Eric said: “Starting out. Yeah. I’m still looking for the mundane Path,..”.
I am glad to hear that honest assessment. Not many people are willing to admit that, and I can see that they just go around in circles.
Let me add to the statement by Tobias to make it a bit better; the additions are in bold (I am sure he meant this part too):
“Niramisa sukha arises from understanding and living according to the wider worldview of the Buddha and tilakkhana. One cannot be forced to calmness. Learning and grasping the Dhamma and living a moral life according to the Dhamma will bring progress. As one learns deeper Dhamma, one’s sila or moral conduct will get better and the niramisa sukha will increase too.”
Let me expand a bit more.
The root causes of ALL kinds of sufferings are associated with dasa akusala. But there are various levels of them. One needs to start dealing with the strongest ones first.
Those are the ones that one does with the bodily activities and speech, which I call “the big eight”. These are discussed in “2. The Basics in Meditation“.
It is useless to try to comprehend deeper aspects like Tilakkhana, until one’s mind can see that such actions and speech can lead to a high level of stress in the mind. Those actually have origin in abhijja (excess greed) and vyapada (excess anger), and micca ditthi (10 types of wrong views) in one’s mind.
When one controls those bad actions and speech, abhijja and vyapada will GRADUALLY REDUCE from one’s mind. When one learns Dhamma and contemplate on them, wrong views will be corrected too. It may take some time. (But most people want to see the results right away, JUST by reading posts at the website. That is unlikely to happen).
I am not speaking to anyone specific, because I do not know the mindset of each person. Each person would know whether he/she is committing immoral actions/speech, AND what types of micca ditthi one has; micca ditthi can be removed only by learning and contemplating, not by sheer will power.
The “cooling down” (or niramisa sukha) will be proportional to how much of a load has been removed from one’s mind. One may not even realize, but dasa akusala are burden to the mind. Most times, one will realize it only when one gets rid of that burden. Then one can look back and realize the “cooling down”. For example, a laborer working out in the hot sun may have done it for years without really feeling how hard that work is. But if he gets a job inside an air-conditioned office, he will now see the suffering that he went through all those years.
In any case, this “basic foundation” is exactly what the Buddha explained to the young Rahula bhikkhu (who had become a bhikkhu only recently) in the Ambalatthika Rahulovada Sutta that you referred to under the topic, “Instructions to Rahula – Ambalaṭṭhikarāhulovāda Sutta“.
Please read my post under that topic, which I just posted. I was glad to see that answer to this question could be found in that sutta, which you yourself referred to.