Mumbai Retreat February 2025 | Day 7 - Dependent Origination

OK. Today we're going to go through something called dependent origination. Dependent origination is essentially how the mind causes its own suffering. It is an elaboration of the Four Noble Truths. So to go over the Four Noble Truths, the first Noble Truth is suffering, that there is suffering. The second Noble Truth is that there are causes and conditions for that suffering. The third Noble Truth is that there is a relief from those causes and conditions, and therefore a relief from that suffering. And the fourth is that there is a path that leads to the cessation of suffering. These are the four Noble Truths. Dependent origination is an elaboration of how craving arises and therefore how we cause ourselves suffering.

But the cessation of dependent origination shows us the path, which is using the Eightfold Path, the Fourth Noble Truth, to get to the experience of cessation. Usually we start from the suffering and then move our way up. But this time I thought we'll do things a bit differently. I feel like doing things differently this time around. So we're going to start with ignorance. What is ignorance? Ignorance comes from the word avidya. Avidya. What is vidya? Vidya is knowledge, wisdom, understanding. Avidya is the lack of knowledge, the lack of understanding. What is the lack of understanding? What is it that we are not understanding through ignorance? Not understanding the Four Noble Truths.

in every moment, and thereby not being able to see that this is a process in every moment that is arising and passing away. And because it's arising and passing away, it's anicca, it's impermanent. And because it is impermanent, we can't call it happiness. Even if it is happiness that survives for 50 years out of our 100-year lifespan, it's still impermanent. At some point, we experience happiness, and at some point, that happiness decreases or it goes away. And so that is dukkha, right? That is the unsatisfaction or dissatisfaction, the unsatisfactory nature of existence. And anatta, which is the impersonal nature. We're not able to see that. So there are levels of ignorance. This reminds me of, hopefully I get it right, something I told people in the U.S., in the Missouris, in Tamasuka in Missouri, at the retreats there.

There are four levels of competencies. Have you heard of this? There are four levels of competencies. You are unconsciously incompetent in a subject, so that is the first level of ignorance. You have no idea what the Four Noble Truths are. You've never been introduced to them. You're consciously incompetent, which means now you're aware that you don't know. So you're aware that there's something called the Four Noble Truths. You've never heard of it before. Then you're consciously competent, which is where we all are, where we're practicing all the time to understand and realize what the Four Noble Truths are, what dependent origination is, what nama-rupa is, and so on. And then you are unconsciously competent, where it becomes part of your everyday life. You don't have to think about loving kindness. You don't have to think about bringing up loving kindness. You don't have to think about the precepts. They are always there, part of you.

So ignorance works in the same way. First you're just not aware of the fact that there is something called the Four Noble Truths. You're not aware of what the teachings of the Buddha are, what the teachings of the Dhamma are, what the traditions are, what the techniques are, what the processes are that are involved, what the Four Noble Truths are. But then you become aware of it, but you forget about it. Sometimes you forget about it, and this is a kind of ignorance, a kind of avidya, a lack of understanding in that moment. So for those of you who might have done forgiveness before, you know that the words that you use are: I forgive myself for not understanding, or I forgive you, the person, for not understanding. Not understanding means having ignorance, not realizing what you did, because if you knew any better you wouldn't do it. But in that moment you had a slip-up and you forgot, and there's ignorance there. So this

ignorance is like a veil. It's like these rose-tinted glasses from which you see the world. You just see the world in this way because you're not aware of the impermanent nature of every experience all the time. And this has an effect on what are known as formations, sankharas, which is the second link. There are three main types of formations. There are bodily formations, verbal formations and mental formations. Bodily formations have to do with the processes of the body. So when you walk, when you breathe, when you have any process that's happening in the body, this is being done through the body formations. The verbal formations happen when something makes contact with your mind and you think about it and you reflect upon it and you verbalize it.

Therefore, it's verbal. It causes the process of thinking and examining thought. This is why it is said that in the second jhana, verbal formations cease, because you stop the thinking and examining thought and expressing that. The mental formations allow you to feel and perceive. So when we're going through this process of the jhanas, in the second jhana, the verbal formations cease. In the fourth jhana, the bodily formations cease. Cease meaning we lose contact with them. We stop paying attention to them. And then when there's cessation of perception and feeling, mental formations cease. These formations are essentially the synapses in your brain. When you are born into this world, you are born with a large amount of synapses, and then as you experience things in this world they prune away based on your reactions to the outside world, based on how you behave, based on how others behave, based on how there's conditioning going on. And the beautiful thing about this is we have something called neuroplasticity, where the brain continues to change its neural pathways, the synapses continue to prune based on our

experiences. So formations are conditioned by ignorance. When we talk about them as karmic formations, in other words, formations or synapses can be conditioned by our continuous process of greed, hatred and delusion. You know, when I use these words, greed, hatred and delusion, it all makes it seem like it's all a bad thing. And no, no, you shouldn't be doing this. I want you to take a broader perspective on this and understand: when we talk about these formations that are conditioned by greed, hatred and delusion, we're just saying that they are conditioned by what is the biological imprint of our mind and body. Sexual feeling is not a bad thing. Hunger is not a bad thing. Thirst is not a bad thing. These are all biological processes in the body. What happens is when we become obsessed by them, when we become obsessed by our emotions, when we become obsessed by our relationships, when we become obsessed with, I should say, obsessed with our place in this world, all of that is the greed, hatred and delusion.

I want more and more because I don't feel content. I don't like this because I have something, I see something in myself that I don't like, and that's why I have resistance to that thing. And that's coming from identification. That's the delusion. So when ignorance is present, these formations carry forward karma, or the fruits of previous actions, that stem from this place of greed, where I don't have enough, from this place of aversion, where I'm repulsed by the things that I don't see for myself but I'm projecting onto others, and by the delusion of taking things personally.

And so when I have acted out of these places, from this foundation, it will create a reaction that we will have to experience later on. So that karma is the electricity. Karma is electricity, and when we switch on a fan, that is the reaction that we have to an experience. The electricity courses through the fan, through the wiring, and the wiring is the consciousness and mentality-materiality, which I'll get into a little bit later. And then everything else that happens in terms of the motion is the rest of the process of dependent origination. So karma is basically flowing through the gears of each of these links of dependent origination. If you want to understand karma, study dependent origination.

After you study dependent origination, observe how it arises in your daily life. Then you start to reverse the flow of karma. So these formations give rise to consciousness. Now, what is this consciousness that we're talking about? Vinnana. It is divided into the six sense bases: there's the eye consciousness, the ear consciousness, the nose consciousness, the tongue consciousness, the body consciousness, and the mind consciousness. This consciousness is not the same as the awareness that is behind all of that. That awareness is jnana, meaning knowledge, the knowing factor of the mind that is free from hindrances. The mindfulness. This consciousness that we're talking about is limited in its capacity, and it is conditioned by the use of the six sense bases.

This consciousness is driven forward into and functions through mentality and materiality. Mentality is made up of five components. It is made up of contact, feeling, perception, intention and attention. That's the mentality. What is contact here? Contact is the instrument through which we access information. It is the nerve endings in each of the sense bases that pick up information, right? And feeling, in this case, is the instrument through which we can experience the sense bases and what is happening. So they are called faculties, instruments. Perception allows you to label what is happening.

It's the memory center that labels: this is the color blue, this is the color red, this is spicy, this is sweet, and so on and so forth. Intention is the process of making a choice. It's called chetana. It's inclining towards a choice. It's volition, so it drives forward the karma. This is why the Buddha has said karma is intention, intention is karma. If you're walking and there's an ant in your path and you mistakenly, without seeing it, step on that ant, it is understood within Buddhist understanding that that is not breaking the first precept. But you seeing the ant and intentionally squashing it is breaking the precept, because there was intention there. So intention drives forward karma, and therefore it drives forward formations. And attention is the spotlight through which the light of consciousness moves. Our intention drives the spotlight in one direction or the other. We make a choice. You're making a choice to pay attention to me right now, but when I tell you to pay attention to the fan, you're making a choice to pay attention to the fan.

Your intention drives forward the attention, and the attention drives forward the consciousness. So what we are talking about when we talk about contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention are essentially the five aggregates, which also includes form or materiality. What is materiality, internal or external? The earth element, the water element, the air element, and the fire element, or the states of matter: the solid state of matter, the liquid state of matter, the gaseous state of matter, and plasma or heat, temperature. This is essentially what is happening on a moment-by-moment basis. Consciousness is not static when it comes to the sense basis. Consciousness continues to change all the time, dependent upon attention, where we choose to pay our attention.

basis consciousness continues to change all the time dependent upon attention where we choose to pay our attention and so what is present in mentality materiality is driven is driving forward the consciousness mentality materiality is dependent upon consciousness but consciousness is dependent upon mentality materiality in order for it to function. You need at least one if not more of the factors of mentality materiality in order for consciousness to continue on.

On a macro level, dependent origination also describes the process of rebirth. How is this happening? This is getting into the territory of the inexplicable. This is getting into the territory of take it with a grain of salt, because it is a leap into something that we have not seen for ourselves firsthand. But the understanding is this: when we are on our deathbed and we are drawing our last breath, in that moment there can happen a few things. We go through a life review process, and the good things we've done in our life may be present, or the bad things in our life may be present, or different things are present which cause us to identify with those experiences. Or the destination that we're getting to in the next life arises in the form of a sign. That's why some people, when they're dying, maybe a day before, a few days before, a week before, they see their loved ones somehow, or they think there are angels in the room.

It's because they're seeing the signs, the lakshin of their new life, basically, the next life. And this happens for people with near-death experiences as well. They go through this. So what happens? They cling to it. They have a reaction to it. They either crave for more, I wish I could do this over again, or I have a lot of attachment to this and I want more of this, or I wish I didn't do this. So there's aversion, there's regret, there's remorse, different kinds of emotions that come up. I'm actually reminded of a story by a very interesting teacher that I highly admire and respect. His name is Rohit Arya. He has a bunch of YouTube videos. He's not as big as you know other teachers out there, but that doesn't make a difference.

He has a lot of deep insight from his practice and his experience into the nature of reality, and I was listening to his video yesterday, it was yesterday, yesterday. In the video he was talking about a memory he had when he was about three and a half, four years old. He had gone with his relatives or friends, and there was a very elderly woman on her deathbed, and she was going through the death rattle. Does anybody know what the death rattle is? It's like when you draw your last breath, so the prana is leaving the body, the energy is leaving the body. She would do that, and everybody would think she's done, she's dead, and they would cry, and then she would come back up again, and she would do this three or four times. So by the third or fourth time, how much crying do you have left? You're like, are you sure you're going?

Like, should I cry or should I not cry? I'm not sure yet. But there was a wise person there who said he understood why she was, because they came from a family of landowners, and for them the pride was their land that they owned. And so she was attached to her land. And what did he do? He said, take a pinch of soil from that land and put it in water and have her drink it. She drank it, and she finally passed away, and by then people were relieved that she went. So what he was referring to was her attachment to the identification with that land. This is what happens in our last moments: we get attached, and we think about, oh, my wife, or oh, my children, or oh, my mother, or my father, or whatever it is. You know, I didn't make enough money. I didn't make, I didn't do enough. This, I should have done that. All of these things come up. These give rise to the formations, the carriers of the karma, and they create what is known as the patisandhi vinnana, which means the rebirth-linking consciousness that drives forward all of the karma from that particular life into the next life.

And the idea here is that there is a genetic match that happens the moment there is conception. You need three things for conception according to one of the suttas, which is Majjhima Nikaya 37, if I'm not mistaken. It's the Greater Discourse on the destruction of craving, yes, the Greater Discourse on the Destruction. Maha Tanhakkhaya Sutta, that's the one. And then the Buddha says you need three things in order for conception to happen: you need the sperm, you need a viable egg, ovum, and you need the gandhabba, which is seen as the descending consciousness. When these three come together, there is life. So the idea is that in that moment, in that life, the craving drives forward the next karma, and those karmic vibrations give rise to a kind of consciousness that drives forward to the next life, makes a direct and exact match to the genetic

makeup in that womb, the next womb, because the genes that are there are also formations that match up with the formations of the previous life. And then from there there's conception, and then from that conception there's the embryo, and everything else from the fetus, and everything else that comes from that, the growth. So this is why you need two things. The consciousness is what is being driven for, and the mentality materiality is the sperm and the ovum. So that's on the macro level, but you can take that aside for now, because this is something outside of the scope of what we can actually see for ourselves. But I wanted to put it out there for you guys to know that there is this understanding.

So now, from that mentality materiality, you have the sixth sense basis. The sixth sense basis are the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind. They are dependent upon mentality materiality. Why? Because in order for them to function, they need a viable nervous system. Mentality materiality is essentially the nerve endings, the nerve centers, the nervous system that allows for the reception of the outside world, so to speak. And so the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, the mind are all receptors. They are like the antenna picking up messages, picking up different frequencies from the air, because our eyes are only limited to basically a very small fraction of what is out there.

We see only in these seven colors, the spectrum of light that's there. Our ears can only pick up so much. Same with our nose. Our tongue has only these four, five, or six flavors, whatever they are. And our body, certain temperatures, certain vibrations, and things like that. And our mind is actually not unlimited, but it is expansive. The mind is not just limited to the brain, but all throughout the world.

So these are the receiving ends of sensory data. Our world is made up of these sixth sense bases. We cannot fathom something beyond what is outside of these sixth sense bases unless we have experienced it for ourselves. Like people talk about seeing ghosts and spirits, or hearing different kinds of music that is just not there, present, and all of these things. These might be our minds being able to pick up extrasensory experiences, extrasensory perceptions. So in order for the sixth sense basis to function, they require mentality materiality. They require the nerve endings, they require the nervous system to function properly. And then contact arises. Dependent upon the sixth sense basis, there is contact.

Contact is made up of three things. Contact is made up of the sense base itself, the sense base object. So the eyes seeing a form, the eye and color and form, the ear and sound, the nose and odors, the tongue and tastes and flavors, the body, vibrations and pressure and temperature, mind, mind objects, concepts, ideas, thoughts, and so on. So these two, when they connect, it gives rise to a sense-based consciousness dependent upon their content. When these three come together, the sense-based, the sense-based object and the sense-based consciousness, then we have contact. Because right now, if you're fully paying attention to me, you're only paying attention to my voice. But if I tell you to pay attention to the sound of the fan, now there's a different contact that's arising.

First there was a contact with the sound of my voice, and now there's a contact with the sound of the fan. Then there's a sound of the bird. There's another contact there. There's a contact of drilling going out somewhere. All kinds of different contact are arising, but it is only contact when attention is given to it, because it's the attention that drives forward the sense-based consciousness. There's so much you're paying attention to at the exclusivity of everything else, because of your attention. So this contact gives rise to vedana, which is feeling. It's translated as feeling, but I call it

experience. Because it can be any kind of experience. It could be vision, seeing. It could be hearing. It could be smelling. It could be tasting. It could be pressure, touching, vibration, whatever it is. Or it could be thinking. These six different kinds of feeling and their quality, the hedonic tone, as it said, that's pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.

Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral are perceptions. What is pleasant for me might be painful for you. What is pleasant for you might be painful for me. What is neutral is us basically not having any kind of reaction to. This vedana can be any kind of experience. We have multitudes of experiences happening in one fraction of a second, based on what input is coming in and where we choose to pay attention. Now, feeling has underlying tendencies driving them forward or being driven forward from them. These are seven in number, the underlying tendencies. There is 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 existence, and the underlying tendency towards ignorance.

The underlying tendency towards craving is the grasping nature of the mind. When we have something pleasing, if we misapprehend the experience as this is me, mine, or myself, and I don't want it to end, we grasp at that pleasant feeling, and that is because of the underlying tendency towards craving. When it's a painful experience, we misapprehend the experience as this is me, mine, or myself, and I want it to stop, and therefore the underlying tendency towards aversion makes me push it away. When we're unaware of the hedonic tone, which is to say it's neutral, there can be the tendency towards ignoring it and still taking it personally. Likewise with the underlying tendency towards doubt. What is the doubt here?

I'm not sure what kind of state I am in. I'm not sure if it's a pleasant state or unpleasant state. I'm not sure if it's a wholesome state or unwholesome state. That's the confusion that arises. When we have the underlying tendency towards views, our opinions about experiences, our opinions about what exactly it is that we are experiencing in terms of a good experience, a bad experience, our opinions about this experience being, I'm sure none of us are like this. I hope none of us are like this, but we might be once in a while. We might read the tabloids, or we might watch the news, or we might look at YouTube and be like, this is what this person says about this person.

And so we have an experience. We're reading about this person or listening about this person. And then we create opinions about it one way or the other, right? And those opinions mentally proliferate into other ideas and concepts. This is the underlying tendency towards views, the underlying tendency towards conceit that's burning. Did you give them the other sheet? That's the types of conceit. How many types of conceit are there? Anybody know? There are 10. It's like 39, I think, because you add them all together: one plus two plus three plus four plus five plus six plus seven plus eight plus nine plus ten. So yeah, thank you. So 1 plus 2 is 3, 3 plus 3 is 6, 6 plus 4 is 4, 4 plus 5 is 9, 9 plus 6 is 15, 15 plus 7 is 22, plus 8 is 30, plus 9 is 39, plus 10 is 49. Hey, I still know how to add. That's good. Oh wow, I don't know how to add. Is it 55? Is it 55? Yeah. 55. Anyway, so these are the different kinds of conceit. What do we mean by conceit? Conceit is

essentially the process of comparing. That's what it is. Why are they meditating longer than I'm meditating? Why is it that they seem to be going deeper than I'm going? Or the conceit of, you've seen it, you see it on the list, but it's basically that's what it is. It's the mind. It comes from the word mana in Pali, which means to measure, to compare. So conceit actually is the desire for security in an otherwise unsecure world, because when we compare we have this subject-object duality, and we then compare with other beings, and we think something is lacking in us, or even from insecurity we have the superiority over others, and we think somehow we are greater than the other person, or we even think we're equal to the other person, because we're looking for security. We're looking for surety, we're looking for certainty. So the conceit is the I am that comes up, the sense of me as a separate self.

It's very intrinsic to the mind. It starts the moment we are born. Why? As soon as, because when we're in the womb it's nice and cozy and cushy and everything is fed to us. We don't have to do anything. And as soon as we come into this world, we are separated from that cushy home that was there for eight or nine months, or nine or ten months, depending on how you follow. But what do we do? We cry, right? We cry. What happened? Why are we out here? And there is now an insecurity that we are cold, we're hungry, we want stuff. And then the doctor, whoever this doctor is, or the nurse who washes us, is like, what is this water, what is this, all this experience, what's going on? And then we're given back to the mother. And there's a familiar scent that's there.

Ah, I recognize this. Security again. And we latch on to the mother. And now we have security. But then as we grow up and we go out into the world, we feel insecure again. There's all kinds of dangers out there. There's all kinds of stuff happening. So we try to find a circle of friends that matches our views and our opinions and so on. So this is conceit, the desire for security. But if we let go of comparing, if we let go of the notion of I, if we let go that I have to do something, like we come into this world, in this messed up society where we have to earn for a living and we have to do this and we have to do that, or we are met with violence or we are met with trauma, we are met with death and all of this,

and we're met with societal norms, and we're met with all kinds of things. We're born into a particular kind of religion, a particular kind of political system, a particular kind of belief system, of politics, a particular idea or ideology of how business is done and how you make money and what is the right way to make money and what is the wrong way to make money. And you don't marry in this caste, you don't marry in that caste, you don't interact with this person, you don't interact with that person. All of that is conceit. We create our own prison. We create our own ideologies because we have nothing better to do with our lives, because we're still seeking that security. We're all little kids trying to figure out how to run this

world, and the most immature little kids are the world leaders that we have. He said this to me, he said that to me, I'm going to throw a missile to him just to show him. He's throwing a missile to me, we're going to throw two missiles at them. We're going to go to the moon. We're going to go to Mars. That's what it is, conceit. So this underlying tendency towards conceit makes us identify with the feeling, with the experience. Then there's the underlying tendency towards existence. What does that mean, existence? Actually it comes from the word bhava, which is the habitual tendencies that we've created in our mind in how we decide to act in the world.

And we'll get into it when we discuss bhava, but basically it's like we choose to create a certain kind of existence for ourselves. And if there's a threat to that from the experience, that causes us to act in a certain way, then there's the underlying tendency towards ignorance. I think that's the last one, ignorance. So that means that we are not aware, we misapprehend the experience as me, mine, or myself. The ignorance of not seeing the four noble truths in every moment causes us, bridges this experience into craving.

Craving is craving for sensual pleasure, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence. Craving for sensual pleasures means I have a beautiful experience. Somebody gives me a piece of chocolate cake, there's no way I'm not going to crave it. I eat that piece of chocolate cake, and what do I do? I want another piece. That's the craving. I haven't had my fill, I'm not content, right? So we grasp onto the things that make us feel comfortable, and that's the craving. I want more. The obsession of I need to have more. I need to possess them. I can't let this go. The

aversion is when there is an unpleasant sense experience and we push it away. That's also craving for sensual pleasures, but it's the aversion. Craving for existence is I don't like the place I am in right now, mentally, emotionally and physically. That's one thing. I don't like it, it's unpleasant, that's okay, but I want another experience instead. Like I'm unhappy that I'm just in the first jhana. I want to go to the fourth jhana. Why am I not in the fourth jhana yet? That's a craving. Craving for jhana. Craving for existence. Craving for non-existence. It's the flip side. It's the aversive aspect of it. The very extreme form of craving for non-existence is suicidal

ideation. I can't live in this world anymore. Why does that happen? Because it becomes very overwhelming to the system. It's difficult to regulate and channelize and understand what's going on, and it becomes so overwhelming, so overstimulating. It's like, I have to end it right now, I don't want this anymore, right? That's a craving for non-existence. So it's even the fear of an afterlife. Like, I'll kill myself as long as I know that I'm not going to end up somewhere. That's a very extreme form of craving for non-existence.

This craving gives rise to something called clinging. Clinging, or upadana, is of four types. There's clinging to sensual pleasures, there's clinging to views, there's clinging to self-view, and clinging to rites and rituals. So clinging to sensual pleasures is like, I talked to you about chocolate cake, right? So I crave the chocolate cake. But why do I crave the chocolate cake? It's because I associate that chocolate cake with satisfaction. I associate that chocolate cake with comfort. Maybe my mother used to make it when I was three years old, and I remember the scent of that. For me, I know specifically what it is. I love white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. Yeah, I'm going to say it a second time, so all of you know it, so you know what to get me: white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. But it's a specific kind of cookie that only comes in Macy's, which is a store in the US, and it's a specific Macy's store, which is on 34th Street in New York City, and it's a specific bakery on the third floor.

When I was very young, during Christmas time, my family and I would go shopping. And I would immediately recognize that smell when you were in the shopping center. And lo and behold, where do you find Delson? Right there at the bakery, waiting for his white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie. I'm saying a third time, so I've associated happiness with that cookie, right? The association with that experience is the clinging. This happens through trauma as well. On the flip side of it, I've had a traumatic experience, and so any sense experience that happens that is associated with that trauma, anytime I listen to some music which is associated with a very traumatic event, it triggers it. It might not trigger the memory, but it triggers that

unpleasantness. That's the clinging to sensual pleasures. It's the why of why we crave. It's the because of what I crave. Why do I crave it? Because of so and so and so. That's the clinging. I like chocolate cake, for example. I say I like chocolate cake. That's a pleasant sensation, and I want more of it because I can never have enough. That is the craving. Because of is the clinging in my mind. If I say something like this, the statement "because of" is the clinging. So this is clinging to sensual pleasures. Clinging to views is clinging to our opinions about things. As I said, we grew up in a certain kind of society.

We grew up in a certain kind of family with its own ideas about what is right and wrong. And we take that forward. Either we rebel and create our own opinions, or we inherit those opinions, and they are there for life. In any case, or in any situation, whatever that might be. Clinging to views can mean clinging to our opinions about things, which can lead, quite literally, to war and violence. Because we're so stuck in our views, in our opinions. This is what happens when we have clash of nations. When we had the big world wars, it was clinging to views. When we had any great war in the world, it was because of clinging to views.

What about in India? It's mythological. We don't know if it actually happened. But the Mahabharata war, why did it happen? Because of clinging. Clinging to what? This is my land. This is my land, the core of us. The Pandavas says, no, we have a share to this land. It is actually rightfully ours. And it creates all kinds of opinions in the royal court. And because it cannot be resolved, and because it just gets worse and worse and worse, it ends up in Kurukshetra. We have a big, massive war. That's all because of clinging. So clinging gives rise to the stick and stone. That's what the Buddha says. Clinging to views. Then there's something called clinging to wrong view.

Wrong view in relation to Buddhism, in comparison to Buddhism. There are six kinds of wrong view that the Buddha talks about, or are mentioned in the suttas. The first is materialism, which is that there's nothing beyond just the sense-based pleasures, or experiences of the sense-based basis. The other view is eternalism, that there is something that continues on after this, and I identify with that. There's something called annihilationism, where it's like there's nothing beyond this, so that's kind of like materialism. There's another one that is called asceticism. So in that ascetic kind of view, it's like in order for me to deal with my karma, I have to do certain rites and rituals and I have to fast for so many days and I have to do this and I have to do that for ascetic reasons and that's how I deal with my karma.

That is the opposing view in the time of the Buddha. Then there's a view of skepticism, which is I'm not sure whether it's this or that. Actually, it's really more of being despondent in terms of whether it's this or that. So there's a bit of confusion in the mind. But regardless of the views, the understanding is that if we take something as just material pleasures, we are discounting the fact that we can experience a pleasure beyond the senses, which is a super-mundane experience of meditation and meditative states. There is the view of eternalism. And this gives rise to the idea that no matter what I do, I will be alive and nothing will happen to me.

It's a diluted view. Obviously, we know there is birth and death and there is a process of rebirth happening in every moment. I say obviously because I've been in this process for a long time. But as you start to develop your understanding of the Dhamma, you see it for yourself. There is the view of no meaning. So this is a view which is like nihilism, actually, rather than annihilationism. No purpose. But if that was the case, then there's no karma. But we know there is a cause and effect. There's an action and reaction. This is why the Buddha says these are wrong views compared to Buddhism. There's something else called Niyati Vada, which is the view of fatalism, of destiny.

It just negates everything else and says we don't have a choice in any matter and it's just our destiny. The analogy that's used here is just as you would unfurl a ball of yarn and it moves and then it just becomes one piece of string the same way our life is unfurling it's causeless there's no effect to it, it's just predestined it's a very fatalistic kind of view which means we don't have control over our choices but we know we do our choices nonetheless are conditioned but they're still choices, we can still make different choices in every given moment

so that's one kind of view and then that view of asceticism as I said is the idea that if you do ascetic practices it's going to lead to the negation of karma and the Buddha says the only way of relieving karma is not to mitigate it by doing different kinds of practices but actually facing that karma and experiencing it with right view with wisdom which is with equanimity non-reactivity and responding with wisdom and then skepticism or this sort of despondency is basically like you're not certain about things there's a lack of faith a lack of conviction in things and the Buddha says that's a wrong kind of view because if you're not convinced about anything then you're always confused in life you can't make any kind of decisions and then he talks about clinging to dhamma itself oh man there is so much clinging on to dhamma if you go on the internet there is so much i have seen it firsthand for

myself he says this that's wrong he said that that's wrong he said this no he doesn't know what he's saying this is the way this is the true dhamma this is how you do it this is how you do it and again it's the taking over the stick and stone it causes all kinds of unnecessary thought processes that create immense mental

proliferation clinging to the dhamma so the buddha says let go of that as well clinging to the dhamma the dhamma is used that dhamma when we said dhamma we're talking about the practice is used as a raft to get from one side of the river to the other side the other side is what the cessation of suffering once you have the cessation of suffering you let go of the raft once you're on the other shore you don't cling to the raft you don't cling to it like this is what everybody should be using and this is the only way there are many ways to get to the other shore you could use a bridge you could swim you could do all kinds of things you can create your own raft you can pay the toll guy and have him take you by ferry many different ways to do it so when you have gotten to the other shore do you carry the raft on your shoulders or you just leave it aside leave it aside doesn't mean you stop practicing it just means you've accomplished what you needed to

accomplish but you don't need to evangelize and make it a big deal. So this is the clinging to views. We've gone through clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, and there's clinging to self-view. Clinging to self-view is in relation to the five aggregates. What are the five aggregates? Form, feeling, perception, intention, and formations and consciousness. So it's the idea that these five aggregates are self, that it is the self with the big S, or they are products of the self, they're emanating from the self, or that the self is contained inside of them or a product of the five aggregates, or that the self is independent of the five aggregates. So these kinds of views, you multiply them by the five aggregates, there's 20

self views. So it's just a matter of noticing anytime you identify with one or more of the five aggregates as this is me, this is mine, or this is myself, or I am separate to the five aggregates, and you catch your mind doing that and you let go of that. So this process of craving and clinging, they can be recognized, they can be released or relaxed, and they can be replaced with the mind that is free of craving, with contentment, with loving-kindness, with equanimity. And so, one. You can 6R the craving, you can 4R the clinging. Then finally, we have clinging to rites and rituals.

Clinging to rites and rituals are essentially identifying with certain kinds of rituals with the idea that they will liberate you. Your own effort will liberate you, nothing else beyond that. Your own wisdom and practice, your own effort, will liberate you. The belief that some deity will do it for you, the belief that some kind of ritual, you know, carrying a lucky charm or whatever it is, you can do all of that. That's fine as long as you understand its place as tools and not as the replacement for liberation. So the clinging to rites and rituals is like the clinging to things like the Buddha said, were like leading to the breaking of precepts. Like what, animal sacrifice? That's a clinging to rites and rituals. Any kind of ritual that causes harm to another being, one way or the other.

So this clinging in general, it's the association. It's the process in which I identify and associate my experiences and the rationalization of why it is I like something, why it is I identify with something, or why it is that I don't like something. And this clinging gives rise to something known as bhava, which is translated as existence. It's also translated as becoming or being or habitual tendencies.

That's the translation that Bhante Vimalaramsi used to like, habitual tendencies. So there are three kinds of existence. There is the sense-based experience, the sensual realms. There is the form existence, which happens in jhanas. And there's the formless existence, which happens in the ayatanas. The jhanas are the first four jhanas. The ayatanas are infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception.

At the macro level, outside of the scope of one life, it's talking about multiple existences. In Buddhism, there's an entire map of the 31 planes of existence. And you have six sensual heavens, you have the Manusha Loka, that's the realm of human beings, you have the animal realm, and then you have multiple hells below that. You thought the Christians were bad with hell. The Buddhists have all kinds of hell realms, you know. And I have a good friend, David Johnson, the author of At Nibbana, he loves talking about hell. You should see some of his presentations about hell, talking about the icy hell, the hell where there's only terror and screaming, the hell of iron spikes and the hell of fire, and just everything, any kind of torture that you can think of. I think David was probably in hell in my past life. It's just like... but anyway, so in the 31 planes of existence, all of these constitute sense experiences, and there's the hungry ghosts. So I'm going to talk about it on a micro level, that is to say on a life level. How can we understand these

existences? I look at them as psychological states. So there is the Manusha Loka, which is us as humans when we become violent and have ill will, and we want to destroy and we want to inflict pain on others and cruelty upon others. That is a very hellish, demonic kind of a sewer kind of mind state. Then there's something called hungry ghosts, when we become jealous, when we become envious of things, when we want to hold on to and grasp onto things. That is a state of a hungry ghost. Whenever we're satisfied, we're never content enough, we want more and more and more. And because that person has that, now I have to have that. They're driving a bigger car, I'm gonna get a bigger car. They have a bigger home, so I'm gonna get a bigger home. They have a million dollars, and I'm gonna get two million dollars. You know, the Forbes list is a list of hungry ghosts. So the hungry ghost, what kind of psychology, psychological state do you have, that you feel like you don't have enough? The animal realm. Animals are limited to

essentially how can I get food, how can I survive, and how can I reproduce. That's essentially what it is. And if that's the kind of mindset you're in, then you have a very animalistic kind of psychology. Manusha Loka is related to choice. Are we aware of our choices? Are we aware of the fact that we have the ability to make, through our intellect, discernment of the choices that are available to us, and thereby have the empathetic sort of... because mammals all have that, empathy and compassion, and so on. Animals have that as well, but we have a level of intellect that allows us to discern. We are called Homo sapiens sapiens, that is, one who is aware of their awareness. That's why we can meditate. Meditation is a truly human skill, metacognition. And then beyond that are the six sensual heavens, which are called the devalokas.

And to get there, you want to have generosity, you want to have empathy, you want to have loving kindness, you want to have all of these qualities of mind. So when you are generous, when you are patient, when you're loving and kind, you have a more deva-like psychology. And now you have the jhana realms, which are associated with the first four jhanas. When you're in jhana, your psychological state is attuned to that experience. That's why you feel joy when you're walking around. You feel equanimous when you're walking around. You feel calm. Likewise with the formless realms. You feel expansion. You feel

spaciousness. You feel that you can penetrate through the arising and passing away of consciousnesses. same with nothingness and neither perception or non-perception so this is existence is one way of understanding it another way of understanding it is habitual tendencies this is essentially like all of the collected data that we have in terms of choices it comes from her from our habitual reactions to experiences habitual patterns of behavior this is where it leads to that rebirth which we'll talk about in a bit but the habitual tendencies is like a library of reactions that we have formulated in our mind when we are met with an experience, we immediately react from there. So for example, we find ourselves attracting very similar kinds of relationships because of our habitual patterns.

We will deal with only these people on a subconscious level, and we'll only be friends with these kinds of people because of that subconscious patterning. That's the habitual tendencies, and it can be immediate, it can be reactive, and that leads to what's known as birth or rebirth. Now, on the macro level, we're talking about birth in every moment. When the fetus is developed, but as soon as conception is there, that is a kind of birth, and then it continues to grow, and those are different kinds of birth, until you come out into the world, and that's your birth. But here we're referring to, in one life, the birth of action. So everything from craving to becoming or habitual tendencies, you can use the four R's to recognize in your mind.

It becomes more difficult as you go downstream. So when you notice, oh, I'm grasping on something and I like something, you can let go of that. You can let go of the tightness and tension. You notice, oh, I like this, but I really like it because of this and this, this. You can notice that and let go of that. You can recognize, I really like this, and I want this because of so-and-so, and therefore I'm going to act upon it in this way, or this is how the world is to me, or this is how the world should be for me. That's the habitual tendencies. You can let go of all of that. But you can't let go of birth of action.

You may say something to someone, and that's a birth of verbal action. You may think something about someone, and that's the birth of mental action. You may do something, and that's the birth of physical action. If you think of dependent origination like a river, in the flow of the river each link is a whirlpool, and the different underlying tendencies, and the greed, hatred and pollution, all of that is generating those whirlpools. And then you come to a point where you have the bend of the waterfall. The bend of the waterfall is the becoming. I'm inclining towards something. But if you go down from the waterfall, there's no way for you to climb right back up.

Once the arrow is released, you cannot call it back. That's the birth of action. So you can't 4R your actions. That is karma. This gives rise to the suffering. What is suffering? We talked about that a few days ago, right? It is the unpleasant experiences, the experiences that we don't like, that we don't want, or the experiences that are painful to the body: sickness, illness, disease, grief, sorrow, lamentation, despair. All of those things are suffering. So the cessation of suffering is a cessation of birth of karmic action. What is karmic action? It's the action in which it is reactive. Every karma is that there's a reaction to every action instead of a response. There's a difference there. I'll talk about that. But the reactivity is the birth of action. With the cessation of that birth of action, there's a cessation of that suffering. With the cessation of the habitual tendencies from which we act, which means we're not thinking before we act, we're just immediately the mind is subconsciously bringing up our reactions. When that ceases, birth of karmic action

ceases when we stop clinging, when we stop creating traumatic associations and triggers, and so on, or when we stop rationalizing why it is that we like something or why we identify with something. The cessation of that is a cessation of the subconscious patterns that come up. When we stop identifying and liking, not even liking, actually, when we grasp at something as discontent, we are discontent. We don't like it, or we want more of it. When we stop doing that, the cessation of craving is the cessation of clinging. When we let go of our underlying tendency towards craving, when we let go of our underlying tendency towards aversion, towards ignorance, towards views, towards conceit, towards existence, and towards doubt, I look at you always because I feel like you're the expert here.

So with the cessation of these seven underlying tendencies, craving ceases, but it's understood with the cessation of that feeling of the experience, of what the identification with that experience that ceases. How does that ceasing happen? The Eightfold Path. What is the heart of the Eightfold Path? What is the re-created version of the Eightfold Path? Right effort. What are the right efforts? The four R's. Recognizing these signals, these links as reactions, allows us to let go, and thereby let go of our karma. This is the true understanding of karma. The react versus response. The react causes further karma. The response mitigates and alleviates that karma. What is the response here? The response rooted in wisdom, through yoniso manasikara, attention rooted in the reality of three characteristics of existence.

Seeing, feeling as impermanent and impersonal, liable to change, therefore liable to cause suffering, therefore not me, not mine, not myself. A very simple way of doing this is bringing mindfulness, awareness, to everything, because awareness is the gatekeeper. It allows for the mind to be regulated. And when we do this, every time we have an experience and respond, the reactivities that cause the patternings start to weaken. So that we replace those tendencies, we replace that clinging, we replace that craving, and finally we eliminate our continuous bombardment of "I need this, this needs to happen a certain way," the constant bombardment of triggers, the constant bombardment of "if only it was this way, if only it was that way," the expectations. And so we become more aware of where the habitual tendencies are arising from, and we can start to change them. We can start to clean them up and replace them with wisdom. Thereby, for one who is fully awakened, their responses are rooted in that understanding, so the karma that arises for them is the karma that arose prior to their full awakening. And they just continue experiencing that.

So for us to be able to let go of the karmic cycle is to stop adding to the karmic cycle. And that is by becoming more responsive than reactive. Allowing karma to arise as it would through awareness, through equanimity. Thereby our reactions don't strengthen the karma through the craving, through the clinging, through the becoming. And just as you would with the hindrance, the hindrance is what it's old karma as a result of us breaking a precept at some point, and how do we deal with the hindrance before it arises? And it comes up but it's weaker, and it gets weaker, and it gets weaker, and it gets weaker until it dissipates. Likewise with all karma. The more we react, what happens? The more the karma arises. But the more we let go, the more we just observe and forearm, the weaker that karma arises. And when it arises it's so weak that no scaffolding of craving and clinging and so on can continue for it to arising, and it dissipates completely. The remainderless fading away of karma is a remainderless fading away of

suffering. So what I have told you, everything that I've told you, is the theoretical framework that is dependent origination, for us to understand how choice arises and what kind of choices we can make, how to deal with and understand karma, both karma in terms of the inherited karma and the destruction of the fruit of that karma. Any questions? I didn't even see that. Let's see. No, I think it's pretty good, yeah? It's all good, it's fine.

I mean, there was a few hands that came up, so. So am I audible directly? Yeah. So this might sound like I'm asking out of self-interest, which is actually the case as well. So, is it possible that the karma that is placed in the consciousness gets purified without getting the fruition, or is there some way it gets purified without it actually coming into reality, without it coming into fruition? It just got purified in meditation or something like that? So here's a way to understand karma also, and this is an understanding that I got from, um, a woman who I think it was, uh, I think it was Venerable Vasa, but I can't be for sure, but in any case it was a woman who was a student of a teacher named Upandita, and he had a great way of explaining what karma looks like.

Say you have three different kinds of fruit seeds. You have an apple seed, you have a watermelon seed, and you have an orange seed. You plant all three seeds, but you plant one seed with proper nutritious soil, and it has enough sunlight and enough water. You plant a second seed in okay soil, and you give it enough nutrition, water and sunlight. You plant a third seed which is in barren rock.

Now, of course the watermelon seed will grow, and let's say the orange seed will grow, and the apple seed might not grow. Let's say the apple seed is in the barren rock. Why? Because for both of these two seeds there's enough nutrition, but the third seed doesn't have enough nutrition. Now, by the nature of that seed it will grow at its own rate. So this is like karma. Karma is like seeds. If there is no cause for that seed to grow, there's no nutrition, then it won't grow, it won't arise. But if there is enough nutrition for it to grow, and the causes and conditions are correct, by the nature of the intensity of that karma it will grow at a certain pace. What is that intensity? Emotional intensity of that karma and the emotional reactivity to that karma. Karma can only be purified by its

experience. There's no other way to do it, just by experiencing it and responding to it with wisdom. So when we do meditation, when we have mindfulness, we're utilizing the tools that cease further karmic arising, so that allows us for the growing for the tree but at a certain rate, and eventually we don't collect the seeds, so no more fruition. So it's not like we prevent or run away from our karma. We face the karma in the appropriate manner, which is with equanimity and mindfulness. My this feeling, perception, perception and feeling, what is the relation exactly, is happening, and what is the difference between sensation? Sensation. Suppose I have something, happened here, the pain has come.

The feeling is, we are telling that it is, this is a painful feeling, pleasant, unpleasant, like that. And what is the difference between all these things and the relationship between the feeling and perception? Sensation is the experience of the six sense bases in terms of what is happening, like, for example, the seeing, the hearing, the smelling, the tasting, the touching. These are the sensations, the raw sensations. The perception that it is pleasant or unpleasant is the perception. The labeling of the experience is the perception. Feeling encompasses sensation and emotion. So feeling can be mental as well as

physical. Vedana, that's why I don't call it feeling, because then it's like, are you talking about emotional feeling or feeling or what kind of feeling? So I call it experience. Perception is that part of the mind that labels the experience, like when we are, let's say, little children and there's a fire stove fire, we have the experience of seeing that stove fire, and our mother tells us that's the fire, be careful, and so there's the knowledge that that fire is to be careful with. That's the perception. But some of us, like myself when I was a kid, don't like to listen to their parents, so we decide to put our hand on top of the fire because I don't trust what she says. I want to see for myself what is this fire all about. So now I experience painful feeling, that it's way too hot, and I get, you know, burned. Next time I see the fire I perceive it as not to be reckoned with. So the perception is rooted in the memory of the initial experience, and thereby every time we have an experience we're always perceiving, we're always labeling what that experience is. The perception is the commentary on the experience.

Thank you. So, her, and then him. Okay. So I'm asking this question because there are some cases like this in my own extended family. You talked about the three factors of conception, so what are the chances when you lose a loved one, especially someone very close to you, during rebirth, their genetic match is you or someone around you, and does it happen more often than random genetic matching? Are there any studies done on that? Yeah, this is the problem with the rebirth, you know, we can't really prove all of these things, but the genetic match is not necessarily within your own family. The genetic makeup is basically the genome that matches the karma of that particular person.

So a person can be born as a human or they can be born in a different realm, but it depends upon the mentality, that is, the different faculties of the mind, and the kind of genes that are there in that physical body. So with the sperm and the ovum for a human or animal or whatever it is.

And it doesn't need to be within one's own family or extended family necessarily. It's just that that particular mentality material, that particular name and form, is suitable for the expression of that karma that needs to be expressed through those four missions. Having said that, I know of one of my teachers whose mother had passed away, and his granddaughter was born sometime later, and there was the person who said that that granddaughter is essentially his grandmother. I'm sorry, his mother, in other words the granddaughter, because she exhibited very similar behavioral patterns, and she knew things about her late grandmother that nobody had told

her. So this can happen within one particular extended family as well. Does it happen because you... there's still some unfinished business in your comic karmically? Very much possible, yes. My second question is you talked about the 31 realms, so is there anything outside? Is there any way to break outside these 31 realms? Is there anything beyond that, and do these 31 realms exist independently, or are they interlinked and spill over into each other? Hmm, the 31 realms are basically the Buddha's interpretation of the loka system that we have in Hinduism, the 14 lokas and so on so forth, but it's also that outside of these realms is Nirvana. Nirvana is seen as that uncreated,

unconditioned realm beyond the conditions of this samsara. So samsara is made up of these 31 realms, and if there's a spilling over, actually it's more like, for example, the first jhana realm has three or four subsections, and each jhana realm after that has its own subsections. And there can be some interaction between these realms. And we see that already with the animal and human realms, for example. But it can happen between devas and humans, devas and demons, and whatever else we want to call it.

So there can be a cross-pollination of experience. Like for example, there are stories in the sutras of a very strange karma of a guy named, well, their Buddhist version, the Buddhist version of Yama Raja. Like he is, his whole thing is to bring people to the next life or into whatever realm they're supposed to be in, but he has a very sort of boring job. He's got to just be there and somebody has to judge where they go and everything, right? And so he's sort of like a cleric or a

clerk, but he remains in the lower realms in order to kind of sort people, beings, out, but after he's done with his job, like after he's given his eight hours, he goes to the devalokas where he has a celestial mansion. This is of course all stories, but the idea is that there is interplay between these realms. So when people do DMT and they see these entities, is that an example of cross? Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. There is something going on there that is beyond the scope of just the mind. It's an actual travel in different realms. Thank you. Two questions. Is humility the opposite of conceit? Humility, the opposite of?

Conceit. And? Second question. No, is it something to develop or? Humility is the opposite of vanity and pride and arrogance, which are different types of conceit. Humility is contentment in my own self. In other words, if I'm comparing with someone, then I have pride over someone because of a superior complex, or I have an inferiority complex and thereby I try to overcompensate and I have arrogance and vanity. But humility is a certainty in one's own value, as opposed to false humility, which is like, "Oh, I'm not worthy," or I bow down and this and that and all that. No, actual humility is like, I have a certitude in what I'm doing and I'm content in what I'm doing.

I'm not comparing it with anyone else or the world around me. Second is these astrological remedies like stones and amulets or whatever. Compared to following the Dhamma and meditating to attenuate your karma, what is the relative impact of these remedies? There is an impact. There is an impact. In fact, the Buddha even talks about it in some cases. He says that certain amulets can give you certain siddhis. And certain amulets can actually help with calming the mind, giving some level of peace. Or each potion or amulet, talisman or whatever, has a certain effect. But again, that's why I was saying we use them as tools if somebody wants to go in that direction.

But we don't use them as crutches or replacements for the actual effort that needs to be made. I'm skipping the line because there is a Sutta or there is a mention, where Buddha has also talked about predicting someone's future or dealing in gemstones and such being considered not right livelihood. Right livelihood? That's not right livelihood for the monks. Okay. So for lay people, it's okay. It's okay for lay people. Actually, the Buddha also says being a doctor is wrong livelihood.

But from monks, right? In other words, right livelihood for monks is: you came into this world of monkhood to meditate, to study and to liberate yourself. Dealing with other stuff is a waste of time for you, because you're in a very one-pointed, singular direction. But anything related to medicine, astrological stuff, palm reading, gemstones, all of that, these are all okay for lay people. In fact, you, if you remember, we had apparently an astrologer predicting, or at least somebody predicting, the future of Gautama: either he will be a Chakravarthi or he will be a Sammasambuddha. Yeah. So these four elements, which are mentioned in mentality materiality, the four ones, earth, wind, fire, water, are these subjected to each individual

Yes. Can you elaborate on that? Because I don't want to, uh, subjected to each individual. For example, I told you I saw some trees growing up, like roots or trees, so I wanted to get some more info on that, right? I saw the earth element, right? Someone can see fire, someone can see water. So what does that? Yeah, that's exactly it. So you might have an experience of seeing something that signifies a certain kind of element. In this case, when we say we have an influence or it has an influence on us, there can be levels of earth element, or levels of water element, or levels of fire or air element in the body, and that can give rise to, if anybody knows Ayurveda, the three humors, the three, you know, Vata, Kapha and Pitta, so that's how you can understand. But even mentally as well you can experience the earth element, the water element, the fire element and the air element. Hi, Nelson.

So I have two questions. One is, I really found the Rohit Aria story very fascinating. Which one? The Rohit Aria, the one where somebody was dying and she had an attachment to her land, right? But if you find someone close to you going through something like that and you don't know what they're attached to really, so what is a good way to bring some... By the way, his story, what he was referring to about that, was it was not good for her to be attached to that land.

Right, yeah. And he made a joke about this. He said that nowadays it'll be more like, if people have the scent of currency before they currency notes, because everybody's tied to money nowadays. But Bhante Vimalaramsi, remember? Before he was a monk, his mother had a hospice, and he would go to the hospice and speak with the people who were there, and he would uplift their mind. Didn't matter if they were Buddhist or Christian or Muslim or Hindu, whatever. He would just talk from their particular religious scripture and let them uplift their mind through that and remind them of wholesome things in their life. You know, for example, when my father passed away, when we were there with him, one of the things that we did was each of us thanked him. He was not conscious, he was not present, but he was listening, and we thanked him for the good things he did for each of us in our lives, and that helped uplift him and reminded him

reminded him of funny times, good times, all of that. So that's what we can do for our loved ones in the past. Thank you. Sorry, I had one more. So this is connected to various concepts you've been explaining to us. One is around how we want to be having this awareness, especially let's say you went quite minor when you have equanimity. You want to bring that in real day-to-day life, where you see things for what they are. Similarly, you spoke about how when we read gossip, not to take it at face value, and so on, and the perception where we talk about labeling things. So if you want to see everything without the context that we already have about this person or this thing or whatever judgment we have built, and only see in this current context, wouldn't that make it very slow for us, or rather a very ineffective way of handling things or situations? The system one, system two, you get on the thinking, thinking fast? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's why I'm saying it's best not to think at all. Okay, just bypass all the thinking

and let intuition come into play, because even within the current context, whatever is happening is all conditioned experience. But when we have equanimity, we're not making a value judgment one way or the other. We're just seeing what's arising, and whatever is required in that current situation we're applying, but we're not having a reaction to it. We're not having opinions about it. We're not coming from a bias, or at least very little amount of bias. We're more like, okay, what seems most appropriate right now in this

Situation. It makes sense. At the same time, it's a bit confusing. On the give me an example and we'll walk through it, I remember a story you told us once about how you look at your mom. I really resonated with that story. I wonder if there were examples like that, but you can tell me. How do I look at my mom? In the sense that I take her for granted, that she's always around. So when she's talking about, let's say, a work opportunity, because I've never seen her like that, I dismiss it, maybe, perhaps. Whereas I would not dismiss that in case my sister had said that, or our friend. So, some context around that. The reason I bring up is it's very easy to otherwise build up on all those contexts or things we have built up around this one personal situation when you are navigating your life. So just meet people where they're at. That's it. Don't be like, "Oh, because he said this and that that time, now this is what's happening." Just meet them where they

I think, first, is a comment to your statement. So there are death doulas these days, just like there are birth doulas. Like, I went to a hospice and I, like there's training for how to deal with dying and help them pass on. Yeah, yeah. So I just found that interesting. Like there's something for birth as well as for death. Yeah. And on to my question. I got a bit confused about karma versus reaction versus hindrances. For instance, pain or appearance of pain is karma, and my aversion to it is the reaction.

we are for our in the aversion, not the pain. Yes. Similarly, if there is hindrance of sloth and torpor, what are we for, our in the reaction to, or the resistance to that? Yes. Another question would be around perception. Say I have a fresh experience, maybe of a jhana or something, then in the database, like you said, there is no entry, right? So a fresh entry will be made at that point. From next time onwards I'll recall from that. Yeah, that's perception. The recalling of what that, it's not present in this. Yeah, it's not present in here, but it's tied to the link of feeling. Okay, so the first time there is no, it's just feeling. It's just feeling, it's consciousness, and feeling consciousness, meaning the awareness of the feeling. And then somebody contextualizes what that is, or you yourself understand through learning and so on, and then next time you perceive it as, so in fact, immediately in that moment you perceive it because you're aware of, "Okay, now that's the, that's the color red," or that's not the first channel.

I have a question about conception, but when does actually the mind get attached to the baby? At this very moment of conception, or is it at a later stage, when all the code and DNA and everything? I think once the code of the DNA is sort of unpacked, then there's a formation, that the form. So right now I end up in that moment, only formations are functioning, formations, and then consciousness is slowly being developed as the mentality materiality forms, and then there is the process

of reactions and stuff that's happening even in the womb. So it doesn't happen immediately? No. Exactly at the moment of conception? So the idea is that consciousness descends and formations are there, but then mind comes into the picture as it's starting to form, and that might take after a little while. So how long is a while? Because there's always a question about abortion. People have, well, in that case, I mean, Buddhism would straight away say that life is

Consciousness and the formations and the intentions at conception. There's birth. There's a birth of mentality, material. There's a birth of some kind of materiality, at least with formations, and then the mind. Just because there's no mind doesn't mean there's no life there. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's killing you. So the Buddhist will say the life is actually starting at conception, but again it depends on who you ask. I have a question also about the jhanas. Yesterday you explained the jhanas, how we see it in TWIM, and you briefly mentioned in other traditions, those who do absorption or concentration methods. How are those jhanas? I understand they are different than the TWIM jhanas, and how come they still get to the same result somehow?

That's a good question. That's what I ask the TWIM community too. The thing is, there's this bias in TWIM that we have the answer. That's why I don't consider myself TWIM. I don't consider myself any kind of teacher. They have this idea that TWIM is the only way to get to enlightenment or awakening, but there are the other traditions that are available there, and it's a matter of your inclination and your mindset and what you find useful for you.

It's you either taking the raft or crossing the bridge or paying the ferryman to get to the other side. So what TWIM's argument is, is that this absorption jhana will suppress the mind, and by suppressing the mind it suppresses the hindrances. So therefore, by absorbing the mind or getting to one-pointedness, you're not actually dealing with the hindrance directly, and thereby you're not making any kind of progress. And whatever experience you're having is just... it is a valid experience. But they go so far as to say, based on some kind of evidence, that apparently you'll go to hell after you experience it. Yeah, you'll experience it, then you'll go to that brahma loka associated with that jhana, and you go all the way back to hell and you start over again. That's

nonsense. Let people just practice the way they want to practice. So what is the ultimate aim here? What is the goal? The goal is a cessation of suffering, and the cessation of suffering is essentially letting go of our conditions, whether that's a kind of craving, a kind of clinging, a kind of becoming, and thereby letting go of hindrances. So we can say a practice that helps us to develop wisdom and also ceases suffering is a valid practice. So that could be anything. Even an absorption jhana possibly can help you by developing wisdom. Maybe you come out of the absorption practice and then you develop it through vipassana. Because the Buddha has said there are four ways to the Dhamma.

There is samatha, there's vipassana followed by samatha, there is samatha followed by vipassana. So in the first case there is a process of going into jhana, having a mind that's collected, and then investigating into the nature of reality, and that's the vipassana. Or you use vipassana and you get into a collected state of mind and calm down the faculties. Or there's a tying or yoking together, and this is what TWIM says it is, which is Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation. Samatha and vipassana together.

So there's jhana plus vipassana, and there is the fourth method, which is due to agitation about the Dhamma. One discovers it, or one experiences nibbana. And this is the case in what they say was with Ananda, where he had to go to the council of arahats, and he's walking up and down, up and down, and he's like, how am I going to get there? Because in order for him to join the council he had to be fully awakened, and he had a lot of disturbance about that. But then he relaxed and let go, and just before his head hit the pillow he attained arahatship. So there are modalities and methodologies that take you there. Oh, one last question there.

You're always the person that's the last question. Yeah, I think. Okay, let's just ask. Are the lokas, do they just exist or are they created? The lokas are created by karma. Just like this Manisa Loka is created by karma. All lokas. So one's karma determines one's place in samsara, and for some while some lokas are just empty because there's no karma leading to the creation of a being in that particular loka. So if there's no one, then the loka does not exist, or will it come into existence when there's appropriate karma for someone, a being, to be born there? It will come into existence when there's appropriate karma for a being to be born there. Okay, follow-up question. So then the simple interpretation is that everything exists based on attention.

Yes, yes. So you know, the statement that wherever the attention goes, energy flows. So in that sense we can actually bring ourselves to deva states, or by just thinking about it, because in a way that's what we are doing in the practice as well, right? That's right. We think about metta, we recall whatever feeling, and then we get in that state. So then, not thinking that rites and rituals will lead you to nibbana but using any kinds of rites and rituals to create any form of faith or any form of sense of ease, that can be used as a tool, right? Absolutely, and I think that's where again the Pali canon, the chanting and morning evening, all of that, it's a skillful use of the rites and rituals with the understanding that they're tools. Yeah, speaking of rituals, let's share some merit.

May suffering ones be suffering free and the fears struck fearlessly. May the grieving share 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 the nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long to make the Buddha's dispensation. Sa'ad, Sa'ad, Sa'ad.