Copy of June 4, 2022 - Questions and Answers with Delson Armstrong

How can you discern the difference between being attached or identifying with a thought versus just observing the thought? So, identifying with a thought means, number one, that that thought is yours. The idea that this is my thought or I am the one thinking it. Observing the thought is basically seeing that the thought is not you, not yourself.

So people get caught up in their thoughts, which means they become, they have mental proliferation and they become attached to their thoughts by thinking about them, by dealing with them, by engaging with them, by seeing their mind become that thought or seeing their selves become their thought, their so-called selves. Whereas observing the thought, you start to see the thought separate from any sense of a self, you see the thought as being just what it is, which is arising from a series of causes and conditions.

So when you see a thought come, you know, just pass on by, that's observing a thought. But as soon as you engage in that thought, now you get into the whirlpool of this is my thought, this is my thinking process. This is who I am. When that happens, it causes a lot of tightness and tension that causes a lot of suffering in the mind, because now you can't come out of it. So how do you come out of it? You have to observe that the mind is getting caught up in it, let that go, relax the mind, bring up a smile, and then take something as an object of meditation. So getting caught up in thoughts is identifying with them, getting caught up in their stories, getting caught up in what they are about, getting caught up in the idea that thought originated me or my mind. But not identifying with them, or disidentifying with them,

You six are them away and just observe them as they are. So even if a stream of thoughts arise, they will pass you by. They will pass you in your mind's attention, but they won't affect you. They won't affect your mind. Thank you. The second question that we got was, I have an aging Buddhist friend and they have multiple life-threatening diseases.

They are not dying, but their quality of life and caring for themselves made life meaningless for them. And they consider taking their own life, and they asked for your guidance. What would be your opinion in accordance with the suttas? - There are some references in the suttas where beings have taken their own lives because they felt like they had everything they had to do was done. So there was nothing else that they could possibly do. But I would say that's a very, very, very rare case. Even if there is a,

diminishing in quality of life, that is to say, one's capacities and things like that. So long as one has their mind intact, so long as they have the ability to cultivate loving kindness, so long as they have the ability to cultivate equanimity, because ultimately, they can still stay with their mind, they can still uplift their mind, they can still keep their mind uplifted, they can still radiate loving kindness.

So the idea that, you know, they want to take their lives might be arising from aversion more than anything else. Even if things are painful, even if you're not able to meditate, it's still not a good idea to take your own life. You're missing out on an opportunity that could happen at the very last moment of your life, and you wouldn't even know it. If you allow the mind to just observe things as they are, allow it to have equanimity, and do that up until the very last moment of your life, you might have a better opportunity for better existences, or even having an experience that lets you start to get off of the wheel of samsara.

So I would never advise anyone to even consider taking their own life, no matter their circumstances, because as long as your mind is intact, you have the capacities to meditate, you have the ability to let go of things, you have the ability to observe and cultivate wisdom, then the mind should just stay with that and focus on that, rather than seeing if you're a burden on other people or seeing if you're not able to take care of yourself. All of that will take care of itself in the sense that if there are people who can help you, they will help you. That's their karma. Your karma is to just see things as they are and let go of any attachments, let go of any identification, and see if you can continue to cultivate the practice, even if you're paralyzed, even if you're emotionless, if your mind is still there you can still practice. I hope this isn't a useful answer for the person in question, but I think it's very beautiful. Thank you. The next question is also a difficult question for, I think, a lot of people.

This is a question with two examples. They said: "As a doctor, for over a decade, I've performed abortions that were not medical emergencies. Is there anything I can do to reduce the gravity of the common consequences?" The question related to that is: occasionally the life of a mother is in danger due to pregnancy, then stopping the pregnancy is the only way to save her life. Should I avoid performing such procedures and ask another doctor to do it? Okay. So, the first part about the karmic consequences of performing, did you say performing abortions? Is that what you said? Yeah. Well, the karmic consequences of that is whatever it will be, and you have to deal with them in whatever way you have to, but you can deal with them through understanding that this is just a consequence. There's no way to prevent the karmic consequences of anything. There's no way to necessarily do is actually start to understand karma in the context of old karma and new karma. So what you can allow the mind to pay attention to is what new karma is it producing.

New karma is produced through craving, clinging and becoming. Any old karma, which is to say consequences of karma you've produced before, you can't do anything about. You can only face them as an experience, and how you choose to face it as an experience will determine whether that karma continues through the fuel of that reactivity, or if that karma dissipates in terms of not having an effect on the mind anymore. So in other words, you can actually start to notice that this is an impersonal process arising because the karmic conditions were right for it to arise.

And then start to have some equanimity towards it. You can radiate equanimity, be in an equanimous state of mind. You can radiate loving kindness. Loving kindness or any of the brahmaviharas are ways to not mitigate karma, but ways to make it so that the karma doesn't seem as devastating as it was, because your mind state is different.

It just takes it and sees it as what it is, which is just a minuscule part compared to the vastness of you radiating a wholesome state like loving kindness. As for performing procedures in terms of saving a mother's life at the expense of a fetus, you have to do what is practical. First of all, your intention is to save a life.

So you have to decide what that means for you as a doctor. You as a doctor are doing something. And what is the intention behind what it is that you're doing? And I'll leave it at that because I'm not a doctor. So I wouldn't know how to make that decision. You have to decide for yourself what makes sense.

Thank you. The next question is, my parents are of a different faith. I know that the Buddha says that it's almost impossible to repay the debt to one's parents. In their religion, there is a lot of clinging to views and to rites and rituals, and the view that only this faith is correct is particularly deep-rooted. I continue to observe some rites in order not to break the precept against lying when speaking to them, but I'm not sure if hiding my practice like this without necessarily lying about it and doing these rituals constitute wrong action or wrong speech. I sense that it's not yet time to broach this subject with my parents.

I also wish to lead by example and I don't feel I'm far enough in the path yet to do so. This is the first part of the question. Maybe you can answer or give some guidelines to this. Yeah, first of all, you are only responsible for your actions. You are responsible for your own choices. How other people decide to respond to that or react to that is their karma, even if it's your own parents.

Obviously, you don't want to do anything intentionally that causes them harm mentally. physically or verbally. But if you are having to do the practices that you're saying that you're doing in order to not break the precept of abstaining from lying, that might cause some agitation in your mind. That might cause a sort of dissonance in what you really want to do and what you want. So if you are comfortable with letting go of those practices or when the subject arises, tell your parents that I'm no longer doing that because I just don't have that as a view anymore.

And how they respond to that is how they respond to that. You're not responsible for that. So you have to decide what is imperative for you. It's not like you are breaking a precept if you do that in the sense that you are continuing to do those rituals because you don't believe in those anymore. as a way of trying to not lie to your parents. Why don't you just tell them the truth when they ask you the question? It might seem difficult to do so, but it'll give you more peace of mind in the long term because you're doing what you want to do and your parents have done for you what they've done for you, right?

Say they've helped you, they've raised you, they've taken care of you, they've given you life so that you could experience the Dhamma and experience Nibbana or whatever it might be. And that's wonderful. the debt paid to parents is unpayable, right? You can't really pay off your debt to your parents, but that doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice your own quality of life for them. That doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your own quality of mind state for them. If it doesn't give you peace of mind to keep doing the things that you're doing in order to make them feel better, then that would be unfair to you. So, you know, ultimately going back to what I first said, you are responsible for your own actions, you are responsible for your own choices, how other people respond and react to that, including your parents or family, you know, that that's their karma.

If you're doing things that are wholesome, if you're doing things that make you happy and are wholesome, if you're doing things that help you cultivate the practice, and that gives you more peace of mind, then keep doing that. And if that means that you have to tell them the truth and be honest with them, and by all means do so. Fine, they will be upset. They will be disheartened.

But that's their response. That's their reaction. Ultimately, as parents, they will respect your choices. Yes, I know there's a lot of cultural differences. And sometimes parents are very, very attached to views and attached to what they think is best for their kids. Based on that, you have to understand that they're doing it because they have the best intentions for you. Be appreciative of that. But it's your life, and you have to decide how best to lead your life. And then they have to respect your wishes, or they can choose not to respect your wishes, but that's their choice.

The second part of that question is related to this, my parents also hold tightly to materialistic worldly views, especially regarding they are perceived by friends and family these often manifest in the form of expectations that they have for me is there a skillful way to handle my parents expectations without causing myself unnecessary stress or causing them harm what precisely are the duties one should observe towards one's parents and does hiding the practice of the dhamma and engaging perfunctory in writing rituals for the sake of not breaking the precepts constitute wrong speech and wrong action. I think you already answered that in part.

I think the part I didn't answer is specifically related to, can you repeat that part? Yes. They feel that their parents hold tightly to worldly views, for instance, how they are perceived by friends and family, and they have a lot of expectations for their child or, well, adult, I take this. But is there a skillful way to handle these expectations without causing myself unnecessary stress or causing my parents harm? And what are the duties one should observe towards one's parents?

Again, I think in part I have answered the first part, which is, yeah, whatever views they have about life, whatever views they have about the world, that's their views. But if they're projecting those views on you and that's not something that you want to do, then you don't have to do it. Because if you're not interested in having materialistic success necessarily, you're not really interested in having to do just materialistic success, in developing your practice and so on, then do that. Just do that. There's no need to worry about causing them harm. You're not causing them harm by doing something that is wholesome. You're not causing them harm by doing something that makes you happy and is wholesome.

As for your duties towards them, your duties towards them, you know, do to repay them in terms of just the fact that our parents gave us life here, and that the Buddha says is unpayable. I mean, that's a huge thing, and there's so many ways we could pay it back, but there's no duty to them other than being a good person. The best way that you can pay back your parents is to be a good person. And the sign of a good parent, this is me saying it, so take it with a grain of salt because I'm not a parent, but the sign of a great parent is that their child grew up to be somebody who is happy, somebody who is healthy, and somebody who does good deeds at the very basic.

So if you're doing that, then your parents are successful. Anything else that they want you to be is all optional. Are people who keep the precepts. Their children are people who make a difference in society by uplifting others, helping others when they can, being generous when they can, and so on. So your duties really is to cultivate those things. Everything else is just, you know, on the sidelines.

Having a good house, having a good family, things like that. That's all just side stuff. The main thing that really matters is, person at heart? Are you a good person in your mind? As for helping them, yes, you can help them, you could support them. As their child, you can continue to support them, help them in whatever way you can. If they're open to talking about your practice, and what you do, by all means, go ahead and talk to them about that. But you don't need to have to talk to them about that, unless they're really interested in it.

you have to talk to them about that but if there's an opportunity that arises and they're open to it then by all means go ahead and talk to them about the dhammas see how how it interests them i mean i'll give you a sutta reference or rather a dhamma reference because i don't know if this is specifically in the suttas i can't say for sure but sariputta before he went to uh attain prairie nibbana said maybe i should go and speak with my mother about the dhamma so you know less you know this opportunity is wasted

And so he goes and he talks to her, and before she goes, he goes and talks to her. I think the story is that the devas saw him, or the devas were the ones who were bound down to him, and she was very much surprised by that, and she wanted to know what it is that he knew. And so I put that actually talked to her about the Dhamma, and she had her own experience of the Dhamma, and then he gave her the opportunity to hear the Dhamma and gave her the opportunity to learn about the devil. Now, it's not like you have to do that. If your parents don't want to know about it, then they don't want to know about it. It's not like there's a duty to your parents towards that. If you want to continue supporting them, by all means do so, in terms of whatever support you want to give them, and live your own life, be a good person, live your own life, and ultimately they will come around and realize

all of that other stuff didn't really matter, but they're happy, they're healthy, and they're a good person. That's what makes it count. Thank you. Next question is about dependent origination. They ask, Bhante Vimalaramsi talks of how individual links can be observed at deeper stages of meditation. But when I see the different mind objects, I find it difficult to accurately discern which links these movements of mind are specifically related to.

Can you offer any guidance as to what links one sees or observes in, for instance, the arupajhana or the base of nothingness? And doesn't even matter if I can't definitively label these things. not a phenomena. Yeah. So in infinite consciousness, what you're seeing is the arising and passing away of consciousnesses. So you're starting to see, so what's actually happening is you're starting to see consciousness arise dependent upon internal contact. So when you see eye consciousness, your consciousness, nose consciousness, whatever, arising and passing away of that, what you are seeing really is the contact that happens in every moment, or the many, many contacts that happen in every moment, the arising and passing away of that.

When you go into nothingness, you're not necessarily seeing any links, but you're seeing how mind's attention is moving. That's really what is more important. You'll start to see formations, which are the first sort of percolations, the bubbling up of thoughts, full-blown thoughts that are arising as feeling. Recognize certain formations that arise. You might recognize them as lines or dashes or dots or things like that, and it's okay if you see them, if you don't see them that's okay. What you have to see is how mind is collected, or if mind is collected, and how mind gets distracted and how you bring it back. That's really what matters. You don't have to try to see the links before you. So your goal in the meditation is to cease the mind, cease all conditioned experience, cease all conditioned activity, so that when you come out, there is just the cessation of all conditions, which is then no conditions present.

And then you see for yourself how this process works. Then that translates into you understanding it on a more daily life basis level, which is then you start to recognize that this is all impersonal. When you start to take things personally, you realize, oh, I was just taking this feeling personal because it arose from contact. And you start to recognize these things in your daily life. So trying to see them or trying to discern what those links are is not the goal of the practice. The goal of the practice is to understand how mind moves from a collected state to a distracted state to bring that up, bring that back to a collected mind, which means also understanding when suffering arose, how that arose, and letting go of the condition for that suffering, namely hindrances.

So when hindrances arise in the mind, your goal there is to recognize that they've arisen, let them go, relax the craving associated with them, that is to relax the tightness and tension, the formations that are rooted in that craving, a wholesome state of mind and then staying with that wholesome state of mind. And that's really it. That's the practice. And then as you're doing that, the mind naturally ceases coarser and coarser levels of activity until it experiences the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness.

Everything that happens after that is a process that unfolds naturally because your mindfulness is so sharp and so clear that you're able to see the links as and when they arise. You don't even have to do it. It just happens. It's really about keeping the practice simple and not getting sidetracked by all kinds of other things.

The next question is about the five powers. So these five powers are faith, effort, or energy, mindfulness, collectedness, and wisdom. And they want to know more about balancing these five within the meditation, especially with the focus on balancing wisdom and faith. How can you implement it in the practice? Because they have read that if wisdom is stronger and not balanced with faith, wickedness, spiritual wickedness, is developed, and if faith is stronger than wisdom, the ability to see the way things really are is not fully developed. And their understanding of faith is the combination of believing in the teachings, trusting the path, and trusting your own practice. So if you could speak a bit about that.

Yeah, so let's understand the powers and the faculties, right? They're synonymous, or they're basically the same thing, in so far as, in one case, you're developing them; in another case, they become part of your mindset, they become part of your mind. The faculties are something that you develop, and then the powers are just a manifestation of that development. So we start with faith. Faith comes from the word saddha, that is the openness to understand the Dhamma, openness and willingness to understand the Dhamma. Then you have energy, which is basically doing the right effort, making the right effort, so that means understanding the 6R's and then letting go of any states that are wholesome. So that's always a process that you're always doing. Now, in faith I would also say that's also the cultivation of the precepts. That's not something that might be explicitly talked about in the suttas, but it is implied, because

when you understand that this path starts from sila, then you understand that you have to develop and cultivate sila. So your openness and willingness to have faith in the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha starts with your openness to understand the precepts, to take them, cultivate them, and make a commitment to keep them. So that's an ongoing process. That's always happening.

With the effort, that's an ongoing process. That's always happening. The energy, that's the effort. Was mindfulness the third one you said so? Yeah. With mindfulness, it's also another process. It's remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. That is something you continue to cultivate, continue to have until it becomes an automatic process. So in other words, the faculties are things that you continue to develop, always continue to develop until they become an automatic part of your mind, until they become an automatic process of your mind. Collectedness. Now, if you have too much collectedness, that can cause the mind, well, that can go into one point in concentration and that can cause a lot of tightness and tension.

So you balance that by remembering to know that you have to relax and keep things open, not become so one-pointed. And wisdom is a natural process. Wisdom arises from closely observing how mind's attention moves. When you closely observe how mind's attention moves, now you understand: here is the mind being distracted, and bringing it back, and here's the weight leading to the cessation of that craving, coming back to a mind that is collected.

And so that wisdom develops as a result of continually doing the effort. So you'll find that these five faculties are developed automatically, or let's say organically. They're developed naturally as a result of following the Eightfold Path. Half. So wisdom is cultivated in two parts. Wisdom is cultivated when you have right view, when you understand and you have the openness to understand what is right view. And then wisdom is perfected when you understand the links of dependent origination, understand how this process works, and right view becomes established in your mind. With regards to collectedness, when you're doing the right practice, when you're doing right effort, you're cultivating energy.

When you're doing right mindfulness, you're cultivating mindfulness. When you're doing right collectedness, you're cultivating collectedness. And what about faith? Faith is cultivated in twofold as well. There is the faith cultivated by keeping the precepts. So that is to have right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood. And there's a faith that arises as a result of stream entry, which becomes basically all the time over there. have to work with them you don't necessarily have to balance them they arise and become developed organically naturally as a process of the practice in tandem with the practice. If you go back to reading Majjhima Nikaya 149, 149, over there the Buddha talks about the cultivation of the Eightfold Path, and he says as you're doing the Eightfold Path the four bases for psychic power are developed.

The five faculties are developed and the five powers are developed. The seven enlightenment factors are developed, and so on and so forth. So these things happen as a natural co-arising process as you develop the 6R's, as you develop the practice, as you cultivate your right effort, cultivate your right mindfulness and right collectedness, so there's nothing to balance. They happen and they arise and they become developed. Maybe it would be interesting for people who are watching this to define what you would consider wrong mindfulness. Yeah, so wrong mindfulness would be basically paying attention to, not paying attention to how mind's attention moves from one object to the other. In other words, you know, there's something called mindful eating or mindful walking or mindful sitting down, or being mindful of the steps that you're taking, or noting what happened, as you went from this place to that place, how many mind moments arose and things like that.

All of that constitutes wrong mindfulness because you're not observing what happened when craving arose. You're not observing what happened when you were able to let go of the craving. So right mindfulness is dependent upon right effort, actually. So right effort leads to right mindfulness, which leads to right collectedness. What that means is you're making the effort not to pay attention to what it is you're doing in terms of eating mindfully or walking mindfully or doing all of these things mindfully.

You're paying attention to what is happening in your mind in relation to these activities. Is there craving present in the mind? Is there aversion present in the mind? Or is the mind collected? Or is the mind having the quantum state? So it all goes back to observing how the attention is moving, not observing what it is you're doing, observing the relation to the mind, or the mind in relation to what it is you're... if craving arises, using right effort to let that go and come back to a more collected mind.

So you could say that when you read the Satipatthana Sutta, for instance, it says, you know, when you are standing, walking, sitting, going to the toilet, things like that, that could be misunderstood as being aware of everything you are doing, but not really seeing the craving that might lure behind it. Right, and it would remind me of... there are a lot of suttas where the Buddha says to be wakeful as long as you are awake, and he always explained it as purifying the mind of obstructive states. Yes, yes, and that's part of right effort, so when he says observing the order of being wakeful and purifying the mind of obstructive states, he's saying purifying the mind of the hindrances. So in other words, being wakeful meaning having right effort to recognize when a hindrance arises and letting that go, to recognize when craving arises and letting that go, and then cultivate non-obstructive states, which is really the loving kindness and other wholesome states of mind and the enlightenment factors and so on and so forth, which would then lead to right collectedness

because you're doing that. Yeah, and that's the three parts coming together of the meditation. Right effort leads to right mindfulness, and right mindfulness leads to right collectedness. Exactly. Okay. Another question is, does regular practice reduce the need for sleep? It can. It can, because a lot of times the reason why people require sleep is because their mind is just so overactive. It can, because a lot of times people talk so much mindlessly without observing what it is that they're saying, that it causes tiredness in the mind. It causes tiredness in the body.

And so being collected, having cultivated the practice, you to actually conserve your energy, which means you don't waste your energy in mindless talk, in unnecessary talk, in unnecessary thinking. You don't waste your energy in having craving mindsets. You don't waste your energy in thinking about this or that. Your mind is in a restful state if it is truly collected. Your mind is in a restful state if it is truly mindful.

And because there's less to process in the mind, which happens in the process of sleep, it can happen that you will require, you could require, less and less sleep, or that your sleep just becomes that much deeper, because there's less to process, and your mind just immediately goes into, or quickly goes into, deep sleep and has longer periods or deeper periods of restorative sleep, sleep as you did before. Um, someone asked the question: if someone has having health issues, is that always because of kamma actions, or can there be other causes for it? Yeah, so this goes back to the Sivaka Sutta, which talks about, you know, there is that view that people have, that everything is karma, fine.

We can grant everyone who says that everything is karma, but to try to find a karmic cause for that particular sickness, or whatever that might be, is not useful at all. What's useful is, if that sickness is there, how do you deal with it? In other words, the only thing you can do in relation to karma is to do with the present moment, is to do with what is happening here and now.

Trying to figure out if it was a karmic consequence is really not useful. It just doesn't really help in any way. Instead, it makes sense to see karma arising in the here and now as a result of previous choices. Now, in terms of whatever sickness it is, is it helpful or practical to think about it, that, oh, it was because of this lifetime that this arose? It's more practical and useful to say, here is a sickness, maybe I can take some medication, maybe I have to visit the doctor, maybe you have to go to the hospital, whatever it might be. So trying to identify the cause of that sickness as a karmic consequence, um, it's fruitless, it's not really going to get you anywhere, um, because we just talked about right mindfulness. Someone is asking

If mindfulness is mindfulness of how the mind moves from one thing to another, then what is mindfulness of minds and mindfulness of mind objects? This definition seems to leave out true mindfulness of the body. When we talk about mindfulness of the body, we're talking about the mind also experiencing the body. The body, experiencing the body, experiencing feeling, experiencing mind and experiencing mind objects.

All of that is still a mental experience, even though you're experiencing it through the body. That's still within the realm of mind. Even though you're experiencing feelings, that's still in the realm of mind. So when the Buddha talks about body in terms of postures, in terms of sitting and standing, this and that, he's still referring to, because there's always that refrain at the end: he has the bare knowledge of this experience, and he's also paying attention to: is there covetousness or grief? Another way of understanding that is: is there craving or aversion in relation to that experience? So mindfulness of mind is mindfulness of different states of mind. For example, is the mind collected or uncollected? Is the mind liberated or unliberated?

Is the mind exalted or unexalted? So when you're in jhana, what's happening in the mind? You're paying attention to what? You're paying attention to the mind being in jhana, and you're paying attention to the object of meditation. But in so far as that, you're not paying attention to the jhanic factors. You're observing how they arise when they arise, but your mindfulness there is on the object of meditation. That means your attention there, object of meditation rather. But the mindfulness that arises from there is when the mind goes from a collected state of mind to an uncollected state of mind. So when you recognize that, then you have mindfulness. Likewise, when it comes to mind objects, you recognize the five hindrances are present or not present.

The seven enlightenment factors are present or not present. The four noble truths are present in terms of your recognition of them, or they're not present because you've ignored them. The mind has ignored them. So likewise with feeling, what kind of feeling arises, it's more understanding is a craving in that feeling. When it comes to postures, it's not about having to take small steps and paying attention to the contact between the feet and the ground. It's paying attention to how mind is in relation to those experiences.

Yes, you're present and you're aware, but that happens as a natural result of paying attention. It's not like that in itself is an exercise, because there are people who have done that, right? There are people who do the slow walking and pay attention to that. And what they've said is they go into a collected state of mind. But what they also say is it's not collected, it's one-pointed. They go so deep into paying attention to the contact of the body to the ground walking, that they're not paying attention to anything else at all, which means that they're not actually paying attention. So here, mindfulness is about having open awareness. That's why it is in relation to the mind and the body, mind and feeling, mind and mind, mind and mind objects.

That's why it is mindfulness. It's not bodyfulness or feelingfulness or all of these other things. It's always in relation to mind. There is no wisdom in the body in and of itself. Right. You mentioned the factors of enlightenment, and someone is asking: I'm confused about the difference between sama samadhi as part of the Noble Eightfold Path and samadhi as an awakening factor.

I understand sama samadhi to mean jhana, but when I'm in jhana, what does it mean to balance samadhi? So that means basically, when you're balancing the samadhi factor, that is the collectedness factor, that is to say, is the mind collected or uncollected? So when you are in jhana the enlightenment factors are naturally present, but one factor or another can be out of step. So for example, if somebody has more restlessness, if somebody has a lot more mental energy, then you tranquilize that, you use tranquility. If somebody is distracted, then you use a collected state of mind. So sama samadhi, a mind definitely, but jhana basically means at the very forefront of it, jhana is a state of mind that ceases certain kinds of activity. There are levels of samadhi, the sama samadhi, you're actually letting go of coarser experiences.

And then the factor of samadhi, the collectedness, is a mind that stays with its object of meditation. So how do you balance that? Notice if the mind is distracted, notice if there's restlessness, relax that restlessness, relax and tranquilize it, let go of that, and then bring the mind more towards its object of meditation. You notice that the mind becomes too collected, which means that now it's paying attention to everything to that at the expense of everything else, which means that it becomes suppressed. Then back off and tranquilize that, let that go, and have more openness, and then let the mind loosen up a little bit. Don't use so much effort, let go of the energy a little bit, keep things a little looser, and that's how you balance the samadhi factor.

Maybe it's interesting for people to understand what you mean by one-pointed concentration versus the concentration or the collectedness that we practice in TWIM. Yeah. So, one-pointed concentration is basically a form of meditation in which the mind focuses on its object of meditation to the point it becomes its object of meditation. In some practices, that becomes the goal, that the mantra that they chant, or the breath itself, or whatever it might be in certain practices, the mind becomes so one-pointed that it becomes that. And it becomes so one-pointed that it suppresses the mind or other states in that mind. So it suppresses not just the hindrances, but it suppresses the opportunities for insights to arise.

What happens is, when you suppress hindrances, you're only pushing them down. You're not actually recognizing them and acknowledging them and having the ability to let them go. When that happens and the mind is suppressing those hindrances, when you come out of that one-pointedness, that one-pointed concentration, the mind might feel relaxed, might feel tranquil, might feel energetic, might feel happy, might feel whatever it is. It might feel very uplifted for a few hours, or maybe even a day or so. But then what happens when the mind is met with something that's unwholesome? How does the mind respond to that? The same hindrances come with the same or even double the energy because of the level of suppression that's going on.

Collectedness is a mind, that is to say, it's a mind that becomes collected around its object of meditation. It orbits its object of meditation. To orbit the object, it stays with it; the attention is non-dispersed; the attention remains on the object, but it doesn't become so concentrated that it doesn't pay attention to what's happening in mind. Because really what's happening is it's not just that right effort and right mindfulness: right effort leads to right mindfulness, right mindfulness leads to right collectedness, but these are happening in tandem, these are happening together.

So mindfulness is there in collectedness. Right effort is there in mindfulness. It's not like once you do right effort, you now have right mindfulness. Once you have right mindfulness, it's not that you have right collectedness. Instead, it's that you're always doing them in tandem. You're doing them together. Oh, you're on mute. There's someone who says, I'm practicing spiritual friends, I'm radiating loving kindness to the spiritual friend, and at some point the image of the friend becomes black and white. After some time they want to know, do I continue with the spiritual friend, or is this a sign to change the object to radiating in the six directions?

You stay with the spiritual friend. It doesn't matter what happens to the friend. The friend could turn into a bubble, or the friend could turn into something or another, or the image can become monochromatic, or whatever it might be. It's not about paying attention to them visually. It's about having your awareness on loving kindness. So you could even just keep your spiritual friend in the heart and just stay with the loving kindness there, knowing that they're basking in it. So don't pay so much attention to the spiritual friend that you forget about the loving kindness.

So just stay with it. It's not anything. It's no big deal. Don't make it a sign of anything. There is someone who feels or thinks that TWIM practices sleep deprivation, and they want to know about the benefits and risks of sleep deprivation. I think that might not be something that we tell them to do. Yeah, that's the first that I've heard of it, that TWIM is sleep deprivation.

If you've heard my recent DELMA talks, I've always said that I encourage naps on my retreats, right? Telling you, you need to stay awake at certain periods of time. Yeah, sure. Sometimes the mind is so collected that it might get up at 2 am in the morning or 3 am in the morning. And then if you want to, if you feel like you want to meditate around that time, then you can meditate. And then if you need extra sleep, then have extra sleep. So this is the first that I've heard of it. TWIM is not at all sleep deprivation. You have to manage your energy. You have to manage.

These are all very strange ideas to be, to be honest. I don't know where people get these ideas, but how does sleep deprivation help in any way? Sleep deprivation causes lack of mindfulness, it causes sloth and torpor, it causes lack of attention. So you have to manage your sleep, just like you manage your food. Sleep is an important element of your existence. So manage your sleep, which means don't have so much sleep that you become tired all the time, but don't have so little sleep that you're inattentive all the time. You have to see what works for you. Seven hours, eight hours, nine hours, maybe six hours, and then an hour and a half nap in the afternoon, or whatever it might be.

You have to decide what works for you. So there's no benefit to sleep deprivation. Absolutely no way any benefit to sleep deprivation. There is someone who would like to know how you practice walking meditation. Okay. So in the twin practice, when we do the walking meditation, what we do is we actually just walk at a normal pace, see what's happening in front of you so that you don't get, you know, you don't run into someone or something or fall into a ditch or something. So pay attention to where you're going, but don't get distracted by the birds or don't get distracted by things around you. Just walk in a normal pace, walk in a way that you would walk normally around the park, but the difference is you're paying attention to what?

You're paying attention to, if it's a spiritual friend, you're paying attention to the loving kindness to the spiritual friend. If it's radiating, you're paying attention to how mind is radiating loving kindness or how mind is radiating compassion. And in the same way, when you're in the meditation, your mind gets distracted. What do you do? You use right effort. You 6R any distraction that arises. So likewise, when you're in walking meditation, notice your mind is no longer on its object.

So you recognize that and then you release it, relax it, re-smile, come back to the object of meditation. This allows you to see that right effort can be done anywhere, whether you're walking or driving or eating your food or taking a shower or whatever it might be. It's all about staying with your object of meditation, staying with the spiritual friend, staying with loving kindness, staying with the compassion. In between practice is not about paying attention to how the feet make contact with the earth and the slow walking and all that. Just walk in a normal pace and stay with your object. And when you get distracted, 6R. - Maybe one last question.

They say, I've been thinking of a judgmental mind as being associated with clinging. Is that accurate? Or is a judgmental mind more about becoming and birth in terms of dependent origination? I guess it depends on the context, and the reason I say that is first of all, any thought that arises is mental action, especially, specifically when you have an intention, or when you think about someone, you have an intention to think about them in a certain way.

So that's already mental action. That's the birth of mental action. If you have a thought of harming someone, that's a mental action. If you have a thought of sending them loving kindness, that's a mental action. So having a judgment about someone, making a judgment about someone, is a mental action in that sense. You can't recall that judgment, but it feeds into that mindset that is clinging to a certain view. Because if you have a judgment about someone, that means you have a certain view about someone, and you're clinging to that view about that person, or you're clinging to a certain idea of how they are. So if you recognize that you have that judgment and it's causing, it's an unwholesome state of mind, then you can 6R that.

You can't call back the judgment, but you can 6R the formations that will arise that give rise to further steps in that process. Because as soon as you have the judgment, then there's some craving that might arise in reference to that. There might be some aversion that arises in reference to that. So you can actually recognize that and let that go. So you catch yourself thinking about this person in a certain way, then you can stop it. And then once you stop it, what are you doing? You're stopping the whole flow of that process of judging. And now you replace it with something else.

Now, if you have a judgment of that person this way, maybe you're jealous of that person and you judge them in that way, recognize that, let that go, 6R, and replace that jealousy with mudita. So a judgment is a couple of things. A judgment is intentionally thinking about someone in a certain way, so that's the birth of mental action. But a judgment is also an experience in the mind, so it's a mental feeling, it's an experience. And if you continue to act upon that, then that can give further clinging, craving and clinging. So if you notice the judgment and you continue to feed into it, but you stop that cycle by recognizing and 6R-ing, then you're replacing that whole process. You're deconditioning that judgment process and reconditioning it with something that's wholesome. Thank you. There was one last question that I wanted to ask, determination practice. So, mastery of the jhanas, to define it a bit, you can do determinations to stay in certain states for a specific amount of time, and you can practice this, and that person wants to know: can you do this after the first path and fruition, or should you wait until you get further along in the practice?

My usual recommendation is to wait until you get further along in the practice. And the only reason is because there's less you have to deal with in terms of craving and aversion and things like that. So if somebody is motivated to do determinations, I wouldn't stop them. And I would give them the instructions and they can continue and try it for themselves.

But I think determinations have their place at a certain level. I think it's more important to actually just continue repeating that whole process until you get to a point where the mind is fully liberated. So I think that should be the goal there, rather than developing the determinations. You could always do determinations at a later stage in time. It's more about how much suffering is present, how much craving is still present, how much more work is left to be done, and continue doing it. It's a process of rinse and repeat. Be a bit of a distraction to the regular TWIM practice, so it could be, yeah, yeah, yeah, it could be, because you know, instead they could just spend more time on letting go of things, because there might be a stage where, let's say at a sotapanna, they want to do their determinations. What happens? They can be craving for that jhana instead of actually understanding that this jhana is just what it is. So there could be this attachment to the determinations.

There could be a clinging to the determinations, or the idea that I have to do the determinations. But to what end are you going to do those determinations, right? It helps. Certainly it helps, because you understand jhanas better. Your mental dexterity is much better, and other benefits, including being able to get into cessation and being in cessation for longer periods of time. But that really happens at a certain stage and not before that.

Thank you. Let's share some merit, right? Yeah. May suffering once be suffering free, and the fear struck fearless being. May the grieving shadow grief, and may all beings find relief. 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. Thank you, Acharya. Thank you everyone for being here. Have a great day, take care.