Day 4 Right Effort - 7 Enlightenment Factors -June Retreat at DSMC

Yesterday we spoke about the Eightfold Path. And we talked about how the Eightfold Path is fundamental, is essential for us to make progress with practice, with our meditation. And we pretty much covered the sila aspect of the Eightfold Path. We talked about right view and right intention, which really are about panna, and you'll see how that happens as we get through this process. But right view, you need to have the right view. You need to have the right vision. You need to have the right perspective and understand what it is that we're doing here and why we're doing it. Right view helps to bring the right perspective, and the right intention, which leads to and is part of panna, is part of wisdom.

Right speech, right action, and right livelihood, those are all part of sila, part of ethics. Without ethics, without sila, samadhi cannot be perfected, cannot be cultivated. And so, samadhi entails three components. Right effort, right mindfulness, and right collectedness. In Majjhima Nikaya 44, it could be 43, it's mentioned that the equipment for meditation, the equipment for practice, meditation practice, is right effort and right mindfulness.

So for right collectedness to happen, we need the right effort and right mindfulness. So today we'll explore what is right effort. What do we mean by right effort? In the suttas, there are many ways in which we can consider right effort. But the standard way of doing it is to simplify it and see it as eradicating and abandoning the unwholesome and cultivating and developing the wholesome.

That's really what it is. The feeling, the painful feeling, observe the arising and passing away of whatever is happening as part of the meditation. Or they may say, just note what is going on. Here is pain, or here is pleasure, here is this thought, here is this distraction, here is whatever it might be. But that doesn't fulfill right effort.

And some people may criticize that and say, well, aren't we just pushing away the unwholesome? Aren't we just ignoring or being indifferent to the unwholesome by abandoning it? Should we not give more attention to it? Should we not see it? Should we not analyze it? Should we not, whatever it is that they say. Well, we can do all that. We can, that's what psychiatry is all about, right? Look into your problems. Let's discuss your problems.

Let's talk about it. Let's do this. Let's explore. Let's do that. Let's analyze. And you might feel better for a while because you're talking about it. You're releasing tension. You're releasing stress. But the more you talk about it, the more it becomes ingrained in the mind. In experience, all you're doing is fueling it with your attention. But that's the recognizing aspect. That's the aspect that's the first right effort.

We should not miss the second, third, and fourth aspects of right effort. It's okay to note here is a hindrance. It's okay to note here is a painful feeling. But continuously paying attention to it, it's not serving you. Because we may mistake insights arising from just observing the feeling and pain as coming from observing, but the insights that arise are coming because the mind wants to distract itself from the painful feeling. Come up with different things. This is what it is. So when you observe without perception, that's one thing.

In other words, when you observe without analysis, it's one thing. But when you observe, things come up to take you away from that painful feeling. Oh, it's impermanent. Oh, it's this. Oh, it's that. So you're not actually fully observing it. My point here is that it's okay to recognize and see that feeling. But to do anything beyond that, which is to keep observing it, I should say, to keep observing it, it's not going to do anything for you.

Once you have recognized here is a painful feeling, here is a hindrance, here is a distraction, it continues to be there so long as the mind's attention feeds it. And so the second right effort is to abandon that unwholesome state by redirecting the attention away from that state. That is what we do when we release and relax.

We release the thought and we relax any tightness and tension that's holding on to that thought or resulting from the craving that thought, to abandon that unwholesome state. And then we generate a wholesome state. So in generating that wholesome state, how do we do it? Once we've relaxed, the mind without craving, the mind without any tension, the mind without any clinging, the mind without any resistance is in of itself a wholesome state of mind to be in. When you've relaxed, your mind experiences wholesomeness, is liberated in that moment.

And the smile that arises when you make the effort to smile, when you have the intention to smile, is directing the mind towards the wholesome by returning back to the object, whether it's loving-kindness, compassion, joy, or equanimity. Therein is the entirety of the practice that the Buddha has laid out. These four right efforts. There is a sutta called the Great Forty. And in there, the Buddha talks about. And he says, in order for us to go from wrong intention to right intention, we need the right view. We need to know what is the difference between what is right and wrong.

We need the mindfulness, the observation, the ability to see how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. And we need the right effort to abandon the wrong intention, the wrong action, the wrong livelihood, the wrong whatever it is. And then generate the right to incline the mind to the right, to that which is aligned towards Nibbana. So today I want to explore with you what is the wholesome and what is the unwholesome context of practice.

So first let's talk about the unwholesome. Let's understand what we mean by unwholesome states of mind. Akusala. That which leads you away from the liberation of mind. And there are five main unwholesome states which we call the hindrances. The five hindrances. Now, we may look at many different kinds of distractions, but they may all fall under the different broad categories of these five hindrances.

What are the five hindrances? Sensual craving, aversion, restlessness, sloth and torpor, and doubt. Or sensual desire. Let's say you're sitting in meditation and you smell a wonderful fragrance coming from the flowers and your mind starts to go in that direction. Your attention goes to that and now the fragrance of the flowers reminds you of a time when somebody gave you those flowers and then your mind jumps to the person, and then the mind jumps to what that person said, and then the mind jumps to what somebody else said that was similar to what that person said, and then your mind jumps to, and then your mind jumps to, and then your mind jumps to.

It all started with that sensual experience. Excuse me. So, sensual desire can happen in many different ways. Obviously, in meditation, you're here on the chair or on the cushion, and there's very little sensual activity going on. In fact, the first jhana, which we'll discuss at some point, is the withdrawing from sensual pleasures. But yet, there are certain sense experiences that may come up.

And when the mind goes in that direction of that sensual experience, something triggers a cascading of thoughts, emotions, and concepts. That process of cascading is dependent origination. There was the contact with that particular object, and then there was an experience. And the mind, in that moment, losing mindfulness, or not having strong enough mindfulness, identifying with that experience, that this is pleasing to me, this is unpleasant to me, this I am.

And from there, all kinds of suffering can arise, from clinging to becoming, to many different things. So sensual craving, as we've discussed before, can arise when the mind is orientated towards the pursuit of sensual pleasures. So when we talk about breaking the precept of sensual or sexual misconduct, it's because the mind becomes inflamed by the pursuit of that experience and strengthens that hindrance, the formations, the sankharas or samskaras, the mental impressions, the building blocks, the proto-thoughts that generate up into and bubble up as a thought of sensual desire. And then from there we get distracted, and we get further distracted, and we get further distracted. And we are now in the land of mental proliferation.

Our mind is now thinking about this or that. Same thing happens with aversion. We are sitting in our chair, sitting on the cushion, and everything is going really great. The mind is very quiet. The mind is experiencing bliss. The mind is experiencing joy. The mind is experiencing deep equanimity. Or so we think, because somebody opens the door a little too loudly, and that makes contact with their ear.

And we think, couldn't that person be more mindful? Couldn't that person be more quiet? Or we may hear the lawnmower going off. We may hear the dogs barking. Kinds of things. And we've thought that our mind is well collected. But now it's got distracted by this sound. Rather than allowing that sound to move through us, move through the mind, see it for what it is, that it is just a sound.

We take that sound personally and we get irritated and frustrated and we have aversion. So then another thought arises, and another thought arises, and now we are flummoxed in this mental proliferation of aversion. Then there's something called restlessness. Actually, it's restlessness and remorse, these two things, restlessness and remorse. Restlessness is, simply put, anxiety about the future. Remorse is regret of the past.

We are thinking about things that happened to us in the past. This is the nature of the mind. This is the nature of what happens when you meditate. When you meditate, the mind is getting quieter, or the noise of the outside world starts to dim enough for all the horrors of the mind to come up and show itself. So we experience fear, we experience anxiety, we experience regret, we experience anger. Something comes up that happened 20 years ago by somebody. Somebody said something to us and we realize we still haven't forgiven them.

Or we are afraid of the future. Maybe we read something on the news before we came here and now it's haunting us and we're thinking about our security, whatever kind of security that is, physical, financial, whatever. Or it could just be a sense of impending doom. All kinds of thoughts come up from the mind. The mind is a great magician.

It provides all kinds of illusions. And the world that we think we live in, the life we think that we're leading, is nothing but mind-made. The so-called matrix that we live in, the interface of that is the mind and the sense basis. And so the mind, all it does is taking up or taking in the impressions of the senses and then recreating that same picture over and over and over. And we have no control over it. Controller there.

The challenge and the cause of suffering is the identification with the continuous replaying of sense impressions in the mind. That's what it is. That's the craving. That it belongs to me. That I am the mind, that the mind is mine, that the mind is me. So the anxiety that comes up, what is it? It is just a series of thoughts that come up. Yes, of course, tandem to that or secondary to that, there are things that happen. We get sweaty palms, clammy hands, faster, and now we pay attention to those things, and we can get into a panic attack, we can get into anxiety. That's the extreme form.

But coming back to the moment, you know, when people experience anxiety, how do people deal with it? How does one bring a friend out of that anxiety? They do it by saying, what do you see? What do you experience right now? What are you experiencing here? Tell me what you're seeing. And by doing that, the mind starts to come back to the present.

It starts to get distracted, so to speak, from all those thoughts that make it anxious. So the coming back into the present moment, the reality is that whether you are thinking about the future or thinking about the past, you're still in the present. Can you choose to be fully in the present such that you don't replay past experiences or forecast future doom?

I think it's very much possible. That's what meditation helps us with. Every time we use right effort, that's what we're doing. We are cultivating mindfulness, which is the presence of mind in the here and now. What is happening here and now? What is the dhamma of this moment? What is the reality of this situation? What is the knowledge and vision of things as they actually are?

So restlessness and remorse, this is also a hindrance. It comes in many different forms, in many different ways. You think about the mind when you're walking around, when you're driving, when you're eating, when you're taking a shower, what's happening? The mind is going on autopilot. It's just thinking about this, that, or the other. Here is retraining the mind.

And it's not a 10-day process. It's a lifelong process of retraining the mind. The ability to observe what's happening in the mind is the beginning of mindfulness. The ability to bring space in the mind so that there is a separation, there is an unlatching of identity around those thoughts and ideas and concepts. So when we practice here, what we're practicing is learning how mind works.

That is what dependent origination is. Forget about the philosophical implications of dependent origination. Forget about the existential ideas of what dependent origination is with regards to rebirth and all of that. We'll visit all of that. But very plainly put, what dependent origination is, is the gateway for us to understand creates its own suffering. And how to reverse that process.

How to rectify it. Then we have something called sloth and torpor. Sloth and torpor. We've all experienced it the first couple of days of retreat. And it's okay. It's totally fine. You see, you go from an environment, let's say, where you've been traveling all day long. It's a bit stressful to the mind and body. And now you come and you sit.

The nervous system needs a reset. It needs some rest. So you will go through that process of resting. This is why I emphasize: make sure you get enough sleep. Make sure you're taking naps. And when I say nap, I'm saying 20-minute naps. Yeah, not a three-hour nap. Giving the body the rest it requires, giving it the exercise it requires, giving it the food and water it requires, essential elements to prepare for practice.

You see, that's what we're talking about when we say balance between the indulgent and the asceticism. We can keep the middle path of making sure our body has what it requires so that once it sits down, it's not thinking about food, it's not thinking about water. It's not thinking about surviving. It's only here, available to meditate and cultivate.

So sloth and torpor here, what do we mean by that, sloth and torpor? When you're sitting down for meditation, you have a certain intention to be with your object of meditation. And you're staying with it. And you're there for a while. And then before you know it, it's like your mind switched off for a moment. Your attention went somewhere else.

And it feels very heavy and groggy. And it's like, I thought I was meditating, but I don't feel light. I don't feel clear. There's a heaviness. There's a density to the mind. That's the sloth and torpor. A lot of people fight it by saying, I will push through it. I will get more meditation done. I'll get more concentration. I'll get this, that, and the other. And they're just met with a wall of sloth and torpor.

But there are ways to deal with it, which we will talk about now. And then the final hindrance that we talk about is something known as vichikiccha, which translates to doubt. What do we mean by doubt? You know, at one level, it can mean the doubt of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and Sangha, doubting in what the Buddha has offered, doubting in what the Dhamma is, doubting in what the Sangha is, these kinds of things. But for practical purposes, in the context of meditation.

Doubt is the inability to recognize or discern between what is wholesome and unwholesome. That's what doubt is. You're not sure of what state your mind is in. And sometimes that doubt proliferates into so much doubt of whether, am I really in loving kindness? Am I really experiencing jhana? Am I really experiencing relief? That's also doubt. Why doubt yourself?

That just comes from a sense of inadequacy. That's all. It just comes from a sense of, no, it can't be that easy. You have all the right causes and conditions and things are working out in the way that they're working out, go with it. Enjoy it. Accept it. So those are the unwholesome states of mind. Those are the hindrances.

And when we talk about the wholesome, a wholesome state of mind can be a feeling of loving kindness. It can be compassion. It can be joy. It can be a feeling of quietude. It can be all of these things. But in a more specific context, it's referring to what are known as the seven factors of awakening. What are the seven factors of awakening? Mindfulness, discernment, energy, joy, tranquility, equanimity.

What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is a big topic. It's a big subject. There's a very important sutta known as the Satipatthana Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 10, which goes through all of the different anchors of mindfulness, the four foundations of mindfulness. We'll visit that probably tomorrow. But when we talk about mindfulness, what are we saying? Mindfulness comes from the word sati, which comes from the Sanskrit smriti, which means memory.

So it means to remember, to recall, to recollect, to recognize. What are we remembering? What are we recollecting? What are we recognizing? We're remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. To simplify that, it's a combination of sati and sampajanna, which means I am aware of what's happening in the here and now, and I have clear comprehension of how that attention may be moving.

So as soon as you've recognized that your attention is no longer on its object, you've gained mindfulness. You've regained mindfulness. You've recollected that the mind's observation or mind's attention is no longer where it should be, where I intended it for it to be. From this mindfulness comes what's known as dhamma vichaya. And dhamma vichaya essentially usually is translated as investigation of states.

But in my mind personally, investigation has this quality of I need to investigate, I need to see into, I need to know, I need to observe what's going on. But it's as simple as discernment. It's as simple as understanding. It's as simple as knowing what is present and what is not present. That's what discernment is. From the discernment, there is something known as energy. Virya. This is what it's called. Virya. And Virya is strength, it's energy, it's effort.

When I recognize that in that moment, that my mind is no longer on its object, I now have mindfulness and I have discernment. Because what I have done is, I have seen that my mind was no longer on its object. So I know that my mind is distracted. That's the discernment. There is the mindfulness and there is a discernment.

Once I release the attention away from that distraction, once I release that thought and I relax, I have balanced my energy. My mind is no longer in the energy of that distraction. It is no longer in the energy of sensual craving or aversion or restlessness or sloth and torpor or doubt. I have brought it back to equilibrium.

So now we have mindfulness. We have investigation of states. We have energy. And then we have joy. So this is so important. Joy. Piti, as it's known in Pali. Priti, as it's known in Sanskrit. That which is dear. That which is desirable. Is that joy. If your meditation has no joy, then you're not meditating. Simple as that.

What do we mean by joy in this case? We're talking about the enjoyment of the process. When you come back to the smile, there is an upliftedness in the mind. There is a joy that arises. It doesn't need to be exuberant. It doesn't need to be fireworks. That we may have an idea of, a concept of, or that we might have read about, or somebody had talked about. It's as simple as the mind being uplifted.

Some people talk about joy as being warmth and heat in the body, or this exuberant state where the mind is so excited and happy, or blissed out. Those can happen. Those are great. Those are fine. But too much joy, and what happens? Agitation. That's why the jhana is so great. The experience of going through the jhanas is great because it's self-regulating.

The moment you try to go more after joy, what happens? There's craving. And now you're out of that jhana. And now you know, okay, I want that joy too much. Or when you bring too much concentration into that joy, what happens? Restlessness comes up. So now you know, okay, I'm out of that jhana. So you pull back a little bit.

So when we smile, the mind becomes uplifted. Now from that joy, what did we talk about? We talked about mindfulness, investigation of states, energy, joy, tranquility, passaddhi, passambhaya. This is also very, very crucial to the practice. A lot of people have this idea that when I sit for meditation, I have to sit on a hard platform, and I have to be disciplined, and I have to be very strong, and I have to be fierce, and I have to try hard. I have to be so tight with my posture and with my jaw and with everything.

And that creates restlessness. That creates over-concentration. That creates over-meditation. And so when you look at something like the Anapanasati Sutta or the Satipatthana Sutta, there is a word that the Buddha uses, passambhaya, which means to tranquilize. He tranquilizes bodily formations. He tranquilizes mental formations. It's as simple as softening, loosening up, letting go. Is that? When you hold on to something, there is muscle tension.

When you drop it, when you let it go, there is relief, there is relaxation there. Same thing is happening in the mind. So don't overlook the importance of relaxing. You're not going to get anywhere by becoming so concentrated on things. You're only going to suppress the mind. Suppress the hindrances. And when you suppress the hindrances, what happens? For that few hours, you may feel at peace. You may feel tranquil. You may feel like you're floating and all of these wonderful things. And then you make contact with a trigger. What happens?

All of those hindrances just come up, like a beach ball held down underwater. And then when you let go, it bounces right back up. So meditation here is not about suppression of hindrances. It's about learning where the attachments lie. It's learning where the triggers for identification arise so that I can let go of them gently. And I, in letting go of that, experience relief.

And the mind starts to incline towards that relief. People are very comfortable in their sorrow and lamentation and suffering. Because they have gotten used to it. They're very comfortable being in pain. They're very comfortable being unwholesome. It's harder to be wholesome than it is to be unwholesome in this world. But when you make the effort, the right effort, we will fail a thousand times.

But what matters is, do we keep trying? Do we keep going? Do we keep cultivating? Because the more we do it, the more we let go, the more we see things as they are, the more we are able to detect when the mind is entering into an unwholesome state, the easier it becomes for the mind to see the value in being. And it's like habituating the mind away from the unwholesome towards the wholesome.

And you don't even have to think about it anymore. What used to frustrate you before, what used to get you upset before, becomes, oh, maybe a little frustration comes up. Maybe you feel a little bit of that fire come up. But you have mindfulness and you see it and you're like, I see this. And you're able to let that go.

But it requires practice. It requires consistency. That is the right effort. So the tranquilizing is a relaxed step. That's what we're doing. Every time you relax, you notice how the mind becomes expansive, how the mind is free of any kind of identification in that moment. So from that tranquility, we have what is called samadhi, collectedness. A lot of people mistake samadhi for one-pointed absorption, that I must be completely singularly focused.

And actually, they find great pleasure in it. And they keep going into it and into it and into it. But there's no new personality change. There's no new behavioral change. Samadhi, as I said before the other day, samadhi is for the purpose of collecting the mind enough so that you can be aware of when triggers arise and be able to let them go.

You are clearing the muddied water. You are stilling the ripples on the surface of the lake so that the reflection of the moon can show itself clearly. So that insights can be cultivated and arise when the mind becomes still. Otherwise when we become singularly absorbed, then not even any insights can arise. But the insights come in real time.

You realize, ah, this is what's going on. And if I just let go and if I just relax, this is my state of mind. You see, your mind when you're meditating is a laboratory. You experiment. You balance the enlightenment factors, the awakening factors, and adjust as you need them based on what is arising, based on what's passing away, based on what is present and what is not present. And so when you return back to your object, that's the collectedness factor. And while you stay there for a while, your mind remains undisturbed, remains collected. And while you're going through that process of letting go using the six R's, you are developing equanimity.

You are developing upekkha. So mindfulness leads to discernment. Discernment leads to balance and energy. That balance and energy leads to joy. Joy leads to tranquility or vice versa. There's an interdependency there. That leads to collectedness, and collectedness leads to equanimity. When we talk about equanimity, it's a very marine space to be in. The mind isn't holding on to one thing or the other. It's not getting affected one way or the other. The mind doesn't remain indifferent to something. It is just observing.

It's the knowledge and vision of things as they actually are. The yatha bhuta nana dassanam, as it's known in Pali. Seeing things as they actually are. To the best of your ability. Now the beauty of this whole process with the enlightenment factors is that they are also antidotes to the hindrances themselves. When you talk about sensual desire, what is that sensual desire? We are finding something more interesting in the outside world than we are with what's going on in our mind. That's why the mind goes there.

But if you can bring inner joy, if you can bring inner interest in what's going on, whatever is happening in the outside world becomes less interesting. When we have aversion, where is that aversion coming from? It's coming from a desire for something. You want to be concentrated. You want to be collected. You want to have good meditation. And an obstacle comes in its way.

And then you have anger. And then you have aversion. But if you have equanimity, where you're like, whatever is happening moves right through you. You have equanimity where, okay, here is a disturbance. It's okay. It's fine. I can just let it go. Instead of making a fuss about it in the mind. Same with when you deal with restlessness.

When your mind is agitated, when your mind is restless, when your mind is bombarded by regret and remorse and guilt and shame and all of these things, then the agitation becomes overwhelming. So what do you need there? You need a mind that has at here when we look at the enlightenment factors is they are either energizing or relaxing. Like for example the joy and the investigation of states and the energy, those are all energizing. The tranquility, the collectedness, the equanimity, those are all tranquilizing. And so we balance based on whatever it is we require.

So when we have restlessness, what do we need? We need more tranquility. We need more collectedness. We need more equanimity. When we have sloth and torpor, what do we need? We need more energy. We need more joy. We need more interest. So sloth and torpor is a very interesting one. He says when you have sloth and torpor, maybe you go for a walk, splash cold water on your face and sit back down.

And he says ultimately if that doesn't work, then you need to go take a nap. Don't fight with it. You may need to just drive through the fog. You don't stop in the middle of the fog. You just go through it. You don't need to do a whole lot. Just the intention. It's like micro dosing. You don't need a lot.

So when you see you have sloth and torpor, what happens? You make an over adjustment and you say, I have to be more energized. I need more joy. And when you do that, then you go into restlessness. And then you say, okay, I need more relaxation. And you go back into sloth and torpor. This effect, this ping-pong effect.

So easy does it. Just little drops of it and just wait and watch how things change. Now with doubt, how do you deal with doubt? You don't know what state you're in in this moment. You don't know whether it's wholesome or unwholesome. All that requires is discernment. The ability to stop or pause, and let your intuition guide you.

The more you try to figure out what is going on in my mind, the more you are engaging with your analytical part of the mind. And that just leads to more confusion. But the more you relax and trust in the mind's ability to know what is wholesome and unwholesome, because it knows what is the benefit of the unwholesome. It knows what is the danger of the unwholesome. It recognizes the expansiveness of the wholesome.

It recognizes the constriction of the unwholesome. It recognizes the pleasantness of the wholesome and the unpleasantness of the unwholesome. So the discernment there is just to be aware and mindful and present. And then the mind will see, ah, right now I'm experiencing suffering. I'm experiencing a distractedness. Let go. Right now, I'm just in loving kindness. My mind is collected. My mind is quiet.

My mind is clear. My mind is light. No adjustments needed. That's enough. That's okay. Now the other part of the beauty of this is that when we are doing something like the six R's, as I've explained to you through this process, the enlightenment factors, the awakening factors, are present in them. So it's less about trying to intend what should be there and what shouldn't be there. But just by doing the six R's, just by letting go in that way, we are balancing the enlightenment factors.

When you get to those more highly refined states where the mind is very, very quiet, then you may consciously directly engage with some of the enlightenment factors. We will talk about that when we talk about jhanas. Ultimately, it's all about seeing whether the mind is collected and staying with its object or if it's distracted and experiencing suffering.

That's the mindfulness. That's the discernment. The adjustments that you make is the energy, the effort. And the rest follows suit. It seems like it's a linear process, where it's mindfulness to discernment to energy to joy to tranquility to collectedness to equanimity. There is a cyclical process going on, so the more mindful we become, the more aware we become. Everything else follows suit, and then that equanimity further strengthens that mindfulness. As this happens, under the hood, we don't need to observe everything. What's going on under the hood is in this present moment.

What you're facing and directly engaging with in this present moment. When that's happening, it further strengthens that cycle, and that's how jhana is developed. So that by the time you're in the fourth jhana, you have what is known as purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. Because by then the mindfulness becomes unwavering, and the equanimity is deep and strong enough to keep that mindfulness unwavering.

So I'll stop there and open it up for any questions. I have a question. Yeah. Because you've been doing this a long time, your attachment must be to the central world must be very little, right? Yeah, that's a good question. I love chocolate cake. But I'm off of chocolate cake for now. But what happens is it's not like you don't experience pleasure in the things that you enjoy. You still enjoy them. You still like them. You still have preferences. It's like, like I love Indian food. I prefer Indian food, obviously.

And if I know that we're going to be going out to an Indian restaurant, I look forward to it. But let's say that that restaurant is closed. Now, if I had attachment to Indian food in such a way that I get upset that that restaurant is closed, that's the attachment. But if that restaurant is closed and somebody suggests, let's go for Mexican, no big deal, let's do that.

So you'll still have preferences, you'll still have your likes and your dislikes, like you have preferences over one thing, over the other. But you won't have this sort of identity around it. Like, I need that. It needs to be a certain way. Things have to be a certain way. That starts to diminish and quiet down. So you walk through life with a certain level of, you can say, acceptance, but also a certain level of non-reactivity.

And you know when you should react or respond and when you just should be silent. So there is a sutta called the Penetrative Discourse. It's Anguttara Nikaya 6.63. And there the Buddha says, the pretty little things themselves are not the sensual pleasures. It's the intention rooted in craving that one must see. So a lot of people may interpret this. But the Buddha is saying that the sensual pleasures are not the problem. They will be there regardless.

It's how you relate to them, how you identify with them, or how you see through them. There's less tension around choices. There's less tension around what needs to be done and what should be done and what isn't done and all of these things. And you become more in tune with your intuition. So, you listen for a message.

This is what should be done in this moment. Then don't react. A lot of things are solved by not reacting. So this is how it happens. If there's nothing else, 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 power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu.