Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 52-minute talk, Khensur Rinpoche works through the first three of four objects of mindfulness — bodies, feelings, and minds — at the opening of an Insight Retreat. He distinguishes outer forms (colors, sounds, odors) from inner forms (the five sense faculties) and organs that are both, using the reddish color of a table versus a face as a crisp test: hit external form and nothing is felt; hit internal form and there is pain. Feelings are sorted into three types (pleasurable, unpleasurable, neutral), their origins traced to skillful and unskillful karma; a sustained post-generosity regret example shows how the same act turns skillful or unskillful depending solely on the thought that follows. He closes with Ārya Maitreya’s distinction between primary consciousnesses, which grasp only the gross object, and mental factors, which discriminate its specific qualities. Best suited to practitioners with some Abhidharma background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 IR 1997-06-07.mp3
UUID: 7b895f4a-05ae-4f6e-aff7-c85e52dbc318
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Insight Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1997-06-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 52.4 minutes
Words: ~2,174
So what do we mean by bodies? Body is synonymous with form. And here, by form, we mean, firstly, the various elements. The elements of the earth element, fire, water, and wind energy elements. So 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 the objects of our visual consciousness, visual forms. Objects of our sound.
Objects of our ear consciousness. Odors, consciousness. Odors, tastes, and tangible objects. Objects of our touch. So these these are evolutes or combinations of the elements.
So with respect to bodies, there there are three types. There is the the inner body, outer body, and the body which is bodies which are both inner and outer. So outer outer forms or we 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, 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 this the inner bodies refer to the 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 ear organ an ear sense faculty and also with regard to the the the nose, the tongue, and the body.
So those we we call the inner bodies. How do we do 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 if we were our fingernails. The tips of our fingernails are external form. If when we cut our fingernails, it does not hurt us. It’s not connected with feelings. But 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 the table, if we were to 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 of 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 with inside the eye organ. It’s like it’s it’s like the glass a window.
It’s the clear matter. Now that is the that is the eye sense of that that is internal form. Now the eye is this eye sense faculty is housed with within the eye organ. That’s like its home, its house. And this 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 the organs, which are both outer and inner forms. Just gonna call Noah. So maybe this presents maybe this we’ve already presented ourselves with the problem. We said said externals 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. But we can we can say that the the forms do not appear to the Today, So the reason that 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, that is say the eye, for example, the eye organ remains.
It still extends. It still exists. But the eye sense faculty that no longer exists. In order that there exist the 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 the faculties no longer exist.
Authorship. That didn’t resolve. So in terms of we said that the objects of observation of close placements of a 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, 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 pleasurable, unpleasurable, and neutral feelings. So the three objects of mindfulness, close placements are on feelings.
And three types of feelings. Pleasurable feelings, unpleasurable feelings, and neutral feelings. The, the, the entity of, or the nature of feelings is experience. So when we say pleasure, what this means that we, is, this is the experience of pleasurable feelings, or the experience of pleasure. Unpleasurable, this unpleasurable feelings are the experience of displeasure.
And the neutral feelings are the experience of of neutrality. So the feelings are of three types. Well, pleasurable feelings are the experience of pleasure. Unpleasurable feelings are the experience of displeasure. And neutral feelings are the experience of neither pleasure nor displeasure.
If we were to expand this into feelings into five. So we could ex we could expand pleasant pleasurable feelings into two, displeasurable, unpleasurable feelings into two, and neutral feelings would remain single. Expanding the pleasurable feelings into two would be pleasurable physical feelings, pleasurable mental feelings. Likewise, with regard to unpleasurable mental feelings, unpleasurable feelings. For example, in the the first of the physical pleasurable and unpleasurable feelings.
If if we were wearing warm, comfortable clothing, we would experience physical physic physically pleasurable feelings. If if on the contrary, we didn’t have warm clothing, we became cold, or 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, un unpleasurable feelings arise due to previous unskillful actions. So Vasubandhu says that that the results of unskillful actions are unpleasurable physical feelings.
Actions is unpleasurable physical feelings. So the unpleasurable mental feelings are sufferings of the mind. There’s two words in Tibetan which are synonymous, the same, yi and sem, so this unpleasurable of yi and unpleasurable feelings of mind are the same. So, the pleasurable pleasurable feelings of mind, or let us say happiness of mind, is arises in dependence 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 the mental unhappiness arises through thoughts. 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, 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 felt you felt you were broke.
You didn’t have any money. It’s, oh, that was really a mistake. Now I’ve given 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 you you 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 [the thought] oh, 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 wouldn’t that generate unhappiness of mind? Would would you you think that was would 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 I would you rejoice in having spoken those harsh words at them? I think that and they’re saying And And 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 a sense of regret toward that that action, then you would not experience happiness of mind. On the contrary, you would experience unhappiness of mind. This Oh. 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 that we accrue skillful and unskillful actions. So in general, we can say that with regard to previous skillful actions, if with regard to previous skillful actions, if we develop regret, that’s unskillful. If with regard to previous unskillful actions, if we develop regret, 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 skillful action. But there are others who say there is a third type of regret. Regret.
For example, if we were to do, simply to draw out, draw with a picture in the dirt, without any particular thought in mind, just kinda scratching the earth and thinking, if you were to say, oh, 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 the entity of the nature of experience. So we have overall three three categories of experiences, pleasurable, 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. Alternate the card is the number shape or number shape, number shape, digit number six primary consciousness are the eye primary consciousness, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mental primary consciousness. So in general, we can we can divide that which knows objects into two overall classifications. There are minds, which that is their primary consciousnesses, and mental factors.
So quote and Rinpoche quoted a verse by Ārya Maitreya from his text called Discriminating the Middle and the Extremes, where he says that the 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 we said that there were six primary consciousnesses.
The first five are referred to as physical or are referred to as as physical sense consciousnesses, physical sense consciousness, and the the sixth is mental sense consciousness.