Re: What is ill will ?
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:06 pm
Hi Cooran, hi Nathan,
now you have confused me. I thought I know dosa from this chain
When an unpleasant feeling arises in the mind there are two things happening simultaneously (well, more or less - I don't want to talk about Abhidhammic time scale here, just about what can be observed). One is the mind reacts to that stimulus - say, we touch something hot, a painful tactile impression conditions a painful feeling and the mind reacts with telling the hand to remove itself from the heat. So far so good, but a second thing happens, namely that the awareness moves away from the painful feeling itself. It blocks it. We get similar blocks when neither painful nor pleasant feeling arise - the awareness it self does not judge it as interesting or important and ignores it and whatever lead to it - an example would be the tactile impression of our heartbeat. It is always there but who can really be aware of it except when the heartbeat changes due to exertion or heart problems and stuff like that? At every moment of our life it is there and we COULD be aware of it - but we are not. It leads to a neither pleasant nor unpleasant feeling and thus our awareness is not interested in it.
However, all this has nothing to do with emotions. The reaction of awareness, the instability does not depend on emotions but on it blocking itself from unpleasant and neutral feelings. Emotions such as anger are neither, they are contacted and lead to lobha, dosa or moha which then result in a reduction of awareness or an increase depending on how one has conditioned it.
now you have confused me. I thought I know dosa from this chain
I thought greed was a translation of lobha, hate/anger a translation of dosa and neglect a translation of moha. However dosa does not arise as a result of situations but as a result of EVERY painful feeling. Usually I don't feel angry or hate anybody when I get a painful feeling thus it has to mean something else than anger or hate in the emotional sense.Pleasant feeling induces greed...
Painful feeling produces hate...
Neither-painful-nor-pleasant neutral feeling
causes neglect and therefore generates ignorance...
http://what-buddha-said.net/drops/II/Bo ... eeling.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
When an unpleasant feeling arises in the mind there are two things happening simultaneously (well, more or less - I don't want to talk about Abhidhammic time scale here, just about what can be observed). One is the mind reacts to that stimulus - say, we touch something hot, a painful tactile impression conditions a painful feeling and the mind reacts with telling the hand to remove itself from the heat. So far so good, but a second thing happens, namely that the awareness moves away from the painful feeling itself. It blocks it. We get similar blocks when neither painful nor pleasant feeling arise - the awareness it self does not judge it as interesting or important and ignores it and whatever lead to it - an example would be the tactile impression of our heartbeat. It is always there but who can really be aware of it except when the heartbeat changes due to exertion or heart problems and stuff like that? At every moment of our life it is there and we COULD be aware of it - but we are not. It leads to a neither pleasant nor unpleasant feeling and thus our awareness is not interested in it.
However, all this has nothing to do with emotions. The reaction of awareness, the instability does not depend on emotions but on it blocking itself from unpleasant and neutral feelings. Emotions such as anger are neither, they are contacted and lead to lobha, dosa or moha which then result in a reduction of awareness or an increase depending on how one has conditioned it.
Yes! The goal is reached by improving awareness - not by blocking more and more away. The state of non-perception is not nibbana.nathan wrote:hi Cooran
The mistake is mine, I made the wrong assumption on the basis of the previous discussion and I mistook dosa as a synonym for aversion.
aversion nibbidā (f.), virāga (m.), anālaya (m.), parammukhatā (m.), vimukhatā (m.)
I'm happy to concede that the terms are used synonymously if that is typically so. Probably the point I was trying to make is lost in the attempt to define the various pali terms used for ill will and aversion. What I was trying to point out, because it is the meditation forum, is that when you are practicing mindfulness you can develop awareness of some of the subtle differences in the way that the mind moves and changes. As an indication of a way to observe ill will in practice I was trying to point out the difference that one can observe between the minds attraction to pleasant sensation and aversion to unpleasant sensation when it is simply left to it's own devices
It is a definition I want but I want it in relationship to meditation. I want to be able to point it out in my mind. Vyapada appears in the jhana formula so it should be easy to identify it. Dosa as in aversion to any unpleasant feeling is certainly less and less arising. When reaching access concentration there is already enough lobha /greed there to keep the object of concentration stable. The mind is attracted to the object because awareness judges it as generating a pleasant feeling. But there are other ways to generate concentration. Ven. Cittapato mentions it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQr_zQfW6rQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . One can generated concentration by observation, including by observing the mind during an emotionally altered state such as anger. Instead of loosing awareness when an emotion such as anger or fear arises one can learn to keep it by observing the angry mind. Sati-sampajanna will increase the concentration and one can enter access concentration or even absorption concentration very fast. Sometimes I use this kind of practice with interesting results - states I need hours to reach when using an object like breath arise almost immediately. Space is there automatically, and the Beauty nimitta arises, flashing in and out. Thus the emotion anger goes well with sampajanna and thus also jhana. Meaning, vyapada cannot mean an emotion, not even anger. So what is it?I hoped that the observation of the one kind of process could be a means to observation of the other. The distinction I was pointing to was between the arising of a relatively unwilling aversion and a more willful involvement in an aversion. I apologize if I misused the terms. The OP was about ill will and I was hoping that I could point to a manner of observing it and some of the subtleties of it first hand. I had thought that what I was saying might be clearer if aversion could be taken in a sense to refer to a more autonomic kind of event whereas ill will could be taken in a similar sense to imply the additional involvement of a more conscious or willful quality. I'm not expert on pali definitions and I didn't take the time to look into those specifics. So if it is just definitions of terms the Op is after, then I offer my apologies for the digression into an exploration of some of what might be noted about ill will and aversion in practice.