How Life Really Works

We can try to hold the “good” and push away the “bad.” This gives us more holding and pushing. Or we can look at what causes happiness to arise and cultivate those qualities. The Buddha showed us how to do this and find deeper wellbeing

Transcript

How many of you have an allergy?

What are some of the causes of your allergies?

Grass pollen.

Cats.

Dust.

Everything.

Idiots.

You're allergic to idiots?

However,

Most people are not allergic to most of the substances,

Right?

Except for maybe the idiots.

I don't know.

So actually a more fundamental cause of allergies is hypersensitivity.

So to avoid an allergic response we may avoid the pollen or the cat hair or whatever that is.

But if you actually want to cure the allergies you have to somehow cure the hypersensitivity.

So what causes the hypersensitivity?

The immune system treats a benign substance as if it were a threat.

That's what happens in allergic responses.

So what causes the immune system to be hyperactive?

Well,

We don't have to go into that.

The point is that most scientific inquiries end up taking this,

Begin to go this way.

We have something to define the cause and the cause of that and the cause of that and the cause of that.

So you have this chain of causation that shows up in many different places.

And you'll notice that in each of these that it is harder to see the cause than the result.

So itchy eyes,

Headaches,

The allergic responses are a lot easier to see than the dust or pollen,

Etc.

And the hyperactivity underneath it is basically invisible unless you have really specialized equipment to see it.

So the deeper we look into this chain of causation the subtler and subtler our investigation becomes.

So to my knowledge I don't think the Buddha had any special interest in allergies.

But he was very interested in finding the cause and to relieve the cause of suffering.

And his investigation took the same pattern.

How many of you suffer?

So what are the causes of your suffering?

Idiots.

Those guys.

So lots and lots of different things,

Right?

Political inanity,

Insults,

Subtoes,

Broken bones,

On and on and on.

Expectations.

But not everyone suffers from these.

So spoiled plans will leave some people angry and leave other people amused.

Some people respond to loss with grief.

Others respond to it with kind of a deeper appreciation for what remains.

Some people respond to an impending death with depression.

Other people respond with equanimity.

So to avoid suffering we can try to avoid the things that trigger it.

Good luck with that.

Good luck with that.

But to cure the suffering we have to look a lot deeper.

We have to look into this reactivity.

There's an old saying that says life brings change but suffering is optional.

So we have to look at the deeper reactivity that gives rise to this.

So the Buddha described the origin of suffering as this series of causal relationships.

Padaka-samuppada is what it's called.

Padaka-samuppada.

I like it.

It sounds like a bongo riff.

Padaka-samuppada.

The laws of dependent origination,

What they mean is the laws by which everything has a cause that originates in something else.

And so it's just tracing these causal relationships down.

The Buddha said that the backbone of this meditation practice that we're doing is Padaka-samuppada.

He said that the person who fully understands dependent origination understands the whole of his teachings.

And anyone who understands the whole of his teachings and his practice understands dependent origination.

So I thought since we're on a Buddhist retreat it might be useful to spend at least an evening looking at Padaka-samuppada,

Looking at dependent origination.

So I passed out a chart that we can use as a study guide as we go along.

Just to get an overall sense of dependent origination,

The image I like of it,

My latest one is just of a string of dominoes.

They're all standing up.

The first one falls and knocks over the next,

Which knocks over the next,

Which knocks over the next.

Except independent origination,

Each domino is bigger than the one that knocks it over.

So down at the end of the chain we get pain,

Grief,

You know,

This full-fledged disaster,

Lamentation,

Sorrow.

And at the very beginning we have very,

Very subtle causes that are almost impossible to see.

Traditionally there are twelve dominoes.

The smallest is ignorance and the biggest is this whole mass of suffering.

So let me just read you one description how this shows up in the text.

This comes from the Middle-Length Discourses,

Majjhima-nigaya,

Number 115.

In it Ananda asks a question.

Ananda was the Buddhist attendant the last twenty years of his life,

Was also his cousin.

And he was a senior monk and the senior monks did a lot of the teaching.

And every once in a while they would take their students to the Buddha for these conversations,

But the protocol was that the teacher would ask the questions for the students and the Buddha would answer.

So Ananda is asking the questions here,

But it's not because he doesn't understand it,

He's asking it for the sake of the students hearing it from the big guy.

Venerable Sir,

In what way can a monk be called skilled independent origination?

And the Buddha answered,

Here Ananda,

A monk knows thus,

When this exists,

That comes to be.

With the rising of this,

That arises.

When this does not exist,

That does not come to be.

With the cessation of this,

That ceases.

So this is the sort of general formula that you hear over and over.

You notice there's nothing about links in here,

It's just caused as when this arises,

That arises,

When this ceases,

That ceases.

Then the Buddha gets specific to name the dominoes.

I don't think he talked about dominoes though.

That is,

Ignorance gives rise to formations.

You can follow along in the chart here if you want.

This is on the right hand side.

We have the Majjhana-kaya 115 starting from the bottom.

Ignorance gives rise to formations.

Formations gives rise to consciousness.

Consciousness gives rise to mentality and materiality.

Mentality and materiality gives rise to the sixth sense base.

The sixth sense base gives rise to contact.

Contact gives rise to feeling or feeling tone.

Feeling tone gives rise to craving.

Craving gives rise to clinging.

Clinging gives rise to habitual tendencies.

Habitual tendencies give rise to the birth of action.

Actions give rise to aging and death,

Sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief and despair.

This whole mass of suffering.

In this way,

Ananda,

A monk,

Can be called skilled,

Independent origination.

You get all that?

These sutas were passed along orally and they weren't actually written down.

Majjhana-kaya was probably recorded two or three hundred years after the Buddha.

So this is like somebody giving a little talk in pre-revolutionary America and it was passed along orally and now we sit and start writing down what this guy said three hundred years ago.

So as you would imagine during that period of oral transmission,

This thing is going to get modified and put together in ways that become deeply stylized and deeply ritualized so they're easier to memorize.

And so the sort of formulaic cadence that you can feel it in,

Da da da da da,

Makes it easier to memorize.

But to me it makes it almost impossible to understand.

You sort of get wrapped up in this thing and you miss it.

So that's why I gave you this chart so you don't have to take notes.

You've got all that.

In a purely practical sense,

There are some of these dominoes that are a lot more important than others.

So what I would like to do is to go back to a much simpler sutta,

One that was written down probably during the Buddha's lifetime.

The Atakavāga is a collection of sixteen verses.

It appears as the fourth book of the sutta-nipāda,

Which is neither here nor there.

But it is,

Scholars believe it's probably the oldest collection of sutta's that we have.

And it's really interesting because in the sutta-nipāda and these collections,

There's no Lord Buddha,

There's no Tagatha,

There's just this guy who is obviously very charismatic and who is deeply respected and who they sometimes call the wanderer or sagodhana.

And he's deeply human and you can feel him,

When you read this,

You can feel him struggling to find ways to put words to what he has experienced.

And in the sutta-nipāda and in this particular collection within there,

The Atakavāga,

There are no Four Noble Truths,

There are no Five Hindrances,

There are no Three Characteristics,

There are no Twelve Links of Dependent Origination.

There's just this,

Oftentimes there's dialogue back and forth between him and much more accessible language.

So you don't even find this formula,

Aging,

Death,

Pain,

Lamentation,

Grief and despair.

But what does show up in places in the Atakavāga are these sometimes quite vivid images of what suffering is.

So for example,

This is from verse number 15,

And the Buddha is talking,

He says,

I'll tell you about the dismay I felt when I saw people hurting each other.

They struggled like fish fighting in a drying creek.

I love that image.

They struggled like fish fighting in a drying creek and I was scared.

It's the Buddha talking,

He says he was scared.

The world's not stable,

Everything's in flux.

I wanted a place to be safe from change but there was nowhere.

In the end I was disgusted by their hostility.

Remind you of the presidential campaign.

In the end I was disgusted by their hostility.

That's when I saw the barb worked deep into the tissue of their hearts.

When the barb pierces someone's heart she runs first one way then another.

When the barb's drawn out she neither runs confused nor falls down weary.

The images are vivid and the Buddha doesn't seem at all aloof or removed.

He's very much engaged.

They struggle like fish fighting in a dying creek and I was scared.

And it's deeply personal.

The world's not stable,

Everything's in flux,

I wanted to be safe but I couldn't find a place to be safe.

And then he describes his insight into the origin of suffering.

It's a first hint of dependent origination.

It's this thorn that is stuck into the reactive tissue of the heart.

When the barb pierces someone's heart she runs first one way then another,

She suffers.

When the barb's drawn out she neither runs confused nor falls down weary.

She's content.

And so you'll notice that this dramatic pain,

Stress,

Fatigue is caused by this tiny thorn.

So the question becomes how to remove this metaphorical thorn from this reactive tissue.

And he gives a kind of an extended answer in another one of the passages in the Atakā-vāga.

This is number 11.

Scholars consider this the earliest recording that we have of what the Buddha thought about dependent origination.

And you notice there's no,

He doesn't even use the term padakasana,

The pot at all.

It's just the string of causal relationships that is revealed in this,

In its dialogue format.

So it starts with a question,

Questioner asks,

Where do disputes and quarrels come from?

There's a lot of the passages in the Sudha Nipata where the Buddha is saying,

I wish you guys would just stop quarreling with each other.

Here it starts,

Where do disputes and quarrels come from?

And the sorrow,

Grief and selfishness and the pride,

Arrogance and insults and lies that come with them,

Why do they happen?

Please tell me.

So you'll note that dukkha suffering is not described with aging and death,

But it's quarrels and disputes.

It's much more immediate.

The Buddha answers.

Disputes and quarrels come from what we hold dear.

They come from what we hold dear.

Sorrow,

Grief and selfishness,

Pride,

Arrogance and slander come with them.

When we argue,

We speak spitefully.

Selfishness is yoked to quarrels and disputes.

So you'll find these terms on the other side of the chart.

So here dukkha suffering comes from what we hold dear.

I mean that will really catch your attention.

You know,

What do you hold dear?

Your kids?

That's a source of suffering.

A source of other things too.

In the later suttas it comes from clinging,

Upadana,

But here the term is paya.

So it's actually the same idea as the later suttas,

But you can feel the language is just so much more personal.

Questioner asks,

So where does endearing come from?

So where do disputes and quarrels come from?

So the question comes back,

Where does endearing come from?

Why do we feel the longing and greed that go with it?

What creates hopes and aspirations?

The Buddha responds,

Endearing comes from desire.

We want things.

Greed is part of the worldly life.

It causes hopes and aspirations for the future.

So the endearing comes from desire or longing and the word here for those of you who know this is chanda rather than tanha.

Chanda is sometimes it's translated as wholesome desire.

Chanda is a lot more moralistic.

You know,

To say that suffering comes from craving,

You know,

But it sounds like you're almost pointing the finger a little bit,

But to say that it comes from what we hold dear and what we long for.

So the Buddha is not trying to pass judgment on any of this.

He's just sort of trying to describe objectively what happens.

So the question comes back,

So where does desire,

Chanda,

Where does it come from?

And what about preferences,

Anger,

Lies,

Doubt,

And all the states the wanderer has talked about?

So the wandering Buddha responds,

Desire,

Chanda,

Comes from what we call pleasing and unpleasing.

Likewise,

When people see how things come and go,

They form preferences accordingly.

Anger,

Lies,

Doubt,

And confusion go.

We're bound by the duality of pleasing and unpleasing.

And I love this next line,

He says,

If you doubt this,

Train yourself to know it.

You know,

So if you don't see this,

It's not clear to you,

Just take a look,

Find out for yourself.

You'll understand when you see what these states are like.

So the word pleasing and unpleasing,

Satam and asantani,

In the later sutas become vedna,

Which means pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neutral.

Again,

You can see it's basically the same idea,

But it's just a different kind of languaging.

Question.

Where does the feeling of pleasing and unpleasing come from?

When are these absent?

What makes them come and go?

Please tell me.

The Buddha responds,

Pleasing and unpleasing come from sense impressions,

Sensory impressions.

Without sense impressions,

They don't occur.

The same happens with coming and going.

They come from sense impressions.

The word for sense impression here is paśa,

In both the early and the later text,

Often translated as contact.

It means just the bare experience without any interpretation.

So we keep going,

The question comes back,

So where in the world do sense impressions come from?

Why do we grasp things?

What must be absent for this selfishness to fade?

What needs to be gone for sense impressions to disappear?

The Buddha responds,

Body-mind depends on sense impressions.

Grasping things comes from calling them mind.

When there is no desire,

There is no sense of self.

When the body-mind is gone,

There is no sense impressions.

In other words,

If you want to get rid of sense impressions and selfishness and desire,

Just get rid of the body-mind.

Good luck.

Or to say that a little more nicely,

What he is saying is that these sense impressions and this tendency to grasp and the sense of self,

They just arise naturally out of this whole body-mind process.

In a sense,

It is not personal.

It is not like there is a self creating it.

It is that there is a body-mind process that tends to just arise out of it.

So Doug,

Are the sense impressions the sense doors like sight,

Taste and then consciousness being the sixth?

Yeah.

When people ask questions,

Do they speak up a little?

I am sorry,

I asked the question if the sense impressions were sight,

Taste,

Hearing and then consciousness being the sixth,

Which we don't usually associate as being the sense in the West.

I actually don't remember in these early texts where it is broken down this way,

But clearly that is what he is talking about.

Okay.

Question.

What do we have to do for the body-mind to disappear?

For happiness and unhappiness to cease.

Tell us please,

We really want to know.

The Buddha responds,

Neither perceiving,

Misperceiving nor non-perceiving.

In this state,

Body-mind vanish from awareness.

Conceptualizing is where the problem starts.

Conceptualizing is also the cause of obsessive thinking.

You follow that?

This one is getting kind of thick.

Neither perceiving,

Misperceiving nor non-perceiving.

In this state,

In this state of mind,

In this place,

Body-mind vanish from awareness.

Conceptualizing is where the problem starts and as you remember conceptualizing is this process of putting a label on things.

Conceptualizing is also the cause of obsessive thinking.

So you wonder where your rambling mind comes from.

So just remember independent origination,

As we go backwards up the causal chain,

Things get subtler and subtler and subtler and subtler.

And so here we are getting down into some very subtle places where there is neither perception,

Misperception or non-perception.

And it is indeed very subtle,

But as you go up through the jhanas you will experience that.

Question.

Whatever we have asked you have revealed to us.

Another question please.

I am just pausing because in the later texts you don't have that sort of informal flavor of the dialogues at all.

Another question please.

Do all the wise men say this is the highest purity or is there something higher?

In other words is this neither perception,

Non-perception,

Is that as far as it goes?

The Buddha answers,

Some wise men say this is the highest and some speak of a state where nothing remains.

A genuine sage knows how everything is conditioned.

Understanding,

Conditioning he is free and content.

Knowing better he does not dispute.

The wise do not keep becoming.

Keep becoming means enlightened.

Understanding,

Conditioning,

Understanding these conditioned relationships,

Fully understand that he is free and content.

The implication of all this is that ultimately there is nothing but this string of conditioned phenomena that just flow on.

There is no self-essence behind it.

There is just this string of phenomena and we add the sense of self into all of that.

And when we fully get that,

Not just as a kind of neat idea,

That's where the freedom comes from.

The phenomena flow on but there is no perception of a self engaged in this causal chain.

There is no self,

There is no one to suffer.

If there is no one to suffer,

There is no suffering.

That's where the freedom comes from.

So that the perception arises from the self?

Yeah,

Yeah.

You have to be really careful with this because the tendency is to actually try to conceptualize what's going on here.

But this is not a philosophical,

It's not theological,

It's not a metaphysical statement.

It is just a description of experience.

It's something that you experience.

It's phenomenological.

If you try to translate it into ideas,

Then you're off into conceptualizing is the cause of obsessive thinking.

So the sutta ends,

If you know it,

It comes back to disputes,

The original question.

And he says the wise do not engage in disputes because we're talking about phenomena.

There is nothing to argue about.

But I was reading this and I thought this would be a great bumper sticker for the presidential campaign.

The wise do not dispute.

Is it being said here that mind-body,

When mind-body comes into existence,

You're born?

It's phenomenological.

It's talking about the experience.

It's not talking about a physical birth necessarily.

So it's awareness of mind-body?

Yes,

It's awareness of mind-body.

So in essence,

Birth then has taken place before either perceiving or non-perceiving.

So when a baby is born,

There is some type of perceiving or non-perceiving going on.

I don't think this is actually talking about the birth of a baby.

It's a confusing phrase.

It's jati.

It's the birth of action and that can be a physical action,

A verbal action or a mental action.

And what it is,

Is,

We'll go through this again and we'll get at it,

But as you begin to conceptualize,

That's where the sense of self comes into being.

Okay,

So it's not ontological?

No,

It's not ontological.

It's purely phenomenological.

And it's a real important distinction to make.

The Buddha is just,

I think I talked the first night about Jean Piaget,

There's an experience and then we extrapolate out from that experience what caused it and who is experiencing that.

And what the Buddha found is that if you can just really get what the experience itself is fully,

That's enough to get enlightened.

It's when we go out from there.

And so all the energy we put into trying to figure out what this is that caused us,

Uses up energy that we might better use,

Just seeing what the experience actually is.

And we're talking about very subtle experiences here.

And as all of you have experienced in this practice,

You know,

As it goes deeper,

As you go up through the jhanas and stuff,

You can feel how your awareness gets so much more sensitive,

So much more sensitive and picks up subtler and subtler things.

Lee Brazington is a scholar I've mentioned before,

They're very mature practice.

And I just want to read you what he wrote about this sutta.

He says,

These verses,

Rather than feeling like a record of an actual conversation,

Have the feeling of being intentionally composed.

