The ‘world’ means a ‘suffering’ (dukkha). The world becomes a suffering because everything that exists in the world is subject to impermanence. Due to regarding as permanent the impermanent world, you endure suffering. At this very moment why you break sweat and exert yourself staying up at night, why you give alms, why you perform meritorious activities, why you seek for variety, is to escape that suffering. Suffering is not something that belongs to you. Suffering belongs to the world. You have taken into your possession the suffering which belongs to the world. Even if you searched every nook and cranny of this entire universe, you wouldn’t find anything other than a rūpa (material form) made up of its constituent parts―earth element, water element, heat element and air element―and changes constantly. ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘you’… no such person will be found anywhere. If you have thus far met or associated with a person called ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘you’, they are all, or have all been, a group continually subject to ageing, illness and death by means of the continuum of dependent-origination. When your grandpa, grandma, aunt, uncle, mum, dad passes on, the son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter grows up.

What for? ―to someday become grandmothers and grandfathers.

We keep running around this cycle―this vicious circle―of dependent-origination. We have no escape. The cycle denotes the world. In the world, beings keep running. Since this is a cycle, no one can escape from it. You’ve got to extinguish the whole cycle if you need to escape from this world. When running in this cycle we see that the world is beautiful. In truth, there is indeed beauty in the world. You see it, touch it, feel it.

Look at the night sky, the full moon which shines in the night sky with a halo cast up, or else the colourful rainbow formed in sullen skies. Recollect the place of pilgrimage in Anuradhapura or Kataragama on a weekend or the splendours of a five-star hotel or a nightclub at night…

What a great deal of enjoyment (assāda) you feel in these things! What you thusly see as ‘beauty’ is the ‘impermanence’. For all these things change from moment to moment. The state prevailing at this moment changes at the very next moment and creates diversity. What gives rise to this ‘beauty’ before your eyes is the said diversity. If these rūpa won’t become impermanent and remain permanent instead, then you won’t see any diversity in them. It is only because rūpa becomes impermanent that you feel this diversity, this aesthetic wonder.

At the same rate rūpa becomes impermanent, feelings (vedanā), too, become impermanent. Why? Because a mind forms due to the phassa (sense-contact) between two rūpa.[i] Since the mind which forms due to sense-contact between internal and external rūpa is also impermanent, you get deceived into thinking ‘beauty’ is for real; you perceive a permanent nature in it. If the internal rūpa is the mother, the external rūpa is the father. And the child born by the sense-contact between the two of them is the ‘mind’.[ii] Just like in the mother and the father, in the child, too, there is nothing but a mere velocity. Just so when the mother-father passes on we make the wife-children ‘mine’, so too when the mind becomes impermanent a concatenation of more and more minds is proliferated. The six internal faculties which cause minds to originate are just like six factories; in operation twenty-four seven. The instant the external rūpa are supplied to these factories, the goods are ready. These six faculties have the world’s fastest capacity for production. The moment the external rūpa which are the raw materials transported from the outside reach one of the six faculties, the end product is ready. That end product is the ‘mind’. So complex a process this is that without paññā you can’t even imagine it.[iii]

It is due to the high-velocity process of mind formation that the complexity of the world has come into being. Depending on the level of craving (tanhā), this factory guarantees the supply to meet the demand. The higher the production, the more the complexity. This complexity is also known as ‘material advancement’.[iv] It is purely due to the complexity of the minds that become impermanent that concrete jungles get erected destroying the natural world, incivility is born destroying civility, competitiveness comes into being defeating moderation, and material values pervade stunting spiritual values. You become a slave to this complexity that is born in dependence of ignorance (avijjā). It is tanhā that enslaves you, makes you a servant of this complexity. The shapes, form, colour, flavour and character of avijjā and tanhā are well reflected in the functioning of the minds formed. Just so the features and character of the mother and father exist in the child, so too the shapes of avijjā manifest well in the functioning of the world. Avijjā and tanhā are like two rascals that deceive you. Further and further you proceed on this excursion, they bestow honorary designations upon you. ‘The affluent person’, ‘the millionaire’, ‘the merchant’, ‘ruler’, ‘leader’, ‘chairperson’, and so on.

The above sections are present in various social strata. The vendor of the corner shop in the village is called ‘the merchant’. The owner of the wholesale store downtown is also called ‘the merchant’. Avijjā bestows honorary titles regardless of the social strata. My goodness! What grandeur, pride, greatness! Highly acclaimed! ‘My husband is a big shot, an executive’, ‘my husband owns a factory’, ‘my husband is in America’… we’d say with such pride. As you say this, although you can’t feel it, tanhā and māna dribble down either side of your mouth. It is even more disgusting than foul spittle. To someone who develops paññā, this may be so repulsive a sight. Every moment the pleasures you aim for become impermanent. You lose them. At the same rate as you lose them, forfeit them, you employ tactics to regain them over and over again.[v] The mind provides you with various advice, just like a legal advocate greedy for money. The mind knows how to prove that the banana blossom is also a flower just as the lotus flower is. The mind can make a grandmother past the age of 60 appear a young woman in her prime. It can make a man appear as a woman. The mind has specialist knowledge for these things. The instinct from having studied for billions of eons the subject of tanhā at the avijjā-tuition classes flows along with the arising and passing mind.

Think of a frog. That creature lives equally in water, in mud, on land and inside a house, clinging to all these places regarding them as a ‘pleasure’. And like so, the mind too clings to every place it comes into contact with. That’s why it is said the mind is your friend who gives you suffering. Regard this friend with suspicion. Then you will sense and understand well this friend’s movements, his comings and goings. Just as he is a two-timing judas, a turncoat, a two-faced hypocrite, an absolute pig, or a psychopath, sometimes he is one of virtuousness, one of righteousness.

This duplicitous, two-faced behaviour will be revealed to you. If you were to come across such a duplicitous friend as this, you’d distance yourself from him or beware of him, wouldn’t you? Like so, study the duplicitous behaviour of the mind. Conduct this study privately without burdening yourself unnecessarily. Thereupon, you will feel a change in your life. You’ll feel that you are discovering something, discerning something. The complexity in your life will grow apart from you. All you have to do is seeing again and again the impermanence of the mind. Here, what is mentioned as the mind is simply the phenomena of the five aggregates that are the objects of clinging―that is, form, feeling, perception, volitional formation, and consciousness.

[i] The two rūpa denote internal rūpa (internal form) and external rūpa (external form). Internal rūpa means one of the six internal faculties―eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind, and the external rūpa means the corresponding external faculty―sight, sound, smell, taste, touch or minds (thoughts).

[ii] At the point when external form meets internal form, consciousness (viññāna, or ‘mind’) comes into being. For instance, when sight meets the eye, the eye-consciousness arises. And likewise with the other five faculties―ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. Therefore, the external form and internal form would be the conditions upon which consciousness arises. Thus, it is said a mind (the child) is born at the point of the sense-contact between internal rūpa (the mother) and external rūpa (the father).

   “Consciousness is called after the conditions due to which it arises. When consciousness arises due to eye and forms, it is called eye-consciousness; due to ear and sounds, ear-consciousness; ... due to mind and ideas, mind-consciousness.” [Mahātanhāsaṅkaya Sutta, MN.(38)] *

   * trans. by Ven. Ñānamoli―“The Life of the Buddha: According to the Pāli Canon”. BPS, 1992 ed.

[iii] In dependence of the eye and visible forms, ‘eye-consciousness’ arises. The coincidence of the three (eye, visible forms, and eye-consciousness) is called ‘sense-contact’. And so is the case with the ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. This process happens at an extremely high-velocity―so much so that the moment we see something, eye-consciousness arises. And not just one but a concatenation of consciousness may follow one after the other. The very next moment if we think of something, instead of eye-consciousness, mind-consciousness arises and a concatenation of consciousness follows. Not only that but also, with sense-contact as its condition, feeling arises. Feeling, perception and consciousness are conjoined, and it is not possible to separate them. With feeling as its condition, craving arises. Like so, the process of mind formation takes place with such complexity that one cannot even imagine it without insight wisdom (paññā). Thus, it is said:

   “Dependent on eye and visible forms, eye-consciousness arises; the coincidence of the three is contact; with contact as condition, feeling; with feeling as condition, craving; that is how there is an origin to suffering (and so with ear ... mind).” [Abhisamayasaŋyutta, Dukkha Sutta, SN.(12:43)] *

   “Feeling, perception and consciousness are conjoined, not disjoined, and it is impossible to separate each from each in order to describe their different potentialities; for what one feels, that one perceives, and what one perceives, that one cognizes. …” [Mahāvedalla Sutta, MN.(43)] *

   “It would be better for an untaught ordinary man to treat as self this body, which is constructed upon the four great entities, than mentality (citta). Why? Because this body can last one year, two years ... a hundred years; but what is called ‘mentality’ and ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ arises and ceases differently through night and day, just as a monkey ranging through a forest seizes a branch, and, letting that go, seizes another.” [Abhisamayasaŋyutta, Assutavantu Sutta, SN.(12:61)] *

   * trans. by Ven. Ñānamoli―“The Life of the Buddha: According to the Pāli Canon”. BPS, 1992 ed.

[iv] That is to say, ‘The greater the proliferation [of minds], the more the complexity [of the world]. This complexity [of the world] is also known as ‘material advancement’ [of the world]’.

[v] That is to say, as pleasures you aim for become impermanent (i.e. as you lose them), the mind employs all kinds of tactics to regain them again and again.