Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute class, Ven Jampa Ignyen guides students through an investigation of perception and conception, exploring whether eye awareness can grasp permanent things like space, or if it’s limited to impermanent shape and color. Using mountain paths, unfamiliar objects, and a striking story of a blind person who gained sight but couldn’t recognize a gorilla until tactile learning intervened, he probes the boundary between raw sensory apprehension and conceptual understanding. Perception and conception work together but remain substantially distinct—perception grasps objects directly, conception supplies definitions and labels. For serious students of Buddhist epistemology.
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File: 11 M and C 2001 05 15.mp3
UUID: e1c2532e-9403-46c7-9706-1947d8c42e90
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Mind and Cognition 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-05-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~2,602
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 through, not with perception. Perception always engages its object without a generic image. Yep. Conception always engages its object with a generic image. Conception always uses or accesses a generic image.
So, if we comprehend perceptually, it means we’re comprehending without a generic image the object. Always with a generic image. So, we talked about, you know, the second part of that sentence was if permanent must be the appearing object of conception. Yeah. Can one then realize emptiness directly?
Perceptually, according to this school, it’s not comprehended perceptually. How is it comprehended? It’s comprehended conceptually. It’s comprehended perceptually without the object appearing to it, or indirectly. Without going on to emptiness, I’m just talking about selflessness because this particular school doesn’t assert emptiness. It’s a sūtra school.
In a way we’ve got to 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 rang zhen. Things like selflessness are abstract.
They’re comprehended directly by perception and indirectly by conception. Something like selflessness is only ever indirectly comprehended by conception. 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?
Imagine that it’s difficult. I would say yes, because you can understand that the back of the moon is there without seeing it. But that’s conceptually isn’t it? That’s not 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, like eye perception, comprehend space?
No, lack of objects is a non-affirming negation. Well, what about say a donkey who is walking up a mountain path and they look over the edge does our eye awareness comprehend lack of obstruction. It appears to our eye awareness. Well, Assuming we’ve got two eyes. But lack of obstruction is permanent.
The lack of obstruction is permanent, isn’t it? Here we’re investigating whether sense awareness, something permanent can appear to sense awareness, or whether sense awareness can comprehend something that’s permanent. But if sense awareness comprehends it, it must do it perceptually, mustn’t it? It must be perceptually comprehending. Well, I would say you perceive a lack of obstruction, but then you have the concept of space with you.
You can’t have a lack of obstruction without the concept. You can’t fix your eyes on space, so you can’t fix your eyes on space, so you can’t see it. Because some people have a greater spatial awareness than others, for example. Some people True, true. But just You’ve looked down, you’ve just shot yourself.
It depends on 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 lack of obstruction. One kilometer of lack of obstruction and then a big obstruction.
So is it the I that’s understanding I would say it’s not the eye awareness because a drugged person wouldn’t have the same awareness as a non drugged person. Their perception would be distorted by the drug. 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.
Oh! Then that’s actually very good, but it’s worth investigating this one point. So the information going from the eye to the mind, argue isn’t the thing that sees that. The conceptual awareness itself. It’s the information plus what’s going on in the mind.
Right. Our eye awareness basically can comprehend shape and color, can’t it? It doesn’t label, but it comprehends shape and color, doesn’t it? Can it indirectly comprehend anything? 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 Do you comprehend the object itself, though? Yes. You don’t comprehend yellow?
A yellow balloon? Yeah, and your eye awareness comprehends the object, doesn’t it? An object there. Well, understands shape and color the shape and color there, doesn’t it? Yeah, but if you don’t understand the word balloon, the eye awareness doesn’t comprehend a balloon.
Then it comprehends a balloon. Well, general space is not an object of eye awareness, is it? Only shape and color. Well it comprehends a balloon. The mind comprehends a balloon, but is it the eye awareness that’s comprehending the balloon?
Eye awareness, shape and color, but the mind interprets it as a balloon. But it is a balloon, isn’t it? And the eye does actually see the balloon, doesn’t it? It comprehends the balloon, doesn’t it? Are other forms of consciousness apart from eye consciousness.
