Questions
First, a few more questions.
On a daily basis when can you think about meditation on voidness, how should it be done?
How it should be done is that we try to recognize how things appear in this deceiving way, and almost like a mantra, we could say, “Garbage! This is garbage what I’m projecting, how things appear to me.” We tend to inflate things into the most wonderful thing in the world, and “I have to have it,” or the most horrible thing, “I have to get rid of it.” Try to recognize all these projections and exaggerations and just say, “This is garbage.”
In the sensitivity training that I developed on my website, Developing Balanced Sensitivity, I use the image of popping a balloon. It’s not as though there’s a separate “me” from reality, and we come and pop the balloon, but just, in a sense, pop the balloon of this fantasy that we’re projecting. Of course, all of this depends very much on being able to identify what’s called the “object to be refuted.” Often the emphasis on what we need to try to recognize first is this inflation of “me” – that “I” have to have this, that “I” have to have my way, “I’m” the most important one, you have to pay attention to “me,” you have to love “me,” these sorts of things. “Things should always have to go the way that I want them to go.” Why? Why should they? “Because I’m so important” Well, this is ridiculous, so we pop that balloon; it’s like that. It’s in a very simple way, not going so, so deeply, but we need something that’s a little bit easier to apply in daily life.
How do we avoid the threat of nihilism? Some people say that when they meditate on voidness, they get the sort of feeling that nothing really matters.
Coming to the conclusion of nihilism is an incorrect understanding of voidness as it says here in the sutra: “form – voidness; voidness – form.” It’s not that nothing exists; it’s saying that what is impossible doesn’t exist. Because things don’t exist isolated, encapsulated in plastic by themselves, then things are able to interact with each other and function; cause and effect works. When we speak about me or you, then there is a conventional “me.” The conventional “me” exists. We’re doing things. We interact with others; we hurt ourselves, and it hurts. However, the impossible “me” – this is the projection onto this conventional “me” that it exists as something (the vague word is “solid”), but something that is established by itself, independently of the fact that it is the referent object of the category “me” labeled onto all these changing aggregates. This type of solid “me” is impossible. That doesn’t exist. One has to make the very clear distinction between the conventional “me,” this is what I was saying, that there is a referent object to the label “me,” but not some sort of solid thing behind that.
Unfortunately, it seems to us as though there is some solid “me” that is established by its own power. It seems as though there’s a “me” that can be known all by itself. Well, this is false, although it feels like this. For instance, we could say, “I see Boris,” or “I know Boris,” or “I like Boris,” or “I dislike Boris.” Well, what actually do I see? Do I see Boris? No. I see a body, I see colored shapes, a body and, on that basis, there is the imputation phenomenon “Boris.” What do I like? I mean, there has to be something, some basis, upon which we are saying, “Boris.” I like the way he does things, or I like his personality. I mean, what is it?
Or it could be with ourselves; the example that I always use is “I want you to love me for me, just for me, not for my good looks, not for my money, not for my intelligence, just love me for myself.” What in the world is that? How is there a “me” that is separate from all these things? Or we did something embarrassing, but “that wasn’t the real me.” “The real me,” what in the world is the real “me?”
“Me” is an imputation phenomenon on each moment of what we do and what we experience. However, we have all these dualistic types of things: “I want to find myself. Do I know myself?” “I’m not going to allow myself to feel this or to do that. I’m going to hold myself back.” It’s as if there are two “me’s” inside. This is crazy, but we get all sorts of disturbing emotions based on that. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t exist, and when we refute these impossible ways in which we exist, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing. Of course, we exist. We feel unhappy, we feel happy, we do this, we eat, etc. It’s just that we don’t exist in the way that we imagine that we exist. It’s in these ways that one tries to avoid the extreme of nihilism.
Does the insight or understanding of voidness automatically lead to compassion, or do we have to put extra effort into that?
That’s a very interesting question. From one point of view, when we understand that we don’t exist in isolation, that we are interconnected with everyone, that leads, in a sense, to understanding that everybody’s problems and everybody’s difficulties – we share them, we’re all together, we’re all interrelated. It’s not just “my” problem (things like environmental pollution), but it’s everybody’s problem. We all share this world; we’re interconnected. It is in that sense of understanding the interrelatedness of everybody and everything that the understanding of voidness is conducive to compassion.
There’s also a specific type of compassion that is based on the understanding of voidness. We understand that everybody’s suffering is due to their not understanding voidness. When we understand voidness, we understand that if they could understand voidness, they would be free of their problems. In this sense, voidness and compassion are connected.
Now there are some forms of Buddhism that assert that compassion, love, these sorts of things, are natural qualities of the mind. This is particularly emphasized in certain Chan schools of Chinese Buddhism. Chan is the Chinese predecessor of Japanese Zen. If we could quiet down, we would see reality, they say, and then this quality of the mind of love and compassion would automatically arise. However, not all forms of Buddhism assert that way, because the danger of such a view is that even if we feel love and compassion when we quiet our minds – and many of us might not experience them even if we succeed in quieting our minds – that might not lead to understanding voidness at all. The various meditation practices for developing compassion – and there are many of these, particularly in the Indian and Tibetan traditions that are emphasized – need to be done in conjunction with voidness meditation.
Also, there are many other levels; I mean, this is a big question that you ask. It’s not a little question. When one understands voidness, the voidness of the mind, one then understands that enlightenment is possible in terms of the purity of the mind and the ability of the mind to be omniscient, all-loving, and so on. When we realize that it is possible to achieve enlightenment and to benefit all others, then that helps with compassion.
Also, with the understanding of the voidness of the self, we understand what is possible for us to do and what is impossible for us to do. In other words, we understand cause and effect. Thus, we have a much more realistic understanding of compassion. It’s not just wishing everybody well but feeling hopeless, helpless, or feeling that we will become an almighty God and just snap our fingers, and everybody’s suffering goes away.
Eight Points for Meditating on Voidness
Okay, let’s get back to our text. Avalokiteshvara has just explained that the five aggregates are devoid of self-establishing nature, and that form, meaning appearances, and voidness are inseparable. That’s form in general, but then there is form within the five aggregates. It too is not separate from voidness, so the two truths here, and it’s the same for all the five aggregates. Then, Avalokiteshvara continues:
It’s like that, Shariputra, with all phenomena – voidness: no defining characteristics, no arising, no stopping, no being stained, no being parted from stain, no being deficient, no being additional.
This is a very difficult line. We have eight qualities, eight points that are mentioned here: voidness, no defining characteristics, etc. According to one commentary, these are describing the types of points that we would meditate on when we are meditating on what’s called the “three gateways to liberation.” One gateway is in terms of just the general voidness of things; the second is no signs, so that’s no sign of a truly existent cause; the third is no hope, so no hope for a truly existent result. Thus, there is the voidness of phenomenon, the voidness of cause and the voidness of result.
Now here, and in many of the sentences that follow in the text, when it says, “no this, no that,” that is referring to there are no truly existent this’s or that’s. Truly existent means that it is truly established by its own power, from something on the side of the object independently of everything else – so it’s saying that there’s no such thing as this impossible way of existing. The “no” in the line means “no such thing as that.” It’s not a nihilist statement that these things don’t exist at all.
It’s also referring to a point about the meditation. When we are totally absorbed with full concentration on voidness, we’re totally absorbed in an absence, a total absence. So, there is no such thing as these impossible ways of existence. There is no appearance, nothing appears. When we are focusing on an appearance of nothing, we don’t understand it as nothing; we understand what is absent. If we look here on the floor and we see that there is no dog there, and we see there’s no cockroach there, and we see there’s no elephant there, what do we see? We see nothing on the floor. In each of these three cases, we see nothing there, but we understand what that nothing means. There’s no dog, no cat, no cockroach, no elephant.
Here we are focusing on something that is impossible to be there. There’s no Godzilla standing here on the floor, and we see that very clearly, don’t we? But what do we see? We see nothing there, but we understand that it’s a total absence of Godzilla, because Godzilla couldn’t possibly stand here. When it says, “no this, no that,” it’s also referring to this point in meditation, that none of these things appear, none of these phenomena existing in an impossible way appear in that meditation where we are totally absorbed on “no such thing.”
With respect to all phenomena, we have the first two characteristics. First, voidness: no truly established existence, or existence established by its own power, or existence established by a self-establishing nature – there are all these terms. Second, no defining characteristic: it’s not as though there is some special defining characteristic inside me that makes me “me” and not “you.” We might understand that, “Well okay, I can’t know me or know you separately from knowing some sort of basis,” and so on, but still, we might think that there’s something special inside, some defining characteristic, that by its own power makes me an individual, different from you.
Now that’s a very interesting question. What makes me an individual? What makes me “me?” What is it about you that makes you such a special individual that I don’t care about anybody else loving me, I want you to love me. If you don’t love me, then nobody loves me. This is a little bit weird, isn’t it? I have the image of this movie, The March of the Penguins. There are hundreds of thousands of penguins in Antarctica, and we want that one over there to love us. The others don’t count, it’s that one! What makes it an individual? Nevertheless, we are individuals, aren’t we? There is nothing on the side of the object, some defining characteristic, that makes it special. This is penguin number 93,472, and that’s the one that we want to love us. Conventionally, penguins are individual. They’re not just all the same penguin, are they?
Conventionally, we do have defining characteristics, but the defining characteristic again is mentally labeled. It’s like a definition in a dictionary. What is love? I experience all sorts of emotions, you experience all sorts of emotions, and we come up with some sort of convention. We group some of them together and call it “love.” Nonetheless, everything that we experience is different, isn’t it? There’s no defining characteristic that’s sitting there inside the emotion that says, “This is love, true love.”
So those first two: voidness and no defining characteristics, that’s the gateway of voidness, the gateway to liberation of voidness. The next four, no arising, no stopping, no being stained, no being parted from stain, that is dealing with the voidness of causes, causality. When we speak of something happening in a causal sequence, it’s not as though something exists independently, all by itself, as a cause making something else happen. Especially if we think in terms of karma, we have a certain tendency from a previous type of karmic action and we have this view that the result is already existing unmanifest in that cause and it’s inevitable that this is going to happen as a result. This is false. You know how we think that “Oh, I killed that mosquito, now I’m definitely going to hell!
However, the arising of a result from a cause doesn’t happen like that, because there are all sorts of conditions, and so on, that are going to affect what type of result is going to come from a specific cause. Nothing comes from just one cause independently, as if that cause is sitting by itself, and then it’s going to give rise to a result independently of anything else. We can understand this in just very general terms or in terms of karma. We can understand this in terms of unawareness or ignorance, acting as a truly existent cause that’s going to give rise to samsara and suffering and so on. There are many different levels in which we can understand this, and it’s not as though a cause is standing offstage over here, and now the cause is going to come on stage, so it’s arising, and now it’s going to do its thing, give its cause and then it’ll go offstage and cease because it stopped working. It’s not like that, so no arising, no stopping. It’s not that in terms of a causal sequence that the mind is stained, and then there’s this awareness, this understanding, that comes in like this super cleanser, like cleaning the toilet, and now as a result of this causal sequence the mind is not stained any longer; it’s parted from stain.
It’s very interesting how we conceive of the whole causal process as if a cause is sitting there and doing something. It’s sort of like, we have this cavity in our tooth, and it’s sitting there inside of our tooth as the cause, the truly existent cause, and by itself it is causing us pain, as if a cause is sitting there and doing something. This whole process of how cause and effect work is very, very difficult. It’s not that inside the cause is the unmanifest result that’s just waiting to pop out, and it’s not that things arise from no cause at all, or that a cause is completely unconnected with the result.
In fact, this is one of the most difficult things to understand, how cause and effect are related. Is it that here’s a cause and here’s an effect, and there’s some sort of stick that connects the two? Well, how could that be? Do the cause and the effect exist at the same time? You know, the seed and the flower, are they there at the same time? I mean, what connects the seed with the flower? Is there no connection? If there’s no connection, then the flower could have come from anything. There has to be some connection, but how do they connect?
Well, of course, if we’re a farmer, we are very concerned about such issues, but for those of us who are not farmers, how the seed brings about the crop is not so relevant. In any case, as I was indicating, the issue that is very, very difficult to understand is karma, how a karmic cause can bring about a result. What’s the connection? With respect to the result as well, is the result already existing but not yet happened, but here it is, and now it’s happening? If it already exists, then why does it have to happen? That doesn’t make any sense. Is it truly existently non-existent, and then it becomes existent, like a nothing becomes a something? How could a nothing become a something? How does a truly existent nothing become a truly existent something? When does it become a something? How is that connection made? All these things are discussed here with these terms, and it’s not easy. It’s one of the more difficult lines here.
Next, not being deficient, not being additional is dealing with the voidness of the result. When we talk about purifying the mind as a result, is it really a result? There wasn’t something that was deficient from the mind, and then our understanding, as a result, gave something to the mind. Mind is never stained by true existence, by impossible ways of existing, and there’s nothing that we have to add with our understanding. Mind was never stained by true existence. When we’re hoping for some sort of result of this whole purification process, then what is it? Was it that the mind was truly already perfect before? No, it’s not like that. How is it working? We need to understand that everything comes about based on an unbelievably complex connection of causes and conditions, and none of these are like ping pong balls; none of the factors that are involved are these encapsulated things being established by themselves, by their own power. Here’s a cause, and it’s truly a cause, and here’s a condition, and these two ping pong balls come together, and they produce another ping pong ball, which is the result! It’s not like that.
Nevertheless, we tend to think like that if we analyze deeply, that here we have this problem. We’ve done such negative things in our life, so we must have some horrible karmic tendencies, for example, and so this is a big, solid, heavy ping pong ball, something like a bowling ball, that’s really heavy that’s sitting there on our mental continuum somewhere. All right? So, this is a truly existent cause that’s going to send us to hell. There’s a terrible result that we think is already determined inside this heavy ball of the karmic tendency. Now, we have this magic pill, which is 100,000 repetitions of the Vajrasattva mantra, and there it is, this is going to purify away this stain. It has the power within it, established by itself, some magic thing, a defining characteristic, inside these magic words. If we apply it, if we do it, recite it so many times, then truly this negative – this bowling ball – is going to cease and fall off our mental continuum and be swallowed by Yama, the Lord of Death, or something like that, giving him indigestion. Before, there was something wrong with our mental continuum, but now we have cleansed it; we have added purity to it, and now we will live happily ever after. It’s not quite like that.
Although we have very difficult words and terminology here, this is what it’s all talking about. This whole process of purification, this whole process of how cause and effect works in terms of how our suffering arises, how we can get rid of suffering, how it will cease, how causes for bringing about suffering work, how the ending of suffering works – all of that can only work if things are devoid of existing encapsulated in plastic, being established by themselves. Everything works in relation to each other. Nothing is solid. In terms of results as well, it’s not as though there are all these possible results, all these possibilities – almost sort of like quantum physics, or something like that – all these possible states are there, and then it’s just a matter of which one. You know, like we press a button, and this one is going to happen. It’s not like that. All of this can be understood from this line, and much more, I’m sure.
Now, Avalokiteshvara goes on. By the way, are there any questions about this? I mean, obviously, there are questions. I can’t imagine that one can just understand the voidness of cause and effect so easily. We shouldn’t think that it is easy to understand. I can’t pretend that I understand it terribly deeply. It’s one of the most difficult things, but to go back to your question, it’s not that voidness negates cause and effect. Because things are devoid of existing under their own power, that means that they arise dependently, and so that means cause and effect. It is because they are void that cause and effect can work. Cause and effect wouldn’t work if things existed isolated: here’s a cause, and here’s an effect. There’s no way that they could be connected with each other. As I said, it’s not two solid balls with a stick connecting them either. So, any comment or anything you want to ask before we go on?
Questions
What does that mean by cause? Is it something that produces something, or is something that is a form of something else, or is it that it aims at something? Could you give more details?
That’s a very deep question. There are several versions of the abhidharma teachings, which are topics of special knowledge. In one version, there are six different types of causes; in another version, there are 20 different types of causes. If we think in terms of a classic example of a seed giving rise to a sprout, then there’s the seed that’s involved in the causal process, but there’s also the earth and the water and the sunlight, these sorts of things. We have all these various factors, and some of them will no longer exist at the time of the result, like, for instance, the seed doesn’t exist at the time of the sprout. However, others will continue to exist, like the elements that make up the seed – the chemicals, the atoms – will still be in the sprout in a slightly different form, and the dirt will still be there that this thing is planted in. There are many different types of causes that are involved.
I think we need to understand cause and effect more in terms of what do certain things depend upon, but it’s not a matter of creation either. Creation implies changing a true nothing into a true something. Because if something’s truly nothing, truly non-existent, then how can it change from being truly nothing to truly something? When does that happen? What’s the connection between one moment it doesn’t exist, and one moment it does exist? Things don’t arise just “poof,” there it is! However, there are certain factors that for something to happen – we’re not talking about a solid thing coming from offstage and onto the stage – for something to happen, it’s dependent on all these other things happening. This is a type of causal sequence.
I mean, there’s also a causal sequence, of course, of something transforming as in a seed gradually growing and transforming into a sprout. It’s not something linear, that one cause is always going to produce one result, as if that operates in isolation from everything else. Everything’s interconnected, so there are all the different conditions and so on that will affect what arises. Also, it’s not just one thing arises, because if this happens here, then not only is that going to happen there, but many other things are going to happen in consequence of that. The whole process of cause and effect has to be understood in the larger context of everything, basically. If I explain something to you and, as a result, you understand, well that understanding is itself a cause for something else that’s going to happen. Whatever I do as a cause in explaining to you is a result of what I learned and all the circumstances of coming here and being invited. There are so many factors that are involved in all aspects of cause and effect, and because all these things are interdependent and relating with each other, then things happen, life goes on. If they all existed encapsulated in plastic by themselves, as “things,” then they wouldn’t interact, and so nothing would happen.
Our vision of things, how we experience things – I often use the example – it’s like in a coloring book, that things are with a line around them, a solid line around them. There’s this cause, and there’s this result, as if everything is with a line around it. That’s how it feels, that’s how it appears to us, but that is incorrect. It doesn’t refer to something real. Not at all.
For example, we pay our money at the door of a movie theater, we get the ticket, we walk in, and we see the movie. Well, is that cause and effect? How did that work? Well, each of these things arose dependently on who printed the ticket, and where did that come from? Who invented the idea of tickets? It’s a weird idea, isn’t it? That really is strange; we give a piece of paper to someone, they give us another piece of paper, and then we walk over here and give that piece of paper to someone else, and then we can walk in. That’s very strange.
So, true, it’s dependent on this exchange of pieces of paper that we’re able to see the movie or listen to the lecture; but understanding that lecture and hearing it has arisen from so many other factors as well, so causality has to do with dependency.
How does the question of responsibility fit into this picture of dependent arising? If things arise dependently on so many different factors within society, and I’m not the single agent that is guilty for the pollution of the environment, for example, then how is it that I’m responsible, and is there any responsibility?
Well, it is true that whatever happens is a result of an unbelievable combination of causes and conditions. For instance, if we take the example of environmental pollution. We don’t inflate ourselves to say that we’re responsible for all the pollution in the world, this is absurd. Nonetheless, every little causal factor contributes to the effect that we all experience.
What does responsibility mean? Responsibility has to do with the factor of experiencing the results of what we do. We’re not talking here about guilt, but, rather, simply cause and effect. If we are born and live in a polluted time, then from a Buddhist point of view, we’ve built up causes in the past to experience this. Now, of course, the pollution itself is created by many, many other factors, but we’ve built up the causes to experience living in that type of environment. If we add to that pollution by what we do now, then we’re contributing causes for not only other people, other beings, but for ourselves as well, in the future, to experience being in that environment.
We don’t go to the extreme of saying that we’re the only one responsible, and we don’t go to the other extreme of saying that we had nothing to do with it. If we act in a certain way, we experience the results of that, but it’s not that our acting in this way is one ball, and the result of what we’ve experienced is another ball connected with a stick. However, we act in this way because of so many different causal factors, and so many different results and things will happen, and so many other causal factors are involved with that. It’s very, very complex, but it’s not as though we aren’t part of that process, and what we do is outside of that process. It is part of that process. This is a very difficult question.
I make a meal for you, for example, and you choke on it and die. Am I responsible for your death? Well, it wasn’t my intention to kill you. If I hadn’t invited you, if I hadn’t cooked, then you wouldn’t have choked to death. Well, then you would have lived or what? Would you have died from something else? Would there have been another condition or circumstance for you to die? Where is responsibility here?
These are very difficult questions, especially when we look at it from an emotional point of view. Obviously, we feel terrible, the other person choked on what we gave them and died. I’m using an extreme example, of course. It’s the same thing. We hit somebody by accident with our car. Well, we didn’t intend to hit them; we didn’t see that pedestrian over there and aimed our car at them and hit them, but do we experience some karmic result from this? Well, to a certain extent, yes, but not as strongly as if we intended to do something. This whole idea of responsibility is a difficult concept; however, there are, what should we say, “consequences” of certain actions even if they’re unintentional.
This fits into this whole discussion of what’s called the “all-pervasive suffering” of samsara. Just by the fact that we have this type of body, that we walk on the ground, means that we’re going to step on something and kill it. Just because we have this type of body and the other people have that type of body, even with the most wonderful intentions, and so on, they get hurt, or we get hurt. This is just part of the whole problem. Even without wanting to, we build up more karma for perpetuating the whole samsaric situation.
The point is how to get out of that, and it’s not just starving ourselves to death and committing suicide. That doesn’t solve anything. It just makes it worse. We have to, in a sense, take responsibility for our actions and try to make them as free as possible of disturbing emotions and disturbing intentions, or at least with the minimal amount of them. Nevertheless, inevitably, we’re going to cause difficulties, create more suffering for others, for ourselves. Are we responsible for that? Well, in a sense that we’re going to experience the results of it, yes. Are we guilty? No. There’s no heavy, “Ooh you’re guilty,” like in a judgmental situation.
Twelve Cognitive Stimulators
Now, the text goes on.
Because it’s like that, Shariputra, in voidness, no form, no feeling, no distinction, no affecting variables, no kind of consciousness.
Here Avalokiteshvara is going through a classification system and saying that when we analyze our experience, each moment of our experience, we have this scheme of the five aggregate factors and none of these have a self-establishing nature. The phrase here is “in voidness,” so that is underlining the point that when we are focused on this total absence of these impossible ways of existence, there’s no appearance of any of these aggregate factors as truly existent. Remember what we said the first evening was that unless we are a Buddha, if our mind makes any of these things appear, it makes them appear as if they are truly existent. True existence means their existence is truly established from something on the side of the object, independently of everything else. So, our mind is going to make things appear that way, but if we’re focused on “no such thing,” then we couldn’t have the mind making an appearance of any of these things, because if it did, it would make an appearance of them as truly existent.
Then, the next group that is mentioned here are the twelve cognitive stimulators. What are they? They are the various things that literally stimulate our cognitions. I mean, the word that I’m translating as stimulator has two syllables: one is that it makes the cognition arise and the other makes it diffuse out, so sort of take its form. This is referring to the six types of cognitive objects and the six types of cognitive sensors. The cognitive objects are things that can be known by each of our cognitive faculties; we have sights, we have sounds, we have smells, we have tastes, we have physical sensations which include hot, cold, motion – there are a lot of different physical sensations – and all phenomena. All phenomena can be objects known by the mind, and mind can know anything.
When the text is saying:
No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind.
That is referring to no eye sensors, no ear sensors, etc. In relation to the senses, these are the cells like the photosensitive cells of the eyes. When this term is usually translated, a lot of people translate it as “sense power.” It’s not referring to a power. Power is a bit of an abstract word, isn’t it? It’s referring to actual physical cells. Also, it’s not referring to our whole nose or our whole tongue. It’s referring to the smell-sensitive cells within the nose, or the taste-sensitive cells within the tongue, or the physical sensation sensitive cells of the body, and so on.
No sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no physical sensation, no phenomena.
This is referring to the objects that, together with a cognitive sensor, stimulate and cause a cognition to arise. We have to have the two. We can’t just have sights by themselves; there have to be photosensitive cells of the eyes. Without photosensitive cells, visual data is not really a sight, something that is seen, is it?
When it says “no mind” here, it is referring to the mind sensor. The Buddhist analysis doesn’t bring in the brain, which we might think would be what should fit here. Rather, the mind sensor refers to the immediately preceding moment of primary consciousness.
These sensors are the type of causes and conditions known as the “dominating condition.” They dominate in the sense that they will be responsible for what type of cognition it will be. I mean, from one point of view, we could say the type of consciousness will be the condition that determines that, but also, we could say from the point of view of what type of cognitive apparatus the cognition needs to depend upon in order for it to be visual cognition or the sound cognition. It’s just a technical point.
In a sense we’re talking about, on the one hand, the data or information and, on the other, the coding mechanism. Remember, we said primary consciousness is what decodes it, in a sense; here with the stimulators, we’re talking about the information and what does the coding of it. The sensory cells do the coding of the sight into some sort of information. If we’re thinking, which is a mental cognition, what performs that function would be the immediately preceding moment of primary consciousness. That, in a sense, will provide the coding for a thought in the next moment.
Our cognition is going to arise dependently on these twelve stimulators, and none of them have existence by themselves, by their own power. They’re all interdependent with each other.
Eighteen Cognitive Sources
Then, we have the list of the eighteen cognitive sources, and this adds to the twelve cognitive stimulators the six types of primary consciousness.
Avalokiteshvara lists these eighteen in brief:
No cognitive source that’s an eye, up to no cognitive source that’s a mind, (no cognitive source that’s phenomena), no cognitive source that’s mental consciousness.
No cognitive source that’s an eye, that’s referring to the eye sensors, up to no cognitive source that’s a mind, and that’s the mind sensors, so we have the six cognitive sensors here. Then, the Sanskrit adds no cognitive source that’s phenomena. That’s not in the Tibetan for some reason that I don’t know. So, that includes the six types of cognitive objects; then no cognitive source that’s mental consciousness, so that’s the six types of consciousness, primary consciousness. Now, we can breathe a sigh of relief. We’ve gotten through the list of the five, twelve, and eighteen. Why are these important? Why are these pointed out here? Because this is the system – I mean, each of these is a system – for analyzing what we experience. We can analyze it from the point of view of the aggregates that make up each moment. We can analyze it from the point of view of the things that stimulate our cognition. We can analyze it from the point of view of what are the sources, what are responsible for all our cognitions? They all are referring to each moment of what’s happening, and no matter what type of scheme we use to analyze and understand what we are experiencing in our daily behavior – after all, Avalokiteshvara is explaining how we apply this in our daily behavior in conducting our lives – none of the components are existing by themselves. Everything is dependently arising. What we experience is dependently arising around these five, around these twelve, around these eighteen.
Dedication
Okay, this is a good place to end for the day, and we’ll conclude with a dedication. We think whatever positive force, whatever understanding has built up, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.
Again, when we make this dedication, we need to have some understanding of cause and effect. Has what we’ve done produced a truly existent cause, and there it is, it’s like a big bowling ball? Now we have to throw it toward the result that we want and is that going to bring about enlightenment? It’s really funny; is it like throwing a bowling ball down the bowling alley toward enlightenment so that it will knock down all the pins that are stains, and then we are free? Certainly not. Even with the dedication, it’s very important to understand cause and effect. There’s nothing solidly existent here: a cause that we have built up and an effect that we’re trying to achieve, as though the mind is inherently stained and now, we have to get rid of something, knock down the pins, and so on. Not like that.
Thus, our understanding of voidness is very helpful in all aspects of the practice, because in spite of everything being devoid of self-establishing existence, nevertheless, we are responsible for what we do, and we can add causes. We’ve listened to something; maybe we’ve understood something, and so there was an intention to learn. Now we want to add something further to it, some further condition that is going to mix into this causal soup, as it were, to try to build up the various causes for a result to happen, while understanding that the result isn’t already existing somewhere waiting to happen, and it isn’t going to come from nothing.
All these teachings on cause and effect – it’s very important to relate them to our Dharma practice, not just to our everyday actions of going to the kitchen and making dinner, but also to this whole karmic process of our practice. Well, we’re aiming for enlightenment. What is that enlightenment? How does it exist? How is it going to come about? How does our practice now contribute to what we will hopefully experience? Is that enlightenment already somehow inevitable, existing somewhere, and we just have to make it happen, or is it going to come from nothing, or just from prayer? How’s it going to happen? So, voidness, cause and effect, and karmic responsibility with things happening, and so on, all of these are interrelated and very vital issues to try to understand.