Good evening everyone Welcome back to Evening Dhamma Tonight I was asked to look at the Anattalakshana Sutta Which I think is
a good idea.
The Natalakana Sutta, the discourse on the characteristic of non-self has much to do with our meditation practice.
So a little background on this talk that the Buddha gave
when the Buddha to be was a young prince these many astrologers came to see the Buddha and to predict his future based on his stars and all of them but one
predicted one of two possible futures for the prince that if he stayed at home he would become king of the world and if he left home and went off to become a recluse in the forest he would become a perfectly enlightened being
But one of the astrologers disagreed and said, there's only one future for this young prince.
He's going to leave home and he's going to become a Buddha for sure.
This is the legend that we have.
This is the story that's been passed down.
But it's related to this sutta because five of those astrologers, when the Buddha to be left home, five of them followed him.
And
spent six years with him torturing themselves, practicing all sorts of torture.
The idea in the time of the Buddha was that given that sensual desires lead to addiction and you can see what that's doing to ourselves and our societies and our world.
You can see how much suffering comes from sensual desire, greed, what we call greed.
Spiritually speaking, the best way to do away with greed was, they thought, was to cultivate experiences of great pain.
The opposite of pleasure, right?
And if you're able to
break through the stress and suffering of unpleasant experiences, then you'll somehow never want pleasant experiences again.
I don't know what the psychology community would say about that today, but the Buddha found that practicing this for a long time, it didn't really work.
And so he decided to change his way and find some third option, saying to himself, look, these two extreme practices, torturing yourself doesn't do anything.
It doesn't make you a better person, not fundamentally.
When I stop torturing myself, I still want things just as much as I did before.
And so he found a third way.
And that abandoning of the accepted practice disappointed these five monks, five recluses, five ascetics.
And they left him.
And he thought to himself, well, good riddance.
So now it's a chance for me to devote myself to my own practice.
Don't have to deal with these guys.
But once he became a Buddha, once he became enlightened, found the right path, he thought of these five monks and he thought to teach them that they might readily understand his teachings.
He was discouraged from teaching because he thought most people won't be able to understand.
Most people are keen on sensual desires or keen on ambitions and are very much caught up in their own paths already.
It's very difficult to understand what truly causes suffering and to
take up the path that leads to freedom from suffering.
Not an easy thing to do, even intellectually to accept it.
So he was discouraged from teaching.
But then he thought of certain people who might be able to understand and he thought of these five monks, five ascetics.
And he went to find them and they were quite
resistant hesitant to accept his teachings at first and then they realized that there was something different about him and he wasn't talking the way he used to talk he wasn't saying the same things he used to say he was claiming something that was if true was of great significance to them and so they thought well let's at least hear what he has to say
And so then he taught the first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, and we've heard that Sutta.
I can give another talk on it maybe some other time.
As a result of that Sutta, one of the monks, Kondanya, and Kondanya was the court astrologer who predicted the Buddha would become a Buddha.
He was the one who said there's only one path.
He was that guy.
And he became a Sotapanna, listening to the Buddha's teaching, which means he experienced briefly true freedom from suffering.
And it changed him.
So they call that Sotapanna.
The other four ascetics spent a few days meditating, practicing, based on the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta.
and then other teachings of the Buddha in the meantime.
And each one of them became Sotapanna as well.
So they were all able to experience the truth and change the way they looked at the world.
And then after five days, the Buddha taught this second discourse.
Now that introduction is useful to help us understand the context of this sutta, which happens to be somewhat important.
The sutta isn't about views of self, the self, the soul.
Do they exist?
It isn't an intellectual sutta.
It isn't meant to be studied or thought about.
It's meant to be experienced.
The audience were advanced meditators.
They were what we call sekha, people who are in training.
That is different from people who come to meditation practice and
still have a great deal of skepticism or uncertainty.
They still have a general lack of proficiency in the practice.
So it's difficult.
They might sit down to meditate and half of the time they're not actually meditating.
Or they're practicing wrongly.
And this is different from someone who has practiced the teaching and seen the results and becomes proficient at it.
It's quite different from someone who has seen freedom from suffering.
So for these ascetics, monks at that time,
It was a clear understanding They had a clear understanding of their views Their views about reality were quite settled And so that's really what we have to deal with If we want to try and understand this sutta The first thing we have to do is settle our views And what I mean by that is Settle the way we look at the world
That's the first important step in meditation practice, is to change the way we look at the world.
And that might sound kind of vague or simplistic or imprecise.
