Y2Q17) The producer of my own experience

[Rik vanKeulen]

With the yogachara theory of perception in mind, how would you explain Ven Gendun’s teaching: “I am addicted to my own experience, but I am the producer of those experiences”.

[Mircea Mocanu]

I see it as living of self-fulfilling prophecies. What is produced within the perception of a self gives rise to the same type of climate. Until the alaya is purified, creation entraps itself into repetition.

[Manita Roose]

I am addicted (very dedicated) to believing in being and having a permanent, unitary and independent self. Nobody can create the thought of this self, but me. I produce the experience of this permanent, unitary and independent self. I looked. I couldn’t find a self/I. So if it doesn’t exist, how come that I think that I have/or I am this self? The logical explanation is that I am the producer of the experience of this self/I.
But please don’t ask me what “I am the producer” means. It’s a very interesting question Rik. I’ve been chewing on it for a couple of days and I’m not finished. To be continued…

[Amrita Tsering Dolma Klop]

If I read: I am addicted to my own experience, but I am the producer of those experiences, I have to think about the teachings of the four noble truths.
As well as craving and attachment – how they arise, the forms they take, their results and also how they can be managed. The way that leads to this, we explore and practice 🙏

[Rik vanKeulen]

You are taking an interesting direction here, Amrita. All schools (tenets) accept the four noble truth, also the Vaibashika’s and Sautrantika’s, discussed during Year 1. These two schools believe in a real world out there build up from the elements. The Vaibashika’s claim that we can directly perceive the world out there (something most ordinary people present day would agree). Sautrantika’s claim that our perception is distorted by our conceptuality (Western philosophers would also agree). As we are now exploring yogachara, likely Ven Gendun’s statement is linked to the way yogachara explains how appearance/perception works.

My contribution:
“I am addicted to my experience”: We really believe what we perceive. The objects seem to us as cut off from our mind and distant from us. We are so convinced of this that our behaviour blindly follows, like an addicted person who has no choice but chase the object of addiction.
“I am the producer of that experience”: this is the yogachara explanation of perception/appearance/experience. Yogachara states it comes from the mind, not from the reality out there. The mind creates an appearance in a dualistic manner, as if the objects is out there. “Cut off and distant”. Separate from the perceiving mind, which seems to be here, somewhere in the body, e.g. behind the eyes. This dualistic perception is caused by the klistha manas (afflicted consciousness) looking at the alaya vijnaya (foundational consciousness). Let’s discuss in Y2Q19) whether we can find examples from our daily life whether the mind is indeed dominant in creating perception.

[Ingrid Lander]

On one level, we are fairly dogmatic and fixed in our perception and interpretation of the world, we affirm ourselves through how we experience and perceive the world. That in itself makes us create and recreate this way of looking at and experiencing the world in an eternal circle. It must be said that this is the essence of the Samsaric circle and the very expression of ignorance.

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