Brisbane Retreat day 7 – Practical Vipassna
Welcome to the Vipassana day !!!
So today, what we are going to do is that in the next 2 hours almost 2 hours it’ll be continuous session. If you want to stretch your leg any time you can do so but do it slowly without disturbing your mind. So first thing is to continue watching your breath. as usual you’ve been doing so far and try to enter into the first Janna which means like you feel somebody is pouring water on your head. So let’s take 15 minutes time to get into that and then I will guide you on the next steps.
Maintain your attention on the in and out breath. The length of the breath long as long, short as short. Don’t have to make it in any way. Just if it is long, it is long. If it is short, it is short. It’s coming in left nostril, so be it. Coming in right nostril, so be it.
Coming in both the nostril, so be it. Both the length are same or different, doesn’t matter. Just maintain your attention on the breath. When you do that, there is a knowledge, there is an understanding on this breath. Then you can have an awareness of the sound and the air. touching your body. Sound coming in your ear and the air touching the body. Relaxation is to bring in the awareness from the outside to the inside and keeping a watch over those areas where you have some discomfort. And when you do that, it starts to loosen up and goes away.
Then bring back the attention on the breath and the awareness will again go back to either the sound or to the air touching the whole body. Start to watch the breath with an intention to have an insight into this breath. The insight is called as vipasana. The first insight is that the air which is outside is coming inside your nose and nose has holes.
So the hole is the space element. So wherever there is space there would be air. Like in this room there’s space and there is air. And the air doesn’t make any distinction between this person and that person. Wherever there is air, it has oxygen. In this oxygenated one is going into the nose.
And that’s all is happening. It’s not going in my nose specifically or that person’s nose. It just going inside the nose. When you see this, you will let go of the idea that this is my nose. This is my nose hole. And you also notice that this room has more bigger space than the space covered in the nose. Then when it touches when it goes inside, you’ll feel the touch which is the earth element.
You might find it hard to find the water element because water droplets you have to perceive it in a sharp way. But you can see the fire element uh because it is heat and cold. The outside air is cold and the air which comes from the nose is warm. So now you have an insight that the breath consists of akasā or space, vayu or air, tejo or warm and cold. Apo dhatu or water droplets and pathavi as in earth. So what is breath is these five dhatu only and if you are wanting to do you can look at the whole body itself like that but if you can’t just restrict to these dhatu’s.
So the knower viññana or consciousness will now know that whenever we call breath it means these dhatus. Just keep on checking on that and look at how it is changing with every breath you’re taking. taking in coming out. Sometimes the air outside is also warm and that goes inside. Sometimes the air outside is cold that goes inside. And sometimes there is a length of the breath being long and short which we just now did. So that is also part of the same phenomena.
That means you can clearly notice that it is an Impermanent that means it arises with something and it passes away. The air is going inside while you and it comes out in breath followed by outreath that means arising and sensation. Keep on looking like this and then we’ll come to the next stage with or feeling. But at present first establish about this The air is not yours. So make a mental note. This is not mine. Breath is just a breath. It’s a label. Sañña meaning just a sign for the air going in and coming out. That’s a sign. And it is nobody’s. Nobody can claim this air is mine. If it were mine, it should stay with me. It doesn’t even stay for a moment. Goes in and comes out.
I didn’t do anything for it to go. go in and I didn’t do anything for it to come out and hence there is no ownership. It is just a process not a person that’s the first insight this is not mine and in Pali it is neso mama If you keep on working like that, you’ll come to the second insight of this. This does not belong to me. There is no belongingness. It doesn’t care whose nose it is. I might feel I’m the owner of the nose but air has no idea that it has to come to you as a owner.
So this does not belong to me. And the third insight is no self not myself. Because if I say breath is myself then every breath I’m going in and coming out and I don’t know where I went because the next breath is different. And how do I then keep track of how many breaths, how many breaths I have died and woken up so not myself. Neso mama, this is not mine. Neso aham asmi, this does not belong to me. neso na me atta or this is not myself. Since you might have tough in Pali, just remember not mine, not belonging to me and not myself.
