AN 1.306-309 Wrong View is always Unwholesome -Sunday with Delson Armstrong

Yeah, I think it's good to go. So today, I figured what I'm going to do is, we had a couple of different suttas, well, requests in some sense. One is going to be out of the Sutta Nipata, which we'll do a little bit later, but the other is from the Anguttara Nikaya. And it's actually a series of suttas. And it's not just one specific sutta. It's more connected by certain themes. And so it's from the Anguttara Nikaya, as I'll show you here. It was actually inspired by our very own friend John here, who was asking me a question about what does it mean, this particular word, through that sutta, and I saw that there are suttas before and after it and there's a whole thematic process. So when you see here, for example, we're now in the Anguttara Nikaya, the book of ones, and this is the second subchapter, and it says here, this is, please mute everybody, so I'm going to read until a few of these suttas until we get to here, which is the third subchapter, because they're all kind of related to each other.

So let's begin with that, and then we'll discuss the Sutta Nipata, and then I will open it up for questions. So the first one is 306. This is, again, the Book of Ones. So really the whole key here is wrong view. What do we mean by wrong view? We'll get into that in a minute. But what do we mean by unwholesome qualities and wholesome qualities?

This comes back to the word kusala and akusala. Kusala actually, you know, is generally translated as wholesome. And of course, this has been translated by the great Bhikkhu Bodhi, who's a, you know, master Pali scholar, so we can't really question much about it. And I think for the purposes of understanding, why is the Buddha always emphasizing wholesome? And why is he always emphasizing the reduction of the unwholesome? I mean, what does he mean by the wholesome? What does he mean by the unwholesome? You know, yes, we could say that it's a moral and ethical perspective.

But I think if we look at the Buddha's understanding from a larger perspective, that is, what is it all about? At the end of the day, it's all about Nibbana. It's about the cessation of suffering. It's about the freedom of the heart and mind. It's about liberation from samsara. That is what the Buddha was out to do as the Bodhisattva. And he came to what's known as the deathless or the unconditioned element, the Nibbana dhatu, which is beyond death, beyond life, beyond, so to speak, samsara, beyond the relative world, which is in the dimension of the absolute, unconditioned, uncreated, unborn, unmade. Then I would not speak of it. So there is something he accessed, something that he uncovered, something that he had an experience of.

And the reason why he is considered the Buddha is because he was able to reverse engineer this whole process and lay down the cards and the instructions on how to play the game, which is the Eightfold Path, generally, the middle way. But part of that includes this thing called wholesome and unwholesome. And what do we mean by wholesome? Kusala, in this sense, would be that which is skillfully liberating.

And akusala would be something that is unskillful. So in other words, yes, there is a moral component to it. Yes, there is an ethical component to it. And these are the states, these are the qualities of the mind that are important on the ladder towards Nibbana. Namely what? Loving kindness, the seven awakening factors, the process of having more patience, cultivating more equanimity, right view in this case, gives rise to these unwholesome states, these things that are unskillful, that don't lead towards Nibbana, that don't lead towards liberation.

And what do we mean by wrong view here? Wrong view is the view that is binding, the view that continues to create disturbances in the mind, the view that creates all of these different ideas about the world and self. And namely, it's regarding nihilism. And in some cases, existentialism. I should say, sorry, eternalism, not existentialism. Nihilism and eternalism. So nihilism here is nothing matters. Like there's no meaning in giving. There's no meaning in what is offered. There's no such thing as karma and action and consequence. So you had a group of people like this, like namely the Charvakas, right? Charvaka was the modern day sort of materialist, philosophy that said, eat, drink and be merry.

There's nothing beyond that. And so it even says in one of their texts that even if you have to take a loan to get the best quality of materials, go ahead and do it. Even if you have to be in debt, because all that matters is today and now and enjoying the senses. So we definitely had late stage capitalism back there in India as well.

So, this idea of nihilism is that, you know, why should I do anything? Nothing matters. It's all about me. It's all about what I feel and, you know, this body and the senses and so on. Or I am the self. Really it's self-view that says that I am permanent, and it identifies with the body or the senses.

It identifies with feeling, perception, intention or choices. And it identifies with awareness itself. In both cases, there's some kind of identification going on in that regard. But eternalism is more like nothing can do, you know, nothing can affect me, unchanging and so on. So what's the point of having to do these different things? Well, the Buddha is really saying that in order for us to get to the absolute, we have to play the game of the relative. We have to play the game because so long as we have a body, as long as we have senses, so long as we have emotions, so long as we have relationships and the things that we have to deal with in this world, we have to play the game that allows us to disengage and detach.

So the more wholesome we become, the more skillful we become, the things that we carry forward that allow us to meditate, go into a space of jhana, allow us to become dispassionate. The more we can do that, then that's the right course of action. So what do we need for that? He says here, so, what is he saying here? He's saying that in order for us to have the skillfully liberating habits that we continue to have, namely that is there in the Eightfold Path, because the Eightfold Path is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. The way leading to the cessation of karma.

Karma is that which binds us. And if we already accept that there is, to some level, some kind of karma, even if we don't understand it fully, but we engage with the world in a meaningful manner that says that when I do this with a certain intention, it has a certain effect. It has a certain consequence. And only a fool, only an idiot, would say that there's no consequence to my actions.

Because the reality is everything that we do in this world has some kind of consequence. And so when we see this, this is the basis of right view. This is what the Buddha says. There is meaning in what is given. There is meaning in what is sacrificed. There is meaning in what is offered. There is action and consequence. And further, there is existence, there is this world and the other world, there is this world of the senses and there's the other world of the super mundane states of the jhanas and the formless states. There is spontaneous rebirth. This is another important thing, the understanding that's a very deep understanding, which is spontaneous rebirth. It doesn't just mean from one life to the next, but it means that the sense of self that we have embedded in the mind is always changing.

Once we start to see this as an impersonal process, then quite naturally we start to see that, or I should say, we start to let go and disengage and detach and come closer to nirvana, come closer towards cessation of suffering, and that is Nibbana. So the idea here is, if I have my view correct and in order, that means if I accept that there is action and consequence, then I will realize that when I have wholesome states of mind, I am able to have a clearer mind, a mind free of any kind of regret, a mind free of any kind of remorse, a mind free of any sort of anxiety about, oh, I did this or I shouldn't have said that.

I don't know what's going to happen now. And I get frenetic in my mind and it's difficult for me to meditate. So the Buddha was very clear that sila here is a skillful habit that we continue to develop so that our meditations become better. When our meditations become better, we are able to develop the mind to such an extent that we develop in tandem to the process of letting go, which leads to samatha, samadhi, which leads to jhanas. There's also insight tied into it. There's also vipassana tied to it. And this is all happening at a natural level or in a natural order. We don't need to force anything. We just have to be present and available to how these things happen.

We start by adopting the right view. We start by seeing that actions are consequences, wholesome actions, and then everything else follows thereafter. And so then he says, because I do not even see a single thing on account of which unarisen wholesome qualities do not arise and arisen wholesome qualities decline, so much as wrong view. For one of wrong view, unarisen wholesome qualities do not arise and arisen wholesome qualities decline. So we can still go, let's say, regress back to wrong views until it is established in stream entry.

This is very important to understand. There are these teachers and guides who have experienced this and can see for themselves and show the path that leads to Nibbana. But if we have no established right view, if we don't have that, then there is a possibility of regressing. in the Four Noble Truths, which is the Dhamma. And so stream entry is essentially the complete unshakable belief and faith in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha. And what that means is that we actually don't go anywhere else in terms of our practice. We realize that this practice is what leads to the end of suffering. It depends on what object we take. It depends on what we do. Anything that leads to the cessation of suffering is in alignment with the Dhamma.

That's the idea. The whole basis of this process that we call the Dhamma. That is essentially the teachings, the way of life, the fundamental nature of reality. That is Dhamma. All of it encompasses this process in which we let go of the things that cause us suffering, but the very important fundamental thing that causes suffering is the wrong view. Once we let go of wrong view and we are fully established in right view, not only mundane but super mundane, then we are basically on a one-way ticket to final Nibbana, whenever that's going to be, whenever that happens.

And after a while, as we continue to keep the precepts, our mind becomes clearer. And when we sit down for meditation practice, our mind is more prone towards having greater degrees of mindfulness, more prone towards a more jhanic state of mind. When you are in a jhanic state of mind, that means all there is present are the wholesome states of mind. No unwholesome states of mind are present. No unwholesome qualities of mind are present. No hindrances are present. No distractions.

Nothing that can take us away. And when it does, it's just because of the nature of mind, because of whatever old karma that we need to deal with. But we have now in our tool set the right effort, which is the six R's. We have with us everything in terms of the Eightfold Path. We've been speaking in a way that doesn't harm. We've been acting in a way that doesn't harm. We've been taking up a livelihood or existence that doesn't cause harm or as little harm as possible, because we live in a very complex environment around the world.

And therefore, our mind becomes steadier. We have a greater degree of mindfulness. When we say mindfulness, we're saying the ability to recognize the here and now. This is how I see mindfulness, because it's not just present moment awareness. It's the ability to recognize what is happening right here, right now. Whoever's watching, sometimes the statement, which we always talk about, mindfulness is the remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other.

For some people, that's a mouthful, and it just doesn't kind of register. So to simplify that, what that really means is, we're not trying to get to a point, like a lot of Vipassana practitioners, to every moment, trying to see what's going on, because that's just creating a certain level of one-pointed concentration that doesn't really help. When we say we're trying to see, we're remembering to observe how mind's attention moves. We are aware of what's happening in the moment, as and when it happens, with reference to the mind's attention. We don't need to see exactly what's going on, because otherwise we will have an. In fact, we won't have any samatha at all.

We'll just be totally in vipassana. The idea here is to have total clarity of mind in whatever is happening as it's happening, which is why we have sati and sampajanna. Sati here is that memory, is that remembering. Collection of understanding, the comprehension of what's happening in the present moment with regards to the mind and whatever action is happening or whatever situation is arising. And this is why I simplify it to being aware of what is happening in every given moment, because in every given moment is where feeling or experience arises.

They even arises. And how do you take that feeling? That's the mindfulness. That's what, as we will see in a bit, that's what yoniso manasikara is. The mindfulness is the gatekeeper between feeling and craving. If we are aware of everything as it actually is, it means that we are completely aware of every experience as it's arising, or as close to it, because we're training.

But in any case, when we are aware of that, another layer of it, which is we let go whenever we catch the sense of self identifying with that feeling. This is why I have said, observe and experience everything without attaching a sense of me, mine, or myself to it. Experience everything fully without the I. How do you do that? What does that mean? Well, a few weeks ago, we did this Vaya Sutta, finally, which is in the seeing, there's only the seeing. In the hearing, there's only the heard. In the sensing, there's only the sense. In the cognizing, there's only the cognize.

So what that means is I am just aware of what's happening. There is just seeing going on, right? There's just tasting going on. There's whatever is going on. The sampajanna, as it's known in Pali, is the awareness of the mind or its attention in relation to the experience. And to that extent, it allows us to see, so to speak, when the self comes up, when the identification process comes up, and then we can relax it. And when we relax it, there's nothing else we need to do. This is why the Buddha says, once you see that in the seeing there's only the seeing, and in the hearing there's only the heard, and so on, then you are not shaped by that.

You are not defined by that. There's no I that comes up that is shaped by the experience, is dependent upon the experience. And then there's just the experience. And just that is the cessation of suffering. Just that is the end of suffering. So here he says, because I do not see even a single thing on account of which unarisen wrong view arises and arisen wrong view increases so much as careless attention.

For one of careless attention, unarisen wrong view arises and arisen wrong view increases. This is what we're getting at, the muddled mindfulness. This is the ayoniso manasikara. Yoniso manasikara. Yoni is the womb, the source of something. Manasikara, mano is mind. And kara means to do. It's the action of the mind to pay attention. And yoniso is what is happening right now that has caused this experience? What is happening right now that has caused this reaction? What is happening right now that has caused this particular state of mind to come? This is what the Buddha used when we talk about yoniso manasikara to understand dependent origination. Asked in the mind, with the arising of this, what arises?

So there is suffering. With the arising of what, does suffering arise? With the arising of birth. With the arising of what, does birth arise? With the arising of becoming or being. With the arising of being, what arises? With the arising of clinging, right? It wasn't immediate. It was just his mind being able to see it, and then it came to him, and he looked at it forward and backward and forward again, and confirmed for himself that this is what creates the relative world, which is full of suffering.

And this is also when you reverse the process, the way leading to the end of suffering, to the absolute, which is nibbana. So careless attention here is muddled mindfulness. It is ignorance. It is lack of mindfulness to see what is arising as it arises. The forgetting to see how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other in reference to what is happening right here, right now.

Here, the attention is rooted in reality. What do we mean by that? Moment, which is to see that this particular experience that's happening right here, right now, is dependent upon causes and conditions. That understanding of causality and conditionality leads to the realization that this experience, due to those causes and conditions, is subject to change. Therefore, if I hold on to it with a sense of self and it goes away, then I will experience suffering. Therefore, I disengage and see the feeling as just feeling.

And this requires training. This requires the ability to practice mindfulness dependent upon right effort, which are the six R's. In order for you to accomplish the six R's, you need a mind that is free of regret and anxiety. In order for you to have that, you need a mind that has wholesome states. A mind full of wholesome states, you need to understand right view, and the basis of that is the understanding of action and consequence. Everything else will follow soon enough as you keep practicing. And so when we have mindfulness, as in when it arises in reference to the present moment, in reference to the experience at hand, we have careful attention.

And when we have careful attention, obviously our mind will see these perceptions, these seven perceptions. And it's not something you have to look for. It's something that happens when you see for yourself by just staying aware and attentive to what the experience is here right now. And you realize, oh, this arose due to causes and conditions. That's the perception of impermanence, that this is subject to change.

That leads to the perception of suffering, that because it changes, if it's a good thing, it's temporary. And if I hold on to it, I will continue to suffer. And so that leads to the perception of not-self, the emptiness of self. And then the perception of the emptiness of self leads to the perception of equanimity. My mind is naturally equanimous. My mind experiences a degree of equanimity where I see things as they actually are without getting affected one way or the other. And I see things without an agenda, without a desire to control whatever is happening. This you see in the meditation when you have equanimity. You just are sitting for the sake of sitting.

You're medicating for the sake of meditating. And there is deep equanimity, which leads to the perception of disenchantment. This disenchantment sees that anything that I do that I think is best, because I haven't seen the end of everything as suffering yet, will ultimately lead to suffering. So I have disenchantment that arises from seeing through equanimity. I am absolutely translucent and non-stick.

Buddha's word for this. And obviously, many different traditions have talked about some level of hell and some level of heaven. But I think, you know, we don't need to try to figure out if there is a heaven or hell. I mean, we don't need to wait for our death for that. We can see it for ourselves in our own actions. When we have wrong view, it leads. So first, when we have careless attention, we have ignorance, which is a lack of mindfulness of what is happening in every given moment, and we don't have the ability to see things from these levels of perception, then we get attached to the experience, we get attached to people, we get attached to situations, we get attached to events, we get attached to identity, we get attached to what we think we are, whether it's the body or nationality or race or, you know, even I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Theravada practitioner, whatever it is. Any kind of identity that arises gives rise to these different kinds of wrong view, or can give rise to different kinds of wrong view.

And I'm not talking about the wrong view in terms of nihilism. I'm talking about the wrong view in terms of the identification with every single experience. When we have that, then there is prone to be some kind of craving or aversion. And that can lead to pain. That can lead to suffering. And it can be eventually, if you haven't learned your lesson yet, enough for us to see, oh, there is something wrong here. This is a bad destination. This is leading to my misery, leading to my suffering.

On the other hand, when we have careful attention, when we are aware of things as they actually are, there is less of a tendency for us to identify with an experience and allow the experience to be just as it is. There is less of a tendency for us to try to defend anything, try to argue, try to do whatever, and more of an understanding that it is all karma. It is all just an experience, vibration through the sense fields, through the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind. And I disengage from that. It doesn't mean I'm not able to fully engage with the relationships that I'm in or with the people that I'm talking to.

It just means no more of that rejection, no more of that supplanting of this me, which I need to defend in such a way that it causes me suffering. When I have that careful attention, it gives rise to right view, because I realize, ah, once I've disengaged, I don't have to suffer. There's no suffering in this space. Defend myself, it is in a way that is ethical, in a way that's moral, that's related to wholesome states of mind. Because we have to. We can't just let people walk all over us. We have to be able to also set boundaries. We've spoken about this a couple of weeks ago as well. But to that extent, what does that mean?

How do we set boundaries? How are we aware of what seems appropriate and inappropriate? That depends on our experience. That depends more on how much we take things personally and how much we see as what is in alignment with the Eightfold Path, in alignment with the Dhamma. Once we have that right view, once we have the Dhamma, then we start to see for ourselves heaven on earth, that we're more loving and kind, that we're more compassionate, that we're more patient, that we're more equanimous, that we're more giving and generous.

That we start to, in some sense, attract the right kinds of people in our lives. We start to see that this group of friends is not conducive for my peace. And we disengage from them in a way that is skillful. And we start to attract the right kind of people in our lives, that are conducive for our practice, that are conducive for us to experience full awakening at some point.

So I think we've got a couple more suttas here. View, this is what we've been talking about, and whatever is volition, yearning, inclination and volitional activities, all lead to what is unwished for, undesired and disagreeable, to harm and suffering. For what reason? Because the view is bad. Because the view in itself, which leads to further taking things personally, which leads to further identification, which leads to a worldview that just isn't, for all intents and purposes, healthy for our state of mind. It leads to certain actions. We become agitated. We take certain actions that lead to our suffering.

And then also lead to states that we call jhanas. And finally, it can lead to stream entry, which is the establishing of supramundane right view, the full unshakable faith in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. And then finally, it leads to full awakening at some point in time. But it all starts with this understanding of right view. That ends what we were talking about with Anguttara Nikaya.

I want to go to the sutta. So this is something that we were discussing a couple of days ago. This is called The Questions of Kappa. Explain to me the island, so this might occur no more. For those standing in the midst of the stream, Kappa, said the Blessed One, when a perilous flood has arisen, for those oppressed by old age and death, let me declare an island to you. So we've always seen, somewhere or another, the Buddha will say, be an island unto yourself.

That was one of his last statements. But that island, that refuge, that shelter, that resting point, is Nibbana. And this is what the Buddha is saying. Owning nothing, taking nothing. This is the island with nothing further. I call this Nibbana, the extinction of old age and death. Having understood this, those mindful ones are quenched in this very life. Mara's footman. Owning nothing and taking nothing. What does that mean?

Well, if you take it in the literal sense, it could be like being a monk. We don't take anything. We don't own anything. But we live in a world as lay people where we do own things. We own our cars, or we own our houses, or we own our clothes, or we own whatever it is. And we do take things. We get things in exchange for our efforts and our time and so on and so forth. So we can be literal and say we have to live a life of a monk and say we own nothing and take nothing. But I think we can also look at it from a much more mental and emotional and spiritual level.

Which is that coming back to the experience as it actually is. Do we actually own the experience? Do we identify with the experience? Do we take on the experience as me, mine, or myself? Or do we just see the experience as it actually is and in that moment feel freedom? This relationship, ownership of this situation, event, whatever it is, can we recognize that and let it go, and in that moment not take anything more, not take on anything more, and just let the scene be the scene, the hearing be the hurt, the sense be the sense, the cognize be the confidence, and we allow the mind not to grasp onto anything? So that there is no self that is shaped by an experience. That is the island that the Buddha is talking about, that is Nibbana. When we say the extinction of old age and death, it means that once you experience that, and once that becomes your natural state of living, once you have seen for yourself that and it becomes

in some sense, because nothing is really permanent in the relative world, but it becomes the natural order of things in your life that there is no more coming to be. As many of the Rs have stated, there's no more becoming. There is no more birth. There's no more rebirth. Which means yes, we go through old age. The Buddha went through old age. The Buddha went through pain. The Buddha died. But as far as we take the Buddha's word for it with regards to nirvana, it's the extinction of that experience, so that we don't have to see it again. We don't have to be reborn and experience all of the nonsense that we do in this relative world.

And even in this very life, be able to be in a space when we go into meditation to fully disengage with the world, because there is the nirvana of the full total extinction of all relative experience that happens as a result of practice. And when we have the nirodha, the Dukkha Nirodha and the Sanna Vedayita Nirodha, the cessation of perception and feeling, as a result of which the mind can enter into Nibbana. But then there's also relating to the world in such a way that we no longer take ownership of any experience.

And everything is just karma coming to fruition. No more renewal of karma, no more renewal of suffering. Then he finally says, having understood this, those mindful ones are quenched in this very life. Mindfulness here, again, that is the key. That is always the key. The careful attention. mean that we have to investigate every single moment, but the ability to rest in the experience just as the experience, that is the key. I'll stop there and open it up for questions. I think you have a few on the chat. Okay. So when we've talked about this in the past, and we've seen this in many of the experiences of meditators, there is a space in which you start to see the arising and passing away of contact, contact, contact, contact, which is known as infinite consciousness.

And when you have this experience, the mind becomes tired of it. This is the suffering that it experiences, the dukkha. So the arising and passing away is the anicca. But then there's the sense and understanding that there's no controller here. I'm not the one causing the arising of this particular content. There's no controller here. That is the understanding of anatta that arises, the perception of anatta. When that happens, the mind naturally becomes equanimous and everything else follows suit after. What is the difference between vipassana and dhamma vichaya? Dhamma vichaya is generally translated as investigation.

But I don't like that word, because it means that we are trying to do something actively. But when we have mindfulness, it naturally leads to dhamma vichaya. Sati naturally leads to dhamma vichaya. And Dhamma Vichaya here is the ability to discern between what is wholesome and unwholesome. And you need mindfulness for that. Vipassana is what arises as insight, as a result of the mind becoming more and more collected.

And there is a balance between samatha and vipassana, which leads to cessation. Ines. Hi, Delson. Thank you very much for the Dhamma talk and your explanation. I would like to quickly come back to what you said at the end of this talk about abiding in experience as experience, meaning in the hearing there is only the heard, in the seeing there is only the seen, etc. Where exactly, practically speaking, does the mind attention lie so that we avoid one-pointedness, and also we avoid distraction and complete identification with the object? How does the attention of the mind lie?

By relaxing in the here and now. And where does it lie exactly? Where does it abide, the attention of the mind? If we try to find it, then we're no longer abiding. It's signless. Empty. Yeah, it's objectless. The here and now is constantly objectless. It's like when you totally relax, completely: your attention, your mind, your body. There is this field that I call the sky mind, the mind that feels expansive. It's free of any kind of craving in that moment, but you can't grasp it. It's just this, it's an experience that you have as a result of abiding. Because in my practice, I noticed that when there is abidance in sky mind and then there is, for example, a sound, the mind shifts a little bit too much to that sound.

So I'm not sure whether in the seen there is only the seen, or in the heard there is only the heard. There is the movement of the mind, even though it's quiet, but whenever there is something happening, quite important, and the attention kind of wants to identify with that object, as opposed to staying relaxed. So maybe to be more precise, the quiet mind is an object. There, the quiet mind is an object. So we're getting one step further, which is the signless that I talked about, where the mind just lets go of all objects, and it's just mind abiding, or mind just

resting in the objectless. And the thing is, the moment we make something into an object, then there is a desire to control how we continue to stay in that object. You see, all this while that we've been in the first jhana, the second jhana, the third jhana, all of these jhanas, all the way up to quiet mind, it's all to relate to the thinking mind, the relative mind, to do something.

And once we have engaged that mind to such an extent that it feels satisfied and content enough, that it's tired of looking, then the real work begins, which is to do nothing. And the doing nothing also, and this is where language and thoughts get tricky, because when I instruct anybody to say, do nothing, the very first thing the mind wants to do is, how do I do nothing? I want to try to do nothing.

And so don't look for something to abide in. But as soon as you relax, there is just flow of experience going on. There's no need to do anything beyond that once you've relaxed. I'm talking about at a very advanced level, which is when you are in a space where you're in the quiet mind, or you're just, you have enough mindfulness, you have enough discernment to be able to see when you relax in the here or not.

That there's nothing else to do after that, because no craving is there. Once you have no craving in that space, in that moment, there's nothing else for you to do. And then during this, in this state, even though there is an object, for example a sound rising, the mind doesn't move. It's just like, it just, no, there's a sound. So it's okay. You see, the thing is, the disturbance is, oh, there was a sound, and then there's all this sort of domino effect of the mind saying, oh, why am I paying attention to the sound? I should be here and this and that and all the other. Oh, it's just sound. Sound is coming, sound is going, and now mind is returning. Thank you. Mark, I just wanted to add that the staying in that present moment, that is another way of characterizing that: staying in the experiential reality of the moment.

So it flows into different things. And that's part of our definition of mindfulness, is watching the mind go to these different kinds of experiences. But it's that experiential reality that kind of is flowing. And so as we keep our mindfulness and our awareness in that, not identifying with it, then the practice becomes right view. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for that. That's perfect.

Anyone else? Oh, there is a question. Do you have time to found on 4.170, what is the fourth way to liberation? Yeah, I'll do that at some point. We can maybe do that another week. Yeah, we can do that next week or something. Yeah. Everybody happy, content, satisfied? Yes. Okay. All right. Sure, Merit. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. 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. Thank you, everyone. I'll see you around. Bye.