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

We can begin with tonight's question and answer session. Whoever would like to start can begin. About his full moon night, and even in Anupada Sutta or in definition of Samadhi, he never mentions any object, specific object. He just mentions the factors of the first jhana, second jhana, third jhana. Was he using his object or maybe? I don't know. What is it? From what I understand, the traditional story is that he, he reminisced about the time when he was a boy and he was sitting under the rose apple tree. And from what I understand, he took that as an object or at least as a way to get into an uplifted state. It's quite interesting.

There are a lot of different ways that the meditation process is described in different suttas. There is a sutta called the Bhikkhunis residence, which is in Anguttara Nikaya, and in there Ananda goes to visit the nuns and he asks them about their practice, and another then comes back and then talks to the Buddha, and the Buddha says, yes, there's a way of doing it where you have the four resting places of awareness, the four foundations of mindfulness. You're aware of body as body, mind as mind, sensations as sensations, mental contents as mental contents. And as you're aware of this, and when you start to get distracted, you bring up an uplifting object. This is what is known as development by application, according to the Buddha.

So in that sutta, he says, you bring up a wholesome object, an uplifting object. Once you bring up the uplifting object, you let go of anything related to it, meaning you let go of the image, the thought, the examination, the verbalization that led to that uplifting object, and stay with the awareness of that uplifting object. This is known as development by application. And then there's development without application, or the undirected meditation. And in this one, it's just resting mind's awareness on the four foundations of mindfulness. This, and then you can actually take the factors of the jhana as your object, meaning you can go through each jhana. This happens later when you make the determinations, when you're quite developed in your practice of the jhanas, and you can actually take the factors of the first jhana and be able to be in the first jhana just by intending it and making your object, so to speak, the factor of the first jhana.

Likewise with the second jhana, the third jhana, the fourth jhana, and then the higher dimensions of infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception, nor perception. So, as far as I know, and as little as I know about the suttas, I don't think the Buddha specifically mentioned anything related to taking an object for the jhanas. some suttas in which there's one specific sutta in fact it is one of the suttas in this curriculum for the retreat and i cannot tell you by memory what exactly the name of the sutta is i think it's something like related to metta and in that the buddha is talking about the different jhanas and then he's talking about how each of the brahma viharas is sort of tied to uh each of the higher dimensions of infinite space infinite consciousness nothingness and neither perception or non-perception so he talks about loving kindness with the first four jhanas and then he talks about compassion with infinite space i believe and he talks about empathetic joy with infinite consciousness and he talks about equanimity with nothingness so and then this is also in relation to the seven factors of awakening.

As far as object of meditation is concerned, all you need to know is once you have your object of meditation, whatever it is, it's important to be with it, to stay unified around it so that you can continue to be in that jhana. That's a way for the mind to be tied with the present moment and aware of what is happening in the present moment, while allowing the mind to start to develop through that awareness the different factors of the jhana and then experience it one by one as they arise. Thank you. You said some object he took as a child. I didn't listen to it properly. Yeah, I was saying, I think the traditional story is, and I may be mistaken, that he pondered back when he was a child and he was sitting under the rose apple tree.

And he was thinking about how happy he was in that state. This was at a time when I think his father was visiting someplace, and he sat at the foot of the tree, and he remembered how easy his mind was while he was meditating. And he then contemplated, what if I were to do that again? I believe before his enlightenment. And then he used that same process to get into this jhana with that ease of mind. Thank you. You're welcome.

How you deal with recognizing them without necessary. I think sometimes I still have a bit of difficulty with that, and then I'm in high jhana and I think, oh, that's this. Yeah, yeah. I just want to make sure I heard you correctly, because it froze for a couple of seconds, but what you're asking is how you can be aware of the factors of the jhana while you're in the jhana? Is that the question, without verbalizing necessarily? Without verbalizing. Yeah. Yes. So it's something similar to how you do the 6R's process. When you're doing the 6R's process, right, you recognize that you were distracted, but you don't say, I'm recognizing now, or you don't say verbally, recognize, but you don't say the rest of the steps in that way. So it's more about when you recognize it. It's just the mind understanding it.

It understands it in a way without words. So it's just like, okay, this is the factor. It might seem like it's verbalizing, but it's just a recognition that happens. And that recognition is really perception. Perception of the factors of the jhana. It's like when you see the color blue, that's one of the examples that I use. When you see the color blue, your mind doesn't necessarily say that's the color blue, that that's blue without verbalizing that that's

blue, so it's practice basically. It is like the 6R's practice, but remember, when you're having that open awareness you're able to be unified around the object. Your mind is open. Your mind is not closed off, it's not contracted, it's open, and therefore it's able to be observing other things around the object. So when the factors of the jhana come about, this is one of the reasons why, for example, when during the interview, one will ask you, did you feel this, did you feel that, you're able to recognize that yes, there was some change in the quality of the feeling, or there was a sensation arising, or things like that. When you're able to notice those things, it's because the awareness is open, and because while you're aware around the object, around the feeling, it's also open to any insights that might arise, and it's open enough to be able to see a hindrance arising and being able to recognize it as quickly as possible, and then using the 6R's process.

So the more you're able to do that, the more you'll recognize, oh, this is the factor involved in the fifth jhana or the fourth jhana. This is the factor that's involved in infinite space, and so on. Thank you. I'm sorry. Go ahead. You go ahead. Now I'm seeing it a little bit wrong. I just want to know the importantness of yoniso manasikara. I don't know how to translate it into English too.

Yoniso manasikara. Manasikara really literally means taking to heart. Meaning really unifying, in that sense, your mind with that object or with that understanding of that object. It's taking to heart what you're seeing. The root of the word yoniso is yoni, which means the source, the origin point. So there are a lot of different ways to look at this word. Like a lot of words in Pali and Sanskrit, it's polysemous, which means one word can have multiple shades of meanings and variations. But if you look at the text, the book that you guys are using as part of this retreat

It was chosen to be translated as attention rooted in reality, which is yoniso manasikara, is really right attention, meaning you are really paying attention, and what you're paying attention to is the things as they arise in the reality of the situation. So it is along with this unified attention. Unified mindset means unwise perception or inattention, or unwise attention, meaning you're not paying proper attention to your object. And when that happens, that gives rise to hindrances, and that gives rise to distractions. Whereas correct attention is not focused, it's not full-fledged focus, but it's more about understanding how things are arising in the present moment. A variation of this meaning is also when the Buddha or any of the monks use yoniso manasikara, they use it in a way to find the cause of something.

For example, in the line of dependent origination, the Buddha will say, birth having come to be, what is the origin of birth? What is the cause of birth? And then he says, being come to be, and so on and so forth. So that is another variation on yoniso manasikara. But for the purposes of practice and for the purposes of the meditation, whether it's in sitting practice or in your daily life, you have to pay attention, meaning you have to understand how reality is arising as it arises, how it's unfolding, and accordingly make changes to your meditation practice in the way of using the 6R's, or whatever it might be. It is actually through this yoniso manasikara that you're aware of, to link back to the previous question, aware of what certain jhanas or factors are present, or what certain mind objects are present, or what distractions might be present, or what insights might arise, or anything else like that.

Hello, Jason. My question is related to the sutta. In the sutta, it was saying that may meditate for saving the repulsive in the unrecursive and the repulsive. My understanding is when we are practicing loving-kindness, our perception is basically towards generating this loving-kindness in different directions. So, because our perception is on the loving-kindness, even though something which is repulsive, something which we usually don't like, we take it as, we don't take it as repulsive. Yeah, similarly with unrepulsive. Is my understanding correct? So this is a very interesting understanding that you're having, because if you notice on a practical day-to-day life, when you're thinking about things and when you're having memories, if you are, let's say, in a bad mood, or if you are in a state of mind which is unwholesome and you think back about things that were, let's say, not so wholesome, you have a certain perception of it, but then you cultivate loving kindness and you cultivate

compassion and you think back on those same things again, you're going to have a different perception of that. It could be anything as simple as a relationship you had with a friend or family member or whatever it was. If you're in a bad mood, you'll start to think about that memory and you'll start to see it in a way that is unwholesome if you're in a bad mood. But when you cultivate loving kindness and compassion and you think about that memory then you're more compassionate, understanding and say, well, maybe they weren't feeling so well and that's why they behave this way. Or maybe they were unhealthy or they were not fully there, fully present.

You have an understanding mindset about whatever that same memory was. That's one way of looking at it. So looking at the repulsive and seeing the unrepulsive in that, and looking at the unrepulsive and seeing the repulsive in that is also a more advanced way of playing around with your aggregate of perception. Meaning you are able to see what is repulsive to others and change your mindset about that and see the unrepulsive in that. Perception. It's an intentional practice of being able to exercise your perception so that the mind is so malleable that it develops a very strong sense of equanimity that whether something is repulsive or unrepulsive, it doesn't matter.

It just is able to stay in an equanimous state without attaching to the unrepulsive or averting the repulsive. So this is a conscious exercise, a conscious kind of meditation practice that certain monks will do or certain practitioners will do in order to make their perceptions malleable. But I'm saying that on the practical level you can see it for yourself. You can reflect on your own mind and see that the very same memories that you have will have different feeling tones, will have different sense of pleasantness or unpleasantness based on the moods that you have, based on the mindsets that you have, and your perceptions will change based on that. So you can make it a conscious exercise if you wanted to, but that happens on its own when you start cultivating loving kindness, when you start cultivating compassion, because when you start getting into

situations and interacting with people which may be repulsive, and what I mean by that is difficult, or that could create aversion in the mind, because you're able to cultivate, and because you have cultivated loving-kindness and compassion and equanimity and joy in those so-called repulsive states, in those difficult states, it's easy for you to see the good in that, and it's easy for you to then be able to let go of what might be difficult, let go of the aversion that might be arising from the difficult. Conversely, when you are in a state where it creates pleasant feelings, and it creates, yes, exactly, that's how metta will destroy ill will. It just fades away, replaced by loving kindness. That's right. So, on the flip side of that, when you are in a pleasant state of mind or you come into places, situations, or deal with people who are pleasant, but then you start to attach a sense of self to it and then create craving for yourself by attaching and wanting more of it

by understanding and using equanimity and seeing the impersonal and seeing the impermanent nature and the suffering aspect of what is arising, what would generally be unrepulsive, you don't necessarily consider repulsive, but you don't attach any sense of desire to it. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, that was, that made me clear. I have another question. Today's Sutta video, you mentioned at one place that when we are practicing 7th or 8th jhana, when the mind will become clear and bright, you mentioned. Is it mean that maybe in nothingness or neither perception nor perception, the bright signs come? Are you referring to that? What I'm referring to is the brightness of mind as opposed to the dullness of mind.

Meaning a mind that is well collected, a mind that is well unified and is constantly aware, constantly attentive without distraction. It is constantly collected around that quiet mind, that awareness. The light objects or the signs of formations or images that arise are not part of that bright mind. They just arise as part of subtle formations that are rooted through our processes of karma and things like that, that will just come about and will arise. But that is different from what is the bright mind. The bright mind is generally a mind which is fully attentive, which is fully conscious and unwavering. It has a steady presence of mind. Thanks. Thanks for clarifying. I have another question.

This is related to practice. Most of the time, whenever I have free time, whenever I sit, I exactly wake up. I exactly come out from meditation. Always, maybe because inside my mind I have this understanding that I want to do one and a half hour. But sometimes I go and I say to myself that I want to sit for two hours, but still I wake up with one and a half hour. Do you have any suggestions? Yeah, for one, if you jump from one and a half hours to two hours, it's quite a jump for the mind to get used to it. So you do it in increments of five, 10 minutes. So let's say an hour, 35 minutes, an hour, 40 minutes.

That works better than jumping from one to another, like from like half hour skills. It's better to do it in those more manageable ways. And you might find it easier for mind to be able to say, if you say to your mind, okay, one hour and 35 minutes, it will be easier and manageable for the mind to do that rather than jumping from one and a half hours to two hours directly. Did you catch what I said? Yeah, I was saying that, it's more manageable for the mind to jump from like 5-10 minute increments rather than half hour increments in the beginning.

Thanks. Yeah. That was my questions. Those were my questions. You know what Bhante says about people who have a lot of questions, right? Yeah. I ask questions to Bante, I said. Questions in this life and you don't attain arahatship and you are reborn in the next life, you'll be born very intelligent, you'll be born with a lot of wisdom. So I will add another question here. One more and then Michael. I feel like, yeah, one more and then Michael has a question. So yeah, go ahead, go ahead. This is What is Dhamma raga? It's attached to Dhamma. Attached to Dhamma, yeah. Up to the level of Anagami, there is an attachment to the Dhamma, which is to say, and this will be a little deeper once you get into day seven and eight, but essentially it's about understanding the purposes of the Dhamma, understanding the Dhamma is meant to be a raft, right?

It's the simile of the raft. You use the Dhamma to get across to the other shore, to get to Nibbana, to get to Arahatship. But if you take the raft with you when you get to the other shore and start carrying it on your back while you're walking, that doesn't make any sense. So in the same way, once you have used the Dhamma or utilized the principles of the Dhamma to get to the goal, which is Arahatship, you no longer even have any attachment to the Dhamma itself. The Dhamma also is an impersonal phenomenon. But the Anagami, it says that, for an Anagami, it said that they will be an Anagami because they keep relishing in the Dhamma.

In a lot of different suttas, you'll see it says that by not grasping, by not grasping even to the Dhamma, for example, their minds were liberated, the taints from the defilements, but there were some who relished in or took delight in it and so became anagamis. So that's really Dhamma raga, that is the passion for the Dhamma, and that's when you get to the stage of an Anagami. That's what you need to work on, is to relieve the mind from its attachment to the Dhamma. Michael, you had a question.

Basically, I do have an idea what it means, but I would like to clarify or have you clarify again what is really the precise holds of just everything that finally leads to the liberation and nothing else or is is there a wider sense of of this world yeah if you go back to for example right intention and uh which i call effective choice there is the intention to let go uh the intention of renunciation to let go uh the intention of non-harm and uh non-cruelty which is essentially means cultivating loving kindness and cultivating

compassion. And so wholesome really is anything that is in alignment with the mundane eightfold path, and what I mean by that is while you're still on the path you're utilizing the path and you are acting, speaking and thinking in alignment with the eightfold path, which means you speak in loving terms, you speak in kind ways, you refrain from using harsh speech, you refrain from using any false speech. So by cultivating wholesome speech, or right speech, it means knowing when to speak and when not to speak, when to speak in a loving way, when to refrain from speaking at all because it may harm the individual mentally or emotionally, and so on and so forth. Likewise for action. So really, in this context, especially for the purposes of the practice, developing the brahmaviharas first and foremost, and the unwholesome is really eradicating that, which is to replace the unwholesome: replacing the ill will with loving-kindness, replacing the cruelty with compassion, replacing jealousy with empathetic joy, and replacing

indifference and greed and resentment with equanimity. So there is that context within that, but more than that, once you elevate from the unwholesome to the wholesome, the work that's remaining after elevating from the unwholesome to the wholesome is to elevate from the wholesome to that of the mind of the arahant, who does not even. Meaning, the kamma that one produces is wholesome and still is identified with a sense of self, still personally identified. So that will continue to create wholesome kamma, which means that will continue to create rebirth. But in the case of one who is an arahant, the actions that they produce are not based on any sense of self. Situationally needed, they respond according to the situation without personalizing it, and so they won't produce any new kamma. So it's getting a little deeper than that, but generally speaking, what one should focus on or understand in this regard is, in this practice, what one is doing is uprooting the unwholesome and replacing it with the wholesome, and the unwholesome is generally. Thank you.

What is the Pali term for wholesome? Where it relates the Brahmaviharas to the different jhanas. It's called the Metta Sagata Sutta. That's Samyutta Nikaya 46.54. So I think it's already in the curriculum. And he was talking about earlier, I was telling, I was talking about the intelligence. He was saying that it's mentioned in the Chula Kama Vibhanga Sutta that questioners are reborn as intelligent persons. And he mentions Majjhima Nikaya 135. So if you want to take a look at those, you can take a look at that. Thank you very much for that, Mother Suleen. Anyone else have questions? Delson, referring to that sutta, when it links the Brahmaviharas to the jhanas, it stops at equanimity.

And well, I know that that's the last of the Brahmaviharas, but it doesn't then go on to talk about tranquility and neither perception or non-perception. Is there a reason for that, do you think? Well, essentially equanimity goes as far as perception. Any of the Brahmaviharas go as far as perception. But once you get into the territory of neither perception nor non-perception, it gets a little subtler than that. And the subtler part of that is the tranquil mind. It's not necessarily, let's say, tranquility as an object, but it's more of the still mind itself. It's the still awareness of mind itself. And though it's not explicitly mentioned in the suttas, it is mentioned in some ways as the luminous mind, for example, the radiant mind.

This is the mind that is starting to become void of subtler formations or coarser formations and then subtler formations and finally the defilements. get deeper and deeper and through each level of awakening you'll find a differential in the quality you'll find a difference in the quality of that quiet mind it becomes closer and closer to the luminous mind that the buddha talks about so do you think that the buddha is like hinting at the fact maybe not hinting but saying that you're going to turn in these other these other realms as well as opposed to just neither perception, non-non-perception, considering the context that it's different from what... Sorry, can you say the last part again?

You froze for a second. Yeah, sorry. Given the fact that these other sects are asking what the difference is, what the Buddha's teaching, do you think that he's hinting at the fact that you can attain nibbana through the loving kindness practice, even though it stops there? These are the jhanas, and joy, and upekkha. The thing is, you can attain nibbana in every jhana and brahmavihara. What nibbana really results from, so to speak, because nibbana is unconditioned, it's the removal of all conditions. So you're using this as a starting point. Even the jhanas, even cessation of perception and feeling, is fabricated, meaning it's still related to formations. It's still related to certain causes and conditions and factors for those to be present.

Whereas nibbana is all about non-grasping, all about letting go completely. So you can attain nibbana even from the first jhana onwards. It's not that you need to go all the way to cessation. It's a matter of having an understanding point that you let go, that you don't grasp at all, and by not grasping, that's when the mind is so quiet that it's able to see with wisdom. It's able to understand with wisdom. Let's go and experience this nibbana. Thank you.

Okay, I'm going to give it about 15 or 20 more seconds, and if no one else has a question, then we can share some merit, maybe a question from it. Yeah, about mundane nibbana, in a way that we could, of us, maybe as a child, already has sensed it somehow in one's life. So really, about the teaching of the Buddha, again, it's the path. It's not so much about nibbana, although of course it's the last step, but it's how to get the wisdom to live it, to live the meditation where we are studying the path. Actually, nibbana is just a goal where all defilements are gone, but the path is the one that it's really important to live in one's life, right?

Yeah, nibbana is the end goal, and then the final ultimate goal is arahant, which happens by not only destroying the defilements, but also having a profound and deep experiential understanding of the Four Noble Truths. It has so many different connotations. It is the extinguishing of the five aggregates. It's the extinguishing of the fuel for craving. It's non-proliferation. It's non-craving. It's the cessation of being. It's the cessation of the sixth sense basis. There's so many different ways to explain it. And even if you use those words, those are still all concepts. Nibbana is beyond all concepts. It's the non-conceptual reality, if you will. Even that is a concept. You have to go beyond all concepts.

That's why nibbana is not experienced in a way that you can conceptualize it. You can only bring it down back to the level of the mundane with these descriptions, these poetic descriptions and understandings. But yes, the primary activity of one still in training is to cultivate the path, because when you're cultivating the path, you're doing two things. You are, number one, understanding the fourth noble truth, which is that the path to cessation of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path. So the more you cultivate it, the more you are living the fourth noble truth. And then the more you're doing that, you are also living the third noble truth, which is every time you do the 6R's, every time you let go of the craving, the stories and ideas and thoughts around the craving and the feeling, you are enacting, you are acting out, you are understanding and applying the third noble truth.

In essence, when you're doing this kind of meditation, you are applying all four noble truths because you understand craving has arisen. You recognize that there is this distraction. You let go of it. You understand the cause of it and you let go of it. And by using the 6R's process, understanding the path and walking the path, you're letting go of it in your daily life as well. So once you start to do this more often, once you're able to put this on autopilot, that's when you become an arahant. An arahant's behaviour, an arahant's way of living, is nothing but the Eightfold Path. It's nothing but understanding from the realm of the Four Noble Truths. It's nothing but acting from right action, from right speech, and using the Eightfold Path in a way that continues to help other individuals, to help other beings, through wisdom and compassion.

Thank you. So nibbana actually cannot be communicated through words. That's why the path is the only way, right? Exactly. The more you are able to follow the path, the more closely you're able to follow the path, the quicker it is for you to reach nibbana and then tell others about it. Yes, thank you. All right, let's share some merit.

Here, I'll give you a host. - Yeah, let me give you the host status. Okay, go ahead. - So everyone can unmute if you like, and then you all can share together beautifully. All right, let's go. That we have thus acquired for the acquisitions of all kinds of happiness, may beings inhabiting face and earth, neighbors and nagas, almighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. So thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.