Why ‘Focusing’ Meditations are Wrong

A: So, we were going to talk about aspects of meditation that I think probably most people, when they think about meditation, they’ll be thinking about. So let’s say, focusing on something.

N: Yeah, it’s probably something we’ve all done in the beginning. When you start practising. I know I did, because that’s the first thing you come across. The idea of meditation is the idea of concentration in terms of focusing, focusing, focusing. And then expecting the result to sort of come automatically, out of you just doing this method of focusing. So, what kind of focusing were you doing?

A: I guess first of all the idea was focusing, focusing your attention on this sort of triangle here around your nose, where breathing is happening. So you’re basically just focusing on the process of breathing. And doing it as a kind of observing air passing over this area. And then the idea was like, get it smaller and smaller and smaller, that area becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, until you’re focusing on just a pinpoint here.

N: And what were you thinking while you were doing the focusing practice? When you were doing the focusing practice, what were your thoughts in terms of, what were you thinking that you were focusing on?

A: Well that was the thing, I was spending most of the time wondering about that, what it was that I was supposed to be focusing on. And what I was doing, and whether I was doing it right. But that was all kind of superfluous to the meditation. The meditation was ‘what are you focusing on here?’ So the idea I guess was, what was being encouraged was a kind of objective, sideways view on the air that happens to be passing this area here. Not me breathing.

N: Exactly. As if you can perceive things that are out there, outside of your experience, and it doesn’t pertain to your experience, your perception. That’s the fundamental problem with any focusing practice. Whatever the technique might be, if it’s a technique of observation and focusing and sort of ‘preying upon moments’ as the Suttas would describe it, the problem with that is you assume this external world, independent of your perception, yet the only way you can relate to it is to perceive it. As in, experience it. But you assume, through experiencing it, that it’s outside of your experience and you can be objective about it. But how can you even conceive the idea of ‘outside of my experience’ unless you’re thinking it, experientially? So you’re contradicting on both fronts. And that’s this whole problem. Focusing on this on account of that, that’s just what mind does. Mind picks the dhammas to look at, that’s just how it works. But you assuming that those things stand for that which they cannot stand for, such as an external world, independent of me, that is subjected to these scientific laws of impermanence, thus the Buddha and science are saying the same thing—all these views that you hear today are completely misguided, because they’re rooted in this utter assumption of ‘external to me’, yet the only way I can know it is by experiencing it by myself.

A: Is it, you’re focusing on something ‘objective’, like there’s this objective flow of air that happens to be going through this objective nose on the front of my face. But also, you have to sort of stand back and look at it from a position of objectivity…

N: Which is very subjective.

A: Exactly! How could it not be?

N: Even an arahant doesn’t become purely objective, because that’s inconceivable. That means like, stepping outside of the aggregates and being there with objective matter. That’s inconceivable. He just stops appropriating his subjectivity. That’s why the arahant still has individuality in terms of a character, habits and all these things—that are not rooted in greed, aversion or delusion, of course. People find subjectivity to be the problem, and it is a problem, but then instead of understanding truly what the problematic aspect of subjectivity is and then abandoning that, they think you can simply replace subjectivity by emulating this assumption of objectivity.

A: Basically there’s always a point of view. There’s always a perspective, I cannot have an experience without a point of view. Whereas many attitudes towards meditation are kind of… Trying to negate that, trying to forget that. They’re trying to take a third-person perspective, or like a god’s-eye view on your experience.

N: We can do something like we’ve done before, let’s take focusing now. Focus on your body touching the chair, right now. What are the characteristics of that? How would you describe it?

A: Well, you asked me to focus on my body on the chair and I’ve just sort of looked into something that was already there, it’s already kind of given. This sense of, I can feel something but it’s totally inseparable from the body, it’s not like, the chair touching my body, or my body touching the chair, it’s just this kind of pressure or something.

N: A sense of touch basically, that’s the only relationship you can have with it. So if you’re focusing now, I’m focusing as well, you realise you can only focus on something that’s already there. Given. But, now you have a choice. So yeah, you focus on it, as in you bring your attention to it. But now you have a choice. I have a choice, you have, everybody has a choice. And that choice is, I can now continue to just keep repeating this focusing mechanically, or I can try to understand the nature of that thing that’s necessary for my focus. And you can see those two are mutually exclusive directions. If I keep, ‘I’m touching the chair, I’m touching the chair, I’m touching the chair’, means you’re actively avoiding the direction of, OK you’re touching the chair, now let it be there so you get to understand the necessary basis for your attending that in the first place. Which is, all the other characteristics we discussed in other videos.

OK, so you can only really focus on something, attend to something, if it was given as a possibility, and by that I mean if it’s given beforehand. It’s already there, thus you’re able to turn to it. And it’s that peripheral aspect of, it’s already there without me directly attending it, so it’s already there as a possibility, means it’s already there on its own. Which means even my ownership is secondary to that basis of possibilities that present themselves as possibly mine. And you can get to understand that and then you realise, OK, so that’s all you need to do. Stop regarding it as mine. And you can forget all the focusing you want. Done, you’ve fulfilled the purpose of your focusing. But if your purpose is just to focus for the sake of focusing, means you’re actively then avoiding understanding things.

N: So focusing—people are going in a particular direction, you said a mutually exclusive direction, so focusing in on this this one particular thing, and then later the next particular thing…

N: Yeah, so focusing, as a rule of thumb follows the ideal of attending to the particular at the expense of everything else, and that’s why it’s a problem.

A: Because understanding is always rooted in the totality of your experience.

N: Exactly, in understanding the context of your particular. And that’s why the whole point is, any form of focusing is already singling out the particular. But obviously within that particular, you can go even further. So you choose to attend your body position, seated on the chair, it’s a particular thing you’re focused on. And that’s more than sufficient. Now, you want to understand the nature of that thing that you focused on, that is still there because you bought your attention to it, and you don’t need to keep holding on to it. Because if I ask you ‘are you still touching the chair?’, yes, of course. You wouldn’t say ‘hold on, I need to figure it out…’, recall the memory. No, the knowledge is still there, because you attended it, you clarified it, by simply by focusing on it. But instead of that, people who follow the rule of focusing for the sake of focusing would then focus on the chair. Then focus on the more specific notions of your body on the chair, and focus on even more, so focusing within focusing within focusing within focusing…

A: That’s generally the technique, that’s generally the idea.

N: And that’s the idea, that’s how you arrive at some sort of knowledge. That’s why I ask you, what do you think, then, you are focusing on? What can you focus on? You can only focus on a possibility that has presented itself as being able to be focused on. Which means when you start practising this focusing upon focusing, you actually develop a belief that you are focusing on the actual rūpa, on the actual matter, on the actual objectivity. While in reality, all you can focus on is, on your thoughts. In other words, your thoughts give you the focus that you can focus on. So, when you are thinking about the objective matter, you are thinking about a thought that has fully misconceived the nature of matter and presented itself as that which is the matter. And that’s the essence of the Mūlapariyāya Sutta. Obviously taken in a very extreme sense.

But the point is, it doesn’t matter how far you’re committed in your focusing practice, how specifically, how particularly you’re staring at things: all you can do is focus at an arisen dhamma, as such. Dhamma as the counterpart of your mind. It’s not, ‘oh I must stop doing that’, no, all I have to stop doing is stop misconceiving that my thoughts can stand for that objective world which I keep fuelling the assumption of through this practice of focusing. Because I am thinking I’m getting closer to the ‘pure matter of reality’ or something, and that will then free me from any subjectivity.

A: And basically, the Buddha’s Teaching is not about just…

N: It’s about understanding the dhammas.

A: Exactly, that’s the thing, it’s all about understanding…

T: So, what you’re saying is that focusing is about getting deeper into the objects, into a smaller object, more particular, more particular… for what?

A: That’s the thing, some people, they will respond and say, well hang on, I get lots of benefit from my meditation practice. Which is focusing on small things, particular things, more and more particular. I notice the more I do it, the more refined and the more subtle and the more particular things, things I’d never noticed before I start to notice, and that means awareness.

N: Right. So where is the nature of things found? In the particular exemplification of that?

A: But they don’t see that, they’re not interested in the nature of things.

N: Exactly, that’s what I’m saying. Which means they’re not interested in the Dhamma. Because the definition of the Dhamma is—

A: The Nature of Things!

N: The Nature of Things. So the definition of the Dhamma is in the direction of the general. The direction opposite to the direction of your particular focusing.

A: So what is it that keeps people doing this? Why do so many people keep going in that direction?

N: It’s this deeply rooted view that you get rid of your attavāda by cancelling it. You overcome subjectivity by denying it.

A: Isn’t it also that it’s actually quite pleasant?

N: Oh yeah, that’s on a more immediate level, I’m talking about the view. But, the point here is when you mention like you’re getting deeper into things, that’s usually the belief. But you’re not getting deeper, you can’t get deeper, you always remain on the surface. Perception will always remain perceiving the perception. Perception cannot really bring you into the matter. Because that would mean that you can access rūpa which the Buddha says is inaccessible, it can only find a footing in your experience through you providing a basis of misconceiving. So it feels like you’re getting deeper, but it doesn’t matter how far you got focussed, you realise, all I’m focusing is on the dhammas. So it doesn’t matter if it’s this particular level, or this particular level, the nature remains completely the same. And if you’re ignorant of that, it means your pursuit of focusing is endless.

