Investigating: The Mind

The root of suffering is what we call avijja not knowing, or ignorance of the way things really are. This basic ignorance is one of not understanding our true nature. We suffer because of views and opinions, and because of habits and conditions which we do not understand. We live our lives in a state of ignorance, nor under standing the way things are.
If you listen to yourself very much, you can sometimes hear such statements as, “I should do this but I shouldn’t do that, I should be this way, I shouldn’t be that way or that the world should be other than it is; our parents should be this way or that way and shouldn’t be the way they are. So we have this particular verb tense ringing through our minds because we have an idea of what shouldn’t be or should be. In meditation, listen to that opinion within yourself of what should be and what shouldn’t be just listen to it.

Our tendency is to try to become something; so we set a goal, create an ideal of what we would like to become. Maybe we think society should be other than it is. People should be kind, generous unselfish, understanding and loving; there should be brotherhood; the government should have wise leaders and the world should be at peace. But the world is as it is at this moment in time and things are as they are. When we don’t understand this then we are struggling. So listen inwardly to yourselves, to the constant crying, “I am this way I am not this way, and penetrate this “I am, I am not with awareness.

We tend to just react and take it for granted chat all the “I am and I am not is the truth. We create ourselves as a personality and attach to our memories. We remember the things we’ve learned and what we’ve done  generally the more extreme things; we tend to forget more ordinary things. So if we do unkind, cruel, foolish things then we have unpleasant memories in our lives; we feel ashamed or guilty. If we do good or charitable things, then we have good memories in outlives. When we start reflecting on this, then we are going to be more careful about what we do and y; if we have lived life foolishly, acting on impulse out of desire for immediate gratification or out of an intention to hurt, cause disharmony or exploit others, our minds will be filled with very unpleasant memories. People who have led very selfish lives have to drink a lot or take drugs to keep themselves constantly occupied so that they don’t have to look at the memories that come up in the mind.

In the awakening process of meditation, we are bringing aware ness to the conditions of the mind here and now just by being aware of this sense of lam, lam not’. Contemplate the feelings of pain or pleasure  and any memories, thoughts and opinions  as impermanent, anicca. The characteristic of transiency is common to all conditions. How many of you spent the day really investigating this in every possible way while sitting, standing or lying down? Investigate what you see with your eye, hear with your ear, taste with your tongue, smell with your nose, feel and experience with your body and think with your mind.

The thought I am’ is an impermanent condition. The thought lam not’ is an impermanent condition. Thoughts, memories, consciousness of thinking, the body itself, our emotions  all conditions change. In the practice of meditation, we have to be quite serious, brave and courageous, to really investigate, to dare to look at even the most unpleasant conditions in life, rather than to seek escape in tranquillity or forget about everything. In vipassana, the practice is one of looking into suffering; it’s a confrontation with ourselves, with what we think of ourselves, with our memories and our emotions, pleasant, unpleasant or indifferent. In other words, when these things arise and we are aware of suffering, rather than rejecting, repressing or ignoring it, we take the opportunity to examine it.

So suffering is our teacher. We have to learn the lesson by studying suffering itself. It always amazes me how some people think they never suffer. They think, “I don’t suffer. I don’t know why Buddhists talk about suffering all the time. I feel wonderful, full of beauty and joy. I’m so happy all the time. I find life one fantastic experience, interesting, fascinating and a never-ending delight. These people just tend to accept that side of life and reject the other because inevitably what delights us disappears and then we are sorry.
Our desire to be in a constant state of delight leads us into all kinds of problems, difficulties and situations. Suffering is not just because of massive things like having terminal cancer, or losing someone you love; suffering can occur around what is very ordinary, like the four postures of skiing, standing, walking, lying down. There’s nothing extreme in that.

We contemplate the normal breath, and the ordinary conscious ness. In order to understand existence, we contemplate ordinary feelings, memories and thoughts rather than grasp hold of fantastic ideas and thoughts to understand the extremes of existence. So we’re not getting involved with speculation about the ultimate purpose of Life, God, the devil heaven and hell, what happens when we die or reincarnation. In Buddhist meditation you just observe the there and now. The birth and death that’s going on here and now is the beginning and ending of the most ordinary things.
Contemplate beginning. When you think of birth you think of “I was born’, but that is the great birth of the body, which we can’t remember. The ordinary birth of me’ which we experience, in daily life is I want, I don’t want, I like, I don’t like. That’s a birth, or seeking to be happy. We contemplate the ordinary hell of our own anger the anger that arises, the heat of the body, the aversion, the hatred we feel in the mind. We contemplate the ordinary heaven we experience, the happy states, the bliss, the lightness the beauty in the here and now. Or just the dull state of mind, that kind of limbo neither happy nor unhappy, but dull, bored and indifferent. In Buddhist meditation we watch these within ourselves.

We contemplate our own desire for power and control, to be in control of someone else, to become famous, or to become someone who is on top. How many of you, when you find out someone is more gifted than you are, want to put them down? This is jealousy. What we have to do in our meditation practice is see the ordinary jealousies, or the hatred we might feet for someone who might take advantage of us, or annoys us; the greed or lust we might feel fix someone who attracts us. Our own mind is like a mirror which reflects the universe and you watch the reflection. Before, we would take these reflections for reality so that we became entranced, repelled or indifferent to them. Sot in vipasmna we just observe that all these reflections are changing conditions. We begin to see them as objects rather than as a self, whereas when we’re ignorant we tend to seek identity with them.

So in practice we are looking at the universe as it is being reflected in our minds. It does not matter what anyone else experiences; one meditator will sit here and experience all sorts of brilliant lights, colours, fascinating images Buddhas, celestial beings  even smell wonderful odours, hear divine sounds  and think, What a wonderful meditation! Such brilliance came, such radiance! A divine being like an angel touched me and I felt this ecstasy. I’ve waited my whole life for this experience.’ Meanwhile the next one is thinking, “Why doesn’t something like that ever happen to me? I sat for a whole hour in pain with an aching back depressed, wanting to run away, wondering why on earth Pd come to this retreat anyway. Another person might say, “I can’t stand all those people who have those silly ideas and fantasies. They disgust me; they just develop this terrible hatred and aversion in me. I hate the Buddha image sitting in the window. I want to smash it. I hate Buddhism and meditation!’

Now which of these three people is the good meditator? Compare the one who sees davas dancing in heaven, the one that is bored, indifferent and dull and the one full of hatred and aversion? Devas and angels dancing in the celestial realms are anicca, impermanent. Boredom is anicca, impermanent. Hatred and aversion is anicca, impermanent. So the good meditator, the one who is practising in the right way, is looking at the impermanent nature of these conditions.

When you talk to someone who sees devas and experiences bright lights, you start doubting your own practice and think, “Maybe I am not capable of enlightenment. Maybe I am not meditating right.’ Doubt itself is impermanent. Whatever arises passes away. So the good meditator is the one who sees the impermanent nature of bliss and ecstasy or experiences dullness, anger, hatred and aversion, and reflects on the impermanent nature of those qualities when sitting, walking or lying down.

What is your tendency? Are you very positive about everything? I like everybody here. I believe in the teachings of the Buddha, I believe in the Dhamma’ that’s a faith kind of mind. It believes, and that kind of mind can create and experience blissful things very quickly. You find that some of the darmers in Thailand., people who have hardly any wordly knowledge, who can hardly read and write, can sometimes experience blissful states, lights, devas and all that and believe in them. When you believe in devas you see them. When you believe in lights and celestial realms, you’ll see them you believe that Buddha is going to save you, Buddha will come and save you. What you believe in happens to you. If you believe in ghosts, fairies and elves, you find those things manifest for you. But they are still anicca, impermanent, transient and not-self.
Most people don’t believe in fairies and devas and chink such things are silly. This is the negative kind of mind, the one that’s suspicious and doubtful and does not believe in anything. I don’t believe in fairies and devas. I don’t believe in any of char kind of thing. Ridiculous! Show me a fairy.’ So the very suspicious and sceptical mind never sees such things.

There is faith; there is doubt. In Buddhist practice, we examine the belief and the doubt that we experience in our mind and we see chat these two are conditions changing.

I have contemplated doubt itself as a sign. I’d ask myself a question like, “Who am I?’ and then I listen for the answer  something like, Sumedho Bhikkhu.’ Then I’d think, That’s not the answer; who are you really?’ I’d see the struggle, the habitual reaction, to find an answer to the question But I would not accept any conceptual answer. Who is it sitting here? What is this? What’s this here? Who is thinking anyway? What is it that thinks?’ When a state of uncertainty or doubt would arise, I would just look at that uncertainty or doubt as a sign because the mind stops there and goes blank, and then emptiness arises.

I found it useful to empty the mind by asking myself unanswerable questions which would cause doubt to arise. Doubt is an impermanent condition. Form, the known, is impermanent; not knowing is impermanent. Some days I would go out and Look at Nature and observe myself just standing here, looking at the ground. I’d ask myself, “Is the ground separate from myself?… Who is that who sees the ground?… Are those leaves and the ground it my mind or outside ray mind’ What is it that sees? Is it the eyeball?. If took my eyeball our, would it be separated from myself?… Would I still see those leaves?… Are they still there when I’ not looking at them?… Who is the one that’s conscious of this anyway?’

I also did some experiments with sound because the objects of sight have a certain solidity like this loom  it see fairly permanent, you know for today at least. But sound is truly anicca  try to get hold of sound.

I investigated sound by asking, “Can my eyes hear it! If I cur off my ears and ear drums, will there be any sound Can I see and hear in exactly the same moment?’ All sense organs and their objects are impermanent, changing conditions. Think right now, “Where is your mother? Where is my mother?’ If I think of her in her flat in California, it’s a concept in the mind. Even if think, “California is over there,’ that’s still the mind thinking “over there. Mother’ is a concept, isn’t it? So where is the mother right now? She is in the mind: when the word mother’ comes up, you hear the word as a sound and it brings up a mental image or a memory or a feeling of like, dislike or indifference.

All concepts in the mind which we take for reality are to be investigated: know what concepts do to the mind. Notice the pleasure you get from thinking about certain concepts and the displeasure that others bring. You have prejudices and biases about race or nationality these are all concepts or conceptual proliferations. Men have certain attitudes and biases about women, and women have certain attitudes and biases about men: this is just inherent in those identities.

But in meditation, “female’ is a concept and “male’ is a concept, a feeling, a perception in the mind. So in this practice of t we penetrate with insight into the nature of all conditions, coarse or refined. Insight breaks down the illusions that these concepts give us, the illusions that they are real. Conditions may arise; we can’t stop the things that affect us in life  such as the weather, the economy, family problems, our background, our opportunity or lack of opportunity. But we can penetrate all these conditions  which are impermanent and not-self. This is the path of transcendence; transcending the mortal condition through awareness of the mortal condition.
The Buddha is the teacher, that within us which reminds us to observe the impermanent nature of all conditions and not to take any of them as reality. When we do, what happens? We have wars, strikes, battles and endless problems that exist in the world because ignorant beings take these conditions as reality. They attach to the mortal body as an identity. We get absorbed into these various symbols and concepts, and in that absorption we have to be born and die in those conditions. It’s like getting attached to something that is moving, such as greed, and being pulled along by that movement. So we’re born and die at that time. But when we don’t attach any more then we’re avoiding suffering from the movement and the limitations of changing conditions.

Now talking like this people might question: How do you live in this society then, if it’s all unreal? The Buddha made a very clear distinction between conventional reality and ultimate reality. On the conventional level of existence we use conventions that king harmony to ourself and to the society we live in. What kind of conventions bring harmony? Well, things like being good, being ,nindf4, not doing things that cause disharmony, such as stealing, cheating and exploiting others; having respect and compassion for other beings, being observant, trying to help: all these conventions bring harmony.

So in the Buddhist teaching on the conventional level, we live in a way that supports doing good and refraining from doing evil with the body and speech. It’s not as if we are rejecting the conventional world 1 want nothing to do with it because it an illusion’  that’s another, illusion. Thinking that the conventional world is an illusion is lust another thought.

In our practice, we see that thought is thought, the world is an illusion’ is a thought, the world is not an illusion’, is a thought. But here and now, be aware that all we are conscious of is changing. Live mindfully, put effort and concentration into what you do, whether you’re sitting, walking, lying down or working. Whether you’re a man or a woman a secretary, housewife or labourer or executive or whatever, apply effort and concentration. Do good and refrain from doing evil. This is how a Buddhist Lives within the conventional forms of society. But they are no longer deluded by the body or the society, or the things that go on in the society, because a Buddhist is one who examines and investigates the universe by investigating their own body and mind.

EVERYTHING THAT ARISES PASSES AWAY

The Buddha said that the origin of all suffering is ignorance  so it’s important to consider what he really meant by ignorance. Most human beings in the world live very much as if they really are their habits! thoughts, feelings and memories. They don’t take time or have the opportunity to took at their lives, to watch and consider how these conditions operate.

What is a condition? The body that we’re with, the emotions and feelings, the perceptions of the mind, conceptions and consciousness through the senses  these are conditions. A condition is something that is added and compounded; something that arises and passes away; it’s not the uncreated, unborn, unoriginated ultimate reality.

Religion is what human beings use to try to get back to that ultimate realisation beyond the cycles of birth and death, the supra mundane wisdom or lokuttara panna; Nirvana or Nibbana is the experience of that transcendent reality. This is when we suddenly know the truth, not by studying the Pali scriptures or a Zen book, but through direct experience.

We generally conceive the truth as being some thing and Nibbana as being some peaceful state of mind or ecstatic experience. All of us have experienced some kind of happiness so we like to conceive the Unborn, Uncreated, Unoriginated as a happy experience. But the Buddha was very careful never to describe the Ultimate Reality or Nibbana  he never said very much about it. People want to know what it is, write books on it and speculate about the nature of Nibbana  but this is exactly what the Buddha didn’t do.

Instead, he pointed to direct knowing of conditions that change, that which we can know through our own experience at this moment This is nor a matter of believing anyone else. It’s a matter of knowing at this present moment that whatever arises passes away.
So, we put forth that kind of attention in out lives  to notice that whatever arises passes away; whatever condition of your mind or body  whether it is a sensation of pleasure or pain, feeling or me sight, sound, smelt, taste or touch, inside or outside  it is just a condition.

k important to reflect on the real meaning of ignorance’ in the sense that the Buddha used it when he called it the origin of all suffering. “Being ignorant’ means that we identify with these conditions by regarding them as “me’ or “mine’ or as something that we don’t want to be “me’ or mine’. We’ve got the idea that we’ve got to find some permanent pleasant condition, achieve something, get something we don’t have. But we can notice that desire in the mind is a moving thing; it is looking for something, so it’s a changing condition that arises and passes away  it’s not The expression “not-self (anatta) is not some kind of manna we use to get rid of things, but it is an actual penetration of the very nature of all desires.

As you look carefully, very patiently and humbly, you begin to see that the created arises out of the Uncreated and goes back to the Uncreated; it disappears and there is nothing left. If it was really you and really youth, it would stay, wouldn’t it? If it was really yours where would it go  to some kind of storehouse of personality? But that concept and whatever you conceive is a condition that arises and passes away. Any time you try to conceive yourself any concept or memory of yourself as this or that is only a condition of your mind. It’s not what you are  you’re not a condition of your mind. So, sorrow, despair, love and happiness are all conditions of mind and they are all not-self.

Notice in your life when you suffer or feel discontent why? it’s because of some attachment, some idea of yourself or someone else. Someone you love dies and you feel sorry for yourself you think of the good times you’ve had and dwelt on that, creating more conditions of mind. Maybe you feel guilty because you weren’t giving or loving all of the rime  that’s a condition of mind also. You have a memory; you conceive of them as being alive  but that very idea of a person is a perception of mind  it’s not a person, is it? Remember someone who is alive, who you wish you could be with right now that’s a condition of mind; or remember someone who’s died, who you’ll never see again  that’s also a condition of mind.

Buddhist meditation is a way of looking at the conditions of mind, investigating and seeing what they am, rather than believing in them. People want to believe  when someone close to you has died, somebody has to tell you; “Oh, they went up to heaven with God the Father, or they’re living in the delights of Tusita heaven. They say this so that you’ll have a pleasant perception of mind  “Well, now I know that my grandmother is happy up there in the heavenly realms, dancing with the angels.’ Then somebody else says “Well, you know, she did some pretty dreadful things, she’s probably down in Hell, burning in the eternal fires!’ So you start worrying that maybe you’ll end up there too  but that’s a perception of mind. Heaven and Hell are conditioned phenomena. So  if you reflect back to ten years ago. that’s a condition of mind that arises and passes away, and the reason that it arises is because I’ve just suggested it to you. So that condition is dependent upon another condition, moment is what we have experienced, and the future is the unknown.

But who is it that knows the conditions of the moment?! can’t find it: there’s only the knowing, and knowing can know anything that is present now  pleasant or unpleasant  speculations about the future or reminiscences of the past  creations of yourself as this o that. You create yourself or the world you live in  so you can’t really blame anyone else. If you do, it’s because you’re still ignorant. The One Who Knows we call “Buddha’  but that doesn’t mean chat “Buddha’ is a condition. It’s not to say that this Buddha-rupa knows anything; rather that “Buddha’ is the knowing. So Buddhist meditation is really being aware, rather than becoming Buddha.

The idea of becoming Buddha is based on conditionsyou think you’re someone who isn’t Buddha right now, and in order to become Buddha, you have to read books to find out how to become one. Of course, this means that you have to work really hard to get rid of those qualities which are not Buddha-like; you are hr from perfect, you get angry, greedy, doubtful and frightened, and of course, Buddhas don’t have this  because Buddha is that which knows, so they know better. Then, in order to become Buddha you have to get rid of these unBuddha-like things and try to get Buddha-like qualities such as compassion and all these kinds of things. And ail these are a person is a perception of mind  it’s not a person, is it? Remember someone who is alive, who you wish you could be with right now that’s a condition of mind; or remember someone who’s died, who you’ll never see again  that’s also a condition of mind.

Buddhist meditation is a way of looking at the conditions of mind, investigating and seeing what they am, rather than believing in them. People want to believe  when someone close to you has died, somebody has to tell you; “Oh, they went up to heaven with God the Father, or they’re living in the delights of Tusita heaven. They say this so that you’ll have a pleasant perception of mind  “Well, now I know that my grandmother is happy up there in the heavenly realms, dancing with the angels.’ Then somebody else says “Well, you know, she did some pretty dreadful things, she’s probably down in Hell, burning in the eternal fires!’ So you start worrying that maybe you’ll end up there too  but that’s a perception of mind. Heaven and Hell are conditioned phenomena. So  if you reflect back to ten years ago. that’s a condition of mind that arises and passes away, and the reason that it arises is because I’ve just suggested it to you. So that condition is dependent upon another condition, moment is what we have experienced, and the future is the unknown.

But who is it that knows the conditions of the moment?! can’t find it: there’s only the knowing, and knowing can know anything that is present now  pleasant or unpleasant  speculations about the future or reminiscences of the past  creations of yourself as this o that. You create yourself or the world you live in  so you can’t really blame anyone else. If you do, it’s because you’re still ignorant. The One Who Knows we call “Buddha’  but that doesn’t mean chat “Buddha’ is a condition. It’s not to say that this Buddha-rupa knows anything; rather that “Buddha’ is the knowing. So Buddhist meditation is really being aware, rather than becoming Buddha.

The idea of becoming Buddha is based on conditionsyou think you’re someone who isn’t Buddha right now, and in order to become Buddha, you have to read books to find out how to become one. Of course, this means that you have to work really hard to get rid of those qualities which are not Buddha-like; you are hr from perfect, you get angry, greedy, doubtful and frightened, and of course, Buddhas don’t have this  because Buddha is that which knows, so they know better. Then, in order to become Buddha you have to get rid of these unBuddha-like things and try to get Buddha-like qualities such as compassion and all these kinds of things. And ail these are can spend lifetimes reading books and translating Suttas, still believing that enlightenment is impossible. But then what’s the point of religion anyway? Why bother, if the ultimate truth is so remote, such an unlikely possibility? We just become like anthropologists sociologists or philosophers discussing comparative religion.

Gotama the Buddha was one whose wisdom came from observing Nature, the conditions of mind and body. Now that’s not impossible for any of us to do. We have minds arid bodies; all we have to do is to watch them. It’s not as if we have to have special powers to do that or that somehow this time is different from that of Gotama the Buddha. Time is an illusion caused by ignorance People in the time of Gotama the Buddha were not any different from the way they are now  they had greed, hatred and delusion, egos, conceits and fears just like people nowadays. If you start thinking about Buddhist doctrines and different levels of attainment, you’ll just get into a state of doubting. You don’t have to check yourself with a list in a book  know for yourself until no condition of body or mind deludes you.

People say to me, “I can’t do all that. I’m just an ordinary person, a layman; when I think of doing all that, I realise I can’t do it, it’s too much for me.’ I say, “If you think about it, you can’t do it; that’s all, Don’t think about it, just do it.’ Thought only takes you to doubt. People who think about life can’t do anything. If it’s worth doing, do it. “When you get depressed, learn from depression; when you get sick, learn from sickness; when you’re happy, learn from happiness  these are all opportunities to learn in the world. Keep silently listening and watching as a way of life., then you begin to understand conditions. There’s nothing to fear. There’s nothing you have to get that you don’t have. There’s nothing to get rid of.

THE FIVE KHANDHAS

As long as these human bodies are alive and their senses are operating, we have to be constantly on our guard, alert and mindful, because the force of habit to grasp the sensual world as a self is so strong. This is very strong conditioning in all of us. So the way the Buddha taught is the way of mindfulness and wise reflection. Rather than making metaphysical statements about your True Natures or Ultimate Reality, the Buddha’s teaching points to the condition of grasping. That’s the only thing that keeps us from enlightenment.

Buddha wisdom is an understanding of the way things are through observing oneself rather than just observing how the stars and planets operate. We don’t go out looking at the trees and contemplating Nature as if it were an object of our vision: we actually observe Nature as it operates through this personal formation.

What we take ourselves to be can be classified as five aggregates or khandhas forms vedana, feeling; sanna, perception; sankhara, mental formation or thought process, and vinnana sense consciousness. These provide a skilful means of seeing all sensual phenomena in groups. The easiest to meditate on is rupa khandha, the form of the body, because we can sit here  it is stuck to the ground, heavy and its a slower moving thing than mental phenomena (vedana, sanna, samnkhara or vinnana). We can actually reflect on our own body for long periods of time and meditate on the breath rather than on consciousness because breathing is something which we can concern crate on. Ordinary kinds of people can contemplate their own breath.

You can contemplate the feeling of your own eyes. They have sensations. Contemplate the tongue, the wetness of the mouth or your tongue touching the palate of your mouth. You can contemplate the body as a sense organ, giving you the sensations of pleasure and pain, heat and cold. Just observe what the feeling of cold or heat in the body is like; you can contemplate that because it is not what you are. It’s an object you can see and easily observe as if it were something separate from you. If you don’t do that, then you just tend to react. When you’re too hot, you try to get cooler and take off your jumper. And then you get cold and you put it back on again. You can just react to those sensations of pleasure and pain in the body. Pleasure:

Oh isn’t that wonderful’, try to hold onto that, have more pleasure. And the pain: “Oh’  get rid of that; run away from anything uncomfortable or painful. But in meditation you can see these sensations. The body itself is a sensual condition that has pleasure pain, heat aid cold.

You can reflect on the forms that you see. Just look at something beautiful, like flowers. Flowers are probably most beautiful things on the earth, and so we like flowers. So note when you look at a flower how you’re drawn to it, and want to keep looking at it: being attracted to what is pleasing to the eye. We can also look at some thing chat is unpleasant to the eye  such as excrement. When you see excrement, cow dung on the path, you politely ignore it. Look at your own excrement. We produce it ourselves and yet it’s something that we don’t really want to go round showing other people. It’s something we’d rather nobody ever saw us producing. We don’t really feel drawn to go looking at it like we would at a flower. And yet we’re quite willing to wear flowers, carry them around and keep them on our shrine.
It’s not that you should find excrement attractive. I’m just pointing out chat you can meditate on this force of the sensory world.

Its natural force. It’s not bad or wrong but we can meditate on it in order to see our tendency to react to sensory experiences.

When you experience beautiful sounds or horrible ones, pleas ant odours or stinking ones, pleasant tastes or unpleasant ones, pleasurable physical sensations or painful ones  meditate on these. See these things as they are: all rupa is impermanent. Beautiful flowers are only beautiful for a while; then they become repulsive. So were observing this natural transformation from what is fresh and beautiful to what is old and ugly. Myself, I was a lot prettier when I was twenty. Now I’m old and ugly. An old human body s not very beautiful, is it? But it’s the body, following what in supposed to do, I’m glad it’s not getting prettier. It would be embarrassing if it was.

Now the mental khandhas also operate on that same principle. Vedana is a mental state, the feeling you have of attraction and aversion around the physical things that you hear, see, smell, taste, touch. The sensation of pain is just as it is, but then there’s the reaction of liking or disliking  or just a movement toward or away from it.

You can be aware of feelings end moods- Note the heat that comes from anger and the dullness that comes from doubt or sloth-torpor. Note the feeling when you’re jealous. You can witness that feeling. Watch jealousy instead of just flying to annihilate it. When jealousy conditions your mind out of aversion, rather than reacting to it or trying to get rid of it, you can begin to reflect upon it. When you’re cold, what is coldness? Do you like it? Is feeling cold something terribly unpleasant or do you just make lot our of it? What is hunger like? When you feel hungry, meditate or’ the physical feeling to which you tend to react by trying to get something to eat.

Meditate on the feeling of being atone or separate, or being looked do upon. If you feel that I don’t like you  meditate on that feeling. And if you don’t like me, meditate on that. Bring this into consciousness now; not analytically, trying to decide if your relationship to me is a dependent childlike relationship that you shouldn’t have or getting caught up in Freudian psychology or whatever. But just observe the doubting uncertain state of mind in your relationships to others  and the feelings of confidence or lack of confidence, aversion or attraction that arise. These are vedana. We’re all sensitive beings so there’s a natural attraction and repulsion operating all the time. It’s a condition in nature not a personal problem  unless we make it so.

Sauna khandha is the perception khandha. To grasp a perception means to believe in the way things appear in the present as permanent. That’s how we tend to operate in our lives. So I might think, for example, “Venerable Viradhammo is this way.’ It’s a percept ion I have whether I’m here, sitting next to Venerable Viradhammo or alone; whether he’s helping me or angry with me. I have this fixed view. A fixed perception is not very conscious but I tend to operate from that particular fixed position if I believe in my perception. In that way, when I think of him, it’s as if his personality is fixed and constant rather than being the way it is at this time. My perception of him is just a perception of the moment; it’s not a soul that carries through time nor is it a fixed personality. So sanna is to be meditated on.

Sankhara mental formations. We operate from these and from the perceptions of the mind, sanna. So the assumptions you have about yourself  from childhood, parents, teachers, friends, relatives and all that; whether you perceive yourself as good and positive or in a negative way or confused way  it’s all the sanna/sankhara khandhas. You have memories or fears about what you might be lacking. You worry that there might be a serious flaw in your character or some repressed horrible desires lurking deep in your mind  which may arise in meditation and drive you crazy! That is another mental condition, that not knowing what we are, so sometimes we imagine the worst possible things. But what we can know is that whatever we believe ourselves to be is a condition of the mind: it arises, it passes away and it is impermanent.

If we come from certain fixed perceptions of ourselves, then we conceive all kinds of things. If you operate from the position lam a man’ and then become that perception of yourself, you never investigate that perception; you just assume and believe, “I’m a man’ and then conceive “manhood as being a certain way; what a man should be.’ Then you compare yourself to what the ideal for manhood is and when you don’t live up to those high standards of manhood, you worry. Something wrong! You start feeling upset or guilty or hating yourself because of the basic assumption chat you are a man.

On a conventional level, this might be true; men are this way and women are that way. We’re not denying the conventional reality, but we’re no longer attaching to it as a personal quality, a fixed position to take at all times in all places. This is a way of freeing ourselves from the binding quality of the conditioned realm. If you believe yourself to he a man or a woman as your true identity and your soul, then that is always going to take you to a depressed state of mind.

All these are perceptions we have. We create so much misery over perceiving ourselves to be black or white or members of a certain nationality or class. In England, people suffer because of this percep tion of belonging to a certain class; in America we suffer from the perception that we’re all the same, we’re all equal. It’s the attachment to any of these, even to the highest, most egalitarian perception, that takes us to despair.

Investigating these five heaps, aggregates or groups, you begin to see them. You can know them as objects because they’re anatta, not-self. If you were these objects, then you would be unable to see them. You would only be able to be them, caught into them all the time without any ability to detach and observe them. But being men, women, monks, nuns, Italian, Danish, Swiss, English or American is only a relative truth, relative to certain situations.

Yet we operate our lives from fixed positions and identities. Throuthout the world, we have national and racial prejudices. These are just perception and conception that can observe.

When you have a fixed view about somebody “One thing I can’t stand is Hondurans’  you can observe that in your mind, can’t you! Even if you have strong prejudices and feelings and you try to get rid of them, that comes from assuming that you shouldn’t have any prejudices or bad feelings towards are and you should be able to accept criticism with an equanimous mind and not feel angry or upset. That’s another very idealistic assumption, isn’t it? You see that as a condition of mind and keep observing.
Rather than hating ourselves or hating others for being prejudiced, we observe the very limitations of any prejudices or perceptions and cot of the mind. We meditate on the impermanent nature of perception. In other words, we try not to justify or get rid of or change anything but just to observe that all things change all that begins ends.

Then we meditate on the vinnana khandha, the sensory consciousness of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. We are aware of the movements of consciousness of the senses. When we Look at something or hear something it changes very rapidly.

All these five khandhas are anicca, impermanent. “When we chant: rupam aniccam, vedana anicca, na anicca, sankhara this is very profound. Then: sabbe means “all conditioned phenomena’, alt sensory experience the sense organs, the objects of the sense organs, the consciousness that arises on contact  all this is sankhara and is anicca. All is conditioned. So sankhara includes the other four: rupa, vedana.

With this you have a perspective from which the conditioned world is nl variabk and complex. But where do you separate sañna from and all that? It’s best not to try to get precise divisions between these five aggregates; they’re just convenient means for looking at things, helping you to meditate on mental states, the physical world and the sensory world.

Were not trying to fix anything as, This is permanently sankhara and that is definitely sanna’, but to use these labels to observe that the sensory world  from the physical to the mental, from coarse to refined  is conditioned, and all conditioned phenomena are impermanent. Then we have a way of seeing the totality of the conditioned world as impermanent rather than getting involved in it all. In this practice of insight meditation, were not flying to analyse the conditioned world, but to detach from it, to see it in perspective. This is when we really begin to comprehend anicca; to insightfully know sabbe sankhara ankca.

So any thoughts and belief you have are just conditions. But I’m not saying that you shouldn’t believe in anything; I’m just pointing out a way to see things in perspective, to avoid being deluded or to grasp the experience of emptiness or the Unconditioned as a personal attainment. Some of you have been grasping that one as a kind of personal attainment, haven’t you? “I know emptiness. I’ve realised emptiness’  patting yourselves on the back. That’s not sabbe dhamma anatra  that’s grasping the Unconditioned, making it into a condition; “Me’ and Mine’. “When you start thinking of yourself as having realised emptiness, you can see that also as a condition of the mind.

Now all things are not-self, not a person, not a permanent soul, not a self of any sort. That’s also very important to contemplate because sabbe dhamma includes all things; the conditioned phenomena of the sensory world and the Unconditioned, the Deathless.

Notice that Buddhists make no claim for Deathlessness as being a self either “I have an immortal soul’ or “God is my true nature!’ The Buddha avoided such statements. Any attempt to conceive oneself as anything at all is an obstacle to enlightenment because you still attach to an idea, to a concept of sew as being part of something. Maybe you think there’s a piece of you, a little soul, that joins the bigger one at death. That is a conception of the mind that you can know. We’re not saying its untrue or f but we’re just being the knowing, knowing what can be known. We don’t feel compelled to grasp that as a belief we see it as only something that comes out of the mind, a condition of the mind, so we even let that go. Keep that formula all conditions are impermanent, all things are not-self’ for reflection. And then in your life as you live it, whatever happens, you can see. It keeps you from being deluded by miraculous phenomena that might happen to you, and iris a way of understanding other religious conventions. Christians come along and say “Only through Jesus Christ can you be saved. You can’t be saved through Buddhism. Buddha was only a man, but Jesus Christ was the son of God? So you dunk, “Oh, I wonder, maybe they’re right.’ After all when you go to one of these born again’ meetings everybody’s radiating happiness; their eyes are bright and they say, Praise the Lord!’

But when you go to a Buddhist monastery, you just sit there for hours on end watching your breath; you don’t get high like that. You start doubting and you think, “Maybe that’s right; maybe Jesus is the way.’ But what you can know is that there’s a doubt. Look at that doubt or the feeling of being intimidated by or averse to other religious. What you can know is that these are perceptions of the mind: they come and go and change.

Keep a constant cool reflection on these things rather than trying to figure it out or feel that you have to justify your being a Buddhist. Christians start saying, “You don’t do anything for the third world,’ and you say, We we … we.. chant! We share merit and we radiate loving-kindness.’ This sounds weak in the face of malnutrition and starvation in Africa But now there’s this opportunity to understand our limits. All of us would definitely do something about starvation in Africa if we felt that there was something one individual could do at this time. Reflect upon this  what is the real problem? Is it starvation in Africa or is it human selfishness and ignorance? Isn’t starvation in Africa the result of human greed, selfishness and stupidity?

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