Mumbai Retreat February 2025 | Day 3 - Mindfulness

It's still the reverb? No? It's the speaker. It's the speaker. Yesterday and the day before, we were talking about mindfulness. And I was saying that mindfulness, according to Bhante Vimalaramsi's definition, is remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one object to another. So what does that actually mean? What I said was it encompasses two components: sati and sampajanya. Sati is being in the present moment. That's what it actually is. The bare knowledge of what is arising and passing away. Just the pure observation of what's going on. The sampajanya is the clear comprehension, meaning understanding where mind's attention is as you have that sati, as you have that mindfulness. Let's kind of break apart a little bit of the four foundations of mindfulness.

The four foundations of mindfulness can be found in a sutta called Satipatthana Sutta or Maha Satipatthana Sutta. You have one variant which is in the Majjhima Nikaya and you have another which is much more detailed in the Digha Nikaya. These are two collections of discourses attributed to the Buddha. So what are the four foundations of mindfulness? Why do we call them four foundations of mindfulness? What does that even mean, four foundations of mindfulness? You think of them as anchor points, where you're using these foundations as a way to bring back mindfulness. You don't need to continuously keep being mindful of those anchors, but allow them to be there as you anchor the mind's attention back to the present moment. So these four anchors, or these four foundations, are body, feeling, mental states and phenomena. These are the four. What do we mean by mindfulness of the body? The Buddha has elucidated many different ways in talking about the exercises of mindfulness of the body. The most common practice is the anapanasati, that is the mindfulness of breathing. Anapana means apana and prana, meaning breathing in and breathing

out. Now, over the generations and centuries and millennia, especially and specifically in the last two to three hundred years, the practice of anapanasati, or mindfulness of breathing, has had multiple variations. Some teachers or teachings will ask you to focus right over here, and when you're breathing, you become very one-pointed on the point below the nose. Others say to focus on the arising and passing away of the belly, the movement of the belly up and down, and so on. And then from there you move into other aspects. Nowhere in the suttas is there mention about focusing here or focusing on the belly. What it says is breathing in long, he recognizes he is breathing in long. Breathing out long, he recognizes he is breathing out long.

Breathing in short, he recognizes he is breathing in short. Breathing out short, he recognizes he is breathing out short. And he tranquilizes bodily formations. Breathing in, he knows he is breathing in, and tranquilizes bodily formations. This is the sutta that caused Bhante Vimalaramsi to look into re-contextualizing the practice from the perspective of relaxation. So before we get into that, first and foremost, is there any mention in there about focusing on the point below the nose? Is there any mention of focusing on the belly? No. It is just pure observation of breathing in long, he knows he is breathing in long; breathing out long, he knows he's breathing out long. This is what mindfulness is: pure observation. That's it. No exercise, no one-pointedness, nothing of that sort. The tranquilizing of bodily formations, what he's talking about there when he says bodily formations, is the tightness and tension that might be present in the body.

And one relaxes the tightness and tension in the body as one breathes in and breathes out. Now, anapanasati is its own practice, which we're not doing here. We're doing metta. We can apply that same understanding. We can have the sati of metta, the sati of karuna, the sati of mudita, the sati of upekkha. In other words, the mindfulness of loving kindness, the mindfulness of compassion, the mindfulness of empathetic joy, the mindfulness of equanimity, the mindfulness of mind itself. That is what encompasses meditations. There are two main equipments as per the suttas: the right effort, which we're all using when we do the four R's, when we relax and come back to the present moment and object. And the second is the mindfulness.

So mindfulness of the body also can be mindfulness in terms of what this body actually is. So there is a process of picking apart, on a conceptual level, the body, and it allows us to disengage our identification with the body. So what are these ways of doing it? There's mindfulness of the impurity of the body, what is known in Pali as the asubha practices. The seeing of the body in all of its organs and all of its different matter, from urine to blood to phlegm and mucus and feces and all of that. And the mind starts to disengage with that, realizing, okay, this is just a body and let me not identify with it.

A process of mindfulness of this identification of the body, by picking apart the body as states of matter: the four states of matter, or the four great elements. The solid state, the liquid state, the air or gaseous state, and the fire or heat of the body. And realizing, okay, this also is just the body, whether it's internal or external. Whether it's internal earth, that is to say the muscles, the skeleton, the bones, the sinew, and all of that, or the external, like the ground and the mud, all of that is the same. So we start to disengage with the body in that way, likewise with water, likewise with air, likewise with fire or temperature and heat.

Yet another way in which the Buddha talks about the mindfulness of the body, to disengage the identification with it, is to see the states of the body as it goes through the process of putrefaction and decay when it is just a corpse. This is not recommended for anybody. Monastics will do this because they have the time and inclination, and they have a completely different inclination, let's say. For us who are in the normal day-to-day life, it needs special permission to do this, because it can create anxiety around our own death. But the whole point of this process is to disengage with the body, realizing that one day too it will be like a corpse, like any other corpse. And there is an acceptance of that death. That is also known as maranasati, the mindfulness of death.

