Talk 8 -Upadana (Clinging) - Dependent Origination Conf. with Delson Armstrong-4K

Upadana can be used to mean clinging, grasping, fuel, or attachment. And when we talk about clinging, how do you recognize what clinging is? Clinging is the rationale that you have for what it is that you crave, or have aversion towards, or identify with. So it's all of these reasoning qualities that you put into what it is that you are attached to, or what it is that you have aversion to. There are four types of clinging. There's sensory clinging. There's clinging to views. There's clinging to rites and rituals. And there's clinging to self-views. These are the four kinds of clinging that are present in the link of clinging, so you can start to recognize what kind of clinging is arising and is dominant based on your reactions to situations. So first we'll take the sensory clinging, that's the most basic kind of clinging. And when we talk about clinging to sensory experiences, that starts at birth of a new being, when they latch onto sensory experiences.

So if you think about when you see a newborn and they come out of the womb and they explore the world, not all of their senses are immediately active, depending upon what's going on. But as they start to grow up in the world, they start to experiment with what's going on. So they're always experiencing or exploring different textures. Then they start to see different colors and they're interested in that. Then they take those things and they put them in their mouth to try to feel what it feels like. What does it taste like? They're doing all kinds of explorations. So for those of you who've had kids or grandkids, you can see this.

Know, the first kind of clinging that arises, the sensory clinging, is clinging to the mother. That's the first thing that happens. They experience the mother's warmth, mother's milk, her touch, her smell, and their sense of smell is very, very sharp there, and so they latch on to that. And if they're separated from that, what happens? They experience pain and suffering. And how does that arise? Grief, sorrow, lamentation and despair, lots of crying, and not only despair for the baby but despair for everybody else involved. Yeah, there you go.

So, and then as they grow up, as toddlers, now they're starting to explore the world further. They make friends, they start to have favorites. So this is another part of clinging: it's associating favorites into whatever experience that you're having. The toddler only likes this brand of applesauce, believe it or not, as compared to the other brand. That brand is too watery, it's yucky, as they would say. This brand is really good, even though they don't know the name of the brands, but they understand because they recognize based on the taste and texture of the food. And some babies prefer certain kinds of foods. They will always say, I don't like this. Or sometimes the foods, certain colors of food, cannot be together. They should not be together. That is a travesty.

So they always start to create all of these little favorites about this and that and whatnot. And as they grow up they start to make friends and they become children going to school and they learn about different things. And as they're starting to learn about it, they see, oh, they learn about shapes and colors, and they start to make favorites. They say, red is my favorite color, and I don't like blue because of so and so, and I like green because it reminds me of that, whatever it might be. And so now they're creating some kind of accumulation. Bhava, remember, is accumulation of identity. The process of clinging is the activation of all of that accumulation.

It's starting to create all of these personality traits based on the associations, based on the rationales, based on whatever it is that a person starts to say: this is me, this is mine, this is myself. What is the so-called self? What is that so-called personality? It's basically just an accumulation of different experiences. That's it. What you think you are, or what the mind thinks it is, is based on all of the experiences that it has had up until this moment. And so when people come and interact with each other, they're interacting based on a myriad of different kinds of interactions they've had before, and then they take all of that and create some kind of idea of how to interact with this person based on past experiences.

So that involves the clinging process as well, which is: I don't like that person because they are wearing the color green. You might not think of that on a conscious level, but it could affect you on a subconscious level, where you've made associations in the past about the color green. And when you see that person wearing the color green, there's a hateful kind of sense of projection there. If you like the color red and a person is wearing red and you see that person, you start to associate good qualities with that person automatically, because of the automatic tendencies that arose through the process of sensory clinging.

So as the child develops and then enters into puberty, also known as hell, they start to have other kinds of clinging. They start to rebel against their parents, because now their friends know everything and their parents don't know a thing. They start to develop different kinds of relationships. So they're exploring with their bodies, so that's a different kind of sensory clinging that arises, and they start to create different kinds of associations based on the experiences they're having with their bodies, with themselves, and with each other and with other people, and so on and so forth. And then in terms of the music that they listen to, this is a big one. The music that you listen to growing up as an adolescent is the best music you'll ever hear. Everything else is trash. What are kids listening to these days?

It's trash. But the music you grew up with, now that is music. What is that? That is associations. That's creating favorites. That's clinging. That's clinging to sensory pleasure, sensory experiences. Another example I would use of this is, when you go to a grocery store, generally what you'll see is, you go into the cereal aisle and you'll see all of the colorful cereal, like Trix and Lucky Charms, and all of those sugary sweets are at a certain height, at a lower level. Why?

Because that's where kids can see immediately, this is the cereal that I want. And all of those colors that they like, bright neon colors, are there, so they're immediately attracted to that. A lot of money goes into this kind of marketing, to figure out what colors are associated with what. And then as you grow into adulthood, you have clinging related to your status. So if I'm driving a Mercedes, or if I'm driving a BMW, I associate that with a certain elite status. Why? Because you see that as a commercial on TV, and the commercial is so expertly crafted that it creates this image that this is what I want to be.

So it creates first the sensual craving for the car and the craving for becoming. And then as you drive it, you associate it with you being in an elite status. Even though you're paying so much in terms of the loan on the car payment and everything, that doesn't matter. That's the suffering part. You ignore that. It's all about, you know, the status that you have right there and then. So that's another kind of clinging that arises in terms of sensual experiences.

So how do you let go of sensual clinging? Well, I have an excerpt from the book, but before I go into that, I also want to talk about how clinging to sensory experiences can create certain kinds of associations that can cause trauma or PTSD as well. Maybe not to a greater extent, but think about it in this way. You have some kind of devastating experience, like the death of a loved one. Your mind takes in all of the things that are going on there, including the smells, the sights, the colors, the forms, the sounds, all of that. And it creates and associates some kind of negative quality to it, because death is a painful process for the person witnessing the death. And when you hear those same things, that's the contact, and it triggers an experience that's a painful feeling. And because you've clung to it as this is painful, you say, I push against it, I don't want to hear that anymore.

There's an aversive quality there. And so you keep rationalizing, I don't like that. And maybe it's irrational, because you don't realize what you're listening to. If anybody has been in the hospital room, where a loved one is in hospice, you hear all kinds of beeps and all kinds of things going on. And it's so recognizable, those beeps. And when you pass on by, what happens? When you hear it, immediately you think about the person. Immediately you think about those memories that you had with those people. And so that's also sensory clinging, and so that can create suffering in the mind, and that can create all kinds of PTSD. You think back on something and you relive that situation again.

So I'm going to read from this excerpt about ceasing sensory clinging. Since sensory clinging is motivated, conditioned, and caused directly by the link of craving, specifically sensual craving, such clinging would be completely eradicated without even a slight ember of it left when the mind enters into the third level of awakening. That's the only way you can eradicate fully any kind of sensory clinging. When a mind has destroyed the fetters of sensual craving and aversion altogether, therefore entered into the state of the anagami, such a mind is free of the underlying tendency towards sensual craving or aversion, as well as free from the roots of greed and hatred and the corresponding defilements of consciousness. Meaning, when you let go of the roots of greed and hatred, all of the defilements that are connected to those roots in consciousness also cease.

Such a mind is also free from the taint of sensual desire. That's gone as well. Therefore, with such clinging gone, there won't be any bhava with sensory habitual tendencies, and no emotional responses to sensations that would recreate further clinging. In other words, even if those sounds or sights arose, the memory will arise. That's the feeling, that's the experience, but no mental projection of pain and suffering tied to it.

Going back to the two darts, there will be the painful memory, but there won't be suffering or an aversive quality to that memory. It'll just be that's a terrible memory, that's it. So it's not like all the terrible memories are gone when you become an anagami or an arahant. It's just that all of the muck of wanting it to go away, pushing it down, is gone. An anagami may have preferences to certain sensory experiences, but that is only in relation to what the body is used to. This is what we talked about yesterday. Somebody asked the question, preference versus craving. However, there won't be any emotional resonance with the experience. If, for example, one has been used to coffee in the morning and it is not available, there won't be any irritation arising because of the unavailability of coffee.

If one has access to foods that one grew up eating, those foods won't be a source of craving or clinging. The body prefers it, but there won't be any craving to feed the body a certain food just because one has been used to that food and identifies it as part of a self's collection of favorites. Likewise, if that food isn't available, there won't be any aversion to its unavailability. Therefore, no craving or aversion means no sensory clinging and obsession.

Understanding the cause of sensory clinging to be sensual craving or aversion, and then seeing sensual craving arising due to the underlying tendencies towards sensual craving or aversion, the mind has to recognize the absolute importance of being heedful in every moment. In Pali, this is known as appamada. Pamada, which we talked about, is the carelessness, the negligence, the lack of mindfulness. Here we're talking about absolute clarity of attention and mindfulness. This is done through the exercise of mindfulness, where the mind is always observing in every moment so that it can recognize if sensual craving or aversion arise. The key here is that until you become an anagami, continuously be mindful, recognize when a state of craving arises, when a state of aversion arises.

And what do you do next? 6R's: you let it go. So here it is. With this mindfulness, one then continues to apply right effort by stopping the process of further clinging from arising, then releasing any arisen clinging, after which the mind generates a mind void of clinging with an uplifted and wholesome object, and continues to maintain attention to that object. So in other words, we're using the 6R's. You recognize the clinging in the form of either its cause, which is the craving. You recognize the mindset that says, I don't like this, and is projecting hatred and aversion towards it, and you let it go. You relax. You smile. You uplift the mind using equanimity or any of the brahmaviharas. This continuous process is the process of reconditioning the mind from the wholesome or from the unwholesome to the wholesome, from that which is afflictive to that which is beneficial. This is the process of the Dhamma. It's that easy, it's that simple, but it requires great amounts of clarity, great amounts of

dedication. Remember, when I say dedication, I'm not saying that you have to push yourself. I'm saying just be here, just be present, pay attention to what's going on in the mind. Pay attention to how the mind is reacting versus responding. And when you lose that heedfulness, when you lose that ability to pay attention, that's okay as well. Don't beat yourself up for it. Notice that it's happened. As soon as you notice it's happened, guess what? You're back in mindfulness. You're back in clarity. And the next step is to just let go, relax, and replace.

If one is unable to recognize the arising of craving or aversion at the level of a pleasant or unpleasant feeling, or is unable to recognize the identification with a neutral feeling, in the form of underlying tendencies present in the experience of those feelings, then one may be able to notice the tightness and tension closing in on the mind, which is a manifestation of craving. To put it simply, if you recognize tightness and tension, that means there is some kind of craving present. There is some kind of dissatisfaction, discontentment with whatever is arising. So when you recognize the tightness and tension, what do you do with it? You relax it. You let it go. As a result of relaxing that tightness and tension, what happens?

Your mind is in a mundane form of Nibbana. Your mind is clear. There is no self in there. It is spacious, clear like the sky. That's why when David and I drive around once in a while, what we'll do is we'll look at the sky and see if it's Nibbana or if there's some craving still left. If one is unable to notice the initial spark of craving, then one may recognize the thoughts around that craving: the ideations and associations, the self-referential obsessions and streams of mentation, which are all manifestations of clinging. In other words, if you can't recognize the tightness and tension that is the manifestation of craving, and the mind goes to further clinging, you can notice the flurry of thoughts that are arising. That's a storm now, instead of a clear blue sky. You have dark looming clouds of clinging, all kinds of thoughts coming together, all kinds of restlessness and anxiety and other kinds of afflictive states arising.

If you start to notice that, then you'll be able to release that. As soon as you release it and relax it, the sky is clear again, and then you uplift the mind using a wholesome state. One will generally see that it may be more difficult to recognize bhava in the form of an identity arising than it is to recognize the clinging. And in fact, it's much easier to notice the craving, and even much easier to recognize the arising of underlying tendencies leading to that craving. So in other words, it's much easier to notice the beginnings of craving when you notice how your mind is relating to an experience. If you notice some kind of identification going on, you let it go and just allow things to be as they are.

If your mind gets caught up in that and starts to latch on or push it away, notice the tightness and tension arising from that. If you don't take notice of that, you notice the flurry of thoughts and reactions coming up, the chain reactions of thoughts and ideas and circumstances and all of that, that comes up, and you let it go there. If you can't notice that, you can start to notice the mind wanting to conclude, wanting to judge, wanting to say, this is what I'm going to do, how dare they do this, or how come it's not this way, which is leading towards bhava. If you start to recognize that, which at that point it's not impossible but it's difficult, but if you can, you can let that go.

You can 6R it so that it doesn't lead to a birth of action that will cause regret and suffering later. And so that's why it says, nevertheless, right effort can be applied at any stage in the process of dependent origination leading up to the birth of action, at which point the action, having been committed, cannot be called back or its flow stopped. And as I was saying earlier, when you have a mental action, when you have a thought and you judge something, you can't recall it. But if you act on that using your speech or physical actions, you absolutely can't recall that. So before that mental activity turns into verbal and physical activity, if you can notice that and let it go, take a pause, and then allow the mind to sink into wisdom so that there is a spontaneously right speech, spontaneously right action that is appropriate for whatever the situation is that is arising, then you won't have any suffering. Then you won't have any dukkha.

Specifically at the link of clinging, while challenging as the mind is clouded by the myriad of thoughts about the sensory experience, creating various associations and proliferation of concepts and tangents in streams of ideas, decisions and opinions, if it can be recognized and one can see the stopping of the flow of all of these mental activities, having been stopped, there is no possibility of bhava from arising. One then abandons the sensory clinging by understanding its impermanence and uproots any associations of self to it by penetrative wisdom of the impersonal nature of all conditioned existence, including sensory experiences. Doing so, one tranquilizes the formations leading to that process of clinging, and in turn, having been strengthened by that clinging, then returns to a mind free of clinging altogether.

So to break that down, what that means is, as soon as you stop that flow by letting go of the clinging, you prevent bhava from arising. You prevent bhava from accumulating, leading to the birth of action. Once you do that, what you feel is relief. When you feel relief, your mind gravitates towards that relief. When it gravitates towards that relief, it starts to automatically weigh out the options. That is to say, relief is much better than doing the clinging part. But that only takes time and consistent effort for you to do that

until the relief outweighs the clinging. The only reason that the mind craves and clings and becomes is because it finds satisfaction in that, it finds relief in that. But if it finds a more elevated relief in the form of Nibbana, in the form of jhana practice, then bit by bit it becomes less interested in all of that sensory clinging, in all of that sensual craving, in all of that identification with the sense experiences and even the sense bases. Next we're going to talk about clinging to views. There are different ways of looking at it: clinging to wrong views, clinging to opinions, and clinging to the Dhamma. So we'll take clinging to wrong views.

What is the wrong view? The view that isn't right view. So first we have to understand what is right view. I'm reading from Majjhima Nikaya 117. This is called The Great Forty, and it's about right view. And what, bhikkhus, is right view? Right view, I say, is twofold. There is right view that is affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions.

And there is right view that is noble, taintless, super mundane, a factor of the path. And what, bhikkhus, is right view that is affected by the taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions? In other words, what is that view that is mundane, that even though you have that view, it will still create karma, ripening the acquisitions? There is what is given and what is offered and what is sacrificed. There is fruit and result of good and bad actions. There is this world and the other world. There is mother and father. There are beings who are reborn spontaneously. There are in the world good and virtuous recluses and brahmins who have realized for themselves by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other world.

This is right view affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions. So let's break that down so you guys have a better understanding of this mundane right view. It says, there is what is given and what is offered and what is sacrificed. This is understood to be generosity. There is meaning in being generous. There is meaning in offering, in giving. There is fruit and result of good and bad actions. This means that there is karma, that actions lead to certain consequences, wholesome intentions lead to wholesome states of existence, unwholesome intentions lead to unwholesome states of existence. There is this world and the other world.

Now, this can mean different things. But one of the ways I've looked at it, from one of the students that had come last year to Dhammasuka, was that, yeah, you can think about it in the sense that there is this world here and that there are other realms, or the possibility of other realms. Indeed, now we know through modern astronomy and so on that there are many, many, many, many different kinds of galaxies, within which there are many different kinds of solar systems, in which there are many different kinds of earth-like planets, on which they haven't figured this out yet, but on which there are many different kinds of human, humanoid beings and so on. But another way to look at this is that there is this world, which is the six, or the five sense-based world, the physical world, which we experience through the physical senses, the sensual world, which is through the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body.

And there is the other world, which are elevated meditative states that are the jhanas. That there is this world that is the physicality, and there is a possibility of experiencing something beyond this world, which are jhanas and the arupa lokas, or the arupa states. There is mother and father. This is very important to understand as well. There is meaning in being grateful and honoring and revering and serving one's parents in whatever way one can.

At the very least, don't trouble your parents, because they have provided something, as we now know, that is one of the most rare things in this existence. And that is a human birth, where the possibility of experiencing Nibbana can arise. There are beings who are reborn spontaneously. So the way I would interpret that is there are Devas and Nagas and Mara and Brahma and all of these other kinds of supernormal, supernatural beings. It doesn't mean that you have to believe in them, but you have to have an open mind and say there is something just beyond this material realm that we see, this physical flesh and body. There are other things out there.

There are other energies out there. There are in the world good and virtuous recluses and Brahmins who have realized for themselves by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other world. This world meaning this body and the other world meaning jhana. If you cannot believe in that, if you don't have that, then what are you doing here? Right? There are those who have experienced it for themselves and understand it. They've seen and experienced jhana. They have understood what meditation is. But first you have to come with an open and willing mind to see for oneself how this process works. That's basically it.

And what, bhikkhus, is right view that is noble, taintless, super mundane, a factor of the path? The wisdom, the faculty of wisdom, the power of wisdom, the investigation of states, enlightenment factor, the path factor of right view in one whose mind is noble, whose mind is taintless, who possesses the noble path and is developing the noble path. This is right view that is noble, taintless, super mundane, a factor of the path. In other words, once you enter this stream, once you enter this path, you start to possess this super mundane right view. And eventually it becomes taintless, in that once you have destroyed all taints, that becomes the automatic way of however you perceive reality, through the process of seeing the four noble truths all the time.

So let's break that down. So the wisdom, the faculty of wisdom, the power of wisdom. What are we talking about when we say wisdom? Seeing and understanding dependent origination. What is the faculty of wisdom? The development of being able to see and experience dependent origination without being attached to it, just understanding it without identifying with it, getting a better understanding of how this process works. What is the power of wisdom? The power of wisdom is the strength of wisdom. It's from the word bala, bala means strong. So you can think about it as, for those of you who do weight lifting: as you start to exercise, what happens? Your muscles start to develop. The same way, as you continue to practice seeing and understanding the links of dependent origination, what happens? You automatically see it all the time. This is the difference between the faculties and the powers. The faculties are essentially that which is being developed, and the powers are that which is now developed and automatically available in the mind.

The investigation of states, enlightenment factor, dhamma vichaya, means the ability to understand phenomena, the ability to recognize what is actually going on. So the investigation of states doesn't mean you're trying to analyze and pinpoint and exercise a level of insight that is so precise and so sharp that you become one-pointed. It's not about analyzing. It's about being able to understand what is arising in the mind, that's it. The ability to recognize what is going on. That's why the investigation of states is dependent upon mindfulness, the ability to see how mind's attention moves from one object to the other. So when you have this investigation of states, you are not in doubt, you are not in confusion about what is arising. There's no confusion about what is wholesome and what is unwholesome. This is what is the meaning of doubt here, the vichikiccha as it's known in Pali, the inability to recognize what is wholesome and unwholesome. That's separate to the doubt we have in terms of doubt in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha as a fetter.

So once you are able to recognize what is wholesome and unwholesome, then you have the right view. And so the ultimate right view is being able to understand the Four Noble Truths in every moment. That's what happens when your mind becomes fully awakened. Now that you understand what right view is, mundane and super mundane, let's understand what wrong view is, because now you can use this as the touchstone. At the time of the Buddha there were these six different types of wrong view that were prevalent, and their descendants are still present, one way or the other, in our modern world. So by recognizing that, you can see: is the mind gravitating towards that view?

And if it is, you can let go of it. So here are the six different types of wrong views that I'm going to read excerpts from Digha Nikaya 2. That is the Samanya Falasutta. And the first wrong view is called amoralism. And so the excerpt says, Purana Kasapa said, Your Majesty, by the doer or instigator of a thing, by one who cuts or causes to be cut, by one who burns or causes to be burnt, by one who causes grief and weariness, by one who agitates or causes agitation, who causes life to be taken, or that which is not given to be taken, commits burglary, carries off booty, commits robbery, lies in ambush, commits adultery, and tells lies.

No evil is done. In other words, there's no need to keep your precepts. If with a razor-sharp wheel one were to make of this earth one single mass and heap of flesh, There would be no evil as a result of that. No evil would accrue. If one were to go along the south bank of the Ganges, killing, slaying, cutting, or causing to be cut, burning, or causing to be burned, there would be no evil as a result of that. No evil would accrue. Or if one were to go along the north bank of the Ganges, giving and causing to be given, sacrificing and causing to be sacrificed, there would be no merit as a result of that.

No merit would accrue. In giving, self-control, abstinence, and telling the truth, there is no merit, and no merit accrues. We just read what right view is. There is meaning in giving. There is meaning in what is offered and sacrificed. There is good and bad actions, and the consequence of those good and bad actions. So this view is very dangerous, because what you're saying is, yeah, it doesn't matter, there is no consequence to what I do, so I can do whatever I want. What's the point of keeping the precepts? Well, we understand what it means to keep the precepts. It keeps the mind calm and collected. Keeping the precepts, our mind has energy. Keeping the precepts, our mind experiences non-regret.

Non-regret brings up joy, that's the pamojja, that's the joy in the Dhamma. From that pamojja we have further joy and happiness. From that we have tranquility, tranquility and collectedness. From that we have equanimity and dispatch, disenchantment and dispassion, and from that we have liberation. So there is meaning in understanding and applying the precepts by keeping the precepts. And so here is an excerpt from the book that talks about letting go of a view that is rooted in amoralism: Amoralism is a misunderstanding of conditioned reality. While it doesn't condone immorality, it has the potential to prompt the mind towards it. One has to see the vitality of mind the precepts provide through experimentation application. Seeing the precepts as the backbone for walking the path to Nibbana, the mind must first use the following line of reasoning.

Would one want to be subjected to harm or murder? No. Would one enjoy having been stolen from or lied to? No. Would one accept and be okay with their partner cheating on them, or have someone cause harm to one through sensual misconduct? No. Would one completely tolerate, without a shred of aversion, someone who is intoxicated and behaving or misbehaving with you?

No. Knowing these actions as being unwholesome, not conducive to emotional development and joy, and knowing them to be hurtful to oneself, how then would one feel if someone had killed, stolen from, lied to, cheated, or misbehaved in an intoxicated manner with a family member or a friend? So in other words, we know what it feels like when somebody lies to us. We know what it feels like when somebody harms us. We know what it feels like when somebody cheats us. We know what it's like when somebody steals from us. We know what it's like when someone's boisterous and loud and drunk and pushes us. We don't like it. It gets in the way of our mental stability and peace.

Therefore, while these precepts are inherently moral and ethical, they are also quite practical, and revealed by the nature of applying them, that there is a universally accepted system of wholesome and unwholesome. No matter what the upbringing, culture, civilization, religion, nationality, status and so on, all see the fundamental basis for growth and harmony as some form of following these five basic precepts. Having seen this at first in a logical manner, questioning and reasoning to get a level of understanding rooted in that logic, one then commits to following these precepts. So in other words, you understand the reason why you should follow the precepts. When you break a precept, what happens? You develop wrong and unwholesome intentions.

When you break the precept of causing harm to another, there's an ill will that's there. There's an intention of ill will. How does that happen? That manifests as a hindrance in the mind, as ill will. When the mind takes what is not given, it results in restlessness. When the mind indulges in sexual or sensual misconduct, there is an intention of sensual craving in there, and that results in a hindrance of sensual craving. When the mind lies and cheats and slanders, there is doubt in other people.

They're also lying, maybe they're also cheating me, and that also is doubt. There is doubt in one's own abilities and confusion about what is wholesome and unwholesome. And when one indulges in intoxicants, whatever that intoxicant might be, it causes laziness in the mind, tiredness in the mind, sloth and torpor, and so that results in the hindrance of sloth and torpor. So when you see it in this way, then you realize that there is a practical application for keeping the precepts, a practical benefit for keeping the precepts. After some time, through practice and application of these precepts, one notices the clarity and calmness in the mind. This tranquility, when used as the foundation and starting point of meditation practice, provides the enrichment of insight and wisdom. The commitment to and the maintenance of following these precepts eradicates the view of amoralism. And then the next view is called fatalism. So this is a view held by a person named Makkali Gosala, and he says there is no cause or condition for the defilement of beings.

They are defiled without cause or condition. There is no cause or condition for the purification of beings. They are purified without cause or condition. There is no self-power or other power. There is no power in humans, no strength or force, no vigor or exertion. All beings, all living beings, all creatures, all that lives, is without control, without power or strength. They experience the fixed course of pleasure and pain through the six kinds of rebirth. There are 1,400,000 principal sorts of birth, 6,000 others, and again 600. There are 500 kinds of karma, or five kinds, and three kinds, and half karma. 62 paths, 62 intermediary eons, six classes of humankind, eight stages of human progress, 4,900 occupations, 4,900 wanderers,

4,900 abodes of Nagas, 2,000 sentient species, 3,000 hells, 36 places of dust, 7 classes of rebirth as conscious beings, 7 as unconscious beings, and 7 as beings freed from bonds, 7 grades of devas, men, goblins, 7 lakes, 7 great and 7 small protuberances, 7 great and 7 small abysses, 7 great and 7 small dreams, 8,400,000 eons during which fools and wise run on and circle around till they make an end of suffering, and a partridge in a pear tree. That's a lot of numbers. Therefore, there is no such thing as saying, by this discipline or practice or austerity or holy life, I will bring my unripened karma to fruition, or I will gradually make this ripened karma go away.

Neither of these things is possible, because pleasure and pain have been measured out, with the measure limited by the round of birth and death. And there is neither increase nor decrease, neither excellence nor inferiority. Just as a ball of string, when thrown, runs till it is all unraveled, so fools and wise run on and circle round till they make an end of suffering. That is absolutely wrong for you. The reason is because, what are you guys doing here, if that's the case? Why are you making the effort? Why are you taking the effort to meditate? Why are you doing anything? It's all predestined, according to this view. So how do you let go of this view?

The view of fatalism denies intention and karma, and thus rejects the understanding of choice and responsibility for one's actions in mind, speech, and body. The flawed idea that even choices are predetermined leads to further delusion. To eradicate this view, one sees that just by committing to and maintaining the precepts, the mind has more clarity and calmness. One doesn't need to have a belief that these choices will change circumstances in the afterlife, but one can see a direct result in the here and now. One can decide to be kind and loving to others and see how that changes one's circumstances in a wholesome manner. Or one can choose to be filled with ill will and see the effect that has on oneself and other beings.

Therefore, if one reflects on the understanding of intention, your own intention, as well as the possibility of others' intentions, or both, or neither, but mostly your own, you see how previous choices arose as a result of contact with the sense base. But then certain choices were changed based on new information or wisdom, like the Dhamma. And then you see that there's a possibility of changing, and responsibility to be taken for your actions. Simply put, if you can intend a change in behavior, then that change in behavior is not predetermined or fated by cosmic principles, as the Ajivakas professed. It is in the intention of that mind, even if that intention was conditioned by previous choices and other environmental factors.

That intention then directs the actions, which then provide the ripening and fruition of the effects of those actions. The seeing of the direct causal relationship between karma and fruition of karma, exemplified by how right view yields wisdom and the experience of nibbana, eradicates the view of fatalism. In other words, we've been talking about this on and off. Is there free will? Is there not free will? Do you have a choice? Don't you have a choice? Yes, you do have a choice, but that choice is conditioned by past causes and conditions. It doesn't mean that it's predetermined. Because predeterminism, fatalism, means that there is no meaning in making any kind of effort. You're going to be enlightened at some point, you're destined to be enlightened, so there's no need to make an effort.

That's not how it works. There is still a process of bringing together the right causes and conditions through your intentions and actions. so there is conditionality and causality but there is no fatalism you're not fated for something you still have to put in the effort insofar as letting go of unwholesome states and ripening wholesome states of mind that just doesn't happen on its own you have to be able to have an intention that sets the course in that direction Then there is a view of materialism. And this is the view by a guy named Ajita Kesa Kambali. Kesa Kambali, that's a very interesting word. Kesa means hair, and Kambali means blanket, because he wore a blanket made out of hair, of human hair.

And he says, there is nothing given bestowed, offered in sacrifice. Again, there is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is not this world or the next. There is no mother or father. There are no spontaneously arisen beings. There are in the world no ascetics or Brahmins who have attained, who have perfectly practiced, who proclaim this world and the next, having realized them by their own super knowledge this human being this is what the view is this human being is composed of the four great elements and when one dies the earth part reverts to earth the water part reverts to water the fire part to fire the air part to air and the faculties pass away into space yeah that part is right but he says they accompany the dead man with four bears and the beer as fifth.

Their footsteps are heard as far as the cremation ground. There the bones whiten. The sacrifice ends in ashes. It is the idea of a fool to give this gift. The talk of those who preach a doctrine of survival is vain and false. Fools and wise, at the breaking up of the body, are destroyed and perish. They do not exist after death. So this view basically says that all there is is just this material realm. There's only this materiality. There's nothing beyond this. So it doesn't take into account that actually there is meaning in giving. There is meaning in having an intention, and so on. And it's rooted in the idea of extreme materialism: do what you can to enjoy the six sense bases as much as you can, right here, right now.

Eat, drink, and be merry. That's this view. There was a statement in ancient India that talked about this. They said, eat, drink, and be merry. Buy as much ghee, which at the time was very expensive, as you can and enjoy it, even if you have to take out a loan. That, to me, sounds like modern capitalism. So how do you let go of this view? Again, the view of materialism and hedonism rejects the same understanding of karma as per the Buddha's dispensation.

However, it goes a step further and says that the only objective one should have is to fulfill all sense pleasures, no matter how this is done and whether it affects another being. One ought to break a precept if required for the sake of sensory gratification, so there's no need to follow the precepts. Just do what you can to satisfy all physical senses. This view, presupposing no karma, is eradicated by the understanding of choice and consequence, as one does when eradicating the view of fatalism. Secondly, the view that the precepts have no effect is destroyed by having seen and experienced for oneself the direct effect the precepts have on one's own life, and with the rationale of knowing that you don't appreciate or want anyone to break a precept to affect you or your loved ones in a negative and harmful manner. One must go a step further to understand the fallacy of this view, that sensory gratification is all there is, no matter what the cost.

First, you must see that there is that pleasure beyond the senses. There is the other world through the experience of the jhanas and ayatanas. So as soon as you experience jhana, you realize there is more to sensual pleasure. I can experience joy and happiness without the need of an external circumstance or an external cause. It's all inborn from my own intention. The ability to let go of hindrances allows me to experience the joy of relief, which is much greater than any kind of sensory experience. It truly is, because it's available here and now, free, without any cost.

Seeing that there is joy and happiness that arises in the mind secluded from sensual pleasures, the mind stops seeing the sensual pleasures as the only way to fulfill one's needs. One then starts to see the three characteristics in all feeling, including pleasant feeling. First, you understand the impermanent and conditioned nature of sensual pleasures, and therefore see them as inherently dukkha. Seeing this, you no longer identify with those pleasures and become disenchanted and dispassionate, leading to a mind that experiences the cessation of feeling and perception altogether. The fact that you can do that, or the fact that it is possible to experience cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness, means that there is something beyond just sensory feeling, sensory pleasure and perception.

The mind then ceases this view after having seen and experienced Nibbana, the unconditioned and highest bliss beyond the conditioned experience of the senses. And then we come to eternalism. The way it's described here is very interesting, but essentially what he's saying here is these seven things are not made, or of a kind to be made: uncreated, unproductive, barren, false, stable as a column, they do not shake, do not change, obstruct one another, nor are they able to cause one another pleasure, pain, or both. What are the seven? The earth body, the water body, the fire body, the air body, pleasure, and pain, and the life principle. These seven are not made.

Thus there is neither slain nor slayer, neither hearer nor proclaimer, neither knower nor causer of knowing; and whoever cuts off a man's head with a sharp sword does not deprive anyone of life, he just inserts the blade in the intervening space between these seven bodies. What kind of logic is that? But anyway, that view is eternalism: that if you kill someone you're not actually truly killing them, it's just the body, and something lives on, and that is the life principle. You call it the soul or atman or whatever it is. That doesn't mean there's no concept of life principle within the Dhamma. There is, but it's understood as conditioned vitality dependent upon heat in the sixth sense basis, and it's interdependent actually. But this eternalism you see prevalent in different cultures, which have the idea that I am not this mind and I am not this body, but I am a spirit, I am something beyond that that lives on, and there's different ways of developing that ideology.

Throughout the centuries and throughout the millennia, these ideas have been refined and reviewed and further refined into different philosophies. One of the philosophies is Vedanta, which talks about the Atman and the Brahman, and this talks about the Atman as the small self that can merge with the large self, the cosmic self, or that the cosmic self and the small self are one and the same thing, and they are both eternal, they are unchanging. So remember when we talked about self-views before, or we will talk about later, we're saying that that view of that self is present in ancient India, and that is what is used as the touchstone to understand if all things that we experience are indeed that self or not self. So this view of

eternalism, when you start to see conditioned reality, goes away, because you realize that everything that is conditioned is actually continuing to change based on the change in causes and conditions. Like our bodies, like the feelings that we have, like the perceptions that arise, the formations that arise, the consciousnesses that arise, all of these are dependent upon varying causes and conditions. When you change those causes and conditions, so too do the form, the feeling, the perception, the formations and the consciousness change. And if they are changing, how can you call them the eternal self? And if you look for an eternal self beyond this, that too is just a concept. It's not tangible. It's something that is intangible, and what we are working with is everything that is tangible, not only physically but also mentally and

experientially. Now we can go into the whole idea of the ontological idea that there might be a self, there might not be a self, and all of that. But remember what we are doing here with the Dhamma is two things: understanding suffering and letting go of the causes and conditions for that suffering. That's it. Anything beyond that is just a philosophical exercise. So let me get into how do you cease the view of eternalism. According to this view, there are seven eternal principles of existence: earth, water, air, fire, pleasure, pain, and the soul. If one were to see that the first four are the four great elements of ancient Indian thought, and updates them to the contemporary understanding of the four states of matter, solid, liquid, gas, and heat, then one also recognizes the impermanent nature of these states, both internally and externally.

Matter changes all the time. Taking into account that the internal solid matter of the body, the liquid matter of bodily fluids, the gaseous matter of air moving through the intestines, and the heat and electrical impulses of the body, one sees that the body itself has grown and changed over the years. From infancy, the body grows, bones and joints fuse, the height increases. As one develops in puberty, the body goes through further changes, and as one enters adulthood, sickness, which has been prevalent since infancy, is more noticeable as a sign of change. Therefore, the body ages, the skin wrinkles up, the hair becomes thinner and grayer, and even falls out, and the sense organs themselves become diminished.

Seeing this, you realize the impermanence of the four great elements, and see that the view that the four great elements are eternal is wrong. Now what about pain and pleasure? Pain and pleasure are experiences dependent upon the process of contact. When a painful feeling arises, you can trace it back with reflection and see that such a feeling arose due to contact. You cease contact and the painful feeling ceases. In other words, you experience the pain of sitting in an uncomfortable position. You stop sitting in that position and the pain ceases naturally. You smell garbage outside your window. You close that window, and the contact between the smell and the nose ceases, and the nose consciousness of that garbage smell ceases.

Likewise, with regards to pleasant feeling, the same is true. You're eating your favorite dessert. The sweetness makes contact with the tongue, and there's awareness of that sweetness and the affective projection of that experience being pleasant. You cease the contact between the dessert and your taste buds, and there is no longer the pleasure of sweetness. On the radio or streaming music service, your favorite song plays. The auditory nerves in your ears make contact with the sound waves vibrating in the air. In the ear, consciousness dependent upon the two becomes aware of the familiar tune of the music that gives you pleasure.

You mute the radio or the phone or computer, and the song stops playing, and thus the pleasure ceases. Having experienced contact and observed the feeling arising dependent upon that contact, then ceasing that contact and observing the cessation of that feeling, you see that indeed pain and pleasure are impermanent. So it's just a matter of looking at that: cease contact, cease the feeling. That's plain and simple. Pain and pleasure are impermanent, are conditioned, and therefore impermanent. So we talked about this a little bit, but I'll go into a little bit of detail. The life principle is a translation of the word jiva sata, which means the life being, which in ancient Indian thought was accepted to be a self or soul. The idea of a self is that which is perfect, untouched, unborn, uncreated, permanent, fulfilling, ever present and pervasive, independent of causes and conditions, and sometimes even equated with a substratum of reality.

If you investigate through observation and look for such a self, you would see first and foremost that all this is in the awareness of the mind, and that is dependent upon causes and conditions, and therefore impermanent and not fulfilling forever. So in other words, even if you took into account that this life principle was some kind of spirit or soul, it's still just a concept in the mind. You stop thinking about it and it's no longer there. So the second to last view is asceticism, or extreme asceticism. And this is a view, so it's interesting what it says. He says, here a Nigantha, which is the old name for somebody following the Jain philosophy, is bound by a fourfold restraint.

What for? He is curbed by all curbs, enclosed by all curbs, cleared by all curbs, and claimed by all curbs. And as far as a Nigantha is bound by this fourfold restraint, thus the Nigantha is called self-perfected, self-controlled, self-established. In other words, in order for me to become perfect, I have to do all kinds of purification processes that basically cleanse my karma. And if I do that, then I will be perfect. So this is a Jain view that talks about a soul. It's literally, this is how it works in the Jain philosophy. You are a soul that transmigrates from realm to realm.

And as you transmigrate, depending upon the karma you produce, by the way, that karma can be intended or unintended, all actions intended or unintended, you will pick up particles, literally karmic dust that happens to cling to your soul. And as you are going from lifetime to lifetime, you keep picking up these karmic particles, and the only way to become fully pure is to become dust free. And how do you do that? Through the process of extreme purification, that is, extreme fasting, extreme celibacy, and all kinds of things like that. And by doing that, the idea is I am whittling away at my karma. But the Buddha asks a question. How do you know how much karma has been produced over the many lifetimes?

And how do you know how much is left in that karmic bank balance? You can't. It's just a concept. It's just an idea. And so this is what it says. I just explained to you everything that we were talking about just now, so I'm going to skip ahead. It says, all of these, if one were to closely investigate with a calm and equanimous mind, that is to say, the idea of the soul picking up the karmic dust, and that you have to do all kinds of purification, how much of it is left, how much of it has been burnt out, all of these are dependent upon concepts and theories that cannot be tested, experienced, or confirmed in the here and now.

What can be seen, even over a long period of time, is that with the changing of intention there is an effect. In other words, when you talk about karma, it's not important to know what karma led to what. It's important to know what to do with the karma that you have right now, and how the intention changes. When the intention changes, it creates a certain kind of effect. One can see that karma is dependent upon intention. If a person changes their unwholesome intentions by abandoning them and replacing them with wholesome intentions, they see a visible transformation in the quality of their thoughts, words and actions. Seeing this, you can then extend the understanding to the fruition of unwholesome intentions from previous moments, even previous lifetimes, as being impermanent and impersonal, and therefore you abandon any further interaction, interference or reaction to such karmic fruit. So in other words, the only way to eradicate karma is by not engaging with it through ignorance, craving and conceit. The only way of letting go of karma is to let it be there and deal with how you take that.

Karma, how do you deal with it? How do you take it? Are you clinging to it? Are you trying to push it away? Are you trying to eliminate it in a way that causes aversion or craving, or whatever it might be? Or are you seeing it for what it actually is: this arose due to causes and conditions, and therefore you just let it be. And you six are the reactions in your mind, and you let go of that, so that doesn't translate into further reactivity. That only continues to sustain that karma. This is very key to understand. Our next topic will be karma and consciousness, so we'll go deeper into it, but this is the basis of understanding how to deal with karma. Karma is only that which is experienced here and now, and the activities that you do right now will lead to further karma that you inherit in the future.

But if your actions are rooted in right action, if your speech is rooted in right speech, if your intentions are rooted in right intention, then you won't produce further karma. Whatever karma you have to experience will be experienced right here and right now, in whatever way it has to be experienced. But it will not add fuel to further production of it. And then finally, we have what's known as the eel wrigglers. The view of the eel wrigglers. That is, philosophical skepticism. So this word, this says, if you ask me, is there another world? If I thought so, I would say so, but I don't think so. I don't say it so, and I don't say otherwise.

I don't say it is not, and I don't say it is not. Does that make any sense to you guys? What did he just say? And he says this for everything. He talks about this world, the other world, basically goes through all of these things. He also says, does the Tathagata exist after death? Does he not? Both? Neither? I do not say it is so. I do not think it is so. I don't say otherwise. I don't say it is not. And I don't say it is not. And I don't not say it is not. Huh? Non-committal. Non-committal, exactly. So why did this view arise? This view arose because those guys were afraid to debate.

Plain and simple. That's it. That was the idea. I don't want to debate you, so I'm not going to conclude on anything. I'm not going to say it is this or it isn't that. But I'm not also going to say that it isn't that and it is not not that either. So how do you let go of that? Short and simple. It is through having gone through the process of seeing for oneself and testing out the Dhamma.

Understanding its principles, following the ethics of the precepts, then deepening your contemplation through right collectedness, and gaining surety and experiential conviction due to the direct experience of nibbana, that you abandon this view. You no longer withhold judgment on what is right or wrong, or on the factors of the mundane right view. Having experienced the four noble truths at stream entry through following the path, you conclude by authority of your own experience, and this shatters any kind of doubt in the mind. So in other words, you might have doubts about the Dhamma, you might have doubts about following the path, but you experiment with it. You see for yourself how this process works, and any doubt that is present is shattered, and what is replaced by that is experiential conviction. Now you know for yourself that there is meaning in giving. Now you know for yourself that there is action and consequence. Now you know for yourself there is this world and the other, and so on and so forth. So how do you eradicate all wrong views? What is the one way to eradicate all wrong views?

It seems to be the answer all the time. That's true, but beyond that, it's to attain stream entry. When you have stream entry, you let go of all doubts, which means you no longer have any kind of doubts about right view. You let go of any confusion about what is right view and what is wrong view, and once you understand wrong view, you know that isn't the right view. Once you know right view, you can assess and say, no, that's not right. That's why I'm saying, yesterday when I said that, if something is told to you, understand it, and if you can understand it within the context of the four noble truths, then it's okay. But if it doesn't make sense in accordance with the four noble truths, you need to reassess that. Does it make sense in terms of allowing you to recognize dukkha, allowing you to let go of the causes and conditions of that dukkha, allowing you to experience relief, and therefore allowing you to cultivate the path.

When you follow the path, when you actually enter the stream, and you see indeed this path has benefits, and you experience Nibbana, you experience stream entry, there's no going back. Now you understand. So there's no wrong view present anymore. Now, that doesn't mean there might be some kind of questions about, you know, what is this view or what is that view? That will still be there. But that'll be gone completely when you have perfected the path. Now you know in all dimensions, in all perspectives, what is the right view and what is the wrong view. The last two parts about clinging to views is about clinging to opinions and clinging to the Dhamma. So what does it mean when we say clinging to opinions?

We start to inherit views from those people that we grow up with. Our views are not actually our own. Try to look at that. If you think about the opinions that you have about certain things, political opinions, religious opinions, your favorite sports team, you know, whatever it might be, that's all arising because of previous causes and conditions. That's not coming from you, so why are you attached to it? This is the only way to do a certain thing because I've done it, so that means it must be right for everybody else. This is the only solution that I know of because it worked for me, so that must be right for everybody else too. How do you know that?

The clinging to any kind of opinion about things creates agitation in the mind. Oftentimes I'm asked about this. I watch the news and it creates a lot of pain and agitation in my mind. What should I do? Stop watching the news. It's not necessary to go on with your life to be able to see what's going on outside in the world around you. It's not necessary, especially if it creates troubling thoughts in your mind. Why would you put yourself through that night and day, over and over again, because you have an attachment to views? There is an attachment to, oh, let's see what this political candidate says, and according to what they say, and then compare it to my political candidate, the one that I know to be the true candidate.

Let's see what this person says about the person that I admire, and let's see what he says about the person that I do not admire, and so on and so forth. These opinions, judgments about things, these are going to cause all kinds of restlessness in the mind. When I say to fully experience everything as it is without the eye, it also means to experience it without any kind of judgment, any kind of personal opinion about it. Now, that doesn't mean that you cannot say that this is bad or this is good, or this is pleasant and this is unpleasant, or this is that, or whatever it is. What it means is don't identify with it.

Don't say that this is pleasant and I like it and therefore it is the only way. Now that's starting to develop an opinion about it. That's starting to create an idea of this is working for me so it will work for everyone else. Let go of that. It seems to be pleasant to me but it might be unpleasant for somebody else. The opinions that people have. You see that on social media, when you see it on Facebook, people are always commenting on somebody's opinion.

I've seen this. I've seen this with people in my life as well, where they have a spare minute, so they'll go on Facebook and they'll see somebody's posted something. I have to comment on that. I have to give my opinion on that. And they go into this comment warfare. Oh, that guy said this, let me say this, let me rebut him. What do you think about saying it in this way? Do you think that's going to destroy all other comments? All of this mental proliferation that arises that is dependent upon clinging to views, clinging to opinions. And then there is clinging to the Dhamma itself. What does that mean, clinging to the Dhamma? It means becoming a defender of the Dhamma. Sounds like a movie title, right?

Defender of the Dhamma. The Dhamma Defenders. Coming soon to a theater near you. You're practicing the Dhamma. Great. Keep doing it. Somebody says something about your practice. That's their view. That's their opinion. No problem. And moreover, the clinging to Dhamma will also mean clinging to the idea that if I don't do it, if I have a problem with going into jhana, then that means there's something wrong with me, and you start to obsess over what's going on. If I'm not meditating correctly or yesterday I had this amazing sit and today it's terrible. You're clinging to the Dhamma. You're clinging to the idea that all meditation will be perfect because I accessed that state where it was wonderful and perfect.

And now I want to repeat that. What is that? I want to repeat it. What does that mean? You're craving for it. When we talk about nibbana tomorrow, I'll be talking about that as well. Why is it that nobody is able to directly attain arahatship, or why it's very rare, I should say, because there is still a craving for the after effect of experiencing them, the Dhamma, or experiencing nibbana. That is to say, oh, the joy and pleasure that I experienced, I want more of that. I want to repeat that experience again. As soon as that's there, you've already had some craving there in the next arising of the links of dependent origination. So clinging to the Dhamma, and I'm sure none of you probably do this, but you don't have to preach the Dhamma either. You don't have to go forth and evangelize the Dhamma either.

That's another kind of clinging. If it works for you, that's great. If somebody sees the benefits that you're getting and wants to know more, sure. Have a conversation with them about it. But how annoying is it in the workplace, somebody coming in and saying, "Hey, I just heard this new technique. You guys should try it." And nobody's interested. Let somebody first come to you with genuine interest, and then guide them along the way. There's no need to say everybody has to do this. Even the Buddha, when he became fully awakened, he said, "I'm not so sure if everybody will actually understand this. So maybe I should just rest in Nibbana and let it be."

Thankfully, that Mahabrahma came to the Buddha and said, "There are those with little dust in their eyes. Maybe they can see." And so the Buddha made that choice and said, "We'll try it out, see what happens." But he didn't do it motivated by saying that everybody has to experience what I experienced. When the mind is ripe for the Dhamma, it will come. It will come to the Dhamma. Not before.

And you can't ripen the mind forcibly, forcefully. It has to be done when causes and conditions are present. Then we have clinging to rites and rituals. And there are different ways of looking at clinging to rites and rituals. A very basic one is to see clinging to rites and rituals with the idea that they will take you to nibbana. If I just do this, this is going to take me to full awakening. That means you haven't walked the path and you haven't seen for yourself that by walking the path is the only way to nibbana. So this could also include belief in luck, wrong livelihood for monastics, I'll expand on that, using occult arts, animal sacrifices, chanting, these kinds of things.

So what does it mean, belief in luck? When you believe in luck, what you're saying is that there's no self-effort required. If I only just do this, if I only wear those red socks, if I only wear this particular talisman, then everything is going to be great. I won't have to deal with my karma. It just is expended, it's burnt out by just doing this. If I chant this particular mantra a hundred thousand times, all my life's karmas will go. I've done this. I've gone and done kriya yoga, right? Kriya yoga is about the idea that if you do a certain amount of mantras and breath practice, a million, if you do a million of those according to some people, 12 million, but let's just say a million of those, then you will become fully awakened because you will have expired all your karma. I did a hundred million of those.

And I can tell you because I have the Excel sheet to prove it. Many, many years, a whole decade. So what happened? I burnt out my nervous system is what happened. I still have the burn marks on my spine to prove it. So there was that belief that if I just do this, I can attain enlightenment. If I do certain kinds of practices, if I do animal sacrifices, that's terrible, doing animal sacrifices. You're killing another living being with the idea that they are going to take your karma, or they, by doing this to appease whatever forces are out there, will help you to achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve.

Whatever it is that you want to achieve can be achieved through self-effort. Making an effort. And that's all about right effort. Doing the practice. Committing to the practice. So the clinging to rites and rituals is fully eliminated at stream entry. Which means that when you become a stream enterer, you've walked the path. Once you've walked the path, you realize that the only way that takes you to Nibbana is by doing these different elements of the Eightfold Path and bringing them in accordance or concordance so that you experience full awakening. But having attained stream entry, you start to see that it isn't through rites and rituals that you experience meditative states. It isn't through rites and rituals that you get to a certain level of attainment. It's through actual practice, through your own self-effort. And then finally, there is clinging to self-views. So, there is an excerpt from Majjhima Nikaya 44.

This is the shorter series of questions and answers, the Chula Vedala Sutta, and this is the dialogue between Visaka and Dhamma Dina. And this is what Dhamma Dina says when he asks her what is identity view, which is another way of saying what is self view. Here, friend Visaka, an untaught ordinary person who has no regard for noble ones and is unskilled and undisciplined in their Dhamma, who has no regard for true men and is unskilled and undisciplined in their Dhamma, he regards perception. He regards formation as self, or self as possessed of formations, or formations as in self, or self as in formations. He regards consciousness as self, or self as possessed of consciousness, or consciousness as in self, or self as in consciousness.

That is how identity view comes to be. What she's basically talked about are the 20 different types of self view. You have the five aggregates and the four types of you. That is, each of the five aggregates as self, or self as possessed of the aggregates, or the five aggregates in self, or the self in the five aggregates. This goes away at stream entry because we talk about the belief in a personal self. That doesn't mean conceit is destroyed. What it means is, on an intellectual and experiential level, you have understood that everything that arises, arises due to causes and conditions. Having understood this, you realize that there can't be a self, there can't be an independent self, because everything that arises is already conditionally arisen.

So from an intellectual standpoint, from a mental standpoint, from an experiential standpoint, you see how this process works. You see how dependent origination works when you attain Nibbana. Having seen this, you realize for your own self that there can't be a permanent independent self. But yes, the mind still can identify with things because the conceit is still there. That goes away completely at arahatship. So how do you let go of the conceit? How do you let go of the conceit of I am? Start to see in your own mind and recognize whenever the mind starts to identify with the process. Even though for those who are stream enterers, they understand that there is no personal self, they still can take things personally.

They can still identify with things. So the key there is to recognize every time that happens, and to just relax it, to soften it. And so the guided practice that we did the other day is a means to be able to understand when conceit arises and to let it go. And remember when I said, and I read from that sutta, that small snippet, which says that the way to the destruction of conceit is through the perception of impermanence. Once you see that, then you don't take anything personally. Everything that's arising is impermanent. This body, the feelings, the relationships, all of that is impermanent. You stop identifying with that, and you let go of conceit.

So those are the four types of clinging at the link of clinging. Alright, any questions? Thanks again for your talk, Delson. I just wanted to make sure I understood something. So one of the wrong views that you reviewed was eternalism. Some factors, one of them was the life principle or soul. The soul or life principle is seen as perfect, untouched, and born and created independent causes and conditions. And the way to refute that, if you will, or to let go of that was to realize that this idea of the life principle was just a concept in the mind.

And so keeping that in mind, and then with extreme asceticism, thinking that you can't throw anything to your karma, it's almost like having them experience it themselves. That's the solution. Look, change your intentions, which you can do, and now look at the consequences, and you'll see that this view of karma is the right one. You'll see it for yourself. But couldn't someone still say the same thing to us and say, well, that's just a concept in your head? But that's just... Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So then I guess, is there... I guess what I'm asking is, is there a stronger argument against the eternalist view? I mean, it makes me think of Catholics again, because I grew up Catholic, right?

There's a soul. Your soul is, you go to heaven eventually and be there for a long time. Yeah. So is there something more that can be said besides your view of the soul is just a concept in your mind? Yeah. So remember, the other understanding, through the concept of what I said, is that this is a self that is permanent.

But can you find that which is tangible, experienced as a self that is permanent, that is going through each of the categories of experience, that could be the five aggregates, that could be the eyes, the ears, and so on, or that could be consciousness itself? And you start to see that those two are conditionally arisen, which means if they're conditionally arisen, they're subject to change, and in that case they can't be eternal. They're always changing, right? So the rising and passing away of different consciousnesses at the different sense doors, we see that they're conditioned, and we see that they change, and that's sort of like the evidence or proof against, if you will. But this idea of a permanent self, because it's multiple selves... yeah, that's one way of looking at it. Yeah. In the back there.

The new meditation introduced, just generally speaking, if you were taking somebody who really didn't have a practice at all, a twin or otherwise, and put them on this path of genre practice, where along the way would you introduce them to the new meditation? Definitely not in the beginning. Right. I mean, we're all experienced meditators, so there's an exception there. But I'm curious, just very broadly speaking, where is that inflection point in someone's practice? It would be at a point where somebody has experienced at least the seventh jhana. And the reason I say that is because then from there, the quiet mind is accessible, and then beyond the quiet mind, the signless state is accessible. So at that point, when you start to see the seventh jhana, which means you've had an experience of impermanence, you've had an experience of dukkha, and you've had an experience of anatta.

Once you see that, then you realize, oh, okay, this makes sense. And then after that, you can introduce this practice. So just to make sure I've got that, you're saying generally speaking, somewhere around experience of quiet mind is where they would have had the direct experience that the meditation you're giving would make sense in that you follow. Yes, yes. Thank you for these great talks. The question I have has to do with clinging and conceit, and the talks on Baba yesterday. So this morning I've got an insight, I think, and I wanted to check it. So conceit itself is conditioned. Is that correct? And can you let go, can one then just let go of the conceit by seeing through the meditation the arising of all the causes and conditions for that conceit?

Like when you're looking through your childhood and you go, oh, well, this is why I became such a powerful opinionator. I have strong opinions because I needed to do that, right, for my mom or whatever. So can you let all that go by just kind of looking back into that time and going, there, I don't need that anymore? Continually, consistently, and constantly. That's the way out? The way out is to basically keep recognizing you don't have to do it in the past. That's fine. There's no point about looking into the past anymore. It doesn't exist. Right now, what you have to see is how is the mind taking it personally in this moment?

Because if you try to go back into the causes and conditions, you could forgive it if you want, and that can help you. But it's all about how you deal with it now, so that in a future arising it doesn't arise. So keep recognizing it when it arises in the moment, and then let it go, and then you'll be able to see the eventual non-arising of it. I think I understand. Thank you. So I used your meditation according to Swoon, so I have a couple of questions about that as well. So normally in the Brahma Viharas practice one may enter either perception or non-perception, that has a call when you do it. Practicing the way you practice, we are not going through the Brahma Viharas, but we're ending up in the state of signlessness.

Okay, so just remember that actually we started off with loving kindness, and then we took a step into now looking at the contemplation practice, and then what that takes you to, as I told you, it can take you to three things. It can take you to nothingness, it can take you to the quiet mind in either perception or non-perception, or it can take you to the signless. Yeah, yeah. So the two of those, those two places seem to be similar. Yeah, there is a subtle difference actually. In the quiet mind, what happens is mind is taken as an object, but in the signless collectedness of mind there is no object there. I said let go of the meditation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is awareness. There is awareness there, yes. So there's no object in the signless, but would you say there's no contact?

There is a type of contact, yes. So the way to look at the signless is it's a contact with consciousness itself, which is dependent upon formations. These formations are rooted in some sense with conceit. There's some conceit over there, normally. Beyond that, if you're talking about Nibbana and the mind of somebody fully awakened, it's signless in the sense that it's not dependent on anything. It doesn't reflect anything. So I'm, again, getting ahead of myself because I'll talk about this tomorrow. But since you're leaving, I'll explain this. You think about a mirror. You take this phone, and you take this mirror, and the mirror is reflecting the phone. And so that's why there is the awareness.

And that is the idea of a sense of self or some kind of personality. You take that away and there is just a mirror, but now it's not reflecting. So that is called the non-reflective awareness, which is essentially not dependent upon any kind of object. So, the objectless awareness. So the reason why there's awareness there is because it's bouncing off of an object like loving kindness, or bouncing off an object like any of the Brahma Viharas or quiet mind, for that matter. But what is fueling it is basically just formations. And there, in that case, it's just pure formations. In the case of a fully awakened mind, that is arising and giving rise to some kind of consciousness that doesn't land on anything.

In Pali, this is called two things. This is called the Pabhasara Chitta, which also could be considered as the quiet mind. But more importantly, it's also understood as the Anidassana Vinnana. Anidassana. So vinnana here means consciousness, awareness. Anidassana means non-manifestive, non-reflective. It's sometimes translated as consciousness without borders, consciousness without surface, and so on and so forth. So the signless state is basically just consciousness dependent upon the internal formations that are there, but those formations aren't producing anything. There's nothing going on there. It's just formations coming up and giving rise to this awareness. Then when the self-reflective awareness does come up, it is conscious of the events that happen. And so is it conscious of just the, in a sense, the way that formations have changed since the last reflection?

Yeah, it's like a... yeah, it's reflection, right? It's reflecting back on what happened. I guess what I'm trying to ask is, there's still a memory trace, in a sense, or are you just cognizant of how formations have changed since the last reflection? Yeah. You realize now, because you will only be in the signless so long as there's nothing taken as an object. As soon as you cognize that something is there, by the very nature that it's there, it's an object. And by that experience, you realize you're no longer in the signless. But do you understand what I'm saying in terms of memory? You can spend some time in the pure silence without any self-reflection, and then body continues moving, maybe some sort of mental forms that are not becoming objects continue changing or things happening, maybe you're creating a memory trace, and then only upon self-reflection maybe you have the memory trace come up, and not just a new object. You can access it... if what you're leading to is that if you can access it in a waking state, if you can access it while you're walking, while you're eating.

Is that what you're asking? That signless state. Yeah, you can. For a prolonged period of time. A prolonged period of time, yeah. And then you would know in a self-reflective type of way that you have eaten. The memory of that is there. When you're in the signless, you're basically meditating and you're aware of what's going on as well. No function is lost, you're still feeling, you're still experiencing, but beyond that there's no reflection of projecting an idea of self to it.

Yeah? So it would seem that in the silent state that you're looking at the aggregates in terms an event that's taking place, and there are five categories of possible events that could be happening, but also at the same time, by the mere knowing of that, you're being taken out of the silence. That's right. That's right. By diverting your attention to that, or as you said, by the mere knowing of that, now there's an object. it's no longer sign, signless. Yes, yes, yes, exactly, exactly. It's similar to when you're in neither perception or non-perception. As soon as you've perceived something, you're no longer in neither perception or non-perception. the same way as long as soon as the mind is taken on an object even if it's observing the five aggregates it's no longer in the signless and i think this is the reason why in the sutras they talk about the signless element when you're talking about the signless collective of the mind it says that the mind takes its as its object the signless element the objectless element

So that objectless element is basically consciousness being non-reflective. The mirror is just there, not doing anything else. It's just the function of the mirror. They're dependent upon whatever is arising in terms of formations, but those formations themselves are not being looked at. Yeah, oh, you had a question. Yeah, I have a question. So we listed attachment to rites and rituals, chanting is one of it. And I know that in Buddhism, there's many schools of Buddhism, and growing up there was a lot of chanting and manana. And so, even, and one day we chant before we eat, and there's many rituals per se. So are we saying that those are, and I'm not gonna put it back, but they shouldn't be doing it.

They know that even repentance, in the Vietnamese, for you to repent, you have to do a hundred something vows, and you have to chant this, and you have to do it in certain ways. And it does bring some calmness when you chant, and there's a vibration that comes with it when you're chanting. So are we saying that those rites and rituals shouldn't be done? No, no, we're not saying that. What we're saying is becoming attached to them, to the point that if I don't do it, I feel agitated. So it's okay to do them, but not to be attached. Yeah, exactly. So is there any value in doing them?

Because we're saying that, there's no rabbit's foot, any kind of thing. So some people say, oh, I chant, and I will even lose my fear, or it helps me, it gives me confidence. So is there a sense of, that's a lucky charm thing? No, there's nothing wrong with it at all. You can light a candle, you can light some incense, you can do a puja, you can do whatever you want to do.

But the idea is that it's only keeping you calm. It's giving you a nice state of mind and all of these things. But is it taking you to Nibbana? It could lead you to Nibbana in the sense that you have a calm mind. And with that calm mind, you can start meditating, but now you're doing something else. Oh, wait, Doug had a question. I'm not quite sure I can formulate this, but think about the difference between awareness and perception, or perception has memory and all that sort of stuff, and that in the signless or objectless awareness there is awareness but just no perception, doesn't form it. So as soon as I try to figure out what it was, I'm starting to form objects. That's right, that's right. Knowing things.

Knowing. You think of the gardeners and fishermen are really a god in it because they're all about conditions, causes and conditions, every day. I mean, it's all over the place. How does anybody miss that in terms of... But it seems like the big difference between Rudadhamma and other views is it's external. It has to come from the outside. And here we are self-responsible, self-responsible. But then, talking down to these most intricate and delicate mental sets, how do you know what you know? Because at one point you can't know or you're out. So how do you know? How do you know what state? How do you know? Neither perception or non-perception.

I would not know what that is if someone didn't tell me. So I don't know about anybody else, but I think there's things you can know that are perfectly clear, and there are some things that are not perfectly clear. So with neither perception or non-perception, one of the qualities of it, and this is very common, is the idea that I'm asleep and awake at the same time. That's a big quality of neither perception nor non-perception. But the catch-22 is, as soon as you know that you're asleep and awake at the same time, you're no longer neither perceiving nor not perceiving.

That's the thing. Anyway, so the voice of the other is very helpful. Yeah. Hi, just further to that. So what is the value, if I can ask it in that way, of perception when you're there and it feels like you're asleep and awake at the same time? It's a very refined state to be in where the mind starts to quiet down to such an extent that formations are starting to cease to arise. And as that happens, the mind starts to incline towards nirodha, towards cessation, which can give the experience of Nibbana. So it's a stepping stone towards Nibbana. That's really what it is. Aside from that, it's one of the highest states to be in.

In Majjhima Nikaya 106, the Buddha says, that's the highest type of clinging, so to speak, that you can have. It's clinging to neither perception or non-perception. So if I could just ask a second part to that, how do you know whether or not you're there too long? You know, if it's ending up sort of being small people. Oh, yeah. You're asleep, but you're not awake. In other words, there's still, like, a mindfulness there, with sloth and torpor. The mindfulness wanes and now it goes somewhere else. But here's another way of understanding neither perception or non-perception: when you're in nothingness, you're generally taking, let's say, equanimity, radiating equanimity, as an object.

And eventually that stops, and then you're in, like, the mind rests in itself. While it's resting in itself, the disenchantment arises. So when you have disenchantment and dispassion, this is a clear sign that you're heading towards deeper levels of quiet mind, and hence even deeper levels of neither perception or non-perception. And it's like the mind is looking at something and then is just no longer interested in anything. And it's just kind of folding in on itself. It's starting to collapse in on itself. And so there's still a knowing in the sense of a consciousness there. There's still an awareness there. And there's a mindfulness there. There's a sense of a presence of mind.

But it's not looking at anything in particular except the mind itself. It's just sort of like the mind becomes the center of gravity. And everything starts to just fold in onto the mind. That's really it. So you feel like there's a border around the mind. And if you're within that border, that's where you are. And everything else that comes up isn't fully formed. So there's consciousness there, which is there's the cognition of something arising. There's the knowing of something arising in the form of formations. But because those formations are not fully baked, they don't arise to the surface. Yesterday, Mark gave me that great analogy of the bubbling up of the water in the pool.

And the whole practice is basically you're here in the surface and you start to go deeper and deeper. And those bubbles that come up are small, which are the formations. And they start to rise up, rise up, rise up, and eventually pop, become fully formed thoughts. But here you're going down deeper and deeper and deeper until you just see the beginnings of those thoughts. And they're not fully formed. That's why neither perception or non-perception is very similar to, like, a hypnagogic state. It's like there's stuff coming up, but you don't exactly know what's coming up. And that's okay.

As long as your mind doesn't get deviated towards those things and it's remaining in the center of itself, in the eye of the storm, so to speak, and not doing anything else, you're okay. As soon as the mind perceives that and starts to go down that track, then you know you're out of it, and that's when you just relax, soften and come back. One last question, we're getting short on time. I'll try and make this last two questions, yours and then Doug's. So a couple of things in that

state in clear mind, and actually in nothingness, being in the state for a long time, there's a sense to either be subject to boredom or restlessness in their very, very subtle states. And of course the antidote is more interest, more mindfulness, which is tricky too. So I guess, is there, how do you maintain? Do you have any tricks for maintaining that interest, because they're sort of, you have to kind of give yourself a pep talk or something? And then the second part of that question is, at that point, are we, in a signless state, are we down at the end of the sort of links of dependent origination, into consciousness, and is that basically what's happening in there? Is that cleaning that's going on? Is it coming back up the chain, or is this something that you're going to cover in karma consciousness? So how do you generate interest? So that interest is another word for joy, right? Joy, piti. Actually, the enlightenment factor of piti. Piti is actually dependent upon

energy. So that means you need to bring a little bit more of looking at it, looking at whatever it is that you're looking at. It's like the aperture of a camera. You tighten it a little bit, right? You bring up a little bit more attention by focusing on it. If you do too much, what's going to happen is you're going to have restlessness and the tightness in the mind. But you need to do just enough. And that's just by microdosing these things, basically. Too much at that point, and the mind just goes all over the place. So you're advocating microdosing? I'm advocating microdosing enlightenment factors. Thank you. I just want to see if I'm on the right track with this.

And some of this has to do with that, between perception and awareness, and I can recognize it when, so one of the things I've struggled with for a while is recognizing when the mind is cool enough that I can just release everything. And if I release it too quickly, then the mind would drift off and get caught by, you know, I'm seeing some cards, et cetera. And so I've identified a bunch of things that seem to arise when I'm really close. And then at that point, I guess it's understanding that awareness can do its own thing. That awareness itself will take care of a lot of things that I thought I would take care of.

And so at that point when I see those, the instructions of my thought is, just get out of the way. When you're in those really high elevated refined states of quiet mind and then signless, you don't have to do anything. That's my final instruction to everyone once they're there: don't do anything. And the problem is, if I say don't do anything, people try not to do anything. And then they try to let go of letting go of letting go. Just get out of the way. But don't try to get out of the way. This is where Yoda's wisdom comes, right? Try. No, do or do not.

There is no try. Just be. But don't try to be. Just be. Just be. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation.