Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 35-minute teaching on Lo Rig—Buddhist epistemology—Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen analyzes three types of consciousness. He starts with non-conceptual, non-mistaken consciousness: direct perception that grasps its object clearly and without error. He then turns to non-conceptual, mistaken consciousness, which perceives an object that doesn’t exist. Using dreams as his primary example, Geshe walks through why dream consciousness is mistaken: during sleep, eye consciousness stops functioning and the wind energies that support sensory perception dissolve, so the dream’s appearance of color has no actual visual perceiver. He briefly addresses conceptual consciousness before concluding the first section on mind itself.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 Lo Rig.mp3
UUID: 74aee0c2-2f30-4c94-8ce2-c3e2a7207923
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Nature of the Mind (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1995 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 35.6 minutes
Words: ~1,386
Like a specifically characterized phenomenon. Specifically characterized phenomenon. That like the non-conceptual, non-mistaken consciousness and direct perceiver or direct perception. These two are synonyms. So this like non-conceptual, non-mistaken consciousness, which as its appearing object, it is the specifically characterized phenomenon, and then it is non-conceptual and it’s also not mistaken.
This specifically characterized phenomenon is known as functioning things. And whatever object that is perceived by direct perceiver, it has to be the functional things which is the specifically characterized phenomenon. So, this specifically characterized phenomenon and functioning things are synonyms. So because of that, like this non-conceptual, non-mistaken consciousness, when you perceive, it has to perceive an object which is functioning. So it’s non-conceptual because the object that appears to it appears clearly, not as combined or mixed like conceptual mind.
So it’s also not mistaken because it is not mistaken with respect to its object. So now we go to the third type of mind. That is the non-conceptual mistaken consciousness. That is the third type of mind. And then, yeah, non-conceptual mistaken consciousness.
Which apprehends — or the non-conceptual mistaken consciousness apprehends its object as a nonexistent thing, or as something nonexistent. So then the definition is: a knower — as a definition of that — is a knower that is mistaken with respect to its appearing object. So that like a non-conceptual mistaken consciousness apprehends an object that is not existing. And it apprehends clearly an object which is not existing.
So the object doesn’t exist but it appears to the person. So it’s mistaken — this perception is mistaken. It’s a mistaken perception and it has again two kinds: that of the senses and that of the mental ones. So that of the senses — as an example — is like seeing two moons, like seeing one moon as two or seeing two moons. So the appearing object instead of the true moon.
But there isn’t a true moon, but it clearly appears to the person as a true moon. So then that of the mental one is that the dream consciousness apprehending blue as a real blue. So that consciousness is a mental consciousness because it is produced by its own uncommon empowering condition, that is its own mental cause. So it’s mistaken. That is mistaken because the dream consciousness apprehending blue as a real blue is mistaken, because the blue — the appearance of blue in dream — is not blue.
So the dream consciousness apprehending blue as blue: if that dream blue of the dream consciousness is blue, then there has to be a mental consciousness perceiving blue. So if there is, how to say, a blue — if there is a blue that is perceived by our mental consciousness, then this explanation saying that whatever is blue can only be perceived by the eye consciousness — it’s mistaken.
It damages that. So up to here, this explanation is about the mind and the mental factors. So the explanation of the mind is finished up here. From here it finishes. So then the rest — the coming explanations — will be explaining about the fifty-one mental factors.
And then when that finishes then the Lower teaching finishes. So because we stop here today let us do some question and answer. Yeah.
So, is there one or two divisions, or?
There are three both here. Yeah. That’s the definition or meaning of conceptual consciousness. So there can be a person when he or she reads the word “vase” — it can be both, like, it can have sound generality and the meaning generality, because when the person reads the word “vase”, if he knows what a vase is, then he has both appearances: sound generality and meaning generality. And if the person doesn’t know both, then — so if the person doesn’t know the word, then when he reads the letter or whatever is written there fast, whatever image that appears from that is the sound generality.
Like when you read the letter, the sound makes the sound of the term “vase”. So to that person, there’s this appearance of “vase” from the seeing of the letters. So it falls into the sound — what do you say — sound generality.
So, the dream — I can repeat that if you want. Dream consciousness non — Okay. Why is dream consciousness non-conceptual? Okay. Wait.
Let me just go short. So, when we said the dream consciousness apprehending blue as a real blue, that consciousness which apprehends blue as real blue is non-conceptual. Yeah, it’s mistaken. It’s a non-conceptual mistaken consciousness. So the next part of the question.
I guess I can change it a bit by saying: if dream consciousness is non-conceptual, does that mean that there are real objects within the dream that we don’t necessarily have sound generalities of? So, this example that we give was: the dream consciousness perceiving or apprehending blue as a real blue. So there are like dream consciousnesses, generally, to which functioning things or specifically characterized phenomena also appear. So the example here is that the appearance of blue in the dream consciousness being blue is not the blue. Yeah.
Because it’s a dream. If the dream consciousness apprehending blue, if it’s blue — so then, like, the hundred thousand dollars that you dream of has to be, like, a hundred thousand dollars. The dream consciousness dreaming of a hundred thousand dollars: that has to be a hundred thousand. So that’s not a hundred thousand dollars. So, yeah, as long as it’s colour blue, it has to be an object which is perceived by the eye consciousness.
So because during dream time, during the dream, the eye consciousness stops working. So but then you have the appearance of blue, but that is not what the eye consciousness perceives. All the sense consciousnesses stop during the dream. So then during the dream, the different kinds of wind energies — only the life-wind remains, like a lamp, but the rest of the winds also sort of dissolve. So because of that, when you are in deep sleep, at that time if someone pricks you or does something, you don’t feel it right away.
So the reason that you don’t feel it right away is because most of the wind energies are dissolved. And similar with that, the mental consciousness at that time only continues. The rest stops. So because of that, the dream consciousness apprehending blue — apprehending blue as blue — it’s regarded as mistaken.
So, yeah, it is because that mountain doesn’t exist. Does it exist or not? What if I dream a mountain and then I see it in my waking mind? So then that mountain is not the mountain that you dreamed. It’s not.
So, only the dreams of those highly realized beings — they are, what do you say, the exception — not mistaken, not wrong. But the rest, most of the dreams, are known as mistaken. So, in the upper tenets, like how things don’t truly exist or inherently exist — the dreams and so on are used as examples of how things don’t exist truly. Yeah.
Can I ask some more questions? No. There were different divisions. Like first, with the mistaken consciousness, there was just a very short explanation of that.
And then the mind or consciousness is divided again into three. And these three are: one is conceptual, one is non-mistaken, and one is mistaken — consciousness divided into three. So a mistaken consciousness is mistaken with respect to its object, like what is its beheld object — it is mistaken with respect to that. So let’s say, the dreams of those highly realized beings are not actually a dream. What the appearance that they have at that time is actually a real appearance. So if it is a dream, then it is mistaken. Mostly, that’s what I — so, non-conceptual mistaken consciousness. Yeah.
So they do dream. They do dream and some of that is dream, which is like a mistaken, non-conceptual mistaken — past mistaken — which is like some dream in which they have a vision of deities. And that one is said to not be a dream. And that is what they are actually saying. Yeah.
So we stop here?