Leigh Brasington - Dependent Origination & Emptiness 2 of 4

7:43PM Mar 21, 2022

Speakers:

Leigh Brasington

Keywords:

sensory input

conceptualize

buddha

thinking

conceptualization

dukkha

craving

veda

mindfulness

unpleasant

concepts

arises

suta

dependent

darts

sound

hear

pleasant

input

proliferation

So, wanna take a look at a suta again, this is in the middle length discourses, this is sukha number 18, the honey balls SUTA and the page number in the PDF is page 43. If you still haven't found page numbers in the PDF, you could scroll back to the table of contents and hopefully your table of contents is live. And you can just click on I believe it's chapter 10, the honey ball SUTA

so most people don't think of this as a dependent origination SUTA but it's very definitely a dependent origination sukha it doesn't have the 12 links. It's got a subset with some other stuff thrown in. But it made my list of top 10 suitors just like the Carlson dispute sukha did. Course my list of top 10 suitors has 11 in it. Oh, well. I enjoyed Spinal Tap too much. Okay. The SUTA opens with a lay person rudely interrupting the Buddhist solitary medic tation to ask what he teaches? What's his doctrine? The Buddha's answer is a bit cryptic. I teach in a way such that one does not quarrel with anyone in a way that concepts no more underlie one who lives detached from sensual pleasures without bewilderment. free from worry and craving. The questioner is not pleased. He's sticks out his tongue Waggles his head and leaves. Later that evening, the Buddha tells his monks what has transpired. A monk asked how does the Buddha teach in that way? And how is it that concepts no longer underlie the Buddha? And again, Buddha's replies cryptic as for the source through which concepts and mental proliferation be set one, if nothing is found to desire or cling to, this is the inter end of the underlying tendencies to unwholesome states. The end of quarrels and disputes here, evil states cease without remainder. So, rather than trying to unpack that statement, let's look at the dependent arising and I'll stick that in the chat. So, evil unwholesome states, such as quarrels and disputes, arise dependent upon desire and clinging, which arise dependent upon concepts and mental proliferation. So, this is somewhat like what we found and the SUTA odd quarrels and disputes that we discussed earlier. But, here desire in clean or not said to be dependent on pleasant and unpleasant and then contact and name and form, your desire and cleaning arise dependent upon concepts and mental proliferation. What exactly does this mean? Well, after saying this, the Buddha retired to his dwelling the monks were puzzle who can explain this to us, they decided to go to the venerable Maha Tatiana and asked him to explain it. Mahakasyapa was recognized as the one who could explain in detail what the Buddha had said in brief. Mahakasyapa says you should ask the Buddha himself but he says he'll do what he can. He says he understands the detail meaning as follows. For each of the six senses, he says dependent on the sense organ and sense objects. Since consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact with contact s condition, they're fading what one feels Pāli That's Figgy T it's a verb form of viññāna one conceptualises son John T, the verb form of son Yeah, what one conceptualises one thinks the V Tuckett t, which is the verb form of vitakka what one thinks about one mentally proliferates punch. We put that in the chat okay.

