Vitakka and Vicara

Words and Thoughts

There are situations which most people will have experienced which will show the nature of escape from vitakka and vicara in their form as unskillful thoughts. The way they manifest to the ordinary person and which must be got rid of before there can be entry into the first burning:

There is the one case where at one time back there it seemed as though absolutely everyone was saying bad things about one or about one's possessions, or about one's loved ones, and they were saying these things and others were saying equally disagreeable things in retort, and it seemed like one and all were involved and that it would never end and it was beginning to get to you.

And there is the other case where you have gotten into a bad thought concerning some situation or another and the mentally arguing back and forth accompanied by some imaginary scene that is going on in your mind is reaching frightening heat.

A third case is allowing a fantasy, sexual or about food or some other indulgence to obsesses the mind.

Thought of sensual indulgence and angry thoughts. These are occupations of the mind of which one is conscious that are below the first burning.

Word-thought-and-speech and pondering things continue in the first burning, but here are purified of this sort of negative thinking. Here they are primarily concerned with one's Dhamma understanding and the problems related to that.

From the first burning ... from the point of view of the first burning, any other occupation looks like pain, hell even.

And one thinks first ... "Ah! Here their words can no longer reach me." And then, a little later, one may be conscious that here thoughts themselves can no longer reach one, that is the entrance to the second burning.

What one has done is something that most of us have done before: we stop listening to the words or we stop paying attention to the thoughts. Usually this is not a lasting thing. But in the case of emerging from the first burning and entering into and abiding in the second burning, the details should be noted well and the ones that are producing or establishing or maintaining that not listening and that not paying attention need to be developed.