Vitikkasanthansutta

Vitikkasanthansutta – Forms of Thought – 43 minutes.
[Practicing mindfulness, Discursive thought etc] A Talk on the Majjhima Nikaya given by the Venerated Namgyal Rinpoche
(First Draft Only)

Vitikkasanthansutta is basically about bringing the mind to steadiness, to calming the mind, to making the mind one pointed and concentrated; that is with a good continuum of focus. The word ‘concentration’, normally applies in the Pali language as absorption, a continuum absorption, rather than power. Because Westerners, when you say ‘concentrated’ on something, they just shift it into being really fixed on something. Now that’s already dealt with in the one-pointed. But the word ‘concentration’, normally from the Pali, is an ability to rest easily, be absorbed into a subject. Like for example, reading a book over a period of time and being quite absorbed in the story. You don’t notice the time passing, and that sort of thing. So normally concentration in the Dharma sense, in the Eastern sense, implies something a little different. Not trying to be concentrated; you know I was reading a book and I was finding it very difficult to concentrate, and had to use a lot of effort. Here, it is effortless and it is a calm continuum.

Now, to bring the mind through to calm continuum, the ability to be absorbed into something that your studying, depends a lot on the various thoughts that you’ve got going. We’re going to do just a little translation on Vitaka, and I like to make a type of pun – tacking with; to focus on and tack your mind on to something. So sometimes it has this meaning as in the factors of Jhana. And sometimes it means, strangely enough, the discursive thoughts that you have happening in your mind, wherever your mind is. Here we’re talking particularly about verbalization. So the Buddha, in this particular teaching, is saying there are five ways in which you can bring to an end, this restless mind, that’s scattered and having all sorts of thoughts. Sort of being subject to them but you don’t know why they start, more often then not.

And I think that’s the first thing that has to be established (which is implied behind the discourse) that the being is practicing mindfulness. If your not practicing mindfulness, you’ll never steady the mind. In other words, you’re not aware of what’s going on. Even when your talking all day long, the most inane, to ridiculous, to serious conversations going on, but they’re hardly there to participate in them, they just happen. And they’re chuntering along and then you probably have to come along and rap them on top of the head and then, – “oh what, where am I?” And they bring themselves out of it, and then they try to get focused on something and get involved in something. But most of the time, they’re absent. And there is just this conversation going on. They could be supposedly sitting down in meditation and they’ve gone shopping, or they’re out to lunch or something.

So, he says if you want steadiness of the mind, which of course is the basis for development of anything, of any subject, university or otherwise, the university of the universe, you need to focus on the discursive thoughts, the conversations that are going on, the inner dialogues. And I’ve put it to you before, but I’ll state it again, and yet again and again, much to your boredom I suppose. But in the Chinese teaching, in the Ten Tai school, which is Ten Tai Shu in Japan, one of the commentators said that when you sit down to meditate, but let’s say you wanted to do academic work, or scientific work, or artistic work for development, you suffer for the first ten years from cancer; the cancer of uncontrolled thought. One of those superfluous growths that keeps on happening. Then the next five years, after you’ve been working away, flogging your mental butt in meditation, after about five years you’ve only got Tuberculosis. This commentator says, you’re having coughing fits from time to time. And then eventually it’s down to the common cold that’s running on, but in the background of the mind. The major thing that has to be conquered or mastered, if you wish not only to develop in meditation but to develop spiritually, you have to see where your conversations are. And of course also fantasy numbers, but just conversations. And in this particular text the Buddha outlines that if the being is intent on the development of higher thought, higher aspects or deeper aspects of understanding, from time to time, you should step in there to have a look what’s going on in terms of your conversations; your internal conversations. And notice, he does say – from time to time. He does not say all the time, like “try to watch your conversations all the time”. Because that in itself could become a hindrance.

But particularly, however, those times when there are dangerous thoughts, unwholesomely dangerous thoughts, or that could possibly ripen into dangerous situations. And then he said you should attend to the five characteristics. I think that should be more, the five ways of dealing with Vitaka, or verbalization. And I’d like to say about thought, some people start some series of thoughts going and they are relatively innocent at the beginning. But allowed to go on and on, and it becomes a full blown fantasy trip and then it leads into danger.

It is very important to understand that. Because most people say, well I was just verbalizing on a bit but then there’s more of them and more of them. And the sheer quantity of that thought leads into a whole quality change in the mind to difficulties, quite severe difficulties. So this is quite important for you to realize.
Now one of the ways that you can deal with them, is immediately you know, well again, do you know? Many people don’t realize the danger in uncontrolled thought, they simply don’t. It’s rather there’s a dream. You know when you wake up, and you’ve had a terrible dream and you say, “it’s only a dream”. So many people with the conversations that go on in their head, ‘oh it’s just a conversation in the head’. They don’t see how it builds and shapes, and turns the stream of the mind in certain directions. How much thought about something, makes something come into being.

You can take that positively too, if you make much thought about enlightenment, it might bring it into being. So if you really thought about it, and put it there as the goal, you might see ways and means of the attainment of that. But you can also turn it around the other way, and start off with minor little (sin) thoughts. And the next thing you know, your plotting and planning major sins.

So he says, anyway, the first way of dealing with it, if you have made that recognition, is – ‘that’s very unskillful’. First of all, not being aware is very unskillful, a waste of the mind. And if you do become aware of these verbal conversations, which have desire behind them,
and anger behind them and dullness, you start having to mark them. The easiest way is just to do that, ‘that’s a lust thought’, just three ways. ‘It’s a lust thought, it’s a hate thought, or it’s a dull thought, that’s very dull thinking’.

So the first thing to do is to name it. See, a lot of people don’t do that. If you actually made that step, from time to time, I’d like to suggest that you not be absolutely obsessional about it. Probably more than once a month, sit down and have one day, you understand what I mean. Particularly when there’s stuff that your suspicious about. It doesn’t mean necessarily sitting there waiting for thoughts to occur, it means when they occur.

But also I’m indicating, not so much from the text but from experience of teaching people, that it’s good to dedicate a period of time to just watch the conversations. Asking the question, ‘what conversations are going on in my head’, and tracking them for a day or two or three. And watching patterns, repeated patterns. Particularly watching repeated patterns of thought, you get some idea of the hindrances you have got. For example, remember we talked the other day of hyper criticism – notice your reaction, or your negatives. Anything that’s proposed, the mind might move into negation, or vice versa. You see the almost automatic numbers that are occurring, which you’ve lived with for so long, so you don’t see them. Maybe other people have to point them out. But if you sat down from time to time, for a period of time, not to say a whole month but every month or so. Sat down in examination, not of conscience but an examination of patterns of thought, you begin to see the ones that are loaded. But then you start naming them, ‘this is a lust number’. When I say lust, I also put conceit in there, because it’s a kind of lust for your ego. Or there’s a hate; my ego verses every other ego. And then of course, above all, how many times you have the blank, confused state of thoughts; confused state thoughts that don’t make too much sense, and they’re jumbled and contradictory and all that.

So you start in separating the chaff, from the chaff, from the chaff. What kind of chaff is it; this is wheat chaff, oat chaff, and this is rye chaff. Like someone who could lay out various grains for inspection. And I think, also by doing that you begin to see the next type of question, which is not quite in the text yet. The Buddha in some ways, is much more direct about this. But I’m giving another possibility; you begin to see what triggered it off, what set that one off. And that’s very conducive to liberation. You see some little event, some trivial little event and then it started in. Once in there, be mindful that it goes on and on and on. But it’s good to get quicker about liberation, ‘I undertake’…, you know ‘I aspire… I undertake to train myself to refrain….’ Yes, but I aspire to become awakened quickly, and that means getting these thoughts quickly, before they get going and their in full gallop down the path. And then your in consequences, because little trickles seem to be inconsequential but they build up etc. I think that is also conducive to liberation.

But now we’ll turn to the Buddha. In this part he said, once you’ve got that, you’ve got them divided and you know that stuff, where it’s going and probably what’s going to happen. A little bit more prognostication; you say ‘oh oh’. Immediately turn your mind to something skillful, something wholesome. And then he gives this simile: as if you had a peg or a bung, I think it’s called, and a wine casket and you want to get at the wine. You want to knock the bung out, and you knock it out with something more focused, a smaller peg. A large peg is driven out by a smaller peg. It’s very skillful to turn the mind to immediate focus on a more high powered thought. A thought that is in atunement with the higher dimensions. Turn your mind to a spiritual subject immediately and that’s knocking the one peg out by the other. So he gives that simile.

And he does also, as he’s saying there, if while he’s attending instead, to that characteristic or some other characteristic which is associated with what is skilled, if you’re attempting to do spiritual work, and there still arises unskilled thoughts associated with desire, and associated with aversion, and associated with confusion, then the parral of these thoughts should be scrutinized, thinking; indeed these are unwholesome. They’re unwholesome at the time they occur (I’m putting in a different type of translation just for the moment). They’re unwholesome at that time, and they’re unwholesome for the future, and indeed they’re based on error.
This is the interesting thing, that whenever you have a wrong thought, its always an error. And you hold, strangely stubbornly, to the error, you believe the fiction. You see that also in fantasy. You know the fantasy is not correct but you stubbornly hold to it. You want it to be correct and this is again subject to error. Micca-ditti also, and has painful results.

Now, one of the ways he says of getting rid of it, is to imagine what possible consequences unwholesome thoughts have. For example, under the heading of confusion; drinking. What might happen if you get into a car accident, your whole life is smashed up. So without making too much of that, when you see that every thought that you have, this is not quite stated in the text but it is the truth nevertheless, that its bad chemistry. Every bad thought you have is bad chemistry and is shaping your body badly and it’s bad hormones and this and that and the other.

So, he then speaks, if you really saw how bad, ‘bad’ was, it’s as if a man or a woman, young, because the spiritual life is always young, its got good energy ,and is the prime of life when you’re being spiritual, no matter how old you are, you feel really very steady and youthful. It’s as if a man or a woman at the prime of life, fond of adornment; you really want beautiful things to happen, who if a carcass of a snake, or the carcass of a dog, or the carcass of a human being, were hanging around the neck. This is the albatross around the neck, (a stinking carcass by the way), would be revolted, ashamed, disgusted. Even so monks, while you’re attempting to attend to the spiritual life, which is for youth, for steadiness, for maturing and for adornment. And then these thoughts came up, well they’re stinking carcass stuff. Dead stuff from the past, usually just chuntering on. Well then seeing that would help you to drop them.

And then the next thing you do, is seeing the peril of the thoughts, should it bring about forgetfulness of the path, or lack of attention to the path. I’m implying certain things here. He says, well as soon as you know that, that’s what’s causing you not to develop the spiritual  life. Every time is arises, it is like someone who is trying to avoid material shapes that come within the range of vision; you turn away from it. If you were walking along and you see a piece of dogs dung along the path, what would you do? Well, you’d normally turn your attention away from it, it’s automatic. You understand what I’m implying. He says, well why don’t you use, as if you’re trying to avoid some material shape or want to avoid somebody, you just look the other way. And so as soon as it comes, be more immediate. There comes that thought, ‘that’s a piece of dogs dung’. You know what I mean. There it comes…Zoomp And there’s an automatic looking away. And your consciousness, which wants you to develop mindfulness, will automatically turn away from that. The stronger you are mindfully, you drop it very quickly. You just turn away from that. You don’t have a conversation with it. Notice here, by the way, you don’t have a conversation with it.

Now, you’re probably fairly skillful if you were walking through town, or a village, and there’s somebody you don’t want to talk to and you saw them coming towards you.
You’d probably start walking the other way automatically, or turn your head away and not acknowledge.

So there’s also a virtue in not getting into a dialogue with it. You just avert your eyes from it and go back to your work.

Another way of dealing with them is slowing it all down. It’s very important to slow your conversations down. You see, when you’re first into them and you watch them happening, they’re zooming along, zooming along. If you could just slow them down, unwholesome thoughts would have less effect on you. The interesting thing is that if you slow down bad thoughts, they would have less influence on you. And if you slow down good thoughts, they would have more influence on you. These are little points that people don’t realize. But you notice that when you’re involved in bad thoughts, lustful thoughts, anger thoughts, particularly, you speed up. Your whole system gets speeded up. Your on a speed trip. And you get more and more thrown in to the fantasies and the rationality, and the ridiculousnesses, and dangerousnesses. Simply because it’s speeding up and it’s getting out of control, and you’re out of control. Even thoughts of suicide are those when the balance of mind is disturbed, but it’s also manic. If you could just slow down the mania it would drop away. You would really not prefer that. And if you slow down good thoughts, they strengthen.

This is another aspect. I’m trying to deepen some understanding which is implied in the discourse but not actually stated. Why is it implied? Because the good states steady you, steady you. And it’s that prime of life thing. They mature, they grow, they expand and lead to adornments. But strangely enough, if you really do spend more time focusing on the good, not just having it happen quick, quick, quick. Trying to get it quick, quick, quick.

But more, luxuriate in the good feeling, it strengthens it.

