Day 3 8 Fold Path June Retreat with Delson Armstrong

The first sermon of the Buddha is in Samyutta Nikaya 56.11. This is called the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the turning of the wheel of the Dhamma. And it's such an important sutta because it lays down the entire foundation of what dharma is, what the Buddha dharma is. So the Buddha explains that there are these two paths, and they're both ignoble paths. There is the path of indulgence, and there is the path of asceticism. So, for the first 28, 29 years of his life, he had experienced many indulgences as a prince. We can say it's the equivalent of a prince because it was more of a collection of different states under the rulership of, kind of like a senate, kind of like a federation of different kingdoms.

And the leader of that was his father. And as the story goes, a man named Asita came to visit the king and his family, because a prince was born, and this was Gautama. That was his name, Siddhartha Gautama. And he made a prediction that this being would be either a great Chakravartin, as a wheel-turning monarch. What does that even mean, wheel-turning monarch?

Or he would be a great ascetic. And a Chakravartin, Samrat Chakravartin, means somebody who is an emperor, a king of kings, somebody who is a leader of many nations. And so for the king, he was distraught because here is his son who could potentially become an ascetic, not a good look for the royal family. So he did everything in his power, as the story goes, to make sure that he warded off any kind of impression of death, disease, sickness. And he kept Siddhartha within the walls of the palace, within the walls of the palace grounds and parts of the city. And all those who were sick and destitute and showed any signs of suffering were cordoned off to another place.

in indulgence. He grew up in a place where he didn't know anything about suffering. He knew only the pleasures of the senses as a royal prince. And as the story goes, he was then exposed to, as we talked about before, he was exposed to the four sights. Here, Channa, took him outside the palace grounds, beyond, because he asked him to do so. And in that outing, he saw different things. He saw a sick person. He saw an old person. He saw a corpse. And he saw a man sitting under a tree, quite serene, smiling, and happy. life as a royal prince and understand what is the way out of suffering.

So here is a person who has never been exposed to anything like physical suffering or even mental suffering because his whole life has been about pleasing the senses. His whole life has been about being happy through sensual pleasures. Of course, when he was around eight, nine, or ten, somewhere around that time, he had the opportunity to sit under the rose apple tree and actually sit in meditation during the Harvest Festival.

So in any case, he had experienced all of that, all of the indulgences, and then he left his old home, went into the forest, and he had two meditation teachers. The first teacher is, I think, Uddaka Ramaputta. And the other one escapes me right now. Alara Kalama. There we go. So the first one was Alara Kalama. And in that meeting of his, he asked him, Do you know? Can you teach me something? And he taught him how to get to the state of nothingness.

One of the formless states. And Siddhartha mastered that very quickly. How to get into that Samadhi. And so Alara Kalama said, You are now the same as me. You are at my level. Become my successor and teach my students as a teacher. And Siddhartha was not satisfied. He said, This doesn't seem like the end of suffering. It's a nice place to be, but I still feel the same things. I still feel suffering. I still experience it.

There must be another way. So he left. And he met with Uddaka Ramaputta. And Ramaputta told him, there is a way which is beyond nothingness. I don't know it myself. My father taught it to me. My father instructed it to me. But I can teach you, and maybe you can find for yourself if you can get into it. So Siddhartha listened to his instructions, meditated, neither perception nor non-perception. This is the highest of the formless attainments, very, very refined state to be in. And he said, there is still suffering here, there is still suffering. I haven't experienced any change in my mindset, I haven't experienced any change in personality, in my view, in my perception. So he left and he became an ascetic.

At some point he met with Jain ascetics, he met with different ascetics, and he had a group of five friends, which included Kondanna, who at the time when Siddhartha was still a prince was his teacher in the Vedic rituals, teacher in all of the old systems, the Brahminical traditions. And he taught him many things. But now he himself had left and become a wanderer. And so Siddhartha, with his group of five friends, continued on the path of asceticism. And it's very interesting when you think about what asceticism is. We all have an idea of what that means. You fast, you grow your hair, you're living off of fruits of trees and this and that.

But there are other ascetic practices that are very extreme that you can still see when you go to India. If you go to Varanasi, if you go to Rishikesh, if you go to the Kumbh Mela, which happens every so often, gathering together. It is the original Burning Man. It's the place where they all gather, smoke up some chillums, tell good stories, and sit by the fire. And you have all these guys in long dreadlocks. Some of them are completely naked. They don't wear any clothes at all.

And all they are is covered and smeared in ash from burning corpses. And some of them are doing various different kinds of ascetic practices. Some of them are keeping their hands up like this for 12 years at a time so that the hand withers away, the arm withers away. Some of them, they do all kinds of things. They poke needles through their skin, hang glide with it or whatever it is that they do.

And these practices are found all throughout ancient India. And so Siddhartha was exposed to some of these practices and he did all kinds of things. Go back to the Suttas and you will read it, but some of it is very, very eye-opening, the kinds of things he did. He did this for a long time. He did this for six years.

And he gave up food. He said, I won't eat anymore. I will rely only on the fruits that drop from the trees. And he just ate those fruits. Then after a while, he said, I give up that too. And just subsist on water. And then he said, I give up that too. No more water. And he had become like a corpse in himself. As it says in the suttas, his navel was touching the back of his spine, basically.

And you'll see statues of the corpse bodhisattva, just very skeletal in his appearance. And he was on the verge of death. This and they said we need to intervene, we need to do something about this, and so he said this is not the way. He had that thought occur to him: this is not the way to enlightenment, this is not the way to awakening. I'm on the verge of death, but if I am to experience awakening, if I am to experience wisdom that enlightens and frees, if I am to find the way to the end of suffering, then may this bowl. He took his bowl and he said, may this bowl float upstream on this river, the Niranjan River.

Depending on what time of the year you go, you can see it, but generally there is no river there anymore. It's just dusty old ground. And the story goes, the bowl did go upstream, and he got inspired and said, there must be a way. And so he left his friends and he sat under a tree. And there was a woman there, Sujata, who saw him meditating. And she thought he must be some kind of a divine being.

And she had this notion to give him some alms. And she made something called kheer, which is made from sugar and rice and milk. It's a milk rice pudding. And the story goes, she made it in such a way that she had used the finest ingredients and all these things. So she gave it to him and he ate it. And the five friends of his saw it. And they said, our friend has left the path.

Our friend has betrayed us. He is no longer one of us. He is no longer an ascetic. And they left him. And he sat under the tree. And he meditated and he went through the jhanas. He went through the first jhana and the second jhana and the third jhana and the fourth jhana. And from there he experienced the understanding of karma based on his own life and the many lives that he may have lived. And so he saw through that and he saw karma, rising and passing away of beings. There too he saw karma.

Beings arise and go away depending upon their karma. And then finally he saw the four noble truths. And in that he had the destruction of the things that bind us to our suffering, this existence in suffering. And they're called the asavas. I call them viruses. The most fundamental elements that create ignorance, that create the desire for sensual pleasures, that create the desire for becoming.

And so this was revealed to him through his practice, through his hard-earned meditation practice. And when he understood this, he just relished in it. He meditated for many days. He contemplated dependent origination, developed wisdom, and understood what the path is. But he was so content in what he had experienced. He didn't think that he should teach others. It didn't occur to him. Because he thought that this was so subtle, very nuanced, that could other beings really get this? And as the story goes, there was a Brahma being, a divine being, who came down and he said, there are those with little dust in their eyes. Perhaps they may be able to experience what you have experienced if you were to go out and teach.

And so therein was the choice for him, whether he would teach or not. And he went ahead and said, perhaps I should do that. And so he walked and went to a different place, and he said he would probably go and see the five friends who were the ascetics. But on the way, there was a man named Assaji who saw him, and he saw this brilliant man, glowing and very wise in his stature, awareness.

And so Assaji said, friend, what do you teach and who is your teacher? And the Buddha said, I have no teacher. I am the fully self-awakened, perfected, enlightened being. He gave all of these wonderful descriptors of who he was. And what did Assaji do? He shook his head and walked away. He said, okay, maybe I need to change my marketing strategy.

So he goes and he sees these five friends of his. And so here is the sermon that he gives. He goes to them. And as it goes, they look at him and they say, that's the guy who left us. That's the man who left us. Why should we welcome him? Let us not even look in his direction. Let us not even put out any water for his feet. Let us not put out any kind of a seat for him to sit on. And as he walked closer and closer, one of them fetched water to put in the bowl. Another put a mat for him to sit on. Another prepared something for him. And he sat down and then he gave his sermon.