Oh, there are? It’s coming together with the eye consciousness. True. Right, but here, just looking at the eye awareness itself, it does comprehend something, doesn’t it? And that’s a balloon, so it does comprehend the balloon.
The eye sees the balloon then? Yes. Well, if it sees the balloon, it comprehends the balloon, doesn’t it? Well, could it see the balloon and not comprehended? But doesn’t comprehension also exist on a superficial level?
Can we say that eye awareness comprehends its object? A person who was blind all their life had an operation and they were able to see. They were taken to a group of cages showing the gorilla, and they couldn’t see the gorilla. But because they’d learned to perceive things through touch, they were then taken to a sculpture of the gorilla. And they felt the sculpture of the gorilla.
And so they were able to perceive the shape of the gorilla. Then with looking at it as well, they were able to know what a gorilla looked like. They would go back to the cage and then they could see the gorilla. But their eye consciousness looked into the cage previous to that and did not see a gorilla. Yeah.
Oh, that can be a fault in the eye sense power itself. Here the eye sense power also connected with the nervous system, with the brain, and the development of, you know, like neural pathways from, you know, a very young age. If those don’t exist, it is difficult for people to see even. Yep. But Yeah, they wouldn’t probably have made much sense of the shape and color.
Yeah, yeah, but they but the eye even his eye did comprehend shape and color, didn’t it? Yeah, but still his eye awareness did it comprehend shape and color. Said this is a gorilla. He was saying he didn’t perceive it as a gorilla. So he had to go away and experience something else so that there could be another He saw it, okay, so he comprehended the shape and color that was there, right.
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. No, no, no, wait, wait, I think there’s a point here that’s probably being glossed over. Our eye awareness does actually comprehend objects. No, no, no, 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. You’re talking about cones and rods now here? Here we’re talking about sensory impressions. Now here we’re talking about sense impressions. Sorry?
No, no, here we’re just talking about sense awareness. It’s important. Put that to one side this whole thing about labeling just for the time being. 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. Oh definitely 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 and 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, can say our eye awareness did not comprehend that thing that they’ve just mentioned to us. But we did comprehend something.
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 a good one there because When you say If somebody asks you, Did you see a such-and-such? You say, No, You’d say, have a concept of some kind of object. Exactly. 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 the sense we don’t know the 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, as a primary source or source of data for labeling things. Yeah. Oh 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 Well, might not be square it could be triangular or A A container of things, but it’s not just any container, it’s Yeah, but we need more than that because we go around and we can tell what a cupboard is, can’t we? We know the term cupboard, and we know where to put that term, put that label, don’t we? What do we put it to? What’s the definition of What is it?
What’s the definition of a cupboard? Sorry, anyone know? No, no, no. How do we describe a cupboard? What’s the essential elements of a cupboard?
Box with doors shelves. Okay, that’s getting to it. Usually in the kitchen, it’s furniture, right! I 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? 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 the 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 consciousness sees, but in order to see I’m concerned then the mental consciousness also does. 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 mental 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, a 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. It’s conception that it’s actually giving the label to it, but that’s also employing the sense data, and the sense awareness itself is actually also 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 it is, the description of it, therefore applies the label to it. That’s almost like asking what came first: the chicken or the egg?
Because here we can’t look at a one life scenario. We’re going back into our past lives, it’s almost impossible to say. If you’ve lost a key, and then the concept could come before the perception, doesn’t it? Because you’re looking for it, then so you’ve only got the concept of the lost key, and then you see it. No, That’s right.
The concept came before the perception. That’s what I’m saying. Somebody says to you, I’ve lost my blue colored key. You haven’t had the perception yet, and you start looking for it. You’ve only got the concept, and then you see it.
Yeah. 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, just soak up all these sensory impressions of things. And then later we get language starts to develop, and we begin to be able toand 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. But people had the concept of the world being round before they actually perceived it. You know, people know the concept of how they actually perceived it. And then he thought he discovered India!
We should stop there. Right, so if we’ll continue anyway with this section next week.