Day 4 Talk on Enlightenment Factors and Jhanas. "Accompanied by Lovingkindness".

Today I'm going to be talking about the enlightenment factors. It is called Samyutta Nikaya 46.54, Metta Sahagata Sutta, accompanied by loving kindness. On occasion, the Blessed One was dwelling among the Kolyans, where there was a town of the Kolyans named Halidavasana. Then in the morning, a number of bhikkhus, dressed and taking their bowls and robes, entered Halidavasana for alms. Then it occurred to them, it is still too early to walk for alms in Halidavasana. Let us go to the park of the wanderers of other sects. Then those bhikkhus went to the park of the wanderers of other sects.

They exchanged greetings with those wanderers, and when they had concluded their greetings and cordial talk, sat down to one side. The wanderers then said to them: Friends, the ascetic Gautama teaches the Dhamma to his disciples. Abandon the five hindrances, the corruptions of the mind that weaken wisdom, and dwell pervading one quarter with the mind imbued with loving kindness, likewise the second quarter, the third quarter and the fourth quarter.

Thus above, below, across and everywhere and to all as to oneself. For many of you, this is now very familiar. This is what you do in the six directions. You pervade each quarter with loving kindness. You allow the flow of loving kindness in each of the four quarters and then above and below. Essentially the six directions.

So these are the four brahmaviharas: loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Those who've done this practice before are probably very familiar with each of these brahmaviharas. And those starting out, now you are seeing for yourself how this happens when you radiate, when you pervade in the six directions. Here it says, without hostility, without ill will. Vast, measureless. The mind becomes very spacious.

You have an experience of infinite space. And it says exalted. What does exalted mean? A mind free of hindrances. And moreover, a mind that is experiencing jhana, that is exalted, that is free of hindrances, that is ripe with all of the different jhanic factors. We'll be talking about jhanas tomorrow. Bhante will be discussing the jhanas in detail.

But it's important to understand what you're doing here. Because when you are using these brahmaviharas, with samatha and with vipassana, that is what TWIM is. Samatha is the mind that is calm and clear and collected. Vipassana is the mind that experiences insight and clarity into the nature of reality. These two are conjoined. And so when we talk about TWIM, tranquil wisdom, insight, meditation, tranquil. That's the samatha aspect.

Wisdom and insight. That is the vipassana aspect. So these two joined together allow you to experience Nibbana. Allow you to experience first and foremost nirodha, the cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. Samatha alone will not take you to nirodha. Vipassana alone will not take you to nirodha. These two together, in the suttas it's sometimes described as serenity and insight.

They're like wings of a bird. You need both in order to fly. So you need to be able to balance these two, samatha and vipassana. And the way you do it is through the process of the enlightenment factors, which I'm talking about as we continue with this sutta. And the enlightenment factors, there's a reason why they're called enlightenment factors. In Pali, it's called bojjhanga, meaning parts that allow one to experience enlightenment. Bojjha, which is bodhi.

Bodhi means awakening. Bodhi means to be awake, to the nature of reality. Anga, that is a limb, that is a part, that is a factor, that is a cause for enlightenment. So I'll explain more as we go into this. And so they say to the bhikkhus, we too, friends, teach the Dhamma to our disciples thus. So, friends, what here is the distinction, the difference between the ascetic Gautama and us? That is regarding the one Dhamma teaching and the other, regarding the one manner of instruction and the other.

So here, the other wanderers, during the time of the Buddha, there were other sects that were, you would call them Samanas or Shramanas, wanderers in the forest who would be out of the world, going forth for the purpose of experiencing enlightenment, for the purpose of experiencing awakening. So it's very common in ancient India for this to happen. Even now, to this day, you have a lot of wanderers. When I went to the Himalayas this time, I went to Rishikesh. Rishikesh is filled with what you would call sadhus and sannyasis, on alms. And they wander from center to center, that is ashram to ashram, in search of alms and rest.

And they spend their time practicing for the purpose of awakening. So it wasn't something necessarily new that you would be wandering out into the forest back in ancient India. They would wander from town to town for alms. They would go into the forest, retreat into the forest, or to a monastery, or to Dhammasuka, as we have it here.

And they would meditate. And they would cultivate their minds filled with love and kindness, filled with compassion, filled with joy, filled with equanimity. So what these other wanderers are saying, these other samanas, actually they are samanas too, or shramanas, I should say. What they are saying is, we teach the same thing. We also tell our students to radiate loving kindness, to radiate compassion, to radiate joy, to radiate equanimity. So what's the distinction? What is the difference between our teaching and the Buddha's teachings?

Fair question. Then those bhikkhus neither delighted in nor rejected the statement of those wanderers. Without delighting in it, without rejecting it, they rose from their seats and left, thinking, we shall learn the meaning of this statement in the presence of the Blessed One. That's a very important statement here. It says here, nor rejected the statement of those wanderers. Total equanimity. Oftentimes when you are met with somebody who criticizes what you do, what's the first thing that happens in your mind? You want to defend it. You want to hold on to it. You want to grasp onto it.

But here the bhikkhus are neither accepting it nor rejecting it. They said that's it. Then when those bhikkhus had walked for alms in Halidavasana and had returned from the alms round after their meal, they approached the Blessed One, after paying homage to him, sat down to one side and reported to him the entire discussion between those wanderers and themselves. So they repeated what the wanderer said, and this is what the Blessed One said. Bhikkhus, when wanderers of other sects speak thus, they should be asked, friends, how is the liberation of the mind by loving kindness developed?

What does it have as its destination, its culmination, its fruit, its final goal? This is a very important question. Oftentimes, there is this understanding that the brahmaviharas do not lead to liberation of the mind. But here the Buddha himself is saying, how is the liberation of the mind by loving-kindness developed? Which implies that the loving-kindness and the other brahmaviharas can lead you, can take you, to the liberation of the mind. Cheto vimutti. Liberation of the mind.

How is the liberation of the mind by compassion developed? What does it have as its destination, its culmination, its fruit, its final goal? How is the liberation of the mind by altruistic joy developed? What does it have as its destination, its culmination, its fruit, its goal? How is the liberation of mind by equanimity developed? What does it have as its destination, its culmination, its fruit, its final goal?

Now somebody could say, all right, it says here that there is liberation of the mind by loving kindness. There is liberation of the mind by compassion, by joy, by equanimity. And they could say that this is a temporary liberation. In fact, the jhanas are understood to be temporary liberations. Why? Because they liberate you from the five hindrances.

They liberate you from unwholesome states of mind. But here we could also say that it can lead you to permanent liberation, take you all the way to Nibbana. In the Karaniya Metta Sutta, that is in the Sutta Nipata 1.8, the Buddha talks about how to cultivate loving-kindness. And in the last two stanzas of that, it says, and such a person does not return back to this world again.

Which means they have experienced Nibbana. So there is a way of understanding how this happens. Understand this: to the liberation of mind, all objects of meditation are conditioned. They are stepping stones leading you to ultimate liberation, because you require the insight, the ability to understand, and all of these other objects of meditation provide the mind the ability to become collected, samatha. And then conjoined with the enlightenment factors, you will have the vipassana aspect, which is you see things as they actually are, you see into the nature of reality. And because of that, through the unification of these two, you experience Nibbana.

Being asked thus, those wanderers would not be able to reply, and further, they would meet with vexation. For what reason? Because that would not be within their domain. I do not see anyone, bhikkhus, in this world with its devas, Mara and Brahma, in this generation with its ascetics and brahmins, its devas and humans, who could satisfy the mind with an answer to these questions, except the Tathagata, or a disciple of the Tathagata, or one who has heard it from them.

In the Yoga Sutras, the brahmaviharas are mentioned two times, and it's explained how the cultivation of each of these helps to clarify the consciousness of the mind. But it has nothing to do with liberation. It's just another stepping stone. Saying there would be no possible way for anyone within a different sect to explain it the way he would explain it. And this is what we're going to get into, because the way he explains it allows you to understand how to develop and cultivate the brahmaviharas to take you all the way to liberation. of the mind by loving-kindness developed.

What does it have as its destination, its culmination, its fruit, its final goal? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of mindfulness accompanied by loving-kindness, the factor of investigation of states accompanied by loving-kindness, the factor of joy accompanied by loving-kindness. The factor of tranquility accompanied by loving-kindness. The factor of collectedness accompanied by loving-kindness. The factor of equanimity accompanied by loving-kindness.

These are the seven enlightenment factors. So how do you get into jhana? Seclusion from unwholesome states of mind. Bhante will be discussing this further. But understand that it first starts with seclusion from unwholesome states of mind. But it's also the cultivation of wholesome states of mind. And those wholesome states of mind are also the enlightenment factors. Through the non-presence of unwholesome states, the absence of hindrances, and through the presence of wholesome states, that is the enlightenment factors, one enters into jhana. So what are these enlightenment factors? First of all, as we said, why are they called enlightenment factors? Because they lead you to awakening.

So let's take the first awakening factor, mindfulness. What did we say mindfulness is? Mindfulness is the ability of the mind to observe. It observes how mind's attention moves from one object to the other. That is mindfulness. When you are meditating, when you start to sit down for meditation and you're observing what's going on, you bring up and cultivate the loving-kindness and you stay there for a little while, but then your mind starts to wander and waver and it goes somewhere else and it starts to think about this or that. Now it is distracted, now a hindrance arises, and it might be there for a second, it might be there for a minute. It might be there for 10 minutes.

But now in that span of time, you have lost your mindfulness because you are not observing how mind's attention is moving from one object to the other. But the moment you recognize that the mind was distracted, what has happened? You have regained your mindfulness because you have seen that the mind's attention has gone from the loving kindness to a distraction.

So you're observing how the attention moved from one object, that is the loving kindness, to the distraction or sets of distractions, that is the other object. That's the first. Now you have mindfulness. But what about the second part, the second factor, the investigation of states? So this comes from the word dhamma vichaya. Dhamma means states or phenomena. Vicaya means to look, to see.

You know, investigate might be one translation, but another translation would be to discern, to distinguish, to be aware of, to understand. Because one of the hindrances is doubt, and we talk about doubt, that is confusion about what state you're in, whether you're in a wholesome state or an unwholesome state. And that confusion arises because you don't know what state you're in, naturally.

So this dhamma vichaya allows you to know what kind of state you're in. When we say investigation, there's an implication that investigation means we have to look deep into it. We have to do insight practice. We have to investigate. But that creates the idea that we have to be very concentrated and we have to be very one-pointed in that process. The investigation of states, all we are saying is you're aware that the mind is distracted.

You are discerning that the mind is no longer on its object, whether it's loving kindness, whether it's compassion, joy, or equanimity, or quiet mind. So you've observed that's the case, but knowing that the mind is distracted is the investigation of states. The ability to discern, I am no longer on my object. So mindfulness is accompanied quickly by investigation of states. The moment you have mindfulness, there is an investigation, there is an understanding, there is a discernment, I am distracted. Mind is distracted.

So these two factors are already fulfilled when you recognize that you were distracted. Then followed by that is energy. Virya. Virya means strength. Virya can mean power. Virya can mean energy. Virya can mean effort. Again, these kinds of words suggest that we have to try very hard. But actually, it's the opposite of that. The second step in the six Rs is to release.

Where in that does it say that you have to make an effort to release? That's counterintuitive. You know, by holding on to trying to release, that's counterintuitive. You only take your attention from here, the distraction, bring it back to mind and body. You release the attention. You make the effort to let go, to abandon. So the effort here is not to grab onto, not to try, not to push. The effort here is to let go, to abandon, to release. Now in the sequence of enlightenment factors there is the joy, but let's put that aside for a moment because the next step here is to relax, to tranquilize.

To relax the tightness and tension in the mind and body. When you consciously relax, what do you do? You bring up the tranquility factor. And as a result of that tranquility, there is joy. So these two, tranquility and joy, they're interdependent. When there is joy, when you're feeling happy, relaxed, spacious. When you feel relaxed, when you feel tranquil, how is the mind?

Happy. Joyful. So when you relax, you experience in that moment a form of Nibbana, which is the mundane Nibbana. Your mind becomes like the open, clear, cloudless, blue sky. Nothing there. No conditions present. Only for that tiny micro moment you experience Nibbana. As a result of which, your mind becomes uplifted naturally. And as a result of which, you experience joy. So the smile, when you come back to the smile, you're anchoring it with the enlightenment factor of joy.

Now that you're joyful, now that you're tranquil, you have collectedness. What does collectedness mean? So this is the other enlightenment factor, collectedness, samadhi. Collectedness means that the mind's attention is non-dispersed. It's unscattered. When you were distracted, your attention was scattered. Your attention went here, there, everywhere. One thing at a time. It just went to this thing, then it went to that thing, then it thought about this, then it went into all of this mental proliferation.

But when you have collectedness, natural collectedness, organic collectedness, not one-pointed collectedness, none of that GMO stuff. It's the organic collectedness. The collectedness that comes through the process of relaxing, through the process of having joy. Natural collectedness. And that happens when you return back to your object of meditation. So that step of return means now your collectedness is present.

And now you are seeing things as they actually are, which is equanimity. So every time you use the six Rs, you're doing a few things. You are utilizing right effort, sammavayama. Sammavayama is the heart of the eightfold path. As a result of which you are cultivating the rest of the path factors of the eightfold path. And you are bringing up the awakening factors. Every time you use the six Rs in this way, with this understanding, you will see the importance, utmost importance, of using the six Rs in this way. When you recognize you have regained your mindfulness, now you're discerning what state of mind the mind is in.

When you release, you make the effort to let go of that distraction. When you relax, you bring up the tranquility factor. When you smile, you have the joy factor. When you return back, you have the collectedness factor and the equanimity, seeing things as they are. This is what is different from the Buddha's practice of cultivating the Brahma Viharas, and any other practices.

The accompaniment, the conjoining of the sambojjhanga, the awakening factors, the seven awakening factors in your meditation. When these become aligned and balanced, then your mind becomes pure. And your mind experiences jhana. And as you continue to develop these enlightenment factors, not through force, not through trying, not through some extreme effort, but just by using the six Rs and staying with your object of meditation.

And eventually, as the enlightenment factors continue to develop through this process and deepen and magnify, jhanas. This is why, as you'll see tomorrow when Bhante reads about the different jhanas, this is why you'll see that the fourth jhana indicates that he has purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. What does that mean? Purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. Because it's not just linear. The awakening factors aren't just linear.

It's not just that mindfulness leads to discernment. Discernment leads to energy or effort. Energy leads to joy. Joy leads to tranquility. Tranquility leads to equanimity. Collectedness leads to equanimity. But rather, that equanimity cycles back to deeper mindfulness. So when you go through these different jhanas, you're cycling through the enlightenment factors, and through each cycling through, they become deeper and more powerful.

Until eventually, the mind releases all conditions and experiences the cessation of all conditions. The cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness, and experiences Nibbana. So, he talks about these different factors accompanied by loving kindness based upon seclusion. Seclusion, based upon sitting down to practice letting go of the hindrances. Dispassion and cessation, maturing in release. Dispassion and cessation. So, what is the cessation he's talking about here? The cessation of dukkha, the cessation of suffering.

What is the dispassion that he's referring to? This is called viraga. Viraga means the mind, or in Sanskrit it's also known as vairagya. The mind remains completely untouched by anything. It's like the mind goes into a bubble. And that bubble shields the mind from anything that's arising. And you will experience this when you go into quiet mind, certain things coming up, but they're not fully developed.

They're what I call proto-thoughts. They're just the beginnings of some kind of thinking process. And you can't really make sense of what's going on there. But if you have dispassion, they just don't stick to the mind. The mind becomes like Teflon. slides on to nothing is able to penetrate the mind so this this passion is cultivated again naturally organically as a result of cultivating the enlightenment factors and then maturing in release vimuthi release of the mind from all conditions in experiencing Nirvana. If he wishes, may I dwell perceiving the repulsive in the unrepulsive.

He dwells perceiving the repulsive therein. If he wishes, may I dwell perceiving the unrepulsive in the repulsive. He dwells perceiving the unrepulsive therein. If he wishes, so these are the four different perceptions that he's talking about. So let's break that down a little bit. The first one, repulsive in the unrepulsive. So what is the unrepulsive here? Sensual pleasures.

Those are the things that are experienced as pleasant. But how do you see that as repulsive? You see sensual pleasures as impermanent, therefore causing dukkha. Therefore, not worth holding on to. Not me, not mine, not myself. Once you see it in that way, then you let go of that. You let go of sensual pleasures. May I dwell perceiving the unrepulsive in the repulsive.

So here, what is repulsive? It could be a painful feeling, a painful scenario, a painful situation, a person that is criticizing you, a person that is abusing you, a person that is in conflict with you. So how do you perceive the unrepulsive in the repulsive? By cultivating a mind filled with loving kindness. By cultivating a mind filled with compassion. So we all know what ill will is, right? Ill will is that hatred. I don't like this mindset.

But what is cruelty? It is not recognizing or not acknowledging the suffering in another being. Because when that happens, when you are unable to recognize the suffering in another being and you act in a way that is unwholesome towards that being, that is cruel. Everyone is suffering. And the cruelty here is adding to that person's suffering. So how do you develop compassion?

Or how do you let go of cruelty? By developing compassion. By the meditation practice of developing compassion. And here compassion means recognizing the suffering in another individual, in another being. And wishing for them to be free of that suffering, their crutch, in other words. You're there as a support for them, but you cannot walk the path for them. You cannot take the suffering out of their lives. You can only show them the way. You can only give them support with words and wisdom and advice and maybe some physical aspects of their own suffering. Otherwise, if you become a crutch, what is the point?

How can they develop the practice? How can they develop wisdom? How can they develop the clarity of mind if they're not given the opportunity to go through this process? So you can help them, but they have to do it themselves in order to truly understand how to let go of suffering. The way, being there and supporting them, but not taking on their suffering as your own suffering.

So that is the antidote for cruelty. Empathetic joy, this is what we would call mudita. Mudita means empathetic joy or altruistic joy or joy, just joy. But it is a certain kind of joy. It's a joy of being happy for those who are experiencing the wholesome. Being happy for those who are experiencing the cessation of suffering. That's why this empathetic joy is an antidote for envy and jealousy.

If you have a jealous mindset, if you have a mindset that says, what they had. Instead of being happy for the other person and saying, good for them, genuinely, I'm so happy for them. I'm so happy to hear that. That happens through the cultivation of empathetic joy. And then finally, equanimity, upekkha. Upekkha is the antidote for restlessness and agitation of mind.

When the mind becomes agitated by this or that, by the weather, by what's there for lunch, by somebody said something to you, by any kind of experience that creates restlessness and remorse and agitation in the mind, equanimity sees through all of it. Through all of it. Equanimity means seeing things as they actually are without becoming affected by them. It is a state of mind that is completely balanced. Oftentimes when people experience initially the loving kindness, accompanied by that loving kindness there's great joy that arises. And then suddenly that joy starts to fade and it becomes softer, and eventually it just goes away, and people say, I think there's something wrong with my meditation.

I don't feel the joy anymore. But if other factors are present, you are able to stay with your object for a long time. You experience other elements, which you talk about with me in the interviews, and if they're present, all that means is that the mind has gone through the first jhana and the second jhana, experiencing great amounts of joy, and then letting go of that naturally. There's no effort there. It happens naturally. Experiencing the third jhana, where there's more contentment there. There's more happiness there, more sukha there. And then that too goes away, and then there's just mind.

Very calm, very collected, very tranquil, very equanimous, and balanced. It is very clear that's a good state to be in. That's a wonderful state to be in. So don't be disheartened if you feel like the joy has gone away, yet you're still collected, yet you're still in the meditation. It's just that you are progressing naturally through this process. So this equanimity is very important as a factor, an enlightenment factor, that allows you then to experience what's Disenchantment and Dispassion. Disenchantment is, well, it comes from the word nibbida, which also is sometimes translated as revulsion. Now it doesn't have any kind of aversive quality to it, but the way I would explain to you disenchantment is in this way: cheeseburgers, right?

Everybody likes cheeseburgers, vegetarian or meat, whatever it might be. And let's say we make a great gourmet cheeseburger for you, specially made for you, just the way you like it. And we hand it over to you and you say, here, this is for you. We made it specially for you. You'd be very happy and delighted and you would eat it. You would enjoy that burger.

But guess what? The kitchen is preparing a second for you and you're polite and you say, okay, I'll take another cheeseburger, that's fine, I can manage that. But we're churning out a third cheeseburger now and I give you that, and now you're saying enough. That's disenchantment. You've had enough of these formations coming up. You've had enough of these distractions coming up. You've had enough of whatever conditions are coming up. The mind wants to be just there with itself.

Later. The mind wants to be just there with itself. It just wants to experience quietude, seclusion. And then from that disenchantment, there comes the dispassion, as I already talked to you about. Remains unaffected completely. Completely in a bubble. Nothing can penetrate the mind. That is the dispassion. As a result of which, this takes you to liberation of the mind. Vimuti. Cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness.

So these brahmaviharas aren't just states to be cultivated in meditation. In walking meditation, these are states that you can actually use throughout the day. You can adjust the mind state accordingly when you notice some unwholesome states coming in. If you notice that the mind has jealousy creeping in, bring up empathetic joy. Replace the unwholesome with the wholesome. How do you do that? Six hours that the jealousy is coming up, release your attention from that, relax, come back to an uplifted mind, bring up the empathetic joy. When you notice that there's an intention to harm, before that there's an intention to harm, that there's an irritation by somebody or something, when you recognize that, release your attention from that, relax, bring up an uplifted mind, cultivate loving-kindness.

When you notice there's an intention to harm, not necessarily just physically, but with your words, you want to retaliate against what the other person is saying to you, that might be unwholesome. You recognize that, you release your attention from that, you relax, come back to a more uplifted mind, and then cultivate compassion. Because what's the point in retaliating against someone who's acting out of suffering?

Anybody who becomes angry and irritated and starts to abuse you, starts to get angry at you, starts to shout at you, they're doing it because they're ignorant, because they're unable to understand another person's viewpoint. And therefore they are suffering. But if you're able to see that with wisdom, then you won't retaliate in kind. Because then you would be adding to their suffering. And your own as well.

But if you have compassion, you can help alleviate the situation, and allow that person to experience calm. Now, this is also where the enlightenment factors come into play. Now, we think about the enlightenment factors or the awakening factors as just being present in the sitting practice or the walking practice. But these factors can be cultivated for your life as well.

For example, the same situation. Somebody gets angry at you. Somebody shouts at you. What is the usual thing that happens in a conflict with you? You want to argue back. You want to defend yourself. Somebody shouts at you, you shout even louder. And then they shout over you. And then it becomes like two dogs barking at each other.

So you're matching their energy, right? Of retaliation, of anger, of hatred. But if you use the tranquility factor, what happens? Instead of shouting at them, you soften your voice. You come to a lower volume. What will happen? That person will start to match your energy. And they'll start to calm down. And they'll start to relax. So these enlightenment factors can be used in a practical sense. We already talked about the equanimity factor. This is the tranquility factor. What about the collected factor?

When you are in a busy day, there's all kinds of things vying for your attention. Your attention is becoming scattered here and there. I have to go do this, then I have to answer this email, then I have to walk the dog, then I have to feed the kids, then I have to go here, I have to book the tickets, I have to do this, I have to do that. And your mind feels overwhelmed.

It feels agitated. It feels like you are being stretched out too thin. So what happens there? When there is hectic situations going on, the mind becomes hectic. Then the mind tries to match that hectic energy. But what if you tone it down, right? Tranquilize the mind and become more collected. Slow things down. And the thing is, when you slow things down, you get more things done. around.

When you start to slow things down and you do things one thing at a time, now your attention becomes more collected. Before, where your mind is going in all directions, you're unable to fully focus on what you're going to write in that email. You're unable to fully concentrate on what you're going to cook for dinner. completely be present with what it is that you're doing. Because you're always looking to the next thing. I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do that.

But when you have collectedness, when you bring in the collectedness factor, then your mind becomes sharp. Now your mind is able to do these things. Everything gets done in the way that it's supposed to be done, without any of that mental hectic energy. And as a result, you become more efficient and effective in your words and in your actions.

Now let's talk about the... Well, we talked about tranquility. We talked about equanimity. We talked about collectedness. Now let's talk about joy, energy. These can be used in the meditation where the mind starts to feel dull when you have sloth and torpor. So for some of you who've experienced dullness of mind, sloth and torpor, the one thing I've prescribed to all of you, I've said, you can go outside and meditate because you'll have more sunlight and so on. But the other thing that is very effective is to walk backwards.

Do your walking meditation backwards. Because the moment you do that, you become more attentive. And somebody had mentioned this to me in the interviews, and I'll say this here. It's even more effective now because you guys are wearing robes. You have to be even more careful. Watch each step as you walk backwards, which means you become more attentive, which means you're using more interest in what you're doing. That is also synonymous with the joy factor. Taking an interest in what you are meditating on and making the proper effort.

So when you're meditating and you are in these states of mind where there's too much sloth and torpor, a little bit more energy to it, a little bit more attention, a little bit more interest. And when you feel that the mind is tipping the other way, and it's experiencing restlessness and anxiety, you pull back a little bit.

You have more tranquility, more equanimity, more collectedness. About the investigation of states, sometimes the mind becomes confused as to what's going on. It's just unable to discern where it is, what's going on. That is because there is a lack of mindfulness. And the reason why there is a lack of mindfulness is because there is what is known as yoniso manasikara. In Pali, ayoniso manasikara means improper attention.

Your attention, again, is scattered. It's not paying attention enough, or it's not paying attention to the right factors, the wholesome factors. Once the mind starts to just relax and become collected. That's why I say in the first few minutes of the sitting practice, just sit down with your mind and watch what's going on. Allow the mind to just become at ease.

Now you're exercising the muscles of attention and mindfulness. Now you're seeing, this is what's happening with the mind. You're able to let go. Wholesome states, and now naturally joy arises, and you cultivate the loving-kindness or whatever brahmavihara you want to cultivate. And then mindfulness. Mindfulness is the base and foundation for all of these. Without mindfulness you're not going to have any of these factors arise.

You have to be able to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. It's a consistent practice, it's a consistent effort that you have to make, but the right effort, remember. Because you could think that you're watching something, and you're observing something, and you're staying with the object, when in reality, what's happening is your mind is actually becoming foggy, and looking at this or that, and becoming disconnected from its object of meditation.

But as soon as you realize that, as soon as you recognize that, your mindfulness actually comes to be. And then the rest of the enlightenment factors arise. And when the rest of these enlightenment factors arise and come in tandem and come into alignment and cycle through, you start to experience the jhanas. And you start to experience greater and greater levels of cessation, which is what the jhanas are. And then as a result, ultimately you experience the cessation of all conditions and experience Nirodha and Nibbana. So then he says, if he wishes, may I dwell perceiving the unrepulsive in the repulsive and in the unrepulsive.

Here again what he's saying is you are able to see that indeed all conditions, good, bad or indifferent, wholesome, unwholesome, neutral, all of them are ultimately dependently arisen and the result of which are impermanent, liable to cause suffering and therefore should not be seen as me, mine or myself. This will happen gradually. This is not something you have to say. This is not something you have to do. This is something that arises as an insight as a result of deeper and deeper levels of practice.

If he wishes, avoiding both the unrepulsive and the repulsive, may I dwell equanimously mindful and clearly comprehending? Then he dwells therein, equanimously mindful and clearly comprehending. Pretty much self-explanatory. You experience a great degree of equanimity. And you experience what's known as Yata Buddha Jnana Dasanam in Pali, which means the ability to see things as they actually are. The knowledge and vision of things as they actually are, without adding anything to it, without taking anything away from it, without passing judgment on it, to see and experience everything without judging it as this or that. We're just discerning it, yes, but without personalizing it, which is to say taking it as affecting on me, affecting them, myself, affecting the idea of who I think I am. So this is the fruit of equanimity with which is that further disenchantment, dispassion and So, Yata Buddha Jnana Dasanam, the knowledge and vision of things as they actually are, is synonymous with this true equanimity.

For a wise bhikkhu here who has not penetrated to a superior liberation. So, what does that mean? Or else he enters and dwells in the deliverance of the beautiful. What is the beautiful? It is the fourth jhana. The Buddha calls the fourth jhana the beautiful because it's a wonderful state to be in. It's a celestial state to be in.

Total purity of mind. Complete equanimity. It's as clear as it can be. And it is the base, this beautiful, is the base for so many other development of so many other things. For example, when you experience the fourth jhana, you experience or can experience infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception. Is this water in there? Okay, good.

So you can experience these, what's known as ayatanas. They are extensions of the fourth jhana. But the fourth jhana is also a base for experiencing supernormal powers. It's through the fourth jhana that you are able to cultivate the ability to see past lives, see the arising and passing away of different beings according to their karma. It's the way, it's through the fourth jhana that you can cultivate the ability to do so-called miraculous things, being able to read another person's mind, telekinesis, and this and that and all the other rest of it. So the fourth jhana is called the beautiful for these different reasons, but namely because it's such a pure, quiet state to be in.

And so, Buddha also says, the liberation of mind by loving-kindness has a beautiful as its culmination. So the limits of loving-kindness is the fourth jhana. And as you start to radiate the loving-kindness, what happens is you start to experience spaciousness. So we'll see what happens when you experience that spaciousness. So then the Buddha says the same thing. How, bhikkhus, is the liberation of mind by compassion developed? Same way. Or what does it have as its destination, its culmination, its fruit, its final goal?

Same thing. He develops the enlightenment factor of mindfulness accompanied by compassion. The factor of investigation of states, of energy, of joy, tranquility, of collectedness, of equanimity, accompanied by compassion. So he does the same thing. He's able to discern the impermanent nature of pleasant and unpleasant states of mind. He's able to see things as they actually are, which means he's able to experience true equanimity. And then finally it says, or else with the complete... So, again, here he says superior liberation. Each of these jhanas are levels of liberation, temporary liberation.

So now the culmination of compassion, the limits of compassion, is infinite space. So in the meditation, as you start to radiate the feeling of loving-kindness, as it starts to expand, you start to feel spaciousness. Further contact in the body doesn't mean it completely goes away, but now you are in this spacious field and it seems to go on forever, or it seems like it can go on forever. There is an infinitude of space. And so tied and coupled with this is the feeling of compassion, where loving-kindness has a certain density to it.

A certain feeling to it. Compassion is lighter. It's softer. It's gentler. It's more spacious. And so then he says, and how is the liberation of the mind by joy developed? What does it have as its destination, its culmination, its fruit, its final goal? Here, a bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of mindfulness. Again, mindfulness, investigation of states, energy, joy, tranquility, collectedness, equanimity, accompanied by that altruistic joy, by that empathetic joy. In the same way, he is able to then discern the impermanent nature of all conditioned states and experience things as they actually are.

And so here, tied to the feeling of joy, there is, as he says, or else by completely transcending the base of the infinity of space, aware that consciousness is infinite, he enters and dwells in the base of the infinity of consciousness. Because the liberation of mind by joy. So coupled with that feeling of joy, with that brahmavihara of joy, is what is known as infinite consciousness.

So here you can experience different ways of infinite consciousness. Bhante will be giving you that more in detail. Is that joy that you experience a more pervasive joy, a much softer joy? It's different than piti, which is more vibratory in nature. This empathetic joy is much softer than even compassion. And the infinity of consciousness, or infinite consciousness, that you experience reality, because that is how you're able to see the arising and passing away of phenomena, and therefore you start to see the impermanent nature of conditioned reality. You start to become tired of it, which means you start to experience dukkha, and ultimately you realize that there is no controller here. You're not doing it. There is just causes and conditions that are arising for the arising and passing away. And therefore you start to see anatta, the impersonal nature of reality. And how, bhikkhus, is the liberation of the mind by equanimity developed? What does it have as its destination, its culmination, its fruit, its final goal? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu develops the enlightenment factor of investigation of states, of energy, of joy, tranquility,

collectedness, and equanimity, accompanied by that Brahmavihara of equanimity. And so he experiences jhana, experiences seclusion, experiences dispassion. It matures into release. And he's able to see how these different states are conditioned, penetrate into the nature of reality as being impermanent, liable to cause suffering, and therefore not to be seen as me, mine, or myself. And then he says, or else, by completely transcending the base of infinity of consciousness, aware that there is nothing, he enters and dwells in the base of nothingness. Because the liberation of mind by equanimity. So now, coupled with that equanimity, there is what is known as the base of nothingness. No-thingness. The mind doesn't take anything as an object. It's just experiencing equanimity.

infinite consciousness, where there is some activity going on that starts to die down, and there's a space between the arising and passing away of different consciousnesses, and now you start to see the nothingness in between those two. And so your mind starts to go and gravitate deeper into that nothingness, and it experiences deeper levels of equanimity. So the limits of equanimity is nothingness. The limits of altruistic joy is infinite consciousness. The limits of compassion is infinite space. The limits of loving-kindness is the beautiful, the fourth jhana. But then what happens is even that equanimity becomes coarse. Even that equanimity becomes, it feels a little tense, so your mind starts to radiate, send out, pervade that equanimity.

And it just feels like it doesn't want to do that anymore. It feels like it's tired. It just wants to rest. And now what it rests in is what you can call the quiet mind, the bright mind, the radiant mind, or just mind. Mind rests in itself. This is also known as the luminous mind. In Pali, this is called the Pabhasara Chitta, the luminous mind.

And so when you are in this, you start to experience what's known as neither perception nor non-perception, where now things start to break down at a granular level. Now you're starting to see formations, which are the proto-thoughts for things to arise. Before they can be fully perceived, the mind lets them go. Because if you can fully perceive it, then you're not in neither perception nor non-perception.

So the mind starts to let go, and when the enlightenment factors are completely present, completely balanced, completely aligned, the mind drops everything, all conditions, all formations, and then there is the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness, and as a result of which, from which, when you come out, the mind touches the Nibbana element and experiences certain things. And if that happens, you have to tell me at the interview, and you will get a special treat.

Something like that. Any questions? Yeah. So, when the seven enlightenment factors are present, then one is in a genre, one could say? One begins to get into a genre. One begins to get into a genre, yes. And being in a genre means that the seven enlightenment factors are present? Yes. And to different degrees, let's say. That's right.

Because as you practice, let's say the jhana and self change or morph. Yeah. Or what should I say? Mind experience. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Mind experience, it changes also the duration and how much mind is interested on them, let's say. Or even sometimes they maybe don't even happen, certain in-between states, or they happen too fast or something. Yeah, so you have to look at the jhanas as not the dominant part of the mind. Actually, the jhanas are just there in the background of the mind, because the moment you start to pay attention to the enlightenment factors alone, or the moment you start to pay jhana, or whatever state of mind you're in, you're no longer with your object.

So you're just seeing these jhanas as signposts on the path to nirvana. That's a book, isn't it? So you have to see the jhanas as just the background setting of the mind. And it starts to get, it starts to differ, because certain degrees of factors are present, that is to say jhanic factors, and certain jhanic factors are not present, but the different enlightenment factors are still present to one degree or the other. So yeah, the mind relates to the object, and that's the main thing. And then that's why the jhana sometimes change or morph, because the centralists paying attention to the objects. Right. So it kind of doesn't really matter too much how they are or if they are present or not.

You have to be able to be aware of what's going on. That's the main thing. That's why when you report to me in the interviews, you're telling me what's going on, and I might ask you certain questions. Is this going on? Is that going on? And then as a result of what is present or what is not present, I can discern, this is where your mind is. Yes, exactly.

I think you wanted to say something. There you go, yeah. Yeah, so let me explain what happened there. First of all, you should understand that you can experience cessation or nibbana from the first jhana onwards. And on the night of his enlightenment, what happened is he did go through each of the jhanas, the first, second, third, and fourth. But remember what I said, the fourth jhana is a gateway to experiencing other things, through which then he experienced the threefold knowledges. Threefold knowledge is when he saw that the mind was liberated from the taints. He did experience cessation there. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yes, exactly. It's an anchor. The object is an anchor.

It's like, the process is not like you are becoming the object. That would be one point in concentration. Here, what's going on is: here is the planet, right, and here you are, or your attention is the satellite orbiting the planet. This is meditation, this is collectedness. Now, when you get distracted, the satellite starts to go out of orbit. So what do you do? You get somebody to repair it using the 6R's, so that you can come back into orbit. When we look at the jhanas in this path, beginning with loving-kindness and progressing from there, what if you were to take compassion or empathetic joy as your starting point?

How would the jhanas not switch around? They wouldn't. This is why I'm saying when I say that loving-kindness has the limit of the beautiful and compassion has infinite space and so on, which means that you can still experience compassion in the first, second, third, fourth jhana up to infinite space. You can experience empathetic joy from first, second, third, fourth, infinite space up to infinite consciousness.

You can experience equanimity from first, second, third, fourth, infinite space, infinite consciousness up to infinite consciousness. Nothings. You had a question? Bahia, there is no you in it. There is no you by that. There is no you after that. Just that is the end of suffering. That is seeing things as they actually are. In other words, you're not adding to what is being seen with your judgment and further taking things personally by judging it as how does this affect me?

You're just seeing things as they are. Or when you're hearing something, you are just feeling and perceiving. That is to say, you are hearing a sound and recognizing it as the chirping of a bird. And there might be some reflection there. But there's nothing there that says that this is me, this is mine, or this is myself. Was he enlightened after? Was he enlightened before he was killed, or he experienced parinibbana? Particular life he was leading, the life of an ascetic that studied the Upanishads, and the Upanishads talk about this idea of a self that is the seer of the scene, that is the hearer behind the heard, that is the one who smells behind the smell, and so on, the experiencer behind the experience. Coming from that perspective, he flipped it and he said, there is no experiencer, there is only the experience going on.

It can be, yes. It can be. And is a person losing perception of consciousness and feeling while they're standing there? Yes, that has been known to happen among students, not here, but students of Dhammasukha, where they're just walking around and all of a sudden they experience a cessation, perception, feeling, unconscious for a moment, and then great amounts of joy come up and clarity come up. Spoon of eating a bowl of cereal, and then they have cessation, and then they experience great clarity.

And would they necessarily, and maybe we're getting ahead of tomorrow night with Banke, he was the first person I ever heard say that you could just be in first jhana and experience in the bottom of the second, and so forth. Would they have necessarily been in one of the jhanas before that happened, or could it just happen before? No, no, they would have to be in some kind of jhana. They would have to be in a jhanic mindset, which means their mind is collected.

So that means they had both the samatha and vipassana conjoined together. I guess there's an adequate amount of samatha and then the insight happens. Yes, exactly. Using the same metaphor before that, could you give a couple more examples of how equanimity is the object of meditation? Yeah, so it's the same. It would be the same. The equanimity here is, because I understand where you're coming from, because sometimes a lot of people are like, I don't know what equanimity feels like. It doesn't feel like anything. I can experience loving-kindness. I can experience compassion. I can experience joy. But how do you experience equanimity? Equanimity is the feeling of no feeling.

Equanimity is where the feeling is just completely balanced. So you have to be able to discern that and be able to see that, that there's a greater calmness there. There's a greater sense of neutrality over there. And it's almost like when you are radiating equanimity, it's not as vibrant as the previous Brahma Viharas. The analogy that I would use here is you take a pebble and you just drop it into a still clear lake and it just ripples on.

That's the level of radiating that's going on when you're doing the equanimity. It's just with your intention of pervading the entire field with equanimity. It's just that intention, and there's these ripples that happen. And eventually they start to soften and disappear, and then you do it again. And eventually it just becomes so clear that the mind doesn't want to do anything. And then you get into quiet mind.

So that's the way I would explain equanimity. Yes. Right. That's the ultimate equanimity. The ultimate equanimity is to be able to see things as they are. Not being agitated by them, which means you don't add to them, you don't subtract from them, you don't compare or anything. It's just the experience. Yes. So when we talk about that, we talk about that enlightenment upon hearing. And that happens for somebody who enters stream entry, so they will be able to have a very collected mind and be able to penetrate what is being said, whether it's a Dhamma talk or a sutta reading or whatever it is. And as a result of understanding, their first three fetters drop. They realize, oh, there is no personal self, and the path isn't rites and rituals. There's no more doubt that this is the path. So it's very much possible through hearing, but very rare. It's possible but very rare. Yes, right, right, exactly. First of all, he was not an arahant yet.

So there are two occurrences of this. There is Vakali, and there is Channa. These are the two examples. And I think in the case of Vakali, or one of those two, this person is basically diseased and bedridden and very ill, and they're terminal, basically. And they say, I want to go and see the Buddha. The Buddha basically gives him a discourse on feeling. He says, what is the point of seeing this flesh and blood that you say is the Tathagata? And this is just feeling. So he starts to give him an entire discourse on the impermanent nature of feeling. But he doesn't grant him that he should or should not end his life.

He just says this. And then it says, Vakali takes the knife, which means... I'll give you just another example of that. Sariputta was going to experience parinibbana. He was on his way to go and experience parinibbana. And he goes to the Buddha and he says, my time is complete. I'm ready to let go of all of the aggregates.

And that's it. But the Buddha doesn't say, go ahead. Nor does he say, don't do it. It is as you please. In other words, he leaves the choice to the other person. So likewise, the same thing happens here. And then Vakali or Channa, they go and then they end their life. But in the process of doing that, as a result of hearing what the Buddha said, they realize the impermanent nature of that feeling, let go of the final fetters, and in the process experience arahatship. But by that time, the body is gone. So just before he goes, he experiences arahatship. And my favorite part about that particular sutta is where the Buddha, and I've been here, by the way, he says, he points to Vulture's Peak, right?

And he says to the other bhikkhus, you see that black smoke that's there? That is Mara looking for a new consciousness, but unable to find it. Which means that confirms that arahatship was attained. Yes? In one of your videos, I remember you gave, you said, I think it was 10%, I think you were talking about the spiritual friend. Yeah. That was really helpful to me. Yeah. Again, when we talk about the six directions, each of the directions is an orbiting going on.

So the object here is still the feeling, which is either loving kindness or compassion or equanimity, whatever it might be. Or even quiet mind, once you get into quiet mind. And so when I talk about the orbiting, what I'm saying is your attention remains there. So the mind remains collected there. It remains collected because you are paying proper attention to it. So using that analogy, the gravitational field of the object of meditation, that gravitational field is mindfulness. If there is no more mindfulness, then it starts to come out of orbit. So the mindfulness is required for you to be able to be aware that the mind is staying with radiating of equanimity in this particular direction, or this direction, or in all directions.

The six directions are forwards, backwards, right, left, below you, above you. Well, you could call it north, east, west, however you want to do it. That's fine. But it's not northwest, southwest, southeast, and all of that. That's, I think, the ten directions, probably. I don't know. Eight? Okay. Well, eight plus the two, then. Okay. Any last questions? That's not a question. Yeah, but that's not a question. I'm sorry? The chakras were actually something that arose later on, during, I would say, starting with maybe 1080. It's not mentioned in the Upanishads. The Heart Center, in some cases, is mentioned, and the Muladhara is mentioned. If you read the... Ganesha, Artha, Visharsa, Upanishad, there it talks about the Muladhara.

But in terms of the chakras we know in modern day, that wasn't really cultivated until maybe the medieval period of India. It was at its height of understanding. Is that part of the tantric period? The tantric period, exactly. So some of it was, for example, Kashmir Shaivism, which means it was up there in Northwest India or North India.

And also in what's known as Shaiva Siddhanta, which was developed in Tamil Nadu and South India. So there was a lot of cross-pollination of information. happened there because if you go back to yoga sutras, which is maybe contemporaneous with the Buddha, maybe 100, 200 years, there's no mention of the chakras there either. Well, I'm not even going to really comment on that, because some scholars say it was before and some say it was after. But regardless, around that time period, there's no mention. That's my point. Yeah. I will say something about, for example, the feeling in the head. Aside from there could be tension and tightness, but there's a different kind of vibration that happens here.

And some people call it the third eye or the eye of wisdom, or whatever it might be. But when you have that, your intuition grows. That's why when we talk about the feeling moving up, it's moving up from, let's say, if you want to use the word chakra, it goes from the heart chakra up into the head. And now you're starting to go into the process of mind and starting to develop intuition. The loving kindness going downward? Yeah, I've heard of people having that as well. Do you feel weirdly kind of comfortable, like a pill you take for digestion? It's a very strange thing.

I know what you're talking about, because some people have experienced that, but that's usually also in tandem with the feeling expanding. And so when the feeling is expanding, people are feeling it more in the core because they're paying attention there. But the next time that happens, you can notice that actually it's the feeling moving in all directions. Downward, upward, sideways.

When the feeling starts to expand, usually people will discern it as moving up. But sometimes it feels like it's also going down. Last two questions. Right now I'm utterly confused because I brought up Mahayana sutra and now we're really talking about Theravada sutra. The concepts are very similar and it's almost the same but yet different. There's also one comment that you made that the hearing part. Right. What are you referring to in terms of the hearing? Okay, right. How would you reach something like that? Because for me right now, I'm listening to you, but I'm also translating it back into Chinese, translating it back into Mahayana texts. It's like, I'm super confused right now.

Can I get that transcript? Which transcript? No wonder you're a translator. I wish I could. I wouldn't. It's not my place to bridge. But what I would suggest for you is to just set that aside for a little while. If it helps to translate in the Chinese, that's great. But don't try to keep comparing the different traditions. Because you will...

Because there's so many different understandings, right? From the Mahayana perspective, the Theravada perspective, the Vajrayana perspective, and within the subsets of those schools, the Vajrayana can't seem to agree with anything. Let that all go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just see for yourself, just try and see for yourself, without that comparison, comparison, comparison mindset going on. That's all. Yeah, yeah. Last question, somebody had. Yeah. So, as I said earlier in this talk, Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation is a conjoining of Samatha and Vipassana. That's the way you could explain it. Manate, would you like to add something?

I'll say in detail tomorrow. All right. Just one addition. Wonderful talk. Thank you. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free and fear strong. 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. Thank you.