This Dharma Talk explores Yogacara Buddhist Psychology, explaining that reality can be perceived through three modes of cognition: direct perception (unmediated experience without conceptual labeling), inference (deductive reasoning based on observations), and fallacy (the seventh consciousness of manas, which creates self-referential delusions). The teaching emphasizes that while we often seek theoretical explanations for the ultimate nature of reality, Buddhism instead practices radical empiricism—suspending beliefs and concepts to directly experience reality as it is. The talk also discusses the three realms of perception (suchness, representations, and mere images) and the eight consciousnesses model, while cautioning against spiritual bypassing and encouraging the use of imagination and visualization to help the mind transcend separateness.
Materialism, Idealism, Panpsychism or something else? | Br. Phap LinhAdded:
Dear respected teacher, dear beloved community, today is the 26th of June in the year 2025.
We're in the upper hamlet of Plum Village on the last day of our retreat for scientists.
Um, it feels very nice to be sitting here and I hope and trust that it feels as pleasant for you as it does for me.
Um, I look around the hall and I see so many familiar faces, so many friends. And um, I remember last summer, I think it was in August, um, some of us were invited to join the mind and life Europe summer research institute uh, in Pomaya in Italy. And uh there's some friends here from there. And on the last day uh there was a circle of kind of I can't remember what the idea was but it was sort of like inspirations, ideas, collaborations and I think I put up my hand and and sort of said would anybody be interested in having a retreat for scientists in Plum Village?
Um and there was uh some enthusiasm.
So we kind of launched into this whilst some there's some part of me that that was thinking I actually can't do this.
There's no way I can you know fit this in. I can't plan it all. I can't figure it out. All the logistics. And so um and that was true.
Uh and yet we're here. So, how did it happen?
Because I didn't have to do it alone.
Um so I really want to to kind of just name the sometimes visible sometimes less visible presence of so many others like the the organizing team a large organizing team of brothers and sisters um from upper and lower hamlet um whom you know many many times big shout out to them uh many many times I said I can't deal with this can you help me and then got it and and they did got it because otherwise we also wouldn't be here and uh and many others. Joanna also has been amazing uh indehaticable uh many many times I also said to her I can't deal with this can you help me and she said got it and um and Ellie and as well uh helping so much uh with the pre and post surveys um which which I hope many of you will have seen and and filled in and our wonderful panelists um who were also very compassionate when I didn't answer their emails and when I didn't tell them what the panels were about and and uh and so on and so forth and probably many many others that I'm forgetting.
I also just want to name the uh the presence sometimes visible sometimes less visible of all the volunteers helping in so many ways especially our cooking volunteers came somewhat at the last minute and and uh I know have been providing amazing uh food for everyone to enjoy and they and they do it joyfully every time I go past the kitchen you know they're all smiling in and then um and all of our brothers and sisters who are also helping in so many ways preparing the hamlet so beautifully. Uh all the grass was cut and everything was cleaned and prepared and all the flower beds were made beautiful and uh the toilets and rooms are cleaned and the beds made and and I know for the sisters too in lower hamlet and um and and also our brothers and sisters are cooking cleaning throughout the retreat and uh yeah so it's really a a collective manifestation this retreat.
It's only possible thanks to everyone working together and that's a very beautiful thing and really it only happens because of all of you right if nobody registered then we would be sitting here kind of okay let's talk about science you know we talking talking to ourselves Um and and really yeah I mean the the kind of this moment of sitting here with you all is also because you all came.
Um so thank you for your trust. Thank you for your stepping into the partially known partially unknown phenomenon of this week.
And uh yeah, it's a it's a beautiful celebration and realization of many many dreams um of many people maybe all our dreams.
We've all dreamed of this in one way or another.
So today, um, I'm going to do my best to respond to some wishes that have been been expressed.
And uh, just to give you an idea, I was asked by several people to uh, to explain the ultimate nature of reality.
So, you know, no biggie. It's like, okay, what what what should I do after that?
So, then I had another request um yesterday. So, oh, can you also do nonself? Like, okay, sure, let's do that.
I mean, really, I'm kind of serious. Like, do you really expect me to tell you?
Like, really?
I had a yes. I I see a no. I see some yes. It's a serious question.
Yes. You think yes. How many How many yeses? Put up your hand.
You got a good number of yeses.
[Music] That's the problem.
But it's um you when I first came to Plum Village 26 years ago, I also had this wish very strongly. Um and I really did expect Tai to tell me.
I really did.
And then Tai kept talking about being aware of your feet, being aware of the breath.
feeling your uh looking into your relationship with your mother, with your father.
It's so annoying. Like just why do we have to waste our time doing that? I want you I want you to tell me the ultimate nature of reality.
I want you to tell me I want you to tell me something that can't be said.
And it's but it's really interesting because I grew up with the idea um I'm you know I read as probably many of you did Stephen Steven Hawkings and and many others and there it's all like about the search for the the guts the grand unified theories right or the toes theories of everything TOE and I really thought that's what we were at some point sooner or later many physicists have promised this and some of them some of them are still promising it that we're going to have a ground unified theory or a theory of everything and I thought that is the kind of uh form that an ultimate understanding should take right theoretical or even in the realm of um philosophy or spirituality or religion I was expecting an explanation a description a form of words, right? Are are you getting this?
You see the problem?
We want to replace the real with the abstract.
And we think that will help. We think that will solve it. If I could just understand, if you could just tell me.
So we we really have to look at that and we really have to allow ourselves to let go of that wish because there whatever is said is less is less than this. How can I say this? The the the stuff the the texture of experience whatever you say about it is a compression is a a lossy compression.
So we we need to be very careful of theory theories and concepts and descriptions and language in general.
Beware the map.
I've said it before and I'm going to keep saying it because we're addicted, okay?
So, I'm not going to tell you.
And and yet we are in this sort of strange moment in our history where my in my I get the sense that um there's a feeling that kind of reality is up for grabs a little bit. There are many many kind of competing descriptions or ways of understanding reality. And just to name a few, of course we have physicalism or scientific materialism, right? The idea that there is an external physical universe made of matter, whatever that is, right? Which matter and energy which obey physical laws um which are the same everywhere throughout time and space except perhaps in the early moments of the big bang and da you know the rest. And um so that's a an account. It's an account which does not mention consciousness.
To me, that's that's a bit of a problem, right? If we're trying to have a theory of everything, a description of everything, of the nature of reality, this is a pretty glaring emission.
So, I don't know if you've noticed, but everything, and I mean everything, everything that we experience about this so-called objective external world is an experience.
I don't know whether that's obvious.
So, so I how do you take consciousness out of that? I mean just look at what you are looking at now. The field of your experience now what you are seeing, hearing, feeling, maybe even tasting, smelling.
You are looking at your own experience, right? And you know sometimes in Buddhism we say, "Oh, you know, we we we we want to we train ourselves to look at the world as ourselves.
And I remember first hearing that and thinking that's quite remote. That's sounds difficult. I have to really oh I have to kind of reorganize all of my thinking.
But but really look at it like objectively with scientists, right?
We're supposed to be objective.
Look at it and realize that this is right now my experience.
Do you really think that your experience is not you?
Do you really think that your experience is not part of you?
How could your experience not be part of you?
That would be very strange.
So if your experience which is what you're experiencing is part of you then you are looking at you because this I'm pointing this way you have to point this way this is your experience happening now is part of you interesting to me that's interesting so we physicalism. I hope we've just dealt with that, but we also have uh these days we have pansychism. So there's another attempt to sort of say okay well okay we do need to account for consciousness uh so maybe everything is conscious.
So oddly it's to me well there are many different kinds of pansychism so I I don't want to you know cast aspersions but there are at least some versions that are very close to materialism. It's actually kind of like matter um with another property called consciousness.
Right? So it's still atoms and electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, whatever. But now they have an extra property like charge and spin and but this one's consciousness.
I I don't find it satisfying, but it's interesting that that it's kind of it's had a big resurgence in the last few years. We also have idealism. So idealism is is is another kind of everything is consciousness or everything is in consciousness um but with a different different flavor.
And then we have um simulation theory.
You know that one? Silicon Valley loves this one.
Um, so we're living in a simulation and maybe we're in a simulation inside another simulation inside another simulation and and we don't know if there's a you know a sort of base layer of that stack of simulations.
And some people's really really think that I mean they actually think that they can sort of prove that this is the case.
Um, so anyway, I'm not really here to to sort of discuss or debate these different theories, but just just to point out that it's it's interesting to me that after a good a solid century of scientific materialism, more or less, um, we're now it's kind of not looking so convincing anymore. And these other other kind of uh sometimes earlier ways of understanding and thinking are coming back and we're trying again. We're we're we're kind of asking these big questions again. What is the nature of reality and we're looking for an answer?
we have um and and and many people sort of come to Buddhism and say well what's the Buddhist answer to this question the nature of reality which is why I came to Plum Village the first time around and um it took me a long time to I mean I think I heard it but then it took me a long time to really understand and then an even longer time to actually accept that Buddhism in its in its kind of purest form does not propose an answer.
So the in in one way of understanding Buddhism is is the removal of these views and concepts but it doesn't seek to then replace these views and concepts with a better view or concept.
And this is really important.
So um at some point I I started thinking of this as a kind of radical empiricism and then I discovered that William James had already got there you know a good 100 years ago. So so this is also not new. Um and it's in a sense it's also phenomenology.
Someone also asked me the other day are you going to do phenomenology? I think we're always doing phenomenology.
Um, so what is phenomenology? It's it's also the ideally the the discipline of um suspending beliefs, notions, conceptual structures about the nature of experience and experiencing it as um in in in a kind of uh in a way that's not mediated by beliefs, views, and concepts.
quite hard to do. It takes some practice. And that's also one way of understanding what this practice that we're doing is all about. When we say come back to the body, when we say bring our awareness to the contact of our feet with the ground, some people after a little while, if they hear that a few times and they hear Tai saying breathing in, I smile, you know, breathing out, I enjoy. And they're like, okay, okay, okay, fine. But but then what?
No, no, there's no then what?
Just keep doing that.
Keep doing that and you will see that's the challenge.
See for yourself.
But it's very hard.
So we also try to help each other and do it and it's easier to get there.
So I like this idea of kind of radical empiricism of coming back to to look at the nature of experience and not somebody else's experience, right? My experience and not not like my experience a week ago but my experience right now.
That's my laboratory. That's where I can experiment. That's where I can see what is going on.
Um, so in the rest of this talk, there will be things that I say that kind of might sound like metaphysics or ontology. It will really look and sound like uh I'm saying this is Buddhist metaphysics. But I really want you to remember it is not these are all um temporary tools that we use to remove other views and in the end we have to let go of even the tools the the the removing views tools because they will also get in the way.
Um, I remember Tai saying very early on, you know, the the Buddha said that the teachings are like a snake and they can bite you.
And I kind of didn't really I was like, okay, yeah, fine. You know, but I didn't really get it. But what he's really saying like be careful. These teachings are dangerous.
We use the teaching of non-self to help us remove the view of self because we know the view of self can cause suffering. We observe that it makes us small. It makes us we suffer in countless ways. So we we have this teaching of nonself to help us uproot that view and hopefully suffer less. But if you get attached to the teaching of non-self, that is a far worse suffering because there may be no antidote.
It's dangerous. And you might have met some people like that who've been to a few too many retreats, you know, and they start throwing around the non-self teaching.
It can be kind of violent.
Like imagine if you're in a war zone, you know, if your child has been killed and somebody comes and tells you, "Oh, don't worry. There's no self. Why do you suffer?"
How does that help?
That's not That's not skillful. That's not wise. It's not compassionate.
It's It's useless. It's worse than useless. you're making things worse.
So we got to be very careful with the teachings especially with the teachings on the ultimate the nature of the ultimate reality.
They are the most dangerous.
So warning [Music] [Music] So, we're in dangerous territory.
Uh, I see if I can make one thing clear.
Um because I've also had this question in the last few days and I talk about physicalism or scientific materialism and I say I'm not so sure you know about the objective existence of matter and energy and the laws of physics as a as a sort of you know cosmos independent from consciousness. When I say I'm not sure about that then people may assume something else very quickly. And this is the question. The question I've heard is along the lines of, "Okay, so are you saying that none of this is real, that this doesn't exist or that it's all in our mind?"
No, I I don't think I said any of those things. And I certainly never heard Tai saying any of those things.
Right? So, let's be careful not to substitute one thing with another thing.
So, we're just removing something. We're trying not to put something in its place and it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable because it's going to make us uncertain and that is just a sort of physiologically uncomfortable thing, but it's not bad. A little discomfort might be a good thing.
So, so let's be comfortable with the discomfort of of kind of not knowing.
Again, not knowing is wonderful.
So, I can look at this and say, I don't know.
And then I have a chance. Yeah. Then the mind is a little bit open.
So, I'm not saying that this isn't real.
I'm not saying that it doesn't exist.
It's It's pretty real.
I'm also maybe not saying that it exists.
Mhm.
But if I remove the idea of existing, I don't replace it with the idea of not existing.
Anybody know the answer?
I've removed the idea of being, right?
I'm saying this this it cannot be by itself as an entity as a separate entity but I'm also saying that it's not in the category of non-being where we can all see it interbeing right answer temporary answer okay be careful with that one too is also an instrument. So we use the instrument of into being to help us be freed from the our addiction to to the categories of being and non-being.
And but this happens all the time when we say there's no this right no self as in no separate self. It's it's in a way it's already misleading because so I I like sometimes saying with the flower instead of saying it's empty because then people substitute empty for non-existent or they think oh so there's nothing.
No, it's it's empty of only one thing which is separateness.
So maybe empty is or a little misleading. I like sometimes saying non-separateness. It is non-separateness.
There is no separateness.
And that's much easier to to see because again we sort of check with our radical eyes of radical empiricism and you look and you see this is in my experience.
So how can it be separate?
It's in your eyes. It's in your visual consciousness.
Where do you find separateness? I don't find it.
It's like try to look at it and at the same time take it out of yourself.
It's like I I don't know, maybe you're a better surgeon than I am, but I don't have a scalpel fine enough.
like it's in me not separate.
Not to mention the sun, the rain, time, space, the evolution of life.
You can't take out any of those things from this any one of them out. It it collapses.
It cannot stand.
So what we find is non-separateness.
But that's also not metaphysics.
It's so tricky.
So if if there is any kind of metaphysics, it's a metaphysics of not knowing or a metaphysics of refusing to know.
You have to be stubborn and the mind wants to grasp onto knowing very quickly. It's like, oh, I got that now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you have to refuse. Say, no, that is again concept. is just a Buddhist concept, a prettier concept.
Don't trust it.
Come back to the direct experience.
You have like a billionth of a second before your mind jumps onto it and starts naming and categorizing.
We try to stay there. it's not so easy.
So we have a metaphysics of not knowing or refusing to know and maybe on the way to that there's a kind of uh practice of unknowing.
So I'm noticing that I quickly start to know things and I'm aware of the danger of that and so I'm going to practice unknowing. I'm going to practice dissolving what it is that I think I know.
And I think that might be safer.
Probably also dangerous.
Um, so h let's see where do we go from here.
Um, some I now now we're really going to get in trouble.
Big trouble. I'm going to give you some maps.
And I said, you know, we're in the business of removing the maps, but here we go. We're going to give you maps anyway, and maybe these maps can help remove some other maps.
So there is in the Buddhist teaching something called the historical dimension uh also known as the conventional truth or the relative truth and that is the one that we're kind of used to uh that's the one that we usually deal with where I am me and you are you right we have different names different passports, different personal histories, different parents, different nationalities, characteristics.
We appear to be different, separate, right? We also have um yeah all kinds of categorization, right?
I I'm I'm human. I'm not flower, right? I'm human. I'm not tree and tree is not and tree is tree tree is not sun is sun tree is tree cloud is cloud rain is rain that's sort of the normal way of going about things and in that world we find uh also causality so things happen because other things happened um and that's fine It's not bad. It's good. Right? I was saying to someone the other day like if you want to not get run over in the street, it's very helpful.
Like if you you see the car coming at 80 km an hour and you say, "I'm one with the car."
Well, you you might be, you know, might be a little bit too much one with the car.
So beware. Sometimes historical dimension thinking, perceiving is very very helpful.
Okay, that's a car. This is human. Human is a little bit fragile. Car's moving fast.
I'm going to stay on the side of the road.
Very practical. It has to do with uh survival, has to do with our our evolution. It, you know, it's just how we navigate the world. that it's very useful.
Um, but we also may have noticed that it that it uh it can make us suffer. It makes us feel alone.
We don't really like to feel so separate uh so disconnected.
We also can kind of make the disconnection even worse if we if we think you know as I did when I was growing up. I I learned to think I am a semi-stable pattern of neural activity which is already kind of saying I'm my I don't know that was normal for me. I don't know about you, but that was like baseline, you know. So that means somehow I'm my brain or I'm I'm not even my brain. I'm like brain activity.
And so I already disconnected myself from my body.
I was already kind of disowning my body.
I am this. I'm not that.
So if there are feelings, it's okay. I can disregard them. They're not important.
just messy biology, forget about it.
And that all seemed to be fine until my mother died.
And then it it wasn't fine.
I I tried to rely on it. I tried to say, well, she's also a semi-stable pattern of neuron activity.
Brain activity has ceased, so she no longer exists.
Right? And it's all, you know, deterministic interactions of matter and energy since the big bang anyway. So none of it matters. There is no such thing as meaning. Meaning is an artifact of, you know, human creation and delusion.
Nothing means anything. It's all just, you know, random interactions of particles. So who cares?
It's what I was saying looking at my mother's body in the ICU.
I thought that made sense.
I didn't know. I didn't know better. Of course, it came with a lot of pride and arrogance and certainty.
I didn't know. It was like I was I was stabbing myself with these beliefs, with these notions. I was hurting myself. I was hurting my father who was standing next to me weeping, trying to help me connect.
St. He was like, "No, but the body, don't dismiss it. Yeah, she's she's dead, but but like that's, you know, this is the body that brought you into this world.
This is the body that held you, that showed you how to love.
Don't disregard it.
Don't say it's nothing. Don't say it's meaningless.
Don't be too sure.
But I was too sure.
And I uh so I numbed myself with these beliefs, with my scientific ideology for as long as I could. I I I kept all those feelings, all the grief suppressed until I came here.
And I came here thinking I, you know, I wasn't thinking I'm going to come here to resolve my grief, you know, or to to mourn my mother. I was thinking I'm coming here to learn about the ultimate nature of reality and to try to figure out is it scientific materialism or is it some wacky woo magical mysticism telepathy levitation I don't know altered states of consciousness that's why I thought I was coming but the more I look at it the more I realized that there was something in me that was bringing me here that I didn't even know out.
So historical dimension good but limited.
And so we also propose another way of looking which we can call the ultimate and this is where we get into problems because if I say ultimate dimension it al this this is the mistake I made. I thought, "Okay, that's the metaphysics."
You're saying, "This is ultimate. This is the ultimate nature of reality." I I just superimposed. I heard ultimate. I was like, "Okay, ultimate nature of reality. Got it. That's what we're looking for. Tell me about that. That's interesting.
That's the thing I want to know about."
So, beware. Maybe that's not what it is.
I'm also not sure but my my sense is more and more for me I find it more helpful to to kind of again refuse um the the urge towards metaphysics or ontology or description of the nature of reality. So rather I want to remind myself that there is something fundamentally unknowable, unsayable and mysterious.
And I want to keep it mysterious because mysterious is so much more interesting.
Like if I know it, if somebody told me and then I told you and we were like, "Okay, that's that's it. We're done." It's so boring.
Yeah. Then then what? Just walk around knowing it. I know it. I know it. I know it.
I can't think of anything worse.
So refuse, refuse to know. And instead we can understand these two uh teachings as um as uh two ways in which this ultimately completely mysterious whatever it is appears to us.
Right? So there's something about the way we are constituted which makes it such that there are at least two fundamentally different ways that this mysterious nature of whatever it is manifests to us or appears to us.
Okay. So there's one way of looking and thinking and seeing and being and walking around and not getting run over by cars in which we we perceive things as separate and outside of each other.
But there's another there's something about the way we are constituted which is such that we can also have the experience that things are interconnected and inside of each other.
Right? So I can look at the flower and I can see the sun.
I can see the sun in the flower. I mean I'm not making this up. This is not poetry. I can see the sun in the flower.
I can see the rain in the flower. And we're going to get into this question of imagination a little bit later because it's to some extent imagination.
But with training, something happens. Something begins to happen.
So we kind of train ourselves to look again.
And where do we look to find this this interconnected experience?
We look here.
You look into the historical dimension.
You look closely enough with the eyes of a scientist, right? You look deeply enough and what you find is only interconnection. It's only interdependence.
But remember not as a theory of everything but as an experience as a way of perceiving.
Okay.
So um we can also draw some parallels um between these two ways of thinking, ways of knowing, ways of speaking, ways of perceiving, ways of experiencing um which which may be partly helpful.
Um, so let's put the ultimate here.
I like to put the ultimate on the left because maybe the right hemisphere finds it easier to experience the world in terms of the ultimate.
And we put the historical on the right because the left hemisphere seems to like looking and knowing at things in terms of separateness, categorization so on.
Uh so there's a wonderful physicist some of you may have heard of called David Bow and he coined two words um which he called the implicate the implicate order and the explicate order and Tai would very often connect these. So in the explicate order everything is explicited it's outside everything is outside of everything else. Everything is parts and separate sort of pieces and in the implicate cord order everything is implicit in everything else. It's more like a kind of he saw it as like a holographic nature of reality. So you know you look into any part you find the whole.
We can also think about um Tai would sometimes use words from western philosophy. So for those of you who who are familiar with that, it may be helpful. He talked about the numinal and the phenomenal.
Um, and if it if these words are not familiar to you, don't worry about it.
Right? It's not like by understanding these words that you're going to understand the nature of your experience. It's more like if you already know these words then it might be help just some more signposts that can be helpful.
So phenomenal is just there are phenomena they are separate they are nameable categorizable and so on and and at the level of the numinal there is something else.
Um we can think about uh the temporal, we think in terms of time and maybe the eternal. I mean this is just like don't take it too seriously.
Okay.
Um but there's something it is possible again in the realm of experience to sort of experience eternity in the present moment.
Right? And how do we do that? We do that by again looking into the historical dimension. We see like okay the whole of the past has conditioned and given rise to this moment. So there's a sense in which the whole of the past is in this moment. It is the nature of this moment and this moment is the ground of the entirety of the future.
Right? So this this moment also has the whole future unfolding of whatever this is in it.
Okay. So again I don't say this as as a theoretical thing. I say this as something to to meditate upon to see if we can touch in our experience.
Um, we can also think of the spiritual and the mundane or the worldly.
Um, and I just like again this is not so important but may or may not be helpful. We can think about mythos and logos.
So these are two ways of speaking almost two ways of thinking and knowing and speaking that are fundamentally different and maybe seemingly incompatible but actually we've we've in our history we've used these two ways and we've we used to know when to use which one, right? So we use logos, you know, when we need to get something done, build a house, uh a hole, you know, whatever we think is important, but when somebody dies, right, you you don't stick in the realm of logos, it doesn't help. So we need to move in in the in matters of spiritual experience, in matters of of Yeah. uh deep spiritual experiences. You can't like to use the language of logos is very strange. It's pointless. It's it's not helpful. So there we have these two ways of knowing and speaking and um yeah any for anybody who's read in McGillchrist I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole I promise but maybe it's worth looking into the left hemisphere's way of bringing reality into being and the right hemisphere's way of bringing the world into being and they are Um, okay.
So, part of our practice is to learn how to navigate and which one to apply when, right?
just as you know when um that you know there are situations like I described when it would be very inappropriate to to sort of try to use the words of uh the historical truth.
There are other situations where it is inappropriate and I've already said that a little bit to to to use the language of the ultimate truth. It it could be spiritual bypass.
If you have somebody in front of you who has just experienced a loss or a trauma or you know is in grief or in is in immediate suffering to start you know going on at them about the ultimate truth and say oh everything's fine we all inter you know everything's interconnected don't be a victim it's it's not okay and we really need to check ourselves as a spiritual community maybe as the plumbumberish tradition.
Do we sometimes do this? Yes, we need to be very careful and we need to be very compassionate.
You know when somebody's in suffering there are so many ways we can help them.
Help them first of all just to be with the suffering to calm it, to soothe it, just to accept and you just say, "I know your suffering.
That's why I'm here for you.
I'm going to be with you in your suffering."
You don't immediately start bashing them over the head with the ultimate truth.
And and it's not that I don't think the ultimate truth is useful to help transcending suffering. Of course it is.
But first you got to calm it down. You got to soothe it. We got to, you know, I call it taking care of the mammal. We're also a mammal and you just got to take care of the mammal. The mammal needs care. The mammal needs love. The mammal needs reassurance, needs acceptance, needs trust, needs connection.
And maybe, you know, when we're a little bit calmer, we've regained our stability, then we can start looking at the ultimate truth because we also have to go there if we really want to free ourselves.
Okay.
So, let's go on.
[Music] [Music] So sometimes sometimes Tai would um do his uh do a little move that he called the Zoro, right? This this is this is Zoro. Okay, we need a new pen for Zoro.
So this this is what Tai would uh refer to as the wisdom of adaptation. It is the types all many different kinds of practice that help us to traverse this apparent space or this apparent distinction between the historical and the ultimate.
So these are practices ways of looking that help us to bridge the apparent divide.
Um, and one basic way that we've already been learning about and that we can apply again and again in so many ways is to look with the eyes of interbeing.
So into being is very skillful because it starts with it still has being in it.
Right? So we still we start with things that appear to exist and appear to be separate and we can say this is a flower. But then we start looking at it more closely and we discover everything else. Right? So it's um it's a it's a way of looking a way of investigating that helps us to move fluidly and we can go in both directions.
And then as we get more and more skillful with that, what we find, and sometimes Ty would draw this, is that the two are not two, right? The historical and the ultimate, they're more like two facets, two appearances of one reality.
So, um, again, don't get caught in the map.
Um the other day we spoke about or the other two days I think we spoke about um Buddhist psychology and this this beautiful model the circle eight layers of consciousness. You have the five sense consciousnesses. Mind consciousness which is the sixth manas or mentation the this the kind of self concept which is the seventh and store consciousness which is the field of all the seeds which is the eighth.
And I don't know if you if anybody noticed in uh Ruth's presentation yesterday uh she had more than five sensory consciousnesses which I which is very cool. Did you did you count? Yeah, somebody counted eight.
I also counted eight. There may be even more but but I think we had so the normal five like seeing you know visual auditory alactory gustatory smata sensory but then also uh propriceptive right the sense of you can close your eyes and you know where your limbs are in space interceptive which is actually probably multiple but it's all the different sensory pathways that tell us the kind of homeostatic condition of our body. So it it can be blood pressure, uh breathing rate, heart rate.
We have osmo sensors which is which measure the stress on our bones. Um and many many many heat, cold, pain, uh gentle touch, pin prick, many many many different sensory pathways which can be summarized with this interceptive. It's like the state of our body in the present moment. And then uh vstibular, right? That was the other one. So this the you can close your eyes and you also know where up and down is, right? We have this sense of of uh balance.
So So that's nice. We can uh we can we can take a list and make it into a longer list.
Um so instead of eight consciousnesses now we have 11 right because this five sense consciousnesses now plus three so we have eight sense consciousnesses and then mind consciousness manas store at least um and now we're going to see if we can get into some new territory we don't often get to teach this because usually, you know, all that store consciousness stuff we, you know, we sometimes do it on the last day, but since we already did it on the first day, that allows us to to play uh and to go a little bit further.
Um, so I haven't heard this taught since Tai taught it in I think last time I heard Tai teaching it was maybe 2006 in the neuroscience retreat.
Um, so we talk about modes and realms.
How much room do I need?
Uh, okay. Maybe I need a bit more room.
So these are Oh, is there a new marker by any chance? Sound team seem to be done.
Oh, these ones. Okay.
So these are modes um modes of uh cognition and um so again not the nature of reality nature of perception.
Thank you. Oh it's blue. Okay. I've already got a blue one. It's okay. Thank you. Some reason I like black. But blue is also good. That's my mind of discrimination.
All right. So, um, so we have modes of perception or modes of cognition and there are in the tradition we identify three.
And the first is direct.
And this is interesting because most of modern science says that this is not possible, right? We only have mediated, you know, perception mediated by imperfect sensory organs.
So this is interesting. True or not true? I don't know. But interesting.
Um so in the mode of direct perception um this is uh way in which we encounter reality with no discrimination, no uh and no speculation, no mental map making, theory making, no conceptual intervention, no language.
just direct and um if we think of the uh and maybe I'll just put it down here for reference, we have our nice model with the five or eight sensory consciousnesses, right? And the this is the sixth.
This is the seventh and this is the eighth and these are the five.
So if I say the the five, the sixth, the seventh or the eighth, you you know what I'm talking about.
So um the five sense consciousnesses or eight and according to the teaching have the possibility of being in the mode of direct perception when they are not collaborating with mind consciousness. So they operate directly with with store without the intervention of mind. So the intervention of mind is the naming, identifying, speculating, inferring and so on. Um and also without the intervention of the seventh.
Let's do a little experiment.
Quite often when we feel something, let's say you have a sensation in your body. I hope you have a sensation in your body right now and you find a sensation. It might be pleasant, might be unpleasant, it might be neutral, might be mixed. There might be a little bit of tension, a little bit of something somewhere.
Um, as you feel that, see if you can notice the way in which kind of unconsciously there's a feeling of this is my feeling.
That's the normal way of feeling.
And now as you are feeling that see if you can to whatever extent take away the notion or the assumption that it is my feeling and just experience it as feeling.
There is feeling So it's possible quite subtle quite difficult the the my feeling bit comes in very fast and you might touch for a moment the just just feeling and then very quickly it gets reappropriated in my feeling.
I like I don't like I want more. I want less. I don't want anything. I wanted an ice cream.
I didn't order this. You know, I ordered French fries.
You brought me a sandwich. You know, we we we we we have all kinds of things that that that follow on from this my.
Once you have my, you have a whole chain of confusion.
So, it's very interesting to experiment with can I feel just feeling without appropriation.
So this might be a kind of uh beginning of experience of of this possibility of direct perception. Usually it's very brief mind consciousness. The sixth also can perceive in the mode of direct perception but it's very rare, very difficult and probably takes a lot of training.
So it's very difficult for mind to perceive without mental elaboration and um so this would be mind also without language a little bit tricky but possible.
Um so mind when it intervenes it also discriminates it says it names very quickly. It's very hard. You may like to try as well. You walk around, try to look and see and feel without naming, without identifying.
Tricky, but possible.
But mind comes very quickly and says this is a tree. Maybe even which kind of tree, this is a nice tree, this is not a nice tree, I like this tree, I don't like this tree. All kinds of things start happening. And once we identify something as say flower, you also have the implicit statement of this is not a cloud, right? Flower is flower, cloud is cloud. These are different. That's mind discriminating, chopping reality and experience into pieces with the sword of discrimination.
So uh this is the first mode of perception. Then we have the mode of inference also deduction and induction.
Um and uh this is the mind that tells you when you see smoke say oh there must be a fire. Right? Right? So you don't see the fire, you see the smoke and your mind sees fire.
You you have inferred from smoke the presence of fire. And we also do this all the time and we do it very rapidly without noticing that we're doing it.
Um there are two ways uh that we can use this mind of inference. It's either alone or collectively.
So in the research community, we may be doing kind of collective inference. I make an inference, you make an inference, we check, we compare, we say, "Okay, we agree and and we and we proceed." Again, I'm not not necessarily bad like this is this is good. And most I would say most of scientific research happens with this mind, the mind of investigation, reasoning, inference, deduction.
Um, and really it only has access to the historical dimension, this mind.
But with some care it might actually help us help to lead us to the ultimate dimension. Okay. So even at the beginning looking with the eyes of interbeing is a kind of inference or deduction. I once asked Tai this question and it because it kind of annoyed me and I was a bit confused. You know you talk about eating meditation.
You you true the piece of carrot and you see the field where it was planted and you see the stars and the moon and the sun and the wind and the rain and the farmers and the and I was like but isn't that just my imagination? Right? Aren't I just thinking and I have to know those things in advance, right? I have to know about carrots and what they looked like in a field and how they were planted and Right. Right. So I'm I'm kind of using knowledge and I what I wanted to know is that is there some mystical state of using the eyes of interbeing where you just see boom no knowledge no inference no deduction.
The form of the question I asked Tai was like this. I because Tai used to sometimes use the example of an orange tree. They say when you see the orange, you see the tree.
You look deeply into the orange and you see the tree and you see the the blossom orange blossom in the spring.
So my question to Tai was, what if you've never seen an orange tree?
Right? If you've never seen an orange tree and you look deeply into an orange, do you still see an orange tree?
I wanted to know is there magic basically. Do you look at it?
You know, omniscience because that would be kind of cool. You look at things and just know I see your true nature.
And I wanted to know. So I asked, "Hey, is it this, you know, are you just saying we're going to use things we already know about orange trees? And this only works if you've seen orange trees in books, in photos, in documentaries, in reality, and then you look deeply and you use your memory and your knowledge. Or is it magical, mystical, kapow?
So, what do you think Tai said?
He actually said, "Keep practicing.
make of that what you will.
So in a in one sense all this business of meditating that we're doing and all the practices that we're doing all this interconnected ecology of practices that we offer you in the container of a retreat is to learn to remove the mind of discrimination.
Not to remove forever and never pick it up again. But it's like if if it's all if the sword of discrimination is always in our hand, then all we get is pieces, right? We just constantly cutting reality into pieces and we cut ourselves.
So, we have to know when to put it down.
Right? The mind of uh discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing, but let's not make it so that it's involuntary or so that it's kind of a compulsion. We have to be able to have the option to put it down.
I find that worth doing a lot of walking meditation for and breathing and all the other things. Not that we're instrumentalizing meditation, by the way.
Um we have the third mode of cognition which is fallacy.
So um this is the mode of cognition of of the seventh consciousness of manass because it already assumes the existence of separate selves. It sees everything in terms of separate selves and it's kind of always wrong. Not necessarily useless but always wrong.
Um, and it can be wrong direct or it can be wrong inference.
So it's, you know, we have intuition, right? And and sometimes we, oh, you got to trust your gut. Trust your intuition.
Intuition can be wrong.
It can also be right.
But be careful. Just because you have a gut feeling doesn't make it true.
Doesn't make it correct. If you take your gut feeling and then look at it with the eyes of self or through the eyes of self, you may end up being very wrong.
So be careful. But intuition can also be trained.
Um, manas the seventh consciousness uh is this instinctive um unconscious uh identification with the body primarily with this is me, this is mine, my my body, my feelings, my thoughts, my perceptions, my consciousness.
It sees things in the in the terms of uh self delusion, self-love.
So, it's basically like this self is more important. I'm going to care about this one more even if I hate it, right?
We can have self-loathing.
Do we need a new battery?
We can have self-loathing and self-love at the same time. If you haven't noticed, uh it it has self view. It sees everything in terms of self. Not only itself, but everybody else and everything else.
And it has self conceit, which is basically like look after number one, right? take care of this first. This is more important.
Um, and we learned all the other characteristics, right? It it it always pleasure seeking, pain avoiding, ignoring the dangers of pleasure seeking, ignoring the goodness of suffering and ignoring the law of medit moderation.
And um, it doesn't know how to use the eyes of interbeing.
And it doesn't uh and it sees in terms of permanence. It it struggles with impermanence.
So it has an image of reality which is conditioned by this idea of self, this very instinctive unconscious idea of self.
Um, so if you find yourself thinking in terms of permanence, in terms of duality, right, or in terms of self, then it's it's very nice because you can kind of go, oh, that's automatically wrong.
So it kind of like that's I think Sister Langim was really helping us with that on the very first day. It's a very quick way to identify unhelpful thinking. So again, they're just signposts, but they are signposts that can help us discard certain paths of investigation or questions very quickly. We don't have to waste our time.
And um we're going to get to imagination, I promised, and visualization.
And this is this is very interesting because Manass needs us to use imagination and visualization to help it let go of this cutting and discriminating and seeing things in terms of self.
So these are the three modes. And then there are three realms. And here now we're really going to get in trouble because when I say three realms of perception, it really sounds like metaphysics.
It really sounds like like realm like as in nature of reality, but it is a realm of perception.
So there are we perceive in these three in terms of three realms.
And the first is suchness.
So again, Tai here was borrowing from western philosophy and from from Kant.
This is the the thing in itself. That's the thing in itself. And that means somehow there is a there is a somethingness there is an essence of things which is not their appearance.
Right? Uh water this is just a metaphor. Okay? Be careful with this one too. Water can appear as a snowflake or as a hailstone or as a raindrop or as mist.
Different faces, different appearances, different names. The substance is the same just a metaphor but maybe useful. So um in the realm of suchness uh when we perceive in the mode of suchness there is no duration, no time and no space.
This is tricky because we usually see in terms of time and space. And what we learn from the tradition is that it is the mind that paints time and space onto uh this kind of point instant perception and it happens so quickly that we don't notice the point instant direct perception.
So um remember the the the sense consciousness is operating with store directly without the intervention of mind. They work in this mode of direct perception and what and in the mode of direct perception what they perceive is suchness.
But then mind intervenes very quickly and adds our assumptions of space and time.
And so we we the mode of direct perception in the realm of suchness is mostly very brief. And we need to train our mind because the mind can operate in the direct mode and can perceive suchness as well. But it takes a lot of training.
Takes training not to paint space and time.
And um but maybe some of quantum physics is sort of pointing in this direction as well.
um that there there appear to be phenomena which are somewhat non non-local such as entanglement and maybe even non-temporal um quantum erasers and all kind there's all kinds of things where time no longer seems to apply in the usual sense that events in the future seem to be able to condition events in the present or in the past and it's seemingly very confusing if we believe rigidly in time and space. If we can suspend those beliefs, well, you know, the maths tells us some interesting things.
Um, but even that quantum physics is just a model. So, we shouldn't get attached to that either.
Uh, where are we? The realms. Yes, suchness. Then we have the realm of representations. So I have to go a little bit quickly because um there's a lot of this stuff representations.
So um this is mostly where we where we hang out.
Um and it's maybe the realm of predictive coding. We heard from from Mark the other day about predictive processing.
Um that the mind sees in terms of what it already knows.
It makes predictions based on past experiences as a way to optimize and to reduce glucose expenditure basically.
So it's cheaper for the mind to give you the apple of experience than to actually check and experience this apple of the present moment.
And but the result of that is there's it comes at a cost because the apple of experience is kind of washed out. It's kind of gray. It's kind of I already know. It's the apple I already know.
It's boring.
Whereas the apple of this moment is totally unknown.
is the mystery. So if we only perceive in the mode of mental constructions and representations in the realm well the mode of inference and fallacy which gives access to the realm of representations then we only have it's like a hall of mirrors.
It's the matrix. We're living in the matrix and we'd like to exit the matrix.
Maybe some people like to stay.
Um, so we have our ideas about the nature of reality and then we experience reality in terms of those ideas. So you might have noticed uh that if you love somebody, you might have an idea about them and you might be very attached to that idea. You have an or you build an image of them and you fall in love with the image, right? Maybe love at first sight and it all seems good and then you live with them, right? And then after a while, like hang on, that's not what I signed up for. Where's that perfect image that I constructed?
You fell in love with an image, but we want to fall in love with reality.
So, we need to be very careful of superimposing the realm of representations on our experience or or you know, dwelling in the realm of representations.
And it's hard because so much of our collective kind of consensus reality is built out of these mental constructions representations and particularly language right and we use language a lot. We have names and sometimes we get identified with our name and then we have identity and we get identified with our identity. I am a scientist right?
I am from this country, from this town.
I support this football team.
Identity a little bit dangerous. And and we start to perceive the world in those terms. We may also have ideas and theories about uh the nature of reality like the nature of elementary particles, atoms, electrons.
They're ideas. And then you look at reality through the lens of those ideas.
And maybe you only find confirmation of those ideas, right? But you what you start to see is the ideas, not the reality because you don't know that the lenses have got into your way of perceiving.
Um, so we see it's not that it's totally wrong, right? But we only see an aspect of reality, not the whole of reality.
And I think as good scientists, we're probably interested in seeing reality.
We have a third realm, which is the realm of mere images.
And this is um also uh imagination dreams.
So experiences that we've had that fall into store as a seed.
Uh let's say you went to the zoo and you saw an elephant, right? And in the night you dream of an elephant.
So in the night, Manas goes goes wandering around and goes for a visit into store and it's like self-service. It's like it selects the image of an elephant, presents it to you and you see an elephant but it's a mere image. It's not an elephant.
It's the image of an elephant.
And uh we may also be perceiving reality in terms of mere images sometimes and also not necessarily bad like dreams and imagination are wonderful and important if both for scientists and artists.
We need our imagination and we're going to get to it.
Um okay, we could spend a lot more time.
There's a lot more to say here, but let's just move on. There are also three.
I think I need a bit more space.
Three moral natures.
I know you might react because I said moral.
Just, you know, just notice it. Breathe.
It'll be okay.
So, these are wholesome and yes, you guessed it, unh wholesome and indeterminate.
So um it's not moral as in absolutely good or bad right that in in according to this teaching there is nothing absolutely good or bad it is our mind that makes it so it is our mind that makes it either helpful or unhelpful wholesome or unh wholesome.
So let's see um if we can sort of tie some of this together.
We have the five or eight sense consciousnesses.
We have the mind consciousness the sixth manas seventh and we have store the eighth.
So let's start with store consciousness.
Store consciousness in a sense is seen as um it's seen as as nature. So again be careful because this really starts to sound like metaphysics.
It is uh it's very hard to say this in any way that doesn't sound like metaphysics.
just just take it and be careful. Um it's it's the field of all potentials.
It is not manifest. It is not accessible to mind consciousness. It is not something that we can perceive directly.
Except maybe we can but um usually not.
I'm sorry. I know I'm not making it easy but it isn't easy. But anyway, so its mode of operation is is sort of spontaneous.
Uh it just does things and in that sense it is morally indeterminate. It's not good or bad. It's just operating spontaneously. It is the field of all nature and but it is also unveiled. It sees things as they are. It is completely unobstructed by conceptual categories or mentation, imagination, speculation, inference, deduction or any of those things. It just operates and it's um so it's its mode of operation or it its moral nature is indeterminate.
Okay, not good, not bad.
uh what it its mode of of perception is direct and the field of of perception or the realm of perception is suchness. So in the mode of direct perception, it experiences things exactly as they are and it is morally indeterminate and it is uh uh indeterminate unveiled. No delusion, no discrimination. Then we have the seventh manas which we know is in a sense it's part of store. It's arisen from store but it has it's it's come it's born from seeds of delusion in store seeds of the belief in a separate self and based on that belief it reaches down into store and identifies and holds on to a part of store. It's also called the lover. It reaches down says I love you and what does it love? It loves itself and it says this is me.
But its moral nature is also indeterminate, right? It's not good or bad. It's just spontaneously doing its thing. That's just how it operates. It's not right or wrong. It's just how it is. It's indeterminate, but it's veiled.
Veiled by the belief in a separate self.
And this is indeterminate unveiled.
Okay, that's the eighth. The seventh is indeterminate morally but veiled. So it has some delusion in it and all it has access to in terms of the mode of perception is fallacy. It seems it sees everything in terms of fallacy and as a result it only has access to the realm of representations.
Okay? Because of the delusion of self, it sees in terms of self which is not the true nature of things. Only sees that.
Then we have then it gets more interesting. We have let's go to the fifth the five or eight sense consciousnesses.
They can operate either with or without mind. when they operate without mind they are in the mode of direct perception but it's not exactly the same as the direct perception of the direct perception of the sense consciousness is I would say is in the is is um direct but uh in the in the realm of phenomena so it's direct phenomenal which means point instant.
Um yes. So it it it still sees in terms of things but without um mental confabulation.
Okay. So it's direct but in in the realm of phenomena. So maybe in the historical dimension and the senses operate like this without the intervention of mind and as as such. Yeah. So they they they have access because their mode of perception is direct when mind is not involved.
So what they have access to is suchness but it is the phenomenal suchness.
So the suchness of phenomena, right? And and store consciousness also has access to the realm of suchness, but it is both phenomenal and it can touch the phenomenal suchness and the numinal.
Phenomenal and numinal.
Okay. If any of this is not clear, you have to uh wait about 18 months and you can read the book.
Um and and just to be clear, I didn't make any of this up. I got this straight from Tai, including this diagram. Okay?
So there's a So it might be better. You can also watch the video of Tai doing the same thing and he'll do it a lot better.
Um so the thing about the five sense consciousness is although their mode of perception can be direct when mind is not involved and so they have access to phenomenal suchness their moral nature can be wholesome unh wholesome or indeterminate.
So what does that mean? Um when they operate without the intervention of mind consciousness, it is indeterminate. They are it's just what it is. With mind consciousness, basically um it kind of depends what you're looking at, right? Whether it's wholesome or unh wholesome and what you make of it with your mind.
So, um, it's not only what you're looking at, but the way of looking at it and what you think about it and whether you get addicted to it or attached to it, whether you hate it, whether you love it, what your mind, what stories your mind makes up about it. And it can either be and wholesome wholesome and wholesome unh wholesome is not also moral is a bit misleading because it sounds like it's some kind of absolute like there are good things and there are bad things. That's not really the lens.
The lens here is is it helpful or unhelpful.
So this question of the mind operating with the five sense consciousnesses in is in a sense dealt with in the five mindfulness trainings and particularly the fifth mindfulness training which some of you received this morning which is about what we choose to consume whether it is helpful or unhelpful beneficial or unbeneficial.
Then we have mind the sixth consciousness and the realm the of activity of the sixth is is the largest because it can operate in the mode of direct perception although it is rare and it takes training.
It can operate in the mode of inference and deduction which is what we usually do. It can also operate in the mode of fallacy. wrong inference or wrong intuition.
Um, and it does have access to suchness, although it is also somewhat rare. It has access obviously to the realm of representations because that's usually where it hangs out. And it has access to the realm of m images. We can imagine things and visualize things. And that's very cool.
And it also can be wholesome, unh wholesome or indeterminate. So it's it's its realm of activity is the greatest. It has access to everything.
But mostly we use it in the mode of inference, in the realm of representation and well wholesome, unh wholesome, I don't know. That's up to you.
So, does that help?
I don't know. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just makes it worse, right? Could just confuse you.
So, um let's enjoy sound of the bell.
[Music] So, we have to treat all of this with a little bit of care because as I've said before and I will keep on saying it, it does start to look a little bit like a description of the nature of reality.
But remember, it is only intended as a map to help us navigate the problem of suffering in our experience as it arises. So it can maybe sometimes help us to know where we are and what we're up to and what's operating and maybe how to practice to move from one way of perceiving to another way of perceiving.
Um there's so much more we could say but in the uh let's just talk about imagination.
So Tai Tai said something very interesting which is that we need we need our imagination and we need our visualization um to help manas the seventh consciousness to to let go to help it start to make this trip into the uh to to to help it to let go of seeing things in terms of separateness seeing things in terms of self.
So what can we do?
It's interesting because in theory like imagination is in the realm of mere images. It's supposed to be sort of not real, right? But that's actually a habit of thought that arises on the basis of scientific materialism.
Okay? Because we have a tendency to think that this is real, right? Reality is matter. It is external. It is, you know, physical and temporal.
But that's just an assumption.
In the realm of experience, why is an image not real?
It's your experience. It's in the present moment. It's part of experience.
So it isn't not real.
That's just a a habit. It's a hangover of uh scientific materialism.
So um this is what confused me when I asked Tai the question about if you've never seen an orange tree, can you you look at an orange, can you see the tree?
And then Tai said, "Keep practicing."
So I asked the question unconsciously in terms of scientific materialism because I thought there is an orange now. It came from a tree then somewhere which I may or may not have seen but it is separately existent right and not accessible to my mind unless I'm looking straight at it.
Are you sure?
Right. If if it's something more like store consciousness where everything is the arising of the manifesting of seeds from the ground of store manifesting simultaneously in terms of subject and object of perception, right? Then those seeds at the level of store are not in space. And they're not in time. They're not subject to birth or death, creation or destruction.
It is always there potential.
So what if mind could just reach directly into store with imagination?
Sometimes we appear to be there is there are two kinds of uh um mere image. One is with substance and one is without substance. This is in the teaching. So with substance is based on a thing that we have seen and experienced in waking normal waking consciousness. And without substance is seems to be a kind of creation of the mind. So let's say you see in your dream a flying elephant.
You've combined two images and you've made a new image. And of obviously a lot of art and literature is is wonderful and beautiful because we can seemingly create new things with our imagination. I also want to say the English language is a little bit um unhelpful in this realm because it gives us only visualization because we are a little bit obsessed with seeing and we don't have a word for the same thing but with hearing. So I I call it aization and this is what composers do. You hear things in this realm.
But if you're a dancer, maybe you have a kinesthetization, right? Or proprioceptization in motion.
It's also a kind of imagination, but it's not an image. It's a maybe a felt sense. Then you can imagine the felt sense of moving through that sequence.
Right? If you're a chef, you have gustatorization.
You could probably find a better word, but it's like uh you can you can imagine before you've made it like a new combination of ingredients.
If you're a perfume, you can do it with with smells. Or if you're if you work with essential oils, you can imagine new combinations of essential oils. You can smell them before you've smelled them.
It's kind of wild.
al factorization, right? So maybe we need some new words.
Um, obviously artists make use of imagination a lot, but I think scientists do too, right? Because there's many many things that we study in science that we can't see directly.
If you're if you're studying um particle physics, most of what you study you can never see or touch, right? But you use imagination to visualize it and then imagine the interactions and and that is wonderful and necessary.
Um in the practice as a yogi or as a meditator, we also make use of visualization. We do it a lot.
And maybe we are learning to communicate more directly with this ocean of potential.
So let's say we're going to go for walking meditation.
You can visualize and you can walk with your mother's feet.
You can say And yeah, it's a little bit of visualization, but it becomes very real.
So we use our visualization, our imagination to shatter the illusion of our separateness.
You can invite your mother, your father, all your ancestors, your teachers.
You walk as a multitude.
This is something you can experience. So it's yes a little bit imagination but you start to practice it becomes very real. something you can feel and it helps manas to let go and there's many many many such practices um in the uh Mahayana Buddhist literature there are some sutras that go very far into this the avatam saka sutra the Lotus sutra they are really trippy you know It's like you sit on the lotus flower of a thousand petals and in each petal there's another flower of a thousand petals and in each petal of the thousand petals there's another you know it's like you know fractal madness.
So it's partly visualization but it's visualization which gives us access gives us freedom from the apparent uh solidity and separateness of things that that manas perceives in terms of.
So I had trouble when I first encountered this business of seeds and store because I immediately and I think I said this the other day I went about trying to locate it saying okay fine so if you're saying that's the ultimate nature of reality then where is it how can I touch it can we measure it wrong questions so maybe a better thought is like how can I how can I leave it alone how can I not grasp it with my concepts It makes us as teachers a little bit hesitant to say anything about it because whatever we say we know is not it.
Nevertheless, I'm going to say something and maybe it's helpful, maybe it's not.
So I'm I'm a musician and I sometimes like to think in terms of music. So, I could take a piece of music that I love, let's say, you know, a Mozart string quintet, and you could choose a song that you like or, you know, something that means something to you. And you ask yourself, um, so let's take this or maybe something more universal like, I don't know, uh, Beethoven's fifth symphony. Does everybody know that? D and so on. Right? You know that one.
Um, between performances, where is it?
Okay, so the Berlin Filarmonic just played it. Vienna Filmonic is going to play it next week. Where is it now?
Does it exist?
Does it not exist?
Collective consciousness.
Is it in collective consciousness?
Partly before wrote it.
Where was it?
Did it exist?
Did it not exist?
Right?
Maybe the terms of the question are misleading because we tend to think in terms of existence or non-existence.
But let's just suppose that for the sake of argument there was a big bang.
I don't know if there was or not, right?
And I think astrophysicists are actually increasingly unsure.
There was a time when that was the consensus. You know, still somewhat the consensus, but there are some competing theories, competing interpretations of the observations. It's not necessarily clear, but let's suppose that there was there's a big bang which implies space, time, and I would say consciousness. Not everybody would agree, but let's say you have space, time, and consciousness.
So, you forget about the big bang.
Doesn't matter.
Once you have space, time and consciousness, all kinds of things are possible, right? Including the note B flat, right? The note B flat is suddenly a possible vibration of space, right? The note B flat including all its harmonics. B flat an octave above, two octaves above, three octaves above, an octave and a fifth, right? an octave and a two octaves and a third and a fifth and a minor 7th and so on. Right? All the harmonics are possible vibrations of a of a of a space of air or matter or string or whatever it might be.
Once once you have space, time and consciousness, that frequency is possible. Double that frequency is possible, triple that frequency as possible. They're all possible.
So by extension Beethoven's fifth symphony is possible right once you have spacetime and conscious it's possible it's possible to assemble those frequencies in that order in with those harmonies with those tambas it is possible.
So what if there is a space of all the possible possibles, right? Including pieces of music, including human beings, including feelings, including mountains and galaxies and dew drops. All the possible possibles are possible, right? Some of them are manifest.
They're all possible.
and as possible possibles.
Let's come back to Beethoven's fifth between the two performances between Berlin Phil and Vienna.
Where is it?
Nobody's playing it. Maybe nobody even playing a recording. That's probably quite unusual these days, but say all the CD players, all the, you know, suddenly maybe Spotify deletes it accidentally, goes off all the playlist, nobody's playing it, nobody's listening to it.
Where is it?
Did it disappear? Did it go away? No, it's still possible.
It's just not manifest, but it's possible. It didn't die. Didn't go away.
Because the possible, the potential cannot be destroyed. Nobody can touch it.
Ty used to use the example of a flame.
He would light a match and then the match would go out.
But when the flame is extinguished, are flames no longer possible?
Is that the end of all flames? No.
They're still possible. They're just not manifest.
Right? But if you're a chemist, you know very well that a flame is just a kind of dynamical system, right? Of some kind of fuel with oxygen combusting in an exothermic reaction.
The kind of dynamic exothermic reaction that draws in the oxygen it needs to to continue.
It's it's a dynamical system and as a dynamical system it is always possible.
So in the realm of the possible nothing is created nothing is destroyed.
There is no time, no locality, no coming or going.
No same, no different.
Just all the possible possible possibles all simultaneously sort of vibrating. Maybe it's a realm of frequency.
A field. We like to think about fields.
Usually we think of physical fields. So fields instantiated in space and time.
So like an electromagnetic field or a field of charge or a field of magnetic charge.
And then we have quantum fields which are not physical fields, right? They're fields of probability which may be a little bit closer.
This is a field of all the fields, not in space, not in time.
It really sounds like metaphysics. This is why I should keep my mouth shut.
So, I just say it uh in the hope that it might point in the direction of a of a kind of experience of freedom of non-fear because you and I are like Beethoven's fifth symphony.
As soon as there was spaceime and consciousness, we were also possible and we were always possible. We will always be possible and there is no separate we right so possible also in all our multiple interactions because maybe it's in the interactions that are more the space of the possible than the apparent separate entities which Manis invents.
So you can even think of the possible as being in the in what lies between us, the realm of relationships.
And what is Beethoven's fifth symphony if not a complex of relationships of sound.
It's not really an entity. It's not a thing. It's also a relationship of your consciousness to it.
Without the listener, there's no symphony.
So I just propose this as a as a an instrument of imagination.
Okay? I'm not describing reality.
I'm just saying we can use our imagination to kind of visualize this vast space.
Sometimes it one point I I visualized it as a giant it's like a giant cathedral with all these tuning forks hanging all possible frequencies and life is a kind of dance brushing against all these different tuning forks and they resonate and they cause each other to resonate and the patterns of resonance ripple out and interact. And there's other resonances and dances happening at the same time. And they all and it's this vast music of us not subject to birth and death always possible.
I wrote something down here. I have no idea what it says.
Okay, that's a sign enough.
So, let's not take any of this too seriously. Let's not hold on to it too tight. Let's not make more theories out of it. Even though we love making theories and any theories we appear to have, you can just also let those go too.
And I invite you to see what you can experience.
How maybe you can use some of these notions to also challenge the categories of experience that appear to you in the mind and the questions that arise based on those categories. As soon as you think, oh, I need to ask brother Fablin a question.
Check.
Right? Are you thinking in terms of self?
Are you thinking in terms of permanence?
Right? Are you thinking in terms of separateness? Are you thinking in terms of dualism?
You do a quick check and like, oh yeah, okay, I don't need to ask.
We'll save a lot of time.
Let's enjoy three sounds of the bell.
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
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