HIndrances + Q&A Day 1/3 Bandra, Mumbai Sept 2023 w/Delson Armstrong Sept 7-9, 2023

So how many of you here are all advanced practitioners? How many of you are doing the Six Directions? So everyone? Most of them. Okay, today I want to talk about hindrances and how to deal with hindrances. First of all, you have to understand that no matter what retreat you're on, whether it's a three- or four-day retreat or a ten-day retreat, the first day or so will be a challenge. That's just because you're going from an environment, both externally and internally, where there's a lot of activity and a lot of things to be done, places to go, people to see, to an environment where you're essentially going to be quiet for the duration of that retreat. So the momentum of various kinds of activities that you've been doing off retreat before you came on retreat, the mindset that you had off retreat before you came on retreat, that will still be there for the first few days, at least for the first one or two days. So don't be disheartened if you are met with all kinds of hindrances. It's important to understand hindrances

as your friends, as your teachers. Hindrances shed light on where your attachments are and where your sources of reaction and aversion are. So when we talk about hindrances, we're talking about distractions. And how would you define a distraction? A distraction is anything that fully takes you away from your object of meditation. For those who are with the feeling of loving-kindness, for those who are sending loving-kindness to themselves or to our spiritual friend, that's your object. For those who are doing the Six Directions, that's your object.

But if there are thoughts in the background, in tandem with the meditation object, then there's nothing you need to do there. You don't have to get so bogged down by it. It's going to be there. It's fine. It will go away because of your lack of attention to it. The moment you have your attention fully away from your meditation object, and now you're immersed in the distraction, whatever the distraction is, then you are set to be distracted, which means you're not even experiencing an iota of loving-kindness.

If you are still experiencing an iota of loving-kindness, you're fine. So don't beat yourself up for that. Every practitioner when they start out on retreat: one is a certain sense of self-doubt, or a certain sense of lack of self-acceptance, or acceptance of how things are versus how things should be in the mind. And the second is trying way too hard. The mind is saying, I'm here on retreat. I'm going to do my best. I'm going to, you know, get to Nibbana or whatever it is.

Right? And what happens? The first time you sit, your mind is just a storm of thoughts. A storm of hindrances. But that's the nature of the mind. The more you accept that, the more you're okay with that, the fewer hindrances will arise. So what are the hindrances that we talk about? Generally we're talking about five basic hindrances, and there are subsets of that. But the five major hindrances are sensual craving, aversion, restlessness, sloth and torpor, and doubt.

What is sensual craving? Sensual craving is essentially where, when you're meditating, you hear a sound or feel something on your skin, and your attention directs towards that feeling, and now you're no longer on your object. If it's a pleasant sensation, your mind will gravitate towards it and say, oh, this is very pleasant, I like this. Then you start to go into mental proliferation, a proliferation of different kinds of thoughts about what it is that you're. So if it's a cool breeze on a hot summer day, now your mind is going there and thinking about that, no longer feeling the loving-kindness, no longer radiating in the six directions. Now it's thinking about the cool breeze, and then you're thinking about the time when you were on the beach experiencing the cool breeze, and then you think, that was a certain date which was related to a certain person, and so now there's a proliferation.

Now you're thinking about all kinds of things, and your mind has gotten caught up in that prapancha, as it's known. This is sensual craving. Aversion is essentially anything related to not wanting or liking the experience that's happening. So you might get distracted, slams the door, yes, there are no coincidences. So that happens while you're meditating, and you feel distracted by that, and you get upset by that, you get irritated by that. Or there are things that come up while you're trying to send yourself loving-kindness, people come up in your life that you're upset towards.

And now that's another kind of aversion that can arise. Then we have what's known as restlessness. What is restlessness? Restlessness is... really, it's actually restlessness and remorse. And it's related to worry about the future, or just general mental activity. One of the ways the Buddha has described restlessness is that it's like wind-whipped water. When the wind touches the surface of the water, it starts to create ripples.

So that's the general restlessness that's there for everyone. But another kind of restlessness is, am I doing enough? [...] to doubt, so that's really much part of doubt, but that can translate into restlessness. Restlessness can also emanate from trying too hard. Every time you try to push the feeling of loving-kindness, every time you try to bring up the feeling of loving-kindness and hold on to it as tight as you can, what happens? You experience this band of tightness around your head, and you experience all kinds of mental... So that's another kind of restlessness.

And then we have sloth and torpor. Generally on retreats, I've seen that the first couple of days, maybe the first two or three days of a 10-day retreat, people struggle more with sloth and torpor than anything else, because they're making adjustments to their lifestyle. They're making adjustments to their schedule. Maybe they don't wake up as early as they would on retreat, and so their mind and body are trying to adapt to the new schedule. For that reason, I would say not to worry about it so much. But when we talk about sloth and torpor, sloth and torpor is essentially when the mind doesn't have enough attention on the object of meditation. In other words, there's not enough energy being given, there's not enough being taken in the object of meditation, and what happens is there are gaps in your attention, very small, micro holes in your attention, and the attention spills out from there, and before you know it you're thinking about something else or you've fallen asleep.

The infamous thing happens: people notice that they have the head bob, and they're like, oh, I'm having sloth and torpor, and then they go like this, they immediately straighten up and they say, I'm gonna try harder. As soon as that happens, what happens? Now there's restlessness. So you ping-pong between sloth and torpor and restlessness, going back and forth. That's why the adjustments that you make should be tiny and incremental. You notice that sloth and torpor has arisen, bring in a little bit of focus, just a small step towards bringing more focus. So the analogy that I use is it's the aperture of a camera, right? If you put too much focus, what's going to happen is you become one-pointed, you're not able to notice anything else that's going on in the periphery of your awareness. If you don't have enough focus and it's too loose, then you're not able to see clearly what is happening.

Your mind goes in different directions. So that's sloth and torpor: the lack of proper attention, or inattention, to the object of meditation. And then finally we have doubt. When we talk about doubt, it's essentially doubt in the practice, or doubt in trying to figure out the practice. Am I doing this practice correctly? Am I having enough loving-kindness? Am I feeling any kind of joy? I'm not sure if this is the way to go. So that's one kind of doubt. But within the suttas, the Buddha says the doubt that we talk about is the inability to recognize the difference between what is wholesome and unwholesome. So in other words, confusion about what states of mind are arising.

that you will deal with, and there are subsets of that. But if you are able to notice this hindrance, you've already done the first step. Now, all of you, I'm sure, are aware of right effort in the form of the 6R's, right? Recognize, release, relax, re-smile, return, and repeat. I'm shortening that to four R's for the sake of simplicity. All you have to do is recognize. Whenever you notice, oh, my mind is no longer on its object, you've already done the first step.

You've caught your mind in this loop. So that's the first step. So when we talk about right effort, it's made up of four right efforts. The preventing of the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, that's the first right effort. The second is the abandoning of already arisen unwholesome states. The third right effort is to generate a wholesome state of mind.

And the fourth right effort is to maintain that wholesome state of mind, to keep that wholesome state of mind going. So the four R's essentially do that. When you recognize that you are distracted, that's the first right effort. You are noticing that your mind is distracted. As soon as you notice the entire momentum of whatever potential thoughts, in the form of unwholesome states, were to arise, stop right there in their tracks. As soon as you recognize, and when you recognize, you've also brought up mindfulness. So what is mindfulness? When we talk about mindfulness, mindfulness is remembering to observe how the mind's attention moves from one object to the other. That is metacognition, the awareness of how your awareness is moving, the knowing of how your mind goes from one place to the other. That's mindfulness. So as soon as you recognized that your mind is about what state you're in now.

Which means automatically there's no more doubt. Now you know the mind is distracted. So after you recognize, what do you do? You relax. In the 6R's, it was release. What does the release denote? The release denotes taking your attention away from that hindrance and bringing it back to mind and body to relax it. So that's inherent in the relax step. So you recognize, and then you make the effort to relax.

Consciously relax. What does it mean to relax? When you tighten your fist, your fist is tense. But you let go, and you feel relief from that tension. So in the same way, you notice any tightness and tension in the mind or in the body, and you let go of it. You abandon it. That's the second right effort: abandoning any arisen unwholesome states.

And so that essentially is the tightness that manifests from craving. So when you relax your mind, how do you relax your mind? Because you know how to relax the body. You know that you loosen up the muscles. You soften up any tension in the body. But what about the mind? It's a matter of bringing a sense of spaciousness to the mind.

When your mind was distracted, the attention was too tight at that point. So you're just bringing a little bit more expansion, a little bit more spaciousness. That's how you relax tightness and tension in the mind. And then, re-smile. We all know that with this meditation, it's important to smile. A little Buddha smile, as you'll see. Smiling uplifts the mind. And smiling is the anchor. It's the conditional force for you to know to bring up something wholesome. Whether that's loving-kindness, whether that's radiating loving-kindness, whether that's radiating compassion,

or joy, or equanimity, or anything that's wholesome. So bringing up the smile is generating a wholesome state of mind. That's the third right effort. And then returning back to the feeling that is anchored to that smile. So you use the smile as an anchor to come back to something wholesome. And maintaining your awareness of that wholesome state, that's the fourth right effort.

So returning back to your object of meditation. This is how you deal with any and all distractions. Now the Buddha has talked about different kinds of antidotes for each of these different distractions. And he's used the context of the seven enlightenment factors. So what are the seven enlightenment factors? Mindfulness, investigation of states, energy, joy, tranquility, collectedness, and equanimity. So we have already talked a little bit about mindfulness. Mindfulness is remembering to observe how the mind's attention moves from one object to the other.

So when your mind is collected, when your mind comes into Samadhi, when your mind starts to experience the cessation of hindrances and starts to experience relief from them, get into the first channel right. In order for that to happen, you need to have a balance in the enlightenment factors, and for that to happen you need mindfulness, and for mindfulness to happen you need right effort. So every time you recognize that you were distracted, let's say you become distracted, your mind's attention goes somewhere else, every time you get distracted and you recognize it, you've already brought up the enlightenment factor of mindfulness.

And you've also brought up the enlightenment factor of investigation of states. So what is the investigation of states? It's translated from Dhamma vichaya, which is to look into the Dhamma, to investigate, to examine. But in English that denotes the idea that we need to do further analysis, that we need to do further and reflection. So that's why I just call it understanding.

Understanding what? You're understanding what states are present and what states are not present. So this is a utility or function of proper attention. Just paying attention to noticing you are distracted. That is investigating into the nature of the mind. The mind is distracted. So when you recognize, you've already brought up mindfulness and you've already brought up investigation of states. When you relax, what you're doing is balancing the energy in your mind and body. Rather than the mind and body becoming too tense, holding on to too much energy, or becoming too lax and having not enough energy, you're balancing it through the relaxed step. Because in the relaxed step, it's all about letting go of the distractions.

And when you do that, there comes about joy. So in relaxing, you are bringing up tranquility and you're balancing energy. So those are now four enlightenment factors that have been balanced just by these two steps. Now, when you come back to the smile, what are you doing? You're uplifting the mind. Joy, but this joy has nothing to do with sensual pleasures. This joy, as it's known in Pali as piti, is an otherworldly kind of joy. It's a joy that is not tied to the experience of the five physical senses. It's a joy that arises as a result of relief from the distractions, relief from the hindrances.

So that joy arises because you smile. When you smile, you uplift the mind and the joy comes up. And then when you return back to your object of meditation, now you have collectedness. When you have collectedness, now your mind is ready to take up an object. So you return back to your object and you stay with it.

How do you stay with it? You rest in it. Whether you're generating the feeling of loving-kindness to yourself or to your spiritual friend, all you have to do is rest your awareness in the feeling of loving-kindness. When you're doing the radiating, that's a question that I get asked a lot. What does it mean to radiate? What does this radiate mean?

In the suttas, actually, what it says is he pervades one quarter with a feeling of loving-kindness, a second quarter, a third quarter or fourth quarter, and above and below, so as to himself, as to all, he pervades the all-encircling world with a mind of loving-kindness. So what does it mean when you radiate? Generally the tendency for the mind is to push. It's to say, I'm going to radiate in this particular direction, and I'm going to push the feeling of loving-kindness in that particular direction. Guess what's going to happen? You're going to get distracted. You're going to have restlessness.

It's counterintuitive to do that. Instead, you just have the mind be in that direction. Stay with the feeling of loving-kindness. So, for those who are doing the six directions, it might be helpful to generate the feeling of loving-kindness to yourself for about 10 minutes. And then look in a certain direction with your mind. Okay, I'm looking in the forward direction. I am allowing the feeling of loving-kindness to now go forward in that direction.

I'm just observing and waiting for that to happen. Nothing else. I'm not pushing. In that way, the feeling of loving-kindness pervades in that direction. And likewise, in the subsequent directions. And then finally, in all directions. There is a general tendency for the practitioner to radiate from the head, right? That is actually what the basic general instructions are, to radiate from the head. You're feeling the loving-kindness spread out from the head. But by the time you're radiating in the six directions, you're no longer in the body, and the head is part of the body. The sensation of the head is also part of the body. So to simplify and to help you with this, what I will do is instead imagine or feel the loving-kindness in your mind and in your heart pervading the entire body and spreading out like an aura around you, like a bubble of loving-kindness around you. And then you're just observing how, with your attention, it's like your attention is the wind that's moving the sail in a certain direction, your attention in that particular direction

is extending the aura in that particular direction. And that aura doesn't have to be exactly in this body. That aura can be maybe a foot away from you or about a meter away from you. And you imagine the feeling of loving-kindness in that direction and likewise in the other directions. And then finally that aura starts to increase in all directions on its own, like a bubble.

And you keep that going. Now invariably, whether you're doing the spiritual friend or the six directions, you are going to get distracted. And for that, you're going to use right effort: the six R's or the four R's. And you don't need to spend too much time on each R. As soon as you've noticed you're distracted, that's the recognize step. As soon as you relax, that's the relax step. As soon as you come back to your object, that's the return step. That's it. You don't need to say, okay, now I'm recognizing, now I'm relaxing, now I'm re-smiling, now I'm returning. No, it's just a flow.

It should take you no more than three to four seconds at the most to do this right effort, to let go of the distraction and come back to the feeling, whatever that feeling is. I don't know, you said you played the meditation last night. Did you play the introduction? The introduction also. So you know some of what I'm going to say, which is you want to sit. For the beginners, you want to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes. And I would say for those who are doing the six directions, you want to sit for a minimum of one hour. About five minutes each direction, so that's already 30 minutes. And then at least 30 minutes of sending it out in all directions.

When you wake up, before you wake up, or before you go to sleep, make the intention, make the determination that when you wake up, you will wake up with a smile on your face. And keep that smile going as best as you can. This will allow your mind to have that mindfulness at all times. When you're no longer smiling, now your mindfulness is there. You come back to the smile, stay with the feeling, infuse everything that you're doing, whether it's walking, whether it's eating, whether it's taking a shower, whatever it is, infuse everything with that feeling of loving-kindness or equanimity or whatever seems to work. And the other thing I will say is when you're doing the walking practice, if you're doing it with your spiritual friend, then just keep the feeling of loving-kindness going in your heart while you're doing the walking practice.

And walk for a minimum of 20 minutes at a time, right? And if you're sitting for longer periods of time, if you're sitting for, let's say, at least two hours, then you want to, if you're getting up naturally from that sit, then follow that up with some kind of walking, some kind of brisk walking, to kind of elevate the heart rate and the circulation because you've been sitting for longer periods of time.

But if you can sit longer, please sit longer. Even if it goes past, what about the meal times? Can they, it's 12, will there be a meal kept for them if they sit longer? Even if it's beyond lunchtime, it's okay because a meal will be kept for you. Worry about that so much, it's important to take as much time as you can, take as much advantage of the time that you have in these next two, three days, to meditate for as long as you can. Having said that, do not push. Don't say, okay, I'm going to sit for three hours, and for the first two hours you're just struggling. You're just wanting to move in your chair, and there's all kinds of built-up energy and restlessness that's coming into the body and in the mind. Don't be like that. Just meditate, just relax. Don't make a determination for how long you've got to sit. Just know that if you feel like you want to get up, ask your mind and ask your body. Coax your mind and coax your body to say, how about another 15 minutes?

If not 15 minutes, how about another 10 minutes? Just relax into it and keep sitting. Ten minutes suddenly turns into another 30 minutes without you even realizing it. This is how you prolong your sits. So those are some of the practicalities. I think I've pretty much covered everything. So, do you have any questions? Yes? Do you think anxiety is related to restlessness? Yes, they are. Anxiety can be a form of restlessness.

And anxiety happens when the mind is usually looking forward into the future or having some kind of aversion to the present moment. And there's a hypersensitivity that happens in certain kinds of anxiety attacks or panic attacks also. It's like electrified, a lot of energy that's going on, and that's not happening outside. That's a manifestation of the internal state of the mind. Seeing this and being able to recognize that, in that process you tranquilize, come back to whatever it is that you're doing, slowly and steadily. So you're bringing up the mindfulness again, and slowly and steadily you're just relaxing

and being in the moment. And the more you do that, you'll notice that it felt like the walls were breathing, or there's energy in the environment. Now all of that starts to dissipate. And that starts to disappear. Sit with it by relaxing into it. Not just sit with it in the sense of observing it. Stay with whatever is going on, in terms of if you're walking or if you are sitting, noticing what's going on.

Not to put your attention on the disturbances that arise, but to notice whenever your mind gets reactive to that, and to relax and keep tranquilizing as best as you can. No, better to do one or the other. If you feel like you want to do forgiveness, then go with forgiveness. Forgiveness is a very powerful practice in and of itself.

And, you know, for those of you who might have read the forgiveness book, you'll know that Bhante Vimalaramsi himself had done two years of continuous forgiveness practice. So forgiveness is a very, very powerful experience. What is forgiveness? That's the first thing we have to understand. Forgiveness doesn't mean that we're condoning what a person has done to us. We're forgiving not for their sake, but for our mental peace.

So what we're forgiving is our reactions to whatever has happened, and we're not forgiving or condoning, I should say. But we're forgiving that it had happened and allowing our minds to accept that, so that we can move on and experience greater peace. That should be seen as the hallmark of the forgiveness practice. So it is important that if there is some residual blockage in the heart, in the emotional heart, us to go back to that person in our minds, or it's not allowing us to fully experience loving kindness for ourselves or for the other person, or we're just not able to experience the warmth, then that means that that's a sign that we need to do forgiveness. Anyone else? Yeah. No, I wouldn't say so.

I say that being not a doctor. Yes, exactly. I think for your condition, it's better to see what works for you. So if you feel it's uncomfortable, then go for a walk, and alternate between sitting and walking, sitting and walking. Yeah. Sometimes if there are multiple points of tension in the body, it seems to work to relax each one of them. If they're very clear and prominent, relax each one of them. Sometimes if there's a very strong spot of tension, then you want to relax around the edges and let the mind open up. So that whole process can sometimes take more than three or four seconds. So is that overkill? How should one handle that kind of a situation?

Relax, rather than relaxing certain places in the body, certain points in the body. It's more of experiencing generalized relief, especially in the mind. So mind first, body second, I would say. The other thing also to understand is when we do the six hours or the four hours, or when we do the relax step, it's important to see that even if the hindrances are present, you relax your reaction to those hindrances. Okay, your hindrance is there, it's okay, I'm letting go of my identification with that, and then come back to the smile, and then come back to the object of meditation. So if you read in Dhammasukha, the US Dhammasukha website, there's all kinds of resources there, and one of the things they talk about is when you deal with hindrances, they use a really interesting analogy. You treat your hindrance like a guest.

So there's a tendency in the mind to have aversion to that hindrance. Why did this come up? I don't want it to be here. Please go away, right? But here the attitude is, oh, you're here? Come in. Let me make you some tea. Let's share a cup of tea. And you go when you're ready to go.

When you have that kind of attitude, by relaxing, then the hindrance will go away on its own. You're actually saying, do not do this specific, relax generally. It's overkill. Not only is it overkill, but there's a certain aversion in there. Yeah. My question is further to this. When you were earlier mentioning about relaxation, how to relax, you used the expression that Brinkman's face. So how do we do that? Yeah.

So actually, this is an exercise that was given by Venerable Metananda. I don't know how many of you are familiar with him, but he was also, he is also a student of Bhante Vimalaramsi. And he talked about, when we... so I'll actually have you guys do it if you want to try it out for yourselves. So if you take your finger in front of you, and just look at the finger.

Try to be as focused on the finger as possible. What happens? In your view, there's only the finger. Everything else around it is kind of blurred. But now, take your attention away from the finger and just look at everything else. Do you notice that there's a tension when you just look at the finger? And do you notice the relief that happens when you let go of just looking at the finger and looking at everything else? That's the spacious awareness I'm talking about. Bringing in that real, that subtle tension that's there in the mind from focusing too much on something, and just expanding, just softening. That's the way to do it. There's a question there. Yeah, in the blue shirt, we see that Buddha often uses this model, like the five aggregates, to depersonalize the whole mind-body phenomenon.

And he uses this formula again and again: anicca sanna, leading to nibbida, leading to viraga and to nirodha, which is a disenchantment related to religion, leading to dispassion, and leading to cessation. And he uses this all the time, you know. He's telling that when he's saying that we should not identify with the eye consciousness or the eye forms, all of this, the eye aggregates, and another three is what? Sixth sense basis. Sixth sense basis. So how do you see this integrating with the practice? Because in my own practice, I have used that to bring out that relief. Just to know that this whole mind-body phenomenon is not me brings the whole stress out of... it brings a relief in the mind.

And that automatically helps to bring joy. So that, to me, is also an integral part of this, because he is using this sutta so many times that it's hard to miss. I brought that up because Shubham, I'm going to send you an audio that you're going to play in the morning as part of the guided meditation. And that's the five aggregate meditation. So yeah, this six levels of perception, anicca sanna and so on and so forth, that is integrated in this practice, not in a way that is maybe immediately seen, but as you get into deeper levels or layers of sankharas, deeper layers of craving, then you start to notice the identification with this or that.

So when we do the relax step, what we're doing is we're letting go of any identification with this, that, or the other, whether it's a hindrance or whether it's even the object of meditation. But that can only happen in certain stages as you progress in the practice. If I was to give that to a beginner and say, this is what you have to look at, they will have a panic attack. They will have an existential crisis.

So you have to be able to ease that person into understanding this. And so when you see the different suttas that the Buddha gives, especially with the anicca sanna and so on, he's referring to it in regards to more advanced monks, primarily. First of all, his audience are monks. Very rarely does he talk to lay people, and when he does, he gives them different kinds of advice. So we have to also understand the context behind why he explains these things. So it's really to more advanced monk practitioners that you start to notice the perceptions of all of these things. Having said that, as you progress through the retreat, and if it's a longer retreat, you'll see it more so. I will be talking about the Upanisa Sutta, which is the flip side of dependent origination, which is not about how the mind creates suffering for itself, but how it comes out of suffering.

So that means that there are certain links that condition the next set of links that lead to total cessation. So we will definitely go over that. to be non-reactive or the recovery time has shortened a lot. But sometimes I notice that it gets very thick, the aversion. And it doesn't really leave the wholesome speech. And I'm aware of that. And I find myself getting entangled with that. Stop taking things so seriously. Easier said than done, but especially in the workplace, right? You got to meet expectations.

And what happens is the mind identifies with those expectations. If you think about it, Buddhism is teaching you how to be the ultimate slacker. And so it's counterintuitive for the workplace. But having said that, it's easier for you to recognize every time you're taking something seriously and try to bring a little bit of joy in it. If not joy, at least equanimity and say, okay, I'm taking things too seriously. I'm going to let that go. And as soon as you do that, what happens is now, because the I is not involved in it, the me is not involved in it, you can see more clearly. The bigger picture, and then make the proper decisions. The more you see this, the more the mind gravitates towards that, because it starts to see the benefit of doing that rather than what you were doing before. Is an experience of cessation a requisite for that and for the pain?

What can happen without it? Cessation has so many different kinds of contexts. So you're talking about the blackout, the nirodha. Not necessarily. What can happen is the mind suddenly experiences after listening to a sutta and it's like, oh, I get it now. And then there's the path, or the fruition. That can happen too. The example of that is in the very first discourse of the Buddha, where he talks about the middle path, which is the Eightfold Path. And then he goes through the Four Noble Truths. And Kondanna, having understood it, experiences stream entry. And then in the second discourse, the Buddha talks about the five aggregates, and he talks about the emptiness of each of the five aggregates.

And what happens? It's possible that that can happen. That doesn't mean it was a path. That doesn't mean it was a fruition either. A relief is felt, let's say, and along with that there is some insights that come up into the nature of reality. That is definitely a path or a fruition. And so seeing the links of dependent origination is definitely a fruition, path. But if there's just cessation and nothing follows suit after that, and there's just a feeling of, okay, that was interesting, what was that?

Then that's just a cessation, not necessarily a path-breaking or a fetter-breaking cessation or a path-entry cessation. Can these cessations happen many times? Oh yeah, I've seen people who've had 16 cessations. If that was the case, it'd be double arahats. But that's not the case. So it can happen. And this whole model of the four stages of awakening, you see that a lot in the suttas. So we cannot deny those four stages, but to understand that they are just ways or designations and that there are gradations.

For example, the step between anagami and arahat, you need to break five fetters. And it can happen all in one go or it could happen step by step. So it could be that an anagami is on the path towards arahatship as they start to break conceit, as they start to break restlessness, and so on. Likewise, sakadagami is such an intermediary level or step where there's a diminishing of sensual craving and a diminishing of aversion.

But between stream entry and sakadagami, there's gradations, right? First of all, what does it mean to be a stream enter? The Buddha has talked about this. To be a stream enter, he talked about the analogy of the mirror of the Dhamma, which is found in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta. And there, Ananda asks the Buddha, Ananda was one of the Buddha's attendants, chief attendants, and he asked him, when you are gone, how are we supposed to know who has had an attainment or not? And the Buddha said, so long as somebody has had complete conviction in the Triple Gem, only then can they be considered to be a streamer. He doesn't talk anything about the destruction of the personal belief in the personal self.

He doesn't talk about the clinging to rites and rituals. All he says is if there's absolute conviction, then that person is a stream enter. So there's gradations. And that's why there's different kinds of stream enterers too. There's one up to three times, and then there's a one-seeder, sotapanna, stream enter, and so on. So the four-path model, or the four-stage model, I think should be taken with a certain grain of salt and understood that in itself, and the path and fruition aspects, can become relative concepts for the spiritual ego, as it were.

So not every cessation is going to equal a path and fruition. So you have to be able to see and assess in your own mind what is present and what is not present. It's continual, non-negotiable, very stringent observation of your day-to-day mental reactions and responses for at least six months, if not an entire year, to really confirm for yourself. Yes, absolutely. There's been times where a person, for example, they were listening to a Dhamma talk and then they left the Dhamma talk and while they were walking, all of a sudden they had a cessation and there was an immense amount of bliss and relief that came up. Other times, there have been times where people have had a blackout cessation and nothing happened, and just before they were going to bed, there was an amazing stream of insight into the nature of dependent origination. So this is just a matter of causes and conditions that are right for those experiences to happen. So, first of all, it's a process of rinse and repeat.

And then you can always add further practices like the aggregate practice of looking into the nature of the six sense spaces and the five aggregates and so on. But secondly, if you want to go from, let's say, stream entry to anagami, or sakadagami to anagami, sensual craving and aversion. How do you do that? Through consistent practice of mindfulness to notice any time sensual craving or aversion comes up in the mind and then releasing it and relaxing it. The more you do that, there's a high chance that in the practice, when you do have a cessation, those fetters drop.

So what you do day to day has a direct effect on the meditation, and how your meditation is has a direct effect on your level of mindfulness throughout the day. So it's interdependent. Anyone else? Yeah. You don't actually see all 12 links. You can't. Not for anyone. That's the understanding on an intellectual level. When you actually see it for yourself in the experience, you're not seeing the potential links. You're seeing, as a result of contact with Nibbana, the feeling that arises dependent upon that, conditioned by that.

The unconditioned contact then conditions the feeling of joy and relief. And there's certain kinds of images or patterns or something that you will see, which is your mind's mental representation interpreting what is going on in the form of the arising of feeling, in the form of if craving arises, of craving and so on. 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. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.