Five Points Of Awakening

Adam Mizner's Dhamma Talk on Five Points of Awakening Adam Mizner has dedicated many years to the in-depth study of Daoism, western Hermetics and the Buddha Dhamma, is initiated into and teaches methods from these traditions. He is a senior lay disciple of Ajahn Jumnien in the Thai Forest tradition of Theravada Buddhism. This deep spiritual background has a large influence on his approach to internal development teaching.

Please note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

There are five points of realization,

Five realizations that need to be actualized on the path.

The Pasana,

When insight arises,

It arises on these five points.

From the beginning of insight all the way through to full awakening,

There is nothing other than these five points.

The five points are anicca,

Or impermanence,

The quality of change,

The fact that everything that exists,

All conditioned phenomena,

Are subject to change.

At the most gross level this means that they arise,

They exist and they fall away,

That nothing lasts forever.

However,

When we look more closely we see that this arising,

Existing and falling away is constant.

When you observe your body,

If you observe close enough,

It's constantly aging,

It's not something that suddenly happens.

Every second it's changing.

Not for one second is your body the same as it was before.

In this way it is anicca,

Completely impermanent.

In the Buddhist path the main objects of contemplation are the five khandhas,

The five aggregates which make up this body-mind complex,

The first being body.

So we look clearly to see the way that form,

Rupa,

The way the body changes,

The way that it's impermanent,

Constantly in a flux.

I like to use the word unstable.

It is not stable,

It changes all the time.

When a scientist looks at matter through the microscope they see change,

They see flux.

The closer you look the more you see change.

Every time you think you see something stable,

If you look closer again you'll see it changing.

This is the truth of anicca.

You need to use this skill of looking at impermanence,

Of looking at change,

And use it to look at the five khandhas.

Rupa,

Form.

Second one being vedana,

Sensation or feelings.

We look at the way there is sensation dependent on the body.

When you're sitting still there's knee pain,

There's hip pain.

Looking at it like this as hip pain,

As knee pain is still not correct because you're labeling it and we're reifying sensation into something.

All we want to see is the fact that this sensation is in a constant state of flux.

Seeing this we call vipassana,

Seeing clearly the way things are.

When we don't see the state of change we call it delusion,

Not seeing the way things are.

Things are always changing but when we see them as stable that's delusion.

When we see the truth of how they are unstable that is clear seeing.

Our perceptions,

Sannyā,

They arise dependent on sense contact.

When we see things we hear things,

We think things.

Memories arise and we label things.

We perceive things in a certain way depending on our lifestyle,

Our conditioning,

Our state of mind.

If you observe sannyā,

If you observe perception,

You see it is unstable too.

It's always changing.

Even yesterday you wouldn't have perceived things the same way you do today.

In one conversation your perception can change many,

Many times.

Perception is unstable.

It is anicca.

Mental formations,

That which is fabricated in the mind,

Thoughts,

Emotions,

We see them arise,

Exist and fall away.

Even while they're existing they're unstable.

Anger arises,

Let's say it's boiling at 90 degrees of anger and it gets worse and worse to 110 and then it slowly dissipates back down to 90,

80,

70,

All the way until it's gone.

It is not stable.

It's impossible to be angry all the time.

You'll be immediately considered crazy.

Even when something truly upsets you,

Sometimes you think about it,

Sometimes you don't.

It's impermanent.

It's unstable.

It is anicca.

Consciousness arises dependent on the sense gates and the intellect gate.

We see that we cognize that we're seeing,

We know that we're seeing.

Then we hear a sound.

We know that we're hearing.

Consciousness jumps between hearing,

Seeing,

Tasting,

Thinking and so on continuously.

Sense consciousness is unstable.

Seeing the way things are as they truly are,

Seeing truth,

Penetrating through to Dharma,

The way things are we call vipassana.

Becoming stable at this seeing,

Becoming skilled at this seeing so that this seeing is constant.

It's shamatha.

We're aiming for the union of samatha and vipassana.

When the quality of seeing is constant,

When it is stable,

That is the shamatha of vipassana,

Vipassana samadhi,

The samadhi which is beyond the world.

The first point of realization,

The first point that we need to realize is impermanence.

But realization does not mean like the light bulb goes on and yes suddenly you get it or an intellectual understanding,

Yes now I understand,

That is not what realization is.

Realization is when the seeing has become stabilized,

When vipassana and samatha have become unified.

When we never fall victim to the false reality of stability,

When we never get tricked by the idea of something being permanent or stable,

Then we could say we have realized impermanence.

The first point.

Realizing impermanence we see the five khandhas which is everything that our body and mind could be made up of,

Everything around us,

All phenomena,

Inside and outside of the self,

Are ever changing,

In a flux,

Unstable and therefore unreliable.

Seeing this way that they're unreliable we see the second point of realization which is dukkha,

That which is unsatisfactory,

That which is suffering.

The truth of dukkha,

The flux and change in our legs when we sit still we perceive it as pain.

The fact that our body ages and gets sick is suffering.

That which we cling to falls away.

That which we desire ends,

That which we do not like will come to us and fall away and come and fall away and change continuously because of the truth of impermanence.

This truth of impermanence shows us directly the truth of dukkha.

However if our realization is complete on the truth of impermanence that frees us from a lot of the dukkha because we no longer cling to wanting things to be permanent,

Wanting things to be stable,

Wanting things to be unchanging.

Why do we no longer cling?

Because we see that clinging as insanity,

It's delusion.

How could you want something to be simply the way it could never be?

It is like we want daytime to be permanent and nighttime to never come.

If somebody wants nighttime to never come,

They're highly deluded and they'll suffer because of it.

We need to see the reality of change.

Seeing that everything is in a flux,

That everything changes,

Frees us from a huge amount of dukkha.

We begin to see these five khandhas,

The aggregates which make up the self as dukkha,

The second point of realization.

Your body constantly changing is suffering.

Feelings they're unstable,

The sensations change.

When you don't move your body pain comes.

Anyone that has doubt that sensation is dukkha,

The challenge is very simple.

Just sit still.

Do not adjust.

Even when you're asleep you have to continuously adjust.

We're constantly running away from dukkha.

Why does dukkha come?

Dukkha comes because of impermanence.

We need to look at the five khandhas under the microscope of seeing dukkha.

We see feelings,

Body or form,

Feelings,

Perceptions,

Mental formations and consciousness,

The way they arise,

Exist and fall away,

The way they change and the way this change brings suffering.

The way it's unsatisfactory,

The way it's just not quite good enough.

Maybe the suffering is tiny,

Just a little bit of not perfect.

We call that dukkha.

Penetrating through dukkha we begin to see the third point of realization,

Anatta.

Anatta is the truth of not-self.

This is one of the biggest points in the Buddha dhamma.

It's what's unique to Buddhism,

It's what leads one directly to realization and freedom.

We can see impermanence and suffering.

In fact nobody really can deny them.

If you look you have to admit there is impermanence and there is suffering.

However the feeling is that I am impermanent and I am suffering.

This is just suffering.

It's only when we see anatta that we begin to become truly free from dukkha.

What is the truth of anatta?

It's very misunderstood.

The truth of anatta is that anatta or self is the coming together of things which we then perceive,

Label and recognize due to convention as a self.

The building we're in now,

This salah is made up of cement,

Tiles,

Glue,

Electrical wiring,

Glass and timber.

We call it the salah.

However it's not really a salah.

It is timber,

Glass,

Electrical wiring,

Cement,

Tiles and so on.

If we took all those things apart there'd be no salah to be found.

So the taking apart of that which has come together is the truth of anatta.

When we see the separation of things we see the truth of not-self.

There is no building,

There is only separate materials.

None of those materials are the building.

If you look more closely once again at any of those materials,

So we look at the cement,

We see the water in the cement,

The sand,

The concrete,

We see separate parts.

So we see there is no truth of the cement or of the concrete.

And we look further into the different chemicals and the further you look the further you find the truth of not-self.

The only time we see self is when we're not looking deeply.

So we penetrate through to not-self.

We allow our vision,

Our clear seeing,

Our knowing quality to penetrate in and see the truth of not-self.

We do this with body,

Feelings,

Perceptions,

Mental formations and consciousness.

When one truly reaches this point of realization,

Dukkha comes to almost an end.

Now we see the way things are.

