Day 4 Jhanas Cont.- Japan Retreat Dec 2023

So tonight we will continue our discussion on jhanas. Yesterday we spoke about the form jhanas, right? That's the first four jhanas. Now what we will speak about are known as ayatanas in Pali. Ayatana means the dimension, sphere or place. So it's like a plane of existence. That's why you have the word salayatana, which means the sixth sense basis. So it also means base. And when we talk about the ayatanas, they are within the scope of the fourth jhana. Now, when we talk about the different Brahmalokas, you have the first, second, third, fourth Brahmaloka, and then you have the arupalokas. In this way there are eight so-called jhanas, but the formless jhanas are extensions of the fourth jhana. Or the other way to look at it is that when you are in the fourth jhana, it is the foundation from where you experience infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception. So, just to jump off from where we left off yesterday.

We spoke about the fourth jhana as being where there is purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. Which means at this point the enlightenment factors have cycled through to such an extent that there is absolute pristine clear mindfulness. And so that mindfulness is able to just pinpoint what's going on. And it can detect if the mind starts to waver from its object, if the attention starts to waver, and bring it back very quickly. And there's deep equanimity. The sensations in the body become more diminished to the point that they are not even felt. Another common factor of the fourth jhana is that the breath seems like it's stopped, subtle almost to the point of being imperceptible. So most of the feeling that you will experience, most of the sensation that you will experience, will be from the head onwards, right? It'll be in a mental realm, and that is what we're doing now. When we get into the arupa jhanas, when we get into infinite space, the practice that you are doing with TWIM is the Brahmaviharas, right? So there are four Brahmaviharas: loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity.

So in one sutta, which is called the Metta Sahagata Sutta, which means "accompanied by loving-kindness", it talks about how the limits of loving-kindness are at a certain level, the limits of compassion are at a certain level, the limits of empathetic joy are at a certain level, and the limits of equanimity are at a certain level. So what is the limit of loving-kindness? It is up to the beautiful. When we say the beautiful, we're talking about the fourth jhana. So when you experience loving-kindness, you can experience the loving-kindness from the first jhana all the way up to the fourth jhana. The limits of compassion

is all the way from the first jhana up into infinite space. So what is compassion? How do you experience compassion? Well, first let's understand: how do you experience loving-kindness? What does loving-kindness feel like? Loving-kindness is the genuine wish for the happiness of other beings: may all beings be happy. And it provides this warmth, a natural glow in the heart, right? It's loving-kindness towards yourself. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be well. I deserve to be loved. I deserve to be treated with kindness. And therefore, from my full cup, my heart that is full of that loving-kindness, I can share it with others. And so I wish for my friend to be happy.

I wish for other friends to be happy. I wish for my family members to be happy. I wish for all neutral people, people I don't even know, to be happy. I wish even my so-called enemies, these are people that we have difficulties with, happiness. Or other realms, gross or subtle, large or small, near or far. All beings, may they all be happy. And when you experience this loving-kindness, you feel happy. That is true happiness. It is a conditioned kind of happiness, but it is happiness nonetheless. Because in that experience of the meditation, truly in the moment, when your mind rests in that feeling of loving-kindness, that feeling of loving-kindness is an anchor for your mind to surrender to the moment.

And that is where you are happiest. So you will experience this happiness. You will experience this feeling of loving-kindness from the first jhana all the way up to the fourth jhana. It is said, if one has even a finger-snap's length of loving-kindness, his mind is not void of jhana. So once you experience this, then you go into sending loving-kindness in all directions, in the six directions. So the six directions are forward, backward, right, left, below you, above you, and then in all directions at the same time. Now, for some people who are visually oriented, they might imagine the directions filled with people and beings and animals and insects and birds and so on and so forth, in each direction and so on.

Or you might just experience a flow of this energy of loving kindness towards others. Whatever you experience is whatever you experience. matter if you're experiencing loving kindness above you you might experience it going to all the devas and brahmas and so on if you experience loving kindness below you you might experience sending loving kindness to animals and hungry ghosts and hell realm beings and so on but it doesn't really matter how you experience it as long as you keep radiating because eventually what happens is as you keep radiating in the six directions and in all directions at the same time your mind starts to become more expansive. You feel a sense of spaciousness. And the feeling of loving kindness becomes more diffuse.

So practically speaking, this diffuse, cottony, almost like cotton candy kind of feeling of loving-kindness is now compassion. And so what is compassion? Compassion is the recognition of other beings' suffering, and the genuine wish that they be free of that suffering. That does not mean that you become a Messiah and take on their suffering. Don't get into that savior complex. That means that you are recognizing their suffering because you recognize the suffering in your own being. And you genuinely wish that you are free of suffering and that they are free of suffering. So practically speaking, right, when we talk about compassion in action, oftentimes people experience fatigue from compassion. You'll see this mostly with doctors and nurses and people in certain kinds of medical industry, or whatever it might be.

And that's because they're giving too much of themselves. And compassion doesn't mean that you are a crutch for others. You are there. Compassion does not mean you have pity. Not pity in terms of joy, but sympathy. Sympathy is to look down on another person. Sympathy is to say, oh, I see you're suffering and I feel sorry for you. No, that's terrible. That's terrible. But compassion is saying, I see you, I understand, or at the very least, I recognize that you are suffering, and I'm here for you, whatever you might need. Maybe you just need a shoulder to cry on. Maybe you just need a person to talk to. Maybe you just need a hug. Maybe you just need somebody to be there in your presence and don't have to say anything.

This is all compassion in action. Be with the person and listen to them. Listen without judgment. Listen without giving an answer. Some people just need to be heard. They want somebody that will listen to them, but they don't need a response. They don't need an answer. They don't need any suggestions. Just listen. Hold that space for them. So this is compassion. You know, when the Buddha talks about, out of compassion, I have done what a teacher can do, what is he saying? I have shown you the path to Nibbana. I have shown you the Eightfold Path. I have shown you the Four Noble Truths. I have shown you the way to meditate. But I can only show you.

You yourself have to walk the path. If you do not follow instructions, then that's on you. But out of compassion, I have given you all that I can. Now you must meet me halfway and do the actual work. This is best exemplified in a sutta where somebody asks the Buddha, you know, you talk about Nibbana, you talk about the Four Noble Truths, you talk about the Dhamma and so on. But why is it that when people listen to you, some people experience Nibbana and others don't? So the Buddha says, I'll give you an analogy. Imagine Rajagaha. There's a place called Rajagaha in India, which is now known as Rajgir. Imagine there are two people who want to go to Rajagaha.

And the first person comes to you and says, please tell me the way to Rajagaha. And you say, okay, you go down this road, and then you walk through this path through the forest, when you reach the stream, and so on and so forth. And that's the way to Rajagaha. And then the second person comes up to you and asks you the same thing. You give them the same instructions. However, the first person doesn't actually follow the instructions. They go and then they do something else, and now they're no longer in Rajagaha. They're somewhere else. But the second person follows exactly the instructions, and he reaches Rajagaha. Why is it, he asks the person, the Buddha asks the person, that the first guy didn't reach Rajagaha and the second guy did?

And the person says, what can I do about that? If they followed my instructions, they would get to Rajagaha. And the Buddha says the same thing: what can I do about that? If they follow my instructions, they will get to Nibbana. There are those who do follow and there are those who don't follow. So we can be there to hold the space that they need. And that is compassion in action. But eventually they have to make moves. They have to take the steps to do what they can to come out of their own suffering. So this feeling of compassion is very soft. It's very gentle. It's diffused, not as vibratory as loving-kindness. And it is linked with this feeling of expansiveness and spaciousness.

Sometimes the spaciousness is as spacious as this room. Sometimes the spaciousness can be even more expansive than that. Perhaps it's out into the field. Perhaps it's out into the countryside. Perhaps it's out throughout the city, or even beyond that, and beyond that, or encompassing the entire world, or even beyond that. It can be boundless. It doesn't matter how far you reach out; that compassion and that spaciousness keep going outward. Now, the Buddha, whenever his schedule was such, or his routine was such, as it's mentioned in the commentaries, is that he would wake up and freshen up and then go for his morning walk. And then he would come and sit down, and he would go into what's known as Maha Karuna Samapatti.

So Maha Karuna Samapatti means the accomplishment or the attainment of great compassion. So he would do exactly that. He would send compassion in all directions to the entire world, to whoever's mind was ripe enough to experience the Dhamma, and he would go there. It was through this that he was able to go to Angulimala and realize that Angulimala could be saved from his detriment, or his future detriment, and so on and so forth. So this experience of compassion is very powerful. If you try it first thing in the morning, it is a great pick-me-up. It's a good replacement for caffeine. It is known to create gamma waves in the brain, which are related to your brain's ability to process information in a more efficient way, so you're more alert and more aware. Now, from this infinite space, what will happen? This is a naturally progressive process. You don't need to switch from compassion to the next thing; it happens on its own.

You don't need to switch from infinite space to the next thing. It happens on its own. So what is the next thing? Infinite consciousness. And tied to this infinite consciousness is what's known as empathetic joy. So what is empathetic joy? This is coming from the word mudita. It is the ability to rejoice in the happiness of other beings. And that's why empathetic joy is a wonderful antidote to jealousy, to envy, right? So when you see somebody happy, when you see somebody experiencing laughter, somebody experiencing success in their business, somebody driving that cool car down the road, how do you feel? Do you feel jealous? Do you feel like bringing them down? Or do you rejoice in that and you say that's great for them?

Do you generally say with the wish that I'm very happy for them, that that's good for them? So that is empathetic joy. Empathetic joy doesn't mean that we relish or rejoice in the success that comes from unwholesome states. Like if somebody buys a new house with a million dollars that they robbed through some kind of hack, we're not happy about that. We probably wouldn't even know about it. But in any case, we rejoice in the wholesome success of other people. And what is one way to rejoice in the wholesome success of other people? You find out, oh, somebody has experienced jhana. Wonderful. I am so happy for them. Oh, somebody has let go of their suffering.

I'm so happy for them. Somebody has experienced some kind of an attainment. I'm so happy for them, right? That is the practice, the ability to be happy for other people. So this is tied to what's known as infinite consciousness. Now, infinite consciousness can mean a few things. At the periphery, it can mean the mind becomes so expansive, so spacious, that the mind itself encompasses that space, that spaciousness. And so it is infinite mind, or it's infinite awareness. But at deeper and subtler levels, what happens is you start to see the arising and passing away of individual consciousnesses, sense-based consciousnesses. This is why in infinite consciousness, you might experience flickering. Even if your eyes are closed, you will feel some flickering.

You might notice concentric circles in your mind's eye. You might notice dots or stars glimmering in the background in your mind's eye. You might hear flickering or tapping in your ears. You might smell phantom smells. You might taste phantom tastes. You might feel electricity surging through your body, or you might start to see the gaps between your thoughts. All of these are different manifestations of infinite consciousness. And what is going on there is that the mind's attention becomes very, very sharp, so that it starts to see the iota of consciousnesses arising and passing away, individual consciousnesses arising and passing away. What is going on is that you're seeing contact, internal contact. Contact, contact, contact. You keep seeing this, and it's not in your control. It happens as a result of causes and conditions. And eventually what happens is you start to realize that, oh, this is impermanent. There is the arising of one consciousness and the passing away of that consciousness. There's the arising of another consciousness and the passing away of that other consciousness.

And so you realize the true nature of impermanence. Eventually, it becomes tiresome. It becomes boring. It's suffering, right? You experience dukkha in that moment. And then you see that there is no controller here. I am not causing this flickering to happen. I am not causing the arising and passing away to happen, due to impersonal causes and conditions, and therefore you see anatta. You see the impersonal nature of all conditioned experience. This then leads you into where the flickering, or the arising and passing away, starts to slow down, and it is replaced by what's known as nothingness, and tied to that nothingness is what's known as equanimity, upekkha. So what is this equanimity? How do you experience this equanimity?

Equanimity is calmness. Equanimity is serenity. Equanimity is balance. Equanimity is being okay with whatever is happening. It is total radical acceptance of everything as it actually is. And it is experienced in terms of the mind as being very calm, as being very tranquil, as being very collected. And this equanimity is an antidote for restlessness in daily life. It is an antidote for any kind of craving that arises in daily life. Let's say you're driving down the road on your way to work, in traffic. How does your mind respond? Does it feel agitated? Does it feel anxious? Does it feel jittery? If it does, what can you do? Come back to the present moment and start radiating equanimity to yourself.

You can start with saying, "May I be calm? May I be collected? May I be at peace? May all beings be calm? May all beings be collected? May all beings be at peace?" This starts to downshift your mental activity into that equanimity. And so, tied with this equanimity, the limit of equanimity is nothingness, or no-thingness. Here the mind is totally internalized. Here the mind remains in this blank canvas, which can be manifested in the mind as totally dark space, or a white space, or a blue space, or any kind of space where absolutely nothing is going on. For miles around in your mind, absolutely nothing is going on. It is just quietness. Now, while you're here, that feeling of equanimity that you're radiating as loving kindness might be, or the other Brahmaviharas might be.

It might just be trickles of equanimity being sent out. And that's okay. In fact, I would say when you're sending equanimity, it's more like a pebble that you drop into the lake, and you start to notice the surface starting to have ripples. And eventually those ripples start to fade away, and you're left with stillness again. So you drop another pebble, which is you drop another intention of equanimity, and that creates more ripples on the surface of the lake. And eventually that fades away. You do that over and over until the mind doesn't want to do any more. And you'll know the mind doesn't want to do any more because it feels too tense. There is just stillness.

Now we are getting into the territory of the eighth jhana, which is neither perception nor non-perception. So before we get into neither perception nor non-perception, we have to understand what that stillness is that we are experiencing. That stillness we're experiencing is just mind itself. There are levels to this. You've all heard about, at least peripherally, the quiet mind, but there's layers to this. The first level is just mind, that is to say, mind watching mind. So the mind turns in on itself and it's just watching. There might still be activity there. There might still be sounds in the background. There might still be little percolations in the mind there, but the mind is just observing itself.

Eventually, that starts to quiet down into this space called neither perception nor non-perception. What is neither perception nor non-perception? Let's take the word perception and understand what it means. Perception is the ability to recognize what it is that you've experienced before, because perception is rooted in memory. Perception is that part of the mind that says, oh, this is the color red, or this is an oak tree, or that's the number four, or the sky has cumulus clouds, or whatever it is. So feeling or experience is going on, but that which labels the experience is perception. So that perception is the ability to remember, to recognize what is going on. So neither perception nor non-perception can also be understood as neither recognition nor non-recognition, neither comprehension nor non-comprehension.

Perception is very fuzzy. It's like being in a hypnagogic state. It's like you are asleep but you're awake at the same time. There's all kinds of random thoughts and images and ideas that come about, right? It's almost like, what am I thinking here? What exactly is going on here? You're not able to really recognize what it is that the mind is trying to make sense of, because it doesn't make any sense. All of these different formations percolate up into these thought bubbles, and as soon as you try to look at them, as soon as you try to make sense of them, guess what? Now you are perceiving, which means you are no longer in neither perception nor non-perception. You are in full perception. So stay with it. Go with the flow. Don't try to figure out what's going on. Let the mind be.

That's why I say at this point, don't do anything. That is the most difficult instruction that people can apply. It sounds so simple, but the mind wants to do something. Oh, maybe I need to tweak a little bit of my equanimity. Maybe I need a little bit more joy, or maybe I should observe what's going on very closely.

No. Don't do anything. Absolutely nothing. If I say just rest, what's going to happen? Your mind's going to say, okay, I need to rest. What does that rest mean? How does the rest feel like? If I say just observe, then you're going to think, okay, what do I observe? How do I observe? Is there a way to observe this, or not observe that? I'm saying don't do anything.

Right? So in that space, eventually, the mind starts to sink down further. It's like the fog clears. The neither perception or non-perception clears into now what is quiet mind. So this quiet mind is the Pabhasarachitta. It is the luminous mind. And when we say luminous, it doesn't necessarily mean that there is white space or light or something in your mind's eye. is that it is fully aware. It has clarity of mindfulness, complete clarity. So in this quiet mind, things might still pop up once in a while. And these are the sankharas. These are formations, or what I call proto-thoughts. Little bubbling up of ideas and patterns that before they can come up to the surface of the pool and turn into big, thoughts they're just here and that's the space you are in when you are in neither perception nor non perception so in this quiet mind there is nothing but just just mind right and eventually all of those different bubbling up all of that they start to diminish they start to dissipate and now you're in what's known as still mind or very clear mind where absolutely not even one percolation happens.

And you can stay in this state and it feels like you're frozen. It feels like the mind is just not frozen in the sense that you're locked into something. It just feels like, wow, there was stuff going on and everything just went on to pause. And everything became very still all of a sudden. In that space, you don't do anything either. You just are present, right? You are surrendering to what is going on. And you allow that to happen deeper and deeper and deeper. There's nothing you can do to get to that space. It will happen as soon as you surrender any idea of doing something. And in that stillness, in that still mind, you start to go even deeper, into what's known as, or what I call, the doorway to the signless.

And in this doorway to the signless, it feels like you have hit a wall. Not in a negative way, but it's like you're walking through some kind of portal, right? And sometimes it feels like you're seeing, when you see static on the old television sets, when nothing is going on, or you see some bright yellowish green wall or something, some kind of wall of light. And that is the doorway into the signless. Now, while you're here, what do you do?

Nothing. You don't do anything. If at all, you just let go. If your mind feels like it wants to go into it, you let go of that as well. It will merge through or it will submerge into that wall. And eventually on the other side, you get into what's known as animitta samadhi. Animitta means, so nimitta means sign or object. Animitta means objectless or signless collectedness of mind. Animitta samadhi of mind means that there is absolutely no object taken. So then, what is the difference between nothingness and signless collectedness of mind? In nothingness, equanimity is taken as the object. In signless collectedness of mind, the mind doesn't land on anything. It is just pure awareness dependent upon mind.

That's it. Imagine taking a flashlight and pointing it up into the sky. Now imagine you have different pieces, pieces of cellophane, different colors. You have eight different colors, right? And so these are all of the different jhanas. You take away each of the cellophane and now all you have left is the light and it's pointing directly up into the sky, all the way up into space. For the sake of understanding, imagine that light keeps going on and it doesn't land on anything. There's no meteorite, there's no asteroid, there's no quasars, there's no stars, there's nothing. It just keeps going. It keeps going. That is the awareness in the signless collectedness of mind. It doesn't take anything as an object.

It doesn't land on anything. It is just awareness, awareness. Awareness of what? Just awareness. Pure awareness. Now, using that analogy, eventually what happens? The battery in the flashlight runs out. That is the formations that continue to keep this awareness going. So long as you don't allow the mind to pay attention to the formations and just stay in that signless collectedness of mind, those formations will diminish even further. The last set of formations that arise in this space are related to the sense of identity, and this is why there is fear sometimes in this space, because the identity is being loosened up, because the sense of self feels like it's going to die. And that's okay. If it goes away, it goes away. But you, the so-called you, that is the mind observing what's going on, you try to relax it, you try to let it go, and what happens when you do that? It tightens up even more. So in this signless state of mind, the signless collectedness of mind, you don't have to relax. You don't have to do anything. Again, don't do anything.

In the very seeing of something coming up, that itself is dissipating. In Tibetan Buddhism, this is known as self-liberating thoughts. The thoughts, the formations, liberate themselves. They go away because there's no fuel of attention being given to them. And as the battery runs out, what happens? The light switches off. And now you have cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness. Now, in this experience of cessation, you won't know that you are in cessation. But when you come out of it, your mind will realize something had happened. There was a gap in your awareness, some missing footage in the film reel. There was a 404 error, 404 not found, right? And so when you come out of that space, your mind would have touched, or could have possibly touched, the Nibbana dhatu, that is, the Nibbana element.

As a result of experiencing Nibbana, your mind experiences extreme amounts of clarity and joy and happiness and relief. So in this process, the mind's contact with Nibbana is unconditioned. It is, as the Suttas say, the three kinds of contact: the signless contact, the undirected contact, and the empty or void contact. Why are they called this? It is signless because it takes nothing as an object, because it sees everything as impermanent. It is undirected because it is not interested in anything. It doesn't crave for anything. And therefore, it sees dukkha in everything. And therefore, it is undirected. It is void or empty. Empty of what? Empty of taking anything personally, impersonal. So this contact, which is unconditioned, gives rise to a conditioned feeling of joy and relief and so on. And as a result, when you come out of the meditation, what's the first thing you do? Oh wow, what was that? That was amazing, right? You see certain things, and then your mind experiences all this joy. So now the formations come to be.

So the order in which they cease, the types of formations that cease, is in this way. In the second jhana, the verbal formation ceases. What does that mean? The process of intentionally thinking about this or that ceases. In the fourth jhana, the bodily formation ceases, which means now you are more in the mental level. Just prior to cessation, the mental formations cease, which means mental formations that allow you to feel and perceive cease. And when the mind boots back up, it comes back up in the reverse order. Mental formations arise first. There is the feeling of joy and happiness. There is some feeling of being present again in the body. And then there is, oh wow, what was that?

Formations coming online. And then when you come out of this, you will see for yourself, everything seems fresh, everything seems new, the colors are brighter, the sky is bluer, you feel like you're floating on cloud nine. And if this happens, you come into the interview, you say, I've had this experience, I say, great, enjoy it, take it easy. When you're ready to go back into meditation, meditate again. And then you do it again. And then you do it again, you do it again, you do it again, right? Now, not every cessation will mean that you've experienced Nibbana. Some cessations are just the mind dropping into cessation; it has clarity, and it has dropped some levels of suffering.

For cessation to then have been followed by Nibbana, that means there is some kind of possible attainment that could have happened. The path and the fruition of one or more of these four attainments. So they are stream entry, they are once-returner, non-returner, and fully awakened, right? So sometimes people have fear of that too. They're like, I don't want to go any deeper than this because what does that mean about my relationships with people?

What does that mean in regards to my intimacy with my spouse or my partner, and all of that? Hey, guess what? If you have fear about it, it's not going to happen. So relax, no big deal. You can't accidentally slip into becoming an anagami or an the meditation. But the key to understanding all of this is it requires all the proper ingredients, namely sila, right? Being able to keep your precepts all the time, being attentive to every moment as it arises, and noticing what's going on in your mind in relation to experiences. Is there craving, or is the mind free of craving in that moment? If there is craving, are we able to let it go?

Because the more you're able to let go in daily living, the easier the meditation flows. And the more you're able to let go in the meditation, the easier it becomes to let go in daily living. So this feedback loop system is ingrained in the practice of the Dhamma. And eventually, when the causes and conditions are ripe, your mind lets go completely and drops certain fetters, and after dropping those fetters, your mind experiences a certain attainment. Now, your mind is your teacher. Your mind will tell you what is going on. Your mind will let you know, there is still a tinge of craving, or there's still a tinge of aversion, or there is no more craving here, there is no more aversion, but there's still a tinge of restlessness, there's still a tinge of conceit or whatever it might be. So trust in your mind and give it space, give it time, experiment with all of the different experiences. Get yourself involved in difficult situations and see how your mind reacts or responds to them, and then you will know for certainty where you are on the path. Now, are there any questions?