Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. What if the brain is merely a television set — the hardware that transmits a signal, not the source of the programme? That analogy is the centrepiece of this 91-minute talk, in which Ven Jampa Gendun builds a philosophical case for rebirth aimed at Western audiences inclined toward scientific materialism. After opening with compassionate guidance on sitting with the dying and leading the room through a loving-kindness meditation, he introduces two key logical concepts — substantial cause versus cooperative cause, illustrated with a clay pot and a flower seed — then applies them to dismantle the neuroscientific argument that mind arises from brain. He further presses conservation of mass and the second law of thermodynamics into service, before closing with a brief sketch of how the subtlest level of consciousness, paired with wind energy, reassociates with a new physical basis at conception. Pitched at thoughtful, analytically minded practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 LOR 1988 08 07.mp3
UUID: 8adc7e79-aabb-4c2d-86d5-787b9d876962
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Logic of Rebirth (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-08-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 90.8 minutes
Words: ~8,987
We want to relate with that person’s being. We want to relate with them beneath the superficial levels, appearances which we usually relate with people at. So it’s most important to create we have to try to create some kind of opening, some kind of communication. You know, if you do this then your knowledge, whatever knowledge you may have, will come into use quite naturally. You’ll be quite you’ll be very skillful with it.
It, you know, what you’re doing will work, it will go right. You know, you sort of connect with it fundamentally. So we create some kind of rapport, some kind of communication. You know, you can sort of just of hang out and reminisce about the old times, you know, about the good times and the bad times that you had together. You try to create some kind of loving atmosphere.
And then you have to be a good listener and let the person talk, allow the person to say what needs to be said. You know, it’s more of a sharing, helping them to express any repressed emotions, sharing in their fears, in their fears, sharing in their pain, and sharing good times and bad times with them. That’s sharing, you know, this being aware of the commonality and the commonality of all our suffering and all our fears that we all have. And it helps people to endure pain and helps them to generate compassion. And we have to comfort them in small ways, whether it’s just adjusting their pillow, wiping their forehead, holding their hand.
But don’t make yourself a nuisance. Don’t impose your kindness upon them. So I think the way you do things is of most importance. So the person has to be allowed to take care of unfinished business. You know, it’s as if he has to catch a train and he has no choice about catching this train.
And he’s not quite sure whether he packed everything. There may be some questions whether there’s some kind of unfinished business that needs to be taken care of. So we have to give him this opportunity to finish his business, to make sure everything’s packed so that when he gets on the train there’ll be no holding back. He can just completely let go. So dying people quite often isolate themselves, you know.
They’re no longer beautiful, they’re no longer useful, And our society values beauty. So somehow we have to convey to the dying person that they’re still lovable. We have to show them signs of loving, that they’re still cherished. We have to not allow them to see that the feeling that they’re unlovable. They’re going to feel, you know, I’m no longer beautiful.
My whole life I’ve been, you know, serving you. I’ve been, you know, especially, I’ve been of use. I’ve been of some function and now I’m useless. I’m no function. I’m no longer beautiful.
And somehow we have to convey to them that they’re still beautiful within our eyes. But you know, I think you get nervous, you get embarrassed, you don’t know quite what to do, quite what to say. And maybe you talk about the weather, maybe you talk about politics, and a lot goes unsaid. So it’s important to communicate, and it’s important to show your love. You know, however you showed your love during the course of your lifetime together, you do more of that.
Show them that, you know, that they’re still lovable, that they’re still cared for, and help them to work through their fears of pain, separation, fears of, you know, going someplace that we don’t know, the unknown. And all the time, you’re working with them and sharing with them, helping them to work with their fears of separation, of aloneness, of going into an unknown, aware that you share the same fears, and that someday you’re going to be looking up into somebody else’s eyes and praying that those eyes are loving and caring and full of peace. Ask not for whom the bells toll, they toll for thee. So the contemplation of terminal issues of death and dying is not in the least bit morbid. It’s life enhancing.
And if we think every day to be our last, then we will receive with joy hours upon which we had not counted. I’d like to start with the Before I give the talk on rebirth, to begin with the meditation on loving kindness. So if you could take a comfortable posture, the one that you can hold fairly reasonably without moving for say twelve, thirteen, fifteen minutes. Then I’ll lead you through a metta meditation or simply a meditation on loving kindness. Sort of just think about what I’m saying and maybe repeat some words to yourself and some heartfelt words rather than being artificial and having to make a great deal of effort to say them, actual emotions that we’re trying to regenerate, the feelings will come spontaneously and effortlessly.
So it’s way of beginning. The heart of all the various religious practices I think is love and compassion. So I think it’s worthwhile to consistently make some effort toward some small way actualizing them in our life. Even it’s just to once in a while generate some good feelings towards other people whom we may normally not even stop to consider exist at all. Can you hear me okay with that?
