Ocean SN 35.228 - Drowning in the Ocean of the Senses - Sunday Talk with Delson Armstrong

Oh, and see this. Yep, I can see it. Good. We're going to do two suttas who are very short. They're called the ocean, both of them. And as you can see, they're in section three of the Samyutta Nikaya. Which one is this now? Do you recall, David? Oh, it's 30. Oh, no. Anyway, it'll be listed. This is number 228 and 229. Bhikkhus, the uninstructed worldling speaks of the ocean, the ocean. But that is not the ocean in the noble ones' discipline.

That is only a great master. So the Buddha is starting off by talking about something known as the ocean, but it has a different meaning with regards to somebody who is a practitioner of the Dhamma. The eye, bhikkhus, is the ocean for a person. Its current consists of forms. One who withstands that current consisting of forms is said to have crossed the ocean of the eye with its waves.

With its waves, whirlpools, sharks, and demons. Crossed over, gone beyond, the Brahmin stands on high ground. Likewise, he says, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body is the ocean for a person. Its current consists of its different sense objects. One who withstands that current consisting of those sense objects is said to have crossed the ocean of the sense bases with their waves, whirlpools, sharks, and demons.

Crossed over, gone beyond, the Brahmin stands on high ground. The mind is the ocean for a person. I was looking earlier at this commentary. I thought it was slightly interesting, also maybe slightly controversial for myself, modern day, but here it is. It's very interesting. It says here: the following explanation for these dangers is given. The waves are anger and despair.

The whirlpools are the five cords of sensual pleasures. Sharks and demons are women. In that case, this is referring mainly to bhikkhus, but in essence, any kind of sexual desire that is unwholesome, or of a misconduct in relation to the monks, means that they have to be celibate. In the case of somebody who is a lay person, that just means that you're not cheating on your partner and so on, or causing any harm to any partner. So when we talk about the ocean, when we're referring to the ocean, the Buddha is saying: the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind, these are the ocean for a person. And the current is the waves that come and go, the current, the stream. When we talk about ocean currents, they're like the little highways underneath the surface that go in different directions. When the eyes are attracted to a certain form, when the ears are attracted to a certain sound, when the nose is attracted to a certain smell, when the tongue is attracted to a certain flavor,

when the body is attracted to a certain kind of sensation, and the mind is attracted to a certain kind of thought. That is the current. The desire for that particular experience, for that particular sense-based object, is the current. And more so than desire, I should say, it's the craving. We know that there is a difference between desire and craving. Desire is chanda. Desire is, I'm thirsty, so I want a glass of water.

Craving is obsessive in nature. Craving, and interestingly enough, craving comes from the word tanha, which means to thirst. When you are truly thirsty, how do you feel about water? You need the water to be quenched. It is the quencher. It is that process of being quenched. When you are in that space, in that mind space where the mind is free of any kind of craving, and it understands the craving, it understands the current, I should say, the current for being whatever it is, that here there's merely an experience of I, the eyes seeing form, the ears hearing sound, the nose smelling odors, the tongue tasting flavors, the body experiencing sensations, and the mind seeing or experiencing mental phenomena.

When the mind sees it just as it is, that there is no me, mine, or myself here, then that current remains unobstructed. And being unobstructed, that current remains free of any danger, any kind of waves or whirlpools, any kind of sharks or demons. Of course, when we say these kinds of metaphors, we're actually referring to the mind that looks at an experience, whatever the experience is, and says, this is mine, this is me, this is mine, this is myself, and therefore wants to hold on to it. It has an obsessive desire, obsessive quality, a craving to want to hold on to it, and therefore has clinging, creates associations, creates rationalizations for why it is that it craves what it is that it craves.

And from there, there is the bhava, the becoming. And that becoming is all of the library of reactions that we have in regards to that particular experience. And when we've had that experience before, we create, or the mind creates, an impression. Impressions get lodged into the mind as habitual tendencies, where we immediately react rather than respond to the situation based on what we've experienced before, without really thinking about it. The mind almost automatically inclines to that particular reaction.

When it chooses that reaction, there is the birth of that reaction, the birth of action, and thereby there is suffering. But as the Buddha says, one who withstands the current consisting of these sensations or these sensations is said to have crossed the ocean of these sense spaces with all their different possibilities of craving and ignorance and so on.

This is what the Blessed One said. Having said this, the fortunate one, the teacher, further said this: who has crossed this ocean so hard to cross. And this is the really important thing to understand. We live in a world where the majority of life on this planet, in this existence, the majority of human beings, especially in our modern-day world, whether we're talking about places in the US, in Europe, in Australia, in Asia, in any of the continents, the inhabited continents.

In those major cities, there is a certain collective society, a global society that is enraptured by media, that is enraptured by the narrative of how our global story continues. And because it's enraptured in it, it's very hard to disengage from it. It's very hard to not want to be part of the collective. Since we are, even before we are teenagers, since we are children, we have a tendency to want to belong to something.

Even in the guise of Buddhism, in the Dhamma, we want to belong to a Sangha. And in doing so, I'm not talking about a Sangha here, I'm just saying in general, in wanting to belong to something, it is also associated with the pleasures of what that association brings. And so the mind becomes enraptured by all of the things that it's picking up. It identifies with all of the things that it's picking up through the sense bases.

This is who I am. This is my body. This is my mind. I have studied so-and-so in this particular university, and therefore I have this particular degree. I have this particular car. I have these many homes. I have this relationship with my spouse, with my children, with my parents. I have all of these things that collectively create my samsara.

So there is the overarching samsara, which is consisting of all beings in all realms. But then we create through our mind our own samsara, so that we feel pain, we feel surprised, we feel shocked, we feel trauma, because we've identified with the world that we have created through the mind. So this world is collectively samsara, but it's also the mind. The mind is samsara. And if you see this, and if you understand this for what it actually is, through the lens of the three characteristics,

It's not just about, oh, this is impermanent, this is suffering, and this is not me, not mine, not myself. It's not like a mantra that you do. Rather, it is the realization of it. And that begins with seeing the interconnectedness and interdependencies of all experience. Once you start to look into the interdependencies and interconnections of all experience, then you start to see how it's like a house of cards. When you take away one, the rest falls apart. Therefore, this is what is known as causality and conditionality. By seeing causality and conditionality, then we can recognize and see for ourselves, through direct experience, that this is impermanent. It is unstable. That is the real word to use here: instability, more than to say permanence or impermanence. And thereby, being unstable, it is bound to cause suffering. It is liable to suffer or to bring suffering. Therefore we do not see it as me, mine, or myself, because the self with the big S, the self that is the true self, the so-called true self that has been a concept in ancient India primarily, is said to be independent of causes and conditions, is said to be permanent,

is said to be the nature of bliss. And yet here we are looking at all experience through our senses and our sense-space experiences: through the eyes and form, the ears and sound, the nose and odors, the tongue and flavors, the body and the mind and mental phenomena. And we see for ourselves that indeed all of this experience is conditioned, and we can go beyond that as well. One of the things I like to do in my meditation, when the mind is completely in a state of fourth jhana, is to start to see all of the connections that happen in our life: our relationships, how they began, how they sprung forth. The so-called identity that has been created around our actions, around what we've done in the past, what we plan to do in the future, what we are doing in the present.

The idea of the identity that people project onto us and then expand that out towards everyone and everything on this planet. Everything has an interconnection. Everything has an interconditionality. And by seeing that, you start to see that indeed all of this is a house of cards. And you let go of so much identity around it. Your mind disengages automatically when it starts to see that it is so unstable, call samsara. This whole thing that we call our life, this whole thing that we call our identity, being so unstable, it is liable to cause suffering. And therefore the mind naturally disengages, becomes disenchanted, becomes dispassionate towards the entire planet.

Doesn't mean that there's a lack of compassion. It just means that you see things for what they actually are. And this is how you cross this ocean. That is so hard to cross, as the Buddha says. When you start to do this, your mind becomes free of expectations. Being free of expectations is upekkha. Being free of expectations is equanimity. It starts with having contentment, having a sense of fulfillment. Nibbana, in the positive sense of the word, because whenever we see Nibbana, it's always that which is not.

It's unconditioned, it's unformed, it's unborn, it is the deathless, it is without beginning and without end, and so on and so forth. But the flip side of that, the positivity aspect of that is it is quenching. Nibbana means to quench the fire of craving. Nibbana is no fuel. Therefore, the fire is extinguished. And so the beginning of Nibbana is contentment.

And it is experienced as fulfillment. And it has nothing to do with an identity feeling fulfillment. It has nothing to do with a sense of self that has some kind of a purpose. It is just here and now, in this moment, total quenching. With its dangers of sharks, demons, waves, the knowledge master who has lived the holy life reached the world's end, is called one gone beyond.

Reach the world's end, the end of samsara. By our sense basis, measured primarily by the mind which takes in those experiences and creates the world, creates the identity, creates the sense of accomplishment and achievement, creates the sense of status as so-and-so, whatever it is that people become proud of. When you truly see this in your meditation and you realize how fake the world is, how delusional the world is, how illusory the world is, how we hear about it by philosophers and great thinkers and people in the academic world who are teaching philosophy or whatever it is. And we may be inspired by those words and we may understand that intellectually.

But to see it and to experience it wholeheartedly, fully, completely, without barrier, to see the illusion of the world and realize that everything that you see in your mind, in your experience, is essentially just causes and conditions. Permanent self, the illusion of some kind of world that is free-flowing, but in reality they are made up of data bytes of sensory information that are being contacted at so many times per second, and we see it as a fluid experience, but in reality the mind is taking that and making it into fluid experience. But when we disengage, we don't even need to see that. When we disengage, our mind being quenched, seeing the world's falsity, seeing the world's fakeness, becomes disinterested in it, becomes dispassionate towards it, becomes like doesn't care about it. And again, when I say it doesn't care about it, it just transcends the dualities of this and that, this is real, this is unreal, this is self and this is not self. It lets go of all of that, because it's another intellectual game, it's another mental game that the mind has to go through.

When you are truly quenched, your mind doesn't move in one direction or the other. It doesn't look for this or that. The mere looking for this or that is the beginning of craving, and thereby he is one called, he is called one gone beyond. This is in some ways the Tathagata, the one who has gone there. Where is there? It's not a place. It's not a physical place. It's not a physical location. It's not a state. It is just that with a capital T. And that's Nibbana. Gone beyond, Parayana. Para means beyond.

And so the Dhamma is Parayana. It is the vehicle to go to the beyond. It is beyond. All dualities, all concepts, all ideas. The challenge here for us as practitioners is that the words that are being spoken by myself or the words of another teacher or the things that you read in the suttas, they're primarily there as a means for you to understand in the words alone.

There is the Sutta, which is the simile of the snake. And in the Sutta, the Buddha says the wrong grasping of Dhamma is like trying to grab the snake by its tail. When you do that, the snake can turn around and bite you. But the right grasping of the Dhamma is being able to hold the snake at the head so that it doesn't come back to bite you. And that's the danger of taking the words of the suttas or of oneself or of any teacher and making that something, reifying that, conceptualizing around that. That is the danger. But the right grasp of the Dhamma is to see it as a vehicle to let your mind abandon all concepts.

There are sounds cognizable by the ear and so on and so forth, mental phenomena cognizable by the mind that are desirable, lovely, agreeable, pleasing, sensually enticing and tantalizing. So here the Buddha again uses the same metaphor of the ocean, talking about all of the sense bases when they start to experience their sense-based objects, because they are pleasing to their sense bases, ultimately pleasing to the mind. The mind will see that and get caught up in it, and that is samsara, getting caught up in samsara. It is samsara getting caught up in the sense-based experience, and seeing it as me, mind or myself, is samsara.

So the Buddha then says, one who has expunged hate or lust, and hate along with the taint of ignorance, has crossed this ocean so hard to cross, with its dangers of sharks, demons and waves. The Tathagata surmounted, the death-forsaker, without acquisitions, has abandoned suffering for no renewed existence. Passed away, he cannot be measured, I say. He has bewildered the king of death. So let's just break down what he says here. One who has expunged lust and hate.

Those are the fetters four and five. Lust and hate. When we talk about the craving, the sensual craving, we're talking about a mind that becomes obsessed towards the ownership and acquisition of something. Hate is the ill will that arises: I hate that guy and I wish him the worst things possible. I wish he did this, this, this. I wish this happened to him. That's hatred. The desire to harm, or the desire to see the badness in others and to make them want, make them suffer for those things, is hatred. But one who has expunged that, which means somebody who has done that, does not feel this obsessive towards something or someone, does not feel the desire that they should be punished for their deeds against whatever they've done to oneself or to one's family or to one's friends or whatever it is.

They have eradicated that. Along with the taint of ignorance, what do we mean by ignorance? Ignorance here is the lack of mindfulness. Mind that is unaware in the moment, the truth of the moment. When you are in every moment, just observing every moment as it actually is, then what you are seeing is essentially a mind that is free of choosing this or that. It is free of making up concepts around this or that. You're truly in the moment. And every moment passes you by, passes the mind by. But if the mind is able to transcend that, then that is natural mindfulness.

That is a mindfulness that is timeless, free of any constraints, free of any trying. It is an effortless mindfulness. And that is the destruction of ignorance. That lack of mindfulness is destroyed. The lack of that particular mindfulness is destroyed. Has crossed this ocean, so hard to cross, with its dangers of sharks, demons and waves. The Tathagata surmounted, the death-forsaker, without acquisitions. Here it's very important to understand, what do we mean by without acquisitions? Upadana, that's the word in Pali. Acquisitions here is essentially karma. Who has let go of the greed, hatred, and delusion, no longer is capable of producing any new karma that will bind one towards suffering. Therefore, he has abandoned suffering and lead to further existence.

Therefore, there is no renewed existence without acquisitions, which means that whatever karma is arising is arising due to when you have released the arrow prior to full liberation. If the traditions are ripe and there, present, for that seed of karma to grow into a fruit to be experienced, then it will be experienced. But there will be no new reaction to that experience that will further strengthen that particular cycle of karma.

The whole point of practicing the Dhamma is liberation. By liberation, liberation from rebirth. If you don't or cannot process rebirth in terms of one life to the next, understand rebirth as the different kinds of patterns that cause you to continue to function in the way that you function, that continues to bring you the suffering that you continue to experience, being liberated from that. Moksha. Moksha. That is liberation. And that is the whole point of the Dhamma. That is the whole point of why the Bodhisattva went on the journey that he went on. A way out of suffering is a way of being liberated from suffering.

And ultimately being liberated from that cycle. But it starts with seeing that. It starts with realizing that: the spiritual urgency of, I've seen this many times before and I've had enough. That is the beginning of disenchantment. And that is how the mind starts to disengage. That's how the mind starts to create an interest, develop an interest, generate and sustain an interest in the Dhamma. And it's not just about using the Dhamma as a platform, more concepts atop more concepts atop more concepts. It's about understanding the Dhamma for what it actually is. A platform from which you jump across to the other side. A raft from which you go from this side to the other.

Don't worry about the finger pointing to the moon. Don't mistake the finger for the moon that it's pointing at. Realize for yourself that the whole point of what you're doing is to liberate the mind. And liberation doesn't mean that now your life is going to become boring. Now the mind is going to no longer experience joys. You will experience an amazing joy that is the joy of Nirvana. The quenching of craving, the relief that you experience, worth more than anything else.

When you experience that, the mind is so satisfied, so fulfilled, that no matter what is happening outside, wherever things are going wrong, supposedly wrong, it just sees it as what it actually is. Perhaps this is karma to be experienced on a more broad scale level. Waves and patterns of information being exchanged from one sense base to the other. That's it.

The forms are just light. The sounds are just vibrations in the atmosphere. The odor and the flavors are just molecules received by the olfactory bulb or the taste receptors. The sensations in the body are just pressures, internal or external. The phenomena in the mind are just electrical signals that are being processed, and the mind then sees that as something. It makes it as something, and the thing that makes it into something is that conceit, that conceit of me, mind or myself, that conceit that compares, the comparing mind, that there is a standpoint from where there is a separate self, and all the other separate selves in relation to the sense of me, my, or myself.

So when you are free of this, your mind will actually be able to truly live life. Experiencing everything fully without getting caught up in the experience. Experiencing everything fully without getting caught up in the illusion of me, my, or myself. And so, passed away, he cannot be measured, I say, because when that mind finally dissolves, when these aggregates dissolve, there is nothing that is further fueling them for further rebirth. And so that consciousness that's there cannot be measured. It is extinguished right there and then. The reason why that consciousness continues on in the next iteration, let's say, of a new birth or a new experience, is because there is that fuel that is pushing it out through the samskaras, through the sankharas. So when the mind is completely free, nothing is pushing out the consciousness before me, and therefore consciousness is right there and then extinguished. And so he has bewildered the king of death, here we talk about as Mara, you