Mar 23 2025 Sunday Suttas "Devouring and Deforming Form" The Five Aggregates w/Delson Armstrong

All right, I want to go to this. This is the Bikku Wadi. And why, because do you call it form? It is deformed, therefore it is called form. Deformed by what? Deformed by cold, deformed by heat, deformed by hunger, by thirst, by contact with flies, mosquitoes, winds, sun, and serpents. It is deformed, because deformed.

For it is called form. And why, because do you call it feeling? Okay, so form. What is form? When we talk about form, form is basically anything related to internal or external form. So we have our bodies as form. We have our sense bases as form, the eyes, physical eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and so on. We have this table that my computer is on. That, if you think about it, is form. All of it is form. And he says it is deformed. In other words, it's subject to decay. It's subject to change. It continuously changes. It continuously goes through some kind of transformation, one way or the other, every moment as things come up and go. Our bodies are aging. Our senses are dulling, for the most part, right? Our eyes

may be getting weaker. Our ears may be getting weaker bit by bit, by bit. And therefore that is form. If we understand form as something that is always subject to change, then we will let go of the idea that we are our bodies or that we are the sense bases. Because the self, so to speak, that the Buddha always talks about, is self versus not self. He's not saying versus no self, you think. Self versus not self. In other words, the body cannot be considered self because it continues to change. And so if we put our identity and our essential nature attributed to the body, then we will experience suffering. We will experience pain, because the body, for the most part, just very very very. In any school times in our lives, do we experience great pleasure in the body?

And generally that's due to some kind of central pleasure, the highest being, you know, sexual release, orgasm. And people become addicted to that experience and it's from the way of the body. But the body is like a machine and a machine continues. to needs and all these things that we carry around throughout our lives sometimes we gain weight sometimes we lose weight in my own experience i had experienced so many different pains in the body after i came back from the himalayas around 17 or 18. uh no it was 17. And I experienced jaundice of the liver, real pain in my sides. And my liver and my spleen were swollen. I know firsthand how it can feel to have a painful experience with the body.

And I had transformed into a skeleton. I was nothing but skin and bones. If you looked at one of my passport photos, it's like there's a skeleton looking out at you through the camera lens. So the body, for all its beauty in terms of its cellular function and so on, from a personal perspective, from a perspective of this is the body you have to carry around, we are subject to all kinds of things related with it. It has illness. It has fever. It has shivering. It has all of these things.

So if we realize that the body is subject to decaying, then we let go. We feel a kind of relief from taking this body as self. And we see the body for what it is, which is just an instrument. And it's meant to be nourished for as long as it needs to be nourished. So you feed it well, you make sure it gets enough rest, gets enough exercise. You treat it like, I don't know about you guys, if you remember the Tamagotchi in the 90s, the little e-pets that I know my generation had those. You had to make sure that the e-pet had enough food, enough water, whatever it is, like any pet.

And if you don't attend to it, what's going to happen? To die. We don't want that. We have a fear of death, and that's because of our identity to the body. So we treat the body with enough nutriment that is required for its sustenance, so that we are in good prime health, or in good health generally, and that we have enough strength to direct our energies towards what really counts in this life, which is to escape the wheel of samsara. The way to do that is through the practice of samatha and vipassana, and you need a body for that. As long as you're here in manusaloka, it's only in manusaloka that you have the higher sort of functions related to consciousness and perception and insight and intuition, but they're all intermingled with the body. This is why we have nama-rupa, and vinnana, is the five aggregates in essence.

But you need consciousness for that nama-rupa to function. You need nama-rupa for consciousness to be housed in, in this manusaloka. So that is the form. Talk about feeling. And why, bhikkhus, do you call it feeling? It feels, bhikkhus, therefore it is called feeling. And what does it feel? It feels pleasure. It feels pain. It feels neither pain nor pleasure. It feels, bhikkhus, therefore it is called feeling. So this comes from the word vedana. Vedana means to experience. I like to use the word experience, because that could be a mental feeling or it could be a physical feeling. What is a mental feeling? A mental feeling can be the experience of loving kindness. It could be the experience of being in the first jhana. It could be the experience of being angry, of being cloudy in your mind. Or it could be the experience of a bug biting your skin. It could be the experience of feeling immense heat in South India, and then suddenly a cool breeze comes by. You feel painful feeling, and then you feel pleasant feeling, or it could be neutral. But these are all experiences.

But by virtue of the fact they are experienced, it means that they're conditioned. Conditioned, conditioned by what? Conditioned by number one, the body, what sensors are present, and how the sense doors are taking that. It's also conditioned by our perception of what is pleasant and unpleasant. So experience is dependent upon, or feeling is dependent upon, contact. What is contact? Contact is the coming together of the sense base, the sense base object, and the sense base consciousness. When you are seeing me and when you are listening to me, you have your eyes and your ears. These are the senses, the sense bases. You have me on screen as the object for the eyes. And you have my voice as the sound, which is the sense-based object for the ears.

But in order for you to be aware of that, you need consciousness. So there needs to be the sense-based or ear consciousness and eye consciousness. You see and hear. When you have these three coming together, you have what? Your contact. And because of this contact, there arises a feeling of seeing me on screen and hearing my voice. But if I shut up right now, now there's no experience. There was no experience there. It changed. If I turn off my camera, I'll turn it off for a couple of seconds. Now you don't see me. So that experience is gone. That feeling has gone. The feeling of seeing and hearing me had gone. Why? Because there was no more contact there.

So feeling is that which feels. Contact is that which is aware of something, where you pay attention to something. And dependent upon that, the feeling comes up, the experience comes up. When it goes away, so too does the experience or feeling. Then we understand feeling to be impermanent. Being impermanent, subject to change, we should understand it as not-self. Because if we hold on to the experience, no matter how pleasant it is, it will change. And if it changes, that means now our expectation of that experience is not met, and therefore we experience suffering. And so we should see it as not-self. Painful feeling. Ultimately, painful feeling in itself is suffering.

But it changes when the stimulus is gone, when the contact is gone. Perception. It says here, it perceives, bhikkhus. Therefore, it is called perception. And what does it perceive? It perceives blue. It perceives yellow. It perceives red. It perceives white. It perceives, bhikkhus. Therefore, it is called perception. It comes from the word sanna, s-a-n-n-a, with the squiggly lines above the ends, so it's sanna. So sanna basically, the word nya or jnana, means to know, to understand. And sa always means there's a certain kind of effort or energy to it. Like, for example, we have sankharas, right? So the word sang, sang there, it really is like an effort. It's extra. There's a certain level of, like, more to it.

Sankharas, to cook something, to cook something extra. That's one of the translations that can be used: that we are labeling what we are experiencing. And it is rooted in the memory of prior experiences. So if our memory is faulty, which can happen as we evolve through life, we remember things differently. And it also is dependent upon our mood when we're remembering something. You may see this for yourself. When you remember happy times, but you are in sadness and grief over a loved one's passing, there's a bittersweetness to that happy moment.

Or you may be in a very happy mood and you may remember something cringy that you did in the past. You may just laugh at yourself and be like, oh, that's what I did. So the perception was different. It was taking it in that moment, and dependent upon how your mind was remembering it. So the mood and the memory of it. Now, it says here, it perceives blue. It perceives yellow. It perceives red. It perceives white. So that's one aspect, the labeling of something dependent upon what we have learned in this consensus reality, based on how our eyes take in information. We all say this is the color red, or this is the color blue, and therefore we all agree upon this is the color red, and we've learned it in

school. We've learned it in the first grade, or the second, kindergarten, or whatever, and now every time we see the color red we say that is red. But perception is not just all of that labeling process. It's also the perceptions of our ideals about the world, that we have of ourselves, that continues to change as well, that continues to evolve and grow. Therefore, perceptions, being conditioned by how we see the world, our memory is interdependent with perception. We understand perception too as impermanent, therefore liable to change, therefore potentially causing suffering. Suffering. And because it's impermanent and suffering, it is not to be seen as me, mind, or myself. Volitional formations, sankharas, they construct the conditioned dhikus. Therefore, they're called volitional formation.

