Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Three death-contemplation questions — what would mourners say at your funeral, how would you live a final year, and who would you call if trapped in a collapsed building — frame the guided meditation at the heart of this 107-minute session. Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a reflection on the difference between pleasure (dependent on conditions) and happiness (a matter of attitude), drawing on the Zen monk Ryokan and writer Robert Johnson to argue that beneath ordinary desires we are searching for the sacred. The doctrinal portion continues the series on the twelve links of dependent origination, covering links four through eight: name and form, explained through a careful breakdown of the five aggregates; the six sense spheres; contact; feeling; and craving — with close attention to why craving arises only when feeling is dominated by ignorance, and why a Buddha can experience feeling without perpetuating saṃsāra. Suited to practitioners working through a sustained study of the twelve links.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 24 3PA 2007 09 24.mp3
UUID: 484adb38-0ab6-4471-a8fc-5ae1a59dffbd
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-09-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 106.8 minutes
Words: ~10,129
Adjusting the microphone. Can you hear me okay? Okay. So it’s a never ending process, isn’t it? Continually having to check up, get back up, get back in touch with our priorities, what is important for each of us.
You know, we’re in the busyness of our lives, trying to implement all the methods and the means that we’ve developed over the course our lives in order to find the happiness that we’re looking for and solve our problems, get rid of the suffering that we don’t want. Amongst all that busyness, we have to actually check up to see whether it’s working or not. Ours is a world where people don’t really know where they want to go, but they’re willing to go through hell to get there. And we have to check up, you know. If I keep heading in the same direction I’m likely end up where I’m headed.
And is that where I wanted to go? So, you know, what is the overall quality, the dominant theme of our life? The overall quality of our activities? Is it taking me where I want to go? You know, like like Ryokan said, my old friend, the Zen monk, Buddha is your mind and the way goes nowhere.
Don’t look for anything but this. If you want to point your cart north when you if you point your cart north when you want to go south, how will you ever arrive? And if you you want to go north and you’re pointing your cart south, how are you ever going to get there? And no matter how much energy, all the worry, the time, the struggle, the planning, all the blood, sweat, and tears that we expend in getting what it is we what we think we want. Is it what we actually want?
So much of our lives are spent in longing and search for what we do not know. So many of our ostensible goals, so many of the things we think we want turn out to be the masks behind which our real desires. Hide. They are symbols for the actual values and qualities for which we hunger. They are not reducible to physical or material things, not even to a physical person.
They are psychological qualities, love, truth, honesty, loyalty, purpose. Something we can feel is noble, precious, and worthy of our devotion. We try to reduce all this to something physical, a house, a car, a better job, or a human being, but it doesn’t work. Without realizing it, we are searching for the sacred, and the sacred is not reducible to anything else. Sacredness is, in a sense, a feeling, but a feeling that goes to the very heart of life.
It is the feeling of recognition directed toward what is great and high enough to give our small lives meaning, to put our personal journeys in a greater perspective. It is the feeling of reverence. What we call sacred is ultimately a universe of meaning against which we measure our personal efforts, our personal lives, to see whether they too have meaning. This meaning that we’re giving seeking to give our lives, we call Buddha. And, you know, as I as I mentioned quite often, you know, maybe we don’t know what a Buddha is, but we can begin to have some kind of idea of the type of person that we would want to become, who we’d want to be, you know, the the best possible story that we could tell ourselves about ourselves.
And that’s what we call a Buddha story. You know, happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. Someone who no longer has to be constantly caught up in their own agendas, their own self serving ends, but begins to look to others to see how they can serve the world. You know, someone who has solved their own problems to the greatest extent and begins to, you know, work fearlessly and skillfully to be able to do that for others. And maybe that’s really a great story, something really we could revere and look to as a as a model to to begin to judge our life against.
Something that we could aspire to. At least we could use that as a as a magnetic north that we could keep coming back to when we lose our way, when we get lost in the confusions of our big, better, more, what it is that is a priority in our life. Know, maybe what it comes down to I I I heard something very interesting. I I didn’t hear it. I read it.
That the difference between pleasure and happiness, difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is dependent upon conditions, and happiness is a matter of attitude. And, you know, I think that’s worth reflecting upon. You know, we we have very little control over the conditions about us, don’t we? You know, what it takes to bring for us to have experience pleasure, whether it be another person or some physical objects, food or music or whatever.
All the various pleasures of our everyday life, they come and go. Control, but none of them can remain, at least not for long. But if we can change one thing, our own mind, that is if we can develop our own attitudes, then we can find some constant happiness amongst the turmoils of our life, you know, the constantly shifting sands of our everyday being. We can find contentment within our own minds. And that’s all dependent upon our attitude.
And maybe that’s all we mean by a Buddha, someone who has got a tremendously positive attitude. You know? We talk about it in terms of wisdom, compassion, and personal power, and those are the things we can we can work toward. You know? But maybe it’s just beginning to shift our attitudes a little bit, a little more skillful.
As I oftentimes repeat this little quotation outside the door of the Dragompa, the meditation room where his holiness says, the purpose of life is happiness, and the greatest degree of inner happiness comes about through love and compassion. So the purpose of life is happiness and maybe happiness is a matter of attitude. So what is it that’s going to bring us the greatest happiness in terms of our attitude? Maybe it’s as the Dalai Lama said in developing the love and compassion. But that love and compassion begins with ourselves, doesn’t it?
And as we treat ourselves, we’ll probably treat others. And if we don’t care for ourselves and have compassion for our own problems that we know directly with our own experience, how can we really ever have a genuine caring and real compassion for others when we only know their problems and difficulties vicariously, secondhandedly? So, you we have to begin at home. We have to begin to put our own house in order, begin to care for ourselves in perhaps more productive ways, more constructive ways than we have in the past. But the journey doesn’t end there.
It ends with others. But we have to begin with the only reality that we know at present, and that’s ourselves. Wishing ourselves true happiness, and what does that constitute for myself? And that’s a tremendous tremendous responsibility that we have toward ourselves. You know, beneath all the religious indoctrination, all the psychological ideological truth that we run our lives by, the shoulds and the ought tos that control our lives to a large degree, what is it that actually brings meaning and happiness to myself?
What makes me feel good about myself, value myself and my life and what I’m doing with my life. It makes the experience of life something more than hollow events, that makes the living of life in itself something really worthwhile. Then checking up for ourselves. And then in the light, you know, the sacred, I guess, is what this quote by, I think, Robert Johnson is trying to get at. What is sacred for myself and in some small way developing the strategies and the means and the attitudes of mind which are going to help us to realize in some consistent fashion, in the everyday insignificant events of our life, a little more of the sacred, a little more of the attitudes which are going to bring about a little more of that happiness, the sacred in our life.
So we come together as we do, maybe just to remind ourselves what is important to ourselves so we don’t lose track. We don’t live a life of banality and meaninglessness, a poor imitation of life. We want to be authentic. We want to read a real life. It’s the only one we have.
We have to be life is earnest. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. The becoming a happy, happy, sane, loving human being. And as someone who has solved their own problems experiences unremitting peace with inside themselves, and skillfully and fearlessly works with others in order to help them the same. You know, what more could you want out of life than something like that?
And that we have to do something. It’s not enough simply to wish it were so. Sincerity simply is not enough to be happy. It’s sad, but it seems to be a fact. We actually have to do the necessary work.
We have to put into practice the changing of our attitudes. We have to implement the Dharma, the methods, the teachings, the trainings and so forth. Ultimately, maybe we simply want to know the way things are and the reality, the truth of things. It’s the truth that is going to free our mind. We’re going through the twelve links of dependent origination.
And the origin of all our problems, all our difficulties, all our suffering is just the opposite of the truth. Ignorance. It is the wisdom understanding truth which eliminates ignorance, is going to free us from all of this and all the problems that we’re experiencing every day of our life. And not only for us, but for others as well. And as we free ourselves, the more that we are as a person, the more that we can be a benefit to others.
Otherwise, even with the best of intentions, it’s like the blind leading the blind, isn’t it? We can mistakenly, unintentionally cause more problems than solutions that we seek to create. And this whole process is occurring as a social event. It’s occurring within the context of a spiritual community. You know, this community spiritual community is not other than ourselves.
You know, each of us are sitting here, you know, individually, and those who contribute in whatever way. We each contribute in our own way. Nonetheless, it comes together and we create a context for like a therapeutic culture where the sacredness can thrive, where we nourish our highest ambitions and goals. And we try again and again to raise the level of our motivation, you know, the why behind and the purpose for. So that’s what we’re doing.
You know, beginning with ourselves, that’s the only reality most of us know at present. Beginning with that, we have to begin from where we’re at. We don’t have any choice in that. But we don’t stop there. Maybe one other person, maybe a parent or partner or a child, relative or friend, just somebody out there that you’d like to be there for in a more significant way, maybe a little more patient, a little more understanding, little more caring, however it might be, but to be there for them.
So what we do together, listening to the teachings or discussing them or meditations, is not only for ourselves alone, not for only for our own narrow concerns and limited aspirations, but it is for the benefit of an widening circle of others. That attitude of the mind is part of the solution to our problems, and we just, we have to implement and augment that, develop that further and further. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from from the joy that is without sorrow.
Abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, mind. Mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, those actually arranged and imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginning of this time and rejoice in all the virtues of superiors and ordinary beings.
Please remain to the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma from migrating beings. I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, to the great awakening. So we’re going to meditate as we usually do. Beginning with the process of working through the body, relaxing the body, then doing the six part breathing exercise and mindfulness of breathing. And then finally, in keeping with this theme of trying to find out what is important to each of ourselves.
I think it’s difficult, isn’t it? You know, to a large degree, we don’t know ourselves. I think it was the Zen master, Dogen, who was one of the the originators of the two originators of the two the two traditions of Zen Buddhism in Japan, he said to study Buddhism is to study the self. And we don’t we don’t know ourselves very well. And maybe this is one of our difficulties.
You know, what is in fact important to ourselves? Quite often, we’re confused about it. And as as Robert Johnson mentioned, sometimes we it’s like a mask that we’ve been striving for. And even when we find it, it’s not what we’ve been looking, what it is that we really want. So in a way that we can do this is, you know, this is one of the reasons for meditating on death.
You know, think death cuts through a lot of bullshit. It cuts through a lot of ideologies and taken for granted truths, lot of social conditioning. You know, what is it that I believe at the core of my being? What is it I really want? Who am I beneath all the shoulds and all tos and that I’ve been conditioned to believe about myself, that run my life more than not?
So in the face of death, we get down to quite a bit of honesty, I think. And so we’re simply going to ask ourselves a few questions in the context of thinking about our death. You know, if you could listen, you know, if you could be present at your own funeral and the people you most care about were, you know, were giving eulogies about you, talking about you, what sorts of things would you like for them to say? What would you like to hear about yourself? What would you like for them to think about you and the role that they played in your life?