So just, you know, become sincere with the moment to get in contact with some of your feelings of dissatisfaction, some of your problems, and the fact that you want to be happy. Whatever you may have done in the past, whatever various mistakes you may have created, you can simply regret them and determine as best you can not to repeat them again in the future. You can begin again. And however you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold, you can change. You can become anything that you want to be.
For the present, we want to accept ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, and develop compassion and a feeling of friendliness towards all those parts. They’re worthy our love and consideration. So simply direct some positive feelings towards yourself. Be gentle with yourself. Wish yourself happiness, good feelings.
May I be happy? May I be well? May I not suffer? May I grow? Just wish yourself everything that you would like to have.
Be kind to yourself. Now think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex, and imagine that person in front of you. If you can’t see them visually, then just feel that that person is there. And remember all the good times that you’ve shared together, all the happiness, all the kindness that this person has shown you. Begin to radiate out direct the positive feelings which naturally arise when you think of this person, the feelings of caring, of closeness, of warmth, of wanting them to be happy.
And simply radiate, direct these feelings toward them, wishing them, May you be happy. May all that you desire, may you have it. All your wants fulfilled, all good things, just good feelings. Just wish this person well and happiness. Now think of someone that you neither like nor dislike, someone you feel indifferent toward.
Imagine that person in front of you. And we want to try to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually cling to, that we usually judge people by, that we discriminate people by, whether they’re male or female, beautiful or ugly, young or old, rich or poor, educated, uneducated. Go beneath all of that to the essence of that person. There’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer exactly like yourself. Try to see that this is the bottom line of that person no matter what superficial appearance is, no matter what they may look like on the outside.
And just as we wish our own self happiness and not to suffer, we have to begin to wish this person the same because it’s very much a reflection about how we feel about ourselves deep down, how we relate to the essential person, because basically we’re exactly alike. So wish them happiness, wish them not to suffer, that they’d be well, that good things happen to them. Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, someone you have some problems with, someone you dislike. Imagine that person in front of you. This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself.
Perhaps their method of finding their happiness, eliminating their suffering, come in conflict with your methods. It’s just a conflict of interest, conflict of egos. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for. And this person has done the same to you. But just as we have to forgive ourselves for the mistakes that we made, we have to begin to forgive this person for making the same types of mistakes.
So just for the moment set aside your hurt, your grudge, your anger, and see someone just like yourself, someone who’s doing the best they can to get some happiness out of life, very confused about how to go about it, and making many, many mistakes along the way. You wish them happiness just as you wish yourself, some good feelings. Imagine these people, all four of these people together, yourself and these three others. They all look different from the superficial aspects, their appearances. You have different feelings towards them.
But try to see them all from the perspective of wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer. In this they’re all exactly alike, no difference. Without any feelings of bias, just radiate out caring feelings, warm feelings wishing them happiness to all four equally. And all the people in this room, people searching, inquiring, trying to grow, trying to find the path, trying to find satisfaction, fulfillment, wish everyone in the room success, that they find what they’re looking for, they find some peace and love, and that they’re able to help others to find the same. Just spread out, radiate out good feelings, positive feelings to everyone in the room.
And all the people on the block eating supper, cooking, watching television, reading the paper, getting ready for bed everything they do is in order to find happiness, to eliminate their suffering. So radiate out the wish touching everyone on the block that they find the happiness that they’re looking for, that they not suffer. Extending out further to all of Adelaide, the people in their cars and buses, on the streets and their homes. And further and further opening your heart, your mind, radiating out further and further to all of South Australia, all the people, animals and insects. Extending out, radiating out further and further, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country.
Extending out further, opening your heart, breathing out warm positive feelings, New Zealand. The entire southern hemisphere, Developing the entire world in your heart. It’s caring, concerned, wishing of happiness. All the people, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects, all everything that lives on the earth is touched by your wish that you’d be happy. Radating out in all the directions of space.
Further and further, without limit. To finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all of infinite space, the wish, May all things be happy. May all things be happy. So I’m going to talk a little bit about rebirth as best I can. Just to kind of cheer you up from last month’s talk when we all died.
Give us some hope. So I’d like to cover, you know, very roughly and briefly two areas in connection with rebirth. One is to explore the question of the very fact of the existence of rebirth and briefly describe the process of rebirth as seen from a Buddhist perspective within the Buddhist system of psychology. So, you know, in exploring this question of rebirth, I don’t presume to think that I’m going to prove its existence to anybody here tonight. But hopefully I can stimulate some inquiry, some questioning, possible opening up our mind to its possible existence.
We should try, make some effort to come to an understanding as to whether rebirth exists or not, because it’s important to know. It has a bearing on the way we live our life. If it didn’t, then of course it might be an intellectual curiosity, but it’s not very important. There are perhaps many more important things that we could direct our attention to. But if in fact rebirth does exist then it may in fact alter the way we lead our life.
It perhaps should, I don’t know. If it doesn’t then it would be good to know that also. Perhaps you’ll find this rather extreme, but I remember one of my teachers in India, he said, you know, If I didn’t have a firm conviction in the existence of rebirth, and I didn’t have a firm conviction in the law of cause and effect karma, then I would commit suicide. I mean, this was the ramifications of his understanding of the existence of rebirth, that if it didn’t exist, then by simply committing suicide, we’d finish our problems once and for all. We don’t have to go through all this trouble, this dissatisfactory quality of his life.
It’s not I should supplement that with the fact that he’s probably happier than anybody in this room, but he’s aware of the suffering nature, the satisfactory quality of any ego state, which we aren’t, probably aren’t. Okay? So he’s a very happy person, but he’s aware of the dissatisfactory quality of existence bounded by ego. So what is the use of trying to go beyond ego? If we’re just going to die, why not just kill yourself?
This was his thinking. But because of his firm conviction in existence of a future life that it’s not going to do him any good to kill himself because it’s just going to go on, he’s just going to have to go through the same work again, and he may not have the fortunate basis that he had then, that he has now hopefully, that he has a method to work with, that he has all the proper circumstances internal and external, that he has to take advantage of his situation. Someday we’re all going to have to do this work, this job of liberating ourselves. This is the implication, the ramification, if in fact rebirth does exist. It does have a bearing on the way we lead our lives.
It’s just not a matter for intellectual curiosity. Now, the problem is that the vast majority of the people who reject the notion of rebirth have never really considered it, even superficially. And, two, the same can be said for those who accept the notion of rebirth. The vast majority of them I’ve never really considered. It varies other than superficially.
Either way, having never really considered the concept deeply, never really having come to a firm conviction, a firm conclusion, then its existence or nonexistence has very little impact on their lives, and especially the existence of future lives. They say, Yes, yes, I think it exists, but never having really considered the ramifications and having a deep conviction, then even this mere superficial acceptance doesn’t play a very important role in the way they lead their lives, their conduct, their goal of their lives. So, you know, these people, they are either unthinkingly biased in the direction of a mechanistic interpretation of life or they simply wish it to exist. It’s comforting in the face of the possibility of complete annihilation in the face of death. They wish it to exist, so they at least pay lip service to the fact that, Ah, yes, it exists.
They don’t have to face the question of the ultimate destruction of their ego or self, annihilation, or the question of the necessity to become serious about the question of liberation. I can do it next life. So the question of establishing rebirth And by rebirth, I mean reincarnation. I use the term rebirth. Other authors may use the term reincarnation.
I think they mean exactly the same thing. So this can be approached by several different avenues. One is the easiest if we could just recall our previous lives. That would be an easy way out. Now we can come to this recollection through spontaneous recollection by training ourselves, cultivating a memory of past lives.
Some people recall past lives through hypnotic regression. Some people are told about their past lives by other people. So there you know, and then lastly there’s the possibility of establishing it through some rationale, some logical reasoning. So these various former methods, You know, are many accounts, many books setting forth case histories, individuals’ experiences, experiments which have been conducted, which tend to support the existence of past lives. And so, you know, these various accounts you can all read at your leisure.
This is not the avenue which I am going to approach rebirth. These various accounts of other people’s accounts through their own experiences or the experiences of other people by whatever means of the existence of past lives. I want to focus on the rationale of rebirth, some of the reasoning involved. First I want to do this for two purposes. First, to eliminate some of the misconceptions of what Buddhism means when it says, I’m going to be reborn.
I’m going to be reborn as an animal, or you better be careful you’re reborn as a hell being. You know, what exactly is being reborn? What is this all about? I remember when I was young and they talked about rebirth, I kind of thought, well, you know, this body kind of flies up in the air and goes somewhere. So this was my conception.
Of course that’s quite a childish conception which can quite easily be rejected. And therefore one rejects the throws the baby out with the bathwater and says, What? Rebirth doesn’t exist because I can see my body rotting. Well, this has nothing to do with the Buddhist conception of rebirth, so we can at least clarify what the Buddhist conception of rebirth is through this explanation of the rationale of rebirth. And also to show that the existence of rebirth has a logical foundation, that it is amenable to reasoning, to an intellectual investigation.
Is this not a wishful, wishing thought, an emotional response to the prospect of death? So in setting forth the rationale rebirth, I’m going to it’s necessary to introduce a few concepts. Hopefully they won’t be very complicated and I’ll try to explain them simply if I can. We’re going to make use of these concepts later. The first is different types of causes.
There are two types of causes. One is substantial cause and the other is cooperative cause. Okay? We’re going to make use of these ideals later, and I’m going to explain what a substantial cause is and what a cooperative cause is. And the other is similarity of type, similarity of type.
And by way of example, basis of illustration for explaining the difference between substantial cause and cooperative cause. And I hope I don’t become what I hope I don’t lose anybody. I don’t mean I’m not particularly a logician, but I think, you know, I’m going to use some analogies, clarifying examples. So even though maybe you’re not used to some of the language I’m using, hopefully you’ll be able to follow along. If not, you can wave your hand or just throw something at me.
And I’ll try to explain it as best I can. But it’s just the words. The words shouldn’t be that much of a problem. So the difference between substantial cause and cooperative cause. So it can be most easily understood if we take as a basis of illustration a clay pot, a ceramic pot.
A ceramic a clay pot. We happen to have one right here. Okay. The substantial cause of the clay pot is the wet lump of clay. Yeah?
Just this lump of clay, this, you know, whatever color, red or gray, just this massive clay, this huge lump, is the substantial cause of the clay pot. This lump of clay itself becomes transformed into the pot. It is incorporated into the pot itself. It becomes the pot itself. After the pot is made, this lump of clay is no longer in existence.
It itself is transformed into the clay pot. Okay? Its substance this is where we get the word substantial cause the substance of it is transformed into the clay pot itself. Therefore we call it the substantial cause of the pot. On the other hand, the cooperative cause of the clay pot is the potter and the various tools he uses to form the pot, his wheel, knives or whatever.
He is the cooperative cause. You know, after he’s finished making the pot, the pot’s created, he washes his hands, cleans up, and goes home. Know, and the tools are very pretty much like in the same condition as when he began. They’re not incorporated into the pot. They’re not transformed.
He is not transformed into the pot. The wheel is not transformed into the pot. His knife is not transformed into the pot. They simply cooperate in the production of the pot. There’s still a cause of the pot.
Without the potter and his tools and the wheel, we could not produce this effect of a clay pot. In producing any effect, anything which is produced, tables, this building, lights, people we have to have two types of causes: a cooperative cause and a substantial cause. If either one of them are missing, then no effect will arise. We cannot produce anything unless we have both substantial cause and a cooperative cause. So another you know, can take another example to help clarify.
You know, we went to a flower. Okay, the substantial cause. It has a substantial cause and a cooperative cause. The substantial cause of the flower is the flower seed. Yeah, the flower seed.
The cooperative cause of the production of the flower is the soil, the moisture, the sunlight, the fertilizer. These all cooperate in producing the flower. So there’s a difference that we can begin to see the difference between substantial cause and cooperative cause. You know if we didn’t have both of these, for example, is some an actual fact they have found seeds, grains of wheat I think, which were found in the Egyptian pyramids, which were probably five thousand years old. And these remained in a dormant state for five thousand years.
They didn’t produce the effect of actually growing wheat. Why not? The substantial cause was present, but there wasn’t the cooperative cause. They took these seeds after five thousand years and they put them in the earth, they’ve added some water, and they grew the wheat. So we can see the necessity of having two types of causes: the substantial cause and the cooperative cause.
It’s obvious if we don’t have the seed, no matter how much earth we have, no matter how much moisture we have or sunlight, we’re never going to grow wheat without wheat seeds. So we have to have both the cooperative cause and the substantial cause. So this is the concept of these two types of causes, which we’re going to make use of in talking about rebirth. And the second concept is the concept of the similarity of type. This is simply that within nature there is always a similarity of type between cause and effect.
Between cause and effect. From an orange seed we get an orange tree. We don’t get an apple tree. Ice arises from water, it doesn’t arise from There’s always some similarity of type between a cause and its effect, the effect and its cause. So it’s the view of mechanistic science.
You know I’m not saying science in general, just the mechanistic science. The view of a type of science which has become predominant in the last two three hundred years since Descartes and Newton in which the, you know, the universe and everything within it is seen as unconscious matter, and it’s merely the mechanistic approach to the universe. The recombinations of various That life has risen through mechanical laws which can be predicted. I think it’s becoming obvious that this paradigm, as it stood for over three hundred years, is now being shifted due to the discoveries in theoretic physics, particle physics, that they’re beginning to see that the universe is a participatory universe. That it only has relative existence, it’s not objectively existing.
It’s just a matter of mechanical lifeless objects, processes occurring. Anyway, mechanistic science. It’s their view that the mind or the consciousness arises from the body or the nervous system or the brain, essentially. Mechanistic science is saying that the mind arises from the brain. I think this is pretty well accepted.
The causes for the mind cease. The body returns to the natural elements, rocks, or decomposes, and the mind vanishes like a rainbow. It kind of fades away. Something like that. That’s kind of the essential proposition of mechanistic science with respect to consciousness, to mind.
Hence, there are no future lives. That’s all finished. So let’s analyze this, this proposition of mechanistic science. I don’t know physics very well, but I’m going to use a few ideas from physics and I hope I’m not misinterpreting them or misrepresenting them. If they are, if there’s some physicists in the audience, please speak up.
I’d like to know myself. So we’re going to analyze this mechanistic approach to the consciousness and from where the consciousness arrives. So one of the accepted laws of a very important law of physics is the law of conservation of mass. Conservation of mass. And this simply stated is that the sum total of the mass and energy in the universe is constant.
That the sum total is neither decreasing or increasing. That their matter and energy are I should say mass and energy are convertible. They can be transformed one into another. This is one of Einstein’s revolutionary ideas. But the sum total is never decreasing or increasing.
So all the infinite varieties of physical objects. By physical objects, I mean both energy and mass. Energy is a physical object. Mass is a physical object. They’re physical from the point of view that they obstruct movement.
This is what we mean by a physical object, that which obstructs as opposed to say space, which does not obstruct. It’s a non physical object. Okay? Just clarifying. So all the infinite varieties of physical objects in the universe are just various combinations of mass and energy.
Just being transformed into recombinations. So that the various production of various physical objects in the universe is simply, you know, the recombining. Recombinating, that’s a new word. The recombining of essentially the elements and the energy which binds them. It’s like recycling process.
You know, this table. It came from a previous physical object, trees in a forest. I don’t know where paint comes from. Where does paint come from? Some kind of chemical.
I should know that. Oil. Oil, good. The paint came from oil, the wood came from trees, the trees came from seeds, from soil, from moisture. And then we can keep coming back, and it’s always physical objects are always arising from physical objects.
And by physical objects I mean objects which obstruct movement, tangible objects. So there’s always this similarity of type. Physical objects arise only from physical objects. This type of similarity of type. They do not arise out of non physical objects.
For example, space. Physical objects, this table, did not arise out of space. Likewise, space does not arise out of physical objects. That which is non physical does not arise out of that which is physical. If they did that they would be arising from a cause which is dissimilar in type to itself.
And this would violate the law of conservation of mass, because if for example, you know, tables came from space then there would be an increase of mass in the universe. Or if a table somehow became space, there would be a decrease of the mass in the universe, and this would violate one of the cardinal laws of physics. So there’s this constant So they’re not interchangeable, non physical and physical objects. So within Buddhist cosmology, know, the study of the nature, the makeup of the universe, it sets forth six primary elements, you know, I think in Western chemistry. I don’t know how many there are now.
There used to be about one hundred and eight elements in All the various physical things were just combinations of various atoms forming molecules, elements. Within the Buddhist conception there are six primary elements. There is what? We’ve been studying these a little bit on Tuesday night. Anyway, I won’t ask them.
I might embarrass them. So there’s the earth element, but what we mean by earth element is the factor of hardness, solidity, something like that. We’re not talking about balls of earth. Earth and water element, the factor of cohesiveness of joining together, the quality of being able to stick together. You know, you add water to flour and it kind of sticks together.
The element of fire, which is the factor of heat or temperature. The element of wind energy. Now this term wind energy, sometimes it’s called air. I would just like to use the word energy, but I’m going to say wind energy because it includes everything from the breath down to the energy in our nervous system, which is running through our nervous system. So it covers quite a lot of territory.
The actual atmosphere which we breathe in to the actual currents of energy running through our nervous system. So I call it wind energy. This is the factor of motility, movement. So there are these four primary physical elements. Then there are two additional elements, the element of consciousness and the element of space.
From the Buddhist point of view, the entire universe and everything within the universe, animate or inanimate, is simply a combination in various proportions of these six elements. In the case of animate, it would necessarily have to have the element of consciousness. Now, me talk about the nature of consciousness, the nature of mind. Here I’m going to use consciousness and mind a little loosely. I want to say they’re the same thing.
Technically they aren’t quite the same thing, but that’s not important in this discussion. So I might use consciousness sometimes. I might use mind, but we can take them to mean about the same thing. The nature of consciousness or mind is that which is clear and knowing. Clear and knowing.
This is the definition, as most of the students on Tuesday night know, the definition of mind. Definition of consciousness, I should say. Clear in a The word here clear, it has different interpretations. In this context it can mean non physical, intangible, non obstructive. So all the various emotions, feelings, discriminations, states of mind, our attitudes, All these various consciousnesses are non physical.
That is to say they’re not obstructive. So the question of rebirth, now the entire question of rebirth comes down to the point from where does the mind arise. If we were to say the mind arises from the brain, then the mind, which is non physical, would arise from the physical. It would arise from a substantial cause which is dissimilar in type to itself. And every time, you know, a mind was produced, consciousness was produced, then there would be a decrease in the amount of mass and energy in the universe.
So the mind does not arise out of nowhere. All products, all effects have a cause. So we have to What is the substantial cause of mind? Now the substantial cause of mind must be similar in type to it. So there’s only one thing which is similar in type.
A substantial cause which is similar in type to the mind, and that is a previous moment of mind. I talked about these six primary elements. They’re not The hardness factor does not somehow transform into a cohesive factor. That is to say the earth element does not somehow able to transform, produce, be the substantial cause of a water element. They each have their continuums.
These continuums have existed from beginning of this time of all the various elements. The various physical elements cannot give rise to the mental element or to space element. Likewise Buddhism is carrying this over into a discussion within the physical objects as presented by Western science cannot give rise to consciousness because the consciousness is non physical. There are various emotions, attitudes, feelings. So the mind which exists at the present moment, you know, which exists at the moment of conception.
