16 April 22 MN 9

So today we are going to go into dependent origination. A little bit more. Actually, a lot more. So the Sutta I'm reading right now is Majjhima Nikaya number nine, and this is called the Sammaditthi Sutta, also known as Right View. Thus have I heard on one occasion the Blessed One was living at Savatthi in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's Park. There, the Venerable Sariputta addressed the bhikkhus thus: Friends, bhikkhus. Friend, they replied. The Venerable Sariputta said this: One of Right View, one of right view is said, friends, in what way is a noble disciple?

Ill will is unwholesome. Wrong view is unwholesome. This is called the unwholesome. And what is the root of the unwholesome? Greed is a root of the unwholesome. Hatred is a root of the unwholesome. Delusion is a root of the unwholesome. This is called the root of the unwholesome. And what is the wholesome? Abstaining from killing living beings is wholesome. Abstaining from misconduct in sensual pleasures is wholesome. Abstaining from false speech is wholesome. Abstaining from malicious speech is wholesome. Abstaining from harsh speech is wholesome. Abstaining from gossip is wholesome. Uncovetousness is wholesome. Non-ill will is wholesome. Right view is wholesome. This is called the wholesome. And what is the root of the wholesome?

Non-greed is a root of the wholesome. Non-hatred is a root of the wholesome. Non-delusion is a root of the wholesome. So what is non-greed? Generosity. Contentment. What is non-hatred? Loving kindness. Compassion. What is non-delusion? Right view. Right view, wisdom. That's right. When a noble disciple has thus understood the unwholesome and the root of the unwholesome, the wholesome and the root of the wholesome, so when someone who has an attainment, extreme enter, understands this, he entirely abandons the underlying tendency to lust. When he becomes an anagami, he gives up sensual craving. He abolishes the underlying tendency to aversion.

But friend, might there be another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view, and has arrived at this true Dhamma? There might be, friends. When, friends, a noble disciple understands origin of nutriment, the cessation of nutriment, and the way leading to the cessation of nutriment. Does this sound familiar? It's the Four Noble Truths. In that way, he is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. And what is nutriment? What is the origin of nutriment? So the first and second noble truths. What is the cessation of nutriment and what is the way leading to the cessation of nutriment? There are four kinds of nutriment for the maintenance of beings that already have come to be and for the support of those about to come to be.

What for? They are physical food as nutriment, gross or subtle. So what's the difference between gross and subtle? Gross is physical food and subtle is food of the devas. Contact as the second. Mental volition as the third. And consciousness as the fourth. These are the four nutrients. That is, food, physical food, which makes up form. Your body is built up of food, of nutrition.

Contact as the second. Contact leads to feeling. Mental volition as the third. These are formations. That gives rise to consciousness. So feeling gives rise to perception. And consciousness as the fourth. So what they're talking about really is that which leads to the five aggregates. Food leads to form. Contact leads to feeling and perception. Intention leads to, where intention is a carrier for formations, and consciousness leads to awareness, or consciousness itself.

With the arising of craving, there is the arising of nutriment. When there is craving for food, you go and seek food, and that food builds up your form. When there is craving for contact, that contact gives rise to feeling, perception. The way leading to the cessation of something is a noble Eightfold Path. I just want you to consider in your mind that you can replace the Eightfold Path with the 6R's. Because the 6R's are right effort. Right effort is at the heart of the Eightfold Path.

We've talked about this before. You go from the wrong path to the right path through right effort. Through the 6R's. You hear me read, and the way leading to this so-and-so is the Eightfold Path. In your mind, see it as the way leading to the cessation of so-and-so is the 6R's. When a noble disciple has thus understood nutriment, the origin of nutriment, the cessation of nutriment, and the way leading to the cessation of nutriment, he entirely abandons the underlying tendency to greed. He abolishes the underlying tendency to aversion. He extirpates the underlying tendency to the view and conceit, I am. And by abandoning ignorance and arousing true knowledge, he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way too, a noble disciple is one of right view, whose view is straight, who has unwavering confidence in the Dhamma, and has arrived at this true Dhamma. Saying, he is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma.

So this is the Four Noble Truths as we know them. And what is suffering? What is the origin of suffering? What is the cessation of suffering? What is the way leading to the cessation of suffering? Birth is suffering. Aging is suffering. Sickness is suffering. Death is suffering. Sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering. To obtain, not to obtain what one wants is suffering.

Or to obtain what one doesn't want also is suffering. In short, the five aggregates affected by craving and clinging are suffering. This is called suffering. Now there are three types or categories of dukkha. We have dukkha-dukkha. We have viparinama dukkha. And we have sankhara dukkha. Dukkha-dukkha consists of birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. Viparinama dukkha. Viparinama means that which constantly changes.

So to get what one doesn't want, to not get what one wants. Holiday, and you have your bags packed and you're ready to go on the flight, flight gets cancelled. That's viparinama dukkha. You've had a long and hard day, you want to go into the shower, have a nice warm shower, the hot water doesn't work. That's viparinama dukkha. And then sankhara dukkha. Sankhara dukkha is a deeper kind of dukkha, a deeper kind of suffering that is ingrained in when you identify, when you have the five aggregates affected by craving and clinging.

This is when you identify with form, identify with feeling, identify with perception, identify with intention, and identify with awareness. This is sankhara dukkha. And what is the origin of suffering? Renewal of being is accompanied by delight and lust and delights in this and that. That is craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence. This is called the origin of suffering.

And what is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, and craving. This is called the cessation of suffering. Every time you use the 6R's and you relax the craving, relax the tension, you experience a mind that is pure. A mind that makes contact with that mundane nibbana. And so you see in that the letting go of the craving, letting go of the hindrances, you experience this pure mind, and that is the third noble truth. Relief. Relief. An arahant embodies a terrible truth, which means they're experiencing relief all the time.

There's no need for an arahant to six hours in the morning. They've done it so many times that there's just relief, always. And that's where they're experiencing cessation in every moment. Leading to the cessation of suffering. It is just this noble Eightfold Path. This is called the way leading to the cessation of suffering. When a noble disciple has thus understood suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the way leading to the cessation of suffering, he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way too, a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. Saying, good friend, the bhikkhus delighted and rejoiced in the Venerable Sariputta's words.

This is what's going on. So now we're going to talk about aging and death, which also is a form of dukkha. And what is aging and death? What is the origin of aging and death? What is the cessation of aging and death? The aging of beings in the various orders of beings, their old age, teeth, grayness of hair, wrinkling of skin, decline of life, weakness of faculties. This is called aging. The passing of beings out of the various orders of beings, their passing away, dissolution, disappearance, dying, completion of time, the dissolution of the five aggregates, laying down of the body. This is called death. So this aging and this death are what is called aging and death.

With the arising of birth, there is the arising of aging and death. With the cessation of birth, there is the cessation of aging and death. The way leading to the cessation of aging and death is just this noble eightfold path. Can you 6R aging and death? You can try. Does the sutras say what's the maximum year that a person can live up to? What is it? The maximum. 120 years? Probably 120 years. 120 years. Chinese medicine says 120 years. I've heard people living longer, but it's not well documented. There's not much evidence for that. But in the sutras it says if the sasana is there and everything is pure and there's a lot of morality.

People can live for thousands of years. Who knows? Does meditation slow down the aging process? Yes. In fact, there is some research that loving-kindness meditation helps with delaying the aging process by lengthening the telomeres, which affect aging. So coming back to that, can you 6R aging and death? When this chain of causality is being described, does it always apply to the bigger scale of aging and death, like you reach the end of your life and you die, but does it also always apply to Yes, that's exactly right. So we're talking about aging and death in relation to both physical aging and physical death, but the arising and passing away of consciousness in another way, which is the identification with the body itself.

So what we are 6R-ing is the identification with the process of aging, the identification and the fear of death. And that's delusion. That's delusion. So you can 6R everything from craving to grasping to habitual tendencies and so on, but what comes before it, feeling, contact, et cetera, et cetera, that's all potential. Can that be 6R'd? We'll see.

Okay. Yeah, we'll see. I'll explain that as we're going through the links, because first we'll do aging and death and then work our way backwards. So we'll get to feeling, and I'll explain what happens there. But, I mean, 6R in sankhara. And the sankhara is driving the aging process. Sankhara. Yes. Yeah. No, you can't 6R out of that. Right. But you can 6R out of the sankharas that arise in meditation.

Do the ignorance? Yeah. I see. And then... We're talking about the three types of sankhara. Okay. Okay, please. So... Yeah, I'll explain. So when we talk about aging and death, we're talking about identification with the body, which naturally ages and dies. Which prolong life. There's Botox. There's wigs and things like that to make you feel good. But that's all just a process of craving for existence. A process for fear of non-existence.

So what we're talking about here is 6R in the identification process. That the idea that this body is me, this body is mine, this body is myself. Yeah, the question is who is identifying with that process? It's the choice to identify in every moment. And that choice itself is influenced by sankharas. And those sankharas are influenced by choices.

In every moment there are sankharas that arise, and then they influence the way you make choices. And depending upon the choices you make, you strengthen certain kinds of sankharas and you weaken certain kinds of sankharas, in a future period of time. So there's no being there, no self there, nobody identifying there. But it's a learned process through habitual tendencies, and the intrinsic survival instinct of saying that this is my body, this is me, this is mine, to protect the body or to protect the mind or the idea of what is mine.

So that arises because of continually living out the world in that way. And the person is basically conditioned to think that there is a self there for the purposes of protection and survival. Once you let go of that idea, then you become free from the need to protect. You become free from the need to crave and to have aversion. And you live a life that's more spontaneous.

You still protect the body. If somebody tries to hit you, you still deflect them. But there's no hatred there. There's no aversion there. So, this process of identification itself is a process in which you mistakenly, the mind mistakenly sees the body and says, this is mine. And says, this body belongs to me. Or this body is me.

Me, mine, myself. When that happens, there's a process of wanting to beautify the body, or there's a process of wanting to change the body because I don't like the way I look. But that's just the way the body is. The body itself is impersonal. We're all just walking corpses, actually. That's the truth, that's the reality. But we have this idea that we're alive because we are in the body, and so where the body is alive because of us, because of some spirit that's there or some self that's there. But the bodily processes, which are dependent upon bodily sankharas, I'll be talking about all of this, but basically that gives rise to a process in which a mind looks at that and says, this is my territory, this is me, this is mine, so I have to protect it.

That's the process. So what is identifying with the body is the mind itself, or the factors of the mind, either, as we see. So we don't see our aging and death, but we see our identification process. That is, the fear of death, the fear of aging, and so on. When a noble disciple has thus understood aging and death, the origin of aging and death, the cessation of aging and death, the way leading to the cessation of aging and death, he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way too, a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma.

