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Introduction to the Abhidhamma, Tape 2, Side 1. Lectures continued from Fall of 75. All of these are referring to the fact that the dharmas present in this wholesome state have a different quality than the same dharmas present in a non-wholesome state. And the qualities that they're talking about is that the dharmas that are present in this wholesome state, all of these dharmas, both Siddha and all of the Saits, all of the Mentors who come with it, to all the four Mentor Sanghas, the dharmas there are Tranquil, there's Enlightenment, there's Softness or Pliancy, they're Workable, they're Perficient or Fit, and they're Upright.

[01:00]

And so what are the things that these overcome, if it were? If we mention what these are opposed, we may just see that the same Siddha and Saita, the same dharmas present in unwholesome states, don't have these characteristics. They have different characteristics, which is what? Relative to balance of things. Relative to balance of things? Where is he opposed to? Does anyone know what he's opposed to? Opposed to? Sincerity is opposed to, or is this? Anxiety and Anxiety. Anxiety and Anxiety. And Anxiety. And Worries. And Worries.

[02:09]

What is he opposed to? I like the example, I thought it was rather amusing, the way it says that, Light, Buoyancy, Precious, Heaviness. Lightness. Lightness. The characteristic is, it always suppresses something. Suppresses, often the characteristic for Lightness is it suppresses Heaviness. And the function is, it crushes Heaviness. And it's in opposition to, Opposition to Sluggishness. Sorry. This Tranquility here, opposition to, in general, Anxiety, Anxiety and Worry, Or more generally, Suffering. The second one, agility, Lightness, Buoyancy is opposed to Sluggishness.

[03:15]

It's not, there's not some way to the consciousness. It's not that way. Do you want to write it up on the board? I'm in the middle of, If you can get up and do it by memory, it's all right. Where did this find itself and oppose to? Oppose to, Anxiety. And, Worriness or Workableness is opposed to, Tendencies that ruin the consciousness, or incompetence on you. Oh, anyway. It's opposed to the remaining tendency, that says, which we haven't,

[04:23]

It's opposed to, Oh, what? Wait, is that it? This last one, by the way, is opposed to Rigidity, that's specifically Mental Rigidity, Which is said to be caused by, This is Mental Rigidity, Caused by, Affirmative Negative, And, And, Okay, now, this Worthiness or Workableness is, Does anybody figure that out yet? What it's supposed to? Well, it says in the, Autopsy that, They should be regarded as bringing faith and objects of faith,

[05:27]

And patience, application, and work to the end. So, It says that it's opposed to the remaining, The remaining tendency, that says, It's near perpendicular to Sensual Desire, Which is, Sensual Desire, Busts into the mind, And makes it stapless. Sensual Desire busts into the mind and makes it stapless, Does not release it. And hate represents other extreme, As hard as, Okay, prison, I hate, Hate, okay, this is, That, Is it too tough to be workable? And this is, Too hard, To be workable. Proficiency or fitness, This is opposed to, Patience, Right? How about sickness?

[06:28]

What kind of sickness is that? I think it's, It's a, A mental sickness. Evilness of mental and moral, Consistency, And inefficiency. Did you say evilness? And it's opposed, Or it's, I guess it's opposed to corruption, Such as, Diffidence, Which cause illness. What is diffidence anyway? What is diffidency? Excessive humility, Excessive humility? You're trying to be humility? Something like that? Inner uncertainty, Inner, Inner uncertainty, Okay, It sounds kind of like doubt. It makes me feel like doubt. I don't know, Doubt or humility or, Something that, Diffidence, I don't know what diffidence is anyway. Which, anyway, First, Sickness caused by, Inner doubt. And this is,

[07:37]

This is mental, Sickness that was caused by, Inner doubt. Okay, It's opposed to, Okay, what's the last one, Non-sickness is opposed to? Oh, this is the one, Opposed to the corruption, Such as, Deception, And craftiness, Which cause sickness. Okay, Okay, so generally, This is, This is, Is very descriptive, Of what a wholesome state is like. You know,

[08:39]

The same, The same darkness person, You know, like, All of this, The rest of the darkness, Other than these six pairs, A lot of them, of course, Can be present, A number of them can be present, In unwholesome states as well, In the wholesome states, In which case, They don't have this. They're different in some way. The wholesome states can, Naturally have this, Tranquility, Buoyancy, Softness, Or, You know, Workableness, Moveness, Sickness, You know, A brightness, That, That. Uh, Do you have something else you want to talk about, please?

[09:42]

Do you have something you want to say about this? Thank you. Uh, I thought I was going to finish the first chapter tonight, So, we're going to have to move along. Is that a problem, sir? Mm-hmm. Well, we're not going to do it next week, We're going to do it tomorrow. Next week we're going to do papers, Uh, that we're going to start talking about. All right? Uh, okay. This is really interesting to me, Because, uh, You know, you often hear Mercy talk about these things. In lectures, And I can remember, like, Sidious was talking about these things. Uh, Sometimes, uh, With Sidious, I can remember, If there was a, Uh, A softness, Like, to have a soft mind.

[10:44]

To have a soft mind. But not, of course, so soft that, uh, It's no longer workable. Anyway, okay, let's go on. Uh, there's Actually, the six pairs, There's sort of six more pairs, Uh, Which, uh, Does anybody know what those six pairs are? We'll just, let me just write it down here, So we can say that we can remember. Did, did, did somebody assign these, uh, Other six pairs? All six? Well, They're not actually, They're actually three pairs. Oh, three pairs, okay. Three pairs. Six, six, uh, Okay, so the first pair is what? Well, the first pair is, um,

[11:46]

Mindfulness, Intelligence. This is, uh, And, uh, Which, uh, In the, uh, That was the guy in the template, Intelligence. But, uh, What's another, Do you know another template for that? Um, Comprehension. Yeah, third comprehension. And what are these two typically? Said to be, um, Helpers. Helpers. Okay, these two are listed again. Uh, This is referring back to the, um, Uh, Uh, Mindfulness, Intelligence, Faculty, Right? Was this the other one that turned around to anything? Uh,

[12:47]

Third comprehension? Yeah, it refers to, uh, Movement. Okay, so this is, This is Mindfulness and Wisdom together. It refers back to Wisdom. And these two, These two here are helpers in the sense that If you're not, That, uh, Anyway, they help. Okay, what's the next one? The next ones are Calm, And Insight. Uh, Calm is the, Oh, this is the Samatha, and Samatha, Samatha, And Vipassana. Right? Samatha, and Vipassana, right? Vipassana. And they refer, Personally refer To, uh, Self-consciousness. And the second To, uh, Wisdom and Wisdom. So this is, Uh, Insight.

[13:49]

And what do these two things mean? These are called The pairwise Combination. Pairwise Combination. They're running out of Labels. Okay, well this is the Traditional, You know, Very traditional Kind of way of Talking about Buddhist meditation. As, uh, Samatha And Vipassana. There's, there's Meditations that are Specifically, Uh, Saying that At Samatha There's meditations That are kind of Things that, uh, Vipassana. And, uh, This, this Is, Uh, Samatha by itself Without calm Or Samadhi Is not Enough. Or is not, You know, Buddhism. And, uh, Vipassana Or insight Is necessary. Uh, As well as Calm or Samadhi. So, This is a problem for Us, Uh,

[14:52]

Students, I think, Because, Uh, Most of us Tend to be more Interested in calm And Samadhi Rather than In insight. You know, We just have to find The next thing To have. Yeah. Uh, Okay, One of the last Next students Is, uh, The last two Are, um, Grasp And balance. Grasp, Which is that Paja [...] P-A-J-A H-O One And Kama And, uh, And, uh, Adhi Adhi Kepa Huh? Yeah. And what does Grasp refer to? Grasp refers to, uh, Energy That we Emanate And, uh, Adhi Kepa Uh, self-collection

[15:53]

Okay, and this Is, uh, There is, uh, A connection between, uh, Mindfulness and wisdom And, uh, This If you want This Uh, You know, if you want these to help You have to have them together So, mindfulness has, uh, You know, some pure comprehension Isn't much help And pure comprehension If you don't If you're not mindful of it Isn't much help So you choose any of it To help And this Through here, again, like One without the other Isn't so complete Uh, This calm This is nothing This is insight And this insight Without calm Uh, can be Disgusting And nothing Uh, And here He's emphasizing that Uh, Where samadhi This samadhi energy Go again What are these two called? The last dyad Oh, the last dyad Last three Oh, yeah

[16:56]

Okay Okay Now, oh Oh, we're not going to talk too much I want to have you Somebody get up and write down You know The five aggressions The five aggressions And so on Because now you should know all 56 You can get up and write You know, five times aggression Huh? Well, you could always read them off And I could You could always sort of say them And I could write them down Anyway, we won't do that tonight Okay, let's go on Uh, Does anybody have the, uh Seven entry factors? No Okay, the seven entry factors

[17:58]

Uh, seem to have crept in, you know Uh, Since the time that Dhamma-sanghani was first written Uh, later Later they decided that It missed a few things Maybe So they added a few more And, uh The first four Uh, the most important Sangha, Arimokta Uh, Manaskara And Tathamajjatata And, uh Or, uh Desire, resolve, attention and equanimity Desire, resolve, but Attention Equanimity They're not listed in the Dhamma-sanghani Oh In the Dhamma-sanghani it just says Or whatever The first four I was wondering why the Dhamma-sanghani Didn't list those And also Why it didn't get into, uh Pairing these things up They're just listed separately On the list Pairing which things up Like in the list They're just listed, uh In English

[18:58]

One after the other Oh And in the notes They never talk about Who they paired up with Oh Yeah, that I don't know when When that became Uh I don't know when When that came in To use You know When the grouping thing Came into use Now some of the groups I mentioned here Uh, like Uh, faculties are eight Jhanas, fivefold Tathas, fivefold Tara, the seven Kajas, the three Uh, some of them are listed Skandhas, the four But, um They don't list all of these things Uh Particularly So I don't know when They started doing that What's that? What's the I don't understand why After I've looked them all up They say Now on that occasion It's common before The experience is too The elements are There's no tremendous It's not occasion I mean, it arrives In one good thought moment Is that what you mean? Right But I understand that part But why do they

[19:59]

This is a summary This is a summary Oh, it's one moment Yeah It's a way to It's a way It's a summary The kids who studied it As the young ones Had to learn it, you know They hadn't just run down I mean This is the way they can check, and they're supposed to also list, in that particular moment, what are the spheres of duty, what two spheres, what are the four, what are the six, how many, so that's another way of, so that's a way of checking your memory, whether you really know which state's in the present. Do you have to have every single one of those, or can you have most of them, or some of them, or a few of them? For what? For good thought moments. Yeah, well, in here they say that for good thought moments you've got to have all of these. Every one of them. Are there other moments that you can't feel? Well, no, there's some variation, though. Now, written without knowledge. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, there's written without knowledge. So there's four husband states, which is something else that I wanted to touch on tonight.

[21:01]

Like, the husband states two through eight. Did somebody say the husband states two through eight? Okay, there we go. Yeah, a few of them ultimately drop away. Well, there's other states. What were you talking about, David, when you said all? All what? All 56ers. Yeah, right, all 56 have to be there for a part. That's the definition of what a husband state is, is that there's 56 in there. Or at least for the first husband state, now. What's a state? Is that a moment? A moment. For the first one, they all have to be there, then. Sometimes the word state is used in here as talking about diamonds, which I think is really misleading. Individual diamonds are states. They're usually factors. I would call them factors or diamonds or elements or something like that. Sometimes you get confused.

[22:03]

Is there any difference between a state and a moment? A state and a moment. What is this thing called? It's a word. Oh, I don't think so. I came thinking of chalk. And it's all waxy. Didn't I tell you about that chalk? Maybe it's that chalk right now in the jar down there. Do I see any chalk? Huh? No. In the jar. It tends to not make a stain on it. All right. These look like old man's photographic cars. Okay, the first part of the state. See above, huh? Huh? See above? The first part of the state is what we've been talking about.

[23:05]

Last eight and a half weeks of class. 56 elements comprise it. And the duration of those 56 elements is what a moment is. How long those 56 elements last is a moment. That's the definition of a moment? That's the definition of a moment is how long those 56 last. What did you say, 56 elements last? Yeah, 56 elements. Well, all the moments have to be the same length. All the moments have to be the same length? Yeah, there's an amount you pile on and on. But one of the things you're saying is a moment is a specific time period. Is that right? Well, anyway, the other definition of a moment is how long do those 56 elements last together? Huh? What did you say? Does that mean moments can be longer for some people and shorter for others?

[24:11]

Yeah, I think so. Okay, but anyway, this is number one is what we've been talking about. It's said to be accompanied by knowledge. Know, know, [...] know. Hey, where are we now? Huh? Yeah, what are the definitions? We've been studying now for eight weeks in the first post mistake. Now, in one night, in just a few minutes, we're going to talk about the first eight post mistakes. We're going to go through eight now. And what the difference is between one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight. The first eight, the eight post mistakes in the Congress are in the central realm of desire. In our world, we all live in. Actually, we're back on page one. Page one, paragraph one, second one. Allison got it.

[25:16]

Page one. Second one. Thirty-four. Okay, also page thirty-four to forty-two, it tells you about the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. The first eight post mistakes is accompanied by knowledge, joyful, and un, unprompted. This is the most posing you can get. It's got knowledge, it's joyful, and you didn't have to tell yourself, now get it together and do it. Bow to the Buddha. You just got to admit it. And you were laughing, and you knew what you were doing, and it wasn't just, you know, because someone told you to do something, and it just came.

[26:17]

Wow. And that's, in a way, maybe most posing now. Does anybody say what is descriptive of how the second one differs from the first one? Unprompted. That's right, it's prompted. The second one is accompanied by knowledge, joyful, and prompted, so it has exactly the same fifty-six elements, only someone told you, please give that toy to the other kid. Unprompted. You know, sometimes it's said to have accompanied by knowledge. If it's a boy, then you say, not accompanied by knowledge, and if it's a child, you say, not accompanied by knowledge. So, you know, someone said, you know, why don't you give that to your teacher, and so you went and gave it to your teacher.

[27:18]

Or he said, gee, I really shouldn't keep this for myself, I should share it with the other students, and then you shared it with the other students. So there's some conscious prompting. And so, all right, you know. Can you give your own prompting? Yeah, you give your own prompting. That's either you or outside. But you told yourself, this is, you know, you hesitated a little bit, you know. The wake-up bell rang, and you said, you know, and you started to say, well, I don't really feel like getting up this morning. And you said, no, really, I ought to get up this morning, and then you got up knowing, and it was joyful. And you did it. Okay. These two, you know, that's a very small, that's a slight difference, which is pointed out, but we were talking about this a little bit,

[28:20]

but it really looks like, in order to have an unprompted home-from-school day, you really got to do a lot of prompting for a long time. You know, which is sort of what practice is all about, because, or like, where's this thing, emphasis on craft? There's some craft to it. You know, and it's better to do the putting your, you know, putting the years, not knowing what you're doing necessarily, and so on, and just do it. And so, anyway, it seems to take a lot of prompting in order to have unprompted. Unprompted doesn't seem to just happen so much. If you just sort of leave it to, you know, natural occurrence, it doesn't seem to happen that much. But it seems to happen more if there's been a lot of prompting along the way, then unprompted also happens. But it seems to take, anyway, a lot of prompting or practice over, you know,

[29:24]

some period of years, and then more and more things start happening in an unprompted way. And how come they have to specify that the 56 elements are accompanied by knowledge and joyfulness when joy and knowledge are already one of the 56 elements? How can the 56 elements exist without knowledge and joy? They're not there. That's right. They're not there in the other state. Just these 56 chains down here. Oh, and then you only have 54 or something. Well, yeah. So if you can just say all 56 are there and it's unprompted, you don't need to say that there's knowledge and joy, right? Oh, that's right. Yes, you do, because there might be some other... The 56... The 56 elements that we've just studied... Which include knowledge and joy. Right, which include knowledge and joy, which is, you know, in brief you can sum up the state and say, well, the coming of knowledge and so forth is unprompted, and so of course those are the 56 elements that are there.

[30:26]

That's right. Now, what's the third one? No knowledge. No knowledge. No knowledge. Is that a constant or an unconstant? Now we get down to 49. Is it a constant? So why is that all seven? This is dissociated from knowledge, joyful, unprompted. So in here there's none of the seven elements of wisdom are present. But it's joyful, it's unprompted, it's, you know, it's got the three wholesome roots, it's got the powers, the controlling faculties,

[31:28]

other than wisdom, some of them. It's a wholesome state. It's wholesome because it's got the three wholesome roots. But it's not exactly based on, it's not because, you know, it's not based on insight or comprehension, but it just arrives... Like what? Well, I think this is simply like a child who, you know, says something. In particular, knowing that, you know... And the fourth one is dissociated from knowledge, joyful, unprompted. And this is where the example given is mother says to the kids to be respectful and proud of their brother and they do it joyfully. Excuse me, Ed, I just wanted to say that I think...

[32:29]

I was puzzled on the difference between prompted and unprompted because the dharma elements are exactly the same in both cases. I think the difference, one way of saying difference maybe, I'm not sure this is right, there's no difference in that particular moment as far as the dharma is concerned, they're identical, but the difference is in the previous moment. Even the moments which preceded it are different. By the karma of it, it's different. Like in one case, there's some sensory perception, you know, that you hear your mother saying something, and those preceding moments where all that stuff is processed and you do something is different. But that particular moment we're talking about, this particular moment is dharmically the same, but the previous moments are different. So I think it is some slight differentiation. So there's some... Like even, like two of the first... You can have one wholesome state, the first wholesome state can follow, you know, can repeat, you know. The next moment can also be the first wholesome state.

[33:30]

But then it's said that even if you get two or three in a row, they're not quite the same, because then the second one is conditioned by the first one, or it's affected in some way by the first one. It's a little bit different. Okay. Okay, number four, which especially is non-special, not to mention... Anybody know about five? Five through eight. Anybody know about what makes five through eight different than one through four? The difference between five through eight is that these are indifferent. And so otherwise... What do you mean by indifference? Oh, does that mean not joyful? That's what I thought. You said that was fifty-fifty?

[34:32]

It was five... Now, in this case, there's fifty-six, but there's isn't fifty-six. So, this is accompanied by knowledge, and this is accompanied by knowledge, and seven and eight are dissociated from knowledge. Now, can anybody... Would anybody have any guess as to which dharmas are different in five through eight, which makes it indi... What the dharmas are that are different that make it indifferent rather than joyful? Do you have your... The joint? So, this is five would be unprompted, six prompted, seven unprompted, eight prompted. Does it all have to be six?

[35:32]

No, there's seven that have one. These seven and eight are dissociated from knowledge, so they have forty-nine. Now, indifference means that, for instance, in the first wholesome state, when it says vedana, it says there's a pleasant, easeful sensation or feeling, which is vedana, which is the vedana that's present. Now, in this case, in five through eight, the vedana that's present is an indifferent feeling. It's not particularly pleasant, and it's not painful, but it's a neutral feeling. And piti is no longer there, and rather than sukha being there, upekha is there. This indifference is the dharmas or indifference of upekha. So, it seems like rather than sukha,

[36:34]

which is, you know, which we talked about before, is ease or savoring, a pleasant feeling, in this case there's an indifferent feeling, or upekha rather than sukha. And then in the controlling faculties, there's no longer samanas in Veda, but there's an indifferent controlling faculty there. What is upekha? Upekha is indifferent. So, what's piti? Piti is joy. So, what is it in this case? It's just not there. So, all the... So, it's not replaced. Uh-huh. Huh? There's 56 of them. No, there's not 56, it's a different number. I haven't figured this number out. It's probably... I don't think it's... I think it's 55. I'll look it up here, but...

[37:38]

Which number are you looking up, David? As far as I can tell, when it says that joy... it says joy is not there, but I don't know that it becomes indifference, because the indifference here, this upekha is the Veda-Nath. And so the three... Veda-Nath comes up in three places. It comes up in Veda-Nath, and then it comes up in... In the first one up here, there's Veda-Nath, and then there's sukha, which is another Veda-Nath. And then there's... Upekha replaces the two. Upekha, I think, replaces the two of piti and sukha. In India, the faculty of upekha replaces the faculty. Maybe it's just coordinating and so on and so on. Anybody have an idea because we can't hear you? Do you all understand that now? It's kind of fast. We've got all these things, but it's not that hard. That's right.

[38:40]

Number eight, I guess, is in between it's not exactly number eight is sort of the least wholesome of these wholesome ones. I guess. It's dissociated from knowledge, indifferent, and it's prompted. It doesn't have much fun for it. What are we doing there? Are we prompting ourselves to be indifferent? An example of that is where a three-year-old child is told by his mother to bow to the Buddha, and he bows to the Buddha and feels very disinterested about it. He doesn't feel joyful about it. He just does it. It doesn't matter if you're asking him. He felt bad about it. He felt it would be an unwholesome state, so at least he's been disinterested. Number eight, second side, fourth side, fifth side. The next moment, it flashed right into a bad state. I can relate to that. It's just for one minute that he bowed. For one moment, he was okay. Indifferent. When he stood up, he just got off. Jumped up and down.

[39:47]

And then he fell. Well, there's not really a difference. Thank you for being here with us this weekend. That's right. We're not playing games against ourselves. We're doing it. Are they in order? Are they just going to go out there? Yeah, next week I'd like to start talking about the challenge, because it's the next chapter. We just finished the first chapter, remember? And so next week we're going to go on to the next chapter. So, if you want to read some more on the first chapter, that's fine. I was sort of hoping that... I guess for a while I wasn't making assignments particularly, and I just sort of assumed that you were continuing ahead, you know, through... And as I mentioned earlier before in last week's event,

[40:47]

I think everybody should try to read in the Dunlopson Guide, and you have to tell me the parts of the event. I think it doesn't seem that... and the genres... To talk about the genres, we don't really need to study the whole chapter on the genres, so let me see how far we might go. Well, I think in the chapter on genres, we've studied the first four, so that goes up to maybe the first five. First four or five, so that's from page 43 to page 51 in the Dhammasanghani, and then the corresponding commentary in the Ashtabhani. Is that in the same volume? Yes, it is. That's still in the first volume of the Ashtabhani. Next week, I guess we should try to get the second volume so we can pass it out.

[41:52]

So, can you all try to read that? And then the people who are doing papers on the genres, instead of help us, you know, maybe talk about their papers, and then we'll just talk generally about the genres. I'll come back to that in just a moment. Thank you. Thank you.

[43:07]

Thank you. [...]

[44:35]

Thank you. Next, we're planning to talk about the genres. And as far as we can with them, this should be the only meeting we talk about them. How many of you have been in my admissions? You can stand down. Can anybody else stand down for a paper? No. So, the three of you can present what you want to present. I don't know if you... You haven't gotten together yet. Who would like to start?