Your daughter, your parent, or your son, or friends? What would you like to hear about the effects that you had on them by who you were. If you knew you only had one more year to live, how would you like to be as a person? What what would you like to do during that time? One more year to live.
You know, I’m not saying that you have to act upon this, but just allow yourself for this few moments to play with that idea and see what comes up. You know, that’s okay. You don’t have to act upon it. That’s okay. You know, if you were if you were, you know, you were trapped beneath the collapsed building and you had your mobile phone with you and you could call one person, what would you say to them?
Who would you call and what would you say? What kind of and and and when you when you think of that, what does this answer reveal about yourself and what is important to you? What is really important to you? What would you be saying to this person? Anyway, I think, you know, these are good things to think of from time to time to take stock about what is really important to ourselves.
So taking a comfortable, firm posture. Begin by relaxing the body beginning at the scalp, the forehead feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around your eyes beginning to diminish. The muscles of the face softening, relaxing. The jaws relaxed.
Relaxed and relaxing the muscles at the back of the neck perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times just gently stretching, loosening. Stretching, loosening, relaxing the muscles of the throat. Moving down to the upper back and shoulders perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times And letting them drop comfortably to the sides, feeling this burden, this weight that we carry around on our backs beginning to move down and through your body into the ground. Like some weight that you’ve been carrying around all day has just been lifted from your shoulders. And then moving all the way down to your hands.
Your hands are soft and loose. Relaxing your lower arms, just allowing them to go soft. And your upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area and the lungs, the central portion of the back, the stomach, and reducing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles, just allowing your belly to go soft.
The abdominal cavity. Keeping your body erect, relax your lower back muscles. Your buttocks, Upper legs, thighs. Your lower legs. At your feet.
And bring your awareness to your body in general and notice any tightnesses, any tensions within the body, any places of discomfort. And focusing upon those areas, consciously relaxing, softening, the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. Breathing into those areas of discomfort, feeling them dissolve. Your body becoming comfortable, relaxed. The feeling of physical well-being pervading your body.
It feels good to be in your body. Just be with your body. Just be with your body. And then bring your mind then we’re going to practice the six part breath exercise breathing in normally breath prolonging the exhalation emptying the lungs of the stale air and doing this six times individually. When you’ve completed the breathing exercise bring your mind to the breath just the easy gentle in and out flow of the natural breath.
If it’s helpful use the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. So now we’re going to put a few questions to ourselves. Beginning with, if you could somehow listen to your own funeral and the people you cared most about were there, what sorts of things would you like for it to hear from them? What would you like for them to say? What would you like for them to think about the role that you played in their lives?
So another question we’ll put to ourselves. If you knew you only had one more year to live, how would you like to be as a person during that time? And what would you be like what would you like to be doing during that time? You’ve got one more year. How would you like to be as a person?
And what would you like to be doing? And then, one final question. If you were trapped in a collapsed building and you just had a few minutes to live and you had your mobile with you, who would you call? What would you say to them? Who would you call?
And what would you say to them? What does this reveal about what is important to you? What does this reveal about what is really important to you? And then bring your mind back back to your breath. And then get in touch with your body, the sensations and feelings within your body, the pressure of the seat against your buttocks, your feet against the floor, all the various sensations that you’re feeling within your body.
In an easy and relaxed manner just slowly become aware of your surroundings taking your time. So we’re looking at what is taught as the twelve links of dependent origination. And appreciation of how our particular situation has evolved, that it’s rooted in ignorance and thereby developing some kind of, making the, the development of wisdom, is able to remove ignorance, giving that some kind of priority in your life because it’s important in the long run, ultimately. And we have all our remedial methods that we implement to solve our problems and gain the happiness that we want, but these are our best temporary and not very far reaching solutions. If we ever want to give up the struggle altogether, if we ever want to find real peace, then we have to develop the wisdom which removes the the basis of our problems, which which is ignorance.
And the Buddha was just trying to show us that there’s no one overseeing the process, that we can’t blame it on a supreme deity who we’ve lost favor with or bad luck, chance. It’s all simply a chain of causality, like one billiard ball striking another. One hits one, then hits another, then hits another, then hits another. It’s all specific variables bringing about predictable outcome. On the basis of ignorance, this whole process evolves, and with it all our suffering.
Developing some kind of a sense of unease around the continuation of such a deterministic process and developing some kind of determination to bring it to an end, to be free. And what are we to be free of? Ignorance, ultimately. So we’ve gone through the first three of these twelve links of dependent origination. Ignorance, ignorance specifically with regard to the nature of the self, the I.
And then we have some mistaken instinctive, innate, wrong conception about who we are. We grasp to that, a solid, concrete, unchanging I or self or person. And that very was in fact just misconception evolves into this saṃsāra, you know, this perpetual cycles of dissatisfaction that we experience. Just what is basically a misconception. I mean, I don’t mean to say it’s easy to overcome, but it’s nothing more than that.
It’s not, you know, it’s not, it’s nothing more than not something more than each of us can manage. It may take lifetimes to do it, but it’s workable. We can do this process. Developing a little more understanding and thereby weakening a certain level of ignorance, life after life after life, until we eradicate it completely altogether from our minds. So it’s not a, you know, we don’t have to be ambitious about it or ego driven about it.
It’s long journey, but we have to, you know, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. We have to at least educate ourselves around what is the source of our problems and begin the journey of removing that from our minds. So the basic problem is ignorance. And so even in spite of my blah blah blah, there’s maybe some kind of new ideas forming around what ignorance is and maybe how to work with it. So we begin with ignorance, this misconception about the nature of the I.
