4 Dec 2021 Online Retreat Q & A With Delson Armstrong Session 2 of 2

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the second Q&A of this retreat. I would like to start with the questions. Well, I'll start then. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to actually start with the very first sentence of the notes that you gave us for day three on effective collectedness. Reality is more than the present moment, which I think if I understand it, obviously you don't want to start trying to seize on the present moment, and that presupposes immediately that you're conceiving of time as a kind of linear past-present-future, which isn't actual.

But reality is more than the present moment. Do you mean, well, yes, what do you mean by that? My understanding is there isn't anything else except the present moment. But it has a lot more depth to it than what we normally think of. It has a completely different dimension to it than we normally think of when we think of linear time.

Yeah. Well, that statement, really, what it's talking about is that the present moment itself, or the way it's generally understood that the present moment is, in a certain way, is a concept in the mind. It is just another conditioned experience. It's a good one, it's a very nice one, because you're able to stay in the present. There's a series of suttas starting with, I believe, Majjhima Nikaya 131, and it's called the one excellent night, I think, or the one fine night, the translation by Bhikkhu Bodhi, probably. So in that there is a statement, or a poem in verse, that talks about: don't incline the mind to the past, don't incline the mind to the future, but stay here in the present. There's something to be said about that in the sense that the present moment is important as an anchor point, because if you think about it, anytime you stay with your object of meditation, if it's metta, if it's compassion, if it's joy, if it's equanimity, if it's quiet mind, you are in the present moment, so to speak.

But in trying to stay in the present moment, what's happening is there is an effort that is making the mind try too hard and to conceptualize it rather than relaxing into it. The present moment, or you call it anything else. So what I'm trying to do with that is to get people out of the idea that the present moment is reality in itself, because the present moment can also be a projection of mind, a projection of different thoughts and ideas and concepts and notions that are put forth as the present moment. So reality, or, you know, reality as it is, we're seeing reality as it is, which is translated from the Pali yathabhuta nanadassanam, which means: yathabhuta is reality, and nana is knowledge, and dassanam is the vision, the knowledge and vision of reality as it is, things as they really are, without a projection of what it is. It's just seeing things for what they are, and that can only happen in an conditioned state, a mind void of any kind of conditions, and void of any kind of craving, identification, any kind of ignorance,

any kind of ideas at all. And so that is why the unconditioned is also known as the non-proliferated, or non-proliferation of mind, which means there's no churning of what is this in that moment. It's just seeing things with complete naked awareness. Okay, so thank you. So that sentence you could say means very concisely something like: reality is more than what we conceive to be the present moment. Yeah, exactly. So exactly. So okay, good. Any more questions? Anyone else?

Well, if nobody else has a question, I'll ask a practical question. Does it sound all right? Can you hear me? Yes. OK. I was wondering about the importance of not moving at all during the sitting, as long as, obviously, the perception of the body is still online. Because I find that, especially in, say, a three-hour sit, if a pain cannot be fixed up because it has a real physical counterpart, then actually, well, in my case it's often a knee pain which feels like very inflammatory, and if I mindfully just extend the leg, then the mind settles quite quickly again and I'm good to go for quite a long period of time again. And it doesn't seem like a huge disturbance, still a disturbance, but it's not massive, and I was just wondering, because I could obviously also just apply willpower to sit through that. But in a way I find that if I allow for this small disturbance to occur, then the net benefit of the sit is still greater than if I just apply a lot of energy to basically, yeah, ignore that physical pain.

Is when you come out of the sit and you walk around, the pain disappears, it fades away, it's no longer there. This kind of pain is called meditation pain. Yeah, if the pain was physical, the pain would have still continued while you, let's say. So if I had pain here in my shoulder while I was sitting for four hours, and I moved and I realized there's no more pain there, then it's a mental rejection of meditation. So this is something that we were talking about, which is that this is really the last major hindrance to let go of. Because it's not attached to the body, actually. It's actually a mental hindrance.

When we talk about hindrances, we talk about the basic five, but there are more than just the basic five. There are different ways of looking at hindrances, like in Majjhima Nikaya 128, kinds of hindrances. But this hindrance of mental pain, or meditation pain rather, is something that you cannot relax into. You cannot six are you cannot ignore it either. You have to acknowledge that that pain is there. And six are the resistance to that pain. Yes, six are the aversion to that pain, accepting that moment that this pain is here, and come back to your object.

When the fuel of your attention is no longer on that meditation pain, it will fade away. In the same way as when you actually moved, or anybody moves when they have meditation pain, their mind is no longer on that pain, their mind is somewhere else. And for that reason, there's no longer, you have that meditation. The assumption that there was no pain after you moved, so I don't know if that's the case. Well, it is a bit of a sensitive joint anyway, so it's easy, whether it is physical or it is more like a mental phenomenon, it's difficult to say, because there is a physical base for the mental pain to attach itself to. Right, I would say don't push it. Don't push your mind to try to ignore the pain. Every time you try to ignore something, you're actually having aversion to it. You're having any difference to it.

Rather, just relax and use the 6R's to come back to your object, and with the fuel of your attention being on your object and no fuel going to that meditation pain, it will fade away. It will go away on its own. And I will say that with the caution that if you do experience physical pain after a while, then maybe find a different posture. If you find, in meditation, sitting, and you see that your joints are paining because of the way you're sitting, or your back is paining because of the way you're sitting, and it's a physical pain, figure out the posture that's most comfortable for you, that works for you. All right. You can always take, actually, you could take a couple of pillows, small pillows or cushions, I don't know. Do you sit cross-legged, or do you sit on, put a cushion underneath your knee? That's fine too. That might help, just to ease any kind of strain, unnecessary strain on the knees. All right. I'll try, thank you. You're welcome. Can I just add something to that from my own

Yes, please, which is, as I've said before, I meditate lying down. I started doing that about two years ago because I have severe spine issues. I actually tried sitting on the floor at one time, cross-legged, because I thought you had to do that. I gave up that immediately. But I spent a long time, years, meditating sitting down because I thought that was what you were supposed to do. And essentially, it just created more and more pain. I have a lot of worry as to whether I was doing significant damage and how long it would continue afterwards, because it always continued sitting, like even now.

I'm very ginger on the seat. So it depends very much on your circumstances. And I'd have to say, as far as a posture goes, everyone says, oh, you shouldn't lie down because you'll fall asleep. I really don't have any troubles lying down. I'm quite relaxed, and if I do get some little pain somewhere, I'm pretty sure that it is in fact a meditation pain, so that's easy to deal with. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, that's a very good point, because, you know, one of the things that Bhante says, for example, is there's no magic sitting cross-legged or sitting in a certain way. It's just how your mind responds to the way you sit. If you're lying down, for example, and that works for you, that's great. I always tell people if they like to lie down, just to put a little bit more attention on the object, just so that there's a balance, because there is a tendency in the beginning doing lying-down meditation for the mind to go into sloth and torpor and then finally fall asleep.

so yes uh there that's that's a very good point there doesn't need to be a reason why you need to sit cross-legged or there doesn't need to be a reason why you need to sit in a certain method through a certain method or a certain way it's all about how your mind is because if you think about in the sutras yes it's mentioned you know he goes to the foot of a tree and he sits down and things like that but in india in ancient india people were people were very much used to sitting cross-legged people were very much used to sitting in a certain way and that was just the way they did it from an early age so they were used to it and they had the flexibility because of the continuous use of doing that.

But at the same time, the Buddha also talks about being mindful while you're in different postures as well, whether you're standing, whether you're sitting, whether you're lying down, or whether you're walking. So, at the end of the day, it's to your comfort. You have to be comfortable enough to be able to sit for long periods of time, or lie down for long periods of time, and a diploma, the choice of posture.

Any other questions? Sophie, you're on mute. Is that better? Yes. Just to flog this point somewhat about meditation pain. To understand is the distinction between when it's meditation pain and when it's actually an old injury or something being inflamed through the posture. Is the distinction whether it's still with you when you stop or not? Is that the line where you can discern whether you're... because it's pretty clear to me when it's meditation pain, and I think it's pretty clear to me when it's the inflammation of an old injury.

And if it's an inflammation of an old injury, what occurs for me anyway is that it's still with me maybe three or four hours after I've finished my sit, if I don't relieve it. That's when I think, as Jana was saying, if I'm doing a long sit, if I make some kind of physical move to relieve that, and then go back into the sit and back into the same posture, when I then finish the sit, that pain is not there three or four hours later. Whereas if I don't do that and I just stay with it, and sometimes if my absorption is good enough, I'm not aware of the pain at all, because it goes, because my awareness is somewhere else.

But then when I finish my session, then whack, there it is again, quite strongly, and it stays with me quite a long time afterwards. So I'm just trying to understand what the most skillful way really is of being with that. And also with the understanding that if the movement is short and with, you know, a lot of mindfulness, is there a problem in a three-hour sit?

Moving the leg out once and then drawing it back in at some point, I think that's what Yona was speaking about. And what is it that disturbs you? And then you have to reset a little bit. I'm just trying to find out where to place the... because otherwise what I find is that there's a lot of anxiety about having to manage it, and then I have to manage that. So first you have to understand the difference between meditation pain and physical pain. If you move around, then that pain fades away but doesn't appear after an hour, and that's meditation pain. But if that pain is there, that inflammation is there, even after an hour, it still persists, and that is physical pain.

So in order to relieve that physical pain, you would change your posture, instead of sitting on the ground or on a cushion, sit on the chair, sit on a comfortable chair, or try lying down or something else that relieves the pressure on that particular joint or whatever it might be. But in trying to move around, that actually disturbs the meditation. The extent to which you can move around is if you see that your head is sort of tilted down, because now you have immediately just pull that up. You just slowly, mindfully bring that up. That extent you can have movement. And if you need to swallow because you've accumulated saliva in the mouth, that as well. But any other things, like trying to move around to make adjustments, is feeding into actually the aversion, and it becomes a kind of addiction.

Exactly. And so what's happening is you think about it in the process of why do we do relaxation? Why do we do relaxing in that whole cycle of the six-hour process? One way to understand the relaxed step and the importance of it is we see craving or aversion as tension or tightness in the body and mind.

So that craving is relieved when it's satisfied. what we're doing here is we're training we're retraining the mind to experience the relief without have to without having to act on that craving so instead of where it's the old model is here's craving here's the action that continues to well let me take a step back so here's the craving here's the tightness intention that the mind feels the body feels and now the mind is agitated and the body is feeling agitated so it does something to satisfy that craving and then experiences relief experiences a relaxation the new model which is what you're doing with six hours is here is the craving but you're not giving into the craving or the aversion instead comes before the craving which means that the craving is not even so how do you translate that into the sit well like I said this meditation pain is one of the last hindrances to deal with it's it's a very subtle one but it's very very noticeable in the meditation and you treat it like any other hindrance which is to say you see it

...you step away from it. You relax the craving, the aversion, the resistance to it. That's the tightness, intention. You then come back to your object, smile, and then what you'll notice is the pain comes back again, but this time the pain isn't as severe as it was before, because it's meditation, if it is meditation. And the reason why is because you have let go of wanting to do anything with it, by identifying with it, by having resistance to it, by having craving for it to go away. Instead, you said, I acknowledge you, I understand you're there, but I'm choosing to let go of my attention to you. I'm not ignoring you. I'm just choosing to let go of my attention to you.

I'm going to relax the craving and the tightness that's causing the pain. You see, it's not the meditation pain that is the source of the pain. It's that which makes the pain seem unbearable, that makes the pain seem severe. When you let go of that, you're going to find relief. And when you find that relief and you come back to your object, then that meditation pain will eventually... - Thank you. I have a question. I'm actually home from work taking care of my son, because he has some flu symptoms, and I have them too. And it's mainly a headache.

And I take painkillers sometimes when it's, how about that when meditating? That's fine. As long as, yeah, if it's an aspirin or something, as it doesn't have any kind of drowsy effect or something like that, it's fine, because that's actual physical pain. The headache is an actual physical pain, so you're relieving it through medicine. It's totally fine. Any other questions?

Everyone is satisfied now. I've got one, actually. Is there any way other than still using the 6R's, if, when approaching a very subtle state and slipping into that very subtle state, and then what has happened for me a couple of times is then the desire for that state arises, which of course then means I'm not in it anymore?

Is there any way other than using the six Rs to, I don't know, bypass that? Want it, but I really want it. Yeah, this especially happens when people get into a certain subtle state, as you mentioned, or experience nibbana for the first time, and then once you get back there again, the problem is now they're anticipating or expecting certain things to happen, because they see the signposts and they're like, okay, here it is, we're going to experience it now. There you go. In that anticipation is where the problem is.

The thing about anticipation is, on a neuroscientific level, neurologically speaking, what happens is it increases the dopamine system. And when that happens, it disturbs the mind. Dopamine really is the craving molecule, craving hormone. It makes you feel good after you satisfy it, but doesn't leave you content. So that anticipation that you have, see it for what it is, see it as craving, and relax it, let it go, relax into it. And of course, when you start the meditation and you just have that beginner's mind, it makes things so much smoother, because now you're saying, I don't know what's going to happen in the meditation, let's see what's going to happen, and you have no expectation, no anticipation of what's going to happen. Otherwise, if you do have an expectation, it inclines the mind and constructs an experience, which then causes further craving to occur.

But if you just relax and allow things to unfold as they would, and you continue to use right effort in the process of the six Rs, then you'll actually get much deeper. You might even go beyond that subtle step or that subtle stage that you're at and get something else. There's a tendency for people to experience these subtle stages and then say, well, I really like it, I'm okay here. But really, there's more good stuff on the way. Ultimately, the unconditioned. So if you have that sort of a presence of mind before the meditation, it will get you much... Which is to say, you know what? I don't know what's going to happen. Let's just sit and see what happens.

Thank you. I have craving for metta. And now it's just very peaceful and a little bit bland, but it's a big relief, but it's still, I have this craving for it. Yeah. Well, if the mind feels like it wants to incline to metta for a little bit, it can do that, and then continue on to progress into the next stage or whatever it might be.

so you definitely don't want to push for it if you don't want to try to bring it up because just force it out you want to just relax and say okay let's see what happens and if the mind says it wants to go back a notch a couple notches below and then start from wherever it is that's fine might be a couple of minutes might be five minutes and it smooths out and goes to where you were before so everything in very gentle steps you know so if you see that the mind is inclining to metta it's no big deal okay go to metta and then come back to wherever it is with a smooth transition any last questions

Let's share some merit. May suffering once be suffering free, and the fear-struck be fearless. May the grieving shed all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired, for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. Space and earth devas, and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation.