaya which is the undifferentiated ground which nobody can say anything about opposite nirmanakaya which is everything you're looking at and the joint between them is Sambhogakaya that all this which seems to matter and to be differentiated and to make sense is jazz it comes out of dharmakaya for no reason whatsoever just just for kicks it's all useless from the point of view of what we call being practical because the practical point of view is simply confined to what cuts and distinctions you can make so all practical people are precise people they want to know precisely what and if and

[39:54]

so on how unpleasant to meet mr. Elliot with his features of clerical cut and his brow so grim and his mouth so prim this conversation so nicely restricted to what precisely and if and perhaps and but so yeah you know that's that that has its place but there's something else to underneath all those distinctions and the balanced human being lives in both worlds he makes sense but also he makes nonsense that was a lecture by the late Alan Watts the world is consciousness

[40:58]

part 3 continuing a lecture that we heard the first two parts of in the past couple of weeks here on KSAN in San Francisco for a catalog of all the available lectures of Alan Watts send a stamped self-addressed envelope to M E a box 303 Sausalito that's for a complete catalog of all available taped lectures by the late Alan Watts a stamped self-addressed envelope to M E a box 303 Sausalito see that bear lapping up that good old country water sure makes a big hairy guy like me thirsty

[50:22]

that's why I wrap my lips around a tall sweaty edible bottle of good old country bear whiz beer as my daddy said son it's in the water that's why it's yellow bear whiz beer bear whiz beer with a message for my disciples listen to KSAN in San Francisco and open up your lower chakras 95 jive your tantric meditation station

[51:23]

step right up folks get your tickets here to the side show it's weird it's different it's unusual every show a different show here at the side show see the fat lady eat 115 cent hamburgers in three minutes see the thin man he smokes he drinks he eats but never gains weight turn him sideways and he disappears come on folks get your tickets right here for the side show here you go sir right ladies and gentlemen I was born of normal parents lived a normal life until the age of 12 when I stopped growing this way and started getting thinner till today I weigh only 47 pounds doctors have tried everything but I continue to lose weight

[52:40]

on my all-american diet of candy ice cream white bread french fries and soft drinks be thankful ladies and gentlemen that you're not like me doomed to go through life falling through cracks in the floor ladies and gentlemen as you can see by these scales I'm seated on I weigh 580 pounds I was completely normal as a child until the age of 11 when my parents took me to my first hamburger where I ate my first hamburger I liked it I ate another and another and today you see the results now if you wish you may watch while the attendants bring me my regular lunch of 100 hamburgers 50 regular 25 with mayonnaise and 25 cheeseburgers for variety

[53:44]

this is a hamburger for the mama this over 8 billion sold this is a hamburger for the mama this over 8 billion sold this is a hamburger for the mama say you'll meet Mary Brad a bunch of bonsai 90 days old it's just amazing what some people put into their stomachs what's more amazing most of them don't even know what they put in their stomachs they just buy it in a bag or a box or a bottle or a can and tear it open and scarf it down after all they wouldn't sell it in the store if it wasn't good for you would they and let's see that's five pounds of sugar ten pounds of white flour dozen doughnuts pound of coffee carton of cola quarter of ice cream and a six pack of beer and a carton

[55:11]

of cigarettes now will there be anything else oh yeah give me a bottle of aspirin what do you got for upset stomach remember how they used to talk about America the best-fed healthiest nation in the world guess again these are a few statistics on the health of our country America is way down the list of world nations when it comes to things like the infant death rate or the number of doctors per capita or the amount of dollars spent on medical and nutritional research heart disease and cancer killed ten times as many people as auto accidents each year only three million people in this country are thought to be really healthy Americans are at the top of the list in some other categories 98% of all Americans have tooth decay one-third are

[56:14]

fat obese if you don't 76,000 are admitted to hospitals every day 32 million people wear false teeth 17 million people are known to have acute hypertension 90 million Americans wear glasses are mentally ill have doubled since 1955 three times as many people catch virus colds and sore throats as they did 30 years ago the chemical manufacturers sell four times as much aspirin as they did 30 years ago in fact we spend six billion dollars a year on legal drugs trying to get rid of our infirmities and another ten billion a year on doctors and hardly anybody really feels the end in $1.98

[57:30]

Get rid of that runny nose, that nagging cough, that sneeze, that wheeze, and other injuries take the wonder drug that kills all your wheels take Jeremiah Peabody's polyunsaturated quick-dissolving fast-acting pleasant-tasting green and purple peels Hey, what's the matter? Aren't you feeling good? Feel like screaming and crying, but that wouldn't do no good. Oh, you don't feel so good. Oh, I feel like screaming and crying, but that wouldn't do no good. Would you like to feel good?

[58:32]

It's easy. Good health is what makes you feel good. When you feel good, you're relaxed, you're loose. You don't come down on the people around you. You contribute positive energy to the world. Good health comes from a balanced combination of air, water, food, rest, and exercise. Most Americans get too much food, not enough of the other necessities. We just love to smoke a cigarette for breakfast, drink coffee all morning, and then eat a big lunch, a bigger dinner, and then raid the refrigerator. All through primetime, the news, and the late show, maybe even the late, late show. You have no idea what it means sometimes in the middle of a nightmare. Hungry like this, and you have a little something to tide you over to breakfast. I just, it's one of my bad habits, actually, I shouldn't be up like this, but I get so

[59:40]

hungry. It's silly to say this, but I look at a little olive like this, and it tastes wonderful. This has got a seed in it, and I can pit in two, and you don't have to worry about the stone. That's why I do this practically every night of the week. Oh, not every night, but every year. I keep worrying I'm going to get fat. I'm sorry. Good celery. It's just about does it.

[60:46]

A little bit of corn here. I didn't want to waste any. I'll finish off this cracker. I wonder if the other end of the celery tastes good. Top end tastes as good as the bottom end. I think I'll eat the leaves. Why not? Well, I guess I made my plate clean. Well, I'll put this in the sink. Maybe I better wash it up. And I'll just leave it there. And now to go back to sleep. Thanks for watching!

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