May 2021 Online Retreat Q&A 1

Welcome everyone to the first Q&A session of this retreat. You're welcome to ask any questions regarding the practice, regarding the subject matter of whatever you've read in the retreat booklet. Oh, I would like to get started. These two, I'll start. Delson can ask a question. Yes, go ahead, please. I just wanted to talk about, if you could, I know you've done this before, but break down the mechanics of the radiating a little bit. And one question I had is, kind of with regards to the purpose of radiating versus the other styles of meditation where you're watching the breath or you're contemplating body parts, etc. Here you're generating a feeling and you're observing the feeling and then you're radiating. I want to make sure I think I understand those mechanics, but if you'd want to expound on that. And then also I'm curious, are you ready basically to monopolize the bandwidth of your attention? Is that one way to perceive that? Okay, good question. So number one.

That's a good summary: generate love and kindness, or whatever the feeling is, observe it in the beginning, and then radiate it when it's ready to be radiated. Radiating the different brahmaviharas, you can actually find that exercise back in the suttas. There's mention in which the Buddha says one takes one part of the area and radiates loving kindness, and then the second part, the third part, the fourth, fifth and sixth, so in all directions without limits or boundaries and with a heart full of loving kindness, compassion

joy or equanimity, and so on, and so on. So on a practical level, when you start to send out the radiating, so let's just get back to how you would do it. It depends on the person's inclination. Some people find it better to just spend a few minutes feeling the energy of the loving kindness, or feeling the compassion or the joy or the equanimity, and that's fine. The general recommendation I have for most people is spend a few minutes adjusting the mind with that feeling, so bringing it up, generating it. With compassion, it doesn't have to be a mental or verbal wish in which you say, may all beings be free of suffering. It could just be this intuitive wish, like a feeling that you get that you want other people to be free of suffering. And so that's the compassion that you have for people. Or when you think about somebody being happy, you're starting to get into empathetic joy, or just having equanimity, where you come back to that state of a balanced and tranquil mind.

And with loving kindness, just being happy for other people, just sending out happiness for other people. Once you start to get your mind adjusted to any of those brahmaviharas, allow the mind to just sort of sink into that feeling and just feel it. Really just let the mind completely be soaked into this feeling. In that process of sinking, the way I describe it is allow that process to radiate on its own. So the more attention you give to it with that intention of radiating, the more it'll just happen on its own, and you just have to observe it. Some people do get tense. They might get headaches, or they might feel like some parts of their body are tense, and that's because they're pushing too hard. The process is not to push the radiating. The process is to just watch radiating. Have the intention

to radiate, by watching how the mind immediately wants to radiate, because after a certain point the mind becomes very collected with this feeling and is so content with it that it wants to share with others. It wants to radiate with the universe. So you start to experience that and allow the mind to just observe radiating. The way I mention it on a practical level, if it's better to do it this way, is maybe a meter or two away from the body and the head. You can imagine that radiating happening from there, sort of like a sphere of light or something like that which sort of surrounds your body. This is really just you're kind of like coated in this loving kindness or this compassion or joy and equanimity, and with the intention of sending it out, it's just being sent out. So depending on the person's inclination, they can start with just one direction, and in each direction, and then all directions at the same time.

so radiating in terms of the benefit is first and foremost uh it keeps the mind very expensive keeps the mind very uh collected but at the same time expense expansive meaning if you have uh and by no means it doesn't mean that you can't be absorbed or radiating because some people put so much emphasis on the radiating aspect that their mind becomes too absorbed and that's where they get headaches and other kinds of pains and aches so it's more important to spend let's say seventy percent on the feeling and thirty percent on the radiating something like that kind of a ratio and when you're doing that what you're doing is more importantly you're allowing the mind to really feel that and when you allow the mind to feel that it's starting to replace formations

that are rooted in ill will, rooted in craving, rooted in aversion. Every time you do the 6R's, you keep doing the same thing. You keep replacing those formations, strengthening the ones that are rooted in wholesome and weakening the ones that are rooted in the unwholesome. So the radiating, for the practical purpose of it, is to keep the mind very uplifted and very expansive, so that it's able to see any time any kind of hindrance starts to arise. So even before the hindrance makes full view in the mind's lens, you can just notice it and let it go. 6R's, and then come back to radiating. Does that answer all your questions, or was there something else that I missed? That was good, thank you very much. Okay, welcome. I have a question. I've been doing this for only a little over one year, so I'm still struggling with how to balance

how to balance the um you know meditation is supposed to be fun but sometime when i try to get them admit that to come up it it doesn't come up and then sometimes i got frustrated and it's not fun anymore how do i balance that yeah um that's the whole point actually uh it's there's an intention to bring the meta up and that's all there is so you have a very simple wish to bring up the meta and uh so you want to just sit down and close your eyes and just come back and center your attention around the mind and the body so really what you're starting to do is come into the

mode so to speak of meditation where the mind is like okay now it's time to do some meditation let me relax and so on so if it feels better to just allow the mind to relax the body to relax when you come and sit down for the first few minutes and invite the feeling invite the experience which is to say, you have the intention, you have a wish saying, I want to generate metta, or, you know, I want to be happy, or may I be happy, or whatever it might be, if that helps in the beginning.

And then certain images might come up, which might help you to continue to strengthen that feeling. And that will help as well. Once you start to get your attention around that feeling, then all you're doing is just observing it. So the whole process is not about pushing it out or trying to generate it. It's more about sitting down and waiting for it with that intention of loving kindness, inviting it to come into the heart, inviting it to come into the mind, inviting it to come to your attention. Once you have it, once it's there, then all you have to do at that point is keep observing. That's it.

Because then if you don't observe it, but rather keep pushing it what's going to happen is it's going to cause the mind restlessness and it'll cause uh pain and craving in in in the mind and the body so you'll feel certain tension and things like that so if you start off with i'm taking a vacation for the next half hour or i'm taking vacation for the next one hour i'm doing anything else i'm going to just sit and enjoy this process if you start with that intention and then say okay let's feel the loving kindness and just

invite it in wait for it don't have to push it thank you can i ask you another one dustin yeah go ahead why is uh jhana referred to as a level of understanding because there are there is some form of understanding when you're in jhana you see that's the whole point about the twin practice it's the tranquil wisdom insight meditation which means within the practice of jhana it's not just samatha or serenity but it's also vipassana or insight which means as you get into the different levels of jhana in the beginning you start to see how your mind starts to become collected in the case of the first jhana you're starting to see how this process of secluding the senses not paying attention to sensory experiences

but just coming back and centering the mind around this process of meditation, starts to generate that experience of the first jhana. So you're starting to actually see how this process works as your mind starts to get more collected and starts to let go of the verbalizations. You see how the attention starts to energize that feeling of loving kindness, how that attention actually brings into focus the loving kindness. And that is the collectedness, born from this, or the happiness rather, that is born from the collectedness. So the piti and the sukha, which is the joy and the comfort or ease, comes in the first jhana. You start to see how it starts to become more intense or more refined as you start to get more collected. So

The whole process about jhana is to see how the mind is in different levels of experience. There are different layers to it, and how you make adjustments throughout the practice. When you get into the third jhana, you start to see how the mind lets go of the piti, and that you realize at that point that the joy that people are seeking. If everybody in this world that you ask what do you want from life, one of the things they'll say is happiness. I want to be happy. And there's an assumption that that happiness will be long lasting, it will be permanent. But you see right there and then, when you get into the third jhana, that that happiness can only sustain the mind for so long. It's not sustainable. It's there as an experience, but it can only be sustained with your attention, and at a certain point, even after that, it just fades away naturally, and it just leaves the comfort and tranquility of the third jhana. You get into the fourth jhana, that tranquility is gone and the mind is completely just equanimous.

It's got the purity of mindfulness and it's completely attentive. So you see that. What you really see, with the fading away of these different factors of the jhana, is seeing right there impermanence. You're understanding impermanence at deeper and deeper levels. And when you get into the formless realms, when you get into the ayatanas, as they call it in Pali, you start to see infinite space and you have an experience beyond this body. So you notice that the feeling of the body is one thing, but the mind is sort of the main forerunner here. You only feel the body because of the mind. And when you switch off the experience of the body, you see that the mind is still here. The mind is still present and it starts to create these experiences of infinite space, infinite consciousness and nothingness.

And so the usefulness of the formless realms or the ayatanas is to see how the mind responds beyond the body, beyond the sensory experiences. When you have infinite space, what you're experiencing is this sense of expansion, this sense of expansiveness, and it can go as far as you want it to, or as far as it can go. It feels like you're going beyond the universe sometimes, and it just continues on and on and on, and you realize that the mind in that sense is limitless. Whatever the mind can think about, it can start to bring up certain impressions. Then when you get into infinite consciousness, you start to see, so now you're starting to see on a much deeper level impermanence, and beyond that you're starting to see dukkha. You're starting to see how this process becomes tiresome after a while, this arising and passing

of consciousness. And because of that, you also notice that this isn't something that you want, this isn't something that you're controlling. So you see anatta, which is the impersonal nature of reality. Then when you get into nothingness, the mind becomes further refined and you notice that there is this fear of nothingness, meaning the mind is no longer attracted to even mental objects, and there's just this perception of nothingness at that point. Then you get to even a deeper level, which is the level of neither perception nor non-perception. There's not much to say about it, because it really is a very subtle state, but at that point you're dealing with formations, and you're starting to see certain patterns of thought that are disconnected, and so on. But when you start to look at that, you start to notice even deeper that these formations are impersonal, because the deepest, the most subtle level of experience, is the formations. Formations are like pockets of experience from which then you have the experience of mentality and materiality.

You have intention, you have contact, feeling, perception, and so on. So you're starting to see these prototypes, or those experiences that you see in every day, and you start to let go of those as well. So it's a deepening of the understanding of the three characteristics. And then when you start to use the 6R's in the process of coming back to the jhanas, because the jhana here, what is the jhana here? Actually it's a temporary liberation from suffering, that's what it is really. So anytime you see the hindrances and you use the 6R's process, you're practicing the four noble truths, because you were in jhana and then suddenly a hindrance arose. That hindrance then arose because of craving. That hindrance is the first noble truth of dukkha. You let that go, you abandon it, which is the second noble truth, and experience when you relax nirodha, and you come back to the jhana, which is the cessation of suffering. It's a temporary cessation of suffering. There are levels of suffering that you start to see in relation to this, most subtle, which is the sensory distractions

and the mental distractions within mind, but even at the very subtlest level are the formations themselves that are rooted in suffering. So when you let go of that and then you have cessation of perception and feeling, then you experience complete neural. Really good. Thank you. So I have a question about the enlightenment factors. I'm wondering, is there a specific way to balance those? - I was told to focus on the equanimity factor and the investigation factor, but what about the other factors of enlightenment? - What you will see in this process of jhanas is that the enlightenment factors are present to one degree or another. They're always there whenever you're in jhana, in some way or another. As you get into the higher levels of practice, especially in the eighth jhana, your mind starts to let go of most hindrances

and there are a couple of hindrances that are still present or that can be present, and that is specifically sloth and torpor. Restlessness factors are used as practical tools to balance the mind from these two different states. It looks like whoever recommended to you saw that you required investigation of states as well as equanimity, which balances out the mind depending upon your inclination. So if the mind becomes tired or sluggish, or has sloth and torpor, then you're using the investigation of states, and really what that is is no more than just noticing

that there is this state of mind present. The way I call that state is discernment, being able to see what exactly is happening in that present moment in relation to the mind. You have energy or effort, so you bring in a little bit more effort into the practice if you require focusing or honing your attention in on the feeling or on the object of meditation. That's what that purpose is. When you use the joy, it's really just having more joyful interest, having more interest in your object. So this is one aspect of that. This is the aspect which helps to combat, or which helps to eradicate, the sloth and torpor. When you have restlessness, then you have tranquility, collectedness and equanimity

and tranquility is really about the relaxed state, more importantly it's about letting go of any tension that is present in mind and body, which then immediately gives you a natural collectedness. The mind is naturally collected, so there's nothing there to do in terms of intention, but one leads to the other. When you have tranquility, when you relax the mind, the mind becomes naturally open and aware and spacious and collected, and as you continue to be in that collectedness by staying with your object, then the mind becomes naturally equanimous. It has equanimity because it's able to just see things as they really are. Now, the thing about the enlightenment factors as a whole is that they lead into each other, they spill over into each other, and the basis for all of it is mindfulness. When you start with mindfulness, which is just observing reality as it is, whether you're in meditation or in daily life

that then gives rise to the experience of investigation of states, because now you're discerning the different elements of the mind, you're discerning what is actually happening. So for example, when you start the practice, you start with the intention of loving kindness or compassion, whatever it might be. When you start with that, you have the mindfulness, or the observation of what is happening in the way of the awakening of this loving kindness or compassion, the starting up process. Then the investigation of states, which is the discernment, is basically putting a name to it, knowing now that this process has arisen. Then there is some energy, there's some effort you bring in by just allowing the mind to become collected, focusing your attention on that process. That spills over into joy. You immediately feel the joy of the first, second jhana and so on. Then that joy starts to become more collected, it becomes more relaxed, and that's where you feel the tranquility. And then from there you experience the collectedness, and that collectedness, when you become collected for quite some time, the mind becomes just very unattached

not attached to things, just seeing things as they are without any involvement, without any kind of personalization or identification with the process. But these are always present in the jhana, and they can be used individually like little tools, like little potions, especially when you get into the higher levels where you see you want to tweak your practice a little bit, so the mind becomes balanced, so that it's always just staying in a state of observing, being equanimous and knowing reality as it is. That make sense? Yes, thank you. Thank you. I have another kind of practical practice question.

Yes. Because since we're kind of practicing in retreat now versus daily practice, you're doing, let's say, when I'm planning to do a back-to-back sit, and do a long sit, and then I maybe get up and walk a bit, and then I sit back down. What's your advice in terms of how I start that second sit? If I, let's say, I was, I don't know, in one of the lower jhanas, third or fourth jhana, out in the first set. I got up and I walked around. I kept trying to be mindful and meditate, and I let's say I stayed kind of collected, but I sit back down and I need to kind of regenerate. What's your advice in terms of an efficient way to return to the meditation? Yeah, actually this is a good opportunity for you to actually keep meditating even off the mat, so to speak. So let's say you

Get up to stretch your legs or do some walking or whatever it might be. You could take that as one continuous meditation. So in other words, let's say you're in the third or fourth jhana, and you continue to be in the fourth jhana even after you open your eyes. You still have the intention of the loving kindness or the compassion or whatever it might be, and you just stay with the fourth jhana as you get up. So you can continue being mindful of the movements while you're in the fourth jhana and do whatever else it is that you're doing. And then when you come back, it's not like it's a second sit, but it's just a continual process, from having come out of that sitting, doing some walking, and then coming back down. So the observation of loving kindness, or the observation of the object of meditation,

doesn't get broken just because you get up from the sit and then take a break or do whatever else it is that you're doing and then come back down for, let's say, a second sitting. It's all one continuous thing, or you can treat it as one continuous process by being able to continue to be aware of the loving kindness. All right, thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Can I ask you a question about the Dhammapada verses, Wilson? Yeah, sure. There's one line, I think, at least on mine it's verse 11, but it says: in the unessential we imagine the essential, in the essential we see the unessential. Anyone who entertains such wrong thoughts will never realize the truth.

Can you shed some light on that? I have some ideas about it, but I'd like to hear how you perceive that. Yeah, let me actually go to it. Let me go to the central, open it. It's on the list that I have for the morning ritual, so that's why I don't know exactly which is the number in front of it. It is 11, but I don't know if that corresponds to the central. Let's see, yeah, I think I just got it here. It says: thinking the inessential is essential

seeing the essential as inessential, they don't realize the essential, or wrong thoughts are their pasture. Is that the one, basically? Yes. My version is a little different, but it's the same. It's a different translation, it's the same verse. Yeah, and it just continues on, says: having known the essential as essential and the inessential as inessential, they realize the essential, or right thoughts are their posture, are their pasture. So in other words, you're thinking... so it's really talking about wrong thoughts or right thoughts, which is in relation to wrong intention and right intention. So when you say thinking the inessential is essential, that means to say things that are temporary, things that are impermanent, you take as permanent. Things that are essentially empty of self, you take to be self.

Because of that you have wrong intention. The mind then has the inclination to not have nekkhamma, which is the renunciation of the sense of the sensual pleasures, which is to say the mind then attaches the sense of self to the experience of sensual pleasures and attaches to it, and so they don't realize the essential. There's no way for them to let go. And of course the second and third parts of right intention are non-ill will and non-cruelty, so they don't have the loving kindness that they generate or the compassion that they generate. The flip side of that is having known the essential as essential, which is: the essential here is knowing that letting go and abandoning, creating letting go and abandoning attachment to sensual experiences, to mental experiences, is the way towards the path. It is the path itself, and the way towards nibbana, the way towards the complete cessation of suffering. So nirodha in that kids and seeing and knowing the inessential as inessential, that's really understanding the three characteristics.

This is the way I understand it, which is to say knowing that all conditioned things are impermanent, and all conditioned things are not worth holding on to, because by holding on to them they will create suffering, and that all conditioned things are not self, and even nibbana itself is not self. By seeing it in this way you create the right intention, and that right intention then gives rise to the other path factors that all culminate into... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I feel like the only one asking questions right now. But anyway, I'm curious: prior to mastery of jhana, what defines the duration? How, why did jhana last a certain amount of time?

I know in David Johnson's book he has a chart of more or less how long the jhanas last. I asked him how he came up with that list, but I'm just curious, because I know the duration changes sometimes in different sits, and I know also that sometimes meditators will kind of get stuck in jhana or something like that. So I'm just curious what you have to say about that. Yeah, well, I'll add to that: there are some meditators who, when they start their practice, even bypass the jhana. So they get to a certain point in their sit where they might experience the first, second, third and fourth jhana for maybe just a few minutes, and then their mind immediately inclines to a quiet mind, or immediately inclines to equanimity, or whatever it might be.

That's a good question, because I do recall reading David's book, but maybe I don't recall the duration of each jhana. I haven't found anywhere in the suttas, or in my own experience, the sense that a certain jhana will tend to last a certain time. It's more dependent upon the attention. So if your attention is really good, your ability to observe is really good, then you can actually continue to prolong one experience of jhana, the first, second or third jhana, as much as you want. That's where the mastery comes in, where you say the mind will have this experience of the first jhana for 20 minutes, and it prolongs for 20 minutes, and it's just because it's dependent upon the attention and the intention and formations in the mind that after 20 minutes are up, the mind then emerges from that jhana, and then whatever the determination is next, it does that. So I would not say that there's a hard and fast schedule of timings

for each jhana, in the sense that, you know, one jhana will last a certain point. I would say it's more dependent upon a person's attention more than anything. Okay, yeah. David had two versions of his book, actually. The old version didn't have the chart, and his second version did have the chart. So that might be, I might have to go and revisit it. Yeah, okay, thanks. You're welcome. It could also be, and I'm speculating here, that he was talking about the general experience of meditators, in the sense that because you have the light jhanas and the very intense jhanas, depending upon level of concentration, which means if your mind is open and aware, usually the jhanas last longer, because there's not so much concentration present, there's not so much focus. Whereas in absorption states the jhanas can last... or rather the other way around. Sorry, I mean to say that if the mind is light and the concentration is not so intense

where the mind is so absorbed and it's open, then the jhanas tend to be there for longer periods. The experience of the jhanas tends to be prolonged. Whereas if the concentration is intense, then usually the jhanas will last only so long, or the factors of the jhanas will last so long. It's like burning out really fast. The joy and the sukha that you experience in the first and second jhana burn out really fast because of the intensity, dependent upon the one-pointed concentration. Whereas if the mind is very expansive and very open and aware, then it'll start to prolong that process, so it doesn't burn out the way you would have it in one point. And what actually David has given is the time when object and average sitting time.

Average sitting time. Yeah, so based on people's experiences, I would say then, throughout his process, and I can only guess, but I think the average is usually people are in the first and second jhana for maybe 20, 30 minutes before they go on to the fourth, but everybody's different. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If there's anyone who wants to ask a question by chat, they're welcome to do that as well. So don't feel shy, ask the question, whatever it might be. I'll ask a question: what would you say is the benefit of practicing staying in jhanas for months, or attaining mastery in the jhanas?

It leads to actually the mastery of being able to be in cessation of perception and feeling for longer periods of time. So you start off with the first jhana, then the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and then you start to master being able to skip from one jhana to the other, and so on and so forth. And then ultimately being able to use that process, because what it's really doing is training the body clock, which is dependent upon the physical formations, to then go into cessation of perception and feeling at will, so-called will. The other process is the ability to be in a jhana while you're on your commute. If you're on the train or on the bus or something, you could have that whole process just be very relaxed by being in jhana, saying the duration of this commute I will be in the first jhana or the second jhana, or while you're washing the dishes you can be in jhana, or whatever it might be. So the ability to bring up a jhana, so to speak, immediately

and be in that very uplifted state of mind, whatever it is you're doing, is quite beneficial because it helps you keep the mind very relaxed, keeps it very uplifted, and actually more efficient in whatever it might be doing. Thank you. Nelson, I think I've asked you this before, but when, I think you, I understand that you can actually go into nibbana after any first jhana, is that correct?

And if that's the case how is that the case and how does that correspond to eighth jhana um i mean to my understanding you go to eighth jhana and it's when you come out of it jhana that you're you're prone to go into nibbana not while you're in eighth jhana is that correct are both those correct okay yes that's correct so what happens is when you let go of all formations in the eighth jhana in the either perception or non-perception the mind becomes so still that there's nothing there's no formation for it to interact with so to speak there's no formation to bring up any kind of mental perception or or feeling and because of that lack of fuel the mind just goes into cessation of perception and feeling so what we have to understand is cessation of perception and feeling is one thing it's certainly the cessation of suffering in that sense so it can be understood as a nirvanic experience

but it can happen from the first, second, third, fourth jhana onwards, or any of the jhanas, when you let go of the formation. So when you let go of any sense of self to that jhana, let go of any attachment to the jhana, you know, that kind of process, then the mind can just immediately, all of all things tranquilize all formations, and then enter nibbana. There is that very famous refrain, I don't know if I remember correctly, but it's basically where the mind is, that the mind inclines towards this understanding that this is peaceful, this is sublime. That is the tranquilizing or stilling of all formations.

the destruction of craving, the dispassion, and finally the experience of nirvana. I might be missing a few of those words in that refrain, but essentially it's talking about not just the process of how that happens. It's from the first, second, third, whatever jhana it is, that this passion can arise as well, if the mind is attending towards just letting go of the process, not really, not really interested, let's say, in the sense of being attached to the outcomes, being attached to the experience of the jhanas, and just inclining the mind towards nirvana. Thank you. Thank you. Kim, did you have any questions that you wanted to ask?

Yes, I can ask a few questions about jhana mastery. How would I know once I am ready to do this jhana mastery practice? Usually I would recommend that somebody gets to anagami, because the mind is very pure at that point. There's not any lust or craving, there's not any aversion or ill will. That's not to say that the mastery can't happen before that, but my usual recommendation is wait until you get to the third path, and then you can start looking at mastery of jhanas, because then that naturally inclines to the fruition of that, which is the ability for an anagami to get to cessation of perception and feeling whenever they want.

One more quick question, Delson, if you don't mind. It's Yoniso manasikara and Sama sankappa, are they the same thing? Both are, both are like, intention, right? It's something to do with the right intention, that's the way I'm... Yeah, the first, I'm sorry, the first word that you used, I didn't catch. Yoniso manasikara is rooted in right intention. So right intention can mean right intention or right thought. That is the sama sankappa, which... sankappa really comes from some sankalpa in Sanskrit, which is to have an intention, to have some kind of a wish. It has different connotations and meanings, but in the context of the Dhamma, right intention is just threefold: being able to let go of any experiences that are happening, so seeing this as impersonal, seeing this as not worth holding onto, seeing this as impermanent, that this is not mine, this is not me, this is not myself. And then yoniso manasikara is rooted in that, but it allows you to actually see that in the moment.

It's yoniso manasikara. Manasikara means attention, or paying attention, it's the faculty of attention, and yoniso really is getting to the root of, or getting to the source of. So when you go into the suttas and you see the Buddha going through that process of seeing what is the cause of a certain link of dependent origination, he was using yoniso manasikara. He asked the question, and then let the mind come to the answer. So he asked, what is the cause of rebirth? And after some time the answer came, which is being is the cause of rebirth, dava is the cause of rebirth, and so on and so forth. So that's one way to use yoniso manasikara, which is when you're using your intuition, which is letting go of any expectation of outcomes, letting go of all kinds of attachments, then asking the question, and it will come to you at some point in the form of an insight. The way I translate yoniso manasikara is attention rooted in reality, which is to say that the mind

is aware of, or is always perceptive of, the perception of impermanence, or the impermanent nature of all conditioned things. It's aware of not holding on to anything, because all conditioned things will cause dukkha, and it's aware of anatta. It's just knowing that this is empty of any personal self, and it doesn't take anything as personal self. Does anyone have any more questions? We can wait a couple of minutes and see, maybe a few more. And then we can close off the session. Thank you. Let's share some merit.

May the suffering ones be suffering free, and the fear-struck, fearless be. May the grieving shed our grief, and may all beings find ways. May all beings share this merit that we have acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May these inhabiting space and earth give us and help us in mighty power. Share this merit of ours. May they come to protect the people of this sensation. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.