Dhamma with Ajahn Sujin

(20m) Azita: My question is about the different terminology we have for pañña, for example pariyatti, patipatti, pativedha, and then sutamaya pañña, cintāmaya pañña... so is pariyatti the same as sutamaya pañña? A. Sujin: That's why we have to study carefully each word, for example, what is suta? Hearing, right? Maya? The benefit of hearing is understanding, otherwise it's useless just to hear without considering whether it's true and what is about. For example now we are talking about seeing right now, and suta heard the word, maya understands, the success, the result, the benefit of hearing is to understand. When it is heard and no understanding it cannot be sutamaya pañña, but maya is the way it works to have understanding of the word said about whatever is now appearing. Sutamaya pañña doesn't mean that "let's hear again and again", but no considering no understanding, that's useless. But suta, hearing and it brings about the understandin...

A. Sujin: Without phassa (the mental factor of contact), can citta arise? When we understand what citta is we know that there isn't just one reality which can experience an object, but there must be many different realities which arise to experience the object, but each has its characteristic and its own function. So they cannot be the same like that which is the chief, the citta, which experiences the characteristic of that which is there, but it does not take it for something at all, it just experiences to see what is there, so clear, like the one who doesn't have good eyes cannot see anything clear, but the one who has good eyes can see that object, that same object, clearer. So the citta is the chief of experiencing the characteristic of that which is experienced only, but it cannot do other functions, it cannot remember, it cannot feel. And phassa is a reality which is not the rūpa, because it can experience an object and its function is not the chief of experienci...

(Suitable for beginners) - A. Sujin: Couldn't we talk with her about her life and what is the best thing she would like to have in this world. And what conditions her thinking of getting away from this world. What is the best thing she would like, and we could discuss about that. If you don't know what she liked and didn't get, so that she just wants to get away from life, to stop, to end this life. Jotika: She was misused in her early childhood and sometimes she could not bear it, and then she became ill, she went to the hospital and then she was taken in and then after a while she was out for a while and then she couldn't bear it and she went in again and so she made her decision and she got all the allowances from the psychiatrist and so on, so that legally in the conventional way she got the formal right to commit suicide, she could not bear the pain. Su. But what about if she leaves this world and pain can arise [again], because it's not under anyone...

(Suitable for beginners) - A. Sujin: I think that at first we should know our own interests, what are we interested now? To understand Dhamma, to know the truth of that which is now appearing? Or just to think about this and that, which doesn't bring any understanding of this moment? Which is so real, because it's there. Feeling is real, it's there, and what is it? There cannot be the understanding the truth of it at all if there are no words which talk about it, or explain about the truth of it. Just seeing and then hearing and then thinking and then nothing else. Just arising and falling away, different moments, different realities. And isn't that life, or what is life? The moment of birth is not this moment, and what is life, from the moment of birth up to now? What are they, where are they, now? They were there and where are they now? No more, just only once in a split second in samsara and then gone. Isn't this true? We have to understand that, from birth ...

(64m) A. Sujin: I think that we live in the world of concept, right? Without concept, how could we live? But how come, concept? What is it? Without the absolute realities there cannot be anything at all, but when there is reality arising, and it arises and falls away so very rapidly, to the point that it cannot be known, but what can be known is the nimitta. So we begin to understand, little by little, how come to have paññatti (concept), because there must be the absolute truths: citta, cetasikas and rupas, and they arise and fall away in split seconds, and what is seen is only the nimitta of each [of these]. Because one [moment] cannot be seen or experienced at all, and that is the absolute truth. So when they arise, so very rapidly, what appears is the nimitta, the mark or the sign of something, even it comes down to just very little, like hardness, it's still something, as something it's nimitta, that which is made known as: it's hard. So we live in the world of...