Subha Sutta

1. What is the mind liberated from?
2. What are the three sets of instructions on?

Indriyabhavana Sutta

1. What attitude towards the senses is skillful?

Additional Questions and Clarification

1. Why does freeing oneself from attachment, aversion, and confusion in regards to perceptions of smell is likened to seeing that these obscurations were drops of water flowing down a slightly tilted lotus leaf
2. Smell is something light. Attachment to it is something heavy. Therefore, when we imagine a droplet of water, which is heavier than a smell in imagination, it rolls off our perception. So the mind is easily liberated from this attachment because a droplet heavier than smell rolls down, while smell rises up. When the Buddha uses comparison — all these comparisons are very carefully thought out, there is extraordinary precision in all these comparisons. Attachment to smell is heavy, while smell is light. When we imagine a drop flowing down a lotus leaf, perception of smell is liberated from attachment to it.
3. Why in relation to the perceptions of ideas, liberation is like dropping a few drops of water on a hot frying pan
4. As soon as drops hit the hot pan, they dry up immediately. Thought is very fast. The appearance of a thought is instant, like splashed drops, and as it is very quick, we must act on it, when we meditate, in correspondence with this speed. When a drop hits the hot pat, its like *psh*, and it immediately dries up. Its span of existence is like the span of the appearance and disappearance of a thought. Therefore, this image is associated with thought exactly by the speed of appearance and disappearance. When we see that a thought appears and disappears instantaneously, attachment to this idea does not arise, an attempt to hold it does not arise, nor adhesion to it. It spontaneously shows its own emptiness.
5. How are the other relations explained?
6. Regarding eyes — when a person blinks, he interrupts one visual perception and transitions to another visual perception. The same thing concerns hearing. The snapping of the fingers mentioned there interrupts the current audial perception and allows one to transition to another audial perception. We figured things out with the perception of smell earlier on. A drop of water flows down on a slightly tilted lotus leaf just as one smell perception is interrupted and another begins. Why a drop of water here? Because we can physiologically say that we inhale smells through the nose and feel them in the region of the bridge of the nose, and the drop of water that flows down a slightly tilted lotus leaf is actually our attention. If we imagine the line of the nose, it's like a tilted lotus leaf. The nose itself. We feel smells somewhere in the area of the third eye, and it turns out that when we imagine that a drop of water, a perception of one smell, flows down a tilted lotus leaf, it's like on the back of a lotus, and another smell perception arises. This example might be the hardest because the olfactory glands are hidden inside where the third eye is. Further, concerning taste — a person on whose tongue saliva has accumulated. He spits it out. Again, we see the tip of the tongue, and saliva is spit out, one taste perception is interrupted and another begins. Bodily perceptions, sensations of the body — a strong person bends and straightens his arm. Again, we see the movement of the body here. Bending his arm is like he pulls his arm away from something, like, for example, a person who touches something. He bends his arm, he stops touching that, and extends it to again touch what he wishes to. Perception of ideas — a hot frying pan on which a few drops of water were dripped, and they evaporate quickly and vanish. Ideas in this case are compared to drops of water. Thoughts. A person thinks of some thoughts, but they dissolve in the emptiness of the mind, just as a drop of water evaporates on a hot pan. Again, we move away from one perception and transition to another. Notice that this pattern repeats in all meditations on the activity of the senses. And what does it mean that we learn to pull the senses from one perception and transition them to another? It means the first method of calming thoughts, moving a thought from unwholesome subjects to wholesome ones. As you see, everything that is described here describes the first method of calming thoughts: how to distract the mind from unpleasant things, subjects that excite it and make it concerned, and move it to topics which calm the mind and make its thoughts wholesome. The first method of meditation is analyzed in detail here.
   

Further Questions

1. What is the difference between a hermit and a monk?
2. A monk lives in a monastery among other monks. A hermit lives alone in secluded places. Hermits often also do yogic practices.
3. How are bad qualities associated with suffering?
4. They lead to suffering.