Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful. Some good friends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet house us to help preserve Tibetan culture. Tibet house is the Dal Lamas cultural center in America. All best wishes. Have a great day.
Speaker 1 00:00:27 This is episode number 22, titled the fundamental MIS knowing
Speaker 0 00:00:36 Now the decision, therefore in its original form in Buddhism is considered one of the most important things. The Buddha drew on the said the one thing that the Buddha wrote in his lifetime after being a Budha before he was Buddhi, he wrote as a prince, of course, but after being a Buddha, he didn't write anything. Supposedly there was a tradition like that, but except that he drew in the sand a wheel with 12 folks, and this was the wheel of dependent origination, pita, Sam Pata. And it ends with what we are confronted with, which is life. Uh, so the 12th step of it is old age and death. And the 11th step is birth. The, uh, 10th step going backwards is conception existence. They say, or sense of being, you know, it's, uh, Baba actually, it's the same word. Um, then the step before that is grasping or taking or, uh, you know, yeah. Grasping and before that is, um, the nine is grasping eight is craving. I hope limb. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, somebody faculty. Yes, it is what it is. Craving what? Craving? Yeah. Craving. That's right. Oh good. I'm right. Eighth is crazy. <laugh> seventh is contact. I think feeling I'm I'm I'm are you sure? Seventh is contact? Is it feeling? What? Do you have it there?
Speaker 2 00:02:11 Is it feel
Speaker 0 00:02:13 What
Speaker 2 00:02:14 It's feeling? I have contact feeling
Speaker 0 00:02:16 Feel, see, feel that's right. Yeah. Crazy. Feel contact is sixth then feeling is seventh. Yeah. Eighth is craving. Okay. Yeah. And, and then, right, so sixth is contact fifth is, um, the sixfold sense organization. The sixth media, I like to call them the sixth media sense, right? The fourth is name and form. The third is consciousness. The second is something like, like, um, activities or functions or operation, some SCADA, meaning to like, you know, creation. Even you could say some SC, sometimes that translate as creation activity. And then the first is ignorance. So what is interesting is that, and, and, and this, again, I think we discussed a little bit less and this again has to do with the fact that when we want, when our human curiosity, our constant, our awareness wants to try to understand something, but we try to understand about it is how it is claim to be how it is made.
Speaker 0 00:03:24 You know, you want, you wanna to find out it's origin and it's sourced. This is like how human curiosity works, probably monkeys too. You wanna find out how something happened or how it's made. So you go back looking for the cause. That's why in all theologies, et cetera, the idea of creation is a big deal. And why all authorities try to pretend that they know how things are created? Do you know what I mean? So the scientists were floundering around feeling nervous until they came up with the big bang. Then they can hold off the Pope. Do you know what I mean? And the religious people who, who claim to know how, you know, God created that and all this, you know, the UN caused cause and all that sort of thing, which is irrational idea. So UN moved mover, you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 0 00:04:09 So, uh, so in doing that, when you go back through a cycle from the existing life, which means old age and death and birth from birth old age and death, that's life, that's 11 and 12. And then you go back through that series of mental things, going back to the individuated consciousness and then the creative activity. But then when it sources ignorance, what does that mean in a way it means that really it is dependent on origination. In other words, the origination is an error it's based on error. It's based on misunderstanding. If you understand nothing was created, actually. So even in the realist schools who think of it as a kind of way of understanding the way that when they meditate on it is said, for example, that the PKA Budha, which means there's something like the hermit Budha, who, who is a being who becomes enlightened in a, to a certain degree without meeting the, a Budha in a particular world or era or whatever, or nation or culture, but, but he does. So because he or she does. So because they somehow heard or remembered from previous life or run into a text, the, those 12 links of dependent origination as it is called. And then they get back into that basic thing that the origin of things is ignorance.
Speaker 0 00:05:31 <inaudible> not knowing and, and, or MIS knowing as I prefer to translated. And what is the MIS knowing MIS knowing is what is the fundamental MIS knowing about each of us in the Buddhist analysis? Each of us knows what, which, what does everybody in this room know
Speaker 0 00:05:53 What our own subjective existence? Well, we know that we exist and we, and this is the place where our absolutism is really most powerful is, you know, like Decar beautifully illustrated. He got back to that thing of like, you know, I'm doubting, therefore I exist, you know, like I'm thinking, therefore I exist. In other words, this feeling of the sort of, I irre reducibility of my own subject to beef, which is what death then is becomes such a big problem for <laugh> because then that's canceled that. But it, and that then seems to be absolute loss to us because we think of that as absolute reality. And that however is the fundamental mise input as view from that MIS knowledge, then the world Springs forth and we functional activity, differentiation of self and other consciousness of, uh, subjectivity of, of object objects that are not the self, then name and form meaning sort of differentiation between matter and mind.
Speaker 0 00:06:56 Name is encompass. Mind is encompass by name by language. And then the sense organs emerge from that and their sense of objective spheres, then contact between the subject and object through the senses, the mind being a six sense and the mental object being a six object. And, um, and then, uh, feeling sorry to, or feeling is a bad translation sensation, pleasure of pain or numbness. It is an emotion, you know, feeling has that double meaning in English of emotion. So therefore vena should not really be translated feeling as people do. It really is sensation. And, uh, then, uh, craving, cause then you want the pleasant one, not the unpleasant sensation. You want pleasure, not pain and then grasping for what you think will bring that through the craving and then coming to a state of existence and then being born and then being then dying. And then it goes round and round. Yes.
Speaker 4 00:07:51 Discrimination. Is that contact
Speaker 0 00:07:53 Where, oh, they have something called discrimination in there? No,
Speaker 4 00:07:56 I mean like the idea of that isn't
Speaker 0 00:07:59 That, well, no discrimination comes right with, uh, right from the ignorance. Yeah. The ignorance itself, the MIS knowing is a kind of discrimination. It's a kind of thinking I'm something different from the world. Oh, okay. So that's the fundamental one. And then that elaborates itself in terms of functioning activities, and then there's awareness of a subjective with the dichotomously et separated from the object, et cetera. And then those are those elaborate into an embodiment. And they have this about formation of the mind in the, in the womb, you know, coming from the 10 stage, this 12 links is used and huge biologically physically it's used in many ways, but the fact that it reaches the base reasoning is the creator of the universe is ignorance of the, is very key point. And then that leads to the <inaudible> thing, which is the non origination of all things, which is a strange idea.
Speaker 0 00:08:54 And then when one first gets deeper with that idea, one develops what is called a tolerance of the worthlessness of all things. And then that tolerance becomes a positive awareness and that's it. And what that means is that, that on the level of where we habitually perceive self and other as having intrinsic reality by instinctive habit, right, which we have on that level, when we keep examining things, investigating them to see if that intrinsic reality holds up under analysis and as it keeps dissolving, then the only then, then what we come up with is that emptiness of that intrinsic reality. And then there's a very deep point there where that emptiness, in other words, the emptiness, we realize emptiness only by not being able to find the non emptiness. So it's a negational realization that, you know, like a negative realization, like for example, when you realize that there's no elephant in the room, it isn't really any termed.
Speaker 0 00:10:00 It's not a sort of seemingly it's a, it's a kind of open-ended realization, cuz there's still, somebody could be wearing a charm bracelet with a little elephant on it. You might not have seen, but you know, you think, well, I'm not really looking for an image of an elephant. I'm looking for a real one, like an animal going trumpeting and you know, slurping around with his nose it's chunk and there's now no room for one and I've looked everywhere and, and then there's no elephant, so they're not, but that's a that. And so the cognition of the lack of elephant is different than if I see an elephant, which sort of seems to be terminated at a certain moment, but the non elephant is a different kind and it just sort of opens into that. And then you sort of make a decision while I've looked enough.
Speaker 0 00:10:42 You know, the criteria for that would be that a, that would enable an elephant to be here, have been fully thought through. And I have looked and investigated and there is none. So that's the way ness is understood. In other words, it's not understood that, but when you viscerally do that, you come into experiences that are seemingly like nothingness type experiences. Things seem to melt away and dissolve or become transparent. It is said, and that's considered almost a danger because then what happens? What should happen if you are properly, if you have done the, if you have the wisdom born of learning is that you inquiring mind will, will not finding any other thing that looks like it's intrinsically real. Except you think you found the intrinsic reality of it, all which is damned Inness. You think you've found that mind will continue to, to go without needing another sentence or phrase or a syllogism or an inference. And that emptiness itself will then be looked for and it will not be found. And so that's called the emptiness of emptiness. Oh, the lack of that emptiness is the intrinsic reality of other things in a way they, you can say, but it itself has no intrinsic reality either. That's very important. Yes.
Speaker 3 00:12:02 Is, is that a danger though? I would think that was, that would be part of using the same critical method.
Speaker 0 00:12:07 Yeah. It is the
Speaker 3 00:12:08 Emptiness what you did to everything
Speaker 0 00:12:10 Else. Yeah, it is. But when you come at it meditatively as a, as a sequence of experiences, then there's this great danger and temptation to think when, because when you do, when you're looking for an intrinsic reality, so when you're looking for selflessness, you're not looking for selflessness or looking for selfless is looking for the self and that's why again, or self and not finding it or looking for intrinsic reality lessness or emptiness is not looking for that is looking for intrinsic realities. Yeah. And then they dissolve under analysis. And so you didn't find them. And then that not finding them is the finding of emptiness they say. But then at a point you run out of things which you might be describing intrinsic, you accepts itself, cuz things seem to have dissolved around you and you seem to have dissolved. And it's very key at that time that you don't then think mistakenly that I now have achieved emptiness as very, very dangerous. Yes.
Speaker 5 00:13:08 What I don't understand is how, how that's more useful in sort of seeking this concept of enlightenment.
Speaker 0 00:13:14 I'm sorry. How, what,
Speaker 5 00:13:15 How it's more useful in, in achieving this concept of enlightenment than any other emotion or knowledge based things. Isn't it still a subjective, whatever the
Speaker 0 00:13:26 Perception. Well, you were the one doing on the subjective. That's good. You see the, the subjective business, the subjective thing is that that's the, that's the most key place where we attribute itself is to ourself where we absolutize the self that is the absolute source of suffering is this ization of the itself of this health because subliminally and instinctively everybody here, unless somebody happens to be a light, which, which, which case I apologize for lumping in with the rest of us, but everybody here instinctively feels an absoluteness about their own existence. So they self are everyone here has subject to the self ization habit. Let's call it. So the key is to look for that. If the self is there, therefore the meditation on the selflessness of the self is to look for that absolute self. And the process of doing it is like, well, if we come to acknowledge in ourself that I'm absolutely thinking I'm here.
Speaker 0 00:14:26 And then, then the Buddha teaching of selflessness or <inaudible> teaching avoidance Sentis is not really like, we're supposed to agree with it. We don't actually agree with it. It's a challenge. And then if we think, well, those people were pretty interesting actually. And they seemed to be pretty together. So if they're saying that my feeling of being absolutely here is something mistaken, then that's something I have to take pretty seriously. But I, but the first step in taking it seriously is admitting that I don't agree with that. At least not in the sense of how I feel so precisely, you know, you, you, you will get down to the de cardian thing where everything else will dissolve under analysis. And then there's still that feeling of the absolute self being there, which is then he started from there, you know, Heva and everything raise extends on very brilliantly, just like any Buddhist Yogi.
Speaker 0 00:15:23 But then he took this presence since self of self presence, which he also admitted. He couldn't find, he tried very hard, but he couldn't actually catch himself. But then he thought, well, I'm trying to catch myself. So that's being there. <laugh> so I can't doubt that. Right. So I have to acknowledge that. So that was in the way, the beginning of the examination of selfness he needed, let's see, he needed a Zen master to give him a whack on the head when he said Carto air goes home in the sense that not in the car goes home is actually correct too. Interestingly, but not as an absolute, it's just part of Carto as a relative, as a relational. And there words, acknowledging the non finding, you see the inability to find means that it isn't there and the way we thought it was there. But when we think in a way we are relationally there. So then in a, in a, in a, in elusory erroneous Iry means it seems to me, but it isn't the way it is. But yet it is a, it is an existence of an illusion in a way you can say and illus, therefore illusory is the word. So, so that is there. So you see there in a way, what is, what, what does, what does an expression in an infinite hole mean?
Speaker 0 00:16:45 How can there be an infinite hole? The word, the, the cons, the economist concept of whole in part dissolve in the context of, of infinity in a way, which is a negational infinity is a negative word. I mean, you never reach infinity, right? Even, although you also never can avoid infinity. You, you realize we are all infinite right now. Right? Because we can't exclude finitude does not exclude infinity because if it did, it wouldn't be infinite. Right. Although it would seem to be, they should be opposite. I'm finite and there's something that's infinite. But if there's something that's infinite, I'm infinite because it can't keep out of me. You know what I'm saying? So that's in that same kind of area, but what was it, your real problem you kept saying I do for the way, which, which we are the authors of the play. As we see it perform, straighten the itself, the finish stuff down place with confidence. Self-awareness and then begin dismantle the attachment to the play itself. Well,
Speaker 5 00:17:49 I dunno if that's fine.
Speaker 0 00:17:50 That's not what that's Jane. That's not you. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. That's another one. That's a good one too. Oh yeah. Here. The assumption that the subjective life is real, only in a relative non intrinsic or self-standing way is in conflict. The idea of practical woman, practically attainable, Budha, what precise? Well, precisely the opposite is correct. From what you're saying. If the subject of life were real in an intrinsic way, that's what would be opposite from practical and practically attainable. Because if you were intrinsically what you are, and if you were UN enlightened, then you're intrinsically unenlightened. Then that enlightenment is your, your intrinsic essence and your intrinsic reality. Then you'll never become enlightened because that intrinsic thing is not relational and therefore can never change. Right? So in a way it's a very easy, the idea of lack of intrinsic reality is incredibly easy.
Speaker 0 00:18:46 It's almost obvious it's almost chronological. How can any relative thing have intrinsic reality have non-relative reality, then it wouldn't be there. You follow me. Yeah. But, but the fact that people come up with all these theories about essentialism or intrinsic reality or whatever essentialism is why, you know, Garfield is using the term for Saba, uh, it means that people's instinctive feeling is that I'm really here in a really absolute way. And there's something irre, reducible, and absolutely me about me undetermined and unaffected by circumstance. And therefore, when I look at myself in a, in a family photo at the age of four, I'm completely puzzled, who is that little like thing. And as you, as you look, and as you grow and you look at yourself in your mirror, you wonder who is that? Because you always just feel the same way because you have this, this absolute time sense of self that is not, that seems instinctively to you never to change, but actually anybody else will tell you it's totally changing.
Speaker 5 00:19:47 Well, I guess, I guess so the, the thing is,
Speaker 0 00:19:51 So the fact that you are free from that is what enables you to be more and more fully relational.
Speaker 5 00:19:57 But if we're not, if we're not, you know, there's nothing intrinsic. How can there be changed? You know, how can relative experiences
Speaker 0 00:20:06 That the only thing that can change is what's non intrinsic. What is interrelated with other things is what changes, right?
Speaker 5 00:20:14 Yeah. But there's, there's an extent to which, um, isn't meditation simply grounding you as a subject because you are subject meditating
Speaker 0 00:20:24 On, but where does it look for your subject then? Apart from objects, try to find it.
Speaker 5 00:20:29 Well, it's not apart from,
Speaker 0 00:20:30 It's not part you're being very good in the sense of you're realizing that you feel you have a subjectivity that is apart from object, and somehow you think that's what you have to glean to that subjectivity philosophically. So that means you're being aware of your own intrinsic self ization habit pattern. But then the key, if you're gonna accept the challenge is find it then.
Speaker 5 00:20:51 Well, I don't think there's any realness to this subject. That
Speaker 0 00:20:54 Quite what realistic subject.
Speaker 5 00:20:56 It, it, I don't think there's any intrinsic subject.
Speaker 0 00:20:58 Oh, you don't, the question is, well then what's the problem.
Speaker 5 00:21:01 If there is none, then how can, how can you get out outside of that? Because
Speaker 0 00:21:06 If there was you wouldn't be able to, therefore there isn't one, but if we were using, therefore the habit that we feel that we do have, one is what is causing all the trouble you see, like right here, we have 30 people or whatever number. Each one is really real. The real person here now it's who's wrong. Like in each one of us things, the others are not really real. They're just like over there somewhere. And yet each one is, so each of us is the center of the, of the event. Edward is the intrinsic subjectivity around here for Bob is, or whoever else. But they, to the other people, no, no way. So everyone is in this error of feeling. They're the real thing here. And no, and then that makes everyone paranoid because we all know that no one else agrees with us. Right. Well, I,
Speaker 5 00:22:04 I, I, I agree with all
Speaker 0 00:22:05 This it's oh yeah. Well, it's your problem then? <laugh>
Speaker 5 00:22:10 I dunno. Uh,
Speaker 0 00:22:12 No, you are right. You see you agree. I agree. It's almost, as I said, it's almost simplistic, but we don't feel that way,
Speaker 5 00:22:19 But isn't feeling just another it's it's no, it's no further towards enlightenment because it's just an emotion. It's just
Speaker 0 00:22:26 A sensing exactly the feel. If, well, I don't mean by feeling by emotion. I mean, we have a sense of our own self centrality. It's called the intrinsic identity habit. The, the Budds have the most fantastic analytical terminologies about all of these kind of instinctive self-centeredness that we have. And that's what we're working with here. And the key though, is to bring them up and to realize that we do have them and then critically seek to verify them. And then what's liberating is if we fail to verify them and we sustain that failure and we, we in a way come to where that failure becomes itself, something. And then you see that you say that we should be self confident, all the, no, that was another person. But you said you only can seeable way around. This is how can the boundaries of something be shaped away. If the means are you seeking for knowledge or self explanation as the subject simply reinforces one's existence as such. But the point is when you self explore yourself as a subject, it doesn't reinforce your existence as an intrinsically real self, because you can't find that is what you'll find. And so that then opens the sense of self and therefore deepens one sense of interconnectedness that's that's key. And that's what, that's why in diverse, he salutes.
Speaker 0 00:23:49 And he salutes also the Buddha. He says, um, crown of all teachers for teaching the emptiness, another transla emptiness, by the way, could be freedom. Freedom is also a negative. You know, you say sugar free soul, free stress, free hassle free. That means lacking. We think of freedom in America, especially as like, I don't know, somebody win a football game, you got freedom or George Bush outing about freedom, but freedom is actually just a negational term. It doesn't really refer to anything. It was a lack of something, lack of bondage. So the freedom from intrinsic reality, that means relativity. You see, so the equivalence of avoidance and relativity is, is for that teaching. That's what Buddha was unique among the ancient philosophers, because otherwise they thought, well, if things aren't really there, then how could they really relate? And they all have like essences and the pure forms, you know, talk Plato has, and cetera, everybody's got some kind of thing on Z hanging around and the Buddhist and most of the Buddhist have only the Ang know the most subtle levels of the Mariaca and even, uh, una and other teachers, all himself, they warn that the sort of most radical, most relativistic, you know, deconstructive type of, um, emptiness level insight.
Speaker 0 00:25:14 One must be careful about it. If seems to one that the, that the, that voidness becomes nothing holistic in which there's a big danger of becoming holistic. And therefore, if you need to keep a little intrinsic reality in things, a little degree of intrinsic and things to kind of feel solid about them do so there is, there's a, there's a wonderful, it's like a philosophical therapy. Don't push too fast. Think you can jump into the void. Don't think you have a hold of the void. That's a terrible danger that makes you crazy. I understand anything. I did understand that I had an experience of it, therefore I'm cool. No matter what, that's not that's wrong. That's a, that's a bad, that's a disease in Zen. That's called being stuck in the demon ghost cave. I like Zen is very rapid.
