30 Oct 2021 Online Retreat Q & A #3

I'll go ahead. Okay, good. I was just about to comment and say, this is one of the things about being a guide, we'll ask anybody any questions and every, it's just pin drop silence every single time. Go ahead, please. Actually, I've got a couple of questions, and maybe first of all, thank you for the possibility to attend the retreat. Thank you for your efforts. Thank you, it was deep wisdom, maybe a different little bit of a different angle of view, and it was just very useful.

And I've got a question. Could you please explain, is it maybe the difference between self-retreat and guided online retreat, except direct teacher communication? Maybe a teacher does some special preparation or practice in order to give some additional merit to the students? And if so, maybe what is the best way to get this merit effectively from the teachers?

This is a question you should have asked at the beginning of the retreat. It would have been a very good question, but anyway. Well, really, yeah, the difference between a self-guided retreat and a guided retreat is really that you have the assistance of a guide who can help you, and you have the interviews, and you have the group Q&As, like we have now. This is the last one, so for this retreat. But they should be, that's really the only difference there should be in terms of meditation practice. I always recommend doing as much as you can, at the very least four hours during the day, and then going through the content, going through the books and things like that.

And if you want to have a good self-retreat, then really use the same parameters, use the same kinds of rules, let's say, or guidelines as for a normal retreat, whether that's actually physical or online guided retreats. What I mean by that is stay away from your phone, no internet, no TV, don't read any other books, and really spend more of your time on meditation. That's sitting meditation, walking meditation.

And let's say you do a seven or 10 day retreat, a self-guided retreat for yourself, that could be through Suttavada, could be just on your own. Try to build up to a point where you can meditate at least three to four hours of meditation in one sitting. That seems to be the magic number. That's one of the things I've been looking at here when shadowing Bhante with regards to the physical retreats he's been conducting.

Something happens at the three hour or four hour mark where the mind becomes so quiet that the conditions and the causes and conditions are right for the experience of cessation to happen. So having said that, I also want to put up that caveat of not pushing to that. Let the mind become comfortable with sitting for an hour, an hour and a half initially, and build your way up to 15 minute increments, 20 minute increments.

And then ultimately, I would say by the sixth or seventh day, you want to be able to meditate at least three hours, if not more, and that's really the standard, I would say, whether it's a self-retreat or a guided retreat. Thank you. To add, I would say that one important difference is that, I think, especially for people who feel a bit stuck in their practice, it might be more useful to do a guided retreat, because then you have someone who can look objectively at what is going on in the practice. Particularly when you feel stuck, there may be something that you are not seeing, and a guide may be able to observe what is going on. Yes, thank you. Yeah, thank you. My question is about the experience of meditating. If I have, I don't know what is piti and sukha, and I wonder if the out-of-body experience is piti, because sometimes I feel like

When I meditate, I become really big, like the volume of my body. I feel like from my eyes to the hand, the distance is actually longer than it actually is, and I wonder if that is piti, or so. Do you want to respond to this one? Um, I'm not sure. I would look more to what is the mental feeling you are experiencing. I would say that piti has often a bit more excitement in it, and sukha is more a comfort in the body. It's really the body feels really at ease and relaxed. But as to the feeling that the body elongates, I'm not sure. Actually, I think I would say maybe that's really referring to possibly the expansiveness of the body that can happen.

As your mind becomes more and more tranquil, you kind of start to lose connection with the body. You kind of start to lose physical feeling in the body as you get into a more tranquil mind, into a more collected mind. So, as still rightly said, piti is more energetic in nature. It's more vibratory, so it's just that happiness that you get, that joy that you get, and it's an excited kind of joy. And sukha is more tranquil, it's more of a comfort in the body, which means

that can also translate to a sort of loss of feeling in the body, and that doesn't mean that it's a complete loss of feeling in the body. If there's contact with the body you will feel it, but otherwise it's like you're not really feeling the body anymore. Other than that, and then sukha is also like when you draw a warm bath and you sit in the warm bath and it's just very comfortable. That's really the feeling of sukha. But you should also notice that, or you should also make a note

that these things are secondary to the practice, whether it's the expansiveness in the body, whether it's the piti, whether it's the sukha. What's really important here is to see how long you were able to stay with your objective meditation before it became distracted, and then when it did become distracted, how did you deal with it, namely how did you use the 6R's? Bob, you're uncharacteristically silent this time. What happened?

I'm just listening. It's all good. I appreciate your answers. I like what you said about the self-guided retreat, and it actually was exactly what I was wanting to hear. I wanted to compliment you on the book. I've started delving into it, and it's quite encyclopedic, so there's a lot of information to take in. But I'm kind of looking forward to using it in an ongoing fashion, and really just kind of stretching out this retreat to keep going in retreat on my own moving forward. So that's why I appreciate the comment that you made.

is it cold there yeah it's not it's now in the 20s it's gone down to the 20s fahrenheit so when i walk out of the when i walk out of the cabin to go to the bathroom i have to make all kinds of preparations i have to wear three layers wear my scarf and then my gloves and then my cap all just to go to the bathroom i have one more question yes um when when the feeling of meta is there in a chest but then the hindron still coming up so i can i experience both at the same time is that possible

No, the mind only experiences one thing at a time. Always the sensation is here, but then the mental is a kind of trip to thinking and doubt. - What kind of hindrance are you experiencing? Or what kind of- - Doubt, I think. - Doubt. - So if you- - Actually not doubt, but then thought, kind of like, for example, if I think of my spiritual friend, and then starting to think about what they're doing and how I'm gonna talk to them, and things like that.

It's like, but the feeling is still there. So that kind of, yeah, when you notice that the mind starts to think about these things, what's really happening is there's some proliferation going on. So, just soften and relax, do the 6R's, and then come back just to the feeling. You want to stay just with the feeling of the spiritual friend, however you'd like to visualize a spiritual friend, or how would you like to keep the spiritual friend in the heart and continue staying with loving-kindness and the spiritual friend? That's more than enough if your mind starts to deviate towards thinking about what they're doing or how they're feeling, and so on and so forth.

then you might feel good about it, no doubt, you might feel good about it, but ultimately the mind is no longer on the object, strictly speaking, which is the metta, whether it's to yourself or to the spiritual friend. So if you notice that those thoughts are in the background, like your collectedness or your attention is collected around the metta, but then you might start to think about this here, but it's not taking your attention completely away from the metta, then that's fine, because those thoughts will go away. But then if you start to notice that you've got into a rolling of thoughts of different things about your spiritual friend and you're no longer on the object, then that's the time when you recognize to do the 6R's and return back to the loving-kindness. I have trouble really returning back to the feeling of metta, because I think it takes a long time for me to drop that proliferation and go back, and it takes longer than I thought sometimes.

Yeah, it'll take however long it'll take for you to recognize it. Every time you recognize it, it makes it easier, it makes it smoother, and it takes less and less time. The recommendation here is, if you're able to return to the object of meditation upon recognizing, you're only doing two steps of that whole process, and it's very crucial to actually do the whole process of the 6R's, because when you do that, when you recognize, you're stopping the hindrance right there and then, and that's good. When you take your attention away from it, you're no longer feeding that hindrance. You're no longer feeding that destruction with your attention. When you relax, you are letting go of any of those formations that had arisen based on those hindrances.

And then when you smile, it brings up a more uplifted mind. And then you return and you have the mind that is collected around this object. So it's crucial to actually do each step of the process. And remember, it's not like you have to stay on one step for too long. Just in the seeing of it, in the recognizing, you recognize, you let go, you relax, you smile, and you return. So that should take no more than three or four seconds, really. It's a flow. You just notice and you do the whole process. But I would not recommend at all that if you notice, you recognize, and you just come back to the object of meditation. And really what that's doing is it's suppressing the hindrance every time you do that, instead of dealing with it and letting it come. When you say letting it go, do you go back to seeing my

Like, how do you actually send the metta to the person? Like, do you say a thing, like say a sentence, or in your mind, or just keep that feeling and keep the person? I'm just not so clear about it. When I say let go, I'm not referring to the metta. When I say let go, I'm referring to the hindrance, meaning relaxing. But when you return, when you return back to the metta, it's just coming back to the feeling. If it helps for you to be able to verbalize just one time, and then feeling comes up, then stay with the feeling or the verbalizing.

But if it's easy for you to just come back to the feeling, because you will know what that feeling is, and that's why you do the smile, because the smile is an anchor to the loving kindness. It's an anchor to kusala feelings. It's an anchor to wholesome feelings, whether it's compassion or loving kindness or whatever it might be. But in this case, for you, the anchor is to stay with loving kindness through the smile. So the smile uplifts the mind. It starts to generate metta again, and you feel that feeling and stay with it. But if it takes a little more effort by coming back to the verbalizing of the metta, meaning, you know, "May I be happy," or telling your spiritual friend, "May you be happy," and so on, if that helps, then do that. But at a certain point you're not going to have to do that again. You just have to, you're going to be able to just stay with the feeling by recognizing what that feeling actually is, experienced like it's felt like. Thank you.

