CALM AND INSIGHT |
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SAMĀDHI |
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In his expositions of the practice of samādhi, Luang Por usually preferred to avoid speaking in terms of jhānas. |
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Instead he would refer to the various mental states – known as jhāna factors – that constitute these jhānas. |
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His reasoning was that the jhāna factors such as bliss (sukha) or equanimity were directly experienceable by the meditator, whereas ‘jhānas’ were simply names for different constellations of these factors. |
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They were, in other words, conventions; |
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and as such, they could lead the mind away from, rather than towards, awareness of the present reality. |
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If the mind is clear, then it’s just like sitting here normally and seeing things around you. |
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Closing the eyes becomes no different from opening them. |
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Seeing while the eyes are closed becomes the same as seeing with the eyes open. |
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There’s no doubt about anything at all, merely a sense of wonder, ‘How can these things be possible? |
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It’s unbelievable, but there they are.’ |
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There will be sustained appreciation (vicāra) arising spontaneously in conjunction with rapture, happiness, a fullness of heart and lucid calm. |
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Subsequently, the mind will become even more refined, and will be able to discard the meditation object. |
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Now, vitakka, the lifting of the mind onto the object, will be absent and so will vicāra. |
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We say the mind discards vitakka and vicāra. |
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Actually, it’s not so much that they’re discarded; |
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what is really meant is that the mind becomes more concentrated, more compact. |
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When it’s calm, then vitakka and vicāra are too coarse to stay within it, and so it’s said that they are discarded. |
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Without vitakka lifting the mind to the object, and vicāra to appreciate its nature, there is simply this experience of repleteness, bliss and ‘one pointedness’ (ekaggatā). |
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I don’t use the terms first, second, third and fourth jhāna. |
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I speak only of lucid calm and of vitakka, vicāra, rapture, bliss and unity, and of their progressive abandonment until only equanimity remains. |
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This development is called the power of samādhi, the natural expressions of the mind that has realized lucid calm … So there is a gradual movement in stages, that depends on constant and frequent practice. |
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Once, Luang Por was asked about the relationship between the first four jhāna factors and the fifth (ekaggatā), usually translated into Thai as meaning ‘single-focused’, and in English as ‘one-pointed’. |
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He replied that ‘ekaggatā’ was like a bowl and the other four factors were like the fruit in the bowl. |
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A cat watching a mouse hole has a kind of samādhi and so does a safe-cracker, but theirs is a natural, amoral concentration of instinct and desire, not the samādhi that issues from a disciplined gathering of inner forces and which provides the foundation of wisdom. |
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The Buddha distinguished between ‘Right Samādhi’ (sammāsamādhi), an essential element of the path to liberation, and ‘wrong samādhi’ (micchāsamādhi), which leads away from it. |
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Luang Por explained that the term ‘wrong samādhi’ included any state of calm that lacked the awareness necessary to create the foundation for insight: |
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Samādhi can be divided into two kinds: |
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wrong samādhi and right samādhi. |
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Take good notice of this distinction. |
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In wrong samādhi |
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the mind is unwavering. |
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It enters a calmness which is completely silent and lacking all awareness. |
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You can be in that state for a couple of hours or even all day, but during that time you have no idea where you’ve got to or what the state of your mind is. |
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This is wrong samādhi. |
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It’s like a knife that you’ve sharpened well and then just put away without using. |
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You gain no benefit from it. |
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It is a deluded calm that lacks alertness. |
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You think that you’ve reached the end of the practice of meditation and don’t search for anything more. |
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It’s a danger, an enemy. |
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At this stage, it’s dangerous to you because it prevents wisdom from arising. |
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There can be no wisdom without a sense of moral discrimination. |
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(Right samādhi) |
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Right samādhi could be known by the clarity of awareness. |
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No matter how deep Right Samādhi becomes, it is always accompanied by awareness. |
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There is a perfect mindfulness and alertness, a constant knowing. |
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Right Samādhi is a kind of samādhi that never leads you astray. |
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This is a point that practitioners should clearly understand. |
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You can never dispense with the knowing. |
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For it to be Right Samādhi, the knowing must be present from the beginning right until the end. |
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Please keep observing this. |
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On another occasion, he said that inner peace could be divided into two kinds: |
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coarse and subtle. |
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The coarse kind occurred when the meditator identified with the bliss that arose from samādhi practice and assumed the bliss to be the essential element of the peace. |
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The subtle peace was the fruit of wisdom, and it occurred when the experience of the mind itself, as that which knows all transient pleasant and unpleasant experiences, was understood to be the true peace. |
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The pleasant and the unpleasant are states of being, states we are born into, expressions of attachment. |
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As long as we attach to the pleasant or unpleasant, there can be no liberation from saṃsāra. |
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The bliss of samādhi is not true inner peace. |
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That peace comes through dwelling in the awareness of the true nature of the pleasant and unpleasant without attachment. |
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Thus, it is taught that the mind that lies beyond the pleasant (sukha) and the unpleasant (dukkha) is the true goal of Buddhism. |
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Sometimes, Luang Por made use of the commentarial division of samādhi into three levels, as these were clearly distinguishable on the basis of duration and intensity: |
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Momentary (khaṇika) samādhi – The initial, short-lived intervals of calm, experienced as the mind becomes focused on its object. |
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Access (upacāra) samādhi – The state in which the five hindrances have been overcome but not securely so. |
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There is still some background movement in the mind, but it is not distracting. |
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Absorption (appanā) samādhi – The deepest level of samādhi, a bright stillness in which no sense data appears to the mind or is so fleeting and peripheral as to be inconsequential. |
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Access samādhi is the state in which the wisdom faculty functions most fluently. |
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It precedes and succeeds attainment of absorption samādhi. |
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The access that follows absorption is a more potent base for wisdom development than that which precedes it. |
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Luang Por compared the mind in access samādhi to a chicken in a coop, not completely still but moving in a clearly defined area, and unable to run off at will. |
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On other occasions, he said it is as if the mind is enclosed within a glass dome. |
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The mind is aware of sense impressions, but is not affected by them. |
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It is the state, he said, in which the mind can see things in their true light: |
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Having abided in the state of complete lucid calm for a sufficient time, the mind withdraws from it to contemplate the nature of external conditions in order to give rise to wisdom. |
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THINKING AND EXAMINATION |
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The common Thai word ‘pijarana’ can mean ‘consider’, ‘reflect upon’, ‘contemplate’, ‘examine’ or ‘investigate’, and is found extensively in the teachings of the Thai forest masters. |
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On some occasions, Luang Por equated ‘pijarana’ with dhammavicaya, the ‘investigation of Dhamma’ that arises in dependence on mindfulness and constitutes the second of the seven enlightenment factors (bojjhaṅga). |
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All Buddhists are encouraged to reflect on (or pijarana) the truths of old age, sickness, death, the inevitability of separation from all that is loved, and the law of kamma. |
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By doing so again and again, these truths sink into the mind and become elements of the Right View that must underlie effective meditation practice. |
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Pijarana is also used in the context of discursive meditation practices to mean the examination of a theme of Dhamma in a coherent and disciplined manner. |
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Whereas the nature and role of pijarana in discursive meditations is straightforward, meditators can often doubt the part it plays in developing insight into the three characteristics, which constitutes the culmination of Buddhist meditation practices. |
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What degree of intentionality was Luang Por advocating when he instructed his disciples to pijarana the three characteristics? |
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How could meditators be sure that they were not merely thinking about the three characteristics rather than developing insight into them? |
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It’s a little bit hard to appreciate this because of its similarity to mental proliferation, and when thoughts arise you may assume that your mind is no longer calm. |
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In fact, the thoughts and perceptions that occur at this time arise within the calm. |
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Examination that takes place within the calm does not disturb it. |
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Sometimes the body may be taken up for examination. |
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That doesn’t mean you start thinking or speculating: |
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it’s a process that occurs naturally in that state of calm. |
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There is awareness within the calm, calm within awareness. |
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If it was merely mental proliferation, it would not be calm, it would be disturbing. |
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This isn’t proliferation. |
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It is something that appears in the mind as a result of the calm and is called examination (pijarana). |
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Wisdom arises right here. |
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Luang Por clarified this point in conversation with a visiting group of American Dhamma teachers. |
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He said that ordinary thinking could be distinguished by the fact that, although it might remain focused on a topic, it was coarse and lacking in penetration. |
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When the mind became calm, the examination (pijarana) arose naturally as a kind of awareness that, while possessing some of the characteristics of thinking, was of a different order. |
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Wise reflection on the three characteristics could be distinguished by the fact that it remained uncorrupted by mental proliferation, was always wholesome, and caused defilements to fade from the mind. |
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Mere thinking, on the other hand, becomes absorbed by defilements and contributes to their increase. |
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The examination that Luang Por was advocating was distinguished by the letting go of attachments: |
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Ordinary thinking has already been filtered out. |
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If you don’t know the examination for what it is, it will turn into conceptual thought; |
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if you do know, it will turn into wisdom – that is, it will look on everything that arises as impermanent, unsatisfactory and not-self. |
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This wisdom or wise reflection, he said, would gradually mature into vipassanā. |
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In contrast to much contemporary use of the term, Luang Por tended to use ‘vipassanā’ to refer to the insight that arises from wise reflection rather than the reflection itself. |
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Vipassanā was not, he said, something contrived, not something you did. |
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Vipassanā was the discernment of the three characteristics that arose naturally in the mind when all the necessary causes and conditions for it had been cultivated. |
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The intensity of this clear seeing could vary from a weak insight to a comprehensive vision of the way things are. |
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The degree of calm necessary before this investigation of the three characteristics could take place was not measurable. |
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When Luang Por was asked, ‘How much calm is needed?’ |
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, he replied, ‘As much as is necessary.’ |
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In other words, meditators were to proceed by trial-and-error and closely observe the results of their efforts until they knew for themselves. |
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If the contemplation degenerated into mental proliferation, then the mind was obviously not strong enough to do the work of wisdom. |
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Meditators had different faculties. |
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Some people found it easy to let go of thinking, but found that the very qualities that made such letting go possible, also retarded the cultivation of wisdom. |
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Others, of a more reflective bent, found that their mind’s gift for contemplation prevented them entering deep states of samādhi, but they were able to penetrate the truth through a close, focused attention on the conditioned nature of phenomena. |
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To illustrate this point, Luang Por adapted two terms from the Suttas – ‘cetovimutti’ (liberation of mind) and ‘paññāvimutti’ (liberation through wisdom). |
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He applied these terms to two paths of practice: |
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one that emphasised the power of mind, i.e. samādhi, and the other that emphasised wisdom. |
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While wisdom-liberation character types were especially sharp and perceptive, the mind-liberation character types needed to take their time and go over the same ground many times before they understood. |
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He gave an analogy: |
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It’s like two people going to look at a cloth pattern for a few minutes. |
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One of them understands the pattern immediately and can go away and reproduce it from memory. |
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This is ‘liberation through wisdom’. |
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The other person, the mind-liberation character, has to sit and ponder on the details of the pattern and go back for further checks. |
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With mind-liberation, you have to work with the mind a fair amount, you have to develop quite a lot of samādhi. |
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The first person doesn’t need to do all that. |
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He looks at the design, understands the principle and then goes off and draws it himself; |
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he has no doubts. |
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Both paths reach the goal, but they have different features. |
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Liberation through wisdom is always accompanied by mindfulness and alertness. |
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When anything emerges in the mind, then it knows; |
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it knows, and then lets go with ease. |
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The mind-liberation person can’t see things as they emerge in that way, he has to investigate them – which is also a valid path. |
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Know your own character. |
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In the first case, some people may not realize that there is samādhi present. |
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You walk along observing, and samādhi – meaning firm stability of mind – is inherently present. |
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For someone with wisdom, it’s not difficult. |
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He just develops enough samādhi to create a foundation. |
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It’s like students reaching grade twelve at school. |
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Now they can choose which subject they want to specialize in. |
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Whoever wants to go on to study agriculture does that and so on. |
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It is the point of separation. |
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Samādhi is the same. |
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It reaches its destination in this same way. |