The Aspect of No-Change

Discussion
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Can you explain a little bit more?

What i have learned is that only the cognition of an arahant is definitely and completely free of ignorance and tanha. That is uprooted. There is no more Me and mine-making of whatever is felt, heard, seen, known etc.

A sotapanna does have a right understanding, in view (ditthi) but this does not mean that there is no more Me and mine-making of what is seen heard, sensed, felt etc. The cognition of a sotapanna is not free yet of ignorance and tanha. If a sotapanna (or not arahant), for example, experiences pain, it is for him/her troublesome, an affliction (SN22.89). This is because asmi mani is not uprooted. The cognitive proces gets still defiled. He/she still has perception (not a view) that this pain is mine. Me feeling the pain.

I have learned that any cognition, meaning citta vitthi’s, starts the same way, for noble persons and worldlings, just as a vipaka vinnana, which might be a memory coming to mind, a smell, a sound etc. Then the mind’s tendencies take over. This is personal.

Flame-talk :grinning:
I like to share some thoughts.

My wish is not to go out like a flame. For me, uprooting ignorance and tanha means that one does not live in a re-active mode anymore in the world. The re-active forces inside are silenced. By living not in a reactive mode anymore, i.e. not governed by the habitual forces inside, one does not alienate anymore from oneself. That is your richness, inner wealth, freedom.

Governed by internal forces, one is also not really wise and loving and compassionate. I have seen this truth for myself by observing my behaviour in such circumstances. Even when I was caring, if it is just like a habit, it does not feel oke, it feels artificial, fake. I do not belief real compassion, real love, real wisdom can be a habit. It is impossible to possess it. It is the natural quality of an detached freed heart.
A heart which owns nothing.

For me the real chellange is to let go. To be open. Not being a buddhist. Not being this or that. Not owning anything. The moment one starts to belief one owns love, compassion, wisdom, one only becomes a dullard. Full of pride and blown up ego. No, the love, compassion, wisdom is not in owning but in not owning anything. Then there is the room for love, wisdom, compassion to manifest, in a open and empty mind. Then one is a true vehicle for the unborn Dhamma.

All reactiveness is not really you, it does not come from your heart, from you, but from what is not you…disposition. If something comes really from you, than it is not mired in avijja and tanha. Then you also do not have to worry that your behaviour is not appropriate, loving, compassionate because it is.
But real love, wisdom, compassion, cannot be a habit. We all have a kind of intelligence to see what is artificial or not. And when we sense that someone is compassionate in some habitual way we will sense this is not real quality, not really true, artifical.

Maybe you find this all nonsense or childish but for me this is the living Budddha in everybody. The Buddha in us wants to come forward. And that is nothing else than you who wants to come forward.
The Buddha is living inside us, no doubt about that. Sharing the Buddha with the world, for me, is the goal of the holy life.

It comes down to the wish of being oneself in all circumstances guided by a sense of what is authentic you and what is artificial you and seeing and knowing that quality is not in an artificial you.

How is one oneself? When one does not own and take possession of anything. If i meet you as a Buddhist, i push aside the Buddha inside me. If i come to you with no ideas in my possession, no wisdom, no identity, no love, no views, no attitude, we meet as Buddha’s from heart to heart.

That, we fear the most…being naked in the world, detached, being without attitude, not being this or that. Identity is for us like a protection and being without identity feels so naked, helpless. But a Buddha is naked, totally naked. Oke, oke, my Buddha is :grinning:

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I’m not sure how this makes any practical difference? Once one has reached that non reactive mode, one surely will be in a much better position to assess if the flame, (now starved of fuel :wink: ) is going to go out.

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Hi @stu,

I do not really see in my heart a wish to escape a beginningless and endless samsara in which i have been mostly in lower realms suffering a lot. For me this feels yet alien. Apparantly it was not for the Buddha and not for many buddhist, but i cannot find this drive in my heart. Because it is not there, it does not feel as my own wish, my own motivation, my own drive. It does not feel authentic but as a borrowed drive, someone else’s drive. If i would pretend that this really motivates me from my heart, this feels untruthful for me. Not sincere.

In my heart there is really only the wish for goodness. Goodness is special. Holy. For me. That can be in all kind of acts. Acts of goodness, really non-egocentric deeds. All that aiming at rewards, i do not belief in it. That does not come straight from the heart and is no real goodness. It is not noble yet.
Real goodness is also noble. The noble life is for me a life of goodness.

Oke, call me an idealist, but for me this is sure. I can feel that a life as a spiritual businessman, strategic, aiming at rewards in the future, that is not really how i want to live and is not noble.

It does not feel right for me to think, speak and act as a spirituele businessman, doing socalled good while i am only acting as a strategic person. For me it is clear the Buddha also taught it will not end suffering. It will not bring one home. That is because it does not really come from the heart. The heart itself is not ego-centric.

I do not really belief that the Buddha taught that one needs to go out like a flame. No, one has to get home that is his message. Nibbana is like being home. And samsara is a way of living in which we are lost and not at home yet. We are lost in arising emotions, ideas, tendencies, lost in our heads. Alienated from our heart, alienated from ourselves, from goodness.

This way i can relate to buddha-dhamma.

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hi @Green

i’ve been reading your comments and questions and thought i’d offer something.

the first observation i’d make is that the buddha’s dhamma is only for the purpose of ending suffering. that is the goal of the holy life in his teaching.

apart from that, questions of who was i in the past, what am i now, who will i be in the future are all inappropriate attention for that goal:

MN 2: Sutta on All the Taints

the buddha’s teaching has no purpose for someone who doesn’t see the truth of suffering. pain, yes, is certainly easy to see as suffering, but it is harder to see the suffering associated with pleasure. for someone who doesn’t see a need to end their suffering, then the buddha’s teaching has no meaning.

from your writing i get the feeling that you don’t want particularly want to end samsara. that is absolutely fine - there are beings who generally have good karma and spend a lot of lifetimes in the heavens, so have difficulty seeing the value of exiting samsara. it may be that you are this sort of person.

rather, i get the feeling that you want to experience heightened sense of mental quality - real love and compassion, mental states of pure perception. your comment about the permanent part of you that sees things is very similar to the notion of the “knower” that was popularised by one of the thai forest ajahns. this sort of knower might be akin to a formless states of constant perception.

all of this is playing with jhana - in particular, the formless jhanas. these are mental states the buddha taught (and learned from other vedic teachers at the time). they’re not permanent, and they don’t in themselves, lead to the end of suffering. but they lead to lifetimes in the form and formless heavens.

you may wish to learn jhana as the buddha taught it. the only caution i’d make to you is that these states can lead one with inclinations that your mind seems to have, away from the goal of ending suffering. i guess it would be important for you to be clear about why you want to practice buddhism (versus say vedic concentration techniques).

apologies if i have read your comments wrong - please disregard if that is the case.

best wishes :slight_smile:

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Thanks @IndyJ for your committment. Yes, i agree with you that the goal of the Buddha-Dhamma is ending rebirth. For me this is not other than ending birth in this life.

What is birth in this life? That is gettting involved in emotions and logings and developing a mentallity. A mentallity of an animal, peta, deva, Brahma, hell-being, asura. In this body these mentallities we develop, they arise in our minds by grapsing. This mental birth takes place in this live.

I know for sure this is self-alienation. This is not who you really are.
Ofcourse there is a relationship between the mentalllity that often arises in this life and the life to come. That is what the Buddha saw during awakening . If one, for example, practices the mentallity of an animal one will be born an animal. (MN57). So there is a relation between what we feed in this live and the next live. Between birth in this live and rebirth.

All these mentallities can be felt as a kind of self-alienation. The heart knows this. It knows because they are temporary, so how can this be you? The heart knows one is not the mentallity. One can become like an animal, sure, but one is not an animal. One can become like a de va but one is not a deva. One can be become like a peta but one is not a peta. etc. But in this life we can know these states just like we can know how it is to live as a arupa deva in arupa jhana et.c

The detached mind is just the mind which has not given rise to an attitude or mentallity yet. It has not taken birth yet because it has not grasped thoughts, emotions, longings etc.
It is not sophisticated, no jhana, not artificial, not a heightened mind, but very very sober and we experience it all the time.

I like to see it as home. Vimutti means one is home. A Buddha is at home all the time and that is why he knows ‘rebirth has ended’.

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Hi @Green,

Thanks for your reply. Something of what you said reminded me of this talk by ajahn chah:

There are questions about the translation of that talk, so best to consider that in light of the accompanying discussion:

The detached mind is just the mind which has not given rise to an attitude or mentality yet. It has not taken birth yet because it has not grasped thoughts, emotions, longings etc. It is not sophisticated, no jhana, not artificial, not a heightened mind, but very very sober and we experience it all the time.

i’m not sure if you’re talking about mundane calm and mindfulness here, or something more.

either way, i suspect if you continue to practice seeing all things (aggregates, sense bases, sense objects, contact, craving, the elements) as impermanent, your mind will come to a point where it sees that this view of ‘i’ is false as well.

i don’t know if any of that helps but it’s been interesting reading your comments.

best wishes.

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Hi @IndyJ ,

I think one of the best sutta’s on identity and how this plays a role in attachment and burdening is SN22.89.
SN 22.89: Khemakasutta—Bhikkhu Sujato (suttacentral.net)

It also refers to what you say about keep contemplating the impermanence and as a result the ‘I am’ notion and longings and anusaya will also disappear.

Something practical,

Suppose you have a craving for candy at a certain moment. And that disappears some time later. Have you internally the idea you are someone else while craving was present and when it is absent?
And, is this possible? Please do not fall back on theory or a learned answer, but answer, if you will, from direct experience.

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For myself i cannot say I know something about myself that is unborn, unbecome. I also cannot really understand how one would know something like this from direct knowledge. Because whatever one knows or is object of knowledge, how can one know that it does not arise or has not arisen in the past?

For me the aspect of no-change is not the same as the aspect of the unborn. The aspect of no-change refers to my own inner knowledge, inner perception, that there is something which does not change. But I do not pretend that it is unborn.

For example, during a day one is aware of all kinds of mental states. Or during jhana one tastes the progressive stilling of formations. But, from inside, there is the perception that the taster is stable and the same. It is not like you experience that the one who tastes first jhana is someone other, or something else than who tastes the fourth jhana. Or, during the day, the one who enjoys a good conversation you do not experience as someone other than the ones who leaves for home and goes to sleep.

Many things change, such as moods, emotions, thoughts, sense object such as odours, smells, visual images, tactile feelings, plan, memories, the body etc etc. But I belief, If one does not jump to some kind of theory, it cannot be denied that something stays the same. So what is this?

Yes, you can immediately jump to a conclusion and say ‘this is a delusion’ but that does not explain anything.

Is this aspect of no change caused by asmi mana or avijja? It would not surprise me if also an arahant and Buddha still experience it this way. Maybe I am wrong. What do you think?

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What qualities does it have except not changing?

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I think qualities like: peace, a stillness, openess, calm, emptiness, unchangeableness, a spacious quality.

I cannot really see/say it has an inherent quality of knowing. I do not think so. I think it is better to say that knowing is a quality which is a potential and becomes active when something arises.

I realise that from Abhidhamma perspective i might just describe the two sides of mind, the active phase of mind in which a sense object is processed, and the passive phase of mind in which mind rests as it were in a state called bhavanga. It is not yet triggered by a sense object.

I am not sure about this but i have still a feeling of what uncontrived mind means. It has no mentallity or attitude yet. There is not even a self-awareness.

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The essence of water does not really mix up with pollution otherwise pollution could not be removed from water. Pollution is always something adventitious. In a certain sense the essence of that water does not change at all while purified. Water becomes more and more itself.

With purification it is not really oke to say that pure water is gone or destroyed or absent while there is, for example oil in it. It is not that the purity of the water is destroyed. It is still there but one has to remove the oil than the water is naturally pure. This is not trivial.

I belief in the matters of the heart it is the same. The pure heart is never ever really absent. That can be the aspect of no change. And incoming and adventitious defilements such as greed and hate do not really affect this purity of the heart. Impossible. It cannot mix up with the purity of heart.

I think the purification effects of Dhamma are quite the same as purifying water. The Dhamma does not create the pure heart but only removes the adventitious defilement so the always present pure heart reveals itself naturally. The pure heart is not a creation, it is not like it is the result of Dhamma, it is not produced, like the pure water is also not produced by the purification proces. It is unmade.
You did not make it. The only thing we can do is to remove defilements and the natural result of this is a purified heart which was always present in the first place. I belief this is meant by the unmade, unbecome etc. We can do a lot but we do not create a pure heart.

Haha, ik sense i like this stuff, oh jee :grinning:

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Suppose you have a craving for candy at a certain moment. And that disappears some time later. Have you internally the idea you are someone else while craving was present and when it is absent?

neither is you - both are impermanent. why identify with either as your own? they are both dependent on other things outside of yourself, so they can’t truly be “yours” or and permanent part of “you” anyway.

seeing things in this way is not just possible but works practically in my experience. it stops you picking things up and making them ‘i’ or ‘me’.

hope this helps - best wishes.

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So I have two thoughts on this.

The first is - what stops the pure water from being defiled again? Or is it a continuous everlasting process of cleaning?

The second is - That’s great as far as it goes, but I can’t help feeling I’m still left with H2 defiling O, HO defiling H, H defiling both O and H … and we haven’t even got to particles yet :wink: Defilements seem to go so deep, maybe they really go all the way down? It’s seriously beginning to look like once we’ve removed all the defilements, there’ll be nothing left. :person_shrugging:

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Hi @IndyJ , i feel your answer is avoiding my question. I do not want to push a certain answer but isn’t it true that there is a sense of sameness, a inner sense you do not change, independend of self-views?

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thanks @Green - i’m not intending to avoid your question. it’s just hard for me to get a sense of what it is you think is permanent.

my understanding of what you’re talking about seems to be a permanent sense of knowing.

i think this would be your mind-consciousness - i sense that you are identifying with this.

however, if you look inside yourself, you will see that that sense of ‘self’ is not constant. it comes and goes as your mind flits between objects of the various senses. for example, when you’re aware of say, the smell of urine in a public toilet, or the pain of breaking a toe after stubbing it on a wall, would that sense of sameness be present? even if you’re aware of what you think is the same object, the object itself is actually impermanent, so that sameness couldn’t truly be the same.

for it to be permanent and self, it would need to be always there, and always of the same thing. is this the case for you?

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Hi @stu,

If one in a personal way starts experiencing the qualities of the un-oppressed purified heart, i belief, one feels less and less needy, incomplete. As a result seeking refuge in the world, in external things, in temporary things and states, decreases and ends at a certain moment. Defiling oneself stops gradually because neediness (mental) decreases gradually. One breaks with the patterns to seek an escape or answer from the suffering externally. Not in a forced manner but because the heart which gets decreasingly unoppressed is not so needy anymore, not so longing.

When the heart is unoppressed, i.e. freed from anusaya, the bonds, then we are ourselves in a way we were never before. We cannot really change. . Maybe you think this is a heretic view, and it does not mean habits cannot change, but it refers to the fact we do not create the pure heart. It is not our creation. The pure heart is just the natural result of removing defilements.

Finally we our ourselves in a way we do not feel incomplete/broken/lonely anymore. We arrived at home.

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No. Not at all. I think that there have been many Buddhist sects across the ages that would agree with your view. I just think it’s a view that isn’t supported by the EBTs, and for me personally it is a view that doesn’t see the immensity and deepness of suffering in all forms of existence. It reminds me of the sort of things that my Christian meditator friends say, and that’s OK, they are a terrific bunch of people headed in the right direction.

But it has been known for me to be wrong; very wrong :rofl: And to be honest, I don’t think it matters that much while we are still heading towards greater peace and losing any residual anger that is left in our hearts. :heart:

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I am investigating this. I cannot denie there is in me a sense of sameness. A sense i do not really change. I do not want jump to any conclusion, like…‘this is a delusion’. That is not investigation, i find.

Even when my body changes, feelings change during a day, thoughts come and go, emotions change, ideas change, i cannot denie i have a sense I do not change.

At this moment i belief the Budddha used words like unmade, unconditioned, unbecome to refer to this aspect of no change. But probably he did not meant permanence. I now think he meant that the only thing a practicer can do is removing defilements but he cannot create Nibbana, the pure mind. This is unmade, unbecome, unconditioned. It is just the natural result of removing defilements but one does not create it. If one removes defilments from water one has not created that water.

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Yes, i think you are right. Maybe i am more like a christian who feels like the teachings have to free the heart from oppressing forces, to live this life fully. To embrace or rather accept life fully, as it is, with impermance and suffering and pain and misery etc.

It is my own experience that my suffering started when i lost faith in boyd and mind and life when my father died of cancer and i was in crises. That was my fall. I died too. When one becomes angry with life, disappointed, sarcastic, cold, uninspired, negative, anxious, cagy, fearing life, than one starts really suffering. But is also normal, it is als humane to become disappointed, cold etc when life shows it’s real face.
I feel deeply this heartache one must overcome otherwise it will overcome you and will drag you down. The downward path is the Path of heartache. Things like hate, greed, anger, bitterness are all kinds of heartache.

It is very very hard to overcome. Because one cannot go back to a naive understanding of life. One has seen the reality of loss, of dying, of sickness, cruelty etc. So one has to find a cure for the heartache while not escaping the facts of life as it is. That is the challenge. I feel one cannot find a cure without starting, in someway or the other, re-valueing life again, but maybe now from a more ripened perspective.

I belief Buddha was also heart-broken because he was very aware of the reality of violence, sickness, death, the cruelty, the darkness, old age and all his troubles etc. He found a way to heal his broken heart. I think the most radical way their is.

Does one really suffer from how life is?

Are you willing to share something about this?

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Hi @stu

Some thoughts on this:

It is useless to start purifying water when one has 1. no vision that the defilements in the water are adventitious to the water, 2. as a consequence defilements can be removed, and 3. that pure water is already there and will be the natural result of purifcation.

A purification proces relies also on a vision that the pureness is allready there and one has only to remove the defilements.

I belief in the case of Dhamma-practice this is true also. We must have 1. a vision that any defilement is not really intrinsic to the mind, but adventitious , 2. as a consequence can be removed, and 3. that pure mind is already there, and is rich, complete, not hurt and needy, and will be the natural result of purification.

If the pure mind would really be a result of conditioning, that result is also conditioned. So that makes no sense. The only thing we can do is to remove the defilements and the natural result of that is pure mind. It was there all the time.

I think it does not conflict with EBT. But if you think so, please explain.

What does conflict with EBT is that we create Nibbana or that Nibbana is the creation of our efforts, like a house, a car or jhana or any kind of development of mind. That we make Nibbana. Or that it is a reality we construct with effort, or have constructed and is liable of deconstruction like any constructed reality.