Due to ignorance, we involve ourselves in actions, which are called formative actions within the context of the twelve links of dependent origination. We in dependence upon this misconception about this I, the solid, concrete, unitary, unchanging, fixed, independent self. We then go on to seek to promote the welfare of this eye, to guard it against threat, enhancing, defending all the various actions that we’re continually involved in. Moreover, is this not the fact that we’re involved in activities. Buddhists involve themselves in activities, but they’re not a problem to him or her.
When the when the activity is dominated by ignorance, with regard to a misconception, there’s some kind of residue which is left on the mind. The mind is conditioned. We we, we, we, like, certain program patterns are being, implanted in the mind that when given specific conditions, they instinctively cause us to react, to think in particular ways, to behave in certain ways. So we’re forming, and ultimately they come down to certain types of feelings. So when we talk about formative actions, we’re talking about types of actions which are beginning to form the quality of our life in terms of the feeling quality of our life, in terms of pleasure and pain.
These actions that we create leave the residues upon the consciousness. So we’re talking about consciousness which has the seeds of our past actions, our experiences, implanted in them. So it’s not plain or raw consciousness. It’s conditioned consciousness. Okay, so that’s about as far as I think we got last time.
We got up to consciousness. The fourth link, name and form. This is the the the name so we’re going to have to go into some discussion of what are called the five aggregates. The five aggregates. This is a very important concept within Buddhism for thinking about the nature of the self, the I, and for being able to to investigate the nature of the eye.
It’s useful to think of the eye and how it relates to the five aggregates. So, name refers to the collection of the four non physical aggregates. There are five aggregates. We’ll explain what that means, but just for now, name refers to the four non physical aggregates. There are feelings, we all have feelings, right?
Discriminations, compositional factors, we will talk more about that, and finally, consciousnesses. So, all of these are non physical feelings, discriminations, compositional factors, and consciousnesses. That is referred to as name. Within this link of name and form, the name refers to the four non physical aggregates. It’s the mind side of the mind body complex.
The reason it gets this name, name, okay, is that the four mental being in general. So if there is a being, are at least these four aggregates, and upon those four aggregates, we label, we name, we designate whatever person or animal or as we talked about the various three realms of existence, the form realm being, the form realm being, and the desire realm being. So this is the minimal basis for designating an actual living being are these four aggregates. Then the form, this is the physical aggregate. This is what we generally term the body.
Okay? And maybe I’ll say, go back about name. Let’s go through the aggregates. Feelings. So all moments of consciousness are associated with the feeling.
We are always having a feeling. It may be a pleasurable feeling, a pleasant feeling, it may be an unpleasant feeling, it may be neutral feeling. But nonetheless, awareness is always associated with the feeling quality about it. There is always a moment of discrimination. There other words for the word discrimination.
Sometimes it’s referred to as perception, sometimes recognition. This is the mind discerning. This is big, this is small, this is a table, this is a chair, this is red, this is white, all of these various discriminations that our minds are continually making, organizing the realities in discernible ways, coming to know what the object is. There’s always a feeling quality, there’s always discrimination going on. Now the third mental aggregate is the aggregate of compositional factors.
This is like a huge big grab bag full of stuff. Within Buddhist psychology there are many ways to categorize consciousness. One way of categorizing consciousness is into what is called six primary consciousnesses and fifty-one secondary mental factors or functions of mind. So six primary consciousness eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mental consciousness. Okay?
Eye sees colors and shapes. Ear consciousness hears sounds, nose, consciousness smells, odors, tongue consciousness tastes, flavors. Body consciousness is tactile objects, objects of touch, smooth, gruff, and things like that. And then finally, mental consciousness. Mental consciousness knows phenomena.
By phenomena, it means mental images which appear in our mind, the thoughts which appear in our mind. It knows other consciousnesses. Okay, it knows consciousness. So these are objects of mental consciousness. Six primary consciousnesses.
There are also fifty one mental factors. You know, if you were maybe really aware and you sat there over the course of your day, you could discern fifty one functions of your mind. Feelings is a function of mind. There’s always a feeling there. Discrimination is a function of mind.
We set those apart. We give them special importance by making them into a separate aggregate. The remaining forty nine are put into this big grab bag called compositional factors. It’s an aggregate. An aggregate is a bunch.
It’s a pile. It’s not like a solid thing. It’s like lots of little things, lots of little particles collected together. Together. That’s why it’s called a a collection or an aggregate, an aggregate of lots of little particles.
So within the aggregate compositional factors, there are these forty nine other mental factors. For example, you know, is faith, anger, love, jealousy, compassion, attention, discrimination, contact, attention, mental engagement. Anyway, there’s a list of fifty one. These are all included. These forty nine are all included in this compositional factors along with karmic latencies, karmic seeds.
They’re also included in that. Then finally the fifth aggregate, and we’ll go through this again, is the aggregate of consciousness, the primary consciousness, I. E, your nose, tongue, body, and mental consciousness. Primary consciousness simply know the rough nature of the object. You know, like if you were doing a drawing, first you rough in the drawing.
You just get the overall pattern of what it is that you’re looking at. That’s the work of primary consciousness. These secondary mental factors, these functions of the mind, fill in all the details. This is this, this is that, and the colors and shapes and so forth. So this is the mental side, these four mental aggregates: feelings, discriminations, compositional factors, and consciousnesses.
That’s name. The minimal designation, the minimal basis upon which we can say there’s a living being there. It has to be at least those four aggregates. The only reason we say that is because in the formless realm we talked about the three realms desire realm, form realm, and formless realm. It is said the formless realm don’t have, beings do not have bodies there but they must have at least the four aggregates of feelings, discriminations, compositional factors, and consciousness.
On that basis, we can label a being. Then the form, that’s the physical side of the being. So this is, as I mentioned, just what we commonly call the body, that which has evolved from the sperm in the case of ourselves, that which has evolved out of the sperm and ovum of our parents. That’s form. So consciousness joins the fertilized sperm and ovum.
Consciousness joins the form aggregate. So we have consciousness and we have form aggregate making up a totality of five aggregates, which constitutes the basis of the being. So this is what is occurring. This occurs over a particular period during the development of the fetus. When we talk about name and form, we’re talking about the first three weeks in the development of a human as the person develops in the womb.
The consciousness enters the sperm, the fertilized ovum, and during the next three weeks there is the development of what are sixth sense spheres, and we’ll talk about that, the various faculties of the body and so forth. So the body is beginning to develop the basis of which it’s going to develop into an experience of the world. Developing a way of how it’s going to be in this world and relate with that world. So it does this in terms of the five aggregates. So the name and form is from the moment of conception in this life up through the third week of the gestation period.
That period in the development of the fetus is called name and form. In our drawing, It’s not very clear but anyway. As you look at it, it’s on your right side at about three o’clock or three fifteen, three twenty. It’s depicted by a boat. So the boat symbolizes the material aggregate of the physical form, the body, and has four passengers in this boat.
That symbolizes the four mental aggregates of feelings, discriminations, compositional factors, and consciousnesses. That’s the name side. Okay, so the five aggregates comprise the totality of our experience. All we know in terms of our world, we know in terms of these five aggregates. Within them there is nothing that is left out that one can actually note in our experience.
They concentrate all that we call I, all that we call self, and the world. And they co arise each per moment to moment within, you know, it’s a, within the interconnecting web of causes and conditions. It’s like a happening, not a solid concrete thing, but an event which is continually rising from moment to moment. So, you know, if we looked at statically, you know, what these aggregates, just like the name term, the term indicates, it’s a collection of lots of little parts. You know, we have a heap of various components.
It’s not an independent thing like a brick or something. It’s a collection of lots of details. The I or the self, if we think about that, our feelings are constantly changing. There’s always a feeling and those feelings are constantly going under change. There’s always a discrimination.
This is big, this is small, this is red, this is wide. I’m here, that’s far. Those discriminations are constantly changing. All of these various mental factors are constantly changing. Consciousness is constantly changing.
One moment the eye consciousness is perceiving a green rug. The next moment it’s perceiving a red cushion. Next moment we’re hearing the sound of the class next door. The mind is So this is the substrata of the eye. All these aggregates are the substrata of the eye, and they’re undergoing constant change moment to moment.
So we can begin to appreciate that the I which is designated, which is based upon that substrata, how it must how it’s undergoing change from moment to moment. It also is not a static thing, unchanging and so forth. If the substrata upon which it’s based is undergoing constant change, moment by moment, then that which is based upon that is likewise undergoing constant change. Dynamically, the apparent continuity of the self or the eye is nothing more than the ceaseless activity of this underlying stream of activity upon which we are designated. That’s the basis of our being.
We we have a sense that there’s something there’s an I there which is inside, where we we probably never really thought about it very much, that we can almost locate, which is solid and concrete. But the I is simply that being which is designated to this constantly changing moving stream of events, feeling events, discriminating events, all these other various compositional factor events, conscious events. That’s all that constitutes our being. Upon that we are designated. We are labeled.
We exist, but we don’t exist in the static, permanent, unchanging, unitary, independent way that we normally think of ourselves to exist. These events are arising from moment to moment to moment. One estimate is that they arise every oneseventy fifth of a second. That’s the threshold in which our normal consciousness is able to register an experience. Once every maybe thirteen milliseconds, one seventy fifth of a second.
So, you know, just like that music, know, the pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding. We’re coming and coming and coming and coming into existence again and again and again. All of these various events are continually arising out of this interconnected web of causes and conditions. And upon that constant changing underlying stream, this massive changing details, we label I self. So what we experience is maybe instantaneous, you know, arising from moment to moment.
To, know, we talked about, when we talked about ignorance, we talked about there’s a sense of bewilderment associated with ignorance, you know, a sense confusion, as if the situation, you know, if we don’t conduct ourselves in the correct way, if we don’t do the right thing, somehow the situation is going to overwhelm us, it’s going to take us over, we could be lost. And there’s this constant struggle to maintain the sense of I ness from moment to moment that the basic ground of our being is not sufficient to support us. We have to, as it were, keep recreating ourselves, as it were, to, in fact, keep recreating this fiction about how we think ourselves to be. So associated with ignorance is this ongoing struggle to ground the misconceived self in space and time, to solidify it, to make it real, what is in fact fiction. So our minds are predisposed to seeking some kind of security in the body, like some kind of fort, Fort Jampa.
We make these excursions forays out into the world, you know, testing how are things going out there. Is it threatening? Is it secure? Is it safe? You know, we withdraw sometimes and move back and if situation is threatening, we withdraw back into Fort Jampa, back into the protection, the security of our skin encapsulated ego of the body, this sense that we have.
So we’re constantly, you know, engaging in the world, retreating from the world, and re engaging, re retreating from the world. It’s a concept process of testing the environment and sending out forays into the territory. So, you know, the self context adds objects about experiences them. And in this experience, the experiences are either agreeable or disagreeable. And this is our first subjective experience of the world.
