Thank you for sharing, Amin, Hojan! It is a wonderful sermon. My key learning points are as follows
- He gives the analogy of a street fight between the good viññaṇa (created from Kusala Mūla Paṭicca Samuppāda) and the bad viññaṇa from Akusala Mūla Paṭicca Samuppāda. Our current bad habits are strong because the viññaṇa for them is strong, and to defeat it we need to 1) Starve the bad viññaṇa and 2) Feed the good viññaṇa by thinking about the dhamma. Such that when the stimulus comes up, we will chose to activate the Kusala Mūla Paṭicca Samuppāda instead of Akusala one. He gives the example of YouTube addiction. When we sight/ thought of watching YouTube, the normal response would be to continue wanting to watch it (akusala PS), but with cultivation of good viññaṇa, we will activate the kusala PS and contemple for example, the anicca dukkha anatta nature of it.
I noticed in Kusala-Mula Paṭicca Samuppāda, the post needs to be re-written. Lal, would it be possible for you to rewrite this post?
- He gives another way of understanding PS, which is that even in every frame of the YouTube vid, there is a PS cycle where we have a vedana that we enjoy it, but also ends with jarā, marana, soka-paridēva-dukkha-dōmanassupāyasā sambhavan. However, we do not feel such suffering when watching because each successive frame is so quick. The suffering/ end of the PS cycle becomes obvious when the phone battery runs out suddenly.
I had another thought which is – what about feelings of satiation? For example, after eating food, we feel full and content, so where is the jarā, marana, soka-paridēva-dukkha-dōmanassupāyasā sambhavan? My response to that is that it is not very prominent becuase the more we eat, the fuller we get, the decrease in sukha vedana and tanha there is for every bite and the less delicious each bite gets, so the dhamma that we receive is less and less pleasureable, and in turn the suffering is less and less as we are more full. However all the while we are enjoying it, we are feeding the viññaṇa for indulging in food.
- He talks about the Vitakkasanthana sutta. at 1:03:55 He lists the ways to get rid of defiled thoughts in the following order:
- Thinking about the good qualities of Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, Sila
- ādīnavo (looking at the negative side) – what do I lose if I engage in this action? what have I built up so far with my good practice that I will waste and restart my progress? what dukkha will I create?
- asatiamanasikāro (to ‘retreat’ or get out from the situation). Eg when my friend invites me to alcohol, I will excuse myself before it gets too tempting
- vitakkasaṅkhārasaṇṭhānaṁmanasikātabbaṁ (understand how it arises) Eg when I am trying to stop a cigarette addiction, I can see that every step of the way of going to the market and buying the cigarette is feeding the viññaṇa. Thus it is not enough to just say “stop smoking”, because that way I can be tempted to buy the cigarette and not smoke it, which will spiral to smoking. The viññaṇa should not be fed from the start
- Using external force to stop the thought. He suggests attadipatiya (thinking how it aligns to my own personality. I am a moral person, so is it fine for me to engage in this?), dhammadipatiya (the dhamma is well taught, is rarely found. It is a waste to engage in such action with this dhamma I have learnt), and lokadipatiya (that there are people in the world that would disapprove of my actions, eg unseen beings, ariya friends who would disapprove. I have not come across these terms attadipatiya, dhammadipatiya, and lokadipatiya but I think what the venerable mentioned is useful to stopping defiled thoughts.
