Day-1 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong

Let's begin our question and answer session. If anyone has any questions, you can start. So, in Sathikri Pantana Sutta, yesterday you said physical sensation. So when he says Vedana Nupashana, it is physical sensation. And when he describes five aggregates in Khandha Pabba, then the Vedana is mental part, right? So, when I was talking about sensory experiences, yes, it's five physical senses and the mind. But there is also sensations in relation to contact, internal and external contact of the body. So, that can also relate to the mind, particularly in the five aggregates.

In either case, the sensory experiences are still part of the mental faculties because all of this ultimately is experienced through the process of mind. Thank you. I have a small question. Yeah. Why didn't the Buddha add perception to the links of dependent origination? You meant yeah? It's a very good question, because the process of feeling is such that you have perception and cognition following it right after.

In the case of the links of dependent origination, when you have feeling, the feeling itself, when the Buddha describes it, and this is how I view it, before the bare sensation or the bare feeling that arises, it is just that, it is feeling. But as soon as you apply onto it the concept of pleasant or unpleasant or neutral or neither painful nor pleasant, that naming of it or that understanding of that is the perception that's tied to the feeling.

So in the case of the links of dependent origination, as you have contact and when you have feeling, you recognize the perception that's in the feeling. Meaning you recognize through the perception whether that feeling is painful or pleasant. And then if you take that to be personal, and if you start to attach to it, that's how the craving arises. So perception can lead to two. It can either lead to more mental proliferation in the way of craving and clinging and so on, by taking it personal. And by taking it personal is another kind of perception that arises.

Or you can have what is the wise perception or the attention rooted in reality. That's the, in Pali, the yoniso manasikara, which is to say that you see through that feeling and see the emptiness of that feeling, meaning you see the not-self aspect, you see the impermanent aspect, and you see that it's not worth holding on to, so therefore that whole process is perception in of itself, it's inherent within the feeling when you name it. Yes, exactly. Sorry, before you go on, that's a very good insight that Madhusudan just mentioned. He said vedana paccaya tanha or vedana paccaya panna, meaning feeling can condition craving, or from feeling can arise insight or wisdom. So it's a very good observation. Two roads from that. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Sorry, that's okay. In terms of talking about choices, that there is either a reaction or a response. When it's a response, the person has a pause, which enables the person then to respond instead of reacting.

Now, I guess through the practice, we will acquire that pause that's necessary to respond instead of react. Is that what this is about? Yeah, so the practice is twofold, meaning it's the meditation. It's the sitting and walking meditation and applying that process of meditation and the six R's in daily living. I might have touched upon this briefly yesterday, but it's basically a feedback loop. The more you're able to use the six R process effectively within the meditation, the more you're able to create for yourself choices out of reflection and out of mindfulness and out of that pause. That pause really is all about the mindfulness of understanding

where your mind is going towards or where it's leading towards in terms of the choices that you have. And then once you start to see that, and you see that perhaps the mind is tending towards something that might be unwholesome, you use mindfulness to be able to 6R that, and then swerve your mind towards the more effective choice through right intention and right mindfulness.

And then the more you do that, it allows you to be more in line with the Eightfold Path. It allows you to act and speak more in alignment with the Eightfold Path. And as this happens, it allows the mind to have a stronger foundation in the meditation itself. So that is why I've said in the book, and possibly in other places and other videos, that there is that inverse connection between following the precepts and the hindrances.

The more you maintain the precepts, the more you act from the alignment of the Eightfold Path, the less the hindrances will arise in your mind, both in the practice and in daily living. Thank you. Delson, I wonder if you could maybe explain a little bit about the awakening factor of investigation and how it maybe differs a little bit from just observation, and how it can be applied to extreme sloth and torpor in general, please.

Yeah, so observation is really just another synonym that I've used for mindfulness. Mindfulness is knowing that your attention was swerving from one place to another and then bringing it back to your object of meditation. Investigation is more in relation to bringing up and understanding how this phenomenon was caused, so it can be used in conjunction with what I was talking about, attention rooted in reality, or yoniso manasikara. Investigating into the phenomenon of sloth and torpor is essentially utilizing observation, meaning first and foremost you understand, or you have seen and recognized, that you are tending towards, or your mind is tending towards, sloth and torpor. So as soon as you see that, you then investigate into what needs to be brought up. In other words, you see whether you need to bring up joy, or you need to bring up a little more effort and put more attention towards the object.

So the synonym for investigation that I use is understanding, because the end result of investigation is understanding. In other words, once you have investigated, or seen, what is required in that process of your meditation when you are leaning towards sloth and torpor, you then understand that this is the factor that I need to bring up a little more in order to balance it. With that understanding, you then apply the effort to bring in, let's say, that joy, bring in the energy or the effort. Hi Delson. Hi. I have a question related to dependent origination. Yeah. In one of the suttas it is mentioned that consciousness conditions mentality and materiality, and mentality and materiality condition consciousness. Yeah. So is it like both come together? How can we understand that, and can you give your perspective? Yeah. The thing about consciousness is, first and foremost, it can only be reckoned, or it can only be measured, through the sixth sense basis

the experience of the sixth sense basis, meaning there is the consciousness that arises from the contact. So you have the sensory consciousness. You have the consciousness of the eye, the eye consciousness, for example. You have consciousness of the visual object that's outside in the external reality, so to speak. And then you have the consciousness of the seeing itself. So in each of the sixth sense basis, there's, you could say, a triad of consciousness. In other words, it's altogether, you could say, 18 different types of consciousnesses depending upon where you put your attention to, let's say.

So when the suttas talk about that, and in particular Sariputta talks about that, and he says it's sort of like a, it's sort of an interlinking between consciousness and mentality, materiality, which is that you don't, you cannot really experience the I without consciousness, for example, but at the same time you are conscious of something through the eye. So on a more broader scale, on a macro level, let's say through the process of rebirth, it's consciousness that then gets linked with a certain mentality and materiality, which means it gets linked at conception with the fetus or whatever it might be, mentality or materiality or mentality and materiality.

So in the broader macro level, that's what happens. But then as the experience of that mentality-materiality starts to arise, there is a consciousness which links through it and it experiences that feeling. So there's the consciousness before mentality and materiality, and there's a consciousness that arises after it links with mentality-materiality. However, it's one and the same consciousness in the flow of that consciousness. And when I say that, I'm saying that in the mentality and materiality, when you have the experience of the "I," that same consciousness arises or is conditioned first and foremost by formations.

So, formations in this regard, unless you become an arahant, are conditioned by ignorance, right? But how does the formation arise? It arises through contact. It arises through feeling, and it arises through perception, primarily through contact and feeling. In that when you have contact with the outside world, let's say you have the visual sensation, you have the visual object. Upon seeing, upon having the contact, the formations related to seeing arise, then activate the consciousness, and that consciousness then links with the sixth sense space, particularly with the eye, and then that same consciousness experiences the triad of the eye consciousness, the visual object consciousness, and the feeling or the sensation of seeing.

Consciousness. So always it begins with formations, and you have to see that it happens so fast. If at the level of infinite consciousness you're experiencing something like up to two million per second, consciousness is arising and passing away, the actual links of dependent origination are several, several, several times faster. So as soon as you make contact with light, as soon as the photon receptors or the photons hit the receptors, you have already activated the formations, which activate the consciousness, and through which then you experience, through attention, whether it's the eye, whether it's the photons, or whether it's the seeing of whatever is being shown.

Yeah, so it's one and the same thing, they're interdependent. In fact, you will read in a later sutta, which is part of this program, where Sariputta talks about ignorance and the defilements or the taints, and even there he says those two are interdependent, meaning ignorance is conditioned and caused by the taints, but at the same time the taints arise because of ignorance. So there's always an interdependency. As I said just earlier, the formations will arise based on contact, which means that the flow of dependent origination, while on a broader scale might seem linear, it's actually cyclical, but within that cycle of dependent origination are smaller cycles.

from contact to formation and so on and within that is embedded the cycle of the five aggregates which are then embedded within the mentality materiality. So it's like, I like to say, circles within circles within circles. It's a spiral thing. I feel like it's something in our computer sense we can't, recursion. Yeah, go ahead. What were you saying? Well, that was a good explanation. Thank you. Thank you for sharing.

Nelson, yes. Does this mean that formations basically decide which sense contact we want to experience? So, formations, I look at as carriers of karma, meaning they are the ones that provide the kammic impulse. And you will see this later on as we progress with the retreat, that in relation to, at the level of contact, it's contact where you have all the old kamma. So there is the feeling that arises, and then what you do with that feeling will then determine whether new kamma is created or not. So whatever we are experiencing up until the level of contact and feeling is old kamma. It's the effects of choices we've made in past lives, whether it's just a split second ago or whether it's eons ago.

Whatever we are experiencing in the way of our six senses and in the way of our experience with the mind and body is all the inherited effects of kamma. So, I would shift the perspective in looking at formations from that angle, and then seeing that whatever we are experiencing is a result of our choices. That is why I began with effective choice.

Going back to the question, it's a matter of the formations deciding in that moment because they were conditioned by a previous choice we made. So they're not deterministic. They are rather affected or conditioned by our choices we made in the past, which means because of that, we can change the formations. We can strengthen certain formations based on choices we make in this present moment, or we can weaken them. And that is why the Noble Eightfold Path is called the cessation of kamma, because when the formation arises as a carrier of kamma, let's say, it then is activated through the process of dependent origination to the level of contact and feeling. At that point, you have the old kamma, which is the effects of choices you made previously.

Then, once you have this feeling, how you perceive it, meaning how you take it, whether you take it through wise perception and let go of any attachment and craving to that feeling right there and then, will then determine the next set of formations, which will allow you to continuously let go in next set of choices. But the more you attach a sense of self, the more you crave that feeling by attaching a sense of self, the more you are determining from your present choices the future formations, which will be strengthened and which will then determine the choices you make, which are tending more towards creating more craving for yourself.

So formations are always conditioned by choices and for choices in that regard of conditioned by old formations makes sense I have another question related to formations so there are basically three kinds of formations have been said like mental, physical and vocal but when we are practicing meditation I see that if there is a slight body movement this can be treated as physical formation these formations also seems like related like this immediately whenever there is small movement there will be some thought also arising so it's like how like are they interrelated or are they

I would not say that the three formations are necessarily interwoven. The three formations are categorizations of different experiences that are caused by them. So in the case of mental formations, they cause the feeling and perception, that is, the sensations, the experience within and without the body and the mind, and the perceptions that are tied to it. Then the physical formations, generally and traditionally speaking from the suttas, are related to the breath first and foremost. But there is also the decision-making process that arises from that formation to move a limb, for example. So I would also categorize that under the physical formations. But that's the way I would view it. And the vocal, or verbal, formations are really the formations that arise from your perception. What I mean by that is, right now you perceive that I am speaking to you and you are listening to what I say. In your mind, you might start to be making thoughts as a response to what I'm telling you.

So the perception that you are experiencing in the way of listening and understanding what is spoken then creates, or conditions or activates, the formations that create or condition the speech that you may have in way of responding to what I might be telling you. So they're not interconnected, but they arise so quickly in the way of how contact arises that they seem like they may be interwoven. So for example, taking your example, when you're in meditation, or when you're just sitting down and you make a body movement, you move your limb, you notice that also it creates thoughts in the mind or it creates other kind of mental feelings and perceptions, mental formations.

But that is a result, or that is caused and conditioned by the contact. So it will actually spurt out, if you will, two different types of formations. One is, first of all, the physical formation had already taken place when you moved the limb. And as a reaction to moving the limb, you had the thought of moving the limb, and that created further thought patterns. So these two things sort of are forks in the road, meaning you started first with moving the limb, but in the process of moving the limb that was conditioned by a physical formation. That process of movement didn't cause or condition or activate a physical formation. It was the other way around. The other fork in the road, the other side, is a result of having moved, which is then the thoughts that arise based on the mental formations that come from the contact of having moved the limb. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense to me. Okay, thank you.

How important is it to not move during the meditation? Extremely important, because what you're doing in the meditation, as you start to still the body, you are already working on the lower jhanas with the stilling and tranquilizing of the bodily formations. Which means not only is your breathing, if you start to notice it, becomes less apparent and starts to become not necessarily shallow but just feeble, and it doesn't really affect the body. And secondly, it starts to lower the heart rate, starts to lower the blood pressure, starts to bring things into equilibrium for the body. And that is why you start to lose certain sensations of the body. So you are tranquilizing and stilling the physical formations when you do that. But then as soon as you move, or as soon as there is contact made with the physical body, you then have perception of that physical body, and that creates further formations in experiencing the physical body again.

Whether it's through your own movement or through contact with the body, so it's very important to keep the body still in the sitting practice. In the practice of walking, obviously you are moving the body and you are still working with physical formations because you are intending the walking while you're doing it. But I would say it's more important to sit. The walking is, I see it as an exercise for the mind to be able to bring and generate the loving kindness out into the world and as a way for you to cultivate it in whatever it is that you might be doing. But in the sitting practice, it's very, very important to sit still. Number one, because as you progress through the jhanas and as your body becomes still, you are tranquilizing bodily formations.

And then up to the level of the full jhana, it becomes almost imperceptible contact with the body. And then there is the formless realms, as they call it, the dimensions of infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception and non-perception. So in the first and second jhana, you are dealing with the verbalizations. So for example, if you see that in the first jhana you verbalize, or you have an intention of sending out the loving kindness to yourself or to your spiritual friend, that's the verbal formation that is at play. But then as you get into the second jhana, or when you start from the second jhana onwards, you don't use the verbalizations, and the intention is quickly let go of, and there's only the awareness of the feeling. So at the point of the second jhana, you have already stilled, for the most part, the verbal formations.

That's not to say that you will not have verbalizations that arise in the way of thoughts, in the way of certain stray thoughts that might come and go that sound like verbalizations. That also can be dealt with from the fourth jhana onwards. That's no problem. But these verbalizations are coming from the intention that is conditioned by the verbal formations. So by silencing the mind, meaning stopping the verbalizations, you are stopping the intention, and thereby you're also stopping the verbal formations that condition that intention. Then as you get higher into the fourth jhana, into the fourth level, you're stilling the physical formations, the bodily formations.

And then as you get deeper and deeper, especially into nothingness and neither perception or non-perception, you'll start to have stray thoughts. You'll start to have, you know, images and things like that that might be disconnected, especially in either perception and non-perception. And when you have that, those are really now working with the mental formations, which are the feeling and perception and as you start to let go of those and you start to six are that then you have basically stilled all the formations and then activated and balanced the factors and then you enter into cessation of perception and feeling so that's basically a long way of saying that it's extremely important to still the body when you're meditating

thank you where can we get a recording of the question and answer sessions uh this should be uploaded probably in the next couple of days i will talk to koon about that um so it should be available soon we can take uh one more question if anybody has any questions uh in the next one two minutes otherwise i would ask him if she's here yes to um lead us into sharing some merit but before that i want to give a couple of minutes see if anybody has any last questions hey are you hearing me hello yes hello yes yeah so i just wanted to clarify like the effect and application like in the today's texts that's slightly different than the six hour process but i suppose it's the same thing so it's just getting more insight into it yeah yeah the the way i've explained it in the book uh and then possibly in the video is that the six r's are really the identical to the four right applications or the four right efforts and the way i've explained it is that you have four different right efforts which is abandoning preventing

bringing up and maintaining and what that means is in the first right effort is abandoning any hindrances that have uh well sorry preventing uh any hindrances from arising which means that uh when you notice and you recognize that there is a hindrance in the mind or there's a distraction as soon as you recognize it you actually stop it from further creating more distractions or from further creating more thoughts so that's the preventing part that's the first right effort when you release your attention and then relax the mind and the body relax the tension or craving

you're using the release and relax step, which is part of the abandoning of any already arisen unwholesome states. So if there is the craving or the tension associated with the hindrance, you are releasing it and relaxing it. And then in the bringing up of the wholesome states, that happens when you smile or return to the smile and you come back to feeling the loving kindness or any of the Brahma Viharas, or whatever your object is. So that is the third right effort in which you are bringing it up. And as you return to your object, you are maintaining the good feeling. You're maintaining the wholesome quality of mind. And then you repeat it as necessary.

So this is how the six-hour process is intertwined within the four right efforts. But whether you're practicing the six Rs, or you're practicing the four right efforts, It is identical. It is one in the same. It's just a different way of understanding. Okay, so I think we can share some merit then. Okay. Do you want me to share the screen?

if you have it yes please yeah i can't share a host disabled participants share screen sharing if you can okay here you go okay you are the host now okay so everybody can see my screen yes all right let's do it one two three may suffering once be seven may the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find room may all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisitions of all kinds of happiness may being inhabiting space and earth neighbors and nagas almighty power share this merit of ours may they long protect the buddha dispensation

okay great so i will see you all uh during our individual interview times uh it looks like somebody had a question somebody had something to say just technical at this time for a very brief moment i could see the text but now i'm seeing your uh what is it your normal desktop oh really yes oh i'm so sorry what else is sharing that i think i know i do see it sort of for the next time okay sorry okay next time i know sorry about that that's all right um okay so as i said i'll see you guys uh individually in your interviews and then once again in tomorrow's group discussion right thank you thank you