Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this two-hour teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen establishes Buddhist psychology’s foundational framework: six types of consciousness paired with fifty-one mental factors. Using vivid analogies—king and courtiers, elephant and monkeys—he shows how consciousness engages the bare object while mental factors like feeling and intention color that engagement. The heart of the session is feeling: what it is, how it arises from past karma rather than external circumstances, and why grasping this distinction is both difficult and liberating. He traces karma’s inexorable link to pleasure and pain, challenges the habit of blaming others for our unhappiness, and works through six ways to classify feeling. Throughout, he emphasizes that genuine freedom comes not from controlling the world but from understanding how our own actions condition our mind. For serious practitioners with some background in Buddhist philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2012 10 23 01 – Jampa Ignyen 20121023 Mind & Cognition231012.mp3
UUID: a39667d4-5319-48e4-9020-bd079ed4ba98
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: Mind & Cognition (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2012-10-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 102.9 minutes
Words: ~10,279
How they hold objects, how objects appear to the mind and the different types of mind and mental factor that can arise. We’re looking at the whole cross section of the function of the mind itself. Now I might just briefly put something on the board. Just as soon as we get a pen that’s functioning. Now we can say awareness cognition include every type of awareness, type of consciousness, every type of feeling discrimination.
Every knowing state that can exist in the universe is included by say awareness and cognition and then that breaks down into really minds and mental factors. So this is what we’re looking at this mental factors. So there’s two, just two types. Now minds also we’re looking at consciousness which we regarding as the same, these synonyms. And so far we’re looking at the six types.
Consciousness has six types and mental factors have fifty one types. So that’s really what we’re looking at so far. Right. Now when we look at what awareness or what cognition mean, it just means that which cognizes or is aware of an object. The mere awareness or the awareness itself of an object.
There’s no type of consciousness or mind or mental factor that doesn’t have object. So in a sense this is the main, what, process that we’re looking at: how we engage objects around us, whether they’re sensory objects or objects that are beyond the senses. Okay? Now so far we’ve gotten up to about about page number well, really we started on the mind which is on page eight. Everyone has a copy of the book so far?
Now we had the introductory part and then we started on the individual nature and division of mind and mental states. Here mental states means mental factors. So that’s what we’re looking at there. Division into minds and division into mental factors. So firstly we had a look at the nature of the mind itself.
Now the mind engages the mere nature of an object. So in other words what mind does which is really we can divide up into the six types of consciousness engages the mere nature of an object. So for instance when we hear a sound like a bird calling, we have an ear consciousness that engages the sound of say bird call. And when we smell, when we we’ve got the five types of sense consciousness and then we’ve got mental consciousness. Now the sense consciousnesses just engage the mere nature of the object.
For instance when we hear the sound of the bird that the ear consciousness that we have engages just the mere sound itself. Our conception starts to think about what the sound is whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant, what type of bird is making it and so forth. But the ear consciousness is just aware of the mere sound itself. Right, so this we’ve covered a little bit so far. What the mind or what consciousness is doing.
Are there any issues? Are there any questions here so far? Right. Now what we’re doing here a little bit is we’re bending English words to suit Tibetan and Sanskrit terms. We have to find some terms in English and they don’t always exactly match.
Now how we’re defining awareness here which is for this Sanskrit word mati or Tibetan word blo is just that which is aware of an object So that has subdivisions then into and awareness and cognition. Cognition therefore rig pa in Tibetan Also it’s very similar to awareness it’s just engaging a specific type of awareness that engages its object. They’re the broadest possible category of awareness of the subject which engages objects. But when we divide that up we can say there’s two types of awareness: There’s awareness which only engages the mere nature of its object. It’s a division of awareness and there are those types of awareness which engage the specific attributes of the object.
Right. Now those two are distinct and there’s no common basis between a mind and a mental factor. Now within our mental factors we have things like feeling, discrimination and so on. All the interesting ones are in the mental factors. Anyway this to really get a handle on Buddhist psychology say as presented in the different schools we really need to understand this division between minds and mental factors.
In Sanskrit the word is citta and chaitta. Chaitta. Anyway, no. Which actually indicates them: citta refers to the mind and chaitta refers to that derived from the mind. But what that means is that the citta or the mind consciousness just merely engages the object itself but then what comes after that is this specific engagement of that object from the point of view or from the perspective of a particular type of awareness which is the mental factor. Okay.
Right. It can be hard going. Looking at these issues. So anything that comes up, bring it up. Sorry.
Well type of mind or anything that engages the object you know in general is going to be awareness. But then whether it’s a mind or mental factor will depend on how that type of awareness what it’s actually engaging whether it’s engaging the mere nature of the object or whether it’s engaging an attribute of that object. Then we’ll determine whether it’s a mental factor or not. Okay. Why are we doing this?
We’re engaging in this sort of analysis because what we want to do is be able to understand the mental factors. Because the mental factors include all the emotions. And it’s the emotions that cause us issues give us that test us that challenge us all the time. So first we look at know what is a mind? We get some idea of what we mean when we say mind.
So the main thing with mind is that we’re looking therefore at the six types of consciousness: mental consciousness, eye consciousness, ear, nose, tongue, body. There’s just those six. Now there are some Buddhist schools that say that there are eight types of consciousness and they add things like the foundation consciousness and the afflictive mind and the stainless mind. So three either they add two or they add three to those six. But we’re not concerned about that.
The foundation consciousness is fascinating though because the foundation consciousness for one particular Buddhist school contains all the karmic imprints that give rise to karmic maturation or the outcomes of our past actions. But anyway, it comes up in this particular text. Now I think we’ll skip this section for the time being we might come back to it later but you’ll notice on page twelve that that about halfway down, we’ve got the last paragraph starts with, even though the storehouse consciousness and afflicted mind are discussed in the text of Asaṇga and his brother Vasubandhu. So storehouse consciousness or the foundation consciousness are maybe the seventh and the eighth type of mind that could be added to those. Just keep a note of that.
We won’t go into detail just at present. There’s even a ninth that can be added. But what we’ll do is we’ll skip ahead to page number fourteen and we’ll start on the mental states. Now here that here it’s we’re given the word mental state. Mental factor I think probably is a little bit better to use.
Now we’ll read a little bit from the text that we have. In regard to the explanation on mental states we have a particular text called the Pañcaskandhaka Prakaraṇa which means the the elucidation of the five aggregates. So the five aggregates really refer to the mind body continuum. This particular text it talks about the basis of imputation of the person. Right?
Talks about the five things that act as the basis of designation of a person. Now it states: Okay, now I’m going to reinterpret this a little bit. What are the qualities that arise from the mind? It really is talking about what are the phenomena that are mental factors? What are the mental states or the mental factors in other words?
So they are those phenomena associated with the mind. So what that quote there is talking about is trying to define what the mental factors are, the mental states are. And that are those things which are associated with the mind. Because the mental factors up here, they cannot exist without other states of mind. They always must go together.
And as we mentioned before there’s five things in common between the minds and the mental factors. Is everyone okay with those five? Time. They have a common time, common basis, common aspect, common substance, and common object or a common focal object. Is that how’s that?
Anyone? I’ll write them down. Just It all seems quite obscure to be honest in the beginning because it’s a much it’s quite a compared to Western psychology, Buddhist psychology is a bit out there in left field. Not something that we readily necessarily are going to understand. So the five things in common between minds and mental factors.
They always have they come together minds and mental factors and they have five things in common. Right? They have the same we could say folk focal object. And the same aspect of the focal object. And they also have the same time.
It doesn’t matter which order we put these in. Same basis and the same substance. Right. So they always possess five things in common. Now for instance, you know, we have give an example of that.
For instance, we have a memory of a friend. Right? We remember John or we remember Sue. Now that’s a type of mental consciousness. Right?
So if we put down the memory of Sue as an example. So we have mental consciousness. Mental consciousness is one of the six types of mind. Right? And then we have a mental factor that has five things in common with that.
Say feeling. Which is a mental factor? Right? This is an example, you know, just how we we’re going to understand the relationship between these two. Now the mental consciousness itself is not feeling.
So that mental consciousness what? It’s the what that is is the memory of Sue is a mental consciousness. Okay? And it’s conceptual, right? We remember Sue.
As we remember Sue, Sue is the focal object of that memory. That memory focuses on a particular person, focuses on Sue. And the aspect is any attribute that we might have, we might be thinking about. The attribute of she’s a good person, she’s a bad person, she’s has some problems at the present time or oh she’s going away or whatever attribute that you know she has at present that we’re thinking about becomes the aspect that we’re looking at. So the memory plus the feeling are both looking at the same focal object, the same aspect.
They occur at the same time. Well, that’s obvious. They must occur at the same time. They have the same basis. Right.
So what is the basis there? The basis there is the what we’d call the mental faculty. Faculty. So what that is in this context is a previous moment of awareness that acts as a basis for generating that. Don’t worry too much about this one.
It could be a thought. It could be Well it’s just something that acts as a basis for that thought to arise. So it could be a previous thought. Yeah, it could be a previous moment of sense consciousness for instance. Yep.
Yep. Okay, we won’t go into that too much yet. And then now they also share the same substance. Okay, that just means that whatever the substance of the memory of Sue is, which is a mental consciousness the feeling that arises with that memory is of a very similar substance to the How does that sound? They share their substance is similar.
The substance or the energy we could put it that way is similar. It’s said that they’re not exactly the same substance but they’re very very similar in substance. I’m not sure that Do you think awareness has substance or energy? Okay. Is energy a better term?
You don’t like substance? No. Okay. Okay. We’ll go for energy.
They have a similar energy. Right? Now in a sense we have the memory of Sue and the feeling of Sue really arising together. That’s a mind and a mental factor and they always share five things in common. Now in a sense what we have is that we’ve got a main mind here and we’ve got a retinue mental factor there.
It’s a bit like an atom nucleus of an atom and the electrons around it. The main thing it’s like the king or the queen is the mind. Here the memory, the mental consciousness and the retinue is like the feeling that exists in the retinue or in the Is retinue an understandable term? Retinue sound okay? In Tibetan the word is kor which means like means like retinue.
Within the circle. Retinue? Oh retinue? Right. So this is basically what we’re talking about with minds and mental factors.
Do you want another example? I need help. Okay. Yep. Retinue is a little bit like the Prime Minister and the ordinary ministers.
The main one, the central one is going to be the mind or the consciousness and the mental factors exist in a sense within the circle of that the principal state which is the main mind. This one here. But is that okay? Okay let’s do another another example. King and the courtier.
Yes. Or the boss and the worker. Boss and the worker might be good. The mind is the boss and the workers are the mental factors. They do all the work.
The boss does very little. The boss it’s also a bit like an elephant. We can imagine the mind is like an elephant. It’s big, has a lot of inertia, doesn’t do very much. But the monkeys the smaller animals run around and do all the work.
They’re the mental factors. Okay so let’s try another one. Say We do ear consciousness again apprehending an object. The sound of music. What sort of music will we put down there?
Sound of oh well, we’ll just do music in general. So we have here consciousness that apprehends the sound of music. Right? This occurs to us all the time, right? Now that ear consciousness is a main mind.
It’s a mind. It’s a consciousness. And in the retinue of that we can have plus okay. Plus attachment. Now attachment is a mental factor.
Right so it’s another scenario. We listen to music and Actually probably attachments not so clear here. We will I’ll put feeling again because feeling is probably So feeling also exists in the retinue of the ear consciousness listening to music or the ear consciousness hearing music. Right? So this is another example and they possess five things in common: they have the same focal object which is the music itself and then they have the same attribute of that music which could be you know, this particular section of the music or you know the what?
The sound of a particular instrument at that time within the music. And then they have the same time, same basis. The basis here would be the ear sense faculty which is the basis upon which the sound the ear is able to hear the sound. Ear consciousness can engage the sound. Right?
Because we need an ear. We need the inner ear mechanism. We also need the nerve, we also need that area of the brain that is going to register what the sound is. All of that is part of the ear sense faculty. That’s the basis.
Then the substance or energy okay we’ll get rid of substance say energy. The energy of the two is very similar. Okay so we can they’re just a couple of examples. Now the reason why we go into this whole issue of minds and mental factors is not mental gymnastics. That’s not the intention.
It’s not meant to make it hard or difficult or confuses. The reason why we’re looking at these topics is really to begin to understand the mental factors the emotions how they arise. The whole purpose of this exercise is to understand how the mental factors arise because it’s the mental factors that are the problem for us. In fact the mental factors are the solution and the problem all at once. Right?
But we need to understand how they actually are generated. Where do they come from? We need to understand the conditions under which they arise. We need to understand the conditions under which, for instance, anger arises. Because anger is one of the mental factors.
If we can understand anger, if we know how to deal with anger, we know how to the conditions under which it arises then it gives us some degree of what? A little bit of control a little bit of a toehold tiny toehold into beginning to control anger. And so on hatred etc. So the reason why we’re looking at these things minds and mental factors is basically just that so that we can begin to understand mental factors. Okay so mental factors start on really page number fourteen.
How are we doing? Is it hard? Is this subject hard? Is it easy? In Sera where I studied this topic is debated for about three months, four months every day two, three hours in the morning, two, three hours in the afternoon.
It is difficult. It’s not easy to begin to understand this area. We unfortunately don’t have a lot of time. We want to get through this particular text within eight sessions. Lots of disagreement but this is one of the fundamental primers.
It’s called Lorig in Tibetan and like in the monastery you first start with what are called the Düra or the collected topics area and there’s a small medium and great collected topics which also deals with the mind but not in a specific way. It comes up of course. Then you go into Lorig which now this actually is a complement to the Lorig text Minds and Mental Factors actually we didn’t study this particular text in great detail we studied another one which has a lot more debate in it. But that other text does include this area but not to the extent not as what extensively is dealt with by this text. But getting an idea of how the minds and mental factors function takes a long, long time because we have a lot of doubts about, you know, about these things.
Even feeling understanding our feeling is so difficult. What is feeling? How does it arise? What is mental feeling? What is physical feeling?
What’s positive? What’s negative? What’s neutral? What are the different shades of all of that? And so on.
Just gaining some degree of understanding does take a long time. But that’s okay. Oh what is this? Yeah exactly. The whole purpose of this is to help us understand our own emotions and you know like be able to understand the process clearly so that we are you know able to avoid problematic situations.
Or we don’t you know when know afflictive or afflictive emotions arise we have some way of addressing them that works basically. So yeah this material is tested a great deal and there’s a lot of disagreement about how to interpret this as well. And there are different interpretations made of this material. So In a sense, it also shows that there are different ways we can look at the mind and at mental factors. The goal is not to come up with an absolutely rigid system of saying that this is how it absolutely must be.
It’s more to come up with an idea of how our mind functions. But of course if we step out of this particular system we have to be able to come up with something that’s plausible and can work. As it’s said in the monastery a lot of debate goes into this and you can either debate purely from the point of view logic which is regarded as superior or you can debate from the point of view of scripture. Logic is taken to be supreme. But many people or most of us go to scripture because actually the meaning is so subtle and difficult to discern that one needs a framework.
One needs some grist for the mill to work with. That’s right. And so we would go through the ideas of past masters and see what they had to say and base our investigation on them. But really brilliant, really sharp people through their own logic are able to understand this. For that reason logic is regarded as superior.
Right, so on page number fourteen. Now we’ve skipped a number of sections. If we get a chance we’ll come back and have a further look at those pages again but we’re not going that quickly to the text I’m not sure if we’ll get a chance to go back to it doesn’t matter. So now we’re looking at the mental states and now we’ve just done that quote from Prakaraṇa. Sorry about these Sanskrit words in here.
Don’t worry about them. Now underneath that it says: When these mental states are classified there are fifty one. Easier. Doesn’t matter. So then they listed the five omnipresent factors such as feeling and so forth.
The five such as interest or resolve resolution and so on which for an object for a determined object or object determining factors or object ascertaining factors. Okay so there’s another five. So first there were five that are omnipresent, then there are five that are discerning or to do with discernment and ascertainment, and then there are eleven which are virtuous. So how many is that? Twenty one?
Okay. How many left? Good! So then we got six fundamental afflictions or six root afflictions such as attachment and so on. And then we’ve got twenty secondary afflictions or afflictive factors such as anger and so on.
Or actually as and And then four variable states such as regret and so on. Right, so how many categories have we got there? We’ve got fifty one all up divided into how many separate divisions? Six divisions! Okay look we will maybe I’ll just write these on the board again.
Okay well that’s it we’ve done the fifty one. That’s good. Sometimes it’s comforting to have a list. Oh they do they’re utterly lists of everything. Fifty one we’re getting off lightly.
Some of the lists are much much longer. So the first list number one, is the omnipresent. Second we can say is the object determining. Excuse my spelling if I Three is the virtuous. Four is the root afflictions or the five is the secondary or the branch afflictions and then six is the variables.
