9. Day 4, morning#
9.1. Second enlightenment factor dhamma vicaya#
The second enlightenment factor is called dhamma vicaya or investigation of state. This is a part of wisdom. There is a simile: like being in a dark room and you get a flashlight. Investigation is the wisdom factor that joins with the consciousness, with the knowing. With the flashlight we start to see things in the room. Dhamma vicaya is the same. We activate our awareness in the present moment, allow mindfulness to penetrate the object, then wisdom comes to play and knows what it is. This clear seeing enables the letting go mechanism.
Mindfulness, energy and investigation spin on each other. Investigation takes up the role of wisdom.
A further four enlightenment factors start to arise when the conditions are in place, that is the first three enlightenment factors are properly working as a team, activating, noting, knowing, letting go, then we start to experience other enlightenment factors. The next four rapture, tranquility, concentration and equanimity start to arise in our practice.
Investigation of states is not carried out by the means of the thinking process, you can’t think yourself to wisdom. Thinking is an object of wisdom, an object of knowing. You can note it, know it and let it go. It is part 148 of the field of conditioned phenomena that we are observing, noting, knowing and letting go. Thinking itself doesn’t lead intuitively to insights. It plays a role in bringing us to some understanding, to the practice if you like. But the investigation we are talking about is an intuitive discerning insight that distinguishes the characteristic of the phenomena. And what are those phenomena? There is mind and body processes that we have been talking about this week. When we see the dhamma, we see rupa, matter – earth, water, fire and air and when we see nama, the mind, we see feelings, perceptions, intentions, attention and contact – vedanā, saññā, cetanā, manasikāra and phassa is referred to as nama. So we are noting these physical and mental phenomena, we are seeing the individual characteristics of these things, the content of these things, but we are not going into the content. We are much more interested in noting the structure in which the content is operating. When we do that we start to understand our insight. We start to understand the conditioning process that is happening in the mind and body unit. Sometimes the body is the cause and the mind is the effect, sometimes the body is the cause and the body is the effect, sometimes mind is the cause and mind is the effect, or mind is the cause and body is the effect. Four ways. Actually, there are many other ways the mind and the body are conditioning each other.
Mind, matter, cause and effect: these are the raw data. When our awareness and wisdom is able to note and know this continuously, we will come to an even further understanding in our wisdom. We will move beyond the content of our experience, the conceptualization of our experience, we will move beyond the individual characteristics of each of these mental and physical phenomena. We will go into another mode of perception, a very particular mode of perception. It is a Vipassana perception which allows us to see all mental and physical phenomena having the same characteristic of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness – dukkha – and non-self. This is the insight, that dhamma vicaya presents to us when we are developing this enlightenment factor. It allows us to see not only the field of our experience but we go beyond that. We see the characteristics of all phenomena, of all conditioned phenomena. They are all impermanent, dukkha and non-self.
The characteristic of investigation is just to know and see things clearly, not through intellectual investigation but through an intuitive mode 149 of experience. You can’t make insights arise, you can’t force them to arise. They only arise spontaneously when the conditions for them to arise are perfectly arranged: keeping the mind in the present moment, keeping the mind stabilized, watching the objects as they arise and pass away, and then ‘bum’, the curtain opens and insight spontaneously appears, an understanding, a knowledge comes into your mind and you know things. You see things very differently. You come to an experience of the dhamma by yourself and for yourself. You won’t need me to explain it to you, you will be independent of other people’s explanations of what just happened. You will have seen for yourself very clearly the nature of the body and the nature of the mind. You will have known that these two things are two very separate and different things. And you will know that because of ignorance and unawareness of the present we don’t see things clearly. Because we don’t see things clearly, we are caught in a habitual reaction mechanism of creating karma and then being exposed to the resultants which just keeps looping around. We will come to an understanding that this has been going on for a very long time. We will understand that all this mental and physical phenomena doesn’t belong to anybody and that it is just arising and passing away. We come about the insight of udayabbaya ñāṇa – the knowledge of arising and passing away. We see all phenomena arising and passing away, quite rapidly and in a detached manner. We are not interfering with anything. Our awareness and wisdom have been becoming quite sharp, quite consistent, quite continuous. We really even needn’t activate our awareness at this stage. We don’t need to direct the mind anywhere. We don’t need to evaluate anything. The mind stays still and holds itself in this mode of knowing, patiently observing and watching, witnessing the flow of physical and mental phenomena as they bubble up and disappear. We come to an understanding of this Vipassana insight.
Now the function of investigation is to see things clearly. We come to know this. The function is to totally remove this darkness from the mind so that it remains illuminated and aware, so that it remains present. An enlightening experience is a continuous arising of this presence in the moment without being interested to, without being attracted to or repelled by the mental and physical phenomena. The mind becomes completely equanimous. 150 Detached, non-identifying with things that we used to take quite seriously, thoughts and emotional states that we would identify with and hold to. You see that you can’t create an identity of that stuff you see. You know it is not you. This is the function of insight, that we let things go. Greed, hatred, delusion, the hindrances. We can free our consciousness from the subjectivation process and can live in a state of peace and freedom. Free from attachment and clinging.
The manifestation of investigation is the dissipation of confusion. There is no longer doubt about what the nature of the body and mind is. We don’t rely on other people telling us what the body and mind is. We have seen it for ourselves. The dhamma, six qualities, discernible by the wise, to be seen for oneself, dhamma leads one on. When we have seen it, all becomes dustness, this is how it is rolling through, this is how the karma is rolling out. And we become content with that. This is what is happening today. Don’t worry about yesterday, don’t think about tomorrow. This is our present moment experience. Try to make yourself alert and awake, each morning you wake up, observe. This is a new day. Let’s see what the karma will bring. Is there going to be pleasantness or is there going to be unpleasantness? Either way we note, know and let go of it. We don’t get caught up. We enjoy it for what it is without attachment, and then it’s gone. When it’s gone we are not upset, because we understand that that is its nature. Its nature is to pass away. When we don’t embrace the characteristics of conditioned phenomena, we can save ourselves of a lot of dukkha. Of course it’s gone! That’s its nature. Don’t hold on so tightly that when it’s gone you experience dukkha. It is only the holding that gives us dukkha. It’s just mental and physical phenomena, just doing its thing. Consciousness is knowing it, that is all.
Matter is made up of the four elements. We know that they have their individual characteristics. We experience these characteristics and can sink into them by noting and knowing continuously and let go of them. Then we might break through and have a vision of the ultimate reality of the four elements, a vision of what this physical body is. It’s not what you think it is, but that’s up to you to examine for yourself.
When we bring our attention to the rise and fall of the abdomen, it is composed of sensations. Try to let go of the conceptual image of the body. 151 We have had an image of our body in our minds all our lives. We have a look at it. Don’t do your meditation on the abdomen seeing moving a body part. It is a field of sensations. That is what it is! We need to move beyond our concepts of stomach, rising, abdomen, falling. We need to go into the mode of perceptions where we are just perceiving physical sensations. Tightness, the pushing, the hardness, the softness, the warmth, the flow, the vibration, tingling, all these physical sensations that are arising there. That is what we want to slide into, if you like.
When we see this in the rising and falling process, two distinct processes are going on: it is the physical phenomena of the tension, of the pushing, of the pulling, movement of the abdomen and there is also consciousness, the knowing is there as well. These are two different processes. Both of them are arising and passing away. Consciousness is not a stable thing either! It arises when its conditions are in place – internal base, external base, meeting together, consciousness arises – and then it cognizes the experience and passes away as well. The whole thing has no solidity in it at all. All is completely unstable, all is completely out of control. It’s impersonal. Consciousness arising, mind and matter arising, they have a symbiotic relationship, they cause each other, they lean upon each other. Without consciousness nama-rupa cannot be known. It doesn’t have a space to arise. Without nama-rupa consciousness doesn’t have a condition upon which to arise. So the two are mutually conditioning each other. The whole thing is arising and passing away the whole time.
So if you realize this for you, your mind is balanced and you experience equanimity. Things are arising and passing away. The first insight can be illuminating but also shocking, you may feel foolished, tricked about the thing sitting on the mat. What is so appealing of the body, head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, eyes? What is so attractive? Maybe the nails, but only when they are painted not when they are in the soup. The hair on the floor is no more me, mine, I. Have a look at the nature of the body! What is it really that we are attaching to? These things are completely out of control. You can’t say I wish my hair has a different color. The nails are just growing, we can’t stop them, out of control! The heart pumps blood through our system. The body takes care of itself, air is coming in and out. Sounds are operating, 152 sights are going on. Your teeth are decaying. It is all happening by itself. It’s not happening to anyone and it’s not happening to you. No one is controlling it, and it is not under the control of an external power. There is nobody sitting on the clouds, looking down and controlling things. It’s out of control. It is going on according to its own cause and effect mechanism.
And this is the mechanism that the Buddha discovered. He didn’t invent the teaching, he uncovered the truth. He uncovered how things are actually operating and then disclosed that to the world. The world has been listening to it, practicing it and realizing it for 2500 years. That’s what the Buddha is, the one who knows. Somebody who broke through and had the ability to transmit the knowledge what the body-mind process is. Seeing it so clearly giving us a formula of the dependent origination so that we also can come to the understanding of the nature of the reality and remove this craving for being. Baba niroda nirvana – the cessation of being is nirvana. When that being, that wish to be someone, that desire, that craving to become, to get, to achieve, when that is completely let go of, that is what the Buddha is teaching is nirvana. It is the removal of the sense of self from your experience, from the experience of the mind and body process. It goes back completely to full nature, it goes back to dhamma. The consciousness has become freed no longer finding a foundation on which it can establish a sense of self. All foundations have been covered by mindfulness. The four foundations of mindfulness have been used correctly to establish awareness and wisdom in the present moment. All holes have been blocked, we are holding back the tide of the sense of self. We freed the mind, we become very light, no stress, no worrying, thinking about future plans because there is no-one it’s going to happen to. Future is just a thought arising in the present. We don’t have to worry about it. Just wake up every morning and be glorious. We have no other work to do than to activate our awareness and wisdom in the present moment. Nothing else really makes sense once you have seen the nature of the mind and the body. We can go on and perform various tasks and do different things, eventually we just have to go back and do our spiritual work, because the rest of it, what for? Unless you have a philosophy like a good friend of mine. The meaning of life according to him is, that the one with the most toys wins.
153 Spontaneous insight causes insight to happen. Insight begets insight. Once we start to see things, we start to practice more, we start to put the conditions in place even more effectively. Further insights start to unfold. We activate our awareness repeatedly, not judging, not getting upset by what we find by activating that awareness, whatever mind state is lurking in the dark, wherever our mind has wandered to, whatever emotional cloud has descended upon us, we don’t judge it, we don’t get upset, we don’t push it away. Wisdom is that which allows it just to be there. We accept whatever is there. When we accept it, then we let it go. We let go of things through accepting them. We don’t let go of things through pushing them away. When we accept how things are, then we become content toward that experience. It is what it is. We see it clearly. If there is something that has become unpleasant, we don’t get upset. We activate our awareness, switch on our wisdom, see that object clearly, the mind disengages and steps back from it, stops identifying with it, knows it as a dependently arisen, conditioned phenomena subject to the three characteristics of impermanence, dukkha and non-self, and that object passes away. It’s seen. It can no longer be a base for me and mine. It’s purpose has been foiled. It doesn’t have an effect on our experience. It’s just stuff lofting by, just like clouds floating through the sky. It just passes through. Mental and physical phenomena start to arise and pass away. Arise and pass away. Arise and pass away. Nothing is sticky. We don’t get caught in the story of any of the mind states or any of the thoughts. We become like teflon. We don’t attach to anything. And the dukkha just evaporates. It just disappears. We start to see things as they really are.
This second enlightenment factor is very important. We have been calling it wisdom. The first enlightenment factor we have been calling awareness. Awareness and wisdom and energy. These three are the workers activating noting, knowing, letting go, activating noting, knowing, letting go – pulling us into the present moment, penetrating the object, disengaging from it and watching it pass away. We can do this over and over. If we can stabilize this activity, if we can still the mind and still keep doing this meditation practice, then our samadhi starts to increase. Samadhi with awareness and wisdom. Not the kind of samadhi with concentration that falls down a well on the ground, kind of pleasant but dull not really knowing anything. 154 Awareness and wisdom with concentration, this is how our insights start to arise. This is how we start to let go of the defilements, of the cravings, of the aversions, of the frustrations and annoyances – all those types of mind states.
9.2. Intention#
I also want to talk about intention, particularly in our walking meditation practice we are going to introduce that aspect of intention. Intention to act or to do something implies a forethought. We think before we act. First there is a mental action before the physical or before we speak. Structurally there must always be an intention before a physical or verbal action takes place. Before we do anything, we must instruct the body to move, to twist, to open, to close, to look. Before any of these physical actions, there must be a thought or order and that thought we call cetana. The Buddha said, «I declare to you that cetana is karma.»
The mind really does cause matter. If you think you want to raise your hand, you think, «raise your hand». It is through thinking that it happens. The mind animates this meat-puppet. The nature of the body is kind of dumb. It is just the elements, the same elements as outside, the external elements are the same as the internal four elements. But when consciousness has left the body, it just lies on the floor like a rotten log. We call that dead. Even when people are unconscious they are like dead. Consciousness animates the body. It opens its mannerisms, all manifestations of the mind states. If we become upset, the eyes start crying, we start to shake, our heart starts to pump a little stronger, breath becomes shorter. The mind affects how the body is operating.
In our walking meditation, we are going to expand our awareness to include awareness of intention of the four stages in the walking. So you should pay attention to the moment just before you lift the foot, before you raise the foot, before you move the foot and before you place the foot. This intention will be difficult for you to see in the beginning stages. So we make a little thought, it is a little contrived but effective. ‘Intending to lift – lifting, intending to raise – raising, intending to move – moving, intending to place – placing’. Before each of these stages you should become aware of the desire to move your foot. Become aware of your mental thought to move your foot. 155 We are paying attention to the thought before we lift and then the lifting. The intention to lift the foot is nama, mind. Moving the foot is rupa, matter. So the intention and the movement are mind and matter, arising simultaneously. They arise together and cease together. If you can drop your mind into the present moment by continuously noting this action, independent of desire, independent of any wanting to see anything or for any kind of experience, if you can drop into it, you can have an experience of mind and matter in the present moment. And you will be able to see things as they really are. And you will also be able to see the conditioning process that occurs between mind and matter. You will see that the mind is actually conditioning the body in this circumstance. Later on we will see all kinds of conditioning patterns. Intention is difficult to note at first if the mind is not continuously aware of the present moment. It takes effort to maintain our awareness continuously.
Keep your mind in the moving foot. Lower your head, keep your eyes three quarters closed. Don’t become distracted by the jungle or other people’s body. Begin your walking meditation practice at a little bit faster pace, so that you can build up some rhythm. Then after 5 or 10 minutes slow down to the super-slow walking if you wish to. You should build up momentum and get used to your walking path. Center yourself in the practice that you’re doing and then start to slow down. If you’re having difficulty with the walking meditation, try walking on a solid floor. A stone floor or tiles will make it easier. The best way is to walk closely to your sitting mat so that you have no breaks in between the walking and sitting. So you stand-up, you walk and then you sit down again immediately. No gaps, no breaks. Really try to tighten up those gaps or breaks that you may have given yourself during the walking and sitting meditation. Try to take that hour and a half period as one continuous time zone of awareness in the present moment regardless of whether you’re walking or sitting or transitioning between the two. Try to keep it together.
The systematic practice of this four stage walking meditation will lead us to seeing the nature of sabhava or ultimate reality, intrinsic reality of mind and matter. We will be able to see that intention actually moves the body. You will see this for yourself. So note the consciousness consisting of the 156 intentions. You can do this in other practices as well not only the walking but in the sitting or do it in the dining hall when you are intending to reach for the cup of coffee or something. ‘Intending to reach, intending’, then reach out, when you touch the cup, ‘hardness, hardness’, when intending to bend your arm, ‘intending to bend, intending to bend, bending, bending’, then you’re bending it up, ’intending to flip the head back’, we flip it back and pour it in, pour the coffee in our face. We are tasting. Tasting is occurring.
Be aware of the intentions before you start to make your movements. Opening the door to the dorm room, go through the whole sequence. Going to the bathroom. Brushing your teeth – be mindful when moving the brush up, ‘up’ or down, ‘down’ instead of moving it in your face and thinking of all other things.
So the inclusion of intention can slow things down but be very fascinating. You may start to feel walking like a robot. You may feel all kinds of different energies flowing through the body. The four elements will start to get clearer as well.
But most of all you start to see the cause and effect of things and that is the most important. We want to see ourselves that actually these mind states are causing the body to move. These states not only cause the body to move but can cause all other kinds of effects on the body as well. Some of you might be familiar with the term psycho-somatic. Diseases that are caused in the body by the mind. Through repeatedly thinking in one way, we can actually make the body sick. The mind has a very powerful effect over the body. Start to see this connection.
We can witness the power that the mind has in the walking process. If we just observe the simple things in our live, such as walking, we can come to a profound understanding that intention has power over the body. Intention makes the body walk around, it can make it sit down, it can make it stand up. Intention makes it do and say all the things it does. When we start to realize the power intention has over the body, you start to think that you better take care over these mind states that you are generating in your mind. Mind states do actually have power. There is a karmic energy produced as well through intention. Not only does intention affect the body in the present moment but it creates karmic energy that remains latent waiting 157 for an opportunity to manifest. Waiting for the conditions to be right that that karma can give its fruit. We have to be careful of what kind of intentions we are making because it is generating both wholesome and unwholesome karma. We have to be aware that we are actually conditioning our existence through our intentional structure. We are creating our world, we create the world that we live in through our thoughts. We are all responsible for our own thoughts and the world we live in. Our experience on a day to day basis is the result of our karma. We are born of our karma, heirs of our karma, related to each other through our karma. Whatever we do for good or bad that we will forebear. Everything that is going on in the mind and body process is karma related. We are either creating karma or we are observing the results of old karma. This is a natural process, it doesn’t require anyone to do anything, either internal or external agents. It is like gravity. It doesn’t need to be anyone there to turn on the gravity switch. It is just like that. It is a natural law. It is a physical law. So karma is a mental law. It is just like that. That is what the Buddha discovered. That is how he uncovered the nature of the mind and body process.
So in our walking mediation we sharpen up our processes. We consciously generate the thought lifting before lifting. Think, «I am going to lift the foot now», and then lift it. «I am going to move it», and then move it. «I am going to place it», then place it. We can say these words to ourselves, it it’s helpful, we don’t need to. ‘Going to lift, lifting, going to move, moving, going to place, placing’. Then move your awareness to the other foot. Always keep your awareness in the moving foot. It is really important that it is on the sole of the foot, following the physical sensation. Try to bring this intention and the movement closer and closer together. See how they are influencing each other. Actually they are happening at the same time in real time. In the beginning of our practice, when we are generating a thought or intention to lift or move or place, then there will be some succession. First we think, then we move. As you get used to doing it – keep going around and around and around – you start to find that the intention and the movement start to correlate with each other. And you start to think that it moves, it moves automatically. You start to see that the physical body is animated, it starts to move because of intention. We can witness this for ourselves in the 158 walking meditation practice.
So try to see very clearly the different stages in the walking meditation. Don’t mix them up. They are four individual discreet events. Lifting, raising, moving, placing. When we keep a gap for each stage, we see that each stage arises and passes away. And when that has happened, it is finished, we can move on to the next event. The next stage, it’s finished. The next stage, it’s finished. Finished, finished, finished. We start to see that these stages in the walking meditation are very impermanent. They arise and pass away quite rapidly even when we are walking slowly. They arise and pass, arise and pass. You should take a great deal of care in observing, be meticulous. Don’t think that the walking meditation is secondary to the sitting meditation. Bring the energy, the mindfulness and the wisdom developed in that walking meditation into the meditation hall. Use it in your sitting meditation. Don’t waste it by wandering here and there after the walking meditation.
The realization of this cause and effect mechanism can be witnessed for ourselves in the present moment.
Don’t give in in any thoughts or emotions during the walking meditation. Cut it, bring it back into the present. But don’t walk wanting results to occur. That will cause a lot of frustration. It ends always in tears. In the back of our mind there is some craving, we want to become a mediator, getting results. We must check our attitude. We are not walking to get results, but to put the conditions in place. We follow the instructions, don’t leave anything away. Follow them as closely as you can. If you notice wishing, imagine results, the mind expanding to the universe and generating all kinds of knowledge, then we only generated ideas. Let go of these! Put aside all theories and just do the practice in the present moment. That is the only way how you will truly understand the nature of the mind and body process.
A deep insight is an intuitive expression of the mind revealing the reality of nature in the present moment to us. When you least expect it, the dhamma presents itself to us. The only thing you need to do is to get out of the way – literally, you. The only reason why Vipassana is not arising is that we may have expectations or a desire for something to arise. Drop all your expectations and wishes for success and achievements. Meditation is the complete opposite of achievement, it is letting go of everything that we have 159 ever learned in school. We are not here to achieve anything, we are here to relinquish and let go of everything.