Dependent Cessation and the Unconditioned

So, a couple of things by way of preface, I suppose, and review, going back, I think, right to the beginning. So, emptiness, teachings of emptiness, practices on emptiness are tools. Fundamentally, they are tools. And that's all they are. They are in the service of freeing us from suffering, in the service of opening, enlargening our capacity to give, to love. And there are many emptiness tools, as we've been going through. But there are many tools in the sort of toolkit of the Dharma -- many, many tools. And we talked right at the beginning how sometimes, we take the approach, the language, the view, the looking of not-self, no-self, emptiness, and sometimes we take the view of self. Both of these are available to us, and should be used by us as practitioners.

So right now, today, it is not necessarily the case, this evening, that the emptiness approach is the best for what you're going through. It may be, or it may not be. Or an emptiness approach -- it might be that, actually, right now, for what you are going through at this time, the self approach, or a self approach might be best. And having that flexibility, to me, is really, really important -- flexibility of view, flexibility of approach. So sometimes, for example, when the inner critic comes up, sometimes can be looked at in terms of emptiness. Sometimes, what's actually helpful is relating in terms of the self: loving oneself, caring for oneself.

Now, of course, the talks on this retreat are mostly about emptiness, because it just feels like there's a lot to say about it. And going right back to the beginning, were it longer, we could talk about a whole lot of other stuff too. But that emptiness is part of the path. It's just that, on this retreat, we're talking mostly about that.

As we practise, as practice develops, as the retreat goes on and practice develops, the development, the deepening, and the opening -- as you well know, and as I said, again, right at the beginning -- is not linear. It does not happen linearly. It does not happen even particularly smoothly. It's more like this: expect a bumpy ride, expect the waves. If I'm not ... well. [laughs] I'm in for a rude awakening. As it's like that, sometimes when -- whichever way you want to look at it -- we have the highs, and maybe it's a high in terms of the heart opening in love or calmness or whatever. In a way, because of that, that kind of almost sine-wavy motion to it, the lows stand out more in contrast. When you keep tasting the openings and the sweetness of that and the highs, when there's a trough of the wave, it feels sometimes even more painful, more difficult. And it's not that one's going backwards. It's just standing out more in contrast.

So given any of that, 7:30 comes, or whatever other time, and the talk comes, or the talk on this day or whatever. And it may not feel like the timing of the talk is exactly -- you may not want to hear anything more about [emptiness]. You may not even want one more word about emptiness. [laughter] "Filled up to my ears! I don't want to know!" [laughter] And you know, that's understandable. People are -- of course, everyone's ways are different. This is an emptiness [retreat]. We're putting that out there. So at the beginning of the retreat, I said there's a whole process that we also have to take care of as well, inside.

So there may be a feeling of, "This isn't really what I want to be hearing about right now." But please see that that has to go on, and there's a context here. So I want to continue, and continue -- I don't know -- unfolding this map, I suppose. And really, really, really, no pressure in this talk. You don't have to do anything with it. You really just have to sit back and listen, and I hope that it's interesting. And for many of you -- not for everyone, but for many of you, this will be something for the future. And that could be years in the future. And I just want to kind of -- again, pointing to the way this possibly unfolds, partly to give you the map, but partly also to fill out the teachings, the implications of the teachings, the fullness of what's meant here. And so it's okay if it feels like, again, I'm just scattering seeds, or the teachings are just scattering seeds. It's completely fine.

So given all that, and in a way, continuing all that, we consider our life and our life on the path. We -- most people in here feel quite committed to the sense of the path as a kind of lifelong exploration: exploration of life, exploration of existence and how one relates to existence, etc. And we consider that the path, whatever, and then the eightfold path, the path of the Dharma, whatever you want to call it. And that includes a lot of things. A lot, a lot, a lot of elements make up what our path is, if we're in it for life -- many, many elements. And many, if you like, chapters and periods of that. Some of them are quite extended. Sometimes, in a day, it feels like it moves between chapters and periods. Some go on for years.

So the whole capacity we have to be with experience, you know, that's a big part of the path: cultivating, developing our ability, our willingness, to meet experience directly, to become intimate with experience, to open to it, to embrace to it, to bring that simplicity of attention. That's huge, especially in the Insight Meditation tradition, other traditions, Zen, etc.; it's a huge, huge, huge part of practice. [7:19] Am I able to be with experience -- the lovely, and the difficult, and the in-between? And it's absolutely central to our path. And cultivating this quality of presence, of mindfulness, of attentiveness. And through that, strengthening, nourishing our intimacy and our connection with ourselves, actually -- with ourselves, growing, learning to be more and more intimate and connected with ourselves, and especially the parts that we perhaps have cut off from, sidelined, hidden, shoved down, those parts that we are maybe afraid to give attention to, reluctant to admit are there. A huge part of the practice is that willingness to be intimate, learning to be intimate, the art of intimacy with ourselves, the dimensions of ourselves, and our experience. So that heartache, that hole inside, that anxiety, whatever it is that feels so hard to draw close to, those parts in particular -- what is it to open to that? What is it inch toward that and to begin meeting it, and tasting it, and have the courage to touch that? Huge, huge. Really, really important.

But practice also, of course, includes our relationship. Relational practice is as important. So what about our relationship with others, and ethics, and care for that, and love, and kindness? What about, within that, the way we communicate with others? All these very significant strands, and perhaps, as I said, periods of our life, where this is really at the fore -- whatever the aspects of practice are, they're really at the forefront of what we're investigating, what we're exploring. Really important.

Connection with others, connection with earth -- what is it to feel ourselves as earthly beings on this planet, flesh and blood, and know that? Connected to animal life, connected to the soil and the air and the water? You know, that's, again, massive, massively important part of practice. Connected to life. And then the whole realm of practice that's about opening the heart, and softening the heart, and expanding the capacities of the heart in different ways, whole realms or dimensions, chapters of practice, periods of our life of practice that are about healing: healing ourselves psychologically or physiologically, actually. You know, if I think back on my practice, large chunks were devoted to healing in different ways -- really important, especially the psychological and the emotional realms. [10:31] Aspects and dimensions of practice that are about expressing oneself, expressing one's truth, expressing one's authenticity, expressing one's creativity -- what is it to express the uniqueness of my being creatively, without fear in life? To me, practice has a lot to do with that, or there's a part of practice -- very significant. Discovering, recovering wholeness, our wholeness -- perhaps something we feel like we've lost, perhaps something we feel like we're beginning to discover for the first time, a sense of the being as something integrated. Mind, body, spirit, heart -- integrated, integrated. Big part of practice.

And then that huge area that both John and I have touched on is the cultivation of beautiful qualities, beautiful qualities of heart -- massive, massive part of practice, and often not given the weight it should. The huge benefit of cultivating generosity, of cultivating loving-kindness, compassion, equanimity -- all these lists that seem so boring at first. And in that, at times, on retreat or off retreat, exploring the kind of range of depths of consciousness, or the way that consciousness can open out at times, and that whole texture of experience, and perception changes, the highs and depths of consciousness -- very important. And then the whole realm of insight, and exploring insight -- we're talking about ways of looking that bring freedom, and all the possibilities of that. Using the reasoning and the reflective mind -- we've talked about reasoning. What is it just to think through a situation or an issue or a problem, in a way that we're not a victim of thought, but we're actually able to use the thinking mind creatively, and in a way that's helpful? That's a skill in practice, has a real place -- so all of that.

Actually, just in relation to that last one, I just want to throw out: these reasonings that I've been offering at a few times (maybe five or so, I don't know how many of them, at different times) -- the point of them is not to engender a state of perplexity and a kind of 'not knowing,' or befuddlement in any kind of [way], even in a pleasant kind of way. It's not, also, to engender or bring about a state where [you] kind of just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, we can't really know what's real," or "Whatever," or something like that, or even to engender an explanation of how things are: "Things are like this. This is how the world is. This is how this object is." Rather, they're supposed to be logical proofs, and to come to a conviction of a lack of inherent existence of what it is you're analysing. And that lack of inherent existence brings freedom. They're in the service of freedom.

That was an aside. What I want to go into tonight, given that whole big, big totality of what practice is at different times, is nirvāṇa. What I want to talk tonight about is nirvāṇa, or nibbāna in Pali. And if you remember, a couple of nights ago, I talked about these four talks actually spiralling around something. And so this is part of the spiral, and tomorrow night as well. So that word nirvāṇa is used in the tradition. It was used in the Pali Canon by the Buddha, and certainly later in Mahāyāna. It actually gets used in different ways at different times, and that's fine. So in a way, you could talk about different aspects of dimensions of nirvāṇa, or different meanings. It's given different meanings.

The one that I want to explore tonight is nibbāna as the Unconditioned. And if you've been around these circles or reading, you may have come across that term before: the Unconditioned, or the Unfabricated, or sometimes the Unborn, the Deathless. These are all -- again, particularly if you're around Insight Meditation or other traditions, too, you will run into this. You will hear this. And that's the aspect I want to explore tonight: the Deathless, the Unborn, the Unconditioned, the Unfabricated.

So again, still a part of the preface, you know, having said all that about practice, about the different strands and different possible theories of practice -- at different times, different of those elements feel more important, may pull more at the heartstrings. So for some, what I'm talking about tonight -- the Deathless -- will feel very, very resonant with the heart. For others, they're in a slightly different chapter, either tonight or in this part in their life, and doesn't seem to [resonate]. Something else -- maybe it's the healing thing, maybe it's something else -- that's what feels is really pulling at the heartstrings. At any time, when we're practising, it's important to have a connection with the reasons for practising that feel really meaningful for ourselves. In other words, I might give a talk on the Unfabricated, or emptiness, or something. But it's important that practice feels meaningful, at that time, for you. In other words, of all these different chapters, something there is grabbing you.

I just said this -- all these dimensions of practice -- tonight I'm going to talk about one. It may or may not have any emotional resonance with you at all. What I'm saying, though, is even if it doesn't, it's important in our practice, in our years of practice, to feel like we're in touch, emotionally connected to the reasons why we're practising. In other words, you know, I speak with a lot of people. And sometimes, I get a sense from people, or they tell me, that they don't know why they're practising. Or sometimes a person doesn't realize that, but you realize that their reasons for practising are not really heartfelt any more. They're practising because someone said, "You should this or should that," and a little time has gone by, and one's actually not really in contact with a heartfelt reason, for oneself, that makes sense, for practising. That seems to be quite common. So I'm saying that, despite whatever I or John or anyone else talks about, that we should have a sense of, "I know why I'm practising, and it's something that really connects to my heart, and makes sense for me, why I'm practising." It could be any of those, or more, or a combination. [17:55]

Okay, so whatever word we say -- the Unfabricated, the Deathless, the Unconditioned -- sometimes (and I think I might have mentioned this already in a talk) you hear someone talking about that. And listening to what they say, or what they write, or whatever, and maybe asking questions, you realize that what they're talking about is that vastness of awareness that we talked about two weeks ago, or whenever it was. And that in the beauty of that, and in the opening of the consciousness in that way, it almost seems like, as we've talked about, every phenomenon -- phenomena are arising out of that, born out of it, and kind of dying back into it. But that thing seems like it just stays. It just stays. And one thinks, "Birth and death seem to be in that thing. That thing seems to be beyond birth and death. It seems to be Deathless. I might go in and out of that experience," and the person says, "Maybe I'm just in and out of contact with that thing. There still is a sense of birth and death taking place in that thing. Perhaps that thing, feeling -- Deathless." So person either wonders, "Is that the Unconditioned?" or goes ahead and says, "That is the Deathless. That is the Unfabricated. That is the Unborn," etc.

