Lankavatara 2:IX:1

*transcript generated by AI

Let’s turn to this.

I’m going to introduce this section with the opening paragraph.

There’s a lot in here and we’ll just take up a little bit so that we can at least get started on 2.9.

So it says, again, Mahamati asked the Buddha saying, the Bhagavan speaks of citta, manas and vijnana, five dharmas and self-nature characteristics, all practices of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, seeing one’s own mind as equal and that objective realms are not manifested through the sequential compositing of dharmas.

All these are said to be characteristics of reality.

All Buddhas call this mind.

So there’s a list there that I think is really critically important for us to understand because it’s naming the things that we’ll be investigating.

The first section or the first list is citta, manas and vijnana.

Citta is like the mind stream as a whole.

That’s why I don’t like translating it into English again as mind or as anything else because they carry Western philosophical and psychological connotations.

So citta is the whole mind stream, all layers of consciousness, all conscious experience, the so-called flow of mind with all of its parts.

In a certain way, it’s kind of synonymous with the alaya vijnana and the storehouse consciousness.

There’s a very close similarity but I would say that citta is inclusive of that but not restricted to that.

So the mind stream is like the capacity for seeding and perfuming to be happening where the storehouse consciousness holds the perfume.

So citta is like the capacity for perfuming and seeding, which is distinct from the kind of the warehouse that holds the perfumes.

The manas, that’s your selfing, that’s the one that stitches together all the experience.

I don’t know why Red Pine translated it as will, it doesn’t really have much to do with will.

It has to do with taking the combination of perfume and seed and then having a subjective experience to it and taking ownership of it.

So that’s what manas does.

Manas gives us ownership over the combined results of the seed and the perfume so that we have an experience of selfing stitched together over time.

And vijnana is your discursive thought processes.

It is the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind.

It’s all of your discriminating faculties.

Most particularly thought and emotion in this context but it does include the idea that thought and emotion are directly related to what we experience through our five senses plus what we’re selfing through the perfuming.

So remember all of these are interlocked and kind of like this practical menagerie of soup.

It’s not like clean layers and lines of things handing off to each other in sequential logic.

It’s just like a soup, like a river which means a medical utility.

Everyone okay with those chitta, manas and vijnana definitions?

Next is five dharmas and I love this list.

This is like one of my favorites because it gives us a quick hit into our direct experience.

So the first one is nimitta or perceptual appearance.

So this is like in other places this is translated as a characteristic.

So it’s like something is perceived pre-language, pre-naming, pre-whatever.

There’s a direct experience of something being perceived and this is nimitta.

Now nimitta in our tradition has lots of different words or different meanings.

Like when we do jhanas we take up a nimitta which is a mental object which takes our consciousness into a very subtle realm as we leave our primary sense organs and move entirely into a mind experience.

And the nimitta can be like a ball of light or it can be a visualization of a candle or it can be whatever.

But here it just means anything which is perceived.

Then the next thing that happens in the dharma soup here is that there is a language name, nama.

So nimitta or perceptual appearance is given a descriptive container through language.

There’s a layer of abstraction that happens with language.

And then the kalpa happens.

The kalpa is like reifying discrimination.

It’s the one that says oh that’s a buddha statue.

It’s the process of taking that name form abstraction that was given to that direct experience and making it a thing.

And it’s easy to do with certain things out there.

That’s a cushion.

Sometimes it’s a little bit harder to do when we look at our internal space but it’s the same thing when we go oh that is sadness.

That’s the kalpa.

That’s reifying discrimination.

That’s taking an experience giving it language and turning it into a thing.

Kalpa is in like the same spelling as like the long period of time.

Oh v-kalpa.

V-I-K-A-L-P-A.

V-kalpa.

Okay.

And I don’t believe that that kalpa is the same root as kalpa.

All right.

The next one is samjna.

S-A-M-J-N-A.

And this is if you look it up it’ll be a little bit weird because it has a lot of different meanings in buddhism.

The Yogacharins and especially the Lankavatara use it very specifically for non-dual recognition.

Okay.

So it’s the capacity.

It’s the dharma we have.

The capacity we have to recognize that the name form that we give the perceptual object co-create each other.

And that the reifying discrimination that turns that into a thing co-creates each other.

So we’re recognizing that all of this is co-creating.

We have direct knowledge of this co-creative process.

And then we recognize the non-dual nature of a mind-only experience.

That’s samjna.

I would prefer to say Chinese.

Okay.

And then we have jneya, ruru in Chinese.

And this is gnosis of suchness.

This is the direct knowledge of suchness.

So this is no longer a it’s kind of like in Tibetan where you have a watcher that would be like your samjna.

This is the one who can like see through the experience that happening.

But you experience it as a watcher, as a separate process.

And then you get into pure Rigpa, pristine awareness.

And then you have jneya, which is just direct knowledge.

You don’t need to do a separate intellectual process to break it down into a non-dual understanding.

There’s no active watcher present that’s doing a non-dual recognition.

It’s just direct gnosis of interpenetrating co-arising.

Okay.

And so this, I think, just is a beautiful little subset of like the faculties that we have online in our process.

And that’ll be… What was the term?

Can we do a recap?

Sorry.

Yeah.

Ruru is J-N-E-Y-A, if you want to look up the Sanskrit.

J-N-E-Y-A.

Gnosis of suchness.

That’s how I’m calling it in English.

And what is this collection of five again, like referred to?

It’s called the five dharmas.

Five dharmas.

So if you want to play for the week, which I strongly encourage you to do, hopefully you all spend at least some time on the cushion because that’s cool and fun and whatever.

But frankly, I don’t really care.

I would much rather you walk through your day having moments of direct perception, just abstaining from giving something a name for just like two fricking seconds, if you can.

And just have a moment where like that thing…

Right.

And then watch yourself give it a name and watch how that name confines it into a certain structure and box and it becomes that thing.

And in a way kind of may or may not lose its mystery, but then watch yourself be able to then reprocess that so that you can not be trapped in any of it, but also not lose any of those faculties.

That’s the beautiful part of zheng zhi is that you get to watch yourself put a nimitta and a name and reify it without getting caught up in it.

You have right knowledge of the thing, right?

You have non-dual recognition actively functioning.

So just try it.

Stub your toe, have a moment and just feel it before you start thinking about whether or not you pulled your toenail off or why so-and-so left the thing there, or how you could be so stupid to kick a door you walk through every day or all the languaging that happens.

Just see if you can stay on for just like two seconds in the direct experience of that pain.

Watch yourself give it a name.

Watch yourself give it a stubbed toe.

Watch yourself worry about whether or not it’s broken.

Watch the conceptual proliferation start and then recognize how that’s actually a non-dual conscious experience.

One of those a day is way better than an hour on the cushion daydreaming.

But that is the point of being on the cushion, right?

I mean, if you do remember this, well, creating space, it does create space to block the inertia.

And it also is your toe.

There’s a gap between your reaction because you’re training your mind to have that space.

Yeah, it absolutely has that impact.

And you can do this investigation on your cushion too.

You can take this perspective into sensation arising in the body, labeling it as a problem, making a thing out of it, watching yourself get uncomfortable, seeing through it, dropping it.

That’s falling away completely so that you’re just in the experience, coming out of that to create a new perception, right?

So you can use this whole schema as a way of watching your mind in meditation, which will also produce the beautiful result that Roland’s talking about, about giving you more space.

So I’m never going to tell you not to sit, but I’m also going to tell you that I’d rather have you meditate while you’re walking around.

Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, even being as that, like I was, whatever podcast or whatever it happened to be, or audio book, I don’t remember where I bought it from, but it was, if you were reminded, just in a discussion between you and I, if you take a look at the amount of time, you know, even if you sit an hour a day, that’s, well, it’s one 24th of your day.

The vast, and I don’t know if everybody sits an hour a day, you know, it’s in the grand scheme of things, the time we spend on the cushion is a very, very small part compared to the rest of the day.

So if you’re only doing the Zen thing when you’re on the cushion, you’re not doing the Zen thing, like most of your life, you’re most of the, you know, most of the day, it has to carry over.

And then, you know, I use this as like my, this is my getaway.

This is my like, you know, preparation in the morning and relaxation in the evening.

And then it’s time to like, do exactly kind of what Robin said, like, Oh, hey, I’m sitting, leg is killing me.

But is it though?

Is that actually pain?

Does it really hurt that bad?

Is it going to be better if I move it?

It probably won’t.

So let’s just sit here and see what and then you get to play that mental gymnastics of like, you know, let’s see if we can do it.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Find out the difference between what?

Now find out the difference between when it works and when it doesn’t.

Expand them.

Well, that would be the next step.

Because if sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, you can identify the difference between the two, then you can become conscientious about how you train yourself so that it works more often than it doesn’t.

Oh, as far as the not moving when it hurts?

Yeah.

Okay.

Because if sometimes it works, then why can’t it work all the time?

What should work all the time?

I think the times that it doesn’t work, you’re just, I don’t know, the nicest way.

I’m guilty of it probably more than anybody because I have short little stubby, terrible knees.

Just a lack of discipline is what I would call that personally.

Could be, but I can hear that you’re a conjection.

So your challenge is to investigate and come up with what makes the difference.

Precisely in the mechanism of your consciousness, what makes the difference?

What’s the button that you push when it works?

And what’s the button you forget to push when it doesn’t?

That’s the inquiry.

Or what buttons do you got to stop pushing?

I said, or what buttons do you have to stop pushing?

Or what buttons do you have to stop pushing?

Matt, you’ll notice that I pretty much always keep things in the active tense.

I know, I know.

It’s like, I mean, that’s been really helpful for me, Umi.

It’s stuck with me, I don’t remember if it was last week or two weeks ago, but I see that, the need for the balance of letting go, being free, but vigorous at the same time.

And yeah, that was a very keen thing you picked up on me.

So I really appreciate that.

I appreciate you appreciating that.

So once again, I’ve run us over.

This conversations are always just, they’re just so rich.

I don’t want to stop them, but I also need to be respectful of our time.

So let’s go ahead and do a closing round of check-in.

And if you do have to go, please go first.

Otherwise we’ll go with Ron and Michael, Matt, Ryan, and myself.

Robyn checking in from Wyalusing State Park in Wisconsin, the beautiful driftless area.

Thank you for the beautiful discussion.

I think there may have been more words in this last half hour than I’ve experienced in my last number of days.

So it’s a bit overwhelmed.

It’ll take a bit to process it, but always appreciative of how much good information is being shared amongst this group.

I’m off to enjoy the great outdoors.

Thank you.

Hey, Michael checking in.

Oh, and my energy saver just popped up just in time.

With gratitude for the time and efforts spent here together, resolving the issues, and I greatly appreciate it.

So I’m in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Matt checking in.

What’s most predominant right now is this little song is so great.

I feel like a newbie still with this group, but like, but yeah.

Yeah, there is there’s really something to expanding this practice and recognizing like, you know, because it like, I think I’ve said this before, it can, it can, it can become it is it’s a totally personal, it’s like you have to ultimately do it on your own, like nobody else can do it for you, you know, so it is a very solitary inward thing, you know, but then like, it’s good to also blow it up and, and realize that this is a collective, you know, collective through the individual.

And so yeah, I love, I love showing up with you friends and, and talking longer and life and so, so thank you all.

I’m in.

Thank you.

Ryan checking in from, what, Columbia County, Ohio.

I think I’ll keep my message, I very much agree with what Matt had said that it can be a very inward solitary kind of journey, but it’s very nice to sit in that solitary journey.

So, thank you, as always, forever grateful, and forever.

When we check in from Mahoney County.

Yeah, we are.

Yeah, I don’t have any, you all said it also beautifully, so I’m just in and grateful and looking forward to being with you next week.

So, hope you all have a wonderful time, and we’ll talk to you soon.

Hey, take care.

See you guys.

Bye everyone.