And what is the conditioned that they construct? They construct conditioned form as form. They construct conditioned feeling as feeling. They construct conditioned perception as perception. They construct conditioned volitional formations as volitional formations. They construct conditioned consciousness as consciousness. They construct the condition, because therefore they're called volitional formations. So when we talk about sankharas or volitional formations, there are three types. There are mental, verbal and physical. So they are literally the ones and zeros of this matrix, because they are enabling for the mind to feel and perceive what is being brought in through the sense bases. They are enabling the function of breathing in and out and other physical aspects of breathing, the body. They are enabling this process of the mind to reflect and contemplate what is being experienced and express it in speech.

Therefore, they're called verbal formations. They are conditioners. That's what they're saying. They construct the condition. They create our reality. And they are dependent upon our volition. Our volition is interchangeable with our intentions. Our volition to do this or that has an effect on the subsequent arising of formations, mind towards the unwholesome, and thereby condition even consciousness to take in the reality that we're seeing from that bend. Likewise with the wholesome. So formations are rooted in the three kleshas, the three roots. In Pali, kilesas; in Sanskrit, kleshas. That is greed, hatred and delusion.

Greed is that potential energy that is like, this is me, this is mine. I want more of this for me, for mine. Hatred is, I don't like this and I'm pushing it away. And delusion is the misperception of what is impermanent as permanent, what is suffering as happiness, self as self. And the formations carry forward those roots and enable the mind to experience karma, but also act out of that sense of me, mine, or myself, which creates further karma.

So how do we escape that? We have to understand that every given moment, there is a choice. And in that moment of choice, we can tend towards the wholesome or the unwholesome. And as we tend to the wholesome, we are letting go of the idea that there is a person doing this. We see it all as a process, because that is what it is. Ultimately, this body, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness, they're all processes. They're all different kinds of vibrations that are happening throughout this samsara. But they are correlated and collected and creating an experience for us. And there is a me, mine, or myself dependent upon the volitional formation of taking things personally, that takes them and creates the sense of karma.

That I am the doer. I am the one who intended this. On this, and therefore I just continue to create that loop. But if I decide to disengage through the process of sila, samadhi and panya, then I'm able to actually go through the process of the jhanas, experience disenchantment and dispassion, which means I disengage and see things for what they are. That's yata bhuta nyana dassana. And by seeing things for what they are, I don't get caught up in the experience. I just experience everything fully without adding or allowing the immediate reaction of ownership to the experience. So all we have to do is let go of that this is me, mine, or myself.

Is conditioned. You can think of it this way. Everything is borrowed. We are living on our karmic credit. Whatever we're experiencing is dependent upon things that we've done in the past. And there are other causes and conditions external to that: the environment, the climate, disease, imbalance in the body, not necessarily of our own making. But we can only see it as this is what we have to inherit. And if you look at it that way, without adding to it by causing the sense of doership and ownership to the experience, we are just letting it process through until there's nothing left of that particular karma. Or to the extent that that karma becomes so weak that it becomes imperceptible.

There is another sutra about this where the Buddha talks about if someone had loving kindness, for example. That analogy that he uses is, if you were to put salt into a cup of water and you drink it, it's salty. If you put the same amount of salt into a freshwater lake, it's very difficult for you to taste the salt because it's been so dispersed and purified through the power of continuous, consistent practice of sila, samadhi and panya. That whatever karma arises, when it seemed like it was so bad, when it seemed like it was so intense, now, because of our practice, it's only this. We go from, how do I escape this? How do I deal with this?

To, oh, it's only this. Natural process that happens. And why, bhikkhus, do you call it consciousness? It cognizes, bhikkhus. Therefore, it is called consciousness. And what does it cognize? It cognizes sour. It cognizes bitter. It cognizes pungent. It cognizes sweet. It cognizes sharp. It cognizes mild. It cognizes salty. It cognizes bland. It cognizes. Therefore, it is called consciousness. This word cognize means to be aware of something. You need the light of awareness for feeling and perception to arise. If you recall Majjhima Nikaya 43, which is the dialogue between Sariputta and Mahakotthita, there it says that which we feel, we perceive, and that which we perceive, we are aware of, we are conscious of. We go around feeling, perception and consciousness.

So when we're saying cognizing, it comes from the word vinnana. Vinnana, again, I said, is to know something. Vi is to divide. It's the knowledge that is divided between or among the six sense bases. So when we say it cognizes that it's pungent, there's a perception that this thing is spicy or pungent. But we're aware, which is the bare cognition of something, the bare awareness of something. This has nothing to do with the Brahman, the universal consciousness or anything like that. It is just that when there is an attention to something, then we become aware of that experience and we feel and perceive it. So when your attention is diverted from that experience to something else, you are no longer recognizing that thing, but you're cognizing the something else.

If I were to give you a sliced piece of jalapeno and you eat that, you would feel the taste of it. Therefore, you'd be tasting. You would perceive that it's spicy and you're aware that it's spicy. So now your attention is on the tongue, that this thing is spicy. And then I give you a cold glass of milk and you drink a gulp of that. Now the experience is different. Now the vedana has turned to the coolness of the milk and the relief from the spiciness. So now what you have is your attention has moved away from the spiciness on the tongue, the pain of the spiciness in some cases, but for some others, pleasure in spicy food, like myself.

But in any case, the milk cools the tongue. Now there is the feeling of that, and there is a perception that it is cool. But your attention has gone from the feeling of spiciness to the feeling of relief. Therefore, your cognition, your consciousness has changed from the tongue consciousness experiencing spiciness to the tongue consciousness experiencing cool relief from the cold glass of milk. So consciousness also is dependent upon formations, and it's interdependent with mentality, materiality. Being dependent, it is subject to change. When you let go of those causes and conditions, then you no longer experience that. When your attention changes from one thing to the other, there is no longer the consciousness of that, consciousness of the other. Therefore it is impermanent, and therefore it is liable to cause suffering, and therefore one should not see it as me, mine or myself. Therein, the instructed noble disciple, noble disciple in this case is usually a stream enterer, reflects thus: I am now being devoured by form. In the past too, I was devoured by form in the very same way that I am being devoured now by present form.

If I were to seek delight in future form, then in the future too, I shall be devoured by form in the very same way that I am now being devoured by present form. Having reflected thus, he becomes indifferent towards past form. He does not seek delight in future form, and he is practicing for revulsion towards present form, towards fading away and cessation. So this is the practice of vipassana. This is the practice of insight, but it is dependent upon, or it is in tandem with, samatha. You need a mind that is calm and collected to be able to see this. I felt this way about it. In the past, it says here, he becomes indifferent towards it, identifying with that past form or feeling.

And you understand that when the same kind of feeling happens in the future, if you take delight in it, it's going to cause the same experience, perhaps suffering. And we say revulsion towards the form. We're talking about nibbana. Nibbana is disenchantment. If I'm practicing for being disenchanted towards present form, towards present feeling, towards present perception, then eventually I disengage. Whatever comes and goes, I don't get caught up in it. I remain clear. My mind is like the blue sky, and the clouds that come and go are the form, the feeling, the perception, the volitional formations, the consciousness that continues to change. But because I'm not identifying with them, because I'm not getting caught up in them, I'm disengaged from them. Eventually my identification with them fades away as well.

And the experience of suffering in relation to them also ceases. So how do I reflect on this? I see for myself, here is a pleasant feeling. And I can say it's a wonderful feeling. I am enjoying this immensely. But I also know that it will fade away. So if I have wisdom, reflecting with wisdom thus, that this too shall pass, then I don't get caught up in it. I don't get so excited about it, and I remain disengaged. I enjoy it fully without attaching the sense of I, without taking it personally, and when it goes, it goes, and that's it. So the remainder is fading away. The cessation of it happens automatically. The thing that I need to let go of or cease is my continuous desire to control a pleasant sensation and say I want it to continue. That is craving, the desire to control that, or the expectation that this will continue onwards. That is also another kind of

Craving. If I sense that, and I see that, and I recognize that, and I six are it, then there's nothing else left for me to do but to remain in that space of automatic cessation. Is there more to this? No, this is it. Thus ends the talk. Thus ends. However, I'm not going to let you in, because I've got one tiny little sutta right here. Wow, that is very tiny. What are your thoughts about this one? For these two, defilements grow. What two? Something they shouldn't be, and one who isn't remorseful over something they should. These are the two whose defilements grow. One who is remorseful over something they shouldn't be, that's like guilt, the guilt that eats you away. I think that's where the discussion about forgiveness was coming in, but the guilt that eats you away for something that you may have done or you may have not done. And it's interesting, because many of my experiences with interviews with different practitioners all across the world have been this.

I did this and I don't know if it was right. I don't know if it was wrong. And I feel bad about it. And it's all of this. And what does it do? It creates restlessness. It creates all of these thoughts. And it creates doubt. It creates trouble in the mind. It's doubt. It creates the sense of confusion. When you have that confusion, you can't act in accordance with the Eightfold Path. You're not sure how to act. You're not sure how to proceed. So this unnecessary guilt, the extent to which you should be remorseful, is you recognize, oh, I screwed up right there, and I'm going to plan to do better next time.

That's it. You see this example in the suttas where somebody messed up, goes to the Buddha and said, this is what happened. And Buddha said, okay, well, don't do it again. That's it. You have seen the error of your ways. You have learned it for yourself. Please continue and sin no more. Jesus said that. But it's the same idea, right? Recognize you screwed up there, you make amends if they need to be made, and then you move forward. The guilt that eats you up is coming from, again, that conceit that I'm making, that process of this is what I did, this is who I am. That was who you were in the past. Now you have a clean slate in every moment.

Make amends and move on. One who isn't remorseful over something they should be is a person who can't even recognize that they did something wrong, or as the inability to recognize their faults. That also comes from conceit. That also comes from a sense of ownership, a sense of no, I am right, a sense of stubbornness, and that too grows defilements. That grows the defilement of greed. It grows defilement of

hatred. So in every moment, when people come up to you and say, hey, maybe you shouldn't have said this, or maybe your own mind says, maybe I shouldn't have said that, it might say, a week, maybe a couple of weeks later, and be like, hmm, I wonder if I should have said that to that person, or I wonder if I should have done that. And if in your mind, based on your understanding of the precepts and your understanding of ethics, you say, okay, I shouldn't be doing that, you realize that. And if you have to go to the other person that you said something to and you say, hey, I think this was wrong, and I want to come forward and say, if there's anything that I can do to help alleviate the situation, then please tell me. And the other person might say, well, yeah, I felt this way. Okay, I'll make sure I won't do it next. If there's anything else you want me to do, let me know to people's suggestions, especially good company, your friends.

Now you might say, hey, maybe you shouldn't have said that. And if you have the arrogance to be like, no, I know better, then defilements will grow. But if you give space to be like, and reflect and be like, hmm, I wonder if this was the case, and you go back and you realize, yeah, that was, then you do good. You make sure that you don't do it again.

The other thing about this is, once you have recognized that whatever you have done was your fault, or you were at fault, let's say, that in itself is the karmic repercussion, if you think about it. The moment you break a precept, the immediate reaction is, oh, I did this. That in itself is a karmic repercussion, in your mind, that, oh, I screwed up right there. If you let that eat you up, all you're doing is continue to propel that karma. Recognize in that moment, okay, the mind did this as a reaction to breaking a precept or doing something I shouldn't have done. And then let that go and make amends and say, okay, I won't do that again.

I will make sure to the best of my abilities that that doesn't happen again. That's it. That's all I have to say about this. Good, good, good. And you're not remorseful. Thank you. Thank you, Delson. You had mentioned, you actually mentioned this in the last talk, the three underlying tendencies of greed, hatred, and delusion. And you touched on them again. What's the connection between the underlying tendency of greed and hatred and the dependent origination step of craving that can occur after feeling? Because I had not heard about the three underlying tendencies. That was sort of a new insight for me. That was a new aha. But I'm like, well, those two seem like they're the same.

What's the relationship? And thank you. Okay. So you can think of them in this way, that the greed, hatred, and delusion, which are the roots, are literally those. They're like in seed form, based on previous interactions rooted in craving, or actions, I should say, rooted in craving, strengthen the roots, so that in the next subsequent moment when something like that happens again, my mind has a tendency to deviate towards that based on whatever feeling arises. So the craving is the fruit, let's say it's the fruit, and the greed, hatred, and delusion, they are the seeds, therefore they're the roots, and if the roots get stronger, gets better. But if I start to hack away at the roots by changing the way I behave based on the fruits, and I throw them away, the fruits of craving, by letting them go, then eventually the roots will weaken.

And I take away the seeds, and I make sure that there's no nutriment given to the seeds. Then I'm also making sure that the roots not only are weakened, but no further fruits of craving arise. That's the way to look at it. Thank you. I think we've been properly devoured. Well, I see Yishui. Yeah, I was trying to find a button. This is faster.

Yeah, I just wanted to... Oh, first of all, David, I thought it was fun that we have very short sutta, the remorse one. Then people started sharing. And then you see how people see same sutta very differently. That's very helpful to see the different perspectives. But then I realized when Thousand was talking, that I kind of take his words at face value. It did not trigger any thoughts, right? Because I guess that's very interesting experience. So I just wanted to share some thoughts that were triggered when people were discussing that sutta before they came. So I want to, yeah, I think what you're saying is when you're given a talk, you just

listen to the talk and you're studying like a sutta study session where everybody just equally involves in it, because they have to think about it, and really, yeah, yeah, it's a great point. Yeah, I just realized I never really thought about it. Yeah, right, you didn't. Yeah, yeah, that was fun. So, since I now thought about it, I want to share the remorse one. I want to. I'm going to tie it back to the practice, because actually Kayla and I were talking about this this week. So I wanted to share some thoughts, because the practice, to simplify, just replacing unwholesome with wholesome. And this one is basically discernment of unwholesome and wholesome, which is actually a skill we cultivate as we practice more.

And this sutta feels like it's giving an example of that, let's say, principle, whatever, but in remorse and blah, blah, blah. blah, blah, blah. But it's still just discerning, let's say, tanha and chanda. And also the other pair would be, I don't know, the Pali, but like aversion and the wholesome aversion, like, I don't want to do it, right? So it's like a growing moral compass. And it's so interesting, it's like a circle, because the more you practice, the more you can discern unwholesome and wholesome. Actually highly individualized, even the same action from outsider's view. It could be wholesome or unwholesome. We don't know, right? Depends on the person's intention. So I just thought Buddha was so cool, because in the beginning, it's very difficult to discern wholesome and unwholesome.

Then he gave you precepts. There are certain things that's more universal that, if you don't know what to do, just do this. Practice more, you grow this faith, oh, this is how this is unwholesome, and the examples we talked about, like a shoplifter, seems more like a universal ethics or whatever, but the cool thing is really the individual, very little tiny things, everything you do, 24/7, and you will have doubts, but as you practice more you just know what to do. It's a never-ending circle, kind of like a chicken. The Buddha gave you the manual in the beginning. And as you practice more, you also realize even the first precept says it all in a way, right?

You just don't harm. That's all. Then it simplifies things. So I just thought that was very cool, what the Buddha did. Give you everything. And also so detail-oriented to give you different examples to say the same thing, like segue more, that makes us easier to understand what action to take in particular cases and grow our own path and our own faith. It's yeah, a lot of gratitude towards that, they wanted to share. Okay, Emilio has something to say. Emilio, unmute. Yes, can you hear me now? Yeah. Hi, thank you. It's a simple question. I noticed there is a kind of overlap between these five aggregates and the mental faculties in mentality when you describe mentality.

So formation, attention, conscience, evolution, etc. So I wonder if there is just coincidence or there is more into it. I just said in my talks that the mentality materiality is one and the same as a five item. Is one of the same. But for example, attention is not there in the aggregates. Or maybe... So it is through attention that consciousness flows. It's through attention. Yeah. Attention is like the spotlight, and the light itself is consciousness. So as usual, it's a different way of seeing things. One is more faculties of mentality. The other one is more connected with the experience we have and with the arising of suffering, like you described it earlier.

So, but it's really, it's always the same thing seen from this one perspective, right, Nelson? I would say so. I would say that. And also, when we talk about the five aggregates, they're not just limited to us alone. So the context of mentality materiality is taking it to the being or me as an individual person. But the aggregates can be, as the Buddha would have described them, feeling in the past, feeling in the future, form that is far, form that is near, form that is subtle, form that is grosser, and so on. That's what I'm saying in the context of form. It's not just me as form or my body.

It could be the table that this computer is sitting on and so on, but in the context of mentality materiality it's really the flow of my experiences. So-called my experiences relate to an individual being. Okay, thank you for explaining. Well, here's something: um, cognition. There's the awareness of perception, feeling, what is there. But isn't it a little bit more like, you know, I can be aware of things and yet you don't know them? They're there but you don't know them. But I kind of see, as a monk knows when he is walking, he knows when, to me, he's cognizing that he's walking? Yes, yes. There's a little bit more to it. There's consciousness and there is the knowing. So where, how does that work? So this is in the context of, let's say, the monk knows that he's walking or he knows he's sitting. The sati is the awareness, the mindfulness. The sampajanna is the comprehension of what he is aware of or what he is mindful of. When we talk about

Mindfulness is remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. One is being aware of that, that's just the awareness, that's the sati. But knowing where it's going from one thing to the other is the sampajanna, that's the clear comprehension. Clear comprehension. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So actually, I would say, we wouldn't just say sati, we would actually make it a conjoined word with the is really what is mindfulness in the context of TWIM: to remain to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other is sati sampajanna. Okay, all right. Anybody else? If not, we'll share merit. Question? Yeah, yes. So the awareness is conditioned, right? And so you can, it can, you can drop awareness, right?

Yes, of course. It happens all the time. And then that becomes, is that the sensation? No, not necessarily. Because as I was saying, when you are paying attention to one thing, now the awareness of the previous thing has gone away. So in that sense, it ceased. And now new awareness has arisen based on what the new thing has arisen. But the total cessation of consciousness means that there's no consciousness diverted outward or inward or anywhere. It has completely ceased because there's no fuel for any more attention. And if there's no more fuel for any attention, then not only the attention ceases but also the consciousness dependent upon that. Okay, all right. Let's share some merit here.

Be suffering ones, be suffering free, and the fear-struck, fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. So I'm very, very emotional for today. I think next week I'll be there one hour earlier than I was today. So I got to remember that, 7.30 my time. Okay. I'll see you guys next week. Enjoy yourselves. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. And we'll end the meeting here. We did it twice today. So I think that this is the end of the session, and thanks everybody for coming. Bye bye.