Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 98-minute class, Ven Jampa Gendun distributes a chart he likens to a nuclear reactor cooling system — a branching map of Buddhist ontology whose organizing question is: what does it mean for something to exist? He situates the Sūtra School within the four Buddhist tenet systems, reviews the four seals of Buddhist doctrine, and unpacks two levels of personal selflessness: the coarser grasping at a singular, permanent, independent self, and the subtler sense of a self-sufficient agent running the body and mind. He then works through the Sūtra School’s definition of existence as the object of valid cognition, and what makes a cognition valid — it must penetrate its object, be factually concordant, and be stable. The session closes by tracing seven grades of understanding from wrong consciousness through inference to direct perception, then moves into live debate practice on classifying objects. Suited to students beginning Buddhist logic and epistemology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1988 03 22 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: 1ee09b2f-ca6f-4fbe-b9a5-6615b9bef2a9
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-03-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 98.0 minutes
Words: ~9,696
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. To the merit I take by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened through the merit I carry by practicing giving and the other perfections. May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened.
Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. Obedience to my guru and protector, Mañjuśrī, who holds to his heart a scriptural text symbolically seeing all things as they are, This intelligence shines forth as the sun, unclouded by delusions or traces of ignorance, who teaches in sixty ways with the loving compassion of a father for his only son. All creatures caught in the prison of saṃsāra, confused in the darkness of their ignorance, overwhelmed by their suffering. You, whose dragon thunder like proclamation of dharma allows us to lift the mist of delusions and frees us from the chains of our karma, who wields the sword of wisdom in hewing down suffering wherever it sprouts and appears, drawing away the darkness. As the body is adorned with one hundred and twelve marks to the Buddha, who has completed the stages achieving the highest perfection of bodhisattva, who has been pure from the beginning.
I bow to you, O Mañjuśrī, with the brilliance of your wisdom, O compassionate one, Eliminate the darkness closing my mind. Enlighten my intelligence and wisdom so that I may gain insight into the Buddha’s words and the text that explain them. So, text we’re going through is Collected Topics, presentation of Collected Topics of Epistemology and Logic. It has three divisions, three overall divisions. Anybody know what the three overall divisions are up here?
That’s good. Now squaiter is better. Lesser, middling, and greater. What? Path.
Paths of reasoning. Uh-huh. There. Paths of reasoning. And the the the first overall division, the first overall division has how many divisions?
Eight divisions. What is the first? On how much? And the second? One.
One? That’s right. So we’re going to go into we have more or less finished color. That’s the introduction. Just to give as a basis of debate and give you an idea of how divisions are going to operate, how definitions are going to operate.
That subject of color will come up again, but in a more elaborate manner. So here’s a handout for everyone. It looks like the chart for nuclear reactor cooling system or something. So this will give you an idea of the way the the Buddhist view of breaking down reality. The view, the largest overall category that we that that within Buddhism is selflessness, And that is starting on the left hand, upper side of this page.
So it begins with selfless, and then below that’s a Sanskrit term for selfless, and beneath that is the Tibetan. So selfless, everything is selfless. There’s selflessness. And what that means in every no. We can’t even say that, can we?
This is from the point of view of the higher schools. We always have to be the understanding that this book, whatever we’re covering, is written from the point of view of one particular school out of the four schools. Does anyone happen to know what the four schools are? That’s right. The school we’re discussing is Sūtra School.
That’s right. And the other three schools? So, there’s the great exposition and then these are getting more and more subtle as to their views, presentation. They all present a system whereby a person can go from an ordinary being up to their goal as they conceive. They are all Buddhist because they all accept the four seals of Buddhist doctrine.
What are the four seals of the Buddhist doctrine? I mentioned that Friday night. All products are impermanent. Product. A product is something simply which arises from causes and conditions.
Anything which arises from causes and conditions is a product. All products are impermanent. That’s the first seal of the Buddhist doctrine. All that is contaminated is dissatisfactory. All that is contaminated is dissatisfactory.
This word contaminated has many different usages. What do we mean by contaminated? We can go into that at a later time. Perhaps, yeah, we’ll leave it at that for now. Phenomena are right.
All phenomena no. I can’t say that. Yeah. Can. All all phenomena are empty.
All phenomena are empty. And the fourth is that nirvana is peace or beyond sorrow. nirvana means beyond sorrow is peace. So any doctrine, any system, any philosophy which is in accordance with those four seals, you know those seals, when the king approved something or a court or something, he would put a seal on it and say this, I checked it out and I accept this. So, these are the four seals of Buddhism.
Any system or philosophy which is in accord with these four seals is acceptable within Buddhism. So, all the four schools accept the four seals, but they all have a different presentation. They’re what are called the bases, paths, and fruits. The bases are usually the two truths. The paths are the various paths and stages that one passes through from an ordinary being up to the goal of that particular system or tenant and then the goal or the fruit is whatever they may conceive of the final end of their particular vehicle.
So there’s always a bit and as you go up through these four tenets, there’s a more and more subtle presentation. For example, the two truths, lower one being the step ladder, another row in the ladder up to the higher one. The Buddha gave different teachings according to the various dispositions and capacities of the students, of his disciples. So then the presentation of the Great Exposition school, and then a slightly more refined view is the presentation of Sūtra school, which is what we’re studying. Above that is the mind only school and above that is the middle way school.
So as it’s been explained in the tenets, year, we taught the tenets, the four tenets, and it’s important to have an idea of each of the tenet systems so that you can begin to understand the coarser views because this will facilitate understanding the more subtle views. If you don’t know arithmetic, it’s very difficult to understand calculus. Though you could start with calculus, but it would be quite difficult. So, we’re working with the Sūtra School because the Sūtra School presents a complete system, almost all of which is accepted by the upper schools. And I’m going to point out some differences as we go along.
Now, when I point out differences, some of you have various levels of familiarity with the Buddhist doctrine amongst you people. Some of you perhaps aren’t very familiar, others are more familiar. I’m going to try to you’re each going to get something out of what I say, hopefully. Some of the things, you know, I mean, I I’ve studied for a number of years. Some of the things, even though I don’t know very much, I I you will not understand partly because of my inability to explain them clearly, partly because of my lack of understanding, my lack of merit perhaps, but also because you have to understand the more basics before you can understand the more subtle aspects of the doctrine.
And so you should not feel frustrated or in any way stuff defeated because you can understand the more subtle points. So there’s going to be something, hopefully, for everyone to learn at what particular level they’re at in their understanding. And you should try to understand and be satisfied, not not in the sense of being complacent, but satisfied, you know, I I learned something. And then next time I hear the same teaching or a similar teaching, I’ll be able to that will be a foundational platform where I’ll be able to go into a more subtle understanding, a more profound understanding perhaps. Yeah.
So some of the things I don’t expect everyone to understand. I don’t understand what can I say? Okay, so we’re going to begin the second of the subdivision, of the eight subdivisions of the lesser path of reasoning. The first subdivision was color, and that was more or just to get you acquainted with the idea of definitions and divisions. And then we’re actually going to begin some more perhaps more profound presentation.
Again, this is being presented to ten year olds, twelve year olds, students who have had very little schooling. This is the way they learn to read, the way they learn to understand the vocabulary. So, the text itself is very terse, and by terse, mean they just present divisions and definitions. So, it’s very much up to the teacher in accordance with what he thinks is the ability of the students, how far he will lead them in this particular subject, because all these subjects are coming, the source of this text, the collected topics, is coming mainly from Dharmakīrti’s commentary to the Dignāgā’s Compendium of Prime Cognition, which is probably one of the most profound logic texts that was ever written in India and also from Vasubandhu’s Treasury of Knowledge, which is another one of the most profound texts that was ever written. So, you you have like little bits and pieces taken from these very profound texts.
This is like tips of icebergs. So the teacher, he could take them very deeply into any one of these according to the student’s abilities or he could just leave it at a very superficial level. So the text just presents the raw material just like this chart. It just gives you divisions, but you could begin to interpret these divisions in a very profound manner depending upon the teacher. So we won’t be able to do that because of this teacher, but we’ll do the best we can.
So we’re going to begin the the second subdivision of the lesser path of reasoning, is called established base. That’s really a name. You’ll understand what that name means as we go along. So it’s It’s going to actually begin the presentation of this the Buddhist view of the way the world is set up. So we begin with selflessness or selfless.
There is a couple of left hand here. So that’s the most overall pervasive category, selfless. Now obviously, what the Sūtra School calls selfless and what the Mind Only school calls selfless and what the Middle Way schools call selfless is going to be quite different. Actually, they’re going to have many conflicting views of what it means. This will come out as we go along and as I said, understanding of the lower schools’ view will facilitate, help you understand the view of the higher schools.
So, selflessness within the Sūtra School. Now, we’re talking about the Sūtra School. It posits now this is additional information. When I studied this, I would not get this information because it would not be pertinent at that time. The idea of actually presenting the view of selflessness, this would come much later.
But I think you’re intelligent and you’re highly motivated, and most of you have exposure to this idea of selflessness, and it’s extremely important that we come to an understanding of selflessness. It’s like the mind of Buddhism. The heart is compassion and the mind is the view of selflessness. So it’s important that we keep working at it even in our limited understanding of intelligence perhaps. We still have to work with it, whatever we have.
So within the Sūtra School, the conception of selflessness, now I’m not going to present a teaching on selflessness, just to give you a rough idea. There are two levels of selflessness within the Sūtra school. They both concern persons, okay. So selflessness is the selflessness of persons and within this selflessness of persons there are two levels. They are coarse and subtle.
Now the coarse level of personal selflessness is a person’s lack of being a singular, permanent, independent self. This is a singular or a unitary, partless, some more synonyms, singular, unitary, partless, indivisible, permanent, unchanging, static, independent, unrelated. Separate self. So the coarsest type of selflessness within the Sūtra school has two levels. First we have to begin to overcome ignorance at the coarser level before we can begin to overcome ignorance at a more subtle level.
So we have to begin to understand what this coarser, this more gross type of ignorance is grasping at. Ignorance is grasping at a particular type of object, a particular type of self. When I say, can you get away from me? I can’t stand you. I can’t you know, this great this emotional moment could be happiness.
You know, won the sweets you just won the lotto. Know, wow, I’m so happy. There’s a feeling of a very concrete, solid self. You know, maybe in here somewhere, you know. You could point to it.
There’s a feeling quality. It’s not intellectual. It’s not rational. It’s not logical. It’s an emotional quality.
If this moment, ignorance is grasping at a type of self. What is the nature of this type of self? It is a type of self which is singular or that is unitary, having no parts. It has it’s unchanging as if it was permanent, static, and it’s independent of everything else, independent of mind and body, independent of conditions, the surrounding situations, other people. You know, something like that.
That’s what it’s grasped before at that particular moment. We have to identify this within our own experience and then to analysis, understand that such a type of self cannot in fact exist in reality, that this is a mistake. Over and over again, we must come in contact, get a feeling for it. This is the most important. You know, we talk about the fourfold there’s a certain meditation called the fourfold analysis, which takes up this very examination.
But the most important is the first step, identifying the object of a negation, identifying the object which, in fact, doesn’t exist, but we think it does. By identifying, it means not intellectually but emotionally from your own feelings. How does the eye feel when I’m upset, when I’m happy, when I’m in an emotional state, undergoing a great emotional experience, how does it actually feel? Not to how I think it feels because we can, you know, intellectually we can talk about, you know, all the words, but we have to actually identify it within our own experience. This is the most difficult part of of overcoming ignorance.
This is the quiz. As I said, I like giving a talk on selflessness. The subtle selflessness. This is a little more difficult to identify and therefore it’s more difficult to overcome ignorance which is grasping, which is conceiving of such a type of self. So this subtle selflessness is a person’s lack.
It’s selflessness, so it’s a lack or absence of a self sufficient and substantially existent self. A person’s lack of self sufficient and substantially existent self. This is more subtle. It’s more difficult to identify. Self sufficient, again, has the idea of being independent, but here it seems as if the I or the self is mixed in with the body and mind or more appropriately we usually say the aggregates, the five aggregates.
Sometimes we break up the body and mind into five aggregates. Aggregate just means bundles. We break up into form aggregate, aggregate of forms, aggregate of feelings, pleasurable, unpleasurable, neutral, aggregate of discriminations, aggregate of compositional factors, that is, this is many different, it’s like a catch all for all different parts that are left over. We throw them into aggregate of compositional factors, but we have to identify each one of them, And if we were to actually involve ourselves in this examination, we’d have to know these five aggregates in very great detail, and then the aggregate of consciousnesses. So, what we would do, we have a feeling the self is like a head salesman.
A head salesman is like a head salesman. That he’s a salesman, but he’s in charge. So we have this feeling that there’s somebody in charge and within this body and mind, it’s kind of mixed in with the body and mind, but still we have a feeling there’s somebody who’s running the show. There’s an agent who’s controlling the whole, you know. When I lift my arm up, there’s somebody willing to up to lift my arm up.
It’s just not, a matter of cause and effect. Certain mental states arise causing electrical currents and muscles moving. That there’s actually somebody in there who’s thinking, oh, I better not raise my arm up. This is more difficult to recognize that this type of self which we feel to be in charge of our thinking, the thinker of our thoughts, the taster of our foods, all these, the experiences of our experiences, this type of self actually doesn’t exist, but it’s very subtle. So we have to get in contact with this coarser, this singular, unchanging, permanent, the independent self.
We have to be able to identify that in our experience before we can begin to identify even this more subtle type. So, sūtra school, persons are selfless. What did I say? What is the third of the four seals of the Buddhist doctrine? Self.
Right, we can say selfless or empty. Same thing, okay? No different. Empty of self or selfless. Okay, I said in Sūtra School that they assert selflessness of persons.
Do they assert selflessness of phenomena other than persons tables, chairs, cushions? How can they be held to hold the four seals of Buddhist doctrine if in fact they don’t hold that all phenomena are Do they hold that all phenomena are selfless? Alright, thank you. Within Sūtra School, they said all phenomena other than persons have a self, are truly existent. Actually, in fact, have a self.
They have some entity which is them. This table is not empty. It is truly existent. It ultimately exists. Have a self.
Have a self. Now, of course, when you get up to middle way school, they say everything is empty. Tables, chairs, people, it doesn’t matter what it is. If it exists, it’s empty. So, beginning to show a difference in the doctrines of, for example, the Sūtra School and the middle way school.
The Sūtra School said Some things are selfless. Persons are selfless. By persons, I mean I’m going to use the word persons, but what I mean is all sentient beings. It’s just easier to say persons, but dogs, cats, hell beings, whatever. Anything that has a mind which is able to conceive, which has ignorance, are selfless.
So, persons are selfless, but phenomena other than persons are not selfless. Then, how can we be a Buddhist? How can we be one of the four seals? How can we be in accord with all the four seals if the third of the fourth the four seals says all phenomena are selfless or empty. Then there would be no agreement.
This is a difficult point. The way they interpret this would be that all phenomena other than persons are selfless from the point of view of not being an object of use or understanding of a person with a self. All phenomena like tables, chairs, cushions, are objects are empty of being objects of use or understanding of a person with the self. This is the way they interpret this. All phenomena are selfless.
That is to say all phenomena are empty of being a use of use or an understanding of a person with a self. That’s the way they’re interpreting it. Object of use or understanding? Are emptying of being an object of use? Object of use or understanding by a person with a self.
So this is the way they get around. Really, get into corporate, they make very good corporate lawyers. They have a lot of fine detail, subclauses and everything. So this is the way they interpret this Buddhist doctrine. They accept it, they say, we have a special way of explaining it.
Okay, all the Buddhism, all the various schools, they all say, we accept the four seals of The Buddhas doctrine. So the third one is all phenomena are selfless or empty. So they say, well, we accept this. Well then, how can you accept this when you say, this table has a self? Oh, it’s okay.
We say, this table, even though it has a self, this table is not an object of use by a person with a self. And they say, that’s enough for us. That something that came about? Was that a way of the Middle Way school explaining them still being Buddhist or was that sort of view that was held by the sūtra school before the Buddhist Christmas? I think there was a sūtra where the Buddha said, someone there, I think his grandmother, his aunt, said, how can I know your doctrine?
And he went forth and he explained these four seals. Anything which is in accordance with that is in accordance with my doctrine. So all the schools had to come up a way to fit in their particular interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings in accordance with this particular sūtra where he said, you must say, everything that you understand should be accorded with these four seals. I said, okay. Then he’ll just give it a little twist here and there.
So what is the suture this is what I’m explaining is the Sūtra School. Yeah. Now what is the higher ones? Do they bring it down to nothing? No, no, what they’re going to do so they say according to when we talk about selflessness, we’re talking about what is called the view.
So the view gets more and more subtle. The Sūtra School says, okay, some persons are selfless, other than persons have a self. Then we go up to Middle Way school and they say well, they begin to become very refined. They say, Okay. Some things lack of self, that is imaginary objects lack of self.
Any permanent phenomena other than emptiness lacks itself, but tables and chairs, they’re going to use a different vocabulary and begin to interpret what they mean by itself differently And also, when you begin to assign very different objects having a self and not a self. So within the mind only school, they divide up phenomena into three divisions: imaginaries, thoroughly established phenomena, and dependent phenomena. They’re going to say two of these truly exist, one of them doesn’t. And then we go to another way of saying nothing truly exists, but what they mean by truly exists becomes more and more subtle. So, they’re beginning to change the meaning of the terms and they’re going to begin to become more and more refined in how they assign to the various objects which are truly existent, which are non truly existent.
So, this is going to come out as we go along to this evening with accordance to the Sūtra School, what we mean by ultimately existent, truly existent, and it will become a little more clearer. So, gets us hopefully, I wasn’t trying to give an explanation of selflessness. I was just trying to, The first overall pervasive category is selfless. Both existent and nonexistent. Everything, whether it’s existent or nonexistent, is selfless according to the Sūtra School.
But we have to make it distinction, some little understanding of it. Otherwise, on, it’s going to say, well, how come the table you just said everything was selfless, tables have a self. They really exist. They truly exist. We have to jump ahead a little bit anticipation and understand what they mean when they say that all phenomena are selfless.
If they don’t mean what they say, for example, as in the middle way school, they have a different interpretation. You can get debates between the different schools, even, you know, in my when I was studying, one person would take the position of a Sūtra school, another person would take the position of a Middle Way School, and you debate according to your system, and you debate within the system, and you debate two different systems. But you have to understand precisely what they mean when they use a word. If you’re using the same word in two different ways, you have no basis of debate. You may actually debate about the uses of a particular word, so you come to some common ground.
But in debate, you must come to some common ground. Therefore, you must understand the other person’s system completely. If you’re arguing apples and oranges, you’re never going to get anywhere. You know, you have to come to some mutual agreement on what you mean when you say this, what you mean when you say this, in order that the debate or the argumentation can go somewhere in particular direction. If there’s no basis, then you’re just you’re just going to listen to your own self, each of you.
There can never be any contradiction. So the overall category, most pervasive category is selfless. Then selfless is broken down into existent and nonexistent. Existent and nonexistent. Okay, there’s some very famous examples of nonexistences.
These will come up when teachers teach, like the horns on a rabbit’s head. This is a very famous example of a non existent. What happens is, know, maybe it’s getting to be nighttime, and you see in the distance you see a rabbit, you know, he’s like, oh, look at the horns on that rabbit. They really don’t exist, right? But they use this example, the horns of a rabbit’s head.
Another is sky flowers. You’ll see these flowers in the sky and the clouds form flowers, looks like flowers. Another famous example is blue snow mountain Blue snow mountain or maybe a yelyellow snow mountain would be better in a way. Some diseases, I don’t know which disease, but it’s supposed to cause you to see white as blue. For example, if you have jaundice, you will see colors through the pigmentation.
You will see white yellow. You see white snow mountain, you see yellow snow mountain. Yellow snow mountain doesn’t exist, even though it appears. It doesn’t exist. So another famous example is like Yellow Snow Mountain where they usually use Blue Snow Mountain.
I don’t know what disease that is. And so this presents another question. Does does nonexistence exist, or is nonexistent existent or nonexistent? Any thought about that? Does nonexistence exist, or does it not exist?
Well, that’s the question. Does nonexistent exist or not exist? Doesn’t exist. How do you know it doesn’t exist? Because if it’s nonexistent, then you have an.
Well, that no. The that’s what we’re trying to find out, whether it’s nonexistent or not. You cannot use the question as a proof. Well, maybe it has to be from first. This is non non existent.
It can be online. How about the non existent of an elephant in this room? Does that exist? No. Does it all exist in this room?
No, sorry. What? Impairments is permanent. Is impermanence permanent? Yeah?
We’ll get to that. Anybody else have an idea whether nonexistence exists in there? For example, this let’s look at about this space exists, uncaused space, unconditioned space, like the space that everything exists within, you know, this table, people, house. Does that exist My my reflex has been here. Is that okay.
Is that is that is that really created by the mind, or is that act is it really? I don’t know why the response would be. Yes. Well, it’s created by the mind? No.
That’s not. It’s not created by the mind? So something which is can you name something which is anything which is created by the by the mind doesn’t really exist. No. I didn’t say that.
I was just seeing distinction between Oh, nonexistence of an elephant, that nonexistence existing only it’s just only as a concept or as an idea. Yeah. Whereas So we can know things in two ways, can’t we? I think that’s what I’m getting at. We can know things with direct perception and through conception.
Thought. Okay. So we’re we’re gonna come to this. That’s a very good point, and we can know things in two ways. If we can if we know something through thought, does it mean it doesn’t exist?
Hello? Yes, sir. Yes. It is. That’s right.
So even though we know something through thought, it still can exist. So even though we know we can say nonexistent exists, but we only know it through thought, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t not nonexist. Dreams. Dreams. Dreams.
Do dreams exist? Yeah. I do. Yeah. That’s right.
They’re not real. Not in the distinction I was Maybe it’ll become clear as we go into what we meaning what we said existent. So we’ll be that open for maybe you can think about that. Does nonexistent does nonexistent exist or not exist? And maybe it’ll become a little bit clearer as we go along what we mean by existent.
So we’ll move on to existent, the definition of existent. Can you just clear something up for me? With selfless, I’ve got two divisions of course of subtle. I mean, you said there was two divisions of existing. Is that two divisions in somehow inside those two divisions?
So selflessness is the selflessness of persons, but these two divisions are two divisions of selflessness of persons. Coarse and selflessness of persons only. And then the way we interpret selflessness with respect to all objects other than persons is that they are empty of being objects of use or understanding of a person with such a self. Right. In that way, it’s existing.
So existent. That which is the object of a valid cognition. The definition of existent. That which is the object of a valid cognition is the definition of existence. Existence.
Merely appealing to cognition. By cognition, I just mean a bare just knowing. Usually, when we say knowing in English, it has the idea of understanding, doesn’t it? We don’t mean understanding here. We don’t mean that we that it’s correct or incorrect.
We just mean to bear I don’t know. A priori. Pardon? A priori.
No. That’s a different thing. Thing. Yeah. Well, what we mean is the the aspect of the object is is appearing in the in the mind.
Just that. Just that. Like, when we say cognize, it doesn’t mean whether it’s the it’s like a neutral. It doesn’t mean we’re saying it’s correct cognition or incorrect cognition. It just means that something is registering in the mind.
This is yeah? Something is registering. It could be direct through the eye consciousness or the thought consciousness, but something is registering. That’s what we something is Like, let’s see if the camera is on. Yeah.
There’s something on there’s something on the screen. Yeah. Something on the screen. Direction. I know.
I could I get cognition. Got cognition of pink elephants in this room. Yeah. Yeah. I just think something on the screen.
I’m not saying whether it’s a whether the thing really exists or not, whether the screen to you. Might be a faulty switch somewhere. No. No. No.
No. No. It’s just the cognition. Cognition. I’m not so But you’re explaining the outcome.
No. I’m explaining what cognition is first. Cognition. Just the mirror, something on the screen. Yeah.
That’s right. Something that appear on the screen is the cognition. Now by cognition, we mean that this that what appears on the screen actually exists in that way that is appearing on the screen. Is actually an understanding, you understand the object correctly. Yeah, well say again if you were seeing pink elephants for instance in the room, Then to you that’s existing, but then again it’s not because it has more valid cognition.
So to you, I you are experiencing that, has to be existing. So for example, if I have jaundice, you know, when you when you have jaundice and liver disease, I I go outside and I see a snow mountain, it appears yellow. Yeah. And you think So the screen on my screen, my middle screen, is a low snow mountain. So I have a cognition of yellow snow mountain.
So is that a valid cognition? Or no? It’s a cognition. It’s a cognition. No question.
Is it a valid cognition? Is it correct is it a correct cognition? Not unless you know whether you’ve got this sickness or not. No, isn’t it? No, it’s not.
Why isn’t it? Because mouse doesn’t exist. It exists. So that’s not it, isn’t it? That’s incorrect cognition.
That’s I’m trying to say. Is that you’re explaining what existence is, right? Yeah, we define So defining existence it says that which is the object of the valid cognition, okay? Yeah. But if you were to see this yellow mountain and you saw that as a yellow mountain as existing, it wouldn’t be a valid cognition, but it would still still be existent to me.
So that my existence can’t be just that which is a valid cognition. The consciousness, the cognition which you see in the Yellowstone Mountain in you, is that a correct cognition, a valid cognition, or no? Sorry. You just turn it a bit? You walk outside and you see your snow melt.
Is that cognition? It’s a cognition, but it’s not a valid cognition. You sure? I understand that but what I’m trying to say is that how does that person that sees it as existed without having a valid cognition, they still see it as existing, whether it’s a valid cognition. So does it mean they could go what?
No. So that’s a mestation, a mistaken thing, but still I still think it is. Well But they were okay. Thank you. We have to find a valid problem.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a very difficult subject, but we work on it. Anybody? How do you actually prove that something is actually existing?
Anything which is the object of a valid cognition exists. That’s the definition of existence. So then we have to establish what is a valid cognition. We used to hear there’s many synonyms, direct cognition, prime cognition. Another way to translate this word is ideal, cognition.
That is a model cognition. But at this point, to get into this idea a valid cognition, what it means. And it’s going to become a little bit clearer, hopefully, as we go along. It’s a very difficult subject I because I have doubts, I have many questions. I tend to, I don’t want to be not kidding.
I’m just confused with the situation. Much of Dharmakīrti’s text was nothing but to establish what a valid cognition was. How do we know a valid cognition when we see one? If we meet we’re on the street, there’s a valid cognition. Okay, so what does this look?
Just because something appears to us doesn’t really exist. Because something appears to, for example, the I, a self, which appears to ignorance, exists for ignorance, but it doesn’t exist for valid cognition. So something can exist for a mistaken consciousness. You you’re walking along at night and in the distance it’s late and there’s a tree there and it’s blowing back and forth. It looks like a person waiting for you and you can become very afraid.
You can be very frightened. You actually feel or you can see of a person being there. That doesn’t mean just because there appears a person here that there really is a person, that a person exists over there. You walk up closer, you examine, you see it’s only a tree. You’re mistaken.
That automatically eliminates that mistaken consciousness which conceived of a tree and replaces it with a correct understanding of a tree. Is only a tree. Likewise, when we conceive of a self, a person, we have a strong feeling that it exists. Once we begin to examine like walking up closer and analyzing, then this analysis will serve to eliminate this evident perception of grasping at itself and it will be replaced by wisdom, understanding selflessness. So just because something appears doesn’t mean it exists.
For something to exist, it must be the object of a valid cognition, a valid cognition, what is a valid cognition we’ll go into. So now we’re going to give a number of synonyms, maybe carbon phenomena which are mutually inclusive with existent. These are synonymous with mutually inclusive. They’re used in different contexts, they use different terms, but they mean is synonymous, mutually inclusive with existence. For example, established base, which is the name of this particular subdivision.
Established base. The definition of an established base, that which is established by a valid cognition. So we’re back to the old, that’s just a different way of rearranging the same words. But we’re beginning to come at the same idea from beginning to, we’re going come at it from many different points of view, many words that describe the same thing. So, definition has a little bit different feel and gives us just a little bit more insight into what we’re talking about.
So therefore, in different contexts, they use many different terms. Another synonymous term, object of understanding, the definition of object of understanding. The object realized by a valid cognition. Definition of object of understanding is the object realized by a valid cognition. Another synonymous term, object of knowledge, object of knowledge.
The definition of object of knowledge is that which is suitable to be the object of awareness. The definition of object of knowledge is that which is suitable to be the object of awareness. And the last one, the last is The definition of phenomenon is that which holds its own entity is the definition of phenomenon. That which holds its own entity or you could say nature. So that’s the definition of a Sūtra School?
This is the definition of phenomenon. The oldest is within the Sūtra School. Everything that we say unless I say otherwise will be accordance with the suture school. Object holds its own entity. If an object can’t hold its own entity, it just falls immediately.
It can come into existence because I think people say, know, keep yourself together, you know, you’re falling apart. It has to be able to maintain itself for some duration in order for it to exist. So the object, the definition of phenomena is something which is able to maintain its entity or hold its entity, hold its nature together for some duration. So these are all synonymous terms. That we mean when we say existent.
I don’t know, is this going too fast? Just gave you some information, more or less. I just gave you some definitions and then we could go on to the next division of existent which is permanent phenomena and impermanent phenomena, if you like. We could go on to that division or we could okay. On this on this chart, we go along, selflessness is divided into two, nonexistent and existent.
Existent is divided into two, permanent phenomena and thing is the division of existent. And then we just went through the definition of existent and named what five phenomena five phenomena which are synonymous with existence and gave the definitions of each. We could go further and divide existing interpermanent phenomena and things. I’m going to go to the homework. Let’s see.
Yeah. Okay. I was going to go into it later when we got into the various types of theories in primitive phenomena, then we have to get into a discussion of different types of consciousnesses. But I don’t think we have time to really go into it, so maybe I’ll just take up very briefly the idea of valid cognizer. The definition of a valid cognizer.
Cognizer. This was taught in when you studied awareness and knowledge, when we studied logic. Does anybody remember the definition of valid cognizer? Anybody Valid cognizer. So the definition of a valid cognizer in the Sūtra School is that which is a knower which is new and incontrovertible.
A knower which is new and incontrovertible. Okay. We’ll go into this very briefly. New and incontrovertible knower. Or you could just say incontrovertible knower.
A new and incontrovertible knower. That’s nice. Anu and incontrovertible knower. Okay? That’s the definition of valid cognizing.
The key word new. What is the word nu mean? Okay, the first moment of any cognizer is new. The second moment cannot be valid cognizer. My eye consciousness which perceives the table, the first moment of that is new.
The second moment, as I keep staring at the table, is old. It’s not new, so it’s not a valid cognizer. That’s all that new means. Okay, in the first instance of correct cognizer is new, The first instance of a cognizer is new. The second instance, this becomes important after a while.
Why are they stipulated? It has to be the first moment when we get into the idea of difference between direct perceivers and thought consciousnesses. Begin to see how even though we may be still looking at the table, we are beginning to not see the table directly but our idea of the table, our mental image of the table. And so it’s not a valid cognizer with respect to the table. It’s becoming mixed with our idea of what the table is.
It’s very important that we stipulate the first moment. Very first moment is what we mean by new. Indicontrovertible is a difficult point. So, I tried to think of the qualities of what I mean by incontrovertible. So, I came up with three qualities.
The first one is this cognition, it gets at the object. It engages the object, it penetrates into the object. I’ll explain what I mean by that. The second is that it’s factually concordant or simply put correct, factually concordant. It accords with the way things really are.
And the third is it’s stable. It’s stable. This first one actually can call it. The first one is gets at its object. Now those of you who studied awareness and knowledge, there’s one division.
The first division of awareness and knowledge was dividing mind into seven. There’s one division of awareness which will be divided into seven parts. Anybody remember? Seven parts? Okay.
I don’t you know, I just bogged you down with too much information, but one of them was assumption or correct assumption. Know, It’s interesting, maybe this will be of interest to you, when the way we come to a direct perceiver, know, the seven, the mind. What are we dividing awarenesses in the seven? Have a direct perception. We have inferential conception, direct perception, inferential conception, subsequent cognition, correct assumption, appearing but not ascertained appearing but not ascertained, doubt, and wrong consciousness wrong consciousness, subtle.
Let’s take for example that non consciousness. For example, we plot it to the self, we have a a wrong consciousness which grasps at an independently existing self. We accept that as the way reality is. You think this self, this independently existing self really exists. You hold that very strongly.
This is a wrong consciousness holding that. Anyway, okay. We go to the Buddha Buddha house and there’s some guy saying, oh, it doesn’t really exist that way. So maybe if we if we explain the situation clear enough, a little bit of doubt arises in our mind. Before, was no question.
Now we develop a doubt which tends toward the non factual. There’s three types of doubt. The doubt which tends toward the non factual that there’s probably a ray of light that’s come into the pitch blackness of idiots, but it’s not much. So you still think, you’re open to the question of that really I think that this self exists, but a little doubt, so that we tend toward the non factual, that this self actually exists. Then we begin to study a little bit and give that some more teaching, then we begin to wonder, well, I don’t know now.
Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. So now you become equally balanced between the factual and non factual. You still have doubt, but now the doubt is beginning to move toward the factual. And then you study more, you listen to more teachings, you do some meditation, you think, well, I’m not sure, now I I really think this this stuff doesn’t exist the way I I always thought it did. And now we have doubt which tends towards the factual, and we’re going through this process.
And then you begin to think about it. You lose reasoning, you know, why this self can’t exist the way it appears, etc. And you think, well, you know, that sounds pretty good. And his teacher, he seems to know what he’s talking about. So, you form a correct assumption and this is the word I’m going to come to when I’m using it as an illustration of this first quality of getting at the object.
We’ve developed a correct assumption thinking the self, an independent self does not exist. I still have not it’s only based upon belief at this time. I have not really penetrated I’ve really not gotten at the object itself, but it’s correct, but I have not really engaged or penetrated what I mean when I say independent self. This is called a correct assumption. So I really haven’t gotten at the object.
I really haven’t formed an experience. I haven’t experienced an independent self or lack of independent self. Still my assumption is correct. This is what this first attribute of a valid cognizer is. It must get at its object.
It must actually experience its object. It must penetrate into its object. Correct assumption does not. So I keep working on it and start using reasoning. Cannot be a self because there’s an independently existing self that cannot exist because the self is dependent upon the mind and body and therefore if it’s dependent upon the mind and body, the independent self cannot exist.
It’s like using more and more reasoning and through this process I go from a correct assumption to an inferential understanding or inferring consciousness. Using reasoning, I come up with a thought consciousness which is correct, which is getting at its object, which actually experiences, but it’s only a conception. That is to say, it’s using an ideal about what selflessness is. It is not actually seen it directly. It has an idea, a mental image.
Know, thought consciousnesses, conception views, ideas, generic images, mental images. Know, when I think about my mother, when I think about America, America doesn’t actually appear to my eye consciousness. It doesn’t appear to my mind actually. I’m using my idea that I have about America. I go back to my filing system in my mind and I look at America over here and I have this symbol or image, mental image about America.
I can use that to think about America. Can say America is a great country and has forests and valleys and I’m using my idea about what America is to operate, to communicate, to understand what America is. That’s a valid way of understanding things. I can understand things using these symbols, these mental images. So when we have an inference, we have a correct understanding, but we’re using these images, these symbols, mental images, generic images.
If I penetrate deeper and deeper using more and more reason, become more and more familiar, more and more familiar, more and more familiar, I habituate myself to that object, that selflessness, we’re going to discuss this more later. The object will become clearer and clearer and clearer until I’m no longer understanding the object through the medium of a mental image, I understand it directly. Then we have bare perception. We have direct perception. I actually through see emptiness, selflessness directly without having to use my idea about it.
I know what it is actually, directly. I don’t have to use an idea about it. So, went from wrong consciousness, doubt, correct assumption, inference, direct perception. We pass through these stages in our understanding. This is a gradient.
It’s three to seven times. Yeah, we’re use all three times. The second, I have direct perception of selflessness. The second moment of that, I have direct perception of selflessness, a subsequent cognition. That’s the sixth and the appearing but not ascertained.
You could fit it in there, but it be involved in the learning process. So, there’s many points. We can begin to, from this example of these gradients of understanding, going from a misunderstanding, no consciousness to a direct perception, we went through some different levels of understanding. One of them is that we actually began to penetrate the object, so we have to get at the object. Without getting at the object, at the level of inference, we can’t have a valid cognition.
Also, we have to be factually concordant. So, doubt which were factually tended toward the non factual, of course, couldn’t be a valid cognition. We have to have it actually be in accord with the way things are. If I think there’s a yellow snow mountain that’s factually discordant, not in accordance with the way things are if I think there’s a yellow snow mountain. So, it has to be actually according to the way things are and the third has to be stable.
A correct assumption is open to someone who can come up to you and say, Don’t listen to that. I can prove that you’re yourself. And he could, using false reasoning which you could not identify, that your assumption is not stable enough to withstand another type of mind within your mind arising thinking the exact opposite. Once we arrive at stability and you understand that this pin exists, as I’m perceiving this pin, a mind which thinks or conceives of this pin not existing cannot arise. That mind is so stable, it sees the pin or thinks that there is no independent existing self.
Inference cannot be, will not be overturned by another inference. It will not be overturned by any other type of reason. It’s that stable. So the cognition has this quality of stability. So the other cognition has these three qualities.
Penetrates its object, it’s factually concordant and it’s stable. It’s not going to be overturned. It’s not going to be contravened. It’s not going to be contradicted. That was a lot of lot of I think I I I I was fully bugging you down.
I don’t know. You have to tell me. I I as I said, I hope we can get into more debating. You know? Just that’s what I just say.
Every night, I end up talking all the time. You’re right. That’s right. But I I don’t want I mean, it’s just a matter of not giving you information. It’s not particularly useful, perhaps.
Any questions about after that? Yeah? Other than other guys will go to the homework and take a look at that. Any questions? Yeah.
Okay. So we’re having some homework, and we’ll take a look at that. So we’ll ask Sue to explain to you. Okay. Okay.
So the first wanted to begin to try to see what the relationship is between two classes of objects. They’re known as a class of objects. Don’t usually think of it as a class, but you might not have much class, but you’re in the class. Rock style class, you know, just like everything is a class. There are many, many.
And Tibetan, you don’t have this problem with plurals. It’s going be somewhat of a problem with English. So how does the class of man relate to the class of, for example, rock star? I’ll ask you in this way. With respect to the first that is known.
This list Okay. We will discuss it in the beginning. How many mutually exclusive did you have? Okay. Will start to, you will get to the fuller debate.
So, you are asking what is the, you know, don’t know, you can use, there is a word in Tibetan, we can translate as different or pervasion. Now, know that pervasion may sound just a little more technical, but I think it’s a better word to use but if you want to think of the word different, you can say what is the difference with respect to non impermanent thing or what is the pervasion between non impermanent thing. So you can ask Alastair, what the pervasion respect What is the pervasion with respect to? And then you know the subject. Man and impermanent thing.
Okay? Go to it. What is the pervasion with respect to man? It’s a very good, clear question. What is the what is the pervasion with respect to man and the impermanent thing?
Optimizing. What is the difference? Oh, the differences. Yeah. We’re looking at differences and similarities.
A man has a mind. Man, all that. This answer, one of these four possibilities. Okay. So you could it follows that it’s not exclusive, so you don’t want to contradict him.
It follows because it’s not exclusive because Because there is a common locus. You know what locus? This means place. It’s something which is both, is what you’re saying. So you say, listen, they are not mutually inclusive because there is a counter locus.
And that’s that’s that’s so we’re we’re we’re the questions toward him. You’re controlling the debate. Okay? Okay. Direct that question to him.
Saying the inclusive works. No. Also I just said because I also took the position that they’re exclusive. And Peter said they are not mutually exclusive because they have a common locus. Okay?
So you get that choice, out there. Excuse me. Okay. Okay, at this point, you can either agree or disagree. You think they have, so you must be taking, either if you agree, then you’ve contradicted yourself and you’re finished.
You could do that, you could realize your mistake or you could disagree. I do not accept. Do not accept. No? Okay.
What are you what are you not accepting in? What are you not accept what are you not accepting? There’s there’s no common locus. You’re you’re not accepting that there is a common locus between what? So that comes down the debate comes out to you.
Now you have to either accept that man is a kind of locus between man and an impermanent thing, or you can disagree using that. I don’t accept. Yeah? But you don’t have to say all that, but you should know. So you say, what?
I don’t accept. Okay. And okay. So you can you have to divide it. There are only the common locus between man and thing because a man is a man and is an important thing.
Yeah? Mhmm. Okay. Can you did you follow-up today? Everybody following that?
We’ll go to we’ll go through that. Man is the common locus between man and an impermanent thing because man is a man. There’s a there is a man and it is an impermanent thing. It’s a common locus, common position between yeah? And a man has this.
Actually, Yeah. I can understand that. We would What fits with the first seal? Products are impermanent? Is that products, what fits sentient beings, objects, and everything?
Everything which is as anything which arises out of causes and conditions. Yeah. Now, yeah, we’ll have to get used to this It’s a different philosophy. This yeah. That’s right.
That’s right. It’s there’s only some peculiarity that we’ll have to have. This Is there any ordinary man which is not a sentient being? No. So is there any man without a mind?
Know. I didn’t give you. Is it such a even better way? Yes. Get some definitions and become clear.
That which is impermanent is changing. That which is permanent is static, unchanging, unchanging, unchanging. There are things which are impermanent and come into existence and go out of existence. There are things which are permanent which have no beginning and no end. So there’s different combinations.
When we discuss permanence and impermanence, we can talk about some things have beginning and no end, some things have end and no beginning, some things have both, some things have neither. We have to get used to this, we can either quit using this word and permanent altogether or understand that when we say impermanent, we need changing, not that it’s eternal. That has no bearing on the definition at all. Okay. Let’s we separate women.
There are no exclusives. How many three how many three possibilities? One. How is it none? None.
None. One. Same reason? Okay. How many had how many did the four pass women had four passabilities.
How many four passabilities were with respect to women? Three. Three. Anybody else have a difference? Anybody have that?
Okay. American? Many mutual inclusives women? One. One.
Okay. So you say that American and American and all these files were let’s see. Which one did you say? Prohibited by being Is that correct? Okay.
Then what does it what does it say? Then give the man pervasion. I reminisce it to illustrate it. But