The Aggregates of Consciousness and Forms: Karma Kagyu

The five aggregates are basically an analytical scheme for being able to deconstruct all these different variables. Variables mean things that are changing. Once we become a bit more alert and aware of all these factors, then we notice that they are all changing at different rates. In each moment there is a mixture, for lack of a better word, going on of many different things and they are all changing at different rates. There is nothing solid about it whatsoever. 

This is a profound and deep insight, that all these things are changing all the time and nothing solid at all. For example, there’s not a mood that we’re in, or an emotion like sadness that we’re feeling very strongly that is static. They don’t occur on their own. While we might be feeling depressed, we’re also seeing things and thinking things. All sorts of things are going on at the same time. That opens the door to be able to apply various methods to either strengthen things that are very week or dampen down or ultimately get rid of things that are causing us difficulties and problems. 

We need to be able to sort out what in our mental activity is not to be abandoned, like concentration or compassion for example, and things that are to be abandoned and gotten rid of so that they don’t occur anymore. That would include things like anger, greed, attachment, ignorance, our not understanding what is going on, and all these sorts of troublemakers that cause us problems. 

The Aggregates Include Nonstatic Phenomenon Only

The aggregates are only including the nonstatic phenomenon. Nonstatic means that they aren’t just standing still. They are constantly changing. It doesn’t include static phenomenon that don’t change. As part of our mental activity there are factors that are static, such as categories like dogs or love or emotion. These are fixed, what are called metaphysical entities. Although we can change our idea, for example, of what a category compassion means as we study it more deeply and experience it, but that’s just an exchange for one category to another. It’s not something that organically grows like a sort of variable.

The Aggregates Are an Analytical Scheme

It is also important to realize that the five aggregates are just an analytical scheme. They aren’t five bags sitting somewhere in our heads. Don’t give them any sort of concrete existence. It’s just a tool for being able to deconstruct each moment of our experience. Each of these aggregates, except for two of them, are made up of many variables within it. In each moment of our experience, one or more items from each of these groups are going to be present in that moment of cognition. 

When they aren’t present, they are there as a tendency. For instance, there can be a tendency to experience anger although it’s not happening manifestly in every single moment. But that tendency is there and can be reenforced, strengthened and weakened. These aren’t things that are static. Tendencies are variable and can change. This has to do with karmic tendencies as well. Don’t think of them as being something that is fixed. They can be strengthened and weakened and, with proper opponents, deactivated and eliminated. 

Focus on that for a moment. We’re talking about all the variables and changing factors that comprise our moment-to-moment experiencing. Although it seems to us that, at any sort of time and also over a period of time, what we are experiencing is some heavy singular solid thing, such as depression or sadness or great happiness as well, in actuality, it’s made up of many variables or parts that are changing at different rates. There are meditations in which we can focus on that and on how everything is changing, such as meditation on impermanence. We can apply it to the weather, but more relevant is what we are actually experiencing in every moment.

[Pause]

This is our topic: the ever-changing variables that make up each moment of our lives, and experiencing things, and each moment of our mental activity. When we understand the five aggregates, then we also understand how the self or “me’ fits into these. The self is included within one of these aggregates. When we understand that it’s just part of the whole mixture of what is going on in each moment, then we can overcome our unawareness or ignorance with which we imagine that there is some sort of dualistic thing that is going on in which there is a separate “me” from all of this. That separate “me” is one that is either observing it, disassociated from it, totally separate from it, trying to control it or feels that it is out of control. 

This is a deceptive appearance. When we understand that the self is part of this mixture, neither identical with the awareness aspect of what is going on, nor is it totally separate dualistically from the mental hologram that is arising. When we feel in any of these ways, identifying with the mind or awareness or one of the factors like sadness or pain – as in “I am so sad; I am in so much pain and so miserable,” what happens is that we feel insecure. 

We don’t actually have that word in the analysis of the five aggregates, but it seems to fit in in terms of how we experience this ignorance. Ignorance is defined as not knowing or knowing in an incorrect way. We either don’t know what is actually happening in terms of cause and effect or we don’t know the reality of what is happening. Because we don’t know that what appears is incorrect and the way it seems to us is incorrect, how do we experience that? We feel insecure. What follows are all these mechanisms to try to make that dualistic self secure. 

We feel out of control, for example, so what do we do? We want to be in control of everything. Then comes longing desire; if we get certain things, then we will feel secure. If we get enough money, enough likes on our Facebook page or Instagram, this is going to make us feel secure. If someone says “I love you” to us enough times, that will make us secure. We might want to get things away from us. That’s hostility and anger, and somehow that’s going to make us secure. If we can just get all the dirt and disorder out of our house, that will make us feel secure. We have this repulsion as another mechanism. We can also have naivety and put up the walls. We think we can ignore something that’s threatening or what’s happening in the world. That’s another mechanism. 

Of course, these mechanisms don’t work. That’s the problem. They trigger our compulsive behavior that is the whole topic of karma. Compulsively we clean the house again, even though it was just cleaned or wash our hands yet again although we just did that. Or, at the buffet we eat as much as we possibly can because we paid for the buffet and we should eat and taste everything. This is compulsive behavior and what karma is talking about; the compulsiveness of our actions, thinking, speaking, and actually behaving. Certainly, that produces problems. 

This whole issue of the five aggregates and how the self fits into the five aggregates, or, in other words, how the self fits into our mental activity from moment to moment is crucial to be able to overcome suffering. This is what Buddhism is all about, all the very sophisticated methods that Buddha taught for overcoming suffering.

List of the Five Aggregates

Just to list the five aggregates, they are: 

• consciousness, referring to primary consciousness
• forms of physical phenomena
• distinguishing, sometimes translated as “recognition” but I think it isn’t very accurate 
• feeling, referring not to emotions but some level of happiness or unhappiness
• Other affecting variables; all the rest of the variables and things that change that are going to affect each moment of experience. Sometimes this is called “conditioned phenomena,” but perhaps “other affecting variables” give a bit more flavor of what it’s including.

This isn’t the standard order of listing them. There is a standard order, but I find this order makes it a bit easier to understand what is being described.

There are six basic kinds. From the Karma Kagyu perspective, there are eight. When we speak about eight, there are still the six basic types. They are eye consciousness; ear consciousness; nose consciousness; tongue consciousness; and physical sensation consciousness of the body, not just hot and cold, but motion and all types of physical sensations; and mental consciousness.

We don’t have exactly the same type of presentation as we have in science in which we just speak about consciousness as being mental consciousness. We speak in Buddhism a bit more specifically in terms of each of the different types of sensory consciousness and mental consciousness as well. If we had to go more in the direction of a scientific analysis, we would find that there are even more types of primary consciousness that humans don’t have, but various animals have. For example, there can be consciousness of the magnetic field, consciousness of sonar, as whales have, and so on. There are other types of sensory data that could be known by mental activity. 

As humans our hardware is limited in terms of the sensory apparatus of our bodies, so we are limited to these six types of basic primary consciousness. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is making efforts to incorporate the findings and analyses of brain sciences to see that they aren’t contradictory but supplement each other. 

Speaking about the awareness side, in giving rise to a mental hologram, with these six basic types of primary consciousness, how are they aware? What is it that they are aware of in terms of that data? What they are aware of is what’s called the essential nature of what’s going on. If we speak in terms of a computer, then within the stream of zeros and ones of any piece of data, somewhere in the actual coding, there’s a certain combination of them that indicates if the data is visual or audio information. That is the part of the data that primary consciousness is focused on. It is the essential nature of that data. Is it a sight, a sound, a smell, a physical sensation, or is it some sort of mental phenomenon that can only be known by the mind, like a thought? That’s what primary consciousness is aware of and focuses specifically on.

Intuition

I was wondering if intuition or gut feeling is a part of that primary consciousness?

Intuition and gut feelings in part get into another analytical scheme involved with ways of knowing. How does that consciousness work? The consciousness never works alone by itself; there are always other mental factors that are part of it? How does it know things? Sensory consciousness is just non-conceptual; mental consciousness can be conceptual or non-conceptual. It can be inferential, based on logic, as in “where there’s smoke there’s fire.” 

Intuition basically has to do with one of the forms of knowing called presumption. This is basically a guess that we know something but not sure about it. There’s no certainty to it. What we presume to be true, for example the Buddhist teachings on emptiness or voidness, we presume it’s true, but we don’t really understand it, so we don’t have real certainty about our understanding. That presumption can be true or we can presume something is true that’s not true. It can go in either direction.

Intuition is sort of like that, we think that it’s true, we believe it, but our intuition can be wrong. Our intuition might be that the bus will come on time, for instance, by the count of ten it will arrive, and maybe it does; and then we think how great, we knew beforehand that it would come like that. That presumption, the gut feeling, has to do more with how much understanding there is. Understanding is another way of knowing something, which is both accurate and decisive. In a sense, that’s an intellectual understanding: this is exactly what something means, and we’re really sure about it. That’s correct; and it’s not that we’re sure of something that is incorrect. The gut feeling has to do with integrating it into our lives and seeing that it’s true based on our experience. That’s what we call a gut level understanding.

We have all this terminology that we use in our western analysis of what we experience. When we understand not just the scheme of the five aggregates, but the whole analysis of ways of knowing and other schemes in terms of logic and lines of reasoning, when we have that full scope of the Buddhist teachings, then we can see how we can translate that Western terminology into the Buddhist terminology. In most cases, they don’t actually overlap. For instance, what is called by one word like “intuition” is actually a combination of many different things in the Buddhist analytical schemes. There isn’t anything mysterious that couldn’t be analyzed and transposed and made understandable in each of the systems, one to the other. 

To answer your question, primary consciousness will know things in many different ways. Intuition or gut level understanding would be the different ways it knows things when it focuses on the essential nature of something. It gets a bit more complicated the deeper that we go, but basically a first level answer would be that. 

Conceptual and Non-Conceptual

As mentioned, sensory consciousness is non-conceptual. What is conceptual? Conceptual is with a category, basically, in the most general explanation. To conceptualize is to fit things into categories, like dog or human. That’s conceptual. Non-conceptual is without that. We have non-conceptual cognition with sensory consciousness, and there can also be non-conceptual mental consciousness. When we speak about conceptual, it’s always mental and not something that operates with the senses.

When we have sensory cognition of something, there is the arising of a mental hologram of basic information, a sight. It can be colored shapes and so on. I always think of money as an example; in Norway, we use kroner. If we have a one hundred kroner note, basically there are electromagnetic waves that strike the eye. What do we see? We see a mental hologram of colored shapes. That’s what it is basically, colored shapes. That’s the basic information that we get from eye consciousness; it focuses on the fact that this is visual data. 

Next, it’s followed by a moment of non-conceptual mental consciousness, which sort of switches it from the channel of sense consciousness to mental consciousness. Again, there’s mental consciousness of just colored shapes. That’s what it is; in that sense because non-conceptual sensory consciousness is followed by a moment of non-conceptual mental consciousness of basically the same type of hologram, we can fit in the scientific notion that mental consciousness is all that there is. 

Mental consciousness does play a central role, but in Buddhist analysis, it takes it in a bit more detail, in that first it’s coming with eye consciousness or ear consciousness, and then mental consciousness is going to deal with it. Okay? It isn’t inconsistent with the Western analysis.

Digest that for a moment.

There is the Western term “perception.” Does that fit into the explanations here?

There’s the Western term “perception,” and when used very specifically it refers to sense perception. That would be non-conceptual sensory perception.

Additional Two Primary Consciousnesses in Karma Kagyu

Karma Kagyu accepts eight types of primary consciousness. What are these other two? It’s not actually so simple. There is the foundation consciousness or storehouse consciousness. That is the foundation on which karmic tendencies, potentials and habits are stored. We’re only speaking about the sutra system. We will leave it at that level and not get more complicated. It is the basic foundation consciousness that’s going on underneath the whole strata of primary consciousness and on which are imputed the non-physical tendencies, habits, potentials, memories and so on. It’s a sort of carrier that is going on from moment to moment. It’s not at all the way it’s defined in the Mind-Only system, but the terminology is used in the Karma Kagyu, Nyingma and Sakya systems. This is kun-gzhi rnam-shes in Tibetan, ālayavijñāna in Sanskrit.

Then there is the seventh consciousness or seventh mind, as it’s sometimes called. It is simultaneous with foundation consciousness. It aims at it and affects the foundation consciousness so that it gives rise to appearances. This is very subtle; it describes the arising of mental holograms, the clarity side. What arises is the appearance side. It’s called clarity/appearance, and they are inseparable from each other. This is addressing how this works. 

Everything arises depending on many different causes and conditions. These various mental holograms that arise are arising, on one hand, from external stimulus, electromagnetic waves, or brainwaves if we speak about mental, and there is some tendency or potential to experience seeing that, as in coming here and seeing what we’re seeing here today. When we actually enter the room, that tendency needs to be, in a sense, stimulated to give rise to a mental hologram. 

That’s the effect of this seventh consciousness. It aims at the foundation consciousness and affects it to be able to give rise to the mental hologram in conjunction with some external stimulus if it’s sensory. There can be all sorts of other things involved as well, but this is the basic mechanism. 

When that seventh mind is under the influence of ignorance and unawareness, it causes the foundation consciousness to give rise to a dualistic appearance: it’s me over here as the mind looking at it and the mental hologram over there. This is dualistic.

This is a basic explanation of the seventh and eighth consciousnesses in the Karma Kagyu scheme. It’s the foundation consciousness and what is called in Chittamatra “the deluded consciousness.” But since it also works with a Buddha, we don’t want to call it deluded. Therefore, it’s often referred to as the seventh consciousness or seventh mind. Okay? Foundation consciousness is number eight in the standard listing.

[Pause to digest]

I have sometimes heard that seventh consciousness being called afflictive consciousness.

I would translate it as deluded consciousness. That is the way that it’s defined in the Mind-Only system; but if we speak about foundation consciousness, there are two of them in the Karma Kagyu analytical scheme. There’s foundational deep awareness and foundational, as I define it, dividing awareness. Foundational deep awareness is giving rise to pure appearances as a Buddha has, the subtlest level of mind, and there are all sorts of explanations of that. It is affected by this seventh consciousness to give rise to its appearances. That’s there. When there is ignorance or unawareness, then mixed together, as explained like milk and water or gold and other metals to make an alloy, is the foundational dividing awareness. 

That seventh consciousness thereby focuses on the foundational dividing awareness and causes it to produce appearances that are divided into the dualistic appearance. When that seventh consciousness is called deluded or afflictive consciousness, that’s referring only to when it’s functioning under the influence of ignorance and aimed at foundational dividing consciousness, not when aimed at foundational deep awareness. 

Just to make it more complete, in this Karma Kagyu system, we aren’t talking about the Mind-Only school, but to make it more general, this is Madhyamaka. Within that, when that seventh consciousness is focused on foundational dividing awareness, it’s giving rise to a dualistic appearance. In the Mind-Only system, that deluded consciousness is aimed at the alayavijnana or foundation consciousness. They don’t make the difference between foundational deep awareness and dividing awareness, and they consider it to be the self, “me.” This is slightly different.

Is the seventh consciousness sometimes referred to as the kleshas consciousness. Is that where emotions come in?

Kleshas include disturbing emotions, not all emotions. There are constructive emotions, like love, patience and compassion, and destructive emotions, like anger, greed, jealousy and arrogance, these types of things. No, the seventh consciousness doesn’t focus on that. It focuses on awareness. 

When it focuses on the foundational dividing awareness and stimulates it to make the arising of an appearance from a tendency, then with ignorance, because we just don’t know that it doesn’t exist the way it appears and we are grasping for the true existence of what appears, so we take it to correspond to reality, then that is what causes the disturbing emotions to arise in relation to that. We don’t like what appears and we want to get rid of it. We don’t like the cockroach on the floor or whatever it is. The disturbing emotions, the kleshas, follow a few steps after the seventh consciousness affects – this is the word is used – or stimulates the arising of a mental hologram. 

The other point was about calling this storehouse consciousness. My question is what is stored?

The term “storehouse consciousness” is how it was translated fifty or one hundred years ago. It isn’t physical. They used the word “imprinted” and so on, but actually the word is “imputation,” which is, as I learned last time when here in Oslo, there isn’t a Norwegian word for that. It makes it very difficult to actually explain. “Imputation” doesn’t actually convey very much in English either, so that doesn’t help. 

It is, in a sense, a fact or something like that about the mental continuum. The fact is that there are tendencies, potentials and habits. These are distinguished in the discussion of karmic aftermath that follows as aftermath from certain behavior. There is a potential and tendency to repeat it; it’s that type of tendency. There are also tendencies of all the various mental factors. There is the tendency to get angry or the tendency involved with concentration. They will have different strengths and this can be affected. For instance, the tendency to concentrate might be very weak, but in some cases it can be better. There is dependent arising and everything depends on many things. 

If we speak about memories, they are basically a tendency to have a cognition in which something representing a prior event arises as a mental hologram. What we remember can be accurate or not very accurate. What represents that event can change at different times. That’s what memory is, as translated into Buddhist terminology. It’s also a tendency to repeat thinking about something that happened in the past. It doesn’t fire or arise all the time. 

That’s the nature of tendencies. They only arise and produce effects intermittently, from time to time. For example, we’re not angry every single moment of our existence. Okay?

That is the aggregate of consciousness or primary consciousness.

Next, let’s discuss the aggregate of forms of physical phenomena. In the presentation that we have in Kagyu, Nyingma, and Sakya, these forms of physical phenomena are limited to just the ever-changing momentary sensory data. It’s only talking about of one moment of some sort of sensory data which can be called sensibilia, if we choose to use a fancy word for it. That would be one moment of a conglomeration of particles and molecules large enough to be detected by sensory consciousness. 

Sensory Data or Sensibilia

Buddhism does speak about particles and sub-particles. It has to be a mass of enough of them so that it can actually be detected by our sensory apparatus. This is the first group of forms of physical phenomena or sensibilia and only one moment at a time. Only one moment is happening at a time. That is an important point. It’s only one moment happening at a time. In the West we speak about past, present, and future, but we don’t use those words in Buddhism. We use presently happening, no-longer-happening and not-yet-happening. There’s the not-yet-happening of lunch; there’s the presently happening lecture, and the no-longer-happening breakfast. 

The only thing happening now is this one moment, and that one moment doesn’t last; in fact, we can’t even pin it down. When does this moment start or when does it end? There’s no arising, enduring or ending that we can actually find and pinpoint to a moment. It’s not that a moment is standing off stage waiting and now it comes on into our mind and is happening and then it leaves. It doesn’t happen like that. 

We’re talking about only momentary sense data. These would be tiny colored shapes, pixels of light or photons or electromagnetic waves, sound waves, smell molecules, taste molecules, physical sensation neural activity or whatever is happening there. They arise from external elements and can be known by a specific type of sense consciousness and a mental consciousness. In moment one, there’s the data, such as the electromagnetic waves that hit our sensory apparatus, and moment two, the sensory cognition of it or the arising of a mental hologram. 

There’s a time lag there; that moment of the sense data is no-longer-happening when the mental hologram arises. That’s why it is described that the mental hologram is opaque. We aren’t actually seeing that no-longer-happening moment when the electromagnetic waves hit the eye sensors. Now we have the moment of the sensory data no-longer-happening. What happens next is the arising of the mental hologram of that data in terms of colored shapes, followed by a moment of mental consciousness of a hologram of colored shapes. It’s not exactly the same thing because the first moment of sensory consciousness is no-longer-happening and now there’s another moment. 

It’s always moment to moment to moment like that. This presents a problem of continuity, but we’ll see a very reasonable explanation for the continuity that’s there. That describes our sensory consciousness. It’s not “mind only,” not that all of this is coming out of one seed of karma and there’s no external stimulus in terms of the arising of these forms of physical phenomenon. 

Forms That Are Only Objects of Mental Consciousness

Colored shapes are forms of physical phenomena as well, but they are only known by the mind. That’s another category of forms of physical phenomenon. We have sensory data, the moments of sensibilia, and then the forms that only the objects of mental consciousness. For instance, colored shapes that appear in dreams or in our imagination or visualizations. These are only known by mental consciousness, whereas the sensibilia are known by sensory consciousness and then very quickly a moment of mental consciousness happens. This is how we begin to process the data and where the brain comes in from the Western point of view.

The Cognitive Sensory Cells

The third category within forms of physical phenomena are the cognitive sensory cells, the photo sensitive cells of the eyes, the sound sensitive of the ears, the smell sensitive of the nose, taste sensitive of the tongue, physical sensation sensitive cells of the body. Mental doesn’t come in here, just the physical sensors. In Western science, we would add brain cells into all of this. As His Holiness says, that would be reasonable to fit into the system although not actually specified in the traditional texts. It wouldn’t harm the system at all but would expand the system to include the various cells of the brain and not just cells within the eye.

These are the forms of physical phenomenon, moment to moment and changing. We are only talking about one moment of various types of sense data and various objects that can only be known by the mind like in dreams or imagination or visualization to form colored shapes, for example. There are many examples of that; when we think about astronomical distances or sub-atomic particles, we can know that by the mind but not physically from our sensors. There’s a list of these. Okay?

[Pause]

In each moment of our experiencing, there will be some form of physical phenomenon that is part of the conglomeration of what’s going on. It’s on the side of the mental hologram that arises, but also there are forms of physical phenomena in terms of the cognitive apparatus, such as photo sensitive cells of the eyes. Additionally, from Western science, we’d have to include there the neural network and the brain.

Now it starts to get very interesting. The momentary electromagnetic waves or photons are what function and produce effects. That’s what produces an effect and actually does things. We’d have to say that form a scientific point of view as well. This sensory data, that change from moment to moment are what function and do things. Non-conceptual sensory cognition of them lasts only an instant and followed by an instant of non-conceptual mental cognition. Instant means a tiny little phase of it, and then immediately there’s conceptual cognition. During the moment of non-conceptual sensory cognition and the non-conceptual mental cognition, there’s no grasping for truly established dualistic existence. 

That’s not so easy; let’s pull that apart a bit to analyze what that means. During the non-conceptual cognition, there is the arising of a mental hologram of colored shapes – a moment of sensory and a non-conceptual moment of mental. Take that little piece, there’s no grasping for truly established existence, meaning dualistic existence. That only arises when we think in terms of actual conventional whole objects such as computer. Then we have the appearance of “me” over here looking at this whole object over there.

Grasping for truly established existence, a dualistic existence, does two things. It makes the deceptive appearance arise and it considers it to correspond to reality. But in the non-conceptual cognition, we don’t have that happening yet because it’s still just all colored shapes. We’re not yet cognizing it or aware of it as a “thing.” Perhaps that makes it a bit easier to understand. It’s not a thing yet in terms of what we’re perceiving. It’s just colored shapes or just sounds. That’s all it is at that point. There’s no grasping for a dualistic existence in this non-conceptual cognition, because the mental activity hasn’t yet given rise to a mental hologram of everyday conventional whole objects.

Conventional Whole Objects: Mental Synthesis

It’s in the next moment when it switches to conceptual cognition that the conceptual cognition mentally synthesizes – the key words here – mentally synthesizes and gives rise, as an appearing object, the mental hologram that represents a conventional whole object. 

What are conventional whole objects? A conventional whole object is something that isn’t just colored shapes. This object in front of me is a recorder; but what do we see? We see colored shapes; but this isn’t just colored shapes that last for just one moment, is it? If we hold it in our hands, there is also a physical sensation. If we listen very carefully, we can hear a sound. There’s a lot of data, but each of our sensory consciousnesses can only pick up one moment at a time of only one type of sensory data. Our conceptual mental consciousness then synthesizes, or mentally constructs, a whole object that extends over time. It doesn’t just last for one moment and it is a composite of all the different types of sensory data of it.

This thing, for example, that I am holding up in front of me isn’t colored shapes. We would call it a hand; but that’s yet as further step in the process. Still, it’s not just colored shapes; it can be held, so there’s physical sensation. I can smell it; I can stick it in my mouth and taste it. It doesn’t just last for one moment. Conceptual cognition synthesizes it into a whole object.

That’s an important thing to understand. This is unique in the Kagyu, Nyingma and Sakya presentation. Gelugpa asserts something different, that we actually see commonsense objects. But these three schools say that we only see colored shapes and we don’t actually see conventional whole objects. 

[Pause]

What’s the significance or consequence of asserting that we only see colored shapes or that we see a commonsense object, such as the hand?

That’s a very good question. When we get into the discussion of voidness or emptiness, that’s referring to understanding that, despite there is this deceptive appearance, there’s a total absence of anything that corresponds to that appearance. That’s to present it in the most basic terms. We can get more complicated and sophisticated than that. If we can understand that the conventional objects are mental constructs, it’s a little bit easier to understand the voidness. 

That’s one side; from the other side, the Gelugpa presentation, in which we actually see commonsense objects, strengthens the compassion side, and that’s its advantage. If we actually see people, it’s easier to have compassion for them than if we think it’s just a mental construct. 

Each view has its advantages and disadvantages. They are both very helpful in viewing our experience. Karma Kagyu gets around this a bit differently than Sakya and Nyingma. They also say that whole objects are conceptual constructs, but let’s go a bit more slowly in explaining.

A Conceptual Construct Is a Static Phenomenon of a Whole Object

A conceptual construct is a static phenomenon of a whole object. Here’s this object, a computer. This object doesn’t actually do anything. It’s static. The electromagnetic waves and such are what is actually doing anything. There’s nothing solid there; everything is made up of atoms, particles and electromagnetic waves. That’s the basic Vaibhashika view, that there’s nothing solid. These are the things that are actually performing functions, and the mentally synthesized hand isn’t. 

Because it’s a static phenomenon, it can’t appear as anything. It’s a metaphysical entity, and abstract in a sense. In our conceptual cognition there’s a mental representation of it that changes from moment to moment. With motion, for example, it changes from moment to moment. Here, there seems to be a static hand that’s not doing anything; there’s a mental representation and that’s the mental hologram that represents a whole conventional object. That’s happening in the conceptual cognition. In addition, imputed on it or latched onto it is a category. That category might also have latched onto it a name or a word. The category is difficult to refer to without using the name. Dogs have this but they don’t attach words and names. There is the category of “my master,” or “food” or something like that. 

There is a category that all individual conventional items fit into. For example, my hand, your hand, both hands, all are in the category of “hand” and then there’s a word attached to it, “hand,” actually just a combination of meaningless sounds. Those sounds are in the category of a word, and the word has a meaning that conventionally people agree upon. In fact, it’s just a mental representation of sounds, but we agree that it will designate this particular category and all the items that fit into it. 

That’s quite a lot at one time, but that’s what is going on in conceptual cognition. We’re only talking about the first moment of it. To repeat, there’s the arising of a mental hologram of a static conventional object which is mentally synthesized. There’s a mental representation of it, a hologram of it. The hologram will still be of colored shapes, but it still represents that the whole object has physical sensation, smell, taste, and so on and lasts for more than one instant. We also have the category, what kind of thing it is. 

Collection Synthesis and Kind Synthesis

There’s what is called the collection synthesis of the collection of all the data about it. There’s also a kind synthesis of what kind of thing it is. The category fits into that kind of thing; and then a word or a name fits to that category and through the category to the items therein. That was made by some convention, some cave people or whomever invented a language and decided that these arbitrary sounds will have a meaning.

Unique Feature of Karma Kagyu

What is unique about Karma Kagyu and different for Nyingma and Sakya is that they say that in that first moment of conceptual cognition, there still is no grasping for truly established existence. In this way, there’s less danger of thinking that there are no such thing as conventional objects. Karma Kagyu says that this mental hologram of a conceptually synthesized whole object and the mental hologram of just colored shapes, both of them are dharmakaya. They are mind itself; they are both what arises with mental activity. 

In that sense, there is less danger of thinking that conventional objects are just a figment of our imagination. This is how Karma Kagyu gets around that point of dispute by taking too literally that conventional objects are just figments of conceptual minds. These are both ways of dharmakaya; the glitter, or display, or effulgence, or however one chooses to translate it of dharmakaya. They are waves on the ocean.

It’s only in the second moment of conceptual cognition that then the dualistic appearance for grasping for true existence arises. With that we get all the other problematic issues that come in, such as, “That’s my computer; don’t touch it or use it. You’ll ruin it.” There is “me” on one side as the mind looking at it, and the object over there, totally separate, dualistic appearance. That comes only when there is an appearance of an actual conventional whole object and not just colored shapes.

That’s why it’s said in meditation, when a thought arises that is a mentally synthesized whole object, don’t follow it out. The first moment isn’t the problem. The problem is the second and third moments when we follow it out. It’s just the arising of a thought; no big deal.

Ever since I was child, I had a great fascination with fire. I played around and my friend and I had this huge place in the forest where we made huge bonfires. One time, I had the strong sense that I should jump into the fire, and I did. When I was mid-air, it still seemed normal: but when I entered the flames, it was like some kind of hyper-drive, like in a science fiction movie, that I had to enter. My normal senses were wiped out and time was in harmony. The flames were dangerous and hot and chaotic and when I was in the middle it was harmonious and beautiful and calm. I felt at peace with nothing but calmness. It was the same when I jumped out. The flow and flames and beautiful all made sense, and it was the way it was supposed to be. It is like what you are saying about this first moment. There was no attachment or names or thoughts. I had no chance to add anything to it or grasp. When I jumped out, I thought should I do it again and then thought appeared that no way would I ever do it again. Never ever again! 

Is there a question about this? 

I felt like this moment, is there a way that this was a pure experience? Like the first moment?

What it sounds like to me is almost like a memory of a previous life in which perhaps you were a moth and flew into the flame. Therefore, there is this instinct or tendency to be fascinated by fire and light and to go into it. That’s what it sounds like, a tendency and memory that has been reawakened. When the moth goes into the flame, of course it experiences death. Death is getting down to this clear light level of mind in which there is no grasping for truly established dualistic existence. It sounds to me, although not quite getting to the clear light mind, but something reminiscent of that. To me, this makes sense of what you explained. Whether it’s correct or not, I don’t know. It could just be nonsense. That’s what it sounds like and it’s understandable.

Colors were very distinct and seemed to be made out of light.

That’s explained as the clear light experience. Okay. 

I have a question; if he says that he would never do this again, then is the way to do this again to die?

No. The way to do it again isn’t necessarily only to die. In very advanced meditations in tantra mahamudra or any of the various practices of the highest classes of tantra, anuttarayoga tantra, there are practices in meditation to be able to activate the clear light mind and use it for understanding emptiness or voidness, the deepest nature of the mind, this pure awareness. It is the foundational deep awareness. There are meditation methods for doing that; we don’t have to die. We simulate the dying process in our imagination in which the mental activity withdraws from having our gross physical basis to a more and more subtle basis. That’s simulated in meditation. It’s very difficult and requires a lot of prerequisites, not the least of which is perfect concentration.

Grasping for Truly Established Existence

One additional point to add for now is that this grasping for truly established existence makes the dualistic appearance and then considers it to correspond to reality. There are two phases or aspects of it. This isn’t included in the five aggregates. It’s there as a tendency and as a habit, what’s called a constant habit that’s there all the time. But it only comes manifest in the second moment of conceptual cognition. We’re having conceptual cognition all the time. 

These tiny moments of non-conceptual sensory data are too fast for us to actually notice them; nevertheless, grasping for truly established existence is not considered a primary consciousness and not a mental factor. We will get to mental factors in our next session. This is because the grasping interpolates. Primary consciousness and the mental factors don’t add anything, and interpolate means to add something that’s not there. This grasping for true existence does add something, the dualistic appearance. 

In other words, there is the appearance of a whole commonsense object, whole conventional object, and that’s a wave of dharmakaya. That’s no big problem; but there’s always trouble with it in the next instance, grasping for true existence projects onto it this false appearance. Eventually as a Buddha, we want to get the mind to stop making this deceptive appearance. In the end, we just have a functioning foundational deep awareness rather than this dividing foundational awareness. Nevertheless, this grasping for dualistic established existence is there but not included in the five aggregates because it adds something, although it too changes from moment to moment.

That is enough for this session. We will have questions and answers in the next session. Please think about this; if one hasn’t heard it before, it can be a little bit shocking. But if you think about it, it actually does make sense in terms of everyday experience. As mentioned, for example, the one-hundred-krona bill. What is this? We see colored shapes and then it’s mentally synthesized into a banknote. Actually, it’s just a piece of paper with colored shapes on it. We fit it into a category and call it money. But then, in the next moment comes “me,” in that we have to have it and it actually has a value. Somebody from another planet would come and see this and think it’s crazy; it’s just a piece of paper. What is that? 

That is what is meant by a conventional object. It’s a convention we all have been fooled into thinking that these pieces of paper are actually worth something and if we give it to somebody, they will give us something back in return. How crazy, if we think about it. But we all agree about it and we have all bought into that myth. It’s like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. That’s how it works; that’s this grasping for truly established existence. 

The insight that this first moment of conceptual cognition doesn’t have this grasping for truly established existence allows us to be comfortable. Although we know it’s just a piece of paper to use conventionally to buy things, we don’t think it’s so ridiculous that we’re not going to use it and we might as well use it as toilet paper or blow our noses into it. Making the distinction between the first moment of conceptual cognition and the second moment makes it much easier to deal with conventional cause and effect. We can actually use conventional objects like pieces of paper to buy things.

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