I’ll ask you a question, ascetic. If you won’t answer me, I’ll drive you insane or I’ll split your heart or I’ll grab you by the feet and hurl you across the Ganges. – The yakka Såciloma taunts the Buddha Såciloma Sutta.

PEMASIRI THERA: When we talk about mentality-materiality, we also have to talk about consciousness. Mentality-materiality, nàma-råpa, and consciousness, vi¤¤àõa, must be talked about together because mentality-materiality and consciousness arise together and are not easily separated. “Just as two sheaves of reeds might stand leaning against each other,” said Venerable Sàriputta, “so too, dependent on mentality-materiality, consciousness arises; and dependent on consciousness, mentality-materiality arises.” Vi¤¤àõa has to be there for the nàma-dhammas and råpa-dhammas to arise, and vice versa. They are built upon each other.

Even though mentality-materiality and consciousness arise together, mutually support one another, we still have to differentiate between the characteristics of mentality, materiality, and consciousness. There are differences between them.

MENTALITY

Mentality, nàma, means leaning or bending towards the object that’s why the word nàma is used. Then there is a bending towards the form, the råpa, and a bending towards vedanà, feeling.

David: Isn’t mentality basically the mental factors, the cetasikas?

Yes, in a moment of consciousness, when vi¤¤àõa knows an object, five mental factors arise:

1. Contact, phassa
2. Feeling, vedanà
3. Perception, sa¤¤à
4. Volition, cetanà
5. Attention, manasikàra

These five mental factors are regularly designated as mentality, nàma. Since these five arise along with a moment of consciousness, they are called concomitant mental factors, cetasika. Concomitants function together along with a moment of consciousness. They arise simultaneously. In most moments of consciousness, at least seven concomitant mental factors arise. To the five already mentioned, we add:

12. Mental essence, jãvita
13. One-pointedness of mind, citta-ekaggatà

These seven mental factors continue to arise whether we are sound asleep, anaesthetized, or in a coma. The seven are in operation just two or three moments after a rebirth consciousness arises in a mother’s womb and conception takes place. The mass that is present in the mother’s womb in those first few moments cannot be called a baby. The mass doesn’t seem to be alive. But as soon as the rebirth consciousness has died and new moments of consciousness are arising, these seven factors of mentality, the cetasika, are also arising. Generally, however, far more than seven mental factors arise along with a moment of consciousness feelings, perceptions, and fifty different types of mental formations numerous mental factors can potentially arise. With a beneficial moment of consciousness, dozens of mental factors arise. Or when we indulge in hating someone, roughly twenty-seven mental factors arise. In a jhàna moment of consciousness, relatively few mental factors arise.

Can one mental factor operate independently?

Why do you ask this question?

Well, I know that I have feelings. Seems clear enough. I enjoy the company of some people and can’t stand some other people. There are types of food that are a pleasure to eat and types of food that are a real chore to get down. Happiness. Sadness. I see all these feelings as being quite distinct from any of my perceptions and even my volitions. It sure seems that these mental factors are acting independently.

There have to be a couple mental factors working together for mentality, for nàma, to take place. One cetasika cannot operate independently by itself or in isolation. No. Many mental factors operate together, with different ones operating every now and again and at varying levels of strength. When we meet a friend, the mental factors of feeling, vedanà, and contact, phassa, are both present in our minds, but the factor of feeling, our pleasant feeling of happiness, is stronger than the factor of contact. When we meet a stranger, however, the mental factors of volition, cetanà, and perception, sa¤¤à, dominate our minds. We speculate, “Who is this stranger?”, “Where did he come from?” and “Why is he here?” The mental factors of feeling and contact are still present when we meet a stranger, but the factors of volition and perception are stronger. We give strangers second class treatment.

MATERIALITY

Whether we are talking about our current life in this five sense sphere world or talking about the brahmà-lokas, we have to talk about materiality, råpa. Our materiality consists of four primary elements, cattàro-mahà-båtàm, and twenty-four secondary forms of materiality, the upàdà-råpa, which include our material sense doors eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. The four primary elements:

1. Earth element, pañhavã-dhàtu
2. Water element, àpo-dhàtu
3. Fire element, tejo-dhàtu
4. Air element, vàjo-dhàtu

Wherever the earth element is present, water, fire, and air elements are also present. Each element has its own characteristic earth has solidity, water has cohesion, fire has heating, and air has lightness and motion. When doing walking meditation, the thought comes to raise the foot and then a sensation of lightness occurs in the foot. That is the air element. The heat of the fire element un-sticks the foot from the ground, the lightness of the air element lifts and moves the foot forward, and the solidity of the earth element brings the foot down. And it’s the cohesiveness of the water element that sticks the foot back onto the ground. All four elements are at work.

As I raise my foot, am I creating new material?

The materiality of the four primary elements earth, water, fire, and air is already present and from it similar secondary materiality, the upàdà-råpa, is produced. Throughout our lives, four causes are constantly producing new materiality:

1. Kamma
2. Mind, citta
3. Nutriment, àhàra
4. Temperature, utu

First, you have the volition to raise your foot and then new råpa form as you raise it. It’s your mind that is producing the materiality, the råpa, as opposed to your kamma producing the råpa. New materiality continues to arise as long as there is sufficient nutriment and a suitable temperature. The workers just planted some bamboo shoots next to the pond. When I looked in on them yesterday, the shoots were six inches tall; today, they are a foot tall; and tomorrow, they will likely be a foot and a half tall. Bamboo shoots grow and are maintained by nutriment and warmth. They are growing so fast you can almost see them growing.
Even though every possible form of materiality produced has the same four primary elements as its basic building blocks, every form of materiality has a unique set of materiality, a different type of råpa, associated with it. For example, a bamboo shoots materiality is unique to bamboo; a chimpanzee’s råpa is unique to chimpanzees; and a human’s materiality is unique to humans. Bamboo, chimpanzees, humans, Brahmas etc. each is characterized by its different and unique type of materiality. Despite chimpanzees and humans both being mammals, the materiality of a chimpanzee is different from the materiality of a human.

Do women differ from men?

Of course they’re different little boys play with toy guns while little girls play with dolls; women often have gender specific roles in society; their bodies, voices, ways of walking and moving, ways of thinking and talking, dressing, jewelry, and behavior are all different. You’ll find Venerable Nerada’s book on the Abhidhamma useful, as he explains how bhàva-råpa produces male and female appearances and characteristics. Bhàva-råpa is subatomic, smaller than hormones, and can only be seen in the highest jhàna.

There’s no need, however, to dig too deeply into the differences between men and women, else you’re just fooling yourself and reinforcing harmful measurements. It’s better to be objective and see the reasons for the arising of your defilements from ignorance, hate, and lust. In the Dhammapada Commentary, you’ll find the story of a man named Sorreya who transformed into a woman, and then after many years transformed back again into a man. This all happened within one single body and within one life. First as a man, the male-Sorreya had two sons, and then as a woman, the female-Sorreyà had another two sons. Four sons in total. By the time the female-Sorreyà had again transformed back into being the male-Sorreya, the male/female/male-Sorreya was disillusioned with the householder life and decided to ordain. Bhikkhu-Sorreya’s lay supporters then asked him, “Was it better to be a woman or better to be a man?” Initially, he said, “Being a woman is certainly better than being a man! With all my heart, I love the two sons that came from my womb.” However, Bhikkhu-Sorreya soon attained arahatship and then, when asked the same question about gender superiority and love of sons, he gave a different reply, “Being a woman is the same as being a man, and I am free of bonds to all four sons.”

David, you think you are a man. Men generally think they are men in the same way as women think they are women, and it’s this distorted sa¤¤a, perception, that controls approach between men and women. A woman’s blood is female and a man’s blood is male. If a woman donates blood to a man, then in time her female blood transforms into male blood. Materiality changes.

Materiality arises in an enormous range of forms, from gross to subtle to bizarre. The material world the external objects that we see, hear, smell, and taste has gross forms of materiality; our bodies and our sense doors in this life that we’re now leading have both gross and subtle forms of materiality; and the fine-material jhànas have only subtle forms of materiality. We could spend many days talking about råpa-dhammas. There is the life-force materiality and the nutrition materiality, which sustains all our other forms of materiality. There is also lahutà, material agility, and mudutà, material elasticity; and àkàsa, illuminated space. These are real forms of materiality that go along with certain mental factors. When conditions are suitable, the materiality of a science fiction type of animal can arise in a human womb with the head of a fish, nose of an elephant, mouth of a lion, and tail of a peacock. Bizarre things can happen in the story of nàma-råpa. And there are planes of being where materiality doesn’t even arise, where only the nàma-dhammas are at work without any rupa-dhammas. There are worlds without råpa. In the arupa-lokas, the immaterial planes, the materiality aspect is totally out. We have to acknowledge those worlds too.

I can assume that those worlds exist!

MENTALITY AND MATERIALITY

As a human, you’re four primary elements earth, water, fire, and air and what else?

I don’t know.

Think! You’re materiality, råpa, and what else? We just talked about it.

Sorry.

Mentality! Nàma.

• You are mentality and earth
• You are mentality and water
• You are mentality and fire
• You are mentality and air

Don’t confuse mentality with materiality; they’re not the same. Nonetheless, arising at the same time, mentality and materiality are both connected and unconnected. They are separate with their own distinct characteristics; yet they act together and are inseparable. To help us understand this apparent contradiction, connected versus unconnected, separate versus inseparable, we compare ourselves to a cup of tea. A cup of tea is made by pouring hot water over some tea leaves, and then adding lots of milk and sugar. After the hot water connects together the tea, milk, and sugar, we pour the brew into a cup. The tea, milk, and sugar, connected by the hot water, are comparable to the mental factors of our mentality; and the cup is comparable to our bodies, our materiality. Normally, we just see the cup of tea as a cup of tea; that’s our ordinary perception, our sanna. And of course, there’s no denying that it’s definitely a cup of tea. That’s conventional reality. Nevertheless, even with an unconcentrated mind and without much effort, we can also see that a cup of tea has its separate parts tea, milk, sugar, water, and a cup. In the same way, we normally see ourselves as a whole person. But unlike the cup of tea, we only see ourselves as a whole person and fail to see that this person is composed of separate parts. Through the practice of vipassanà, with thorough investigation, we penetrate the nature of mentality-materiality, separate mentality from materiality, and separate the mental factors from each other. This insight knowledge arises when our sati is well developed.

MENTALITY, MATERIALITY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS

We now bring in consciousness, vi¤¤àõa.

Oh, I wonder why it’s so important to make these subtle distinctions. Does consciousness operate separately from mentality?

You can look at vi¤¤àõa as operating separately from mentality. When the nàma-dhammas of mentality contact, feeling, perception, volition, attention, and the rest are in operation, consciousness is inactive; and when the nàma-dhammas of mentality aren’t in operation, consciousness, vi¤¤àõa, again becomes active. Sometimes we do have attention, manasikàra, and sometimes we don’t have manasikàra. When we do have manasikàra, vi¤¤àõa is inactive, silent. Does that help? Are you following? Or, you can look at consciousness as operating along with mentality. One aspect of the nàma-dhammas is phassa, the mental contact. As one of his duties here at our centre, Piumantha has to climb to the tops of coconut trees to cut down coconuts. When you see Piumantha high up in the tree, perched precariously thirty feet above the ground, you are afraid and shivers run down your spine. The fear that arises in you for Piumantha’s safety is vi¤¤àõa operating along with phassa. It was vi¤¤àõa that saw Piumantha high up in the coconut tree, and then the fear that you felt was the phassa and the vi¤¤àõa acting together. When we’re afraid of something, there is always the mental factor of feeling linked to that fear.

Is mentality-materiality a single unit?

No. We can’t say that nàma-råpa is a single identifiable unit because numerous and differing mental factors are always operating together. With mentality-materiality, there’s a dynamic mix of things going on. We could however say that vi¤¤àõa is a single unit if we remember that consciousness is inactive and has no inherent characteristics of its own. Consciousness only arises in dependence with existing mentality-materiality, which means the characteristics of a consciousness are the characteristics of the objects that it knows at that certain moment. Don’t think that vi¤¤àõa has its own unique characteristics. Whatever mentality and materiality link together to form a unified object, a consciousness knows that formation, gives rise to more mentality-materiality, and then that single unit of consciousness dies. Right now, my bladder is full and I feel a need to go to the toilet. It occurs to me that I better excuse myself because a vi¤¤àõa knows the mental factors of feeling, vedanà, and contact, phassa, that are presently taking place in my body. A vi¤¤àõa comes out of those nàma-dhammas and I know that it’s time to go the toilet. I’ve got to get my body, my råpa-dhammas going!

Now that I’ve gone to the toilet, all those old feelings and contacts connected with the full bladder have died. The old nàma-dhammas, as well as the old råpa-dhammas and that old vi¤¤àõa everything has died and in its place another set, a new set of nàma-dhammas and råpa-dhammas and a new vi¤¤àõa has arisen. A vi¤¤àõa connected to a fresh cup of tea has arisen. Another example. We can say the body of a lute is the råpa-dhammas part of our story; the lute’s strings are the nàma-dhammas part, and its sound is the vi¤¤àõa part. When a skilled musician strums the strings, beautiful music goes forth. You’ll find the Simile of the Lute Sutta in the Saëàyatana Saüyutta.

There’s a question that needs to be asked. I just said that mentality and materiality give rise to consciousness, that a lute makes sounds. But I also said at the beginning of this talk that consciousness has to be there for the mentality and materiality to arise. How can the sound make the lute? The sound from the lute has come and gone! How can it be that vi¤¤àõa comes about? Because of nàma-råpa? In the teaching on dependent origination, vi¤¤àõa gives rise to nàma-råpa. So, nàma-råpa giving rise to vi¤¤àõa seems the wrong way round. Let’s leave råpa, materiality, aside for the moment.

The lute’s sound is one thing and the knowing of the lute’s sound is a second thing. Nevertheless, the sound and the knowing of the sound cannot be separated. How can sound be known if it isn’t there at the same time as the knowing? Even though we like to think that a vi¤¤àõa and the nàma-dhammas are separate things, they always arise together. Simultaneously.

Okay, the knowing of the sound comes along with the sound itself.

Yes. Understand this one point: Consciousness depends upon mentality-materiality, and mentality-materiality depends upon consciousness. They mutually support each other. As Venerable Sàriputta put it, “If we remove one of the two reeds, the other reed falls down.” Likewise, if we remove mentality-materiality, there won’t be any consciousness. And vice versa: if there is no consciousness, there won’t be any mentality-materiality. We aren’t trying to separate them in any way, are we?

Nàma, råpa, and vi¤¤àõa seem like parts of yet another complicated and abstract Buddhist theory. Not very practical. Why bother?

By discussing the factors of dependent origination, we are trying to convince ourselves that they really exist, that this is in fact the true nature of things. We are hoping a little knowledge will dispel our doubts, open up our minds, and we will attain insight. We are aiming for that goal, aiming ultimately for path knowledge, breaking free from samsàra’s cycle. And if we keep that goal in mind, then okay, it is worth digging into these teachings. If we don’t have that goal in mind, or aren’t at least trying to reduce our suffering, then discussing these factors of dependent origination is nothing more than philosophical speculation, a complete waste of time. And for most people, digging into and tearing apart these teachings is a waste of time and rarely yields any beneficial results, let alone insight knowledge. On the contrary, many people who use brute force to analyse the Buddha’s teachings develop strong views, which is worse than a waste of time!

You can smile and laugh. I don’t find myself laughing a lot when I study this material, as it’s nearly impossible to understand.

That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. You’re overcoming your laziness. Based on sãla and living in a supportive environment, dedicated meditators develop a deep samàdhi, work their way through the fine material jhànas, and see for themselves the nature of mentality-materiality and consciousness. When they remove themselves from the first jhàna, they clearly see the mental factors that arise along with the first jhàna applied and sustained thought, rapture, happiness, and one-pointedness. Through direct experience, meditators penetrate the nature of nàma-råpa and vi¤¤àõa. Destroyed is their doubt. And if meditators have a strong practice, they attain to the immaterial jhànas where they see that materiality, the råpa-sa¤¤à, is out. Meditators who make the right effort have no difficulty with the Buddha’s teachings on dependent origination.

Mentality and materiality we think this combination is stable and lasting, calling it me and mine and self. But from the day we were born right up till now, all our mental states were transient and every part of our bodies changed, died, and was renewed. Our lives are nothing more than a process of mental and material phenomena continually arising. Mentality and materiality are created in change. Anicca. They are impermanent. Yet, we prefer to see them as permanent and we suffer. Dukkha. Mentality and materiality do not maintain themselves according to our wishes. They are beyond our control. Anattà. Just watch. You’ll see that apart from mentality and materiality, there is nothing else. You’ll see that there is no such thing as a me or a mine or a self, just the three characteristics of all conditioned things: anicca, dukkha, anattà. Look, see, and know.

If you were doing a Ph.D. in Buddhism, we would discuss mentality and materiality in far greater detail. We would look at the workings of kamma-vipàka, that’s kamma and its resultants. We’d also look at how nàma-dhammas create nàma-dhammas, how vi¤¤àõa affects nàma-dhammas, how nàma-dhammas sometimes do come along with rupa-dhammas, as in our lives in the kàma-loka, and how nàma-dhammas sometimes don’t come along with rupa-dhammas. You’re not doing a Ph.D. So, this brief introduction to mentality, materiality, and consciousness is more than enough for your practice. Develop your beneficial qualities, build up your Samadhi, and discover for yourself that everything is nothing more than nàma-rupa.