Day 3 Apr Retreat-MN 111 One by One - the Jhanas lead to Nibbana

We're going to go into John O'Lynn today. I'm all right. I know. I know. This is a classic. One, one, one. I already hear the groans. One by one as they occurred. Anupada Sutta. Thus have I heard, on one occasion the Blessed One was living at Savati in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's Park. There he addressed the bhikkhus thus. Bhikkhus, Venerable Sir, they replied. The Blessed One said this. Bhikkhus, Sariputta is wise. Sariputta has great wisdom.

Sariputta has wide wisdom. Sariputta has joyous wisdom. Sariputta has quick wisdom. Sariputta has keen wisdom. Sariputta has penetrative wisdom. These different types of wisdom are referring to a specific insight into dependent origination. Whenever they talk about wisdom, they're referring to that. During half a month, bhikkhus, Sariputta gained insight into states one by one as they occurred. One by one, as they occurred, was this.

Just so you know, if I'm correct about this, Moggallana took about a week to become an arahant. Sariputta was a slow learner, so it took him about two weeks. Here, bhikkhus, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, Sariputta entered upon and abided in the first jhana, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion.

Let's unpack this first. What happens in the first jhana? Quite secluded from sensual pleasures. practice or whenever you're in jhana, if you're walking in the first jhana, your mind is not paying attention to any sensory experience. It's just with the feeling of loving kindness or whatever the object is. That doesn't mean that it doesn't hear. That doesn't mean that it doesn't see if you're walking. That doesn't mean that it doesn't feel the wind if you're meditating outside.

It just means that the mind is okay with those experiences. Secluded, not affected, unaffected by them. Secluded from unwholesome states. Unwholesome states are hindrances. So when your mind is rid of hindrances, it is ripe for becoming in jhana or going into jhana. And so he says that first jhana is accompanied by applied and sustained thoughts. This is thinking and examining thought. And what that means is you start off with the process of verbalizing a wish of "May I be happy? May I be well?" Or you start off with the intentionalizing of a feeling of loving kindness through wholesome imagery, through using a wholesome memory. And then you allow the mind to rest in that experience.

Thinking and examining thought. With rapture, that is joy. And pleasure born of seclusion. Now that joy and that pleasure that we're talking about, that joy is this feeling of elevated pleasantness, this feeling of elevated joy. And that pleasure is a feeling of comfort in the body, ease in the body. This is coming from the Pali word sukha, which means comfort and ease.

In the first jhana, you don't have to bring up the joy. You don't have to bring up the ease. It naturally arises born out of seclusion, born out of becoming, starting to become collected around your object of meditation. Remember yesterday we talked about how when you have the five hindrances and you let go of them, there arises a natural joy, a natural happiness, because you have freedom from those hindrances.

So that joy and pleasure that's born of seclusion is related to the fact that the mind is no longer contaminated by hindrances, no longer dealing with hindrances, having let go of, relaxed and abandoned the hindrances. As a result, that joy picks up. The metta that arises is one thing, and the joy that arises is another. The feeling of metta is this warmth in the middle of your chest. That joy is high vibrational energetic experience, a form of feeling exhilarated. Sometimes it feels like that, sometimes it feels like it's rising, whatever it might be. It might manifest in different ways. It might manifest as warmth in the hands, as a feeling of heat in the body, as a feeling of being happy, and so on.

And the states in the first jhana, the applied thought, the sustained thought. The applied thought is the intentionalizing of bringing up loving kindness. And the sustained thought is the mind resting in the experience of loving kindness. The joy, the ease or comfort, and the unification of mind. The unification of mind is the mind that starts to become collected around the object of meditation. It comes from the Pali word ekagata.

Sometimes this is translated as one-pointed concentration. But as we talked about last time, when the mind is relaxed, it's able to be more attentive. When the mind has too much concentration, there is a point in which that concentration becomes diffused because so many different thoughts arise as a result of suppressing the mind through one-pointed concentration. So ekagata here means a unified mind, a mind that orbits around the feeling of loving-kindness, a mind that stays there, rests there.

The contact, feeling, perception, volition or intention, and mind or consciousness. So the contact, feeling, perception, intention, and later on it talks about attention. These make up mentality. When we talk about mentality, materiality, we're talking about mind and body, of matter. And the mind is known by its qualities, by its faculties and processes of contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention.

So when you start this practice, you start with the contact. That first contact is the mind making contact with the feeling of loving kindness. The mind making contact with its object of meditation. The feeling, the sensation, the experience is the experience of that warm glow of loving-kindness. The perception is the recognition that you are experiencing loving-kindness. The intention is placing your attention on loving-kindness.

The intention is the actual application of thought, the application of the practice. And the attention is the that you use to be able to see the experience of loving-kindness. And then we talk about the zeal, the mind, consciousness. So there is consciousness that flows through that process of attention, awareness of the loving-kindness. Zeal, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity, and attention. Chanda.

Chanda means the inclination, the inclining of the mind towards meditation, the inclining of the mind towards loving-kindness. The zeal is also a wholesome desire or as I call it a cultivated intention, an intention rooted in something that's wholesome, rooted in the Dhamma. That is the resolution, to resolve the mind to be in meditation, to have that resolution.

The energy, here you're making the right effort to go into the practice of meditation. And so when we talk about energy, we talk about in the form of mental and physical energy, but we're also talking about it from the application or the endeavor of using right effort. Mindfulness. Now you're observing what's going on. Through that observation, attention flows through the attention that is pointed towards loving kindness.

So mindfulness here, remember, is remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one object to another. So you're actually paying attention. The process of mindfulness is the process of paying attention. Attention is the tool of the mind to be able to know what's going on. Equanimity. There's equanimity here in the first jhana. And what we're talking about here is actually equanimity that's understood as knowledge and vision of things as they are, as they really are. Meaning equanimity is the ability to see things and not be agitated by them.

So the mind gets disturbed, there should be equanimity. The mind is disturbed. Use the six Rs and come back. The mind is collected. Great. The mind is collected. There's no pulling or pushing going on. The mind is just seeing things as they are, like a scientist observing. And attention, as I said. The attention is the scope of the mind. That is to say, the tool of the mind to hone in on an experience. That doesn't mean it becomes one-pointed. You use your attention; the intention of bringing your attention is the process of this practice. These states were defined by him one by one as they occurred. These different states: first, the first jhana has the applied thought, the sustained thought, the joy and the comfort and unification of mind. These will change as we get through higher jhanas, but what will remain is the contact.

Now the contact also means contact in terms of sensory contact with the body. So while you're still in the first jhana, the second jhana, third jhana, fourth jhana, you still have a sense of contact with the body. You might hear things, you might smell something, you might feel the fly on your arm or on your knee, you might have some kind of experience and there's that contact but it doesn't affect you. You just know with equanimity, that here is the contact, that's okay. Your mind is not distracted. It's just aware of everything. There's an open awareness going on here in jhana. One of the ways to understand jhana is: we have jhana, which is traditionally understood as jhana that is suppressing the hindrances, suppressing the mind.

And then there's a concentrated mind that then experiences pleasure and joy. And you might experience that pleasure and joy after you come out of the meditation practice for a few hours or even for the whole day. But nothing really happens. You're just experiencing a blissful state of mind but not really understanding when hindrances arose and in allowing those hindrances to be there and letting them go using right effort, using the six Rs.

The jhanas that we're talking about are what I would call Arya jhanas, that is to say noble jhanas, and this is a jhana which is through the process of having a collected mind rather than a concentrated mind. A collected mind is a mind that orbits around its object of meditation, aware using that as a gravitational field and just being openly aware, so that when insights arise they arise accompanied by that jhana through that process of jhana, or when hindrances arise the mind knows it is distracted and lets it go and comes back. The process of applying right effort is key to this practice. Knowing that there is an unwholesome state arising, using recognition, recognizing that, letting go of that through releasing, relaxing the craving, the tightness and tension, coming back to the smile and bringing up joy, and then returning back to your object of meditation.

This fulfills the four right efforts, which are part of the right effort we know as part of the Eightfold Path. In the first kind of jhana, which is the non-Arya jhana, the un-Arya jhana, that is to say the ignoble jhana, in that jhana you suppress everything. So there's no wisdom that is cultivated. The wisdom that's cultivated through the Arya jhana is through the process of knowing how mind's attention moves, how this process of mind works.

That's why Sariputta is able to see these different elements, the contact, the feeling, the perception, the intention, the mindfulness, the attention, the consciousness, the zeal, the enthusiasm, the equanimity, and so on. So another way to understand jhana might be through this kind of analogy. Let's say you're sitting with a friend at a restaurant. And there's some ambient music playing. So that creates a nice ambience for you. And you're talking with your friend. But let's say that more and more people come in. And now it gets a little louder. And then the music becomes even louder. And now it's difficult for you to listen to what your friend is saying.

Or for your friend to listen to what you're saying. And so you become more distracted by what's happening with the music and the ambient noise. It's more difficult for you to be more collected with your object of meditation. So there's a tendency initially for people to get distracted by the factors of the jhana. The jhana is the background setting of your mind to cultivate wisdom. If the background setting of the mind, the ambient aspect of the mind, becomes louder and you take the joy as your object, as your object, or you take the sukha as your object, then you're no longer becoming collected. Now you're being distracted by the very factors of the jhanas.

And when you do that, what you see is that the mind becomes, or rather mistakes, the loving-kindness or the joy for the loving-kindness. And so sometimes it'll feel like, oh, the loving-kindness went away. But that's because you mistook the joy factor, the piti factor, first and second jhana, as loving-kindness. And loving-kindness will fade away, as we'll see. Because what Sariputta says, or the Buddha says about Sariputta's experience, he says, these states were defined by him one by one as they occurred. Now, it's not necessary for you to have to define these states in that same order. But you might recognize them. You might recognize here is the contact. You might recognize here is the feeling of loving-kindness.

You might recognize here is the intentionalizing. You might recognize here's the consciousness flowing to the awareness of loving-kindness. Would that be an investigation when you say, "Oh, that's a factor." Yeah, that's the perception aspect of seeing it. It's just not investigation. No, it is investigation, but I caution anyone to use the word investigation because it brings up in the mind that I have to further analyze. Discernment, let's say, the knowing, the understanding. I use the word understanding.

Understanding that your mind is now in jhana, or understanding now the mind is making contact with the loving-kindness, or understanding now the mind is perceiving the experience of loving-kindness. That's the second enlightenment factor of investigation of states, the Dhamma-vicaya. So you might recognize these things. If you don't recognize them, that's fine. Fine, no problem. But just understand that Sariputta's mind was openly aware to be able to recognize them. His mind was not suppressed.

His mind was not one-pointed, that he was not able to pick out these different factors. Known to him those states arose. Known they were present. Known they disappeared. He understood thus. So indeed, these states, not having been, come into being. Having been, they vanish. What is he seeing? He's saying anicca. He's saying the impermanence of the jhanas. So the jhanas are a means to an end. The jhanas, even though we have the Eightfold Path and you see the experience of all of the different path factors leading to right collectedness, leading to sammasamadhi,

That process of samadhi, that process of mental development, of bhavana, through the process of jhana, is just a means to an end. And that end is wisdom. That end is the destruction of greed, hatred, and delusion. So you're understanding these states of jhana not as an end in themselves. Rather, they are a process to allow you to develop wisdom, to cultivate wisdom.

Regarding these states, he abided unattracted, unrepelled, independent, detached, free, disassociated, with a mind rid of barriers. So he abided unattracted, unrepelled. That is, he had equanimity towards these different factors. He saw them as they occurred, one by one, and didn't get attached to them, and detached, free, disassociated, with a mind rid of barriers. A mind rid of barriers, which means a mind that is rid of any inclination to do something, any inclination to be something, just seeing things as they are, unattached.

He understood there is an escape beyond, and with the cultivation of that attainment, he confirmed that there is. And so now, what happens in the second jhana? In the first jhana, you started the process of intentionalizing the loving-kindness through a process of verbalizing, through a process of wholesome imagery, using a memory or an image that helps you to feel that loving-kindness, to bring up that loving-kindness.

Once the experience of loving-kindness happens, then you let go of that image. You don't need that image anymore. Now the mind becomes collected with that feeling of loving-kindness. And so there is no need to continue to start the ignition over again, over and over again, to start the car. The first time you started the ignition is enough. Now the car is running. Now the mind is staying with its object of meditation. And therefore there is the self-confidence, the idea that, okay, I know what I'm doing now. I'm confident in this practice. And the singleness of mind, the mind stays with its object of meditation, doesn't become distracted. The attention is non-dispersed. There is the joy and the comfort born of collectedness.

Again, you don't bring up the joy. You don't bring up the comfort. It arises as a result of the mind becoming further collected. The mind becoming unimpeded by the process of jhana, or through the process of jhana. The mind becomes aware and rests in that awareness of loving-kindness. And as a result, there will be a feeling of pleasantness, pleasure. There'll be a feeling of joy, and there'll be a feeling of comfort.

Again Bhikkhus, with the fading away as well of joy, Sariputta abided in equanimity. And mindful and fully aware, still feeling pleasure with the body, that's the sukha, the comfort and ease of the body. Now what happens in the third jhana is that excited form of joy, that vibratory energetic joy, starts to taper, starts to disappear, and all that's left is this feeling of pleasantness or pleasure in the body and in the mind. So there is a more sustained experience of pleasure in the body while the mind is collected on its object of meditation.

But the defining factor for this third jhana is the equanimity and tranquility. So the tranquility factor of the body, the body feels very relaxed. And so sometimes the body will feel very light and it feels like it's starting to be more expansive. Sometimes the body will feel heavy, feels like it's grounded. It feels like it's collected. And sometimes you'll feel that the body is just very stable, very balanced, very much at ease.

And likewise with the mind, the mind will start to feel expansive. You might feel like the loving-kindness starts to become more expansive from the heart and starts to rise up. You might feel like as if the mind is becoming more spacious, balanced, and whiru. That is to say, a mind that is observing things as they are. The full awareness.

Now the mind is fully collected on its object of meditation. There's just smooth gliding from the second jhana to the third jhana. And the unification of mind. That's the collectedness. Again, the contact, feeling, perception, volition, and mind. The zeal, decision, energy. Again, it says mindfulness. That's the observation, and the equanimity, seeing things as they are. So here you notice there's the equanimity first, and that's the factor of the jhana, and then there's the mindfulness. The mind is becoming more and more clear, more and more having clarity. Whereas here, when we talk about the factor of mindfulness and equanimity the second time around in this jhana, we're talking about the enlightenment factor of mindfulness and the enlightenment factor of equanimity and attention.

Not much going on here. Very stable. And purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. Mindfulness due to equanimity. So we talked about the enlightenment factors yesterday. We have the mindfulness, which leads to the investigation of states, which leads to the energy, which leads to the joy, which leads to the tranquility, which leads to the collectedness, which leads to the equanimity.

That equanimity leads to further strengthening of mindfulness. So what we're seeing here is a process of the enlightenment factors feeding themselves through continual attention. The more you pay attention to the factors as they arise, so there is the joy, then there's the tranquility that arises. Then there is the collectedness that arises. Then there's the equanimity. Now there is a further strengthening, further clarity in the mind, further strengthening of mindfulness.

And so that mindfulness becomes even more powerful, even sharper. And so this equanimity informs that mindfulness, which means that clarity of mind, is based in equanimity. It sees things as they are without getting pulled in one direction or another, without getting pulled towards pleasure or getting pulled towards displeasure or pain. The mind is becoming even clearer because of that. The analogy I used of water: when the water is all over the place, moving, the mud also starts to move around. But once the water becomes quiet, the mud settles and there's clarity. Purity of mindfulness. We're saying that the mindfulness is becoming clearer and sharper.

And the states in the fourth jhana, the equanimity, the neither painful nor pleasant feeling. The neither painful nor pleasant feeling. That's a feeling of neutrality. Everything's great. Balance. The mental unconcern due to tranquility. Mind is very relaxed. Mind is very tranquil. Doesn't get affected by this or that. Just stays with its object of meditation, manner. The purity of mindfulness. The mindfulness is much sharper now. And the unification of mind. The contact, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness.

In the third jhana, the joy tapers away and there is now a lightness of body that is experienced through further comfort and tranquility. And in the fourth jhana, the mind becomes utterly stable, utterly mindful due to that very strong equanimity, very strong balance. These are the four jhanas. We're going to explore what are usually known as the arupa jhanas, the formless jhanas, but technically they are known as bases. They come from the Pali word ayatana, which can mean the base of, the sphere of, the dimension of.

These four formless attainments, these formless jhanas, as they were, are actually within the experience of the fourth jhana. So in other words, they are subsets of the fourth jhana. While you are in the fourth jhana, you're still experiencing these formless attainments. And we'll go through them now. Is this a good time for a question? Sure. Is typically dispassion a quality of mind in the fourth jhana? Dispassion starts to arise.

And it gets further cultivated by the process of disenchantment. So what we're talking about here is that joy leads to tranquility, that tranquility leads to collectedness, that collectedness leads to equanimity, which you experience deeper and deeper, and then eventually that equanimity leads to further disenchantment. That disenchantment then leads to dispassion. But that dispassion is starting to arise as you get into the third and fourth jhanas. So in the Satipatthana Sutta, as the Buddha is describing, the latter sequence, that's where that...

And I always equated that to the fourth genre. You're talking about mindfulness of phenomena? No, I'm talking about the description of the training. And there are, he starts off, so there are, I think there are 12 descriptions. And starting with, I think it's disenchantment is something like eight or nine in the sequence. Disenchantment is an important factor, actually.

So disenchantment is an important factor in the path. And we'll talk about that at some point later, where there's a process where you have something known as pamojja that arises from faith. Pamojja is gladness of the Dhamma, which then leads to the joy. That joy then leads to tranquility. That tranquility then leads to further comfort, which leads to equanimity. That equanimity then leads to disenchantment. That disenchantment leads to dispassion.

And then that dispassion leads to cessation. Is it something that correlates more with the ayatanas? It can happen in the four channel. Okay. Yeah. It's just, it depends on the individual? There are, let's say, six different perceptions. We'll get into that as we get into the ayatanas, but it can happen at some point or another, which is, you get to a point where you see certain things. You see impermanence, you see dukkha, you see anatta. And you're not reflecting on it, you're seeing it as it actually happens, the impermanence of states and so on. These three, so impermanence leads to dukkha, dukkha leads to anatta, anatta leads to equanimity, equanimity leads to disenchantment, disenchantment leads to dispassion, and dispassion leads to cessation.

It can happen in the ayatanas, but it's not unique to the ayatanas. It can even happen in the fourth jhana. Again, bhikkhus, with the complete surmounting of perceptions of form, with the disappearance of perceptions of sensory impact, with non-attention to perceptions of diversity. So what we're talking about is the complete surmounting of perceptions of form. Now it's completely a mental experience.

That is to say, now the experience of infinite space, infinite consciousness, of nothingness and neither perception or non-perception are happening at the level of mentality. So there is still a form. You still will feel something, but it'll be very minute, if at all. That doesn't mean that the mind becomes so concentrated that it can't hear what's going on outside.

But it's just that these things become more and more faint. And that's why there is the disappearance of the perceptions of sensory impact, with non-attention to perceptions of diversity, which means now the mind is collected in this mental experience of the ayatanas. So now there's nothing to do with the body. It has to do with internal states of understanding the expansiveness of infinite space, passing away of infinite consciousnesses, the experience of nothingness and the experience of perception of neither perception or non-perception.

So diversity here refers to sensory experiences. When they talk about diversity, that's a mind that is not collected because it's paying attention to an experience that it's hearing, or paying attention to an experience it's smelling, or paying attention to an experience that it's experiencing through the body while sitting, or even when you're walking around paying attention rather to what you're seeing and so on. So diversity is having a mind or an attention rather that's dispersed through the experience of the six sense spaces, or really the five sense spaces, because the mind is still collected.

But now there's no attention given there. Now the mind is collected within itself through the experience of the ayatanas. Space is infinite. Sariputta entered upon and abided in the base of infinite space. So here, the feeling of loving kindness will move up and it will change. And the quality of that feeling of loving kindness will change into compassion at infinite space.

So when you have this experience, you will report to me and tell me what happened. How did the feeling change? And then we will explore it and see that that's compassion. That experience of compassion is conjoined to the experience of infinite space. So you have an experience of boundless space, because at this point you're radiating the brahmaviharas, and as you're radiating, you're not pushing them, you're observing how they radiate outward and there's an expansion going on. And this is the experience of boundless space, of infinite space.

Again, bhikkhus, by completely surmounting the base of infinite space, aware that consciousness is infinite, Sariputta entered upon and abided in the base of infinite consciousness. So this is sometimes called boundless awareness, or infinite awareness, or whatever other ways you want to talk about it. But usually when people see this, they have this understanding that, oh, so now what happens is the experience of expansiveness into infinite space, now that's replaced by an idea of this infinite consciousness, aware that there is space, and then aware that that awareness of space also is infinite. You see the rays of the sun, they all seem like one fluid experience of light, one fluid ray of light. But in actuality, they are made up of individual quintillions and quintillions of photons that give the illusion of a flowing experience of light.

In the same way, infinite consciousness, as we understand it, consciousness as we understand it, is made up of data packets of individual arising and passing away of consciousnesses. So depending upon which sensory formations are strongest in your mind, you might have some experience of infinite consciousness. You may see flickering, you may see circles of light, you may see an expansion of light in your eyes or through the field of your mental vision. Some kind of tones arising and passing away. You might actually smell phantom smells.

You might feel tingling on your face or on your skin. You might feel slight small vibrations going on in the body. That's body consciousness. You might experience phantom tastes or some electricity buzzing through the tongue. You might experience the gaps between thoughts and seeing infinite mental consciousnesses. So as you see this, what you are seeing is infinite consciousness. And it might happen in different ways. The arising and passing away of consciousness.

When you see this, it will also be accompanied by the experience of what's known as mudita, or empathetic or altruistic joy. In the experience of the meditation, this is a softer, more sustainable form of joy. It's very vibratory and energetic. But this mudita is more sort of a silent, comforting joy. It's a very stable form of joy.

In your experience of daily living, what mudita means is the ability to be happy for somebody's wholesome success. The ability to celebrate in their wholesome success. And it's that feeling, that quality of feeling that you experience. This accompanies the experience of infinite consciousness. Now, it's important to understand that that arising and passing away of infinite consciousness is the ambient sound.

Don't let the mind get caught up in the ambient sound, but pay attention to the conversation, which is the experience of mudita, the experience of joy. So you might see the arising and passing away of individual consciousnesses. This is impermanent. The impermanence of consciousness. You are seeing for yourself anicca. And then it becomes tiresome. It's like, alright, when is this going to get over?

Maybe like this Dhamma talk, but it's just seeing the dukkha, the tiresomeness of the arising and passing away of consciousnesses. Seeing that, you also see that there's no controller here. You didn't intentionalize the arising and passing away of consciousnesses. It's just happening because of a series of impersonal causes and conditions. So you're seeing right there into anatta. You don't have to reflect on it. You don't have to bring it up. It's happening in that moment as it happens, as it arises and passes away. Seeing of dukkha, which leads to the seeing of anatta, the impersonal nature, which leads to equanimity.

And so now the mind starts to see the gaps between the arising and passing away of individual consciousnesses. And eventually the arising and passing away slows down and the gap widens. And as the gap widens, there is the perception of nothingness, which we'll get to. And accompanied by that is equanimity. The impersonal nature. Remember I said a little earlier while we were talking, which is the perception of impermanence leads to the perception of dukkha, which leads to the perception of anatta, which leads to the perception of equanimity. So this equanimity is experienced in nothingness. And the states in the base of infinite consciousness, the perception of the base of infinite consciousness, the collectedness of mind, the contact, feeling, perception, intention, and mind, the enthusiasm, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity, and attention.

So when those gaps of consciousness, the arising and passing away of consciousness, start to widen and they start to quiet down, what's left is a sense of nothingness. There's nothing going on now. The mind becomes so collected, it's not paying attention to anything outside of itself. Now the mind is just fully with that nothingness, accompanied by the experience of equanimity.

Mind is very pure at this point. Mind is very collected. Mind is very balanced. And so mind is just perceiving this equanimity. And what you're doing is you're radiating this equanimity. Because you were radiating the loving-kindness which turns to compassion in infinite space, you were radiating the experience of joy in infinite consciousness, and now you're radiating the equanimity in the experience of nothingness.

Soon that feeling of radiating equanimity starts to die down, starts to fade away, just gently fades away. The radiating of equanimity again, and it will just go on in itself. The analogy that I use is, imagine the mind like a still surface of a lake, clear lake, and you have the intention, which is a small little pebble that you drop, and that creates little ripples, and those ripples are the rippling of equanimity in all directions.

So just dropping a little intention, and then allowing the mind to observe the radiating of equanimity. And then it feels like the mind doesn't want to do anything. It just feels like it wants to rest in itself. That's when we get into neither perception or non-perception. And we'll get to that in a moment. Intention and mind, the zeal, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity, and attention. These states were defined by him one by one as they occurred. Known to him, those states arose. Known, they were present. Known, they disappeared. He understood thus that there is an escape beyond this, and with the cultivation of that attainment, he confirmed that there is. So let's just, for the taking, the example of nothingness.

There's still collectedness of mind. What is the contact that arises? The contact is the contact with the experience of equanimity. The feeling is the feeling of radiating equanimity. The perception is perceiving that the mind is radiating equanimity. The intention is the intention to radiate equanimity. The mind or the consciousness is the awareness that mind is radiating equanimity. The zeal, that is the intent, the cultivated intention. The enthusiasm. The decision: the mind is resolved on radiating equanimity. The energy: the right effort to radiate, the right effort to bring back the mind when it becomes uncollected and distracted. The mindfulness: observing the radiating happening. The equanimity. And the attention: the mind scopes into the experience of equanimity. That's the attention.

So these are all still there. From infinite space to infinite consciousness to nothingness. But now what happens in neither perception nor non-perception? Again, bhikkhus, by completely surmounting the base of nothingness, Sariputta entered upon and abided in the base of neither perception nor non-perception. Interesting state to be in. Neither perception nor non-perception. What is perception? Perception. Go ahead. Please. Knowing. Knowing what things are. Identifying them. Meaning being able to recognize what it is that you're seeing or experiencing. So that perception is rooted in memory. As a kid, let's say somebody goes to the stove fire and touches that stove fire. They have the feeling that that fire is hot and painful. Now the memory of that fire being hot and painful is there in the mind.

So the next time they see fire, they perceive it as hot and painful. That perception, that recognition from memory that this fire is hot and painful, perception. So here in neither perception nor non-perception, what's going on here are the limits of perception. The ability to recognize things becomes less and less active, less and less stable. That's because now mind is ceasing a lot of that activity. The activity is starting to diminish, so you get into a state of like a lucid dreaming or lucid sleep state where you're awake and asleep at the same time. And little things might pop up, disconnected thoughts, disconnected images, shapes and patterns, maybe even insight into past lives, memories, things like that.

They just don't make a lot of sense. They're all discombobulated. And so you don't have to pay attention to those. Just let them be, let them go. At this point, mind is automatically releasing them. So those events are taking place during that time? That is the mind that is luminous, quiet, bright, radiant, however you want to call it. But it's basically mind resting in itself, resting in on itself and staying there. It's a collectedness of mind.

Eventually, all of those fuzzy images and things start to die down because of non-attention to them. Your mind just releases them. And there's this very sharp clarity, pristine clarity that happens, and no vibrations at all. And no vibrations for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, nothing going on. There might be a slight, slight vibration that happens, and you just release it, just relax it, come back to the feeling of quiet mind, to the experience of quiet mind.

Now, because there's no fuel to that quiet mind, no fuel for the attention to look at these vibrations, those vibrations cease. And what also ceases is the feeling and perception, which we'll get to in a moment. So, look what he says. It says here, Sariputta emerged mindful from that attainment of neither perception nor non-perception. When you're in that state, you're not able to identify where is the contact, where is the feeling? Where is the perception? Where is the attention? Where is the mindfulness? Where is the equanimity? Where is consciousness?

It's very sort of like a twilight zone kind of thing. So that's why he emerged mindful from that attainment. Then, having done so, he contemplated the states that had passed, ceased, and changed. Which means: if you don't get into cessation and you break your sitting and you come out of this particular attainment of neither perception nor non-perception, spend a couple of minutes to just review what happened in mind. Because you might have missed out on certain formations that might have arisen. And you might notice patterns coming up. You might notice disconnected images coming up. You might notice shapes coming up. Whatever comes up, just six are it. Sariputta emerged from that state, mindful, and then recollected what happened in that experience, you do the same thing.

And then you Siksar and let go of those states. Let go of those experiences. Independent, detached, free, disassociated, with the mind rid of barriers. He understood there is an escape beyond, and with the cultivation of that attainment, he confirmed that there is. Again, Bhikkhus, by completely surmounting the base of neither perception nor non-perception, Sariputta entered upon and abided in the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness.

So now very subtle formations arise in the form of vibrations that might happen every so often when you're in quiet mind and you're starting to let go of them. And the deepest or the most subtle formation is the sense of the conceit of I am. From that sense of I am comes craving, comes aversion, comes restlessness, comes all of these other kinds of hindrances and ideas.

But that very subtle formation that arises, you have to continue to let go. It's that particular formation that causes fear in the mind. That, oh, something is going to happen now. I'm going to drop. I'm going to sink. And there's a resistance there. That resistance arises from the idea that there's still a self that's holding on to this, arising based on this formation.

It's impersonal. It's arising because of the impersonal causes and conditions of that sense of I am. Let that go. Just soften the mind when you experience that fear. Soften it. Let go of it. And eventually the mind becomes utterly pure again. And when there is no more fuel in the form of attention given to any states, it drops and switches off, maybe for a couple of seconds, maybe just for a couple of moments, and this is the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness. You don't know you were in that state until you come out of it, and what happens is when you come out of it there's this sense of seeing something, something, and then immediately mind says, wow, what was that? That's why Bhante said that he wanted to call this meditation the oh wow meditation, because you see all of these amazing and cool things. But in that process what happens is you experience seeing the links of dependent origination, and having seen them in an unattached manner, you have experienced the unconditioned element that is Nibbana. And from there

having made contact with the unconditioned, there is a feeling of joy and relief that arises. And that feeling of joy and relief stays with you for a long time. And what happens is everything you see is unimpeded, unfiltered. You're seeing things as they really are, in the best sense of that statement, which is when you see the grass, the grass is greener. Flowers, the flowers are brighter. When you see the sky, depending upon whether it's gray or blue, you see it much grayer or much bluer. Everything has this sparkle to it. Everything has this freshness to it. And that's because you have experienced something in the form of Nibbana, and you have experienced the letting go of certain fetters.

And that depends on whatever attainment that you've had and so on. And so in the case of Sariputta, his taints were destroyed by seeing with wisdom. Meaning he saw with wisdom, he saw the links of dependent origination. And not having clung to the relief and joy, not having identified to that experience, the taints were destroyed. The taint of sensual craving was already gone. The taint of becoming went away and the taint of ignorance went away. noble truths.

He emerged mindful from that attainment. Having done so, he recalled the states that had passed, ceased, and changed thus. So indeed, these states, not having been, come into being, having been, they vanish. Regarding these states, he abided unattracted, unrepelled, independent, detached, free, disassociated with the mind, rid of barriers. So what are these states he's talking about? The states he's talking about is the joy and relief that was experienced. The seeing of the links of dependent origination. He remained unrepelled, unattracted. He remained seeing things as they were without any identification to them.

Mindfulness was very sharp and clear that it was able to catch seeing that process arise. He understood there is no escape beyond. And with the cultivation of that attainment, he confirmed that there is not. Bhikkhus, rightly speaking, were it to be said of anyone, he has attained mastery and perfection in noble virtue, that is sila. Attained mastery and perfection in noble collectedness, that is samadhi. and perfection in noble wisdom, panna. Attained mastery and perfection in noble deliverance, that is vimutti, liberation of the mind.

It is of Sariputta indeed that rightly speaking this should be said. Bhikkhus, rightly speaking, were to be said of anyone, the Blessed One, born of his breast, born of his mouth, born of the Dhamma, created by the Dhamma, an heir in the Dhamma, not an heir in material things. It is of Sariputta indeed that, rightly speaking, this should be said. Bhikkhus, the matchless wheel of the Dhamma, set rolling by the Tathagata, is kept rolling rightly by Sariputta. The bhikkhus were satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One's words. Shed all grief and may all beings find relief. 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.