Q&A about MN 43 with Delson -Mahavedalla Sutta

The interpretation is different because of synesthesia, and that is dependent upon the mind and how it's taking it in, and that's where the answer is. So he's asking, what does it resort to? What is their resort? What experiences these sense bases? Friends, these five faculties each have a separate field, a separate domain, and do not experience each other's field and domain. That is the eye faculty, the ear faculty, the nose faculty, the tongue faculty, and the body faculty.

Now, these five faculties, each having a separate field, a separate domain, not experiencing each other's field and domain, have mind as their resort. Mind experiences their fields and domains. Mind is chief. Mind is the forerunner of all states. Friend, as to these five faculties, that is the eye faculty, the ear faculty, the nose faculty, the tongue faculty, and the body faculty, what do these five faculties stand in dependence upon? What are they dependent upon?

So what is vitality? Vitality comes from the word jivitindriya, the life faculty. And what is the heat? That is tejo, or also ushna. So I would say you could think about the life faculty as basically the electrical activity that runs throughout the nervous system. That allows the functionality of these five faculties to run. But for the nervous system to work properly, you need proper cellular metabolism.

And so you could say that heat is metabolism. So you have the electrical activity of the nervous system as vitality, and you have metabolism as the function of heat in the body. So then he asks, okay, what does vitality stand in dependence upon? He says, vitality stands in dependence on heat. And what does heat stand in dependence on? Heat stands in dependence on vitality. Friend, just now we understood the Venerable Sariputta to have said, vitality stands in dependence on heat. And now we understand him to say, heat stands in dependence on vitality. How should the meaning of these statements be regarded?

In that case, friend, I shall give you a simile. For some wise men here understand the meaning of a statement by means of a simile. Just as when an oil lamp is burning, if you've ever seen an oil lamp burning, you see the flame. Its radiance you can see, like some radiance shining. If you look carefully, you can actually see different colors around in that radiance. That radiance is seen in dependence on the flame itself. In order for you to see that radiance, you need a flame, and its flame is seen in dependence on its radiance. You can't see the flame without the radiance around it. That's allowing you to see the flame.

So too, vitality stands in dependence on heat, and heat stands in dependence on vitality. So the life faculty is dependent upon heat, and heat, in order for it to actually be present, requires the life faculty. Friend, are vital formations things that can be felt, or are vital formations one thing and things that can be felt another? Vital formations, friends, that is ayu-sankhara, are not things that can be felt.

If ayu-sankhara, or vital formations, were things that can be felt, then a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling would not be seen to emerge from it. Very interesting. Because vital formations are one thing and things that can be felt another, a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling and consciousness can be seen to emerge from it. So what are vital formations? Ayu-sankhara. They determine the longevity of the body. They have to do with whatever is happening in the body in terms of its functionality. Related to heat and vitality. Related to metabolism in the body. Related to digestion. Related to telomere activity, related to all kinds of things that the mind itself cannot directly perceive.

Sometimes you can perceive the process of digestion through hunger, that the body is hungry because you feel it, and all of these other things. However, the mind isn't able to perceive what's going on at the cellular level unless it looks really closely. And so those functions happen at one level, and the functions of seeing things or experiencing things through the sense faculties happen through another. The vital formations give rise to the functioning of organs and all kinds of cells and the nervous system in one way or the other.

And the mental formations give the functioning of what the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue and the body, and the mind itself, can feel and perceive. So these are two different things. So in cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, what ceases are the three formations, the three types of formations: the bodily formations that have to do with inhalation and exhalation and other functions of the body like movement and things like that; the verbal formations that have to do with thinking and expressing in speech; and the mental formations that allow you to feel and perceive through the sixth sense basis. These cease. But while they're ceased, in cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, the vital formations continue. Right? That's why you put somebody under an MRI or all of these different sensors, and while they're in cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, they will still trace some kind of bodily functions going on, in terms of skin conductivity and some kind of heart rate and some kind of blood pressure, and so on and so forth.

But in terms of what's happening in the mind, in terms of feeling and perception, in terms of expression of speech, in terms of moving around, that all ceases in cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. To the extent that even when you're asleep, even when you are sitting in meditation, even when you think you're still, the eyes move around just a little bit. But in cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, the eyes are absolutely still.

Everything is absolutely still in that sense. You had a question? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's where it gets a little hazy, because when we talk about breathing as a function that's being done through basically the nervous system, related to vital formations, but here we say bodily formations have to do with the inhalation and exhalation, possibly due to intentionally inhaling and intentionally exhaling, in other words, controlling the breath. That could be seen in one way. Yeah. So for vichara, expression of each, what you... yeah, but in the first we don't expect... yes, that's right.

So that's what I'm saying. It's reflection first. That's the vichara, reflection. So in other words, vitakka and vichara are bringing up the object of meditation and then reflecting upon it. That is the vitakka and vichara. In this case, the vitakka and vichara is thinking about something, reflecting about it, and making the intention to speak or making the intention to express it in some way. Yeah, or you could say the speech is a result of the vitakka vichara.

It's saying applied and sustained thought in here. But you can also have thinking and examining thought. I don't know which version I have. It looks a little old, but anyway. Friend, when this body is bereft of how many states is it then discarded and forsaken, left lying senseless like a log? Friend, when this body is bereft of three states, vitality, heat, and consciousness, it is then discarded and forsaken, left lying senseless like a log. In other words, a corpse.

The warmth of the corpse is gone. Or the body is gone, we should say. And his faculties are fully broken up. In other words, now there is no connection made in terms of the mind, because the mind has gone from there. And these five physical sense bases, there's a disconnection now. So they're broken up. There's no functionality going on at all. Yeah? Should I remember your verse? Yeah. So instead of vitality, which you translate as, I mean, the original word is jivitindriya, right? Yeah. So here we have jivitindriya. So are these jivitindriya the same? Yes. Yes. They are the life faculty. Yes. But here when you talk about ayu, here you're talking about longevity, or life itself.

His heat has not been dissipated, which means that there is still some kind of metabolic activity going on. And his faculties become exceptionally clear. This is what I was talking about earlier, right? When you are in cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, there is no sensory impingement on the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body. All of the signals are completely clear, because they're cleared of any kind of, or I should say the reception is completely clear. There's no traffic jam going on. The road is completely clear. Not even one iota of sensory impact going on in any of these five physical sense bases. So they're exceptionally clear, but they're still connected to mind.

It's just that there's nothing going on through that connection. Let me make sure that that's how we have it. Yeah, because if you see the first jhana, really he's talking about how do you start to get into jhana. And then everything else after that is a natural progression. The second, the third, the fourth, it's like using that same simile of the water going down from the mountain, streaming down to the gullies and so on. Once you're in the first jhana, your mind will naturally progress through the second jhana once it lets go of any thinking and examining thought, because now it has self-confidence in it. Once it's in the second jhana, after a while, just because of the fact that the contents or conditions of that second jhana are impermanent, the joy fades away.

And then you're naturally in the third jhana. And then naturally in the fourth jhana, once the sukha fades away. And of course, he did talk about the ayatanas earlier in terms of the mind consciousness. But again, cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness can be experienced from the first jhana onwards. It doesn't have to happen all the way through the first eight and then cessation, but it can happen from the first jhana onwards.

So that cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness is never in Nibbana. Right. But it is what allows for the experience in Nibbana to occur, let's say. Is that the Nibbana of the Sotakarnas or the Nibbana of the Nibbana? Both. It can be both in one way, and it can be one in the other way. So then can it be only one cessation of cessation? Right. Are cessation and nirvana can join?

Your line of question has gone too far. That's from another sutta. But I'll get to that later. Actually, I want to try one thing here. Yeah. So there's no sensory input in the situation. It's like the road, there's no car. It's totally empty, but the road is still there. That's right, exactly. The road's gone. That's right. Good way, good way of putting it.

That shows you that sensation is not nothing. It's just that there's nothing happening. No conditions present, that's all. Because there's no contact happening, when you have contact, that is a sensory impingement from the light hitting the eyes. That's not happening in cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness. No sound waves are being received, made contact with the ear, and there's no registration of that happening. So there's no sensory impingement. They're not being felt and perceived by the mind. That's right. So yes, and the connection between the five faculties and the mind is exceptionally clear.

Right, there's no data going in. There's no sensory data there, so it's completely wiped out. You don't know if it's connecting the same soul from the mind? Yeah, yeah. Is it almost or completely? Is it what? Almost or completely? Completely. You're saying completely what? Removed. Removed, yeah. So I have five sense of my ear, my mouth, and I disconnect from the mind. Or the mind disconnects from them. From the earth. Yeah. Yes, that's the problem. Yeah. Yes, it's disconnected completely. But what is still there is the vitality and heat,

which allows them to be functional or potentially functional. If the vitality and heat were not present and the mind is disconnected, which in the case of death, then there is no possibility of them re-arising again. Can they be felt like someone else, or if they don't call 911? Yes. Yes, it can. Yes. So, anywhere in the body? Well, it's very diminished, let's say. Yeah.

But it should be, generally. Yeah. So, is it both in Nirvana and in cessation that when you come back online, there's the experience of very clear vision, very clear hearing, very clear smell? Right. Is it fair to say, because of that disconnection with the word, that you actually rest the? That's right. It has complete rest. Absolutely, no traffic at all, no traffic at all. So that's why when you come out your faculty is being exceptionally clear. You have this, the greens are much greener, the blues are much bluer, and the sounds are much more potent, and so on. In what sense? Cessation. Yeah, you're not aware, but you're aware after cessation. Yeah. It could be for a moment, but it has been timed.

I'll explain that there have been people who have experienced cessation by listening to some meditation, which at some point David will probably play. And in listening to that, they said, my mind went away. I was listening to this word, and my mind went away. And then it came back on, and it was saying something else. And so they went back to remember what was that in the meditation. And they said it was at this point, something happened.

I don't know. I just heard that last word. And it was at this point I heard this word, and that measurement was a minute and 20 seconds. So it could vary from a few seconds to even up to a minute. Up to? Up to a minute or two minutes. Can we even know, especially, I think this is what I was asking the other day, if it wasn't awkward or if you had to go blank for five, ten minutes or two minutes, doesn't matter. So what's the difference between cessation and sloth and torpor?

In one case, you're very radiant and bright, and in another case, you're very dense and heavy. So that's different. There is nirodha and there's nirodha-samapati. Nirodha is the experience that somebody has when they go through this process and then they come out and experience Nibbana. Nirodha-samapati is somebody who can intentionally go into Nirodha. Samapati means the attainment or the accomplishment, the achievement. You've unlocked the achievement in the game of life to be able to go into Nirodha. And how long does that last? Up to seven days.

Anywhere from a couple of seconds? Up to seven days. Yeah. Yeah. Well, with the cessation of consciousness, there is the cessation of nama-rupa. So the functionalities of any kind of contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention also cease. And the sixth sense basis also cease. Absolutely. With that whole one cessation, there's a whole cessation of the rest of the links.

All right, I'm almost done, guys. So once I finish, we can ask the questions here. This is the difference between one who is dead, who has completed his time, and a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness. Just to recap, what is the difference? In death, there is no vitality, there is no heat, and the sense faculties or the five faculties are broken up. There's no more connection. Oh, there's a turtle there.

He's come to listen. By the time this talk is over, he'll be late. It's like, what happened? Coming back again. So there the sense faculties are broken up and in cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness. There is still heat, there is still vitality, and the sense faculties are exceptionally clear. The connection between the mind and the sense faculties have been disconnected, in the sense that the mind ceases.