Day-5 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong

I know there was one particular person who had a question, and that was Kirsten, who had a couple of questions. So if Kirsten wants to begin, she can start. So on the sutta yesterday, at the very end of it, and I know there's a number of suttas like this, and then the 16th, the minds of 60 bhikkhus were liberated from the taints, so it sounds like they became arahants after hearing that discourse.

And I guess what I'm wondering is, is that something that just doesn't happen anymore, or does that still happen to somebody when you just hear and understand like that? Of where, having heard the talk, that for such beings, that by not grasping, the taints were destroyed, the defilements were destroyed, and by, and thus they were then arahants. It's interesting, there are a few other suttas like the Bahiya Sutta, which is very similar to another one in the Majjhima Nikaya, where it's very similar in content as well as style, and upon listening to the Buddha's talk and really contemplating what he says, they become arahants right there and then. And then there's even, and it's very interesting, you have Sariputta, who has two different accounts of how he sees through wisdom. There is, as we know, traditionally the Anupada Sutta, the one by one, as they occurred.

And when you read that, you see that it just goes through each of the jhanas, and then the mind is liberated at the end, having seen with wisdom. But there is another sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya in which the Buddha is talking to Sariputta's nephew, I believe. I think it's, I can't remember the name of the sutta, but it's one of the suttas we'll discuss in one of the Dhamma talks later on in the future. But in that, Sariputta is fanning the Buddha.

And upon listening to the Buddha talk about the level of feeling and contemplating on that, Sariputta's taints are destroyed and he attains arahatship. You can, there is a potential if the mind is serene enough, if the mind is collected enough, if the mind is already mindful enough, to be able to listen to it and in that process apply what the Buddha is saying upon listening to it. So it is, for example, in the case of Sariputta, having understood that the phenomena of feeling, and understanding how letting go of the phenomena of feeling and by not grasping, he understood how it was impermanent, how it was impersonal, let go of any attachment to it, and then was able, through seeing the links of dependent origination in the next moment, to just let go of all the taints. In that wisdom the taints were destroyed. So in the case of even Bahiya, I would say that that was, that is what happened upon listening to it: insight with deep reverence and deep mindfulness.

Upon listening to it and seeing, when he says about the self, in not being before or after the seeing, and there's just pure seeing or pure experiencing, he was able to see and not involve his mind in the links of dependent origination as they arose. So whether it's through the jhana practice, meaning whether it's through samadhi, collectedness, that then you go through the four jhanas and then the higher states and then enter cessation, and upon that, see with a clear mind and understand with wisdom, or upon listening with deep reverence and allowing your mind to be free of any hindrances.

Essentially, your mind is collected while you're listening. And we have some interesting comments about it. It's possible that these people were meditating while listening. In some sense they could have been, because they were listening so deeply that their mind was quite serene and tranquil. And another individual says mindfulness, collectedness, and the four right efforts is meditation. Yes. So in having that application of mindfulness, seeing the body, seeing the mind, seeing the sensations, and understanding it as the Buddha is relaying the information, using the right efforts whenever the mind might be distracted and coming back to that collectedness in that meditative state while listening, they were able to see the links of dependent origination as they arose, without having to go through the entire process of getting into cessation and coming out of it.

So it is quite possible, but for that you need very good collectedness, very good and very sharp mindfulness. Thank you. And good karma, yeah. That's a good point. And good karma. Well, I did have another question too, about, when you start, you might notice something arises within you, whether it's a thought or a memory, feeling or something. And sometimes it's really clear, or where it came from, what it was in the past that cultivated that particular thing that happened.

And sometimes something just completely random will pop up in my head. I'll be like, well, wow, is that really, did that relate to this? And I guess I wonder what is the mindset, or what should I do, when I'm seeing that, other than the 6R's? But I might say, okay, it wasn't personal. I didn't know what I was doing at that time that created that. So I guess I'm curious to know what to do when you see what it was that you did, or what actions created that new thing that came up in the moment.

That's sort of getting into the line of looking at previous lifetimes. And when I say previous lifetimes, I'm not talking about just lifetimes, like a hundred years ago, just even a few seconds ago. It's really about using the fourth jhana as your base and then going back from the fourth jhana onwards. So it's a secondary meditation, in the way of: if you want to do something like that and understand the mechanics of karma and how it led to this moment, you can do it through the process of the fourth jhana. And when you get to the fourth jhana, if you want to recollect, for example, past lives or previous situations, you do it by going through your memory bank, as it were, meaning you go back to doing what you were doing yesterday and then the day before, and it's sort of like a rewind, and it starts to get quicker and quicker and quicker.

And then there's a point where you see, well, this is what led to this, this is what led to this, this is what led to this. So that's something you could do. But that would be a secondary practice to this. And you can go even deeper than that, where you can go through multiple lifetimes and eons and eons of lifetimes, and then also go back into seeing how beings arise and pass away according to their deeds, according to their thoughts, according to their actions, and according to their words. These are the two of the threefold knowledges.

The knowledge of one's past lives, the knowledge of kamma according to beings passing away and arising and passing away, and the deeds that they fare along with. And then finally, the third of the threefold knowledge, which is the knowledge of the destruction of the defilements, the knowledge of arahatship. So if you feel like you want to do something like that, you can, with using the fourth jhana as your base. But it might be simpler to just understand that this kamma arose and what can be done to not have it become so effective, meaning if you can understand that this came about because of this choice, and then you can just change the choice you made before, and be able to at least understand it from the perspective, as you said, of the three characteristics of reality. So not taking that effect of karma to be personal, not taking it to be permanent, and not holding on to it, and therefore just letting it go as it arises. So when it arises and you start letting it go, it is no longer a reaction that will cause new effects from that kamma.

And number two, you will terminate, or at least nullify, some parts of it right there and then upon experiencing it. And then the next time it arises, it'll be weaker in the way that it might be experienced. So bit by bit, you're wearing away at that kamma, eventually, so that it just doesn't arise anymore. Thank you. Elsa? I wonder, what's your opinion about collective influence? Is it also, I heard that collective meditation can be very strong, though I don't have so much experience with that, but also the influence of maybe the close people that are close to you, or collectives that are. Does it have any strength in this sense? Oh, yeah.

I would say there is definitely something to be said about meditating in numbers. If you're meditating in a group, I've had situations where, even not necessarily meditating in a group physically, where you're with people, but meditating on an online group, where just people's meditation together on that online group had quite an effect on people in that online group. So there is something to be said about meditating together. It definitely starts to strengthen the quality of the metta, for example, or whatever the brahmavihara is. And it is quite useful to be able to meditate in large numbers. I have a question. In today's discourse, you were saying something like feeling.

There is feeling and feeling process. There is perception and perception process. Can you please explain how these two are different? Yeah. I have another question, that is this feeling part, which is actually feeling. I think this should also be conditioned, right? Yeah. Yeah. Can you please explain around that? Yeah. I will. Just give me one moment. I just read somebody said something in Pali, if anyone knows what it is, I would like to know. Meditating together is happiness. Ah, okay. So that's just confirming what we were talking about earlier, about group meditation. Okay, good. That's good.

Yes, that's great. So going back to your question about feeling and perception. Feeling itself is dependent upon contact, right? So feeling means the sensory experiences that you're having, and the mind experiencing the mental objects. So the mind and the six, well, the six sense spaces, which is the five physical senses and the mind, they are rooted within the mentality and materiality.

So mentality and materiality make up your mind and your body. This is one way of looking at it. The five physical senses, which is your sense faculties, the sense organs, your eye, your ear, the auditory nerves, the olfactory nerves, all of that, your photoreceptors, all of those different kinds of things, are all rooted within mentality and materiality. So that's why the sixth sense base is conditioned by or dependent upon mentality, materiality.

Now, it's only through the sixth sense base that contact can be made with the outside world, as it were. Experience in the way of the sixth sense base is the world. This is what the Buddha calls the all or the world, which is to say that there is no one objective reality. Everything that we see as reality is through our own individual sixth sense basis.

And because that is dependent upon those sixth sense bases, the contact that arises is dependent upon that. When there's contact with the outside world, sense basis, which is to say that there is photons hitting the photoreceptors, there is sound waves hitting the auditory nerves, there's olfactory molecules hitting the nose, there is flavor molecules hitting the tongue, and so on and so forth. These are all dependent upon contact. This hitting that I'm talking about, which is that, for example, the sound waves make contact with or stimulate auditory nerves. In that process, the experience of interpreting those sound waves, which is just waves in the air, as sound through the auditory nerves, is the feeling. It's the bare sensation. Applying to that bare sensation, the idea of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, or neither painful nor pleasant, or neither pleasant nor painful.

is the beginning of the perception aspect of the mind. So the feeling is the sensory aspect. It's the sensory experience of the mind. It's after the contact is made, after the stimulation is made, you have the arising of the feeling. Perception is the naming aspect of what is being experienced, through recognizing what it is. So as an example that I often use, the color blue.

When you see the color blue, you immediately know it's blue because you have recognized that it is blue through the formations that created the memory. And that happens through having learned from your elders, through your parents, in a book, or whatever it is, that this is the color blue. And so now you always recognize it as the color blue through the conceptual perception of it. So perception first of all begins at naming what that feeling is, and it continues on to conceptual or mental proliferation, which then can cause craving if taken personal, and if not, basically stopped right there and then.

Is that clear? - Yeah, I feel like there is, I feel like something like this mentality and materiality is connected with body content. Yeah, the simple way of understanding mentality, materiality is that the materiality is this body. It's essentially the form. It's the four elements that make up this body. Right? In modern scientific context, you would say it's the four states of matter that make up this body. It's the solid molecules or the solid atoms. It's the liquid atoms, gaseous atoms, and it's the plasma atoms, which make up this body. That's materiality.

Mentality is what happens through the experience in the mind. You can say it's stored in the brain or however you want to put it, but it's the experiences that you're having in the way of what is the five factors of mentality, which is to say you have the faculty for feeling, which is your sixth sense basis, your five physical senses, and the mind itself.

So that's the faculty for feeling. You have perception, which is the faculty for perception. So you're able to recognize through the process of memory, knowledge, and learning what you are seeing or what you are experiencing or what you're cognizing. So that is perception. Then you have intention, which is where the formations are basically acting, meaning when the formations arise, that consciousness drives forward those formations into the faculty of intention, creating the idea of saying a word, for speaking, for making an action, doing an action, or for thinking and reflecting and feeling.

So that's intention. Then there is contact, which is actually really the nervous system, if you will, which takes in that sensory information. It has the sensory input and creates the experience through that contact. It's the bare contact between the photoreceptors and the photons, for example. And then you have attention, which is what you're doing when you're applying mindfulness. And that's how the consciousness flows through attention. When you use your attention, you're applying mindfulness in meditation, so attention really is able to not control but be able to understand and be able to let go of, through correct attention, to proper attention, the personalizing aspect of the other four factors of mentality. So that's how you should see mentality and materiality. It's all one thing. It's the mind and the body, but the materiality is just this body, just the different four elements that make up the body, and the mentality is all that is basically making you speak, making you think, making you act, making you feel, making you experience things. It's very clear to me now. Thank you.

In the Right View sutta, I noticed that Sariputta, he talks about being, about birth and about suffering. He very much seems to be talking about it in terms of one actual person's life, as opposed to these millions of dependent originations, rising and ceasing. I mean, he talks about death is the death of the body and birth is the birth of the body. Could you maybe explain a little bit about why he chooses to do, anybody experience that? Birth can be looked at in two different ways. That is to say, of course, death is just a termination of life. That is the termination of the body, bodily processes and the mental processes, and so that's the dissolution of the body. Let's make sure that we're clear on that first and foremost.

The birth can be seen as birth of action, which is the karma coming into play, where you are having a sense of self that you are doing something. So that's the birth of action in one regard. And that happens continuously through just one lifetime. It can happen a trillion times because of the different actions that are happening with the intention and so on and so forth. Then the birth of, let's say, a being, basically bhava, right? Bhava, which is really the accumulated tendencies. When you see the idea of a sense of self, it's really all just this bundle of karma. It's a bundle of different associations, a bundle of different ideas and concepts and mindsets that create the sense of self. It's all of these tendencies that you take together, and that's the accumulation of being.

But you take that all away and there is no being. There is no permanent being there. It's always changing. So when you have that sense of being and acting from that sense of being, there is the birth of action. In the case of rebirth on the macro level, where you're looking at dependent origination from that viewpoint, there is the being that is being conceived in the womb, in the case of a human birth, let's say, right? So in that case, in the previous life, what happens is because of the formations that arise at the point of death, in the deep layers of mind, there is craving or attachment to one of those formations.

The consciousness that is carried forward through those formations then intends for rebirth. That creates the intention for rebirth, are carried forth by that consciousness, which spontaneously links at the point of conception, which will then create the mentality and materiality, which is in this case the fetus that grows in the womb. And there is already a sense of being, and the formations are starting to grow, and different formations are starting to come into being based on the experience of the fetus in the womb. So there is still craving, there is still clinging, because of the sensory inputs that start to arise when the sixth sense bases start to become developed during the nine-month process of the birth, of the conception of that being, of the making up of that being.

And so that is being, that is becoming. Now that being is becoming, that's the process of becoming in bhava. And then birth happens, which then creates the, yeah, so that creates then the birth of that being into this world, into this physical world. And so that's one way to look at it, through the process of macro level rebirth.

Thank you. Yeah. So there's a commentary. It says earlier than the fetus, the Buddha talks about the descent in the womb. Yeah. So basically that's referring to when the consciousness that arises because of taking the previous formation as personal and craving for it, that carries forward the consciousness, which will then descend into the womb. And then that will create then at conception that being, that sense of being. But as soon as that consciousness takes root in that new mentality, materiality at conception, that consciousness dissipates and a new consciousness arises based on the experience of that being. So even within the womb, there's trillions of arising, of passing away, of consciousness.

going on within that womb. So it's not the very same consciousness that continues to be experiencing things within the womb. It's just that consciousness keeps arising and passing away in that fetus as well. So there's somebody who wrote a question. Yeah. Somebody was asking something. Yeah. If I may, I would like to come back to a previous dialogue that you had, where you mentioned the word attention. In your writings, you often have this attention rooted in reality, yoniso manasikara, I think, right? Yeah. Would it be wrong to understand yoniso manasikara as a development stage to sati, in the sense that it is sati plus it being informed by a certain level of understanding of the Four Noble Truths and the Three Characteristics, or is it something entirely different that goes on parallel to sati?

So, number one, attention rooted in reality, as I chose that translation for yoniso manasikara, it's more related to being present, having the mindfulness, mindfulness of the present, to know what is arising in terms of the reality that's unfolding. So that's how you should see attention rooted in reality. But then there is the evolution of that as it starts to progress, where it's attention informed by the Four Noble Truths or attention informed by right view. So in that case, when right view is established in an arahant, when at the level of feeling they see what is arising with that attention rooted in reality, they understand it to be automatically impersonal.

They understand it automatically to be impermanent and not worth holding on to. So mindfulness, which is translated from sati, which comes from the Sanskrit smriti, which is related to the word in English as recollection or memory. So it's remembering to keep one's attention or understanding where one's attention is going and then bringing it back to the object of meditation in the case of meditation. Reality is just in the passive sense of the word the attention that one is using, but the mindfulness is the application of that attention to the mental object or the object of meditation. So when you have the application of using that intention towards the meditation object, that is mindfulness, and then collectedness, which is the samadhi aspect, is when that attention continues to be flowing towards the object of meditation, and that creates a collected mind.

So attention in that sense is triggered or kicked off by mindfulness, is that right? Yes, you can say that. In the beginning, it's starting off with mindfulness, meaning the mindfulness is the intention of paying attention. Right? And so in the beginning process of meditation, when you start your meditating, you're having the intention to pay attention to your object. That kicks it off.

And then as your attention sways, you're using the mindfulness to bring it back again. I think, Syl, you had a question. I just heard you say something, or was that just... that was related to an earlier topic about the peters, and who, I know, there are trillions of consciousnesses in there, but I wanted to point out as a woman that it's important from the viewpoint of people and abortion, basically, to understand that even at conception, yeah, there are still mental processes going on. Yes. Just to point at that. Yes, that's a very good point. Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. Somebody asked, is yogic concept of, I guess, manno, buddhi, chitta, ahamkara, identical with vedana, sanna, sankhara, and vinnana? Okay, so the yogic concept of manno, or manas, is mind. Buddhi is intellect. Chitta, in this case, is consciousness, and ahamkara is the I-making, it's the ego. Whereas vedana is feeling, sanna is perception, sankhara is more related to formations, and vinnana is consciousness. So there's a difference between chitta in the Sanskrit, which translates to awareness or consciousness, and vinnana in Pali. Vinnana in Pali and Sanskrit means the consciousness that divides, meaning it's a consciousness that's divided by the sixth sense basis. It's a consciousness dependent upon the sixth sense basis, so you can't really equate them in the same way, because number one, the philosophies behind yoga and the yoga sutras are different than the philosophies behind the Buddha Dhamma. So even though they might use very similar words or synonymous words that might seem like they have the same meaning, in the context within each philosophy, they will have a different application.

Yeah. So, vinnana, right? Yeah, vinnana means, first of all, vi, which means divided, and nana, which means knowledge, right? And vi is what is the dividing knowledge. It's the knowledge of the sensory experiences. So, an easier way to understand it is cognition. That which cognizes is consciousness. That's always what's said in the suttas. So, cognition, which is the process of bare awareness of the object or bare awareness of the sensory experience or bare awareness of the sixth sense basis, is vinnana. Chitta in the context of yoga is more about the overarching consciousness that's related to an eternal sense of the word, internal sense of consciousness. But in the Buddhist context, consciousness here is the consciousness that is dependent upon the sixth sense basis and the experience of the sixth sense basis.

There is also chitta in the Pali, in the Buddhist terminology and context, which I translate as mindset. There is chitta, which is like where they say chitta is very fast and it's really equated to the process of thinking or the process of thought, which is to say a collection of thoughts and mindsets can arise in a moment and disappear in a moment, or it can be there for lifetimes.

It doesn't matter. Okay, one more question and after that. So, volition and sankhara, they're different? Yeah, volition and sankhara are different. Sometimes the translations will, for whatever reason, say that sankhara are volitional activities or volitional formations, or sometimes even equate them to intention. But the Pali translation of volition, or what is intention, is chetana. And as I was mentioning earlier, the five factors of mentality, in mentality and materiality, are feeling, perception, and intention. So through the faculty of feeling, that is the sixth sense basis, the process of feeling occurs. Through the faculty of perception, that is memory and recognition, the process of perception and recognition occurs. Through the process of intention, this is how the formations flow through the consciousness.

So the consciousness carries forward those formations and then is lodged into the faculty of intention, which creates the intention behind acting, behind behaving, behind speaking, and behind thinking or reflecting, happening through the faculty of contact within mentality. So the process of contact is the stimulation that occurs when the outside world meets with the sixth sense basis. And this happens through the faculty of contact in mentality. Attention is what you're using, manasikara, what you're using for mindfulness to be able to collect the mind towards an object, collect the mind and unify it around an object.

So attention is what, as I was saying earlier, not controls, but is able to perceive and be able to understand whether to take any of these other four factors of mentality and their processes as permanent or impermanent, impersonal or personal, or worth holding on to or not worth holding on to. Thank you. So I believe Kin told Sylvie to host and share Merit today. Can everyone see it like this? Yes, I can see it. Please unmute if you wish, and maybe on the count of three we share Merit. One, two, three. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Be well. Thank you.