Realizing, for what reason are we beautifying this body? For what reason are we doing anything related to the body? And this is again for the monastics, because at the end of the day, the body will go through a series of levels of decay. Has anybody been to Varanasi? Yeah, you've been. Varanasi, I would highly recommend that you guys go to Varanasi. It is said, the belief is, that you don't go to Varanasi; Varanasi calls to you. So when it is your time, you will go to Varanasi. But what I will say about that is I've been to Varanasi at least four times, and I've had the fortune of going up and down the river and looking at the Ghats, the different bays that are there on the river.

And one of them, or two of them, but one of the special ones there, the main one, is Manikarnika Ghat. And over there, there are always 24/7 bodies being burned, corpses being burned, because the belief there is to be cremated over there. One can achieve salvation, one can achieve moksha. Regardless of whatever the belief is, it's an interesting perspective, because you are going to your ultimate state. Everybody is going to die. Nobody is getting out of this journey alive. And that is a great reminder, whenever you go there and you see it up close and personal, of those levels of decay in the body.

And so it is quite possible that the monks would probably go to a place like Manikarna Gat and witness that and observe that for themselves and immediately detach from the body and realize that, not the body this body is not me mine or myself so but when we talk about mindfulness of the body what we're seeing is we are anchoring this we're using the body as an anchor to come back to the present moment that is a whole point now the present moment is just a concept it's just another concept it's just another idea yesterday we were talking about time we're talking about how time is yet another element and so on and so forth So it's using these dualistic elements to come to a more non-dualistic state.

And this is where we're going to be heading when we talk about mindfulness. So how do you use mindfulness of the body? Maybe there is pain in the body. Now this takes you to mindfulness of feeling. What is mindfulness of feeling? emotion it's more than that. It's any kind of hedonic tone, and what that means is there is a certain level of pleasure in an experience, there's a certain level of pain in another experience, and there might be neutrality in yet another experience. This is why, what is the Pali? Vedana, which is usually translated as feeling. I like to translate it as experience, that is happening right now, right here, in any situation, in any circumstance. That is vedana.

It is an experience that's going on. And that experience can be pleasant. That can be pleasurable to the mind and the senses. Or it could be unpleasant. It could be displeasing to the mind and the senses. Or it could be neutral. So when we talk about mindfulness of feeling, what are we talking about? We can have mindfulness of loving kindness. Is not the feeling of loving kindness an experience? And is it not a pleasurable experience, generally speaking? Does it not give rise to that warm glow for some people? That is mindfulness of the body and mindfulness of feeling, or mindfulness of an experience. So there are two categories of feeling, the mundane and the supramundane.

What is the mundane? The mundane pleasant feeling, the mundane unpleasant feeling and the mundane neutral feeling are tied to the senses. For example, you are out in the desert and you are experiencing extreme thirst. That's a mundane unpleasant sensation, but you find yourself seeing an oasis, and now there's an expectation. You go towards the oasis, and there's crystal clear, cool, refreshing water. And you drink that water, and that is the mundane pleasant experience. Unbeknownst to you, there is a scorpion at your foot, but you don't know it. You're not aware of it. You're indifferent to it. That's a neutral mundane experience.

Indifference. Ignorance. Not aware of something. That's a neutral experience. Super mundane is different. Super mundane can mean... First of all, what does that mean, super mundane? It's just a fancy way of saying, beyond the senses, beyond the physical five senses, and have an experience in the mind generally. So in the mind, you have the experience of jhanas, experiencing the loving kindness, experiencing the piti or joy that comes with the first jhana. That is a pleasant, super mundane experience. The liberation of the mind, the liberation from the five hindrances. Those are all pleasant, super mundane experiences. The five hindrances that arise, even though the sensual craving might arise from the senses, ultimately it feeds into the mind.

That is a super mundane, unpleasant experience. Each of these five hindrances is a super mundane, unpleasant experience. The body you have mindfulness of the mundane unpleasant experience every time you become aware and are tending, attending, aware, conscious of the feeling of loving kindness or the feeling of jhana, that is to say the feeling of piti or the feeling of equanimity or the feeling of spaciousness, and so on and so forth. That is the awareness or mindfulness of a super mundane pleasant experience. Every time you have an awareness of an itch on your nose or you hear the banging of the door or you hear construction noise, depending on how you react to it, that is a mundane unpleasant sensation. Every time you have a hindrance arising, every time there is aversion, and so on, that is a super mundane, unpleasant experience.

What is a super mundane, neutral experience? Equanimity. Equanimity is tranquil. Yes, it's pleasant initially because it has relief in it, but ultimately it's neutral. No up and down that's going on. So every time you're aware of that, you have mindfulness of a neutral, super mundane experience. Then we get into the mindfulness of mental states. And here the Buddha talks about varying kinds of mental states. There's a whole list that he mentions, but from the top of my memory, there's a constricted mind, an expanded mind, there is an unliberated mind, there is a liberated mind, there is a mind filled with sloth and torpor, there's a mind that is clear, all these different mental states.

Again, that overlaps with the hindrances and can overlap with the yesterday when you experience an uplifted state of mind. So I usually call this the third anchor. I call it mindset. Why? Because it's actually coming from the word chitta, c-i-t-t-a, chitta. That's what it's usually referring to, the chitta upasana, that is the mindfulness or the observation of the mind or mental states. But I call it mindset because in the same way a mood is a collection of emotional experiences over a period of time, a mindset is a collection of similar mental experiences. So when the mind is expanded, it could be because there's relief, it could be because there's spaciousness, it could be because there's compassion, for whatever reason. But that is the mindset that you are in. So when you are aware that I'm in neither perception or non-perception, that is the mindfulness that is using the anchor to come into the present moment with the awareness of this particular mental state. When you're aware that there is a hindrance, that's also a constricted mindset. When you have aversion, when you have craving, that's constricted.

It's tight. Tightness and tension. You're mindful of that. Whenever you recognize that, you're aware of that. So recognition is bringing back that mindfulness. When you let go, you experience the cessation of that hindrance. That is a liberated mind. It's not just liberation in terms of moksha and nibbana and so on. It's liberated because in that moment you are free from that hindrance. Your mind is free from that hindrance, therefore you have mindfulness of the fact that your mind is free, and you feel that relief, you feel that piti, that gladness, and then you return back to the feeling of loving kindness or the spaciousness or the compassion or whatever it is that your object of meditation is. So you are already, when you are meditating, utilizing mindfulness in so many different ways.

Finally, there's mindfulness of phenomena. What do we mean by mindfulness of phenomena? Actually, this is translated from the word Dhamma. Dhamma with the plural A, meaning the many different Dhammas. Dhamma can mean different things. Dhamma can mean teaching or dharana. It can mean teaching. It can mean a way of life. It can mean principles. It can mean phenomena. It depends on the context that it is used in. So in this case, when we talk about mindfulness of phenomena, we're talking about things like the four noble truths. So every time we're becoming aware of the hindrances, we're aware of the first noble truth. Every time we let go of that, we're experiencing the release from that.

The attention to that hindrance and then the release from that, which is the cessation of that, and every time we're using the right effort, we're aware of that as well. So this is mindfulness of the four noble truths. In that way, there's mindfulness of the five hindrances. They themselves are different phenomena. Why do these hindrances arise? According to the origin of ignorance, it talks about that. Whenever there is any kind of misconduct, mental, verbal, or bodily misconduct, that is what? Breaking the precepts. This is the reason why you guys are taking the precepts. It has nothing to do with rituals. It might feel like a ritual, but it causes the mind to be uplifted every time you take the precepts.

Break a precept, it has a direct, or I should say indirect, relation to the arising of a hindrance. When you keep a precept, that hindrance starts to dissipate bit by bit by bit. So we talk about these hindrances. For example, craving, sensual craving, arises when we break the fourth precept of sensual misconduct. It's usually translated as sexual misconduct, but it's misconduct. In the pursuit of sensual pleasures, we break other precepts. That's misconduct. When we have any kind of doubt, that's the breaking of the precept of using honest speech, in other words, abstaining from false speech. Why? Because when we use false speech, we may think others are lying. We may think others might be having some dubious situations.

So the doubt arises in us and in others and in our own practice. When we have aversion, that gives direct... how does that arise, that aversion or ill will? When we kill or harm or have the intention to harm another living being, it aggravates the mind to give rise to that ill will. When we have any kind of restlessness, that comes from trying to take what is not given. And that's not about stealing only stealing. It's about taking someone's time more than it is allotted. Trying to seek for credit when it's not due. Or whatever it is. That gives rise to restlessness. When you talk about sloth and torpor, it is indulging in intoxicants.

What are intoxicants? Very plainly put, he talks about them as alcohol. He just calls it drinks that intoxicate. But you can see this as intoxication in the overindulgence of something. You imagine when you watch a Netflix show, for example, and you binge watch the entire show. How do you feel at the end of that? Quite dull. You have, okay, now I don't want to do anything. Mode. So that gives rise to that sloth and torpor. The overindulgence in anything can weaken, let's say, for lack of a better word, the senses and the nervous system, and gives rise to that tiredness, that dullness, that heaviness, that sloth and torpor. And I think I covered all of them.

The signal I'm talking only about the five basic precepts. I think I covered all five precepts and five hindrances. But basically what the sutta is saying is that every time we break a precept, that can give rise to the fueling of those hindrances. This is why we take the precepts, to commit to not breaking them again and giving rise to the alleviation of those hindrances. Then there is the mindfulness of the enlightenment factors, or the factors of awakening.

Mindfulness, discernment, energy, joy, tranquility, collectedness, and equanimity. Whenever you notice these factors arising, what are you doing? You're aware of it. Full of it. So the mindfulness aspect is just a pure, unadulterated awareness of the arising of something and the passing away of something. You're not meant to hold on to it. If loving-kindness is there, great, it's there. If it goes away, all right, it goes away. So mindfulness and equanimity are interlinked. Why? Because equanimity is the seeing of things as they actually are without getting caught up in one direction or the other. Just pure observation without getting caught up. So when you're meditating, are you meditating or is meditation happening? Do you become the meditator?

Meditation happened. It's like when you spin the top: the first intention is to spin the top, and then you let it go. It's the same thing with meditation. The first intention is to bring up the loving kindness, and trust with your attention that the loving kindness will continue. You don't need to keep engaging with it all the time. It's like when you start the ignition of the car. Now the car is started. Now, whether you want to go or you want to put it in neutral or what you want to do with it, you don't keep igniting, you don't keep putting in the ignition, turning the ignition

key the same way. Now that you have loving-kindness, you don't try to bring it up over and over and over and over. It's just there. You're aware of it. When it goes away, you're aware that it's going away. When there's anger present, you're aware anger is present. When there is sadness present, you're aware sadness is present. When there's frustration present, you're aware frustration is present. When joy or piti is present, you're aware joy or piti is present. When there is comfort in the body, you're aware there's comfort in the body. So I would like all of you to try this out next time you're meditating. When you are sitting down for meditation, observe it like an experiment. Observe it like a third party looking in.

You're not you. You're just observing this body sitting down. You're observing the eyes closing. You're observing the body relaxing. You're observing there's an intention arising. You're observing loving kindness is arising. You're observing the loving kindness is going. You're observing joys arising. You're observing tears are coming from the loving kindness. You're observing whatever it is that is arising. When you observe it in this way, you will get less caught up in personalizing it. This meditation process is just that: it's an impersonal process. We get in the way and screw it up for ourselves, and that's the case with all of life. All life situations, we think somehow we know better of how to deal with that situation.

But the more we get out of our own way and allow things to arise and pass away in the way that they will, some higher intelligence arises. A higher function of wisdom arises. And that is known as intuition. And that only happens when we let go of the need to control the situation. So mindfulness is observing an agenda it is being aware without any kind of intention to be aware the initial intention to be aware is enough but not the intention I will continue to be aware in this way because now we're trying to control the situation this is a kind of Samadhi that the Buddha talks about and he calls it the uninclined Samadhi the unintended Samadhi not getting caught up in that process of meditation.

When Sariputta, one of the Buddha's chief disciples, was walking around, Ananda, who was the Buddha's caretaker and attendant, saw Sariputta walking down the path and he was glowing. He says, your faculties are so clear. You look so serene. What are you doing? He says, I have been in the first jhana all day. I've been in the second jhana all day. I've been in the third jhana all day, and so on. And he says, but it did not occur to me that I would go into the first jhana, and it did not occur to me that I would be experiencing the first jhana, or it did not occur to me that I am experiencing the first jhana and that I am the one experiencing it.

In other words, he's let go of the I from the whole equation, and it's just a process. So I'm going to give you a couple of tips and tricks now for your meditation. When next you are meditating, do this. Be the sakshi. Be the observer. Be the witness to the experience of meditation. A hindrance is arising. There is a hindrance. But I am not engaging with that hindrance. Meditation is going on. That's great. But I'm not engaging with the meditation. I am here. Here is all of the activities of the meditation. Good, bad, or indifferent. Wholesome, unwholesome, neutral. Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. I remain here just watching, the same way as I would be watching on the corner of the street, on the footpath, on the sidewalk, and just observing cars going by in the traffic.

Now, I'm not going to be looking at what kind of car it is, who's sitting in the car, who's driving the car, how the car is moving. I'm just observing: car going, car coming, car going, car coming. The same way I'm observing: loving kindness is present, loving kindness is not present. Loving kindness is there, loving kindness is not there. Spaciousness is present, no spaciousness is present. Quiet mind is there, no quiet mind is there. Sloth and torpor is there, no sloth and torpor is there.

Neither perception or non-perception is there. There is no neither perception or non-perception. Whatever it is, it's just seeing and observing without an agenda. This is very important to understand. That's the first part of it. A deeper aspect of this, and now listen to me, this is not just for your meditation. This is your everyday life. When you wake up in the morning, mind is alert, body is awake, walking through the hall, meditating, taking the precepts, there is an observer outside looking in at the actions of what is going on. In some traditions they call this letting go of the sense of doership. There's no doer here. There is just a process that's going on, and there is a witness to that process. So you start your day with that, and in everything that you're doing. Right now I'm speaking, but there is no one speaking.

There is just a process of speaking. Right now you're hearing, but are you the hearer? Are you the listener? Or are you aware that there is a listening going on? So you always have this standpoint of the one who is aware, the one who is observing, the one who is witnessing. Now you have a choice. As you're doing this throughout your day, as you're doing this in the meditation, you have a choice to do one of two moves. You can either let the sense of the observer, or the sense of the I, the one who is observing, melt into the experience so that there is just a total experience, full-on experience, without the experience, without the I.

I have talked about this in previous talks. The whole point of the cessation of suffering is to fully immerse in the experience, whatever the experience is: wholesome, unwholesome, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Whatever the experience is, fully dive into it without the I, without the me, mine, or myself. Allow the me to melt into the experience. And therefore, seeing that there is only the experience, there is only the meditating going on. There's only jhana arising. There's only loving kindness present. Or the second choice is to turn the attention back onto the witness, the observer. And by turning the attention back onto the witness or the observer, it all falls apart like a house of cards. And it's the same

outcome. There is just the experience. This is where the Bahiya Sutta comes in. In the seeing, there is only the seeing. In the hearing, there is only the heard. In the sensing, there is only the sensed. In the cognizing, there is only the cognize. There is no you in that. There is no you before that. There is no you emanating from it. There is no you emanating the process. It is just the seeing, the hearing, the tasting, the meditating. That's it. And that is what the Buddha says is the cessation of suffering. The more you try to build this muscle of seeing the world in this way, the less it matters whether there's anger or frustration or irritation or sadness or grief or depression or anxiety.

It doesn't matter what the content of the mind is, because you realize right there and then the impermanent, impersonal nature of all of those elements. So it doesn't matter if the mind is feeling joyful or the mind is feeling sad, if the mind is experiencing loving kindness or the mind is experiencing ill will. It is just pure observing, and from that pure observing, pure experiencing without the experience. This is the essence, the fruit, the ultimate understanding. It's a very high claim that I'm saying, but it's my claim, of the Satipatthana Sutta. This is what the Buddha is referring to when he talks about mindfulness. The basic understanding is that body, feeling, mental states and phenomena are hooks, anchors, to bring you back to the present moment, observing without the agenda. The next step is to let go of the hook, let go of the I, and just let the experience happen. This is why he says in each refrain, after each mindfulness of so and so, he sees the arising and passing away, or the bare knowledge of the experience. What is the bare knowledge of the experience?

There is just an awareness of an experience. There is no experiencer there. So that is the essence of the Satipatthana Sutta. If you can grasp this, if you can utilize this, if you can apply this, your meditation will no longer be something that you have to make an effort towards, because your entire moments are meditative. It's always meditation. This is what Bhante Vimalaramsi talked about. Meditation is life. Life is meditation. Meditation is not about sitting in a chair or sitting on a cushion and then, okay, for the next 30 minutes and for the next one hour, I'm going to experience this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.

No. What's the point of doing that when you come out of it and you still experience the same old things and still get caught up in all the craving, get caught up in all of the humdrum of the world? The identification with it is the cause of suffering. But if you use meditation, the formal sitting practice, as an anchor to understand how mind works and how attention moves, and allow the mind to be the mind, and let go, let the experiencer, the doer, the knower, the seer, the hearer, the cognizer, just melt into all of that. That's it. Then you have understood meditation. Then you are actually meditating. Otherwise, it's just a mental exercise.

Otherwise, it's just a process that you continue to do. The success of a teacher would be that you guys don't show up here again, because you've understood it and you can do it for yourself. Otherwise, it's the same old hamster wheel. All right, next year I'm gonna see Delson, I'm gonna see this teacher, and I'm gonna go on retreat and I'm gonna experience this, and I'm gonna experience calm and clarity, and by the sixth day or seventh day or eighth day I'm gonna experience amazing amounts of bliss. It's gonna be great. I'm floating on cloud nine, everything looks colorful, it's easy-peasy. And then after day 10 I go back to the world. I'm just dropping, floating back into the real world, and then eventually it happens, and then now I get caught up in that, and now it's like, oh, what did I actually learn? I forgot what Delson said about this, or I was not able to apply that in that moment. What's the point? It's another samsara. It's a samsara of retreats, that's what it is. The hamster wheel of

retreats. But if you go away with this understanding of mindfulness, observing and letting go of the I, this can be applied anywhere. You find yourself getting caught up in the anger. As soon as you have got caught, find yourself getting caught up in the anger, what happens? Now there's a distance. Now there's a space. Now there's a witnessing of the anger. There's a witnessing of the grief. There's a witnessing of the guilt. There's a witnessing of the joy. And then the second move, after a while of the witnessing, you let the experience happen just without the experience, and what happens? It dissipates, it goes away. It doesn't matter what is arising and passing away in that moment. That is the wisdom of this whole experience, the wisdom of seeing everything as an impersonal process, the self.

Not that there is no self. The Buddha never said that there is no self. When he was asked, is there a self or is there no self, he didn't answer one way or the other. He said anatta, anatman, not self. It's a process of disengaging with all experience that cannot be considered self. What cannot be considered anything that does not bear resemblance or bear the marks of what is that self, and what is that self? It is independent, it is self-existing, suck shit, it is in its own consciousness, it is independent of all other factors and conditions, Ananda. It is a source of bliss, it is the nature of bliss itself. Sat Chit Ananda. That is what self is understood as.

So what is the Buddha saying? Look at all of our experience, all of the five aggregates, all of the six sense bases. Look at all of that. Do they bear the markers of Sat Chit Ananda? No, they don't. Why? Because they are conditioned. And being conditioned, when those conditions fall apart, they are subject to passing away. They are impermanent. If that is impermanent, it can't be a source of eternal happiness. And therefore, it is dukkha. Essentially dukkha. And therefore, it cannot be considered as self. It cannot be me, mine, or myself. Anything that can be experienced, anything that can be observed, anything that can be sensed is not self.

The self cannot be apprehended. So the Buddha doesn't say that there is a self or there is no self. Why? Because if he says that there is a self, what's going to happen? Like the humans that we are, we are going to conceptualize what that self is. Oh, it's Sat Chit Ananda. So this particular experience means now I've experienced Atman. No. And why did he say there is no self? Two reasons. One is because there is a self that apprehends that no self. So how can there be no self? And second, it makes you nihilistic. If there is no self, what's the point of all of this? Why are we here in the first place? What is the purpose? It's meaningless.

So I'm going to finish my rant, because I think we've gotten deep enough with this. I didn't expect this to go this deep early, but just to reiterate what we're talking about in terms of mindfulness, you are already utilizing mindfulness every time you're observing and aware of every present moment. When you're aware that you're distracted, you are mindful. When you're aware of the loving kindness, you are mindful. When you're aware there's pain in the body, you are mindful. When you're aware of the anger, you are mindful. When you get caught up in these things, then you're not mindful. As soon as you recognize and see you're getting caught up, you come back to that mindfulness.

And in that mindfulness, there's the witness. And then all you do is that move of finding the witness and realizing the witness is the experience itself. There is just the experience going on. Using that principle, go back to your meditation and see what happens. Any questions? First question. You talked about either melting into the experience or turning your awareness back. So in that, until it collapses into itself, there is a metacognition that remains, and the four-hour process will keep happening, right? Like it gradually slows down at whatever pace one is going, but that keeps happening, correct? Yes. I just wanted to confirm. Yes, that's right. Second question is more around what you talked about in terms of death.

So I have a, I don't know, weird relation with death. I've seen way too many in my life, in my close family, like in front of me. And I carried that blame, guilt, and grief for very long. It is better with the years of meditation and everything, but there are sometimes, you know, you are either prepared for your own, but not for, you know, your close people, or vice versa. How does one prepare for that without going through that intense asubha practice? - Prepare for what exactly you're saying? Not go in that deep cycle of grief and despair, especially worrying about either their own deaths or worrying or reminiscing about the passing away of the loved ones.

One is to actually, this is advice from Master Yoda from Star Wars. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a huge fan of Star Wars. You remember this? I told you this. There's a scene in Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith, where Anakin Skywalker is consulting Yoda, and he has dreams. If this is spoiling it for you guys, I don't care. It's fine. I mean, if you haven't seen it yet, then shame on you. But in the movie, he has visions of his wife dying, and he has a lot of grief and despair around that. So he goes to Master Yoda, and he says, these visions? How do I let go of this?

And Master Yoda says, do not grieve for those who are going to be part of the Force. That's their way of saying dying and so on. And he says, how do I do that? How do I train for that? And he says, you should train yourself thus. Be prepared in your mind to let go of all that you are afraid of losing. So it's a painful exercise.

painful process but you start bit by bit and one of the most useful ways i found personally is utilizing the five aggregates like realizing at the very core of the body and the rupa because the what is the death actually we're afraid of when we talk about the fear of dying the fear of experiencing it it's because of the things associated around the death itself it's not death it's the seeing of other people grieving it's the seeing of other people being in pain it's the thinking and projecting that there is pain in that death and the identification with the body the identification with memories the identification with experience that causes causes us to cling to life but as soon as you see the impermanent nature of each of these five

aggregates the loosening of that not happens so you should train yourself thus use the five aggregates or any kind of practice like that to realize that actually it has always been this way it's always changing it's always arising and passing away we personalize death because it happens to our family members it happens to our friends it happens to our pets it happens to our loved ones ones, but we don't think about the death of another person that we don't even actually know about. It doesn't mean that we have to treat those deaths the same way, one way or the other. It just means that we have to realize that it is an impersonal process. It is inevitable.

And the other thing I would say about that is, if you are experiencing grief, then experience it fully. If you are experiencing fear, then experience fear fully. If you're experiencing anxiety, then experience anxiety, because what happens is as soon as we experience it fully, it disappears. The resistance to it is what amplifies it. But the moment we lean into it, it goes from something huge to something manageable to something that we can navigate, to it's only this. So can we say that, not taking it, not making it about myself, say someone in... why did it happen to me? Because it's their mind stream and their process. It's not me, not mine, not myself. Can I use that approach if it's helping you? - Yes. - Okay. - Yeah. - So I've noticed some similarities between Buddha's teachings and the concept of Stoicism.

Yes. Especially the foundation laid by Marcus Aurelius in his book, Meditations. So one happened in the East. One arose completely separately, to my knowledge, in the West, in the Roman Empire. So what are your thoughts on this? Do you notice any similarities? Yeah, I do actually. I notice quite a lot of similarities. One is memento mori, which is remembering that this is all impermanent, that this process is going to decay, it's going to be annihilated one day. And that is something centrally core to Buddhism, as well as in Stoicism. There's the understanding of accepting our karma, amor fati, right? Being okay with our fate. It doesn't mean we get into a sense of fatalism and that everything is predestined.

It's more like this is what is right now the present situation, and my resistance to the present situation is what is causing me pain and suffering. But if I allow myself to go through it, which is what I was just referring to right now, which is leaning into it, it becomes much more manageable. I'm not aware of the connection in terms of which came first, or whether it was kind of parallel, or maybe there was a cross-breeding of ideas going on. It's quite possible that that's what happened. So I have two questions. The first is about the bhaiya state, or the signless state. I have noticed in my experience that the nature of the state keeps changing. It's never the same.

Sometimes it's weak. Sometimes it's very strong. It's almost like I'm one with the environment. But sometimes it's weak, but it's there. The state is there. The first question is, why is that? The second question is, since this is the case, how do you clearly discern signless? Okay. When you say sometimes it's weak, what do you mean? Sometimes the signless experience is weak? In the sense that it's not clearly discernible. Signless because it's just not as deep. In the sense that I don't... I don't know how to... yeah. And the one of the reasons I would say is because when we talk pure signless, it is pure non-dual, purely non-dual, which means as long as there's some discernibility of me not being in it, or being weak, it means that we haven't fully surrendered to the signless.

What does that mean, not fully? In other words, that witness state is still there. Okay. We haven't fully disengaged from the witness. Got it. Anytime there is a searching for the signless, anytime, even in the meditation itself, when you get to that signless state of mind, anytime there's a searching of it, then what is actually searching is a sign. Signlessness is objectlessness, which is non-duality. But for us to look for that object, it's like cancelling out the whole experience. So again, it's relaxing, further relaxing, further relaxing. So like the signless that is experienced by an arahant, experienced by another person? It's one and the same. The difference is that one is with effort and the other is effortless.

Effortless. That's it. So can you give me very, I mean, are there any very specific pointers to discern signless accurately? Yes. One is that there is a complete acceptance of the moment. Total acceptance. Total non-resistance of any experience. There is a... How do I put it? Because there is a sense of things happening, like processes going on, rather than I'm the doer. It's like the universe is working through this body as a vessel. That's one way of looking at it, to make it sound mystical. But it's basically like functions are happening rather than there's I'm controlling the functions. There are less and less gradations of I, me, or mine in there, just pure non-dual awareness. It's just a function of the universe, the function of the body.

Is there any other way of accepting death instead of impersonalizing it from self? One way is that, and then another way is to imagine your own death. Imagine what would happen if you were in your deathbed, and what does that process look like? There are some guided meditations that are available on YouTube that actually go through that. And in that way of doing that meditation, you start to see what is essential and what is essential in north. In other words, you start to see, okay, am I really attached to this body right now, now that I'm going through this dying process? And so you equate the dying process, or death, as a process of letting go itself, disengagement. Disengagement, yeah, yeah, because the confusion that arises in the dying process, the resistance that happens in the dying process, is because there's still a clinging. But if I disengage and I'm just observing the process happening.

So if I just apply what you said, in loving-kindness, and there is pain in the body, and then there is a reaction to it, I get caught up, and then I four hour, and I'm in the witness mode now. What is the fourth step here? What do I return to, right? I've already let go. Do I return to loving-kindness? Return to loving-kindness, isn't that effort then? Yes, but then after you return to loving-kindness, you disengage from the loving-kindness and observe loving-kindness going on. So in other words, even the intentionalizing of the 4 R's is observed. As soon as you recognize you got caught up, you take a step back in your mind and observe the process of relaxing, observe the process of re-smiling, observe the process of returning.

So I feel like it's easier said than done. Yeah. Practice. When you were talking about signless and you gave example of universe happening through the vessel, there is still some level of decision making and movement going on. Does that happen through the memory and habitual tendencies of this life, past life, whatever? Or how does that happen? Because the metacognition always remains, right? Yes, yes. Until the time you're alive. Yeah, and this is where I want to make sure you guys understand, especially the more advanced people, who, not you specifically, but anybody who conceptualizes these things, is don't take these words as the absolute, like this is the ultimate and so on. What I'm talking about is a kind of sign of the signless, a discernibility of what is going on.

There will still be a transactional I that's going on. There will still be, like, an I that's engaging with the world, but it is coming from this wisdom. And even then, there's times when the I will get caught up in this and this and this. But it's much easier to, like, oh wait, you know, I'm engaging in this way. There's like a pullback process, and then allowing things to happen, allowing things to unfold. There's still choice in the matter. And that choice that we call free will is moment by moment happening. And it's conditioned by a few things, which include not only our past experiences, but can be informed, when we get to these experiences, by the wisdom, not only of the experiences, but of the states that we are in.

And then there is a certain kind of synchronicity that happens, where you actually start to see how spontaneous your action is in alignment with whatever needs to happen for the people involved, for you involved, and so on. Like, everybody comes here with some kind of set of inclinations. This is what we call samskaras or samkaras. And those samskaras are leading to some kind of destiny, for lack of a better word. And what does that mean? It means the non-Buddhist term of dharma.

You are fulfilling some kind of role in this play of the world of samsara, and either you can take that personally and say, I will be a so-and-so person, or I will be a mechanic, or I will be a tutor, or I'll be a musician, or I'll be a writer, or I'll be whatever. You can go from that angle and say that is my destiny, keep doing that and making it personal. Or you realize it's your dharma in the sense of ikigai: it's what feels good to you, what gives you fulfillment and satisfaction, and what is beneficial for the community or society around you. Because there's always that exchange of karma going on all the time.

And so my actions, if they're in alignment for the benefit of others, causing me happiness, and I'm receiving some kind of reward from it, that's my dharma. That's my purpose. So as long as I'm on that road, everything else is arbitrary. Does karma have a medium that it moves in? Elaborate. I've been trying to frame my question, but I am unable to. So what I want to ask is, from one life to another, what transmigrates? And if it's karma, then what's the medium that it's going in? So is that medium just the mind? And then is there a difference between my mind and your mind, or is there a collective mind? And then how, when does the I tap into one stream of that in the moving-on process?

If we think of karma as vibration that happens in the universe, then what we are, in terms of the five aggregates, are different levels or frequencies of vibration that are happening. When the dissolution of the five aggregates goes away, for the arahant, for the one who's fully awakened, it goes into a zero-level vibration, which means absolutely no vibration at all. But if there's a tinge of any kind of vibration, that will reverberate further vibrations, which cause the coalescence of further five aggregates. That's one way of understanding it. So karma can be seen as energy or reverberation, literally, quite very much the exchange of energy, the exchange of vibration. I do something, and immediately my mind thinks about whether that was good or not, and that's also a karmic output. So this process of migration.

We cannot fully prove it. You can only see it for yourself, in very differing terms. Some people talk about it from the level of soul, or some people talk about it from the perspective of a carrier that is conscious, that takes all of the vibrations and then puts them into a genetic match, which is the next five aggregates, or the next mind and body, nama-rupa. We can think about it in terms of the blockchain. And karma is basically algorithms. And so when you're having a certain level of karmic output, because of those karmic outputs, because of those algorithms, it's going to tend to take you in a certain direction. So whatever it is that transmigrates, if we put any kind of quality to it, if we put any kind of reification to it, that is taking a step in the backward direction, let's say, in terms of wisdom.

What we're saying here, because the reason I'm saying this is because this very same question was asked in Majjhima Nikaya 102, I think. It's called the Mahapunnamasutta. It means the full moon night. Somebody asked the Buddha, how do we understand the five aggregates? And then there's somebody in the audience who's thinking, okay, so all of this is not self, but by what self does the karma come and go? And so what the Buddha gives is, he goes back to the understanding of the five aggregates. What he's saying is, even this is karma. So if we go back to karma being vibration, the body itself is karma. Form, rupa, is karma. So is that self or not self? It's not self. So there is no carrier that's reified that causes that karma to arise. It is karma itself, in that moment. This is why all the wisdom traditions talk about this, at least the eastern wisdom traditions, where your final thoughts determine your next destination, because those thoughts are also karma. Now there's two aspects of karma. There's karma in terms of the action, the intention, and there's vipaka, which is the fruit of that karma.

And the fruit of that karma is the effect of my actions. And so we've always, well, not always, but we've always. We've heard from near-death experiences that there's a life review process that goes on, for example. And in that life review process, we have regret, or we have remorse, a guilt, or we have happiness, or we have, like, I want more of that. That vibration of wanting more of that or repulsing against it, repelling against it, is also karmic. It's our reaction to the fruit of our previous actions that give rise to further births. Not only lifetime to lifetime, but moment to moment to moment. So we can extend the micro all the way up to the universal level.

And so if you want to go one level deeper, when you talk about the universe, the Buddha talks about the universe arising and passing away, expanding and contracting. In the contracting period, everything comes to zero point. Everything comes to a potentiated zero point. And because of some trigger, then there is an arising of that new universe, and so there are levels. Level zero, see if you can, while I'm saying this, apply this on the human level. Level zero is the substrate, that is the nibbana, that is the nibbana element. There is no vibration going on. It is karma-less, without any karma. No karma exists there. But from there there is level one, which is the reverberation of one point of vibration that comes on.

What is the cause of that? It is all of the potential, the potentiated karma that now releases, because it's kind of timed from previous iterations. When that level one arises, there is an intelligence in that. That intelligence that emanates is consciousness, vibration. Now there's not one, but there's two. So we can call it two particles. From these two particles, now there is a me and a you. There's a subject and an object. Now I'm taking things personally. And then at the third level, there's dependent origination, all of the different machinations of karma that arise, that create all of this universe in samsara. So now, bringing that to the human level, death: if you completely let go of all experience, you're at level zero.

And if you remain there, then no reverberation happens. But because of the reiterations from previous actions that we've done, there are mental impressions that give rise to an experience in our mind, and we hold on to it. And that karma creates level one. That creates the consciousness, the intelligence, that carries forward all of the coding, all the vibration, into level two, where now there is a new body, a new mind and body. And then the whole iteration of dependent origination arises from that at level three, but lesser than what it was previously, and then slowly, slowly... builds up again. Slowly, slowly you stop the process. If you're using wisdom, right? If you're using right effort to let go.

Yeah, let go. A person at the death moment can let go completely, may get another birth or may get a few more, but then the process weakens. It's weakening the process, yes, can weaken. Every moment is a choice for us to either weaken or strengthen, and we want to weaken, we want to weaken, and that's by letting go, that's by letting go, or letting things unfold without our reaction to the unfolding, which is also letting go. Yeah, we're letting go of not what is happening, but we're letting go of our reaction, control. Yes. Okay, I think that's enough now. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation.