Day 7 First 6 Links of Dependent Origination

So let's just quickly review what are the different links that we went through, starting from suffering. So there is suffering, which is dependent upon birth or rebirth, which is dependent upon bhava or becoming or habitual tendencies, which is dependent upon clinging, and that is dependent upon craving. Now, what is craving dependent upon? It is dependent upon what is known as feeling.

Now, the translation of feeling is okay. Because the problem is that people may mistake only emotions for that feeling. But it can be any kind of feeling. It can be sensory feeling. It could be emotional feeling. Feeling internally, feeling externally, feeling that's pleasant, unpleasant, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. So I like to use the word experience. That is basically overarching for everything.

Any kind of experience that we have. It can be an emotional experience, it can be a sense-based experience. To this vedana, as it's mentioned in Pali, is what's known as perception or sanna. Perception is the ability to recognize what it is that we are experiencing. So the color red, the color blue, this is an oak tree, this tastes sour, that smells funny, this sounds wonderful, you know, all of these things are perceptions.

Based on learning and memory. I would like you guys to stop with the paper and listen to me. You can do it later. So this perception is essentially rooted in memory and learning. Or having any sort of a reference point, we cognize the experience. Even there, there is some perception. We still use some kind of memory to kind of figure out what is this thing.

You think about a little kid who is told not to touch the stove when the fire is on. You don't listen. So you decide, you know what? I'm going to find out what is the issue here. What's the problem if I touch my hand above the fire? And so the kid does that and it's warm. He recognizes, he feels the warmth. He recognizes the warmth. And he gets burned. And so now he knows getting close to the fire can be dangerous and hurtful.

It harms me. So now he knows what that feels like. So anytime he sees fire, there is a perception. Be cautious. Be careful. So we experience this in school. We learn about colors, numbers, we learn about shapes, in mathematics we learn about patterns, we learn about equations. All of these things are things that we learn and then we have it in our memory banks and every time we see something we recognize it from what we've learned.

If I asked you what 2 times 2 is, it is 4. They might not know, and you try to teach them. And what do they do? They try to learn it. And so over a period of time, as they start to learn their multiplication tables, it's very easy for them to say, 12 times 12, 144. 12 times 11, 132. Because it's there in the mind.

Perception is there. This feeling, how does it transition into craving? How do we go from feeling to craving? It's just an experience. It's a pleasant experience. It's an unpleasant experience. Or it's a neutral experience. So how does it get to craving? Yesterday I said that mindfulness is the gatekeeper. Mindfulness is the gatekeeper. It is the watchman. It is the security guard.

That allows us to feel everything as it actually is, to experience everything as it actually is. But the mindfulness of what? The mindfulness of the Four Noble Truths in every moment. The mindfulness of the three characteristics. This feeling is impermanent. It will change. We may not need to say it, but we feel it. We experience it. We understand it. Have cultivated the wisdom for it, we see that it arises and therefore it will pass away one time, so we don't hold on to it and we don't identify it as me, mine, or myself. But until we can do that, there is always the danger of lack of mindfulness or muddled mindfulness, in which the mind takes that experience and says, oh, this is very pleasant, especially if it's a pleasant experience. This is amazing.

This is a wonderful piece of music. This is a wonderful fragrance. This is a really tasty curry. This is whatever the experience is. And now the mind hones in on that experience and says, I like this. And because it says, I like this, that's the beginning of craving. And this is what's known as the underlying tendency towards craving.

Which leads to the link of craving. So the bridge between feeling and craving is this bridge, this link of underlying tendencies. So there are seven underlying tendencies. There's the underlying tendency towards craving, the underlying tendency towards aversion, the underlying tendency towards ignorance, the underlying tendency towards views, the underlying tendency towards conceit, the underlying tendency towards habitual tendencies, the underlying tendency towards doubt.

Did I cover all seven? Was anybody counting? Good. You're the only one paying attention. So, when there's a pleasant experience, we say, oh, how beautiful that experience is. I want more of that experience. I don't want that experience to stop. I don't want that experience to go away. And that is the underlying tendency towards craving. And that leads, that bridges to craving. When it's an unpleasant experience, oh God, make this stop.

Why is this going on? I don't like this smell. I don't like this taste. Right? That's a reaction. That's a reaction to it. But it's like I have aversion towards it. I say, I don't like it. I have this tension in my body to want to push it away. And that's the underlying tendency towards aversion that leads to full-blown aversion.

Now, with neither pleasant or unpleasant experience or feeling, there can arise the underlying tendency towards ignorance. We don't realize what it is that we are necessarily experiencing in terms of the quality, and we take it for me, mine, or myself. We have lack of mindfulness there. But you see, with the exception of the first two, underlying tendency towards craving and underlying tendency towards aversion, the other five, towards ignorance, towards views, towards doubt, towards conceit, towards habitual tendencies, underlie any type of feeling.

Here, what do we mean by the underlying tendency towards ignorance? Ignorance is a lack of mindfulness in the present moment. It's the inability to pay attention to what's going on as it arises. And that is the muddled mindfulness. And that can underlie any of those three feelings or experiences. The underlying tendency towards views, I have an opinion about someone or something or an experience.

I am on retreat and I see somebody doing something I think they shouldn't do. Or I see somebody walking a certain way. Or I see somebody. I make judgments. I make opinions. I have views about that. An underlying tendency towards views, I can either choose to let that go or it can proliferate into, I should say something to that person, and then that creates further disturbance, that creates certain suffering for me and the other person. That's very simplistic, but another kind of underlying tendency towards views is, I have an opinion about the experience in terms of this is now my favorite experience and anybody who doesn't like it is my enemy.

Very extreme. Having opinions about certain situations, people and experiences. This is the underlying tendency towards views. And obviously this can give rise to craving or aversion or identification. The underlying tendency towards conceit. When we say conceit, what do we mean by conceit? Conceit means comparing. Conceit comes from the word mana in Pali, which means to compare, to measure up.

So conceit here is, I have this experience, but that person has that experience. Why can't I have that experience? Or my experience is better than the other person's experience. are better than the other person's possessions. Or, I feel equal to everyone still, that is comparing. And that arises because the mind takes the experience personally. This is me, this is mine, this is myself.

And there are many different types of conceit. Many. Conceit in relation to the mind, conceit in relation to the sixth sense basis, conceit in relation to the five aggregates, conceit in relation to the different kinds of feeling, and so on and so forth. And so the next underlying tendency is the underlying tendency towards doubt. What do we mean by doubt here? The word doubt is really perplexity.

We're perplexed. We don't really know what we are actually experiencing. So we have a lack of discernment of whether this is wholesome or unwholesome. Whether this experience is leading to my mind being freer or leading to my mind being more constricted. It becomes perplexed, it becomes confused, it experiences disturbance and agitation and restlessness. And when this happens, when I was experiencing something wholesome, I wasn't able to discern that it was wholesome.

And so because I get confused and because I get perplexed, that experience replaces that wholesome experience. And so if I just let go and go back to the experience and stay with it, it doesn't matter what the experience is, and just stay with it, without the me, mine, or myself, then I have total mindfulness to have the attention and awareness to discern what it is that I'm experiencing.

Then there's the underlying tendency towards existence or habitual tendencies. So what does this mean? I have an experience and I have an automatic sort of reactivity to that experience based on the library of choices that are presented to me in my mind dependent upon the type of experience I'm having. So I was telling you yesterday, for example, with bhava, habitual tendencies, certain kinds of words or ideas or thoughts.

Because it's similar to previous kinds of experiences we've had where we've had the same kinds of reactions, and that is built over a period of time. And so it's collecting in the mind as habitual tendencies. So far I've gone over craving, aversion, ignorance, doubt, views, conceit, and existence. I think I've covered all of it. Good. So that's the bridge from feeling to craving.

Now, feeling as experience is dependent upon what's known as contact, or phassa in Pali, or sparsha in Sanskrit. What does this mean? It actually means impingement. It means to touch, sparsh. And what is being touched? What is being made contact with? The eye, that is, the eyes, make contact with form and color. The sound. The nose makes contact with odors. The tongue makes contact with flavors.

The body makes contact with tangibles, with pressures, internal and external. And the mind makes contact with mental objects in the form of thoughts, ideas, concepts, imagination, dreams, so on and so forth. Mental objects. Now, contact is made up of three things in order for contact to arise. And contact is dependent upon, in the sense, I should say, it is made up of attention. And I'll explain what I mean by this.

Right now, you are all hopefully paying attention to me. You're listening to me. My voice makes contact with your ears. And dependent on that, ear and making contact with that voice, there is the corresponding ear consciousness that arises. Right now you are all seeing me. Most of you are. The eyes make contact with my form and color.

And dependent on the two, there is an underlying eye consciousness. Now, you're all seeing me, but if I were to tell you, now look at these flowers. Look at them. Look at the flowers. I'm telling you, look at the flowers right now. Pay attention. What is going on right now? Your eyes are making contact with the flowers, and there's an underlying or a corresponding eye consciousness that our eyes depend on, the two. Why?

Because your attention moved from me, to the flowers. Attention is the rudder of consciousness. If consciousness is the light, right, the spotlight is attention. And the one that moves that spotlight is intention. You made a choice by listening to me to pay attention to these flowers. And so no longer is there an underlying I consciousness dependent upon the I making contact with me.

There was a new consciousness that arose dependent upon the I making contact with the flowers. So it's also if those who are musically inclined, when you pay attention, let's say, you know, a piece of music, a classical piece of music, a symphony, which has many different instruments playing. Now, when you're listening to that piece of music, you can choose to pay attention to one specific instrument.

The other instruments are still playing, the sounds are still there, the oboes, or you choose to pay attention to the violins. What's going on there? Your attention is directing your ears to make specific contact with that particular sound. And there is an underlying ear consciousness dependent upon that particular sound and the ear making contact with that particular sound.

And so this changes based on our attention. Now when we talk about attention, it's like quanta of attention, quanta of consciousness. In other words, it's like little iotas of consciousness coming and going in every moment. Monte would always say that was a hundred thousand arising and passing away of sound consciousness. But it is a smooth experience for you.

When you get into the field of infinite consciousness, you can start to see the individual ear consciousness arising and passing away, dependent upon that sound, because your attention moves in that way. What seems fluid, what seems like a process that is unwavering, actually is made up of tiny bits of sensory data that the receptors, that is the six sense bases, pick up.

And this is why contact is dependent upon what is known as the salayatana, the sphere, ayatana, the dimension, field, or base of the sense bases, the six sense bases, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind. So the eyes can only pick up certain kinds of colors, certain kinds of wave patterns in the electromagnetic field.

The ears, as we age, start to pick up certain kinds of frequency. The taste receptors in the tongue receive certain kinds of taste molecules. The receptors on our skin and internally receive different kinds of pressure points. What we think of as sitting on this chair is just pressure between your seat and the chair, the back of the chair and your back.

When you feel the wind on your skin, that's just the air pressure on your skin. When you feel a stomachache, that's pressure inside your digestion, your digestive system. And so this is the various nerve points. You require this. The wiring needs to be there in order for consciousness to be present, in order for there to be made a contact, a connection.

So these six sense bases are dependent on something known as nama-rupa, name and form, mentality, materiality. So what is materiality? Materiality are the four great elements, earth, water, air, and fire. So when we talk about that, that's really the different states of matter. Earth is the solidity of matter. Water is the liquid state. Air is the gaseous state. And fire is heat and temperature.

And we have that in different degrees and ratios that make up all form, whether it's our bodies, internal or external, or this table, these flowers, this statue, this hall that we are sitting in, the trees, even the air, the water, the rocks, the snakes, the dogs, the turtles, all of that are made up of different kinds of things, degrees of these materials, of these states of matter.

This is materiality. Now, mentality is sometimes known as name and sometimes known as mind. So mind and body. There are five aspects to mentality: contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention. But wait a minute. Didn't we already talk about contact? Didn't we already talk about feeling? Didn't we already talk about perception? Isn't that later down in the line of dependent origination?

So how can we experience contact at this point? There is a difference here. Contact as a process in which the sense-based objects, when they make contact, the instrument or faculty through which that process can happen, is the faculty of contact, which happens to be in mentality. The ability to experience something is in the faculty of feeling, that mentality, and to perceive something is the process that is happening because of the faculty of perception in mentality.

When we make decisions, when we make determinations, when we make choices, when formations arise that give rise to these choices, these are all interdependent with intention, cetana or volition, that is in mentality, the faculty of intention. When we choose to pay attention to something, that is the intention. When consciousness flows through that attention, that is the faculty of attention that is in mentality. And so in essence what we are referring to is actually the five aggregates.

Materiality is form, the body, internal and external, near, far, superior, inferior, so on and so forth. Feeling, obviously, is the feeling faculty and the experience of feeling, the process of feeling. Perception is the perception faculty, as well as the process of perception. Formations are related to the faculty of intention and making a choice, volition. And attention is allowing the flow of our awareness and consciousness, the light of awareness, to be directed to a specific object.

So the sixth sense bases are basically the nervous system connected to each of the different sense organs, which are receivers of sensory data. But in order for them to function, you require a body for them to be housed in. You require a mentality for you to be able to assess what it is that you're experiencing, for you to be able to feel, recognize, assess, pay attention to, and make choices dependent upon it.

If you think about all of the experiences that we're having, it is due to the squishy parts of our body: the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the skin, the organs inside, and the mind, which is generally housed, as we think, in the brain, but it's actually everywhere. Mind is samsara. So if we were to take apart the body, the thing that doesn't feel are the skeletons, bones, generally speaking, but there too we can feel when the broken bone is there, right? And that is facilitated through pain receptors, which are lodged in the nervous system, the actual framework of the body plus the nervous system that allows us to experience things, that allows us to pay attention to things, that allows us to perceive, that allows us to make memories, that allows us to identify.

Now that doesn't mean that we have to destroy our nervous system in order to cease perception and feeling. We don't need to do that. So this mentality, materiality, is dependent upon what? Dependent upon consciousness. Vijnana. Nyana means knowledge. And V means to divide. So, vinyana means divided knowledge. Divided into what? The knowledge of the experience of the sense basis. The eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness.

Now, on a macro level, there is this interdependency between consciousness and mentality-materiality. In fact, there is a sutta which talks about it. It talks about the simile of the reeds. When you see the reeds like this from the tree, they kind of jumbled together. And so they're kind of intercrossed, interwoven. That's what consciousness and mentality-materiality are. In order for mentality-materiality to function, it requires consciousness as a life experience, as a life principle. That's consciousness.

But in order for consciousness to function, it requires mentality-materiality. Consciousness, therefore, is interdependent with mentality-materiality. With regards to on a micro level, moment-to-moment level, there can be the sense-based consciousness, but it's dependent upon the mind and body. We need consciousness to be aware of what we are experiencing, but consciousness requires the instruments of mind and body for it to flow.

So this consciousness is dependent upon something known as formations, sankhara in Pali or samskara in Sanskrit. There are three types of formations: bodily formations, verbal formations, and mental formations. Formations allow us to breathe in and out, walk around and do other things with our body, to move. The different processes of the body are facilitated through the bodily formations.

When we feel and perceive, when we have an experience of anything and we have a recognition of that experience, that's facilitated through the mental formations. When we are experiencing something and we think about it, reflect on it, we contemplate it, and then we express it in speech, those are facilitated by verbal formations. These formations continue to change as we continue to develop.

So, in some sense, they are very similar to, or they can be likened to, synapses in the brain. You know, the Buddha, really, they talk about neuroplasticity 2600 years ago, because he was talking about conditioning and reconditioning the mind. This is facilitated through formations. Formations allow us to see this, allow us to experience this, as we continue to develop in our life. We make different choices based on the conditions outside of us. We may inherit certain kinds of viewpoints of the world, and as we generally do in our adolescence, choose to rebel against our family, rebel against our parents, we choose to develop different viewpoints and ideas about experiences. And so those formations change.

And we take up certain choices, and those will strengthen certain formations. And we choose not to do other things, and those will weaken those formations. This is the fundamental essence of the path of the Buddha, of the Dhamma. Conditioning and reconditioning. In every given moment you have a choice. And depending upon what choice you make, you further strengthen certain formations.

Those formations will condition the kind of awareness that is present. That awareness will give rise to a certain kind of feeling, or identity with that feeling, or identification with that feeling. To look at it another way, formations are rooted in what are known as the three roots, the three kilesas. Can be greed, hatred and delusion. When they are, then they give rise.

And they stain the consciousness that might arise. And that consciousness may be defiled by what are known as the 16 upakilesas. Those 16 upakilesas can be conceit, can be arrogance, can be stubbornness, can be rivalry, can be jealousy, can be stinginess, can be anger, it can be greed, covetousness, different things that the mindset already has been conditioned with. So by the time we have the contact and the feeling, we've already made up our minds about what it is that we think about something.

It's very immediate. And that then determines or conditions whether a certain underlying tendency will arise or not. However, if we pay attention to every given moment, mindfulness in every given moment, then those will not be clung to, those will not be hooked onto, they will be seen for what they are. Let's say we miss our chance there and we go into craving, we can still 6R that into clinging, we can still 6R that into becoming, we can still 6R that. But as soon as we make the action, we can't call it back.

So formations are seen as the carriers of karma as well. They are the volitional formations and the karmic formations. Volitional formations are dependent upon how we make certain choices, hence volitional. Karmic in the sense that something arises and it makes contact with this mind-body complex. And so it launches a series of different formations, which then snake through the consciousness, through contact, through the feeling, and enables us to either identify, crave, cling to, become that experience.

Or, if we have sharp mindfulness, see that I am identifying with this. Let me go. Let me let go of that. The whole point of the practice is summarized in what the Buddha says in the Bahiya Sutta. He says, There is no you in that. There is no you by that. There is no you before that. There is no you after that. Just that is the cessation of suffering. In other words, we can experience everything fully without the sense of me, mine or myself. And this is when we have total mindfulness in every given moment. Because there is no me there in that mindfulness. There is only this experience happening.

No experiencer. Or no notion or sense of an experiencer. So as we start to do this, those formations that are rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion start to weaken. And through non-use, they fade away. It's like they atrophy. That's what we're doing here. We are atrophying those formations that lead us to further suffering. And we are strengthening those formations that lead us to greater mindfulness and towards wisdom and freedom. destroying the formations.

We are transforming them. We are reconditioning them. Now, these formations are dependent upon ignorance. What do we mean by this? Ignorance. What is ignorance? Ignorance comes from the Pali word avija or avidya. The lack of knowledge. The not knowing of what? The Four Noble Truths. In practical terms, the inability or the lack of mindfulness of the Four Noble Truths in every moment.

So ignorance can arise every time we take personal an experience. Every time we take personal a relationship. Every time we take personal any kind of situation. But if we are mindful and we are responsive rather than reactive, then we whittle away at that ignorance with every arising of dependent origination. See, what you have to understand is dependent origination is not just a linear process and not just a cyclical process, origination. There are feedback loops within feedback loops, because when there's contact, it feeds back into formations. It feeds back into consciousness. It feeds back into mentality, materiality.

When there is an experience, it feeds back to the formations which condition that consciousness, which conditions whether there will arise a lack of mindfulness or whether there will arise mindfulness, whether there will arise underlying tendencies or whether there will arise no underlying tendencies. And now this ignorance is also dependent upon something. This ignorance is dependent on what are known as the asavas.

The asavas are sometimes translated as taints, sometimes translated as defilements, sometimes translated as intoxicants or fermentations. I translate them as virus. They're viruses. They're viruses insofar as they infect the mind, the operating system of the mind. And they continue to replicate every time there is a lack of mindfulness. There's three of them. Sensual craving, being, and ignorance.

Every time there is a sensual experience and we go after it and we want to possess it, we don't want it to stop, that feeds back to the asava of sensual craving. Every time we want to hold on and control an outcome, every time we are attached to the effects of what this will produce, going to happen, that is the desire for a certain kind of being, that feeds back to the next arising of the asava of being.

Every time we have lack of attention, lack of mindfulness, lack of wisdom and insight into the nature of this particular experience that's happening in this particular moment, that feeds back to the asava of ignorance. Now, what are these asavas dependent upon? They are dependent upon ignorance. They are interdependent. Just as consciousness and mentality, materiality are interdependent, the asavas and ignorance are interdependent.

And this vortex, this whirlpool, is the subatomic vortex that runs the engines of rebirth. The gears that run the mechanics of samsara. Lack of mindfulness. Every time we have lack of mindfulness, we're giving further strengthening to the asavas. mindful and we make a choice that is rooted in the Eightfold Path, the asavas slow down. It's like we file away at the gear wheels of the asavas every time we have that mindfulness.

Because mindfulness keeps away the craving, keeps away the clinging, keeps away the becoming. Keeps away the underlying tendencies. So the asavas condition ignorance, which means the ignorance here is because at some point, for example, when an infant is born, a baby is born, they're not born a clean slate. They're born with certain underlying tendencies. They're born with certain strengths of the asavas. And you see this in babies, right?

They are attached to their caregiver. In fact, they don't have any identity other than the caregiver is me, and I'm the caregiver, for the first few months of their life. And their sense of smell is very strong. Eventually, later on, they start to develop color. And they start to see, and things become less and less blurry. And now there are colors and shapes and patterns.

And there's sounds, the sound of a dog, the sound of this cartoon or whatever it is. So now they're developing where they left off with a sensual desire. And they start associating, I like this applesauce, but I don't like that particular baby food, right? Get that thing away from me. Right? So now they're developing more different kinds of craving, different kinds of clinging.

Eventually they start to become independent. I got it. I know what to do. I can walk on my own two feet. I don't feel like taking a nap. And so they develop a personality. They develop an identity. And they have craving for being. I'm not going to take a nap. I want to do this. I want to do that. And obviously, they don't have the ability to kind of just be aware of these things. Not for a little while. Because they're just growing into it.

So for the most part, they're kind of... beholden to those asavas. And ignorance further strengthens. But at some point, on the path, they start to question their suffering. Like, there. I've had enough. There must be a way out. And that is the beginning of wisdom. The search for a way out, and the discovery of the Four Noble Truths, the discovery of the Dhamma, the discovery of wisdom, that there must be a way. So they look for that and they start to learn about it and then they start to meditate on it. They go on retreats, they watch videos, they read books, they practice.

And as they do this, their mindfulness sharpens. And now they have the tools right there and then: right effort, and right mindfulness. That is all dependent upon sila, keeping the precepts, having right view. When this is there, now the asavas can weaken. And as the asavas weaken, the ignorance starts to weaken. And at some point, there's an experience in which the mind sees for itself how this process works. It develops experiential wisdom.

And so bit by bit, ignorance is being cut away. And at the level of full awakening, the asavas are completely destroyed. This is why a fully awakened being in Pali is known as khinasava, one who has destroyed the asavas. Therefore, if there are no more asavas, there's no more rebirth. There's no more possibility of further birth. Because that subatomic vortex that runs the gears of samsara, it's collapsed.

And those gears have stopped. Becoming has stopped. Habitual tendencies have stopped. And so no more ignorance. Ignorance is destroyed. formations, because formations are carriers of karma. And so everything from that, let's say in the case of anyone who's not fully unawakened, fully awakened, anyone who's unawakened, the ignorance still continues, right? So the ignorance, the formations, the consciousness, the mentality, materiality, the sense base, the sense basis, the contact and the feeling. Now, if you want to write this down, write it down. All of these links, you can put them in parentheses and underline old karma.

All of these constitute old karma. Craving, clinging, and becoming are the ingredients for the birth of new karma. Karma works. In every moment, we inherit the actions, the effects, and conditions dependent upon our previous intentional actions. And they are fed through these links. Ignorance, formations, consciousness, mentality, materiality, sixth sense basis, contact, and feeling. This karma is to be felt and experienced, says the Buddha. That is the only way out of karma, is to experience it once it has been released.

Once the arrow has been released. However, if we want to make sure that arrow isn't released anymore, then we stop the new karma. We decide how to respond rather than react to the old karma. And mindfulness is our protector from that new karma. Because if I identify with any experience, if I identify with a feeling, if I identify with anything that's happening through any of the six sense bases, then there is prone to be craving. Now, the ingredient of craving can lead to the ingredient of clinging. The clinging can lead to becoming, and that can lead to the birth of new karma. And so then the next arising through suffering of the old karma in the next moment.

And this is the cycle of karma. But I break that chain every time I have mindfulness of every experience. See every experience for what it is. Conditioned, therefore impermanent, to change and cause suffering. Therefore, not me, not mine, not myself. Beyond my control. Therefore, I let go of any identification with it. Of any desire to control the experience. Of any desire to change the experience.

And when I do this, I have equanimity in regards to that experience. I have disenchantment in regards to that experience. I have dispassion in regards to that experience. And I am liberated from the suffering of that experience in every moment. So this is dependent origination. Share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu.