Transcription
So yesterday, we talked about the seventh jhāna, what we might call the seventh jhāna, what many people nowadays call the seventh jhāna, and what the Buddha simply called the realm of nothingness. And there's a possibility of going beyond that, too, to a deeper jhāna, a more refined jhāna. So we, not very optimistically, turn to the Buddha, and ... [laughter] So again, this situation, he's describing a monk practising, gone through these jhānas up to the realm of nothingness, the dimension, the sphere of nothingness.
[He] sticks with that theme, develops it, pursues it, establishes himself firmly in it. [And then, after a while,] The thought occurs to him: "What if I, with the complete transcending of the sphere of nothingness, were to enter and remain in the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception?" Without jumping at the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, he enters and remains in the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception. He sticks with that theme, develops it, pursues it, and establishes himself firmly in it.[1]
That's it. So, neither perception nor non-perception: what is this about? We should be very clear: again, what's primary here? There's something primary that the title, the name of this realm and jhāna captures: neither perception nor non-perception. I've come across writings and heard things that seem to emphasize, or make most significant, with regard to this jhāna, the absence of thinking, or just how delicate a state it is, in that any little thought will decimate the state, will knock you out of it, as if that fact is the most significant thing -- how easily a thought will disturb it. But the title is telling us, the name is telling us something.
And so much here, certainly with regards to this jhāna, so much in relation to all the jhānas, and I would say, and maybe you hopefully are getting an inkling by now that so much in the whole of the Dharma, in the whole way we understand Dharma, and approach, and what we think we're doing with it, and what is primary in it -- so much hinges on what we mean by 'perception,' what we mean by that word 'perception,' and how we understand it, and how we relate to it. Saññā is in Pali, saṃjñā in Sanskrit -- what does it mean? What does it not mean?
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, certainly as well, but what I want to say right now is: to perceive doesn't mean to label. Remember that? Remember this? Well, I think I said Sari was a pomegranate or something. [4:15] Right? So oftentimes, you'll come across that in the list of what all these Buddhist words mean: saññā is a labelling or a remembering. I'll put it this way: we could interpret it that way, but what then unfolds in terms of the whole scaffolding and conceptual framework of the Dharma will be much, much more limited. So perception is not a labelling, is not a verbal labelling of things. That would also imply that the sheep out there don't perceive. I don't think sheep have language, but they certainly know the difference between food, a human being, and a sheep, right? So they're perceiving without labelling, I would assume. So we're talking about something else here. An insect -- maybe even an amoeba, in some ways, differentiates between what's to eat, what's to -- I don't know, do amoebas have sex? Do they ...? [laughter] "What do I with this? What do I do with that? Which way to go? That way or that way?" -- without, one assumes, labelling or language.
So what is perceiving? What is perception? I'd say it's probably most helpful, most congruous with a whole conceptual framework and scaffolding and understanding of the Dharma that will be most helpful and most liberating, if we think of 'perception' as meaning something like 'the forming or constituting or fabricating of an object for consciousness.' Do you understand what I mean by that? I think it would be most helpful and most liberating and most congruent with a really liberating and far-reaching conceptual framework of the Dharma if we define this very basic term, 'perception,' as something like the 'the forming or the constituting or the fabricating of an object for consciousness.' This is so, so important.
So we do that when there's no -- if you're really telling me that you notice, as you walk from here to the dining room, everything you notice, there's a verbal label going on ... [laughs] Sarah's shaking her head. There isn't! You're still perceiving. Sometimes they call it 'recognition,' as if it's based on memory. That's another interpretation. I 'recognize' an object. We can also perceive an object that I don't recognize what that object is, I don't recognize it, or just that it's some kind of object -- all this is perceiving. We could say 'perceiving' is 'the act of forming, constituting, fabricating an object for consciousness,' and 'perception,' as we defined earlier in the retreat, we're using that word synonymously with ... [inaudible response from yogi] Ah, thank you. 'Experience.' Other words? Experience, phenomenon, appearance -- object, even. Object, experience, appearance, and phenomenon. 'Phenomenon' is just a Greek-derived word -- phainómenon or something in Greek means 'appearance.'
So I would use those words interchangeably: 'perception' to talk about the object, the experience, the phenomenon, the appearance; 'perceiving': the act of, again, constituting, forming, fabricating that object for consciousness. When we say 'playing with perception,' we're playing with both: we're playing with the forming and the fabricating and the constituting. Of course, that does form and fabricate and constitute a different object, or a changed object, an altered object, a more or less fabricated object for perception.
Sometimes it's interesting. It's like, what a difference in terms of defining terms makes. Defining terms in this way or that way can make, then, for the whole possibility of what the Dharma can be. Something to really reflect on. And if you're really keen, you could actually trace it. Have two different definitions of 'perception': for example, perception understood as mental labelling, and perception understood in the way we've just talked about, and see what kind of Dharma is possible from both. That would be a really, really good exercise if you're up for it. Based on that, the whole interpretation of the Dharma opens, or goes in one direction or the other, or closes, or gets limited. Other terms take on certain meanings which end up being very significant, very liberating, or not particularly. Anyway, so everything, to me, hinges -- certainly in this jhāna, because it's just in the name of the jhāna, 'neither perception nor non-perception,' certainly in jhāna work in general, and even more significantly, in the whole of the Dharma. So in the realm of nothingness, the jhāna before this one we're talking about today, the primary perception, and actually the only perception left, so to speak, because all the other perceptions of pīti and sukha and space and all -- they've gone. The only perception left is this strange perception of nothingness. The only perception left is nothingness, and that's a perception. And as we said, try to imagine that. We're not talking about a very, very big space with nothing in it, which is what most human beings would think of when they say, "Can you imagine nothingness?" We're talking about something even beyond that. It's nothingness. But that's the only perception, and that's the primary perception in the realm of nothingness. So that's strange enough. And now we're going to go even beyond that. [laughs]
Neither perception nor non-perception: we're not even perceiving nothingness, because nothingness, a 'nothing,' is a kind of object, is constituted. In the realm of nothingness, nothingness is constituted as a kind of object for consciousness, for attention, for the citta. It's some kind of a very strange thing that's a 'nothing.' It's a 'thing' there. It's a 'nothing.'
Here, in the realm of neither perception nor non-perception, without being unconscious -- in other words, without being totally non-percipient -- the citta, the consciousness is, we could say, not landing on any object at all. Well, we could almost say that it's not landing on any object -- not even the strange object of nothingness. It's not landing. So when there's a nothingness -- or let's say, easier -- when there's whatever jhāna you're up to, and there's your playground, it forms an object. The primary nimitta forms an object for consciousness, and the consciousness wants to really get into it and enjoy it, and yummy yum. There's the subject and the object. Now, object is the primary nimitta or the jhāna itself, and that's an object for consciousness. And you could use the language, the consciousness is 'landing' on that object. And that's partly what 'attention' means.
Here, it's not landing on any object -- not even the object, the strange object of nothingness. And it's not landing in that way, moment after moment. And that's what makes it a jhāna, the sort of constant burning. This not landing, this sense of not landing on any object, is the primary nimitta. [laughs] In other words, in some strange way, the state itself, the sense, the fact of neither really perceiving (which means, again, neither really construing, constructing, fabricating, forming an object) nor not perceiving at all -- that state, that fact, the sense of that, the sense of the mind kind of -- would we say 'doing' that, or 'not doing' that? Anyway, somewhere in between. That's the primary the nimitta. And you could say a secondary nimitta is the sense of liberation with that, because when the mind doesn't land on something -- like when you throw a hook, and the hook lands in something -- it's just not hooked by anything. It's unhooked -- not completely yet; I'll come back to that. It's not completely unhooked. But that sense of not landing -- there's a kind of liberation in that. If I use the word, if I use the language 'unhooked,' you can feel the relative liberation in that. A hook is a kind of tether, a fetter, an imprisonment. [14:33] So perhaps, we could say, the sense of liberation with that, the sense of freedom that comes with that, is a secondary nimitta.
Who's old enough here to remember The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Oh, good. So for those of you who don't know, it was a series of books. I think I must've been a young teenager when it came out, and it was very funny sort of -- what would you call it? Funny sci-fi, I guess, yeah -- funny science fiction, yeah. And so I think this was from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It could be from somewhere else. But there were instructions on how to fly. Do you remember this? And it was a two-step instruction. [laughter] So the first step was: fling yourself at the ground. The second step was: miss. [laughter]
So in a way, that's what's going on. In a way, that's what's going on in this jhāna. Now, that's not really going to -- well, later on it might help you as an instruction, but probably at first it won't. But what the 'ground' translates as here, if we take the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy instructions, what the ground translates as is anything and nothing. Anything and nothing will constitute a ground that you want to miss. You understand? [laughter]
Now, there is a sutta in the Saṃyutta Nikāya where the Buddha gives an analogy. I think he's talking to Ānanda, and he's giving the analogy of consciousness being liberated, unhooked, completely unhooked. And the analogy he gives is sunlight rising in the east, and coming into, well, what starts off as a house in the analogy. And he says to Ānanda: "The sun rises in the east. Where will the sunlight [which is consciousness, an analogy for consciousness] land?" And Ānanda says, "Well, on the western wall." And the Buddha says, "Well, what if there isn't a western wall?" What if there isn't an object for it to land on? And then Ānanda says, "Well," I think he says something like, "It will fall on the ground outside there." And [the Buddha] said, "Okay, what if there isn't a ground outside?" And then Ānanda says, "Well, it will fall on the water," which I guess is the water under the ground in some kind of cosmological system. He [the Buddha] says, "What if there is no water?" And Ānanda says, "Well, then it wouldn't land." And he [the Buddha] said, "Just so, that's consciousness liberated."[2]
Now actually, there the Buddha's talking about the Unfabricated, which is a stage ahead of even this jhāna. But the analogy works very closely. We're almost there in this jhāna. There's something almost but not quite analogous to the Buddha's analogy of nirvāṇa, of the Unfabricated, of what remains beyond cessation.
We could language it "it's not landing on anything." We could say we're not fabricating. There is not the fabrication at that time of any perceptions, or all other perceptions have been unfabricated, except two perceptions: one is the very state, this sense of not landing, this sense of not quite perceiving, and yet not quite not perceiving. That's sort of a perception. It's a sort of remnant, or just on the edge, the very perception of not really perceiving but not really not perceiving. So that's one perception. The other perception that remains is time. Now, I'm telling you this, but it may or may not occur to a meditator in this state that that's still there as a perception. There's a sense of this 'not landing' happening in time. It happens in this moment, and implicit in this moment -- even if I'm so, so in this moment, there's still, implicitly and experientially, a past moment and a future moment. So this not landing and this state is ongoing in time. And that's a very secondary perception. Probably most people wouldn't even notice it as a perception unless you compare it with a totally timeless sense, which comes later. So I'm kind of telling you that now: there are two perceptions, we could say, remaining there. No perception of anything, not even 'nothing' (a 'nothing' would be a kind of 'something'), no perception of anything except the state, this strange 'not landing,' this strange 'not really perceiving, not really not perceiving,' and secondarily, that that is happening in time. And it's this latter aspect, as well, that's -- actually both of them, but the latter aspect, the happening in time, that I would say is a fundamental difference between this eighth jhāna and a state of cessation or complete unfabricating. Actually, they're both significant, but I want to point to that.
So in this state, in this jhāna, another way we could just phrase it, there's a sense of something so, so ultra-refined, it's really on the edge of perception. And that's one way of sort of seeing what's happening: it's something so ultra-refined, we can almost barely say it's a thing to be perceived, it's an object, a phenomenon, an experience, an appearance. It's so ultra-refined there's almost nothing left of perception as we construed it earlier. And as we said, secondarily, there's a sense of release, of being released from perceptions.
Ajaan Lee -- I mentioned him at some point earlier in the retreat. He was the teacher of the teacher of one my teachers, a Thai monk in the twentieth century, the early twentieth century. And he kind of phrases it: the citta, the mind and the heart, are kind of in this state -- the citta is struck by its inability to decide if it's a perception or not. It's absolutely right, but to me -- maybe it's the translation -- it just sounds all very clunky, like one's sort of, "Hmm, I don't know. Is this ... uhh ...", and it's sort of pondering like that. Something extremely, really subtle is going on. But it does capture something of it.
Again, we can think of this business -- ultra-refined -- and we can connect that, as we have so far on the retreat, with the whole spectrum of refinement, which I talked about. That's a very fruitful way to understand what's happening through the eight jhānas. They're really a spectrum of more and more refinement, which is just the same thing as saying it's a spectrum of progressive removal of what is gross, right? Because that's just what 'refined' means: to refine some things, which just the same thing as saying it's a progressive non-fabricating, a progressive unfabricating, because we would expect the grosser thing to be what's most fabricated. Don't fabricate that; it gets removed; the thing's more refined, and then the next gross thing -- don't fabricate that; that gets removed, gets yet more refined.
So if we think in detail, let's just say, the first jhāna is a refinement. What's been removed at the first jhāna? The hindrances, yeah? We could say the grossness of the hindrances -- they're gross, they're gross phenomena. In the first jhāna, the grossness of the hindrances is removed. There's that kind of refinement. We could just say, to say the same thing, the hindrances are not being fabricated. In the second jhāna, we could say there's a removal of thought (and we had this problem with vitakka and vicāra, and how you're going to translate those terms), certainly discursive thought. That grossness is removed. It's not being fabricated. In the third jhāna, what is removed? What is not being fabricated? Pīti is not being fabricated. Pīti is removed. Relatively subtle compared to the hindrances, compared to the gross body sense, but actually, now the most gross thing there. It's then not being fabricated. In the fourth jhāna, even the sukha is not being fabricated. So that's being removed. That's the gross thing being removed. But actually, that's something very, very subtle at that point.
In the fifth jhāna, even a subtle sense of materiality -- remember we talked about these three levels of being. There's gross materiality, the kāma-loka world. There's the world of subtle materiality, the world of the rūpa-jhānas, the 'subtle form,' what's called in Buddhist cosmology. But even the subtle form is removed. So even subtle materiality is not being fabricated. Even that relative grossness, which is actually very subtle, is being removed in the fifth jhāna.
And we can keep going, etc. In the seventh jhāna, space is not being fabricated. In the eighth jhāna, not even nothingness is being fabricated. So you see how this refinement, removal of the gross, not fabricating something all goes together. And then what happens after this jhāna? Now we're not even fabricating nothingness; now we've gone beyond that. Is there some further non-fabricating that's possible? Which hopefully we'll get to.
So this refinement is really a sort of very remarkable feature of this jhāna, very remarkable. And in practice, it can help you come to find or notice or tune to, focus on, if you like, the most refined perception. So again, you could do this in the state itself, before it's quite consolidated and come together -- just tune to the most refined there. Keep tuning to the most refined. That will help consolidate it. The most refined -- we could say 'perception,' but it's not even quite a perception. The most refined 'thing,' 'object' -- that doesn't really do it. The most refined sense, the most refined level -- I don't know. Words really start to fall apart at this level. It gets really hard to put things into language. But the tuning to whatever is most refined there can help consolidate it, if it's not already consolidated in a session. So we can kind of refine the whole experience and move it into the more pure realm of neither perception nor non-perception by very gently, very gently looking for, very delicately looking for, listening for, attuning to, putting our antennae out for whatever is most refined. And that's a very subtle, sensitive, as I said, delicate and gentle process.
And one can even, perhaps, start doing that in the realm of nothingness. When that's established, when you've got some experience with that, then maybe kind of looking for what's the most refined in there, ultra-refined. And again, it may start -- what would we say? -- maturing, purifying from that, moving on from that, just from that attending to the most refined level, and that amplifies it, as we've talked about all the way through the retreat. So with experience, that may work that way, and may take you to the realm of neither perception nor non-perception.
So, I was trying to find the sutta, and well, anyway, I couldn't find it. But again, the Buddha -- this is an escape. It's an escape, nissaraṇaṃ.[3] It's a release of awareness. Again, he uses this language a lot. It's almost a total release from perception, almost a complete not being hooked, not casting out a hook and finding an object, almost a total release from perception, while there is still awareness. So we're not talking about general anaesthesia or anything like that here. What I was looking for and couldn't find is, there's some languaging -- so remember we talked about, the Buddha talks about the jhānas as 'perception attainments'? Do you remember this? I couldn't remember if, then, he says the highest perception attainment is the realm of nothingness.[4] In other words, this one, because it's neither perception nor non-perception, actually doesn't qualify as a perception attainment. I couldn't remember, or if he counts this one as the highest perception attainment. It doesn't really matter; the principle is the same. I do think, somewhere or other, he calls this one (neither perception nor non-perception) the 'summit of perception' or the 'limit of perception,' I think.[5] But then we can go beyond this, and hopefully we'll get to that tomorrow. We even go beyond this, this much unfabricating, this limit of perception, this summit, this perception attainment, if that's what it's called.
There is, again, with the sense of refinement there, and somewhat akin to the fourth jhāna and some of the other jhānas, there's a real sense of purity here. There's something in the very refinement itself, in the stillness, extremely pure. Again, these words don't quite capture -- the experience itself is so different than normal experience that words which we use for normal experience get quite clumsy at this point. But I think that's quite a good word. There's something very pure about it. It feels very pure. Refinement, purity, release -- these are all part of the texture, let's say, of this realm. And there is something, I think -- and then these words start to sound really ridiculous -- amazing and jaw-dropping. So it is amazing and kind of jaw-dropping, but the whole thing is, at this point, very, very delicate. Because of the refinement, it's very, very still. It's almost like one is awestruck, with very little reverberation going on in the being, because that would disturb things. So if can have one's jaw dropping without much reverberation, one would. But in the refinement, in the purity, in the release, there is something really amazing there, I think, exquisite, beautiful. But these words don't really capture it. [30:53] It's very different, as I said, from normal experience. We're really talking about something quite different. And in some ways, I think, in a lot of ways (at least that's my sense), it's quite different even than other jhānic experiences. There's a kind of larger quantum leap here, I think.
The after-effects on perception -- one of them could be that, with regard to what's going on in the inner and the outer worlds (how my mind is, how my body is, what I see out here, what I sense out here), there can be just a sense in the after-effect on perception, it's just what's happening in the realm of perception. All this stuff -- "My mind is foggy. My mind is clear. I've got a pain in my tummy. I've got a headache. There's this perception, that perception" -- it's just appearances. It's just what's happening in the realm of perception, which is very different than "This is what's happening." It's just what's happening in the realm of perception. So in that way, there is this kind of even deeper relativizing of our phenomenal experience -- internal, external. And so with that, through this relativizing, comes this kind of really effortless equanimity with regard to the things of this world: the eight worldly conditions, praise/blame, pain/pleasure, headache/no headache, whatever it is. Effortless equanimity comes, partly from the after-effect on perception. It's just what's happening in the realm of perception. It relativizes it.
Or these are 'just perceptions.' They're just perceptions, whatever I'm perceiving -- my tummy ache, my headache, my foggy mind, this or that in the world. They're just perceptions. It's not that things are 'really otherwise,' like 'I have a foggy mind, but really my mind is clear,' or 'really it's this or that other.' But they're just perceptions. So it's not that another perception is true instead.
So how do we open the door here? How does the door open for us? (1) Again, one way, and perhaps the safest and best way, is just letting it naturally mature from hanging out -- as fully as one can, as wholeheartedly, as attentively, as absorbedly as one can -- in the realm of nothingness. And in time it will mature. So that's one way. I think SASSIE probably has to become ASSIE at this point, because suffusion really pertains to the energy body experience. Maybe there's a way we can talk about a different kind of suffusion, but in a way, the others are more important: Absorbing into the nothingness, Sustaining the attention, Sustaining the sense of nothingness, the Intensity, which is not so important, and the Enjoyment, which is very, very subtle. So the ASSIE rather than SASSIE, perhaps -- working with that, getting into it, hanging out, over and over and over, and at some point, it should mature.
(2) Second possibility for getting there is, again, from that same sutta, the Āneñjasappāya Sutta, where the Buddha is describing insight ways of looking that lead to the immaterial realms, the immaterial dimensions. And basically, he's gone through his ones that we talked about yesterday, with regard to opening up the dimension of nothingness. And now he says:
Then again, the disciple of the noble ones [again, there's that word] considers [employs, engages subtly an insight way of looking] thus: "All sensuality, all sensual perceptions, all perceptions of forms [which includes the perception of jhānic forms and jhānic experiences], [perceptions of the fifth and sixth jhāna -- in other words, perceptions of infinite space, perceptions of consciousness, and] the perception of the dimension of nothingness: all are perceptions. [All of that are perceptions.] Where they cease without remainder: that is peaceful, that is exquisite, i.e. the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. Practising and frequently abiding in this way, his mind acquires confidence in that dimension."[6]
In other words, it's just the same thing: "Perceptions are not peaceful." It's just the same thing as the instruction for the realm of nothingness that we talked about yesterday. I've just included the perception of nothingness. I've just extended it to include the perception of nothingness. Again, very, very powerful. If you can get the hang of these kinds of insight ways of looking, very, very powerful. I don't need to repeat: we're talking about something very agile here, and not a whole big thinking thing, not a whole big philosophy. It's a very light tincture in the way of looking that one's employing again and again. 'Way of looking' means 'way of relating, way of sensing.'
Now, one could do that, this "Perceptions are not peaceful; I want something peaceful. All those perceptions are not peaceful. I want this, what is exquisite, what is peaceful: the realm of neither perception nor non-perception." One could do that in and from the realm of nothingness. One could start doing that in the realm of nothingness, start employing this insight way of looking. Or, actually, you can do it from anywhere. You could do it from right now. Just whatever's in front of me: foggy mind, etc. And again, you know, as I say, I contradict myself, say so much, "Oh, this jhāna will depend on the one before it, and that will depend on the maturing of the one before," etc. After you've got a hang of all this, sometimes, there will be plenty of times when you sit down and ughhh, body feels funny, mind feels bluhhh, and you just start on that very discomfort of body and non-settledness of mind and non-clarity of mind, and you just start employing an insight way of looking like that, and lo and behold, you end up in the eighth jhāna.
So it's all in the art, in the trust, in the confidence -- primarily in the art. Also in the familiarity -- that's much more likely to happen if you have some familiarity beforehand with the neither perception nor non-perception. But it's definitely not going to hurt to try such a thing. Don't get too locked on where it might end up. It's still practising a very powerful insight way of looking, and see what happens. It will be, as we'll return to, it's going to be connected with the whole spectrum and the whole process of unfabricating. So whether I actually end up in the eighth jhāna is, again, less significant than what I learn through employing insight ways of looking and seeing what they do, and understanding what they do, and adding two and two together and getting four. That's much more important than whether I have achieved eighth jhāna, and I get my eighth jhāna badge.
(3) It could also arise, or it can also be helped by a similar reflection: "Just a perception, just a perception," which again, was very similar, was exactly what we listed, included in the list we gave out yesterday. "It's just a perception." And again, that could be in and from the realm of nothingness -- "This too is just a perception, this perception of nothingness," and "just a perception" there means, again, "fabricated." "It's just a perception" means "It's fabricated." That's the small print for 'just a perception.'
Or again, you can do that from anywhere. Again, I start from my ughh-feeling body. I'm not feeling so good, and the mind is nuhhh -- "Just a perception." Whatever comes into consciousness, whatever perception there is: "Just a perception, just a perception," meaning "It's fabricated, it's fabricated, it's just a perception," and that will start, if I'm doing it right, if I've got the art right of that insight way of looking, it will unfabricate. Because all this is related, on the spectrum of unfabrication, it may open up the realm of neither perception nor non-perception. So I could do that from the realm of nothingness, or actually from anywhere, from a very ordinary state of consciousness -- even from the midst of the hindrances.
(4) There are also plenty of other ways of looking that one could kind of adopt or train on the object of the realm of nothingness, but I've talked about them elsewhere; I'm not going to mention them.
The slight risk in those last three I've listed -- so either the "Perceptions are not peaceful, perceptions are not peaceful" (that one), or "Just a perception" (that one), or other insight ways of looking -- is that they might, they could be sometimes so powerful that they even overshoot the eighth jhāna, and you get even more unfabricated. It's possible. So there are those four.
(5) Remember I said (I think it was very near the beginning of the retreat), I talked about, the jhānas end up being -- the sense we can have is just that they're there already. They're in the air. They're frequencies. They're radio frequencies, and we can just tune our dial and find that frequency. So similarly with this neither perception nor non-perception -- it's kind of like a radio frequency or radio station, and when we have a memory of it (in other words, when we've gone in and out lots of times, and really gotten more familiar with it), we can, from memory, just tune to that frequency again. And of course, that's very related to just the whole mastery thing, and opening the door to this realm, opening through subtle intention -- very similar.
(6) Someone told me a little while ago that their way of working was, their way of moving from the realm of nothingness to the realm of neither perception nor non-perception was, in the realm of nothingness, to just introduce a little, very subtle sort of thought or intention, really: "Might there be perception without this object of nothingness?" And it was just a kind of invitation: "Might there be a kind of perception without this nothingness as an object?" And that would help open it up for them.
(7) It might be, also, that some people are kind of able to find or then tune to and open to -- I don't know what to call it -- a level of the mind or a part of the mind, part of the citta that already, right now (or so it seems), is not perceiving but not non-perceiving. It's already neither perceiving nor non-perceiving. Sometimes that's possible. And then it's possible to find the 'now' in it, make that very alive, present, now, now, now, the sense of that happening now, and refine it in that way. So there's a part, or it can seem there's a part or level of the mind that is even now not engaging in perception. It's free of it. Or it's not interested in perceptions. It wants to be free of perceptions, perhaps. And again, unhooking from perception. Or perhaps it's already unhooked. There's a very subtle, sort of hidden dimension, but finding that, and then that can be amplified, perhaps. For some people, that will work. And again, that's something that could work from any state of consciousness, from a normal state of consciousness. Of course, the grosser the state of consciousness, the more turbulent it is, the harder that will be to do. But you know, sometimes, you get surprised with these things; you get very, very surprised at what's possible.
So these last three that I've mentioned -- either tuning to it from memory, or the subtle intention, or this kind of very subtle question: "Is it possible to perceive right now without this nothingness, without this object of nothingness?" (that one), or this kind of finding a level of the mind that's already neither perceiving nor non-perceiving -- all of them imply and need, I would say, some confidence that there is this possibility of neither perception nor non-perception. And the confidence helps these methods to work, so that we can kind of fish for it, and we have confidence in our fishing. And by 'fishing,' I mean an ultrasensitive, subtle receptivity and attunement. And through that, it can emerge.
Again, though, there's an issue here with some of these methods. So if I employ an insight way of looking -- "Perceptions are not peaceful. They're not peaceful. I want what's peaceful. Let me ... That's not peaceful. Any perception is not peaceful" -- if I employ that method, if I employ this tuning to a part of the mind that's actually not engaging in perception or interested in perceptions, and maybe some of the other methods, is there the possibility of aversion? Is there the possibility of aversion to perception, which means aversion to experience, appearance, objects? Yes, there is. So what we're talking about here (again, so important to emphasize in these insight ways of looking), if there's aversion mixed in with it, it sends the whole thing in a very different direction. It stirs things up in a very different way. So what we're talking about is an insight way of looking that doesn't have aversion in it. The aversion needs to not be there.
So you know, the Buddha, when he talks about insight, on several occasions, and the way some streams of practice mature, when he talks about the way some streams of practice mature, he uses the word 'disenchantment,' and that the practitioner 'becomes disenchanted' with everything, actually, with the whole world of phenomenal experience, inner, outer. There's a disenchantment with sense objects, disenchantment with mental objects, disenchantment eventually with the jhānas, disenchantment eventually with the formless jhānas -- all that. So that word occurs relatively frequently. Some maps of the way insight progresses, or the stages of insight, really emphasize this quite a lot, and emphasize that a practitioner practising very deeply goes through a period, or even recurrent periods, of extreme 'disgust' and 'repulsion' at everything: the world of appearances, inner, outer, states, mental objects, physical objects. The whole [world] is disgusting and repulsive to them. And there's a lot of agitation, often, with that.
It may be that someone experiencing that sort of thing -- it may just be that aversion and neurosis have gotten tied up in their practice, and one is deciding to view it as being on the edge of awakening, etc. But actually it's just aversion. I'm aversive to my body. And it's not great insight into Dharma or something. It's just, there's aversion there. Or there's a kind of neurosis. Sometimes there's a lot of encouragement for very high energy, high intensity, high intentness in practice, with a kind of micro-sharp focus, all these things (intensity, energy, micro-focus) building up, with this teaching about disenchantment given primary place -- actually, aversion gets mixed up in there, and the whole thing just spawns cycles of dukkha that may have very, very little to do with liberating insight. But one might have heard that they have to do with liberating insight, and so one just goes round and round in that. Are they liberating? Is it liberating? Or are they dependent arisings? There's a whole thing about playing with perception: if I look a certain way, I get a certain result. If there's aversion in my looking, I get a certain result. If there's neurosis and repulsion, I'm going to get a certain result, a result in my perception, in my sense of things. In some circles, this is a really, really important thing to consider.
I have to understand dependent arising, the dependent arising of perception. And if my whole mode of working in insight is not taking the inquiry into the dependent arising of perception, is not taking that as central -- I've just got an idea: "I'm going to laser-beam through this, and whatever I hit is closer to the bottom layer of rock, and that's the truth, and eventually I'll reach that truth or reality," and I'm not inquiring into dependent arising. Do you understand what I mean by this? To me, this is the most important thing. If I'm not thinking that way -- I go back to what I said at the beginning: what's the conceptual framework? And is the conceptual framework set up to really liberate? Or is it set up to take me in directions where I don't understand fully what is happening, and what my experience is, and why this experience arises now, and why that experience arises at another time, and why this experience arises or doesn't arise? So we can certainly set up (and people do) a whole process of insight and stages of insight, and there's very, very little consideration of dependent arising. It's almost like it's just a thing on the side. To me, dependent arising and emptiness are almost synonymous, almost synonymous. Practically, until the very last levels, they're synonymous. So if I'm not inquiring into that, if I'm not including that as the central theme and scaffolding of my meditative inquiry, then it's possible that whatever insights I have have very little to do with emptiness -- as I would understand it anyway.
So I think (I remember coming across it once, and I can't remember where it is) there is a sutta in the Pali Canon (I think in the Pali Canon) where two old monks are talking, and it's not the Buddha; I can't remember who it is. Two old monks are talking, and they do describe a process of these stages of insight that go, and they go through something like disgust, etc. There's no place I'm aware of where the Buddha describes that, but it may well be one of things, again, that's very, very emphasized in certain texts like the Visuddhimagga or the Abhidhamma, and then that gets -- like, this one instance of these two old monks talking becomes, in some paradigms, in some models, "This is the way insight unfolds. These are the stages of insight," as opposed to, "This is what will happen if you look this way. This is what will happen if you conceive this way and if you look this way. And if you conceive another way, this is what will unfold," etc. So the stages of insight -- it's a possible model of stages of insight, if I look a certain way, usually prioritizing impermanence and micro-focus, etc. So I'm mentioning this because I know some of you have run into this, and some of you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. It may or may not be useful at some point.
It is true, somewhere or other, the Buddha says, basically, there are four ways to liberation: (1) you can choose the path that is pleasant; it's a pleasant path, and it's long. (2) Or you can choose a path that's pleasant and short. (3) Or you can choose a path that's unpleasant and short. (4) Or you can choose a path that's unpleasant and long.[7] [laughter] But I actually think, what I'm trying to say now actually goes beyond that, because to me, if it doesn't include this inquiry into the dependent arising of my experience now, dependent on my way of looking -- if that's not in my inquiry, the question would remain (I'm not saying it's impossible, but the question would still remain for me): does that path open up a full understanding and a really deep understanding of dependent arising and emptiness? That would be a question I would have.
I would say, most definitely, that insight and practice and the path can be mostly fun. I would absolutely, definitely say that: mostly delightful, mostly characterized by a sense of release and relief and some degree of liberation now, as I'm practising. I would say that. And it's part of what I mean when I say, can we bring some intelligence to this? Can we bring some intelligence to these sort of very basic questions, or intelligence to "How am I practising?" It's really, really fundamental.
And we talked very briefly about, what's a definition of insight? Well, we can define insight in all kinds of ways, and people do. Listen even just to enough Theravādan-based Dharma, there are lots of definitions of what insight is. But one way, and the primary way I find helpful -- well, I would like to keep a few ways open, but one of the ways that I would particularly like to emphasize is: 'insight' means ways of looking that reduce clinging, which means increase letting go in the future, for the future, but also now, right now, and even primarily now. That's what insight is. It's adopting ways of looking that liberate and that primarily liberate right now. All these insight ways of looking that we're talking about, that we'll give examples of, and there are loads more we could talk about -- they should feel liberating. They should feel like there's a relief, a release, a delight, a beauty, an opening, a peace, a joy that comes with them. If they're not, then they can still be insightful, but they're not the kind of insight that I would like to emphasize -- put it that way. So if we define it that way, and we kind of use that as, let's say, the primary understanding of what we're doing, then the whole path just -- it does not need to be this whole contracted thing of sitting through pain and all these eruptions of difficulty.
[57:08] So again, some of these themes carry over from these different jhānas -- in a way, there, with that insight way of looking that the Buddha gave here: "Perceptions are not peaceful. I want what's peaceful. That is peaceful: the realm of neither perception nor non-perception." Other times, the Buddha says -- I couldn't find the whole quote, but it's very common, almost stock formula: "Perceptions are dukkha. Perceptions are a hassle." He doesn't say quite that word, but ... "Perceptions are a boil." You know what a boil is? Like a big, painful pimple, big zit, you know? "A boil, a dart, an arrow, a cancer, a disease." And he goes on. "This is what perception is." [laughs] It's extreme language.[8] Or even when we just say, "Perceptions are not peaceful," again, there's the danger of that tipping us towards, leaning us towards a dualistic conception, a dualistic philosophy, but also a dualistic sense -- more than just an abstract intellectual philosophy -- a dualistic sense, or a dualistic lived preference, even, away from this world.
The world is perception. What else is the world if it's not perception, phenomenologically speaking? Appearance, experience, objects, phenomena -- the world is perception. So if I start to say, "Perceptions are a boil, a dart, a cancer, are dukkha," it's basically saying the world is. So we might get again, here, a tipping, a dualistic preference and tipping away from the world, and in preference for this subtler realm, free of perception. Even the idea or the way of looking, "Perceptions are fabricated; they're empty" -- if we don't fully understand what we're doing there, and what it means, fully, to say that something is fabricated, there's a danger, too, of dualism there.
'Fabrication' is an interesting word, because in English (I don't know how it is in other languages, but in English), a 'fabrication' is also a 'lie'; we say it's a fabrication. I don't know, is it the same in other languages? [inaudible response from yogi] Yeah, okay, in some languages. Thank you. In some languages it's the same. So the word 'fabrication' is very interesting. It connotes an 'untruth.' I use it partly because it connotes that. It's just that if we really take it deeply, we go beyond that notion of untruth. We take it, but we hold it provisionally, and we go even beyond it. So it has a derogatory connotation: 'fabricated, fabricated, fabricated.' There is this derogatory connotation. If I'm adopting an insight way of looking and saying, "It's just a perception; it's fabricated," it has got this slightly dismissive -- "It's a lie. It's not true."
But I need to understand more deeply. I need to understand dependent arising and emptiness more deeply -- not just intellectually, but through the lived meditative exploration. I really need to feel this, see this, sense this, watch it work in action, and feel its effects: "When I do this, this happens, and it feels like this," and the intimate experience of that. If I take that far enough, it goes beyond. I would say it definitely goes beyond any notion of duality or hierarchy there. When I explore it that way, the whole understanding of what it means to say something is 'empty' or a 'fabrication' -- it's not dualistic. It's almost the opposite end from dualism. We could say, we get a sense of being so profoundly intimate with the world of experience -- that doesn't even come close, this language; the word 'intimacy' doesn't come close; something even more intimate than the word 'intimacy' can possibly connote. We participate in the co-fabrication of the universe, of the cosmos, of the world, of things, of life. But even that doesn't quite do it, because we have a certain notion of what the word 'participation' means. We participate in the magic, the dance, and the co-arising of subject and object. We participate in a way that's -- again, there's no word for the depth. 'Participate,' 'intimate' -- they come sort of close, but it's even deeper.
Language is based on notions of subject and object, and when they start falling apart or collapsing into each other -- not into some oneness; they're neither one nor two, subject and object; nor nothing; nor many things. They're not zero, one, two, nor many. Language is based on "There's this and that. There's a subject and an object." So the whole language of 'intimacy,' 'participation' -- language cannot cope at this deep level. But if we say the profound sense of participation in the magic of the co-arising of subject and object, the magic of the co-arising of the appearances and awareness, the appearances of appearances and awareness, of self and the world, the magic of that, the beauty of that -- somehow we're completely implicated, interwoven with that, in the most gorgeous and blessed ways. This is very far from dualism, if one goes deep enough, again, just into this same investigation into fabrication and dependent arising; I don't lose sight of that (hopefully we'll get to this tomorrow). If I just a little bit investigate fabrication, a little bit investigate dependent arising, I'm not going to get this gorgeous, full blossoming of all this.
And again, similar themes -- it should be the case with this realm of neither perception nor non-perception, and it should certainly be the case that the more we understand, and the more we open to the emptiness of the world, it should be the case, and I would say it is the case, that -- if our conceptual framework doesn't get in the way, remember? How much depends on that. I can have all these wonderful, wonderful experiences, or frightening experiences, or amazing experiences, or strange experiences, but if I'm not taking care with my conceptual framework, my big picture, my understanding of what I'm doing and what's going on, those experiences can deliver very, very little, or actually deliver what is really not helpful. [1:04:55] So even more than the experience, the understanding -- and the understanding of the conceptual framework. But it should be that experiences at this level, of this jhāna, and deep emptiness, etc., that the emptiness of the world -- one sees that, but they actually somehow open up even further, increase our love for the world, our love and compassion for the world. It should be, it should work like that.
The heart opening in that way, sensing things in that way, touched in that way, becomes tender, open, at a whole other level, is wonderstruck, touched (I would say) with a sense of the profound blessing of the magic of appearances, profound blessing of that, whatever the word is that's more than 'participation,' the profound blessing at the mystery of things, the mystery of appearances.
I think ... let's stop there, actually. So let's maybe sit together for a bit.
[silence]
Okay, thank you, everybody. And it's just about time for tea, so enjoy tea.
AN 9:35. ↩︎
SN 12:64. ↩︎
E.g. MN 111. ↩︎
At AN 9:36, the term 'perception attainment' seems to include the first seven jhānas, not the eighth. ↩︎
Source unknown. The term 'summit of perception' (saññagga) appears at DN 9, which contains a discussion of the first seven jhānas but not the eighth. ↩︎
MN 106. ↩︎
AN 4:162, AN 4:163. ↩︎
The five aggregates are frequently described as "inconstant, dukkha, a disease, a boil, an arrow, misery, an affliction, alien, a disintegration, empty, not-self" (aniccato dukkhato rogato gaṇḍato sallato aghato ābādhato parato palokato suññato anattato), e.g. at AN 9:36. ↩︎
