Question & Answers

Daily Life

[person that asked the question]

To elaborate: I do understand the mindset one should have, like in the Simile of the Saw [MN 21]. That one still sees the suffering in the attacker, radiating Compassion or Loving-kindness. I also understand that I’m not supposed to punch them back, for instance.

But…how about physically defending myself? Pushing them away would be a clear example. Not to hurt them, but to try to get them away from me in some sense.

How would one act in a case like this? Let it happen?

[Answer]

I would suggest reading this sutta:

20. Sabbath.

In this case there was no self-defense. However, Mogallana’s forceful throwing out of the monk may seem not monk-like  🙂

With that in mind I would say to remember that Kamma always begins with intention. First, if one were to have the intention of being harmless, but if found in a situation you specified, one would run away and force themselves out of the situation, with the intention of not wanting to hurt the attacker. 

Allowing the attacker to do what they intend, will make them liable to very unwholesome Kamma. However, by defending yourself to the extent of getting away, without any intent of anger or hatred towards them, and rather with the intent of helping them, you are effectively preventing them from committing this Kamma. 

Category: Daily Life

Meditation

This question came up in the Online 10-day Retreat Nov 3, 2020, guided by Delson Armstrong. Day 2 was part of a daily 30-minute discussion on the suttas, the Dhamma talk and reflections.

Slightly edited to improve readability

I see that in one way, where it can be related to external phenomenon outside of the body. It can also be related to the input of the five physical senses and the sensory experiences that arise from it. So that can be the external aspect of it.

 The internal is really more related to the mind, and the mental contents of the mind. But also the physical sensations that happen within the body itself  – which is in relation to feeling – for example the heartbeat,  you’re feeling the blood rushing through the veins, the digestive processes, different parts of the functions that happen within the  body; that’s another internal aspect of  it.

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Online Retreat

This question came up in the Online 10-day Retreat Nov 3, 2020, guided by Delson Armstrong. Day 6 was part of a daily 30-minute discussion on the suttas, the Dhamma talk and reflections.

Slightly edited to improve readability

Primarily, the feeling that is experienced after contacting the Nibbāna element, is the cooling that you just mentioned, the relief. That primarily happens in the mind. There are sometimes statements by the Buddha where he talks about the body contacting the Nibbāna element, but essentially that means that the body is also part of the mind as well. It can manifest in some sense as a physical sense of relief. One of the ways that for example bhante Vimalaramsi explains it is that it’s like an ocean of suffering that you know have complete relief from. Your shoulders feel so relaxed because the burden has been lifted and laid down. So, in that in that regard it can feel physical, but it primarily happens on a mental level.

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Category: Online Retreat

This question came up in the Online 10-day Retreat Nov 3, 2020, guided by Delson Armstrong. Day 2 was part of a daily 30-minute discussion on the suttas, the Dhamma talk and reflections.

Slightly edited to improve readability

I see that in one way, where it can be related to external phenomenon outside of the body. It can also be related to the input of the five physical senses and the sensory experiences that arise from it. So that can be the external aspect of it.

 The internal is really more related to the mind, and the mental contents of the mind. But also the physical sensations that happen within the body itself  – which is in relation to feeling – for example the heartbeat,  you’re feeling the blood rushing through the veins, the digestive processes, different parts of the functions that happen within the  body; that’s another internal aspect of  it.

Watch it here

This question came up in the Online 10-day Retreat Nov 3, 2020, guided by Delson Armstrong. Day 5 was part of a daily 30-minute discussion on the suttas, the Dhamma talk and reflections.

Slightly edited to improve readability

Feeling itself is dependent upon contact, right. Feeling means the sensory experiences that you’re having, and the mind experiencing the mental objects. The mind and the sixth sense base – which are the five physical senses, and the mind – are rooted within the mentality and materiality. Mentality-materiality make up your mind and your body. This is one way of looking at it. The five physical senses – which are your sense faculties, the sense organs: e.g., your photo-receptors in your eye, the auditory nerves in your ear, the olfactory nerves, all of those different kinds of things – are all rooted within mentality and materiality. That’s why the sixth sense base is conditioned by, or dependent upon, mentality-materiality.

It’s only through the sixth sense base that contact can be made with the outside world, as it were. What we experience in the way of the sixth sense base, is the world. This is what the Buddha calls the ‘all’ or’ the world’. Which is to say that there is no one objective reality. Everything that we see as reality, is through our own individual sixth sense base. And because that is dependent upon those sixth sense bases, the contact that arises is dependent upon that. When there’s contact with the outside world, with the sixth sense bases – photons hitting the photo-receptors; sound waves hitting the auditory nerves; olfactory molecules hitting the nose; flavor molecules hitting the tongue, and so on and so forth -, these are all dependent upon contact. This hitting that I’m talking about is for example the sound waves making contact with, or stimulating, the auditory nerves. In that process, the experience of interpreting these sound waves – which are just waves in the air – as sound through the auditory nerves, is the feeling. It’s the bare sensation. Applying to that bare sensation the idea of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral – or neither painful nor pleasant – is the beginning of the perception aspect of the mind. So, the feeling is the sensory aspect, it’s the sensory experience of the mind. It’s after the contact is made, after the stimulation is made, you have the arising of the feeling. Perception is the naming aspect of what is being experienced, through recognizing what it is. As an example, that I often use; when you see the color blue, you immediately know it’s blue. Because you have recognized that it is blue through the Formations that created the memory. And that happens through having learned through your elders, through your parents, in a book, or whatever. It is that this is the color blue and now you always recognize it as the color blue, through the conceptual perception of it. So, perception begins at naming what that feeling is, and it continues on to conceptual or mental proliferation, which then can cause craving if taken personal. And if not, it’s basically stopped right there and then.

Mentality-materiality in more detail

The simple way of understanding mentality-materiality is that the materiality is this body. It’s essentially the form, it’s the four elements that make up this body. In modern scientific context you would say, it’s the four states of matter that make up this body. The solid molecules or atoms, the liquid atoms, the gaseous atoms, and the plasma atoms, which make up this body. that’s materiality. Mentality is what happens through the experience in the mind. You can say it’s stored in the brain, or however you want to put it, but it’s the experiences that you’re having in the way of the five factors of mentality:

  1. You have the faculty for feeling, which is your sixth sense bases, your five physical senses and the mind itself.
  2. The faculty for Perception, so you’re able to recognize through the process of memory, knowledge, and learning, what you are seeing, or what you are experiencing or cognizing.
  3. Then you have intention, which is through which the Formations are basically acting. When the Formations arise, that consciousness drives forward those Formations into the faculty of intention, creating the idea of saying a word for speaking, for doing an action, or for thinking and reflecting and feeling.
  4.   Then you have the faculty for contact, which is actually really the nervous system, if you will, which takes in that sensory information. It has the sensory input and creates the experience through that contact. It’s the bare contact between the photo-receptors and the photons for example.
  5. And then you have attention, which is what you’re doing when you’re applying mindfulness and that’s how the consciousness flows through attention. When you use your attention, you’re applying mindfulness in meditation. Attention really is to be able to understand and to let go of – through correct, proper attention -, the personalizing aspect of the other four factors of mentality.

So, that’s how you should see mentality-materiality. It’s all one thing; it’s the mind and the body. The materiality is just this body, it’s just the different four elements that make up the body. And mentality is all that is basically making you speak, making you think, making you act, making you feel, making you experience things.

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This question came up in the Online 10-day Retreat Nov 3, 2020, guided by Delson Armstrong. Day 5 was part of a daily 30-minute discussion on the suttas, the Dhamma talk and reflections.

Slightly edited to improve readability

Birth can be looked at in two different ways. That is to say, death is just determination of life, the termination of the bodily processes, and the mental processes. That’s the dissolution of the body, let’s make sure that we’re clear on that, first and foremost.

Birth can be seen as birth of action, which is the Kamma coming into play, where you are having a sense of self that you are doing something. That’s the birth of action in one regard, and that happens continuously through just one lifetime. It can happen a trillion times because of the different actions that are happening with the intention, and so on and so forth.

Then the birth of, let’s say, a being. Being is basically bhava, which is really the accumulated tendencies. When you see the idea of a sense of self, it’s really all just this bundle of Kamma. It’s a bundle of different associations, a bundle of different ideas and concepts and mindsets, that create the sense of self. It’s all of these tendencies that you take together and that’s the accumulated tendencies that creates this sense of being. But you take that all away and there is no being, there is no permanent being there. It’s always changing, so when you have that sense of being and act from that sense of being. there is the birth of action.

 In the case of rebirth on the macro level, where you’re looking at Dependent Origination from that viewpoint, there is the being that is being conceived in the womb, in the case of a human birth. In the previous life, what happens is because of the Formations that arise at the point of death, in the deep layers of mind, there is craving or attachment to one of those Formations.  The consciousness that is carried forward through those Formations, then intends for rebirth. That creates the intention for rebirth. Then, those Formations are carried forth by that consciousness, which spontaneously links at the point of conception, which will then create the mentality and materiality. Which is in this case the fetus that grows in the womb. And there is already a sense of being and the Formations are starting to grow, and different Formations are starting to come into being, based on the experience of the fetus in the womb. So, there is still craving, there is still clinging because of the sensory inputs that start to arise when the sixth sense bases start to become developed, during the nine-month process of the conception of that being, of the making up of that being. That is ‘being’, that is becoming. Now that being is becoming, that’s the process of becoming a bhava. And then, birth happens, which then creates the birth of that being into this world, into this physical world. That’s one way to look at it through the process of macro level rebirth.

There’s a comment here in the chat that says: Even earlier than the fetus, the Buddha talks about the descent in the womb.

 Basically, that’s referring to when the consciousness that arises because of taking the previous Formation as personal and craving for it. That carries forward the consciousness, which will then descend into the womb. That will create, at conception, that being, that sense of being. But as soon as that consciousness takes root in that new mentality-materiality at conception, that consciousness dissipates and a new consciousness arises, based on the experience of that being. Even within the womb, already at conception, there’s trillions of arising’s and passing away’s of consciousnesses going on within that womb. It’s not the very same consciousness that continues to be experiencing things within the womb. It’s just that consciousness keeps arising and passing away in that fetus as well.

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Category: Online Retreat

Sutta Explanations

This question came up in the Online 10-day Retreat Nov 3, 2020, guided by Delson Armstrong. Day 2 was part of a daily 30-minute discussion on the suttas, the Dhamma talk and reflections.

Slightly edited to improve readability

I see that in one way, where it can be related to external phenomenon outside of the body. It can also be related to the input of the five physical senses and the sensory experiences that arise from it. So that can be the external aspect of it.

 The internal is really more related to the mind, and the mental contents of the mind. But also the physical sensations that happen within the body itself  – which is in relation to feeling – for example the heartbeat,  you’re feeling the blood rushing through the veins, the digestive processes, different parts of the functions that happen within the  body; that’s another internal aspect of  it.

Watch it here

This question came up in the Online 10-day Retreat Nov 3, 2020, guided by Delson Armstrong. Day 5 was part of a daily 30-minute discussion on the suttas, the Dhamma talk and reflections.

Slightly edited to improve readability

Feeling itself is dependent upon contact, right. Feeling means the sensory experiences that you’re having, and the mind experiencing the mental objects. The mind and the sixth sense base – which are the five physical senses, and the mind – are rooted within the mentality and materiality. Mentality-materiality make up your mind and your body. This is one way of looking at it. The five physical senses – which are your sense faculties, the sense organs: e.g., your photo-receptors in your eye, the auditory nerves in your ear, the olfactory nerves, all of those different kinds of things – are all rooted within mentality and materiality. That’s why the sixth sense base is conditioned by, or dependent upon, mentality-materiality.

It’s only through the sixth sense base that contact can be made with the outside world, as it were. What we experience in the way of the sixth sense base, is the world. This is what the Buddha calls the ‘all’ or’ the world’. Which is to say that there is no one objective reality. Everything that we see as reality, is through our own individual sixth sense base. And because that is dependent upon those sixth sense bases, the contact that arises is dependent upon that. When there’s contact with the outside world, with the sixth sense bases – photons hitting the photo-receptors; sound waves hitting the auditory nerves; olfactory molecules hitting the nose; flavor molecules hitting the tongue, and so on and so forth -, these are all dependent upon contact. This hitting that I’m talking about is for example the sound waves making contact with, or stimulating, the auditory nerves. In that process, the experience of interpreting these sound waves – which are just waves in the air – as sound through the auditory nerves, is the feeling. It’s the bare sensation. Applying to that bare sensation the idea of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral – or neither painful nor pleasant – is the beginning of the perception aspect of the mind. So, the feeling is the sensory aspect, it’s the sensory experience of the mind. It’s after the contact is made, after the stimulation is made, you have the arising of the feeling. Perception is the naming aspect of what is being experienced, through recognizing what it is. As an example, that I often use; when you see the color blue, you immediately know it’s blue. Because you have recognized that it is blue through the Formations that created the memory. And that happens through having learned through your elders, through your parents, in a book, or whatever. It is that this is the color blue and now you always recognize it as the color blue, through the conceptual perception of it. So, perception begins at naming what that feeling is, and it continues on to conceptual or mental proliferation, which then can cause craving if taken personal. And if not, it’s basically stopped right there and then.

Mentality-materiality in more detail

The simple way of understanding mentality-materiality is that the materiality is this body. It’s essentially the form, it’s the four elements that make up this body. In modern scientific context you would say, it’s the four states of matter that make up this body. The solid molecules or atoms, the liquid atoms, the gaseous atoms, and the plasma atoms, which make up this body. that’s materiality. Mentality is what happens through the experience in the mind. You can say it’s stored in the brain, or however you want to put it, but it’s the experiences that you’re having in the way of the five factors of mentality:

  1. You have the faculty for feeling, which is your sixth sense bases, your five physical senses and the mind itself.
  2. The faculty for Perception, so you’re able to recognize through the process of memory, knowledge, and learning, what you are seeing, or what you are experiencing or cognizing.
  3. Then you have intention, which is through which the Formations are basically acting. When the Formations arise, that consciousness drives forward those Formations into the faculty of intention, creating the idea of saying a word for speaking, for doing an action, or for thinking and reflecting and feeling.
  4.   Then you have the faculty for contact, which is actually really the nervous system, if you will, which takes in that sensory information. It has the sensory input and creates the experience through that contact. It’s the bare contact between the photo-receptors and the photons for example.
  5. And then you have attention, which is what you’re doing when you’re applying mindfulness and that’s how the consciousness flows through attention. When you use your attention, you’re applying mindfulness in meditation. Attention really is to be able to understand and to let go of – through correct, proper attention -, the personalizing aspect of the other four factors of mentality.

So, that’s how you should see mentality-materiality. It’s all one thing; it’s the mind and the body. The materiality is just this body, it’s just the different four elements that make up the body. And mentality is all that is basically making you speak, making you think, making you act, making you feel, making you experience things.

Watch it here