MEDITATION INSTRUCTION 12.3
Analyzing Real Materialities197
Summary of Method: Begin by establishing concentration. Then shine the light of wisdom onto a location in the body such as a material base that enables sensory encounters with the world: eye base, ear base, nose base, tongue base, and body base; and the material support for consciousness, the heart base. Examine the ultimate materiality that comprises the sense bases, and then examine the thirty-two body parts. You will discover various types of rūpa kalāpas present at each sense base and each body part.
The Procedure: First look at a field of rūpa kalāpas such as what occurs in the eye base. Discern the components of earth, water, fire, and wind in each grouping. Sort the rūpa kalāpas into two categories: those that appear translucent, reflective, or transparent and those that appear opaque or not translucent. Then, notice the color of individual rūpa kalāpas.
In the eye, ear, nose, and tongue bases there are two types of translucent decad kalāpas. To distinguish between eye-sensitive elements and body-sensitive elements in the eye base, find a translucent rūpa to analyze. Discern the four elements of earth, water, fire, and wind in that translucent rūpa kalāpa. Then look at the color of a different rūpa in the eye door. If the color impacts the translucent rūpa, it is an eye-sensitive element. To identify the body-sensitive element, look at the tangible elements of earth, fire, or wind in a nearby kalāpa of the eye base and notice if the perception of a tangible object impacts the translucent rūpa. If the perception of a tangible element impacts the translucent rūpa, it is a body-sensitive element. Body-sensitive elements are found in all the sense bases, plus most of the body parts.
Matter also has odor. Try to discern the smell of rūpa kalāpas. Odors impact the nose-sensitive element and are known by mind consciousness. To harness both the material sensitivity and the mental perception that will facilitate the discernment of odor, find the nose-sensitive element by looking for a translucent rūpa in the nose, and then discern the mind door. Try to discern the odor of a rūpa kalāpa near that translucent rūpa. If the odor impinges on the translucent rūpa and mind door simultaneously, it is a nose-sensitive element. If instead the perceptions of earth, fire, or wind impinge on the translucent rūpa, you will know that it is a body-sensitive element. After seeing the odor of materiality near the nose, you will be able to apply this method and use the mind to discern the odor of other materialities in the body.
Matter has taste. To facilitate the perception of the flavor of rūpa kalāpas, find a translucent rūpa of the tongue base and discern the mind door. Observe a rūpa kalāpa in your mouth or saliva. If flavor simultaneously impacts the translucent element and the mind door, it is a tongue-sensitive element. If instead the perceptions of earth, fire, or wind impinge on the translucent rūpa, you will know that it is a body-sensitive element. After you are skilled in seeing flavors impact the tongue, you will be able to use the mind to discern the taste of materialities throughout the body.
Nutritive essence is found in all matter. It supports the reproduction of materiality. Look closely at any rūpa kalāpa and you may see the force of nutritive essence multiplying the materialities like a stream of beads or spray of water drops.
Life faculty is found only in kamma-produced materialities with nine or ten rūpas. It is responsible for maintaining the materialities within each kalāpa. It may be easiest to discern the life faculty first by examining a translucent decad kalāpa. You have already discerned the other nine constituents (earth, water, fire, wind, color, odor, flavor, nutritive essence, and sensitivity); the additional factor is the life faculty.
There are three types of nontranslucent kalāpas that also contain life faculty: heart decad kalāpas, sex decad kalāpas, and the life nonad kalāpas. Heart dacad kalāpas will be found only in the heart base. Look for nontranslucent kalāpas that you can find only in the heart base; they will not appear in the eye base, nose base, liver, bones, or teeth. Discern the ten distinct types of rūpa that make up the heart decad kalāpa. Life nonad kalāpas and sex-determining decad kalāpas are both distributed throughout the body and are present in all the sense bases. Through repeated observation and systematic elimination, you can learn to distinguish the subtle formations that contain the life faculty. Look again and again, in various sense bases and body parts, until you sense the distinctive function of sex-determining materiality and can distinguish the life faculty as it appears in sex-determining decad kalāpas and life nonad kalāpas.
If you have difficulty discerning sex-determining decad kalāpas, you may discern the materiality within yourself and then compare it with other males and females that are sitting nearby. Look for rūpa kalāpas that contain life faculty and are present in all members of the same sex but not present in the opposite sex. With repeated examination you will find a material formation, the sex-determining decad kalāpa, that appears differently in males and females.
Thoroughly examine the materiality of the eye-door, then proceed to examine the ear, nose, tongue, body, and heart bases, followed by the thirty-two parts of the body. See that each rūpa kalāpa is composed of at least four elements (earth, water, fire, wind), plus four ever-present types of matter (color, odor, flavor, nutritive essence), which function together in interdependent units. In each group that is sensitive to the impingement of a specific sensory phenomena such as colors, tangible objects, or odors, an additional two material properties will be found: life faculty and sensitivity to the corresponding sense field (for example, the matter in the eye that is sensitive to the impingement of color, the matter in the tongue that is sensitive to flavors, or the matter in the body that is sensitive to tactile contact). Use Tables 12.3–12.6 to guide your investigation until you easily see all sixty-three types of rūpas in the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and mind bases, the fifty-three types of rūpas in the body, and the varying quantities and types of rūpas in the thirty-two body parts.
I have constructed the tables and the exercises in this book to reveal sixty-three types of rūpas in the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and mind doors, and fifty-three types of rūpas in the body door. You may find references in other traditional Abhidhamma lists and in the Visuddhimagga to fifty-four and forty-four types of rūpas.198 Many traditional sources exclude from the primary lists the ninefactored kalāpa called the life nonad kalāpa (jīvita navaka kalāpa) that contains earth, water, fire, wind, color, odor, flavor, nutritive essence, and life faculty. Sometimes this kalāpa is called “digestive fire” and has a dominance of the fire element. It is active in the aging, nourishment, digestion, reproduction, heating up, and breaking down of material formations, and it is found in all the sense doors and throughout most parts of the body. When guided by a teacher, you might be asked to discern this life nonad kalāpa with a dominance of fire element early in the discernment, or only after you can easily distinguish the other fifty-four and forty-four types of rūpas in the sense doors.
TABLE 12.3
Schema of the Material Groups (kalāpas)
TABLE 12.4
Sixty-Three Rūpas of the Eye, Ear, Nose, and Tongue Doors
*Replace eye with ear, nose, and tongue for the discernments of these sense bases.
TABLE 12.5
Fifty-Three Rūpas of the Body Door (kāya dvāra)
TABLE 12.6
Sixty-Three Rūpas of the Mind Door (mano dvāra)
MEDITATION INSTRUCTION 12.4
Analyzing Nonreal, Nonconcrete Materialities
Ten additional material properties are classified as nonreal or nonconcrete rūpas. These ten nonreal elements of matter are attributes of real matter and include space, bodily intimation, verbal intimation, and the lightness, pliancy, wieldiness, growth, continuity, aging, and impermanence of concrete material.
To discern these elements, first establish concentration. Then, direct your attention to the materiality of the body, beginning with the six sense doors and proceeding to the thirty-two parts of the body (see Table 12.7). Look for ea
ch element one by one. If concentration weakens or your attention falters, refresh attention with a brief return to jhāna, concentration on the breath, or contemplation of the characteristics of the four primary elements. If you have done the previous exercises, you will be able to easily intuit the salient aspects of most of these nonconcrete rūpas while examining the ultimate materiality in each sense base and body part.
Bodily intimation refers to the production of intentional physical movement and involves the activation of the wind element in mind-produced materialities. To facilitate the perception of bodily intimation, carefully observe the changes in the rūpa kalāpas in the heart base, arms, and hand during a small intentional movement such as wiggling a finger or making a simple hand gesture. Observe the mode of the wind element in the mind-produced octad kalāpas that arise during an intentional movement. Similarly, to facilitate the perception of verbal intimation—the production of speech—focus your attention on the mind base and the vocal cords while you utter a sound, such as by reciting the alphabet: a, b, c, d, e. Observe the mode of the earth element in mind-produced octad kalāpas; watch as earth elements collide in the vocal cords to produce sound.
Move back and forth between concentration and the discernment process until you have discerned all the concrete (real) and nonconcrete (unreal) rūpas in each sense base and part of the body.
PHASE 4: DYNAMIC MATTER
After all the twenty-eight real and unreal rūpas have been seen, as clearly as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table, you may begin to analyze how they interact by observing transformations, movements, and reproduction of matter.
MEDITATION INSTRUCTION 12.5
Analyzing the Dynamics of Matter
Explore the behavior of materialities through three easy-to-practice phases.199
Phase one—observing mind-produced materiality. The mind generates materiality that is not translucent and distributed throughout the body. To see the generation of mind-produced materiality, called mind-produced nutritive-essence octad kalāpas, focus your attention on the mind door while you make an intentional movement such as wiggling your fingers, reaching, or moving. The mental impulse to act produces a stream of nutritive-essence octad kalāpas that you can see arising in conjunction with the impulse to move. Find these mind-produced nutritive-essence octad kalāpas first in the heart base, then in all the sense bases, and finally examine the body parts to discover where mind-produced nutritive-essence octad kalāpas are found.
Phase two—observing temperature-produced materiality. The fire element is present in every material formation and is a force that multiplies materiality. Each new material formation also contains fire element that has the potential to reproduce more materiality. To observe this process, discern the fire element in the body, for instance in the eye decad kalāpa, and watch as four or five generations of temperature-produced nutritive-essence octad kalāpas are produced from the fire element of the kamma-produced eye decad kalāpa. Discern the production of temperature-produced nutritive-essence octad kalāpas in the sense bases and body parts.
Phase three—observing nutriment-produced materiality. By this point in the training you will have discerned the fire element of many life nonad kalāpas. Sometimes called digestive fire, they are most powerful in the digestive process. You will also have discovered that there are some parts of the body (undigested food, feces, pus, and urine) that are composed of only temperature-produced nutritive-essence octad kalāpas. When the nutritive essence in temperature-produced nutritive-essence octad kalāpas (such as that found in undigested food) meets the fire element in the life nonad kalāpas (digestive fire), the encounter produces many generations of nutriment-produced materiality. As the nutriment-produced materiality spreads throughout the body, the nutriment that it contains continues to support the production of more materiality when activated by the fire element in life nonad kalāpas.
You can observe the production of nutriment-produced materiality while eating. Place a morsel of food, such as a bite of banana, into your mouth. Discern the four elements in the fruit and the eight rūpas that comprise the temperature-produced octad kalāpas that make up a banana. Discern the four elements in your mouth and the various rūpa kalāpas with their constituent elements that comprise your saliva and tongue. Highlight the fire element in life nonad kalāpas in order to watch how it functions as digestive fire. When the nutritive essence of the chewed fruit meets the fire element of the life nonad kalāpas you will see many generations of nutriment-produced nutritive-essence octad kalāpas born. These newly produced materialities will be nontranslucent and contain eight types of materiality. You can watch as generation after generation of rūpa kalāpas rapidly appear. Observe, bite after bite, as the consumption of a banana produces subtle materiality within your body. After the banana is chewed and swallowed, the process of digestion continues. Focus your attention on the digestion in your stomach and then the intestines to observe the dynamic activity that occurs when the forces of nutriment and digestive fire meet.
As nutriment-produced octad kalāpas spread throughout the body and are in proximity to digestive fire, this nourishing team supports the reproduction of kamma-produced, temperature-produced, and mind-produced materialities. Look for the production of new materiality in all the sense bases and body parts. For example, focus on the eye base and discern the materialities present in the eye by specifically seeing the sixty-three types of rūpas present in the eye base (see Tables 12.3 and 12.4). You will find the fire element of life nonad kalāpas present throughout the body, but to a lesser degree than what is available while eating a fruit. You will find nutriment-produced octad kalāpas, along with kamma-, temperature-, and mind-produced materialities, each of which contains its own nutriment. The nutriment within the kamma-, temperature-, and mind-produced materialities will reproduce when supported by the combined presence of nutriment-produced octad kalāpas and digestive fire. The strength of the nutritive essences determines the exact number of generations each is capable of producing (see Table 12.3).
Engage with these processes as you would an interactive video game. Observe their dynamic qualities, behaviors, and functions as you might enjoy a show on a movie screen.
PHASE 5: THE HEART OF THIS MATTER
After observing the functions and interactions of the most highly refined and subtle material phenomena, recognize that the entire physical world is composed of material elements. Contemplate all these elements within the body and in the world at large as just material elements. Discern the elemental nature of phenomena with an attention that is clear, concentrated, and unobscured by limiting conceptual labels, identities, and names.
TABLE 12.7
Parts of the Body Organized by Element
DOMINANT ELEMENT CORRESPONDING ELEMENT OR PART IN THE BODY
Earth Pentad 1: Head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin
Pentad 2: Flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys
Pentad 3: Heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs
Pentad 4: Intestines, mesentery, contents of the stomach, feces, brain
Water Sextet 1: Bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat
Sextet 2: Tears, grease, spittle, snot, oil of the joints, urine
Fire Heat that warms the body
Heat that causes maturing and aging
Heat of fever
Digestive heat
Wind/air Air that rises up (e.g. belching)
Air that goes down (e.g. passing gas)
Air in the abdomen outside the intestines
Air inside the intestines
Air that pervades through the limbs
Air that enters and exits the lungs
Space* Space in the lungs, mouth, nose, ear, and
other doors, organs, and body parts
Space between different organs and parts
such as between skin and bones
Space between and inside rupa kalapas
*The space element is not a primary element; it is
classified as a derived materiality.
MEDITATION INSTRUCTION 12.6
A World of Matter
Review each material element found at each sense door and in the parts of the body. So far we have been working with the classic thirty-two parts. At this stage, the list can be expanded to discern forty-two parts by adding four manifestations of heat and six aspect of wind in the body (see Table 12.7).
Contemplate each element within each part of the body individually and then as a group by reflecting: “This is materiality. This is rūpa, rūpa, or matter, matter.” Next, discern the rūpas in someone sitting nearby, contemplating all material elements as “matter, matter, just rūpa, rūpa.” Alternate contemplating the elements internally (in your own body) and externally (in something or someone outside of yourself). Repeatedly discern and contemplate the materiality of people near and further away until your analysis encompasses the entire universe.
Include inanimate entities by discerning the eight basic types of rūpas found in nonliving material (earth, water, fire, wind, color, odor, flavor, nutritive essence), starting with something near, such as your clothing, and then gradually extending to the floor, the building, and out into the world. After clearly discerning the eight types of rūpas in each nonliving form, contemplate it as just rūpa, rūpa, matter, matter. You can continue to contemplate the materiality of the world while walking, reaching, eating, and moving by observing the interaction of all material forms.200
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