Right, so that sums up all the sets of mind that we can generate. If we have at any time any time of the day or night previous years, future years if a mind arises it’s got to be one of the six types of consciousness and one of the fifty one types of mental factor that arise. There’s no others. Possible. Within the universe.
From a Buddhist point of view. Okay, so these in and of themselves are neutral. Next one are positive or virtuous. These next two are neg negative or non virtues. And these variables therefore they can be any or we’ll say either.
They can be either. But they could be either virtuous, non virtuous or neutral. Right, so that’s the that is the basic ground plan. In a sense these mental factors are divided up ethically. So what does it mean here that they have a value?
They have an ethical value? The mental factors. The first two sets the omnipresent and the object determining by themselves are neutral. The virtuous, the eleven types of virtuous mental factor are positive by their very nature. They can only be positive.
The six root afflictions are by nature they can they’re generally non virtuous they can be neutral ones in there as well. But we’ll just include we’ll say non virtuous just to because they’re predominantly non virtuous. Virtuous. And then we got twenty secondary or twenty branch afflictions. They’re also predominantly non virtuous.
And then we got the final four variables which can be either virtuous or non virtuous or neutral. Depends on conditions. So from that we see that there’s not many of the virtuous. There’s only eleven of fifty one that are in and of themselves virtuous. Any virtue in the universe has to be associated with one of those eleven types of mental factor.
A mind can only become positive or virtuous if it strikes up, manifests, gouges into action one of these eleven. If one or more of these eleven are not manifest in our mind in our mind stream the mind is not virtuous. Yeah. Oh, coupled with consciousness. This is what makes consciousness virtuous or neutral or Yep.
Consciousness itself doesn’t is neutral. But no wait wait I was gonna get there. Consciousness is neutral but when consciousness has in its retinue a factor consciousness becomes positive. When consciousness is associated with a negative mental factor consciousness becomes non virtuous or negative. Not to the same object at the same time it’s not possible.
Wrong view itself is neutral so it’s possible that faith arises with wrong view and that faith is positive. Wrong view Yeah wrong doctrine also possible because that’s neutral. Neutral and positive becomes positive because the mind itself is neutral but when we activate a mental factor in regards to a particular object the consciousness of the mind itself then becomes takes on the ethical ethical value or it takes on the what? The value of the mental factor or how the mental factor is acting. It becomes virtuous due to the mental factor or it becomes non virtuous due to the mental factor.
It’s variable. It’s the first of the omnipresent which are neutral. It can it can but it becomes that through other mental factors. It’s okay. Mental factors become neutral mental factors become positive or negative due to other positive or negative mental factors.
Oh there can be maybe up to twenty mental factors simultaneously arising with it. Well there are okay we’re going to do the omnipresent first. The omnipresent mental factor. And the omnipresent means that they occur with every mind. Right?
So with any mind arises, say ear consciousness, nose, tongue, body, mental consciousness always has these five omnipresent mental factors with it. So at least there must be five! Right, how are we doing so far? Sorry? Any doubts about or any issues?
Are they mutually exclusive? They can be virtuous feeling. Yeah. Yeah, you can have a positive feeling but it doesn’t become positive due to the feeling itself. It becomes positive by association with one of the eleven virtuous mental factors.
Right. Okay so now we’ve just done that list now we move on to there’s a quote from the Pañcaskandhaka Prakaraṇa which says there are omnipresent, five have a determined aspect, eleven are virtuous, six are afflictions, the others are secondary afflictions, four are variable. Okay, so that’s a particular text that goes back to Vasubandhu, one great scholar. So now we’re going to deal with the first of the six groups. And the first of the six groups is the five omnipresent mental factors.
The five omnipresent mental factors are feeling now here we have recognition but I think discrimination may be a little bit better so I’m using discrimination. But recognition we can also keep there as well. Intention, contact and attention. So just those five. So they’re called omnipresent because they’re always there in our mind stream.
And the first one mentioned is feeling. And the reason why feeling comes up first is just shows the importance of feeling. Also indicates the importance of understanding our feelings. And that very much as an individual we’re defined by our feeling how we feel. How we act towards others is dependent on how we feel.
Where our feelings are coming from. What influences them? Right, so feeling is the first. So we do the deal with the first towards the bottom of page number fourteen: The nature of feeling is explained according to the Abhidharmasamuccaya. So we’ve got another text here which means the compendium of higher subjects.
So this particular text first says: What is the defining characteristic of feeling? Experience. It is that experience in the form of which the maturation of the results of virtuous or non virtuous karma is experienced. Okay so the main part there for us is that feeling the definition of feeling is experience. It’s the experience of something.
Experience of the object. So here what is experienced in feeling is called the matured result or the maturational result of past action. This is stated for the purpose of understanding that all feelings of happiness and suffering arise within us only as the matured result of past karma, As a result of our past actions. So our feeling is coming from our past actions. Any feeling that we experience physical physical or mental is coming tends to come from our past action.
Furthermore the Lam Rim Chenmo states, the great text on the the paths and stages to enlightenment says: The infallibility of our actions means that whether we are ordinary individuals or noble beings any pleasure occurring as pleasant feeling even just the pleasant sensation from a cool breeze experienced by those born in hell arises from previously accumulated virtuous karma. karma means action. That’s all it is. karma comes from the verb to do. Kri the verb to do just means karma just talks about the action itself.
So here it’s talking actually about mental action and that mental action is intention. Willing to do something. The volition to do something or the intention to do is the actual essence of karma. It is not possible for happiness to arise from non virtue. Also, any suffering occurring as unpleasant feelings, even just an unpleasant feeling that has arisen in the mental continuum or in the mind stream of an arahat.
An arahat is a liberated being. Arhat means someone who’s overcome the foe, overcome the enemy or destroyed the enemy. Arahat, Arahan. What is the enemy to be destroyed? That is the negative emotions, the afflictive emotions.
So someone who’s overcome the afflictive emotions still can experience unpleasant feeling. But that is because only on a physical level not on a mental level. There’s a lot of debate about this. An Arahant is a liberated being but they still can experience negative physical feeling due to past karmic residue in their mind stream. But they have a for instance a positive mental feeling anyway.
But they can experience a feeling they can get an ache in their knee or an ache in their back or get a headache. But no negative mental feeling because they’re liberated. However that view is challenged in the great vehicle treatises. Not even in some say not even a negative physical feeling is possible for a liberated being. Totally impossible.
Anyway, if a being like that were to experience a negative feeling that is coming from the past actions that occur from the accumulation of non virtuous karma in the past it is not possible for suffering to occur from a virtuous virtuous action. And the Ratnāvali, another text by Nāgārjuna, says: From non virtue comes all suffering, likewise all negative rebirths. From virtue comes all positive rebirths and the happiness within all births. Right, so therefore happiness and suffering do not occur without a cause nor do they occur from inappropriate causes such as a primal essence. Primal essence here is indicating a creator being.
It’s not that there is some being that’s imposing these negative feelings on us outside. The source of all our feelings is our past actions. They’re not being imposed upon us by some other being. In a sense, if they were, there’d be no way of overcoming them. Or Īśvara Īśvara and so forth.
Rather, in general happiness and suffering come the virtuous and non virtuous actions of our virtuous and non virtuous actions and the various particular forms of happiness and suffering arise distinctly or separately without even the slightest mixing or conflation from various particular instances of those two types of karma, attaining certain knowledge of this regularly regularity or this certainty or non deceptiveness of karma and its effects is the correct view of Buddhists and praised as the foundation of all positive all positive view really. So this particular statement from the Lam Rim is really goes to the core of what the Buddhist beliefs which is that happiness and unhappiness arise for us as individuals due to our own particular past actions. It’s not imposed by any other being on us. And there is absolute certainty as to the causal process such that if we experience happiness it’s coming from non virtue. If we experience if we experience happiness it’s coming from virtue.
If we experience unhappiness it’s coming from non virtue. And that law is fixed. We cannot find a variation to that. What this also means is that other beings are not the source of our feelings. So our partner is not the source of our happiness nor the source of our unhappiness.
It may appear that way but what the source of, say, the positive feeling that we have is from positive past action that we’ve engaged in. That’s the root source. And also the unhappiness. We tend to blame our partner, we tend to blame other people when we’re unhappy but that again is misunderstanding the root or the source of that feeling. So this point is difficult to understand because we are so habituated to looking or what?
Conceiving the source of our problems as being those around us, other people or society in general. Negative feeling arises in the moment because of the government or our neighbor or you know something happening in America or my parents or my family in general. We tend to blame others. Yes. Feeling is coming from our actions in the past.
In the past but not all action it’s only positive or negative action. Neutral action doesn’t generate karmic imprints. So in the past when we’ve gotten annoyed and we’ve yelled at another person we engage in a negative act towards another person. We get angry. We’re motivated by the anger Now that has laid down karmic seeds in our mind stream that then awaken in this life for instance due to causes and conditions coming together and we experience a negative feeling.
And it appears as if the negative feeling is coming from say the situation that we’re in or another people involved in that situation. So Then we get annoyed with them. Then we lay down new karmic imprints. And those again will be experienced later on. So this is an ongoing issue that we have.
We’re a hundred and thirty five percent convinced that our feelings arise due to the actions of others. We are convinced of this so we then therefore try and subdue others or isolate them or distance ourselves from them or blame them or slander them, yell at them, hit them, kill them, put them in jail but we’re still not absolutely sure where the initial feeling came from that led to this course of action. Actually when I say that we’re not sure we’re really convinced that it’s coming from those people. Those people cause the feeling. Another person causes this feeling that I have.
We are almost utterly convinced of it. So what this quotation here is suggesting is that the feeling is not actually coming from that other person. Just as we are not the cause of their feelings that arise in their stream. Even in that case we feel empathy for another we don’t actually feel what they’re feeling. It’s not possible.
We can sympathize with their situation and often we sympathize because we love the other person. We we can’t sympathize so readily with our enemies. We sympathize with our friends because we have an affinity with our friends. But even so, our affinity or our what? You know, we feel for what they feel.
But still we don’t feel what they feel. Because their their mind stream is different than ours. It’s really the basic. Our mind stream doesn’t merge with the mind stream of someone else. Our feelings are independent in a way or no I wouldn’t say independent they’re more like unique to us.
They’re influenced by others but they’re not the root cause of our feelings. Others are not the root cause. Others can influence act as a condition for the arrival of feelings but they’re not the root cause of our feelings. For instance other people hit us with sticks and it appears as if they’re the cause for the pain physical pain that we feel. But they’re only a condition.
It doesn’t seem that way though Someone hits us with a stick and we look at the you know the bruise that comes up and we’re in pain and we think they caused it. They hit me. They actually caused this feeling. Feeling! Again they’re only a condition they’re not the substantial cause of that negative physical feeling.
Well there’s no choice we’re gonna feel it. Yeah. Someone comes up and hits us with a stick. We yeah. We we feel that physical pain, and we feel highly offended.
We get annoyed. We get angry. We yell. We feel badly done by and we blame the other person. We take them to court.
See them as the source of that injury. But technically the root cause is our past actions for that feeling. It’s our karma. That person is just a condition for the arrival of that feeling. That’s right: if that person experience pain it’s due to their past negative actions.
