For more on "yoniso manasikara" see our following videos: * Peripheral Awareness ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-F2-b5s6Msxw.html * Guided Contemplation - Awareness ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AQQUBOLx2g4.html * The Right Kind of Questioning ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MPPi7ielaaM.html * The Dhamma is directly visible ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6lizd9HSkpU.html * Seeing the symptoms of your mind ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1XMDbO8JLvo.html * Look at the Context, not the Object ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UObLjg5umb0.html * "Wise Attention" - Misunderstanding of Yoniso Manasikāra ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VtFKM8y7UEE.html * Putting the Body First ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hB9dQFtXMKs.html * Seeing your own mind ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lMl8C1ViL1c.html * A Definitive Guide to Seeing Your Mind ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Hd9WZzxqAkE.html * Necessary Condition for Sotapatti (Yoniso Manasikara) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yptLIdi1JW8.html * Seeing Through the Hindrances Instead of Denying them ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QDdMyOTylH0.html ____________________________________ If you wish to support our work, the Hillside Hermitage Sangha and this channel you are very welcome to do so via: www.hillsidehermitage.org/support-us
Happy New Year to all the wonderful Monastics and Community. The teachings you all present are of the very highest quality and benefit. Thank you deeply.
Sadhux3! My favorite sutta. I hope it carries me to abhisamaya. Bhante Nyanamoli is imho really gifted with an incredible chrirugical sharp discerning ability. His explanations are really eye-opening. Lots of small details here and there that i have myself overseen or not fully understood have remained unseen in the darkness. Thank you for putting the spotlight on them. 🙏
Re the point at 36:00 on undoubtability - it might be worth mentioning that this obviously goes deeper than Descartes' 'cogito ergo sum' which is also based on reflexive awareness of doubt, but differs in an important way: for Descartes, who is asking 'do I exist?' discerning the presence of doubt can't happen without that being simultaneously taken for granted as 'I am doubting' or at the very least 'doubt is present to me.' In this way the factual undoubtability of the doubt ends up carrying with it, and perpetuating, the (highly doubtful) assumption of the independent Being of the Person Who Is Doubting. This is why yoniso manasikara alone (which is necessary to arrive even at Descarte's conclusion) will not give rise to the right view. It would be a bad idea for a person to conclude that they must have the right view as soon as they find 'something' that can't be doubted. In contrast, the beyond-doubtability of seeing 'with this, this is' comes from seeing the arisen phenomenon (such as doubt) as PRIOR to whatever-is-taken-as-self (e.g., in this case, mental-consciousness) and including whatever phenomenon that is to the extent that there's nowhere left for the self to escape. One's 'own' cognition in this case, is seen as inseparably dependent on the arising of 'something' that is presently cognized, just as there cannot be that 'something' without its being 'present' I.e. cognized (with this living mental faculty). Or on a more practical level, when bothered by doubt, discerning that discomfort as a thing arisen inseparably dependent on that doubtful phenomenon; the arising of an uncertainty. It's basically ironing out all the wrinkles where a sense of self can hide, bringing them into clear light. Until even asking the question of whether there are any remaining somewhere just serves to confirm the nature of anything that the question could either arise from, or apply to, as impermanent from beginning to end.
Amazing. Reading your comment, it’s funny to think back and consider that my earlier judgment of philosophy or even contemplation as a whole to be fruitless was in some sense based on Cartesianism: I believed that the best that could be achieved was to be like a dog trying to catch its own tail, or even if I did catch it, then what? But to go beyond even the Ouroboros, to make an end of reflection, to even believe in this I had to have faith in the words of another. Anumodana!
So instead of myself being the centre of my all experience in this life, there is this meat vehicle this body which doesn't belong to me which isn't myself and mistake I am making is thinking that's me. Problem is that to some small extent I can make this body to do stuff and that gives me that false sense of ownership and when body does its own thing which I can't influence in any way (getting sick or old etc.) than I don't think anything about it at all. On top of this everyone around is suffering from the same delusion which makes this even worse.. I am so very grateful for all your excellent teaching Bhante and wish you and everyone involved with Hillside Hermitage great and insightful 2024.
Thank you so much Bhante. Learning that it is natural for the mind to get absorbed into something and then at the same time simultaneously recognize the source of this absorbed attention. To see this we need to have learned to supress our thoughts by learning to deliberately stop thinking the bad thought and gaining faith in controling our mind beacuse by supressing our thought by stop thinking the bad thought we unabsorb ourself from the bad thought that our minds attention fell into and then on the basis of whatever thought our minds attention falls on to we recognize the simultaneous source of it such as the body there being the necessary condition for what my mind is currently thinking (while I am not absorbed in what it is currently thinking) Thank you Bhante I took very much from an old video where you spoke about supression of thoughts. I like the word supression as it implies I am in control and I can supress this bad thought by stop thinking this bad thought which gives me faith to do it. My mind have reached a very strong peaceful state with faith whereby all my old bad thought habits have been cleared out. I will be rewatching this video and I have gotten so much from it. Thank you very much for these videos.
What I struggle to understand is how these people have developed yoniso manasikara before meting Buddhas teaching. Did other religions at that time teach this before Buddhas arising in this world.?
I believe the Buddha said that his teaching was a rediscovered path. He did not start a religion/systematic philosophy but thought the Dhamma: ‘the nature of things’ and that he did so for the sake of liberation of dhukkha only. Quite a lot of philosophical schools at that time and throughout history and even today have been concerned with sense experience so it is possible that people who were intending on finding the truth and dispassion already had reasonable levels of discernment of the nature of experience but were still a puttujana.
To me it seems that the most crucial aspect is our inability and lack of attention to discern the arising of a phenomena such as a feeling ,the very moment that it arises. Usually we are, so to say , already ,,consumed" by a feeling once it has arisen . Unable to see its arising from a distance, we are overwhelmed and caught up by it already the very moment it arises and thereby forced to habitually react to it with craving, aversion or distraction. Virtue,seclusion, silence, sense restraint , and refraining from distraction is the method to amp up the process of making sure , as ajahn would say , that your feelings get in touch with you on a more profound basis. If you do that long enough, you eventually will become able to discern the phenomenon of feeling the very moment that it arises and you won't be fooled anymore to get entangled, caught up and identified with a separate phenomena that was never yours in the first place. That's the theory anyway. I wonder if someone who has already achieved in practice such ability of attention would have to add something to it...?
The way I understand it, there is no such thing as "seeing the arising of a feeling from a distance". When a feeling can be felt, perceived, discerned, seen, it is already manifested. It's also not a problem, because feelings arise on their own and it's not your job to catch them or control them (because you can't do that anyway). The practice of yoniso manasikara and mindfulness of feeling regards the feeling that is already manifested. While attending the currently experienced feeling, you are aware peripherally that there is a simultaneously present necessary basis for that feeling. This carries with itself all the important implications (anicca, dukkha, anatta) that when discerned, would make you disentangle from the whole domain of feelings. But you are right that you need virtue, restraint, etc. first to stop habitually engaging with feelings as if they were 'yours' to ever be able to see them as not yours.
@@speedwagon869 i appreciate your input, but i think that you possibly might have misinterpreted what i had said. I wasn't saying anything about me wanting to catch or controll a feeling. That we try to do anyway by habitually appropriating and identifying with feeling. I was only talking about the discernment of a feeling, the moment it arises. The frase ,,from a distance" is supposed to figuratively illustrate a situation where we could discern it before we are already entangled in it, caught up in it, identified with it as me or mine , which actually constitutes the false idea that feeling is something that we can control and that we are somehow entitled to. And for to create that figurative distance to the arisen feeling which in itself means that we do not take it up as me or mine, we probably most of all need to endure it without acting out of it. In pali terms it would mean that we need to have khanti. The way i see it , is that this knowledge or discernment also has different levels. Starting from different levels of mundane right view up until the supramundane right view where this discernment has penetrated the inner core of one's being and only due to that combined with the yonisomanasikara in regards to the discernment of phenomena, one does not go anywhere near( again the distance)and does not touch the arisen feeling ,knowing about its implications of anicca, dukkha, anatta in a similar way someone knows about the implications of touching burning coals. Only then one will be literally unable to identify with feeling as well as unable to react to it with craving, aversion or distraction.
@13:45 Beware 'eventually', & I'd say we're not trying to focus exclusively & unceasingly on ever subtler feelings in what sounds like a Goenka-Vipassana way (although they are great retreats). Trying to find the beginning point of a feeling that does not currently exist seems to me analogous to seeking the origin of the world, which a sutta says leads to madness & vexation.
we are frequently encouraged to discern the presently persisting feeling. Not in terms of ever subtler tingling sensations as promoted in Goenka meditation retreats but in terms of pleasant, unpleasant or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. There is clearly a beginning point of a feeling. It is determined by a preceding event of a sense contact. Without phasa vedana can not arise. By reminding yourself of the body and its sense faculties as the simultaneously present basis for the arising of a feeling we can step back and refrain from being identified with the arisen feeling because we can clearly discern its arising and ceasing. I guess that's what guarding of the sense doors is for. The discernment of arising and ceasing of phenomena and therefore the subsequent understanding of impossibility of ownership. Imasmim sati idam hoti.
I don't have the right view, so take this with a grain of salt, but if by "the witness perspective" you mean identifying as a supposed pure observer outside experience, untouched by what is happening, or something along those lines, then no, not really. Yoniso manasikara is supposed to show us how our sense of self depends on something that is there outside our control and impermanent (e.g. the body). This body cannot be "witnessed" or "observed", but any witnessing or observation we are doing depends on its presence. Whereas at least if I guessed what you mean correctly, identifying with "the witness perspective" would go along the lines of identifying with a supposed pure witness, untouched by everything, supposedly eternal, that witnesses everything else, so having this dichotomy of me over here (the witness, permanent) and things over there (impermanent). Yoniso manasikara is, again, supposed to show us how the me (here) depends on something we cannot directly observe, something impermanent and not subject to our control, and thus this me, this sense of self, is also impermanent and not subject to our control. EDIT: The wrong view Ajahn is describing at around 28:40 could be relevant to your question
Right view is defined as the four noble truths and 3 characteristics (anicca, dukkha, anatta), however without proper attention (yoniso manasikara) one will misconceive and misinterpret what those things mean.
Thank you ,bhante.. Absolutely wonderful,it is truly taken for granted how the self proliferates through the consciousness field towards the objects but once the source is seen it back peddle slowly and whatever defilement was proliferating,it ceases to exist...
