MN111 12 April 2022 Easter Retreat - St. Francis Retreat Center, San Juan Bautista, California, USA

Jhanas. So today we are going to talk about jhanas. This is the Majjhima Nikaya 111. That's the Anupada Sutta, and it's called One by One as They Occurred. Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Savatthi in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's Park. There he addressed the bhikkhus thus: "Bhikkhus." "Venerable sir," they replied. The Blessed One said this: "Bhikkhus, Sariputta is wise. Sariputta has great wisdom. Sariputta has wide wisdom. Sariputta has joyous wisdom. Sariputta has quick wisdom. Sariputta has keen wisdom.

Sariputta has penetrative wisdom." When they talk about wisdom or being wise in the suttas, they're referring to a very specific way. They're talking about somebody who has experienced seeing dependent origination up close and personal. Somebody who has had an experience of cessation and seeing the links for themselves. So when they talk about these different kinds of wisdom, these are just ways of describing how that wisdom is felt.

Joyous wisdom, for example, is when you feel a lot of joy when you experience seeing the links of dependent origination, because you experience Nibbana. That's because the mind makes contact with that which is signless, void, and undirected. That is the Nibbana element. Because it has seen with wisdom, this great amount of joy and relief comes, and that wisdom is deep, it's wide, it's quick, it's penetrated. "During half a month, bhikkhus, Sariputta gained insight into states one by one as they occurred.

He gained insight, he had vipassana, into the states of samadhi. Now, Sariputta's insights into states one by one as they occurred was this: "Here, bhikkhus, quite secluded from sensual pleasures." Remember, yesterday I said your eyes are closed, you may still hear things, you may still feel things on your skin, your mind might still be active, but you're quite secluded from sensory experiences.

Secluded from unwholesome states. That is, the mind is free of the five hindrances. "Sariputta entered upon and abided in the first jhana, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought." Applied thought, sustained thought. That is where the mind initializes, intentionalizes the arising of loving-kindness through verbalizing or through a wholesome image. It's like when you start the ignition of the car.

You only do it one time. So when you have the experience of loving-kindness, you let go of the wholesome image or the verbalizing. And then the sustained thought is the maintaining of the awareness on the loving-kindness, keeping your attention on the loving-kindness. "With rapture and pleasure born of seclusion." Rapture, this is piti. This is joy. This is an energetic, vibrant experience of joy. Pleasure is from the word sukha, which I translate as comfort, comfort of the body. He's in the body, born of seclusion. Seclusion means the mind is no longer paying attention to the external sense basis, not any longer paying attention to what's happening outside in the way of vision, of what's been heard, and so on. And secluded from the unwholesome states, secluded from hindrances. And the states in the first jhana: the applied thought, the sustained thought, the rapture, the pleasure, and the unification of mind.

So you have ekagata in the first jhana as well. Ekagata, unification of mind, is where the mind starts to become collected around its object of meditation. Unified, or unification, brings about this idea that the mind unites or makes union with, that's yoga, with the object of meditation. That means that the mind becomes one-pointed. But that is a different way of understanding. The way it's understood through this process is that the mind collects itself around the metta, around whatever the object in meditation is. It's like a whirlpool. The mind is just looking around the object. It's orbiting the object of meditation rather than landing on it.

Contact, feeling, perception, volition or intention make up mentality, make up nama, make up mind. These are the factors of the mind that are present in the jhana. How do you make contact? Your mind makes contact with the mind object, which is, your mind experiences contact with the feeling of loving-kindness. What is the feeling? The feeling is the sensation of loving-kindness, the somatic sensation.

What is perception? Perception is that which labels what is felt. Perception is that which knows what is being experienced. So you see the color red, knowing that that is the color red, is perception. So knowing that there is loving-kindness present in the mind is perception. Knowing when the mind is distracted and what kind of distraction it is, is perception.

Volition. There is intention there. The mind intends to experience love and kindness. It begins with that intention. Also, there is external contact still present. There might be the fan, there might be people walking by. So there's contact, there's feeling of that, there might be perception of that, and so on. And mind. So mind here is related to attention, or rather related to consciousness, sorry. That is to say, the mind is aware of what is happening. That is, the awareness of the mind, the consciousness of the mind, is imbued with loving-kindness.

The zeal, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity, and attention. The zeal, that is chanda, the inclination for the mind to experience love and kindness. That is another way of understanding obsession. That is to say, the mind is inclining towards it. It wants it, but it doesn't have craving towards it. It is inclining towards it. The decision: here the mind has decided to go into jhana, or go into a state of meditation. That is the decision-making process, which is the precursor for the mindfulness, precursor for the energy, precursor for all of the other enlightenment factors.

Mindfulness, as we said, mindfulness is observing. There is observation going on in this process of meditation. Equanimity. There's equanimity in the first jhana already. So that equanimity is a mind that is stable because of the collectedness. And attention. Mind is made up of five factors: contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention. Attention is that through which consciousness flows. What you put your attention on is where the consciousness will flow.

So if your attention is on loving-kindness, your consciousness will be imbued with that loving-kindness. So we have the usual states, or usual aspects, of the first jhana, with the co-factors of the unification of mind, the contact, the feeling, the perception, the intention, and mind itself or consciousness. The zeal, or chanda, the inclination. The decision-making. The energy. What is the energy? The energy is the effort, using right effort, to go into the state of jhana, go into meditation. The mindfulness, equanimity, and attention. So that is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve additional factors or co-factors found in the first jhana, in relation to, or in addition to, the usual factors that we understand for the first jhana. Now he says these states were defined by him one by one as they occurred. So in other words, his mind was open. The awareness was open. It was not constricted by one-pointed concentration.

He was not pointing them out in reference to analyzing: when does the contact happen, when does the feeling happen, when does the observation happen? He's just aware of them. He's able to see them as and when they arise, because his mind is open. That doesn't mean that you have to specifically look for them, but your mind is open, so that it knows that there is the contact with loving-kindness automatically. It organically knows that the feeling of loving-kindness is there. It automatically knows that there is the perception of the loving-kindness. It automatically feels the intention of being with the loving-kindness. It automatically understands that loving-kindness is present in the mind or consciousness. It automatically has the zeal, the decision-making, the energy, the mindfulness, and the equanimity and attention.

All of these states Sariputta is slicing through, because his investigative factor, the factor of investigation of states, is quite sharp, and he's doing this for the purpose of understanding the jhanas on a deeper level. So what he's seeing is that these are made up of all of these components, and the only way he's able to see them is because of his open awareness. So this jhana experience is not one-pointed; it is collected.

One-pointed jhana will not allow you to know that there has been contact made. It will not allow you to know that there is intention there. It will not allow you to know where the mindfulness is. It will not allow you to know if there is equanimity or not. It will not allow you to know if the hindrances are present or not. It will not allow you to know any of the insights arising, because it suppresses the mind fully.

This kind of jhana, the one-pointed jhana, just provides you a deep sense of bliss and happiness. But then after you come out of it, there are a few hours in which you are in a blissful state. Then that subsides, that ceases, but no change has been made to the mental personality. No change has been made in reference to dealing with hindrances and letting them go. Here, because the mind is open, the awareness is open, you're able to see when hindrances arise, deal with them, and get back into jhana using the 6R's. So he says, known to him, those states arose, known they were present, known they disappeared.

What is he seeing? He's seeing the impermanence of the jhanic state. They came into being and then they pass away. So jhanas arise and they pass away, dependent upon a person's mindset, dependent upon their attention to the object of meditation, and to the presence of the enlightenment factors and non-presence of the hindrances. So he's seeing here directly the impermanent nature of jhanas, because jhanas themselves are conditioned.

So the idea here is not to glorify the jhanas. The jhanas are a means to an end. They're used as tools to calm the mind so that insights can arise and liberate the mind. So it's not the Noble Seventh-fold Path. It's the Noble Eightfold Path, which is why jhanas are necessary in samadhi. Samadhi is comprised of the jhana experiences.

Unattracted, unrepelled. He didn't identify with the factors of the jhanas. He didn't say that I really like this joy. He didn't put his attention to the joy and make that an object of meditation. He didn't get repelled by them. His mind was independent, detached, and free, just observing. When you just have the attitude of observing without an agenda, then you are just observing how the mind is experiencing the jhana. Not you experiencing the jhana. Not you pushing to experience the jhana. Not you pushing the attention to experience loving kindness.

There is a detachment. You, in the sense of the observer, the sense of observing, are observing the mind which is experiencing these different jhanic states while it's being collected around its object of meditation, and that is meditation. He understood there is an escape beyond, and with the cultivation of that attainment, he confirmed there is. In other words, he understood this jhana is not the end-all be-all. There is something more to do. There is something beyond this first jhana. By the way, if anyone has questions, you can always just feel free to ask in the middle.

Again, bhikkhus, with the stilling of applied and sustained thought, Sariputta entered and abided in the second jhana. Now in the second jhana, there is no more intentionalizing. What happens here is you have brought up the feeling of loving kindness with an intention, with possibly verbalizing or a wholesome image. And now that that feeling of loving kindness is present, which becomes the object of meditation, you let go of the wholesome thought. You let go of the verbalizing, and now your mind is flowing with loving kindness.

I have a big question about that, and when you're going from the first jhana to the second jhana, and even from the other jhana, and it says as a student, with the stilling of applied thought, does that mean that, am I understanding correctly, that the stilling happens you're not making a choice to ignore that anymore, it just falls away and you're watching that fall away and then you're watching the next state arrive, right? But here the stilling is also a little active in the sense that you're letting go of the wholesome image, you're letting go of the verbalizing and staying, putting your attention fully on the object in meditation. Is it a chicken when the object of meditation comes up, you let it go, your attend because your attention

goes on the object of meditation, so now you're no longer paying attention to the wholesome image or verbalizing. But why I'm saying that you have to let it go is, sometimes there's a tendency in some meditators to continue to turn the ignition of the car, right? So once the car starts, that's it, now you're flowing, now you're driving. So in other words, that just goes away, to let that part go. That's why I'm bringing this up, because there's a tendency for people to go, oh, I'm not not feeling it, and I got to do it again. I have to do it again.

You have to let your awareness flow with the object. So you're not making a wish for yourself or your spiritual strength. At that point in the second jhana, now you're just staying with the feeling of love and kindness, which has self-confidence. This is the flow that happens. This is where the mind experiences, oh wow, I know what I'm doing now, it feels wonderful, and let me just continue. So no longer having to restart the ignition, now the car is driving, the mind is flowing with this experience and singleness of mind, without applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of collectedness.

So that singleness of mind is the same as the unification of mind, although it's mentioned twice. So the singleness of mind is where the mind really collects itself. In the first jhana it's starting to have that sort of whirlpool vortex effect, where the attention is orbiting the mind, or the attention of the mind is orbiting the feeling of loving kindness, and now it's just flowing there. There is just the singleness of mind. There's non-dispersal of attention. The attention is no longer here or there, it is now all coming together to stay with the loving kindness.

With rapture and pleasure born of collectedness. Now that the mind is single, now that the mind is collected, there is greater joy, there is greater experience of that sukha, of that ease. So in the first jhana you're experiencing the loving-kindness after you bring up the loving-kindness, and there might be some kind of joy that comes up, some feeling of elevated energetic joy. In the second jhana that joy becomes even greater, it becomes more vibrant. But the key here is not to allow the mind to mistake that feeling of joy for loving kindness.

See that in the background. What are these jhana states really doing? These jhana states are actually just the background activity of the mind. It's the stage, it's setting the stage of how the mind is experienced. So the factors of the mind are being affected by the presence of these jhana factors. But they themselves are not the object. They are the conditions that allow the mind to stay collected, conditions that allow the mind to be with its object of meditation. So don't mistake any of the factors of the jhana for your object of meditation. Then you're going to become one-pointed and you're not going to move further.

And if you mistake the joy, then you're going to think that the loving-kindness has disappeared somehow, and then you're going to think, I'm not able to bring up the loving kindness, because the mind mistakes it for joy, or the mind mistakes the joy for love and kindness. Rather, question: sometimes it's difficult to distinguish all of these. Excuse me, could you take off your mask and speak louder? When there's 50, sometimes these states are more kind of somewhat overwhelming, and that the background metta is hard to discern, and sometimes it's difficult to continue just with the intention on the metta itself while there is this mixture of piti, sukha, and what would you suggest to me? And we end up kind of just amplifying the piti sukha instead of the metta itself. You have to use the enlightenment factor of investigation of states to realize that, oh, I'm no longer on the object, now I'm looking at these different states, and then use the 6R's to let go of those states.

See the attention to those states as distraction from the loving kindness, from the object of meditation. And recognize that, release it, relax, re-smile, come back to the metta. Coming back to the metta brings it to the foreground, and then those states start to go into the background. And the states in the second jhana, the self-confidence, the rapture, the pleasure, the unification of mind, the contact, feeling, perception, intention and consciousness, the chanda or zeal, the decision, the effort or energy, mindfulness, equanimity and attention, these states were defined by him one by one as they occurred. Known to him, those states arose. Known they were present. Known they disappeared. He understood thus that there is an escape beyond this, and with the cultivation of that attainment, he confirmed that there is.

Again, bhikkhus, with the fading away as well of rapture, Sariputta abided in equanimity. So now the rapture is gone. That is the joy, the elevated joy, the experience of piti, goes away in the third jhana. And the dominant factor here is equanimity and mindful and fully aware, still feeling pleasure with the body, still feeling the sukha, still feeling the ease, the comfort. He entered upon and abided in the third jhana, on account of which noble ones announce he has a pleasant abiding, who has equanimity and is mindful.

And the states in the third jhana, the equanimity, the pleasure, the mindfulness, the full awareness. So you see, you got the equanimity now as the dominant factor here in the third jhana. What happens is that joy subsides, and the feeling of the body starts to become either lighter or it starts to feel like it's become more grounded, and then it feels like the body is expanding. There's a sense of expansion going on. The feeling of loving kindness starts to become more expansive, and it might even start to move up from the heart and up to the head. It's starting to do that. So the equanimity that's there is experienced as this deep tranquility, a deep sense of calm, and there's full awareness. The mind is fully aware at this point. The collectedness is so dominant that the mindfulness is very sharp. Because of that, the equanimity is very dominant. So these three states run together: the equanimity, the mindfulness and the collectedness. Collectedness leads to the equanimity, the equanimity is leading to the mindfulness, as you'll see in the fourth jhana.

Excuse me. So, this is over a two-week period of time. Yeah. But in practical terms, this can take place in a matter of days, hours, or minutes, or even seconds. Is that... Yeah. Yeah, so... What this is referring to, and what I was doing over the course of two weeks. The story goes, you have these two friends, Sariputta and Moggallana, and the story goes that they were best friends, and they were living together in this village, and they found out that there was a circus coming to town.

And they went to visit the circus, and they saw all of these amazing shows, and all of these amazing plays, and all of these dancers and acrobatics and things like that, the first day. What they did was they bought a ticket for the next month, and they went for watching that show every single day. By the third or fourth day, they became disenchanted with the circus show. They were watching the same thing over and over and over again. They were disenchanted with sensual experiences.

So in them came what's known as Samvega. Samvega is this spiritual urgency. And so they said, there must be something beyond just sense experiences and just fulfilling the sensual tribes. So they decided to leave their homes and go into the homeless life, go into the life of a wanderer. And they met with a guy named Sanjaya, who was a skeptic, or what would be known as a skeptic.

And they followed him around, and they developed their skills of being quite analytical and intellectual, let's say. And then they came across a man. Well, Sariputta and Moggallana, they both came across a man who was radiant and glowing and smiling and light-minded. And it was either Sariputta or Moggallana who asked the question: you seem to be awakened, what is it that you have learned, and what is it that you have experienced, what is it, who is your teacher and what does he teach? And I believe this was Sariputta who asked it. This person had just experienced Nibbana after the Buddha had awakened, so he had gone to see the first five disciples and taught them the Four Truths, and this person was fully awakened. He said to Sariputta that I have learned the causation essentially. I have learned that whatever arises has a cause and whatever ceases has a cause, just by, and I'm paraphrasing here, but there's a specific line that he says.

Just by hearing that, upon hearing, Sariputta became a sotapanna, and then he went to Moggallana. Moggallana saw him and said, "You look amazing. What happened? You look like you have attained some kind of insight." And Sariputta told him the same thing. Moggallana took four verses before he became a sotapanna. Then both of them went to see the Buddha, and the Buddha saw them from afar and said, "Here amongst are my two chief disciples." He recognized them, and they came, and he trained them in the practice of samadhi, in the practice of meditation. Moggallana was a fast learner. He took about a week to attain arahatship. Sariputta was a slow learner. He took about two weeks.

But the reason he took two weeks was because he was very much invested in understanding those states. But coming back to your question, I wanted to just give some clarity on this. The actual experience of the first jhana can happen the very first day. It can happen the very first time you meditate, if your mind is collected, if your mind's attention is collected and not one-pointed, your loving-kindness is brought up, you can experience the first jhana, in the very first few minutes of your first sitting practice.

So it's that quickly that you can experience it. So when we were talking about earlier that it took two weeks for Sariputta, it was because he was looking at the different states, he was trying to understand them, and he was deeply interested in understanding origination. That's why Moggallana is known as the intuitive one. He's the psychic one. He developed psychic faculties to their perfection.

But Sariputta was the intellectual. He was the one who developed the wisdom to its limits, and that's why these are the two chief disciples, and both of them are, or were, masters in meditation because of their training under the Buddha. So when the Buddha talks about Sariputta having penetrative wisdom, deep wisdom, joyous wisdom, it's because of this. Because he took everything and he took it apart, and he really understood the mechanics of everything. Whether it was dependent origination, whether it was jhanas, whether it was the enlightenment factors, whether it was the four foundations of mindfulness, whether it was ethics or sila, or whether it was just knowing when to go for alms round and things like that, he just knew the entire Dhamma. There are two suttas in the Digha Nikaya, Digha Nikaya number 33 and 34, which are by Sariputta, and they are the basis for the Anguttara Nikaya. The Anguttara Nikaya has all of these different lists and all of these elaborations of these different lists.

I did a talk on Digha Nikaya number 33. In my folly, I thought it would take me maybe two hours. It took me about three weeks to finish that talk, because the entire Dhamma is in there, and that was Sariputta giving the entire Dhamma. So he was very, very wise and deep. So it says the equanimity, the pleasure, the mindfulness, the full awareness and unification of mind, the contact, feeling, perception, intention and consciousness. So these factors, those other 11 or 12 co-factors, are always there in each of the jhanas, because why? Because you have the mental factors that make up mind. You have nama. You have contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention at all times, because these are what constitute mind.

And obviously you have body. But they will always be present in any of the jhanas. And this is what Sariputta was aware of. You mentioned, you mentioned pleasure. Yeah. Now that's mental pleasure as opposed to sensual pleasure. That's right. Because it's secluded. That's right. So it's not a pleasure of the senses. So that pleasure then gives rise to piti, to have a joy. Yeah. That pleasure is divided between the piti and the sukha. So the piti is the vibrant joy, or the bliss, and the sukha is the comfort on the body. It's like when you get into a hot tub and all your muscles relax and you're just calm. That's the feeling of sukha.

So now he's in the third jhana, so he's not feeling piti or sukha. But then equanimity would be considered the mental pleasure. That's the mental pleasure. There is still sukha in the third jhana. Oh, that's right, comfort in the third jhana. Yeah, there's comfort in the third jhana. But these are all mental states, as you just said. So the Buddha talks about sense restraint. He talks about letting go of sensual pleasures.

But once you let go of something, there is a vacuum in the mind. So you have to replace those sensual pleasures with something that is more pleasurable. And what is more pleasurable is the otherworldly pleasure of the jhanic states. So the pleasure in jhana replaces the pleasure of the sixth sense basis. So the worldly pleasure is anything related to experiences of the sixth sense basis that are inputted through them.

Or rather, the five physical senses, I should say. These five physical sense bases are known as the five cords of sensuality. But then the Buddha talks about once you let go of that, the mind still needs something to experience. So that is the mind. The mind is experiencing the jhana. The mind is experiencing the joy, the mind is experiencing the pleasure. Even though it feels it in the body, even though it feels relaxation in the body, it's felt through the mind. It's experienced by the mind. And so it's not dependent on the five physical senses. It is an otherworldly pleasure, an otherworldly joy.

So somebody else had a question, so I'm going back to equanimity and the object of meditation changing from kindness to now it's equanimity. That is now the... because there's no more metta. Yeah, what's happening here in the third jhana? Yeah, is that there is still nothing you're... You're still with the object, but the dominant factor now is the equanimity.

So you will notice that kind of arising of joy as a factor while you're staying with the metta. And you're still with the metta while you're still experiencing the transition from the joy to the equanimity. So the equanimity is still present, but it becomes more dominant as you get to the third and fourth jhanas. So at some point there's a transition from metta to upekkha. That's going to happen from the fourth jhana onwards. Okay.

Can you repeat? You listed the components that make a mind. Can you repeat that, please? Contact. Feeling. Perception. Intention. And attention. Thank you. My question was similar. I did have a follow-up. So when you say mind observing, that means mind is observing the components of itself. Right. It's observing it dependent upon when those things happen. So when there's contact, it realizes, oh, here is the contact.

When there is the feeling, the sensation, it is observant of the sensation. When the perception is there, it's observant that the mind is labeling that sensation. That's the mind, but that's also known as nama. Nama-rupa. So rupa is made up of the body. Body is comprised of the four elements or the four states, a matter. But the nama is the mentality, that's the mind, the actual factors that are present in the mind that make it up. Together from the mind, or is it just... no, the just the nama, are... Is the audio of this going to be available to us in any way? Yeah, it will be, right? Yeah. Because otherwise I feel desperate. This is fantastic. I mean, the hours and hours that I've spent just trying to find anything about Pali, and you find one paragraph, but it's always contradicted by somebody else. You know, this level of detail is just phenomenal, and the way it fits together.

It makes sense, it's just so easy. All right, yeah. So the factors, that is contact, feeling, perception, volition, in mind. Yeah, sometimes volition is measured as its formations in mind as consciousness. Yes. Yes, yeah, that's a good point. The nama-rupa is also the four foundations of mindfulness, which are also the five aggregates. The reason being is you have rupa, which is the form, so that's the form. Contact gives rise to feeling, the feeling aggregate, that also gives rise to perception, the perception aggregate, that gives rise to intention, through which formations arise, so that's the formations aggregate, and attention, through which consciousness arises, that's the consciousness aggregate. So these are the five aggregates that are present.

While you are in the state of general... So it said, I think, perception is conjoined with consciousness, no feeling, and perception is conjoined, and then consciousness. These three run together. Where there is feeling, that is a sensation, there will be the awareness or consciousness or cognition. That's another way of understanding consciousness: it is the cognition of the experience. When that experience is there, the mind automatically labels what that experience is. So the very first time when you are at a stove fire and you put your hand on the fire, you are aware of the heat, and then you're aware that it is painful. So now there's perception that I should not be putting my hand in the fire, because it's going to be painful.

So in other words, there was feeling, the sensation of heat. There was the awareness that it is hot and painful. And then there's perception, which is rooted in memory. So whatever it is you've learned through your experiences are what feed perception. That's why you don't have to sift through your mind and say, oh, what is that color, or what is that? Is that a tree? You automatically, when you see it, there is contact with the tree and with the eyes. The photons bounce off of the tree and then come into the eye, the retina makes contact with that. That gives rise to consciousness or awareness or cognition of the shape of this tree, and gives rise to the sensation of seeing this tree.

And then there is perception that knows, oh, this is a tree. That color of that leaf is green, the color of that bark is brown, the outline of this tree is an oak tree. All of these things happen in a flash, but these are broken down as states in the jhana and in your daily living. And so these states were defined by... so we have the equanimity, the pleasure, the mindfulness, the full awareness and the unification of mind. These are the different factors: contact, feeling, perception, volition, mind and attention.

are the nama, which is also part of the five aggregates: the zeal, decision, energy, mindfulness and equanimity. These constitute parts of the enlightenment factors as well as other bases for cultivating wisdom and psychic faculties and so on and so forth. But the way to understand this is that these factors are present not because you intentionalize them. They arise just because your observation brings them together.

You're not the one who's intentionally bringing up the mindfulness, although the intention of bringing up the loving-kindness brings about the mindfulness. In other words, the mindfulness is you are mindful of loving-kindness. The investigation of states is you are aware that there is loving-kindness. That is perception. The energy that's there is arising because you have right effort of collecting the mind.

The joy is there, as we talked about, dependent upon that. The joy from relief from the five hindrances, the joy from having collectedness. The tranquility is there, present, because the mind is relaxed, calm, clear. The collectedness is implied, is imbued in the state of the jhana. That is samadhi. You are experiencing jhana and therefore you are in samadhi.

As a basis of all of these, there is then equanimity, which is a mind that is balanced. A mind that sees things as they actually are. What you're going to notice is that in the third jhana, it should be in all the jhanas anyway, but the dominant factor of the third jhana is there is a deep level of clarity in the mind.

The mind is able to see everything in a balanced way. See things as they really are without projecting, without rejecting, without adding, without subtracting. Just seeing things as they actually are. This is known in Pali also as yata buddha jnana darsana, which means the knowledge and vision of things as they really are. The knowledge and vision of reality, this is another synonym for equanimity, so this is another way of understanding what the quality of that equanimity is. So zeal, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity and attention: these states were defined by him one by one as they occurred, known to him. Those states arose, known they were present, known they disappeared. He understood that there is an escape beyond this, and with the cultivation of that attainment he confirmed that there is.

Again, Bhikkhus, with the abandoning of pleasure and pain and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief. So now the mind becomes completely equanimous. There's no experience of joy and there's no experience of pain. There's no experience of loss. There's no experience of gain. It's completely balanced, completely neutral. The disappearance of joy and grief, Sariputta entered upon and abided in the fourth jhana, which has neither pain nor pleasure, that's the balance of mind, and purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. Anonymity. That is to say, now when you're in the experience of the jhanas, you're cycling through the enlightenment factors as we talked about it yesterday. So you go from the mindfulness that gives rise to discriminating the different states, that gives rise to effort and energy, that gives rise to joy, that gives rise to tranquility and relaxation, that gives rise to collectedness, that gives rise to mindfulness.

But that cycles through and now that mindfulness is informed by that equanimity, that mindfulness is conditioned by that equanimity, and that mindfulness is so clear in the fourth jhana and so stable that there's no wavering at all. Now the mind is completely on the object. That is to say, in the first three jhanas, the mind can waver a little bit. You might be in that state for about a minute and come back out of it. You use the six hours, you come back, you might be in that state for about three minutes and then suddenly you get distracted, you use the six hours again, you might be with the meditation object for five minutes, you get distracted, you come back again, you can be with that meditation object for ten minutes, you get distracted and you come back again. So what's happening is your collectedness becomes deeper and sharper and clearer and more stable or stabilized until your object is just there.

The mind is completely unwavering. And this is what happens in the fourth jhana. You become undistracted for longer periods of time. And the states in the fourth jhana, the equanimity, that's the balance, the neither painful nor pleasant feeling, the mental unconcern due to tranquility, this is another way of understanding disenchantment mind doesn't care what's going on it's just with its object of meditation before in the previous jhanas you got distracted you might have beaten yourself up and said something and thought oh this is not working what's going on and then you use the six hours the hindrances go away you come back you're more attentive and then finally things do come up you're not you're no longer concerned by them you have disenchanted you have this passion because your mind is tranquil and it's at ease there's comfort there and there's balance and equanimity there the purity of mindfulness the unification of mind and then the same factors the contact feeling perception volition and mind the zeal decision energy mindfulness equanimity and attention these states were defined by him one by one as they occurred.

They don't mean anything special by abiding in a fourth jhana or abiding in third jhana. Is there, what's, I'm just curious, what's the copy? To rest. Just to rest in it. To rest in it. Nothing else, to observe and to rest in it. So your awareness is just resting in that. Now, these are the first four jhanas, and these are actually the only jhanas. After this, there is a misnomer where people say there's the fifth jhana, the sixth jhana, the seventh jhana and the 8th jhana. That's fine, you can say them, you can call them jhanas just as a figure of speech. You can call them arupa jhanas as a figure of speech. But technically what they are known as are the ayatanas.

Ayatana means the base of something, the dimension of something, the realm of something, the sphere of something. When we talk about the sixth sense bases, they come from the word salah ayatana. Salah means six and ayatana means basis. We're talking about the sixth sense basis. So ayatana is an experience, a dimensionality within the scope of the fourth jhana.

So now what we're getting into, these are arupa states, these formless states are just subsets of the fourth jhana. Again, Bhikkhus, with the complete surmounting of perceptions of form, now the mind is no longer in the body. There might be little contact here and there, but now the mind is no longer concerned with whatever contact is arising with the body. If there's a fly that lands on the hand, it might experience that, it might feel that, but it doesn't get enamored by it. It doesn't get fully distracted by it. It's aware that, okay, there's a fly on my hand, but it's completely unconcerned with what's happening in terms of the body, perceptions of form.

With the disappearance of the perceptions of sensory impact, that's the other part I'm talking about. If something happens, it's not bothered by it. It just sees it as it is and continues with its object of meditation. With non-attention to the perceptions of diversity, what does this mean? Now, the perceptions of diversity means a mind that is engaged with the sixth sense basis, engaged with this or that. Now the mind is completely unified, completely collected. It has transcended anything to do with the form. It has transcended anything to do with the body. And now you are completely in a mental realm, a mental experience.

And here is where you are aware that space is infinite. You are now in the realm of boundless space. Sariputta entered upon and abided in the base of infinite space that is accompanied by compassion, by karuna. So I talked about before that the limit of loving-kindness is the fourth jhana. The limit of compassion is the fifth jhana. So you can experience compassion in the first jhana, in the second jhana, in the third jhana, in the fourth jhana, all the way up to infinite space.

This is from the Metasahagata Sutta. This is where it talks about the accompanying of the four Brahmaviharas in relation to the jhanas and the spheres of experience, that is to say infinite space, infinite consciousness, and nothingness. And the states in the base of infinite space, the perception of the base of infinite space and the unification of mind. So now mind is still collected, mind is still unified, and now mind experiences this sense of infinite space. It feels like mind itself is expanding infinitely as it's radiating out the loving-kindness, which now changes to compassion. So there's a feeling in the change, the quality of the feeling changes from metta to karuna, from loving-kindness to compassion. It's a different kind of feeling, and so with that the background experience of the mind is the arupa experience of infinite space.

That is to say, the stage now upon which the mind is, is now the experience of infinite space. It's just this vast spaciousness that you experience. Then there is still the contact, the feeling, the perception. Why? Because the mind makes contact with compassion. Mind makes contact with the experience of infinite space, it has the sensation of infinite space, it perceives that there is infinite space, volition, it has the intention of radiating compassion, and mind, that is consciousness, is imbued with the experience of infinite space. Still the inclination is there, still the decision is there, still the energy is there, still the effort is there, the mindfulness is there, the equanimity is still present and the attention. These states were defined by him one by one as they occurred, known to him. Those states arose, known they were present, known they disappeared. He understood thus there is an escape beyond this, and with the cultivation of that attainment he confirmed that there is. Again, because by completely surmounting the base of infinite space, aware that consciousness is infinite.

Sariputta entered upon and abided in the base of infinite consciousness. Now this is a very interesting state to be in. Many times it has been understood in one way or another that the base of infinite consciousness or boundless awareness is where now that feeling of spaciousness is being experienced by this awareness, and so there is this feeling that awareness itself is infinite. But there is a different way of understanding this, because that feeling of awareness breaks down into what it is actually, that is to say infinite consciousnesses. The arising and passing away of phenomena happens at infinite consciousness, because what you are seeing is the arising and passing away of how awareness, tied to a sensory experience, comes to be.

So for example, in your meditation you might see the flickering of lights. You're seeing the arising and passing away of eye consciousness. You might actually hear, although there's nothing going on, you might just hear something internally, and this is like a phantom sound of clicking, rapid click clicking. This is infinite sound consciousness, infinite ear consciousness, the arising and passing away. As Bhante would say, that was a hundred thousand arising and passing away of your consciousnesses. That's how fast it is. But your mindfulness becomes so clear and so sharp that now it breaks down consciousnesses to what it actually is. What we see as awareness seems to be very fluid, seems to be very much unified, but in the same way a ray of light is made up of quintillions and quintillions of individual photons giving the perception of this ray of light, there are so many different hundreds and hundreds of thousands and millions of consciousnesses, depending upon which sense base it is, that give this idea, give this perception of a fluid awareness of eye sensation, ear sensation, nose sensation, tongue sensation, body sensation, or even mind.

I talked about the flickering that might happen, the clicking that might happen. You might actually smell phantom smells. You might suddenly smell some very sweet smell coming in, although there's nothing there. You might have a feeling of buzzing in the tongue, a feeling of phantom tastes. You might feel like spiders are crawling all over your face, tingling on the face or in the skin. This is infinite body consciousness. Or you might start to see the gaps in thoughts, gaps in awareness.

This is mind consciousness that you're seeing. So what's happening is you're seeing the individual iotas, the arising of individual iotas of consciousness. This is strictly the experience of the base of infinite awareness, infinite consciousness, and accompanied by that is mudita. Now this mudita is known as empathetic joy. In your daily living, empathetic joy is the experience of feeling happy for another person's wholesome success: feeling happy when somebody experiences the birth of their child, feeling happy when somebody is celebrating their birthday, feeling happy when somebody is celebrating their graduation, feeling happy that somebody is getting married, feeling happy that somebody is attaining nibbana. These kinds of things are wholesome successes, wholesome events in another person's life. So in day-to-day life, the quality of the experience of mudita, of empathetic joylessness.

In the meditation, it's an experience of joy, but not the joy you experience as piti, as vibrant energetic joy. It's another kind of soft, you know, very balanced kind of joy. So the compassion changes into this experience of mudita when it is in the base of infinite consciousness. And now you are radiating this mudita, this empathetic joy. When the background of infinite consciousness is present, when this flickering is present, your mind is radiating this experience of empathetic joy.

That's where the intention comes in. This particular intention factor is the intention to continue to radiate that empathetic joy. So you could understand it in the form of packets of data per second. So you have, for example, with the eye, something like a million or 11 million packets of photons hitting the retina, and you're seeing that individual arising and passing away. So that's the rate at which you might see it in relation to time. So, like, oh yeah, it can be. It can be. Because what happens next is where time doesn't even seem to have any kind of effect, which is the base of nothingness.

There's another sense of understanding time as being infinite time. You have the dimensionality of infinite space in the base of infinite space. When you do the practice of going back into your past lives as another practice, there you're seeing the dimensionality of infinite time. So that's the infinite time factor, and here there is the infinite space factor.

But time is meaningless, in essence. You know, the past is the past, the future hasn't come yet. And even the present moment, as we understand it, is actually not the present moment. There's a delay between what is the present moment and what you experience as the present moment. So that too is no reason. In the stages of the basis of fitness consciousness, do you have to see all those things? Or let's just say you saw the flickering of light here, and that would be enough? You might see one thing. So you might just see the flickering of light. This is dependent upon the strength of certain formations.

If, let's say, you're a musician, your ears are more developed, so you're prone to listen to the flickering, the clicking. If you are a cinematographer or a photographer, your eyes, formations are more prevalent, so you actually see the arising and passing away of that. If you're a chef, your tongue and your smell, your tongue and your nose, are more prevalent in terms of the formation, so you might see the buzzing of that. So it's not that, you know, an occupation will develop that particular sense. It's just that whatever dominant sense is there that you will constantly use will give you that experience. Question. Does it also go with the somatic experience? Yes, with the body.

So you can feel tingling in the body, you can feel heat in the body, you can feel coolness in the body, things like that. Although that's actually not going on, physiologically speaking. It's a mental experience. Somehow you feel like you're cold, but the body is not actually cold. Sure. When you're using God, we're seeing flickering lights. We're not seeing all the rising and passing away of consciousness. It wouldn't be possible, right? Just the hundred thousand. So what are we seeing? No, the mind is slowing down. The mindfulness is... Now the consciousnesses are slowing down, because your mindfulness is so sharp that it's actually seeing one arising and one passing away at some certain rate.

It's a slow-down rate. Can you talk again about the object of meditation at this point? Yeah. So, like I said, the object of meditation at this point is not the arising and passing away of infinite consciousnesses. It's the joy. It's the mudita. At this point the feeling of compassion changes to this softer feeling of joy, and so now what you're doing is the object is to observe how mind is radiating this experience of empathetic joy. What kind of effort is connected with that?

Just observing it. That's it. Not pushing it, not radiating. There's an intention. Okay, you're radiating, but now you let go of that intention, and once you start off you're just watching how the radiating is going on. It's like when you spin a top, you know. The first intentional intention is to just radiate, and then let go of the intention, and now this is the top spinning. That top spinning is the radiating going on. In the same way the feeling of loving kindness in the first four jhanas is happening. Your observation continues that top spinning. So long as your observation is there, the top will continue to spin. As soon as your attention is somewhere else, the top starts to wobble and stops. Then again you need the intention to come back, and the top continues to spin. And so he says, and the states in the base of infinite consciousness, the perception of the base of infinite consciousness, and unification of mind, so these same states are still present: contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, inclination, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity and attention.

Nothingness happens when that flickering, or whatever the arising and passing away of consciousnesses are, starts to slow down. And now you're aware of the gaps between the arising and passing away. This gap starts to widen and becomes the dominant presence in the mind. This is the background of the experience of nothingness. There's nothing going on there now. Mind becomes totally quiet, totally silent.

The perception of the fact that there's nothing going on is what is known as the base of nothingness. Accompanied by this, which is your object of meditation, is equanimity. Now the equanimity is just being radiated. The feeling of the mudita, the feeling of the empathetic joy, changes to upekkha, which is equanimity. And now that equanimity is radiated. But that radiating happens very gently. The analogy I like to use is, you think of the mind as this still clear surface of a lake. Your intention, which is another factor within this particular state, drops like a pebble into the lake. Now there are gentle ripples all across the mind. This is the radiating that's happening. It's very, very gentle, not much is going on, so you have to be very soft, very gentle. Now the mind is becoming even subtler. Yeah, can you explain the connection between infinite consciousness and compassion?

Like, I never understood why empathetic joy is related to infinite consciousness, for example, why equanimity is connected to nothingness. They're connected in so far as they are the limits of the experience. Like I was saying with Metta Sahagata Sutta, love and kindness is experienced all the way up to the fourth jhana, and compassion is experienced all the way up to infinite space.

So the transition, that means when you're radiating compassion at infinite space, when you experience infinite consciousness, the limit of infinite consciousness is the joy. Or the limit of joy, rather, is infinite consciousness. So what I'm saying is, when you go back to Metta Sahagata Sutta, what it says is, you experience metta and you experience metta all the way up until the fourth jhana, then you experience compassion. But the metta changes to compassion as soon as you get into infinite space, because now you have crossed the limit of metta and now your mind is dropping into compassion. Then when the infinite space changes to infinite consciousness, because the limit of compassion is infinite space, and because you're going into infinite consciousness, the compassion changes to joy.

It automatically, organically changes to joy. The next succeeding Brahmavihara. Now, since the limit of joy, of mudita, is infinite consciousness, when your mind traverses to nothingness, it goes beyond the limits of mudita. And therefore, because it crosses that limit, it goes to the next succeeding limit, which is equanimity. So there's no inherent connection between these two. It's just that the limits are crossed. And so as the limits are crossed, now you're going to the next experience, which is whatever it will be. But equanimity seems to come across... Equanimity seems to come across all the way from the first jhana up until nothingness.

Compassion seems to come across from the first jhana up until infinite space. The mudita comes all the way from the first jhana up to infinite consciousness. So the limits of them is there, that's it. But they can be experienced in the first jhana onwards. Thank you. Equanimity is the factor that goes out the furthest. Could you really just concentrate on equanimity of being equanimous in the first jhana and just really excel at equanimity all the way out? Sure. Okay. So that's what you're saying is that the limit of each of those is these states. Right, right, right. And most of us, I understand, at least I do.

Know metta a lot better, as far as a skill. Yeah, right. So it's easier to see that and then grow that, and especially since it automatically kind of moves toward those others, it would be easier to do that. But you could theoretically just start somewhere, anywhere on the problem. You could theoretically. Yes, thank you. Would you say that metta has all these, is a composite of all of these different things? And they're like, so there's equanimity in metta? Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. There, and they're like, yeah, that's a good way of putting it, because the brahmaviharas are sort of nested. So it's like, within metta you still have the compassion, you still have the mudita, you still have the equanimity.

It's like, yes, wavelengths, exactly. Metta is the most, yeah, exactly, it's the most noticeable. That's why we start with metta. Equanimity is very subtle, so only when your mind becomes subtler do you really experience equanimity. But technically, as I was saying to you, you could start with equanimity if you wanted. But when we talk about beginning the practice, it's much easier to start with metta, because it's just more coarse, it's just more felt than equanimity. So in theory we can start at equanimity, but in practice it's just easier just to get started with metta and work your way up, if you will, rather than, it'll probably be very hard in practice to start at equanimity because it's so subtle.

Exactly. So you can start with compassion if you want to. You can start with empathetic joy if you want to. So, I know you've talked to hundreds of meditators, so is it good advice to say, choose the feeling of the Brahma Viharas that is strongest for the person, rather than trying to fit your sensibility into one of these categories? It's better to use your sensibility as your natural inclination. So some people talk about just being kind, yeah, or generous, yeah. And are those handy tools? Oh, you mean within the meditation? Yeah. Outside? No, well, but in the meditation particularly. Yeah, you could use kindness, you can use generosity, you can use gratitude, you could use contentment, you could use any of the parameters, for example. But in that, inevitably they will lead to these states in one way or another. So the Brahma Viharas build the jhana factors

and the jhana factors evolve in a natural order just based on how they mature. Yes, yes. So we're not doing any of this stuff, we're just applying the basic tools that you've been talking about. I'm so happy you mentioned that, George. I'm a control freak. I'm getting away from it. Yes, it's a natural progression. That's why I keep saying to everyone, if I could, I could save two to three hours of a Dhamma talk in just two words, by saying two words: observe and 6R. Observe and 6R. This is a show that's going on. You're watching a movie show, which is your own mind, and you're just bringing in some of the stage actors. You're bringing in some of the things by your observation with your intention, and things like that.

Once the reel starts, the film reel starts, the movie is projected, and now you're just observing the movie. You get distracted by something, by the smell of popcorn, by somebody going here or there. You just use the 6R and you come back, pay attention to the movie. That's it. There's no pushing, there's no trying here. Just observe, have fun with it, relax, enjoy the movie. That's it. So how does one progress? Wherever it gets entertainment, you don't do anything, just kind of sit in your butt, and just, I mean, I just understand what you're saying. Did you say you're not doing anything? Well, I mean, you're, you're, I guess observing is other things, is not observing something?

But it's, I guess I'm on your camera, I can't control a little bit more here, because basically, and I feel like I understand this theoretically, but not in my heart yet, like it's not up to us how this unfolds and progresses. I mean, we do tweaks here, right, we 6R, we keep observing, but it's not up to us to have entertainment, to reach infinite space or or anything like that, and we just stay with our object. All we do is just observe our object, and the rest will take care of itself. Is that the--

It's so easy. OK, I guess that makes sense, go ahead. I mean, it's simple. It's not easy. In other words, there's a controlling aspect of the mind that wants to say, there's something I need to do here, and realizing that observation is something that you are doing, and 6R, that's it. And anything more than that comes under the category of craving. Like the checklist approach: got to put in the A, got to contact, looking for the sustained thought somewhere, that's... That's craving.

So what would you lose or miss if you just started in the fourth jhana and whatnot? I mean, if you interviewed... What you would miss is an understanding of how the fourth jhana progresses. But would you necessarily miss anything? No. I mean, if somebody is in the fourth jhana automatically, then they just are in the fourth jhana, and that's fine, because it's not about the jhana again. The jhana is the platform from which nibbana can be experienced. You can experience nibbana from the first jhana onwards. You can experience cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, nirodha, from the first jhana onwards. But if somebody's starting from the fourth jhana, that's completely fine. The only thing they're missing is the experience of the first three jhanas, that's it, but that's no big deal.

You can progress from there and go into infinite space and infinite consciousness and so on. So, if it's a movie, coming back to your analogy, then for an individual meditator, is it the same movie over and over again every time you say it? Or how much does it change? Are we looking at a magic show that, uh, that, you know, Moggallana and, you know, Sarah Buddha gave up on, right? They knew that's not the way. Are we watching the same show over again? Yes, you are. Okay, but why is it more interesting than that? Because it's beyond the senses.

It's more interesting because it's more sustainable. It's not dependent upon the senses. The senses are more fleeting in terms of the experiences, but eventually you become disenchanted with the jhanas as well. Yes, that'll happen with each attainment. So we're not there yet. We'll talk about it. How necessary is it to let go of a sense of self when applying observation and 6R? That is a very good question.

It's absolutely necessary. That's what I thought. Yes. So that comes later, though. As your wisdom develops, as your insight develops into dependent origination, you realize, oh, even the jhanas are conditioned, and even the jhanas are impermanent. Therefore, depending upon the jhanas, having your mind become hooked to the jhanas can create suffering, and therefore they should not be seen as self. But you can't explain that to somebody who's just starting out on the path. It happens as you become a Sotapana, as you become a Sakadagami. The states become more and more refined, your clarity becomes more refined, your mindfulness becomes more refined, and then the Anagami has the attachment to the jhanas that they have to let go of, which is a gateway to Arahant.

We'll get to that. I'll talk about that as we continue with this, but that's very essential to get to the end. Is there anybody else? Oh, I thought it was something. And the states in the base of nothingness, the perception of the base of nothingness, the unification of mind, the contact, feeling, perception, intention, and consciousness, the inclination, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity, and attention.

Eventually, the mind doesn't want to do any more radiating. The mind feels a certain tension. And so you stop and let go of that tension. And in that space is what is known as the quiet mind, the luminous mind, the clear mind. This is the Pabhasara Chitta, as it's known in Pali, the luminous mind. And this mind itself becomes the object of meditation. Mind becomes its own object. Mind rests in itself, and you come to the state which is not groggy, which is not entirely dreamlike.

But it's a state where you feel like you're asleep but you're awake at the same time. It's a lucid deep sleep, a lucid sleep without any other states going on. And it feels like there's things that are happening where you're perceiving something but not exactly perceiving. You're aware of something but not exactly. This is the limits of awareness, as someone once put it. Bhikkhu sorry, Bhante Ananda, he called it the limits of awareness.

Here awareness is very refined. Your perception is very refined, to the point that it's almost non-existent. You know you're in that state, and to that extent there's perception, but beyond that you can't really recognize what's happening. What's really happening is there are formations coming up. Sankharas are coming up in the form of glittering, shimmering lights, in the form of flickering, in the form of memories. It seems like you're thinking, or you'll come across certain memories that you never knew that you actually had. These are gateways into past lives. Now, when I say that, don't become interested in the sankharas. If you become interested in the sankharas, if you look at something and say, "Oh, what is that?"

and you follow through on that, then you are no longer in need of perception or non-perception. The fact that you are perceiving that means you are no longer in either perception or non-perception. So it's almost like you become disenchanted and don't even care what's going on. Just like, okay, all that's there, but you're just staying with mind. Mind is staying with mind.

Now, here's what he says. Notice what he says. He says, he emerged mindful from that attainment. There's no mention of contact here. There's no mention of feeling here. There's no mention of perception here. There's no mention of intention. There's no mention of consciousness. There's no mention of mindfulness. There's no mention of equanimity. There's no mention of energy. There's no mention of inclination. There's no mention of decision. There's no mention of attention. So what's happening here? He emerged mindful from that attainment, and having done so, he contemplated the states that had passed, ceased, and changed.

Why? Because there's no perception completely there. You can't really perceive when the contact happens. You can't really perceive when the feeling happens. You retrospectively look back at what happened. This is why I suggest to those who are in either perception or non-perception, when you come out of it, spend a few seconds, a few moments, and even a few minutes to look back at what happened in the mind. And you'll notice certain formations, patterns, colors, pictures, memories, ideas, concepts, disconnected thoughts coming into the foray.

And all you do is just six articles, Come back to the quiet mind, six others, come back to the quiet mind. And when you do that, you are emerging mindful and then contemplating the states that were there and that passed. This is what is meant by this. So when you're in a human perception or non-perception, there's no need to six are, right? That's what we do when it comes out. Yes.

So all you're doing is releasing, and so there are little vibrations that come out. Like when you're in the mind, a little vibration, you might notice the vibration. All you do is relax and release it, or release and relax it. Doing so, the vibration stops and you're back in the mind. Because if you do anything further than that, then you're perceiving it now. You're out of either perception or non-perception. So, he emerged mindful from that attainment. Having done so, he contemplated the states that had passed, ceased, and changed, thus. So, indeed, these states, not having been, come into being; having been, they vanish. So, he saw the impermanence of those states. Regarding those states, he abided unattracted, unrepelled, independent, detached, free, disassociated, with a mind rid of barriers.

He understood thus, there is an escape beyond, and with the cultivation of that attainment, he confirmed that there is. Again, bhikkhus, by completely surmounting the base of neither perception nor non-perception, Sariputta entered upon and abided in the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness. His taints were destroyed by his seeing with wisdom. What does this mean? Now the mind becomes so subtle that there's no more fuel in the form of formations.

The formations that arise, if you give attention to them, you're outside of the state of neither perception or non-perception. You have to return, you have to let them go and come back. When everything is in balance in terms of the enlightenment factors, there is enough mindfulness, there is enough energy, enough interest, enough joy, enough tranquility, enough collectedness, enough equanimity. They're all in alignment.

The mind is super quiet and you might not have anything going on. No vibrations for 30 minutes at a time, for 45 minutes at a time, for one hour at a time, for two hours at a time, for three hours at a time, before anything comes back up. It's so sublime. And when this is happening, there might be some slight vibration, and that could be in the form of boredom. Here you're not going to experience any kind of sensual craving, you're not going to experience any kind of aversion, but you will experience boredom, because you're sitting for so long in the mind, being used to activity. The mind craves for it, wants it, and so there's boredom. That boredom translates into either sloth and torpor or restlessness, because the mind becomes agitated. There's nothing going on here, I need something to do, so restlessness will come in. Or, this is really boring, I'm going to sleep.

That's sloth and torpor. That's what the mind does. So how do you balance this with the enlightenment factors? When there is sloth and torpor, you bring up a little interest. You become aware that there's sloth and torpor. You become more interested in your object of quiet mind, of mind-saving mind. You bring up micro-doses of interest, micro-doses of energy, micro-doses of joy. If the mind is restless and there's agitation and there are vibrations going on, you bring in micro-doses of tranquility, of relaxation, micro-doses of collectedness, micro-doses of equanimity. And this happens just with a slight intention. It's so slight, it's like you're walking a tightrope, right? Just a little bit is enough, because the mind is so subtle that it's very impressionable.

And mindfulness is always there at present, whether it's in sloth and torpor or whether it's in restlessness. But the other six enlightenment factors are divided amongst these two scenarios. So again, when there's sloth and torpor, you need more interest. You need more energy. You need more joy. Microsism. When there's restlessness, you need more relaxation or tranquility. You need more collectedness. You need more equanimity.

When you say more interest, what does that mean exactly? Putting a little more focus. Your mind's attention is like a camera lens. It's too loose. It's not able to see things. Focus a little bit. I'm breaking my own rule of using the F word, focus, but it's just a little bit more interest, because I said interest makes you think of thinking. No, no, just unifying your attention. That's it, right? Then, when everything comes into balance, there comes a point where there's no more fuel for the mind's attention in the form of formations.

Because of that, there's no more contact in the mind. Because of that, there's no feeling, there's no perception, and there's no consciousness dependent upon those. Mind switches off. It drops into the cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness. And you don't know how long you were in that state. You don't even know you were in that state until you come out of it.

When you come out of it, something happens. And that something is seeing with wisdom, the deepest insight of understanding dependent origination. Why? Because you go all the way beyond formations to the basis of ignorance, or rather what would have been ignorance, which is complete shutting off in the mind. When the mind comes back on, formations arise again. Those formations give rise to consciousness. That consciousness gives rise to the experience of nama-rupa, mentality, materiality. That gives rise to the sixth sense base. That gives rise to contact.

But what is it making contact with? It's making contact with the Nibbana element. That which is signless, objectless. That which is empty of self. That which is undirected. Why? Because when you were in infinite consciousness, what you saw was the impermanence of awareness. You saw the first characteristic. Because of that, it became tiresome. And so you saw the dukkha nature of this arising and passing away. You saw there's no controller here, and therefore you saw anatta. You experienced the emptiness of self. That translates to: when you come out of cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness, and when you experience formations, when you experience consciousness, when you experience nama-rupa, when you experience the six sense bases, when you experience the contact, mind makes contact with that which is objectless, because it understood impermanence.

All objects are impermanent, and so there's no need to have an object there. Mind understood suffering, or dukkha, and therefore there was an undirectedness to it. There was no intention of where it was going. Mind understood the emptiness of self, and therefore it was void. This is the nibbana element that the mind makes contact with, and from there it drops the fetters.

The dropping of the fetters gives rise to immense relief and joy, and that joy, when you experience it, is an otherworldly kind of joy. When you come out from the sitting, you have so much energy in your mind. You come out and everything is in hyper-realistic, five-dimensional reality. The colors are brighter than ever. Lights are brighter than ever. Outlines are sharper. Everything looks as if you're seeing it for the first time, and you have had an attainment. In this case, the first attainment is stream entry, sotapanna, and the dropping of the fetters here are the fetter of a belief in self-view, doubt, and clinging to rites and rituals with the belief that they will take you to Nibbana.

Why does your belief in a personal self go away? Because you have seen for yourself that the self arises, the sense of self arises through dependent origination. So how can there be a permanent self there? You see it for yourself, you understand it for yourself. Your mind's eye sees the Dhamma. There's no longer doubt in this practice because you have gone through it. You no longer have doubt on what is wholesome and unwholesome.

How to practice, you no longer have doubt in that. What is the path leading to nibbana, you no longer have doubt to that. No doubt of that. Clinging to rites and rituals goes away because you understand that they don't lead to nirvana. You could still light a candle, you could still light a ghee lamp, you could still chant, you could still do other things just for the enjoyment of doing those things, but you understand that there's no value in them insofar as leading you to liberation, leading you to nirvana. It's just another process. So there is the path of stream entry, and there is the fruit or fruition of stream entry.

The path allows you to experience the dropping of the fetters. The fruition, the joy arises again of having released all of this, the experience of having made contact with the nibbana element. The joy arises again, but this time it's not as profound, let's say, but the fruition locks in. There's greater clarity on what's going on. There's a greater certitude: oh, I have had stream entry. You have this experience again, then there is the experience of the once-returner, the sakadagami. Here there is an attenuation, a weakening of the fetter of sensual craving and aversion. When this happens you have contact with the nibbana element, you experience the relief, but there's not so much attachment to that relief.

There's greater clarity there. You're pretty much disenchanted with that now. You kind of have a bright mind and you see it and you're not bothered by it, you're not disturbed by it. But there's still some clinging there, there's still some kind of craving present. But now your mindfulness becomes so clear that you're able to see the ripples and percolations of when sensual craving arises, the percolation of when aversion or ill will arises. And you might actually crave and you might actually have aversion, but you're able to immediately get it in six art. So the seeds are still there, but they're not so dominant. They don't have such a big impact on the mind. In the sakadagami there's path and fruition.

Again, the path is the entry into sakadagami, where the attenuation of craving and aversion are there, the decrease of craving and aversion, and the fruition locks it in. Then when you have this experience again, you have the experience of entering into nibbana. And here the anagami drops all five fetters, which means now even sensual craving and aversion are gone.

When the experience of nibbana happens again, there is greater clarity into the dimensionality of the links of dependent origination. You're able to see them clearly and you're able to see them with wisdom and understanding. You're able to understand, "Oh, here is the intention. Here is the contact, here is the feeling." And when you make contact with the nibbana element, the mind feels relief but has no craving for it, no inclination towards it as it did before with the joy.

Mind is much brighter, mind is much clearer, mind is much sharper, mind is more balanced. And so this translates into a mindset and personality where even the seed of sensual craving, the seed of aversion, has completely been eliminated. That's why the anagami is known as the non-returner. They won't come back onto this earth plane. They won't come back into any of the sensual heavens. They will go to the pure abodes where you have other anagamis and arahants frolicking. Now, there is a path and fruition to this as well. The path is when you have the experience, the fruition is when it locks it in.

After that, we get to arahantship. We make contact with the nibbana element again, and the dimensionality of seeing the links of dependent origination goes beyond the scope of space and time. Now you see the links of dependent origination backwards and forwards. It's like time has stopped. And so when you see in the suttas, when they talk about dependent origination, they talk about the forward order and the reverse order. Now you see when contact arises, now you see when feeling arises, but then you see how the feeling emerged from the contact. You see how the contact emerged from the six sense bases. You see how the six sense bases came from nama-rupa. You see how nama-rupa came from consciousness, but then you see how consciousness affects nama-rupa.

You see it in all different dimensions. And then there's complete destruction of ignorance, because now you understand the Four Noble Truths completely. You understand that there is suffering. You understand dependent origination to the point that you understand the elaboration of it, or you understand it as an elaboration of the Second Noble Truth. When you make contact with the nibbana element here, you cease suffering altogether, because you have walked the path, you have cultivated, you have developed, and you have perfected the Noble Eightfold Path, which is the Fourth Noble Truth, and therefore experienced complete cessation of suffering altogether.

And now you become an arahant. When you destroy ignorance, dependent upon that, there is conceit, the sense that this is me, this is mine, this is myself. You have this idea and this acting out where any of the five aggregates are seen as modes of clinging. You see this body in the conceit. You see this body as me, mine, or myself in some way or another. It's not that the self-view is there. Self-view is gone on an intellectual level when you destroy the first three fetters. But there's an intrinsic sort of experience,

transactional experience where you feel like, oh, this is my body. It's just implicit. But that goes away completely once ignorance goes away. Dependent upon the conceit, there is restlessness. There is mind movement going on. That's why when that goes away, when the arahant closes their eyes for meditation, they're right there. There's no taking out the trash, as they say. You're completely quiet.

And there's no craving for a form realm or formless existence, so there's no craving for jhana. The anagami is stuck because they still love jhana. They love the Dhamma, they have passion for the Dhamma. Now, in this case Sariputta became an arahant in this situation by seeing the links of dependent origination, but he had the fruition when the Buddha was talking to his, either his cousin or his nephew, Diganaka, the guy with the long nails.

And Diganaka was another skeptic. And he asked the Buddha, what do you teach? And the Buddha talks about, what is your teaching? I cling to nothing, says Diganaka. So the Buddha says, do you cling to the view that you cling to nothing? And realizing that, Sariputta understood, "Oh, I'm clinging to dependent origination itself, I'm clinging to the Dhamma itself." And the Buddha himself is not even attached to the Dhamma. And so in the span of one flicker of a fan, he attained arahantship with fruition.

And so his complete, all his fetters dropped. So he no longer had the attachment to the jhanas, no longer had the craving for existence in a form realm or a formless realm, and so he had fruition of arahantship. This is how the path is developed and cultivated. Now for the arahant, when they experience things in terms of the sensory experiences, they still have dependent origination, but there's no more ignorance, so there's no more ignorance influencing the formations. Those formations that arise arise dependent upon choices they made in a previous time, prior to full awakening. So they have to run out their karmic fuel, which continues their existence in this particular realm.

But that fuel, in the form of those formations, is not laced with any craving, is not laced with any clinging, is not laced with any identity, is not laced with any conceit, are not laced with any kind of views. In the case of the anagami, their formations were not laced with craving, but their formations were laced with conceit and view, clinging to fear. But now for the arahant, the formations are so pure that the consciousness that arises doesn't take or is not rooted in any of the three roots of greed, hatred or delusion.

That consciousness then gives rise to an experience of nama-rupa without any identification or taking that nama-rupa as personal, and therefore any of the six sense bases as personal. Therefore any experience that happens through the six sense bases is seen automatically through the default mode of renunciation in right intention. That is to say, this is not me, this is not mine, this is not myself. Automatically, they experience everything as being impermanent, therefore not worth holding on to, therefore not seen as oneself.

Because of that, any feeling that arises, there won't be any underlying tendencies that arise in that feeling. When you see something beautiful, something wonderful, or you experience something wonderful, there is an underlying tendency towards craving that can arise, and if you act upon that, there is full-blown craving. So all of the seven underlying tendencies are destroyed in the arahant. Therefore, there is no more craving. Therefore, there is no more clinging. Therefore, there is no more becoming. Therefore, there is no renewal of birth. And therefore, there is no more suffering.

The links that are present in the mind of the arahant are the pure formations, the pure consciousness, nama-rupa, mentality, materiality, the six sense base, the contact, and the feeling. That's it. So this is the whole path. That's it. That's it. It's as easy as that. Takes you two weeks. Maybe one week. Slow. If you're a slow learner, two weeks, right?

The other thing to understand is the way the arahant functions is always rooted in the Eightfold Path. So what's happening is you're going through a process of reconditioning. When you come into this deep level of cessation and you come out of it, your mind is very clear. And so what is inputted, what is reconditioned at the basis level, at the foundational, most fundamental level, is installing the software of the Eightfold Path.

So what that means is now that you have right view, now that ignorance is eradicated, now that you see everything from the lens of the Four Noble Truths, that leads to an automatic right intention of seeing everything as being impersonal, not taking anything personally, and having loving kindness and compassion naturally in the mind. That gives rise to an automatic way of having right speech.

You're always going to have right speech no matter what. You're always going to have right action no matter what, right livelihood no matter what. Your effort will always be the right effort. Your mindfulness will always be there. And whenever you want to get into jhana, at will, you can go to any jhana. You can even go into cessation at will, you can even go into conscious cessation at will, you can go into the experience of how you experience nirvana at will, because your mind is rid of all barriers, and it unlocks two more path factors, which is

right insight and right liberation. The right insight goes back to right view. The right liberation is what actualizes all of this whole experience of the Eightfold Path. So for the arahant, they're always looking at everything from the lens of the Three Characteristics and the Four Noble Truths, and they're always behaving from the Eightfold Path. So they're always spontaneous.

There's no bhava, there's no habitual tendencies from which they're reacting or responding. Everything is in the moment. Everything is perfect for the situation, depending upon the circumstance. And so the mind is always spontaneous, always able to use intuition to understand what is right for every situation. And that's why the arahant doesn't produce any new karma. They're only experiencing the old karma, and any new karma is no longer there. The seeds for any new karma are completely extinguished, completely roasted and extinguished, let go of it. And so he emerged mindful from that attainment of cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness.

Attain mastery and perfection in noble collectedness, that is samadhi, jhana practice. Attain mastery and perfection in noble wisdom, that is the understanding of dependent origination. Attained mastery and perfection in noble deliverance, having experienced arahatship. It is of Sariputta indeed that rightly speaking this should be said. Thee who is rightly speaking were to be said of anyone, he is the son of the blessed one, born of his breast, born of his mouth, born of the Dhamma, created by the Dhamma, an heir in the Dhamma, not an heir in material things. It is of Sariputta indeed that, rightly speaking, this should be said. Bhikkhus, the matchless wheel of the Dhamma, set rolling by the Tathagata, is kept rolling rightly by Sariputta.

Why? Because now your wheel of rebirth, when you become an arahant, stops and ceases. And it's replaced by the wheel of Dhamma, which is the Eightfold Path, which is the Four Noble Truths. That is what the Blessed One said, the bhikkhus were satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One's words. So in the pure abodes, there are anagamis and arahants. In the pure abodes, there can be anagamis. There are actually...

Let me make sure I have this right. Yeah, let's make sure I have this right. There are five types of anagamis. Do you want me to go into that? Yeah. First of all, there's three types of sotapannas. What? Yes. He's trying to get to one, move the goalposts here. The three types of sotapannas are... It's been two hours. You want me to take a break? Yeah, 10 minutes, because I think we have 10 minutes. I'll ring the bell. So make sure it's only 10 doors. You need to make it sound like it's simple. I'm sitting here thinking, my butt won't let me sit tight. It's sore.

But it is that simple. Yes, it is simple but not necessarily easy. Does our karma determine whether or not we'll actually reach entertainment only to the extent that you continue to influence? Because karma is always basically action, intention, and action. Previous choices will determine your next set of intentions and next set of actions. But if your actions are rooted in the Eightfold Path, and your intentions are rooted in the Eightfold Path, then it will cease that karma when you get to arahant. Going back to what you showed me with the four types of people. Oh, right.

So one is a person who practices for themselves but not for others, right? This is they practice the precepts, but they don't, or they misguide others in not following the precepts. Practices, does not practice for himself, but for the benefit of others. Meaning, he himself doesn't follow the precepts, but he tells others to follow the precepts. He's a hypocrite.

Neither practices for himself nor for others is where he doesn't practice the precepts and misguides others into not following the precepts, and then finally, for one who practices for his own benefit and for others, is he maintains the precepts and he encourages others to maintain the precepts. That's the way I'm saying. Thank you. So the object in the jhana, the object itself, I guess there's six hours when there's low vibration, right? Just yourself, just the quiet. Yeah, because there's nothing, yeah. So you mentioned something about

doing the six hours of the formations that occur during that time only help you get out of here. You don't do it within the practice itself, you're only releasing the vibrations because you came out of it, but you release it and you come back into it, and then after you come out of your practice, if you don't go into cessation and you come out of either perception or non-perception, then you do those few minutes of reviewing what happened to let go of some of the emotions.

Yeah, it's not like you have to actively remember. You just engage the mind into what happened and it will just reveal to you. Yes, exactly. You're not able to fully see it until you come out. No, no, they're not self-liberating. They continue on to other aspects of consciousness. You have to actively release it, and therefore using right after, you're replacing it with a mind that is quiet. You have to let them go. You can look at it from a perspective of neuroscience, let's say you have synapses. Certain synapses are wholesome and certain synapses cause you to be unwholesome. Wholesome and unwholesome, by letting go of the reaction from the synapses that cause you to be unwholesome.

By actively doing that, you are then putting your attention on the wholesome, on the wholesome synapses. You're replacing those synapses with the wholesome synapses. You're weakening, you're pruning away those unwholesome synapses, and you're replacing them with the wholesome synapses. During the time of the non-perception, either perception itself, all these things that come up, the images, things that are, just don't jump into it, don't do anything, just observe, observe, observe. Yeah. Do unbelievable. Yes. Thank you. Any vibration comes up, you're now just to release it and come back. Yes, so you're saying even if the vibration doesn't catch your attention, the school thing is to give it attention? No, no, if it doesn't give, if the vibration is there, you might have missed it, right? That's why when you come out of the state, you do it with you, fix for a few minutes, and then whatever you missed. So it would be a bad idea to just leave them alone and just let them be there?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was just exactly what he asked. Okay, so you have to do something. You have to, I mean, yeah, you have to let go. This is like the clearest jhana talk I've ever listened to. It's amazing. Thank you. Very clear. Years ago, I heard Dr. Dan Brown speaking at a seminar with the Dalai Lama and he talked about some of his early experiments. And one of the things they used was a tachistoscope, which can show one flash of light or two flashes of light, closer and closer together. He was saying that the more meditation, the more you got closer.

He said he was some Sri Lankan monks, and instead of describing two flashes of light, they're describing the beginning of a flash, yeah, the end of the flash, and this was at the rate of showing the movie, right? Exactly, 20 23 frames per second. Oh, okay. Actually, the infinite consciousness you can experience it even with your eyes open. You could start to see reality start to slow down and you start to see how things flicker. It's like when you have a strobe light and you see movements, like jittery movements like that. You actually see that in the consciousness when your eyes are open. Look, if something is moving by, yeah, and also

like a semi-truck, yeah, the sound also, yes, goes, yeah, you just, there's just pieces of it, yeah. See, it's like the movie is starting to fall apart. Yes, yes. So this can happen in a waking, like not a waking state but outside of the meditation too. If you can have an infinite consciousness, it can be a little disconcerting for people in the beginning. Oh, you're losing your mind. Your spouse comes to kissy. It's not a term of understanding. Yeah. When you were talking about that, there may be a little bit less and a little bit of a soft flavor and how to adjust it to the energy, that was either perception or non-perception. Yeah. Yeah, because there's none of that sensation.

Right, exactly. Everybody here? I think the least of them. Right? We're getting it done. So what were we talking about? Three types of sotapannas. Three types of sotapannas. Okay. There we go. Okay. Three types of sotapannas. The usual sotapanna, the average sotapanna, is the one that comes after seven lifetimes. They have seven rebirths in the earth plane or any of the six centuries realms, set up to seven times, and then at the seventh life they will become an arahant and leave this wheel of samsara. The second type of sotapanna is the one who comes after three births, so they have three more births instead of seven, and they're known as the kolamkola sotapanna, that is to say, from one clan to the next clan, from one family to the next family.

This Sotapanna is born in a family, up to three families, that are rooted in the Dhamma. So they will automatically be born in a family that is a family of Dhamma practitioners, let's say, up to three lifetimes. And then you have what is known as the Ekabija Sotapanna. This is the one-seated Sotapanna. And this Sotapanna is somebody who comes back after one lifetime. Now the question arises, what's the difference between a one-seated Sotapanna and a Sakadagami? Because a Sakadagami also comes back only after one lifetime.

The difference is with a one-seated Sotapanna, they only come back to the earth plane and they still have stronger craving and stronger aversion than the Sakadagami, whereas with the Sakadagami they can come back to an earth plane or they can come back to any of the six sensual realms, and then from there when they become an Anagami they disappear from there and go into the pure abodes. All right. Now, the five types of Anagami. I have to make sure I have this. That's right. So any Sakadagami types before we go through all the... No, no, no Sakadagami types. I just want to ask, where do Jhanagami fit in? Oh, now you've opened a whole can of worms.

Other question? Jhanagami. Jhanagami, yeah. Jhanagami. Okay, let's leave that aside for a second. Let's talk about the five types of Anagami. I'm trying to make sure I get this right. I don't want to mess it up. So the first type of Anagami is the Anagami who, just before they pass on, lets go of all the fetters and becomes an Arahant and no longer takes rebirth.

The second type of Anagami is the Anagami who upon landing into the pure abodes attains Arahatship and therefore Parinibbana. The third type of Anagami is one who attains Anagami and then goes to the pure abodes and then attains Arahatship, stays there for some time and then attains Parinibbana. Was that the third or fourth? Third. The fourth type of Anagami is one who goes from this life into the pure abodes and they become an Arahant and then they wait until the five aggregates extinguish and become an Anupadisesa Parinibbana. And then the fifth type of Anagami is the Anagami who then goes into the pure abodes and traverses through the five pure abodes.

So depending upon which faculty is most dominant in their mind, they will land in that particular pure abode. So if they have more mindfulness, they will go to a certain pure abode. If they have more energy, they will go to a certain pure abode. If they have more collectedness, they will go to a certain pure abode. If they have more insight, they'll go to a certain pure abode. And so on and so forth. So those are the five types of Anagami. Is that clear? Yeah, yeah. Will we be tested on this? And then you have the Jhanagami. Question for this, I thought the Arahants, when they pass on, it's kind of just like a candle extinguished.

Yeah, they're extinguished, that's right. How come there's Arahants in the pure abodes? Because they become Arahants in the pure abodes. Yeah, that's right. That's what I'm saying, those are the five types, right? One who attains Arahatship right before they pass and therefore attains Parinibbana. One, as soon as they land in the pure abodes, there's no more fuel for existence, and so they attain Arahatship and Parinibbana. One who lands in the pure abodes becomes an Arahant, and then after a time attains Parinibbana. And one who takes effort, has to make effort to attain Arahatship. And then the fifth one is one who has to traverse through the five pure abodes, and then finally becoming extinguished as an Arahant.

And then the Janagami is basically understood as any Sotapana or Sakadagami who has attained jhana. What happens is when a Sotapana who attains Sotapana through jhana or Sakadagami through jhana, their mind is very pure and what happens when you're in jhana let's first clarify what happens when you're in jhana are there any of the five humans is present yeah no no so that means there's no central freedom right there's no aversion right so what happens is for the sordapan and the sakadaka when they have attained jhana when they die their mind automatically inclines to a janic state which means there's no hindrances present therefore there's an essential craving or aversion present and therefore they become an anagami.

They become what? An Anagami. In the next life? In the next life. Immediately? Immediately. You're born as an Anagami? Excuse me? How can you be born as an Anagami? You're going to the pure abodes. Yeah, you don't get... you don't get bored. Any other questions? You can't... you can only become a Sotapanna upon hearing something, but you still need jhana to get to Sakadagami. So what's the difference between the Sakadagami with jhana, it's called the Jhanagami, and a regular Sakadagami? There isn't. Okay. There isn't. Yeah. Okay. What happens if you achieve path but not fruition? When you die, you will achieve fruition. Oh, guaranteed. Guaranteed. For a Sotapanna? Yeah.

So once a person has path knowledge, the fruition is guaranteed. Yeah. Okay. So you can't slip back. No. I think I know somebody has slipped back. But you would only slip back if the Free Fighters came back, right? Yeah. So they had Dalton in? I don't know. I'll ask. Any other questions? But you said, I'm not sure if I heard it right, but you said a Sotapanna only gets a knowledge upon hearing. But it's both hearing and also in jhana. Yeah. Without hearing. So both. It can happen either through hearing or through jhana. I just want to clarify that. But the Sotapanna who becomes a Sotapanna through jhana can become a Jhanagami.

Why is that? I don't know. Alright, let me tell you. Because in the Sotapanna and the Sakadagami, the three fetters are destroyed, right? Now, what defines an Anagami? Somebody who has the five lower fetters gone. If you attain jhana, there's no hindrances there, which means that when you, as a Sakadagami or a Sotapanna, go or pass on, your mind inclines to a jhanic state, which means there's no sensual craving, there's no aversion, there's no none of the three fetters, the first three fetters, so effectively all five, three fetters, oh sorry, all five fetters are gone when you pass on. That's why you then become an Anagami in the pure place. Okay. So point of clarification: that means just the first jhana is all you need, and Sotapanna just becoming a Sotapanna after having attained jhana first? You need to attain stream entry from jhana first. You have to, from jhana... what if you get it from the other way and then you get jhana? Then you have to become a Sakadagami through jhana. I know. Yes. Look what you did, Kim.

Yeah. We need to move on. Yeah. We need to move on. I've heard the way two people would get your drive and pass them out and send them the name Jenna and become a kind of. Yeah. Can you repeat the question just a little longer? No, can you repeat it? Can you repeat it to the microphone? I couldn't hear it. I've heard the stories of people who attain Sotapanna with dry vipassana without attaining jhana. What kind of Sotapanna is that? That is the Sotapanna upon hearing. So anyone who has had insight into the experience of letting go of the belief in a personal self, letting go of doubt and letting go of the clinging to rites and rituals.

They are effectively a Sotapanna when they happen to have it through insight. They are effectively a Sotapanna upon hearing. So they won't have jhana at that point. But once, if that upon hearing, or somebody who attains it through dry insight, then experiences the jhanas, different after... yeah, they have path... yeah. What is there any special... what happens if they attain jhana, then they become or they have the ability to become a Jhanagami? So the Sotapanna who has dry insight won't be able to become a Jhanagami until they have jhana at one point, so once they have even the first jhana, then they become a Jhanagami. Yeah. And then they have fruition after the... yeah. Okay. Now what happens if somebody just has jhana experiences but doesn't have a path or fruition experience, then they go to one of the Brahma realms. The Brahma realms. So that is

you have four different Brahma realms, you guys are interested in this, and this is like, except everybody's trying to find a way before you get there, before you... sorry, before you answer that, can you tell us what suits us? Do you might find Jhanagami references, or I'll let you know, it's in Anguttara Nikaya, there's a few of them. Kim, do you know that one? I might have heard that one. Yeah. That's true. We should blame David. The hell realms are also real places you go to, and kind of like the psychological state. Right. I mean, there's a way in which the mind can experience the hell realm psychologically,

because there are certain kinds of fetters and attachments in the mind. But then because that mind is such, the formations that arise in that mind will then have aversion towards. Aversion creates fuel for new being, and that new being goes into the hell realms. But when you become a Sotapanna, what's wonderful about that is you close off rebirth in those lower realms, so that means that you're no longer able to get into a hell realm, a hungry ghost realm, or an animal realm. They're physical in so far as, I mean, they are, they exist, but they are

so for example, when you get into a hell realm, you spontaneously generate as a hell being. When you get into a sensual deva realm or a Brahma realm, you spontaneously generate as a deva or a Brahma. It's only the human and animal realm where there's a physicality, there's a physicality which takes place in terms of the body, gestation and birth. Gestation and birth. Yeah. So there's different kinds of births also. So there's a birth through gestation, birth through the egg, birth by moisture, and birth by spontaneous generation. What are the Brahma worlds? You're going to tell us about... Oh, oh yeah, the Brahma realms. Actually, we'll talk about that in a couple of days, yeah, because there's a sutta there which mentions some of the stations of consciousness, which is where consciousness can be established, and that includes the Brahma realms. And if I forget, somebody will remind me, I'm sure.

I would like you to correlate something you said last night and tonight. Tonight you said all you need is two things, you need the six R's and an object of meditation, right? Okay. Last night you said if you do the six R's, which are the four right efforts, that are made actionable, yeah, that they constitute the eightfold path when they're applied. So what you're saying is if you do this, it's automatically, you automatically take you to the bottom? Yes, it's actually automatic if you apply

It adds, as a, I'm done. Well, yeah, basically what it is, is the six R's are just another way of understanding right effort. And right effort is the heart of the Eightfold Path, because you only get from the wrong path to the right path through the application of right effort. So when you do that, you get to the back. So in other words, when you recognize something in the process of, let's say, a hindrance, you are recognizing suffering. You're recognizing the First Noble Truth.

When you release and relax, you are letting go of the Second Noble Truth of that craving or that aversion or whatever it is. And then you experience nirodha of suffering, nirodha of dukkha. In that moment, after relaxing, you are experiencing mundane nibbana. Mind becomes pure, there's just this spaciousness to it, and there's nibbana. And then when you smile and you come back to your object meditation, you're fulfilling the fourth noble truth. So not only are you fulfilling the eightfold path, activating the seven factors of enlightenment, applying the four right efforts, but also understanding, applying, cultivating, developing, and perfecting the four noble truths. Speaking from the hindrance of doubt, if the six R's is so powerful, why didn't Buddha talk about it in the Sutta?

He talked about it from the concept of the four right efforts. So we're using the six R's as a way, as a modern rendition of the four right efforts. So he did talk about it, but he talked about it in the context of four right applications of effort. So the four right applications are preventing unarisen unwholesome states from arising. You do that when you recognize that you were distracted. Now you're stopping the flow of the unarisen distractions. And then you abandon the arisen unwholesome states. So when you release and you relax, you're abandoning that hindrance, the already arisen hindrance. Generating a wholesome state is the third right effort. And so when you smile, you're generating something that's wholesome.

And then maintaining that is the fourth factor. So when you return back to your object, you're maintaining and sustaining that wholesome state, the feeling of nothing, the feeling. Any other questions? I believe that in the Samadhi in Sutta? Yes, possibly. Yeah, possibly. And so many Sutta. There are, yeah. There's one called the Sutta that's called the Great Forty. So there it talks about what is right effort. And it talks about those four right efforts. And there's a few other places. There's some places in the Samyutta Nikaya somewhere. And the younger Nikaios. Would you like to hear the origin of the six R's? Yes, of course. Okay. No, no, no, please. This is great.

Wait, right now? Right now. This is a cool story. We have to wake up in eight hours. So maybe tomorrow. How about tomorrow? All right. Now, how long is it taking? Leave it hanging. Leave it hanging. There you go. No, let's do it again tomorrow. Yes. Okay. Tune in tomorrow. part out of the arm, but those are six arms. It's really cool.

Any last questions? Or are you guys delighted and satisfied? Delighted and satisfied. Good. Alright, let's share some merit. 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 powers, share this merit of us. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation.