Ch. 6 - Reviewing Mentality, Part One
The Cognitive Process and the Formations Aggregate
The Unwholesome Mental Factors
Remember to Review the Mind Non-Judgementally
[This discourse was given on a week long introductory retreat. It looks at the formations aggregate and how to identify unwholesome mental states.]
The Cognitive Process and the Formations Aggregate
So, I want to try to explain how we can constructively start to identify the unwholesome mental states so we can understand why the mind arises like it does and so begin to dismantle unwholesome habit patterns within us.
The first thing we need to understand is the process by which the mind arises.
So, as I explained in detail in earlier discourses, the mind always arises in a discrete way. There is always contact with an object at one of the sense doors that causes the arising of consciousness. An object appears in the mind, and that object appearing in the mind produces in us a feeling and what we call perception – a sort of recognition of what we think we are experiencing.
So for example, I look over at the flowers and the registration at the eye-door produces some kind of feeling and with it the perception arises: flowers. And with the feeling and the perception arise what we call volitional formations (an easier word than that would be reaction). I look at the flowers and there’s consciously or unconsciously some kind of inclining towards them with liking or some kind of shrinking away with disliking. Yes? You can already see some sense of self in it. Some people might like those flowers and some people might not like those flowers, but as soon as you see them, your inclination has already arisen. You don’t sit there and ask yourself, “I wonder if I should like or not like those flowers.” No the reaction arises spontaneously within you. There is some kind of comparison to a previous experience going on unconsciously that has already decided that I like this kind of flowers or I don’t like them.
Or take the statue of the Buddha, for example, being slightly contentious, some people might think, “Oh no, I’ve come to a meditation retreat. Oh, I hope it’s not all going to be about Buddhism!” Yes? This could be the reaction that is prompted. And whatever ideas arise they are prompted by the spontaneous arising of aversion over which they have no control. And again others might think, “Wow, fabulous. Look at that wonderful statue of the Buddha.” And they feel this room must be a sacred place, or something like that. And all such reactions like this would be prompted by attachment or clinging, over which they have no control.
So consciously or unconsciously there is always some reaction going on to what we experience. We very rarely just witness it as it is in the way I am suggesting you do here. Very rarely do we just witness what we experience without an inclining towards with attachment or a shrinking away from with subtle aversion.
Now, it doesn’t mean we can’t look at those flowers and enjoy their appearance. I’m sure many of us would just look at those flowers with appreciative joy, which doesn’t cling to. And in this case there is no attachment in it. But that is still also a reaction. Even though the appreciative joy is not prompted by attachment or aversion, it is still a reaction.
Now normally this reaction is called volitional formation in vipassanā language. In pāḷi the word is saṅkhārā. I find this a little misleading because the term volitional formation suggests in a way that it is a wilful response. Sometimes our reaction may well be wilful or intentional. Certainly the behaviour that our experience solicits might be. But here we are interested in the first spontaneous reaction that arises within us at the point of contact. And in truth we do not have control over this, it is a purely conditioned response. So for this reason I will choose to call it simply our reaction, and by this I might just add, our conditioned response.
So within this saṅkhārā aggregate, the reaction aspect, we have what we would call wholesome and unwholesome reaction. And what do we mean? Now here, we’re talking about one that afflicts us or one that doesn’t. We don’t like the reaction that happens to us when we feel greedy. We may well be driven by the greed but actually we don’t feel very comfortable when we are craving. And we don’t like how we feel when we’re angry; it produces a disturbance in us. But just because it is unpleasant, it still happens and it keeps going on anyway because it’s a conditional, habitual response.
So all of the unwholesome reactions produce an unpleasant feeling within us, and all the wholesome reactions produce a pleasant feeling within us. Thereafter we have another feeling arising in the body, don’t we? The feeling that is produced by the mind as a result of its reaction.
So let’s consider the reaction, “I don’t like.” What happens if you sit there feeling angry for a while? How do you physically feel?
Q: Heavy?