So dependent on sense organ and since object since consciousness arises. So since consciousness is that aspect of your mind knows the sensory input. Like, right now, you are not aware until I say so if the pressure on your left foot, oh, and then suddenly you became conscious of the pressure on your left foot. Right? The pressure was there all along the sense organ, your sense of touch, and the object, the floor or whatever that was there, but there was no sense consciousness until I mentioned it. Or like, look back here over my shoulder, you see the Tonka? See this is white Tara, put your attention really carefully on this white circle in the middle of that Tonka look, look really carefully at it. look really carefully. Now become aware of what's in your peripheral vision. What is in your peripheral vision was there all alone, you just weren't conscious of it, you had your eyeball, it was working, the objects in your peripheral vision was there, but because you were focused on the Tonka, you weren't conscious of them. Right. So it takes the three of these. And when they come together, that's since contact dependent on contact, VEDA arise. As I said, Neuroscience tells us that within a 10th of a second, you're going to judge the sensory input is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Most of its neutral, you can you can see where this would be a useful sorting of the input. The pleasant Yeah, you may want to get some more of that or keep it around the unpleasant we have, maybe you got to deal with this and get rid of it. The neutral, you can probably ignore that. And so you know, vagueness is a very simple thing. amoebas seem to have, well, maybe not fading, maybe they don't find it pleasant and unpleasant. But they do respond to their environment, you put some salt into a solution where they're amoebas, they run away, you put some food in, they run towards it. So it's very basic, we could say that being alive means the capacity to respond to the environment and the most basic form of responses either towards or away. Plants been towards the sunlight. Now, I'm not going to say they find sunlight pleasant. I'm going to say that, yeah, science says that. cells growing in the dark grow faster than cells growing in the light. That's why they've been towards the light. But you can see why that's a very helpful evolutionary thing. And so Veda is a very helpful evolutionary thing. But our world is more complex than running away from unpleasant and running towards the pleasant. I mean, does seem to be that's what we do a lot. One of my fellow teachers once said, it's like, we got a, an instruction manual. When we arrived, we open it up and it says, seek pleasure avoid pain live forever. Yeah, you know, they tried that during the hippie era. You know, it feels good, do it. We wound up with a lot of drug problems. So we need to get a little more sophisticated than that. So who dependent on vedanā? conceptualization arises. conceptualization is my translation of the word Sonia. Sonia is usually translated as perception. But I don't think that fully captures it. So I want to translate it as conceptualization. For example, I'm holding up a car and on it can can you people see the bird and the flowers, nod your head if you can see the burden the flowers, you all see the bird in the flowers. There's no bird or flowers. There's just colored shapes. That's all there is is colored shapes. You make up the bird and the flowers in your mind. You take the colored shape and You make it up into bird and flowers. Or so this can it? Can you see this? Can you tell what it is? Right now cuz I'm not you see this color shape. But if I hold it still you go it's a bodhisattva. Right? The colored shapes were there, but you couldn't quite conceptualize what the colored shapes represented till I held it still.

This is conceptualization. You hear a sound, and you conceptualize it as bird. You didn't hear the bird, you heard a sound and you conceptualize it as bird. You smell a smell, and you smell roses? Well, no, you smelled a smell and you conceptualize it as roses. We do this with all of our senses, we get the input. Alright, we sorted into pleasant, unpleasant neutral. And then we identify what it is by conceptualize and we give it a name. This is usually perception, but I don't think conceptualization is more accurate word to use in this case. And we do it all the time. I mean, you're looking at me on the screen, I assume. And you can see that I'm wearing glasses, right? Now you see pixels, you don't see glasses, you see pixels, and you interpret those pixels as the guys wearing glasses. Right? It's easier to see it, you know, with a painting like this, where it's just colored shapes, and I'm making up the bird and the flowers. But it's that way for everything. Anything you see. All you eyeball sees his colored shapes. And then you interpret it to be what you think it is. Your interpretation hopefully is correct, but sometimes it's not. That we do have the word misperception. Yeah, that's Miss Sanya II. Okay, once we've conceptualized and thinking arises. So I hold this up, say, you see the burden the flowers, you conceptualize the burden the flowers, and you think, Oh, I gotta get a card for my niece, her birthdays tomorrow. So you've taken what this is, and then you've run off into something else, you start thinking or you think that's a really nice painting. I wonder who painted that painting? Or you think he just really likes that he's holding it up for the third time? Some weird thing going on? I mean, whatever comes to your mind, right? So there was the sensory input, and then there's the downstream processing of the sensory input. That's the thinking. And if the thinking gets out of hand, that's mental proliferation, which in Pāli, is puncher puncher is one of the best words in Pāli. I mean, we do punch out all the time. You hear something, you see something and you start thinking about it. And then you run off into who knows what. This is a story about a man whose wife asked him to go to the market and get some potatoes. Yes, dear. So it's self together. And just as he goes out the door, she says, and be sure and get a good price. Yes, dear. So he's walking to the market. And he's thinking, yeah, she wants me to get a good price. But she also wants me to get good potatoes. You know, you can get bad potatoes for a good price. And you can get good potatoes for a bad price. But it's really hard to get good potatoes for good price. You kind of watch those potato sellers. Now, put them put bad potatoes on the bottom and good potatoes on the top. Sometimes they put in a rotten potato, I hate the smell of rotten potatoes. But that moment he walks up to the potato cellar and screams in his face. You can keep your rotten potatoes and walks away. This is a poncho. We do this sort of silliness all the time. We get some idea and we just spin out on it. And because we're thinking it, we think it must be true. I mean, when I say it like that, just because I think it it must be true. You can see how absurd it is. But this is how we operate. We have a whole political party that operates that way. You know, sorry. Anyhow. The poll, mental proliferation is what gets us into trouble. Okay.

We now have the basics. sensory input. There's an object and a sense organ. These two come together with since consciousness to generate contact. Contact is invariably followed by fading. And then we conceptualize that input Sanya. The conceptualization step doesn't always occur if you are well concentrated in meditation or on a task. There might be a sound, but you don't bother to conceptualize what it is. I mean, you're working on your computer writing this really important email and truck goes by outside you hear the sound, but you don't bother to even think truck. Somebody interrupts you and say, Did you hear that truck and you're like, I guess so. Right. Or if you're deep in meditation, there's a sound, and you just don't bother to decide what the sound was, it just went in one ear and out the other. But for the most part, we do conceptualize our sensory input. And then we start stringing concepts together. That's thinking, the, the usual way is explained is in terms of the five contests, the five aggregates. So there's form aggregate, that's the external, whatever Sight Sound and your sense organ. And then the fifth aggregate is consciousness, right? So the to form and consciousness come together. That's followed by VEDA, Sonia and sankhāra, or your categorization of the sensory input is pleasant or unpleasant, your conceptualization of the sensory input, and then your thinking and emoting and remembering based on the sensory input. There remember, sunkara literally isn't making together. So when we're thinking we're making together concepts, right now, I have a thought in my mind, and I bust it up into concepts called words. And I make the words come out of my mouth and hit the microphone in my computer, which digitizes into the internet gets to your computer, and digitize, it makes a sound, and it comes out to you, you hear the sound, you conceptualize it as a word and you string those words together, make together those concepts, to have a thought that hopefully is pretty close to the thought I had that I was trying to communicate. When we communicate, basically we're taking thoughts, busting them into concepts, throwing those concepts wanted another form of words at someone else, and hoping they reassemble the concepts into the same sort of felt as what we had.

This understanding of the mechanism of sensory input, sensory processing, it's very useful information, we can make a chart of it which I will put in the chat Okay, so Oregon, an object and consciousness equals contact, which leads to Vaikunta which leads to Sanya conceptualization, which leads to sankhāra as thinking emoting. So the first two organ, an object that's Rupa, and then consciousnesses consciousness, and then the other three are the other three aggregates, Tegna, Sanya, and sankhāra. This insight into understanding how we interface with the world of our sensory input is very helpful and exploring many Asik aspects of the Buddhist teaching, as well as our own direct experience.

It's very important to realize this is not a one shot deal. The thinking that arise is input to the sixth sense. And so it also generates of eight now, it may also generate a new concept. And the new concept and the old concept may be put together to generate more thinking, which is going to generate some more faith now because it's another input to the sixth sense. In fact, I read a long time ago, an article that's At 80% of our mental activity is generated by other mental activity only 20% comes through our senses. Unfortunately, I didn't save the article, I saw it on The New Scientist website more than a decade ago. But yeah, most of what's going on this stuff we're making up in our head. Right, we get an external sensory input and guarding of the senses say, yeah, let it go as far as conceptualization and profit. Unless, of course, you really need to deal with that concept that it's something that maybe you eat or you got to get rid of. But mostly, we just get stuff in and then we run all over the place with it. It's very important to realize that wind is a sensory input, and we experience VEDA we're often experiencing the fade now of the downstream processing, not the Veda of the sound or the sight. I can give you an example of this. I'm going to say some phrases. And you are to notice the vagueness of the sound of my voice and the vagueness of the mental picture that I'm painting for you. All right, so close your eyes tall trees green grass big bushes. President Bush's maybe some different vade. Now on that second, Bush's. Alright, that's downstream Vega. That might I tried to say the sound exactly the same both times. But you process it differently. And you experience the vague net of your processing. There's a sukha about this that's really important. This is the sukha on the dark. It's same you to nicaya 36.6. And in that SUTA the Buddhist says that a worldling 70. Karos translation is a thick stir. So an unenlightened person to worldly, experiences a painful bodily sensation, and then gets upset about it beats their breast cries out in pain, etc. It's like someone who's struck by a dart, who then picks up another Dart and strikes themselves. But oh, a noble disciple, a well taught noble disciple experiences the same bodily pain, but does not get struck by the second dart does not beat their breast and cry out in lamentation. So we know that Buddha had a bad back, there are multiple occasions where he would give an introduction to a dhamma talk, and then turn to Sāriputta or Moggallāna. And ask him to elaborate and he would go lie down, he would say I need to rest my back. And he would go lie down, he would listen to the dhamma talk. And when it was over, he would come back and say, if I give him the top, that's exactly what I would have said. We also know that in the moha, passaddhi, nibbāna, sukha, dig into K 16. He said that the only time he got relief from his back pain was when he entered into the state of norodha. The cessation of feeling and perception. This is the station of Veda and Sonia. And then he wasn't experiencing unpleasant. Vatan unpleasant dukkha Vaikunta.

