Day 8 Upanisa Sutta - The Path to NIbbana- Japan Retreat Dec 2023

Tonight I want to talk about the transcendental links of dependent origination. These links are what happens after suffering. We all know about dependent origination. We know about how suffering arises through craving, clinging, becoming, birth of action, and so on. But how do you deal with that suffering, and what is the path leading to freedom of mind? What is the path that takes you from suffering to the total cessation of suffering? And so, in these links, there are essentially 11 links in the Upanisa Sutta, as it's called, 23, and in Anguttara Nikaya 10.1 to 10.5, I believe. There are variations of these links. But in the Upanisa Sutta, it starts out with suffering, dukkha.

The first link is suffering. That is to say, the experiences that we have that are unpleasant, experiences which are causing us all kinds of pain in mind and body. So there's physical suffering, there's mental suffering, there's a suffering of change, there's the suffering of existence, and so on and so forth. Now there are two paths leading out of suffering or leading from suffering. One is further confusion.

Be a way out of the suffering maybe if I just continue to indulge in further sensual pleasures, continue to numb the pain with alcohol or drugs or overindulgence in food and sex and all kinds of things. And for a while the pain seems like it's numbed, but then it comes back with full force, and you're right where you started. That suffering path is a search for the way out of that suffering. And so in the sutta it talks about a person says who knows a word or two about suffering and the cessation of suffering. And so this invariably leads a person to think about what exactly is going on in their life. Are they happy in their lives? Do they enjoy the things that they're doing? And there is this certain depressive attitude towards life.

There's a certain dissatisfaction with life. There must be more to this than just what we do here. And so that leads into the search for something, into the search for some higher meaning, greater meaning, some level of experience that is more potent, more powerful, more satisfying than the temporal things that we experience in this world. There must be a way out of that. And so that is the search. And so you do the search and you find yourself listening to the Dhamma. You find yourself listening about TWIM, or listening about meditation in general, or listening or learning about or reading about the brahmaviharas. And as you start to learn about it, you decide, okay, I'm going to try it for myself.

And so that is what is the beauty of the Dhamma. It is immediately effective and is open to invitation for all to come and see for themselves how it works. It doesn't try to persuade you. It doesn't try to make you do something. It just says, this is what is. This is what is available. See for yourself. And so you accept that invitation and you continue on and say, okay, I want to try for myself. And so the first part of that is actually virtue. Although it's not mentioned in the Upanisa Sutta, it is mentioned in Anguttara Nikaya 10.1, 2, 3, 4, where virtue, that is sila, keeping your precepts, is essential to this path. And so we talk about precepts in terms of why and how they are kept.

First and foremost, every morning when you get up and you come together and you take the precepts, it is a commitment to follow the precepts. There is great power in the precepts. All you need, everything else that happens on retreat, you can keep the eight precepts or the ten precepts. Bhikkhus have to keep 227 precepts, right, and bhikkhunis even more than that, something like over 300. So keeping the five basic precepts, why do we do that? It's very simple. It's the golden rule. You would have them do unto you. That's it. You would not want somebody to hurt you. You would not want someone to kill you or your loved ones. You would not want someone to steal from you, take the limelight away from you, take things away from you.

You would not want someone to cheat on you, be disloyal to you, or in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, harm you. You would not want someone to lie to you or gossip about you. You would not want someone to be boisterous and rowdy and rambunctious by being completely intoxicated and disturbing your peace. In the same way, if you do not want that for yourself, make sure you don't do that towards others. That is the practicality of these precepts. It's not about having a higher moral ground. It's not about being, I am greater than thou, or holier than thou. There is, well, a moral morality here, but there's no judge looking down and saying, if you don't do this, this is what's going to happen.

The judge is your own karma. Not even Yama, the gatekeeper of hell, is going to judge you. All he does is keep the records. He looks at the records, reviews, and says, this is your karma, this is what you'll have to deal with. So there is no judge. Your karma is your own judge. So what is the power in keeping the precepts? Well, first and foremost, it starts to bring stability to your mind, which is in preparation for meditation. So when we start to keep the precepts, the hindrances in our mind start to reduce, because each precept, or the breaking of each precept, has a correspondence to one of the five hindrances.

other living beings, we bring up the hindrance or cultivate the hindrance of ill will. When we take what is not given, we cultivate the hindrance of restlessness. When we indulge in sexual misconduct or sensual misconduct, we strengthen the hindrance of sensual desire, sensual craving. When we use false speech, we cultivate the hindrance of doubt. And then when we indulge in intoxicants, we cultivate the hindrance of sloth and torpor. So when we start to refrain from breaking these precepts, those hindrances start to reduce. But as we start to keep these precepts over time, we start to notice in ourselves a certain kind of change and a certain kind of magnetism and charisma and power that's there in our minds.

For example, when we keep the first precept, abstaining from killing and harming living beings, what happens? We start to attract the right kind of people in our lives for the purposes in our lives. People want to be around us. People want to know more about us, engage with us. People want to do business or have relationships with us, or whatever it might be. We create that sort of an aura. When we have maintained keeping that first precept for a long period of time, when we keep the second precept, when we don't steal, when we stop taking things that are not ours away from others, given to us? We notice that in our minds or in our lives, things that are required in that exact moment are given to us, whatever it is: resources, money, a flight, books, whatever it is, shelter. It is given to us exactly when we require it.

And you start to notice that the universe starts to take care of you. In that sense you don't have to worry about things. You don't have to worry about resources and what am I going to do when I reach this place or that place. Everything starts to fall into place for us. When we keep the precept of abstaining from sensual or sexual misconduct, what happens is that our mind becomes much clearer, and we start to notice that the things that we might want start to manifest. This is very closely related to the second, in the sense that not only are things provided for us or things are given to us whenever we need them, but if there is something that we want, it is also given to us.

It may take a little time, but it manifests in its own way. worry about it and there's a level of clarity in our minds when we keep the fourth precept. People have a lot of confidence in us, and we have a level of inner confidence, we have a level of self-confidence. We have the ability to influence others for wholesome purposes. What we say comes true. Whatever we think and whatever we say comes to be. This is known in the Indic religions, or in the Indic traditions, that is to say in the traditions of ancient India, as Vak Siddhi, or it's a power. Vak means voice. You utter something and it happens. Keep the fourth precept.

When you keep the fifth precept, it creates a level of stillness in your mind that is immediately approachable, immediately accessible. You're never tired. You're never bored. You're never looking for this or that. Your mind is steady all the time. And wherever you incline your mind, it goes there. Whatever it is you want your mind to do, it does it. There's no trying to reboot or thinking about this or that or making an effort. You just incline your mind to something and it goes there. So this is the power of virtue. This is the power of sila. And as a result, it goes into non-regret, which translates to what is known as pamoja. That is gladness in the Dhamma.

Having gladness, because you have come to the true Dhamma for yourself. You have seen for yourself that this practice is starting to have an uplifting quality to your mind, and you become more at ease. You feel gladdened by words of the Dhamma, or when you read a sutta, or when you're just sitting and meditating and reflecting on the Dhamma. From this pamoja, you have what is known as piti, or joy. Now, this piti can be experienced as exuberant joy. It can be experienced as excited joy, but it doesn't have to be. This piti is a sense of happiness, joyfulness, a sense of being at ease, being playful. This is the whole practice of the retreat: stop taking things seriously, allow the mind to be at ease, make it a game, enjoy yourself. Enjoy, I mean that word, enjoy. What does that mean? It means inculcating joy within ourselves. And it starts as small as the smile, as small as laughing, telling a good joke, having a sense of humour, not being offended by things, allowing the mind to be happy all the time.

Now from this joy, we get what is known as tranquility. Tranquility is an experience of being again relaxed and at ease, right? So you take things less personally. When you walk, you're more relaxed. When you speak, you're more relaxed. When you eat, you're more relaxed. When you meditate, you relax into the meditation. So this tranquility, this experience of being okay with things, right? Relaxing into the moment translates into a meditation where the mind isn't looking for an outcome. It's completely relaxed. It's content being in itself. It's content to be here in the moment.

This tranquility invariably leads to what's known as sukha or comfort. And this is actually a body that is at ease. Sukha. Sukha can mean happiness, but sukha also means comfort. It means to be comfortable in your own skin. Being comfortable with whatever is going on. Completely okay with everything. And that's why it is a big factor of the first and the second jhana, and especially the third jhana. Because in the third jhana, you start to experience this level of change in the body. The body becomes more deeply rooted, and it feels like it's heavy, but it's stable, or it becomes light and airy and floaty, right? You start to lose sensation in the body, but at the same time, you have a clear level of contentment, a level of, it's a sigh of relief.

Everything is okay in the body. And so, from this tranquility, we have what is known as collectedness. So that is samadhi, right? This collectedness we've spoken about when we talked about the enlightenment factors. This collectedness is where the attention remains unified around the object of meditation. The mind is composed. The mind is balanced. The mind is here, present. Where the mind inclines to, there it goes. And so the mind remains stable and steady. It is unwavered. And so this is where you start to get into the territory of the fourth jhana. The third, getting into the fourth jhana, where the mind is unwavering. The mindfulness is so sharp, even if a hindrance arises, it's no big deal.

