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Today we're meeting to talk a little bit more about the different ideas related to meditation practice. I know last time we spoke, we were talking about the jhanas and talking a little bit from our experience about what the jhanas are and the levels and the experiences and the factors that are present. And we pretty much discussed all the way up to cessation of perception and feeling and kind of talked a little bit about what happens right after that. So I think you and I have discussed talking a little bit about now that you've experienced cessation, there is something called awakening.

And when we say awakening, it's a very specific word. It's a very specific term to mean something, and there are different ways in which people may interpret that or ways in which people may look at that and try to compare and contrast based on different spiritual concepts. So maybe first what we'll do is we'll try to define what we mean by awakening and what it actually refers to from the context of what this practice and what it means to us, personally, from our own personal journey, what that actually feels like, or maybe we feel like is something that we've always thought about on our spiritual journey as an ideal to experience. So I mean, very simply put, what do you say awakening is? How do you contextualize awakening? Yeah, that's a really good question. When you are asking this question, I have in my mind, it's popping many different answers, and it's really hard to say just one way, because

I look for meditation from different angles, so when we just look from different angles, that can mean so many things. But let's keep it the Buddhist model. So I would say that this is like going into understanding the four noble truths, and more like an experiential level than just an intellectual level, because when I first met the idea for noble truths, I was just understanding it at an intellectual level. And then when I was arguing with my wife, I was curious, oh no, it doesn't work. Why is craving the problem? The problem is my wife is a problem, not is a craving. And finding this deeper layer is something that can awaken us from the dream of the problems that we have, and going deeper it can show us different ways how we can see awakening, because we can just talk about really nice concepts and deep stuff like dependent origination and understanding the links. We can talk about losing completely clear craving, we can talk about

loosen up the sense of self and seeing anatta, but I really like to see awakening, like seeing things, what is, how I react, and if I can see what is and how I react, there is a space, and in this space is a space of kindness. So I would say that we can just skip over this concept and say, start with kindness as a base, because I started my journey with lots of acceptation, and when I felt, when I've heard the first time about awakening, it was like the project for ego. I was, oh yes, great, let's go be awakened, oh, oh, I say, oh, people, that, oh my god, that's crazy, that's, I want to do this. Oh, but I didn't know what I was assigning for, like deconstructing this concept about the self, and

years of meditation took me to understand that it's not about state, because I imagined this at the beginning, that this is the state that I get some place, and this place will be ah, and I got it, something, and it was, I think it's not only for me but probably for many people, this is the biggest obstacle, that we just crave for a state and trying to catch something. Then just open with kindness for everything that arises to us and see really clearly what is, because for me it's just what is in every moment. Another moment is what is, and if you see how you react for this, you see this useful concept of dependent origination in a simple way, because for example there is a tiredness and there is a reaction: oh, I want to relieve from this tiredness, I want to go for a holiday. But if I can see this without identification, just see what is and open for this, there is wisdom that arises in this moment. So this is my understanding of this idea.

Yeah, yeah, that resonates a lot with me as well. When I was on my spiritual journey, there was all of this mystification about what enlightenment is. That's the other common word, enlightenment, and I'd studied many different teachers and I'd studied with many different teachers from very interesting lineages. Some talk about enlightenment, means there's a big flash of light in the middle of the head that explodes and you experience a lot of bliss, and it's the light of a thousand suns. Someone like Osho, for example, said this. And what happens is it makes in the mind a concept, okay, if I have to experience enlightenment I also have to experience a thousand suns blazing in my head, and these kinds of things. And if you think about what awakening really is, it comes from the word Buddha in Pali. So Buddha, who we talk about as the

discoverer of the four noble truths in the present time. He really was on a journey to find the end of suffering. He wasn't really looking for mystical states, he wasn't looking for any kind of space in which you're transcending, and these kinds of things. Those are, I think, secondary to his journey. He just wanted to know, how do I experience the freedom from suffering, the freedom from emotional suffering, mental suffering and physical suffering even? And so Buddha comes from the word buddho, which means Buddha, which is intellect or the mind. The mind has woken up. The mind has awoken

And what is it awoken to, or what has it been awakened to? It's awakened from the dream of existence, and I borrow this from Bhante Punnaji. And in my understanding, as I continue to explore my own practice, my own experiences with the practice of jhanas and meditation, I think letting go of any perfectionist attitude is also very important. So what do I mean by that, perfectionist attitude, right? It means that, oh, I can never experience craving, I can never experience frustration, I can never experience hunger, or I can never get sick. Some people have that idealistic attitude that once you're awakened, it means that your body is in perfect harmony and you'll never experience sickness, and things like that. But I think in my personal way of seeing things, awakening really is freedom. It's freedom in the sense of, when we think about the word moksha, which is a word that you commonly will see in India, for what it's the ultimate goal of a spiritual path.

So whether it's Vedanta or yoga or Buddhism, moksha is used across all traditions to mean to be free. And it comes from the word muchyate, to be free, like the ripe fruit that drops from the tree, it becomes free from it. So what are we actually free from? In my mind, we're free from any sort of conceptuality. We are free from any sort of constant identification with things. The mind is used to that, the mind is used to, like, grasping on and thinking, how does this benefit me, how will this affect me, who is this to me, is this mine, is this not mine, these kinds of things. Our whole world, for the most part, revolves around this 'I' or me, mine, myself, as the center point of experience. And I think as we start to practice deeper and deeper, we start to uncover the layers. You mentioned dependent origination, which is a huge topic, huge, huge topic, and some people, as you say, can define it as

awakening is seeing the links of dependent origination, or it's awakening to the four noble truths. Yeah, I understand that, but I think experientially, for a lot of people, they wonder, what does that actually mean, what does that actually look like? And I think awakening is a verb, which means it's an ongoing process. It's like a spiral. We go deeper and we experience the same thing, but from a different viewpoint, from a different standpoint. So the same emotions that may have affected us before, the same situations or similar situations that have affected us before, we have a new perspective on it because of this experience of awakening, so that we can let go of it further, so that we don't have it affect us in a way that causes us suffering. So very simply put, I would say awakening is awakening from the dream, or from the idea, that there is a permanent me that's there, and that seeing that the me is a construct

that's used for the purposes of interacting with the world but no more than that, and there's a lot of freedom in that when you actually realize it. For some people it feels disconcerting or destabilizing, because their whole world has been used to the idea of there is a stable, static me. But since we go through the jhanas and meditation, and we utilize bliss and equanimity and wonderful co-factors to stabilize the mind, the insight that liberates the mind, into seeing through the nature of things as an impermanent process, an impersonal process, feels very freeing.

And the other thing I would say is, a lot of people have this conception that awakening means that you enjoy, you have a lot of bliss, you're always happy all the time, it's like everything is a Disney cartoon. No, no, no, no, it's not that at all. So maybe we can talk a little bit about our understanding of the post-cessation experience, because that's really generally where people experience maybe their first awakening, for the most part. So how would you convey that to people? That's the good topic. So the post-cessation experience, it could be surprising, because I remember myself, I

I didn't expect something like that. You know, it was... I had so many imaginations about how the cessation looks like, but there is... I can say it looks like any cessation, because there is no continuity in your memory. So when you just go out from this cessation, there is several stuff that is going on. The first... the first, I'm talking about my first time right now, this is because it was like the most vivid and powerful experience. Then I was like, the mind is going to use the stuff, probably because there's more equanimity, so it's not like vivid. But the first time was like when I come up with this side. I wouldn't say I come up with this side, it was just experience going on, like the experience. It was like, some how to say, like explosion of the cessation consciousness. It wasn't explosion in a sense of noise, but boom, very clear awareness that came up, and in some moments there was just pure awareness. No self, no direction, no object.

no sense of self just pure experience experiencing i would say like pure experiencing uh i haven't i i hadn't had any ex that kind of experience before with so pure awareness and then come up the feeling of relief and it wasn't exactly relief because i was like saying something uh bad word like oh what what's going on and i come up immediately with meditation because whoa and then i thought it was like you know uh when you go around with a bag of a full of something which is heavy and you take off the bike you feel very light yeah and i felt the same like i was carrying with my life the back of full of bricks and i didn't know about it and then i was like this this bricks uh just were gone and i and it was strange because i didn't notice that i had so many so many you know these bricks in my backpack and then i i thought really um powerful joy really powerful joy and i was so excited there was lots of energy and everything was

colorful, just like... it was similar experiences to taking just a little bit of psychedelics. Just was very colorful and everything, because it happened in my flat, in my apartment, not on the retreat. And I was like seeing my flat for the first time. Everything was new, like my neighborhood. I felt like I just went for a vacation in a new place. It was amazing, a feeling of freshness. And then I started thinking about what happened in this process, and I got through a few realizations about this, because

I experienced a big change in my personality, and it was a sudden change. Before the cessation, I was struggling with addiction. Many years before, I was really heavily addicted to drugs, alcohol, etc. When I started meditation and I was, you know, getting more and more deeper into jhanas, I just lost this addiction, but still I had addiction. I needed to drink some beer during the week, and I was craving for one too many beers, and I couldn't stop. It was like some power that was

i couldn't imagine that it could stop and after cessation this completely evaporate and never come back just one click i don't want to advertise this uh for people that they have a problem you don't create any acceptation that because that's my personal journey but that was the most vivid part it was like gone completely gone for years i just like i felt like never had any problem with alcohol that was the the change that come to my mind uh and and my heart wants since this morning my heart wants to be very kind and go with ethics i i was i didn't think about like you know uh keeping precess and being so uh focused on this but i noticed that i was just um

organized myself in a different way in a different way more harmful less harmful yeah for me and and and people and and i got to the realization that this post cessation event is uh it's very important because in this moment when you just come up from the cessation and all these candles arises again there is a moment like a reset for the mind and it was like it was the first insight that there was like the reset because when everything comes back in this clear awareness the mind sees this for the first time with no identification for a moment because some identification come up again which is important to see uh when you come up from the cessation to look back what is going on and really be really mindful in this in this moment because after this there is lots of uh excitement

and uh this excitement could also like be some kind of a craving and you can be lost in the same uh patterns but like more spiritual patterns uh so that's my uh that's my experience with this uh with this topic and then it wasn't like the end of everything it's i would say it was like the beginning not ending because i was thinking uh i had an imagination that when i got the cessation my problem uh will be gone and after after because i was really joyful for a long time it was like i think three weeks for me was very long time next day i had the next session was like i sat and suddenly go again was my mindful oh i forgot about this because the mindfulness was the alertness alertness was so clear i was the mind was just very clear and then after uh after uh mounts uh weeks um

some problems uh issues come up again and not in the stronger there was before but it was the time to revise this it was and now i see this like the beginning of the work when you got to the first session it's like the moment that you know really now how to walk the path it's not the end of the path but this is like knowledge knowledge how to walk their path because you still probably go right and left and that's okay because this is that idealization that we have and i was like hitting what you said about perfectionist because it was like my problem with perfectionism and i was trying to get ideal meditation ideal uh awakening ideal stuff and it was the most awakened stuff it's not being ideal it's being as you are in this moment humble honest with yourself be yourself even there is no self be yourself because to get no self you need to be honest i need to be honest not to be yourself just just relax with who you are in this moment and don't say don't take this so much personal who you are in this

moment and and then it was like it was like more working with um the stuff that was arising and understanding in a when a better understanding depend origination and just let going more craving more craving more craving i still didn't let go all craving so i'm just working on this but my life has changed dramatically uh over the years of meditation and um after experience uh cessation because what has changed it i still sometimes experience anxiety i still sometimes experience uh shame or guilt but some emotions were like there was it was less this emotion on the intensity of the motion just drop dramatically like anxiety i had a really problem with anxiety and just drop it doesn't mean i don't experience anxiety but it's uh the level is like low

and the mind don't have a problem to experience so much with this stuff so this is that that change um really important and last but not least about awakening because i got to some really interesting insight because when you think about what is unawakened mind you can see that this is the mind that is like in hypnosis because we are hypnotized with the faults there is the first fault and this create next fault and next fault and next fault next fault and i was living in a chain of a fault fault fault fault fault hypnotized my attention was like i know it's hypnotized about who i am in the context of people who i am to myself and all the time like in the dream and then i want as like was open oh just the faults the eye is just default useful it's like a indication in a

um in a space i talking to you but really it's just a concept it's nothing more and this is really freeing in this uh in this understanding Yeah, that's, that's wonderful, actually, because, and this is so important for people to understand that not every experience is going to be the same for, for people. Generally speaking, you know, with, with cessation, it's like, it's like the mind is rebooting. That's, that's the word.

It's like a computer, you know, you, you defragment the drives of the computer and now things get a little bit more efficient get a little bit more uh effective in their processing power so cessation is a reboot in my mind it's it's it's restarting the system and so when you restart the system you can start to see how things come up that create the world in your mind and create the world outside as well because really the way i look at it is while there is the possibility of an objective world around us in terms of the physics and the mathematics and science and everything else around it most of us i would say probably 99.9999% of us live in our thoughts as you rightly put you know we are going from one thought to the next thought to the next thought and we're only thinking about things rather than actually experiencing things

so awakening really cuts that cuts through that through cessation for that few moments or however long it is i can speak from my own experience when in 2016 i did an online retreat with david johnson who's the author of the pata nibbana and he's he's been a very long time close friend and student of Bhante Vimaramsi, you know, who spent many years as a monastic traveling around in Asia and really developed the system that we call TWIM, Triangle Wisdom Insight Meditation.

And I got inspired to do a retreat there because prior to that, I was studying a little bit more about yoga and then the brahmaviharas. And it seemed like this program was really talking about cultivating the brahmaviharas. So anyway, I signed up for the retreat and I went through the instructions as given and as laid out. And I had taken time off for those 9-10 days to just focus on the retreat.

So I had a lot of time on my hands to meditate, to sit, to walk, to do all these things, and it was so interesting how the jhanas came one after the other, and how, as you're listening to the description of the jhanas, the experience also fits that description, and vice versa. And then I was in a space of nothingness for a while, just radiating race, simply radiating equanimity for a bit. I remember just being in that nothingness for a bit, and then it's like my mind had a gap in its awareness. It was like there was a winking out.

And, just as you said, it was like, what was that? Where was that? What was going on in that moment? It was like I didn't fall asleep, I didn't become drowsy, I was not with sloth and torpor. It was just like somebody had cut, you know, one of the films from the film reel, and now there's missing data in there. It's like a file 404 error, can't find that particular memory. And as you say, it's a cut in the continuation of the memory, and so

I remember just being like, whoa, what was that? And I remember seeing these little ripples in my mind's eye, these little concentric circles that just rippled out, and it was like whoosh, just this amazing relief that was there. It was just like... And there was like an over, like a fountain from my heart of so much joy, so much bliss in that moment.

And I was like, wow, this is amazing. And I got up from my chair and started walking out of my room, and just remembering, I don't think I was walking. It felt like I was floating. Obviously, I was not floating, but everything was so peaceful. Everything was perfect in those moments. Everything was just as it was. You didn't really have to think about anything, and I remember walking across the kitchen and entering the backyard, and the sun was just setting, so I was looking in the backyard. We had a great big backyard with a big swimming pool and lots of flowers and trees and grass, so I remember just getting caught up in the beauty of the flowers and the bushes. And it was just a brilliant pink, brilliant yellow, brilliant red.

It was hyper vivid, 16K, 4D, whatever you want to call it, like the vision. And I remember turning around. I had some friends over there who were playing ping pong, and they said, hey, do you want to join us? And I just silently shook my head. I had this smile on my face and I was just walking. Felt like I was gliding in the backyard. And I turned around and I saw the most glorious sunset I probably had ever seen. It was just having shades of purple and shades of pink and orange and red. And there were little dark strips of clouds here and there.

So it was just like, wow. It was a brilliant light. And I remember, yeah, it was sort of like a microdosing of psychedelics or something, everything was much sharper, everything was a little sharper. So I went back to my room and started sitting for a while, and just nothing in the mind, just complete clarity in the mind. There was just this sort of knowing, this sort of realizing that this is just an impersonal process. This is, I wasn't verbalizing in that way. It was more like, yeah, I can, there was a knowing that there's just walking going on. There's nobody who's controlling the walking, or there's just sitting going on.

There's no one controlling the sitting. There's eating going on, but no one is controlling the eating. It's just happening, and life is just unfolding, and this lasted for a little bit. And I remember talking to David, and I said, this is the experience I had, and he said, oh, that's very interesting. I think he had gone back to meet with Bhante to talk about my report, and he came back a little bit later, and he sent me an email. And he said, it sounds like you went for a little swim.

And I said, I was wondering what that means. And I realized what he's saying is you've entered the stream. You've gone for a little swim. You've entered the stream. And so this is what we call stream entry in Buddhism. And I didn't really know what he was talking about. I didn't really understand much about it. I remember watching the videos of Bhante on retreat where he's talking about the four stages of awakening. But it didn't really click for me. But in my mind, it was more like, yeah, that's great. Don't know much about that. But it feels like a lot of relief. It feels like, yeah, it feels like a lot of suffering had just kind of gone.

A lot of suffering had just sort of evaporated. And I felt like this for a few days, and David said, you just keep sitting, keep going. And in that retreat, I had multiple cessations, and each one kind of locked in a different kind of experience, and things became more clear. The knowledge of dependent origination became less intellectual and more experiential, like being able to see how contact is coming up, being able to see what is the vibration of feeling or experience.

And, yeah, it was fascinating to go back and read the suttas, because now the suttas started to make sense. The Pali Canon, where you have the words of the Buddha from the earliest Buddhist texts. It's like, oh, this is what they mean when they talk about mindfulness, what they talk about when they talk about clear comprehension.

Oh, this is what they mean when they talk about contact and feeling and perception and so on. And the idea of the four stages of awakening became more concretized in my mind, less of a concept and more of like, okay, these are models, this is a model for us to kind of aspire towards, whether we experience it or not. Nobody can be for sure, nobody can be for certain, except on our own experience, our own mind, which will inform us. Is there more craving left, or is there less craving? Is there no craving left? Is there restlessness still in the mind? Is there agitation still in the mind? Is there still a desire for certain kinds of states of mind? These kinds of things. I think the four stages of awakening are helpful as gauges, but I think it's important for people to understand that you use them as inspirational tools and a way of engaging, and less of an obsessive

like thing of, like, when will I get there or how will I experience it, or beating ourselves up due to that moral, ethical, spiritual perfectionism where we feel like we failed. But I want to remind everybody that this process is an ongoing process. It's a process, it's a verb, it's something that will continue. You never stop at it, so to speak. You're continuously evolving, you're continuously changing, and the more you do consistent practice and consistent insight and consistent awareness and mindfulness, the deeper the insights will start to become in your mind, the deeper ingrained they will be, which will shift how you experience reality on a day-to-day basis.

You mentioned the four stages model, and I have some caution with this model, because the suttas are beautiful but at the same time they are so rigid in describing stuff. I remember myself, because I had also, no, not maybe multiple cessations in this, because it wasn't ready. I was just meditating at home, so I had one cessation, then the second cessation the next month, the next cessation. And then I just came to more like having more of this experience of cessations. And in some moments I opened the book of David Jensen, of the path to Nibbana.

And I said, oh, with this book I should be an arahant, but I don't feel like an arahant. And I started to talk with that crap about this. And because I was suspicious about some dogma in a model, the model is very useful, but the experience is something different, because we have so many backgrounds. Yes, my background was pretty heavy. I was addicted, anxiety, depression, and it's lots of stuff to let go. So then I realized that the Dhamma can reveal in a different way for different people. And when I started to teach for the first time, I was surprised how differently the Dhamma can reveal for different people. And I think it's really important to say this really loudly to people, that they should trust their insights and their, oh, I forgot the word, intuition.

Intuition, because I said this and I'm always telling the same story: that I think doubt is the biggest problem. Like when we have this model of craving, of course doubt is the form of craving, but we, especially in the Western world, have a problem believing in ourselves. We feel underestimated, and we can go into psychological understanding of this: how we just get it by identification, how people treat us, of ourselves, parents, and then we just have this self-esteem, and this, and to be honest, this is really doubt. This is like doubting all the time, doubting. And that was one of the biggest problems, because I was doubting on the inside, doubting myself. And really, for today it's funny for me, but I know that it isn't funny for many people, but talking about self-esteem and getting self-esteem, it's great. It's great for me, like laughing, because I was trying to get self-esteem and I

In one moment I understood on some retreat. I was leading a group and I was having lots of thoughts: I'm a bad teacher, I don't know anything, my awakening is fake, etc. It was arising, arising, arising, arising, arising, the stuff. Then I was talking with Duck Craft, and I asked what I should do to get this service team. That was like identification. I wasn't able to see it. He said, do you need any service team? And I said, I need to... are you talking about the law any? And in this moment I just... this is the story I gathered by myself, and then it was like evaporated, never came back. For now, I know many people probably have a problem with self-esteem and trying to get some good self-esteem. But to be honest, this is the story that we tell ourselves in the mind, and talking about the awakening, awakening, and going in a deeper, deeper

stages of awakening is just letting go of the stories, letting go of the subtle stories that we have. Because some stories we let go, and there's more identification in other stories, and we still keep telling the stories: how I awaken, how I'm not awakened, when I'm in this mode, maybe I'm not an anagami yet, and I'm trying to get there. The most important fact in meditation is that the problem is not taking the next step. The problem is how to see that I'm trying to get the next step. Just let go. Because the mind... it was a long journey for me to see this. Probably I don't see it quite well for now, but it's easy for me to get to this understanding: the problem is not to get somewhere, but seeing the conceptualizing mind, that the tension arises. Just relax and soften into experience as it is, and just

trust that every moment is awakened. There are no really awakening moments, because we are talking about cessation. We are talking about the beautiful bliss moments. I've read the book of Eckhart Tolle saying about his awakening and joy, etc., but really it's the same mechanism. Like the first jhana, we're free from hindrances for a moment and the joy arises, and we think that this is awakening. No, it's just the experience of the joy. Awakening is now. So you can hear us and check: just in this moment you are awakened. The problem is, oh, I want to get, I want to gain what doesn't get, or Andrei get, or I want to be in a different place. Who is going to, who is wanting to get there? It's just the movement of my mind. Just relax into an object of meditation. No object of meditation. Just soften into tension and see what is, and see how the mind reacts, going, oh no, it's, I'm not awakened, oh I'm awakened. All this movement. And just see: this is it. This is it. Nothing more to get.

Yeah, that's beautiful actually. It's such an important reminder, and I want to re-emphasize what you said, which is: we think about it from the perspective of jhana. We think about it from the perspective of, oh, I want to get to this specific jhana, I want to get to this specific state, and the moment we let go, we actually get there. So the double-edged sword is that we want to let people know what awakening feels like. We want to let people know there is something called awakening. We want to inspire them from our own experiences, and the experience of other people, and from the suttas. But it's a double-edged sword, because it helps us to be inspired, but on the other side of it, it's like making us be in that sense of: are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And a lot of people who practise will say the first cessation was the easiest. It was the second or the third that was more difficult.

Because now there's a fruit, there's a carrot I'm chasing after. And the moment we just let go of that, we let go of all the ideas, it's much easier for the mind to actually sink into, let's say, cessation, and maybe even have another level of awakening, and so on. I just want to touch upon it for the sake of posterity, because maybe people are curious about the four stages, and what are we talking about when we say the four stages? So just to appease the conceptual mind

I do want to touch upon that a little bit. What I'll say is the four stages of awakening are Sotapanna, which means stream entry; Sakadagami, which means once-returner; Anagami, which means non-returner; and Arahant, which actually means the worthy one. These models or these stages, you will start to see a lot in the suttas over a period of time. What's interesting is when you look at the first and second sermon of the Buddha, chronologically speaking. In the first sermon you see stream entry: somebody attains stream entry just upon listening to what the Buddha says. And in the second sermon, all the five that are listening attain arahant. So these intermediate sort of stages of Sakadagami and Anagami, you see later on in the suttas, chronologically, as distinct stages.

So I think even there, while there is a consensus within the Theravada community about these four stages and what they represent, I believe that in the spirit of the Dhamma, what it really is, in terms of the essence or the essential aspects, is: are you suffering, or are you suffering less, or are you not suffering in this moment? That's it. Because the same model that can cause inspiration can, because of the nature of the mind that's always looking, looking, looking, cause suffering. I'm not saying the four stages itself or the model itself, but the identification with the model, the desire to attain those models or those stages, is counterproductive and counterintuitive to the freedom that's actually always present, as you rightly said, the awakening right here when you relax into this moment. And when there's no conceptualization in the moment, that's what's known as nipapancha, the lack of mental proliferation, which is synonymous with nibbana. No fire, no craving in that moment, no desire for anything in that moment. There's a deep, deep, deep, deep contentment and acceptance of things as they actually are.

So going back to the four-stage model and what it represents, the four stages of awakening: Sotapanna, stream entry. What does that actually mean? Traditionally speaking, what that means is that three fetters have weakened and then been cut off. And what that experientially translates to is that the mind experiences a deep-rooted confidence in the practice. It's like, now I've seen where this practice can take me, and I have unshakable confidence that the practice will take me all the way there. There's a deep sense of appreciation and confidence in the Buddha, and there is a deep appreciation for our fellow practitioners, because we are in it together. And there is a sangha, a community. Let's say community can be two people, even. It's fine, two or three people. But there is a coalescing of volition that we're all in this together.

Right, so that's sort of the traditional idea. But experientially, what it is, is confidence that this path that I have taken has invariably led me to a sense of peace and joy and gratitude and awakening. The second part that goes away is the attachment to rites and rituals. So what do we mean by rites and rituals? What are rites and rituals? Well, they could be something like praying to a deity, or lighting a candlestick or an incense before you sit for practice, doing these kinds of different things.

And the thing is, with regards to the rites and rituals, it's not like you stop doing them. You might start to lose interest in them. You might say, I don't really need to do this for anything, but it just keeps the mind motivated, it keeps the mind uplifted. But you realize, I could take it or leave it. There's no longer this obsessive-compulsive idea that, oh, I was not able to light the lamp today, that means it's going to be a bad meditation, or, oh, I didn't do this, so that means I won't get awakening. You've divorced, you've cut away the connection between: if I do this, this is what will happen. In terms of this rite or ritual, and therefore I'll have awakening. You've let go of that completely, because you have seen that the path of insight, of meditation and insight, is what takes you there. And the path of meditation and insight is not dependent upon any kind of rites and rituals. You can do it anywhere, at any time.

You can do it in a car. You can do it on a train. You can do it on a plane. You could be sitting just in your cabin. You could be out in the park, you could be lying down. There's no rites or rituals there. You can take your mind, and your mind goes wherever you go. So there's an understanding that the path, the inherent path, happens by me meditating and letting go and experiencing insight.

So that's very important. And then the third aspect of that is the realization that this is an impersonal process. We may continue to still take things personally, because of the emotional core of whatever the memory or the experience is. But there is, in the back of the mind, a sort of software upgrade in which the operating system has been renewed or refreshed, so that the corrupted fragments in the hard drive that cause us to think, intellectually, even, that there is this permanent self, have been neutralized. So even though I will say I am Delson Armstrong, and I love Indian food, and I love my family, and I enjoy spending time with my friends, and I like to read a good book when I'm on vacation, or I love to do this and that and the other, all of those are different personality traits and aspects of a structure. But in the back of all of that there is the knowledge, there is the knowing, that that is just an impersonal process.

My preferences, who I think of myself as Delson Armstrong, what I do for work, how I relax, all of that is still an impersonal process. There's no central identity or core that I can see or understand at an intellectual and experiential level. So this can be available to people when they meditate and have the insight into this at a deep level.

And when they continue on the path, as we may conjecture to see based on the traditional model, they get into what's known as the once-returner. And the once-returner is somebody who has attenuated, has decreased the level of sensual craving and aversion or ill will that can happen. So such a person may have very deep mindfulness, they have deep collectedness, but there's still irritation, there's still frustration with things, there's still maybe ill will towards someone, maybe there's still some forgiveness that needs to be done, and there may be a slight attachment to sensual things, and so it's like, if I don't get that thing I feel frustrated, or I get obsessed around that particular sense-based object or sense base. So in this case that weakens, so the mind is able to catch that and be able to say, ah, I noticed that, let go. There's some slip-ups, and that's okay, that's completely okay. We should be comfortable with failing. We should be comfortable with making mistakes. The more comfortable we are with failing, the easier it is to master something. That's what it is to be a master, right? They have failed

more times than any of their students, so they are fully aware of that. There is a humility to it. There's a sense of, like, I don't need to put on a show. I don't need to put on a show for other people or for myself. I just accept things as they are. And as you do this, the mind will do what it needs to do to make adjustments based on the tools of meditation and insight, and as you get further down you start to eradicate that sensual craving and aversion.

So in my mind, as I would see it, it would mean that you still have preferences for things. You still have, you know, I grew up in India, so I love Indian food. Somebody else who's grown up in Poland, they love Polish food because that's what they're accustomed to. But does that mean they have sensual craving towards it? Not necessarily. It's just that I enjoy these things. Ill will goes away, so there's a greater degree of acceptance of people around us. There may be frustration about things, because you know we want to get things done and things are not getting done on time, and there's a certain pressure, especially when we're living the lay life. But the idealistic model is there's no more sensual craving and there's no more ill will, and then you get to the stage of arahatship where five different things have fallen away, and that is something known as conceit, restlessness, attachment to jhanas, attachment to formless states and ignorance. So when we say conceit, it is the mind that is comparing

between myself and another, or the mind that's comparing between this experience and another experience. It's the mind that feels that intrinsic sense of, I am better than you, or I'm worse than you, or I'm equal to. And when we see through that, then the mind lets go of performing, lets go of trying to be a good person. It just accepts things as they are. There is a sense of stability which is independent of any causes and conditions, because conceit is that desire for security in a world that is generally very insecure, the desire for stability in a world that is generally unstable. We look for stability in different things. We look for stability in a relationship, we look for stability in validation, we look for stability in sex, in drugs, in music, in things that we enjoy, in food, whatever it is, that thing that feels like, ah, you know, I don't have to do anything, I feel safe and I feel secure. But when the mind gets to that stage, idealistically speaking, idealistically speaking, it doesn't need that anymore. So it remains independent, and restlessness and remorse

there's no longer any agitation of regret about the past. The past was the past, it's fine. Whatever happened in the past happened in the past, and there's a deep acceptance of it, and there's no worry about the future, what will happen in the future. So the mind remains very, very rooted in the present moment, which continues to flow. It continues to flow all the time. The attachment to jhanas. This is really, a person sees through the jhanas also as signposts. They're just interesting states to be in that the mind can take refuge in for purposes of relaxing and meditation, likewise with the formless states.

And there's a detachment from them. There's less dependency on them, let's say. And finally, there's the ignorance, what we generally call avijja in Pali. And that means the lack of wisdom. And I think, practically speaking, what it means is there's a lack of the awareness of the emptiness of the self. There's a lack of mindfulness of the four noble truths. There's a lack of mindfulness of the present moment. That's really what, practically speaking, I see as ignorance. And so in my mind, that's probably what fades away for somebody who becomes an arahant. So these ten fetters are dropped, traditionally speaking, through these four stages.

And I've given this information just for people to understand the model, but it should be understood very importantly that it's more about: in your mind, am I suffering in this moment, or have I let go of suffering? If you have that as your compass, then it becomes less about an achievement of where am I in that stage or in that model, and it becomes more about: do I have peace in this moment? Am I able to deal with the situation in a way that doesn't cause me harm and doesn't cause another harm? Can I be, can I be in my emotions

but not let my emotions take over in a way that causes further distress, further suffering? Yeah, that's really important to understand, that this is very simple and mundane stuff. This is what you said, because all this practice is just seeing if there is any suffering, and if there is, just relax into it, just be okay with whatever arises. And when you were talking about the stages, I got some idea that awakening is like, it's just understanding that

having something is as good as don't want something. If you can just understand that this is it, and it doesn't mean that we don't want to get pleasure from things in life, but you know that having this is the same as good, like don't want it. And if you can't get it, you can just relax and be okay with it. And this is really mundane stuff, because sometimes we go in the journey with the opposite state, and we think that this is like, we're missing the point that

it's about deep equanimity and deep equanimity is not indifference because some people and this is also my path and some of my students have we have the tendency to to avoid life because oh i'm so enlightened so i don't need anything uh i there is no one thing in me no it's not about you know you have one thing and not the one thing but can you have you can have all these preferences because um i many time read about the awakening saying that there is no preferences but no preferences now no other processes it's it's like it's more like having preferences and having no preferences that you have these preferences like the meta level of this understanding i can i can want that thing or you know experience but if i just can allow myself relax and see that if i didn't if i can't get this experience on things i can just relax into it and have the same experience be free this is it it's not like avoiding something it's just really be honest with yourself with the present moment not trying to fool yourself because because of these ideas

That should be helpful, but sometimes the mind can understand in an opposite way. It's not about avoiding it. It's about just being really honest. This is the fact that I was spending many years getting to the place of just being really honest. What? Because you know, it's not about with someone or somebody, I know you. It's really to just admit that there is this feeling that arises, and going just really lied about this topic. It's like it's about authenticity, it's about honesty, it's about kindness

it's about being yourself. This is funny, because when I thought about this topic for the first time, it's anatta, is no self, but the best no self is when you are just able to be yourself, because there is no tension and no conflict between, oh, I'm that person, I'm that person, and I'm bad or good or something like that. And when you just can be with all your conflicts, all different intentions, and be okay with it, just, no steps further, just saying clear what is.

That's beautiful. I actually think that's a great way of looking at it, right? Just being comfortable with yourself, being authentic, as you said, just accepting things as they are, also doesn't mean that I suppress my own conditions or I suppress my own emotions. Being in touch with them, being in touch with what's actually going on in your mind, actually is more productive than saying, oh, I shouldn't be this, or I shouldn't be doing that, because then you can actually transform that if you need to. You can actually learn from it. You can see. And being, as you say, honest with yourself means when you see the blind spots being exposed, not withdrawing from them but rather leaning into them and seeing them and saying, okay, this is who I am in this moment, this is what I'm experiencing in this moment, and finding the suffering in that, relaxing into it. And just in that process, things evaporate, you know, the tension, the tightness, it evaporates, and there's a greater degree of intuition. We use that word intuition, which allows us to

which allows us to see things in a way that isn't filtered by that sense of eye which is more of as objective as possible within this subjective mind and body complex. I think we can stop here. I think we've had a good journey of understanding our own interpretations of awakening and looking at the traditional model, and really, I think you did a great service to people by saying accepting things, being honest with yourself, being authentic. I think that's what people should take away from this. Yes, because this is a realization that I got in the

In the end of all these concepts and practice is just simple: be yourself, be honest, be kind. And this is, I know it sounds simple, it's easy to say simple, but really it is just kindness, honesty, and it's just being emotionally mature. And just a little bit too crazy, too. Great, wonderful, Andres. Yeah, we'll stop here and we'll take up a new topic another time. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, wonderful talk.