But he didn't get upset about it. Right. He didn't hit himself with that second dart, he still experienced physical pain. If an enlightened one steps their toe, they will still experience physical pain, but they won't get upset if this error, right that doesn't occur. Right? It's just physical pain. When the Buddha says he teaches dukkha and the end of dukkha. I assume what he's saying is he's teaching us the end of the mental dukkha that we generate for ourselves by our reactions to our sins. Three input, an awakened one would get the same sensory input, but wouldn't get upset. They would just know, oh, this is unpleasant. They hear about the war in Ukraine. And it's very unpleasant to hear that, but they don't experience it as dukkha. And if there's, they can do something about it, they did. They stubbed their toe, it's unpleasant. That's it, it's just unpleasant. So this understanding of how we process our sensory input in about the fact that so much more of what we're experiencing is our mental processing of the external input. It's our sixth sense input. And we have some control over that. Yeah, be mindful of what's going on. Don't get caught in the craving and clinging. That's where the dukkha arises. The second important takeaway from understanding that sensory input chain continues on in the middle realm is this delineation of the mechanism for the origination of puncher mental proliferation? Any sensory inputs going to generate Payton and probably conceptualization and most often thinking, as I think he's going to generate bait now and more conceptualization and more thinking, and the subsequent thinking is can colored by that dāna And those conceptualizations. And if there's no mindfulness years, spirals out of control, this is the key teaching from Mahakasyapa, his explanation of the handball SUTA unless we're careful, the thinking gets out of hand, it spirals into papañca. It can be truly amazing what comes up. Think about the last time you meditated. Your intention was to sit there and just notice the tactile sensations of your breath. And the next thing you knew you were in Hawaii, or you were whatever, right, it's just all stuff we're making up. So now we can understand what the Buddha originally said to the monks. Don't let your sensory in put trigger poncha But Poggio can lead to delight welcoming and holding, if you don't get entangled in this way, the underlying tendencies to unwholesome states are not there. This is the end of quarrels and disputes and other unwholesome actions. So we can actually make another chart. Stick it in the chat. Dependent upon since organized since object since consciousness arises dependent on sense organs its object and since consciousness contact arises, dependent on contact fade, not dependent on VEDA Sunya, dependent on Sunya thinking depended on thinking, mental proliferation, dependent upon mineral proliferation, delight, welcoming and holding, dependent on those three, underlying wholesome unwholesome tendencies are strengthened, dependent upon underlying unwholesome tendencies, quarrels, disputes, and other unwholesome states arise. Now, Mahakasyapa says it's possible to stop the evil unwholesome states from arising at any point in this chain.

And yes, sometimes it is necessary not to look, I mean, I'm hopeful that all of you are discriminating in what movies you watch what TV programs you watch, where you go on the Internet, what books you read, etc. There's a lot of really well, punchy, producing stuff out there. For example, mainstream news in America is all about capturing your eyeballs. They're not really interested in giving you information. They're really interested in capturing your eyeballs. So they're going to present the information that they use to try and capture eyeballs in a way that's mostly tailored to capturing your eyeballs. So that yeah, you'll spin out into fear and so forth. So you'll keep watching because you need the information so that Well anyhow, that's what they're trying to do. So you want to be really careful about where you get your news. Right there any want to get your news in small doses. I mean, 24 hour news, I felt that anybody needs to watch the news 24 hours. Right? It's all available on the internet. They're places like the BBC that aren't quite so hysterical. Right. And this applies for everything else. I mean, on the internet, you can find anything. But on the internet, you don't want to find just any shake. You want to be discriminating where you go. And then yeah, once you find something pleasant, enjoy it, let it go. Don't get lost in it, you find something unpleasant, deal with it. But don't get lost in it.

We, we can't shut off our senses completely. We need them to navigate our environment, I came at us to say that they're not an amusement park. Okay, they're going to be contacts. And that's invariably going to generate data. So you're not going to be able to shut off the fate. Now, if you're getting six contacts. If you're well concentrated, then we have maybe that's the end of it. But most of the time, we're just not that well concentrated. So this is going to be conceptualizing. And we're going to deal with the concepts through thinking. It's really important that you get your mindfulness in there so your thinking doesn't spiral out of control. Remember, in dependent origination we had since contact VEDA craving, well, that's a big gap in their craving is a type of thinking. We could even say as papañca, right? So there's going to be since contact VEDA. And there's going to be conceptualization which isn't mentioned in the 12, links of dependent origination. And there's going to be some thinking that's happening in response to that sensory input. Second, establishment of mindfulness, second foundation or mindfulness of eight. Now, if you're mindful of your VEDA, you're getting your mind in there between the Veda and the craving, at the conceptual level, early thinking level, but you don't let it go all the way to the craving. This is what the second establishment of mindfulness is about. If I had to say the most important of the four establishes, mindfulness is the second one on faith. Now, of course, you got to do the first one body first to learn how to be mindful. That's that's where you begin to pick up the skills on mindfulness. But mindfulness is really important after all, this is the sati center, the mindfulness center, sponsoring today's talk. So after Mahakasyapa explains all this amongst go back to the Buddha and Heskey. This Baka Jada said it was this is that right? And the Buddha says yes, if I'd explained you that he explained it exactly this way. And then a Nanda, the Buddhist attendant says, to the Buddha, this is minimal search just as if a man exhausted by hunger and weakness came upon a honey ball, wherever he would taste it, he would find a sweet, delectable flavor so to Venerable sir, any evil minded Bhiku, wherever he might scrutinize with wisdom, the meaning of this discourse on the dhamma would find satisfaction and confidence of mine, Venerable sir, what is the name of this discourse? A Nanda, you may call it the honey ball. SUTA. So questions come in.

Ali, yeah,

thank you for the wonderful talk. Enjoy. So everything based on your saying is that then everything is my projection. And then there, it's also everybody else's projection. Because I see things and create I just think what they said, no honor, you're so much misunderstanding because I am saying something, but it doesn't go through. And also the second part is that I've heard that the easiest place to cut through the chain is the feeling tone. I think that's what you kind of like referring to at the end, right? The

feeling tone. I think feeling is a terrible translation of fate. No, because too many people think it's emotions. And it's like, right, so yeah, cut it between the fader and the craving. So yeah, get your second order of mindfulness right in there. So

if I miss it, it's easier It's possible to cut it in the third thinking level, though, and then going back to viññāna. Right?

Yeah. You want to get your Vaden a bit, your mindfulness between the fader and the craving, but there's a bunch of thinking in there, too. So you've got you've got a little bit of time, not much. Time. Get it in there. And

yeah, hopefully, I can and everything is a projection, right? I mean, everything is basically projection of what my mind and everybody else's, there is nothing out there.

Yeah, you've never actually seen anything except neurological activity in your visual cortex. And then you interpret that visual cortex, activity into Yeah, person, Tonka, computer ceiling floor. Yeah. Now, hopefully, your projections are somewhat accurate. I read a very interesting book few years ago, on some of the neuroscientists going on, and there's bottom up input and top down input, and the two come together. And that's what we see. Okay. And the bottom up is what's actually coming through our senses. And the top down is what's coming from our anticipation of what's coming next. This is how music works. Music is not one note after another, music has a lot of anticipation of what's going to be coming based on what's coming in the past. Right? You This is one thing where you can begin to get a sense of what's going on as if you pay attention to how you're processing music. There's a sense of Yeah, the music is taking me away. But that's also you're remembering what has happened in the past and your anticipation of what's coming next. So that way, with everything, we expect to see something. So many times you're reading along and you expect this word and His Word that looks sort of like it and you read it as the one you expected. Not the one that's there. Yeah, that's the top down processing. And you didn't quite see what was actually there.

Yeah, thank you. I have a question. I don't but I got a couple other hands off. If so,

for Okay, put your hand down. And then when these films put yours

back, if there's time. Thank you, sir. Sure. I lane.

Good morning, and thank you very much for this talk. I'm trying to apply all of this to my reactions. When I open my email at work. It's not so much the news. It's, you know, somebody sends an email, and it's like, Are they kidding? Are we supposed to do this? Now? You know, that kind of reaction? So where do I enter? I mean, I'm already in the punch. And I've already met this person. I've just, I mean, at the point where I don't want to even open my email sometimes. So where I trying to think where can I interrupt this process? And just read my email more without the second and third darts? Right. And I haven't read yet. If you have any thoughts about that, I appreciate it.

Yeah, this is, this is really hard. So when you sit down to open your email, sit down and say, okay, they're going to be throwing darts. They're not being malicious, but they're going to be throwing darts. Right, I'm going to read this first email, and I'm going to read it to see what the Dart is they're throwing, not what I'm going to do, I'm just trying to see what they're saying. And try and keep it at that level of Okay. And, in other words, I'm not going to be completely caught in the email, as soon as I look at it, I'm going to be looking at it almost as a disinterested person to see what sort of darts are going to be throwing. Alright. And then, alright, now that I've seen what dark they're throwing, what of this is reasonable? And what can be done and what just has to be set aside? So instead of trying to process the whole thing, all the way to, how am I going to do this? Alright, what is it that's coming? What is this just arrived, as opposed to just being lost in there. In other words, get your mindfulness in some of the earlier steps. And the way to do that is to prepare yourself that alright, I know this is probably going to be full of darts. I'm going to look and see what the darts before I even think about how I'm going to process. Hopefully that's helpful.

Very helpful. Thank you so much. Yeah,

I know what you're talking about. I used to work in corporate environment. And yeah, it was like, I didn't get a lot of those. But when I got one, it was really easy to spin out. Yeah. Lin

Haile, thank you so much for the talk today and for your book is a really beautiful and useful explanation. I'm still a little that have questions about the best, most useful and most possible places to interrupt the chain. And my experience or the way I, the way I experience it, is there is not very much time gap between the waiting and clinging, maybe a little more between clinging and craving. Once becoming sets in Yeah, it's pretty tough to turn that around. But over maybe possible, but pretty tough. But but for me, I seem to find it most useful to work at the cleaning, not to go to cleaning once craving comes in. Because Because because the cleaning, once there's Wadena, I seem to go to cleaning pretty darn fast. Is that? Am I off track here? Or does that seem reasonable?

That's it's very much what we do. It's pleasant. I want it. I've got it. I'm going to keep it. I'm going to be the one who owns it. Yeah, I mean, just almost instantaneously, but not quite. So what the Buddha is saying in the second establishment of mindfulness is Be mindful of your Vaden up all the time. So you're, you're trying to get your mindfulness in there, right at the Veda, for everything, even if it's very minor, just any sensory input, can you actually become conscious of the Veda that that's producing? before? Before it spirals out of control? Right, and it's tricky. Yeah.

But yet, would you say it is still possible? If we go into clinging? There's still the option to okay, I received the cleaning, I can let this go. I can, I don't need to do the craving is that?

Yeah, it's possible. It's just the further it goes, the harder it is. But yeah, it's it is possible to let it go. At any point along there. It's, so we got Vedanta here, and we got to go over here. Right? Any place before it hits the dukkha? If you can let it go, then that's fine. Right? But easiest LightSwitch to manipulate is don't do the craving, you know, keep the craving switch off. But if the craving gets on, can you turn off the cleaning switch? Okay, if the cleaning switch got out on, you start becoming now it's really you, you're wrapped up in identifying with it now it's going to be really hard to turn it off. But if you can turn it off, I don't know you. Your car, your identify with your wonderful car, right? It's my car, right? You know, something terrible happens to your car, you're really really upset. It's almost like it's an attack on your person. Because it's your car. Right? You've gone so far there. Could you when your car wears out? You know, it's like, no, it's going to cost more to fix this and the cars where can you let it go at that point? Well, depends on how wrapped up in identifying with me as my car. If you could just say, Yeah, I guess so. Let it go, you know, collect the insurance and whatever, then yeah, no, dukkha. But that's really hard to do. Especially if you got a nice car. And it's been on all these great trips with you. I mean, yeah, you wrap yourself up in it gets really hard. So the idea is to get as close to the Vaden as possible to let go. Because that's the easiest place. It's also hard because, yeah, we just go right so fast all the way up to it's me. I own it. It's either me or I own it or whatever. Just almost Yes. Totally. takes practice you. Right. Maria?

Um, I had a similar question. Maybe you can help me with it. So that the suffering that I've been going through the most lately is related to my family. My sister and her alcoholic husband have a very dysfunctional relationship. And he recently had a stroke and heart attack and he's been in rehab and almost died. And it's been really a huge family crisis to support my brother in law and my sister, and the part that makes suffered the most is experiencing their dysfunction between the two of them, and seeing how emotionally unhealthy my sister is. And to help her through this, I she calls me and tells me what's going on. And it disturbs me to hear what she has to say. Because she's so dysfunctional, and so attached to him being the way he used to be, which he will never have, again, because his brains damaged. So I've been trying, I've been working this whole time trying to figure out what is my wrong view about this? Where do I keep getting caught, but it's upsetting me so much, to have to listen to her? And so what I think I'm hearing you say, is, to catch it is perhaps just to think of them as just two people. It's, it's because there's nothing I can do about their relationship. And I can't not if I if I were to hang up the phone and not talk to her, that would damage my relationship with her. Yeah, what what's your advice to me? My suffering,

alright, so it sounds to me like your dukkha is that your sister is not how you would like her to be. I mean, this is most of our reality is not like we would like it to be. Alright, so your sister is unable to be like you would like it to be you would like her to be more highly functioning in this critical environment here that she's facing. Yes. So can you help her? To to deal with what she's facing better? Sometimes, maybe you can sometimes. She boy, she,

she? No matter what I've tried. I've tried everything. Nothing works. At me, yeah.

And when she's doing that, maybe what you can say is, but that's not helping the problem. Which she probably won't like at all.

Yeah, I've done that. And it's more of

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is this is really, really difficult. And I really don't have good solutions for this. I mean, if before it became a dharma teacher, I was a computer programmer. And when my computer didn't do what I told it to do, I rebooted it. And people don't work that way. It's yeah, it's, it's really difficult. And when somebody is fixated in their wrong understanding of what's going on, and they don't want anything other than for their understanding to be correct, it's really hard to fix anything. And so you, one have to take care of yourself, because you're not going to be any use to your sister at all, if you're not taking care of yourself. And you have to say two things to her like, you know, I hear what you're saying, I hear how painful it is, I wish it wasn't like this, and then offer what advice you can with no attachment to her doing it and realize she's probably going to reject it. And then the next time again, maybe you can offer some new advice that she's not going to do. One of the things I learned fairly early on. There was a movie called do the right thing. Back probably late 80s, I think, write a good movie. About the same time I saw the movie, there was an article in the inquiring mind. Remember the inquiring mind? Yeah, if I, Joanna Macy, and basically it was don't be attached to the results. And so that's been my mantra, do the right thing. Don't be attached to the results. So say to your sister, what you think is going to be the most helpful thing. And don't be attached to the results because it sounds like you're not going to get the results that you want. But she's got so much going on. And she's unable to actually hear what you're saying. But just keep putting out what you think is the best advice you can give her because she wants some help. And so you'll give her what help you can but don't be attached to the results. That's about the best I can offer. I wish I had more. Good luck.

It's it's been very painful.

Yes, it sounds like Yeah. All right. Okay, I don't see any hands up. It's, well where I am. It's noon. It's 10 past the hour, I assume probably a number of you are on the west coast. So we're going to take a lunch break. Right? For those of you in eastern time like this, it's maybe it's a meditation break for you. So at the top of the hour, which is five oh, 15 minutes from now, one o'clock on the east coast on the West Coast, and I guess that's four o'clock on the East Coast. We're talking about the general principle of dependent origination, which actually is far more important than the links, though the honey ball SUTA links are really, really important. So, enjoy your lunch. When you're done with your lunch, come back and meditate. Alright, and at the top of the hour, one o'clock on the West Coast, four o'clock on the East Coast. We'll talk about the general principle of dependent origination.