Day 4 'The Higher Jhanas (5-8)+Nibbana" - Progressing on the Path to Nibbana-Excellent

So just to recap, in order for us to experience jhana, we need to have a good foundation of sila, proper ethics. And so when we take the precepts in the morning, it is not just a ritual. It is a practice of the mind. It's a practice of steadying our behavior so that we have no regrets and our mind is easily collected. And jhanas essentially arise when the hindrances have been let go of. There are no hindrances present. And to some degree or another, these awakening factors are present: mindfulness, discernment, energy, joy, tranquility, collectedness, and equanimity. And they cycle through the mind as we get deeper and deeper. So we go through the first jhana, which has five factors.

The vitika and vichara, which is the bringing up of the object and placing the mind on the object, staying there. As a result of which, joy will arise. Sukha will arise, which is comfort in the body, of mind, where the attention is non-dispersed. And this results, the joy results, because there's relief from the hindrances, and the mind is collected into itself with an object of meditation that is the anchor for the mind's attention.

The second jhana has the disappearance of vitaka and vichara. You don't need to keep calling up the object of meditation. Now you have smooth self-confidence. You still have joy, you still have sukha. Third jhana, contentment, tranquility. The body starts to be almost boundless, boundaryless. You start to lose sense of where the body is, where it ends and where it begins.

Fourth jhana, purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. So now you've cycled through the enlightenment factors, and there is strong equanimity, and the mindfulness is unwavering. And at this point, the physical formations have ceased in so far as contact with the body is concerned. So now we get into the territory of what is commonly known as the arupajhanas, but really, technically, they are called ayatanas. That means a sphere or a dimension or a place.

And there are four ayatanas which are under the territory of the fourth jhana. So in reality there are only these four jhanas. And then the four ayatanas are an extension of the fourth jhana. So the limit of brahmaviharas, right? Loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity. Loving-kindness is what we start with for ourselves for the first 10 minutes and then for our spiritual friend.

As we progress through this practice, we go through the jhanas. Now, as we're going through the jhanas, what happens is the loving-kindness starts to become more expansive. And we may even feel the loving-kindness going up into the head. And that's just because the feeling of loving-kindness is expanding and we're losing contact with the body. At that point, the mind is unwavering and has a lot of deep equanimity and very good mindfulness.

At some point, you will be instructed to then pervade one quarter, a second quarter, a third quarter, a fourth quarter, as below, so above, as to oneself, as to all, so to all, this loving kindness. In other words, radiating loving kindness. And we are sending this loving kindness out in different directions to all beings indiscriminately. And this loving kindness, or the expansion of loving kindness, becomes stronger. And we experience the first arupajhana, the first ayatana, which is infinite space.

This is a boundless space, no boundaries. So at this point, it can happen that loving kindness also changes. The feeling of loving-kindness changes. And it changes into what is known as compassion. Karuna. What is compassion in practical terms? Compassion is the recognition of the suffering of others and the wish that they be free of suffering. This is why we say, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering. May all beings be well, may all beings be happy.

May all beings be filled with loving kindness. If we want to start with compassion, we may say for ourselves, may I be free of suffering. May I recognize the suffering of others. May I be filled with compassion. May others be free of suffering. May they be filled with compassion. And so this compassion is possible for us to be experienced from the first jhana to the second jhana, to the third jhana, to the fourth jhana, all the way up to infinite space.

There is a sutta called the Metta Sahagata Sutta, in which the Buddha says the limits of loving kindness are the beautiful. another way of explaining the fourth jhana. And he says the limits of compassion is infinite space, which means we can experience compassion all the way up to infinite space. At this point, we have lost touch with the body.

As Bhante would like to say and admonish the people, loving-kindness back down. You don't have a body at that point. It feels like you don't. At that point it feels like your awareness is beyond the body. And so when we send loving-kindness at this point, or when we send compassion at this point, the loving-kindness will change. The compassion will be softer. It will be gentler. It will have a very diffused kind of feeling.

And so it will feel spacious. We may start off with the six directions and then all directions at the same time. And at that point, we may encompass all beings here in this hall with loving kindness. And we may extend that outward, with that loving kindness or with that compassion, going outward to this entire center. And that all beings in this forest experience that.

And we keep that going. There are some people who are more visual. So for them, it's easy to see the forest outward, to see beyond the forest, see the town, the county, all of these different labels. But if you're not visually oriented, you may just experience the spaciousness, and primarily the spaciousness, which is to say you may experience like you are just continuing, your mind is continuing to expand, expand, expand. And that it's encompassing at one point the entire world indiscriminately to all beings. It doesn't matter who it is, what it is, where it is. All beings will feel this wish that they be free of suffering.

That's why we are here. At some point we made certain intentions, and those intentions may have been wholesome or unwholesome. We identified with those intentions. In the purview of rebirth, we were sent onward into this life because of certain unfulfilled desires, because of certain regrets, because of a desire to experience certain things again, and so on and so forth, all due to our karmic intentions, the karmic propulsion of craving for something, or having aversion towards something, towards a bad memory, or whatever it is. Because in our final moments, those come up and then project outward into the next life.

And so all beings that are here have come here because of some choices, some intentions, some reactions, some responses. And all beings are suffering at one level or the other. If we can truly recognize this, we go beyond the labels of, you know, evil and good from our perspective, from our clinging to views and opinions. If we can go beyond the labels of race and sex and gender and politics, and all of these things are essentially just man-made concepts.

Go beyond all concepts and come to the truth, the reality, that ultimately we share one commonality, which is that we are all suffering. It doesn't matter if we're humans, or if there are dogs, or cats, or snakes, birds, hungry ghosts, devas, demons, whatever it is. All are suffering, all are burning with desire, with craving. And this recognition allows us to not have sympathy, not have any kind of pity for them, but true compassion.

I sit with you in your suffering. And I do not look to save you, because I am here to support you in your own self-salvation. The Buddha said in his final words, be an island unto yourself. Be your own refuge. So we may be there for the people in our lives we have connections with, emotional connections with, relationships with, whatever connection it is that we have.

Or even just random strangers. And they may need just to be heard. Being able to just hear out what they have to say is an act of compassion. You don't even have to do anything as such, solutions, doesn't matter. But by allowing them to speak and unburden, and you being there as somebody compassionate enough to listen, not taking on their pain, not taking on their suffering, but just being present and having that presence for them.

So we must practice this more and more and more. We need to let go of any kind of ideologies and, you know, war, and this is this and that's this. This is opinion about this. This is an opinion about that. My God is better than your God, and all of these other things that humans have been fighting for for tens of thousands of years.

To what avail? So the recognition of this allows us to have free-flowing compassion. All deserve compassion, no matter who or what. And so this indiscriminate sending out, radiating of compassion, results in, or is in tandem with, the infinite space. That's what we call the first arupajhana. And then at a certain point, that space is filled with our awareness, with our consciousness.

As the Buddha would say, he realizes that consciousness is infinite, because the meditator changes or shifts their attention from the space that's there to the awareness that fills that space. And at this point, what can happen, not necessarily, but what can happen, is that the mind experiences what's known as mudita, empathetic joy. What is empathetic joy? So if loving-kindness was, may all beings be happy, and compassion is, may all beings be free, then mudita is, may all beings celebrate in the release from suffering.

You have sent out the wish that all beings be free of suffering. And there are some beings who may be free of some levels of suffering. And so what can we do? We can celebrate with them. This is what we talk about when we say empathetic joy. Jealousy and envy. Jealousy and envy come from a sense of lack, from insecurity. We talked about greed earlier this morning.

But when we are fulfilled, when we have the foundation of loving-kindness, the foundation of compassion, the foundation of empathetic joy, then we actually are happy, genuinely happy, for the success of other people, other beings. And this experience in the mind is of soft, gentle joy. It's not so exuberant. It's very soft. It's very gentle. It's like, yes, I'm so happy for you.

I'm happy for all beings that are experiencing, in whatever moments they are, the cessation of suffering. The ayatana of infinite consciousness. It can be in tandem to infinite consciousness. So what happens in infinite consciousness? At some level, the awareness expands outward and fills up that infinite space. And so one knows consciousness is infinite. But it goes or can go even deeper than this.

At this point, we experience the arising and passing away of contact, through any of the sixth sense bases. Generally for people, they can be in the mind's eye. They may experience light from corners. They may experience sparkles. They may experience dazzling kinds of lights coming and going, flickers in their mind's eye. Or they may hear sounds. They may hear flickering in their ears. Phantom smells.

They may feel electricity through the body. Or they may start to see when thoughts do arise in the background that they slow down significantly so that you can see the space between two thoughts. And you should understand that these jhanas and these ayatanas are available to you even when you're doing your walking meditation. And I can testify to this from my own experience.

When I was doing my first and only twin retreat with David, back whenever that was, 2016, I was experiencing infinite consciousness. And at one point, I was living in San Diego at the time, I was walking into the kitchen and this is what I saw. It was like my visual field had slowed down. And I started to see the gaps between the action of people who were in the kitchen. It was like everything was under a strobe light and you could see every other movement.

And in your mind's eye, this happens as well. What's happening or what feels like what is happening is like the film reel of consciousness is slowing down. And we start to see the gaps or we start to see the individual frames. The arising and passing away. More recently, I was telling you about looking at the hummingbirds. You stand still and you watch the hummingbirds and you see their fluttering wings.

If you are truly in infinite consciousness, you will be able to see, if you direct your mind, individual fluttering of wings of the hummingbirds. This is a very trippy experience, to say the least. And it is essentially showing you, giving you the direct experience of the three characteristics. Because you are seeing the contact arising and passing away internally, is that there is an arising and passing away, which means there is an impermanence, an instability in this experience.

And after you see this for a while, after you experience this for a while, you start to see how boring it is, how tiring it is, and that's the suffering. And then you also see, if you pay attention, that there's no one controlling this process. It is happening due to whatever causes and conditions are present. And so you are seeing this as an impersonal process, having a direct realization of anatta, not self.

So after a while, when you start to see this, you start to see the gaps between the film reels contact or consciousness. And eventually, you get into this field or this space. And for some people, it's utter darkness. And for some people, it's just utter whiteness. It's just this blank that they're aware of. And this is what is known as the ayatana of no-thingness. The mind is no longer interested in anything. Only aware of no thing. Nothing there.

And tying to this can be the experience of the brahmavihara of equanimity. What is equanimity? Equanimity comes from the word upekkha. Race very closely tied to the word upekkha. Expectation. An upekkha would be without expectation. A mind that remains undisturbed because it is not looking forward, it's not looking backward, and when it is just present, it's not even identifying with anything.

And so, this experience of equanimity feels in the mind like tranquility, calmness, coolness, like the surface of a very still lake. And so you may experience some of these states, and you may not, and it's okay. Don't worry about where you're at, whether you're actually experiencing all of these things. I'm just giving you a good idea of the map. You may skip over infinite consciousness. Sometimes you may skip over nothingness.

Sometimes you may not experience the mudita. You may just go into upekkha and experience equanimity. And so, what is this equanimity? How do we bring up this equanimity if we wanted to when we start off our practice where we left off, if it was an equanimity? Well, like in mudita, I would say, may I be happy, may I experience the joy of the cessation of other suffering, may I celebrate in others' joy, may others experience this joy, I would say for equanimity, may I experience tranquility, may I be free of any attachments to one side or the other, may I be filled with equanimity, may my mind

be tranquil. You may say that for others. May others be filled with equanimity. May they experience tranquility. May they experience calm and collectedness. And after a while, as you're experiencing this nothingness, things become very quiet, or can become quiet. There may be still very small snippets of things happening in the background, little wisps here and there. But generally, it's pretty quiet and for a good while.

And you're sending this equanimity outward. But at a certain point, it feels like even trying to send anything out is creating tension. And so the mind just stays in itself. The mind decides, I'm not going to do anything. And now you are in just mind. We call that quiet mind, but sometimes it's not altogether quiet. Sometimes there's still things going on.

And in this space, the mind isn't radiating anything anymore. It just remains with itself. It is centered in itself. It's not looking outward, it's not looking inward, it's just remaining still, stable. And at this point, there may come certain wisps of images. It may feel like you are in a hypnagogic space. Weird images, lights, flickers. It's like your mind is making up things.

different patterns, colors, squiggly lines, thinking about the time and then equating that with something. It's just very odd thoughts that are happening in the background, which make no sense at all. And what we are starting to experience is what is known as the fourth ayatana, which is neither perception nor non-perception. What is perception? Perception is the mind or part of the mind that recognizes what it has experienced before.

For example, you see the shirt and you recognize the color of the shirt to be white. You can see that it's white. You don't even have to think about it because your memory informs the perception. So here there is neither recognition nor non-recognition. Things are coming and going in whatever way they're coming, but nothing makes sense. You are aware of what is arising, you are present to what is arising, but you can't exactly label or recognize what exactly is arising.

It's like you're having a dream while still awake. And this process of these formations come and go for a while. But you remain in the eye of the storm, which is the mind. You keep your attention stabilized in itself. And there's nothing for you to do here. This is my final advice to you guys when you get there. Don't do anything.

And it is so ironic because we all meditate to get a quiet mind. And as soon as we have a quiet mind, what can I do? Is there anything else left for me to do? So, remember these words, don't do anything when you're there. And after a while, the competuous formations, colors, patterns, and all of these things start to die away, and you're staying with just mind.

And sometimes, because nothing is going on for a long period of time, our minds are so used to having so much stimulation. It will feel bored. And in that boredom, it will create restlessness just to do something. Or it will have sloth and torpor. This is where the enlightenment factors come into place. When you have too much restlessness going on, you have a small intention of microdosing the mind with tranquility.

It's like you have a little drop of tranquility in the mind and you see that pervade through the mind. And wait and see, because at this point the mind is very sensitive. You start to see how the restlessness dies down, comes back into balance where it's in the quiet mind. If there's too much sloth and torpor, and you start to discern their sloth and torpor, you may bring a little dropper, a small microdose of joy, the intention of joy.

You start to see how that brightens the mind slowly, and it comes back into balance, where the mind is quiet, stable. Stay on for too long in this way. And sometimes there is expectation. Expectation of what? Something is around the corner. I can feel it. My mind is sinking, sinking. Oh, something's happening. Right? That's the expectation, the anticipation.

Something good is going to happen right now. And so what do we do there? We try to relax that and come back. Sometimes that works and sometimes it's difficult because our mind is already excited by the anticipation. So what do you do? You go back to radiating equanimity, or some drops of equanimity into the stillness of the mind that's like a lake on the surface of the mind. And you see how those ripples of equanimity pervade the mind.

And it goes away. So you drop another piece of equanimity, a pebble of equanimity, and it radiates again, pervading the mind for a little while. And then it becomes soft and gentle and still. So you do it again. But this time maybe the mind says, no, I'm good. I'm okay with staying here in this quiet space. So you stay here.

And the mind experiences contentment. It's happy to be where it is. Not bored. No expectations. And you sink deeper and deeper and deeper. Sometimes what can happen is you feel scared. You may feel scared. You may feel agitated. You think you're hearing your heartbeat. You think you're hearing heavy breathing. And you feel like something's going wrong. Nothing's going wrong.

This is the sense of self that is clinging for dear life, because it thinks that it's going to be gone. So when you have that experience, what do you do? Go back to equanimity. Little droplets, little pebbles of equanimity again. See how that ripples through the mind, starts to soften the mind, starts to calm the system down again, and you're there in quietude once again.

Now, you may have to redo this cycle a few times, maybe a dozen times, maybe ten dozen times. But you know what happens when you do this? Your mind naturally develops something else, which is known as disenchantment. At this point, no matter what formations come up in the mind, the mind remains within the eye of the storm. It's no longer interested. It's no longer enchanted, ensnared by this or that. It has had enough. It's like the usual example I give. Since you're here, I'll give you that example. Somebody here loves strawberry ice cream, and

They're given a bowl of strawberry ice cream. I know for this person it's impossible to experience this, but still, when it comes to strawberry ice cream. And they eat the strawberry ice cream, and they love it, and they enjoy it, and people want to be generous, and they give another bowl of strawberry ice cream. And they eat that strawberry ice cream, and they're like, wow, this is great. I feel so full right now. I feel satisfied.

But craving sets in, bowl available of strawberry ice cream, and so they eat that bowl of strawberry ice cream, but now they're feeling, okay, this is enough. The fourth bowl comes, and now they're like, no, I can't even see strawberry ice cream. This is disenchantment. I've seen enough formations. I've seen enough of the boredom. I've seen enough of the anticipation.

I don't care anymore. I don't even care for liberation. I'm just going to sit here and relax in this mind. Total disenchantment. And so this may occur for a little while and then leads into what is known as dispassion, detachment. A mind that is disengaged from all experience. Nothing sticks in the mind anymore. And a beautiful image of this, I love to quote this movie because it's such a beautiful scene.

There's a movie in the, I think, mid to late 90s called Little Buddha. And there's a scene of the Bodhisattva under the Bodhi tree. He's meditating, and Mara's armies... First, Mara tempts him with his daughters, with greed, hatred, and delusion. And the Buddha, or the Bodhisattva, remains equanimous. And he has disenchantment. And then Mara's armies, he launches his armies, and the armies launch 10,000 arrows of fire towards him as he's meditating. And what does he do?

He has this kind of like a force field around him representing his mind that is quiet and calm and collected. And each of those 10,000 arrows goes and crosses that force field and transforms into flowers on the ground. Nothing sticks in the mind. You don't even have to deflect anything. The mind just remains here. Whatever comes, comes. Whatever goes, goes. And whatever comes as well is just there, is transformed in its own way, and goes. You don't have to do anything there.

And at a certain point, the mind may experience that even this quietude feels a little too tense. And so you feel like you don't even need the mind. You remain just in pure, signless, empty awareness. You don't reify anything. You don't objectify anything. You don't want even the mind as an object. And you have undirectedness, your intention doesn't go anywhere. You may stay here for a while, you may recognize this space, or you may not, and it's okay, but it will be there at some point in time.

And because there is no more fuel, and the way this looks like is when you have this signlessness, signless collectiveness of mind, it's like having a flashlight and pointing it to the sky, up into space, and imagine there was no star, no meteorite, no comet, no asteroid, nothing to deflect that light or for that light to land on anything.

And so your mind remains, the awareness remains that way. It doesn't land on anything. No formations for that light to land upon, to land upon. Eventually the batteries in that flashlight run out. And the light switches off. And because there are no more formations in the mind for the mind to cling to, and there's no anticipation, there's no expectation, the mind ceases: the sensation of perception and feeling. Nirodha. The Nirodha of perception and feeling. That is sanna and vedana. No more experience in the mind. It's like there is a gap in your perceptual awareness. There is footage missing in the film reel and the continuity of your mind.

And what can happen at that point is the mind emerges bright and clear, full of relief and joy. In that moment, it would have touched the Nibbana element. And it can happen that some people may see certain flashes, certain lines, whatever it might be, because the mind will interpret it the way it will interpret it. And this is the turning on of mental formations.

And this is the reboot of the links of dependent origination, seeing with wisdom. This is how wisdom arises and is established in the mind. And you may experience this and you may not. It doesn't really matter, because it's all about letting go of expectations. Doing this process of equanimity, quiet mind, then the mind becomes disenchanted, doesn't care about any formations, dispassionate, nothing sticks, signless, doesn't want to meditate on anything, just this pure signless collectiveness of mind. And then, when you least expect it, there is this shift, a small gap in the continuity of mind and in the emergence of joy and relief unlike you have ever experienced. Things in your perceptual awareness will change for a little while.

Colors will be brighter. Sharper. It's like you're looking at everything in 16K. Ultra high definition. Beyond. And so you may report this to me. And you may say, I've had this experience. And I'll say, great. Keep going. That's it. It's no big deal. There's no need to make it into something more than it actually is. There's no need to be super excited about it. It's a wonderful experience. It's wonderful to have. But the moment we say, oh, this is amazing, this is wonderful, what happens? We want to repeat it. And when we want to repeat it, we anticipate even further.

Now, is it going to happen as I've described it? Maybe. Or maybe there may be some variations. It doesn't matter. I'm just giving you a certain path or map that allows you to see what can happen on this retreat. What it requires is our dedication to let go of our desire to control how the meditation should go.

And it requires our dedication to sit for longer, as long as you can. Because when you do this, you are giving enough space for the mind to declutter, to detach, to disengage, and to quieten down. And you're giving more periods of time available for that quietude to persist for longer. But do it at whatever works for you.

There's no point in breaking your back doing this. Make small adjustments to your posture so that you can sit for longer periods of time. So this is the path to Nibbana. Also a book written by David Johnson, which leads you to, of course, A Mind Without Craving, written by yours truly. That's it. That's the plug for the retreat. I think that's enough for you guys. of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu.