This lesson goes over Akhankhiya Sutta (The Fullfilment of Noble Desires) and Kevaddha Sutta, with an additional explanation to the hermit’s and the Buddha’s views. There are also two additional questions at the end to think about.
- What does right effort enable?
- Are the nobles desires goals upon which the practitioner should focus their mind, or are they natural stages of purifying the mind?
- How does the fulfillment of noble desires occur?
- What are the noble desires?
- What three kinds of miracles are there?
- Which miracle is the Buddha not ashamed and not afraid of and does not avoid?
- What question does the hermit seek to answer? Does Brahma know the answer?
- Who should have the hermit asked the question?
- Is the question posed correctly? How should it be asked? What is the answer?
Additional explanation to the hermit’s and Buddha’s views
The four elements lack foundation in the state of nibanna. In the state of nibanna, their illusory nature is evident. The Buddha says it’s not right to ask the question “where do they end”, it doesn’t mean that they need to end or vanish. The hermit asked where they disappeared. The Buddha reformulates the question and says, “Where can one see that they are baseless?” The hermit, at the beginning, searched for some state that is beyond existence. Because the four elements — they compose all of existence. So we can say that this hermit understood nibbana as non-existence. In the hermit’s understanding, the four elements, which compose existence, have to end somewhere, and he needs to become liberated in a state of non-existence, that is, in a state where he won’t perceive anything. But the Buddha said, no, that’s not right. You need to ask, where do they have no basis? That means that the state of nibanna is present already now. It is present already now, and it does not depend on whether we exist or do not exist. It is present and it is continuous. The Buddha experiences a state of nibbana while the four elements manifest themselves, and he sees that they are empty because his mind is unaffected by them. He does not identify himself with a body, he does not identify himself with a feeling, and so the four elements lack basis for him, they are illusory to him.
To explain this visually — the hermit’s view is that the existence of the four elements needs to come to an end. That is nibbana for him, non existence. Oblivion, the absence of any perception. That is the thinking model of the hermit. It is ineffective.
The thinking model of the Buddha is that Nibbanna is like space. Often, in meditative teachings we compare the mind to pure space. The four elements arise in space. They change, transform, become destroyed, arise again, but space does not change in any way because of this, it is not affected by it. In space, we light a fire, and it gets extinguished. Space doesn’t change because of that. A mountain of earth arises. This mountain gets erased later. Nothing changes in space either. Water, air, all those elements interact with each other, but space remains unchanged. The mind also — the mind of a hermit who attained the state of nibbana is like space, inside of which everything can exist, manifest, but, meanwhile, the mind is unaffected by it. That is the difference. The hermit wants to run away from existence, hide in a hole where there is no perception, nothing. In a place where there is no activity of the mind, but the Buddha says “You can’t find a hole where to hide”. It isn’t salvation. He says salvation is the mind, which is like space, in which things arise, change and disappear, because they have no basis of their own, while the mind is unaffected by them. It is aware of them, it can affect them in certain ways, but at the same time, they do not affect it, just as fire, wind, water and earth do not affect space.
Additional questions
What is the meaning of the following phrases?
- “It’s like you brought a lamp into a dark room”
- “You picked up what was dropped”