It's able to catch it before it turns into something even greater, into something that pulls your attention completely away. And so this collectedness. Using this collectedness, we have what is known as yathabhuta nanadassana. So yathabhuta means reality. Yathabhuta means things as they are. And nana means knowledge. Dassana means vision. So it is the knowledge and vision of things as they actually are. So that means, or is a fancy way of saying, equanimity. Like I said yesterday, don't worry about what the equanimity feels like. Understand the quality of your mind in terms of, is it getting pulled in a certain direction? Or if a distraction arises, it's just aware, okay, here is a distraction, and it's able to let that go.

The ability to see things as they actually are, right? Now the mind is collected. All right, it doesn't celebrate it so much. The mind is distracted, it doesn't get so distraught about it. The mind is in a space of neutrality, it doesn't identify with it. So at a deeper level, it also means the ability to discern and see for yourself and experience for yourself the dependently arisen nature of all conditioned experience, which means you don't take it personally. You see it as impermanent. Does it really matter for me to get caught up in this right now? Will it really matter to me in an hour from now? Will it matter to me six hours from now? Will it matter to me tomorrow or five days from now or a month from now?

It is passing all the time, and passing, so you let go of that. And as a result, you start to see the impersonal nature of things. And so this is one of the deepest levels of understanding, where you see in the meditation also formations arising, sankharas arising in your mind, and you don't get caught up in them. It is just aware. Okay, there's this activity coming up. Okay, the mind is starting to sink deeper into something. Okay, the mind is starting to experience some greater clarity of light. Okay, the mind is starting to experience joy. In any situation, the mind remains non-reactive. The knowledge and vision of things as they are, or equanimity, is total non-reactivity to an experience.

No reaction, just seeing as it actually is. As you start to do this, it results in, the fruit of that, is disenchantment and dispassion. So what is disenchantment? Disenchantment comes from the word nibbida. Nibbida means revulsion, but that gives the connotation that it is aversive in nature. Disenchantment is when you've had your fill, when you've had enough, right? Your mind has had enough of the formations coming up. Your mind has had enough of going down these rabbit holes of trying to figure out what's going on. Your mind has had enough of all kinds of perceptions arising and passing away. And so because of that, it becomes tired of it. Where you experience this first and foremost is in life.

And that is also another level of some vega. You become disenchanted with the world. You say, you know, there's got to be more to this life. There's got to be more to just doing what I'm doing. You know, more to me than just my job and my career and my relationships and all of these things. There's got to be something else. in the Upanisa Sutta or in these links of transcendental dependent origination. So this disenchantment in the meditation is where your mind becomes less and less enchanted by things, less and less interested in things. That is why I say if your mind is a quiet mind, if your mind is neither perception nor non-perception, experience different kinds of formations coming up.

And you notice your mind starting to get distracted by that. Or you notice your mind starting to want to do something with it. You start to notice your mind enchanted by it. Then you take one step back. These links are conditioning the next arising of the links. So what does that mean? If you don't have enough disenchantment, gets too interested, too caught up in what's going on with the formations in quiet mind. What do you do? Go back one level. Go back to the previous one, which is equanimity. Go back to radiating equanimity. Okay, there's not enough equanimity in the mind. What do you do? Radiate joy. Okay, there's not enough joy. What do you do?

Radiate compassion. Fine, there's not enough compassion. What do you do? Radiate loving kindness. There's not enough loving kindness to radiate. What do you do? Cultivate loving kindness for yourself. Okay, there's not enough loving kindness for yourself. What do you do? Forgive yourself and forgive others. Okay, you can't do that. What do you do? Go for a walk.

Right? The answers are given to you through your practice. You have the tool set. You have all of the different kinds of mechanisms and tools and practices to deal with different kinds of situations. You just have to be able to discern what is required for that moment. And all that means is having that sati sampajanna, coming back to the present, waiting and seeing what is required in this moment. What is it that I have to let go? Or what is it that I don't have enough of to let me go to the next step? This is using investigation. This is the proper use of investigation. It doesn't mean you have to look for something. It doesn't mean you have to analyze something.

It doesn't mean you have to reflect on something. It means being present and open, asking the question and waiting for the answer. Being open to whatever answer arises. That is the utilization of your intuition. So this disenchantment, being the fruit of equanimity, gives rise to dispassion. So what does disenchantment feel like in the meditation? The mind becomes very still. The mind becomes very quiet. You're in the pabhassara citta, the luminous mind.

Where the mind is absolutely quiet and nothing is going on for a long period of time, and then there's a deeper level of stillness in the mind where everything seems like it's just frozen, nothing is going on at all. And here the mind is in the bubble of this dispassion, where nothing can penetrate through the mind through that bubble. Nothing sticks to the mind. The mind has Teflon around it. Whatever comes towards it, it just slides on, but without the mind engaging with it, there's no engagement with whatever is going on. The mind remains totally introverted. It folds in on itself completely and takes itself as the refuge. Then the mind starts to get into the signless, and the mind doesn't look for anything. As an animitta, it is content with just being aware, but not aware of anything in particular, in particular not even being aware of nothing, just pure

awareness. And then from that dispassion, you enter into vimutti. So this vimutti is cessation, the cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, or the cessation of certain fetters. So that means you have an attainment, you have an experience, and then the mind is free for a while. In reality, whenever you have a cessation experience which is followed by nibbana, or a fetter-breaking experience which is the entry into a path and the fruition of it, whenever you have that, in that moment when there is contact with the nibbana element for that moment, the mind is completely free of all fetters. Which means for that moment the mind experiences our hardship. However, because of the feeling of joy and relief and happiness and just overload of amazing feelings, that experience which is conditioned by the contact with the unconditioned, the mind craves for it and says, what was that? It identifies with it and says, I want more of that. Can I get some more, please? Yeah. And so then certain fetters come to be again. So sensual craving is still there, aversion might still be there, identification might still be

there, followed by nibbana. You enter the stream. You have let go of any doubt in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. That is the mirror of the Dhamma. How do you know somebody is a stream enterer? When they have total conviction in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. Everything else comes to follow that, which is the letting go of the belief in a personal self and the letting go of any clinging to rites and rituals with the idea that they will take you to full awakening.

So once you have this vimutti, it takes you into the next step, which is the knowledge or the reviewing knowledge of what has happened. And this can happen immediately where you notice something happened, something changed, something shifted. Or it can happen over a matter of days, weeks, months, even a whole year of noticing what kind of changes are happening in the mind.

Wow, the mind isn't reacting this way anymore. Wow, the mind doesn't get irritated by this anyway. Wow, the mind doesn't identify with this. That is why you give it some time to see how your mind responds in all varieties of situations. So that you can know for yourself, the mind can know for itself, indeed, this is the work that has been completed and this is the work that is yet to be completed. And if that's the case, what do you do? This whole process of the 11 links, you go back to what? You go back not to suffering. You go back to maintaining right view. You go back to maintaining your virtue. You go back to relishing in the Dhamma by listening to Dhamma talks, meditating, reading suttas, so on and so forth.

Having a sangha, a community of people, whether it's online or physical, where you can connect about the Dhamma together. And then that leads to further joy. That leads to further tranquility, that leads to further sukha, that leads to further collectedness, that leads to further insights into the three characteristics, that leads to further equanimity, further disenchantment, further dispassion. Another level of vimutti, another uncovering, another dropping of the fetters happens. And then you know for yourself. So this takes time. Not only does it take time, but just like any of the links of dependent origination, it happens at different levels. It can happen from lifetime to lifetime. It can happen from day to day or moment to moment, or it can happen immediately, right?

Each link succeeds the other immediately. And it can happen in the meditation. You start to see for yourself how this process works. So these are the tools that you have available for you in your daily life. You have to continue to make a commitment to keep the precepts. Every day you wake up, first thing you do is you take refuge and you take the precepts. It takes you no more than 10 minutes to do that, if at that. You do that and you go about your day. And you try to make the commitment to sit for however long you can. If it's only 30 minutes, it's only 30 minutes. If it's an hour, it's an hour.

If it's two hours, it's two hours. You just work with your schedule. One of the best things to do, in my experience and experience of a lot of other people, is as soon as you wake up, just sit down for meditation. That's it. Sit down to take the refuges, sit down to take the precepts and meditate. If you have 25 minutes, you have 20 minutes, fine. But you have done at least that much for the day. If the rest of the day is bombarded by all kinds of other things to do, that consistency in practice is key. That ability to have a disciplined routine of meditating first thing in the morning. You can notice for yourself, meditate three or four days in a row, and you miss out one day, how does that day feel like?

It doesn't go as smoothly as it would have if you had loving kindness, if you were cultivating the brahmaviharas, if you're staying in quiet mind. You notice that change. You notice that difference. So as you start to notice that difference, your mind says, what? I'm going to start to form this habit of meditating first thing in the morning. Of course, you work around your schedule. But the reason I say first thing in the morning is because you have no excuses there. You have to do it. Even before you brush your teeth or whatever. You just do that. I'll do it after I brush my teeth, after I have my first cup of tea, after I go for a walk.

Okay, you know what? I'm kind of late for work now, so I'm going to do it in the evening. You come back in the evening. You know what? I'm a little tired. I'm just going to sit around, watch TV, listen to the news or whatever it is. I'll do it before I go to sleep. Go to bed. You know what? I'm a little tired today.

Right? So all kinds of excuses start to build up. If you do it first thing in the morning, that's it, you've done it, at least you've done that. And what you will find, the beauty of that, is you enjoy doing it in the morning. You'll say, hey, I'm looking forward to when I can do it in the evening as well, because it becomes that much more pleasurable. It's like, wow, this was great in the morning, I can come back in the evening after my day has ended and just replenish my system. Another sit, maybe for half an hour, maybe for an hour, whatever seems to work. And then always try to see if you can find some days where you can be on retreat mode, which means maybe for a weekend, Saturday and Sunday, once a month or twice a month. You decide, I'm going to just shut off everything, disconnect from the world, and just be in retreat mode.

Maybe I'll listen to a couple of Dhamma talks, I'll read a couple of suttas. Most importantly, I will dedicate three, four, five, six hours of the day where I can do some real long sits for myself. And what does that do? Not only does it start to build your endurance to sit for longer, but it keeps the momentum for the rest of the week going, right? So that's another thing that you can do when you get off of retreat. Find days in the month where you can block off and say, this is my retreat time. I'm disconnecting from the world. And yeah, maybe if you want, you can do one or two physical retreats a year or one or two online retreats a year, just to take a complete break, nine or 10 day break from the world.

Completely fine. But if you do these things, that all helps with the meditation. Other things that help with the meditation is to be able to use right effort in your daily life. What is the point of getting into these verified, refined states of mind if you get pissed off at the other person, right? If you get saddened by something, if you get distracted by something, what is the point? Recognize when your mind starts to get distracted. When your mind starts to get agitated by something. And to let go of those unwholesome states. And to replace them with wholesome states of mind. It's as simple as saying, you're finding yourself getting agitated. And you're like, okay, I'm agitated.

I'm going to make it a point to relax. I'm going to come back to my smile if I can. And I'm going to bring up some equanimity in this moment. Or I'm just going to become more mindful of this moment and start to relax, tranquilize and relax. As you do this, you start to recondition your habit patterns in daily life too. You recondition your bhava. Your bhava are the habitual tendencies that you have. Habitual tendencies doesn't mean that they're just unwholesome. They can be wholesome as well. Instead of lashing out at the other person who gets upset at us, we can recondition that habitual tendency and say, I'm choosing to be silent in this moment.

And you know what that does? It starts to disarm the other person. It starts to make the other person be like, oh, I'm not getting the reaction that I usually get whenever I get upset by someone. You know, if I'm upset, I'm thinking about what my next mode of attack will be towards that person with my words.

But if this person is not reciprocating that, is not matching my energy? How do I deal with this? So if you are in silence and you don't react, that person starts to calm down. You're like, wait, what happened? Okay, maybe I'm overreacting here. Maybe I shouldn't have shouted at them. And then now the person starts to get a little bit more rational. Right? And then you have time to respond with compassion, with wisdom, with intuition, and being able to use the right that is appropriate for that situation or act in accordance with right action in that situation. So this is the practice. This is a lifelong practice. It's a lifestyle. The Eightfold Path is a lifestyle, and what you're doing every time you do this process, whether you know it or not, you are following the links of transcendental dependent origination and you are following the Eightfold Path.

Every time you choose to let go. If there's one thing to take away from this retreat, it is to be able to let go into the moment. Right? Let go of our preconceptions of what should be or what has to be. Let go of our ideas of the other person. Let go of our judgments. Let go of our concepts. Let go of whatever we think things have to be. And being open to the moment, open to the experience, and not taking ownership of it, not identifying with it, not saying this is me, mine, or myself. So that is the only thing you can take away. If that is the only thing you can take away, then that will be beautiful for you for the rest of your life. If you can just do this, that is being open to the moment and letting go of my reactivities, of my preconceptions and allowing intuition to come up. Everything else will take care of itself. Any questions? Thank you.