No expectations to understand anatta

(Transcript by Alan, link to his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK2uWCfzpQA)

[Nina] The Buddha spoke so much about the subtlety of the Teachings and Acharn always reminds us of this subtlety. So, I think it's good to hear more about the subtlety of feeling and all the other realities and the Teachings.

[A. Sujin] As long as there is expectation it's not moment of understanding anything. But from hearing again and again and understanding the anattāness of everything and the point is that it has to be anattā, uncontrollable. When it's so firm we don't mind at all whether now it's time to understand seeing or hearing or remembering or whatever, no selection, to be the proof of the confidence of no-one and no-self. So at this moment there is feeling but it depends on conditions whether it can be object of awareness or understood or not.

That's why as long as we think about one thing it hinders the anattāness of that which is now arising and falling away instantly. That's why when time comes there can be moment of understanding instantly, no expectation of that object before. That's why just understand the anattāness of all conditioned realities and also Nibbāna or whatever, it cannot be taken for anything because it has its own characteristic, its own nature but they are together at once: they cannot be known any one of them at all, but when there is the understanding of each one more and more to understand that actually seeing is seeing and feeling is feeling. At moment of seeing there must be feeling but it does not appear, so how can there be the understanding of feeling? But when there's the understanding of whatever is there by conditions there can be moments of being aware of feeling, even it's so very vague in the beginning, but it's there: a reality which is different from seeing or liking or remembering or whatever it is.

That's why there should be or there must be the understanding of one characteristic otherwise the anattāness of anything cannot appear as it now is at all. That's why just learn to understand more and more deeper and deeper about the meaning of anattāness: what is there, gone, while we are thinking of feeling feeling's gone, arising and falling away all the time and there is only thinking of wanting or trying to understand the feeling even it's there, but when it does not show up as the object there can never be the understanding of it because it does not appear, it does not show up at all. So now what appears has arisen, fallen away, unexpectedly, but its characteristics is anattā, it cannot be expected at all because it's there, seeing now, whatever now, by conditions. This is the subtle way, to let go of the idea of self or thing from anything.

So, when we hear about the four noble truths, the fourth one [is] included because now it is the way to understand better and better about that which is now appearing little by little: compared to the amount of ignorance and attachment from aeons and aeons ago, how very little it is and there are many stages, many degrees of understanding and now we're just talking about feeling seeing hearing thinking, while each one is there, when it is conditioned to be there, but when it doesn't show up it cannot be known at all, but hearing about it on and on and on, it's there now here, everything we've been talking about: feeling memory and so on, but it's not known until, by conditions, right understanding develops in different ways, like it can be moment of just thinking about: what's the use of that which arises and falls away and then gone, never to return from moment of birth, each moment on and on arising and falling away and gone, until death, no more thinking about the past life, past realities at all. Even just right now they are as they are by conditions, arising and falling away, but not known at all because no words which can condition moments of thinking, considering, seeing the truth, the absolute truth of life, that what we take for life is just the very short moment, from moment to moment, of that which is there by conditions.

So, no one in this life at all, only different realities from moment to moment, but wrong understanding, ignorance and attachment are there, at any moment when there is no understanding of the truth of what is there now. So now there must be the truth of whatever is there, but it's not known yet because of the subtlety of its nature, that it just arises and falls away in split second, it doesn't know who and who and who at all, only at that moment the idea of that which appears which doesn't understand the truth of its nature as: it's not there anymore, concealing its truth of: no one there, no thing there, all gone in split seconds.

That's why consider about the truth of whatever we are hearing about to have more confidence, this has to build up, to implant the firm confidence of the truth that even right now it's only a characteristic of a reality, or what are there only different realities from moment to moment, until it appears just one, as the object.

So when we've heard about a reality now arises and falls away, it's not there anymore, it just develops little by little, to understand the truth, so that when time comes, at moments of sati, no doubt about what is meant by sati or satipaṭṭhāna because if there is no understanding of the truth of what is there now, at all, it's impossible for awareness with understanding to arise to understand the truth of what is now appearing. This is why it works its way, the eightfold path, no one there at all, so subtle, unknown at all until hearing about the Teachings and learning to understand that at that very moment even hearing and thinking and understanding it's not me, not anyone at all.