Oct 11 MN 133 - Mahākaccāna and a Single Excellent Night - The Nature of Consciousness in Meditation

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone, wherever you are in this part of the world. I'm going to start with reading the sutta, and the translation I'm going to be using this time is from Bhikkhu Bodhi. This is called Maha Kaccana and a Single Excellent Night. Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Rajagaha in the Park of the Hot Springs.

Then, when it was near dawn, the Venerable Samiddhi went to the hot springs to bathe his limbs. After bathing, he came up out of the water and stood dressed in one robe, drying his limbs. Then, when the night was well advanced, a certain deity of beautiful appearance, who illuminated the whole of the hot springs, approached the Venerable Samiddhi, standing at one side. The deity said to him, "Bhikkhu, do you remember the summary and exposition of one who has had a single excellent night?" "Friend, I do not remember the summary and exposition"

Bhikkhu, master the summary and exposition of one who has had a single excellent night. Bhikkhu, remember the summary and exposition of one who has had a single excellent night. Bhikkhu, the summary of one who has had a single excellent night is beneficial. It belongs to the fundamentals of the holy life." That is what was said by the deity, who thereupon vanished at once. Then, when the night was over, the Venerable Samiddhi went to the Blessed One, and after paying homage to him he sat down at one side and told the Blessed One all that had occurred, and said, "It would be good, Venerable Sir, if the Blessed One would teach me the summary and exposition of one who has had a single excellent night."

"Then, Bhikkhu, listen and attend closely to what I shall say." "Yes, Venerable Sir," the Venerable Samiddhi replied. The Blessed One said: "Let not a person revive the past, or on the future build his hopes. For the past has been left behind, and the future has not been reached. Instead, with insight, let him see each presently arisen state.

Let him know that and be sure of it, invincibly, unshakably. Today the effort must be made. Tomorrow death may come, who knows? No bargain with mortality can keep him and his hordes away. But one who dwells thus ardently, relentlessly, by night and by day, it is he, the peaceful sage has said, who has had a single excellent night." That is what the Blessed One said. Having said this, the Sublime One rose from his seat and went into his dwelling. Then, soon after the Blessed One had gone, the bhikkhus considered, "Now, friends, the Blessed One has arisen from his seat and gone into his dwelling after giving a summary in brief without expounding the detailed meaning.

Now who will expound this in detail?" Then they considered, "The Venerable Maha Kaccana is praised by the Teacher and esteemed by his wise companions in the holy life. He is capable of expounding the detailed meaning. Suppose we went to him and asked him the meaning of this." Then the bhikkhus went to the Venerable Maha Kaccana and exchanged greetings with him. When this courteous and amiable talk was finished, they sat down to one side and told him what had taken place, adding, "Let the Venerable Maha Kaccana expound it to us."

The Venerable Maha Kaccana replied: "Friends, it is as though a man needing heartwood, seeking heartwood, wandering in search of heartwood, thought that heartwood would be sought for among the branches and leaves of a great tree standing possessed of heartwood, after he had passed over the root and the trunk. So it is with you, venerable sirs, that you think I should be asked about the meaning of this after you passed the Blessed One by, when you were face to face with the Teacher. For knowing, the Blessed One knows; seeing, he sees; he is vision, he is knowledge, he is the Dhamma, he is the holy one, he is the seer, the proclaimer, the elucidator of meaning, the giver of the deathless, the lord of the Dhamma. That was the time when you should have asked the Blessed One the meaning, as he told you, so you should have remembered it. Surely, friend Kaccana, knowing, the Blessed One knows

When one does not delight in that, one is invincible in regard to presently arisen states. This is how one is invincible in regard to presently arisen states. Friends, when the Blessed One arose from his seat and went into his dwelling after giving a summary in brief without expanding the detailed meaning, I understand the detailed meaning of this summary to be thus. Now, friends, if you wish, go to the Blessed One and ask him about the meaning of this, as the Blessed One explains it to you, so you should remember it. Then the bhikkhus, having delighted and rejoiced in the Venerable Maha Kaccana's words, rose from their seats and went to the Blessed One. After paying homage to him, they sat down at one side and told the Blessed One all that had taken place after he had left, adding, "Then venerable sir, we went to the Venerable Maha Kaccana and asked him about the meaning. The Venerable Maha Kaccana expounded the meaning to us with these terms, statements and phrases." "Maha Kaccana is wise, bhikkhus. Maha Kaccana has great wisdom.

If you had asked me the meaning of this, I would have explained it to you in the same way that Maha Kaccana has explained it. Such is its meaning, and so you should remember it." This is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus were satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One's words. So, this one single excellent night has been expounded in actually many different ways.

There is a version in which the Buddha himself expounds on it, and he relates it to the past five aggregates, the future five aggregates and the presently arisen five aggregates. So when he expounds upon it, he talks about the forms, the feelings, the perceptions, the consciousnesses and the formations that have arisen in the past, and that one takes to be personal, that one craves or one avoids. And by taking it personal, when he talks about it in relation to the future and the present, he considers that the taking personal of the five aggregates

is what causes suffering, and when you take any of the aspects of the five aggregates as personal, you automatically create for yourself suffering, because either you attach a sense of self to something that is temporary, to something that does not last forever, and to something that would create thereby suffering, and therefore should not be considered as self. Likewise, now, in this exposition, Maha Kaccana expounds it in relation to consciousness.

Let's first understand what consciousness is in the context of the Buddha Dhamma. Consciousness is not permanent. Consciousness is not eternal. Consciousness can be reckoned by the sixth sense base, through the experience of the sixth sense base coming in contact with the external world. And when that happens, there is a consciousness attached to the sensory experience. So when Maha Kaccana talks about it, he is referring to the consciousnesses that arise in every given moment in the present, and that can be attached to any of the five physical senses or the sixth mental plane, which is the realm of thought, any kind of consciousness that is attached to the mind and to thoughts.

So really, he's dividing up the consciousness into two: internal and external. He's talking about the consciousness that's tied, for example, to the five physical senses, the sense bases, the ears, the eyes, the nose, the tongue, the skin, and then he's also relating it to the mind itself. Those are the six internal. He's also referring to consciousness that's tied up with the experience that arises from the contact with each of the senses and the inputs that they receive from the outside world. So with the ears, for example, with the sounds, there's a consciousness that is associated with the sound that arises when the sound arises.

There's a consciousness that arises when there are photons that go into the photoreceptors in the eye. That consciousness is with whatever one sees in external reality. Then there is the consciousness that arises when one detects the odors and fragrances in the air. That's what's tied up with. Then there is a consciousness that ties up with the feeling of the skin. It could be the feeling of air moving, it could be the feeling of a contact with the skin. And then finally there is the consciousness that's tied up with the thoughts. So in all together he's detecting 12 different types of consciousnesses that are related to the senses and the sensory experiences

that come into contact. Then he also relates and divides them into past, present and future. Now, a lot of the mindfulness that you hear about is always related to the mindfulness that happens in the present. It's always about being present, it's always being aware of the present moment. That's how mindfulness is usually portrayed or conveyed or defined. But if you go back to mindfulness in the Pali, which is sati, and then in the Sanskrit, which is smriti, it comes from the word that means to recollect or memory, or to remember. And what you're remembering is to keep your mind's attention on whatever is your object of meditation. In this case it could be the brahmaviharas.

And so it goes beyond the present moment. The present moment in and of itself arises and passes away, and the mindfulness stays with the object which flows with the present moment. So here Maha Kaccana is talking about the desire and the lust that is attached to the senses and sensory experience, and when he talks about the desire and lust, he's talking primarily about the craving and the conceit, the identification that arises from that experience. For example, in the past one may have regrets about things that might have happened in the past, one may have nostalgic feelings of things that happened in the past, and consider them to be real in the mind

consider them to be an experience within the mind. One re-experiences in that regard the past, and by doing so one forgets to be mindful. One has diminished their mindfulness, one is no longer mindful of what one needs to be mindful of, which is primarily understanding with wisdom that whatever arises passes away and therefore should not be held onto. And by holding on to something that should not be held onto, it creates suffering, because you are seeing something that is permanent in what is actually impermanent, and thereby you're holding on to something which you think is worth holding on to, but in fact causes suffering because it arises and passes away so quickly. And then moreover, one considers it to be self. One considers it to be in relation to a sense of self, one considers it to be affecting or coming from a sense of self, and thereby that ignorance and that delusion that arises from that creates further suffering and creates further ignorance.

So whenever the past thoughts arise, or whenever future thoughts arise, and the future thoughts are things that one desires to happen, desires to, let's say, manifest, or desires that it should happen in this way, and that is the sense that I want to control my thoughts, I want to control my feelings, I want to control the sensory experiences that I'm having. And by doing that you're trying to control something that has no controller, and thereby you will suffer. If you consider something that is not having a controller to be something worth controlling, or something that can be controlled, that is delusion. Moreover, when you look at the future and consider that I wish

that in the future, for example, I wish in the future I would be this kind of a person or I would have this kind of an experience, that is the craving for existence, for future rebirth and future rebecoming. That is tied to the defilement or taint or the projection or virus for craving for existence, for being and for becoming. And what that creates is restlessness in the mind. Every time your mind shifts to the future and has thoughts about the future, it starts to create anxiousness, it starts to create anxiety in the mind, and it starts to create tension and worry. And this tension, as we know through the TWIM practice and through the 6R's process, is because of the craving, and that craving is because we wish it to be something.

or we wish it not to be something, or we consider to be ourselves, we take it personally, and we think that it's affecting us personally, and it's affecting us personally in the way of a permanent self, an unchanging, permanent, independent self. But as we understand through wisdom, which is the insight into dependent origination, anything that arises passes away. And then more importantly, this sense of self is built up through many cycles of dependent origination, and the aggregates that arise are built up by the flow of dependent origination. So it's dependent origination that, through the causes and conditions, builds up that sense of self. Once you understand this, you no longer consider anything to be

independent of its own existence. Everything is in that sense interdependent, and by being interdependent upon causes and conditions it is bound to also fall apart. So once you have this insight, once you understand this, and therefore understand that even consciousness, even the idea of an independent consciousness, a consciousness that is eternal in some sense, is an idea, a concept that is in the mind. So the experience that one may have of an eternal consciousness is also rooted in an experience that happens within the mind, which is to say that that experience of an eternal consciousness is a concept born from the mind. It's a concept born from thought, which means that if it is arising from thought, which is interdependent upon different causes and conditions, they cannot be considered independent, and it cannot be considered permanent. So whenever Maha Kaccana expounds on these kinds of things, he always uses consciousness as the stability point, as the point of teaching, because it's important to realize that consciousness cannot be considered to be taken as something as a self that is permanent, as a self that is independent and unchanging

or a self that will bring one happiness. So whatever consciousness that you experience, you have to see it as being tied to some sort of sensory experience. In the snap of a finger there's up to close to two million arising and passing away of the ear consciousness when one listens to the snap of a finger. So that, right there, was close to two million arising and passing away of consciousness. And this is what is known as rebirth in the Buddhist context. It's the rebirth of consciousness, arising and passing away in each moment, in each second and in each microsecond. So what's important to understand from this particular sutta, there's so many different levels to it, but there's primarily a few levels that one needs to understand to progress on the path and to understand while one is meditating. Number one, when you're meditating and you have your vehicle of meditation, which is your brahmaviharas, it's your vessel or your object of meditation, which you are paying attention to and you're mindful of

What you're doing is, yes, you are mindful of the present moment through the flow of seeing the brahmaviharas, but while you're doing it, don't allow the mind to sway to the past or to the future. When it does sway to any thoughts of the past or any thoughts of the future, you use the 6R's process. You recognize that the mind was distracted. You release the attention from that distraction, and then you come to the relax step. So you take your attention away from the distraction and you put your attention on relaxing the subtle tension that arises in the body and in the mind. How does this tension arise? It's the craving that arises as a reaction. The tension arises as a reaction to the craving. It's just like it suddenly tenses up because it's taken something to be personal. Therefore, when it takes something to be personal, you tighten up in anticipation of wanting more of it, or in fear of not wanting more of it, in a kind of defensive posture, so to speak.

So you relax this bodily tension, and therefore you also relax the mental tension that arises. Then, after you relax, you come back to a smile, because the smile is the vehicle for the wholesome feeling. It regenerates that wholesome feeling for yourself, which is one of the brahmaviharas. Then you come back. You return to your object and you repeat when necessary. That's how you do the practice. In order to use the brahmavihara as the object of your practice, the object of your meditation, as a stability point, as a flowing point for the present moment, you're allowing mind to be present, naturally aware, naturally conscious, naturally mindful, without effort. Once you do this, the next step... well, first let me get to the future. If you have thoughts of the future as well, you do the same process of the 6R's and you come back to the present. But what's important to understand now is when you are meditating, when you are taking the practice, or when you are doing the practice, not to take it personally, not to push

not to try to pull away from the practice. And what does that mean exactly? When you take it personal, the practice is essentially this: you are considering that there is a sense of self meditating. So I'll use this mind-body as an example. I would take this personally, for example, and think that it is Delson that is meditating, that I, Delson, am meditating.

You want to stay away from any thoughts related to I, me, or mine when you're meditating. Rather, just allow your mind to observe the brahmavihara. Allow it to flow without any kind of idea that there is a person meditating. There is only the meditation happening. There's only the meditating going on, and you allow that process to unfold without sullying it with any kind of sense of self. Secondly, you don't push. So if you start to see that you need to bring up the metta, you need to bring up the metta, for example, you come back to the wholesome image or the thought that will start to create that metta again, create that feeling. But once you are with that feeling, you stay with it. Don't try to push it. Don't try to make it transform into compassion. Don't try to make the compassion transform into joy. Don't try to make the joy transform into equanimity.

If you allow the mind to unravel itself, it will unravel on itself by itself. If you poke and prod it, if you nudge it, if you push it, what you are going to experience is restlessness. You're going to experience a reaction of more thoughts arising rather than less thoughts going away. So what's important is not to push, but to let the mind observe. Observe the mind, allowing this flow of the brahmavihara, whatever the brahmavihara might be, to continue. And the second part is, whenever you are distracted by future thoughts, by past thoughts, by personalizing thoughts in the present, you 6R. That's the only thing you have to do: observe and 6R.

So finally, there is also the balance that you need to have as you get deeper into the practice, as you get deeper into the higher jhanas, for example. You start to balance the enlightenment factors, the seven enlightenment factors. And the way you do it is not to look for them. You don't look for whether I have more tranquility in mind or whether I have more joy in mind. The mind will allow itself to unravel itself to you, which means that the mind will inform you of what is required. And how is that done? Let's say there is sloth and torpor arising in the mind.

You are presently aware that you're starting to drift, and your mindfulness then allows you to 6R. And then you realize there's sloth and torpor. So then you bring up the balancing factors so that sloth and torpor dissipates, and you then continue on with the meditation, continue on with observing whatever your object of meditation is. Likewise, when you see that there is restlessness in the mind, there are too many thoughts coming into the mind, you might get caught up for a few seconds into those thoughts. And what you do then is, if your mindfulness is sharp enough, you recognize that you were distracted, and you do the whole 6R's process again, and then you bring up the balancing factors that are required to balance the restlessness, and then you continue on with your object of meditation.

So essentially, in relation to the practice, all you are doing, again, to reiterate, is to observe and to 6R, just observe and 6R when required. Don't push. Don't personalize. Don't want, and don't don't want either. Don't try to make something happen because you like it or you don't like it. Just allow it to be there, and just allow mind to naturally rest in that flowing of the brahmaviharas. So the other thing I want to mention is that whenever you are out of the practice and you are in daily life

in every single moment there is a feeling arising, or multiple different feelings arising, multiple different sensory experiences arising. And so in those moments there are millions of consciousnesses arising and passing away. How you treat that, how you perceive it, will then determine your next set of choices. And what do I mean by that? That means that if there is a feeling that arises that is painful, you don't personalize it and say, I am in pain. You understand there is a painful feeling with perception, and you let it go. You let go of the personalizing of that painful feeling, and you let go of trying to avoid that painful feeling, because that is the reality of the situation: whether there is a painful feeling, or whether there is a pleasant feeling, or whether there is a neutral feeling, that's the reality of the situation. And you use your attention

your wise attention, or attention rooted in reality, to make sure that you are not personalizing it, to make sure that you have no kind of craving mindset, whether you like it or don't like it, or you attach a sense of self to it. And how you do that is again through the 6R's process. So let's say a craving has arisen. When a feeling arises, you immediately recognize, for example, that you took that to be personal, or you want more of it. You recognize it. You release your attention from that. You've relaxed the tense body and the tense mind that might arise, and thereby you let go of the craving, and you come back to the present moment and understand that this is the reality of the situation. And you continue on. If you would want to start to radiate loving kindness, if it's necessary, or radiate any of the brahmaviharas, if it makes sense for that particular situation.

So in your daily living, in your daily life, in your daily practice, as well as in your meditation practice, it's all about understanding that the consciousness that arises should not be taken personal. And so that is what is meant by delighting, the delight and lust for it, the desire and lust for it, and the delighting in it. That is what creates the craving, the taking of it personal. Let's open up for questions. Okay, maybe shall I start, Delson? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so I'm just going through the wording here.

Consciousness is bound up with a feeling or any other sort of senses to that, so I'm just particularly keen to look at it from the perspective of dependent origination. Is it kind of a link between the consciousness and the nama-rupa aspect, or shall we say consciousness and the six sense base? Are they interrelated, or just trying to make it... I mean, how do we see this in terms of the links of dependent origination? Yeah. This is all going down to the same process, yeah? Yeah.

What you have to see is that when we take the perspective of the links of dependent origination, we'll start with formations first. The formations activate a type of consciousness, they condition a type of consciousness, and that consciousness then gives rise to a new nama-rupa, mentality-materiality, or name and form. But what you have to see is that the sixth sense base is rooted within the name and form. In other words, when that consciousness is tied up with the nama-rupa, with the mentality-materiality, it also ties up with the sixth sense base, which is part of the materiality, which is part of the body itself. It's the physical

sense receptors. So the consciousness then flows through that, and the feeling that arises from the contact, the joining of the eye receptor, the photoreceptors, with the photons, is then the contact. And the conjoining of this, then you have the consciousness of the eye and the consciousness of the visual form. So there's no difference between the consciousness of what comes through the nama-rupa, which comes through the mentality-materiality. In other words, the consciousness becomes established through one of the six sense bases, or, in this case, in the reality of it, multiples of the six sense bases. In other words, you are listening and watching, you are using your ears and you are using your eyes, and also using your mind. So these six sense bases, the five physical senses and the mind, are rooted within the mentality and materiality, and then the experience is what gives rise to the different kinds of consciousnesses.

that are tied up with the sensory experiences. Thank you. Well, that's all. Yes, I have a question. Is it possible that what Mahakaccana was saying is connected to the monks being born again and again? Is it related to the past and rebirth? Because if there's no past, rebirth is not possible in the Buddhist context. The rebirth that arises happens in every moment, so the understanding that's there, there are two. The rebirth that you might be considering is the rebirth that is within the context of ancient Indian and Hindu philosophy. But within the Buddhist context, what it's talking about is that there is rebirth in every moment, and so that rebirth also translates, on a macro level, on a larger level, to the rebirth of beings within the Buddhist context. But that does not mean that it's the consciousness, the very same consciousness, that is reborn. The consciousness arises with the experience, and when that experience is gone, that consciousness dissipates. So what is being reborn? It's not a consciousness, it's not a soul. It is the kamma that is being reborn, and that kamma is rooted through the formations.

And what are formations? That's sankhara, or samskaras in Sanskrit, and those are the impressions of the mind. So the macro level of rebirth that occurs happens when there is a consciousness that is activated through taking some aspect of the formations at the end of one's life to be personal, and there is some kind of attachment that then activates a different consciousness that then takes birth into a new mentality and materiality on the macro level. But as soon as that conception arises, that consciousness that took birth, or was conceived,

dissipates, and a new consciousness arises in every moment. And then, as that happens through the process of the fetus being developed in the womb, there are multiples of consciousness arising and passing away as the fetus starts to experience different stimuli within the womb. So the idea that the monks here are talking about is the consciousness that is rooted to sensory experiences. It's not rooted to any kind of rebirthing consciousness that is always taking rebirth in the same way or with the same essence. Okay.

Hi Delson. Hello, good morning, good evening. I have one quick question. It's the first five links of dependent origination. I kind of never really seen it. Is it possible to see it, but I know that it is there, since starting to realize from the six, so which is contact onward, easy to seize it. But the first five is the one that's always a trouble, and it's any... yeah. When you say the first five, when you say the first five, are you starting from ignorance, are you starting from formation? Ignorance, yes.

So the thing about, as I mentioned, when it comes to the arising and passing away of these sensory consciousnesses in the snap of a finger, you have somewhere up to two million arising and passing away of consciousnesses. So if that is just the consciousness, that's just the link of consciousness, imagine how much faster the other links are when they arise and pass away, right? But that's not to say that you wouldn't experience them or be able to see them. You will be, as you get into higher states of meditation practice, as you get higher into the jhanas. And what happens, especially for example in infinite consciousness, is you will, depending upon the inclination of the mind or the inclination of the formations, related to a certain sense base. And what I mean by that is, if there are certain formations that are more

in number and in strength, those particular formations tied to those senses will be experienced in infinite consciousness. For example, if you are a visually oriented person, let's say you're bound to start to see flickers in your meditation in infinite consciousness. Likewise, if you are an auditory oriented person, for example, you might hear snaps and beats or flickers in the ear. You might even start to experience different fragrances. You might start to experience different tastes in the tongue. Some people experience some electrical kind of circuitry shocks and things like that within the body, which is the tangible, the sense of touch. And then with the mind, you start to see spaces between each thought. If you start to see that, and then as you get deeper into nothingness, what happens is

So first I want to say this. So you start to see consciousness within infinite consciousness. You start to experience the links arising and passing away of consciousness as you get into infinite consciousness. But what you have to understand is the nama-rupa, the mentality and materiality, you are already experiencing all the way up until we would say the seventh jhana or eighth jhana. And why I say this is the five aggregates: that is the form of the body, the feeling or sensations within the body, the perceptions that arise from the sensations, and the consciousness.

and the formations are rooted within the mentality materiality especially the form feeling perception and consciousness they're rooted within mentality materiality and then the formations you start to see in the form of little sort of proto thoughts and what i mean by that is like when you get into neither perception or non-perception you start to see little wisps of incomplete thoughts and those are sort of the formations that are influencing certain thoughts and certain intentions and certain images and they might seem disconnected and they might even seem like as if you it's not even based in any kind of memory so to speak in this particular life so some people uh might report that they start seeing things that they didn't even

think that was in their memory it's like as if it was from a past life for example and these are the formations that are coming to become uh prevalent or perceptible in some sense but here's the key if you start to see these formations you let go and then come back to the tranquil mind when you're in the eighth jhana when you're in neither perception or non-perception because as soon as you perceive something you are out of that jhana you are out of neither perception or non-perception it's like a lucid deep sleep you're just aware but not really aware in some sense you're you can kind of see something but it's not really there and so when you're in tranquil mind completely it's just a complete flow it's just complete and so these formations might arise but they'll be so far away from you or so deep in the background that they might not even be perceptible.

They may not even be, you know, visible to you in the mind. But when they do arise, they might arise as just a certain arising. And then, if your six R's have been developed, you just automatically six R's, let go, and then you continue on for that time with the tranquil mind. This is how you start to see the first five links of dependent origination. In every moment it's happening, but you get a deeper look into it, a microscopic look into it, when you have an elevated perspective through the deeper states of the higher jhanas. You talked about within meditation bringing up balancing factors. Could you talk a bit more about what you mean by that?

Yeah, so what I was referring to was the seven enlightenment factors, or the seven awakening factors. And those factors are mindfulness, joy, investigation, energy, tranquility, help me out please, someone, my mind is going to be equanimity and the sadness, collectedness. Yeah, so let me go through each one of them. The mindfulness is going to be there throughout your practice, throughout your meditation practice, because it's the mindfulness that allows you to stay with your object. You're able to remember where your attention is. The joy and the energy, which is really the effort that you put into the practice, and the investigation are the balancing factors for sloth and torpor. So the joy naturally brings up a lot of energy. It brings up some amount of energy. And the energy that I'm referring to as a separate factor is more like an effort that you make. You kind of bring a little more interest into the practice. And then the investigation is really allowing your mind to tell you what you require, what you need.

And then when you have restlessness, that's where there are too many thoughts that are arising in the mind, and for that you basically balance it with tranquility, with stillness and with equanimity. And when you do that, and collectedness, when you do that, it starts to balance out the thoughts that are there. But in each case, whether it's the restlessness or the sloth and torpor, you have the mindfulness there. So for example, let's say you are meditating and you start to experience sloth and torpor. That means you sort of drift away from your object now, and you're starting to get dull. The mind is starting to get dull. So what you do is you recognize. As soon as you've recognized, the first step of the six R's process, you have brought back your mindfulness, and then you recognize there is sloth and torpor in the mind. So you bring up very, very minute amounts of joy, very minute amounts of effort or energy or interest, very minute amounts of investigation

to balance out that sloth and torpor. And sometimes it can be that you might have brought in too much joy or too much energy, and then you might slide the other way, which is restlessness. But then you have the mindfulness, or the recognition, of seeing that there are too many thoughts and there's restlessness in the mind, and by doing so you now intuit that you need to bring in the other balancing factors, which is you start to bring up a little more collectedness, you start to bring up a little more tranquility and equanimity, and that balances it out. And how this is done is because mind will let you know through mindfulness. Mind will let you know that this is what you require, and it's a matter of allowing mind to inform you, so to speak, what it needs, instead of extending and attaching onto it what you think it requires.

Because the moment you do that you are not. So that's what you refer to, pushing. You know, my immediate instinct is, I need to bring this other thing up. Yeah, so I put my attention on it, yeah, and then my attention isn't on the object. That's right. So as soon as you have balanced it... so when you get into, that's what I'm saying, when you get into deeper states of meditation, you start to play around with these seven enlightenment factors in order to keep that mind balanced, to keep that mind continually flowing with its object of meditation. So it's done, and as I said, it's done with very minute levels, because if you do too much you'll immediately know that, okay, now there's restlessness. So you've got to... it's like walking a tightrope. You have to just really... it's like walking the edge of a sword, really, and you really have to be careful in what level of balancing factor you're using. Okay, thank you.

Any more questions? May I ask one more, please? Yes. It's in terms of this balancing awakening factors, in even a higher jhana like seven, or even eight, that investigative awakening factor. Is it still there in the eighth? Yeah, it's in the seventh for sure, but even up to the eighth. Investigative in the eighth jhana, really, it's very difficult for the mind to know what's really there. So you have a retrospective look into what was occurring in the eighth jhana, but what is present in the eighth jhana as you start to develop your ability to be more perceptive.

But not to say that you are tied to any kind of perception. You actually see that yes, there are present these enlightenment factors, because they need to be there in order for the mind to continually slope towards nirvana, to slope towards nirvana, to slope towards enlightenment. So it's not like they're not present within the eighth jhana. It's just that they may not be perceptible completely. But how you are able to perceive them is, for example, as I just mentioned, when you have the restlessness or the sloth and torpor, you immediately have recognized and you have perceived, and which means now you are no longer in the eighth jhana. So then you're exercising, for example, the investigative principle, the investigative enlightenment factor, in order to balance out the sloth and torpor. And the investigative factor really is just allowing mind to tell you. You just ask the mind, okay, what does it require? And it will let you know that, okay, I'm feeling tired, or feeling dull, or feeling restless. That is the investigation into the Dhamma. That's the investigation into the mind.

So it's only required insofar as getting back the balance within the mind. So they will be present insofar as when you require them, when you require to exercise them, to come back to your object and to come back to a balanced mind. That will then eventually lead you to nirvana, right? It has been such an amazing talk. The version, I think, we have so many questions, but always we have got always another talk that can be scheduled. So I guess would be okay, I mean, to we can... we are approaching the end of the talk, so we can possibly do the sharing of the merit.

May beings once suffering be suffering free, and the fear-struck fearless. May the grieving shed their 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.