The Practice Which leads to Nibbana - A Buddhist Library

w 14If the meditator has not attained jhŒna but has only attainedupacŒra concentration by developing the four elements meditationthen he must also begin his discernment of mentality from this samepoint because he does not have the ability to discern the mentalityassociated with jhŒna consciousness.To discern the mentality associated with a wholesome mind doorthought process of the sensual plane (kŒmŒvacara kusala mind doorv´thi) the meditator firstly discerns the mind door which is thebhavaºga citta and then takes the eye transparent element (cakkhupasŒda) as an object.Then when the object of the eye transparent element appears inthe mind door it produces a mind door v´thi.For a sensual plane consciousness the most important factor thatdetermines whether this consciousness is wholesome or unwholesomeis the presence or absence of wise attention (yonisomanasikara) or unwise attention (ayonisomanasikara).If the meditator pays attention to an object and knows it asmateriality, mentality, (rèpa, nŒma) cause or effect, anicca, dukkha,anatta or asubha then this attention is wise attention and it is associatedwith a wholesome consciousness.If the meditator pays attention to an object by way of a conceptsuch as: person, man, woman, being, gold, silver, or as permanent,happiness, or self then this is unwise attention and it will be associatedwith an unwholesome consciousness.So the meditator repeats this process again and again and triesto discern the types of mentality, associated with the consciousnessof that mind door process, one at a time in a similar way to the waymentioned earlier for the jhŒna mind door process. So that hediscerns the mentality beginning either with consciousness, feeling,or contact and then develop his understanding until he can discernprogressively one, two, and three types of mentality in each con-