Mumbai Retreat February 2025 | Day 6 - Levels of Cessation

So today we're going to talk about jhanas. Jhana comes from the Sanskrit word Dhyana. So Dhyana means to focus. It means to meditate. But here in the Pali canon, the context of jhanas is that they are levels of meditation. So the other day we were talking about the eightfold path and that includes right collectedness and within right collectedness are the four jhanas. So you will see in the Pali Canon they talk about eight jhanas, eight levels of meditation. But actually there are four and then there are four ayatanas. I'll get into that as we discuss it. Do we mean when we say jhanas? Bhante Vimalaramsi called them levels of understanding because as you progress through each level you have a different understanding of reality.

I call them levels of cessation because as you experience each jhana the coarser experiences in the outside world and in the mental field starts to become reduced and you get into a more subtle state of mind. So what is the first jhana? The first jhana is each jhana has its own composites, its own components that make up that particular state. The first jhana is basically, it says, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, he enters into the first jhana, which is made up of thinking and examining thought, accompanied by joy and comfort. So let's break that down. What does that mean? When you are sitting down for meditation and you use an object like loving-kindness,

or you look at the good things in your life and you reflect on the goodness in your life, immediately your mind becomes uplifted. There is a sense of happiness, a sense of joy, a sense of elation that comes up. This is the beginning of the first jhana. And why is that? First, it says you're quite secluded from sensual pleasures. When you close your eyes and sit down for meditation, your attention is directed inward. It is not outward. It is not looking at things around you. You're not paying attention to the people around you. It is internalized on an object of meditation. So that is the thinking. I'm sorry, that is the secluded from sensual pleasures.

Because your eyes are closed, your attention to the ears, with the other physical sense bases, is now withdrawn, and it's only in the mental. So secluded from unwholesome states, what are unwholesome states? The hindrances, distractions. This is why in my book, A Mind Without Craving, I've talked about jhana as void of hindrances and filled with the enlightenment factors or the awakening factors. So you need the awakening factors in order for the mind to be in jhana. There is a sutta called the Finger Snap Sutta and it says in that, the Buddha says, if one were to have enough loving kindness to span the length of a finger snap, immediately that mind is not void of jhana. So when you are cultivating loving-kindness and he says how much more so for one who cultivates loving-kindness, so when you have loving-kindness your mind is getting jhanic. Your mind is starting to get collected. It might not happen immediately. It might take some time,

because the mind is so used to different external stimulation that when it becomes internalized, all of these thoughts are there in the process. But as you start to relax and let go, so first you are relaxing the body, using the body scan, so now you're secluding your mind from sensual pleasures or sensual experiences in general, and then you notice hindrances and you let them go. As a result of letting go of the hindrances, your mind experiences pamoja, the relief. And that relief then gives rise to joy. But how is this cultivated? Through thinking and examining thought. The thinking, the vitaka or vitaraka, is the intentionalizing of a thought. So when you intentionalize, verbalize, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering, may I be filled with loving kindness.

When you think of an image or a memory, a wholesome memory, or you use gratitude, or you think back to things that you've done in your life that uplift you, that is the vitaraka. That is putting the key into the ignition, turning it on, starting it. That's the intentionalizing, the thinking, and the examining thought is the intention to sustain that attention on the object of meditation. As a result of which some level of joy comes in. This is known as piti in Pali. This joy is mental in nature. It doesn't matter if it manifests

physically in terms of heat or warmth or vibration, but there is an emotive quality there, there's an emotional quality to it, where you're actually experiencing uplifted states. Sometimes it's translated as exuberance, that might be a bit too much, because if I call it exuberance then you're going to expect fireworks all the time in your mind. You don't want that. We just want a very uplifted state that is not dependent upon sensual experiences. This is very important to understand. So the piti that we're talking about is mental joy. It's not joy based on physical sensations. It's a joy cultivated through thinking and examining, through meditating, through bringing up an object, through letting go, through the relief that you feel when you let go of a hindrance.

And there's something called sukha. Sukha, as I was saying the other day, is comfort. It's where the body is stable, and there's relaxation and tranquility in the body, and the mind feels at ease. So this is the first jhana. Seconds to a minute to five minutes, to where you keep coming in and out. What do I mean by keep coming in and out? Remember, there will be always background thoughts in any of the jhanas. It doesn't matter. When we talk about thinking and examining thought, we're talking about an intentional process of thinking and an intentional process of bringing up an it. When we get caught up in the thoughts, that is the distraction. When you are distracted you are no longer in jhana. So you can come in and out based on whether there is a distraction or not. When your mind is free of that distraction for some time, whether it's 10 seconds, whether it's 20 seconds, whether it's a minute, whether it's three minutes, five minutes, in that time, the mind is uplifted and it experiences these factors of the jhana.

Another factor of the jhana is something known as ekagrata or ekagrata. The full thing is chitta ekagrata or ekagrachitta. There has been a lot of controversy, debate and conflict in the Buddhist world, which I have no interest in getting into, about what this word ekagrata actually means, because some people say it's one-pointed, some people say it means it's absorbed, some people say it means that the mind is unified, and one-pointedness is bad, and absorption is bad, and you have to be aware in the jhana, and all of these things.

TWIM says one thing, the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition says another thing, the Pa Auk Sayadaw tradition says another thing. Everybody has their own idea of that. I have no skin in the game. I don't really care whether you want to have easy jhanas, light jhanas, hard jhanas, you want to be in jhana, you don't want to be in jhana, it's up to you. It doesn't matter to me.

So just understand the ekagrata citta. What is it saying? A unified mind. A mind that is composed. A mind that is collected. Its attention is non-dispersed. Its attention is orbiting the object of meditation. So when you have a unified mind, you're getting into the first jhana. After a while, the verbalizing stops. The continuous image making stops, the process of gratitude or whatever else you use to bring up the loving kindness or any of the objects that you are using stops, which means there is the cessation of thinking and examining thought, the cessation of vitaka and vichara, and what remains is the mind has self-confidence, it has joy, it has comfort or piti and sukha, and it has ekagrata.

What is that self-confidence that we're talking about? What it's saying is there is a certain ease that's happening, a flow that's happening. It's like the mind is now on autopilot. You don't have to keep bringing up the loving-kindness. You don't have to keep engaging with it. Trust that it continues. You can trust that the mind rests in equanimity. You can trust that the mind rests in the quiet mind. So in this second jhana, that self-confidence, that autopilot is there, like this is actually working. I can actually feel it happening and now I don't need further intentionalizing.

Background thoughts will still be there and that's not a big deal, but what is remaining is the joy and the comfort, the joy and tranquility. These are the main factors of the second jhana. In the third jhana what ceases is the piti, the joy. So now we're getting into levels of cessation. In the first jhana what ceases are the unwholesome states. Yeah, thank you. So in the first jhana what ceases are those unwholesome states, those hindrances, and what also ceases are the sensual experiences. You still hear things. You'll still hear the fan, you'll still hear the birds chirping, you will still hear people coming in and out of the hall and so on and so forth.

But your mind is collected. So what has ceased specifically are the hindrances. In the second jhana what has ceased is the intentionalizing, the verbalizing, the bringing up of the feeling of loving kindness or the object in general, and the sustained attention, because now it's on autopilot. In the third jhana what ceases is piti, joy. So oftentimes what will happen is a person meditating and they're like, I felt so much joy, I felt very uplifted, and then it felt like as if it went flat, or like I kind of lost control and I couldn't feel the joy anymore, and people are disheartened by that. They think I'm going in the wrong direction. Something's going on. No, I've said this before: bliss is overrated. Bliss is short-lived. If you're living for bliss then I feel sorry for you. Because bliss is just an aspect of life.

Beyond bliss is something even greater. And that is the sukha. That is the tranquility, the comfort that comes. This is the difference between the bliss, or the joy, and the comfort. Think about a candle flame. The flame will flicker. That's joy. It's excitable, it's got all of this activity in it. It's just a bit too short-lived, unsustainable. If you are living in joy all the time you're gonna blow out your dopamine receptors. We're already doing that with short-form media and stuff, but sound like a boomer for some reason. But the sukha, the comfort, the happiness that's there, that's like a flame, like a ghee flame, an oil flame. It's just still and it remains steady. So that tranquility, that happiness, that ease of mind is much more sustainable.

So it lasts from the first jhana to the second jhana to the third jhana. And it's mentioned in the suttas that this is what the noble ones call a pleasant abiding, which is to say that it is very pleasing to be in. It is very pleasurable to be in the third jhana. Then the fourth, and what ceases in the fourth is the sukha as well. Now, people think that if the sukha ceases, then what's going on there? What happens in the fourth jhana? There is strong mindfulness and equanimity in the fourth jhana. In fact, it says the major factor of the fourth jhana is he or she has mindfulness due to equanimity.

Why? Because as you're going through each of the jhanas, as I mentioned earlier, the jhanas are essentially the cessation of the hindrances and the activation and balancing of the enlightenment factors. And as you're balancing the enlightenment factors using right effort, using the four Rs, using the six Rs, if you're using that, what you're doing is the mindfulness goes into discernment. The discernment goes into energy. The energy goes into joy. The joy goes into tranquility. The tranquility goes into collectedness. So the mind is now collected. And the collectedness goes into equanimity. That equanimity goes back to mindfulness. It cycles back into mindfulness. And this time the mindfulness is deeper. And it cycles through the jhanas until, in the fourth jhana, all there is is this mindfulness. There's a deep sense of equanimity. Here the mind is unwavering. It feels neutral. It says, "there, with the transcending of pain and pleasure," it goes beyond the duality of pain and pleasure, and it just remains in this neutral equanimity. It's not indifferent.

The indifference is the shadow of equanimity. Very important to understand this. They call it the near enemy or the enemy of equanimity. Equanimity is seeing things as they are. Indifference is you see it, but you don't want to face it. And so there's a quality of aversion in that indifference. And you're kind of wanting to ignore it. Equanimity is facing everything. Painful, pleasurable, neutral. Whatever it is, it just remains steady. Upekkha, that's the word for equanimity. Upekkha, right? It's different from Apeksha. What does Apeksha mean? Expectation. It's free of any of that expectation. It's free of any of that craving, that clinging, that grasping. It just remains neutral to observe things as they are. So in this fourth jhana, you will see that the mind is exceptionally clear.

Very few thoughts, if at all, are there in the background. And the mind is unwavering. The attention is unwavering. Even if that bird is chirping, the mind remains steady. It's aware of the bird chirping. It just passes right through. And it just remains relaxed in the object of meditation. I believe it's Samyutta Nikaya 46.54. And in that sutta, it says that the limit of loving kindness is the fourth jhana, which is also known as the beautiful. Why is it called the beautiful? Because it is beautiful. It's an amazing space. Like I said, bliss is overrated. People go after bliss. They're basically low consciousness people who are going after bliss. They don't realize that there's more beyond just the bliss. Once they transcend that bliss, then their consciousness is raised. Otherwise they're just going after serotonin and dopamine, even if it's just mental. Eventually, once they transcend that bliss, they go into this neutral zone, a space where everything is equanimous, and that is the most sustainable place to be in, and that is where the limits of kindness reach.

So these are the four jhanas. Beyond that there are something called the ayatanas. Ayatana means dimension or field or space. There are four ayatanas: infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception. So when you get to this space, the teacher will tell you, I'm going to give you new instructions. I'm going to tell you to radiate in the six directions. Sometimes the teacher will do it without you having gotten to the four jhana, just because it feels like it's appropriate. Because the ayatana is accessible even outside of the scope of the four jhanas. Though they are within the vicinity of the fourth jhana, they can be accessible directly without having to traverse one, two, three, four.

So when you are radiating loving-kindness in this direction, in this direction, in all six directions, what happens is the mind starts to become more collected. And you start to, it says, he transcends perceptions of diversity and transcends perception of form, because now we are entering into the formless territory. Perceptions of diversity means that the mind gets less and less interested in the sensual experiences, to the extent that the mind is just remaining in itself. There might be contact. A fly might land on your skin and you barely experience it. Someone might be calling out to you and you barely hear what they're saying. Your mind is that collected. And as you're starting to radiate loving-kindness, your mind feels like it is expanding. You lose awareness of the body, which you begin to lose in the third jhana, and by the fourth you're just up in the head. By the time you're in infinite space, you're now feeling that expansion.

You're feeling spacious. You feel like you're transcending the limits of this physical body, and that the boundaries between where the physical body ends and where the outside world begins start to disappear. That's why when you encompass the loving-kindness with everyone in it and then go beyond, you're starting to feel that expansion. This is infinite space. And tied to that infinite space is compassion. What is compassion?

Karuna. Metta is essentially friendliness. It comes from Maitri. Maitribhav, which means the feeling of friendliness, benevolence, the goodwill towards another being, wanting their happiness, wishing for their happiness. Karuna, compassion, is not sympathy. It is not looking down at another person and feeling sorry for them. Compassion is empathy, or it includes empathy. The recognition of my own suffering helps me to recognize the suffering in other beings. This is compassion. And quite literally, holding space for another being is also compassion. That is an act of compassion. Actively listening to someone. Lending them your ear. People just want to air out their grievances. They don't necessarily need anybody to give them an answer. They just need to be heard.

They want to feel heard. They want to feel seen. The act of doing that for another person is compassion. Compassion doesn't mean that we are crutches for the person in pain. We do not take their pain away because we are not responsible for their pain. We hold space and give them the tools necessary for themselves. This is best exemplified in a sutta. It's, I think, Majjhima Nikaya 107, in which somebody comes to the Buddha and asks him, why is it that some of your students attain Nibbana and some of your students don't attain Nibbana? And he gives a really good answer. He gives an interesting metaphor, an analogy. He says, suppose there were a man who was approached by a certain individual who said, good sir, give me the directions to get to Rajagaha.

Rajagaha is now modern-day Rajagir, where if you are going to Bodhgaya, you might see it. That's where, on the way, you have, I think, King Bimbisara's palace, and you also have Vulture's Peak, and some really famous places that are mentioned in the sutta, the bamboo grove, and so on. So, show me the way to Rajagaha. How do I get to Rajagaha? And so the man gives him the instructions and tells him, you make a left here, if you go here you make a right, and all that. So he says thank you and he goes on his way. The second, there's a second man who approaches that man. He says, what is the way to Rajagaha? He gives him the same set of instructions. He says, you go this way, this way, this way. He gives the same instructions, and the man says thank you very much, and he goes on his way. The first man decides to take shortcuts and decides that he might know better, and he doesn't listen or follow the instructions of the man who gives the

directions. He gets lost. There is no Rajagaha. The second man follows the instructions, follows the directions, goes exactly how the man explained to him. So then the Buddha asks the man who asked him that question, why is it that some people get enlightened and some people don't, yet they follow the same instructions? And he says to him, now, whose fault is it? Is it the man giving the instructions, or is it the person who doesn't follow the instructions? And so the Buddha says, in the same way, I give you the teaching. Out of compassion, I give you the teaching. But you must walk the path. I cannot walk the path for you. So out of compassion, when you do something for someone, do not be their crutch.

Allow them the space to grow and learn and do things on their own. In the same way you would do with children, little children. When they're first walking, you give them the space to see if they can get up and start walking. And other things, riding a bike and so on and so forth. This is compassion. In the meditation, this feeling of compassion is a more diffuse form of metta. Whereas metta felt like this warmth and this glow and this upliftedness, the compassion feels a bit more diffuse, spacious. There is a lightness, a softness, a kind of cotton candy feeling through the compassion. So beyond infinite space, there is something called infinite consciousness. It's a very interesting space to be in.

So as you are radiating loving kindness, as you're radiating compassion, which is limited to space, as you're radiating all of that, what will happen is that the awareness will take over that space, and now you have infinite awareness. This is the beginning of infinite consciousness. Eventually the mind becomes so pristinely aware that it starts to see the limits of consciousness. What do I mean by that? It starts to see the limits of awareness. It starts to see the arising and passing away of infinite consciousnesses. We have been told in other ways that consciousness is all pervading and so on and so forth. Let's not talk about that. What we are referring to is the sensory based consciousness, which is dependent upon contact.

So what you are seeing is the arising and passing away of contact. And it can happen in the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body. It can happen in the mind. How can it manifest? Sometimes you will see flickering in your mind's eye. It's like as if the lights are being turned on and off very fast. Or you might see spirals. Or you might see different colors. Or you might see different shapes. You might see dots of light, like stars in front of you. You might see all these different things. Or when it comes to the ears, you might actually hear maybe the bird chirping, but it slows down. And it's like you're hearing click, click, click, click, click, like that, very fast.

Or you might smell phantom smells. It's as if somebody is burning incense. Pure divine sounds. Or you might feel electricity coursing through your body. You might feel goosebumps. You might feel all kinds of things coming in and out of the body. Or you might start to see gaps in your awareness of thoughts. This is all infinite consciousness.

Because what we are saying here is, when you are listening to my voice, one quanta of sound wave hits the ear and is received by the ear. And there's a consciousness that arises based on that. But this is fluid. So millions of sound waves are transferring to your ear. And the mind interprets that as a fluid experience of listening.

Same with the lights, same with everything that you're seeing here. When you're on LSD or mushrooms or any other psychedelic, this can happen, where things slow down and you start to see things becoming jittery. It's like when you have a film reel and there's a gap in between one reel and the next, like stuttering. This can happen. In my own experience, when I was meditating and doing my online retreat with David Johnson, I was having this experience of infinite consciousness. I was living in San Diego at the time, and I came out of the meditation and I walked to the kitchen, and the people in the kitchen and everything around me was starting to come in and out of awareness. The people became like staccato, meaning they started moving in very rigid ways, and I could just see frames, frames, frames.

Not a fluid experience of whatever it was my eyes were taking in. This is infinite consciousness, which is what I'm saying. You can experience the jhanas and these states even outside of meditation. When your mind is doing walking meditation also, it can experience it. It will experience them. So tied to this infinite consciousness is something known as mudita, or empathetic joy. It means the joy of appreciation for the happiness of others. Whereas compassion was the wish for all beings to be free of suffering, because I know what suffering feels like, mudita is being happy for them and celebrating in their happiness. This is why it is a wonderful antidote to words or for envy, because you appreciate whatever successes the other person has, and you feel warmth and happiness for them.

And so the limits of this joy, right? In other words, loving kindness can be experienced all the way to the fourth. Compassion can be experienced from the first all the way up to infinite space. Empathetic joy can be experienced from the first jhana all the way up to infinite consciousness. Now, I want to tell you something. It's not necessary for all of you to experience these states in succession, or in order, or for you to experience them at all. Sometimes you may bypass or skip some of these experiences. This is just the entire map that I'm showing you, conveyed from the Suttas. You don't need to walk the entire map. It's just allowing you to know where you might be on the map.

And you might not end up in infinite consciousness, and you might just directly go into nothingness, and that's okay. We'll talk about what that is. But how does one get from infinite consciousness to nothingness? Flickering, the sounds, all of that becomes tiresome. You're starting to see the arising and passing away of these infinite contact fields, and eventually you realize, oh, it's impermanent. Just arising and passing away, arising and passing away, and you get bored, you get tired, you're like, this is enough. And now you have a direct experience of suffering, dukkha. As a result of what you realize, there's no controller here. With the arising and passing away of consciousness, it is an impersonal process. And so now you are seeing not-self, an immediate recognition and experience of anatta.

So the perception of impermanence leads to the perception of dukkha, or suffering. The perception of suffering leads to the perception of anatta, or not-self. The perception of not-self leads to yathabhuta-nyana-dassanam, or equanimity, the perception of equanimity. And so what happens? You start to see those flickering, start to have gaps, or those thoughts having larger and larger gaps in between them, or in the sounds, or anything else that's happening. There's gaps, and your mind starts to drop into those gaps, and as it drops into those gaps, it becomes more stabilized, and you now enter into what is known as

nothingness. Why is it called nothingness? Because there is no thing there. There's literally nothing there. The mind is taking as an object only empathetic joy, and eventually that empathetic joy turns into equanimity. Another way of understanding nothingness is that the mind becomes so withdrawn that it is no longer outside. No things external to the mind are visible or perceivable. The mind is completely withdrawn inside. Sometimes, when there is contact for some time, you might experience it very, very distantly, whatever is happening outside. But now you're in nothingness, and tied to this is equanimity. What is equanimity? It is even-mindedness. It's the mind where it's just very tranquil and very neutral. I look at equanimity as this very still lake.

I don't know if I told you guys, when I went to Austria, we went down there and we saw this lake. That is what it is. That feeling of equanimity. Very clear. Very balanced. And you're radiating that now, and then there's nothing going on. Eventually, as you're radiating that equanimity, now here's the question: how do you radiate loving kindness? You say, may beings be free of suffering, may they be happy, may they be filled with loving kindness, and so on. How do you radiate compassion? Again, may beings be free of suffering, may they be filled with compassion, may I have compassion for them. How do you have empathetic joy? May beings celebrate in their happiness, may I celebrate happiness.

How do you bring up equanimity? May beings experience tranquility. May they experience calm. May they have equanimity. May I feel equanimous towards all beings. So this equanimity, eventually as you're radiating, starts to become quieter and quieter and quieter, and subtler and subtler and subtler. And then it's like nothing is happening at all. The mind is just very quiet. You may decide you want to bring up the equanimity again, and as you do that, it's like just dropping a small pebble onto the surface of a lake, and it just ripples out. This equanimity eventually, the ripples start to die down again. It's very still and flat and clear. And then you might do it again, but this time the mind doesn't feel like it wants to do anything, and so now you become the object.

It's like the mind has internalized and collapsed into itself, withdrawn completely into itself, and now it will enter into the territory of neither perception nor non-perception. So what is neither perception nor non-perception? What is perception? Perception is the ability to in terms of an experience. The knowledge of something is rooted in learning, and that memory brings up a perception that this is the color red, this is the color blue, this is the color orange, and so on and so forth. Neither perception or non-perception means that a certain point, certain formation, certain samskaras, certain images come up in the mind. And it's like you are in a hypnagogic state.

Asleep but awake at the same time, and you're lucid. Patterns come up. Distant memories come up. Very cloudy images come up. It's not sloth and torpor, because the mind is clear, and it's like your mind is trying to make logical sense of what's happening, but it's just not able to, because the faculties of perception are starting to diminish and starting to quiet down. So it's neither full perception, right, nor non-perception. You are aware of something there, but you can't fully make out what it is. And you might go through this for a period of time until all of that haze starts to settle down, and now you're just in clear space where the mind is very quiet.

You may still hear things, you may still get contact from the outside world, but the mind is very quiet. And this object of the mind being very quiet can start from the first jhana all the way up to this eighth level, which is the neither perception nor non-perception. Eventually, the mind becomes so quiet that very small vibrations are perceivable. And all you have to do is just put a tinge of relaxation in there, and the vibration flattens out. The waves flatten out. This is where you may actually balance the mind with enlightenment factors. If it has too much sloth and torpor, or has too much tranquility, you bring up some discernment, you bring up some energy, you bring up some joy, some curiosity, some collectedness, a little bit more focus.

If the mind is having restlessness, too much going on, and it just feels like there's no way to control that, no way to get out of it, bring a little bit of tranquility. It's like you're micro dosing on tranquility or micro dosing on joy. Just a little is enough for the mind to experience it all in this space. Sometimes what happens is that might not be enough. The mind is just so caught up in everything. What will I do? Or what will I tell you to do? Go back a step.

Go to equanimity, and equanimity again, until the mind settles back into its self, into quiet mind, and again the same thing happens. So what do you do? You try using all of these different enlightenment factors based on what is required. If it's too much, you go back again and you radiate equanimity. Sometimes you might have to go a couple of steps below that and go to loving-kindness and radiate

that and eventually goes back into quiet mind and you may have to loop back again and again a few times, and guess what happens? Disenchantment comes up. You've had enough of this cycling through equanimity and coming to quiet mind, equanimity and then coming back to quiet mind. Your mind is like, you know what, I don't care anymore. If thoughts come up, distractions come up, it's fine. I'm going to remain in the background and stay. I'm going to remain steady. I don't care what comes up. I'm just going to see whatever happens and don't do anything. Eventually all of these different things come up and arise and pass away, and they're just passing through your mind, and your mind becomes like Teflon, like nonstick. This is the dispassion. And now your mind dips into what's known as micro cessations. You come in and out of consciousness. It feels like you're fainting into something.

So when this happens, do not fear. Do not get scared. It is a normal process of the practice. The mind may feel like, I'm going to die, like I'm sinking into something. It starts to pay attention to its breathing. It's like, am I breathing? What's going on? And for that, all you have to do is bring some equanimity and say, whatever happens, it's going to be fine. It's all right. Just keep letting the mind sink into it. Sometimes you may go into what's known as the signless, the objectless collectedness of mind, where there's just pure awareness, not taking anything as an object. The analogy here is like a flashlight that you point to the sky, and the light just goes up into space without landing on any celestial object and keeps going.

Awareness. You just are aware, but not aware of anything in particular. And in that mindset, or in that space, in the seeing of something arising, the very seeing of it, it relaxes whatever distraction might come up, or whatever proto-thought might come up. Eventually, because your attention is so still, and you're not paying attention to anything in particular because no stimulus is arising, and you're able to stay here without any expectation, when you least expect this, this is what I say. I hammer it to you guys all the time: when you least expect it, nirvana happens. When you least expect it, meaning you are not in the waiting room of nirvana. You're not waiting for nirvana to come up. You're just

content. Dispassion and disenchantment, contentment is the key. I'm okay with this. If I had to stay in this space for 20 minutes, if I had to stay in the space for one hour, if I have to be here for 30 hours, please don't do that. Just giving a very extreme example. But the idea is that I don't care what happens anymore.

I'm just going to be here and content with space. When you least expect it, the mind drops. It's as if the mind goes unconscious, completely unconscious, and it drops into the cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. And then what comes up after that is, just for a brief moment, the mind touches the nibbana element. It touches the substrate of all reality, which is the nibbana element. And because of that, there is something known as the contact that is unconditioned. This contact is known to be undirected, signless, or signless undirected, and empty. It's signless because there's no object there at all. It has touched something that is beyond the scope of our consensus reality. It is outside of the purview of conditioned reality, of time and space. And it is undirected because no intention can take you there, because any intention that's there means there is expectation, and expectation is dukkha, in construction, under construction, as Venril Methananda would say. And it is empty, because there's no self that the mind attaches it to.

It's just an impersonal process. And when the mind comes out of it, it experiences immense relief and immense joy. Joy like you've never felt before. If anybody has done MDMA here, you know what that joy feels like. But it is ten times better than that. Just like a fountain of continuous joy that comes up. And the mind is so free of it, so completely relaxed and in relief. It's like all of this weight that was on your shoulders has been lifted, and you just feel content. You feel like you want to be in seclusion. And when you walk around, it's like you're floating. Everything is just like you're on cloud nine. Everything is perfect.

And sometimes this cessation is not discernible. Sometimes you're not aware that there was a gap in your awareness, but you do realize that there was this immense joy that came up, this immense relief that came up. And then when you look outside, in the world around you, you see the grass is somehow sharper in terms of its greens. The reds are much redder. The yellows are more yellow, and so on and so forth. Clarity in your senses. So what do you do after that? Rinse and repeat. Go back and sit. Of course, it's going to be difficult for you to sit. You might not be able to sleep even, because of the immense energy and joy and relief that's there for some time.

But then you come out of it, and then your mind is like, okay, there's still craving. There's still aversion. There's still identification. That's okay. You experienced a preview into full awakening by touching the nibbana element. Now you rinse and repeat. Whenever your mind is ready to go back to meditate, you sit down and you meditate, and you go through that process again, this process of the jhanas again. As I said, it doesn't have to be in sequence. If you don't experience all the stuff I'm telling you, it's okay. I'm just giving you the entire field map. That's it. How you decide, or how the mind decides, to go in that journey is up to it.

What it decides to experience and not experience is up to it. Yesterday we went through transcendental dependent origination, or dependent liberation. This is being experienced as you traverse through the jhanas as well, and through the ayatanas. And so this is why, in the West, now, I wouldn't say this is the exact reason, but this is probably one of the reasons why in the West there is so much emphasis on jhanas. Just like 10, 15, 20 years ago there was this whole hullabaloo about mindfulness, right? Mindfulness-based, mindfully eating, mindfulness-based apps, and all of that. All great stuff, but it's now gotten into territory of mechanical mindfulness. And now we're getting into the territory of mechanical jhanas, sadly.

It's nice that people are getting introduced to this, but you have to understand these are stepping stones towards full awakening. They themselves are not that important. They are the markers, the mile markers that let you know, okay, you've reached this much on your path to nirvana, on your destination, towards your destination. So don't worry about whether you're in jhana or not in jhana, where you've experienced it, whether you're progressing. I wonder if I'm in this jhana or that jhana. It doesn't matter. What matters is how much fun you're having along the way. Do not make it like homework. Do not make it like some kind of assignment that you have to do. Remember, go back to the inner child.

Be happy. Make it a game. Make it fun. And the more you do that, the easier the mind slips into these states, and the easier it is for you to just let go, let go, let go, let go, until you get to these levels of cessation and cease experiences and further experiences and further experiences, until there's a total cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness. You may have ever experienced in your life, and it is so profound, because the insights that arise based on that, the experiential insights into the links of dependent origination, which we'll go over tomorrow, make you realize, in reality, in real time, the impersonal nature of this world, and you begin to understand the truth of this existence, and this is because you've touched the substrate that makes up this samsara.

So I'll stop there and open it up for questions. Two questions. First, the equanimity of forced jhana and equanimity of nothingness, are they the same or is there any subtle difference? No, they are the same. Okay. Second question: some people have the tendencies, right? Like their general way of existence is, say, they genuinely have that empathetic joy. They genuinely celebrate the achievements of their friends, family, and so on. And they have other brahmaviharas as well, as I would say, having a general sense of ease in existence and in contentment. They go up and down, right? But the default state, so to speak, has become that. How do you interpret that in terms of jhanas?

You see, the thing is, such people may experience jhanic states without realizing that they're falling into jhanic states. Okay. Or they're just experiencing those emotions of empathetic joy without it being followed by a collectedness, because jhana means a mind needs to be collected. So it's not... there is overlap in the texture of feeling, but it may not be a jhana extinct. That's right. Is it possible to experience cessation outside jhanas? Yes.

Sometimes what will happen is, and there have been examples of this, where people are having a very deep realization, deep experience, collected, and they might be walking to the dining hall, and then for a moment their mind just becomes very blank. And when they come out, they feel just a surge of energy and joy and relief. Sometimes what can happen is, if I might be reading a sutta that's like a guided meditation, or I might be giving a guided meditation, people's minds become so deeply engrossed in what is being said, because it's so measured and detailed, that their mind is entrained into a very collected state, and for a few moments their mind just drops and experiences cessation as well. So it's quite possible. One more question: where does self-inquiry fit in all this, or it's nothing to do with the jhanas? No, it can lead to

nothingness. Like when you find out, where, who am I? You try to see where is the self. Eventually the mind kind of just drops everything and it comes to nothingness, and the quality of mind is generally equanimous, so it can lead to that. Is there any work required, self-inquiry work, in the jhanas? In the jhanas themselves? Yeah. That's where the experience of samatha and vipassana are kind of conjoined, where you're seeing for yourself this impersonal process through infinite consciousness. But some people, what they'll do is they'll just go into a jhanic state, come out and reflect on the self, and then experience the dissolution of self. - There are some people, it's a sort of a follow-up question on what Divya asked.

There are some people who just feel things too much. Some people who are borderline personalities, for example. just naturally attuned to emotions so isn't it more difficult for them to experience cessation detachment disenchantment and other people not necessarily there's nothing about it being more difficult or easier or anything like that it's just if you're going to follow the instructions it may take a little bit more time and Some people surprise themselves. It's like because they just follow the instructions and going through the process, because there's no expectation of what is to happen, they just fall into the experience.

So I would say that it is based on a person's inclinations and faculties. It's just dependent upon how immersed they are in the experience, or how unimmersed, or how dispersed their attention is. With the support of any metaphor or analogy, can you give me a description of the feeling you felt when you snapped back from nothingness?

From nothingness? From nothingness. Yourself, like you feel immeasurable joy. Yeah. So like that feeling, can you give a metaphor, an analogy, which will give me some idea, some context, as to how it feels? Yeah. Like I was talking about, if you've done MDMA, yeah, you feel this surge of serotonin, yeah, that's how you're feeling it. And the relief that you feel, like I said, it's like you've been carrying this weight on your shoulders, and all of that just drops, and you feel like you're floating, like you just have, I'm free of all burdens. - So when one is starting out and the body is not stable, say there is pain, sickness or whatever in everyday life, and you don't have enough equanimity, how does one meditate?

Does it change to, like, just compassion? Because you might have some expectation, okay, I've been meditating in a certain way, but today, you know, I have pain and I, yeah. So do you change the quality to, you know, compassion, acceptance, instead of being in whatever other state you would be otherwise? Can I just point out that your shirt says Nirvana?

Yeah. We're all after her. Yeah, the screenshot is on sale. Yeah, I think it's still possible, when you're feeling pain or sickness, for your mind to go into a jhanic state. We have the Buddha as a very prime example. He was suffering from severe back pain all his life, or at least towards the older period of his life, and so he would actually use jhana as a way of relieving the pain. But of course, him, I mean, his mind was already trained in that process. Not to say it's not possible. Another thing is to use the enlightenment factors as a way of inculcating or cultivating these jhanic states. There are examples of this as well. Very interesting. Like Maha Moggallana, one of the chief disciples of the Buddha, was very sick, and so the Buddha guided him through the enlightenment factors, and he said that he felt much better. It's like he came out of his sickness, whatever it was.

I wouldn't read too much into it by saying that it's going to heal you, but it allows your mind to go away from, or divert the attention from, the pain and more towards the internal states of joy and equanimity. The funny thing about that is later on the Buddha gets sick, and Maha Moggallana gives him a sermon on the enlightenment factors, and that takes him out of his sickness. So it's very much possible. Yeah. So for a lay person, yeah, again, for a lay person also, if they just focus on, let's say, the breath or just on compassion or loving kindness, eventually the mind will become collected enough. Wherever you're sitting, you become less in contact with the body, more internalized, but it just requires time and the right amount of effort to get there. So you probably are not even sitting in that state you could be in. You could be on your deathbed, you could be just in bed doing that, and that's fine. You could be lying down, and that's fine. - I'm still not convinced, I think.

Say I am feeling pain today, right now, and I want to sit and meditate. How would I, and I'm a very beginner, so how would I, you know? - Take a painkiller. Yeah, please. I mean, you have your own. Yeah, so I have backache, like really bad backache. I have a lumbar support belt right now. What I do is either I use the chair or I meditate lying down. So, you know, your spine is straight, at least in my case, and the pain is lessened. Second, you can go for a walking meditation. So, you know, the restlessness from the pain gets released to an extent. Pain, sort of, as an object of meditation, not get too focused on it, but just to see it impartially and see the impermanence of it.

And then it sort of dissipates. Yeah, no, you are just then, you know, the object, and the way you approach the meditation sort of shifts you just in that moment. The object is to, you know, reduce the hindrance. You don't have to always go with the metta or, you know, compassion or anything. Yeah. I would say that at some point you will experience joy. It might just take a longer period of time.

Any other questions? When we experience the cessation of consciousness, feeling, and what's the other one? Perception. Perception. That doesn't necessarily mean we're about to become a stream-enterer. Right. That's right. So it might take a few attempts until we... You might just be dipping your toes in, unnecessarily fully going into the lake, let's say. So what's been really required? See, this is the thing. What I'm telling you guys is just the standard model that the TWIM people talk about. I told you in the beginning, I don't want to talk about enlightenment states or stages of awakening, because nobody has it right. Everybody has their own theory, everybody has their own model about it. The TWIM model is: if you had experienced cessation the first time, the likelihood, when you experience the joy and relief, is that you have entered the stream.

But there is evidence in the suttas to suggest that one can enter the stream without cessation. One can even experience arahatship without cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. In other words, that state of cessation. Because again, cessation is used in so many different contexts. When we're talking about dukkha and nirodha, the cessation of suffering, it means you're just free of suffering in that moment, or free of suffering in that period of time. What it is when it comes to stream entry is there are a few things that the Buddha mentions as factors of stream entry, or let's say signs of stream entry. Primarily, he says, actually the evidence is in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, where Ananda is asking the Buddha, once you're gone, how are we to discern where someone is?

How do we know somebody has become a stream-enterer or stream-winner? And the Buddha says there's something known as the mirror of the Dhamma. That mirror is basically to what extent someone has experiential confidence in the Triple Gem. In other words, complete confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, and keeps the precepts. That's also in other suttas that talk about it.

confidence plus keeping the precepts and a process of when a precept is broken immediately recovering from that realizing oh I broke a precept I will choose not to do that again and keep the precept when it gets to other stages after that it's using the ten fetter model so the first three fetters are gone first three mentors so you have to see in your mind if that's the case the next to a weekend for the ones returner and then the first five are gone for the non-returner and all ten are gone for the fully awakened beam that's really the the parameters that are used in order to assess this the reason I stay away from all of that now is because not only from my experience but also from the experience of others it's like with the twin practice there is a lot of emphasis on cessation a lot of emphasis on like

KPIs very frankly speaking like how many cessations can I get as a teacher from students and it's like if I can just get this person to get cessation now I'm top teacher that's really what it is so for the student for the practitioner it's an understanding of how quickly can I let go of my negative do I have experiential confidence which means to what extent do I feel inclined for practice and to follow the path. So Ariputta also gives an example of stream entry where he says one who enters the path of the Eightfold Path is already one who enters the stream but one who completes that path in one in one cycle, one who experiences the the process of the Eightfolds and comes to that right view of the Four Noble Truths is one who wins the stream, the stream winner, stream enter with fruition.

Thank you. Micro-cessations. I just want to ask how that feels. It's like for a moment your mind just went unconscious, and you come up, and there's brightness in the mind. Okay, let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free, and the fear-struck, may the grieving share all grief, and may all beings find belief. 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.