Delson, can you give some explanation to how, when one is in a nothingness and then that transition into the quiet mind, how that happened and how that feels like? Yeah. So when you're in nothingness, really what's going on is you're radiating equanimity, feeling of equanimity. And what happens is, and the way I suggest it is, when you're sending out, when you're radiating or sending out equanimity in all directions, it's like looking at the mind like the surface of a lake and just having the intention of sending out that equanimity. Just as you drop a little pebble into the surface of the lake, it starts to ripple and create these waves. So in the same way, that's how you're just looking at your intention of staying with that radiating of metta or equanimity, sorry, and the equanimity continues on, and you're just watching how that equanimity continues on, and then it might fade away for a bit, and then you do it again.

And it continues to go on, and you're just observing how that radiating is going on, and it might stop again. Eventually what you'll notice is, if you start to intend to send the equanimity again, there might be a little tension. You might feel a slight tension or resistance in the mind to do it, and that's indicative of the fact that the mind has now come to a very subtle point in the practice, where it just wants to rest in itself. And that resting in itself is mind watching mind. That resting in itself is the quiet mind. It's a deep level of collectedness, where there's nothing going on there now, and there's no action being taken except for just observing the mind itself. It feels very bright, it feels very relaxed, it feels very quiet. There's no vibrations going on at all. And when you get into the quiet mind, at that point you might notice tiny vibrations, and all you do at that point when you notice the tiny vibrations is to just

let them go, to release them, relax them, and every time you notice a vibration like that, you just stay with that quiet mind. Eventually you start to notice there are even levels of quiet mind, and what that means is, for a little bit it's kind of fuzzy, and there might be different kinds of proto-thoughts in the form of disconnected thoughts or images or patterns and things like that. But eventually even that just completely dies down as you let go of them, and it's just utterly quiet, and eventually that quiet mind becomes so subtle as an object that it's not even grasped on, and the mind is just very

very much, almost, in an objectless meditation, and that's where we go into the territory of the signless state. And it's not important right now to recognize where you're at in terms of the signless state of the quiet mind. Eventually you'll be able to see it, but the more important part about this is to be able to recognize any time a vibration comes up and to let it go. Some of those vibrations will be related to conceit. It'll be related to the "I am," and then you just let that go. And you might notice, when you're in quiet mind, that eventually the mind kind of gets bored of it, and this boredom is a natural consequence of tranquilizing this mind to such an extent, because the mind is used to having a lot of different kinds of activities

It's used to having a lot of different kinds of stimulation from the five physical senses or just within itself, and so it'll throw up different kinds of things. It'll throw up all kinds of ideas, and maybe even past-life memories or concepts, and it'll start to deviate the attention towards going into that direction. When that happens, the restlessness is arising because of that boredom. That's when you start to use the enlightenment factors to balance things out, which is you use the tranquility factor, you use the mindfulness factor, of course, you use the tranquility factor, and use the equanimity and collectedness factor.

When you notice that, because of the boredom, instead the mind starts to become dull, and you might even come to a point where you just doze off and you don't even realize you dozed off, or the mind is just very dull. The recognition of that is certain thoughts start to creep in, and you realize that you're no longer on your object of meditation, and the mind just isn't collected enough, and it becomes very dull, and very, very unclear. So when you see that, then you need to bring up a little bit more interest in paying attention to the quiet mind. You have to bring up a little bit more joyful interest, and that starts to balance things up when you have some energy and you have some understanding of what's going on

with mindfulness as the base. When you do that, you come back to the object. So all you're doing really is kind of adjusting the lens, the focal lens of your attention, whether it's becoming too loose, and so you have sloth and torpor, or it's becoming too tight, and therefore you have restlessness. So in short, the difference really is: in nothingness you're radiating equanimity, and in quiet mind, mind is just resting in itself, so to speak, and eventually even that fades away, and you enter cessation.

Thank you, Delson. I have one more practical question. Yes. And it kind of relates to the ongoing practice. When I get up in the morning, I like to get up and just go to my meditation chair and start meditating. I've heard Bhante and David kind of counsel: get up, wash your face, whatever, brush your teeth, go get breakfast if you want, do something else, and then go and sit down and meditate, which I don't do, just because it feels like I take in too much, whatever, during that process, versus just going and sitting down. So I was just going to see what your thoughts or advice were regarding that. It really is dependent on what works for you.

I can understand why Bhante or David would say that, because for some people, coming out of sleep and then going back into meditation might not be the best sit for them necessarily, because there might still be some sloth and torpor, there might still be some sleepiness and things like that. So just to get things going, in terms of just going, freshening up, and even just washing your face might be enough, just to get the body moving, and then coming back to sit. I would suggest maybe just doing that. But if for yourself, in your personal case, let's say it works that you come out of sleep and you go and sit and it works, then that's fine too.

If you use the example of the Buddha, according to his so-called routine, he would wake up and then actually go and wash his face and do all of his morning routine, and then come down and come back and sit, and then radiate compassion or whatever it is. But it's different for different people. So whatever works for you, you should see what works for you. Experiment and see if, after going through a process of freshening up, and then maybe having breakfast, and then coming and sitting, it's different than when you just wake up and then go and sit. Then when you just wake up, wash, and then go and sit, so experiment and see what works for you. All right, thank you very much.

Maybe one more question about how to implement the meditation into the ordinary life, because three, four hours meditation is most possible to do for every day. Maybe some suggestions about, yeah, I would say first and foremost, when you come out of, let's say, retreat, don't let the planning mind, don't let the mind that says I have to do this, I have to do that, get in the way. Just observe how mind responds to situations, observe how things are going. And the second part of that is smile. Keep smiling. Every time you smile you have an uplifted mind, and every time you have an uplifted mind your mind is mindful. Every time your mind is mindful your mind is also becoming collected, so that means that every time you smile you're actually meditating, you're actually becoming more collected in your ability to observe how mind's attention moves.

The other part of it is, if there's one day or two days, let's say there's a weekend or whatever day works for you where you're off, schedule off your work, and have time to yourself on those days, be able to meditate for three, four, five, six hours. Whatever works for you. Because that creates a momentum for the rest of the week. It helps you to continue to practice deeper and deeper. And if you're depending on your schedule, if it works for you to do it in the mornings or in the evenings on work days, after you come back from work or before you go to work, if you can meditate for at least an hour, that would be recommended, an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, that would be even better. But see what works for your schedule, and keep smiling. That's the most crucial part, is to keep smiling.

Thank you. Do I have a question? Buddha said that he has knowledge about his own multiple lives and other things, multiple lives, and then I was curious about where that information is stored and how did he access it? Oh, where is the information or the memories of those past lives stored? Is that the question? Yes. And also, I would like to understand, maybe he's his own memory, maybe he has his own memory, but what about how would he know about other beings' past lives? Yeah, in the case of knowing one's own past lives, what you're dealing with is formations.

That's why when you're in the eighth jhana, that's why when you're in neither perception and non-perception, what happens is sometimes people have memories of past lives, like they say they see things in their mind which they don't recognize, it's like it was from a past life, and the reason is because formations are arising and starting to show up, these packets of memories. So these memories are stored, so to speak, the storage device for that is the formations, the sankharas. And so the way to access past lives is to first of all get into the fourth jhana and start to remember certain things and allow that remembering process to continue.

In the reverse order, so what you did for today, what you did yesterday, certain things come up, and then what happens is you're starting to access certain formations that give rise to those memories or the experience of those memories, and eventually it comes to a point where you start to look at things in a more rapid manner, because it starts to rewind, if you will, different stages in your life in this present life and even previous lives, later or before. And the key here is to understand that not all the things that you're going to see are necessarily going to be vital or important. They're just going to be there, and they're going to show you a deeper understanding of dependent origination. Some people go into past lives out of curiosity, to see, maybe I was so and so at this point in time, and these kinds of things, but the real reason why you would go into these kinds of states or understanding past lives is to get a deeper understanding of how karma works, get a deeper understanding that certain choices create certain situations and create certain intentions.

