June 10 -Day 6...Formations to Feeling-Paticca Samuppada-Delson Armstrong

Yesterday we began talking about dependent origination and we discussed the links in reverse order. We started off with suffering with Jara Marana, which is the old age and death, and along with that other aspects of dukkha, and we saw that the birth of karmic action led to some kind of a karmic result that is rooted in suffering.

We saw how that birth is dependent upon what's known as bhava or becoming, the process by which we act with an almost automatic reaction, a collection of habitual tendencies that we have cultivated through similar patterns, similar behaviors, similar situations, and so on. And then we saw that this bhava or becoming is dependent upon clinging, which is the strong associations with the sixth sense basis and the experience of the sixth sense basis, with rites and rituals, self-view or views in general.

And then we ended up discussing a bit of craving, which is that mind that's rooted in craving is agitated through the I like it, I don't like it, or I am it mindset. In other words, craving, aversion, or identification with the process. Now we will discuss the rest of the series of links in Dependent Origination.

And these are all old karma. Yesterday, whatever we discussed are the mechanics through which new karma is activated, cultivated, and brought to action. And now we will discuss old karma, all the karma that we have inherited through past moments, through past choices and decisions and intentions. In that series, we will now discuss feeling. This comes from the word Vedana.

Vedana means to know, to experience. of the word feeling what we're saying is not just our emotional feelings we're not talking about just that we're not talking about our internalized mental and emotional feelings we're also talking about sensations through the eyes through the ears through the nose the tongue the body and so some people translate this as experience because that covers the whole broad spectrum of everything right whether it's sensations in around or on the body or whether it's internal experiences of the body and the mind in terms of how we feel and perceive now tied to feeling is what is known as perception so feeling is the experience is labeling or recognizing what it is that we are experiencing.

If I am seeing the color white or the color red, I know it's white or I know it's red because I have learned about it somewhere else in my previous time in this existence. In other words, maybe in kindergarten or first grade, I learned about the color white. I learned about the color red. And so every time I see it, I recognize it as white or as red. That's perception.

That experience of seeing the color red or seeing the color white is Vedana or feeling. It's a verb, feeling. It's a verb. It's a process. Not in this case, just a sensation. It's an actual process that is happening. I am seeing, I am hearing, I am smelling, I am tasting, I am touching, I am thinking. These are all different types of feeling and all kinds of experiences.

Now there are 108 different types of feeling. Let's go through each one of them in exact detail, yes. But the primary categories of feeling are pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. And how do you get to 108? Well, you have internal feeling and external feeling. So you have pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral internal feeling and external feeling. You have those in the past, in the present, and in the future.

So somehow when you multiply all of those, that gets you to 108. I was never good at mathematics, so I'm not going to do it. But what do we mean by pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral? Pleasant is that which is pleasing to the nervous system, that is pleasing to the eyes, to the ears, to the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind, something that makes us feel good. An unpleasant situation, experience, or feeling is that which makes us feel crappy, which makes us feel bad, which is undesirable for our nervous system. And a neutral feeling generally is categorized into two.

There's indifference and there's equanimity. So we're not really paying attention to the quality of the feeling there. It's just whatever feeling is there and we're indifferent to it. Or we are paying attention but we don't add any kind of categorization to it. It's just a feeling, and therefore it's equanimity. So the question is, I have a pleasant feeling, or I have an unpleasant feeling, or I have a neutral feeling.

How is it that craving is dependent upon feeling? How do I make that connection? How is it that any experience leads to craving? Why should it? How would it? Well, there is something happening under the surface. How do you get from feeling to craving? There are these things called anusayas in Pali. These anusayas are seven in number, and they're translated usually as underlying tendencies.

For example, when I have a pleasant experience, my mind looks at that experience and my nervous system kind of clenches around that experience and wants to own it, wants to hold it, wants it to stay the way it is. And I don't want it to stop. In fact, I want more of it. This is the underlying tendency towards craving.

It's when the nervous system clenches around the experience and says, I want more. When I have an unpleasant experience, my mind can say, this really sucks, I don't like this, I hate this, get it away from me. And what do we do? We push it away. And that urge to push it away is that underlying tendency towards aversion.

Then there are other underlying tendencies. When we talk about the neutral feeling, if we are unaware of the neutral feeling, or even unaware of what it is that we're experiencing, in terms of it is just a feeling. Feeling is just a feeling. It's just a process. But our mind supplants onto it the idea that this feeling is me, this feeling is mine, this feeling is myself.

And that is the underlying tendency towards ignorance. When I have a lack of mindfulness of the three marks of existence of every feeling and experience that arises, that's an underlying tendency towards ignorance. There is something called the underlying tendency towards doubt. How can you doubt your feelings? How can you doubt experience? How can you doubt any sensations?

Well, here the word doubt doesn't mean doubt in terms of whether it's there or not. It means the inability to discern between what is wholesome and unwholesome. So when I have that lack of discernment, again, I take that feeling and I say, this is me, mine, or myself. And in the process, because I hold on to it, anything or anyone that gets in the way of that is an obstacle.

And I will do anything and everything possible to keep that feeling going, which means I could even break a precept. This is what we mean by the underlying tendency towards doubt, which can lead to craving, can lead to aversion, can lead to identification with an experience. So we have the underlying tendency towards craving, underlying tendency towards aversion, underlying tendency towards ignorance, underlying tendency towards doubt.

Then there's something known as the underlying tendency towards views. We create ideas, concepts. We create ideologies. We create all kinds of philosophies or rationales of why this is a good feeling and why we must hold on to it, or why this is a bad feeling and why we must push it away. We have certain kinds of opinions.

About the thing that we're experiencing. And we hold on to those experiences, and we hold on to the opinions about those experiences, and that can lead towards craving or aversion or identification. Then we have something known as the underlying tendency towards bhava, towards becoming. So we had the experience or the link of bhava or becoming, the habitual tendencies, which means: what I want, that feeling to continue; I want that feeling not to continue; or identify with this feeling and I want that existence, that personality or selfhood, to continue. That's the underlying tendency towards bhava. And then we have something known as the underlying tendency towards conceit.

What do we mean by conceit? The other day I said conceit comes from the word mana. Mana means to measure. We mentioned before that comparison is the thief of joy. I take my experience, which is a pleasant experience, but I see that the person in front of me has an even better experience. So I want more.

I'm in competition. Or I have a terrible experience and I see the person in front of me has a better experience. Likewise, the same thing. So the conceit that we talk about, there are many different types of conceit. There's conceit towards how we feel about something in relation to a sense of self: prideful, we feel like a sense of ownership, we feel arrogant, we feel conceited, we feel like this sensation, this feeling, the sixth sense basis, the fame, the blame, the praise, the honor, the dishonor, the gains, the losses, all of those are me, mine, or myself.

Now these are the different types of conceit. You don't need to know all about those, different kinds of conceit. What we're saying here, basically, on a very practical level, is there's that sense of comparison. I have an experience of being in the third jhana, but the man in front of me is in the fourth jhana, and I get to find out about that. Now my experience pales in comparison to his.

And what do I want? I want what he has. I'll have what she's having. That is the conceit, the underlying tendency towards conceit. And so this is how feeling is bridged towards craving. When we have these underlying tendencies, how do these underlying tendencies arise? Where do they come from? Are they present in us all the time? They are potentials in our mind when we are born.

We spoke about formations the other day, and we'll talk about that more here. But they are like pre-programming in the mind, in the brain. Because of our experiences in the womb, because of our experiences after we come out of the womb, and as we continue to grow and develop as an infant, as a toddler, as a child, as a teenager, as an adult, these things start to develop and to cultivate and to change in their levels of intensity.

So the primary design, for lack of a better word, of all beings on this planet, in this existence, is the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. And we do it all the time. Even when we're meditating, we feel a little itch, we feel a little pain, we need to make an adjustment. Because we're avoiding the pain, and we're trying to get to pleasure, or at least homeostasis.

That is inbuilt within our programming, as beings. And that is the platform upon which these underlying tendencies come to be. So what is feeling dependent upon? Feeling is dependent upon contact. Contact comes from the word 'phassa' in Pali or 'sparsha' in Sanskrit, means spurs to touch. When the light touches my eyes, the sound waves touch my eardrums, the odor molecules touch my olfactory bulb in the nose, when the different taste molecules touch the taste receptors on my tongue, when the different kinds of pressures in the environment touch upon my skin, internally or externally, also, or when there are different kinds of thoughts in those moments, the thought makes contact with the mind. These are all contacts, different kinds of contacts. For example, when you're in infinite consciousness, you see the flicker behind your eyes, or you hear the tip-tap-tip in your ears, or you experience phantom smells or phantom sensations.

These are all contact, arising and passing away. Contact, contact, contact, contact. To take those thoughts and make it about me, mine, or myself. And that's the nature of the mind that is rooted in ignorance, rooted in conceit. Thoughts are no different than the green of the trees and the green of the grass. You can't change the color green when you're looking at the trees right now, or the grass, with your eyes. You can't change the sound of the construction outside. Or you can't change the smell of chocolate cake or the taste of it when you have it. So how can you change your thoughts? It's the same thing. They're just mental processes happening, and the nature of the mind is to take that hook onto it and say this is all about me, this is all mine, this is all about myself, and

Really, they are just currents in the ocean. Just clouds in the sky. How could the sky take itself to be the clouds? The sky is the awareness behind the thoughts. There are two kinds of thoughts. There's the passive, discursive thinking process that happens, which we are not in control of. And then there's a verbalizing, intentionalizing process of thinking about something, contemplating something, reflecting on something, or bringing up an object.

The first kind of thought, the discursive thought, is brought about through mental formations. The second kind, which is the active process of contemplating, reflecting, thinking, and creating or intentionalizing an object, is facilitated through the verbal formations. I think instead of calling them verbal formations, we can call them contemplative formations, for lack of a better word. So you have an understanding that it's not about just expressing and speech. When we say verbal, we think in words, we think in images, we think in patterns. These are all under the word vacha, for which the translation is verbal.

But that's just the limitations of translating from Pali to English. So if you grasp this understanding that thoughts are no different than trying to change the color of trees when you can't, trying to change the sounds around you, right? Then you just see it as clouds in the sky. Let them pass on, pass by. So this contact arises dependent upon three things.

So contact is dependent upon the sixth sense basis. What are the sixth sense bases? The eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind. So when we say mind, what do we mean by that? We mean not just the brain or not just the nervous system, but just that whole experience of mind. And we'll get deeper into that, what we mean by that, the faculties of mind.

These sixth sense bases are receptors that the nervous system picks up and carries as signals into the brain, which the brain then repackages into an interpretation of what reality is. These are tools. They are the receptors for this matrix. They are what allow us to create this matrix. And this matrix is nothing but feeling and perception. So when I have an experience of seeing, that's dependent upon eye contact.

Eye contact. When I am hearing something, that is dependent upon ear contact. When I smell something, that's dependent upon nose contact. When I taste something, that is dependent upon tongue contact. When I feel through touch, body contact. And when there is a process of thinking going on, that is dependent upon mind contact. So when we say eye contact, ear contact, nose contact, tongue contact, body contact, mind contact, what do we mean?

These are the three components. I need the eye or the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body or the mind, and an object. In this case, for eyes, we will need color and form. For ears, we will need the sound waves in the atmosphere. For the nose, we'll need the odor molecules. For the tongue, we'll need the taste molecules. For the body, we'll need the internal or external pressures.

And for the mind, we will need thoughts, as it's put. But color and form, for the most part, if we just take it very simply, objectively, is out there. Sound waves are out there. The odor molecules, taste molecules, and pressures are out there, internal. They're all there. But how can I see? How can I hear? How can I smell? How can I taste? How can I touch?

How can I think? I need something that connects between the two. Because my eyes might be there, but I might be blind. My ears may be there, but I may be deaf. But the outside world has color and form. The outside world has sounds, has sound waves. Why am I blind? Why am I deaf? What is preventing me from hearing or seeing?

And that is consciousness. Eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness. These are the six consciousnesses. When the Buddha uses the word consciousness, he's not talking about some kind of substratum. In this context, that is to say, it is the universal consciousness through which all beings are born and existence arises. We're not talking about that.

We're talking about awareness. We're talking about the ability for there to be reception. The signal is out there in the form of color and form, sounds, taste, and all of that. And the receptor is there. But the process of receiving requires awareness. So when we talk about contact, what do you need in order for contact to arise? How does awareness arise? How is awareness directed?

Attention. Let's go back to that analogy of the stage show, where you have a performer on stage, and the performer is your object of meditation. The spotlight is the attention. The intention is the guy navigating the spotlight, right, moving around the spotlight. So my intention controls the attention. Right now, all or most of your eyes are fixed on me, which means there is the experience, or the external form, of myself, and the light bounces off and hits your eyes. So your eyes and the object of the eyes, which is myself, is there. When these two meet, there is an eye awareness, an eye consciousness, fixed to me. If I tell you now to look at these flowers, what has happened? Your attention has moved to these flowers, which means the eyes are no longer in contact with me. They're in contact with these flowers. And when they're in contact with these flowers, there is a corresponding awareness, dependent upon the eyes making contact with the flowers, which have been directed by your attention, which has been directed by your intention to move your attention.

So, contact is dependent upon the sixth sense basis, and the sixth sense basis are dependent upon something known as nama-rupa. Nama is name, rupa is form. Also translated as mentality, materiality. Materiality is form. Materiality is just the elements that make up this form. What are the elements here? The elements here are the earth element, the water element, the fire element, and the air element.

And sometimes the space element, if you want to include that, and the consciousness element. So this form, any form, this table, this phone, these flowers, the statue of the Buddha, these books, this table, this teacup, this candle, this meditating Sasquatch, all of these are made up of varying degrees of earth element, water element, fire element, and air element, and space element.

That's what materiality means. We start off as little infants, newborns, and our body grows through nourishment of milk or formula. And over a while, we then start to eat soft foods and then other kinds of foods, and those foods become assimilated into part of our body. Foods are from the ground, generally speaking. Most foods, right, they're either liquid or they're earth.

So the food is grown into the soil, or if we eat meat, the meat comes from these animals that are also born from nutrition from the earth. Earth element, water element, fire element, and air element. The food that we eat, the water we take, all of the things that we put inside our body become assimilated as part of this body, accumulated as part of this body. And that is materiality.

Simple enough. But there's something known as mentality. And there are five components to mentality, a mentality that is mind. And mind is known by its faculties and processes. What are the five faculties? Contact, feeling, perception, intention, attention. These correspond to the five aggregates. So materiality already corresponds to the form aggregate, through the faculty of contact. What do we mean by faculty?

There are these components, let's say, in the mind that allow us to experience contact, allow us to experience and take in feeling, allow us to experience perception, allow us to have intention, volition, allow us to be aware through our attention. There is the process of contact which we've experienced when we say the eye meets with the form, and there is an underlying eye consciousness. That's the process of contact that flows through the faculty of contact in mentality.

When we say we are feeling something, when we are seeing something that's dependent upon contact, that is happening through the faculty of feeling. When you say the process of perception, that's happening through the faculty of perception. When we intend something, when we make a choice in every given moment, that happens through the faculty of volition or intention.

When we are aware of something, that happens through the faculty of attention. The Buddhist understanding of how mind and body works as part of mind. Mentality and materiality are dependent upon consciousness. Now there are two ways of understanding this process. There is a sutta known as the greater destruction of craving, the Maha Tanhakkhaya Sutta. I believe it's Majjhima Nikaya 38. It's a good sutta. It's a really interesting sutta because he goes through the evolution of a person who grows and so on and so forth. But he talks about how that process happens in terms of the creation of that being.

And he says you need three things for the creation of a being. We're simplifying it just for human existence. You need, he says, the way he says it is, you need the mother and the father, and you need the consciousness, the gandhabba. So we need the genetic material, and we need consciousness to bring life to that. So you can choose to contemplate that if you want. But this is the understanding within that particular sutta.

But there's another way of looking at how mentality and materiality are actually interdependent with consciousness. In order for consciousness to function as awareness, as attention, it needs mentality. And in human existence, it needs a body as well to be housed. Materiality to function, it needs the power of consciousness to run it. And this is how they are interdependent.

If the energy of consciousness were no longer present in the body and in the mind, then what we have is a corpse. We're not saying that consciousness is the soul, which is to say that it is some kind of a permanent being. What we're saying is that the process of consciousness continues to arise and pass away, which allows for the continual growth of the body and the mind, and eventually even decay.

That's one way of understanding it. But the other way of understanding it is that in order for us to even experience that we have a body, in order for us to experience that we have a mind, we require awareness of it. An awareness of the body. That's why when you're in the fourth jhana and you go up to the fifth and sixth and seventh, there's very little awareness of the body because your attention is no longer there. Your attention is in these higher states.

So you still have a mind. You still have a body. It's not like you leave your body when you're in jhana. It's just that the contact with the body is not as apparent as there is with the factors, and so you still need awareness there in order for that to function. So mentality, materiality, and their processes require awareness. This is called vinnana. V-I-N-A-N-N-A. Or in Sanskrit, vijnana, which is V-I-Silent-J-N-A-N-N-A. And the vi means divided.

And jnana means knowledge. And so what we're saying is divided knowledge. The knowing of something, the understanding of something, is divided in between what? These five sense bases, which all come and track back into the mind as mind consciousness. This is why mind is chief. Mind is the forerunner of all states. We think when we touch this table, we feel this at the skin of our hands.

Or when we are seeing, that we are seeing through the eyes. And yes, we are, because we're picking up the signals. But the mind is what interprets what it is that we are experiencing. And for that to function, it requires an awareness to be aware of what is being experienced. This is why in Majjhima Nikaya 43 it says feeling and perception, these two are intertwined.

Where there is feeling, there is perception. And where there is perception, there is awareness. And these three run around each other: feeling, perception, and consciousness. Remember, when I say consciousness, I'm not talking about the substrate of some kind of underlying existence that is the Brahman of all experience. I'm talking about just awareness that is within the conditioned experience.

So this consciousness is dependent upon something known as sankhara. Sankhara translates to formations, to cook up something. These are the facilitators to cook up our reality. They are the chefs in the kitchen preparing whatever it is that we want to experience in this world or we don't want to experience in this world. We have no control over that.

Whatever rice cooks for you, you have to eat. We talked about this a couple of times. We have physical formations, verbal formations, and mental formations. Physical formations are related to our bodily processes. They determine how often we breathe, whether we're breathing or not. They determine how we walk and other aspects of the body itself: the physicality, the heat of the body, the metabolism of the body, and so on and so forth.

The verbal formations are related to our ability to contemplate, think about something, actively think about something, to intentionalize a picture in our mind or words in our mind which we can express in speech. And the mental formations facilitate our process of feeling and perception. Because whether you are seeing or hearing or tasting or smelling or touching, at the end of the whole process, it is fed into the mind. And hence, the feeling and perception comes from those mental formations.

So when we are bringing up an object of meditation, we are in the first jhana, we are having that process of sustaining that object. And as we become self-confident and get into the second jhana, the verbal formation ceases. We don't have to make another intention to keep that object going until we do. But for that time, those verbal formations cease. As we get into the fourth jhana, contact with the body.

We even feel like we're stopping breathing, like our breathing has become subtler. We stop paying attention to all that. And so the physical formations seem to cease. And then as we progress upward through the 5th, the 6th, the 7th, and the 8th, after a while, because there is no more fuel being given attention, the proto-thoughts, which are the mental formations, they too cease.

And that's why we have the cessation of perception and feeling. These formations are carriers of karma. They help facilitate the process through which karma is activated. When I make contact with the outside world, that feeds back to the formations to facilitate what it is that I feel and perceive. Rooted in and conditioned by the ignorance, then they will be rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion.

These are the roots. When the formations are rooted in some kind of greed, then the awareness that arises is stained, like a stained glass window through which it's filtered through one of the 16 kinds of defilements, like jealousy, conceit, pride, arrogance, desire to harm, stubbornness, many different things. And that conditions the way we then take an experience as me, mine, or myself.

And that is where the underlying tendencies arise to give rise to full-blown craving, which then conditions clinging, which then conditions becoming, which then gives the birth of new action, and finally suffering. So these formations, if they are conditioned by ignorance, what does that mean? What is ignorance? Ignorance comes from the word avija. We're not necessarily ignoring anything, but really what we're saying is we are unaware of the Four Noble Truths.

We don't know the Four Noble Truths in every given moment. We don't see the Four Noble Truths in every given moment. Avija means lack of knowledge. And for practical purposes, it basically means lack of mindfulness. When there is a lack of mindfulness in any given moment, the formations can be rooted in greed, hatred, or delusion. And thereby, how we pay attention to something can be determined or stained by some kind of defilement, which then, when the contact is made with the outside world, makes us take personally one of the sensations or feelings or experiences.

And because we have lack of mindfulness at that level of feeling, which is the gatekeeper, the security guard, and that is no longer present, craving can seep in. Aversion can seep in. Identification can seep in. And if you can't recognize then, which means we don't have mindfulness then, then clinging can arise. And if you don't have mindfulness then, then becoming can arise.

And if you don't have mindfulness then, then the birth of action. And by then, you're lost. Because at the birth of action, it's like the river of dependent origination, and all of these different undercurrents are there. The underlying tendencies, the upakkilesas, and so on. It doesn't matter if you know them or not, but just you see them as a river that flows.

And then at the bend of the river is the birth of action, or becoming, let's say. And then when you go down the waterfall, that's the birth of action. What happens next is suffering, obviously. Swim your way back the waterfall. Once the arrow is released, you can't call it back. Once the thought is thought, you can't call it back. Once the word is spoken, you can't call it back. Once you have acted upon something, you can't call back the action.

And so what happens? You are beholden to the consequences of those actions, words, or thoughts. Maybe in this moment, maybe in the next moment, or maybe in some future moment, if the causes and conditions are right for them to arise. And this all stems from a lack of mindfulness. What is ignorance dependent upon? The three viruses: the kama asava, the bhava asava, and the avija asava.

What do we mean by these viruses? They are deeply ingrained parts of the mind that have basically infected the entire process of experience. They are deeper than the roots. And this kama asava is essentially that part of the mind that says, I want this. Like, I want to obtain this experience. The bhava asava says, I want this in terms of, I want this experience never to stop. I want to be better than this. I want a better experience. And the avija asava is the ingrained lack of mindfulness. Well, let's just say about human beings first. When you have toddlers, they obviously have all of these asavas. They don't know any self-control.

They only recognize what they want. And if they don't get what they want, what do they do? They throw a tantrum. Because they don't know any better. It's the ignorance in that moment. There's no attention, there's no self-control, there's no awareness, there's just this: I want, I want, I want. Or, I don't want. This food is yucky, take it away from me.

They kick and scream. That's also part of the kamasava, the bhavasava. And as the human being is programmed through the experiences, these viruses grow deeper and wider through the brain, through the mind. But every time we have mindfulness, every time we learn how to be attentive to what's going on in every given moment, we have present moment awareness, we can recognize when the contact arises. We can recognize when the feeling arises. We can even recognize when the craving is about to arise.

But because of our skills through the Dhamma and the practicing of the Eightfold Path, we're able to see that and we're able to let it go. We're able to process it. And thereby, we let go of any potential of new karma from arising. In the context of meditation, let's look at it this way. I am meditating and I have an intentionalization of bringing up an object. And so that is facilitated through my verbal formations. I bring up loving kindness.

And so what happens? My mind makes contact with that feeling of loving kindness. And thereby there is an awareness of that loving kindness. And thereby there is a sensation of that loving kindness. So now my mind, as the sense-based object, makes contact with the mind object of loving kindness. There's an underlying awareness of that loving-kindness and thereby the feeling in the psychosomatic experience of warmth in the heart or whatever the experience feels like for us when we think about loving-kindness.

So I'm having that, but bit by bit my mindfulness goes to something else. My attention goes somewhere else. What has happened? Mindfulness as the gatekeeper has gone out to lunch. The security guard is no longer at his post. So now what happens? Craving seeps in. So a hindrance arises. And that hindrance arose because of something we may have done in the past.

And that hindrance manifests as now a new experience that we're experiencing. A mental experience: vedana. It's an unpleasant experience. So how do we choose to deal with it? We can have more craving if it's a hindrance that's something that we think about, like chocolate cake or being somewhere else or the sensation of the distractions outside, the disturbances outside, and we say, I don't like this, and we try to push it away. The aversion, the restlessness, the sloth and torpor, the doubt, the lack of discernment, all of those things arise in the mind one way or the other. What are we doing? We are indulging in the link of craving.

And then we rationalize why it is this hindrance is here and why it should not be here. And all of these things happen. But if we recognize that this hindrance is present and we release our attention from that and we relax, uplift the mind, gently come back to our object, what are we doing? We're engaging with the hindrance in a wise way. Thereby, that hindrance goes away.

Because our attention is now back on our object. But after a while, the hindrance comes back. But it's weaker this time. Because we haven't added fuel to the fire. And we do the same thing. And the hindrance weakens again. Back again, but it's much weaker. And eventually it fades away. You take this principle and you apply it to everything in your life.

Every difficult situation, difficult relationship, challenging person, all things that happen in the present moment to us is old karma that we have inherited, which we just need to deal with. Of course, we can't six-hour a person. We can't six-hour and experience away, but we six-hour our mental reactions to the situation, thereby reconditioning whether craving arises or not, reconditioning whether clinging comes or not, reconditioning whether we choose from those library of habitual tendencies or not, and thereby stopping the flow of new karma as a reaction to the old karma, into a birth of action which will then lead to suffering.

So when we understand dependent origination in this way and we apply the principles in this way, then what we are saying is we experience everything, the good, the bad, the indifferent, the unpleasant, the pleasant, the neutral, the wholesome, the unwholesome, the neutral. We experience everything fully. In the seeing, there's only the seen. In the hearing, there's only the heard. In the sensing, there's only the sense. In the cognizing, there's only the cognized.

The only difference is we do not supplant taking it personally. When, Bhaya, you do not see the self in that or by that. Just that is the end of suffering. This is the Bhaya Sutta that I like to quote often. In the seeing, there's only the seeing. Experience, there's only the experience. If you choose to let go of the self in the experience and see the experience as just an experience, then there's a flow.

But as soon as we supplant the self, now we have something to defend, we have something to control, we have something to change, we have something to manipulate, we have something to like or not like or identify with. Dependent origination is not some kind of a, although it can seem like it, it's not some kind of huge theoretical model that you need to memorize.

Just understand this. In every experience that I'm having, how am I taking this experience? How is my mind taking this experience? If I can recognize the craving coming up, I can recognize the identification coming up, and I can choose to let it go, then I am reconditioning the arising of the next links of dependent origination in the subsequent moment and future moments as I keep doing this.

And eventually, as I do this, and as I perfect my mindfulness, ignorance is destroyed. And thereby, all I am doing then is experiencing the old karma I have to experience prior to the destruction of total ignorance or the total destruction of ignorance. So I'm still beholden to choices that I made prior to the destruction of that ignorance, which means that karma is facilitated through those formations.

And as those formations allow us to have an awareness of that experience. And so what is remaining for such a person? No more ignorance, only formations, consciousness, mentality, materiality, the contact and the feeling. But because there's perfect mindfulness, no craving, no clinging, no becoming, no birth of action, no further future suffering. And therefore, all that remains are the five aggregates. Because the formations are there. The consciousness is there. The mentality materiality, which is the form, is there. And the feeling is there and the perception tied to it is there.

And so the Vipassi Buddha saw this. But he also recognized that one needs to let go of any clinging to the five aggregates or identifying with them. See them for what they are. This is going to be a very blunt and stark statement to hear, but it is in one of the suttas. It is in the simile of the snake. The Buddha says, suppose there's grass outside and somebody were to light the grass on fire. Would you be so concerned? As long as no one is harmed, nothing is going on there. Would you be so concerned about it? Because it's just grass.

So we treat the aggregates in the same way. We see the aggregates in the same way. It's a very stark statement. But what he's getting at is if we can see the aggregates as totally impersonal, then there is no possibility of future identification arising or craving arising from those aggregates. The aggregates remain just as they are. They continue to change just as they are. What then qualifies our awakening?

Our perception of seeing them as wholly conditioned, as fully conditioned, thereby unstable, ever changing, thereby liable to cause suffering because we'll still experience pain. We let go of the ignorance and all of that, but you stub your toe, what are you going to do? You're going to experience pain. That's an unpleasant sensation. But you might even curse, and you may even say, ow, and you may even be like, what was that? But you're not going to let that proliferate into clinging and becoming and so on.

So you will still be beholden to pain. You'll still be beholden to illness. But your relationship with illness changes. You will still age. So anybody who came on this retreat with the idea that this is an anti-aging retreat, I'm sorry to burst your bubble. But your relationship to how you age and what happens in the aging process changes.

And when you are ready to die, you will be able to let go fully. And not an iota of any potential possibility of future rebirth can exist. And when you die, you die. That's it. No new beginning. No new rebirth. No new possibility of further suffering into a new existence. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.