Putting The Body First

T: So these are some more questions that have come from around the world, and some comments from YouTube. I’ll just read out someone’s comment from YouTube. He says, “I was thinking: ‘This person said something I heard and I didn’t like. This person did something I saw and I didn’t like.’ But without my eye, or my ears, or this body, I wouldn’t be able to experience that person. So do I hate this person, or do I really hate my eye, my ear, this body? The world outside of this body is only experienced through this body. So how can it be outside? And how can I conceive outside of this body if it’s not on the basis of this same body and senses? This is where the misconceiving happens, isn’t it?”

N: Exactly, that’s exactly where it happens. That’s why the Buddha described the sense organs as hollow, empty, without substance. In other words, they don’t appear. You can’t see your eye. So that’s why you naturally think you hate that which you’ve seen, because there is nothing else there that you can visibly hate. But actually, what you are averse to is that negative sense base, that’s hollow, empty. As the Buddha would say, if a man were to look closely they would find no substance to it. It’s just devoid of substance. So it’s basically this negative space, that’s what your eye is. That which doesn’t appear when your sights are there, but it’s the reason for your sights. That’s why it takes knowledge. First it takes sense restraint to stop acting towards what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, to stop fortifying the wrong notion that that’s what you are averse to. And then you discover that natural aversion, natural paṭigha toward these senses, because they were always the untamed animals, not the objects they were seeking. But even then you will not see the eye as an object. But you get to know that, through withdrawal from the sense objects that I used to chase with likes or dislikes, what I’m left with now is that pure aversion to the fact that there is seeing there that undermines me, that I’m subjected to.

The Buddha said himself, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, agreeable and disagreeable, they’re besetting. They’re attacking your senses. That’s what sights do, so to speak. So you realise that it’s your own senses, that that’s where the problem is. But for as long as you haven’t been withdrawn from the sense objects, if you haven’t stopped acting towards the person that upset you, acting out, you will be maintaining the notion that that’s where the problem is. And that’s exactly the root misconceiving. You don’t see your body for what it is, these sense organs that actually you resist. And that’s why you delight in sense objects of an agreeable kind and that’s why you’re averse to sense objects of a disagreeable kind. Because fundamentally, you don’t want to face that voidness of those sense organs, the lack of substance. Because it reveals non-ownership. If you were to see the eye, truly, for what it is, as a sense base because of which there are sights, you realise it’s inaccessible to you. Any sense of control you have, preferences for pleasing, avoiding displeasing sights, all that is completely circumstantial on the basis that you are fully trapped within it. And exactly, there is no outside of it. What you see is, your eye seeing. You develop this notion, the knowledge of the world outside, because of which you feel like you’ve freed yourself from the pressure of these five senses, five sense organs, the body. But that’s the wrong notion. And for as long as you maintain that wrong notion, you’re never going to take on that pressure correctly, and you will not be able to free yourself from it.

T: So your senses are, sort of, open for attack. And you can’t, how do you protect that?

N: That’s what I mean, they are completely inaccessible to you. You can’t. You don’t even have a say in how senses see things, or hear things. You only get the result of it. And for as long as you don’t sufficiently withdraw yourself from sense objects, you will entertain a degree of notion of control over sense objects. Because senses don’t appear, the sense bases. You can’t see them, eye cannot see itself, ear cannot hear itself. So it’s negative, hollow, empty, all those things that the Suttas describe them as. And because of that, all you see is you, and me, and this anger. Or, whatever—this pleasing thing, and me, and this pleasure. So it’s for me, it’s mine, I want it, I don’t want it. But you are completely outside of that whole relationship between that eye that is being harassed and besetted by these sights, and so on. But for as long as you don’t withdraw yourself from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, you will not see that there is something else there, that doesn’t appear on that level. That background, pressuring body for what it is. What I was describing, that natural paṭigha that you discover. And it’s like ‘oh, that’s where it is’.

T: So would you say that you can perceive them, can you perceive the senses?

N: No, you can know them. By not misconceiving the perception on account of them, you get to understand the nature of perception. In other words, you get to understand the nature of those hollow, negative senses, devoid of substance.

T: That you cannot perceive.

N: You cannot see directly. That’s why that whole point of discerning the peripheral context and everything else. Because if you expect you’re going to see a nimitta of what your eyes are, that’s not going to be anywhere near it. And the Buddha said that, he compared them to those empty rooms, an empty village. A man escapes the vipers and so on and comes to an empty village, and it’s just devoid of anybody, it’s empty and hollow. And that’s what the senses are, they’re just devoid of presence. And you realise, this is already abandoned. This cannot be owned. That’s already the nature of your sense bases. But most people wouldn’t even get near that to see it, because most people would not be sufficiently withdrawn from the sense objects, and that’s where the problem is. Keeps you basically external to yourself, the assumption, by being engaged with these sense objects. Not necessarily even just through coarse sensuality. In general, the view is that you’re outside, you can get outside, you can choose and do things outside. But actually, all you can do is engage with your senses that see things, hear things, smell things, and so on. There is no outside of this body.

T: So this notion of my self, my identity. That thought is here in this section of perception, this area. Where is the body? Where are the senses which I am identifying with? I can’t contact those things.

N: No, no. Everything is the result of having them already. That’s what I mean, you can never step outside and take the ownership, or protect them. You can only tame them or follow where they want to take you. There is absolutely no third alternative that you can do. Because it’s all on that internal level. So the first thing you need to do is stop misconceiving those senses that undermine you as ‘oh yes, this is my eye, and this is my ear’. Basically, you’re misconceiving them through the external means and criteria that you developed on account of already misconceiving that. That’s why you develop this perception of external world, and sense of control and ownership, and delight and sensuality. It’s because you’re already misconceiving the senses for what they are. Now on account of that misconceiving, you develop a view about the external world through which now you think you can access these senses. So it’s like a double misconceiving. And when people look at the eye, as if it’s just this medical thing, yeah, it is when you look at it, but not as that because of which there is looking. Personally, you can never see the internal eye the same way you would see the eye if you were dissecting it in a lab or something. That’s an object that I can see because of these eyes that are not on the level of the object. Because if these eyes become on the level of the object, I will not have my sight any more.

T: So you can look at them as a doctor or scientist can, look at an eye and see how it works…

N: But you need to see that you are accessing that through your own eyes already, which means it can never be that internal counterpart, that sense base that’s always internally found.

T: So how do you know that it’s there?

N: How do you know that it’s there? By withdrawing yourself from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches that otherwise please you or displease you, by not acting towards them.

T: So then what do you find?

N: Well you find that empty, hollow space. You find that empty village that the Buddha talks about. You realise, yeah, this hollowness is that body because of which I was confusing myself to be the conceiver and perceiver and owner and master of the world. Yet, it’s because of that, this absolutely unownable, empty, abandoned village that everything has fled from, because it’s subject to ruin. So then you will not entertain the notion that you are the perceiver and conceiver of the world, because you just saw that notion being completely undermined and dismantled. And there is a Sutta where Ānanda says that. It’s because of that eye that one is the perceiver and conceiver of the world. Because he doesn’t understand the eye, so he becomes ‘I see this, I perceive this, I conceive this’. Because as I said, there’s nothing else that appears there in those palpable terms. So that’s why a person needs to develop internally, to recognise these negative counterparts as a necessary basis. But practically speaking, what you’re going to find is just this unity of your body experienced internally, whereby the external thoughts that you might have in regard to that body, in regard to the eye and ear, are seen second to the internal experience of the body internally as a hollow, empty vessel.

T: So thoughts are actually seen as external?

N: Yeah, you cannot get rid of the thoughts—‘I must not think the eye if I try to see the eye.’ You will think the eye, but you should not conceive your thought of the eye to be that eye that is internally there, as that negative, hollow, empty vessel, empty room, empty village. So training in regard to that internal negative space, for the lack of a better term, will then un-pervert the order of your thoughts in regard to the eye, and that which the eye base actually is. It will remove the basis for conceiving. Then yes, you will have the thoughts about the eye, they were never the problem. But they will not carry the assumption that yes, those thoughts which are basically external and about external things, are my eyes. Eyes are that internal, hollow, unownable, subject-to-ruin village that everybody has fled from. That’s your body, those are your senses. If you’re able to see it that way, the conceivings will fade away. You will not have to then make the effort to stop conceiving or misconceiving, because you realise ‘this is subject to flooding and attacks, I’d better not be there.’ And that’s how you free yourself from it. You can’t free yourself from it by pulling your eyes out. You can free yourself by completely removing any misconceived notion of ownership in regard to the sights, and the eyes, and both, and anything else in between that used to exist. Being, stuff you felt on account of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, things you did, choices you made, intentions, thoughts you had, all of that’s the result of that basis.

