Here’s an 60-min recorded video Dhamma Talk (101MB .mp4).

Topics:

  • Bāhiya, Bahiya, Kāḷaka, Kalaka, Kālakārāma, Kalakarama Sutta, anatta, not-self, Pacekka Buddhas, wanderers, seekers, sages, enlightenment, Nibbana, Brahmaviharas, objects of meditation, the six sense bases, ayatana, anxiety, logical thinking, left and right hemispheres of the brain, overwrought, relaxing, mellow, richness of life, full attention to the senses, dropping the sense of self, how the sense of self is the main problem, the “interloper”, net neutrality, streaming setup, new tutorials on split screen, castles


Sutta References:

  • SN 35.96 “Decline”:

    “Bhikkhus, I will teach you about one who is subject to decline, about one who is not subject to decline, and about the six mastered bases. Listen to that….

    “And how, bhikkhus, is one subject to decline? Here, bhikkhus, when a bhikkhu has seen a form with the eye, there arise in him evil unwholesome states, memories and intentions connected with the fetters. If the bhikkhu tolerates them and does not abandon them, dispel them, put an end to them, and obliterate them, he should understand this thus: ‘I am declining away from wholesome states. For this has been called decline by the Blessed One.’

    “Further, bhikkhus, when a bhikkhu has heard a sound with the ear … cognized a mental phenomenon with the mind, there arise in him evil unwholesome states, memories and intentions connected with the fetters. If the bhikkhu tolerates them and does not abandon them, dispel them, put an end to them, and obliterate them, he should understand this thus: ‘I am declining away from wholesome states. For this has been called decline by the Blessed One.’

    “It is in such a way, bhikkhus, that one is subject to decline.

    “And how, bhikkhus, is one not subject to decline? Here, bhikkhus, when a bhikkhu has seen a form with the eye, there arise in him evil unwholesome states, memories and intentions connected with the fetters. If the bhikkhu does not tolerate them, but abandons them, dispels them, puts on end to them, and obliterates them, he should understand this thus: ‘I am not declining away from wholesome states. For this has been called nondecline by the Blessed One.’

    “Further, bhikkhus, when a bhikkhu has heard a sound with the ear … cognized a mental phenomenon with the mind, there arise in him evil unwholesome states, memories and intentions connected with the fetters. If the bhikkhu does not tolerate them, but abandons them, dispels them, puts an end to them, and obliterates them, he should understand this thus: ‘I am not declining away from wholesome states. For this has been called nondecline by the Blessed One.’

    “It is in such a way, bhikkhus, that one is not subject to decline.

    “And what, bhikkhus, are the six mastered bases? Here, bhikkhus, when a bhikkhu has seen a form with the eye, there do not arise in him evil unwholesome states, nor any memories and intentions connected with the fetters. The bhikkhu should understand this thus: ‘This base has been mastered. For this has been called a mastered base by the Blessed One.’

    “Further, bhikkhus, when a bhikkhu has heard a sound with the ear … cognized a mental phenomenon with the mind, there do not arise in him evil unwholesome states, nor any memories and intentions connected with the fetters. The bhikkhu should understand this thus: ‘This base has been mastered. For this has been called a mastered base by the Blessed One.’ These, bhikkhus, are called the six mastered bases.”

  • In a previous audio Dhamma Talk, I explained Bahiya’s prescribed object of meditation (“Bāhiya Sutta”: Ud 1.10), and the “Kāḷaka/Kālakārāma Sutta”: AN 4.24, see pg. 16 in “Magic of the Mind”.

Dhamma References:

  • Pacceka-buddha:

    …This is a term for an Arahant … who has realized Nibbana without having heard the Buddha’s doctrine from others. He comprehends The Four Noble Truths individually (pacceka) independent of any teacher, by his own effort. He has, however, not the capacity to proclaim the Teaching effectively to others, and therefore does not become a ‘Teacher of Gods and Men’, a Perfect or Universal Buddha (sammā-sambuddha). Paccekabuddhas are described as frugal of speech, cherishing solitude…

    Canonical references are few; Pug. 29 defin.; A. II, 56; in M. 116, names of many Paccekabuddhas are given; in D. 16 they are said to be worthy of a thūpa (dagoba); the Treasure-Store Sutta Nidhikhandha Sutta, Khp. mentions pacceka-bodhi the C. Nidd. ascribes to individual Paccekabuddhas the verses of the Rhinoceros Sutta Khaggavisāna Sutta, Sn.

Other References:

  • This weekly Dhamma Talk is now mentioned on the “Fourth Messenger” website

  • U.G. Krishnamurti’s “The Mystique of Enlightenment”:

    You can never understand the tremendous peace that is always there within you, that is your natural state. Your trying to create a peaceful state of mind is in fact creating disturbance within you.

    The natural state is not the state of a self-realized God-realized man, it is not a thing to be achieved or attained, it is not a thing to be willed into existence; it is there – it is the living state. This state is just the functional activity of life. By ‘life’ I do not mean something abstract; it is the life of the senses, functioning naturally without the interference of thought. Thought is an interloper, which thrusts itself into the affairs of the senses. It has a profit motive: thought directs the activity of the senses to get something out of them, and uses them to give continuity to itself.

    Is there in you an entity which you call the ‘I’ or the ‘mind’ or the ‘self’? Is there a co-ordinator who is co-ordinating what you are looking at with what you are listening to, what you are smelling with what you are tasting, and so on? Or is there anything which links together the various sensations originating from a single sense – the flow of impulses from the eyes, for example? Actually, there is always a gap between any two sensations. The co-ordinator bridges that gap: he establishes himself as an illusion of continuity. In the natural state there is no entity who is co-ordinating the messages from the different senses. Each sense is functioning independently in its own way. When there is a demand from outside which makes it necessary to co-ordinate one or two or all of the senses and come up with a response, still there is no co-ordinator, but there is a temporary state of co- ordination. There is no continuity; when the demand has been met, again there is only the unco-ordinated, disconnected, disjointed functioning of the senses. This is always the case. Once the continuity is blown apart – not that it was ever there; but the illusory continuity – it’s finished once and for all.

    Unless there is a demand for knowledge about what I am looking at, there is no separation, no distance from what is there.

    This is not a state of omniscience, wherein all of man’s eternal questions are answered; rather it is a state in which the questioning has stopped. It has stopped because those questions have no relation to the way the organism is functioning, and the way the organism is functioning leaves no room for those questions.

    What is keeping you from being in your natural state? You are constantly moving away from yourself. You want to be happy, either permanently or at least for this moment. You are dissatisfied with your everyday experiences, and so you want some new ones. You want to perfect yourself, to change yourself. You are reaching out, trying to be something other than what you are. It is this that is taking you away from yourself.

    “What you are looking at is not different from the one who is looking.”

    What is thought? You don’t know a thing about it; all that you know about what you call ‘thought’ is what you have been told. How can you do anything with it – mould it, control it, shape it or stop it? You are all the time trying to do something with it because somebody has told you that you must change this or replace that, hold on to the good thoughts and not the bad thoughts. Thoughts are thoughts; they are neither good nor bad. As long as you want to do something with whatever is there, you are thinking. Wanting and thinking are not two different things. Wanting to understand means there is a movement of thought. You are adding momentum to that movement, giving it continuity. The senses function unnaturally in you because you want to use them to get something. Why should you get anything? Because you want what you call the ‘you’ to continue. You are protecting that continuity. Thought is a protective mechanism: it protects the ‘you’ at the expense of something or somebody else.

    Understanding is a state of being where the question isn’t there any more; there is nothing there that says “now I understand!”

    You know the answer, and you want a confirmation from me, or you want some kind of light to be thrown on your problem, or you’re curious – if for any of these reasons you want to carry on a dialogue with me, you are just wasting your time

    Q: You say that the question “Who am I?” doesn’t remain there when you really scrutinize it?

    UG: Because you cannot separate the question from the questioner. The question and the questioner are the same. If you accept that fact, it’s a very simple thing: when the question disappears, the questioner also disappears with that. But since the questioner does not want to disappear, the question remains. The questioner wants an answer for the question. Since there is no answer to that question, the questioner remains there for ever. The questioner’s interest is to continue, not to get the answer.

    I realized that all my search was in the wrong direction, and that this is not something religious, not something psychological, but a purely physiological functioning of the senses at their peak capacities. That was the answer to my question.

    Then thought cannot link up any more: the constant demand for experiencing things comes to an end.

    It is physical, not psychological – I don’t remember anything that is not happening at that particular moment – there is no reaction, only response. But you are reacting all the time – there is the judgement for or against: “This is right, that is wrong.” The response I am talking about is the physical response to the situation. I function in the physical plane all the time. I am not thinking of anything when I see you; my eyes are focused on you. If I turn this side, you are wiped out; the door-knob is there, not you; you are finished for me, even in the mind. (There is no mind.) If necessary, it is recalled – if you ask questions. Reaction is thinking about it: ‘Right,’ ‘Wrong.’ ‘Good,’ ‘Evil’. Response is just looking without the intervention of thought. Response is physical; reaction is mental.

    The structure which is always thinking of every possible situation, envisaging every situation, how to be prepared to deal with each and every kind of situation that might arise during the course of your life, is a thing that has no meaning, because every situation is quite different.

    If you accept the helplessness, the problem is solved –

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