Everything is changing.

Because of that change there is suffering.

But all this change and suffering is not-self anyway,

So what is there to suffer?

Why am I so caught up?

It's just stuff happening.

It's just phenomena rolling on.

Seeing this we become free from it.

The third point of realization is the point of dukkha.

So then we see,

Okay,

So the body is separate to feeling,

Feeling is separate to perceptions.

We've broken the parts up.

Now we need to look deeper at each individual part.

Looking at each khanda,

Looking deeply at each component,

We penetrate deeper again to the next point of realization,

Sunyata,

The point of emptiness.

We see the truth of emptiness.

No matter how much you break something down,

All those components are impermanent,

They will dissolve,

They will disappear into nothing.

If you look at them very closely,

You will find only empty space.

You use a microscope and you look and you see it's 99.

99% empty space.

And that little bit of the cells that are there,

When we look close enough they're unstable.

If you look really closely they disappear.

This is science seeing the truth of sunyata,

Seeing emptiness.

In your personal practice when your samadhi gets strong,

When you look at something with strong samadhi the object disappears.

You can put an object in front,

Sit down,

Go into samadhi on the object,

The object disappears.

The table is still there but the object of your concentration vanishes.

I was confused when this first started to happen.

I talked to my teacher and he said that it's seeing emptiness.

Because your vision is penetrating deeply into the truth of the matter.

The truth of the matter is it's nothing,

It's empty,

It's void.

So they're the four first points of realization.

From impermanence to suffering to not-self to emptiness.

Seeing emptiness in many ways is the fruit of wisdom.

We see the ultimate truth.

Emptiness is the ultimate truth.

Conventionally we have this building,

Tables,

People,

Meditation mats.

But when we look deeply enough and we penetrate through we see only cells and then only empty space and there's nothing.

We see only sunyata.

It is only when we don't look with penetration that we are deluded by things.

We see atta,

We see self.

When we look clearly we penetrate through,

Not self and see emptiness.

But even the arising of this wisdom is not complete freedom and not complete enlightenment.

It is not the state of an arahant.

Why is it not an arahant?

Because there is still defilement.

The mental defilements still exist.

There is still greed,

Anger and delusion.

Because of this greed,

Anger and delusion we suffer.

So maybe we can penetrate through and see that it's innately empty,

It's insubstantial,

It's not real but still the greed arises anyway.

So we have an empty kind of wisdom.

We have a high meditation skill.

However we are not free from the defilements.

The true path is eradicating the mental defilements which are the ultimate cause of suffering.

The first four points of realization are all working towards this.

The deeper we see the easier it is to let go of these mental qualities which are negative.

The more we see them as fleeting,

As passing,

As empty,

As insubstantial,

As worthless,

The less they disrupt us.

When we see them just as a meaningless suffering we don't get so caught and we no longer follow them.

With time and persistence this starves out the defilements.

The defilements become starved of their fuel.

Their fuel is clinging.

When we cling to these mental states they go on and on.

The Buddha used the term clinging sustenance.

The five aggregates of clinging sustenance,

They are sustained by clinging.

When we relinquish,

When we let go of clinging they no longer can be sustained.

Their fuel dies out.

Just like when you take the fuel away from the flame,

The flame dies out.

The fire of greed,

Anger and delusion is dependent on fuel.

The fuel is this clinging.

The absence of this clinging leads to the eradication of the defilements which is the fifth point of realization,

Nibbāna.

Nibbāna is the complete eradication of all defilements.

Recognizing emptiness is not yet Nibbāna,

Not yet the state of Arahant.

Only when one relinquishes all defilements is it complete.

From the beginning of insight,

Seeing impermanence,

Seeing anicca,

Seeing suffering,

Seeing dukkha.

Because of that we see the nature of not-self,

Seeing anatta,

Penetrating deeply into those components,

Penetrating deeply through anatta to see the truth of sunyata,

To see the truth of emptiness.

This gives us the tools to eradicate the defilements for the final realization and actualization of Nibbāna,

The complete and utter end of all suffering here and in all future states.

This is the way my teacher has broken down the path in a very complete and short,

Very direct way,

The 84,

000 Dharma doors broken down into very simple five points.

The five points of realization.

How do you realize these five points?

By looking at the five khandhas.

Vipassana is the skill of looking at the five khandhas to realize in sequential order the five points of realization.

The looking,

The seeing is the vipassana.

Becoming stable in that is shamatha.

The enlightened ones have achieved the perfect unity of shamatha and vipassana.

Complete freedom from dukkha.

Okay.

Any questions?

That's not a question.

The knowing,

The seeing quality is knowing.

When we see the change,

That's knowing.

We have to constantly look and see.

When we stop seeing,

We lose the stability in our vipassana.

The shamatha disappears.

We have erratic vipassana.

The knowing falls away.

So we call it,

The knowing is buto,

The knower is buta.

When the knowing is stable,

When the buto is completely stable,

That's buta,

That's awakening.

You're awakened.

We all have knowing.

The knowing quality is innate.

However the knowing quality is also at present impermanent.

Sometimes we know,

Sometimes we don't know.

Or the knowing quality jumps around to this and that.

It gets caught up in the body,

Gets caught up in our desires.

And the knowing quality is now knowing what we want for dinner instead of knowing impermanence.

It's now knowing this nice sensation of stretching out your legs instead of knowing dukkha.

So the knowing quality runs off,

Gets diluted by phenomena.

So we need to stabilize the knowing quality in a state of vipassana.

When we always know clearly,

See emptiness and let go,

This is the stability of vipassana.

The opposite of dukkha is sukha,

Which is pleasure.

We're not denying the pleasures of life,

They're definitely there.

However,

When looking at the truth of impermanence,

Nobody can deny that the pleasures of life arise and fall away.

No pleasure of life is everlasting.

In fact,

Even the greatest pleasure,

If it was everlasting,

Would become dukkha.

Even sexual orgasm,

If it went on and on,

It would be the most terrible,

Terrible sensation.

A nice massage that went on and on would be torture.

Nice food when you're eating it is sukha,

But if it went on and on,

It would be torture.

All sukha is impermanent.

If it went on and on,

It becomes dukkha.

It's the nature of change.

When one thing reaches extreme,

It becomes the other.

The only reliable sukha is emptiness,

Because emptiness never becomes dukkha.

It's not something to reverse.

It's not a manifest thing to change,

It's non-dual.

All dualistic things are suffering,

Even sukha,

Even pleasure.

We all experience this if we look at it clearly.

The goal is freedom from the defilements,

But the path to achieving that is seeing not self and emptiness.

This emptiness does not mean emptiness of mind.

There's a misunderstanding where some people think emptiness means blank.

Emptiness does not mean blank,

Nor does it mean void like a black hole.

Emptiness is the nature of things.

Nobody can deny this timber here on the chair I'm sitting on.

There it is.

But the nature of this timber is emptiness.

If you look clearly enough at it,

You cannot find it.

For most people,

They need a very powerful microscope to look clearly enough at something.

The deeper you look at anything,

You see that its essence is empty.

Innately it is empty.

We're not denying its existence or saying to be in a blank state.

It's rather to see the truth of things as they arise as emptiness.

Emptiness is the ultimate truth of everything.

Everything good,

Everything bad,

Everything manifest or unmanifest is all emptiness.

It is emptiness that unifies all.

The emptiness is the beginning,

The now and the end if there is one.

It is constant.

It cannot be destroyed.

It is permanent.

Because it is permanent,

It is reliable.

So we learn to rely on this emptiness.

Emptiness becomes our refuge.

The truth becomes our refuge.

So we're no longer at war with the way things are.

We suffer because we're at war with the way things are.

Life just isn't how I want it.

I don't want to be sick,

Tired,

Hungry.

This is the human state.

We battle truth.

When we battle truth,

We suffer.

When we truly accept and see clearly the way things truly are,

That thing will not make us suffer anymore.

Like the example I gave before of day and night,

Which is a very simple example.

If we're battling,

We don't want night to come pretty soon.

In an hour or so we're going to be very unhappy because things are going to go not the way we want.

But we see the truth that night has to come.

Seeing,

Understanding,

Accepting,

And relinquishing in accordance with truth allows the suffering to fall away.

We no longer cling to delusion.

Instead we take refuge in truth.

We see the emptiness of things.

Seeing the emptiness of things allows one to become peaceful,

At ease,

Not diseased.

Disease is diseased,

Not at ease.

When we're sick,

When we're in pain,

When we're stressed,

We're diseased.

There is dis-ease.

When you become at peace with things,

You're at ease.

Mental health and physical health.

The ultimate form of health being Nibbana.

No sickness left.

Nothing left to do on the path.

All the illnesses eradicated from the mind.

This is what we work for.

So,

You still need to like,

You know,

Carry on every day with that mask.

It's just been mindful of what you were talking about.

I was going to sit there and be blank.

Well,

You can try to sit there and be blank.

I guarantee you'll fail.

No,

I don't think it will change.

You can't be blank.

Try.

One thing that experienced meditators know is that perfect emptiness of mind is impermanent.

So we enter Samadhi.

Samadhi is when the mind stills onto one single point,

One facet of concentration.

We enter Jhana,

Bliss arises,

The mind is still.

And then,

The mind is not still,

The mind starts moving again and the bliss ends.

Now,

Even if you practice for 50 years,

10 hours a day,

This will still happen.

Nobody can perfect that.

You can get very skilled at it,

But it's the nature of the mind to change.

Because it is anicca,

It is impermanent.

Because of this change,

You cannot become perfectly still.

Thoughts will come and go.

Meditators are better at holding them at bay.

Meditators are better at focusing the mind.

But ultimately,

Everything still follows Dharma.

And anicca is Dharma,

The way it is.

So the goal is definitely not to do something that's impossible.

Now,

Some people fall into that,

Thinking the goal is to have a perfectly still mind.

And they will suffer till the end of time because the goal is impossible.

It cannot be done.

But you can see that when the mind changes,

When your meditation ends,

Well that too is empty,

That too has no substance,

That too is impermanent.

It's nothing to cling,

So when you don't cling,

You don't sustain the cause of suffering.

The clinging sustenance dies out.

The fuel of the flame is taken away and the flame dies out.

When the flame dies out,

We call this Nibbana,

The ending of the flames of greed,

Anger and delusion.

Do we need a particular environment to practice these things?

No.

Vipassana can be practiced in any environment.

What is special about vipassana is that it is timeless.

The Buddha described it,

The word he used was Akalikol.

Akalikol means timeless.

That means you can do it anytime.

You can do it sitting on the meditation mat,

Walking,

Working on the computer,

Going to the bathroom,

Interacting with friends and family.

Anytime you can see the way things are.

Samatha on the other hand,

The practice of samadhi,

Of tranquility,

Of stilling the mind is dependent on time and environment,

Dependent on time and condition,

Cause and condition.

It's very difficult to enter samadhi at a rock concert for example.

When the body or mind is busy,

You can't enter samadhi.

The body and mind must be still.

The environment needs to be comfortable enough and peaceful enough.

When there is a lot of pain,

We've all felt this.

The first half an hour of meditation was great.

I had a little taste of samadhi.

Maybe I even had some bliss states.

And then my hip just started burning.

Like somebody was stabbing me and my meditation is gone.

So it is completely dependent on the environment of our body,

Which is our true environment,

And the environment around us.

If somebody is poking you continuously,

You cannot enter samadhi,

But you can practice vipassana.

Now the samadhi of vipassana you can enter in any time,

In any condition,

Because it is not the samadhi of stillness.

It is the samadhi of seeing clearly.

It is not stable in the way that the mind is not moving.

It is stable in that the mind is always penetrating through and always seeing reality.

This kind of samadhi,

The samadhi put forward by the Buddha,

A samma samatit,

The right samadhi,

The samadhi that leads to enlightenment,

Is not dependent on our environment or time.

This is the ultimate goal.

But the reality of practice is,

In the beginning,

In the early years,

Your environment is extremely important.

Separating yourself from negative influences is extremely important.

Being comfortable,

Healthy enough,

In a peaceful environment,

Will speed up your progress in a massive way.

So once again we have relative truth and ultimate truth.

They must be balanced.

Realizing ultimate truth,

However still taking care of relative truth.

We can say knowing and awareness,

You can link them together?

Link them together?

If you say,

Talk or in this past time ask.

Sure,

You could be two words for the same thing.

The actual quality of being awake,

Of being aware of knowing,

There are many words to describe it.

It's the important quality,

It's the essence of vipassana.

When we lose that knowing,

That's when vipassana dies out,

When we're no longer in the knowing.

Now it doesn't mean we're not aware.

We're still aware but we're aware of the wrong thing,

Or our awareness is muddled,

Our awareness is confused.

Awareness is part of the human state.

We're aware right now but maybe we're not practicing vipassana.

So just being mindful is not right mindfulness.

Just awareness is not right awareness.

Some people put forward that all you need to do is be mindful.

Well,

A race car driver is extremely mindful.

I guarantee while they're on that track,

They don't lose their mindfulness.

If they do,

It could cost them their life.

Their mindfulness is highly developed.

However,

Their mindfulness does not lead to freedom from suffering because it is not sammasati,

It is not right mindfulness.

Right mindfulness is being mindful of the five points of realization and the five khandhas.

Their mindfulness is a worldly skill.

When we're mindful of that which leads to emptiness and beyond the world,

It becomes a super mundane skill,

A spiritual skill.

So awareness itself,

Yeah,

That's the ingredient.

The knowing,

That's the ingredient or the tool.

But you have to turn it in the right direction.

You have to shine the light of awareness in the right direction.

Having a lot of awareness,

That's not really it.

Pointing it in the right direction,

That's when we bear fruit.

We've all met people with highly developed intelligence and awareness who are totally miserable.

Maybe their highly developed intelligence is always just looking at politics and picking holes in the way the world is and it's everything screwed up.

I hate the way the government does this.

Can you believe what's happening in that country?

Can you believe this food is not organic and it's going to poison me?

Their intelligence stuff leads to more problems.

They're pointing the light of intelligence outward in the wrong way.

So we need to turn the light around via light of awareness.

Turn it around to look back at yourself.

And keep turning it around.

We look deeply and we find there's nothing to find.

We find emptiness.

That's when our light is looking in the right direction.

Seeing emptiness,

Seeing truth.

Using awareness as a skill instead of being used by our awareness.

We all have knowing,

We all have awareness,

But most of us are used and abused by it.

We need to use it.

We need to use it to push us towards the fruit of the path and freedom from suffering.

Because that's what we all want.

That's what every being wants.

Anybody else?

You said that the ego's taste is 99% anti-active.

Inside our body,

Yeah.

That's a scientific thing.

I don't know the exact technology on it.

But the basic principle is that if you look at any matter,

Whether it's this chair,

This microphone,

My body,

Your body,

The clothing,

The amulet.

If you look closely enough at the microscope you see that it's actually mainly made up of empty space.

So it's just the physical truth of form.

The rupa,

The matter is actually sunyata,

Is actually empty.

Now even that little bit left over of the cells,

Once again when you look even closer they've now discovered if you look closely at them,

Those appearing and disappearing atoms or whatever,

Or waves of energy.

However you look at it,

Whatever you look at,

When you look closely enough at it,

It ceases.

Because its existence is dependent on our delusion.

It is caused by our delusion.

When we look and penetrate through it ceases to be there.

This is a very strange phenomena of science aligning with the Buddha Dharma.

However knowing it,

Looking through a microscope doesn't make you awakened.

It has to be,

Your awareness needs to become the microscope.

When your awareness is super powered like a super microscope and you can penetrate through,

Your vipassana is strong,

Then you can see these things in a way that bears fruit.

Looking at it through a microscope does not work.

But it's interesting nonetheless the way science is catching up.

It's really true isn't it?

You can't continue to play with it.

You look at these,

Those are little things that are established between you and the Buddha Dharma,

It's really what we're saying.

Even though science has no knowledge of the Dharma,

You are with it,

That's all that is in the situation.

Well truth is truth and they are starting to realize some of it.

Reviews

I am in awe of Adam, I think you are amazing.

Really informative. I wonder how when we switch from looking outward to looking inward, how do we main a perspective of social justice and working toward the enlightenment of all human beings. I dont know if that is clear or not. But I struggle with maintaining the sense of compassion for all people, even those who would harm me and others while still maintaining an inward sense that all slips away and nothing outside me is important. Thank you for a very good talk.