Day 5 Path to Nibbana - Upanisa Sutta-Transcendental DO - Delson Armstrong

So I want to recap, first and foremost, the higher jhanas, what are known as the ayatanas, or commonly known as the arupajanas. The first ayatana, or the first arupajana, is infinite space. So at this point in the meditation, somebody has felt like the loving-kindness has expanded, the contact with the body has diminished, and it feels like the loving-kindness has moved up and outward sometimes.

And so at this point, I will give you further instructions, and in those instructions, there will be the radiating of loving-kindness in different directions. So as we know, the limits of loving-kindness reach up to the fourth jhana. In the case of the fifth jhana, or the arupa jhana of infinite space, compassion is in tandem with it. So at this point, you feel boundless spaciousness.

You feel like the feeling of loving-kindness or compassion has gone beyond just the heart and the mind and the body, and it's expanding outward in all directions, encompassing the room, encompassing the building, and beyond that the street and all the houses, and then even beyond that until it encompasses the entire world, and all beings indiscriminately are sent this loving-kindness or compassion.

And then at a certain point, the mind or the awareness of the meditator starts to expand in tandem with infinite space. And so what we have is boundless consciousness or infinite consciousness. And the awareness expands outward. And eventually what you see is the arising and passing away of individual consciousnesses. For some people, they will see it behind their eyes as flickers.

Some people may hear flickers. Some people may experience phantom smells, tastes, maybe some electricity coursing through the body, or they'll start to see the gaps between thoughts. And what they're seeing is the arising and passing away of internal contact. And as you start to notice this, you get direct experience of impermanence because you're seeing the arising and passing away of things.

And at some point, it feels tiresome. And so you're getting a direct experience of dukkha, of this process. And then you realize that there is no controller here. I am not making this thing happen. It is happening due to causes and conditions, and so this is the experience of anatta. And so what you are experiencing is essentially what are known as the different perceptions, sometimes six, sometimes seven, depending on which sutta that you're reading. But what it says is: the perception of impermanence leads to the perception of suffering. The perception of suffering leads to the perception of emptiness or not-self, anatta, and that perception leads to the perception of equanimity. And this is why, as you progress and you start to see the gaps between the arising and passing away of individual sense-based consciousnesses, you get into the field of no-thingness.

This is the third arupajana, the third ayatana. In nothingness, some people may experience a blank, maybe a field of black or white or whatever it is. It's just nothing going on there. The mind is not engaged outward, not engaged inward. It's just present, aware of nothing in particular. And so with infinite space, we may have been radiating compassion.

With infinite consciousness, we radiate empathetic joy. And in the case of nothingness, we radiate equanimity. And hence, the perception of impermanence leading to the perception of suffering, leading to the perception of not-self, leads to the perception of equanimity. And now here you are radiating this equanimity, gently, softly, as if you were dropping pebble by pebble into a still lake, and you see those waves of equanimity radiate outward.

And you do this for a while, until the mind feels like it doesn't want to do anything. It just wants to rest in itself. And this is where we get into the territory of quiet mind. And at this point, you will get into a space where you feel like you are asleep, but awake at the same time. It's a very hypnagogic state.

There will be squiggles, patterns, colors, lights, as if you're remembering a life that you never lived and different kinds of things coming and going. These are the mental formations that are arising and coming to the mental screen, as it were. These formations are proto-thoughts, the bubbling up of formations before they lead into fully perceived existence, experiences. And hence we are entering the territory of neither perception nor non-perception.

This is the eighth jhana or the fourth arupa jhana, the fourth ayatana. And we may be in this space of neither perception or non-perception for quite a while. And as long as we continue to stay with the mind as its own object, as if it were in a hurricane, that it was in the eye of the storm. There are images and patterns and things coming and going, flotsam and jetsam of all kinds of things.

But the mind remains with itself. Eventually, this perception of equanimity enters into the perception of disenchantment, where the mind is no longer interested in what is happening. It is disengaged, free from the enchantment of formations coming and going. And for a while the mind is very quiet. Absolutely no vibration. Very still, clear, lucid, bright, luminous. And then this perception of disenchantment leads to the perception of dispassion.

And there may come a point where even the mind, the borders of the mind, feel a little tense. So you relax that and go into what is the signless collectedness of mind. And after a while, because the mind has that disenchantment, perceives that dispassion, and there is no formation that the mind clings to, just as I was using the analogy yesterday where you point the flashlight up into the sky, out into space, and it lands on nothing. This awareness lands on nothing.

And eventually the batteries of the flashlight run out. So the formation, the attention, not giving any energy to any formations coming up because it's dispassionate, it shuts off. It ceases. And this is known as a cessation of perception and feeling. And when the mind emerges, it has made contact with Nibbana and experiences great relief and joy. And so this is how the process works when we get into the higher jhanas. From infinite space, in tandem to that compassion, to infinite consciousness, in tandem to that empathetic joy,

which leads to nothingness, in tandem to that equanimity, which leads to neither perception or non-perception, with mind-watching mind until it gets quieter, gentler, softer, with less and less formations arising and there is cessation. And so under this process, we are going through, as I said, the perception of impermanence, to the perception of suffering, to the perception of anatta, to the perception of equanimity, to the perception of disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation. And this is how the mind is liberated.

So, with that understanding in mind, we are now going to look at the mechanics of liberation. We're going to look at the backbone of liberation. What are the causes and conditions for the mind to experience total liberation? And I'm going to be referring to the Upanisa Sutta. This is Samyutta Nikaya 12.23, the Upanisa Sutta. And in there, the Buddha starts in the reverse order, begins with talking about liberation.

In fact, he begins with talking about the knowledge that the mind is liberated. There is the knowledge that the mind is freed from the asavas, the taints. What are the three taints? The taint of sensual craving, the taint of being, and the taint of ignorance. When the mind is free of this, it knows that it's free of this.

And that is known as the knowledge of the destruction of the taints. And when does this happen? The Buddha says this happens when the mind sees the arising and passing away of the five aggregates. He knows form is such, feeling is such, perception is such, formations are such, awareness or consciousness is such. What do we mean by that? He is looking into the emptiness of each of the five aggregates, the realization that this is not me, this is not mine, this is not myself.

What is liberation? Liberation is the realization of the emptiness of the illusory self. The realization that what we think we are is not it. The realization of the illusion of birth and death in relation to a self. The complete disengagement from that. And this is what is known as vimukti, or vimukti in Sanskrit, which translates to liberation, freedom.

There's the Panya Vimuthi and the Chetua Vimuthi. Panya Vimuthi is the liberation by wisdom. Chetua Vimuthi is the liberation of the mind-heart. Freedom of mind, as one would call it. And it is, what does it mean to be liberated? Why are we using that word liberated? Why are we using the word to be free? What are we being liberated from?

You see, the thing is, in ancient India, it was quite common to understand this process of rebirth. For the majority of the population, there was, okay, this is one life, I have a life before this, and I may have a life after this. This process of rebirth. And this process of rebirth is instigated by karma. Due to certain actions, they lead to certain consequences.

And the fruit of which can lead to another life. And if you've been in samsara long enough, it feels like a prison. Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. This is rebirth. And even if we were not to look into rebirth from lifetime to lifetime, if we understood rebirth as a process of repeating the same kinds of patterns, you may live here, but you may go travel halfway around the world and decide to relocate there and live there. And yet, somehow, you find yourself in similar kinds of situations,

with similar kinds of relationships, with similar kinds of experiences. Why? Because your mind has gone with you, and your mind, being unliberated, has certain causes and conditions that create the same kinds of patterns, and that is also a form of rebirth. So we are liberating ourselves, so to speak, we are liberating the mind from those patterns, from that rebirth. We are liberating the mind from having to come back in this cycle of suffering.

So whether or not rebirth after life exists, what we are liberating from in this very life are the patterns, causes, and conditions that lead us to suffering. The word vimukti comes from the word mukti, or moksha. And that moksha comes from the word muchyate in Sanskrit. Muchyate means that which drops. It's like when the fruit on the tree is ripe enough, it drops. It's liberated from the rest of the tree.

That's what the mind is. It ripens enough to be liberated from the tree of samsara. And it is because of this experiential, deep, essential realization of the emptiness of self. What do we mean by emptiness of self? The realization that everything in this condition is reality. Being conditioned is impermanent, is unstable, is unreliable, keeps changing all the time, subject to change.

And therefore, even the greatest, highest, orgasmic happiness, no matter how blissful it is, because it is unstable, it will change. And therefore, it will lead to dissatisfaction. And therefore, it is suffering. And there is no one here who is in control of that. It is due to these causes and conditions and the mind realizes the emptiness of self, the anatta. Anatta here means anatman, that which is not self.

And so the Buddha's second sermon was to the group of the first five disciples where he talked about the five aggregates and he led them in a guided meditation into looking at each of the five aggregates. And at the end of that sermon, they became arahants. So the realization of anatta leads to the realization of arahatship, full enlightenment.

So this vimutti is dependent on something. What is it dependent upon? So we have the knowledge of liberation, which is dependent upon the liberation. This liberation is dependent upon dispassion. What is dispassion? The word dispassion comes from the Pali viraga, or in Sanskrit, viragya, which is detachment. The mind is free of all attachments. Another word for viraga is lack of color, lack of passion.

Nothing seems as interesting as it might have before, and so the mind is not absorbed in this color and that color and oh look at this and look at that. There are two cities in my travels, actually three in my travels when I think about the representation of samsara, especially craving: three cities, New York, Tokyo, and Mumbai.

Especially in Times Square in New York. It is just billboards everywhere, you know? Digital billboards with so many beautiful colors, so many different kinds of people there. There's people trying to sell you tickets and trying to get you to take photographs with them. And there's just traffic everywhere, noise everywhere. And all of these advertisements trying to pull you in.

Same as some places in Tokyo and definitely the same in Mumbai. And that is samsara. So many colors, so many sounds, so many different tastes, so many restaurants to go to, so many different foods to try, so many different fragrances, you know, to experience this perfume and that cologne and these flowers and so many things. Beautiful clothes and fabrics to feel.

Going to some high society places and bringing up high philosophy of this and that and intellectualizing and all of these things. Thinking about or commenting about this is how the economy is now. What do you think is going to happen next week? What do you think the price of this stock is going to be? What's the highest Bitcoin can reach tomorrow? All of these are different sense experiences.

And there's color to them. There's vibration to them. There's a radiance that is fuzzy to the senses to them. And dispassion is able to cut through that. Dispassion isn't only about being uninterested, or even if you have an interest, which is to say, to be in the world, but not of it. To have that dispassion, to be able to be collected even in the middle of Times Square, is dispassion.

All kinds of formations, and neon colors, and sounds, beautiful sounds, beautiful fragrances, and all of this stuff is there. But the mind, with this passion, cuts right through it. It sees right through it. That is true, this passion. So in your own mind, when you are meditating and you get, you see all of these different patterns and maybe past lives and ideas and insights.

Oh, maybe I should do this or maybe I should do that. You get an idea for a new book. You get an idea for how about if I were to do this, all of these things. But this passion is like, that's to one side. I'm quite content where I am. So this passion is dependent upon something known as disenchantment, nibida in Pali. This disenchantment basically means being free from the ensnarements of experience.

And I gave you an example yesterday, I'll give you another example, chocolate cake, the infamous chocolate cake. Now, I love chocolate cake, and if I were to hear that Rose was making chocolate cake tomorrow, my mind would be thinking about chocolate cake, dreaming of chocolate cake, waiting for chocolate cake. And Rose, being the kind person that she is, decides to make an entire chocolate cake set aside just for me.

And so she slices one piece and offers it to me, and I eat it, and I relish it, and I love it, and I enjoy it. Oh, my goodness, what amazing flavor of chocolate cake. Beautiful, wonderful. And she says, here's another plate. And me and my craving, of course, why not? I'll have another plate. So I eat another plate, and I'm already eyeing the third plate that she's preparing me, the third slice.

And somewhere in my mind, I'm thinking, maybe I should stop. But craving takes over and says, why? So I eat the third plate. And this time, she offers a fourth slice. And now the same chocolate cake that I was dreaming of the night before, that I was looking forward to, making extra room for, skipping breakfast, skipping lunch.

That same chocolate cake is now the source of my pain. And I realize I've had enough. I can't do this anymore. The same relishing of the luscious chocolate ganache, the soft sponge cake, is now become a burden to me, is now become a source of sickness and nausea to me, and I learned my lesson and I say I'm not going to do that again. So disenchantment is the realization that every time I engage with the sensual pleasures it will ultimately lead me to disappointment.

So when will I learn? At some point, my mind says, enough. Same with meditation. My mind is enamored by seeing this past life, or seeing this squiggly line, or seeing this formation, or wandering and going into this particular territory. Or on the other side of that, my mind is sort of restless with, what should I do now?

Should I do this? Should I do that? So all kinds of activities going on. And so, I hear about going back a step before, radiating equanimity for a while, then my mind quiets down, but then it comes up again, all these activities in my mind. So what do I do? Again, I go back, radiating equanimity, my mind quiets down.

I have, for myself, created my own mini-samsara. Equanimity, quiet mind, activity, equanimity, quiet mind, activity. Eventually I say enough. I'm neither going to do equanimity, nor I'm going to pay attention to all this restless activity. I've had enough of the cycle. So what do I do? I just give up all effort and rest. This is disenchantment. I see through the danger of the activities. I see through the danger of sensual pleasures in the world.

Not the pleasures themselves, but the mind's relating to it. And I escape from that by realizing the impermanence, the dukkha and the anatta. So my mind experiences disenchantment. And after a while, in that deep disenchantment, my mind has dispassion. It is a non-stick mind. Nothing sticks to it. No matter where I go, what I do, in the most hedonistic areas of the mind or of the world, it remains untouched.

And after a while, because of non-attention to any of these formations, my mind drops and is liberated. Vimutti. And I have the realization of that liberation. Now, this disenchantment is dependent on something known in Pali as yatha-bhuta-nana-dassanam. It's a mouthful. Yatha-bhuta-nana-dassanam. Yatha-bhuta means reality as it is. Nana is knowledge, dassanam is vision. The knowledge and vision of things as they actually are.

This is happening in infinite consciousness. When you have the direct realization that the arising and passing away of consciousness is impermanent and you see the tiresomeness of it, the dukkha, the suffering, and you see the anatta of it, this leads you to equanimity. So the realization of this is the yathabhutananadassanam, and there is this deep equanimity that is present which sees things as they are without going down one road or the other, without being affected one way or the other.

And so once I start to see that, my mind naturally experiences disenchantment. My mind naturally disengages from all of the different formations in the mind, and eventually it has the strength of this passion, like that non-stick mind, and it experiences liberation. This knowledge and vision of things as they actually are, is dependent upon samadhi. Samadhi is collectedness.

Sama means same, same, same, sama. Dhi, which is the short form of buddhi, which means the mind. Even-mindedness where the attention is non-dispersed, it's collected around an object. This is strongest at the fourth jhana where the mindfulness is extremely sharp, extremely clear and unwavered. And so as we are practicing through the jhanas, our mind gets deeper and more collected until it has developed samadhi to a high level.

When we have that samadhi, then only is our mind able to penetrate into the deeper recesses of our mind, into the deeper layers of our mind, to start to see how formations create this suffering. Starting to see the conditioned reality of our mind. So this samadhi, or collectedness, is dependent on passaddhi, which is tranquility, relaxation. So when we tell you, or we teach you, the process of the 6R's, it is engineered for you to be able to experience that tranquility immediately.

And that tranquility can be felt as relief in the body, can be felt as relief in the spaciousness in the mind, it can be felt as this cloudless kind of sky in the mind free of any conditions, and so the Buddha instructs the meditators to consciously tranquilize the formations. And this is what we do when we do the 6R's. This tranquility is dependent upon sukha, comfort.

Sometimes it's the other way around. The sukha is dependent upon the tranquility. So this comfort that we're talking about, sukha, it's comfort in the body, it's steadiness in the body, which leads to comfort and steadiness in the mind. And this is dependent upon what is known as piti, P-I-T-I, piti, which is usually translated as joy. And this joy is experienced, especially in the first and second jhana. So what are we experiencing here? We are experiencing the piti and sukha in the first, second, and third jhana. So in this backbone, the roadmap to enlightenment,

In the blueprint for awakening, we are seeing the backbone of how this emerges. As I said earlier about the first four jhanas, they're not just to feel good. They are the ingredients necessary for the mind to experience freedom. The basis is this joy, this piti, which leads to sukha, or tranquility, either way. Tranquility, which is in the third jhana. And then the sukha, which is in the first and second jhana, and even in the third jhana. And there's deep collectedness by the time you're in the fourth jhana. And then there's deep equanimity, the yatha-bhuta-nyana-dassanam. And as you're progressing through the higher jhanas, your mind deepens and develops this stability,

able to penetrate into the nature of existence. Seeing things as they actually are. And eventually you have enough and you disengage and you have disenchantment. And your mind remains unaffected because now you develop this passion. Total lack of any anticipation or expectation. And the mind liberates, is liberated, and there is the knowledge of liberation. So there is this step-by-step process that you are seamlessly going through.

Here the Buddha is reverse-engineering awakening for us by showing us the causes and conditions that enable the mind to experience it. And this backbone is happening in the Eightfold Path, is happening with the Enlightenment factors, is happening with the jhanas, or within the schema of the jhanas. So what is this joy dependent upon? This joy is dependent upon something known as pamoja. Pamoja is generally translated as gladness.

But it is a sense of relief. And sometimes, so I've talked about Samyutta Nikaya 12.23, the Upanisa Sutta, which we are talking from right now. But there are its correlates in the Anguttara Nikaya in 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5. And in there, the Buddha refers to that as something known as non-regret. Why? Because you keep the precepts. Your mind doesn't have any underlying guilt about anything.

Or your mind doesn't go there. And your mind has relief, gladness in the Dhamma, gladness in the realization that one upholds the precepts. And because you are quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states that arise due to, at some point, breaking a precept, your mind feels relief. That relief leads to joy. That joy leads to tranquility. That tranquility leads to sukha. That sukha leads to collectedness.

That collectedness leads to equanimity. That equanimity leads to disenchantment. That disenchantment leads to dispassion. That dispassion leads to liberation. And that liberation leads to the knowledge that the mind is liberated. And finally, what is this relief, this pamoja, this gladness, this celebration in the Dhamma dependent upon? It is called saddha in Pali, or shraddha in Sanskrit.

And generally, it's translated as faith. But I don't like that translation. It is actually taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha. First, in the realization and understanding that what we are doing here, at the very core of it, is surrender. We are surrendering to every moment. This is known as sharanagati in Sanskrit. So every morning when you take the refuges, it is not some kind of religious ritual.

It is something else. You are saying in the Pali, I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dhamma, I take refuge in the Sangha. What do we mean by taking refuge? I take shelter in the notion of what the Buddha has accomplished. Or I should say, the potential, the possibility of what is available even to me, full awakening. I take refuge, I take shelter, I surrender my ego to the Dhamma. The Dhamma here is what?

The interconnectedness of it all, through the understanding of dependent origination. Or very simply put, I let go of the sense of self in every given moment. I take refuge and shelter in the community, in the Sangha of monks and nuns. So he has the fourfold Sangha, right? That is, those who are monks, those who are nuns, those who are lay women, lay men. Or another way, those who are noble ones and those who are the faithful and leading towards attaining nobility. When we say noble ones or nobility, we mean being awakened.

So what are we taking refuge in there? Very simply put, for practical purposes, we're taking refuge in a community. Here you are with like-minded meditators and individuals meditating together. And when you decide that you want to be part of a Sangha, like in the case of the TWIM practice, there is the Sangha that meets every Sunday. And we have the Sutta study. That's one way of taking refuge. This is what is known as, truly known as, kalyana mitta, beautiful friendship.

The Buddha said the entire path is this beautiful friendship. Because we have our friends to hold us accountable to whether or not we are actually practicing, and vice versa. We have our friends in the community with whom we can discuss the Dhamma, in which we can clear our misunderstandings and doubts of the Dhamma for each other. So this is what is known as faith.

Now, what happens? This faith leads to the gladness in the Dhamma, or the relief. Thereby, when I am meditating, I experience the joy in the first and second jhana. From that joy, I have sukha and tranquility, or comfort and tranquility. From that, I have a mind that is collected. From that collectedness, my mind is able to deeply perceive things as they actually are, and I have strong equanimity. As a result of this equanimity, my mind disengages as disenchantment and remains unaffected as dispassion.

And when there are no expectations, my mind drops into cessation and has tasted liberation. And my mind knows something happened. And I may have to repeat that process a couple of times, a few times, until I attain full awakening. But this time what happens is that faith is now experiential in nature. I have what is known as experiential conviction, because I have seen for myself how this path works and where it takes me.

So then the relief that I have, the joy in the Dhamma that I have, is established. It is much easier for me to go into the first jhana, the second jhana, the third jhana, the fourth jhana, thereby experiencing the piti, the tranquility, the sukha, the collectedness, equanimity. But where I can get caught up is because I've seen this already happening, I've already tasted liberation. Is the anticipation getting over that hill? I've heard of it, I have seen it for myself, and I recognize I'm getting there, and now I'm waiting.

I'm waiting, waiting, waiting. And this is where, for the advanced practitioners, the disenchantment and dispassion is so important. The yatha-bhuta-nyana-dassanam, seeing things as they are, leading to the disenchantment. Disengaging. Remember, it's as simple as this. Going back a step, radiating equanimity, seeing the mind settle down. Eventually, your mind gets disengaged, disenchanted, and remains unaffected. And again, you experience another taste of liberation, or maybe total liberation altogether, and thereby experiencing the knowledge of that liberation. This is what is known as transcendental dependent origination. This is what is actually the path, said differently. It incorporates all of the 37 requisites for enlightenment in this process.

The Eightfold Path, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the seven enlightenment factors, the psychic development factors, all of these things that we talk about in the 37 requisites, all of that is incorporated within this path. And it's all seamless. That's the beauty of this practice. It's all seamless. Right now, I'm just inundating you with a lot of information.

That you don't need to recognize in your meditation. But the aim here is to help inspire confidence in the mind that it is on the right path when you recognize these different stages. So I'll stop here and open it up for questions. Yes? Regarding your example of chocolate cake, that's sense pleasure. We're going to have sense pleasures. There's a nice movie, the arts, culinary masterpieces, and so on. But if I understand it, that's not really the problem. The problem is the craving. And if you understand that, then you can stop at one piece and just tell them, okay? That's right. That's exactly it.

This, actually, you find credence in the Anguttara Nikaya 6.63, which is the penetrative discourse. There the Buddha actually says, the beautiful things of the world remain just as they are. But it is the craving, the intention rooted in craving, that imprisons us. So disenchantment and disillusionment and all that is caught up in, okay, I'm going to be a robot now. That's right. And not experience sexual pleasures. Not experience, not enjoy. That's not the point. The point is to disengage from the craving and still be able to see what things are. I understand. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you raise your hand? Yeah. Yeah. Is developing this passion, the way the situation is about, in terms of, you might not have expectations and things like that? Not having what you said? So if developing this passion was meditation itself in terms of not having expectations, is it on me a matter of time, and for the purposes of that? Is it on me a thing? That's right.

Yeah. What happens, I try to understand, there's a point in the genre, everything stops, and I can make them move, and I can make them slow down. What is that? Is it a delusion? Is that delusion you said? No. Yeah, because everything is, you know, right in front of me, and all of a sudden it stops, and I say, well, slow down, how to slow down. Yeah. Yes, that's the nothingness.

That nothingness is the gap between the arising and passing away. That's great. Yeah. The one in the red. You need a mind that is collected. You need a mind that has. So here's the way to look at it: there are four ways leading to nibbana. One is samatha, which is a mind that is clear and collected, that leads to vipassana, which is the insight, the liberating insight.

The second is the mind having Vipassana, which is followed by Samatha. And the third is Samatha and Vipassana yoked together, where this is what you're doing with TWIM. So you need the collectedness. Now there is a fourth way, which is translated as agitation regarding the Dhamma. And this is something that Ananda experienced, where after the death of the Buddha, after his prayer in Ibbana, Mahakasapa, one of the chief, one of the arahats, had gathered the Sangha together and said, "Now we need to decide what we're going to do, how are we going to proliferate the teachings," and so on. And we need Ananda, because Ananda has been with the Buddha all these years, and he has great memory, like perfect photographic memory, and be able to listen to what the Buddha has said, and be able to repeat that.

that. But we need his mind to be free of any craving. And so he asks Ananda to get full awakening before you join the council. So Ananda is agitated about this. He says, how am I going to do this? How am I going to do this? And finally he's walking up and down, up and down. And he gives up. And this is the lesson here for us. We get agitated in the meditation. When is it going to happen? When is it going to happen? And finally we just give up. And it's said that before his head touched the pillow, he attained full awakening.

So I'm saying this just to point to one thing, which is you need a mind that is collected, that is in samadhi. And this is what we're doing with the practice of meditation. Yes? Are you able to speak of the practitioners of other spiritual traditions at all in terms of is the process of awakening and liberation the universal human process or are they actually going in a different direction?

I don't want to comment on that. It's unnecessary to even contemplate that. Because it gives all kinds of proliferation in the mind about this versus this, this compared to this. And true liberation is the transcendence of all of that. There is that camp that says there is self, and there's that camp that says there is no self. And one camp says we realize the self with the big S. The other camp says we realize the emptiness of self.

And true liberation is a transcendence of all of that. Yeah. Can any mind become characteristic? Not every mind. Okay. This is a very good question because you need to have a mind that is, and this is why we're talking about the faith and then the relief in the Dhamma, really what that's pointing out to is a mind that is capable of reflection, capable of self-control and self-regulation.

That's what we're doing when we're keeping the precepts. And so you need a mind that is able to understand what it's doing with regard to that, and why it's doing that, and how it's doing it. So not all minds can experience this. Yeah. Why do people renounce? Yeah, like, why is there an infusion? Like, why do they not even want to live in the infusion? Because their minds are... Because they're smart.

They know the trappings and so they want the quickest way to enlightenment and so they renounce all distractions or any potentialities for distraction to arise. We're the stupid ones here. We get caught up in, "Oh well I'll meditate for ten days and I'll go back to my world." Get caught up in writing an email, get caught and this and that. I'm not saying that you know, the monks all do that, but generally that is the reason why monasticism was introduced, at least in the practice of Buddhism.

It was to go forth into a life where we become free of all of those different distractions and our only centered focus is awakening, and it's a way of clearing the path for that. Oh, they do. Of course they enjoy life. Yeah. Even when they're monks, they enjoy life. In fact, I would say they enjoy life more than we do. Oh, they get first dibs on chocolate cake.

But I want to also point out another thing. I'll be talking about this at some point later in the retreat. But there's something called right intention. And in right intention, there's something called nekkhamma in Pali, which means an inner renunciation as well. So we want a mind that is free of distractions, and that is available to us. And we are capable of that when we have true contentment.

So nekkhamma is the renunciation of the sense of identifying with things and relationships and people. And we develop a strong sense of contentment and calmness, so that whatever is coming our way, we remain content. If it comes, it comes. Great. We enjoy it. If it goes, it goes. We don't lament about it. But monasticism helps a person to actually have renunciation in all aspects.

And then once they have full awakening, what they realize is there's no point going back to what actually they call the lower life, the unevolved life. They find the beauty of the ultimate super mundane Nibbana and they remain in that. And it's the ultimate contentment. So they don't feel like they need to go back. Yeah. So I understand that some minds can be liberated by listening to the Dhamma. Is the assumption there that they were collected, that the master collected? They have to pay supreme attention to whatever it is that is being said.

And they can experience it. There was a question in the back. Is it in the back of their head that the goal is, okay, I achieve awakening, I will then try to share that and promote that and get more people on board? No, not exactly. The goal of monasticism is not to evangelize. The idea here is the Buddha set up a merit economy.

What he did was he said that the monks are not to cook their own food, they're not to earn money, they're not to do all of these things. Their life is dependent upon the good graces of others, namely the lay people. So it is the duty of monks to go out into the village on alms round, receive food. And so what they're doing there is they're giving the opportunity for laypeople to experience merit by expressing their generosity. And the laypeople in return receive the teachings and guidance that they might need for their life, for their practice, and so on. So there's a kind of exchange. That's usually what is happening.

At least when you read in the suttas, this is what happens. You'll always often hear the Buddha was invited for lunch the next day, or a group of monks and so on. And they go there and they have their lunch, and then the Buddha inspires them with the Dhamma talk. So they're not really concerned about who joins the order or who doesn't join the order and things like that. They're more concerned about just doing their practice and for survival and for making, and they're not concerned with survival, but they're concerned about making sure that they have an unhindered life for the practice of attaining Nibbana.

And that there are four requisites that they all have, all humans have. These four requisites are food, clothing, shelter, and medicines. And so the lay people, out of their generosity, offer this to the monastics. And they receive merit because of this. This is the understanding. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was having the impression that at some point, you would have said that only monastics can become fully enlightened.

And if that is the case, why is that? This is a misunderstanding. What he said is, once one becomes fully awakened, they must join a monastic order because that's how they will continue to survive in life. Okay, sir. Yeah. Yes? You've spoken of coaching even advanced students in the higher accomplishments with something that must be done as a form of practice.

Is it that just that's the nature of reality that we need to practice something in order to approach what is essentially the unconditioned? In other words, that we get to a point where we need to have that practice before we can launch, so to speak? The nature of the mind is such that it requires something to do.

before you can quiet it enough, so that the real work begins, which is looking into the nature of existence. So when we go through this process that I basically summarized through the process of joy and so on, it is to basically, in some sense, occupy the mind, the thinking part of the mind, the mind that feels like it needs to analyze everything.

And the mind that runs helter-skelter. The whole point of collectedness is to occupy that mind there so that we actually get to the higher mind, so to speak. And this higher mind is for the purposes of disenchantment, dispassion, and liberation. That's basically the key. You were going to say something? Yeah? Yeah, I was just thinking that, all of you here are, in a sense, doing that really for rest of it. I see that kind of it's like you're doing some ordination, just not shaving your head yet. Yeah. You're asking for food, you're taking what's given, if you need medicine, come and come with you, ask for medicine, pillow, or whatever, so it feels like it's needed.

Yeah, that's very true. It's a very kind of thing. Good point. Yeah. No, you're right. You mentioned that wherever you move to, there is repetitive patterns to probably learn from and to let go. My question is, what about the quote-unquote positive patterns? Because I didn't realize after I come to Dhammasukha, in the past certain places I lived, including what I'm living now, I do have friends they don't drink, which is very rare. I also have had friends who are not watching anime. So my question is... Why? I love watching anime. Anime is great. So my question is, should I start drinking and just stop watching anime? When it comes to the positive repetitions or the patterns you're talking about,

it's great to have that. That's important. That's the way the path is developed. But the key is two things. Don't identify with it and don't make it a big deal. And that's what you have to learn. That's what we all have to learn. Yeah? When it comes to the repetitive cycle, and I'm probably going to answer the same question, each time you experience them, how you experience them before, it probably all changes each time you experience in the genre, or... What changes, you said?

The way that you're experiencing a particular genre. Possibly. Possibly. Okay. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free. And the fear struck, fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.