Day 3 "Gates of Liberation" Oct 26-Nov2 Retreat at St Francis

So tonight I want to talk about Transcendental Dependent Origination. This is what we call transcendental dependent origination because it is allowing us to see what are the causes and conditions for the process of awakening to happen. So we will start from the last link and build our way to the first link. So the final link in that series is what's known as the Knowledge of Awakening, or the Knowledge of Liberation.

And what the Buddha says is, how does one know, or what does one know and see when one is awakened? Knows and sees such is form, such is feeling, such is perception, such is formations or intention, such is awareness. And so what he's talking about is seeing the five aggregates. Now, a couple of days ago, was it yesterday, we did a guided meditation for the five aggregates, and maybe some of you work with it, and some of you maybe need more time to really let that internalize, and that's okay, because we're going to do another guided meditation in a few more days, maybe towards the end, so we can see how well it seeps in.

The five aggregates are basically just divisions. That's what they are. And you can divide experience in many different ways. There is, if those of you who are familiar with Bhante Vimalaramsi's often quoted Sutta favorite, which is 148, the six sets of six. That's there too. What are the six sets of six? The eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind. That's one set. The form, the sound, the taste, the touch, the hearing, and the thinking. That's another set.

Likewise, in relation to that, there's the six kinds of consciousnesses related to each of the sense spaces. There's the six kinds of contact related to each of the six sense spaces. There's the different kinds of feeling. And then there's the different kinds of craving. So there are six sets of six. So we are using these different divisions to break apart the ways in which we experience reality.

And why are we doing that? To understand where, if at all, there is a sense of self. What is so important about the self? Why is it such a big deal in Buddhism? Self versus no self, or emptiness of self, or not self, and all of these things. Because at the time of ancient India, during that time, concurrent to the teachings of the Buddha, and even preceding the Buddha, there was the understanding of Atman, which is the Sanskrit for self or soul.

And this Atman was conflated with the word Sat-Chit-Ananda. Sat-Chit-Ananda. Sat means self-existing. It is independent of causes and conditions. Chit means consciousness. And Ananda means bliss. And really what it's talking about is the fact that this self, with a capital S, stands on its own. It is independent, free of any kinds of causes and conditions. And that it is of the nature of bliss.

And it is us. We are it. That was the idea in ancient India. But the Buddha never really concluded whether there is a self or no self. Anytime he was asked, is there a self, he would not respond. And then they would say, oh, then that means there is no self. And he would not respond. And one time this happened. And in the Sutta, Ananda comes to him and he says, why didn't you respond?

He said, if I said that there is a self, then the mind of that individual will conceptualize some kind of a self. And that concept will become self, not self itself. That concept will become part of the mind, and that concept is impermanent. And if I said that there is no self, that's another concept. That's another mechanism of trying to find stability. So what we're looking at is the different components of our experiencing, our experiences, whether it's the five aggregates, the six sense bases, the four foundations of mindfulness, and so on and so forth.

And we're using the touchstone of Sat-Chit-Ananda, that kind of big S self, and we're comparing all the components of experience and saying, is it self-existing or is it conditioned? Therefore it is impermanent. That which is impermanent is liable to cause us suffering. Therefore, it is not me, not mine, not myself. And so, anatta doesn't mean no self. Anatta means not self.

This world is not myself. This body is not myself. The eyes are not myself. The ears are not myself. All the sense bases are not myself. Experience that I'm having right now is not myself. The perceptions of those experiences are not myself. My choices, as much as they seem to be mine, is not myself. Awareness that is dependent upon seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, thinking, is not myself. Anything that is dependent on something ultimately will decay, will fall apart, because when those causes and conditions are not present

they won't be present, and if it is not present then that means it's impermanent, it doesn't stand on its own. And ultimately the most amazing levels of happiness, the most amazing kind of bliss, when that arises, will one day falter as well. It won't be as interesting, it won't be as gratifying, it won't be as stable as it was when it first arose. And so anything that we do will ultimately lead to its breaking down, and therefore its suffering, and therefore not to be regarded as me, mine, or myself.

This understanding, the Buddha says, this seeing through with reality, is the knowledge of liberation. For one who knows and sees, he is liberated. What does he know and see? The five aggregates. But the five aggregates are standing for anything really, because the five aggregates are all-encompassing. They deal with everything in our everyday experience. And so the gates of liberation that we talk about, the objectless or the signless, the undirected or the desirelessness, the emptiness or the voidness, these three things that we talk about, these are the mirror of the understanding of impermanence, of suffering or unsatisfactoriness,

and of not-self. When I am meditating for a little while, I start to see that every object that I take ultimately changes in some way. It's not stable. Therefore, I see the conditionality of that object, as simple as loving-kindness or as subtle as quiet mind, or subtler even than that, just awareness itself. I see that as changing, wavering.

And so, seeing that, and understanding it, and realizing that, my mind drops that, and is in this space of, for lack of better terms, pure awareness. It's in a space of objectless awareness, dropping all signs, all objects being impermanent. Secondly, I notice that every intention that I take in the meditation, no matter how noble, no matter how pure, no matter how wonderfully charged it is with joy and great intentions and happiness and peace and so on and so forth, because it wavers, because it changes, it doesn't last that long. And even in a great sit that's lasting seven days long, that's the maximum, seven days long, it's just seven days long.

It's not permanent. And so that intention that I have also has an expiration date and ultimately leads to suffering. So what do I do? I drop all effort. I drop all trying. And I experience what's known as appanihita in Pali. I experience the undirected, the undirected kind of meditation. And mind you, the objectless or signless and the appanihita or the undirected, qualitatively are very similar, if not the same, in experience.

Likewise, with the realization that this is not me, not mine, not myself, there is a spaciousness that's there in the mind. Not an expansive spaciousness, but there is a spaciousness in the mind, a quality to the mind. But if you just right now, in this moment, relax into it, you're listening to the sound of my voice. You're paying attention to the thoughts that come and go.

You're feeling the warmth of the room. All of these are sensations, experiences that are happening, but you're not in control of them. You didn't cause them. They're not you. And in seeing this and being present in this way, what do you notice the mind being? It has a quality of being like a clear cloudless blue sky, expansive and without borders, the unconditioned. And that experience is experience of emptiness. So these three gates are not just gates of liberation but are as close to the experience of liberation as you can access with a conditioned consciousness. What that means is the awareness that arises from that experience of the objectless, the

undirected, and that spacious emptiness, is in itself conditioned by the unconditioned. It is what is known as Anidassanam Vinnanam in Pali. The consciousness that does not manifest anything. The consciousness that is non-reflective. It's like a mirror that doesn't reflect. You can't wrap your head around that. But you can experience it. It's there all the time, if you just learn to relax in that way.

And this realization is liberation. The seeing of this is vimutti. So there's knowledge of liberation, and then there's the experience of liberation, and this liberation is dependent on what's known as dispassion. Dispassion is one translation, but the Pali is viraga. Raga means passion and vi means without passion. And raga has so many different connotations. It can mean color, it can mean sound, it can mean a certain kind of flavor to things. And what it's talking about is that the quality of the mind there is non-stick.

Nothing sticks to it. When you fry an egg on a non-stick pan, you don't need to use any oil. You just slide it around and it keeps swiveling here and there. It's the same quality of the mind, where no matter what comes and goes, no matter what kinds of thoughts come and go, you just slide off.

They don't stick. Is this something that you can bring up? That's the irony. You cannot. The more you try to bring it up, the more things stick in the mind. So how do you escape that hamster wheel? Trying and trying and trying, and sticking and sticking and sticking. Again, it is just relax, giving up. Not that I'm going to give up and not meditate anymore and forget about all this, but giving up that part of the mind that keeps trying and trying and trying, and surrendering to the intuition

and so this is conditioned. This dispassion is conditioned by something known as disenchantment. Let's look at that word, disenchantment. Sometimes it's translated as revulsion. Why revulsion? Because it's that feeling of sickness, when you know, I'll give you my own example, and I always give this example: chocolate cake. I seem to have a samskara around chocolate cake. So somebody knows that I love chocolate cake, and they decide that they're going to let the kitchen know that, if you can make chocolate cake today, that would be really great for dessert.

Make sure you make lots of it today. We want to treat Delson to some chocolate cakes. This happened actually one retreat in Mumbai earlier this year and I kind of drove the point about chocolate cake in terms of examples, lo and behold, I manifested three different chocolate cakes at the end of the retreat. And I don't expect any chocolate cake industry, please, I'm trying to watch my weight. But let's say, giving this example, that I love chocolate cake and you decide that you're going to have the kitchen make lots and lots of chocolate cake, and me knowing myself, I can't control myself, so I see chocolate cake and to my surprise you say all of it is for you, please enjoy.

So I forget about lunch and I just dig into the chocolate cake and I have my first slice and it's so amazing, it's wonderful. I have a craving for a second slice so I eat the second slice and then I start to feel a little bit content but then I say, well, there's still more, so I might as well have a third piece. I have a third piece and before you know it I've finished one chocolate cake out of many that are still there. But by this time I'm full.

But you insist that please have some more chocolate cake. And what became the object of my desire has now become the object of my revulsion. And that is disenchantment. I've had enough. This is too much. Enough, please. This is disenchantment. When is enough enough? How many times are we going to allow ourselves to try too hard, or allow ourselves to get caught up in some kind of distraction, or allow ourselves to get caught up in different kinds of thought loops over and over and over? No, there must be something different this time, let me look. So eventually the mind tires out and you say, I've had enough, I'm just going to drop the whole game. And so this is part of the realization that every time I do something, here, and this leads to this, I let go of it. Now here's the thing. This

Transcendental links, dependent origination, is not just for meditation practice. It's for our whole life. We often repeat many different kinds of patterns, sometimes without thinking, mostly without thinking, and that's why we keep repeating them. And yet we go back in hindsight and we say, oh, this happened because I did this and this and this and this. This was similar to what happened last year, and this is similar to what happened six months ago, and this is similar to what happened yesterday. Why do I keep repeating these patterns? But that's not enough, so you go back and you repeat the patterns again and again and again, and you suffer for them. And eventually at some point you say, to hell with these patterns, I've had enough, I've had enough. That is disenchantment. And so what happens when you have that level of disenchantment? The triggers that bring those patterns up stop sticking in your mind, and you let go, and you become liberated from those patterns. This is liberation, the liberation from rebirth as we call it, liberation from samsara.

Liberation is a liberation of different kinds of patterns that cause us to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And so our words, our actions, our thoughts, our choices, experiences, are not rooted in some arbitrary sense of self, but they arise seemingly spontaneously from the intuitive mind that functions in accordance with what is required in every given moment according to the experience. That's how the liberated mind functions. A message comes: do this, and this, and this. Ah, okay, let's try this. That's listening to the intuitive mind. So this process of disenchantment is dependent on something known as, I spoke about this yesterday, Yatha Bhuta Jnana Dassanam, the Pali for that, which is the knowledge and vision of things as they are.

Yatha Bhuta, that's the reality of things as they are. Jnana, knowledge. Dassanam, vision. What does it mean, the knowledge and vision of things as they actually are? At a certain level, the knowledge and vision of things as they actually are is the understanding of the three characteristics, is the seeing of the four noble truths in every given moment. This realization that what I'm experiencing right here, right now, is conditioned by so-and-so and so-and-so and so. When I see in this way, I drop any kind of ownership. This is me, this is mine, this is myself. So therefore I become disenchanted and dispassionate.

And I'm liberated, and I know I'm liberated. Qualitatively speaking, this Yathabhuta Jnana Dassanam is equanimity. It's the experience of being so present with whatever is arising that there's not an inkling of that nervous tension of anticipation of what is next, what happens now, that pull towards the future or the pullback from the past. It's so in the now, but even in the now there can be identification: this is who I am, this is me, this is myself. And because of that understanding of the three characteristics, we disengage. We disengage from the sense of this is me. So we are free of any anticipation, we are free of any kind of expectations, and we are fully in equanimity.

This Yatha-bhuta-jnana-dassanam is dependent on what's known as samadhi. Samadhi. It's not meditation. Nowhere in these links does it say anything about meditation. Nowhere in these links does it say, and so he sits down and he meditates and he has these experiences. These things can happen anywhere, at any time, just like that. You'll be walking through the dining hall and you have these different factors present in the mind without even knowing it. But you know your mind is collected.

You know your mind is staying with a specific object, being with loving kindness. Or it's objectless. What do we mean by that, the objectless awareness? We're watching the mind like a stream, like a river, or like a traffic of cars, or like clouds in the sky. And we remain disassociated from all of that, independent from all of that, as a silent witness to that experience, to that flow of thoughts, ideas, and concepts.

So we could be in that. Either way, we are meditating. And we are in samadhi. Samadhi is generally translated as concentration or collectedness. But when we see samadhi, samadhi is same, same, even, everything is the same. And dhi, that is the buddhi, buddhi is the intellect, it's the mind. Our mind is in balance. When our mind is in balance, then we can see clearly.

Seeing clearly, we have knowledge and vision of things as they actually are. Therefore, we can disengage, have disenchantment. And our mind is non-stick and dispassionate. It's liberated after that. And then there's the knowledge of that liberation. So this can happen anywhere, this process. So why are we meditating? What use is meditation? Because somewhere, from someone, whether it was me or Bhante or any other teacher or having read it somewhere, we've heard of how meditation leads to certain states. We've heard about or read about how meditation reduces stress or brings more joy, brings more clarity, brings more happiness, and all of these things. Meditation is a vehicle, but it is not the end-all be-all.

It is not the panacea for everything. Samadhi, samadhi is something you can carry wherever you are. So what is samadhi dependent upon? Samadhi is dependent on something known as sukha, which is translated as ease, ease of mind. To be in sukha means that everything is great, everything is fine. It's the perfect temperature, it's the perfect humidity, and the body is relaxed.

The mind is free of any kind of distractions for the most part. The senses are relaxed. So everything is at ease. That's what we need. How do we get that ease? How does one experience that ease? Through tranquility. Passaddhi. Through relaxing. And understand, this relaxing is coming to you in many different forms. It's happening through the six R's, through the four R's, through drops, through whatever allows us to disengage from the unwholesome and rest in the wholesome.

When we have that, we are tranquil, we have tranquility. So the more we try to relax, the more counter-intuitive it is. Do not try to relax, do not try to do anything. Relax. The thing that prevents you from relaxing is trying to relax. If you drop trying to relax, that in itself is relaxing. Dropping all trying. This tranquility is dependent on something. What is it dependent upon? It is dependent upon piti, joy.

Now, for those of you who are jhana junkies, you'll recognize the word piti, and sukha, of course. But you'll recognize piti as one of the first factors of the first jhana and the second jhana. And so you might ask, but then you said samadhi is here, and the sukha is before that, and piti is before that. Isn't samadhi part of, or isn't jhanas part of samadhi? Yes, that's one way of looking at it. That's one way of seeing it.

But piti is its own thing. It's its own factor. If you're truly paying attention, you can start to see that the enlightenment factors are being interwoven in this path. I'll show you how once we're done. But this joy, what are we talking about when we say piti? As I mentioned before, piti can mean many different things for many different people. It can be exuberance, it can be exhilaration, it could be contentment, it could be a soft, silent kind of joy, an empathetic kind of joy, or just being in the moment and completely present and relishing what is there in this moment.

Where in that is meditation? Where in that do you need to sit formally and experience? Can you not have joy when you're walking around, experiencing the sun on your face, how the light glimmers on the leaves of the trees? Can you not have joy when you're eating good food and relishing its taste? Can you not have joy when you feel the wind on your face on a hot day?

All of these are piti. These are all part of joy. They're sensual kind of joy, but behind that is a mental joy. All sense bases ultimately find their end in the mind. That's why when we say formations, that are mental formations, they allow you to feel and perceive, and therefore all experience has its terminus at the mind. So any kind of joy that we experience, we can go deeper and experience that joy internally, have an appreciation for every moment that comes, a gratitude.

This gives rise to joy. So joy, as you see, is an integral part of the recipe for awakening. There's no dryness about this. There is zest. Zest for the moment. And zest here is just complete, full enjoyment. Enjoyment. Joy is in that word enjoyment. When was the last time you enjoyed meditating? Or was the meditation just another task to do? Was it a practice, just another thing to do in our routine? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I get up at this time, or not even just on retreat, just in your daily practice. It just becomes another thing to do.

Instead of something I get to do. Oh boy, I get to meditate now. Let's enjoy this. We need that joy. And that joy is dependent on something known as pamoja. Pamoja means gladness, or sometimes it is translated as gladness, but a better translation I like to use is relief. Relief from what? Relief in many different things. For example, when I keep the precepts, I have relief in that moment.

That I have made up my mind to keep the precepts. I have made up my mind to make sure that I uphold these ethical and moral standards. And I make it a point to make them habits. Not because there's some judge sitting up in the sky who at the end of my life is going to say, you did these many deeds, and of those, these were wholesome, and of these, these broke the different laws of God. No. Why do we keep the precepts? For what?

To be morally superior? To be holier than thou? No, because there is a very practical reason for keeping the precepts. The basis of the precepts is the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And this is found in every tradition. It is universal. And every tradition has its own reasons for why it does it. But for practical purposes, when we're talking about the Dhamma, it's for the experience of relief.

Because when I uphold the precepts, my mind relishes in that. My mind realizes, ah, I haven't harmed anyone. I haven't harmed myself. I haven't betrayed anyone. I haven't betrayed myself. I haven't cheated anyone. I haven't cheated myself. I've upheld the precepts, and my mind feels clear and calm and relief. And the more I do that, the less hindrances arise, and I feel a deeper relief from that.

I think it was a couple of weeks ago we did the Sunday Sutta Talks. And in that one I was talking about Digha Nikaya 2, which is the Samana Phala Sutta, the fruits of the holy life. And in there the Buddha, and I love those descriptions of the hindrances, because there the Buddha talks about what it really feels like to be free of the hindrances.

And it sounds so exaggerated, but if you go deep enough, you will see, yes, there's just that level of relief. He talks about how it feels to be on the verge of death with sickness, and at the turn you are no longer sick and you're free of disease. How does that feel? Somebody who is imprisoned with no parole, no probation, nothing.

And at the turn, they are freed. How does that feel? Somebody has debt, mounting debt, no idea what to do with all that debt. It's going to take a whole lifetime, many lifetimes possibly, to deal with that debt, the level of debt that there is. And then all of a sudden, all of that is cleared. What does that feel like in the mind?

Relief. Relief from the hindrances. That is pamoja. This pamoja is dependent on, or I should say, it is related to, non-regret. We've already talked about this because of all these things. But these are related to and dependent on two things. Because there are three primary suttas that talk about the transcendental links of dependent origination in a myriad of different ways.

Actually, a little more than that. There is Samyutta Nikaya 12.23, that is the Upanisa Sutta, and then there is Anguttara Nikaya 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, which all talk about these different links, but they differ. Samyutta Nikaya talks about faith, and the sets of 10.1 to 10.4 talk about virtue. So we will explore both of them. What is virtue here? It's as simple as keeping the precepts.

Virtue is, I have resolved to be ethical. I have resolved to keep the precepts, and therefore, I experience non-regret. And I have relief. The other one talks about faith. What is this faith? Is it saying to accept the Buddha as your Lord and Savior? No. That's not what it's saying. In fact, the Buddha said that. Do not see me as that.

I have just shown you the way. I have shown you the path. You must take the steps to walk that path. There is that Sutta in which, I think in Majjhima Nikaya, there is a man who asks the Buddha, Some of your students seem to attain awakening, and some of them don't. Why is that? And he gives an interesting answer. He says, you know, suppose there were two men wanting to go to Rajagaha. It's a town in India, where Vulture's Peak is. I've been there. It's a very interesting place.

And the man tells the first person, You go and do this. You take a left here. You go a few kilometers this way. And you get to Rajagaha. He says that to the second person as well. The first person, being a smartass, thinks he can take a shortcut. So he doesn't... He veers off of the instructions. And he does something else. And he goes in his own way.

Obviously he hasn't reached Rajagaha. The second person memorizes the instructions, makes sure he follows the instructions, and lo and behold, he gets to Rajagaha. So the Buddha asks the guy who asked this question, that the man gave instructions to both, why didn't both of them get to Rajagaha? Why wasn't the man able to help both? And the man says, How could the man be responsible for that? He just gave the instructions. It was according to the people who asked for the instructions to follow it.

And so the Buddha says the same thing. I have shown you the path. Don't look to me. Walk the path and see for yourself. And so those who do and follow the instructions will experience awakening. This is what the Buddha says. And those who don't, well, they don't. So, when we say faith, the word faith, the Pali is saddha. Saddha has many different components or contexts.

It can mean devotion, it can mean faith, it can mean conviction. But it is the experiential conviction in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha. So when you take refuges and you say, I now take refuge in the Buddha, I now take refuge in the Dhamma, I now take refuge in the Sangha, what are you doing? Are you selling your soul to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha? No. Because there is no soul. But what are we doing there? When we say, I take refuge in the Buddha, we're saying the Buddha represents

a possibility. The Buddha. That's not even his name. That's not even what he's called. He's called Tathagata. But the Buddha is a title. It denotes one who is awakened, one who has woken up. Woken up from what? Woken up, as Bhandi Poonaji would say, woken up from the dream of existence. I take refuge in the Dhamma. What is the Dhamma? The Dhamma is the understanding and seeing of the impersonal process of self and the world. I take refuge in the Sangha. What is the Sangha? Sangha, at the outset, is the group of meditators that we're meditating with, or on a larger basis, fellow practitioners around the world, or on a larger basis, the entire sangha of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis and lay people and followers, and so on and so forth. So it's a sense of community. But the Buddha also said this. He said there are times when you don't find a community, you find that they're not really talking about the Dhamma. So what do you do there? He says become like a tusker, become like a rhinoceros, go into the forest on your own and be your own good company. Can you do that?

Can you sit and enjoy your own company? So that faith that we're talking about starts off as an openness to say, all right, let me try and see what this process looks like. Let me take the first step and practice and see for myself. Let me take the precepts, see what that looks like. And then I start to see, ah, this faith leads to, or faith and virtue lead to, relief and non-regret.

These lead to joy. Now I'm actually enjoying the process. I'm learning to enjoy things in my life again. I'm learning to enjoy the moments. Not because the externalities are the reason for that joy, and they may be the reason for the joy, but because I'm starting to find an inner appreciation about things that makes that joy so much more potent.

So that chocolate cake that I love and enjoy becomes that much more enjoyable, because I'm so in the moment of every taste. And more so that sunset that I watch. It's wonderful, it's beautiful, but it's that much more enjoyable because I'm fully present, so present that I can start to see every moment, the sun going lower and lower, and looking at the different shades and enjoying all of that. And so then that joy leads to my mind being tranquil, being able to relax in the moment, and my body and mind are at ease, and my mind experiences collectedness, even-mindedness, presence, and because of that my mind is able to see things as they are. And seeing things as they are, I develop wisdom, and I disengage from the things that tire me out, from the old repeated patterns that caused me suffering. And my mind becomes dispassionate, non-sticky to those same triggers that no longer affect me, and I experience liberation, and then I know I'm liberated. This is the path. This is the process. Do with it what you will. Thank you.