We’re going to talk about this. This is called contact. We come to know the world. This represents our kind of our initial determine on how we’re going to deal with the things about us, whether we see them as agreeable or disagreeable or disagreeable, as neutral. So if the object is felt to be agreeable, then we develop pleasant feelings with regard to the object.
If the object is discerned as being disagreeable, we go on to develop unpleasant feelings. If it’s neither disagreeable or agreeable, we develop neutral feelings. So depending upon what we perceive, the object is seen as supportive or, you know, we’re trying to see how these five aggregates are evolving. Okay? So we have this aggregate of the body, the fort, you know, and we make these forays out into the world and we begin to see, well, is the world threatening or is it safe?
Is it supportive or is going is it enhancing my existence or is it a threat to my existence? How is it agreeable or disagreeable, essentially? And And dependence upon that, the aggregate feeling arises. If we see it as agreeable, we develop good feelings, pleasant feelings. If it’s disagreeable, feelings of unpleasant feelings.
But then, in dependence upon those feelings, we begin to discriminate, you know, we perceive it, this is threatening, this is safe. You know, we begin to there involves the aggregate of discriminations, how we’re perceiving. This is friendly. This is hostile. This is good.
This is bad. Making all these kinds of judgments, in dependence upon feeling, and the aggregate of feeling begins, the aggregate of discrimination arise. in dependence upon the aggregate of discriminations, all our various emotional reactions, all these other forty nine mental factors begin to come into play. You know, we react to patterns of thought, you know, all our beliefs, assumptions, ideals about the object, how we’re going to work with this object, how we’re going to get away from the object. You know, we might react with desire or we might react with aversion, for example.
These are all compositional factors. And this is all occurring within the meshwork of consciousness. You know, the background narrative or the pattern of psychological works which fills in all the details, which makes the story coherent. We live in Adelaide. We’re in the Buddha house Gompa.
It all makes sense. We know where we are. You know, we’re constantly filling in all the details about who we are and what we think and how things are supposed to work. So this is all supplied by consciousness. So there’s this evolution of the five aggregates.
First, in terms of the FORT, the skin encapsulated ego of the body, and then making these forays out into the world, determining in terms of contact agreeable or disagreeable, there’s the first subjective reaction. There’s a subjective reaction about the feelings, feeling pleasurable, feeling pleasant feelings, feeling unpleasant feelings, then making discriminations about those objects which are seen as pleasurable, they’re enhancing. I want those. I become attached to them, making discriminations about those which we have unpleasant feelings for. Those are threatening, those are bad.
I’m going to destroy those. I’m developing hostility, hatred, and so forth. This all is happening within a coherent story that we’re telling ourselves about what is going on, how this is filling out all the details which make reasonable and sane as far as we understand it to be. So before but before we can so before we can begin to extend our territory, before we can make these kind of four ways out in the world, there has to evolve some kind of medium. You know, this is the you know, how how do how does the mind in here relate with the world out there?
And we’ve we’ve built up this dichotomy ignorance that there is a world which is completely independent. There is a world inside here and a world out there, but we have to have some medium for relating with that world out there. So is it depends upon name and form, we develop the fifth link, which are the sense spheres. So these are the internal mediators of consciousness. There are six sense spheres.
Eye sense sphere. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body sense sphere and mental sense sphere. These are the mediums upon which the consciousness is able to relate with the world outside. But these six sense spheres refer to a developmental phase during which the fetus is developing until the moment of contact. So this was of the five aggregates during the first three weeks.
The sense spheres, so these are the mediums of relating which are the physical conduits of consciousness in the way that we can relate with the world out there up until we develop contact, and we’ll talk about what more contact is. But what do we mean by sense spheres? Sometimes these are referred to as sense faculties. So there are five physical sense faculties, five physical sense spheres and one mental sense sphere. The five physical sense spheres are what are they’re extremely subtle matter.
They aren’t the gross organs. You know we talk about the eye sense sphere. It’s not the it’s not the the eyeball, the fleshy thing. It is said, this is according to traditional Buddhist explanation of the physiology, that within, for example, the eyeball there is a subtle clear matter. They may mean the cornea, I don’t know.
That’s just a speculation. But there is a subtle clear matter which is what they call the eye sense sphere. There is also an ear sense sphere. There is a nose sense sphere, there is a tongue sense sphere, and a body sense sphere. So first there is the foundation for the development of these, the five aggregates per se up to the third week.
And then we go on, the fetus goes on to develop five physical sense spheres. That is to say this subtle clear matter begins to develop within the eye, within the ear, and so forth. You know, the reason it empowers the consciousness with respect to a particular object. The eye sense sphere empowers the consciousness with respect to colors and shapes. It’s not able to empower the consciousness with respect to sounds, for example.
You can’t use the eye sense sphere to hear sounds. If the eye sense sphere were to be damaged, even though there were consciousness and even though there were colors and shapes, you wouldn’t be able to see. You’d be blind. Even though there was an eye consciousness, even though there was colors and shapes, objects to be seen, because there’s no medium of, of, in which contact can be brought about, you couldn’t see. So in this process of evolution we’re talking about these phases that the fetus is going through.
From the formation of the basic form of the aggregates developing of these five sense spheres, physical sense spheres. Mental sense sphere is a previous moment of consciousness. So any moment of any previous moment of consciousness can act as empowering condition for the next moment of consciousness. And that we have to, the difference between this table and myself I’m better looking than the table I think. But that’s questionable.
It’s a nice table actually, is that this table cannot generate consciousness. Why? Because there’s not a previous moment of consciousness. I, on the other hand, can generate an eye consciousness seen in this white piece of paper. Why?
Because there’s a previous moment of consciousness in this continuum which acts as an empowering condition. That previous moment of consciousness which acts as an empowering condition is the mental sense sphere. So there are five physical sense spheres and one mental sense sphere. Okay? But but up to this point, they haven’t we we have we’re just forming the the the potentiality for experiencing.
We’re we’re trying you can think of the person as an experiencer. Basically, we are experiences. And we need the basis which brings about those experiences. So we’re developing the basis which can act as a cause for bringing about these various experiences that we undergo. These six in terms of the drawing that we have at about, what is it, it’s almost five o’clock, there’s a building with six windows.
A building with six windows. So these, sometimes it’s five windows and a door, anyway this one has six windows. If it has five windows and a door it’s nicer because the five windows are the five physical sense spheres and the one door is the mental sense sphere but here we have this six windows which are the six sense spheres. Anyway it doesn’t matter. So we’ve gotten the basis of experiencing all set up.
Now we developed a basis, we developed a medium for contact, for actually making contact with the rest of the world and now we actually make contact with the world. So, dependence upon the sixth sense spheres, we developed the sixth of the twelve links of dependent origination, which is contact. The self makes contact with the sixth sense objects. Yeah. I, colors and shapes, sounds, odors, tastes, objects of touch, phenomena, conscious thoughts, and mental images, things like that.
Those are the six sense those are the six sense objects. It’s interesting in Buddhism, we talk about six sense consciousnesses. We have six senses, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, but we also have a sixth sense called mental consciousness. We give tremendous importance to mental consciousness, perhaps more importance than the physical senses. We actually have six senses. Contact is a mental factor which distinguishes the object as either agreeable or disagreeable or neither agreeable nor disagreeable, as being neutral.
Okay, it arises. How does it arise? When consciousness come together, the aggregation of these three. So we have a consciousness, we have a medium of exchange, a sense sphere, and we have a sense object, for example color and shape. When these three come together, an experience happening, there is what’s called contact.
This contact is the primary subjective discrimination of the object as being agreeable, disagreeable, or neutral. That’s what we first come to know about anything. We make contact when we make contact. Every moment of consciousness has contact. We’re always discriminating things in terms of whether they’re agreeable, attractive, disagreeable, unattractive, or neutral.
Okay? This is symbolized by, at about almost six o’clock, there is there is a couple who are embracing. Okay. That’s contact. Real contact.
But they but they they have they’re not it is said they’re not in union yet because feelings haven’t risen yet. They’re just in contact. Feeling has yet to rise. And dependence upon the contact, the seventh of the twelve links of dependent origination arises feeling. Feelings are either unpleasant feelings, pleasant feelings, or neutral feelings, as say feelings which are neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
In general, we distinguish those three types of feelings. In dependence upon contact, when the contact is agreeable, this gives rise to pleasant feelings. When the contact is disagreeable, this gives rise to unpleasant feelings. When the contact is neutral, it gives rise to neutral feelings. So all feelings arise in dependence upon contact.
Contact is experience and the object as agreeable and so forth, while feeling is the subjective reaction. How? Is completely internal. We don’t even need the object. Feelings rise in dependence upon contact.
They don’t rise indirectly upon the object. First, we have contact. We discriminate the object as agreeable. in dependence upon that, we go on to have these various feelings: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. Feeling is a subjective reaction to our contact, whether we discriminate that object as being attractive or unattractive and so forth.
So we can look at this whole process and the evolution thinking of the being as like an experience. Essentially, that’s what we are. We are experiencers and we have two parts. We have a physical part and a mental part. The physical aspect comes together in mother’s womb with the union of the sperm and ovum and the consciousness joins at the moment of conception, like we just said.
With the completion of name and form, we have an actual body. At this stage, the six senses are not fully matured. As the process continues, entire, the physical capacity of the body to, for the fetus to be an experiencer, it becomes complete. We go on to develop the name and form and six Sense Spheres. So there we have the capacity.
Up to this point we have the capacity to be an Experiencer. Here we are forming the basis for becoming an Experiencer, up to name and form. Now we’ve actually become an Experiencer, commencing with contact. At the the eye faculty, nose faculty and so forth, consciousness and object when they meet, that’s why they’re called contact, then when they meet, this creates an experience. There is consciousness apprehending an object, but it’s only limited in the aspect of how it’s apprehending an object.
It’s only limited in terms of whether, you know, it’s kind kind of narrow minded. It only has one small job. Is this agreeable, disagreeable, or neutral? That’s all that contact does. That’s its function.
So that’s what it’s up to. That’s our first experience as an Experiencer in terms of relating with the outside world, making this kind of determination. Then, in dependence upon you, you develop a feeling, either the pleasant feeling, unpleasant or neutral feelings. And one feeling comes after another, and this is the way our life runs. So each experience of feeling is a ripening of a karmic seed we planted previously.
The ripening result causes we created by our previous actions. Feelings Feelings are the completion, the culmination of the actions that we’ve created. You know, when we talk about all these complexities of karma, and all the various types of karma, the various types results that come about in terms of our lives in terms of the world, our environment, you know, our relations and so forth, it all comes down to completion. The end point of it all is feeling. We experience our previous actions, acts that cause to bring us about a pleasant feeling, an unpleasant feeling, or a neutral feeling.
It all comes down to that. It is the ripening fruit of our karmic seeds. in dependence upon feelings we develop craving. Craving is the eighth link of the twelve links of dependent origination. Craving is essentially attachment.
It’s like another name for attachment. Whenever we have a pleasant feeling, we become attached to it. And that means to say, don’t want there is a desire not to be separated from that pleasurable feeling or to repeat that pleasurable feeling in the future. Even when we have unpleasant feelings, we develop craving. But here the craving is still craving but it is craving to be separated from that unpleasant feeling and the object associated with that unpleasant feeling and the craving never to be to have that unpleasant feeling again, never to meet with that object which this unpleasant feeling is associated with again in the future.
So it’s both craving. One is craving not to be separated, one is craving to be separated, but nonetheless it’s nonetheless is still craving. So important to, maybe it’s useful to understand that when it’s stated that craving gives rise, rises from feelings, is not craving is not feeling is not the ultimate cause of craving. Craving is caused when the feeling is accompanied by ignorance. Buddha has feelings, a Buddha experiences unremitting bliss but that feeling does not give rise to craving.
Only when the craving is dominated by ignorance, a misconception as to the nature of the experience of that feeling, does craving arise. Therefore, when, you know, when pleasure pleasant feelings or unpleasant feelings arise toward an object, that object is being mis, due to being dominated by ignorance, it’s being perceived in a distorted way. Because of ignorance, the feeling arise based upon a mistaken perception. When a feeling is pleasant, we desire the object, and we want to possess it. When the feeling is unpleasant, we desire that to be separated from the object and we want to be rid of it, we want to destroy it.
In the case of feeling, gives rise to craving only when it’s dominated by ignorance because we’re misconceiving the nature of the object due to the dominance of ignorance. So, you know, craving is simply another word for attachment or another word for desire. And we’ve talked about this. We said that all desires are not unskillful and we have to we have to make some kind of a distinction amongst what we mean by by desire. Desire is only unskillful when it’s dominated by ignorance.
So when desire is free of ignorance or free of, you know, the various other afflict emotions, it does not serve as a cause to perpetuate cyclic existence. It is not unskillful. It does not lead to suffering. Once ignorance is cut from the root, feelings still arise. The Buddha still has feeling, but since they’re not dominated by ignorance, those feelings do not perpetuate cyclic existence and they did not give rise to craving.
So this is an important point, this conjunction between feeling and craving. It’s a good illustration of how the twelve links are operating as a chain of causation, how we keep perpetuating these dissatisfactory cycles of existence, why this is a self perpetuating feedback loop that we’re caught up in. You know, a feeling is the culmination of a previous action. It’s the end point of our skillful and unskillful activities, which have risen at their origin from ignorance. But the endpoint is a feeling — we experience a particular feeling as a result of this entire process.
So activity, that particular cause has exhausted itself, that action acting as a cause is complete. We experience a particular feeling. It’s that particular set of causation is finished but the problem arises because due to feelings dominated by ignorance we again develop craving. A new craving arises, a new particular sequence of causation arises. The same time, we develop attachment, we develop aversion, wanting to possess that object, wanting to be separated from that object and so forth.
All the very afflictive emotions begin to rise. And out of those very afflictive emotions, we’re motivated to, again, to create more more actions, which is dominated by ignorance. We simply begin the whole process again. On the basis of ignorance, we involve ourselves in activities which end in a feeling and due to those feelings, we develop craving, which causes us to develop the afflictive emotions dominated by affliction, dominated by ignorance. We again involve ourselves in activities which again bring about feelings as an endpoint and we again develop craving and the process is just a self perpetuating loop.
It just keeps feeding on itself like, you know, it never ends. We just keep creating more and more of the same, this self perpetuating process of these twelve links of dependent origination. In this, in our drawing, it’s about, it’s almost at seven o’clock. It’s, but you can hardly tell what it is, isn’t it? Anyway, it’s supposed to be, it’s a woman offering a drink of alcohol to a man and this symbolizes an addictive substance.
So we’re addicted to this process that we’re involved in. Or maybe we could say it’s a man offering alcohol to a woman. I heard that mum laying in the background there. Didn’t that didn’t go unnoticed. Anyway so out of this new craving we create new karma and the whole thing just keeps on going.
karma, we go through this process again and ending with feelings, developing craving. Out of this craving comes new karma, going through this whole process again, developing at the end point which is feeling, developing craving. And the whole process starts anew each time. So we’ve gone through eight of the twelve links of dependent origination. We’ll finish the rest next time, okay?
So you might like, maybe we could grab a cup of tea. There’s something. This chain of causation is initiated again. Lay down the cause to begin this process all over again. Here we said this formative action was a propelling karma which brought about rebirth, but in fact it can be It can be any type of action.
Okay. So the various actions, all the various experiences that we’re creating for ourselves continuously are in one explanation, this is occurring momentarily, from moment to moment. But here, generally we’re just applying this to where it says formative action, propels us into a new rebirth. So before we break for a cup of tea and have a discussion, if I’m right Becky, next week is a holiday. Is that right?
Becky’s declared a holiday. Have you declared a holiday? It’s a holiday. So there won’t be a class next Monday. Is that right?
Is that I’m just kind of get is that are you is that correct? As a teaching? Okay. Okay so we could have it. Okay.
Shall we have class next Monday? Yeah. So there will be a class next Monday. Okay. Just to make it clear.
There will be a class Monday. There probably will not be a during the meditate class, though. Those are usually not We’re following Monday school holidays, so I presume have a white board on. Well, no. We we we will have classes throughout the school holidays.
We we decided yeah. It might be a good idea just to continue through the holidays. Okay. So if you like to get a cup of tea we’ll come back and have a discussion.