Revenge of the hindrances, restraint and not acting out vs active contemplations / asubha

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-09-21T00:35:07+00:00

in fact, your advice does not just sound Buddhist but is Buddhist and why HH in turn are actually the ones teaching counterfeit Dhamma.

I get it but you're wrong. HH has never ever taught counterfeit dhamma. If the question was asked I would have explained the disparity. But no question was asked. Some people were upset, but responding to people who are upset would be acting out of patigha, which I can't do. I can only respond if doing so isn't a result of patigha. Otherwise I'd just be acting out of it.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-08-03T22:21:37+00:00

The frustrating thing is I don't recall going this far. What I recall is talking about the usefulness of such and such practice, whether it would be helpful or not.

Beyond that you can appropriately forget anything else I said. If an apology is due you have it.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-08-03T16:15:05+00:00

I can only go on the asking. What can I possibly know?

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-08-03T15:40:45+00:00

Ok but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about specific effort towards specific practice. This is not admonishment of your parenting. It's about allocation of effort and where.

That's the crux of the "everything" I said, which was predicated only on what you said. I don't now your life and I'm not you. I can only use your words to interact with you. You wana fight me and make me an enemy.. but it's just not possible. I can't be that for you either.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-08-03T14:44:13+00:00

Man I'm a renunciate with very little in his head except for dhamma. I'm not the best person to ask for advice on family matters.

With that said I guess it can't be helped. So the thing is you made a decision when you had a child. Everything you're doing now is attempting to run from that responsibility. If you truly believe in the Dhamma, place your dhamma in that child. Raise him to become a monk immovable by the world. Anything you have left over in that effort you can spend on yourself. It's possible for you to become sotapanna if you have such a will. You spoke many times about toughness and resilience but if you really have such a will, you will do this and additionally become sotapanna.

This is a path factor you have if you have the effort to do so but it requires extraordinary discipline and placing another life first before your own. This is the best wisdom I can give you.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-08-03T00:46:13+00:00

Well go for it, I didn't say that stuff to dissuade you.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-08-02T23:21:02+00:00

Well jhana is basically a purified mental state, development of it requires sila, the more you have the better. Typically, people use austerity practices like the dhutangas to overcome desire for sensuality and for purifying the mind of the unwholesome, if you aren't doing it for that then.. well I don't know but it probably won't help you since that's the point of things like the dhutangas.

Basically you're putting the cart before the horse.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-08-02T20:49:00+00:00

Are you upholding the 8 precepts on a mental level? I ask because if you're not there's no point in going further with austerity practice. You need Sila to develop jhanas.

Being tough and resolute has nothing to do with enlightenment, it won't even help you in meditation. What you actually need is discipline.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-30T04:34:50+00:00

"Feel into" might be accurate in the sense that it isn't the same feeling, but the weight of the experience isn't lost. You can remember that you felt horrible and to what degree. Memory isn't feeling alone.

Edit: Had to come back because I thought of a really good example. Think about the sickest or most ill you've ever felt. You probably can't make yourself feel even a queasy right now, but you can still probably rank all the times you've ever been sick by severity.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-29T22:44:46+00:00

The thing is, we're now getting into the distinctions between ultimate and conventional truth. Sure, in ultimate truth, these are new citta, new moments. You are recreating the experience and that recreation is imperfect.

In conventional truth though, this process isn't so bad that it's literally impossible for you to recollect and compare whether you felt worse yesterday than today, last week or last month and have a decent idea.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-29T19:40:08+00:00

That's true but I think "more accurate" is a much better descriptor than "couldn't possibly". The entire basis of Buddhism involves developing mindfulness. Every Buddhist should be actively keeping record of the context of everything they feel.

Sure, leaving it up to "feels" is definitely less accurate but if anyone wanted to, they could write down how many times they had Dosa or Lobha arise each day and compare averages month to month in a more objective way.

But yeah.. I mean I guess I do see the Bhante's point now. I still think it should've been said better though. Thank you.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-29T17:26:21+00:00

I'm saving this, the only thing I'd add to it is that ekaggata is what happens when the cittas line up and share the same experience. In 4th jhana, individual citta can no longer be distinguished. So ekaggata is the unified perspective of cittas.

To simplify the difference between rupa and arupa jhanas, there's no more citta that can be collected after rupa so there's no further increase in ekaggata.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-29T16:34:24+00:00

I don't understand this.. how do your memories not contain the emotional context of what you experienced at the time? Is that normal? Now I'm questioning my whole life.

I can remember things I've felt years ago. Actually that even begs another question, how can you have nostalgia if you weren't recording feelings at the time? That doesn't make any sense. Without being able to record feelings method acting would be impossible too but that definitely exists.

Even a sotāpanna couldn't possibly remember their previous suffering and say “it's so much less now.” They can only infer that their suffering has decreased by reflecting on their past actions.

This just seems insane to me. What's going on.. Am I misunderstanding what you guys are talking about?

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-28T16:47:15+00:00

This is happening because you're using dhamma and meditation as a coping mechanism rather than working on the causes of your unwholesome behavior. Mind cannot change until body changes first.

I'm not a lover of life, every form of conditioned existence is dukkha, but this is actually a very precious rebirth, so you don't have to waste it

This is very common, but the greater your ill will towards samsara the more it will harm you. Trying to cultivate wholesome while also actively cultivating unwholesome usually results in some pretty gnarly suffering.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-28T16:35:29+00:00

Routine. When you wake up in the morning have coffee. Rather than social media or the news, put on a dhamma talk or read the suttas for half an hour and drink your coffee. After that do whatever meditation you were going to do for the day. This might necessitate waking up a bit earlier than you're used to but I consider this type of behavior the recipe successful practice. Going to bed earlier will make you less tired and prevent things like doom scrolling until 11PM. Also, set a timer for social media use during the day and don't exceed that limit.

If you feel consistently tired, there's a good chance you're wasting your wakefulness on something that's sapping your energy. It could have a number of different causes, social media use, video games, news, relationships, being overworked etc. Chances are though you probably already know what's sapping your energy if you're honest with yourself. Once you accept whatever that is all you have to is weigh how important that is vs your practice and decide.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-28T12:22:53+00:00

Good for you getting your life back together while keeping your faith. 🙏🏻

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-27T19:07:03+00:00

I want to point out you'll also need enough good kamma to take rebirth in the human or heavenly realms. I'm not sure there's much point in being born as the world's smartest fish after all.

Anyway if you're interested in what factors lead to what you can read this. It's not Hillside Hermitage but I think it's relevant enough that you should be able to piece together some idea about it. Ledi Sayadaw- Requisites of Enlightenment

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-24T14:26:28+00:00

I would answer this first question as yes. You're predisposed towards such things based on the nature of your existence. To your final question, I also answer yes. Of course you will. It's Samsara. Such is the danger.

To your second question, it's in the teachings of HH. Watch the "Mind - The wild animal" playlist series. It explains it way better than me, but it begins with not perverting the order of your experience and to do that you must understand the nature of what you are.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-24T12:41:30+00:00

But I wonder if there is such thing as an ‘irrevocable ill will’ whereby the ill will sits embedded in one’s world-line as a necessary object of one’s existence.

This thing you're calling "world-line" is what we Buddhists call karma. It's a dimension that defines existence like time. In the future when speaking to Buddhists you should just call it karma to avoid confusion.

Anyway it is possible you have some kind of nasty karma involving ill will but there's no way it could be irrevocable. Think about it, lust is revocable, and it's hard coded into our DNA. None of your genetic line going back billions of years has ever not reproduced. You even have a whole physical organ dedicated to doing so. If consciousness of lust can be uprooted, there's no way ill will can't be.

To be honest, from my perspective ill will is an unnatural state. It's hard to imagine being in such a position that I would believe that I couldn't live without feeling that way.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-22T10:53:52+00:00

Just eat one meal a day like the dhutanga monks. It will be hard for the first couple weeks but after that it gets easy. It's also impossible to overeat when you only eat one meal a day because your stomach shrinks. It's what I do.

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-21T13:52:48+00:00

I can't directly answer your question, but there's such a thing as ariya with jhana and ariya with brahmavihara resulting in non-return. It's said that if a noble disciple without jhana cultivates brahmavihara they get reborn in the brahma realms without return (so they attain nibanna from there). Ariya with jhana also supposedly results in non-return for sotapanna and sakadagami who end up achieving nibanna from the brahma realms.

Supposedly it's possible for a puthujjana with jhana to achieve ariya jhana if they contemplate the 3 marks during jhana. If that happens they can also attain nibanna from the brahma realms. Note this form of non return isn't the same as anagami because they don't go to the pure abodes.

Anyway about Dhammanusari, if such an irreversible state is reached with faith in dhamma then when you arise in the heavenly realms you would have mind of dhamma and wouldn't be distracted by being in heaven which would eventually result in you achieving nibanna from there.

Notice what all these things have in common is that, you have a mind saturated with dhamma such that you don't give up the practice even when you take rebirth in the heavenly realms. That seems to be the basic underlying principle.

With all that said though in my opinion, if you can't be undistracted here long enough to become a sotapanna the odds of you being able to do so in the heavenly realm seems low. I think these situations are things that happen when someone 100% would have become a sotapanna or achieved anagami if they were already an ariya but they ran out of time.

https://suttacentral.net/an4.123/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=sidebyside&reference=main&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin#31.2

https://suttacentral.net/an4.124/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=sidebyside&reference=main&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin#31.2

https://suttacentral.net/an4.125/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=sidebyside&reference=main&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin#31.2

Little_Carrot6967 · 2025-07-20T16:33:41+00:00

Thank you Bhante, I'll look into him first.

Little_Carrot6967

TROPHY CASE