Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Choedak explores how to work with thoughts during calm abiding meditation. He begins by explaining that noticing thoughts is not a distraction but a sign of progress: as your focus on the breath stabilizes, you naturally become more aware of your own thinking. Rather than rejecting all thoughts, you learn to treat them as a secondary meditation object, resting your mind on a thought when the breath becomes difficult, then returning to the breath. Choedak walks through how to recognize thoughts as mere labels—empty, momentary, and without inherent existence—using examples like the label “horse” and the nature of the bell. He shows how singularizing a thought, separating it from past and future thought-chains, makes it easier to handle. The teaching emphasizes that wholesome and unwholesome thoughts can both arise, and how to distinguish genuine calm from subtle forms of excitement like pride or self-comparison. He concludes with mindfulness of phenomena: understanding that external objects have no independent existence apart from our perception, which liberates us from blaming circumstances for our mental responses and opens the path to genuine equanimity.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 TtT.mp3
UUID: 3c741220-87f6-4898-8a09-2526e4941e96
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Calm Abiding (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~6,227
Now this brings you to the next topic, mindfulness of the thought. Because the moment you’re watching the mind for the body and mind as a feeling, you become then more aware of your thoughts. I mean you had no intention. It wasn’t in your list of things to do that I’m going to watch my thoughts. Your idea was I’m going to be calm and have no thoughts.
Thought wasn’t at all in your idea of having. But you you you just you just realized that it’s something it it needs to be needs to be looked at. Mindfulness thought. And you can disassociate the mind, the thought, from feeling. Whether the thought yeah.
I I believe that thought precedes feelings, yeah? Thought precedes feelings, unless it’s a regurgitated past feelings. Then it doesn’t seem to require much of a thought and a feeling it takes all of it. But but most probably it’s the thought that precedes feeling. You know, if you you see something, you know, if you see an object go past that door and we say, what is it?
What is it? First, we have to conjure up the label. Horse. Is it a horse? Is the thought is the thought our mind labeling it?
You know? The object does the object exist independent of our our thought? You know? Even there was a horse that went past, but who what is a horse? Horse is a labeled phenomenon by us as human beings.
If you ask the horse, do you think, are you called horse? He says, no. I don’t know what we’re talking about. I don’t know what people call us. I’m me.
So so thoughts are just mere labels. It’s interesting. Thoughts are mere labels. Thoughts are mere labels. Whether we have any role in making the thought thought, or whether thought are just ready made product as well, like feelings will appear that way.
Now when you look at when you become more more consistent, you can only see thought when you’re when you’re focused on the breath is really stable because, know, and when your mind is focused on the breath and then and until that, until then you didn’t know breath also was a thought. And that’s an allowable thought, I suppose, that you focus on, and any other thought that comes to you, it takes you away and therefore you try to come back and you have a you develop attachment to breath, and you develop aversion to non breath thoughts, and and and you realize that, And then you start seeing thoughts. He said, oh, if there were fewer thoughts I can spend more time on the breath. That will be good. Who said one thought is allowable and others are not?
Now this comes a big inner conflict. You see, of course meditators, all while developing stability in a breath, they want to just stay with that and not many thoughts, and not many thoughts. But the whole idea of your ability to see thoughts is not an obstacle. Your ability to see is a progression of your practice. It’s a sign of your progress of your practice.
Previously we weren’t able to see breath. Then we became able to see breath. Previously we were not able to see thought. Now we are able to see thought. And previously we weren’t able to see enlightenment and we might see it too.
So, so don’t stay alarmed, unalarmed. Stay unalarmed by the existence of thoughts, but see what the thoughts are and see whether you could choose one thought from the other thought. Is the breath a thought? And you have to say, oh, I’m sorry, it is. So, not that one that is it’s not the thought that we are against.
It’s not the thought that will make us unable to stay calm. It’s not that. It’s what we do with it. So, if the second if any thought if any non breath thought comes to our mind now this is stated in the Kamalaśīla’s Manuals that when you develop wisdom to appoint the thoughts as your secondary object of meditation. Secondary object of meditation.
First is the primary object of meditation is breath and the thought are secondary object of meditation because it takes a while for you to appoint that because until then you’ve been rejecting the thoughts you go away. Why are you coming here when I’m focusing on it? So later on only you befriend the thoughts you realize that you have to make friends with the thought so that you know exactly what they are, if there are any. And when you begin to do that, then you what is called you use the thought, secondary thought as a resting place when the mind get agitated, when no longer can stay on the breath. Just see whether you can deliberately focus on that thought or that object.
So maybe a bell, the bell, yeah. And after after a while of counting grounds of breath, bell seems to be something nice to look at. Oh. You you rest your mind on the bell. And then until you get bored onto the bell, and if you get bored of the bell, bring it back to the breath, you see.
So that’s what the secondary object. Secondary object of you the thought any thought or any object used appointed as a second secondary object of meditation. And see whether you can now interchange your mind between these two chosen objects and not the third one. Not the third. First you were allowed one, you can’t stay with one.
And when you’re having difficulty with one, you try to have you you have other thoughts and and and now you have you have learned to you learn to stay with two thoughts. And whether whether you can now stay with two thoughts interchangeably without without being agitated by other thoughts. So in many ways you you are the more you are able to gain stability of the breath thought, the more you will be able to see the existence of other thoughts. But when you see the thought, normally when we have thought, we try to lump those thoughts into past thoughts. Present thought is mixed with is sandwiched with the past thought and then then with also future thought, then becomes a phrase, you know, and sentence maybe, and then becomes a story.
But if you keep if you singularize those thoughts, if you say alienate those present thoughts from the past and the future, future thoughts, and simply use the present mindfulness of the breath as that which alienates the breath, alienates the thought from having other thoughts. Yeah. The thought itself, thought as a singular, just a just a thought. When you can’t just a thought, when you think it’s just a thought, it’s a lot easier to handle. When it becomes two thoughts, three thoughts, four thoughts, a phrase, an alarm, a statement, and then it becomes too big a reality.
It’s not just a thought anymore. You can say it’s been bugging me for a few days, you know. It wasn’t just a thought, it can stay on quite a long time and has made up made up some kind of pattern. And now when you’re able to focus your concentration on the object of breath, object of meditation of breath, when you see a thought, the thought instead of destabilizing, it just seems to sharpen your concentration. You are more sensitive to the arising of thoughts, the coming of the thoughts, but at the same time you are not as agitated as you used to be.
You almost have become very dependent on the thoughts so that you can how soon can you reinforce your concentration on the object of meditation depends how quickly you saw the thoughts. Because sometimes we don’t see the thought coming and they already have swung to you and all of a sudden it’s too late. And how did you guys all got in? I thought the front door was locked and Yeah, front door was locked but back door was open. And and yeah, we thought we we were focusing on the breath and nothing else but all of a sudden there’s just the thoughts mushrooming in the middle.
And and and just to watch your own thought is a bit of a handful of a job. Let alone anything. So you can see how human beings are naturally naturally in everyday life, you know, you know, to be sharp or intelligent is one thing, but to be able to be focused and calm and do nothing that’s harmful to others is quite difficult, I think, to keep. Because mind is often swayed by defilements and conditions and circumstances. Things are so impacting on each other.
You know, how can you still stay so guarded that you never do anything wrong or think anything wrong or say anything wrong? It’s very, very hard. And unless you’re locked up, it’s difficult. So staying in retreat is quite a good sort of luxurious stage where you definitely get to know and see your mind. You can see the lack of progress but at the same time you can see the slow progress.
Slow progress, very very appreciable progress. However slow it is, you know, however slow it is. People say, oh I’ve been doing this retreat. Oh I was I’m I’m not just able to start liking to sit. And that’s about it.
That’s the progress. Progress is that I’m able to like sitting. Taking a while, that’s quite a nice thing because being able to make such small but beautiful progress seems to last long. And the problems are also very small, misunderstood ones create huge problems. When we understand it is small, but when we understand it, they just make a very tangible gem.
It’s a gem. It’s small but it’s still a gem. What people call sit well. Can you sit well? Means whatever circumstance you are, how well you are able to sit well yourself.
Now that’s a quite a quite a talent being able to situate well, adjust yourself in a given situation, and not react irrationally, and negotiate with the situation, and sitting well really is. And not saying, no, I want to move over there. That’s that’s where the sun is shining. Can I go over there? And not not restless like that.
Just just just sit wherever you are, like the Buddha, under the tree, whether it’s sunny or cold or and just sit there. He didn’t move in the afternoon one spot. He said, oh, I shall move over there. And they’ve been to him, oh, I should sit over there. In cold mornings, I shall cuddle up here.
There was no, no, nothing. It’s not didn’t have even a blanket, I think. Nothing nothing to choose from. Just sheer discipline. No dining room to go to?
No hot running waters? No chefs cooking for you? Birds dropping on your nose? Still concentration is best friend. Really, you can’t stop admiring the the effort of the Buddha.
If you can sit well better in third day or fourth day, you have reason to like it and treat it as a precious gem. Buddha would have been accumulating like that every day. Wow. It doesn’t just happen overnight, but it did happen. Cheer, perseverance.
Maintaining oneself. Because we remember the way we prayed at the beginning, generating enlightenment thought. You know, generating the right thought, the thought of enlightenment, instead of, you know, negotiating with all other incurring thoughts and choosing it, transforming them into inherent enlightenment thought. So the mindfulness of thought is most important. The former two are foreigners for you to be able to or for you to be able to develop mindfulness of thought.
Because when you have the mindfulness of thought, then only you can develop mindfulness of the enlightenment thought. And in particular in Mahāyāna teaching, not forgetting Bodhicitta, thought of enlightenment is one of its main precepts. Yeah. It’s actually, is keeping our thought, keeping our thought alive, keeping our wish alive. And one doesn’t have mindfulness.
However precious that wish is, we cannot keep it. You know? And that’s what the mind the mindfulness of thought is. So the when you start seeing a thought, you should really treasure it. And you start seeing your thoughts, and and then you you you you have a choice of your thought to focus on the breath, and whether how readily or how readily you are able to bring back your mind to the breath.
And what is your opinion about other thoughts when just get crashed? And do you fall with them Oh, they fall upon you. Or you stand, they fall all over your feet. Let that be that’s a good one. You wouldn’t fall with them, but you can see them coming and turning into nothing.
Because you remain unperturbed and therefore the thought just like the like the pole, the flags. No no flags or no flapping. The wind blows but nothing. It just comes and it comes from this side, go past you, go that way, and nothing. Thoughts are like that.
You thought you had one, but when you look at it, you can’t see one. You can’t measure it. You can’t weigh it. You can’t DNA DNA test it? Doesn’t take any space?
Has it got a tendency with you? Oh, some thought do. Some thought has a fairly fairly secure room. Only if the bodhicitta had it, which would be good. Only if the bodhicitta had the tendency in us, well, let’s stay there, and it doesn’t go away.
So if you really look at the thoughts, they said look at the origin of the thoughts, look at the lifespan of the thought, look at where the thought goes to in order to develop mindfulness of thought. You know right, we were talking about the breath, yeah, gentle beginning, prime climax of the inhalation and the gentle ending. Now that’s exactly what we’re talking about thought, beginning the thought, the origin of the thoughts. Look at the origin of the thought and the abiding place of the thought where it goes to. Now you’re using the same technique, you’re just at the thought where the thought came from.
Did the thought come from the object that moved, which I thought was a horse? So I can’t find the origin where the thought came from. I could say the object, but without object moving, I can have thoughts, all sorts of things. So the object origin of thought is not a moving object. Origin of thought is unfindable.
If if the origin of thought is unfindable, the production of it would be highly unlikely. And it doesn’t really matter where it went or where it didn’t, because if there was no production, you wouldn’t worry where it went to. So all thoughts are illusory, you know. All thoughts are like a phantom. Now, when you can meditate, why Buddha use these eight similes to teach emptiness, you know, illusion, dream, rainbow, twinkling of the stars, lightning, flash of lightning in the dark night.
All thoughts thoughts are nothing more than that. You know? When you see a lightning, you say, oh, there was a lightning, but when you thought, you thought, but when you look at it, there isn’t one. But you keep thinking there was a lightning and write about it. So just just like a flash, just like a dream.
Now when you when you understand, when your stability of understanding of the thought is like that, then you focus on the breath, all thoughts, whatever thought arise, they only are so momentary, so fleeting I think, they don’t stay, they are not, they have no, thought has by nature don’t stay long unless you unknowingly hugged it, kept it, know, as if it’s something very very cherishable. The thought doesn’t stay, and if you really, if you have a surgery, you know, ask the doctor, please look where all my thoughts are stored, you know. I don’t think they can find anything. Maybe some biochemical product will be interesting to watch, but I don’t think they can say this is this thought, this is their thought, this is they can’t. Because thought is not a compounded aggregate.
It requires five elements. Whatever is produced out of five elements usually have weight, color, shape, density, softness, texture. Thought has none of that. So that’s why thought is like a flash of lightning. It’s just like a dream.
Now when you’re able to treat like that, you come back to your mind on the breath as object of meditation more readily, so your thought cannot really become an incessant cause of suffering or problem, or irritability. It doesn’t. The more thought you see, the more you’re able to see the emptiness of your mind. Emptiness of thought, so to speak. You can see the emptiness of thought.
And it’s not very far, not very far from here onwards for the mind to realize the, what do you call, mindfulness of mindfulness thought enables you meditational you are able to stay longer in a calm abiding situation because thought doesn’t, hasn’t got the ability to destabilize or irritate you as much as it had previously. You are no longer demonizing thought. You’re no longer demonizing object. You’re seeing the emptiness of everything. When you start seeing emptiness of everything, and your thought is a prime, a good example of that, and you are liberated.
When you have not many difficult thoughts, you are liberated. Enlightenment is where you completely vacate all difficult thoughts, you know. Completely vacating your your Buddha nature, you know, of all inherent thoughts is enlightenment. Enlightenment is completely, you know, emptying everything that has been cluttering our walls. And when you are trying to sit down the med sitting in the meditation, that’s what you will slowly achieve.
The most calmer you are, the more precisely you see the relative phenomena of moving object. Definitely it was a horse, and I thought it was a horse, but it’s a merely labeled horse, And because of that I don’t give so much credence to what I saw or what I say, but because I see everything as just merely labeled like illusion. When one can see that, that the teaching of Maya, that everything is an illusion, it helps. It helps to dismiss and downplay all the tough, tough problems. Even if the problems, they are problems, the problems only stop.
If somebody knocked the door and you were meditating for instance, and first you heard about it, you say, let him let him knock few more times if he’s serious, you know, he’ll keep knocking. And then, of course, he stopped after third knocking, then you start worrying more, who must that be? Then you are the knocking, you are knocking constantly. This is what we’re talking about mindfulness thought. So when you’re not mindful of thought, you know, it’s difficult to govern.
Person has left. You’re thinking who it might be. You didn’t have the courage to open the door when as soon as he knocked. See? Basic hypocrisy looming here.
And so, so this is mindfulness or lack thereof thought can do that. You see, when you heard the door knock, say, is this is this me? Is this my discussive thoughts or somebody really knocking? Probably somebody is knocking, but I wouldn’t mind. I let it go.
Because if I didn’t mind it, it wouldn’t matter. Even if you knock hundred times, it wouldn’t matter. Hundred times is after all accumulation of many ones. Many ones become hundred. And they never become, all of a sudden, hundred.
Just one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one. So if you’re mindful with the one thought, two thought, four thought, resolve, resolve, resolve. As soon as they rise, they dissolve. It’s constant sheer concentration. Yeah.
So that’s this is why when you’re using the breath as an object to meditation, it increases your your perceptivity, perception to be able to know your thought. And mindfulness breath, stay away, because breath itself is not a, a breath itself is not a visual or so much of a sensual object, but not yet you can feel. And the moment you focus on that, then you become more aware of your thought. And you’re becoming aware of your thought, but not not letting it to destroy this this, you know, this destabilize us, but to increase our awareness when, therefore, we are seeing our thought, mindfulness of thought. Mindfulness of thought is is a is a is a of course, when the Buddha said, the form is emptiness.
Form is not other than emptiness. I is emptiness. I is not other than emptiness. And likewise likewise, mind is emptiness, you know. Mind is not other than emptiness.
Emptiness is not something you refute the existence of phenomena. It’s really affirmation of what things actually are by nature. All things are by nature emptiness. That’s a great affirmation. It’s not a reputation of everything.
It’s affirming that everything is basically emptiness, and the moment you are starting to dawn these experiences, very very genuine ones, these are not intellectually believing in some theory, but you just understand that that thought are empty. As long as you realize thought are empty, you don’t fall victim to it. Because of that, you don’t take action on that thought, and because there are no consequences of that thought. You know? All karmas are misunderstood thoughts executed on its behalf.
Through body, speech, and mind, and all is just like concretized thought. Concretized thought becomes karma. That’s why when Buddhism says karma, they say it’s intention. If there’s no intention, there’s no karma. Intention is thought.
The intention to do something, a thought to go somewhere, then one goes. Without the thought proceeding, one doesn’t have, will actually do the going, act of going. Likewise, unless one is able to see the thought and its contents, one is not going to able to choose whether that is what is called positive wholesome thought or unwholesome thoughts or neutral thoughts. So while you’re meditating of course, calm abiding wise on the object of meditation, whatever thought comes they are all called discursive thoughts. So we will discuss later on about what kind of discursive thoughts are.
There are wholesome discursive thoughts, unwholesome discursive thoughts, and neutral discursive thoughts for a calm abiding meditator. For a non calm abiding meditator, when they have wholesome thoughts, all of a sudden feel so loved, so grateful to somebody, and it’s a good wholesome thought. Generally that’s a good karma because you’re developing wholesome thought. But when you’re meditating, even wholesome thoughts is considered as a discursive thought. Yeah, so, but of course there is a difference between wholesome thought, discursive, discursive thought of wholesome thought, as well as discursive thoughts unwholesome thought.
A person is supposed to be meditating on the breath, but he is developing strong devotion to the Buddha, or strong liking of something, or whatever, and become totally emotional, you know that. And that’s that as far as calm abiding meditation, it is a distraction. It’s a subtle, not subtle, it’s a gross excitement perpetuated by the wholesome thought. That normally is very difficult to give rise to. When that comes in a meditation, one can’t help but to make it grow.
And a technique of calm abiding which is not analytical, which is therefore one-pointed concentration. One point of concentration meditation during which one is not supposed to analyze and go beyond the, stay with the technique to focus, go back again and again with object to meditation. And so once, that’s why they say gross excitement is where a person is feeling so happy about their life, all of a sudden in the middle of an meditation. I mean these are these are valuable experiences of meditation, but at the same time not something we need to, you know, we should become attached to. If we become attached to the the temporal, I would say, happiness that one finds in the meditation practices.
It is a gross excitement. That gross excitement usually comes from after a long effort of practicing, only you’re able to again, you able to experience gross excitement. Most people don’t even know how to have gross excitement, but in the middle of meditation you will have it, you will have the gross excitement, and grows only in the sense there are more subtle to come, there are more subtle forms that is yet to come, but otherwise it seems completely virtuous, it is doing no harm to anybody, it seems like a very happiness providing state of mind, it’s perfectly that. And that is the kind of mindfulness of Now, in relation to this gross excitement, you have gross excitement, you have a gross excite object of gross excitement. You have an object in your mind that your mind was focused upon where it therefore lost from the breath or whatever the object happened to be.
So your mind went to mind went to some object or some situation in your life that you reflected and you feel so happy in the middle of a meditation you feel so happy. And some people have this what they call the pride of saying, oh I knew, I knew I was intelligent, I knew I can do this meditation, look look there it goes. I knew I was a genius kind. All of a sudden they’re thinking like this in the middle of meditation. It’s one of the eight entanglements, self entanglements.
I think these are natural, but you can’t deter these experiences. You got to face them and then undo it and let them go. You can’t, you know, deter them and avoid them. That’s the process of meditation and stages of meditation. Experience teaches us when you have this.
But if had you not done meditation, you may not have been able to think that way, feel that way, see those thoughts, and that’s why it’s only gross in relation to subtle, but it’s not necessarily non virtuous in its content, in its content, and encouragement is very necessary whether it’s from others or from ourselves. But if the overblown encouragement goes goes and becomes pride, subtle pride, you know, pride of that, or pride of arrogance within the meditation, within meditation. Why is somebody so restless? I haven’t been moving at all. Wish they were not doing like this.
Why aren’t they like me? Hush. They should go somewhere else. You can see the subtle subtle it gets looming. Sudden, it’s totally distractive, very discursive.
So as a group, meditation is very good for a subtle ego. I’ve been doing this years. When did this guy start it? Even you come, you can see you’re doing this. Otherwise, it totally overtakes us.
Totally overtakes us. We have lost even though you’ve been meditating so many years, so what? You’re just getting in the middle of this puddle. Puddle of self self ing you know, completely engrossed in this state of state of arrogance, which is which is not only distraction, but it’s non virtuous. So it’s easy, easy, you know.
Easy to see, easy to have discussive thoughts quickly come in as a great helper. humility is a long humility is the best of all outcomes of good experienced practitioner. humility is seen will be seen in a seasoned good practitioner. Years of experience, more humility they increase. More contentment they have.
Less demand they have. For calmness, completely nourish them. They crave nothing for things that is within them is adequately there for their sustenance, and therefore they don’t make ill comparisons with others. Their thought are not incoherent anymore because of that it does doesn’t doesn’t think, doesn’t allow itself or prey to discursive thoughts such as gross excitement. So in order to develop stage by stage calm abiding meditation, you can appreciate learn to develop mindful body, mindful of the feeling, then mindful of the thought.
And the most next next one whether you it should then then it’s almost if your mindfulness thought is now have become registered fairly very very clearly. Then even when you’re out of meditation, there is a thing called mindfulness phenomena, you know. You’re you’re more aware of things there, you know, phenomena, and the phenomena that, you know, without your thought are phenomena anything. Or without you, or without a phenomena exist. Without your existence, anybody exist.
Type of doubt or or curiosity comes in your mind. It’s the this is mindfulness of phenomena. Your your awareness, your thought makes you to wonder the existence of phenomena, whether phenomena has independent exist existence, independent of you. Most people believe when I die, everybody will be around except me, type of feeling. Therefore, they don’t, they fear death because I have to go alone type of thing, leaving this beautiful world behind, as if the world exists independent of us.
When you die, actually world actually dies too. The world actually dies, but most most dying people don’t understand it. They think the world exists, and they also continue to exist. They’ve only departed from the body, but they actually continue to exist, because they didn’t have mindfulness of thought. One who has the mindful thought in real living life at the moment of death is very easy, not not a difficult part at all.
Because life was a long thought. And part of it is a short one. Part of it is a short thought. Why make it long? Life was already long enough.
The mindfulness thought, this is why you can appreciate at this stage why we had one school in Buddhism called Mind Only School. People used to this theory that everything is mind. No matter how they study phenomena, they think everything is a reflection of mind, and there’s a lot of truth in that. How far it can take, it’s a different matter, but for the time being, it will suffice. It will be more than sufficient to think it will be maybe maybe very safe to think everything’s my mind.
But one shouldn’t get stuck in that, because it could be quite demeaning to you later on. Think everything is my mind, and if you all you have is defilements and negativity, you will you can’t really blame yourself too much. And so, that’s why mindfulness phenomena is very important. There are phenomena that if there are no labeling base like horse, you wouldn’t just call a horse, you know. So labeling the mind which just does the thinking and the conceptualizing labeling only does so when there are there are certain characteristic of of phenomena that exist.
What defines a human being, a human being, person, what defines a human being, what he does, what he’s able to do. And we all have certain way of defining everything. A table is which at least have a couple of legs, and these days they make three legged tables too, so you can’t say four legs is table, definition table. It’s quite difficult these days. All the same.
Maybe there’s not only one not maybe only one leg these days. Only one leg in tables. So in the old days there was a definition table, four legs and a a top on it which support objects. The definitions are just defined for the function of what what phenomena provides. But you don’t call table to anything, like you you can’t say this table.
You can say it, but we’ll have great difficulty putting a cup on it. Depends how big your cup is, I suppose. Depends how big depends how big your belly is too. So everything is relative. So everything is just merely labeled based on many many factors other than itself.
So phenomena has no independent existence. And that’s really liberating because then your object, your objects of your thoughts becomes now liberatable. You can liberate the objects because otherwise we’ve been holding some object with great aversion and great anger and great detachment as if these is the valid objects of aversion. These are the valid objects of attachment. These factors are given rise because of our the factors that we cushion to it, not because it exists independently.
This is, by the way, not even bell, let alone table. What’s the definition of bell? Give it a give it just this, just simple definition. You’ll be safe. That we can hear.
Come on. Ding ding. Okay. Okay. Good.
Good. Good. Good. Good. But you said that too.
Okay, good. I wouldn’t make it, take it a bit more difficult. Okay, say ding ding bell. Takes ages. It hasn’t proven to be bad.
It probably will never. It takes my hand to ring maybe, if I’m so willing. If my ringing will prove it’s the bell, if it’s the bell, let’s try. Oh, it’s not bell. So it’s not been my effort of ringing that makes bell bell.
It’s not not us labeling this bell bell that makes it a bell. So what is phenomena? There’s a there is there any phenomena that really exists what we label it for? You know? So they they have depends on many causes and conditions.
There is nothing inherently existing phenomena. You know? Even even say, I pick the bell bell up and ring the ring. It’s good that you have two ears. If you didn’t have ear, even I ring them out, you wouldn’t hear it.
So so this way you slowly disaggregate the the lack the disaggregate the existence of inherently exist inherently existing bell. You know? If one condition is missing, the phenomena have no valid existence. You see? So and that includes us as a hearer or labeler or a organizer of the object.
Phenomena itself never says, I’m a bell, please ring me. He says, bring me. Come on ring. Phenomena doesn’t phenomena So phenomena are namers. Phenomena are merely labeled objects by us, by namers, by labelers.
Yeah. This is very, while this is not very philosophical even though you thought it might have been, not very good. It’s really really practical too if you really think in everyday life situation when you have a problem and you have mindfulness thought and you know, it’s not really my thought, it’s that this is the problem, the object is the problem. Whether the object really is independently of the problem without your thought, without anything else to do, you can actually excuse many things from the object and that object will is not entirely responsible for all the things you thought it was. It completely liberates the tension and misunderstanding that we have or phenomena or objects or people or events.
It completely liberates us from this, you know, danger of misunderstanding, danger of this ignorance, not understanding of things. So so mindfulness of phenomena is something a calm abiding meditator who particularly who does the retreat goes out will be more aware of. All phenomena now manifest to you. Does that do they really inherently exist? Even if one phenomena gives rise to some thought or feelings or emotion in you, is it is it the phenomena that get rise or is it what you do with the thought?
Is it is it depends to you? So there’s a greater degree of greater degree of flexibility as what you do with the thought. Because normally we think our thought is caused by some other object, you know, and therefore we can’t be bothered to take responsibility of our thought because we think it’s caused by factors other than us. And that we can’t be we can’t be enough enough, we can’t be enough to to view in view inwardly that what factors, what makes the phenomena phenomena is not the object itself, but what is what is percept the perceivers. How is the perceiver seeing of it?
When that’s why Buddha said not only he he didn’t say just when he say form is emptiness, form is not other than emptiness. Sound is emptiness, sound is not other than emptiness. He’s talking about mindfulness of phenomena. He’s talking about meditate on phenomena. Sense, you know, visual objects, sense tactile objects, all five sense objects.
He says meditate on them. That’s the whole topic of the Heart Sūtra. We met our problems in life. If we think somebody did something to hurt us, it is little scar of mine, it’s because we misread that, we misread the phenomena. We misunderstood the phenomena, and therefore we have the perception.
The perception was empty, emptiness. Emptiness is not other perception, but we concretize the perception as to be correct and valid, and we have since been the custodian of that perception. We couldn’t change it, better or worse. It has stayed that way because we we grasp it as truly existent. So