Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)
Ltd.
Personal Self Habit, Phenomenal Self Habit -Part 3
John D. Hughes
Recorded
Teachings
Buddhist Discussion Centre
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Disclaimer
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of recording: 25/6/88
Transcribed by Lainie Smallwood & Alec Sloman
Checked by Leanne Eames
CD Reference
25_06_88T3S1i
File Name: 25_06_88T3S1i_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day Meditation Course
Recording Title: "Personal Self Habit, Phenomenal Self Habit"
This Teaching is on Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha,
Buddha, Dhamma Sangha Teaching, not
anything else, not anything
else. This is Buddha Teaching. It's based on Teachings of Tsong Khapa.
And it's the method of determining the view, the identification of afflictional
misknowledge, and it appears from the personal self habit, which is the vipaka
using the Pali (kammic return) and phenomenal self habit of
the samsara. The two strike together and produce a phenomena which fascinates you. You arms length ... ignore
the phenomena of the striking, like a stone strikes
on a flint and gets a spark, ignore the spark. Direct your
attention to the two things, but the one we're looking at now is the
personal self habit, the vipakic return which comes empty . . . if
you've been following.
Nagarjuna states in his Philosophical Sixty "The perfect Buddhas do declare misknowledge is the condition for the world, so why should it be wrong to say that the world is a mental construct?" It's quite reasonable to say that the world is a mental construct. And Chandrakirti comments that this means that the worlds are not objectively established but merely constructed by conceptual thought. And again, Aryadeva states in his Four Hundred, Since there is nothing existence in desires and so on without mental constructs, what intelligent person adheres to true objects and constructs?"
There are no true objects in the world because they're empty. So for example, to go back to our example of a waterfall. The water is empty of any wisdom, it is empty of any intention. Now a true object would be pure wisdom mind. The purpose of this meditation is to bring you to omniscience. For this purpose, the past is real, the vast quantity of past, the future is real, the vast quantity of future yet to come, whereas the present is just one tick, tick, tick, tick . . . the striking of the personal self habit with the phenomenal samsara self habit. So like a snake, imagined in a striped rope, we mislabel these phenomena. Now when you strike one mind against something you get phasa or contact, something must appear. If you study the law of dependent origination you will realize that is happening all the time.
But don't be interested in what appears from the striking of the blow. Be interested . . . we're going to do both sides, but at this point we want to focus on the personal self habit which is just a kammic stream, your kammic stream. Now it's the results of good and bad, or unwholesome or wholesome kamma that makes our lives different. Our lives are different apparently. Because your streams are your streams because you've had different grabbings, different graspings. And out of that grabbing which has been going on for an infinite time. Past is real, future is real. This present is unreal, it is just where the past kamma strikes, the future kamma is formed.
The reasons, these reasons of, you know, about imagining things, these reasons bring out the mode of the habitual sense of truth status . . . it brings out the negates, the things that are not to be attended to, which is the habitual notion that it is not merely imposed by force of beginningless mental constructions. The infinite past is real. Never had a beginning in time, always been mental construct, mental construct, clang, clang, clang, clang, ding, ding, ding, ding . . . producing phenomena and then the phenomena produced in itself becomes a cause for the future. So you've got to establish upon objects as to their own objectivity. The presumed conceptual object of that habit pattern, the presumed conceptual object, the thing that appears from striking the personal self habit against the phenomenal . . . against the samsara self habit, the stuff that forms, whatever that mental, mentally, mental construct is, is called the Self. In other words, you strike the flint against the stone and the spark you call the Self, or the intrinsic reality. But behind, the Self can be anything at all, you can have any phenomena. You can hit the stones in any way and you will shower with different coloured sparks maybe . . . and the error was that you presumed that the sparks formed were a Self. My self, himself, herself. Or Self is real, spark is real. But the sparking occurs in the present driven by the infinite real past creating the infinite real future. The present is unreal.
In reality, there is this phenomena of habitual striking, hitting, touching, contact. you've never, ever constrained to stop the contact. You've got to constrain the self habit. You don't have to constrain the samsara, you don't have to stop the world, but constrain from the habitual self habit side and don't let it strike! Don't let it strike the samsara. So this requires enormous constraint. It's like holding something slippery. Since you've never practiced this constraint, you find it difficult to do. But decide, I am going to constrain the personal self habit from striking the phenomenal self habit which is the world. I am going to really do it this time, and to do it, so you don't get hypnotised by the sparks or the mental constructs formed by the clash of the two things, ignore any mental phenomena that appears because that phenomena that appears, you call Self. And it's a fraud, it's only mental constructs.
So therefore don't designate as person the phenomena of the striking of the personal self habit and the phenomenal self habit. Don't say that, don't designate that as a Self, a person, a being or something coming. It is just like a spark, it's there and it's gone, but it stains the future kamma. So exercise great restraint, stop . . . do something totally different. Don't strike the samsara. If you constrain then, if you make error there will be showers of phenomena, you might see a million past lives, ignore! Celestial eye might open, Dhamma eye might open, anything can happen, ignore! That is not a person, Dhamma eye is not a person, celestial eye is not a person, worldly knowledges are not a person. they're just phenomena only, they're mental constructs out of stupidity of letting that self habit hit against the external samsara.
So don't, although, do something which you've never done before. Past is real, future is real, present is where the past runs into the future. There is no Self, so any phenomenon, any mental constructs, universes of devas, universes of Buddhas, anything that appears is still not a Self, it is just psycho-phenomenon. Ignore! Go back to the root of one of the two things striking, and know that the root of the striking thing is empty. Empty of intention, empty of person and so on. In one of the Japanese texts it compares like this. A bell is empty, Sunyata and yet you strike it, it makes a sound. Your body, which we identified in the earlier discussions, same as a dead body only it moves, is empty. Sunyata, empty. Empty of intention, empty of self.
Restrain the personal self habit from striking the outside samsara. It's absence, the presumed conceptual object of this habit pattern is called Self. That's what we called it in the past, or intrinsic reality. Intrinsic reality is the shower of sparks, you call that reality. But there are two underlying realities higher than that. And one is the personal self habit of infinite duration, and the phenomenal self habit of the samsara. So its absence of self in the designated person, don't designate the fireworks display, no matter how brilliant it looks. Don't call that a person, it's just rubbish. It is called personal Self-less-ness. Label the error of letting the personal self habit striking, label the sparks, the phenomenon, the mental objects produced as personal Self-less-ness.
Why personal? Because it was personal self habit.
We've all got different lives, because we've got different wholesome and
unwholesome kammas coming out of that infinite past, we've all
had
different tracks. So what, when your mind strikes a samsaric object, say
the marble table, depending on your view, some of you like the reflection
of the light of the marble, some of you like the colour, some of you like
the shade, some of you like the shape. You're all seeing differently
because of your personal self habits, which are selfless, hit in different ways. So whatever the phenomena,
this room, the people in it, the Buddha images in it, my voice,
my opinions, is nothing but personal selflessness. And its absence in things
such as eyes, ears, smell, you know all of the sense bases,
is called selflessness of things. Or, if you like, phenomenal selflessness. All phenomena
is empty of self. It is thus understandable by implication
that the habitual notions of the existence of that intrinsic reality in persons are, and things, are the
two self habits. The self habits of the external,
water falls down a waterfall, that's the habit of the water. Nothing
to do with you. But then your comment "the waterfall is beautiful" or "the
waterfall is dangerous" so all the, the Self is formed out of two
components striking together.
As Chandrakirti says, quoted by Tsong Khapa in his Four Hundred Commentary, 'the self is the 'intrinsic reality', which is that objectivity in things independent of anything else. Independent of anything else. Its absence, the absence of this imputed self or person, its absence is selflessness. It is understood as twofold by division into persons and things. We arbitrarily divide it up this way, we might argue. If you had vast minds we could extend it much further than this but because of the small scope of your minds we keep it manageable by calling two things: persons; your minds, your self habit minds clash with persons, who happen to be mind and body. And that's called personal selflessness. Or they clash with rupa form, objects in the world, and that's called phenomenal selflessness. So we see even the anatta concept is produced from these two errors.
As for the objective condition of personal self-habits, (Chandra) explains in the Introduction to the Middle Way that certain Sammitiyas assert all five aggregates, and certain others only the mind, to be the objective condition or support of self-convictions. As for that mind, the Idealists” which is one branch of early Buddhism “and certain Idealistic Madhyamikas assert it to be the fundamental consciousness; other Dogmatic Madhyamikas such as Bhavaviveka and the majority of the Individual Vehicle scholars do not accept that, but assert it to be the mental consciousness. In regard to the systems of all of these schools, it is both necessary to know that the referent for the designation "person" is merely the "I," and necessary to be familiar with the methods of positing a substantive basis for that "I" (or me) “such as the fundamental consciousness etc.”
So of all the views you can adopt, each has been
examined in turn by Tsong Khapa. Now
as long as you strike
the habit kamma or vipaka against the phenomenal world, you
will produce mental constructs. Any of those mental constructs you say is “I”, infinite numbers of "I's", because
infinite number of mental constructs have been produced in
the unlimited past, the beginningless past. And an infinite number of mental
constructs will be formed in the infinite future extending ahead of you. Past is
real. Future is real. Present is unreal, because the striking is only very
short in time.
Now, watch carefully, in your mind. If I breathe in and I pull the sparks away, if I breathe out I put the sparks back. If I breathe in I pull the sparks, I pull the mental constructs off your consciousness. If I breathe out, I return them to you. If I breathe in, I pull the mental constructs away from you. If I breathe, out I return them to you. If I breathe in I pull the mental constructs arising from your self habits away from you, if I breathe out I return them back to you. If I breathe out and out, what happens? If I breathe in and stop, what happens? If I breathe out and out and out and out and out and out, what happens? If I breathe in and in and in and in, what happens? If I breathe in and out, in and out what happens? If I don't breathe, if I stop my mind and my breathing stops, what happens?
Take rest.
The
next session of these Teachings is entitled 'Personal Self Habit, Phenomenal Self Habit
- Part 4'.