The Body and the Environment

0:00:00 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

0:01:30 La Sangha est invitée à retourner à sa respiration afin que l'énergie de la pleine conscience puisse nous rassembler comme un organisme, coulant comme une rivière, sans plus aucune séparation. Puisse la Sangha tout entière respirer comme un seul corps, écouter comme un seul corps, chanter comme un seul corps, transcendant les frontières d'un soi illusoire, nous libérant ainsi des complexes de supériorité, d'infériorité et d'égalité. De l'ombre éloquence, Libre de toute affliction du monde, Le beau qui s'affa se tient majestueusement, Sur les pas de la naissance, Thank you.

0:05:22 majestically upon the ways of birth and death free from all of his show her great compassion eliminates all sin Even that was thought of as incurable Her wondrous light sweeps away All obstacles and dangers Her willow branch Once way Reveals How less good at end Her wondrous flower Lawsomes a multi-field A practice center We bow to her We see her true presence in the here and now We offer her the incense of our hearts May the Bodhisattva appear listening and praise us all with great compassion.

0:07:36 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. To Sangha, today is the 12th of January, 2014. We are in the lower hamlet of the Assembly of Star Meditation Hall. We learned the first line of the verse.

0:08:36 of the morning chant which is the dharmakaya, dharmabody is shining brightly in the morning. And we learned that the Dharma body is self-practice. It's one of the definitions of Dharma body, our own practice.

0:09:45 And the second line of this verse is sitting still. My mind is at peace and I smile. And there's a verse then, when we translate it into English, it's very long. When it's translated into this full line, when it's translated into English and French, it's very long.

0:10:36 but in Vietnamese, it's very short. And yet, it's translated long, but it doesn't convey the meaning of this word "tinh làng". "Tinh làng" means "ngồ" is to sit still. It means that our body is one of the three karmas. Peaceful mind belongs to the second karma, which is our mind.

0:11:34 Second action of karma. And my smile belongs to our mouth, our speech, the karma of the speech. So it's hard, it does not convey these three meanings in the English verse. And that when we sit down, we try to practice and calm our mind, our body, our mind and our speech. And that the first, it means the first thing we sit down, that these three karma has to calm down.

0:12:23 Our body calms down, our mind calms down, and our mouth calms down. And of course, when we sit, we do not talk, we only smile. But even though the mind, the mouth is not talking, but our head is talking, Our mind is talking, it's mental discourse happening. And so when we sit down, the moment we sit down, we have to make these three kama to calm down. That our body is peace, calm, our mind is at peace, and our mouth is smile, a half smile.

0:13:14 And so that's how, that's the meaning in Vietnamese, very short. So in French it's very long and English it's also very long. And so this is a recommendation that in the morning when it's still cool and fresh and that our Dharma body has the chance to shine brilliantly and that we sit down and we make our mind, our body, our mind and our mouth, our speech calms down. In the morning chant in Sino-Vietnamese, Thay had already taught us this, but maybe we had forgotten.

0:14:34 This verse. It's going to be down. And so a night is divided into five different parts. And the first part of the night is at the beginning of the night.

0:15:25 And the third part is right in the middle of the night. And Kan Nam, the fifth part of the night, the fifth part of the night is early in the morning. So the first, and so, and that's for the evening verse, and the morning verse is said, Ngô Căng Yidao And those of us who understand Chinese need to learn this verse by heart.

0:16:09 And so the fifth part of the night has arrived, which is the early morning. And... The door of the Dharma is opened. And that's when the Dharma body shines brilliantly in the morning. And for the evening verse, the first part of the night has arrived. We sit we sit on the Zen platform Body speech and mind the three comma The Trikama has calmed and peered, the body, speech, and mind.

0:17:34 And I see And I see the face of the Tathagata, of the Buddha. See the face of the Buddha. So when I see the, when my big karma has calmed down, I can see the face of the Buddha. And for the morning verse, And I wish everybody can step On the land of the land on the pure land You have to know the origin verse the original verse that the fifth Part of the night has arrived, and the Dharma, the door of the Dharma has opened, wishing everybody able to walk in the Pure Land.

0:19:41 and they can see clearly, they can penetrate the Three Vehicles. We sit in a way that we can understand profoundly the Three Vehicles, the teachings of the Three Vehicles. Shravaka Vehicle And the other one is Pichy Pichy means Self-enlightened And to embrace Embrace the two truths There are two kinds of truth. There's the relative truth and the other one is absolute truth or conventional truth, absolute truth, ultimate truth.

0:21:08 Thank you. The Sun of Wisdom up high, a miraculous Sun of Wisdom, high up there, dissipates all the fog, the mist. Just like the sun, when it rises, it dissipates all the fog.

0:22:18 And so our practice of looking deeply helps us to see, understand deeply the teachings of the three vehicles and embraces the true truths, the relative truth and the absolute truth. And this is a verse that I had used every morning when I was younger. And this verse is for sitting in the evening. So the first part of the night, I sit on the Zen platform. Three comma, it's calmed. I see the face of the Buddha.

0:23:25 We have deep faith in the teachings of the Buddha. And I practice recollection of the Buddha. Lenshan is Lenshan is Grita Grita Mountain. So we practice and aim toward the direction of Linshan, Vida Buddha Mountain, that every night we practice, we listen to this verse, and every morning we listen to this morning verse.

0:24:46 And so the monks and nuns who know Chinese have to memorize this by heart and use your music, Can you put them into music? Brother Renkwang, Uncle Thien, can you do it? This is the second time we learned this verse, and if you don't memorize it, then that's too bad.

0:25:58 you. And the Vietnamese, the verse in Vietnamese, a new day. I vow. This word, this word D means to walk, but it doesn't mean necessarily to walk, but to go through. It means that we have a new day, a new 24 hours a day, and it's very precious. And we go through it, we vow to go through it with awakeness. This is a reminder from the heart for us, from our heart to ourself that we make the determination that we will go through this new day in mindfulness.

0:27:16 And not to walk as sleepwalkers. Not to go through it as sleepwalkers. A new day. So the meaning of this verse has, the meaning of this line is also in the original Chinese verse. The sun of wisdom illuminates in our direction, shines in our direction. When we sit down, the sun rises and we wish that the sun of wisdom in our heart also rises.

0:28:39 This morning, when Thay went from his room to the meditation hall, Thay saw that every one of us have walked in a different way, and Thay said to his attendants, It doesn't matter how you walk, as long as every step you have peace and joy. Whether you are walking fast or slow, as long as you can generate joy and happiness and peace. Because in the past, when we haven't met the teaching, the Dharma, we walked as if we've been chased after by a ghost.

0:29:39 We walk very hurriedly. There's a, in the past, there's a senior nun who came to practice with us. And her name is Dam Khan, Dam An. She's a student of Zhutiu Zhu. And she knows, she likes to read this, that where you go in a hurry and rush, Shen Wei, that you tripped over the ropes and rocks.

0:30:40 And then she said, but as stable as we are, don't end, we are, that no rope and no rock can make us fall. So we have habit energies of walking very hurriedly. We don't have peace, we don't have joy, we don't have happiness when we walk. And it's a waste of our life because we don't know how to walk, we only know how to run. What are we looking for?

0:31:22 It's as if we're looking for something. So when we come to Plum Village, the first thing we need to learn is to walk. And we learn to walk in such a way that each step has peace, joy, and happiness. And if we can do it in Plum Village, then we can do it when we go back home. When we go to the supermarket, we can do that. When we walk in the airport, we can do that too. When we walk in the train station, we can walk in that way.

0:32:06 When we walk from the parking lot to our office, we can walk like that, walk as a free person. Free from all the anxiety, our suffering from the past. That is the practice of freedom. If we look at someone's, the way she walks, we can see how much freedom she has. When we look at a monk walking or a nun walking, we can tell how much freedom they have. And that our happiness depends on our freedom. If there's no freedom, there's no happiness.

0:32:53 And so every step, we have to reestablish our freedom so that we are not carried away by our past. And so being in Plum Village for seven days, we have to practice in a way that it becomes habit energy. And if we stay two weeks, it's better. We have more time to practice so that it becomes habit energy to walk as free people. Walk as happy people. So that we can have something to transmit to our children.

0:33:41 If we walked as if we were being chased after a ghost, then that's how our parents and our grandparents have walked and have transmitted to us. They transmitted, we have received this rushness, the hurriedness from them. And now we have met the Dharma. We have to readjust, readjust to change the way we walk. And when we become a free person, our parents in ourselves can become free people. Our ancestors can become free people, walk as free people.

0:34:45 And each day, we have many hours to practice. If we can do that every time we want, then it's a lot of chance to practice mindfulness. So when we walk to the meditation hall or walk to the bathroom, we walk like that. Not just when we walk with the sangha in walk and meditation time. And this is what we call conditioning, that every step has to bring peace, joy, and happiness.

0:35:38 It's something doable, and it can be done right here and right now. We don't have to wait for tomorrow to do it. And when we walk in that way, we use these three things, body, speech, and mind. Our mouth, we don't say anything. Our mind, we don't think about anything. Our three commas, commas. We only concentrate on our breathing and our steps, so that every step we make, we are free. and freedom is liberation. Our breathing is like that is as important as our steps.

0:36:25 We have to breathe in a way that when we breathe in that we are a free person. Perhaps before we breathe, we're not free. But the moment we breathe in mindfully, we are free. And it's very easy to understand. We are worrying. We are in despair. We are angry. And all of a sudden a bell is invited. And we pay attention to our breathing. And we pay attention to our in-breath. And when we pay attention to our in-breath, we concentrate concentrate on our in-breath 100%.

0:37:13 And when we concentrate 100% on our in-breath, we bring our mind back to our body. It's something that we can do in a second or two seconds. Here's our body. and our mind is else over there. And with an in-breath, when we concentrate on the in-breath, then we bring our mind back to our body.

0:38:01 Because we put 100% of our mind on the in-breath, I breathe in, I know I breathe in, 100% of our attention is focused on the in-breath, and that is called concentration. And this concentration can be generated in a second or two. Because an in-breath takes place within two or three seconds. And just with that in-breath, we can already generate this energy. And when we breathe in in that way, all our worries and anxiety and fear of the past and the future dissipates immediately.

0:38:56 And so concentration has the capacity to let go of the anxiety of the past or the future. And that it only takes two or three seconds to be free. And so the time that takes to cultivate freedom takes only 3 seconds or 4 seconds. It only takes that long to be a free person. Our mind is not thinking about anything. Our mouth is not talking about anything.

0:39:39 We concentrate completely with an in-breath. And just with that one in-breath, it already brings a lot of freedom. And a step in mindfulness helps us to be free. Every step, every breath can help us to be free. And when we are free, our decision is more valuable. When our mind is filled with anger, anxiety, despair, then the decision we make with that mind is not very good. It can be very wrong because it's based on our anger, our anxiety, our fear.

0:40:29 It brings suffering for ourselves and for other people. But if we can breathe in, for just three or four seconds we become a free person, there's no fear, no anger, no anxiety then decision made from that mindset can be much better and so when we practice the fruits come immediately, it only takes in one in-breath or one step that we can already be very free and with that freedom, our speech, our thinking, our action has more values. And we can do this every minute, every second.

0:41:16 And this is what we call training. And when we learn, it means conditioning, operant conditioning. and if we breathe out in that way, then we can be free with an out-breath. And so when we walk, we're free, we eat, we're free, we stand, we're free. This afternoon, we will be sitting together for lunch, and then every moment of our meal, we practice to have freedom.

0:42:07 We're not eating our past or the future. We are dwelling in the present moment. Come in touch with the wonders of life in the present moment with the Sangha. In order to be free, to be happy. And so eating is a training, it's a conditioning. And so mindfulness can be generated. And happiness is not something that is sent from a family in a package or far down from the sky, but it's something we need to work with, we need to generate.

0:43:06 And we know that the Dharma body has the meaning of the wonders of the universe. And in Christianity, there are practitioners who can also see that as well, That we as Buddhists can see, such as Saint Francis, one day he was walking meditation, he was doing walking meditation, and he was walking in the campus of the monastery. And he walked by an almond tree.

0:44:07 Almond. And he watched the almond tree, and he said to the almond tree, please tell me about God. And then all of a sudden, the almond tree blooms with flowers. And if we don't have mindfulness, we walk by an almond tree and we don't see the almond tree. Because the almond tree is a miracle of the universe. of life.

0:44:52 When our mind has a lot of suffering, anxiety, jealousy, anger, even the almond tree is in bloom, but we don't see it. But if we are a free person, we can come in touch with these miracles, because the almond tree is a wonder of life. And that is blooming. The almond tree blooms and says, "This is God." And in Zen, there is a koan by the master Chu Chau. And a student who lived with his teacher for three years, and he felt like he hadn't really learned the gist of his teacher's teaching.

0:45:54 He felt complex that he does not know anything. And one day he was so irritated, really upset, and he went to the teacher and he said, because all this time the teacher only taught him how to eat, how to walk. And one day, he went to the teacher, he said, can you teach me something important? You haven't teach me anything important. And he said, on the way here, have you seen the pine tree out there? If you haven't seen the pine tree, go out there and look at the pine tree.

0:46:43 And this is a koan, the cypress in the yard. And every day we walk by this cypress tree so many times, but we haven't really seen the cypress. We haven't seen that this cypress is a wonder. How are we to understand a suchness, O God? So if we have mindfulness, then we establish our mind and body in the present moment and can come in touch with the wonders of life around us.

0:47:33 If you want to have a relationship with God, if you want to understand God, All you need to do is stand next to the pine tree, the cypress tree, to see God and to hear God. And the Dharma body is like that, Dharmakaya. In the past, when the Buddha was still alive, the Buddha was giving talks with his physical body, was teaching with his physical body. and his physical body is called nyukdhan. But when this physical body disintegrates, his Dharma body is still alive.

0:48:27 That is, his teaching is still alive, and we can still come in touch with the Dharma body of the Buddha. In Mahayana tradition, we talk about Dharma body, as the wonders of the universe. For example, this orchid flower is a wonder of the universe. Just like the almond tree or the cypress, the almond of St. Francis or the cypress of Master Jiu-Chung. If we are mindful, If we are listening deeply, we can see that this orchid is given talk, a Dharma talk, on impermanence, non-self, four noble truths, eightfold path.

0:49:26 The reason we can't hear the rose given Dharma talk, because we do not have mindfulness concentration and insight, we're not dwelling in the present moment. So now, in Mahayana tradition, this is the meaning of Dharma body, and that the Buddha has never stopped giving Dharma talk. If we have the ears, we can hear the cypress giving Dharma talk. That when the wind blows through the cypress, that's the voice of the Buddha giving Dharma talk. And so in the Mahayana tradition, the Zen masters say the yellow flowers, the purple bamboo are all given Dormatops.

0:50:26 If you haven't seen it, you are not dwelling in the present moment. And so Dharma body in Mahayana tradition is like that. It means the miracle of the universe. At night when we look up the stars and the moon, when we wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning, we can see everything is miracle. The moon and the stars are wonders. So in manifestation only teaching, Store consciousness, it contains the Dharma body.

0:51:22 It contains all the wonders of life, of the universe. And when we see the moon or the star, that's store consciousness. The universe is, its mind is consciousness. And in Manifestational teachings, we talk about the object, the object of mind. There are 3 3 objects It means Things as it is, things in themselves Things in themselves reality as it is you The object is then the object in itself.

0:53:57 So the object of soul consciousness are things in themselves. Suchness is dharma-body, the ultimate reality. And in Buddhism, dharma is equivalent to God, things in itself, things in themselves. you And and the and then the soul consciousness has a direct perception It's a perception that is direct without going through speculation and analysis, analyzing.

0:55:43 And if it goes through a speculation and thinking, it's called gilu, dilu. And through speculation and analysis, there is mental construction. What do you think? Um, strong consciousness has um, direct perception and that its object, uh, its object are, um, things in themselves.

0:56:41 So, therefore, Thang is called Wofu, that is unobstructed. It's not covered. It's not covered up. Because store consciousness says is the capacity to have direct perception, part direction in Sanskrit. Store consciousness is the capacity to come in touch with the ultimate reality, with suchness, things in themselves.

0:57:28 So, therefore, the alaya or store consciousness is unobstructed, whereas the other consciousnesses are all covered up just like manas or mind consciousness or the five sense consciousnesses. Vofu means uncovered, unobstructed, and Voki means that it's neither wholesome nor unwholesome. And one important difference between Christianity and Buddhism, This is why perhaps Christian practitioners, if they look deeply, they can also see this.

0:58:41 Because in Christianity, they identify God as goodness. And in Christianity, they identify God to goodness. with beings, existence. Existence.

0:59:34 There are theologians. They say that God is the foundation of existence of a being, the ground of being. And God is goodness. A goddess, at the same time, goodness and the ground of being. But store consciousness, it's neither wholesome nor unwholesome. It's neither being or non-being.

1:00:25 That's the ultimate reality. And the ultimate reality is neither wholesome nor unwholesome. And that's the difference between Christianity and Buddhism. Because if God is the foundation of being, then who is the foundation or the ground of non-being? And this is a dilemma. If God is the ground of being, then what is the ground of non-being? On one side, it's being, it's being.

1:01:34 and on the other hand, it's non-being. No. If God is the ground of being, then what is the ground of non-being? That's a dilemma in Christianity. In manifestation, only teachings that mind-consciousness is neither being or non-being. And in original teachings of the Buddha, the Master Gattigyana asked, what is right view?

1:02:28 And the Buddha said, Right field is a field that transcends being and non-being. And the ultimate reality, if we say that it's being, it's incorrect. If it's non-being, it's incorrect either. And then if we say God is the ground of being, then we really put God down because God is a reality that transcends both being and non-being. And there are theologians that have transcended this dilemma.

1:03:23 And so this is a dilemma, this is a question. The second dilemma is if God is goodness, but apart from the goodness, there are the evil. Who are the ground of all these evils? Is it Satan? And it's on one's end, it's very clear that strong consciousness is neither wholesome nor unwholesome. That the notion of wholesome and unwholesome, being or non-being, belongs to the evolving consciousnesses, the manas, the mind consciousnesses, and the five-sense consciousnesses.

1:04:28 In the sutra, it says that the store consciousness is like the ocean and it's the wind that makes the waves. And these waves are the manas, mind consciousness, and the five-sense consciousness. And that this evolving consciousness, it has the idea of wholesome and unwholesome being and non-being. But mind-store consciousness is different. It transcends notions of being and non-being, wholesome and unwholesome. And so, and that the ultimate reality, it is undetermined.

1:05:18 and soul consciousness has a direct perception and can touch the ultimate reality the things in themselves the the form as it is object as it is so tang is uncovered it's undetermined but manas and mind consciousness and the five and the five sense consciousnesses are covered are obstructed because they have mental constructions it has it has It has mental construction, but not store consciousness.

1:06:25 Store consciousness has access to the direct object, to objects in themselves. It has the Dharma body. And there are three things related to, three things. And mind and soul consciousness embraces all these three things. The first thing is, first is the body.

1:07:12 the second is the body, and the third is the environment. We learn the body as the Chanbao, the main principle, I mean, the principle retribution. the main retribution. And the third one, King Tei Yang, is the environment.

1:08:08 It's there, the universe, the moon, the stars are in it. The sun, the mother earth, and that the body is our body. And the first one is the seeds. And that restored consciousness has the responsibility to embrace all this. It embraces the environment, the whole universe, the body as well as the seeds. and that the seeds manifest as body and environment. Seeds are called bija. They're equivalent to, in science, they call them Subatomic particle.

1:09:03 Subatomic particle. And every discipline has their own words and terms. And so in science they called it the subatomic particle, sometimes they called it the field of force, sometimes they called it the cord. that the universe is made of very thin cords and that they can use science experiment to show that.

1:10:08 that. And so, seeds manifest as body and as the environment, just as H2O can create snow, rain, ice, clouds. And H2O is equivalent to, represents seeds, and that from this seed, There are water, ice, glacier, clouds, fog, mist, and those water, clouds, and glaciers represent the body, the main, the principal retribution. And my store consciousness embraces everything.

1:11:13 And that when we look at the moon and the star, we see their store consciousness. Because store consciousness is not covered up, that it has the capacity to come and touch with the wonders of life. and that the object of mind, of store consciousness is the Dharma body. And then if we say that when we become enlightened and get to the stage of Arahant, that we no longer have store consciousness, then this is not correct.

1:12:01 But when we are enlightened, we can see that alaya, the store consciousness, is bright because it's shining bright. The store consciousness always shines brightly, but we don't see it. And that when we are enlightened, the store consciousness becomes the great near wisdom. And it shines. It has been shining. It doesn't need to be transformed. It is as it is. But because we have evolving consciousness that have round perception, that we need to transform these evolving consciousnesses.

1:12:56 Store consciousness does not need to be transformed. That is something new. That store consciousness doesn't need to be transformed. It is as it is. It is as always been shining. Stole Consciousness is uncovered and undetermined. When we get to Manas, even though Manas is undetermined, But it is obstructed.

1:13:52 It is covered up. Manas is neither wholesome nor unwholesome. But it's obstructed. It's covered up. Because it's covered up, so it's unwholesome. We will learn that store consciousness has to rely on its object because object and subject are a pair that always go together. That when there are objects, there are subjects. That store consciousness and the universe are not two separate things.

1:14:42 When we look at this piece of paper, we know that there's the left and the right side of the piece of paper. And this, the right side and the left side, we think that there are two things, two separate things. But we cannot separate them. If we say someone come and bring the left side away to Bodo and the right side to Toulouse, it's not possible because those two things cannot be separated. And in the store consciousness it's the same thing, that the subject and the object of store consciousness cannot be taken apart, cannot be separated.

1:15:33 And that we cannot take store consciousness out of the wonders of the universe, nor can we take the wonder of the universe out of store consciousness. So when we see the object, we see the subject. When we look at the subject, we see the object. So that's what it means by subject and object. In the West, they have the discipline called phenomenology. That consciousness is always consciousness or something. That it always has an object of consciousness.

1:16:26 And this is true. For example, when we see, we always see something. When we're sad, we are sad about something or with someone. It's the same thing with our mind. It's that the object and the subject always go together. In manas, it's covered, it's obstructed, it has wrong perception, a wrong view. In us, there's life. So, in original manifestation teachings, it says that consciousness, still consciousness only works with the five universal mental formations.

1:17:37 But it also works with other mental formations. It works with the five particular mental formations, with concentration, and with vitality, another mental formation. Then Nyik Tam, then it's concentration, one-pointedness. "Mangang" is the vitality. "Chipid Indri" We translate "Mangang" as "vitality".

1:18:37 So, in store consciousness, apart from working with the five mental formations, it works with five particular mental formations plus ma'okang vitality. At the Hermitage, there is a ginger that was left in a corner. It wasn't taken care of, but then it gave rise to a plant, and there's a life in it. The ginger has life in it.

1:19:35 It has vitality. Just like a potato, if you put it aside, it will sprout into a plant. And that's vitality. So in our body, there is this vitality of wanting to go forward, of wanting to be continued. That in our mind consciousness, sometimes it stops working. For example, when we are sleeping without any dreams, but we are still alive. And this proves that apart from the mind consciousness, there is something else.

1:20:17 And that something is store consciousness. Store consciousness has vitality. that Astral Consciousness relies on the central nervous system. In our body, there is what we call the autonomic nervous system. It has the brain, it contains the brain and then there is the sympathetic nervous system. It takes care of regulating our life, it regulates our inside and our body.

1:21:22 It's called Harmony, that it helps to help our interior body, to the environment in our body to be balanced in harmony. That no matter what is outside, that our body can help to adjust and to adjust. And this is called homeostasis.

1:22:11 And this is the work of store consciousness. It maintains life. Sometimes mind consciousness is working, it's sleeping, but store consciousness takes care of everything. It maintains our homeostasis. And store consciousness maintains our life. When the child is in the womb, it hasn't had the eyes and the ears to see yet, but it still has life already. And when we die, our ears and our eyes are no longer there, but still consciousness is still there.

1:23:06 The thing that comes before and that goes before and that goes after our life, before the first to come and the last to leave is store consciousness. And so store consciousness controls and it collaborates with the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system to create balance and homeostasis in the body. And when we say, when we're hungry, then we want to eat.

1:23:50 When we're thirsty, we want to drink. And there's life in it that make us want to have, that control our sexual energy so that we can continue our life. And it's the vitality, just like that ginger that was left in the corner, that it comes out, that a tree, a plant comes out of it. Because it wants to continue, it wants to live. And so Thay put that ginger in a pot. And so when we're hungry and we look for something to eat, it's a normal thing.

1:24:35 Nothing bad about that. When we're thirsty, we go and look for things to drink. That is normal. If we want to have children to continue ourselves, and that's a normal thing. Nothing bad, nothing wrong with that. And manas. Manas, that is covered up, it does not know that his mistake is that he thinks that this body is a separate self, it's a self. So it's covered, it's covered, it's covered up. Manas is one of the evolving consciousness.

1:25:28 And it's the ground, it's the base for mind consciousness. So, mind consciousness, from store consciousness, a seed comes up, manas come up, and it embraces store consciousness. And it only embraces a small part of store consciousness, And it makes that part into itself, into itself. When the object of soul consciousness is things in themselves, the object of manas is not things in themselves.

1:26:16 And that the self is the creation of manas. Man has considered this body as itself. We had written that store consciousness has the seeds, has the body, body and the environment. So manas come from store consciousness and come back and embrace the body.

1:27:10 It embraces the body as a self. And it embraces everything that relates to the body. There are four things. Perception, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. It embraces part of the store consciousness. And because it's covered up, it's obstructed, It thinks that this is itself. So this one is no longer things in themselves, but it is a realm of representation. Mental construction.

1:27:58 It thinks that this body, this feeling, this perception, this consciousness is itself. But it is not like that. It doesn't see that this body, it doesn't see that the environment is also part of the soul consciousness, it's coming from the soul consciousness. It only sees that it is only the body, And it tries to maintain, to preserve that self. And so that is its weakness, its weaknesses.

1:28:44 And that every night and day, it seeks for pleasure. And the second thing is that night and day, it tries to avoid suffering. The third thing, it does not know that looking for sensual pleasure is suffering. If you're hungry and you eat, then that's good, but sometimes you eat, but you're not hungry, but you eat. And it doesn't see that suffering is necessary, is needed for the person to learn to love and to understand.

1:29:40 It does not see that. So the first thing, it looks for pleasure. The second is avoid suffering. The third, it does not see the danger of pleasure seeking. And the fourth thing is that it does not see the goodness of suffering. So it always tries to avoid suffering. And that if we are running away from our suffering, that's how manna is working. And the fifth thing is that it does not know the law of moderation. It does not know that. It does not know the law of moderation. And so it creates a lot of difficulties. And so manas, even though it's undetermined, but it's covered up.

1:30:46 And manas, it belongs to the subconscious. It grasps onto store consciousness. In the West, they have a discipline called psychoanalysis. And the father of psychoanalysis is Freud. And he says that there is something that has the tendency to look for pleasure, and avoid the suffering.

1:31:41 And it does not know the law of moderation. It does not see the danger of seeking pleasure. And this is what he called the S. in English is id id is the manas and that we all have it it's the mud it's the mud in our body In our five skandhas, the five skandhas that the manas cling to, it has no, it's also a wonder of life.

1:32:51 just like the flowers or yellow flower or the purple bamboo, but because manas cannot touch those wonders. So the five skandha becomes a fabrication of manas, that the body is no longer the dharma body, it becomes the five, when it's free, then it is the Dharma body, but when it's not free, it's called Upanana Skandhas.

1:33:40 It's a body with delusion. And when we practice to remove this delusion in the body, then this body becomes a Dharma body. And without manas, this five skandhas is the Dharma body, that our body is a wonder. And according to Freud, Apart from S, from it, it has the ego.

1:34:43 And this is called the self. Ego is called self. and "it" is that, it's the unconscious that seeks for sensual pleasure, and that's the "it". But then, there is the ego, and the ego becomes something that is more tangible. And that part is equivalent to the id. And that manas is the ground for mind consciousness, mano-vishnana.

1:35:49 So mind-consciousness uses manas as its foundation to manifest. So, the Ego The Ego The Ego is Inhibited and it inhibits manas, it inhibits it, it inhibits it from manifesting.

1:36:57 Sometimes manas can, sometimes ego allows it to act out, but most of the time ego inhibits it. Because in a society, there are laws and regulations against allowing the it to come out, and ego can inhibit the it. And for example, we see a cup of really delicious juice and we want to drink it because the owner of that cup is no longer there.

1:37:44 But it's the ego that stops us from taking that cup. It's the id that wants to have that cup. And it's the ego that prevents the id from taking that cup of juice and drinking it. And so, and according to Freud, the ego has its roots in the id. And underneath, in the depths, the id and the ego are at one. It's only that line that they're separated.

1:38:40 And so ego is able to inhibit id, but sometimes ego is unable to inhibit id. And ego, it acts very practically. It acts based on reality. But apart from ego, there is the super ego. So above the ego, there is the sipping ego.

1:39:40 So the super ego looks for ways to free the id, the needs to free the id by going on ways that are wholesome, such as artwork. And so super-ego is on the path of sublimation. It wants to go in the direction of goodness. And so above the ego, there is the super-ego that helps to neutralize the id.

1:40:31 Let's not just inhibit the id, but it helps to maintain and balance the id. This is that underneath is the id. And above the consciousness level is the ego. And then above the ego is the separate ego. In manifestation only teachings, it's different in a sense that consciousness has the object and subject. And if we have, in our brain, there's a place called autonomic.

1:41:42 It's a function that controls when we are thirsty, we drink. When it wants to continue, then it continues itself, then it goes in the direction of helping continue. So there's the base for the id. There's the base of the id in the brain. And they think that the super-ego is located in many places, but it's mainly behind our forehead.

1:42:39 And the person who has their frontal part of their brain removed, they are no longer able to control their id. And they don't know how to relate, to deal with their sexual energy, and they don't know how to deal with people of the opposite gender. And so, they don't know how to relate with the person of the opposite gender in order to go in the direction of...

1:43:28 And so in Buddhism, mind consciousness can look deeply. It can see that the object that is considered as a self, that it is not a self, that there is a relationship between the body and the environment. that if you take the environment out, there's no body. And that the body and the environment is coming, manifested from the seeds. And this looking deeply brings an insight of interbeing of non-self.

1:44:19 And the thing that's called the supid ego, It can do more than just trying to go toward the direction of virtues and goodness, but it can also help to see the interbeing nature of things. It can help the manas to see that there's wrong perception in it about its idea of a self. When we read about Freud, we can see clear that in Buddhism, the part of manas that is in the subconscious, and that manas relies on manas, It relies on manas, and it can use, and that mind consciousness relies on manas, but it can also shine light onto the manas.

1:45:49 And one thing we need to remember in this Dharma talk is that there is interbeing in nature between suffering and happiness. That they are related, suffering and happiness are related to each other. They're related to the extent that if there's the absence of one thing, then the other thing cannot be possible. And that in our tradition, we go to a point, We go to a point where suffering can be completely eliminated and that there is only happiness.

1:46:46 And that there is something, they think that there is something that's completely pure. And there is no sign of impure. There's only purity and no impurity. There's only happiness and no suffering. And this faith and this belief is against the teachings of Dung Lai, interbeing, that there's no suffering, then there's no happiness and that if there's no mud there's no lotus and that the purpose of a practitioner is not to run away from the mud but to know how to make use of mud to make lotuses.

1:47:56 So we imagine that this is a lotus pond And this is the water. And this is mud. And the lotus root is underneath in the mud and it comes up through the mud, through the water and blooms into a flower. This is mud, and this is water, and that's air. Imagine if there's no mud. How can we have the lotus?

1:48:41 And so if we dream, we dream that we practice to the point where there's no more mud, then it's not very realistic. Because mud is really needed to make lotus. And that there is, if there is life, there is suffering. But we have a way to help minimize the suffering. And that's where the practice comes in. But if we ask for the absolute, If we ask for goodness or absolute happiness, but in life there is no absolute.

1:49:38 Because in life, if we want to have the flower, we need to also have the lotus, I mean the mud. So we keep mud, just enough mud so that the lotus can bloom. Because if we remove all the mud, there's no way we can have the lotus. And that the mud and the lotus are interrelated. That if we are looking for goodness, for purity without the impurity, then it's not possible.

1:50:23 So we have to learn how to accept the mud, to accept the suffering. We have to accept the ed. But we have to know how to help id to become something that's better, more beautiful. Because if we don't have the id, then we don't have the super ego or the ego. We will continue on Thursday. Thank you.