The Jhanas with a Map of the 8th Jhana -Day 3 June 24, 2023

Today we are going to discuss jhana and meditation, what happens in the meditation. I was going to do another sutta, but I was talking with Bhante Kusala after last night's talk, and he was talking about this other sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 31. It's called the Chula Gosinga Sutta. And it's called the Shorter Discourse in Gosinga. And actually, it is very similar to the sutta that we read yesterday, which is Majjhima Nikaya 28. And it starts from where the Buddha is going to the park, and he remains unrecognized, and it continues from there. On that occasion, the Blessed One was living at Nadika in the brick house. Now on that occasion, the Venerable Aniruddha, the Venerable Nandiya, and the Venerable Kimbila were living at the park of the Gosinga Sala tree wood.

Then when it was evening, the Blessed One rose from meditation and went to the park of the Gosinga Sala tree wood. The Venerable Aniruddha heard the park keeper speaking to the Blessed One and told him, and said, Come out, Venerable Sirs, come out, our teacher, the Blessed One, has come. Then all three went to meet the Blessed One. One took his bowl and outer robe. One prepared a seat, and one set out water for washing the feet. The Blessed One sat down on the seat made ready and washed his feet. Then those three Venerable Ones paid homage to the Blessed One. When they were seated, the Blessed One said to them, I hope you are all keeping well, Aniruddha.

But, Aniruddha, how do you live thus? I live thus. I think thus. It is a gain for me. It is a great gain for me that I am living with such companions in the holy life. I maintain bodily acts of loving-kindness towards those venerable ones, both openly and privately. I maintain verbal acts of loving-kindness towards them, both openly and privately. The Venerable Nandiya and the Venerable Kimbila each spoke likewise, adding, Good, good, Aniruddha. I hope that you all abide diligent, ardent, and resolute. He returns first from the village with alms food, prepares the seats, sets out the water for drinking and for washing, and puts the refuse bucket in its place.

Whichever of us returns last, eats any food left over if he wishes. Otherwise, he throws it away where there is no greenery or drops it into water where there is no life. He puts away the seats and the water for drinking and for washing. He takes a refuse bucket after washing it, and he sweeps out the refectory. Whoever notices that the pots of water for drinking, washing, or the latrine are low or empty, takes care of them. If they are too heavy for him, he calls someone else by a signal of the hand, and they move it by joining hands. But because of this, we do not break out into speech.

Whenever we want, they can go into jhana, the first jhana. What does that mean? Quite secluded from sensual pleasures. When you sit down for meditation, you close your eyes. There is no more visual information coming in. You start to collect your mind around an object. becomes to a bare minimum because your attention is now going towards its object of meditation. Right, so you're secluded from sensual pleasures and now you are more in the mind. The first jhana onwards all happens at the level of mind. The beautiful thing about jhanas is they are not dependent upon externalities.

They're not dependent upon pleasures of the senses for you to experience happiness and joy. You can take them anywhere and they're free. You can be blissful on demand. Whenever you want. And so first what it requires is to collect your mind around an object. In this case, let's say it's loving kindness. Secluded from unwholesome states of mind.

What are unwholesome states of mind? Hindrances. Them last night. There are variations of these hindrances, but essentially there are these five hindrances. Sensual craving, aversion, doubt, restlessness, and sloth and torpor. What is sensual craving? You hear something. You feel something on your skin. You think back to a time that your mind starts to gravitate towards based on that sensory contact, that physical sensory contact, or when you're walking, right, and you have loving kindness, your mind starts to get diverted because it hears birds chirping in the trees or it sees some beautiful flowers and gets engrossed in that beauty. Now you have your mind directed and attending towards outside sensory experiences, and now your mind becomes gravitated towards it.

There is sensual desire that arises. What is aversion? Aversion is when you get upset, irritated, frustrated, angry, right? Fearful. I don't want this. You're sitting deep in meditation. It's so beautiful. Everything is going great. And some idiot opens the door and shuts it. And bam. Your mind goes towards that and says, can't that person be more mindful?

What about you? Where is your mind? Or when somebody's mowing the lawn. Don't they know I'm meditating? All these kinds of thoughts. This is aversion. I don't like this. You're frustrated. You try too hard. You push too much. I can't seem to get past this. Aversion. And it's a double-edged sword. And you have craving. I want to go somewhere in my meditation, and yet I'm frustrated with myself, frustrated with the practice, frustrated with the teacher.

Right? And that's okay. You can be frustrated with me. No big deal. I've had that happen many times over many different retreats. I'll tell you what, at the end of the retreat, everybody loves me. Or it could just be because they're relieved that the retreat's over. So that aversion that arises, right? Notice what happens when you have that aversion. There's tightness and tension that arises in the mind and body.

When you have doubt, that doubt? Am I in the first jhana or am I feeling spacious? Am I feeling joy? I don't know if I can feel the loving-kindness. Is this sloth and torpor or is this something else? Not knowing what states of mind are there, being unclear about the states of mind that are there. And then restlessness.

Too much energy. The mind starts to try too hard, or maybe it's just restless in nature, and there's agitation. But the only way you can deal with restlessness is to tranquilize, is to use tranquility, to relax, to keep the mind open and spacious. And then sloth and torpor. Sloth and torpor is one of the most common hindrances that people experience in the first few days of the retreat.

It's inevitable because it's common and it's expected, and it's fine. Because you're coming here on retreat, you have a different schedule, right? Some of you are coming from different parts of the country, and some people on retreats come from different parts of the world too, right? And they're trying to adjust to the time, to the schedule. And you've just started to come into a place that is very restful, very secluded, right? You don't have your cell phones with you. You don't have your laptops with you.

Hopefully nobody's carrying a second cell phone because that has happened on retreat. So mindless, let's say, unmindful that I'll be there and they're talking on their second cell phone without realizing that they're doing that. So, you know, your mind doesn't have so much sensory stimulation. You're here out in the forest. You're meditating. So your mind feels very restful.

But it's too restful where it starts to experience sloth and torpor. And sometimes because of the journey you've taken to come here, maybe it's been a long journey, your body is trying to recover from that. And in trying to recover from it, it becomes very restful. So I've given you some tips on how to deal with that sloth and torpor. One way you can deal with it is by meditating out in the daylight, if the weather permits.

Another way is to walk backwards for 10 to 20 minutes and then come back to your sit. Another way actually is to, you know, splash cold water on your face and then come back and sit. And another way is to make sure you have enough sleep or you take enough naps. Remember 15 to 20 minute naps. Come back and you sit. Or another way is to just sit. Sometimes you have to go through the sloth and torpor, right? You can bring a little bit of attention. You can bring a little bit of interest in your object of meditation, and it's just a matter of shifting your perception, shifting your focus. Your focus might be a little too loose. Things don't seem very clear to you.

But if you just take your mental gaze and you bring a level of focus and fix it upon whatever the object is, it doesn't mean you become one-pointed. Just a small, tiny shift in your focus. Last year, Venerable Metananda gave a very interesting exercise to do, and it was to understand how the meditation practice is in regards to open awareness, right? The exercise was very simple. You can all do it with me. You take your finger and put it in front of you. Now just look at the tip of your index finger. When you look at that, your mind is directed right there, but everything else around it is in the periphery.

When you become one-pointed, this is what happens. But then now, look away from the finger and look at me, or just look ahead of you. Now you're not on the finger. The inverse of this would be, the finger is the object of meditation. When you have sloth and torpor, this is how you're looking. There's not enough energy there. Your gaze right here, what happens now? You become focused, but notice when you do that, looking here and looking there, the difference in the shift of your focus. The same thing happens in your mind. There's not enough focus on your object, and the moment you start to bring that, you notice that the sloth and torpor starts to dissipate. Sometimes sloth and torpor is very, very intense.

And at that point, as I said, all you can do is just meditate through it. That doesn't mean that you sit and just continue being in sloth and torpor to the point that you're sleeping and snoring, because you'll become a disturbance to others. But if you just walk through it, it's like you're walking in dense fog. At some point, you will go past the fog and into the clearing.

So sometimes you just have to go through it, not do anything. And eventually the mind starts to become more collected. Eventually that sloth and torpor starts to just dissipate. So these are the five hindrances. And when you 6R any of these five hindrances when they arise, naturally [the mind becomes] collected. Why? Because it starts to become secluded from unwholesome states of mind. When the mind is free of hindrances, then that mind is ripe for experiencing jhana. With relief from those hindrances, the mind experiences joy.

It's not a joy that you have to bring up. It's not a joy that you have to construct. The jhanas that we're practicing here are not a constructive process. They are a deconstructive process. Each jhana is a level of cessation. In the first jhana, what ceases are the hindrances and your focus on the sensory externalities. As a result of that, the joy that arises is very natural.

It's a piti that arises because your mind feels relief from the hindrances. And along with that, or tied to that joy, is what's known as sukha, comfort, or happiness. There's a level of tranquility in the body, a level of steadiness in the body. And so, these are the components of the first jhana. Born of seclusion. Remember what it says. Rapture and pleasure, born of seclusion, arising due to the fact that the mind is free of hindrances. Venerable Sir, this is a superhuman state, a distinction in knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones, a comfortable abiding, which we have attained while abiding diligent, ardent, and resolute.

So in the second jhana, what disappears? What fades away? What fades away is the thinking and the verbalizing. That is the applied and sustained thought. Initially, in order for your mind to become more collected, more steady, more meditative, you have to use an object of meditation that the mind anchors around. And in order for you to do that, you have to bring up the object of meditation in the form of verbalizing or bringing up some kind of an image.

Once you have the loving-kindness, you let go of verbalizing, the imaging. Now the mind is experiencing the loving-kindness and it has a level of self-confidence that there is a smooth running of the mind through the second jhana. And because the mind becomes more collected, it starts to experience greater degrees of joy and comfort born of collectedness. Now the mind is very steady.

With the fading away as well of rapture, we enter upon and abide in the third jhana. And in the third jhana, the joy fades away. So what is remaining? Sukha, happiness, comfort. A level of mental clarity, steadiness and tranquility. Here you feel quite content. The third jhana is known by how the noble ones declare: he has a pleasant abiding. The mind is very clear, content, happy. So there is a level of comfort here.

So the joy goes away. That means it becomes less energized, less energetic. So the difference between piti and sukha, the difference between joy or rapture and happiness or pleasure, between piti and sukha, is this. This is the analogy that's used. The flame, the candlelight of piti, is like that, where it keeps flickering. So the piti is vibratory in nature.

But the sukha, the more subtle, calmer sense of happiness, is a flame that is gentle, lasting, let's say. It's more pervasive. With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, we enter upon and abide in the fourth jhana, which has purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. Now, the fourth jhana is where the mind is absolutely steady. And there is a deeper level of tranquility and equanimity. And with this equanimity, the mind is pristine.

The mindfulness is sharp. That is why the fourth jhana is a basis for the cultivation of psychic faculties, for the cultivation of the ayatanas, for the cultivation of the threefold knowledge. Because it's so pristine, it's so clear, it's so sharp in its mindfulness and in its depth of equanimity, very malleable, but at the same time, it's absolutely steady, balanced.

So when you get to the fourth jhana, a few things will happen, right? All of you have experienced that. When you first have the experience of loving-kindness, the loving-kindness starts to become more expansive. It feels like the loving-kindness is starting to become more spacious. It feels like the loving-kindness is going up into the head. And at that point, the mind feels a lot of equanimity and clarity.

And when that happens, the mind's attention is very steady. are less in nature, less in quantity. And the time spent in staying with the object of meditation is larger, much larger. After that, then I will give you, or I will have given someone, the second exercise to do, the intermediary practice, directions. So the six directions, what are the six directions?

Forward, backward, right, left, below you and above you. Now you are pervading each direction with your loving-kindness. Right? So when you do this, what happens? Now your mind is in a mental sphere, a mental sphere, which means that any kind of sensory impingement that arises is very lightly experienced. You may experience some degree of sensory contact, that is to say, if there's an ant crawling on your skin you may feel that, but because of the steadiness of mind and collectedness your mind goes back to the experience of pervading

all the directions with loving-kindness or compassion. At this point, the loving-kindness switches over to compassion. What does compassion feel like? It's a more diffused version of loving-kindness. It's more spacious. It's like cotton. And so that compassion is tied with infinite space. You feel expansion in your mind. You start to feel like you are no longer in your body. That can happen, and you feel like the awareness is just increasing in terms of its pervasiveness, its expansion. It keeps going, keeps going, keeps going, keeps going, and so it can continue on and on and on, infinitely,

until you are just a small little, your body is just a small little center, and there's this huge amount of space which is pervaded by your compassion. Sometimes what you can do when you are radiating or pervading this compassion is not only sending out into the different directions, but sending out to certain people in that direction, or different beings. For example, when you send it upwards, out to all of the deva lokas. You're sending it out to all of the brahma lokas and the arupa lokas. When you send it down, you're sending it down to all of the hungry ghosts, to all of the animals that reside within the earth, towards those who are suffering in hell.

You can do that. Sometimes when you are in this space of infinite compassion, infinite space, when you are in this experience of compassion, you may get an intuition that somebody is reaching out to you. And lo and behold, that person calls you. Or when you call them, they say, I was just thinking about you. I needed your help with something. You'll see that happen.

With compassion, this is a practice that the Buddha did in the morning. It's called Maha Karuna Samapatti. This is the attainment of great compassion. With his mind's eye, he would survey the entire world and pervade it with compassion. And then he would know where to go if somebody is in need of his assistance, in need of the teachings, or if someone's mind is ripe for a particular kind of teaching. And he would go there.

And initially people will experience this idea of this consciousness, like there is an awareness that takes up that space. But a greater degree of that experience is where, when the breaking down of the borders of that infinite space happens, they can experience the arising and passing away of individual consciousnesses. And what you are seeing, or what you can see, are like rings of light, or you can see flickering behind your eyes, or you can even hear like a tap, tap, tap in your ears.

You can feel vibration in your skin, a tingling sensation, an electrical feeling in your skin, on your face, as if spiders are crawling up your face. Maybe they are, but if they are, it's okay. Or you experience a tingling on your tongue. Or you start to notice that the thoughts that might arise, you can start to notice gaps in there.

These are all different levels of experience of infinite consciousness. And what you're actually experiencing, really at that level, is contact. Over and over and over and over. Because contact is made up of three things: the sense space, the sense-based object, and the sense consciousness. But this is all happening at the level of mind. And it's just mind's interpretation of what is going on.

And what is going on there is you start to experience for yourself. You start to see and experience for yourself that these arising and passing away of consciousnesses are impermanent. That they arise and pass away shows you the impermanent nature of this experience. And then at a certain point, they become tiresome. They become boring. They are dukkha. One of the greatest dukkha that teenagers experience is boredom.

They're always bored. Always looking for something new. And some people never grew out of that. Always looking for some kind of new stimulation all throughout their lives. So the boredom that you experience is, I've had enough of this. And then you realize, I can't even control what's happening here. Which means there's no control there. So what you are seeing is anicca, dukkha, and anatta: impermanence, suffering, and the impersonal nature of experience.

Now, there are these different perceptions. The perception of impermanence leads to the perception of dukkha. The perception of dukkha leads to the perception of anatta. The perception of anatta leads to the perception of equanimity. The perception of equanimity leads to the perception of disenchantment. The perception of disenchantment leads to the perception of dispassion. The perception of dispassion leads to the perception of cessation, or the experience of cessation. And this is what's happening.

Once you start to see the not-self nature of these experiences, to the next step, which is, as Aniruddha says, by completely surmounting the base of infinite consciousness, aware that there is nothing, we enter upon and abide in the base of nothingness. So that feeling of compassion that you experience in infinite space, that now changes to empathetic joy. Not the same as piti, it is a level of feeling joy but it is more spread out, more diffuse in everyday life. How do you experience these: loving-kindness, compassion and empathetic joy? Loving-kindness is the experience you have, the genuine experience of wanting happiness for another person, for your friend, for your family member, for

for your colleagues. Compassion is recognizing the suffering in another being. That's why loving-kindness, the best for someone else, is the cure, the antidote for ill will. What is ill will? You don't like that person. You wish them ill. And that is why compassion is the antidote for cruelty. What is cruelty? The inability to recognize the suffering of another being. And because you're unable to recognize that suffering, you lash out at them. If somebody shouts at you. If somebody abuses you, somebody says bad things to you or about you, what do you do? What is the usual reaction?

Retaliate. But if you truly understood that somebody who's doing that is suffering, why would you retaliate and add to their suffering? Think about a time when you were angry and you said something to someone, and then they just retaliated back to you. How did you feel? You felt like holding on to that. You felt more suffering. And so that is cruelty.

Every time you retaliate in a way that is filled with anger, filled with passion, filled with wanting the eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, you're doing nothing but just adding to that suffering. You are being cruel. But when you have compassion and recognize the other person's suffering, then you realize that I know what the suffering is like. Let me help this person by alleviating their suffering, by not retaliating, by trying to de-escalate the situation.

So compassion is not trying to take on their suffering, not trying to save them from their suffering, but being there as a support system for them to understand how to get out of suffering. A teacher, when they teach out of compassion, can only show the way. But they cannot walk the path for you. You must do it yourself.

So you can be a support system and show them the way out of suffering. And how can you do that? By being an example. When somebody gets angry and the other person responds in kind, they are cruel. But when somebody gets angry and the other person smiles and says, it's okay, I understand, you can see the change in that person who's angry.

Because you are being the example. You're showing the way out of that suffering by being the example. How to get out of that anger. And then you have empathetic joy. The joy for being happy, of being happy, for somebody's wholesome success. That's why it's an antidote for jealousy and envy. Being able to say, I'm very happy for that person.

Instead of saying, how come they got that promotion? How come they're being recognized and I'm not? How come they're getting all the attention and I'm not? How childish that sounds. But everyone, the majority of people, are like that. And if you have truly cultivated and perfected empathetic joy, then you will be secure in yourself. You will have let go of insecurity.

And because you are secure in yourself, whatever success another person has, you're genuinely happy for them because that's their happiness. That's their accomplishment. But you're secure in your own contentment. You're secure in knowing who you are in terms of your accomplishments and achievements. You're confident in the things that you have done, and the things that you haven't done that you shouldn't have done.

So that's empathetic joy. Being happy for the other person. Now, when you come out of infinite consciousness, this is a natural progression. You don't need to force these things. The infinite consciousness goes into nothingness, and accompanied by that nothingness is equanimity, upekkha. So what is that experience of nothingness like? Some people experience these gaps in their infinite consciousness. And eventually, when their attention goes there, those gaps start to widen.

And there is a space of blankness. It could be dark, or it could be a white space, a pure white space. It doesn't matter. It depends upon that person's faculties. There's a sense of no thing there. Nothing there. But there's an experience of equanimity. What does equanimity feel like? It is a clear and calm feeling. Very tranquil.

Almost as if there is no feeling. It's very translucent. But when you feel it, when you experience it, there's coolness in the mind. And when you take that, there's a level not only of coolness, but a level of very strong collectedness and steadiness. A great degree of mental composure. And then you take that and you pervade that experience throughout your space.

And you do it gently. You allow it to just percolate and expand. And all throughout that time, the mind experiences nothingness. Nothing there. Nothing the mind is interested in looking at. Just secure in the experience of deep equanimity. Surmounting the base of nothingness, we enter upon and abide in the base of neither perception nor non-perception. Venerable sir, this is another superhuman state which we have attained by surmounting the preceding abiding, by making that abiding subside.

Now you can look at your papers. Is there a copy for me? This is the 8th jhana. Let's go through it together so we understand what is going on here. So, the 7th jhana, as we know, is the base of nothingness. At nothingness, you are radiating equanimity and experiencing the base of nothingness. When you enter the 8th jhana, you are entering the base of neither perception nor non-perception.

How does this happen? At a certain point, the equanimity stops radiating. You stop radiating. Now, when you stop radiating, you try again, and you start to radiate again. And it might start to do that, gently. And it stops again. And you try doing it again, to radiate. But when you try to radiate, at a certain point, you will notice a slight tension.

You can no longer radiate. And it says here, when you try to, the mind just says, no thank you. This means now you are leaving the brahmavihara practice of the four brahmaviharas and are entering the silent mind, where you simply rest in mind, let go of anything that arises. So now what's going on is you finish radiating and the mind doesn't feel like doing anything, and it settles in itself.

Now the base is the base of mind itself. The mind takes itself, so to speak, as an object. And while you stay here for some period of time, you experience properly neither perception nor non-perception and here it says this is a dream-like state and it may feel like you are asleep and aware at the same time this is a very core signature of neither perception or non-perception where the mind is alert there's no grogginess there but the mind feels like it's in a dream-like You might experience disconnected thoughts, shapes, patterns, or images that you can't fully comprehend what they are or make any sense out of them. You are there, but not fully. You have some awareness, but you then come out of the space and you realize that when you were there, you didn't have enough knowing mind, the ability for mind to be fully aware of what's going on, to know you were there.

the name neither perception nor non-perception. In other words, these different disconnected thoughts that arise, these different patterns that might arise, the different shapes and images that might arise, you can't fully acknowledge or comprehend what they are. Because the moment you do, you are perceiving them. And when you perceive them, you are no longer in neither perception nor non-perception, but not non-perception either. In other words, there is some level of awareness of something coming up. And what you are experiencing there are the sankharas in the form of little thought bubbles at the depths of the mind that are starting to percolate up. And these effervescent thoughts bubble up into fully formed experiences in the mind.

But here at these depths, you're just seeing the beginning of those. These are proto-thoughts that are coming up. And that's why you don't fully perceive them. But the moment you start to look at them and try to find out what they are, or you start to gravitate towards them, now you have come out of neither perception nor non-perception. cycle through this dreamlike place a number of times during your sit, and every time, coming out of it, the mind is even quieter. The key here is to let the mind remain in the eye of the storm of these thoughts and let go of your attention to them, so your mind is here and all of the percolation of these formations that come up are around you in the periphery, the center of the tornado, in the center of the hurricane, of those thoughts.

The moment you start to perceive them and try to figure out what they are, what happens, you get swept up. You get caught up in that whirlpool, in that storm. And it's difficult for you to come back into the center. The key is to just remain on home base. What is the home base there? The mind itself.

Just remain there. Don't do anything. The moment you notice that the mind is gravitating towards it, relax, soften, come back. Eventually, the mind will turn away from them and become disenchanted with the constant arising and passing away of this flux of movement. Disenchantment will arise. Because the problem is that your mind hasn't suffered enough. Somehow your mind is enjoying that suffering.

It's enjoying going through that process of looking and going through these thought loops over and over and over again. You're experiencing samsara in your mind. You're experiencing rebirth in your mind. What is the definition of rebirth? It's the same as insanity, different result. Eventually you smarten up and you realize, I can't just keep doing this. You know, this is tiresome. I'm tired of this nonsense, because it is nonsense. These words, these images, these patterns, they're all nonsensical. They don't make any sense at all. But eventually your mind turns away from it. It doesn't have an aversive quality to it. It's just, talk to the hand. It's like, I'm not listening.

I'm not looking. And then the mind goes into quietness. A further level of quietude. So that disenchantment that we talk about is where the mind is just sick and tired of all these formations. And when you're sick of something, what do you do? You turn it away. You've had your fill. You're done. And so when this happens, you go into what's known as quiet mind proper.

After you come back from the dream-like state, or I should say, after your mind descends from the dream-like state, because these are levels that are happening. First, you experience nothingness and equanimity. Into itself, which is mind. And then it starts to go into the fog of neither perception or non-perception. And it goes through these different cloud formations.

And it descends and descends and descends. And on the other side, below, is this clarity that arises. And that clarity is quiet mind. So we need to change that. It's not after you come back from the dreamlike state. It's the mind goes deeper. And your mind will be very alert, very quiet and awake. You may have a lot of energy, but it is energy with balance.

As soon as you notice any movement, you just relax. As soon as you notice anything arising, you just relax. You don't have to do the full six hours. Just soften as soon as you notice any vibration. There you will experience full disenchantment. Your mind will have completely turned away from all formations and experience a deep level of quietude.

Then there's even a deeper layer to that, and that is called still mind. There will come a time when you start to notice movement at all. This is the still mind. Mind can be still for long periods of time. In both quiet mind and still mind, boredom can arise because nothing is happening. And this is where people get caught up.

They need some spice. They need something to happen. But here, the mind needs to let go of any expectations. People stay here for long periods of time expecting something to happen. And that's the problem. The expectations. Waiting for something. So in still mind, the level of disenchantment has to be fully developed, fully cultivated. The mind doesn't care at all in quiet mind. And when it's in this level of still mind, whatever boredom arises, the mind just sees that and becomes disenchanted with it. The mind is okay with being still for long periods of time. It's not looking for anything to happen.

Now you can be balancing the awakening factors. So that's relaxation versus focus. So what does that mean, relaxation versus focus? When you experience boredom, there's two things that can happen with that boredom. Because the mind doesn't have anything to do with any sensory stimulation, Mara starts to throw all kinds of arrows at you. There's a great, interesting movie called Little Buddha. Interesting story, but there's a small little scene there, very beautifully done, where it's on the night of the Buddha's awakening.

And the Buddha is under the Bodhi tree, and he's meditating, and Mara comes up, and he has all of these armies, and the armies are trying to distract the Buddha with all kinds of things. And finally, Mara commands his armies to launch a thousand arrows at the Buddha. And the arrows come this way. And then all of a sudden, because there's this equanimity, because there's this enchantment, those arrows go through and turn into lotus flowers. And they float down.

This is what's happening with your mind. The boredom is Mara. And he is going to throw all kinds of things at you in the form of all kinds of thoughts and try to entice you. Past life that I should look into. Oh, look at that. Oh, look at this. As soon as you do that, what's going to happen? You're going to have agitation.

You're going to have restlessness. And that's where relaxation comes into play. When you notice the restlessness arise, you take the mind and you relax. You soften. You tranquilize. You bring some space. You allow those arrows of thoughts to dissipate into beautiful flowers that just disappear. And you come back to your mind. On the flip side, he can throw all kinds of sloth and torpor at you. The boredom is like, I don't like this, so I'm going to shut down. But I'm going to shut down in such a way that I'm going to feel groggy and heavy and dense.

So what do you do there? Now there is a level of disinterest in the mind. The mind wants to shut down from that. So how do you bring it back? You bring a level of interest. You bring a level of focus. You're shifting subtly your focus. When I say you bring some joy, it doesn't mean you rain down joy on the mind. A lot more restlessness.

Here you are micro dosing. You're micro dosing little joy or you're micro dosing little relaxation. You're not micro dosing any psilocybin or LSD. Right? You're just bringing little small doses of joy and interest. And when that happens, there's a focus, there's a shift in the focus, and the mind comes back to still mind. And it just happens in a few moments.

You notice, okay, mind is going to soft and torpor. Bring up a little bit of energy, a little bit of interest, and wait and see what happens. And then the mind just gravitates back to still mind. That is your true north. You have to come back to true north, which is the still mind. Micro cessations where the mind winks out and period. I don't know what was supposed to be said there. It winked out. It ceased.

We'll figure it out later. That's fine. It's never mind. But what happens when the mind winks out? What's happening is your mind is getting so deep, touching cessation, like it's just going into it. Now this is different from sloth and torpor. In sloth and torpor, your mind goes, goes, goes, and it experiences heavy grogginess. Here, when the mind starts to shut down in touching cessation, there's a certain level of luminosity there, a certain level of radiance, a certain level of clarity there. It feels energized.

When you come back, there is an energy burst that happens. These are all good things. Just continue to observe. So you have to notice what happens. Does the mind sleep off into sloth and torpor? Or does it start to wink out into luminosity? And if it's doing that, that's okay. Keep going. Keep relaxing into it. If it's starting to go into sloth and torpor, you know that because of the grogginess and lack of focus, and so you do that experience of bringing it back to the true north. You bring in more energy and interest.

At one point, the mind will become dispassionate. You understand phenomena will never stop, and you cannot stop them. You stop trying to control altogether. You see there is no control, and you stop any controlling or trying to change things. So what is that dispassion that you experience? That dispassion is where the mind just lets go completely of any trying.

It's just completely resting. Now you don't do anything. Don't do anything. Those would be my final instructions to you when you get there. Don't do anything. It's much easier said than done, because the mind always wants to do something. And then the mind tries not to do anything. But as Master Yoda says, there is no try. Do or do not. There is no try.

All this time, what you've been doing with the experience of the jhanas, with the experience of the brahmaviharas, is to engage that part of the mind that feels like it needs to control. You're engaging that part of the mind, it feels like it needs to do something. And eventually, you satisfy that mind. And now, you don't do anything. Now the mind is clear and content.

That's why you always start with radiating, because you are balancing the energy of the mind and you are making sure that the mind has something to do, and eventually it becomes saturated in that, and now you don't do anything. When you don't do anything, that dispassion is there, and that dispassion is experienced where anything that arises in the form of the formation doesn't stick to the mind. The mind becomes like Teflon. That is the quality of dispassion.

Complete non-engagement with anything. Nothing penetrates through the mind and into the mind. It's all just deflected and gliding past it, sliding past it. The mind becomes non-sticky. Nothing sticks to the mind. And then there is what's known, or what we call, let's say, the doorway to the signless. You may experience a doorway to the signless state. You may notice that everything looks gray, or that you are watching static on a TV screen, or you might even see a wall of lights.

You might see this, and you might not see this, and that's okay. But if you do, it means you are letting go and you are on your way to the signless. You may also notice that the mind feels like it is sinking. It feels like there is a level of, like, you're sinking. And at this point, what's going on is you might experience your heartbeat.

Some people can experience the breathing and they can really hear deeply any level of breathing that might be occurring. And they're experiencing their heartbeat and they feel like their heart is fluttering. That's not what's happening. It's just that you have come to such a greater degree of sensitivity that you're shutting down all externalities, so that you are now paying attention more to what's going on internally.

So you're paying attention to the heat and vitality, the processes of the body. You're just aware of them. So the heart is just beating. In your own mind, it feels like it's thumping. Nothing like that. It's all good. Nothing's going on. You're not going to have a heart attack. So far, we've never heard of anybody having a heart attack, at least on my retreats and Bhante's retreats. So that's happening.

And you might even experience sounds, some kind of distant sounds, some kind of harmony, some kind of buzzing in the ear. And sometimes that buzzing becomes very strong. And that is a sure sign that you're getting towards cessation. Because all of a sudden it just stops and that's it. Sometimes what you'll experience is you can hear the blood rushing through the body.

It's all because your mind has become very sensitive. So the sinking feeling is a very distinct signature of the signless. Even if you don't see anything in your mind's eye, forget about all of that. If you've just experienced the sinking, know that you're getting into the signless. Now you are experiencing full dispassion and entering the signless. And what is the signless? The signless comes from the word animitta. Animitta samadhi. So what is animitta? Animitta means a sign or an object.

Now you are in an objectless awareness. There is pure objectless awareness where mind is not looking at anything in particular. That's where I use the analogy of the flashlight. You point the flashlight up into the sky and you imagine that that ray of light goes endlessly out into space. But you're not landing on anything in particular. There's nothing going on. It's just drifting out into space.

That's the same with your awareness. It's not landing on anything. There's no object that's being taken as an object of meditation. Here you experience a mind that is undirected because now there is no desire there. You don't experience any object and therefore it's signless. The level of conceit, the level of self, the sense of self starts to diminish. And therefore you experience emptiness, voidness.

As soon as a vibration arises, in the very noticing of it, the vibration ceases. So you don't have to do much here. As soon as you notice something coming up, as soon as you notice it, it goes away. But the moment you look at the vibration, and you do something with it, now you have lost your dispassion.

Now you have lost your disenchantment. Now you have taken on an object in the form of that vibration. So don't even try to 6R. Don't even try to relax. In the very noticing of it, the vibration ceases. Here, it says, here you don't try to relax or interact with the vibration any further than just seeing it. By interacting with the vibration in any way other than just noticing and allowing it to cease creates yet more movement. The key here is to just let the vibration cease. Just observe with no interference.

I don't care what is arising but will just let it pass on its own. This is where the thought of I, myself, me is seen and ceases. Think about that for a moment. Through the sixth sense basis is just an experience. It's just vedana. It's just a feeling. But the conceit in the mind has a tendency to project an I, a sense of ownership, onto that feeling. This feeling is me. This feeling is mine. This feeling is myself.

And that's why the Buddha has said in the Bahiya Sutta, seen in the seeing there is only the seen, in the hearing there is only the heard, in the sensing there is only the sensed, in the cognizing there is only the cognized. When, Bahiya, there is no you in that, and there is no you before that, and there is no you after that, just that is the end of suffering. That's very important to understand. When you experience everything fully without the sense of I, you don't produce any suffering in the form of any renewal of being or any new karma.

It is just an experience. So in the signless, when you have this experience, the mind doesn't attach any substance, sense of self, to it. The moment it does, you're out of the signless. And so when the final formations of conceit dissipate, now the mind experiences the path to the unconditioned and experiences cessation. When all formations cease and mind remains in the deep state of dispassion for some time, and when you least expect it, cessation occurs. When you least expect it, when there is no craving or expectation of what happens, cessation occurs. Now all perception, feeling, and consciousness disappears.

And our taints are destroyed by our seeing with wisdom. So, what does that mean? Our taints are destroyed by our seeing with wisdom. So when this experience of cessation happens, then the mind touches the unconditioned. And as a result, the mind being so pure, for those few microseconds, the mind experiences what it feels like to be an arahant. Because there is no craving there. There is no conceit there. There is no ignorance there. ultra-high-definition mindfulness.

Where you see dependent origination. His seeing with wisdom, that is what it means. You see how this process works in terms of how dependent origination creates your reality, your idea of reality, that there is no you there, truly no you there, and you let go of it, then the taints are completely destroyed. But because in the seeing of that, the mind says, oh wow, that's why that's the last part, right? Oh wow, what was that?

The mind says, I want more of whatever that is, which is a feeling of joy, a feeling of relief. And because it clutches onto it, it ignites. The fetters re-chain themselves. Then the craving arises. The ignorance arises. The formations arise rooted in that craving and in that ignorance and in that conceit. So how do you have to do then?

Keep 6R-ing throughout your daily practice, throughout your daily life. And you do that process again. And then you experience, whenever that happens, when you're least expected, another experience of cessation, and another dropping of certain fetters or weakening of fetters. And you keep doing that until there's nothing left at all. And there's just that pure mindfulness, free of any craving, free of any conceit, free of any ignorance, free of all attachments to all views, including right view itself.

Totally liberated. Free of any new karma. Free of any kind of suffering in the mental world. Because physically, yes, there will be suffering in the form of bodily pain. But there won't be any mental clinging to that bodily pain. To that pain where the mind says, I don't like it. means in terms of the links of dependent origination, but essentially that mind has achieved the best and most supreme of all states, which is the destruction of the taints of all craving, of all being, of all ignorance. Good, good, Anuruddha. There is no other comfortable abiding higher or more sublime than that one.

Then, when the Blessed One had instructed, urged, roused, and gladdened the Venerable Anuruddha, the Venerable Nandiya, and the Venerable Kambila with a talk on the Dhamma, he rose from his seat and departed. After they had accompanied the Blessed One a little way and turned back again, the Venerable Nandiya and the Venerable Kambila the Venerable Anuruddha. Very interesting question.

Have we ever reported to the Venerable Anuruddha that we have obtained those abidings and attainments that the Venerable Anuruddha in the Blessed One's presence ascribed to us up to the destruction of the taints? In other words, we've never talked to you about our experience. How do you know about it? The Venerable Ones have never reported to me that they have obtained those abidings and attainments.

Yet, by encompassing the Venerable Ones' minds with my own mind, I know that they have obtained those abidings and attainments. And deities have also reported to me, these Venerable Ones have obtained those abidings and attainments. Then I declared it when directly questioned by the Blessed One. Anuruddha, he is the foremost in the Divine Eye. And that is a ripening of his karma, not only in that life, but in previous lives.

In different occasions in different previous lives, he has dedicated thousands and thousands of oil lamps to a certain Buddha in one life. And he has taken one large lamp with a thousand lights, circumambulating a Buddha. And in doing so, the Divine Eye became ripened in this particular life as Anuruddha. And what does it mean when someone has a Divine Eye?

They can look into a person's mind and they can see what is going on there. They can look into any being's mind and understand what defilements are still present, what taints are still present, if any. They can go to different realms and interact with the different beings there. They can go into past lives and see their different lives. They can look into a person's past lives and see what lives they've led. They can see all of those things. So there are different degrees of the development of the Divine Eye. But in the case of Anuruddha, it was so well developed that even during the time of the Buddha's last experiences of jhanas, he could see what was going on.

In other words, if you go back to the Maha Parinibbana Sutta, there the Buddha is ready to attain Parinibbana, his final Nibbana. And what he does is, he goes through the four jhanas, then he goes through the ayatanas, and then he experiences cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness. And everyone, or most people there, mistakenly thinks the Buddha has passed on, the Buddha has gone. But Anuruddha says, no. That is not the case.

The Buddha is merely experiencing the cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. He comes back to the first jhana, goes to the second jhana, goes to the third jhana, goes to the fourth jhana. And from the fourth jhana, he inclines his mind towards Nibbana, and there he experiences parinibbana. This is what is reported by Anuruddha. So this is the power of his divine eye. After paying homage to the Blessed One, he stood at one side and said, "It is a gain for the Vajjians, a great gain for the Vajjian people, that the Tathagata, accomplished and fully enlightened, dwells among them, and these three clansmen, the Venerable Anuruddha, the Venerable Nandiya, and the Venerable Kimbila."

If the world, with its gods, its Maras and its Brahmas, this generation with its recluses and Brahmins, So, Diga, how those three clansmen are practicing for the welfare and happiness of the many out of compassion for the world. Sorry, see, Diga, I should say, how those three clansmen are practicing for the welfare and happiness of the many. Satisfied and delighted?

All right. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free, and a 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. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of happiness ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.