And those are stored in formations, and those formations then give rise to more situations and more choices, and so on and so forth, and in that process you're starting to see how dependent origination works. That's the case for somebody who wants to see their own past lives through the process of accessing the formations, the sankaras. Now, for a being who's able to, like the Buddha, who's able to see other people's past lives, it is starting to get into the territory of psychic faculties. So what they're doing there is there comes a point where you can start to see different streams of karma, and it can be visualized in different ways, but you start to see for yourself if you make a certain choice it can lead in a certain direction, and this is where psychic faculties come into play, because then the mind places its mind on another being's mind. So it's a level of, let's say

reading a person's mind or mindset and starting to understand the choices that they've made, independent upon the choices that they've made, what choices are potentially going to be made for their future, as well as what choices they've made previously, and then leading that, going back in that same fashion, to be able to see what formations arose to give those choices, and then what formations arose dependent upon previous choices in that person's life or in that person's previous lifetimes. So in one of the daily notes, and then, yeah, you said you mentioned that upon death, or our own death, and then we had a chance of kind of seeing the refreshing, like flashing of our own life, but what you described about earlier, about how if we were wanting to assess it

Like, right now we want to assess the past life, it sounds like a bit more effort needs to be put in. So what's the difference between now and that time of death? That is, because at death there's the body, the aggregate, is not there to maybe become a blockage or hindrance to, so that makes it easier to access what this whole life is all about, the memory. In the case of the first case, where you're doing a practice where you're looking at different lives, there is an effort in so far as going into the fourth jhana and then making the intention to see. But then you're just observing how things are going.

At the point of death, it's automatic. It's like, how do you, unless you're doing lucid dreaming, for example, how are you able to control that, what dreams arise and so on and so forth. In the same way, at the moment of death, whatever thought arises happens automatically. If I was to ask you now, and I'm borrowing this from a friend, from Kuhn, which is if I ask you now to think of your next thought, would you know exactly what your next thought is going to be? No, you're not able to know it, because it's just a series of causes and consequences that give rise to the next thought, but you won't be able to effectively know. Anyone wouldn't be able to effectively know what the next thought is going to be, but it happens.

Seemingly automatic, dependent upon causes and conditions. So in the case of, let's say, somebody dying or somebody who has a near-death experience, it just happens through that series of causes and conditions without any intention there. It happens, where for example there might be a life review, and so your life flashes before your eyes, as they say, and that's an automatic process, in the same way as a dream might come up automatically in your sleep. But the intention that comes up is dependent upon how you take what you're seeing. So if there's an intention to grasp onto one of those things at the moment of death, that's liable to cause craving, which is liable to cause further rebirth.

So it is automatic, or automated, in the case of death. But in the case of reviewing your past lives as an exercise, as a meditative practice, there's effort and intention there. I just want to follow up with Stella. When you're explaining about that experience of seeing your life flashing in front of your eyes, I'm not sure whether it's my lucid dream or what it is, but I saw everything that happened before me, the memory that I completely forgot, and it's just in front of me and it's so fast.

And then I don't feel, I don't feel it's my life at all. It's like watching someone else live. I don't see the idea of self in there, and then it's go back to the point where I see just like a dna floating, and then I'm starting, and then that's suddenly the scene of self, kind of, kind of conceit or something, kind of coming up, and then I could, I feel like I could choose whether to float along with it and choose to get out of it, and then I, because of conceit, I get out of it. So I just wonder what that was. That's basically a couple of things. One is that's an experience, a certain level of experience of anatta. You're able to see the impersonal nature when you're just seeing, when it's mind just watching mind, and you're sharpening your mindfulness by being able to, let's say, access the different memories. One of the key understandings of seeing how your mindfulness is becoming sharper

is if your memory is sharper too, if your memory becomes sharper and you're able to start to remember things that you long for god or start to remember things that never came up in quite some time, then your mindfulness has become sharper. Your ability to observe how the attention is moving becomes sharper. As an exercise, I would say, if you want you can do that, but there's not real benefit except for understanding the impersonal nature of things. But if you do this practice the way it's laid out in terms of the meta, and then later on when you do other things, it's very much of a gentle approach, because when you start to get into where you're starting to see the aggregates and you're starting to see the dna of the aggregates and all of those other things, that's all well and good, but it can be disconcerting at a point, because if the mind is not ready to experience anatta, it can jolt at and get into levels of depersonalization.

and levels of derealization and even make it feel like it's an aversive experience. I'm not saying that you might have had that experience, but I'm just saying just be cautious when you start to have those experiences and don't get attached to them. Don't allow the mind to make it a big deal because then it will cause that experience to become a source of attachment for the mind as well. Everything that you observe, everything that you see, is already not self. Anything that you can observe is not me, not I, not myself. It is just another... that's the truth of the nature of reality. Even Nibbana itself is not self. But the point here is make sure that the mind doesn't delve so deep that it starts to become analytical and starts to become investigative in this process, because that's where the mind is liable to create experiences of derealization and depersonalization, and those kinds of experiences can be disconcerting to people.

So just know it to be an experience of anatta and let it go and continue on with the practice. Thank you. Sorry Delson, can you explain what's the realization, what's the other word, that two words that you just talked about? Yeah, depersonalization and derealization. It's a state of mind which is almost like you're watching things from a television. Like you have this really strange, very nervous, anxious state of mind where you think, okay, this isn't real, and you're starting to try to look for something that is real. It can be a very disconcerting state. Depersonalization

is where you know that okay, there's no self, but there's an aversion there because now the mind is trying to hold on to itself, and that's based on the conceit. But that can become a root of anxiety, that can become a root of restlessness. That's why I say if you notice that, just let that go. Don't make it a big deal. Derealization is where you see everything as being not real, like you're trying to even when you're holding on to something, even if you're trying to eat food or trying to engage with the senses, there's no experience going on there. It can be disconcerting for some people. A lot of people

they explain it in a way where it's like, like I said, it's like they're watching a television show. It's as if they're in a television show and they're watching it through some kind of tunnel vision or some kind of a filter, and none of this is real, and even their body isn't real, and all of these things. And yes, you do experience this in the meditation practice, but it's done in a gentler, much softer way. Whereas if you're kind of jolted into this experience, then it causes anxiety, then it causes resistance and restlessness. Listen, no, what did I do to be like that? Because I have no idea what I do, and I don't want to do it again, like to get into that. This, you know, just like, I have no idea why it's happened.

And it happens because the mind lets go, continues to let go, and starts to get a deeper level of other experiences. It just has a realization and insight that comes out of seemingly nowhere, but it's just because the causes and conditions are right for that experience, and it happens through a process of releasing. So if you're just letting go and just observing the impersonal nature of things, not taking them to be self, it becomes deeper and deeper and you're able to see that. So do you want to add anything to that? No, I think this is a great explanation. Well, maybe one thing. It's very interesting talking about past lives and things like that, but first of all, for certain experiences it's best to have a certain level of equanimity so that the mind is not that easily shaken. And also, all these insights are really

great in in a sense and they are really uh adding wisdom to intellectual knowledge but like delson said you you have to let them go it's good to contemplate after the meditation for instance hey what happened here and then uh let it go and just continue to practice because the ultimate experience that we can experience is becoming an arahant and everything else fades in comparison um can i have one more question oh i just wonder whether it's um is it's beneficial to to realize what you are in your practice like first channel second channel fourth channel or we just just just keep meditating and experience um thing along the way and not just not worry about all that and yeah yeah uh it doesn't matter i mean you know because there's a couple of reasons i say it doesn't matter one is if you get to start to really recognize you're in this channel or that channel it can be liable to create

some kind of conceit around that, some kind of pride around that, and then you don't move forward because you really enjoy that. And secondly, it can create doubts, because if the teacher tells you you're in the jhana, and you say, oh well, I don't know if I'm in that channel, I don't know if I'm really actually experiencing that. And then the third reason I would say not to care about it is because ultimately jhanas themselves can be sources of attachment, very very very very subtle sources of attachment, even though they're very pleasant and they're wholesome and they're super mundane in the experience. They're still conditioned. So it's not completely

necessary for you to know where you're at until a certain level, until a certain point, where then you know, the teacher or the guide will tell you, this is where you're at, now congratulations, now move on to whatever else is going on. And then later on, when you have a level of experience and level of mastery, then you can go into doing determinations and being able to start to deepen your understanding of each of the jhanas and so on. But if you're starting out on this path, it's definitely encouraged that you just continue, and the teacher will let you know when they are able to know, based on your reports, based on your interviews, what you're saying, how long you've been on the object, what are certain kinds of factors that are being presented based on what you're saying,

then they can tell you, okay, well you're here now, and then I'm going to give you further instructions. Delson, I listened to one of your talks and I was kind of curious about this question. I think you briefly mentioned about Nibbana. Is Nibbana, my question is, is Nibbana a realm by itself? No, it's not around. It's not a realm, it's not a state, it's not an object, it's not anything, and it's not nothing. But for sure it's not a realm, because as soon as you call it a realm, it means that it's another conditioned experience that you have to go through. But Nibbana itself is the unconditioned. It happens when you completely let go of everything, and whenever it happens, it will happen, and you experience the result of that Nibbana experience, which is the joy and the relief and so on. And there's a lot of different, let's say, I think there's like

at least 33, if I'm not mistaken, 33 different descriptions of Nibbana, but they're all within the realm of language. You know, Nibbana is the far shore. It's the other shore. It's the island. It's the ultimate happiness. All kinds of ways of explaining it, but it's just pointing to what that is, and really what it's pointing to is the experience right after the experience of Nibbana itself. So Nibbana is not within the realms, which are all part of conditioned existence, but nor is it outside of the scope of experience. It is some kind of an experience, but you can only look at it when you review it, when you reflect on it. The mind immediately recognizes it as having experienced Nibbana. Nibbana happens when the mind is able to see the links of dependent origination without attachment, and because of no attachment, no clinging, through non-grasping, to any of the links of dependent origination.

There is Nibbana, there is liberation of the mind. So a lot of times you'll read in the suttas, his taints were destroyed, or he or she became liberated through non-grasping. What that's pointing out to is when you get to that level, where you come out of cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness, you see the links of dependent origination, but you see them in such a way that there's no identification with them, there's no personalizing them, there's no clinging to them, there's no reaction to them. And because of that, because there's no reaction, there's no fuel. There is complete quenching of those fires related to clinging, related to craving, related to conceit, related to identification and ignorance. And because of that quenching, which is really what Nibbana is, Nibbana is the no fire. But I also interpret Nibbana as being no longer in the forest

So ni means no, and bana can also mean fire, so it's the quenching of the fire, quenching of the fires of greed, hatred and delusion. But it's also coming out of the forest of samsara, so to speak, coming out of the forest of conditioned experience. So ni meaning no and bana meaning force, so coming out of that forest. Another way to experience and understand it is also that the forest being made up of wood, which is for the fire, there's no longer any fuel. There's no fuel for further existence. There's no longer any fuel for further grasping, for further craving, and so on. So actually it doesn't matter what the attainment is. When the mind experiences Nibbana, in that process there is no craving. In the process there is no conceit, there is no ignorance. What is happening later is because of the feeling

Based on that contact with the nirvana experience, if that feeling is taken to be myself or mine, then there's conceit that arises again. If that feeling is taken to be, you know, something wonderful to incline the mind towards, then there's some kind of craving, subtle craving, there. So another experience, another way of explaining this process, is known as the three kinds of contact: the signless contact, the empty contact and the undirected contact. What that means is you're making contact, the nibbana element is made contact with, when the mind experiences this whole process. And so this contact is not conditioned. It's signless, meaning it's not taking anything as an object. It's empty because it's empty of any kind of sense of self. There, I am not experiencing nirvana; there is only the experience of nirvana happening. And that contact is also undirected. I'm not intending towards nirvana. It's a natural process in which the mind inclines towards seclusion, inclines towards solitude, hence inclines towards nirvana. So, in short, nirvana is not irrelevant.

Okay, thank you. I was wondering if that 36 description of the nirvana is in one of the particular references of his, across different suttas? Yeah, I can look at it. Yeah, there's a couple of references to nibbana as being a realm, but it's not really specifically saying that. It's really saying there's that dimension of experience that is beyond earth, beyond the four great elements, beyond contact, feeling, perception, beyond conditioned existence. I can't tell you right off, right out of my mind, what exactly those sutta references are, but I'm sure later on we can probably add them to the description or in the comments, so you can take a look at it when this video gets published. Sure. Thank you very much.

Sorry, I have a last question here. It's about the cosmology. I know that you talk about the vertical world system versus the horizontal world system. So to understand that, is this also possible? I was thinking about the horizontal world system: is it possible that in other worlds, right now, there's another living Buddha that is teaching, that actually comes from the Mahayana tradition? I remember there's a story in the Mahayana tradition, I think it comes from specifically Chinese Mahayana. There's a text called the, hopefully I'm not butchering the word, the Avatamsaka something, which is basically the Flower Garden, Flower Garland Sutra, but it's a Mahayana text.

And what it talks about is where Moggallana... well, it's interesting, so it's not this Moggallana that we understand from the suttas. It's a Moggallana from a different galaxy who ventures from that galaxy to here to speak with the current Buddha, which is Shakyamuni Buddha and Siddhartha Gotama Buddha. So that's a Mahayana idea, but within the Theravada experience the idea is, even in the horizontal, if you go all the way as much as you can in infinite space, you won't find another Buddha. So what that's really emphasizing is the special nature, or the uniqueness, the blessedness of the fact that there is a Buddha who came on this planet, in this galaxy, in this star field, in this system, and no other Buddhas are present anywhere else. I mean, that's quite a way to look at it, to see how fortunate beings are. First of all, they took birth on this planet where there was a Buddha that set foot on this planet, in that particular part that's called India.

Well, Nepal, in India. But the idea is that if you were to look, on a horizontal scale, for another Buddha, even if there was another Buddha, you probably would not find that Buddha, because the mind of the Buddha, or the mind of the arahant, is not discernible. Even the gods and the devas and the brahmas and Mara obviously are not able to actually do a full universal scan and find any of the consciousness of an arahant present. I mean, if an arahant is not able to be discoverable, imagine the Buddha. So that would be my answer about that, how Moggallana might find the Buddha.

Found the Buddha. This is the Mahayana. This is the Mahayana understanding, which is Moggallana was told by that other galactic Buddha that there is another Buddha present here, and so you can go and travel to this star system and meet with that Buddha. So he was, for lack of a better word, an alien Buddha, and an alien Moggallana who came onto this planet to meet with, you know, Gotama. Yeah, thank you very much for the answer. So within our world system, is that the same samsara? Since samsara is once world system has one samsara. So if we're here in this world system, that is samsara, but it's not possible for us to go to another world system, another samsara? Or is it horizontally transferable?

When we talk about samsara, it's not just on the level of the vertical planes but even the horizontal level as well. So the way to understand it, they call it the cakkavala system, or cakkavala, which is world systems, and there can be one world system, a thousand world system, and a ten thousand world system. And there's another sutta that I recall from either the Anguttara Nikaya. I'm going to have to find it, and then when I find it we can put it up as a link in the comments. But in that, the Buddha is talking about how in this particular world system we have our hell realms, we have our animal realms, we have our hungry ghost realms, and then we have our deva realms, and brahma realms, and so on.

But that's in just this world system. And then when you talk about the 10,000 world systems, there's 10,000 different kinds of hell. There's 10,000 brahma realms, there's 10,000 deva realms, 10,000 arupa realms. But all of that consists of samsara. So samsara is not limited to just one world system or 10,000 world systems, but it is, in essence, encompassing even all multiverses, so to speak.

So that means it doesn't matter how many world systems, there's only one samsara? Yes. Thank you. Any last questions about samsara and nibbana? Is samsara permanent? And then the thing inside samsara is impermanent, and nibbana itself is permanent. Samsara has no beginning. I mean, the Buddha has described samsara as being beginningless, but samsara is conditioned. It's still conditioned existence. So your experience of samsara, or our experience, let's say, of samsara through the five aggregates, is impermanent. So samsara will continue on until there are no more beings taking birth, but so long as there are beings taking birth, there's so long as there is karma to be played out, so long as there's craving.

Samsara will continue on, but nibbana is outside of the realm of samsara. It's outside of the scope of any kind of conditioned experience. So that is why nibbana can also be understood as being permanent. But when I say permanent, when we say permanent, it doesn't mean that it's some kind of permanent consciousness. What it's talking about really is the unshakable deliverance of mind. It's permanent in the context of the fact that you will no longer return back to samsara. When you experience arahatship, you will no longer experience suffering beyond the five aggregates, meaning after the five aggregates are dissolved, that's it. That's basically it. There's no coming back to any new being, and therefore there is no renewal of being, there's no renewal of birth, and so it's irreversible enlightenment, so to speak. Irreversible.

Awakening to that extent. When we say nibbana is permanent, we're talking about it in that context. Maybe also that the Buddha describes impermanence in two different ways. He talks about it, on the one hand, that it doesn't exist forever, but he also describes it as subject to change. And when you look at samsara, for instance, there are constantly beings entering and, to a smaller amount, leaving samsara because of arahantship. So samsara is not really one solid thing, but it's also subject to change all the time.

Yes, okay, let's share some merit. Yes, before we do that, I want to thank you all for being in this retreat. As a guide, it was a really lovely experience to get acquainted with all of you and giving some nudges here and there. We don't have real limitations to how many retreats you can do with Suttavada, but we do give priority to people who have not done a retreat with us before. But usually there are places left, and you can join however often you want. I want to thank Delson and Kuhn and Kin and the entire Suttavada team for making this all possible. It's a really beautiful experience to be able to do this work in the Dhamma, so thank you. And thank you to Syl for all the guidance that she's provided. You're welcome. Okay, may suffering once be suffering free, and the fear-struck fearless be, may the grieving shed 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.