Day 6: Dependent Origination part 1

Today we will talk about some portions of dependent origination. Dependent origination basically comes from the word paticca samuppada. And what that means is, at the very core of dependent origination, it means that everything that arises, arises due to certain causes and conditions. And when something ceases, its corresponding link or effect ceases as well. So this is really the heart of the Buddha's teachings. And in Majjhima Nikaya 28, Sariputta has said that the Buddha has said that one who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination, and one who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma. So it is that important. Now, we will discuss some of the links of dependent origination because there's a lot to cover, so we'll cover it in the next two days, starting today.

The one thing to understand about this process is that it's not important for you to understand all of it right now. If it feels overwhelming, it's okay. Just allow the mind to take in whatever it can take in, and it will start to understand as you get deeper into the practice and start to see for yourself how this process arises. There's a lot of information to cover, and don't worry if you're not able to get all of it in one go. We're going to start in the reverse order. In terms of the forward order, the links of dependent origination are ignorance, formations, consciousness, mentality, materiality, sixth sense basis, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, and suffering.

So we're going to start at suffering. The word suffering is a very dramatic word. It's a word that comes from the Pali dukkha, and suffering has been the usual translation for that, and that's okay, but it creates this idea that it's just very dramatic, and it doesn't necessarily need to be. The word dukkha comes from the word where du means bad or unwholesome, du means negative, and kha is the Pali for sta, which means stable, meaning stability. So dukkha is a kind of instability. It's a kind of unease. And the way the Buddha has described dukkha is that it's like the axle in a wheel doesn't function properly. I don't know how it is when you go to the supermarket here, but every time you go to the supermarket, at least this has been my experience, maybe it's my karma, that whenever I take a cart and I push the cart, there's always one wheel that is off-center.

It's always just a little bit scraggly. That is dukkha. That is the actual meaning of dukkha. Where one wheel is just off-center. There's something about it that just, it's very uneasy. So that is the feeling that people get with existence. That's the feeling that people get with reality, with their relationships, with the people around them, with themselves, with everything in this world. And that is the nature of existence. One of the natures of existence is that it's impermanent and therefore liable to cause dukkha, or suffering. And therefore seen as not me, not mine, not myself. Now, if you read in that chart the different kinds of suffering or dukkha, we have a very coarse kind of suffering, which is the aging, illness, death, grief, despair, sorrow, lamentation, and so on, right, pain.

And then we have subtler kinds of dukkha, which might not be mentioned there, but one kind of dukkha is getting what you don't want or not getting what you want. And then finally it says that the five aggregates themselves, five aggregates affected by clinging, is dukkha. So what this is saying is there's three categories of suffering. There is dukkha dukkha, there is viparinama dukkha, and there is sankhara dukkha. So dukkha dukkha means it's the, you know, generic kind of dukkha. It's the brand name dukkha that we know. It's the dukkha that we see all the time, in terms of aging, and sickness, and death, and grief, and despair. So let's talk about some of these different types of dukkha.

We talk about aging. Aging is a natural process for all beings in existence, even for the devas. Now we're going to get into some other territory. We talk about devas, which live on a different kind of plane of existence. And oftentimes the devas are imagined as being ever youthful and frolicking and enjoying the fruits of their karma in these heavenly realms. But actually, towards the end of their life, what they start to see around them is decay. They start to see aging. And before they can do anything about it, boom, they're gone. So they do experience some suffering in the form of aging. We humans also obviously experience aging. And if we could, it would be wonderful, but we can't 6R aging.

What a great marketing tool it would be. 6R aging. But it's not possible. So what are you 6Ring in there? You're 6Ring your identification with the body. 6Ring your identification with the sense basis. So aging is a process of slow decay or decline of the body. You start to feel weaker, you start to maybe not see so well anymore, maybe your hearing starts to become more diminished, maybe you are more tired, and so on and so forth. So this is the decline of the bodily processes. And so you see people's fear of aging when they do all kinds of things to prop themselves up, with plastic surgery, wearing a wig, makeup and all of these things to kind of make themselves feel younger.

Because every time they go look in the mirror and they say, oh, another gray hair, oh, another wrinkle here. How do they feel? They feel despair. They feel sad. They feel depressed by that. But that's only because they only take the body as self. They say, this body is me, mine, or myself. But once you start to let go and you start to see that this body is obviously impermanent, you don't identify with it anymore. Or even if you do identify with it in terms of the pain and the pleasure, you don't take it so seriously when aging happens. And that can only happen as you start to 6R your craving for the body, your identification with the body.

Now, when we talk about sickness, there's all kinds of diseases that we experience or have experienced in our lives and throughout human history. Some are curable, some are incurable, some are genetic, some are viral, some are bacterial, some are fungal, some are, you know, there's so many categories of disease and illness. And it's the fear of the illness that's greater than the illness itself sometimes. We're afraid to get sick. And in that fear of getting sick, we might cause ourselves sickness because of the stress that we create for ourselves. So it's not about the illness itself. It's about the process of the mind and how it takes that illness. The fear of illness is what should be let go of.

Take all the precautions you can. Take the supplements that you need, the nutrition that you need, and so on and so forth. You might do all of that and you might still get sick. If you get sick, what do you do? Do you feel bad about it, or do you take the medication you need for it? Do you take the treatment that you need for it? Do you beat yourself up for having this sickness? It's not your fault if you've had that sickness. It's just because of causes and conditions. So there's something that's known as the concept of the two arrows that the Buddha has talked about. The first arrow is the arrow of pain, bodily pain, that can come in the form of actual bodily pain or sickness or illness or whatever it might be. That's the first arrow, and that arrow is perhaps unpreventable, and everybody experiences that first arrow. But the second arrow is the pain associated with the physicality of that. In other words, it's the grief, it's the mental experience to it, the aversion to it.

So when we talk about pain, for example, everybody's sitting for longer and longer periods of time. And out of 20 people, 20 people will experience pain. Everybody will at some point or another. And the pain can feel excruciating. It feels like there's needles just poking up and down. There's all kinds of burning sensations throughout the thighs and in the back and so on. When you're sitting for two hours or three hours or four hours or whatever it is, or even if you're not sitting that long, if you're not adjusted to it, you feel some kind of pain. But you know what that pain is. The first arrow can't do anything about it, it is there. But the second arrow is preventable. The second arrow is the aversion to that experience, and that aversion makes it worse than it actually is.

If you change your perspective on the pain, and if you 6R, if you let go of the aversion, then the pain will be that. If you relax into the pain, if you have acceptance of that pain, whether it's an illness or whether it's actual bodily pain, if you just accept it as it actually is, it becomes easier. This is my personal observation, let's say, so take it with a grain of salt. I don't know if you've noticed this, but when women get a common cold, you never really actually know that they're getting a cold, because they're just going about their day and everything. But when men get a common cold, you know, everybody knows about it.

It's like, oh, I can't deal with this. Yeah. That's the way that the mind works when it comes to pain. But if you let go of the attachment and aversion to it, then the pain is just that. It's just pain. You just relax into it. This is the way to deal with any kind of meditation pain while you're sitting. Then we have the other kinds of pain. The emotional pain. The grief. The despair. The anxiety. The things that come up in the mind. Those things arise for different reasons, but they're all part of dukkha dukkha. So this mental experience of grief, we spoke about it a little bit. How does grief arise? Or why does it arise?

The grief arises not for the person that's gone. Now, when we talk about grief, it's not just grief like if somebody has passed on, but even a breakup. You experience grief there. You think about the person over and over again. You're eating at a cafe and you think about, oh, this person used to love this food.

Or you see the color pink and this person used to always wear pink socks, and all kinds of grief-stricken thoughts arise because you're thinking about how that person used to make you happy, and now that person is no longer there. How are they, how are you going to be happy? So grief, in that sense, is arising not for the person. It's arising because there is some emptiness in you. There's a feeling of emptiness of the person in your mind. But if you understand that everything has an expiry date, whether it's people or animals or even relationships, one way or the other will

end. If you have that in mind, then you can really enjoy what's going on in the present moment, because you can really take it and say, hey, this is going to go away at some point, but it's here now, and I'm going to enjoy being with this person. I'm going to enjoy sitting here by the lake. I'm going to enjoy spending time with my dog. I'm going to enjoy whatever it is, and I'm going to allow myself to enjoy it. Oftentimes this is the thing: Buddhism is seen as a life-negating process, for whatever reason. But I see it as a life-affirming process, where if you have the ability to see things as they are, then you can just be in reality as it is and enjoy everything, but don't have to cling to it.

The clinging arises because there's fear of losing it. But when you know that it is going to go away, then you can enjoy that much more. You'll see it for yourself when you see that if you let go of trying to hold on to it, and just allow things to be as they are, that the sense bases, the mind, everything is able to enjoy it that much more. So grief is one process where the person who is grieving for another person is doing it because they feel the emptiness, or the missing, of that person. When we talk about anxiety and depression, in some ways you can think about it in terms of energy levels. When the mind and body have too much energy, sometimes that could be misinterpreted as anxiety, or there is just a lot of thoughts going on in the mind, a lot of sensory input that's going on.

And some people experience panic attacks because of that, because it's just so overwhelming. I don't know what to do. And in those situations it's best to just try to bring some level of space by coming back here and doing what it is that you're doing, whether it is listening to a person, whether it's feeling the ground beneath your feet, whether it's feeling the air as you do that. Your mind starts to collect in towards the present, and it stops getting into this worrisome, anxious kind of attitude. Then you have depression, which is something that's related to energy as well, can be related to energy. Now, yes, granted, these different kinds of mental experiences might be due to the way the brain is wired, and that's okay too.

If you can just accept things as they are, it doesn't mean that you give up on life. It doesn't mean that you give up on enjoying life. It doesn't mean that you give up on being able to live life. It just means now you just manage it the best way you can, with the tools that you can use, whether it's therapy, whether it's medication, whatever it is. But by identifying with it and saying, this is who I am, and making it a personality, you're only causing yourself further suffering, further mental pain. When we talk about death, we have grief on one end, which is grieving the death of someone. But then there's also death anxiety, the fear of death.

Why? How does the fear of death arise? Again, the same thing. The mind clings on to this present moment. It doesn't want it to go away. Whether it's the fear of death for oneself or the fear of death for another being. Dying is easy. Everything around that process of dying is difficult. For the person who's dying, sometimes they will experience anxiety, they will experience fear, and so on. And in those moments, it's important for you, if you're there, to calm them down, to remind them of the good things that they've done in their life. And you start to uplift their mind. Bhante Vimalaramsi did this when he was a layperson, too. His mother took care of a hospice where a lot of people were in their last moments or in their last days.

And he would go from place to place, go to them, and he would spend some time with them. And it didn't matter whether they were Buddhist or Christian or Muslim or Jewish or whatever they were. He would just take their particular religious book and read from it and uplift their mind. If you can do that, that's a great service, to be able to uplift a person's mind before they pass on. Because having an uplifted mind creates wholesome intentions and inclinations that can lead, potentially for that being, into a new life that is more wholesome. At least not bringing them down. But the dying process itself, when the body... what is death? Death is basically the ceasing, the irreversible ceasing, of all functions in the body: the respiration, the heart, and the brain, as we know from medical science.

But in the process of dying, there is a way that dying happens in terms of how the sense bases start to stop their functions. First what ceases is the sense of smell. Next what ceases is the sense of taste, then touch, then sight, then hearing. This is the order in which the senses start to cease, and then finally the mind itself. And the mind is ceasing when it has an experience of the life review process. So oftentimes people think that when you go through a process of seeing heavenly beings, or going through the light, or seeing yourself from a higher vantage point, or experiencing visions and things like that, they think that's the transition point from where the person has left the body, so to speak, and is now going to the next life.

Actually, all of that is still happening in the mind. And so the mind continues to function even after so-called medical death, and for a few seconds it just goes through this immense energy. The brain has immense energy that comes up, that is this process of letting go, that results in complete dissolution of the mind and the body. So the body ceases first in terms of the sense bases, and then the mind ceases. And then likewise with regards to the body in terms of elements: what goes away first is the air element, the respiration stops. Then you have the fire element, the temperature, the heat in the body starts to dissipate. Then you have the water element, the blood stops flowing. And then finally you have the earth element, the decay of the bones and the muscles and the sinews and so on.

But long before that happens, the mind has ceased and is already gone. So the body is also completely gone. Because in order for the body to continue functioning, it needs what's known as the life faculty. And that life faculty is also known as vital formations, the jivat indriya. Some people call this the atman, some people call this the soul. But really it's just a process of electrical impulses in the nervous system and throughout the body that creates activity. This starts to go away. Even long after the person is gone, there's still some electrical activity that's there. When that completely ceases, then that's the life energy completely gone. The metabolism goes away as well. So that's the heat and vitality, as it's translated from the suttas.

This process of dying can occur over a period of a few hours to a period of a few days, depending upon how long the mind continues to function. Maybe the mind is still hanging around, and maybe the life faculty is still going on. That's why it's important when somebody passes on, when it seems like, medically speaking, they've passed on, not to cry immediately, not to grieve for them immediately. Try to be there in silence, try to be there by meditating, try to be there by reminding them of all of the good things in their life, even if they've gone afterwards. So, when we say death is suffering, it can be suffering for those who have unwholesome inclinations.

But generally, if they have wholesome mindsets, it's a peaceful transition. The other thing to understand is that once the person goes, death is still suffering, or can be. And I can say this from my personal experience when my father passed away, that all of the other stuff around after the death process is also suffering. Like what? Like having to comfort grieving relatives, having to sign lots and lots of paperwork, right? Getting the body out of the hospital. In my case, or in the situation of my father's body, we had to take him from Cambodia to India. That was quite the process. When he passed on, it took us two weeks for his body to reach India.

And there was a lot of paperwork, a lot of legalities, a lot of things that you have to do. And that is suffering, right? A lot of red tape to go through. In the case of even Bhante Vimalaramsi, when he passed on, his body was there. Then we had to go and cremate his body. It took some time. There was all kinds of paperwork to do, all kinds of legalities to do, and all of that. So all of that is also suffering. It might not be as bad as the moment when the person dies, but in that moment when you're tired and exhausted after the person is dead, you still have to deal with all of this stuff.

And that can be part of that too. So this is all-encompassing, the dukkha dukkha, right? The mass of suffering that is the generic brand name kind of suffering. Then we talk about viparinama dukkha. What is viparinama? Viparinama means to change. The dukkha of change, the suffering of change. So suffering in relation to: there's something that you want, there's something that you want to acquire, there's something that you want to experience, somewhere you want to go, but whatever it is that you want, you don't

get and what it is that you don't want you get, so that can also be part of viparinama dukkha. A few days ago I talked about the shower. That's a great example of viparinama dukkha, right? Cold, hot, hot, cold, cold, hot, right? And you have to be expert in terms of how you calibrate. So this can be part of everyday life. You decide that you want to go on vacation, and you have an entire plan for that vacation. You've booked all the tickets, you're ready to go, you're at the airport, and then you go to the check-in counter and it says that the flight is cancelled. That's viparinama dukkha, yeah, the dukkha of change. Then there is what's known as sankhara dukkha. This is the innate suffering that we all experience through the five aggregates. It's a kind of suffering, a sort of malaise about life. It's a sort of like, oh, there's something more here, something more to life than just this. And it's happening because there's this process of taking personally one or more of the five aggregates.

That's why the five aggregates affected by clinging are seen as sankhara dukkha, because it is through these five aggregates that you experience life, but also you experience dukkha. And when you cling to the five aggregates, what does that mean? That's the question that was asked in many suttas: are the five aggregates the same as the clinging, or is the clinging different from the five aggregates? The way it's understood is that the clinging is intertwined with the five aggregates, because the mind takes the five aggregates as either myself, or belonging to a self, as me, or separate from a sense of self. These are the four kinds of views, self-views, in relation to the five aggregates. So it's the four views multiplied by five aggregates, which are the 20 different kinds of self-view: the five aggregates are me, or the five aggregates belong to me, or I am in the five aggregates, or the five aggregates are separate from me.

So anytime you take things personally, their suffering is inherent. Anytime you identify with this body, anytime you identify with an experience, anytime you identify with concepts, anytime you identify with perceptions, anytime you identify with choices and decisions and formations, anytime you even identify with awareness itself, no matter how pleasant and pristine and clear that awareness is, the identification process itself is suffering and the cause for that suffering. So this is the whole mass of suffering. This is dukkha, and it's understood that what arises, gives rise to dukkha, is jati, birth. Now, here when we talk about birth, we can talk about it on multiple levels. Here birth can mean rebirth from one life to the next life, but it can also mean rebirth from moment to moment.

And then it can also mean birth of action. To be more practical with dependent origination, we'll talk about birth of action first. When we say birth of action, we mean birth of intentional action. And when we talk about intention, we're talking about karma, the renewal of karma, the creation of new karma, which is to be experienced in a future time at some point or another. And that karma can be wholesome, or unwholesome, or neither wholesome nor unwholesome. So when we say birth of action, what we're saying is it's intentional mental volition, or mental intention. So thinking about something, thinking about, for example, harming someone, thinking about saying something to someone that would be harmful.

Or verbal, which is saying something that could be harmful or saying something that could be beneficial. Or physical, or bodily action, or karma, which is the actual using of your body to create something, right? To cause harm or to cause benefit for someone. It's either wholesome or unwholesome. So this is one way of understanding birth. When we have the birth of karma, it can give rise to further dukkha in some way or the other. How? Because karma, now the question that arose was, who does this karma belong to? Every time you take things personally, at that point in time, you renew further karma. Or you bring about the ingredients for the renewal of that further karma.

Which can give rise to further dukkha, further suffering. When we talk about jati also, we're talking about different kinds of beings. So this is on a more macrocosmic level. We're talking about humans and animals and devas and brahmas and mara and hungry ghosts and hell beings and so on and so forth. But what the Buddha is saying is, by the very fact that we come into this existence, that in itself is suffering, because we are experiencing all kinds of painful experiences. We're experiencing all kinds of grief and despair and sorrow and lamentation, but that is the nature of existence. The moment we come to terms with that and we stop identifying with it, then we come towards the wholesome, then we come towards happiness, then we come towards a mind that is free of any kind of agitation.

When that happens, intuition can arise. When intuition arises, then the ingredients for further karma don't arise. So this is all interlinked. It's all interlaced. Now that birth of action is, it cannot be six-hard. It can't be six hard. And the reason is because the moment you release the arrow, you can't call back the arrow. The moment you have thought that thought, you can't recall it. The moment you say that hurtful statement, you can't recall it. You have to experience the effect of what you said. So you could recall it by saying, I'm sorry that I said that, or whatever the effect is.

The moment you punch someone, you can't call back that punch. So the moment you take any kind of intentional action, you can't recall it. So if you see dependent origination like a river, the bend of the river is what's known as bhava. Bhava is the becoming or existence. We'll get to that soon, but the waterfall is the birth of action, and then crashing into the waves is dukkha. You can't try to come back up the waterfall. It is going to take you down towards dukkha. But before dukkha, or before birth of action, there is what's known as bhava. Bhava is translated as becoming, as being, as existence, or personality, or habitual tendencies. All of these different things can be understood as bhava.

And bhava is the bend of that waterfall, just before you take the action. It's all of the things your mind automatically inclines towards when it's met with a series of choices. For example, if somebody says something that is unwholesome towards you, somebody says something that is mean or mean-spirited, the inclination for most people will be to defend themselves, in terms of how could you say that, or to reciprocate in that same way. And the reason is because they have been conditioned to think in that way and to react in that way. So these are your habitual reactions. So when you're met with a series of choices, your mind automatically inclines towards a specific kind of choice.

That is bhava, the becoming into a certain kind of choice. It's where your personality is fully cooked into some kind of a being from which you act, the sense of self from which you act. And so, bhava can be unwholesome, but it could also be wholesome, because you can start to generate wholesome kinds of inclinations, wholesome kinds of responses, rather than unwholesome kinds of reactions. Another way to understand bhava is the habit patterns that we have, that we seem to always get ourselves into. We might travel to a different country. We might travel to a different place completely, but somehow we always manage to find ourselves in similar kinds of situations with similar kinds of people around us.

That is also bhava. So this process of bhava can be understood as a psychological state as well. What does that mean? Well, I talked to you about some of the beings that are there in the Buddhist cosmology. There's the hell beings, the hungry ghosts, the animals, then you have the humans, then you have asuras, devas, brahmas, and so on and so forth. So, to simplify, what that means is our personality traits or our psychological traits can be similar to the way that we behave with regards to these different cosmological existences. So if somebody is generous, if somebody is more forgiving, if somebody is more compassionate, if somebody is more patient, then they have what would be said to be a deva-like psychological trait.

They're more deva-like, even being human. If somebody is all about eat, drink and be merry, then they have a more animalistic kind of mindset. And so their mindset is geared towards the satisfaction of the sense bases. And so their mindset, or their psychological makeup, is more animalistic. If somebody is more jealous and greedy, if somebody tries to be manipulating, they're always hungry for things, jealous of other people's successes, that's very similar to being like a hungry ghost. If somebody is violent, causes violence towards others, creates terror in others, that's the psychological state of being in hell. Causing yourself hell and creating hell for others. But if somebody is in a meditative state, always meditating or always being in a certain kind of jhana, then that corresponds to that particular brahmaloka.

The first jhana or the first four jhanas are the first four brahmalokas. The formless jhanas, infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception or non-perception, are corresponding to the formless realms. So if somebody continues to condition their mind in these states, then their mind state will be similar to that of the beings existing in those realms. So which means they will be primarily, mostly happy, They'll be mostly calm, they'll be mostly tranquil, they will experience spaciousness, they'll have deep equanimity, or whatever it might be. They might have a quiet mind throughout the day, they might be in the signless throughout the day, whatever it might be.

So in terms of the practicality of it, what bhava is, is the habitual reactions that the mind has in relation to choices, and how it starts to incline to certain kinds of choices. Which means this bhava can be conditioned or reconditioned using right effort. So you can 6R unwholesome reactions by recognizing the mind wanting to incline towards creating an unwholesome action, and you can release and relax, and then generate a wholesome choice, or a wholesome inclination towards a choice that might de-escalate the situation, that might create peace in the situation. This is how it's done. So this process of the 6R's is not just for meditation. It's done for daily life. It's done for reconditioning your mindset. So what are these habitual reactions or these habitual tendencies dependent upon?

They are dependent on what's known as upadana, or clinging. When we say clinging, it also means to grasp, to acquire. It's like you're digging your heels deep into it, saying, This is why I crave something or this is why I don't like something or this is who I am. So it's the associations you make around certain kinds of experiences, and it's the rationalizations that you make in your mind. So you could say that when you think about it in your mindset, when you say I like this or I want more of this, that's craving.

Because of so-and-so, that's the clinging. Trying to justify what it is that you crave or have aversion towards is the clinging. Therefore, I am so-and-so is the becoming, the habitual tendency, from which you then act in the birth of action. So there are four types of clinging. There's sensual clinging. There's clinging to rites and rituals. There's clinging to views, and then there's clinging to self-view. Clinging to sensual experiences, what does that mean? You start to create associations for the things that you say are your favorites. When we all grow up as teenagers, for example, we grow up listening to a kind of music, and that's the best music there is. And then when we grow up, we get much older, that's music.

Everything else kids are listening to these days is crap. What are they listening to? But what we listened to when we were teenagers, that's music. Why? Because when we are teenagers, we have all of these emotions, strong emotions that we connect to when we listen to the music or scents or tastes or whatever it might be. We might enjoy certain kinds of foods, because we have some kind of emotional association to them. Our mothers would maybe make a certain kind of dish, so if it's on the menu, we might have a tendency to order that on the menu. A chocolate cake, the best example there. I love chocolate cake because when I ate chocolate cake, I was in a birthday party and I had a lot of fun and all of these things.

Things like all of these associations that come up are part of the clinging process, creating favorites. I like the color red because it represents the time when I was in love, and this and that, all of these things. Or I love the color green because when I wore green I seemed to get more money, and all kinds of associations that people will make. You look at, especially in the US, I don't know how it is in Europe, you look at supermarkets, and all of the colorful

Cereals are about this high. Why? Because kids are this tall when they see it, and they're like, oh, I want that. So marketers and advertisers, I don't know how many of you might be here who are that, but you guys are reinforcing clinging. When you go and see an ad for something, and the ad uses certain kinds of words and certain kinds of colors and beautiful models and music and all of that, it's just creating: oh, I have to have that. I have to have the latest iPhone. I have to have the latest car. I have to, I need this perfume or cologne because it attracts the people that I want in my life.

Or I have to wear these kinds of clothes. So creating all of these associations is sensual clinging. The rationalizing of why it is that you think you like something, or you don't like something. Then we have clinging to views. Clinging to views can mean clinging to our opinions about things. The Buddha has said, this world is a thicket of views. A thicket of views. And beings can get attached and cling to views. And that could even result in the taking up of the stick and sword. We've seen it in our own human history. People have certain opinions about this. My religion is better than your religion. My political view is better than your political view.

My understanding of this world is better than your understanding of the world. And if you are wrong, I'm willing to kill you for it. It happens. It has happened. So, clinging to opinions, identifying with the views that we keep taking on. What are views, actually? What are opinions? They are not ours. We grow up listening to our parents. We grow up listening to our teachers. We grow up listening to the news. In order to fit in with a certain kind of social circle, we'll take up those views. And eventually, they become part of us. And we start to defend those views. That's a kind of clinging. Another kind of clinging to views is clinging to wrong views, in accordance to what the Buddha talks about, when he says right view and wrong view.

A wrong view would be something that negates the understanding of karma, for example. It says there's no meaning in giving, there's no meaning in sacrificing, which means to offer something to the monks or the nuns and so on. There's no meaning in action and consequence. It's a very nihilistic view. Or it might say something like, if I do certain kinds of things, then I will get it. Or it's only about this body and the pursuit of sensual pleasures. But in reality, if you think about it, if you've experienced jhana, then you know there is this world and the other world. So once you start to get into right view, you start to identify what are the wrong views, the views that cause suffering, the views that cause the mind to go into confusion.

So clinging to these kinds of views. And then finally, there's even clinging to the Dhamma. You're practicing TWIM, or you're practicing whatever it is. You follow the Eightfold Path. You have conviction in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha. And if somebody says what you're doing is wrong, somebody criticizes you, somebody creates a whole essay on you and says, what you are practicing is so-and-so and all of these things. How do you feel about it? Have you identified with the practice? Have you identified with the Dhamma? Have you identified with the meditation? Have you made it a part of your personality? Or are you using the Dhamma as a tool to go from one shore to the other shore?

The Buddha has talked about the Dhamma as a raft to get from one side to the other. Once you use the raft to go from one side to the next or to the other, then you don't carry the raft on your shoulders and continue walking. You leave it there as it is. It doesn't mean that you stop following the Eightfold Path. All it means is you stop making a personality around it. You're using it for the purposes of letting go. Don't use it for the purposes of holding on to the Dhamma itself. This is what I would call Dhamma defenders. People who defend their views and positions on the Dhamma. You are right and you are wrong and all of these other things.

So your understanding of the Dhamma is your understanding. Another person's understanding of the Dhamma is their understanding. There's no need to say who's right or wrong. If it's causing harm, if it's causing, if it's not creating what the Dhamma was supposed to be intended for, then yes, you could say, hey, maybe you should look into this, if it seems appropriate to. But just do your own thing. Stay in your own lane. And at the same time, don't identify with the practice. The more you identify with the practice, the harder it becomes, actually. That's why I was talking about in the meditation, when you meditate, just be here and let the object be here.

Don't become the meditator. Don't become the meditation. Just notice the meditation is happening. I'll go a little deeper into this when we talk about feeling. But this is the way to let go of identifying with the Dhamma. So anytime you notice thoughts of creating associations about the world in relation to the sense pleasures, anytime you start to notice opinions being generated or the mind starting to become flustered, wanting to say something, wanting to defend that particular view, you can recognize it and you can let it go. Because ultimately, your peace of mind is more important than trying to be right. Be right for just that one moment. To what? At what cost? At the disturbance of your mind.

If you truly understood that the greatest wealth in existence is peace of mind, a peace that passes all understanding, passeth all understanding, as it's said in the Bible, it's a different kind of peace, and if you can just remain there and not have to defend something, you don't need to do that all the time, and the more you do it you're creating the conditions or reconditioning the mind to be somebody who's volatile, somebody who's reactive towards situations, towards things people say about different kinds of views. Then there's clinging to rites and rituals. So when you say clinging to rites and rituals, one understanding is clinging to rites and rituals with the idea that they will take you to nibbana. But when you start to walk the path yourself, you start to see, oh, walking this path will take oneself to nibbana. It's not clinging to certain kinds of rites and rituals.

One kind of rites and rituals that was there during the time of the Buddha, which was very prominent, was animal sacrifice, and the Buddha was pretty vocal against that. That's a kind of clinging. I will cause harm to another being for the benefit of my own self. That's a kind of clinging to rites and rituals. Or clinging to rites and rituals with the idea that, if I only do this, if I only pray to this particular deity, or if I only wear this color on a specific day, or if I only wear this particular lucky charm, all of these different kinds of ideas are clinging, clinging to rites and rituals. But the Buddha has said it is through our own efforts that we create karma, not through just thinking and wishing for it. If that was the case, it'd be very easy for us to just sit and think about it, and it comes to

Be but there is effort to be made. You can't just pray to a deity and say, if you only give me this, then I'll do this. You know, have these transactional deals with deities, or wear your lucky socks or your lucky ring or whatever it might be. So these are the different kinds of clinging. If you notice the mind starting to make associations like this, you'll also notice that it creates agitation in the mind in the form of expectation. My very good friend Venerable Metananda would say, expectations are dukkha under construction. Yeah, expectations are another word for craving, so this is going to cause further suffering. Finally, we have clinging to self-view.

I already touched upon this a little bit. Clinging to self-view is clinging to the belief in a personal self, and it's an intellectual kind of clinging. The idea is the mind will identify with one or more of the five aggregates, as I mentioned earlier, as self, or belonging to self, or self being in it, or separate from self. So those are the 20 kinds of views: the four self-views multiplied by the five aggregates.

Now, each of these different types of clinging is completely destroyed at each of the different attainments. For example, clinging to wrong view, clinging to self-view, and clinging to rites and rituals go away completely at stream entry. Clinging to sensual pleasures goes away completely at non-returner, at anagami. So for the clinging to be completely eradicated, you need to progress through the stages of awakening. Now, this clinging is dependent on what's known as craving. Craving comes from the word tanha, which literally means thirst, to thirst. So this craving is not just the mind that says, I like it or I want it. It's deeper than that. Or it says, I don't like it, or this is unpleasant to me.

It's deeper than that. This craving, when we talk about it, is a form of fight or flight. And the reason I say that is because when we see an object of attraction, something that we want, what do we do? We pursue towards it, and we get obsessed by it, and we want it, and we try to grasp at it. And so that's the craving. It says, I like it, I want it, I won't stop until I have it. And as soon as you acquire it, what happens? You feel a sense of relief in that moment, the satisfaction of attaining that. But guess what? That's very short-lived. You need the next dopamine hit. So, I got that, but I want a better model now.

Or I've seen that there's something else bigger than this. I want that now. So you just keep doing that over and over and over again. In the case of the flight situation, the aversion, where you don't like something and you say, I don't want it. And in pushing it away, the pain that you feel, you have aversion towards it and you push it away. And if you move around, or if you get up from your position and you walk around, oh, now I feel relief. What are you doing? You're reconditioning the mind to say, every time I do this, I feel relief. That's why the 6R's are crucial in this case. The relaxed step of the right effort is absolutely crucial.

Because what it's saying is, if you can relax and find relief in that moment, it's not conjoined to the pursuit of the object of craving, or it's not tied to the pushing away of whatever it is causing the aversion. So you feel relief. In feeling relief, you don't need to do that in order to pursue and then feel relief. So you're reconditioning your mind. If you find yourself relaxing and finding yourself relieved, then you won't pursue that, or you won't push it away. That's why when we talk about relaxing into the pain, what we're saying is you're just accepting the pain. You're taking away the aversion, the identification with the pain. In that in itself, there is a minuscule kind of relief.

And bit by bit, that relief starts to replace the aversion. And bit by bit, that pain starts to dissipate. So this craving mindset arises from taking things personally. When you have a pleasant feeling, you say, oh, this is great for me, I want more of it. When something seems off and you don't like it, you say, I don't like it, take it away from me. Or if it's something that's neutral, if it's a concept, if it's a process, if it's an identity, what do you say? I am that. Identifying with whatever it is. And then from there, the clinging arises. So it's that part of the mind that says, I want it, or I really want it, I can't live without it, or I want it to go away, it's causing me all kinds of distress, or I am it.

That first part of the statement is the craving. And then, because of so-and-so, is the clinging. Therefore, I am so-and-so is the being, and from there you act. So, there's different kinds of craving. There's the sensual craving, there's the craving for existence, and there's a craving for non-existence. The craving for sensual pleasures, we all have felt that at some point or another in our lives. That's like, "Oh, I have to have that particular thing," or "I don't want that, it's affecting me in a certain way because I'm identified with the sense basis." That's sensual craving. Craving for existence can mean things like, I want to be in a certain kind of social circle, or I want to progress in my meditation and I'm obsessed by that.

Now look, there's a difference between wanting Nibbana and craving for Nibbana. There is a difference: one is called chanda, which is a wholesome inclination. You know your goal post, you know the goal is freedom from suffering, you know the goal is Nibbana. But in the pursuit of that, in the process of that, I should say, you get obsessed by it. You're in the waiting room, expecting for something to happen. That has to be let go of. So, another kind of craving can be non-existence. I don't want to be here. I don't want to live. That's the most extreme form of craving for non-existence. Why does that arise? It can arise because, again, the person feels so overwhelmed by everything.

It's like, I will only find peace if I leave this life. Craving for non-existence. And all of them stem from the sense of the personal self. The sense that this is me, this is mine, this is myself. As soon as you let go of that, then the craving also ceases. And that's why this craving is dependent on vedana, or feeling. So when we use the word feeling, it can sometimes mean, oh, our emotions. That's part of it. But I like to use the word experience. It's any kind of experience. It can be a mental experience. It can be a sensory experience. It can be a conceptual experience. Whatever experience it is. And there are 108 different types of feeling, or 108 different types of experience, categories of experience.

But the very, very fundamental kinds are pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. So a pleasant experience is something that is pleasing to the eye, pleasing to the ear, pleasing to the nose, pleasing to the tongue, pleasing to the body, pleasing to the mind. Something that is unpleasant is aversive towards the eye, towards the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body and the mind. Something that's neutral doesn't create any kind of desire to go here in terms of craving or aversion, but it can give rise to ignorance, and I'll explain what that means. So if we take these three categories of experience and you think about dependent origination like a river, underneath the river are these vortexes, whirlpools, and each whirlpool is a link of dependent origination.

But the force of that whirlpool are what are known as tendencies, underlying tendencies, in the case of feeling. There are others as we go and explore the other links, but in terms of feeling, there are underlying tendencies that underlie the experience. So in the case of a pleasant experience, something that is pleasing to our senses, something that is pleasing to the sense of I, is the underlying tendency towards craving. And so that means as soon as something is pleasant as an experience, we say, oh, this is wonderful. I hope it doesn't stop.

Or I hope I can hold on to this. That's the underlying tendency towards craving, which can give rise to full-blown craving at that link. Or if it's a painful feeling, a painful experience, your mind says it flinches and says I don't want that. That's the underlying tendency towards aversion. If you act upon that, then that gives rise to full-blown aversion. The neutral feeling can give rise to ignorance. When we say ignorance, we're talking about lack of mindfulness, because it might be a feeling that has no quality, and we might not be aware of it. And by not being aware of it, we could also identify with the experience that's going on, which can give rise to the craving that says, I am this, which gives rise to the clinging that says, I am this because of so-and-so, which gives rise to the bhava that, therefore, this is my sense of self, and from that sense of self, I am going to

act. And then, those are the three primary underlying tendencies that can arise, dependent upon the quality of the experience. But there can be other ones. There can be the underlying tendency towards doubt, the underlying tendency towards views, the underlying tendency towards being, and the underlying tendency towards conceit. So when we say underlying tendency towards doubt, doubt here is not knowing if the experience is wholesome or unwholesome, if the experience is going to cause me pain or not. It's very much tied to ignorance in that sense. The underlying tendency towards views is having an opinion about the experience, judging the experience, creating again identification.

The underlying tendency towards being: I want this, I like this experience, and I want more of this experience, and I want to see if I can have something better than this experience. Existential, from existence, from being. And then the underlying tendency towards conceit. So conceit comes from the word mana, which means to compare. So when we say compare, it means we make comparisons. I am better than so-and-so, or I am worse than so-and-so, or I am equal even to so-and-so. Those are the three primary kinds of conceit. But there can be conceit in relation to the sixth sense basis. I identify with the sixth sense basis. To the five aggregates, to an experience, to jhana, to meditation, to knowledge, conceit towards knowledge.

"My knowledge is greater than everybody else's" or "this person is more knowledgeable than I am." This comparison happens all the time in the mind. That's really a big cause for suffering, and that creates the whole syndrome of keeping up with the Joneses. Our neighbors have a nice car, so we have to get a better car. The idea that the grass is greener on the other side. "This person is in a relationship. Why am I not in a relationship? I'm going to go out and date now and find somebody that I can be in a relationship with." Or any kind of comparing that the mind does. There's different kinds of conceit.

37 types of conceit, or something like that. A whole list of different kinds of conceits that can arise. And it's always there, nudging in the mind, this little mechanism in the mind that's always seeing: how does this experience benefit me? How does this person benefit me? Is this person better than me? All of these different kinds of things are part of conceit. And so any experience that the mind has, it will create a sense of self around it. And this is where I want to talk about one of the most compact teachings of the Buddha. It comes from a Sutta called the Baiya Sutta. It's one that I often quote because it's so powerful.

In that Sutta, there is a wanderer, an ascetic named Baiya. And he's called Baiya of the Bark Cloth because the kind of clothes he wears is made out of tree bark. And what that denotes is that he comes from a school from the Upanishads, which always talked about the self behind everything. The self is the seer behind the seeing, is the hearer behind the heard, is the one who is the experiencer behind the experience. This is what he was taught, this is what he meditated upon, and he felt he was now fully enlightened. The story goes that this Deva came to Baiya knowing that Baiya had this conception, this idea. So he said, Baiya, go to the Buddha.

He will clarify your ideas, because what you think you are is not the case. So Baiya goes in pursuit of finding the Buddha. He sees the Buddha, the Buddha is there, and he says to the Buddha, "Please give me a teaching that is very compact so that my mind might be free from all suffering." What does the Buddha say? "I'm on my lunch break, come back later." Because he's going to go for alms. And so Baiya says, "Well, if you can just give me a short teaching, a very short teaching, just a little amount of your time, that's all I'm asking for." Again, the Buddha says, "Baiya, ask me later. I'm going to go for lunch."

So a third time, Baiya says to the Buddha, "I might die by the time you get back from lunch. So please, give me a short teaching." And so in the Sutta, as it says, if you ask the Buddha something three times, he's going to give it to you. So he says, "Okay, fine." He sets his bowl aside and he says, "Okay, now listen carefully, Baiya."

In the seeing, there is only the seen. In the hearing, there is only the heard. In the sensing, there is only the sensed. In the cognizing, there is only the cognized. If, by ya, there is no you in that, then there is no you by that. When there is no you by that, then there is no you after that. Just this is the end of suffering. And Baiya understood immediately. He contemplated what the Buddha said and he attained arahatship. And then later on he walks away from the Buddha and he forgets to look both sides of the road, and a bull gores him and kills him. So that's what I say to everybody: when you attain arahatship, please remember to look both sides of the road. But he died as an arahant. So what is this teaching all about?

what the Buddha says in the seeing there is only the seen, in the hearing there is only the heard what does that mean? it means that whatever you are experiencing, it is just the experience the mind has the tendency to project this is my experience or i am experiencing it or this experience is happening to me that's why the buddha says when there is no you in that there is no you by that and there's no you after that just that is the end of suffering if you see every experience as an impersonal process in other words the way i would say it is experience everything fully everything

fully without the sense of I then there will be no craving there will be no clinging, there will be no becoming there will be no birth of further renewed karmic action and there will be no suffering so So, how do you experience something fully without the sense of I? Allow the experience to flow as it is. Don't judge it. Just let the experience be as it is. It's a painful experience? It's a painful experience. It's a pleasant experience? Okay, it's a pleasant experience. It's a neutral experience? Okay, it's a neutral experience. That in itself is mindfulness of feeling. This is what is present right now. That's it. In the same way for the meditation. In the meditating, there is only the meditation.

No meditator. Whatever is happening in the meditation is an experience. As soon as you grasp onto it, and you want to relive that experience, or you want more of that experience, or you want something better than that experience, now you are in craving. It's a very subtle kind of craving. Or you've heard that there's a better experience, and so now you're waiting. Anytime now. You're in the waiting room. So how do you deal with that? What have I told you before? Go back to radiating equanimity. Because equanimity is seeing things as they actually are, without getting affected one way or the other. That is the true meaning of equanimity: allowing the experience to be as it is, but not taking it personally.

We'll stop here now, and we'll continue tomorrow. Any questions? Thank you. So, what we discussed: fading to this age and death, all of that except birth can be... Yeah, becoming can be worked with through the 6R's, and clinging can be worked with through the 6R's, because once you experience dukkha, you can't 6R it; you can only 6R your reaction to it. So dukkha can also be seen as a painful feeling, for example. But you can apply the 6R's to becoming by recognizing the choices you're about to make, if they're unwholesome, and letting them go, and then reconditioning by generating wholesome choices. You can start clinging whenever you notice the mind digging its heels into it and saying, "I really like this because of so-and-so."

And you can let go of that. And in that moment, you stop any process of becoming from happening. Every time you notice the mind says, "I want this" or "I don't want this," stop. That's the craving. You can let go of that and just rest in the mind that's free of any of that craving. Or any time you notice the mind taking something personally, whether it's a pleasant experience, an unpleasant experience, or a neutral experience.

If you recognize the mind taking it personally and you let go of it and let the experience happen as it is, then there won't be further craving, clinging, and becoming. So primarily the underlying tendencies in feeling, the craving, the clinging, and the becoming, are what you can apply the 6R's to. The birth of intentional action, you said when there is a thought you cannot take it back. But is it when you identify with the thought or when you cling with it, it creates... - Yeah, when I say thought, I mean intentionally thinking about something. But thought in general, like the thoughts that come and go, that has nothing to do with it, yeah.

Yes. Maybe my question is a little bit off topic, but you mentioned seeing things as it is but not taking it personally, and now all these days we are without our smartphones and mobile phones, living every day with this device gives another side on the world and makes it pretty difficult to receive all this information that is intended for me personally. I see that this will cause some difficulties when further progressing with this kind of meditation when we are outside from retreat again. - Yeah, this is actually a very good question that you're asking. So this was a question asked in one of my online talks somewhere, and somebody said, I have a lot of suffering whenever I watch the news.

So what should I do? And I told him, just stop watching the news. It's really that easy. Because we understand that all the information that we get through our mobile phones, through social media and everything, is all catered by algorithms. And this is a great representation of dependent origination for us, because the algorithm will be conditioned by what we see more and more of. Same with conditioning in terms of dependent origination. So it's important to understand that what we see around us, what is given to us as information, should not be accepted as it is.

But when we say seeing reality as it is, what we are saying is that reality has certain characteristics. Mainly, it is dependently arisen. Meaning, whatever arises in front of us through the six sense bases arises due to causes and conditions, and therefore is impermanent, and therefore is impersonal. So reality being impersonal: if we have that view, then no matter what kind of news is coming in, no matter what kind of information is coming in, with that as a buffer, this is what I call attention rooted in reality. Which means, or comes from the word yoniso manasikara: seeing things by how they arise. Manasikara is attention and yoniso is the source, the source being seeing reality as it is. So when we do this with that buffer of seeing everything as impersonal, then we have the ability to say, okay, this has nothing to do with me.

And we can just rest in that. We don't have to take that information and judge it, or do anything with it, or create opinions about it, and so on. Of course, easier said than done when we live in a society where we are fed continuous information 24 hours a day. That's why in the time of the Buddha it was so much easier to understand the Dhamma and experience these stages of awakening. Can you imagine giving a mobile phone to somebody living at that time? I think their heads would literally explode. They would have, like, this serotonin syndrome or something. It would just be so many newer chemicals coming in the way. So we have to... I mean, this retreat is wonderful because it's a dopamine detox for us.

We're not engaged with mobile phones. We're not engaged with social media, and so on. And what I would say to that, practically speaking, it might be next to impossible to have that kind of lifestyle out there in the lives that people live, because they need information, their jobs require them to be informed, and so on. But if you have mindfulness as the gatekeeper, the mindfulness that understands that this experience that we're having is conditioned and not to be seen as me, mine, or myself, that mindfulness will be our protector, and we won't engage in it through a sense of craving or clinging or becoming. Develop your mindfulness and everything else will fall in its place.

Thank you. I have also an integration-kind question, because I'm working as a coach very often, and so it's common, in my experience, in my opinion, I feel like it's common, to train methods to feel what is yours. Yeah. So how can I speak or act without always saying "I'm my mind now"? There's nothing wrong with saying me, mine, or myself. Nothing wrong with it at all. Yeah. The other thing is, actually, somebody did ask the Buddha how somebody who's fully awakened would use terminology. Would they still say I, or me, or mine? And the Buddha said yes, they would, otherwise it would be very difficult to transact in the world. It'd be like, you know, "this body right now feels hungry." So yes, people will understand what you're saying, but they'll also think you're a little weird. So what I'm getting at is, it's okay to use personal experience when you're trying to teach people or trying to coach people.

What you have to understand is, you don't expect them to say, "Oh, that's a wonderful experience," and all of these other things. It's just you're saying, from your own experience, that this is what I've seen, or I have read about this, or in my opinion, based on what I know, this is how I understand things, and maybe this is how you might want to approach it. Completely fine. But the taking of it personally would be thinking that experience is really me, mine, or myself. Because that experience actually is nothing but in your memory. And now that memory is arising due to causes and conditions. And that's another way of saying, if you remain completely here in the moment, surrender to the moment, then even if you take other memories and use those as examples, you won't take them seriously.

You won't take them as personally, because the reality is here in the moment. Yes. Her, and then you, yeah? So probably a little bit related as well: if someone is dissolving grieving and enters into a stream here at the retreat or later in life, would they normally observe the eight precepts on a daily basis, or the five precepts? And also, I want to ask you in practical terms, it's like another question. On a day-to-day basis, it's probably easier to stay in the moment, but quite probably difficult to radiate loving-kindness on a day-to-day basis, like when you go home and, you know, your busy lives, and so your mind can't be constantly, you know, radiating loving-kindness or equanimity.

Or whatever, but probably a little bit easier to be at the present moment. So how would you, first of all, just to make sure that you understand: a person doesn't enter the stream by dissolving craving. Okay, they let go of all causes and conditions, experience nibbana, but craving can still arise for somebody who enters the stream. Remember the ten fetter model. All right, sensual craving and aversion goes away completely for the anagami; the first three fetters go away for somebody who enters the stream. Secondly, when we talk about this process of mindfulness, it is a lifelong system, it is actually a lifestyle. Does it mean that you have to continuously radiate all the time? Not necessarily. What we're saying is that you could use these brahma viharas as tools in your tool set. I'm going to talk about this on the last day, because we're going to talk about what to do. But for example, if you find yourself in conflict and you have aversion, what is an antidote for that? Loving-kindness. But how do you bring about that loving-kindness through mindfulness? So the brahma viharas and so on are not the key.

Always, it's the mindfulness. And mindfulness, yes, in a sense, being in the present, being aware of what's going on, being aware of where your thoughts carry the mind. That is easier, let's say, than trying to radiate all the time. And that's okay. That's fine. But you should be able to use the Brahma Viharas as toolkits. Somebody is having a bad day, somebody is suffering, you can radiate compassion and act from that compassion.

Somebody has had some kind of experience of success, instead of being jealous, you can have empathetic joy. You're sitting in traffic and there's honking and all of these things are going on, you can be in equanimity. But all of that is dependent upon mindfulness. Just observing what's going on in mind, in relation to everything that's happening. Sati sampajanna. Sati, remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. Sampajanna, aware of things as they are. Meaning, in the walking, you're only aware that you're walking. Okay, I'm walking this way. I'm thinking about this while I'm walking. So that's, again, present moment awareness. That is much easier to do. Yeah, about the precepts.

When you get off a retreat, first and foremost, you can just take five precepts. But somebody who enters the stream, at a minimum, can take five precepts. It's not like they have to, or they will choose to take eight precepts or ten precepts. But at a minimum, they will keep the five precepts. Yeah, wait, first turn. I am not so totally clear about the connection between neutral feelings and ignorance. So it's an underlying tendency which can cause harmful action?

Yes, not the neutral feeling itself, but the underlying tendency of ignorance. So when we say ignorance, for practical understanding, ignorance means lack of mindfulness, lack of proper attention, and lack of mindfulness of what? That this is an impersonal process. So when that happens and you take the neutral feeling as self, then from there you can have identification and clinging and so on. That's the underlying tendency to ignorance. But if you see it with the mindfulness that this is not me, not mine, not myself, you have complete clarity of mind, then you will just let that experience pass, aware of that experience as an experience without clinging to it. Exactly. In the story you have been telling us, you explained that he attained full arahantship by understanding.

Does it mean that he, at some point of his listening and existing, just had to dip into nibbana and just understand everything? Or is it just by contemplating? By listening, in the listening of itself, it's like a guided meditation. Remember what I said, every time the Buddha spoke, it was like a guided meditation. So if somebody was listening to the Buddha, you would listen very deeply and experience the states that he was talking about as he was explaining them, and in essence going into meditation, and then experiencing nibbana, and then being free of suffering. So contemplation as a process of mind is one thing, which is helpful to the extent that it can allow you to clarify a lot of the concepts in the Dhamma.

But the experiential understanding of it only happens when you go into meditation. Anyone else? Okay, let's share some merit. May all beings be free from suffering, and may the fearstruck be fearless, 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.