Precisely what I mean is, instead of looking at the world from the point of view of entities, people, places, things, this room that we're in, this body that I inhabit,
possessions and so on, to look at the world from a point of view of experience.
It's the first shift that a meditator undergoes that instead of thinking cerebrally about things, people, places and things, to have an experience of reality that's based on your experiences.
So when we're sitting here, what is really happening?
If we think of reality from a point of view of entities, we would say, well, I'm sitting in this room and you are all sitting in this room and the people watching on the internet are all sitting in their rooms.
All of this is going on in my mind.
I think these things.
But from a point of view of experience, it's only the thoughts that are real.
What's happening there is there are thoughts.
Thoughts about people in this room, thoughts about people in their own rooms.
And then there's the sound of my voice.
And then there's the feeling of the cushion you're sitting on, or the chair that you're sitting on.
There's the vision of light, color in the room.
Maybe even there's smells or tastes.
There's feelings in the body of pain and pleasure and there's heat and there's cold and there's hunger and there's thirst.
These are real.
These are experiences.
So if you want to understand this sutta, the first thing you have to do
is become accustomed or familiar with this way of looking at the world, the experience-based way, to see things based on your experiences.
That's where meditation begins.
Then you begin to be mindful of these experiences and try to understand
the process of experience by which we experience something, then we react to it, and then we get caught up in it, and particularly how we suffer from it.
When we get angry at something and how that causes us stress, when we worry about something and how that causes us stress.
So it's really a specific way of looking at the world.
And it's important because otherwise you can't really understand what the Buddha is talking about here.
You misunderstand it, I think.
You take this sutta in the wrong way.
Because the Buddha is already talking about realities that
discount the idea that there is a self or the question of whether there is a self.
They move into a whole other realm.
The Sutta never says there is no self, there is no soul.
That's not what the Buddha is saying.
I get in trouble for saying those things.
Like I've said before, the Buddha never said there is no self.
I've explained this.
It's not that the Buddha believed in a self or a soul.
It's that it's not the way the Buddha taught.
It's not the way the Buddha looked at the world or encouraged people to look at the world.
When you move away from this paradigm of people and places and things and start looking at the world based on your experiences, the question of a self is foreign.
It's meaningless.
So the sutta begins by talking about the five aggregates.
The five aggregates.
The five aggregates are an important Buddhist concept.
They are the first noble truth.
But basically they're the aspects of experience.
So we're saying we're trying to look at reality
as experiences.
We're trying to look at our experiences, understand them, free ourselves from the stress and suffering that they can cause when we react poorly to our experiences.
And so the five aggregates are what makes up an experience.
That's all it's saying.
The five aggregates are our rupa, first of all.
Rupa is the physical aspect of experience.
This is the feeling of hardness and softness of heat and cold.
Number two is vedana.
Vedana is the feelings.
You feel pain or you feel pleasure.
Happy, unhappy.
This is number two.
Number three is sanya, which means recognition or memory.
Sanya is when you recognize something.
So when you hear a noise and you say, that's a cricket, or you see something on the wall and you say, that's a picture, or when you read, you see words and you recognize letters and that kind of thing.
This recognition that goes on.
You hear a cat, you recognize it as a cat.
Number four is sankara, which means our reactions to things.
Mainly, sankara is a bit complicated, but to keep it simple, let's talk about our reactions to things.
So sanya is when you react by saying, hey, that's a cat, but you haven't really put any value judgment on that.
Sankara refers to those value judgments.
And this is what's really of interest to us.
We try to understand all aspects of experience, but what we really want to do is understand how it causes reaction.
You like something, you dislike something, you appreciate something or depreciate something as beautiful or ugly, good or bad.
This is where you say something is me or mine.
And this is where this sutta tries to do its work.
And the fifth is just vijnana.
Vijnana is the consciousness.
The fact that we experience it all is because we're conscious, our awareness of something.
So with each experience there are these five aggregates or these five aspects.
They come together and they make up the process of experience.
Now the Buddha says that all these five things are non-self This is where he says anatta These five things are anatta What he's trying to do is get the monks to look at their experiences objectively So that instead of trying to change them, trying to control them
instead of having expectations or ambitions or partialities.
He's trying to help them see things clearly and let go.
A big part of the reason that's trying to be addressed in this sutta of why we suffer
It's because we have a sense of self.
We have a sense that this is me who's experiencing and this is my experience.
We have a sense of ownership that leads us to want to fix things.
When we have pain we want to find some way to free ourselves from it.
When we see things we don't like or hear things we don't like, we have a sense of trying to change them.
