👁️ Introduction: The Vision and the Eye

At the very beginning of perception, we want to know…

Who am I? What am I?

• This represents the awakening of the visual sense and the desire to perceive the world. From this initial impulse, the process of self-awareness begins.
• This class explores the Eight Consciousness Kings—a poetic map of awareness, from the raw senses to the illusion of self and finally to the pure, formless essence within all beings.
• Below we discover how reality forms through layers of perception, and how suffering arises from clinging to a false sense of self. But more than that, you’ll be shown how to return to your original nature, free and clear, with the heart of a Bodhisattva.

Let’s go!

Here are the Eight Consciousnesses – 8 functions of consciousness:

• Eye consciousness
• Ear consciousness
• Nose consciousness
• Tongue consciousness
• Body consciousness
• Brain consciousness
• I-consciousness
• Hidden consciousness

👑 The Heart as King and the Illusion of Suffering

• They use the word ‘king’ because our own heart is the main cause for everything. The power to create all the causation. It is the leader and creator as the king.
• Our own ego is concerned with I and mine. If it can even be called ‘observing’ we do so as the centre of our own universe. Observing just for ego is where all the suffering comes from. It is like a bubble of our own feeling and issues.
• The causation created from this bubble of Observing I and mine brings the feeling of suffering to us and controls our heart.
• We think we can find something to make us happy and steady but that fake-I will all disappear and keep changing. All of these feelings come from outside. In Buddhism they write, ‘comes from others.’
• Feeling is the result of blindness observing all of this and stuck in it as a loop.
  How can we leave this loop? Through observing Dharma.
• We observe Dharma to awaken our Number 6 consciousness. We practice to observe that my creation of ‘I and mine’ is all fake. We never wanted this anyway. In this role, we work so hard for nothing.
• Buddhism teaches us a different way to observe, out of this keyhole ‘I and mine’ limited view. Instead able to observe everything from every angle.

🛄️ 2. The Method of Dharma Observation

Observing Dharma has a procedure:

• We already connect to blind causation, ego-I, need not to connect to this
• Connect to Dharma to develop the complete view of life
• Complete view helps you to be free from ego I and mine.
  This is called back to essence, emptiness or pureness. From here we can use Dharma to create a new future of wise choice and kindness towards others.

Becoming Dharma has a procedure:

• For awakened consciousness, the complete awakening map appears in everything they see, hear, smell, taste, touch or calculate.
• This represents a level where understanding has matured into a high-level ability.
• Free from all blind-causation, they create a will to help others. The Bodhisattva learns to help all beings without suffering.

🌫️ 3. The Arising of Illusion from Pure Consciousness

The Five Sense Consciousnesses – These are the foundational consciousnesses that arise from our contact with the external world:

• Eye consciousness – Vision
• Ear consciousness – Hearing
• Nose consciousness – Smell
• Tongue consciousness – Taste
• Body consciousness – Touch

• These five are referred to as the “Blind Possession” stage of consciousness, where reactions are instinctual and unprocessed.
• At this level, we are like infants—seeing, hearing, tasting without judgment or labeling. Feels but with no-I to judge. Pure consciousness.
• In fact, every time we become like a baby—seeing without judgment—we touch this level of pure consciousness again. Babies are fully present, not yet wrapped in thoughts or a sense of self.
• A skilled healer can touch the body and instantly feel where the tension is blocked—how deep, at what angle, and how to release it.
• This type of knowing is subconscious—it doesn’t require thinking. It echoes how early consciousness functions instinctively.
• I consciousness appears through wanting to see.
• Can see has no form, feel have to be something so four elements appear.
• As you start to see more, hear more, you start to judge different. The more you know the judgmental appears more. This happens through all the senses.
• 5 consciousness don’t need brain—they work so fast they don’t need brain. These are all instinct for what I and mine wants.

🧠 The Thinking Mind: Language, Memory, and Time

• With the development of language and memory, the sixth consciousness arises:
• This consciousness organizes, labels, and processes what the senses perceive. It allows for understanding, planning, and critical thought. It also starts to form preferences, biases, and judgments. It is through this sixth layer that we begin to say, “I like this” or “I don’t like that.” It supports and enhances the function of the first five consciousnesses.
• Like learning music, at first everything is just sound. But over time, we begin to distinguish guitar, piano, and rhythm levels. This represents the sixth consciousness—labeling and judgment growing stronger as knowledge increases.
• Animals like dolphins and whales have complex sound communication, suggesting a kind of sixth consciousness. But without structured language and memory like humans, their mind-consciousness is limited in development.
• 6 consciousness allows us to quickly get all the information and think.
• Mind consciousness – Thinking, analysis, memory, and judgment
• Number 6 needs language to think.
• This then supports 1 to 5 consciousness I and mine. Memory power also starts to appear, this allows for time to appear.
• Time never exists—it’s just space changing.

🪞I-Consciousness: Mo Na and the Dream of Self

• Mo Na – ability creation of self separate from others. Fake I. This I doesn’t even exist—we just create it as a continuous dream.
• Creating all kinds of fear, worry, possessive to create another I. But that I never exists.
• So no beginning, no end. True self is never in the dream. When you awaken you will experience this, time will disappear when out of causation I.
• This layer introduces the idea of the individual self. It’s the awareness that “I am different from others.” The seventh consciousness creates the illusion of separateness, giving rise to ego, fear, desire, and comparison.
• It is from this illusion that suffering originates, as we grasp onto the self and its experiences as real and permanent.
• It’s like playing a video game and forgetting it’s not real. The seventh consciousness makes the illusion of a player so strong that we suffer when things go wrong—even though it’s all a dream.
• The self is like a wave thinking it’s separate from the ocean. But the truth is—we’re always part of the same water. When we awaken to this, we dissolve the illusion of separation.

☸️8 Consciousness: The True Heart Awakens

• True heart – creates the connection to different I
• The Eighth Consciousness – Hidden or Storehouse Consciousness– The true self, original mind, or essence
• This final consciousness is said to be the deepest level of awareness.
• It holds the karmic seeds and is the source of all other consciousnesses. In its purest form, it is the Buddha nature—formless, limitless, and equal in all beings.
• However, it is usually “hidden” beneath layers of illusion and blind habit. Through meditation and awakening, this consciousness can be revealed.
• A humorous example given was how our bacteria influence what we crave—salty, sweet, or sour. We think “we” are choosing, but often it’s the subconscious systems (like gut flora) guiding us. In this way, the eighth consciousness operates quietly beneath our thoughts.
• Blind consciousness connects to different blind I. Eventually can awaken from this blind zone, power to be aware of anything.
• The essence has no form, no form has no limitation. Aware this, then you are toward awaken.
  Aware the essence, aware the water creates all the wave. No form creates all the form.
• Bodhisattva aware all the different with equal heart. Each consciousness has no form—equal, unlimited—but they are all in a different zone. Blindness unlimited, awaken also unlimited.

🗺️ Summary and Reflection

• The Eight Consciousness Kings represent a map of human awareness, from raw sensory input to the profound awareness of oneness.
• Most of our suffering stems from attachment to the sixth and seventh consciousnesses—thought and self.
• True liberation comes when we realize that the self is an illusion and return to the eighth consciousness, which is pure, non-judgmental, and deeply connected to all life.
• Purify yourself, sharply aware this is illusion. Clean it out, enjoy being aware of the Dharma, free from all the negative feeling of life. Dharma is complete freedom, unlimited creation wisdom. Power of creation self being to be whatever you like. Dharma heart will also be kind and care towards every life with complete view of life.
• Aware the Dharma, remember the Dharma, become the Dharma. Finally being that intuition force.
• Amitabha Buddha’s pure land is the fastest way to develop this ability.
• You will never find happiness in greed, lazy blind habit. Develop all the pure kindness heart.