And he said that there are these two paths, the path of indulgence and the path of asceticism. Both are ignoble. Neither of them lead to the end of suffering. And so there is what is known as the Majjhima Patipada, the middle way, the middle path. And what is this middle path? It is this Noble Eightfold Path. What is the Noble Eightfold Path?

It is Sammaditthi, right view. Sankappa, right intention, right speech, samavakya, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right collectedness. And so, if you look at the way he's showing the path, wherein is meditation? The path starts with right view. The path starts with right view and ends, so to speak, in right collectedness. So when we get on a meditation retreat, we're often very eager to do what? Sit and meditate.

And rightly so. But if you are to follow the way in which the meditation happens in Buddha Dharma, then you need to understand that for right meditation, or right collectedness, or what's known as sammasamadhi, to happen, you need the right causes and conditions. Those preceding factors are non-negotiable. They're not optional. If you want to experience the practice in the way the Buddha has taught, then you have to understand that the fundamentals need to be addressed and need to be applied, need to be cultivated.

So what is right view? What do we mean by right view? Very plainly speaking, right view is the understanding of karma. It's the understanding of action and consequence. So the Buddha says here that right view essentially is these things. First of all, there's two levels: the mundane and the supramundane. We'll get into that. The mundane right view, the right view you start off adopting, is the understanding that there is meaning in what is given, what is offered. There's meaning in what is sacrificed.

In other words, generosity. There is meaning in giving. Giving of your effort, giving of your time, giving of your knowledge, giving of your resources. There's meaning in that. There's meaning in that, and then there is mother and father. So, a lot of times, we will think, does that mean? Like, what if my parents were jerks? What do I do about that?

Because unfortunately, the world we live in, we live in a world where our parents may not have been the best, may not have given us what we needed, may not have been as loving as we wanted, may not have been loving at all. How do we deal with that? What does that mean? There is mother and there is father.

The Buddha is saying here that there is mother and father. In order for us to have existed, we need a mother and a father, biologically speaking. In order for our body to be here, in order for the mind to be here, in order for us to be here in this life, we needed these two components, which were provided by the mother and the father. Why is that so important, the acknowledgement of that? Because we, being here in this life, in this human life, we are given the possibility to experience the freedom from suffering.

That's not possible unless we were born into this world. Now, if you want to be an antinatalist and you want to be an annihilationist or you want to be a nihilist and you say, well, there's no meaning in anything and all of that, good luck to you. I don't think you're happy. Yeah, there is suffering in life. There is suffering in a lot of things.

But this life also has happiness. This life also has pleasure of things. If it was all suffering, then I would probably grant you that this is not the best place to be. But I would also say if it was all pleasure, it would not still be the best place. And there is a reason. Because if everything is wonderful all the time, why would you want to do anything to get out of it?

You would be enjoying the contents of your life up until the very end. But therein lies the suffering. It ends. You may have many eons of pleasure, but at one point it all ends. By that definition, it is suffering. It is not permanent. It is conditioned. And so, human life, the existence that we have here as humans.

It's the best of hells and the worst of heavens. That's what it is. It gives us just enough to say, yeah, I understand what pleasure is. I understand what pleasant feelings are. But it also gives us enough of pain to say, I need to figure out a way out of this. And for those who are wise enough to realize that, they may come to Dhammasukha and do a retreat.

So that's what happens. You are here in this human life because of your parents. And to that much, to that extent, you owe a debt of gratitude. You acknowledge that mere fact. We may need to forgive our parents. We may need to forgive our mother and father for not giving us the things that we needed in our life, not giving us the love that we needed, not giving us the warmth, the tenderness, all of those things that we may have seen other children receive.

And so, we have to learn how to forgive that and accept that. Some parents learn from that. And so there is mother and father. And then the Buddha says, there is this world and the other. And so a lot of people will interpret that as saying, there is this world that we experience in the here and now, perhaps in this human existence, but that there are other realms, that there are other worlds.

Now, we will have to take his word for it. We have not seen it for ourselves. We may have not experienced seeing other beings and other realms, life elsewhere. We know about the animals. We know about the birds. We know about the reptiles. We know about the fish and so on. But beyond that, that there are other non-human intelligences, let's say we're not really aware of that. And so we may have to take that on the basis of faith. There is another way of understanding this. There is this world and the other. There is this world of the senses, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the body.

And there is the other world of mental states, especially refined and elevated mental states that are known as the jhanas. That there is a possibility of going beyond sensual pleasures and experiencing that are not dependent upon the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, and the body. And so when they are not dependent on these things, this pleasure doesn't require us to continuously abuse our senses and our body. Jhanas are different. Jhanas are very different. Happiness and the tranquility and the contentment that comes from jhana, you can take it with you anywhere and everywhere.

When you're eating, when you're walking, when you're driving, there is this world and the other. There are those teachers, Brahmins and ascetics, who have walked this path and can show how to walk this path. Is right view. When we attain to this right view, it's easy for us to see the benefits of this practice by inferring from it.

And so that right view will then lead to right intention. Right intention here is made up of three things: contentment, non-ill will, and non-harm. Nekkhamma is the Pali word. It means renunciation, but it's not the outer renunciation in which you go into the forest and all of these things. These are beneficial and they're helpful, but it is the inner renunciation of holding on to things as me, mine or myself.

It's the letting go of the things that don't serve us. Letting go of the things that cause us harm. Letting go of the unwholesome. Non-ill will. What is ill will? It is the desire to harm another. I have ill will for someone. I don't wish them well. When I have loving kindness, I'm not in ill will. And so I cultivate that aspect of right intention every time I cultivate loving kindness. Non-harming or non-cruelty.

What is cruelty? Cruelty is adding to another being's suffering. By not recognizing their suffering, perhaps not recognizing our own suffering, we add to another being's suffering through cruelty. So what is a great deterrent against this? Compassion. The recognition of another's suffering and the wish for them to be free of that suffering. In an argument, or in a situation where another person is upset with you, and they call you names, and they criticize you, or they do things that are hurtful, understand, as difficult as it may sound, that they are acting out of suffering.

They may do this for whatever reason. They have their own reasons: vengeance, or they don't like you, or whatever it is. But if a person is free of suffering, why would they want to harm anyone? If a person is no longer bound by their suffering, why would they add suffering to another? And so if we have the wisdom to see that in that situation, and not retaliate, with words of our own, with actions of our own that cause further suffering to that person, then we are activating that non-cruelty.

That is compassion in action. When you have this right intention, then you have something known as right speech and right action. What is right speech? There is an acronym that I like to use for right speech. It's called THINK. T-H-I-N-K. Think before you speak. So what does that stand for? The T stands for timeliness. Is it the right time to say what I want to say? Is it the appropriate time?

H is for honesty. To say is truthful. I is for intention. What is the intention behind what I am about to say? Is it to cause divisiveness? Is it to make peace? Is it to give information? What is it? N is for necessity. Am I just filling the silences up with gossip and tabloid news? Or am I actually just speaking for what needs to be said in that moment?

And K is for kindness. Can I say it with kindness? Can I reprimand with kindness? Can I admonish, if I need to, with kindness? Think before you speak. It'll save you a lot of time. It'll save you a lot of grief. Noble silence is the best. Don't say anything at all. But there's always that little urge. How could he or she say that to me or about me? I have to get the last word.

That's just our ego talking. That's just conceit. And for just a small fraction of satisfaction, that I got the last word, we break relationships. We cause so much pain. So practicing that ability to stay silent, easier said than done. The more you do it, the more peace you will find. Maybe for a few days you'll be in the shower giving the right expression of what I should have said to that person.

Oh, I could have said this to him. I could have said that to her. But it's not worth it. It's not worth it. And then we have something called right action. Right action is refraining from taking what is not given, refraining from harming other beings, and refraining from sexual misconduct. So these are the precepts. Right now, you guys are following, what is it, eight precepts?

But when you get off of retreat, should you want to continue your practice, the five precepts are the basic precepts. Do no harm. Do not kill or harm. Don't take what is not given. What do we mean by that? I'll get into it. Don't indulge in sexual misconduct. And don't indulge in lies and gossip. Don't indulge in intoxicants.