[45:45]

I don't know exactly where we want to start. Did the rest of you read... You're doing the reading about the genres. Did I suggest it last time, since it's 4362, and then you returned the exposure? Why don't we start here, and then as things come up, if you have something to talk about... I don't know what you have in front of you to talk about. So, maybe we can look at page 43 and start with that. Page 43, it says, Chapter 2,

[46:54]

Good in Relation to the Universal Form, Rupa Gitara, Kusala. Kusala. So that's... Are you all familiar with where that is on the chart? Right? We're still in the first column of the chart, Kamati Holson. And in Kamati Holson, there's the Kamati Gitara, and then the Rupa Gitara, Arupa Gitara, and then the Srimad-Bhagavatam. So, this is in Kamati Holson, and Jhana is the Rupa Gitara. First column of the chart. This is Methods for Inducing Jhana. The Eight Artifices. Kristina, does anybody have anything to say about Kristina, and what Kristina's are?

[47:56]

Okay. Well, you can talk about the casinos, and if you have some other things, you may as well do it now, too. ...descriptions of the casinos, and they're different translations. The Sri Madhya is very interesting to read, because it's so different from most of the things that we read. It's not like a scripture, because it actually talks about practical practice, and how the teacher is relating to students. And if the teacher assigns some practice to the student, and the student has difficulty with it,

[48:57]

what the teacher can say to the student. And it actually describes, physically, what kind of rooms they live in, and it's very specific. It's very interesting, because it actually describes how people live. When it's talking about people preparing to enter the Jhana, it talks about that there are 18 conditions that are unfavorable to this kind of concentration. And some of them have to do with the physical aspects of the monastery, like if the monastery is very big, and there are a lot of things to take care of, to make sure that there's drinking water, to take care of the matters of daily life, then the monk can get really involved in that, and not have time to really meditate, or that people will feel like that person should participate in that, instead of meditating. So that kind of thing, or if it's very new, and there's still a lot of construction going on, people will feel that the monk, well, it's not like this,

[49:57]

will feel resentful that this person is trying to meditate, because it's not very good to enter the Jhana, to be in this place. If it's real old, you know, you have to repair it. Then the other kind of problem is, is the location near a sea, or places where people are gathering fruit, or a pond where people are bathing, or dyeing fabric. There are all these people coming in all the time to distract you, and it's a member of the opposite sex might be there, and that's very distracting. And another kind of problem is the presence of incompatible persons. That seems to be mostly people who don't support what you're doing, it's like putting you down, but that isn't helpful. And the last one that they talk about is the lack of good friends, where it is not possible to find a good friend as a teacher. So any of these conditions of presence is considered unfavorable. And then there are the five factors of a resting place,

[51:01]

and mostly those are the friends that are being quiet, and not being too hot or too cold, and also they feel it's very important to have older monks there, who are very well-read in the scriptures and the practice of Vinaya. When they're asked questions, they really try to answer them fully. Then the lesser impediments. These have to do with actual, like how you take care of your clothing and everything in your room, like if there's a chair that's broken or some stain on it or something, you have to completely take care of that before you try to do a jhana. Or your clothing, you should mend all your clothing, you should clean your body, your fingernails, everything. It's like a very thorough cleaning and mending. Then there are eight ksinas, which are like, sometimes it's translated as totality.

[52:04]

It's like a way of entering the jhana, the subject of meditation. And there are earth, water, fire, air, and the colors are blue, yellow, red, and white. Sometimes people, it says if someone has a lot of merit or experience in meditating, they'll spontaneously be drawn to one of the ksinas. Like there was one example of a monk who was on a boat going to India and he looked at the ocean and he just went right into the water of the ksina. And sometimes someone will see a fire and it just happens, you know. But if the person hasn't had so much experience or didn't have so much merit, then they have to find a way to concentrate on one of these ksinas. And so the teacher has to know the student

[53:09]

and know what the student's temperament is and how the student can learn and then ask the student to work with one of the ksinas. And the ksina that they talk about, they talk about one, the earth ksina, really thoroughly, and then the rest of them they kind of say, oh, it's like the earth one, it's like this and that. So with the earth ksina, and some people have like booked it on cloud field or something, but for someone who has to make their own, you take some clay and make a small disk about four inches in diameter. And one of the troubles with the first four ksinas, like earth and air and water, is that it's easy to confuse them with the colors. So you have to be careful to get a clay that isn't, it should be sort of a light red, otherwise it's very easy to get it,

[54:12]

but you don't have a real, I guess it's just too easy to confuse it with something else. And so you make this disk, and you put it on a frame, you get a piece of cloth and you put it on a piece of cloth, and then there are sticks in the ground. Then you sweep the whole place thoroughly and go for a bath. This is somewhere, you set up this place outside of the monastery, and you put screens around it, or in some way, it's not like other people can observe what you're doing, but you're near where you live, this place that you've cleaned up and taken care of, and you're also near other monks, but when you're doing the actual ksina part, you're on your own. So you sweep, after you've prepared the ksina, you sweep the place and you go for a bath. And then when you come back, you have to sit in a chair, which is a certain height from the ground,

[55:14]

they usually put it in a certain distance from the ksina. So it's all very specific, and it's said if it's too high, you have to bend over to see it, and if the chair is too low, you may need to turn. The next step is to encourage yourself, and it says you should review the dangers of sense desire. And just think about the Buddhas, and say that what you're doing is what they did to you. One translation says, by this method, I shall become a partaker of the sweet blessings of isolation. Another translation says, you'll come to know the safety of the bliss of seclusion. So it's some kind of, like you're trying to make some kind of vow, or encourage yourself to make some effort. They say the eyes should be, if they're open too wide, they'll ache,

[56:19]

and if they're open too little, you can't see the circle very clearly, and your thoughts become very sluggish. The next part is you start to name the casino that you're concentrating on. You say the name, like Earth, Earth, and then after a while, you can start opening and shutting your eyes. When you shut your eyes, you see if you can see the casino clearly. And when you can see it very clearly, and very exactly, that part is called the learning sign. It's the first stage. When you can see it with your eyes shut. Yes. When that happens, you should go back to the house where you're staying. But they say that you should have your sandals and your walking stick handy, because sometimes you'll get into this first stage, where you have the learning sign, and you go back to your house, and something will happen, some kind of disturbance, or you'll run into somebody who will distract you.

[57:20]

And so you should be able to easily go back to see your casino, and start to get refreshed. Bennett talked about the other kinds of casinos, like water, when people sometimes see it. So when you have the learning sign, which is the way you see it, or you can see it clearly when your eyes are closed, you go back, separate yourself from the casino, and go back and continue meditating. And the next stage is the learning sign, which turns into what they call the counterpart sign. And I'm just going to read this part to describe how it looks when it changes.

[58:26]

It appears as if breaking out from a learning sign, more purified, like the moon's tips coming out from behind a cloud, like cranes against a thundercloud. But it has neither color nor shape. It goes beyond the sensory description, because at the point at which the sign changes, the person is no longer involved in ideas of form and color. And each of the casinos, like water... So what happens when there's water, there's a monk who's on a boat, and he saw the ocean, and he immediately got into the learning sign, and into the counterpart sign, just from seeing the ocean, because he had some store of merit. Like, he didn't have to go through it, he just saw the ocean and threw it right into the camera. So with water, sometimes people experience this spontaneously,

[59:31]

with the pool, or the lagoon, or the lake. And again, with water, they're quite clear that you shouldn't identify the color, because that will confuse it with the other color casinos. And with the water, you take the water and pour it through a cloth, like a teacup, and put it in a bowl, and then you pretty much treat it the same way you treat the earth. And the learning sign for water is moving, but when it changes into the counterpart sign, it's very still, like a crystal. On a fire one, people get that spontaneously, because they're looking at a lamp flame. And the way to set up a casino for that, is to make a fire, and there's certain ways to make a fire, to make the tension. And then, you take a mat, or a piece of cloth, and hang it in front of the fire, and cut a circle, the same width as the bowl for the water,

[60:32]

and a disc of clay, or whatever it's like. And a circle helps you focus on just the fire, so you don't get into the smoke, or into the wood. And also, in this one, the learning sign seems to be moving, and when it gets to the counterpart sign, it's completely still, just like a red cloth set in state, or like a gold pan. For air, people get into that one by noticing sugarcane tops moving in the wind, or trees, or hair moving. And this one, it's sort of interesting, because they don't focus it so much, it's like you just become aware of something. You sit still, and you feel the movement of the air around you. And again, the learning sign, it has some movement in it, like a swirl of hot steam, and the counterpart sign is completely quiet.

[61:37]

See, roots. Sometimes people see that in a flower, or in a cloth, and if you're going to make your own kitchen report, you take blue lotus, or morning glory, and you put them on a clean-covered tray, or a very shallow basket, and you do it in such a way that the stems and the stems are covered, so all you can see is blue. And yellow, red, and white are about, they don't say much about the learning sign, about the changes, they just say you can do it with cloth, you can do it with colors. For red, they say you can do it with jasmine, and then with white, for them, it's like you see the jasmine, and then when it changes, it's the counterpart sign, so it's still like this, but I'm going to... Okay, do you have,

[62:47]

does anybody have the further stages of your job, after the preparatory image, of the scene, and then the learning sign, and kind of the signs? Okay, so the, the one that's illustrated here in the book is the Earth, Earth device, the Earth artificer, which is the Earth device, which, and, so the first thing is, I recall, the preparatory image, what was it called, what did you call it? Oh. What? Learning sign. Learning sign. Well, they also, in this one, they call it mental reflex. This is when you,

[63:51]

this is you prepare the bit, and you get it all set up, and you start looking at it. Okay. And then, next one is the learning, learning sign, or, acquired, mood. And then there's a, after, image or kind of part of it. So, this one is, you can see it,

[64:52]

through the eyes closed. And then, this one is described as, what is it, pure or without stirrings, or? More for things, or? Pure. Pure. Pure. Still. Quiet. There's no, there's no deep fact anymore. There's no blemishes. It's not, it's not all obscured. It's not fuzzy or hazy, or. Okay.

[65:56]

Now, at this point, if you continue, you enter what's called the neighborhood concentration. Concentration is, upachara, upachara samadhi. And this, this, upachara, upa, upachara, that's the normal, this is the English one. This is upachara, upachara. It means neighborhood, and it's called neighborhood samadhi,

[66:59]

because this one is in the neighborhood of the, of the, of the, what's called ecstatic samadhi. Or, apana samadhi. It says that in the, the neighborhood concentration, all sense activity is suspended. There's no more seeing and hearing. There's no perception of bodily impression again. And, the hindrance is a temporary impediment.

[68:02]

We'll get to that too. And it says, eventually, he gains ecstatic concentration. And that's followed by a moment of, it's called, vertra, vertrabo, vertrabo. And this vertrabo is an important term. It means, it gives the kama lineage, or, you've been going along for a long time in the kamabhachara, right? And how do you ever get out of that? And, there's one moment when you, which finally, makes it break from the kamabhachara, vertrabo. And, and then, the next moment is, actual jhana. These,

[69:11]

these two samadhis are not considered the jhana. I don't think so. What do you say about the, vertrabo? Huh? What do you say about the vertrabo? It's the moment when you, it's the first moment which is finally, not kamabhachara. So it's the moment which, breaks the, breaks from the kamabhachara. So it's kind of like a moment of insight. Or the way it's, let's see. Okay. Well, this,

[70:37]

and it's sort of, so, this is the first moment, it's not, it's not kamabhachara here, and it also, has a function then of, then, switching the consciousness over to jhana, the other realm. So, you can't, it's not, there's always this kind of, there's a moment, which breaks out to one, and then, allows you to turn to the other. You don't just go from one to the other, in the kamabhachara of the jhana. Same is true, like you don't go from unwholesome states, directly to wholesome states. There's a moment which is neutral. I don't know. I'm going to pick up this, and, see what's here. Ask me, please. Here we are. Oh,

[71:42]

excuse me, I'm going to take that. According to this book, the, doshabhu comes before the apana. According to the, timing of abhidhamma, this doshabhu comes in here, which gets you from the neighborhood, to the ecstatic, position. And it says, there's a part in here later on, that talks about, progress being painful, and intuition sluggish, or progress is quick, and intuition is quick. And there's, and there's, there's, there's fast or slow progress, or painful or swift progress, and then there's painful or swift intuition. And, from, from when you start, up to here,

[72:44]

is what progress is. And then, this is the moment of insight, is required, to go from here to here. So it's sometimes, depending on, again depending on who you are, you know, various people, some people can make quick progress, but then their intuition is slow, in occurrence, so they can hang around the neighborhood for a long time, and never make it through the door or something. And other times, or then, other times, their progress may be very painful and slow, and all of this, but when they get to here, they go, they go, intuition may be quicker, they may be both too slow, and both too quick. And that comes up later, we won't actually talk too much about that, but that's what, when it says progress, that's from the initial, decision, to practices, up to, neighborhood concentration.

[73:45]

And then, just go to taboo, it's like a moment of insight. Okay. Okay. also about Jonah, this Jonah's here, sitting in the, there's two kinds of Jonah's, and, one Jonah, examines, close to the object, or examines close to the containers. And the other kind of Jonah, examines characteristic marks, which are, ill, no self, and impermanence. And, that's the Jonah, the Jonah which examines the characteristic marks, is,

[74:46]

the Jonah of the higher ideal, the Bhogatara. Which we'll study in two, in, we'll, have one class in, in two weeks. That begins over, Would you want us to try again? You found it, what? It begins over on page 82. Okay. Let's do, Let's try this one. Essentially, brothers, there's two kinds of Jonah's. One is, and two,

[75:53]

the other kind of, the other Jonah, examines, the characteristic marks. Which following, excuse me, following your breath, what would that be? Following your breath, comes under the Erechthymia. Oh, that's okay. as sometimes, it can be, it can be Erechthymia. Erechthymia. Erechthymia. Sometimes, it might also be included in the space, because, there's never a list of chance, you might understand, which includes space, do you? Yeah, there's a lot, there's lots of them this year, here, there are, a pink nebula. Oh, yeah. They say, there's a galaxy. Uh-huh. There's lots of, oh, you think about your body, there's, there's another kind of, Right, that's in there too, yeah. Oh, there? Yeah. The characteristic marks,

[76:56]

you mean three marks? Yeah, I think there's three marks, uh, yeah. So, this kind of Jonah, is the one we're doing now, which produces trance, and, uh, this kind of thing here, this is Jonah, the, uh, the locatara, uh, which produces, uh, which produces the, uh, the path, and this, uh, this one is trance, and this one's, uh, this, this Jonah, this Jonah, this Jonah characteristic marks, which produce the path, or path, Jonah characteristic paths. So, those are, number two is,

[77:59]

that's a, uh, locatara, and that's number, that's number one, that's kind of trauma. These are, these are rupa, rupa, and, uh, rupa, rupa, rupa, and, uh, that's the first, uh, that's the first and second. Uh, well, these sort of go, sort of, these ones go in order, and, and this is, and this, and this starts with, the object, and then, uh, this Jonah down here, produces the, uh, path, or, this, when,

[79:00]

when we study that other chapter, on the higher ideal, then, um, It says, the first one here, it says the first path, the twenty great methods, and the first of the twenty great methods is called rapid meditation, jhāna, and so that's the second kind of jhāna, there's other ways to enter the path or proceed on the path, but the first one, which, like the irukasena, the first one is listed here on the transcript, on the jhāna, and here's the irukasena, the first one under the higher ideal is jhāna, here is the jhāna, [...]

[80:20]

jhāna, [...] j jhāna, [...] j

[81:22]

jhāna, [...] jhāna. See, the thing, the path, the path that makes the great difference is in the path, when you get on the path and you start, you're actually, and that again includes a moment of good talking, of insight, and then you're on the path, next moment is, path arises. It says, the moment of good talk which says, path arises, and next moment the path arises. But, and then, Where am I? Oh, so, once the path, when the path arises, it says, it makes it very clear, that that path arises and it takes, it dismantles karma, it takes down karma.

[82:52]

It says, it's like this one carpenter's coming along, putting up the bricks, and somebody's coming along behind him, taking him down. And that's what the path is, it takes down, it takes away karma. And, these transcendent here do not take away karma. They're producing karma, and they're produced by karma. And they produce more karma, and if you do this, it's pretty good karma. It's better than having unwholesome karma. You're doing unwholesome things, and getting unwholesome karma. There's like, it's still, it's still producing karma, and you can still, and there's five fetters. And there's a fetter, specifically, which is only overcome at the stage of arhatship. And the final, the final stage of the lokitara, arhatship, is, is, is the fetter of being attached to the fine material, or the rukupatara, or the trance. Being attached to trance is only overcome at the stage of arhatship. So you have to be, there's a problem, you see, about these trances.

[83:56]

You can get caught in them, and not, and then, and then you just spend all your time there, instead of going on to once return, then return to arhatship. There's even a chance that you'll get trapped into a hell realm? Well, eventually your good karma runs out. Although it may last a long time, and you can practice a new thing. But eventually your, your good karma would, you know, take a chance, because your good karma's gonna run out. Will you, will you keep producing good karma in this trance state? Maybe. Yeah, you'll be producing good karma as long as you're in the trance state. But, still, your past, you still, if you have some past bad karma, I mean, karma is said to, you know, take effect immediately. Future life, future lives, so you can still have some karma from the long time back that, that you're producing good karma in the trance state, but then that other, that other catches up with you. You see? And you haven't taken care of it yet, and then you, you go on some trials.

[85:00]

So there's only, there's only a certain, you only get a certain, you have a certain stock of merit, as it were, and that keeps you, you keep doing that for a while, and it's pretty good. Eventually, though, it may run out. So, both of these realms, I think, the, what's called fine material here, and immaterial, or lucrative material, and unlucrative material, they're, they're producing karma still. And you can get, you can get attached to them. And they're considered to be fetters in attachment to the lucrative, attachment to these trances is a fetter. And, which is only eliminated, that attachment is only eliminated with this digital attachment. Okay, why don't we talk about what this first jhana is now. Have you, do you want to say something about that? What the first jhana is?

[86:03]

Okay. One, one of the things that it says in the first jhana is that he is removed from sensuous appetite, and that's referring to getting rid of the five hindrances. And, well, and that goes back to the, the five factors of absorption, and how each of those affects the five hindrances. What happens to the five hindrances? What did you say? What happens to the five hindrances? Oh, well, the, the five hindrances are directly opposed to the first jhana, and in order for the first jhana, in order to be in the state of the first jhana, you have to get rid of the five hindrances. The first jhana.

[87:03]

Okay, so the five hindrances are, you know, sensual, sensual desire, concentration opposes sensual desire, joy opposes knowledge, and conception opposes torpor, peace opposes excitement, and dispersive thought opposes perplexity or delusion. We're going to do those in a moment. Go back to two. Sensual desire, ill will, and the third one is, I, I want to write down the hindrances there. Okay, total torpor or validity. Excitement and worry. That's one of them. And doubt or perplexity. Okay, and then, concentration.

[88:08]

These five hindrances are overcome by concentration, joy, and peace. Okay. The answer to this one is that initial apprehension is back up, right? Do you remember these five? These are the second five from the list. The second five are referred to as the factors of absorption. I don't know, is that a thing here, absorption? Absorption. I think it's absorption. This is absorption.

[89:10]

So, these five here are the five factors of absorption. The second five are on the list that we studied. You can see me, but I'll keep that to you. I said that if you've got these five hindrances, you're not going to get the job done. Yeah. The jhana itself, it says here, when that he may attain to the heavens and form, he cultivates the way thereto, and he cultivates the way thereto,

[90:13]

elude from sensuous appetites, elude from evil ideas, and so, by earth-gazing, enters into and abides in the first jhana. That means he enters into and abides in the ecstatic concentration. So, everything else has happened prior to this moment where he enters into and abides in the first jhana. Wherein conception works in thought discursive, which is born of solitude and full of joy and ease, then the contact of feeling, etc., etc., etc., down to the grasp of balance, which arises in him, or whatever other incorporeal, causally induced states that there are on that occasion. These are the states that are good. So, this first jhana has the same 56 factors, the same 56 dharmas as the first ultimate consciousness. Right? However, they're said to be subtler. They're said to be sublime.

[91:15]

They're said to be sublime in that the factors of absorption tend to intensify. Oh, yeah. All of the other states, everything else, they're intensified by the five factors of absorption. So, these five have been intensified. It's important to read this clearly, not presently. It's really subdued here. And it says, abode from. Purely abode from. And it says, born of solitude. That apparently refers to, specifically, the fact that you have some solitude in the five hindrances. It says that these five hindrances are

[92:19]

obstacles to mind and blind mental vision. And in their presence, it's not possible to reach upachara samadhi or apana samadhi. And they're unable to discern it pretty clearly. And then it says that sensuous desire is like water mixed with manifold colors. Ill will is like boiling water. Sloth and torpor are like water covered by moss. Restlessness is like water, agitated water whipped by the wind. And death is like turbid, muddy water. And in such kinds of water, you don't get a very good reflection. And just as that's the case with those kinds of water, in the five hindrances in there, you can't discern so clearly one's own benefit or the benefit of others, one's benefit of both. You lose your fine sense of discerning. One second.

[93:24]

Okay, what's next? All right, in the next reading, well, this isn't going right in order, but... It says, why is it that you hear on the moral consciousness of the realm of rupa, or attenuated matter, initiated by the personal agent, and not by the taking of the conscious state of awareness, as it is in the sensuous realm. And it says, because it is accomplished by practice. It also says, it does not arise, it says, jnana does not arise without progressive practice. And practice arises when there is a person who is in it. Thank you. The person who attains his jnana. But that's on a conventional basis.

[94:32]

It's not possible to have a jnana machine. I thought that what they meant by that was, they were talking about volition when they said practice. They're doing the same thing. That there's some volition involved, that volition has a kind of... Yeah. This jnana, this is the only jnana that arises with initial and sustained application of mind. And it says that initial and sustained application reveals the determined results of each individual experience. What is the determined result? That they reveal what the results are of each experience by having sattva and dharma.

[95:33]

It says that as a tree is found with flowers and fruits, so the first jnana occurs with with the sting and with the tara and they're always there in the first jnana. And of course, in the second jnana, they're they're suppressed. And in the third jnana, they're completely absent. Thank you. It says that in the first jnana, you're exercising more choice or whatever. You're having to sort of continue to apply your mind or something. Yeah, constantly.

[96:45]

In the first jnana, there's still some there's still some kind of thinking or application of mind to the activity. You still have to keep starting the process. You still have to keep doing it, yeah. So that's why by the second one the second jnana, there's no dhitaka or dhitara. And you don't get any chakras. You get five. But you can see that as long as you're still having to do that to apply yourself or to keep applying yourself and so on, that's something extra. So in the second jnana, that's something extra. In the first jnana there's the five factors, all five factors are present. When you're done with that

[97:54]

now you can tell me why I go to the next jnana. Why do you get five? How do you get that five? There's two systems. There's the four jnanas and there's the five jnanas. And in the four jnana system, you've got the same guy to do the four jnana system as this. So the way, within the jnana system, you get second one, you get and then third one in within the jnana system, you get Oh, I see. Actually, the chakras should drop out together. Yeah, in the system of the four jnanas the chakras and the chakras go together, so in the system of five it goes one, two, three, and then the four forces get in.

[98:55]

You see? In the four-fold system, the chakras and the chakras both go together. So there's the second jnana. That's what we're doing now. And the second jnana is this and and the third jnana is and and the fourth one is this What's that on the second? The map? There's another one in front of you.

[100:00]

Oh, that's a... There's a wonderful story later on in the Antasalami where it says that there's this there's this young fellow and he's a pretty sharp fellow but he's fallen into drink and he's drinking all the time. And one day in a wine shop they sort of, I don't know, they take his clothes and they put some straw mats on him or something and they haul him off to some place and some old somebody sees him or some what do you call them? You know, a soothsayer or something. A prophet. Yeah, a prophet sees him and says, this man is going to be a benefit to his people.

[101:02]

And so they haul him off and they take the four men four strong men hold down his arms and his legs and then somebody shampoos his feet and then they get somebody else to wave this fan in his face and they ask him if he's playing the lute and in this way they manage to keep him from the drink you know, from getting drunk because they're holding him down and they're shampooing his feet and they're playing this music and waving this fan in his face so he can't fall into drink. And so all those things are the those are the, you know, the five Vittaka and Vichara are these these four strong men who hold down their arms and legs after a while he comes to you know, he sort of wakes up from his stupor and he says, you know, come on you know, this is getting me down you know, to have you holding down my arms and legs really should just let go so they let go of his arms and legs and then they still are shampooing his feet and playing the music and waving the fan and stuff

[102:04]

and he goes back to sleep and he's and then after a while he wakes up and he says you know, come on now I'm getting tired of you shampooing my feet I'm getting tired of all that music and I'm getting tired of the fan you know, that wind in my face you know, cut it out so that's what happens to Siddhi and Sukha is the music and the shampooing the feet and the fan so then there's just concentration left and then he realizes his true condition or something and goes off to sleep so that's the story given about to explain how these these things the fact that certain start out as being helpful and you need them to keep yourself from getting involved in the five hindrances but then after a while they're a chain or a burden on themselves you have to go on sort of keeping yourself or holding yourself to that grind

[103:06]

or being weighted down or you know having this constant wind in your face which for a while was soothing but you know, it's just there all the time you get so tired of it so that's what happens here and you end up having to risk with that concentration and that anyway, why don't we go on now and you can talk I don't know do you want to talk more about the first channel or the second channel and then I think you can do you have mostly about the third and fourth channel more or I know you won't I won't well if you want to say something now we can go say some more about the first channel if you want or can you talk about the second channel we have

[104:07]

can we talk about the second channel we sort of went through quickly here what happens to the factors of absorption through the first four channels but if we want we can talk more now about what distinguishes the second channel and how it's different from the first how it's typically different from the first thank you I've quoted Angela Krupa Dalai Lama full of joy and ease set free from the working of conception and the thought discursive the mind goes calm and sure this shows that since there's no the chakra tranquility or faith becomes strong and exalts the mind

[105:08]

which is another word for concentration it exalts the mind in the associated states there's still PT and Sutra present however but in the third channel this this passion for joy wanes and he becomes disinterested and by being disinterested he can see impartially and this implies that it's discriminatory knowledge by being disinterested even in the wonderful rest of the third channel he becomes he gains equanimity and by being mindful and self-possessed

[106:09]

he experiences that ease this shows how through mindfulness and clarity of consciousness he has no longing for bliss thank you the Atasalami says beings long for happiness and the blissful ease of the third channel is exceedingly sweet that which there is no greater bliss but if one is mindful you can overcome this because if you take this bliss as a goal in itself then you've never reached the final goal of enlightenment and by renouncing this bliss anyway by renouncing this you actually experience it

[107:13]

the Buddha Goswami says that this bliss is so subtle that you may not even be aware of it I remember once during the last ashram I was sitting in between you and somebody else it just seemed like an ordinary thousandth thing but I remember afterwards that there was a I remember I mean I realized afterwards that I experienced this feeling but it was interesting because I didn't realize that it was actually a thing the fourth jhana is mostly described in negative terms because it's probably pretty hard

[108:24]

to find it let's go back I'd like to go through this a little more a little more slowly we have a kind of I think a general picture of the four and some idea now about how joy or you know how thinking or joy or ease or something having some interest in that is a distraction is a distraction from concentration being fully concentrated so maybe we can go back now let's go back to the second jhana now and let's the second jhana in this system

[109:27]

it has you see it's so in this one there's no there's no longer the disturbing thinking which is said to which means that the concentration here is this jhana is said to be born of concentration or this concentration is said to rise up with the chakra which are waiting to bring it down when that thinking is gone doesn't the concentration rises up I think it's Gandhi who says well and also that even the remaining states

[110:27]

the chakra are gone even the remaining states are different from the first jhana you mean the other jhana oh I know what you mean it's concentration because the mental factors of the first jhana are not present in this one but the ones that are present are different ok so the other the first jhana remember had the same 56 dharmas present in it as the first awesome state but they're different because the five factors of absorption are particularly strong and there's been some practice and cultivation or development of through that series of steps as it were taken to the jhana in the second jhana then

[111:28]

are there 54 dharmas present yeah I think there's 54 is there any other change no there's not there's 53 that they're just suppressed well I don't know I think in here they're not here in the dharma sanghanaya I don't know where it says they're just suppressed because in here in the second jhana they're not listed it says the jhana is threefold lax conception and discursive thinking and the path is fourfold the lax right intention the right intention is a development or is synonymous with initial application there's also no right intention in the second jhana except three they become more clear because

[112:28]

the tapa returns the other dharmas become more clear is it in the lax thinking or well Gandhiji says that the intellectual thought that is in the emotional elements are actually one thing and by getting rid of the intellectual aspects of the time in the tapa it's like you don't really get rid of them it's a relationship he says although the intellectual aspects and emotional aspects can be distinguished from each other they essentially operate together the new character is never one or the other but both

[113:29]

that's what he calls individual clarity he calls his new character individual clarity is that just in the second jhana yeah also because the tapa and the chara are no longer present it's just painted strong which which means that it brings out tranquility because it's assured no longer overgrown base is strong and so these two together well tranquility is a mark of the second jhana so this jhana

[114:34]

is marked by some more developed tranquility due to strong base and concentration allows this base to become quite strong exalted concentration exalted exalted exalted this jhana is quite clear whatever the first jhana is like this jhana still has titi and sukha right one is interest in an object and the other is enjoyment of an object again the other dharmas are

[115:38]

somewhat different going to the concentrated tranquility base is concentrated exalted concentration exalted yesterday jhanas were born yeah there's no rupa jhanas in the jhaya state what? there's no rupa jhanas in any of these jhanas jhitas jhanas

[116:41]

jhanas [...] when they're suppressed they're not there but there's a suppression going on

[117:43]

this may clarify I think maybe this might clarify, Brutiglossi says that in the access moment they're still there, they're suppressed, but in the actual genre itself it's absent. I don't know what exactly he means by access moment. Access is the name of the concentration, which is the moment before. Do we know enough to know what access is? Do we know what all these terms are? Yeah, you should know what all the terms are now. Which one's section is it? Are you on page 40? 49. 49? You mean you're on page 30 now? Oh, that's wrong. 47? You want to do it a second time? Yeah, a second time. The skandhas are four, right? That's right, and the rupa is four.

[118:56]

Right. The spheres are two. That's the... The material? No, the spheres are two. That's the manayatana and the dharmayatana. Okay. Sometimes you can take the special skandhas. No, it's the manayatana and the dharmayatana. You want to know the elements of two? That's the manadhatu and the... The elements of two... The spheres? The manayatana and the dharmayatana. What happened? I told you, you could have ate the spheres. You know that there's five skandhas?

[119:56]

And there's twelve manayatanas? And this is six sense organs and six sense objects. Right? And the two that are present in this state are the mind organ, namely citta, and everything else that's present in this state is mind objects. Mind objects, namely chakras. And these mind objects, in this case, include fifty-six dharmas. The other dharmas present here are mind objects. Okay? Next one is the eighteen dhatus. Now, why does it say that...

[121:00]

It says the dhatus here, the elements are two. That's what refers to dhatus. And where are the two dhatus? It's the same two again. It's the mind dhatu. And the mind dhatu, or manadhatu, manadhatu, is the same as manabhinyana dhatu. And then there's the dharmadhatu. That's mind and manadhatu again. And then there's a third one in this here, which is mind consciousness, right? The dhatus have mind, organ, eye object, and eye consciousness. So this is mind, organ, mind object, and mind consciousness, only mind consciousness is the same as mind, organ. So it says they're just two. Now, next one. The nutriments are three. Does anybody know what the three nutriments are?

[122:04]

No. No. Well, no. We skipped the nutriments. That's produced corporeality. Huh? Nutriments are produced corporeality. Produced corporeality? What are the three of them? What are the three corporealities that are produced? Nutriments produce corporealities. I can remember two of them. One of them is karma. I think it might be karma. And one of them, which is for physical, and then there's diphtheria, and then there's Alzheimer's. I had already saved that.

[123:26]

Oh, here it is. Oh, the other one is context. Remember context? I have quite a lot of them. So this is three nutriments. And they're nutriments because this pasta feeds feelings. You know, it feeds feelings and so on. It feeds everything. It feeds a whole bunch of stuff, right? It feeds the soul, all the dharmas. And karma, of course, feeds vijnana, and the so-called changing feeds consciousness. And consciousness feeds, oh, let's see what this says specifically. Specifically, pasta is the condition for the three kinds of feelings. Karma feeds rebirth, and vijnana or consciousness feeds mind and body.

[124:28]

And actually, you know, a lot of other things are said to feed. However, these three are supposed to be much better at it than most other things. We're really talking about just the three major terms or areas that we... Huh? The three major terms or areas that really feed the whole process. Those are the three main ones, yeah. And there's a fourth one, which isn't listed here, but there's a fourth nutriment, which is material food. But you see, that's not in corporeal, so it's not listed here. There's only three nutriments in the state of consciousness. There's actually four nutriments? There's actually four nutriments, but there's only three of them here. The faculties are eight. You know the eight faculties, right? The eight faculties... You know the faculties? There's five spiritual faculties, right? Remember the five spiritual faculties?

[125:35]

Those are the first five. Those are the first five. Faith, Energy, Mindfulness, Concentration, Wisdom, right? Then the next three are Mind, Mono, Monindria, and then Samanasindria, and Purindria, right? Okay, so there's eight of those. The jhana is threefold. That means out of the five... There's no longer five factors of absorption. There's only three factors of absorption. Namely, there's no conception or applied thinking. Then the path is fourfold. It lacks right intention, plus it lacks the three, right action, right speech, and right livelihood, which are lacking in the first wholesome state anyway. The powers are seven. Well, you all know what the powers are. Those are the balas. The causes are three. That's the roots. Non-greed, non-hate, non-delusion.

[126:38]

I think. Contact counts as a single factor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay? What did you say about the two spheres and the two elements? What are they? That's the ayatana and the bhakti. And it's the mind ayatana and mind-object ayatana, and mind-object and dharma-object. That's the mental organ and then objects of mind. Do you remember those classifications? The ayatana and dharma-object classifications? Only the mental ones are present here. The spheres are the ayatana. The spheres are the ayatana and the elements are the bhakti. Okay, now on to the third genre.

[127:43]

Unless they contact counts as a single factor, are they going to go back into that? Are they going to go through? That's all there is to it. All right? Thank you. Now, the third genre. Do you all know that story about the old, old monk and there were these young monks who, this old monk was married to a monk and these young monks were teasing him. And they had a ball and they told him, Listen, old man, you come over and you sit down in this corner here

[128:46]

and we're going to bounce this ball off your head and when we bounce the ball off your head you're going to attain the first genre, all right? He sat down in the corner and they bounced the ball off his head and sure enough he attained the first genre. And he didn't sit down, he didn't tell him. And then they said, Okay, now you go and sit down in this other corner over here and we're going to bounce the ball off your head and you'll attain the second genre, okay? And they're all laughing, yuck, yuck, yuck. This poor old guy is sure. And so sure enough they bounced the ball off his head and in the second corner he attained the second genre. And then they put him down again and he attained the third genre. And then he went right through all the genres and everything and his kids bouncing the ball off of his head. That must have been, he must have, even though, you know, he hadn't particularly attained any of the genres previously, he must have, you know, as Anne was saying, by that point he would have had a career in Samara. Okay, what distinguishes the third genre?

[129:49]

The third genre, of course, is only two factors of absorption. It's no longer sensitivity or joy or interest. Yes. Yes. Very interested. Okay. Okay. It's ten times a bit different. Uh-huh. Maybe we should read this, okay?

[131:00]

The third time. When, that he may attain to the heavens of porn, some page for you, he cultivates the way thereto, and further, through the waning of all passion for joy, holds himself unbiased the while, mindful and self-possessed. That's also, self-possessed isn't such a good word there, actually. That's mindful and comprehending. So, holds himself unbiased, mindful and comprehending, the experiences in his sense consciousness, that is, whereof the noble ones declare, he that is unbiased and watchful dwelleth at ease. And so, by earth-gazing, enters into and abides in the third genre. Then, the contact, the feeling, perception, thinking, thought, ease, self-collectedness, the faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom, ideation, happiness and vitality,

[132:04]

right views, right endeavors, et cetera, and so forth, through the grasp and the balance that arises. These or whatever other incorporeal, causally induced states that there are on that occasion, these are the states that are good. All right. So, what seems to distinguish this, is this waning of passion for joy, that is, no longer seeking for joy. And this is said to promote some unbiased or economic

[133:12]

and and this means that Surya is even stronger. There's no longer, no passion for joy, which means it is more unbiased. Because of that, he experiences this great ease, he who is in different dwelleth at ease. He may not actually be aware of it. He may not be aware of it. That's it. That's it. I think we're losing track of time. We're trying to talk, but we're losing it. I think we're losing it.

[135:24]

All right. [...] Anyway, I think I will continue this class next time and say more about Jhana and Lokantara and Unwholesome and Indeterminate and so on. And Rupa, the form, Kshatriya form, and so on. I hope it's been useful. It's really nice to see all of you.

[136:33]

I think there's a fear that people who've taken the first part of this could take the second part. Maybe a few people, if they're really dumb and wholesome, they could continue without having taken the first part. If they have the fear that they would really be confused for a while. I mean, we're not going to... Well, we're just going to touch on Lokantara next week, but we won't have done anything on the chapter on Rupa or Indeterminate state. And we want to talk about the... all the... the ones down at the bottom of the chart, all the specific themes, that one in particular. Are we... Are we going to get to the 17th chapter? Unless we have an extra class. Why, is that what you're saying? I guess we'd better get to the 17th chapter.

[137:37]

Maybe we shouldn't get to that. Are you ready to do that tonight? No. Huh? Okay, well, next week. It's the last chapter. You have to do it next week. Oh, okay. All right, next week is... Well, we haven't decided exactly when we are going to do it, so... There's a chance it'll be on Tuesday night. In which case, we might change tonight. Would you all be able to come on, like, say, Monday night? We can't do Monday night. So we might... That might come up. We can't do Monday night. It may be easier to change our class, then, like, to start on Wednesday, so it's a Wednesday night, actually. Couldn't we just declare it full moon Monday on Monday? It doesn't fall that way, though.

[138:41]

Mm-hmm. Full moon doesn't fall that way, in fact, we can actually do full moon on Wednesday. All right. We could declare it to be on Monday, but... Okay, tonight we're doing... Tonight we're doing bad... bad states of consciousness. Um... So who's... Who's been sitting in bad states of consciousness? I have. David? Anybody else? Do we have any other resident experts on bad states? Have you... Have you... Have you... Have you been sitting for a paper? Have you been sitting for a paper? Uh, yeah.

[139:43]

I've been trying to... Wait. What? Time. Uh, time? Yeah. Time in the Abhidharma? Yeah. Do you like it early? Huh? Would you like it early? What? The paper. Because I think you can see it right now. But I'd like it early. It was due last week. The paper should do that, uh... I don't know. I didn't get any papers last week, so... You're the first one. Sorry. All right.

[141:07]

Do you want to start, Tom? Sure. Um, this is going to be a little rough because I don't have time to review. I mean, I don't have time to go over it and make, like, a presentation. Um, this is, uh, Aka Kusala. Um, uh, Karmically Unwholesome States of Consciousness. And, uh... These are also... These are, uh... Tadamatangani called these Bad States of Consciousness. And, uh, Dattasalini called them Immoral. And, uh, Govinda Navagantra called them Unhealthy. And, uh, Yudhisthiramana called them Unhealthy. So everyone kind of, in varying degrees, you know, how they are related according to their titles. So, uh, first off, um...

[142:20]

I was... Actually, just before class, I was trying to give an overall picture because everyone had been doing it specifically, and I didn't do very well. But I wanted to figure out what the main reasons are that it's called bad. But, uh, I didn't get much except, uh, the fact that it's rooted... All the states of consciousness in this category are rooted in greed, hate, and delusion. They're not all rooted in all of them. No, no. Greed, hate, or delusion. Uh, and the way Govinda terms it, uh, he says, Every thought and act connected to the state of consciousness creates suffering. Also, uh, definitely, you're reborn... And I read somewhere that you'd probably be reborn in a lower life form, but I couldn't...

[143:21]

I went back to try to find out more about it, but I couldn't find it. Also, it's, uh, incompatible with spiritual development because it's infected with greed, hate, and delusion. So you can't attain enlightenment or liberation... And it's tied to the world of sensuous relatedness, where likes and dislikes and unwarranted assumptions occupy the arena most of the time. And, uh, associated with attenuatedness and conceitedness is another reason it would be called bad or unwholesome. But, on looking into that, I noticed that only four of twelve states are associated with attenuatedness. And conceitedness, in the Buddhist dictionary it says, it's called mana. And conceit only vanishes completely at the entrance of our house here. So...

[144:21]

You can be in some fairly good states, I guess, if you're greater than our house, but you still have to be conceited. Well, that's the, uh, potential for conceit. Conceit. The potential for conceit. In other words, in our house, the potential for conceit is not there. It's not just conceitedness there, there's a potential for it. It's just never going to come up again. That's what it means for our house to eliminate it. Whereas, uh, I think otherwise conceit, we could say that if conceit is present, probably conceit is only present in the bad states. Actually. So, the potential for having bad states. The potential for having particular kinds of bad states is especially eliminated in the past. So, there's no potential for it. In Akusala, there's 12 bad thoughts.

[145:27]

And all of these, uh... Do you all get that? What is it? Is it 12 bad thoughts? Actually, that means that there's 12, uh... There's 12, uh, states. Or, uh, citta. There's 12... There's 12 consciousnesses. So, like, we talked... We talked in the wholesome... The wholesome realm in Kamabhachara, there was eight. The first one, and then... That we studied at great length, and then two through eight, which had variations in whether they were prompted and unprompted or joyful or different thoughts. So, in unwholesome, there's 12. Or, like, in the jhanas, there was four jhanas. So, here, in unwholesome, there's 12 citta. 12 different types of unwholesome states. And all of these states, if I understand correctly,

[146:34]

have no other sphere of existence save the sensuous universe. So, the first one, which is sort of like the first one in the karmically wholesome state, we'll go through, like, all the dharmas one by one, and then after that, there's just minor variations on the theme. A bad thought, accompanied by happiness, associated with views and opinions, not prompted by a conscious motive. Associated with opinions, and not prompted. Okay.

[147:40]

Where it says, associated with views and opinions, it automatically means that these are wrong views. A view and an opinion is a wrong view, due to four reasons. One is hearing of evil doctrine, that is, any doctrines associated with erroneous views, that is, in the doctrinal sense, doesn't follow the Buddhist doctrine. The second is companionship with friends who have failed in the true doctrine. The third is desire not to see Aryans. This means that you don't want to associate with Buddhism. And fourth is unsystematic thought, that is, unskillfulness in the application of mindfulness, or the absence of discipline, or addiction to sexuality.

[148:45]

Are these all wrong views? No, this is the reason that you come by an opinion, and an opinion is a wrong view. This is how it comes about. What was number three again? The desire to not see Aryans, or that is, you don't want to... the desire not to associate with Buddhists or good people. Also in Govinda's defined opinion is to not see things in their true nature, to have an opinion. Or that is, cognizing or knowing something in the framework of a pre-established idea. So it sort of seems to me that you have to be pretty close to enlightenment in that life already to not have an opinion. Something without...

[149:55]

Okay. So... I didn't actually get anything on the fact that it's accompanied by happiness. Except that joy is one of the dharmas. And now that we've been looking at this, I think that dharma is constituted. This is the... This first one is the... The theory is that... The theory has emerged that our present here are greedy. The first eight are the very five rooted in greed. And the next two are rather... This is the person here who is joyfully greedy. Joyfully. Joyfully. You have it in you. And you're very happy to be indulging in that. But greed can also be translated as cupidity.

[151:09]

And... Can... Greed isn't the only way that... It's just attachment, actually. And the desire to continue attachment. Oh, well that's also... Yeah, also here in Dharmasangani it's translated as lust. Can I shut the computer down for a second? Yeah. Okay. The first five are identical with... The whole system of consciousness. Asa and Vijnana and Samadhi and Satyam and Arunachala. They're identical. No difference. And the first three... Not the first three, but three of the five absorption factors are the same. That is, discursive thought, Tara, joy, fatigue, ease, sukha.

[152:17]

They're identical. And the faculty of ideation, the faculty of happiness, and the faculty of vitality are all the same. And I think that's always the same. And we have a certain number of Dharmas which don't appear at all. That appear in the wholesome state, but don't appear at all in the unwholesome state. And those are faculty of faith, faculty of mindfulness, faculty of wisdom, and then again, right mindfulness, and the power of faith, and the power of mindfulness. At this point, I noticed that they didn't say anything about absence of hate or hate. Neither of those were said to be there or not to be there.

[153:19]

But in a later... In this first Dharma moment, there's neither hate nor malice. But later in another thought, consciousness, hate, malice... But in this... I'll be honest with you here. It's considered that greed and hate don't appear in the same moment. So if you're lusting or attached to something, you're not involved in hating it. Or it's not considered that way. It's called... What about if you hate somebody else because you're lusting to put their name or something? Well, yeah, but you don't get involved at the same time. Especially with Krishna here, which is accompanied by happiness. One is gradually... gradually... clinging to something.

[154:21]

It's not... Okay, faith. It says faith... I guess this is in other Slovenian words as well. Can't a person have faith in false opinions or faith in wrong teachers? It says faith in false opinions or wrong teachers is called acquiescence in worth. It's either delusion, indiscrimination, or opinion. So actually, what we would call faith, they do give a name for. It's not like it's taken out. And mindfulness in a man of false opinions is called mode of remembering. And wisdom or knowledge in a man of false opinions is called trickery, maya, which is actually craving.

[155:32]

There can be no wisdom in a consciousness which causes mindfulness and following to lose mind. The six pairs also aren't present. They're not present because... a mind with false views is connected with torment, slowness, heaviness, roughness, stiffness, unwieldiness, laziness, unhealthiness, emptiness, and crookedness, all of which are the opposite of truth. And then under the... and whatever other... of real reality... on all these twelve, I could never quite keep straight what they were saying, whatever other... but it seemed that the ones that... this thought consciousness has in common with wholesome consciousness

[156:38]

was the desire to do and resolve and attention was both present in both of those. And... excitement? I didn't remember what excitement was. But... But in this case, excitement is called flurry in words. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. The... the rest are dharmas which... Now, the ones that are changed in some way, they're actually pretty much the same, but they have a little twist.

[157:40]

So, the first one is the Tathagata conception or application of mind is now done with wrong intention. That was right. Chitta ekagata... ekagata? Self-collectedness is the absence of distraction with wrong concentration or false concentration due to pervertedness of fixation on object. So, this is the... where they give the example of... at one point of mind, a murderer's knife does not miss, a thief does not miss care. And also, later it says that this self-collectedness... all it means is it does not tremble to close this mistake. But...

[158:45]

in the sense that... but in the consciousness... in the sense that... in the wholesome state, the definition was it stands having died and entered into the object. That definition does not... Very... So, this concentration is free of distraction, but it hasn't really penetrated. Right, right. All it does is kind of hold steady and not tremble. The very idea of the fact that energy is now striving with wrong intention. And that the... one of the definitions in the wholesome state was that the striving to expel vice. In this particular case, that definition doesn't hold. Again, this is... it's only...

[159:47]

it only holds in the sense that it's non-trembling in coexisting states. There's a strength called energy to be understood. Faculty of concentration Concentration here becomes wrong concentration. That's just sort of a take-off on self-equippedness. Right views become wrong views. And this is... basically... right in the beginning, it's accompanied by happiness and especially with opinion. This is that opinion. Wrong view. And wrong view is to be in opinion. I guess I'll skip it. I don't know.

[160:48]

I don't know. Oh, yeah. Well, the definition he gives for wrong views in the Tathagatagarbha is the views which on that occasion are a walking in opinion, the jungle of opinion, the wilderness of opinion, the puppet show of opinion, the scuffling of opinion, the fetter of opinion, the grit and the tenacity of it, the inclination towards it, the being infected by it, the by-path, the wrong road, wrongness, the boarding place, the students... Correct. Anyway, they give... for all those... they give explanations for... Well, maybe we can stay a little bit... Like when he says wilderness of opinion, it just means that the whole thing is so thick and crowded and it's also dangerous. Yeah, it's a jungle because it's hard to get out of.

[161:54]

And it's a wilderness because it's not... there's not any water, and it's often wild, and it's not very nourishing. That's why it's called a wilderness. That's why it's called a puppet show because it's kind of just grungy and you're not free of it. It's just like a puppet of your opinion. Let's see. It says here... Oh, yeah, I don't know what that is. The scuffling of opinion is people's scuffle of opinion, particularly between like annihilation, people's annihilation of opinion and the scuffling of opinion. Uh... Let me see here. It says to be patient of the intrinsic nature of things for it considers them perverseness.

[162:56]

So, for instance, it considers things to be pertinent. Yeah, I... What it said, its function is perversion, and I hadn't gotten to where... I didn't know that perversion was a Buddhist thing. I was going to register when I got something wrong, but then I found out that perversion just means leaving impermanence. Or to not see the intrinsic nature of things. There's an interesting one here. The... The false opinion is like somebody who's lost their way off someplace and they say, oh, this is the path to the back of the house, and then they don't get to the house because it's not the path over the house. And it said to be similar with somebody with wrong views. They said, oh, this is the way to get, you know, happiness, this is the beginning, this is the end. You never arrive at the destination with that... by following that view. So it's said to be a path to a wrong view.

[163:57]

The wrong... That's what it says, the wrong view. That one. That one is that the... person who has a false opinion holds that this is the path to the destination but can't get there. Okay. It is a characteristic of unwise conviction, it's function is perversion, and its manifestation is wrong conviction, and its proximate cause is the desire not to see anything. It is regarded as the highest fault. All this business... we should make clear, I guess, of the... perhaps not necessary, but... all this business about unwholesome and unhealthy and right and wrong, everything is all within the context of Buddhism.

[165:01]

I mean, Buddhist... Buddhist path. And Buddhist practice. Where all this writing on is. A lot of these things I'm just telling you, if you take some other... within some other system, it may be quite different. So all this writing on is in terms of what's conducive to liberation, what's conducive to the path. What's conducive to realization, free insight. Which for the Buddhists, of course, would take you in a brilliant section. So that's what all this writing on is. So it's not... it's all within that discipline.

[166:03]

As somebody points out, because it's strictly, he says, if you're in the army or something, then there may be some... there may be hidden skill. There may not be skill. But in terms of Buddhist practice, it's not such a good idea. In terms of what kind of Buddhist practice. Okay. Okay. Okay. Right intention becomes wrong intention. Right endeavor becomes wrong endeavor. Right concentration becomes wrong concentration. Power of energy becomes power of wrong endeavor. Power of concentration becomes power of non-concentration, power of conscientiousness becomes power of unconsciousness, power of non-unconscientiousness, the absence of any feeling of conscious scruple, when scruples ought to be felt.

[167:10]

The scruple of the habitat is the hesitation or reluctance for restraining reason. Restraining reason. So, the absence of any feeling of hesitation to restrain when one ought to feel some hesitation to restrain. Characteristic of not abominating this contact with the body or absence of shame. Well, this is where you can do, absence of shame is where this is where you can do things and think nothing of it. You know, you put aside any kind of qualms you might have. A lot of that for us, you know, in terms of, in terms of Bickford has been talking about is, is in the sense to put aside is that you, you, you forget your own deep vow or your, your, your deep intention.

[168:20]

You have, if we have sort of mixed intention, we disregard, you know, we have to sort of disregard one to act on the other. And so, in, in, in the Buddhist sense, the absence of shame is, how there can be shame, as I mentioned before, is because of respect for Buddha. So, if you have respect for Buddha, which is like your deep vow, then you can have shame. But if you, if you disregard that, you sort of put aside your respect for Buddha and don't, you know, don't think about that, don't look at things from that point of view, then you don't, you can, you can do any number of things and not, not feel anything. Because you don't, because you disregard your, your, some other intention you have in your deep vow for respect for Buddha.

[169:24]

And whoever went a good look at absence of blame, is in the sense that you, you, you disregard what others are going to think, or how other people are going to feel about what you do. And you don't, that's not part of your consideration in the midst of this unhealthy state, how other people will feel about it. So, again, there's, the main, the main, these two are actually are the main brakes. Because I mentioned before, when we talk about being positive, these two are actually are the main thing, the main two that can get you out of bad states. Because you don't have shame or, you don't have some conscientiousness or, or fear of blame, then you just stay in, it's quite easy just to stay in a positive state. The main way you get out is by, if you feel, if you feel bad about the unhealthy state, you either do shame, as it were, you feel bad because you realize you're, this wasn't your true intention.

[170:47]

And then you feel, and then you feel shame because you realize, oh, but my real intention is this, and this is what's happened, this is what I did actually. And the disregard of blame, so if you, you, again, you, you slap the bad state because you consider what other people think and the relationship of other people. So out of your consideration for that, you don't do something. And so that, that's why we have to explain this on him, because on our own, there's no reason for us particularly, maybe on our part, there may not be no particular reason why we should, you know, worry about doing anything. But it's different than, it's different when if we consider what effect it has on others, then we may, we may have to try to do something about it, for the sake of someone, for the sake of harmony, otherwise there's not much reason to try something that doesn't matter so much.

[172:06]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should talk about that. Because it's all in the book. Yeah. Do you think it's the only one, he says? No. That's the whole chart. I've never played with all the states, the Coast Series I've played, the Head Coast Series, or any of the seasons. I mean, how I feel about that. Even in Hustle States, in the past, in the genres, there's this little thing, and it's sort of like... But it's sort of like,

[173:16]

every time you want, every time you stop and you look at your state of mind, if you do stop and look at your state of mind, when you stop and look at your state of mind, you say, what does this tell? Chaos. And that's what every state of mind is, you'll notice. But there's a chaos. So it doesn't matter, actually, if any state of mind, when you look at a state of mind, when you make an object of a state of mind, you'll find a chaos. As long as you make a, as long as you objectify a consciousness, you've got a chaos. And it is. Now, I have no idea. Bad states, it seems like, maybe, you know, I don't know, it could be a little different.

[174:25]

I don't think that... I want to say there's some figure there, that seems to be the best that we can figure. Okay, so anyway, unconsciousness and disregarded blame are, along with the fact that the roots, you know, the roots of, what makes an unwholesome state is the presence of unwholesome roots. And the unwholesome roots, in this case, in this first unwholesome state, the unwholesome roots are greed and delusion. And this greed is also called lust. You can combine the two. Lust or covetousness. And as a way of action, it's called covetousness.

[175:30]

This is because the root is called this, and then as a way of action, it's called covetousness. And covetousness, specifically, is you see someone else's happiness and you covet it. You covet what they have. Because, you know, you see, well, it's real nice to them, so then you want it for yourself. And this greed has several interesting... Did you have the characteristics? The function is clinging like a piece of flesh to a... Do you have the characteristics? Grasping the object like a sticky line. But anyway, I don't know, maybe a sticky line is... Like mortar or something. Oh, mortar, yeah.

[176:30]

I was thinking of... I think it's... Like plastic. Yeah, like getting your hand in between it. And it starts to harden. You like someone that's clinging like a piece of fresh meat in a hot pan. It's greed. Not letting go. Yeah, it's not gestation. It's not letting go like a tainted lamp flag. And it's proximate causes of viewing the feather-like states as enjoyment. Yeah, that's kind of important too. The reason why you can have this and this is because we view it as enjoyable. We view it as enjoyable to... Get into this sticky line, you know? And get stuck in it.

[177:31]

Yeah. No, I just... Well, it gets stuck in it because it causes a river... Causes a river of creating which... Anyway, you can get carried away. That's the nature of this... This stuff is that you can get carried away. You can get stuck in it. You can get carried away. And... You know, as a baker who sometimes put it... You know, you think practice is bad. But if you don't practice... Then... You find yourself doing all kinds of things. Because it just goes on and on. Which is...

[178:32]

The question I have is... I don't know if I can say this. But practice in the middle of grief... In the presence of grief, right? But what I was mostly impressed with studying this is that this is just the way the world is. You know, the world as we know it, this is it. In a way... I mean, I guess we can remove ourselves from it. But it seems like it's just so much... I mean, the First Noble Truth is life. What I saw was this whole state of consciousness is the First Noble Truth. That life is suffering. I mean, this is why it's suffering. Because everyone is in a state of consciousness. I mean, everybody. And a few people, I guess, are trying to get out of it. Anyway, what I...

[179:34]

You know, what I'm impressed with is practicing in the middle of grief. It's interesting that what the ordinary world calls sanity, an ordinary well-adjusted state of mind, what human nature is conceived to be in legal terms, and everything is all these states. In fact, you could say, in generalizing it, the entire legal system is based on the fact that this is the way that people inevitably act. So you have a system of laws to prevent you from hurting each other too much. Except that at the beginning, nobody even knows about it. They're a wholesome state of consciousness. But even these things that sound so bad, like greed, greed is, even if you don't act in a really over-egregious, greedily manner, your whole life is embedded in greed, even in the smallest things. I'm not sure. Try to practice in the middle of grief. To practice out of grief.

[180:39]

Because it became obvious to me when I was doing this lecture that what I didn't actually know before was that the practice of it is to completely try to get out of grief. It's just me. And I feel like such a wimp. I never, I've just never done it. It's an extension of it. Well, when you're practicing, you're not greedy. At least not all the time. There must be some stage in there when you're sitting, when you're not greedy. You can't, excuse me, you can't be greedy for the whole forty minutes. I mean, there's some people who maybe can manage thirty-five or thirty-seven minutes out of the quarter that can be greedy, but there should be, at least for most people, some small spaces in there where you're not. Yes, and there's pain. That's better.

[181:50]

The easiest way to follow the precepts is just to sit, because when you sit, you follow all the precepts. All the things it says to do, you do it, and then because you're sitting there, you can't actually do anything. So, I guess you can have thoughts about doing stuff, carry on hateful dialogue in your head about what you should have said to such and such a person and what you'll do when you get that, but... I mean, I'd say it actually means the actual practice of skin-darkening, but to live your life in a skin-darkening atmosphere and at the same time to be in everything that you do. Is it greedy to take a breath? Is it greedy to want to take a run? Yes. Well, those two things are exactly the same, you know. So, take a breath if you want to stay alive on exactly the same. Take a breath to some extent.

[182:53]

Well, if you start breathing, and you pose your breath and start breathing, you can count the time. If you're interested, make sure that you stay alive and I'll get there with you in a minute. That's an interesting question, though, because in a sense, survival is our deepest desire. The situation is the same. Survival is our deepest desire. You scratch anybody deep enough to find out their basic desire is to stay alive. But when you talk about a legal condition, you're talking about a natural condition. You also have to be in the same, rather than above, in the same temple. Well, probably for most people, to grieve and to want to stay alive is the same. Maybe for a Buddhist, you can separate the two and train yourself to actually not care whether you grieve or not, and whether the next breath is going to come or not. Sikhi Rishi gave a very powerful lecture once about

[183:55]

one time he almost drowned at Pasahana. He fell into the water. He was swimming down to Narasimha. Unfortunately, nobody realized that he was not swimming. Everybody was having a great time, you know. And Sikhi Rishi was sinking into the bottom of the water. Nobody noticed him. And he was running out of breath, and he didn't really know if he was going to survive. He thought he was going to die, and he drowned. And, uh, it pulled him out just in time. He talked about how he pretended like he talked about it as though he never realized until that moment what it was like to really not, you know, to really take each breath as a last breath and not really care whether the next breath comes or not. Because it may have been, that breath may have been his, he experienced very clearly that that was his last breath. He wouldn't have another one. And he wondered why. So then he explained that's what Shikantaza really is. You grieve as though each breath goes out and you don't know whether it's coming.

[184:57]

But that's a very Buddhist, that's a Buddhist practice that maybe most people may be even conscious of the fact that they grieve. If there was a fight, like if you were locked up in a dragonfall with a bunch of people and the air was being short, who knows what would happen. Most average people would leave. There's a weird news story about people who are on a life raft. There's one guy, one guy actually in the East Coast, here's the people overboard on a life raft and he didn't want to see his dog get killed. He died. His dog killed his people. He died of discharge from the life raft. Hmm? I'm so rambling now. Well, I think it's interesting, I think that

[186:14]

as far as this non-Buddhist stuff, this is, it's in a way sort of out of our vocabulary. If you talk about Western states, you talk about non-Buddhism, non-Buddhism, non-Buddhism. It's just not our, it's not our vocabulary of the society we grew up in. It's not there. And in a way, it's not, it's not there in the same way that a non-Buddhist state is there. Well, as you originally talked about, sometimes talked about creative division, it's just the fact that there is an objective world. If you have objects, as soon as you have objects, which is what we talk about in things, you have things, then you have creative division. You have wanting the things, wanting to get rid of the things, and thinking those things are real. So, if you have an objectless world,

[187:16]

then what do you say about it? How do you, you know, and then it's hard to notice it because it's like all you notice is the objects. And so the objectless quality, when it happens, you don't notice it. That's quite a false viewpoint. Because there is nothing, there is no object to fascinate attention. So that's when you nod out. I guess that would be nice. I sort of think it should happen that we tend to nod out. Because we don't have any practice to find out what's going on in the objective world. If it's objectless, then we're not interested. Oh, well, nothing's happening here. I'll just, you know, nothing interesting. So we go to, we we tend to go to where the objects are.

[188:21]

Yeah, that's our upbringing, our training, and how our mind goes. It's more than our training. No, our mind tends to be associated with objects, with an objective world, and to believe that that objective world is a reality. But so it is very hard, I think, to talk about you know, if you start talking about non-create, non-hate, non-delusion, you can't, and then you can no longer talk about objects. It's no longer it's no longer, in a sense, the world a world that we know in the same way. But it's, I mean, it's I think we have to be also a little bit careful to in the sense that

[189:24]

although we can say our whole life is embedded in greed, at the same time if we if we say, well, that's that's just where it's at, that's all that's all there is, then that's not, I don't think, I don't, that's not quite right, because we do have we do have those motives and intentions. It may be there, it's true, but then the other is also there. But the other, again, we don't, we don't always notice it, and we don't always and we tend to act on what we notice, and we notice the greed, so we act on that. And we don't notice that actually, we don't care. We don't notice it. Actually, we don't care whether you get that thing or not. We notice that you want to get that thing. That's just much more noticeable. It's much more phenomenal. But sometimes if we don't get it, we notice

[190:25]

oh, I don't really care. It does, and sometimes we notice or other times, too, we notice well, I don't actually care. It's not just you make it up and say, well, I didn't really care about that. But there's some there's feeling like it doesn't really matter whether I have that or not. And and your breathing doesn't get all involved when you especially waiting for the outcome of whether you get it or not. And you just breathe easily. And it's not a problem. But that's always there, too. But, I mean, that's what Buddhism says that the basic nature of our life is actually to be calm and very still. That's what Mahayana Zen tends to say. Samadhi is the basic nature of mind. But that's not what you notice.

[191:26]

If you again, it's like the tail. As soon as you look at the mind and say now, what's the nature of this mind? You notice this tail wagging. And you can't see you can't see no disturbance. You know, in terms of seeing something you look here, you look out there and you don't see the space, you see the wall over there. Same kind of thing. You know, you look out, oh, there's the lamp. But it's similar to what Joseph used to say one time, if you're in the Greg talked about it in the other class Greg said that he was down in his high school or something he was down in this room which is inside the boiler room it was completely black. And you have your eyes open and it's completely black. And the blackness is, well, anyway if you have your eyes open in the dark

[192:28]

it's not like you're not seeing. You're not seeing anything. Anyway you can't you don't see the somatic value, if you look you see objects. So you don't see the non-disturbance or the non-greed. What you notice when you look at the free mind is you notice the tail wagging. You don't notice all the space around that tail. You know, the little tail wagging you don't notice, gee, there's a whole big sky there, other than that little tail that's wagging, there's this huge sky. So where's that tail wagging it, you know? The tail to be wagging it there has to be something around it. You just notice that something's missing

[193:30]

there. And so you're aware of that rather than all this space. Do you think to stop seeing the tail wagging Americans have to do damage to to what? To what? Wait a minute. What do you mean stop seeing the tail wagging? What's the point of that? I thought you were playing with that one. You notice that not only is the tail wagging but there's this immense space that the tail is wagging in. That to me is more like what we're doing rather than to stop the tail or get rid of the tail. The point is that that tail is there.

[194:30]

You don't stop it or get rid of it. But more and more we can begin to notice that gee, there's some background to all this other stuff. There's some depth there and uh you know, uh talking about when the Piper was no thought or no object or something he says something very similar to what Gordie Downer said which is make your mind like the empty sky which holds everything. So we should notice more that there's this empty sky which contains everything. Which has all these things in it, there's all these things but then there's also a non-object a non-object quality to our mind, a non-object quality. So it's not like getting rid of the tail or doing something with the tail but to notice as well the non-object quality to notice what the tail

[195:34]

there's the reverses there's the tail but what is our mind the way our mind goes is we get the tail but it's just like you know those pictures, those illusion pictures where you get the two profiles and you get the base you know that one? Right? You know the simple illusion, obstacle illusion which do you see? Do you see the base or do you see the profile? It works a lot because I only see both Well that's what it should be That's kind of later in one of the unwholesome consciousnesses they say that it's one of the part of the unwholesome state is to not be able to decide between two things so if I see both of them bases bases I say well I don't know what it is, I just can't tell and that's an unwholesome state that comes out of it

[196:36]

Very interesting That's the hand of the hand of the that you still are sort of rigid rigid in your life even though you can't decide you're rigid in your indecision Well I'm just using it as an example anyway of what we were talking about I think we just don't you can't notice in the same way the non-object the non-object quality the way that you can notice objects it's a different kind of it's a different kind of of experiencing in a way it can involve if we want to talk about here they've got calmness or or the non-object non-object quality, non-beauty Bruce says anyway that's there that's there all the time

[197:39]

it's like saying enlightenment is there all the time that's there all the time but what we notice when we look at our consciousness in the tail wagons and we notice oh there's greed oh there's Nazis, oh there's this, oh there's that and so that's just the way our mind works and we pick out the objects we see the objects when we look at our consciousness what we notice is objects, we don't notice as Bruce says all the time there's enlightenment there there's complete calmness there and all these other things are there but when we look we notice objects what is the most important point about the difference between looking and seeing? if you make an effort to see without grasping at particular things without

[198:41]

focusing on yeah that's the thing seeing in the sense that without grasping particular things, without focusing on yes you can't be in a state of consciousness that is other than a chronically unopened state where you've had some kind of some actually bonafide experience you know I've got I've got to think that you felt that you can't be in a holistically unopened state but you say it looks like to me like you'd always be in that crystal state until you had some picture or something but I don't think that's so

[199:42]

I don't think that's the entertainment that you have now one thing that moments happen very fast, very very fast like this so you're there may be a tremendous alternation or potential of wholesome states going on that's what I'm talking about Zazen when you sit you have a chance to slow down your mind enough to see that intermix between that what you thought was the continuity of one state of mind which you identified which is all kinds of states of mind going on simultaneously, almost simultaneously you know first one pops up and then another you have a wholesome thing like you have an urge to bow to the Buddha let's say which pops up and then immediately it's clouded over by gee who's going to see me bow to the Buddha will I get some junior out of this act, gee what if she's coming off out of the Buddha that'll show that I'm a good student I mean immediately it's clouded over by some unwholesome and then again you have some wholesome projection and then another thing comes in pride or

[200:43]

envy or something so there's, I think because of the momentariness thing it's actually there's tremendous also the way according to Mr. Grover-Arredondo which has a 17 thought moment, there's only six of those that are that have the potential for time, or there's not time there's more than six but a lot of those 17 moments are indeterminate, like neutral karma they're just automatic they're sort of automatic or the result of karma which isn't in your karma but I think unless you unless you've really worked at it at developing your occult qualities through

[201:45]

you know, association with some friends and the whole business that my feeling would be like the Buddha was saying that days and nights are coming and going and we we don't notice exactly but it happens sometimes but this is certainly much more I think part of the part of the practicing is to notice that there's some other states of mind that are happening as well but generally we strictly we have a tendency to you know, since there's a tendency to try to get back to an occultistic state of mind where we're comfortable

[202:45]

that's where we're comfortable, yeah, that's home that's where you can have a self but if you sit there there's going to be times when you don't have a self, where it's an occult state of mind, but you're not going to feel comfortable there you're going to think, geez, where am I? and then there you are and then there you are that's just a state of mind you know that's home again huh?

[203:14]

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