T: We had another question about memories. Where are memories stored? Where is the memory of yesterday and the day before? Where is that?

N: Well, in the same place where the thoughts and images of that question come from. So, where are the memories stored? Where are these designations that I’m using to ask you a question, where is that stored? And then you realise, it’s kind of an invalid question. Because it assumes an external point of view that can see the storage of my consciousness and thoughts and everything else. And you cannot conceive that. Well, you can misconceive that. As I said, assuming the outside of yourself can only be a form of misconceiving. So, the notion of external storage or whatever else, it’s very much on the basis of your internal that comes first, and that’s the point. So you can have those thoughts, it’s not that you must not stop thinking this, but you must stop misconceiving the order. You must stop putting the thoughts of external first, the thoughts in regard to the external sense objects first, the meditation techniques about sense objects and nimittas and visions, stop putting that first and start discerning that negative, empty, abandoned sense organ body as internal, as that basis. That is what you’re bound with, there is no outside of it. All the external perceptions and notions and designations and thoughts and questions you might have, is within that internal body you are bound with.

T: So the point is not to really figure out, get information or try to get hold of the eye, get hold of the ear, and really understand how they work.

N: But people would still hold the view that they can, and that it’s about that. Basically you’ll only get frustrated and you will not find your answer. Because that idea is based on the wrong premise.

T: I know what you mean. ‘There is the mind, there are mind objects, and there’s mind consciousness. And then the coming together of the three is contact.’ So, how does it come together, why does it come together, where is the mind, where are the objects exactly situated, where is the consciousness… To try and figure that out you can come up with some fancy ideas, but that’s not the point. That description to me seems to be enough.

N: It is. It’s not about figuring out the relationship of those things, it’s about just not falling into the trap of misconceiving and becoming the owner of it. That’s why all the interpretations of that description came later, did not come from the Buddha. You know, how the meeting occurs, like slapping of the hands, and the sound is the result—that’s not from the Suttas. It’s literally just there in the world, the hollow village that gets attacked every now and again. And the results of that attack is basically the pressure that you can feel on account of seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, that’s agreeable, disagreeable, it’s pulling you in directions. How it happens, it’s irrelevant. The fact is that you cannot remain unmoved, that’s your problem. Contact has to cease, not by removing the village or that which comes into the village to attack it, but by removing you being bothered by it. So that’s why the only way to know the eye, to know the objects correctly, is first to see that you can only know them on the basis of pressure already being there.

T: You are secondary. You have no access to those things.

N: And that pressure is the measure of whether you understood it or not, whether you’re trying to get rid of it through finding answers, or you’re able to endure it and see through it and then remove that paṭigha towards that internal aspect. And then whatever comes, it will just come through, so to speak. You will not be bothered by it. But if people already have the view, and most of them would, of that external, explanatory, ‘this is what happens’, as if that’s relevant to the fact that you’re pressured by the pleasing and pressured by the displeasing… That’s the core, that’s the meeting spot. And now you’re going to go and solve how this meeting happens by abandoning the meeting spot, and investigating sort of theoretical aspects of it? No, the only way to solve, to undo the contact, is to endure it where it is.

A prerequisite for the right view was, as the Buddha said, to restrain yourself from falling into seeking answers for ‘who am I, what was I in the past, will I be in the future’, all these external answers that pertain to the core of your sense of self. Because that takes the sense of self for granted, and it also assumes it externally, by thinking I can find the answers for it externally. A person needs to recognise, yeah, a sense of self is a problem, it’s the root of suffering and so on, but I must myself refrain from seeking these questions out there. So if you refrain from acting out of that pressure to find these answers, which is always rooted in trying to get rid of the pressure by the way, but if you refrain from seeking these external answers and stay with the problem on that internal level, that’s pretty much the first step, that’s the correct step.

That’s why sense restraint always comes first and as we’ve spoken about before, if somebody or something upsets you, you have to stop acting towards that thing. Because otherwise you will never see that that thing was never the root of your upset. It was your internal craving, in regard to what you internally felt. In regard to the internal base, that has perceived something externally, which is within the internal base, because you cannot actually have something externally, independently accessed, or perceived independently of your sense organ. So you all can perceive is sense organs seeing, or hearing, or smelling, or touching. So there’s no outside of it. There is no outside of it, means already there is no assumption of me being outside and accessing outside. So that’s already shrinking of attavāda and so on. But that takes effort, it’s not about finding the answer, it’s about actually enduring that pressure to seek and resolve the issue of my self, and what I am, and who I am, and where I came from, or the issue of contact and stuff, to resolve it on that external plane. Because that’s already a perverted order, and you’re looking in the wrong place, and feeding that perversion of the order.

T: So, if you then become mindful of the body in this way where you understand that you don’t have access to the body.

N: So you can become mindful of the body internally by not falling into the trap of putting the thoughts of your body as that which your body is. So when I say be mindful of the body, the first thing you’re going to have is an image of the body. And that’s fine. Through that image of the body, there is the internal physicality of that body being there. That’s the basis of mindfulness, seeing body within the body. But the problem is that people expect some magical result out of it, and then they fail to see that the actual problem is just that, just what you put first, nothing else but that. Do you put that physicality of the body—see, even ‘physicality of the body’ is a form of thought, and that can become a form of misconceiving then. That’s the Mūlapariyāya Sutta. You misconceive the form, one way or the other. And that’s where the practice is.

You recognise the thought, you don’t take it for granted as ‘that’s what my body is’ because it is an external thought in regard to that physicality. Through the enduring of the thought, through the enduring of that contact, pressure, you develop yourself to that counterpart of physicality that is there because of which… otherwise you wouldn’t even have that thought there. So mindfulness of the body, fine, even have a thought of your posture of whatever. If you just sit down, mindfully, you are already aware that you are seated. That’s already an image in your mind. That’s fine. Through that image now, discern the more actual physicality of the seated body. Again, without perverting the order by allowing new thoughts to just take you into the assumption that ‘oh yeah, that’s what’s happening because of which this body is here’. No, this body is here because this body is here, every thought you have in regard to it is within it. Not the other way around. And that was also like the problem with sensation watching meditation. Sensation is ultimately an external point of view that you keep applying to your body, with the assumption that that’s what’s internally felt. But it’s not.

T: It’s touch.

N: It’s a sense of touch, sure. There’s no problem saying ‘I feel a sensation in my back’ or something. But it’s an external. I’m being touched there, basically. Even if it’s inside of the body, that’s not the ajjhatta, internal aspect, which is on the level of the body as an organ that can be touched. And that cannot be measured by sensations. That is a negative, hollow, empty village. So if people have a view that sensations measure the presence of the body and the mindfulness of the body, they’re basically using sense objects to measure the presence of their organs, which is impossible, which is already a form of misconceiving. That’s exactly why people don’t see their organs, because they put the sense objects first.

T: That’s why no one’s mindful of the body.

N: When you look for the body, you expect to find it on the level of sense objects, because that’s what your view tells you it is. And then you might be refining your sense objects, refining the perceptions of touch into these subtle sensations, but that’s still external. That will always remain external. And it’s not a problem to have those things, the problem is that you put that first, and the actual physicality of the body that is the container, of even the most refined sensations you might have, is actually first, and you don’t see it as first. Well, you probably don’t even see it at all, if you see it, you see it as second. You experience it as second.

T: But then what would you think that internal body is then, if you haven’t experienced it? You can only think of it as a perception of something, which means if I experience it, I perceive it on some level. But it’s not a perception.

N: But see, saying ‘I can’t perceive it’ is another perception. So you cannot not perceive it either. That’s why the whole point of the Mūlapariyāya Sutta is not to not have thoughts in regard to the body, it’s just to not misconceive the body on account of those thoughts. In other words, all you can do is withdraw yourself from perverting the order through your thoughts. And what you’re left with is the physicality of the body seen correctly, with an unperverted order, and the body for what it is. The body there. And that’s the ‘body witnessing’ that the Buddha would describe as a part of meditation.

T: If you do this practice you can’t expect something, you can’t have an idea of…

N: Well you might be expecting something, but don’t put that first. Leave it second on account of the physicality there enduring internally that is hollow, empty, unownable, subject to peril. And if you’re seeing your own basis like that, you will lose passion towards any prospects and objects that exist within it.

T: So, keep seeing the thought of the body as secondary?

N: Yes. And then when you say, OK, the thought of the body’s second, this body’s first, you recognise that’s a thought. Fine, let it endure, and through that learn how to discern the physicality of that body without making it into a new object, a new thought. That’s that peripheral awareness we keep talking about, that you can infinitely practise. And all it does is, not take you to some special place at the end of the ‘peripheral planes’, no. All it does is eventually eradicate your casual, ignorant habit of perverting the order. That’s it. If you stay sufficiently on the extent necessary of that peripheral stepping away correctly, any tendency to flip back the order to the wrong way will be eradicated. As the Buddha would say in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, “or they simply practise mindfulness of the body to the extent necessary for the final knowledge to become established”. That’s all.

And yeah, it’s a lot of information, theoretical and so on, but if you listen and re-listen, it’s a very practical thing. First you need to be thoroughly restrained in terms of your actions, by body, by speech, by mind, because each time you act out of greed, aversion, or distraction, you pervert the order. You re-enforce the already perverted order, you feed it, you keep throwing fuel on that burning fire. You stop acting, you guard your sense doors, and then you’re going to start discerning that negative, empty, hollow village. Emptiness, suññāta. This is empty. And you will not necessarily be saying ‘this is the eye…’ you can just see it in the most generic terms of the body. The external perceptions will be seen for what they are, and that internal sense of emptiness will be then seen, ‘that’s that sense base that I have no outside of’. So the practical way of practising mindfulness once you’ve been thoroughly restrained—because if you’re not, that’s your practise of mindfulness, thorough restraint. Guarding of the sense doors, moderation in eating, watchfulness, then if you want to do more on top of that, you just do the same with what you have already gathered, so to speak. Your sense restraint and your effort towards sīla and virtue and growing on account of it, what that has gathered, you realise OK, so now, I’m not leaking outside, I’m not spilling outside, my behaviour has been restrained.

So when I have the thoughts of the body, you can actually allow it to endure, and within that, see the present physicality because of which this thought is there (i.e. see “body within the body” of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta). So you can never get to the ‘pure physicality’, because that’s a thought. If you start coming to it as an object, the only way to objectify it is to have an image of it. Which means, physicality has been misconceived. So all you have to do is stop trying to access it through the assumption of access, and just see what’s there, and stop putting the thoughts first. Let them endure, and then discern the negative physicality underneath it. And that’s pretty much the culmination of the first jhāna, on the level of withdrawal.

Like, your practise of the first jhāna, as we’ve said before, starts by not acting, restraining your speech, guarding your sense doors. You’re already gathering in. And that’s why in first jhāna you would have thoughts, ‘thinking and pondering’, ‘picking up the content’, whichever way people translate vitakkavicārā, but the order will remain unperverted. If you’re not established in the physicality of that body, if you have not sufficiently stopped misconceiving it and putting it second, and putting the thoughts as more fundamental, every time you have vitakka, it comes from the outside as that which is first. Because each time the thought appears, unless, as I said, you have been developed to the extent necessary, it will come with at least that initial perversion of order. That’s why people who have developed jhānas, in the Suttas, it says they’re able to ‘purify the thought in it’s arising’. In other words, in the arising of the thought, order will remain unperverted, there will be no pollution.

So, it’s sustaining that order. And you can start sustaining that order in the broadest sense. The order of sense restraint, the order of the aggregate of virtue. That becomes first now. See, virtue is not first either. Acting out is first. Then you ponder, then you understand that you need to be restrained, and now you start actually preventing yourself from putting the acts of non-virtue first, making them factual. And if you’ve been cultivating virtue sufficiently enough, for a period of time, you start to physically recognise an aggregate of virtue, an aggregate of certain non-behaviour. That you cultivated, and now that’s first. And if you choose to break it, now you realise ‘ah, that will be perverting the order’. That will be going against the right order. And then same with speech, and then eventually, you can do that on the level of thoughts, because that’s where the conceivings happen. That’s where you pervert the fundamental order and put the thought, the image of the body first, not the physicality of the body.

And that’s the whole Mūlapariyāya Sutta, how one misconceives, but there are other Suttas as well about that. When there is a contact, say I have a thought of the body, there is the paṭigha aspect of it, and there is the adhivacana aspect of it. There is the resistance aspect of it, and there is the designation aspect of it. That’s the core of every contact. And usually it’s the designation that’s put first. They are simultaneously there, it’s not that designation comes later. So thought of the body doesn’t come later, thought of the body is there with the body, which is why you know it’s the body. So thought designates that resistance, ambiguity, that paṭigha. But it cannot go outside and possess it, or be separate to it. Yet that’s what every misconceiving carries. The implication that that’s the body, and already, you put the body second, and you stop seeing paṭigha of the body for what it is. So that’s the ‘resistance contact’ as it’s translated in the Suttas sometimes, and ‘designation contact’.

They’re two aspects of the same thing, and that’s where the perversion happens, within that pressure of contact. So you have to stop acting, you have to be able to endure the pressure of the contact, pleasant or unpleasant, and then within that see the physicality of it simultaneously present with the thought of the physicality of it. And don’t pervert that order. Allow it to endure, and keep sustaining it and protecting it. And then you can think freely, without any misconceivings, without any underlying tendency finding its way back, and that’s basically the thinking and pondering of the first jhāna. When the body is there, unified, how the Suttas would say. The pleasure of that unification is there, that whole thing, because you’re fully withdrawn, and no amount of thinking can pervert the order, and there is a sense of safety on account of it—a profound sense of safety. Because the threat was not that there was a village of an empty kind, being harassed and attacked, the threat was that you didn’t know how to leave it. The threat was that you were there. And now, you are not there any more, you removed the ownership.

T: This right order that you’re speaking about, that’s the right view.

N: Yes, and without the right view of what the right order is, you will not even know what the right order is to look for.

T: So if someone can get an idea of that…

N: Follow that idea and you will get the right view.

T: Or remember that idea. Sāti that idea.

N: Have an accurate memory of that idea.

T: And just keep on remembering it, keep on remembering it, keep on remembering it.

N: But obviously that idea will not have anything to pertain to and be recognised as factual, unless your behaviour has provided a sufficient basis for it. So your behaviour needs to be purified beforehand.

T: Or it remains theoretical.

N: It remains theoretical, and you will not see it for yourself because there is no matching physicality of it, of the right order. Everything you live, on a day to day basis, is through the perverted order. So you can have all the thoughts you want about the right order, unless your basic physical behaviour starts to emulate the right order, there is no basis for any of that to take root. You cannot practise the right order while you allow yourself to keep engaging in the wrong order by that which is even more fundamental than your thought: action by body and by speech. So it’s just not negotiable. But you realise, actually it’s good news, as I said before. All you have to do is keep your body restrained, keep your speech restrained, and you are practising. You’re practising the jhāna, you’re practising the right order, you’re practising toward the right view. And then your thoughts will have a much more fertile basis, even fleeting little thoughts, if they were correct, are going to be recognised instantly. Because the basis is there.

When the Buddha said ‘just think about Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha’, recollection of virtue, you’ll get samādhi as a result of it. Because yeah, behaviour by body and by speech has been purified, and that aggregate still persists. Now just tweak your thinking a little bit, focus on certain themes, and you’ll have a pleasant abiding here and now. That’s what it also means, by the way, in the Suttas when the Buddha said mindfulness should remain always established on the body, and never abandon the body, in terms of your sāti and recollection. As if somebody’s going with a sword behind you, and you’re carrying that pot full of water and everything is trying to distract you. It’s not about focusing on the sensations, it’s about maintaining the right order, never slipping from it. So establish the right order of the body to that extent necessary, and don’t allow it to be perverted, even if there are dancers around you and everything else, because your head will be chopped off if you pervert the order. If you lose the mindfulness of the body. If you lose the correct recollectedness of the body, the correct memory, the memory that doesn’t pervert the order. Memory of the right order.

T: So this is a short Sutta, and it seems to be in connection with what we’re talking about. I think you’ve already answered this, but maybe you could say something more. It starts: ‘Bhikkhus, when what exists, by assuming what, by adhering to what, does the thought occur: ‘I am superior’, ‘I am equal’, or ‘I am inferior’?’ The Buddha says: ‘When there is the eye, bhikkhus, by assuming the eye, by adhering to that assumption of the eye, the thought occurs: ‘I am superior, I am equal, I am inferior’’ and so on with the ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. So by assuming what, in terms of the senses, does one start to get this sense of…

N: By assuming the wrong order. That’s what I mean, by assuming the externals first, you don’t even see the internal, you don’t see the eye. You don’t see, so you are the perceiver, the conceiver, which means you are now comparable there. ‘I am better’, ‘I am worse’, ‘I am equal’… but the point is, no, you are secondary. And if you see yourself as secondary, there is no more conceit of superiority or inferiority. No, you are out of the picture, you don’t exist for the eye, or for the objects. You’re irrelevant. So you can’t even be dejected on account of it, because dejection requires some recognition of you being demoted or inferior. And you realise, there is no room for any conceit. Because conceit comes as a result of conceivings. You are not even equal. Because even equality, as in ‘we’re equals’, requires me and you. But if both you and I are utterly, completely invisible to our own eye and sense objects, irrelevant, non-existent, redundant, then it’s like comparing two things that are redundant. You wouldn’t say they’re equal, no, they’re just both equally redundant maybe. So yeah, conceit, you can take that as I said before, it’s more of a symptom. Conceit is a symptom of a problem. ‘Oh, I must get rid of the conceit’, no, you must stop misconceiving the core of your existence.

T: You mean like pride?

N: Pride, yeah, that’s what I mean. Superiority, that ‘I’m better’, ‘I’m worse’, ‘I’m inferior’. All of that is the result of the problem that you’re taking for granted. So if you start practising sense restraint, virtue, and then look for the correct practice of the mindfulness of the body, the right order, your conceit will fade. Doesn’t matter how you might come across to other people, the point is, internally there is anatimānī as it says in that Sutta, like free from any arrogance and so on. It’s not there, because that’s the result of sustaining that wrong order and wrong conceiving, where you are the perceiver, the conceiver of the world, which inevitably then results in creating a certain value around that. ‘I’m better, I can get even better’ and so on.

T: And there’s this, I think this was from the Theragāthā. Anyway, this arahant, his name is Jenta, he’s the high priest’s son, and this is his poem in the Theragāthā. “I was drunk with the pride of birth, and wealth, and authority. I wandered about, intoxicated with my own gorgeous body. No one was my equal or my better, or so I thought. I was such an arrogant fool. Stuck up, waving my own flag. I never paid homage to anyone, not even my mother or father, nor others esteemed as respectable. I was stiff with pride, lacking regard for others. When I saw the foremost leader, the most excellent of charioteers, shining like the sun at the fore of the mendicant saṅgha, I discarded conceit and vanity. And with a clear and confident heart, I bowed down with the head to the most excellent of all beings. The conceit of superiority, and the conceit of inferiority, have been given up and eradicated. The conceit ‘I am’ is cut off, and every kind of conceit is destroyed.”

N: Yeah, he became an arahant.

T: By understanding the body.

N: Well, exactly. By seeing that, actually, this is nothing to be conceited about, or feel inferior on account of either. As I said, your sense of self, your conceit, is something the eye doesn’t even know about. Yet here you are, all-important, or all-unimportant, all afraid, but your own body is not aware of you.

T: ‘Look how wonderful I am, on account of this thing that is not mine.’

N: Yeah, that has its own course, that I kind of know, but I ignore, because I’m intoxicated with the pleasure that I get momentarily from it. That’s why you develop these views as well. If the conceit and sensual pleasures were not pleasant, nobody would be conceited or vain. But you get pleasure on account of it, you take pleasure for granted, you put the pleasure first, you put the pleasure as the basis of your whole experience. And then you could be witnessing unpleasant things and not see the nature of it, because you refuse the allow the order to change. You still put the pleasure first. You refuse to give it up.

The body can be deteriorating, breaking down, and you still remain attracted to bodily pleasures. Because you refuse to put them second, you refuse to see the body as first. Because now it’s too unpleasant as well to admit that. The longer you refuse to admit it, the harder it will be to do it later. Because you’re becoming more and more dependent on that wrong order. Practically speaking, the burden is getting heavier, and it’s crushing you more and more. And if you couldn’t give it up so easily when it was relatively light… So don’t wait until it’s too late, in other words. Because the intoxication grows. The more you engage with it, the more intoxicated you become, the harder it will be to sober up.