Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 87-minute talk, Ven Thubten Dondrub explores the nature of mind and its capacity for direct perception, moving well beyond ordinary conceptual understanding. He begins with foundational Buddhist ideas—that mind is formless, nonphysical, and the basis of all experience—then systematically unpacks how the six consciousnesses (five sense consciousnesses plus mental consciousness) actually work. Using concrete examples like perceiving a clock or tasting an orange, he shows how we mistake conceptual labels for direct perception, and why this mistake underlies all suffering. The bulk of the teaching addresses the mental consciousness: its supreme importance in creating the sense of self, its current near-total dependence on concepts rather than genuine perception, and most crucially, its untapped potential to perceive reality directly—exactly as a Buddha does. He then introduces the three levels of mind (gross, subtle, very subtle), explains why the mind must be beginningless, and establishes that only mind can be the cause of mind, grounding Buddhist philosophy’s rejection of both materialism and creator-god views. Pitched at practitioners new to Buddhist psychology but engaged enough to follow technical distinctions between conception and perception.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 01 29 DBMind&itsPotential Dondrub week3 29012013 MP3.mp3
UUID: 1157bebc-a0b1-4e3d-bcd6-ed1e1aae402b
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-01-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 87.3 minutes
Words: ~8,303
So welcome everyone to our third class on mind and its potential. So this of course, I’m schedule, and there’s a lot to cover. So, although the motivation is incredibly important, I’m not gonna say much about it tonight because I’ve said it twice so far a little bit about the motivation. So I’m going to say this prayer of refuge in bodhicitta, that’s my job to do this. And so if if you feel comfortable joining in, please do so.
But at least as this prayer is being said, and generate from your own side good motivation, the best motivation you can, and try and align it as much as you can with what is the the best motivation possible, which is the bodhicitta motivation. So if you have some belief of connection with the Buddha’s teachings and the idea of enlightenment, that one feels that enlightenment is a possibility and that because one has mind, one one has the potential to achieve enlightenment, then by training the mind properly, one can achieve that state. And why can one what is the reason to achieve that state? Because it’s in in that state only that one, has all the positive cause qualities and no negative qualities so that one one doesn’t cause any harm. It’s utterly impossible to cause harm to any sentient being in any way at any time for any reason.
And one only benefits sentient beings perfectly, completely, continuously. So only as an enlightened being can one repay the kindness of sentient beings. So one can think about the kindness of sentient beings, how we totally depend on them and how they are suffering and in that way start to generate this wish to understand one’s mind, work with one’s mind, overcome the negative qualities, awaken the positive qualities, not just for one’s own benefit in this life, not just for benefit in future lives for oneself, not just to get out of suffering of saṃsāra for oneself, but for the sake of all kind suffering mother sentient beings. So also without going into detail, as we say this prayer traditionally to make it more effective, more powerful, more meaningful, we visualize, especially those of us who have taken refuge, try to visualize the Buddha in front of us as the very embodiment of what are called the Three Jewels of refuge and at the same time thinking of all sentient beings surrounding us starting with our parents on either side. So that prayer you know is in your prayer book in the student material.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through teaching the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings? So then if you find it helpful, imagine that the Buddha in front of you is very pleased with your motivation and shows this by coming to the crown of one’s head. And then when directly above one’s crown, one’s head, imagine that the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light, and that light pours into you, blessing your mind in such a way that it becomes easy to understand the teachings as they’re meant to be understood, easy to put them into practice correctly, easy to gain the undeceiving authentic realizations. So then just for a very short time, we can do the nine round breathing exercise as it’s set out in the student material to help establish a developing a more calm, clearer, more concentrated mind so that we can use that mind to right now to listen to and think about the Buddhist teachings.
Okay. Thank you. So, the mind is that which is clear and knowing. In a simple way, what this means is that the mind is something nonphysical. It is formless.
It is not, something produced by the brain. It has always existed and it’s because it’s indestructible being non physical. It is something that will always exist. It just simply cannot cease. And what the mind is doing is something totally unique.
The mind is that which knows. And so there are many, many, many ways to know or experience. And as I tried to say previously, with every moment of knowing and experiencing, there is feeling that goes with that. That is a new unique feature of consciousness or mind. Nothing else has feelings.
Yeah. Computers can compute faster than the human mind, but they don’t feel. They don’t experience anything while they’re computing, whereas the mind does. So I’d like to talk a little bit more about the mind as the knower or the function of knowing tonight. So what I said in the first talk, think it was that just like our body is made up of many, you know, we talk about a body, one body, but our body is made up of many parts, all different, but they all have the common feature of being physical.
