CH43 — Mogok Sayadaw: Present-Aspect Dependent-Origination & the Removal of Diṭṭhi
A different way to read the same day
Imagine this ordinary scene:
You unlock your phone “just for a minute.” On the screen: a red dot, a new message. In the split second before you even read it, the eyes catch color and shape, the mind notes “notification,” a faint tingle of “something’s happening” stirs, and before you know it you’ve opened the thread, replied, and then—fifteen minutes are gone. If the response you got was kind, a warm afterglow lingers; if it was curt, there’s a thread of irritation. Either way, the whole business felt automatic—“I didn’t choose it; it just happened.”
Mogok Sayadaw’s hallmark contribution is to slow down that “just happened,” to re-educate attention so that you can see, as it happens, the small lawful steps that carry the process from contact to feeling to craving to clinging and onward. He takes the grand arc of paṭicca-samuppāda (Dependent Origination) and drops it squarely into the present moment as your living lab. This “present-aspect” emphasis is not a theory to memorize; it is a way to watch your day. And it is surgical: he places the knife exactly where the loop is cut—at feeling before it hardens into craving. In this, Mogok stands squarely inside the classical Theravāda frame: contact conditions feeling; feeling conditions craving; craving conditions clinging; and so on—each step occurring only when conditions combine, with no maker behind the gears, and no effect without its proper causes. Seeing this correctly undermines wrong views (diṭṭhi) at their root by revealing the middle, causal way and the absence of a self-controller in the sequence (DO’s “dependent” denies eternalist and no-cause views, while “origination” denies annihilationism and moral-inefficacy doctrines).
Below is a practitioner’s chapter: a lived walk-through of Mogok’s present-aspect DO, a set of drills, and a full real-world case with troubleshooting for diṭṭhi. The map is classical; the pacing and pedagogy are Mogok.
The logic that keeps you honest (and humble)
Before methods, anchor two premises that Mogok relies on:
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Causality is exact and inescapable. Effects arise from the specific conditions that produce them, “like curd from milk.” Seeing this regularity loosens both the fantasy of a sovereign controller and the despair of fatalism; what happens happens by conditions—and conditions can be known and trained.
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There is no “doer” behind the doing. The chain runs without a hidden maker: ignorance does not mutter “I must produce formations”; formations do not command “Let there be consciousness.” Grasping the absence of a maker abandons self-view (attā-diṭṭhi) and keeps practice precise.
These are not metaphysical claims to “believe.” They are working hypotheses to test in the present scene. Mogok’s confidence rests on the Buddha’s own insistence that DO is the tangled skein we must penetrate, and that practice must be directed to understanding it as it is occurring—not merely as a story of past and future births.
Mogok’s present-aspect lens: exactly where to look
In present-aspect practice, the relevant slice is the sense-door event: eye + form → eye-consciousness; ear + sound → ear-consciousness; etc. At that micro-moment of contact, feeling is born. Crucially, the “bare” registration at the five external doors (eye, ear, nose, tongue) is neutral—upekkhā vedanā—at the point of “just seeing,” “just hearing,” “just smelling,” “just tasting.” Pleasant and unpleasant immediately enter the picture through the body door (physical comfort/discomfort) and then as mental feelings (somanassa/domanassa) when the mind reacts and colors the experience. Getting this sequence straight is the spine of Mogok’s method.
Two practical corollaries:
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Only one consciousness arises at a time. You cannot “see and hear and think” in a single mind-moment. Momentariness lets you catch the handoff from contact → feeling → reaction with more resolution.
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Nāma “bends” to object; rūpa changes under conditions. When you want to check the phone (nāma), the body moves (rūpa). The relation is lawful, not personal; mind inclines, matter responds. This supplies a plain-language handle for non-self (anattā): “Master” is simply the mind’s leaning, not a permanent owner; “slave” is simply the body’s changing responsiveness.
The cut-point Mogok insists on: vedanā → taṇhā
Mogok’s “surgeon’s preference” is simple: intercept at feeling. Why there? Because feeling is the pivot where the lawful, impersonal process most often becomes personal, sticky, and selfing. The mind surfaces a half-felt warmth (or rub) and slides into wanting (taṇhā) or pushing away, then doubles down into clinging (upādāna)—either sensual, or view-based, or ritual-habit, or self-view. From there, fresh kamma accumulates, and “becoming” (kammabhava) plants seeds for future results.
Two teaching-grade details that Mogok emphasizes:
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“Initial contact is neutral.” That red dot doesn’t feel good or bad at the bare seeing moment; pleasant or unpleasant blooms as the mind adds meaning, memory, and comparison. Noting this helps you catch the exact instant when the mind starts to want.
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Clinging splits in two families. Kāmupādāna (“I want more of the five strands”) is greed-driven; the other three—diṭṭhi-upādāna (views), sīlabbata-upādāna (empty practices), and attavādu-upādāna (self-doctrines)—are view-driven. Mogok is relentless about the view trio because they hide inside “spiritual” habits and sustain wrong view even when sensual greed is quiet.
This is not moralizing; it’s mechanics. The craft is to notice earlier and do less—to keep feeling as feeling, without recruiting wanting and clinging.
The lab: a 15-minute Mogok session (do it anywhere)
Set: Sit or stand. Don’t strive for special calm. You are going to watch one sense-door for five minutes at a time.
1) Door choice (5 minutes).
Pick the eye door if you’re at a screen, the ear door if you’re outside or in a café, or the body door if you’re sore or restless. For these five minutes, treat this door as your microscope. When contact happens, whisper in your mind:
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“just seeing” / “just hearing” / “just touching.”
This phrase encodes two claims you are testing: (a) that the feeling at this bare moment is neutral (upekkhā), and (b) that only one thing is happening right now—this, then the next.
2) Vedanā read-out (5 minutes).
Now, when you notice pleasant/unpleasant/neutral tones, label only the tone—“pleasant,” “unpleasant,” or “neutral.” Do not chase content. You are learning that tone follows contact, and that its flavor is highly conditioned by context: posture, memory, expectation. This discipline reads the hinge in DO—feeling—without promoting it to a self story.
3) The craving ping (2 minutes—fast, sharp).
In these two minutes, be especially interested in the first wanting—the micro-lean of mind that tries to taste more of the pleasant, to end the unpleasant, or to stay in the middle. Note “wanting,” “resisting,” or “numbing.” You are catching taṇhā at its birth. This is the pivot Mogok points to again and again.
4) Letting it be (3 minutes—quiet).
For the last three minutes, practice doing nothing extra: allow contact, label tone, and don’t follow. Watch tone change on its own. This is where seeing causal regularity undercuts wrong view: you witness that tones shift with conditions, not by a controller’s decree.
Repeat this lab across your day. Five such micro-sessions accomplish more for Mogok-style insight than one heroic hour of vague concentration. The point is not to become a professional labeler; it is to train the timing of attention so it habitually notices vedanā before it turns to taṇhā.
Real-world case study: “The Red Dot”
Let’s run the opening vignette as a full Mogok walk-through. Suppose: You’re mid-task at work. A red dot appears on your phone.
1) Contact (phassa) at the eye door.
Eye + visible form → eye-consciousness. Mogok would have you say, simply, “just seeing.” At this exact door, the tone is neutral. There is no sweetness or sting yet; it’s a dot.
2) Feeling (vedanā) arises.
Because you’ve had good news from similar dots before, a pleasant mental tone bubbles up. Or perhaps you have a difficult project pending, and a subtle unpleasant tone surfaces (“Please don’t be from the client”). Either way, the rule is the same: feeling follows contact and is colored by conditions. Label it: “pleasant” or “unpleasant.”
3) Craving (taṇhā) tilts the mind.
If pleasant, the mind leans: “Open it now.” If unpleasant, it leans differently: “Make it stop.” This is the first wanting. If you’re trained, you catch it and name it: “wanting.” Here you put the scalpel: stay with feeling without feeding wanting.
4) Clinging (upādāna) attempts to lock in.
If you didn’t catch wanting, clinging consolidates: “I need to know,” or “I must avoid this.” Notice how quickly views join: “They shouldn’t message me during focus time”; “I’m the kind of person who….” Mogok stresses that three of the four clinging types are view-based (diṭṭhi-family): self doctrines, ritualized habits taken as salvific, and philosophical opinions. These hide inside “reasonable” inner talk and keep the wheel spinning.
5) Kammabhava (doing that plants seeds).
Unread dot → you open → you reply with a bit of heat. These are present bodily/verbal/mental actions that lay tracks. Classic analysis distinguishes present action (kammabhava) from past formations (saṅkhāra); the present can still be steered—its result hasn’t yet ripened, which is exactly why Mogok aims here. “With the help of a good teacher and practice, it can be made fruitless.”
That’s the loop. In a Mogok day, you interrupt it not by force but by timely seeing. “Just seeing → tone → wanting?” Catch it at tone; let tone move on; watch the wanting not take hold. The wheel keeps turning on its lawful bearings without you climbing aboard.
What this does to diṭṭhi (wrong views)
Mogok’s method is not only about moment-to-moment hygiene. It is also the quickest way to dislodge diṭṭhi (wrong views). How?
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It removes the hidden “maker.” You witness functions performing their jobs without any “I” commanding them. That is the method of uninterestedness: neither ignorance nor formations is a person making things happen. Self-view weakens.
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It shows the exact regularity of cause → fruit. Seeing “fruit according with condition” abandons fatalism and no-cause theories (and their cousins in today’s language: “It’s just random,” “It’s all fixed”).
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It walks the middle way. “Dependent” rules out eternalism (“This is fixed/self/soul”), and “origination” rules out annihilationism and moral-inefficacy (“Nothing matters; there’s no fruit to action”). DO, taken together, threads the “neither same person acts and reaps” nor “one acts while another reaps” extremes.
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It turns the Four Noble Truths from ideas into penetration. The Visuddhimagga notes that “knowledge as penetration” grasps the four truths as functions in this very seeing—suffering understood, craving abandoned, cessation tasted, path developed. Even at the mundane level, knowledge of suffering forestalls self-theories; knowledge of origin forestalls wrong cause-theories (Overlord, Time, Nature, Fate); knowledge of cessation forestalls eternity-views; knowledge of path forestalls “actions are futile.” Mogok’s lab literally trains these knowledges by timing attention at vedanā.
When this is seen, diṭṭhi does not need to be argued with. It can’t breathe in a room where experience is read as conditioned, momentary, and ownerless.
Step-by-step pedagogy (how Mogok would teach a week)
Day 1–2: Contact → Tone Literacy.
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Practice the 15-minute lab, three times a day, rotating doors.
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Homework: Keep a tiny log with three columns: door / tone / what happened next. The aim is to verify neutrality at “just seeing” and to notice how quickly mind adds story.
Day 3–4: Wanting Watch.
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Same lab, but with a bell every 60 seconds: at the ding, ask “Was there wanting?” If yes, which flavor: pull for pleasant, push from unpleasant, drift in neutral. You are mapping taṇhā in real time.
Day 5–6: Clinging Diagnostics.
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After the lab, write one sentence capturing any view that appeared (e.g., “I deserve peace,” “They should reply fast,” “I am a focused person”). Classify it: is this self-view, ritual-habit view, or general philosophical opinion about how things are? This is Mogok’s special X-ray: it reveals how diṭṭhi sneaks in dressed as “common sense.”
Day 7: Causality Day.
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Read your logs. For every “what happened next,” ask, “What condition set this up?” Fatigue? Hunger? Past rewards associated with the red dot? You are teaching yourself ineluctable regularity: fruit follows condition; change conditions, change fruit.
By the end of a week, you will already feel a quiet change: more room between tone and wanting, and far fewer loops you “wake up” inside too late.
Troubleshooting diṭṭhi in the wild
Problem 1: “I can’t help it; it’s automatic.”
Fix (Mogok): Great—that’s the point. Treat it as a strength. Since only one consciousness arises at a time, you have a shot at catching the next one. Get closer to the birth of tone; don’t start at storyline.
Problem 2: “I’m the kind of person who always checks.”
Fix: That sentence is attavādu-upādāna (self-doctrine clinging) masquerading as personality science. Label it as a view, not a fact. Then return to conditions: sleep, stress, the app’s design, past rewards. The wheel moves by conditions, not by identities.
Problem 3: “If everything’s conditioned, nothing matters.”
Fix: That’s the no-cause / ineffectual action view. DO shows the opposite: actions matter because effects follow causes. Seeing this precisely is how you abandon both despair and magical thinking.
Problem 4: “I’ll beat craving by sheer willpower.”
Fix: That installs a hidden maker—another form of self-view. Instead, train the timing of attention to feel tone early and do less. The system de-escalates on its own when not fed.
Problem 5: “My meditation is about bliss, not this gritty watching.”
Fix: Mogok does not oppose serenity; he places it in service of seeing. The classical path details how insight begins with defining nāma-rūpa, discerning conditions, then contemplating rise and fall—until the supramundane path cuts craving at the root. Present-aspect DO is that discernment engine.
A second case: irritation at a colleague (ear door, body door)
You’re in a meeting. A colleague interrupts you.
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Ear door contact: “just hearing”—neutral tone at the bare register.
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Body door tone: a clench in the chest (unpleasant physical feeling). Label unpleasant.
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Mental tone: domino of mental displeasure (domanassa) follows. Label unpleasant (mind).
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Taṇhā: the urge to retort. Label wanting (to end unpleasant, to assert control).
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Upādāna: a view locks in—“People shouldn’t interrupt me.” See it as diṭṭhi-upādāna (view-clinging), not as a moral truth of the universe.
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Kammabhava: you choose silence and a neutral re-entry: “Let me finish the point; then I’m happy to hear yours.” You altered present action; therefore you altered the seedbed. The result of present kamma has not yet ripened—good news—it can still be made fruitless through wise restraint.
Over time, this re-wires the pattern toward less clinging and more clarity.
How Mogok harmonizes with the classical wheel (and why it matters)
Mogok’s “present-aspect” is not a new chain; it is the same wheel in high resolution, seen at the level of immediate events. The Visuddhimagga names this the Wheel of Becoming and insists it is profound and the exit from the “knotted ball of thread” only comes by severing it with knowledge honed on concentration. Mogok is simply saying: your phone, your colleague’s interruption, your aching knee—this is the stone on which you whet that knife.
Two classical cross-checks that Mogok’s lab constantly illustrates:
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Sacca & DO are inseparable in practice. “He who sees suffering sees origin, cessation, and the path.” When you catch tone and don’t feed craving, you are literally leaving suffering un-originated in that moment; you are tasting a localized cessation and walking the way that leads to its expansion.
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Saṅkhāra ≠ Kammabhava. Past formations produced this setup; your present actions (body/voice/mind) are new, modifiable seeds. This distinction keeps the practice sober: you are not condemned by past causes; you are responsible for present ones.
Advanced drill: “Micro-frames” through the day
Pick one 90-minute block at work.
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Frame A (first 30 min): Eye door dominant—every time something visually salient pops, whisper “just seeing,” tag tone, and pause one breath before any action.
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Frame B (next 30 min): Body door dominant—check in every five minutes, label the strongest bodily tone, and ask, “What condition is feeding this tone?” (chair, temperature, deadline).
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Frame C (last 30 min): Ear door dominant—whenever a sound interrupts, label “just hearing,” tag tone, and note any first wanting.
This yields a map of your conditioned day and demonstrates that the “self” you defend is, in experience, an aggregate-stream responding by conditions. (It is also a live demonstration of how identifying with any aggregate breeds dukkha; the classical warning not to cling to any khandha is precisely what the micro-frames make obvious.)
Where this goes (and what it feels like)
With months of Mogok-style present-aspect training, several things come together:
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Earlier noticing, lighter touch. Vedanā is seen before wanting hardens. Tones are held like weather: interesting, not commanding.
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View quiets. The trio of view-clinging—self-stories, empty “rituals,” and big opinions—loses its grip because you have evidence that experience moves by conditions.
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A stable middle. Eternalist/annihilationist swings calm down. You trust causality without worshiping control.
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Courage increases. Because you see that present action is modifiable, it becomes natural to choose wholesome bodily, verbal, and mental kamma—this is the sīla that protects samādhi and supports paññā. The three training arcs function as one living system.
None of this requires exotic attainments to begin. It requires fidelity to a simple lab: door → tone → wanting?—again and again, across ordinary hours.
A note on depth and safety
Mogok did not trivialize DO; he de-mystified the entry point. The classical texts warn that DO is profound, and that people get snarled in it when they try to solve it as an abstract puzzle. The safeguard is practice directed to present conditions. The warning signs of overreach are grand metaphysical claims and moral-inefficacy talk; the antidote is, again, “What conditioned this? What action is skillful now?”
Closing: How to read today like Mogok
Go back to the red dot. The next time it flashes:
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Whisper “just seeing.” (Neutral at the sense door.)
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Tag the tone as it blooms. (Pleasant/unpleasant/neutral.)
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Catch the first wanting. (Name it; don’t feed it.)
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Notice any view sentence hitching a ride. (Classify it; let it go.)
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Choose a small wholesome action—maybe one breath before touching the phone. (Present kamma is still steerable.)
Do this fifty times and the day reads differently. Do it five hundred times and whole months tilt. Mogok Sayadaw’s gift is not another theory but a way to put your eyes and hands where the wheel can be felt—and released. As the Visuddhimagga summarizes: practice to “find a footing in the deeps of the dependent origin.” That footing is your next contact, your next feeling, and the choice not to turn tone into bondage.
Selected sources (embedded above):
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On DO’s middle-way function and wrong-view prevention; on profundity and method: Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification) XVII–XVIII.
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On contact → feeling typology and initial neutrality; on craving/clinging types; on modifiability of present kamma: Law of Dependent Origination—12 links (with references).
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On one-consciousness-at-a-time and nāma-rūpa dynamics: ibid.
(End of CH43)
