Transcription
I remember saying at the beginning, the whole retreat was Kirsten's idea. And when the opportunity came up, because of the building work, I'm pretty sure I asked, "Can we have a month?" And for whatever reasons, they said, "Well, this is what we've got, just over three weeks." So I feel a little bit like how you feel -- desperate to go home. [laughter] And get out of here. But in a way, I feel like I'm sort of rushing at the end, and running out of time, and not quite having time to say certain things. I certainly wish very much that I had had more opportunity to meet with you individually, interviews and things, and Q & As and things, but like I said at the beginning, in many ways, just the fact of this retreat has been a miracle, the fact that the conditions came together to allow that, this. So we're doing the best we can, and that's good.
So a little bit rushed, and I'm partly wondering how you're doing with especially these later talks, when I'm not really talking at the level -- I'm not really talking about your playgrounds any more, your learning edge playgrounds. How are you doing? How do they land? As I said, in our modern or postmodern society, however you want to see that, it's completely okay if this kind of stuff, like these deep, deep mystical states, and these kind of openings, it's really okay -- and I really feel this way, as well, genuinely feel -- it's really okay if you're not interested. That's a perfectly valid sort of relationship to have with it.
Of course, some people will be absolutely very interested, and fascinated, and drawn, and allured, etc. But it's really okay if one isn't. Someone might be, or some people might be thinking, "I don't feel interested now, but it's probably because of my psychological dukkha," or whatever it is. "Once I've got over that, then I'll be interested, I imagine." It may be the case. I would kind of tend to more guess that if you're not interested anyway, you're just not going to be interested, or if one isn't interested in this kind of thing, one will never probably be interested. It's not like a certain amount of healing has to happen, or psychological clearing of the path, and then one will get interested. So these things are interesting to some people, and really passionately interesting to some people, and not so much to others.
The technical information I've been putting [out], or the information about technique I've been putting out in these last talks, you know, because we're not really talking about your learning edge playground, for most of you, almost all of you at this point, not really talking about your learning edge playground, the technical information is really for later. As far as I can tell, it's being recorded by, like, three or four different recorders. [laughs] So it should be somewhere. [laughter] Unless there's a worldwide internet crash, it should be accessible to you, if and when the time comes that these territories do become your learning edge playgrounds.
But the big picture stuff and the conceptual framework stuff will also be very relevant then, when you come to this stuff. And it's absolutely relevant now. So the big picture stuff and the conceptual framework stuff is not stuff that you have to write down. In a way, it makes more sense for you to write, as you're taking notes, to take notes on the bigger picture/conceptual framework stuff than on the little tricks of getting from the seventh to the eighth jhāna. I mean, you're obviously welcome to write whatever you want, but again, I just put so much emphasis on understanding the big picture and the conceptual framework. That's relevant now. What's also relevant is when we've dipped into talking, several times, or drawn into the conversation and the teachings the reflections on desire, and the inquiry into desire, and the inquiry into intention, and the relationship with "What is it to keep my intention on something that I desire? And how am I with desire? And what happens with me with desire?" Those things will be relevant then, when you're working on the eighth jhāna or whatever it is, but they're relevant now. And as I said, these things -- big picture, conceptual framework, desire and intention -- these things are, if you like, more fundamental than "Can I move from this jhāna to that jhāna?" But sometimes human beings have a habit of listening with the wrong set of priorities, or not quite a developed sense of actually what's most important. I've said all this before. Understanding the big picture, understanding the conceptual framework, is actually rare. It's very rare, and I've said that before.
So yesterday we talked about the realm of neither perception nor non-perception, and today I would like to talk about what's beyond that: the Unfabricated, the Deathless, the asaṅkhata, or asaṅkhata dhamma. (Saṅkhata is related with saṅkhāra; it usually gets translated as 'condition,' 'conditions,' or 'conditioned.' Saṅkhata is to be conditioned or fabricated.) So the Unfabricated, the Unconditioned. Now, all this business about we're being quite rushed is that's not the end of the story to me. Opening to, realizing the Unconditioned, the Unfabricated, absolutely wonderful and important as that is, it's not the end of the story. For some people it is, or for some maps of the Dharma it is. But even that is becoming actually quite rare in the Dharma world. Even any kind of importance given to this -- I don't even know the word for it -- the realm of the Unfabricated, or the Unfabricated, this complete fading -- that's actually getting rarer and rarer in a lot of Dharma worlds; I think in the Insight Meditation world, certainly.
But in my book, it's extremely important, extremely touching, beautiful, liberating, but it's kind of like half the story, if you like. And the other half has to do with emptiness, which goes even deeper than the Unfabricated. Now, the Unfabricated is important for emptiness, but emptiness, in its full understanding, goes even deeper. I have written about and explained all this elsewhere a lot, and I'm not going to do it again today. This business about going beyond the Unfabricated is in Seeing That Frees, in the chapters kind of leading up to and then after the bits about the Unfabricated, in a lot of detail -- in a lot of practical detail, and also conceptual detail. I've written and spoken about it, as I said, in a lot of detail, about the Unfabricated, about how that opens up in practice, about what it means to go beyond it, and how that opens up in practice; about the relationship of both of those stages to emptiness and liberation; and about the whole philosophy, or the kinds of philosophical questions that are implicit in all that, about reality, and how we know what's real, or how we can trust what's real (so ontology and epistemology).
I've, as I said, written and talked about it a lot in where you'd expect to find it, in Seeing That Frees, a book about emptiness, and talks about emptiness, etc., but there's also a lot of that material, and a lot of different approaches and even further kind of elaborations to that material, in talks about soulmaking, in Soulmaking Dharma talks, because it's actually woven into all that, and it has a lot of implications philosophically for all that territory.
So I got a note saying, "Is there any space in tonight's talk to be able to distinguish the terms 'dependent origination' and 'emptiness'? Maybe also 'co-dependent arising,' 'the lack of inherent existence.' I, anyway, thought of them as synonymous." So the short answer is no, unfortunately. There isn't quite enough time. I can say something very brief now. But it is all in that material. It's all there. I think it's really, really clear. I really took a lot of trouble being really, really clear. Every word means something, implies something, certainly in the writing. Obviously the verbal teaching is a bit more loose. But it's there. So, briefly, for this. This isn't a talk about emptiness, primarily. It's a talk primarily about the Unfabricated. But briefly, in terms of this question:
Part of the problem is terms like 'dependent origination' and 'emptiness' get used in a lot of different ways in the Dharma. Even in the Insight Meditation world, we could list I don't know how many different ways they are used, and, I would say, the same term, understood at very different levels, which a person using it at a certain level might think, "Well, that's the total thing. That's the final level of understanding." But someone else might, or as I would, rank those kind of as provisional levels of understanding. So it gets quite tricky trying to untangle all that.
But briefly, dependent origination, we could say, "Okay, this book is a dependent arising," which means what? "Well, someone sat down and spent a lot of time writing it. The paper had to come from trees. Someone had to cut down the trees, and take it to a paper mill, and make paper out of it, and then there was the ink. And whoever, the person, the author, had to practise and study a lot. The book arose dependently on all those conditions." That's all really, really important, and lovely, and can give a nice sense of interconnectedness with everything, but it won't do that much for liberation, okay?
So the primary emphasis I put on understanding dependent origination is 'dependent on the mind,' 'dependent on the way of looking.' So we've seen this when we talked about working with pain on this retreat. Here's the pain. It is a pain. It seems to -- I'll weave in the other word -- it seems to inherently exist. It just exists. It is what it is. It's a pain, and it hurts. When I play with perception, and I look at it in a different way, I find that, oh, it's become a pleasure. It's become pīti. It does not exist inherently as pain, okay? It doesn't exist 'from its own side,' the Tibetans say. It's dependent. It dependently arises, it dependently originates, primarily -- the most important thing for liberation, I would emphasize -- it dependently originates on the way of looking in the moment.
We could say much, much more about these terms. 'Co-dependent arising' is, let's say, for now, just the same thing, and I'll weave it in later in the talk. 'Lack of inherent existence' is, at one level, synonymous with emptiness or dependent arising. In other words, to say that this pain lacks inherent existence is, as many of you have seen for yourselves and felt for yourselves in meditation already, to say that this pain lacks inherent existence is just the same thing as saying: without my looking at it in my normal, habitual, reactive ways, it does not arise and exist for me as pain. It lacks inherent existence, or, we say, lacks an independent existence. And that's just the same thing as saying it's empty, and it's just the same thing as 'it arises dependently, dependent on the way of looking.' So, very brief answer for that.
Okey-dokey. In order that you don't get quite confused, or rather, more confused than you may already be [laughs], you should probably know that this way, as I'm about to talk today, and the way that I've written about and talked about other times, this way of talking about the Unfabricated, and this way of talking about the fabricated, and this whole idea of insight ways of looking -- ways of looking, ways of relating in the moment that reduce clinging, and, through reducing clinging, fabricate less, and the implication, from that, that a thing is therefore empty, to a certain extent, and a dependent arising, and with the implications about its reality -- all of that (the way I'm talking about Unfabricated, fabricated, insight ways of looking, clinging, unfabricating, emptiness, dependent origination, and the implications about reality), all of that together is rare in the Dharma world. It's not like you can just expect it to mesh neatly or nicely with other things that you will read and hear. So I'm just saying that. I'm not saying it's better or worse. You're welcome to prefer whatever you prefer, or make more sense. Just that, if you're approaching something else with the idea, "Well, they must be saying the same thing," you're liable to just get very confused. That's all. And then completely up to you to gravitate to what you gravitate to, explore what you feel drawn to explore, etc. But if you know that from the start, then you won't just kind of be trying to mesh things together which actually don't really mesh that well.
So it's rare in the Dharma, this way of talking about these things, and this way of explaining things. And it's very rare, the whole conceptual framework that ties it all together -- certainly with the soulmaking, but even all that tied together. And as I said, the understanding is very rare. So it's very rare for people to really understand this -- yet.
There's a passage in the Pali Canon where the Buddha and Ānanda are sort of hanging out. And Ānanda, remember, he was the Buddha's attendant. So he probably heard, let's estimate, maybe 90 per cent of the Buddha's teachings, something like that -- talks to monks, talks to nuns, talks to lay people, talks to kings and queens, talks to individual wandering ascetics, question and answer sessions, one-to-one interviews, etc. -- over I don't know how many years, but a long time. He was just there all the time, pretty much all the time. And he wasn't a thicko. After the Buddha died, he became an arahant, so he wasn't someone incapable. They're hanging out one day, and the Buddha says something about dependent arising, and Ānanda says, "It's so clear. It's so clear to me. It's wonderful, this dependent arising. It's just as clear as clear could be." And the Buddha turns to him and says, "Don't say that, Ānanda. Don't say that. We're talking about something really profound here -- profound as a teaching, profound in its manifestation."[1] So just to contextualize this a little bit.
This is an interesting thing as a teacher, because I feel I'm talking to someone, and they're like, "Oh, I don't understand. I don't understand." And then there's the self-judgment: "I'm so thick. I'm lost. I'm confused," and all this stuff. And actually, they do understand. They do understand, very well, the beginnings of this thread. Remember I was talking about this whole thing -- emptiness, fabrication, dependent arising? It's just a thread. It's the same understanding I'm taking from the most basic level that my mother could understand, who has not meditated for ten seconds in her whole life, and is not interested in anything. She can understand when she gets into papañca compared to afterwards, "That was fabricated. That was less fabricated. There was something unreal there, and there was something" -- she would just say 'real' -- "here." It's the same thing. Papañca compared to normal consciousness, and you just keep following that thread. A person says, "I don't understand, I don't understand!" Actually, you do understand. You're on the right thread, and you need to know that you understand and keep going.
So there are some people like that, and they need encouragement: "Actually, you do understand. Just keep following. Same inquiry. Just keep going. Don't freak out." Other people are a bit more like Ānanda: "Yes, yes, yes, I understand completely. I get it. It's wonderful." And I feel like saying, "You don't understand!" [laughter] "You don't understand!" So the question is, which one are you? [laughter] And are you able to know which one you are?
So, again, put this in a little context. I would say one doesn't understand dependent arising and emptiness and all this business unless one understands that what dependently arises does not arise. And one understands that that is the case for many reasons. What dependently arises does not arise. What is unfabricated is not unfabricated. Unless one understands that, one hasn't really understood all this business. What is unfabricated is not unfabricated. Unless one has also understood that when we talk about this fabrication business and ways of looking, we're not talking about, "Ah, yes, it's because the brain processes things like this," or "These are the neural circuits," etc., because we're not talking about something based in materialism or physicalism. Brains, neurons, neurotransmitter molecules and atoms, they are empty too. Neither are we talking about the kind of complement in philosophy from materialism, mentalism: "Everything is projected by the mind. The mind is somehow real, and everything is projected by the mind."
So unless one understands all that, one doesn't really fully yet understand this dependent arising business. Unless one understands:
why there is no trauma. There is no trauma, but we can respect and care for trauma and heal it. But there is no trauma;
unless one understands why there are no ways of looking, but at the same time, it's impossible to exist, even for a moment, without a way of looking. But there are no ways of looking;
unless one understands that things are not impermanent, but nor are they permanent;
unless one understands that there are no moments, there are no moments of time, one hasn't understood all this yet;
unless one understands that there are many things, and at the same time, there are no things, and, in a way, there's one thing only, or there are many kinds of versions of one thing only, or there are infinite things -- all these are true: many, none, one, infinite. And none of them are true;
unless one understands that there is no suffering, and there is no liberation;
and unless one understands that emptiness, too, is empty, one hasn't yet fully understood dependent arising.
So if you're one of those people who think that you have ... that's great. [laughter] I could go on. We could go on adding to this list. We're talking about something very profound, and I'm not going to be able to explain it all today. Everything there, if you really read and listen -- and practise, obviously -- it should actually all completely make sense in the heart, through practice.
So this talk, I'm not going to go into the whole emptiness thing. We don't have time. In a way, it's only half -- as I said, I'm just going to talk about to the Unfabricated a little bit, and it's only really a little of what's really a huge area and profound area of understanding and practice. I'm really going to talk about the jhānas in relationship to the Unfabricated.
And one more thing. Some of you are a bit new to this fabrication and fading thing, so we should be clear: one isn't going to understand this business about fading and dependent arising and emptiness without practising what I call insight ways of looking. One is not going to understand that without practising, really practising, those insight ways of looking, like a lot, and getting into them, and really grappling with that, and letting the beauty of that open up. So jhānas are really not the best way to understand fading and emptiness. They're really not the best way to understand fading and emptiness. However, emptiness and fading is part of the best way to understand the jhānas. That's not quite a contradiction, what I said. Jhānas are not the best way to understand fading and emptiness, but fading and emptiness are part of the best way to understand the jhānas, along with what we talked about -- development of sensitivity, and attunement, and deep resource, etc.
So partly the reason I've been going on about emptiness, and all that, and ways of looking, is because it forms the best and most coherent way of understanding the jhānas and placing them coherently in a much bigger picture of the Dharma -- a picture which makes sense of a lot of possibilities, including Soulmaking Dharma, but even without Soulmaking Dharma.
Okay. So that was all before I even start. It's interesting: whether people use the word or not, 'fabrication,' I would say that certainly most Insight Meditation teachers use the idea of fabrication. They may use that word or not use that word. So when people talk about papañca, whether they use the word 'fabrication' or not, they're suggesting that it's what we call a fabrication, in both senses. It's something that the mind has just concocted. That's another word: it's a concoction. It's a construction. And with this double meaning that we have in some languages, it's also a lie. And that contrasts with what, usually implicitly, is something unfabricated; something real, or reality; something true, or truth. Even if a person isn't using that concept, it's there, woven into most Insight Meditation teachings.
Fabrication is a construction, a concoction by the mind, and what is not real. It's a lie, in some ways. So that unfabricating the fabricated, or not fabricating, is just part of practice. It's part of what is kind of conveyed in actually any Dharma teaching, let alone just Insight Meditation teaching. Not fabricating, or unfabricating the fabricated, is part of practice. And more than that, implicitly or explicitly, there's an ontology woven in. 'Ontology' means a view or philosophy or belief about what is real. So when people talk about papañca, even if they don't use the language 'real' or 'fabricated,' the way they talk, and the jokes, and the humour of it, it's like, "Wasn't that funny, because it was completely not real?" So even if a person doesn't pull all this out, there's fabricated and unfabricated as notions.
So there's an implicit ontology, implicit view of what's real, and there's an implicit ontological hierarchy. Sometimes it's drawn out; it's made explicit. More often, it's implicit. It's not actually talked about in this way. But sometimes it is. In other words, clearly the 'real' is better than the 'unreal,' is preferable, right? That's woven into it as well. And wrapped up in all that, there's a value judgment involved: it's better. "This is a waste of time. This is ridiculous. This is worthless, or even harmful," etc. Most of the time, that's just sort of spun into the rhetoric, into the teaching rhetoric -- sometimes verbally, and sometimes not verbally. And it's not just in Insight Meditation. It can also be in kind of pop versions of Zen: if you get a bit conceptual, you just get hit on the nose with a stick or whatever. And it's conveying something about what's 'real' or 'not real,' because 'reality' is what's not bound up with concept in this. Very rarely is there actually a big probing of the philosophical questions and psychological questions here. It's usually conveyed -- not subliminally, but non-verbally, non-philosophically, usually. Whatever kind of Dharma we're talking about, not just Insight Meditation, that's an observation.
So what is this Unfabricated that people may be suggesting, or pointing to, or kind of is there, implicitly, without being named, and what is the fabricated? (Again, whether they use those words or not.) So Unfabricated may be -- we've touched on this -- it's basically what is not papañca, as I just said. So when there's the absence of papañca, we're not fabricating. Or mindfulness reveals what is not fabricated. Mindfulness -- less story, less view, less reaction, less conceptual sort of involvement, and that mindfulness or bare attention reveals the Unfabricated, even if one doesn't use that language. It cuts fabrication. Or you may have heard someone say, "That's not an emotion. It's just some sensations. Really it's just some sensations in the chest." And again, there's the 'really,' the ontological question, the hierarchizing, all that.
Or, "There's not really self and story. All there really is is the process of the five aggregates in time, including those sensations arising and passing in the chest area or whatever." Or this vast, primordial, impersonal awareness is regarded as what's real, and the whole concepts or stories of self are regarded as not real. So whatever language one uses, there is this kind of, as we've said, something that's fabricated, something that's not fabricated, some ontological distinction and hierarchy there, and a value judgment is woven in with all that.
So when I use the word 'Unfabricated,' I certainly don't mean what is revealed by 'bare attention.' I certainly don't mean what is there, visible to us, sensible to us, when there is no thought. I certainly don't mean what's sensible to us, perceivable to us, for us, when we're calm, without papañca, without making a fuss in the world. More, I would say, it's what appears, or what opens, when there is no intention whatsoever and no conception whatsoever. I could also say no perception whatsoever. But I have to explain those words, because I don't mean by 'conception' thought. So when I say 'non-conceptual,' I mean much, much more than non-thinking. So 'concept,' to me, is a much deeper and subtler thing, much more deeply woven into consciousness. And I'll come back to that, hopefully, in this talk.
And when I say 'no intention,' I certainly don't mean -- or I mean much more than -- "I'm just sitting here, being. I'm just being right now," or "I'm not doing," or "I'm not making any effort," or "I have no plans," or anything like that. I mean something much, much more, again, subtle than that, much more deeply intricated (if that's even a word) into consciousness and how consciousness works. I'll come back to that later.
But let's go back to what I said before. In whatever Dharma we're teaching, there is, woven into this, some kind of idea of the fabricated and the Unfabricated, with all these ontological hierarchies and judgments. The question is: where are we limiting the process of unfabricating? So for all these Dharmas, there is a practice that involves unfabricating. The question is, where are we limiting that? Where are we limiting this practice of unfabricating? Where are we drawing the line and saying, "Ah, that's it now. Done. I'm done with fabrication," or "That was a moment of unfabricating"? Where are we limiting it, and why are we limiting it there, or here, or wherever we are? Where and why? And why not leave it as an open question? So these are real questions. In other words, someone needs to come up with a really good answer for these questions, I would say.
So I'm meaning something quite different by 'the Unfabricated.' We'll return to those questions at the end. I think they're very, very important. But there are lots of texts where the Buddha describes the Unfabricated, at least to my reading of them, that sound like what I'm talking about. I'm not going to be able to find them. [shuffles papers] I'm not going to hunt for them right now, but there are texts where the Buddha's describing a state where all perception has ceased. So not even what we were talking about yesterday, the neither perception nor non-perception. All perception of a subject, all perception of any kind of object -- not even nothingness; not even a state of neither perception nor non-perception -- all sense of time, all space, not even a present moment -- all of that, not there. And there are many texts in the Pali Canon. It's interesting. A while ago -- I don't know whether it's still the case -- some people would say, "Oh, there's only one place in the Pali Canon where the Buddha talks about such a thing." It's not true. There are many, many places, and they're all different. It's not the same little passage getting reprinted. It's lots of different texts pointing to the same experience. I should find one. Let's see. Okay. This one will have to do for now:
That sphere should be understood [should be known, that dimension, that āyatana should be known, that realm should be known] where the eye ceases and perceptions of forms fades away. [There's no sight, no visual objects.] That sphere should be known where the ear ceases and the perception of sounds fades away. That sphere should be understood [should be known] where the nose and smells, the tongue and tastes, the body and perception of tactile objects fades away. That sphere should be understood where the mind ceases and perception of mental phenomena fades away.[2]
By 'mental phenomena,' it doesn't just mean thought. It means any mental perception. So a perception of a jhāna, perception of the neither perception nor non-perception, perception of nothingness -- any perception at all. So we're talking about something completely beyond the perception of matter, completely beyond any kind of measurement, completely beyond any kind of perception, any subject, any object, any sense of time -- even a present moment. No space, no nothing.
So, as I said, there used to be -- I don't know if it is still; I think it probably still is the case -- there are people who say, "No, there's only one passage." But actually, it's in Seeing That Frees, if you're interested -- there are many, many passages that, in different ways, describe such an opening and such a realm, place, whatever we want to call that. Some people really don't like that, and some people really oppose such a teaching. That's always quite interesting to me. Some people use some of those passages, or use words like 'the Unfabricated,' but if you listen to what's being said, or if you follow the teachings, they're actually using 'Unfabricated' synonymous with 'awareness,' often 'vastness of awareness,' and claiming that is the Unfabricated, that is the Ultimate, or that's the nature of mind, or whatever. Occasionally, very occasionally, someone -- it's usually people who haven't been practising that long, certainly not teachers; I don't think I've ever heard a teacher say this -- but occasionally, again, someone construes the Unfabricated as just 'things as they are,' as seen, or as sensed, as revealed with 'bare attention' or mindfulness. So sometimes people use either parts of these quotes or the word 'Unfabricated,' but in quite different ways.
So very briefly: if yesterday's language, you know, stretched language to the limit, here it's really gone beyond the pale. The Buddha sometimes talks in positive language here. There is, as I said, something -- that passage we just read: "This should be known. That dimension should be known." It's as if it's a something that should be known. And there's another passage I'll read where he says,
Here, with regard to earth, the perception of earth has disappeared. With regard to liquid, the perception of liquid has disappeared. With regard to fire, the perception of fire has disappeared. With regard to wind, the perception of wind has disappeared. [In other words, with regard to materiality -- that was the physics in their days. With regard to materiality, the perception of materiality has disappeared.] With regard to the realm of infinite space, the perception of the realm of infinite space has disappeared. With regard to the sphere of infinite consciousness, the perception of the sphere of infinite consciousness has disappeared. With regard to the sphere of nothingness, the perception of the sphere of nothingness has disappeared. With regard to the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, the perception of the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception has disappeared. With regard to this world, the perception of this world has disappeared. With regard to the next world, the perception of the next world has disappeared. Whatever is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, or explored by the mind, the perception of that has disappeared.
Absorbed in this way [samādhified in this way], one is absorbed dependent neither on earth, liquid, fire, wind [dependent neither on perception of materiality] nor on the sphere of infinite space, the sphere of infinite consciousness, the sphere of nothingness, the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, this world, the next world, nor on what is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, or explored by the mind -- and yet one is absorbed. And to this one, absorbed in this way, all the gods pay homage even from afar:
"Homage to you," they say, "you of whom we don't even know what it is that you're absorbed dependent on."[3]
So it's something so beyond. These gods are gods with very, very refined, subtle perception. It's gone even beyond that. The point I want to make, though, is the Buddha's talking about it in sort of positive language. It's a something that we can perceive, in a way. It's a something; it's as if it's an object that the mind can know. The mind knows this object, as if, in that language. Other times, he talks about it as if it's a subject, as if it's consciousness released. And there was that analogy I talked about yesterday of the sunlight not landing anywhere -- it's completely released. So in those terms, talking about it in subjective terms, if you like, he talks about what remains with the cessation of the six sense consciousnesses: sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing (the five senses), and mental consciousness. When that all stops, the cessation of the six sense consciousnesses, and their respective objects of knowledge smells, sights, tastes, etc., thoughts, or anything perceivable in the mind, what remains is:
Consciousness without attribute, without end, luminous all around. Here water, earth, fire, and air [materiality] have no footing. Here long and short, subtle and gross, pleasant and unpleasant [all kinds of discrimination, or measurement, or relativisms], and nāmarūpa [nāmarūpa is perception, attention, contact, feeling, and body, awareness], all are destroyed. With the cessation of consciousness [i.e. those six sense consciousnesses], here each of these is destroyed.[4]
The first phrase there, "consciousness without attribute" -- the Pali is actually viññāṇaṃ anidassanaṃ. And actually, a better translation, I think -- nidassana is to point to something, or to show something. And so it's 'consciousness that does not point to anything' -- again, 'does not land,' as we were talking about yesterday. So it's a consciousness completely released from any kind of object.
There he's talking of this Unfabricated in kind of subjective terms, as a kind of awareness beyond any kind of sense of awareness that we might have. Remember, the sixth jhāna is awareness aware of itself. Here it's not even that. It's not awareness aware of itself. It's not awareness aware of nothingness. It's not neither perception nor non-perception. It's gone beyond. It's totally released.
So sometimes he talks about it as a kind of object. Sometimes he talks about it as a kind of subject. But often he talks in negative terms, what in the Western theological tradition is 'apophatic' terms, or the via negativa: you can't say this, you can't say that. Nothing, no attribute you say about it will be true. And the Buddha says,
Where all phenomena are removed [where there's this complete fading of all phenomena], all ways of speaking are removed as well.[5]
All possibility of speaking about it is removed as well. So more often than not, the Buddha talks about it in negative language: it's the cessation of this, it's the fading of that, it's the Unfabricating of this. And the whole thing is pointed to apophatically, negatively, this mystery, what is totally beyond what the mind can grapple with or even understand in any kinds of conceptual ways.
So this experience, this opening, this realization is possible for us as meditators. I'm absolutely not saying it's easy, but it is totally possible. We're still left with other interesting philosophical questions though. One teacher said (I wasn't there; I heard it secondhand), "Well, you can't go from meditative experiences to epistemology and ontology," meaning just because you've had a meditative experience, it doesn't mean that what you've experienced in your meditation is anything real, or is anything that you should trust in any way. Just because you've had a nice meditation experience, it doesn't prove anything about anything; you just had a nice experience -- so what? I think it's an important point. Just because I've had a meditation experience, what does it prove about the reality of what has opened to me in my meditation? How can I be sure that that points to anything real, that I can trust epistemologically -- I trust that knowledge, that it's pointing to something ontologically real?
What I would respond, rather, is: fair enough. That's true. I cannot 100 per cent guarantee an epistemology based on meditative experience. No one can. What are you going to argue? How are you going to construct a philosophical argument that would do so? But the question I would have is: okay, but where does your epistemology come from, and how will you prove your epistemology? Meaning, what are you believing to be valid knowledge about reality? That's what 'epistemology' means. It's connected with ontology, what is real. Are you going to say, "This world of matter that everyone agrees on -- that's real"? You still have to prove that. And you just need to pick up a few books on physics in the twentieth century, and begin asking, "What do you mean by 'matter'?", and the whole question, or the whole assumption that matter is something real, starts to get very, very shaky indeed.
So now, post-Scientific Revolution, we understand matter as Descartes and Newton understood it (most people on the street, let's say). But come, for example, the quantum revolution -- Niels Bohr, one of the fathers of quantum physics, he said, "Everything we call real, everything we think of as real, is made from things we cannot call real." This is what quantum physics seems to have shown us. So if I ask this person who says you cannot go from meditation experience to epistemology and ontology, claims about reality, I would just say, "Well, what is your epistemology?" And if they say something like, "I believe in the reality of matter," I'd say, "What do you mean by 'matter,' and have you really gone into whether that's real or not in the way that you think?" Or is your epistemology, is your idea of what is real and what's trustable as knowledge, is it just socially agreed-upon views? "Well, it seems like most people in my society agree on this view. Therefore, it must be right, because our society is very smart, and we make all the right choices." Right? [laughter] You guys haven't read the news recently. Or is it just the most common view that I choose as my idea -- it's just what most people believe? Or, if it's Descartes, again, you know, that was a long time ago, and Western philosophy has really moved on. There are quite sophisticated, profound critiques of Descartes, this idea of "there's mind and there's matter" or whatever.
So I wouldn't disagree with this person who says you can't just automatically, unquestioningly jump from a wonderful meditation experience that you really enjoyed to claims of ontology and epistemology, but I would just turn it around and say, "Okay. Where is yours coming from? What are we going to do?" And some people say, "All that talk about epistemology and ontology," which I've talked a lot about in recent years, "we don't do that any more." That's quite a popular view in modern philosophy, modern Western philosophy. It's a post-metaphysical, "we don't do metaphysics" kind of thing. Actually it's impossible. It's impossible to live in the world and be in the world without some view, some belief, about what is real and what is not real, and what constitutes valid knowledge or valid judgment about that. It's impossible to be a person, and function in the world, and make choices -- even walk from here to teatime, or go to the toilet -- without some ontological/epistemological view going on, even nowhere near any kind of philosophy or whatever.
So there's always some epistemology, some epistemological position, view, etc. It's unavoidable, and similarly with ontology, with claims about reality. That's really, really interesting, okay? It's a very complicated area. I think, if you really, really care about all this stuff, you cannot get away from such questions. So someone who says to you, "Well, you can't just glibly jump from your meditation experience to claims about reality, or this thing that you've opened to is real" -- they're in the same boat about whatever they believe. They're just glibly jumping, and it's easier for them because they're not questioning or not even realizing what they're assuming, or it hasn't been brought into question. But there are profound, difficult questions here about epistemology and ontology.
What is the reality status of this Unfabricated that we might open to in meditation? What is the reality status of all this? [knocks on something] I'm mentioning that. I'm not going to dwell on it now. I've talked about it a lot elsewhere. Question, though, meditative question: how does this most wonderful of wonderful openings open? How, as meditators? The Buddha says it's a fruit of gnosis. It's a fruit of deep insight. In other words, it comes about only through deep insight. We're not just talking about a state of samādhi or concentration. So you can get to the eighth jhāna just by concentrating. I start with my nostrils, whatever, if I'm doing that method. I just concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. The first jhāna opens. I let that mature, let the mango ripen. The second jhāna, third, fourth, fifth, da-da-da, all the way to the eighth. I haven't done any insight at all. I could have, as we said, and the more I get into it, there are more insight ways of looking that open up these jhānas. But for this one, the Unfabricated, I cannot get there without insight. It's not just a natural state of concentration that will open. It's not just a samādhi that will naturally ripen.
And again, this is all in Seeing That Frees, and explaining what kinds of insights, and how we go about that. I'm going to give a very brief sort of tour of a few possibilities, and take them from the Buddha, instead of what I've said in Seeing That Frees.
The first example is from Ānanda, and he says,
There is the case where a monk enters and remains in the first jhāna. He notices that this first jhāna is fabricated and willed [it has intention in it]. He discerns, "Whatever is fabricated and willed is inconstant and subject to cessation." Staying right there, he reaches the ending of the effluents.[6]
The ending of the effluents is just another word for complete awakening, complete enlightenment -- ending of greed, hatred, and delusion.
Or if not then, through passion and delight for this very phenomenon of insight [in other words, one is kind of clinging to one's insight], and from the total ending of the first five fetters ...
In other words, the experience, the letting go, through seeing that it's fabricated, the first jhāna, takes this person to the second highest level of awakening, but they're still clinging to the insight, and that's keeping them from full awakening. So they're a non-returner, and therefore,
he is due to be reborn in the Pure Abodes, there to be totally unbound [to reach nibbāna], never again to return from that world.
And then he repeats it. Ānanda repeats it with the second jhāna all the way up to the realm of nothingness, and also with states of deep brahmavihāras -- mettā, karuṇā, muditā, and upekkhā. So these states, these very stable states, are used as objects for insight ways of looking. And here, particularly, it's saying 'it's fabricated, it's fabricated,' with the implication 'therefore, it's dukkha, it's unsatisfactory.' And because one is regarding it that way, in that moment there is the reducing of clinging, and because there's reducing of clinging, there is less fabrication. Yes, there is value judgment in that moment. In other words, it's fabricated, it's unsatisfactory. There's a kind of dismissing -- neti neti, if you know from the other Indian traditions. I'm not wanting what's fabricated. This is all the subtext, the subtext of 'fabricated.' I'm not wanting what's fabricated; I'm looking for the Unfabricated. I want what's Unfabricated and therefore not dukkha. This is all implicit in the way of looking.
So here it emphasizes what is fabricated is impermanent. The Buddha talks about three kinds of dukkha:[7]
(1) There's dukkha-dukkha, which means just what's painful. It's dukkha because it hurts, this backache.
(2) There's anicca-dukkha, which is dukkha because it's impermanent. So even this happiness, even this joy, even this love is unsatisfactory, is dukkha, because it's impermanent. It can't fully, forever, satisfy me.
(3) The third one is something like saṅkhāra-dukkha or saṅkhata-dukkha. It's dukkha because it's fabricated. Now, that means more than to say it's impermanent. Because of everything we've been talking about, it's fabricated -- it's something that doesn't have inherent existence, and therefore, in some way, or viewed from a certain perspective, it's dukkha.
Okay. So this is one method. You take a jhānic state, up to the realm of nothingness, or you take a nice, stable brahmavihāric state -- mettā or whatever -- and you view it as fabricated, in the moment, again and again: fabricated, and therefore unsatisfactory. Because of that, there's less clinging, and because there's less clinging, there's less fabricating, and see where it goes. The instruction here from Ānanda -- and if you really develop this practice, it can go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. Maybe all the way.
Okay. Second example. The Buddha says,
I tell you the ending of the effluents [again, the ending of greed, aversion, and delusion, meaning total awakening] depends on the first jhāna. [I tell you total awakening depends on the first jhāna.][8]
Then he gives an analogy, which is probably a little bit confusing, so I'm going to leave that and just read what he says technically:
There is the case where a monk enters and remains in the first jhāna [and he describes the first jhāna]: pīti and sukha born of withdrawal [withdrawal from the hindrances], accompanied by vitakka and vicāra. He regards [the monk regards] whatever phenomena that are connected with form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness [in other words, the five aggregates: form, vedanā, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. He regards them] as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a disintegration, a void, not-self.
Okay? So here's the jhāna, and now one is looking at the elements that make up the jhāna, or some of the elements. Actually he's looking particularly at the jhāna factors here, right? We said there are five factors in the first jhāna, and one's looking at them -- insight way of looking, in the moment -- and looking at them in these ways.
Now, all that list of adjectives there -- they're "inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow," etc. -- we can actually put them into four baskets. There's a lot of repetition there, basically. We can put them into the baskets of the three characteristics, and one of emptiness, voidness.
(1) So the three characteristics are dukkha -- it's unsatisfactory. It is, as I said, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, stressful, etc., all that. They're just similar words for saying it's dukkha, it's unsatisfactory. So it's the first characteristic.
(2) The second basket is the second characteristic: impermanent. And here we have words like "inconstant," "a disintegration," etc. So it's the second characteristic as an insight way of looking, and looking at the jhānic factors, right here, in the jhāna. So I have to have enough sensitivity, enough malleability, enough attunement of mind to be able to know the jhāna really well, and then kind of look at the individual jhāna factors with these insight ways of looking.
(3) The third basket is the third characteristic, what's known as the third characteristic, and that's that it's not-self -- so when he says it's not-self, and also when he says it's alien. It's not-self. It's not me, not mine -- none of this. The pīti is not me and mine. The sukha is not me, not mine. The ekaggatā, the concentration, all the rest of it is not me, not mine. We're looking at it with the insight way of looking of anattā: "It's anattā, it's anattā," again and again.
(4) The fourth basket is a void -- not 'avoid,' but 'a void.' Two words: a void. I think this points to the understanding they're not just not me, not mine, they're not just anattā, but they have no phenomenal self. They are empty of having a phenomenal self. The pīti doesn't exist inherently. The ekaggatā, the whatever, it's void. It's empty of inherent existence. Void and empty are interchangeable words. And that's an interesting word. Suñña is the Pali. Sometimes people occasionally say to me, "The only place the Buddha really talks about emptiness in the Pali Canon is two suttas with 'emptiness' in the title." But actually there are all kinds of teachings about emptiness of phenomenal self -- not just this anattā, not me, not mine, emptiness of the personal self. There are all kinds of teachings about this emptiness of phenomenal self in the Pali Canon, and different ways the Buddha uses the word 'empty.' So here's one: they're a void, they're an emptiness.
So there are four ways of looking there: the three characteristics (unsatisfactory/dukkha; impermanent/anicca; not me, not mine/anattā), and void or empty (śūnya, suñña in Pali). The jhānas, because they're stable objects -- jhāna, partly the etymology can be, I think I said, traced to a candle that burns steadily. So because of the steadiness of a jhāna (and remember, it's our two S's in the middle of SASSIE), because of the steadiness, they actually form really good objects on which to practise these insight ways of looking -- also because they're clear, the citta in a jhāna is clear and subtle and malleable. It's an optimum -- what do they say? "Location, location, location." [laughter] They're really good spaces, places to practise this. But all this stuff we're talking about is after you've really mastered and become familiar with a jhāna. Then you need to practise with your insight ways of looking. So all this we're talking about, it's a long, long process of development of practice, but incredibly beautiful, and incredibly freeing and gratifying. But it takes time, you know, to develop all this.
So earlier in the retreat, we said, "Why is it such a great place to do this?" Yes, a stable object. Yes, a clear and subtle citta. But already in the jhānic state there is a little less fabricating. We've almost defined the whole jhānic spectrum that way. And that means the self is less fabricated at that point, and what do selves do? They go "me, mine, me, mine, me, mine, me, mine." They appropriate. So the habit of "me-mining" is already a little bit less. It becomes easier than usual, in that space, to just see things as "not me, not mine." The anattā practice is easier. It's easier to let go because of the well-being, and especially if you're confident that you can get this jhāna back -- it's not just, "Oh, my God, I had this amazing experience once, and I just need to cling on to it, because ..." Once you've gone in and out a lot, you don't get attached to jhānas any more. You know. I used to say it's like, in this country, thank goodness for us, I'm not going to get super attached to water. I mean, there's water there. I actually don't know old that is! But if I want water, I know I can go to the tap. It's just there. When I don't know that there's a tap there that I can turn on and off, then my relationship with water gets very attached and difficult, and understandably so. When one's in and out, in and out of the jhānas, we can actually let go quite a lot in the jhānas, because it's a well-being that we're less attached to, we're more used to. We trust it can come and go. And it's easier to let go there.
And also, as I said, impermanence becomes obvious. That's also one of the reasons why they're prime spaces. Here it says -- who is this talking? This is the Buddha. He's talking about,
I tell you, the ending of the effluents depends on the first jhāna.
Then he goes right through all the other jhānas, up to the nothingness. But I would say probably it will get easier with the third jhāna, just because there's much more stillness there. What we're talking about at this level is really something that takes quite a lot of stillness and spaciousness and kind of subtlety. If there's too much pīti bouncing off the walls and kind of making things turbulent, this kind of thing can get a little more difficult. But theoretically, I think it's possible. It's probably much easier from the third jhāna onwards, but not past the realm of nothingness, because in the neither perception nor non-perception, you need to actually perceive things here. You need to perceive what the jhāna factors are. You need to be able to almost make clear things. And in the neither perception nor non-perception, that's partly what defines the state -- it's almost like I'm not quite perceiving anything. Again, it's said that only a Buddha can do this in the realm of neither perception nor non-perception -- not an arahant, not anyone else.
So he goes through the same thing with all the jhānas. Actually, I've missed a bit out:
He regards whatever phenomena that are connected [with the aggregates there] ...
This one is concerned with the aggregates, not with the jhāna factors, so the five aggregates that are present in the jhāna factors (body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations/fabrications, and consciousness). And he regards them in one of these four ways: dukkha, anicca, anattā, or suñña. Yeah? And does that, and then
He turns his mind away from those phenomena [because there's a letting go], and having done so, inclines his mind to the property of deathlessness [the amāra, what is deathless, this Unfabricated]: "This is peace, this is exquisite -- the resolution [the ending] of all fabrication; the relinquishment of all the paraphernalia of being; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; unbinding [or nirvāṇa]."
And again, it says staying right there -- in other words, staying right there, he reaches total liberation, or, if he/she/they are a bit attached to their insight there (which is, after all, quite an extraordinary level of insight), if they're a bit attached to it, then they get only as far as the non-returner, and they're, according to this,
reborn only in the Pure Abodes [the heavenly realms, the highest heavenly realms, and in those realms, they will come to full awakening], there to be totally unbound, never again to return from that world.
So first jhāna up through nothingness, and then he says,
Thus, as far as the perception attainments go, that is as far as gnosis-penetration goes.
In other words, it's what I said before: you can only do this kind of insight way of looking up to the realm of nothingness, because from there, you're not really perceiving anything to get enough of a handle on it, the aggregates.
Okay, third passage. Here the Buddha's talking about Sāriputta, one of his chief disciples. He says,
Monks, Sāriputta is paṇḍita [which can get translated as 'wise'; it can also get translated as 'skilled.' He's wise or skilled]. He is [the translator here has] of great discernment.[9]
It's actually mahāpañño, of great -- you could say wisdom; you could say discernment; you could say insight. You could also say, and what I'd like to put the emphasis on because that's what the passage is talking about: Sāriputta has great skill in insight ways of looking. That's exactly what the passage is talking about.
Monks, Sāriputta is wise and skilled, of great insight, of deep insight, of wide insight, of joyous, rapid, quick, penetrating insight.
Note the 'joyous,' yes? Joyous. This insight way of looking approach, as I said yesterday, it's a joyous way of practising insight. There's no way it can't be. I mean, maybe a little bit here and there. But basically because you're looking, because you're relating in a way that unbinds right then, you feel that, the taste -- you feel it in your body, in the consciousness, of some degree of unbinding, some degree of release from suffering, and therefore it is joyous. Beautiful spaces open up.
So why is he all that? Because
There is the case where Sāriputta enters and remains in the first jhāna. Whatever qualities there are in the first jhāna [and then he lists again the jhāna factors, the five jhāna factors, which we've had, and then he lists things like] contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire ['desire'?], persistence, mindfulness, equanimity, attention [the list could go on a little bit] -- he ferrets them out one by one. Known to him they arise, known to him they remain, known to him they subside. He discerns, "So this is how these qualities, not having been, come into play [come into being]."
'Evaṃ,' 'this is how,' 'such is the way.' Remember we had this brief discussion? I think Andrew asked about the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, and how it can so easily be read and heard and translated as teaching on impermanence. Missing this 'how.' This is how these qualities, not having been, come into being, and how, having been, they vanish.
He remains unattracted and unrepelled with regard to these qualities, independent, detached, released, with an awareness rid of barriers. He understands, "There is a further escape" [there's a further nissaraṇaṃ], and pursuing it, he confirms that there is.
That further escape is the second jhāna. And then he goes through the same thing, all the way up to the realm of nothingness. Here's a jhāna; what makes up this jhāna? So sometimes, when we're practising jhāna, we, for the most part, want to not differentiate, not deconstruct it. We want to see it as one homogenous yumminess, and I'm just throwing myself into that vat of homogenous chocolate yumminess. That's how we want to relate to it. I don't want to be deconstructing it, seeing its gaps and impermanence. I don't want to be deconstructing it in terms of its constituent elements, unless I'm doing that so I can work on one of them, like my -- I have to switch the analogy now -- like my wattle and daub building has got a bit of a hole in it, and I need to sort of focus on that bit, and kind of push it back or bring ...
I'm not deconstructing it if I've got a samādhi intention, unless it's for the sake of shoring it up for the samādhi. But now we're in an insight way of looking, we are really interested in the discerning, in seeing: what's going on here? What are the elements here? And bringing into play an insight way of looking which changes my relationship with those elements very, very powerfully, very potently. All this is extremely subtle, but it's absolutely doable with practice. That's why I put so much emphasis on this sensitivity, attunement -- taken to extraordinary levels, but absolutely possible. And if I can do that, then the whole thing begins to unfabricate, unfabricate. In this example, he's going stage by stage through the jhānas. I think I said the other day, what might happen -- it's a bit like an elevator shaft. Sometimes the elevator will just go fooooof, and you're just at a floor, or in the area of a certain floor: somehow, somewhere, I'm around the seventh jhāna, whatever it is. Sometimes it goes all the way. Here there's a kind of stage by stage -- he's stopping at every floor.
So this word 'void,' I've already explained that. There are many ways of understanding emptiness, as we said in response to the question on the note earlier. So we can understand, if I'm looking at a jhāna factor, or something like attention, or even the intention to pay attention, or something like vedanā, or something like consciousness, there are many ways to understand its voidness, its emptiness. In other words, there are many possible subtexts if I'm using that way of looking: 'empty, empty.' One of them, though, could be 'fabricated,' which one might have already understood. I see that when I practise letting go, this fades; therefore, it's fabricated; therefore, it's empty of inherent existence.
But the key thing is here, as we've said, it's the how -- how something arises, how these elements arise. Not just the jhāna itself, but the actual elements. How is it that consciousness arises? How is it that consciousness fades? How is it that a sense of contact, or a perception -- which, remember, means experience, or appearance, or phenomenon -- how is it that it arises, and how does it fade? This is the deepest level of dependent arising. And as I said, dependent arising is a teaching you can take on many different levels. At a certain level, it begins to deconstruct, which is why I could say at the beginning, what dependently arises does not actually arise. At the deepest level of understanding dependent arising, what dependently arises does not arise. But there's a whole range of levels.
At the deepest level, where it kind of still just about makes sense to talk about 'arising' -- let's see if I can explain this very briefly. Again, it's in Seeing That Frees in quite careful detail. So a very deep meditative state -- we don't even need to put a jhāna name on it; just somewhere in that territory where there's a lot of fading. No sense of my story. No sense of my personality, and all my neuroses, and the big, complex 'me.' There's just the simplest possible self. What might be the simplest possible self? Just a sense of consciousness. No story, no personality, just an awareness. Just 'subject,' in the barest, most basic sense. Everything has faded, and that's all that's left. And with that, all that's left is, let's say, a very, very simple object. Now, it could be the realm of nothingness. It could be something in that territory -- some very, very empty state, in terms of object or what's being fabricated there as an object. Subject, at its most basic level, we might say. Object at its most basic level, we might say. And there's a third element that goes with these, that always goes with these. No subject, no object. No object, no subject. But they need a third element to stand together, to construct something: time.
'Time' doesn't mean, "Oh, yes, I remember when my ...", or "What I'm going to do after the retreat ..." No. Completely beyond all that. It means just a sense of the present moment. Just a sense of a present moment. Now, implicit in a sense of a present moment, I would say -- implicit, without any thinking -- is a subtle sense of a future moment and a past moment. It goes with our sense of time. So this is the most basic tripod. Three legs propping each other up. They need each other. Take away any one -- generally speaking; there are always exceptions, but generally speaking -- take away any one of these legs, and the other two come tumbling down. The other two get unfabricated.
So this is the most basic perception. This is way down there at the low end of unfabricating. Here's this thing about conception and intention. I would say this bare, barest subject, this most subtle subject, most unconstructed subject, with an extremely unconstructed object, and the barest sense of time, it still has, pregnant within it, conception and intention. There is the sense -- a subject recognizes a something other than it. And subject, self, by saṅkhāra, karmically, is invested. None of my big story; none of that. There's an investment. This subject, this thinnest subject, is invested, in some way or another, with this object: I like it. I want more of it. (This is not linguistic.) I want it to stay around. I want it to increase. I want it to decrease. I want it to go away. I want to keep it just as it is. There's an intention on the subject's part, in relation to the object. It's what subjects do. This is karma. This is saṅkhāra. This is the wheel of saṃsāra at the most basic, basic level.
There's a conception of time. I'm not thinking about time. And there's a conception of an object. I'm not thinking about an object or a subject, but it's woven into the very perception: there's a conception of subject, object, and time. And woven into that, there's an intention -- some intention or other, to do with what happens in time; some investment on the subject's part, to do with the object, about what then happens in the next moment. So implicit in a sense of a present moment, the barest sense of time is implicit, a sense of a next moment, and there's investment in what will happen in the next moment for this subject.
So there's already clinging there. It's wrapped up in the most subtle intention and the most subtle conception. This is this most basic tripod. This is propping up saṃsāra. We say these three arise together. Going back to the question on the note, they dependently co-arise. It's not like first there's a subject, sort of sitting around, drumming your fingers, waiting for an object and waiting for time. [laughter] Or that there is time waiting for [a subject and object] -- which is also quite interesting if you know something about very recent developments in physics. They arise together. Even saying "they arise together," we're really at the edge of what language and conception can ... 'Arising' is something that happens in time, and now we're talking about the arising of time. They arise together. They go together. Language -- exactly at this point, this is the limit, I would say. This is the limit of conventional language in terms of how deep we can go with understanding the arising and passing of things, and dependent arising.
They arise together. They are not separate. Subject, object, time -- they're not three things. Nor are they one thing. Nor are they nothing, no-things. Nor are they many things. And nor are they infinite things, really. You could see them in all those ways, but really they're not any of those.
So typical avijjā, typical ignorance/delusion, believes in this conception: "There is a subject. There are objects. And there is time." That basic conception is avijjā. Out of that basic conception comes, inevitably, these intentions, in some way or another, for the next moment in regard to this object (or I want a better object, or whatever it is). Not talking about any thinking at all. It's so, so subtle. That's basic avijjā, propelling saṃsāra, propelling the wheel of dependent origination at the most basic level. In the conception, in this most basic conception, is the avijjā. Out of that most basic conception -- not even out of it, but wrapped up with it is this stream of saṅkhāra, intention, intention as what fabricates: I'm invested, I'm clinging, I'm pushing, I'm pulling, in the most, most subtle ways.
When we understand what's happening here -- understand they're not three, understand they're not one, understand it's not nothing -- when we understand how this arises through this conception and through the intention and the clinging, at the moment we understand that ... Or rather, let's put it this way: when I am meditating, and I bring that understanding, and I use it as an insight way of looking -- I take this understanding, "This is what's going on here. There's a conception of subject, object, time, and it propels, it's wrapped up with, or wrapped up with it is this movement of intention, of clinging -- very, very subtle." When I understand that, and I plug that in as a way of looking, I understand what's going on: "Therefore, these things are fabricated. Subject, object, time are fabricated. They're not unfabricated. Time is a fabrication," and I understand how they arise together, then, we could say, okay, at that moment, avijjā is much, much, much less, in that moment of employing that insight way of looking. Avijjā, the foundation or the first link of dependent arising, we've just decreased it radically at that point, and so we're not pumping into the wheel of dependent arising. We're not pumping the liquid into saṃsāra. Saṃsāra means 'to flow,' sāra, 'to flow,' into that flow. We're not pumping the liquid in, because the avijjā squeezy liquid box thingy has got no liquid in it, or very, very little liquid in it.
And then our tripod collapses. Unfabricating. Total unfabrication. No time, no subject, no object, no present moment, no awareness in the usual sense of what we mean by 'awareness,' or in any big vastness of awareness or something like that.
So, as I said, we're talking about something very, very subtle, but actually very, very doable, if I approach it in the right way. "Thus he trains himself." That probably takes a while, but it's really, really possible. So the Buddha said -- I'm paraphrasing; he probably said it much more elegantly -- but something like,
No matter how long your legs are, and how long you walk for, you'll never reach the end of the world. No matter how long, even if you lived forever, you'd never reach the end of the world. But without reaching the end of the world, you won't know liberation.[10]
Without reaching the end of the world, you won't know liberation. He's talking about this: the end of the world. Other places, he defines 'the world' as basically the six senses, what appears in the six senses, including the mind.
So you could say, philosophically speaking, all this has relevance as what we might call a 'phenomenological' approach, a radical phenomenological approach, in philosophical language. And yet, it's still the case that a person might go through all this business, and open to the Unfabricated as an experience, and yet, not take it, or decide not to take it, as implying anything at all with regard to the world. It only implies something about the mind's relationship with the world, the world of experience. So they maybe conclude that "I experienced the Unfabricated, and therefore there's no rebirth, because I've severed my infatuation and my ties and my clinging with the world. There's no rebirth in the world." And from that kind of understanding, it's possible to get a very dualistic, "There's the Unfabricated, and there's the world," and not much more is understood about the world from that viewpoint.
So one could view it that way. One could also hear all this -- and I think sometimes people do, or partially, or partially read about it and view it as a kind of, what they call in philosophy, mentalism. In other words, all this world -- there is no materiality; materiality is an illusion, and what's real is the mind, and the mind projects this world. But we're going beyond that. There are lots of critiques I could say of that partial understanding. The mind, awareness, consciousness, and all the elements of the mind that make up the mind too -- they are empty too. One can come to see that they are empty too.
All of them -- all the world, and the mind, and the elements of the mind, and all this -- Sāriputta gives an analogy of two sheaves of corn or wheat, like in a field after the farmers do their harvesting. They might prop two sheaves of wheat, leaning on each other. The whole thing -- mind and world, awareness, the elements of the mind -- they all prop each other up.[11] That's also partly what it means, dependent co-arising, like the tripod. They're not really separate things. They're empty of being really separate things. But they're not one thing.
Some people, this, what I've described here very briefly, kind of rushing through, what I've described here is not only beautiful as a practice, but profoundly liberating for their life. Maybe, let's say, most people. We go back to the epistemology question. I'm still left with, "Well, how do I know I can trust this, what this means?" I'm not going into the epistemology thing right now, but for some people, it's convincing enough. That's totally convincing, and that does it for them. There will be people who don't like this approach for different reasons, or when they hear about it, they just don't find it convincing -- this whole idea of less fabricating, and exploring that, a meditative journey of less fabricating. So there are other approaches to emptiness that are possible, and again, I've written about them in Seeing That Frees. They're what I call analytical meditations, or what are called analytical meditations -- very different from this business about insight ways of looking and fabrication. Through these analytical meditations, you can come to understand: it's impossible for something to have inherent existence. It's just another way into emptiness.
Okay. So going back to something I said at the beginning, if a person, again, says 'fabrication,' whether they use that word or not, 'fabrication,' what we mean by it is an important concept. Fabrication is an important concept. For example, seeing papañca as fabrication, and then, you know, "I see you, Māra" -- seeing it's fabrication, letting go of it, and then, you know, that one's with the unfabricated. So papañca, in the common sense of the word -- actually, when the Buddha uses it, he means something much more subtle, I think. But anyway, we'll keep it at that.
So, "Fabrication is an important concept, because we see, for example, the difference between the papañca mind and the mindful mind, or the mind of bare attention. Fabrication is an important concept. But I'm not really interested in all this mystical, deep talk of the Unfabricated, etc.," or "Yeah, but that's all irrelevant to life. What's that got to do with life, this kind of thing?", or "It's only for some people, that thing," "Fabrication is important as a concept for everyone, but this business about Unfabricated? It's only for some people." I would say: are we not, then, making an artificial distinction, or drawing an artificial and arbitrary line between everyday life and the mystical? Because again, as I said at the beginning, why? Why have I, why have you, why has a person drawn the line about what is fabricated where they have drawn it? Why there? First of all, where exactly have you drawn it? And why there?
The principle of fabrication, as I said -- the principle of fabrication, the principle of clinging, the principle of the relationship between clinging and fading -- it's the same, and it's one spectrum. As I said, my mum can understand: there's papañca. I'd have to explain to her a bit what 'clinging' means at that gross level, and she'd understand, "Oh, yeah, when I just calm down a bit and relax a little bit, then it all fades." It's the same principle: there was the fabrication, then I let go of the clinging, and the fabrication, the papañca, faded. It's the same principle. It's one spectrum, all the way from that to what we've been talking about this evening. It's one spectrum. It's one principle -- actually, a really, really simple principle -- running all the way through.
It's only, perhaps, that preconceived, unquestioned ontological assumptions, assumptions or views about, beliefs about what is real, are somehow dragged into what's actually one spectrum, what's actually a coherent system, and then these preconceived assumptions about reality just make a division in that spectrum, and I end up dividing the spectrum and actually making it a bit incoherent.
Okay, last thing. Again, someone might say -- and we talked about this yesterday a little bit with the realm of neither perception nor non-perception -- "Well, what's this totally transcendent Unfabricated got to do with me? What's it got to do with life? What's it got to do with my life? It's so transcendent, so removed. Life is contact. Life is experiences." Remember, that's what 'perceptions' mean. "Life is the senses and what comes to us in the senses. Life is emotions. It's heart. It's story. It's self. And even if it's not self, it's at least the flow of the aggregates, right? That's life. What's this got to do with life? What's it got to do with me? Why should I be interested in this?" Already in the fourth jhāna we talked about the quietening of emotions, and they're part of life. In the jhānas, we're getting used to this unfabricating. Again, it's one way of understanding what's going on. It's probably the most helpful way of understanding what's going on in the jhānas. They're not -- for the hundredth time on this retreat -- states of deeper concentration and ability to keep your mind unwavering on one object, etc.
So already in the fourth jhāna, there's a quietening of what we might view as life, and there's, hopefully, a kind of opening to the beauty of this which is sort of halfway or a lot less like life than we think, than we're used to thinking. So what's it got to do with me? And again -- we've talked about this before -- it may be that a dualistic understanding and a dualistic sense of the world and sense of things comes out of all this: "There is the Unfabricated, this wondrous, mystical release and opening, and something that is completely beyond conception, completely beyond perception. There is the Unfabricated, and there's the world of the fabricated. And they're really different, they have no connection, and this is clearly better than that, and I don't want to be reborn. I just want to -- whatever the word is -- dissolve, unbind." Nirvāṇa means 'unbind.' That's one of the etymologies -- vāṇa, like a vine, like you wrap things in vines. "Nirvāṇa -- I just want to unbind in that and not be reborn."
So it could lead to a kind of dualistic understanding. Absolutely. Could. Doesn't have to. Sometimes what happens for a person who opens to this kind of experience, and then it's as if that Unfabricated then can be -- at least at times -- a sense of it shining through the world of experience, the world of matter, the world of phenomenal reality. The light of the Unfabricated shines through. The song of the Unfabricated blows through. It casts a light on this world. It casts its light on this world, or it is the light behind and through the phenomenal world, or it gives a kind of space and context to this world, and the comings and goings, and the ups and downs of this world.
So that's much less dualistic. Have to be careful, though, because remember we talked about the after-effects on perception? By now, it should be clear there are many possibilities for what could be perceived as shining through. It could be the joy of the second jhāna, as some people have reported very beautifully. That can shine through, or the third jhāna, or the realm of this or that. So there is this possibility, I think, of a sense of the Unfabricated shining through, but we have to be careful in our discernment: is it the Unfabricated, or is it something else?
But a third possibility is, again, what I've touched on before, and I think we talked about it yesterday again: it's like, through all this, I go further. I go further than the Unfabricated. I don't stop there, wondrous as that is, and I go further in my understanding of emptiness and dependent arising. And I realize through that, I sense through that, in my being, in the fibres of my being, in my consciousness, I sense through that this -- again, we run out of language -- whatever the words might be for a participation so profound that it's beyond the word 'participation,' for an intimacy and an involvement so intimate, and involved, and close, and deep, that it's beyond what we usually mean by words like 'intimacy' and 'involvement.' Participation, intimacy, involvement in the mystery of things, in the mystery, in the magic of appearances. And then there's sacredness everywhere. There's holiness everywhere. There's this beauty of emptiness everywhere, without any duality.
So people take this different ways, but there are possibilities here, different possibilities. Okay. Let's have some quiet together.