Things like drugs and alcohol that dull the mind. If you really want to progress on this path, you're going to need that. You're going to need that. That's a non-negotiable. So why do we follow these precepts? Because these precepts have an indirect correlation with the hindrances. When we break the precept of doing no harm or killing another being, we are actually activating and cultivating and strengthening ill will, the hindrance of ill will and aversion in the mind.

When we take what is not given, this is essentially stealing, as taking the spotlight in a meeting or taking time away from someone or anything like that. But generally, it's about taking what is not given. This causes an agitation in the mind. Think about the kind of mind that does that. It's a mind that is, of course, greedy, but it's a mind that is insecure. And in that insecurity, there is restlessness.

And that is what is cultivated. When you indulge in sensual or sexual misconduct. Now, obviously, for the purpose of the retreat, it says, no sex at all. Celibacy. Because you're on retreat. You don't need that. When you get off of retreat, it's about sexual misconduct. And sensual misconduct. Sensual misconduct is that in the pursuit of something that I really, really want badly, that's a sensual pleasure, I'm willing to break other precepts.

And where does that come from? It comes from cultivating sensual desire. And when I do it, I strengthen that sensual desire. And gossip and talk about other people behind their backs. I create doubt. I doubt others if they're truly being honest with me. I doubt what they're saying. And I even doubt myself. I can't tell what is right and wrong anymore.

And that results in the hindrance of doubt. What is wholesome and unwholesome anymore. And when I indulge in intoxicants, and now when I say intoxicants, of course, we talk about the usual fear of drugs and alcohol, but also overindulging in other things, like there's a new show on Netflix. So what do you do? You spend the weekend binge-watching the entire show.

And Sunday night, how do you feel? Your mind is dull. So an excess of anything, this overindulgence, causes dulling of the mind, which results in sloth and torpor. These are the five basic hindrances. We'll get more into it as we progress on retreat, how to deal with these hindrances. But if you understand for practical purposes, we're keeping the precepts, not because there is some moral justice, judge up there who will then tell you where you're going to go based on what you've done.

It's for the here and now. You know, the Buddha gave that, he had that bargain as well. He said, okay, fine, I'll grant you, I'll suppose to you that there is no heaven or hell after you die. Let's just leave that aside. But when you do die, how do you want to die? Do you want to die in confusion?

Do you want to die in an uproar of agitation and discomfort and regret and remorse and guilt and shame? Or do you want to die knowing, when you look back on your life, that for the most part you did the best you could to be a person of benefit for yourself. That when it came time to be patient, you were patient.

That when it came time to be loving and kind, you were loving and kind. That when it came time to fall back on your ethics, when people asked you to break them, that you didn't break them. But for us meditators who are serious about meditating, who are serious about getting off of the wheel of samsara, for practical purposes, following the precepts is crucial.

Because it starts to help us cultivate the mind in such a way that we are now taking up the initiative to deal with the hindrances, in this way. When we keep the precepts, there is a certain relief that we may experience. And there is a certain relief and joy that we experience when the hindrances are free from the mind.

And that's the beginning of jhana. Jhana is not bliss on demand. about, I'm going to go on some kind of a retreat and I'm going to experience these amazing exuberant states. Jhana is about understanding that there is something more satisfying than sensual pleasures, and that this experience of jhana allows my mind to be cultivated, to be collected enough so that it can cultivate wisdom.

And in order for that to happen, I need to let go of hindrances. And in order for that to be easier for me to be able to let go of hindrances, I follow the precepts. Because in following the precepts, it grinds away at the hindrances, at the roots. So when I follow this, when I have right speech and right action, then invariably I look at what I do in my life to earn my food, to earn money, which is a representation of the four requisites.

As laypeople, that's what we do. We earn money because that's what gives us food, that's what gives us clothing, that's what gives us shelter, that's what gives us medicines. But how do we want to earn that money? Do we want to earn that money by causing ourselves harm and causing others harm? Now, obviously, we live in a very complex and complicated world. And I always get these kinds of questions. Well, I'm investing in this stock, which is part of a company that's doing this and that and the other. If you feel so strongly about it, don't invest in that stock. I can't give you the answers. Not anyone. Nobody can give you the answers. You have to follow your intuition and your heart.

But know enough to see that if I'm dealing with something that is directly causing harm towards myself or towards another being, I shouldn't be doing it. So what does that involve? That involves a trade that deals with things that kill, that harm. That deals in the suffering of yourself or in the suffering of others, that deals in things like intoxicants that dull the mind.

How could you meditate when you're causing the intoxication of others? So it's just about making sure that whatever I'm doing for my livelihood, a way that it's not causing me harm and causing another harm. I also want to explain one more thing, because there are people who come on retreat sometimes and they have a perfectionist attitude. And it's like, should I have walked there where there was a bug and I didn't see that bug and I accidentally stepped on it? Should I have done this or should I have done that?

You have to understand one thing. It starts with your intention. Karma, as the Buddha says, is intention. What was your intention behind what you did? You stepped on that bug by accident. It wasn't your intention to harm it. So people may get a bit too caught up in the moral perfectionism. And that in itself becomes a detriment to our practice. Because we get too caught up in whether I did the right thing or not.

Don't get caught up in it. Just understand as cleanly as possible: can I be in a space where I am keeping these five precepts? That's it. Let that be your compass. So what am I doing here with these factors of the Eightfold Path? You see, right speech, right action, and right I take up the sila, the bedrock, the foundation.

And then once I have that, then I move on to what's known as right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. That's samadhi, or bhavana, mental cultivation. Once I have that, then my mind experiences liberating it. Insight, panya, coming to the right view that is super mundane and the right intention that is super mundane. What is the super mundane right view?

Well, the Buddha talks about it in his first sermon. He says after he talks about the Eightfold Path, he goes into the Four Noble Truths and he says it is to be understood that there is suffering. It is to be understood that the causes and conditions of suffering are to be abandoned. It is to be understood that one must realize the cessation of suffering. And it is to be understood that one is to cultivate the path that leads to the end of suffering, namely the Eightfold Path.

And then he says, It is to be practiced, cultivated, so that one fully understands suffering. It is to be cultivated so that one fully abandons the causes and conditions of suffering. It is to be cultivated so that one fully realizes the end of suffering. And it is to be fully cultivated so that one fully has developed the path.

And finally, upon reflection, upon seeing this, one has the knowledge that indeed suffering has been understood. One has the knowledge that indeed craving has been abandoned. One has the knowledge that indeed the end of suffering has been realized. And one has the knowledge that indeed the path has been perfected, fully developed. These are the 12 modes that the Buddha talks about.

The Four Noble Truths and the Three Modes. So that's the 12. To be understood, to be cultivated, to be seen that it has been perfected. So in order for us to actually experience the cessation of suffering, we need to follow that path. So once we have that, then we have the Four Noble Truths established in the mind.

It's one thing to say, I know about the Four Noble Truths, I've read about it, I can tell it to you in Pali, in forward and reverse order, I can do all of these things. But it's another to be aware and mindful and to see and realize in every moment the Four Noble Truths. To apply them to every situation.

You see what the Four Noble Truths are. They are a toolkit to diagnose what's going on. So the suffering here can be replaced by distraction. There is this distraction. That's the First Noble Truth. What is the cause and condition for that distraction? I'm trying to control it. I'm pushing it. I am trying to change it. So what do I need to do? I need to abandon it.

I need to drop it like it's hot. To let it go. And when I do that, I experience what? I experience cessation of that hindrance. I experience relief. How have I done it? Applying the fourth noble truth. In this case, what's known as right effort. So what is right effort? Right effort is to recognize that there is an unwholesome state present.

That's the first right effort. The second aspect of that is to abandon the already arisen unwholesome state. What does this mean? There is in your mind sensual desire. Thoughts of sensual desire. There are these thoughts of sensual desire. They are like a flow coming and going, coming and going. As soon as I've recognized that, that's the first noble truth. I have stopped or prevented the arising of future sensual desire thoughts from that momentum.

And I've abandoned the one that has already arisen. That's the second noble truth. I let that go. So with it, like a house of cards, that entire stream of thoughts goes away in that moment. And when I do this, I do the third right effort, which is to generate a wholesome state with a smile. I come back to the present moment with the relaxation. I come back to mindfulness with the smile.

And I maintain that by returning back to my object, a mind that is free of hindrances, a mind that is collected, a mind that is happy. That's right effort. But I can only do that systematically over and over and over if I'm able to recognize those hindrances. And as those hindrances start to weaken, it becomes much easier.

And eventually those hindrances fade away. Maybe in a minute you will have to do 50 6R's. Whatever it is. And that's okay. But after 5 minutes you get the hang of it. You don't have to 6R as much. After 10 minutes you get the hang of it. And you don't have to 6R that often. And eventually your mind becomes more stable, collected, and you may have the six hour, maybe every five minutes, or every 10 minutes, or every 15 minutes, if at that.

It is a practice. This is the practice. This is the work that you're doing here. This is the Dhamma. To decondition the mind from the unwholesome, and recondition it with the wholesome. That is the heart of the path. Right effort is the entire path, the entire Eightfold Path, encapsulated in those four right efforts. When you have that, that leads to right mindfulness and right collectedness.

But these two are large subjects in and of themselves. So we will leave that for another day. Any questions? Yes? Essential pleasures, or is it not how to think about happiness with an object? Yeah, this is a good question. So we should understand that when we say sensual pleasures in this context, it is to do with the physical, primarily.

So when we experience the warmth in the heart, that's a psychosomatic experience that's signifying that we're experiencing the loving-kindness. But we don't make that the object. It's just a signpost. It's the mental pleasure of being in loving-kindness. The joy that we may get from it, the happiness we may get from it, the state of being uplifted that we may get from it. That's mental in nature because it's happening in the mind or the heart or whatever you want to call it. And those pleasures are the beginning of the factors of the jhanas, which we'll get into in a few days. But those factors are not dependent upon whether I'm experiencing something pleasing to the eye, or something that's sweet to the ears, or something that's pleasing to the nose, or something that is very tasty to the tongue.

It's all happening in the mind. It's a pleasure that's happening in the mind. Very different. Yeah, it's not the physical, for sure. As I say, the warmth in the heart is like allowing us to anchor the mind there. Into mindfulness, we will see there's the mindfulness of the body, which includes pleasant sensations. And that's just an anchor for the mind to be there, to be present.

But the loving kindness itself is an emotional experience that's less to do with the body and more to do with the heart. And when I say heart, of course, I mean the spiritual heart or the psychic heart, whatever you want to call that. So don't get too caught up in the physicality of what I need to feel.

Because those are all little kind of signposts. Some people feel heat in the body. And they say that's part of the joy. Some people feel an exhilaration coursing through their body. That's still just part of joy. But the real mental experience of being content, the experience of loving kindness. It's like even if the warmth isn't there, I'm still satisfied.

So you can say it's a positive mindset. It's an uplifting state of mind where I can just remain there no matter what's happening in the body. Yeah, exactly. We're not trying to construct anything here. We're trying to, you pointed out really well, we're relaxing. When we're relaxing, the mind is open enough for these states to happen because we've let go.

The relief we feel isn't something that we are creating or constructing. It's by letting go, by deconstructing, that the mind experiences that relief and that happiness. It's not born of us trying so hard or creating a certain kind of intention that's going to lead to that. It's just by letting go, there's relief. And in that relief, the joy happens.

First there's relief, there's relaxation, and then there's joy. Then from that joy, the mind becomes very collected. But remember, don't mistake the joy for the collectedness. What we are going after, really, is a mind that is collected. That is true jhana. The factors of the jhana are just signposts. So don't mistake the bliss or the uplifted states for the collectedness.

The loving-kindness is there as an anchor, again, for the mind to remain there. You could use compassion. You could use joy as empathetic joy. You could use equanimity. If it feels good to be in a state of gratitude, to uplift the mind and get collectedness. Because that transitions into a feeling of loving kindness. And later that transitions, or can transition, into a feeling of compassion. What are we really after? We're really after things that are wholesome.

The kusala versus the akusala. The kusala really is that which is skillfully liberating. That which brings more expansion. That which brings more freedom. That which brings lightness to the mind. And the akusala states, in which I'm trying very hard and there's restlessness, states in which there's a desire to control and therefore anger may arise because it's not going my way.

Frustration may arise. The unwholesome states, those are constrictive, restrictive, tightening. And this is where the emphasis on relaxing is, to let go of the unwholesome, the akusala. Let's hear some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear 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. May beings inhabiting space and earth and Nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation.