Day 5 High Altitude Retreat - Energies & Enlightenment Factors

Well, I was trained in bioenergetics, which is definitely a musculature-focused type of thing. But as you open up to that more and more, you find that the energy will move through your system lots of different ways. And as you settle into it and get more used to it, you can begin to feel the freedom to just let the energy come up and then figure out later if that was the best thing to do.

And it takes some stretching and going out to the limits of things. And if you feel cautious about it, well, you pay attention to that feeling. It doesn't mean you follow it literally, but knowing how the energy is running through your system and what it feels like. And it will manifest differently for different people.

And so Delson and I were talking about this evening and what we might do, and I think as far as we got on our plans was, we'll just open it up and see where it goes. So is there anything else you'd like to say about the energy? There will be more. Is there anything you'd like to say about the energy?

Well, I would say that first we have to define, because everybody has a different idea of what energy is and what it could look like. In certain traditions, it's chi. In certain traditions, it's prana. In other traditions, it's kundalini. It's emotional. It's mental. I would say that energy moves through awareness. So, where you put your attention, there's a certain movement of energy that happens.

So to come back to your question about jhanas, for example, what is jhana? What does it actually mean? It's coming from the word dhyana, which means to place one's attention on something. You know, the standard definition is dhyana is meditation, it's concentration. But literally it's to place one's attention somewhere. And if we follow the idea that where you put your attention, that's where the energy flows through awareness, then a jhana is actually movement of energy in that sense, right? So the feeling of joy, the feeling of comfort in the body, the tranquility, these are all signatures of the energy moving a certain way. And depending upon how concentrated you want your attention to be, the energy becomes stronger, and how loose your attention wants to be, the energy becomes more disparate, right? It becomes more diffuse. So it's interesting, because we don't hear a lot about energy work in the Theravada system. We don't really hear a lot about it in the Pali Canon.

The Buddha kind of references it in terms of some of the practices he did as a Bodhisattva, including holding the breath and moving the breath and so on and so forth. So in one way you can think of energy work as Anapanasati. You're watching the breath, you're observing the breath. And if you go directly into the Sutta, the Anapanasati Sutta, it says, breathing in, he knows he's breathing in. Breathing out, he knows he's breathing out. Breathing in long, he knows he's breathing in long. And so on and so forth. And then afterwards, it says, breathing in long, or breathing in, he tranquilizes bodily formations.

Breathing out, he tranquilizes bodily formations. Breathing in, he tranquilizes mental formations. Breathing out, he tranquilizes mental formations. In my mind, what that looks like is a process of stabilizing the energy through tranquility or relaxation. When we say tranquilizing formations, relaxing, it's a process of stabilizing the energy. Of course, there are extraneous practices in which we can follow the energy through the channels. You know, we talk about the nadis, which are there in usually Hindu or yogic practices, or the channels in terms of the meridians and things like that. And kriya, for example, is a form of energy work. What does kriya do?

It helps to stabilize the energy in the different centers. We call those chakras, and those chakras are seen as resonance with the limbic system. It deals with our emotions. It deals with how we relate to the world, with different kinds of karma, with different kinds of intention. So a process like kriya yoga will help to understand what's going on there, to tranquilize, to relax, and to stabilize. And when that happens, you are entering into a formless realm. So it's one of the paths that takes you directly into a formless state, into infinite space, or infinite consciousness, or nothingness.

Which is to say that there are many ways in which you can bring attention to collect the mind and enter into jhana, and so on. And jhanas are in and of themselves impermanent. They're conditioned, they're impermanent, they're liable to suffering, and they are empty. This realization and this understanding leads to disenchantment with the jhana. You see the trapping of, oh, I'm going into this space and I'm taking this way too seriously.

Right? I have to get to the third jhana, I have to get to the fourth jhana, I have to get to the eighth jhana, I have to stabilize there, and so on. The more you are able to see this and observe this, the less tied you are to the outcome of what that jhana is going to produce. You are just observing and tranquilizing, observing and letting go.

And outside of jhanas, there is the ability to observe the energy as emotion, what's happening in the body in relation to that emotion. This is something that is not my forte, but it's something that I've worked with more recently. Understanding where does the anger come from? Where does the sadness come from? Where does the happiness come from? Where does the different emotional aspects of the mind come from? These are all different energies, and in understanding that we develop insight. We develop wisdom. We develop the knowledge and vision of things as they are. What is the knowledge and vision of things as they are? It's not to change anything. It's not to push away anything. It's not to control anything. It's just pure observation of what is arising in this moment. And when you meet the moment with full open awareness, stuff dissolves, things come up and they pass away.

The mind is able to see that without clinging to something, without identifying with something. So my take on this is movement of energy is essentially movement of awareness. Yeah, so let's just review very quickly. What are we talking about when we say enlightenment factors, or awakening factors? You've got mindfulness. You've got discernment. You've got energy. You've got tranquility.

You've got collectedness. And you've got... Thank you, equanimity. That's six. I'm missing one. Did I miss energy? Joy. How could I miss joy? We do all the time. So what are the enlightenment factors, what are they there for? I look at it on a larger scale, and it's one of my favorite maps because it's so naturally progressive. When you're looking at any kind of formal sitting practice, the process of what starts that whole chain reaction. Mindfulness leads to discernment, discernment leads to energy, energy leads to tranquility, tranquility leads to joy, or it could be the other way around, then that leads to collectedness, and then that collectedness leads to equanimity. I feel like I missed one there again. Mindfulness, discernment, energy, joy, tranquility, collectedness, and equanimity.

I got all seven. Good. So it's a naturally progressive process. And when we're specifically talking about energy, it's coming from the word virya. Virya means strength. It means power. And so it's really about to what level you focus the lens of your meditation. So if you're doing a practice where you're doing some kind of a collected practice, or a process of focusing or collecting around an object of meditation, then you could do too much, which leads to what's known as absorption.

And that befuddles or muddles up the rest of the factors. Because you have too much concentration going on, you suppress the mind. And in suppressing the mind, you're unable to see what is actually going on. The awareness becomes stagnant. The awareness becomes frozen. It becomes brittle. If you pull back too much, and you have very little concentration, very little collectedness, then there is no gravity there to keep the orbit of the attention around its object. Right now we're talking about a formal sit in which you're using metta as an object, and so on.

So the balance, the balancing process, is the use of energy. And how do you determine how much is required? How do you determine when it's too much or when it's too little? Look at the way in which this is working. You've got mindfulness, discernment, energy, joy. Is it bringing you joy, or is it taking you away from joy?

That's the beauty of it. If you look at Samyutta Nikaya 12.23, the Upanisa Sutta, which talks about the eleven links of transcendental dependent origination, that's the map I love to use, because it's so natural, right? And embedded in it are the seven enlightenment factors. What does that map say? What does it actually say? It starts with suffering, it starts with dukkha. It says that I am suffering in this moment, and there are two paths that lead out of suffering.

One is a path where I try to suppress the suffering. I do all kinds of things to deal with the suffering, but it leads to further confusion. Or I try to find a path out of suffering, and that's the beginning of samvega. Samvega is spiritual urgency. I need to find a way out, but there's a certain level of discernment where you're like, there must be a way. There is a kind of intuitive journey that you take, and you say, perhaps this is the way, and you try it out. That ability to say, perhaps this is the way,

is the process of faith, of saddha. It means I am going to try this out, because I'm putting my faith into this process. There's a willingness to try. When I do that, it leads me to a space of gladness, because in that faith I have done certain things. Like in the case of the practice of the Eightfold Path or the process of the path of Buddhism, the Dhamma, I've taken the precepts, I've taken the refuge, I've done all of these things that are, at the outset, a manifestation of faith. But that's very superficial.

The deeper level is, I am willing to try this out because I want to see what happens. That's the whole point of the Dhamma, the Buddha says. See for yourself, and you can notice whether it works for you or it doesn't. That's the beauty of it. So that faith leads to joy, to pamoja, to gladness, Pramodha, as it's known in Sanskrit.

That pamoja is, "Wow, I found the path. This is wonderful. I found something that's working for me." And that pamoja is a reflection of utilizing mindfulness and discernment. So what do we mean by mindfulness? What is mindfulness here? Anybody want a gander? A guess? What is mindfulness? By the way, I don't like the word mindfulness, but I'm using it because everybody knows what that word means. Observing how the mind moves from one thing to another. And hopefully recognizing it as an impersonal process. Yeah.

The word mindfulness comes from the word sati, which comes from the word smriti in Sanskrit. So the recognizing, what are we recognizing? What are we, what are we remembering? What goes into your experience? What happens when you remember? What are you recollecting? Where was it before the movement of the mind? Before, and then now? Now? Can we go deeper than that? What are you remembering? In this case, when we are doing a formal practice of Samatha, right?

Can we go deeper than that, that can be seen as discernment, let's say. Can we go deeper, knowing? What does that mean? How do you know what you're experiencing? No, we're getting circling. That's cheating. But that's what it is, knowing that you know. That's the definition of a word. Yeah, what I'm saying is, if you're using a word to define itself, it can be accurate, but it's helpful to be able to recognize and feel when something is off.

That's what the process of discernment, I think, helps do, the discernment. So let's say we start with mindfulness, which is the awareness of pure experience or raw or the understanding of what is happening right here or right now. I like to look at mindfulness, again, that word mindfulness, but what does that even mean? You're like full of mind or I don't know, but it's just basically bare awareness of the present moment, whatever is happening right here, right now.

It's the junior form of yata-bhuta-nyana-dasanam, the ability to just recognize what is happening right here, right now, and in that process, in the process of meditation, you may see, ah, the mind is moved, or the mind is moving in this direction, or whatever it is. That process of knowing that the mind is moving is discernment, right? Discernment is, what do we mean by discernment? It comes from the word dhamma vichaya, the term dhamma vicaya. So discernment is knowing the difference between light and dark, knowing the difference between wholesome and unwholesome, knowing the difference between what is and what isn't. You're using conceptual mind in this case? Yes, yeah, because, well, it's not less about concepts and more about just awareness of what's happening right here, right now, like the awareness of, right now I'm feeling anger, or right now I'm feeling joy. You don't need to do all that. You don't need to do all that. It could even be just energetic, right? Just like, this is how I'm feeling right now, or this is what's happening in the mind right now. The ability to name that

is discernment, right? So, to name or not, sorry, yeah. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, I understand. I understand. Yeah, whether discernment can happen, I don't think you need to verbally name it. Yeah, although you can, but it's a quality of being able to, okay, this is what it is, this is, you know.

To cling to it, or not cling to it, to let it go. That's where right effort comes in. So right effort is part of the virya, the energy. So at one level, when we're talking about the cultivation of samadhi, it's the ability to discern whether I'm too concentrated or I'm not concentrated enough. That's one layer. The other layer is what you were just referring to, which is, is the mind clinging to it? Is the mind taking it personally? Is the mind identifying with it? Or is the mind just observing without any kind of reaction to it?

What I see happens with that stuff a lot is that there will be reactions that the mind has or something like that. And I may not recognize what's going on. I can still feel it, but I don't quite know what's going on. And so the stuff can go out of balance. And you don't want to sort of wipe that out, but you also want to have some clarity. So you're purifying it or whatever. Yeah, it's, yeah, so when I say discernment, sometimes you can verbalize it, sometimes you can understand it energetically, sometimes you can understand it mentally, conceptually, whatever the framework is. It's the ability to point that out, name it, not necessarily verbally, but just, okay, that's the signature, that's the signature of it, recognize it, right? That's the recognition of it.

So is the kusala citta that comes up and the akusala citta, are they different feeling tones that we're getting in them, different vibrations? Is that sort of how we're evaluating them? Like, oh, here's like vibration, because we're not conceptualizing it, is that? Yeah, it's... So then you let go of the, so if my ideal is to let go of the unwholesome, is that citta, akusala citta, a different vibration than akusala citta? Conceptually, yes. No, not conceptually. No, almost neurologically.

Yeah, I would say so, because the way I look at it is when you have something that's unwholesome, or akusala. First of all, I would redefine kusala and akusala. So kusala, in my perspective, is that which is skillfully liberating. Right? You take out the moralistic aspect of it. You look at what is skillfully liberating. And akusala is what is unskillful, that which is clenching.

And so at a vibrational level that could be something that creates tension in the system, constrictive, and generally in a person's experience, that which is skillfully liberating has a sense of release, has a sense of openness and expansion, right? What was that? So then beer becomes kusala, though. It's kind of nice to do. Yeah, but it's not skillfully liberating. Yeah, right, but if it's a Buddhist or not, kusala means it's a Buddhist.

Depends on how you use it. Pardon? Depends on how you use it. Yeah. So now we're looking at the energy, the right effort of looking at what is kusala and akusala, right? And coming towards that which is more skillfully liberating. When we experience that, we're experiencing a sort of release. And in that release, there arises a kind of joy, piti.

So from that joy, there arises something known as sukha. What is sukha? In the Yoga Sutras, it says asana sthira sukha, which means an asana, a posture that you take up for meditation, is that which is stable, sthira, and comfortable, sukha. It brings comfort, it brings ease in the system. So that joy that we experience affectively, in other words emotionally or mentally, also has a bodily effect, which is a feeling of comfort, a feeling of ease.

As a result of that sukha, you experience tranquility. So when we say tranquility, that comes from the word passambhaya or passaddhi. This is where we have the concept of the six R's, right? The relax step. The relax step is to tranquilize formations, is to let go, is to soften, is to drop. Whatever word you want to use that helps to bring full comprehensive relaxation to the system, mentally, physically, and emotionally.

So a mind that is filled with joy feels ease in the body and is naturally relaxed. But the beauty of this is it can work conversely, or it can work interdependently. When you experience ease and comfort in the body, the mind generally has a tendency to feel bliss, to feel joy, and to feel at ease. Now you have these factors, so now you're going into, what we're going into now is the journey of the Upanisa Sutta in tandem with the enlightenment factors.

So now from this tranquility, you experience something known as samadhi, which is usually translated as collectedness. But what is samadhi? Does that mean, samadhi? Samadhi means same, same, same, equal, balanced. Dhi is short for buddhi, the mind, the intellect. So the mind becomes in balance. The mind has a certain gravity to it. It has a certain kind of collectedness to it. Is that the balance between mano and chitta? Is that where the samadhi is? Samadhi is, I'm saying buddhi, which maybe doesn't come up in Buddhist terminology, but it is as good as saying mano.

So it's the balance of the mind, it's the balance in which the mind becomes unwavering. No, when I'm referring to, yeah, I understand what you're saying with evenness, but what I'm referring to is a balance in the sense that, yes, the mind does not go in one direction or the other. It remains unified.

So maybe unified is a better word, let's say. It becomes, that's the ekaggata, the unified mind. So the mind has, that's why I like to use the word gravity. It orbits in a balanced gravity. So balance in this sense is not too hot, not too cold. It's in the Goldilocks zone. Not too hard, not too soft. Just right. That's the balance.

Now from the samadhi we experience equanimity. That's the final enlightenment factor here. That's upekha. Equanimity is synonymous in my mind with yata-bhuta-jnana-dasanam. It's a mouthful, yata-bhuta-jnana-dasanam. Yata-bhuta means here and now, what is happening right here, right now, and jnana is knowledge, dasanam or darshanam in Sanskrit is the knowledge and vision.

So we have discernment, which allows us to understand what's happening that is skillfully liberating or not skillfully liberating. But yata-bhuta-jnana-dasanam is where we get insight developed. The insight into dependent origination, the insight into this is conditioned, the insight into this is impermanent, the insight into this is suffering, this is what is causing suffering, the insight into, ah, this is empty.

So now if you use the map of the jhanas, for example, when you get to infinite consciousness, you have this. You can have this experience where you're starting to see the arising and passing away of consciousnesses, and you're starting to see how that is conditioned by constant contact, continuous contact arising and passing away, arising and passing away.

And by seeing that, you see the impermanence, and by seeing that, you become tired of it. This is boring. That's the suffering. But I'm not in control here. It's just an impersonal process. That's the insight into the nature of emptiness of self. So that perception leads to the understanding of equanimity. That is yata bhuta jnana dasanam. So once we start to see this, this leads into something known as disenchantment. You can actually use this now, today at lunchtime. I saw a big piece of chocolate cake, and everybody knows I love chocolate cake, and it was just dense.

Beautiful piece of chocolate cake. You know, just the chocolate. It was just like decadence, and I was biting into it, and it was so rich and I was so happy and so satisfied with it. No, I don't want, I don't want to ground, I want to, that's the chocolate cake suit that I use, that all. And I took another bite, and it was so good. And I took another bite, and it was okay.

And I took one more bite, and I was full. And my greed got in the way, and I finished the piece of chocolate cake. And I was disenchanted by it. To the extent that another meditator here said, can I offer you another piece? And I said, no, I can't. That was my disenchantment. Right? I was able to see through, ah, the same thing happening over and over again.

I get excited about the same thing over and over again. I get distracted by the same thing over and over again. And eventually my mind just drops it. It's like disenchanted. It's disillusioned. Look at that word, disenchanted. You see through the enchantment of the experience. You know, for those of you who are in the 8th jhana, you go through seeing, oh, let me see what this formation leads to. Maybe this is a past life. Oh, let me do this. Maybe I tweak this. Maybe I bring a bit more joy. Maybe I, you know, whatever it is. All these micro-movements mean that you're still enchanted.

Because you see, once you see that every micro-movement leads to being away from the experience, away from the eighth jhana, finally you're like, ah, I see through you. Maybe this time I can do it and I won't go. So you see through it and you let go. And you have this passion. This passion comes from the word viraga or vairagya.

And vairagya or viraga, viraga in this case is vi, raga. Raga is color. It's a kind of sense of like passion of something. And vi here is not divided in this case, but the lack of. It's the lack of like movement in the mind because it's seen through all of the different percolations of formations and all of the myriad sort of, you know, ways in which Mara can come and distract you and say, hey, look at this, hey, look at that.

There's a beautiful film called Little Buddha. I don't know how many of you have seen this. It was from like 97 or 98. I recommend it. It's really interesting. And there's a scene in there, in the film, where the Buddha is meditating under the Bodhi tree and he sees Mara's daughters and remains unaffected. But there's a very interesting point in which Mara's armies launch a thousand arrows towards the Buddha, or the Bodhisattva in this case. And he doesn't do anything. He just observes.

He's just aware. And you can see it symbolized or picturized as this kind of force field around him. And as the arrows cross the force field, they turn into flowers. They turn into lotuses. So that dispassionate awareness. This is where you get into the signless, right? This is where I'll tell you, you just observe, but don't observe anything in particular.

And what is the signless in this case? The analogy I like to use is you're taking a flashlight and pointing it to the sky and the light just goes up, the beam continues. Imagine there's no stars, no clouds, no meteorites, no comets, no planets, nothing to get in the way of the light and it just keeps going.

Now it doesn't mean that there's a light in your head and you're going up. It's a metaphor for your awareness. It just keeps going, and in that process the awareness itself liberates the formation that arises. Whatever comes up just burns in the fire of that awareness. In the light of that awareness you don't have to make any movements there. So in this dispassion, after a while, what happens is the batteries of the flashlight run out.

Which means the attention of the mind no longer has any fuel in the form of formations that it's trying to micromanage. And so the attention just drops and one enters into vimutti or vimukti, freedom, cessation, cessation of all suffering in that moment. So how is this picturized in the Little Buddha? Here the Bodhisattva, after all of that, is in total peace and equanimity and acceptance, and he sees a reflection of his own reflection in a puddle of water. He pulls out that reflection, and there's two Bodhisattvas sitting in front of each other, and that's when he uses that line. He says, I have seen through you, housebuilder. You can build no more. He says, oh lord of my ego, you can construct no more. And that image of Buddha turns into Mara, and Mara is seen, and vimutti arises.

What do we mean by vimutti or vimukti? Vimukti means it's the ultimate freedom. You know, the prefix v is very interesting. There's the word vinnana, there's a word viraga, and there's the word vimutti. Vinnana means to divide. So the divided knowledge, the divided jnana in terms of your consciousness, i-consciousness and so on. Viraga, the lack of passion. And vimutti, the ultimate freedom.

Mukti comes from the word moksha. And the word moksha comes from the word muchate, to drop. Just as the ripe fruit, when it is ready, drops from the tree. The mind completely drops, right? That is cessation. And then finally, there is the knowledge of that freedom, the reflective awareness the mind has dropped. That's when, for somebody who comes out of that experience of cessation, touches or makes contact with that which is signless, with that which is undirected and empty, the Nibbana dhatu. The knowledge is reflective, in Anguttara Nikaya 10.7.

Ananda asks Sariputta: is there a state of mind in which one is not looking here or there, not in this jhana or not in this arupa jhana, not in this world or the world beyond, not in the realms of the gods, nowhere, and yet still percipient? And Sariputta says, "Yes, it is the perception that this is the cessation of existence, bhava nirodho, i.e. Nibbana. In other words, the awareness that is reflective of Nibbana, this is what's known as vinnanam adi-anidasanam. It is the reflection of Nibbana that you see. Ah, the mind touched something. That's the conceptual mind coming and confirming, ah, something happened there. But that awareness itself is nibbanic consciousness. It is the knowing itself that we've been pointing out to, because it is free of all conditions. It is not dependent on anything. And so what the Buddha says here is this: the knowledge of freedom, the reflective knowledge of freedom, arises because the mind has seen through the emptiness of all the aggregates, right? He says it's the knowledge of the destruction of the taints upon review. Or how does that, upon reviewing and seeing?"

Such is form. Such is its arising. Such is its passing away. Such is feeling. Such is its arising. Such is its passing away. Such is perception. Such is its arising. Such is its passing away. Such is our formation. Such are their arising. Such are their passing away. Such is consciousness. Such is its arising. Such is its passing away. That which sees the arising and passing away itself is not a conditioned awareness. It is the knowing, it is that which sees, that is the unconditioned. And the mind, the conceptual mind, becomes free completely of all notions that this is me, mine, or myself. She's completely the emptiness of self.