The Aggregate of Other Affecting Variables: Karma Kagyu

That’s what we have covered thus far and it’s a lot. In order to actually understand and digest all this information, we need to take time by ourselves to try to recognize these various factors in our daily lives. 

We can start by doing that in meditation; but don’t do the meditation with eyes closed. That is going to make it more difficult to recognize these factors in the beginning. Later on, it might be helpful, but in the beginning, we need to sit quietly and look all around and try to understand what’s happening when we’re seeing, hearing noises, what’s happening when mental wandering comes up and so on. Try to identify that it’s just the arising of a mental hologram.  

Try to identify that there’s some form of physical phenomenon arising, the consciousness that’s going on and being aware of it as a sight, a sound etc. There is a distinguishing of it from the background; there is some urge that is drawing us to pay attention to it as a special object. When we’re paying attention to it, the urge has drawn us to it after having distinguished it, then we’re experiencing that as either pleasant and unpleasant to look at or listen to. 

There is a very subtle level of happiness or unhappiness as well. This is demonstrated by the fact that if we were happy with something, we would stay looking at it, listening to it or paying attention to it. If we weren’t happy about it, another urge would come up to draw our attention to something else. We’re talking about what actually happens in each moment. That is the point of this meditative process, to actually recognize that. 

Then, of course, we see that there’s no separate “me,” separate from all of this, analyzing it and watching it. Once we become familiar with doing that while sitting quietly in our room, then we want to take that in our daily life. In various situations, especially like when we are in some sort of bad mood and identify with being in this mood, experiencing it as solid and feeling “poor me,” or feeling blah, feeling like not doing anything at all, that’s the time to deconstruct it. 

We can see that that is only one factor. There’s no reason to identify with it, because we are also seeing things and hearing things and everything is changing all the time. There is nothing solid about it at all. In this way, it helps us by deconstructing it not to identify with the bad mood and not to get stuck in it with incorrect consideration that it is static, permanent, solid, not made of parts, never going to change and “poor me.” That is a source of great suffering, and we want to be able to overcome that. By deconstructing it into the five aggregates and understanding the relation of the self with the five aggregates, it enables us to get out of being miserable. It’s very helpful.

We need to look at the other mental factors in this aggregate. There’s a long list, and we won’t be able to go into each of them in detail. 

Five Ascertaining Mental Factors

In addition to the five ever-functioning mental factors, we also have what’s called the five ascertaining mental factors. They help the primary consciousness to take its object with certainty. In Vasubandhu’s explanation, these also occur in every moment. In Asanga’s presentation, having to do more with karma and so on, then it is defined as being there only when focused on a constructive object. Nevertheless, we can understand it in Vasubandhu’s sense a bit more universally. 

Intention

We first have intention. Intention is the wish that causes the mental activity to take possession of this or that desired phenomenon. It’s the wish to have it, and it’s aimed at a phenomenon that has previously been thought about. This is a very interesting point. In order to do something intentionally, we have to have previously thought about that object or whatever it is, in which it has keen interest.

This also involves interest. The intention may be wanting to meet that object or goal or not wanting to meet it. It can also be to want to be parted or not parted from this object or goal. It can also just be having a keen interest. We wish to meet with this goal, for instance enlightenment, or getting something from the refrigerator, or yelling at somebody. The wish is to reach that goal and to do something to reach that goal that we’ve thought about beforehand. That eliminates unintentional things that we do; if it’s intentional, it means that we’ve thought about it and decided to do it.

Intention is very fundamental and includes interest or is based on being interested in something. If we have no interest in an object or goal, we won’t make any effort to achieve it. That’s intention and is very important. When we hear urge translated as “volition,” this isn’t exactly correct. Volition would be better used to describe intention. We want to do something; this is what volition means.

Regard

Next, we have regard, which takes its object to have some level of good qualities on the spectrum of no good qualities to all good qualities. It may be accurate or distorted. If we wish to meet something, we regard it as having some good qualities that we would like to have, by having this object. To be parted from it, we regard it as having no good qualities and we don’t want it. 

Mindfulness

This is a word used in our modern Western times without the defining characteristic as how it’s defined in Buddhism. In Buddhism, mindfulness is the mental factor that holds onto some cognized object without losing it as an object of focus. It’s equivalent to a type of mental glue. Basically, it has to do with memory. We’re not talking about memory in the sense of recalling something or retrieving it from the data bank or whatever. It’s keeping something in mind, recollecting it. We’re remembering this object of our focus, like a mental glue that keeps us from losing it as our object of focus. That’s mindfulness.

In the West, the term is used as just being aware of what’s going on in the here and now. That’s not what this actual technical term refers to. It’s the mental glue, and as His Holiness the Dalai Lama explains, this is the most crucial thing in shamatha meditation. We want to gain perfect concentration and so on, where we put all our effort into not letting go of the object. That’s what we put our effort. Alertness and all these other things come together with that. This is the main thing – just hold on and don’t let go.

For example, I do a lot of physical training, and when we’re holding onto a chin-up bar and we’re supposed to do ten chin-ups or pull-ups or knee raises, it’s this incredible effort to not let go because the hands hurt. Not to let go, that is the mindfulness on a mental level. Don’t let go of the object.

Concentration

This is basically fixating. It’s the activity that stays focused on the object and can vary from weak to strong. In other words, concentration holds onto the object, and mindfulness prevents us from letting go. That’s the difference between the two. With concentration we stay fixed; this can be strong or weak. We’re not just talking about what we have in meditation but also what we have in every moment. As we fix on an object, mindfulness is the glue that keeps us from leaving an object.

Discriminating Awareness

This is sometimes translated as “wisdom,” but that’s such a vague word in all our languages that I prefer not to use it. Discriminating awareness decisively discriminates whether something is correct or incorrect, constructive or destructive and so on. It adds some level of decisiveness to distinguishing an object of cognition. We distinguish, for example, how something exists; it can be talked about in terms of wisdom or in terms of constructive or destructive. There’s some defining characteristic and we focus on it. In its so-called wisdom form, it’s discriminating between what is true and not true, how things actually exist and what is impossible and just appears that way without corresponding to actuality. However, it’s also very important in the ethical sphere to distinguish between what is constructive and what is destructive in terms of our behavior.

Discriminating awareness adds certainty and it can either be correct or incorrect. For example, when we are older and we might have someone who cleans our house and we can’t remember where we left our keys, then we might be absolutely certain that the cleaner took the keys. This type of discriminating awareness is incorrect. It adds certainty to the distinguishing.

Summary of the Ten

These five ascertaining mental factors, together with the five ever-functioning mental factors are what I refer to as the mechanical mental factors. They enable our primary consciousness to take hold of an object, go toward an object etc., and do it with certainty and stability. Concentration and mindfulness give us stability. We’re able to concentrate on our work or the video we’re watching on YouTube or whatever.

All of them work together. If we analyze in terms of a sequence of moments of bare sensory and mental cognition and subsequent moments of conceptual cognition where we synthesize into whole objects, then we can understand how all ten work simultaneously and harmoniously together, all with the five things shared in common. This means they are focusing on the same data, the same object, giving rise to the same hologram, and arising at the same time, with the same slant, and the same mental or sensory cognitive sensor (this means physical sensors for sense consciousness and the previous moment of mental cognition if it’s mental consciousness).

Let’s analyze how these ten factors work together:

• Initially, a compelling urge arises to go in a direction of an object
• It’s distinguished from other objects that it’s not
• There’s paying attention to it
• There’s regarding it as having good or bad qualities
• There’s discriminating awareness to add certainty that it’s not some other object and is constructive or destructive
• The intention to obtain that desired object of interest, having thought about it before in order to do something with it or to it
• Contacting awareness contacts and experiences it as being pleasant or unpleasant so we feel a level of happiness or unhappiness
• Mentally fixating, we stay focused on it with concentration
• With mindfulness, we don’t let go.

We can understand in this way how they work harmoniously together. It’s the whole combination that’s going on in each moment. When we can deconstruct that moment into these ten, then if we’re having some difficulty, we can see what the area presenting that difficulty. Which group of these are weak? It could be attention, interest or regard; for example, we don’t understand the good qualities of something.

I always remember that I stayed for several months with a friend who liked to watch Formula One car racing on television. This is just cars going around and around in a circle. I couldn’t understand why he found that interesting. Why would he want to sit around and watch that? Then he explained what was interesting about it, what good quality he found; it was the strategies that the drivers used in terms of passing and wheel change and this or that. My regard was weak; I didn’t see any good qualities to it.

If we find the good qualities in something, it triggers interest. We find something interesting and then we can pay attention to it. With all these factors, if we can identify and understand which one is deficient, then we know what to work on and what to strengthen and how to deal with it. Otherwise, in this example, I would be sitting in my room grumbling about why my friend was watching this loud thing on television. This isn’t a comfortable state of mind. It’s not that I sat there and watched him with it either; but in any case, I no longer got annoyed.

What follows is a whole bunch more of these other affecting variables.

Eleven Constructive Factors

These don’t include all the possible constructive mental factors. I’ll just read the list:  

1. Believing a fact to be true. Sometimes that’s often translated as “faith” or “believing,” but that really isn’t a very helpful translation. It doesn’t convey the meaning. It does not mean that we believe nonsense to be true; we believe a fact to be true.
2. Moral self-dignity or having a sense of values.
3. Care for how our actions reflect on others. For example, as Buddhist, we realize that if we go out and get drunk or get in fights and so on, if people know that we’re Buddhist, it reflects badly on Buddhism. It’s particularly strong in Asian context at the time of the Buddha, that it reflects badly on our family, our caste in India and so on. Therefore, we restrain from acting in an outrageously destructive manner.  
4. Detachment, meaning bored disgust with objects of compulsive desire. We’re not talking about being totally free of attachment and desire. It’s similar to how we give up drugs, marijuana for example. We have to be bored with it. There’s always getting high, sitting there listening to music, eating or whatever, and it’s always the same. When we find it’s boring, we finally give it up. Detachment is this constructive aspect.
5. Imperturbability, in the sense that we aren’t disturbed at all nor belligerent in response to negative behavior of others. We don’t get cranky or aggressive when we’re suffering. These terms are just non-anger or non-attachment, but we have to look at the commentaries to understand what is being described. It’s not total freedom from suffering, but, for example, when we have a cold or something and get annoyed. Older people can get annoyed because they are confused and so on. We can get annoyed when the bus doesn’t come on time. This provisional state is that we don’t get annoyed; it isn’t that we’ve completely overcome anger. 
6. Lack of naivety, meaning that we are sensitive to the effects of our behavior on others and on ourselves, in our own or others’ situations. It’s very important to be sensitive to the effect of our behavior, even on ourselves. For example, we may work too hard and be stressed all the time. If we are so tired, we need to rest and go to bed. With others, we need to be considerate and not insensitive. Perhaps another person is busy and therefore we don’t bother them. This is a point stressed in the sensitivity training I developed.
7. Perseverance is zestful vigor for being constructive. Asanga explained five aspects or divisions: armor-like courage to endure difficulties gained from reminding ourselves of the joy with which we undertook what we did; constant and respectful application of ourselves to the task; never becoming disheartened or shrinking back; never withdrawing; never becoming complacent.
8. A sense of fitness, meaning a sense of fitness and self-confidence that we can stay focused and accomplish what we wish.
9. A caring attitude, with which we take seriously cause and effect in situations. That brings us to act sensitively and constructively. We don’t want to hurt others’ feelings and so on. Of course, this is a spectrum. The most constructive is caring. How much do we care about others and take them seriously? It’s connected with lack of naivety.
10. Equilibrium, meaning our mental activity is without flightiness or dullness in a natural state of spontaneity and openness. Equilibrium is defined differently in many different contexts. In this list of mental factors, it is defined in this way. We aren’t flighty, nervous and unable to focus. We are in a state in which we’re open to be able to act in a spontaneous open way.
11. Not being cruel is not merely the imperturbability of not wishing to cause harm to limited beings who are suffering or to irritate or to annoy them. It has, in addition, compassion, the wish for them to be free of their suffering and its causes.

This is the standard list of eleven, and there are many more that aren’t included in the list. For instance, there are things like love and compassion. These are included in meditations, like the four immeasurables for developing these constructive qualities. There are others listed in the paramitas, the perfections, that aren’t listed here, such as generosity, ethical self-discipline and patience. These are some that are left out and are obviously constructive mental factors.

Disturbing emotions are sometimes called afflictions, but the definition is that when they arise, they cause us to lose peace of mind and self-control. It’s a wonderful definition and why I translate it as “disturbing”; this definition fits. When we’re angry, we don’t have peace of mind. When we’re greedy, we don’t have peace of mind and we lose self-control, so we yell or we stuff our mouths with more chocolate or take the last piece of cake before anyone else can take it. 

There are six root disturbing emotions. “Emotion” is a difficult word because some of them wouldn’t fit into our category of emotions. There isn’t a word that actually covers these six very nicely. Sometimes, I use “disturbing emotions and attitudes,” but even then it doesn’t work. We don’t have a word, unfortunately.

(1) The first one is longing desire and that has three aspects. Longing desire is for something we don’t have. We have attachment if we have it and we don’t want to let go. Greed is when we have it, even so we want more. These three are there. Longing desire for what we don’t have, attachment if we have it and don’t want to let go, and greed, wanting more and never being satisfied. That’s quite a disturbing state of mind and is based on exaggerating the good qualities of something and ignoring the negative qualities or shortcomings.

(2) Anger, meaning wanting to get rid of something. It’s repulsion. We exaggerate the negative qualities and ignore the good.

(3) There is arrogance, with seven types of that. 

(4) Next, there is unawareness or ignorance. Actually, anti-knowing fits better to the definition, although everybody uses “ignorance.” Ignorance, in English at least, implies being stupid and this isn’t really involved with intelligence. It’s a mental factor that is an obstacle to knowing correctly either behavioral cause and effect or the nature of reality. It is not speaking about an obstacle to learning algebra.It is in this sense that it stupefies the mind and is defined as bewilderment or dumbfoundedness. Bewilderment is a heaviness of mind and body. That’s ant-knowing. That’s how ignorance is defined in abhidharma.

Dharmakirti defines it as knowing in an incorrect way, so misknowing. It is misknowing the aggregates as being either identical with “me” or as the possession and habitat of “me” as something to control. Thus, it is equivalent to one of the disturbing attitudes with a view, the deluded view toward a perishing network (the aggregates).  It is a subtype of naivety. 

(5) The fifth is indecisive wavering. This is one that doesn’t fit into emotion or attitude. This is indecisive wavering about accepting or rejecting what is true. It’s defined quite specifically. It’s the same as it is with anti-knowing in that it’s not indecisiveness about what we’re going to have for lunch or what we should wear. Both of these can be potentially crippling and certainly disturbing, but again, it’s not going to prevent our liberation or enlightenment. This is indecisive wavering about accepting of rejecting what is true in terms of the teachings on karma, cause and effect, and the teachings on voidness or dependent arising. The indecisiveness is if these things are true or not true and these types of variables.

(6) This is a group of five different types of deluded views or outlooks, and we won’t go into that right now as it’s rather complicated. The main one is a difficult one to translate. I really don’t remember how others translate this. I call it a deluded view toward a perishing network. Perishing network refers to the aggregates. As a network of five aggregates, it is not partless, and perishing from moment to moment, it is not static. Again, we need to look at the definitions. That can’t be stressed enough. The problem is whether or not these definitions are translated into our languages, but they are there in the abhidharma texts and in the autocommentaries that Vasubandhu and Asanga wrote to their abhidharma texts. 

The definition is that it seeks and latches on to some perishing network of components from our samsara-perpetuating five aggregates. It seeks and latches on to some grouping of our aggregates in that moment and throws out on it an accompanying conceptual framework that it tightly holds onto. It’s a very descriptive definition. It doesn’t interpolate; remember, mental factors don’t make up anything. It’s from grasping for true existence or grasping for an impossible self and so on it comes up with some conceptual weird idea. For instance, “I” exist as something separate from consciousness, and I’m the most important one in the world and I should always have my way and so on. 

Then with this deluded view, it seeks and latches it on to something in our network, it throws this conceptual framework of a static, partless “me” that this grasping manufactures, and throws it onto it. The conceptual framework we’re talking about here is “me and mine.” That’s the conceptual framework. “I’m me.” We identify with something in our aggregates, such as our appearance in the mirror and thinking, “That’s me,” or something in our mind that thinks we are still young separate from the aging body, or we see an aging face and aging body and see it as “mine,” and we don’t want that. It’s “my hair” or “my body,” and we have to make it look pretty. 

These entities, “me” identified with something in the aggregates or “mine” identified as something that belongs to “me.” This grasping for an impossible me, the “me” conceptually doctrinally derived from one of the non-Buddhist Indian schools describing this separate entity that comes into the body and mind and then takes possession of it as its habitat and uses it; with liberation, this “me” can exist independently of a body and mind. This is the gross self that is to be refuted. This is the feeling that we get of “me and mine,” as in “This is my body. I’m going to use ‘my body’ to get strong or ‘my mind’ to figure something out.” Also, it can be an object that we’re seeing as “my” computer, “Don’t use it.” It’s really important to see this; it’s throwing out the net of “me and mine” onto everything that we experience. This is what we need to stop doing.

It’s a matter of fact that some people regard the self to be a different sex than they really are physically.

This is identifying “me” with different components from the aggregates. We can identify “me” with the gender-specific organs of the body, that being a form of physical phenomena, one part of the aggregates, or we can identify it with certain strong tendencies from past lives or whatever to identify with one gender or another. Gender, if I remember correctly from Asanga’s system, is separate from the organs themselves. This would be identifying with that due to strong tendencies that can be located within the five aggregates. We will get to the so-called noncongruent affecting variables like age, and gender, if I recall correctly, is one of them. There are two common listings of these points and Asanga’s list is much larger.

These are the root disturbing emotions.

Next, we have the auxiliary disturbing emotions that are derived form the three poisonous toxic disturbing emotions: longing desire, hostility or naivety, a subcategory of ignorance focused on persons. All of these are focused on persons. “Hostility,” for example, is a different word from “anger”; anger is directed at objects as well as persons, whereas hostility is just at a person or an animal. We don’t feel hostile toward our lunch, for example. Pardon my always using examples from food. A good friend of mine always made fun of me about that. These need to fit into the Theravada systems as well, so this needs to be focused on persons.

We won’t go into specific definitions, but these include: hatred, resentment, concealment of having acted improperly, outrage, envy, miserliness, pretention, hypocrisy, concealing shortcomings, smugness or conceit, cruelty, no moral sense of self-dignity so no sense of values, no care for how one’s actions reflect on others, fogginess of mind, flightiness of mind, disbelieving a fact, laziness, not caring, forgetfulness, being unalert and mental wandering. Flightiness is when we lose an object of focus because of desire; mental wandering can be about anything and is a subcategory. Flightiness is pointed out as being a major distraction in meditation, because it’s more compelling than mental wandering about something that annoys us. Sexual desire or desire to get up, to scratch one’s head, etc. are big distractions.

Next, there are the changeable mental factors. This means that they can be destructive or constructive depending on the ethical status of the cognition they accompany. There is sleepiness, as in we are feeling very angry and sleepy and dull; then it’s a part of this destructive package. We might be sleepy while helping someone, and it’s part of the constructive package. These things have the same “slant”; that means that they all fit together. 

There’s regret; this is probably the one that is most central. We can regret something destructive and the regret is positive. We can regret something that is positive, such as we regret helping someone or giving money to the beggar, and that is destructive. It’s changeable depending upon what it accompanies.

Gross Detection and Subtle Discernment 

There is this pair of gross detection and subtle discernment. Gross detection investigates roughly, and subtle discernment scrutinizes this finely to discern the specific details. These are very crucial in vipassana meditation or analytical meditation. Rough investigation can accompany a plan to kill somebody or it could be while planning how to help somebody. We try to investigate roughly how to do it and then scrutinize that fine details of how to do it. It can accompany something positive or negative.

Those are the mental factors. There are a lot of long lists, and I don’t expect you to know them all but, on the website, there is an entire presentation and definitions of all of them in an article on mind and mental factors. This is how they are usually referred to.

[See: Primary Minds and the 51 Mental Factors]

Any questions thus far?

It’s fairly straightforward that in each moment we’re going to have some of these and not all of them. Again, we try to deconstruct in any moment what emotion of cluster of emotions or factors are there. For instance, when we’re envious of someone, there’s also hostility. These things go together in a cluster of these various emotional mental factors. If we can deconstruct it, find all the parts, then we can work on it much more easily to overcome it. If we see it as just some horrible mood, some solid thing, there’s no way of actually dealing with it.

That’s why His Holiness is always emphasizing that this type of material should be taught in schools to children. This has nothing to do with religion; this is science. If we put together this type of information that we find in all the various abhidharmas, including the Bonpo abhidharma, which gives additional mental factors and so on, then we have, what His Holiness calls, a map of the emotions.

Some psychologists – Paul Eckman and others – have made these emotional maps, but they are primarily doing it from a Western point of view of emotions. If we do it from the abhidharma point of view, we might get a more expansive map of the emotions, as His Holiness says. In the Indian traditions as well, although I’m not as familiar with the non-Buddhist Indian traditions but wouldn’t be surprised at all if they also have listings of the various emotions and mental factors and so. All of this would be very helpful in teaching what His Holiness calls emotional hygiene as well as physical hygiene and it should be taught in the schools. India is the place to start incorporating that because it’s traditional Indian wisdom and they would be more open to actually teaching it to children.

Also included in this aggregate of other affecting variables are a group of variables that aren’t easy to understand and not easy to translate their name. These are variables that aren’t congruent with the primary consciousness and mental factors. In other words, they don’t share five things in common with them. They are neither a form of physical phenomena nor a way of being aware of something. One is the aggregate of forms and the other is being aware of something. When we get into deep debate and deep philosophical discussions in the various Indian tenet systems, we have some problems with that; but we will put that aside. 

They don’t share the same (1) reliance, the cognitive sensor. (2) They don’t share the same focal object. (3) They don’t give rise to the same mental hologram. (4) They don’t share the same time. (5) They don’t share the same harmonious slant. They don’t share all five; in fact, various ones will share some of them but not all five occurring simultaneously.

Imputations

These are imputations, another very difficult word. They are nonstatic facts; this is about the closest that we can come without using the jargon. They are nonstatic facts about the mental continuum, about mental activity, which is made up of these five ever-changing aggregates of experience. They are the facts about the various items in the five aggregates. They only exist “tied” to those items, never separate from them.

From the point of view of Sautrantika, one of the tenet systems, these are objectively tied to the aggregates. It’s not that somebody has to impute it onto things. They are facts and part of the package that changes from moment to moment. They perform functions and produce effects. For example, impermanence, change, aging, motion, tendencies for mental factors to arise including karmic tendencies, and persons. There are many more, such as gender. Impermanence is a fact about something, that causes things to change. Change is a fact about something. Motion is a fact, it’s not a figment of one’s imagination. Aging is a fact. A tendency to repeat certain things is a fact. It isn’t a way of being aware of something, it’s not a form of physical phenomenon, and it doesn’t share five things in common; but it is there. It’s not that we can point and find it, but it’s happening.

All these facts, in a sense, are present with each moment of a mental continuum. That includes the tiny moments of bare non-conceptual sensory perception of tiny colored shapes and moments of conceptual cognition of mentally synthesized conventional whole objects. It can be a moment of seeing something, data transformed into information, or whether it is conceptually cognizing whole conventional objects. There is still change, still motion, still these sorts of things. 

In each moment all of the five aggregates are impermanent. They are all changing. This is a fact about them. These are the noncongruent affecting variables that are changing, impermanent. The forms of physical phenomena, these tiny colored shapes or soundwaves and so on are in motion. We only see one moment at a time, but nevertheless it is an objective fact that there is motion because there’s change. The primary consciousness and mental factors have varying strengths because of their potentials and tendencies to repeat. These are also changing. These are facts.

There is also a person experiencing all of this. That’s a fact. The person is aging, also a fact. If we see the tiny colored shapes that conceptual cognition synthesizes into an appearance representing a conventional whole body, our own or someone else, it is a fact that this is a body of a person.

That’s a very important distinction to make. It’s quite different from a category which is conceptually synthesized. These are facts; it’s not that anybody is imputed it onto it. How we conceptualize it is something else, and how we know it is something else. However, as a fact, there are impermanence, change and motion. Remember, we said that we can’t have mental activity without it being the mental activity of someone; and we can’t have someone without mental activity.

Think about that for a moment.

A fact about something isn’t identical with the thing that it’s a fact about; nor does the fact exist separately form the thing that it’s a fact about. It’s tied to it. There isn’t aging separate from something that’s aging. Aging isn’t the same as the thing that is aging. It’s just a fact about it, an imputation. There are many facts about it. There are facts and there are qualities like color and size and these sorts of things. That’s a different type of thing; those are relative, such as large or small, pretty or ugly. A fact is something different; something is aging; it’s falling apart, degenerating, ending. These are all facts, like being born; there’s a whole list of them. The self, a person, is one of them. It applies to all five aggregates and all the components that make up the mental activity.

The person isn’t the same as the basis of the person and it’s not totally separate from it either. But the deluded outlook took it to be that. It’s “me” over here and the aggregates are over there as mine. Or there’s a “me” as some entity living inside us, inside our heads talking, and that’s “me.” That is not understanding that a person is a noncongruent affecting variable. It’s an imputation, a changing fact, changing all the time, growing and aging etc.

Although these facts are valid facts that apply to moments of bare sensory cognition and all their aggregate components, they are too subtle for the mind to perceive them in the first moment. It doesn’t mean that they’re not facts. Remember, all that we perceive is one moment at a time; but in that one moment at a time, it’s too fast to be able to perceive, or have certainty, or ascertain of motion for example. Think about it; it’s only when we have a sequence of various moments that we can know motion. Does that mean that in one moment, something isn’t in motion? 

We have Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. We can’t know the motion and the location simultaneously. It’s exactly the same thing. That doesn’t mean that motion is just mentally constructed, conceptually constructed. We can only know it as a conceptual construct; but that doesn’t invalidate that in each moment particles and waves are in motion. For instance, with aging, we can only know aging over a sequence of moments in time. That doesn’t mean that we’re not aging in each moment. We are. We can only know change, when we see what was before and what is after; still, things are changing all the time in each moment.

A Person Is an Imputation Too

A person is exactly the same thing. We aren’t able to perceive a person instantly. It’s too subtle. First, we see a body or hear a voice on the telephone. Then, in the next moment, we hear that it’s a voice of a person, the sound of a person. It happens very quickly, but this is the process: there are sound waves, then a hologram of the sound, then sound and the person speaking. Nevertheless, it’s the soundwaves of a person talking. 

We can only know a person conceptually according to this Karma Kagyu explanation: it’s synthesized into a person that extends over all the aggregates even though we are only perceiving it with one piece of sensibilia, in this case the voice on the phone. The person extends over all the aggregates and extends over time; so that’s conceptually synthesized. That’s only how we know it. In a first one moment, we conceptually synthesize that it’s a voice and then a person. It’s not the same and not different. But that doesn’t mean that in each moment, a person isn’t talking. There is a person talking; that’s a fact.

Let’s digest that a bit and then we have time for a few questions about it. This is the big misconception that one can have that the self is only a conceptual construct and therefore it doesn’t exist. If we take the Buddhist teachings of no-self to literally mean no self, if there is no self, then we don’t have a healthy sense of a self. Without a healthy sense of a conventional self, we don’t do anything. Why would we? That’s the nihilistic extreme. Without a healthy sense of a self and other people, we wouldn’t aspire to help them and we wouldn’t aspire to attain liberation or enlightenment. If nobody is there, why does it matter? That’s not the meaning; that’s a misunderstanding. We can only know the self conceptually, with certainty. That doesn’t mean that there’s no self conventionally, literally. The self is a fact about the mental continuum, mental activity and the five aggregates.

Can we say that the self exists but is constantly changing?

We can say that the self is impermanent.

There’s nothing constant about it; but there is a continuum and is that self the self?

Is the self the self? In Chandrakirti’s seven-part refutation of the self, or truly established existence, that’s one of the things that is refuted. We have to understand that the self is not the same as the aggregates, not different from the aggregates, it’s not on the basis of the aggregates, the aggregates are not on the basis of it, it’s not inside the aggregates, it’s not the continuum or the shape of the aggregates – maybe this is all seven, maybe not. Anyway, it isn’t any of these because if it were truly existent established by itself, dualistically, separate from everything else, and there’s a continuum that is established truly by itself, then we can’t say that this solid “me,” as if enveloped in plastic, is identical with the solid continuum. 

Each of these incorrect ways are in terms of if the self were self-established and the aggregates were self-established, they couldn’t be the same thing nor could they be totally different. That’s because the whole premise of something being self-established is incorrect.

Do we have to think of them as self-established?

The problem is that our habit of grasping for truly established existence makes them appear like that. What is “self-established”? Self-established is a shorthand way of saying “established by a self-establishing nature,” that there is something inside findable that establishes and makes it a thing. I describe it as enveloping it in plastic wrapping and now it’s a thing all by itself, like a ping pong ball or something like that. There is no such thing as a self-establishing nature. That is also often translated as “inherent existence”; but, literally, if we look at the words, what it’s saying is a self-establishing nature. It appears like there’s something in my head that’s me, that’s talking and it’s self-established and there’s something inside it that makes it me and not you. Somehow, that defining characteristic has some power by itself to generate the plastic and there it is – self-established. It doesn’t.

It’s not that it came into our bodies and inhabited them and now it’s talking and trying to control it and is out of control. It’s not that in meditation, it’s sitting back and watching it. This is false, but it appears like that and we believe it. The way that we describe it is that it feels like that. Even though it feels like that, the response is “so what?” This is nonsense. 

Building Up Positive Force

But we need to convince ourselves of that and not just intellectually. That is the trick. It’s not easy, and it requires building up a tremendous amount of positive force. That’s called merit. Without that, our mind is too closed to understand it. We need to open our minds; this is why it’s Mahayana. If we are thinking of benefiting all beings throughout all of space, we aim to open our minds up to that level described in the Mahayana sutras, for instance, that the Buddha is teaching and there are twenty million asuras and thirty million gods and countless gandharvas, these fantastic numbers of beings present for the Buddha’s teachings. In our visualizations it says to image all sentient beings around us. If we can do that to a certain extent, and that’s another form to visualize, and that’s a form that can only be known by the mind because obviously we can’t see all sentient beings. But if we can open our minds to that scope, generate compassion toward all of them and do something positive to help others with the dedication that it benefits everybody, if we do that enough, it opens up our minds. If we open up our minds with compassion, that opens up the mental blocks that prevent us from understanding voidness, or emptiness.

It’s very clear; if we look at the example of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug tradition, or Milarepa, Tsongkhapa was extremely advanced on the path already, but he was having trouble having non-conceptual cognition of voidness. He had a vision of Manjushri who advised Tsongkhapa to do thirty-five sets of a hundred thousand of prostrations – one for each of the thirty-five confession Buddhas. He also advised him to do, I believe it was, ten million mandala offerings. Then, he would be able to break through the mental blocks. At that super advanced stage, he went into retreat for a couple of years and did all of that. 

Look at Milarepa building all the towers etc. Why did Marpa make him do all of that? Hopefully, he didn’t do it while grumbling at Marpa; he did all of that to build up positive force and open up his mind. This is very important. Don’t belittle ngondro and all the ways to build up positive force. It’s very important and not just at the beginning with the attitude of “I need to get over with that to get onto the good stuff.” Look at the example of Tsongkhapa at this way advanced stage, and he went back and did more. 

This is just some general advice. It doesn’t have to be prostrations. It could be helping others as a doctor or teacher or something that is helping others with the proper dedication. Without the dedication, doing positive things with the default setting just produces good positive karma and improves our samsaric existence. That’s not what we want; initially we do want that so that we have the proper circumstances to make more progress. But we don’t just want improved samsara. It has to be dedicated or it doesn’t go into that folder, as if on the computer hard drive.

Knowing all these mental factors, utilizing this for deconstructing our self, is this the way to discover that there is no self or it just to open up? I still can’t get it.

What we want to do is not to go to the nihilistic position that there is no self at all, but to understand that what we imagine and how it feels that we exist is nonsense. It’s not corresponding to reality. What is voidness? Voidness is “no such thing,” a total absence of something that corresponds to this dualistic appearance. That’s what is absent; voidness is an absence. When we speak about voidness beyond words, beyond concepts, that’s referring to the voidness that’s understood non-conceptually. Still, it’s the absence – absence of the four conceptual ways of conceiving it. 

When we understand that there’s an absence of any findable reference corresponding to what we imagine, the term is “what is holding up from out there,” that there is no such thing, then subsequent to that we understand that it’s dependent arising. It’s arising dependently on the five aggregates as a fact about them. We have to understand these two together. Voidness goes together with dependent arising. Dependent arising can be understood in many ways. It’s not dependent arising as in the twelve links of dependent arising. That’s talking about samsara. It’s dependent arising in terms of imputation, a basis and a fact about the basis. It’s neither the same nor totally different. 

It doesn’t mean no self, literally no self as is the nihilistic position; and it doesn’t mean an impossible concrete self wrapped in plastic that we imagine either; that’s the absolutist extreme. It’s Madhyamaka, neither of those two; but not neither as a category of a thing beyond words and beyond concepts. “Neither this nor that” could imply that it’s something else; it’s not that either.

Does this mean it’s going beyond self? I don’t understand.

It’s going beyond believing in the impossible self. It’s going beyond that. We have very strong mental and emotional blocks preventing us from really accepting and understanding that. Unfortunately, it feels as though we exist as this findable thing talking in our heads and complaining and commenting all the time. It’s very hard to accept that, even if intellectually we understand it. 

That requires applying it in our daily lives and seeing that it functions. That’s the test that comes from Dharmakirti: Does it perform its stated function? The stated function is that it will not create suffering. If we believe in this impossible self, what is the test? Believing like that, we have all sorts of problems, unhappiness and trouble and we act in compulsive and stupid ways. We get angry and so on trying to defend it, trying to make an impossible “me” secure. This is impossible; it can never be secure and will always be insecure. That’s how we experience ignorance; we don’t know and that’s insecure.

If we understand voidness and dependent arising, what is the test? We don’t create problems and everything works fine. It’s like when we have a lot of work to do and we just do it. We’re not worrying and thinking, “Oh, poor me; I have so much work. I can’t do it and how am I ever going to get it done?” We have work and we just do it. What we can get done, we get done and what we can’t get done, we can’t get done. Period. Try our best on the basis of a healthy self, a healthy “me.” It works; we just deal with life and whatever comes up we just deal with it.

That’s why in Zen, they say in the end it just comes down to ordinary life. Don’t make a big deal out of anything; nothing special. It’s samsara and what do we expect? Bad things are going to happen; deal with it. It’s simple, but not so simple.

Let’s end with a dedication. We think whatever understanding, whatever positive force has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for all beings to reach the enlightened state of a Buddha for the benefit of all.