ENLIGHTENMENT
IS
YOUR BIRTHRIGHT

Part II – Practice

THE ONLY WAY
TO DISSOLVE

Discussed by
Bogoda Premaratne

PERSONALITY - VIEW

(SAKKîYA-DIééHI)

THE ONLY WAY TO DISSOLVE IT

Human mind craves to derive  pleasurable feelings out of sense-perceptions. The mind achieves this by clinging, holding, and hanging on to sense-experiences, and creating out of them a creature in the form of a self that enjoys permanency through, otherwise impermanent, arising-changing-and ceasing mental processes.

Your ignorance of this actuality has given birth to emotional antagonism that expresses itself in the form of aversion, hatred, vengeance, violence, against all those who appear to you as 'others' who stand in the way of fulfilling cravings, desires, greed and ambitions of your Self to become this and that. These are the impurities clogging and blocking your mind from seeing what is true, what is real, and what is actual.

How do you get this 'self' - and its 'garbage' cleared out of your mind ?

Mind and Consciousness have no essence of their own. There is no direct way of seeing or handling them. For purposes of cleaning and purifying they can be handled, only through material on which they depend for their existence, through which they express themselves.

We have identified the bodily action of breathing-in-and out as the most reliable medium through which your mind can be handled, cleansed and purified.

We learn that the Ascetic, former Prince Siddhartha attained Enlightenment and became Buddha through the practice of mindful-awareness on breathing, known as breath-meditation. The Buddha has given us the guarantee that all of us can attain that total freedom of mind, which also means freedom from existential suffering by treading the Path he has recommended based upon his own experience. This book tells how you can do that.

INTRODUCTION

THE METHODOLOGY

OF UNCOVERING THE ENLIGHTENMENT

HIDDEN WITHIN OURSELVES.

• Despite the very high level of intellectual, scientific, and technological advancement characteristic of our age, it must be admitted that most of us are ignorant of the actuality of the way our minds are functioning.

• This is no fault of us as individuals, it is the fault of Nature that has structured barriers separating our mind into conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious layers.

• What these divisions mean in actual terms, is that whatever we are aware of is confined to the surface mind. We see things only when they have happened, but we do not see how they happened or what made them happen. Their causes are hidden from our view just as roots of trees are functioning from underground. Thus we assign the invisible conditions of our mental life to a sub-conscious layer of mind. There are vital organs sustaining our life, but we have nothing to do with them consciously. So we assign their functioning to Nature or an un-conscious layer of mind. The mind in its natural state should be operating as just one undivided whole.

• We who are  obliged to live all our life at the level of superficial consciousness or surface level of mind, with no access to the deeper levels of our own mind, have no option but to construct false views, concepts, and opinions based on what  seem to be of immediate advantage to the self that we have conceived.

• What we as individuals do not see is that our living experience is actually being guided and controlled all the way through by certain powerful sinister forces lodged deep within the recesses of our sub-conscious mind.

• There was one individual, unique among  all human beings, revered as the Buddha on account of his Enlightened mind, who was able to confront and vanquish all these sinister forces and break through all frontiers separating the one mind into conscious, sub-conscious and un-conscious territories and emancipate the whole mind of his and gain what we call Enlightenment.

• Through this Enlightened state of mind, one of the things he saw  was that these latent forces are universally operative in all living creatures endowed with consciousness, causing endless misery and suffering; and out of compassion for humanity he has revealed the method he himself successfully followed in conquering these forces.

• What are these forces?

  One group of them is named ŒsavŒ variously described as influxes, cankers, taints, corruptions, intoxicants, biases, floods, and yokes etc.

• A similar group is named anusaya, also described as inclinations, proclivities (latent or natural tendencies) etc.

What are they actually?

• Both groups combined can be named as: Sensual Desire, Grudge, diÊÊhi or Speculative Views, Skeptical Doubt, Conceit, Craving for Continued Existence and Ignorance.

• The actuality of the way they express themselves through our living experience is highly complex. ‘In consequence of their pertinacity they ever and again tend to become the conditions for the arising of ever new proclivities.’

Why is it said that we are not aware of them?

• We  know them by name, we can also see how some of them operate within our living experience. We don’t see where they are rooted. The roots, as usual are invisible. That is why we say they operate from the depth of the sub-conscious not directly accessible to our surface mind.

• The worst is that they, one and all are rooted within and around diÊÊhi  – the conjectured notion of ‘Self’ or the ‘person that I am’. When they come out to attack they are welcomed, as they are ‘my people’ serving some sinister purpose of ‘my own’. So who is there to root them out?

• But until and unless they are rooted out, the mind cannot display its true nature as to what it actually is, its state of Enlightenment.

• That state can be reached in two distinct stages, one being a state of  purity of mind at surface level. This is something you and I can achieve easily by wiping out five specific hindrances or impediments that are blocking and covering the mind that is pure.

•  It is a temporary achievement, lasting only as long as one is in meditation, with provision for making it permanent through practise of  the second stage.

How do we purify the mind?

• The mind itself doesn’t appear in  a manner that its ‘owner’ can directly handle. So in order to purify the mind we use some element on which the mind has to depend for its existence. We accomplish this task of calming down of all mental activity by mobilizing mindful attention on the breath, a principal constituent of the body on which the mind has to depend.

• The second stage is the eradication of the cankers and the proclivities ingrained in the fabric of the sub-conscious mind, particularly the personality view of the self that harbours all of the other defiling forces. This is accomplished by using the intuitive insights emerging from the purified mind coming in contact with the subconscious.

• These intuitive insights, flashing forth from the purity of mind or samŒdhi in its process of exposing the sub-conscious, reveal the transient nature of all sense-data used in the construction of  concepts.

• They reveal the futility of the craving’s attempt to construct fixed entities of thoughts, ideas, views, concepts for the purpose of a self so conceived, to derive pleasure out of ever arising and vanishing sense-data.

• They reveal the chaos and conflict arising out of craving’s attempt to identify a permanent unchanging self with ceaselessly changing, impermanent constituents of living experience.

Why Intellectual Reasoning is a Hindrance.

• It is important to realize that this is not something that can be achieved through  intellectual reasoning, the only instrument we know of to be used in understanding anything  at all.

• Thoughts, ideas, concepts used for intellectual purposes are material specially designed for use within the confines of the superficial layer of conscious mind, serving under the stewardship of the Self.

•  They are a serious hindrance in uncovering and uprooting the causes originating from  the sub-conscious level which is not accessible to logically constructed thought.

• Hence the paramount importance of SamŒdhi, a state of intuition free from mediating obstacles, generating intelligence that is wisdom.

•  That provides direct contact with whatever one wants to understand providing ‘knowledge and experience within the actuality of the way things have come to be’ within the world of our mind.

• Through this unique technique of educating the subconscious, these vipassanŒ or intuitive insights succeed in generating the kind of wisdom that enlightens the mind to expel for ever the canker of self-view, the creator and protector of all defiling forces.

• That is the emergence of the Enlightened Consciousness, in which there are no barriers separating conscious, sub-conscious, un-conscious etc., no distinctions of ‘self that I am’ as against ‘others’ and the ‘world’.

  All these culminate in that blissful state of NirvŒna in this life, free of any single fetter that can cause renewal of birth.

PART II — METHODOLOGY

17

THE WAY TO BE ENLIGHTENED

BY ROOTING OUT

THE DELUSION OF SELF                                                         

  In Part I We have exhausted almost every available means of reasoning to impress upon you how this over-growth of the ‘parasite’ of Self, is systematically suffocating you to ‘death’.

• The misery of it is that you are being mesmerized into ‘enjoying’ it, as the romantic embrace of the loved one.

• So how can this deluded and unwilling self, that is you, be persuaded to accept and follow the Buddha’s prescription to eradicate, to root out, this ‘virus’ of a parasite masquerading as your own dear Self?

• We  thought  it  might  generate  some confidence within you, if we began by telling you how the ascetic, the former Prince SiddhŒrtha, discovered the remedial method essential for this eradication, and how that discovery in itself transformed him into that Perfectly Enlightened Human Being, the Buddha.

17 : 2

Intuitionalism that leads to

 Enlightenment

  The Buddha’s Unique Discovery of Intuitionalism is the only way of arriving at the Truth regarding nature of life and living experience, and also the only way of liberating ourselves from all forms of existential suffering.

  Let’s try to understand what intuitionalism means.

• To intuit is to receive knowledge by direct perception.

• A perception, as you know originates with the arising of consciousness of a sensation caused by a sense-experience.

• The mind immediately connects this sensation to its cause or the source of this sensation, and that would be an external object.

17 : 3

What then is direct perception?

Is it the same as Intuition?

• Intuition is immediate apprehension, or understanding or grasping by the mind, without going into thinking about it, or reasoning.

• In the matter of understanding, there are two things involved, one is the object that is  being perceived – the object may be material or mental. Even an external material object, once it is perceived, becomes a mental object.

• The second thing involved in understanding, is that the entire cluster of mental faculties, not merely attention, such as the consciousness of intention and attention, etc., all get involved in  that object.

• The problem is that there are certain ‘extraneous’ things that come in between the mind’s attention and the object, obstructing and preventing a direct contact with the object as it actually exists.

• In Intuition, the significant word is ‘im-mediate’ which means absence of any such things  mediating  or coming in-between mind’s faculty of understanding and the object concerned.

• You may be surprised to learn that among those ‘certain things’ we described as ‘extraneous’ that interfere with right understanding are your own mind’s products of  reasoning.

• A human being with sense-organs that function normally, cannot prevent sensation resulting from an act of perception.

• It is also natural for sense-perceptions to be developed intellectually into construction of  thoughts, and thoughts into ideas, to views, beliefs, opinions and theories, etc.

• In the minds that are un-enlightened these objects perceived, as well as their intellectual constructions come under the control of the self-view or personality-view resulting in a  variety of emotional expressions  such as sense-desire, greed and lust, love and hatred, aversion, likes and dislikes, prejudice  etc.

• Every time a perceived object calls for understanding, one or the other of these intellectual or emotional agents of Self, will aggressively prop up, intervene demanding judgment in favour of Self.

17 : 4

Five Constituents of Living-experience

functions in Duplicate

  What then is Intuition? Is it the same as Mindful-Awareness? We  tried  hard  to make  this  point  clear  in Part I.  Evidently it is worthy of being repeated.

• The un-enlightened living experience of ours functions in duplicate.

• There is the original living experience centering on this body, equipped with six sense-faculties.

• Every bit of  living-experience comprises of Five Basic Constituents: (i) Being conscious, (ii) being conscious of matter, (iii) being conscious of whatever that is perceived, (iv) being conscious of feeling, and (v) being conscious of whatever is conceived  by the mind out of these constituents themselves.

• These Five, in their totality as a single unit of living-experience, is being held and identified as the Self, the Ego, that regards all these, along with their products, as “Mine, Me and My Self.”

• Because of this ignorant point of view, whatever external objects perceived by the six senses, whether material or mental, become the building material of the other half of my living-experience. These are duplicate copies of the Five Basic Constituents that have become  personalized as the Self itself.

• Intellectual constructs; thoughts, ideas, views, beliefs, opinions, ideologies and theories also become personalized property of self.

• What is wrong lies with the emotional perversions or distortions which the Self creates out of them, such as likes-dislikes, desire and aversion, love and hate etc. One or the other of these will always be mediating between the mind and any object that is perceived.

• There is nothing wrong with the Five Constituents of Living experience on the side of the body and mind, or on the side of the externals to the body and the mind.

• What is wrong is the identification of both sides with a false conception of an unchanging, permanent,  pleasurable self  or  ‘personality-view.’

• You can imagine how pervasively the self has gone through into every part of living experience, by considering the fact that consciousness which alone is responsible for making known anything and everything in life, and life-experience, is itself perverted and distorted by self-view.

• Detaching living experience from this perverting attachment is the objective of this practical approach through intuition or direct understanding

• This mental habit of looking at everything through the mediating self-view  constitutes the ignorance that prevents knowing and seeing of causes and conditions hiding behind each experience. Only such knowing and seeing can provide right understanding of phenomena.

• Getting to this point is no easy task, particularly because of the traditional supremacy of the intellect, and belief that truth or reality is to be understood and realized only through reasoning.

• To arrive at truth through reasoning requires a great deal of factual knowledge to be  gathered, sifted, one fact to be related with  the other, then that again with another, and come to conclusions or judgments; and that is what is taken to be true.

• Unfortunately, every item of knowledge or fact that I have to use in my reasoning, is already converted and distorted into a property of self, a matter of subjectivity, and as such cannot lead me to direct vision of truth.

• It is unthinkable how emptying the mind of all contents of mental activity such as  thinking thoughts, conceiving concepts, reasoning etc., could result in any kind of realization.

• But that was exactly what led ascetic SiddhŒrtha to gain Enlightenment and become

the Buddha.• Intuitionalism means the doctrine that the perception of truth and even  philosophical and ethical principles are arrived at by intuition.

17 : 5

Why do we say that the Buddha discovered Intuitionalism?

• We narrated the story of the Prince SiddhŒrtha going in search of teachers who could teach him how to attain immortality.

• Names of two teachers are mentioned in this connection as îlŒra-kŒlŒma and Uddaka- RŒma-puthra who taught him all of the known systems of Yoga and yogic meditation.

• Under their guidance he acquired mastery over the eight stages of jhŒnic absorption which was all that the two were able to teach.

• Four of these jhŒnas were based on perceptions of materiality, and four on immateriality such as consciousness by itself as object of meditation, then on space as object, advancing to nothing-ness, and then reaching the level of neither perception nor non-perception.

• Ascetic SiddhŒrtha on his own developed the highest level of JhŒnic meditation, that is the level of cessation of consciousness.

• JhŒnas certainly are direct and immediate perception, at very deep levels, for the reason that all of the thoughts, and emotions have been suppressed or driven out of consciousness.

• The ascetic’s experience was, however, that on getting up from the jhŒnas, the old habits of mind would rush back and take over from where they had ceased to function with the attainment of jhŒna.

• It was no better than consciousness being suspended in deep sleep, and on waking up in the morning, quite fresh of body and mind, of course, but with no cessation of the old worries and concerns of ‘self’.

• The ascetic SiddhŒrtha discovered, on his own, the method that led him to the ‘im-mediate’ knowledge and vision through a gradual process of eliminating all hindrances and mediating obstacles culminating in the destruction of all potentials for suffering.

• After his Enlightenment, the Buddha spent forty five years of his life, teaching the theory of the Path to freedom from Self, and guiding innumerable individuals through the practice of the Path, leading to the actual gaining and experiencing of that  Freedom.

• It is our intention to describe and explain this Path of Gradual Training  as best as we can.

• That again, on our part, would only be an exercise in words, thoughts, ideas and  concepts, that you are  warned to abandon at some stage, and go beyond.

• What we are offering is only a course-description; a course guide, the course itself is to be self-administered by you, by each individual.

• Please note: Meditation is an adventure into the unknown depths of the mind. The verbal instructions in books such as this are meant only to stimulate interest. It is essential that a  course of training be followed for a continuous period of at least two weeks under the personal guidance of a teacher with experience in teaching this kind of meditation.

18

PROGRESSIVE OPENING

UP OF THE MIND

  Developing  the  mind  means  removing ‘dust and dirt’ covering up knowledge and vision of actuality.

  It is a process of cleaning and purifying.

  The final goal is the abandonment of the conceit of self.

Question : In the absence of a self who is   there to develop the mind?

• Such questions are not foolish, but demonstrate rationality making fun of its own ideas and concepts.

• You and I, still with our un-enlightened minds, still being possessed by the ghost of self, cannot take the liberty of imagining how we would act in the absence of self - the one who acts.

18 : 2

We have to start on the journey

just as we are, as un-enlightened,

self-motivated individuals.

• Not imagining what we would be like at the end of the journey; the fact is we are not there as yet.

• At this stage, it would be sufficient if you bear in mind, with a certain degree of understanding and humility that whatever you are doing, is something that is happening on the basis of the Natural Law, to the effect that things arise only in dependence upon essential causes and conditions.

• When the appropriate causes for the arising of a particular phenomenon are present, that phenomenon must necessarily arise.

• If those causes are absent, it is foolish to expect the desired phenomenon to arise.

• Our journey on the Path has to be regarded as a gradual process of purifying, as a series of exercises in cleaning up.

• In other words attending to the removal of the dust and the dirt, the garbage that has got accumulated within our mind, for how long we do not know.

• They are rightly named defilements, things that make the whole of life and living-experience dirty,

• and as intoxicants, garbage that is giving out poisonous gas that makes the mind giddy and go out of control.

• They are the mediating impediments preventing the mind from having im-mediate and direct access to the real and actual nature of living experience.

• It is regarded as a gradual process for no other reason than that one course of action in this mental purification process, causes the arising of a particular level of purity of the mind,

• and that in turn becomes the condition for  another level of mental purity.

• In that manner conditionality moves on purifying the mind from one state to the next.  

• Here you have the answer to the question ‘Who is it that develops the mind’?

18 : 3

Treading the Noble Path

  The Training Course that we have chosen to follow is called ‘Treading the Noble Path.’

• Treading a path is to walk along a foot-way through fields and woods, which is quite different from travel by car or by plane, but the destination is Noble, great.

• The epithet or term Noble (ariya) is used to indicate some special quality of a person, usually of high birth or high status.

• The final outcome of this training course - the destination of the journey, is a complete transformation of an un-enlightened commoner to the status of an enlightened, liberated Member of the Nobility of which there are eight grades including the final Graduation.

18 : 4

The simile of the Stage Coach

  A disciple of the Buddha who had successfully  completed  the  Path  of  Progress has made use of a simile to illustrate the journey on the Path to Intuitional Knowledge and Vision that  really  has  the  capacity  to  liberate  the mind.

• A relay race is a race between groups, every person of which does part of the distance.

• No single runner covers the whole distance, yet each individual’s contribution is indispensable - you cannot do without it, because it is that which adds to make up the total effort.