So what we label the mind, what we call the mind, is also made up of many aspects. But and each of those aspects has the same characteristic that each aspect of the mind is something formless, and it has the function of knowing in some way or another. So one way of dividing well, I also last week, talked about, oh, no. The mind is having these three levels. There’s the gross mind, the subtle mind, and the very subtle mind.
So just to remind you that the gross mind of this life, that does come to an end. That that, yeah, that has a finite it starts and ceases in this life. But that’s not the totality of the mind. That is just in a sense like the tip of the mind, the the tip of the iceberg of the mind. When that ceases during the death process, another aspect of the mind, a more subtle aspect of the mind becomes manifest for some time during the death process.
That also ceases, And what then manifests in the last moments of death are is sorry. The very subtle mind, which in which is also called the primordial mind of clear light or just the mind mind of clear light. Sometimes it’s called the primordial mind of clear light to indicate that it has always existed. So when we when I say, you know, the mind will never cease, we’re talking about that very subtle level of mind because the the gross mind and the subtle mind, they have a finite existence. They come into existence during any one particular life and cease at the end of that life.
But the the underlying them, the basis of them is not the brain, but this very subtle mind, and that has always existed. It is beginningless. A wonderful concept to try and wrap the mind around. The mind is beginningless and endless. So when and when we say that, we’re talking about this very subtle mind.
A little bit more about that later. Another way of looking at the mind is that especially if we look at our the mind which we operating with now, which is the gross mind, that can be broken up into six different consciousnesses. A very difficult word to say. Right? So there are five what is operating now with with us right now is that we have five sense consciousnesses and one mental consciousness.
So I hope I’ve got so just as we have an eye organ and an ear organ and a nose organ and a tongue organ and a body organ, which material scientists explain as the sum total of how we experience things. From a Buddhist point of view, we have these organs, but with them is a consciousness that goes it depends the gross mind depends on these physical organs and how they’re connected to the nervous system and the brain. But that’s just part of the picture. Along with those organs is an eye consciousness, an ear consciousness, a nose consciousness, a body consciousness, and then the so these are the five sense consciousnesses, and then there is the mental consciousness. So each of these consciousnesses is has the characteristic of being formless.
It’s not a physical thing. The I organ, of course, is a physical thing. Right? But with it is an eye consciousness that depends on the eye organ. That eye consciousness is clear and knowing.
So what does the eye consciousness know? It it knows two things. It it it knows or experiences shapes and colors. That’s all our eye consciousness knows. It doesn’t know anything else.
It’s it’s it’s it’s not able to be aware or experience anything else, just shapes and colors. I won’t go into all the the details, but there are eight there are eight kinds of shapes, and there I can’t remember how many colors there are, but they’re divided up into primary and secondary colors. Alright. So that’s all the eye consciousness perceives. Okay.
Perceives or yeah. Knows experiences. Then there is the ear consciousness. So that that the object of the ear consciousness, the only thing the ear consciousness knows experiences is sounds, nothing else. And there are eight kinds of sounds.
And just generally, these can be divided into sounds made by living beings and sounds made by physical objects like that. And the ear consciousness can distinguish that as an inanimate sound and human voice. For example, There’s more divisions, but, you know, just to give you an idea. This is just an introduction to the whole topic of mind and its potential. Okay.
So then there’s the the nose consciousness. So that that that what it experiences uniquely is odors of which there are four four kinds. Basically they’re either fragrant or unfragrant. Alright. And then there is the taste consciousness, and there are six tastes which I will list for you.
There’s the taste of sweet, sour, bitter, salty, pungent, and astringent. So that’s all that the conscious the sense conscious sorry, the taste consciousness experiences. Those different tastes. And then finally, there is the what we can roughly call the the body consciousness or the tactile consciousness. And there are eleven eleven different kinds of objects of the of the touch body consciousness such as I think I’ve only got ten here.
Sorry. Lost one. We will find it somewhere. Just to give so there is this awareness of smooth, rough, cold, heavy or heaviness, hunger, thirst, and the awareness of earth, fire, water, and wind. Sorry, one more is missing.
Yeah, there’s one more. Okay. So the what the so the sense consciousnesses are very, limited, very primitive in a sense. They just know very limited things. So then that you have with the sense consciousnesses, you have the mental consciousness.
So this is the most important part of the mind aspect of the mind. You know, with the body, we could argue what is the most important part of the body. We could say the heart or the brain. But what else? That’s about it.
These are possibly the two most important bits. So but with them when we talk about the mind, the most important part of the mind is the mental consciousness. And when we talk about the mind, we are usually referring to mainly the mental consciousness because yeah. Well, because why? Well, I’ll explain a little bit later.
Yeah. But the mental consciousness is the most important and sophisticated complex complex as part of the mind or aspect of the mind. I I don’t wanna say the word part too much because a part sounds something very physical, and the mind isn’t physical. But anyway so very roughly, what the mind does the the mental consciousness, sorry, does what the mental consciousness does among many other things, but it puts all that information coming from the sense consciousnesses together to create this seamless illusion of this world. Yeah.
And in addition to that, on top of that, the mental consciousness then thinks about all of that stuff and labels it this or that, good or bad, etcetera, etcetera. Okay? So the mental consciousness is the most important part of our mind. So I am holding up a clock. Okay?
Without being tricky, can is is there can everyone see this clock? Can you see it, Bill? Yes. Yes. Is is there anyone who can’t see the clock?
Anyone cannot see the clock? Everyone agrees they cannot see the clock. Right? But you’re all wrong. You’re all completely wrong.
You can’t see this clock. You can’t. You can’t see it with your eye consciousness. All you can see is some a shape or shapes and colors. You can’t see a clock.
You can’t see it when we mean see, when we mean the eye consciousness. Because an eye consciousness can only see shape and color. But for convenience sake, we say I can see a clock. Because what is experience knowing that this particular shape and color is a clock is our mental consciousness, Not the eye consciousness. So the eye consciousness gives rise to a very simple experience, and then immediately the eye mental consciousness comes along and says, I know what that is.
That is a clock. Because I’ve seen a whole lot of different things shaped in various ways with different colors, but I can tell that that one, that is a clock. And, of course, the problem is well, I can’t say it in the case of well, here. You know? Not only does my mental consciousness say that this is a clock or a watch, what gets what starts to get trickier is that this is my watch, not your watch.
You can’t have my watch. I’m not gonna give you my watch. Yeah. And the that’s the eye the mental consciousness thinking all that. Yeah.
The eye consciousness doesn’t think my watch. Our eye consciousness can’t see my watch, my clock, my this, my that. It’s the mental consciousness that does all that stuff. And, of course, with my, there’s the sense of I. Where does that sense of I come from?
It doesn’t depend on your I consciousness or all the sense consciousnesses. This ought to well, a little bit it does, but it’s the it depends on the mental consciousness. The sense of I, the person me, isn’t our mental consciousness, but it depends on the mental consciousness. What is thinking I is the mental consciousness. I am this.
I am that. I am good. I am bad. I am happy. I am sad.
This is the mental consciousness bubbling away. So also just from some other examples, you know, if you eat an orange, can you taste an orange? We would all say, yes, I’m tasting this orange. It tastes delicious. But actually you can’t taste an orange.
All you can taste is this this or your eye consciousness sees something round and orange, and your taste consciousness tastes something which is hopefully sweet. And then your mental consciousness says this round what I’m what I’m well, it doesn’t I’m just putting it primitively right. It doesn’t think ponderously like this. But the eye because the eye consciousness is seeing round and orange and the taste consciousness is experiencing sweet, mental consciousness has the experience, I am eating an orange. I am tasting an orange.
And for just for convenience sake, we say, I’m eating an orange or I’m tasting an orange. But technically, we’re not tasting an orange. We’re just tasting sweet. Or our taste consciousness can’t taste an orange. It just tastes sweet.
It just experiences sweet. So the mental consciousness fills in all this stuff, all this information. Yeah. So it’s very important. So also something to think about, to, you know, to be aware of and think about is that with our sense consciousnesses, we perceive things, we know things with our sense consciousnesses directly.
We we see shapes and colors directly. We don’t depend on something else to understand this shape, this color. When we taste sweet and sour, etcetera, we taste it directly. Or in other words, we perceive these things. There is a direct perception of them.
It it doesn’t require some some other something else to to experience them. Whereas, with our mental consciousness, our gross mental consciousness, which is how that all the of the mind that we’re using now, most of what we experience with our mental consciousness is not direct perception. It is mainly secondary. It is conception. In other words, when we say, I see I see a clock.
I see this clock. There is not a direct perception of a clock by our mental consciousness. There’s a direct perception of the shape and color of a clock by our eye consciousness. But there is this conceptual experience of a clock by our mental consciousness. It’s not direct perception.
And so we think we’re experiencing everything directly as it is, but in fact, our mental consciousness is creating concepts about things. That this is this, this is that, this is good, this is bad, this is beautiful, this is ugly, this is right, this is wrong, and we think that is reality. And sometimes we are, you know, correct up to a point. This is this. This is that.
But many times, we may be wrong, but we don’t know it. Anyway, what what the Buddha is discovered and is teaching is that although right now our mental consciousness is mostly almost ninety nine percent only functioning at a conceptual level and therefore subject to all sorts of confusion and mistakes and and so on because of that. Anyway, we’re getting onto the other topic of the potential of the mind. But anyway, the potential of the mental consciousness, what the mental consciousness can actually do or its potential is that it has the ability, the potential to directly perceive whatever exists. And, of course, this is what a Buddha is doing.
