The Four Noble Truths in Context: Afternoon Dharma Talk

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video The Four Noble Truths in Context: Afternoon Dharma Talk - Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Ajaan Thanissaro at The Sati Center in Redwood City, CA on September 10, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

The Four Noble Truths in Context: Afternoon Dharma Talk

Okay, we did the first Noble Truth this morning. Now we move on to the second. The Second Noble Truth is defined as the craving that leads to further becoming. Sometimes you hear it defined as any desire at all, and that's not the case. After all, the desire to gain awakening is part of the path; it's part of Right Effort. The desire to get rid of unskillful qualities in your mind and the desire to develop skillful ones is also part of Right Effort. The cause of suffering is sometimes defined as the general desire for things to be different from what they are. If that were the case, there'd be no end to suffering. Even Arahants^[1] can see if things are bad, they can be changed. But they've learned how to not suffer from that desire.

The Buddha actually defines the cause of suffering as three types of craving: craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, and craving for non-becoming. Sensuality, as we've already explained, is your tendency to fantasize about sensual pleasures—thinking about what a great meal that was, or what a great meal you'll have tonight. Becoming is your sense of yourself in a particular world of experience. Now, this can happen on the micro-level and the macro-level. The macro-level is where we are right now, you sitting in this room. That's a kind of becoming; we're on the level of the human becoming, on the level of sensuality.

It can also happen inside the mind. This is where the process begins. You have a desire, and then around the desire comes the sense of what needs to be done in order to attain that desire, or where the object of your desire will be found. The "where" becomes the kernel for your sense of that world in that thought world. And then there is the sense of you as either being capable of getting it or not getting it, which talents you have that would enable you to get it, and which ones would get in the way. It involves all three roles of self that we talked about this morning: the self as the agent, the self as the consumer, and the self as the commentator.

You go through this process many, many times in the course of the day. Thinking about something you want, "Where is it? How can I get it?" That right there is a level of becoming. Sometimes you just lose interest in it, and you move on to another one, and then another one. The Buddha calls this "further becoming" because it happens not only on the internal level in the mind, but from the internal level it spreads out to the outside level. When you have to leave this body, there will be a desire to go on and continue finding a new identity in a new world based on a desire. That is further becoming.

And then finally, there's the craving for non-becoming. You have a particular state of becoming and you don't like it, and you'd like to see it destroyed. Either you don't like your identity in that world, or you don't like that world at all, and you'd like to destroy it and see it go away. Now, any one of these three can come in really strong at death. For example, craving for sensuality. You're in pain, and for most people, what is their alternative to pain? Fantasizing about sensual pleasures. And so you start thinking about where you could go or what kind of sensual pleasure you would like. You're not necessarily thinking about where you want to go, but just what a good pleasure would be. And then you find yourself kicked out of the body. Okay, well, go. That can be dangerous, because you know how random your sensual desires are. Ajaan Mun said he could recollect 500 lifetimes in a row when he was a dog, because he liked being a dog. [Laughter] As Ajaan Lee says, "Dogs have no laws."

With craving for becoming again, you'd like to take on an identity someplace. You don't like the idea of your identity being obliterated. So you see some opportunity to take on an identity, and you go for it. Craving for non-becoming is when you start thinking about what a miserable life this was, how miserable you are at the moment, and you'd just like to be obliterated. That too can happen at death. And the Buddha said all three of these kinds of craving lead to more becoming, even the desire to be obliterated. There are these states of being that they call the states of non-perception, where you just kind of blank out for an eon or two. And then you come back and you've got to start all over again.

So this creates a strategic problem. We're trying to go past becoming, and yet the desire to destroy becoming is going to actually lead to further becoming. So what do you do? The Buddha's analysis says you have to look at the processes that lead up to becoming, see them as steps in a process, and see that none of them are really worthy of passion. None of them are worthy of a desire. So you basically abort the process before it yields a state of becoming, before you start having an identity in a particular world. You see this—it's just mental fabrications, thoughts, perceptions, all very flimsy material. They come and they go. And how can you hope to find any lasting happiness in something that's so flimsy? So that's the strategic solution to get past this otherwise impasse.

Now, to abandon these kinds of craving doesn't mean simply allowing them to go away on their own. You have to do something in order to get them to stop. You have to see through them to the point where you actually have dispassion for them. Otherwise, as long as there's some underlying passion for them, the next time the opportunity comes, you'll go back for it again.

But to get past that, the Buddha says there are two ways in which causes of suffering should be treated. He says some of them actually do go away simply as you look at them. It's like they get to function in the mind simply because you're not paying attention. But if you actually looked at them straight on, you begin to realize, "I couldn't possibly go over that. This is crazy. Why do I allow myself to be pulled into these things?" And they go away. In other words, you stare at them and they wilt away.

There's a second kind where you stare at them and they stare right back: "Make me go away." And that's the case where the Buddha says you have to exert a fabrication. Now, fabrication here has three meanings in this particular context. It's what's called bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, and mental fabrication. Bodily fabrication is the way you breathe. Verbal fabrication is the way you talk to yourself, which the Buddha calls directed thought and evaluation (vitakka and vicāra)^[2]. Mental fabrication would be feelings and perceptions.

And so you have to say, "Okay, look at that particular desire. How are you breathing together with that desire? What kind of breathing aggravates the desire?" Or if it's anger that you have, what kind of breathing aggravates the anger? How are you talking to yourself? What are you saying to yourself about this particular object that you either love or dislike intensely? And then also, what are the perceptions you're holding in mind? The images you have with regard to that. Your boss does something really stupid, and all you can see is the boss as an ogre, a monster, or a fool. And you have to realize that's only part of the boss. The boss has other sides as well. So this is the beginning of taking it apart. If a certain way of breathing is aggravating your anger, breathe in a different way. If a certain way of talking to yourself is aggravating the anger, learn to talk to yourself in a different way. Point out things that are equally true, but you've been ignoring consciously.

The Buddha says, when you're angry at somebody, you have to stop and think, "Okay, what good qualities do they have?" He compares it to coming across a desert; you're hot, tired, trembling with thirst. You come across a little bit of water in a cow's footprint. Now, you know, if you tried to scoop up the water, you'd get it muddy. So you have to get down on all fours and slurp it up. Now, you don't want anybody with a camera and Instagram to come along at that point. But you realize that this is what you've got to do. So there will be times when somebody you really are angry at, and you feel that it's demeaning to actually have to focus on their good points, but you realize you've got to do it. So you have to slurp up their good points in spite of that. So that would be verbal fabrication. And this is mental in terms of the perceptions. So these are some of the ways in which you redo your emotions to get past them.

Now the Buddha says to really get past them, it has to go through what he calls—he doesn't call it a five-step program, but it is a five-step program. The first step is to see: how does this particular emotion originate? How does this particular craving originate? And that means where does it come from inside the mind? You're not looking just at it arising, but you're looking at what the cause is that gives rise to it. And when the Buddha uses the word origination, samudaya in Pali, it's usually nine times out of ten something coming from within, inside you. Okay, what's inside you is giving rise to the craving.

Then also notice how it passes away. You may have craving for something for a couple of hours, but it's not a solid one-hour craving. It comes and it goes. It comes back again, it goes again. And you want to see when it goes, why did it go? When it comes back again, why did it come back?

This is where you get to the third step, which is to look for the allure. What is it about the mind that keeps drinking this up and then holding on to it again? And the allure can be either something you like about this, or it may be an emotion that you really don't like, but you feel obligated to think about it, or obligated to think in those terms. Or there's a part of your mind that is wallowing in self-pity and says, "I'll just wallow in this miserable thought." There are lots of different reasons what the allure might be. So it's not obviously something you like about it, but there's something that you feel compelled for some reason or another.

And then you look at the drawbacks. If I actually focused on this thought or this emotion for a period of time, what would happen? And you look at the drawbacks of it. This is where the three characteristics come in. So in the context of trying to figure out your attachment to a particular craving, one way of looking at the drawbacks of the thing you're craving is one, see that it's inconstant (anicca)^[3]. I prefer the translation "inconstant" to "impermanence." Because impermanence could apply, say, to mountains. Like you know the Sierras are not going to be there forever. But if you think, "I can build a house on the Sierras," it's not all that likely that it'll get torn down anytime soon. But if you realize you're living in a place where earthquakes are possible at any time, it's not a good idea to build a house. So these things that are coming into the mind, they're not reliable. That's the point that's important. They're not stable enough to depend on. If they are that unstable, then they're going to be stressful (dukkha) to move into. And when they're unstable and stressful, are they worth calling you or yours? In other words, do you really want to lay claim to them?

The Buddha doesn't come to the conclusion, "There is no self," out of this analysis. Basically, he wants you to see it's not worth holding on to. Years back I was on an interview show in France. You know, in France they have a weekly show where they interview Buddhist teachers. And the first question they asked me when they invited me to go on the show was, "Why don't you have this in America?" And I said, "I have no idea." So at any rate, they had me on a show about not-self. And so I said, the Buddha said, "Look at these things and see that they're inconstant. When they're inconstant, they're stressful. If it's inconstant and stressful, he does not come to the conclusion that there is no self." Now they were doing a simultaneous translation, which I couldn't hear, but it was recorded. And then several weeks later we got back and it came on YouTube. And they had me saying, "Buddha said, 'Okay, things are inconstant, they're stressful, therefore he comes to the conclusion there is no self.'" And I said, "Oh." That's when you really want to learn—wish I didn't do it in French.

So once you see the drawbacks outweigh the allure, that's when you feel dispassion for them, whatever it is that you're analyzing. And through the dispassion you let go. That's how you let go of craving. It has to go through that process. So that was the outline of what I wanted to say about the Second Noble Truth. Are there any questions?

Q&A: The Second Noble Truth

Question: The process you just described seems like there's a lot of cogitation involved. But in meditation instruction, we're usually just told if we're ever engaging in thought, just go back to the breath. So is this not something we're supposed to do during meditation or are we supposed to be thinking during meditation?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Okay, there are times when you say, "Look, I'm trying to get my mind concentrated, just go away and do whatever you can to get that thought out of your mind." Other times when it keeps coming back, you've got to say, "I've got to think this through a little bit, look at the drawbacks."

Question: I've heard you explain that a strategy to let go or stop clinging for sensuality is by clinging to pleasure of form or of the pleasure you can get through concentration. Is that something that's different from what you're talking about now?

Ajaan Thanissaro: If you do have that kind of pleasure that you can access, then it's a lot easier to see the drawbacks of sensuality. Greater depth of concentration and also just learning to be quicker at getting into concentration. So you can say, "Hey, there's this pleasure over here, guys. Let's go there instead. It's a lot better." But if you're talking only in theory, that there must be something better than sensuality, but I don't have any concentration yet, they're gonna say, "Come on." [Laughter]

Question: You mentioned investigating where this need or craving is arising from, like which part of the mind. Could you give an example of what those causes might be?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Well, again, if you look at the way the Buddha lines up dependent co-arising, there are a lot of different things that come before becoming, and before clinging and craving. You have these three kinds of fabrication. You have what he calls name and form, which is another way of talking about the five aggregates. And then he defines the aggregate of fabrication into attention, intention, contact. So you ask yourself, "What intentions do I have right now that are causing me to focus on this? Or how am I paying attention to something in such a way that makes this desirable or this disagreeable? Can I pay attention to other things?"

For example, just a simple thing, say somebody's always irritating you at work and there's always this irritating feeling and you just need them to behave in a different way, and that need is coming through what you're paying attention to. Now you may decide, "Okay, this person really should be behaving in a different way. But if I allow myself to be irritated, I won't be able to think of a good way for that person to behave in a different way. And I won't be able to strategize in such a way as to actually get that person to behave in a different way." So you say, "I'm going to overcome my irritation first." And then say objectively, "Okay, given where that person is coming from, what would get that person to behave in a different way?" So it allows you to step back.

Question: I have a question about meditation practice. When I usually set my timer and start to meditate, I find that I'm very restless. I'm constantly looking at the time, how much time is left. Is that restlessness the outcome of some kind of becoming?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Well, you've been engaging in different kinds of becoming and your mind is kind of bored with the becoming of meditation. And you'd like to have the meditation over as fast as possible. That's craving for non-becoming. In this case, since this—and again we're talking strategically here, the Buddha doesn't say just abandon all becoming—actually create a state of concentration, which would be a state of becoming. And learn how to say, "Okay, there's something desirable here, something I really like about this. This is why I have to focus on what kind of breathing feels really good." And then think of that whole body sensation of the breath flowing through the body. And when that does happen, tell yourself, "This feels really good. Remember this the next time you don't want to meditate." See if that helps. And also turn the timer around.

Question: Could you speak more about going from noticing the drawbacks to the allure? When you say allure, does the allure mean the same as the becoming and the non-becoming or are we trying to look at the underlying reason for that becoming?

Ajaan Thanissaro: We're trying to get to the reason underlying it, which is, what is it that you like about this? And here again it's useful to think about the committee of the mind, because there may be parts of the mind that really don't like this. But there must be something someplace that either feels justified, feels pleased, feels whatever about going for that particular kind of thought. And then once you can figure out what that is, then the whole idea is just, "Oh, this really is not worth it." When you can see the drawbacks of that, then you can let it go. You compare the drawbacks to the allure, and you realize the drawbacks really outweigh the allure. And you say, "I'm getting so little from this, and I'm spending so much." Cost-benefit analysis. [Laughter]

Question: I've been reflecting less on the drawbacks recently. I can see the value in doing that as a medicinal counterbalance. Is what you're suggesting that you do that so comprehensively and consistently that eventually the allure never comes back? Or is it just that the path requires that response as the most liberative thing you can do and you just keep doing that forever?

Ajaan Thanissaro: It's more that when the allure goes, it goes. Think of a partner you had in the past who cheated on you, and the idea of going back into that relationship, it just has no appeal anymore, because the drawbacks have made it so obvious. One of the big problems is that many times the allure is so stupid that you hide it from yourself. There's a part of you that really likes it, but it's afraid that if you really get exposed, then you'll see right through it. It's the kind that if you look at it, it goes away. And so you have to dig deep, because sometimes you say, "Okay, the allure is this, but these are the drawbacks. And the drawbacks obviously outweigh this allure, but it still doesn't work." Which means you really haven't seen the allure. So you have to ask yourself, "Okay, what else could there be in there that I like about this?"

Question: When you spoke this morning about the point where you let go of the path, I have a hard time knowing what that is or means, especially in the sense of letting go of the five clinging aggregates, and what are the five clinging aggregates of the path?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Okay, in concentration, you've got the body, you got the feeling of pleasure, you got the perception that holds the mind on that topic, you've got the fabrication (the thought and evaluation, or just the intention to stay), and then you've got the awareness of that. And you're holding on to that. And you keep holding on to that so you can let go of other attachments. And then finally when you realize, "Good, the only attachment I have left is really to this." You begin to see, "Okay, this I really have to work at." If you know you're getting better and better at it, still there's an element of fabrication that's going on. And this is when the mind inclines to what is not fabricated. And we're talking at a very advanced point of the path. So for the meantime, hold on. And then there will come a time when you say, "Okay, I have no other attachments right now, and this is the only thing. And I'd like to find something better." It's not like you say, "Okay, this weekend, samatha on Saturday, vipassana on Sunday, Sunday night, letting go of the path." It doesn't work that way. [Laughter]

Question: How do you work with thoughts where at a surface level the attachment is clear—like eating tasty pizza, just a hit of pleasure—and the downsides also feel clear, like it's irritating and annoying to constantly have a stream of thoughts break what I do?

Ajaan Thanissaro: There is a part of the mind that simply likes variety and it will take anything new. And you have to ask yourself, "Well, where has this led me in the past?" And it's probably led you to do some really stupid things. So remember that. And then say, "If I don't get some control over this right now, I'll probably do more stupid things in the future." That's one way you can think about that. But tell yourself, this is the nature of sensuality. You have one sensual pleasure, and you have it enough times you get sick of it, and then you need something else. And then after a while you get sick of that, something else, and you go back to the first pleasure. And ask, "How much can I trust this?"

You have to learn that not every voice in your mind which sounds like you really has your best interest at heart. Ajaan Lee has this great image where he says you not only have you in your body, you have all these worms and germs and other things in your intestines, in your bloodstream. As the germs go through your brain, they may just drop off a thought or two as they go past. And just because it's appearing in your brain doesn't mean it's something I really want to do. And then on top of that there are the spirits of beings that you've harmed in the past. They may be hovering around and say, "Let's see him do something stupid."

So the whole purpose of this is to get a sense of not-self around these thoughts. The fact that something comes in, goes past, you just learn how to say, "I'm not going to get disturbed by that." It's like you're sitting in a large room, there are people over there in that corner talking, but you've got work to do over here. You can pretty much shut them out. I remember just back, my brother and I were comparing notes about our childhood. He was five years older than I was. My mother would have this habit when we're sitting reading something, she would come in and start talking to us. In both of our cases we wanted to continue with the reading, but we learned pretty quickly how to listen to her tone of voice until we could say, "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm," and then we'd continue reading. So learn how to have that split in your mind. These members of the committee can be chatting, but I don't have to worry about them. That cuts through a lot of problems. It's when they say, "Hey, we've got something really cool," and then you fall for that. It takes a moment.

Question: Is attempting to develop a dispassion against the sensual fantasy non-becoming?

Ajaan Thanissaro: No. Non-becoming means you've got this sensual fantasy there, and you say, "For the time being, I will just go with craving for non-becoming. But I won't just sit there with a craving. I'll actually do something about it." Otherwise, every unskillful thought that comes in your mind lays claim. It says, "You can't chase me away because that would be craving for non-becoming. Ha." No, that doesn't work. You say, "Okay, I will put up with non-becoming for a while in order to get rid of this unskillful stuff in my mind." Because that's part of the Fourth Noble Truth. The desire to get rid of unskillful mind states is part of Right Effort.

Question: Is there a sutta precedent to this idea of playing with the breath as opposed to the path being an exclusively mental affair? Or is it that the breath as an experience is just as much a mental affair as any other khandha^[4]?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Well, the breath is actually part of form, which is the physical khandha. Now, your way of perceiving the breath, which would be the perception aggregate, can change. And the Buddha talks about learning how to breathe in a way that is sensitive to pleasure and sensitive to rapture. Now, this pleasure and rapture are not gonna happen on their own. You've gotta do something to give rise to the sense of pleasure or give rise to the sense of rapture. The Buddha doesn't go into detail on that point. In fact, if you look at the 16 steps for breath meditation, it's almost like 16 questions that you have to learn to answer. How do you breathe aware of the whole body? How do you still bodily fabrication? How do you breathe sensitive to rapture, sensitive to pleasure, sensitive to mental fabrication, calming mental fabrication? He doesn't give detailed instructions. There's another place where the Buddha says, "Okay, when the sense of pleasure arises, allow it to spread to fill the whole body. A sense of rapture arises, allow it to spread to fill the whole body." Does he say how? No. So playing with the breath is one way of filling in that blank.

Question: How can we distinguish the first and second noble truths?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Well, this is gonna be important 'cause you have to ask yourself, how am I feeding? Why am I feeding? There must be hunger someplace. So look at your mind's feeding habits. Of course, when you're sitting and eating a meal, it's different. Sometimes you can't tell which part is the hunger and which part is the actual eating. But you ask yourself, "If I stopped eating, which part of me would say, 'Hey, eat some more?'" That's how you make a distinction.

Question: I find myself in the state that when my mind doesn't want to stay in the meditation, I try to bring something interesting, like I turn on some chanting or start doing metta meditation or meditation on body parts. Is it okay to bribe the mind in this way?

Ajaan Thanissaro: How else are you going to get it to behave? So yeah, go ahead and bribe it. [Laughter]

Question: Is the pleasure of jhāna^[5] the same as the delight that you referred to earlier this morning?

Ajaan Thanissaro: The pleasure of jhāna is basically the sense of real ease that you feel inside the body as the mind settles down. And then there's the ease that comes when the mind is allowed to rest. And the delight would be talking to yourself, "Well, isn't this cool?" Now, you don't want to talk about how cool it is so much that you actually destroy it, but just kind of remind yourself, this is really, really nice. That would be the delight.

Question: Feeling insecure and afraid can trigger craving for security and searching for something that can make me feel safe and happy. Is that an example of becoming?

Ajaan Thanissaro: It depends on how you act on it. It would be desiring a state of becoming—a state which is more stable and more secure. That can either be skillful or unskillful, depending on where you look for your security. If you look for your security and say, "Okay, well, the Buddha says if I'm actually going to be secure I have to follow his path of practice." That's actually a skillful use of that state of becoming. If you're trying to find security by bombing other countries, that is very unskillful.

Question: Is the identifying of oneself of having a disease or illness, the labeling, as distinct from the awareness of becoming on the level of sensuality? Is it something to be overcome or just noticed?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Labeling yourself as diseased is not a helpful label. You have the actual disease, that would be the state of becoming you're in. But saying, "I am that, that's the totality of what I am," that's gonna be an unskillful label. So remind yourself, "Okay, I have these other potentials as well that are not diseased. Let's focus on those."

Question: There are some other bhikkhus who really emphasize enduring, and they would interpret vitakka and vicāra as something more like directed attention. I just wonder what the interplay between khanti (patient endurance) and these fabrications is in the meditation.

Ajaan Thanissaro: Well, the trick to endurance is you don't just sit there gritting your teeth. You're going to have to tell yourself that it's okay, this is worth doing. And then you think about where your strengths are right now. If endurance gave you awakening, chickens would have awakened a long time ago. But it's the fact that you're enduring the pain, but also realizing, "I don't have to make myself suffer because of this pain." The Buddha basically said that the ideal relationship to pain is that it does not invade your mind and remain. Now, why does it invade your mind? The pain itself is not invading your mind. Your perceptions are going out to label the pain as "mine" and pulling it in. You have to see that process. So that requires discernment.

Now there are many ways that you can get the mind ready to apply discernment that way. And one of them is to give rise to a sense of pleasure. That you know, "Okay, if things get really bad with that pain, I don't have to suffer from it. I can step out for a while and rest." 'Cause otherwise you're just fighting, fighting, fighting. In Ajaan Maha Boowa's analogy, you've got a knife and you keep cutting, cutting, cutting, and it gets dull. You've got to stop, sharpen it, and then come back and start cutting again. The stopping and sharpening would be the concentration. You've got to have that sense of well-being to keep it going. And that's what allows the endurance to really endure.

Question: I've been having a problem lately where things will really start to settle down and the breath starts to feel really calm and just feels good. But then there's this thought like, "Hey, I'm finally doing it." It's almost like when I learned how to ride a bike and I realized, "Oh, I'm riding." And then I just crash.

Ajaan Thanissaro: Okay, you've got to learn how to... "Okay, that sentence went through my mind." Let that sentence go and go back to right where you were. Drop the sentence and then go back to where you were.

Question: What is the cost-benefit analysis for long-term retreats, especially multi-week ones?

Ajaan Thanissaro: I would say, give yourself two weeks, get the mind settled down, and then see if you can carry that back into your life. 'Cause beyond that, you're getting the mind into a kind of a hothouse environment where whatever blossoms in the mind is not gonna survive the outside world. So you wanna say, "I wanna give the mind time enough to be by itself to get to know itself, and then see how much I can carry that into daily life." If it starts falling apart, take another two-week retreat. These three-month retreats, the benefits go down, down, down, as it progresses.

The Third Noble Truth

Okay, the Third Noble Truth is to abandon the three types of craving, which you do, as I said, by looking at the processes that would lead to becoming. First, you have to tackle craving for sensuality. A lot of people say, "Well, why don't we just go straight through and get rid of becoming, and sensuality will take care of itself?" It doesn't work that way. Partly because a lot of our craving for sensuality is based around becoming in a really blatant form. I'll give you an example from the Pali Canon.

There's a famous verse in the Therīgāthā where a nun who is a non-returner is going through the woods, and this guy comes up to her and propositions her. He says, "Why are you wasting yourself as a nun? Come on, come with me." And he doesn't talk much about sex. What he talks about is, "What a beautiful woman you will be. I will provide you with all these clothings. I'll provide you with all these servants. I'll provide you with this wonderful house. You will be like a golden doll as you live in this beautiful environment." So he's talking about a state of becoming for her. And that is supposed to appeal to her. Now, fortunately, she's a non-returner and she sees right through it.

What's interesting is there's a translation of this piece by Ed Walderman in which he is a real klutz. Comes up with, "Hey baby, you're really cool, let's go have sex." Like no woman in her right mind would go for that, right? What makes it interesting is that he's got the best poetic lines in the whole Pali Canon. Talking about the beauty of the forest, "but the forest is a dangerous place, you know, and I can provide you with the same." And then he describes all this stuff in very poetic language. The fact that she can see through that, that's what makes it really interesting, number one. Number two, she asks him, "What is this in this ugly body that you see that's attractive?" And she goes through a kind of analysis of the unattractiveness of the body. He says, "Your eyes." And she says, "Oh, come on. This little ball of liquids, lots of mucus and all this other stuff. You want that?" He says, "I just love your eyes." And she says, "Okay, have one." And he says, "Oh, I'm sorry." But that shows the connection between becoming and sensuality. And you've got to attack sensuality first.

So we're abandoning the three kinds of craving. And the Buddha describes this as the remainderless dispassion, cessation, giving away, giving back, release, lack of nostalgia for those cravings. In other words, you are totally dropping them. You've seen through them and they have no more appeal anymore whatsoever. There's no need for any nostalgia for the great pleasures you had in the past. "I'm done." Now this is not just accepting things as they are, not being "okay" with craving. Sometimes you hear that: "If you're okay with the cravings, then they don't cause suffering anymore." As if your only problem is your neurosis. No. You realize, "Okay, I just have no more craving for these things." It's also not identical with the knowing, because that is a type of becoming. Also, the goal is not identical with the path. You totally lose interest in those forms of craving.

You have to make a distinction between the realization of nibbana, which has to be realized, and nibbana itself. Because the realization of nibbana is a phenomenon. It's something that the mind knows as an object. But then it goes into nibbana, and there are no objects there at all. The realization of nirvana is something that should be done. Nirvana itself has no duties. You're totally beyond. This is a point that Ajaan Mun made, and it's supported by the Canon.

The Buddha often will use the image of fire. Back in those days, fire was considered to be an element that existed in all things. And to start a fire, you actually were provoking the fire element. You take a fire stick and you rub, rub, rub, and then the fire. That provokes the fire element. When the fire element gets provoked, it latches onto its fuel. And the word actually they use is the same word for clinging (upādāna). It clings to its fuel, feeds off the fuel. It's in a state of agitation and heat. When it goes out, it lets go. And when it lets go, then it's freed.

So the analogy for the mind here is that it's the fact that you are stuck on your aggregates. It's not that the aggregates are clinging to you. You're clinging to the aggregates and that's why you're not free. So you have to be the one to let go. Also the Buddha says, "When a fire goes out like that, you can't describe it as having gone east, west, north, or south." In the same way, the person who has been released that way cannot be described as existing, non-existing, both, or neither. That's because people are defined by their clingings and their cravings. When they have no clingings or cravings or attachments, you can't define them. When you can't define them, you can't talk about them. But the image they give is being like the ocean, totally immeasurable.

However, nibbāna is described, and it is. It exists. And it is, the Buddha says, beyond the realm of language. It is described through metaphors and comparisons. It's got five qualities altogether. The Buddha has many names for nibbana. There are at least twenty-some altogether, if not more. And what they all have in common is five characteristics. One is that it is a form of consciousness. You're not blanking out, and you don't go into nothingness. Because after all, the Buddha said you can't be described as non-existing. It's consciousness without an object. That's the first characteristic. The second characteristic is that it's true. It doesn't change. It's not deceptive. Third, it is blissful. Sometimes you hear the goal of the path is equanimity. That's not the case. Nibbana is the highest happiness. The quality that's most emphasized is a sense of freedom. In fact, that's what nibbana basically means. It's been unbound. And then the fifth one is that it's hot stuff. It's really excellent. It's the best thing there is. So those are the comparisons that the Buddha gives you to give an idea of what nibbana is. As I said, he can't really describe it through language because language is fabricated, whereas nibbana is not. But he wants to make sure that you have the sense that it's something very, very positive. If you have any idea that there's any regret for someone who's gone into nibbana or there's any suffering or anything, that's wrong view. It's total, unadulterated bliss. So that's the Third Noble Truth.

Q&A: The Third Noble Truth

Question: You just explained about Nibbana. How do you compare that to stream entry?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Stream entry is your first taste of Nibbana. But you hit it and there's a strong sense of delight. And that delight is what keeps you from totally experiencing it. 'Cause you view it as an object and you cling to it. There's some passage in the Canon where the Buddha says, if you let go of the five aggregates, incline your mind to the Deathless, either you go to Arahantship, or there is some passion or delight for the Deathless, in which case you don't fully go there.

Question: So that means you have some fetters but you drop some fetters?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Well, what happens is after coming back from your first taste of the Deathless, you realize one, there were no aggregates in that experience. Two, you got there through your own efforts and not through just... and so you have to be very careful about what you do because otherwise it's going to delay your full experience. Which is why you're no longer clinging to precepts and practices. And then finally, you have no doubt about what the Buddha taught. You say, "This is it. I found it." So you don't drop the fetters first and then gain stream entry. You gain stream entry first and then the fetters get caught by that experience.

Question: My question is how to relate with nibbana like how you described it. How I tried to associate with the idea is like if I can just let go in the moment and have like a very brief momentary nibbana with whatever I was clinging to. Does that work for a lay person?

Ajaan Thanissaro: I wouldn't call it nibbana. Okay, this is what's good about letting go. Maybe the time will come when I learn how to let go totally. It must be really, really good. But it's not a nibbana yet, please.

Question: Related to nibbana, would you then say that it's sort of the opposite of the three characteristics? So that nirvana is constant and peaceful, right? No suffering. And what would be then the inverse of not-self?

Ajaan Thanissaro: The fact that neither self nor not-self applies. It's transcendent of that. So that question just gets put aside. There was a controversy back in Thailand, back in the 1990s. There was a kind of a cult that developed in Bangkok, and they came out with the teaching that Nibbana is your true self. And then a lot of scholarly monks said, "No, no, no, no, it's impossible. Nibbana is not your true self. Nibbana is not-self." And it actually got into the newspapers. You can imagine the San Francisco Chronicle running articles on whether Nibbana is self or not-self. And so someone finally took the question to Ajaan Maha Boowa. He said, "Is Nibbana self or is it not-self?" And he said, "Nibbana is Nibbana." And he says, "If you try to call it self or not-self, it's like you've got something really pure and you're putting excrement all over it." He says you use the perception of not-self to learn how to let go of things. But that's part of the path. When you hit nibbana, you go beyond the path.

Question: Is it possible for a lay person to be completely free? The texts say that if you're a lay person and you become an arahant, you have to become ordained within seven days or you die. This is the commentary.

Ajaan Thanissaro: But cases in the canon where people become arahants, it does occur that they want to ordain right away. The case of someone dying after seven days, it appears in the commentary, it's about the Buddha's father. He becomes an arahant, he's already sick, he's on his deathbed basically, and dies a week later. Now whether he died because he became an arahant or because he was sick, that I can't tell you.

Question: Sometimes when I look at why I am hungry or why I am feeding, I feel a lot of time it's just pure boredom. And I feel like my concentration is not strong enough to get pleasure. And because I'm bored, I constantly keep on going back to my old habits. So is there something that I didn't do about it?

Ajaan Thanissaro: I would say try to work on your concentration. Say, "What would feel really, really good right now? Which spots in my body are lacking breath energy? What kind of breath energy would they want?" And see if you can provide that. So always have that question in mind. There's always something to do in the meditation so you don't get bored. And same in real life. This is when you have to avoid yourself with another topic of interest. Because, you know, if I go to this topic of interest, I'm going to do something unskillful. So find an alternative topic of interest to keep yourself occupied. This is why meditation is not just being with the present moment or just being with the breath. You can think about the qualities of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. You can think about your generosity in the past. You can think about your virtue in the past. Do you think about death? That's a good conversation to enter. Mind wants to start chatting, say, "I could die. Do I want to die in the middle of this chatter?" [Laughter] And it's okay to create a healthy sense of self in that way, thinking about all that.

Question: Attachment often seems to be within my body and less a function of thought. How can I get there is often unclear. How can I meditate with this skillfully?

Ajaan Thanissaro: This attachment really is a mental phenomenon and may have its physical correlate in a sense of a certain feeling of dis-ease in the body that comes about as a result of the mental activity. Or there is a sense of discomfort in the body and the mind immediately interprets it in a certain way: "I feel ill of sorts. I need a drug." So you've got this association that you will get out of that feeling through an unskillful means. So what you've got to do is think, "Okay, I've got this attachment here in the body. What would be a more skillful way of getting past it?" This is where you have to expand your repertoire and also expand your imagination as to what you can do. Because a lot of addiction is just that, a lack of imagination.

The Fourth Noble Truth

Okay, I think we've got to move on. Fourth Noble Truth. I can't go through all the eight factors of the path in 20 minutes, but I will tell you a few general things. The Fourth Noble Truth is to be developed. The Buddha uses the image of the path because we're trying to get to something that is unfabricated. You cannot cause the unfabricated, but you can get there. The image they use, not in the canon, but in the Milindapañha, is you have a mountain. You've got a road that goes to the mountain. Now the road does not cause the mountain, and walking along the road does not cause the mountain, but walking along the road will get you there. This is the image the Buddha uses.

And as I said earlier, the path is not the goal. I heard a Dharma talk a couple of years back, where someone was saying, "Well, the path is kind of like this path around a jetty. You go around and around and around and never arrive at an end." I think this person's path is really bad. It does go someplace.

There are eight factors. The Buddha divides them into three main headings. There's the heading of discernment, which is Right View and Right Resolve. The heading of virtue, which is Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood. And the heading of concentration, which is Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration. Now this is a point that has to be emphasized. Sometimes you hear—in fact I know someone who actually said it—that there are two alternative paths. There's the six-fold path of the first five factors plus Right Mindfulness. And then there's a seven-fold path: the first five factors plus Right Effort, Right Concentration. That was not the Buddha. For him, you start with Right Effort, which is the effort to give rise to the desire to develop skillful qualities if they're not there. And then if they are there, to try to develop them. The desire to prevent unskillful qualities from arising, or if they have arisen, the effort to get rid of them. And there has to be the desire to get rid of them, followed by the effort. That's Right Effort.

When he defines Right Mindfulness, Right Mindfulness is two activities. One is keeping something in mind. And then the second activity is putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Now the Buddha talks about this keeping in mind. He'll describe it as keeping track of the body in and of itself, or keeping track of feelings, or mind, or mental qualities in and of themselves. The "in and of themselves" means that you're looking at the body, say, not in terms of its position in the world. In other words, "Do I look good to other people? Is my body strong enough to do the work that has to be done in the world?" It's simply the body as you've got it, you're experiencing it. And then you put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. I mean, this is a description of concentration practice. You've got your one topic and you put aside all other thoughts.

And then you bring three qualities to it. One is mindfulness, which is the ability to keep something in mind. Second is alertness (sampajañña), knowing what you're doing, why you're doing it, and also seeing the results you're getting from what you're doing. And then the third quality is ardency, which is basically Right Effort that's brought inside Right Mindfulness. There's a passage where the Buddha says that the duty of Right Mindfulness is to keep in mind the fact that you want to abandon unskillful qualities and develop skillful qualities. There's another passage where he talks about mindfulness as a governing principle in your mind in which you are mindful to give rise to skillful qualities that are not there. Once they are there, you remember to try to develop them. So you're not just watching things coming and going. There are certain things you want to make come and to keep from going. This is what you keep in mind.

When I talk about the word "sampajañña," which I translate as alertness, the commentaries define that as seeing things in terms of the three characteristics. And this is not in the canon. In the canon, when they talk about alertness, it's just being aware of what you're doing while you're doing it. And you know when someone's giving an argument that it's really weak when they get snide. And the commentary gets snide on this point. It says, "It cannot possibly mean knowing what you're doing while you're doing it. Even babies sucking at their mother's breasts know what they're doing while they're doing it. Even jackals howling at the moon know what they're doing while they're doing it." I say, "I don't think so." The canon describes it as just knowing what you're doing while you're doing it.

So mindfulness on its own is not necessarily skillful. Alertness is not necessarily skillful. You can keep lots of things in mind. You can be alert to what you're doing, all kinds of things. But what makes it skillful is the Right Effort, the ardency, trying to abandon whatever is unskillful there and trying to develop what's skillful. And it's in doing this that you get the mind into Right Concentration. The Buddha says that these themes of the establishings of mindfulness, those are the themes of Right Concentration. And it's in the fourth jhāna that mindfulness gets purified. So for him, they're not two really distinct practices. It's mindfulness when it gets really good, turns right into Right Concentration.

Now the path, as I said, has a duty. It turns out it has a double duty. First you develop it, then you abandon it. And the image the Buddha gives is the raft. You take the raft across the river. And what is the raft made of? It's made out of trees on this side of the river. You're not waiting for the Nibbana yacht to come pick you up. Otherwise it's not like your innate nature is going to awaken you. You've got to put together what you got, the five aggregates that we've talked about: form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs (or fabrications), and consciousness. You put those together into your raft. You hold on tight so you don't get swept away by the river. And you make your way across. Then when you've gotten across, you don't just dump the raft. You either sink it or you put a part of it on land. But the Buddha says, first you think about what a good raft this was. You appreciate it. But now that you don't need it anymore, you leave it in case someone else needs it.

Some of the misunderstandings you get about the path are, one, that the path must resemble the goal. In other words, "the goal is effortless, so we will have an effortless path." "The goal is equanimous, so we'll just practice equanimity." Someone actually called this the practice of being awake. You don't practice being awake. You practice the path. You develop the path.

Now the Buddha lists two ways of developing the factors. One is sequentially. You start with Right View and work through Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, and so forth to the end of Right Concentration. The other way he describes it is that for each factor of the path, you have Right View, Right Mindfulness, and Right Effort hovering around them. Right View is what recognizes what is the right version of that path factor and what is the wrong version of that path factor. Right Mindfulness is what keeps this in mind. And Right Effort is actually what does the work to develop the right factor and let go of the wrong factor. In both cases, Right View comes first because you have to have a good comprehension of why you're doing this so you can do it well.

So that's a quick tour of the Fourth Noble Truth. Any questions?

Q&A: The Fourth Noble Truth

Question: I listened to a previous talk that you gave here and you mentioned that you can attain stream entry from any jhāna, which really surprised me, because I thought your mind had to be very still in order to attain stream entry. How is it possible to attain stream entry from the first jhāna?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Okay, you'd have to have someone who was really, really sharp who was able to do that, because the Buddha said it could be through any of the jhānas or the formless states. Now, some people are really, really quick. They see the first jhāna and they realize, "Okay, I'm doing this fabrication here. This is a burden on the mind," and they let go of the directed thought and evaluation. And instead of going into the second jhāna, they go to awakening. Other people have to go further up before the mind is quiet enough. So it's not the case that you got to choose, "Hmm, which door do I want?" [Laughter] You try this door, it's locked. You try this door, it's locked. You find the one that you can get through.

Question: I don't quite understand the terms I've heard before about a mundane path and a supramundane path. Is there any real significant difference?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Okay, the mundane path is what gets you to a good rebirth. And the supramundane path is what gets you to the transcendent. Now the big difference is in Right View and Right Resolve. Right View in the mundane path is basically the belief in skillful karma, unskillful karma, rebirth, those issues. Right View in the supramundane path would be Right View in terms of the Four Noble Truths. Right Resolve in terms of the mundane path is resolving to get the mind free from sensuality, from ill will, and from harmfulness. Right Resolve on the supramundane path is to get the mind into the first jhāna. Those are the differences. Majjhima 117 explains that.

Question: My question is about meditation practice. When the object of meditation is body sensations, then how does one practice sampajañña because the sensations are kind of happening on their own?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Notice when the Buddha talks about sensation in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, he lists: first there's pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. And then there's what he calls pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain, not of the flesh. Now those are feelings that are actually actively cultivated. Pain, not of the flesh, is when you think to yourself about the fact that, okay, there is this path to the end of suffering. Other people have gone all the way to the end of suffering. I'm not there yet. That's a pain. Pleasure, not of the flesh, is the pleasures of the first, second, and third jhāna.

Now, when the Buddha talks about taking pleasure as an object of mindfulness, he has you base it on the breath. If you look at Majjhima 118, he talks about how when you're working with the breath, you've actually got all the other frames of reference there. Feelings are there. Mind states are there. Mental qualities are there. Stay rooted in the breath to make sure you're in the present moment. And then notice the coming and going of feelings. And you don't just say, "Feelings come willy-nilly." You're trying to give rise to a sense of pleasure not of the flesh. Or equanimity not of the flesh. So think in those terms.

Question: When you read the Thai Ajaans, they give a really big emphasis to not get lost in the theoretical knowledge. Especially in meditation, sometimes I just get caught up in thinking about the concepts, and then I jump from meditation topic to meditation topic. What's a good way of preventing that?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Well, remind yourself that when you're doing jhāna, the topic is not jhāna. The topic is the breath. And how you're relating to the breath. A lot of the theories are in the background so that when you come out, you can think to yourself, "Well, where was I? What was I doing? If something was going wrong, what could I possibly be doing wrong?" We tend to think about the forest Ajaans being kind of rough and ready with no theoretical background. They had a good theoretical background. It's just that they didn't wear it around all the time. But when you're out in the forest alone, and something's going wrong with your mind, you've got to run through what you have already learned about the Dhamma to see, "Okay, could this possibly be wrong, or is it right?" It's asking questions about direct experience. There's a passage where the Buddha says that the Dhamma is nourished through commitment and reflection. When you really commit to doing it, and then you come out from that, you reflect: "Okay, what were the results? If the results were not satisfactory, what could I change?"

Question: Define/describe clinging with an example for the aggregates, please.

Ajaan Thanissaro: Okay, clinging to a particular feeling. This means you want to have that feeling come back, back, back, back, back, back, again, again, again. Clinging to a particular perception would be, "Okay, I really like this perception and regardless of whether it's getting me good results or not, I'm just really going to hold on."

Question: Is concentration practice essential? Does it work if we skip concentration practice and just observe what's happening in the six sense fields?

Ajaan Thanissaro: The Buddha said that Right Concentration is part of the path. And as he said, there is nothing extraneous, nothing lacking in the path. So you've gotta have concentration. Now, the big issue is how concentration is defined. If you look at the canon, concentration is defined one way, you look at the commentaries, it's defined in another way entirely. And it's in the commentaries that they say concentration, or jhāna, is not necessary. But then their concentration is really, really strong trance states. So they're right that that is not necessary. And so maybe there's some people who actually got into jhāna and didn't realize it was jhāna because they were suffering under the perceptions of the commentary. When you look at the suttas and what the Buddha describes in the suttas, that concentration is necessary.

Question: Could you please recap the key takeaway from the third truth?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Third truth is the total abandoning of craving. And it's not just watching craving come and go. Like, "Gee, wasn't that interesting? But now I'm past it." You have to figure out why you are attached to the craving so that you can give it no more room, so that you will not be interested in it again.

Question: What is the feeling we feel in the body? Is it the feeling aggregate? If not, what is the difference between the feeling aggregate and the body feeling?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Feeling aggregate is a sense of pleasure or pain, neither pleasure nor pain. The form aggregate would be the four elements of the body. So say you feel heat in the body. That would be the form. Now the pleasure or pain that you associate with that, that would be the feeling aggregate.

Question: What is the aspect, if any, of the relationships in Nibbana? It sounds sort of lonely being blissed out all alone. Can you communicate with others in Nibbana?

Ajaan Thanissaro: [Laughter] Well, for one thing, you're outside of space and time. So there is no time where you say, "Gee, this is getting long in the tooth." There's no time. There's no space. And the other thing is, what would you wanna communicate? [Laughter] You say, "Hey, isn't this really cool?" I mean, that would be delight. You don't need delight. It's so totally satisfactory that you don't need to comment to other people. I highly recommend the book The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. There's a scene in there where two of the characters are stuck on the planet Mercury. Vonnegut's vision of the planet Mercury is this big crystal... you've got these little beings called harmoniums, and they feed off of the vibrations. They don't feed off of one another; they feed off of any other living being. And they have two messages that they send telepathically to one another: "Here I am, here I am, here I am." And the other one is, "So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are." My feeling is, if Kurt Vonnegut can think of a place where people can live without feeding... But Nirvana, there's nothing lacking. There's no need to communicate.

Question: Could you please speak more about what should be our focus at the time of death?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Okay, you should focus on whatever state of concentration you've been able to attain so far. And if an issue comes up about where to be reborn, if you're not going to become an arahant, then the question is, can I be reborn in a place where I can continue practicing the Dhamma? And don't fall for the first thing that appears. I had an electrocution experience one time... all of a sudden these doors opened up in front of me where I could go through any of the doors. And I was telling myself, "No, I don't want to go through any doors." And then the electric current stopped. So don't go for the first door that opens. Two, just because something looks attractive doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be good. Make sure that you're firm in your desire: "I want to practice. I want to go where I can practice the true Dhamma." So we've got a break. Break for 20 minutes.

The Context of the Four Noble Truths

You may remember the framework I mentioned this morning. You start with the desire to understand suffering and looking for someone who can help you find the way out. The Buddha recommends to find a good teacher. There are ways of testing the teacher. Is the teacher the kind of person who would get people to do things that were not in their own best interest? Would he or she claim to know things that he or she didn't know? Does the person actually have knowledge? When the person passes the test, you listen to the Dhamma. Basically the Four Noble Truths, as we discussed it. Then the next steps are how you go from listening to the Dhamma to awakening to the Dhamma.

The Buddha lists in Majjhima 95, five steps. First there's pondering what you've heard. Then there's desire, willingness, judgment, and then exertion. And it's through the exertion that you finally awaken to the truth. I'd like to go over some of those steps.

Pondering means basically comparing what you've learned with views that you already have, and seeing where your pre-existing views might get in the way of the practice. And if there's a conflict between the two, ask: which set of views, the Buddha's views, or your previous views, makes more sense, which seems to induce more skillful behavior? And ask, "Why would you hold on to them when the Dhamma promises the possibility of an ultimate happiness?" The Buddha gives you a couple of examples. One is not believing in karma and rebirth. The Buddha says, "Ask yourself, if you believed in karma and rebirth, would you be more likely or less likely to behave in a skillful way?" If you see it holding, the idea that there was a possibility of rebirth and it would be influenced by your actions, you would be more likely to want to do skillful things.

There's another case where the Buddha mentions believing in the possible ending of becoming, as opposed to not believing that becoming could end. He says, "Since you really don't know yet, why choose the alternative that would close off the possibility of ultimate happiness?" When ultimate happiness is a possibility, you're not sure about it yet, but take it on as a working hypothesis. Try it on, and see what happens as a result. So this is an aspect of pondering. There's also the aspect of listening to different Dhamma teachings, and you try to put them into the context of the Four Noble Truths.

When you've finally arrived at the path you wanna follow, then there has to be some desire to do it. Here, this is the role of desire as Right Effort. You say, "I really want to do this. It means I'm going to have to make some sacrifices, but it's going to be worth it." Again, it's kind of like psyching yourself up. The definition for Right Effort starts with generating desire to get rid of unskillful qualities and generating desire to develop skillful qualities. It requires you to know how to motivate yourself. You can use thoughts of heedfulness: that if I don't get my practice together it's going to be for my long-term harm. You think about compassion. If I practice, I will be a kinder person. At the very least, people will be less subject to my greed, aversion, and delusion. Whatever way works to foster desire in your path, motivate yourself.

Then there's a willingness to submit yourself to the Buddha's teachings, meaning you're gonna take the Buddha's teachings as your measure for what you should and shouldn't do. And then there's judgment, which is where you test yourself and test the Dhamma at the same time.

I'd like to make a short digression here. We hear so much about developing a non-judgmental state of mind. And yet so much of the Buddha's teachings are about developing skillful powers of judgment. The Buddha said that his prime responsibility as a teacher was to provide you with the basis for deciding what would be skillful and what would be unskillful to do. That's judgment right there. Where does the idea of Buddhism being portrayed as advocating non-judgment come from? One comes from our own cultural bias, from the Romantics going through the Transcendentalists and through modern humanistic psychology, that passing judgment is an unskillful thing. Secondly, there's a misunderstanding of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. The sutta is giving only a partial description of mindfulness. In the rest of the canon, when the Buddha talks about alertness, ardency, putting aside greed and distress, there are very active processes to get rid of unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones. So it's misreading the sutta that gets the idea that maybe the Buddha was telling you not to judge.

And then finally, there's an emphasis on equanimity. The Buddha doesn't say just be equanimous about whatever. There's what I call Mindfulness 1.0, which is his instructions to his seven-year-old son, which is make your mind like earth. People put disgusting things on the earth. The earth doesn't react. You start out with a non-reactive state of mind. Not to stay with a non-reactive state of mind, but just so you have a good, solid basis for judging what you're doing. Your mind is stable enough so you can judge, "This is good. This is bad." When the Buddha does talk about equanimity further on, he says there's basically household equanimity and renunciate equanimity. Renunciate equanimity comes when you have practiced jhāna or when you have developed insight and there's a strong sense of joy that comes with that. From that joy, then you become equanimous about other things. This is equanimity not just based on willpower, but based on an experience of joy. In other words, your own internal needs are being met, so you can be more equanimous about what is happening outside.

In terms of judgment, just the fact that the Four Noble Truths say, "Hey, there's stress and there's not stress. There's a difference. One is better than the other." And then he gives you the duties with regard to that. The three perceptions are basically perceptions of seeing why you don't want to latch on to something. It's a part of evaluating judgment. I am always amazed when I hear people say, "Well, you know, these three characteristics, they're not judging things. They're just a statement of fact." You are passing judgment. Is this worth holding on to? And then the next step is to actually make the change. That's the exertion, as you develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones.

And so you don't just go through this series of pondering, desire, willingness, judgment, exertion one time. It's a constant process. Keep delighting in the results as you get results from the path. You know, "I'm making some progress. This is a good thing." Especially don't compare yourself with other people, but you say, "Hey, my concentration is getting better from what it used to be." That's skillful. I'm heading in the right direction. This strengthens your desire.

And what are you going to learn from the practice? The Buddha talks about discernment coming in three levels. There's the discernment that comes from listening. The discernment that comes from thinking things through. And then finally, there's the discernment that comes from developing the good qualities. As you get experience in developing more, getting better at virtue, getting better at concentration, getting better at discernment, you learn some things that are not there in the text. For instance, you learn about the role of clinging in the path. You learn how to use right views, right habits and practices, and a healthy sense of self.

The views that the Buddha recommends ignore many of the questions about the world that people ordinarily ask. The Buddha focuses on the right view about karma, so that you can understand what the potential is for action. He was very critical of people who taught that your present actions did not have an impact on your present experience. You have to believe that you have some role in shaping your present moment right now. As for your sense of self, the Buddha never gives a full-blown sense of what a healthy self would be, aside from believing that you are capable of doing the path. You are responsible for it. And you will benefit from doing it.

And then finally as to habits and practices. You learn details about how you practice concentration, how you bring your mind down. You don't wait to the end of concentration and then do insight. As you're getting the mind to settle down, you run into problems. And as you learn to work your way around the problems, you're gaining insight there.

Another thing you learn from doing the practice is you see how the path targets the three types of clinging. It's the discernment group, Right View and Right Resolve, that focus on events leading to becoming. The concentration group gives you a new alternative to pain, to gladden the mind along the path, so that you have energy to do it. And it gives you an alternative to sensuality. "I need some pleasure. I need some way of relaxing." Instead of turning to videos or music, "How about, shoop, comes on first jhāna?" [Laughter] It's a much more skillful alternative.

At the same time, when you're working on concentration, the concentration itself is made out of aggregates. So if you want to understand clinging aggregates, the best way to understand aggregates is to do something good with them. The steadiness that's provided by concentration enables you to see subtle movements in the mind that you wouldn't have seen otherwise.

The virtue groups are there basically to give a good solid foundation for the concentration. You're going to need to be really honest with yourself about the mind. So the best way to learn how to be honest about the mind is to start by being really honest about your behavior.

As I said earlier, you develop the path to the point where you finally have to abandon it. How do you do that? When an insight comes, you have to be really quick not to latch onto the insight. Ajaan Fuang's commentary always was, "An insight arises in the practice. Ask yourself, 'How can I apply this right now?'" And if you don't see any application for it right now, drop it. Otherwise you just spend your time collecting insights, but without any real use for them. Upasika Kee Nanayon recommends that when an insight comes, just watch for the state of mind that immediately follows it, and be quick to drop that, too. Ajaan Lee says, when you get an insight, ask yourself, to what extent could the opposite be true?

One of the big issues in insight is going to be the three characteristics, because it's very easy to misuse those three perceptions. "I sweep up the garbage, there's going to be more coming the next day. So it's just anicca. It's inconstant. So why bother?" That's a misuse of inconstancy. Or "everything is not-self, so I can do anything I want, right? Who's going to be responsible?"

Finally you awaken to the truth. You go beyond clinging to views, not through willing it, but you use the views until you get there. The raft has done its job. You're on the shore. Then you put the raft down. You achieve the reality. When you get to the goal, as far as you're concerned, the weeds and the stones can come back on the path. But then you look back and you see other people are struggling on the path. And so you do what you can to come back and sweep things off for them.

So that's the context for the Four Noble Truths. You start out with the question: "Is there anyone who knows a way to put an end to suffering?" The Buddha recommends you find a trustworthy, compassionate, and knowledgeable person. You listen to that person's Dhamma. Then you ponder what you've learned, you develop a willingness, you use judgment, you exert yourself in terms of Right Effort. And then you finally awaken to the truth. And in awakening to the truth, you get to the point where you are beyond the need for the words anymore.

Q&A: The Context of the Four Noble Truths

Question: Until one reaches nibbana, would you apply this same process or cycle to each object or person that you interact with? For example, if I'm teaching a fifth grader, I haven't achieved nibbana, but maybe this person has something to tell me that enlightens me. And at a certain point I can let go of the conversation. Is that the correct way to apply?

Ajaan Thanissaro: In this particular case, if you're suffering from your contact with your student, you have to ask, "Why am I suffering? What am I clinging to? What am I craving?" Now they do say the wisdom that comes from the mouths of babes. Prepare for that, that the kid will have some insight. But you're not looking to the kid for the same kind of insight that you would get from a teacher.

Question: You spoke a little bit about the corruption of the three perceptions into the three characteristics. Did it pop up in the commentaries? Is it still present today?

Ajaan Thanissaro: It's very much present today. It seems to have originated in the time of the commentary. Because it's only there that you actually have the term "three characteristics." In the canon, there's no mention of three characteristics at all. There are three perceptions that you apply. The commentary brings it in and makes a big deal out of it. Part of this comes from a tendency in the development of universities. When you develop universities, you have to have curricula. And if you're going to present Buddhist doctrine in a syllabus, you have to figure out, where do we start? And you see some textbooks that start with the five aggregates and the three characteristics. This is the nature of reality. The Four Noble Truths get placed quite a bit later. What this means in practice is the idea that ignorance is not seeing things in terms of the three characteristics. You don't see the reality that there is no self. And somehow if you saw that there was no self, then you'd be okay.

Question: Are there any current popular meditation techniques that still embody the three characteristics as a tool?

Ajaan Thanissaro: The forest tradition talks about it as a tool. Ajaan Lee, I think more than anybody else, talks about the dangers of jumping into the three characteristics too quickly. Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about the perception of self and perception of not-self as tools.

Question: Once you awaken, do you ever fall back asleep? What happens after that?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Once you've attained nibbana, you've attained it. You don't lose it. You step out of space and time, and there's no "after" in space and time. But the arahant who's still alive after Nirvana, they can choose to live their lives in line with the fact that they no longer have any greed, aversion, and delusion.

Question: How about being a Bodhisattva? Does that come up?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Once you're an arahant, you're an arahant. It's not like you say, "Do I want to go for a postgraduate degree?"

Question: There's a connection between the Dhamma and dependent origination. I haven't heard you talk about dependent origination, even though I think it's part of the second noble truth.

Ajaan Thanissaro: It's definitely a more detailed version of the second and the third noble truth. It traces back: where does this craving for becoming come from? And he traces it back to ignorance. And what nourishes ignorance now is the five hindrances. So that's where the work has to be done. It's kind of a non-linear system with lots of feedback loops. There's a book I wrote on this called The Shape of Suffering.

Question: How many lay people do you know who have attained stream entry personally?

Ajaan Thanissaro: I'm really convinced of two. [Laughter] One of them was an architect, the other was a housewife. I mean, sometimes you hear, if you really see that things arise and pass away, that's it. And I said, no. The phrase they say is the Dhamma eye, which is that everything that is subject to origination is subject to passing away. To what state of mind would that thought just naturally occur? It would have to be someone who's experienced something that is not originated and doesn't pass away.

Question: Do you think there's fruit to be born in looking at combinations of the Dhamma with existentialist thinkers? Or is this kind of a recipe for a thicket of views?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Sometimes it's interesting if you try to connect what you've learned in the Dhamma with what you already knew, so you can see where it fits and where it doesn't fit. And then anything that doesn't pass the test, you just say, "Okay, let's put it aside." A large part of the Dhamma has to do with which conversations you get involved in and which ones you don't. The Buddha says, "Some of the questions that are not worth asking is, 'Who am I? What am I? How am I?'" So you look at your existentialist and say, "Okay, which questions are they asking? Are they asking questions the Buddha would say are worth asking?"

Question: What we crave for is these three things - sensuality, becoming, non-becoming. But what we cling to are these five aggregates. It almost seems like we cling to the five aggregates for the sake of the becoming, the sensuality, and the non-becoming. Is that how we should read this?

Ajaan Thanissaro: We crave becoming and we realize that to get to becoming, you have to hold on to the aggregates. So that means it's a kind of an addiction. Both of them are feeding off each other.

Question: Do you have any plan to teach in Asia in the future?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Yes, I will be in Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore at the end of November and December.

Question: Typically how many years of practice are required for attaining jhāna or stream entry? What are your tips to make best progress on the path?

Ajaan Thanissaro: I really haven't done a survey. [Laughter] I can tell you that Ajaan Fuang would have some lay students that come and practice with him, and they would get into really strong states of concentration very fast. Others would come along and it would be years before they'd get the mind to settle down. But he says, "In the cases when it's difficult, you have the advantage that once you finally do get it, you really understand it."

Question: Could you share with us how you generated desire to start the path early in life?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Problems in the family, strong sense of saṁvega^[6], and just looking for something. Life had gotten to a point where it just didn't seem to have much meaning anymore. And then meeting Ajaan Fuang, and there was somebody who seemed to know what he's talking about. He seemed to be really wise, really compassionate. I figured, okay, whatever he has, I want that. So that was my first sense of strong desire to practice.

Question: You mentioned judgment as a vital part of the path. I tend to think that the thing we want is really discernment. How do you distinguish the two?

Ajaan Thanissaro: There's a difference between being judgmental and being judicious. Judgmental is when you come to a snap judgment without enough evidence, without good standards. What you need to do is develop good standards for judging what is skillful and what is not skillful, and be willing to take the time to look into something carefully to decide which is which in any particular case.

Question: Could you please ask about the housewife and architect? Were there any standout features of them that could help other lay people?

Ajaan Thanissaro: For one thing, they didn't talk about it. I knew the architect better than I knew the housewife. He was the sort of person who during his spare time would meditate. That was his entertainment. He had a wife and he had a couple of kids, and he did his job as a father and he did his job as a husband. But when he had spare time, it was devoted to the practice. He was a very reflective sort of person, thinking about his actions and the implications of his actions.

Question: How shall we adapt the knowledge of the Third Noble Truth? Do we have to understand Nibbana, or should we just try walking the path until we see it? And along the path, how do we know that we're still on the path? Is it that maybe we're less angry?

Ajaan Thanissaro: Comprehending nibbana is not the duty; it's eventually realizing it. Up to that point, all you have to do is have a really positive image. If your positive image is a sunset at a beach, keep it in mind, knowing that it's an inadequate image, but it has good connotations. It is useful in the sense of knowing that where we're going is something that is outside of space and time.

As far as progress on the path, that can be measured in many ways. In terms of your reactions in day-to-day life: being less angry, being less reactive. Your ability to get the mind into concentration gets better. Your ability to recover from distractions gets quicker. The fact that you're more sensitive to what's going on in your mind, and your ability to control where you're going to be thinking, where you're going to be not thinking. That's how you measure progress on the path.

Question: Have you ever seen an example of someone going so deep in thinking too much about the concept of what things are, but not really progressing on the practice?

Ajaan Thanissaro: I've seen cases like that. The question is, focus on the duties of the path. If you're thinking about something but it's not really improving your practice, say, "Maybe I better just leave that alone for the time being and focus on what I can comprehend and work on getting that."

Question: What's the purpose of life in terms of Buddhism?

Ajaan Thanissaro: I'd say, ask yourself, what would be a really good purpose for my life? What purpose would I choose for my life that I would find satisfactory? 'Cause it's not that it's written out there that this is the purpose of your life. You get to choose. So how would you choose wisely?

Question: I feel like it's easier for me to believe in thinking of becoming as a rebirth. So every becoming is a rebirth. Would that be misleading or inadequate?

Ajaan Thanissaro: That's the beginning. Be open to the idea that it may actually go beyond this body. Thinking in terms of rebirth helps me act better and see why it's actually a good thing to be a better person. If you don't do anything different, it's gonna be a lot longer until you achieve nirvana. And you don't want to do anything that would pull you down to a lower rebirth. Because this is the scary thing about rebirth. Some people believe in rebirth because it's a nice consoling idea that death is not annihilation. But you realize that until you reach stream entry, you could be reborn in some pretty bad places.

Question: I do believe that there is a cessation of suffering at some point, but along the path, it's just creating one suffering for another. Is there a transformation in our relationship to suffering or what we know of as suffering?

Ajaan Thanissaro: You learn how to go for things that cause less and less suffering. Your sense of suffering will get more and more subtle. At the same time, there is a sense of well-being that comes from being on the path. There's a joy in generosity itself. There's a joy in the act of virtue itself. There's a joy in concentration, a joy in discernment. In appreciating those joys, your sensitivity to what is suffering, what is not suffering, is going to become more subtle, more refined. Okay, well, thank you for your attention.