Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 99-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub opens week two of his course on mind and its potential by establishing the foundational Buddhist definition of mind as “that which is clear and knowing”—a formless, indestructible phenomenon fundamentally different from the brain. Drawing on scholar Alex Berzin’s analysis of how Sanskrit and Tibetan concepts resist direct translation into Western languages, he explores why “mind” best translates as “experience” rather than any neurological correlate. From there, he unfolds the radical implications: the mind is beginningless and endless, the gross mind depends on this life’s brain and nervous system but subtle and very subtle levels persist through death and rebirth, and everything we perceive—this room, flowers, people, the entire world—arises as a unique experience dependent on our individual mind rather than existing as solid, independent reality. He illustrates this with concrete examples (how anger prevents tasting food, how a clock is only shapes and colors unified by mental consciousness, how the same person appears beautiful to one and ugly to another) and emphasizes the practical consequence: conflicts arise because we wrongly assume everyone perceives what we perceive. He walks through Buddhist psychology’s five sense consciousnesses and mental consciousness, sets two alternating meditations as homework—one on the formless knowing nature of mind, one on tracing consciousness backward through this life into past lives—and concludes by anchoring the teaching in motivation and dedication. Suitable for newcomers to Buddhist philosophy as well as serious practitioners seeking conceptual rigor.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Mind and its potential week 2.mp3
UUID: 43691ae1-4689-4fea-a407-a6796e9a6277
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential 2017-18 (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2017 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 99.1 minutes
Words: ~11,429
Begin, as always, generating a good motivation for being here, particularly trying to generate what is called the bodhicitta motivation, which is that thought wishing to realise the full potential of one’s mind and achieve the state of enlightenment, to be in a position to be able to perfectly repay the kindness of all sentient beings recognising that every sentient being actually we’re intimately connected, related with every sentient being, always have been, always will be. Every sentient being has been our mother but we’ve been in every possible positive relationship with every sentient being in past lives, we’ll do so in future lives. But as and even when we’re not in those close relationships we are totally dependent on sentient beings and for our mere existence, for all our good experiences, ordinary and spiritual, for all the qualities that we develop and skills that we develop, ordinary and spiritual, it totally depends on the existence and the kindness of sentient beings. And so that’s recognising that is one aspect of being able to generate bodhicitta. Another is recognising that all these beings are trapped in, these kind beings are trapped in cyclic existence.
Most of them totally unaware of that and recognising that most beings much of the time unknowingly are creating the causes to remain trapped in cyclic existence in suffering over and over again. And the third main component of generating bodhicitta is recognising that we do have this potential to be Buddhas within us. We can, like as we are now of course, we can’t be of much benefit to others but that doesn’t mean that that’s a fixed state because the very nature of our mind is Buddha, is omniscient Buddhahood, omniscience and great compassion and so on. So we can benefit all sentient beings perfectly, completely, lastingly. So when we put those three essential ingredients together and think about them deeply and work and follow the path, then we can achieve enlightenment, can generate bodhicitta.
So even leading the mind, directing the mind in that direction is incredibly beneficial. So as much as possible please try and generate a good motivation for studying this topic of one’s mind and its potential. And if you have any connection with the Buddha or thinking maybe it’s a good idea to generate a connection with the Buddha, then as we say the prayer of refuge in bodhicitta, is on page ten, then we visualize the Buddha in front of us as the embodiment of all enlightened beings, all the perfect teachings of the Buddhas and the embodiment of the Sangha, all the great highly realized practitioners of the Buddha’s teachings. So refuge of course refers to when one feels that strong commitment to the triple gem of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and really wants to take the Buddha as one’s inspiration, guidance and teacher and follow the teachings of the Buddha as much as one can in one’s daily life and not just in this life but hopefully in all future lives. Refuge is, yes, well some people here have generated refuge and maybe some people are inclining in that direction, some people don’t have that connection yet.
So this course is for everyone, people who are Buddhists, old Buddhists, new Buddhists, thinking about being Buddhists, not thinking about Buddhists. Anyway, it’s about discovering Buddhism. So one aspect of Buddhism is generating refuge and one very important aspect is trying to do everything, absolutely everything, with the best motivation we possibly can. And as the great Indian master Śāntideva says, All the Buddhas cannot find a better motivation than bodhicitta. That’s it, that’s the best one.
If you can think of a better motivation than wanting to perfectly benefit all sentient beings, please let me know. Okay, so as we say this prayer, one tries to think of the Buddha as seated on a lion throne and above the throne is a or you can forget the light, I shouldn’t say that probably. It gets more anyway, at least imagine the Buddha sitting on a lotus which symbolizes the mind of renunciation. Above the lotus is a sun disc which symbolizes wisdom, the wisdom that’s going to free us from saṃsāra and lead us to enlightenment. And then above the sun disc is a white moon disc that symbolizes the mind of bodhicitta, the greatly compassionate, loving kindness mind of bodhicitta.
So it’s those three qualities that bring about enlightenment. So we think of the Buddha seated on Lotus Sun and Moon and then we think of the all sentient beings surrounding us. So at our level it’s extremely difficult to try and think of or imagine or visualise all sentient beings. So at least what we can try and do is think of our mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, then those closest to us, our family, friends, helpers, behind us, those who have harmed us or whom we dislike, whom we know dislike us, we put them in front to try to open our mind to realising that these beings deserve my compassion rather than my indifference or aversion. So at least trying to think of that group of people, but as much as possible, then opening one’s heart and mind to an awareness of at least all other human beings.
But if you know about the Buddhist view of other sentient beings, that animals, all the different kinds of animals are sentient beings, and that there are various other beings of cyclic existence, as much as you know about those and believe in them, then try and think of all those beings as well. Many of the teachers say to make it more effective for our mind, we try and think of all these different beings of the different realms in human form because humans are the ones that we hopefully we can relate to human beings. The lights are going a bit weird are they? Oh, sorry, I did not want to turn them off. Oh no, no, it’s okay.
Can you see? I can see okay, yeah. Is everyone okay? Can you see me? It’s probably better if you don’t but We’re doing it twice in Tibetan, one time in English.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So thinking the Buddha in front of us is very pleased with our motivation, we imagine the Buddha now comes to the crown of our head, and then when directly above our crown, imagine that the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light, and that light pours down into you, blessing your mind in such a way that your mind becomes very calm, clear, very peaceful. So then, just for a short time, reinforce that calm, clear mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise and you can do it in a simple way or combining it with the visualization of white light and breathing out one’s disturbing thoughts and agitation in the form of thick black smoke. Okay. Thank you.
So our topic is the mind as is understood in the Buddhist teachings, is a very unique view of the mind. So mind and the potential of the mind. So the very best explanation of so the definition of mind is very, very simple, it’s that which is clear and knowing. So the very best explanation that I’ve ever come across about that definition comes from Alex Berzin, acted as a translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he gave some teachings many years ago on Mahāmudrā. This book was produced by Snow Lion Publications, it’s readily available.
So Alex Berzin wrote a very long introduction to that text and part of it includes this definition of the mind which you have in section three of your student material. Hope you brought that tonight. So I thought, I’ve never actually gone through it with people in all the classes I’ve done but I thought it might take some time I might end up skipping a lot of it but I hope everyone has read it but I thought I’d like to maybe we can just go through it together Mahāmudrā, which means the great seal, meditation on the nature of the mind. Does everyone know where it is? There’s three sections.
If you go to the very, unfortunately, would be page forty five but the pages aren’t numbered. So if you look at the very on page three, there’s section one which is all the introductory material, section two is the required reading and section three is further readings which begins with a diagram of the mind and the definition of the mind. Was one’s homework anyway. So, it says, when we raise the topic of the nature of mind, we of course need to explore first what we mean by mind. This is because we are asked to focus and meditate on the nature of mind or on mind itself.
So and of course as I was saying last week, in Western culture these days that mind and brain are mixed interchangeably. Some people use these two words interchangeably. Some scientists say there’s no such thing as mind, is talked about as mind is just simply the functioning of the brain. So to investigate what the mind is we must look closely at the definition of the mind in Buddhism and as soon as we look at the standard definition we discover that Buddhism is talking about something quite different from what we mean by any of our corresponding Western words. Even in Western languages there is no consensus on the meaning of mind.
If we speak just in terms of English and German there’s a great difference between the English word mind and the German word Geist. Geist also has the connotation of spirit which is not included in the English concept of mind. Also I think in French what the word for mind is esprit which again is like or lung, yeah, is like spirit. The classical Asian Buddhist languages of Sanskrit and Tibetan speak of something quite different from both and the difference between what they refer to as mind and what the corresponding Western terms refer to is much greater than that between the reference of the equivalent don’t know, Shin, something which actually means more like heart, isn’t it? Yeah.
So Alex Berzin, who is a really great Western scholar of Buddhism, is very concerned about the words translating Tibetan and Sanskrit into western languages or particularly English, but trying to capture the real meaning which is very difficult because our language has all these other connotations and our, whereas Sanskrit is a language that develops to express the mind in many ways, you know, the English language and European languages are about expressing stuff, the physical world, it’s not a language of the mind. So there’s all these problems of, because what we need to do in trying to understand Buddhism is to try to cut through all our concepts about stuff, much of which we’re unaware that we have them. There’s so many things, you know, polluting our, well not necessarily polluting, but in our mind that we’re unconscious of that are influencing how we understand and perceive the world. Actually every time you learn, not that I’ve tried to learn a couple of languages and failed in all of them, but when you learn another language, so I’ve been told and I’ve had a teeny experience of it, you’re really learning another way of perceiving the world to some extent because each language in some ways expresses or has, you know, it sees, it’s an expression of that culture of how that culture sees the world.
Like when I was trying to learn, oh no, I’m getting carried away here, when I was trying to learn Tibetan I discovered there’s no word in Tibetan for interesting, whereas interesting is a very interesting word in the English language, it can mean many, many things, it’s a very interesting word. But there’s no such word like that, anything like it in Tibetan. Nothing is interesting in Tibetan, it’s either good or bad or this or that, but it’s not interesting. Berzin goes on to say, The problem is not limited to Western languages, Mongolian also differentiates between the intellectual and emotional sides but unlike English uses the term for the later setseg-il in Buddhist texts. The Chinese translators as well chose a word meaning heart, shin, which the Japanese also accepted and used.
The issue of what is mind brings to the surface many fundamental differences in cultural world views. If we want to find a better synonym for the Indo Tibetan terms in European languages, perhaps the closest equivalent is the word experience, which is one of the things I often said like last week, the mind is that which knows, it experiences and feels. But also we have to try and get this idea, there’s not this thing, the mind is not a thing that has these experiences, but in a sense the experience is the mind in a way. The mind isn’t a thing, a separate thing. Alright, I don’t really understand this either by the way, so.
Although this word experience too is not quite precise, we do not include in its meaning here experience in the sense of familiarity, you know. So we often we use the word experience to mean I’m I have experience in something, it means I’m very familiar with it. But the mind can be experiencing without being very familiar with it. Also it has the so experience has the sense of familiarity and expertise through repetition as in the doctor has a great deal of experience. So it doesn’t mind as experience doesn’t necessarily mean that.
Furthermore, in Western languages to experience something often implies to feel emotions about it, either positive or negative. We feel we have not really experienced something deeply unless we consciously been moved by it on an emotional level. So this understanding is not included in the Buddhist notion of experiencing things because one can be experiencing something but be, this gets confusing, I’ll probably confuse you more trying to explain this, but experience can be going on at various levels, there’s experience where we do have emotional responses to knowing, but we can be knowing things without knowing them in a sense. So we don’t have an emotional response to them. Just maybe a gross level of explaining that is sometimes we can cut ourselves and we don’t even feel it, we don’t even know it.
And then you look and the blood’s coming and then you start feeling something. When we’re asleep, in deep sleep, we are, compared to how we’re knowing things anything but mind doesn’t stop in sleep. Sleep is a state of mind. It is a particular way of knowing, a particular way of experiencing. And for example, possibly a lot of people think when you’re dying you’re not experiencing things or when you’re dead you don’t experience things but you are definitely experiencing things, the mind is experiencing things when we’re dead, a lot.
Experience never stops, mind never stops. Never, never, never. There’s always experience, there’s always knowing of some form, maybe I shouldn’t use the word form, some type. It may be very, very subtle, it may be completely different from what we think of the experience now of what you’re experiencing this wonderful talk I’m giving. So, yeah, there’s many different other kinds of experience.
So, he also says, Nor is there any connotation of evaluation, as in I learnt a lot from that experience. So, in the Buddhist context, experience is merely what happens to us, what ever occurs. Like we’re experiencing the air on our skin now, but we’re not having a gigantic emotional response to it, but it’s happening. We may not even be really aware of it, but we are actually knowing it, we are experiencing it. So in the Buddhist discussion of mind we’re not talking about some sort of thing or organ that is in our head like the brain nor are we talking about a space as implied by the Western expression, imagine in your mind this or that, as if the mind were a stage or room in our head through which thoughts parade or in which memories are stored.
Rather, we are talking about some sort of occurrence that is happening on the basis of the brain and the nervous system. But it’s not the brain and it’s not the nervous system and ultimately it’s not coming from the brain or nervous system. Yeah. Right. But the gross mind depends on the brain and nervous system now.
Just like the picture in the television set depends on the functioning of the television set. So for someone who knows nothing like me about television sets, One can imagine that it’s the television set that is producing the image and the proof of that is that if you smash the television set there’s no image, proof that the television set produces the image. And with this, you know, if you damage the brain, the mind doesn’t work the same as an undamaged mind. That seems to suggest it’s the brain that produces the mind. But the image in a television set is not, it depends on the television set and the working of the stuff in there, but the image is coming from elsewhere, right?
Just like the functioning of the mind depends on the brain but the actual functioning of the workings of the mind are depending at this gross level on the brain but on a more subtle level there is a more subtle level of mind that is functioning. And in a sense below, but again below is a physical concept, because, and when we think about, you know, the three levels of mind, it kind of sounds like there are three minds, but there are not three minds. But there is also this very subtlest level of mind which is the ultimate source of all experience. And it’s that very subtle mind that goes from life to life. This gross mind that is operating now, that’s not going to go into the next life.
That stops with death because it depends on this body and the nervous system and brain of this body. It depends, yeah. So this body, this brain stopped with death and so the gross mind stops. Just like when the television set breaks, the picture stops, but the picture is still existing elsewhere in a sense. It’s still going on because there’s this something else.
There’s this subtle level of mind that is not physical, is indestructible. Alright. I think I might leave it there. Maybe I’ll just keep referring back to this thing. But I’m a bit worried I’m not going to cover all the things because I always rave too much as some of you know.
And I’m trying to behave myself, but I never learn. Or maybe I’ll just finish this section anyway. What is happening when we see, hear or think something? Although we may be able to describe the occurrence biochemically or electrochemically, we can also describe it subjectively. This latter is what we mean by mind in Buddhism.
So there’s the objective, you can objectively observe, you can wire up your brain and objectively observe when you have various kinds of thoughts and feelings, you know, the graph produces whatever, you know, so that’s a subjective thing. But that isn’t your mind, you know, that’s, you can see, you know, when a particular kind of state of mind is going on, a particular graph image may be produced, but that isn’t your mind, that isn’t, you can’t actually know what the thoughts are, that is totally a subjective experience. You know, guy or lady looking at the graph may say, Oh, you’re displaying anger now, but that observer cannot really know the actual angry thoughts or know the actual experience of that person having those angry thoughts. That is totally a subjective experience and that is what is the mind. That you can’t hook up to a machine.
When we hear, when we see, hear, think or emotionally feel something, there is an experience from moment to moment. This is what is happening. Furthermore, experience always has contents. An equivalent way of, so even when we’re asleep, you know, there is content of our deep sleep, when we’re not dreaming or anything, it’s still there is content there. An equivalent way of saying that is, mind always has an object.
That’s a very interesting point to think about. The mind is always knowing, experiencing something. The two things go together. In fact, mind in Sanskrit and Tibetan is also called that which has an object. Okay.
So Alex Berzin is a very profound wise scholar, I’m not at that level, so I’ll leave him for a while and just go back to my blabbering. So the mind is that which is clear and knowing. It is formless and but that formless space like mind is knowing, experiencing, and feeling. So, and everything depends on our mind. As I said before, we have the sense of I, me, the person, and that experience is dependent on the mind.
You know, we have a body, how we know, we have to have a mind to know we have a body. The feelings we experience in our body are not actually our body, they are mind. Our mind pervades, in a sense you can say, pervades the body. As I’ve said before, this table is made of wood, it’s organic matter, this is organic matter. But this table, this wooden table doesn’t feel anything, it doesn’t know anything, it doesn’t experience anything, but this organic matter does.
Why? Because this organic matter, or maybe even a better example, is this. This is very similar organic matter to this body, but this doesn’t know anything, it doesn’t experience anything, doesn’t feel anything. But this does, seems to, because pervaded by mind, this isn’t. So, talk about bodily feelings, but those bodily feelings are consciousness, they are formless experience.
So the mind gives rise to everything, it gives, the mind is giving rise to experience moment by moment. Our mind is giving rise to this room and to this building and this building being in this city, being in this country, being on this planet, being in this universe. So, we experience that, you know, there is this external reality out there and our mind is just observing it. But, can all agree that this room has walls that are dark red or brownish red or something at the bottom and then they’re white and they’ve got these decorations and things, images of Buddhas and whatever. So we all think we’re experiencing the same room, but we’re not.
In one way we are, at one level of experience, one way of looking at things, we can say that it’s convenient to say that we’re all sitting in the one same room. If you were to say something different, one might get locked up. But at another way, we are all sitting in our own room. We are all experiencing a room that is generated, which is an experience, a unique experience of our mind. So we can all agree, you know, the back door is red and a bit yellow and this and that, but the what, you know, actually the room we’re in is created by our mind and the way we are all experiencing this room in slightly different ways because our minds are different or separate, they’re separate minds.
Nature is same but still different minds. We have different experiences that influence how we experience things and even each time we come into this room, we could experience it in different ways because our mind is in a different state. We can come into this room, you know, for twenty years and one day we, Oh, you say, Oh, I’ve never seen that before. It’s always been there, we’ve actually seen it, yeah, we’ve seen it but we didn’t experience it. Or, hits us in a particular way that our mind relates it, relates to it in a particular way on a particular, in a particular time and it really makes an impression.
It all depends on our mind. Am I making this confusing? Do you agree? Well, you don’t have to, but Because we’re all human beings, we have this karma to be human beings, we all share similar experiences of things, we agree that this room is like this and that, but nevertheless, everything is still unique. Just on a very practical level, again this is something I’ve said but I’m not going to apologise, I’ve said it many times before in classes but I won’t apologise this for repeating it.
But if we really understood that more and also were mindful of it in our daily life, this would be incredibly, incredibly helpful in our relationships with other people. Because if you check, if we look, one of the main reasons, one of the reasons why there are so many conflicts between people, individuals and groups and countries and everything is when an argument is going on, for two people who are arguing, you know, I mean there are exceptions when people are just being nasty and whatever and just being belligerent and what’s the word, contradictory, but in many cases, you know, with nice people arguing and falling out with each other and whatever, it’s because they’re arguing about this thing and this person is seeing this thing this way and this person is seeing this thing this way and they both think they are seeing the reality. And they can’t understand why when I say What’s an example? I should have planned this, shouldn’t I? Oh yeah, like, see purple?
Grey. So, and I say to you, this book is purple and you say, no it’s not, it’s whatever that colour is. I said, no it’s not, it’s purple. He said, no, it’s this. So you fight because I believe it’s purple, because that’s my experience.
And I don’t realise that the other person, because they don’t have my mind, they have another experience. It may be very slightly different, but it’s different. People see things in different ways. But we go around assuming everyone is experiencing what I’m experiencing or at least they should experience what I’m experiencing and it’s not true. Yeah.
Check up, as used to say, check up. I I have to confess, I waste an incredible amount of time looking at Google News and things, which I really have to give up, but it’s definitely something I have to renounce. And in there, you know, there’s articles about this and that, and then there’s all the comments by people and it is actually sometimes quite interesting to read the comments, they’re revolting but you can see the completely different interpretation of what appears to be one fact, one thing and some people say it’s like this and, you know, this person is disgusting and blah, blah, blah and they’re revolting people and the other person is saying they’re so nice and sweet and lovely and you think, you know, what is the reality? The presentation, it’s just people expressing their mind actually, but you’d never know what something was like from reading these things because they are so vastly different. But it’s just one person’s confused experience, one confused sentient being’s mind perceiving things.
You know, we read newspapers and think we’re being told the reality, but it’s just one version, one interpretation. So, also, when we talk about mind, one way to get a sense of what mind is as opposed to robots generating I’m very worried about robots, is that mind has, with every moment of experience, a very subtle experience, there is feeling going on. And as I was trying to say last week, we use this word feeling in a very strange way, in many ways in English. So we can say things like, I’m not feeling very well or I feel sick or what’s an example? Or we can even say, that makes me feel angry.
But from a Buddhist point of view, can’t feel angry. Anger isn’t a feeling, believe it or not. Love isn’t a feeling, from a Buddhist point of view. Jealousy is not a feeling, kindness is not a feeling. These are, wait for it, they are thoughts.
They are ways of perceiving the world or people. Perceiving the world or people. But, with those thoughts, when you have a thought of anger, there is a feeling because it’s consciousness. Thought is consciousness, is mind. And the feeling is unpleasant.
When you feel love, kindness, there is a pleasant feeling that goes with it. But there is a feeling with every experience. But feelings are related to the sensations of pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering. Suffering. And it’s thoughts that generate, you know, every kind of thought has a feeling that goes with it, because thoughts are consciousness.
So these things go together. So, one thing I haven’t talked about, I should talk about which is very important, try. The mind is formless, right? It is like space, it is not just space but it is like space in that it has no shape, no dimension, no color, it isn’t physical, you can’t see it, taste it, touch it, but it does exist. It is an existent phenomena, an intangible phenomena.
It’s the most important phenomena, no other phenomena would exist if there wasn’t mind. One of the qualities, space itself is something that exists, there are different kinds of space, but there is one definition, there’s a particular space that is defined as the absence of obstruction, the mere absence of obstruction. Physical matter, such as this, is distinguished by being obstructive, because it’s physical it obstructs, you know, this, you know, some other physical object can’t exist where this physical object exists because this physical object is obstructive. But space, the mere absence of obstruction exists and that’s why some obstructive material can exist where there is space. Alright?
So, space as the mere lack of obstruction exists. It’s a very important space. Right? But when you put something in the space, like this object, this object, this obstructive object is occupying space, but it’s not harming the space, it’s not destroying the space, it’s not reducing it, it’s because the space is there, it can exist. Alright?
So if we think about it, this may sound very boring and abstract, but it’s very important, I’m making a point, is that space isn’t something because it is formless, you can’t do anything to it. You can’t harm it. You can’t damage it in any way. You can’t bring it to an end. You can’t chop it up into little pieces.
It won’t rust, bend, break, melt, melt, disappear. It is just there all the time. And the mind being formless like space has that same quality. You can never damage the mind. You can damage the brain and the functioning of the gross mind, but you cannot damage the mind in its totality.
It is always in it’s yeah. Which means, the main point to make is that it’s never going to end. Mind is that just which is arising moment by moment, giving rise to some experience, moment by moment, there’s this continuity of consciousness. Every single moment something is arising, some experience is occurring, some knowing is occurring, some feeling is occurring, and that will never stop, ever, ever. There’s nothing that can stop it.
The mind goes on for ever. This body stops, so this nervous system stops, this brain stops, stops, therefore this gross mind will stop because it depends on all this stuff, but the subtler levels of mind just keep on going, because the mind is like space. It just keeps on knowing. There’s always something to know. One knows death, one’s not unconscious when you die.
On one level, the gross mind is, but death is an experience of consciousness. And then there’s what is called the intermediate state between this life and the next, the Bardo state. So one is knowing that, one is experiencing it, one is feeling it, and then there’s the next life. It just doesn’t stop. The mind is indestructible.
Indestructible. That’s something to really think about. Because of course, if the mind is the brain or a byproduct of the brain, then there’s nothing after this life, nothing to worry about. Well, of course, there’s three basic views existing in the world that there is the scientific one, the scientific materialist one that is becoming dominant, that says that everything can be explained by the brain and therefore there’s no past lives, future lives, there’s no God, no nothing. Could be true, but if it’s true, it’s desperately a depressing view of existence, really, really truly depressing.
Then there is the theistic view that there is a creator of everything and that there is the soul, yeah? And then there is the Buddhist view that there is mind. So the mind and the soul are not the same thing. Sounds quite terrible to say, but Buddhists do not believe in a soul, that we are completely soulless. There is no soul.
But if you investigate the theistic view of the soul, it has many of the characteristics of mind. So, you know, why talk about a spirit, a soul, when there is the mind? Anyway, there’s some complicated philosophical problems from a Buddhist point of view with the idea of a soul and also a creator as well. Because I I don’t want to insult the if some people here have other religious views, I don’t I want to don’t want to attack those, but I have some responsibility to try to present the Buddhist view. And, of course, the Buddhist view is that there is no creator.
There is no creator of the world because, of course, for there to be a creator of the world, there has to be a world. The idea of a creator assumes that there is this world out there, separate from us that that has been created. That there’s this stuff, because it looks like that, there’s there’s all this stuff out there separate from us. So how does it exist? Oh, this special being created it.
But the more we understand what the Buddhist view of mind is we and this is yeah. We start to understand that this external world, although it appears that way, is not something out there separate from our mind. This is what I’ve been trying to say before. That there isn’t this just this one separate room out there. Looks like it, very difficult to prove otherwise, but the Buddhist view, what the Buddha perceived, is everything, everything that exists depends on the mind.
Depends on mind. It doesn’t depend on some one special being’s mind having created it all. The whole universe is collective creation of all the different minds. Something to think about. Well, the whole universe, just put simply, is the collective what is the result of the what did I say?
The collective result of all our minds. Yeah. Something like that. And each of us in a sense is living in our own little world, our own little world bubble, our own little bubble. And you can check that when we change our mind, the world changes.
Yeah. Our world changes. Yeah. If the mind becomes really dark and negative and very, very depressed, the whole world can appear horrible to us. Alright?
And then that depression goes away and then the world can seem an okay place. And then something really good happens to us and we’re really happy and the world can appear just wonderful. Because it all depends on our mind. Someone can appear as like a monster to one person, and terrific, wonderful person to others. It really depends on our mind.
There’s not this concrete solid reality out there the way we believe it to be, that’s been created separately, independently. This is why it’s important to understand the mind, because the main teaching of the Buddha is about the nature of reality, because the Buddha discovered that the cause of our suffering is because we do not experience ourselves, we don’t perceive ourselves and everything the way things actually exist. And the way things actually exist is depending on our mind. We don’t see that, we don’t experience things that way. Know, pretty flowers, I always have some pretty flowers here, you know.
So when you look at this and you think, Isn’t that beautiful? And where is the beauty? It seems to be there in the flower. That is a beautiful, it appears there is a beautiful flower, unquestionably beautiful. Someone thought it hopefully, they put it there because they thought it was a beautiful maybe they thought this is an ugly flower.
I’ll give him this really ugly flower to make him miserable. But I hope someone thought, oh, this is a beautiful flower. I’ll put that there, you know, as an offering or something. And it seems from its side so attractive, so nice, and like the colour, interesting, such a nice color, beautiful. It’s really there.
But is it? Is it? The Buddha says, It really depends on our mind. It really depends on our mind. When you’re really angry, you can eat food and you won’t even taste it.
Your most favorite food, if you’re really angry, you can and you won’t taste it, you won’t enjoy it at all. Because everything depends on our mind. Check up. Don’t believe me, check up. But take some time, check up with an open mind, not with a fixed mind, but check up.
So another important thing to consider is that one of the fundamental Did I finish my point? Yes, so the Buddhist So the source of all our suffering is our ignorance where we misconceive, falsely experience everything because we don’t experience things as connected to the mind. But the Buddha said, actually everything depends on our mind, things simply can’t exist without the mind, they arise depending on the mind. So to develop the realisation of that, to develop the wisdom that directly perceives the way we actually exist, how all phenomena exist, to develop that wisdom that is going to free us from suffering, we have to understand the mind. We have to start getting this, some idea of what our mind is and how important it is, and how important it is to take care of it.
This is the message. If you don’t get anything else from this six weeks, it is we have to take care of our mind more than anything else. No matter what we do with our body, it is going to die. No matter what moisturising lotion you put on this, the wrinkles will come. Can stick buttocks forever and we are still going to die, yeah.
But if we take care of our mind, that effort will not be lost, yeah? It just won’t be lost and it’s so important. So anyway, another point is this, that according to the Buddhist teachings, for there to be an effect, for something to happen, for something to exist, for something to come into existence, for there to be an effect, a fruit, a result, there has to be a cause. If there’s no cause, it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t exist. And the Buddha said that the nature of the cause determines the nature of the effect, the result, the fruit.
Have to there has to be a correlation, a connection between the cause, the result. So, we’ll look into this if you survive this course, there’s another one on karma, I think will be the next one after this and we’ll be going into that in more detail. But in relation to the mind, using that understanding in relation to the mind, it follows if that is true, and that’s something we need to investigate and check up, but if that is true, but it does seem to make a lot of sense, that physical matter cannot give rise to mind, to consciousness, because physical matter has none of the qualities of consciousness. Physical matter doesn’t know, it doesn’t experience, it doesn’t feel, if physical matter has shape, color, dimension, this and that, and mind doesn’t have any of those qualities. So, therefore physical matter cannot give rise to consciousness, mind.
So what can give rise to consciousness? The only thing that is the same, has the same characteristics to consciousness is consciousness. So the only thing that can give rise to consciousness is consciousness. So, why is our consciousness existing right now? It exists or what, put it simply, why does it exist, why does our consciousness exist today?
It exists today because it existed yesterday. Yesterday. Today’s consciousness is a continuum from yesterday’s consciousness. And this week’s consciousness exists as a continuum of last week’s consciousness, this month’s consciousness exists as a continuum from last month’s consciousness. The same, this year’s consciousness is a result or is a continuum from last year’s consciousness.
And this life’s consciousness exists as a continuum from the life immediately before. One moment before there was our consciousness functioning in this life, our consciousness, if you go back in that stream of consciousness, there was a previous moment which was the last moment of the last life. So there is, just as our mind can never end because it’s like space, it’s indestructible, Our mind has no beginning, it just simply goes back and back and back into beginningless time. If you check tonight, right now hopefully we’re all awake, I haven’t sent anyone to sleep yet by the looks of things. So, but at some point tonight there will be the last moment of waking consciousness of today.
But in the very next moment there will be the first moment of sleep consciousness. Yeah? And then, at some point tomorrow, there will be the last moment of that sleeping consciousness, and in the very next moment, there will be the first moment of waking consciousness of tomorrow. Just in the same way, at some point in this life, there will be a moment which will be the last moment of our consciousness of this life. But in the very next moment, when someone out, you know, the doctor or someone says, Oh, so and so is now dead, but in the very, very next moment, there will be the consciousness of the state, which will last for a period of time and then there will be the last moment of consciousness of the Bardo state and the very next moment is the first conscious, first moment of consciousness of our next, what we call our next life, where our mind is in another body, which if it’s going to be a human being, will be in the womb of our Mother, that first moment of conception in the womb, our consciousness will be there.
And that process has been going on forever. So there’s every month, you know, there’s today’s consciousness because of yesterday’s consciousness, there’s this year’s consciousness because of last year’s consciousness and that was because of the year before and the year before, and then there’s the consciousness of the first year of our life and that exists because of the life before that. So there’s a moment of consciousness and just before that there was a previous moment of consciousness. So we would like to think, our little logic, so called logical mind says there must be a beginning, there must be a time when my consciousness started. But then there was always a previous moment.
There was always a previous moment. Just one nanosecond before there was a yeah. So the Buddhist view is our mind wasn’t created created by some divine creative force, it wasn’t our mind wasn’t created by our parents, our body was created by our parents, our brain was and nervous system was created by our parents, but not our mind. Of course, we all have, which we probably like to deny, but we all have characteristics of our mother and father because we’re influenced by them, but also from a Buddhist view we would have some of these because we created the cause for those beings to be our parents. Nothing happens without a cause.
Our parents are not something accidental. We created the cause to have our parents, so we have some characteristics with them, something in common with our parents from past lives. But if our mind was created from our parents, how would that be? Did we get a bit of our mother’s mind and a bit of our father’s mind? That’s not possible because you can’t you can’t take you know, with with physical stuff, you can pull it apart, but you can’t pull apart space.
You can’t pull apart the mere absence of obstruction just as you can’t pull apart space like mind. And if, you know, if our mind came from our mother’s mind or our father’s mind, we should know all the things of our mother or father. We should have all those experiences and memories, but we don’t. And in the same way we haven’t come from some divine mind because the same argument would apply. Where we’ve come from is just a previous moment of our own unique discrete stream of consciousness that is beginningless.
That is beginningless. So that means with beginningless mind that we’ve had countless previous bodies, countless previous mothers, and the Buddha says that means every sentient being has been our has been our mother. That’s a pretty important concept to think about, to be aware of, to practice in our daily life that everyone has been our mother, which also means everyone’s been our father, everyone’s been our brother, brother, everyone’s been our sister, everyone’s been our best friend, because we’ve had infinite lives. Not just a lot, but just an uncountable, because even a Buddha can’t can’t count the number of lives each of us has had, because there is no end to them, oh, sorry, no beginning to the number. But sorry.
Okay. Oh, so, you know, I don’t have much time left. We’re going to have a discussion, you know, group and then I’ve got I think a little bit of time to talk after that but just very quickly, one of the meditations I’d like you to do for your homework, there’s just two meditations during the week to alternate but one of them is about the continuity of mind. So, actually, once somebody is from what I think I’m not mistaken in this, but if someone develops single pointed concentration, the ability to concentrate on one thing effortlessly for a very long time and this is a very difficult thing to accomplish, but there are people who have achieved it. Once someone has done that, if they do this meditation of tracing your mind back, continuity of your mind.
So this is an experiment you can do where you think, like for example tonight, how did I get here tonight? What was I doing like an hour before I was here and two hours or five hours? And then what was I doing yesterday? Without getting caught in, you know, the details of what you were doing, you just try and take your mind back, like yesterday, last week, last month, last year, the year before that, and the year before. You just sort of latch on to something that happened without, you know, then getting distracted by it and remembering it all, but just something, something, something and move your mind back to when you were younger and younger and younger, when you were a little kid and try to remember back as far as you possibly can.
And even if you can’t remember beyond when you were very small, you could imagine that at some point you were in your mother’s womb and then before that you were somewhere else. But also you can then so anyway, that is actually the way to develop clairvoyance. You do that, not clairvoyance, clairvoyance, but to remember your past lives. Once you’ve developed Samādhi, if you haven’t developed Samādhi, it doesn’t happen, but it’s still very useful to do this, to get some sense of the continuity of your mind, to take your mind back and back. But also you can then fast forward to back to your present and then think that your mind is going to go on and also you’re going to get older, you know, you live that you will get older and older and older.
And then I’ll die. And then my mind will go on. What will it do? What might it happen? Where will it go?
What could happen? Anyway, the idea is to try and get a sense of the continuity of your mind, that your mind is always bubbling away, giving rise to some experience. Always. It’s always there. It just doesn’t stop.
There is this stream of consciousness and it’s a unique one, has the same characteristics, fundamental characteristics of everyone else’s mind, but this is my unique stream consciousness. We’re not one big mind, right? There are some philosophies or religions or whatever talk about one big mind, but this is not the Buddhist view. View. There’s not one big mind.
We are separate, discrete consciousnesses, but our minds have the same conventional nature of being clear and knowing, and also the same ultimate nature of being empty of inherent existence. And we all have, every consciousness has Buddha nature. But once one’s if one starts to reflect, I really encourage people to do these practices. You don’t have to label them as doing them well or bad. You just try them and do them again and again, see what happens and what what thoughts it it may lead to, yeah, as well.
