---
ai_generation_date: '2026-05-12'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
  - date: '2023-03-27'
    mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/17998/20230327-David_Cohn-IMC-perfect_as_it_is.mp3
    speakers:
    - speaker_name: David Cohn
      speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/38
    talk_start_time_seconds: 0
    title: Perfect As It Is
    url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/17998
    video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: NjKyM8HYkig
  imprecise_upload_date: null
  title: Perfect As It Is with David Cohn
  upload_date: '2023-03-28'
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKyM8HYkig
---

# Perfect As It Is - [David Cohn](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/38)

*This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.*


## [Perfect As It Is](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/17998)

As I do when I come here, in the meditation I think about what to talk about. Different things come up into my mind, and then I let them go. I try not to grab onto any of them.

But one thing that strikes me is that we're all sitting together here, and it just feels to me like it's a stream of awareness that we're sharing. Maybe this sounds far-fetched to you, but this is how I experience it: there's a stream of awareness in here that we're sharing. Or maybe it's just my stream of awareness. Or not *just* my stream of awareness—it *is* my stream of awareness.

What could be greater? What could be more vast, more immanent, more pervasive? If I want to think of something to talk about that's true, what could be more true than this? I don't know if I should say "my" stream of awareness or "this" stream of awareness. And I say it's in the room, but it is in the room, it's bigger... Well, I can see the room. I can feel the space of the room. I can see all of you.

Looking at different senses, I can taste a little bit of something in my mouth, so the awareness has all of these qualities of the five senses. Your five senses. Your hearing... you can hear, right? You can hear something. Maybe I hear something. I don't think I have tinnitus, but I always hear something in my inner ear that a great teacher calls the Sound of Silence.

I can definitely see, you can see, right? You can hear. If you examine your tongue, you can probably taste a little something there. And certainly, we feel. We feel our bodies, we feel hot or cold. There's some feeling in our body, some feeling like you could say it's an emotion, perhaps, but some feeling that we have. We always have a feeling if we look at it.

And we have thoughts. And that's it! That's all we've got. We have the five sense perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. Is there anything more that you have than that? It's kind of amazing, isn't it? It's all we've got, and it keeps going in this stream of feelings, thoughts, sensations, tastes, seeing, hearing. It goes on and on and on, in this stream.

And sometimes we get really busy trying to create a better stream. We want the best stream, we want a good stream. I think that should be respected: we want a good stream. We want to be happy. We want to have well-being. So that's something else that I think is in us. There's this stream of awareness, and I talked about a feeling before—well, there's something in us that wants to be happy, that wants well-being. That's probably why we're here. It's probably why you meditate. You want to have well-being. The trouble is, we want more well-being than what is so amply provided, so abundantly provided by this stream. We want more.

But I really respect that we want well-being, that we want to be happy, that we want ease. We want all kinds of things that we should have; it's kind of our birthright. And that's love, wanting that. I want you to have well-being. Nice to see you! And I want you to have well-being, and I want all of you to have well-being. It's just natural, if we aren't obscured by the odious quality of comparative thinking, competitive thinking.

Where I was originally trained, there was a saying that stuck with me all these years: "Comparisons are odious." Comparisons destroy our well-being. Measuring ourselves against others. Making a thing out of "me", or me making a "me" and a "you" and comparing, measuring. Everything's going so well, the stream of awareness is going so well, and I want to be happy, and I want you to be happy, and I want there to be well-being and ease. And then... oh, then all of a sudden I compare myself to someone else. Ugh, what a buzzkill.

The Buddha said a couple of things about this, but one that I remember word for word is: "He who sees through the deception of more than, less than, or equal to, will not suffer." So the Buddha is saying, in a way, this is the secret to life. If you can give up or not indulge in comparative thinking, you won't suffer.

And we all know that's what Buddhism is all about, right? How not to suffer. But we do it anyhow. And I'm not saying I'm not going to do it, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, and I'm not saying you shouldn't suffer, or that I shouldn't suffer. Or maybe we can be at ease with our suffering. We can allow the suffering to be there in the stream of awareness, just relaxing and letting the suffering be.

If we want to get rid of suffering—"I don't want this suffering! I want to..."—yeah, that's a lot of "me". That's a lot of control, and it brings more suffering. So there's comparative thinking. Maybe something else comes along that makes you suffer, makes me suffer. Like a habitual pattern arises: an affliction.

There's one school of thought, called the Yogācāra[^1] school, that says there aren't just those seven things—the five sense perceptions, thinking, and feeling—but there's an eighth one: an afflictive mind. We have an afflictive mind that turns our thoughts and our feelings and our sensations into a "me", a "self". I don't know if this is interesting to you. Maybe it's kind of academic. I don't know, to me it's interesting: there's an afflictive consciousness, a "me" consciousness that suffers.

So to bring it back to Earth, probably mostly from comparative thinking, we have anger, hatred, jealousy—it all has to do with other people. Self-doubt ("I'm not as good as..."), fear, anxiety. So you have your own afflictive thoughts and feelings. I hope you know them.

I heard a great teacher today saying that these afflictions come in many shapes and forms in different circumstances, but he says there's really just one or two in each of us. Maybe one! So when you think about your suffering over the years and years and years, it's kind of the same suffering.

I was talking to a friend of mine today about that. I think that's a very interesting thought: there's only one or two. It seems like there's such a variety coming up in this or that situation. We think about our life of suffering: suffering in high school, suffering when we were in college, midlife suffering, suffering these days... and it kind of has the same flavor. Your flavor is going to be different from someone else's flavor, but it's based on maybe something that happened in the family, some habitual pattern that originated in your family.

So, just let it be. Let that consciousness be. Just let it be. And letting it be is like this love that wants us, this essential love that we have that wants well-being, that wants us to be happy. So be at ease with suffering. Just let it be. Don't fight with our suffering, don't have to get entangled with our suffering. Letting it be... "My darling, suffer all you want. Go ahead." Treating your suffering, holding it with warmth. It's not your fault. We all have this consciousness.

Actually, the Yogācāra school—I'm getting my numbers confused. The five sense objects, thinking is six, and then the afflictive consciousness is seven. So yeah. And then the Yogācāra school has another consciousness that they describe, and the Buddha also described this in a sutta—all of these things. And it's called the *ālaya-vijñāna*[^2]. It's beneath our consciousness; it's a storehouse consciousness. It stores all of our karma.

I think of it like some vast ground. And it's said when we do something—I do something "good"—it goes into our *ālaya-vijñāna* and it becomes a seed. We do something bad, it becomes a seed. So the *ālaya-vijñāna*... I like this. I think it makes sense to me. It's a ground that holds all of these seeds of our karma.

And then something happens, and a seed sprouts. You never know what's going to happen! Look at all the things that happened to you today. You never know what kind of karma is going to arise tomorrow. You might want to love someone, hug someone. You might get irritated or afraid of someone. All kinds of things happen. You might start feeling lonely, insecure. It's coming from our *ālaya-vijñāna*, and then the afflictive consciousness makes a "me" out of that. "I am insecure." "I am full of rage." And all of those suffer. And it's all part of this flow of awareness, it just keeps flowing. And we can embrace it all with love. By love I mean allowing it, just allowing it to flow. "I'm not going to try to stop you. I don't know what's going to happen next, but it's okay with me."

There are thousands of thoughts that keep coming through my mind. Let it be. Who cares? So what? There's a saying: "The greatest transformation is non-transformation." Just letting it be is the greatest transformation.

We work so hard sometimes to create a better "me" or get rid of a worse "me", a bad "me". Or we work so hard in so many things that have to do with comparisons with others. It makes me sad to think about it, trying to get people to like us and say good things about us, think well of us. I know a guy, he's a scientist, and he just really wants to be successful. He's a great guy, but he really wants to be successful. He wakes up at night thinking about these projects that are going through his mind, and he's really nervous because he wants them to be successful. I hope he accepts that and lets it be, because that's the way it is for him. Without trying to become anything special, or do anything special. Because really, what could be more special than this? This vast awareness is as big as this room, right? We can sense this whole room, and we can sense so many things.

I was meditating this morning... trying to remember what was going on. It wasn't exactly this, but it was something like, "What's the meaning of life? What's the meaning of this?" It wasn't exactly that; it was more of a feeling, looking for something. There was some kind of something I was looking for. Some discontent was there. What's the meaning of life? What's the meaning of *your* life? Is it your work? Your relationships? It's really got to come down to just this. Just this.

There's a Buddha right here. Just this. He's sitting right in the middle of it. There's so much meaning in that Buddha, serenely sitting in the middle of *just this*. Just relaxed. Is this enough for you?

I have an ink drawing on my altar made by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's son, Hoitsu Roshi[^3]. And it is a very simple drawing. It's a couple of carrots in front of a rabbit. The carrots are orange, and the rabbit is very simple, just an ink drawing. It's not complex. The eyes are dots, but they're very awake dots. So it's just this simple rabbit with these carrots in front of him, and the calligraphy says, "I have enough." I have enough with whatever is happening right now. With the vast space of awareness, and the feelings in your body, and the thoughts in your mind. And your eyesight, the sounds you hear, and all these things. And your afflictions. And your welcoming of it all, your love welcoming it all, allowing it all to take place and to flow freely. Whatever is happening, allowing it to happen is love. Without getting in the way of it. Can you do any better than that?

I had a dream the night before last that I walked into a pet shop, and I saw these little puppies in cages on a shelf looking out. They looked like small dogs, like Yorkies or Chihuahuas. And I felt very bad for these doggies, as I always do when I go into pet shops. And then the salesgirl said, "The owner, the roshi, isn't here right now." And when she said "the owner, the roshi," something completely changed in me. It made this place, this pet shop, seem like a kind place, a realized place. Like the realization, the blessed realization of a great master was perfuming this pet shop. And then I looked at the dogs again, and the dogs were not troubled whatsoever. They were just sitting there completely at ease.

So, I'm wondering if you have any comments or protests or questions about anything that I've said. Anything coming up for you that you'd like to talk about?

## Q&A

**Questioner:** David, I like what you said about that reservoir deep inside that holds accumulated past karmas. I think that's *ālaya*... it seems to me to be how things are. At one level...

**David Cohn:** Can you take off your mask so I can hear you?

**Questioner:** Yeah. At one level, you see how your mind works and where your attachments and aversions are, and you work on letting go of them, and in a way you do. But there's some stuff, suffering deeper down, that you haven't really fully worked out of yourself. Does that make sense?

**David Cohn:** Yeah. Oh, now that sounds like suffering. Is that what you're talking about? Disease?

**Questioner:** No, I mean they lead to suffering, but what I'm talking about is patterns.

**David Cohn:** Patterns, yeah.

**Questioner:** That accumulate. I think it's really interesting that it's just one or two things. Does that make sense to you? I hadn't thought of it that way before.

**David Cohn:** Yeah, I think it's amazing if you think about it. I didn't recognize you behind your mask, but it's so nice to see you! [Laughter] Yeah, think about it, it's just one or two things. For instance, I don't know what it is for you. I was talking to a woman today about this, and she said, "Oh, that's right, that's what happened to me when I was a little girl, and I felt that way since I was a little girl." The same very similar dis-ease has come up in so many different forms. Hers was like being left out of the popular group in sixth grade. But then she identified, "Well, it's always feeling a little bit left out of this and that, all through my life." And that was her thing. You might recognize that. It doesn't matter, it's just very interesting.

But if we just don't fight with them and allow them to be as they arise from this structure of the *ālaya-vijñāna*, becoming this and that... If we just allow them to float up, come into fruition, grow into whatever they want to grow into, mature, blossom into a full-fledged affliction—they free themselves! They always free themselves, they're gone, right? I don't even know what was bothering me, if anything was bothering me, an hour or two ago. But I know things are always changing, they're always liberating themselves. Can you remember a thought you had a minute ago? So everything is always freeing itself. We don't have to worry so much about, "I've gotta free this, I've gotta work on this..." Just relax and let it be. Welcome it with love, accepting, allowing.

There are other ways to work with afflictions. This is a very gentle way, the path of accepting. The path of equanimity is the path of accepting. There are other ways. One way is to get rid of them. If I think a loving thought, if I think a *mettā*[^4] thought, I can't think a hateful thought. You can't think two thoughts at the same time, for example. That is another way, a way of getting rid of them—that's a Hinayana[^5] way. This is another way of accepting, allowing, which I really like because it's so big and generous and warm and compassionate. And it's calling on what's deeply intrinsic to who we are. We don't have to manufacture anything. Compassion is here in that acceptance. Love is here. We're naturally compassionate. I don't want you to suffer. I don't want myself to suffer. Unless there's some comparative thinking, some odious comparative thinking, I want you all to be happy, and I want myself to be happy. There's this generosity, this openness that is intrinsic, and there's this awareness that's intrinsic.

So all we have to do is relax and simply be ourselves, be our perfect selves. You're perfect, all just as you are. I'm perfect. It's so nice, it takes all the pressure off. The greatest transformation is non-transformation. 

The Buddha tried so hard with ascetic exercises. It's said a sunflower seed couldn't fit between his spine and his stomach; he almost died by the river. And he did all these yogic exercises, going through all these *jhānas*[^6], and finally, he just thought of himself as a child, and he relaxed. And then he said, "This is profound. This is peaceful. Just to be." And he said, "This is luminous. This is luminous." The light is on. Your light is on! Your light is always on. Well, when you go to sleep it's not on, but it's always on. We don't have to use a flashlight to find our light, it's on. It couldn't be more obvious. That's our refuge. We don't have to manufacture a refuge. We are... we have awareness, luminosity, we have love, we have compassion. 

Thank you.

---

[^1]: **Yogācāra**: An influential school of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing the study of cognition, perception, and consciousness.
[^2]: **Ālaya-vijñāna**: A key concept in Yogācāra Buddhism, often translated as "storehouse consciousness," which contains all the karmic seeds of past experiences. Original transcript said "Elia vignana".
[^3]: **Hoitsu Roshi**: The son of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, a prominent Soto Zen monk and teacher. Original transcript said "her witso Rochelle".
[^4]: **Mettā**: A Pali word meaning loving-kindness, benevolence, or goodwill.
[^5]: **Hinayana**: A Sanskrit term literally meaning "smaller vehicle," traditionally used in Mahayana contexts to refer to the paths of early Buddhism. Original transcript said "Hinata".
[^6]: **Jhāna**: A Pali word (Sanskrit: *Dhyāna*) referring to profound states of meditative absorption. Original transcript said "genres".