Breaking the Link

By Sayadaw U Jotika

Perface
Breaking The Link is one of a series of talks given by Sayadaw U Jotika as an introduction to a meditation retreat. The talks were given at the Buddha Society of Victoria in Melbourne Australia in 1998.

Sayadaw replies to a question that leads to him discussing aspects of Paţiccasamuppāda (Dependent Origination), as to where in the chain-link of existence, the link can be most easily severed.

He also talks about Paţiccasamuppāda from a practical point of view, its relevance to normal life as well as to meditation practice. He expands on how mental states are the primary influence of our lives.

He says :” when we measure other people by our standards and when we measure ourselves by other people’s standard; as long as we do this, we will always feel unhappy,” and expands on this.

In further questions he talks of the best way to sleep and overcome sleeping problems. How mindfulness in daily life is the best way to overcome many other problems.

May reading this Dhamma text (* book) inspire you to further strive towards the attainment of your spiritual goals!

Anna Muresu & Lesilie Shaw
January 2006, Penang

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Breaking the Link

Most of you have heard of Paţiccasamuppāda (Dependent Origination). In Paţiccasamuppāda there are two ways of beginning: one is to begin from avijjā; avijjā-paccayā sańkhāra. Paccaya means cause. From ignorance (avijjā) sańkhāra are caused. Activities, actions, deeds, wholesome and unwholesome deeds, all are sańkhāra. Also meditation and jhāna are included in sańkhāra.

Vipassanā is a different matter because the chain-links of dependent origination can be broken by seeing the true reality of mind and matter. This will be explained in detail later. However when a person practices jhāna, because in jhāna you do not see the reality of mind and matter, you identify with it. You see ans feel this as mine and it can cause another rebirth, It will be a very good rebirth because the mental state of jhāna is very concentrated, calm, peaceful and very clear, but there is still ignorance. The rebirth will be the reflection on the mental state.

Everything that happens in our life is a reflection of our mental state. This is a very important basic law to understand. It is the mental state and the power of that mental state that produces the situations of life. People sometimes ask me,” How can this sort of life happen?” What is the cause of this sort of life? How many different kinds of lives are there?” Well I cannot tell you how many different kinds, because it depends on how many different kinds of mental state there are! Depending on the mental state many different kinds of life can happen.

Even in this human world if you studied each human being very closely you would be very surprised. Although physically we share the same physical world, mentally, emotionally and intellectually, the quality of each individual mind is very different. Some people live in very painful situations, mentally they are in pain. They do not have mettā (loving-kindness) or karuņā (compassion), they don’t have clarity.

When we think of life,
We should think more about
The quality of the mind

One person may be a millionaire and another may be very poor, but the poor man may be living a very satisfying and happy life and the millionaire may have a very miserable one.

We cannot judge a person’s life on how much money or status or whatever he or she has. If I have to judge someone’s life I prefer to do it by his or her mental states. If they are a loving, kind and contented person and if their mind is peace and clear, then they are living a wonderful life. So life is a reflection of our mental state, whether your life is a success or failure it depends on your mental state, not on what you own.

A man asked me about success in life. He is working very hard to get promoted. He judges his life by how highly he has achieved in his career and he is still trying to get a higher position. He is thinking of getting another degree so that he can be promoted. I asked him why he wanted to be promoted and he said that if he got promoted he would get a higher salary.” Why do you want to get a higher salary?” I asked.” So that I can have more money and buy a bigger house and a better car.” I asked him why he wanted a bigger house and a better car.” Then I will be satisfied and I’ll consider myself a successful person and that will make me happy.”

I said ”when the day comes that you have to stop doing what you are doing,will you think of your life as a failure? How long does success last? For a few years you may feel you are a success and after failure again! As long as you measure your life by what you have, you’ll always have the fear that one day you’ll be a failure again.” Then he said:” Oh well, I’ll think about my past and about what I have achieved and that will make feel happy.”

This is just an illusion;
real happiness comes from
what you are now
not from what you have been

Most of us go through life thinking “ I was this” ……” I was that” ……. I often ask people “who are you?” by that I mean their name. But one man, instead of telling me his name said ”I was a minister.” All I wanted to know was his name, not what he did. He was so concerned with who he was that he didn’t even understand my question. By looking at him I could see that he was really afraid of people not respecting him for who he is.

As long as you cling to what you were or are,
You will be insecure
Real security comes from being satisfied with
Who you are and not what you are

If you are a peaceful, calm, loving, compassionate, mindful and wise person you can be very satisfied with who you are and it does not matter whether people think highly of you or not. Your satisfaction is expressed in the way you live your life, you will not be afraid of people not respecting you because you don’t have a high status. As long as we cling to our status or position, we live life with fear and insecurity. Life is a reflection of our mental states, therefore who we are depends on our mental state.

Let’s come back to meditation. In Vipassanā practice we are paying attention to what is happening right now, not the past; we are paying attention to what is happening in the present, but the immediate past can also be included in the present. For example, if I strike this bell; no, I have not struck this bell it; now I am going to, so its in the future, we cannot really observe the sound of the bell now, because it does not exist; so you can think “he is going to strike the bell and it will make a sound” this is just a thought, this is not observation, this is not Vipassanā .

Now I strike the bell, you hear the sound, you pay attention to the sound, ’hearing’, this is a sound; also you can pay attention to the quality of the sound, slowly it becomes softer and softer, then you cannot hear it anymore. So at the moment you hear the sound you can pay attention to the sound and you can pay attention to the consciousness of the sound too; ’hearing’. Hearing means consciousness. This hearing consciousness arises because of the sound, without the sound there cannot be consciousness of it.

There must be this ‘it’ (the sound) present for consciousness to arise. When you are watching this consciousness you are watching vińńāņa-kkhandha ( consciousness aggregate). We know that this consciousness of ‘it’ cannot arise without the ‘it’. This sound is the cause of this consciousness, we are seeing cause and effect nd this cause is samudaya as well.

Samudaya has two meanings: arising and cause. That is why the Second Noble Truth is dukkha samudaya sacca; the Truth of the cause of the dukkha. So this sound is the cause of this hearing consciousness. They are so much together, one being the cause of the other, we do not think.”this happen first and that happen later”. In fact they happen at the same time; when the sound is there, so is the consciousness; when there is no sound, there is no consciousness.

Sometimes in the same noticing, when the mind is working very fast, we can see both. In the same noticing there is a series of awareness’s, in fact in just one second they can be innumerable, seeing clearly becomes so powerful that in one seeing you can understand so much. When you experience it, you will know how amazing it is. Without thinking of anything, in one seeing, you can understand a lot.

When you notice the consciousness of the sound at the same time you are aware of the sound, you cannot separate the two. Sometimes when you are paying attention to the sound you can reflect and contemplate on the fact that because of this sound there is hearing, without it there cannot be any hearing.

Although if you think about this is obvious and you can understand it, when you actually see the consciousness arising just NOW, you really know that because of this sound, this consciousness arises; that this is something new that you are experiencing.

Meditation is not about seeing something
that has not been seen before;
meditation is seeing
that same phenomenon in a different way.
It is a new way of seeing

Everybody knows that because of the sound there is hearing, but this is a thought. We feel that there is already a person there to hear the sound, but in meditation practice, when it happens, we know that this consciousness just happens NOW, and it appears because of the sound. You know this consciousness as something totally new.

When we can see phenomena as something totally new, arising just now, only then we are seeing reality. This happens in Vippasanā meditation practice, you can see consciousness arising NOW because of this object and we know that because of this object this consciousness arises. This is the samudaya factor. We can also see the sound as arising and passing away; arising is samudaya and passing away is vaya.

We can understand the same Dhamma in many ways. The Buddha says:

“ He dwells contemplating the Samudaya- Dhamma (originating factors) and he dwells contemplating the Vaya-Dhamma (dissolution factors)”
~ MAHĀ-SATIPATTHĀNA SUTTA,
DIGHA NIKĀYA SUTTA 22

Vaya also means nirodha. There are many synonyms here: Samudaya also means nibbati-lakkhana. Vaya means viparinama-lakkhana and it also means nirodha, dissolution.In Paţiccasamuppāda the word nirodha is used: Avijjā-paccayā sańkhāra can be put another way, avijjā tveva asesavirāga-nirodha; sańkhāra-nirodho. Here the word nirodha comes in. So when there is avijjā (delusion) there is sańkhāra.

We do so many things because we don’t really understand absolute reality. We think that it will make us happy doing this and that and we will be unhappy if we don’t. There is always this ‘I’. But when we really see there is no real ‘I’ and there are only mental and physical phenomena, then our understanding changes. When ignorance (avijjā) totally ceases, even doing wholesome actions does not create kamma anymore, and because kamma is not created anymore there can be no result and there are no sańkhāra created. The link is broken; sańkhārā nirodhā, viňňāņā nirodho.

At birth, the first consciousness in life happens because of sańkhārā, which in this case is synonymous with kamma. Because of kamma there is rebirth consciousness and this is called viňňāņā. If there were no sańkhārā there would be no kamma to give rebirth; therefore there would be no rebirth. So sańkhārā nirodhā, viňňāņā nirodho viňňāņā nirodhā, nāma-rūpa nirodho; if there were no rebirth consciousness there would be no mental and physical process following it. If this dissolves, this also dissolves, it continues on and on that way.

Nāma-rūpa nirodhā, phassa nirodho; if there are no mental and physical phenomena going on, there cannot be contact with sense objects anymore.

The opposite is, as there is mental and physical process going on, so there is contact with sense objects. Phassa-samudayā, vedanā-samudayo, phassa-nirodhā, vedanā-nirodho; because of contact there are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings. If there were no contact then there would not be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings anymore.

At one stage in your Vipassanā meditation practice you see this very clearly, sometimes brief moments of thinking arise and sometimes even without thinking you can know it; you can see the reality of it very clearly.

Vedanā-nirodhā, taņhā-nirodho; if there are no feelings of any kind; there cannot be desire for anything anymore. When we feel happy or unhappy about something, we see that because of feelings, because of enjoyment, there is this desire to have more. When we feel good about something we want more of it and when we don’t feel good about something we don’t want it instead we want to replace it with something that feels good.

Feelings direct the mind towards more desire. When there are neutral feelings and we don’t like them we want something pleasant, something that can give us strong feelings, which is further desire. Whenever desire arises we can see that it arises because of feelings, if there were no feelings there would be no desire anymore.

Feelings control our lives.
Vedanā is that factor that motivates us
to do this and that, in order to feel good.
When we can see this very clearly it helps
the mind to become more detached.
This detachment is freedom.
Detachment makes this mind clearer and
it gives us more freedom.

The more we see how vedanā influences our mind the more we can free ourselves. This is where the chain-link in Paţiccasamuppāda can be broken and we find the way out: between vedanā and taņhā. We experience vedanā but if we don’t let it become taņhā (craving) we can get out of it. But if we go on to taņhā, which means desire, then desire can build more and more energy, more and more momentum.

Taņhā can then become upādāna, clinging or very strong desir. Taņhā is normal desire; upādāna is very strong desire. When taņhā is present you feel “I want it”, if it becomes upādāna then you feel you cannot live without it. What do you do when you feel you can’t live without it? You do whatever can to get it. Upādāna leads to bhava. Here bhava has two meanings, one is ‘kamma’ and the other is ‘ another life’. Here it means kamma because you have such a strong desire, you think about it, you talk about it and you do something about it; this creates kamma. Kamma leads to jāti (birth), because of kamma there is another rebirth.

The chain goes on and on. In practice, sometimes we see one part of it and sometimes another, but mostly we begin to see the vedanā and taņhā link more clearly. Later in our practice when concentration and mindfulness become very strong, we can experience phassa (contact), the mind coming in contact with the object, the contact is very clear and powerful. Usually we don’t experience this contact because immediately there is vedanā , the feeling of enjoyment of it.

So when mindfulness becomes very strong, instead of going into the process of taņhā we stop there and watch the object, we define it, and we enjoy the object.

In meditation practice we receive the object,
we see what it is very clearly but
we don’t go into enjoying it.
Instead of getting happy or unhappy about it,
we stop right there and just watch it.

We see that it is arising and passing away and there is nothing to be happy or unhappy about. When this takes place the process stops at the point of phassa: contact and observation, without reacting to it.

We don’t see this as either good or bad, there is no discrimination anymore. There is no desire for it to be different anymore. Observation is very clear, therefore without thinking of it being different in any way, the mind just observes it; it makes no difference, whatever it might be.

Phassa-samudayā vedanā-samudayo; phassa-nirodhā vedanā-nirodho; is a very important link. From vedanā-samudayā, taņhā-samudayo; vedanā-nirodhā, taņhā-nirodho; when we see the links like that, we are seeing the originating factor and the dissolution factor, both of them; seeing it arising, seeing it passing away. Seeing the cause of it and seeing the dissolution of it. This all means seeing samusaya-dhamma and vaya-dhamma.

~end~