Well it’s due to your present actions isn’t it? It’s due to you intend in the present to hit that person. It’s a current action. It’s new karma. But hitting another person with Well the tendency or the habitual tendency to reach for a stick when we don’t like someone else could be from a long long line of similar actions that stretch back many many lifetimes.
We’ve tried to resolve our issues by picking up a weapon or picking up a stick and hitting someone. But the feeling that arises in the mind stream of that other being depends on their own past actions. No, if you’re an enlightened being you wouldn’t feel pain because you would have eliminated the you would have purified all your past karma. At most you might feel a neutral feeling. Like the Buddha when the Buddha was alive he had a cousin called Devadhatta and Devadhatta was extremely jealous of the Buddha and he came up with all these ruses to try and undermine the Buddha.
He went to the extent of even, you know, like trying to kill him by rolling rocks down upon him and so forth and causing him to at one stage he managed to roll a rock that splintered off and a shard cut the Buddha and the Buddha bled. But there was no the Buddha didn’t experience pain from that because he had completely eliminated all karmic seeds and imprints completely purified those within his mental continuum. Okay this is it’s a this particular idea as they say here it’s one of the fundamental principles you find in Buddhist view that feeling that we have internally is coming from our own past actions. But it’s an extremely difficult proposition and it almost seems to be counterintuitive. It doesn’t appear that that’s what’s happening.
However, although it seems counterintuitive what it’s suggesting is that if if we control ourselves we eventually are able to eliminate all sources of harm to ourselves not through subduing the world but subduing our own actions. Because it’s impossible to subdue the world or the universe in general. There’s no way that we can control everything. In that sense enlightenment or liberation would be impossible if it depended on controlling the external world. Because even a Buddha can’t control.
When the Buddha was alive, he couldn’t control what was going on. Buddha wasn’t able, you know, having taken rebirth on earth, to then sort everything out because a Buddha cannot control the actions of others. An enlightened being cannot stop or manipulate the actions of other beings. Other beings had the free will to do as they please. All that a Buddha in that sense a Buddha is powerless.
All a Buddha can do is suggest: don’t act in this way there be consequences. Better act this way. All the Buddha can do is teach the path. And if sentient beings decide to follow that advice then they can overcome their negative karma. If not, then it’s up to the individual.
It shows the strength of karma, of action. In in a sense, Buddhism is about just that, the strength, the dominant strength of action in the lives of sentient beings. For their blessing. When we ask for a blessing we ask for please, you know, have sympathy for me in my situation. Inspire me to practice virtue.
But being inspired to practice virtue means that we put the work in to start practicing virtue. Because if we don’t have a basis of virtue there’s no way that we could even be blessed. You know it’s like this the story of you know when the sun of wisdom shines the flowers bloom but the rocks don’t. When the sun of wisdom shines the flowers bloom because the flowers are like you know have a basis of virtue. Flower is like a virtue.
When the sun of wisdom shines the little flower opens up and benefits from that. A rock is like someone who’s not practicing virtue. The sun of wisdom shines but the rock is not going to bloom. It’s not going to. Similarly the blessing is a little bit like a flower receiving the Sun’s light and benefiting from that.
That’s a bit like a blessing. So we need to practice virtue in order to be blessed by the virtue of others. Otherwise not possible. There’s a lot of hard work. All of this practicing virtue is one hundred percent hard work.
There’s no easy instant solution. So anyway we’re dealing with feeling at present. Feeling means experience. So experience here means like tasting the object. What work the feeling does it’s like it tastes the object.
Now this is hard for us to really zero in on to really nail it but feeling is doing just that. Whenever we look at something, hear something, smell, taste, touch it it’s like we’re tasting the object. It’s like we’re really experiencing it. We’re getting you know our own unique evaluation of that object. Also with the mind on a mental level it’s the same.
We have mental feeling arise. Positive, neutral or negative. Right, so at the end of that quote: The types of feeling are pleasant feelings, unpleasant feelings and neutral feelings. Just three fundamental types. So it’s good if we can be aware of our feeling when we’re observing objects.
When our awareness, when our minds engage other objects we should try and be aware of the feeling that arises. Positive feeling, negative feeling, neutral feeling. So this is really it’s almost part of the four foundations of mindfulness mindfulness of feeling. Extremely important. Furthermore the Pañcaskandhaka Prakaraṇa says: What is feeling?
It is the three kinds of experience: pleasure, suffering and that which is neither suffering nor pleasure. Pleasure is that which one desires to meet again if the original feeling stops. So if we’re uncertain about whether we have a pleasant feeling towards something we can gauge it also by the fact that if we stop observing that object we wanted that feeling to continue so we come back to the object. That indicates it was a positive feeling we had. Similarly suffering is that which one desires to be free when it occurs.
So suffering or negative feeling is what we want to stop. And a feeling that is neither pleasure nor suffering is one for which neither of these two desires occurs when the feeling arises. So if it’s a neutral feeling we neither want to be with that object or separated from it because a neutral feeling arose in relation to the object. Now our feelings are extremely important because we tend to be caught between these two the positive and the negative. We don’t want to be separated from certain objects because we have a positive feeling.
We like the positive. We get addicted to the positive feeling. And if we have a negative feeling we want to be separated. In a sense also it indicates the objects that we want to be near to, that we’re drawn to give rise to a positive feeling for us. And the objects that we want to be separated from distances ourselves from is those objects with which we have a negative feeling in relation to.
A lot of energy in this life can be put into just trying to keep close to objects that we have a positive feeling towards and keep a distance from objects we have a negative feeling in relation to. Is that true? Anyway, this is something that it’s good for us to observe yeah yeah then it’s an indication conditioned the arrival of attachment. The attachment is not the positive feeling but the attachment comes very quickly in the wake of the positive feeling. The attachment then is wanting attachment to that object that one has positive feeling towards.