Womb, generation, manifestation of the aggregates, obtaining the basis of contact. This is called birth. The five aggregates are always changing in every moment. Your form is always changing. Feelings come and go. Perceptions come and go. Intentions come and go. Awarenesses arise and pass away. Yes. Why is that? Sankharas flow, and it's through sankharas that intentions are influenced. I see them as being synonymous, so intention here is the Pali word, the volition, but it is through that which sankharas flow. So you can call them formations, which is a translation of some colors for preparations or constructions or mental impressions.

So if the form, the feeling, the perception, the formations, the consciousness, they're always arising and passing away. They're always experiencing birth, death, birth, death, birth, death. This is what you see at infinite consciousness. This is what you see when you see the arising and passing away of the eye consciousness, the ear consciousness, the nose consciousness, and soul.

But there's another way to understand this idea of birth. Birth means the birth of action. So that's the birth of mental action, when you have a thought or an idea. The birth of verbal action, where you say something, and the birth of physical action, where you actually do something. So we're talking about thoughts, words, and deeds. The birth of these can be 6R'd.

And 6R is what is the preceding link, which is power. And we're going to get to that. Once you have a thought, once you say something, once you do something, you cannot take it back. So you think about the stream of dependent origination. It's a river of dependent origination. Everything from ignorance, formations, consciousness, nama rupa, or mentality, materiality, six bases, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, being, birth. That's the waterfall. You can't get back. But this bend, which is the power, you can 6R that before you go all the way down.

So, it's like releasing an arrow. You know, all of the tension that's there is all of the other links except for birth. And when you release the arrow, you can't call it back. When you fire the gun, call back the bullet. So that firing process, that shooting process, is the birth of action. And the consequences that are locked in? They're locked in. Then now you experience that new karma as old karma in a future moment. So then you experience the suffering, you experience the whole mass of suffering. You're saying that arrow or bullet can be stopped at the birth stop? At the bhava, which is becoming. But then what, isn't craving where you cut the link though?

How do you speak to it? I'll explain. Okay. So what was the reaction? So if we're 6R'd already, is it too late already? It's not the reaction. It's the tendencies that lead to the reaction, which is the first. Yeah. Okay. So can that be, all those links can be 6R'd up to feeling, anywhere along that path.

So that's just, but once you go past bhava, habitual tendency, and you buy into that one, then the story is written. That's it, you can't do anything about it. Question: could you clarify that you said you can't 6R feeling, or did I hear wrong? That's right, you said you can't 6R feeling. You can't. I'll explain it when we get to these different things, I'll explain it. So as you asked, Molly, you asked, you know, what about craving? You can 6R craving. But you can 6R clinging, from 6R to come, and I'll explain how that's the case. So, with the arising of bhava, with the arising of, let's say, there's different words for bhava.

There's being, there's becoming, there's existence, and there's habitual tendencies, which is the one that we use a lot. For the birth of action, we're talking about the habitual tendencies. If we're talking about the birth of a new being, we're talking about bhava in the form of becoming. That is to say, what happens in the process of becoming is that becoming leads to the new birth. And that process I'll explain a little bit. Let's get to bhava. With the cessation of habitual tendencies, there is the cessation of birth of action. The way leading to the cessation of birth of action is just this noble eightfold path, or the 6R. When a noble disciple has thus understood birth, the origin of birth, the cessation of birth, and the way leading to the cessation of birth, he here and now makes an end of suffering.

is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. Saying, good friend, the bhikkhus delighted and rejoiced in the Venerable Sariputta's words. Then they asked him a further question. But friend, might there be yet another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma? There might be friends. Friends, a noble disciple understands being, we'll use the word being for now, origin of being, the cessation of being, and the way leading to the cessation of being. In that way, he is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. And what is being? What is the origin of being? What is the cessation of being?

What is the way leading to the cessation of being? There are these three kinds of being. Sense sphere being, that is the kamadhatu. Fine material being, that is the rupadhatu, and the immaterial being, that is the arupadhatu. So let's break this apart. Now we're going to look at it on different levels. First on the macro level, which is from one lifetime to another, when we're talking about the process of rebirth.

What they're talking about is that certain inclinations lead to certain kinds of birth in different kinds of realms. [Kamadhatu] is a category of realms. Kamadhatu means the sense sphere. So that's everywhere from the hell realms all the way up to the sixth central heaven. The rupadhatu has to do with the jhanic realms. That is the first brahma loka all the way to the fourth brahma loka and the pure bliss. And the arupadhatu has to do with all of the, well, just the four arupalokas, that is to say, infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception.

So how does this process work? Bhava is one of the most intricately interconnected links in dependent origination. You have to look at dependent origination not only as a linear process, not only as a cyclical process, but a process which has interconnections. So bhava has many interconnections. We'll talk more about bhava tomorrow, but just have an understanding that bhava has interconnections at formations, has interconnections at consciousness, has interconnections at contact, has interconnections at feeling, at craving and at clinging. Bhava is seen as a library of habitual tendencies from which a person acts.

So, let's say on the macro level, even on the micro level, but let's take the macro level for a minute, the larger picture. When a person has wholesome tendencies, how do those wholesome tendencies arise? Because of wholesome choices. And they make those wholesome choices. How do those wholesome choices arise? Because of wholesome formation. The formations that are kusala, that have the roots of non-greed, the roots of non-hatred, the roots of wisdom or non-delusion.

So when those formations arise, they give rise to a consciousness. And in that consciousness, there can be different kinds of consciousnesses that arise. Kindness consciousnesses that are rooted in generosity, consciousnesses that are rooted in compassion, consciousnesses that are rooted in forbearance, and so on and so forth. Then the way the person, through that filtration system of consciousness, perceives contact through nama-rupa and the six sense bases, the feeling they experience, they see it as wholesome or from a wholesome perspective. Even if the feeling is painful or pleasant or neutral, there they identify with it. And so there is the craving. When they crave in the form of identification, they're clinging to that experience, and then they add to the library of wholesome tendencies, which are at power. So when you act from those wholesome tendencies, you are refueling that process again with the energy. Every time you act upon a wholesome tendency with the identification with that wholesome tendency, you are refueling the roots at the formations.

You are then refueling the same consciousness, the same contact, the same feeling, the same perception, and so on. Likewise with the unwholesome tendencies. So, if over a period of time, in one lifetime, a person has been wholesome all their life, they've been generous, they've been loving and kind, and so on and so forth, then their thoughts and ideas, their sense experiences will also be somewhat wholesome.

When they die, at the process of death, there is a process in which they see wholesome images, wholesome thoughts, wholesome ideas, wholesome memories, things that they did in the past that were wholesome. The reason is because the mind automates towards whatever is its immediate tendency. In other words, the mind will always make that automatic choice depending upon its library of tendencies without even thinking.

So if a person has been wholesome their whole life, those wholesome tendencies will be clung to, will be identified with, and that gives rise to becoming into a new wholesome state of being at the level of birth on the macro level. wholesome existence will be rooted in a place that is wholesome so a wholesome human existence or any of the six central heavens for example that's the macro but think about it from the level of the micro from day to day moment to moment when you make wholesome choices you automate that process where the mind always inclines to and tends to words a wholesome choice they do it without it does it without thinking you react in an unwholesome manner.

That leads to an unwholesome existence in the next moment. You have an argument with a friend or a co-worker, and if your tendencies are unwholesome, meaning you're always reactive, you're always angry, you're always upset, you're always acting in an aversive manner, that means your mind will tend towards that aversive manner. And when it does that, what happens?

You lash out. You react to that person. You are arguing with them further, shouting with them further. And so what is your new state of existence in the next moment? Further shouting, further arguing, further discomfort, further anger. So this is the way to understand habitual tendencies. Could it be a fair description to say that these habitual tendencies are, to all intents and purposes, just good and bad mental habits that have some karmic origins? So, my mental habits. I have good habits, I have bad habits. Some of them I've reinforced myself through good choices and bad choices that I've made. Some of them come from lifetimes ago. They're dragged around. And so they're just basically these habits that we have.

Good habits and bad habits. And either we keep reinforcing them or we change them. It doesn't matter where they came from, because the choice is not ours how we're going to act. That's the short of it. Yes. So our habitual tendencies are those habits that you just do automatically, but they are dependent upon clinging, which we'll see, which are dependent upon craving, and then feeling, and so on. So if we were wholesome, let's say ten times, and five times we were not wholesome, unwholesome, so with the unwholesome camps down the wholesome, do you still go to the wholesome place because there's five good?

I know you have to be wholesome all the time, and I wasn't sure, because you're saying that you cannot be good all the time. So let's just say that there was only a few times you'd yell at friends, but 30 times you didn't, but 15 times you did. And then is there a place for that?

So you have to look at it from this perspective. If a mind tends mostly towards the wholesome, now what that ratio is, we can't really say, but what we can say is the tendencies will be strengthened by the number of choices you make continually. So there might have been choices where you didn't choose the wholesome, but you chose the unwholesome. is karmic residue from that. That karmic residue is experienced at the next cycle of feeling, and there you can choose to either identify with it or let it go, and then those unwholesome tendencies start to weaken. So you have a choice at the level of feeling. Do you want to crave for that feeling? Do you want to identify with it, or do you want to see it as being impersonal and therefore not act on it with identification? See it as that, let it go.

Once you let it go, which is the 6R's, then those tendencies might come up again, but they won't be as strong. But the wholesome tendencies, because you've been reinforcing them with active actions, will come up as the automatic inclination. So that's about automated inclination towards a specific type of behavior. The neuroscience on that is kind of use it or lose it. If the brain wants to be increasingly more efficient because it's overwhelmed by all the data and all the needs that are presented to it, then if a neural pathway is unused, it will be pruned, pretty much disassembled, and the parts are recycled.

That's how we grow as children, because we come in with the most neurons we're going to have in our whole lifetime, and then the ones that we don't use get pruned away to fit us to the environment that requires an environment. Now, on the other side of that is myelination, that if a thought is repeated several times, then the brain picks up on the fact that, oh, we have to keep doing this. Let's make it easy, because it's expensive to put it all together.

And so we're just going to automate that. And the way it does that is these little astrocyte cells come out and they slather myelination on the sides of the neural pathways so that electricity flows through more quickly and then they're more efficient. That becomes the kind of substrata outline of the brain as well. We're wired to do this. It's not our wiring. You can always change it through practice. You can ignore these and do these and you'll move it in that direction. Direction. What he said, that's exactly it. That's the whole process of this habitual tendencies, being able to prune out the synapses that you don't want or that are not conducive for you, and strengthening those synapses that allow you to flourish in your life, flourish in the Dhamma. So if you choose to maintain the precepts, for example, you are strengthening those synapses.

If you choose to break the precepts, then you're choosing to strengthen those synapses and prune those synapses that have to do with maintaining the precepts. So to simplify everything, it's basically why we call it habitual tendencies, because it's just the best way, the easiest route towards, or the easiest road, or the easiest choice that's taken, in terms of just automating that process for greater efficiency.

So if your habitual tendencies are more wholesome, you'll be a more wholesome person with wholesome choices. But if your habitual tendencies are unwholesome, you'll be a more unwholesome person who acts upon unwholesome choices. Any further questions on this? I want to say that I think you can be good all the time. 'Good' in this regard is not an absolute. Even if you have anger, you can choose to exercise it in a way that's more wholesome, right? And this has more to do with how present you are, and how aware you are of the distinctions between the states, than some standard that you have to meet all the time. So the point here is to continually trend towards the wholesome versus some idea of good all the time. It gets you as far as anagami. I mean, if you want to get to arahant, then there's a whole other process there. But yes, exactly. I mean, you can decide to take your anger and transform it into something else, let go of that, and still be wholesome in your expression. You don't have to be

unwholesome by causing pain and suffering to another person or yourself or to yourself. So at the moment of death, the predominant habitual tendency will prevail, but not always. In other words, if someone has a habitual tendency of happiness, generosity, etc., but in the moment of death it's so violent, it's so much pain and suffering, the mind may also [unclear]. This is where karma comes in, which is to say that if a person comes to meet with a violent accident, usually, their state of mind is going to be one of fear, one of something that's unwholesome. And that can lead to an unwholesome state of existence for a long time, because the strength of their wholesome tendencies overpowers the unwholesome tendencies.

There's a discourse that the Buddha gave on this about karma, which is that how come bad things happen to good people or good things happen to bad people? It's because they're drawing off interest from the karmic bank balance. And so if a person is very rich but then they act really terrible, they're just drawing off of whatever they've done in a past life, and then now that they're acting terrible they'll reap the benefits of that at a later period of time. But it's not linear in the sense that, oh okay, now this karma has to come into fruition, this karma has come to fruition. It can happen depending upon the energy of that karma. That energy is given through emotion, action, intention, and so on.

But the general understanding is this, that the becoming, for example, if a person is in jhana, or they've experienced the first jhana, second jhana, third jhana, fourth jhana, it's such a sublime state that at the moment of death, if everything is not a violent death, and they're just passing on, their mind will incline towards what was the most sublime experience that they ever had, which is one of the most profound memories that they ever had, which is a jhanic experience.

That then leads them into a jhana realm if they've had an arupa experience, that leads them into an arupa. That brings up an interesting question, especially where I see a lot of people dying of prolonged death, in intensive care, with multiple life support, etc., and the family members would not allow them to die. Yeah. And maybe there's their karma, to have family members drag on like that. So I have heard some people, just from the story of near-death experiences, even when they have severe accidents, say that they had no pain when they went through this tunnel or whatever during this bardo state. And what are the bardos, this thing? And when is the moment of death itself? When the breath stops, when the heart stops, when the brain death happens, what is the Buddhist view?

Mahayana view is different. Pure land view is different. What is the Theravada view? What I'm about to say is my understanding, so take it for what it's worth. I'm not saying that this is the Theravada view. I'm saying this from my experience of seeing my own father and understanding the death in different ways, understanding what happens during the dying process. When you go through a process of bardo, when you're seeing different things, you have a life review process that's going on. A lot of people report that in near-death experiences it's like, oh, I saw my whole life come flash before my eyes, or they see, you know, I saw certain kinds of memories that happened in my life, and those were the most profound memories in my life, or they go through the bardos. But all of that is still a mental experience. Now, you two are physicians, so you might disagree with what I would say is the definition of when a person dies.

The medical definition, correct me if I'm wrong, is when the heart stops, the brain stops, and the respiration stops. Is that right? Not always. Also brain can happen with the brain. Look at it from the context of the six sense bases and the four great elements. So we're looking at it from a very Buddhist context.

The understanding is that even when the heart stops, even when the respiration stops, even when there's no more brain function, there is still life going on, actually, for some time. And first, the air element unwinds. Then the fire element unwinds. Then the water element unwinds. So the air element has to do with movement of air, respiration, makes sense. Fire has to do with heat. So you start to see that the body gets cold, it's losing heat, it's losing fire energy. prior element. Water element, the blood starts to start flowing. There's no more movement of water element in the body. The earth element is decaying. It's diminishing, but it's not completely gone yet.

While this is happening, the six sense bases are still active. So even after what is understood as death, the six sense bases are still active at some point. And how that's understood is, the first sense base to go is the sense of smell, then the sense of taste. Then what goes after that is the sense of sight, the sense of touch, the sense of hearing, and then finally thoughts.

So that's why even after a person is medically considered dead or legally considered dead, they still come back and they say, oh, I saw something, I experienced something, because their mind is still there, consciousness is still there somehow. So the mind sense is the last sense to go. In that mind sense, they're experiencing the review of life, they're experiencing the bardos, they're experiencing all of these different processes.

And then when there's a clinging to a specific type of formation, then that clinging fuels the next consciousness that arises. This is the rebirth-linking consciousness, the patisandhi consciousness, the new bhava, which will then be going into a new bhava. So this is the way the dying process happens. Is there a sense of how long this lasts? I guess the Mahayana views of eight hours, the body should not be 12 hours. It could last that long too, but I'm telling you from my personal experience. Yeah. Thank you. believe that he can, this individual can then go to heaven. So the way I'm understanding this is that he probably could go to heaven, but they're not going to stay there. It's their karma, it's still going to go with them, even though they have a wholesome state at the moment of death. Until the hour and a half later or 12 hours later, whatever that is, they're in a wholesome state, but they don't get to dismiss their whole life of bad karma. They don't, no.

So they'll still experience heaven, but maybe for a very short time. Right. That's the mental factors of contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention. And at least I find it helpful. I would say that Buddha isn't dead because his process continues on. Right? In fact, it's changed form. If you're just a process, then as long as his process continues, he's still alive. But there's another way that I actually like to think about it. And if somebody's a physicist here, maybe you'll correct me and I'll listen to that. Of general relativity is that Einstein, the whole foundation of everything that we're doing with electronics, with everything, requires the best explanation of it that we found is general relativity.

And under general relativity, anything that ever is, will be, world without end. In other words, time is an illusion. So what I like to think about it is every day you're painting. It's like a painting. You're putting more paint on the easel, and once it's put on, you can't really take it off. But as long as you're alive, you're allowed to add to your painting.

And when you're done, at least as far as general relativity is concerned, keeping in mind your painting, the process of it may continue on. But what you put on there is the totality, it's the sum of your life, and it will always be. Somewhere in space-time, literally, somewhere in space-time, everything you have ever done, every thought you have ever thought, still exists.

Everybody that's ever been alive is still alive somewhere in space-time. Is that the internet? What's that? Is that the internet? Is that the internet? No, because you were saying it's there, it's available everywhere, or it's around in some way. Well, we may not be able to access it, but it's still there. And I found that very helpful when my parents were dying, thinking about it.

And Einstein actually said, on the death of his friend, he said, 'To us believing physicists, death is an illusion, even if a persistent one.' So I kind of view it, your karma is the whole of the painting. And so if you messed up here, well, you can correct it over there. Right. Ongoing, you can change how the picture is going to turn out, but you can't take paint off a picture once you put it on, right? That's the birth of action that we're talking about. And so I find that helpful, and once I ran across that idea and that quote, I've been trying extra hard to change what I can still change, with the idea that it's not until it's done that my painting is done, and then the process of people viewing it goes on. Right. Anyway, thank you.

Just very quickly, wanted to share that I've heard a sutta, and I can't remember, I have to go look it up again, where a monk was asking the Buddha about what's going to happen, along this idea of my last thought when I die. And the Buddha said, think of a tree when it's about to fall. Which way is it inclining: east, west, north, south? And whichever way it's inclining, that's where it's going to go. And just to reinforce the idea of habitual tendencies, whichever way you're inclining, that's the way you're going to go. So I guess I bristle a little bit at the idea that your last thought is the final thing. I guess I'm more comfortable with the idea of your tendencies overall.

Which way are you leading? Well, the idea is that the last thought, generally speaking, will be one in a collection of those habitual tendencies. Obviously, if somebody is a good person and they have a violent death, even then the strength of that will not be as persistent as all of those wholesome tendencies that they have. So the experience of the effect of that particular thought, the immediate thought, actually, is that which gives rise to the next life. It is. There's no one way about it, no two ways about it. of that, which leads to that last thought.

So if somebody had a last thought where they had an accident, it's going to lead them into a bad destination, let's say, as it's known in Sutta. Can you give me the Sutta reference for that? What's that? Can you give me the Sutta reference for that at a later time? The last thought is definitely the next birth. If you go to...

Let me see if I can find it here. Well, I'll let you know. Yeah, you let me. that says otherwise and I like that better, but maybe we're saying the same thing. If you take that idea, the last thing to go are the thoughts. Yeah, that's the last thought. Right, right. So even though the accident may have been quite traumatic, yeah, that's not their last thought necessarily. Yeah, unless there's, just ejecting at that exact instant. Right. But there's still time for more thought, and that's the tendency.

Because think about it, even after they die, supposedly die, to that point there's still a flow of thoughts going on, so the habitual tendencies might still overpower that supposed last thought. The first thing is that we can have a very heightened concentration state, it looks like. We can go back and forth in time, begin to see events that can possibly precede the events in all of the world at once.

It's a very interesting phenomenon that's happening. Can you say more about what it is, what does that mean, where does it fit in? I've never had a near-death experience, so I can't really tell you. But I know someone who had one, actually 13, and his experience of it was, depending upon which near-death experience it was and different times in his life, he always had this experience of going into the tunnel of life. Or he had a download of information that came out from somewhere in the ether, as he calls it. And so those could be in relation to gifts from the devas. Maybe that could be one way of interpreting it.

Maybe certain kinds of, because you're not limited in the mind and body anymore, you're not limited by the physical aspect of the body, you're kind of unlimited, or you don't have any resistance. Is it true that the arahant knows everything? No. Because they say that he can have become a pool of choices that I know. But that doesn't mean he knows everything.

He doesn't know everything all at once. Nobody knows anything all at once. It's impossible. Not even the Buddha. If that was the case, there's a story of the Buddha where he talks to them about dependent origination, he talks about the existence, cessation of existence, and he goes out into his cave, and wherever he goes, and he meditates. And meanwhile, there's a few people who misinterpret what he says, and they kill themselves, thinking that's what he meant, the cessation of existence.

Now if he had known everything all at once, he could have prevented that. So he came back and he said, "What happened once?" And they said, "Well, these people were interpreting this way and they killed themselves." So he had to re-find his messaging. Yeah, this friend of mine who had this near-death experience, on his 12th near-death experience, when he came back, he had this download of information on insights about reality and life and things like that. But he didn't know everything all at once. He had to really think about one thought at a time. Okay, let's get back to the download. Are things that could be... an individual with good parents, who could grow up in a very wholesome environment and naturally grow up with right view, are they automatically a noble one because they have right view? Is that personal self? They still have to let go of clinging to rites and rituals.

But if they are a sotapanna and they get born in a, what do you call it, a Dhamma family, let's say a family that follows Dhamma, they might already be born a sotapanna. In fact, since we're talking about bhava, another way to understand bhava is that you can be born into a noble family or you can be born into a wonderful family and you can still make wrong choices. So you have the foundation, you have the good upbringing and everything, but how you choose to use that can still lead to a bad destination. Or somebody has a bad origin, they come into poverty or a place of violence and refugees or whatever it might be, but they make their choices to uplift themselves and uplift others, and that could lead to a good. So this whole process is never deterministic.

There's still choice in that matter. There's still intention in that matter. So if the sotapanna is born in the next lifetime, one of the sevens, is the sotapanna already kind of realized when growing up, or having no doubt in the path, having no significant sense of self, and there's no... yeah, they'll be reintroduced to the Dhamma and immediately recognize it and say, oh yeah, this is home, home base for me, I totally know what this is. Okay, and what is being, what is the origin of being, what is the cessation of being, what is the way leading to the cessation of being? There are these three kinds of being: sense sphere being, fine material being, and immaterial being. And then we talked about habitual tendencies.

With the arising of clinging, there is the arising of becoming or being, or habitual tendencies. With the cessation of clinging, there is a cessation of habitual tendencies. The way leading to the cessation of habitual tendencies is the Noble Eightfold Path. So when you have a habitual tendency, that can leap into the waterfall of birth, right? But if you 6R's and you recognize, oh, wait, here's a habitual tendency, I'm about to make a choice, and I 6R it, I let go of all of that energy of habitual tendency, and I choose not to act in a way that is unhealthy. You cease birth of action by having ceased that habitual tendency using the 6R's.

Right effort. Noble eightfold path. So there's no suffering arises. No suffering arises. That whole mass of suffering is gone. So an example of this is we were talking about earlier, which is you have an argument with a friend or a co-worker. Your habitual tendency is to be by that. Your habitual tendency is to say, I am offended by this. So another point here: habitual tendencies are also where the self is most concrete.

The sense of self is most concrete. It's also known as Atavava. So this Atavava is a series of intentions that are made up to create the sense of self. When somebody gets upset by somebody saying something to them, they now have this sense of self that I am the offended one. How could they say this to me? Why did they say this to me? Don't they know who I am?

These are the thoughts that are coming in. So that's the craving, the clinging, the becoming. Now, if a person says, don't you know who I am? And says, how could you talk to me like that? How dare you speak to me that way? That is the birth of action. And now you have suffering. That person might punch you. That's despair. That's pain.

But you can see, or you can realize, that, oh, wait, all of these thoughts are circulating in my mind. I should stop right there. Let me fix it. Let me let that go. And let me de-escalate the situation with love and kindness and compassion. So you don't have to think that. You can do 6R's exactly, and what happens, it deconditions it that one time, right? And if it comes back, you do it again. The tendency is that it's a deconditioning process. Yes. And then the concrete around the personality starts to crack. Exactly. And then eventually, what happened, eventually there's no more unwholesome tendency, that kind of unwholesome tendency, it's now replaced by them. So it's gone.

How long has it gone here? Around. Around. As long as there's no more fuel for it. Right. And then the nutriment for fear or anger or resistance is also gone. Yes. So it can never come out. That's right. It's actually pulled out by the roots. Right. It's deconditioned at the root. At the root. So in other words, what we're looking at is at the habitual tendencies. We're spending a lot of time here because the bhava is the one thing that a lot of people kind of have questions about. That's why I really want to clarify.

So what you were just saying, which is, okay, now the unwholesome tendencies are replaced by the wholesome tendencies. While you're replacing the wholesome tendencies, what's that doing? In the chain of dependent origination, it's going back again in the next cycle. And the roots at the formations are starting to be deconditioned. So now the root of greed or hatred or delusion starts to weaken. And the root of loving kindness, of compassion, of generosity, and of wisdom starts to become even more dominant. And so then the next cycle of dependent origination through consciousness, nama-rupa, or contact, feeling will give rise to an experience in which the person is more wholesome. It'll automatically tend towards the wholesome. That's the inclination that's there. Clear? Yeah, okay. So when we're sitting in meditation, differences arise. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm so glad you mentioned this. I want to elaborate on that. So basically, yeah, that's how you should see hindrances. Right? Of past actions. We chose to break a precept, let's say, right? And then the breaking of that precept was the birth of action that led then to reconditioning or conditioning the next cycle of dependent origination, or over a period of cycles of dependent origination, where then the formations, the sankharas, rooted or conditioned by that action, give rise to a certain kind of consciousness. And so it's like a snowball effect. The formations that were there, rooted in that akusala, in the unwholesome, roll down and then it becomes a huge snowball, not at bhava, not at birth, but at feeling.

A hindrance is a feeling. A hindrance is a thought. So all of that potential, all of that momentum of that snowball is old karma that is experienced at the level of feeling. When you act, when you have these bhavas, when you have these habitual tendencies, and you act from there, the next cycle gives rise to the next cycle of sankharas, consciousness, then you have contact with it, and then there's a feeling, there's an experience.

So when you broke the precept, that was the birth of action inclined, or where the inclination of that birth of action to break the precept stemmed from the habitual tendency. Now that gave rise to a next series of formations that then condition the rest of the process. And now the feeling that arises, that big snowball, is the hindrance. Now if you choose to identify with that hindrance, you choose to ignore that hindrance, you choose to push it away, you choose to suppress it, you choose to engage with it with craving, then you have craving, then you have clinging, then you have being, and then the rest of the cycle continues.

But if you choose to see it for what it is, that is that it is an impermanent process, not worth holding onto, and therefore not me, not mine, not myself, and you 6R it, then the energy of that hindrance dissipates because there's no more craving energy given to it, no more clinging energy given to it. That hindrance will arise again because there's the momentum of previous formations. There's the momentum of previous inclinations.

But because you 6R'd, that momentum of formations weakens. So the next arising of that hindrance will be weaker. And eventually it will dissipate and disappear. Remainderless fading. What happens if you just suppress it? Use the power of your practice just to hold it back. Every time it comes up, just suppress it. Sure, you could do that. And when you suppress it, you push it down, what happens? and push it down the water comes back up again with full force so there's no so can you why are you suppressing it though because there's aversion there you want to get rid of it yes Yes. Yes. When you relax, what are we doing? We're tranquilizing formations. Tranquilizing bodily formations.

Tranquilizing mental formations. You are relaxing, at least letting go of that particular formation that led to that particular hindrance. So bit by bit, you're cutting away at that karma by not reacting to it. Letting it go. Letting it be and having no engagement with it. Yeah. I want to get a little bit more in this example. What we are looking for is the tension in the body or in the head. Can it be that there's a possibility that it is not, that the tension is not at all present in your body but just having a prayer? Tension is a manifestation of craving, so it can manifest in the body or it can manifest as a thought that has a lot of this craving energy, some hearts basically. And so when you're at the with certain hindrances that come up.

What you're actually dealing with when you go into your vipassana, especially the quiet mind, you see all of these lights come up, you see flickering come up, you see something coming up, just stuff, and disconnected images. Those are hindrances, those are formations. And those formations have to be let go of. At that point, all you're doing is releasing and relaxing, releasing and relaxing. Because at that point, you don't need to smile. Because now it's not at the level of the body, it's the level of the mind. So when you're, anytime your mind becomes distracted, it's craving. So here's another way of understanding craving. Anytime your mind becomes distracted, it's craving. So on the physical level, it's tightness and tension.

On the mental level, anytime your mind is no longer in the present moment, with whatever it was doing. Any time the attention is swayed, that's craving. Or a form of craving. One of the funny things. And in this case, would you say it's a passive result of past karma? In other words, you're not trying to crave anything. You don't have an object that you're looking at because you're... There's nothing. There's no thing. So this is just the sankhara bubbling away. Yes.

So it's really not in... So there's no controlling this. No. There is just... Observing. Observing. And 6R. Yeah, because we've all... So we're in a pure mode of observing how the mind is working. Yes. And letting go. So those formations that come up will come up laced with craving or conceit or views or ignorance. One way or another. But if you let it go at that fundamental level of the sankharas, you're doing it in such a way that doesn't lead to... And it's being deconditioned. It's being deconditioned. And eventually... You come to the unconditioned. Because you've deconditioned everything. You've deconditioned everything. That's why you have the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness.

The most subtle formation is the sense of conceit. The sense of I am. The sense of this is me, this is mine. This is myself. So when that comes up and you engage with it, what are you doing? You're adding more of the sense of I am, this is me, this is mine, this is myself. But if you let it go, then once all of that is silent, there's no possibility of any perception, no possibility of any feeling, no possibility of any further consciousness.

So the fuel for that, which other formations cease, and therefore you have the cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, and then come to the unconditioned. So the root cause of these conditionings, the dependently conditioned phenomena, is ignorance. Yes. These six are... You're 6R-ing everything, ignorance out of existence. Yeah. You're deconditioning ignorance bit by bit until it's gone. And what are you deconditioning it for? Wisdom.

So the eye of wisdom appears. Yes. Once the ignorance is gone. Yes. It's not real. It's a result. It's not... Exactly. Exactly. And I'll explain how that is, because you can fix your ignorance, but how do you do it? It's because you have to think of dependent origination not, as I said, just as a linear, not just as a cyclical, but these interconnections that feed back. These are feedback loops within feedback loops. So bhava has the most number of feedback loops, that's why we're spending so much time here. It has the feedback loop in the taints, it has the feedback loop in ignorance, it has a feedback loop in formations, it has a feedback loop in consciousness, it has a feedback loop in contact, basically every single link has a feedback loop. Those feedback loops have feedback loops with other links, and we'll go through them. So how do you kind of remove that trace of aversion in that bloody ball and relax?

What works for you? For me, it works like it's fully accepted and embracing some sort of melting experience. Use that. But if I do not fully embrace melting experience, it takes a long time. There's no aversion when you let go. There's aversion when you push it, when you resist it. Letting go. When you see this and you loosen it, is there aversion there?

It's tight. The fist is tight and it's causing you tension and tightness. Sure, you don't want that tightness and tension. But that's not aversion. Aversion is where... So the definition of aversion, or the subsets of aversion, is I don't like this. But you're not engaging with the hindrance by saying I don't like it. You're just seeing it as a painful feeling.

Seeing it as a painful feeling, you're letting go of any identification or engagement with that painful feeling. That's all. But if you say I don't like it and you let go, you're not actually letting go. But if it helps for your mindset to say, I'm just accepting and letting it melt away, or however you want to phrase it, that works for you, that works for you. That's fine. Just to add, you do let it be. Yeah, let it be. Free it. Yeah, that's a good one. I'm letting it go, meaning I'm letting it free. I like that. That's a really good one. I'm giving it freedom. I'm liberating it. There will be. There will be.

Kyn, we're working on it, aren't we? I have the original diagram. Kyn, have you seen the original diagram where I just made all those connections? If I have a photograph of it, I'll share it with you guys in the interview. Yeah, it's just like a mad men's work. But if you're interested in knowing more about the charts and stuff, let me know in the interviews. I have a free gift for you.

Yeah? All right. Anything else? We'll come back in some feedback loop. Yes, exactly. So... So when a noble disciple has thus understood habitual tendencies, the origin of habitual tendencies, the cessation of habitual tendencies, and the way leading to the cessation of habitual tendencies, he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way too, a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma, in the Venerable Sariputta's words. Then they asked him a further question. But friend, might there be another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma? There might be friends. When friends, a noble disciple understands clinging, the origin of clinging, the cessation of clinging, the way leading to the cessation of clinging.

In that way he is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. And what is clinging? What is the origin of clinging? What is the cessation of clinging? What is the way leading to the cessation of clinging? There are four kinds of clinging: clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rules and observances, and clinging to a doctrine of self.

Clinging is translated from the word Upadana. And that can also mean acquisitions. That can also mean fuel. That can also mean grasping. So this is the process in which, as I was saying yesterday, the mind, once it says, I don't like this, or I like this, or I identify with it, now it comes up with reasons of why I like it, why I don't like it, why I identify with it. I'm a Republican because so and so and so. I am a man because so and so and so. My favorite foods are because so and so and so. I don't like you because so and so and so. Right? The because, that process of why, the rationalizing, the associations of why you don't like this or that.

So clinging to sensual pleasures can be both clinging in the form of greed or aversion. It could be in the form of, I like it, because so and so and so. You know, I like this song because I had my first kiss at this and this is the reason I like this song. I like this food because when we were out here, my mother made it, and now I just really like it. So now it's my favorite food. It's my favorite song. It's my favorite scent. It's my favorite touch. This is my favorite clothing, this blanket, because so and so and so. Right? Or I really like this idea.

I subscribe to being a Buddhist because I like it. Because it makes me feel good. I subscribe to the idea of being a Democrat because I believe in this and this and this and this. I subscribe to the idea of being whatever it is. All of these are the associations that are in clinging. So clinging to sensual pleasures is clinging in terms of the experience of six sense bases. The experience of six sense bases is feeling, vedana. The I like it or I don't like it or I am it, that is the craving.

Because I like it, because, is the clinging. And the associations and rationalizations are the clinging for that. That then gives rise to an identity in bhava, which says, I don't like this, because so and so and so, and therefore I am this, and therefore I'm going to act from this identity. So now I'm trying to build this process. Is this making sense? Questions so far?

Good. So then clinging to views. There are 62 different types of views. Let's go over there. Reverse order. Forward and reverse order. Right now there's 26. There you go. Well, we're not coming here. No. Let's take a break from you. I'm not going to go through all the 60 views. I'm just going to go through six. Yeah. Would you like a refresh more? I think we could just do a new one. Refresh the hot water. There's not much in there. It looks like an early spring. It seems like if someone has a lot of storehouse, I guess most people have so much storehouse. Yes. Yeah, that's why the first jhana is so important because you've actually let go of the sankharas by engaging with the hindrances in the way of right effort, in the process of right effort.

It's more challenging to get into, yeah. So you can't get rid of the straight down the bottom to work on the ignorance of everything else? Self. I think that was the second sermon. One of them became an aura just upon listening. Because they were just so clear. Yeah. So in this process of exhausting agencies, I'm wondering, sometimes when I sit, it's very clear that some part of the body is holding on because of deep trauma. Is that something? Do you think more concentration will eventually resolve it?

Concentration in the sense of... Continuing down the jhana. Yes. Even permanency or just for the duration? Just for the duration until it becomes permanent. That's why some people would come back to Muroda and then come back out, right? Something would... How do you interpret some people, some claiming to be arahants, saying they have a moment of perception of cessation? They are experiencing, well, I don't know, I can't speak for them, but they're experiencing the embodiment of the Third Noble Truth, where everything is ceased completely. They're experiencing things, but the mind, let's say, the not fully awakened mind, has a tendency to always look at the arising of something and then cling to that. But here, that mind is not tending towards that, but always tending towards the cessation of something.

That's the way it comes. But a mind like that, they would not have perception at all. They would have perception. Yes, yes. There's a perception of cessation. So there's seven perceptions. The perception of impermanence leads to the perception of suffering. Perception of suffering leads to the perception of anatta. Perception of anatta leads to the perception of disenchantment.

Perception of disenchantment leads to the perception of dispassion. The perception of dispassion leads to the perception of cessation. So that perception of cessation is a perception of having relaxed. The pure mind that experiences the mundane Nirvana, that's what they're seeing in every moment, but they're seeing the perception of the arising and passing away of things. Right, so they will still see, or they will still understand it, in the context that it's impermanent, and therefore that all will lead to the perception of the cessation of that feeling and feel. That's a mouthful. You mean completely or in every moment? In every moment. So here's a perception. Passes it. So in what way do they not have perception compared to the ordinary mind?

The ordinary mind looks at that and says this is me, this is mine, this is myself. Automatically sees it. So you're saying that there is perception, just no subjective experience? Yeah, think about it this way. Once they know that it's impermanent, they don't hold on to it as me, mine, or myself. Therefore, they have disenchantment with whatever is arising. Therefore, their mind is dispassion. Therefore, they're seeing it as cessation.

So that subjectivity is no longer. Supposedly, the person reporting is also not. I guess that's also something you can have almost complete and still mostly tend to the sensations, right? Even though occasionally you have some... So it's a process of conditioning again until it becomes automatic. Until it becomes? Automatically becomes the default. Quick question. You said clinging gives rise to an identity in bhava. Would it be fair to say that almost all the links give rise to an identity, or? Craving, clinging, bhava. Give rise to an identity. And some parts of feeling that you would get to. I will explain. Okay, so we're talking about the 62 views, right? Clinging to views in general, first and foremost, is the idea of, I subscribe to this view, right? I subscribe to the Dhamma, so I'm clinging to the Dhamma. That clinging results in a bhava, an identity: that I am somebody who practices the Dhamma, I'm somebody who practices jhanas. And so from there I act. I don't experience suffering, but I experience rebirth in a realm related to that jhana.

But they're still suffering there. Why? Because they're becoming. They're becoming. You're becoming what? It's something that is... It's... Impermanent. Yeah. Yes. So even something as good as a jhana or a jhanic realm is still impermanent. Even though it's so many maha kappas, even though it's so many hundreds of trillions of years, there's still an end to it.

It's conditioned, impermanent, and therefore not worth holding on to, and therefore not self. But that not worth holding on to means that you see it as suffering. It is suffering, because whatever is impermanent is liable to cause suffering at some point. A pleasant feeling, when it disappears, Then there is this view of a guy named Pakuda Katsharyana. He says, or of a kind to be made. These seven things are not made or of a kind to be made. Uncreated, unproductive, barren, false, stable as a column. They do not shake, do not change, obstruct one another, nor are they able to cause one another pleasure, pain, or both. What are the seven? The earth body, the water body, the fire body, the air body.

Pleasure and pain and the life principle. These seven are neither slain nor slayer, neither hearer nor proclaimer, neither knower nor causer of knowing. And whoever cuts off a man's head with a sharp sword does not deprive anyone of life. He just inserts the blade in the intervening space between these seven bodies. Does that make sense to you guys? Wow. That's cold.

This is the view that the body lives on, that the soul lives on. This is the eternalist view. And so if everything is eternal, what's the point of being good or bad? Doesn't matter. I'll live on anywhere. Then there's a guy named Nigantha Nataputta. This is the Jain view. There's still modern Jainism, as we understand it, view.

He says, let's see where it is. Your Majesty, here one is bound by a fourfold restraint. What for? He is curbed by all curbs, enclosed by all curbs, cleared by all curbs, and claimed by all curbs. And as far as he is bound by this fourfold restraint, thus he is called self-perfected, self-controlled, self-established. So they don't give a whole lot of clarity on this, but I'll give you the understanding of what the Jain idea is. They believe in a soul that continues to reincarnate from lifetime to lifetime.

And they do believe in karma. What they believe is that karma comes in the form of particles. So as you make good karma, karmic particles stick to the soul, and as you make bad karma, bad karmic particles stick to that soul. And so how do you purify and become a perfected one? You have to purify by de-dusting yourself. And that happens through ascetic practices.

You have to fast. You have to be one way or another. So the ascetic practices, the idea that purifying the body through hard practices will lead you to a point where you let go of all this karmic dust. It's the kind of view that says that my salvation is only through having experienced hardship. At least this is what the monastics of the Jain community believe.

But the Buddha says that there's no meaning in doing these things. It's just the process that causes pain, more and more pain. So the Buddha actually asked this Jain philosopher the question, all right, so you say that you have so much karmic particles by doing all of these ascetic practices. Is there a bank balance? Is there a balance of, oh, I have this much left, or I have that much left, until you become perfected?

So the idea is you become perfected only after you let go of all karma. But that's not a Buddhist view. You become perfected when you purify in the sense of replacing the unwholesome, and you de-identify with that wholesome process. Karma, not by engaging with it, by purifying through ritualistic and aesthetic practices. Instead, you see it for what it is, as being impersonal, and let go of that. There's nothing else to do but to let go, to soften it, to accept, and let it melt away. And then finally we have this interesting character.

Sanjaya Belaputta, who was the first teacher of Sariputta and Moggallana. Remember I was telling you the other day that Sariputta and Moggallana, they went and they met Sanjaya. They were under the skeptics, which are also known as the eel-wrigglers. They never make conclusions or anything. Give them a question and they just say, oh, it might be this, it might be that, might not be this, it might not be that. It could be that, could not be that. It's neither this nor not that.

So, basically, their view is, if you ask me, is there another world? If I thought so, I would say so. But I don't think so. I don't say it is so, and I don't say otherwise. I don't say it is not, and I don't not say it is not. If you ask me, is there another world, or both, or neither, is there fruit, is there a Tathagata, and so on, I say the same thing. Conclusions, and the reason is because they're afraid to be criticized. That's the general idea. They don't want to be criticized. They don't want to have a conclusion and have to debate.

So they say, no, it could be one or the other, or it couldn't be one or the other. Who knows? But obviously with the Dhamma, there are certain conclusions. There are certain ideas that are set in stone through the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths, for attainments and so on. All of these are there. There's no doubt about it. There's no skepticism about it. So these are the six views.

Now let's continue with the rest. I think the people that do tax support are eel-wrigglers. It could be, yeah. And then we have clinging to rules and observances. So clinging to rules and observances comes in different flavors. One is the idea that these rites and rituals will take me to salvation, will take me to Nirvana. But another way of looking at clinging to rites and rituals is this idea of believing in the concept of luck and coincidence. In the Dhamma, there are no coincidences.

So if you have a lucky sock, you have a lucky underwear, you have a rabbit's foot, you have a horseshoe, four-leaf clover, all of those things, that's just the idea that I believe in luck. I believe that I'm going to get this because if I pray to this particular deity, they're going to give me this, and so on and so forth. That attachment, you think about it, it's in direct conflict with the idea of karma.

Because karma is about your own self-efforts. Self-efforts, meaning your own efforts, your efforts of making a choice. And so you're conditioning or reconditioning. But the idea that you can bypass karma comes from this idea of clinging to rites and rituals. Finally, clinging to a doctrine of self. We went over this some time back. As I said, there's 20 self-views. There's the five aggregates multiplied by the four basic views. The five aggregates are me, or the five aggregates are myself.

Myself is in the five aggregates. The five aggregates are in myself, or myself is separate to the five aggregates. These are the 20 different views. Let's look at, you mentioned this yesterday, which is a good point. When you become a stream enterer, which clinging goes away? Right, and? Self-view. Self-view. Self-view. But the clinging part, the clinging to self-view and the clinging to rites and rituals, go away. When you become an anagami, which clinging goes away? When you become an arahant, which clinging goes away? Clinging to views, all views, because you don't even cling to the double. You don't even cling to right view. So with the arising of craving, there is the arising of clinging. The way leading to the cessation of clinging is just this noble eightfold path.

So you like something, or you say that I want this, and then you say I want it because of so and so. If you notice that there is craving, that the mind says I want this, and there's tension there, and you let it go, it won't go to that part of associating, that part of rationalizing why you like something. Because I like so-and-so, because so-and-so.

So if you let go of craving, you let go of clinging, and therefore there's no being either. Because there's no being, there won't be a birth of action, and because there's no birth of action, there won't be any suffering. Disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. There might be friends. When, friends, a noble disciple understands craving, the origin of craving, the cessation of craving, and the way leading to the cessation of craving, in that way he is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. And what is craving? What is the origin of craving? What is the cessation of craving? What is the way leading to the cessation of craving?

There are these six classes of craving. Craving for forms, craving for sounds, craving for odors, craving for flavors, craving for tangibles, craving for mind objects, and of course you have craving for existence and craving for non-existence. So sensual craving comes from kamatanha, which is the Pali. Craving for existence is bhavatanha, and the craving for non-existence is vibhavatanha. So any of these craving patterns come from this sense of identity, this idea that I am this, or I identify with this. When you identify with something, then you say, I don't like this, or I like this, or I am this.

So how do you identify? You identify when there is an experience, which is in the form of vedana. There's a pleasant feeling. There's a pleasant sight. You look at that and you identify with the process of that seeing and say, I like that. I want more of it. Now you have craving. Or there's a terrible odor somewhere and you smell that and you realize, oh, you identify with that process and say, I don't like that. Oh, there is a painful feeling here, or there is a pleasant feeling here. So you see how the shift in the language and context is there. In one case, you're saying, I like this because the smell is terrible. Well, the smell is great.

Or I don't like this because the smell is terrible. Or you could say, this feeling is unpleasant. If you change your mindset and see things in an impersonal manner, then you won't have pride. And that happens when you understand that every feeling that arises is impermanent and therefore cause for suffering. Therefore, it should not be considered yourself. It should not be taken as me, mine, or myself.

Once you do that, then there won't be an inclination to say, I like it, I don't like it. Do you think this semantic shift actually helps? Oh, yes. Yes. It definitely helps. What did you say? The semantic shift from saying I like this to saying that this is a painful feeling, or whatever it might be. So you explained the recognizing clinging. Yes. So I asked you the question, how do you recognize craving, and is it recognizable physically? So in order to let go of it, it has to be identified. Right. Now, for example, it can manifest physically as tightness and tension. This we understand. It can manifest mentally when there is a mind that is no longer in the present moment.

Fully in the present moment. But you can even identify in the present moment and say, I like this thing. So the idea is, if you recognize the tightness and tension, you can let go of it. If you recognize the mind that says, I don't like this, or I like this, in the form of being distracted by whatever is there in the present moment, whatever is the object, that is freedom. If you recognize that and you let it go and relax it, then you let go of the craving, and therefore you let go of the craving. But the way to prevent craving from even arising is to understand that everything is impersonal. But you can't just understand everything is impersonal.

You can understand it on an intellectual level. You have to be able to see it for yourself that this is an impersonal process. And that happens through the process of samadhi, through the process of meditation. I did not cause this hindrance to come. It just happened because of causes and conditions. I did not cause this pleasant feeling to come. It just arose because of causes and conditions. When you see it in that way, then you don't identify with it. When you don't identify with it, there's no pull. There's no inclining towards it to say, this is me, this is mine, this is myself, and therefore there's no tightening.

When the body is identified with, there's the tightening and tension. So I see chocolate cake. It's a pleasant feeling. It's a pleasant experience. The smell of the chocolate, the taste of the chocolate, you know, all of that. It's nice. It's good. But if I have craving, I notice a certain tension, like my survival depends on it. That's good. It's fight, flight, or fornicate. Or feed. Right? That it creates this tension in mind and body because there's a sense of I need to defend myself. If it's a painful feeling, why, I need to get ready for myself. To enjoy this, because I'm identifying with it, and then what happens? I eat the chocolate cake and I feel relief. But what if you could really find relief before craving arises? This is why we do the 6R's. We don't engage with the craving aversion by looking at it and identifying with it and acting on it and then feeling relief. We relax and feel relief, and therefore we don't crave.

You see the shift? So that's with the feeling, the pleasant or unpleasant feeling. Neutral feeling, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's a psychological impetus. Then, so on an EEG, would that show up as a hot spot on a brain map or something like that? So then it hits the neurological condition and transmits into the body, where the body gets warm or cools depending on what the feeling is, physical. And that's why we use release and relax, right? Because you're getting it on the psychological level and the physiological level. So the question is, can that be seen? Could somebody be meditating and see on a brain map cravings starting to arise?

I'm just curious. Does anybody want to volunteer for that? Sure, it ain't that simple. You don't have to be really slow because it's not being 100,000 times a second. Right. But what we should understand is that even after all of those processes, the best way to recognize craving is if there's tightness and tension. That's the easiest way to understand it. So if you find that the body is a little tense and you let it go, you're reconditioning the mind's way of dealing with that craving, because you find relief in either case.

It's just a matter of which successive processes that you want to follow. There is the mind that says, oh, I like this, and it craves it, and when it finds satisfaction in that craving, it finds relief. Or, you see the craving, but you don't indulge in the craving, and you let it go, and you already find relief. So if you have relief, and if relief is the motivating factor, if you already have relief, why would you then crave? That's the way to understand it, but in terms of recognizing that craving, it's by understanding it in tightness and tension in the body. That feeling, I think it can be directly observed. Letting that go.

Relaxing that. This is why we do the relax stuff. That's how we let go of the treatment. So it's a sensation. Yeah. That's why softening is such a great word too. Because tension means it's hard. You just soften. Soften it. Is there any app for this? Is there an app for this? Would you like to help us develop one? Let's talk. Yeah.

Right. And then possibly, as you were saying, maybe some kind of brainwave pattern too. Who knows? We'll talk. So at each link, they're saying, is there a way that one has the right view? And they always say, understand suffering, understanding, clinging, understanding, feeling. So is there... I'm assuming this understanding, experiential understanding that you're talking about, and it was curious, like, what the Pali word is, if there's something special about what they mean by understanding. And the other bit is, I'm assuming that there's degrees, whatever it is, because the arahant will understand it in a way that someone who's just starting meditation practice, for example, is going to have such a well called myself a basic understanding of craving, and all these links are right, because, and ultimately because, as they say, whoever understands this here and now makes an end to suffering.

I can understand craving somewhat, but my suffering has not ended. Arahant understands it differently, and so their craving has ended. So we look at it from the context of just the four noble truths. So far, if you haven't understood already, you might already, or if you haven't recognized it already, what we're doing is we're saying that the dukkha, for example, is craving itself. In the context of, you have dukkha, you have samudaya, you have nirodha, and then you have patipada or magga.

Or in English, that is, you have the dukkha as suffering, you have the condition for the suffering, or the cause or condition for suffering, you have the cessation of that suffering, and then you have the way leading to that cessation of suffering. So what do you do with those four Noble Truths? The first Noble Truth, you have to abandon the second Noble Truth, experience the third Noble Truth, and cultivate the fourth Noble Truth. So understanding here is meaning recognizing that there is craving. Then abandoning and relaxing is the relaxing of the second Noble Truth, letting go of that. So if there's clinging as the first Noble Truth, when you 6R that, you're using the fourth Noble Truth, cultivating it by exercising it, to abandon the craving that caused the clinging.

And then therefore, you experience the cessation of, or you realize the cessation of that clinging. So understanding here is in terms of the awareness that it's there, the recognition aspect, that's all. And then applying the four noble truths format to each link. Yes, exactly. You had mentioned earlier that luck and coincidence does not happen in Vietnam. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam and Taiwan, they're all about superstitious where you pray to the Buddha to enhance your business and give you money. And so I'm just thinking, praying and doing all those donations, they're useless is what we're saying. What we're saying is that if you're doing it with the idea that this is going to change my karma, because your karma is only changed by experiencing it, but if you say that this is going to negate my karma or alleviate my karma by doing this, that's the kundi.

Prayer is different. Prayer depends on what kind of prayer you're doing. In a sense, when you're sending out loving kindness, you're praying, right? You're praying for loving kindness of all beings. But prayer with the idea that this is going to change my karma is different. There's the intention behind that, yeah. So now, you were mentioning the painful or pleasant craving. But there is craving in the sense of a painful or pleasant feeling. There can be craving or aversion. But in the case of neutral feeling, and in the case of the other two, there can be identification that can be craving. So, even in neutral feeling, there can be craving, in the form of saying, this is me, this is mine.

That's what you have to let go of as the anaga. Can you give an example of a neutral feeling? So a neutral feeling would be a feeling of equanimity. It's neutral. It feels good, but it's actually a neutral feeling, and then having the clinging to that equanimity and saying, oh, that's my equanimity. So, with the arising of feeling, there is the arising of craving. With the cessation of feeling, there is the cessation of craving. The way leading to the cessation of craving is just this noble faithful path. When a noble disciple has thus understood craving, saying, good friend, the bhikkhus delighted and rejoiced in the venerable sorry for those words but not enough, because then they asked him a further question. But friend, might there be another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma?

How does it transition from feeling to craving? We already talked about this. The identification of a feeling as taking it personally leads to craving. But what is the intersection between feeling and craving? There's the seven underlying tendencies. When there is a pleasant feeling, there can arise the underlying tendency towards craving for that feeling. When there is a painful feeling, there can arise the underlying tendency towards aversion for that painful feeling.

When there is a neutral feeling, there can arise the underlying tendency towards views towards that feeling, seat of that feeling, towards wanting to become from that feeling, and then doubt from that feeling, or any of those feelings, qualities of feelings actually, and ignorance in the form of lack of mindfulness. What is ignorance? Ignoring the four noble truths, right? Not knowing the four noble truths. How does that manifest? Sloth and torpor. And why does sloth and torpor happen? Well, in my case, I don't sleep that much.

But generally, if it's sloth and torpor, but it can also be other things, other hindrances, let's say. But the reason why there's ignorance, the ignoring or the not knowing of the four noble truths, ultimately leads to, ultimately stems from, lack of mindfulness. Lack of wise attention. Every time you are not mindful, you don't have wise attention, or, if you read the book, attention rooted in reality, which is the ability to see that feeling as impersonal, as impermanent, therefore not what's holding on to, and therefore personal. That mindfulness is not there. That leads to the arising of an underlying tendency towards craving, towards aversion, towards conceit, towards views, towards ignorance, towards doubt, towards dhava, whatever it might be. Then from there, that fuel can, if acted upon, or that tension that comes from there, that inclination that comes from there, stems into full-blown craving or full-blown aversion.

So how do you let that go? Arouse more mindfulness. Right. How does mindfulness come about? By applying intentiveness to the object of meditation. Right. And how do you bring the mind back to the object of meditation? Do the 6R's. Six R's. You recognize and you're mindful. You release and you relax and let go of the identification of that hindrance, let go of the underlying tendency that can bring, and come back and generate something wholesome, and then come back to that wholesome. And now you have attention, wise attention, attention rooted in reality. Yoniso manasikara, as it's called.

So, has anybody written down the seven underlying tendencies? So I'm going to write, I'm going to say it again. Underlying tendency towards craving. Underlying tendency towards aversion. Underlying tendency towards doubt. Underlying tendency towards abuse. Underlying tendency towards conceit. Underlying tendency towards becoming or habitual tendencies. And underlying tendency towards ignorance. Yeah. So, why are...

Isn't aversion just like the flip side of craving? That's right. So there's something separate here. There's a separate tendency. It's a separate tendency, but it's the same, the two sides of the same coin. I guess I would have thought, would we just fall under craving and not have its own entry, I suppose? Do you have craving? Like sensual craving? Or do you have sensual aversion? You have aversion towards that sense experience. Compulsion and aversion. Right. And that's dependent upon the painful feeling or the pleasant feeling. If it's a pleasant feeling, you have craving for that feeling. If it's a painful feeling, you have aversion for that feeling. Or towards that feeling. But they're both craving.

Yeah. All of this is craving. That would be a first. Once you're mindful, then you no longer have... Let's talk about that. You can be mindful, but you can still have views and doubts and things like that that might come up. So the reason I asked somebody to write that down is now let's go over that and understand when you have each attainment, what goes away.

When does the underlying tendency to craving and aversion go away? Anagami. Anagami. When you become an anagami, the underlying tendency towards sensual craving and aversion goes away. When you have let go of the underlying tendency of doubt, what level is that? Stream entry. When you let go of the underlying tendency towards views, conceit, becoming, and ignorance, when does that happen? You said something very interesting about too much mindfulness or...

I missed it. So mindfulness by itself can be problematic because without serenity, it's a sharp sword. but it can cut anyway, because it's not tempered by metta or-- - Equanimity and so on. - Right, so mindfulness by itself, bare attention, can be, and so what I'm thinking here is this mindfulness-based stress reduction programs that, I mean, too far without tranquility, without compassion, we can have a sharp, critical mind rather than a compassionate, empathetic mind. Is that right? That's right.

So in other words, if you just have bare attention in the form of just mindfulness, then the mind has a tendency to look at that and can be critical of it. But if it's tempered by the other enlightenment factors, which include the investigation of states, the energy, the joy, the tranquility, the collectedness, and the equanimity, then you have balance. Then you're seeing things as they actually are, but without judgment, without criticism, without any kind of 'I want this' or 'I am this' or any kind of projection. There's a federal propina who says even thieves need mindfulness. Right, exactly.

You need attention to steal. Otherwise, how are you going to make your money? So before we go, I forgot to ask you guys. So we have the sensual craving, we have craving for existence and craving for non-existence. When does it go away, the sensual craving? Sensual craving. Oh, sensual craving. When does the craving for existence and non-existence go away? At this true Dhamma. There might be friends. When friends, a noble disciple understands contact, the origin of contact, the cessation of contact, and the way leading to the cessation of contact, in that way he is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. And what is contact? What is the origin of contact?

What is the cessation of contact? What is the way leading to the cessation of contact? There are these six classes of contact: eye contact, ear contact, nose contact, tongue contact, body contact, and mind contact. With the arising of the sixfold base, there is the arising of contact. With the cessation of the sixfold base, there is the cessation of contact. The way leading to the cessation of contact is just this noble eightfold path.

Can you cease contact? No. Why? It's already happening. It's already happening. Can you cease what's happening right now, what you're seeing in terms of contact? But does it cease? No. It can cease. It can cease. Yes. With the cessation, perception, freedom and consciousness. Oh. Eventually. Yeah. In that sense. So as you sit deeper and deeper and deeper and let go of the final formations in the mind, you have cessation and there's no more contact. Disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. There might be friends. When friends, a noble disciple understands the sixfold base, the origin of the sixfold base, the cessation of the sixfold base, and the way leading to the cessation of the sixfold base.

In that way, he is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. And what is the sixfold base? What is the origin of the sixfold base? What is the cessation of the sixfold base? What is the way leading to the cessation of the sixfold base? There are these six bases: the eye base, the ear base, the nose base, the tongue base, the body base, and the mind base.

With the arising of mentality-materiality, there is the arising of the sixfold base. So what is the eye? What is the ear? What is the nose? What is the tongue? What is the body? Receptors. Receptors, right? For different vibrations and photons and... Molecules. Yeah. Stores. They're sensors, yeah. So, but how do they come about? How are they...

How do they process? What are they dependent on? Contact. Contact is dependent on them. Reception. Consumption. They need something to be housed. So the receptors, the photon receptors, the olfactory bulbs, the whatever you call it in the ears, the tongue, you know, all of that, it's happening in the physical body. I mean, it's placed in the physical body of materiality.

Remember what we said yesterday? How do you experience the factors of mentality? Only through the body. How do you know that you have a body, or there is a body? Only through mentality. And so the sixth sense spaces are actually part of mentality-materiality, but they stem from them. So that's why they're known as being dependent upon them or conditioned by them.

Any questions about that? Good. So, when a noble disciple has thus understood the sixfold base, the origin of the sixfold base, the cessation of the sixfold base, and the way leading to the cessation of the sixfold base, he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way, too, a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. Saying, good friend, the bhikkhus delighted and rejoiced in the Venerable Sariputta's words. Then they asked him a further question. But, friend, might there be another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma? There might be friends. When, friends, a noble disciple understands mentality-materiality, the origin of mentality-materiality, cessation of mentality-materiality, in that way he is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. And what is mentality-materiality? What is the origin of mentality-materiality? What is the cessation of mentality-materiality? What is the way leading to the cessation of mentality-materiality? Feeling, perception, intention, contact and attention, these are called

mentality. The four great elements and the material form derived from the four great elements, these are called materiality. So this mentality and this materiality are what is called mentality-materiality. With the arising of consciousness, there is the arising of mentality-materiality. How do you know you have mentality-materiality? Consciousness. You only know you have mentality and materiality, or you know that knowing is consciousness, the jnana. Jnana means knowledge. Vi means to divide.

So the consciousness that we're talking about is divided through the processes of mentality and materiality and the sixth sense basis. That's why we have eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness. We know it because there is the feeling and perception that arise due to the mentality-materiality, or mentality rather, because that's dependent upon the content. There's intention, there's attention, and so on. But because of these processes, consciousness arises. You know what the world is in the context of the Dhamma? No. It's a sixth sense basis. No, we're not saying that.

But we're not perceiving. None of us are perceiving? Right. In the sense that if you don't pay attention to it, it won't come to be. So in the same way, when a hindrance is there and you pay attention to that, your consciousness is flowing to that hindrance. Attention is fueling that hindrance. You have, so to speak, hindrance consciousness. But if you let go of your attention through that hindrance, you relax it, let go, and it's through the six hours that hindrance goes away, because there's no attention to fuel it. But if your attention is now on loving-kindness, you have, so to speak, loving-kindness consciousness, and so that is present there, and that happens through the process of intention and attention.

You intend what you want to see, and your attention makes that consciousness flow. Yeah, the world is, according to the Dharma, just that which we see. Yeah. British empiricism. Excuse me? It's like a British empiricism. So, with the arising of consciousness, there is the arising of mentality and materiality. With the cessation of consciousness, there is the cessation of mentality and materiality. If there was no consciousness, would you be aware of mentality and materiality? No. Looking at it from the experiential point, we talked about it from the macro point, the rebirth to rebirth, life to life. We talked about it yesterday. If there was no consciousness there, would the nama-rupa be there? Would it continue to grow?

But if you don't have nama-rupa, would there be consciousness? Because consciousness is always arising dependent upon an experience. When you have the sixth sense bases, then only do you have the six consciousnesses that arise. So, it means that if we are not looking at the defilement, then the defilement doesn't exist. So, if you're only generating wholesome states, then for that moment, only wholesome states exist. In that moment. So, it's like, you know, look at it. If it doesn't exist, that's itself a little bit. It's not that you don't look at it. It's that your attention is not fueling it. But it's still there as a potential in the form of roots in the formations.

So we're going to get to that very soon. So, when a noble disciple has thus understood mentality-materiality, the origin of mentality-materiality, this part. The noble disciple of this true Dhamma is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma. You and has arrived at this true Dhamma. And what is consciousness? What is the origin of consciousness? What is the cessation of consciousness? What is the way leading to the cessation of consciousness?

There are these six classes of consciousness: eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness. With the arising of formations, with the arising of sankhara, there is the arising of consciousness. With the cessation of formations, there is the cessation of consciousness. The way leading to the cessation of consciousness is just this noble eightfold path. Why are formations the condition for consciousness?

At the macro level, they will determine what the consciousness is going to be like when it is reborn, and at the micro level, formations are just habits that are going to... So, at the macro level, the formations activate a certain type of consciousness. It works the same way at the micro level. If your roots of the formations are unwholesome, so if you have greed, hatred, and delusion, there's a specific type of consciousness. We talked about the sense consciousness. What we're talking about is chitta.

Now you have to understand consciousness can have interchangeable definitions and meanings depending upon the words. There's citta, mano, and vinnana. So we talked about the monkey mind, right? Does anybody know where the monkey mind came from? In the sutta, it says that the mind or consciousness goes from one branch to the other. So when we talk about consciousness in this perspective, what we're saying is if there's greed, hatred, or delusion, it can give rise to a certain kind of filtration system of that consciousness. That mindset, which is the citta, or the vinnana, which is the consciousness, can be colored by one of those roots of greed, hatred, or delusion.

And those filtrations or those colors are the upakilesas. Don't worry, but I'm just going to say there are 16 of them. I'm not going to go through that. But these kinds of, there's like a greed mindset, there's a stinginess mindset, there's an aversive mindset, you know, these kinds of things, which then determine or influence the way you make contact with the world. With the world, you have this mindset that influences the way you perceive the world, and then when you have the feeling, it can give rise to a pleasant or painful feeling. And because those rooted unwholesome formations are running in the background, they're influencing the way you make contact, and therefore influencing the way you're going to feel, and therefore can give rise to an underlying tendency, and therefore give rise to craving. But at that intersection point between feeling and craving

If you can make the choice to see it as being impersonal, then you are rooting out those unwholesome roots in formations. And therefore the new consciousness that arises in the next cycle won't be influenced, or will be less influenced. And so this is how you do that whole reconditioning process. The consciousnesses, the tainted glass. Yes. Formations are the color for the tinted glass.

It's the actual stain. Or rather, the roots in the formations. They influence then the next set of consciousness that arises, filter and let in, in a sense. Yeah, they facilitate that filtration process. That's what I'm saying. On the macro level, it gives rise to that particular consciousness, but on the experiential day-to-day level, it's influencing that consciousness. But there's actually a birth of consciousness. That's why we're saying in every moment there's an arising and passing away of consciousness. There's a birth of consciousness and there's a death of consciousness in every moment.

And that's happening and being determined by what kind of formations are arising. It's sort of the wheel of fortune. That's what filters through depending on whatever is there. So it's sort of, in a sense, it's automatic. So that's how karma is really. That's our storehouse of, you know, what numbers are there. The formations are the carriers of the karma.

So I'll explain now. Let me get to formations. Yes. Citta. Vinnana is interchangeable. Yeah, yeah. But it can be interchangeable with the word citta. Just as you can say consciousness or awareness in English, citta and vinnana can be used interchangeably also. That's right, that's right. The mind is how everything is experienced through. So you experience, that's the mentality factors of contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention. That happens through mind. That's mano.

So to further complicate things, you can also use mano interchangeably with vinnana, consciousness, or citta, mindset. You know, most people like mano and citta, that could be the same thing. Exactly. And depending on the context, it can be the same thing. Well, there's... In the Foundations of Mindfulness, there's Citta Anupassana. Yeah. And Dhamma Anupassana. Yeah. So would you equate... This is probably not a little bit of this.

Maybe we'll have this discussion. All right. Yes. We're almost done, guys. We're almost done. So, when a noble disciple has thus understood consciousness, the origin of consciousness, the cessation of consciousness, and the way leading to the cessation of consciousness, the here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way, too, a noble disciple is one of right view and has arrived at this true Dhamma.

Saying, good friend, the bhikkhu is delighted and rejoiced in the venerable Sariputta's words. Excuse me. Of formations? What is the cessation of formations? What is the way leading to the cessation of formations? There are these three kinds of formations: the bodily formation, the verbal formation, the mental formation. With the arising of ignorance, there is the arising of formations. With the cessation of ignorance, there is the cessation of formations. The way leading to the cessation of formations is just this, the Noble Eightfold Path. So, he just talked about three types of formations.

Bodily formations are related to breathing, because your body is the one that breathes, the whole process of inhalation and exhalation, but also any other bodily processes, including taking action, walking, sitting, standing, so on, and perception itself. They influence how you feel and how you perceive things. Verbal formations are those thought processes, the percolations of thoughts that arise when you want to engage in speech. So they influence what you say and how you say what you say.

Now, formations are karmic, or carriers of karma. Formations are influenced in a non-fully awakened mind by ignorance. They can be laced with craving, laced with conceit, laced with views, and laced with ignorance. So now what we said was the tinted window is consciousness, and the tints themselves are the formations, but the coloring of those tints is determined by the pigmentation.

That pigmentation can be craving, it can be conceit, it can be views, it can be ignorance. So when you let go, as an anagami, of sensual craving, sensual craving in the formations no longer arise. When you let go of the craving for existence and non-existence, then that craving in those formations doesn't arise. The karma of that doesn't arise. It's not carried away. When you let go of all views, let go of all conceit, let go of ignorance, then that formation or those formations are said to be pure.

So there are abhisankharas, which are the formations, karmic formations, that are tinged with the craving, conceit, views, and ignorance. There are the pure formations, which are still karmic in nature, because for the arahant there are still formations. They still arise because you still need to feel, and you still feel, and you perceive, you still speak, you still feel the body, you still have bodily needs, so they still are in function, they still act, or they're still active, but they're pure. So all they do is they carry forward previous karma, previous karmic coloring from previous choices prior to full awakening. And that translates into karma, old karma from those previous choices, manifesting as vedana, manifesting as feeling.

But because they're not laced with craving, conceit, views, or ignorance, there won't be a consciousness that will have greed, hatred, or delusion. Therefore, the contact won't be influenced by such consciousness. Therefore, the feeling won't give rise to certain kinds of underlying tendencies. Therefore, there won't be craving, clinging, and being. Instead, the karma of that arahant goes through the formations, but the formations themselves are pure, unlaced, untinged.

Therefore, the consciousness itself is pure, untainted, unstained. And therefore, the contact is pure. It is impermanent, not worth holding on to, and impersonal. So because of that, it just dissipates. It might come up again, but then it dissipates. And eventually there is the remainder of this fading away of that karma. And that happens through the Eightfold Path, having followed the Eightfold Path. So pure formations, you could say, actually, you think about it this way. What are the formations influenced by? What are they conditioned by? Ignorance.

What is the opposite of ignorance? Wisdom. Right view. So now right view is influencing the formations. Which means when you have right view, you have right intention, comes from the formations, or which the formations go through, and that means that automatically you're seeing everything as being impermanent, a cause of suffering, and therefore impersonal. So now what's influencing everything is right view, wisdom, instead of ignorance, eradicated completely. And it's just the spinning of the, well, the sankharas that are sort of powering the show. Yes. And as soon as they run out of gas, everything runs out of gas.

Not knowing about suffering, not knowing about the origin of suffering. Not knowing about the cessation of suffering. Not knowing about the way leading to the cessation of suffering. This is called ignorance. What's the origin of ignorance? There's something very specific that gives rise to ignorance. That is ignorance itself. What is it? What conditions ignorance? Taints. Who said that?

Ken, you know this already. That's right. You've been to this town before. At least three times. Yeah. The taints. The asavas. Remember we're talking about the asavas, the outflows. So there are three asavas. There is the sensual craving asava, there's the becoming asava, and the ignorance asava itself. It's going to be sensual craving, becoming, and ignorance, sometimes views also, but views can be categorized under ignorance. Yeah. No, it doesn't go to habitual tendencies. For the arahant, there's only the feeling, and that's it.

That action is right action, which doesn't produce karma. So the birth of action there, so there won't be the craving. So what the question is, for the arahant, if there's no craving, there won't be craving clinging, but will there be being? There won't be being either. There won't be habitual tendencies. There will be birth of action, but that's birth of spontaneous action.

That birth of spontaneous action is rooted in right action. So there the arahant is using their intuition to see, to automatically understand what is the perfect action. So there's a new list, a shorter list for me? Yes, I'll go over that. So the verbal formations give rise to a thinking pattern of how you want to say something. But if you catch that thinking pattern, you recognize just before you speak of verbal action, that's influenced by this whole processing that happens through verbal formations. If you catch that processing by saying, oh, I'm starting to think this way and I'm about to say something, you can let go of that and replace it with something wholesome.

Can you turn off words? One of the things that I expected to encounter, that I've never... is somewhere the ability, maybe when you're far enough to advance, to not translate the words. Yeah. If you could just escape the words, you'd escape it off the block, wouldn't you? Yeah, exactly. Does that happen? That does happen. It does? Yes. Just a more further walk. Further walk. Okay. Yeah, I'll talk to you later about that. Yeah. Yeah. They are uprooted. They don't occur at all. So let me continue and I'm going to explain more. So everybody has understood ignorance so far?

In that way, he is one of right view, whose view is straight, with unwavering confidence. Becoming destroyed. And the taint of ignorance? What gives rise to the taints? Who said this? What did you say? Yes. See, there's an interdependency between ignorance and the taints. Remember what I said. The ignorance equals lack of right mindfulness. When you don't have attention at the level of feeling, the lack of mindfulness feeds the taint of ignorance.

When you have a desire to become, because you have lack of mindfulness and you take and identify that feeling personally, you feed back into the taint of becoming. You have craving because you have lack of mindfulness, you feed back the loop to the taint of sensual desire. So, if you have mindfulness, the right mindfulness, with regards to feeling, you're whittling away at ignorance bit by bit and therefore whittling away at the taint of sensual desire, the taint of becoming, and the taint of ignorance, bit by bit, until they fade away.

And how does that happen? Six hours. There you go. So here's a question. Once the taints are destroyed, do you need to 6R's? No. Well, I think it's automatic, isn't it, at that point? There's no need to make... It's effortless. It's just automatic. Effortless. Because... Because the mind is pure. And that's all it does. It's just pure awareness. Just meeting itself. So there's nothing to say sorry then. It just sees things as they really are.

And what does that mean, seeing things as they really are? That's the attention rooted in reality. I know I sound like a broken record, but that is seeing it as being impermanent, not worth holding on to, and therefore not me, not mine, not myself in personal process. Yes, questions. Yeah. There is 12 links, but sorry, put the being started with, he likes to analyze things, and so he goes deeper than anyone else. So I'm looking at the taints themselves. The taints themselves are not the links. The taints themselves are the substratum, the foundation from which the links arise. How is the taint of becoming different from becoming a link?

So the taint of becoming influences the habitual tendencies. And the habitual tendencies, when acted upon, influence the taint. That's why I'm saying there's a feedback loop system going on. It's not really a link. Exactly. What does the text say the origin is of the taints? Ignorance. Which means lack of mindfulness. Lack of right mindfulness. It's all right. Well, the word right is sammasati. So, sammasati. Not just sati, but sammasati. It has to be the right. It has to be the right mindfulness, the effective mindfulness. The one that is effective for the realization of the body. Right. And that is the mindfulness that is associated with the seven factors of awakening. Right. So it has to be associated with that.

When I see you at the interview, I have a gift for you. Alright. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering freely and the fears struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. Space and earth, leave us an artist of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect and put this dispensation.