The questions are just too perfect at each set of questions having a single answer.

But this does not distract at all from the significance of this sutta.

It is clearly a well-thought-out discourse describing a series of necessary conditions.

This is the links of dependent origination in their earliest form.

It would seem that any explanation of the links of dependent origination ought to harmonize with this early description if the later description is going to be accurate.

It doesn't mean the later ones have to agree,

But they have,

You know,

If there's not a good relationship,

You can't see it's grounded,

Then you've drifted.

This is as close as we can get to the gold standard for understanding the Buddha's original thinking about dependent origination.

And given what the Buddha says,

Understanding his early thinking on dependent origination is a requirement for awakening.

Is a requirement for awakening.

Because awakening at its core is actually seeing this whole process and how impersonal it is.

So what I would like to do is to unpack this a little bit.

Okay?

Does it seem like it needs to be unpacked a little?

So thank you for giving us the two texts here.

In our own thought process and studies should we just ignore the later texts and focus on the earlier texts?

You can do either.

It's actually seeing the harmony between them.

In a sense what I would have in some ways what I would have wanted to do is just present the early text.

But you see the later text and so often it's around all over the place.

So I just,

It felt like I would be leaving you a little illiterate,

You know,

If you didn't actually see what it is.

But what's important in all of this,

Well the other message about all this and give me two of them,

Is that,

You know,

Let's not reify the language.

If you get,

You know,

Several different ways of describing it you come closer to actually understanding what's there.

When I first started learning about dependent language and I hated it.

Just this real kind of formulaic,

And if there wasn't understanding the same words would be said over and over as if we just say them often enough that you understand it.

So I like having a variety of avenues that go in.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I'll give you just a slight diversion here.

It's part of it as understanding the consciousness and mentality that was predominant at that time.

And the idea was that the way you learn things was that the knowledge comes from ancient sources.

And so you would get the words,

It's just like in Christianity,

It's like memorizing biblical phrases because they come from the Lord.

It's the same idea,

So we're supposed to memorize this stuff that comes from some sacred source,

The Buddha or Vedic scriptures or something.

And it was very deeply,

Deeply respected,

You know,

People who memorized the whole Vedic scriptures,

Which are massive.

And the idea was you memorize all these words and you get them down because they're going to keep you in line.

And then you start reflecting on what they mean and then you begin to apply them to your life.

But it actually starts with getting the words exactly right.

You know,

In the West now the way we operate,

It's really more getting the sense of what's going on and how the words are really somewhat arbitrary.

So let me run through this just a little bit.

I'll start with paśa,

With sense impressions,

Intact.

It appears in both of them.

The ones that occur before that are very subtle and you can see them and you can experience them,

But we'll just look at the ones that are really much more obvious and that'll give you a whole sense of how it works and you can extrapolate out from there.

So starting with paśa,

It's this raw sensation.

So you hear a sound and before you identify it as rumbling traffic or peepers out in the pond,

There's just the sound without any concept on it.

Or you feel heat and before you recognize it's coming from a lamp or the sun or the stove or something like that,

There's just the raw sensation.

So that's what paśa is.

It's sometimes called contact.

I sometimes call it raw perception without any conceptualizing.

The raw perception can be pleasant or unpleasant.

And in early suttas this is called pleasing or unpleasing.

Later on,

As I mentioned,

It's called vedna.

And if it's pleasing,

We tend to want to lean towards it.

If it's unpleasing,

We tend to want to get away from it and push it away.

And if it's neutral,

Frankly we tend to ignore it.

So this grasping,

Pushing ignorance is chanda,

The desire,

Or it's called tanha,

Craving later on.

And for me the difficulty with tanha is that it really,

When it's translated as craving,

To me it sounds like sort of a drug addict trying to get a fix.

And it has a pretty heavy moral overlay on it.

But what we actually experience there can be very,

Very subtle.

It can be just,

Oh,

No,

I can't wait for summer vacation.

Oh,

That's sweet.

It can be this very subtle leaning.

So if the tanha is relaxed,

Then it just sort of dissipates and it stops there.

And if it's not,

The next thing that happens is the mind tends to,

To me I experience this,

The mind tends to shrink wrap around it.

It gets a label.

It says this is what it is.

It's called endearing in this early text.

And the later text it's called upadana,

Which means clinging.

And this is where the sense of self begins to set down some roots.

Before this it's pretty much preconceptual.

You can experience it,

But it's subtle.

But once we get a label on it,

And particularly when there's a pushing and pulling,

There's the sense of there's something that I don't like.

So there is a me here trying to get away from something or something I want.

So you get this pushing and pulling.

This is where sense of self starts to get some strength to it.

If the,

If the chanda or the upadana or the piyana,

The clinging or the clinging and grasping,

If that is not softened,

So the tanha becomes upadana and clinging and you always experience that as a word.

So it's a little bit conceptual.

So the next thing that happens is it triggers a whole bunch of thoughts.

You get into your concepts,

Your ideas,

Your beliefs,

Your story lines,

Etc.

,

Etc.

,

Etc.

And those story lines can give rise to action,

And those actions can lead into suffering.

It doesn't mean they always do.

Dependent origination,

Dependent origination in practice is worked with backwards.

So it starts with suffering and looks what's the cause of suffering.

And so there's actions,

There's things we do that cause suffering.

It doesn't really work the other way because there's lots of actions that you can do that don't necessarily lead to suffering.

You know,

Just because I go and pick up the popsicle and eat it doesn't mean I necessarily suffer.

But if there is suffering,

There's some action that preceded it.

So it seems like re-education happens between endearing and quarrels and disputes.

But making it into a thing,

I'm thinking of what the Eskabos have names for different kinds of snow because that's important to them.

And we don't,

But we have names for different kinds of feelings.

So the value of what's perceived precipitates a label.

And once you have this label that becomes a thing,

Then people have opinions about it one way or the other because now it's a thing.

Yes and that's what you're saying,

The conceptualizing is the beginning of quarrels and disputes.

It almost seems like you should stick re-education in there.

I mean I know the root of the zero.

Right.

Yeah,

That showed up with Nagarjuna.

But it is the visual tenancies.

So the re-education is actually with the clinging,

With the endearing,

The first label,

Because the label that gets put on it is a reification.

This is not a striker.

It's just what it is.

But once you have a label on it,

You begin to see it as a striker,

It becomes a little bit reified.

Yes.

Yours is better than mine.

There was this friend of mine who was teaching a class for me because I was going to be away and he wanted to come into the class the week before.

It was meeting on the Sacramento State University campus.

And it was raining that day and so we both brought our umbrellas and there were both of them with these collapsible REI umbrellas that were actually identical.

And as we got out of the car I noticed that and I said to him,

We're going to have to be careful or we're going to get these confused.

Like if you couldn't tell him apart,

What difference did it make?

But at the time when I said it,

It seemed like this was really important.

You know,

It would be a disaster.

But if he got mine and I got his and we didn't even know it,

That's reification.

Okay.

You'll notice the other thing that happens in the early suttas,

The habitual tendencies and the birth of action is not included in it.

And I thought about why that isn't in there because it seems so important.

But it actually,

In a practical level it isn't.

Because the Buddha said over and over and over,

The weak link in all of this is actually the tanha,

The chanda.

It's where the energy,

Where the feeling is strong enough that you can notice it and where you can actually relax it.

But once you get into the labeling and the thoughts and stuff like that,

It's like it picks up momentum and it's harder to work with it.

So that in our meditation practice,

You know,

As you hear me over and over again,

We're always talking about noticing where the tension is,

Notice where the tightness is.

This is the second ennobling truth,

That suffering arises out of this experience of tension which needs to be abandoned.

And so if you can do that,

Then the rest of the links that flow from that just don't arise.

There's no energy there.

So everything gets powered by tension.

That's the fuel that drives it.

There's no fuel there.

They run out of gas.

So if this is supposed to be a philosophical treatise,

You really need to get all those steps in there.

But clearly the Buddha was creating this as a practical tool,

In which case it actually isn't necessary.

So any other questions?

I want to go through this one more time,

But I want to do it from the standpoint of how this appears in your meditation practice.

But before I do that,

I just want to see if there's a… So working backwards from suffering,

Not all labels are… As a practical tool,

Let me see,

I was just confusing about formations and ignorance in there.

Can you just elaborate beyond the consciousness,

Awareness,

How you get these other two,

How he comes up with formations and ignorance,

Especially ignorance?

Where you're getting the ignorance?

The bottom of the head.

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Okay,

Okay,

Okay.

So in ordinary perception,

Everyday perception,

We have contact,

Pasa.

But the events that happen before that become very,

Very subtle.

So your question is where do those come from?

Well,

No,

You have consciousness.

Just saying,

Maybe a physicist will tell you,

We don't know,

Consciousness rhymes and just rhymes.

So how do you get these other two?

They're phenomenological.

I was meditating at Dhammasukha,

And practice had gone very deep,

And there was these just kind of fleeting,

Not even tactoscopic images of these balls of energy that were just coming right past me.

And they were so faint that I hardly paid any attention to them.

But they arose a whole bunch of times,

And so I went to my interview with Bhante,

And it didn't even occur to me to even mention them because they were so faint.

But there weren't other people there,

So we ended up chatting about stuff for a long time.

And I said,

You know,

I've just had this strange thing,

You know,

That these balls of energy come through,

And my sense of them is that they're sort of like stem cells,

You know,

In the sense that they're not anything particular,

But they are something,

You know,

That they have potentially become anything.

But right now they haven't actually taken any particular shape.

And he kind of looked at me and he said,

He said,

You're seeing formations.

You know,

That's what they are.

And sometimes it's just translated as potential.

And so if you try to get down into the physics of what appears there,

That gets into hopelessly conceptualizing,

Maybe there's,

You know,

Data and stuff behind it,

But this has all come from a description of what actually arises,

You know,

An experience.

And in terms of the other links before contact,

The way that most people will experience them if they do at all,

And it's not really necessary,

Is that the mind will be very quiet,

And then it seems to sort of drop and to be even quieter.

And then it'll drop again and to be even quieter.

And so it's just,

It's almost like there's a subtle vibration and it just slows down.

And sorting that out into these specifics,

There are some people,

Sorry,

Putha could do it,

There's some people that are just very,

Very sensitive that can separate that out.

Most people can't.

And it's not even necessary.

There's just knowing that they come.

And so.

.

.

So the ignorance,

What it really means is it just comes out of nowhere.

You don't really know where it's coming from.

So I saw these balls of energy coming from and I had no idea where they came from.

And Bhante said to me,

He said,

If you can follow those back,

He said you'll go into Nibbana.

Good luck with that.

I mean,

I tried.

That didn't work.

So you're saying that Nibbana is a cinnamon for ignorance.

That's a tough one to get your head around.

Yeah.

Well,

It's,

So,

And the root of ignorance is ignore,

Which comes from not seeing.

And so the problem is when you translate it in English,

They have all these different connotations that may not be there in the original text.

Yeah.

No,

It probably isn't.

At least in terms of the connotations it has for us.

And,

Quite frankly,

A lot of these translations will come from people who don't have the deep experience.

Question for just an exact moment in my answer to this.

I know your question,

And this has thrown me in for a loop ever since I ran into this.

If you're reading these translations,

Conscious just means at that moment of contact,

Then there's an awareness.

It's not talking about the conscious,

The observer of that activity.

No,

Yeah,

You're right.

It's just.

.

.

So ignorance to me seems like grounding emotion or chaos or something.

Well,

You can see there's this tendency to translate it into the conceptual framework that we're most used to now.

And in the West,

You know,

The Bible,

The ultimate authority for most of us is actually science.

You know,

So we tend to try to draw it back into those kind of metaphors,

Thinking that they are not metaphors.

But as you say,

These don't lead us to intercepting.

Right.

Isn't ignorance our foundational state?

And everything arises out of that until.

.

.

I mean,

Then we become conceptual.

Unfortunately,

We become a dualistic being.

And then our goal is to try to go backwards and become non-dualistic.

And it seems like the ignorance here,

Maybe that wasn't the best choice of word.

We're not dropping back into ignorance.

We're dropping back into a more enlightened state.

But originally,

We always come into this practice with ignorance.

It's a problem with the word ignorance.

And if you could hear in your language,

It says,

Originally,

We were non-dual,

We've become dualistic.

There's arya,

There's arya-fide,

Us,

In that.

So what I think I would like to do,

It gets really hard to talk about this.

I want to go back and I want to run through what this looks like in meditation and give you a couple of other things.

And then I want to come back and pick those up again because it feels like to answer that.

We really have to unpack a whole bunch of other things.

If I were capable of describing all of these things in a way that is crystal clear,

Exactly what they are,

And then you wouldn't have experienced it,

What you experienced would be completely different than what you thought.

It's the difficulty.

These are fingers pointing to an experience and without the experience,

It's hard to know what it is.

And so I want to just look at it from the practical perspective because again,

The Buddha said this is the backbone of this meditation and the process of getting free and see if we can trace this down experientially and to see where it's pointing.

And then we'll come back to some of these questions and see if I can make a fool of myself trying to answer them.

So you're meditating and here's your primary object.

This is peacefulness or metta or something and your awareness is just resting on it.

And so you're meditating and it's peaceful and serene and your awareness is just right there with what's going on and it's really lovely.

And then at some point you think,

Oh my goodness,

I really blew it.

I really wanted this situation to work out and I can't,

Oh,

I was meditating.

Oops.

And so what do we do?

Recognize thinking,

Recognize,

Release,

Relax,

Smile,

Go back to sending out metta.

Oh,

But I really wish I hadn't blown,

Oh,

Recognize,

Release,

Relax,

Repeat.

Oh my,

And so gradually,

We may do that a whole bunch of times and then what happens is we become more and more sensitive to that and so then what happens is this phrase comes,

Oh,

I blew it,

Oh,

And you just catch it right then.

And before the rest of the story unwinds,

You know,

You recognize that it's there,

You release it,

Relax,

You sixar it and you come back.

Blew it,

Oops.

And blew it,

You know,

Has a lot of tension in it.

So at some point,

You're sitting there and what happens is you feel this tension and even before the word blew it comes up,

You just recognize the tension,

Release it,

Relax,

Re-smile,

Come back,

Feel the tension,

Oh,

Recognize,

Release,

Relax.

And you're sitting,

It's very peaceful and the tension in it is not very comfortable at all,

Right?

And so what happens is you sit in there and then you just,

This very peaceful state and it just gets a little bit uncomfortable and even before it starts to tighten up or anything,

You just recognize the discomfort,

Release it,

Relax.

At this point,

It's just one,

You just recognize and they all roll together and it just comes back.

And of course,

The more you do this,

The longer the stretches are that your mind doesn't get distracted and when you do get distracted,

You're catching it quicker and quicker.

And then you're just,

You're sitting there and it's very serene and the mind just starts to wobble and you just catch that little subtle wobble and you just soften it,

You know,

The six arrows all roll together for a long time,

A little wobble,

You get really used to noticing that wobble.

And then there'll just be like a little vibration,

Sometimes it's like the background field of awareness just starts to vibrate a little bit.

It's very easy to get caught up in it because it seems to be out there but eventually you realize you get that little vibration and you just soften and it stops.

And then you just start to notice,

You don't even know what it is and you soften.

And then you slide into Nibbana.

So do you see where the stages of dependent origination show up there?

So you want to name them so we're just sure.

Somebody want to name one of them?

Blue it would be a label.

Blue it's a label?

Yeah so that's the Upadana,

The clinging.

The vedana,

The vedana,

They have that.

Yeah so the vedana,

The satya sati in the early text is just a feeling of pleasant or unpleasant even before it starts to lean one direction or another.

You're getting down into that.

So for my example it's not really clear but it's coming up into consciousness or the sense base or something like that.

And because these don't appear like a Venn diagram,

They're just these very subtle motions that you feel under there.

And it takes somebody like Sariputta actually to sort it out.

When Bhante told me that I'd seen formations I was just blown away.

Part of it was that it could be seen and part of it I said how do you know that?

And he said because the Buddha mapped all this stuff out and that's what just got me.

I mean I could barely see some of this and to think that this guy was able to sort all this stuff out was just amazing to me.

Okay so you see how this is how it actually appears and you can see how it's so essential to how this process works because you're actually seeing those links.

And the important thing about it is that the words,

The labels you use for it are not very important.

It's actually the direct experience because until you get to the Uppadana there are not even labels.

It's a pre-verbal,

Pre-conscious experience that you can see.

So some people they read about dependent origination and then they come in and they want to figure out what all these things are.

Now I want to make sure that I can see endearing and so I look at it until I can label it endearing.

Well the labels are way downstream.

It doesn't have any labels there.

Let me know.

Because I think sometimes you know what happens and they say oh wow and there can be a little bit of an energetic thing and then if you start thinking oh wow that was great and you start proliferating on that then definitely you come out.

But short of that it's just a little blast of energy that may pull you out for a half a second so it doesn't necessarily.

And by the time you notice oh wow,

My cow's out of the barn anyway,

There's nothing you can do about it.

So you just kind of recognize,

Release,

Relax.

All at that point it's not all six of ours.

I'm sorry,

Does that have sort of a liquid communication to the whole thing?

I mean if you react with the word wow that's okay.

You just in that moment soften and go back.

I mean we're not being quizzed or tested or there's no goal.

So I think I'm at a nice,

I think isn't it okay to just be like oh wow I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

It's not okay or not okay.

It's it is it is what happens.

And I'm playing with it a little bit.

But yeah to get into whether it's okay or not is now you're really way out into way downstream individual tends and thoughts and concepts and comparisons.

I'm saying just the practical tactic in the moment.

When I am in the middle of a meditation and I'm blown away by the feeling and I do break out I just try and pop back in without chastising or being concerned or worried.

Yeah,

Yeah chastising is extra and it's not helpful.

And if chastising arises because at that point what you're talking about you know in these these subtle levels you're actually not doing it.

No you're not even responding.

It just appears.

You know it just appears and then if you start judging it or something that you start attaching the self to it and then the whole thing creates.

But at the moment I mean there really can be you know it's like oh you know there's it's not exactly the words but like cool are whoo.

Ah yeah.

And it's quite natural and like I say it's already happened so you just just flow with it.

Judgments are extra.

Okay any other thoughts or questions?

God make it done on time I can't believe it.

As time goes on what do you,

Like what you said it wasn't important.

Is it important to see it earlier and earlier to stop it?

I know that that has,

What I mean do we go all the way back and see it?

So you do.

Just to play with your language a little bit to see it and stop it.

Yes.

This is important because I mean I'm hopping on it because it's a very common way we talk about it.

It's one of these slippery fish.

It's not about stopping or starting anything.

It's about seeing.

It's about just knowing.

And as we're talking about some of those subtle intentions some of the stuff you're never going to see if you're really quick to try to stop it.

Sometimes you really have to kind of let it be until you see it clearly and that as you see it clearly the mind itself will catch it earlier and earlier.

And the tension,

The tightening,

The stuff that drives it is inherently uncomfortable.

And so as the awareness gets subtler it will just release that.

So for example if you're in just very,

Very peaceful,

Mellow place and this lovely thought about a movie or something comes up and it may be a lovely thought but compared to that sweet place you know it's relatively coarse.

And so as you see that and the coarseness then it's like the pull towards that thought.

It just starts to fade away.

And if you say to yourself thinking about movies is bad and you try to stomp on it then you just create a whole mess.

So it's just about seeing and it will release.

Flora recognizes Gail.

It seems like you have a sense of volition which you're calling tension but it feels like you know.

Well we had this discussion and I looked up volition and actually volition does imply will at least in English.

Yes,

There can be.

And so in my experience my sense of it is it's more like it's just a little contraction or leaning.

Sometimes it just feels as simple as the awareness kind of thickens a little bit.

And down at these levels when you're talking about vedna and tanha that it is preconceptual.

There's not necessarily words on it.

You certainly can experience and I think most of you here have felt that.

Well,

I mean the first night when I was reading that list of words,

Sunset and Donald Trump and you can feel the whole mind just goes whoo.

There's nobody that's doing it at that point.

It just,

And it does have that sense of just pulling in.

That's endearing or craving depending on whether you're,

Which century BC we're talking about.

Okay.

Just a couple of other little things about this that I want to throw in.

I have on this handout,

There's a picture of those Russian dolls there because it's another way that I think dependent origination is experienced which I think is very helpful because there's a sense when you're looking at dependent origination like you're always looking back to see what happened a split second ago and a split second ago.

So there's this big thought storm going on and you're trying to remember back where the tension was that started it.

And so I came up with the Russian dolls because if you have this big thought storm,

So inside the habitual tendencies is the upadana,

Is the clinging,

The first label.

And inside that is the tanha.

So when there's a big thought storm that comes up,

The tension still exists in the moment.

And if that tension was gone,

The whole thing falls apart.

So most of the maps of dependent origination show it as this sequence that seems to go across time but just to know that it's right there in the moment.

Okay.

Anything else?

I'll contact your question.

Okay.

Can I ask one question?

In relationship to off the question,

So would it be correct to say that,

For example,

The lady with the dog,

When I go to the zoo,

The lady with the dog that I saw the other day,

So that would be contact?

So the contact is just actually the color and form and the shape.

So lady with the dog is at least upadana,

You know,

Clinging.

There's a concept that's been put on it already.

And then your thoughts about what's going on with her get into the habitual tendencies.

They're called habitual tendencies because they tend to be shaped by our habits of mind.

So how do you work with that in the moment?

You look for the tension.

There's a little bit of tension in all these stages.

So when the Buddha said that it's the weak link,

There's not only the tanha as a specific place in this,

But there's a little bit of tension that's the glue that holds all this together.

And so just on a practical basis,

That's all you really need to see,

Is to find the tension and relax that.

And then as that relaxes,

You know,

To see the pleasant unpleasantness and the stuff that precede that begins to get subtle.

And you can see that in meditation cushion,

But in the middle of action,

It's less likely unless you've done this a whole lot.

But in normal life,

If you're in a fight with somebody,

Let's say,

You know,

To recognize the tension,

The tightness in you,

And have some way of softening that as the fight is going on,

Can be extraordinarily practical,

Just in terms of getting through it.

Will there be more talk about when you heard term about all the cushion,

Because this is all wonderful and lovely,

But once I get back to work on Thursday,

I think that I will be on my own.

You'll be on your own.

Yes,

We will towards the end of it.

The last day we're going to have a closing circle,

Which will just be open for people sharing anything and one of the topics I want to put out there.

Because I could put a list together of things that you could do,

But there's a collective wisdom of all of this that's much larger.

So we'll kind of look at all the types of things that you can just support.

Let me give my,

You know,

I have a preacher background,

So I have to give my little sermon on this.

The bottom line,

You know,

In dependent origination is that we humans,

You can look at us metaphorically at least,

Are a bunch of hyperactive paranoid squirrels on caffeine.

Because we have this genetic inheritance that came from a time when we were a marginal species and in a world that was filled with huge carnivores and there's a question of how do we survive all that.

Well,

It was these quick reflexes that would get very small things and if you ever watched a squirrel,

You know,

Run across your lawn,

I mean,

I feel bad for them.

You know,

They zip and they look and zip,

Zip,

Zip,

Zip,

Zip,

Zip,

Zip,

Zip,

Zip,

Zip,

Zip.

And of course,

If they didn't do that,

They would probably get eaten.

And so that's our genetic inheritance.

At this point,

There are no longer saber-toothed tigers chasing us around.

We are the top of the food chain,

Right?

But we still have these deeply embedded instincts and what saved our life,

You know,

Back then is actually destroying the world at this point,

Our hyper-reactivity.

We are the most destructive species,

As far as I can tell,

The most destructive species that has ever existed on the planet.

It's not only what we do to each other,

But we're taking that whole species at an alarming rate.

And I think the core of it is this hyper-reactivity.

And so,

You know,

We come off on a nine-day retreat,

It may seem a little narcissistic,

You know,

It's like we're just looking at ourselves,

We ought to be out there saving the world,

But the thing that's destroying the world is this causal reactivity that goes through us.

And so,

You know,

If we would like to pacify the world,

I mean,

We sort of have to start,

You know,

With ourselves so we can learn and see that and cultivate some contentment in the face of what's going on.

And with the contentment,

There is more room to respond wisely than reflexively.

And I say all this because,

You know,

In the next number of months during the presidential campaign,

We're going to get so many gross examples of hyper-reactivity that's all over the place.

And there's a lot of,

You can see all the suffering that it generates.

So this,

You know,

Work on ourselves and our own contentment and untangling this stuff is absolutely essential,

You know,

I think if we're going to survive as a species.

So that's all very conceptual.

But I believe it's so there.

I want to run through this one more time.

And this is an example that's more embedded in everyday life of how this stuff shows up.

And,

And see if you can hear in this some of the various phases that go through.

This is a blog I wrote.

I don't mention Padukasamuppada explicitly,

But just see if you can see it running through all this.

I woke around 1230 in the morning,

Rolled over and began to slide back into a slumber.

A thought drifted lightly through the side of my mind.

He's an emotional coward.

He referred to a man with whom I had a difficult relationship.

And I'd handled it with equanimity,

Empathy and compassion.

I'd been the paragon of kind maturity.

The phrase emotional coward captured the essence of what I found difficult.

The angry vapor seeping out of the phrase brought me back from the edge of sleep.

Send him an email.

Tell him he's an emotional coward,

I thought.

I no longer felt like a paragon of compassion.

I'd like to stick a finger in his eye.

Beneath my spiritual sensibilities was a tantrum I had been quietly pushing aside.

I might have been able to subdue the ire,

But when I try to fight the truth,

I always lose sooner or later.

And the truth was I was angry.

The genie was out of the bottle,

And I had very little desire to push it back in.

Now I was thoroughly awake.

I got out of bed,

Wrapped up in a blanket and sat down to meditate.

I did the refuges,

The precepts and a few aspirations.

I seek to observe the mind without preference.

I seek clarity and acceptance.

My object of meditation was equanimity,

Spreading it all around.

After a short while,

It began to thin out into a clear mind.

Then a thought erupted.

I want to tell him this and this and that and that.

I really didn't want to poke him in the eye,

But a good tongue-lashing might feel satisfying.

I recognize the flush of anger.

Meditation is a purification process.

As the mind-heart quiets down,

Psychic toxins can rush to the surface.

It's healing.

So I let the feelings be.

I release them in a sense of not trying to hold onto them or push them away,

But I gave them plenty of space to romp around inside.

At the same time,

I relaxed the tension in him.

It felt like relaxing into anger.

I smiled slightly and sent out a little equanimity.

It would be better to say it this way.

I thought,

That'll get him.

An hour later,

Waves of righteousness continued to rise through me,

Followed by moments of quiet,

Followed by another wave.

I tried to stay out of the way and let them do their thing.

They'd throw me off balance for a moment.

I'd feel it,

Release it,

Relax into it,

Return to equanimity,

Only to have another wave throw me against the rocks.

I had hoped it would subside,

But it kept going.

I felt discouraged.

I recognized the discouragement as just another impersonal energy,

Released it,

Let it be,

Softened into it,

And smiled.

Fifteen minutes later,

I noticed the thoughts no longer had any specific content.

They still reverberated like buffalo stampeding across the plains,

But I could not make out individual animals anymore.

There weren't specific thoughts,

Just thundering hooves.

Then the rumbling ceased.

There was still aversion without content.

I continued to recognize what was going on in the mind-heart,

Released it,

Relaxed into it,

Smiled softly,

And sent out peacefulness.

Then it was all gone.

It was only pervading quiet and ease.

I vaguely remembered that I had been upset about something,

But it took effort to recall what the fuss was about.

Oh yes,

That guy!

Compassion welled up for his suffering that made him behave so poorly.

There was nothing I could do about it,

So I just let it drift away like the last clouds faded into a clear sky.

There was a slight luminosity in the back of my mind.

I thought it peculiar that I found it easier to recognize upset than this quiet glow,

So I relaxed into it.

After a while I winked out.

When I came back,

The mind-heart was soft,

Quietly joyful and expansive,

And my body was fatigued.

It was two-thirty in the morning.

I crawled back into bed and slid into sleep.

May all of us humans everywhere see more deeply and clearly and compassionately our reactivity.

May we see it lightly with a sense of humor.

May we relax into the natural peace.

May we know that ease and well-being.

May we have faith in our underlying expansiveness.

May we know kindness.

May we know joy.

May we know contentment.

All beings everywhere.

May it be so.

Blessed be.

May we have faith in our underlying consciousness.

May we have faith in our own consciousness.

Time for practice.

Time for meditation.

Take a walk.

Go do some yoga.

Yoga at,

Let's say,

Quarter to eight,

And we'll start doing some restorative practice with relaxation.

So if you'd like,

Bring your blanket,

If there's an extra blanket in your room,

So that we can use that as a yoga prop.

And then something for the back of your neck,

Too.

Anything like the other jacket or something like that for supporting that.

So quarter to eight,

You know the deal.

And I just,

I want to thank all of you,

You know,

For your practice.

You know,

You can sort of kind of feel it go into the group a little bit.

You know,

They're doing great work.

And you can feel how much it affects,

You can feel the effect of the group around you.

At this point,

It may seem really subtle,

But as you move out from here,

You'll appreciate more how powerful it's all become.

So thank you for your deep work.

Thank you for supporting my practice.

Have a sweet evening.

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