Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute session, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen establishes why consciousness must be beginningless, using two conceptual tools: substantial cause (which determines a thing’s identity) and cooperative condition (which shapes its form). Applying this framework, he argues that consciousness cannot arise from the brain because mind is non-material and non-obstructive—it cannot emerge from physical matter without violating conservation of energy. Therefore, consciousness arises only from prior consciousness, stretching infinitely backward through previous lives, conception, childhood, and moment-to-moment continuity. He opens with teaching on noting meditation and expanding compassion to three expanding circles of people, then shows how mind and body interdepend as cooperative conditions while remaining fundamentally distinct in their causes.
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File: 12 H and M of A.mp3
UUID: ab34423a-dcfc-4032-bb75-4a5bb7530478
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996 Jul-Sep (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1996 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~5,696
Using the technique of noting in terms of just thinking, thinking. Really, the noting is not to be done like a mantra, something which you mindlessly repeat, which you shouldn’t do anyhow. But anyway, you’re actually describing that something is happening, what your mind is involved in. It’s involved in some internal object, and you’re going to describe that as thinking.
Keep bringing the mind back to the mental consciousness itself again and again and again. You know, we cultivate love and compassion, this process of accustoming, you know, changing our habits. And we’re working with — I think last time we worked with somebody that we’re very close with, that we love a great deal, and then someone a little bit further out from that. We like a great deal but we’re not as close. Now this time we’re going to add a third person to expand the scope of our ability to develop love and compassion — the object of our love and compassion.
Someone who is appealing to you because, you know, they have a very pleasant appearance, but they’re not particularly close. You don’t have any particular relationship with them — maybe somebody that you see at work, one of your peers, somebody that’s a tradesperson, somebody that you see in the course of your daily life. You have no particular relationship. There’s still a positive connotation around your relationship. You’re inclined to think of them well because of their appearance in some way or who they are.
But, no, we have no particular relationship. So we’re going to try as best you can to imagine that these three people — just, you know, if you can’t see them, the visualization is useful but not that important, that’s secondary. The feeling is what is important. Imagine that this person who is very close to you — maybe it’s your partner, maybe a parent or a child — is there, and then someone a little bit distant from that — maybe a close relative or maybe another member of your family, you know, one of your best friends — is there.
And then this third person is appealing but the type of person you don’t have a very close relationship with, though they still have a very positive appearance for you. Imagine that there’s an increasing group of people for whom you will have naturally various feelings, but we’re going to try to cultivate the feelings of love and compassion for all of them as a group, as together, as a whole — as something worth loving, something that is worth thinking: I wish they didn’t suffer, all three of them. So working with those. Okay? So taking a comfortable firm posture.
So even talking a great deal about death — and what we can do as a means to improve the quality of our life, to appreciate our life while we have our life — we talked about the death process, the transition that occurs, the physiology and psychology of the experiences surrounding death and what we can do for ourselves in terms of helping ourselves at the time of our death — the five forces. So whether or not we as dying people — or a dying person — have been able to make use of the opportunity of death as we described, in terms of the clear light of death which the Tantric practitioner makes use of in order to achieve liberation, or whether we have been able to apply the five forces which we described skillfully, or whether we die completely without awareness — in the case of most people, you know, in the state of confusion and perhaps fear that the average person dies in — the moment of the clear light is the moment of our death. So it is this moment of the clear light that the link between this subtle most wind energy-consciousness combination breaks, is severed from the grosser levels of the physical body — the actual moment of death.
Subsequent to that, the actual rebirth process begins. So we’re going to talk about rebirth. There’s still hope. And in exploring the question of rebirth, you know, hopefully we can maybe stimulate some kind of questioning, some kind of inquiry around it — even for ourselves — and maybe open ourselves to its possibility if we haven’t really considered it before or have been closed to it previously. I mean, it’s important to try to come to some understanding as to whether rebirth exists or not.
Because it has bearing — you know — if rebirth does or doesn’t exist, it will have some bearing on the way that we live our life, which is ultimately what we’re concerned with. That’s why we’re going into all these. They aren’t just academic subjects or interesting theories — they have practical implications on the quality and the way that we lead our lives. You know, the problem is that the vast majority of people who reject the notion of rebirth have never really considered the matter even superficially. And the same can also be applied to those who accept the notion of rebirth.
You know, having never really considered the concept of rebirth deeply, whichever position is taken — whether accepting it or rejecting it — it has very little effect or impact upon our lives. Most people are either unthinkingly biased in the direction of a mechanistic interpretation of life, or they accept rebirth, or they wish rebirth to exist in their desire for more life — the continuity of life in the face of death, you know, the annihilation of ourselves — but there’s still something more I can look forward to in terms of life. So the question of establishing rebirth. You know, I use the word rebirth.
Same word as reincarnation, I think. It can be approached in several different ways. Some people have spontaneous recall of previous rebirths, previous lives. Some people are said to be trained to actually gain memories of past lives. Some people recall it through hypnotic regression.
We could use credible testimony by reliable people who have knowledge — direct knowledge — of the existence of past and future lives. Or we can approach it through perhaps some kind of logical reasoning. So I think there are many books published setting forth, you know, case histories or experiments or individual experiences which tend to support the existence of past and future lives. But here I’d like to focus upon some of the rationale, some of the logic, which tends to support the existence of past and future lives. That in fact it does have a rational basis.
It’s just not wishful thinking which we need to blindly accept — but we can intelligently consider it and maybe in that way begin to tend ourselves towards its existence. And in that way, perhaps it can have some kind of useful effect on the way we live our lives, the quality of our lives. So in talking about rebirth, it’s first necessary to introduce two concepts which we’re going to use like tools. One is the concept of distinguishing between two types of causes.
Two types of causes: substantial cause and cooperative condition. Substantial cause and cooperative condition. So this is one idea that we’re going to make use of later. And the other concept that we’re going to make use of is the notion of similarity of type.
So two types of causes — substantial cause and cooperative condition. The difference between a substantial cause and a cooperative condition — we can understand it easily if we take the example of a clay pot. The substantial cause of a clay pot is a wet lump of clay. You go down to the riverbank and you dig up a wet lump of clay and you put it on your wheel and you shape it into a clay pot.
The substantial cause of that clay pot is just that mass of wet clay, that lump of clay. The cooperative condition — why is it the cause? Because it assists in the production of the clay pot. That’s what the definition of a cause is — which assists in the production is a cause. So the wet lump of clay assisted in the production.
It is a substantial cause because the actual substance of the clay is being incorporated into the product, into the result — the pot. That’s substantial cause. The cooperative condition is a cause because it also assists in production. But what do we mean by the cooperative condition? That would be, for example, the potter, the wheel that the potter uses and all the various tools.
You know, with the potter and these various tools, they also assist in the production of the pot. But they’re a different type of cause, aren’t they? The cooperative condition is the cause of the pot because it assists in its production, but it does not determine the type of pot. The potter could have shaped a plate and would have ended up with a clay plate, or could have shaped a cup and would have ended up with a clay cup. But it is the substantial cause which determines identity — that in fact whatever it’s going to be, it’s going to be clay.
And it is the potter who actually determines what shape the clay is going to take — whether it’s a cup or a pot or a plate. So they both are playing their parts in creating this final result, a clay pot. So all products — and by products I mean tables, houses, ourselves, this building, whatsoever — anything which arises dependent upon causes necessarily has both a substantial cause and a cooperative condition. If one of those is missing, the result will not arise.
So, you know, taking just another simple example. A flower grows from a seed, from soil, from moisture, from light. Seed, soil, moisture, light — these are all causes of the flower. They all assist in the production, in the development, the growth of a flower. They all cause the flower.
The seed is the substantial cause of the flower. It supplies the essential material necessary for the flower’s growth and it’s going to substantially determine what is the identity of the result — whether it’s a flower or not, it’s a flower rather than being a carrot, or it’s a sunflower rather than being a marigold. So the seed is the substantial cause.
On the other hand, the soil, the moisture, sunlight are the cooperative conditions for the flower. They contribute the conditions necessary for the potential of the seed to actualize. If you had poor soil, if you had a lack of moisture, if you had little sunlight, then the flower which is produced, the plant which is produced, could be shriveled and could be stunted. But they by themselves would not determine the substantial identity — that it in fact is a flower. For example, in this case a sunflower.
