A Sense of Contact

Thich Nhat Hanh — Winter Retreat 2013–2014 Full Moon Meditation Hall, New Hamlet, Plum Village · 28 November 2013 · talk 4 of 24

Illuminates: Verse 9 — maturation (vipāka) “in its participation in the different stages and realms of being” · the five universal mental formations · the worn path / new neuropathways · store consciousness (ālaya): its names and functions · manas · seeds and the matter–energy analogy.

Flag: the raw transcript carries the header title “Individual and Collective Manifestation” — a copy-paste artifact from the 21 Nov file. The actual talk (and its audio) is “A Sense of Contact.” Title corrected here.

---

[Opening chant / invocation.]

Today is the 28th of November, 2013. We are in the Full Moon Meditation Hall of the New Hamlet, in the winter retreat.

Today we continue to study the five universal mental formations. First of all, whenever we hear the sound of the bell, we practice so that every cell of the body participates in the breathing and the listening, so that the sound of the bell generates mindfulness and insight that go deep into every cell. Our ancestors and our children are in every cell of our body; so if we know how to listen, our parents and children in every cell also benefit from the peace we generate. We listen to the bell in such a way that the one who hears and the sound of the bell become one — the subject of listening and the object of listening have no frontier, no boundary.

The five universal formations

These five mental formations are called universal [sarvatraga] because they are present everywhere, function at any time, and arise in a split second.

Contact [sparśa]. In the traditional definition, contact is a vibration, a modification in the sense organ when the three — organ, object, and consciousness — come together. Its function is to prepare the ground for feeling to arise: contact is the support, the stepping-stone, for feeling. Stephen Levine renders contact not merely as “feeling” but as impression. And contact is a continuous stream, whether we are aware of it or not, because our six organs are alive and consciousness is present — and this consciousness is really the store consciousness [ālaya], the ground on which contact depends (for how could consciousness arise with no foundation?).

Attention [manaskāra]. Stephen Levine renders it “mental act.” Our organs are in contact with many things at once — the skin with cold or warmth, the ear with sound — and attention is the formation that chooses one of these contacts and orients the mind toward it; as Levine puts it, attention “puts the mind in face of its object.” There are two kinds. Inappropriate attention leads toward the unwholesome: if, while the bell is being invited, we attend instead to a whispered conversation, the mind is dispersed and we may become irritated. Appropriate attention directs the mind to what is beneficial — to the sound of the bell, which becomes the object of the mind and gives us the chance to calm it. So when we arrange an environment for practice, we make sure its sounds and images support appropriate attention; and on the internet, where countless objects of mind wait, appropriate attention keeps us from the toxic sites and turns us toward the wholesome — a place to look up the sutras.

Feeling [vedanā]. Stephen Levine again renders it “impression”; its nature is to receive, to feel something — and what we feel is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

Perception [saṃjñā]. From the object, perception grasps an image, a sign. Every object has its sign: a cloud is soft, white, light, and can melt — that is the nature, the sign, of cloud and snow. Perception grasps these signs and discerns one from another — thanks to her sign we recognize Sister Du and not someone else. But in the Diamond Sutra there is the line, “wherever there is a sign, there is delusion” — for our perception is fooled by the sign: we see only “Sister Du,” and do not see her parents, her teacher, her ancestors in her. It is like a fish that sees a tempting bait — it looks delicious, but it may be a plastic bait with a hook, and biting it, the fish is caught. So perception is the foundation for liking and disliking, for attachment and aversion: when the sign is interesting we want to grasp it; when it is not, we push it away.

Volition [cetanā]. This is the willingness to act — according to how we perceive the object, the mind moves to grasp it and chase after it, or to flee and push it away, or to fight and punish it. Volition motivates, pushes the mind to act. The traditional simile is the magnet: as a magnet draws metal objects to itself, so when volition arises the mind is drawn toward its object.

These five formations take place almost simultaneously. Sometimes attention comes before contact; sometimes feeling comes first, and then there is more contact, more attention, then perception, and then volition — the motivation, the impulse to act.

The worn path

For example, a person comes to us with a face that is not very kind, and words that are not kind. There is contact; we pay attention to the person; and simultaneously there arises an unpleasant feeling. Contact, attention, and feeling happen very quickly, and then we have a perception: “This is an unpleasant person.” We don’t want this unpleasant feeling, we don’t want to sustain it, so we find a way to get away — and all this happens very fast.

Another example: we come in contact with the smell of incense, and perhaps also the smell of roasting beef or soup. When the bell is invited, do we pay attention to the bell, or to the smell? Whatever it is, there is a feeling, and then a perception — “the roast meat is over there” — and we decide to go in that direction. All five of these happen so quickly, and our mind comes to have a worn path.

When there is this contact, this feeling, automatically there is this perception, and then automatically this volition — and whenever there is this contact, the same feeling, perception, and volition accompany it. It happens a thousand times, always the same. There is a book called The Pathways of the Mind: we have trodden this path so long that it is worn smooth, and it carries us to anger, hatred, aversion — that is our reaction, all the time. There is a person who, in a meeting, whenever he hears someone say a certain thing, becomes very irritated; he doesn’t look deeply into his feeling but reacts with his words, and so he creates disharmony. He has reacted like this in hundreds of meetings. There is a worn, habitual pathway: whenever there is this contact, there is this reaction, this perception — “these people are making me suffer” — and this person becomes afraid of going to a meeting, because she knows that whenever she goes she will come in contact with that object and react in that way. The path is so worn she is used to it; it has become automatic.

But there are people who have this contact and this feeling, and it does not carry them to that perception or that action — because they know how to make use of the particular mental formations to interfere, and to open up a new pathway. In neuroscience it is called creating new neuropathways. When we have contact — many contacts at the same time — if we know appropriate attention, we can choose one contact. We have learned from experience that putting our mind on a different object, with inappropriate attention, takes us to unpleasant places. So, used to practicing appropriate attention, among all the contacts happening at once we choose one; instead of going down the old negative direction, we go in a new direction.

When an unpleasant feeling arises, if we have no practice, that feeling generates a perception — “this is not good for us” — and with that perception we either react to it, punish it, or flee it; and so contact, attention, feeling, and the rest bring anger and irritation. But as a practitioner we bring in appropriate attention; we bring in mindfulness. Mindfulness is one of the five particular mental formations — it is the third of the five.

What mindfulness is

Stephen Levine, and the traditional definition, give mindfulness as memory — to remember, to recall a past experience. But “the past” here is not something that happened a year ago or yesterday; it can be something that happened a split second before. Mindfulness is not-forgetting — not forgetting something familiar that we have experienced; we continue to remember the object of it. The Plum Village definition is that mindfulness not only remembers a past experience but prolongs it, maintains it. For example, when we recollect the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, and the precepts, we have an experience of what the Buddha is, what the Dharma is; and so when we recollect them, we feel at ease, protected, safe. That is our experience. But because we haven’t practiced in the last few days, we now bring that image back to the present — not memory by chance, but intentionally bringing back the object in order to remember it.

If we have an insight but don’t often use it, it is a pity — we already have the insight but don’t make use of it, and so we keep repeating our old mistakes. Mindfulness brings that insight back from the past into the present moment, so it becomes a torch to light the path. For example, we had the experience that walking in meditation with the teacher on the mountain is happiness; we had it years ago on Gridhrakuta [Vulture Peak] Mountain. Now, with mindfulness, we remember that experience, bring it back to the present, and re-experience it — and that can bring us happiness.

In Plum Village we say: to be aware of what is happening in the present moment, and to maintain, to prolong, that awareness. Another definition: to bring the mind back to the body, to be present in the here and the now. So when there is contact and attention, mindfulness lets us know whether it is appropriate or inappropriate attention, and gives us the opportunity to go in the direction of appropriate attention. Someone who does not practice would be the victim of the worn pathways — like a buffalo or a horse that knows its way home no matter where it is, returning by its worn path.

So instead of reacting angrily and with frustration, with appropriate attention we choose objects, we choose contacts that bring us peace. A feeling can make us irritated, or make us crave; it gives rise to a perception, and the perception can be a wrong perception that motivates us to act in a wrong way. The other person does not want to harm us, but we think they do, and that perception can give birth to a volition — “I must hit this person before he hits me; I must kill before I am killed.” The war against terror is like that: “we must kill the terrorists before they bomb us” — a perception that comes from fear. But when there is mindfulness, and a feeling arises, mindfulness interferes and helps us see whether the feeling is beneficial or not, whether it comes from a wrong perception or a correct one. Where there is mindfulness, there is concentration and insight; and with mindfulness interfering, we have the chance to check our attention and our feeling again.

We know that manas is the one that always seeks pleasure and avoids suffering — that is the nature of manas. When mindfulness comes in, it is different: it helps us see that suffering can actually be beneficial. So we stay with the suffering and look deeply into it. Manas does not see the goodness of suffering, but mindfulness, concentration, and insight can see that suffering plays an important role in creating happiness — just as mud has the capacity to grow lotuses. When there is mindfulness, the situation changes. When we know how to take care of our feeling in that way, the feeling does not bring anger; it does not make us want to flee or fight, and we do not walk down the old pathway.

With mindfulness, concentration, and insight, we see clearly that the person is unkind in his speech because he has a great deal of suffering — his suffering creates suffering for himself and everyone around him; he does not know how to handle it, and so he continues to suffer and to make others suffer. With that insight, we are not made angry, and we don’t want to punish him; instead we become understanding and loving. So instead of going down the old worn pathway to anger and punishment, it opens up a new pathway to love and understanding. As practitioners we have to open up new pathways; and if we keep practicing, we create new neuropathways.

So the next time there is contact and feeling, we should not let it carry us along; we bring mindfulness in, an appropriate attention, so that we have more time to stay with the feeling, to see where it comes from — a correct perception or a wrong one. Do not react immediately. To react immediately is to go down the old worn pathway, and the result is suffering, anger, despair. Bring mindfulness, concentration, and insight to dwell with the feeling and the perception, and shine light on them. This is a very important practice, and it is the interference of mindfulness, concentration, and insight — which is really the interference of the Buddha and the great beings — in our feeling and perception.

Store consciousness — ālaya and its names

In previous talks we spoke of store consciousness. Ālaya means to store, to maintain, to preserve. And what does it store? It stores the seeds, and all our experiences. Yesterday, when we saw a deer in the forest, we formed an image of the deer, and that image is still there, stored in store consciousness; perhaps tonight or tomorrow we will see it again.

Ālaya has two meanings. There is the subject that stores — the force, the capacity that has the power to store and maintain — and there are the objects that are stored; the seeds it stores are also called “store.” Take a museum: there is the building, which is the subject — the one that maintains, so that the precious objects are not lost or stolen; but the museum is not only the building — it is also the objects stored in it. So ālaya is not just the subject that stores, but also the objects that are stored.

There are several names for it. One name means “the consciousness that stores all the seeds” [sarvabījaka] — it means both the storing and the objects stored. Another means “to receive and to maintain” [ādāna] — to preserve, so that they are not lost. Another is the foundation of all objects of consciousness [āśraya] — the base of everything we know. We see the river, the mountain; these are objects of our mind. We see people, trees, animals — objects of mind. And all these objects have a foundation: store consciousness, from which everything manifests. The potentials of these things are in the store consciousness. So store consciousness is the foundation of all the objects of our cognition; everything that is known has its base in store consciousness.

Maturation — vipāka

Another name is maturation, ripening [vipāka]. When something is ripe, it is different. There are three differences:

1. Ripening at different times. The seeds planted in our consciousness ripen at different times — some immediately, some only after a long while. On an orange tree, some fruit ripens before other fruit; perhaps the fruit that receives more sunlight ripens before the fruit hidden by the leaves.
2. Different varieties of seeds. There are different kinds of seeds, and some varieties ripen before others. We plant papaya, orange, and banana trees together, and each ripens at a different time. In our mind there are many kinds of seeds — wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral.
3. Ripening with change. When a seed ripens, it changes. The orange, when young, is green, small, and sour; when ripe, it is big, orange, and sweet — it changes its form. The seeds in our store consciousness are the same.

So this ālaya is called maturation of seeds. We are a child in the mother’s womb; every day the mother eats and drinks, and the baby in the womb grows. The joy and the suffering of the mother are transmitted to the fetus and affect it. This ripening, this maturation, takes place every moment — a fetus of two months is different from one of one week, and one of six months different from one of two months. Even before the baby is born, the maturation is taking place; so the mother has to be very careful, because anger, joy, and suffering affect the child, and we have to take care of the child while it is still in the womb. After birth, the child continues to change with its inputs; some things ripen before others, and when they ripen, they change. We can see the child change very quickly, in body and personality — three months, five months, twelve months, all different.

So maturation is the totality: looking at a person at three years old, or five, or twelve, we can see clearly that at every stage there is ripening, and it is the conditions that help the person to grow. We go to the monastery for two months and practice with the monks and nuns, and we are different; we go home and see, “I have changed.” That is maturation — it depends on the way we are cultured, the way we learn. So the seeds are very important.

People tend to think that this maturation belongs to the end of one life and the start of the next — that the ripening of seeds in this life produces new seeds in the next. But according to this teaching, the ripening of seeds is happening every moment of this life. Birth and death take place every moment. You now are different from you tomorrow, because birth and death happen every moment. In this very moment, millions of cells are dying and at the same time millions are being born. So samsara is taking place in every moment; we don’t have to die to be in samsara. A child of seven, when he becomes seventeen, is different; this person is in samsara — the ripening of this moment affects the ripening of the next moment.

Continuous and obscured — the eighth consciousness among the eight

Ālaya is the foundation; the other seven consciousnesses are called the evolving consciousnesses [pravṛtti-vijñāna] — the consciousnesses that spring from this foundation. There are seven of them, and the foundation is consciousness number eight.

We learned two things in previous talks: a consciousness can be obscured or unobscured (covered or not covered). The seventh consciousness, manas, is obscured, covered up; but the eighth, the ālaya, is not obscured, not covered up.

And today a new word: in relation to store consciousness, it is continuous [hằng — constant, ever-present]. It is present all the time, while the other consciousnesses can have a break. The eye-consciousness, for example, is not working when we sleep; the mind-consciousness may not be working when we sleep — though when we dream, the mind-consciousness is working, and in deep sleep it is not. So the five sense-consciousnesses and the mind-consciousness are not continuous, while store consciousness is continuous — because if store consciousness stopped working, we would die. Even when the first six consciousnesses are not working, we are still alive; but if store consciousness stops, we die.

Store consciousness is also always changing — it is like a river. The river looks always the same, always there, but it is really always changing; all the seeds in it are always changing, and yet it is always there, continuous. The first six consciousnesses are not continuous; store consciousness is.

Another word: cogitation [tư lượng — deliberation, mentation]. This is the characteristic of manas and the mind-consciousness. The sixth is the mind-consciousness, the seventh is manas. The function of manas is always to hold on, to grasp the eighth consciousness as its beloved; it is constantly cogitating, analyzing, speculating. Store consciousness, by contrast, does not cogitate. So while manas cogitates, it is also continuous: when we sleep, the mind-consciousness rests, but manas and store consciousness keep working. The mind-consciousness cogitates but is not continuous; the first five sense-consciousnesses are neither cogitating nor continuous — they cogitate only when working together with the mind-consciousness. In brief: manas cogitates and is continuous; mind-consciousness cogitates but is not continuous; store consciousness is continuous and always changing but does not cogitate. There is the statement of Descartes — “I think, therefore I am” — and that “I am cogitating” comes from manas.

Seeds, formations, and the matter–energy analogy

Next time we will learn the characteristics of the seeds. But today: seeds manifest into mental formations, and formations can change into other formations. A seed manifests into a formation; one formation can manifest into a different mental formation; and a formation can become a seed, and a seed can give rise to another seed.

It is just like matter and energy. Matter can become other matter — in a chemical experiment, elements combine and become a different element. A formation can become a different formation, just as rain can become snow, or a cloud can become rain or snow. And matter can also become energy — helium [hydrogen] in the sun becomes sunlight; energy can become other energy; and energy can become matter again, condensing into matter. It is like a samsara: matter becomes matter, matter becomes energy, energy becomes energy, and energy becomes matter — and nothing is lost. We light a match; we feel the heat, we see the light — heat and light are energy. We think the energy is gone, but it goes into the atmosphere and manifests in a different form; the light and heat of the match enter our body and the cosmos. In science this is the conservation of energy, the first law of thermodynamics: nothing is lost.

Ālaya is like that: it maintains and preserves all kinds of seeds; it receives them and preserves them so that they are not lost. That is the work of ālaya. When we look deeply into ālaya, we see that its nature is no birth, no death — nothing is lost and nothing is new. We think a thing is new, but really nothing is new. Go back to H₂O: it manifests as cloud, rain, ice, mist, fog, snow; the cloud becomes rain, the rain becomes ice or snow or fog; and at the same time, in the cloud and the rain, there is H₂O.

Cause and effect manifest together

One of the six characteristics of a seed is that it is simultaneous with its effect [câu hữu — co-existent; the cause and its fruit arise together]. H₂O is the cause; the cloud and the rain are the effect. But when we look at the cloud, we see H₂O in it — which means H₂O is not different from the cloud or the rain; the cause and the effect are always together and cannot be separated. They manifest together. We have a piece of paper and say there is a left and a right; we may say the left is the “cause” of the right, but neither happens before the other — both happen at the same time. This is the second of the six characteristics, and it is very important: it lets us see that we cannot separate the cause and the effect.

Consider the egg and the chick: they are two, but really one, manifesting at the same time — just as H₂O manifests at the same time as cloud and rain. If we imagine a cause completely separate from its effect, that is wrong. Father and son are the same: we think they are two separate entities, but in the son there is the father, and in the father there is the son. The same with Mother Earth: Mother Earth is in us, and we are in Mother Earth. In the discourse on Mother Earth there is a verse: In me there is always the presence of Mother Earth; I am able to see Mother Earth in me at any time. And I am in Mother Earth eternally; I see myself in Mother Earth always. Mother Earth and I are not two separate entities. If Mother Earth is no-birth and no-death, then we too are no-birth and no-death. So this characteristic helps us see that we cannot separate cause and effect — the same with the seed: we think the seed is elsewhere, but looking at the formation we already see the seed in it. Store consciousness is not somewhere far away; it is right at the object that we see. That is manifestation.

The manifesting and the manifested

So in manifestation we see the subject of manifestation and the object of manifestation — the manifesting and the manifested. The manifesting is the subject that manifests; the manifested is the object that is manifested. These two cannot be separated. Vijñapti means it manifests so that we can recognize it, can see it. The mountain is manifested from ālaya, from store consciousness, so that we can recognize it — and the ālaya that manifests as a mountain is also the mountain, and the mountain is also ālaya. So if we look for ālaya somewhere else, that is not correct: we have to look at the subject of manifestation, ālaya, in the object of manifestation, the manifested, the seed.

So a Christian who thinks that God creates everything has a dualistic notion: that God is different from the objects God creates. If we look for the creator outside the creature, we can never find the creator; but with a very clear mind, looking at the flower, we can see the creator in it. Ālaya is the same. We should not ask, “What is ālaya?” We should look at the manifestation we can discern, and see that within this manifestation the manifesting and the manifested are happening at the same time — just as H₂O is not separate from the cloud and the rain, which manifest at the same time.

Is that difficult?