Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 30.8-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen investigates the relationship between perception and conception in Buddhist epistemology, establishing that while all sentient beings possess both, Buddhas have only perception. The core inquiry examines whether sense awareness can comprehend permanent phenomena—particularly space and lack of obstruction—or only impermanent objects. Through sustained dialogue with students, he explores a concrete puzzle: when we look over a cliff edge, does eye awareness directly perceive the absence of obstruction, or do we only conceptually understand it? He then broadens the discussion to how we develop valid labels and definitions for objects, tracing the process from raw sense data (shape, color, texture) through mental conception to conceptual labels. Pitched at practitioners already familiar with Buddhist logic and epistemology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 M and C 2001 05 01.mp3
UUID: 308c7ed5-d187-44ed-b752-be2ea62895f8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Mind and Cognition 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-05-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 30.8 minutes
Words: ~2,620
Go ahead, actually. Just yeah. Yeah. But just in the class, it may be better if we just stick with what we’ve done. But please read ahead.
Otherwise, Oh, both. Yeah. We have access to both. All sentient beings have I think we can say this. All sentient beings have both conception and perception.
Buddhas have only perception. Not with conception, only with perception. Perception always engages its object without a generic image. Yeah. That’s also a one to five.
Yep. Yep. Conception always engages its object with a generic image. Oh, look at that. Conception always uses or accesses a generic image.
So when if we comprehend perceptually, it means we’re comprehending without a generic image, the object. The concept is with one. Always with a generic image. So we talked about, you know, the second part of that sentence was if permanent, it must be the clear object of conception. Yeah.
Yeah. How can one and then realize emptiness directly? Perceptually, according to this school, it’s not comprehended perceptually. How do you think it’s It’s comprehended conceptually. It’s comprehended perceptually without the object appearing to it or indirectly.
Without going on to emptiness, just talking about selflessness, because this particular school doesn’t assert emptiness. It’s a sūtra school. In a way, we’ve gotta make make a few steps backward for this school and leave emptiness to one side. For them for this particular school, everything impermanent truly exists. They’re real.
Impermanent objects are real or. Things like selflessness are abstract. They’re comprehended indirectly by conception and directly by perception. Conception and indirectly by perception. Something like selflessness is only ever indirectly comprehended by perception.
In other words, that’s saying that perception comprehends selflessness without selflessness appearing to it. Now the question arises probably, can we understand anything without it appearing to awareness? Is that possible? It’s difficult. Yeah.
I would say yes, because you can understand that there’s the up the back of the moon is there without seeing it. But that’s not conceptually, isn’t it? Not that conceptually. And if it’s understood conceptually, it’s understood by it appearing to conception. What about space?
Space also appears to conception. It’s not physical. No. Can sense perception comprehend space? Can sense perception Yes.
Like eye perception, comprehend space? No. Lack of objects is a non affirming negation. Well, what about say a donkey who’s crawling up or walking up a mountain path, and they look over the edge, or if we’re doing the same thing, we look over the edge, does our eye awareness comprehend lack of obstruction? Because because we need to tell if there was obstruction or not.
Right. So lack of obstruction, our eye awareness can see. Yeah. It appears to our eye awareness. If you got two eyes.
Well, okay. Assuming we got two eyes. But lack of obstruction is permanent. But lack of But lack of obstruction is permanent, isn’t it? So here we’re investigating whether sense awareness something permanent can appear to sense awareness or whether sense awareness can comprehend something that’s permanent.
Yeah. Well, you can you can comprehend it, but whether you perceive it is another question. Yeah. But if sense awareness comprehends it, it must do it perceptually, mustn’t it? It must be Perceptually.
Perceptually comprehending it. Well, I would say you you perceive a lack of obstruction, but then you have the concept of space. True. True. But just now, if you’ve looked down, you’ve just hit yourself. It depends on my life.
Yeah. How long exactly. You’re looking down, and it only takes an instant to look down. So you’re comprehending this lack of obstruction there. Right?
A lot of space. So one kilometer of lack of obstruction and then a big obstruction. So is it the I that’s understanding that? Yeah. But that their perception will be distorted, wouldn’t it, by the drug.
But the eye awareness would still be operating. So Okay. The question is, when we’re walking around that cliff face and we look down, is the eye perceiving lack of obstruction or not? Is the eye awareness? Eye awareness.
But the the eye The group wants to argue that it’s actually learned. Yeah. Oh, then that’s that’s actually very good, but it Oh. It’s worth investigating this one point. To the edge.
Looks Yeah. It doesn’t have the same No. I just have done that. Yeah. It’s the conceptual awareness itself.
Right. Okay. So Eye awareness. Right. So, like, our eye awareness, basically, can comprehend shape and color, can’t it?
Yep. It it doesn’t label, but it comprehends shape and color, doesn’t it? Can it indirectly comprehend anything? Can it what? Indirectly comprehend.
Some people argue that our eye awareness can indirectly comprehend lack of obstruction. Okay. But does it comprehend the object? Even if you don’t know what it Yeah. Yes.
Do you comprehend the object itself, though? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You don’t comprehend yellow.
A yellow balloon. Yeah. That’s No. I didn’t like it. Your eye awareness comprehends the object, doesn’t it?
An object there. Yeah. That that comprehends object. It means under well, it understands shape and color. The shape and color there, doesn’t it?
Yeah. But but if you don’t understand the word balloon, it doesn’t the eye awareness doesn’t comprehend a balloon. But even if you understand the balloon, because you got eye awareness. Then it comprehends a balloon. Well, then general space is not an object of eye awareness, is it?
Only shape and color. Can you say eye awareness comprehends that? No. There’s a balloon there. Well, it comprehends a balloon.
The mind comprehends a balloon, but is it the eye awareness that’s comprehending the the eye awareness Well, the balloon. Shape and color. Yeah. But is the mind interprets it as a balloon? But it is a balloon, isn’t it?
Yeah. Yeah. But this And the eye does actually see the balloon, doesn’t it? Yep. And it comprehends the balloon, doesn’t it?
Types. There’s other forms of consciousness about my consciousness. Oh, there is. It’s coming together with the eye consciousness. True.
When Right. But here the argument is not looking at that factor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But just looking at the eye awareness itself, it does comprehend something, doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s a balloon. So it does comprehend the balloon.
No. The eye sees the balloon then. Yes. Yes. Well, if it sees the balloon, it comprehends the balloon, doesn’t it?
It sees the balloon. Well, how could it see the balloon? But doesn’t comprehension also exist on a superficial level? Can we say that eye awareness comprehends its object? Yeah.
Oh, that can be a fault in the eye sense power itself. Here the eye sense power is also connected with the nervous system, with the brain, and the development of neural pathways from a very young age. If those don’t exist it is difficult for people to see even Yeah. They wouldn’t probably have made much sense of the shape and color that, yeah. But But the eye, even his eye did comprehend shape and color, didn’t it?
It doesn’t matter about shape and color. He’s still seeing the gorilla. He just didn’t know what he was looking at because he hadn’t labeled it. Yeah. But still, his eye awareness did comprehend shape and color.
He saw it, okay. So he comprehended the shape and color that was there. But was unable exactly to label it because he was much more used to tactile awareness and the tactile impression of a physical object and applying labels in dependence on that tactile awareness or using that as a base. But No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. No, think there’s a point here that’s probably being glossed over.
Our eye awareness does actually comprehend objects. How does it comprehend? No. No. No.
Let’s let’s not go into space at present. Just talking about shape and color. Our eye awareness, even whether we know the label for something or the designation and so forth, still it comprehends. Here we’re talking about sensory impressions. Now here we’re talking about sense impression.
Sorry? No, no. Here we’re just talking about sense awareness. Yeah, it’s Yeah, it’s important. Put that to one side, this whole thing about labeling just for the time being.
And like we do have sense awareness. Of course, this labeling process we’re already engaged with, or it’s already, you know, active for us. But it’s important to try and see how they actually come together. So initially, just looking at our sense perception of things, even without knowing the label of something, we still do have those objects appearing to us. That Don’t we?
There’s a difference between sense perception and mental perception. Oh, definitely. There’s there’s a difference. But here, we’re not talking about mental perception. We’re talking about mental conception. These two processes, because these can occur simultaneously.
That is having a sense perception of something and simultaneously we can be conceiving the object, thinking about it, investigating it, and so on. Even so, the sense perception that we have does comprehend its object. Even, for instance, you know, if we go out, we see a new object that we’ve never seen before, we don’t know the name of it. Still, we comprehend its shape and color. True?
Like if we went, you know, like to Tibet and they have various implements that we may never have seen before there. We could see them and we’d say, it looks a bit like, you know, this or it looks a bit like that. What we see with our eye awareness is correct in relation to the shape and the color of that object, and maybe to what it’s made up of. But later, if someone were to say to us, did you see a such and such? We couldn’t say yes or no.
Therefore, we can say our eye awareness did not comprehend that thing that they’ve just mentioned to us. But we did comprehend something. So, our sense perception, our sense awareness is very important and it does actually I think we can say that it does comprehend objects, but in a way I don’t think your example is necessarily good right there because There. So you can’t say that your eye consciousness didn’t also carry with it some concept. Oh, of course, we had a conception of it later, don’t we?
And that conception is really dependent on the previous perception, the sense perception we had of it, isn’t it? And even though we don’t know what we saw, in in a sense we don’t have a label that’s attached to it, We can remember it, don’t we? We have a conception based on the initial perception. And the very fact that we remember it is a proof that we comprehended it perceptually to begin with. Sorry.
Yep. Yeah. Other senses. And then also we can use conception as well as a primary source or source data for labeling. Yeah.
Well, that’s right. We do have sense data, and then we learn the names for things. And then we also learn the definitions for things. Like, we get the name of that, and we understand that basically the definition of that, like a cupboard. What’s the definition of a cupboard?
You know, something that Square. Well, it might not be square. It could be triangular or Container. A container of things, but it’s not just any container. It’s Fifty to seventy centimetres or what?
How many is that? Yeah. But we need more than that. Because we go around and we can tell what a cupboard is, can’t we? Yeah.
We know the term cupboard, and we know where to put that term, put that label, don’t we? What’s what do we put it to? What’s the definition of it? Back to the explanation. Yeah.
But what is it? What’s the definition of a cupboard? Sorry? Anyone know? The idea when you use a cupboard.
No. No. No. What how would we describe a cupboard? What’s the the essential elements of a cupboard?
Box with doors. With shelves. With shelves. Okay. So, that’s getting to it.
This Usually in the kitchen. Showroom. Usually in the kitchen. Can be in the It’s furniture. Right.
The hallway? Yeah. So in fact So The definition don’t know what the definition of a cupboard is. But we’re always using definitions, and that’s how we know where to place the labels that we have. We’re full of labels for things, and we’ve learned how to apply these labels because of the definitions that we develop for all of these things.
We know what a car is. What’s the definition of a car? And, well, if we can apply a label validly to an object, that means that we understand the definition of the object. But what we’re dealing with initially is the raw sense data, the shape and color, the smell, and so forth. And even on the level of sense data, we’re validly cognizing the objects.
I would say though that the eye’s eye consciousness sees, but in order to see our cupboard, then the the mental consciousness has to come in as as well. Oh, it does. The As we perceive of something through our senses, then at the same time we’re thinking about it. So we can have two substantially distinct streams of awareness simultaneously occurring within our continuum focused on the same object. That’s possible.
We can have a sensory. In fact, we can have more than one. We can have three or four senses focused on the one object. And then also be thinking about it, which is a different further substantial stream of awareness also focused on an object, and then all of those being in agreement. And that’s often what’s happening.
And it’s conception that is actually giving the label to it, but that’s also employing the sense data. And the sense the sense awareness itself is actually also comprehending comprehending the object within its proper sphere. Like eye awareness is comprehending the shape and color. Tactile awareness is comprehending or touch awareness is comprehending the texture of it and so forth. All of these can work together along with mental conception that labels it, that comprehends the definition of what what it is, the description of it, therefore applies the label to it.
That’s all we that’s almost like asking what came first, the chicken or the egg? What was the question? Does before before the conception. Yeah. Because here, can’t look at a one-life scenario.
We’re talking if we’re going back into our past lives, then it’s almost impossible to say. You haven’t had the perception yet, and you start looking for it. You’ve only got the concept, and then you see it. Then you’ve got the concept. Just on that question also.
In this lifetime, it’s we can say that the perception comes first. You know, from a when we’re a young baby, we just, you know, we just soak up all these sensory impressions of things. And then later we get language starts to develop and we begin to be able to and the development of language is all conceptual. So first we have the sensory impression, then conception, then applying the labels to things. Although, we should keep in mind in that scenario that we have imprints of conception within our mental continuum that are coming from previous lifetimes as well, and they can be awakened and so forth.
And then Columbus thought he discovered India. So yeah. We should stop there. Right. So if we’ll continue anyway with this section next week.
So, if