DO Series - The Link of CRAVING/TANHA

I just wanted to, we'll kind of open this up. I just wanted to make sure that everybody's aware that Delson will be talking about craving today. That's the cover of the book. This is a photo that he took on the Ganges of a funeral pyre. And there's a foot in here somewhere. I don't, that might be it there, but maybe he can talk to that. Cover and today we'll be talking about this subject. This will be the last look of the dependent origination series for now, more to come maybe next year, but there will be one more meeting, and that will be next week, and the subject will be the end of craving, Nibbana. Man, but with that I'm going to turn it over to John.

Hello. John. Hi. Thanks, David. Hello, friends. So I've been, over these talks, I've been showing various aspects of Delson's social media presence. So today I thought I would just do a bit of a summary, one last chance at proliferation before we go to Nirvana next week. So there's one place, actually, Instagram connects to a site that has a whole bunch of links that goes from Delson's Instagram. And so, of course, there's the website.

And now there's a Facebook page. Instagram itself. And we have TikTok. And I just slipped in the Delson bot for fun. And then, of course, there's Delson's page on Damosuka. There's the Freedom of Mind website. There's the book. And so, anyway, there's all these different links. And I guess some people are wondering why all the links and why all the connections and why so much, why TikTok videos, et cetera. And I think of us as kind of like we lucky few. We have the access and we've had the chance to practice. And if you look around in the world, there's so many people who have no idea how easy it would be for their lives to change for the better.

And all they would need is just to have a chance to know about it and to try it for themselves. And so reaching out in these different forums like TikTok and Instagram reaches a whole other audiences that otherwise wouldn't hear about this. And that's the reason why we're trying to expand it out like this. So I'm just going to dump the links into the chat here and enjoy them at your leisure. And with that, I'll hand it back over to David and Delson. Thank you. Thank you, John. The link for the link tree is in the chat now, I believe. Yeah, they're all there. And with that, let me go ahead and spotlight Delson.

and we'll get started with some craving. Delson, you are on. Okay. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about that photo cover that's behind David, the cover photo, rather. And this was taken on one of my now half a dozen trips to Varanasi. Somehow, like that line from The Godfather, just when you think you're out, they pull me back in. It's been like every few months I had to go to Varanasi for something or another, but it's not a complaint at all. It was a wonderful experience. So on one of the trips, I had been with a student there and we saw this live funeral pyre going on. It was the most interesting thing in Varanasi because you go down this, you go down the river and you see all of life there.

You see people washing their clothes, they're praying, they're doing different kinds of rituals. And then there's this particular place called the Manikarna Ghat, where it's supposed to be for Hindus, the holiest place to get your body cremated at. And so we stopped at just before or just after Manikarna Ghat, is a big entrance to a famous temple, which is called the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. And so the student of mine and I, we got off the boat and went to the temple and came out. And we saw this thing going on, which was this funeral pyre. And maybe 10, 12 feet away from it, there was this vendor who was selling fruits. So it was like the most bizarre thing you saw.

It was like, there's life and death, business and everything going on. It's all of samsara has been abbreviated or compacted into that particular river tour of Varanasi. And I remember, of course, I took David and Bhante Kusala and Kirsten out there and it was a great experience. So anybody who is looking for something like that should definitely check it out. And yeah, I think it's a foot or an arm, but it's right next to David's. On his right, if you see that black thing, it looks like this. It's some arm or a foot or something. Anyway, Varanasi really helps you to realize the impermanence very quickly. The humdrum, the dukkha, the impermanence, all of that.

And it really starts to bring up that samvega. I should be doing something. I should be practicing. I should be learning how to let go. So what are we trying to let go now? We are trying to let go of craving. Craving, this is a book that has been a long time coming. I think I finished the other books sometime in 2021, and then they were published a little later after that. And so then there was a question, when's craving coming out? When's craving coming out? And I said, I'm working on it bit by bit. And I've been stuck in craving ever since. I've been just trying to figure out how to get out of craving.

And finally, what had to be done has been done. I sent an email out to David with the manuscript. And then that was it. I had such relief. After I finished writing that final sentence, there was such relief. It was over, it was done with, and yet now there is still work left to be done, because we have to discuss feeling and ignorance and formations and all that, and we will get to that in due time. But hopefully until then you will be satisfied with craving. So what is craving? What is craving? Craving comes from the Pali word tanha or the Sanskrit trishna. And this literally means to thirst, to be thirsty, right? It's not desire.

It's not something that you want, even though we've talked about it in that context before. But it's beyond just desire. And desire in itself is not bad, right? It's neither good nor bad. We personify desire because we experience it ourselves in the way that we want things, we like things, we want to acquire things and so on. But there is this push and pull that happens throughout samsara that's also outside of the scope of human experience, with animals and with other beings, and then even just what's happening out there in the universe. But craving is something altogether. Right. So tanha, to thirst. Think about when you are thirsty. You haven't had a drink of water all throughout the day.

How do you feel physically? How do you feel mentally? How do you feel emotionally? It is uncomfortable. It creates discomfort in the mind and the body. Glass of water, and in your desire, for lack of a better word, in your craving for that glass of water, you will do anything. You will do everything to get that glass of water. That is what craving is. You become obsessed by whatever experience you're having, either because you want to possess it and you don't want it to stop, or it's so irritating and annoying to the system

It's so aversive to the system that the mind says, I don't like this. Get it away from me, and starts to push it away to the point that you become angry. You become even sometimes violent in order to protect yourself from that aversive experience. And then there's another aspect to it, which is getting caught up in the experience itself with the sense of me, mine, myself. There was a question that was asked a couple of weeks ago about how do I know I'm taking something personally? How do we know we're taking something personally? When there's an I or me or mine, that doesn't mean that we're taking it personally, because you always use that in daily language.

You always use that in your transactional experiences. But there's something else, which is the conceit. And that conceit is basically comparing, where you are comparing and contrasting between me and the other. And then you say, oh, he seems to be more well-off than I am. Or I feel sorry for this person. They're worse off than I am. Or even, we have to be equal. All of that is creating that conceit. It's that process of conceit that creates this idea that I am separate from everything else. Immerses itself in the process of the links of dependent origination, then there is a greater wisdom that arises, which is that there is the knowing of anatta and the experience of anatta, also sometimes translated as emptiness, coming from the word shunyata, because you realize that every process that is happening is interdependent.

Is interlinked. There is no separate independent self. It is all arising and passing away due to causes and conditions that are interdependent with one another. And through this experience, or through this insight, the mind starts to let go in that moment of that conceit. And eventually it becomes the lived reality, the lived experience, where all throughout the day you are not only aware of it, but you live it. You are seeing it, that this is all an impersonal process. And when you see it in that way, you can still use the words of I, me, myself, but you don't get caught up in it, where you have that conceit. There's another way of understanding what conceit is.

Conceit is essentially the mind looking for stability in an otherwise unstable world. Samsara is unstable. Samsara is anicca. Anicca is usually translated as impermanent, but actually it's instability, unstable. Things are always in flux. And so our misperceptions of the experiences that we have, where we don't realize the condition or conditionality or interdependence of all experience, leads to our perception of, you know, impermanence, that we think that this is permanent. We expect it to be permanent in its joy, in its pleasant experiences. And that which is actually an impersonal process, then we take it up on ourselves to say, this is me, this is mine, this is affecting a sense of me.

Now, if we find ourselves in this process and we have the wisdom, or we have at least the tools to understand and see what's going on, it's better to; then if we miss it, it's fine. If it happens again, we have the ability to recognize that the mind is holding on to something, attention. Our attention, which is causing the further propagation of that conceit. We come back and anchor ourselves to the here and now, to the present moment. And when we do that, we relax into it. We relax and feel that when we actually are embodied, so to speak. Then we can do the next step, which is to, after having rooted out, or abandoned, or let go of the unwholesome state, we bring up the wholesome state of mind.

We gravitate towards joy. We gravitate towards equanimity. We gravitate towards just resting in that sky mind, in that mind which is mundane nibbana. Because in the release and in the relaxation of the craving, of the tightness and tension, is joy to be found. It's almost like a super mundane joy. And so we rest in that, or we come back to an object of meditation when we're meditating, and we continue on. So that should be your home base, this experience of relief. And, well, I shouldn't say should, because that's, I'll get into that a little bit later when I say should or must or have to. But what I mean to say is, that home base is always available to you.

You know, that place of security, what the Buddha calls the refuge, the shelter, the island. We'll delve deeper into this when we talk about Nibbana, but that is where you can just rest into. Anytime. It's accessible to you. Only if you learn and know and apply how to relax and let go of the craving. So when we talk about twin practice and when we talk about in our previous Dhamma talks what craving is and what Bhante Vimalaramsi has called it, it is the tightness and tension. The tightness and tension is the manifestation of that craving, right? That's how you recognize craving. And this is what Bhante had always said. He went to this teacher and the other teacher and that teacher.

He asked them, what is craving? How would you define craving? And they would say, oh, it's desire, or, oh, it's, craving is craving. It's just this, it's just that. But he didn't find a satisfactory answer. And so by linking or joining or showing that tension is an emanation, a manifestation of craving, we can now directly deal with the craving by treating the tension that arises, by letting it go. So that's the quickest way to recognize the craving is as a manifestation in tension. So there are three kinds of craving that are usually talked about. There is the kamatanha, which is the sensual craving. Bhava tanha, which is the craving for existence, and vibhava tanha, which is the craving for non-existence. So, sensual craving, what does that mean? What is sensual craving? It's tied to the physical sense basis: the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue and the body.

And sensual craving is essentially where you are experiencing. So vedana is an experience. Vedana is a feeling. It's usually translated as a feeling, but it's an experience of anything, whether it's in the mind or in the body. And when vedana arises, if it's a pleasant experience, a pleasant sensory experience, then the mind can get caught up in it and say, oh, this is wonderful. This is great. Saying that this is wonderful and this is great, or by saying or thinking I like this, is not the craving. What happens is you know there's craving when that particular pleasant sensation stops. When it stops, then how does your mind respond? How does it react? If it's taken away from you, if that wonderful slice of chocolate cake is put in front of you, right?

with a tall glass of ice cold milk, and you enjoy the chocolate cake and you enjoy the glass of milk, and it's a pleasant sensation and you experience and you love it. It's great. Now you look forward to it the next time you have lunch, because you heard that there's more cake to be had. But this time around something happens. Maybe there's a delay in the delivery, or somebody had an accident and the cake fell out, or whatever. And how does your mind react? Oh, I wish I had that cake. You know, that tension arises. That's the craving. That's the initial arising of the craving, which is called the underlying tendency towards craving.

So the same can happen with aversion. So when we talk about the link of craving, it's not just the craving for something, but it's also the aversion against something, the aversion of saying, I don't like this. There's a tendency for people at Dhammasuka to open the doors wide and close the doors shut in a way that causes disturbance to the ears. So while you're meditating, you're doing well, and maybe you are experiencing deep levels of loving kindness and joy and equanimity, and then slam. Somebody just shuts the door, and then your mind just goes there, and then you get irritated, and you say, can't they? and they should know better. And then you just start to go into all this proliferation.

What happened there? There was an unpleasant sensation. There was just a sensation, right? The sound of the door shutting. But then, because you were taken out from the meditative experience, now your mind went to that. And instead of saying, oh, okay, I'll go back to it now, just come back to the meditation object. Now you're thinking, oh, I better talk to that person who did it. Slam the door that way, I gotta tell David, I gotta let the staff know, and this and that and all the other stuff, right? That's another kind of aversion. So the underlying tendency towards aversion arose where you were thinking about how difficult and challenging this is, and now you have a bone to pick with that person or with the door itself. Maybe think about giving Dhammasuka another kind of door that doesn't slam so hard, and whatever it is. And then the other part of the craving, the sensual craving, is the identification with it.

So what does that mean? It means that you see the experience of the sense basis as mine, as belonging to me, rather than seeing it all as an impersonal process. That is easier said than done. So I wouldn't expect anyone to really get that immediately. But the idea here is that when you're enjoying that piece of cake, you are there in the moment enjoying it and you're okay with it. But you also see that, okay, there is a tasting going on. There's a flavor of sweetness going on. There is a softness to the cake. There is a cold sensation with the milk. What is going on when you're doing this? You're not noting it.

You're not noting eating, eating, eating. You're not noting tasting, tasting, tasting. You're just aware of it. So you are applying sati sampajanya. You see, the word sati is usually translated as mindfulness. I generally don't like to use the word mindfulness, but I have to because it's so universal throughout the world of the Dhamma, now, in the English-speaking world. But sati is only half the picture. It's actually two things: sati, sampajanya. That is what we talk about when we say mindfulness. The sati aspect is just remembering to come back to the present, coming back to what it is that you're doing. It's allowing your mind to anchor into it. That's why we have the Satipatthanas.

The Satipatthana, the foundations of mindfulness, are anchor points to bring your awareness and your attention back to the present moment. mind's attention is. So really, when we talk about mindfulness, it's really seeing things as they are, right? In other words, that's part of the equanimity and the attention and so on. But it's bringing all of that together so that you come back to the present moment. So the very simple way of explaining this, as Bhante has, and it's a great way of explaining mindfulness, is remembering, right? That's the sati, remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other, from one object to the other. That part is sampajanya. So it's together, sati sampajanya, that is your gatekeeper. When you do that, then you let go, or you don't even have to let go, because you see it already through the lens of yoniso manasikara. So what is yoniso manasikara? It's radical attention.

It is attention rooted in reality. What does that mean? It means that you are seeing things through the lens of the three characteristics. You understand that this is an impermanent process. You understand this is an impersonal process. You understand that right now I'm enjoying it, but it can go, and that's fine. And that's okay. So you have equanimity there. You're able to see things as they are. So through that yoniso manasikara, you have the mindfulness, you have the sati. Because of all of that, there is a gatekeeping. None of the underlying tendencies can arise to bridge the gap between feeling and craving.

So that's the sensual craving. It's tied to the sense basis. When we talk about craving for existence, bhava tanha, that is essentially craving for a specific outcome. You are attached to how things should be. This is what Albert Ellis called musturbation. Things must be a certain way. I have to do things a certain way. Right? Should, that's what I was talking about, the word should. I shouldn't use the word should. That's another should. It's a little problematic there. So basically what we're saying is there's three levels, right? There's an expectation of how I should be. There's an expectation of how the people around me should be, my friends and my family members and everybody else in my circle.

And then there's a larger expectation of how the world should be. And so that is also part of craving for existence, because we're saying that I want this to be a certain way. And when those expectations are not met, what do we experience? Do we experience suffering? We beat ourselves up because we forgot to meditate. We beat ourselves up because, oh, I forgot to sex art that. Like I couldn't see that. Now I beat myself up for it. We, you know, hold a certain standard for the people in our lives. And when they don't meet it, we get upset by that. Oh, how could they speak to me that way? Why do they say this?

Why do they say that? And when the stuff in the world that's going on, we want peace in the world. We want tranquility in the world. And yet we turn on the news and we see all this nonsense that's happening, right? So that creates suffering in our minds again. So letting go of expectations. How do we do that? How do we let go of the craving for existence? to understanding one fundamental truth about this whole process. And that is that samsara will always be the way it is. Right? We can do what we can. We can do our part to try to make the world a better place. But if we go out doing that all the time, we will be fatigued.

So it starts first from us. It starts from being a friend to ourselves. It starts from being loving and kind to ourselves. You know, there's oftentimes what happens is we have great friends and we want the best for them and we give them great advice. We tell them, maybe you should do this, maybe you should do that, right? Because you genuinely care for them. But how about ourselves? Why don't we treat ourselves like our own friend, our best friend? If you can give advice to them, why not give advice to yourself, right? In the morning, when you wake up, think to yourself, oh, how great of a day this is. See the things that you're grateful for about your own things. I'm a great speaker, or I'm a great musician, or I'm a great painter, or I'm doing a great job here. I'm really enjoying this process. What that means is gratitude, right? Gratitude for oneself, appreciation for oneself, loving kindness for oneself, compassion for oneself.

Okay, I messed up. I screwed up, but it's okay. I'll try better next time. Instead of beating yourself up. Yeah, I'm suffering right now. Instead of trying to run away from that suffering, you're actually facing it and you're leaning into it and saying, okay, I do feel this suffering, but it's okay. And you start to see that melt away when you send yourself compassion. The appreciation for yourself is that appreciative joy. The equanimity for yourself, which is you have patience for yourself. You have patience for your own mind. You have patience for your own worry. Okay, I'm getting worried, but okay. It's just the mind running its course. You know, patience with your own mind.

When you do this, you bring your mind back into whatever's happening right here, right now. And you're not looking for something of a future self to be, where maybe you were better off in the past, you say, or you were worse off in the past, you say, and you say, I'm better now. Or you look to the future and you think, I want to be this way. Why can't you just do that now? And why not just take the steps to do that now? The future will take care of itself. We know this. Through the process of causes and conditions, we know and see that things will happen a certain way. And if they don't, that's just our expectations, being met.

So coming back to what we're doing right here, right now, being appreciative of what we're doing right here, right now, that starts to take off the first level, the first layer of the craving for existence. What about our friends and family? Instead of having expectations for how they should be, we should have more appreciation for them, have more loving kindness for them, be a friend to them. Be patient with them. Understand that they're suffering the same way as we are. That is true compassion. The recognition of their suffering, right, is from the recognition that I'm suffering. So why would I want to inflict pain on them? So I don't try to expect something from them.

Not because I have lost all hope in them, but because I find more peace in being here now and just allowing things to be as they are. Likewise with the world. Then there's the whole process of meditation. I want to be a certain kind of meditator. That in itself is not craving for existence. That is what is known as chanda. There's a difference between chanda and tanha. As we already said, tanha is like that obsessive quality to this experience that I need to possess it. I need to keep holding on to it. Or I'm just pushing it away. processes I'm identifying with it. Chanda is a wholesome intention. It's a wholesome desire. Yes, I want to meditate.

I want to experience Nibbana. I want to experience the first jhana. I want to sit for 20 minutes. I want to sit for two hours, whatever it is. Those are all good goals to have. Those are all part of chanda. The chanda is like, you're setting the course towards Nibbana, right? Or you're setting the course towards being in the first jhana or whatever it is.

But while you're setting that course, you just let things be as they are. You might notice once in a while, okay, where are we? Are we getting off course or not? But you don't micromanage throughout that whole process. By micromanaging that whole process, you're becoming more obsessive and you're losing sight of what needs to actually be done in order to experience that particular goal. That is where craving gets in the way. Getting obsessed by how things need to be, getting obsessed by whether I'm achieving my KPIs or not. So the idea here is to just set the rudder and enjoy the process as best as you can.

It is also known as vibhavatanha, that is the craving for non-existence, that's the flip side. Vibhavatanha is essentially where you say, I'm not satisfied with things as they are and I want things to change. That's part of chanda. That can be part of chanda if you know that the state that you're in is an unwholesome state, or it's a negative state, or it's not a helpful state. There's another aspect to it, which is, I don't want to be here and I don't want this, because it's got an aversive quality to it. It says, oh, I have to find my way out of this. And you become obsessed by it. Everything becomes very overwhelming.

Being in this place here is overwhelming. Being with the people I'm with is overwhelming. Sitting here in meditation is overwhelming. And so you just want to escape it. So the extreme form of that is wanting to end this existence, because it's way too overwhelming for the senses and for the mind. The reason is because, again, the mind is not paying attention to what's going on right now. It's always creating an image of what needs to be done. It's creating an image that this is how it has to be. When it's not met, there's conflict. And when there's conflict, the mind says, I have to resolve this conflict. And the only way to do it is to escape the reality instead of changing the image.

Come back to what the internal image is. What am I expecting right now? Are things really that bad? Are things manageable or really that unmanageable? What if I just come back here and come back to the present? What if I just focus on my breathing for a moment? I just notice tightness and tension right here? What if I just relax into it? The more you're able to do this, you're going to see that the anxieties around it start to melt away. And the craving for non-existence starts to dissipate, starts to dissolve. There is another part in the book that I talk about, which is called the four F's of craving. The four F's of craving.

That is fight or flight, freeze, and fawn. So you might have heard of this in other places in terms of psychology and behavioral science and so on. But that also gives some insight into what we're doing here when we're relaxing tightness and tension. Because what's going on is when we crave for something, our life has, in that moment, become unbalanced. There's a tension there. And in order for us to come back to balance, in order for us to feel relief again, free of that tension, we fight after it. We go after it. We want it. And we think once we have it, we'll experience relief again. And this starts to recondition how our mind creates this process.

It starts to recondition how we react to these situations. When there's aversion, we fly away from it. We go into flight response, right? We say, I feel tension. And the cause of this tension is this experience. And if I just go away from it, I'll feel relief again. And when I do, that's now my habitual tendency, my habitual reaction. Or we freeze. What does it mean to freeze? We freeze because we don't know what to do. We're just kind of stuck in there. Maybe we're overwhelmed by anxiety or whatever it is. And if that happens, it's important to kind of just lean into it and keep moving forward. Maybe even just physically move around. Because then you start to anchor your mindfulness into the body.

And through that foundation of mindfulness, you bring back sati-sampajanna. You bring back attention. And now you can face the situation as it's required. What is fawn? What does it mean to fawn? We try to put things under the rug. There's a difficult person or a difficult experience and we don't really beat around the bush as to what we want to say to them. And we try to disengage from the conflict from an aversive standpoint instead of trying to resolve it. And so this manifests as trying to please other people, or not trying to muddy the waters by saying what you require, or whatever it is.

So you need to train yourself. You need to see that happening and that there's an aversive quality to it and let go of that. So when we see that every time we've relaxed into an experience and come back to anchoring the mind to what is the experience as the experience, in other words, in the seeing, there's only the seen. In the hearing, there's only the heard. In the sensing, there's only the sense. In the cognizing, there's only the cognized. When we don't attach an I to it, when we're just flowing through that experience, then that is the end of suffering, which means there is no craving that will arise there. But when there is some kind of imbalance, the majority of people who are untrained in this process is to look at it and say, I need to come back to homeostasis.

I need to come back to a place where I can feel relief again. So what do I do? I try to push the object of aversion, or I try to hold on to the object of craving, or I stick my roots deep into the sense of, no, this is me. This is mine. This is myself. And then we feel a temporary release of tension there. And we think that is the way we need to work with things. This is why we do the six R's, to retrain the mind, to reconfigure, recondition the mind, coming back to the understanding that actually we are always in, or can be in, this process of being in relief.

The mind, monks, luminous is the mind. The nature of the mind is to be luminous. What does that mean? It doesn't mean there's some bright halo shining out from my brain. When we say luminosity or luminous, we're talking about the light of wisdom. The true nature of the mind already has Nibbana. Because when we're meditating, what we're doing is we're uncovering the debris, defilements. That's what the Buddha calls them. The adventitious defilements. What does adventitious mean? It means that which is not inherent to the mind. In other words, the nature of the mind is not to be craving. The nature of the mind is not to be clinging. The nature of the mind is to be mindful all the time.

The nature of the mind is to have that clarity, that spaciousness, that experience of. That's what the title of that book means, A Mind Without Craving. It is the mind that is always immersed in Nibbana. In other words, it's a mind which doesn't get caught up in this or that. It's relaxed at all times. So that is the true nature of the mind. But what happens is the mind gets caught up in this or that. And it does that through the experiences. It does that through learning what's going on. It does that because of past karma. It does that because of past situations. We're all here to deal with that. We're all here for a certain experience to be had.

Not to create new experiences. Not to generate new karma. We're here to just live out the karma that we are supposed to live out. Then, if we've done that successfully, don't come back to Nibbana. I'll talk a little bit more about that when we talk about Nibbana at full. But basically what we're saying is craving is like this layer of debris on the mind. And we latch onto it, and it sticks in our mind, because that's how the mind trains itself to survive in this world, in samsara. But now as we start to relax and we see things as they actually are, then we realize that we don't need to have craving. We don't need to have clinging.

We can just be satisfied and content in being in this space, in this field of the nibbanic mind. So this is the process of craving, right? This is what I talk about, the majority of it, in the book. And in the suttas, the Buddha talks about different types of craving besides the three types of craving. Identifying with the past, identifying with the future, or even identifying with the present. There's 62 or something like that types of craving generated because of these elements of the past, present, and future. So I am because of this. I am because of that. I am not because of this. I will be because of this. I won't be because of that.

These kinds of thought processes are all part of that craving link. So how does feeling and craving connect? What is it that bridges the gap between the feeling and craving? It's primarily ignorance, right? Ignorance is lack of mindfulness. Remember I said mindfulness is the gatekeeper, but when your mindfulness is muddled and you're getting caught up in something, there's something else that arises in the feeling, something that underlies the feeling. And what is it that underlies the feeling? It is the underlying tendencies. There's seven of them usually, and they're different lists of the seven, but primarily they are: underlying tendency towards craving, underlying tendency towards aversion, underlying tendency towards ignorance, underlying tendency towards views, tendency towards existence, underlying tendency towards doubt, and underlying tendency towards conceit.

So what do these underlying tendencies do? What are they doing to bridge the gap between feeling and full-blown craving, the link of craving? The underlying tendency towards craving itself is generally sensual craving, but craving in general. That is basically the tension that arises and says, I want this. I like this and I don't want it to stop. An initial thought that starts to pull us, not able to see that and just relax it. Then it goes into full-blown craving, where we get obsessed by it. We say, I need to have this. And then we say, I need to have this because of so-and-so. And that's the clinging and so on. The underlying tendency to aversion is the flip side, where we say, this is an unpleasant experience.

This is a painful sensation. I don't like it. Still, that's fine. You can say, I don't like it. You can think I don't like it. It can be annoying. It can be frustrating. But then there is the tension of, I need this to stop. This needs to stop right now. And so that's the underlying tendency to aversion, towards aversion, rising to full-blown aversion. The underlying tendency towards ignorance.

Now, with craving, the underlying tendency to craving will always underlie a pleasant sensation or pleasant experience. The underlying tendency towards aversion will always underlie a painful experience. The other five can underlie any of the different feelings, pleasant, painful, or neutral. The underlying tendency towards ignorance is the lack of mindfulness. I'm not paying attention to what's actually going on. And because of that, the craving arises. The underlying tendency towards existence. I really enjoy this, or I don't like it. And I hope in the first case, it continues on in the future. Prolong that process. So I'm already now thinking about the future. That's the craving for existence. I'm already thinking about how this will stop in the future.

That's the craving for existence. You can find solutions. You can find it irritating. And that's okay. But then by being obsessed by it, and being like, I need this to stop, or I need more of this, that is what you have to look at. Which just constricts the mind. And what happens when the mind is constricted? It becomes like tunnel vision. It's not able to see clearly what's going on. It doesn't have an expanded sense of awareness where it can see solutions or see the things that need to be done. It doesn't allow for intuition to arise, so you can see what is needed for this particular situation. And in that moment, you're not acting spontaneously.

You're acting beholden to your habitual tendencies. But when you're doing spontaneous action, that is still rooted in the Eightfold Path. That is still rooted in your training. It's spontaneous because it happens, it just comes out, eureka. This is what needs to be done. And whatever it is that's being done is appropriate for that particular situation, that particular person, and is beneficial for everyone involved.

So the underlying tendency towards views is having opinions about things. You know, holding on to views, right? We see that all the time when we watch the news. The news is no longer news nowadays. It's more just opinion everywhere you watch it, right? Oh, now here's the piece of news which could be told to you in about two minutes. And we're going to spend 28 minutes discussing why it's good or why it's bad or why you should like it or why you shouldn't like it. So it's just generating all of these different kinds of views about things. Does it mean that you become some kind of brainless puppet, not to have views?

No. What it means is that when you create or generate an idea about something, it is okay. That's fine. You have an opinion about something, fine, no problem. But now you have to try to defend it to the extent that you have become so attached to that particular view that it causes conflict, unnecessary conflict. This is why the Buddha said, holding on to views, having views, ultimately leads to war. It ultimately leads to conflict, to violence, to the taking up of the stick and stone. So having opinions about what it is that you're experiencing is one thing, but then saying that it has to be this way because this view is the only view that's right.

That's now giving rise to full-blown craving or full-blown aversion. The underlying tendency towards doubt. What does that mean? Underlying tendency towards doubt. Are we doubting what we're experiencing? I don't know if this thing is good. I don't know if this thing is bad. Is that what we're talking about? Or is it actually something more than that? The underlying tendency towards doubt is doubting whether what you're experiencing is good or bad. That's one aspect. The other aspect is, where is my mind right now? I don't know whether this is wholesome or unwholesome. I'm not sure what I'm doing with regards to how I'm acting with this, right? So that is the other aspect of doubt, the vicikiccha, as it's mentioned in Pali.

It's the inability to not only make a decision, but it's the inability to know what is right or wrong. Do you know if this experience is causing you craving or not? You have doubts about that. And you have doubts about how to respond to the situation. And this can oftentimes arise, especially in that freeze response, because your mind and body shut down for a moment and they're locked up. They don't know what needs to be done right there.

So by letting that go, by moving forward, by just creating some kind of activity and coming back to the present moment, then you're able to see, oh, this reaction, if I would do it, is going to cause me pain. But if I do it this way, which is the wholesome way, or aligned with the Dhamma, which is more expansive in my mind, it'll actually help me let go of this. And then you have the underlying tendency towards conceit. The underlying tendency towards conceit is essentially, like I said, conceit is the mind looking for something that is permanent and stable in an otherwise impermanent and unstable place. So being okay with that is the equanimity, right? And that only happens through having the awareness and the understanding and the experience that this is actually an impersonal and impermanent process.

When you do that, your mind is able to let go of it and it comes back to the mundane Nibbana. It comes back to a wholesome object and it stops trying to look for something that I can possess as me, mine, or myself. So these are the seven underlying tendencies that can connect or bridge the gap between feeling and craving. So I think I'm going to stop there. Thank you. And we'll share some merit. Grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation.