Day 7 Higher Arūpa Jhanas 5-8 leading to Stream Entry

Yesterday we started talking about the jhanas, and so to give a summary of what the jhanas are: essentially, jhanas are states of meditation that allow the mind to become more collected. Jhanas come from the word dhyana, which means to place one's attention on something. When we place our attention on an object, our mind over a period of time becomes collected, but there is a specific roadmap that leads to that collectedness.

Specifically, it is sila. When we say sila, we're talking about morality, about ethics, about kindness, about being a person who understands that when one causes harm to another, they're causing harm to themselves. Every action that we take, whether in mind, body, or speech, should be done with reflection: Is this harmful for myself and another, or is it beneficial for myself and another?

And from this sila, there is what is known as pomoja, relief, gladness, non-regret. Because when you keep the precepts, right, that's what we do. Those precepts allow the mind to become more, not only collected, but pure. And when we talk about purity, we're saying that this mind becomes clear. It becomes luminous. And so from this non-regret there is, or this relief and, you know, pamoja of gladness and non-regret, there is this joy that arises. That's the piti. And from that joy, there is tranquility.

And from that tranquility, there is ease, comfort. And from that comfort, there is collectedness, and that is samadhi. You can try all you want to bring up a feeling of joy, but if you haven't done the work of being a person of moral virtue, a person of kindness, you may only sustain that joy for so long.

And you may only experience that joy and that collectedness for so long. But it will not last, and it will not lead to liberation. What we realized yesterday is that once we have let go of the hindrances, we experience a great relief. It is likened to someone who has paid off their debts, and how that feels. Or someone who has been freed from slavery or from prison.

Or someone who has found safety in a village after crossing the desert. That relief is the joy that arises. Or we can say that the joy that arises arises from that relief. It's the joy born from seclusion, born from the mind withdrawn from the sense bases, staying collected, and born from the mind being free of the hindrances. And so the first jhana has vitakka and vicara, the thinking and examining thought. The placing of the mind on an object and staying with it. And then the joy born of seclusion, the sukha, the ease, the comfort, and the ekaggata, the unification of mind.

As we progress into the second jhana, the vitakka and vicara cease. You no longer need to place your mind on an object; it remains there. There's a certain self-confidence, and the joy that arises from that is born of further collectedness. Then as we progress into the third jhana, the joy dissipates, and what's left is comfort in the mind and body, tranquility and contentment, a great level of ease, lightness in the body, groundedness in the body. Perhaps a feeling of expansion starts to happen.

And from there, when we progress into the fourth jhana, the fourth jhana has purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. In other words, the mind is beyond the duality of pain and pleasure. It remains unwaveringly mindful. It is with its object at all times. There is this equanimity in which the mind is calm, serene, and tranquil.

As you walk out of that jhana, or from that jhana, or you walk with that jhana, your mind remains collected and remains equanimous. As you start to stay deeper in this fourth jhana, it becomes what is known as the base for psychic faculties. There are many different kinds of psychic faculties. There are psychic faculties mentioned in the suttas: reading people's minds, being able to walk through walls, fly through the air, and walk on water, and all of these interesting siddhis, as they're known, or iddhis in Pali.

What's wonderful is that, as the Buddha talks about the divine ear, the divine sight and everything else, he then talks about something much greater than these lower psychic faculties. That is the destruction of the asavas, the destruction of the viruses, the seeds, the roots from which rebirth arises. That is primarily ignorance, the lack of mindfulness of the Four Noble Truths.

That is kama asava, the inclination, the pull towards sensual desire, and bhavasava, the pull towards becoming something or becoming someone. So that is the greatest so-called psychic faculty, the greatest accomplishment that one can experience. This is what is known as arahatship. Now, when we say that the fourth jhana is the basis for these experiences, these faculties, it's also the base for the ayatanas.

Ayatana means a space, a dimension, or a sphere. When we talk about the six sense bases or the six sense spheres, they're known as salayatana, the six spheres. These bases, these spheres, are known as infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception. As you're in the fourth jhana, the feeling of loving-kindness, or whatever it is you're taking as an object, starts to move up into the head. At that point, I will give you a different practice in which you start to spread the metta to other beings.

Eventually you send it to all beings indiscriminately, in all different directions. When you do this, your mind starts to become further collected. The metta that you start to radiate can become compassion. It softens. There's a wispy quality to it. It's almost like cotton candy, as some people have described it.

This compassion is basically in infinite space, right? You can experience compassion all the way from the first jhana up to infinite space. As you radiate out, for a while the mind starts to feel very calm and collected. It starts to transcend ordinary consciousness of the body. You may not feel the body as much, and you're not even in the head; you're just expanded.

Your awareness expands outward as you encompass everything in that loving-kindness, or everything in that compassion. In this spaciousness it can go on and on and on. Some people like to visualize that it goes beyond the earth and beyond the solar system, out into space and out into the galaxies and so on and so forth. But there is a sense of infinite space, boundless space, space without boundaries or borders.

You might feel like you're floating, or maybe even your sense of stability or direction starts to get a little wonky, because you're no longer feeling the body. As you're in this infinite space, your mind becomes very, very expansive. It feels infinite. It feels like there is no boundary to the mind, and now you start getting into what's known as infinite consciousness. The compassion that you were radiating before can change into mudita, empathetic joy.

This empathetic joy is a feeling of contented joy. It's not an exuberant joy; it's a joy that is peaceful and content. Why do we call this space infinite consciousness? Well, like I said in the beginning, your mind or your awareness becomes expansive, and it fills up that infinitude of space.

But then your mind starts to, in some sense, slow down, or in some sense become sharper, however you want to put it. You start to see what is known as the arising and passing away of infinite consciousnesses. You may see the arising and passing away of the eye consciousness, the ear consciousness, the nose consciousness, the tongue consciousness, the body consciousness, or even the mind consciousness.

For some people, what they may experience is a flickering behind their eyes. They may see certain kinds of dots or lights. They may start to see concentric circles. They may see all kinds of things related to vision. Or some people hear a flicker in their ears, like a constant tick, tick, tick, tick, something like that.

Some people experience phantom smells or phantom tastes. They may experience certain vibrations in or on the body. They may start to see certain kinds of thoughts that slow down, and it's as if the very structure of those thoughts breaks down. You start to see the gaps between the thoughts. This is the arising and passing away. Bhante would give an example: he would snap his fingers and say there is a hundred thousand arisings and passings away of ear consciousness.

We're just not aware of that, because the matrix that the mind is interpreting is taking all the different frequencies of the sense bases: whatever color and form, sound vibration, odor molecules, taste molecules, vibration and pressure in the air and atmosphere, internally and externally. It's taking all of that at different rates and creating one homogeneous experience.

So you don't see the gaps. You don't see the slowing down of the film reel. When you go to the movies, back before we had digital projectors and had film projectors, if the projectionist was falling asleep and wasn't paying attention to what was going on, you could start to see the individual frames of the movie.

This is what is happening. Primarily you may experience this in sitting meditation, but you can also experience it in your walking. You can experience spaciousness in walking. It's like you don't have any contact with the body, but as you're walking you might experience the brief contact between the feet and the ground, yet there is an awareness that is expanded. You might look at the trees, you might feel the sunshine, but there is a sense of expansion. You can even experience infinite consciousness when your eyes are open and you're walking around or sitting. I can tell you from my own experience. When I was first doing a retreat, an online retreat, I was experiencing infinite consciousness.

And I experienced that while walking in the kitchen. And I saw the people in the kitchen, and they started moving like they were under a strobe light. You could see every other movement of theirs. It wasn't a seamless movement. Then this can happen. Or you may sit down and you might hear a sound, but you won't hear the sound as we all hear it. You might hear the breakdown of that sound.

You might hear it in a different way. Or when you're eating your food, you may experience a different form in how you're tasting the food. It's very strange, but what it's showing us is the arising and passing away of contact. So internally, the mind is making contact with the world through the sense bases, and internally the mind is making contact with thoughts or mental objects or ideas or concepts. And seamlessly taking all of that together and producing a feeling, an experience.

And there's a perception, a labeling of what that experience is. So in this realm or in this field or in this base of infinite consciousness, there can be that joy, that inner contented joy. Now, after a while, as you're starting to see the arising and passing away of these consciousnesses, you are now experiencing firsthand the three characteristics.

Because what you're seeing with the arising and passing away of these consciousnesses, impermanence, is instability, anicca. And as you continue to observe, as you continue to be aware of this process, your mind feels that process becoming tiresome. And that's dukkha, that's suffering. And after a while, you realize, I'm not controlling this, I'm not doing this, this is happening seemingly on its own, but it's happening due to causes and conditions. And so now you're getting a firsthand look at anatta, the impersonal nature of experience. And as this happens, the mind starts to slow down even further.

The awareness, the gaps between the arising and passing away of one consciousness and the next, starts to become larger. And your mind starts to see that. And because the perception of impermanence leads to the perception of suffering, and that perception leads to the perception of the emptiness of self, the impersonal nature of experience itself. That perception leads to the perception of equanimity. And so now you are in this space of equanimity. And once you start to get into the gap between the arising and passing away of individual consciousnesses, you're getting into a space that's known as nothingness, or no-thingness.

Now, if you haven't experienced this, or you're trying to experience it, don't worry about it. It will come to you when it comes to you. If it doesn't, it's not like you're not making progress. Generally, what happens is a lot of people will experience metta, and then they'll go into radiating metta, and then that'll change into compassion, and then that might change into joy, or they may go directly into equanimity because their mind just likes that. The mind will incline to the space that is most sustainable,

most enjoyable. After a while, the mind gets tired of bliss, gets tired of joy, and it just wants to be in this deep sense of equanimity. So in this no-thingness, in this nothingness, the mind isn't thinking about the outside world, it's not thinking about the inside. Sometimes the nothingness appears as this blank screen. It may be darkness, it may be light, it may be very clear and translucent.

Different kinds of things will come up. But here, you're still radiating something, and generally it will be equanimity. And the radiating might not be as spacious as it was before. It might not be as dense as it was before. There might be a certain kind of lightness to it. There might be a certain kind of, the analogy I like to use is, like when you're looking at a very still lake and you just drop a tiny pebble and you start to see the ripples.

It's very, very, it's very small. And so you're radiating for a while, you're radiating for a while. And then what happens is the mind stops radiating. And you notice this, and so you try to radiate again. And so you're radiating for a while, you're radiating for a while. And the mind stops again. And at some point you try again and the mind tenses.

There's a certain tension, it's like, I don't want to do this anymore. No more effort, no more doing, enough. And so that's when you rest in what's known as mind, in quiet mind. This is the beginning of the Pabhasara Chitta, the luminous mind. And so how do you know you're there? How do you objectify that awareness? There is a sense of relaxing into it. There is a sense of steadiness in it. There's a sense of a stable base in it, which the awareness rests in.

And you may be here for a while, and so now your object has become mind itself. Mind has reflexively started looking into itself. No more radiating, no more spaciousness, no more anything. It's just quiet mind. Now, as you're here for a little while, your mind will be very, very collected, and it'll be like you're in the eye of a storm, because invariably, at some point, something will come up, and it's like your mind becomes very, very deep and almost dreamlike, but there's no sloth and torpor there. The mind feels like it's getting asleep but awake at the same time. It's like it's looking but it's not looking at anything in particular, and there are these little different things that come up, patterns and images and colors.

And it's like things from when you were five years old come up. You never even thought about that person. You never thought about that incident. Or things that feel like they are not yours in this life, but maybe in a different life. And just little glimpses into that appear. And so these are all what we call formations coming up, sankhara, proto-thoughts, the bubbling up of thoughts before they become fully formed.

And so in this, the mind may get caught up and might say, oh, that's interesting, I want to look into that, and it'll start to follow that particular stream. But guess what? As soon as you do that, you're no longer on your object. So this space that we're talking about is known as neither perception nor non-perception. What does that mean, neither perception nor non-perception?

Well, let's review again and go back to what we mean by perception. Perception is recognising. It's the process through which we remember something. It's the process by which we label something based on what we have learned before. You know this to be a table because you've seen it before, or your mind conceptualizes it based on what it's seen before. Maybe you haven't seen this one before. But you know the function of this is to be like a table.

Or that this is a cup, because you've seen one like that before. Or something similar in terms of that shape and that color and so on. Or these flowers, you recognize them. That process of recognizing in neither perception or non-perception. It's like you can see or experience certain kinds of thoughts, but you can't fully label them. You can't fully recognize them. Because what happens is if you do fully recognize them, if you do fully go into them, you're no longer in neither perception or non-perception.

Now you're distracted. So if your mind starts to hover and go and get interested in those little tidbits of images and patterns and memories, then what do you do there? How do you deal with it? Recognize that's going on and relax and come back to quiet mind. And what will happen is after a while, these different patterns and images will go away.

And you remain in the eye of the storm. The quiet mind is the eye of the storm. And they may come back again. They may go away, and they may come back again, and they may go away. And after a while the mind becomes very, very quiet, very few distractions, very few images, and you may be in a space where nothing is going on. There's just awareness for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, for one hour, for an hour and a half, for two hours.

People don't get that far because before then they're like, this is boring. I'm bored. I have to get up. And what happens is you start paying attention to the meditation pain. You start paying attention to your butt cheeks. You start paying attention to, oh, this is painful. I don't want to sit here now. There's nothing going on. Why should I continue sitting?

But then this is the space that everybody wants to be in when they meditate. They want to be in a space of no thoughts. They want to be in a space where there's no longer any thinking going on. Or so they thought. Because just five minutes of that is nice. Ten minutes of that is nice. Maybe 20, 30 minutes. But an hour of that and nothing's going on?

Is my mind broken? Did I break my mind? But keep going. Keep going. Because what happens next is the mind starts to become even more translucent. After a while, even the quiet mind starts to become too coarse, and you let go of that, and there is a certain kind of clarity that comes up, which is known as the animitta samadhi. This is the collectedness of the signless.

This is objectless awareness. So the analogy I like to use is imagine your awareness as light, as a beam of light. And you take a flashlight, and it's a very strong beam of light, and you point it up into the sky. And imagine, for the purpose of this analogy, that there's nothing there in the sky, no birds, no clouds, it's just sky. And it keeps going, and that beam goes out into space, and there are no satellites, there's no space station, there's no meteorites, there's no asteroids, there's no planets, there's no stars. It just keeps going out into space

never landing on anything, and that is the objectless awareness. It's a seeing, but the seeing doesn't land on anything. It's an observing, it's an awareness, it's pure awareness that doesn't land on anything. And sometimes you may feel like you're seeing something. You may feel that you're seeing reflective light. You're seeing some kind of gray or like an orange green, or you might be seeing static or something. But just let that go.

And in this area, this signless collectiveness of mind, what happens is things come up. But the moment we start to look at the thing that's coming up, we're no longer in the signless. So it's like as the thing comes up, it fades away. You don't need to do much. In fact, this is where my instructions are. Don't do anything.

I have yet to have somebody really follow that instruction. It's very difficult not to do anything. And when somebody doesn't do anything, it's not intentional. You see, because we try not to do anything and we're doing something, it's like you're dropping all intention, you're dropping all trying, you're dropping all effort, because effort at that point comes from the I. There is an I that needs to do something, there's a me that wants to get somewhere. But you drop all of it, and as this happens, the very last few strands of formations that come up are related to conceit, related to the I, related to the me, and you start to let go of that as well. And by letting go, it doesn't mean you try to relax it. It's like in the very seeing of it, the light of seeing, the light of that signless collectedness of mind, that objectless awareness, that light just shines on it, and it just goes away.

It's like the distraction was caught, and so it scurries away. It self-liberates. And then after a while in this space it feels very nice, it feels wonderful, and there's no expectation of something happening, you know. This is the space in which the mind starts to experience the fruition of disenchantment and dispassion. So we'll take a couple of steps back and understand what do we mean by disenchantment and dispassion.

When you are in that space of nothingness and you start to get into the quiet mind, after a while, maybe because of boredom, your mind will look at things, right? It might say, maybe I should energize the mind, or maybe I need to tranquilize the mind, maybe I should do this, maybe I should do that, and maybe you're able to relax those thoughts, and then it's just back to quiet mind. But maybe at other times the mind starts to get bombarded by many different kinds of thoughts, many different kinds of concepts and images.

And maybe I should do this, maybe I should do that, right? So what do you do there? Generally, the mind fights back, or the attention fights back. I have to do something. But what I would suggest you do is you take a step back and you radiate something for a while, so that the mind again relaxes and goes back to the quiet mind. And you may have to do this a few times as the mind keeps getting bombarded by these distractions.

And that's how disenchantment arises. What is disenchantment? Disenchantment comes from the word nibidha, which can sometimes translate to revulsion. It's like the same thing that you enjoyed doing. This is the infamous chocolate cake example that I give to everybody, right? I love chocolate cake. So Rose goes ahead and bakes a whole chocolate cake, and she says, I made this chocolate cake for you. And she slices a big slice for me, with some ice cream. And I start to eat it, and I enjoy it, and it's really nice, and I like it. And she says, do you want another one? And my greed gets the better of me and says, yeah, I do want another one.

So I eat a second slice of chocolate cake, and I'm pretty satisfied, but then she says, here, have another one. So by the third time I'm thinking, do I really want this chocolate cake? You know, what, I'll eat it. I will eat it to be nice. But by the time the fourth slice comes, what happens? Get that thing away from me, I've had enough. That's disenchantment. You see, you haven't had enough of those thoughts. That's why you're always enamored by the thoughts, you're enamored by, let me do this, let me do that, let me get up from my chair, maybe this isn't working, maybe I should be doing this. Does he think he knows what he's saying in the interviews?

Right? So this disenchantment is, I see through this, I understand. It's going to lead me to the same place over and over again. And so I finally let go of all effort and just sit and don't do anything. And then there's this passion. This passion here is where the mind becomes like non-stick. Thoughts keep coming, but they don't stick anymore.

They're just a stream, and you're not interested in that anymore. It's not indifference, because indifference has a quality of pretending to be uncaring about it. This is like, you truly just don't care anymore. It's fine, because you're satisfied in just being in the quiet mind. There's a really nice film called Little Buddha. It was made in the 90s. I don't know if anyone here has seen it. But there's a really nice section in which they're talking about the awakening of the Buddha.

And there's a scene in which the Buddha is sitting under the tree and the armies of Mara are marching on and they're going to launch an onslaught of arrows and spears onto the Buddha. And what does the Buddha do? He doesn't do anything. He just sits there, content, but there is this sort of field that surrounds him, and every arrow and spear that goes past that field that surrounds him turns into lotuses that fall down. It's a beautiful image, it's a wonderful little scene, and that's what's happening with this passion. You remain non-reactive.

And whatever comes up just disappears, just goes away, and so that's why in the signless collectiveness of mind the little things that come up, they just go away because of your non-reactivity. And so let's say now, using that analogy of the flashlight that keeps going up into space. Now that flashlight is running on batteries, right? Eventually, the batteries will run out and the light will stop.

And this is what happens because you don't give undue attention to those thoughts, or even to the idea like nothing is happening right now, what should I be doing? Not even giving attention to the nothingness that's going on, to the blankness of the mind, to the quietude of the mind. There's just no attention given anywhere. And so because the attention, that's the battery, that's the fuel, it starts to run out.

And that's why the mind gets subtler and subtler and subtler. And some people might feel like they're sinking into something. They may feel like they're either going into some kind of a portal, or they're sinking in their chair, or their body is further sinking and sinking and sinking. And as this happens, some people do get a little distraught, because sometimes they may hear their heartbeat.

They may listen to their breath. They may feel like something is going on, but nothing is going on. It's just your sense of self making a big deal out of what's coming next. That's all. It's your sense of self clawing, thinking it's going to go. And you have to just, as the practitioner, see it for what it is.

It's the last vestige of your delusion. The last vestige of your ignorance that this is who I am. Soften, relax. And as you do this, what happens? When you least expect it, the mind stops. There is a break in the continuity of your awareness. And this is what we call cessation of perception and feeling. And the mind completely drops for a moment. And people get scared listening to this. What does that mean? My mind stops. Like, okay, yeah, there's no thoughts. No, no, there's no awareness either. There's a gap in your awareness.

And people might find that a little disconcerting. Like, okay, what am I doing with my mind? Is my brain broken? No, it's just your subjective awareness has ceased because nothing is there for it to hold on to. The attention, the batteries have run out. And so the light of subjective awareness switches off for that brief moment.

And it's only for a moment. People wonder, will I get back? Will I come back from it? Yes. So far nobody has, you know, not switched back on. But what's interesting that happens on the other side is when the mind ceases, when there's cessation of perception and feeling and all awareness ceases, the mind is so pure that it makes contact with the Nibbana element, the Nibbana Dhatu, the unconditioned, the unfabricated, the uncreated, that without origin, outside of the realm of conditioned experience.

And from contact with that element, there arises again the mind. But that mind has changed. It has transformed. It is different now. That mind experiences this amazing joy and relief. It's like a ton of weight has been dropped from the shoulders. And the joy is not piti, it's just this fountain of amazing joy and relief. It's just like, wow.

That's why Bhante would want to call it the oh wow meditation. Because so many people say, oh wow, in their mind. What was that? And it's so beautiful. And your mind, it just feels like everything is perfect. There's nothing that needs to change. And you come out of that, and you might go out and you walk and you see colors are hyper-vivid. It's like you're looking at everything for the first time.

The green of the grass and the green of the trees. You know, the light hits different on it. There's a hyper-vividity to everything that you're experiencing. And it's like you're floating. Like everything is just perfect. And so you may experience this, and you may come to the interview, and you'll say, yeah, I felt like this, this, and I might ask you certain questions, well, did this happen, did that happen? And I'll say, okay, cool, that sounds great.

Keep practicing. Keep going. But the beauty of this is, when you experience this for the first time, when you see this, this is where you enter the stream. This is what is known as stream entry. Because what you have done is you have walked to the end of the path and seen what it brings you. And so there is this experiential confidence in the Triple Gem. There is an experiential gratitude and confidence for the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. There is a realization that the path to this is not through rites and rituals.

Not through different practices, but just walking the path, sitting down, observing the mind and letting go. And then there's a realization of the impersonal nature of all conditioned phenomena, because that continuity has broken for that moment. So you realize even awareness is not the self, and you have let go of any views or belief in a personal permanent self. And so these are what we will call the first three fetters. The mind drops completely those three, and you have stream entry. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing to accomplish, a wonderful thing to experience, because that's where the personality change happens. You go back into the world and you stop taking things so personally. You might still identify with things, right? You will still get irritated by things. You'll still have anger. You'll still have craving. You'll still have all of these things, but

what's beautiful is you won't break precepts, because you'll have Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder telling you you shouldn't be doing that. And there is this mindfulness that comes up, and the things that used to irritate you before, you're like, do I really want to hold on to this? Does it really matter so much? And you drop it and you let it go. The things that your partner might irritate you about, you know, you're like, it's okay, it's fine. So there's a certain kind of flow in life. You start to see how life unfolds.

And you may start to become even more interested in the Dhamma. You may want to read the suttas. You may want to listen to talks. You may want to contemplate what dependent origination is, because that is actually what happens without you knowing it. When you come out of cessation, the contact with the Nibbana element leads to this succession of the links of dependent origination that you see retroactively. You start to see, ah, there was contact, there was feeling.

And when the mind latches on, that's the thing, right? The mind will latch on and say, oh, that was wonderful, let's do it again. There's a craving and identification with it. And you keep doing this, and rinse and repeat. This is the process. And this allows you to purify the mind further and further and further. And what happens down the road is you become more pure in your mind.

You become less attached to things. You couldn't care any less about, this is what's happening in the news, this is what's happening there, because you realize everybody's doing whatever they're doing according to their karma. That doesn't mean you become selfish, but that just means that you start to value your peace more at a very, very deep level.

And you really start to have fun. You start to enjoy life. You start to see the beauty in life. You start to see the beauty of being in nature. You still enjoy the things that you do enjoy, the music you listen to, the shows that you might watch, the foods that you're interested in. But there is a certain level of, yeah, it's great, it's nice. But there's no craving there. There's no sense of, I need this to feel happy.

Because you have started to taste the happiness that is independent of causes and conditions. It's a different kind of happiness. And all of this is possible over the next few days. You just have to keep letting go. You have to just sit and be present and don't try to make anything happen. Watch the show. Watch the movie. Observe it. Realize what it is. And don't get attached to any particular scene in the movie, to any particular jhana, to any particular, oh, look at this, oh, that was interesting, oh, this is interesting. Because that's going to pull your attention away. Just be present and watch all the way to the end until the movie is done.

And you're a different person after watching that movie. So, I will end it there. Any questions? First, is there a limit to how many times you've experienced the bottom? No limits. No limits. And so, each time you do, you go from Stream Mentor to One Returner and Anagami? Yeah, it's basically, there is a linearity to it where you're experiencing more and more purity of mind. But the thing is, you have to be able to touch Nibbana every time, right? And how that happens and how that translates into your daily life, only your experiences and your responses to situations will inform you to what extent you still have progress to do, progress to make.

So just because you've experienced Nibbana later on again, you don't automatically get a bump up in your video game. You still have to work on yourself as a person. Oh yeah, in between this bump up and the next bump up, there's still work to be done, which isn't just sitting but also keeping the sila, keeping the ethics, and the world around you, which is made up of karma. It will come at you. We'll test you. And the test therein is how non-reactive are you to those situations, how mindful are you to those situations, how kind are you to those who are not kind to you, how patient are you with the people who try to test your patience. Because that's the utility of the practice. How can you apply the six R's in different situations? Because that has an effect on your meditations after that, and then those meditations have an effect on how you behave in the world. So there is this feedback loop system. Yeah, no, it's permanent after that. Then you're on a one-way ticket to full awakening.

When that happens, it's up to you, your karma, and the effort that we make. Yeah? Sorry, this question is kind of unwieldy, but how do teachers, an outside observer, how do they verify attainments? And then how come sometimes people who've had verified attainments do misconduct? Well, one is, don't rely on your teachers to get verification of your attainments. That's why sometimes, you know, maybe to the irk of some people, I just don't tell them. I just don't tell them. Yeah, especially if it's a second or third, because it'll be like, okay, that's cool, keep going. If it's the first, probably a really good introduction, and say, okay, this is what's happened to you, now you see what's happening in your mind. But I'm not in the business or anything. Nobody should be in the business of handing out certificates of enlightenment, right? And the people who have certain attainments, or they think they have certain attainments, and there is a misconduct there, then they have to re-look and see what actually happened, because then that's not an attainment.

Yeah, that means that all layers of conditioned experience have kind of peeled away, and what remains is Nibbana Dhatu, the Nibbana element. So your mind just drops or sinks right into touching that. It literally makes contact with it. That's how the suttas talk about it: his body makes contact with Nibbana. So body here is not the physical body but the manokaya, the mental body, or the mind literally just touches that ineffable thing, slash, non-thing, that we call Nibbana.

So it's a literal contact. How do you know? You don't. As the... You want to say something? I just want to say that there is a cessation, and then there's Nibbana possibly. So they're two different things. Yeah. So that's... Yeah, that's true. And the thing is, as you start to progress on this path, you know, eventually you will start to see whether you have touched Nibbana or not, based on how you respond to the world at large.

It's only for very, very advanced practitioners, when they get to the end, towards the end of this, or towards full awakening, that they're able to access Nibbana on demand, just as they may access cessation on demand. So they can actually go into and know that their mind experiences Nibbana, because there's a change in the way they see the world.

Right? So this can happen. I'd like to get that description. Yeah. That would be nice. Yeah. So once you experience sensation, do you need to go all the way back to the first shana and then work your way back up through the whole realm, like accumulating insight along the way, to kind of like progress inside every game of things, or how does it work once you begin? It's not exactly like you have to start at the beginning. It's just that you continue from what feels appropriate. So at that point, you'll know in your mind when you sit down for practice, it feels appropriate to radiate compassion or radiate joy or whatever it is, and you keep practicing.

And so consistency is key for that cumulative effect. You need to keep practicing every day, every single day, and it will happen. It's a rinse and repeat process. What's interesting is when we get into the transcendental links of the penetration, you will see that the experience of that will inform the faith that you get in the practice, which then further strengthens all the other links that lead towards liberation. So there is, in that sense, you start from the beginning, but it's not that you're starting completely from the beginning. It's like now you have established in the practice and in the path.

But for practical purposes, you can just sit down and listen to your mind and see where it wants to take you and just radiate whatever comes up and keep going from there. No, no, no. It's unmissable. You can't miss it. Trust me. You can't miss it. It will be like, oh my God, what was that? Why is cessation brief and you have to kind of wait for your physical body to die to not be reborn? Can you clarify what you mean by that?

Just assuming that rebirth means you die, and then you're like, okay. So, yeah. So, okay, so cessation is... so what the first part of the question, cessation is brief? Well, because for a moment your mind drops, and it's not used to that kind of a condition, so it just touches and comes back after a while. Once you start to become stabilized in this practice and you start to get towards full awakening, there is the ability to enter into cessation for longer periods of time. And there's a certain practice that's there which is called determinations, and every person that I've given determinations to has just said, thank you, but I can't do this, because it's so... there is a certain way and discipline that you need for it.

And very few people have the patience or discipline to do it. But once you do it, it's wonderful, because then you can go into cessation whenever you want, for however long you want, up to seven days. And the second part of your question about rebirth, again, because they're still fuel of karma. So karma in that case is things that the body still needs to go through. Things that your longevity is determined by, the habits that you've made, the things that you do, the things that you have done. So the body, or the five aggregates, which are the fuel for existence

might still run on for a little while, and then there's a dissipation of that, and then the mind knows, okay, it's time to go. So it has pari nibbana, which is the final nibbana. In other words, that person, which is an arahant, knows now is the time to leave, and they will actually sit down and access nibbana for one final time, and that's the dissolution of that life.

But the reason why we say pari nibbana, and that's the final nibbana, is because they can access nibbana whenever they want, just as somebody can access jhana whenever they want. That's the beauty of it. So there's no more rebirth for that person or that being or non-being, however you want to put it, because the roots, the asavas, the viruses that could lead to further rebirth, have been chopped away completely at the root. It's been uprooted completely. So there's nothing for that mind to hold on to when it passes away. So rebirth, when we talk about rebirth, it's like there's certain regrets, or we might go through a life review process, and there's things where we're like, I wish I could have done things differently, right?

Those are all different modes of craving which lead to a new consciousness and a new birth. But a fully awakened being doesn't have any of that, so they won't experience any of that to cause further rebirth. Curious if you know what the pali is, what does that mean? Pari, I think, is final or ultimate. It's, I think, related to para, which means beyond.

Determinations are a practice that if somebody is really interested, they have, first of all, done quite enough practice to have attained to or gone through certain stages. And then the determinations will come up when somebody's interested. We'll say, okay, now what you do is you're going to focus on staying in a specific jhana for a certain amount of time. And these times are random times. It's like one minute and 17 seconds. I won't go higher than the first jhana. Or for seven seconds, I won't go higher than the first jhana. So you're training. There's a certain level of agility that happens. And you can go jhana jumping. From the first jhana to the fifth jhana, from the fifth jhana to the third, third to the seventh, seventh to the fourth, fourth to the eighth.

There's a certain, as I say, agility that happens. And then you're able to do that for cessation. That's why I said not a lot of people have the discipline or patience or steadiness of mind to do that. When you say just sit and let your mind guide you to practice, it should be like it might be mental form, compassion, and amenity.

If you're drawn to one of those, how does it feel? Well, you sit down. Yes, you sit down and you close your eyes and just say, mind, what do you want to do right now? And you just wait and see what happens. Sometimes you may want to just start off and say the intention, okay, I'm going to start with metta, but then invariably your mind will say, no, I think I want to transition into joy or compassion, as you just follow along and radiate that out. So that's what we're talking about when we say establish mindfulness

before him or in front of him. You're sitting down, just asking mind, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go? And then you follow that. And then it will take you, and invariably it will take you to quiet mind. A lot of people might want to go directly to quiet mind, or a mind kind of inclines towards quiet mind. This is especially for advanced practitioners who have been consistently practicing every day.

And what I would suggest for them is to still do some radiating for at least 5 to 10 minutes, 15 minutes, because that brings balance of energy so the mind won't get too restless or won't get into sloth and torpor. There will be a certain balance when you're doing that. Any further questions? Let's share some merit.

May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear struck fearless be. 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. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu.