Day 7 Introduction to Dependent Origination -Clinging-Craving

So over the course of this time so far, we've been looking at sila and samadhi, right? So sila is the ethics. We've been talking about the lifestyle you need to incorporate in order for your mind to be collected enough to enter into samadhi. So just to recap, what did we talk about? We talked about the importance of precepts, the importance of taking refuge, the importance of being mindful, the importance of having the right speech, right action, right livelihood.

And then we entered into samadhi: right effort, right mindfulness, and right collectedness. So, right effort is something that you do constantly in order to go from the wrong path to the right path, from the path that doesn't lead to the end of suffering to the path that does. With that right effort, you start to develop the right mindfulness.

What is the right mindfulness? We talked about the anchors, the four foundations of mindfulness: the body, feeling, mind-state, and phenomenon. As your mindfulness gets more still, you have more unwavering mindfulness, and then you enter into right samadhi or right meditation. What is the purpose of meditation? Why meditate in the first place? What do you get out of meditation?

The last couple of days before this, we talked about the jhanas. We talked about what jhanas are. Levels of collectedness, levels of understanding, levels of cessation, levels of meditation, dhyana, levels of attention. And what does that attention bring you? What does it give you? When we talk about meditation, it's not about, I mean, the side benefits of it are that you will get joy and happiness and equanimity and a balanced mind and all these wonderful things.

But meditation takes you to wisdom, to insight, to the awakening of your intuition. And this is what we will talk about. This is what is known as panna, or pragya, which means wisdom. One who has awakened from the dream of existence, one who has entered the stream, super mundane right view. And right intention becomes a part and parcel of their mind, body and speech.

What is the super mundane right view? The super mundane right view is essentially the Four Noble Truths. It's to understand that there is suffering in life. To abandon the causes and conditions that bring up that suffering. To experience the cessation of that suffering by abandoning it. And how do you abandon it? By cultivating and perfecting the Eightfold Path.

So, when we talk about the Four Noble Truths, they are talking about causality and conditionality. With the arising of this, there is the arising of that. With the cessation of this, there is the cessation of that. There were two chief disciples of the Buddha, Sariputta and Moggallana. And Sariputta and Moggallana were the best of friends, very good friends from childhood, who lived in the same village.

And one day, they found out that there is a festival, a fair happening in the village. All these players and acrobats and jesters and all of these entertainers were coming into town. And they said, let's go and check it out. And they were in the village performing for a period of time. They were there for about a month.

So Sariputta and Moggallana said, let's go every day. Let's go check it out. First day was amazing, wonderful. Wow, look at the sights. Acrobats, look at this, look at that, wonderful, you know, fireworks, and this and that and the other. And then the second day they went, and the third day they went, and the fourth day they went, and the fifth and the sixth and the seventh and the eighth. And by then they were like disenchanted, that was their chocolate cake, disenchanted with all these sights and sounds and pleasures and all these other things.

So they said, you know, there must be more to life than just these sensual pleasures. There must be more to life than just, you know, eating and drinking and being merry. There must be more. So they went out and became wanderers of their own. And they joined a teacher named Sanjaya Belatthiputta. He was a skeptic. He was someone who was, maybe we can say agnostic in one way, but he was somebody who was a skeptic in the sense that he was somebody who questioned everything, who questioned what was rational, what was not rational. But he never came to a specific viewpoint that he held on to. This school is called the eel wrigglers. They don't hold on to any views.

Not because they've transcended all views, but because they're afraid of trying to defend a view, trying to get into debates. They're afraid of holding on to a view because they feel like they don't really know. So these are the people who you ask: is there a soul? And they'll say, I don't know. So is there not a soul?

I don't know. You know, that kind of group. But obviously this is the Pali Canon's characterization of that tradition. So we don't really know a whole lot of what they were really teaching. Suffice to say that Sariputta and Moggallana were liking the teacher and the teachings, but it came to be that at one point, Moggallana and Sariputta were going out, and I believe what happened is, if I remember the story correctly, they met another student of the Buddha, a disciple of the Buddha, Assaji. And this is the same guy who, if you remember a few days ago, when the Buddha was fully awakened and he was walking down the road, the first guy he met asked him, who is your teacher and what do you teach?

And he says to him something like, I am self-awakened and perfectly awakened and there is no teacher but me and I have discovered the path to full awakening. And that guy shakes his head and wanders away. That's Assaji. So later on he came back and learned from the Buddha and understood. And Sariputta, if I remember correctly, if the story is the way it is, goes and sees this student and he's looking at it and he says, your faculties are so clear, you're glowing.

You know, who is your teacher and what do you teach? Of course, Assaji doesn't say I'm perfectly self-awakened and there is no teacher but me. He says, my teacher is the Buddha, and he teaches this: a cause and condition for arising also passes away. In other words, causality and conditionality. That is the essence of the teaching of the Buddha. Whatever has the nature of arising also has the nature of passing away.

And there are these two stanzas that Assaji says. But the idea is that Sariputta, before even the second stanza was spoken, on the very first stanza, Sariputta attained stream entry, because he understood, ah, okay, conditionality and causality. It was such a deep mark. Moggallana was a slow learner. He had to listen to both stanzas to turn into a stream entry. Then they went to see the Buddha, both Sariputta and Moggallana. And they saw the Buddha and the Buddha said, those are my chief disciples that are coming here. And so they became his chief disciples. Sariputta was known for his wisdom, known for his ability to provide amazing elaborations and explanations of the Dhamma. There are some amazing suttas in the Pali Canon that are to him when he talks about dependent origination, when he talks about the elements, when he talks about the different numerations of what is the Dhamma and what is not the Dhamma.

And Moggallana was the one who was chief in psychic faculties. So you don't see him that often in the suttas because he's somewhere out there in the brahma realms hanging out with the devas, you know, talking to them. There's some little suttas here and there that reference him. But this is what I was getting at: the essence of the Buddha's teaching is conditionality and causality.

What is known as paticca samuppada. And this is generally translated as dependent origination or dependent co-arising, dependent co-origination, and many different ways of translating that. But Sariputta had said one time, one who knows and sees the Dhamma knows and sees dependent origination, and one who knows and sees dependent origination knows and sees the Dhamma. So it's not only about ethics, and it's not only about meditation, but it's also about truly understanding, at a core level, at an experiential level, what is dependent origination.

And what dependent origination is, it is an elaboration of the first two noble truths, really. It's an elaboration of all four. When you look at the arising, it's the first two. When you look at the cessation, it's the second two. So going back to the time when the Buddha was the Bodhisattva and he was looking at the four sights, the thing that he was looking for is, is there a way out of this cycle of birth and death, birth and death, birth and death? Is there a way to escape the pain and suffering of this world?

And so after he was going through his own process of going through the jhanas, his past lives, why did he look into his past lives? Going into the arising and passing away of beings, why did he do that? Looking into the destruction of the asavas of the mind and seeing the Four Noble Truths, why did he do that?

What was the reason for looking at the past lives? Was it just to be curious? Is there birth and rebirth? What is it? No, it's to see causality and conditionality. Why did this existence arise in the first place? What was the cause of birth into this existence? It was because of certain actions from a previous life. It was because of certain intentions.

It was because of certain mindsets that happen at the moment of death. And this is why I say to people, which maybe a lot of people don't like to hear, but when I'm teaching meditation, right, or when you learn meditation and you're applying meditation, the ultimate reason why you're doing it is because I'm teaching you how to prepare for your own death.

That's what it is. That's what meditation is. Learning how to die in peace and acceptance, not in confusion and resistance and turmoil. What you deal with in meditation, you will deal with in your final moments of life. And what you think about, what you gravitate towards, that you become. That is the nature of dependent origination. That is the nature of this existence, of becoming and being. The Buddha saw dependent origination through the past lives.

He saw that it applied to the arising and passing away of other beings in accordance with their karma. Because dependent origination, the links of dependent origination, which is what we'll go through, are the gears that shift and move. They are the mechanics of how karma works. And karma is that which binds us to existence. And to be free, to have liberation, is to be free of karma.

To be free of karma in what way? To be free of the patternings and the subconscious material, the habitual emotional reactions, the library of choices that our minds always incline towards. To be free of all of that is to be free of karma. So the Buddha saw that this dependent origination doesn't just apply to him, but applies to all beings in one way or the other.

That beings arise and pass away according to their karma. And so then from there, he saw into what the Four Noble Truths are, and discovered the path to awakening with the Eightfold Path. And it is said, I've been to Bodhgaya a few times now. Bodhgaya is the epicenter of Buddhism because it's where the Bodhi tree is purported to be, where the Buddha had sat down under and attained full awakening. And there are these marks, markers in the ground, seven steps.

I think it's seven steps, but there are these markers, and it shows these are the footsteps the Buddha took up and down, up and down, contemplating dependent origination. For seven days, he contemplated dependent origination, using his intuition. For seven days, he contemplated the arising and the passing away, and so on. So for 49 days, it's like seven times seven.

He contemplated many different things that then became what we see as the framework of the Dharma. And how did he do it? Well, the Sutta say that he basically sat under the tree and just contemplated, or walked and contemplated, with the arising of what is there, the arising of. He uses intuition. This is how we use our intuition. We ask whatever it is that we're trying to find out. You ask the intuition that.

And you set it aside. You don't think about it. You don't hope for an answer. You don't expect anything. You just set it aside. And the answer will hit you in meditation, just when you're maybe in the kitchen or walking or driving or taking a shower or whatever. Suddenly, like a eureka moment, it hits you, that intuitive answer. And it is the answer that is most appropriate for your situation. It's not the answer that you will like.

It's the answer that will be most appropriate for the situation that happened. So he uses the intuition to find out with the arising of suffering, or with the arising of what comes, the arising of suffering and what is suffering. Now we will get into dependent origination. So what is suffering? Suffering comes from the word dukkha. Dukkha. So what does dukkha mean? Dukkha is actually like, which is bad.

There's suh, which is a prefix for good, and duh, which is a prefix for bad in Sanskrit and in Pali. And ka. Ka is a short form for what represents stability. So dukkha, just like anicca, is talking about that which is not stable, that which we cannot depend upon to be stable. He uses the analogy, and many times it's used, the analogy of, at that time they had chariots, but now we have Walmart. And so in Walmart you always have a cart that you take, and it's my karma, I always get a cart where one of the four wheels is not exactly functioning the way it should. So the axle of the wheel, of the chariot, isn't well aligned.

And there's dukkha. Things are just not exactly the way they could be. So there is the dramatic word, suffering. But it's just, things aren't great. And so the Buddha categorizes them into three kinds of dukkha. There is dukkha dukkha, there is viparinama dukkha, and there is sankhara dukkha. Dukkha dukkha is the original dukkha. It's the original recipe of dukkha. It's the dukkha that we all experience at some point. Pain in the body, illness, disease, grief, sorrow, lamentation, anxiety. These kinds of things are also dukkha. Old age is dukkha. So there is jara marana, as it's known. Jara is old age. Marana is death. Jara marana. That's the usual dukkha that we all experience.

And then there's viparinama dukkha. That's the dukkha of change. The dukkha of where you're, you know, getting ready to go to your airport and you have a flight scheduled at so-and-so time. And you get to the airport, you check in at the airport, you go through security, and it is cancelled. That's viparinama dukkha. The dukkha of change, the dukkha where you don't expect things to be a certain way. The things that you don't want come to be, and the things that you do want don't come to be.

That is viparinama dukkha. And then there is sankhara dukkha, which is a more existential kind of suffering, the dukkha that comes from identifying with one or more of the five aggregates. What are the five aggregates? Form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness. Form is this body. Form is this table. Form is this cup. Form is the statue of the Buddha. This form, any form that you're here looking at, experiencing.

Internal, this form. External, all other forms. Why? Because they're called form, or rupa, because they're made up of the four elements, the four states of matter. To one degree or another, they're either solid or liquid or gaseous, or for heat and temperature, fire, plasma. And they make up different kinds of forms. And they're in aggregate. They are made up. And by the nature of them being made up of different conditions, they are impermanent.

Form is impermanent, because as soon as you take away the conditions, the form collapses. Form is impermanent, is therefore suffering, dukkha, not to be relied upon, not to be dependent upon. That's what dukkha is, unreliability. You can't rely on it for unending happiness. Even when you are blissed out, that is dukkha, because it doesn't continue. Or you get bored of the bliss.

What about meditation? We all meditate to get to a quiet mind. And as soon as we have a quiet mind, I'm bored. I want something to happen. That's also dukkha. So form is like that. Feeling. What is feeling? Feeling is the experience that we're having through the sense bases. If one or more of the sense bases is not functioning, or there's no contact there, then that feeling disappears.

And therefore, that feeling is impermanent. Being impermanent, even if it's the most pleasurable feeling that you have, when it fades away, you experience dukkha. Perception. We talked about perception yesterday. The recognition, the recognizing of something, that's dependent upon what we have learned, or what we have experienced. You may have the most pleasant perceptions. One piece of information totally collapses all of that, and it falls apart. Perception is impermanent, and therefore it's dukkha.

Formations. What are formations? Formations, we will get into it when we talk deeper into dependent origination, but for now, understand that formations are our volition, our choices. We identify with our choices, but the reality is our choices are not our own. Our choices are inherited by what we learn from our parents, what we learn from society, what we learn from our teachers, what we learn from our peers, what we learn from our friends.

And we decide, we make up an opinion about something, and now this is my choice. I identify with this choice or that choice. And everything that you see on the news is nothing but a conflict of many different choices that come together, and people saying this choice is better, and other people saying that choice is better. And it's not just America.

Anywhere you go in the world, this is how it is. This is why the Buddha says that when you hold on to views so strongly, it results in the taking up of the stick and sword. That is the cause of all wars that we have. It's a war of opinions, of this is my choice, this is how I see the world, versus another group's idea of what the world should be, or how the world should be, or how they choose to live their life.

So inherently there's dukkha in that. We try to find security and stability in our choices. We try to say, oh, this is my choice. I stand firm by that choice, but it collapses. It changes. It has the nature of change. When I'm talking about formations here, I'm talking in the context of choices. There is another context which is much deeper, which we will get into later. I don't want to give you too much, because this is a very vast and deep subject. And it's okay if you don't understand all of it.

You will, over a period of time, as you reflect and as you see for yourself, you will. So don't worry. So we have form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness. Consciousness is dependently arisen. Consciousness arises dependent upon the meeting of sense-base and sense-object: the eyes and forms, the ears and sounds, the nose and odors, the tongue and flavors, the body and tangibles, the mind and mind objects. When these two come together, or these dualities come together, there arises an underlying consciousness.

That is the sense-based consciousness. That changes all the time. We spoke about infinite consciousness, seeing the arising and passing away of many different awarenesses, many different consciousnesses. This is what this is referring to. Therefore, consciousness being impermanent is also dukkha. Now, in the time of ancient India, during the time of the Buddha, and even before then, and of course, even after him, there was or is this idea of atma, atman.

This atman is seen as the self, the soul, the thing that is our pure essence. And in some traditions that pure essence is not different from a god or godhead. It is not different from the universe. There is an ideal, there is an idea that there is the self. And this self is seen as sat, chit, ananda. Sat means self-existing, independent of causes and conditions.

It exists by its own nature. Chit, that it has the nature of pure awareness, not dependent upon any sense experience. And ananda, it is unending bliss. That is the nature of this self. So that is the touchstone that we're looking at. And what is the Buddha saying? The Buddha is saying, look at the five aggregates.

He doesn't talk about whether there is self or no self. He's saying, let's say you're saying that there is a self. Now look at the five aggregates. If self is supposed to be independent of causes and conditions, supposed to be unending, permanent, self. If you look at form, you've seen that form is impermanent and it causes suffering.

Therefore, it cannot be seen as inherently me, mine, or myself. It cannot be seen as self. It cannot be seen as belonging to self. It cannot be seen as separate from self. It cannot be seen as self within that form. Likewise with feeling, it's impermanent, therefore suffering, therefore not me, not mine, not myself. Likewise with perception, likewise with choices, likewise with awareness.

But the challenge, the issue, the problem at hand is that over a period of time the mind has gotten used to identifying with one or more of these aggregates self, so to speak, causes suffering in the mind. That is the inherent dukkha, the sankhara dukkha. The identification with the aggregates, one way or the other, is the result, or is the cause, I should say, of the suffering that we experience, where things are not enough, we identify with it.

So this dukkha, the Buddha then asks, this suffering, with the arising of what comes the arising of suffering? And what is the answer that he comes to? Birth. With the arising of birth, there is the arising of jara marana, the arising of dukkha. As soon as we are born, we have an expiry date. supposed to go, but we're all going to go at some point.

Death with the arising of birth, there is the arising of death. But does that mean that the Buddha is saying that nobody should be born anymore? What is he saying there? And this is where it can lead to misinterpretation of the words of the Buddha, and they thought, oh, he's saying life is suffering, so why should we continue? And they killed themselves.

The Buddha was on retreat that time. He came out of retreat and they told him this is what happened. And he realized he needed to be more careful with how he explains these things. He needed to be more deliberate about what he's saying. He's not saying that nobody should be born. What he's saying is at this point we are all born. So now we can't escape that.

But birth also provides the ability for us to experience Nibbana. Remember that. Nobody remembers that part. The fact that we are born gives us the potential to experience Nibbana. Gives us the potential to experience wisdom. The people who are new to Buddhism, who want to give a nihilistic flavor to Buddhism, overlook this fact. But there's another way of understanding birth, because there are, when you look at dependent origination, there is the macro level, which explains how rebirth happens, and there's the micro level, which explains how rebirth happens in every moment, is the reality of existence.

We are constantly being reborn in every moment. Our bodies, our feelings, our perceptions, our choices, our awareness, constantly being reborn. And there's also the understanding of birth as the birth of action, the birth of karma. Karma is the villain. We speak in the morning, karma is my relative. I am the inheritor of my karma. But karma is also the villain. Karma is the one that has caused the birth to happen in the first place, has caused the suffering to happen in the first place. So with the birth of karma, there arises suffering.

What do we mean by the birth of karma? What is karma? What is karma? Is it a cosmic ledger that says you've done so many different actions and therefore now you have so many different merits and so many different punishments? Is there someone sitting on a golden throne who's going to tell you now at the end of your life these are the things that you've done and these are the things you should have done and therefore according to your deeds you will go here and you will go there?

How are we so sure that is the case? How can we be so sure that is the case? Has any one of us actually seen that? Or have we been told that? Have we learned that through our priests and scholars and teachers and parents and peers? You see, Nibbana is this also. The freedom from the conceptual framework of what we perceive to be consensus reality.

The freedom to think for yourself, to see for yourself, to understand, from your own experience, not because it was handed down to you, not because they have said seven generations ago this was the case, and so this is the tradition we follow. This is why the Buddha was a maverick in his own tradition. He questioned a lot of the things that people were doing in those days.

So, setting aside the conceptual framework of rebirth from one life to the next, we can look at birth of action as the birth of intention and the birth of speech and the birth of physicality. That is what the birth of karma is, the birth of action. The moment you say whatever it is that you say, you can't call it back.

The moment you think and intentionalize something, you can't call it back. The moment you take a physical action, you cannot call it back. What can happen? It depends on the intention and the strength of the intention. The causes and conditions that may give rise to the reaction to that intention, the reaction to that action. That reaction can come in the form of suffering. So this action-reaction, action-reaction, that is samsara.

That is the cycle of birth and death. That is the cycle of rebirth of action. With the arising of the birth of action, there's the arising of the birth of, or the arising of suffering. When you let go of action, you let go of suffering. But it doesn't mean that you stop acting. There's a difference. The karma that we talk about as action is a certain kind of action.

It's an action that is rooted in identification, rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion, rooted in motivation of what's in it for me. When I meditate, will I get Nibbana? If I do this, will I get that? That sort of bargaining with existence is that kind of action, that kind of intention that gives rise to further suffering. And so that kind of action is known as new karma.

There's old karma and new karma. These are words I'm just throwing out. You will understand as we go down the chain of dependent origination. So with the arising of the birth of action, there is the arising of suffering. With the cessation of the birth of action, birth of what action? Of egoic action. Birth of action rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion. With the cessation of that, there is the cessation of suffering.

With the arising of what, is there the arising of the birth of action? With the arising of bhava, which means becoming, or being, or habitual tendencies. The other day, you guys were very curious about the realms of existence? And I talked to you about how these are also psychological states. This is where we're talking about being, existence.

With the arising of a certain set of habitual tendencies, there comes a certain birth of action. If I am met with a certain experience in this moment, my mind will immediately gravitate to a certain choice without even thinking about it. That is habitual reaction. That is habitual tendency. That is being. If I am somebody who gets angry at the slightest startle of somebody, who gets angry at the slightest comment, who gets upset by whatever it is, and I've continuously over my life made the same choice to be upset and to be angry, when I'm met with the same or similar kinds of conditions, my mind will naturally incline to that.

That is the library of choices that we carry with us. The patterning that I'm talking about. Where you can move halfway around the world and yet still find yourself with similar kinds of situations that you try to escape. With similar kinds of people that you try to escape. Why? Because of your habitual tendencies, because of how you decide to make choices.

Those choices or that library of decisions and choices leads to a certain mindset, a certain psychological mindset. If you have been generous, if you have been giving of your time, if you've been selfless in many different ways, if you've been forgiving and compassionate and so on, start to become that over a period of time. And you will start to, in some sense, find yourself in situations where you're mostly compassionate, mostly forgiving, mostly this or that.

And your birth of action will be rooted in that. If a person has been very violent over their life, their psychological state is hellish. They find themselves in situations where they are always violent. They find themselves in situations where they're punished for that violence. Maybe they're in prison or they're running from the law or whatever it is. It's a very hellish place to be.

If you're a person who meditates over a long period of time, you meditate every day with consistency and you go into a certain jhana and you'll learn all the facets of that jhana. Your mind will start to incline and be conditioned by that jhana. And you will have that jhana available to you wherever you are.

And you start to gravitate towards situations that give you that experience. And vice versa. So, habitual tendencies with the arising of what? Comes the arising of these habitual tendencies. With the arising of clinging or upadana comes the arising of habitual tendencies. Now here's the interesting thing. When you have the birth of action, there's no way to call it back.

But when you have the becoming, which comes in the form of what? Thoughts. Comes in the form of choices. Before you choose to act, choices that come up in the form of thoughts. Do I do this or do I do that? But most people, they don't think, they just do based on their reactions. When you meditate, you start to become aware of these reactions and you start to recondition them into responses that are rooted in wisdom.

You become more aware of these habitual reactions and so therefore, you start to see how your mind is going to take that action and you stop. How do you stop? You recognize that choice is about to be made. You release that choice. You relax the tightness and tension. And you are now in a place where your mind can respond.

And that response doesn't create new karma, being rooted in wisdom, being rooted in the Eightfold Path. You see, when you have the right speech or the right action, that right speech or right action does not produce new karma. Think about this. When you have right speech, the speech that is truthful, the speech that is timely, the speech that has good intentions, the speech that is necessary, the speech that is kind. That you will experience some level of karma that is good and beneficial.

But you let go of the identification with that. That karma is like oil and water. It's separated. You can't mix it. That karma doesn't touch you in a way that will cling, in a way that will cause further repercussions. It will lead to the dissolution of unwholesome karma. Same with the right action. You keep the precepts as best as you can, the repercussions of those actions will start to change over a period of time.

In fact, it is said in the suttas, I'll give you two things. One who meditates with loving kindness or one who meditates with compassion or joy or equanimity, their mind becomes immeasurable. Why? What does he mean by this? He gives the example of this. You take a spoonful of salt and you put it in a glass and you drink the glass of water, right? In a glass of water, you put the salt, and you drink it, it will taste salty. Will it not?

But you take that same amount of the spoonful of salt, and you put it into a wide and large freshwater pool of water, like a lake. What happens to that salt? It starts to dissipate. In the water, you don't taste the salt. It's very difficult to taste that salt. So this analogy explains what? When the mind is cultivated through loving kindness, through compassion, cultivated through joy, through equanimity, it becomes expansive.

And that same level of karma that arises, which is that spoonful of salt, doesn't affect you in the same way as it would have before. You have the capacity to experience that karma without habitual reactions. Therefore, the karma dissipates, dissolves, and fades away. It's not only through our non-reactivity, it's through our understanding that whatever is arising in this moment is karma that is impermanent and dukkha and not me, not mine, not myself.

That whatever is arising in the form of feeling, in the form of this experience, I meet with wisdom. I meet with loving kindness. I meet with equanimity or any of the brahmaviharas. And through my non-reactivity from that wisdom, charge and dissipates. It may arise again but it arises much weaker. It may arise again but it starts to dissipate even more until it fades away.

This is what will happen in the meditation. The hindrances that you are experiencing in the meditation is your old. Treated as old karma that is arising and surfacing for you to meet with it. How you choose to meet with it will determine what happens next. Do you bring in more karma or you dissolve it? The hindrance arises, right? What do you do? Do you fight with it? Do you suppress it? Do you pull it? Do you push it? What do you do? Just be there with it. You recognize it's there.

You release the tightness and tension with regards to how you should control it. You drop it. You relax. You engage with something else that replaces the hindrance. And that hindrance becomes weaker and weaker and weaker. But the reason why it doesn't become weaker and weaker and weaker is because we're like, oh, here it is again. I thought I got rid of you. Here you are again.

But if you have that attitude that with everything that I'm meeting is just this old karma that's arising, then I can be in a space with the capacity to meet with that karma so that karma goes from this to this. When my mind is equanimous, when my mind is loving and kind, when my mind is compassionate, joyful, when my mind has wisdom.

So when you have the becoming, the habitual tendencies, you can recognize that, you can release it, you can relax it. When you have the clinging, you can recognize it, you can release it, you can relax it. So what is clinging? There are four types of clinging. There's clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rites and rituals, and clinging to self-view. Clinging to sensual pleasures. So clinging in general, what does clinging mean? Clinging is the rationalizing for why it is that you obsess over something, or why it is that you hate something, or why it is that you identify with something. So the thought process is this. I like this, that's the craving. I hate this, that's the aversion, because of so and so.

That's the clinging, the rationalizing, or why it is that you hate something, or why it is that you like something. Therefore, I will act this way. So I hate this. That's the aversion. That's part of the craving. Because of whatever happened in my past, or because of my trauma, or because of my associations, because of whatever. That's the clinging. That's the rationalizing.

Therefore, I will act this way is the decision to act a certain way. That's the habitual reaction. And then the action arises from that. Right? Every time we rationalize, no, but he said that to me. They did that to me. That's the clinging. So, clinging to sensual pleasures. Clinging to sensual pleasures is clinging to any of the experiences that are happening through the five physical senses. Clinging to forms, clinging to sights or forms, clinging to sounds, clinging to odors, clinging to tastes, clinging to tangibles. How do you cling to those things?

Well, let's use the example of chocolate cake, right? What's going on there? Happening, so I have created an association that chocolate cake is wonderful, maybe because of the way my mom made it, because I ate it at a certain bakery, or I just love the flavor of chocolate. I have heard that chocolate is good for you, so I justify by saying that no matter how much sugar is in the chocolate cake, the chocolate will outbalance, you know, the sugar. I rationalize it in this way. That's the clinging. Eat chocolate cake. That's the decision. That's the habitual emotional reaction.

And I take that step to eat the chocolate cake. It's pleasurable at first, but over a period of time, if I eat only chocolate cake, I will develop diabetes. That's the suffering. I will develop all kinds of pains and aches, probably. Or I'll, at the very least, have a stomach ache if I eat too much chocolate cake.

That's also the suffering. That's also the dukkha. So the clinging to sensual pleasures. You think about the way now, I would say America, but it's everywhere. Everywhere I've traveled to, I've seen this, is, you see these wonderful different billboards and advertisements on social media and television. For those of you who still watch television, there's a certain way the marketers appeal to us. If I drive a certain type of car, then I'm this type of man.

If I wear this type of cologne, then this is what I will attract into my life. If I wear a certain kind of watch, then people will know I'm this kind of person. This is the clinging that is created through advertisement. I always give this example. I don't know if this is still the case. When you go to the grocery store and you go to the cereal aisle, all of the colorful cereal is about two to three feet above the ground. Why?

Because it's targeting children. They see the colorful icons and they see the colorful packaging. What do they want to do? I want that. So the world is built in such a way that it is built for us to crave and cling. I've always said this, that our attention currency that we have in this world. How you choose to spend your attention will determine what kind of life you will have.

You can choose to go on social media and doom scroll. And hey, I do it all the time. I do it all the time. It's so addictive, right? You go on Instagram and it's one thing after another, one thing after another. And you say, I'm just going to be there for 10 minutes. And then 10 minutes turns into an hour. Imagine you do that for meditation. You think you're sitting for 10 minutes, but you've been going on for an hour. That's a great meditation.

But in no way is this meditation. This is just you wasting the currency of your attention. And your attention dwindles. Your attention span dwindles. Meditation helps you to replenish your bank balance of attention. So clinging, how people, whatever it is, companies, corporations, businesses, social media, whatever it is, how they use colors and sounds and sights, right? How they use fragrances.

When you go into a casino, everything is temperature regulated. There are the colors that pop, right? They're all there for you to stay. The slot machine, right, that's mini samsara when you go into a casino. So the world at large, when we see these things, this is what I mean. When you become free, you become free from the clinging that is manipulated for you from the people or corporations or businesses or whatever that want you to spend more of your money on that. And at this point, our attention also is monetized.

It is literally monetized at this point. So to take back your freedom, to take back your power in this, is to decide how you want to spend your attention. So every time you rationalize why it is you like something, look at that. Where is that coming from? Sikhs are it. And choose to act out of wisdom. Clinging to views. What is clinging to views? Well, in the traditional context of the suttas, it says that clinging to views is clinging to views that oppose right view. Clinging to views that deny karma. Clinging to views that deny the possibility of freedom, of Nibbana.

But there's also clinging to the Dhamma itself, right? Evangelizing the Dhamma in such a way that you get offended if somebody says something about your practice. You try to defend TWIM or you defend Vipassana or you defend yoga or you defend this or that or the other. That's where you become insidiously dependent upon the Dhamma when it was supposed to make you independent.

The Dhamma is the raft that takes you from this shore to the other shore, which is Nibbana. And clinging to the Dhamma is like taking that raft and carrying it on your shoulders and walking after you've reached the other shore with it on your shoulders. The Dhamma is the raft. Does that mean you abandon the Dhamma after you reach the other shore?

No, it means that you have embodied the Dhamma. You have understood the Dhamma where every action, every speech, every intuition is in alignment with the Dhamma. So you don't have to make it into a thing for you to defend. There's nothing to defend. That's freedom. Then there's clinging to views in the form of clinging to our opinions. I said this earlier. We cling to our opinions. We cling to the choices that we have cultivated.

Oh, I'm a Republican, or I'm a Democrat, or I'm a Christian, or I'm a Muslim, or I'm a Buddhist, or I'm a meditator. As soon as you identify with something like that, what have you done? You have excluded everyone else. You start to see the world in us versus them. That is how wars start, clinging to your opinions in this way.

But this is how we've been taught in this world, to learn how to argue, learn how to debate, learn how to hold on to your views. To what end? Can you take your views to your deathbed? And once you are dying, what are you going to do with those views? What are you going to do with those opinions when you're meeting your last breath?

Your opinions don't matter. Your opinions continue to change over a period of time. You may have grown to think one way and after maybe a few years you think a different way. The very same views that you held on to before becomes the very same views that you go against. And if you are that person who holds on to that same view all your life, even then, what does it get you?

Your views, your opinions become the filtration system through which you see the world. And you're not free from that. Clinging to rites and rituals. What is clinging to rites and rituals? Clinging to certain associations about, oh, if I only do this on Fridays, then I will appease this particular deity and therefore I will get this from them.

So, clinging to rites and rituals. That's why the Buddha was against animal sacrifice, against certain kinds of rites and rituals, where he said, this doesn't take you to full awakening. What's the point? It only causes you harm and causes others harm. Or even clinging to rites and rituals is clinging to a certain routine. You become so habituated. You become like Pavlov's dog. I need to have my espresso at 9.15 in the morning every day because if I don't, else will suffer.

Right? So having that flexibility, having that adaptability, that is the whole purpose of being somebody who is in the life of a wanderer. Somebody who is a monk, somebody who is a traveler, somebody who is a nomad. They're flexible all the time. They don't cling to rites and rituals. Rites and rituals are a form of security for the mind. You see, the whole point of this life for most people is to find security.

We think we'll find security in the form of happiness, in the form of joy, in the form of love, in the form of acceptance, in the form of validation, in the form of so many different things. And we create different little rituals as a society, you know, little rituals as different groups of people, little rituals as individuals that says, do this, I find security in that. I find a little stability in an otherwise unstable world, unstable world.

So, clinging to rites and rituals, that goes away when you start to gain the first level of freedom. Clinging to the views, that starts to go away when you have the first level of awakening. Clinging to self-views. Clinging to self-views is the deep-rooted identification with one or more of the five aggregates. That's basically what clinging to self-view is. It's the idea that I am this body, right? Or my feelings are this and I am these feelings. My experiences are these. My memories are these.

My perceptions are this. I am these perceptions. These perceptions belong to me. My choices are my own. No, they're not. No matter how strongly you fight and defend that my choices are my own, nobody's choices are their own. It's all inherited. It's all conditioned. My awareness is my own. I am awareness. No. Awareness is conditional. It only arises where you place your attention to.

You may say, but what about the idea that awareness is this vast substrate of reality? You know, like the Vedantists will do. Some of the Brahmanical traditions will say, the entire world is just consciousness. How do we actually know that? We can use quantum physics and mathematics and all of that. This is the kind of stuff that is the unessential.

What will you know once you know that consciousness is the world or the world is consciousness? How does it change your relationship to suffering? How does it change you from going from suffering to the cessation of suffering? self-view. Seeing that consciousness is dependently arisen, based and dependent upon how and where you place your attention, that frees you from that clinging.

So this clinging, with the arising of what, comes the arising of this clinging? With the arising of craving, tanha. Tanha means thirst. It's an obsessive thirst for something. Or the aversion. I don't like this, so I push it away. There is a craving for sensual pleasures, right? I like this chocolate cake. I hope it never ends. I want more and more and more.

That's the obsession. That's the craving. This is painful, I hope it stops. You know, the pain itself is one thing, but our reaction to the pain is another. The pain will be there, but how we choose to respond or react to that pain will either diminish it, subjectively speaking, as an experience, or intensify it. And it's our resistance to the unpleasantness of things that is our aversion. Because my mother said that same thing, you know, two years ago in this particular tone. And I hear somebody else say it. And now I have that association. So I cling to this.

I don't like it because my boyfriend broke up with me on this particular day. And I associated this with that. And so now I have an aversion to that. Right? Even our cravings and our aversions are inherited. It's not our own. It's impersonal. It's all a process. And of course, at the foundation of that is the identification that this is me, this is who I am. I'm a Buddhist, or I'm a meditator, I am a sotapanna, arahant, or I'm a this, or I'm a that, or whatever it is.

That's all identity. Identification. And once I have identity, I have something to defend. Because that identity is very fragile. But we hold on to it so much because we find security in it. And anything that pokes at that identity, we become defensive of. We crave for that identity. Push away anything that challenges that identity. This is the desire for becoming.

So there is the sensual craving and there is the existential craving. The desire to become something. The desire to be something. Now you may ask, but then what about the desire for Nibbana? Is that not wholesome? Yes, it is wholesome. This is what is known as chanda. That desire, if it becomes obsession, oh, when will I attain Nibbana? Am I going to attain Nibbana now? Is it going to happen now? Is it going to happen now? That's the obsession.

You have the intention to incline the mind towards Nibbana, and you let it go. Right? You have put in the coordinates of where the ship needs to go, or where the plane needs to go, that it will go where it needs to go. You make little adjustments based on what's happening in the mind. But if I constantly am like, oh, are we getting there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? That's the craving.

That's the obsession. So the sensual craving, which is known as kamatanha, the existential craving, bhavatanha, which makes me want to go to a certain realm, or go to a certain jhana, or become a certain kind of person, or be seen as a certain kind of person, whatever it is. That's the existential craving. And then there's a craving for non-existence.

Right? If there's a person here who's getting bored by my talk, I don't want to be here. That's the craving for non-existence. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be in this family. I don't want to be in this group. I don't want to be in this country. I don't want to be part of this society. That's all different kinds of craving.

Of course, you know, the ideation of suicide, that's a craving for non-being, craving for non-existence. But where does that come from? That still comes from a strong identification. Why does a person commit suicide? Because they're looking for relief. Any kind of craving that we're going after, it's because we're looking for relief. That person who wants to commit suicide is overwhelmed by their life, and they feel like if they end this life, they'll find relief.

Every time I don't find relief in something, I crave after it. And I think if I do that, I'll find relief. I have mistaken relief for craving. I have mistaken the object of craving for that relief. When the real relief is Nibbana. No craving. No identification. No conceptualizing. Just being here now, seeing reality as it is. Without projection, without identification.

That's the cessation of suffering. That's why the second noble truth, as the cause of suffering, is craving. But the dukkha nirodha is tanha nirodha. The cessation of suffering is the cessation of craving, which is equal to Nibbana. That mind without craving, a mind without craving, that is rooted in Nibbana. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free, and the fear-struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. 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.