Day 8 Dependent Origination Part 2 - Very Interesting!

*Music* Yesterday we went through dependent origination, the first half or the latter half, because we're moving in reverse. So what did we talk about? We talked about how dependent origination is the elaboration of the four noble truths. And that it starts with understanding suffering. And letting go of the causes and conditions of suffering to experience the end of suffering.

And we are cultivating the path, that is the fourth noble truth, that leads to the end of suffering. And we went through what these different types of suffering are. And we said that the cause and condition for suffering is birth. And we went into birth of action, or the birth of karma. And then we saw that the condition for birth is being, bhava, which are the habitual tendencies where the mind will go in a certain direction when faced with a particular situation because it's inclined, habituated to go in that particular choice.

And that the conditioning for that bhava is what's known as clinging. And that there are four types of clinging. There's clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rites and rituals, and clinging to self-views. And we saw that the condition for clinging is craving. Craving is that obsessive mindset towards owning something, wanting something, possessing something, and not wanting to let it go. As pleasurable as it is, we don't want it to, you know, because it's so pleasurable, I should say, we don't want to let it go. We want it to continue.

And when it is not pleasurable, when it is painful, we want to push it away. We want to prevent it from happening again. And that arises due to identification with the sense basis, identification with the feeling. And so, with feeling as condition, craving arises. What do we mean by feeling? Are we saying feelings like emotional feelings? Are we saying feelings like the things that we may feel because of something that we see on TV and we start crying?

Or is it a happy feeling, is it a joyful feeling, is it a depressive feeling? What do we mean by feeling? You see, the translation is feeling, but I like to translate it as experience. The word comes from the Pali Vedana. Vedana means to know something, to experience something. So for whatever reason, feeling has been used or sensation has been used. But when we say feeling, there are multiple categories of feeling.

There's pleasant feeling, there's unpleasant feeling, and there's neutral feeling. And there is feeling that is of this world, and there's feeling that is not of this world. There is physical feeling, there is mental feeling, there is the feeling experienced in the past, the feeling experienced in the present, and the feeling that will be experienced in the future. These are all different kinds of experiences.

And the Buddha has talked about feelings as being numbering 108 different types or categories of experiences. So right now, when you are, hopefully, listening to what I'm saying, there is experience going on. The ears are listening, that is experience. Your eyes are all on me, that is seeing, that is experience. Your mind is reflecting on what is being said, or maybe is haphazardly going somewhere else.

But that is also experience, that is feeling. That is thinking. So when we have seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and thinking. These are all verbs, these are all actions, these are all things that are happening. These are all experiences. So, when you are experiencing pain, that is a feeling. When you are experiencing pleasure, that is a feeling. When you are experiencing jhana, that is a feeling. When you are experiencing a hindrance, and the mind is feeling in pain because of it, that's a feeling.

So, the feelings of this world are the feelings that you experience through the physical sense bases: the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue and the body. The feeling that you experience that is otherworldly, that is not necessarily transcendent but not of the physical world, is happening here in the mind. The reality is everything is happening in the mind.

Does that mean that there is no objective world out there? No. What we are saying is that everything that we are experiencing happens in our mind. In terms of most of our lives, they are lived in our thoughts. Most of our lives are lived in what we think about this experience, what we think about that person, what we think about our situation.

And that filtration, that coloring is what creates craving, that identification. So feeling, how does feeling get to craving? How does feeling become a condition for craving? Because really feeling is impersonal. It's just an experience. Right now, when you're listening to my voice, it's just feeling, it's just experience. How can there arise craving from that? What is it that connects feeling to craving?

There is something else that is underneath, right? What we should look at is this process of dependent origination, the 12 links of dependent origination. Maybe at the end of this talk or tomorrow morning, the handout will be given to you so you can see the links for that. But if you look behind you, there is a poster. It says the 12 links of dependent origination.

Now, that is seen as a cyclical thing, but actually within each of these links there are smaller cycles, there are smaller feedback loop systems. But if you look at the paticca samuppada as a river, there's a river that's going on, and every vortex, every whirlpool, every eddy is a link of that river of the paticca samuppada. It's a link. As the current gets stronger, you get closer towards the waterfall. Right? So you start off from ignorance to formations, then from there you go to consciousness, then from consciousness you go to mentality-materiality, and from mentality-materiality you go to the six sense bases, then from there you go to contact, then there's feeling, then there's craving, then there's clinging, then there's becoming.

Then there's clinging, then there's becoming. Becoming is the bend of the waterfall. You still have the possibility of saving yourself from becoming, but as soon as you go down the waterfall, the birth of action, that's it. Now you have crashed into suffering and you can't do anything about it. So from becoming to clinging to craving, you can 6R that.

You can recognize when the mind is going in that direction and 6R it. Save yourself from the waterfall. But underneath all of this are these other sort of whirlpools and eddies and things like that, that power that stream, that power that current. And one of those things is a collection of tendencies that are called the underlying tendencies that happen at the level of experience.

There are seven of these underlying tendencies. Now, there will be a lot of information being given to you in this particular talk, but it's okay. If you're not able to process everything, that's fine. Whatever connects will connect with you. Just go with it. See what happens. So in the experience, you have seven underlying tendencies, dependent upon whether up the stream ignorance is present, whether up the stream greed, hatred, and delusion are present, whether up the stream the 16 defilements are present, and all of these other things which we'll get to.

But these underlying tendencies are seven in number. There's the underlying tendency towards craving, the underlying tendency towards aversion, the underlying tendency towards views, the underlying tendency towards doubt, the underlying tendency towards conceit, the underlying tendency towards becoming, the underlying tendency towards ignorance. I hope I got all seven. So, what do we mean by this? There is a pleasant experience that is happening right now, let's say. We'll take the example of chocolate cake. So what happens? I see the chocolate cake, and now I want it.

Why? Because it triggers something in my mind. You see the contact, my eyes making contact with the chocolate cake. I am seeing that chocolate cake, and it triggers a memory of the last time I had chocolate cake and how wonderful it is. And I identify with that memory. I identify with that previous feeling. So now there is an underlying tendency towards the craving for that chocolate cake.

Now I want that chocolate cake and I will do anything possible to get that chocolate cake. I will cut the line if I have to to get that chocolate cake. So it's the same with aversion. Unpleasant experiences, there. Somebody says something terrible to you. Now you identify. See what's going on: it's just sound coming from the mouth of that person. It's just vibrations in the air that make contact with your ear, and your mind takes that and interprets that sound vibration as a voice, as a tone, as words,

and dependent upon the memories of what that tone feels like, what those words mean to you, it creates an underlying tendency towards aversion. And then I say, I don't like this, what they said, I don't like this person. All these thoughts arise. And because of something that happened in the past, that's the clinging. Therefore, I will act this way, that's the becoming, and I say something.

In retaliation, that's the birth of action. The underlying tendency towards views, what does that mean? Now, this can be any kind of feeling. It could be pleasant, it could be unpleasant, or it could be neutral. What's a neutral feeling? A feeling of equanimity. Or you're just seeing. There's nothing pleasant about it or unpleasant about it. You listening to this Dhamma talk, there's not necessarily anything pleasant about it or unpleasant about it. You're just listening.

So it's a neutral experience. But if you identify as the listener of the sound, now you have identified with the experience. And now, based on what you're hearing, based on what you've heard before, you may develop opinions about it. This is the underlying tendency towards views. This is how I understand what he is saying, based on what I've heard before, because of my views in the past, because of my opinions.

This underlying tendency to views, if it matches my views, it's a wonderful thing, and I like more of it, and I crave for it. If it doesn't match my views, that guy is an idiot. He shouldn't be talking. There's an aversion. There's a pushing away of that. If it's neutral and there's identification with it, there's opinion about whatever it is. You decide based on your views whether it's pleasant to you or unpleasant to you.

The underlying tendency towards doubt. What do we mean by doubt? The word doubt, the translation of doubt, implies that I'm doubtful of someone or something that's being said or being experienced. It's more about the confusion or lack of discernment of what am I experiencing in this moment. And because there is a lack of discernment, there's lack of mindfulness.

In fact, because there is a lack of mindfulness, I should say, there is a lack of discernment. And because of this lack of discernment, the mind has a tendency to grab onto the experience as me, mine, or myself. And from there, craving can arise. The underlying tendency towards conceit, that's the one that I missed. The conceit, what do we mean by conceit? Again, this is another English translation of the word mana. Mana means to measure, to compare.

So I have an experience, and it's a wonderful experience, but I think about an experience I had before, and I say, you know what? It wasn't as great as what I experienced before. There's always a comparing mind that's happening. It's measuring everything. And so there are different kinds of conceit related to what we're experiencing, related to what we've possessed or possess, related to our knowledge, related to our skills, related to our heritage, related to the senses, related to many different things. And so, these different things that the mind compares to, why does the mind compare? Because it's always recalibrating, it's always recalibrating, looking for stability in an otherwise unstable world.

So when it has that, it doesn't feel as great about this feeling because the feeling before was better, or feels better about this feeling because the feeling before wasn't as great as this feeling. There's the conceit. Or even if it's neutral, the sense that this feeling belongs to me or that I am the one feeling it, I am the one experiencing it, gives rise to the craving, gives rise to the delusion, gives rise to the clinging.

The underlying tendency towards becoming. What do we talk about in terms of becoming? The desire for being. I want to be someone, I want to be something, I want to experience a certain state, I want Nibbana, and the mind gets obsessed by that. So the experience that's there, I want more of this experience, I hope this experience doesn't stop.

I hope this experience continues on into the future, or this experience makes me want to be a certain person so I can always go and access that particular experience, or makes me a certain person so that I have to push away that experience. Then there is the underlying tendency towards ignorance. What do we mean by the underlying tendency towards ignorance? What is ignorance?

Ignorance comes from the word ignore. It comes from the Pali avijja, which actually comes from avidya in Sanskrit. Avidya means the lack of wisdom. So very practically speaking, it's the lack of mindfulness of the present moment, as it actually is. It's the lack of proper attention given to an experience to see what it actually is. You see, when we talk about ignorance in the Buddha Dharma, it's very simply put as the ignorance of the Four Noble Truths.

There's one level of ignorance where we've never been exposed to the Four Noble Truths. We may have heard about something, arbitrarily, that there is something called Buddhism and they talk about the Four Noble Truths, but we don't really investigate into it. Then there is the time in which we are told about the Four Noble Truths. And if we are paying attention, we remember it. If we don't, we forget about it. But if we're actively practicing in a practice like this, where the Four Noble Truths are essential, our core, are central to the experience and the practice.

Then we consciously, in some ways, ignore, because we know better, or we should know better, to know what this experience is. So what are we talking about when we say the underlying tendency towards ignorance? We're saying there's a lack of mindfulness of the nature of the experience at hand. What is the experience? No matter what the experience is, it is conditioned by contact, which we'll get to.

Being conditioned, being dependently arisen, it is liable to change. It is unstable. Take away all the composites that make up that feeling, that feeling goes away. Being conditioned, therefore it's impermanent, therefore it's suffering, therefore it's not me, not mine, not myself, because if I use the touchstone of what self is as sat, chit, ananda, independently existing and always free and happy, free in terms of, free of any causes and conditions.

Then the experience that I'm having right now is not that. And this is the instruction I give to everyone at some point, which is experience everything fully. The good, the bad, the indifferent, the pleasant, the unpleasant, the neutral. Experience it completely with total awareness, with total presence of mind, with total mindfulness, but without the I attached to it.

Just see the experience as experience. This is the crux of the entire practice here when you're applying the 6R's. If you understand just this, this is the entire path of how do you prevent the arising of craving before it gets to it from feeling. That is what mindfulness is. Mindfulness is the gatekeeper. Mindfulness is the guy who's always on alert, making sure that the mind doesn't slip up and enter into the territory of craving or that craving invades the mind.

Mindfulness is seeing experience as just experience, feeling as just feeling. There is a wonderful sutra called the Bahiya Sutta. It's from a section of the Pali Canon called the Udana. It's a sutra that I often will quote because it's such a great piece of teaching. It's so succinct. And if you understand just this teaching, you don't have to do anything else. If you fully understand this teaching, you can leave tonight.

This is the teaching that the Buddha gives. So the background is, there is a guy named Bahiya, who finds himself in the position of being a practitioner of meditation. And there is some backstory to it. But basically, he believes himself to be fully awakened. But a relative of his, who comes from the Deva realms, comes to him and says, No, no, you're not fully awakened. You still have work to be done.

But there is somebody there who can show you the way. So Bahiya says, who is that? So Bahiya is in a place called Sapphora. Sapphora, which now is Nala Sapphora, which I, as a little infant, used to live. It's a little port city, just far off from Bombay. So he's walking from Sephora all the way, not Sephora, not the makeup store Sephora. Sephora. He's walking all the way from there towards where the Buddha is staying, which is in the northern regions of India. So it's quite a walk. It's where at least a week you'll probably have to walk. So while he's doing that, his mind is only towards,

I have to get full awakening, I have to get full awakening. And he's only on the lookout to find the Buddha. He finally reaches the park where the Buddha is supposedly staying at, Anathapindika's park. And he asks the monks, where is the Buddha? And they say, oh, he's over there. So he goes to find the Buddha and he says to the Buddha, please teach me the Dhamma in such a way that I may understand it. Because if I die in the next moment, it will be too late for me. So please explain the Dhamma in such a way that I may understand it and attain full awakening.

What does the Buddha say? I'm going for lunch. Come back later. He says, now is not the time, Bahiya. Now is the time to go out for alms. Come back later and we will talk. So what does he do? He asks for a second time the same thing and the Buddha says the same thing. Finally he asks a third time. This is the thing, the power or the magic of three. You ask the Buddha something three times and he is bound to give it to you.

So on the third time the Buddha says, okay, sit down, let's talk, and he keeps his bowl aside and he says, okay, Bahiya, this is my instruction to you. In the seeing there will only be the seen. In the hearing there will only be the heard. In the sensing there will only be the sensed. In the cognizing there will only be the cognized.

When Bahiya, there is no you in that, then there is no you by that. And when Bahiya, there is no you in that, and there is no you by that, then there is no you in between the two. Just this is the end of suffering. And Bahiya understands completely. He goes, practices this, attains full awakening. But unfortunately, he's walking down the road, doesn't look both sides of the road, and there is a cow with her calf, both of them are running, and the cow basically crashes into Bahiya, and he dies right on the spot.

So the monks see this, and they find his body, and they go to the Buddha and say, you know, we found Bahiya's body, where is he gone, what has happened to him, what should we do? And the Buddha says, despite him not wearing the robes, Bahiya was one of us, because he understood the Dhamma and he attained full awakening. Give his body the same respect as you would for someone who is an Arahant. And so they do that. But coming back to the central teaching, this is the crux of the entire Dhamma. If you understand this, then you don't need to understand anything else.

If you understand just this, that feeling is a conditioner for craving. How does that happen? Because the Buddha says, in the seeing, there's only the seeing. That means there's only seeing going on. In the hearing, there's only the heard. There's only hearing going on. But what happens to us? We see and we hear, and there is a seer behind the scene.

There is a listener behind the heard. There is someone sensing. There is someone thinking about something. Now it's important to understand why did the Buddha give these instructions in the way he did, because Bahiya studied the Upanishads. The Upanishads talk about that there is the atman, that is the seer behind the scene, the eyes behind the eyes, the ears behind the ears, the mind behind the mind. That is the atman. So here he's overturning that, and what he's saying to Bahiya is just experience everything. There is only seeing going on. It's just an impersonal process of seeing happening.

It's an impersonal process of hearing going on. You didn't cause the seeing to happen. There was no you to cause the hearing to happen. There was no you to cause the sensing, the other sense experiences to happen. There's no you to think it's coming up due to causes and conditions, but as soon as there is a self in that process, then that particular experience defines what that self is, and hence craving comes up, clinging comes up, becoming comes up. You can just observe the experience as experience. Understand that the sense of the observer itself is an impersonal process, coming up together because of composite thoughts.

Just make that your, you know, sort of your, put that on a magnet and put it in the fridge every morning when you go to the kitchen. You will see that. In the seeing there's only the seeing, in the hearing there's only the heard, in the sensing there's only the sense, and in the cognizing there's only the cognized. So this experience is conditioned by something known as contact. Phassa or sparsha. Sparsha in Sanskrit literally means to touch, to make contact with.

So what is contact? Contact is made up of three things that arise concurrently. When you are seeing me right now, yeah, what is happening is the light is bouncing off of me and hitting your retina and your eyes, right? So your eyes are taking in this information. And dependent upon the two, there is an awareness that arises, the I awareness.

When you're hearing my voice, right, the vibrations from my voice make contact with your ear. And when they come together, dependent on the two, ear consciousness arises. Likewise with the other sense bases and whatever they make contact with. But contact is dependently arisen as well. How do we know this? Contact is actually dependent upon the sense bases. In other words, the direction in which the sense bases are given.

This is why the sense bases are dependent on mentality, materiality. We'll get to that. So how do we know that contact is dependently arisen? Right now, you're all paying attention to me by looking at me. But if I direct your attention and say, all of you look at the statue of the Buddha right now, what has happened? Now you are no longer seeing me, you are looking at the Buddha, you are seeing the Buddha, you are experiencing the vision, the form, the sight of the Buddha.

So the attention has moved your eye consciousness. The intention to move your attention elsewhere has given rise to a new sense contact, right? A new form that makes contact with your eyes. And dependent upon that, that underlying new eye consciousness arises when you're looking at the Buddha. If right now you're paying attention to my voice, there is the ear consciousness, there's the contact with the ear. But if there is a lawnmower or somebody's chopping wood or chainsaws going off now, your attention moves to that, even though while I'm speaking your attention goes there. You're not actually listening to me anymore, which means the eye, the ear contact has shifted, dependent upon your intention to pay attention elsewhere.

So this contact conditions feeling. This feeling conditions craving. Craving conditions clinging. Clinging conditions becoming. Becoming conditions the birth of karma. The birth of karma conditions, or gives rise to, suffering. Now this contact is said to be dependent upon the sense basis. These are known as the salayatana. Remember the word ayatana? It comes from the word... well, the ayatana can mean dimension or space or base or sphere. So the sense spheres, we're talking about the literal organs: the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind. What is the mind? How do we define the mind?

We already know the eyes are instruments, the ears are instruments, right? We can see them, we know what they are. We can feel them, right? We understand when we have the physical tongue and so on, and the body, even internally when we have a stomach ache, we can feel that internally. But what about the mind? Where is the mind?

You see, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, these are all receptors. They bring in all of the sensory data from the outside world, and then they bring that all together into the mind. Now I'm pointing here, because generally that's where we point. We think the mind is the brain. But in the ancient days, the mind was here.

Because they thought that chitta, the mind, is the heart. But beyond that, there is mind that is not here or here. That is just for us to understand, subjectively speaking. But where does my mind end and your mind end? Is it the same mind or is it different minds? Is there an internal mind? Is there an external mind?

One way of looking at it is the idea of mano, which is the physical component of the brain and the nervous system itself, which brings in data. And then there is a process of mind that interprets that through feeling and perception. Remember what perception is? The recognizing of an experience based on what you've learned before. So the mind takes all of that. That's why in the beginning of the day, what you start off with, the Dhammapada: mind is chief. Mind is the forerunner of all states.

The world that you experience is not different from the mind that experiences it. So these sense bases, they bring in these raw sensory data. The mind takes that, interprets that, and then creates an experience of contact and feeling. And if there is present this illusory sense of this belongs to me, this I am, rather than the wisdom that says this is an impersonal process, then there is a liability of craving and clinging and so on to come about.

Now these sense bases are dependent upon, or they are actually within, what is known as mentality-materiality. Nama-rupa. Nama means name, rupa means form. Rupa, in this case, is the form of whether it's this body, whether it's this table, whatever it is. We talked about this when we discussed the five aggregates. So rupa is made up of the four great elements as they're known: earth, water, fire and air, or solidity, liquidity, movement of the air, the heat of temperature, and fire, and so on.

All of these, in varying degrees, make up some kind of form. When you take them away, that form no longer exists. So what we see as the body is just made up of different nutrients that we have continued to consume in the form of food, minerals and vitamins, and whatever it is, to make up the different things that our body requires to function.

Proteins and calcium and whatever else it is. So this is the form, this is the rupa. What is the nama? Nama literally means name. So usually it's translated as mind or mentality. And mentality is made up of five things. It's made up of contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention. These are literally the faculties of the mind, for you to experience their corresponding processes.

So you have to understand the difference between faculties and processes. It's like there is somewhere, and I'm not saying that that is the case, I'm saying it's like that: somewhere in the brain or somewhere in the mind, however you want to put it, there's the capacity for us to experience contact. That's the faculty. From there, there is the process of contact. There's a capacity for us to experience contact, right, and then there's the process through which contact happens, due to that instrumentation that's there in mentality.

Likewise with feeling, likewise with perception. What about intention? What is intention? Intention is our choices, that's the formations. It's from intentions that formations flow out into an experience. It's the intention that moves the spotlight of attention. The intention is the spotlight operator, and the attention itself is the spotlight. The attention is that from which the light of consciousness shines.

So when I said to look at the statue of the Buddha, the awareness changed because the attention moved based on your intention. These are the inner workings of the mind that condition how the sense bases function and receive information. And how the sense bases function and receive information determines, or conditions, how contact arises. And that conditions the feeling, and that conditions the craving, and that conditions the clinging, and that conditions the becoming. And that can give rise to birth of action, which can give rise to suffering.

Now this mentality-materiality is dependent on something known as consciousness, vinnana. Usually it's translated into consciousness or awareness. Now we can have a difficulty here, because a lot of people from other traditions will say, oh, it's all consciousness, consciousness is eternal, it's independent, and all of these things. In fact, they might say that consciousness is the building block of life and many other things that they may say. But within the Buddha Dhamma, the understanding of consciousness is very exact. It's a very particular way of understanding.

Consciousness here, at the macro level, is seen as something that arises and passes away from one life to the next. It is not the same consciousness that goes from one life to the next. Consciousness that arises dependent upon your last thoughts takes all that karma as carrier. And then when there is, as it said in one of the suttas, when there is the seed and the egg, right? Then you have the sperm and the ovum coming together. You don't just have that. That's just the genetic material.

That's just the scaffolding for the karma to express itself through gene expression, through behavioral modification, through environmental factors. But the consciousness that gives life to it is known as the patisandhi vinnana, the rebirth-linking consciousness, that goes from one life to the next and at the moment of conception gives rise to that. If all three are together then there is life. But if consciousness is not present there, then there is no life.

Once the karma, that is all of the potential karma, is then installed into that new life, that consciousness departs, and that installation, that new software installation, gives rise to the arising and passing away of further consciousnesses within the womb. And this is what is happening to us after we're born as well, into the physical world. Consciousness continues to come and go. New consciousness arises, old consciousness passes away, in every single moment.

As it's understood from the Abhidhamma, and as Manti had said one time, when you snap your fingers, that is something equivalent to 100,000 arising and passing away of your consciousness. How our sense bases take in the information gives different frequencies of how many arising and passing away of consciousnesses there are. And it all comes together with the mind, which makes this smooth experience that we're experiencing right now.

So that's the consciousness at the micro level that's arising in every moment, dependent upon contact, contact, contact. So when you're seeing it in the infinite consciousness territory of jhanas, you're seeing the arising and passing away of those consciousnesses, individual consciousnesses, coming and going, coming and going, arising and passing away. This consciousness, this awareness, is the lens through which everything else can be understood and seen. Because the word vinnana means divided knowledge.

Knowledge that is divided between what? Between the sense bases to give some kind of an experience. Where there is experience or feeling, there is perception. Where there is perception, there is consciousness. These three are always together concurrently. Even though it's here as a link, before feeling can happen. This is what I'm saying about the feedback loop system. When there's contact, it gives rise to consciousness. It can give rise to the formations that give rise to consciousness.

When there's contact, it gives rise to feeling and perception. When there's contact, it can give rise to the intention that's there in mentality, materiality. So, this consciousness is interdependent with mentality-materiality. In order for us to be able to function through mentality-materiality, we need consciousness. But in order for consciousness to flow, it needs the instrumentation of mentality-materiality. These two are dependent together, interdependent.

Now, this consciousness can be tainted, stained, by what are known as the upakilesas. These are known as different kinds of defilements due to previous actions that were unwholesome. So the defilements here could be anything from stubbornness to pride to vanity to anger to jealousy to rivalry to many different things of those 16 upakilesas. And what happens is, those 16 upakilesas can come about when the formations that arise are rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion. What are formations?

Formations are that which bring the arising of consciousness, which condition consciousness. Formations come from the word sankhara or samskara, which are mental impressions. Sankhara also means to cook up, they cook up our reality. They are literally the ones and zeros of the matrix but they are present in the mind. They are the synaptic firings that happen in the brain through all the neuronal firing that creates the experience that we're experiencing.

And there are three categories of formations. There are mental formations, there are verbal formations, and there are physical formations. Mental formations, they're called mental because they come into the mind. They allow us to feel or experience and perceive reality. So even though what's happening at the level of feeling. The formations are pushing forward the experience. They are the conditioners. They're conditioning the experience, how we choose to experience something.

And they are manipulated or changed around by our intentions and vice versa. Our intentions change dependent upon the quality or the effectiveness of our formations. If the formations are rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion, then generally the intentions also will be. And so the consciousness that arises may be rooted in one of these upakilesas, in one of these defilements.

The verbal formations are the formations that allow you to express in speech or that allow you to consciously think about something. So, for example, when you say, may I be happy, may I be filled with loving kindness, and whatever it is you may say, you are engaging with verbal formations. That's why in the second jhana, the verbal formations cease.

Because you've let go of doing that process. So one example is you're walking out and you see a wonderful apple tree in the middle of summer, right? And you're seeing the first apples become ripe and red. So now you're experiencing that, you're seeing that, there's contact, the mental formations allow you to see that. Now you want to go and tell someone that. Those are the verbal formations coming and saying, I perceive that and I want to express the information that I got, these apples are ready to be picked.

So you go to tell someone that. Those are your verbal formations in action. And then the physical formations, which in suttas primarily are related with inhalation and exhalation, that allow your bodily functions to happen, that give you the awareness and contact with the body, that give you the capacity to move around with the body, that give you the capacity to feel an itch while you're in deep meditation, that give you the capacity to want to move just a little bit, to make tiny adjustments, right? That's the physical formations.

Now, what do we mean when we say if these formations are rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion? These are the little whirlpools of greed, hatred, and delusion. These are the roots from which everything else happens in terms of suffering. What is greed? Greed is the root of craving. I want more, I want more, I want to possess more and more and more. Hatred is the root of aversion. I don't like it. Why is this person bothering me? I want to push it away. And delusion, that gives rise to the misperception of seeing things that are impermanent as permanent, seeing things that are suffering as happiness, seeing things that are not self as self.

So now these formations are conditioned by ignorance. For the most part they are conditioned by ignorance. Why? Because so long as there is a lack of mindfulness, these formations will be rooted, or take root, in greed, hatred, and delusion. But if you cut away ignorance, what happens? Do the formations cease to exist? Only the formations that are fettered by greed, hatred, and delusion in that moment.

Because formations have a different function, another function. They are also carriers of karma. When contact arises, formations arise. And they give rise, or they allow for the transfer, the movement of karma to happen. And this ignorance is conditioned by something else. It's conditioned by what are known as the asavas. What I translate as the viruses. The virus that's deeply rooted as the seeds of sensual craving, the seeds of existential craving, and the seeds of the lack of mindfulness. And these in turn are interdependent with the lack of mindfulness, with the ignorance at large, and this is at the center that moves the wheel of rebirth.

This is the exact center which moves everything else in samsara. If you take that away, then you stop that whole process. So when ignorance is gone, formations will continue as carriers of karmic repercussions. Think of it this way: everything from formations, or let's say ignorance in this case, but formations, consciousness, the mentality, materiality, the sense bases, the contact, and the feeling. All of that is the karma that you inherit, right? I am the inheritor of karma. Karma is my relative. All of that is the old karma that you inherit as a result of previous karma.

How you choose to respond to the experience in that moment, how you choose to either identify with the experience as me, mine, or myself, or to see it as an impersonal process, will determine whether new karma is created. And that new karma, the ingredients for that, is craving, clinging, becoming. And then the generation of that new karma.

The creation of that new karma. The birth of that new karma. And hence that cycle continues. But that cycle is broken completely when ignorance goes away completely. That happens only at full awakening. And once full awakening happens, there's no more ignorance. There's no more of those viruses. And so those formations are said to be pure because they are functioning only purely for the sake of old karma to arise.

And old karma is basically the experience that we're having right now. It will only ripen dependent upon the causes and conditions. If the causes and conditions are not there, that karma will not arise. And so those formations won't get activated. Now when that karma arises, what we choose to do with it, we'll decide whether that enables the continual recycling process or regeneration process of that same karma.

You think of it in this way when it comes to karma. There is an orange seed, there's an apple seed, and there's a mango seed. By the very nature of that particular seed, it will grow at a certain rate. You put it in the ground. For the apple seed, you don't give enough water or nutrition or sunlight.

For the other two, the mango seed and the orange seed, you give just the right amount. So when the causes and conditions are not there, the ingredients for its growth are not there for the apple seed, for the apple karma, it won't grow. Now, dependent upon the intensity of the karma, based on our intention and what we've done, if the right causes and conditions are there, namely the sunlight and the water and the nutrition and the soil and everything, then that karma will arise.

But the intensity is different for the mango karma and the orange karma. They will arise or come to fruition at their own rate, dependent upon their intensity. So, when we talk about karma, understand, the only thing we have to understand is, what is happening right here, right now? And how does the mind choose to deal with what is happening right here, right now?

Is it being conditioned by what has happened in the past? Is it being conditioned by the fear of what will happen in the future? Or is it seeing with wisdom that this karma that is arising in the form of this experience is impersonal, which means I don't do anything with it. And when I do see it taking it personal, the mind taking it personally, I choose to 6R. I choose to let that go.

And thereby the intensity of that karma reduces. That is what dependent origination is. Any questions? Yes. The central wheel? So the central wheel is the ignorance with the mechanism of the viruses, the seeds that cause us to have sensual craving, the seeds that cause us to have existential craving and the seeds that cause us to have lack of mindfulness.

They turn together and cause the entire mechanism to turn. Is there an understanding for why? Because it seems like it would be so beneficial to not have craving, to not get ignorant. So why is the impulse in that direction so strong? Because it feels good. You don't know any better. We haven't found anything that feels better than that yet.

And we haven't conditioned the mind enough to see that something is better than that, so that we stop doing it. Yes? Just to be clear, you were saying that the crux of the path is to see every moment, whether or not. Yes. Okay. And so... That is the conceit that we were talking about, where the mind seeks some kind of stability, and it finds so-called stability through having an identity, through possessing something, through owning something. You see, if you treat the sense of self as transactional, that there is a sense of self in order to function with the world at large, that's fine.

But once we take that as, that is me and that is the big self and so on, that's where the trouble is. Because then we take things personally. But who is actually taking it personally? For what and for who? When we are children, our worldview of the world is, how many toys can I get? And that has just been replaced by, how much money can I get? How many possessions can I get?

How much validation can I get? So that same sense of seeking something comes from that I that seeks security. Because when we're in the womb, everything is wonderful. It's secure. We're given nutrition, we're given water, we're given warmth. Don't have to worry about anything. Trouble starts as soon as we are born out into this world. Now we're cold and we're hungry and we're wondering what the hell happened.

Who is this person looking at me? Who is that? What is going on? And we're trying to seek security. And if we're fortunate enough to have our mother alive after we're born, we sense that. And we find the mother as security, and we cling to the mother for a little while. Then afterwards, we create our own separate identity based on the things that we like, based on the things that we don't like, based on the foods we like, the foods we don't like, based on who is playing with us and who isn't playing with us.

And that identity continues to evolve and build and build and build. But it's a house of cards. And as soon as you see that and it drops, then you see everything as an impersonal process. And that's the understanding of emptiness. That's the understanding of anatta. That's the understanding of this world is dependently arisen. Any other questions? How do you know that?

Who told you this? Oh, I see. I got it through the Department of Pali while I was at the University of Mumbai. And that's where I would be teaching when I'm in India for some time. And there were students there who had gone to Taiwan, and they had gone to do some temporary ordinations as monks and nuns.

And it came to be that one of the senior monks there happened to have this, or actually four or five batches of this, supposedly. And so they gave a few to these temporarily ordained monks and nuns, and they thought, why not give one to me? And actually I think they gave two to me. They were going to give me three, but I said I'll take two, it's fine. So I don't want to keep it at home, so then I gave one to Dhammasuka. I think there's two, and there's one in the stupa. That was the reason, yeah, that's the reason I brought it here, to take one to the stupa and keep it there. So these, if you look closely, these little fragments, or they look like little pieces of bright pebbles, they're understood to be fragments from the ashes of the Buddha.

And they continue to change and they continue to grow, grow in the sense of numbers. That's why they had just so many, and it grew, it literally cloned itself. So we'll see what happens with this one. If it continues to grow, we'll have to find another container, but so far we're fine. But that's how it happened. Yeah.

No, no, no. Back. One more thing about karma. If we take it with us, is that right? At the end of our lives, we take with us whatever karma we finish this life with. Is that sort of good or bad? I'm waiting for you to finish the question before I... And then, what happens between that time, at the time of death, and the rebirth, and the infusion of our karma into the new body? You have to think of karma in this way. It's like our karma is not our own in the sense of, that's what continues onward as a soul or a fragment of a soul or something that is infused with the soul.

But rather, they are like different pieces of information that come together to create a certain circumstance because of how they're encoded. So the karma that comes together isn't necessarily going to be something we have to experience until the causes and conditions are there present for it. That karma can remain latent and dormant for lifetimes. It's not necessary that it needs to be experienced in the next life.

And it's not necessary for us to be free of all karma in order to be fully awakened. Because as I said, one who is fully awakened still is subject to the old karma prior to being fully awakened. It's just that they don't produce any new karma that has the nature of being reproductive. That has the nature of continuing with a new cycle of creation.

So they may speak, they may act, they may do things, but none of that has some kind of a strong link that the mind can hold on to that creates new karma. All they are subject to at that point is the karma that has to be felt or experienced, dependent on causes and conditions. And when they pass on, any karma that's there is extinguished.

So when they attain parinibbana, for example, nirvana for the last time, all of that is extinguished like ash, and it has no potential for it to grow again. The seeds have been completely burned up. You have a question? I see how dukkha connects to Nietzsche and anatta. How do Nietzsche and anatta connect to each other? How do anicca and anatta? Well, these three are basically like... So when you see anatta, you're seeing that touchstone of the self, as I explained, the satchitananda, the self that is self-existing and so on. The fact is that if that self is supposed to be permanent and we see it as impermanent, it is naturally anatta, it is naturally not-self.

So the created self is unstable? Yeah, the self that we transact with in the world is constantly changing. My mind is still spinning in this whole idea of not-self, because you're like, okay, it's karma, it seems like we each have our own karma, then you say the word soul, and it's like, okay, isn't the soul an I? It goes in the baby, it comes to karma, and you're like, okay, that's my karma, not-self. Yeah.

So it's all an impersonal process. There's not anyone who's controlling them. There's no soul that is controlling them. It's only happening due to causes and conditions, dependent on the last thought that arises from the previous life. And as I said, the consciousness that arises from that particular thought is just a function of transferring all of that, all those formations, into the next life, and it departs as soon as it makes contact; it drops, and then the formations that are there create their own consciousnesses that arise and pass away. It's like, one of the traditional examples is, you take a candle flame and you light another candle with that flame. Is it the same flame or is it different?

You, as all of us, are just processes. With the what? Yeah. Spinning. And even the sense of self is arising and passing away. Yeah. Where did you get to? Like, if it feels like my sense of self is continuous right now, is it passing away so quickly and arising that I just can't perceive it? See what's going on there? Is what you're saying, that the sense of self that's arising and passing away is nothing but conceit that's coming and going, based on what you're seeing and experiencing? It's constant. Like, it actually, the Buddha gave this example. It's like a monkey that holds from one branch to the other, and he's just constantly looking at things, looking at things, and taking that and making it into this is me, this is mine, this is myself. That's the function of the desire for stability. So I'm creating a sense of self based on my perceptions of everything else. It's dependent on everything. Who is the who that is creating the self?

I don't know me. It's all an impersonal process. You will only see this, you, whoever that is, that will only be seen when the mind is able to be completely quiet and then realize, ah, this is all dependently arisen. This is why the Buddha didn't even want to answer, is there a self, is there no self? Because both are extreme views.

He said, just do away with that and talk about what is suffering and what is the end of suffering. And dependent origination helps the mind to understand that suffering and to let go of that suffering. Great. Yeah, it is always dormant until there is something to trigger it, and that trigger is those causes and conditions. So, going back to the example of the seeds, you have the apple seed, the orange seed, the mango seed, but the nature of the seed itself is to germinate if it has the right soil. If it doesn't, then it will remain as it is. It won't do anything. So the karma remains dormant all the time until there's a cause and condition for it to arise.

I think that should be enough. May suffering once 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. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.