Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen guides practitioners through the Buddhist epistemology text Lorig, focusing on the crucial distinction between self-determined and other-determined valid awareness. He starts with a practical challenge: most of us accept our thoughts without questioning whether they’re reliable. Using concrete examples—seeing a distant object you’re uncertain about, hearing sounds without understanding their meaning—he shows how perception and conception work differently and how to test which states of mind can be trusted. He explains that self-determined awareness needs no confirmation, while other-determined awareness requires additional information. Finally, he shows how reasoning and inference allow us to understand hidden phenomena like impermanence and emptiness that direct perception cannot reach. For practitioners already engaged in Buddhist study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 M and C 2001 08 07.mp3
UUID: 8e3baf76-4804-4e91-8113-712ae11d68b4
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Mind and Cognition 2001 Month 07-09 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-08-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~4,957
This text, of course, is a very it’s a central text. And it’s essential that we have some understanding of the meaning of this text is very, very important. And as much as possible, we should try and apply it to our everyday life. So how we apply this in a way is just using the information in Lorig to investigate the way we think, the way we experience objects, and so on. And in fact, we need to remind ourselves as much as possible that our mind is impermanent, that the way we look at things, our views, our experiences and so forth, all of these things are impermanent and have developed through causes and conditions that have evolved from the distant past.
And the basic presentation of Lorig is taken from Abhidharma. So in the beginning of the text, notice that the author makes prostrations to Mañjuśrī, which is an indication that this text is dealing with wisdom, with how we acquire wisdom. And the one thing that we need to acquire wisdom about is the mind itself, how the mind functions. So, this is the central topic in a way. So, should give some time contemplating the issues within Lorig.
Now, initially what this text sets out is that there are seven types of mind that are possible. Only seven types. Seven types of awareness. And it’s good that we’re mindful of these different types of awareness so that we can identify them when they arise. Why should we bother with that?
One of the reasons why we seek to identify these states when they arise is that we can then determine whether we can rely on that state of awareness or not. Mostly whatever our thoughts are, we just tend to accept them. Oh, that thought about that is okay, and that’s probably a fair assessment, and so on. We tend to simply accept our thoughts as they come up, and accept that they’re a valid assessment, when in fact, quite often they’re not a valid assessment. But we’re quite attached to our thoughts and so on.
By understanding what the seven types of mind, seven types of awareness are, then we can begin the process of just being mindful of these states when they arise. We can practice mindfulness. This is the third type of mindfulness, mindfulness of the mind itself. Second type of mindfulness is mindfulness of feelings, feelings we need to be aware of. In fact, feelings can be any of the seven types of mind, any seven types of awareness.
Can anyone recite the seven types of awareness? Perception, inference, valid inference, subsequent awareness, correct belief, inattentive awareness, doubt, wrong awareness. So only those seven types of awareness exist. Whatever occurs now in our mental continuum, when we say mental continuum, we just talk about this continuum of awareness that we have and different states of awareness arise moment by moment. It’s true, isn’t it?
We just have this continuum of awareness progressing from the past to the present to the future, or coming from the future into the present, into the present and proceeding into the past. And we’re standing in the sort of the center line or the line that marks the present. And whatever awareness occurs for us, it’s gotta be one of these seven types. Even feeling itself has got to be one of these seven types of awareness. So we need to think about these issues quite a lot, because unless we see the benefit of doing something, we won’t be convinced that it’s of benefit for us to do it, to be engaged in this type of mindfulness.
But this whole issue of the nature of the mind is central to us, to our identity as an individual and our experience as an individual being. So, up until now, we’ve discussed valid perception and valid inference as the two types of valid awareness. What this reflects is that there’s two ways in which we can develop an understanding of anything. If we come to an understanding of anything, it’s either through perception or conception, correct perception or correct conception. Everyone’s aware of the division between conception and perception.
It’s not easy to actually delineate or to really clearly understand the difference. For instance, we have ear awareness at present and we hear sounds. This is Ear awareness is simply aware of sounds as they’re rustling of this or someone talking. This is what our awareness ear awareness does. Our ear awareness cannot understand language.
It’s our conception that does that, that’s able to discern the meaning of the words as they’re expressed. So simultaneously, we have ear awareness and we have the comprehension of the meaning of those terms and so on. Anyway, we have both conception and perception. What we’ve been dealing with so far is how valid awareness is generated perceptually and conceptually. We can have valid awareness.
Our ear awareness does comprehend the sounds that arise. But our conception comprehends the meaning, for instance. One of those is a perceptual process. The other is a conceptual process. Right.
So feelings also can be the conceptual or perceptual. All of these The states that we experience, the mental states, the factors, such as feelings, such as discrimination, contact and so forth, these states can be either perceptual or conceptual. But it’s these states that make up the full extent of our experience, of how we experience the world. And that also, they’re like the currency of the sense data, the data by which we form our views of how the world exists. So it’s important to investigate just how we do experience things.
Now just before we go on any further, was Now we’ve had a break for a couple of weeks, really three weeks, and we’re probably a little bit rusty or there may be some issues from last term that would be good to discuss before we continue with the text. In fact, everyone looks as if they could take another couple of weeks off. I don’t know, it’s just appearance. I mean, we can be deceived by appearance. There’s a story in Sera about one monk who always would come Like in the monasteries, often the pujas are held, you know, every day and, you know, in the morning and so on.
There was one monk who would often sit there and not recite. And of course, if you go to the pujas, you’re supposed to sit there and actually recite the prayers. You’re not allowed to take in any prayer books. You’ve gotta have memorized everything. So that was okay for me because I hadn’t memorized any of the prayers so I could go in and do my commitments while I was sitting there.
But there was a story about one monk who was there in Tibet some or many years ago in Tibet in Sera. And he would often sit there and not recite and he often appeared to be asleep. And one day, of course, the master of discipline would walk up and down the robes and his helper, called the dob-dob, who everyone used to be a little bit scared of. And then they would walk up and down the robes. So anyway, one day, the master discipline stopped in front of this one particular monk and he was about to hit him with his mala to wake him up.
And it said that when he was about to do that, this deity appeared. And because master discipline stopped at that point. So that was actually the deity Hayagrīva appeared, which is the protector deity of Sera Je Monastery. So the master discipline stopped and didn’t proceed. But to look at this particular person, he looked as if he was asleep and not doing anything.
But some people who, of course, are engaged in high practices, they appear to be, you know, like doing very little, but in actual fact they are. So this is probably I mean, probably everyone’s engaged in, you know, very sound and genuine practice. It’s also like the story of Śāntideva. Everyone’s heard the story of Śāntideva. But, anyway, appearances are deceptive.
They are deceptive, aren’t they? In fact, the way we look at the world now is completely wrong. When we analyze the view of the world that we have, we begin to see that it’s actually a collection of, you know, bits and pieces of hearsay and, you know, projections of own ideas and so forth, our view of the world doesn’t necessarily reflect the way the world actually exists. But we’re almost completely convinced that it does, because even intellectually when we think, oh yeah, the world doesn’t actually exist in this way, okay, it’s an illusion, Still, we tend to affirm the illusion all the time without even thinking about it, because the habits are so strong for us to look at the world in a particular way. One of the purposes of this particular text is to develop the capacity to penetrate to the actual nature of reality, to create a foundation by which we can eventually understand how things are.
If things exist in the way we think they exist or the way they appear to exist, there’s little chance of us actually progressing, being able to progress. So it’s in our own interest that they don’t actually exist in the way they appear to exist to us. Right. So anyway, we’ve been discussing So I take it no one There’s no issues from last time. Yep.
Okay, now the last time we were doing the self determined and other determined And there is a definition on page twenty where it states that halfway down the page there, we have these definitions where it says our system, it is reasonable to posit the definition of these according to Chim Jampaiyang, which states valid awareness which is capable of initiating determination by its own strength that it would not occur if its object that which is assessed did not occur is the definition of self determined valid awareness. And valid awareness which necessarily initiates determination by another strength that it would not occur if its object that assessed did not occur is the definition of other determined valid awareness. So there’s two types of valid awareness here. Other determined valid awareness is probably easy to begin with. Other determined simply means that although we may comprehend something at a distance, we see that there’s something there, it’s a shape or something like that.
We’re not exactly sure if it is something or not. That type of awareness is other determined valid awareness because it’s On one level, it’s comprehending something, on another level it has doubt about it. So it’s valid awareness in relation to what it’s comprehending. It’s other determined in relation to what it has doubt about. For instance, if we’re walking along a road and we see in a distance, say three, four hundred meters away, we see the shape on a hill and it looks like someone sitting on a log.
It’s just a shape there. We have valid awareness in relation to the shape, but we don’t have valid awareness in relation to whether that’s a person or not. We have to actually rely on another awareness in order to determine whether it’s a person or not. In other words, for instance, we would have to go up near to it, to a point where we can actually see whether it’s a person or not. What is other that you take into the awareness?
The another awareness. Just another awareness. So there’s these two types of valid awareness that can occur. Self determined valid awareness is just valid awareness that knows itself to be valid in relation to its object. It doesn’t need to rely on any other type of awareness.
Like if we’re looking at the floor, our eye awareness of the floor is self determined valid awareness in relation to the floor. We have no doubt about, you know, if that’s the floor or not, if that’s the carpet or not. On the other hand, you know, if there’s something really small like mites in the carpet, we have doubt about that, but actually we don’t even That’s slightly different also because we don’t even see the mites anyway, unless we get up really close, unless we have a magnifying glass or something. Here it’s talking about something that’s gross enough so that we do comprehend it, but we have doubt about its nature, what it actually is. So there’s said to be five types of self determined valid awareness and this occurs on page number twenty one.
So valid sense perception seeing function is a type of self determined valid awareness and valid sense perception familiar with the object, valid self perception, valid yogic perception and valid inference. So, all of those five are self determined valid awareness. And then there’s examples given of these. The first one is sense perception holding fire to function to burn dry wood. So that’s something that we see.
We see fire consuming wood. That’s self determined valid awareness. And the second one there, self perception holding the form of the father in the continuum of the son, or the form of the father in the continuum of the daughter, and so on. That type of self determined valid awareness is that if one’s walking along the street and one sees one’s father, one doesn’t need to rely on any other type of awareness to determine whether that’s one’s father or not, one knows. Just like one knows the function of fire is to burn wood.
And then the third one there, valid self perception. Self perception experiencing eye awareness. Now again, this is the view of the Sūtra school, which asserts that for when we have eye awareness that’s aware of an external object, we have self perception which is aware of the eye awareness itself. And that self perception which experiences eye awareness, that again is a self determined, self determining valid awareness. Anyway, that’s not so important.
The fourth one, there’s valid yogic perception, for instance, omniscience, which is an other cognizing mental awareness. So, the omniscient mind of a Buddha is valid yogic perception. So, an omniscient being certainly has omniscience. That omniscience is self determined valid awareness. That type of awareness knows itself to be valid to its object.
It doesn’t rely on any other type of awareness to determine whether it’s valid or not. So this is not too difficult, is it? Self determined valid awareness. And then the fifth type, there is valid inference. Correct conception in relation to an object generated by valid reasoning, correct reasons, is self determined.
When the penny drops about something, we know ourselves that that’s true, that we’ve comprehended that without having to rely on another type of awareness. Now the now we have another division into three here. And this division of three is for other determined valid awareness. Are we finding this subject matter? Okay.
So we’ve done here in this subject matter that we’re dealing with here, it’s we’re dealing with valid awareness and this division into self determined valid awareness, other determined valid awareness. Self determined has five types. Here, other determined is said to have three types. So this will perhaps explain a little bit more what, in more detail, what other determined valid awareness is. So firstly, the instance of initial perception.
So sense perception holding the color of an Utpala flower in the continuum of a person who has not previously experienced seeing an Utpala flower. So that’s other determined valid awareness, which is called initial perception, meaning the first time we see something, we don’t know the name of it, is other determined valid awareness. So if we saw something like a flower we’d never seen before, our eye awareness is valid in relation to the color and shape of the flower, but it’s not valid in relation to the flower itself. The reason is that if later we were questioned as to whether we saw an Utpala flower, we would not be able to answer it, which means that we didn’t perceive an Utpala flower. We perceived a certain shape and color, and we may have smelt a certain aroma with our nose, but we can’t say we comprehended an Utpala flower.
So that type of awareness, when we first see the Utpala flower without knowing its name is other determined valid awareness, because we depend on other awareness to comprehend whether it is an Utpala flower or not. Then the second one here, undirected perception. So, sense perception holding sound in the continuum of a being while their mind is attracted to pleasant form. So, this is said to be undirected perception. Okay, and the third type here is perception possessing the cause of a mistake or the cause of distortion.
So sense perception holding the color of a mirage, which directly produces the overestimation holding the mirage to be water. So that’s perception possessing the cause of mistake. So these in a sense are not actually valid awareness, these second two, but they’re included here because they’re approaching or they’re related to valid awareness. Okay, then the second list of classifications here is, then other determined valid awareness can again be classified into three. Valid awareness, which is self determined regarding the appearance, but other determined regarding the truth.
And valid awareness, which is self determined regarding the general, but other determined regarding the specific. And valid awareness, which is other determined regarding appearance itself. So firstly, the first one here, for example, sense perception holding a distant bright red color while in doubt as to whether it is the color of fire when the object is the color of fire. So this example we had previously. So this is an example of being self determined with regard to the appearance, but other determined regarding the truth of the situation.
So the example here is like, we see for instance, in the distance, some red rags fluttering. If the light is in the right place, it it could appear to be flame. Now, when we look at it with our eye awareness, have valid awareness, at least in relation to the color red, but we have some doubt about whether it’s the color of flame or not. So that’s said to be another determined valid awareness. We’d have to get closer to it to find out whether it is actually fire or not.
So, the second one here is valid awareness, which is self determined regarding the general, but other determined regarding the specific. So, for example, sense perception holding wood with branches, leaves and flowers, while in doubt as to whether it is an aloe tree when the object is an aloe tree. So when we look at a tree, we know it’s a tree, but we’re in doubt about whether it’s an aloe tree or not. So that’s self determined regarding the general. That type of awareness is self determined regarding tree, but other determined regarding aloe tree.
The specific. Then number three, valid awareness, which is other determined regarding the appearance itself. For example, sense perception holding blue, initiating doubt reflecting, did I see blue or not? So that can happen. At times we look at something, initially we understand it, we’re distracted and then a doubt arises, did I see blue or not?
Okay, so these either as actual or nominal because the first two are actual, other determined valid awareness, and the latter is nominal. So for these first two of the second set of three, the first two are actual, other determined, valid awareness, and the latter is nominal. From amongst those also, for the first, it is both self determined and other determined valid awareness with respect to the distant bright red color while doubting whether it is the color of fire when the object is the color of fire. So here the author is saying it’s self determined and self determined valid awareness with relation to the bright red color. So he’s just adding actually here a convention.
This doesn’t matter. Though it is both other determined and other determined valid awareness with respect to whether the bright red color is the color of fire, it is not valid awareness with respect to that. Okay, so what are you saying? In that first example where we have that fluttering prayer flag, for instance, in the distance, when the light is, you know, striking that in the right way, it looks as if it’s a flame. This is an example of other determined valid awareness holding that.
It’s actually self determined valid awareness in relation to the color red, but other determined valid awareness in relation to whether it is the color of fire or not. But being other determined valid awareness in relation to whether it is the color of fire or not means that it’s not valid awareness in relation to the color of fire. That’s all he’s saying here. Does this make any sense? Yeah.
That’s right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. A tree.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yep.
That’s right. We need, fundamentally what we’re trying to do here is develop an understanding of what valid awareness is, because ultimately we want to transform all our awareness into valid awareness. And the process of doing this is starting to work out what states of awareness we have which are invalid, which are not correct. It’s only by understanding the incorrect ones to be incorrect that we can begin to eliminate them and establish valid awareness. Yeah.
Oh, that’s initially, one would have a wrong conception and think, no, that can’t be true. That’s right. Perhaps. And then maybe thinking about it for a while, well, maybe it’s possible. A doubt tending in the wrong direction occurs, then maybe an even handed doubt.
Well, it’s possible. I really don’t know which way to go on this. And we think about it more and we think, well, probably it is true that all beings have been my mother in the past. And then, but we still waver a little bit one way or the other, but more, we tend more to think that they’ve been our mother. And then we develop a conviction, a correct belief that all beings have been our mother.
And then from there, we develop a correct conception. Emptiness? That well, yes, the first moment of non conceptual understanding of emptiness is valid perception. Well, probably it’s through self determined valid awareness because it’s through valid inference that we initially understand emptiness. Well, here.
Yeah. But here something like that is something that because it’s obvious, like whether a rag is fire or not, is something that we can easily discover for ourselves. No, not for obvious things we don’t. Obvious things or perceptible things, we can determine the fact about those quite easily because in fact they are obvious. Fire is obvious.
As long as we can get close enough to it, can determine whether it’s fire or not. But we don’t need to generate reasoning in order to determine whether something is fire or not. We just put a hand in it and we quickly work out whether it’s fire or not. But for things which are obvious, generally we don’t need to formulate reasons because they’re obvious, because our senses can determine what they are. Self determine.
No. We use self determined. We use valid reasoning in order to comprehend those things that are beyond the senses, like emptiness. Here we use conception. Well, the fifth type of self determined valid awareness is valid inference.
Valid inference is the type of awareness we’re using in order to comprehend hidden phenomena, hidden entities, hidden objects, like emptiness. But our aim ultimately is to come to develop a correct perception of everything, because perception is a better state than conception. It’s clearer. It’s a qualitatively better state. And that’s true for emptiness as well.
But we rely on conception in order to get to perception. But how can you have a perception which is something that’s come through the sense organs? No, not necessarily. There’s sense perception, mental perception, yogic perception, self perception. Mental perception is not coming through the senses.
Yogic perception is not coming through the senses. So it’s not possible to new languages just without learning conception? Not possible. No. That’s one of the reasons here. Well, it depends what you mean by study as well.
But to understand, it really comes down to this issue that everything in the universe is is divided into one of three categories. Either if it exists, it’s either obvious, hidden, or extremely hidden, right? Now, what’s obvious to us is everything that appears to the senses, like all the colors and the shapes, the smells, the sounds, all these things are obvious, aren’t they? Right? Now, what lies beyond that is hidden, such as impermanence.
Impermanence is not something that we’re aware of with the senses. Here’s subtle impermanence, emptiness, non duality, and so on. These objects, they exist, but our senses can’t comprehend them. You know, we can hold onto the table until the cows come home, but we’re not going to understand the impermanence of the table with our sense, with that through the sense of touch. Unless it crumbles in your hand.
But even then, all it’s aware of is the gross impermanence of it, and that’s not impermanence. Here talking about the subtle impermanence, the fact that the table is changing moment to moment, the tactile awareness is just not we just can’t get at it. It’s too subtle. It just won’t pick it up. Our eye awareness also is too gross to see impermanence.
Because when we look around, we think everything is fixed. Everything appears fixed, doesn’t it? I thought, you know, the table appears pretty fixed, it’s not changing. It’s true, isn’t it? The doorway looks fixed, the glass looks pretty much fixed, it’s not changing.
But intellectually, we know it’s changing moment to moment, don’t we? We all have that, we all accept that, say this table is changing moment to moment, don’t we? Although we can’t, it doesn’t appear to be changing moment to moment. Is that a correct understanding that the table is changing moment to moment? Why?
It doesn’t look to be changing moment to moment. Yep. Well, how do we know that? It’s true. Actually, we rely on science to point out these issues for us.
But just saying science is not a correct reason to But it’s understood that actually if science has said that it is that way, then we pretty much accept it. That’s conceptual, That’s the road to conceptual understanding using reasons. What’s the reasoning that proves this to be impermanent or changing moment to moment? It does. But it’s changing even now, isn’t it?
Now that’s true. This wood here is like a, what, made up of cells of a particular type of wood covered with paint and so on. When we go down deeper and deeper into the structure of this object, we can determine that it is impermanent moment by moment. It’s completely changing every moment. And we’re convinced of that, aren’t we?
Are we? No. Well, is the actually, this is science, is so beneficial for us. Because science is actually indicating just how this does exist. It’s made up of atoms and molecules, and the atoms themselves are made up of, you know, the nucleus and then electrons spinning around the nucleus, and the nucleus is made up of further particles, and they’re made up of further particles, and they’re all in motion, and so on.
And we’re convinced of this, aren’t we? It was drummed into us for many years at the high school, let’s face it, and we accepted it. True? I mean, these days if we said it’s not the case, we’d be in trouble probably, are we? So this is applying reasoning to establish what is beyond the senses, isn’t it?
The impermanence of this table is beyond the senses. It’s a hidden object. But we, through our reasoning, through common sense and the application of correct reasons, we can come to comprehend just how this table exists even beyond the senses themselves. Well, valid inference is simply the understanding that arises through employing reasons, correct reasons. For something that you can’t, I mean, we can’t directly perceive with the senses, then we generally have to use reasons to understand them.
They can also be sensory objects like we can understand the existence of fire on a distant mountain pass where there’s all this smoke billowing up. Just seeing the smoke, we know there’s fire there. Although we don’t see the fire, do we? But we can develop the comprehension that there’s fire there just by seeing that there’s smoke there. And we have no doubt about it.
What comprehension means is that we get to a point where we eliminate conception is, is like when we comprehend the object, the penny drops in other words. There’s a And that type of understanding is self determined valid awareness. We know it’s valid. We comprehend it. It doesn’t matter if twenty people tell us it’s not the case, we’ve understood it.
It’s self determined valid awareness. But certainly for things beyond the senses, we need reasons. We have to apply reasons in order to understand those objects. Scientific method.