Let me summarize what I have understood.
When a sensory experience is presented, the mind begins to become conteminated as it processes it. This defilement gradually intensifies and eventually leads to unwholesome thoughts, speech or actions. At this point, how a sensory experience is presented is the most crucial point for understanding the concept of distorted saññā. According to one’s gati, people engage in various kinds of wholesome or unwholesome kamma. When the proper conditions are present, those kamma lead to a jāti that fits that particular style.
The kamma that produces a given jāti carries the mind’s distortion (vanka) that existed in the mind at the moment that kamma was performed. Accordingly, conditions are arranged so that a vipāka viññāṇa with that distortion embedded in it can arise. Thus, even though distorted saññā arises in the citta, the diversity of indriya that makes distorted saññā possible is built into the organism. Different kamma lead to different jāti, and therefore to different forms of distorted saññā. In short, distorted saññā explains why the content of form value differs across beings.
Sensory experiences that arise through distorted saññā present us with things that appear different from one another in terms of their form value. As we sense and interpret those differences, contours of meaning begin to take shape—such as thinking pasta is better than curry, or rock is better than classical music.
There is a saying in marketing: don’t make the customer wonder whether to buy; make them wonder which one to buy. The role of distorted saññā is, in essence, no different from marketing. The diversity of form value generates likes and dislikes toward things that, at the most fundamental level, share an equal meaning value.
However, because everything within saṃsāra is anicca, dukkha, anatta, without a single exception all things possess the same meaning value.
Moreover, when we encounter a strong stimulus through distorted saññā, what is involved is not merely the intensity of the pleasure itself. Rather, we undergo an experience that gives rise to the illusion of being filled. A useful analogy is a container with a hole at the bottom: when water is poured in until it overflows, it gives the impression that the container is filling up.
It is at this point that problems begin to arise in the meaning value. Even though the container can never actually be filled because of the hole, the illusion of “being filled” still occurs. This illusion is precisely what is meant by nicca–sukha–atta. On the basis of this illusion, we willingly throw ourselves into the pursuit of even more sensory pleasure.
Because there is a hole, the situation is anicca; because both the effort to fill it and the inevitable loss are stressful, it is dukkha; and because the entire process is ultimately futile, it is anatta.
A magic show might seem like an example of violating natural laws, but its tricks still operate entirely within those laws. What a magic show does is present an experience that appears to be an exception. We watch the magic show of nature and fall into the illusion that we are seeing something that lies outside of Paṭicca Samuppāda. But such a thing cannot exist. Therefore, even when the form value appears different, we must penetrate the truth that the meaning value remains equal(anicca dukkha anatta).
Purana kamma is resolved not through willpower but through wisdom. If we find ourselves relying on willpower in practice, it is a sign that something is going wrong. In this long samsara, we never won with willpower. Being drawn toward sensory pleasure simply means that wisdom is not yet sufficient. We must focus on the cause, not the symptoms. When we understand that, the fundamental question of practice changes. “What am I wanting? Until that moment I may not even realize I was wanting something, but once I see it—“Ah, this is what I was wanting”—I see that letting go of that very desire would bring true happiness. This is the real direction of practice.
When anger arises, we must reflect on what it is that we are wanting. For example, if I become angry because someone has not acknowledged me, it is because I desired recognition. In that case, if I abandon the desire to be acknowledged, anger will not arise.
Anything in this samsara is not worth. What we need is to grasp this truth emotionally at the deepest level of the mind.