You know, Buddhism is saying when at the moment of conception there is a consciousness present. Now that consciousness is an effect. It must have a cause. And the only thing which can act as a substantial cause to that consciousness which is present at the moment of conception is another moment of mind in that same continuum, like a train. That moment of consciousness is the last moment of consciousness of a previous life.
Consciousness exists at the moment of conception. Now the consciousness has to arise from somewhere. It has to have a substantial cause and a cooperative cause. Buddhism is saying that the brain, the molecules, organic molecules cannot act as the substantial cause of consciousness. That only something similar in type to it can act as a substantial cause, and this can only be a previous moment of mind.
And this previous moment of mind is the last moment of mind in a previous life. But we’re going to examine this a little bit more. You know one mind moment is always arising in dependence upon another mind moment. You know something happened to you this morning. Somebody gave you a dirty look and it’s kind of carried this mood throughout your day with you.
These things are impermanent in their states of mind. That is to say they arise, they abide for a moment and they cease. And therefore they have to keep recreating similar types to themselves in the same way that this table is constantly from moment to moment is creating a similar type to itself. Constantly. You know, for example, we can begin to think about it in terms of the body.
It said that the entire all the cells in the body are completely replaced every eight days. That’s a lot of work. The various cells are replacing each other until the sum total of the complete body is replaced every eight days. Constantly changing, changing, changing, changing from moment to moment. But it’s always replicating itself as a similar type or very roughly because we do grow and we do have mutations.
This ultimately why we die as far as old age is concerned. If there wasn’t this replication process, if there wasn’t some a little bit of mixing, little bit of bad workmanship involved, there’s no reason why we couldn’t go on indefinitely. But there are mutations. There’s some flaws in the reproduction process. But anyway, essentially the cells are replicating themselves even on an atomic level.
So this is also in terms of mind. In one mind, a bad mood gives rise to another moment of a bad mood, gives rise to another moment of bad mood, and this carries down through the entire day and you had a bad day. Something like that. So one mind moment is giving rise to the next mind moment, to the next mind moment. You know, we can change our moods, but essentially what we’re talking about is not particularly the particular state of mind, but the fact is that the mind is rising from a similar type from the point of view of another mind.
Consciousness gives rise to consciousness, gives rise to consciousness, gives rise to consciousness. Whatever that particular state is is not important at this time. In this way we cannot posit our first moment of consciousness. Every moment of consciousness, since it’s an effect, must have a substantial cause, and that can only be another moment of consciousness Prior to that, prior to that, prior that, prior to that. We can never find the first moment of consciousness.
Interestingly enough, we can never find the first moment of matter. We can never find the first atom in the universe. Ask a scientist, a physicist, a chemist, When did the first atom come into existence? They can’t tell you. It didn’t come from space because space couldn’t even exist.
Because the definition of space is the absence of obstructability. If there’s nothing to obstruct, the question of nonobstructability doesn’t make any sense. So space doesn’t even exist before the first atom. And consciousness doesn’t even exist because as it’s becoming more and more evident the universe does not exist objectively. It’s a participatory universe.
Objects do not exist independently of subjects. They exist in an interdependent relationship. So there’s no atom without an observer. There’s no matter without an observer. There’s no space without an atom.
They’re all interdependently existing. None of them came first. We cannot posit the existence of a first moment of any of them, of either physical object, space, or consciousness. Does that make a little bit of sense? Think it’s interesting if you ask where the first moment, where the first atom came from.
Had to be a first moment. And where’d it come from? I don’t know his name. There was a physicist on television a couple weeks ago and we talked about that. And he’s quite he’s an English physicist, considered one of the foremost physicists in England, I take it.
And he has come up with the revolutionary hypothesis that the universe never had a beginning, which is what Buddhism said two thousand five hundred years ago. That makes sense, but it’s kind of hard to accept logically initially. We kind of have to get our mind a little flexible to work around with that new idea that things don’t necessarily have to have the beginning. In fact, it may be illogical that they have a beginning. Okay, let’s work with it a little more.
The mind is dependent upon the body. There’s no question about that. For example, when we become sick, our mind doesn’t function particularly well. We can’t think clearly. We get irritated easily.
We don’t want anybody to go away. I’m sick. So the mind is dependent upon the body. That’s quite acceptable. The body, the brain, is the cooperative cause of the mind, of consciousness.
You know, the mind, the body conditions, influences the mentality, the states of mind, the consciousness. Just like the potter determines the shape, influences the design of the pot. He is the cooperative cause. The body, the brain determines the quality and the expressions of the consciousness. It’s the cooperative cause of the mind.
The body influences the mind. Likewise, the mind is the cooperative cause of the body. You know, this is readily apparent when we think in terms of psychosomatic illnesses. But just simply through mental actions, Mental processes we can have physical effects. Different illnesses are purely brought about through the cooperative influence of the mind.
They don’t have an organic basis. The substantial cause of the body is the sperm and ovum which came from the parents. Okay? So we have two things together, mind and body. They both have a substantial cause and a cooperative cause.
The cooperative cause of the mind, one them at least, is the body. And likewise the cooperative cause of the body is mind, one of them. Food is also a cooperative cause. They both have a substantial cause. The substantial cause of any moment of mind is the previous moment of mind.
The substantial cause of the body is the previous moment of that body. You know, the body is constantly being replicated. And as I said, in eight days it’s completely recycled. This goes all the way back to our parents, the ovum and the sperm, and that goes back to their parents. There’s always this lineage, this continuum of substantial causes.
Similar in type. Okay. Bring up an interesting problem. Mechanistic science, you know, would posit the brain as alone, as the substantial cause to mind. This is the hypothesis of mechanistic science that the brain, body, nervous system is the substantial cause of consciousness.
And they have proof. We have some proof. We’re going to show you our proof. So they’re going to offer some observations from clinical and experimental neurology. They’re going to show that there’s a very clear connection between the various conscious processes and the physiological processes.
There’s a definite correlation between conscious processes and physiological processes. You know, kind of the physiological processes of the brain. So for example, you get a bump on the head, a severe blow, a contusion, or anesthesia, a restriction of the blood supply to the brain, we become unconscious. We black out. Or a tumor in one part of the brain is associated with very specific altered or distorted states of consciousness, whereas a tumor in another part of the brain will have a completely different distortion of consciousness.
And you know they stick needles in the brain and they get various you know people getting different feelings, sensations, and they’ve got brain mapped out. They can tell exactly where everything is going on. They have a high degree of predictability. They can actually correct distortions in consciousness through surgery, through drug therapy. They can help alter the states of mind through physical means, surgery and chemical therapy.
So this sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Therefore, this is the reason to say the mind arises from the brain because we can predict if I stick a needle here he’s going to smell a certain smell, he’s going to have a particular type of distortion in his mentality, in his consciousness. A certain state of mind will arise. If someone has a tumor here, they’re going to have this problem in their consciousness. If it’s here, they’re going have this consciousness in their problem.
So this is their essential proof, the essential demonstration of mechanistic science by which they establish that the mind, the consciousness arises from the brain. So we look at this and see if there are any logical inconsistencies in this argument. It sounds pretty good. So we can use the analogy to try to show up some logical inconsistencies in their argument, in their observation. We use the analogy of a television set.
Example of a television set. Now the quality of the picture and sound of the television set is critically dependent upon the structure and the structural and functional integrity of the television set itself. That is depending upon whether all the parts are working and whether all the parts are present. This is going to determine what kind of picture we’re going to get, what kind of sound we’re going to get. I think this is pretty straightforward.
If there’s any malfunctioning or some destruction of some component, some part of the television set, then this is going to lead to a specific distortion, some fault in the sound and picture. So you know we don’t get any picture or picture’s fuzzy. The color’s no good. It keeps flying up and down like this. So we call it the television repairman.
And he looks at it and it’s going like this and like this. There’s no picture at all or something. You know a good TV repairman person, TV repair person, there must be women repair people, a good TV repair person can diagnose the problem on the basis of the nature of the distortion by looking at the picture, by looking at the sound. He can diagnose what’s wrong with that television set. And he can correct it, you know, by repairing the hardware.
You’ve got a burned out transistor, obviously. He opens the back up and takes out the old one, puts in a new one. I don’t know. I don’t know very much about television sets. Anyway, you can look at the picture.
You know, experienced television. Person, repair person, can look at the picture, listen to the sound, and make a diagnosis. And make a repair replacing the hardware, repairing the hardware. Now, you know, this TV repair person is quite sharp. You know, he would not conclude on the basis of really this that the program is being generated by the television set itself.
That is to say that the equipment is the source of the program. I’ll explain that in a bit. That the equipment is the source of the sound and the picture. He would rightly understand that the integrity by integrity I mean that it’s working well is a prerequisite for the integrity or that we get proper sound and picture. If the equipment, if the hardware is not working properly, we’re not going to get proper sound and picture.
In other words, the set must be working well if we’re going to get a clear sound and picture, undistorted sound and picture. In other words, he understands that the television set must be working well to serve as a basis for the transmission of the sound and picture, of a clear sound and picture. He would never question, it would never occur to him to think that the equipment, the hardware, was the source of the sound and picture. He understands it’s merely the basis of transmission of the sound and picture. Even though he can correct distortions and even though he can create distortions by manipulating the dials, by manipulating the hardware, by putting in new parts, taking out parts, he can create predictable distortions.
He can change the channels even. He would never stop to think that that picture, that sound is coming out of that television set, that it’s the source of that sound and picture. But in fact he understands that that sound and picture has its source in some TV studio, maybe one hundred kilometers away. And this is merely a basis of transmission. It is the cooperative cause of the sound and picture.
The substantial cause is somewhere in the television studio. Yet this is exactly what the mechanistic scientist would have to conclude, you know, if we use this analogy, that the hardware, the equipment of the television set is the source, is the substantial cause of the sound in the picture, which is exactly what he’s saying when he says that the mind arises from the brain, that the brain is the substantial cause of consciousness. Simply because he’s able to manipulate the hardware, change the dials, take parts out, put parts in, and particularly distort or undistort, clarify states of consciousness, he said, Well, then it must be coming from the brain. Look what I can do. I can play with all the dials and the transistor.
I can play with the frontal lobes and I can stick pins in. I can do surgery, apply drugs. But the repairman, he would never think this because he knows it’s not coming. It’s merely the cooperative cause, that the substantial cause is coming from somewhere else, in this case a television studio a few hundred miles away. So this is the prime argument which mechanistic science uses for stating that the mind comes from the brain.
And I think it becomes quite clear that it’s not a logical conclusion through this analogy of the television set. It doesn’t hold up. It’s not consistent. Another interesting point is that mechanistic science in explaining human intelligence as a product of Material processes of the brain, which itself evolved out of some chemical ooze in the prime ooze ocean. And it contradicts its own second law of thermodynamics, which is, you know, there’s various laws of thermodynamics, and the second of these is that all systems tend toward randomness or entropy.
This just seems to be the natural course of a system. Complex systems are always disintegrating into simpler types of systems unless there’s some kind of organizing factor which keeps reinforcing the organization. Now, you know, we’re talking about human intelligence, for example. The probability of human intelligence developing all the way from the chemical ooze of the primordial ocean simply through random mechanical means, processes, has been compared to the probability of a tornado blowing through a gigantic junkyard and accidentally constructing a seven forty seven jumbo jet. It shouldn’t happen.
There shouldn’t be life. It contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, that things tend to a randomness, disorganization. Anybody who’s ever been a member of an organization knows that. You have to keep putting energy in over and over again to keep it going. You know, okay, so that’s some of the reasoning we can think about.
Maybe raise some questions, some ideas you can work with. I think there are some substantial questions in what I’ve put together here that you can begin to think about. Now we can talk about the process of rebirth. You know what actually takes place. I’m only going to talk about this quite briefly.
This is quite a complex, you know, not complex but it’s a detail. You know when we talked about last week, last month we talked about the death process and all the various stages of the dying process. The various internal signs, external signs, dissolutions, why these come about. Essentially, taking rebirth, talking about rebirth, we’re talking about the reassociation of the mind with a new physical basis. Re association of the mind with a new physical basis.
Initially this would be the fertilized egg. So, you know, we’re not going to go anywhere in this body. It’s going to decompose. You know, whatever you do with your body when it’s finished with, if we’re talking about the mind, it’s going to reassociate reassociate itself with a new physical basis. So with respect to the mind there are varying degrees of subtlety and coarseness of the mind.
There’s all the way from gross sense consciousness, eye consciousnesses, more subtle types of consciousness such as conceptual consciousnesses, thought consciousnesses. There are more subtle such as dream consciousnesses. There’s the most subtle type of consciousness. The most subtle type of consciousness is the consciousness which goes on to take rebirth, not the grosser types of consciousnesses. In corresponding to these levels, these coarseness and subtlety of consciousnesses, there are coarse and subtle level of energy, wind energy, associated with these consciousnesses.
That’s a lot to say, consciousnesses. Mind, consciousness and energy, wind energy, are always associated. It’s like compared to a horse and a rider. The energy, the wind energy, remember what I said about wind energy, is the factor of motility, is the mount of the mind. You know, together they can go anywhere.
The mind does not have the quality of motility, movement. Or it’s sometimes compared to a person with eyes but no legs, which would be the mind, and someone with legs but no eyes, which would be the factor of wind energy. Know, if they team up, they can go anywhere. They actually able to move and have an understanding knowing where they’re moving to. So these two are always associated consciousness and wind energy.
Consciousness and wind energy. This is very important when we come to the practice of tantra because we begin to control the mind through controlling the wind energies since they always go together. If we can gain control over the wind energies, then we can indirectly gain control over the mind. So it becomes a very important factor in the practice of tantra, in directing the various wind energies to different channels of the body. Because in that way we can direct consciousness to different points of the body and experience various profound states of consciousness since the body is the cooperative causes of the mind, influences the mind.
But that’s another story. You know last month we described that the you know our hero was dying last month. As we take up our story, he was laying on his hospital bed going through the dissolution process, all his various elements. The various steps and the various stages of the actual dying process. We talked a little bit about this.
The fact that the earth element, we talked about these four primary physical elements. The Earth element dissolves into the water element. The water element dissolves into the fire element. The fire element dissolves into the wind energy element. The wind energy element then goes on to dissolve into the conscious element.
And then there’s further dissolution of consciousness in the sense that the consciousness becomes more and more subtle. So, you know, when we talk about dissolution of the elements one into another, it’s not like we dissolve alka seltzer in a glass of water. That’s not quite what we’re talking about. Do you have alka seltzer in Australia? That’s not quite what we’re talking about.