A Buddha is directly perceiving everything all the time. There’s no conceptions in the mind of a Buddha. Everything is directly, vividly, unmistakenly perceived as it is. It’s perceived, not conceived. A Buddha doesn’t have ideas about things.
We have ideas about things, and some of our ideas are completely correct. Some of our ideas are completely wrong, and there’s a whole gradation between. But a Buddha directly perceives everything. And that’s what we’re trying to work towards in following the spiritual path of the of of of the of the Buddha. Any questions so far?
Disagreements? Yes. Yes. Think that gets very tricky, but I’d have to say generally yes. But also a Buddha can perceive that this action leads to this action, this type of action leads to happiness.
This kind of action leads to suffering. A direct a Buddha can directly perceive that. And therefore, because the Buddha can directly perceive that, the Buddha says, this is a good action. No. No.
No. No. A Buddha can see his eye. This person is killing something, a sentient being. He can directly perceive that, and he can directly perceive that the the result of that is suffering.
Right? He doesn’t have an idea about it. He can directly perceive the result. Right? And so the Buddha says that this is a negative action.
He doesn’t have a conception about it as being negative. He directly perceives it as negative because he doesn’t then develop aversion to that action or this or that the way we would do or think this is a bad person. He just directly perceives that this is a negative action because we label what is negative is what brings suffering. What is positive and virtuous is what brings happiness because no one wants suffering. Everyone wants happiness.
Not just human beings, all sentient beings. So anything that actually brings happiness, we label good. And anything and that’s valid. You know? And then anything that brings suffering, we label bad because no one wants suffering.
And, of course, we have conceptions about good and bad, but one can directly perceive that this action brings this, this action brings that, and therefore one can validly label it as that, as something. Right? Yeah. He directly knows it. Yeah.
He directly perceives it. But yeah. But it’s it’s important because we have these two words in English and there are Sanskrit and Tibetan equivalents of conceiving and perceiving. And we say, oh, I’m perceiving or we don’t use this word too much in ordinary conversation, but we think we are perceiving things when we’re not. This is the point I’m trying to make, that we think we are perceiving stuff like when we see red, you know, again we can make mistakes there too but if we don’t have some something wrong with our eye we can directly perceive red.
It’s red, you know, no question. But then when I say I can perceive that you’re a good person, we can’t. Now we may think we are seeing a good person bad. You did this. That means you’re good.
You did that. That means you’re bad. I can see. I can we think we’re perceiving this. We’re not.
We’re just making judgments. We’re conceptualizing. And that can be a big problem. In what sense? Yes.
Should do. Not necessarily, unfortunately, but it’s more likely to. Yes. Sure. Yeah.
I mean, this this is all connected to mean, the fundament there’s so many things to say in Buddhism. Like, this is a basic course, but even to introduce a basic course, there are the basic ideas. But I think you maybe you are familiar with the first teaching of the Buddha, is the four noble truths that there is suffering. Life, ordinary existence is suffering. Second noble truth is there is a true cause of that suffering.
Third noble truth is there is a true cessation of suffering. All suffering can actually be ceased, eliminated, not temporarily, totally, in a way that it will never come back. Fourth noble truth is in a nutshell, a very small nutshell, is that there is a true path, a valid path by which one can bring about that cessation. This is what Buddhism is all about. Why are we suffering?
And the Buddha discovered second noble truth is that there is a cause, and that cause there is one cause, one principal primary root cause of all suffering. All suffering can be traced back to this one root cause which is called ignorance and it’s a failure to perceive things as they actually are. There’s a whole module of DB about this. It’s a very most complicated part of the Buddha’s teachings, but this is what the Buddha says. And in a simple way, you know so basically, it’s saying when we don’t see things experiencing experience things as they are, we suffer.
I always give very primitive simple examples. I don’t mean to offend you, it’s just that I’m a very primitive simple person. You’re So for example, if you mistake, you make a cup of tea or coffee and you want to put some sugar in it and you put salt in it because you have perceived, you made a misconception, a misperception, you suffer. Simple. If you go through a green light, no, no, a red light thinking it’s a yellow one or a red one.
You know what I mean? A red light, a green light, we suffer. Yeah? If you if you misperceive a bad person as a good person, you we suffer. You know?
There’s very simple examples, but deep down we are making this incredibly huge mistake about everything. It’s huge, but it’s immensely subtle. We are misperceiving how we are, how we actually exist. We misperceive all the time how everything actually does exist. Yes, of course.
Yes. Yes. Everyone is. With their mental consciousness. Animals, of course, with their sense consciousnesses, their sense consciousnesses actually, in many cases, are far more developed than our sense consciousnesses.
But their mental consciousness is less no. Not less developed. It’s more obscured than ours. Okay. Rapidly moving along.
Is that okay? I’m trying to yeah. Okay. Sorry. Less conception, more perception.
Yeah. Yeah. That sounds very boring, but no. That’s not the aim. It’s by doing that.
The aim is to achieve enlightenment, which is a wonderful state that only benefits ourselves and others. Yeah? But one can’t do that by having concepts. Oh, no. Oh, no.
Sorry. Concepts are very important. It’s very important in following the spiritual path to get the right concepts. But there is there is a an experience, a state of mind which is called bodhicitta. There is a state of mind called love.
In order to and there is a state of mind called wisdom. In order to actually have those direct experiences one has to first develop a correct concept about them. And by having that correct concept, one can then create the causes to experience, not the concept, but the reality. Okey doke. See.
How about it gone? Not I was doing so well. It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault asking questions. Okay.
So just very quickly, an important point which I’ll try and elaborate on later on somewhere and especially in another module is that I think it’s very helpful and important to understand what Buddhist meditation is. Well, there’s many things to say about it, but because many things these days label meditation. Everyone meditates, and most of it is not meditation from a Buddhist point of view. I mean, it’s fine to label it meditate, but from a Buddhist point of view, it’s not meditation. What one just one point about meditation.
It’s important to understand that what distinguishes meditation has its traditionally, historically been understood in in ancient times is that what we’re trying to do is that oh, okay. What we’re trying to do in meditation is isolate the mental consciousness. Consciousness. We are trying to let the five sense consciousnesses stop, become inactive, inert, so that the the the mental consciousness is free to do its thing, which is to know. It’s the super knower.
The others are little baby knowers. They only know little things. But the my mental consciousness, that is what can really know, right, and experience. So but it can’t do that very well when these five little kids are running around screaming and yelling and carrying on. So just a rough analogy, when we go to sleep at night, what happens is that our five sense consciousnesses shut down.
Yeah? And what is left is the mental consciousness. All that’s left just before we go to sleep is the mental consciousness. Oh, I don’t know how they order it, but anyway, roughly. But then what the mental consciousness does is it focuses on darkness and it falls asleep.
That’s the definition of sleep. One of the mental factors is is the mental is the mind or the mental consciousness focusing on sleep on darkness, which is not a very interesting thing to do, but we seem to enjoy it a lot. We do need we do need a certain amount, but nowhere near as much as we think we do. That’s just a concept of how much anyway. Right.
So so meditating is a little bit like in some ways, it’s much like going to sleep, and in other ways, it’s totally different because what is similar is that what we’re trying to do is allow the sense consciousnesses to fade away as much as possible so that the mental consciousness can you know, is just left there alone, free. Right? The thing that isn’t completely different between, you know, ideal meditation of of meditation of a an advanced practitioner and going to sleep is that with going to sleep, the mind becomes even less aware than it is when it’s awake. In meditation, what happens is the mind becomes more clear, more aware, more knowing. Right?
That’s what we’re trying to do. Because, ultimately, Buddhist meditation is about well, ultimately, what why we’re trying to allow the mind to know is to know what is a true, especially the truth about ourself and all things. Because the Buddha discovered it’s that that truth, that actually not the concept of the truth, but the experience of the truth, which is going to free us from all suffering. Right? But also in the meantime, that it is that mental consciousness that we can use to cultivate all these other mental to overcome the negative mental factors that are associated with the mental consciousness and to cultivate the positive mental factors that are associated with the mental consciousness.
So that’s an important thing to understand because many people I’m I’m sorry if I’m being sound arrogant or whatever. But many people do all sorts of things that they call meditation, like looking at flames or listening to dolphins, looking at crystals, and and looking with their eye consciousness. This is not meditation. It is actually an obstacle to meditation because you’re using, you’re entertaining, you’re just using your sense consciousnesses. It may be good for quietening the mind to some extent and relaxing, and that’s fine.
But it it it won’t lead to liberation and enlightenment. It’s just it’s just a kind of entertainment. It’s a maybe nicer kind of entertainment than watching Terminator six hundred or, you know, kickboxing and, you know, all that stuff and kickboxing and stuff like that. I’m sorry. Should say that.
Anyway, but it’s just entertainment. You know? It’s not gonna free us from suffering. It’s not gonna develop insight into things that we need insight into. It’s not bad, but it’s not particularly useful.
Excuse me for saying that if I’ve offended some people, but I just, you know, just it’s my job to present the Buddhist view. You can whether you agree or not, that’s that’s sure that’s completely up to you. I allowed you to totally disagree. Maybe I won’t. I’ll fight back.
But, anyways, my job to present the Buddhist view. Yeah. So that just leads into just briefly another point is that so we’ve got the five sense consciousnesses, and then we’ve got the mental consciousness. And Okay. A little a little more technical.
So these six consciousnesses are called primary consciousnesses. Primary consciousnesses. So you have the primary eye consciousness, nose, tongue, body. I’ve left one out, ear consciousness, and the primary mental consciousness. And then what what you also have are what are called mental factors.
So there’s a whole pile, a huge number of mental factors. Traditionally, they talk about fifty or fifty one mental factors, divided into various categories. I won’t go into all this all of this, but, basically, the main mental factors for our purposes now are there are positive or virtuous mental factors, and there are negative mental factors such as anger, afflictive desire and attachment, pride, jealousy, etcetera, etcetera. So the there’s about twenty of these negative mental factors, and there are there are no more than that. But, anyway and then there are the virtuous positive mental factors such as love, compassion, patience, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Right? So those are mostly connected with they arise with the primary mental consciousness. Right? And yeah. So that’s why the mental consciousness is such an important aspect of the mind, the most important part, because with it, in in the train of the primary mental consciousness, depending what’s going on, etcetera, etcetera, come these positive and negative mental factors.
And what the Buddha discovered is why the mental negative mental factors are called negative is because when they arise, there is suffering. Because remember, with every moment of experience or knowing, there is either a pleasant or an unpleasant feeling. So when the negative mental factors arise with or become associated with the primary mental consciousness, there is only unpleasant feeling or suffering. There’s never anything else. And when the virtuous positive mental factors such as love, compassion, intelligence, and wisdom, and these things arise, there is pleasant feeling or happiness.
Right? So with all of those mental factors, these are all ways of knowing something. So when one is experiencing love towards another person, it is a way of knowing a person. Right? When you the when when when the mental factor of hate gets is associated with the primary mental consciousness.
That hate or anger or aversion, these are ways of knowing someone, of experiencing someone. Right? What one experiences with hate, you experience this person as bad, terrible, blah blah blah blah blah. When you experience someone with love and affection, you experience them as good and and so on. And also it’s important to understand that what tends to happen is that when a negative mental factor such as anger or jealousy or pride and so on arise in the mind, what tends to happen is that it it draws with it all the other negative mental factors.
They all tend to come along. The whole gang comes along, and they all kind of, you know, bubble away together and create a total mess in our mind. Brain. Of course, what you know, as all this is going on, things are happening in the brain. But, you know, the the materialist would say, what is going on in the brain?
That totally explains your hate, your love, your this or that. And the Buddhist or a well, not a Buddhist, let’s say the Buddha and highly realized beings who have clear perception, they say, yes, all of that stuff is a secondary condition for hate this and that to arise but it’s only a factor. It’s not the main thing. The you know, the these two things are happening for sure, but that that what is happening in the brain is not the total explanation. It’s just something.
Yeah. Buddhism the Buddha Buddhism doesn’t deny anything that scientific materials say about how the brain does this and that. It’s it’s amazing and wonderful. But Buddhism is saying that this is only part of the picture. Yeah.
Yes. They are. We’ve established that. Right? Well, we maybe as a view.
Mhmm. What? What how does what? No. Let’s say all the thoughts you have or a person has.
We don’t wanna get too personal. Yeah. In it’s in that person’s mind stream. Yes. Yes.
You can talk about the mind or consciousness or the stream of consciousness. Yeah. Because the mind isn’t a thing, remember. It is just what is labeled on an ongoing process that changes moment by moment of giving rise. It is this giving rise to experience that changes moment by moment by moment, and that you call the mind or a stream of consciousness, a stream of experience.
Because just like you you look at a river or a stream, it appears to be one thing. But, you know, if you look at the, you know, the water going by, you know, but and there’s there’s basically some patterns in the river. But what is creating those same patterns again and again is different molecules of water going by, you know. I’ve got five minutes to cover everything else I mean to cover. Oh gosh.
Got all the complicated bits to do. I give up. Oh my gosh. What I’m was gonna talk about continue to talk about, and I’ve lost my notes on it, is that So this mental consciousness is is when we talk yeah. When I was saying that there are three levels of mind, we’re talking about the three levels of the mental consciousness.
It’s the gross mind that has the the the sense consciousnesses associated with it and the mental factors, but then these all absorb at the time of death. And then you have fundamentally just this primordial mind of clear light. So that has you know, so that very subtle mind, the primordial mind of clear light, that very subtle mental consciousness, that mind is beginningless. And it is it it’s indestructible. It will never end, and it’s always giving rise to experience.
So that mind that mind has never been created. Nothing created it. It wasn’t I’ll I’ll maybe I’ll try and talk about this next week because I have to let you have some discussion this week. Third week, you have to talk among yourselves. So, like, the gross mind of this life has arisen because our parents have given have caused this physical body, and this physical body has a brain.
And the gross mind depends on that brain. Right? But our parents aren’t the cause of our mind when we when we mean when we’re really referring to this ever ever arising stream of consciousness which goes back into the past and on into the future. That mind, that primordial mind of clear light wasn’t caused by our parents. It wasn’t caused by our parents’ body, and it wasn’t caused by our parents’ mind.
Our mind is not something that we got from our parents’ mind. Right? Unfortunately, I don’t have any time now to go into all the arguments to suggest that’s not possible. And I know many women say or maybe not many, but some women say that when they go gave birth, they lost their mind. But or some of their mind.
But this is not proof that actually part of the mother’s mind became the child’s mind. Right? Because there’s all comp you know, there’s all many problems, you know, if you say that your mind came from your parents’ mind. So did it come from is your mind did it come all from your mother’s mind, all from your father’s mind, or a bit of both? Right?
And, of course, we do have characteristics from our parents, but that can be explained by all sorts of conditioning, etcetera, in this life, but also because of a karmic connection from the past that we are attracted to people who, you know, have certain qualities. Karmically attracted not consciously. We because from the Buddhist point of view, we created the cause to have the parents we do. Yeah. It’s it’s not an accident.
Not an accident at all. Yeah. Yeah. And if if if our mind came from our parents, then we would have to know everything our parents knew if it’s for the same mind. But then if you have this sense that the mind is something clear and knowing it is formless, it just is impossible.
You can’t talk about extracting a part of that mind and becoming another mind. Just like you can’t extract some space from space. That’s just not possible. Right? And then, of course, another explanation is our mind comes from a creator.
So this is certainly not the Buddhist view. Actually, I I don’t wanna go into this too now, and I don’t want to offend anyone. But if one really understands the Buddhist view of mind, not just as you know, because we all tend to believe the mind exists. It’s not just the brain. This is a common thought, idea, conception among people that, you know, I’ve got a mind, not just a brain.
But then most of us don’t really think about what that, you know, have much idea of what that mind actually is. So I’m talking about the if if one really gets a correct idea of the Buddhist view of mind, then there cannot be a creator. Right? There is no creator. There is mind is creating everything.
Everything that exists is being created by our minds moment by moment. I mean, this is a very, very complicated subject. No time to go into it. We’re going a little bit to course twelve about the wisdom of emptiness. Because, you know, the view of a creator god is is implying more than implying is saying that this stuff out here is really there.
God created this stuff. But Buddhism questions, and many philosophers and others have questioned, is this stuff really out there? Is it really out there, solid, concrete, to be created? Very big question. I’ll just leave that dangling and run away for the time being.
So, also, just with just in the same way with our parents, our we can’t get a bit of our parents’ mind to become our mind even if there was a creator, and, you know, we we can’t get a bit of the creator’s mind to be our mind. If we did, we would have to be completely pure and omniscient. And although that is our potential, we are not that. How could you get a create a piece, become some part of the creator’s mind, which is pure and perfect, break off, or somehow become our mind, and yet we are obscured? And and what this comes down to what what Buddhism is saying, which is also a very fundamental concept within Buddhism, but once you know, some concepts have a validity.
They’re based on what is actually true. Some concepts have no validity whatsoever. For example, there is a concept of father Christmas. I don’t want to upset you, but father Christmas doesn’t exist. He’s just a concept.
Similarly, I don’t wanna upset you, but the Easter bunny doesn’t exist. It’s just a concept. Right? But some concepts like roses, there’s a concept of you know, I can someone who’s never seen a rose, I can tell them. I can describe a rose.
I can give them a conceptual experience of a rose. Or if you’ve never been to New York, someone who has or lived there can give you a conceptual experience of New York. Yeah? Which has a certain truth. Yeah?
So we believe Buddhist concepts connect to an actual reality. Right? So one important concept that that is taught in Buddhism, is based on the Buddha’s perception, is that is the the whole idea of the law of cause and effect, which is our next topic in discovering Buddhism, flows just naturally with this topic because the law of cause and effect is basically about how the mind works. So that law says that for an effect there has to be a cause. And the nature of the cause determines the nature of the effect.
Simple example, if you want hot water, you have to have a hot cause. A cold cause won’t make water hot. Right. Along the same lines, for there to be mind, there is a cause of mind. Mind has never been created, but there is a cause for why our mind exists.
And the only thing that can cause mind is mind. Physical matter cannot cause mind because it is a different it is a different entity. Right? Hot hot heat can only create hot water because there’s a similarity between hot, you know, fire and hot water. Yeah.
Physical matter cannot create mind. Physical matter has no awareness, no feeling. It doesn’t experience anything. It cannot create something which is mind, which has a totally different nature. Physical matter is form is is form.
It has shape, color, dimensions, blah blah blah, and it knows nothing, experiences nothing. Mind is formless, has no shape, color, and knows and experiences and has feeling. Something that has none of those characteristics can’t create it. So the only thing that can create can become a cause of mind is mind. What causes our mind is a pre this answer will infuriate you.
You either love it or hate it totally. I love it. The the cause of our mind is a previous moment of our mind. Simple explanation, and then I think I’ve got to stop. I haven’t covered everything, and I’m slightly over time, but that’s okay.
Why does our mind exist today? Apart there’s also because we’re still alive and we ate rice bubbles this morning or something. That’s true. That’s one reason. The main reason why our mind exists today is because our mind existed yesterday.
Today’s mind is an overflow from yesterday’s mind, for want of a better word. It is in the same stream of consciousness. It’s not the same mind. Just like when you look at a flame, know, it’s a different flame every moment, every moment, every moment. But there is that flame which is different from that candle flame.
Right? So today’s mind exists because of yesterday’s mind. This week’s mind exists because of last week’s mind. This month’s mind exists because it existed last month. This year’s mind exists because it totally depended on last year’s mind.
This life’s mind exists because of the mind before it. Rough analogy example, tonight right right now, we are using our gross mind, and we have the waking mind, the waking gross mind, what’s the word I’m using? Yeah. The waking mind, the waking gross mind. At some point tonight, there will be the last moment of this waking gross mind.
And in the next moment, the very, very, very next moment, there will be the mind of sleep. Alright? And that will continue for some time, and then there will be the very last moment of the sleeping mind. And in the very, very, very next moment, not a slightest milli nanosecond of a gap, there will be the awakening mind of tomorrow. Right?
Same consciousness. Similarly, there is to this life’s mind, and there was there was at one point the first moment of this life’s mind. And in the very moment before it was the moment of the last life. Roughly speaking, there was the Bardo state, but let’s not get too detailed yet. Yeah.
The point is before the first moment of this life, there was a moment of consciousness immediately before. Not a gap at all. Like one nano nano nanosecond before there was mind in the same con not somebody else’s, the same stream. Yeah. Going back and and and there was that life and then before that before that.
So and that’s beginningless. What does? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
So conception happens. From the Buddhist point of view, why does a particular sperm and ovum join together and and become fertilized? It’s because a consciousness has joined with a a fortunate consciousness has joined with those physical substances and given it life. You know? Yeah.
Sentient life. Those two substances are alive. They’re physical living substances. Oh, that’s not a flower. But they’re not sentient.
But along comes consciousness and then those two substances are able to join and grow and it’s sentient. Right? So what the Buddhist argument is is that in, you know, there’s a moment of consciousness, before that is a moment of consciousness, and before that was a moment of consciousness going back and back into literally beginning less time. There was no time when the mind started because you can always oh, it must have started then, but then just before then was a moment of consciousness. Or you think, well, it must have started then, but but they just before then was a moment of consciousness going back and back and back.
That was bodies, not minds. Minds don’t evolve. You remember, minds don’t evolve. What was your mind doing when there was algae and no human bodies? Your mind was in another body somewhere else, in another universe.
Because, of course, in Buddhist view, this universe is just one of a grillion grillion endless number of universe, which actually I just read is becoming the scientific materialist view that there are just inconceivable numbers of universes. And they’ve also decided there wasn’t just one big bang. There were just so many it’s not worth trying to count. I I I really can’t answer that question properly. I I you know?
Because when when we when we talk about energy, there’s all sort you know, there’s all sorts of energy. There’s, like, the energy associated with the life force, the energy of life force. But then there’s the energy well, I’m not much of a scientist. I’m not a scientist at all. But when you talk about energy, like, energy of of physical mass or something, that’s a different kind of thing.
So that kind of energy doesn’t have consciousness associated with it. But some energy, of course, does. Yeah. I mean, consciousness itself is energy, you could say. It’s the most amazing energy in the universe.
It gives rise to the universe. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. The mind leaves the body, roughly speaking, and that mind has energy.
That mind has that has, as Lama Yeshe used to say, more energy than the well, I can’t remember exactly what it says, but far more energy than an atomic bomb. The energy of the mind is unlimited unlimited. It has no no limit to the energy of the mind because it goes on forever and and it can when when unobstructed can give rise to infinite expressions, manifestations. And I think sorry. I I have to break.
I have to try and be a good and and keep to this to the schedule somehow. So we’ll take a ten minute break, and then we’ll meet back here and have you can break up, not individually, but get it be put in a group. Too many more people out. Okay okay so for the discussion groups we’ve got six it’s not five I wanted five anyway I think some people can’t hear it anyway group one is