Vast space of awareness -- sometimes, occasionally, someone will say the Now is that, because the Now also seems endlessly Now, etc. So that's one position. In a way, we've already gone into that. But I'll speak again about it tonight. Other times, you come across opinions that get voiced, and by some scholars, etc., who say, "The Buddha has been mistranslated and misrepresented by any words like 'the Unfabricated' or 'the Deathless' or 'the Unconditioned.'" And they'll say, "If you look in the Pali Canon, you'll find only one instance where that's the case. And there is no Deathless, and it's" -- as I said -- "one instance that's actually a mistranslation, and not truth." What I'm interested in is practice, and where practice goes, what practice shows us, not so much -- to me, that sounds like an intellectual position. Again, oftentimes, if you ask someone, you realize that it's not a practice realization that they've come to. It's more of an intellectual position that they've arrived at.

Other times -- I'm kind of laying out the territory, because I'm going to explain, this is actually very loaded. Might not feel loaded for you, especially if this is the first time you're hearing about it. But actually, in the Dharma world, this is a very loaded area. Others will say, "The teachings of emptiness are actually contradictory to the teachings of an Unconditioned or Unfabricated. And it's only Hīnayāna teachings that teach about an Unfabricated" -- in the kind of derogatory sense. But actually, just on that, there's a text by Nāgārjuna called Praise of the Supramundane. 'Supramundane' means 'beyond or above the world' -- the world of the senses. And he says:

You [the Buddha] have said that there is no liberation so long as the absence of representation is not realized.^[1]

"So long as the absence of representation" means thingness. I guess the point I'm making is it is present in slightly different language in Mahāyāna teachings as well. Sometimes you've heard something -- people refer to the dharmakāya. Heard that word? There's a relationship with what more Theravādan people would say: 'Unfabricated,' etc.

One of the things I'm really, really interested in -- so we're talking about something the Buddha or some people seem to be saying. The Buddha's talking about something transcendent: transcendent to the world, transcendent to the mind, and transcendent to the senses. And some people say, "There is that, and it's important. It's important to realize it." And some people say, "There is not that. The Buddha has no interest in anything transcendent at all. It's a mistake, a typical human mistake to hunt for something transcendent, something beyond this world and beyond the senses."

What do you want to be the answer? [laughter] What do you want to be the answer? This is an important question, because what I notice in teaching and in talking to people, is that oftentimes, people have pre-decided this. They've pre-decided what the answer is. And I've run into this -- I can't -- I've lost count of how many times. In actually quite an emotionally charged way, they've pre-decided. [23:19] So I'm going to shut up for ten seconds, and you just look inside and see what you want. What would you like? [laughs]

Yogi 1: What was the question?

Rob: Is there a transcendent, something transcendent to this world, transcendent to the senses, transcendent to the mind? And does it have any significance whatsoever?

Okay. [laughs] I'm actually really curious, but I'm not going to ask ... [everyone laughs] I'm not going to ask. I will assume, as usual, that there's both camps in this room. And there usually always is. But the reason I'm doing ...

Yogi 2: Maybe more than both camps.

Rob: Maybe more than both camps, yeah. Good point. But the reason I'm doing that is because I really notice this tendency to pre-decide, and to want it to be one way or another. And I think it's really important, in the context of integrity and self-honesty, to know what we are bringing to any kind of investigation, know where we're leaning, how we're maybe biased through whatever conditions or predispositions, etc. But let's look at this. Let's look at this in terms of the practices we've been doing, and in terms of the teachings. So I think it was a couple of weeks ago; I started harping on about this thing, 'fading,' about this phenomenon of fading -- of perception, experience, thing. Fading. As we cling less, as there's less and less push and pull, with practice, the experience is perceptions fade. As there's less selfing, less identification, similarly, the experience, the perceptions fade. And as there's less delusion as well, the experiences begin, on a spectrum, to fade. As we let go, and as we let go of identifying with the things, the aspects of experience that we usually identify with -- and on that, we said it can get very subtle. For instance, including identifying with consciousness, and including, for example, identifying with the intention to pay attention -- very, very subtle. The intention to pay attention -- default, got a sense of 'I,' 'my,' 'mine.' And learning, actually, with practice, with time, to actually even unhook the identification from that: "There is just this intention to pay attention."

Or when we're seeing something as empty, and just knowing that it's empty, and just looking at it with this lens on: "It's empty" -- including awareness, as I was talking about in the last two talks, including that. With all that, there will be this continuum of fading, this continuum of the fading of perception. Now, I think I've said this, but it's really worth repeating: to move on that continuum as a practitioner, I would say -- and this goes back to near the opening talk -- it actually needs some samādhi. The samādhi and the mettā really, really help. Why? Because as things fade, as the sense of self fades, the sense of the world fades, one of the functions of the samādhi is to soften the fear, to allay the fear. It will have that function of allaying the fear, and actually bringing warmth into the being, so that it doesn't feel like we've just been hurled into interstellar space in some cold vacuum. Actually bring warmth in and soften the fear.

I've only thrown this out a couple of times, and not in any detail; I'm not going to throw it out in any detail tonight either. But in a way, when people go through the jhānas, and there are eight jhānas -- actually relates to a question Richard asked once in here -- there are two reasons why that, even that degree of samādhi is important. Remember, I'm just throwing out a map here. So if it doesn't relate where you feel you've covered, I'm just putting out the information. One is that samādhi itself, or the progress of samādhi through the jhānas, and the bliss, happiness, peace, stillness, infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception nor non-perception -- classical jhānas -- that is actually a spectrum of fading, a spectrum of fading of perception. The body-sense gets more subtle, more refined. The body-perception gets more refined, and then the self-sense and the world-sense. It's all a process of fading. So by going through samādhi, one's actually having experience of fading to some degree anyway. As significant is the fact that, very often, especially the formless jhānas -- those ones of infinite space, etc. -- get mistaken for the Unconditioned, the Unfabricated, the Deathless. And a person who doesn't have that experience and that map will very easily mistake an experience, say, of nothingness as the Unfabricated. So there's also a reason why that's important. [28:47]

And I can't remember when I said this, but it's also important to realize that, when things fade, or when things disappear in that way, to whatever degree, we begin to get more and more confident, safe in the realization that we're not actually losing or letting go of anything really real, because it's actually empty anyway. It's fabricated. So these two understandings go together. And they make this whole journey into this fading -- a little, lot, come back, little, come back, deeper, and deeper, gradually -- they make it feel much more safe, much more doable, much more okay.

So this spectrum of fading has everything to do with a spectrum of less and less fabrication. It's on its way to possibly something beyond the experience of the world.

Yogi 3: By samādhi you mean 'meditation'?

Rob: By samādhi I mean 'concentration.' Yeah? So listen to this from the Buddha, Saṃyutta Nikāya 35:117. He's talking to a group of monks:

Monks, that dimension should be known where [literally] the eye stops [where vision stops] and the perception of form fades. That dimension should be known where the ear [where hearing] stops and the perception of sound fades ... where the nose stops and the perception of aroma fades ... where the tongue stops and the perception of flavour fades ... where the body stops and the perception of tactile sensation fades ... where the intellect [or mind] stops and the perception of ideas [or phenomena] fades. That dimension should be known.^[2]

Okay?

Yogi 4: Reference again ...?

Rob: Saṃyutta Nikāya 35:117. Another one -- Aṅguttara Nikāya 11:10. Actually, the whole sutta, I think, but he's talking about going beyond the perception of the four elements, the perception of material form, going beyond the perception of everything, All -- the All or the Totality -- going beyond the perception of all those eight jhānas.^[3]

In the Sutta Nipāta, he's talking to one particular seeker, and he says to him something like:

By knowing the destruction of fabrications [the destruction of what is fabricated], be a knower of the Unmade [the akata, the Unmade or what is Unmade].^[4]

So in reference to yesterday's talk, we talked about this tripod of subject, object, and time. What the Buddha's pointing to is, when that tripod -- he said, beginning to see the mutual dependency, the mutual emptiness, one's taking away the support for that tripod, the belief in the inherent existence. Or pulling at one or the other, and the whole thing begins to collapse -- gone beyond the world, the typical world, transcending the world of subject, object, and time. [32:26]

This came up, I think, in the question and answer yesterday: sometimes a person will say -- I remember reading this thing about a guy who pedalled a pedal boat across the Atlantic or Pacific, can't remember. And he said, you know, he was on his own in this little boat, and pedalling away all day, and ... [laughs] and it got quite meditative at times. But he wasn't a meditator. He had never had any experience with that sort of thing. Only afterwards did he get interested in meditation. He said he realized now that, at certain stretch, he got into what he was calling "an experience of totally non-dual awareness." He said, "The subject/object duality just faded." Well, reading and explaining what actually happened, what actually happened was he just got quite absorbed in what he was doing. There was not much else going on, and he was pretty focused on ... [laughter]

Yogi 5: Except he survived ...

Rob: Yeah, and nothing else was distracting him. He just, he was just pedalling, pedalling, pedalling. What actually happened was a state of samādhi. It was a state of more absorption in what's going on in that moment. It's a long way from that to what the Buddha's talking about, this whole tripod fading, ceasing, cessation -- long, long way. So it's a very different thing. So in his case, when he described it in more detail in the next paragraph, basically, the chatter of his mind that he -- you know, he wasn't even aware of any of this. [33:45] He notices he started pedalling, and then, "Who's with me? Oh, it's my mind. Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit ..." So this was a time in this stretch that, actually, that chatter got quieter. And the distracted mind got quieter. And there was more of a sense of oneness with the pedalling and the movement of the body. It's just absorption there. And in this spectrum, the self-sense was less. He noticed that. But we need to be strict and precise about this. It's not an experience of totally non-dual awareness, lovely as it was for him, and actually sent him on a real path, etc. But it's still some degree on that spectrum.

So I keep going back to this concept of the spectrum, because actually, a lot can be corralled in terms of the teachings. So if we don't understand this way that perceptions, experience, object, all that is fabricated, as I've been describing in the talks over the days, if we don't understand it, and there's no fading of that, we're not talking about what the Buddha's getting at with this, you know -- something else. And when the Buddha says, "This dimension should be known," so very easily a practitioner can get into a mode where they're chasing this experience. Especially when meditation gets very deep, and you actually get a sense of something is around that's really beyond what one knows. It's almost like the little ... nyeeeehr ... you know, picked up on the radar screen, and kind of go for it. And you can actually feel, basically, what happens is -- sometimes you get away with it, but usually, a contraction comes in. It's a form of clinging, and you just end up shooting yourself in the foot. [35:37]

So it's not that we're chasing experience. In the way I feel is best with all this, it's not so much that we're chasing experience of this Unfabricated. What's much more important is, we want to see this -- we talk about dependent arising, we talk about dependent fading. We want to see this dependent fading over and over and over, because that's where the insight is. Things don't fade randomly. They don't just fade because they're impermanent. Remember, I was talking about this -- dropping this. There's a principle going on here that has to do with the way the whole of our experience is fabricated, built, etc. So if we're playing, as we were talking about yesterday, with this triangle of self/thing/time, really playing with that in a way that starts to take away the support of that tripod, actually take it away and see things -- see self/thing/time fade, collapse, to some degree. It's that understanding, and it's that insight that comes out of that, really taking on board the implications of what that means -- that's what frees, rather than an experience.

There are people who report kind of textbook experiences of this cessation experience, the Unfabricated, and it hasn't made any difference in their life, or very little. Now, maybe they've had the wrong experience. Maybe they just haven't had any understanding. They just haven't had any understanding. So for some -- but I'm really not saying that experiences are irrelevant. I do not want to say that at all. But what's important is the insight that we take out of it. [37:28]

So ideally, a practitioner moves in and out of any experiences of emptiness. You're all having experiences of emptiness to some degree or another -- all of you. And if it goes into the fading, then to some degree of that -- but it's the understanding, and the understanding feeds the experience, and the experience feeds the understanding, like that.

So we talk about dependent origination, and the Buddha always, when he talks about dependent origination, talks about dependent cessation. What does it mean, 'cessation,' 'dependent cessation'? What does it mean not to build, not to build? So on the morning after his awakening, in the mythological story, he utters this spontaneous verse: "Housebuilder, you've been seen. Your ridgepole has been shattered. Your roof beams have been scattered," etc.^[5] You can interpret that in different ways, but to me, the most significant meaning is, "I've seen this building of experience. I've seen this building of the world, this building of the world of experience, the world of perception and consciousness, etc., in the usual way. I've seen it in a way that can not build it."

So when he talks about the five aggregates as well, he talks about investigating them. He says, "Such is form," or "Such is feeling," or whatever, and "Such its origination," and "Such its disappearance." In other words, to understand the aggregates -- "Such is form, vedanā, perception, etc., such its origination, such its disappearance" -- the "such," to me, there, doesn't mean, "such its disappearance -- in other words, it's impermanent." It means why it's impermanent, how it arises, how it gets built, how the aggregates get built as an experience, and how they actually get not built.^[6]

Here's another one from the Buddha. I'm partly doing this just because of those people that say there's only one reference to it. And I could've filled the whole talk with just quotes from the Buddha that refer to this. I feel that's a little misrepresentative. This actually refers to -- I remember I was talking about that analogy of two sheaves of corn. I think this is Sāriputta -- not sure who's talking:

It is as if two sheaves of reeds stood leaning against one another. In the same way, from nāmarūpa [in other words, what that really means is 'the processes of the perceiving mind'] as a requisite condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes nāmarūpa. [And then] from nāmarūpa as requisite condition comes [the next link, sense contact, etc., etc., and then all to] the entire mass of stress and suffering. If one were to pull away one of those sheaves of reeds, the other would fall. If one were to pull away the other, the first one would fall.

[40:44] Consciousness and perception, consciousness and nāmarūpa. We've already talked about consciousness and the processes in the perceiving mind.

In the same way, from the cessation of nāmarūpa comes the cessation of consciousness. From the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of nāmarūpa. From the cessation of nāmarūpa comes the cessation of [all the way around the other links, the whole mass,] this entire mass of stress and suffering.^[7]

What does it mean for consciousness to cease? What does it mean? Consciousness, remember, is knowing: knowing of the six, knowing in the realms of the six sense spheres -- in other words, the whole world of experience, inner, outer, that we have. That consciousness fading, that consciousness ceasing.

This is another passage, Saṃyutta Nikāya 12:51. (That last one was Saṃyutta Nikāya 12:67.) He's talking to a group of monks, and he's asking them a series of questions, and he said:

Would a [practitioner] whose fermentations [or effluents, whose outflows of ignorance, attachment to sense pleasure, attachment to 'being' or 'becoming' -- and I use that word 'being' as well, as a translation of bhava. It's not just 'becoming': being, attachment to being, attachment to sense pleasure, ignorance, and attachment to views. When those] are ended, would they fabricate [would they build] a meritorious or [even] an unmeritorious fabrication?

In other words, would they build something unlovely or something lovely in that state? "No," then comes the answer from the monks. And then the Buddha continues:

With the total non-existence of fabrications [of saṅkhāras, of that which builds], from the cessation of fabrications, would consciousness be discernible?

The answer: "No." So these are good monks. And then he asked them:

Would nāmarūpa be discernible?

And then, going through all the links of the twelve:

Would aging and death be discernible?

"No." Then he says:

Very good, monks ... Just so should you construe it. Just so should you be convinced. Just so should you believe. Do not be doubtful. Do not be uncertain. This, just this, is the end of dukkha.^[8]

[43:30] Another one. This is a very interesting quote. So listen to this one. I'll read it first. Saṃyutta Nikāya II 65:

If one neither wills nor determines nor is occupied [with anything], there is no [arising of an] object for the persistence of consciousness. There being no object, there is no foothold for consciousness.^[9]

In other words, this mutual dependency -- in other words, no willing, no determining, no occupying with anything is the same thing as saying there's no clinging. Or we've seen the emptiness of it. There's no reason to be occupied with it. It's empty. It's empty. That gives nothing for consciousness to lean on, in its leaning on nāmarūpa.

So 'building,' 'fabricating' -- these are the Buddha's words. 'Fabricating' is actually a really, I feel, really great translation for saṅkhāra, or saṅkhāra-ing, or whatever the verb is. In English, two words are really great for translating saṅkhāra, and they're 'fabricating' and 'concocting.' The reason is because they give an impression of building something. We fabricate, you know, this or that. We fabricate, you know, we talk about a 'prefab house,' or a 'prefab' whatever. Or 'concocting' -- again, I put something together. But the second implication in English of that meaning is, we say a 'fabrication' is a 'lie.' It's something that's not quite really real. [45:19] It's not quite real. I don't know if there's a double meaning in Pali when the Buddha originally used the words. But it's actually very good in English to talk about 'fabrications' or 'concoctions,' because we're building something. In the very building of it, it's not something real.

The more we see that, the more insight we have, and that's why I keep saying "practice": you build the steps, and eventually you reach some degree of conviction that things are built, that the experience of perception, object, thing is empty because it's built, partly because it's built. You realize any self-sense, any perception, experience, object, any time-sense, any consciousness is all fabricated. That seeing of its fabricated nature even brings more of this, what I've been calling "holy disinterest," holy kind of letting go. In the Buddha's words, one doesn't "relish" them. One doesn't relish either the objects of consciousness or the consciousness. One does not relish. And that non-relishing is a huge level of letting go, very deep level of letting go. It's as if right there in the meditation, there's a sense of, there's nothing here for me or for anyone, actually, nothing here -- in this whole realm of what we could call saṃsāra, the whole realm of experience, there's nothing here. There's nothing here. And seeing that, seeing the emptiness of it is like, there's very deep letting go. This relinquishment, to use the Buddha's words, for non-relishing. So again, it's a way of looking. You're pursuing these ways of looking. They begin to build on each other until they bring a really deep conviction, an ability to not relish in that moment, to relinquish, to let go.

The Buddha -- can't remember the source of this sutta; I think it's somewhere in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, maybe in the section on the aggregates. I'm pretty sure it's in the section on the aggregates somewhere. He describes this building, fabricating for us. The analogy he gives is of a painter painting a mural on a wall. And he says the aggregates, all the aggregates -- form, vedanā, perception, mental formations, and consciousness -- are like someone painting on a wall, painting a man or painting a woman on a wall.^[10] Seeing that, when there's no craving for things, for contact, then, in any of the -- it gets less and less and less. In the spectrum of fading, something fades even more.

So it's interesting. I think I threw this out at one point. There's a large current in Indian religiosity or spirituality for two things: one is for the transcendent. Even at the time of the Buddha, it was not the only way of looking at things at all. That, again, is a slight misrepresentation. There were many schools of philosophy and religious philosophy. Some were completely 'this world'-oriented, kind of nihilistic and hedonistic, actually. And some were more transcendent. So there was quite a spectrum there, but there is a strong current in Indian philosophical traditions of something that moves towards the transcendent, and also something that loves formulating things in negatives -- "not this, not that, not not not." But actually, that's shared with a lot of the deeper mystical traditions. They feel safer, in a way more accurate, to describe the ineffable or what's more ultimate in terms of negatives.

However, and actually, in line with that -- and I don't know where this is quoted from. It's from the Pali Canon somewhere. The Buddha says about this Unfabricated, about this state:

Where all phenomena cease, all ways of speaking cease.^[11]

It's almost like, can you describe it? Or can you even ...? And actually, he says you can't go there, because the language has its limits. Language is based on subject/object/time. Now, where all phenomena cease, all ways of speaking cease. However, having said that, there are a few passages in the Pali Canon where the Buddha does talk in positive terms about this. So this is quite a beautiful one, and quite a sort of -- well, this is Saṃyutta Nikāya 12:64. And he's giving an analogy, and I think it's to Ānanda. He says, "Just as if there were a roofed house or a roofed hall, having windows on the north, south, and east" -- okay, so it's a room like this with -- three of the sides have windows. "When the sun rises, and a ray has entered by way of the window, where does it land?"

And Ānanda says, "On the western wall."

And then the Buddha says, "And if there is no western wall?"

"On the ground."

And the Buddha says, "And if there is no ground?"

Ānanda says, "On the water." There was an idea that the earth kind of rested on water.

"And if there is no water?"

Ānanda says, "It does not land." Do you get the image? This ray does not land.

And the Buddha says, "In the same way, when there is no craving, no craving for things, for consciousness, for contact, for intention, consciousness does not land or grow. That, I tell you, has no sorrow, affliction, or despair."^[12] This is a more positive image there. [51:28]

There's also a sutta -- I can't remember where it is -- again, I think it's in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, in the section on the Unconditioned, where the Buddha actually gives synonyms for nibbāna. And some of them are very beautiful. I think there are thirty-seven, I think? And some of them, these are synonyms for the Unconditioned, the Unfabricated. He says: "The truth, the subtle, the very-difficult-to-see." Listen: "The unmanifest, the sublime, the amazing."^[13] Okay, so there's a definite predisposition and preference for the negative terminology. But it's still there in the Pali Canon -- there's the positive terminology. So if we take that consciousness not landing, consciousness not landing on an object, consciousness without object -- sometimes people talk about awareness without an object -- something has happened there. Usually, our usual sense of the world and consciousness is, consciousness is actually, we don't know what it is for consciousness to not be bound up, wrapped up with a world of objects and time and subject. It's wrapped up in that trinity that I was talking about, tripod that I was talking about yesterday. And consciousness as we know it is consciousness in that realm: objects, things, subjects, and time. And what is it for that, through not being built, that whole structure of that trinity to unbind, to collapse, to dissolve? In the positive, what would it be for awareness, then, to be without an object -- which is different than awareness knowing itself, which would actually be the sixth jhāna, infinite consciousness, awareness knowing itself?

So, the knowing, awareness without an object -- it's not that this Unfabricated awareness, so to speak, knows other objects, or knows the 'small mind' or the 'small self,' or something like that, the 'true self' knows the 'small self,' or something like that. It's not that the small mind, and the machinations, and the thought of that, and all that, is somehow in this bigger mind, either, and somehow contained in it. It's somehow gone beyond all that. It's gone beyond all that. So Indians' predilection for -- or there is a stream in Indian for the transcendent, etc. And I threw this out at one point: Japanese and Chinese, very much not so, very much not so. The leaning in this thing is more to the phenomenal, the tangible, the beauty of this moment, and then the uniqueness and the impermanence and the poetry of that -- but very much 'this-worldly' and tangible. It pervades the art and the spiritual traditions, Taoism as well as Buddhism. Actually, not completely -- there's one Zen teacher which, quite rare, because he's an odd one out. I'm sure he's not the only one. Huang Po, his name is -- really, one of the real hardcore, enigmatic, beautiful -- I absolutely love him, Huang Po. So his language for this is 'Pure Mind' or 'Real Mind,' the 'Real Mind.' And he says:

This Pure Mind ... the people of the world do not awake to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling and knowing, they do not perceive the spiritual brilliance of [that truth].

In other words, "spiritual," so it's not luminosity as in perception. Then he goes on:

Realize that, though Real Mind is expressed in these perceptions, it neither forms part of them nor is separate from them.^[14]

Yogi 6: When he ... [?]

Rob: His dates?

Yogi 6: Roughly.

Rob: Can't remember -- Middle Ages, sometime, but I -- yeah, sorry. You know?

Yogi 7: [?]

Rob: 600, 700? I don't -- yeah, I'm not sure.

Yogi 7: [?]

Rob: He's pretty early, yeah. But remarkable, remarkable teacher, and really, really strong, you know, but quite rare in the Japanese, Chinese cultures. Speaking of which, I'm going to go -- this is part of a spiral. Again, as I said, these four talks are part of a spiral. So some things I say tonight I will revisit tomorrow night, and maybe in a slightly different context.

Buddha from the Pali Canon, the Dīgha Nikāya number 11, again, talking more positively, more in positive terms:

Consciousness without feature [I think a better translation for that is 'non-manifestative consciousness,' consciousness that doesn't manifest an object], without boundary, luminous all around: here, water, earth, fire, and air have no footing. Here, long and short, coarse and fine, beautiful and ugly [all those dualities and those perceptions] ... nāma and rūpa [in other words, mental processes of perception, the perceptions of form] are all brought to an end. [They're all brought to an end.] With the stopping of [the six sense consciousnesses, each] is here brought to an end.^[15]

There's another passage where it's almost exactly the same, but he just adds: that (exactly what he said) does not partake of the four elements, does not partake of the material world, does not partake of any of the realms of the samādhis, does not partake of any of the objects in the totality of what we experience as the world.^[16]

This is Udāna number 80. And again, he's talking about the same thing:

There, I declare, is no coming and no going, no stopping, no passing away, and no arising. It is appatiṭṭhaṃ.

Appatiṭṭhaṃ -- it means 'without foundation.'

It's without foundation [without establishment]. It has no support of a mental object, anārammaṇaṃ.

And the one that -- what I really want to highlight right now is:

It's appavattaṃ.

And in Sanskrit, think it's from the root pravṛtta, which means 'to continue.'

It continues not. It does not continue. [And he says:] This, indeed, is the end of suffering.^[17]

"It continues not." It's not in time. It's not of time. It's gone beyond that trinity. So when people talk about the Deathless, one of the problems with this vast awareness thing is that it has a sense of eternality, as in it goes on and on and on, forever, and everything else arises and passes. That's not what the Buddha's pointing to. He's talking about something that is beyond the fabrication of time.

So there's another sutta where someone's asking Sāriputta about this, and he says, "Well, okay. When there is this opening, with the remainderless stopping and fading of the six sense spheres of contact, is it the case that there is anything else, that there then is something else there?"

And Sāriputta says, "Don't say that, my friend."

And so he says, "Okay. Should we say there is not anything else, then, when that all fades completely?"

And Sāriputta says, "Don't say that, my friend."

And so the guy says, "All right. Is it both that it is and it isn't?"

And he says, "Don't say that."

"Is it that it neither is nor isn't?"

And he says, [laughs] "Don't say that."

And he said, "Why?"

He said -- Sāriputta says, "That would be to complicate what is beyond complication. It would be to *papañc-*ize what is beyond papañca."^[18]

So this word papañca that most of you are familiar with is like the mind kind of gone crazy with something. Again, that's a spectrum. That's a spectrum. This -- what the Buddha's calling the Deathless, the Unfabricated, nibbāna -- it's the ending of papañca. And that's sometimes what he refers to as the ending of papañca. Papañca's on a spectrum as well.

I want to go back to this pre-deciding thing. [1:00:54] When a person has that experience, that kind of degree of fading, I feel, there will not be a rush to say, "It isn't real," "It is real," "It exists or [does] not exist." It's a realm that's beyond that kind of distinction, as Sāriputta just said. One would be very hesitant to say that there is no Deathless, or equally hesitant to say it's the only thing that really has inherent existence. With wisdom, there would be just some hesitancy there.

Sometimes people call that 'Emptiness' with a capital E, but remember, going back, I think, to the very first talk, emptiness, strictly speaking, is an adjective, and so emptiness is not a thing we arrive at. It's something that's relative to some thing. It's an adjective: this thing or that thing is empty. But for different reasons, people seem to, or a lot of people seem to have an allegiance, a pre-deciding, one way or another. I'm going to revisit this tomorrow, the reasons for that. They're deciding one way or another: "I'm for it," "I'm against it," "It's definitely not real. It doesn't exist. It's not important," "It really is. It really is the ultimate. It really" -- very, very interesting.

I remember -- I can't remember when it was, but I must have been talking about this, and I don't remember how it happened. But two practitioners that I know said they -- I don't know if it was after a talk I gave or before. Anyway, it doesn't matter. They were talking about -- and they got -- and two really lovely people got into an argument about this. One of them I've never known to ever get in an argument about anything. And the other was also a very nice person. The interesting thing was -- and I don't know how long the argument lasted. I think it was quite a while. And they said it was the first time they'd ever argued about anything. They were good friends. And the first time they'd ever argued about anything, and what was really interesting to me, when one of them told me later, was that neither of them had experienced it. Completely based on some kind of ideational, intellectual allegiance, and it was so -- it was described to me, really quite charged. I find that fascinating. [laughter] I find that absolutely fascinating. Again, I'm going to revisit this. It's part of the spiral thing I've been talking about.

At first, when one experiences, I think it's probably normal to feel it as some kind of object for the mind. In a very kind of transcendent way, it's an object for the mind. It turns out that it's not really an object in that sense. One of my teachers, Ajaan Geoff, talks, uses a better word for nirvāṇa as 'unbinding.' Nir is a negative. Vāṇa can actually -- there are a few etymologies. One is nirvāṇa as in 'blowing out' -- vāṇa like 'wind.' Vāṇa, 'wind' -- it's like extinguishing something. Also, vāṇa, I think, may be related to the word 'vine.' I'm not sure, but 'vine' as in something that binds something. And what's happening is unbinding of this whole 'house of cards' structure, this whole self/things/time binding, tripod, trinity -- unbinding of that.

Yogi 8: Are you equating cessation with nibbāna?

Rob: Yes. So as I said, nibbāna has lots of different meanings, and tonight, the meaning I'm exploring is nibbāna as the Unfabricated. Okay? But it does have different meanings. That's important to be aware of. So a better way of understanding that, actually, what's going on is there's an unbinding of consciousness, object, and time. That whole magic show is unbound. It's unsupported and unbound. And all we can say is that there's an unbinding. [1:05:16] So it's not so much a thing.

Yogi 9: Unravelling.

Rob: Unravelling, yes -- except usually when we talk about -- they're good words. But as I'm saying, there are also limitations, because sometimes when we 'unravel,' we end up with the pieces of string that were originally, and there's, like, actually not even that, you know. I'm going to revisit part of this tomorrow night, because I actually think it's okay -- in the same way that I said, when we were talking about the vastness of awareness, and I said to people, it's really okay if you want to give that a kind of ultimate significance for a while. It's really, really okay. I would rather you do that than just pooh-pooh it and skip over it, and not drink of the freedom, and the beauty, and the peace, and the love that comes from that. Even more so with this level of things -- so for me, it's actually really okay if one gives it a kind of ultimate reality for a while.

Okay, just to wrap up, again, I really, really stress: it's the understanding that's more important than the experience. It's way more important than the experience. There's a continuum of fading that we've been talking about for more than two weeks now, a continuum of fading. And in a way, the end of that continuum is what we could call 'the Unfabricated,' or 'Unfabricated,' or 'unbinding,' whatever. If one has an experience, it should bring that understanding. To the degree that one's moving on that spectrum of fading, it should bring that understanding that all is empty. The nature of all things is emptiness, so it's empty.

There's a beautiful quote -- and I'm not sure where this is from. It's from the Pali Canon somewhere. Someone who's seen that, understood all that, he or she is "conjuring-free, free of conjuring": free of compulsively creating this spell, this magical illusion, free of the illusion, and the spell of that illusion. Now this is another reference. We talk about illusion: "Conjuring-free and does not submit to conjuring and the cycling of time."^[19] [1:08:02]

So it's interesting, you know, given people's predilections, given also, as I said, right back to where a talk like this lands. And I know it lands in very different places, and people are going through very different things. Some of you completely bored by now. [laughs] It's the understanding that's important. All practice is in the service of that.

Now, any level of emptiness we see, we can absorb the understanding of that, and develop that, and develop that. The more we do that, the more we cultivate the beautiful qualities, the more insight we have, the more insight into emptiness we have, and we travel that path, basically, the more able we are to let go. Our ability to let go in life increases. And with that comes more and more freedom, and more and more capacity to give, capacity to love.