• This simile can also be used to explain the operation of Conditionality as well as what is known as the Theory of Karma or the doctrine of action and its cumulative effect.

• Cumulative means increasing by one addition after another.

  One single action causes the arising of a particular condition in one’s own mind, as well as the mind of another person affected by that action;

• That condition of mind nourished by the contribution of the original action, becomes the cause for generating an advanced condition of mind.

• In this process all of the past actions, though as actions they have ceased and are no more, retain their indispensably effective contribution, gradually changing from one quality to another,  maturing and developing themselves into the current state of affairs, which also is continuing.

• Compare this with what happens in a relay race.

18 : 5

Destination to be reached in Seven Stages.

  The king Pasenadi Kosala residing in SŒvatthi decides to go on an official journey  to another city located far away.

• He commands that the journey be arranged to be completed in seven stages or in seven relays in which he would change horses and coaches at seven points.

• We shall try to keep strictly within these seven stages of cleaning up the accumulated impediments that are blocking our minds from getting directly in touch with the actual nature of our living experience, which in itself will be our complete liberation and Enlightenment.

19   

Stage One

PURIFICATION OF MORALITY

Depending on Right View

Arises purity of morality

Social morality

  What is moral has to do with questions of right and wrong, it means doing  what is right.

• By Morality or Ethics we are to understand rules of right and wrong behaviour.

• Standards of right and wrong are set up by the community in which the individual lives.

• That means these standards can vary from community to community, from place to place, and from time to time.

• Individuals conform to rules of conduct out of a sense of fear of consequences from society; thus it is other people who decide how I should behave. This is social morality.

• The person who is getting ready to ‘walk’ the Noble Path should be on a more stable footing as regards the standards of morality, rather than those shifting and variable standards set up by different communities.

19 : 2

What is Right and Wrong should be a Decision that comes out of Right View.

  Right view, at this stage, refers to an outlook or an attitude that you and I, as un-enlightened people, can easily develop.

• What is needed is to understand what it means to suffer.

• All of us have knowledge and experience of our own personal suffering. That’s all we know of suffering.

Physical insulation

• You and I cannot actually experience the pain and the pleasure felt by another living being.

• Nature has ensured that each individual remains bodily wrapped up within a cocoon, completely insulated from whatever is felt by other living creatures. Had it not been so, we would have gone mad.

Emotional insulation

• Apart from physical insulation, you and I are  mentally also insulated, not allowing me even to imagine the kind of pain that you and other people are going through.

• That has been strengthened by an intruder occupying my mind, a  false view of an all- powerful and attractive ego-consciousness.

• Everything that I see and come to know of you and other persons,  is being covered over and distorted by an egoistic view of ‘me’ and my concerns that should have priority over everything else.

• My natural instinct which is of priority-importance is my happiness first,

• and to overcome my aversions by destroying the conditions that cause me pain of mind.

• I am totally engrossed and occupied with what pleases my senses and destroying what goes against my pleasure and happiness.

• There is no time for me to be thinking of other people’s happiness or pain of mind.

• In that context how can you and I acquire the right view of suffering as a condition common to every living creature that we meet with or think of ?

19 : 3

Depending on Right-view of Suffering arises Right Mindedness.

  There is a way of testing for yourself whether or not there is within you, at least some elementary level of right-view of suffering or concern for the welfare of other people.

• That kind of right view of suffering that all of us are going through, will necessarily generate, as a causal condition, a specific quality of mind that can be called Right Mindedness.

• This quality of mind expresses itself in three ways:

    i. Awareness of what is attachment and       what is not

   ii. Good will or Benevolence and

  iii. Non-violence.

19 : 4

Awareness of Attachment

  You can always test-check whether or not your understanding of the fact of suffering is well placed, by examining the nature of the thoughts, attitudes  and  intentions  that  arise  in  your mind.

• If your thoughts, attitudes and aspirations are in the direction of renunciation, that is abandoning, detachment rather than attachment - being charitable, rather than grabbing and grasping all for yourself - letting go, rather than in holding and clinging, then your understanding is in the right direction.

• Greed, desire, or craving are the ways in which the delusions of your mind manifest themselves, express and behave themselves.

• If your general attitude is more in favour of generosity, charity rather than selfishness; non-violent, peaceful behaviour, rather than resorting to violence in utterance and action;

• If your thoughts and feelings are in the direction of good-will rather than ill-will,

• then you have that right-mindedness conditioned by right view of that suffering inherent in all sentient existence.

• You can now see the way Right-mindedness develops itself into Right Intentions.

For contemplation

• Whenever possible get into the habit of looking at the causal and impersonal connection that operates between the awareness of your feelings of personal suffering, and that as identical with the way others feel their suffering.

• Look at the relation between your understanding of suffering and the understanding of what causes that suffering and realizing the need for reducing the factors that cause suffering.

• Look for the connection that exists between consciousness of suffering common to all humanity and the need for reducing selfishness, greed and ill-will and thoughts of violent revenge and reaction on your part.

19 : 5

The Clinging Attachment that seems impossible to give-up.

  At this stage when you are just getting ready to ‘walk’ the Path, we don’t expect you to have developed your Views to that level of Perfection to be called exactly Right

• Right View will work at its highest level, in the form of Wisdom, that arises only after perfecting purification of mind, through removal of all false views - false because of being falsified by that Fiction of Self. That is the destination we are aiming at.

• It is clinging attachment that causes the most acute suffering, but that suffering caused by clinging is seen and felt as the most pleasant to endure.

• It is that delusion,  the product of  ignorance that prevents seeing this causally conditioned mechanism as such; and it is the work of delusion to show it as belonging to ‘me’ to be directed and controlled ‘by me’, and constituting ‘my permanent and pleasurable Self’.

• This is Self-view, Personality-view which until removed or renounced there can be no peace or real happiness.

19 : 6

To keep you reminded of the

Cause of Suffering

  When you identify yourself with a mechanical contraption, assembled out of decaying and dying, tentative components, you are bound to suffer every time that contraption breaks down; because it is ‘part and parcel’ of your own personal self.

• The delusion created is that ‘behind this body and mental experiencing’ is a ‘somebody’, a ‘personality’ a ‘self’, an ‘Œthma’, and ‘I am that somebody’, ‘I am that self’, ‘I am that Œthma’.

• Every bit of experiencing that goes as matter creating sense-impressions, feelings, perceiving, intending, thinking, etc. are all ‘activity of my own’, ‘I possess them’, ‘I direct them’, ‘I manage them’, and ‘I control them’. “Since my self is ever-lasting and pleasurable, I want these things of experience to last for ever, giving me pleasure”.

• But actually what happens is that the body and mind are functioning under the instructions of another master, the Law of Causality, and not according to my whims and fancies.

• So can you see the eternal battle that goes on as a result of this conflict created by a self, craving for permanent satisfaction out of an impermanent creation?

• The outcome of this battle is the arousal of a variety of reactions, in the form of defilements that make you sick and miserable.

• If and when this personality-view is gone, there will be no occasion for ill-will, or for exercising violence of any sort whatsoever; as there are no ‘others’ or other things in opposition to my self, because I have no ‘self’- interests.

• Renunciation of self is freedom from dictates of body and mind; so that there will be no enslavement to compelling sensual desires, as greed and wanting to become this and that;

• there will be no jealousy,  no hatred, no vengeance, no conceit, no pride.

• These are the intoxicants that cause the most oppressive suffering, acting under the command of self-notion.

20

RIGHT UNDERSTANDING

OF THE LAW OF ‘KARMA’

PURIFICATION OF MORALITY

NEEDS TO BE SUPPORTED BY AN

UNDERSTANDING OF

The Law of ‘karma’ or

Action that matures into Effects

  One who begins to practise the Noble Eightfold Path, or to walk the Path of Seven Stages is required to equip oneself with Right-View.

• Right-view is right understanding of certain fundamental principles that make up the  foundation of the Path.

• One, we said, is the understanding that suffering is not confined to one-self, but that suffering has to be understood as the common lot of all living creatures. Everyone knows this, but judging by the way everyone behaves, only some exceptionally few people seem to realize this fact of nature. 

• That understanding is the causal factor that serves to condition the moral behaviour of an individual. Otherwise it is the fear of the police, or the public opinion, that keeps individuals on their best behaviour.

• The other Right View or Right Understanding that one is expected to possess is that of the Law of Action that guarantees ‘inevitable’ Reactions, Effects or Consequences, in the domain of living experience.

• In the absence of this understanding, there is nothing, in our private and personal behaviour, to prevent us from acting out of our instinctive impulses; because, at the time of  acting, we are not conscious of the fact, that any action we commit contains within itself the potential for consequences for ourselves, and others for better or for worse.

2O : 2

What does ‘Karma’ mean ?

How does it work within my

living experience?

  Karma, it is said,  is the only dependable possession that a human being can claim as his or her own in this world. 

• It is a law that nature enforces on us all, regardless of our religious faith. It is a natural law, whether we know it or not, that every action is inevitably pursued by a corresponding reaction, particularly on the one who acts.

• Whatever good or evil we do, is for ever following us giving rise to corresponding good or evil consequences.

• If you see the  truth of this and guide your life accordingly, you do not need any other protection. The one who is Law-abiding will always be protected by the same Law.

• The literal meaning of ‘Karma’ is action – action that is part of our living experience.

• We don’t use the word Karma as action that is applicable to inanimate things, as in the case of a plant that grows, a tree that bears fruits, lightening that strikes, sun rising, sun setting, etc. In their case it is Causation that works.

• Within our living experience what is called karma issues from our Intention.

  Thus karma is intentional action, volitional action or motivated action which we can easily recognize as part of our living experience.

• Of the Five Basic Constituents of living-experience, the Fourth Constituent, which is introduced in a variety of ways, such as that of Mental Formations, or that of Constructing Concepts etc., is also identified as that of Intentionality.

• That shows what an important role karma or intentional action is playing in our living-experience.

• Action in living experience is identified as intention, as no action takes place unless it is intended; unless it is consciously decided.

• If you can become aware of any action of yours, an action of thinking, speaking or physical, you should be able to recognize the presence of some intention or will that is prompting that action, and the fact of some purpose that you intend through that action.

• Any intention is directed towards the achievement of some purpose

• So we say that all conscious action is intentional, that is, purposive, motivated.

• Any action we do, is done consciously. If consciousness is not there, there is no knowing of anything.

• Intentionality is a necessary characteristic of whatever we are conscious of.

• Intention influences all Five Constituents of Experience.

• It is intention or will prompted by desire for pleasurable feeling that holds, grasps, and converts the Five Constituents into one entity possessed by Self or Personality view.

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THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE LAW OF CAUSATION AND THE LAW  OF ‘KARMA’ (ACTION maturing into EFFECTS)

The problem of ambiguity.

  There is a fundamental difficulty we have in expressing as well as in understanding what the Buddha taught through the medium of the language we are accustomed to, whatever that language may be.

• When we come across words and phrases that are intended to communicate what is valid exclusively in the non-personal, non-self sphere of experience, as un-enlightened persons with minds that are obsessed with self-view, we are obliged to interpret and understand in terms of our own personal, self-ridden experience.

• It helps to bear in mind that this must necessarily cause confusion in certain areas of thought.

The problem of free-will is one such instance. The operation of intention, deliberate choice or free-will is applicable within the ordinary level of our understanding, but when we develop insight into no-self-ness of all action, free-will or deliberate choice disappears within the nature of causal conditioning.

• The way we have been explaining the Law of Conditionality is likely to have created the impression in you, that there is no distinction between you and an inanimate object.

• You are likely to think that man is only a mechanical contraption subject to natural causes and conditions, and everything that happens to man, and everything that man does,  are effects of karma, and reactions to effects of karma that become fresh karma, and that man has no freedom of will or freedom of choice at all.

• The law of karma when correctly understood as intentional action, will show that intention (cetana) is nothing but freedom of will, freedom of choice that differentiates man from inanimate things.

• Even the saint, the Arahant who is totally liberated from the rule of  Self, the Personality-view, lives and functions intentionally at a level distinct from that of the worldling.

• It is true that the Law of causation or conditionality which we discussed previously, is applicable universally to the entire creation of nature - animate and inanimate.

• The doctrine of Dependent-together-Arising that the Buddha formulated out of that universal, and so ‘natural’ Law of Causality, was for a particular purpose. That is for unfolding and revealing the causality behind human suffering.

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The two sides of the Formulation of Dependent - Origination

• There are two sides to this formulation.

• One aspect of the formulation deals with causality involved in originating and sustaining existence, together with the causal process of craving that brings existence under the control of ego-consciousness.

• The second aspect of the formulation deals with the causal process that un-winds itself and brings about total release from ego-consciousness, that is, from suffering. It is in accord with the principle “With the cessation of ‘this’- this also ceases.”

• The second formulation is similar to the situation where one group of scientists discover a scientific principle, and another group of scientists will discover methods of applying the principle in technology and invent machinery that can get things done.

• The Buddha attended to both these functions himself.

• The Causal Process that brings about the ending of that causal origination is what we are now dealing with, under the title of the Noble Eightfold Path or the Path of Seven Stages of Purification.

• It is a course of action that we, with our un-enlightened minds, take upon ourselves to pursue with diligence and understanding as best as we can.

• It is intentional action or karma that we perform consciously and with deliberation. 

• We have confidence that its results or consequences will be reaped in progressive stages, ending in total release from the ‘view of a personality’ who intends action.

• This is right view developed within myself, that keeps me on the straight path of morality, without having to be guided by what others are saying or doing.

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For Contemplative Reflection

  Let me consider for a moment my present state of being: in terms of what I am, and in terms of what I have.

• The state of my present emotional condition: “What is the sort of mood or temperament in which I am, just at this moment? Am I generally contented and happy? Am I discontented, dissatisfied, distressed, or worried over something or other?” that would be the state of my existence passing through the present moment.

• let  me  reflect  on  the  state  of  my  physical condition.

• Let me reflect on my current status in my family, in the society in which I am.

• Let me think of all that I have achieved over the years. My advancement in education, the skills I have acquired, the wealth and property I possess etc.

• From this position, let me try and recall the specific intentions, the intentional actions, the decisions, the choices that were responsible for making me what I am today; and what I  have today at this present moment of my life.

• I must remember that any intentional action is a karmic-action, with potential for unlimited, undefined, cumulative consequences.

• I deliberately chose to specialize in arts, science, or medicine or whatever.

• Had it not been for that deliberate, conscious intention, the karmic decision and choice, I cannot imagine what could have been my position in life today?

• I am married, that means, some years ago I made a conscious decision, a critical choice, a karmically operative intentional action. 

• Had I done otherwise, I cannot imagine what difference it would have made in my life as of today?

• Reflecting likewise on my choice of career, choice of residence, choice of employer etc. I can trace the course of development of just one intentional action of mine some years ago in the past.

• That helps me realize the importance of right understanding in the choice of intentional action.

• I do not need any skill, effort, or exertion to yield to the instinctive, impulsive compulsions of greed, lust, desire, hatred or delusion.

• I certainly need skill, effort, exertion and intelligence to cultivate non-greed, generosity, and charity to overcome greed;  goodwill to overcome ill-will and aversion; to resort to  peace, reconciliation and  non-violence in place of violence as a method of solving interpersonal and social conflicts  etc.

• In developing Moral Rectitude required to follow the Good Path, we certainly need skill, energy  and  effort  guided  by  Right Understanding of universal suffering and the Law of karma.

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  (i) To be on guard as to what I speak

  If  I rightly understand the fact of suffering as common to all people;

• and if my mental attitudes are of good-will, and non-violence, and if I am not out to build the center of my personality,

• and if I am conscious of the fact that my verbal action is karmic-action with potential for consequences on myself as well as others that will keep on maturing over a long period of time;

• Then, these qualities will ensure the moral purity in whatever I speak, or my vocal action.

• I will not permit myself, under any condition, to lying, slandering, or to use harsh language, or to indulge in foolish babble.

• I understand them as expressions of inconsiderateness towards myself and others.

• I will acquire the habits of speaking only what is true, only what is conducive to harmony, and to use language that is gentle, and meaningful.

• It is my understanding that in this matter of training in Right Speech, I need to be  constantly on the watch out to see that I am not adding to the content of suffering of mine  and others, through the medium of the words I use.

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  (ii) Ensuring Purity of Mind Through

     Right Action

  When the state of your mind is well grounded on the fact of universal suffering and its causes,

• and when the mind is being oriented in the direction of non-grasping, good-will, and non-violence, in all its verbal, mental and physical action,

• that mind of yours will not in any way allow your physical body to be an instrument of violence, cruelty, killing, stealing, or sexual misconduct.

• This way you ensure that your bodily actions are clean, and right,

• This is a case of developing the right conditions that would overpower the self, in the ways that it expresses itself through sense-desires.

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(iii) Being Right in the way I earn my living

• If those conditions of right view and right mindedness have developed within me, and if I understand the fact that every action of mine  carries with it causal consequences on myself  and others, then that development should necessarily change my greed into non-greed.

• I will not want to keep myself occupied with any kind of work that will feed my greed or aversions that will constantly keep disturbing my emotional balance.

• I will naturally follow a livelihood that does not entail harm and suffering for others.

• In earning my living, to provide myself with essential food, clothing and shelter I will somehow avoid any course of action likely to harm, directly or indirectly myself or others.

• It is important to understand that morality or virtue does not consist in the mere ritualistic repetition of precepts or even mechanical observance of rules.

• The rules are set forth as guides to conduct. Right course of outward conduct is insisted upon essentially as a means of purifying the mind, because it is from the mind that all of our actions flow.

• Is it not a matter of common-sense that I would not be in a fit condition to concentrate my mind on anything worthwhile, if it so happens that I am in the habit of taking intoxicants, and if my mind is preoccupied with thoughts of sensual pleasure, and habitually being dishonest with myself, with no fear or shame to do what society looks upon as evil?

• It is very important that we understand, that without establishing a firm and strong foundation of moral purity, that is virtue, it is unthinkable that any genuine concentration of mind or development of mind can be achieved.

• Mental development doesn’t mean acquiring something from outside, like acquiring knowledge of some subject, something that we do not have.

• What it means is nothing other than the removal, the clearance, the elimination, of the waste-product, the rubbish, the garbage from our living experience,

• until the clean, un-blemished state of purity already in existence, but  hidden within us, is revealed.

• Thus the entire process of development is regarded as a process of purification, of cleansing, gradually, stage by stage in Seven Stages.

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Stage Two

PURIFICATION OF MIND

  In order to complete requirements of this stage, I am told that I have to obtain passes in three courses.

• To begin with, my performance has to be at least ‘satisfactory’, but I am told that with time and improved effort, I must raise my performance to levels that can be judged as ‘good’, ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’ or ‘perfect’ (sammŒ).

• These courses are to be followed simultaneously, as time permits, that is why they are grouped under one objective– purification of mind.

Titles of the courses are:

   (i) Right Effort

   (ii) Right Mindfulness and Comprehensive        Awareness

  (iii) Right Concentration.

• They are three ‘structural’ factors of one process of developing the quality of mind.

In other words

  (i) Serves as cause for enhancing and upholding (ii), and (ii) along with (i) serves as cause for enhancing and developing (iii). And all three together perform the function of purifying the mind.

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(i) What is Right Effort?

  This is training myself to be continually aware of what enters and what goes out of my mind.

• It is assumed that as a result of what I have covered so far on the Path, I am fairly well disciplined emotionally, intellectually, verbally, and physically within the framework of the ethical assignments.

• I am now ready to turn my attention towards events that are taking place within the interior of my mind.

• I am called upon to begin exercising my mental energy, and to put forth effort in an excursion to get closer to the roots of my mental compulsions.

• I am told it is the initial harnessing, mobilizing and training the forces that have the capacity of destroying the citadel of Self, fuelled and sustained by a host of defilements.

• I need to try with great effort and energy, because, I am told, the defilements in the service of Self are bent on preventing me from seeing the true nature of things, and are very strong in their opposition to my wanting to do this.

• They keep telling me “all this is utter waste of time, useless, profitless, dull and uninteresting exercise”

  In Right Effort, I am asked to put forth effort deliberately and intelligently.

  It is described as a four-fold exertion in keeping guard over my mind.

    (i) To abandon the un-skilled states of        mind already arisen,

   (ii) To prevent the arising of un-skilled        states not yet arisen,

  (iii) To arouse skilled states not yet arisen,

   (iv) To maintain and develop skilled states        already arisen.

• Un-skilled or un-wholesome states are created by the intentions motivated by greed, aversion and delusion,

• Unskilled means with no training or discipline whatsoever.

• Emotions of anger, hatred, desire and greed arise in human mind impulsively or instinctively due to ignorance of causes and consequences.

• Do I need any skill or training just to give expression to these emotions?

• They express on their own, but through my living experience.

• Since it is the behaviour of my own Self, I happily allow them to have their way.

Greed, Aversion and Delusion

• These three are known as the three primary roots of all evil in the world.

• You and I are expected to be able to recognize them; to develop the skill in recognizing them.

• We can recognize them only by the way they express themselves through our thoughts, words and deeds

The word ‘root’ calls for special attention.

• Root is that part of a plant which is normally under-ground and,

• the root system is what provides nourishment for the tree to keep growing.

• We can see the plant or the tree, but its roots are hidden from our view.

• We know that the plant is alive and growing, but we don’t see how exactly the roots are feeding the tree.

• The three primary roots of evil are similarly invisible, and we are ignorant of the way they keep feeding and distorting the growth of our character.

• These happen without our knowledge, demonstrating the fact that we experience what is happening, while the causes behind the origination of what is being experienced, and conditions sustaining it, remain unknown to us.

• While treading the Noble Path we are called upon to exert energy and strive at every point to recognize the operation of these powerful forces.

• It is by no means easy, because, like the root system of a tree operating from underground, these forces also operate from the subconscious depths of our being, of which we are not conscious.

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Cultivating Skill in Recognizing Delusion

  Of the three roots we prefer to deal with Delusion first, as it is Delusion that is at the root of greed and aversion as well.

• What is known as ignorance, in the way ignorance behaves within my own living experience, is said to be in the same class as delusion.

• Ignorance is said to be basically my non-knowledge of the fact of suffering, and the way of eliminating the causes of suffering.

• Delusion, it is said, includes that ignorance, and goes beyond ignorance, perverting and distorting my conscious mind, my perceptions and views, making it impossible for me to see life as it actually is.

• Delusion is said to be what distorts my experience of living, making me see permanence in everything that is impermanent,

• making me see what is actually painful and suffering as pleasant and happy,

• what is impure and ugly as pure, as beautiful and attractive,

• what is not self as self.

• Delusion, thus attends to the purpose of Nature, tricking us, the  ignorant beings that we are, for ever to be attached to existence.

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Developing skill in

Recognizing and Restraining Greed

  We all know what greed is.  Even as kids we were told not to be greedy.

• We understood it to mean that we should not go for more than that much that is necessary, or for more than what is good for us.

• What is important is to understand greed as a root of all evil that is active as a canker from deep within our subconscious.

• Canker is a sort of infection slowly and invisibly causing destruction of the organism.

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Causal Connections of Desire, Greed, Lust, Craving  and Concept of Self.

• Greed is not alone; it keeps company with desire, craving, and lust.

• It originates from natural and normal sense-experience causing sensation, and sensation developing into feeling, and feeling advancing into wanting, desiring and craving to make a continuing pleasurable experience out of it.

• It is this that ends in holding grasping and bundling up the whole of living experience into one permanent, lasting entity of my Self, ‘the person  that I am’.

• We have become that from the moment desire started playing with feeling.    

• Desire, greed and lust are some of the recognizable forms of behaviour of Self conceived out of craving.

•  Self itself is not something that is available to be directly handled and dealt with.

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What is lust?

• Lust is to be recognized as sensuous appetite or craving for enjoyment of sense-pleasure, particularly the kind of animal desire for sexual indulgence, in which all of the senses get perverted through delusion.

• At the level of lust it is insatiable; never can it be satisfied.

• The skill that I am asked to develop at this stage, is that just at the moment a thought or emotion  arises in my mind, I should be able to recognize its character as to whether it is desire, greed or lust,

• and then I should have the skill in disciplining or driving it out of my mind.

• On the other hand, if I recognize it as a good thought, a good clean feeling, I should have the skill to retain it, and allow it to settle down and grow in strength within my mind.

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Causal Relation between

Desire and  Aversion or Hate

•  As a human being, my mind is naturally bent on maintaining an undisturbed, comfortable, pleasurable state of mind, a state of being, a state of existence.

• All my striving, exertion, and effort is constantly directed towards that end.

• I  have identified my whole life with the conditions, objects and persons I think can make my life pleasurable and happy.

• However I am ignoring the fact that these conditions, objects and persons do not remain the same all the time.

• Then there are other persons whose desires interests and claims come directly in conflict with my desires, interests and claims.

• Every time this conflict arises that becomes the condition for the arising within me of emotions of displeasure, discontent, pain, unhappiness and being hurt.

• I have been taught that the strong desire to overcome this condition of being hurt, and equally strong  desire to recover the former  peaceful state of being, results in my aversion, anger, and hatred towards the conditions, towards other persons, I think are  responsible for this situation.

• That hatred becomes active within me in violent reactions, and violent behaviour that brings only misery upon myself, and everyone around me, instead of the consolation and peace of mind that I was yearning for.

• That kind of experience convinces me how necessary it is for me to maintain constant vigil over thoughts and emotions that keep breaking into my mind, with no advance notice,

• and then to be able to admit and accommodate what is good, and repel or destroy  what is harmful.

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What it means to be Attached to,

To Cling to Objects that are Perceived

• I am told that I am in the habit of getting attached to every object that I am seeing, every sound I am hearing, and every thought that passes through my mind.

• I am found fault with for clinging to things perceived by my senses.

• This is something I am unable to understand.

• I am not prepared to admit, for I don’t do any such thing intentionally.

• I am not aware that such a thing as attaching or clinging happens when I see, or hear something or even when I think of something.

• It is true that I know when some thing pleases me, when some thing displeases me.

• There are certain things I hate to re-call and remember, and certain things I love to recollect and remember.

• These, I am told, go to prove that my mind does not stop with mere seeing or hearing, or remembering, but that the mind attaches, clings to, and takes into possession everything that is being perceived by the senses, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

• Further I am told, that the secret of all my suffering is in this habit of building my self out of these sense-experiences, and then identifying everything I experience with this self of mine that I have built in my mind.

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Do I actually identify Sense-objects

 with my Self?

  This is one of those things that happen within us all the time, but of which we are not aware, of which we are ignorant.

• I am told that my living experience, or the Five Constituents of life-experience comprises of two sets:

• One set is confined to my body, and how it appears to me through perception, feeling and my thoughts and ideas about my body.

• The other set is confined to the world of objects: outside my body, but coming in contact with the six senses that are mine.

• Just as the body is conceived as ‘mine-me- and myself’ everything outside that I perceive is also taken as ‘Mine - me - and - myself’  Both get merged together to form my living experience at any given moment.

• This goes to show the strength of the bond between me and any thing that I see, hear, think of, etc. Because these are all nourishments for my consciousness.

• They too are as vitally important as my life itself. That shows how difficult it is to give up attachment to things, ideas and views that one is holding as one’s mental property.

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(ii) Right Mindfulness and

Comprehensive Awareness

  Before I get on to the practice of mindfulness, I must have a clear idea of the purpose of cultivating such a skill.

• I am told that cultivated skill in mindfulness will help me overcome the heedless and desultory habits of thinking that I am used to.

• I understand what it refers to is that bad habit of mine, always skipping from one object of thought to another, disconnected, un-methodical habit of thinking, described as ‘scatter-brained’

• As against this, mindful training is designed to help me to develop the habit of general recollectedness, the ability to remember and recall things and keep my mind in a stable condition.

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How do I recognize Mindfulness?

• Let’s see how I could obtain these benefits through an actual exercise in practising mindfulness.

• In terms of the literary meaning of the word mindfulness, I am asked to ‘fill’ my mind only with the ‘object’ that I am paying attention to, at any given moment.

• When I think, or say, or do anything, my mind is fully attentive to what I am thinking,  what  I am saying, what I am doing.

• I pay no attention at all to that action of thinking, to that action of saying, or that action of doing.’ May be because I do them by habit, passively and there is nothing interesting in the act of speaking itself, or the act of thinking itself.

• That action of my thinking, that action of my speaking, that action in which I am engaged, is what I am told, that should, for a change, be made the sole object of my attention, to the exclusion of what it is that I am thinking, what it is that I am saying etc.

  As an exercise in cultivating this mental habit, I take particular care to place attention only on one thing, only on one mental object; I place my attention on the activity of breathing.

• From what I have learnt so far, this happens to be an act of mind that quickly advances into  perceiving a mental object by the mind-sense.

• Perception cannot be separated from feeling.

• Feeling starts with a sense - perception and then quickly advances to pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral qualities of  consciousness, and even rises up to emotional states of experience.

• Feeling that arises with attention to the breath, at this stage, is retained at the level of physical sensation in the body.

• The air coming in and going out gets in touch with the sense-organ of the nose, in front of my face. This is actually a body-contact. Not smell-contact.

• So to begin with, deliberately, and with great effort, I continue keeping my mind’s attention moving along with the passing body-sensation, created by breathing-in and breathing-out.

• It doesn’t look good to keep attention stationed at one spot, from which point the movement of breath is watched. Rather like an unfriendly security-check.

• It is more natural for attention to keep moving along with the breath itself, and to experience the breath when it is long as long, and when it is short as short.

• This is natural, as mind’s attention is not a static thing, but a movement, just as the breath is a movement.  It is comforting for attention to move hand in hand with the moving breath, and in no time, I become one with the whole of breath.  

•  I am advised to ensure that the breath that I am noticing, is not forgotten even for a moment; because mindful means keeping, retaining that one object in memory, to the exclusion of all else. This is what promotes the general habit of recollectedness.

• As I keep developing this skill, I am told, that I am also sharpening my mind to be the  instrument most essential to cut through layers of impediments, in order to penetrate to the deeper levels of my mind. Now as things are, in that respect my mind is totally blunt.

• At the same time, in  taking aim at keeping  just one mental object in isolation from all else, I am training the mind to discard, to reject, to throw out, the non- essential impurities, the dust and dirt blowing in and trying to settle down in my mind.

• An extremely purposeful and essential skill to be developed.

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What is Awareness?

  What is the purpose in developing awareness?

• Being mindful and being aware are two distinct aspects of mental development.

• Since very often one and the same object of attention is being used to develop both aspects of mental development, they are closely related to each other. For that reason awareness often goes along with mindfulness.

• But awareness has a very specialized and distinct function and meaning.

• The purpose and objective in developing that skill in being aware  is to make use of the very special contribution it can make, in getting rid of the false view of self.

• Since self is a fiction, a fabrication of the mind, there is no self to be aware of.

• But awareness, when developed, it is said, has the capacity to reveal the actual and true nature of the material on which self feeds itself, and out of which ‘self’ is building itself.

• The right view that awareness develops becomes the condition for weakening, and finally removing altogether the false view of self.

• In practising mindfulness and awareness, I am advised to see, that while my mind is solely occupied (mindfully) with that one object, I am required to be fully aware of the presence of that object, very clearly and comprehensively.

• Comprehensively means taking into mind the whole range of that object.

• being aware of the whole range means, more precisely keeping the whole of my living experience of the time, under careful observation.

• not letting a single sense-experience, a thought, idea, memory, image, a feeling, trying to interfere, go unnoticed.

• Now the question may arise how can I attend to two things at the same time.

• concentrating all my attention on the breath  and also keeping guard over the whole range of my living experience?

• In theory it may be a problem, but in practice, you will experience, that it is not a problem.

• While concentrating on the breath, it is natural for a host of other sensations to arise from time to time, and keep trying to attract my attention. I don’t concentrate on them, the same way as I concentrate on the breath. I only become aware of each one as it arises, only taking notice of each as it appears, making it aware that it is not welcome, and encouraging it to go away.

• The term awareness is used to indicate a quality of mind that is clearly conscious of, watchful, observant, awareness that leads to clear comprehension.

• In the matter of keeping my living experience under observation, I have been so far guided by theory, reasoning using words and concepts.

• Now it is a case of learning by observation, by seeing and noticing, as for example, how actually a material thing comes in contact with my senses,

• Observing a particular seeing of a sight, a particular hearing of a sound, a particular smelling, a particular taste on the tongue, a particular touch on the body, particular knowing in the mind. as it occurs.

• All that would be practising how to observe the act of knowing matter, or consciousness of matter, without allowing an interval of time for it to be caught and held by craving to be converted into a property of ‘self’.

• Training to notice consciousness of feeling, without permitting that feeling to be held and converted into pleasurable or un-pleasurable self, consciousness of perception, without permitting it to be held by craving to make self out of it, and consciousness of intentions  before their being developed into self.

• This indeed is hard work at the beginning, until mindful-awareness develops and becomes an integrated mental faculty.

• Actually putting into words what mindful- awareness is, is the hardest thing to do, whereas practising mindful-awareness is the easiest thing in the world to do.

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Cultivating Habit of Reflexion as against Reflection.

  Reflexion is another way of describing ‘Mindful- awareness.’

• We are familiar with the term reflection.

• To reflect means ‘to think’ ‘to go back and forth in thought’.

• It is the same as contemplation. To contemplate means to think about, to view things mentally.

• To be contemplative means to be thoughtful, to be in deep thought, to meditate’.

• To reflex  means a mental action quite different from what it means to reflect or reflection.

• To reflex is to direct attention on a mental action.

• In other words, referring a mental action back to its own operation.

• ‘Reflexion’ is ‘seeing’ not thinking, but ‘observing’ what is happening,  observing the behaviour of my own mind.

• This is being in direct touch with the actuality of living experience.

• Reflexion is possible only while an experience is on, right at this present moment, unlike reflection, that is, thinking of something that happened in the past, or might happen in the future

• It was reflexive action that we meant, when we said keep looking at the action of saying or the action of doing, rather than what you are saying or what you are doing.

• It is a case  of looking at the way my mind is reacting to what is being perceived.

• To observe I don’t need words.

• There is no need for words to keep looking, to be watching, to be observing, placing attention accurately, and directly on what is going on in my mind

• In reflexion, the habitual part of the experience, that of seeing the roses, the condition that is causing my experience, is not banished; that also remains in the background of my mind; but that reflexion takes me beyond the superficial experiencing of the object to the

deeper recesses of my mind.

• Passive, involuntary, habitual experience is said to be similar to surface riding; whereas

• reflexive experience is similar to deep-sea-diving that brings before your eyes a different dimension of the glory of marine life.

‘Reflexion’ calls for deliberate effort.

• For me to withdraw my attention from that tele-drama going on over there, and to direct it upon my own mind’s action of seeing, (or perceiving) within me over here, and to notice the feelings that keep on  arising as a result of the sights and sounds, there has to be some deliberate effort on my part.

• Deliberate effort is needed because these mental objects are not readily visible like the material objects out there.

• Attending to these interior mental events doesn’t sound as interesting as looking at the actors acting out other people’s characters.

• When I am deliberately turning back that attention from the outside object to rest upon that inner feeling, that action is called reflexive action.

• To reflex means to turn back upon itself.

• This habit of constantly looking back on the way my mind reacts towards sense objects, is of tremendous importance.

• Our long-term object of this skill in reflexion is to prevent entertaining ourselves by fabricating thoughts, which are really the messengers of self – the most vicious pretender ruling over our life.

22 : 5

Let’s describe Reflexion through an Example.

• There is a bunch of roses placed in a vase on a table.

• In seeing and recognizing that bunch of roses I am not exerting any effort at all.

• Only thing I know is that it gives me a pleasant feeling.

• Then I keep looking at it.  

• Prior to the arising of that pleasant feeling, many things should have happened by way of seeing and recognizing the flowers as roses etc.

• All those things must have happened altogether so fast, that I had no knowledge of them at all, I had no role to play in it, I had no responsibility at all. I had nothing to do in it,

• So it can be called an involuntary, habitual experience.

• Suppose in the course of my seeing those flowers,  I voluntarily take my attention away from the bunch of roses, and re-direct that attention on the mental activities that are taking place within my mind, and see if I can recognize what goes on within my mind in regard to that experiencing.

• This time I am intentionally and deliberately turning my attention to that act of seeing that keeps happening, and that feeling that is felt within me,

• instead of involuntarily and passively being occupied with the enjoyment of the sight of those roses outside. Do I see the difference?

• In the case of the passive experience of seeing, feeling I just allow it to happen, I do nothing about it except passively submitting to the feeling  that  comes  out  of  it.  I  do nothing about it.

• But when I withdraw that attention from the outside object, and redirect that attention upon the mind’s act of seeing or feeling, there is considerable effort on my part, as it is something I am not used to, something that is not interesting in itself.

• Since it is said that, that is the only way to root out craving, to eliminate the notion  of self, and to remove ignorance from my living experience, I have no alternative except developing that skill.

• That action is what is called Reflexive Action; the same as Mindful-Awareness.

22 : 6

Reflex Action goes against Habit of

Being Held

  Let me watch how I get held by the sight of those roses.

• I begin to see each flower as a work of art.

• What I see strikes my mind, that means I get impressed by the colours and the shapes of the petals that go to make up each flower.

• I recognize my favourite colour among them, and  the  unique fragrance given out makes the experience a desirable and an all together agreeable one.

• I desire to keep repeating that experience, I do not want that experience to pass away.

• I want the roses to remain within my sight as an object feeding my pleasurable experience permanently, if possible.

• So I think I am holding and fixing it in my mind, totally unaware of, or ignoring the actuality of what is happening – that it is not a case of my holding the flowers in sight, but I am the one who has got held.

• All this is description of the process by which dead matter and impersonal sense-objects get welded and integrated into my living experience, in order to provide building material  for my self which alone can experience pleasure or pain.

• As against all this, when I convert this involuntary, passive experience into a reflexive one, let’s see what happens.

• The roses appear as a mental construct, or a mind-made counter-part image of the roses.

•  The photograph of a woman is not the woman, however much I may admire the photograph.

• The flowers actually appear in my mind as forms of colour and shapes, as reflected visual images of the material things, presented for view by consciousness linked to the eyes.

• Actually and in truth, they are now neurotic reactions of my brain cells, or vibrations of brain cells caused by electro-chemical reactions, creating mental images that arise and pass away like movies or motion pictures.

• In whatever graphic terms I may describe them, I am totally unaware of all that in my daily normal experience.

22 : 7

Special Value and Purpose in developing Awareness.

• The roses exist as a matter of fact. They are real, and no illusion.

• Experiencing is knowing that is derived out of facts.

• But the experiencing that I am living with is not the roses; The roses do not get inside my brain.

• There is a world of difference, a huge gap, between those natural, material and real roses over there, and having seen them, the pleasurable experience I am building out of that sight within my own mind. The roses are not aware of me or my seeing or feeling pleased.    

• As soon as the roses catch my eyes, depending on that sight, the actual events that occur within my mind are the arising of mental forms of matter, mental feelings, and the mental perceptions.

• These things that are being mentally experienced are things that have gone beyond and outside the nature of roses.

• The  nature that is now being experienced is, the ‘nature of seeing’ such things as roses, matter or form in general. Feeling as feeling in general, perception as perception in general.

• What that means is, the act of perceiving matter by the sense-organs is general, the fact of feeling is general, common to all human beings, universally the same for all living bodies even of animals equipped with six senses.

• That nature of mental experience is not particular to you or to me as individuals.

• For instance, when my seeing and feeling are based on the roses in a vase, you may be looking and admiring the colourful painting on the vase. The general nature of perceiving and feeling are the same for both of us.

• That is why You and I, and all of us are able to speak of The Five Constituents of Living experience, because their general nature is the same for all of us. What each individual makes out of that general nature is a different matter.

• It is important that we learn to see the general nature of this inner experiencing common to all human beings – all living beings.

• The Buddha has often repeated that what he teaches could be understood only through an act of proper attention.

• The proper way of paying attention is described as referring it to the very source of origination of my perceptions, feelings and thoughts, deep within my mind, rather than directing and confining attention to the objects of the world outside.

• It is the development of this kind of awareness that can reveal to my mind, the impermanence of things experienced, not confined to this or that particular experience, but universally in all instances of experiencing.

• Those things that the mind saw and held as permanent, fixed, static, entities now begin to appear in awareness as conditioned things, arising and falling, impermanent events in the actuality of my living experience.

• Conditioned things have no value in themselves, for it is some other things that have come together to create them and make them appear to be what they are.

• Suffering then, is not a painful feeling of frustration caused by the impermanence of cherished objects, but in the attachment to the constantly arising- changing-falling nature of the personalized creations in one’s own mind.

• We usually try to see impermanence in the external  objects to which we are attached, but actually what we are attached to ‘experientially’ is the pleasurable or un-pleasurable feelings for which  the condition is only a mental counterpart of some material that comes in contact with the senses. But of course that realization happens with deepening of awareness.

• Impermanence must be seen within mental creations themselves.

• Because in our living experience all things are mind-made, mind is in the fore-front of everything we experience.

• It is within my mind that the abandonment of holding has to take place, helping me to realize that there really is nothing to hold, nothing out of which I can make that permanent and pleasurable ‘Mine-Me-and-My Self’.

• It is that kind of interior seeing or Reflexive Awareness that discourages holding on to material objects, and encourages leaving them aside ‘as no-things worthy of being grasped’ as ‘mine’.

• The Self which is strengthened in passive experience is now weakened in self-awareness.

• Warning: please do not expect this to happen until this reflexive awareness develops to the level of  im-mediate and direct vision. We are taking you there.

22 : 8

In-take of Food – a Meaningful Analogy

  In order to understand what is meant by

      (i)   the general nature of body-mind                                                            experience and

     (ii)   the proper way of paying attention to                                       items of knowledge,

•  It would be of much use to  have these actions compared with what happens to the food that we consume.

• Consider the quality and the variety of things we take-in as food, at a dinner given in honour of a special guest.

• These food-items are prepared with great care and attention to obtain maximum quality in colour, flavour, touch and taste on the tongue, displayed and identified on the menu card with high-sounding  exotic titles, to excite the imagination and the  taste-buds and stimulate the appetite etc., etc.

• Consider what happens to all those expensive items, the moment each one gets through the throat, the gullet and into the stomach.

• Can you imagine that not a single one of these items retains its individual and particular identity.

•  Each one of them is now transformed into a general nature in which the previous condition of each becomes different and  unrecognizable.

• That general condition is what becomes your life-blood sustaining your very existence.

• You are totally un-conscious of what is happening inside of you; you and your self don’t figure in that process at all; and that general condition also has absolutely no regard or respect for you as a person  or your ‘self’, as an important personality.

• This is exactly what happens to the variety of the wonderful things you see, you hear, you smell, taste and touch, and all those mentally constructed thoughts, ideas, opinions, views, and beliefs etc.

• When they arrive at the interior of your mind-base, wherever that may be, each one gets transformed into its general nature as consciousness of matter in general, consciousness of perception in  general, consciousness of feeling in general, consciousness of conception in general.

• In short the Five Constituents of living experience, in which to begin with, i.e. in their original condition, You as a Person or your Self have nothing to do.

• We said ‘to begin with’ because with the intervention of craving they have altogether been brought under the dictatorship of the ‘Self’.

• The proper way of dealing with whatever your perceptions collect from the outer world, whatever thoughts, ideas, views etc. are conceived out of them, should be considered similar to what happens to the food that you consume.

• The immediate reaction  of the mind to sense-perceptions is one of identification with each one of them and getting involved, engaged  and absorbed into the particular qualities of that experience.

• Instead of allowing that to happen, we are advised, to allow reflexive  awareness to take charge of it, and watch how each converts into its general condition.

• At that level of generality in consciousness of material form, perception, feeling and even  conceiving, the personal and individual characteristics get lost.

• It is a case of transition from the superficial level to a deeper level in consciousness where these perceptions of things, thoughts, views etc. are liable to be deprived of their particular features that attract attachment of the self, with its greed, lust and aversions and hatred.

22 : 9

Do we attach Ourselves to

‘Unpleasurable’ Feelings?

• Whatsoever that stands in the way of your pleasure, provokes your displeasure, your ill-will resentment and hatred.

• These are the most unpleasant feelings to endure. And they are held, very often with greater tenacity than you do the pleasant feelings.

• With the best of intelligent reasoning in the world, they cannot be uprooted, because they get identified with one’s very life.

• Aversion and hatred, like the shadow follows behind every self-identified attachment and greed.

• You are ever ready with destructive weapons in hand, to fight back, attack, take revenge by destroying that which stands against your human and personal ‘rights’ for pleasurable existence.

• Failing everything else, you will resort to suicide in order to teach the other fellows a ‘good’ lesson.

• Your adherence, your craving for pleasurable existence is so die-hard.

• This is evidenced by the battles and the wars that are  being waged everywhere in the world, right at this moment.

• They are expressions of strong desire into which some human beings are absorbed, happily resorting to sacrificing their own people, before the altar of their insatiable craving to annihilate some other human beings, perceived to be ‘enemies’ standing  in the way of achieving their desired pleasure.*

23

(iii) TECHNIQUE OF DEVELOPING MENTAL PURITY

  We are still at the Second Stage of Purification, called ‘the Purity of Mind’.

  In order to reach a perfect level of purity of mind, we said, it was necessary to follow and complete  three practical courses.

    i. Perfecting Right Effort

   ii. Perfecting Mindfulness and Awareness,                                       and 

  iii. Perfecting Concentration.

  We shall now try to understand the subject of Concentration as found in the teachings of the Buddha.

23 : 2

What is to be understood by Concentration

• The origin of the word ‘concentration’ refers to all soldiers engaged in battle ‘assembling’   or ‘getting together’ in formation at one particular point.

• In meditation, it means ‘to centre all one’s attention on one thing’. It is also described as ‘one-pointed-ness of mind’ or ‘unification of mind’.

• ‘Unification of mind’ means to mobilize or to gather together all of the wholesome or skilful mental forces working unitedly and harmoniously on one particular task.

• By the skilful forces are meant what we practise under perfecting Effort, under Mindfulness and Awareness.

23 : 3

With what object do we practise concentration ?

• These mental forces do not refer to things we have to bring in from outside, as for example skills in using a foreign language that we have to acquire.

• The faculty of concentration refers to a skill inseparably associated with our consciousness of daily living. But we hardly notice it, as it functions at a very low level.

• Our consciousness associated with mental action is ceaselessly being loaded with myriads of objects brought in by the six senses.

• But had it not been for this faculty of concentration, our conscious mind would not be able to recognize each object separately and distinctively one by one.

• Thus concentration is taught as a way of harnessing this latent faculty, and developing it to serve a very special purpose.

• That is to use it as a cleansing agent that can remove the several layers of impurities hindering and blocking our view of that actuality operating within the depth of our living experience.

  How does concentration develop?

  What do I have to contribute towards this development?

  How do I recognize it when it has developed?.

23 : 4

What do I have to do to achieve Concentration?

• When you hear words like concentration, purification etc. it is natural that yon become anxious as to “how am I going to do all these things”?

• On the subject of mental development through meditation, it is stated that it works according  to a principle of  ‘invariable sequence’

• This is the same as what we discussed under conditionality; a cause giving rise to a condition, and the condition becoming the cause for yet another state of being.

• When you put one foot forward, the  other foot will follow almost on its own, without your having to stop  and think ‘what should I do next’.

• If you provide the  essential condition, e.g. purity in your moral conduct; that will ensure purity in thoughts; that will  facilitate mindfulness, and that develops into intuitive insight.  

• The  mobilization or the ‘gathering together’ of all these results  in  concentration or centering of mind. This is called ‘SammŒ SamŒdhi’ - the Right Type of Concentration.

• Its arising is inevitable if you proceed perfecting each condition.

Sequential development,

  ‘With the arising of  ‘this’ –  this also arises’ principle is at work.

  Moral purity is the nearest or proximate condition for Right Effort, Right Effort is the nearest condition for Right Mindfulness, Right Mindfulness is the nearest condition for Awareness, Awareness is the proximate condition for Right Concentration.

23 : 5

A Technique for Purifying the Mind

  There are many techniques of arriving at that state of mind described as ‘purified’ or ‘concentrated’, or SamŒdhi, or tranquility.

• We would prefer the technique that enabled Ascetic SiddhŒrtha  to gain Enlightenment and become the Buddha. That is well-known today as Meditation on the Breath.

• If you are questioning as to “its why and the wherefore”, we would ask you to go back and refer to what we said under ‘Mindfulness’ and ‘Awareness’.

• Our aim is centering consciousness in the mind, exposing the very center of your being, to reach that stage described as ‘one–pointed-ness of mind.

• These words may not mean anything very much at this stage, until you experience one-pointedness-of- mind at least once.

• For you to be conscious, for you to maintain your consciousness, it is essential that there has to be some object to be conscious of.

• We said that we can be mindful and be aware only of an object that is present (here) in this present experience, and at this present moment (now) in experience.

• We can also be mindfully aware of images, thoughts and ideas of things not before us at the moment, but objects of the mind-sense base, by recollecting, recalling and bringing them before the present moment of consciousness.

  That is why out of an endless variety of objects that keep on impinging upon our six senses, we try to remain with the perception of breathing-in-and-out. It is here and now.

• It is strange that there are some people who do not know, who cannot feel, who cannot be aware of their own breath.

• If you belong to that minority, please try and see if you can develop that elementary level of awareness.

• Failing that, you can use the ‘up-and-down’ movement of the abdomen as a substitute for mindfulness of breath.

• They both belong to the same category of ‘meditations on the transient nature of the body.’ There is no doubt whatsoever, that too can lead you to the Right type of Concentration.

23 : 6

A Perfect Medium through which Conscious Mind can be Experienced

In meditation we do not go into analysis of experience. Yet by way of justification of the choice of breath as object for meditation, let’s see the functioning of all of the Constituents of living-experience in this simple act of breathing.

• Physical body is one of the five sense-organs.

 • It is composed of matter that is insensitive.

• Air we breath is  (i) matter; one of the four basic elements constituting the material world.

• The material body, being a sense-organ, is covered by (ii) consciousness. When an external thing comes in touch (contact) with the body, it creates (iii) a sensation that is picked up by body- consciousness.

• That which is sensed or felt is perceived by the conscious mind and is recognized as air causing the sensation.

• When a conscious (iv) perception is coupled with conscious feeling (which happens invariably) the result is (v) mind-consciousness (citta) a subtle formation in the mind. Intention and attention are inevitably involved.

• Thus you can see all of the Five Basic Constituents of Living experience expressing themselves through this act of voluntary direction of attention to the process of breathing: (i)Consciousness of  (ii)matter, consciousness of  (iii)feeling, consciousness of (iv)perceiving, and consciousness of  (v)mental formations of contact, intention and attention.

The very special duty of meditative exercise is, while intentional attention is maintained on the breath, to prevent mental constructions moving on to conceiving of thoughts, ideas, imaginations, views and opinions etc., which is the normal habit of mind under the control of ‘person-the self’.

23 : 7

Does this not amount to holding that is being discouraged?

  “Mentally holding to any object, we learnt, amounts to creating the personality of self. Doesn’t this holding attention to the breath amount to perpetuation of self”?

• Yes, it does. Our mind is un-enlightened. We cannot help but make a start with the notion “I am the one who is breathing, I am the one who is meditating.”

• Do not lose sight of that destination at the very end of the journey, which is that of uprooting that false view altogether. You can’t begin with that.

• Notice that these objects recommended for meditation, and particularly breath, are not the ones we usually hold, in order to  extract some sense-pleasure out of them.

• Concentrating on the breath, to begin with, is very un-interesting and dull. That is why most people are reluctant to give a fraction of their life-time to meditation.

23 : 8

Posture

  For breathing meditation what is essential is a comfortable posture in which you can keep your back straight, so that your lungs can function freely.

• It is not compulsory that all should sit un-comfortably on a mat on the floor or on a cushion.

• In the good old days of the Buddha, young and old, high and low, everyone everywhere sat barefoot on a mat or a carpet. Meditators sat in the shade under the trees in open air. 

• In that part of the world, at that time, even the little kids were accustomed to the comfort of sitting in the ‘lotus posture’ of the yogis. That doesn’t mean we have to adopt the posture of the Buddha image in meditation.

23 : 9

How do I begin?

  I am given two keywords to guide me on how to begin: ‘here’ and ‘now’.

  ‘Here’ means not there or anywhere else. All my mental activities should be gathered together to be present at this place where the breath is taking place, not allowing a single thought to wander away from the breath that is being attended to right here, right now. This is getting ready to practise mindful awareness. (read  what we said on this subject)

23 : 10

Where do I place my attention?

  On the breath. Sometimes you are advised to station your attention on a particular spot on the upper lip, on the tip of the nose etc., and watch the breath passing by. It is rather like security check; unfriendly.

• It is much more natural to place attention right on the breath, howsoever you  perceive and feel it, but being consciously aware when the breath is long and when the breath is short.

• We say natural because the nature of the breath is one of movement, and the nature of mind’s attention is also movement, though at this moment we do not see it that way.

• Breathing as an object of sense-perception is in the company of the six sense-organs, acting in close proximity to the brain, the seat of conscious mind. 

• Thus when we make mindful attention move along with the movement of the breath, hand in hand, they become familiar with each other, and become friendly.

23 : 11

Then what happens?.

  As you become more and more familiar with the skill in sustaining attention, your mindful- awareness expands and covers the whole breath from beginning to end.

• Mindfulness takes in the entire breath; the entire process of an in-breath (from the point of its origination to its ending, then the interval of silence, then the beginning of an out-breath through to its ending); should become  very clear and distinct in awareness.

• This part of the exercise calls for long-term practice, until you develop ability to sustain effortless and continuous awareness.

• How you test the scale of success is, when you are in meditation, if you could be aware of only the breath and nothing else, and that all other intruding perceptions have been easily and successfully pushed aside.  

23 : 12

Is it  of any special value? 

  Yes. Your mind begins to learn what it means to sustain your attention on one object, the breath, to the exclusion of everything else.

• You are learning what it means to have the mind absorbed into the object that is perceived, to become one with the object of perception.

• The breath occupies the whole of the mind, with no room left for anything else. Gradually the breath gets established and lodged deeply within the consciousness of mind.

• This is a demonstration lesson directly given to your mind, on what we have been saying under holding, grasping, or what it means to get held by objects of perception.

23 : 13

What do I do with this state of experience?

• Now you need to find a way of calming down, loosening and unwinding this state of attachment.

• By now your mind has acquired added strength with its mindful-awareness; and a simple act of will, volition, or intention directed towards this attachment, suggesting that it is time to calm down, will be complied with;

• and gradually the grip on the breath will become less and less, and the breath will become softer and softer.

23 : 14

How do I know for sure that

the breath is calming down?

  We said that the breath and your mind had become one.

• That is because, for consciousness to be, there must be matter perceived by the senses or ideas and views conceived by the mind.

• What that implies is, any change in the quality of the breath becomes a change in the quality of your mind.

• The breath becoming more and more refined, peaceful and smooth means that your mind is becoming refined, peaceful and happy.

• As a result of this change in the inner state of being, you begin to feel an extraordinary sense of (i) inner joy and (ii) inner happiness mentally and even physically a sense of ease.

• You may want to know what is actually happening here.

23 : 15

As one thing happens

it also makes  something else happen

  This mental act of holding to an object that is perceived does not stop with perception.

• It becomes the cause for the arousal of all sorts of thoughts and ideas about and around the object.

• When the grip of the mind on the object of perception (i.e. holding) gets loosened, that rare state of freedom causes the arising of joy.

  What is termed ‘joy’ here in meditation is a kind of spiritual rapture that arises.

• With the arising of joy arises the state of freedom from hatred. Joy and aversion or feelings of aversion, anger, displeasure cannot co-exist.

• When holding loosens its grip on the object, that becomes the cause for arising that state of freedom from thinking around the object.

• With the calming down of the stream of thinking, arises the calming down of the feeling of uncertainty (doubt) about everything.

• Excitement and remorse are two powerful conditions that stand against peace of mind even in normal life.

• The arising of ‘happiness’ accompanied by joy in meditation becomes the condition for calming down of excitement and remorse, those lingering disturbances and regrets in remembering personal commissions and omissions in the past. 

• The end-result of all these is the arising of an extraordinary sense of beauty and peace in the mind that is in meditation on the breath.

23 : 16

  These states of blissful joy and happiness  are of much value, and if they don’t arise on their own, in their strength, at this stage, as meditators we are advised to deliberately invite and arouse them in order to be able to withstand the powerful attacks of aggressive sense-attachments to which we had succumbed all through our life, regardless of the inevitable displeasure and aversion coming behind them.

23 : 17

How am I to do that?

• Joy and happiness that arise in meditation, contain within them a carry-over effect into your normal behaviour, provided-

• you recognize and appreciate the value of your breath in meditation.

• Whenever anything displeases you or disturbs your peace of mind, if you develop the habit of turning to your breath that has already developed this purity, you can experience the effect of this meditative quality.

• Joy and happiness are the effects of temporary abandonment of attachment to sense objects which invariably result in reactions etc., reactions of excitement, regrets and aversion.

• When you are not in meditation, make it a habit of looking upon whatever you are doing, whatever sense-disturbance is overtaking your mind, in association with or, in the light of  that sense of peace and happiness experienced in meditation.

• You will then find that in whichever direction you look, there is peace, comfort, and joy.

• That is learning to be at peace with living experience.

• Cultivating this habit of mind is a necessary condition for what is to happen in the next stage.

23 : 18

Breath as Mind-object.

Feeling yielding place to Knowing.

  What happens next in this gradual process in mental purification is most significant.

• Why we say that this is a significant development is because, all the time we are awake, our living experience gets flooded with sense-perceptions flowing in, particularly, through the five external bases, (external in the sense of being turned towards the world outside).

• They are matter perceived, and converted into ‘personal’ feelings of self as pleasant or un-pleasant, desirable or un-desirable.

• Feelings compel attachment, subsequently very often, leading to disillusionment and aversion.

• Now the mindful-awareness taking the breath away from body-sense and settling it within the mind sense, is a new experience confined to the mind. 

• Although you are still breathing, it will appear that the breath has disappeared. The breath is no longer being experienced, because breath is experienced as a sensation, a touch on the body.

• Similarly, the perceptions of matter through sights, sounds, smell, taste, and all body contacts have also subsided.

• Now that the five sense-perceptions have been set aside, breath is experienced as an object of mind-sense, which is experienced primarily as knowing, and not as consciousness of a sensation in the body.

• Feeling is essentially a quality of the mind with tendency, in the hands of self,  to express itself  with extreme force, such as lust, greed, passion, hatred, revenge through violence etc.

23 : 19

Calming Joy and Happiness.

  From now on, whatever happens is confined to the domain of the mind, the sixth sense-base.

• You or your mind cannot directly handle the mind.

• Mind can be handled only through the medium of an object held by the mind.

• So we use the breath, because the nature of the mind now, is almost the same as the nature of the breath.

• The excitement of joy and happiness is not the freedom that we are aiming at. Therefore there is the need for further calming down of the mind.

• This is being attended to, not by anything you can do, but by allowing the natural process of causal conditioning to operate on its own.  That represents the end-result of all that has gone before.

• Now the temporary suspension of all sensory feelings becomes the condition for ending the excitement of joy and happiness as well, though they were the features we welcomed enthusiastically at the preceding stage.

• That doesn’t mean that other aspects of feeling in the sphere of the mind-sense have been  surrendered.

• Now there is no breath to be felt, no perceptions of matter rushing through the five sense-doors, joy and happiness also have moved out, only the door of the mind-sense is open.

• How do I respond to this new situation? There is nothing for you to do.

• You should keep absolutely calm, remaining in that absolute stillness, deepening meditation, leaving the mind-door open for whatever may happen.

23 : 20

Experiencing the mind

• Mind at any particular moment can be experienced only through some other thing on which the mind depends at that moment.

• Now that almost all of those factors, the sense-perceptions normally provided by the five bases have moved out,

• the mind displays itself before the meditator in a style that is most extraordinary and unique to this kind of meditation.

• It is called ‘nimitta’ meaning sign or signal that notifies ahead of some important event that is to follow.

• What follows is not something that can be described in words. One has to experience it to know what it is.

•  Those who have experienced it describe it in various ways.

• Generally to begin with, it comprises of sparks or flashes of colour-lights which appear and disappear, within the space of the mind.

• You can always go back to the breath when you want to deepen your meditation, and as meditation deepens, in the words of some meditators, “It is the most brilliant thing that I have ever seen, and of unearthly beauty, brilliant, beautiful and radiant”. The “most beautiful brilliant light I have ever seen in all my life,”

• Very deep and beautiful green, gold, or blue- indicating the fact of individual difference.

• The entire ‘sky’, the whole ‘space’ of the mental world, gets enveloped within this glow of radiant colour.

• It ends with the ending of the session in meditation.

• It is a reflection of the purity of the mind. As such the moral purity and freedom from restlessness, regret, remorse and conflicts is an essential condition on which the clarity and stability of this signification depend.

23 : 21

What does this signify?

  The ascetic SiddhŒrtha in his experimentation with meditation discovered and proved that there lies latent within each human mind the capacity for intuitive or direct insight into the actuality of things.

• But that certain powerful mental factors, impurities, impediments are blocking and obstructing that capacity from emerging. 

• What you achieved upto this moment of your breath meditation was a temporary suppression of some of those basic hindrances.

• That caused the de-fusion, dismantling, un-winding of certain knotty neural centers of the brain.

• That brought up to the surface an indication, a signal that those intuitive elements are now ready to spring up, piercing through the layers deep down in the sub-conscious.

• Intuitive means knowing through im-mediate ( with nothing mediating) or direct contact with actuality.

23 : 22

Freeing the mind

  The sign or the signal indicates that the mind is ready and waiting to be freed.

• In your next sitting when you relax and let go of whatever your mind holds, the mind will confirm its freedom by ushering you into a state of calm tranquility, variously introduced as SamŒdhi, samatha or jhŒna.

• JhŒna means a stage of mind’s freedom from defiling impediments, that are blocking  direct vision from penetrating into reality or rather actuality.   

• The major symptom of this condition is that the mind is free from being sensitive to the body which means the activities of the five sense-organs.

• When the mind is not receiving sense-data through the five senses, the mind is compelled to stop its own activity of conceiving thoughts, ideas and views.

• Though you are still mindful, seeing, hearing, thinking have all come to a stand-still, immovable, as though the mind is nailed to a plank. The most powerful experience you can have in your life-time.

• This is called one-pointedness in consciousness, or unification of mind. That condition does not prevent you from maintaining mindfulness.

• The blockage  of sense-perceptions reaching the mind becomes the condition for removing attachment of senses to objects and so the desire for sense pleasure, the strongest among defilements preventing mind’s direct access to reality.

• With this attainment of SamŒdhi, or jhanic tranquility,

• we have completed the Purification of Mind, the Second Stage of the Seven Stage – Relay Race to the Perfection of Purity of Mind–that is Freedom.

23 : 23

Let’s look back upon the Ground we have covered so far

• Through samŒdhi- jhŒna we learnt the method of suspending the activity of defilements caused by sense-perceptions of matter, namely seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching – all within the area of the five sense-bases.

• We became aware of some of the feelings that result from contact of matter with the sixth sense and the emotions generated through this contact.

• At the deepest level of breath meditation, we were able to isolate the mind from the influence of these sense-experiences, which meant that the mind was deprived of material to build its own concepts.

• We attained that level of purity of the sign, the signal that ushers in SamŒdhi.

• Having further worked on the sign, we attained the Samatha, SamŒdhi or jhŒna   whatever that can be called the first level of intuition, the purification of mind (citta).

• We have further washing and rinsing to be done to remove all of the stubborn and ingrained, subtle particles of  dust and dirt clinging and adhering to the mental fabric.

• They are mostly the views fabricated by the Self for its own ‘personal’ satisfaction.

23 : 24

SamŒdhi is not the destination we are seeking

• It was this kind of tranquilizing SamŒdhi or jhŒna that Ascetic SiddhŒrtha had perfected under the guidance of two teachers in turn.

• Why was he disappointed with it? Why did he abandon that practice and come away determined to find a way on his own, for which he had to work so hard for six odd years in the loneliness of the forest?

• Because he realized that one was not going to be in jhŒna-or in meditation the whole of one’s life. When one comes out of jhŒna into normal life, if those defilements rush back and assail the meditator, (may be in a much lesser degree of intensity), that freedom cannot be true or perfect freedom.

• That means we need to find a way of permanently destroying those impediments that we  suppressed or suspended through SamŒdhi, so that they will never again come back to harass us, as long as we live.

• That means there has to be a Way that will effect a permanent transformation of the individual’s character–free from all conditions of suffering.

24

Stage Three

of the Seven Stage relay Purification of View

• The rest of the relays in the journey should not be difficult for us, with the mastery of the breath meditation that brought us to a crucial stage in mental purification.

• From now on, we do not have to depend on our expertise in logical reasoning, or intellectual  understanding of the teaching as we read in books, or as we hear  from other speakers on the subject.

• Now we have at our disposal an  entirely a new kind of vehicle that will transport us most comfortably right through to the end of our journey.

• This is the intuition that we gained through SamŒdhi-jhŒna.

• The fact that we are now able to set aside or suspend the operation of five kinds of obstructions that block our direct vision into reality, is that intuition that is going to help us through to the end of our trip.

• The clarity of this intuitional space is by no means perfect. This imperfect quality of intuition can serve as the foundation on which we can take our present stand, and then keep on perfecting it, step by step, until it reaches the point of its Absolute Perfection.

24 : 2

What are views?   

How do they get formed?

  They fall within the activity of the fourth Constituent of our Living-experience, known as the Constituent of Mental Formations, or Concepts.

• When a material object comes in contact with a sense-organ, that contact causally creates a  sensation which attracts the attention of the mind and completes a perception.

• Every perception is accompanied by a sensation that evolves into a feeling.

• Any feeling is felt as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

• Pleasant, unpleasant is not a quality inherent in the matter perceived, but the conversion of a causally created sensation into something that can be experienced, enjoyed by a person – a self who only can experience pleasure or pain.

• Thus pleasurable or un-pleasurable feeling gets into the mind as a mental formation serving the interests of the ‘self’.

• Thus ordinary percepts get formed or constructed into concepts in the form of mental images of material forms into thoughts, imaginations, ideas, views, beliefs and opinions etc.

• These are not wrong, or false in themselves; they have been made false, distorted and perverted by the personality-view of the self that intruded itself from the moment an object got in  touch  with  a  sense  organ  causing  a sensation.

• Until and unless this false view of self is dissolved and destroyed, we have no true salvation. It is for ever standing in between mind and its objects, preventing the mind from  perceiving things as they actually are.

• The object of continued meditation now on, is cleansing the mind of this parasite - the personality view, the notion of self which shelters and commands a host of defilements, biases and fetters, the operations of which we are normally unaware of. We are ignorant of what causes our suffering.

• It did not happen even at the stage of Samadhi, though some of its ingredients were certainly recognized and weakened

24 : 3

Intuitive  Awareness.

     There are many ways of arriving at jhŒna   or  SamŒdhi   tranquility.

• The fact that it is variously named suggests that there is just not one kind of jhŒna:  entering into trance, absorption, ecstacy, tranquility meditation, calming meditation, samatha, etc.

• They all may mean the same thing.

• Whatever that may be, none of them is strong enough to wash away the deeply ingrained, obstinate stain of the self-view, the personality-view.

• In the Buddhist tradition this can be done through ordinary SamŒdhi being perfected and developed into Samma SamŒdhi.  SammŒ means what is not imperfect, what is Right, or  that which needs to be gradually developed into its level of perfection. 

• Most meditators are satisfied with whatever SamŒdhi has been attained. The ascetic Sidhartha wasn’t.

• What he found effective was SamŒdhi perfected through vidarshanŒ/vipassanŒ that means  Intuitive Awareness.

24 : 4

What is intuition?

• ‘Im-mediate’ or ‘direct’ contact with reality is Intuition.

• Im-mediate means without allowing anything to mediate, to intervene, to come in between the knowing mind and that which the mind needs to know.

• Our mind cannot come directly in touch with reality, or rather actuality, because of a huge mass of defilements, the chief of which is the delusion of self intervening and perverting everything that comes into mind’s view.

• Through mindfulness of breath we learnt to develop certain conditions (antidotes) that could make five such mediating elements ineffective, while we are in meditation, and to experience a wonderful state of purity of mind.

• That was SamŒdhi at which level we were able to render ineffective some powerful impediments. That skill is what has to be recognized and developed.

25

  The intervening Impediments we pushed aside

25 : 1

Condition that was able to overcome mind’s rigidity

• Looking at the performance of our mind from the angle of its supporting physical conditions, we can see how stiff and fixed our mind is, it is not flexible, not amenable to change; always prefers to remain holding tightly to some mental object or other.

• One word that can describe this condition is Rigidity.

• In practising mindfulness we keep aiming directly at one particular mental object, say, the sensation of the breath.

• This involves re-adjustment of several mental factors, going against the fixed habits of our mind.

• Those who start on this practice know how difficult, and how long it takes to break down the rigidity and the resistance of the mind obstructing this exercise.

• When the mind itself is trained to be mindful on the breath and nothing else, that character of the mind changes.

• Focusing the mind’s attention right on the object, and establishing attention on that object, so that the mind continues to stay there,  breaks down that condition of rigidity of mind, because mind and the object are dependent one upon the other.

25 : 2

Condition that can keep

sluggish mind awake

• There is another quality of the mind resisting mindful-awareness at the beginning.

• That is the slow-moving, sluggish, dull and lazy character of the mind, that prefers to remain dormant like an animal hibernating, extremely difficult to arouse interest so as to remain awake.

• Torpid, torpor is the word that describes this impeding character.

• The attentive mind is kept moving over the object back and forth, like a watchman, so that the object gets no chance to slip off.

• This, in fact, ensures that the mind is kept awake, open and fresh, and watchful all the time, with no chance to wander away from the object; and at the same time becomes acquainted with the qualities of the object.

• This meditative action can be called ‘silent investigation’.  Silent because we do not allow thoughts and concepts to arise and intervene.

• There is an interesting analogy used to clarify what is meant by these two initial steps in meditation: mindfulness and investigation.

• Imagine your act of polishing a brass vessel.

• Being mindful is similar to your holding the vessel firmly with one hand, while investigation is similar to your action with the other hand of applying some polish on the vessel and vigorously rubbing its surface with a polishing cloth.

• When these two factors are maintained steadily and continuously the rest of the samŒdhi factors will arise on their own, without much deliberation on your part.

25 : 3

Practice of awareness is different from that of mindfulness.

• In our practice of awareness what we are doing is moving the mind’s attention around the object that is held in hand by mindfulness, examining, investigating, with a view to getting a clear comprehension of the nature of the object.

• The sluggish and lethargic mind itself is used in carrying out a very serious act of investigation on something that the mind is doing.

• In the face of this meditative skill the mind just cannot remain asleep; it has to keep awake.

• This is what the joint exercise of mindfulness and investigative-awareness can contribute to the cleansing of the mind.

25 : 4

How to handle the mind that is

uncertain of everything

• The mental attitude of most people is one of uncertainty, doubt and suspicion leading to reluctance to try anything new.

  Nothing is accepted without expressing opinions, doubts, and criticism.

• When you are  overtaken by doubt, you cannot proceed further; you become paralyzed like the traveller at a cross road, unable to decide, and unsure as to which road to take. 

• Questions like “what purpose, what profit, what benefits will I have, in return for time given to meditation? There are more important things waiting to be done, I have no time to be doing nothing in meditation” etc.

• Doubt is indecision; a doubting mind runs here and there, and cannot fix itself on any particular object.

• Continuous attention to an object is the opposite of mind’s behaviour known as doubt.

• Obviously, when mind is engaged in an investigation, and the object is not allowed to slip off the mind, there is no space for doubt to be active.

• When that same mind is compelled, (though reluctantly at the beginning), to go through the steps of mindful- investigation of the quality of breath as a mental object, and begins to discover  those elements of joy and happiness, then comes the appreciation that there is value in spending some time with the mind, and so abandons that doubt and uncertainty, and falls in line with the practice.

25 : 5

Mind that is always in a

State of Dissatisfaction

• One of the most powerful impediments that stand in between mind and insight into actuality is the general condition of aversion, or ill-will, a feeling expressed in terms of  “I don’t like it, I dislike it, I  don’t like the people doing it, I don’t like the way things are done.”

• Nothing pleases, nothing is good enough, critical of everybody and everything.

• When rapture, joy and happiness arise and begin to fill the whole of meditator’s living experience,  this mood of depression, aversion or dissatisfaction will completely fade way.

• Naturally, these emotional feelings cannot co-exist with joy and happiness..

25 : 6

Restlessness and Remorse – Two major Impediments opposing Tranquility of Mind

• Our major objective in meditation is calming down of mind, to arrive at a state of tranquility, at that intuitional space.

• A major obstacle in this exercise is the restlessness of mind that we have been cultivating as part of our day-to-day style of living.

• During  the hours we are awake, we allow our mind to be constantly flirting with one object of thought after another, mostly frivolous, creating  thereby a dissipated and scattered state of mind.

• When there is nothing to do, we go searching for pleasure of entertainment that thrills and excites; and even anxiety, fear of horror are invited as thrilling elements of entertainment.

• So much so, that some of us suffer from habitual sleeplessness, insomnia.

• On the one hand we suffer from this restlessness, on the other hand we go looking for it.

• It is not a state of being with which we can be happy.

• It is a state of being disturbed, excited, difficult to bring under control.

25 : 7

The nature of mind overtaken by worry, regret or remorse

• This is another impediment that subscribes to the restless nature of the mind.

• The silent intervals that arise in meditation provide excellent opportunity for this type of hindrance to show up.

• This refers to remorse or bitter regret, that arises as a result of past memories surging over the mind, bringing with them painful feelings of regret, remorse, repentance and agitation  and worry over some wrong deeds one had done, or duties one had failed to fulfil.

• When the object of meditation is well developed, a deep sense of joy, happiness and comfort arises.

• Even body pains disappear under the influence of mindfulness, leading to a sense of physical ease and relief.

• With this physical and mental comfort, the mind is content to remain with the object, it does not fly about. Ths is the antidote for restlessness and worry.

25 : 8

Habitual Search of the Senses for what Pleases them.

• This is what we call sense-desire.

• At  each moment of our living experience the mind, led by ignorance of actuality,  goes on seeking, grasping and holding on to desirable sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, emotions, thoughts, concepts and memories.

• Thus sensual desire is the first and foremost hindrance to our practice of meditation.

• The attainment of one-pointedness-of-mind is the antidote for sense-desire.

• While the mind remains fully and exclusively concentrated on the object of meditation, it cannot and does not move around looking for other thoughts, nor does it desire pleasant sights or sounds.

• Pleasurable objects lose their power over the mind, and dissipation cannot occur.

•  That unification of mind in itself is a state of purity, clarity and sharpness.

•  It maintains the mind in its natural state of intelligence, preventing any other hindrance from entering the territory of the mind.

26

What is there to be purified

in my views ?

• To purify is to remove what is wrong, what is false in my views.

• This must be looked at from the point of view of our main objective, that is to make our mind free of whatever is dirty, whatever is foul, whatever is responsible for defiling and misleading our mind.

• What is so dirty and foul about my views that calls for purgative action ?

• Formation of views, other than Right Views, is a ‘conspiracy’ against Actuality – the Law of Nature that governs my living-experience.

• For instance : Perceiving, i.e. becoming conscious of matter with the senses, that leads to sensation – i.e. becoming conscious of the effect of that perception on the body are all parts of a process i.e. a series of acts or changes that go on connecting one with the other.

• What is being perceived is only a presentation by consciousness of some superficial, immaterial qualities such as colour, shape etc.

• It is a fleeting presentation with ‘No Thing’ in itself at all in that actuality of the process.

• Now what is the ‘conspiracy’?

• Desire or Craving for pleasurable feeling is not a quality of the objects perceived by the senses. Wanting to continue with a pleasurable feeling converts transient, impermanent processes of perceiving objects into THINGS of the mind in the form of VIEWS (diÊÊhi) that craving can hold in its grip.

• The formation or Construction of mental forms out of fleeting actualities is the ‘illegitimate’ function of the 4th constituent of my living-experience. 

• That means it is happening all the time, in every bit of experiencing.

26 : 1

This is how it is justified :

• Matter – whether of the physical body, the sense organs or of the objects perceived, as perceived cannot and do not feel pleasure or unpleasure.

• Only a ‘creature’, man or woman or animal can feel pleasure or un-pleasure.

• Every time a perception is built into a concept, a creature comes into being in the form of another view, a Notion of ‘self’ a person, an ego who now holds the mental formations as ‘This is mine’ – ‘This am I’ and ‘This is my-self’.

• Holding implies a holder like in ‘house-holder’ who ‘owns the house’.

26 : 2

How come the defiling elements into these constructed views ?

• Look at the role played by the concepts hidden within the following words when possessed by self-view or Personality-view (sakkŒya diÊÊhi)

• Thoughts – in the forms of pictures, ideas, purposes structured in mind in accordance with my inclinations, likes and dis-likes.–

•  Views – What I see when I look at things and people according to my personal points of view. “That’s the way it seems to me”.

• Opinions – I have formed my own opinions about everything and everybody in this world.

• They may not be based on complete knowledge, yet I hold fast to my opinions (opinionated).

• Notions – I have my own notions, ideas formed about everything.

• Images and Imaginations :– I have a perfect image, an un-changing picture of her or him sculptured in my memory.

• My imagination may be faulty, but yet that is ‘mine’.

• Beliefs – A mental construction accepted and held as absolutely true, having no doubt whatsoever, that calls for further investigation.

• Cause – A purpose built into the mind for which one is totally dedicated to fight for, even sacrificing one’s own life.

26 : 3

• Now see the tenacity with which one is held by the views on the one hand, and by the ego on the other – the by-product of the same conceiving industry.

• To hold – To keep grip of what one thinks is one’s property, concept, notion, idea or opinion.

• To grip – To keep tightly in mind as it is so sentimentally moving and interesting.

• To grasp – To ‘take in’ not only with the mind, but with the whole of living-experience.

• To grab – To get hold of it all for myself, with no concern for others.

• To cling – To hold tightly as though one’s very life is dependent on it.

• To attach – To have oneself fixed or joined to that which one likes.

• To identify – This is the culmination – the highest point in the development of abject slavery to the mind’s own conceived views.

• This is taking one’s ego, or self and each concept formed in the mind to be identically the same.

• This happens in total disregard to the actuality of transience – impermanence of living-experience being tied up with a notion of self that lasts un-changed for ever, yielding satisfaction for all time.

• The consequence of this mis-match is craving that is greed, sense-desire, egotistic selfishness, leading to conflict, misery, hatred, aversion, revenge and violence etc.

• This is what we meant by mind-defiling and corrupting conceptions of views, contrary to the nature of actuality of living-experience.

26 : 4

Functional Distinction of SamŒdhi - VipassanŒ  and Intuition

  To remind you again, the function of  SamŒdhi was to purify your conscious mind.

• SamŒdhi did this by sweeping away five hindrances that were blocking you from getting a direct view of actuality.

• SamŒdhi, by setting aside of those hindrances, provided you with an intuitive space enabling your mind to have direct access to actuality, using that limited space.

• This intuitive space is limited, and unreliable as those suspended hindrances can be blown in at any time.

• VipassanŒ functions in a manner quite different from that of SamŒdhi..

• The word VipassanŒ or VidarshanŒ  refers to those intuitive lights or insights themselves flashing forth from that clear space, and exposing the actuality of mental perceptions.

• What is insight ?

  Just as experience is not mere knowledge, but knowledge that comes out of observation of facts or events with the senses –

• Insight is not mere knowing by experience but deep understanding that comes out of an experience of seeing into with the mind itself - or something being directly presented to the mind.

• It goes completely beyond verbalized knowledge.

• Thus VipassanŒ takes full advantage of that intuitive space created by SamŒdhi, and works towards  a methodical and speedy destruction, once and for all, of those hindrances, together with a host of other defilements, in order to enlarge the intuitive space and make it perfect and infinite, with no boundaries at all.

• What we are putting into words refer to those intuitive revelations within that wordless, silent interior world of our own mind, which has been a closed book so far.

• The features of our living experience, when examined and investigated by looking at them through this purified space of intuition, the actuality that appears is so revealing that it has the force of transforming the character of our very being.

• A photograph you take of a man or a woman is very much the same as the visual image you get through your eye-perception.

• You do not see any difference between the photograph and the ‘real’ man or woman.

• From the point of view of what is ‘actual’, the man or woman in flesh and blood, breathing and living, what a difference!

• Apply this to all your sense-perceptions, and see the difference between what seems to be the reality you perceive, and the actuality that you prefer not to look at.

• The intuitive insights that flash through the mind cleansed by SamŒdhi, can be compared with what you get from an Electro-Encephalogram, the X-ray photograph of the brain waves, or an Electro-Cardiograph that reveals the sequence of electric waves generated at each heart beat.

• These  insights  provide you with the Vision of actuality, and you have to interpret it and arrive at the Knowledge component.

• Together they provide Knowledge-and-Vision, not of a static thing, but of an event in nature as it is actually happening.

26 : 5

Why Right View is so Important

  The term view in my living experience can be understood as beliefs, opinions, impressions or judgments formed in my mind.

• Even thoughts, ideas, and notions come under VIEWS when they are distorted by Self-view.

• VIEWS  express  in  terms  such  as  “It  seems to Me,  It  appears  to  me.”  “In  my  point  of  view” etc.

• They serve as fixed standards with which I judge other people and every thing that I perceive with my senses.

• This brings out the need that my views be right. If my views, beliefs and opinions are false, then not only my thoughts and aspirations but also my actions will drive me along evil paths.

• Purification of view, at this stage, has to be looked at, in the context of purified mind that has already been achieved.

• That means, in the context of the level of intuition, the samŒdhi jhŒna that has come to be experienced.

• That intuition is the skill that I have developed  in suspending certain hindrances  standing in the way of my direct understanding.

26 :  6

How do I set about Attending to the Task of  ensuring Purity of my Views?

• In order to get into meditation at any time, I make use of the breath as the medium of contact with my conscious mind. 

• But I do not resort to the technique of mindfulness in the way I practiced in order to reach one-pointedness of mind.

• My refuge, now, is awareness which investigates into the actuality, the true nature of what is being perceived.

26 : 7

Exposure of Things to vipassanŒ - Insights 

• Now that is made so easy and comfortable by the fact, that I have at my disposal a precious instrument that helps me see directly into the true nature of any object of mind.

• What I mean by that, is the state of mind that is free from the five hindrances, which is equal to SamŒdhi-jhŒna or intuition that has the capacity of exposing the actual nature of things.

• I only have to recall, and re-establish that quality in my mind, (if it is not there already) and place the object that I want to investigate on that background, and just allow it to be exposed to the purity of that conscious mind.

• This is what is called VidarshanŒ or VipassanŒ which flashes forth intuitive lights exposing the actuality of things, particularly the fleeting, transient, impermanency of things in mental experience.

• Our verbal analyses and explanations, intellectual arguments have no place in this mode of teaching and leaning.

• The message and its meaning are directly communicated to the mind through a kind of perception unique to vipassanŒ meditation.

• It provides both knowledge and vision in one and the same insight (g–Œna-dassana) in the manner it actually exists (yathŒ-bhèta)  

• That is why it brings out the impermanency, which is the actual nature of all things that exist in our mind.

26 : 8

The Actuality of View as exposed to Intuition. 

• We cannot help but verbalize it.

• It is a jhŒnic way of demonstrating the actuality of living experience, in order to help us correct and revise the kind of view we have already fixed and established in our mind.

• It draws the mind’s attention to the material aspects and the mental aspects of living experience or the Five Constituents of living experience,  to help learn the distinction, and then brings home the actuality of the inter-dependence of both these aspects.

• It is done through certain fast-moving experiential episodes, evidently using some features of the meditator’s acquired knowledge as well.

• To indicate what is not right with such fixed views, it gives a convincing demonstration of the arising and ceasing process of material and mental aspects of all experience.

• The effect of such intuitional vision or insights is quite different from what we understand through our interpretations and concepts we build on our linguistic experience. 

• The lesson gets engraved on our subconscious or the unconscious. We say so because, although we have learned the lesson, we have no knowledge that can be recalled of everything that happened in that process.

26 : 9

Application of Right-VIEW to Things

that surface in the Conscious Mind

• Now as a matter of constant habit we should use that state of purity of mind or samŒdhi as a special lense through which to look at, to examine any and all those disturbing sense-data that keep on gate-crashing into our surface-mind.

• You remember those sense-experiences we dealt under Restlessness and Remorse-Regret and Worry regarded as major hindrances that called for suspension.

• Now we can recognize them easily as they start disturbing the calm and tranquil state of mind we have learnt to enjoy.

• There is a strategy we can  adopt in carrying out this experiment :

• We should visualize three distinct regions in our physical body associated with three categories of conscious experience.

• The First Region of the Head where the brain and the five sense-organs are located.

• This is the central market, the busiest center where all manner of in-coming sense-data are received and exchanged for responses of valuation in terms of appreciation, rejection, praise and blame.

• This is the  ‘Head-Office’ where all this information is converted into thoughts, ideas, notions, opinions and views, and are recorded and filed for future intellectual consumption.

• In short this is where our superficial consciousness or surface mind is transacting all business with the outside world.

• We need to keep this Center under surveillance and disciplined and occasionally to respect rule of silence.

• Then there is the second region - the region of the Heart.

• This is the center that receives sense-data that get converted into emotions, sentiments and feelings as against the unsentimental intellectual activity of the ‘Head-office’.

• You can feel for yourself the varying impacts of lust, love and affection; anger, hatred and revenge; fear, anxiety and frustration; sorrow, grief and sympathy, all of these ruthlessly affecting this region of the heart.

• We can consider this to be the  Sub-conscious Region within which the roots of cankers, and latent tendencies and biases are embedded and hidden from the  view of the surface mind.

• The third Region is one that has been specifically mentioned by the Buddha as the ‘Yoni’ – the ‘womb’ the birth-place where all those thoughts, feelings, concepts are conceived–conceived in ‘absolute silence’ and in their true nature.

• The Buddha’s admonition was that whatever the teaching you give ear to, must necessarily be referred to their point of origination (yoniso-manasikŒra) at the depth of your being.

• That means what the Buddha teaches is meant to be known and experienced in the way it actually touches the deepest level of your being.

• How we can practise this is by learning to locate that State of SamŒdhi,  that state of mind free from sense-attachments and aversion, within this region of the ‘womb’, silent’ accommodating, peaceful – but penetratively vital and alive.

• Then learn to direct this intuitionally pure ray of consciousness upon the ‘trash’ that is defiling and disturbing the surface mind, as well as those emotional disturbances of the heart.

• If the purity that you have gained through the practice of ‘breath’ meditation is genuine,

• you will be amazed to notice the effect of this shifting of light has upon the surface mind and the heart region.

• This calls for constant practice for gradual deepening and widening the space of Enlightenment.

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Stage Four

PURIFICATION BY OVERCOMING DOUBT

  The Stage four, supported by Stage Two, that is the purity of conscious mind, and the preceding Stage Three, together provide the condition necessary for the arising of a state of mind that is free from doubt.

  We have ‘doubts’ about every conceivable thing.

• Our minds are conditioned to accept as true only those things that our own senses have perceived: “I saw it myself”, “that is my experience”, “that is my view”.

• I accept, without any ‘doubt’, views that conform to my intelligence and my logical reasoning  or if science agrees with such views.

• I have never taken the trouble to find out whether or not my sense-perceptions are liable to error,

• whether those premises on which logical conclusions are based can be mistaken or not,

or to ask science how it is qualified to tell me anything  about my conscious experience.

27 : 1

The kind of Doubt that Intuitional Vision clarifies. 

• The over-riding object of our meditation was the search for a way to overcome suffering inherent in the nature of our existence. 

• By understanding the actual conditions of corporeality and mentality, the mind has escaped from all doubt pertaining to the past, present or future.

• As such the responses vipassanŒ intuition provides, necessarily concern our existential condition, not the kind of uncertainties and doubts we have about things of daily life.

• What is being clarified at this stage is my doubt or non-knowledge of the causes and conditions governing the functioning of this body-mind complex.

• My doubts have led me to think and believe, and entertain false views that  this life, this body and mind are owned and directed by me - the person, the self, that I am.

• In the light of the intuition that is free of hindrances, my mind, at its sub-conscious level is made to see and realize, that it is all a case of impersonal causes and conditions determining and activating all things within this living experience.

• This is a perfection of the previous stage of purification of view as well, in addition to an awareness of the ‘dependent-together- arising’ of phenomena in body-mind complex.

• Our ignorance of the causes and conditions behind our existential suffering is clarified, to a certain extent, through a demonstration of non-verbal vision that brings about knowing.

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Stage Five

PURIFICATION BY KNOWLEDGE AND VISION OF

WHAT IS PATH AND WHAT IS NOT.

  This is a crucial stage in the process of educating the sub-conscious, through the medium of vipassanŒ insights.

• When you reach certain stages in meditation, you are likely to get unduly attached to certain experiences which will distract your attention, and lead you away from the right ‘path’.

• It is the grasping habit ingrained in you, even at that sub-conscious level.

• So it is essential that you develop those conditions that will insure you against such an eventuality.

• Until You come to possess a perfectly developed state of SamŒdhi or intuition, you are likely to be unduly attached to those ‘road-signs’ and ‘advertisements’ and bide your time at those halting places.

• They are those bright lights, states of joy and happiness on the way, which we made use of to undermine certain hindrances.

• They are not imperfections or defilements, but can become a basis for your pride or delight to come to wrong conclusions that you have attained the destination of the Right Path.

• Now that you have already developed intuition at the level of SamŒdhi, you should use that to investigate the actual nature of everything that appears to your mind. Whatever appears will fall within the Five Constituents of living experience.

• The way you do that is to direct your attention to the very center of your being (Yoniso manasikŒra) and in a short while the SamŒdhi-intuition will re-emerge in its wakefulness, and freedom from sense-attachments, aversions etc.

• When each of these appearances is investigated in the light of vipassanŒ-insights, that will reveal its actuality of impermanence, actuality that is un-substantial, yielding nothing that could be grasped and held and enjoyed by ego, by self.

• That much will be enough to convince you what the genuine Path is and what is not.

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Stage Six

PURIFICATION BY KNOWLEDGE AND

VISION OF THE PATH PROGRESS

  This comprises of a series of nine distinctive vipassanŒ- insights or intuitive revelations

• Since they arise within the field of SamŒdhi –intuition, they are free of defilements, and each is a condition for the arising of the one that follows.

29 : 1

Intuition into rise and fall of

mental phenomena

• Whatever phenomenon that is noticed by your mind, must necessarily fall within one or more  of the Five Constituents.

• As soon as a perceived object comes within the range of the intuitive light that you have discovered within yourself, it reveals itself in its true and actual character.

• The object is no longer an entity, a thing that stands by itself.

• The object in mental experience, whether the object is dead matter or a man or a woman alive, it  becomes a moving event, a non-stop process, like the brain waves that get recorded on an X-ray photograph, or the heart beats that get recorded on a cardiograph. It is only an arising - appearing only to change - and ceasing: arising again, and ceasing.

• This is experiencing of the actuality of impermanence of every sense-perception whether of the five senses or arising within the mind-sense itself.    

• No amount of reading literature on impermanence, no amount of discussion, no amount of intellectual contemplation can equal the actuality of this direct experience at the deepest level of conscious mind, as to what impermanence is in its actuality.

• In normal life our mind goes out of its way to resist, to reject this fact of impermanence in nature, that operates within living experience, in preference of artificially created ‘fixed’ moments of pleasurable existence.

• Look at this. Look at the actuality behind the fiction that your mind creates out of everything presented by your senses, in order to enjoy a moment of pleasurable or painful existence.

• When you are watching that tele-drama what you do is concentrating all your attention on the characters involved in the drama, identifying yourself wholesale with those characters, sharing their joys, their sorrows, their hopes and frustrations. You want to fight their battles for them, for you are in the know of many things that the characters in the drama are unaware of. You have become an active partner in the drama.

• But what you are forgetting, and rejecting off hand, is the fact  that each of these actors and actresses is only acting out an imaginary role. If you remind yourself of that you lose half your emotional involvement in the drama.

• More than that, you have deliberately allowed yourself to overlook the fact, that what you are seeing on the screen  are not men and women in their flesh and blood, but only electronically produced and coordinated series of lifeless and thoughtless visual images and audible sounds,   arising and falling, arising and falling, to create a false impression in your mind of continuing entities, of personalities, in order that you may create emotional feelings out of what you are made to imagine.

• The technical engineers know that to derive pleasure or pain out of what is perceived, the images must be preferably of men and women; they must be made to continue in the beholder’s senses unchanged for some duration in time, to be held and to make them  keep company with the self-experience of the beholder. 

• The actuality behind  everything that your senses perceive, is similar in every respect, to what the T. V. technicians are projecting on the screen.

• The present intuitional episode exposes the arising and falling away actuality in impermanence of all your perceptions, and leaves it to your subconscious intelligence  to let go of that foolish clinging to objects of perception.

29 : 2

Intuition into Dissolution of

Sense-Perceptions

• This arises as a natural development of the previous intuitional exposure.

• When you sit in meditation at this stage of your practice, you will be exposed to a situation in which you experience only the ending of whatever appears in your mind.

• If it is the breath that comes to your attention, you will find that the mind has lost its contact with its beginning and the middle and only the ending, the dissolution, the ceasing, the falling, the fading away of the breath comes into view.

• Breath is the mind itself, since mind depends on what it perceives.

• This happens in regard to whatever object, thought, idea, percept or concept that arises in the mind .

• As soon as something is noted, it dissolves leaving room for another to arise, and to fade away.

• Whatever perceived becomes indistinct, even the parts of your body: hands, legs, head, abdomen seem not to exist.

29 : 3

What is it that intuitional insights are trying to demonstrate, and teach you?

• The intuition you have already attained is free of attachment to sense-perceptions.

• Intuition is now projecting that purity of conscious-mind upon sense-perceptions that are arising, in order to prevent the defiling activity of attachment, holding and clinging, by demonstrating that they have no enduring substantiality, lasting quality.

• At the beginning you tend to get upset. But as the experience matures, a neutral feeling in body and mind, neither comfortable nor un-comfortable, will take over.

• This is the stage at which joy, happiness and comfort disappear and equanimity begins to predominate.

• Your mind regains ease, You will coolly settle back and watch the interesting procession of phenomena fading away.

• Note that consciousness has always to depend on an object, and when the object dissolves it is the dissolution of the conscious-mind itself, and that has a powerful effect on the entire living experience which has to depend on consciousness in order to be present.

• Do not forget that it is Craving’s Clinging to things that gives birth to the View of an un-changing Self – When those things appear to be evaporating it is Self that appears to evaporate.

29 : 4

Intuition of the Fearful

  Terror that strikes when continuity of existence is at stake.

• On account of seeing the impermanence of all  formations, and the misery in identifying them with one’s own self, creates an emotion of fear for one’s own existence.

• This is an emotional state that arises deep down in the heart of being, as an inevitable effect of all the intuitive insights that had arisen so far, and their coming into conflict with the view of one’s self being permanent.

• My pleasurable self has been conceived out of material forms, feelings, perceptions and  conceptions, all of which are forged and welded together by Craving to exist.

• These are the conditions without which there can be no existence for me; and to continue to be in pleasurable existence is my foremost desire.

• But now the vipassanŒ insights are impressing upon my mind, that to be conscious of any of these objects conveyed by the six senses, is to invite disappointment, frustration, misery and suffering.

• But it is impossible to abandon these sense-objects, because without them there is no consciousness for me, and without consciousness there is no existence for me. 

• Intuition also makes me aware that these Constituents of Existence are impersonal, but I cannot do without them in order to build my personal existence.  

• Trapped in the midst of these dilemmas, and when I see that even death is no end to this continuity in existence, I feel I have no escape whatsoever.

• This emotional conflict proves to be most oppressive and depressive and I am overtaken by a deep sense of fear and terror of my own existence.

29/5

 Intuition of Aversion

• Attachment to phenomena, i.e. to whatever the senses bring into my experience, is the one thing that makes me feel that I am alive, and that makes me happy.

• The insight I gained into the dissolution of these phenomena brought me an entirely different picture of their actual nature when they form part of my living experience.

• I saw the actuality of what happens to whatever sense-perception that arises, as being subject to decay, destruction and death.

• This realization creates within me a feeling of utter disgust with all sense-perceptions.

• Earlier, I was frightened of them, now I am disgusted of them, creating a deep sense of yearning to be free of being trapped up in, and fettered to this entire mass of grasping and holding to the Constituents of Existence.

29 : 6

Intuition of Yearning to be Free

•  Now that deep feeling of aversion towards all mental formations that was dominant in the previous insight makes me totally weary of the Constituents of my own living experience.

• This leads to a new development of not finding any delight in the formations.

• Formations are all that materiality, feelings, perceptions and conceptions on which consciousness has to depend for its presence.

• The previous insight presented the Five Constituents as prison to which one is confined.

• That has resulted in a total weakening of interest in clinging to the Constituents of Existence or to anything that belongs to the Constituents.

• The realization that there really is no experience anywhere in this domain of conditioned existence that appears to be satisfying, becomes the condition for the arising of an extremely strong resolution to get out of this prison constructed out of Five Constituents.

• That is a profound yearning for liberation, and an impulse to continue the practice, driving onward towards reaching cessation of all experience.

29 : 7

Intuition leading towards

Reflective Contemplation

• The collective force of all the insights gained so far, guided by that strong desire for emancipation from all those formations of existence, is now being directed towards applying the three characteristics to these formations.

• The three characteristics of all nature are the impermanency, impersonality and un-satisfactory consequences of identifying living experience with self.

• This is a repetition of meditative insights directed towards a penetrative understanding of the nature of the Constituents manifesting themselves as personal existence of the self.

• Now the mind, in its intuitive strength, free from resistance of the self, is moving very fast towards that seemingly impossible task of uprooting of craving’s clinging from the Five Constituents,  or in other words undoing the Craving’s creation of existence of a  self, out of impersonal, impermanent constituents.

29 : 8

Intuition of Equanimity regarding all Formations

• Notable feature of this stage in meditation practice is a great subtlety of awareness.

  We passed through similar state of awareness in our meditation on the breath, that brought us to the stage of purification of mind. 

• But now with the gradual expansion of the field of intuition, the state of awareness is very much clearer and deeper.

• What remains is only the consciousness which knows the absence of physical phenomena.

• At such times it is consciousness itself that has to be taken as the object of knowing, and to be  noted as ‘knowing’.

•  Even that consciousness can begin to flicker and reappear; yet at the same time, there will be clarity of mind, and extreme sharpness in awareness, giving no chance for attachment or aversion to arise.

• Objects that are normally unpleasant lose their influence completely, as do thrilling and exciting objects.

• Breathing process becomes a mere vibration, it breaks into particles, and may eventually disappear.

• Balance of mind is regained and mindful-awareness becomes extremely agile.

• This shift of attention from objects to consciousness itself is a crucial development in vipassanŒ  – intuition

• In our daily experience, consciousness gets identified with self that craving has created out of the Five Constituents.

• But the fact is that consciousness also can operate only in dependence on objects of which it is conscious.

• That is what makes self identify itself with all formations, i.e. matter, feeling, etc. 

• Now that the three characteristics are directly applied to consciousness itself, we are aiming at the dissolution of that ‘self’, the ‘subject’ before whom all objects present themselves, the master-observer, the one who knows and the one who does everything.

• This is the stage known as Equanimity regarding all Formations.

• Equanimity that we spoke of, on an earlier occasion of SamŒdhi jhŒna was never so strong as what arises at this stage.

• There arises a sense of coolness and steadiness in the absence of reactions; reactions are absent because the one who reacts has been silenced.

  From this state of extreme balance, the mind is able to penetrate into the peace that is  NibbŒna..

29 : 9

Intuition inro Adaptation of Truth 

  This is an intuitional over-view, in summary, of all factors of Insight Knowledge covered so far, as well as one that gives an indication of what is to follow.

• Each episode in insight arose in dependence upon the cumulative effect of the ones preceding, 

• but since  they all must be geared to take the meditator to one goal, that is NirvŒna, there is need for a Review and Adaptation towards  that one destination in view.

29 : 10

Intuitive insight into NibbŒna

• At this stage an extraordinary event occurs.

• The object of meditation, the breath and all other mental and physical phenomena, as well as the noting mind itself, come to a complete stop, a wipe out, a total black-out, a cessation, a temporary suspension of existence.

• You do not, of course, experience this at the moment it occurs, as you are devoid of consciousness of perception and feeling.

• This too is an intuitional insight of vipassanŒ that creates a tremendous impact on wisdom.

• It is meant to give you, at the level of your subconscious mind, a realistic demonstration of what NibbŒna is, what extinction of existential suffering means, without your being consciously aware of it, at the moment it occurs.

• With this attainment, only one last veil remains covering the revelation of NirvŒna; and that happens with what is called the development of strong wisdom. “Noble Path Consciousness”.

30

Stage Seven

Purification by

Knowledge and Vision

  This is what is known as “Noble Path Consciousness”.

• Up-to this point, each intuitional insight had eliminated a specific kind of wrong view, or misconception regarding the actuality behind existence.

• While the vipassanŒ insights are active, the defilements have no chance of arising and disturbing the meditator’s absorption in SamŒdhi.

• But the defilements are not totally uprooted as yet; in normal day-to-day life they are likely to return and be active.

• Thus we have to conclude that our meditation, concentration, as well as vipassanŒ jhŒnas resulting in insight knowledge, are all means, or instruments to be used for the development of that strong wisdom that has the capacity to transform character from within.

• Wisdom is identical with perfected Right View, at a level very much deeper than that with which we started our journey on the Eightfold Path.

• After all these vipassanŒ insights have been completed, and the cleansing process accomplished, there arises what is called the Right View of the Noble Path.

• This is the same as Perfectly Purified View, recognized as Wisdom now functioning as the culminating insight.

30 : 2

Significance of the term ‘Noble’

• Whenever the word Noble occurs in the Teaching, we are to understand what is meant is a state of being opposed to that of the ordinary un-enlightened worldling.

• Now we are approaching the stage when the ‘worldly’ or mundane state of consciousness of the meditator is on the verge of being transformed to what is recognized as supra-mundane.

• Mundane is to be confined to this material earth; to be confined to matter, the raw materials that the five sense-bases keep supplying for the mind to build mental concepts; to be willingly submissive to the totalitarian  control of the ego-consciousness.

• The insight  wisdom that arises at this point uproots and breaks through a most powerful cluster of defilements known as ‘fetters’.

• Fetters are shackles or chains used to keep man or animal in captivity. 

• This group is headed by sakkŒya-diÊÊhi or personality-view, the ego concept. The others are (ii) skeptical doubt and (iii) adherence to rites and rituals.

• This does not remain as an experience confined to sessions in meditation, but it brings about an actual transformation of the meditator’s personality, effective all through normal living experience. That is what wisdom determines.

30 : 3

Skeptical Doubt

  Some people have a cynical attitude, a low opinion of the goodness of human life, the perfectibility of human mind.

• Some people are so cynical and unconvinced about things they cannot see with their own eyes, that they have no inclination at all to inquire and investigate into the truth or otherwise of what even an Enlightened Teacher like the Buddha has taught.

• They reject off-hand doctrines such as conditionality, and life before birth, or life after death.

• When some of the mediating hindrances have been cleared out of the way, that space provides for intuition or im-mediate and direct contact with actuality.

• This actuality demonstrates experientially the transient, impermanent nature of all mental constructions;

• That leads to Knowledge and Vision that wipes out deluded views such as that of ego, self and personality.

• This leaves no room whatsoever for doubting the truth of what the Buddha taught on  subjects such as personality-view.

30 : 4

Adherence to Rites and Rituals

  How does that become a fetter that binds me to this endless birth and death?

• What drags me along this continuing existence, through birth after birth, and death after death is my own craving to go on existing.

• It is the same clinging to life that takes me from moment to moment, from day to day in this very life itself.

• That will-to-live that clinging to life that prevailed up-to the dying moment in the previous life, was the natural cause that determined the kind of birth as a human being in this life for me.

•  The quality of life I gained depends on factors other than my clinging to life.

• Human mind takes great delight in dwelling upon mystery, imagining things hidden from view, things inexplicable and beyond human reason.

• In modern language, adherence to rites and rituals is the same as practice of rites and rituals based on superstitious beliefs.

• Superstition is unreasoned belief, specially based on fear and sense of insecurity, giving rise to belief in strange forces, unnatural powers in control of natural events and human affairs.   

• Rites and rituals are those actions dictated by irrational fear of the unknown, misdirected and mysterious reverence in the sphere of religion as well.

Question: What is the harm in such practices, if they provide a sense of security and peace of mind, and even effect cure of mental depression and such complexes? Even placeboes are administered as medicine just to humour the patient, rather than to cure the patient.              

• In regard to this adherence to rites and rituals, the danger lies in the craving, the adherence, the attachment, the clinging, that gets expressed through what one does by way of practising these rites and rituals.

• You can understand the intensity of this craving, when you see that it falls within the same category of cravings, as clinging to sensuous  objects, clinging to views, opinions, beliefs, ideologies, and clinging to the notion of “I-mine and my-self”

• As long as un-enlightened human beings exist in this world, there will be no end to these irrational practices based on the notion of a self, an ego, a soul that yearns to be protected through placating other imagined superhuman and non-human ‘souls’ and ‘spirits’.

• The dissolution of personality-view through intuitional knowledge and vision alone, will see an end for ever, of those unreasoned beliefs and practices.

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The Aftermath of Completing the Seventh Stage.

• When this Knowledge and Vision  arises for the first time, the meditator is deemed to have attained to the Path of Stream Entry, the first level of Enlightenment.

• Stream here refers to the initial stage of the process that leads, in a few more stages, to the Ultimate Emancipation recognized as NirvŒna.

31 : 2

How does this Path Consciousness

uproot fetters?

• You ought to understand by now, that there is no ‘you’ as an agent of action.

• When appropriate conditions have been generated, what is known as causal creativity or dependent-arising takes over and makes things happen.

• It is this conditionality that builds, and also destroys.

• If certain conditions are developed, then those things dependent on such conditions must necessarily come into existence.

• If certain conditions are brought to an end, then the things dependent on such conditions  will inevitably come to an end.

• If you become aware of any defiling reaction arising in your mind at this present moment,  what you do is to look at it, with mindful-awareness springing from that intuitional resource free from five hindrances, that you have developed, and that insight will immediately bring that defiled reaction to an end.

• The impediments that prevent us from direct contact with reality that are to be removed or uprooted are the ones classed as latent or potential tendencies.

• Latent means “present but not seen to be active”. There are seven such latent impediments, all of which, under different terms, are included in the 10 fetters that bind us to the endless process of birth, death and re-birth.

31 : 3

The 10 fetters are

  (1) Personality view           (2) Skeptical Doubt   (3)Clinging to rites and rituals 

  (4) Sensual craving            (5) Ill-will

  (6) Craving for fine material existence

  (7) Craving for immaterial existence

  (8) Conceit                                       (9) Restlessness

 (10) Ignorance

• There are two ways in which these fetters function within our living experience.

• One mode of functioning is  in connection with objects of sense-experience, and the other is concerned with our long-term continuity in existence.

• The first mode of expression occurs every moment of our daily living-experience.

• When a  mental or physical object is perceived, and if there is no mindfulness  to keep that contact between mind and the object clear and pure, then some defilement  which lies dormant within our un-conscious will rise up, and behave in ways that create unpleasant and painful  conditions.

• If one is mindful, and the conditions are not conducive for the defilements to be active,  then they will continue to  remain dormant.

Second mode in which these fetters become operative is quite different.

• When it is said that these fetters lie dormant or latent, the question can be asked as to where exactly are they residing?

• They remain all the time buried and lodged in the stream of our consciousness, all the way through the cycle of existence in which no beginning can be known.

• It is only the Path Consciousness that arises at this stage, that has the strength to penetrate into the depth of that stream of consciousness, and to root out that  kind of fetter.

• It is said, that if a person, after the disappearance of the first three fetters has entered the Stream that takes one  to NirvŒna, he or she is no longer subject to re-birth in lower worlds, such as animal world,  and is destined to full enlightenment, having passed among heavenly and human beings, at the most, seven times more, through the round of re-births, before finally putting  an end to existential suffering.

• This gives us an indication that the fetters or the shackles that connect us with the previous life and the  next birth, remain lodged within what is called the ‘life-continuum,’

• whether it be subconscious or unconscious it doesn’t matter; the fact is that it is not accessible to willful manipulation by the mind operative in daily life.

• Life continuum - is like an oceanic current in which we, the worldlings are trapped and are being mercilessly dragged through beginning-less and end-less cycle of birth-death-and re-birth.

• It is only when we reach the end of the seventh or the final relay of our journey,  and gain that Noble Path Consciousness that we find ourselves safely out of that oceanic current.

  The fact that we are unaware of, is that it is within the capacity of each one of us; if only we have the courage to take the first step in the right direction, that is practising mindfulness on the breath, the rest will follow.

31 : 4

How does one get to know  that one has actually entered the Path of Stream Entry? 

• He or she has come to understand at a certain level of experience, the fact of suffering, its cause, and the fact that it can be ended, and the exact method of ending that suffering.

• He or she will find that, most of the time the mind is automatically tuned into

        (i)  Mindful- awareness,

       (ii)  Investigating the fundamental principles of the Teaching,

     (iii)  Effort in cultivating clean and pure  thoughts, 

      (iv)  Maintaining inner spiritual joy that affects others  with whom one comes in  contact as well.

       (v)  Calm and restful state of mind that nothing can disturb, 

      (vi)  Frequent arousal of SamŒdhi or intuitional state of concentrated mind, and

     (vii)   Equanimity, that is not indifference, but looking upon everything and everybody with that quality of mind free from the five hindrances, such as desire for sense-satisfaction and aversion towards things unpleasant to oneself.

• From now on with this new found happiness and bliss, the meditator will develop an extraordinary interest in the Teaching and in the cultivation and refinement of mental faculties.

• All these together will hurry the meditator along the route for what is known as Fruition Consciousness.

31 : 5

The Essence of what you have Learnt so far

  There is a wise saying on education’s general effect on an individual : “What one is left with, when one has forgotten all that was learnt at school and college, is the essence of one’s education.”

• Similarly, at this point, if you have forgotten all that we discussed so far, all that you understood and all that you experienced ;

• but if you are left with only that habit of constantly paying reflexive or mindful attention to whatever that happens in your living experience –  and interpreting that experience in the light of the fundamental principles of the Teaching –  that alone is sufficient.

• These represent the first two items of the seven ways of behaviour of one who has advanced in his spiritual development, and the rest will look after themselves.

• Let us always bear in mind the most fundamental and the guiding principle of Causality or Condtionality that should be applied in understanding everything that we experience.

• This means that everything I experience within my physical body and within my mental world is made to happen by impersonal causes and sustained, even for a brief moment, by impersonal conditions.

• The ‘person’ that I am, the ‘Self’ that I am that exercises supreme authority over everything I experience is also nothing but a mental notion, a view created by impersonal causes and conditions.

• It is this false view that causes all of one’s suffering by converting nature’s impersonal events into one’s own ‘personal’ affairs.

• The only way to root out this parasite is by training one’s mind to view everything that goes on within one’s living-experience in the light of reflexive or mindful awareness in which ‘Self’ has no influence.

• This exercise should be supported with the knowledge that all things of experience are impersonally caused and are transient and impermanent, providing no fixed entities to be grasped by the ego.

• It is quite easy to understand the operation of impersonal, natural causality in the way one’s internal organs are functioning systematically and purposefully providing absolutely no scope for one’s ‘personality’, ‘self’ or ‘ego’ to claim ownership or responsibility.

• What is essential is to be able to see the same principle of causation operating as mental formations, feelings, perceptions and consciousness, and that they can function very well without imposing on them a ‘bogus’ self.

• Once this bogus self which is only a false view, is driven out of all aspects of physical and mental life, then there arises Enlightenment free of all biases and fetters, of pleasures and displeasures.

31 : 6

Fruition Consciousness

• This is a particular development in consciousness when one is able to confirm for oneself that the attainment gained is irreversible, that there can be no going back.

• The Consciousness of entry into the Path occurs as a flash of insight, and until this fruition takes place, the path attainment is not strong enough to resist for all time the attacks of the defiling fetters. .

• So one continues to work on oneself, most enthusiastically as one who lives according to the tenets of the Teaching, as we described above (31:4 and 5), until this confirmation or consolidation takes place, which will definitely occur sooner or later in this very life.

• The Noble Fruition Consciousness cools the ground from which certain defilements have already been uprooted .

• A fire may burn out, but still embers are left behind keeping the ashes warm.

  Noble Fruition Right view, it is said, is like water being splashed over the embers.

32

Enlightenment

• Enlightenment is the word used in confirming the transformation of the individual in a manner that is irreversible.

• It is not a state of mind confined to the duration in which you are sitting in meditation.

• You become aware of the defilements that have been uprooted, and of the defilements that have yet to be uprooted.

  From now on NirvŒna itself becomes an object of consciousness for you.

  There are three more stages in enlightenment that you have to complete before you could abandon all of the remaining fetters, that in some way or other are upholding  the conceit ‘I-am’.

32 : 2

Wisdom  that is part of Enlightenment

• In order to understand what exactly is meant by the words Enlightenment and Wisdom, let’s  first recall the meanings attached to some of the key words we used in our discussions.

• We said, at some stage, that intuition meant immediate perception of truth or direct contact of mind with actualiy, without recourse to reasoning.

• Im-mediate means, not separated by any intervening medium.

• Insight also means penetrative understanding into the character of something or other.

• Removal or setting aside of the five hindrances means providing that im-mediate space for the knowing mind to come in direct contact with actuality.

• By using that limited space of intuition as the ‘microscope’ through which to look at our thoughts, ideas, views etc. we succeeded in recognizing and removing what is false in our thoughts, ideas and views that were impeding  and blocking  the mind from having direct contact with actuality.

• That is what enabled us gain the First level of Enlightenment.

• ‘To enlighten’ means to shed light on an object, free from prejudice and superstition.

•“Prejudices and superstitions” are the impeding hindrances that inter-fere with our direct insight into actuality.  

• The ordinary meaning of the word Wisdom is knowledge and experience together with the power of applying them critically and practically.

• Wisdom through its penetrative insight into the nature of actuality reveals the constituents out of which an object of mind is constructed, and also how those constituents interact in order to keep that object in existence.

• Wisdom’s best contribution towards purification of mind is its revelation of the actuality of transience, the impermanence of all constituents of mental experience.

32 : 3

The Fetters that need to be removed

in order that Wisdom may arise

• Their labels are no indication of the malignancy of their corruptive influence. 

       (i)   Sense-desire,

      (ii)   Grudge or Revenge  

     (iii)   Desire for continued existence,

     (iv)   Adherence to wrong views, 

      (v)   Skeptical doubt,

     (vi)   Conceit

    (vii)   Ignorance.

• The extent of the damage they cause within our living experience, can be understood in the way they are  described as “cankers, with their virulent, malignant,  cancerous roots extending deep down to the unconscious level of our being; as ‘intoxicants’ with poison oozing from the very depths of our being where they reside, to  infect the entire living experience.”

• Their grip on our hearts and minds is so tight, that once a latent tendency is provoked, it becomes a condition for multiplying itself, and one never knows whether its effect  will ever cease.

• Their removal stage by stage, creates that space free of hindrances and impediments, enabling intuition or the knowing mind to come in direct contact with actuality of things and events.

• This is Enlightenment, Awakening, Wisdom or the arising of knowledge and Insight into the actuality of things and events.

• The causes and conditions behind whatever happens become transparently visible when viewed through  this liberated space of consciousness.

• The Enlightenment that the  Buddha gained, consequent on destruction of all defilements, cankers, fetters  and latent tendencies is described in words such as the Arising of the Eye, Arising of Knowledge,  Arising of Wisdom, Arising of Science, culminating in the  Arising of Light.

32 : 4

Is there any Social Value

in this Individual Attainment?  

• To judge whether or not there is any social value in the Enlightenment of an individual, it is necessary to examine the social impact of individuals who are un-enlightened worldlings.

• Un-enlightened ones are the individuals for whom the ultimate value of all things lies in self-interest.

• In the case of un-enlightened minds, what-ever thought arises, what-ever the words in which the thought is  expressed, what-ever way the thought is put into action, is necessarily confined to the domain of “I-mine and myself.”

• Worldling cannot transcend, cannot go beyond this ego-centered world of his; there is no other criterion, no other standard or measure to judge how he or she should behave towards others in society.

• The social aspects of the worldling’s life are motivated entirely by  “What does it mean for me? My satisfaction, My good name, My popularity, My position, My status, My wealth, My gain, My profit, My power,  My future, My family, My people, My country, My religion, My language, My culture. In short,  My motives only are my priorities.”

• Compare this with the Enlightened individual for whom every act of social behaviour is completely devoid of motives pointing towards himself or herself.

• What-ever thought arises in that mind, whatever words or whatever action is used to express such thought, that will  always be within the context of “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my Self”

32 : 5

What makes it possible?

• There are no mentally constructed boundaries, frontiers or compartments within the Enlightened consciousness.

• Such a mind can no longer think in terms of ‘my self’ versus ‘others’ 

• No longer can he or she think in terms of the thinker as the subject and the thought as the object.

• The enlightened consciousness does not have mentally constructed views, opinions and prejudices through which to look at every other person.

  The Enlightened individual abides in four levels of consciousness within which the rest of all living beings are accommodated.

• One is good-will or benevolence, within which all of  conscious beings, visible or invisible  are accommodated with no distinction.

• The second is compassion rooted in the knowledge of the fact of universal suffering that goes with sentient existence, that is un-enlightened.

• This is not a passive state of pity or sympathy, but active involvement in what best could be done to alleviate that condition of pain whether of body or mind.

• The third is a state of consciousness described as altruistic joy in being aware of those  who are faring well in life,  free from states of poverty and misery. This is the opposite of what the worldling experiences as envy and jealousy, powerful anti-social defilements.

• The fourth abiding is a state of consciousness described as Equanimity, evenness of mind or temper, a state of composure that results from absence of attachments and aversions, absence of preferences and rejections because the one who does all that is no more.

• The social implications of Enlightenment can be judged by the life style of the Buddha himself  who represented the ultimate in Enlightenment.

• The Buddha – nature was one in which all kinds of hindrances and impediments imaginable, so called fetters, biases, latent tendencies etc. were completely dissolved and washed out of his conscious being, leaving absolutely no trace that could ever spring up again.

• Consequently the space of intuition that became available for the Buddha, with nothing whatsoever to impede his insight wisdom from directly and im-mediately coming in  contact with actuality, was boundless and fathomless.

• It was out of this boundless space of intuition that he derived all knowledge and insights into ethical and philosophical principles on which he structured his teaching.

• The same, as he said,  as had been discovered by all previous Buddhas who had come up the same Path.

• Whatsoever subject matter on which he directed his attention, its actuality, with all its hidden causes and conditions, would be revealed to him, and so the quality of omniscience (All knowing) was attributed to him.

• The purity and strength of his samŒdhi was infused with compassion and benevolence, that there was im-mediate communion with other conscious beings that he wished to get in touch with.

• Buddha was well known for his talent in taming the untamable.

• Once an intoxicated elephant that came rushing down to attack the Buddha, immediately calmed down in his presence.

• The communion that operates is not at the superficial level of thoughts, and feelings, but at the deepest level of subconscious being, the commonly shared nature of all sentient beings, the very source from which SamŒdhi springs in human beings.

• You can judge the social impact of his Enlightenment by the fact of his devoting all his life-time after Enlightenment, forty-five years, sharing his knowledge and experience, teaching and training innumerable number of others, to gain that same Enlightenment that he himself gained.

• He showed that Enlightenment is within each and every human being;

• He has demonstrated so clearly and systematically how every man and woman can clear the hindrances, and discover that intuitional space hidden within oneself.

• Knowledge and practice of that method has lasted vibrantly effective for the last twenty-five centuries in many quarters of the planet.

  May you have Confidence and Courage to tread the Path, and arrive Speedily at the Goal of total Freedom from Existential Suffering!

NirvŒna or NibbŒna – the Unconditioned.

  In all that we discussed so far, we were guided by just one objective in mind.

• That was to make the reader realize the conditioned nature of all things that exist on this planet earth, with particular insistence on subjective reference to the life and life- experience of the reader himself or herself as an individual.

• If we succeeded in that effort, then we can be  confident that we have created interest and incentive for the individual to go beyond the conditioned to the unconditioned.

• Otherwise the unconditioned doesn’t mean a thing.

  What do I understand by the Conditioned?

• Very briefly, Conditioned means “brought into existence by things other than itself, and being sustained by things other than itself.” Whatever thing you notice with your senses, whatever your imagination creates in your mind, whatever you perceive, or whatever you conceive out of what you perceive, with no exception whatsoever, has no life of its own, it owes its existence to other things. These other things in turn suffer the same fate, they also exist in dependence on other things. So where is the assurance of substance or permanence?

• It was to bring home this actual truth  to you, that we talked of causality, conditionality, dependent-together-arising principle of ‘paÊicca samuppŒda’, the nature of impermanence etc.

• It was with this object that we presented the Buddha’s instructions on how to obtain  knowledge, vision and experience of the actuality of your mental life as it moves along.Depending upon the depth of understanding of the transient, impermanent nature of all things that constitute your living experience, will arise the interest in actually experiencing the unconditioned.

The Unconditioned Happens with the Abandonment of the Conditioned

• It happens with the mind’s level of development in its capacity to abandon whatever object  the  consciousness reveals, whatever object is held by the mind in the  interest of desire to find some enjoyment through what is perceived; whatever idea, notion, view, opinion is conceived and grasped as ‘mine’ etc. All these come out of conditions that arise only to cease, and basically nothing to do with personality of a self. But all this is subject matter for knowledge which you are free to accept, doubt or reject.

• Actual abandonment of the conditioned happens with the mind’s knowledge, vision and experience of the natural law  that “Whatever has the Nature of Arising, by that very Fact is of the Nature of Ceasing” This has to be seen as actually what is happening all the time within the world of your own mind.

• It is only the insights that can usher in wisdom, that opens the gates to the Unconditioned.

Wisdom Demonstrates absence of Substantial Entities

  The mind is made to realize the fact that all formations ( formations are whatever the mind builds out of  sense-perceptions) are conditioned.

• The building material used to construct things of the mind are for ever arising and ceasing, and as such nothing mental allows itself to be held by and identified with a concocted notion of an unchanging self.

• With the arising of wisdom that there is nothing that can be held, arises the knowledge that there is nothing with which a self can be built.

• With these insights objects get wiped out of the mind, and self gets erased off the conscious mind. The mind’s craving vanishes as there are no objects yielding pleasure or pain.

What is so Blissful about Unconditioned NirvŒna?

Whatever we say by way of answer will be held as an object of mind, and endless concepts will multiply around it. All that can be understood as the opposite of the unconditioned.

• It is an experience of a state of mind that is absolutely free of all attachments, and therefore of aversions, disturbances, worries and conflicts. Absolutely free of pleasure, and consequently free of all pain.

• If you can visualize the effect of expulsion of self as agent and owner of all of your experience, then you can realize what bliss of the unconditioned means.

If not, it can in no way be verbalized, it has to be experienced.

• Till such time, keep investigating into the actuality within your own living- experience  of,

“Whatever has the Nature of Arising, All that has the Nature of Ceasing!”

“ yam kinci samudaya dhammam sabbam tam nir¯dha-dhammam!”