Interbeing and Store Consciousness

0:00:00 Thank you. So, let's go. Breathing in, I am aware of the wind, breathing out, I smile to the wind.

0:01:16 Dear friends, we should learn, we should try in order to see things in the nature of interbeing. We should train ourselves to think and to see things in the light of inner being. Suppose we think in terms of left and right. The right and the left.

0:02:14 We may tend to believe that the left is not the right and the right is not the left. Sometimes we like only the left, we don't like the right, we want to remove the right. But looking deeply, we can see that the right is made of the left. And the left is made of the right. You cannot remove the left from the right and the right from the left. Looking deeply, we see that the left and the right are not enemies.

0:03:11 But they contain each other. Without one, the other cannot be. Every time you have a presidential election, you think in terms of the two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. And you take side. And you suffer, or you are happy. Because one party wins or loses.

0:03:56 But if we look more deeply, we see that the two parties, they are made of each other. And you can see a lot of things in common. And the growth of your party is due to the other party. The success of one party is made of the unsuccess of the other party, and so on. The Buddha said that this is because that is. This is not because that is not.

0:04:46 These words are very simple but very deep. This is because that is. The right is because the left is. If you remove the left, there will be no right. If you remove the right, there won't be no left. We tend to think that body and mind are the two different things. Mind is not body, and body is not mind. and we get caught in that kind of tendency to look at things. So we should try to train ourselves to see in a different way, in terms of non-duality, in terms of inter-being, and to discover that mind is not mind, body is not body, body is mind, mind is body.

0:05:55 This is very fundamental. The Nucleus scientists they tell us that... an elementary particle of matter... Sometimes it manifests itself as a wave and sometimes it manifests itself as a particle. And now thinking a wave is a wave, a wave cannot be a particle. A particle can only be a particle, it cannot be a wave.

0:06:44 But how can the electron sometimes manifests itself as a wave and sometimes as an electric. And therefore they have invented another word to call the same thing: "Waviko". Yes. We should learn to look at our body and at our consciousness in that way. do not discriminate against the body and consciousness. Something manifests itself, sometimes as body and sometimes as spirit.

0:07:38 And looking deeply into the physical, the physiological, you might find out that it is not only physiological. It is also mental, it is also the mind. Mankind now is in a position to be able to duplicate a body. That is the practice of clothing. We can take one cell within our body, just one cell from anywhere in our body, And we can make it into an entire body, an exact copy of our body.

0:08:50 In each cell of our body is stored the whole cosmos, the whole stream of ancestors. all the qualities, all the shortcomings of our ancestors just in one cell. The mental, the physical, all of them are small in just one cell. And if we begin to see deeply like that, we will no longer say that this is only matter, this is only the physiological. In the Buddhist studies of the mind, we are remembered that the body is first an object of our perception.

0:09:55 And as the object of our perception, it is perception. Because perception is made of the perceiver and the perceived subject and object. If we try to analyze, there is a perceiver, there is the object perceived. Every perception has these two parts. And these two parts, they have to manifest themselves at the same time. We might have the tendency to think that our perception is something like a yardstick. And we take it out in order to measure things.

0:10:44 The subject of perception, we might think that it is an entity by itself. And which we use in order to perceive the objects of perception. But that is not correct. Perception means, at the same time, subject of perception and object of perception. Perception is always perception of something. Without the object of perception, there cannot be perception. It is like eating.

0:11:28 Eating means eating something. You just cannot eat nothing. So we train ourselves to look, to touch things within ourselves and around us as objects of our perceptions. namely touching perception itself. We learn to do that in order not to get caught in the idea that the object of our perception is something existing independently from our perception.

0:12:19 Think of Paris. You have been in Paris or you might have heard about Paris. You have a perception of Paris. Paris in your perception is an object of your perception. And if you compare your Paris with the Paris of your friend, these two things are very different, can be very different. Those so-called Parisians, they live a long time in Paris. When they compare their Paris, they got also very different kind of Paris. Being aware of the nature of interbeing We will be much more careful when we touch our body, when we have a perception of our body.

0:13:58 We will no longer say that this is only the body. And that is something quite distinct, quite different from our mind. That is already enough. It is like when we talk about the present moment. We cannot talk without using words. But using words, we might get caught. When we hear that we should try to go back to the present moment and leave only the present moment, we may have the feeling that we are not allowed to touch the past, to consume the future, to arrange for a future, to plan for a future.

0:15:01 We tend to think like that, to feel like that because we already have our habit of thinking, of seeing. That is based on the view of duality. Because it is the present, it is not the past. And because it is the past, it cannot be the present. While in the light of intervening, the present contains the past. And the past also contains the present. The past is already gone, we say.

0:15:51 The past is no longer there, we say. That is true, but that is not entirely true. Because the present is made only of the past. And if we touch the present deeply, we also touch the past. And the past is not untimely, the past is not truly gone. It is still there, and we can touch it. We believe that we cannot go back to the past and fix things that we had destroyed there. But in fact, touching the present moment, we can still feel the past and the wounds of the past, the wounds that we have created ourselves in the past.

0:16:57 We may think that our ancestors are no longer there. But if we know how to touch the present moment deeply, we find out that our ancestors are still there within us. Still alive in us. If in the past, I did something not mindful, if I said something unkind to my mother, And the wound is still there in me.

0:17:59 And if I touch the present moment, I can still touch the wound within me. I did say something not very sweet, not very kind to my mother. That made her suffer. and that made me suffer later also. So the wound is still there. Now establishing myself in the present moment, I touch the present moment and I also touch the wound that is in me. And because I can touch deeply the present moment, I can see that my mother is still in me, alive.

0:19:01 How can it be otherwise? Because I am the continuation of my mother. I am my mother. My mother is myself. That's the insight we get when you are able to see deeply, when you are able to touch deeply yourself. My mother is myself. I am the continuation of my mother. She is alive, fully alive in me. And if I say, "Mother, I'm sorry," I would not say something like that again. and I see my mother smiling to me and the wound will be healed.

0:19:53 You can heal the wound of the past by touching the present moment. When your mind is changed, everything will change. That is the practice of beginning anew. Our mind has the capacity of beginning a new and recreate the cosmos. So everything of the past is still available to us if we know how to touch the present. The same thing is true with the future. The future, we might think that it's not yet there.

0:20:40 But the future is already there. If we touch the present moment, we can touch the future. Because the future is made only with one substance, the present moment. And the best way to take care of the future, you know, that is to take care of the present moment. There is a professor of Buddhism in New York. He said that you cannot be a Buddhist. You cannot be called a Buddhist unless you believe in formal life and future life. I smiled at him.

0:21:22 I said, "Do you really think that we have to believe like that in order to be a Buddhist?" There is something more important than the belief, that is the insight. If you establish yourself in the present moment, and if you touch that present moment deeply, you will have the insight about your former life. In my former life, I was a bird, I was a rock, I was a cloud, I was a mountain, I was a squadron. And this is not a mere belief because I am touching myself and I find that I am still a squadron, I am still a cloud, I am still a tree, I am still a mountain, I am still a deer.

0:22:20 If you take the mountain out of me, I can no longer be myself. If you take the cloud out of me, I can no longer be myself. I am actually all these things. That is the insight of the interview that I touch when I touch the present moment. When you touch the one, you touch the all. It is like talking about a piece of bread. Last night, we spoke about a piece of bread. The piece of bread is the body of the whole cosmos. And if you touch the piece of bread deeply, you touch the whole cosmos that is in it.

0:23:05 So, how could I be here without a squarrel, without the mountain, without the cloud? And actually, in this very moment, I continue to be a cloud, I continue to be a deer, a squirrel, a mountain. So that insight is more important than just an idea about former lives, a billion. And that is true also concerning future lives. Because I have touched myself deeply in this very moment, I can already touch the future.

0:24:01 I know already what I am going to be in the future just by touching the present moment. This is a training that is a practice. The practice of looking deeply. And when you are able to look and to touch deeply, you touch the nature of interbeing within yourself and around. The Buddha proposed the term "Namma" and "Ruppa". "Namma" means the mental and "Ruppa" means the form. The form can be considered as the body, and the mental considered as the mind.

0:24:53 Rupa is the Sanskrit word for form. And Nama is the word for the mental, the consciousness, the mind. Nama rupa, it can go together as a word, it's like a webhiko, nama rupa. Sometimes the same reality is manifested as nama, the same reality is manifested as rupa. So the distinction is only to help your practice. This is not an attempt to describe reality.

0:25:38 This is something we should bear in mind. All analysis within Buddhist psychology is for the sake of the practice, not for the pure sake of understanding of analysis. So this is the simplest way of analysis. There is the body and there is the mind. Distinguishing like that in order to facilitate our practice. Because there is a contemplation, there is a meditation called the contemplation of the body in the body. And there is a meditation on our mind that is called the contemplation of the mind in the mind.

0:26:38 Why this kind of repetition? Because when we do the work of contemplation, of looking deeply, we should not establish ourselves as a subjective outsider, an observer standing outside. we have to participate into the object of our observation. This is very essential in the Buddhist practice. In the French language, we have the word "comprong" which means "understanding".

0:27:37 It is made of the word "prong" which means "pick up" in your hand. And "kom" the prefix "kom" means "to be one with it". You pick up something and you become one with it in order to really understand it. So, this is the same: when you practice looking deeply into something, don't try to stay as a separate observer. You have to participate. You have to be a participant and not just an observer.

0:28:28 Because in the practice of deep looking, the separation between observer and the observed just vanished. And only by that time that observation can get deep. That is why the Buddha used the expression contemplation of the body in the body, contemplation of the feelings in the feelings, Contemplation of the perception in the perceptions. Again, the stress on non-dualism, the stress on interbeing is very important in the Buddhist methodology.

0:29:27 Therefore the simplest distinction is Nama Rupa Mind and form At this point we should only remember that the death reality death reality is manifested sometimes as form and do not let ourselves be caught by the idea that form is not mine, and mine is not form. The second kind of distinction is the distinction in terms of five skandhas, five elements.

0:30:24 Skandaz is an English word, in Sanskrit word, it means "hips". We can translate as five elements: aggregates, And the first, imagine this circle representing a tangerine. And there are five sections in the tangerine.

0:31:14 And the first section being rupa, means form, the body. and then the second section of the tangerine represents our perceptions. Perception is rather the third. The second is feelings. The fourth section of the Tangerine represents our mental formation.

0:32:20 And the fifth section of the Tangerine would represent our consciousness. Again, this distinction is for the sake of the practice, helping us to practice. We can see it very clearly by the fact that mental formation here includes feelings and perceptions before feelings belong to a category of mental formations.

0:33:14 First of all, I would like to say something about formations. Formation is a technical term, it means everything that is made of everything else, conditioned things like a flower. A flower is a formation because a flower is made of the seed, of the plant, of the sunshine, of the rain, of the earth, of the mineral, of time, of space. A flower is made of non-flower elements.

0:34:05 So the flower is a formation. The table is a formation, because the table is made of elements, different kind of elements. The piece of bread we talked about last night is a formation. "Samskara" is the term in English, "samskara formation". And a table is a rupa-samskara. It means a material formation. But our anger, our sorrow is a mental formation.

0:34:57 Our hate, our love, our fear, All of them are formations, are mental formations. So if we analyze our fear, our anger, we see that our fear is made of elements, including the element of hope. If we don't have hope, we will not have fear, since we have hope in such a way, that this fear becomes possible. So fear is a mental formation. Love is a mental formation.

0:35:40 Hate is a mental formation. And in Mahayana Buddhism, And we talk about 51 categories of mental formation. And when I was a novice, I had to memorize all these 51 categories of mental formation. And among these 51, feelings is one category Because a feeling is a mental formation. Perceptions are also mental formations.

0:36:27 Perceptions are a mental formation. Therefore, here is one mental formation. The first one. Here is another one. And that is why here there are 49 left. So this fourth section of the Tantorin represents 49 mental formations. And if the analysis is for the sake of analysis, they would include 51, right? If it is divided like this because the practice of contemplating the feelings and the feelings is so important.

0:37:15 That is why we have to take it out as a category by itself. And the contemplation of perceptions is also very important. That is why we have to single it out as a category. So what I'm trying to say is that this kind of analysis is for the sake of the practice and not for the sake of the analysis by itself. And perception always includes subject of perception and object of perception. Form is the object of perception itself.

0:38:07 We cannot form exists independently from perception, and yet we have to separate and to consider form as one scandal, and perception is another scandal. So this is because that is, that is because this is. We see the nature of intervening between the two, between the three, between the four. And what I recommended this morning is that it should get used to the way of looking, of touching, of thinking in such a way that we can see the one in the all and the all in the one, namely in the light of inter-being.

0:39:00 in English we have the word to be "Interbeing" has the idea of "to be" in it. "To be" and "to interbeing".

0:39:45 Maybe that's the same. If you look deeply into the nature of "being", We will discover the nature of inter-being. Because with the practice of looking deeply, we find out that it is impossible for something to be by itself alone. Nothing can be by itself alone, like a flower. It is impossible for the flower to be by itself alone. It has to be made of non-flower elements, including the cloud, the sunshine, the seed, the earth and so on.

0:40:34 A flower cannot be by itself alone. It has to inter-be with everything else. So "to be" means to inter-be. And the word "to inter-be" reveals more reality than the word "to be". Nothing has a separate entity. Nothing has a separate self. That is why the notion of "no self" can be found in the expression "inter-being". A flower is full of everything in the cosmos.

0:41:30 Touching deeply a flower, we can touch everything in the cosmos. A flower is only empty of one thing: a separated self, a separated existence. And that is why the expression "emptiness" is very helpful. To be empty means to be empty of a separated existence, to be empty of a separated self. You and I, we are all empty of a separated self because our true nature is the nature of inter-being. This is because that is.

0:42:19 This is a wonderful way to look at things. When we look at form, we have to look in such a way that we can touch the nature of interbeing of form. Form is made of non-form elements. Body is made of non-body elements. Perception is made of non-perception element. And in that way, we will never get caught in duality, in the idea of self. This kind of presentation is for the purpose of the practice.

0:43:20 Because the object of our meditation, of our deep observation maybe just for the contemplation of the body in the body, how to handle our body, how to touch deeply our body, how to understand our body, how to bring peace and solidity into our body. And while contemplating this, we see the connection between body and feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness. If you know how to practice the contemplation of the body in the body, and if you can do it deeply, you already have practiced the contemplation of feelings in the feelings, perceptions in the perceptions, etc.

0:44:32 We have to come back to the Tangerine later. Now let us take the four last sections of the tangerine and make it in two sections. And this section represents 51 mental formations.

0:45:43 And this section represents consciousness. Mental formation, consciousness. This consciousness is called by different names, with different names by different schools of Buddhism. In the Satvasti Vada school that was established in Kashmir, north of India. The Sarvastivada school was flourishing and it continued to flourish during a long period of time, nearly one thousand years and from that, many of the teachings have penetrated into China.

0:46:57 The Sattvasthivada school used to call this consciousness by the expression "roots consciousness." Consciousness of the root. Mula-vishnana. Mula means the root, the base. In Mahayana Buddhism, the school of Vishnana baddha, the school of manifestation of consciousness, it's called Alaya Vishnana.

0:47:42 Alaya means store, store consciousness. Alaya means the store, store consciousness. Why do they use the word "store"? Because this consciousness has the capacity of storing many things. And the object of storing are called "seeds". Seeds. The Sanskrit word is "bija". "We have a seed of compassion in us.

0:48:42 We have a seed of jealousy in us. We have a seed of fear in us. We have a seed of joy in us. We have several kinds of seeds in us. The seeds of the 51 categories of mental formations are stored here. Positive, wholesome seeds, negative, unwholesome seeds, they are all buried in the deep soil of our stored consciousness. They are there in a form of vision, potentials.

0:49:35 And every time one of the seeds is touched by ourselves, or by another person, or by a circumstance, then that seed will manifest itself on the upper level of our consciousness. ...in the form of energy, which is a mental formation. Mental formation. So there are two terms.

0:50:21 The first term is "seat". The other term is "formation", "mental formation". From a seed, there is a manifestation in the upper level of our consciousness. And when it manifests itself, it is called a "mental formation". And this upper level of our consciousness is called "mind consciousness". Mind consciousness is the space where the mental formations manifest themselves, sometimes just one, sometimes two at the same time.

0:51:13 And all these manifestations into mental formations have the root in store consciousness. And every time a seat, a bija, manifested itself here on the upper, in the upper level of our consciousness, it will stay there for some time. And if it stays longer, there will be some growth, some development at the base.

0:52:02 Suppose the seed of joy in you is touched by your friend, by your teacher, by a happy event. It is manifest here as a zone of energy, the energy of joy. And if you can maintain it alive in your mind consciousness for five minutes, and down here the seed of joy will have five minutes to grow, to be strengthened. The energy of anger, if it stays here too long, down here the seed of anger will grow.

0:52:52 So, the time with which a mental formation can continue here in mind consciousness determines the sense of growth of the seed down here. And if we allow the seed of anger in us to be touched, to be watered several times a day, And then the energy of anger will have plenty of chance to be here. And down there, anger becomes more and more important because we allow the rehearsing of anger to take place several times within ourselves.

0:53:39 So a meditator would not allow the mental formation called anger to be there for a long time. the meditator would know to do something in order to take care of this zone of energy so that it will not overwhelm the whole scenery. And usually, the meditator invites another seat to manifest up here, the seat of mindfulness. she will practice mindfulness of anger.

0:54:22 Mindfulness as a zone of energy that she uses in order to embrace her anger. Here is zone one, the energy number one. This is the zone of energy number two. This energy recognizes, "umbrace," bring the relief to this zone of energy. And because of this practice, anger will soon go down, go back to its form as a bisa, as a seed.

0:55:09 And even if anger is still there, anger will not be able to cause damage because some other form of energy is taking good care of the energy of anger. Mindfulness is a mental formation. Anger is a mental formation. Using this energy to take care of that energy is the practice. The full consciousness is sometimes called the consciousness of all the seeds, the totality of the seeds, all the seeds. Sapa Bijakka, that is the other name of "Store Consciousness".

0:56:46 Thank you. Store consciousness is sometimes described as the soil, as the earth, as the garden that has the capacity of maintaining, storing all the seeds.

0:58:03 And these seeds... All these seeds have been transmitted to us by our ancestors, our parents. Modern psychology in the West describes the unconscious. But the unconscious is making only a small part of the store of consciousness. The territory of the store of consciousness is extremely vast.

0:58:49 And we are going to learn about the nature and the function of the store of consciousness. The practice of meditation may be described as the practice of recognizing the seeds that are in us, to identify the seeds that are in us, and to help the wholesome seeds to grow and to avoid touching and watering the negative seeds in us. And the principle for the practice is quite simple.

0:59:46 During walking meditation, during sitting meditation, you may like to do the work of recognizing the seeds within yourself. the seeds that are easy to be identified within you. The capacity of being joyful, the capacity of accepting the willingness to offer joy and happiness. All these things we can recognize, identify. by our breathing and smiling.

1:00:42 We know that every time a negative seed is touched, it will manifest itself on the level of mind consciousness. It makes us unhappy. And it makes the people around us unhappy. That is why the practice is to refrain from touching the negative seeds in us. And we may ask the person who lives with us to help us in the practice: "Darling, if you really care for me, please be careful not to touch the negative seeds in me every day." Yeah, people who take care of each other, who love each other, should take care of each other.

1:01:38 And everyone of us has negative seeds. And if we keep watering our negative seeds, we become unhappy, and we cannot make the other person happy. That is why we have to practice, and we have to ask the other person to help us in the practice. and they have to sign an agreement. I recognize these negatives in you, my darling, and I do my best in order not to touch them, not to water them for your well-being and for my happiness also. So we practice as an individual, we practice as a group, as a couple, as a group of people.

1:02:30 A therapist can help his client to recognize the positive seeds in him, to identify them, and to practice watering these seeds by himself. And the therapist can help watering the seeds. When you meet your client, your client prefers and has the tendency to talk about what is wrong, and neglect about what is not wrong. And a therapist should learn to help his client to touch what is not wrong within himself or herself.

1:03:31 And not just to talk about what is wrong. There are plenty of positive things within and around. Why don't the therapy hire? Why don't we practice touching these positive, refreshing, nourishing and healing elements for the sake of the healing? Because even if we don't touch what is wrong, Even if we touch only what is right, what is positive, we can already begin to transform and to heal what is wrong, what is negative. We know that if our body is strong, if we can help our body to be strong, and then we can overcome the illness that is there in our body.

1:04:39 We can overcome the wrong, the negative, by supporting the positive. We don't have... It is not absolutely necessary to deal with, or to touch, or to talk about the negative. In the Omega retreat, the Vietnam veterans, they love to talk about the suffering. They love to practice writing, talking, sharing about suffering. I always advise them not to do that too much because to rehearse, to allow the seed of suffering to manifest too much, Go help them to grow down here.

1:05:34 I always advise my friends, the Vietnam veterans, to allow themselves to release the past, to learn how to touch the positive, the refreshing, the nourishing in the present moment. And if they can just do that, they will be able to transform the negative things within themselves. There is a tendency to cling to the suffering, to cling to the past, as if that is the only reason to be. This is maladive, this is not healthy at all.

1:06:21 Sometimes we cling to our anger. We think that if we release our anger, there will be nothing left. And that is a tendency within us. We have to recognize it, in order to be able to let it go. Refrain from watering the negative seed. And if the negative seed has already manifested itself up here, practice in such a way that can help it to go back as quickly as possible to the form of a bisha by recognizing, embracing, smiling to it, taking good care of it.

1:07:21 And if we cultivate our mindfulness, that energy of mindfulness will be able to do that work. The other aspect of the practice is to recognize the positive, wholesome seeds in us and organize our daily life in such a way that you can touch these positive seeds every day. To help them manifest here, in order for them to be strengthened at the base, the base here is Thor Consciousness.

1:08:15 And we will ask the person we love, the persons we love, our friends, to help us do the same. "Darling, if you love me, if you really care for me, please try to water the positives in me every day." "That's not only for my sake, but for your sake also, because if I am happy, you will be happy also." So, one of the homework we may like to do is maybe some walking meditation in the non-thinking mood, just in the being mood and touching the wonders of life that are available in the here and the now.

1:09:07 here and now, and then we might like to sit down and using a piece of paper and to write it down. The positive seeds in us that we don't need to be touched, to be watered every day. the negative seeds that we should refrain to water and to touch every day. And we use our intelligence, our creative energy in order to figure out how to do it. We do that as an individual.

1:10:06 We can do that with the cooperation with the other person who cares very much about our well-being, our happiness. And the practice can be collective. There should be a kind of pact, kind of treating between us in order for the practice to continue to be successful. Every time a negative energy manifests itself, We should be able to recognize it.

1:11:00 We are not responsible. We are not the only one responsible for all the seeds within us. Many of the habit energies have been transferred to us, has been transmitted to us by generations of ancestors about our parents. And if we are practicing, embracing, holding, recognizing, smiling to it, we practice for all our ancestors at the same time. Our ancestors, our parents, may have not had a chance to learn the practice, But we have a chance to learn about the practice.

1:11:48 So we are now practicing for all of them. And we can end the samsara, the vicious circle, in order for us not to transmit it to the future generation. Very often, children suffer because of the negative energies in their parents. And they make the resolution not to do like their parents when they grow up. They are very sincere. When I grow up, I will not do like my father, I will not do like my mother. But in fact, when they grow up, they will do exactly the same thing.

1:12:34 because the seeds have been transmitted. They don't know how to handle these seeds. These seeds continue to push them to do things that they don't want to do. So ending the will of samsara here means not to allow it to continue, to push us, to make us suffer, and to make other people around us suffer. But for the positive energies and habits, I think we should allow them to continue, to grow. And if we can develop these wholesome assets, we have something to offer to our children, to the future generations, to our society.

1:13:29 And with the energy of mindfulness, we can invite one, two, three of these seeds to come and stay here. Because the more, the longer they stay here, the stronger they become at the base. Manas - Alaya. Alaya is down here. Up here is manas. Mano-vijjana.

1:14:19 That's the name of mind consciousness. And down here, Alaya-vijjana, store consciousness. A little bit more about the names of Star Consciousness. The first is the capacity of storing. To store.

1:15:10 That is the function of stored consciousness. To store, to maintain, to keep, not to lose. That is the function of stored consciousness. Second, what is being stored? Namely, all the seeds. "Store consciousness" is the capacity to store and the content of the storing, namely all the seeds that are in us, the totality of the seed.

1:16:18 Third, It is the victim of a kind of misconception. Wrongly, grasped as self. There is the mental formation hidden behind manas.

1:17:21 There is a tendency of grasping. That tendency is made of a long-lasting habit energy, a series of wrong perceptions, of illusions, of confusions. They tend to embrace part of store consciousness and consider it as the object of self.

1:18:17 This is called in Vietnamese "Nang Tang" The subject, the capacity of stock