May 25 All is Burning Adhittasutta Sunday Sutta study with Delson Armstrong

This is the first one, Samyutta Nikaya 22.61, it's called the Adittasutta, burning. Most of the suttas that we're doing, I think all the suttas we're doing, are going to be pretty short, and they all have a certain theme related to the five aggregates. So at Savatthi, "because form is burning, feeling is burning, perception is burning, volitional formations are burning, consciousness is burning. Seeing thus, because the instructed noble disciple experiences revulsion towards form, revulsion towards feeling, revulsion towards perception, revulsion towards volitional formations, revulsion towards consciousness.

Experiencing revulsion, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, his mind is liberated. When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: it's liberated. He understands: destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more of this state of being. This is a short sutta, but there is a lot to unpack here, because actually it's quite timely. Yesterday, Doug and I had our second part of the two-part event discussing really interesting themes about consciousness and meditation, jhanas, and so on.

And afterwards we went out for lunch with a few of our friends. And after lunch, we had an interesting discussion about translations, because the thing about Pali and Sanskrit is that they are multidimensional languages. It's just a very fancy way of saying that one word can have many different meanings in English, and it's really dependent upon context. We also have to understand that these words the Buddha used were not fancy words. They were not even high school level or collegial level words. They were just words directed towards people who understood them in the context that they were given. He was speaking with farmers. He was speaking with princes.

He was speaking with laborers, he was speaking with acrobats, he was speaking with all sorts of people from different walks of life. So he had to be able to convey his understanding in a way that was immediately graspable. So I want to just break down some of the translation here. And actually, what we're going to do is go through a little bit of the Upanisha Sutra by memory, and Anguttara Nikaya 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4. They're all the same.

And I'll explain why I'm going to do that. So first of all, let's see here. He says form is burning, feeling is burning, perception is burning, volitional formations are burning, consciousness is burning. So what do we mean by burning? We know that Nibbana is to be cool, to cool down, to be free from the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion.

So how is form burning? Form, whether it's internal or external. What does internal mean? It means this body, my body, or the body that I'm currently inhabiting. It's burning. It's burning with all kinds of desires. We were talking yesterday about sexual desire, for example. It's a biological drive to procreate, and it's not something that goes away, but with time, because of the way the hormones and neurochemicals are present in the body and the brain, it changes. So that's burning. Hunger, right? You're experiencing hunger through the body. You're experiencing thirst through the body. These are all biological drives, but then craving is supplanted towards them, or on them.

Desire is essentially just this: I want to do this. But craving is like, I want to do this, and if I don't get to do it I will be pissed off, I will feel upset, I will feel angry, I will feel sad, I will feel all of these things. So it's a more reactive process. When we talk about craving, it's a reactive, obsessive, almost compulsive process, where if I don't get my way I will feel bad. And that's the difference. You need desire to go into jhana.

You need desire to go into meditative states. You need desire to experience nirvana, insofar as the desire to let go. The desire to see what is suffering, and the desire to see the way out of suffering. I think the majority of us already know what suffering looks like. We've all had our experiences in life where we're like, okay, could this situation get any worse? You are deep in suffering when you have that experience or that thought. But the path leading out of suffering, the way out of suffering, is utilizing the eightfold path.

So when we realize form is burning, it is not because form itself is craving or form itself is clinging, but that craving and clinging can be experienced because of the vessel of form, because of this mind-body complex which is form. And external to that, we see things that we like, we feel things that we like, and they might be enjoyable, they might be pleasurable, but then we want more of it, or we want it a different way, or we want variations of it, and those are all starting to get into the territory of craving. There's a difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is short-lived. It's the dopamine drive. Every time we scroll on our social media we get these context switches. We're like, oh look at this, look at this, look at this, and we're just getting hits of dopamine in our mind. We were talking yesterday about The Social Dilemma. It's an interesting documentary on Netflix for those of you who are interested. It is so interesting. It shows how everything we are experiencing in social media, but I think to a larger extent in the world,

doesn't matter, east or west, anymore, because I see in India also this sense of grasping. We need to have this form, we need to have this particular thing. It's all driven by dopamine. It's all driven by certain kinds of colors, certain kinds of forms, certain kinds of patterns and shapes that seem pleasing to the eye. But happiness is something else. Happiness is this unconditioned, it's a happiness that is free of any kind of dependencies on external factors. But beyond that, are we actually looking for happiness, or are we looking for something else? The reason I ask this is because, when we look at the words anicca, dukkha, and anatta, anicca we always seem to translate as impermanence, but actually it should be seen as unstable.

Things continue to move. They're unstable. It comes from the Sanskrit, anitya. Dukkha is actually, I always say this, when we go into the shopping center or the grocery store, we take with us their cart, and there's always that one wheel that's sort of off center. It's a bent axle, as Doug was saying when we were having a conversation.

And that's dukkha. That's literally what dukkha is. Things are not exactly the way we feel they should be. That's suffering. And then anatta. Anatta is not self, that which is not self. So we are looking for something that is stable in an otherwise unstable world, and that's what we're looking for. Happiness is just the costume, just the layering that we put on that stability. And say because we feel pleasant, because we experience sukha, because we experience this comfort, that's what we are seeking. But we're actually seeking stability. That's what ignorance and conceit are. Ignorance isn't to ignore something necessarily. Ignorance comes from the word avijja, which means not knowing, the misapprehension of pleasure for happiness.

It's the desire for security, but the inability to discern what is actually stable and unstable. And so from there, conceit arises and says, everything I try to hold on to as me, mine, or myself is that desire for stability. And it arises immediately when we're born, because we are in the comfort of the womb for nine or ten months, depending on how you count it.

And everything is taken care of for us. We have our nutrition, we have our warmth, we have these experiences of love from our mother in the ideal setting. And then we come into this world and we're thinking, what the hell is going on? Everything is unstable. It's some strange doctor, if you're going through that kind of a birth, or lights everywhere, and it's just like, oh my gosh, where am I? It can be traumatic. And then that desire for stability comes when we're with our mother, and we're with that caretaker, that person, the caregiver who holds us. And that grows out from whenever we grow into this world. This is replaced by this. This kind of stability is replaced by that.

We get interested in toys, we get interested in friendships, we get interested in relationships, we get interested in exploring our sexuality, we get interested in making a career, having a good job. We get interested in, okay, in this world you need money, so let me try to make the most out of it. And that's all conceit driven. This is why the Buddha says that the way out of conceit is through the understanding of impermanence, through the understanding of instability of this world, through the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body and the mind. So form is burning in that way. Likewise with feeling.

When we say feeling, coming from the word vedana, it's really to experience. It's any kind of experience, whether it's internal or external. I'm experiencing a pleasant experience by seeing the birds at the bird feeder right now. I'm experiencing a pleasant feeling by just listening to the silence, just being aware of no noise in this moment, no sound, very peaceful, except for the sound of my voice. I'm experiencing a pleasant feeling when I'm looking at all of you. All of these are experiences, whether it's internal: I feel happy, I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel right. I'm experiencing the redness of the red. I'm experiencing the redness of the roses that's behind here in the backyard.

I'm experiencing the warmth of this tea. Don't worry, this is tea. This is not beer. This is tea. I'm experiencing all of these things. That's all vedana. That's all feeling, and that too was burning. Why? Because we start to grasp onto feeling as a need for happiness, as a need for that security and stability. And when we desire that security and stability, what we're experiencing is that craving: I need to hold on to this feeling lest it go away and I no longer feel happy anymore. Likewise with perception and volitional formations and consciousness. Perception, here, is as I was saying, seeing the redness of the roses, so experiencing and seeing, that's the color red, and those are roses. When I'm looking at all of you, I'm recognizing your names. So the process of recognizing your names and your faces and your features is the process of perception, and that's also conceptual proliferation, because we look at perception and we say, oh, that's interesting, I want more of that. Again we're seeking that security in that experience.

Volitional formations are intention, choice, decision-making, the process of doing something, or the intention, I should say, a process of intending to do something. And those are also rooted in craving, can be rooted in craving, because it's like, that's the only sense of control I seem to have in my day-to-day life. I make this choice, and I make that choice. I like this, and I don't like that. I have these favorites, and I don't like these favorites. So I create a personality around that, and volitional formations allow me to experience some level of control, and so that makes me have this craving, this burning desire to hold on to that personality, and then consciousness

What is consciousness here? Consciousness here is we're talking about the eye consciousness, the ear consciousness, the nose consciousness, the tongue consciousness, the body consciousness, and the mind consciousness. When I am aware of something, my mind wants to hold on to that awareness. Again, that desire for security. That too is burning. But when one sees through this and understands that there is a process of holding on going on, and they use the process of right effort.

They use the Eightfold Path, abbreviated in the 6R's. Then they start to see what do they see? They have yatha bhuta nana dassana, seeing things as they are. This is another word for equanimity. Now, when we come to the word equanimity, this is from my discussion with the friends yesterday, it's an interesting translation. What do we mean by equanimity? It means calmness. It means tranquility. It means balance. Yes, it can mean all of these things qualitatively speaking.

But you go back to the word upekkha. There is another word similar to it, which is apeksha. So upekkha and apeksha. And what do we mean by apeksha? Apeksha means expectations. With expectations. So another way of understanding upekkha is no expectations. That's what we mean by equanimity. No expectations. Seeing things how they are without projecting any kind of expectations, ideas, concepts, beliefs, views about whatever it is that we are experiencing. This is upekkha, or synonymously yatha bhutam nana dassanam, the knowledge and vision of things as they actually are. Seeing thus, one experiences revulsion towards form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness.

I don't like that word revulsion. It revolts me. It's a different kind of meaning. Actually, it comes from the word nibbida, and this was specifically in my discussion with John Duteeth when we were talking about these translations. Nibbida, you know, is usually translated as disenchantment. But when we use the word disenchantment and dispassion, it gives a certain flavor. It makes Buddhists boring. It's like, oh, those Buddhists, they don't know how to have fun, they're just always disenchanted, they're dispassionate, they're just going through life without a smile, like, ah, this sucks, this sucks. I actually like this word, which, thanks to John Duteeth, instead of disenchantment we can say freedom from enchantment. We're free from the enchantment and snares of the senses, of the aggregates.

So disenchantment, disillusionment, it gives a different flavor, but freedom from enchantment means I see through the enchantment. I see through the snares, the trappings of these sense bases and the experiences. Therefore, having this freedom from enchantment, seeing through the enchantment, we experience dispassion. But this passion again has a very interesting tone to it. Another way of looking at it, and I like to use this word, is the unstickiness of the mind, the non-stickiness, the Teflon, if you will. I realize I was told yesterday that Teflon is actually a trademark name, so I'm probably going to stop using that and just say non-stick mind. Right, just like you have a non-stick pan, you have a non-stick mind.

What do we mean by this passion, or this non-stickiness? It's that whatever comes and goes in the mind, nothing sticks to it. The mind just remains completely neutral. It's not indifferent. Indifference again has a different flavor to it. Indifference means I see it but I'm choosing to ignore it. Neutrality is okay. It's coming and it's going. See it coming, and I see it going. And so the mind becomes detached, non-attached, it's completely non-judgmental in whatever is arising and going, whatever is coming into the mind and going away.

And therefore the mind experiences what's known as liberation. Now, this word liberation, or to be liberated, comes from the word vimutti. Vimutti, or vimukti, comes from the word mukti, which comes from the word moksha, which comes from the word muchyate, which means to drop. Just as you have a ripe apple, and when it's ready to be eaten it drops.

So what is dropping here? We become free from our desire to have things a certain way. That's the greed and hatred. The desire to have some kind of an identity, that is conceit. That is delusion. That is ignorance, avijja. So that drops, and muchite, where are we dropping? We're dropping out. We're all becoming samsaric dropouts, dropping out from samsara. That's what freedom is. We decide, you know what, I'm not interested in this merry-go-round anymore, and I've decided to be free from greed, hatred and delusion, having gone through this process of the Eightfold Path, and therefore I am now checked out of samsara. And therefore the mind knows, yeah, I'm checked out, I'm no longer interested, and I'm free of this. Of course you have to test, you have to see for yourself. And therefore he understands, or they understand, destroyed is birth, destroyed is birth, because I'm no longer checked into the matrix of samsara. The holy life has been lived. Brahmacharya is the word, actually, which means the way of Brahma. It doesn't necessarily just mean celibacy, but in the context of bhikkhus, that's the case.

But the holy life here is having lived what the Buddha has taught. The way of the divine, the way of being free, brahmacharya. What had to be has been done. What needs to be done? What do we need to do? We need to see the four things. We have to do the four things. We have to acknowledge and understand suffering.

We have to abandon craving and all of its different counterparts and cousins. We have to realize for ourselves nirodha/nibbana, and we have to cultivate and perfect the Eightfold Path. Therefore, what had to be done has been done. There is no more for this state of being. That's an interesting way of putting it. There is no more for this state of being, no more, what, no more desire to do this or that with the obsession around it, no more craving for a certain outcome, essentially no more obsession, no more burning, and therefore no more new becoming.

All right, that's the end of this sutta. I don't know if you want to go to the next one or if you want to pause for questions here. Yeah, I think we could, there might be a few questions here that have come up. Anybody want to comment on this one? There's a lot to unpack in that sutta, I must say. It's got it all. Hi, I had a question. I couldn't figure out how to raise my hand. I apologize. I was wondering how much of dispassion is related to becoming. I'm finding myself spending more time resting in that place before becoming, where I don't step into relationship with the stuff that arises, and instead I let it pass.

It's not perfect or all the time, of course, but it's getting a toehold, and it's very peaceful. And this seems to have qualities that sound like this passion, but I don't I don't know if there's like, like a checklist or something. And not that it's not a keeping score thing. I'm just curious. Yeah. I would say simpler, simplicity is so important. So let's not complicate what this passion is here. It's just basically, you don't get caught up in things.

You're not interested in trying to get caught up in this or that. So again, it doesn't mean that you're boring. It doesn't mean that you're just becoming this robotic zombie that doesn't have any life in it anymore. It just means you see through the danger of these things as being catching or trapping you into these spaces of samsara. So becoming, becoming is really the desire for things to be a certain way. That's really what it is, and then our habitual reactions are to keep that status quo of the way things and the way that things need to be. I feel like they're moving around, they're shifting, so I need them to be a certain way, and I use the habitual reactions to keep that status quo. So one of the things is, we have a tendency to fall into certain habits. Things have to be a certain way. The day has to go a certain way. If it doesn't, then that's what happens. You become

you become complacent and you become comfortable in that habit, and then when things don't go a certain way you get irritated and agitated by that. So this passion is the ability to be non-attached to experiences without any kind of an agenda or judgment, and then being able to function in a way where you're very adaptive to experiences and situations.

That's one way of looking at it. Next question. Yeah. Shalina, I think. Thank you, that was great, and I really enjoyed it. I really resonate with the freedom from enchantment, like that. When you were talking about suffering, you said we all know what suffering is, but yeah, we know what a certain type of suffering is, in the obvious physical and mental suffering, and perhaps even the changing nature of things, the suffering. But that more fundamental suffering of the dependent nature of all things is more difficult to access, and that brought me to

that kind of understanding that I came to, which was related to sankhara, choices that we make, that even those are not in our control. They're also dependently arisen, depending on circumstances or inclination of the mind or whatever, and that understanding was, you know, really freeing actually. Now, and so I just wanted to share that. Yeah, yeah, I mean, my only note about that is I think when we talk about the deeper aspects of suffering, like the sankhara dukkha, the dukkha of the aggregates, we can't get to it unless we are on the Buddhist path, actually, if you think about it, because we only have these two layers of suffering that we're all aware of outside of the Buddhist path, which is, you know, the general aging, birth, that aging, death, illness, grief, anxiety, restlessness, despair, not getting things the way we want them to be, and all of these other things. So the sankhara dukkha, that is the more innate suffering, only happens with the realization of seeing through impermanence, and that's where the training happens.

it's like oh there's another level of ignorance there's another level of vija that i had no idea about until i actually investigated and saw for myself through the practice that i'm actually causing myself this suffering uh and i don't even i didn't even know it you know so yeah yeah next person bill Hi, Nelson. Thanks. I've asked before about consciousness. I'm just confused about consciousness. I mean, I get perception and the other things in there, but I mean, what is the experience of consciousness? and what is it like to see through that?

Consciousness is the quality of knowing something. It's the vinnana, right? That's the word that's from Pali. It's the jnana, the knowledge, the knowing of something. So when we are aware, like when I'm holding this oversized coffee cup, I'm aware of myself holding it. That awareness of me holding it, so the holding it is the feeling, the perception of me holding it is the perception. In other words, okay, I'm holding this coffee cup, that's a perception. There's a light that's shed on it, that this process is happening.

That is awareness, that is consciousness. So in the context of the Dhamma, what we say is, you know, there's I consciousness, your consciousness, knows consciousness, and so on. What we're saying is there's a knowing of what is happening. There's a knowing of 'I'm seeing this', there's a knowing of 'I'm hearing this', there's a knowing of 'I'm smelling and tasting'.

This is why when we read Majjhima Nikaya 43, there's a dialogue between Sariputta and Mahakotthita, and there it says where feeling is, there perception is, and where perception is, there consciousness is, and these three encircle each other: feeling, perception and consciousness. Because what you feel you perceive, what you perceive you know, you're aware of. They're so entwined that you can't separate feeling from perception and consciousness. So consciousness, that's the thing about this word consciousness: it's gone through so many different transformations through the millennia. We've got the Vedantic understanding of consciousness as Brahman, the universal sort of consciousness and field, and so on. We've got the understanding of consciousness that scientists are now trying to figure out: where in the brain does consciousness come from, or does it actually? And now we have Buddhism, which says consciousness actually is dependently arisen.

So if we are understanding it from the Buddhist context, what we're saying is consciousness is just that quality of knowing, being aware of something. Well, why would you be revulsed by consciousness? Because I think, so it seems like a necessary ingredient of every all of this. These are all necessary ingredients. This is why I said the form, feeling, perception, intention and consciousness, they are not craving in of themselves, they're not clinging of themselves. They become vessels for craving to arise. And so what we are saying is consciousness is burning, but consciousness is not craving itself. Consciousness or awareness is burning with craving because there's a potential for the mind to grasp at that awareness as something more than itself and identify with it, which then is that desire for stability in that identity.

And when that is shaken, we experience suffering. Thank you. Okay, David, thanks. Thanks, Delson. Just a follow-up, I guess, on that. Revulsion and then burning. Could you say more about the burning? I mean, I think of it like a fire with wood, and all these things are the prima materia that's just burning up for unification of consciousness. So just a little bit more about the burning, and especially in Saturn and Aries, I am feeling a burning with everything that's happening in my life. Everything that you're talking about is really quite a moment of synchronicity. And then just a bit more about the revulsion. Unpack that maybe a little bit, so that experientially I can feel into what the revulsion that follows from this burning is about. Thanks.

I was unaware of Saturn in Aries. I thought it's still in Pisces. Yeah, today, today or yesterday, 25th, whatever today is, I don't know. And my body is blowing up in the middle of the night, my knee swelling, my muscle pops, blood traumas. I mean, you name it and doctors can't explain it. Doing a lot of prayer and just a lot of meditation around it, trying to allow some of this energy to burn.

And it is burning. So just, again, I don't want to create a story, but physically speaking, it is happening in my body. And so, yeah, I don't know if you have anything to add about that, because I feel a burning. I mean, that's all I can say. Whatever that term means metaphorically speaking, but whether it's karma, I don't know. Consciousness, like you were just speaking of, becoming more conscious of patterns and stories and imprints and the sankhara. I'm really dropping into it. And then the revulsion, the fight, the revulsion, because I don't think it means how I typically want to see revulsion, which would be an aversion, but that's what we're taught: don't attach, don't turn away. So maybe what the actual revulsion is, maybe that's pointing to. Yeah. So what I was saying is about the burning, you know, I mean, that's one context, which is the burning of karma, but I think that's not necessarily the way the sutta is being contextualised. It's more about the burning of

Like things are on fire. You know, they're always on fire because there's craving in them, or they can be on fire because there's craving in them. So the burning can arise because of resistance. How do you make fire? You make fire when you have things that are resisting. There's friction. You make heat through friction. And why is there friction? Because there are two repelling forces coming together to create that heat and that fire. But if you take away one, and you're just free from that, you say, okay, this body is experiencing this pain, I am experiencing this pain, there's a feeling of pain and inflammation and burning and so on. I become aware of that.

Can I just be aware of it non-judgmentally and relax? Just release my identity with that burning, with that pain, and then see where that takes you. Now with the revulsion, the word revulsion, as I was saying earlier, with my conversation with John Duteeth, the idea of freedom from enchantment. So revulsion is the word that's used here, but, you know, in other contexts it's used as disenchantment.

And I was saying, you know, that flavour of disenchantment makes it feel very, very boring. So if we just use freedom from enchantment, we're no longer... because revulsion means, as you say, correctly, that it's like having aversion towards the experience, having aversion towards the burning, but just freedom from being enchanted by it. Again, it's like, I've been bullied. I think some of you have been bullied and you might know what that looks like. And what did your parents tell you? What did my parents tell me? They told me to ignore them. But of course, ignoring here means like I'm being indifferent, but it's the same kind of quality. It's like, all right, I'm aware of the bullies, I'm aware of the hindrances, I'm aware of all of this stuff. I'm choosing to relax back into my awareness of it, and I'm choosing to let go of it, and I'm choosing to be unburdened by it. Oh, I don't like to use that word unburdened because of its political connotations. I am choosing to be

I'm choosing to be free from it. I'm choosing to be aware but also not judging. Again, that dispassion or disenchantment is like, I'm choosing not to engage in the prospect of being bullied, because I can choose to be affected by something, or I can choose to remain unaffected by relaxing into whatever is going on. So I choose to be no longer enchanted by the experience. So revulsion again, it's a terrible translation. I don't know why this was chosen, but I know in Samyutta Nikaya, other parts of Samyutta Nikaya and Anguttara Nikaya, somewhere, they use the word disenchantment, which is better, not the best, but better. So there you go. Thank you. Okay. Harshini, hi everybody. Just to add a couple of points, if I may, and I may be wrong, but just to get your views on this: I see disenchantment as a kind of fatigue. You're just exhausted by doing the same thing just endlessly, again and again. That really helps me to

contextualise that. I don't know whether that helps at all. David, yeah, and you know, this happens in the meditation when you start to see the arising and passing away of individual sense-based consciousnesses. And it's like burdensome, it's just like, "Oh, I keep seeing this, it's just the same thing over and over." And that's what we define as dukkha.

So the nibbida, the disenchantment, is more than that. It's like, I choose not to engage in it anymore. Disengagement. I like the word disengagement as well, being disengaged from that whole story. The second thing, very quickly, is you spoke of instability, and really struck a chord with me, because I see the jhanas, particularly the latter jhanas, as a place of stability. Mind is actually stable, and that brings so much peace. And again, the instability of daily life, where your mind is constantly barraged by fatigue of handling this enchantment, as the opposite of that. So when you go into a sitting, there is that little bit of expectation, going, oh, I'm just waiting for that space of stability where my mind doesn't have to constantly

tackle all these things. I don't know whether that's a correct assessment regarding the jhanas and the stability of the mind. Yeah, the jhanas are seen as temporary liberations. For example, I know there's a situation where Ananda goes to the Buddha, and he says, they say that we are addicted, we are obsessed by these states known as the jhanas, what do we do about that? And the Buddha said it's the best kind of addiction, because it's not dependent on any kind of external factors, and it's self-regulating. I'm interpreting it in that way, because when you're in jhanas, it's not like you need more and more of that same hit of jhana. It's just that the experience of jhana itself is so wonderful and feels freeing. So I think, but you get to a point later on when you also see through the three characteristics of jhanas, but we don't need to do it prematurely. We can enjoy experiencing the jhanas and eventually realise, okay, we can let go of that as well.

Thank you. Shall we move on to... yeah, I've got a real small one here. I'm going to do this one here. You see that? Yes, yeah. So this is a small segment from the largest Sutta in the Pali Canon, which is the Digha Nikaya, Mahaparinibbana Sutta. The greater discourse on the Buddha's extinguishment. Such is ethics.

And while staying there at the Vulture's Peak, the Buddha often gave his Dhamma talk to the mendicants. Such is ethics, such is immersion, such is wisdom. When immersion is imbued with ethics, it's very fruitful and beneficial. When wisdom is imbued with immersion, it's very fruitful and beneficial. When the mind is imbued with wisdom, it is rightly freed from the defilements, namely the defilements of sensuality, desire to be reborn, and ignorance.

So the Buddha is talking about the entire path here. He's talking about sila, samadhi and panna. What do we mean by ethics? Well, at the very, very basic level, keeping the five precepts. When you have a mind that is imbued with those five precepts, what are the five precepts? Refraining from harming and killing living beings, refraining from taking what is not freely given, refraining from any kind of sexual or sensual misconduct, refraining from lying and bearing false witness, refraining from intoxicants. These are the five precepts.

And each of these precepts has a direct correlation, or indirect correlation let's say, to the hindrances. When you don't keep the precepts, the mind remains unguarded. Being unguarded, hindrances come through, and then it's just an uphill battle, because the more you break precepts, the more hindrances come up, and you try to subdue those hindrances by then breaking more precepts, because you don't like what's going on. So you try to target and harm the person or thing that is getting in the way of your particular desire or craving, or whatever it is. So it's this, again, mini samsara of breaking precepts, trying to subdue the hindrances. Breaking precepts, trying to subdue the hindrances.

But as you start to take the path of keeping the precepts, realizing the importance of keeping the precepts and seeing the fruit of keeping the precepts, at the forefront you take the precepts, and you make a determination to keep the precepts whenever you take the precepts in the morning. And this starts to ease the mind. It doesn't mean it extinguishes or destroys the hindrances. It just means that now the mind is feeling what's known as non-regret.

You will be tested because of your karma, where things will irritate you. Things will get you upset. Things will cause you to possess and own something in terms of the sensual desire, craving. And your process therein, after you've kept the precepts, is to immerse yourself in the Dhamma, which is to use the Six R's, to use right effort and be attentive.

I'm going to say be mindful, but I realize I don't like the word mindful or mindfulness anymore, because it's just like, where did we get this word mindfulness? It's such a terrible translation, you know? It's like this, mick, mindfulness. It comes from the word sati, and sati is to remember. What does mindfulness have to do with remembering? Right? You want to use the word mindfulness, because for the last 80 years we've been using mindfulness, that's fine, but I want you to know it's a terrible word, in my humble opinion. I would rather say, you know, remembering.

I mean, this is the definition. We always say remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. It's a mouthful, so that's why we abbreviate and say mindfulness. But basically what we're saying is remember to see how things change in the mind, observing your awareness, observing your attention. Right? Meta attention, not attention of meta like loving kindness, and that's another word we'll have to look at one day, but meta in terms of attention, of attention, awareness of awareness, seeing the movements of your attention. That's what we're talking about. And if we're not able to see that, then our mind is unguarded, our senses are unguarded, and it's easy for craving and aversion to come up. But as we start to utilize the Six R's and be more present with what's happening in the mind

that's some sampajanna, knowing when you're walking you're walking, eating you're eating, sitting you're sitting, standing you're standing, and so on. Then you have a clear picture of what's going on. If you're hyper-focused, that one-pointedness, then you're just tunnel vision, not able to see the whole picture. So to have collectedness, that is the immersion. That's the word that's been used here, immersion. Immersion really is samadhi: to have an attention that is undispersed, not going in different directions, but at the same time not laser focused. You see the big picture. Therefore you have sati and sampajanna. When you have this, then your mind starts to understand how it works. That is the true meta-awareness, the metacognition, and that's where wisdom arises.

It's the ability to see how mind interprets reality, and in fact generates and simulates its own reality based on previous causes and conditions. Hence paticca samuppada, or dependent origination. That is what wisdom is. So when immersion, or samadhi, or collectedness, or the process of meditation, is imbued with ethics or virtue, which means, well, I am having the ability to keep the precepts, therefore I have the experience of non-regret. I don't regret that I did this, so I broke this precept, or anything. My mind starts to become quieter and more still. There's a certain self-confidence in that, and so I experience pamojja. So that pamojja is to be rejoicing in my ability

to keep the precepts. I feel a breath of fresh air, because I no longer am tied to this incessant circle of breaking a precept, subduing the mind, breaking the precept, subduing the mind. Instead, I become free from that cycle, and I feel that relief. That's another word you can use for pamojja: relief from breaking the precepts.

From that relief there comes piti: joy, exuberance, exhilaration, this joyfulness that's there in the body. From that joy there arises tranquility, passaddhi. The mind feels relaxed. The body feels relaxed. And from that tranquility you have sukha. Now I'm going back into the Upanisa Sutta here. You have sukha. Sukha is this feeling of comfort in the body and mind.

You guys remember, I don't know if you know that song, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen? And in there it says, comfort and joy, comfort and joy. That's what it is. Piti is the joy, and comfort is the sukha. As you experience that, your mind becomes more stabilized, and therefore it becomes collected. Being collected, now it can develop wisdom. What is that wisdom? Yathabhuta nana dassana. The components, or the equipment, of wisdom is the ability to see things as they are, the freedom from enchantment, the non-stickiness of the mind. And therefore the mind is free from those defilements, and those defilements are the taints, the asavas: sensuality, kamasava.

It's coming from a lack of mindfulness, or a lack of being able to be aware of how your mind is moving. So you're free from that. You're free from the desire to be reborn. What does that mean? A desire to change the way things are because you're not comfortable with them, because you find you're not able to be stable in that unstable environment. And the defilement of ignorance here, the avijja, the defilement of not being aware of the Four Noble Truths in every moment. So in short, what we're saying is: it starts with keeping the precepts. When you have the precepts, you have no regrets. When you have no regrets, you feel relief. When you feel that relief, there's an exuberance of joy that is not dependent upon external factors. When you have that, your mind becomes tranquil. When you are tranquil, your body becomes comfortable. As you become more comfortable, your mind becomes more stabilized and experiences meditation, and as the meditation starts to become more stabilized and deeper

then you're able to see things as they are, and that is the process of wisdom. From that process of wisdom, you're seeing free of enchantments. You're becoming more detached. Your mind is no longer sticky, and therefore it experiences the dropping out from samsara, because now you're no longer defined by these defilements of sensuality. This desire to own things and this desire to identify with the sense bases. That's what it is. Or this desire to change the outcome or change the way things are. That's the bhavasava.

Or the avijjasava, which is the inability to be aware of the Four Noble Truths in every given moment. And that's it. I'll stop there. Okay, well, these little suttas, they carry a lot of meat to them, or a tofu if you're a vegetarian. All right. Well, thanks. And thanks for getting up early, Delson. I know you're in California, so it's a little bit harder to come on at this time.

Yeah, it's so funny. Last week I think I was at Mark and Andre's place, and this week I'm at Doug's place. Who knows where I'll show up next? So you guys be careful, you know, I might just pop up at your place at some point. That's right. All right. Well, thanks very much. And I guess I really should be doing the sharing of the merit, shouldn't I? Probably should. And it is somewhere here. Let me...

And I have it. Hold on a second here. Yeah, here it is. Go share that. All right. Okay. May suffering ones be suffering free, and the fear-struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired, for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. 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. All right, thanks very much. Bye.