Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 33-minute teaching, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen traces the moment mental perception arises after sense consciousness perceives an object. He lays out three types of mental direct perception: valid perception (the first moment recognizing something, exemplified by clairvoyance initially knowing another’s mind), subsequent perception (the second moment, now secure), and inattentive perception (awareness while distracted—hearing sound while absorbed in form). Through examples—someone learning what a vase is for the first time, an infant recognizing her mother—he shows how mental perception adds conceptual understanding that bare sensation cannot provide. He explores how sense consciousness serves as the necessary condition for mental consciousness to arise. A classroom dialogue shaped by student questions; suited to practitioners already studying Buddhist epistemology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 Lo Rig.mp3
UUID: 53a158ed-2e9c-4ace-81fa-eb750ad7efa3
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Nature of the Mind (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1995 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 33.6 minutes
Words: ~1,684
Hello. Just right after the apprehending of form by sense consciousness, just right after that, the mental perception comes about to perceive the object. So not like the others, it goes alternately, but just right after the sense consciousness perceiving the object, right after that, subsequently, right after that, the mental direct perceiver perceives the object. So then again we talk about the mental direct perception — the uncommon one and the common one. There are two kinds.
So the uncommon one we just explained right now and the common one, again, it is again explained with three kinds: that of the valid one, and that of the subsequent one, and that of the inattentive perception or non-ascertaining perception. These are three divisions — it’s made into three types, explained again with the common explanations of mental direct perception. So the first, the valid perception — the mental direct valid perception — that’s the first one. And this one, as an example: the first moment of clairvoyance that one has — the first moment of clairvoyance that knows others’ minds — that comes to know others’ minds. That very first moment is what is known as the valid perception, the mental direct valid perception.
So then the second moment of perception of that — the same thing like a perception knowing another’s mind through clairvoyance — the second moment is then known as the subsequent perceiver. So then the third, like, inattentive perception. Inattentive perception is that — as an example: apprehending a sound by a person who is completely attracted to a form. And that is like the third one which is inattentive perception, inattentive mental perception. So today we sort of do this much and we do some more question answering. And if you have any questions or anything didn’t become clear, you can ask them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
So this is different ways of generating, different ways of like having the mental perception — the mental perception — different ways. Three different ways, yeah. And then the first one like as explained is like the alternating production, or alternating ways — is that first you have the first moment, first you have the perception of the first moment of the eye, the sensory perception, the first moment of sense — first you have the sensory perception and then right after that what you have is the second moment of the mental eye perception. And then it comes alternately in that way. And then the other two, different ways of generating, different way of perceiving it.
So for example, with an example of a vase — when there’s a — like the first, like, eye consciousness perceives the vase, the sense consciousness perceives the vase. And then — so first, your eye consciousness observes the cup here. But it won’t recognize — the eye consciousness won’t recognize this is a cup. So right after — right after the second moment — that of the eye consciousness perceiving the cup, it generates the mental perception saying this is a cup. They are both — it has both, like, valid and invalid. Yeah. With the mental functions. Yeah. So like we explained, there are three kinds of mental direct perception: that which is valid, subsequent, and what do you call the inattentive one.
Inattentive — and yeah, this is — that’s what I translated as — and I gave two — Presumption. Yeah. Presumption is different. Yeah. Is it inattentive perception.
Yeah. That’s what I give two translations. You finish with your question? Sorry. So, mostly, like, all the sense consciousness that are known as the other-knower, which means one that perceives the outer things like form and so on.
And only it observes the outer phenomena, the external phenomena. Yeah. So then the self-knower mainly observes the internal, which is like the beings. And within beings, it mainly observes the consciousness — to the awareness or to consciousness. To that mainly it observes that.
So there is a knower — there’s a knower or awareness that perceives the eye consciousness. And that is like — that is known as the self-knower. Something beside — there’s something which is a knower, which is an awareness that perceives the eye consciousness. And that awareness is known as the self-knower. How does the mental perception perceive the other-knower?
So with an example of sound — if the ear consciousness, the first moment of the ear consciousness apprehends the sound. And right after that, the second moment, the mental — I want to say, mental perception, mental mind perceives or the mental consciousness perceives the sound, and recognizes this is a sound. So in that way, the mental perception perceives. So like another example — like with the vase — a person who doesn’t know the term “vase” — even if he sees the container, that container, he knows — he or she knows that it is something that is round and it can be used. It can contain, it can hold water inside.
So something like that — can give the definition of what it functions as. But then it doesn’t know the term. So for him or her, if a person comes and tells this is a vase, this is a so-called vase, and then at that very moment the mental perception sort of recognizes that it is a vase. So then from that moment onwards, every time when the person sees the vase, right there — when as soon as the vase is in contact with it, as soon as the person sees the vase, right there, he or she has this perception, the mental perception saying that this is a vase. So unless somebody explains the term “this is called a vase” to that person, him or her, they will never come to understand, to perceive, or mentally recognize that saying this is a vase.
Yeah. These are the inattentive like — the mental perception, they have this one here. So, like, the very infant baby — the baby sees the mother, but doesn’t know that she’s the mother. Mm-hmm. So the difference between the self-knower and other-knower is like as explained before: that which perceives external phenomena is known as the other-knower, and that which perceives the internal phenomena — that is like those with internal here means the beings — is the self-knower.
But then there’s still — like if you trace back then it’s like there’s always a self-knower to the — like every every moment of consciousness, the past, it has its own self-knower. So like if there’s no sort of beginning, that there’s nothing where you can point to where that ends. If you trace then it can continue like forever. No. Let’s say.
So knower here — you mean like this? Sorry. The self-knower or the other-knower? The knower of this moment. Of self.
Of self. So, like, if you with the example with this cup here, you know, saying that, like, when — the first moment of eye consciousness seeing the cup causes the first moment of mental perception of the cup. And then the first moment of mental perception of the cup causes — so so it works like that, like alternately. One sort of — so how it works is that the sense consciousness acts as an uncommon empowering condition — acts as the uncommon empowering condition of the mental perception. So sense consciousness always acts as the producer of mental consciousness.
Yeah? So uncommon here means only this — uncommon here it’s uncommon, it’s not common. That is, it can act as a cause for only this one. For example, uncommon empowering condition of eye consciousness only acts as a condition to the eye consciousness, nothing else.
So not to ear, nose, and so on. So it’s — so as an example, like the Buddha house is common. So Buddha house is known as something common, commonly owned. And like your own house, your own room — probably say uncommon, like uncommonly owned — like, it is just your own. So that’s, yeah.
So the uncommon empowering condition of the eye consciousness acts as a cause for the mental consciousness. So the self-knower — now, all self-knower — is that which only perceives or knows the consciousness. So the different different consciousness. That’s what the self-knower’s function is.
One only knows the consciousness. And all-knower is like the omniscient mind of Buddha. It’s known as all-knower. Yeah. What’s the difference between these two, you mean?
So the difference is that the self-knower only perceives consciousness, not other phenomena. Just the various types of consciousness. So the all-knowing consciousness perceives everything — not only the consciousness, but the other types of phenomena like the form and so on. Yeah. Yeah.
So one person — within one person there can be both, like, the self-knower and the other-knower. Can be both. But these two — the self-knower and other-knower — are like these two are sort of different. They are different. They are not one — which means they are not synonyms.
Their nature also is different. Yeah. And like the first moment of self-knower and the second moment of self-knower are different. So now we do this much today. And then next Thursday we won’t have the class because that’s the first day of Tibetan New Year.
So so, like, with this particular subject — the awareness and knowing logic, this subject — to make it, what to say, to have a good better understanding of the subject. Like I guess he was saying that maybe we have to — not this week but next week — we may just meet and discuss a little more: how, like, Geshe-la can like, Geshe-la himself ask questions to you in the class? Or is it better, like, we make a sort of exam after, like, a few classes? So to make it — so this we will discuss — not this week. Not this coming, but the next coming week we’ll discuss on that point.
Yeah. Yeah.