Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A question about cutting fingernails — does it hurt? — anchors Khensur Rinpoche’s analysis of inner and outer form in this 45-minute commentary at Buddha House. He works through three of the four close placements of mindfulness: bodies, feelings, and minds. On bodies, he distinguishes outer forms (colors, sounds, tangibles) from inner sense faculties, using the fingernail test and the contrast between hitting a reddish table and a reddish face. On feelings, he traces pleasurable and unpleasurable experiences to skillful and unskillful past actions, and examines how regret can itself be either skillful (regretting harsh speech) or unskillful (regretting a generous act). He closes with minds as the six primary consciousnesses, citing Ārya Maitreya’s distinction between minds grasping coarse objects and mental factors discriminating finer qualities.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 CP of M 1997 06 07.mp3
UUID: 835ed501-be95-40d5-ac08-9f94ab6964ec
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Close Placements of Mindfulness (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1997-06-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~2,077
So what do we mean by bodies? Bodies is synonymous with form. And by form, we mean firstly the various elements. The earth element, fire, water, and wind energy elements. Then there are the evolutes, that is to say those forms which evolve out of the elements, coming together of the elements form various objects.
And these would be, for example, the visual forms, that is to say, objects of our visual consciousness, visual forms, objects of our sound, objects of our ear consciousness, odors, taste, and tangible objects, objects of our touch. So these are evolutes or combinations of the elements. So, with respect to bodies, are three types. There is the inner body, outer body and the body which is bodies which are both inner and outer. So, outer outer forms or we’d say the body, outer bodies are the various external forms.
And these would be, for example, the objects which are seen by our eye consciousness, the visual forms. That is, say colors, for example, red, yellow, blue, these are visual forms. And then there are the objects of the various other consciousnesses such as sounds which is the object of the ear consciousness. And as was mentioned previously, odors, taste, and then finally objects of touch or tangibles. So then there are the inner bodies.
And the inner bodies refer to the five sense faculties. The five, for example, in the case of the eye sense faculty, we’re not referring to the eyeball, that fleshy part, but to an inner matter which is within the eyeball, the black part to our eye. This is the eye sense faculty. And so, this holds true for all the various other senses that there is within the within the ear organ an ear sense faculty and also also with regard to the the the nose, the tongue, and the body. So those we call the inner bodies.
So, how do we distinguish between external and internal forms? It is The determining factor is whether the matter is connected or not connected with feeling. For example, the external forms are unconnected with feelings. The internal forms are connected to feelings. For example, if we were to cut our fingernails, the tips of our fingernails are external form.
When we cut our fingernails, it doesn’t hurt us. It’s not connected with feelings. But if but as if we were to cut further down, then we would experience feelings and there this would this would determine that it is internal form. So, another example, you know, the table, the table is reddish in color. If we were to hit that reddish color, there’s no pain.
There’s no feeling. But our face is also slightly reddish in color. If we hit that reddish color, there’s pain. So this reddish color at the table is external form. The reddish color of our face is internal form.
So, we said that the eye sense faculty is internal form or internal body. And, for example, in case of the eye, there is it is a clear matter within the eye organ. It’s like it’s it’s like glass of a window. It’s a clear matter. Now, that is the eye sense faculty.
That is internal form. Now, this eye sense faculty is housed within the eye organ. That’s like its home, its house. And so this eye organ where the eye sense faculty is housed is said to be both internal and external form. So as it says in the text that the basis of the sense faculties, that is to say, the organs which are both outer and inner forms.
Maybe this presents the maybe this we’ve already presented ourselves with a problem. We said that that we said externals are are are characterized by being not connected with feeling. Internal forms are characterized by being connected with feeling. And now we have something which is both internal and external, which seems to be connected with feeling. So we can’t say that the defining characteristic of whether something is internal or external form is only whether it’s connected with feeling.
That seems that’s a bit of a problem. We can say that the forms do not appear to the So So we can distinguish between the sense faculty and the basis of the sense faculty. When a person dies, the basis of the sense faculty, for example, eye organ remains. It’s still extant. It still exists.
But the eye sense faculty, that no longer exists. In order that there exist the the sense faculties or sometimes this is translated as sense powers, same same same sense faculties, there must be present it must be connected with feelings. If the feelings are have are no longer existent, then the faculties no longer exist. Is that okay? Very good.
So, in terms of we said that the objects of observation of close placements of mindfulness were four, bodies, feelings, minds, and phenomena. And so the objects of observation, first of the close placement of mindfulness on bodies are these three, outer forms, inner forms, and that which is both. Mhmm. So having explained what are the objects of observation in terms of bodies, now we come to feelings. So, the objects of observation of the close placement of mindfulness of feelings.
If we, in expanded fashion, we could list five But here, in a condensed fashion, they list three. And those three are pleasure, unpleasurable, pleasure, unpleasurable, pleasurable, unpleasurable, and neutral feelings. So the the three objects of mindfulness, of close placements are on feelings and three types of feelings, pleasurable feelings, unpleasurable feelings, and neutral feelings. The entity of or the nature of feelings is experience. So, when we say pleasure, this means that we This is the experience of pleasurable feelings or the experience of pleasure.
Unpleasurable feelings are the experience of displeasure. And the neutral feelings are the experience of of neutrality. So, the feelings are of three types. Pleasurable feelings are the experience of pleasure. Unpleasurable feelings are the experience of displeasure.
And, feelings are the experience of neither pleasure nor displeasure. If we were to expand this into feelings into five, so we could expand pleasurable feelings into two, displeasurable, unpleasurable feelings into two, and neutral feelings would remain single. So, expanding the pleasurable feelings into two would be pleasurable physical feelings, pleasurable mental feelings. Likewise, with regard to unpleasurable mental feelings and unpleasurable physical feelings. For example, in the the first of the physical pleasurable and unpleasurable feelings.
If we were wearing warm, comfortable clothing, we would experience physically pleasurable feelings. If if on the contrary, we didn’t have warm clothing, we became cold or if we were in the hot sun, became hot, we would experience physical unpleasurable feelings. So, the pleasurable feelings arise as a result of previous skillful actions. On the other hand, unpleasurable feelings arise due to previous unskillful actions. So, Vasubandhu says that the results of unskillful actions are unpleasurable physical feelings.
The result of non-skillful actions is unpleasurable physical feelings. So the unpleasurable mental feelings are sufferings of the mind. There’s two words in Tibetan which are synonymous, which is the same, yi and sem. So, this unpleasurable of yi and unpleasurable feelings of mind are the same. So the pleasurable feelings of mind or let us say happiness of mind arises and depends upon skillful actions.
For example, the ten skillful actions, the actions of love, compassion and the awakened heart, the correct view of emptiness, etcetera. Śāntideva says that mental unhappiness arises through thoughts. For example, we said that mental unhappiness arises from thought. By way of example, you know, that you had let’s say you had ten dollars and that, you know, that you were going to practice generosity, which is a skillful action, and you met with a beggar, and this you developed a great deal of compassion for this beggar. This beggar didn’t have any food or clothing, and you gave them you gave them ten dollars.
But later on, when it came time for yourself to eat, you thought you were broke. You didn’t have any money. Said, oh, that was really a mistake. Now I’ve given I gave away all my money and now I have nothing. That thinking would be which is thought or conceptuality would be would lead to mental unhappiness.
So you’ve generated thoughts in your mind. Again, on the other hand, let’s say you did something unskillful that you criticized someone, you spoke a great many harsh words directed at them. But later on, you developed that wasn’t the right thing to do and that was wrong of me to speak in that way, and you developed a regret in your mind. That would also be a state of mental unhappiness arisen by thought? Wouldn’t it generate unhappiness of mind?
Would you think that would on the other hand, would you think, oh, that was a good thing to do, that was that was the right thing to do? Would would you would you think, for example, that person really deserved everything I said to him. They really they really were wrong and I’m would you rejoice in having spoken those harsh words at them? I think that and they’re saying If that were the case, then you you wouldn’t experience mental unhappiness, you would experience happiness in mind. On the other hand, if you thought that what you did the previous day was wrong, it was a mistake and you developed a sense of regret toward that action, then you would not experience happiness in mind.
On the contrary, you would experience unhappiness in mind. So that regret is skillful. On the other hand, to say, oh, that was that was okay to do, that would be unskillful. On the other hand, having one’s practice generosity and subsequently developing a regret with regard to having practiced that generosity, that regret would be unskillful. On that end, having practiced generosity and thinking that was a wonderful thing to have done, that was the right thing to do and developing a sense of rejoicing, then that would be a skillful action.
So, it is it is through the quality of our thoughts that we accrue skillful and unskillful actions. So, in general, we can say that with regard to previous skillful actions, if we develop regret, that’s unskillful. With regard to previous unskillful actions, if we develop regret, that’s that’s a skillful action. Vasubandhu says that there are two types of regret, skillful and unskillful. With regards to positive previous actions, if we develop regret, that’s an unskillful regret.
With regards to previous negative actions, if we develop regret, that’s a skillful action. But there are others who say there is a third type of regret. For example, if we were simply to draw draw with a picture in the dirt, without without any particular thought in mind, just kind of scratching the earth and thinking, if you were to say, oh, I I shouldn’t have done that and develop that kind of regret, that would be a neutral regret or unspecified type of regret. So, most essentially by feelings, we mean the entity of the nature of experience. So, we have overall three categories of experiences, pleasurable, unpleasurable, and neutral experiences.
So, we’ve covered bodies, feelings, and now the third object of observation is minds. And here, minds refers to primary consciousnesses. Minds and primary consciousnesses are synonymous. So, we said minds are synonymous with primary consciousnesses and there are six types of primary consciousnesses. So six primary are the eye primary consciousness, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mental primary consciousness.
So, in general, we can divide that which knows objects into two overall classifications. There are minds, that is their primary consciousnesses, and mental factors. So, Rinpoche quoted a verse by Ārya Maitreya from his text called Discriminating the Middle and the Extremes where he says that the nature of minds is that which understands the coarse entity of an object, the coarse entity of an object. So primary consciousnesses or minds simply know the coarse or the gross object. Whereas, mental factors understand or discriminate the specific qualities, the detailed characteristics of the object.
So, we said that there were six primary consciousnesses. The first five are referred to as physical are referred to as physical sense consciousnesses, physical sense consciousness, the sixth is mental sense consciousness.