Now you have this insight for the breath. Even though the label looks permanent, but below that label is this impermanency. Just keep a watchful eye on this and then wait for my next information. Having watched as a witness, let’s move to the second one.
Feelings when you had no idea the feeling was different. Now that you’re watching the space air like that, the feeling turns different. It becomes equanimous. Not neutral feeling but equanimity. What is equanimity? It means no substance, nothing to be attached to. So the moment you touch that space or touch that knowledge of equanimity, all reaction ceases at once.
No reaction Just like in the vipasana course, how an itching sensation or a throbbing sensation etc. comes on the surface of the skin and goes away or within the body. In the same way if you were to be equinimous watching the air coming inside the nostrils and then how the heat can be found and the water uh and the rubbing of the breath which is the earth element you’ll become equanimous all reaction ceases if you forget that then you’ll have a pleasant sensation you can have a unpleasant sensation or you can have a neutral sensation I’m using the word sensation because you are used to that word from the Goenka ji technique, but actually it is feelings you feel based upon the length of the breath or because of the touch of the breath either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.
But again when you don’t react it turns equanimous. What is neutral feeling? Neutral feeling is that when you forget to watch these five elements, it becomes neutral or ignorant that the breath indeed has these five elements.
So that’s the difference between equanimity and neutral. Now for the next half an hour we will watch only the feelings what it is changing to. So you be an inside person an investigator looking at the changes that appears on the breath.
While you do that you will find the sañña or the perception also changing with that breath and while you’re doing that the sankhara the in-breath and out breath itself is called kaya sankhāra so that also changes. So all these three are held by phassa or contact.
So contact create feelings, contact creates perceptions and contact creates the evolution. Let me breathe again is evolution. It’s the most interesting drive of half an hour. Don’t wasting a single moment to watch this in action.
Based upon these five elements moving here and there, if you do it in a correct way, you’ll start to get the particle kind of effect in the body. Starting from the tip of the toe to the top of the head, it will be bhanga or kalapa or whatever you want to call that as which is again a label. Instead of attaching a label just Watch how this whole thing transforms. Have a good ride. Meet you in half an hour.
Now coming to the consciousness portion of it. All this time you’ve been knowing which is consciousness. Started with breath, then with the feeling, then with the perception, then with the now you are in touch with itself, the knower of the knower. Now follow my instruction carefully and everything will start to shut down. First to shut down is the eye eye consciousness. There is nothing to see. There is nothing to experience as a scene. The next one is the nose. There’s nothing to smell. The next one to close is the tongue. There’s nothing to taste. The next one that is going to get closed is the ear. There is no No sound to be heard. Slowly it will start to diminish. You are hearing something now but slowly it is withdrawn. The body consciousness is the inb breath outreath which now has become so subtle that in few moments you might see it seizing. as though the breath has stopped. Then finally there are no thought patterns, no images in the mind and hence it stops.
So you enter into the nirodha of any sensations. Now this can happen in two ways. One with bhanga happening followed by the vibrations or kampana and that takes you to nirodha or without the bhanga itself because you are observing in equanimity it will take to the seizing of the six sense doors. until you hear my voice again. You might have a suspension of any conscious experience of any of the six sense objects. May you attain the supreme bliss of nibbana and enjoy this ride.
What we did now is to look at the breath in five parts. One as rupa, another one as feeling, another of the perception and Then the volitions and the consciousness how it can know from just taking as breath to a different dimensions.
So all that we need to know is about consciousness that which is conditioned and which it can get unconditioned. The conditioned consciousness is established on on name and form. Whatever you feed it, you experience that. But when you don’t feed it, nothing gets experienced. And that would be the end of the suffering.
May all of you attain the supreme bliss of nibbana in the next few days. where we’ll be continuously practicing vipassana on the breath and cutting it down into five aggregates without grasping.
Sadhu sadhu sadhu
Day 7 – Vipassana Insight: The Five Elements and the Seizing Mind
