Over these past few days of the retreat, we've come to understand the true purpose of dhamma practice: purifying and liberating the mind through cetovimutti (liberation of heart) and paññāvimutti (liberation of wisdom). This is a basic matter of life, not something remote or unreachable.

The Three Natures That Govern Our Lives

Our lives are governed at every moment by three natures. They work through inner voices and feelings, pressuring and steering us into actions that draw either merit or demerit into our lives, all to serve their own ends. These natures use the "dhamma khandha" — mental factors — as their tools to control the cycle of our lives, producing results: a good result if wholesome, a harmful result if unwholesome. The unwholesome in particular relies on ignorance and wrong views as its instruments, while the wholesome relies on mindfulness, clear awareness, faith, and wisdom to bring us benefit. The wholesome side's essential tool within the body is the "sphere of dhamma" — the spheres of morality, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge-and-vision of liberation — which we need to learn, understand, and put to use for our own benefit.

Knowing and Using It: The Difference Between the Learner and the One Merely Acted Upon

We used to think liberation was difficult, something distant. In truth, purity and liberation are present in our lives at every single moment. If we don't know how to use this, we remain purely acted upon by the three natures, unable to argue or negotiate with them at all — not knowing, we simply go along, until it becomes automatic habit. But once we know and understand, we can choose for ourselves, and refuse what we don't want. This is why we must learn and understand. Once we see the dangers each nature brings, we can choose to side with the wholesome, because only the wholesome benefits us and gives us what is right and good. The unwholesome brings only harm and suffering, and the neutral, while not harmful, gives no benefit either — it simply squanders our precious time and resources without accomplishing anything.

The Early Stage of Practice: From Suffering Caused by Defilement to Ease

There's another important matter — the process by which one arrives at the Dhamma through meditation. Observe your own practice from the start: new practitioners usually meet with suffering first, because there is still much defilement (มลทิน) present — the darker the defilement, the greater the suffering. It presses and squeezes the mind into restlessness. But if we endure and keep sitting, while we practice the merit of the wholesome causes mindfulness to arise and draws in merit to cleanse the defilement weighing on the mind, little by little. Sitting becomes easier and more sustained.

Hindrances and Defilement: Let Them Spend Their Own Energy

Once the coarse defilement that caused suffering is gone, the hindrances (nivarana) still remain, making us drift off or fall asleep while sitting. This is defilement doing its job — discharging energy that forces us to sleep or wander. Don't worry about it: once that energy is spent, the mind wakes up on its own, and the wholesome will tell us to keep going with concentration. Just don't actually give in to sleep — if the mind wanders or dozes, let it be; once the defilement's energy runs out, we can continue. The key is to keep mindfulness going even outside formal sitting, continuously drawing in merit to cleanse the mind — this makes the next sitting easier still, hindrances clearing faster, settling more readily, bringing feelings of ease, clarity, openness, and spaciousness that last longer and longer.

Open and Empty but Not Yet Bright: A Subtler Veil Still Covers It

Many are puzzled: once the coarse defilement clears and the mind feels open and empty, why isn't there yet any happiness or light? It's because a subtler veiling element still covers the refined merit that is already present. We simply continue, giving time to the wholesome, which keeps refining things until that subtle veil is finally removed — then either light or happiness will appear on its own. We don't manufacture it; it arises naturally as a result of defilement clearing away. If it's happiness, a mass of happiness begins forming, growing denser and denser. If it's light, brightness grows bit by bit until it feels as if someone switched on a lamp — yet opening the eyes, it's still dark. This happens more and more often, until with eyes closed there is brightness all the time, though the source of that light still can't be seen, because a still subtler veiling element covers it further.

From Light to a Sphere: Massing Together Into a Clear Orb

As merit continues clearing the defilement, once it thins to the point where the massing of brightness can gather together, the scattered light coalesces into a distinct sphere — though it isn't yet clear, since ordinary defilement still coats it. Continue drawing merit in until the defilement thins to where it can no longer hide the clarity, and clarity appears. Even then, the bright clear sphere cannot yet be moved at will, because a subtler layer of defilement still locks it in place. Once that locked layer is cleared away entirely, we can direct the sphere left, right, forward, back, shrink it or expand it. From there, we direct it to the true center of the body. When the subtle defilement controlling that spot thins away completely, the elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and space unite as one, rising from the sixth base to the seventh, and the bright clear sphere is drawn into the system of wholesome dhamma held within the sphere of dhamma itself.

The Automatic Process: From the Sphere of Dhamma Through the Eighteen Bodies

From the moment of being drawn into this system of wholesome dhamma, an automatic inner process of the wholesome begins, heading straight toward the path to nibbana. The sphere of morality refines the mind to purity and passes it to the sphere of concentration; concentration refines it further and passes it to the sphere of wisdom; wisdom refines it to greater purity and passes it to the sphere of liberation; liberation refines it and passes it to the sphere of knowledge-and-vision of liberation, and so on. We need only rest the mind at ease — no effort required. The process then carries the mind through the coarse and refined divine bodies, the coarse and refined brahma bodies, and the coarse and refined formless-brahma bodies — each body having its own six spheres of dhamma that refine the mind further — through to the coarse and refined gotrabhū bodies, then onward to the body of the stream-enterer path and fruit, the once-returner path and fruit, the non-returner path and fruit, and finally the arahant path and fruit. All of these are ourselves at different planes of existence, each with a different appearance and its own set of tools appropriate to that level. Seeing this process doesn't mean we've attained stream-entry or arahantship — it means seeing the structure and the tools that will carry us along the path to nibbana.

How This Differs From Jhāna: The Jhāna Disc Versus the Sphere of Dhammānupassanā Satipaṭṭhāna

Besides the path by which the Buddha attained enlightenment, there is also the path of jhāna, which he had studied before his awakening — the four jhānas and the eight attainments. But he saw that this was not the way, and turned instead to the path of dhammānupassanā satipaṭṭhāna. Someone once asked a monk of the present day who practices jhāna attainment what he sees upon reaching the fourth or eighth jhāna. He answered that he sees a bright sphere. Asked whether he had ever looked inside that bright sphere, he said he had not — because what he actually saw was merely the "jhāna disc," round and flat, like the disc one sees beneath a seated Buddha image, simply a tool used to focus the mind until body and mind become clear. Its highest limit reaches only this far and no further. The Buddha thus proved that jhāna was not the answer — not even the eighth jhāna — and so sought a new way until he reached the sphere of dhammānupassanā satipaṭṭhāna, discovering it to be the wholesome's own instrument, holding the entire automatic process leading to nibbana, located precisely at the seat of the mind at the body's center.

Why It Is So Rarely Found: Only Two People Per Buddha-Era

The revered founding teacher proved that this position was indeed the answer, and said that because it is this difficult to reach, ordinary people cannot easily discover it. In each Buddha-era, only two people are able to discover this: the first is the Fully Self-Enlightened Buddha; the second is the revered founding teacher himself. This is because after the Buddha's parinibbāna, as the Buddhist religion gradually declined, even though the words of the Tipiṭaka remained, the method for reaching the Triple Gem within was lost. Someone therefore had to be born to bring the Buddha's own Dhammakāya knowledge back into the world once more. We have heard the words "Triple Gem" our whole lives without ever knowing what it looks like, where it is, or how to reach it — even though it is the most essential matter in the entire Buddhist religion.

The Purpose of This Retreat: To Truly Be Able to Go Forward

Coming to this retreat, at the very least we now understand the mechanics at work, including the path to the Triple Gem within. This lets us move forward instead of being stuck, not knowing which way to go. Once we return home, take what you've learned here and review it, reflect on it; whenever something isn't clear, you are always welcome to come back and ask. Having this suitable environment to bring about purity and liberation is a real opportunity, because genuine practice ought to show real results — practiced simply, at ease, comfortably — not something that demands ten or twenty years of effort with nothing to show for it.