The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello and welcome to this fifth and last talk on the five bundles of grasping, the five bundles of clinging. The word for

clinging in Pauli's uppad, and it has an interesting meaning, double meaning. It means both

clinging and fuel, the food, like the fuel that keeps a fire burning.

And so clinging is the very fuel for more clinging.

So as long as we cling, it's very hard to get the fire to stop,

the fire of clinging.

But we have to somehow stop,

and sooner or later, and appreciate the stopping, appreciate the moments, the minutes, the hours, where

the heart is not caught in the grip of anything. The mind can just move freely, lightly, fluidly,

without stopping for anything by getting hung up by it or blocked by it or

preoccupied by anything. It's a remarkable state of mind of heart. So the last of the five bundles is usually translated into English

as consciousness and the poly word is probably more like cognition. The problem with

translating is consciousness is that for one thing we have English speakers

have very deep-seated kind of assumption about what consciousness is and philosophers, psychologists

have been trying for years to figure out what it is, as if it is something. In Polly, the word vignana is not a continuous state of

just a simplest knowing,

just as simplest knowing,

more simple than recognition.

So the word recognition and cognition

have similar root word cognition in them.

Just like the word sanya in Polly, the third bundle,

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