T: You’re delighting in the novelty of an object.

A: It feels novel, this feels like I’m noticing things I’ve never noticed before, which means I must be learning things.

N: Well, I remember for myself it kind of feels like a novelty, it feels like you’re so focused on particular movements, basically exercising this sort of contrived sense of control. But you can only sustain that so far. But initially it creates this sense of novelty whereby, ‘oh wow, I’m experiencing things differently’. But again, where can difference happen? On the level of the particular. So, think of yourself now, focusing. Why would you carry on focusing? As you said yourself, because it feels good. It feels peaceful. It feels less cluttered, and so on. So bringing your attention to things feels less cluttered, feels more directional. That’s fine. But why would that then justify you constantly bringing attention, bringing attention, bringing attention, bringing attention. It means you still don’t understand where that peace comes from.

And that’s in the other talk, I explained the simile of the anchor, throwing down the anchor. You throw the anchor, and then you sort of let the boat float round because it’s anchored. So you know it can’t float too far, you allow it to move around. The idea of focusing is like, throw the anchor, pull the anchor, throw the anchor, throw the anchor, throw the anchor, throw the anchor, that’s it. I’m focusing, I’m focusing, I’m focusing. Because the idea of floating about is too overwhelming. So the whole point of doing the focusing practice would be, you just want pleasure. Or you just want to avoid any liability to suffering, to uncomfortable feelings. That’s it. So it becomes a management of your liability to suffering. Oh, if I focus hard enough I won’t think about things that bother me.

A: It’s basically putting your head in the sand.

N: Yeah. And that’s what I was saying in the other talk. The idea of concentration for most people is, you focus so hard on one point where you forget everything else.

A: And that’s why everyone calls it ‘absorption’. As if that’s a good thing! If you’re absorbed in something that means you’re not aware of anything else!

N: But one-pointedness, as we’ve described before, is the point that includes everything else, regardless of the content. And that’s exactly what we’re describing. So you focus on your experience as a whole. My experience now, I’m focusing on being seated on the chair. OK. You’ve bought your attention to it, now that’s the container for your context. Let’s see what comes up with it. So, while I’m seated on the chair, we’re talking about these various ideas that are wrong, that are rooted in wrong assumptions, while I’m seated in the chair. While I’m seated in the chair, I have these feelings arising. While I’m seated in the chair, I have these other thoughts arising, while I’m seated in the chair. But, if you’re doing the focusing practice you’ll be ignoring all these things that are happening, ‘I’m seated in the chair, I’m seated, I’m touching, touching, leaning, leaning, touching, touching, leaning, thinking, thinking—’ oh so you’re not seated on the chair? No, you are, but now you’ve forgotten that. Because you think the whole purpose is to be fully absorbed in focusing right in front of you. And how can you then be fully absorbed with what’s in front of you without doing that at the expense of the nature of that thing? At the expense of everything else that’s not in front of you? And that’s why it’s inherently wrong, you can’t do it rightly. It cannot have the right outcome.

T: It’s cancelling out the context.

A: You’re basically saying ‘I’m not interested in finding out…’

T: ‘I’m worried about content. I’m just interested and delighting in…’

A: ‘…in the next thing.’

N: And that’s another Sutta that people, probably many people, have read, but they would not necessarily see a connection with what we’re talking about. That one where he says ‘all these sāmanas and brahmins who say ‘we are meditators, we meditate’. But what they do is like an owl preying upon, waiting for a fish. Or a jackal waiting for a mouse. Imagine, don’t take my word for it, imagine if you’re a hunter. So there is a little hole and you’re waiting for a rabbit, a hare to come out, you want to catch it. What would you be doing?

A: You’d be focusing.

N: You’d be focusing, exactly. At the expense of everything else. Because that’s how important this is to you, to catch it. And when the Buddha described them, when he said all these people call themselves meditators, but all they do, they are like a jackal trying to catch a prey. So basically trying to catch, trying to focus and catch, and attend and grab ‘the moment’, whatever you want to call it. And he said, whoever does that, does so rooted in sensuality. They meditate with sensuality. Because you meditate like, this is on the basis of my senses, sense of touch, can be visual, whatever else, can be audible… The point is, you’re catching the moment that you believe has significance for you. Profound significance you yourself gave it, in a way, with your wrong views. That if you catch the moment rightly a sufficient amount of times, it will purify everything that needs to be purified, without you needing to think about it, or address it on an individual basis.

So, ‘focus, focus, focus, focus, focus, focus, got it! I got the moment, I had this great experience, my body felt so light, it was like disappearing… Oh, so that must mean that I’ve succeeded. Somehow.’ And that’s usually like, I’ve had the experience, now I have to interpret it. Which means, I have no understanding of the experience, now I have to fabricate it. Because even if you have the lofty unusual experience of your energy in your body and whatnot, what is the nature of it? Means, slightly less common experience of this body here. As opposed to more common, daily experience of this body here. Either way, there is this body here.

A: Normally people would think you do the meditation, but then afterwards you’ll have this profound experience and then you have to make sense, interpret that. But that actual making sense out of it, that’s the meditation!

N: Yeah! Well, that’s closer.

A: That’s the direction that you need to be going in.

N: Yeah. The best meditation the Buddha praised is the meditation of jhāna, and how do you develop jhāna? By understanding what jhāna is. So by dwelling on the theme of jhāna, as in this is what jhāna is, I keep thinking about it, dwelling on it, a monk enters it. By not dwelling on the theme of jhāna, he doesn’t develop it. As simple as that. But, with the whole commentarial, evolutionary take of ‘watch your nostrils, which leads to absorption, which leads to jhāna, which leads to whatnot’. The Ānāpānasati Sutta doesn’t talk about jhānas at all. It talks about the four foundations of mindfulness. So, practise mindfulness of breathing and that fulfils your awareness of the peripheral. Fulfils your knowledge of the background in regard to that which you’re focusing. Rather than some sort of mystical absorption of focusing. And that was the meditation we were doing, while I’m sitting here, I have such and such feeling arising and enduring. And I still feel like that, while I’m sitting here, while we’re talking about these themes. And I don’t need to try to catch everything, anything actually. All you need to do is stay at the doorway which you determine through your initial act of focusing.

This is my situation. My situation is being seated on the chair in this room with two other people. And six dogs. That’s it. Within that, now, everything that happens will happen within it. And you don’t need to chase it. And countless similes the Buddha gave. But usually the one, the man surveys the outskirts of the city, there is not any entry or exit except one big gate. And he decides, ‘if I stay at the gate I’ll know whoever’s in and I’ll know whoever’s out. I don’t need to chase people individually in, or try to get them outside. I just need to stay here.’ And the idea of how you stay here while things are changing is not by focusing, focusing, focusing, focusing, means I’m at the gate, I’m at the gate, I’m at the gate, I’m at the gate—people are coming in and out, but you’re looking at the gate! No, you stay by understanding this. So, this is the context, this is the present container, this is the entry and exit point. I’ll keep that in mind. That’s it.

That’s samādhi. Keeping things in mind. Keeping things together, isn’t it? Sam-ādhi. Composing things. So you compose your situation through revealing it, through attending to it. So yeah, don’t be completely mindless and inattentive, but doing attention for the sake of attention means actually ignoring the situation. You cannot do both. You cannot attend to that which is peripheral to what you’re attending. So I’m attending to this, means the other things that are there, simultaneously present, cannot be attended to. And it’s not the point to attend all of them. The point is that what you attend, recognise, or attend to that which is a natural container to everything else.

A: Basically, the nature of your experience involves the presence of other things, this periphery, other things that you aren’t attending to right now.

N: Yeah, because when I ask you to focus on your body for example, I could ask you to focus on something else. That’s equally there. That can serve as a footing for an anchoring.

A: Any meditation that avoids acknowledging the periphery of whatever it is you’re attending to—

N: Is miccha samādhi.

A: —is going to be missing the whole nature of your experience!

N: It’s going to be like a jackal preying upon something and ignoring everything else. Like a cat catching the fish and ignoring everything else. And the Buddha mocked it. He said ‘with his shoulders drooping, head swinging, sleeping, drooling, ‘I’m a meditator, I’m a meditator, because I have this powerful concentration… where I fall asleep’.’

A: And isn’t it funny that that is actually the nature of falling asleep. When you fall asleep, you’re lying on your bed, and you’re thinking about whatever it is you’re thinking about. And then at some point, you forget the background, ‘oh I’m lying in my bed here’, and you’re absorbed in the particular thoughts you’re having.

N: That’s why even in your dreams, if you end up in a dream, something that requires slightly higher degree of reflexion, you immediately wake up. That’s just how it works.

A: So basically, the common idea about what meditation is, is very similar to what happens when you’re falling asleep.

N: In a way, yeah. And I think it has similar physical manifestations as well. But another thing that often gets tied with this focusing practice is the idea of sensations. As some sort of a hybrid phenomena, that’s in between perception and feeling.

A: So at the beginning I was talking about focusing on this, but another thing that I used to do and I think a lot people do, is focusing on sensations in the body. With the rationale that that’s what the Buddha meant by vedanā, feeling.

N: Sure. But then when the Buddha described vedanā, he said what they are. Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. So what difference does it make if your sensation is in your elbows, or your shoulders, or your nose. When all you need to look for is, is this pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. And if you start looking at that you will see that pleasantness, unpleasantness and neutrality is not localised in your perception of spatial body. It cannot be. So when they say ‘bodily feeling’, it’s basically a mental feeling in regard to the body. When they say ‘mental feeling’, it’s a mental feeling in regard to the mind. Either way, feeling is cetasika, as the Buddha said in the Suttas. It’s mental. It’s always mental.

So you observing—‘observing’, there you go—sensation in your legs means you’re perceiving sense of touch in your legs. That then somehow starts to stand for the feeling, vedanā. So how can you perceive vedanā? So how’s that possible? ‘I’m perceiving what I’m feeling?’ But the Buddha said feeling is that which feels the felt, and perception is that which perceives the perceived. So how can you perceive what you feel? From the point of view of perception, sensations are described as feelings, if you look at feelings, they are described as perceptions. And you will maintain that ambiguity, that confusion, that contradiction, because you don’t clarify what it is. You can only observe a perception.

A: So when people are observing sensations, first of all you’re observing like you’re kind of standing back, like it was actually described as like a doctor. Imagine you’re a doctor looking down… so that’s the third-person perspective.

N: That’s all fine. Nobody denies the existence of sensations, or, that which you refer to as sensations. But it’s the confusion that you imply with it, as if that which you are perceiving is your feeling. Thus, all I need to do is start ignoring, or maintaining the ignorance of how I’m actually feeling, and keep hoping for the right perception that will reveal the nature of feeling and everything else to me, because you assume that it can be perceived. So yeah, I have various sensations in my back after a bee stings you. But that’s not how I feel. Those are things that I perceive. Because the body’s spatial, three-dimensional, it has insides, it has outsides, and touch receptors go both ways. So you can feel internal perceptions, which are sensations. But then you saying that that’s what your feelings are, that’s how you maintain the wrong view. Because feelings are felt on the level of the mind. That’s why we always start with, ‘what’s your mood right now?’ That’s where the feelings are. ‘Oh, I’m feeling pleasure in my hand’—no, you have agreeable perceptions in your hand, which result in the experience of pleasure. That’s it. So it’s not ‘oh, you must stop paying attention to sensations’, no, you must stop misconceiving feelings with your sensations. Feelings are placed in this body. So then you can measure a feeling by the means of perceptions?

T: It was like that surgery I had in my hand. And they numb the area, they numb it out, so you don’t ‘feel’ anything, so you don’t sense anything, you don’t sense any pain. But they would numb it out, and I could feel them pulling on the tendons. Which is not something that is agreeable to me. So I can feel that, and I thought ‘ah, it’s not numb enough, because I feel pain’. But I’m sensing only the pulling of a tendon, which is disagreeable. So they would numb it out even more. And still the pain was there. And I realised, oh wait, they can’t numb that out. They cannot numb the feeling out. But they can change the sensations.

N: That’s how people experience pain in their limbs, after they’ve lost a whole limb. Racking, unbearable pains.

T: Because it’s feeling in regard to the body.

A: Phantom limbs.

N: That’s the thing: feeling is always phantom from the point of view of perception. Feeling can never enter the domain of perception. So you have feeling, perception and intention, which are impossible to disjoin as the Buddha said. So whenever there is a perception, there is a simultaneously present enduring feeling. Disagreeable perception, but then some people would find that pleasurable. There are people who find pain, discomfort, extreme piercing discomfort, being inflicted upon the body, they find pleasure in it. There are other people who have an extreme amount of comfort ‘inflicted’ to their body, and they still find it painful. So mind determines basically the threshold of what’s going to be painful or not.

Hence the trained body, the body resistant to elements can endure much more. The mind developed in jhānas can endure the roughness of the root of a tree, horrible fermented urine for medicine, rough hemp robes—will be like silk and basmati rice and a king’s palace. That’s how it will be felt. And that’s why the Buddha said you should practise jhāna and develop your mind, in that sense, correct sense. But if you think that you can actually perceive your feelings, it’s uncalled for, but you end up giving significance to your perception that it doesn’t deserve. It shouldn’t be there. It’s misconceiving it.

So, you don’t need to deny sensations, or say sensations are wrong, you just need to understand them. And you’ll see that if you’re either taking them as perceptions that stand in for feelings, or feelings that stand in for perceptions or what. But once you clarify them, you won’t do that any more. So you can still use it as a designation and a form of speech. Yeah, I’ve got sensations in my leg, I’d like to change my posture. That’s it. Disagreeable perceptions. Agreeable perceptions. But how you feel is in its own domain, and it can never mix with any other domain.

A: And you aren’t going to find vedanā by focusing.

N: No. Because what you can focus on is what you can observe, and you can’t observe feelings, you can only feel them. But if your only means of any form of effort is on the level of focusing, focusing, means this whole domain of what’s being felt right there simultaneously with it is invisible to you. Knowledge however, is a blanket access to all of the domains. Understanding the nature of things that you are not directly focusing on, but discerning as a necessary basis, means is a base for understanding intention, feeling, and perception for that matter. But yeah, you can use the base of perception to establish an anchoring of your mindfulness. Like for example light, now, right here and now. If I ask you ‘is there light or is it dark? Which is it now?’ It’s light. So whatever you do, whatever we say, whatever you feel, whichever way your body moves, it’s done within the container of the light that still endures. And that’s not on you. You didn’t create this light. It is there, arisen, providing a basis for the whole experience on a more particular level that’s happening to it.

A: And it’s not something I can focus on, because I can’t see it, I can’t see the light.

N: Exactly. So you do anchoring properly, you do focusing properly, it’s something you don’t focus on any more. Like focusing means bringing attention to it, but doesn’t mean keep attending, keep attending, keep attending, no. Means, you should understand it, now that you attended it.

A: Even perceptions aren’t really things that I’m attending to.

N: Any of the aggregates for that matter.

A: Exactly, yeah. So, I attend to these things, but within that I can discern various perceptions. They’re always peripheral to the actual things.

N: If you have a view that you must attend and focus, you have a view that prioritises the content of whatever you’re focusing or attending. Which means, that has to be done at the expense of the nature. That’s why the Buddha said, whatever aggregate of perception, so whatever perception, old, new, past, future, far, near, up, down, left, right: whatever particularly the perception might be, he knows perception is there. He doesn’t say ‘oh, this is the perception’, no. Perception is there because it has to be in some way, and so you stop being concerned about what way perception is there. You know perception is there. Whatever feeling, past, present, future, far, near, personal, impersonal, pleasant, unpleasant: feeling is there. So every aggregate can be is present particularly, but if that’s all you see, you’re ignorant of its nature. Means you’re ignorant of the Dhamma.

So that’s what I mean, focusing outlines the picture for you. But understanding is on the level of the opposite of what you’re attending. That’s why yoniso manasikāra. ‘From the origin’. So, knowing the origin of this very thing that I’m attending, while this origin of that attention is present. How can you attend the origin of your attention? You want to attend it. Inasmuch, I will see my eye with the same eye. That is inconceivable. But I will know that there is that because of which I am able to see, that I cannot see, but I can know that it’s there as a necessary basis. Namely, the eye. That’s properly exercised yoniso manasikāra. And it’s all in the Suttas.

A: Yeah, I guess most people would think yoniso means attending carefully, attending…

N: Yeah, you can attend it carefully, on the level of the nature of things, not on the level of what you can, like, observe and stare at. Because if its the origin of my attention, how can that same attention attend itself in its origin? Impossible. And the only reason you would keep assuming that is because you don’t clarify sufficiently enough that it is impossible. Because if you do, your efforts that will be trying to attend to it will fade.

T: Yoniso could be like, context.

N: Well yeah, pretty much. That’s what I mean, can you attend something from nothingness? No, it needs to be there beforehand.

A: And that context is the origin of this thing, in the sense that this thing couldn’t be what it is without this whole larger context being there.

N: Well, attend to your elbows touching the chair. How can you do that if you wouldn’t have elbows, if there is no chair, if you’re not seated in a particular position requiring you being leaning on the chair. How can you attend to it? You can’t. So the only way you can attend it is if it’s already there enduring.

T: And when you attend to any aspect, it’s not new, like something’s begun. It’s being going on and on and on and on.

N: Fully understand that, that’s how you also become unable to regard the most volitional choice, decision, as mine. Because you see it fully encapsulated within that which cannot be yours.

T: The option to choose a certain choice is there, so you choose it. That choice has always been there, and then you can even look, I’m still sitting here. Am I sitting? Yeah, so I’m still, the choice to sit here is still going on.

N: And if you say now, oh, but I have a choice to stand up and change that situation, yes, and you can only do that because there is a possibility for you, as in for the body, to be moved in an upright position. So when you stand up, you just exercise another choice, on top of the choice that’s been exercised of you sitting. So there is no such choice that can take you outside of the given container of your experience as a whole. From which you can really impartially, or independently, or as a master, choose without any basis for that choice. It’s always secondary to it. So, the choice, the effects of your choice, the results of your action, are within your experience as a whole. They are secondary to it.

So if I choose to stand up, I have changed my initially determined base for my mindfulness that I focused on initially to just discern it, but now I can only change it because there is another potential basis that this can be replaced with. Hence the four body postures. Because there is no fifth by the way, you’re either going to be standing, lying down, walking or sitting. That’s it. That’s when you start realising that it doesn’t matter how much I exercise my choice within this, it’s going to be within some limiting container. Fundamentally, that limiting container is the five aggregates, or the life in itself. You can’t do anything unless you’re alive. So, am I still alive? Yes. So that’s the most general container. Because if that’s taken away—which can be at any moment—I have no say in that.

My whole life depends upon a muscle that beats inside of my chest. Can I even conceive telling it how to beat, how fast? No, it’s just inaccessible to you, inaccessible to the wildest of your imagination. Yet, your entire life sits on it, like this, and you can’t even imagine this thing, how it could change or what could happen to it. And if that goes, none of this can remain. So if you keep that context in your mind, that’s basically maraṇasati, done correctly. Everything is then put against the backdrop of ‘it’s unownable, because its rooted in something I cannot even have in my imagination, let alone in practise’. Thus, whatever I do on top of it is equally unownable by me. Because if you are the owner, you’re the master, you’re the controller, you’re in charge of it. How can you be in charge of something you can’t even imagine?

T: You can’t even know the ending…

N: You know that it’s going to end…

T: …is it already falling apart?

A: It’s beyond you.

N: Yeah. Inaccessible.

T: That’s the suffering. That’s the murderer waiting to stab you. It’s coming for you, coming for you.

N: Well, that’s the impermanence. That’s anicca. Unownable. Anicca means impossible to own, impossible to be mine. And if it’s unownable, and yet here I am depending on it, that’s suffering. If it’s unownable, it is dukkha. If it’s unownable and dukkha, then this sense of my self, I don’t own even that. So if it’s unownable and dukkha, then my experience is anattā. You don’t need to do anattā then. ‘Oh, this is impermanent, this is suffering… and this is the not-self.’ No, this is impermanence, this is suffering, this experience is experienced as not-self. So if you see your sense of self as inseparably rooted in that which cannot be your sense of self, which is unownable, inaccessible to you, even in your imagination, then your sense of self right here and now will be felt as not my sense-of-self. So, attā and anattā means basically my self or not my self. Doesn’t mean there is no self, because if there is no self, what are you designating by saying ‘there is no self’?

A: It’s like, allowing that understanding to endure long enough in the background to kind of colour and influence the choices you’re making, the decisions you’re making. Because you will see that everything that you’re doing is bound up within that. But ignoring that…

N: Ignoring that then takes you in the direction of ‘oh, I am doing this’ in the sense of ‘I am controller/master of this’. But at any given point, you can re-establish the fundamental context that if a random muscle that pumps blood from your chest, if that stops, no amount of your projects, feelings, hopes, dreams, memories, traumas, happinesses, sadness, can remain. Not for a second longer. ‘OK, so what do I do next?’ Nothing. Clarify that same thing, that’s what you do next. Just allow it to endure, and make it clearer, and clearer, and clearer, and harder and harder to forget. That it doesn’t matter how involved I get with things, simultaneously present is the basis for those things that is inaccessible to me.

And when I say basis of those things, I mean basis for your own life as well. Because your life is another thing. That’s it. And you could then see how that this contemplation, meditation, samādhi, would automatically result in dispassion. How can you exercise passion towards this when you cannot possibly lose the sight of the context that it’s inherently inaccessible to you. Unownable. Not worth the effort. And that’s why the Buddha says, like when the monk practises rightly, he starts developing these notions of like, ‘oh this is not worth engaging with. This is not worth delighting in. I can still do it, but now the unworthy aspect of this is way overwhelming’, and then you can’t do it any more. The only reason you would be doing it is because you find it worthy of doing it.

T: Passionate about it.

N: Exactly, passionate about it.

T: Delighting in it.

N: Becomes impossible. Passion is worthless. Effort of investing passion becomes inconceivable.

T: Whether I delight in it or not, it is what it is and it’s… not mine.

N: And you don’t need to ‘oh I must stop!’ No, just don’t lose the sight of that peripheral context. Doesn’t matter what you’re particularly attending. Beautiful aspects, ugly aspects, beautiful aspects, ugly aspects, neither—it’s on the context of being all rooted in something that I cannot even conceive owning, thus pleasure, pain, stops bothering me.

A: And that delight just naturally falls off. So you don’t have to fight the delight, you just kind of stop…

N: Yeah, you just need to maintain the context in the face of it. That’s it. But if all you’re doing is focusing on what’s in front of you, means your mind will be fully taken by pleasure, fully taken by pain. You’ll be resisting the pain, prolonging pleasure.

A: Because that will always be peripheral, which is, you’ve chosen not to look there.

N: Exactly. The knowledge is on the level of peripheral. Because if you have to keep keeping things that you know in your mind, means you haven’t really understood them. If you have to keep reminding yourself, because if you forget, the knowledge goes with it, which means that’s not knowledge. Things that you’ve really understood, you stop thinking about. And if they’re brought up, the understanding is there. The Buddha had that simile when that man asked him, when he asked the Buddha, ‘do you prepare these answers beforehand?’ He said ‘let me ask you in return, you are a master chariot maker’ (or whatever he was). ‘If I were to ask you anything about the workings of the chariots or parts, would you need to prepare the answer?’ ‘Oh, no, people wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me a question, and I will give them the answer right away. Because I have fully understood how a chariot works. All the engineering and everything, fully understood. So I don’t need to prepare anything, when it’s asked the answer is there from that understood context.’ And he said ‘the Dhamma works the same. That’s how the Tathāgata doesn’t prepare the answers.’ Because you understood it. But if, again, simile of the same chariot maker, if you haven’t understood how the chariot actually works, but you’ve read about it, then you’ll be ‘OK, so the wheels, the wheels, the wheels, and the chassis, the chassis, the seat…’

A: You have to think about the particular parts.

N: Exactly, you stop thinking about it—gone! ‘Oh god, how does it work? How does it work again?’ Means you haven’t understood it. And it’s not a big surprise then when you read the Suttas, that that’s all the Buddha talk about. The Dhamma is all about understanding. Yeah, you attend certain things at the expense of others, as in things that are conducive to non-lust at the expense of things that are conducive to lust. But only so that you can understand the nature of them as they are.

T: Discerning the nature that is there. So that thing is there. Like nibbāna.

N: Yeah, the element of nibbāna, that’s what it means. Doesn’t mean you’re already in nibbāna, means you developing the dhamma of nibbāna is possible. If you do it rightly. It’s not something outside of the five aggregates. It’s basically the attitude in regard to the five aggregates. It’s a particular dhamma of complete absence of passion in regard to the five aggregates. That’s why even a puthujjana in Majjhima thirty—no, later on. When he talks about the conceivings, ‘I am doing this, I am attaining this’, and he says ‘at some point some men can even say, ‘this is nibbāna and I am attaining this nibbāna, this nibbāna is mine’’. And people think ‘oh it must not be the real nibbāna.’ And then the Buddha says, ‘no it is the real nibbāna. What this man asserts is that which nibbāna is.’ But he doesn’t attain it, as in he doesn’t actually develop it properly, because he’s still ‘I am doing this’, so he’s appropriating it. So the element of nibbāna is basically the experience of absence of greed, aversion, delusion. That’s what nibbāna is.

T: And one can discern that.

N: One can discern that, yeah. The more you discern it, the more the context will endure. The more the context will endure, the less of you maintaining all these random passions will occur. And when those passions completely go, then on account of the context that you started discerning, you are then ‘in’ nibbāna. That’s how the sotāpanna understood nibbāna, understands the arahant. Now he needs to develop it. He needs to maintain that context simply through non-engagement with sensuality, through restraint, and that’s it. He will have to arrive at the complete eradication of greed, aversion and delusion, from that context that has been fundamentally understood. Context of unownable, unpleasurable, and thus not my self. Not my own self.

T: That context has been uncovered, can never be covered.

A: Because anything particular can only ever be determined by that context. But not understanding that…

N: What do you mean?

A: So, when you say you’ve uncovered the context, basically, you’ve just simply uncovered that which everything—the yoniso—which everything is determined by, whether you were aware of that or not.

N: Yeah. That upon which your passion, your aversion, your distraction and delusion depend, is something inaccessible to your passion, to your aversion, and to your delusion. You fully understand that, and you will not be able to maintain passion, aversion, delusion, in regard to that thing. That’s it.