Someone shared that they had heard a YouTuber describe how, after studying Buddhism, he had "let go of nandi" and it had changed his behavior significantly — but they did not understand what nandi meant, and asked the teacher to explain.

Nandi Is Delight — a Tool for Confining the Mind The teacher explained that nandi means delight — absorption, for example, in scrolling on a phone. It is a tool used by the unwholesome and neutral natures, which rely on our sense of pleasure and enjoyment. Delight in various states of mind is a cause for generating further becoming and defilement, because whenever we become absorbed in something, we become confined within that dimension and remain there. An inner mechanism then operates: if the unwholesome side becomes the "landlord" causing us to be absorbed, pleased, and delighted in that state, it draws in energy that is impure — demerit — appearing as a dark sphere, saturated with suffering and defilement. At the center of that sphere of demerit lies misfortune, poised to destroy our good fortune. Once enough demerit accumulates, it compels us to speak and act according to its direction.

We Must See Impermanence and the Danger in Things The teacher taught that we must therefore train ourselves to let go of delight in all its forms — watching films and dramas, listening to music, going out, playing games — all of which drain away our valuable time for no real benefit, rather than cultivating the drawing-in of merit. We need to see the impermanence of this bodily compound, so that we no longer take delight in this present existence; to see the danger in it, knowing how little time remains, how the body is impermanent, ever-changing, and prone to sickness. We should not delight in "the world" — which includes the outer world, seen through eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body toward forms, tastes, smells, sounds, and touch, as well as the inner world, experienced through the mind. The pleasure gained from these sense objects is naturally alluring; wherever we take delight, we become absorbed in it. Without cultivating the letting-go of nandi, we simply drift from one delight to the next, morning to night, with our time spent to no benefit at all.

Nandi Is Not Only Pleasure — It Includes Grief as Well This is why the Fully Enlightened Buddha taught us to abandon nandi, to abandon all defilement and craving. Nandi stands opposite to cessation (nirodha) — the letting go, the relinquishing, the non-delighting in absorption. And it is not only pleasurable absorption that counts: sorrow, too, can become a form of delight. Some people, after watching a sad film or drama, dwell in grief for days; or after being separated from someone or something they love, they dwell in that suffering. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, both are the fruit of craving — the wanting of more. Both draw demerit inward equally, because in either case the mind becomes defiled.

Those Who Seek Liberation Must Face Suffering Directly The daily life of ordinary people in the world is spent chasing delight, but the Noble Ones do the opposite: they let go of delight and face suffering directly, while ordinary people turn away from suffering and seek pleasure instead. Anyone wishing to be free from the cycle of rebirth must therefore let go of delight — learning to see, and truly seeing, its danger. Without seeing that danger, we cannot refuse the delights that the unwholesome and neutral natures deliberately offer us, since they depend on our pleasure and satisfaction to shape us and draw in their own energy of demerit.

The neutral nature occupies more than 90 percent of our time each day — and, in the same proportion, each week, each month, each year, our entire life — from childhood through adolescence to old age, cycling endlessly through eating, playing, dancing, and roaming. When life ends with little merit, one drifts as a wandering spirit; with heavy demerit, one falls to hell, becomes a hungry ghost, or an animal — since these states of being depend on demerit's own energy to sustain them.

Letting Go of Nandi Returns Precious Time to Merit The teacher said that those who live rightly, centered on the Triple Gem and on Nibbana, become a channel through which the stream of merit and refined treasures flow. Merit purifies us, freeing us continuously from one dimension into the next; the proportion of wholesomeness in us grows, while the strength of the unwholesome and neutral natures diminishes day by day. Nandi confines us within its own dimension and shrinks the days of our life; but when we can let it go, the precious time that the neutral nature had claimed — more than 90 percent of it — can be returned to the wholesome side, used to correct and purify our life, both now and in the future.