LTF 66: 3rd through 6th Links: Consciousness up through Contacting Awareness

We have been discussing the first two links of dependent arising. We saw that the start, the true origin, of the whole process of samsaric rebirth – although it has no beginning because mind has no beginning – is unawareness. That’s the first link. 

Unawareness has to do with the unawareness of how persons exist. Persons include animals, of course, and all the beings in the different rebirth states – so, individual beings with minds. We are unaware of how we exist. This refers to both ourselves and others. We can have an incorrect view of how we exist based on doctrine – in other words, having been taught a false view that has to do with an eternal soul. Such a view is that we are an eternal soul, an atman, that (1) never changes – so, is unaffected by anything; (2) has no parts – so, it’s either the size of the universe, equal to Brahma, or just a little, tiny spark of life; (3) exists completely separately from a body and mind and can fly off from a body and mind all by itself and enter another body and mind. It then inhabits that body and mind as it it were its home, or residence, and makes use of the body and mind as if it were a machine or its possession and is the ruler over them.

This is not something that we would think up by ourselves. Certain aspects of it might automatically arise but not the whole package. The whole package is something that we would have to be taught from one of these non-Buddhist Indian systems of philosophy. That type of unawareness is the first unawareness that we would get rid of when we understand that that’s not the way we exist, that there is no such thing as that type of atman, or soul. That’s what we get rid of with the seeing pathway of mind.

But on a deeper level, we also have an automatically arising unawareness with which we project or imagine that we and others exist as self-sufficiently knowable things. The example that I use, which I think is so common and one that we can all understand, is this feeling that “I want to be loved just for myself. Just love me. I don’t want you to love my body or my mind or my personality or my possessions. I just want somebody to love me,” as if there were a “me” that existed independently of a body and a mind, emotions and so on. This automatically arises. Everybody has it. Nobody needs to be taught that. Even the dog has that. “Throw the bone to me,” not “throw to the bone to a mouth of a body on which there is a ‘me’ imputed.” Dog doesn’t think that, does it? Just “Me, me, me. I want it.” 

That is something much more difficult to overcome. We have to realize that, again, there is no such thing as this type of “me.” That manner of existence is totally false; it doesn’t exist at all. That’s what voidness is talking about – an absence of this impossible way of existing. We do exist. No one is denying that we exist, but we don’t exist in these various, impossible ways. That’s the first link, unawareness.

That unawareness causes various disturbing emotions to arise. So, based on the doctrinally based unawareness, we have, for instance, attachment to our view. We think, “This is correct. Everybody else’s view is wrong,” and we feel threatened; we feel angry at anybody who asserts something differently. We become very close-minded, very stubborn in insisting that our view is correct. We can feel very arrogant about it, very proud about it, and so on. Then we can go out and try to save everybody else’s soul and become very pushy with other people, based on believing that we all exist as this type of impossible soul. That’s one type of disturbing emotion that would come from this doctrinally based unawareness, or ignorance. And that, of course, can go into all sorts of real hatred and so on of people who have other beliefs, etc.

We also have disturbing emotions that are based on this automatically arising unawareness – the automatically arising disturbing emotions and attitudes that are based on this impossible “me.” These are very, very common, such as the one I mentioned – that “I want to be loved for me.” Then, of course, we cling to other people; we make demands on them. (Let’s talk just in terms of the emotions.) There’s this clinging and attachment and desire for someone to love me for myself, and anger with the person when they don’t do what we expect or would like them to do. There’s jealousy when they are with somebody else, etc, etc. All these disturbing emotions come there. Close-mindedness – we don’t want to consider that this person is involved with other people because we obviously are the only one that exists and their whole life revolves around us; we are the most important one in their life – which is, in almost all cases, false. 

So, from unawareness, we get these disturbing emotions. Based on the disturbing emotions, we get the second link, which is the link of affecting variables. It refers to what Nagarjuna calls in his text “karmic impulses.” They are affecting variables. “Variables” means they change, and “affecting” means that they affect what we experience in the future. It’s a technical term, the Sanskrit term samskara. It refers specifically to karma. 

Karma refers to karmic impulses – the impulse, or urge, to do something. Based on unawareness about how we and others exist and the disturbing emotions that come from that unawareness, we would have the urge, or impulse, to go out and try, for instance, to say something to someone else – like, “Why don’t you call me? Why don’t you come? Why don’t you love me? Why don’t you say you love me more?” etc. – and then the urge to say nasty words to them if they don’t do what we would like them to do. Karma is talking about the urge that draws us into thinking to say these words and the urge that draws us into the actual action of either saying these words or doing something strong toward this person, based on this disturbing emotion. We could be very nasty to them based on anger toward the person. We could also have the urge to do something very nice and constructive, but based on attachment and clinging, we would want something from them in return. So, actually, it would be a very disturbed action, even though the physical action might be very nice, like making a really nice meal for them or buying them a present or something like that. These are karmic impulses, affecting variables.

Throwing Karma – Strongly Motivated Karmic Impulses That Can Throw Us into Another Rebirth

Here, though, we are talking about impulses and actions that are strongly motivated so that they become what is known as “throwing” karma. In other words, they will have the energy to be able to throw us into another rebirth. So, they have to be strongly motivated, either in a negative way or a positive way. It could also be compassion; it doesn’t have to be a disturbing emotion. It could still be a throwing karma. It could be “I have compassion for you. I want to save you; I want to help you,” but we could have some weird idea that we are this great savior, a big soul, a big, solid “me,” and “I am going to go out and save the whole world.” So, it’s mixed with unawareness. But the motivation is positive here: compassion – we really would like to help. 

Very often it’s the case that we really want to help but that we are completely ignorant of what to do, and we do something that doesn’t help at all. So, these can be causes for samsaric rebirth, but a positive type of rebirth, rebirth in one of the better states of rebirth, based on the fact that it was done with a good motivation. However, underlying it was still unawareness. We had a false idea of how we exist, how the other person exists – “me,” the great, big “me” is going to save you, the great, solid “you.” This type of thing.

That was as far as we got in our last two sessions discussing these twelve links. Are there any questions about them? No. Everything clear. Good. I won’t quiz you on it to make sure that everything is clear. But I could! So, be careful when you say everything is clear.

Two Explanations of Karma

So, we have this unawareness and these disturbing emotions, and we have these karmic impulses. There are two explanations of karma. According to one, karma, the impulse, or urge, that draws us into thinking to do something and the impulse, or urge, that draws us into the physical or verbal action is always a mental urge, a mental factor. According to the other explanation, only the urge that draws us into the mental action of thinking is a mental urge, a mental factor. For physical and verbal actions, karma is a form of physical phenomenon – either the motion of our body or utterances of the sounds of speech as the method implemented to make an action of body or speech happen. So, it can be explained and differentiated in different ways.

The next link is consciousness. We have two parts to this link:

• Causal consciousness, which is the consciousness in this lifetime 
• Resultant consciousness, which is the consciousness in a next lifetime, not necessarily the immediately following lifetime 

Causal Consciousness – Consciousness Loaded with Karmic Tendencies 

From the point of view of causal, what happens when we have a karmic impulse and we act on the basis of this karmic impulse? What happens is that there is an aftermath, something that is left over from that karmic impulse and action. There are many, many different aspects to this aftermath. There is no need to go into all of these aspects (you can find it on my website in great, great detail), but we have things like karmic force, we have tendencies, and we have constant habits, and so on, and they are all slightly different. 

Karmic Tendencies (“Seeds”)

Let’s simplify the discussion and just talk about tendencies. “Tendencies” is the way that I prefer to translate the word that is literally “seeds” (sa-bon). The discussion is usually done on a very simple level for ordinary people to understand. You have to understand that the audience at the time of Buddha would have been a lot of farmers, so the presentation is made in terms of planting a seed in the field. So, karmic aftermath is like a seed. So, there’s a tendency, and it is “planted” in the consciousness. The problem is that we are not talking about physical things like a seed and a field. We are talking about a tendency, which is much more abstract, and we are talking about a mental continuum – so, moments of awareness, of making mental holograms of things and being aware of them, even if that hologram is of darkness and your awareness is that you’re asleep. 

So, we are talking about a continuity – moment to moment to moment. That is going to have imputed on it a tendency. What does “imputed” mean? It’s almost like infer. We could infer that there is a tendency. If we have had previous moments of, let’s say, yelling at somebody and we will have future moments of yelling at somebody, we can say that there is a tendency to yell at people. Where is that tendency? It’s not something physical. Of course, some scientists would say that there is the brain and certain pathways within the brain that might be more greased, in a sense, so that thought goes in a certain way – or to put it more accurately, that a line of chemical transference from one neuron to another neuron, an electrical impulse from one neuron to another, goes more easily. So, there are certain physical pathways. Buddhism says that, of course there is that, but that is just the physical basis for the subjective aspect of this mental activity. The subjective, individual aspect of it is what we are talking about when we talk about mind. 

So, there is a tendency to yell. And that is something that is imputed, inferred, etc. by a mind that is trying to understand what’s going on. So, we say there is a tendency to yell. That tendency is given the literal word “seed,” but it’s important to understand that it’s not something physical inside our heads. That’s why we can get rid of these tendencies. We get rid of a tendency when there is nothing that will cause a future occurrence of that behavior. If there is no possible way that we could ever get angry and yell again, we can’t say that we still have a tendency. We’d have to say that we had a tendency before. But tendency means that it can happen again. If it can’t happen again, we don’t have that tendency, a present tendency; we had a previous tendency. That’s how we get rid of it: we get rid of any possibility for there to be a future… the word is “ripening” of these tendencies. It comes, again, from this image of the seed – the seed will ripen into a sprout.

So, when we talk about consciousness, we are talking loaded consciousness, causal consciousness, that is loaded with these tendencies. This is  the third link, but just the first half of that third link. It’s what happens in this lifetime, in the lifetime in which we commit various karmic actions based on these karmic impulses, which are based on unawareness. OK? Clear? Fine.

Resultant Consciousness – The Consciousness at the Moment of Conception

Then we have the resultant level of this consciousness, the second half of this link. The second half of this link would be the mental continuum at the moment of conception in a future life. So, we have in this lifetime the loaded causal state, and we have the resultant state in another lifetime. 

At What Moment Does Life Begin?

This brings up a whole big question and an issue that is not very easy to resolve and one that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has looked at a bit with scientists. This is not an easy one, which is: when does life begin? When is there a mind in an embryo? When does it join? When is that embryo sufficiently developed to function as a basis for mind? That’s not an easy question to answer. What is the criterion? 

One has classical presentations of this in the Guhyasamaja Tantra, for example, which is a very advanced text. It says that the consciousness enters the mouth of the father, goes down the central channel, joins with the sperm and then goes into the mother and joins with the egg. That’s the way it works. To take that very literally is a real problem because what happens when you use birth control, a condom? What happens with men masturbating? And is something wrong with doing this? Are you killing a mind here or preventing a mind from getting a rebirth? How does a mind know that there is not going to be condom and that it will produce a fetus, an embryo, so that the mind actual joins? Would the mind have to know? It starts to raise very uncomfortable questions. 

There are many different aspects of these questions that one could answer. But the thing to remember is that this explanation is not to be taken literally. Why is there this description in the Guhyasamaja Tantra, which is the earliest tantra, the one that is called the King of Tantras because it establishes so much that is found in all the other tantras and has the explanation for things in it? 

In the tantra practices, you have the generation of a mandala. A mandala is a world in which one of these various Buddha-figures like Tara or Chenrezig live. You have a meditation in which you generate the figures in this mandala. The way you do it is to imagine that these figures from the Buddha-fields where they reside come and enter the mouth of the male figure, go down the central channel and through the male organ into the womb of the female. There, from a drop, the mandala is generated. Then the mandala goes out of the female’s womb, and there you have the production of the mandala. They say that there is a parallel between our samsaric experience, our ordinary experience, and this way of generating a mandala in the meditation. But that is for a specific meditation. It’s for a specific method of purifying our samsaric experience. It’s not to be taken literally.

That is a large point, actually, which a lot of very conservative fundamentalists would be very hesitant not to take literally. But if we don’t take it literally, then the question really is: when is the embryo sufficiently developed so that it can be a viable basis for a mind? That’s an important question because that raises the question of abortion. So, it’s a very delicate, very difficult question. 

Then the discussion with the scientists comes in. Do you have to have the cells of the embryo differentiated enough so that you have a proto-brain or something like that, some cells that will function? What about the transference of information within these cells? Do you have to have a system for information transfer within and between the cells in order for the embryo to be a basis for a mind? These are very difficult questions to answer. And when is it sufficiently developed? No answer has come up. No definitive answer has come up. But you can see that this is a very important question. 

Participant: Could the consciousness be attached to the embryo even before that? 

Dr. Berzin: Well, first of all, the consciousness doesn’t have to be conscious. We have to be careful that we don’t get mixed up with the Western idea of conscious and unconscious. There doesn’t have to be any consciousness from the point of view of Western consciousness. 

The Clear Light Mind and Subtlest Energy; the Eight Stages of Mental Activity at the Time of Death

Here, we are talking – from the tantra point of view – about clear light, the subtlest, clear light mind. For most of us, there is not terribly much…

Participant: This is true of death as well.

Dr. Berzin: At the moment of death, you have the clear light mind. 

Participant: And do you have a body?

Dr. Berzin: Do you have a body at the moment of death? You have the subtlest energy. 

When you are… now we get a more complicated explanation. From Guhyasamaja point of view, there are eight stages of mental activity. When we are talking about mind, we are talking about mental activity, a succession of moments of mental activity. Mental activity always has an energy component to it, and that would be considered the subtlest body. So, there is an energy component. We are talking about one thing: mental activity, which is subjective, individual. It can be described from that subjective point of view, and it can be described from the energy point of view. It’s talking about the same thing: clear light mind and subtlest energy. 

There are eight stages that the consciousness goes through as it withdraws from being supported by gross elements (actually, it gets subdivided even more). There are four stages of withdrawing from the gross elements and three stages of stopping making appearances of solid existence, which is involved with a grosser movement of the winds, of this energy, before it gets to the subtlest energy. That’s the eighth stage: clear light. The clear light of death, for most people, doesn’t last terribly long. We are talking about a very, very short amount of time. It’s only great lamas focused on voidness in some fantastic meditation who can sustain this state of clear light of death. 

But when it trips over into bardo existence (in-between state), that clear light mind and the wind that’s with it get grosser and associates with subtle elements, subtle energy, so that you have the bardo body. Then it goes back to what’s called a small death, so, again, the clear light mind, and then… That can happen up to seven times. But then there is rebirth. Let’s leave aside the various realms. We have these three planes of existence: plane of sensory objects, or desirable objects, plane of ethereal forms, and plane of formless beings. The bodies of the beings in the formless realm are made of subtle energy, and those in the form realm, the plane of ethereal forms, are made with some subtle energy but not as subtle as the formless. And those in the desire realm, the plane of desirable sensory objects, are made with gross elements. 

So, when the continuity of clear light mind, the mental continuum, has based itself on or is supported (I like to use the technical term) by an embryo… well, it has gone through those eight stages in reverse. Now it is supported by earth, water, fire, and wind, or if we want to put it in more Western terms, we’d say solid, liquid, gas, and heat. At that time, the clear light mind is no longer manifestly working; now it’s unmanifest. Whether or not we have what we would say in a Western sense is consciousness or whether we would be in a state like sleep, very deep sleep, a coma or something like – that’s something else. I suppose that depends on the level of development of the person. There must be some super yoga levels in which we would have mindfulness, etc. at that stage, but for the vast majority, we wouldn’t. 

In any case, the question is: when does the mental continuum join? And that’s not clear. But this link is speaking about that moment – let’s call it conception from the point of view of a mind joining, not conception in terms of just a sperm and an egg joining. I think you have to explain it like that. Otherwise, the whole thing becomes quite open to a lot of arguments, a lot of debates. I mean it’s still open to a lot of debates, but it’s a little bit easier. 

Any discussion or question on that? As I say, it opens up a big, big area of discussion, particularly when it gets into the topic of abortion.

Participant: I would just guess that if something can be sustained by something very subtle, it might be possible for it to be sustained by something like a cell that has just assembled between the egg and the semen.

Dr. Berzin: What Andreas is saying is that if the clear light mind is so subtle, even after it has gone through these eight stages, perhaps it could be supported just by a two-cell embryo. Maybe. That’s hard to say. Then it gets into this question of do you need an information processing faculty. 

For there to be a mind, mental activity, does there need to be a way of working with information? That’s what mental activity does, doesn’t it? It deals with information in the broadest sense, .

Participant: Before, like in the seventies and eighties, everybody was talking about artificial intelligence. Now it has become clear that human intelligence is not algorithmic in the sense that it doesn’t always follow the same series of steps in a rigid way and come to the same conclusion. So, it doesn’t process information algorithmically.

Dr. Berzin: Intelligence?

Participant: Intelligence, human intelligence.

Dr. Berzin: Let me just repeat. In the seventies and eighties, a lot work was done with artificial intelligence. But what has been discovered since then is that, although artificial intelligence would need to work on algorithms, which means following the same pattern for coming to a conclusion, human intelligence doesn’t. 

Participant: It’s not algorithmic.

Dr. Berzin: It’s not algorithmic. It can come to a conclusion in many different ways. In other words, it could be irrational. In a sense.

But, here, we are just talking about a transfer of information. And you need a nervous system in order to transfer information or at least a proto-nervous system to transfer information.

Participant: The formless have that or not?

Dr. Berzin: Formless ones don’t have that. But we are not talking about when a formless rebirth begins. A formless rebirth… they don’t even have a bardo. Let’s not discuss the formless and the form realms, please. And let’s not discuss the god realms either. Let’s just talk about beings in the desire realm – humans and animals. 

So, these are difficult questions. Very difficult questions.

What is heartening is that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is very interested in these questions and wants to make the Buddhist explanations harmonize with what science says. Buddhism, for instance, never talks about the brain in relation to cognition theory. But there is nothing contradictory about bringing the brain into the Buddhist explanation… how the brain functions and what part of the brain does this and what part does that. There’s nothing contradictory in bringing that in. So, similarly, we have areas here in which Buddhism and science could fit together. 

The Aggregates of Consciousness and Forms of Physical Phenomena – The Basis for the Resultant Consciousness

Anyway, this is the resultant link of consciousness when it can actually be supported on the basis of some sort of embryo. So, from among the five aggregates, what would be functioning at this point are the aggregate of forms (forms of physical phenomena), because there is a body, and an aggregate of consciousness. The other aggregates are in a potential form not yet differentiated. 

Aggregates, for those of you who might not be so familiar or don’t remember, are the various factors that make up each moment of our experience. These are things that change, so these are non-static phenomena that make up our experience from moment to moment. These can be classified into five groups. That’s why they are called “aggregates.” “Aggregate” means a “group,” an aggregation of a number of things. 

We have forms of physical phenomena, which include not just the body but also sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and physical sensations. We don’t have that differentiated yet. But we have a body, which is an aggregate of form. And we have consciousness. Here, it is not yet differentiated into eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mental consciousness. It’s just in a very undifferentiated form. The other aggregates, which are feeling a level of happiness or unhappiness, distinguishing (distinguishing one thing from another within a sense field) and all the other affecting variables like the emotions, concentration, and so on are also not differentiated yet. 

OK? So, this is just the very first stage of a rebirth. That’s the second stage of this third link of consciousness. The next links describe the process of differentiation of these aggregates based on the development of the embryo and the fetus. 

The next link is nameable mental faculties with or without gross form. So, here we have these mental faculties, consciousness… Actually, this resultant consciousness – I was jumping ahead, mixing it a little bit with nameable faculties with or without gross form. We can give a name to these undifferentiated mental faculties like feeling a level of happiness, distinguishing, various emotions and so on, but basically, we just have consciousness. With or without gross form refers to fact that in the formless plane, the plane of formless beings, the beings don’t have a gross form. So, the consciousness, the resultant consciousness, would start at that first moment of rebirth and that is moment we have nameable mental faculties with or without gross forms. 

Then there’s the fifth link, the simulators of cognition. This refers to when the embryo is differentiated enough so that now we have cognitive sensors, in other words, cells: photo sensitive cells, sound sensitive cells, smell sensitive cells, taste sensitive cells, and physical sensation sensitive cells, and the objects of them. These are the stimulators of cognition. So, the fetus has to be developed enough so that it starts to differentiate these different senses. That’s this next step.

Then there’s contacting awareness. At this point, obviously, the consciousness would also be differentiated into visual, audio, smell, taste, and physical sensation, and mental consciousness. And we have contacting awareness. Contacting awareness – this is not an easy mental factor to understand. Usually, it is translated as “contact.” But “contact” is very misleading because we think of physical contact, and it is not talking about physical contact. It is talking about when there is a consciousness – we are talking about a fetus here, so a physical consciousness, a body consciousness – together with a physical sensation. A physical sensation could be heat, cold or bouncing up and down or whatever it is that a fetus experiences in the womb. The contacting awareness is the mental factor that experiences this as pleasurable, unpleasurable or neutral. 

Habit – A Key Factor for a Contacting Awareness to Be Pleasurable, Unpleasurable or Neutral

Now, one has to understand that experiencing something as pleasurable, unpleasurable or neutral is based on previous habits. To think about it in terms of everyday life, not in terms of a fetus, why is it that when, let’s say, I taste Tibetan cheese, I taste it as a pleasurable object? I love Tibetan cheese. Most Westerners find it disgusting, repulsive. Why is it that my contacting awareness of it is pleasurable (now, we are not talking about happy or unhappy; we’re talking about a step before that) and somebody else’s contacting awareness of it is unpleasurable? Well, that has to be based on previous habits, customs, etc., which gives us preferences. It’s certainly not inherent in the object; otherwise, everybody would experience it as either a pleasurable object to taste or as an unpleasurable object to taste. 

This is contacting awareness. It’s the awareness of something as pleasurable, unpleasurable or neutral. You got it? This link is very, very frequently misunderstood basically because of translating it as contact and forgetting that it is a mental factor. OK?

This question about why we find things to be pleasurable or unpleasurable becomes very interesting, actually. Let’s say, we’re talking about the type of body that one finds attractive, pleasurable to see. The type of body that I find pleasurable to see might not be the type of body that you find pleasurable to see or the type of body that the dog finds pleasurable to see. So, there are certain previous habits. Can you explain this on the basis of biology? 

Is There a Biological Explanation for What We Find Pleasurable and Unpleasurable?

Participant: Psychology has a lot to say on this. At least for this life.

Dr. Berzin: In what way? Can they explain why I like chocolate and you like vanilla? 

Participant: It’s just like what kind of person you find attractive. 

Dr. Berzin: How would they explain why you find one person attractive and not another? Obviously, there is a whole issue of gender, of homosexuality and heterosexuality and whether you find men or women attractive. 

Participant: That for example.

Dr. Berzin: That for example. But, also, why do you like people with blonde hair, and why do other people like people with dark-colored hair?

Participant: Yes, that also.

Dr. Berzin: Also? What – you can’t explain that biologically, but you can psychologically? 

Participant: Yes. It’s simply from habit, through having contact, previous contacts that you find repulsive or attractive.

Dr. Berzin: Habit from previous contact? Why? I think there is a difference here. We are talking about the first time we see something? Let’s say that I go to India for the first time, and I have never seen a mango. There were no mangos where I grew up. Well, the first time I see it, it’s pretty neutral, actually. I don’t know what it is. I know it’s a fruit. I have no idea how it tastes. When I taste it for the first time, why would I either like the taste or dislike the taste? There is no previous experience of that in this lifetime. There are no other fruits that taste quite like a mango. I don’t know. 

These are difficult questions – to put together science and Buddhism. Buddhism would explain it with previous lives. There is no problem with that, except then you get the problem with the first time you see a computer or after you’ve… I don’t know. I think the first time you see anything… Well, I guess it could remind you of something else. Couldn’t it?

Participant: It could also remind you something in this life. Even a mango could remind you of whatever – an apple or whatever.

Dr. Berzin: A mango could remind you of an apple. A strange-shaped apple, but…

Participant: Wrong color, wrong shape, wrong texture, but…

Participant: Almost the taste, maybe.

Participant: No, it’s not the same taste.

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. These are funny things. The first time you see a new invention…

Participant: I think you’d have to say that it’s putting together your previous experience.

Dr. Berzin: Putting together previous experience. I suppose that seeing… Wasn’t it with the… I forget who it was. Maybe it was some Asian people, or maybe it was African people – that the first time they saw a white person with red hair… well, this was a description of a demon because only demons have red hair. The first time they would see someone like that, they would see it as unpleasant. 

Anyway, contacting awareness. Then we have… Pardon?

Participant: [In German. Says that it’s due to education that one would see red-haired people as demons]

Dr. Berzin: Right, it’s education. So, here we have doctrinally based and automatically arising. You are taught that demons have red hair. You wouldn’t automatically think that. A dog wouldn’t think that, would it? 

[Participant comment cut]

Renata is saying that liking sweet or sour is genetic and that babies would have that. Well, why, in Mexico, do you teach small children to like chili pepper by giving them chili candy? That’s doctrinally based. That’s teaching them.

Participant: It’s not like you give it to the children. The children also ask for it.

Dr. Berzin: Children ask for it. I didn’t ask for that growing up in New Jersey, in the United States.  

Well, there are physical bases of certain things. As I say, all of these issues with these twelve links can be discussed on many, many different levels. If you really start delving deeply into it, they open up very large areas of investigation. 

Question about Creativity

Participant: I was wondering if this whole issue of creativity could also imply here that your… like, most artists say that they are inspired by something and they remember or make up some idea as a new idea. That may come from past remembrances or impressions that are used to create. I was just wondering.

Dr. Berzin: Andreas is asking about creativity, which is not associated with contacting awareness, and whether coming up with new ideas could be based on some sort of previous life experience or training. 

Well, it’s certainly not that in some previous life whoever invented a computer knew computers and now, in this lifetime, created one. I don’t know. There are different types of creativity. There’s the inventor who invents a new machine, and there’s the artist who is creative. 

What is creativity? This is a very difficult question. It’s a very complex question because there is creativity in a Western sense, which is to make something new – which is based on a Abrahamic tradition of a creator God. So, creativity has to do with creating something new and individual. It could be mixed with this Western concept of a self – “I have to express myself,” as if there were some independently existing “me” that could be expressed with creativity. And there’s creating a new invention, which is not so much an expression of me, like in art, but is making something new. Or you have what I characterize as a more Asian style of creativity. Perhaps it’s more Chinese, actually. I don’t know that it’s so Indian. Maybe it is a little bit Indian as well (you can inform me) – which is that the idea is not to make something new but to fit something traditional into a different environment. Like, for instance, with Chinese temples – it’s not that you design a brand-new temple; instead, you fit it creatively into the mountain scenery or the lakes and things like that. Or you fit a tangka painting creatively into a background where it is. So, it is within a structure being creative, but it is not making something new. 

Do you say that’s Indian? When you make an Indian temple… Nobody makes a new style of temple, really. Maybe through history there were different architectural styles, but when you look at a Hindu temple, you see that it’s basically a variation on a basic theme. There are north Indian temples; there are south Indian temples. They are quite different. 

Participant: In South India, it’s Tamil.

Dr. Berzin: Right. South Indian is Tamil, which is a very distinct culture, very old culture.

Anyway, where does creativity come from? It could be doctrinally based, I have to express myself, “me” – this solid me. It could be based on equalizing deep awareness. Remember, the five types of deep awareness that we all have. So, equalizing is seeing patterns and putting things together. From at least a Western point of view, that is what genius is all about: being able to see patterns, like Einstein coming up with a new physical law. That’s seeing a pattern. That’s equalizing, putting together. So, creativity – seeing a pattern of how we can put something together and make a new machine. Does that come from the previous life? Not the content of it but maybe the training. 

The point is, I believe, that we have biological factors (as in genetic factors) for what we like, for our talents and so on, and we have psychological factors, and we have cultural factors, but those don’t account for everything. Remember, Buddhism says that things do not arise just from one or two causes: they dependently arise from a tremendous number of causes. In fact, if one analyzes deeply enough, everything is inter-related in some way or another. So, we’d also have to bring in previous life experiences and the previous life experiences of everybody that we’ve ever encountered as well. 

Anyway, that brings us to the end of our class. We have gotten as far as contacting awareness. Now we are making a little bit of progress with these twelve links. The next one is the link of feeling a level of happiness. This is where the trouble really arises. That’s the trouble because it is based on experiencing happiness, which we don’t want to lose, and experiencing suffering, which we don’t want to repeat. The whole cycle really takes off from there. What we have discussed so far is the foundation, the basis, the operating basis for the body and contacting awareness.