Ch. 11 - Meditating in the Body Skilfully; Seeing That Mind-Door and Body-Door Processes Are Separate
Body-Door Consciousness
Feeling is One thing, Four Elements is Another
The Arising of Bhavanga Creates the Sense of ‘Self’
[This discourse was given on an eight day Vipassanā retreat and explains that the mind-door consciousness is separate to the body-door consciousness. The body-door process occurs dependent upon the base of the body, the mind-door process occurs dependent upon the heart base, even though any feeling that arises in either process is mentality.]
Body-Door Consciousness
Questions and Answers.
Q: When you say the unpleasant and the pleasant in the mind-door and the body-door, I always associated the unpleasant with the mind. Is it also inherently in the body?
A: Not in the body, but the body-door consciousness. Feeling is always only a mental aggregate, not materiality. Only the four elements are materiality. Too much heat is unpleasant in the body, isn’t it? The base of your body is that subtle element in your body that feels, in the same way that the base of the eye is the subtle element of the eye that sees. So in that seeing, in the base of your eye there is feeling associated with the object that you are seeing. In the body there is feeling associated with what you are feeling within the body. But the body is the material aspect and feeling part of the mental aspect.
Q: So even when there is equanimity, I go to the body and I see the unpleasant in the heat as well.
A: Yes. Maybe it is not unpleasant. But sometimes it might be, but without it being the cause of aversion. It is certainly unpleasant when it is too hot, but just because it is unpleasant doesn’t mean we can’t be equanimous to it. That’s the whole point.
Q: So if I see unpleasant it’s not because I see it that it creates an unpleasant mental feeling….
A: Now I see how you are confused. There are two mind-processes going on in the knowing of your body. There is the knowing your body in the body. And there is the mind also knowing it as a slightly analytical process. Knowing it directly in the body is what we call the body-door process. This is still mind. Like when I say put your hand behind you and feel in your palm. The feeling in your palm appears in the base of the body. Then when you ask yourself is it hot or cold, the reviewing part is a mind-door process. There is feeling in the body-door process. There is perception in the body-door process. There is perception in the mind-door process. So we can have pleasant, neutral and unpleasant mental feeling and also bodily feeling. The mind can feel agitated without any unpleasant feeling in the body. This is mind-door process with unpleasant feeling. The body can feel unpleasant without the mind feeling unpleasant. This is body-door process with unpleasant feeling.
Q: But for example if you go to your body and it is feeling unpleasant but you are not reacting to it. You are looking at it with equanimity.....
A: That equanimity is in the mind-door. There is unpleasant feeling in the body but not in the mind. Sometimes you feel your body and it is oppressive. This oppressive feeling is in the mind, there is a feeling of subtle aversion. Or sometimes you feel frustration or a subtle craving that is unsatisfied, but you may not even notice the unpleasant feeling in the body that is the cause of this. This reaction appears in the mind-door, producing unpleasant feeling in the mind. Also, you might feel it where you hold it in the body but the oppressive feeling can still be in the mind. So we have to see the body-door process as one thing and the mind-door process as something else. The eye-door process is just seeing. The mind-door process goes, “Oh, that is a nice tree over there. Oh, sorry that is just four elements, isn’t it?” or whatever. Both have feeling in them. Every mind-moment has feeling.
Q: But the body doesn’t?
A: Rūpa doesn’t. But the consciousness that arises in the body to know the body, feels.
Q: So the feeling is linked to the consciousness. It is not inherently in the body.
A: That’s right. If you stick a pin in that wall over there, there is no consciousness going, “Ouch”.
Feeling is One thing, Four Elements is Another
Q: How can you differentiate between rūpa (materiality) and mind if the only way that you can know rūpa is through the mind?
A: This is where you have to see that the feeling is one thing and the four elements is another. You see hardness and softness and hot and cold – these are four elements, this is merely materiality. The feeling that arises with the knowing of that hardness or softness is the mind. This is exactly why we are doing what we are doing. We have glued the mind and body together so much that we can’t break down the compactness of this experience. We need to see body as one thing and feeling as another thing.
Q: But they are not really separate. One thing is caused by the other.
A: They are separate. They are discrete, conditionally arising, interdependent processes. But they are not the same thing.
Q: I don’t understand how they are different.
A: You are trying to understand it. Keep looking. What you can’t see now, later with more mindfulness you will see clearly. Feeling is one thing and rūpa, body is another. We are doing this now to get to that point.
Q: So is it through the suffering that you come to know this? Because usually when I am sitting on the mat, I go to where I feel something in the body and that is usually because it is uncomfortable.
A: So the unpleasant feeling is the feeling aggregate. The “I don’t like it,” is the saṅkhārā (reaction) aggregate. The perception that ‘it is my leg that is hurting’ is the perception aggregate.
Q: I can see that. But I only feel the leg when there is an unpleasant feeling there.
A: Oh I see. You only feel the gross in your body. Otherwise you don’t feel your leg at all.
Q: I try to feel it but.....
A: Gradually the mindfulness will build up and you will realise that there is feeling there and perception that can arise in your body without it being unpleasant. It will just be the awareness of the subtle feeling. You can feel the flesh, you can feel the bone, feel in the joint. This feeling is just neutral. When you feel the palm, there is feeling there. There is awareness; There as feeling. This is why I say, stop thinking about it. Because it is only mindfulness that can break this down for you. Your mind can go through the exercise and say feeling is one thing... but there is a point where mindfulness becomes enough to separate the feeling from the body, to separate the perception from the feeling. And then it becomes clear. This is the point at which we start to do vipassanā. So just keep going until it builds up.
The Arising of Bhavanga Creates the Sense of ‘Self’
Q: When you are going through the process as you have just described, if you start to get a feeling that you associate with panic or anxiety, not when you are in one particular part of the body but as you are moving the attention from one part of the body to another, what do you do with that?
A: You see the arising of the perception of self. This means that this unpleasant feeling produces this perception of panic, which is a mass of, “I don’t like”. Maybe all kinds of volitional formations start to arise. In that moment, instead of just seeing this is body, this is feeling, this is perception, suddenly there is this sense of ‘me’ there. And it is this sense of me that proliferates the panic. The moment that you come back to it and see it as four elements, feeling and perception of nāma and rūpa, it will just pass away. And watching it pass away without remainder you realise, “Ah, well that was impermanent.” But the problem is that when the gross appears, the, “I don’t like” appears and with it, ‘me’. Eventually your mindfulness will be clear enough and wise attention strong enough that you can’t find this me. The paradox is that you only find ‘me’ in the experience when you don’t look carefully enough. The moment you look carefully you can’t find me in the experience any more. The only reason that you have a sense of self is because your experience is so compact. Even when you break it all down you can come to the conclusion that ‘me’ is in bhavaṅga. You can watch bhavaṅga arising momentarily and see that actually there is no me there. There is only the sense that it is me. We are working to gradually get to that point. Some people can let it all go just by seeing impermanence. Some people have to see no-self. Those who can let go just by reviewing impermanence are those in who the ego or sense of self is less developed, not so strong or clung to.
Q: You have talked about unpleasant feelings arising, but sometimes you can get a really pleasant feeling arising, of delight say or gratitude. Do you just watch it?
A: You have to review the mind-door process still because pleasant feeling is one thing, delight another and gratitude is another thing again. But if in that moment there is no sense of feeling pleased with oneself, there is no self in gratitude. This is appreciative joy. It is born of the sense of no-self and is free of clinging. Perhaps this sounds counter-intuitive, but look closely. If I am feeling quite pleased with myself because I have these feelings going on, then you can see the self in it. So you have still got to see whether there is attachment behind this pleasant feeling, or equanimity.
Q: The temptation will be to stay with it, but is this attachment?
A: Well, there will be initially. But that is fair enough. Because if it has been a mass of suffering and then a pleasant experience arises you are likely to want to stop off for a moment and enjoy it. But the point is to watch that even that pleasant experience is shrunk when we smother it with self. And in fact, the arising of, “it’s me and I am quite pleased with it,” does not add to it but actually takes away from it. So pleasant feeling is pleasant feeling. Pleasant mental feeling is the absence of affliction, the absence of contraction in the experience, a spaciousness in the experience and that spaciousness is the absence of self. So you’ll realise that the less of me there is, the more this pleasant experience remains, eventually.
Q: Like your skiing analogy when it all happens so fast but you are doing it effortlessly without thinking about it; in the zone. When I am feeling.... I don’t seem to get to perception when I am feeling four elements in the body. I just seem to get feeling. I don’t get perception unless I make it a mental process to review it.
A: If you have done samatha practice when we are reviewing the jhāna factors, you know that we can’t review our practice while we are concentrating because we lose our concentration. But each mind-moment is registering in bhavaṅga. So what you do is to review your experience in bhavaṅga and watch what were the mental states that arose while you were meditating just now. Then you can see which jhāna factors were present. In the same way, while you were meditating upon the body, seeing earth as earth, water as water, feeling as unpleasant, what was the perception that was there in that mind-moment. You can see it. “Ah, there was the wrong view of body as mine,” or, “I was only seeing four elements”. You can see it in the mind-moment as you review it in bhavaṅga.
There is a moment when our mindfulness becomes sharp enough that we see each mental formation arising and passing in a stream. At this stage you have to learn just to discern them as separate. So in that moment you are reviewing one mind-process with another mind-moment in bhavaṅga. You are looking for the right view or wrong view.
Q: Is it necessary to see that?
A: Yes. To understand that perception is also part of the conditioning. You need to see the ignorance, because ignorance is the beginning cause of the chain of Dependent Origination. Ignorance you have to see, which is seeing that ignorance is part of Dependent Origination; ignorance is not seeing rūpa as rūpa, not seeing feeling as feeling, seeing it as me, seeing it as mine. So you have got to watch to see the arising of ignorance, unwise attention or wrong view because that is the cause of the next step which is saṅkhārā.
But your mind will become bright quite quickly, once your wisdom aspect comes up with your concentration. When your concentration is there and your mindfulness is there the mind gets quite bright. But the mind gets twice as bright when the wisdom is there as well. Then your mind will become really clear quickly if you can just keep this wise attention. Even with a few mind-moments of being really clear then the mind will become bright and then it will see more clearly. You just have to keep going.