So what does that attach? Well the attachment then you know is that which is just observing the positive features of that So it’s like a misconception of the object. But we’ll wait until we yep. Another thing is that these minds and mental factors arise very quickly very rapidly and precisely almost subliminally and we often don’t really have the time to step back and sort of work out: Oh what happened there? Why are my emotions so caught up with that particular object?
What’s happened here? Often attachment leads the way. Positive feeling into attachment and then from there we go to hatred. And often wobble between those two so it becomes very time consuming, energy consuming. Our whole life can be involved in this process of attraction repulsion.
You know in a sense we’re like victims of our feelings and never really understand the process. Never really get a chance to step back from the process far enough that we can have a bit of a rest. Put the burden down of this that arises due to our feelings. There’s nothing in a sense wrong with our feeling. It’s what we allow to arise in relation to the feeling.
This is something we need to observe, need to examine. To be able to observe this we need to practice a little bit of breathing meditation. And this is one of the reasons for practicing breath meditation so that we can just stop the process, allow our feelings to settle, just watch the breath and just relax the mind a little bit because it’s so often you know like so tense because of the attract attractive and repulsive natures of objects. It brings a lot of tension. Anyway!
Right, moving right ahead. These three types of feeling (also now in the second last paragraph on page fifteen) have six aspects when categorized in terms of occurring either through a physical or a mental basis. Thus, there are three physical feelings and three mental feelings. And the three physical feelings are physically pleasant feeling, physically unpleasant feelings, and physically neutral feelings. So they’re really feelings of the body.
Feelings that arise in relation to the sense bases. The three mental feelings are mentally pleasant feelings, mentally unpleasant and mentally neutral feelings. So they’re feelings that arise in relation to really our conception, our thoughts. So often you know we have two sets of feelings going on at any one time maybe more. You know the physical feeling just sitting here in a chair you know we feel sort of, you know, warm and so forth.
So we have this physical feeling associated with body consciousness. A feeling arising in relation to ear consciousness. Feeling arising in relation to eye consciousness, and feeling arising in relation to smell consciousness, even feeling arising in relation to tongue consciousness, and at the same time we have conception arising and we have feeling arising in relation to conception. Oh they’re much more relevant. Yeah absolutely.
There’s nothing wrong whatever a sensory feeling is not karmically active. For us the main game is our action our intention and our intention is generally conditioned by mental feeling. So that’s where we need to be careful. Physical feeling is just that. You know, I’ve got a pain in my knee.
That’s a feeling arising in the retinue of body consciousness. That’s okay. That’s fine. That’s neutral. And so on.
But really it’s the feeling arising within our mental awareness. Mental positive feeling, mental negative feeling and so on. These can be conditioned by our physical feelings and we can have a pain in our knee that really conditions the arrival of you know impatience or discomfort mentally. Right? We all understand that.
We get a toothache and we’re in a bad mood because of it. That’s where negative physical feeling conditions the arising of negative mental feeling. It’s not the root cause of the negative mental feeling but it acts as a condition. But then we get angry because we got a toothache and we kick the door or something or we abuse someone. Right?
Which could happen. That’s really the result of the negative mental feeling which has given rise to anger. Oh that would be very necessary. Yes. Oh absolutely!
Negative feeling can be virtuous. Negative mental feeling can be virtuous. When we endure a difficult situation that causes us mental pain but we do it because we should do it then that can be very positive. The mind becomes very positive through that. That’s excellent.
In fact we should practice virtue no matter what the feelings are. We have to practice virtue no matter what the feeling feeling is. Anyway the feelings are impermanent they come and they go due to causes and conditions. Sorry? Right.
A negative feeling, mental feeling may arise from past negative karma but the thought of not reacting to that negatively, of being patient, of enduring it, that’s positive. Yep. So it makes the feeling the the mind and the feeling that arises then virtuous. It just means that negative feeling can be associated with a virtuous state. Well, anyway, let’s examine this.
Let’s try and unpick that as we go along. Right. For the distinction between physical and mental feelings, feelings that occur as attributes to the five forms of sense consciousness are called physical feelings. Feelings that occur as attributes of mental consciousness are called mental feelings. So a question arises: Well, then, what is the reason for saying that physical feelings are feelings that occur as attributes of visual consciousness?
The four hundred stanzas, the Catuḥśataka states: Just as the tactile faculty covers the whole body, likewise delusion is everywhere. Since the tactile faculty pervades the whole body from head to toe, feelings that arise as attributes of the four other sensory consciousness such as the eye consciousness and so on are called physical feelings or maybe even body feelings. So what this is saying is that we call sensory feelings feelings that arise in relation to the physical sense bases physical feelings because the physical sense base or the physical sense faculty pervades the entire body. Meaning the sense of touch pervades the entire body and therefore that particular sense base gives its name to the feelings such as the eye feeling, eye consciousness feeling and so on down to body consciousness feeling. Also, when these six feelings are divided into two categories turbulent and unturbulent, there are twelve types or worldly and not worldly One may wonder about the meaning of turbulent feelings and unturbulent feelings.
Turbulent feelings are feelings that are equably conjoined with craving for the contaminated appropriated aggregates. Feelings which lack turbulence are feelings that are conjoined with the wisdom that directly realizes selflessness. So in other words, turbulent feelings or worldly feelings are just feelings that arise in the retinue of a mind fully engaged in ordinary reality, which is for us, that’s all we have, turbulent feelings or worldly feelings. But if we happen to generate wisdom understanding emptiness the feeling that arises in the retinue of that awareness is non turbulent. Okay.
How are we doing? Five are only present. Yep. Are they all neutral meaning ethically neutral? In and of themselves.
By their own power they are neutral. Yeah. But if in fact feeling links with love, right? If feeling and love arise together in the same in the retinue of a main mind, then that feeling becomes virtuous. Because love is virtuous.
Oh that’s just positive when it’s saying positive negative or neutral or pleasurable unpleasurable and neutral it’s not talking about the ethical positive there. That’s all. Does that make sense? It just means three types of feeling. A type of feeling that you know is we like.
Yeah okay it will become clear. Yeah true. We have a problem with the terminology here. Even the Tibetan has a problem. Even the Sanskrit has a problem because the terms often can be ambiguous and have other connotations and a lot of the process here is sort of paring back the unwanted connotations.
Connotations. So that’s yeah unfortunately there’s no easy way out of it. We’re victims of language. Yeah. Yeah.
We’re just talking about, the bare feeling. When we’re talking about feelings we’re talking about the feeling that experiences the object that is the very essence of the experience of the object and that can either be positive negative neutral. That’s all. But feeling just by itself is neutral. Ethically neutral.
Because it can go with anything. We are feeling when we’re angry. We are feeling when we love someone. Someone, we’re feeling when we’re neutral. Feeling arises all the time.
For us we don’t have any moment where this feeling is not there. Sometimes it appears as if feeling is not there because it’s neutral and it’s not really sort of making its present felt or impinging upon us. But it’s omnipresent therefore it’s always there. Feeling at times can become unmanifest but only in very special circumstances. Like during the death process.
It’s said that it may. Anyway Okay where are we? At At the top? Right. Also when these six feelings divide into okay turbulent and non turbulent.
I’m not sure turbulent or worldly and non or transworldly or something like that. Worldly feelings and transcendent feelings something like that. We never experience a transcendent feeling. Because we have never generated a transcendent state of mind. But we have to.
That is absolutely should be on our list. It should be on the you know towards the upper realms of the list to generate that sort of an awareness. One might then think: well, using this classification one can speak of an unturbulent, unpleasant feeling. But how can an unpleasant feeling occur for those who have the wisdom that directly cognizes selflessness? True.
There are many such cases. For example, in the Vinaya Āgama, the Dulwa Lung. Now this is a treatise on ethics. It says that even arhats who have abandoned grasping at self experience unpleasant feelings such as headaches due to the maturation of previous karma. True.
Even that a being who has generated the wisdom of selflessness outside of equipoise can experience a headache. Now some criticize the author here because he’s talking more from the lower vehicle point of view. Because for a liberated being to say that they can experience an unpleasant feeling is not the view of the great vehicle. Anyway. There are many debates that can be had at this point about these feelings.
What is possible for us? What is possible for a liberated being? Unfortunately we don’t have enough time to go into all of these types of debate. Okay let’s push ahead and we’ll finish feeling tonight. Furthermore when classified according to the basis there are six feelings: feelings arising from contact of the eye, feeling arising from contact of the ear, feeling arising from contact of the nose, feeling arising from contact of the tongue, the body, the mind itself or mental consciousness.
Since the threefold classification of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral applies to each of these six there are eighteen types of feeling. Okay so we can divide it into eighteen. I will stop now because if I were to write in detail identifying each of these feelings I’m afraid this essay would be too long. One may classify feelings according to that which is abandoned and that is an antidote. So some feelings act as antidotes to what we need to get rid of.
Some feelings don’t. They need to be abandoned. Feelings that serve as a basis for longing and feelings that serve as a basis for renunciation for instance. So some feelings just tend to make us enter saṃsāra more fully. Some feelings tend to make us want to renounce cyclic existence.
Feelings that serve as a basis for renunciation are for example those feelings that are conjoined with the mental consciousness that have turned away from the desire for sensual things. And that is included in the actual basis, the actual state of the first concentration or the first absorption. The first absorption is a meditative state that one can attain if one practices meditation for a long period and is able to settle the mind completely, eliminate all the standard faults of the mind such as laziness and so on, forgetfulness, and one obtains a completely pliable clear mind, one can generate bliss that is beyond our current level of existence. So talking about that type of feeling there. That type of feeling is very useful and beneficial for us.
It’s very good for us to develop single pointed concentration. Because the feelings that arise as retinue to that consciousness are far superior to our ordinary feelings. They’re like a little bit like a medicine for us. This twofold classification of feeling is stated so that one might understand the way that feeling can induce craving and the way that in reliance upon the actual state of concentration one can become free of attachment to feeling. If one wishes to understand in detail the way that these two kinds of feeling function, one should learn by carefully examining the upper and lower abhidhamma.
Also, one should learn from the stages of the path through enlightenment how to prevent the three feelings of pleasure, pain, and indifference from becoming the cause of the three poisons. Right! Okay So we’ve covered a fair amount of material and you’ve been very patient. This area is not easy to understand but our feelings are one of the prime elements within our existence that we should become and clearer about. So anyway Are there any further issues that come up?
Okay, what we’ll do is we’ll just finish there for today. And so any anything we’ll have a time for some questions on this tomorrow. So if you have time, just have a glance through feeling and then also look forward, look ahead in the next one discrimination. We should have some more text to be able to hand out as well. If you have a chance please read ahead and also read back a little bit.
Just take note of any issues that are not clear and we’ll try and deal with them tomorrow and also have the tests ready to hand out. I’ll send out the test results anyway to each person that’s done them by email by tomorrow afternoon so you have time to read them before the class. Right. We should just do a quick, dedication. Right.
So at the end of the prayers for guided meditation, we’ll just do a quick dedication the two verses of dedication at the end of that. Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the supreme jewel, bodhicitta, that has not arisen, arise and grow. May that which has arisen not diminish, but increase more and more.