2025 SN 12.15 'Origin of Suffering'; Sn12.26 'Existence' with Delson Armstrong Sunday Zoom Series

Now, Venerable Sir, what does the Blessed One say about this? What does he teach? How should we answer if we are to state what has been said by the Blessed One and not misrepresent him with what is contrary to fact? And how should we explain in accordance with the Dhamma so that no reasonable consequence of our assertion would give ground for criticism? Pretty good question. Here's what the Buddha says. Upavana, I have said that suffering is dependently arisen, dependent on what? Dependent on contact. If one were to speak thus, one would be stating what has been said by me and would not misrepresent me with what is contrary to fact. One would explain in accordance with the Dhamma and no reasonable consequence of one's assertion would give ground for criticism.

So he's saying here that dependent origination is the cause of suffering, or the way he's saying here, suffering is dependently arisen. Some ascetics and Brahmins say that we are the cause, we cause our own suffering. Others say that it's because of others. Others say that it's because of just causes and conditions not related to us or others. But the Buddha is talking about it as dependent origination, and specifically dependent on contact. So let's see what he says about this there in Upavana. In the case of those ascetics and Brahmins who maintain that suffering is created by oneself, and those who maintain that suffering is created by another, and those who maintain that suffering is created by both oneself and by another, and those who maintain that suffering has arisen fortuitously, being created neither by oneself nor by another, in each case that is conditioned by contact.

So the Buddha is not refuting any of this. He's saying in all cases it's happening due to contact. It's being conditioned by contact. If suffering is created by oneself, what do we mean by that? Well, let's see if he says anything else about that. Therein, Upavana, in the case of those ascetics and Brahmins who maintain that suffering is created by oneself, and those who maintain that suffering is created by another, and those who maintain that suffering is created by both oneself and by another, and those who maintain that suffering has arisen fortuitously, being created neither by oneself nor by another, in each case it is impossible that they will experience anything without contact. The contact is key. There's actually a subheading in my book, A Mind Without Craving, where it talks about contact as being the key, because it is only through contact that we experience feeling or vedana or have any kind of an experience.

So the Buddha is not refuting, as I said, any of this. He's saying that those who maintain that suffering is created by oneself. How is suffering created by oneself? Through contact. When there's contact, there's a feeling that arises, and we decide whether we want to take that feeling personally or not. And that causes the mind to identify with it, to crave it, to have aversion towards it, depending upon the quality of that feeling. And then we choose to see if we want to cling to it with our ideas, with our sense of self, with our views, with rites and rituals. And from there we have habitual tendencies from which we act, and there is birth of action, and thereby we create our suffering.

Likewise, when we're saying that those who maintain that suffering is created by another, somebody else comes to us and stabs us, and what happens? There's contact there. What is that contact? The pain that arises is dependent upon the contact. That contact is our body and the knife piercing the body and the underlying consciousness, or the consciousness dependent upon that. These three constitute contact. This is very important to understand. I'll get into this. So somebody else does it, but then there is the feeling, and that feeling is painful, and that in itself is suffering.

We have aversion, we push away, we act in harm, and that creates further suffering, the clinging, the becoming, and so on. So those who maintain that suffering is created by both oneself and by another, same thing, it stands. And what about fortuitously? Same thing. What does it mean when we say fortuitously? Maybe an incident where we find ourselves in a situation where there's a natural disaster. We didn't create that natural disaster, nobody inflicted it upon us, unless we are to believe some of the theories that there are countries that are able to control the weather, but that's a whole other thing. But in any case, we're talking about the situation where we didn't really create it for ourselves.

There was an accident, there was a natural disaster, there was a terrorist act, something or another happened that caused this experience. And that experience is always dependent upon contact. So neither by ourself or another, he says, in each case, it is impossible that they will experience anything without contact. Contact is key. So what is contact? Contact is made up of three things. There is the sense base, the sense base object and the underlying sense base, sense experience, consciousness. So what happens when you are looking at me, when you're listening to what I'm saying, your eyes connect with the screen and there's light that bounces off the screen. and thereby there is an underlying consciousness dependent upon the joining of the eyes and the screen, or likewise with the ears and the sound of my voice.

This consciousness is dependent upon our attention, to pay attention to something. That attention is dependent upon our intention. So whatever we pay our attention to, that is basically the driving forward of consciousness of one of these six sense spaces. So contact is dependent upon where we place our attention. What is the cessation of contact? The cessation of contact is the cessation of feeling and perception. Contact is the cause and condition for feeling and perception. This is mentioned in the Anguttara Nikaya, I think it's 6.63, which is the penetrative discourse, and in there the Buddha says that contact gives rise to feeling and perception, because perception is tied with any kind of experience, any kind of feeling. So if we understand this, then it's really important to understand it in the context of meditation as well. We experience a hindrance when we pay attention to that hindrance. The paying of attention to that hindrance is dependent upon the mind, the mind object, and the underlying consciousness that is dependent upon that contact.

That consciousness drives forward because we continue to pay attention to that hindrance. The moment we recognize this and then release our attention, what are we doing? We recognize our attention is here. We release our attention and move it elsewhere. As soon as the attention is moved, the contact with the hindrance dissipates, and now our attention is on the mind and body, and relaxing, and we're smiling, and then coming back to our object, our meditation object, and thereby there is meditation. And as long as we continue to pay attention to that, there will arise the experience of loving kindness, or any of the brahmaviharas, or quiet mind, or anything else that you use as an object.

So where do you choose to pay attention? Where do you choose to utilize your attention? You have to understand that attention, right now, especially in today's time, is one of the greatest assets that we have. It's one of the greatest currencies that we have, especially in today's world with social media and Instagram reels and TikTok and so on. How do we decide where we want to focus our attention? With our intention. Our intentions are dependent upon what we see. And so there is this loop. As we start to notice for ourselves that where we pay attention can give rise to feelings of pleasantness or feelings of unpleasantness, we now make decisions.

Ultimately, when we want to cease all that suffering, we cease contact altogether. What does that mean? We cease feeling and perception. And by ceasing contact, we cease consciousness as well, because we're ceasing the attention driving forward that consciousness. And this happens when we are in very high refined states where the mind is just within itself, and any kind of formations that arise, any kind of thoughts that arise, we stop paying attention to, we stop getting caught up in. We have disenchantment and dispassion. By stopping that process of getting caught up in it, our attention has nowhere to go but just within itself, and eventually the energy of that attention just relaxes and relaxes and relaxes until there is no contact left anywhere, and we have cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. Thereby we cease our suffering when we cease all contact, feeling and perception. So any questions about this? Yeah, I'll just make a comment that it's very interesting.

Because what it really says is that there is no world out there. This is just looking at it from mind. We're creating this: oh, that guy, he's coming for me, or I'm going for him. But actually there's just only color and form. There's a feeling that arises, and there's nobody doing anything, it's all... and that suffering is arising just at that moment, and there's no story behind it. You've made this story and you've created the whole world. So you have to bring back your awareness to just what's happening at contact right now. Yes, very interesting. Yes, David has raised his hand. Yeah, thanks, Delson. Thanks, David. Just curious. I'm approaching this, I'm psychoanalytically trained, have mentioned this before, but can you distinguish a spiritual bypass, to the extent that some people use dissociative measures to unattend, especially when it's a difficult feeling, difficult emotion, difficult situation, experience? It's arising, and like you said...

Forget to not a defilement, but some things are rising. The person's meditating, I note it, yes, go back to the object of meditation. But when that could be, I mean, I understand it with Theravada practice, but where that could be evading something or avoiding something, defending against something that's emerging, rather than just resting in whatever is occurring without attachment or aversion. I mean, again, I understand the meditative technique with Theravada in practice, moving back to the object of attention.

But when perhaps we need to rest in whatever is arising, do you see the difference, or is it always just in terms of technique, go back to the object of meditation? But so actually what we are 6R's in is essentially our reaction that can cause so. In the meditation we're not having aversion towards the hindrance or the distraction. In fact, as soon as we recognize that there's a hindrance, so there's a distraction, we're paying full attention to it. We're paying full attention in the moment that this is what is aware of, present, and we're aware of it, and when we're releasing, what we're doing is we're using skillful means to say, "The more I try to pay attention to it, the more suffering it creates. So I'm not running away from it. I'm choosing to drop it, but I'm not disassociating with it either." And this can be applied in any

situation where we're not using the object of meditation as a means to suppress or to disassociate or replace the hindrance, in a way where it's like, "We don't want this hindrance, we don't like this hindrance," in the meditation, in the outside world of meditation, so to speak. When you are dealing with a difficult situation, the immediate reaction for some people is to react, and the reaction can be a process of engaging in an unskillful way, and this reactivity is what creates further unleashing of karma and suffering. But if we disassociate, that's also a version, that's a process of like a trauma response, let's say. What we're training ourselves to do is to actually approach and lead

experience. This experience is causing us disturbance. If it is causing us disturbance, we can't deal with the world with disturbance in our minds. We're not six are in the problem away, we're not six starring the external situation, but we are skillfully dealing with our internal reaction to it, because if our internal reaction is clouding our judgment or clouding our inability to respond in a way that can help alleviate the situation, then, you know, that's the approach. That we come to a place in the mind where we can skillfully deal with that situation. So when we say we're returning to an object, it's not necessarily returning to loving kindness or any specific meditation object outside in the real world. It's actually attending to what's happening in the present moment, and when we're there, we're actually attuned with spontaneity and intuition to deal with it in a wise and compassionate

manner. Just thank you. Just to follow up, because I think with me, again, doing enough psychotherapy and else, I have the observing ego that can note I'm reacting. Perhaps I drop into witness, I see it. I'm not attaching necessarily, but then I loop back into that more cognitive, I don't know. I mean, witness stage is not the, but it's so I'm in the observing mode of seeing the reaction, but I'm still cut off, so I'm not. I like the word contact, because I feel like the contact is lost because I'm too much in my head, mindfully thinking about it conceptually, like, "Oh, this is a reaction," rather than, like, I think what you're saying with contact is there's something, you know, felt, experienced immediately, and I kind of lose that. I mean, you often say to me relax, and other teachers say relax, so I understand that I have to relax the conscious thinking-doing, but many recommendations for how to, how about relaxing into the

observer. For instance, you can still be in witness mode, just instead of letting the mind go through its minutia of mental proliferation, the relaxing into the background of awareness of what is arising gives rise to mindfulness. And so what we're talking about is contact, as you rightly said, is the felt sense, but it's actually just before the felt sense. It's the initial point in which the felt sense happens, due to it. If you just relax into that background awareness, we are now actually aware of the entire landscape, rather than getting caught up in the minutiae of trying to figure it out from the mind that is sort of dealing with it from cognitive thinking, anxiety, and so on and so forth. Okay, so it's more of like you can go into background awareness, you can go back into relaxing into the witness and just observe all that that's happening, even the reactions that are coming up in terms of the mind's reactions. And when you give that space and that

pause, then you're actually able to deal with it in a way where it's like, "This is not helpful, choosing to let go of that. I know this is not helpful because it's causing me suffering. I'm choosing to let go of that. I know this is helpful, so let me engage with this and see if this works." Gotcha. And then finally, contact.

Is there ever a point, is cessation no contact, or is never not a point where we're not resting in this awareness which is fundamentally contact so there's always well theoretically as far as we're concerned with the suttas it says that cessation perception feeling would also mean cessation of contact and the buddha talks about it in terms of the the forward order of the penetration nation where with the arising of this there's a rising of that and then there's the reverse order where with the cessation of this condition there is a cessation of its effect um so the cessation of contact theoretically speaking happens in cessation perception feeling and consciousness i think when it comes to the scientific research which is still unfolding uh we may see that there is some kind of trigger happening but remember you need three things for contact to arise you need the sense base you need the sense base object and you need its underlying consciousness if consciousness is not available or there's no attending to any experience or external

stimulus, then technically there is no contact. Gotcha. Okay, that helps, thank you, really appreciate it. Okay, one more comment and then we'll move on to the next sutta, if there's anything. Okay, looks like we should move on and wants to speak? I don't see that. Where am I? I'm sorry, I can't figure out how to put the little hand raise up. Oh my goodness. So, because I can't see hand raises when I'm in full screen, let's go through a hand raising

Yeah, how do you click on it? Because I'm on an iPad, and when iOS upgrades, it changes where it was, it's not where it is, and so I'm just jumping in right now, not to take anybody's more of anybody's time. Well, go to, is there a react on there? On the bottom it says React with a little heart on it. Oh, reactions, okay. Yes, click, just click that. Don't. There it is. Okay, raise your hand. So Ken, am I recognized? You are recognized, you have the floor. So I'm always looking for application that helps my mind, and, um, so dissociation is very, I, I am assuming, is quite different from not taking things personally, but for a real-life example of where all of this should come into play, I have a neighbor who knows that I am very interested in meditation. She dabbles in it a bit. She goes, "So Ann, what would you tell the woman in Gaza who's been raped and, of course, all the other terrible things happening there?" And I, wow, hmm, what do I, I won't

meet her because that's not, that's an if, and I'm not going to meet her, but what I did tell my friend, what comes to my mind is that I'm developing a mind that, if I should be in her situation, I could take it, I could, I could not take it personally, I could not, um, be traumatized by it. So dissociation is a kind of, kind of a logical thing a mind would do under tremendous traumatic conditions, but can we remain sane and viable, because this is why we meditate, right? We want to be free and inviolable. So the whole practice, this whole understanding of the Dhamma, is so we can

truly not take it personally. Our body, our mind, it's just this process, and no matter what damage comes to it, it is not me, it is not mine, it's not myself. Am I understanding correctly? Um, is there a way for you to simplify the question? And it's been a long day. Oh, sorry. So the point of meditation is to be free no matter what happens to us, because, you know, you grow old and you have pain, and it's painful and suffering, or you have someone who enters your house and steals your things or damages your body. Things happen to people, things happen to people, and the difficulty, why do people suffer? Well, we suffer our own mind, that seems to be plenty to worry about, but we suffer other things too, and if it is only old age, disease and death, these are very scary for us all. So we're met, we're all here meditating and learning the Dhamma to liberate our mind

Correct. Yes. So, yes, I mean, the shorter answer of it is yes. Yes, go ahead. So if traumatic things should happen to us, or we don't take them traumatic, they don't become traumatic, because it is not me, it is not mine, it is not myself. We don't take it personally, which is not the same, this is the question, as dissociation. You really don't think it's you they're harming. It's their problem, not yours, for one thing. But you don't have to create a story that I am being harmed. Harm is happy, you know? This is painful, but it isn't me or mine. This is just fine. This I'm just trying to, you know, I'm always looking for application to make it real, and not, yeah, this is an interesting question. Yeah, so, so with the dissociation, I would argue that actually the person has taken it so fundamentally onto themselves that that's the reason why the mind is dissociated in the first place, because it's so traumatic and it's so affecting their psyche, where they are taking it personally. So this application of not me, not mine, not myself should not be seen as the means to

bypass difficult situations either what I'm referring to here is, first of all, we have to understand what we mean by that: not me, not mine, not myself. I always look at it from the perspective of ancient India at the time in which the Buddha was teaching, because what he's referring to when he says anatta, which is the impersonal nature of experience, he's basically saying that one of two things. First of all, I want to clarify this: he's not saying that there's no self, he's saying that there is not self. So we are essentially disengaging. Maybe you want to, a person might say, well, that's the same as dissociating? No, I'm saying they're disengaging in the sense of they are realizing through wisdom all the things that are temporary or impermanent that are seen or mistaken to be mine or me or myself, and thereby they let go of all standpoints. They let go of all views. They let go of all ideas of a self in

anything, and they don't reify it with another sense of self onto it. It's just like, the Buddha is basically, because we're going to talk about that in the next sutta about existence, that's why I'm referring to that here. There's that idea that, do we exist after death or do we not exist after death, and all of these things, and the Buddha says none of that applies because it's all dependently arisen. So dependent origination as the framework for our understanding is a perspective we lay out onto the world. And with such a perspective, we become less prone to clinging, which is a kind of trauma response as well, because it starts to create associations in the mind.

That's the way I look at clinging. It's associating negative or painful experiences and then creating triggers in the mind, and every time that trigger is touched we have a reaction, and that is our habitual tendencies. So if you look at it from that scope, then what we're saying is, first and foremost, we're not taking it personally in the sense of dissociating. We're taking it with wisdom, which is: I'm looking at my own reactions to the experience. I'm not in control of the world around me. I'm not in control of the externalities in terms of how a person chooses to respond or react to me, but I am in control of how the mind perceives things. So the Buddha is referring to right view when he talks about dependent origination. He's referring to right view when he talks about anatta. It's a perspective that the mind takes so that it doesn't create responses that create further suffering. This is the way I'm seeing it. Okay, I think one word for dissociation would be aversion. Is pushing it

away, just taking something you cannot take. You don't want to be here, you want to be somewhere else, and the you is so strong. I mean, I've read how the self will just pop out of the body and go up in the ceiling because it's so traumatic, right? But I don't want to be getting into a therapy session here or anything. So, but Ann wants to say something. Yeah.

So I'm thinking of, in a moment, you know, where, let's say there is a crisis situation your mind can go into. You see, you could go, this is horrible, this shouldn't happen, I don't want this person to die. Or you can just go, what needs to be done? Your mind has to be clear to respond appropriately. You can't let the horse run. That it arises, you have a human, by the body reacts, reacts on its own. Something you don't call up necessarily, but there's a moment where the mind chooses, and I don't know if one controls that or not, but I do. And I don't think that's dissociation. It could be compartmental, where you compartmentalize your reactivity so you can respond appropriately. And then sometimes, by nature, the reactivity dissipates because the situation is handled. But anyway, it's just interesting how the mind works, and what we're doing to give the mind room to work in that way instead of be cluttered with fear and anxiety for

ourselves, right? I think another thing to add to that is, any kind of negative or unwholesome experience, or even pleasant experience that we're having, this is the one statement that I've always talked about for some time now, which is: can we choose to experience everything fully as it is without projecting onto it our ideas of what? In other words, can we lean into the experience if it's an unwholesome experience? Easier said than done when we're talking about things like war and violence and things like that. But when we lean into our, at least, mental experience of what wakes what, what is happening, without all of the reactivity underneath it, and I think one way to do this is the continuous training of using right effort, the continuous training of taking a pause and letting wisdom arise, taking a pause and letting the executive faculties, or the prefrontal cortex if we can allow, to arise and give some kind of decision or process that doesn't create further engagement or unskillful means that causes us

He has no perplexity or doubt that what arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing. So here the Buddha is talking about, oh, let's go, here we go. His knowledge about this is independent of others. In this way, Kaccana, there is right view. So now, earlier I was just referring to this, which is dependent origination as the elaboration of the four noble truths, and the four noble truths constitute right view, because it's a perspective that we're taking. It's a perception of the world that the Buddha is offering to us from his experience of how this world is created and how this world ceases. Every time we use the word the world, we have to think about it from the perspective of how the Buddha might be applying it, based on other suttas. For example, the Buddha says that this world is fathomed by the sixth sense basis, right?

The world is made up or created through the sense bases. How we interpret the world is dependent upon how the senses take in the world. Our world, for the most part, is our world based on our sixth sense basis. The world for someone like Duke, the Dhammasukha pet, sees the world a little differently. Or Sukha, the cat there, Dhamma Sukha, sees the world a little differently. So different beings will see the world differently. But here we're talking about something even more subtle than that, which is the perspective of the world in terms of existence and non-existence. So this duality that the Buddha is referring to, existence and non-existence, is also synonymous with the duality of eternalism and annihilationism.

Eternalism says that there is a world and there is a self that continues on after this life. And annihilationism says that there is no self and there is no world after death. Everything just stops. It ceases. And this can create its own sub-views that are detrimental to one's existence, like nihilism, for example, or pessimism. But here the Buddha is referring to, he says, one with right view, one who fully understands dependent origination, doesn't become engaged and cling through that engagement and clinging. It has let go of mental standpoints. So when you fully understand dependent origination, you let go of the desire to prove that the world exists or the world doesn't exist, because how you see the world is now all dependently arisen. When causes and conditions are present, there arises certain effects of those causes and conditions.

When they are not present, those effects depart. So it's beyond the scope of existence in terms of, there's something that exists afterwards, or non-existence, that nothing exists. And this is where he says, he does not take a stand about myself. His knowledge about this is independent of others. It is in this way, Kachana, that there's right view: all exists, this is one extreme view; all does not exist, this is the second extreme view; without veering towards either of these extremes, the Dhamma by the middle, in consciousness comes to be. The consciousness's condition, name and form come to be, or mentality materiality. With name and form as condition, the sixth sense basis comes to be. With the sixth sense basis as condition, contact comes to be. With contact as condition, feeling comes to be. With feeling as condition, craving comes to be. With craving as condition, clinging comes to be. With clinging as condition, habitual tendencies come to be. With habitual tendencies as condition, birth comes to be. With birth as condition, all of that stuff, this whole mass of suffering, comes to be, such as the origin of this whole mass of suffering.

But with the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance comes the cessation of formations. With the cessation of formations, the cessation of consciousness. With the cessation of consciousness, the cessation of mentality materiality. With the cessation of mentality materiality, the cessation of the sixth sense basis. With the cessation of the sixth sense basis, the cessation of contact. With the cessation of contact, there is a cessation of feeling. With the cessation of feeling, there is a cessation of craving. With the cessation of craving, there is a cessation of clinging. With the cessation of clinging, there is a cessation of habitual tendencies. With the cessation of habitual tendencies, there is a cessation of birth or birth of action. With the cessation of birth, there is a cessation of this whole mass of suffering, such is a cessation of this whole mass of suffering. So that, that is the middle way that the Buddha is offering to us. He's talking about less or non-existence with regards to the world. He's saying, if we understood dependent origination, there's nothing else to understand beyond that, because you understand

that how self comes to be, and that self, that notion of self that we take personally, is only transactional, dependent upon causes and conditions, namely with the arising of dependent origination, and that self ceases with the cessation of dependent origination. We're not talking about the self with the capital S, which is some big overarching self. We're talking about the arising and passing away of multiple selves, because that's what's happening with rebirth and with the world. This is a very, very subtle understanding, because right now we live in a very materialist world, a very scientific materialist world, and there's all these theories about what arises, what goes away, how the universe came from nothing, came from something, the universe expands, and all of these things. The Buddha is simplifying it by saying, let's let go of all standpoints and understand with correct wisdom, correct wisdom, that is right view. So if we understand this with dependent origination, it is another perspective that we can take with regards to the world itself. In fact, if you think about dependent origination as a

multi-dimensional approach, which is to say you can see dependent origination arising and passing away moment to moment, and you can see it arising and passing away from different circumstances in your life, and take that from lifetime to lifetime, and then use that in the arising and passing away of a universe, this is what he's referring to. So the existence of the world, it exists insofar as there is the sixth sense basis. And how we take that is dependent upon whether we engage and cling, which is taking it personally with a sense of self. And when we do that, we get caught up in the world. If we see this through the 6R's, if we understand this getting caught up in the world using this sense of self, and we let go of it, using the right view that all of this is arising dependent upon causes and conditions, therefore, all of this is always changing, is in flux, is anicca.

Therefore, I should not hold on to it, because it can be causing suffering. It is not having any underlying happiness that is permanent. Therefore, it is dukkha. Therefore, I don't see it as me, mine, or myself. So what we're looking at is the self and the world. It's one and the same, synonymously. Whether you talk about the self exists or the world exists, or the self doesn't exist or the world doesn't exist, or that the Tathagata exists or doesn't exist, and so on, the Buddha is saying all of these are standpoints coming from wrong view, a wrong view that has either eternalism or materialism or nihilism or anything else, where it's negating causes and conditions. It's not taking into account causation, which is a

fundamental understanding of the Buddha Dhamma. It's a fundamental understanding that is the basis for all our practice. If we don't have that right view, then everything else that it depends upon just crashes and burns, because that right view gives rise to right intention and so on and so forth. So let's come back to the understanding that if we see dependent origination, then there's nothing for us to resolve, there's nothing else for us to solve, just by understanding and experiencing and seeing dependent origination in the way that we understand through this sutta and other suttas, and the realization of that in our own personal, so-called personal experience. It lets go an immense amount of suffering, especially the suffering tied to all of this cognitive dissertation about the world and existence, because at that point we don't care, it doesn't matter. We have come to the cessation of suffering. We understand suffering and we come to the cessation of suffering. This is what is important, this is what is vital for all of our

practice. There we go. Gelson, may suffering ones be suffering free, and the fear-struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired, for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of us. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. All right, thank you everyone. I'll see you around next week. Thank you.