Now there may those that say, ‘oh that isn’t working’. Then he says, if there really is strong karma from the past, and it really is getting a hold of you, then he said, be ye not moved. This is the one, teeth clenched, and tongue pressed against the palate, should my mind subdue, restrain and dominate his mind. And that’s one of the things very few people do. They have a kind of weak approach to sin, “oh please sin, don’t go on like that. I repent but don’t go on. Couldn’t you just pack it in bad thought?”. And it comes back, “no…(laughter) I’m here to stay no matter what you do”. I think you’ve got to get to Luther, or St. Theresa of Avila, you know, throw the ink pot at the devil. Clench your teeth, and press the tongue against the roof of the mouth and just subdue thoughts. In other words just dominate. Raise that question of silly old you allowing yourself to be dominated by that stuff all the time, it just goes on and on… Now is the time to practice domination over those things. Casting out the devil, ‘ get ye behind me satan’. That type of number, and mean it.

Of course that’s the trouble, most people don’t mean it. It’s more, “oh go away, please”. But they really want it sort of, ‘couldn’t I get the path and still have that thing present? Come along with me like a little Fido doggy’, along the path, vomiting or whatever it’s doing. Puking or defecating, I’ll have this other sort of sub-me come along on the path with me, it’s all very nice. But here the text says, no, if you really do have the insight about the transcendental, then you’ll apply domination of the mind over. Dominion over the evil.

But there are other techniques before that, and there are things to be learned. So that’s again spoken of there. Another thing I’d like to point out, of course, that the very steadiness which jhana; the ecstatic absorption, would give, the calm that it would give, the one- pointedness that it would give, the full absorption that it would give, of course would wipe the slate clean. The unwholesome thoughts cannot and never occur in jhana. And so they’re wiped out and so that is where that is at.

These are where the Buddha is speaking about ways and means to cut off the various forms of craving. And by the way, it’s breaking free from a fetter, from chains. Because these thoughts, not conducive to the path, are put in there willy nilly, of happenstance, of things that have happened in early childhood, if not from other life times. And you’re chained to them, they’re just going on automatically. That’s the imprisonment. You’re imprisoned in these thoughts. You think they’re inside your head, but your inside they’re head. It’s more like that, and they’re speaking. They’re going on and on and on by habitual pattern. And anyone living in habitual pattern, just doing things by rote, unaware, is in slavery.

And the Buddha said, you will break through. You can only break through if you give up false pride. He speaks about fully mastering pride. You’ve identified with those thoughts, and you are those thoughts and those thoughts are you. And they are going on because the being is in false ego, or the being is in conceit. There’s always behind, the false sex thoughts and the anger thoughts, there’s always conceit. There’s always conceit; I will get this, this will happen to me! This is for me, I’ll do that…and it’s all conceit. And it’s not even true (this will sound very strange) but some psychologists talk about the true ego. This is all false ego stuff. It’s not actually good wholesome pride of life and being and so on. It’s all false, miserable, little stage pride number that’s going on. It’s really in a way, not you. And the path by the way, is for your best interest. All those things are not for your best interest, you have falsely identified with them.

Well, if you wanted to study more about that, you’d have to get into certain therapies like, primal scream. You know there’s a point where you’ve been living falsely, and think that you build yourself up by various conquests of this and that and the other, however subtly they’re put. It’s conceit, and it’s really not to the advantage of the true self or the true emperical ego. That’s one way of speaking, or just to be an unfolded human being. Of course unless you deal with your thoughts, your conversations, you will never attain an end of suffering, an end of anguish. Because the more look at it you see how productive of suffering the conversations are. Conversations, just conversations. If you could deal with the inner conversations how much suffering would go out of the life, can you intuit it? Someone I once heard, one teacher, one of the first Buddhist teachers in this life time, I heard expounding said, ‘do you know that 95% of the time that people are in vittaca; idle conversations, 95% of the time’. And his audience sort of gasped. And eventually I’ll turn around and accuse you of being 95% of the time, absent.

And most people will say, ‘oh no, I’m here all the time’, no you’re not. It used to be that people could spend twenty minutes in a relatively good focus, good concentration. Then came commercials on television. It’s down to about three minutes now, the average time people can let go and be absorbed into something. It dropped in this century, from about twenty minutes at the turn of the century, by some measurements, that people were able to really get involved and be focused, to about three minutes. It’s no sooner that they get in meditation, that they’re waiting for the commercial, and you have to make a commercial.

I think, if you did, excuse me, thirty minutes of mediation, I’d have to come ten times to say ‘come on now, get out of it, you do this…’ I’d have to sell it as a package, you understand, soap or detergent or something. ‘If you meditate, you’ll get this, that, or the other’. And then three minutes later, come again, because it’s just about that time, your waiting for the interruption. And now we have the state, where one of the inhibiting factors of letting go into full absorption are these various vittaccas. Which you’re dependent on like a drug addiction; to have a stimulating thought, ‘look at the great time I’m having, here I am meditating. Is there a jhana coming? When is the ecstatic absorption coming?’.

Then much comment of course, preceding it. You almost have to psyche yourself up to get it!. It’s advertising. Instead of depending on the calm intuition of the teaching. If you had an intuitive understanding, you’d have faith. But now you have to be made to have faith, you have to be sold enlightenment!

I think we’re going to give up this way of teaching from the books, you know, and we’re going on television. We’d get better results, you know, from one of those evangelical programs. It’s interrupted every three minutes for an appeal for various monies, to make bigger and bigger projects. So you have to have more money for the bigger projects, etc., etc… I guess it’s the expanse of mind. You’re all guilty of being a T.V. evangelist as far as I can see. I’m not referring to various other numbers.

It’s just that you have to be psyched up, kept up, staying power. The Ontario consciousness is not that great, I reported that to you. Canadians in general have a very poor record, and North Americans in general, of ability to be calmly, quietly, steadily, one focused, positive. They have to be advertised. And as a teacher, if you don’t constantly advertise, you’re no where in their consciousness, that’s another thing. Keep them entertained, keep them reved up, keep them with different subjects. I’ve referred to the great discourse on the Chariot Of Gifts. Because the little children get easily bored, easily distrustful of their own being.

I think you’d prefer to be dragged to enlightenment, through the great doors of immortality, “come along, now your coming along”. Screaming and protesting and dragging your heals and pouting and all the rest of it. But, you know, gone are the days where the kingdom of heaven is taken by storm, and domination, and I’m going to get it!
It’s just like, please Rinpoche, drag me there, by the hair, screaming and protesting, right?

“I didn’t want it anyway when I got there”, there’s a touch of that. We may think it’s humorous but in fact…And I attribute much of it to your intuition being silenced by the advertising. The spiritual advertisement that has to go on.

What I notice about advertisements is that they’re always louder, and when it goes into the real program it’s quieter, have you ever noticed that? The action’s quicker, and no wonder that after awhile, you get an excitement for the advertisement, not for the work!.

Student: Also, these days you’ve got those clickers that you can turn the sound off.
Rinpoche: Yes, well I should issue you one when you come in. Because that’s what you do anyway. If I’m right, and you only have a three minute…You get the type of question, have you noticed sometimes in class, that somebody will inevitably ask a question and many people will ask a question, that’s already covered. They weren’t there however. They were in some interior conversation, who knows, they’ve gone shopping again. Or they were fixing their car in the garage. Their minds were elsewhere. And then they have enough nerve to ask you to go back over that subject for them, that point. They look blank when you say, ‘well, I’ve already covered it’. Now that’s fairly standard, and you have to catch yourself doing that. Have you ever been guilty of that? Yes, yes, yes, and you have other wonderful interests. So you see, you’ve already come with your clicker.

Well that is something about the different ways, five major ones, that the Buddha gives.
I would like to say, there’s another word there which I believe should be translated more as ‘details’. In any case, where it says characteristics, I think you can put in, details.
Then you’re involved in the details of something and some other numbers.

So the characteristics. I think you’ll get a better reading, if you sort of translate it as detail. For example, while you’re attending to some characteristic, It would be better for you to say, if you were involved in some detail or some Dharma question ; is attending to that, involved with that detail in examination. Characteristic sounds rather vague. You can also translate it as some aspect.

And that does happen , that you get involved with an aspect of something that is very positive and some other stuff comes up. Which is, in some texts, referred to as the near enemy. For example, you can be doing the meditation on loving kindness, and the near enemy is called sensuality. You can be doing analytic work and the near enemy (in other words it’s almost a friend, looks a bit like that), aggression. Instead of analysis, it can easily become aggression; hate, picking it apart and your attacking it, or some sort of number. And the near enemy of the calm, clear state, is a calm blank state. So again discerning that is quite important.

Anyway these are a few thoughts on this subject, and on this discourse.

SABBE SATTA SUKHITA HONTU,
MAY YOU BE WELL AND HAPPY.

Hope it helps you.

Good…