Live Dhamma QA with Delson Armstrong Aug 6

Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So I think it's 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time in 10 Fort Delson. I should start, before we start anything, I would like to say how we selected the questions, based on the meditations related and Dharma related. We also limit the maximum questions to three questions per person, to give others a chance. Being said that, I will go through the questions. Some of the questions give a lot of context behind them, and then Delson gets these questions, so when I ask him he'll know, but I won't read out the whole stories for everyone's benefit.

The very first one is related to dependent origination. Can you please provide some contacts around... Okay, so that's the link of becoming, link of habitual tendencies. Habitual tendencies are also translated as existence or being. Another one is ways of understanding bhava. Number one, bhava is habitual tendencies in the form of different kinds of tendencies that make up the sense of self. Now, this could be translated as psychological states associated with certain kinds of spheres of existence. You could have a hellish kind of existence in your mind. You could have an animalistic psychology in your mind. You could have a deva-like existence in your mind. You could have a brahma-like existence in your mind. And that's dependent upon choices that you make.

So what that means is the clinging that's there before the bhava. That's the process where you associate, you rationalize why it is that you like something, why it is that you don't like something, why it is that you think you are that. When you then go forward from there, then you have a library of kind of choices.

Associated with similar kinds of situations. So if you are met with a certain kind of situation, before there is the birth of action, there is in your mind all of these different choices, and your mind almost automatically inclines towards that choice that seems to be best suited for that situation, dependent on previous choices made in similar situations. So if a mind is met with somebody who is aggravating them, instigating them, and they are prone to being instigated, then their bhava will be somebody who says, I am this person who gets instigated, and they decide they choose to act in an unwholesome way by reacting and getting upset.

So in that process of dependent origination, what's going on is there's contact. That is the initial sound of the person shouting at you, and then the feeling of seeing what is going on, in other words hearing that there is this unwholesome state present through that process of that person saying something. Now that's an unpleasant feeling. There can arise from there the mind that says, I don't like this, and then if the mind says I don't like this, it can act from there and say, I don't like this because I am so and so a person. When it says, because I am so and so a person, that's the

bhava, and therefore I'm going to act in this way. So that happens in a process of, you know, one second, that whole process. So bhava really is that initial spark just before you act. It's all of this momentum that happens from the feeling, the craving, the clinging, and then the bhava is just before you act. You say I'm going to act in this way, or I'm going to say this to this person. That if you recognize and you let go of, then you won't produce any kind of verbal unwholesome action or any kind of physical unwholesome action. So bhava is also something connected with the formations. The more you act in bhava, the more they strengthen certain kinds of formations that can be rooted in craving, in clinging, in conceit, and so on.

Thoughts that say, you know, I don't like this person because they're doing this to me, therefore I'm going to act this way. That initial wanting to act that way, that's really the problem. Thank you very much. The next one is regarding the first precept. So just to give you a little bit of context: when I'm working in the garden, I'm aware that some of the things I do may be harming or killing living beings, even though my intention is to dig a hole, harvest crop, et cetera. I still feel some distress and am guilty at that thought, that I am likely harming other beings. I try to save the beings that I can, but it is not just practical to try to save all of them.

Well, for one, gardening in itself is not breaking the first precept. So you are not breaking the first precept by gardening or whatever it might be. Now, if you're doing it with the intention that you're gardening and you're going to kill all these living beings in the process of gardening, then obviously you have an intent. So the breaking of the first precept has to be qualified by a few things. Number one, there has to be a weapon. Number two, there has to be an intention to kill. Number four, there has to be an act of killing. And number five, that living being has to be dead.

Nowhere in that process of gardening is there an intention to kill. So don't worry yourself about these things. Otherwise, take up some other kind of hobby, stop gardening. So the next one is jhana-related questions. I would like to explore the jhana in daily life. What practice might you suggest to do the explorations? I don't really find the method of practice the best for me, like having worked with the anapanasati for a very long time.

I don't know if this person has done a retreat or not, but I would suggest first doing a retreat if they haven't already, like a retreat with some kind of online retreat that does the TWIM practice, and see for themselves how that works. Because it suggests to me, from that question, and I can be wrong, that they're saying they've done anapanasati for a long time, but maybe they haven't done the TWIM practice. There's no mention of TWIM there. So you might want to try the TWIM practice, which uses the brahmaviharas as an object. And that is a more feeling, psychosomatic-based meditation than just a mantra-based meditation.

May I be happy, and so on. Once you start to know what your object is, and then you start to experience joy and happiness, and you start to notice that the mind starts to become more collected, then you are set to be getting into jhana. Once that happens, then you start to get through each of the jhanas, and then you have an experience. And then later on in your daily practice you can explore the jhanas by just continuing the meditation. There's no real magic to exploring the jhanas. It's just a matter of how much time you have on your hands and how your mind is able to be more collected. Just stay in the jhana and start to explore by just understanding things as they arise. You don't need to go look around. You don't need to go and explore. Just be present, be aware, be attentive, and then notice, just like Sariputta would in Majjhima Nikaya 111, seeing things as they arise: that contact, the feeling, the perception, the intention, the attention, the mind, the mindfulness, the energy

The determination, the decision-making, the enthusiasm, and so on, that's present in each of the jhanas as you go through it. Not to mention the main primary factors of each of the jhanas. Like in the first jhana, you might notice the joy and the happiness arise. In the second jhana, you notice that the thinking and examining thought goes away. In the third jhana, you notice that there's more comfort in the body and less joy present. In the fourth jhana, you notice there's a lot of mindfulness and equanimity. And so on and so forth. So I think the first step would be, if you haven't already done so, do a TWIM retreat. After you do a TWIM retreat, then just explore on your own, and then when you're ready you can start doing determinations. Determinations are for anagamis and above. I would not recommend doing determinations for anybody who is not an audit, because it just gets frustrating and it's much more difficult, because you have that fetter of craving and aversion still present, which is a big block for the determinations.

- I would like to take the one from the chat. It's because it's kind of related to this. So I think, first question, probably it's addressed already. But the second one is, can it be a very focused practice? I think I'm assuming the questioner is asking about TWIM practice or open awareness. Can you comment on that? Yeah. So this practice that we do, the jhanas are like in the background. The jhanas are not the goal here in this practice. The jhanas are facilitating a mind that is collected enough to start to see the insights that arise. So the way to look at jhanas in this practice is like how you would have a conversation with someone at a restaurant.

You're having a conversation with that person, and your mind is centered around what that person is saying. While you are centered your mind around what that person is saying, you might hear in the background ambient music, other people conversing, whispers, glasses clinking, shuffling, whatever is going on, and that's just the ambient noise. Now, if you pay too much attention to the ambient noise, you're not going to be able to know what's going on with whatever that person in front of you is saying. So whatever you are listening to is your attention around the object of meditation, whether that's love and kindness, the breath, a super practice, whatever it might be. That is the objective: to continue to stay with your object of meditation.

The longer you stay there, the ambient noise around you starts to differ. It changes. It goes from being more vibrant and joyful, to being less vibrant and more collected, and then much softer, and even more collected. So the goal here is not to focus on the factors of the jhanas, but rather allow them to be there in the background of your mind. You're aware that they're there, but your mind is just centered around the object of meditation. Oftentimes I'll use this analogy: you see that the object of meditation is like a planet, and your attention is like a moon orbiting that planet. So you're centering the mind around that object. You don't

land on the object and whenever your mind goes off target, that is, it goes out of orbit. You use the six R's to bring it back into orbit, and now you stay attentive to your object again. And as a result, there'll be more factors of the jhana present in the background of your mind. So this is more of an open awareness, open attention kind of practice, but it's like a balance, you know. You're keeping your attention on one object, but not at the point of sacrificing your mind, suppressing all of these other things that are going on. Because if you suppress, you're not going to be able to acknowledge the unwholesome states that might arise, which you can then let go of, and then return back to the object, and then get into a more collected state and deeper in the jhana.

Now, anytime you do get distracted, you are not to be in jhana. You're set to be not in jhana, which means that you notice that you're distracted, and then you use your mind to use the six R's. You use the six R's to bring your mind back. And when you're back, you'll become more collected. So you've activated the enlightenment factors, brought everything back into balance, stayed with the object. And as a result, with the non-appearance of any hindrance present in the mind, the mind becomes even more relaxed, even more joyful, and it's experiencing jhana in that sense. So very briefly put, it is an open awareness kind of practice.

Thank you. So next one, it's like I'm going to take this two questions just like this. One is from a, you know, previously submitted. Can you provide the context around like JANA? What one should experience? experience like in the eighth jhana? So the eighth jhana is known as neither perception and non-perception. Technically, it's the ayatana of neither perception nor non-perception. And what that means is that initially when you get into this state, the mind feels like it's asleep but awake at the same time, initially. And it might feel like it's a little clouded. There might be disconnected thoughts here and there. There might be different kinds of patterns and shapes and pictures that appear, but not exactly knowing what they are.

So the reason why it's called neither perception nor non-perception is because your mind, the mind's capacity to perceive, starts to diminish. And perceiving, or perception, is that process that recognizes, that is able to label and note what is going on that is present in the mind. That starts to become more and more diminished. So as that happens, you're going to see that the mind becomes this very asleep but awake kind of state, not groggy, very alert, with different kinds of clouded images. And eventually, all of that dissipates, and the mind is said to be very, very clear.

And it's not looking at anything in particular. It's just mind resting on mind. But for the initial time, the quiet mind is not all too quiet. The intention in there is not to stay quiet. The intention is there not to get distracted by things coming up. Just stay there in the eye of the storm. You are in the eye of the storm, and around you are all of these formations, all of these thoughts. But as soon as you get distracted by that thought, then you're out of that process, and now you're no longer in that perceptive aspect of the mind. So staying in the mind and being clear there, that is all you have to do in the eighth jhana. That's really the quality of the eighth jhana. There's not a whole lot going on. Eventually nothing happens, and then the mind just switches off and is said to be in cessation. Now, it can happen that the mind feels bored, as it were, and then because of it, it brings up all of these different kinds of activities. And that creates restlessness in the mind.

So what you do there is you bring up a little relaxation. You bring up a little equanimity, and you widen your attention a little bit, and you relax. And then that brings the mind back into itself. Or, on the flip side of that, the mind starts to become bored, where it just delves out and it has sloth and torpor. There you tighten up your focus a little bit. You bring a little bit more energy, bring a little microdose of joy, and wait and see what happens. And the heaviness of the dullness, the sloth and torpor, starts to go away, and the mind becomes collected in itself again. So when that happens, then you are said to be in earnest in the eighth jhana, where mind is just resting in mind.

In Pali, this is known as the Pabhasara Chitta, or the luminous mind. It's just luminous in and of itself, but nothing else. Thank you, Nelson. He is, you know, there's a concern attached to this question as well. The other thing is, nothing appeared to be happening, which makes me think that I'm doing something wrong. A lot of people want nothing to happen in their mind. So you should be happy that nothing's going on in your mind.

That takes us to the one question in the chat: place or object which the mind puts the awareness or attention on, which is the recommended object of meditation to relax and rest the mind? Is it signless mind or neither perception, no, like NPNMP? Yeah, signless state. When we call signless collected, of collectedness mind, it's, I would say, jhana 8.5, you could say. So what's happening is that the mind starts to become less and less interested in anything. And it's almost like a pure awareness. You're not looking at anything in particular. And the objective here is actually to not look at anything in particular. So the objective, the object here, is nothing in particular.

That's why it's called the signless. It's not taking anything as an object. And what happens is you start to soften the edges of the periphery of your mental vision. And that starts to widen. more and more and more and some people might see like a blank screen some people might see like a a sort of you know when you had the old televisions and they weren't like there was no signal and you'd see those mosquitoes in the screen you know the black and white kind of thing that fuzzy stuff people will see something like that or nothing in particular or like like like a very clear glass and there's nothing there beyond it so it's like your awareness is just there just going outward, but not landing on anything.

And this is a key aspect of the signless state. It can be very subtle initially. Sometimes it can be very disconcerting, because it feels like you've completely lost contact with the body and you have no bearing of where you are. Some people feel like they become upside down, because there's no sense of direction anywhere. And when that happens, that can be anxiety.

I suggest that when that happens, just relax, soften things, you know, and allow the mind to kind of just rest there. It will start to become more comfortable, and very little things happen there. And if things do come up, the key is not to look at that and then get caught up in it. In the very looking of it, the mind relaxes it. You don't have to do anything at this point. It's very similar to how the mind just self-liberates, to use Tibetan tradition language, in a sense. It's just the mind, it sees it, and in the very seeing of it, that becomes disinterested, disenchanted, and that thing goes away. If you try to make the effort to let go of that thing, then you are no longer in the signless, and now you're taking that as an object by your intention to do something with it

where there will be very little things that come up, and if they do come up, you just basically, you know, in a sense, you don't ignore them, but in a sense you just see them from afar, and the mind kind of just lets it dissipate. And the very last thing to appear or disappear from this state is the sense of conceit, the formation of conceit, the sense of I am. Because there is a tendency, there can be a tendency, I should say, where the mind will take this state and say, oh, this is what I am. I am that pure awareness.

This is sometimes where people get stuck. So if you notice your mind doing that, let go of that and just keep watching. Just keep observing. Eventually, because there's no more field of attention, the mind will just shut off and it will enter safely. - Thank you. Next question is, we're getting into a little bit more general questions.

Having tried many meditation systems and knowing you have mastered even more, in your take on how your previous work impacted on your success with TWIM, anything you can tell us in this regard will be most wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, I think, excuse me. I think, when I went through these different practices, I did it with the intention of looking at the end of each of these practices, and I saw for myself, for my own mind, that this was the limitation. Let's say, because there was this sense of conditionality still present in each of these different states, which means that the mind was not in a state of being unconditioned. Insofar as that, it helped me to understand that there is a state beyond this, there must be something beyond this. I would say that what has helped is those practices that have allowed the mind to be open and aware, allowed the mind to be relaxed and attentive, allowed the mind to just see things as they are, instead of trying to construct an experience.

A lot of the practices that I've done have caused the mind to construct these experiences by certain kinds of techniques, certain kinds of breathing patterns, and things like that. With the TWIM practices, it's a deconstructive process. It's a process where the mind deconstructs any kind of experiences by letting go. And that process of letting go is not an active letting go. It's just relaxing when tightness and tension are there, and just being present, being aware.

And that insofar as practices that I've done in the past have helped me to exercise those muscles, as it were, to be present, to be aware and not do anything else, not do much anything else. So it's just a process of staying present, observing, seeing things as they are, and then relaxing. So I would say everybody has their own journey, everybody has their own practices that they've done, and that is their karma. Right? Their karma has led them to all kinds of practices, and they might be satisfied with that, or they might say that there's more to be done. And if there's more to be done

something will come into place, something will come into play for their life or for that experience, for them to be able to see for themselves: oh, now there's something else beyond this, and there's something else beyond this. So the other thing I'll say, it has been helpful as a guide, as a teacher, is you can know where somebody is based on their experience, and if you've done it before, you can start to guide them and say, well, when I wasn't doing this practice, this is what happened. I think that's where you are at, so maybe you want to shift your attention this way, or you want to relax a little bit more here, or you want to let go of this idea there. So that has been helpful as well. Thank you. The next one is someone wants to know: is it possible to get into the arupa jhana without going through the first full jhanas? Yes. Yeah. Are they really jhana or just perceptions or spheres?

So the ayatanas are part of the fourth jhana, actually. Now, if you go to Majjama Nikaya 121, it talks about how a person starts to let go of this and that, and they start to get into infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception nor non-perception. So it is quite possible, for somebody to start from excuse me infinite space infinite consciousness and so on that's why more advanced practitioners after they go beyond the four jhana they can just start from infinite space or they can start from infinite consciousness or they can start from nothingness so it's jhanas are not the jhanas are successive right but once you start to advance your practice you can start from anywhere but just on a technical From a technical perspective, the ayatanas, that is infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception nor non-perception, that is the base of these experiences.

And they are rooted, or their foundation is the fourth jhana. So technically what you're doing is you're going from the fourth jhana and then widening your experience by having these different perceptions. Thank you. Yeah. One is in the Zoom chat. I practice TWIM and have practical and day-to-day questions. In life, there are times that due to work pressure, I wake up at 4 a.m. or so and my mind becomes very active and doesn't let me go back to sleep. I'm trying different things like metta, equanimity or forgiveness, but at times they don't work.

Any suggestions on practicing during trust time, I will pressure when my mind is very busy or when I wake up during the sleep and the mind is busy? Thank you. Yeah. Don't do anything at all. Don't do anything at all. When you start to notice that the mind becomes very active, you start to notice that the mind, you know, wakes up and it's very active. What happens is you're trying to use the practice of metta, or you're trying to use the practice of equanimity or forgiveness, sort of like a whack-a-mole. If you're playing the whack-a-mole game, you start to, you try to get this, and you try to get that, and try to get this, trying to get the thought. You're trying to whack that and try to whack that thought. No, no, no, because when you do that you're adding energy to all of that. You have to take a step back, notice, just relax, notice that your mind is starting to get active, be aware of the activity in the mind, but don't look at what's going on. If you start to

that space between the mind and the thoughts of the mind, what you'll start to notice is it's like a traffic, a flow of thoughts that are happening, a stream of thoughts that are happening. And then is the goal there? Then you see it, you know. When you're by the side of the road, you're just noticing traffic of cars just going by. Would it be practical for you to then go to that traffic and stop that car and say, hey, wait, I want to look at this particular car?

No, it wouldn't be practical. In the same way, when you are seeing this traffic of thoughts, just see it for what it is, just arising and passing away of thoughts. You need to have what's known as metacognition. Metacognition, or not meta, M-E-T-T-A, M-E-T-A, which is the awareness of awareness, which is you just take a step back and just say, okay, this is what the mind is doing. You might even want to say it in your mind: okay, this is what the mind is doing. Mind is thinking right now. Let me take a step back and just witness what's going on. Once you start to do that, you become less enchanted with that and it becomes less interesting.

And eventually it just starts to slow down. Once it starts to slow down, then if the mind feels like it wants to gravitate towards an object in meditation, it can bring up something and use that to stay collected. But I will say that once you start to create this spaciousness, mind naturally develops equanimity, because equanimity is being able to see things as they are without getting affected one way or the other. So just relax, observe, allow things to slow down. It might take an hour. It might take two hours. But in that process, you're not allowing your mind to get caught up by that traffic. You're just observing the traffic, and eventually it slows down.

Thank you. Last question. Please eliminate the notions that mind without craving acts without looking forward to something, anything, be it chocolate cake or a dive in a cool river on a hot day or anything for that matter in the sensual realm. That is to query a mind that does anything in order to, quote unquote, in order to is a mind that craves. Thank you. So what is the mind without craving? Thank you. Well, I think it's called, it's a title of a book as well, Mind Without Craving. If anyone's not checked it out, you can check it out. Anyway, shameless plug. A mind that craves, first let's deal with that. A mind that craves is the mind that, you know, basically says, I have to have that thing. It's definitely from saying, oh, that looks like a very nice piece of chocolate cake, and goes and looks for that and eats it.

There's craving present in the mind if that supposed object of craving is present. Let's say I'm in line to get some chocolate cake, and I go online and I'm very much looking forward while I'm there, standing waiting for that piece of chocolate cake, and then I get to the place where I can get chocolate cake and there's no more chocolate cake there. How does the mind react then? In other words, the mind is looking forward to that chocolate cake. It says, oh, that's great, I really want that chocolate cake and goes forward. But if it's not there anymore, how does the mind react? If there's agitation in the mind, if the mind says anything like, oh no, I really wanted that chocolate cake and there's this disturbance that goes on, then that's craving.

The mind without craving will say, okay, well, chocolate cake. Moving on, right? So take away the object of craving and see how the person reacts, or see how your own mind reacts. And if there is agitation, then there's craving attached to that sensual experience. The Buddha said the sensual pleasures in and of themselves, the sensual experiences in and of themselves, are not the issue. The issue is the intention behind the possession of that: the wanting to possess it, the wanting to have it. Or on the flip side, the wanting to get away from something that's unpleasant, that's the craving. So if there's something unpleasant, let's say you're meditating, like, you know, over here when we meditate at Damasuka, there'll be the lawn mowers that go off. Many people get irritated by that, and there's the aversion. Eventually the mind realizes, oh, this is just an unpleasant sound. So the craving that's there is the reactivity in relation to that experience. So if you notice that the mind gets agitated because that piece of chocolate cake is not present, or whatever is not present, then you should understand that there was craving present there.

But if the mind just reacts and responds and says, okay, no big deal, then there was no craving for that chocolate cake. There was no craving for that. So, somebody will prefer something over the other, or somebody has to do something in order to, whatever is going on, exercising situational-based awareness. If there is something to be done, then they will do it. But there won't be any sense of, I have to do it, right? Like you have to go to a plane. You have to catch a plane. In order for you to catch the plane, you have to check in. In order for you to check in, you have to get to the airport.

In order for you to do that, you have to take a taxi or drive. In order for you to do that, you have to get into the car. So all of these things are just a series of events and circumstances and situations that you get yourself into in order to get something done, but that in itself is not the craving. The craving is how your mind is reacting to every single situation. The mind without craving doesn't have any kind of anything to land upon. The other day I was talking to another monk about this, and we were talking about how, you know, when you look at different kinds of states of meditation or different traditions, they're always looking for the end goal, and the end goal is something, but it's always in the conditioned reality. There's something conditioned about that experience. The mind without craving, or the way to get to the mind without craving, is realizing that that whole notion itself is flawed. That is to say, the mind is always looking for some kind of security

The mind is always looking for something to grasp onto. The mind is always looking for something to land on. So here we're taking away the need for that security. We're saying the mind doesn't need to be secure. The mind doesn't need to land on anything. The mind doesn't need to need anything to hold on to. Once that realization happens, then the mind is completely free, because before then the mind is always looking for something to satisfy itself. But if you let go of all notions of things that need to be satisfied, of all notions for security, then your mind is liberated. Thank you very much. So that will bring to our end of the sessions for this month. Let's share merit. of happiness, may being inhabiting space and earth, diverse and nagas, almighty power, share this merit of ours. May the long protracted buddha dispensation... Thank you so much, Delson. Thank you everyone.