June Retreat AN 10.1 Transcendental Arising-Out of Suffering

So today I want to talk a little bit more about the path, because that is what you will be developing, not only in what you've been doing on this retreat but also in what you will continue to develop, hopefully, off retreat. The path we're talking about here is about the fourth noble truth. Right, there are four noble truths. The first is that there is suffering. The second is that there is an origin of suffering. The third is that there is a cessation of that same suffering by the cessation of the origin of suffering, and that there is a path leading to the cessation of suffering.

So, earlier on we were exploring the first two noble truths by understanding dependent origination, which is an elaboration of suffering and how suffering arises. The second noble truth is, namely, craving, but craving is an abbreviation for all of the different facets and links that lead to suffering, namely ignorance, craving, clinging, becoming, conceived, wrong views. Now we're going to talk about the three, well, number three and number four, the third and fourth noble truths, which is the cessation of craving and the cessation of suffering.

This is what you've been doing in the last few days, in the last seven days let's say, where you have been letting go of suffering, utilizing the path. That path is encapsulated in the six Rs. So the six Rs are essentially the four right efforts. There are also the awakening factors, or to bring up the awakening factors, and they allow you to walk the right path, that is the eightfold path.

Along with that, they're doing other things that are meeting in resonance with the other aspects of what is known as the 37 requisites for enlightenment. So that includes the four foundations of mindfulness, that includes the five powers and the five faculties, the eightfold path, the seven enlightenment factors, the four bases for spiritual power, and so on and so forth. So all of these are incorporated every time you utilize the six Rs. Now I'm going to be talking about what is known as the transcendental dependent origination.

So the dependent origination that we know, or that we've heard of so far, is from ignorance all the way to suffering. Those are the 12 links. But there are 11 additional links to understand, which allows you to experience the cessation of suffering and liberation of the mind. I'm going to be reading from the Book of the Tens, and this is Anguttara Nikaya 10.1, and it is in the section, the first 50, which is the section on benefits, and the name of the Sutta is called, What Purpose?

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Savati in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's Park. Then the Venerable Ananda approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, sat down to one side, and said to him, Bhante, what is the purpose and benefit of wholesome, virtuous behavior? So before we start on this, let me explain what is the actual link, the first link, in Transcendental Dependent Origination.

The first link is actually suffering. So in other words, ignorance leads to formations, formations lead to consciousness, consciousness leads to nama-rupa, or mentality-materiality. Mentality-materiality leads to the six sense bases. The six sense bases lead to contact. Contact leads to feeling. Feeling leads to craving. Craving leads to clinging. Clinging leads to habitual tendencies. Habitual tendencies lead to birth.

And birth leads to aging and death, sorrow, grief, lamentation, and despair, a whole mass of suffering, dukkha. But dukkha is the first link in transcendental dependent origination. Why? Because it is from dukkha that you seek a way out of dukkha. It is from suffering that you seek a way out of suffering. If somebody is satisfied in their life and everything is going well in their life, why would they seek a way out of that? So people who are on this path come to this path because at some point or another they had experienced enough suffering to say, is there a way out of the suffering? And so the Buddha has said that suffering leads in two ways, in two directions. It leads to further confusion, because somebody who has suffering may numb that suffering. They may suppress that suffering through alcohol, drugs, sex, food, media, addictions, all kinds of things, to numb that suffering.

And so that leads to further confusion. But somebody else says there has to be a way out. They have had enough of the suffering, enough of this vicious cycle of trying to alleviate, so-called alleviate, that suffering through whatever they've done in terms of indulging in sensual pleasures. They ask themselves, it must be another way out. So they find out. Right, in the modern day you read books, you go on YouTube, you go on Google, you search what is the way out of suffering, and you come across Dhammasukha Meditation Center, and hence here you are, finding a way out of suffering.

So then that suffering leads to something else, and that suffering leads to faith. That's the second link. Excuse me. So what is that faith that we're talking about? Remember, I told you, you don't have to believe in anything. You don't have to believe in the Buddha. You don't have to have faith in the Buddha in the same way that you would think that he is your Lord and Savior. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the openness to try out what is being taught. If you cannot come at this with an open mind, then you can't actually apply the principles. So you have to let go of some level of doubt, some level of skepticism.

Have an open mind and say, let me see for myself. That's why the Buddha has said the Dhamma is inviting you. It is open to testing, right? Check it out for yourself and see if it works for you. So that's one level of faith. There's another level of faith called experiential conviction or experiential confidence. That only arises as a result of walking the path. When you walk the path, you go through the jhanas and you experience for yourself Nibbana, then you know for a certain fact that this is the path leading to Nibbana. This is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. Now you have experiential confidence.

And so from that experiential confidence, that leads to Pamojja. But before I get into what that is, there is an alternate way of looking at this. And so Ananda is asking the Buddha, what's the purpose? What is the benefit of wholesome, virtuous behavior? Because you see, tied to that faith, tied to that openness to try and see, is also making a commitment to be wholesome and virtuous.

That's what you do every morning. You take refuge in the Buddha. You take refuge in the Dhamma. You take refuge in the Sangha. You do that three times. You then take the five precepts. Well, in this case, eight precepts, but when you get back into the real world, or the outside world, I should say, there you take the five precepts, and you're making a commitment to remain wholesome.

So intertwined with this, right, is right view, right intention, right speech, and right action. Faith is understanding, first and foremost, your world view. Understanding what is wrong view according to the Dhamma, and what is right view. Wrong view basically says that there is no karma. There is no action that leads to consequences. There is no meaning in generosity. There is no meaning in what is offered. It says that there is no mother and father. In other words, we don't owe anything to our parents. It says that there is no this world and the other world. It says that there is no one who has learned the Dhamma and can profess it, can teach it, can elucidate it, and show you the way.

But right view, and that is the mundane right view, says otherwise. It says that there is meaning in giving. There is meaning in action and consequence. It says that there is mother and father. What does that mean? There is mother and father. It says that we owe it to our parents for giving us life, giving us an opportunity in this existence, in this human existence, to actually walk the path and experience Nibbana. That alone is something that you have to be grateful for, let alone all the other things that our parents have done for us. If your parents have not been, let's say, the ideal parents, that's okay. Forgive that. Let that go. Understand that at the very basic level, they provided us life so that we can learn from life, understand the path and experience Nibbana.

And so there is gratitude for that. There are ways of expressing that gratitude. No matter what we do in the way of expressing our gratitude, it will never repay the level of merit that they, basically the level of karma that they have produced by helping us come into this existence. So regardless of what our parents have been like, we can forgive that and just be grateful for that alone.

Then it says that there is this world and the other world. So this world and the other world takes into account the idea that there are other worlds out there. You talk about the Buddhist cosmology, that there are other realms out there. But I also like to see it in this way, that there is this world, which is made by the six sense bases, or the five physical senses. And there is the other world, which is the experience of jhana. In other words, it is possible for us to experience something beyond sensual pleasures, which is the pleasure of jhana, and ultimately experiencing the ultimate super mundane state of Nibbana. And that there are those who have walked the path and can show the path. So, the ascetics and brahmins who have walked this path and shown how it can be done. So once you get your view straight with that open mind and start from that, then that leads to right intention.

What is that right intention? There are three aspects to right intention: renunciation, non-ill will, and non-cruelty. When we talk about renunciation, we're not talking just about physical renunciation. We're talking about mental renunciation, the renunciation of letting go of a personal self, the renunciation of saying that this is me, this is mine, this is myself, letting go of the idea of ownership over things, over people, over situations, over relationships, over even what we consider to be ourselves in terms of the body and the five aggregates. That is ultimate renunciation.

What is non-ill will? Non-ill will is having no ill will at all, which is the perfection of having cultivated loving kindness. You come to such a point in perfecting the radiating of loving kindness that you don't have any more ill will in your intentions. What is non-cruelty? That is the perfection of compassion. You wouldn't even harm a fly. You would not hurt a single living being intentionally. So what is cruelty? Cruelty is ignoring another person's suffering and adding to their suffering through your thoughts, through your speech and through your action.

Non-cruelty is the cultivation and perfection of compassion. And what is compassion? Understanding that there is suffering in other beings and not wishing to add to their suffering, but that they are relieved of their suffering. Being there as a support and guidance system for them to come out of their suffering. Not to be a crutch, not to walk the path for them, but to help them walk the path for themselves, so that they can experience the insight for themselves. So that is the true manifestation of compassion. So these are the threefold right intentions: renunciation, non-ill will and non-cruelty. From there you have what is known as right speech.

Right speech is essentially refraining and abstaining from false speech. So keeping that precept right, the fourth precept, which is abstaining from false speech, abstaining from slander, abstaining from gossip, abstaining from harsh speech, abstaining from abusive speech, abstaining from speech that divides, abstaining from restless speech, which is to say just speaking for the sake of speaking, just babbling with your mouth for no reason, right? So there is an acronym that I use in order to understand right speech, and it is THINK. T-H-I-N-K. Think before you speak. You've heard this before: think before you speak. So what does that mean? Think before you speak. The T stands for timeliness. Is it the right time to say what it is that you want to say?

H is for honesty. Do you know what you're going to say to be true? Do you know that you are being honest in what you are going to say? I is for intention. What is your intention? Is it a wholesome intention or an unwholesome intention? N is for necessity. Is it necessary for you to say what you have to say, for the benefit of yourself and/or for the benefit of the other party?

Right, T-H-I-N. And then K is kindness. Can you say whatever it is that you want to say from loving kindness? Can you say it in a kind way? So sometimes I'm asked the question: what if you have to be stern with your kids? What if you have to scold someone? What if you have to reprimand someone? Well, can you do it with loving kindness?

Can you have loving sternness? Yes, you can be stern, but you can also be loving and kind in that. So that's think before you speak. That is right speech, and then that takes you to right action. What is right action? Refraining from killing and harming living beings, refraining from sensual and sexual misconduct, refraining from taking what is not given. So essentially what you're doing here is, when you have right intention, right speech and right action, you're following the precepts.

That is what right intention, right speech and right action is all about: keeping the precepts. And that is intertwined with virtuous behavior. And so then the Buddha says, Ananda, the purpose and benefit of wholesome virtuous behavior is non-regret. In other words, your mind doesn't become restless, your mind doesn't have regret, your mind doesn't have remorse. Why? Because it's keeping the precepts. The moment now, when you get off a retreat and you want to tell a little white lie, you're going to have Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder saying, should I be doing that?

The moment you want to take that sip of wine, you're going to hear, I don't think I should be doing that. And you follow that through, and you don't. You refrain from breaking a precept. How does your mind feel after that? It feels clear. It doesn't have agitation, and therefore your mind remains collected, and so your mind remains uplifted. That is a result of having no regrets, no agitation.

So then Ananda asks, and what Bhante is the purpose and benefit of non-regret? The purpose and benefit of non-regret is joy. We're not talking about piti here. Piti will come later. We're talking about something called pamoja. In Sanskrit, this is also known as Pramodha. And pamoja is joy in being wholesome, joy of the Dhamma. It's gladness. It's being happy that you are having a mind free of breaking precepts. You're having a mind that is uplifted, a mind that is virtuous. As a result of it, what happens? Your mind remains happy, right? There's a certain level of freedom, a certain level of clarity that you experience, and that is the pamoja. So from that pamoja, then he asks, and what Bhante is the purpose and benefit of that joy, of that pamoja?

The purpose and benefit of joy is rapture. That is the piti that you experience. Now we are getting into understanding the rest of the path, because from right view comes right intention. From right intention comes right speech and right action, as well as right livelihood. What is right livelihood? Not to engage in any kind of trade that harms oneself or harms other beings.

So that trade can involve, or that trade should not involve, I should say, the production or selling of alcohol, should not involve the trading of arms and weapons, should not deal in human trafficking, should not deal in poisons, and should not deal in animal sacrifices and animal slaughter. These are the five. And essentially what we're talking about is not to harm anyone from your trade, from your livelihood. Whatever it is that you choose to do, you do not harm yourself and you do not harm others. So that is also part of having wholesome virtuous behavior. As a result, your mind becomes uplifted. When your mind is uplifted, now you can go into the practice of samadhi, and so that umbrella of samadhi, underneath that, is right effort.

Right mindfulness and right collectedness. What is right effort? Right effort is utilizing the six R's. Right effort has four aspects to it: right understanding, unarisen unwholesome states, letting go of already arisen unwholesome states, generating wholesome states, and then maintaining those wholesome states. So first, recognizing an unwholesome state. Second, letting go of it. Third, generating a wholesome state. And fourth, keeping that wholesome state going.

This is exactly what you do when you use the six R's. You recognize when an unwholesome state is present, you release your attention from it and you relax. As a result of relaxing, your mind becomes more collected, and you have joy that arises in the form of smiling. And because of that, there is a generation, or the creation, or the bringing up, the activation of a wholesome state of mind. And then, coming back to whether it is loving kindness or compassion or joy or equanimity or tranquility or quiet mind, all of these are wholesome states that you maintain.

And then you repeat, whenever necessary, whenever the mind gets distracted again. That is right effort. You cannot utilize right effort unless you make a commitment to keep the five precepts. If you break the five precepts, your mind will become agitated and your meditation will not go well. Even if you have a mental action in the form of an intention to harm, or an intention to possess, the pursuit of some kind of sensual pleasure, or the intention to lie, or the intention to steal, or the intention to indulge in intoxication, that alone can create a little bit of restlessness in the mind, can create agitation. So what do you do? You make a commitment to keep that precept or keep those precepts, and then you will be able to best utilize right effort.

That right effort activates mindfulness, so when you activate mindfulness, you are also activating what's known as Dhamma vichaya. So this is the second enlightenment factor, Dhamma vichaya, which means investigation of states, or to discern, to understand, to comprehend what is going on in your mind. Mindfulness is remembering to observe how the mind's attention moves from one object to the other.

And investigation of states allows you to know that you are in a distracted state, coming back to an undistracted state, to a collected state of mind, when you use the rest of the six R's. Now you have energy. As a result of that energy, that is the effort that you are putting into this process of releasing, you have what's known as tranquility and joy. So this pamoja that arises because the mind becomes secluded from unwholesome states of mind gives rise to piti. And that's where the Buddha says, so he asks, and what Bhante is the purpose and benefit of joy? The purpose and benefit of joy is rapture, piti. That piti arises as a result of relief from unwholesome states of mind, being secluded

from all sensual pleasures. The mind now goes inward, and being quite secluded from sensual pleasures, being secluded from unwholesome states of mind, one arises piti and sukha, that is rapture and comfort, rapture and happiness. And so that joy becomes further refined as a joy that you experience in collectedness. And that sukha that you experience is a relaxed mind and a relaxed body. And that is why then Ananda says, and what Bhante is the purpose and benefit of rapture? The purpose and benefit of rapture is tranquility. The mind experiences tranquility every time you relax; you are bringing up that tranquility factor. So the joy leads to tranquility, or the tranquility leads to the joy. They are interdependent. When the mind and body are tranquil, joy naturally arises. When the mind and body feel joyful, they are naturally relaxed.

So now we're talking about interweaving not just the eightfold path but also the enlightenment factors. We start off with the mindfulness, and then the investigation of states, which leads to energy, the right proper effort of letting go. As a result of which you experience joy and tranquility. From that tranquility, then he asks, what is the purpose and benefit of tranquility? The purpose and benefit of tranquility is pleasure, and this pleasure we're talking about is sukha. Sukha is comfort in the body, comfort in the mind. It's total relaxation in the mind and body.

It's that sigh of relief that you feel after having let go that is the sukha that you experience as a factor of the first, second, and third jhanas. And what, Bhante, is the purpose and benefit of pleasure? The purpose and benefit of pleasure is concentration or collectedness. And so now we are getting from right mindfulness into right collectedness.

What is right collectedness? It is getting into the first jhana, letting go of the hindrances through right effort, becoming mindful, understanding where mind's attention is, having discernment, leading to proper effort of letting go, leading to tranquility and joy, leading from there to collectedness. And so now that collectedness means that the mind's attention is non-dispersed. It is collected. It is steady. There's a level of mental steadiness, a level of mental composure, a level of mental stability on the object of meditation.

And this is further refined in the second jhana and fully experienced by the time you get to the third jhana. In the second jhana, you have confidence, self-confidence. There's a certain level of things flowing. And as a result, the mind remains absolutely steady. And so there is the piti and sukha born of collectedness. And what, Bhante, is the purpose and benefit of collectedness?

So now that you have that collectedness, what is going on? You experience the first four jhanas. That is part of right collectedness. Sama-samadhi, as it's called. You go through the first jhana. You experience letting go of thinking or application of thought and sustenance of thought. So applied and sustained thought go away and you experience the second jhana, where the mind becomes even more collected. Once there's further collectedness, the mind then lets go of piti, because it's too coarse. The mind gets even more refined, experiences sukha in the form of contentment and happiness and tranquility. And then even that sukha goes away and the mind experiences what is known as equanimity.

And that is mindfulness purified by equanimity. What purified mindfulness do to equanimity? And that is why when Ananda asks, and what, Bhante, is the purpose and benefit of collectedness, the Buddha says the purpose and benefit of collectedness is the knowledge and vision of things as they really are. This comes from the Pali word yathabhuta nanadassanam. The knowledge and vision of things as they really are.

And that is synonymous with having total equanimity, which is experienced in the fourth jhana as a factor, which is experienced as a Brahma-vihara as well. Loving-kindness changes to compassion. The compassion changes to empathetic joy. The empathetic joy changes to equanimity. And you are seeing things as they actually are. What does that actually mean? It means being able to be okay with whatever is arising and not identifying with it.

Whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, whatever formations are coming into mind, the mind doesn't care about them. It is just seeing through them, seeing them for what they are, just formations. So what happens when you get to quiet mind? Your mind is poking here and there, looking at, okay, what is that formation? What's going on over there? Oh, cessation is about to come. It's coming, it's coming, it's coming, and it doesn't come. Why? Because you're anticipating it. You're waiting for it. You're craving for it. Samsara is all about waiting. And waiting is another name for craving.

Stop waiting. Let that go. Have total equanimity. See things as they actually are. Allow them to be there as they are without getting hooked onto them or without trying to push them away or without trying to identify with them. Then that is also an enlightenment factor, equanimity. That is the seventh enlightenment factor. So as you're going through these jhanas, you're cycling through the enlightenment factors. And that's why in the fourth jhana, you have purity of mindfulness due to equanimity.

The mindfulness leads to investigation of states that leads to energy, that leads to joy, that leads to tranquility, that leads to collectedness, and that collectedness leads to equanimity. That equanimity then further refines the arising of the next level of mindfulness. And there's clarity there, more clarity. And then in the third jhana, there's more clarity. And then finally in the fourth jhana, there's absolute pristine clarity, absolute pristine mindfulness, absolute pristine discernment, proper balance of energy, proper tranquility, proper levels of joy, proper levels of collectedness, and finally, deep equanimity.

And so when you are in the fourth jhana, what happens? Then you radiate the loving-kindness or the compassion in all directions. This is taking you to infinite space. Although we say there are these eight jhanas, there are technically only four jhanas. Sometimes they're categorized as the rupa jhanas, which are the four jhanas, and the arupa jhanas, which are infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception or non-perception. But technically what's happening is you are still in the fourth jhana, but you are now experiencing the base of infinite space. You are inclining your minds towards the base of infinite space when you radiate.

When you experience infinite consciousness, your mind is inclining to the base of infinite consciousness from the fourth jhana. When you experience nothingness, your mind is inclining towards nothingness from the fourth jhana. When you are experiencing neither perception or non-perception, your mind is inclining to neither perception or non-perception from the fourth jhana. So when you are experiencing neither perception or non-perception, you experience what's known as quiet mind. This quiet mind is very, very peaceful. There might be whispers of thought in the background, but there is a level of absolute clarity and collectedness in quiet mind, and your mind is so clear that it's just there. But what happens, because for a long extended period of time where the mind is so quiet, it feels like it needs some kind of stimulation

and because it needs some kind of stimulation, the mind goes into boredom, and because of that boredom it causes all kinds of things: the arising of formations, the arising of this and that. That results in restlessness, or it shuts down in a wrong way by going into sleepiness and drowsiness and experiencing sloth and torpor. So how do you balance that? Well, you use the enlightened factors to balance that. You use tranquility to let go of restlessness. You use joy and interest and energy to let go of sloth and torpor. And when you come back into a balanced quiet mind, you stay there and you rest in it and you don't do anything. That is my final advice to you guys. When you get there, don't do anything. It's easier said than done, because the mind is always wanting to do something. And don't try to do nothing. Just don't do anything.

Because what happens? The mind is like, what should I be doing? What should I be doing? Should I be resting? Should I be observing? What should I be aware of? What should I be looking at? Don't do anything. Okay, how do I not do anything? Right, I should try not to do anything. No, don't try. There is do or do not, there is no try. So just let go of any concepts of effort at that moment, and just relax into it. And if your mind starts to deviate in some form or fashion into a formation, relax and come back. That's all.

You have to do in that moment, but once you are back in quiet mind, don't do anything. The reason why you are doing all of these things, like radiating loving-kindness and compassion, is to keep that part of the mind that feels like it has to do something busy. So you're tricking your mind into coming to quiet mind. You're telling the mind, okay, do this, go do that, go do this. Ultimately, the mind feels satisfied in that and then experiences quiet mind.

And now you have stability. You have great collectedness. And now you need to develop equanimity by not getting affected by the formations that arise one way or the other in the form of boredom, in the form of restlessness, in the form of sloth and torpor, in the form of doubt, in the form of any of these things.

Don't go down the rabbit hole of seeing what exactly are those trippy images that you're seeing in neither perception or non-perception. Let them be, they will be whatever they are. Keep your mind equanimous. And so then that's what Ananda asks. He says, and what, Bhante, is the purpose and benefit of the knowledge and vision of things as they are? In other words, what is the purpose and benefit of equanimity?

The purpose and benefit of the knowledge and vision of things as they really are, or the purpose and benefit of equanimity, is disenchantment and dispassion. Now there's another sutta called Samyutta Nikaya 12.23, which is called the Upanisa sutta. There are actually 11 links that start from suffering and go all the way up to cessation and liberation and the knowledge of liberation. But prior to that, there is this passion, and prior to that, there is disenchantment. But what is disenchantment conditioned by? Disenchantment is conditioned by equanimity.

What is equanimity conditioned by? Collectedness. So if you don't have enough equanimity, which means you don't have enough collectedness. So if you notice the mind getting agitated, if you notice the mind anticipating that experience, what do you do? It means you don't have enough equanimity. So you try to develop that equanimity. But you notice that your equanimity is out of balance. What do you do? Start from loving-kindness. Radiating loving-kindness. When you start from radiating loving-kindness, always do that in your practice. Always radiate something, whether it's loving-kindness, whether it's joy, whether it's compassion, whether it's equanimity, because those first 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 45 minutes of radiating balances the energy. Those first moments or few minutes of radiating bring up mindfulness, bring up discernment, balances the energy, brings up the proper amount of joy, brings up the proper amount of tranquility, brings up the proper amount of collectedness.

Now that the mind is collected, what happens? It doesn't feel like radiating anymore. And so that collectedness is the quiet mind. Now when you're in quiet mind, you just see things as they are. Just rest, don't do anything. As a result of which you experience disenchantment. What is disenchantment? This disenchantment comes from the Pali word nibbida. Nibbida actually means revolution.

And I'll give you an example of what that's referring to. Let's say you have a favorite meal that you really, really enjoy. And we go into the kitchen and we say, we're going to make your favorite meal. And we're going to serve it to you. And we give it to you and you enjoy it. And we say, we have another serving of your favorite meal for you. Would you like some?

You are polite. So you said, sure, I'll have some more. And then as you finish your second helping, we give you a third helping. How do you feel now? You try to finish as best as you can. Before you can even finish that, we give you a fourth helping. And by then you say, I've had enough. And you push it away. You don't have an aversion. You're just, I don't want to see this anymore.

This is what happens. In other words, when I say that somebody who goes into this experience doesn't have enough disenchantment, it means they're not tired enough of all of the stuff that's happening in mind. They're not tired enough of all of the formations coming up. They're not tired enough of all of the boredom slingshotting from boredom to restlessness, sloth and torpor to restlessness, ping-ponging from this to that. They're not tired enough. They seem to enjoy it at some level.

And the reason is because they haven't fully developed their equanimity. So in order for you to have disenchantment, you need strong equanimity. And eventually your mind sees through those formations, sees through all of that activity, and becomes tired of it and doesn't even look at it anymore. It's like it almost just turns its head away from these perceptions. It gets to a deeper level of quiet mind, and there it experiences what's known as dispassion, which is from the Pali word viraga. Viraga means to have or the raga means the division of passion, the letting go of passion, the letting go further interest in whatever is going on. The mind becomes like Teflon. Anything that comes into the mind doesn't stick to it, it just glides through. And so the mind just doesn't look at anything. It has become tired, and hence experiences dispassion. And what Bhante says is the purpose and benefit of disenchantment and dispassion? The purpose and benefit of disenchantment and dispassion is the knowledge and vision of liberation. So here you are in quiet mind, where the mind has a lot of equanimity, and formations come up and the mind remains disenchanted.

Things come up, but the mind remains unaffected by them, just sees right through them, just turns away from those perceptions. And it has dispassion, where it's in like a bubble of Teflon, where anything that comes through doesn't penetrate to the core of the mind, it just glides on through. And so all formations that come up are not attended to. The mind looks through them instead of looking at them. It's like these formations, these images, these ideas, these proto-thoughts, the percolation and bubbling up of the starting of a thought process before it becomes a fully formed thought.

All of them are seen as being translucent. The mind sees through them and doesn't look at them in particular. Because of the lack of fuel being given to these formations, the mind drops. And so the last formations rooted in conceit, the mental formations rooted in conceit, drop away, become silent, become fully tranquilized, and the mind enters into cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. Now that can last anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute, maybe even a couple of minutes. But you wouldn't know it, because there is no space and time in the cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. All you will know is when you come out of it, your mind says, "What was that?"

It's like my mind went somewhere, it dropped into something, but I can't make sense of it. And usually the first time it happens, the mind goes, oh wow, and that's why you know this meditation would have been called the oh wow meditation. That's what Bhante wanted to call it, because so many people were actually saying that, oh wow. And then you experience this amazing feeling of joy and relief, because your mind has experienced Nirvana. Your mind has experienced Nibbana in that moment when your mind ceases completely. It has let go of all conditions. And so each jhana that you experience is a level of cessation. The first jhana is the cessation of hindrances. The second jhana is a cessation of verbal formations in the form of applied and sustained thought. The third jhana is the cessation of piti, joy. The fourth jhana is a cessation of sukha, or that tranquility that you experience.

Infinite space is a cessation of the fourth jhana because now you're perceiving infinite space Infinite consciousness is a cessation of the perception of infinite space Nothingness is a cessation of the perception of infinite consciousness Neither perception or non-perception is a cessation of the perception of in of nothingness And then the last formations, the last mental formations, go away and cease completely. And there is the absolute and total, complete cessation of all perception, all feeling, and all consciousness.

And so all conditions cease. And when all conditions cease, you get to what is known as the unconditioned, the asankhata, which is another word for Nibbana. There are 32 words for Nibbana, and one of them is the unconditioned, because there are no conditions present. Nibbana is a process of letting go, as well as the experience of what happens when you let go.

That's why Nibbana is both a process in terms of a verb, as well as, let's say, an object in the form of a state of mind, so to speak. You are letting go, you are unbinding the fetters of the mind, you are unraveling the craving of the mind every time you six are and you let go. And you cease all of that until you come to the unconditioned. So when your mind comes back online, it makes a certain kind of contact. Remember, when there's contact, there is feeling. But that contact is with the Nibbana element, the Nibbana Dhatu.

And that contact is known to be undirected, is known to be empty, and is known to be signless. In other words, it doesn't take anything as an object. The contact is not with an object, even though Nibbana is experienced there. There is no self in that contact, so it's empty of any kind of self, and it's undirected because there's no desire there. There's no craving there at all. It's just undirected. As a result of that contact, what you experience in that moment are the links of dependent origination, however you will see them, and you will experience great amounts of joy and relief. What is that joy and relief? It is the experience of feeling joy and relief conditioned by the contact with the unconditioned. And so for a moment, in that time, the mind is free of all ignorance, all craving, all conceit, and experiences arahatship. But because there is no stability in there, if the mind is not stable in there and clutches onto that experience and identifies with it, the other fetters come back online.

Except for the first three fetters. When you enter stream entry, which is doubt in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, you let go of that, because you've walked the path and experienced Nibbana for yourself. You let go of any clinging to rites and rituals with the idea that they will take you to Nibbana, because you have seen for yourself. Walking this path means taking the precepts, keeping virtue, having great amounts of samadhi, and experiencing insight for yourself. And you let go of the belief in a personal self, for your mind lets go of the idea that there is a personal self, because it sees dependent origination at a very microscopic level.

And because of that, it understands that all things that arise, arise due to causes and conditions. There is no controller there. It's an impersonal process. And so there, the mind experiences liberation. Not full liberation. It experiences a liberation from the first three fetters. It experiences liberation from rebirth in any of the lower realms, lower than the human realms.

Because it has essentially let go of an ocean of suffering. It has let go of any karma that can take it to an experience of a hell realm, to an animal realm, or to a hungry ghost realm. And so it experiences that knowledge and vision of liberation. But that's just the first step. What do you do now? You rinse and repeat. Go back to where you started from. But now you have established right view in the form of understanding, to some extent, the Four Noble Truths. Now you're attaining the beginning of supramundane right view, which is the understanding of suffering, the abandoning of craving, the realization of Nirvana, and the cultivation of the path leading to Nirvana, the Eightfold Path.

And the more you do this, it's a matter of repeating that process over and over. So now you have the knowledge and vision of liberation. You go back again. You have now this renewed experiential conviction in the path. And from there, you have greater appreciation for it. You have non-regret because you're keeping your precepts. And you have a strong moral compass that doesn't allow you to easily break the precepts.

As a result of this, your mind remains uplifted and experiences gladness. From that gladness, you have rapture. From that rapture, you have tranquility of mind. From that tranquility of mind, you have the experience of sukha and comfort. From that experience of sukha and comfort, you have collectedness. From that collectedness, you have knowledge and vision of things as they actually are, or equanimity. From that equanimity, you have further disenchantment. You get less interested in the things that you used to get interested in. That is to say, you get less caught up in identifying with things. You get less caught up in taking things personally. You quickly recover from any kind of craving or aversion you might have.

You will still have it. But now you will have a level of mindfulness to see that and be able to say, do I really want to hold on to this anger? You will let it go before it might have taken you, let's say, a day or two. But now it takes you maybe half a day to say, you know, let me let go of that. And so you go through that process of disenchantment again. In your mind, in your meditation, you have further dispassion. Guess what? It's easier the first time around to experience cessation, because you don't know what to expect. And that's why I say cessation happens when you least expect it, and expecting is another word for craving. So now you have to be even further disenchanted from any kind of anticipation of that experience, and have further dispassion. And when the causes and conditions are right for the mind to drop, it will drop, experience another degree of liberation and the knowledge and vision of that liberation.

Liberation from what? A further liberation from craving and aversion. And this experience is Sakadagami, once returner. First you have the path of stream entry and then you have the fruition. Then you have the path of Sakadagami and then the fruition of Sakadagami. What does Sakadagami mean? It means that there is a small percentage of craving and aversion left in your mind.

And so you stop getting caught up in those levels of craving and aversion in your mind. You might still have some craving. You might still have some annoyances. But you will quickly recover from it. You'll notice the percolation of the seeds of craving, or the arising of the seeds of aversion coming up, because your mindfulness is that much stronger, and you can let go of it before it actualizes into some kind of experience in your mind, body, and speech.

And when you do act upon that craving, when you do act upon that aversion, your mind lets go of it very quickly. But there's a small seed of it there, there's still some craving, still some aversion. So let's say then you get into the fruition of Sakadagami, then you repeat the process again. You go and you have even further conviction in the path. That's the first step: having faith. You have total commitment to keeping the precepts, and because of that your mind is uplifted, because your mind is uplifted, it experiences gladness in the Dhamma. From that gladness, piti arises. From that piti, there is a level of tranquility. From that tranquility, there is a level of sukha.

From that sukha, there is a level of collectedness. From that collectedness, there is further equanimity. Repeat the process again. Become further disenchanted. Now when you experience this, the disenchantment is even deeper. Now the dispassion is even deeper. And when your mind drops into cessation again, touches Nibbana, and then experiences the contact with Nibbana, now the mind experiences a great degree of equanimity.

The first time around, the joy is overwhelming. It's amazing. It's like you have never felt this joy ever before. The second, third, fourth, fifth time around, it's not as great as the first time around. There's still some level of joy. And then there is some level of equanimity and tranquility. And now the mind has completely let go of any craving and aversion, any sensual craving and aversion. But it's not because it just kept meditating. It's because it kept the precepts and it utilized the six R's in daily life.

In other words, in order for you to let go of sensual craving and let go of aversion, you have to be aware of it when it comes up and be able to let go of it in your daily life. Notice when it comes up. Notice when the mind has an intention of acting upon it, and let go of it.

Six R's. This will translate into a meditation which is informed by all of those conditions, informed by right view, and you go through that process again, experience cessation, experience Nibbana, and you've dropped that craving, you've dropped that aversion, and now you have equanimity. But guess what? There's still a process of identification there. The mind still has conceit and is holding on to the idea that, yeah, I experienced Nibbana again, right? There is that I there again.

There is the craving for jhana experiences. There is a praying for arupa jhana experiences. There's still restlessness there. There's still ignorance there. There's still conceit there. So again, you rinse and repeat that process. And then you experience the path of arahatship. And then finally the fruition, where you know for a complete certain fact that what had to be done has been done. There is no more coming to being. The holy life has been lived. Birth is destroyed. And that is the knowledge and liberation of, I should say, knowledge and vision of total liberation. Liberation of wisdom, or liberation of mind, and liberation of mind by wisdom. That is ceto vimutti and panna vimutti. The mind knows for a certain dude, there is nothing else to be done.

All fetters are destroyed. All taints are destroyed. It's that simple. Just repeat. Rinse and repeat. So now when you're thinking about getting off a retreat, what are you thinking about? What am I going to do? What should I do? What is my routine? How should I make my schedule? How long should I practice? All that is well and good. You still have one full day left. Make that commitment to do that three-hour sit. Sit for as long as you can. Let go of all expectations. Now you have the tool set. There's not enough disenchantment. What do you do? Go back to equanimity. Bring up more equanimity. There's not enough equanimity. What do you do? Come back and radiate loving kindness.

Redevelop your collectedness. There's not enough collectedness, what do you do? Come back and bring up that joy, bring up that sukha, bring up that tranquility. So knowing the conditions leading to the next level of conditions, you know what you need to do, what balance you need to have. And then when you get to disenchantment, just keep letting go, keep letting go, keep letting go. Don't do anything. And then when it happens, it'll happen when you least expect it.

But you need that time to sit. You need those two and a half, three hours just to let the mind settle and let the mind unravel and experience the different jhanas and experience the different awakening factors and experience the different links of transcendental dependent origination. This is what you've been doing for the last seven or eight days.

Experiencing these links. You just didn't know it. Now you do. When you have this tool set, you can understand how to apply it in your daily life and in your daily practice. Thus, Ananda, the purpose and benefit of wholesome, virtuous behavior is non-regret. The purpose and benefit of non-regret is gladness. The purpose and benefit of gladness is joy. The purpose and benefit of joy is tranquility. The purpose and benefit of tranquility is comfort. The purpose and benefit of comfort is collectedness. The purpose and benefit of collectedness is equanimity. The purpose and benefit of equanimity is disenchantment. The purpose and benefit of disenchantment is dispassion. The purpose and benefit of dispassion is liberation and the knowledge and vision of liberation.

Thus, Ananda, wholesome, virtuous behavior progressively leads to the foremost. You cannot experience Nibbana unless you keep your precepts, unless you make a commitment to be moral and ethical. So, keeping the precepts is not only for just the retreat. You're not keeping the precepts for these 10 days. You're keeping these precepts for your entire life. Make that commitment.

Be absolutely dedicated in that sense. Absolutely determined. Absolutely resolute. Not one iota of compromise with the precepts. Any questions? Yeah. Clarify the distinction between path and fruition. Path and fruition. So the path is really entering into the stream, for example. Fruition is locking that experience and now winning the stream, the stream winner. And so there is somebody who is on the path towards Sakadagami, and there's somebody who experiences the fruition of Sakadagami. One who is on the path experiences the path, and then they experience the fruition of that path. One who is on the path to anagami. This can be somebody who is a Sakadagami and is letting go of further, further craving, further and further aversion, and is walking the path in terms of doing the practice, but has not yet experienced anagami.

Then they experience anagami, and they have another experience which locks that in as fruition. Then ultimately, if they're continuing the path, they're walking towards letting go of conceit, walking towards letting go of further levels of craving. And so they're on the path to arahatship, experience the path, and then fruition, which is the final fruition. Yeah. From Michael Lightfoot. Hey, Delson, in regard to your teachings today, any advice for an artist who is walking this path, yet who is attached to making a living and has a passion in life that's wishes from Brighton, UK?

The beautiful thing about this whole path is that you don't have to let go of your artistic endeavors or your careers. As long as your livelihood has nothing to do with those five things I was talking about earlier, has nothing to do with harming yourself or harming others, you can still pursue any kind of career you want. In fact, you can become a better artist because you have less and less restlessness in your mind. Your mind becomes more collected. As your mind becomes more collected, it becomes quieter. From that quiet mind, there is the birthplace of intuition. From that intuition, you have inspiration to create whatever it is that you want to create.

So I don't see a resistance to the path by following your artistic endeavors. In fact, I see the path as a way of complementing your artistic endeavors. In fact, helping you to become a better artist. Because you start to tap into your intuition, your intuitive mind, from where all kinds of wonderful things can come up. You can start to experience and experiment with colors, because when you have experienced stream entry or any level of awakening, your senses become very sharp, right? Things around you become much more clear. This purple becomes bright purple. The greens in the leaves in the trees become absolutely clear. You see every single detail of that leaf, and your mind becomes so clear that when you look into it, all kinds of organized thoughts arise that allow you to come to a point where you can understand what to do.

If you're a writer, you have better clarity of speech, you have better clarity of communication, you come from intuition, and so from that intuition, whatever it is you're writing is basically perfect, or almost perfect. There's very little that you need to change. So the practice or cultivation of the path leads to the mind having greater degrees of intuition, which allow you to become not only a better person in your relationships but also a better person in your career and in every other aspect.

Later on you can still continue to be an artist. When you become a Sakadagami you can still continue to be an artist. When you become an Anagami you can still continue to be an artist. When you become an arahat, you can still continue to be an artist. But you will be using your art for the Dhamma. You will be utilizing your artistic capabilities and skills for bettering, better understanding the Dhamma and for helping others understand the Dhamma. So in other words, for example, there are arahats in the time of the Buddha who had different skill sets. It's not like they've let go of those skill sets. They have practically utilized those skill sets in a way that has no attachment, no greed, no hatred, no delusion, but helps in the process of furthering the Dhamma, let's say.

Yeah. Just to clarify, the experience of quiet mind is the dropping of the meditation object, whichever realm of jhana that you're experiencing? And that happens quite naturally, yes. And then experientially, it's just the space in between the thoughts that you come up with, right? Your mind becomes collected, and your mind is basically observing. And it's just a mind that is very quiet. It's like before, when you were radiating, it was external.

So the experience of nothingness was external. Along with that, the experience of radiating equanimity was external. But here, once that equanimity stops being radiated and the mind naturally just envelops inside of itself, that's the quiet mind. It just rests in the sense of collectedness. That is the quiet mind. That happens too. That can happen. People can just go from compassion into the quiet mind. It's not like you have to experience all of them, although you will at some point, because the way you guys are practicing in this retreat, it's like a fast-track path to enlightenment. Sometimes you will skip jhana, sometimes you will skip some of the factors, sometimes you will skip through the brahmaviharas, and because your mind is having that strong level of collectedness, it just drops and experiences quiet mind.

But as I said, always start with radiating to balance the energy. Yeah? How do you find physical energy changes as you progress on the path? On this retreat, obviously, we're sitting a lot, so I've had bursts of energy. I've had to walk a lot and run. Is that mostly because we're on retreat, do you think? Or does it also, do you find your physical energy changing?

Usually it is because you're on retreat. What I will say is when you're sitting for longer periods of time, you have greater levels of rest because you're sitting for that long period of time. So what I suggest is you actually do some walking, like brisk walking, or even running or jogging, so that you start to bring more circulation in your system, and you utilize that energy.

That can happen outside of retreat, but it's rare because you rarely have the time to sit for three or four hours at a time. And you're rarely ever undisturbed when you're out there. So I think you would say it's more prone to happen when you're on retreat. It's just a matter of utilizing the physical energy with running and walking and jogging and then coming back and sitting again. And so another question just on keeping the precepts. So if you make some good progress in this retreat, then you just go back home and don't follow anything in the precepts. And then you come back for another retreat, are you basically starting from the beginning or how does that work?

I would say that there's some level of... I don't plan to do that. I hope not. I hope not, Misha. I would say that when that happens, there's still some momentum that you've experienced through going through the jhanas, right? There's still some momentum of having made progress there. So there's a karmic benefit to that. But at the same time, it's meeting up with the fact that you have broken precepts.

So it'll just take you a little more time to get there again. But once you're there, it'll free flow. But that doesn't mean that you should break your precepts at all. Right? Yeah. John Monroe in Tokyo. With respect to generosity, could you please speak about balancing generous giving without burning out or undermining family finances, etc.? Any thoughts about sustainable giving, one feels inspired to give with both hands and then finds one has overextended one's financial pace? Yeah, this is very important to understand. That's what I was talking about yesterday with generosity. Be practical with your generosity.

Don't give to the extent that you feel regret for it, because as soon as you feel regret for giving, that nullifies the whole experience and the effect of that experience. Give whatever you feel you can. Start small, start practically. One way of looking at it is utilizing that idea of whatever income that you make, let's say if it's about money, take 10 to 15%, 10 to 20% of that, and utilize it towards giving for whatever purpose that you want to give for. Whether it's for monastics, whether it's for dhamma teachers, whether it's to meditation centers, whether it's charitable organizations, whatever it might be, give in that sense. Now, in the same way that you have to be mindful of your own energies when you're helping other people, otherwise you experience what's known as compassion fatigue, right?

You experience tiredness from that. The same way when you're utilizing your resources, when you're utilizing your influences, be mindful, be practical about that. And so take a small portion of it and do it every month if you can. That way you can continue to be sustainably generous rather than just giving in one go and then having to deal with the fact that you don't have enough money left over for the rest of the month. Be sustainable by giving a little portion and that's fine too. And as you do that, you notice that actually those portions become bigger because you have more income from other avenues or you're getting more money from whatever is happening. And so now you can give a little bit more.

So give whatever you can. The Buddha actually talked about the utilization of money, and he talked about it in terms of percentages and ratios. And the ratio that he used, or the percentage he used, was 50-25-25. 50% goes towards the running of your business or the running of your household, in this case, the running of your expenses.

25% goes towards whatever it is that you want. You want that new TV, you want that vacation, you want that whatever new thing that you want, goes towards enjoying it, right? Enjoying the fruits of your labour. Then the rest of the 25 is your emergency funds, but also savings, and savings can mean investments, savings can mean saving in your bank account or whatever. But from that portion also can go to donations. Maybe from that 25%, half of that goes into donations.

Or from the other 25% where you're spending for yourself, half of that or a percentage of that can go towards donations. So create ratios in your mind. This is just one suggested ratio. You use the ratio that works for you, but make sure it's never underutilized or overutilized. In other words, you don't do a thing where you're saving 90% and living only off of 10%. That's impractical, right? And that's not enjoyable. It's not an enjoyable life either. So have a balanced approach to how you spend your money for yourself, how you save your money, how you spend for your business or your household expenses, and how much you give as well. So that's the way to be practical and sustainable.

I'll give one more here. Same question about the artist, but now it's a musician. Same thing for the musician, right? Here's an interesting thing. Generally, if you're an artist, you're working with the medium of the visual. If you're a filmmaker, you're working with the visual. If you are a musician, you're working generally with sound, right? So what you will notice, for example, in infinite consciousness is if you're more visually oriented, you will experience the arising and passing away of eye consciousness.

If you are more of a musician or somebody who works in the field of making music or sound engineering or whatever, the formations rooted in the sense base of hearing flicker. So the formations that arise and pass away and that flicker, the consciousness that arises and passes away and flickers, will be related to whatever sense base is most active in your field or in your life. So for a musician you will notice that it's usually the ear faculty that is flickering.

Now when I was talking about experiencing jhanas, letting go, as a musician absolutely you can still be a better musician. You can understand tonalities even better. I'll give you an example for myself. I hadn't played the piano in a long time. I learned to play the piano when I was eight. And the last time I touched the keys was when I was 16, before I went to the Himalayas. And then in 2021, so this was back in 2006, was the last time I touched the keys.

And then later on in 2021, we got a little electric piano, digital piano. And I decided to go and learn the Moonlight Sonata, the first movement. It took me two weeks to learn that whole thing because of the clarity of mind. Yes, you can say because of the skill set that I had, right? Because I had some level of understanding of piano music, tonality, and reading sheet music. But then going back to it, there was such clarity of mind that there was no resistance to if I was going to make a mistake. There was no resistance to I have to learn it. It's just all in the flow of things. So what you're going to find is as you start to let go of further levels of craving and aversion, your mind is that much more freed up to learn faster, that much more freed up to absorb more information, that much more freed up for intuition to arise, to create amazing and inspirational pieces of music.

Yeah? I have two questions. Have you used float tanks? I will be. Does that work well with this method? It seems like it would. I'll let you know once I use it, but I will be using it. Awesome. Yeah. Because I know in a tank you could stay in there for four hours. Yes, and my impression is with flotation tanks, it's very easy for you to experience arupa states. Right, because you are just so free from any bodily contact that it's very easy for you to experience infinite space, infinite consciousness, and nothingness.

That's my impression, but that's my hypothesis. I'll test it out when I try it soon. - The second question is, what's up with all the sensations in the face from the meditation, like around the nose and the eye aperture? - Yeah. Again, that's infinite consciousness. That's infinite body consciousness. Some people experience tingling in the face. Some people experience tingling in the tongue. That's taste consciousness or tongue consciousness.

Some people experience vibration throughout the body. And some people will experience heat throughout the body or coldness through the body. They feel like there's water running through the body. All of these are manifestations of infinite bodily consciousness. Anyone else? There is one in Indonesia, and that's it. New York. Sorry, Bhante Sachinanda's place is there, Brahma Vihara Meditation Center. That's in, is it Westbury? Westbury, New York.

And Damasuka, Indonesia, which is in Bali? Jakarta. But you have to speak to the hospital. Oh, okay. Wow. Very likely. And what does it take to put together a center, just so that there's more opportunity to work with the house of the world? Just anything, really. Whatever you feel like you can do, or anybody feels like they can do to open up the center. There's a little house, a bigger house, and then an even bigger house. Yeah, you see, what we do have are twin cells, that is to say little sitting groups here and there all around the world. You know, these sleeper dharma cells, what's that? No, no, no, no. We have a sitting group in St. Louis, for example. We have a sitting group in Italy, we have a sitting group, many sitting groups.

But where I travel to is where I'm invited. There might be a group of TWIM students who want me to come for a meditation retreat. What they'll do is go and look for a meditation center and rent out that meditation center, and then start the process of putting it up online, getting registrations done, and then I'll be invited to go and teach over there.

Yeah? This is the only Dhamma Center I've ever been in that has crystals in the walls. Yes. I'm sure people in here have been thinking about that. I don't know if it's in the canon or anything. Can you talk about this? It's not in the canon. Okay. But crystals are cool. They do work. They do work. Quartz crystal especially, because it takes the energy and it works with it, like it feeds back the energy. That's why when you're meditating you feel so good when you're meditating over here. This whole place is imbued with loving kindness from essentially now thousands of meditators who've come and gone here, who've attended.

So you really feel it when you're there. It's on the floor, too. Yeah, I was going to ask, is it in the wall? Yeah, you see these? Yeah, you see them poking out? Well, they're in the columns here, obviously. They're in the columns, and the stone is actually from our neighbor's land. They call it Dreamstone, but it was a little quarry up there, and they brought it over, the guy who built this, and then stuck in based on Bhante's desire to have quartz everywhere, and then also into the concrete. Wow. It's underneath us too. Wow. So crystals, any kind of metaphysical aspect has some kind of property to it, and it's not like it's mentioned. Crystals are there in the Pali Canon, but indirectly, the Buddha has talked about it in the form of talismans and amulets.

All he said is that carrying those for monks and monastics doesn't make a lot of sense because you're not utilizing that for the purpose of attaining Nibbana. It's just, you can use it and there's nothing wrong with it, as long as you understand the purpose of why you're using what you're using. Different kinds of crystals will have different kinds of experiences, or provide different kinds of experiences. Yeah, I was just wondering if the canon mentioned anything about it? Not specifically, yeah. There might be something in there. We never know, maybe in the Khuddaka Nikaya, which is untranslated yet. Yeah, this is the Dhammasukka logo. This is the Bodhi leaf, and that is the wheel that represents the Eightfold Path.

The Bodhi leaf is a leaf from the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. When you go to Bodh Gaya, it's considered very fortunate for you to get a leaf from the Bodhi tree. You can't pluck it, obviously, but it's considered very fortunate to get it when it falls. So a lot of people are there just waiting, just grabbing it. Metta Nanda got a dozen of those. We got some, I got some as well. I gave them to Metta Nanda and gave them to other people. So it's considered fortunate to have that. But it's representing enlightenment. Bodhi actually means awakening, to become awakened. That's where the word Buddha comes from, the awakened one, the one who has awakened.

Yeah, there's one more thing about that. Because somebody asked the Buddha, well, how do I remind myself of you and how do I respect you? And he said, get a leaf from the Bodhi tree. Don't make an image of me. Just get a leaf from the Bodhi tree. That represents me, the Dhamma, everything else. And that's really why we have that instead of the Buddha's image. We think this was kind of a later edition for our monastic retreat. But before that, there was no Buddha in here at all. The Buddha said, no, I don't want anybody, any statues around. The first few representations of the Buddha were the Bodhi tree, or an empty chair, or a mirror, or a footprint.

But not really the face or an image of a Buddha. That came about later, many, many centuries later. The Greeks. Yeah. The statues. Do we know what he looks like? There's something called the 32 great marks of a man. I'm not so sure about that, because it's something coming from the Vedas, and it's not like the Buddha carried them. He would portray that or project that out to a person for them to understand that this is what's going on, but that was only to show the Brahmins that this here is somebody who is, you know, somebody who's a great person.

The descriptions are manifold about the curls of his hair, the colors of his eyes, excuse me. Smells like sandalwood, the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, things like that. But there is no real, like, physical description of the Buddha. Now, in the suttas, in some suttas, for example, there's a king named Ajatasattu who comes to see the Buddha. But what happens is that the Buddha is amongst his monks.

And all the monks look pretty much identical because they're all wearing robes and they're all shaven-headed. And that suggests that even the Buddha at the time was shaven-headed. That's how he couldn't distinguish where the Buddha was. There's another one in the suttas where the Buddha is spending the night somewhere, and he's meeting with another monk, and he asks, Who is your teacher? And he says, It's the Buddha. And he's speaking to the Buddha. He doesn't know he's speaking to the Buddha. And the Buddha, being sneaky, says, What does your teacher teach? At the time, how revolutionary was the Buddhist cosmology versus that of Vedic and the Brahminic cosmology? How much did it differ?

It differed quite a bit, actually. It incorporated some aspects of the Vedic cosmology because that was the level of understanding that they had. They had the concept of the gods of the 33. They had the concept of the other sensual heavens. They had some of the hell realms. They had some of the hungry ghosts. They had all of these other things, and then they had the Brahma loka, but they only had one level of Brahma lokas. So the Buddha said, no, no, there's more there. There are four rupa brahma lokas and then four arupa brahma lokas, which are tied to the consciousness of each of the different jhanas.

So they weren't very similar, but at the same time there were a lot of distinguishments. Um, the idea of enlightenment or the idea of awakening differs from culture to culture, actually, and it depends upon the philosophy. For example, in yoga philosophy, the idea is, yoga means to unite or union, but it's really discerning the difference between the prakriti and the purusha. You become the purusha, which is separate from the prakriti. The prakriti is all of nature, this whole existence, but you come to the essence of that, which is purusha, which has been intertwined with it. So their concept of enlightenment has come to a place of kaivalya, which means to be alone, to become separated from prakriti and become pure purusha. The Vedantic philosophy talks about different kinds of Vedantic philosophies. There's the non-dual Vedantic, which is Advaita Vedanta. There's the Vishistha Advaita Vedanta. There's the Shuddha Advaita Vedanta. There's the Dvaita Advaita Vedanta. And all of these have the concept of a soul and a super soul, in the form of an atman and a brahman, and depending upon

which philosophy you follow, the idea is to merge with it, or it is one and the same, and it becomes one with the universe. The Buddha's understanding of awakening was to let go completely, and that started with something very radical which had not yet been introduced in India, which is the understanding of anatta. It was there in the form of understanding what is not self and then coming to the true self, but the Buddha never said that there is no self or there is a true self. All he said was, look at all conditioned experience as being not self, and then you come into the experience of nibbana, which he also radicalized by saying that too is not self. So enlightenment will mean different things according to different cultures and different philosophies. You had a question? For the inside knowledges that the Buddha had under the Bodhi tree, where he saw the cycle of existence and transmigration of beings and everything like that, is that possible for people that are not Buddhist to realize?

Yes. People can still have some level of understanding of their past lives. In fact, if you go to Digha Nikaya one, the Brahmajala Sutta talks about how some beings see up to a certain level, and then from there they make conclusions about how reality works, in seeing past lives or in seeing the different lokas and the karma. What is the distinguishing factor in this case is the third knowledge, which is the knowledge of the destruction of the asavas, the destruction of the taints. That is unique to the Buddha Dhamma.

Anything else? Any other questions from online? All good? Looking into past lives, is that a path to enlightenment as well, or is that just sort of an interesting thing to do? It depends on your intention, but it can be a path to enlightenment because you start to, if you do it the right way, the effective way, you actually start to see dimensionalities of dependent origination through all of these past lives and how they create karma.

Likewise with seeing the arising and passing away of beings according to their karma. Yeah? I just thought of a question around psychics and their, some are very rigid and others obviously not, but how do they do something that anticipates cause and condition? So psychics, even during the time of the Buddha, there were psychics, so there were people with psychic faculties. They had the faculty to be able to see into a person's future, they had the faculty to be able to discern a person's mind and understand what they're thinking.

And all of that is essentially using the mind as the sixth sense and it's cultivated to such an extent that you're able to extend that mind to whatever it is. So you use, for example, the mind-made body to project yourself or the body or the mind outward to see, remote viewing for example, or you use it to understand what a person is thinking or what their intentions are, or you use it as a means of looking into the future or looking into the past, and that's the same as looking into their causes and conditions. Looking into the future of a person is very tricky because there's all kinds of karmic streams that are dependent upon a limited stream of choices, but there are so many different variations and permutations. So how you do that is you look at the likelihood of what's going to happen and you know that this is where that stream is going to lead, so that's how you can tell into a person's future.

Yeah. That's for later on when you learn to determine how to get into jhana whenever you want. So when you do that, you're training your mind to be able to stay in a certain jhana for a certain amount of time. And ultimately, that translates to being able to stay in cessation for a pre-directed amount of time. That's what it is. Yeah? If you're in cessation longer, does that change the experience coming out? Well, look at it this way. When you're in cessation, perception, feeling, and consciousness, you have given total rest to your entire body and your sixth sense spaces. So the more rest you give it, the less impingement there is, and it's much fresher.

Everything is so much clearer. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fears 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. Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu.