Mumbai Retreat February 2025 | Day 9 - Practice after Retreat

As I said, today's the last Dharma talk, and tomorrow will be Q&A. Since tonight is the last Dharma talk, I figured we'll talk about what to do off of retreat. I've been teaching now for the last, well, since 2022, longer than that, because I was teaching during the pandemic also, but in terms of giving retreats, my first physical retreat was in Cambodia, where we had three-day retreats, but my very first 10-day retreat was in April of 2022, where I was doing a TWIM retreat in California for a group of, I think, 30 or 35 people. First time I did that.

And since then, I've kind of been in the swing of teaching TWIM. But you guys might have noticed, especially those who are in the TWIM tradition or who have done TWIM repeats before, that I don't necessarily teach only TWIM or only from TWIM protocols. And the reason for that is because, one, I was saying the other day that I don't have any skin in the game. I don't care about TWIM. It's the same way I don't care about Kriya Yoga or I don't care about any tradition. It doesn't mean I don't have respect for those traditions. It's just that to hold on to one tradition is a choice that you can make. But I've noticed it doing more damage in my observation, in my limited observation, than it has created more stability for people.

The other day I was talking about how, you see, I've been at the very center of all sorts of debates and ideas about who's right and who's wrong. Is he awakened, is he not awakened? He's right, he's wrong, he doesn't know what he's talking about. And if I had skin in the game, and if I cared so much about him, then I would have gotten into that whole vitriol of answering every single accusation, every single claim, every single so and so and so. But I don't care. I really just... the thing that is bothersome, let's say, is that some of those people are people I thought were very close friends of mine. Now I don't want to get into the whole personal aspect of it. I'm just getting into this understanding that the reason why I'm teaching the way I'm teaching now is because TWIM is not the answer in the same

way Tibetan Buddhism is not the answer in the same way Kriya Yoga is not the answer, the same way Kabbalah is not the answer. And when I say it's not the answer, I mean it's not the ultimate answer. It's not the thing that solves everything. If and when you become fully awakened, you're going to notice that the same problems still persist in life. When you get off of retreat, you will notice the same relationships are waiting for you outside, the same people, the same behaviors, the same troubles. Everything that you thought that you could maybe, maybe, maybe, you thought so that you could resolve while being on retreat will still be there waiting for you. So if there's anything to really take away from this, it's what I would call karma management. That's what this is. Karma management is life management, and that's what the practice is. Karma is not some kind of esoteric mystical element that's mysterious. What is mysterious about it is when and how it emerges, but the patterning and the mapping for it is possible. Whether it's Buddhism or Hinduism or Vedanta or yoga, any Eastern tradition within the Indian

subcontinent has looked at karma in its own lens, with its own lens, through its own lens. So I want to offer to you guys what is most important for life, which is the understanding of karma. Once you understand karma, and once you understand how to navigate and manage karma, then you have a life that is free. You see, moksha, or freedom, or nirvana, is not the freedom from problems. The problems are non-negotiable. How we choose to behave with them is our choice. And that is karma. The problems that arise are the effects of things we might have done in a past life. Or they might just be causes and conditions that have nothing to do with us directly, but we seem to be there at the right place at the right time to experience it.

And what we choose to do is our karma. That is choice. That is intention. That is karma. That is what the Buddha said. Karma is intention. So you may have heard me say, the whole process is about letting go of karma, or the cessation of karma, or no longer producing further karma, or no longer adding to the chain of karma. And the reason I say that is because karma is what mechanizes samsara. And if your ultimate goal is to let go of the chains that bind you to karma, that bind you to samsara, then you let go of all karma. Because good karma also, so-called good karma, is only going to produce further existences in your life, further habitual tendencies, which further propagate more situations, more experiences, and more circumstances.

And the choice is up to you. There's no better than this or better than that going on here. Some people want to remain in the game, in this leela, in this play. And that's okay. But regardless of whether you want moksha, whether you want dharma, artha, kama or moksha. What is dharma, artha, kama, moksha? Dharma, not the Buddhist dharma. Dharma means our purpose, for lack of a better word. It's our ikigai, if you are familiar with that term. There are three things that intersect to find your dharma. What it is that you enjoy doing, that you have an innate talent for,

that can provide some benefit to your fellow beings, and that you, in exchange, are paid for. Paid for doesn't mean in money, because this particular planet, in this particular eon, deals with money, and money has been given a lot of value, and therefore we say money. But we're saying value, that you receive something of value in return. When you find that that is your dharma, and as a result of that dharma you find artha. Artha, A-R-T-H-A. Artha. Artha actually means meaning. It gives meaning to your life. It's not that there is no meaning to this life once you find out that there is an ultimate reality that is outside of the scope of this conventional reality.

It's not that you live a life that is just now on the fringes of society and you become a sannyasi, or you become a monk, or you become a sadhu, or whatever. Although if that's the lifestyle you choose, then that's the lifestyle you choose. But the intrinsic meaning behind your actions, of why you're doing what you're doing, is for the purposes of fulfilling karma.

But most of this planet, in terms of the human population, is asleep. They are functioning at a level in which they are allowing karma to dictate their terms of life. But moksha is the other way around. We learn how to deal with karma and alter that karma. This is the practice that we're doing. The fundamentals of what we're doing here is going to show you that karma is something that is manageable. We are not victims of it. We are not beholden to it. We have to experience it. That is true. But we can mitigate it, and we can learn how to work with it.

So artha comes from dharma. Once we find what it is that we're good at, that can help serve other beings, and we get value from, then artha is already there. Artha is not just economics. Artha is not just money. Artha is a life that provides meaning and value to you and to others. There's a mutual exchange of intrinsic value where you find joy in it, and that joy is translated as kama, the enjoyment of an experience. Kama can be desire. It can be seen as desire. It can be seen as sensual desire. It can be seen as passion, in different ways. But kama is the process of relishing

life. How do you relish life? Life kicks us and punches us and subjugates us into thinking like it's all just a black and white film reel where we can't enjoy life anymore. But if we find the understanding of how karma works, then we know what is the right way of enjoying life. The juice of life, that rasa, as they say, that ability to enjoy life, doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. None of us here are monastics. We are going to go back into our daily lives, meet with our relatives, meet with our partners, meet with the people that we hold dear to us, meet with our friends, and we have to deal with them.

We have to relate with them. That also is karma. And when we understand the mechanics of how to relate with the world, that leads us to moksha. Moksha is being liberated from the subjugation of life. The awareness that you develop on retreat, the understanding that you develop on retreat, is to be intensified in life when you go back out in the real world. Because this isn't the real world here. This world here is what we've created for ourselves.

Right. The silence, the so-called silence, the timetables, the management of everything. Everything is running relatively smoothly and we have a schedule, we have a set time, and all of that. It's like we've gone back to school, you know. But then outside, in the real world, we have our own things to deal with, our own situations, our own troubles, our own problems. So moksha is being liberated from them troubling you any further. So, karma. Let's go back to karma. When we are born on this planet into this life, there are astrologers who say that there are certain planets that are present in certain houses in the sky. They're looking at that, and what they're saying is that based on that, this is this person's astrological birth chart. That birth chart is a snapshot of the karma that we brought forward into this present life from a past life. So that birth chart, so to speak,

dictates the personality, the behavior, the temperament, the possible diseases, the possible mental conditions, the possible behavioral tendencies. All that is sort of available as a blueprint, and this is known as prarabdha karma. It is your fate, your destiny, the things that you must experience or are likely to experience in this life in this capable. But the key there is, do you create further karma, which is known as agami karma? There is sanchita karma, prarabdha karma, and agami karma. I may be mixing the sanchita and agami, so I'm going to use the English terminology now. There is the destined karma that is allotted to you in this life that you must experience. There is the karma that you are bringing forward from your library of many different past lives, and there is the karma that is being produced as a result of your reactions to the destined karma, which propels forward potential future existences. But the only thing you know for a fact is this moment and this life, which is our destiny, but we are destined to experience one way or the

Other, does that mean that it's fatalism? No, it's not fatalism, because there is a choice in every matter. We can choose to be different than what we have come into this world as. Like I said, it's a screenshot, it's a snapshot of karma. But aren't the planets always changing, always revolving in different ways? In the same way, we too express our personality in different ways, so we can cultivate good habits, wholesome habits, in mind, body, and speech. How do we do that? First and foremost, let go of the unwholesome habits in mind, body, and speech. What is that? Causing harm to others, lying, stealing, cheating, sexual misconduct, sensual misconduct, harming another being through our words, gossiping, "he said this, she said that," causing chaos amongst the group, causing divide. All of these things are unwholesome. So the idea of the four R's is to recognize those intentions and to let go of those, because those actions are kriya, which means the action itself, the activity itself that we are producing, and that gives rise to what is known as vipaka. Vipaka is the

fruit. Our actions, whether it's our thoughts, our intentional thoughts, our speech, or our physical actions, are planting the seed. If the causes and conditions are right, if there's enough sunlight, if there's enough water, if there's enough nutrition, based on the nature of that seed, in other words based on the intensity of our action and the intention behind that action, along with the correct causes and conditions, that karma, that action, that kriya, turns into vipaka. It fructifies. It comes to fruition as some kind of a result. Now, that can be wholesome, or that could be unwholesome. We know the consequences of unwholesome actions. We've seen it for ourselves in different ways, but we've also seen the consequences of wholesome actions. So this process, should you choose to go through it, is a three-step process. The first step of the process is to recognize the unwholesome and let go of the unwholesome, and then bring the wholesome. So you go from recognizing the unwholesome, the first step, going into recognizing the unwholesome, going into the wholesome.

And then the third part, which is subtler, which is more nuanced for the purposes of moksha, is to let go of the doership of the karma, the me, mine, or myself. The exercise of being in the background awareness burns away the sense of doership. When there is a doer, then there is an identification with that. When there's an identification with that, there's ownership of that. When there's ownership of that, there is an intensity of me, mine, or myself: that I am doing this. Right there, that intensifies. When that ownership is there, like, no, this is mine, then that karma arises. How does it manifest? Through the mechanics of dependent origination. When we are met with any feeling, now, you guys remember dependent origination, right? It starts with ignorance and formations, consciousness, mentality, materiality, six sense spaces, and contact. All of that, up until contact, is inescapable karma. That is your prarabdha, that is your destiny. You can't do anything about it. As it arises, you can't do anything about it. The feeling, the experience, the sensation, the vedana, whatever is arising in the moment, the

qualia, whatever is arising in that moment, you can't do anything about it either, whether it's painful, pleasant, or neutral. That is the manifestation as vipaka, the fruition of past actions. When you deal with it, or how you deal with it, determines whether the intensity of that vipaka, of that fruition of karma, will further add more seeds to the soil, or whether the seeds are obliterated, that the seeds are roasted so that they don't come to fruition anymore. How do the seeds come back into fruition? You throw the seed back into the ground. What does that mean? Craving arises, an intention, a choice dependent upon craving arises. The association of "this is me, mine, myself," and therefore I'm clinging to it, is the clinging. The habitual tendencies, where we don't give a gap between what is arising and our response to the

experience, launches that seed into the ground, and the seed, now being in that tilled soil, is the birth of action. At some point, dependent upon the causes and conditions and the nature and intensity of that action, the next fruit will arise. And that next fruit is the next arising of ignorance, formations, consciousness, mentality, materiality, six-sense spaces, contact, and feeling. That is what samsara is. That is the cycle of samsara. The cycle of rebirth.

The moment we utilize wisdom. What does that mean? To utilize wisdom is to sink back into that awareness and see with wisdom, thus, that this is just an impersonal process. There is a pull in the direction of the mind wanting to own it as me, mine, or myself. There are two minds. There is the thinking mind, and there is the observing mind. The thinking mind is the one that gets caught up in the thoughts, gets caught up in the traffic, gets caught up in the clouds. The observing mind is the higher mind that observes what is happening. That higher mind is mindfulness, sati, sampajanya, awareness of mind that has clear comprehension of the present moment. That is the background awareness that we sink into, the blue sky mind that is free, untouched and uncovered by any clouds. The clouds are the thinking mind.

So when we can sink back into the awareness and watch the intentions arising, that in itself is the first step towards wisdom and understanding. With that wisdom and understanding, we see and utilize the four R's. We choose to let go of that emotional grasp towards that experience, and we relax it, we release it, we relax it, and we remain in that background awareness. Now a wholesome state will arise. Whether we decide we want to be the one who has that wholesome state, that is to say we don't recognize that a wholesome state is also part of the conventional thinking mind, then we get attached to it, and that gives rise to wholesome habitual tendencies. The craving may not be there, the clinging may not be there, but the wholesome habitual tendencies are present, which give rise to a birth of action that is wholesome, which still gives rise to existences. We can choose to do that. We can choose to go on a better merry-go-round and have better experiences, but at some point we will get tired of that as

well. How, how rich can rich be? How wealthy can wealth be? How many sensual pleasures can you experience? How much intensity of joy and gratitude and gladness and equanimity can you experience? To what extent can you be okay with having the goodness of life? Because let me tell you, once everything goes really well, at some point your mind gets bored, and it's like, I can't keep eating dal rice all the time. I need a little bit of spice, a little bit of pickle, a little bit of biryani. So it will poke, huh, chocolate cake? It needs some flavoring. And that need for a flavoring is conceived. It's like, I can't deal with this, because I thought I wanted security, but actually what I want is a variety. And then that variety is craving, that desire for variety is craving. So what happens after a little while? You're in the brahma lokas, you're enjoying it, and everything, you run out of that karma eventually, and it's like, now let me enjoy the biryani of hell. To go through hell, you go through the animal realms, you come back to the human realms.

Same thing over and over and over. So at some point, at some point, the mind is like, there has to be a way out of this game. Or, if there's not a way out of this game, is there a way to be free from the troubles of this game, of this cycle? And that is moksha. Even the desire for the end of rebirth can turn into a craving.

There's chanda, which is the wholesome desire to be free of this. I will grant you that, totally fine. But real moksha, real freedom, is you don't care whether there's going to be rebirth or not. It doesn't matter anymore, not because you're nihilistic or because you have no purpose, but because you've come to this absolute reality, outside of the scope of conventional reality that you're functioning from all the time. Whether you come back or not doesn't matter, because that absolute reality now acts through you. It functions through every sense base. Everything you do, everything you say, everything you think is a reflection of that absolute reality. Can that absolute reality be experienced? No, because all experience is conditioned. But that absolute reality is the origin of that

experience. In other words, that absolute reality is enmeshed in conventional reality. What is conventional reality? Right now, what we're experiencing here is conventional reality. But there is a sense of the absolute. Why is that? There is a sense that there is something beyond. Why does that arise? For some people it never arises, or it seldom arises. They like to be in the matrix, they enjoy being in the matrix. But there is a sense that there must be some freedom from all of this, and that only happens when you've had enough

suffering. You've had enough of the merry-go-round in this life alone. You've had enough of the suffering, enough of the qualms, enough of the headaches, enough of the ailments, even enough of the joys. It's like, yes, okay, I've experienced this joy, yeah, I've made a million dollars, I've done this, I've done that, I've done this. You know, like you can only crave so much more. It's like there's got to be something else. And that something else, that recognition of something else, is the beginning of the journey to the absolute. Even the term the absolute is a conventional term for that. It is indescribable. That's why it's nibbana. It's ineffable. Nibbana means what? No more of that forest. The forest of what? The forest of the senses, the forest of making this matrix. Nibbana has so many synonyms. It's called the island, the shelter, the refuge, that which is dear to the self, that which is auspicious, shiva, that which is unconditional, that which is beyond birth and death, because it was never born, it has always been there. There's a sense of that. It is also called as amata, the

Immortal, the eternal. It's the only element that is permanent. Now, yes, we can say that's conceptual philosophy, and there's a hope of that, and so on and so forth. But there is a touching of that at some point, and the awareness that we experience, that sky mind that we experience, is our conventional mind reflecting that absolute. So the absolute cannot be experienced, but it can be reflected in this awareness. So the choice is ours: how we decide to move forward in every given moment. How strongly are we rooted in wisdom, in the wisdom of the absolute? Or do we just need a break from life once in a while? Is that why we come on retreat?

Just need a break. Came here to be free from my work and my relatives and family and friends, and I just need a place where I can just meditate and let it all go. Great! You've done that, mission accomplished. But there's something else you can get out of this retreat, which is the tools, the understanding of how to navigate through life, hence how to navigate through karma. Karma is essentially relational dynamics. Karma is exchanged between one or more, two or more parties, let's say. But you can even have a relationship with yourself, that's also karma. So karma is not a good thing or a bad thing or a neutral thing. It is just the mechanics of this world, the mechanics of how we navigate through this world.

And the tools that we develop through meditation, and the awareness that we develop through the practice, is the real practice. All the stuff of going through the jhanas or not going through the genres, having collectedness or not having collectedness, it's a game of the thinking mind. It's like one of my good friends in the Netherlands, we talk about this. I think they used to have a small little white puppy at the neighbors, and sometimes the white dog would be there, and whenever there would be a difficult situation where a person is arguing or getting flustered or irritated, he would say, oh, look at the white dog there. So he would divert people's attention and say, look at the white dog, and then people would kind of get out of that emotional intensity.

So jhanas are the white dog for the thinking mind. We just are using jhanas to appease it, the same way we give a toy to a little child so that they can play and expend their energy, so that they can nap and give us a rest. That's what we're doing with this meditation: we're appeasing the thinking mind so that the observing mind can do its work. And the observing mind's work is just to be, just to observe, and to be a reflection, a natural, natural, effortless reflection of the absolute. That is the real practice. How can we continue to engage from that observing mind? How can we integrate that into our life? You have gotten the tools, you've gotten the practice, you've done the sitting. What have I told you guys? Can you bring the loving kindness into the dining hall? Can you bring the loving kindness in the walking? Can you bring loving kindness while you're eating, while you're talking, which you shouldn't have been doing, but while you're talking, while you're doing anything? Why? Because you're exercising the ability to engage with the world from the observing meditative

mind. When all of you had your first crush, whether it was in school or high school or college, you couldn't stop thinking about that person. They were always there on your mind. I wonder what they're doing now. I wonder who they're talking to now. Oh, their favorite color is orange, maybe I should get them an orange. All of these ideas about them, what does that mean? Your mind is engaged in that person. It's the same thing with loving kindness, the same thing with quiet mind. So the question is, how do I do that? How easy was it for you to think about your crush? Effortless, and why? Because it was enjoyable. So the way to collect the mind is to find something that it enjoys doing, that it finds pleasurable, that doesn't deteriorate my senses or cause harm to another person.

This is the key. We're talking about a mental joy. A joy that is not obsessive and compulsive. A joy that is like a sigh of relief. When we enjoy that, our mind naturally becomes collected. Through that collectedness we learn to let go and experience a balance of mind, the tranquility and equanimity. That tranquility and equanimity is a reflection of that sky mind, and that sky mind is a further emanation of the absolute. Don't try to get there. The more effort you make to try to get there, the more you're engaging with the thinking mind. But if you use the anchor and realize that the awareness paying attention to that anchor is the observing mind, and just sink into that, that's it, just sink into that, and now it becomes aware of everything. It's lantern consciousness. In other words, there's a laser focus consciousness, which the thinking mind wants to do, and then there's the lantern consciousness, where the mind is diffused, the attention is everywhere, it's aware of everything, and it's not sticking to anything. When we have that, then whatever we are doing, whatever we are saying, however we are

acting, is a reflection of the mind rooted in wisdom. The intentions will not be filtered through the prism of any kind of ego, any kind of craving, any kind of this is me, mine, or myself. What is that ego that we say? What is that sense of self? It's a function of the mind that has been created, that has been coalesced from past experiences. The ego is reactive. The observing mind is responsive, rooted in the spontaneity of the absolute. That is intuition. The observing mind is the intuitive mind. It functions in that way spontaneously. When you least expect it, the answer comes to you: aha, that was the answer, that's what I should be doing. You ask the mind, what should I do? Should I do this or should I do that? Should I have Italian or should I have Chinese? Ah, that's what I should do. So your real retreat starts tomorrow, when you go out into the world and learn how to engage the world from the absolute, this awareness.

I'll stop there now. Yeah, questions? Yes. Well, there's this first question. If the five aggregates are not me, not mine, not myself, then what is me or mine, or is it awareness? If yes, from where does it come from? This question was similarly asked. Now I have to correct myself. It was 109, the full moon Sutta, Poonama Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 109, and it's a similar question where the Buddha says the five aggregates are empty of self, and then somebody thinks, well, if that is empty of self, then what is it that is aware of that emptiness of self? But what is it that is the doer of the karma? What is that not-self recognized from? And the Buddha says, actually, he repeats the same process of going through the five aggregates, because what he's saying is karma or intention or choice or awareness is also an aggregate. It's part of, like, the karma in terms of intention is the formation aggregate, and the

awareness that is behind that is part of the consciousness aggregate, because it's reflected in the mind. It's reflected from the mind. The mind consciousness reflects whatever is arising. But what we are referring to when we talk about this awareness that is non-reflective, the vinnanam anidassanam, is not a me or mine or myself. One of them, what I'm going to say to you, you can take with a grain of salt, but in the book on craving, which is in the series of dependent origination, the book series of dependent origination, the very final part of the book, there's something that is mentioned about Nibbana and karma, and what it's saying is that you can think of these experiences as layers or levels.

Level zero is the substrate, which is the Nibbana dhatu. It's the thing from where everything stems or arises. It's always there, it's always been there, it's uncreated, unborn, outside of the purview of regular time-space causation, which is samsara. At a certain point in time there arises an intelligence that stems from that, which is the non-manifestative awareness, the non-reflective awareness. This is also seen as the chitta in some of these schools. This is the Self, with a capital S, but it isn't, there's no identity there. This is what some people will call Brahman. This is what some people will call awareness or consciousness with a capital C, or awareness with a capital A, whatever it is. From this there arises a second, another particle. This is level two. Level zero is a substrate, level one is that intelligence that arises from it, level two is the duality. Now there is two or more, and now karma functions. Now there's an intention, there's an understanding that I am separate from this and this is separate from that, and there is a sense of me, mine, or myself. This is the birth of

conceit. From there is level three, which is the mechanics of dependent origination, and in level four, which is samsara, everything that we're experiencing here and now. So that awareness, being non-reflective, is an emanation of, or reflection of, the absolute. It doesn't reflect the world of dependent origination. Nibbana is outside of dependent origination. It is independent, permanent, and it is self. But we can't say that, because the Buddha wanted to make sure that there is no conceptual grasping at self. Because the mind, if it is not ready enough, will grasp at some idea of a self, and that just becomes another mental object. What we are saying is that it is beyond the purview of time, space, and causation.

And therefore, the experience that we're having when there is an I, is a result of awareness that is in dependent origination, within the scope of dependent origination, dependent on the mind, and that's where the I is. And when there is an awareness outside of that, which is inaccessible through the conventional mind, only when the conventional mind ceases, that is true cessation. The cessation of the thinking mind, the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness, or the cessation of perception and feeling itself, leads to the mind having direct touching on the Nibbana element. So there is no I there. The I is just another thought, a reflection of the thinking conventional mind.

Can everything that we have discussed, but can just the inquiry, just observation of the metaness of the dependent origination, or an inquiry like what Ramana Maharshi said, "Who am I?", just going, just keep peeling the layers, can one go through cessation, touch Nibbana that way as well? - Yes. - Okay. And if there is more analytical tendencies arising in that moment, that is more helpful, I believe. Second question, can addictions be defined as obsessive joys of any form? - Yes, definitely. - And where does the OCD or narcissistic tendencies or the compulsive lying, the medically diagnosed one, or where do they fit?

- Independent origination? - Yeah. - I would say clinging. - Okay. - I would say clinging. - So? - I mean, they, the action of that is clinging, but they are stemming from the formations, resulting from past clinging. - So can, so, you know, there are levels, right? Like for example, maybe not these examples, but say people with autism or even OCD. I have observed, you know, there are people who absolutely just cannot function, like, you know, without, it causes extreme meltdown, like the smallest of change and stuff like that. Whereas there are some people who have those tendencies, but they learn to navigate through that.

So is it more biological, or is it more, again, obsessive level of clinging? It could be one or the other, and both are equally valid. It could be biological, thereby, which means that it will require maybe further medical intervention, or it could be psychological, thereby having some kind of cognitive behavioral therapy or something to manage and navigate through that. So that's an equally valid thing as meditation, because you're starting to get into shedding light on the patterns, which are the habitual tendencies, and learning how to see them and letting go of them or replacing them, or at least mitigating them. - Two questions, any here? - Yes.

- The first one is, I want to ask about when you say, no, birth after birth, one birth after all, whether the past life's knowledge is known when you take a birth, or when it is known, or is it not known at all? So the veil of ignorance is what keeps us from knowing it, basically. So as soon as birth is there, then ignorance is also there, and so the ignorance prevents the mind from accessing the knowledge of those past lives. Generally, a person who dies and takes a rebirth doesn't necessarily know the birth, right, past lives? That's right. Okay, second question. Um, when you say, again, from birth to birth, we have one identity that takes through many lives, is it right? No, no, no. There is no identity. That's the thing: we think that this is our identity, because it is the concretization, the solidification of many multitudes of choices that have created this

identity, and so when we are kids we hold a certain kind of identity. When we become teenagers we go through a crisis of identity to figure out who we are, and then later on, even in adolescence and even later on, especially, I don't know how it is in India, especially in the West and the US, we had a midlife crisis, you don't know who you actually are anymore, and so you're reinventing yourself. So the identities are not static. You continue to change in one life, which means even from life to life, birth to birth, identities change, and there is no static principle behind that or underneath that. Even then, you say that we have a rebirth? Yes, because what that rebirth is, is just an exchange. It's just a transfer of further karma and energy of that karma to be experienced, or to take seed, or to take root in, and to become into a plant, to use that symbol. So it could be any seed, but what happens is the seed takes itself seriously as me, mine, or myself, which is that

identity. Again, one more question on that. You said that no, we get bored with many lives, going power through this thing, no, so I thought there is an identity here. No, we get bored, but then boredom can also be manifesting, or we should say that that can be understood even in one life. Imagine. Well, I don't even have to imagine, I can tell you from a friend of mine who told me about this, where he was, let's say, quite wealthy for a while, and he decided he would retire early, and he went to Thailand. His life was basically enjoying on the beach, having a drink, going out, doing the same thing over and over and over. He found other things to do to keep the variety going. There's other things.

Finally, his mind was like, I gotta do something. So that's the mind, right? It's like it can't have the same thing over and over. It needs different variety. My second question was that only. So when ultimately you get bored or whatever, and you ultimately reach the Nirvana stage, does there is a scope for coming back, or it's like the end of it? So there, that's what I was saying. At that point you don't care whether you come back or not, because then it's not seen as some kind of punishment. Then it seemed like, okay, it doesn't matter, it's all an emanation from Nibbana. But you get bored. Yeah, but there's two things you can do without boredom. You can go and create new cravings, which is what majority of beings do, or you can find the path where you never have to be bored ever again

which is another manifestation of creating, that is Nibbana. Thank you. There's a question here up in the, I think most of what I wanted to ask has been answered in your talk, but just to, sort of... The World Health Organization defines health as absence of disease. So can we say that happiness is absence of suffering, or is there something more beyond absence of suffering? This is a good question. Many months ago, maybe a year and a half ago, I had a discussion, probably longer, with some friends, and Bhante Kusala, who you'll probably see tomorrow, he's coming, about starting an organization, and we were trying to figure out what is the name of that organization?

And, there were different names that came up. And I said, how about Ultimate Happiness? And a lot of people were resistant to that idea, because, happiness. Happiness is just, it might be sensual happiness. It might be happiness because of drugs or LSD or something like that. So I said, yeah, okay, fine, that makes sense. What about Cetovimutti, which is freedom of mind?

So I would say happiness, we could not say, is an absence of suffering. Sorry, but what I meant was, is there something more to it than just absence of suffering? Yes, yes. It's surely not only absence of suffering. Yeah, because if that was the case, absolutely, you can have no suffering in life but still not be wholesome. That's right. So that's where the Dharma, the kama moksha, comes in, which is you can be free of suffering, but that freedom from suffering has

positive components to it, let's say wholesome components to it, pleasant components to it, which is a type of happiness, but it's a happiness that is an independent happiness. This is also when I was meeting with these two people in the South Indian film industry, let's just say that, and I was invited to come and see them in their very nice place, and they had a nice big movie theater, and they had amazing bamboo gardens, and this and that. This, look, we have a meditating Jesus and we have a meditating Buddha and we have a meditating... they're like, we're very pleasant here, he's so peaceful, and that's wonderful, we can meditate. So we meditated for a while, and then the question arose, what is the purpose of what you're teaching, what is it that you're actually teaching? And I explained to them, they weren't able to really grasp the teaching from the mechanics of the penetrating nation and all that. I just met them, so I said

the world wants to be happy. The world wants something that is positively good, something that we know is translated as happiness. There are two kinds of happiness. There's a happiness that we experience as a result of something that is conditioned, dependent happiness. When you take away those causes, that happiness goes away. But there is an independent happiness that we're looking for, and that independent happiness is what we're teaching here, where no matter what it is, I feel at peace, I feel content, I feel happy, I feel I can still celebrate, I feel I can still experience joy, I feel like even in the midst of whatever is arising I can choose to lean into the experience, no matter how terrible it feels, and by doing that I'm actually letting go and experiencing this space which is free of any conditions. So the absence of suffering is also the cultivation of this independent happiness, this stability, calm, clarity, that remains relatively unmoved by the charms and dangers of the world.

I think I had a second question, or no, that was no. Okay. So I mean, just a small key: if one had the option, let's say, in one's last moments, to choose what would be the best way to die? Just observe everything as it is, and come to that understanding that whatever is happening right now, that's not me.

A process of meditation that negates the projection of self onto anything that's coming into the mind. You see, this not me, this not me, in day-to-day life. Can you just talk a little about intention setting, and also, so what does intention do, and then if you have the intention, because I always thought that intention is not what matters, action is what matters, and you say it otherwise. So is it possible that sometimes you plant an intention so strongly that action is compulsive, and then some intentions are weak, so the action is not compulsive, which you can choose? And then, is there any unconscious intention and conscious intention, like intentions that can be planted in this life, because they are coming from... so you are not consciously planting them, but you are watching them in the mind? Now, if somebody's watching them in the

Mind, just the process of the mind working. Maybe you can call it, for lack of a better word, fantasy. Is that intention setting, or is that not intention setting? There's two things here. One is the process of thoughts that are not intentions, so those thoughts are just thoughts, in the same way as sounds are just sounds. Okay. But there's an intention where there is an actual mechanism of control, a mechanism of willfully, volitionally setting a thought into some action.

Volitionally setting a thought into some action. Okay, so it is action. Then intention is action. So nothing happens if it just goes through an observing mind, and things are happening from the outside but you have no role to play in those happenings, although they're manifesting as thoughts and things like that. So a thought manifested, and then that became a reality, but without any of your willful action on that intention, then it doesn't take fruit, as it doesn't get planted as a seed, right? Okay. Okay. So you need two things for the intention to, or you need two things for existence to continue. You need intention, which is the willful or volitional taking of an action, and the craving which identifies that action as me, mine or myself. If there is intention and no craving

can it? Does it die? Does the process stop, start dying by itself? The intention to let go, yeah, yeah, is what allows it to go. Okay, allows it to. So intentions may arise, but then you watch them arise, and they drop, and they may keep arising. The same intentions may keep arising for, say, five years of meditation, right? They haven't gone. So that's not setting further intention, right? That's just watching them and dropping, watching them and dropping. Right, right. Okay, right, okay. So just a follow-up, and this is something I was thinking to ask earlier. There are a lot of these affirmative statements that people use to make their wish come true and whatnot, so very similar to what he asked, right? So are affirmative statements craving, or is it like an intention, like you just explained now? Any kind of process that identifies itself as me, mind or myself is

craving. So it is a craving. Maybe, depends. Depends. Nothing wrong with affirmations. You could have an affirmation to let go, that's not a craving. It depends on the affirmation and the intention behind the affirmation. This is the same as Sankalpa, or determination. Okay. I'm asking if it's the same, like if there is no craving in that affirmation, it becomes a determination. So that Sankalpa you're talking about, right? That's the right Sankalpa, the right intention that's mentioned by the Buddha in the Noble Eightfold Path. And that's three things: renunciation or contentment, non-ill-will and non-cruelty. To you, so what are we renouncing? We're renouncing the controlling of how that outcome is going to happen, from a sense of self that is writing tension. - Same as letting go of craving.

- Yes. - This is the last question. - I have to have the last one. - So, a follow-up on the same thread. It also talks about this in the sense that when there's an intention and there's no craving, how to fulfill that intention, because then it's very clearly mentioned that the desire should not be overly sluggish, it should not be restless, in the sense that it should just be firm, and you should have the energy to get to or fulfill that intention. So I think that answers this.

So I have to read that to really understand what you're saying. I've never read that sutta, so I can't give you an informed yes or no on that. But what I can say is, what are the iddhipadas? First and foremost, it's basically having an intention which is not rooted in craving, in the sense that the desire there. There are at least four, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, four bases of power. It's, I think, intention, then it's energy, and then it's discrimination, in the sense that, yeah, you should be able to... four, or six, hours. I don't remember the one in between. Okay, so we'll have to figure that out. But I think the way to look at it is there's another sutta called the Bhava Sutta, where it's all about escaping or letting go of existence, and there the Buddha says there can be no craving but there can still be intention, which still gives rise to an existence. Correct? But there might not necessarily be craving around it. You just want to get something done, and you just, for example, jhana doesn't have any

craving but it's in existence, correct? Or formless attainments, or anything else. But this part of where we are manifesting things, there's always some kind of hint, very, very nuanced. How do you actually manifest without controlling the outcome? What if it's just a sense of, this needs to be done, and you just have to get it done, even with no craving? So it's just energy and right effort to get it done. But it's very easy to renounce it altogether. So that is the right intention, to renounce it. Yes, to be content with whatever is arising but not controlling how the outcome happens. Right, yeah, that's the thing, and that's what I'm saying: to manifest something without controlling the outcome, therein lies the rub. Makes sense. Rub, that's a Shakespeare thing. There's the rub from Hamlet, meaning that's the point. You know, another question: what is the difference between ceto vimutti and panna vimutti?

So, in other words, you go through the processes of the form attainments and formless attainments and experience Chaita Vimuthi. Paniya Vimuthi is you go through the four jhanas, through the process of insight, mind gets liberated. And this is why I don't go into all of this theory anymore. because what's the use then like in the sense that there's a cessation that happens during the meditation and their cessation that happens outside of the meditation is there a difference between them no cessation is cessation is Are you trying to say Cheta Vimuthi is something that happens in meditation and Panya Vimuthi is something that happens outside of meditation? Yeah, I'm asking is that so? No, the theory behind all of this is the Panya Vimuthi happens from the first four Janas and the Cheta Vimuthi happens from any of the eight Janas.

Okay. So that's what I'm saying, let go of the theory. Okay. It's more of a curiosity, but there are people who spend their whole lives practicing and still don't get it. Then there are people who develop the wisdom very quickly, even without having read a lot of things. They understand the nuances through experience, intuitively. At any moment, say they read a sutta or whatever, any explanation starts making more sense. Is it an indicator of, if we go through the four levels of awakening, can we see it as an indicator of, say, this person may have attained stream entry earlier? Does it, because there is ignorance, they don't know if they have been a sri mentor? Or is it just the regular kammic tendencies? They may or may not be a sri mentor, whatever. But why is there a difference, if you can talk about it? And secondly, if I am aware that I'm a slow learner

or if I am a quick learner, how do I update my faculties in a way so that if I'm slow, I can become fast? If I'm fast, I can become faster. How do I do that? We always want to make things quick, don't we? This Western mental disease of, get it quick. No, but I'm just teasing. I'm being facetious. That's Chanda, right? Yeah. Actually, even the Buddha says, right, there is a path that is easy in the beginning, easy in the middle, easy in the end, and there's a path that's hard. And all that stuff he says. So yeah, I mean, granted, but it's not necessary that somebody's born as a stream enterer and therefore they're much easier to go into the Dhamma. It's possible, but at the same time somebody can just be very inclined to the Dhamma because of their good kamma they did in a past life. Possible, or because they just develop those skills of being able to take information, process it quickly

and just absorb things that much faster. That also might be a result of past kamma, or maybe as kids they had really developed that skill due to interest. What fastens things, what quickens things, what interests. The more we put interest and joy, the more it intensifies, and the easier it is to learn and absorb and practice and apply. That's how it is. When I was in school, my two least favourite subjects were mathematics and physics, and my favourite subjects were literature, music and art.

So we had a physics teacher, I won't give his name because I don't want to make it public, but he would speak in such a way that it would make him fall asleep. And this has happened, I've seen it with my own eyes. So I never got into physics. It was boring for me, because nobody really made it interesting for me. Same with mathematics. It's just too logical for me. I can't think logically. It's just like A plus B is equal to C, or whatever it is. I don't want all that logic. But when it came to art, music and literature... Do you know what I used to do in math class, mathematics class? What would happen is mathematics would usually be after lunchtime, and there's always this slump during lunchtime, right? So I had a friend, he and I would sneak into this teacher's lounge, get some coffee and lots and lots of sugar, and just down that. Then he and I would sit in the back and just throw things at the blackboard.

The teacher would say, who is that? Who's doing that? So that's how we had fun in math class. It was a different kind of fun, but it didn't make math fun at all. So the directionality of interest is also important. It's not just the interest. That's my point. But when it was literature or art, music, I was fascinated, I was interested, I was curious, and I actually inclined my mind into learning those things, and thereby being able to actually have fun and absorb the material. So the intentionality that has interest, which is the Chanda, allows your mind to learn that much faster, or manifest that much faster. And how do you manifest that much faster? The law of attraction will tell you, you have to manifest from the heart, which is you need to put love into it. That's just another way of saying that you need curiosity and interest and joy in that.

process. I knew there was gonna be a question there. There is a slight follow-up to that. So using your own example, similar situation, hardly tolerating physics and still took science. That's another story. Yeah, I was forced anyways, and I had similar interest in literature, but we also had teachers in one grade, the physics teacher, we would even ask to repeat, explain, and the same exact words would be repeated in the different grade. It was different teacher. It became

tolerable. I also had a Hindi teacher. He could make people fall asleep while, you know, talking, teaching a poem or story or whatever. So, do you also... can this be expanded in the sense that even with your natural inclinations and interest, you also find a subset within that interest area where there is a natural tendency to be able to pick it up? For example, within the art, you say, painting, you pick a medium which feels more natural to you. You pick watercolor over charcoal, or something like that. Right, right. That's also another thing, right? So the interest is one thing, the intensity or the directionality of that interest and how you pick it up, that could be dependent upon karma as well, previous choices, or maybe something, you know. For example, I think this is where my lack of interest stemmed in mathematics, and my real interest in writing was when I was in first grade, first standard. There were two choices given to me by the teacher. Miss Wexler was her

name, and she said, you can choose to go and do some creative writing, so you can write some stories, or you can choose to go to math club and learn about addition, subtraction. And because I already had a talent for writing, and why? Because before then we were all given a task to write a story. And I, I have to admit this now on camera, I took a story from The Magic School Bus and I wrote it down, but I made it my own. And I asked my mom for help, and I said, I don't know this one word, and just use the word suddenly. I gotta use the word suddenly. And Miss Wexler read the story to the entire class, and I felt so proud and happy, and she said, look at this word suddenly, he's using that word suddenly. So what happened after, all my subsequent stories had suddenly positive, positive affirmation.

I was like, I would want to go into writing. That's why I've written a story about magical bicycle chain. By the way, one last question within this: how much of a role discipline plays in it? Because also there are times where you have to sit with that particular tool to see if it's working for you. So where do you draw the line? How do you identify, in terms of the texture of experience? When you say discipline, what is your understanding of that? I would say sustained effort.

Yeah, yeah. So then you're kind of answering your questions when you say that, because that is what it is, right? The intensity, the intention, the joy, the intensity, and the sustained effort, which is the intensity. So you need the innate talent, or you need the innate ability to absorb, and you need the ability to sustain that intention. That's the discipline. No, but say you apply sustained effort initially, you're not experiencing the joy element that you talked about. How long do you keep applying effort with that particular, how long do you keep trying to work with charcoal until you move on to watercolor, because the joy is just not arising? Do you wait? In terms of, how do you know? Because the joy that will come is natural, it's spontaneous. The moment you try to create that joy, it's no longer joy. So it's either the very first attempt you feel a certain level, yeah, it's like, oh, this is really fun, I really like this, okay, you feel a draw, as you said.

It's a nice pun, by the way. That initial joy, that spontaneous joy, is like an alert system to let you know that this is something that I like and I should be doing more. This question relates to the transcendental deal. We didn't talk about this in the Dhamma talk this time, but in whatever videos that I've seen on YouTube given by you, it starts with dukkha, it starts with suffering, where, you know, there's a lot of suffering, and then there's conviction that stems out of that suffering, and then there's the, you know, the entire spiral. Now, like for the majority part of my life, spirituality or questions, second-order thinking, third-order thinking, or not second-order, third-order, but spirituality or the draw to spirituality majorly arose when there was a lot of dukkha, and then there will be a spiral.

But then when that suffering was gone, then, yeah, everything's good now. I mean, then the effort will go away as well. But then there will be another cycle of dukkha, and then there will be another cycle of spiritual growth, effort, and, you know... But after a while, when you're settled, and it's not arising too much, I think there needs to be some way that you can keep the effort going, right?

You can keep the energy going, not just depend on suffering to arise for you to put in effort. So I think I should clarify that, because the reason we mentioned dukkha is because in the Samyutta Nikaya 12.23, in there it gives the entire process of the 23 links starting from ignorance all the way to dukkha. So what it's saying is, dukkha initially gives you that faith or that conviction, like desire to find a way out, but then what sustains you after that is the actual pleasure of doing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that is exactly what I wanted to confirm: it's the sustained effort and the pleasure that you derive out of the data process that keeps you going when the suffering starts to lessen.

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, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu.