Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A reddish glow seen at night in the Tibetan countryside — does the eye consciousness alone know it is fire? In this 53-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche uses that example to anchor a precise epistemological distinction: prime cognizers that reach their “final object of apprehension” by their own power versus those requiring a further cognizer to complete understanding. He enumerates five types of the first kind — among them, an eye consciousness that recognizes a father’s face through repeated familiarity, and an inferential cognizer realizing impermanence or selflessness. He then maps three subtypes of the dependent class: seeing red but needing convention to confirm fire; knowing something is a flower but not which species; and a consciousness so distracted it cannot register what appeared at all — this last, Rinpoche notes, is not truly a prime cognizer but merely a nominal one. Suited to students working through classical Buddhist philosophy of mind.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 AK 1988-11-10.mp3
UUID: b863b1f6-0294-491c-a804-96f04c8370cd
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Awareness and Knowledge 1988-1989 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1988-11-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 53.3 minutes
Words: ~2,981
Cognizer when inducement is is When ascertainment is induced by another. So the opposite of that. That is to say, not able to induce. You know, it’s said here, a prime cognizer that induces, let’s see, is able to induce. So the opposite of that is not able to induce.
Not able to induce. Everything else would be the same. And in that case, you would have the definition for a prime cognizer which, when ascertainment is induced by another. Not that which is not able to induce through its own power. So just, you know, just reverse the definition and you then you have you and if we understand one, then we’re going to be able to understand the other just by reversing the understanding.
So there are five types of of prime cognizers which induce ascertainment by themselves. There are five types which induce ascertainment by themselves. The first is sense direct prime cognizers. Sense direct prime cognizers having a familiar object sense direct prime cognizers having a familiar object. And the the, an example of that, an example would be a, a sense direct perceiver, a sense direct perceiver in the continuum of a son apprehending his father’s form.
A sense direct perceiver in the continuum of a son apprehending his father’s form. So due to the, you know, his, the father’s face, for example, appearing again and again to the child, the child develops a familiarization, becomes familiar with that face. His eye consciousness, the child’s eye consciousness becomes familiar with that face. So in dependence upon that face, father’s face appearing again and again to his son, son’s eye consciousness, the eye consciousness itself realizes the father’s face. Not, you know, it just doesn’t see a form.
It just doesn’t see form. It sees it realizes the father’s face due to the force of familiarity. It sees, understands Father’s face. Not just form, but Father’s face. Through the force of, again and again, appearing to the eye consciousness.
Then the second was the sense sense direct prime cognizer to which the ability to perform a function appears. The sense direct prime cognizer to which the ability to perform a function appears. And the, the, an example of that is the, for example, the eye consciousness which apprehends fire. The eye consciousness which apprehending fire, which apprehending fire understands that the fire is able to perform the function of cooking and burning. The eye consciousness, which apprehending fire, the eye consciousness sees fire, and it understands that the fire is able to perform the function of cooking and burning.
That if you put a pot, that you could cook food on that fire, or if you put something in that fire, it would be burnt. The eye consciousness itself knows this. That this, what it’s seeing, is able to perform that function of cooking and burning. The eye consciousness understands what that fire which it’s seen is able to perform these functions of cooking and burning. Then the third was is self knowing direct prime cognizer.
Self knowing direct prime cognizer. And as we’ve we’ve discussed this before, this is there were two types. There is direct self knowing prime cognizers. It’s just self knowing direct prime cognizer. It’s the third type.
And an example of that is the self knowing direct perceiver, the self knowing direct perceiver that experiences a prime cognizer. For example, in a direct So there there are the two So there there are two types of self knowing direct prime cognizers. There’s So there are two types of self knowing direct prime cognizers. There’s the self knowing self knowing. There’s a self knower knower experiencing direct prime cognizers, and the self knower experiencing inferential prime cognizers.
And the fourth is yogic direct prime cognizers yogic direct prime cognizers. And then the fifth is inferential prime cognizers. Inferential prime cognizers, such as the inferential prime cognizer realizing impermanence or selflessness, for example. So the fifth is inferential prime cognizers. These are all These five are prime cognizers which induce ascertainment by themselves.
So these are all of these are prime cognizers which induce ascertainment by themselves? So in order to come to an understanding of this, what a prime cognizer is, induces ascertainment by itself. We’ll go back to this first example. The eye consciousness in the child which apprehends its father’s face. The object of, of the eye consciousness is, is the form of the father, in the father’s, the the father’s form.
Now, the object that is the apprehended object of apprehension is the father’s form. Is the the object of apprehension is the father’s form. But we can there are two types of objects of apprehension. There’s a simple object of apprehension, and then there’s the final object of apprehension. Now, in this case, the eye consciousness is apprehending the final object of apprehension.
That is to say, the father’s face. There’s nothing more for this eye consciousness to see, to understand, to realize. The eye consciousness in this child is apprehending the final object of comprehension, his father’s face. So, you know, this this eye consciousness, taking this first example again, there’s there’s nothing this eye consciousness has exhausted its, there’s nothing more for this eye consciousness to apprehend once it’s seen, once it realizes the father’s face. It’s exhausted the possibilities of its function.
It’s no more work for it to be done. And this is the same for the rest of these four, exactly the same. That the consciousness, the awareness is apprehending the final object of apprehension. There’s nothing more for it to apprehend. So this prime cognizer, which induced ascertainment by itself, it’s it’s completed its work.
There’s nothing more for it to do. It’s, it’s, it has realized the final object of apprehension. Whereas the second, this second category, that is to say prime cognizers, when ascertainment is induced by others, they realize their object of apprehension, but not the final object of apprehension. They have, they’ve just begun to do the work necessary, that they haven’t, completed their work. They haven’t realized everything about the object that can be realized about it.
They’ve only realized, the beginning aspect of it. They still have more work to perform. So if we give a simple example to help us understand what we mean when we say prime cognizer, when ascertainment is induced by another, then you’ll understand the first one also better. In Tibet, you know, they, previously, they didn’t have electricity like they do here. You know, that, you know, we have these lights and everything.
And so at night, their only type of illumination was by fire. You know, where if they had to go somewhere, they had to light a fire. Where they cooked, they cooked. They had to cook by fire. So they were, all their lighting, all their cooking was always dependent upon fire.
So the situation could arise where, you know, you were at a long distance, it was night, and you saw a reddish color, a reddish color in the distance. So your eye consciousness sees reddish color. So it, it, that is its object of apprehension, but that’s not its final object of apprehension, which we can know about this object. We can know something more about it. That is to say, we can know that this reddish color is the red of a fire.
That this is, this is the red color of a fire. But this eye consciousness does not know. It only simply knows it apprehends a reddish color. It does not apprehend that this is the reddish color of a fire. It doesn’t realize that this is the reddish color.
So the person might think, I wonder what that red is in the distance is. Sees the red, eye consciousness sees red, but still he has his doubt, his qualm. I wonder what that red is. He does not, his eye consciousness does not realize that this is the reddish color of a fire. So the, you know, there’s this person at night looking off into the distance and sees the red color.
And the eye consciousness, the object of apprehension of that eye consciousness is the red color. But that’s not the final, situation or the final mode of abidance of this, of what he’s seen. He could, there’s something more to be known about that red color. He might actually begin to wonder, I wonder what that color is, that reddish color. Is it the red color of a fire?
But his eye consciousness does not know that. In order for him to come to an understanding of the final object of apprehension, that is what can be known completely about that object, that is to say that this red color is the red color of a fire, he would have to rely on another prime cognizer. That is, this is what we mean when we say ascertainment induced by another. He would have to rely on a conventional prime cognizer in order to come to an understanding, ah, that’s the red color of a fire. As it is now by its own power, this eye consciousness cannot understand that this is the red color of a fire.
It would have to go on and through an in dependence upon another prime cognizer, come to an understanding that this is in fact, not just red color, but the red color of a fire. The it’s final object of apprehension. So another example, if someone were to come in this room who none of us had ever seen before not none of us. Someone came into the room who I had never seen before. And let’s say this person was from Russia, that my eye consciousness would apprehend that this person, but it would not understand that this person is from Russia.
It could not understand that this is the final object of apprehension, that this is a Russian. It would just see, it could see a person, it could understand a person, that would be its object of apprehension, but it would not realize it’s a Russian. Therefore, it would have to rely on later someone saying, oh, that person who walked in the room, he’s from Russia. That is to say on a convention. Someone would tell us that this person is from Russia.
And only then could we come to realize that this person was a Russian, this person that we saw was a Russian. So it’s an we have to rely on something more. We have to rely on a convention in order to realize the final object of apprehension. Without that relying on something more, something other, then we cannot, by its own power, it cannot realize the final object of apprehension. So in general, we’re saying that if we can realize the final object of apprehension by its own power, by itself, just that consciousness by itself, then this would be a prime cognizer, which induces ascertainment by themselves.
If it’s necessary to rely on a further prime cognizer, another convention, in order to come to that understanding, then we say this is a prime cognizer when ascertainment is induced by another. It relies on something else, not completely by its own power. So, you know, when this person who came in the room, with respect to him being a person, then we could, you know, we could the awareness can ascertain, ah, the person just came in the room. We can we can realize the person. And therefore, with respect to the person, simply the person, this would be a prime cognizer induced which induces ascertainment by them by themselves itself, which induces ascertainment by itself.
Simply with respect to the person, it it is able to, apprehend the person. So the with there are the divisions of prime cognizers when ascertain is induced by another. There is, you know, in the case of when we saw a reddish color at a distance and we were not able to induce that its final object of apprehension was that this, in fact, is the, in truth or in fact, this is the reddish color of a fire, then this would be a prime cognizer, the apert the ascertainment of a a prime cognizer when ascertainment of the of the appearance is induced by itself, but ascertainment of the truth is induced by another or the fact. It’s truth, fact. So this would be a we’re talking about the divisions of ascertainment induced by another.
So this would be one in which ascertainment of the appearance is induced by itself. The appearance was fire. That eye consciousness which sees the reddish color, the appearance it sees the appearance of of the reddish color of fire. The fire appears to it, but the but the ascertainment of the fact or the truth is induced by another, but it doesn’t realize that this, in fact, is fire. So the the fire appears, but it doesn’t realize that this is, in fact, or in truth, fire.
So this is a case of when the ascertainment of the appearance is induced by itself, it’s able to have the appearance on its own, but the ascertainment of the truth is induced by another. It has to rely on a convention to understand that this is the red reddish color is the reddish color of fire. Then the second type is when ascertainment of the general is induced by itself. When ascertainment of the general is induced by itself, but ascertainment of the particular is induced by another. But ascertainment of the particular is induced by another.
So if we give an example, for someone who doesn’t know what type of flower this is. Now when he sees the flower, he can He knows that this is a flower. He realizes his object of apprehension that this is a flower. That is, he knows in general, this is a flower. But he doesn’t know what type.
He doesn’t know in particular what type of flower it is. So this would be, you know, the awareness ascertaining the flower, knowing it’s a flower, but not knowing what type it is. So this would be an example of when ascertainment of the general, that is it’s a flower, is induced by itself. It knows for itself it’s a flower, but it would have to rely on a convention, somebody else telling him later, Oh, that flower is such and such a type. The ascertainment of the particular is induced by another, that is a convention.
He would have to rely on a convention later on in order to actually ascertain what type of flower. So, you know, we have many of these types of prime cognizers that we’ve just explained. You know, we know the general name for various types of objects, but we don’t know what this particular type is called, for example. And so we experience this quite often. So then the third type is is when ascertainment of even the mere appearance is induced by another.
Ascertainment of even the mere appearance is induced by another. So the example of this would be a the eye consciousness apprehending a blue, apprehending blue. Eye consciousness apprehending blue, which induces a doubting consciousness that thinks, did I see blue or not? So the eye consciousness, there has appeared blue color to the eye consciousness. But this eye consciousness induces simply a doubting.
We wonder, did I see blue or not? In fact, blue color appeared, but we wonder, did I actually see blue or not? And so therefore, this is not really a prime cognizer. This is a nominal, or it’s simply called imputed prime cognizer. It’s not an actual prime cognizer.
It’s just by by way of its name, it’s called prime cognizer since it doesn’t it isn’t able to induce ascertainment with respect to its object. It is it induces instead a doubting consciousness. So another example would be if we had, we had five minutes to get to work, And, you know, we really wanted to get to work. We were really rushing. Really wanted to get there.
We were in a hurry. We really wanted to get to work on time. And someone began to talk to us. And though, you know, the very sounds that he was making appeared to us. If someone were to ask us later, you know, what did tell you?
You wouldn’t have any idea what he said. So this would be an example of where, you know, even the mirror appearance is induced by another. We’d have to rely on some further convention in order to understand what he even said to us before, what appeared to us. We’re not even sure what we heard. We have to depend upon something else even to understand what we heard.
So this ear consciousness, which heard his words, is not a prime cognizer. Because prime cognizers must induce realization. They must induce understanding. Whereas this type of prime cognizer simply induces doubt. It’s not sure what was said.
So therefore, this is merely nominal or imputed prime cognizer, not actually a prime cognizer. So we have a I’ll take a few minutes to answer questions. Yeah. The the Roman Naked Samisushi The the So the eye consciousness itself, without relying on memory, without relying on reasoning, realizes that this is the, it’s father’s face, the eye consciousness itself. The So the eye consciousness is accompanied by, for example, the mental factor of discrimination.
So we’re not accompanied. When we say eye consciousness, we mean all these various consciousness which are associated with the eye, the main eye consciousness. So there is associated with this eye consciousness. There is discrimination. So, yeah.
They mixate and number.