You start to feel dense don’t you, you loose your sense of lightness and you feel hot, and uncomfortable. It’s an uncomfortable feeling being angry. How does it feel when you feel jealous? Unpleasant feeling isn’t it? So the point is that once the mind has arisen, the mind now produces another feeling in the body which is unpleasant. That feeling of the unpleasant produces consciously or unconsciously another perception, “I don’t feel good,” and more, “I don’t like it!” So you can see once the reaction has arisen in us it tends to proliferate more and more.
What you’re sitting with now when you meditate is the feeling within your body. But where is it coming from? One day you wake up feeling dandy and another day you wake up feeling wretched, heavy, can’t drag yourself out of bed. Where is it coming from? Where is the energy coming from? Well it’s coming from your mind isn’t it? It’s the energy of your mind.
So the point is, what we have to try to understand is the way in which we react to what’s going on. We call this a volitional response. It’s kind of a little bit misleading, that “I would choose to be angry” or “I would choose to like this, dislike that.” You don’t choose. It’s already wired into your programming as a result of your past accumulation of experiences and how you reacted to them.
How you react to what goes on normally without enough mindfulness is an automatic process, and over the course of the life, or lifetimes, we’ve built up our habit patterns and tendencies of reactions and the ideas we have formulated around how we feel about these things. This is what defines our character. And you can clearly see that some people are prone to anger more and some people are prone to greed more, some people are prone to both and some people are not so prone to either.
This is your basic character and it’s conditioned. It’s not something you choose. You might like the idea of not being like that, but try as you might, it still has a tendency to arise in you. So, say, somebody has something that you don’t have and you would like to have it, much as you’d like not to feel jealous you feel jealous. And telling yourself that you shouldn’t be jealous, “Oh no, I’m not jealous,” is not the truth. You are, you think you should have that too. So the point is, we don’t have as much control over our mind as we think, at the moment.
In the Abhidhamma the aggregate of discrete mental factors is broken down into non-compound volitional formations. You should by now be quite familiar with them. Some of these arise within every mind-moment, some occasionally arise. These states are neither wholesome nor unwholesome and in themselves carry no kammic energy. The rest of them determine the wholesome or unwholesome quality of that mind-moment.
The Unwholesome Mental Factors
So, looking at the unwholesome mental factors, there should be fourteen of them altogether now. This, in a way, is a spreadsheet. But these are what we call discrete mental states. You’ll say, “What about fear?” and “What about judgement?” and all kinds of other compact experiences. “How about anxiety?” - these are bundles. This is because there is too much compactness in your experience so that you can’t see what makes it up.
Fear, for example, is a mental experience that contains a feeling, a perception, and a volitional reaction. We need to break our experience down more than this. In the same way we broke down the compactness of our experience of materiality, so too with our experience of mental states. These fourteen unwholesome mental factors are what we call discrete mental states, you can’t break them down into something simpler. Like when I touch the wall I know the hardness of it, I absolutely know it by its hardness and I can’t divide that up into something simpler than its hardness. This we discuss with regards to four elements practice. The point of it is to get beyond concepts, again like four elements practice when we review materiality to see what it is fundamentally composed of. So if you look at the experience of fear and you try and unravel your fear you’re lost in concepts, until you understand that fear contains within it a set of discrete mental states, along with the feeling and the perception. What we call emotion is the whole bundle of your experience. Our goal of investigation in this instance, which is part of our preparatory work for the vipassanā practice, is to break down the compactness of our mental experience to see what it is made of. So we start by looking at the arising of the basic states of mind that define how we feel, our mood, our emotion, etc.
I want you to all learn the whole spreadsheet of mental states, the same way you started by learning the twelve aspects of the four elements. But please don’t just stop at book knowledge. Many people study Abhidhamma without it transforming the mind. We need to clearly identify all of these aspects experientially. So, to start with I will list the unwholesome states and you should treat this as a kind of spreadsheet if you like. Okay. Well, can you read them all?
Ignorance or Delusion – is always present in every moment of unwholesome mind. That is not seeing the truth. That’s ignoring what’s going on and pretending it’s something else;
Greed (including craving, clinging, desire and lust) – is an inclining towards, with a wanting of;
Aversion – is the shrinking from, the dislike of;
Sloth – that aspect of laziness that is unwillingness to do;
Torpor – that aspect of laziness that is the inability to apply ourselves and is more associated with a lack of energy;
Restlessness – is the hankering for variety, needing distraction, wanting more. It usually arises with greed, but often it doesn’t or it can arise without greed. It can arise with just the scattering of the mind. It is an expression of poorly organised energy;
Lack of Moral Shame – does not cause me to shrink from the idea of doing something that is harmful to myself;
Fearlessness of Wrongdoing – does not cause me to shrink at the idea of doing things that are harmful to others. Both Lack of Moral Shame and Fearlessness of Wrongdoing are often prompted by greed and they often prompt greed or aversion. “I’m willing to pursue what I want, regardless.” So it adds this fire, this flame, to our greed. “When I’m not willing to act regardless, there might be some dampening of my greed or lust”. Lust is in the greed category. “When I am not willing to act in a way that is harmful I might choose to dampen this tendency in me, but when there’s no regard for myself or others then these can really run riot.” So this is very, very key;
Worry or Regret and Remorse – now that’s, “I wish I hadn’t done it.” Well, the truth is, it’s done. Seeing it, being with it and letting it go is as far as you can go with it, because yesterday doesn’t exist any more. The time not to do it was yesterday, so you say, “Okay, that was that.” And seeing into it becomes the prompt for me not doing it again. That’s as far as you can go with it. And thereafter you see the ignorance that prompted it and you forgive yourself. So, we’ll look into regret and remorse in more detail later;
Conceit – this is again an aspect of pride, an idea of self and comparing yourself to others as better. There is the other side of comparing ourself to others as worse, but in it there is also conceit. When you see yourself as worse than others there’s a form of arrogance in it because of the idea that you should be something other than you are – better. It’s not accepting that I am what I am. So both of those aspects, actually, are conceit. Whether you feel not good enough or you think you’re really good, they are both conceit;
Envy – “You’ve got something, I can’t delight in that until I’ve got it for myself.” It’s unable to delight in others’ good fortune;
Avarice – is stinginess. Unwillingness to share your good fortune;
Doubt – is confusion. Vexation caused in the mind as a result of confusion;
Wrong View – is misunderstanding, seeing things incorrectly.
Okay, so there you go. Just put them into the spreadsheet for now.
Now I just want to say a little bit about lust. Lust has the power to cause you to turn away from what is absolutely most dear to you in the pursuit of what you think you want. It’s unbelievable how much misery is caused by it. People’s lives change direction and end up coming to grief because of not being able to surmount lust.
If you’ve read my first book, in the chapter, Beyond the Veil, there’s a point where I talk about the reflection on the spin of the power of nature and the spin of the will of man. If you were to apportion the will of man and work out how much of a percentage of it was lust, you would find that a tremendous amount of it is driven by lust. Lust has been the prompt for so much of what people do, and we disguise it and dress it up as so many other things so that we can justify it or feel comfortable with it, but in truth it is responsible for most of our suffering.
It is one of the hardest things to surmount. Make the effort to surmount lust because it is more consuming than anything else. It has more power over you than anything else. It is the one thing that will make you turn back from the path right at the point of it opening up to you. Right there, the door to everything you want could be in front of you and you only have to take the next step, and on account of lust you would turn away from it. It has such a power!
So dismantle it, gradually in stages, by reflecting upon its power over you. Yes? See it for what it is, in the same way that we see greed for what it is. They are two aspects of desire. There’s no judgement in this, that’s why we’ve made all these reflections that we’ve made. This is how things are, and these things are always themselves conditioned by ignorance. We don’t see things as they are. There’s no finger of blame to point at yourself or others, there’s just a complete willingness to see things as they are.
Q: By lust do we mean sexual or lusting after everything?
A: Sexual lust is one big part of it, yes. But lusting for is another aspect. Sexual lust itself as a percentage of what has driven this world is enormously powerful. It’s not that it’s a sin, so please get all of that out of your mind. I’m asking you to see the power that these things have over you. So that you can see how you might dismantle the power that they have.
Q: What’s the difference between greed and lust, because lust is a form of craving?
A: Well they are all subtle versions of the same thing aren’t they? This wanting, this not being able to not have. The lust is the unbearable desire or need for, “I just can’t bear not to have that.” It’s consuming.
Q: Consuming in the sense too that it’s almost like being hijacked?
A: We get hijacked, exactly! Like, you could be really sure and know about what you want to be doing, and still fall prey to it. Everybody at some level understands about virtue, they know where their true happiness lies, they know what peace is, at least the heart knows! This hijacking or smothering, it has the capacity to cause you to sacrifice everything that is dear to you in the pursuit of craving, greed or lust. That’s the power it has. And seeing its power for yourself is part of disempowering it – that’s why you make these reflections. At least if you can see, “Gosh, I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Maybe you are only thinking about it, but the next time you wonder why you feel all over the place with distraction, stop. “Gosh, it’s because I’m consumed by the need for something”
Q: I think I’m a little bit confused, actually. So, when we’re meditating on these qualities: greed, lust etc. I found I was just thinking...
A: You will have to reflect on these things to begin with. These are reflections. We reflect on the insight first, so that we can spot, recognise the energy of these things when they appear. The point is, when you’re familiar enough with these then your meditation will progress. It’s like when you’re learning four elements – there’s an awful lot of labelling it and trying to work out what’s what in the beginning. This is just the preparatory work.
Q: I thought thinking is surely what we shouldn’t do...
A: You are right. When we meditate our mind should not be thinking, but this is what we call a ‘reflection’. You will have to do it to begin with. The point is, until you are familiar with these you won’t spot their arising. It’s mindfulness. Of course, in the beginning our mindfulness is not pure mindfulness, it will be what I call contrived mindfulness, which may be full of labelling. This will stop when we become familiar. But it’s the mindfulness of unwholesome states that enables you to spot their arising. Understand? So, you know, you might have to sit and gradually it comes to you, you spot: “Ah, this is greed that’s pulling me, this is craving that’s pulling me, this is attachment that’s pulling me.”
You have to spot it through recognition. Now that doesn’t immediately come. We need to make these reflections. So I understand this is a contrived exercise, but it’s for the purpose of bringing our mindfulness to these things so we can start to see. Initially, we don’t see how strong is the power of these habits. Like what I just said about lust. It would never occur to us how powerful it has been. We wouldn’t stop to think until we have looked at how our mind arises in our meditation.
Q: And then it translates into feeling?
A: Not exactly. Feeling is part of our experience also. Gradually your mindfulness starts to see it. “I’m driven by desire,” for example. Even spiritual greed, you know? “I’m driven by the desire for accomplishment and attainment.” All of this stops you meeting yourself where you are. There’s so much restlessness in it.
Q: This stopping the feelings and being able to oppose them or not to be dragged by them. Does it help you to evolve beyond this conditioning?
A: Well, you learn to be with the feeling with more and more discernment. At the moment, you can learn to be with the feeling as unpleasant. Then, you start to be with the feeling knowing that within it there’s the arising of greed or anger. It’s like you’re breaking the compactness of your mental experience down gradually with the light of insight or mindfulness, to see what your mind is made up of. You are trying to spot this smothering of your experience with the proliferation of unwholesome mental states and stop them at the the point of arising.
It will take practise. We’re building up a spreadsheet which is a way in which we can start to practise. But even some reflection upon what I’ve just said about the power of greed, lust and craving has a profound effect of dismantling its power when your insight is sharp and your harmonious mind is strong. Maybe this is the first time you have ever reflected upon this with a detachment, a willingness to see it for what it is.
And the same thing when we don’t see our conceit, we don’t see our avarice or stinginess, or our jealousy. We don’t see them normally. We’re totally driven by these things without seeing them. Once you see them they lose a tremendous amount of power over you. So the pointing out of them is quite key. You should spend some time reflecting on all of these states and try to honestly recognise and accept how much power they have over you, how you are conditioned by them. Okay? Alright. Any other questions?
I know that compared to the sort of fluidity and spaciousness of our meditation so far it suddenly feels a bit contrived, but it’s just for the purpose of seeing what the mind is. It’s just an exercise we must do to see into the mind with more discernment. It isn’t the way one would abide in meditation per se, but a mental exercise in mindfulness for the purposes of breaking down compactness of our experience.
Q: But then we walk into the world after this and go back to our partners, or whoever, our dogs, whatever. We take some of this with us, and it’s going to be quite hard at times to go back into that world.
A: Well, this is why you have to make sure that it really equates to a willingness to be with. You don’t expect these unwholesome states to suddenly not arise in yourself or others. It’s your pride that compares yourself and others to how you think they should be. We have to overcome our pride. As I have said all along, it’s all in the end about surmounting pride.
Our willingness to be with what is – that’s compassion, that’s real loving kindness, that’s acceptance, and that’s appreciative joy. So even the seeing of our own greed and the greed of others, even the seeing of our own jealousy, it shouldn’t be the cause for the arising of aversion in you. Aversion is also the not seeing how it is. When you see things as they really are, you see ignorance as the real cause, and at that moment the next thing that arises is compassion. So even though you don’t expect the world to change, you can be with it for what it is.
Remember to Review the Mind Non-Judgementally
I mean one aspect of love is the ability to be with things as they are, and this is one of the ways that we get there. So, I understand, it’s almost inevitably going to be the case that we’re going to start to say, “Yes, but then what do I do with my life?” And you have to see that when the insight matures to a point, your life remains exactly how it is, but you can now be with it.
If insight does not mature far enough you might feel that you have to run away from everything, but this is immature insight. As insight matures and you realise, “Actually, I can be with everything now with compassion, with acceptance and love,” that’s what Grace is. So you can’t think that everything is going to suddenly change just because you get some insight, but you develop within you your capacity to meet things, even though others may not yet be able to. It is challenging.
So, identifying what the unwholesome states are within us is very useful, because it brings mindfulness to the things we may previously not have noticed arising within us. It’s a step. It helps us to recognise what we normally wouldn’t recognise as the arising of these unwholesome states. But until we can see why, they won’t start to be cut off.
So, for the next few days I want you to review these unwholesome states within you. Stalk them, look for them, look for them where you don’t expect to find them. Be willing to uncover and reveal them for what they are, even if you feel uncomfortable knowing that they still have the power to arise in you. Don’t seek to gloss over them and tell yourself that you are already a noble person who doesn’t have these things. Because the chances are, you do.
But at the same time, don’t judge yourself when you find them. They are all conditioned by ignorance. You cannot judge yourself for being confused, unless of course you are too arrogant and can’t accept that you do not yet fully understand. This process of reviewing our character to see what pushes our buttons, is a very important part of the practice. Our vipassanā will not progress until we have done this thoroughly enough. Keep this list with you and keep going back to it. Spend some time every day with it until you have stalked every one of these states within you.
When I was taught to review mental states, we just identified each one to become familiar. But I see that the mind has many ways of hiding from the truth or trying to convince itself that it is purer than it is. We tend to seek a satisfactory view of self, and in doing so often gloss over some of the work that needs to be done. So really stalk all of these states, dig them out, reveal them. Come for interview, ask questions, but really go deeply into these states until you have revealed each one and sat with the charge that you carry around each one of them. In the end it isn’t about just seeing the mind for what it is. It is about releasing and letting go the charge that we carry around in the mind. So spend enough time on this aspect.