Or when we see or hear or feel things that we like, we have a sense of identification that makes us want to keep, possess, continue them.
We worry about them, we're afraid of them.
When bad things come, we take it personally.
This pain is my pain.
It's not an intellectual thing.
These aren't views.
It's a visceral, it's called atasanya.
It's not the view of self.
It's the perception of self.
It's this sort of visceral reaction.
that clings to things.
Buddha pointing out that clinging involves self.
We don't really do what we think we do.
We think that we experience things, we see something and, you know, that's seeing.
What we do when we experience, what happens when we experience is we
We cling to it.
We interpret it or identify with it, interpret it as self.
When we feel something, when we think something, we become enamored and attached to our thoughts and our feelings, or we become afraid or averse or frustrated or upset.
We react.
So what you see in meditation is what the Buddha is going to explain here.
You start to see that these things that we're trying to control are not really under our control.
To see that controlling them is not useful, is not beneficial.
Trying to keep things or run away from experiences that our reactions are causing us suffering.
He says these things are not ours.
These things are not self.
Basically what he's saying is you should start to look at these things a little bit differently.
Because if they were, if it was proper to say these things are me and mine, then they wouldn't lead to suffering.
They wouldn't lead to affliction, he says.
Take form, for example.
An exercise we give to meditators is to watch their stomach rising and falling.
This is rupa.
This is form, physical.
When the stomach rises, you're aware of it rising.
You say to yourself, rising.
When it falls, you say falling.
That seems simple.
And the way we think of it is, well, okay, I'll watch it.
Don't really understand why, but
It will rise and it will fall and I will be aware of it rising and falling, but it's not really like that.
And as a result of watching the stomach, we tend to feel quite uncomfortable after some time.
Trying to control it, trying to keep it constant.
our ordinary way of experiencing it is quite unpleasant, which should surprise us.
And we think often that we're doing something wrong because it's a simple experience.
It shouldn't be like that.
I mean, we think we should, and the Buddha says we think we should be able to obtain, let it be so, let it not be so.
We have expectations.
It says, Let my form be thus, let my form not be thus.
And the same with Vedana.
We have pain, we think, well, I'll try my best to make the pain go away and bring only pleasure or calm.
And we're frustrated by this.
We find that it's not possible.
We cling to the short periods of time where it is possible to experience calm or happiness and we get frustrated when we can't always be happy.
and so on, our perceptions, especially our judgments.
We want to always be pleased, we don't want to get angry, or we want to control our desires.
We think of desire as ours, right?
I like this, I like that, I don't like this, I don't like that.
We go through our lives telling ourselves and each other what we like and dislike, thinking it's me and mine.
But when we sit down and look at it, we come to see it's quite out of control, out of our control.
What we like and dislike isn't really us.
It's an affliction in many ways.
We want something, we can't get it, we suffer.
We don't want something, we get upset, we suffer.
It's not the experiences, it's our reactions.
We suffer because we like and dislike things.
Because they're not under our control.
We can't just like the things we have and dislike the things we don't have.
Sometimes we get the things we don't like and don't get the things we like.
That's the first section.
He talks about these five things and explains them to be non-self.
The second section is where he starts to explain what he means and his sort of evidence for this.
And this relates not only to non-self but also to impermanence and suffering, the three characteristics.
So he says, okay, well, maybe you don't believe me that these things are, maybe you think it's okay to identify with these things and maybe they really are me and mine.
He says, but tell me, are they permanent or impermanent?
Are they predictable or unpredictable?
And again, he's talking to people who are meditating.
So he's talking on the realm of experience.
It's not something you should think about.
It's something you should answer from your experience.
This is a sort of a reporting session with the monks.
He says, what do you think?
Is form stable or unstable?
Is it predictable or unpredictable?
So it doesn't just mean that it does it arise and cease.
It means, is it always the same?
When you watch your stomach, is it always rising and falling the same?
No, it's not.
And because it's not predictable, because sometimes it's long, sometimes it's short, sometimes it's clear, sometimes it's unclear.
Because of that, it's suffering.
It's dukkha.
And it's important to understand what he means by this.
He doesn't mean that the unpredictability itself is stressful.
He means it's not something that you can cling to and find happiness from.
It's like a fire.
A fire is hot.
Well, a fire is not hot.
But if you touch the fire, you get hot.
So the stomach rising and falling is not stressful.
There's nothing stressful about that.
But if you cling to it and say, let my stomach be thus, let my stomach not be thus, you will suffer.
Because it's unpredictable.
Basically, a big part of the meditation is to make us more flexible.
Life is unpredictable.
A big part of why we suffer is because we're not in tune with the way things are.
We look at the world in terms of what it should be, how we want it to be, what our expectations of it are.
All caught up with ego and self and me and mine.
And so he says, he explains it this way, he says they're unpredictable.
Because they're unpredictable, you're only going to suffer when you cling to them.
And so should you cling to them?
Is it proper for you to say, this is mine, this I am, this is myself?
Incidentally, these are the three ways we cling to things through.
Etang mama means this is mine.
So this is the aspect of self that is possessive.
Something you experience, something you say, this is mine.
Well, that's a problem, of course, because you're always going to be worried about keeping the things that are yours.
People, places, things.
This I am.
When you identify with things, this is conceit.
I am this, I am that.
I am intelligent, I am handsome, I am wise, I am good, I am kind.
Or conversely, I am ugly, I am mean, I am evil, I am useless, I am stupid.
So much suffering, right, comes from identifying with things.
No use or good comes from it.
We're too caught up in ourselves in modern society, proclaiming who we are and what we are.
It's a wonder that we think this is of any use.
What good is it?
What good is it to tell other people?
You see people bragging about their accomplishments to others as though that we're going to ingratiate you with others.
Sometimes we do it because we like the fear that it brings and the suffering that it brings to others.
We're cruel enough to think that bragging about ourselves is going to, is a good thing.
And the suffering that it causes for others when they fear us or feel threatened by us.
It's a bully mentality really.
our ego about who we are.
Or maybe we want people to appreciate us.
Hey, look at me, I'm this.
We want people to think highly of us.
Nothing good comes from it.
What good could come from I am, I want, I like, I hate?
This is one of the big, important philosophies of the Buddha, that I is no good.
No good comes from I.
It's an unbeneficial way of looking at the world.
It's not about views, about is there a self, do I exist, do I not exist.
The Buddha didn't answer these questions.
He said it's about how you look at the world.
When you see things, do you see things as they are or do you interpret them?
Do you cling to them?
Do you identify with them?
And so the third aspect of clinging is esomeata, this is myself, which is views.
So the first one, possessiveness, is in regards to craving.
The second one is in regards to conceit.
And the third one is in regards to views.
Clinging, conceit, and views, or craving, conceit, and views.
These are the three ways we cling to self or to things in general.
The third part of the sutta is
is a description of the course, the results of proper practice and proper observation.
He says when you see things in this way, when you start to see that these things are not predictable, not a cause of satisfaction, stressful, you let go of them.
You become disenchanted.
The Buddha uses a word called Nibbida or Nibbindati.
which he uses in many different places.
He talks about this term again and again, which basically means you get tired of them.
Whereas before you were so caught up in trying to fix your form and your feelings, your perceptions, your thought, your judgments.
trying to fix reality, trying to control it.
We have all these ambitions and goals and possessions, qualities about ourselves that we cling to.
You get tired of it.
When you do a meditation course, this is an important part of the course where you begin to tire of this whole repetitive
process of clinging again and again, of craving again and again, judging, reacting again and again, suffering again and again.
The way out of suffering is not to want to be free from suffering.
Our desire to be free from suffering is often just aversion, it's just anger.
Freedom from suffering comes from when you get tired of causing suffering.
It's like those silly games that kids play.
Why are you hitting yourself?
We begin to ask ourselves, why are we?
Why are we causing ourselves suffering?
You realize that it's not self.
The suffering is a habit.
It has a sort of inertia to it.
It's gotten moving and now it's become unmanageable.
You start to see that these actions, these activities, these reactions, these judgments are just a cause of suffering.
And you disincline.
This is how freedom works.
Freedom comes about through getting fed up, through viscerally feeling how something causes you suffering and really getting it.
It's a deep understanding, a penetrative understanding that this is what causes suffering.
And the final thing the Buddha says is that when, basically he says, when you realize this, then you become free, to put it simply.
And when he finished teaching the Anattalaka and the Sutta, the five monks all became Arahants, which means they freed themselves from all defilement.
So it's important in summary to clearly understand this to be a meditation teaching.
This is a teaching for people who are engaged deeply in meditation.
Those of you who have done intensive courses or are in the process of taking them can understand and appreciate this, I think.
This concept of how unmanageable and unwieldy experiences are and how really it's our
our misperception of things as me as mine that has got us into this mess and every time you see things as being out of your control you're moving closer towards getting tired of them towards giving them up towards letting go that's really what this sutta is all about so
Hope that was interesting.
Hopefully it was useful.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Have a good night.
I'll be answering questions as well if anyone has questions, so you can stay tuned for that if you like.
Nine questions tonight.
Sometimes I'm facing an issue and I cheat a little by using my meditation time to reflect on it.
Try to break it down to clearly understand it and understand why it is affecting me negatively or positively.
Is that a valid meditation?
More like active meditation versus passive.
Well, I can't answer this part of the question.
Valid meditation doesn't mean anything because meditation could mean anything.
When we talk about meditation, it's such a vague word, really.
Do you mean like Descartes' meditation?
There's many different kinds of meditation out there.
It's an important thing that people don't really think about.
I only teach one type of meditation, mainly, really.
So I can't really answer that.
It's not what I teach to do.
If you want me to answer what is that likely to lead to, I would say because it's not...
it's not particularly based on mindfulness that you're more likely to be to be plagued by judgments and reactions when you reflect upon a thought it's a useful practice it can be a useful practice at times
but it's not going to replace meditation practice.
And you can understand this when we talk about the second part of your question.
You say, when I just repeat the mantra, disliking, disliking, the issue keeps arising.
It seems like my mind is screaming for an interpretation versus a passive observation.
Okay, so...
This is what we expect to see.
This is not a sign that your practice is going wrong.
This is a sign that reality is not under your control.
When you say disliking, disliking, and the issue keeps arising, what you're seeing is what we just talked about in this Anattalakana Sutta, that it's not under your control.
that you're not in charge that it doesn't turn off just because you want it to go away that's what we're trying to see if the issue keeps coming back enough again and again and you keep staying objective as you say passive passively observing it eventually you're going to get fed up with it you're going to say look this is just making me suffer again and again and again
We want it to come up again.
We're not trying to get rid of the problem.
We're trying to understand the problem.
And when you understand it clearly enough, your mind will change.
You'll cease to react in the ways that you
you ordinarily react, because you'll see they're just causing me suffering again and again.
So the unfortunate truth is, from our perspective, to free yourself from something, you really have to go through it over the long term.
You have to go through the issue, experience it again and again.
There's no quick fix.
Looking for a quick fix, trying to
Fix your problems when you talk about this active sort of practice of trying to find out what's wrong.
It just leads to the habit of trying to fix things.
That habit is problematic.
You'll never get tired or disenchanted or turn away or let go.
Because you'll always be trying to make things better.
It's not the way we normally look at things, but
I think that's a good thing because the way we look at things obviously normally isn't working.
I'm not going to answer this one because it deals with other people.
If you want to ask it more generally, go ahead.
I'm not going to comment on other people's practice.
Is there a difference between wanting and liking?
Do both of them come under craving?
Right.
So we had this question before, actually, recently, I think.
And no, there isn't a difference.
We look at it differently.
But see, the point is that technically, technically, you experience something, and then there's a reaction to that experience.
And then there's the drive to do something about it.
So it's always going to be the same.
But when we look at it from a sort of a wider sense, we have a sense, well, this is liking and this is wanting.
But it's always going to be a combination of both.
Or it's two parts of the same process.
The liking aspect of it is in regards to the experience.
The wanting aspect is in regards to the process of doing something about it.
It's how it appears to us.
But the moment of liking or wanting, of what we call craving, I suppose, is the reaction to the experience.
And so basically it's just an excitement.
It's a stress of sorts, where you get stressed about the experience positively.
It's a positive stress we call eustress or something.
Instead of just calmly experiencing it, you get excited.
It triggers something.
And that trigger, in some cases we call it liking because it's a positive, or in some cases we call it disliking because it's negative.
Some things excite us negatively.
But either way, it's technically the same.
It's a description of the same process.
It's just there's different qualities based on many other factors.
How are we able to practice metta without craving or desire?
Well, an enlightened being just naturally cultivates metta.
I mean, not all of them do and not all the time.
But no, it doesn't require desire or craving to be loving.
Love is just a natural expression of the mind and something that is appropriate
appropriate at certain times, and it's innocent.
So it's a part of the mind that isn't eradicated.
An enlightened being does away with many different qualities because they come to understand that they're unbeneficial.
Love and compassion, these don't cease.
And it's certainly possible to have them mixed up, where love and desire are mixed.
You love someone, but you also, well, for example, you want to love them, or you, I mean, more like you want them to love you back, usually.
You want them to be near you.
You want them to be happy, for example.
If you really want someone to be happy, that's problematic, and I think that's what you're getting at.
We say, may you be happy, and it's like, hey, doesn't that mean you want them to be happy?
Not exactly.
It's a problem with the word want because when we say, may you be happy, we're just expressing a friendliness.
In love, it's not really a, I want you to be happy.
It's not like when you say, hey, if I say to you a good day, it doesn't mean that I'm going to be upset when you don't have a good day.
I'm not going to worry or ask you, did you have a good day?
And be upset about it.
It's a wish.
It's what we do when we greet anyone.
When you say to someone, oh, good day to you.
It's not that I want in that sense.
It's an expression of friendliness.
And it's a limitation of language that it sounds like a desire.
Could you explain the relationship between sati and sanya?
When you've noted the beginning of anger many times, the next time anger arises, one gets knowing here comes the anger.
Sounds like this knowing quality is based on past observations.
Hmm.
I don't really know what to say there's no relationship so I guess that is a relationship what happens as you're mindful you gain a certain amount of what we might call sanya an awareness of how things are how your mind works which you can call sanya but I don't know what else you want me to say about it
It sounds like you're doing quite well.
I mean, that's a good thing to see.
As you're more mindful, you get to see how your mind works.
You come to see more clearly.
Yes, this is how anger comes.
This is what causes anger.
Also seeing, hey, what is the result of being angry?
When I'm angry, it causes me suffering.
So, good for you.
Is there a force or energy that makes people like us more since we meditate?
Yeah, I think you generally, it's arguable that you become more attractive as you meditate because you're more kind and peaceful and you have a bright complexion, I think.
When you meditate, it makes you in some ways beautiful, let's say.
So then your question, if people come, insist to meet you, but it keeps you away from your practice, how should you keep going without being rude to people, right?
So it attracts people, it attracts unwanted attention.
It's a good question.
And it's a problem that you're going to have.
The further you go in meditation, the more the people that are connected with you are going to want to engage with you.
Not even just for the reason that you become more attractive, if that's even a thing.
But also just because of your relationship with them.
You're going to have to interact with people.
And as you pull away, that triggers something in them.
People see that you are no longer engaging.
It intrigues them and it pulls them in.
We might say it triggers your karmic relationship with them.
You're pulling away and you have to deal with the karma that you have with this person.
So you might say you have to deal with it more quickly.
It comes more quickly to a head because of the practice.
So what to do about it?
Well, consider it part of your practice.
Other people shouldn't be an obstacle to your practice.
They have to become a part of your path to enlightenment.
How you deal with other people.
Are you mindful?
How you interact with them?
I still have a question about reincarnation.
If we are all born again, how can it be that mankind has more than five-fold over the last hundred years?
Right.
Well, 5 billion, 6 billion, 7 billion people isn't really that many beings.
I think there are a lot more animals than that.
So the number of animals that have become humans is probably a great part of that.
But there are also other realms.
There are heavenly realms, there are hell realms, and there's a lot of movement.
So whether you believe in reincarnation or not, or rebirth or not, it's not really a valid, it's not really an important, it's not a challenge to it.
When we do mental noting, does it fully fulfill the instruction Pajanati?
Not entirely, but it's the process of, it's the relationship between sati and panya.
Sati is this process of recognizing, remembering.
So when you say to yourself, itching, itching, for example, or when you feel pain and you say pain, pain, it brings about the panya, the wisdom.
Because once you do that, then you see it as it is.
Your awareness of the experience is objective, it's mindful, it's clear.
And that's the Pajanati.
It comes about because of the noting.
The statues of Mahavira often look similar to the statues of Buddha.
Are there parallels or strong differences between the two?
Yeah, the Mahavira plays a big part in the Pali Canon.
There's lots of stories about the Buddha and his encounters with Niganta Nataputta is what he was called, what the Buddhists called him.
Nataputta was his family name.
Niganta was a name for the giants.
So there were similar teachings.
The Jains were more extreme.
They believed that in order to be completely harmless,
you had to really stop doing anything.
Eventually stop eating.
The best practice was to just starve yourself, because otherwise you were in danger of harming.
You have to sweep in front of you, this kind of thing.
They went naked, some of them.
I'm not quite sure why.
They were very careful when they ate.
They would look through the food to make sure there were no living beings, insects had fallen into it.
They had to be very careful about everything.
They weren't allowed to boil water because boiling water killed the beings that were potentially in it, that kind of thing.
So it's a different, it's just another one of the many philosophies that were around at the time of the Buddha.
And that's all the questions.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Have a good night.