Delson Armstrong 8 Fold Path Series - Right Intention

Last week we started with Right View and I explained the levels of Right View, which is mundane Right View and super mundane Right View. Today we'll be discussing Right Intention. And again, like with the rest of the Eightfold Path, you have the mundane and the super mundane. So the word right intention, let's go back to the Pali and understand what that's really talking about.

So samma sankappa, that's actually the word, sankappa. The Buddha has mentioned intention as karma. Whenever he talks about karma, he says that karma is intention. So everything starts in the mind, right? For those of you who've done the retreats at Dhammasukha or any TWIM retreat, you'll see in the morning that there will be the statements from the Dhammapada. And one of them will be, mind is chief, mind is the forerunner of all states. And that indeed is the truth.

So before we say anything, before we act out in any way, there's always a mental process. There's an intention to speak. There's an intention to act. And this is why we talk about karma as intention. But it's interesting, the word for intention in Pali is manifold. It's Chetana. So you'll find the word Chetana when we talk about the mind and body or nama-rupa.

And here when we talk about mind, it's defined by its five variants or you could say subsets. The way mind is experienced, that's contact, feeling, perception, attention and intention. And the word there is Chetana. So, for example, Bhikkhu Bodhi has translated that as volition. That is the will to act. That is the intention to do something.

So that's Chetana. So why is it that here we have right intention, which is actually sankappa? In reality, when we talk about sankappa, what it means is a determination. It's a resolve. It's a resolution. It's a wholesome desire, which is chanda, right? In Pali, we talk about desire as tanha and chanda. Tanha, as you all probably know, is craving. Tanha is rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion, which are the seeds for this constant suffering that beings go through.

But chanda is where you place your mind towards a wholesome outcome through a wholesome intention. So, for example, when you come on retreat, your intention is to let go. Your intention is to experience loving kindness. Your intention is to experience jhanas. Your intention is to experience nibbana. So you set your course in that direction. That's the chanda. Once you've set the course, you don't have to keep looking all the time whether or not you're on the right course.

So if you do that and you become identified with that process, then that chanda turns into tanha, where you're craving for it rather than just taking the necessary steps towards that particular goal. So in other words, the attachment to the outcome is what you need to let go of. The desire to succeed, the desire to do anything that's rooted in the craving for existence, right? I want to be a good meditator. I want to be a good speaker. I want to be a good teacher. I want to be right. That is craving for existence. So chanda here is basically, yes, the mind

desires to experience nibbana, the mind desires to experience any of the jhanas. Now you have that in motion, and then you take the necessary steps. The necessary steps that you take are chetana, or are comprised of chetana. That is the volition, the volitional actions that you take. For example, you sit down in your chair or you sit down on your cushion and you start the meditation. That is part of the different steps that you're taking. Every single step that you're taking is initiated by that chetana, by that volition, the will to act, the will to do something.

So when we talk about samma sankappa, really what it is, is right resolve. You might have come across this word determinations, especially for advanced students. We talk about determinations as a process where we're able to actually go through specific jhanas for a specific amount of time, and that is to train the mind to be dexterous enough to be able to really pinpoint exactly when you want to come in and out of the jhana, and then also finally cessation.

That's what we call determinations. In the same way, right intention can be understood as the right determination, and right intention is dependent upon right view. So how is it dependent upon right view? Because unless you have set your direction in the right way, that is to say your gaze, your dhiti, your drishti, unless you have the right perspective, right or the right understanding, you cannot go towards right intention. And the right understanding, as we explored yesterday, was also twofold, right? We talked about the mundane, where we understand the laws of karma. We understand that there is a give and take. We understand the value in being generous and the meaning in doing certain things and so on, because they take us into wholesome states of mind.

And then we also see how right view is related to the Four Noble Truths themselves. It's also related to wisdom, the ability to use our intuition in every given moment. That gives rise to right resolve or right intention, because ultimately right intention has to do with three things. It has to do, as the translation in Bhikkhu Bodhi's text here says, with renunciation, non-ill will, and the intention of non-cruelty. So I'll just read it so you understand what I'm saying here.

And what Bhikkhu Bodhi's is right intention that is affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions: the intention of renunciation, the intention of non-ill will, and the intention of non-cruelty. This is the right intention that is affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions. So remember last time I said that this mundane kind of right intention, or right view, or any of the Eightfold Path, is affected by the taints because it still has some level of the asavas. It still has the desire for sensuality. It still has the desire for existence. It still has some ignorance in it. Partaking of merit, in other words, it's still leading into karma or karmic repercussions. Likewise with ripening in the acquisitions, it builds up a sense of self.

Not that the right intention does that, but rather when you are on the path you haven't let go of these things yet. You are starting to let go of them, right? But when you initially start on the path, these things are present. That's why it is the mundane right intention. So the intention of renunciation. Renunciation comes from the word nekkhamma in Pali.

And that could mean the lack of sensuality, because initially the Buddha talks about wrong intention, and there he talks about wrong intention as partaking in sensuality, right, in ill will and cruelty. But there is another way of looking at renunciation. Now, the word renunciation might denote this idea that we all have to give up our jobs and go into the forest and become monks, become bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, and then take up the robes and subsist on alms and so on and so forth, which are all wonderful and noble things to do if somebody is inclined to do that.

But oftentimes what will happen is there's somebody who would want to become a monk and they may approach me and ask, what is it that I should look out for when I decide to become a bhikkhu? And I always say this, which is: make sure that you don't trade one identity for another when you enter into the holy life, when you enter into becoming a bhikkhu or a samanera, whatever the case might be. Because there is a tendency, when you go from one change to the next change, to start to acquire the surroundings, acquire from the surroundings, and then build up the sense of identity that yes, I am a bhikkhu and I am a monk. And from there can arise some level of conceit. From there can arise some level of pride and arrogance and all the other kinds of defilements, upakkilesas.

But is it necessary for us, when we start on the path, to all become bhikkhus? Practically it's not possible. So what is this renunciation talking about, aside from letting go of the home life and going into the homeless life, taking on the robes and the bowl? Renunciation here is a mental attitude more than anything else. It's a mental intention, it's a mental attitude. It's better to be somebody in the midst of the world, where you're dealing with a hundred things, but you have let go of any attachment to any of those things. Better to be in a place where you have to deal with sensuality but you are non-attached to it, you are unaffected by it, than to be somebody who is an ascetic and has all of these different kinds of desires.

Right, oftentimes you will see when you meet with people who have left the lay life, in whatever tradition it might be, that they have to deal with the desires, and oftentimes they will suppress those desires. Those desires are still present, whether you take on the robes or not, whether you go into the wilderness or not. Those desires will remain with you, because the intention is still rooted in some kind of sensuality. So renunciation is really about letting go of a certain attitude, and namely letting go of identifying

with the things that we are dealing with now. For somebody who enters the holy life, somebody who becomes a monk, somebody who becomes a bhikkhu or bhikkhuni, it is much easier for them to let go because they live a very simple life. So the attitude should be, or the intention should always be, to simplify things, not to complicate things. Be direct with the things that you do. Be simple with the things that you do. You don't need to have a bunch of things. You don't need to be accumulating, not necessarily physically but mentally, all of these ideas about ownership of this or that, identifying with this or that. So when you enter a simple lifestyle of being a bhikkhu or a samanera, you are letting go of the worldly life.

Therefore, it's much easier for you to start to develop that wholesome attitude of mental renunciation. But for the majority of us, we live in the lay world. We live a lay life. We deal with all kinds of people on a daily basis. We have all kinds of concerns that we have to take care of. Maybe our health or our partner's health or our business or our work or our education or whatever might be the impending issue in our lives.

In all of that, if we start to worry about it, if we start to become anxious about it, that means that the mind is identifying with it. That means the mind is projecting and attaching a sense of I, me or mine towards that. So renunciation is to let go of the I, let go of the sense of me, the sense of this is me, this is mine, this is myself. Renunciation is about seeing that this whole thing is an impersonal process. This is why, when you think about the three categories of sila, samadhi and panya: sila, as we know, is morality or ethics. That's what we'll explore later on when we talk about right speech, right action and right livelihood. Then samadhi is meditation, samadhi is bhavana, development of the mind, and that consists of right effort, right mindfulness and right collectedness, which then leads to panya, which is insight, or living from an intuitive understanding.

and that is comprised of right view and right intention. The reason is exactly this: when you experience insight, when you experience nibbana, when you understand how this process works, when you see for yourself the links of dependent origination and understand that this is an impersonal process, you now establish the mind in the super mundane right view and also the super mundane right intention, which we'll get to. But regardless of which intention is present, whether it's mundane or super mundane, it's still part of panya, because you let go, because you continue to let go, because you have let go of the sense of I. That is the conceit that we talk about. There are so many different types of conceit. There is the conceit related to the aggregates, the conceit related to the sense bases, the conceit related to fame and glory and honor and praise, to loss and to sickness, and this and that and the other. That's all part of identifying with this process that we call life.

The intention of renunciation starts with wisdom, actually. It starts with understanding what? Understanding the three characteristics. Seeing that everything in this moment, right now, is essentially impermanent. It has the nature of arising and passing away. Arising and passing away. It has the nature of changing all the time. And this is what's known as anicca. Seeing this, we then understand that actually it leads us towards suffering.

Even the most joyful, most pleasurable experience is inherently impermanent. And the reason it is inherently impermanent is because it is dependent upon causes and conditions. So the understanding of dependent origination actually allows us to see and experience in first person, fully, the process of impermanence and therefore dukkha, or suffering. Dukkha, of course, can mean suffering, but it's a very, very multi-dimensional word.

There are so many ways of seeing what dukkha can mean. Indeed, when we look at dukkha as a link, there are so many different aspects to it. But essentially what it's saying is that it is unsatisfactory. Even the most pleasant experience that we have, whatever it might be, is conditioned. It's dependent upon conditions. Therefore, when those conditions are gone, it will change. It will become from sukkha to dukkha, from happiness to suffering, because of the very fact that it is impermanent, because of the very fact that as soon as that pleasant experience goes away, what do we do? We say, I want more of that.

we say why couldn't it last why couldn't it continue right there's a there's a twinge of unhappiness in that happiness. Therefore, when we discussed last time about the sense of self, we cannot say that this happiness, this pleasant experience that we have is me, mine, or myself, because we understand that that idea of a self is supposed to be permanent, it's supposed to be the source of happiness, everlasting happiness, and it is the true self. So in that sense, we can't say that anything within the conditioned world, even Nibbana, cannot be considered as self.

So seeing this, we start letting go of our attachments of I towards that experience, whether it's pleasant, whether it's painful, whether it's neither pleasant nor painful. So this is the true meaning of renunciation: letting go of our sense of self, or letting go of our automatic or almost automatic tendency to incline towards it from a sense of self, or to project that this is mine. This is me, mine, or myself.

And how do you do that? Well, very simply put, you use the 6R's. That's the technique that we use. That is the technology that has been given to us by the Buddha, in the process of right effort. So every time you notice this pain, or you notice anxiety, you notice worry, you notice an attachment to the pleasurable.

Take note of, am I looking at this from the sense of eye? am i expecting the pleasure to continue am i having a innate desire for the pleasure to continue or am i having aversion to the pain am i getting agitated by the pain or am i identifying with that which is you know neither painful or pleasant which is just neutral this is facilitated through the process of mindfulness just being present using yoni so many scar that is to say attention rooted in reality right understanding what is present right now okay the mind is starting to identify with this what do you do you have recognized that this is what's going on you release your awareness towards it you release your attention on it you bring back the attention to the mind and body and then you relax any inherent tightness and tension that might result from taking it personally then you come back to the smile you generate something wholesome

Or you just stay with that mind that is free of any kind of attachment. You stay in that presence of awareness that is free from any sense of self. That's enough too. Stay with that, and in staying with that you become this silent witness, as it were. You become the observer without being the observer. You become just the process of observation. And when that happens, there's just the experience going on. This is why I often quote that particular sutta, the Bahiya Sutta, which says: in the seeing there's only the seen, in the hearing there's only the heard, in the cognizing there's only the cognized, in the sensing there's only the sensed. When you understand this, when you see that there is no you in it, there is no you after it, there's no you before it, just this, this is the end of suffering. So I would encapsulate that in a statement: you can experience everything fully, good, bad or indifferent, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, but experience it without

the sense of I. That is the key to letting go of suffering, letting go of the causes and conditions of suffering. Be present in every moment, every given moment. See the experience for what it actually is. Let the experience be there, whatever it is, and remain in it without the sense of I. Am I the one who's experiencing it? Without the sense of I am the one who is doing this. I am the sensor. I am the cognizer. I am the experiencer. I am the thinker. Let go of that. It is just an experience that's happening. It's just a process that's happening. When you do this, no craving, no clinging, no becoming, no birth of new actions that are rooted in further karma will arise.

Therefore, no new suffering will arise. This is the key to understanding how to let go of karma. When you have this intention of renunciation, letting go of the sense of I in every given moment, and experiencing all vedana for what it actually is, an impermanent, impersonal process, then you will not produce new karma. This is the way to destroy karma. This is the ending of karma, whatever karma arises now.

Then we have the intention of non-ill will and the intention of non-cruelty. So the intention of non-ill will, this is developed through the practice of loving kindness. What is ill will? Ill will is essentially hatred. Ill will and cruelty are hatred. So now we are starting to understand how this process of super mundane right view and right intention, mundane or otherwise, is basically within the scope of panya, of insight.

Because when we have right view, we're starting to get towards the destruction of delusion, the destruction of ignorance. We're starting to get towards the mind of the arahant, where there is no delusion present. We're starting to get into where there is non-delusion, which then leads us into right intention, at the mundane or super mundane level, where there is the renunciation, which is the destruction of greed. Letting go. Every time you let go, there is the destruction of greed in that moment.

The more you do it, eventually all greed is gone. And then when you have the practice of loving kindness and compassion, and any of the other brahmaviharas, but namely loving kindness and compassion, then you have developed the ability to have non-hatred. So non-greed, non-hatred, non-delusion, or non-delusion in the case of right view: non-greed in the case of renunciation, and non-hatred in the case of non-ill will and non-cruelty. So how do you develop this non-ill will? How do you develop this non-cruelty? Like I was saying, ill will is essentially hatred. It's seeing the other person, or seeing or experiencing anything, and having irritation towards it, frustration by it. I wish this were different. I don't like this experience. I don't like this person.

This person annoys me. This person irritates me. I wish they would shut up. I wish they were more quiet. I wish they were this or that, or whatever. And there's this agitation and irritation and anger that arises. And so that irritation, that anger, that hatred is basically ill will. It is aversion. When we talk about craving, we talk about craving and aversion. Craving is the grasping at something, and the aversion is to push it away. I don't want this. So every time we develop the intention of loving kindness, we are using that as an antidote towards ill will.

Now, it doesn't actually say, when we say right intention, it doesn't actually say the intention of love and kindness. It doesn't actually say the intention of compassion. What it says is the intention of non-ill will and the intention of non-cruelty. But in order for you to come from, or go from, ill will to non-ill will, from cruelty to non-cruelty, you need to develop the antidotes. Likewise, even for developing the intention of renunciation, how do you do it? You develop the antidote, which is generosity, because in generosity you are practicing letting go. You are letting go of something for the benefit of another person or another being.

and in doing so you're letting go of your identification with that, the sense of ownership of that. So in the same way, when you develop loving kindness, this is the whole practice you're doing with TWIM, right? The first object of meditation that you're taking is loving kindness towards yourself. This has to be the basis for all other practice, because in this world, especially now, we see a lot of self-hatred. We see a lot of self-denial. We see a lot of the sense of self-loathing, and that leads to unhappiness.

And that's why I do ask a lot of people on retreats, do you feel like you deserve to be happy? And if you don't, then loving kindness towards yourself doesn't mean anything. First, you have to accept yourself as you actually are. It doesn't matter how that is. And that starts from a process of forgiveness. And that's where Bondi had developed this practice of forgiveness, of letting go of any sense of resentment towards ourselves or resentments towards others, letting go of our guilt for things that we might have done, and remorse, which is blocking us from experiencing that self-love.

That sense of being kind to ourselves, being kind to our own mind and body, and eventually being kind to others. So that's what it starts off with. If you want to be able to experience loving kindness for others, you need to first fill your own cup. You need to first take care of your own self, so to speak. Right? When you go on the airplane, one of the things they say is, before you can help others with the oxygen mask, make sure you put your own first. In the same way, before you can send loving kindness towards others,

develop loving kindness towards yourself, accept yourself fully, and that can be done through different kinds of ways. Right? You can start off initially when you start the practice with the intention, verbal intention, in the mind, with "May I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering." But another thing you can do is list out the things that you are grateful for in your own life, the things that you see in terms of your own goodness. So sometimes what Bhante would do is, when there were people who were experiencing this sense of self-hatred, the sense of not being able to accept however things are in that moment, he would have them actually write out five things I like about myself.

And he would have them do that every day, and every day those five things would have to be different. In that way you build up the sense of, okay, there is goodness in there. There are things that I have done in my life. I have been generous in this experience, or I have given to this person, or I've helped this person, or I've supported my friends and my family. I've done something good in this world. And when you start to see the goodness in you, you naturally become uplifted, and being uplifted because of that and appreciating that, is that loving kindness towards yourself.

Now that you have that, then you send the loving kindness to others. Start off with a spiritual friend, somebody who you know, you might know or might not know, but somebody you admire, and so on. Then you start off with your circle of close friends, and then your family members, and then neutral people, and your so-called enemies. These are the people who are difficult, maybe they have problems with you, or you just don't get along well with them. You send loving kindness to them, and then ultimately you send loving kindness in all directions. Now when you do this, whether it's this particular brahmavihara, loving kindness or compassion or empathetic joy or equanimity, what you are doing from a neuroscientific perspective is you're shifting from the left brain to the right brain, because the left brain has to do with rationalizing things, right? The left brain has to do with analyzing things, but then the right brain is all about joy and expansion. So you're shifting gears from there to this, from left to right, left brain to right brain, and when you do this you'll start to experience that spaciousness.

You start to experience that sense of expansiveness, that there is no border between what you experience as this body and the rest of whatever is out there, and from this infinite space that then gradually goes into infinite consciousness, then final nothingness, then neither perception or non-perception, and then finally cessation, or nirodha. But it all starts with that intention of loving kindness to yourself and then finally to others. As you start to develop this, you realize that you can actually apply this in any moment.

It's not just a meditation practice in terms of a formal sitting practice, where you sit down and, okay, I'm going to send loving kindness to everybody for the first hour of my day, and then you start your day, and then somebody irritates you and then you get angrier. What's the point of doing that? It's a wasted effort. The idea is to keep that feeling going as best as you can. This is what we emphasize on retreats. When you join a retreat, one of the first things you're told is to keep that loving kindness going in whatever it is that you're doing. First thing when you wake up, put a smile on your face. Have the intention before you go to sleep that I will wake up with a smile on my face, and you keep that experience going. You keep that self-loving kindness, as it were, going, and you keep that experience of loving kindness towards others going, whether you're brushing your teeth, whether you're walking, whether you're having dinner, whether you're walking the dog, whether you're

driving, whatever it is, you try to keep that going as best as possible, and the only reason you're doing it is because you're exercising that muscle of loving kindness. And the more you do that, bit by bit you let go of ill will, right? And bit by bit, eventually that ill will goes away completely. At a certain level, now, before that happens, you start to get into a baseline of no ill will in almost every moment, and that's what's happening when you have this intention of non-ill will. So the intention of non-cruelty, avihimsa. So first you have to understand what is cruelty. Cruelty is the desire to harm another person, another being. It's a desire to harm them, not just physically but in your intentions, in your thoughts, and in your words. It's the desire to say something mean when they say something mean to you. It's a desire to shout at, it's a desire to denigrate them, or whatever it might be. All of these things are cruel, they're mean-spirited.

And so the understanding of compassion, when we develop karuna, when we develop compassion, what it means is essentially recognizing the suffering in others the same way we recognize the suffering in ourselves. When we are able to recognize that we indeed suffer in whatever way we suffer, then we start to realize that there are other beings out there suffering. Now, we don't feel sorry for them, because if we start to feel sorry for them, then we have what's known as pity, right? P-I-T-Y. Sorry, P-I-T-Y rather than P-I-T-I. P-I-T-I is pity, which is the joy. But we're talking about pity, which is sympathy, looking down at another person and saying, oh, I feel so sorry for you.

That's not the attitude you have. Here we're talking about empathy. We're talking about understanding, yes, you suffer in the same way I suffer or the way I could suffer. And I recognize that suffering in you, and I want you to be free of that suffering. So how does that start? That starts when you start to develop the loving kindness to yourself and then to other beings. When you radiate out in all directions, eventually the quality of the loving-kindness changes.

And that quality is basically, or the change in that quality is a change from loving-kindness to compassion. And that compassion is softer, it's more free-flowing, it might be less energetic, whatever it might be. So that's just the qualitative experience in the meditation. But practically speaking, when you apply this understanding of compassion in everyday life, what you're saying is, if somebody shouts at me, if somebody is rude to me, if I don't recognize that they're doing it because they're suffering, then I will act in kind. I will be cruel to them because I'm not recognizing that they're coming from a place of suffering. Therefore, the more you develop this compassion, the more you become naturally aware of the suffering of others, so no matter how terrible they might act towards you with their words and actions

not that you become a rug that they walk on, because that's also not helpful to anybody. You can be assertive and say, hey, you need to stop doing that, you need to stop acting that way, that is hurtful, that is mean-spirited. But you can do it in a way that's assertive, not aggressive, in a way that is rooted in loving kindness and compassion, rooted in wisdom.

So when you see somebody acting bad towards you, instead of reacting to that, see, this is the other process. What happens is somebody says something terrible to you, and what happens? It's received as a sound in the ear, and then there's the feeling of the experience of hearing those terrible words, and that's the perception. And then there's a sense of I that's attached to it. So that's, which means you've not let go of seeing this as an impersonal process. Now that there's a sense of I, there's the craving in the form of aversion: I don't like what they just said. Then there's clinging, there's stories about it: they shouldn't be saying this to me because I am so and so, don't they know who I am, don't they know what I've done, all of these other things that come up. Then there's the becoming.

Right now you've created an identity around it through your habitual tendencies of how you would usually react, and from that library of habitual tendencies, then you have the birth of action that says, I'm going to act in this way. Now the intention arises, and I'm going to respond in kind. I'm going to be equally or maybe worse than them in terms of being cruel and mean-spirited, and say something untoward, say something terrible to them. And what does that do? All that does is it perpetuates the cycle. All it does is it reinforces that reactivity, that nature of reactivity in the mind. So that I brought that up last time also. You go from reactivity to being responsive. Instead of reacting to what they're saying, you take a pause.

You recognize the anger coming up. You recognize the ill will coming up, bubbling up in your mind, but because you've taken a pause instead of reacting and doing something you would regret, you recognize it. You let it go. You relax and you see, okay, this person is suffering. I should not be responding in kind. It will only create more tension. It will only cause more suffering for myself and for the other person. So I'm choosing to de-escalate the situation. I'm choosing to try to calm them down. I'm choosing to not react in a way that's going to cause them to react again. So there, then, wisdom arises. There, then, right view, intuition comes up and says, rooted in this wisdom, maybe I should say this.

It sounds like they're hurting, or it sounds like they're suffering because of something I said, or because somehow they heard it in this way. So let me clarify it to them, or let me make them understand that my intention was not this, but this is what was the case. Now, how they choose to react is still their karma. You can't control how they react, but at least you have restrained. You have let go of any kind of identification process. Therefore, you don't have an attachment to the outcome of whether this should go one way or the other. Instead, you see this as an impersonal process. You engage from that compassion, that desire not to harm the individual, and you've caused your mind peace.

Now your mind will not be reactive. It won't be agitated. So if they continue to react in a way that is agitated, if they continue to react in a way that is mean-spirited, you can decide to walk away from the situation. You can say, hey, look, you don't seem to be understanding what I'm saying here, so I think we should take a break, maybe get back to this again later. I'm going to walk away. Instead of the same old rut, the same old perpetual cycle. So this is non-cruelty, the recognition of another's suffering, because cruelty would be adding to that person's suffering by reacting in the way that you would.

So these are the three components of the mundane right intention. Now, the Buddha says, and what, because, is right intention that is noble, taintless, super mundane, a factor of the path. The thinking, thought, intention, mental absorption, mental fixity, directing of mind, verbal formations, or verbal formation in one whose mind is noble, whose mind is taintless, who possesses the noble path and is developing the noble path.

This is right intention that is noble, taintless, super mundane, and a factor of the path. So, in other words, this is the right intention of somebody who has started to actually walk the path. They might not have experienced the first level awakening yet, but they are being a faith follower, a Dhamma follower, or they might have come into being a stream winner, or even further than that. Or ultimately, they are taintless. That is to say, they have let go of all of the asavas and are essentially fully awakened. In any case, what he's talking about here is the thinking, thought, intention, mental absorption, mental fixity, directing of mind, verbal formation.

What is all of this pointing towards? This is pointing towards a different kind of intention, a super mundane intention. So let's go back to what I was talking about last time, about this world and the other world. This world is the world of sensuality. This world is the matrix of our five sense bases, the physical sense bases: the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body. But the other world can be the world of the mind, in which it is possible for one to experience jhana and ultimately the most super mundane, the ultimate, the absolute, which is nirvana. So all of this is pointing towards the inclination to enter into a jhana. Indeed, when we talk about the first jhana and the second jhana, we're talking about, well, actually, the first jhana. When we talk about the first jhana, we're talking about the thinking and examining thought, which means what you have applied and sustained thought, which means you start off with the words in your mind: May I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering, may I be filled with loving kindness.

What is that? Those are verbal formations. What are verbal formations? Those are the proto-thoughts that bubble up in the deepest recesses of the mind, and they bubble up into a thought that says, may I be happy, may I be well. So it's the intention of entering into a meditative state, which is the noble right intention, which is the super mundane right intention. When we have that application of thought, and then we sustain that, how do we sustain that? Mental absorption. When you say absorption, we're really referring to collecting the mind around

that intention of being loving and kind towards ourselves, or sending loving kindness towards ourselves and then towards others. Mental fixity. That's the sustained thought. We keep that thought going. We are directing the mind towards loving kindness. Ultimately, the direction of the mind is towards nirvana. That's the chanda. That's the course that you set out to, that this is where the mind wants to ultimately go, by letting go layer by layer by layer. But it starts with an intention. It starts with a mental thought. And so that is what we're talking about when we say the super mundane right intention, that is noble, in one whose mind is noble, who is taintless, who possesses the noble path, is developing a noble path, or it is a factor on the path.

So I will stop here, and I will open it up for questions. Delson, hello. Hello, Brian. Hi, Brian. Great talk. I've got the last one on right view, and I couldn't wait to get to this one. Could you go over again the end of karma? I have it, I'm recording it now so I can listen to it again. It kind of went by me about, yeah. So when we talk about karma, the Buddha has talked about this as the cessation of karma. When we talk about karma, karma is essentially starting with intention, and it can be a mental action, that is to say, a thought, an intentional thought. It can be the intention to speak something, or it could be to act with our body, the deeds that we commit.

That is the active form of karma. There is the karma which is understood as vipaka, which is the fruit of those actions, which is the result of those actions, and that is experienced as old karma. New karma is the active form of karma. Old karma is the karma that is inherited from that new karma, from that new action, that can take root or that can arise if the causes and conditions are ripe, if they're present, to give rise to that particular karma. How is that karma manifest? It's manifest as feeling, as vedana, as some kind of an experience.

Now, when we see that as old karma, that is a result of previous actions that we may have taken in this life, possibly a previous life or whatever it is, or it could be the convergence of different kinds of factors that come together that causes the experience to happen. Now, how we choose to react to that will decide whether new karma arises, which is to say new energy is given to the perpetuation of that karmic cycle. That essentially is the fuel of craving, and that fuel of craving arises by identifying with the feeling, by saying that this feeling is me, mine, or myself.

What we're saying is, I don't like this, or I do like this. So if I don't like this, I try to push it away, and the energy of that aversion then gives rise to other repercussions. That is the clinging, the becoming, the birth of new action, and then hence the further perpetuation or clinging to it in the sense of I want this, grasping towards it. Or if it's neutral, saying I am this. Even the delusion that this is me, mine, or myself can give rise to a different kind of craving, which says this is me, this is who I am, which then gives rise to the clinging, the stories about the self around it, and then the habitual action, habitual tendencies that give rise to those new actions, and then that's how the cycle continues. But the breaking of that cycle is essentially being present in the vedana, letting go of a sense of self, letting go of any tightness and tension, and letting it happen, because this can be seen in the meditation too, when you are meditating.

Any hindrance that arises is essentially old karma. It's arising because of some other karmic action, but now we are dealing with it in this moment in the meditation, and we're seeing it as a hindrance. Now, if we choose to identify with that hindrance and say, why is this hindrance here, I don't like this being here, or I want more of it, if it's pleasurable, then we're perpetuating that hindrance through our undue attention to it.

But with the process of right effort, with the process of the 6R's, we recognize that hindrance as suffering. We recognize that it's there. We release our undue attention to it. That undue attention is rooted in the sense of I. We relax any tightness and tension that's residual, and then generate a more wholesome object or a wholesome state of mind, so that we can respond to it in a way that doesn't perpetuate that karma. So you can actually apply right effort with every situation, and that is the key to starting to dismantle these various kinds of karmic cycles.

When you say letting go of the sense of self, I'm always trying to identify if I actually have a sense of self. I'm not really sure what that means. You know, that basically just means that you're taking things personally more than anything else. That's what it means. Like, I'm taking this personally. I'm saying this is mine. Okay. Delson, you've got a question in the chat. Okay, Apple Pie, unless they would like to come on and ask it. Can you see that? Yeah, it says here.

Hi Delson, thank you. I have a question on intentions. Non-ill will is often translated as having intentions of goodwill, like compassion and loving kindness. My question is, are intention of non-ill will and good will the same, or are they different? They are different. So as I was saying earlier, non-ill will essentially means that there's no ill will present in the mind. Non-cruelty means that there is no cruelty in the mind. But in order for you to get to that stage, you need to cultivate the antidotes to ill will and to cruelty, which are loving kindness and compassion. So you go from ill will to non-ill will, you go from cruelty to non-cruelty, through the cultivation of loving kindness and compassion. But they are not the same as non-ill will and non-cruelty. They are different. Tucker, where's Tucker at? Hello.

the progress of the training so in the jhanas the progression is one from which metta becomes compassion and i'm wondering if a meditator is it the case that they should focus on uh or is it recommended that they should focus on generating uh meta as a uh antidote to ill will or um and then later on uh perhaps when they have like a basis they're uh working with compassion much like with the janas or are they better worked in tandem or does it depend on like a particular individual's inclinations

Yeah, I think the way I would look at this is that these brahma viharas can be developed however you want to develop them, but they start off with loving kindness because they're the most easily accessible for some people. Some people are better off with equanimity, some people are better off with compassion, some people are better off with mudita or empathetic joy. That's fine, because you go back to the Metasahagata Sutta. The Metasahagata Sutta says that the limits of loving kindness are essentially the fourth jhana, and the limits of compassion are essentially the fifth. So that means you can experience loving kindness from any jhana up to the fourth, and compassion from any jhana up to the fifth. Likewise with mudita, anywhere from the first all the way to infinite consciousness, and

with nothingness it's equanimity. So it's not like you need to, you have to develop a certain brahma vihara before you've gone to the next one. But what we have seen is that there is a natural progression that does happen. Beginners will start with loving kindness because it's much more accessible for them initially, but as they continue to develop compassion they can go and cultivate that, and as they continue to develop equanimity they can continue to develop that, or in between that.

I think you have to do what works for you. Initially, for a beginner, I would say just start with however we give the instructions, but then as you start to explore your own mind and explore the experiences that are going on, start to experiment with it. That's the attitude everyone should have: see what seems to be more accessible for the mind, and just go with that, and keep developing that until you move on to another one, and another one. So developing jhanas is not the goal here, nor is developing the brahma viharas. These are all steps. The brahma viharas are tools that allow you to experience jhanas, and the jhanas are a natural fruition, a natural ripening of letting go. In fact, there are levels of understanding, as Bhante Vimalaramsi would say, and I would say there are levels of cessation. They're basically, you go deeper and deeper, and you have deeper and deeper insights because you continue to let go. So the best approach

In my understanding is to just let things happen naturally. When you get to a certain level of, let's say, advancement or mastery, then you can start playing around with these things. Okay. Humberto, you were in line there. I think it doesn't pretty much answer this, but I was going to ask: how would one cultivate an intention that's truly aligned with the path to liberation, ensuring that it's free from self-interest and grounded in compassion for all beings? That's an interesting question, because actually, in order for you to get to liberation, you have to let go of any self-interests. So that means you start off with, as I said, being loving and kind to yourself.

But ultimately you let go of even that, and you are now sending loving kindness to others, and so on. But the path to liberation, right? One of the best maps that I like to use is the Upanisa Sutta. What does that talk about? It talks about starting off with having some level of confidence in the path, some level of confidence in this structure of the Eightfold Path and the Dhamma, ultimately the holographic structure that is the Dhamma itself.

And ultimately, that leads to gladness, naturally. Then ultimately, that leads to joy, naturally. That leads to sukha, or comfort, or tranquility. That leads to collectedness, right? That collectedness then leads to a level of equanimity. And then that equanimity leads to disenchantment, dispassion, and then liberation. So I think the way to look at it is, yes, you can have the desire for liberation, which is the chanda.

But if you're motivated by the desire for liberation in a way that is, for lack of a better word, unwholesome, in the sense that you're wanting to be liberated so that you can have siddhis, you can have powers, then you're not going to get anywhere. That's actually going to be detrimental. But if you're doing the process of letting go because you see your own suffering, and you become liberated, then actually you naturally become compassionate towards others. The exercise of being compassionate towards others becomes automatic.

First, you have to cultivate it. But when you become fully liberated, you are naturally compassionate towards others. Ambedo, I hope that's getting to your question. Thank you. Okay, Rahul. Hey, Delson. Earlier in your talk, you mentioned something along the lines of letting go of outcome, and I was wondering how I could apply that practically. Like, for example, at work or related to work, I find myself thinking, hey, I need to get this done by date X, or it won't be good, or, oh no, if this doesn't happen, something bad would happen. So I'm clearly holding on to some outcomes there. You know, there is some self in there, but by the time I catch it, it's already at the I'm stressing out sort of stage.

So what's a good way to detect that and let it go? Yeah. So when we talk about attachment to outcome, what does it actually mean? So an outcome is a future experience, which essentially is not fully under our control. We can bring up the proper causes and conditions that might lead to a specific outcome, or a particular outcome. But the moment we start to just look towards the outcome, what that brings about is the worry and anxiety. So first we have to recognize that. As soon as we recognize that this is what's going on, it means that we start to become more present.

Any kind of suffering that arises ultimately arises due to non-presence of awareness, the lack of presence of awareness in every given moment. So if you can start to see that, and start to recognize that there is this suffering now, and then you let go of it, and then you continue to be in the present and use your meditative awareness to understand what's going on in the present, then you're just basically dealing with tasks at hand, which might be important for that particular outcome, right? But if you're looking towards the goal, if you're looking towards the outcome, then you're not doing anything. All you're doing is continuing to obsess over that and not really fully, efficiently, effectively taking the tasks, or doing the tasks, or taking the steps necessary for that particular outcome.

So ultimately, in a nutshell, what it means is you have to come back to present awareness. You have to come back with your mindfulness and notice, okay, I'm starting to worry about this situation, I'm starting to become excited about the outcome or attached to the outcome. I'm going to let that go, and I'm just going to focus. I'm going to put my attention, I'm going to incline my attention through my intention to just be present and do the tasks. And doing that, you will actually be much happier. You will actually be more efficient, you'll be more effective. This is the way to do it. Got it. To recap: every time I catch myself worrying, 6R's, and then come back, and over time I can catch myself hopefully earlier. Thank you. And the other thing is enjoy the moment. The reason why we look towards the future is because we're not happy in this moment. We're not able to actually fully accept and enjoy the Dhamma, the truth, the reality of this moment.

But if we can actually enjoy it, then screw the outcome. I don't care what the outcome is. It's whatever it is, I'm still having fun and enjoying myself in this moment. Okay. There was an earlier question in the chat: how do I distinguish aversion from a choice to just stay away from angry, hostile people? Having aversion, so aversion has... Yeah, this is a good question. How do I distinguish aversion from a choice to stay away from angry, hostile, controlling and dominating people? Yeah, it sounds like you really need to stay away from them. So you could do it without any aversion. You could take the necessary steps that you need to do. See, aversion is essentially having that quality of ill will. If you recognize the ill will, that, okay, I don't like this person, I don't want this person in my life, and there's a quality of agitation

You let go of that. You recognize that right as a symptom of being with such a person or with such people, and you let go of that, and then you take the necessary actions that will allow you to stay away from such people. You are motivated in some sense by compassion as well. What that means is compassion for yourself and compassion for the other, which is to say that you realize that if you continue to stay in this situation where these people are this way, it's only going to cause you more suffering, and ultimately them suffering as well, one way or the other. But if you are able to sidestep and take the necessary steps to go away from them in a way that doesn't lead you towards getting angry at them, that's the aversion, in a way that causes you to be irritated by them, that's the aversion, then you're taking the steps that are rooted in wisdom and rooted in compassion. Okay, Virgil.

Hi Delson. I have a quick question regarding the intention of renunciation and how it ties into generosity. So the Buddha said that if two people... there is a Sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya, which I think is called the Fruits of Forgiveness, in which he said that if two people give the same exact gift but with a different intention, they will get different results, right? And I have a hard time understanding the very last intention.

So he used basically an example, seven examples of seven people, and the last one, which is like the most wholesome, the most noble intention, he said that this person gives a gift thinking this is like an ornament for the mind or support for the mind. I had a kind of hard time understanding what that means, so maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit. And also he said that this person, when he dies, he goes into the higher brahma lokas, and then he becomes a non-returner. So that means that somehow his renunciation, or that intention of renunciation, is so powerful that he can abandon the five fetters in the process. So maybe you can also elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah, so I would have to read that fully to really give you a proper answer, but based on the information that you're giving me, as I understand it, we'll have to see what the word ornament actually comes from in terms of the Pali, but possibly what it might be referring to.

Is that the ornament of the mind? In other words, it's a jewel for the mind, it's a tool for the mind, it's a support for the mind, where because you are generous in this way and you realize that being generous is practical for your progress in your practice, for your progress in the Dhamma, that it allows... yeah, like a tool to get rid of greed. That's basically right, exactly. And which would basically mean that you're progressing through the different stages of the path by practicing it. So generosity is the foundation upon which then you have to continue to practice. So the ornament there, or the foundation, is that, but you have to continue to progress by still applying right effort, by still applying right mindfulness, by still applying right collectedness, by still going through the process of meditation and letting go, and then experiencing at least the first level of awakening, upon which then he may go into a higher realm, which is a higher brahma loka, and from there experience non-returner, because in that moment there's no greed, hatred

Present, right, and then whatever brahma loka they go to is wherever they go to, but since there's no fuel to take them back down from there, they attain, you know, final awakening. Okay, thank you. Okay, just one question from the chat here: sometimes after I finish a meditation, anxiety arises. Is there a way to deal with it besides six hour in it? Sometimes after I finish meditation, anxiety arises. Is there a way to deal with it besides six argument? Well, I'm going to have to ask you what kind of meditation are you doing, because if the meditation is rooted in trying really hard or pushing or intensely

contemplating the three characteristics or anything like that, or even if you are, let's say, radiating loving kindness and you're just pushing it, you know, from a neuroscientific perspective, what's going on there? So to give you a little bit more clarity, what's going on there is you're engaging actually the left brain when you should be engaging the right, and more specifically you're engaging the parts of the brain, so to speak, which are dealing with the fear response, which are dealing with the anxiety response, every time you try to push. So I'm saying this assuming that that's the case, and if that is the case, then you would want to actually disengage from that kind of practice, let that go, and kind of just relax into whatever is going on in the meditation. Right. And the other thing is, when we talk about relaxing, some meditators might have a tendency to forcibly relax, like, I have to relax, if I don't relax something's going to happen, and so they push themselves towards relaxation. It's like you're consciously

tightening your fist so that you're able to experience the relaxation. Right. So I'm giving all of this based on my assumptions from that question, but if you want to clarify, maybe I can give you a better answer. We can wait for the clarification in the meantime. Let's see. Let's go for... what is this? No, I think Jordan was in line here. - Okay. - Mr. Jordan, really a wonderful talk, thank you for tying in this talk today to samadhi, your talk last week. It's really a great link. I did have a question about, you mentioned renunciation, and when I bring that up to people, they recoil

and today i was really it it was clear to me that um the six hours um release and relax um uh it is is our steps in renunciation we're letting go and i think right can i take that as kind of a general direction and and if that's the case i notice that some people have greater success with this than others. And I'm wondering if it's, well, of course it's their karma, but what role does Sila, we're not at Sila yet, but what role does Sila play in that ability to

renounce, to let it go, and not make it into a battle between our established habits and, but, you know, a journey of freedom, a freedom of mind, letting go and renouncing, renouncing it consciously by just releasing and relaxing? And I think sila, I'm just beginning to realize, there seems to be a liberating principle in the effects of the 6R's, and could you talk about that? Yeah, definitely. Because we talk about jhanas a whole lot more than anything else. Even in the suttas it does talk about jhanas, but there is an emphasis on what would be the jhanas that are liberating,

right, the ariya jhanas, as it were, compared to the anariya, that is to say, that which doesn't lead to liberation. And there have indeed been examples in the suttas where the Buddha has talked about how people have gone to nothingness, or they've gone to this particular loka, because it's associated with this particular jhana, which means that they were able to get into jhana, but they were doing it without the preceding seven factors, which is to say right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness.

That is what denotes ariya jhanas, noble jhanas, jhanas that are liberating, which means within that is the facets of right speech, right action, right livelihood, which I'll take up, of course, later on. But the practical understanding of this is that when we are able to be ethical, we're not doing it because there's necessarily some moral judge out there who's going to tell us what our punishments are. It is our own karma.

It is our own intentions, our own reactions, which will do that for us when we die and so on and so forth. Even now, in every moment, it is our intentions that are taking us to a certain kind of destination. So if we're able to let go of being unethical, that is to say at least keeping the five precepts, if we're able to do that, what that means is that our mind becomes less agitated, because we don't feel remorse over doing something that is untoward, that is unethical, that is breaking the precepts. And as our mind starts to actually disengage from breaking the precepts and starts to keep the precepts, our mind naturally starts to become less agitated, starts to become more calm, and it starts to collect itself naturally, automatically, because of that.

And also, in keeping the precepts, that also gives rise to the pamoja, the gladness in the Dharma. We actually, in a wholesome way, relish in the fact that we have been wholesome, that we have been keeping the precepts. and that is yet another factor that gives rise to the joy that we experience in the first and second john so you know we cannot uh you know we can't discount the vital importance of keeping the precepts and essentially having that sila before we even start meditating got it thank you okay i think tony hello delson um thanks for the talk i have a question regarding the um i guess the sending loving kindness and also forgiveness um so there are times i'd like to tie to previous questions was asked that you have got the people around you you have to work with for instance and um you of course you try to send forgiveness but

you cannot change the nature of the people, right? I mean, assume a tiger, they of course bite, or a snake, you approach them, they bite. Right? So in situations where you have people around you who have that connection, of course you see their nature, you try to avoid them or try to work around, or find a better way of communication or dealing with those people, but keep sending forgiveness and doing that. Sometimes it gives me the feeling that I'm failing at forgiveness, but by seeing the nature, I see that these people are like that. I mean, you have compassion towards them, and then of course there is a certain level of loving kindness to send them. I'm not the Buddha, that is, he was saying in the Saw Simile of the Saw that even when somebody is cutting off your limbs you have to have compassion or loving kindness towards them. I guess I'm far away from that, but what are the limits of forgiveness, and

How far you have to go for those kind of people, or do you have any advice for that? Okay. So first we have to understand that when you said loving kindness, or when you have forgiveness towards the other person or people, it's not for them. It's not to change them, it's not to change the situation, it's not to make them a better person. It's for our own mind, it's for the purification of our own minds. So when we have loving kindness towards them, it's not for them; it's so that we have a better mindset to deal with them. We can't control how they're going to react, we can't control how they're going to behave. We can control how we react or respond to their behavior. So if we have loving kindness and we have an attitude of forgiveness towards them, we can act intelligently, we can act insightfully, we can act with wisdom for ourselves, for our own benefit. We can navigate the situation in a way that's more appealing to us, let's say, that's more peaceful for us. Okay. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean

Loving kindness for those kind of people, or even your boss or colleagues, that at least gives us the room to distance ourselves from that and take a look at that. Okay, thank you. Okay, Michael, unmute. Yeah. So the question was regarding the practice, and I felt anxious coming out of the practice, and it happened all of a sudden, so I just wanted to understand, like, what I might be doing wrong. So let me ask you, what is the practice you're actually doing? So I was doing loving kindness, and I was slowly progressing to compassion in the practice. So I have the determination that I would sit longer and try to experience different genres. But yeah, coming out of it felt a little anxious, but it soon settled down, but I didn't feel anxious. So this can arise, like I said, if you are pushing. If let's say, if I understand correctly from what you said

That you were transitioning from loving kindness to compassion, which would denote that you are going from radiating metta to radiating karuna, meaning you're sending it out in all directions. This happens very commonly with a lot of people who are starting on, or even people who are doing it for a long time. There can be a tendency to push. So I just want to make sure that you're not doing that. Are you, let's say, when you send it out in a direction, are you very determined that it should go out, or are you just observing that process of loving kindness or compassion going on? Because it's just to place the intention of that particular brahmavihara going in that specific direction, nothing more than that. Not pushing it out, not trying to make it happen. Yeah, I was just observing it, but then I think I just came out too quickly and felt like, yeah. Did you feel spaciousness? Did you feel that sense of infinite space?

Yes, I did feel the sense of space, and I was just observing whatever was happening, like contact and everything, and then I just came out. So I felt a little anxious for a while. So yeah, I would say to take some time in between when you finish your sit and when you get up, because when you have spaciousness, for some people they could also feel like everything is discombobulated, like what is up, what is down, what's going on. Just take your time to kind of rest and just be here, present. Maybe take two or three minutes before you do anything, and then see how that goes. Thank you so much. Okay. Emilio, you had a question?

where basically you said uh the intention is karma which basically previous action on these lies or previous lives and then you immediately kind of change gear and you went into the determination in sila samadhi in panya almost like well the karma you have is the one you have what is important is really the determination you have and in paying attention on this formation and direct in a wholesome direction i wanted to ask what your feedback on this understanding that i had especially at the beginning of your talk and if you have further things to say on that topic

I would say you've rightly understood that, because we can talk about all the ways in which karma arises, in terms of: in this moment this arose, and that was because of this particular sequencing of things, and it was because I did this, or because I had the intention of doing this, and that arose because of this particular condition. And we could make ourselves literally go crazy doing that, right? But if we can just deal with what's going on right now and then choose to let go, that's a much gentler and more effective approach to dealing with that karma. So this is the way to look at it. One more on that point: it's almost like, if you want to introduce free will in our life, we have to put that determination in. If not, we are simply guided by the previous karma

and we don't yeah i'll alter that right so that's what i was referring to last time was last time free won't right like in every moment every moment you have that sort of choice and if you're not present to that choice in other words you don't have the attention of what choices are available then the habitual tendencies come up to incline you automatically to a specific choice that's conditioned by previous habitual tendencies of taking that choice but when uh you know wisdom comes up when the dhamma comes up in the mind then you realize okay this is not the choice that seems most effective this choice is rooted in the wholesome or this choice is rooted in letting go and you take that direction but it's all predicated upon uh proper attention to the choices present in every given moment okay thank you okay let's go back to the chat delson take a look at this interesting question uh a long one from apple pie it's about the relaxing the hindrances such as anger yeah uh i've got another question it's about relaxing the hindrances such like anger

I've been practicing the 6R's and it works well, but I've also heard about another practice from different schools of Buddhism, where you simply observe, watch, or just feel the hindrance until it subsides. The reason they use this method is to exhaust the kleshas. I would like to ask, is it possible to exhaust kleshas this way, and also, can you talk about why the 6R's are more effective than the other? I'm not going to do any kind of comparison between systems first and foremost. What I am going to say is that when we deal with the kleshas, we are actually letting go of the kleshas when we actively let go of them.

For us to just observe the kleshas is giving attention to the kleshas. Attention is the fuel for any mind object, which means if my attention is being given to something that is unwholesome, the likelihood is higher that it will persist. That's why it feels uncomfortable to keep observing the painful activity: keep observing, keep observing, keep observing. All it does is actually perpetuate that aversion, until what happens, because the mind gets so agitated by it, it suppresses it. You can either forcibly suppress it with your own intention, or it does it automatically because the pain is so much by continuously looking at it. But if you look at it and you say, this is a painful experience, and you notice the agitation, the aversion towards it, or whatever klesha is coming up, and you engage with it by letting go

consciously dropping it and replacing it with what is wholesome, that is fulfilling the Eightfold Path. Go back to the suttas, go back to the Eightfold Path, go back to right effort. What are the four right efforts? The first right effort is to observe that there is an unwholesome state present, that is fulfilled by when you observe the kleshas, but not by continuously observing them and letting them be there and then just waiting until they are exhausted. That's not the goal here. You're not exhausting the kleshas, you're transforming them, and that happens when you let go of your attention to them. That is abandoning the unwholesome states, that's the second right effort, and then you generate a wholesome state, that's the third right effort, and then you maintain your awareness

on that wholesome state. This is the actual practice that the Buddha has given. So what that means is, in order for you to go from sensuality to a jhanic level of mind, you need to have a joy that is more fulfilling, more enjoyable, or more satisfying than sensual pleasures. This is why, as you start to engage with jhanas, the mind bit by bit gets less interested in sensual pleasures, because it has found a pleasure greater than the sensual pleasure. Which means when you disengage from the unwholesome state and you replace it with a wholesome state, what you're doing is changing the direction of your attention from that unwholesome state and taking it to something that's more pleasurable, which is the wholesome state of mind. And you keep that going. Due to the fact that attention is what strengthens that unwholesome state, when the attention is diverted away from it, gently, using the 6R's, then because of the lack of fuel that unwholesome state naturally passes away. That is the remainderless fading away of that unwholesome state, of that question.

Great. Ines, you've got a question. Thank you very much, Delson, for the talks last week and this week. I have a question, very similar to the one that you responded to, and it is related to pain. So how can we experience, or go through the experience of, body pain without the sense of I? Or in a more general way, how can we see anatta or practice right effort and the 6R's, or radiate metta, while experiencing body pain, which is very unpleasant and somehow has the tendency to keep our mind focused on this pain?

Right. So we don't 6R the pain. We don't 6R anything with regards to the pain. We actually accept the pain. We say the pain is present, but we look at the aversion. So this goes back to the analogy of the two darts. The first dart is the physical pain. The second dart is the mentality around the physical pain.

So the physical pain is present. That is unavoidable. But the mentality around the physical pain, which actually aggravates the mind, because we're giving the attention through aversion towards it. That's what we use the six R's for. And eventually, that allows us to develop equanimity towards the pain. So we're not six R'ing the pain. When people actually meditate for longer periods of time, one of the things that they deal with is bodily pain, because they're sitting for long periods of time. So the idea is not to kind of gung-ho it and just be like, sit through the pain. It's to understand your mind's reaction to the pain. It's to understand how you react to the pain, how the mind responds to it.

It makes it feel worse than it actually is. I'll give you my own example. Yes, there's other bodily pains which are more persistent. But today, when I was getting out of the bathroom, I nudged my elbow on a nail, and it was like right there, where the funny bone is, where it just radiates, really badly. So I said, okay, here's a pain, and I actually said ow. Right, that was painful, but then I observed the pain and I realized

that this pain is just because of contact. The contact arose, and that was the initial contact of the pain, and the pain just radiated because there was further contact through the nerves. But as I continued to see it, it just subsided. I didn't try to change it. I didn't try to, like, aggravate it by getting upset at myself or whatever. I just saw, okay, here is the pain, and then you realize that that pain just subsides at some point. That pain just subsides. And it might take longer for different kinds of pain, especially when you're sitting in meditation, because the biggest contact that you have in terms of meditation, not meditation pain but physical pain and meditation, is when you're sitting. Your thighs and your back and so on are what is making contact with the seat. And so because of that continuous contact, there's continuous feeling of that pain.

So you just have to allow it to be there. You just have to accept that that's the case. Now, if there's bodily pain outside of that, which is, because of an injury, because of something else that's going on, and you choose to sit with that injury or with that particular pain, then you just notice your aversion to it and you're trying to let go of the aversion and bring your attention back to the loving kindness. Eventually, over a period of time, as your attention starts to seep out of that pain and towards more on the object of loving kindness or whatever it is, your attention to that pain subsides, and even the feeling of that pain subsides for a period of time, as long as you're in that jhana, as long as you're in that meditation. Yeah, so it's a matter of practice. So the pain I'm experiencing, it's not a meditation pain, but it's a pain related to a health condition, which seems to really completely have disrupted my meditation practice and my metta and my practice in general.

And I'm a little bit like the mind is a little bit worried because I am finding myself not able to meditate and completely identified with that pain. So how can we see anatta in this really kind of extreme situation where the pain is so strong? Yeah, at this point, no need to see the anatta. Because when you try to see the anatta, it's another mental process of aversion.

You're trying to use the tools to block out the pain or to push the pain away. There's no need to see the anatta of the pain at this moment. All you have to recognize is that there is a reaction to the pain while you're sitting. Of course, a more practical approach is to find a sitting position, or maybe lying down, or any position that is more comfortable for you, that might not aggravate the pain while you're sitting down for practice. And when I say sitting down, it doesn't mean sitting in a chair or on a cushion. You generally mean also lying down, whatever seems most comfortable for you, first and foremost. And then that will help ease off your attention on the pain.

So it's not important at this point to try to see the anatta of the pain. That happens as a natural ripening as you progress through the jhanas, as you progress through the levels of understanding, through the layers of letting go and cessation. That's the way to look at it. And eventually you will see for yourself. It's not a mental exercise. It's not a mantra. It's not an affirmation where you're saying, oh, this pain is arising due to contact. You actually see it for yourself. And because of seeing it, the wisdom arises. And now you have a different relationship to that pain.

So basically, it's a matter of practice, like accepting the pain, recognizing its existence, and then going back to the object of meditation, metta, to the best of my ability, and repeat. Simply put, that is the case. Yes, exactly. Rinse and repeat. 6R'ing whatever aversion, whatever suffering is arising because of the pain, and if this is still difficult, so I should just practice this, because the pain is really important. It's the truth. It's the reality of the situation. You just have to accept it.

Okay, thank you, Delson. Thank you so much. Okay, David, is that me? Yeah, yeah, yes. Okay, thank you. I thought somebody was before me in the queue. Thanks, Delson, for the talk. Glad to finally meet you. I listen to a lot of your talks and podcasts. I know people who know you, so pleasure. I just want to ask about karma again. That seems to be... it keeps popping up in my practice. Yeah, you said we're not supposed to exhaust it, and I understand the risks and what I'm about to say. I don't want to get stuck in a story or a metaphysical theological system. Karma is this, past lives, so on and so forth.

My question is more experiential, perhaps even a little bit shamanic in terms of the exhaustion of the karma. I understand that the practice, which is to see the causes and conditioning so that one is just observing it and then not reenacting it in a furtherance of perpetual karmic sort of enactment. So I get that psychologically. And maybe this is referring to the woman's question before around pain. A teacher says to me, well, there's the first arrow of suffering, pain, whether it's just reality, the nature of it, which we can't do a damn thing about. And then there's a second arrow, which we can. I pushed around this because, again, in my medicine work and meditation, it feels like there's something that needs to be burned off.

And I don't want to get lost in the language of, oh, it's a past life and this, that, and the other, because I'm aware enough to understand that what matters most is, like you said, here and now, presence, reality as it is, but it feels or seems or just this burning of karma. And I've seen it with others that regardless of where they are in their practice, it just seems like something needs to be burned off, so to speak. You use the word exhausted. And so I just, I wonder if you could say something about it in terms of just like the Buddha, for instance. He did his renunciatory practices, man. He almost died. So I don't want to create a myth around that, that this was a part of his karmic unfolding and so on and so forth.

But there are those myths, and there are indigenous peoples who sort of see this as sort of a necessity. I don't know, in terms of the practice and what needs to be burned off. So like I said, the woman's pain that she was just referring to. But I don't want to spiritually bypass and say this is what she needs to do, because I don't think that that's what's at all happening. But it is something that she needs to go through. And so can you say something about just this first arrow of suffering and whether or not we, I don't want to say transcend, I guess transmute it. You said you used the word transmute. So here's the way to understand it.

First and foremost, any kind of karma that arises, arises due to causes and conditions. This notion that we need to burn it off or exhaust it. When the Buddha talked about karma, he first and foremost said that karma is inescapable. I'm basically just paraphrasing what he's saying, but it's essentially that karma is inescapable. But not all karma needs to be exhausted. You can look at karma as different kinds of seeds. This is the analogy that I often use, and it was given to me through a student of Upandita. But it's a very nice analogy to understand karma in this way. You can imagine karma as different kinds of seeds. Let's say you have an apple seed, you have an orange seed, and you have a watermelon seed.

And you plant the seeds into the same kind of soil and so on. But one seed or one particular plant doesn't receive enough nutrition in the soil because of wherever it is. And it doesn't receive enough sunlight. So because of that, even though it germinates, it just dies off. It's not able to fully come into being. But the other two seeds, let's say, do germinate in the right way. They have enough nutrition in the soil, they have enough water, they have enough sunlight, and so on. All the causes and conditions are ripe for those plants to grow, for those fruits to come up.

But by the nature of the seed itself, it will grow at a certain rate. An apple tree will grow at a certain rate, and an orange tree or whatever it is will grow at a certain rate. So this is how you can understand karma: that causes and conditions need to come about for that karma to arise. Now, if you feel like something needs to be burned off, it could be a block, it could be an energetic block that's going on, and for that usually what we'll do is we'll prescribe a forgiveness practice that allows you to actually let go of it at a deeper level, so that you can continue with your practice, so that you can continue doing the loving kindness or whatever it is that you might be doing. But I think we have to let go of the notion that, in order for us to burn off the karma, some kind of success can happen. We can just accept things as they are. We just accept that this is the case, whatever it is, and we just deal with our reactions to those things.

But if there are deeper blocks, then I would suggest forgiveness practice for that. Okay, thank you. Anything more, just to push a little bit? So, what about collective karma in regards to past generations, ancestors? If the pentacle rising, if these causes and conditions are even beyond any notion of an isolated self, such as myself. And that implies that there are all these causes and conditions, again, in the great, great, great beyond, which can you say, or do you have an opinion about the nature of intergenerational

transmission or trauma in which work needs to be done around that, again, maybe exhausting the karma. I hear you go back to my forgiveness, forgiveness of myself, past generations, so on and so forth. But it does feel like, one, it's bigger than me, but two, logically speaking, dependent origination, that perhaps there's more that needs to be done than just me as an individual. And I use that loosely in the relative sense. But yeah.

Yeah, about that, what I would say is that when we talk about intergenerational karma and things like that, I think the way to look at it is we go back to the link of nama-rupa. What is nama-rupa? We actually go back to nama, which is the four great elements. In terms of the ancient Indian understanding, that's basically the four great elements that make up this body. And what does that also consist of? That consists of DNA and genes and so on. So yes, those kinds of things can be passed down into the nama-rupa, but again, how do you deal with it? You deal with it in the present moment, in how it arises as a feeling or as a mental experience

of some kind of karmic outburst, as might be remorse, might be guilt, might be this, might be that, whatever it is. In the same sense, you still deal with it using forgiveness. But yes, that idea of ancestral karma that can be passed on, because from a genetic standpoint you hear of people who somehow have the attributes of their great grandfather, physically or emotionally or mentally, and that's because of nama-rupa. That's basically what it is. Great, thank you. Okay, Patrick.

Thanks, David. Hi, Dilsoji. It's good to see you again. In the early part of this sutta, the Buddha starts out with saying, he's explaining what right concentration is, and then he goes through these other seven folds. And at the end of each of the sections, he's saying um you know one makes an effort to abandon wrong view and to enter upon right view this is one's right effort and each of the sections it finally concludes thus these three states run and circle around right view that is right view right effort and right mindfulness and it's the same for each of the sections which is interesting and like before i came before i came to twim um i didn't give right effort you know the importance that it's clear to me it has now and i don't want the uh the six hours are the right effort right and right effort when you're practicing right effort you're practicing all folds of the oval eight fold path

Is that correct to say? Is that right? Yes, yes. Because each of these seems like it could just be right view: the effort to abandon wrong view, so to keep unarisen and wholesome states from the rise, abandon already arisen and wholesome states, and then to enter upon right, so to bring up a wholesome state. Right? So it's just right view throughout everything, like the engine. Right, to develop the... to develop the technique, really, and just to make it be your new way of your mind operating. So it affects the habitual tendencies, and that now you're only taking closer attention and less and less

It becomes less and less necessary, really, to have a conscious right effort, to just be in the way your mind operates. Is that correct? Yes. Understand. Yes. So the way to look at it, and yes, that's a good point that you bring up, is that in every factor of the path, the ending refrain is one abandons this through his right view. And that right view is essentially knowing what is the wrong intention and the right intention. Recognizing that is the mindfulness. He mindfully abandons that, and that is one's right effort. That's how these three come together. So the right view there, at the very, very basic form, is understanding, okay, this is the wrong intention, or this is the wrong speech, or this is the wrong action, or this is the wrong livelihood, or whatever it might be.

And then mindfully he abandons it, meaning recognizing it, and then using right effort to let go of it, and then bringing up the right intention, right speech, right action, whatever the case might be. So this is how you do it. Okay, good. And so, when we're in jhana, right concentration, do we have at that time, then do we have right view, right speech, right action, all the other forms? Wow, is that what jhana really means, or is it like a moral, because it could be both mundane or super mundane at that point? In jhana, at that point, yeah, go ahead. Well, as you can say, in jhana, because the definition of jhana really is that the hindrances are not arising when you enter the jhana, because if they start arising you can pull right out of it. So while you're in the jhana and the hindrances aren't arising, for that period of time, do you have the entire noble eightfold path in practice correctly?

So the way to look at it is that the jhana, that is the ariya jhana as I was referring to earlier, is predicated by preceding factors of right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness. The fruit of all of that is the right collectedness, the right concentration. So the jhana is a natural fruition of letting go. When we have the intention to bring up loving kindness and we keep that going, as a result of that we have a jhanic factor that comes up, or a jhana that comes up, and every time a hindrance comes up the mind is out of that jhana, and then we utilize the rest of the path through the 6R's to come back to that jhana. So we're not necessarily having the eightfold path there in the jhana, but we are experiencing the fruition of having practiced the preceding seven factors. Good, good, thank you, that's clear. Thank you.

Okay, I think just one more question, if there is any. Was there any in the chat, or did we clarify that? Yeah, I think we've cleared that out. Okay. Yeah, so I might have a very quick question, and that's regarding determination. So you touched a little bit about determinations, about setting an intention to stay in a certain jhana for a period of time, also to wake up. I also heard Bhante saying things like, when you sit, don't move, don't scratch, don't be perfect, which is a form of strong determination, or some level of that. I also heard him say, tell people, you know, go by the lake and sit for three hours.

But on the other hand, I heard a podcast with you, and you said, I got a feeling that you're against adhitthana, which is understood as strong determination, because that can bring a level of rigidity and craving in the mind. So my question is, how can you identify, how can you set determination in a way that would be wholesome and not bring a lot of stress that would be detrimental to the cultivation of the path? Yeah, so the way to do that first and foremost is you don't need clocks, you don't need timers, and all of that. We're talking about just basic general sitting, and you make a determination that you want to sit for three hours, and you just sit, but you don't force yourself to sit. The idea is you've set the intention, you've set the goal of: I want to be able to sit for three hours.

And you sit down and you do that. Maybe you don't sit for three hours, maybe you sit only for 90 minutes. Okay, no big deal. Maybe you get to two and a half hours, no big deal. So what I'm referring to is, again, the attachment to the outcome. The obsession over, I have to sit for three hours, is what needs to be let go of. You can serve the determination and keep that going and just sit and enjoy the practice, or the process of the sit that's going on. And then when your mind naturally wants to get up, maybe you can just say, let me go for another 10 minutes and see what happens. And if there is an agitation by that or from that, then you say

Let me let go of this agitation and let me sit for five minutes, and that's how you expand on that. But try to force yourself to sit, no matter what. I'm going to sit for three hours, or no matter what, I'm going to sit for four hours. You're not going to even last 10 minutes doing that, right? So the idea is to let go of all of that, to have the idea that you're going to sit there and then enjoy the process. When you get there, you'll get there. You try maybe a couple of times, you try four times, you try five times, you try a dozen times, and eventually you'll sit for three hours.

Okay, great. Well, thank you, Delson. I think you probably want to share some merit. Yes, somewhere here, I just shared it in the chat as well, David. Oh, great. Okay, oh cool. Okay, there we go. 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. Thank you. All right. Our next meeting is April 14th, so there's three more, so stay tuned, and we'll see you next time. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.