Sanghadevi and beautiful namacharinese. So as we know this year's International Women's Order Convention and also other parts of it are devoted to exploring the mind and the 51 mental events in an atmosphere of meditation and reflection. So you also know that Bante led a seminar on this material many many years ago on the book Mind and Buddhist Psychology which produced a, I think it was a two volume, at least a two volume transcript and enormous amount of material. And that book Mind and Buddhist Psychology is based on a translation by Dr. Gunter and Dr. Kawamura of a Tibetan text called The Necklace of Clear Understanding by Yeshe Gjalsen. Yeshe Gjalsen lived 1713 to 1793. I'm just going to quote a little bit from Bante in No Your Mind. He says "Although Yeshe Gjalsen includes quotations from Sankapar, the founder of the Glugpa tradition, and from Sankapar's disciples, he is clearly at pains to interpret faithfully the original Yogachara Abhidharma tradition as expanded by Asanga and the Abhidharma Samu Chaya." So Bante also mentions in No Your Mind that he's going to draw on another text called The Doctrine of Mya Consciousness, which is a Chinese text in the Yogachara tradition by Swansong. So I thought it was interesting just to mention that this is kind of lineage in the teaching coming to us. And that lineage involves people on our own refugee tree. So we have Asanga, Bhazu Bandhu, Sankapar, Swansong, and of course Bante. So it's just worth knowing what the lineage of this material is that we're going to be reflecting on. And as we're doing the frustration practice every morning, perhaps we can particularly bear those figures in mind. So it will become a bit more alive to us as we explore mind and mental events from that tradition. Last night we also had a reading from the Shepherd's Search for Mind, Millirepra, of course, a song of Millirepra. So Millirepra is also on our tree, and Millirepra is also very much concerned with discovering the true nature of mind. Perhaps we could say that all the figures on the tree are concerned with the true nature of mind, either expressive of the true nature of mind because they express the absolute refuge, the buddha, or the five jinnas, or in terms of the teachers, they knew from their own experience the true nature of mind. They may have arrived at that in very different ways, but in a way when we go for refuge in the frustration practice, we go for refuge to mind, to the true nature of mind. So perhaps we can bear that in mind when we do the practice, and it will connect us with the reflections that we're doing and the talks. So then as we also know, this material from that seminar has been made into a book by the Spoken Word Project, the book Know Your Mind, which as I said last night, I'm sure many of you have read and studied and thought about. And as I said last night also, Sabouti's taken up this material and run several meditation retreats and study retreats. And he's also brought into those retreats other material, so he's read around the subject. And Loka Band is produced an anthology of mental events defined from many, many different sources, which some of us have a copy of. So we're beginning to build up a body of practice and theory around this whole topic of mind and mental events. And we are going to be exploring that material over the next nine, ten days. So the Abhidharma tradition, which involves the classification of mental events, is a very long history. It goes right back to the first Abhidharmakas, through the yoga Charins, the klugpas and the ningmas. And as the tradition involves analysis, and as perhaps as interested people with that kind of mental bent, it has served history, drifted as it were, towards scholarly abstraction. So you can get very, very involved with classifying mental events. It can be your sort of life's work as it were to know what they're all called and so on and so forth, and how they interrelate, but you may never reflect whether you have one or not. It seems odd, but I think one can, that's an extreme view, isn't it? But one can go that way. I think the modern person would be someone with a computer who can sort of press a button, and you know, all kind of references kind of come up on their screen. It's very, very exciting, but you don't necessarily reflect on whether it pertains to your own mind or not. So although that's happened throughout Buddhist tradition, the teachings of the Abedam are of great practical benefit to us. Their main purpose is to help us to know our minds. To know our minds more thoroughly so that we can transform our minds from unskillful mental states to skillful mental states and beyond to the transcendental. So we do need to be able to recognise what's going on in our own minds, to be able to discriminate at least between wholesome and unwholesome mental states, skillful and unskillful, so that we can cultivate the skillful and transform the unskillful. And we know that mental events, mental states quickly become actions, actions of body or actions of speech, and then affect both ourself and others. So it's not only for our own sake, but for the sake of others and our relationship with them that we need to know our minds. So obviously it will be helpful for us in our individual and collective spiritual lives to become more aware of our mental states. Greater awareness cannot but be a good thing and will have all kinds of positive spin-offs. So if we become more aware on going of our mental states and also develop a greater facility to transform the negative, then presumably not only will we be generally more skillful and happy, but we will be able to become more deeply concentrated when we sit on our meditation cushion, and that will enable us to be able to reflect more deeply, and that will enable us to give rise to insight. So becoming more finely attuned to our mental states and their effects will also help us in our practice of confession. Also, if we become more aware of our mental states, we will act more skillfully and be in more harmonious communication with one another. So those are some of the benefits of engaging in and with this material. So studying, reflecting, discussing, confiding and confessing on this material in the context of a convention is a wonderful opportunity for us all. We will have a clear objective framework for assessing our mental states, and we will share that with one another. The mental events are delineated so clearly that we may have the realization that there is no need for a rational guilt or concealment. I was talking to Mok Jananda who had been on this kind of retreat recently and he said that was one of his experiences. You can think that only you have greed, hatred and delusion in your own particular fashion. We do have that sort of thought, don't we? So we don't really want to tell other people about our greed, hatred and delusion. But the mental events in this text are so clearly delineated that we just realize that everybody has them. They are just a product of the ignorant mind. We all have ignorant minds, we are all spiritually ignorant. So we have these mental states. I think that just enables us to confide more in one another and confess more. So I would imagine that spending the rest of the women's convention, reflecting on this material will have a big effect on all of us individually and collectively. And many of us are doing this with our fellow chapter members. So we can just imagine that that is going to have a big effect on our chapter life in the future. So first of all we need to talk about mind and mental events. What is mind and what is mental events? So let's go back to the beginning as it were and quote the first two verses of the Dharmapada. So this is Banti's translation of those two verses. Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind and produced by mind. If one speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows. Even as the cartwheel follows the hoof of the ox. Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind and produced by mind. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never departs. So the Buddha here is not involving himself in philosophical speculation, but he's giving us the benefit of his insight, of his wisdom for practical purposes so that we can change our minds by pointing out to us that everything depends on our minds and the states of our minds. So Banti translates Dhammas as experiences. In some translations it's just as mental states are preceded by mind. So that's Dhammas, mental states. So it follows that we need to know our mind and mental events. Of course in any practice of mindfulness we're attempting to know our minds and hopefully we've all been doing this for many, many years. The verse expresses knowing our mind in a very general sort of way, knowing at least the difference between an impure mind and a pure mind and its consequences. So we can first of all introspect in a very general way into what's going on in our minds. We can ask ourselves, are my mental states pleasant or unpleasant or neutral? Are my mental states happy or unhappy? Are my mental states skillful or unskillful, wholesome or unwholesome, pure or impure? Are my mental states ignorant or clear and wise? Are they in accordance with the Dharma the way things are or not? That's a very general introspection in the nature of what's happening in our own mind. But we can take this introspection further by developing the faculty of Dhamma Vichaya. This is a very important faculty which hopefully we will all develop on this retreat. So Dhamma Vichaya is the second of the seven Bodhyangas, the seven limbs of enlightenment. A teaching which I think Vante outlines in mind, reactive and creative as a path in itself. So just to remind you what the other limbs are, we're not going to go into them in detail. So we start with mindfulness with Shmurti and on the basis of that we develop Dhamma Vichaya, investigation of mental states. That gives rise to energy, that gives rise to pretty, that calms down, that gives rise to samadhi or deep concentration and that gives rise to upeksha in the highest sense. So mindfulness, investigation of mental states, energy, rapture, calm, concentration and equanimity. So Vichaya means to discern or to discriminate, to pick out, to identify, to investigate, to distinguish, to sort out. So it's a bit like sorting out the wheat from the chaff or sorting out the rice, going through your rice and picking out the black bits, the hard bits. That kind of process is what we're engaging in with our mental states. And Dhamma is mental state, event, object of mind, mental concomitant. So this is the faculty that we need to employ and develop if we are to know our mental events. We need to examine, identify, discriminate and sort out our mental states. And it's this faculty that we will be developing by focusing on our mental events during this retreat and reflecting on our mental events more deeply. So important to realise that when we're investigating our mental events, when we're using Dhamma Vichaya, we're not just thinking about what goes on in our minds in a sort of slightly alienated kind of sense. We're trying to experience our mental states, we're trying to experience what happens in a direct, intimate way. So first of all we have to experience, then acknowledge and then identify. So in a way the naming process is secondary. First of all we just have to get the feeling tone as it were of our mental states, our mental events. So eventually this process of investigating our mental events, developing Dhamma Vichaya, takes us deeper and deeper into the nature of the mind and involves reflection on the three electioners. So we begin to see if we begin to look more and more deeply into our mental states, mental events, that our minds are impermanent and is substantial. We realise if we don't realise that, that that leads to suffering or dukkha. So we begin to watch the flow of our mental events, the flow of our thoughts, and we begin to see that our mental events arise in dependence on conditions. So again we begin to understand more deeply Pratichit's summit Pada. And as we go more and more deeply into those elections, particularly in some sensuality, we begin to experience our mind, particularly as we transform unskillful mental states, free of the glaciers, free of illusions and distortions, free of wrong views, free of the veil of conflicting emotions and free of the veil of wrong views. So that eventually we experience a happy, blissful, pure, liberated and free mind. So this is the mind we're trying to experience at the end of the sixth element practice or at the beginning of a visualisation practice. We let everything dissolve into the clear blue sky of the mind. So through employing Damavachaya, we are trying to go deeper and deeper into the mind until both veils are rent and we experience blue sky mind. But we're not there yet, so we need to backtrack a little. So the Buddhist tradition has developed many aids for increasing our faculty of Damavachaya by analysing mental events. So we have a finer and more subtle experience of what goes on in our minds. So you find lists of poisons and lists of positive mental events in the suitors. However, the Abhidhamma tradition developed this investigationist analysis to a much higher degree. There are several Abhidhamma traditions, but they all analyse mental events. They all investigate what's going on in the mind and give us a list to help us identify what is happening. And as I said earlier, that investigation analysis did tend to drift into scholasticism, but nevertheless, those lists remain as a practical source of knowledge for us if we use them with the right motivation. And the right motivation is that we want to change our minds. So we know that there are different lists and the different Abhidhamma traditions. There's a Theravada list, a Savastivardan list and a Yoga Chara list just to name three. And we're going to focus on the list of the 51 mental events from Asangas Abhidhamma Samachaya, from the Yoga Chara tradition. So to some extent, the different lists overlap, and to some extent, they differ. And it's not something to worry about. No list is exhaustive. There are no fixed boundaries between mental and vest, mental events. The list is only a tool for practical purposes, so it's provisional. Provisional labels. Using such a system is meant to be helpful to us, to help us recognize the subtle nuances of our mind and its mental events, to recognize, acknowledge and change them into their opposites if they're unwholesome. So it can be unhelpful if we get too academic involved in it all, and take it all too intellectually and literally. Mental states are infinite really, and we could cut the cake as it were of the mind in any number of ways. So the lists are just tools or a signpost. So we're working within the dualistic mind. We're using provisional labels of mental events in ignorance, as it were. We're making a distinction between different things that go on in our mind so that we can clarify the unskillful and the skillful and change this. So this is a process at the Ningma Tantric tradition called "Using Dirt to Get Rid of Dirt". So we're working with our dualistic mind to get to mind as such pure mind. So what is mind? I had to get round to it eventually, trying to avoid it desperately. So in the Dharma part of verse, mind is mano in Pali, or manas in Sanskrit. And in the Ami Dharma tradition, mano is used as a synonym for vinyana, consciousness, and jitta, state of consciousness. So those three terms, they have different roots, but they're used enormously for mind. And I thought it was very helpful that we had the whole shepherd's search for mind, the conversation between the shepherd and millerepa red in the shrine room last night, because it gives us a very good flavour of what it's like to try and find your mind. So what is mind? Well, it's impossible to describe or define mind because it's not an object. It's not an object like a table or a chair. So in the shepherd's search for mind, millerepa sends the shepherd off to find his mind. And he goes off and gets completely absorbed in that reflection, which is really what we ought to do. We just want to go off and sit and think, what is my mind? And he says, doesn't he? There is one mind, and even if you want, even if you want, you can't kill it. Maybe that means if you want to stop the mental chatter, you can't stop the mental chatter. You can't dismiss it or catch it or grasp it. If you want it to stay, it won't stay. If you want to release it, it won't go. It cannot be seen or known. If you think it's existent, you can't cast it off. If you think it's non-existent, it runs on. So I think that reading, you know, I could hear people going, so you have a sense of your mind. And if you want to sort of pin it down in some way, you just can't, your thoughts go on and on and on and on. If you want to sort of say, oh stop, it won't stop. So it's very hard to control one's mind. So the shepherd says the mind is illuminating, aware, wide awake, yet it's incomprehensible. And then later Millireppa asked the shepherd to go again and think, well, what colour is the mind? What shape is the mind? Is it oblong? I find that amusing, an oblong mind? Where does it dwell? And again, the shepherd gets totally involved in that set of reflections as it were and comes back saying, the mind is limpid, which means clear, lucid, moving, unpredictable and ungraspable. It has no colour or shape. So the mind is not an object. It's that which experiences objects. So in a way, the mind is everywhere where there are objects. It's everywhere where we place our attention. It's everywhere where we put our awareness. So it's the subjective dimension of our experience. That's its character, its subject. It's not an object by its very nature. So that which is known and perceived and experienced is the object. So we cannot observe our mind because it is as it worthy observer. So it's a bit like the eye trying to see itself. It can't be done. And you can't understand the mind because then it's the mind trying to understand itself. So we're always one removed from the mind. So as soon as we start to try and know what the mind is, the mind becomes an object to our present mind. It becomes an object to a subject and that's not the mind, which is not an object. So we never experience the mind of the present experience. We always experience the mind as an object of reflection, which is not the mind. So mind cannot be the direct object of our reflection because it is the act of perceiving. So thinking about this does very strange things to us. So if you're starting to feel strange, that's probably very good. So mind is not an object. Mind is a subject which perceives objects. But nevertheless subject and object are inseparable. You can't really have one without the other. You can't have mind which is subject without an object. So we can't know mind directly except as an object. So we can only know mind through its effect so we can learn to know mind to some extent through the mental events which pass through the mind as it were and its states and moods and attitudes. And of course to some extent we're involved in the problem of language because we can language splits into subject and object and we can name the mind, which is really just an operational concept, or then we think of it as an object. We think we can know it as an object, which of course we can't. So mind is that which experience and perceives and illuminates our experience. It's that which lights up the object and recognizes it. So there are two poles to our experience. There's the inner subjective pole. Mind is the experience so sometimes called the grasp. And there is what as it is as it were out there, the objective pole, the experienced, which is what is sometimes called the grasp. So the grasping subject and the grasp object. So that might well do for common sense purposes as it were. But of course the Yogachara said that there were no boundaries as it were between these two poles, the experiencer and the experienced, so that both poles are resolved into one single idea that of mind, the one mind, mind only. So all we have is the perceptual situation, which is if you are enlightened, bipolar split into subject and object. So the Yogachara denies the reality of matter as being a separate category from mind. We just perceive mental impressions. There are no external objects as such. We have the objective content of the perceptual situation, but we do not know objects as such. We cannot know objects as such, all we know are the sensations which we experience. The Yogachara also, early Buddhism has five scandas, as you know, and the Yogachara reduced those as it were to one scanda, the Vinyana scanda. So that's consciousness, and that consciousness is the perceptual situation, which is bipolar if you are enlightened. That's the metaphysical position of the Yogachara, but it has practical purposes or practical consequences. So if we see the object as a transformation of mind, like a dream object, which is a product of the mind, when we wake up, our grasping disappears. So when you dream, I mean your dream may stay with you for a while after you wake up, but at some point you know that it was a dream, and you're no longer emotionally involved in it. So this is the analogy often used. So if there's no object, there's nothing to grasp, and there's no one or no subject to grasp it. So with regard to the perceptual situation which we split into subject and object, the enlightened person lives with that same perceptual situation, but they no longer identify with the subjective pole of it, so that the whole perceptual situation is expanded, clarified and illuminated like the clear blue sky. This is where we're trying to head, as it were. So in that experience, there's no element of resistance to the objective content. You could even say there's no will separate from the will of others. So perhaps all we're saying is that mind is not an object. I'm just wondering whether to go into the eight vinyanas. Maybe I'll mention them briefly. We also know that the Yogachara Chitomatra tradition, having said there's one scandal, the scandal of consciousness, mind, talks in terms of eight vinyanas, eight consciousnesses, and that enlightenment involves the transformation of those eight consciousnesses into the five wistoms of the five jinnas. And that is brought about by the turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness. So you all know this. You all know this material. It's in no your mind. I'm not going to go into any great detail, but I will just mention it. So the eight vinyanas, the five senses of the first five consciousnesses, objects of visual field, oral field, tactile field, and so on, transformed into the wisdom of a mega city. Then the mind sense, mano vinyana, the mind has a sense. So this is the sense that perceives mental objects which flow through the cognitive field. So that may be derived from the other five senses, or it may be ideas from the mind itself, in meditation, in dreams, and so on. Transformed into the wisdom of Amitabha. The Clisto mano vinyana, the big baddie, defiled, afflicted, suffering, tainted consciousness. So manus or ego. So this is the consciousness which splits the world into subject and object. As a dualistic outlook, splits everything into opposites, so subject, self, and object world. So what it does, it interprets data received from the other senses into an existing external world. We receive information through our senses, and we think there is an existing world out there. And then we have a reflection, as it were, in our Clisto mano vinyana of the alia, of the pure mind. We have a reflection of the alia in our experience, and we interpret that as a real or separate self. So the Clisto mano vinyana has this two sets of information coming from this way, and that way, as it were. And it looks both ways, and it splits into subject and object, self, and world, in a fixed way. So the eighth consciousness is the alia vinyana, which of course has two parts, the relative and the absolute. And into the relative alia for the seeds of all our actions, all our previous actions. So this is the realm of karma, and these seeds rectify, creating the illusion of the world as we know it. And it's in the relative alia that our practice, our positive practice, drops as it were, the positive seeds, the good seeds, which at some point are going to outweigh the unskilled four seeds, bringing about the turning around in the deepest seed of consciousness. So the Clisto mano vinyana is transformed into the wisdom of Ratnasambhava. The relative alia into the wisdom of Akshovia, and the absolute alia, well, it's not transformed, but it's expressive of the wisdom of Rachina. So Yesha Gjaltsen focuses on vinyana's one to six for practical purposes, so that's the six senses, and perhaps we should do likewise. So perhaps we should return to our question, what is mind? So mind is the perceiving subject that cannot be known as an object. Perhaps we don't really need to go into whether those objects exist, or not as it were, but you can pursue that if you wish. But there are distinguishing characteristics of mind that are traditionally used to help us to know the mind, so I'm going to run through these. So first of all, the characteristic of clarity. Now this doesn't mean sharp and focused or crisp. In a way, it's the kind of mind described by the shepherd in the shepherd's search for mind. It's mind which is indefinable, ungraspable, lacking in definition, infinitely flexible, non-material, space-like nature of consciousness. So it's devoid of colour, shape, form and dimension. It's transparent, mysterious. It cannot be objectified as this or that. It cannot be measured or weighed or defined by categories. So this is very much like the shepherd coming back and saying, mind is lucid, limpid, ungraspable, illuminating, etc. So it's infinitely malleable, shapeable and fluid. Nothing intrinsically defines it as this or that. There is nothing it cannot be. Mind is unbounded. So that's what's called clarity. And I think sometimes in a formless meditation practice when you're not focusing on an object, you have that sense of your mind, don't you? It goes wherever it goes. It's got no limits. It's got no boundaries. You can do that in a kind of quite ordinary way, just trying to have a sense of your mind as the space-like quality of your mind. This is a meditation practice that Kamla Shee has led some of us through on the retreat we were on, just to sit and contemplate the spacious nature of one's mind. It's very interesting practice. One can take that further, of course, and develop it into the sort of blue skylight mind that we begin a visualization with. So it cannot be defined in its essential nature. So the second characteristic of mind is cognition. So mind consists in knowing its object, and we won't analyse at this point whether objects exist or not. You can't have mind without an object. Mind is that which knows and is aware and conscious and always conscious in terms of an object, however subtle that object might be. So it's always relational. Mind is a relational term, relational to an object and vice versa. So we can't experience anything independent of our experience as it were. Sometimes we think of mind as an independent entity, but it really isn't if we pursue our reflections on mind. Subject and object are always in relationship to one another. An object is an object for a subject, and a subject is a subject for an object. So clarity and then cognition. The third characteristic is that mind is momentary. So this is true of all Buddhist philosophy. Mind is momentary. Mind is ever-changing. It's never the same. It's a continuous flux. It's quite hard for us to think about, so we tend to think of it in discrete moments as it were. And in the tradition, a mind moment, a consciousness moment, is said to be one sixty-fourth of the snapping of a finger, or one billionth of a flash of lightning. So the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest thing you could possibly think about is a mind moment. And there is a sutta in the Pali Canon called Consciousness a Process Only, where the Buddha takes the task, the camera of the person's name, but they think that mind is a sort of entity. And the Buddha is pointing out that it's a process. So perhaps it's more accurate to talk in terms of minds, which arise and pass away. There's a sequence of minds as it were. One mind moment being the occasion for the next mind moment. So I think we tend to think of mind in the West as more like a camera with an object presented to it. And the camera remains the same. The mind remains the same. I think we have to sort of get into a different mindset as it were to think about mind as a process. And of course the fact that mind is a process, mind is a momentary, is connected with the six senses. So it's not that there is one mind, you know, series of discrete minds having discrete experiences. There's information coming in through all the five senses. Each sense giving rise to its own consciousness, so ear consciousness, eye consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, mind consciousness. So this just gives us a sort of sense of the mind being momentary. And then the mind is conditioned. So each mind or mind moment is dependent on conditions, the conditions of the previous mind moment. So this involves an element of volition, of karma and karma of apaka. So mind has the tendency to reproduce itself and keep on the same track. I mean, we know this from our own experience, don't we? Mental events tend to cohere and create character and style. So our minds tend to function in accordance with habit. If you're unskillful, we tend to repeat that. And the more repetitions we do, the easier it is to do it again and again. So we dig channels for ourselves. This again is very clearly expressed in the dhamma pada. Should a man once do evil, let him not make a habit of it, let him not set his heart upon it, painful is the heaping up of evil. There is also the opposite verse. I haven't got that written down, but should a man once do good, let him make a habit of it? Let him set his heart upon it, happy is the heaping up of good. So habit, we tend to think of habit as a negative word, don't we? But you could see it as a neutral word, and then if it's unskillful actions, then obviously it becomes unskillful. So at the very least unskillful habits are routine. They're worse, they're compulsive and addictive. So let a man, should a man once do evil, let him not make a habit of it, let him not set his heart upon it, painful is the setting up of evil. Because that's digging a channel deeper and deeper in our experience, and it becomes easier and easier to follow that line of least resistance. But habit can also be seen as positive in terms of a positive momentum of creative discipline. So it's interesting that habitual karma is one of the four main types of karma, and I think it's the most important one perhaps. You've got weighty karma, which may be rare in your experience. You've got death proximate karma, which you're only going to have it death. You've got residual karma, which seems to be sort of indeterminate, and you've got habitual karma. So the things you do most often have the greatest effect upon us. The things we do again and again, and reflect upon. So it's important to set up positive momentum, positive habits, to dig new channels for our behaviour, in line with the ten precepts. And again the dhamma pada expresses this. Irrigators draw off the waters, fetches straighten arrows, carpenters shape wood, righteous men discipline themselves. So we're trying to re-channel our mental events from habitual, unskillful channels into creative, positive channels. So the mind can be characterised by clarity, cognition, its momentary, its involved with the six senses, and it involves karma and karma of apaka. So perhaps we know now that we can't know the mind itself as an object, because it's a subject. But we can begin to know our mind through the mental events that flow through it. So sometimes mind is referred to as primary mind and mental events as secondary mind. So chitta, or primary mind, the essential function of that mind is to cognise the object. And that gives rise to mental events, chitta dhammas in Sanskrit, mental events, mental functions, mental concommentants, which arise simultaneously with consciousness. So primary mind is sometimes said to be the raw confrontation of the mind with the object, the raw cognition, the basic active awareness. I don't know if we ever really experience that. I think Banteen, know your mind says sometimes you do first thing in the morning, you wake up and nothing much is happening, it's not my experience, so I don't know what that's like. Anyway, Katherine, I've got lots of mental events. So some of you may wake up and you've got that moment of raw cognition of the world you live in. And the mental events give mind its specific, I can't say it, specificity. Each moment of mind is a feeling tone, so we have objects with qualities and characteristics experienced by a subject with characteristics. So mind is indefinable, but it defines itself as if we're through the mental events. So it's a bit like you have water with, you know, ripples on the surface. You have mind as the water and the ripples as the mental events. So mental events are the way in which the mind, the grasp, the grasping subject becomes involved with its object, the grasp, and picks out the specific characteristics of those objects and gives consciousness its tone. So I think, again, in "Know Your Mind", Bante likens the mind and mental events like a king with its ministers or a hand with its fingers. But they're always in conjunction. Mind and its attendant mental factors arise together. And there's always the same tone through that experience, so if mental events are unskillful, then mind is unskillful. And the analogy used is like dissolving salt or sugar in water, so there's, you dissolve salt in water. It all tastes salty, or if you dissolve sugar in water, it all tastes sugary. So if your mental events are unskillful, then the mind associated with those mental events are also unskillful. So do you ever have mind separate from mental events? So, well, there's a suggestion that you have this primary mind, this raw act of cognition, first thing in the morning when you wake up. But do we ever experience mind as such without mental events? Well, you can't have mental events without mind because mind arises, mind and mental events arise simultaneously. You could in theory have mind without mental events, but would do we ever experience that mind? Well, we don't experience with our ordinary mind. We can't experience mind as such, mind in its pure sense with our ordinary mind. We can only experience mind as such, the one mind, pure mind, through pranya, through intuitive wisdom. Well, you could say, well, we experience mind as such all the time, but it's always manifested as something. So in the Chinese Huayen school, they talk about you never get gold. You always get a gold something, so you never get the essence of gold. You have a gold broach, or a gold lion, or a gold ornament, or a gold chair, or you never get just gold. So they use that analogy. So, yes, in a way, mind is such as there all the time, but it's always manifesting through mental events. So, Miller Epper is encouraging the shepherd, isn't he, in the shepherd's search for mind, to find his ordinary mind, and then to find his absolute mind, as it were, the mind beyond subject and object, which we can only know with pranya, and you can't know it as an object. And it's interesting what Miller Epper says that the shepherd needs in order to do this. He says the shepherd needs faith, so we need Shraddha to develop pranya. He says the shepherd needs humility, so I suppose we need to know that we don't know. He says the shepherd needs zeal, so we need energy and virya to practice, to give rise to pranya. He says the shepherd needs the understanding of karma, or the condition nature of all things. He says the shepherd needs a teacher. He further says that the shepherd needs to set up a field of merit through skillful actions, to be able to disregard comfort and suffering, to have the courage of fearlessness and defiance of death. So, I think that's quite interesting as well. So, it's a rigorous practice to know your mind, to come to know your true mind. You have to be prepared to be fearless and have defiance of death, because in a way you're going beyond the ego. The ego is going to die if we have an experience of the one mind. And then the shepherd goes to refuge, he's given the precepts, and minarepa teaches him to meditate. He says go in, meditate for 12 years, doesn't he? He starts him on the path of regular steps, and of course eventually he has very good realizations. So, I think for practical purposes we need to work on our mental events, the way that mind does manifest, and we can do that. We can get hold of our mental events as something practical that we can do, which will lead us perhaps hopefully to an experience of the one mind in time. So, that's perhaps our task, is to be able to identify our states of mind. So, we need to identify them, evaluate them in terms of content and criteria. So, the content of our minds, in this particular tradition, as Sanga's Abhidharma Samu Chaya, is the 51 mental events. So, again, just to remind you that the 51 mental events as a list is not the last word on mental events. It's not exhaustive, it's a provisional, operational concept, it's a tool, it's a map. You won't find, for example, fear delineated as an unskillful mental event. You may find it implied in some of the others. So, don't take it all too literally. So, first of all, we have the 51 mental events, which we're going to be exploring in more detail through the talks and through our own reflections later on, on the convention. So, I'm just going to list them in categories. They fall into six categories, and I'm sure you all got this on your sheets. So, first of all, the five omnipresent mental events. This is the chapter that Bante entitles, and know your mind, the perceptual situation. They're always there. Secondly, the five object determining mental events. Chapter title of that is a steady focus. It's how we get close up to the object and become more aware of it. So, five omnipresent, five object determining, eleven positive mental events, the creative mind at work. The six root places, chapter heading as forces of disintegration. In know your mind. The 20 branch defalments or upperclaces, factors of instability, and the four unclassifiables. So, those are the six categories. Five omnipresent, five object determining, eleven positive, six root places, 20 branch defalments, and four unclassifiable. Don't worry. It's on the sheet, and you have a speaker each day telling you what they are. I'm just going to give you just an outline. So, that's the content, and then we need to evaluate those mental events from two perspectives. Again, there will be talks on this, so don't worry too much. So, they're going to be evaluated through the epistemic perspective, first of all. So, epistemic means to do with knowing. It's to do with knowing how we know, how the mind works, and is concerned with degrees of awareness. So, that involves those first two sets, the five omnipresent, and the five object determining mental events that are involved in the epistemic perspective of mind. And here all about that, I think tomorrow. The second perspective is the ethical, and this is the 41 remaining mental events. The unskillful, the skillful, and I think the unclassifiable fall in there. So, this is the material we're going to be covering. Don't worry, lobby made, clear to you in the talks. So, to summarize, and the main thing to say about mind is that mind is not a thing. It's not an object, it's not a table or a chair. It's not like a table or a chair. It's not a static entity. It's not a mere state or function of consciousness. It exists solely in its activities. We experience a range of mental events, and we call that mind. But that's just a concept, it's an operational concept. Mind is always moving, always changing. It's always in relation, it's a relational term. It's always in relation with an object. So, mind is dynamic, it's not passive, like a mirror. It's always reaching out towards an object, towards objects. So, we can get closer to our minds who know the mental events and work into transform them. And given that the mind is dynamic and always changing, it needs constant observation, both within and without meditation. There's a quote from Geshe-Rapton from his book, Mind and Mental Events. So, everything comes back to mind and mental events. First of all, we need to understand what kind of nature the mind has. Then we need to learn precisely how different, positive and negative mental events arise from it, and how they in turn condition the quality of our mental, vocal and physical actions. If we can make such a study, it is certain that we should achieve an unequal capacity for establishing happiness and dispelling suffering. So, I hope that our study, discussion, reflection, confession on mind and mental events will have many of the benefits that I outlined at the beginning of the talk. I hope that our development of the faculty of Dharma Vachaya, using the map of the mind provided by Asanga, leads us to become more and more aware of our mental states. So that we can transform those mental states which are negative and see more and more deeply into our mind, into the nature of mind and thus into the nature of reality, mind free from all places and mula places, free of both veils, free of illusion and distortion, beyond all words and thoughts and ideas. So that mind is perceived directly, unlimited, open, free, boundless, pure, radiant, infinitely clear, like the clear, new sky. And it concluded by reading a piece from Padma Samava who is very concerned with the nature of mind. Astounding, the self-creating, clear light has always been. Astounding, it is parentless, pure consciousness. Astounding, primal wisdom has no creator. Astounding, it has never known birth and could never die. Astounding, it is obvious everywhere, but with no one there to see it. Astounding, it has been lost in illusion, but no harm has touched it. Astounding, it is enlightenment itself, yet no good has come to it. Astounding, it exists in everyone, but has been overlooked. Astounding, yet we go on looking for something other. Astounding, it is the only thing that is ours, yet we look for it elsewhere. Astounding, astounding. (Laughter) (Applause) (applause)