You might end up with a stunted sunflower or a shriveled sunflower because of lack of moisture or poor soil, whatever. So both of these are necessary in the production of any result — a substantial cause and a cooperative condition. So everything in the universe is exactly the same way. If one of these is missing, the result will not arise. We’re going to use that idea and apply it to the notion of rebirth — it applies.
The other idea, the other tool that we need to make use of, is that of similarity of type. This is simply the fact that there is within nature a consistency — a similarity of type — between a cause and a result. That from an apple seed, an apple tree grows — not an orange tree, not a carrot. But there’s a similarity in type. You know, the apple seed is the cause.
The apple tree is the result. And moreover, there is some kind of similarity of type between the two. It’s not haphazard. It’s not random. There is definitely some kind of relationship between the type of cause and the type of effect that’s going to arise out of that cause.
And the globe? Light bulb? You know, we’ve had many substantial causes — glass and metal. The stuff. Yeah. The stuff which in itself is going to be incorporated in the result, as opposed to the forces which are shaping that result but aren’t incorporated into the result. Like the potter stands up. The potter takes off his apron — you know, there’s a pot. At the end of the day, he takes off his apron and he’s more or less unchanged by having created that pot.
But he still is the cause of the pot. There’s no question about that. He hasn’t been — we used to debate on this when I went to Dharamsala. It’s actually called the Buddhist School of Dialectics, but we used to call it the Buddhist School of Dramatics. And we used to do a lot of debating.
It was very dramatic debating, but then, you know, I remember when we were looking into this particular subject — kind of an elementary subject — you know, well, we would say, what happens if the potter died and you ground him up and you put him in the clay and he became part of the pot? Is he the substantial cause or is he the cooperative condition? These kinds of mind games. Anyway, that’s to give you the idea. Yeah.
It’s just a transformation. Yeah. They condition the final product. Yeah. That supplies the actual essential material, which determines the identity. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
That’s yeah. So whatever this potter made, it was going to be clay — either clay plate or clay pot, clay cup. So the substantial identity — the substance of the substance — is determined by the substantial cause. How that’s being shaped is determined by the cooperative conditions. Just like in the case of the sunflower seed, it’s going to determine what is the identity — whether it’s going to be a plant at all, or what type, what variety — that essential material is going to determine that.
But how that develops — how it’s going to be shaped, whether it’s going to grow at all — the quality of the soil, how much moisture, sunlight. It could be a stunted sunflower. So I don’t know if that’s — we’re kind of getting there. I don’t know. There’s something which is going to be transformed, and there’s something which is conditioning, which is shaping, that transformation process. Let’s see.
Yeah. I mean, the substantial cause of our experiences, our mind states, is our karma. But that’s conditioned by the world around us — the doctors, who we come in contact with, who we don’t come in contact with, the situations, social environment, our diet. Yeah.
Those would all be cooperative conditions. Yeah. Okay. Maybe we’re going to use these ideas and we can expand upon them. But I think it’s interesting that we can begin to — just the idea — maybe you’ve never considered the fact that there are two types of causes in fact.
And both are different — they’re different, aren’t they? And they’re different in how they operate in bringing about a result. And we’re going to make use of this in terms of how we look at rebirth, in terms of the mind, and where is the mind coming from — because that’s what rebirth comes down to basically. Where does the mind arrive? What is the cause of mind?
That’s what rebirth comes down to essentially. And the second concept that we’re going to make use of is this idea of similarity of type. That there is a relationship between cause and effect. It’s not haphazard, it’s not random, that there is — we can make use of this understanding every day because we can predict results from the type of cause. And by determining the quality of the cause, the type of cause, we can bring about whatever kind of results that we want.
That there is this consistent, predictable relationship between causes and effect in terms of some type of similarity of type. Okay. The notion that we’re going to develop is that all of the production, the continual production of all the various physical phenomena in the universe, is most simply recombination — like a recycling, a transformation of previously existent physical phenomena, material phenomena, which act as a substantial cause. We can say that physical phenomena act as the cause of physical phenomena — that matter acts as a substantial cause of material objects.
You know, most — that’s kind of the notion that we want to get a handle on, come to some kind of understanding of. That physical entities are produced from other physical entities. And that — I mean, that might — because I don’t know if that sounds overly simple-minded — but maybe it’s necessary to go into that. Physical entities don’t arise from nothing. Matter does not arise from nothing, nor does it arise from a substantial cause dissimilar in type to itself.
For example, space. Matter does not arise out of space. Nor does, for example, space arise from matter. They arise from a substantial cause similar in type to themselves. There’s just the transformation of physical things into other physical things.
Space arises from space. And we’re going to try to get to a sense that mind only arises from mind. Now, in terms of mechanistic science, the mind or consciousness arises from the body. Or we could say more specifically that the mind or consciousness arises from the nervous system or the brain. Mind is what’s called an emergent property of matter.
That’s basically what mechanistic science is saying — that consciousness arises from matter. If it arises from the brain, if it arises from the nervous system, which they do assert — so when the body dies, then the causes of mind cease, the body decomposes and returns to its natural elements, and the mind fades away like, you know, maybe like a rainbow. That’s kind of the, if it’s thought of at all, a mechanistic approach. Let’s think of it.
I’ll read a quote here. Some people who think of themselves as scientifically minded believe that the mind is the brain or a function of the brain and that for this reason there is no essential mind-matter dichotomy. According to their view everything can be explained in terms of the material world. They choose to overlook the qualities of mind that have no relation to matter — thoughts, emotions. Although they would not take seriously the story of Pinocchio — remember the story of Pinocchio?
He used to have — whenever he told a lie, his nose got long. Although — so, you know, Pinocchio’s nose just gets longer and longer. Although they would not take seriously the story of Pinocchio — were a simple piece of matter, a stick. Pinocchio was made out of wood — if the stick inexplicably develops a mind experiencing hopes and fears, pleasures and pain, and so on. It would not find it strange if subatomic particles, atoms or molecules started to produce thoughts and feelings.
However, not only is there no scientific evidence whatever that such a phenomenon is possible, but it represents a categorical confusion of categories. Linguistically, there is the category of mind. And what is not mind, that is matter. Matter or the material world is what exists out there beyond the senses. If it does not exist independent of the senses, how can it be categorized as material?
Can a material world that exists outside the senses also be the senses that sense and experience it? Such a theory does not answer anything. It does not even begin to address itself to the question of what conscious experience is, let alone the question of what might not exist external to it. So in Buddhist cosmology — that is to say the Buddhist theory on the makeup of the universe — how there are six primary elements. We’ve talked about four of these quite at length.
You know, earth, water, fire, and wind energy — the air element. Then there’s space element. And space is the lack of obstructive contact. My hand can move. My hand isn’t obstructed because there is space existing there.
If there was not that space, my hand would be obstructed from moving. I couldn’t move my hand. The fact that there exists space there allows for that movement. And then finally the sixth element — that of consciousness itself. Consciousness is defined as that which is clear and knowing, or sometimes luminous and knowing, clear and knowing.
So all of the multiplicity of phenomena in the universe — everything in the universe, whether it’s animate or inanimate — is a combination of either one or many of these six elements in various proportions. So all of the diversity of things in the universe from a Buddhist point of view are just simply combinations of various proportions of these six elements. So the definition of consciousness is clear and knowing. Here, clear can mean — is taken to mean — non-material, non-physical. You know, our various emotions and feelings, all our various cognitive states, our consciousness — are not material or are not physical.
That is to say they’re not obstructive. Like, love as a state of mind is non-obstructive. It allows — you know — it could be moved through. In that way, it’s space-like. You know, that’s why sometimes the mind is described as being space-like — in that it’s non-material.
It’s non-obstructive, just like space itself. So mind exists as a different type, a different category of phenomena from mass and energy, from matter. Now the crux of rebirth comes down to the question: from where does mind arise? Are physical phenomena the substantial cause of mind? In other words, is mass and energy the material — the stuff of which the mind is made?
Or does the mind come from a different type of phenomenon such as mind or space? I’ll read that. Wow. I lost — let’s examine the hypothesis that mind arises from mass-energy. According to the principle of conservation of mass-energy, if any new physical entity — such as heat from a fire — is created, some other form of mass-energy must have been used up in the process.
That heat may have originated from some of the stored energy of wood which is released in the process of combustion. It therefore follows that if some physical entity — say a component of the brain — is to be identified as the origin of awareness, that physical entity must be used up in the process of producing the awareness. The physical component would be transformed into the cognitive phenomena just as energy in the wood is transformed into heat. The difference in our hypothetical production of awareness is that the physical component would be transformed into a non-physical phenomenon. Now, physics has discovered a vast body of evidence to support the principle that physical phenomena are conserved through all known transformations.
That they are conserved means for the physicists that they retain their physical status as forms of mass-energy. Thus, the hypothesis that any physical component or process in the brain transforms into a non-physical cognitive event can be vigorously denied on the grounds of energy conservation. Given our initial hypothesis that mental events are non-physical, events in the brain certainly influence cognitive phenomena, but the former cannot be the source of them. So the mind does not arise out of nothing. Nowhere in the whole of nature do phenomena arise simply from nothing.
Being a product — mind is a product. Being a product, it must arise from a cause. And moreover, it must arise from a substantial cause similar in type to itself. What is that? It must be that which is clear and knowing.
Therefore, it arises from a previous moment of mind. Physical phenomenon, material objects — brain, nervous system — are dissimilar in type. They are neither clear nor are they knowing. The only phenomenon that is of a similar type to mind, and therefore can act as a substantial cause of mind, is another moment of mind — a previous moment of mind. Nothing other than a preceding moment of mind can act as the substantial cause of mind.
This holds true equally for physical entities — matter. They too have a substantial cause. And that substantial cause too must necessarily be similar in type to itself. Therefore, matter can only arise from a previous moment of matter. We cannot logically posit a first moment of physical phenomena.
We cannot logically posit a first moment of the universe. You know, each — there must always be a preceding cause. You know, this is an old philosophic debate in the West — first cause. From the Buddhist point of view, within their logic — that since every product must necessarily have a cause, and there must always be an antecedent, there must always be a preceding cause before every product — therefore there’s an infinite regression backward. Therefore, this is where the notion comes up within Buddhist thinking, which is very difficult to wrap your mind around, which is that the universe is beginningless. That in fact our minds are beginningless. Why?
We can never point to a first moment when it began. That every moment we point to must have a prior moment preceding it as its cause. Therefore, it becomes a logical necessity to assert that there is no beginning. And the idea of beginning is simply a limit of our usual Western thinking in terms of our logic — that things necessarily have a beginning. Buddhism would say that in fact the mind does not have a beginning.
Each of our mind streams does not have a beginning. There is no first atom — this process of universe coming into existence and going out of existence. You know, the big bang and the big crunch has been going on since the beginning of time. Not only is there a conservation of mass and energy, but there also is a conservation of mind as well. That mind is not newly created nor is it ever destroyed.
The aspects, the states of mind may change dramatically, but mind in itself is essentially conserved. Physical events modify and condition cognitive states without transforming into them. And this is the notion of cooperative conditions and of substantial causes. From where does the mind come? That’s where rebirth comes down to.
In answer, Buddhism asserts that the mind present at the moment of conception of this life must necessarily have had a substantial cause similar in type to itself preceding it. That previous moment of mind was the last moment of mind of the previous life. Each moment of an individual’s mind arises dependent upon a previous moment. The mind that we have at present — we’re all here, we’re all thinking — that mind arose from this morning’s mind. All the peculiarities of this morning’s mind, its various conditioning factors, its various emotions, its various types of habits and patterns, proceed down in serial fashion, in a similarity of type, reproducing what is called a homogenous series.
Our present mind that we have arose from this morning’s mind. This morning’s mind arose from yesterday’s mind. Yesterday’s mind arose in dependence upon last week’s mind. Last week’s mind arose in dependence upon last year’s mind. And, you know, we’re trying to form some kind of continuum.
That notion that this is proceeding backwards — one moment of mind arising from the next, from the next, from the next. It doesn’t rise from nowhere. It arose in dependence upon something. It rose in dependence upon a previous mind. You know, if we got up in a bad mood this morning, maybe we still feel kind of uncomfortable at present. That something carried through. All our habits of thinking, all our ways of thinking, our emotions — last year’s mind arose in dependence upon the mind of ten years ago, twenty years ago, to childhood, to infancy, to the mind present at birth, the mind present during gestation, the mind present at the moment of conception. That moment of mind also arose from a previous moment of mind.
That previous moment of mind was the last moment of mind in the previous life. Trying to get a sense of this — that mind is dependent upon a previous moment of mind — continually. Continually. We cannot posit a first moment of mind just as we cannot posit a first atom of the universe or a first physical phenomenon. Each can be traced backward, infinitely back.
You know, from where did they originate? From where did matter originate? Asking that kind of question. We cannot — some scientists would say that there was the notion of a free lunch, that there was only space.
Even that is not plausible, because without matter, there’s no space. If space is the absence of obstructive contact, if there’s nothing to obstruct, then space doesn’t even exist. If there’s no matter, there’s no space — they arise simultaneously. It can’t arise out of nothing because without something, nothing is meaningless. Without something, nothing doesn’t exist.
So nothing and something arose simultaneously. And matter can’t arise from — its existence depends upon the mind for being perceived. Without a perceiving mind, which validates its existence, it itself would not exist. So all of these — these four elements, the material elements, space, and consciousness itself — have existed without beginning. So it’s not to say that the mind does not depend upon the body or that the body does not depend upon the mind.
The body — and here’s where we make use of this idea of cooperative condition — the body is the cooperative condition. The brain, the nervous system, etcetera, is the cooperative condition of the mind. The mind is dependent upon the body, but not for its substantial continuity — but only for its necessary supportive condition. You know, when we talked about the death process we said that the various elements begin to dissolve and that as they dissolve the physical elements were no longer able to act as a support for consciousness.
For example, the eye sense faculty began to lose its ability to act as a support for the eye consciousness. If we damage the eye, then the eye consciousness is lost. The eye consciousness is dependent upon that physical base as a cooperative condition. But its substantial cause is a previous moment of mind — not this physical eye sense base. If we’re physically ill, it affects our mind.
Perhaps we can’t think clearly. If the nervous system is damaged, then the function of mind is impaired. So the body does affect the mind. The body and nervous system are cooperative causes. The body and nervous system are cooperative conditions for the mind itself.
They condition the mind. They influence the various states and qualities of the mind in the same way that the potter influences the shape of the pot, or the soil influences the quality of the plant. Likewise, the mind is the cooperative condition of the body. The body depends upon the mind, is affected by the mind. This is obvious in the case of psychosomatic illnesses or stress-related disorders — like some types of ulcers and some types of asthma, some types of skin diseases and allergies — which are very much psychosomatic or stress-related.
That is, they’re very much dependent upon our minds. But they have a physical expression. So the quality of the body is very much dependent — as a cooperative condition — upon the state of the mind. The various qualities of our mind. The substantial cause of the body is the sperm and ovum of our parents.
The substantial cause of the body is not the mind. So mind and body act in interdependence. They are usually one another’s cooperative conditions, but not each other’s substantial causes. When we talked about — okay. We said that what goes on to a future — we believe it is this subtlemost wind energy-consciousness combination.
It is our consciousness. In the fact that our — in a roughly speaking — our evolutionary history is encoded upon it. Therefore, it is ours. So due to the force of craving and grasping, this combination will compulsively reassociate itself with coarser wind energy patterns. That is to say it will compulsively reassociate itself with a coarser body.
That is to say it will compulsively enter into a fertilized ovum. It will be drawn into that union of its future parents. So it is the entrance of this continuum — of this very subtle wind energy-consciousness combination — into the fertilized ovum which constitutes rebirth. So from that coarser level, once this combination takes place, coarser consciousnesses — such as all the various sense consciousnesses, conceptual consciousnesses — start to be generated in accordance with the specific type of coarse body that’s supporting them. You know, throughout this process, even now, we aren’t — I am not my body. I am not my mind. We sometimes identify with the body.
For example, if you stub your toe, you say I’m hurt. Sometimes we identify with the mind. If something wonderful happens to you, you say I’m happy. Sometimes we identify with either the body and mind. For example, we say, I can’t stand you. Or sometimes we don’t think about the body and mind in any way — you know, we’re just going about eating, sleeping, walking, doing these various things. The body and this very subtle combination of wind energy and consciousness — we designate, we label —