Especially in relation to that, if you can see signs that animals have minds, that they have feelings, they have awareness, they have intelligence, means that they are just the same as us. That also means we were animals in the past, could be in the future. As soon as you can see that an animal has even the slightest hint of consciousness, you know it’s just you in another body. And that being was your mother, is your mother. Okay.
Getting carried away there. Alright. A break. So please, if you can get a cup of tea or coffee or glass of water, whatever you want. So I should have mentioned but some of you would know this, but at the beginning of each class if people could, when they first come in the room, it’s good if you can put your completed homework over on this table and collect the next set of homework and also there should be some discussion, a list of discussion topics for class that night.
So if you could put in your homework, collect the new homework and discussion topics so you’re all organised, ready for the breaks to save time. So that’s one thing. I’d just also like to go through has everyone collected their homework? Because I’d just like to go through the just quickly through the homework sheet. Please remember to put your name on the homework sheet so I can tick you in my little list tick you off.
So the idea is if you can to review what happened that was covered in the class, so that means maybe taking a few notes or just trying to remember what was discussed in the class, to review that and also to just write down anything, particular things that you felt were helpful or interesting or important, but also the things you found difficult to relate to or understand and why if you can because it’s helpful for me to know these things. So with the reading you may really just do the reading for that week, not read all the stuff you might, Oh this is an interesting article, read that, which is nice but I’d really encourage people just to read the set homework and of course you don’t have to confine yourself to reading it once but you could read it, especially if there’s not much to read, to read it, you know, each day or at least a few times during the week and really think about it because dharma is not like reading a novel or something, it’s meant to be read many, many times and pondered or reflected on over and over again. So that would be good.
So also what’s really good if you can is to, if you’ve got the time, just to quickly review the previous works, your previous week’s reading, so just to, you know, refresh your mind so you don’t forget the previous stuff. So then to go through the articles that are set out and to read them as much as possible and as kind of carefully as possible because I said the more effort you put into it, the more you will get out of it, right? So that’s really important and that’s how your mind works as well of course. And to write down any questions regarding, and you don’t have to agree with everything, can disagree, you know, you’ll be thrown out if you do, but no, it’s fine. And to ask any questions or what does this term mean or what did this bit mean?
So then there’s the daily meditation. Also if you can tick if you’ve read what you’ve read and you’re not allowed to cheat, shouldn’t cheat and lie to monks, so just tick what you’ve actually read and the same with the homework, there’s the list of the days of, so your next, your first homework will be tomorrow, so if you do it, tick it, if you don’t do it, please don’t tick it. So I’d just like to know, I’m not going to, you know, blackmail you or give you a bad time if you don’t do it, but it’s just nice to see if you are doing it, you know, it’ll emotionally blackmail you to do it anyway. So the idea is each time is to be familiar with posture by reading that section, once you’ve got familiar with it you don’t have to keep reading it and then do the nine round breathing exercise at the beginning and then there’s the meditation. So for this week, this coming week, there are two meditations to do, one is on the mind being formless and knowing as I’ve been trying to explain in the class to think about, you know, just reflect on that and the second one is to do the continuity of mind as I try to explain, you know, it goes back and back and try to take your mind back as far as you can in this life even beyond if you can, or at least imagining possibly what happened and also forward.
And you can start with the traditional prayers like in your student material there’s the refuge prayer to say at the beginning of meditation and there’s dedication prayers to do. And I would encourage you to try and do it for at least ten minutes, you know, the whole session, at least ten minutes. Of course it can be longer but at least about ten minutes and the ideal time to do this of course is first thing in the morning, whenever first thing in the morning is for you. For His Holiness I think it’s about four o’clock in the morning but, know, His Holiness is that’s when the mind is freshest, know, the confusion hasn’t regenerated, mind, the earlier you start meditating in the morning, it’s also generally speaking more quiet and you know, just the energy of the day is quieter but also according to tantric understanding the, like the confusion in the mind and the disturbing thoughts aren’t, haven’t got so much energy in that early part of the morning so your mind, your mind is more flexible and workable generally speaking, especially if you get used to getting up early and if you’re not used to it of course it can be difficult.
But anyway, I mean it doesn’t have to be first thing, long as you do it sometime during the day if possible is good. So just very briefly, many people have the idea that meditation is just where you don’t think about anything and that thinking is evil. But this is not the case, especially in our tradition. The Gelugpa tradition is really unique in that it emphasises very that what is called analytical meditation is incredibly important. It’s very, very powerful where you use your intelligence, that particular quality of your mind to think.
Much of our thinking is confused and disorganised and we’re not even properly aware of what we’re thinking about, but here in what distinguishes thinking here in analytical meditation is you’re consciously doing it, you’re doing it with a conscious good motivation, one should have some idea why you’re doing it and you try and do it logically. So you think about the topic, know, or follow the outlines of a particular meditation. And one thing that it’s good to do is, well for example, in doing analytical meditation on the mind and the definition of mind is it’s clear and knowing, that it’s formless and it knows and experiences. So you try and think about the meaning of that and does that make sense and you also try and catch any aspect of your mind that says, I don’t believe that. That’s rubbish, that doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, and then what you should do if you catch that mind that says, Oh, that doesn’t make sense or it’s ridiculous, But then you should try and think if you’re trying to open your mind to the Buddha’s teachings, that this comes from the Buddha, so it’s probably right. So how can I maybe the reason I think it’s stupid and wrong or ridiculous is because I haven’t understood it? So one tries to understand, you know, look at it with a more open mind and check, maybe how could I understand this to be true? Not force oneself to believe it’s true, but open one’s mind. Is that making some sense?
Right? Yeah? Yeah. So, yeah, we’re just trying to lead the mind deeper into Yeah, if you don’t have any questions about the dharma, some people think, Oh, I don’t have any questions about the dharma, I’m so devoted, I’m so wonderful. I think that’s not good at all.
If you don’t have any questions or doubts, it means you haven’t thought about it, just blind belief. I mean the dharma should make your mind be buzzing with thoughts in a sense. I mean one may feel a connection with it and think, Oh, I’ve always kind of felt that, believed that, but oh, now it’s expressed exactly so that’s good, but if, you know, you, yeah. There’s many, many questions and it doesn’t necessarily have to be doubts, but it, oh then you start to think of, oh then that may mean, oh that, you know, Buddhism says that and that makes sense, that maybe mean also this. Oh I hadn’t thought about that.
You know, it may imply, you know, the consequence is this, I hadn’t thought about that consequence. Like if the mind is beginningless, you know, I’ve had many lives, many bodies, you know, everyone could be my mother. Wow, oh, check that. Yeah, something like that. You check your mind, you analyse, you’re analysing the teachings at the same time analysing your mind that is analysing those teachings.
Right? Okay, so there’s two meditations. So Wednesday you meditate on think about the clear and knowing nature of the mind, Thursday on the continuity of mind, then Friday clear and knowing, so you alternate those two meditations like that. And then there’s the daily mindfulness practice. Yeah, just trying to note the mere knowing of an object.
So we see things, there’s the seeing, you know, see things and so when we see things we focus on what we see but we can try and as we’re looking at something just be aware that there is this knowing, there is a knowing going on of the object, try to focus on the knowing. The mind, there is a mind, there is this process, this moment by moment arising of experience of seeing something, hearing something, smelling something, tasting something, touching something, or even thinking something. Yeah, which leads me very quickly, that’s very good, into just what I want to talk about very briefly, I’ll maybe go a little bit more next week, is that, so the mind is that which is clear and knowing. So there are many ways we know. So one way we know things is through we have an eye consciousness, we know things through seeing.
Seeing is a way of knowing. So what we know with the eye consciousness is we know shapes and colours. This is what our eye consciousness knows, that’s all it knows, shapes and colours. And then with our ear consciousness we know and experience sounds, pleasant sounds, unpleasant sounds, meaningful sounds like human language and meaningless sounds like, what, breaking glass or something, you know, babbling brooks, you know. Or, yeah.
Okay, so you see, you hear, then one knows through smelling, you know, pleasant smells, unpleasant smells. Then we have, we know through taste, pleasant tastes, sour and sweet and bitter astringent and so on. And then there is the tactile, knowing of tactile sensations of smooth and rough and hot and cold, something hard and soft, things like that. So there is that knowing. So these are the five sense conscious, what are called the five sense consciousnesses which make up our mind.
The eye consciousness, nose, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness and body consciousness. These are the five sense consciousnesses. And then there is another consciousness which is called the mental consciousness and this is the most important part of the mind because it’s the mental consciousness which puts all that information from the five sense consciousnesses together to create this, the seamless appearance. So for example, in our conversation as ordinary people we would say, we can see this rose. You all agree we can see this rose?
Yeah, but according to Buddhist psychology you can’t see a rose. We are not seeing a rose. All we can see here is shapes and colours. And we would also say, well I can smell a rose, but you can’t smell a rose, all you can smell is sweet. You know, there’s a sweet smell or pleasant smell, pleasant odour.
Yeah, you can’t smell a rose. A rose is a mental concept created by the mental consciousness that puts together this shape and colour on this thing and labels it a rose. And that pleasant smell that comes from that you call the smell of a rose. Yeah. Just like, I always give this example of a clock.
You can’t see a clock. We think we’re seeing a clock, but you can’t see a clock. What you can see some shapes and colours, I can’t even touch a clock. I can But you said, well you can feel it, look, look, look, look. But all I can feel or touch, the tactile sensation is not of a clock, it’s just, oh it’s smooth and it’s hard.
But my mental consciousness is telling me that that, that smooth hard thing I’m experiencing is a clock. Okay. That’s very interesting to think about, really. See, we think there’s a real clock out there because, look, and you can hear it, he’s hit, that’s the sound of a clock. But that’s not the sound of a clock, that’s just the sound.
My mental consciousness, well my ear consciousness is distinguishing there’s a sound and my mental consciousness, well my eye consciousness can see that my body is touching shape and colour, which my mental consciousness has labelled a clock and therefore the sound must be the sound of a clock. But you can’t hear the sound of a clock. It’s the mental consciousness telling you that that’s the sound of a clock. How about that? Check up.
That helps to start to disintegrate that there’s this real solid world that you can prove is out there. That table is really out there because you can hear it, I can feel it, but you can’t feel a table, you can’t hear a table. But there is a table. But anyway, that’s another topic. Right.
So that’s one basic way we know through our five sense consciousnesses and our mental consciousness. So then, so all of that, you know, we talk about consciousness and mind, so when we’re talking about mind we’re really talking about the totality of the five well, it’s a bit confusing but mind is used either to talk about, it’s really referring to the mental consciousness or the totality of the five sense consciousnesses and the mental consciousness together. And when we talk about this gross, a subtle and a very subtle mind, we’re talking actually about the mental consciousness. Yeah. There, you have, there’s the gross mental consciousness of this life that arises depending on those five sense consciousnesses which come because we’ve got this body.
We’ve got an I but then there’s the I consciousness and there’s an ear but an ear consciousness. But to have an eye consciousness you have to have an eye, if you don’t have eyes you can’t have an eye consciousness. Now I’ve got confused, I’ve got lost, where am I? Oh yeah, so there’s, so on the basis of the, you know, the nervous system, the brain, this body, we have the five sense consciousnesses and therefore the gross consciousness of this life, but then there is this, there’s the gross mental consciousness of this life, but then there is the subtle mental consciousness and the very subtle mental consciousness that goes from life to life. And it’s that very subtle mental consciousness that will eventually manifest as Buddha, as enlightened mind.
And that enlightened mind doesn’t need a body, it doesn’t need eyes to see, it doesn’t need ears to hear. It just knows everything directly. Now I’ve gone over time as usual I went back to normal form. So, oh I didn’t have my book with me. Ah, yes, okay.
So, so we started out hopefully with a good motivation and the object of our motivation was the dharma. Not sure if I did a very good job but at least the dharma itself is a wonderful object. So then, so we can now dedicate the merit from listening to the dharma with a good motivation. So we can try and dedicate it to bring about the very best result, so that means to dedicate it to achieving enlightenment for the sake of all kind mother sentient beings. So if you’d like to join in, we do this in English.
Through the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhi mind not yet born arise and grow, may that born have no decline but increase forevermore. Okay, thank you very much. So we can finish. For those who feel comfortable to do so, we finish with, three prostrations to the triple gem.