Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 41-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun makes a step-by-step logical case against the view that consciousness ends at death. Starting from the law of conservation of mass, he argues that non-physical mind cannot arise from physical matter — the brain is a cooperative cause of consciousness, not a substantial one. His central analogy is the television set: a repairman can manipulate the hardware and predictably distort the picture, yet would never conclude the program originates inside the set. Any moment of consciousness must have a prior moment of consciousness as its substantial cause, tracing back without a discoverable first moment. He adds a thermodynamics challenge to materialist accounts of human intelligence, then closes with the rebirth process itself: the most subtle level of consciousness, always paired with what he calls wind energy, detaches at death and reassociates with a new physical basis at conception. Suited to students with some prior exposure to Buddhist teachings on death and dying.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 LOR 1988 08 07.mp3
UUID: 10a13952-f6bd-48d0-9c6f-81ab3219a193
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Logic of Rebirth (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-08-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 41.1 minutes
Words: ~4,799
Therefore, you know, when the body dies, the causes for the mind cease. The body returns to the natural elements, rots, it 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. It’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 wherever the consciousness arise. 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 the 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 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, you know, essentially the elements and energy which binds them. Is 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. It Oil. Oil, good. The paint came from oil, the wood came from trees, the trees came from seeds, from soil, from moisture. You know, we can keep coming back and it’s always physical objects are always arising from physical 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. Yeah? This type of similarity of type. They do not arise out of non physical objects.
For example, space. Physical object, 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, would be arising from a cause which is dissimilar in type to itself.
Yeah? And this would violate the law of conservation of mass because if for example, you know, if tables came from space, then there would be an increase of mass in the universe. Or if tables somehow became space, there’d 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, you 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. And 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. Like 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. And 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 let’s talk about the nature of consciousness, the nature of mind. Here I’m going to use consciousness and mind a little loosely. I’m going 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 and knowing. 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, the entire question of rebirth comes down to the point from where does the mind arise. Now, 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 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 the previous moment of mind.
I talked about these six primary elements. 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 the 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 object that’s presented by western science cannot give rise to consciousness because the consciousness is nonphysical. The various emotions, attitudes, feelings. So the the mind at the 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. This can only be a previous moment of mind.
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.
And these things are impermanent 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 at a similar type, or very roughly, as we do grow and we do have mutations.
This is 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 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 the atomic level. So this is also in terms of mind. In one mind, you know, a bad mood gives rise to another moment of bad mood, gives rise to another moment of bad mood, and this carries down to the entire day and you had a bad day. Something like this. 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. You know, whatever the 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 to 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, 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 space, the definition of space is the absence of obstructability. If there’s nothing to obstruct, the question of non obstructability doesn’t make any sense. So Space doesn’t even exist before the first atom.
Consciousness doesn’t even exist because as is becoming more and more evident the world or 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. There’s no 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, consciousness.
Does that make a little bit of sense there? No. I think it’s interesting if you ask where the first moment, where the first atom came from. The heck? Wow.
There had to be a first moment. And where’d it come from? I think I wish I I don’t know his name. There was a physicist on television a couple weeks ago. Remember we talked about that?
And he’s quite he’s one of the 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 bit 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.
So 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 come near. 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 through 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 these.
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 of one of them at least, is the body. And likewise, 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.
And 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. Bring up an interesting problem. Mechanistic science, you know, would posit the brain as the substantial cause to mind.
You know this is the hypothesis of mechanistic science that the brain, body, nervous system is the substantial cause of consciousness. 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 physiological processes of the brain. So the, you know, for example, you get a bump on the head, you know, a severe blow, a contusion, or anesthesia, a restriction of the blood supply to the brain, we become unconscious. We black out.
Okay? 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 people getting different feelings, sensations, and they’ve got brain mapped out. They can tell exactly where everything is going on. And they have a high degree of predictability.
You know they can actually create, 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 that 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 to 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 and 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. Yeah? 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 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, you know, 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, picture’s fuzzy, the color’s no good, it keeps flying up and down like this. So we call it a television repairman. And he looks at it and it’s going like this, like this. There’s no picture at all or something.
And 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 know, all your I don’t know.
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, he can look at the picture.
You know, experience delusion. 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 a little bit. That the equipment is the source of the sound and the picture. He would rightly understand that know, 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, 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 a 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. You know? Yet, this is exactly what the mechanistic scientist would have to conclude, you know, we use this analogy.
That the sound, 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 predictably 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. And 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 really 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, you know, 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 primordial ocean.
And it contradicts its own second law of thermodynamics, which there’s various laws of thermodynamics. 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 an input. This is 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 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 toward 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. 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.
What actually takes place? I’m only going to talk about this quite briefly. This is quite complex, not complex but it’s a detail. 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. The reassociation 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 mind is finished with, if we’re talking about the mind, it’s going to 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 levels of energy, wind energy, associated with these consciousnesses. That’s a lot to say, consciousnesses. Mind, consciousness and 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, it 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. You know, if they team up, they can go anywhere.
They are 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 productive states of consciousness since the body is the cooperative causes of the mind. It 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, 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 consciousness element. And then there’s a 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, you know, we dissolve alka seltzer in a glass of water. That’s not quite what we’re talking about.
You have alka seltzer in Australia? That’s not quite what we’re talking about.