I'll talk a little bit about
meditation practice
and then we can try to do some
afterwards together.
So, I think the most important thing
to realise about meditation practice
is that it's supposed to be
a positive experience.
Right?!
This may seem obvious,
because why else would you want to do it
if it isn't a positive experience?
It may seem obvious,
but as a matter of fact,
many of people don't experience
meditation as a positive experience.
When you start to read
the word of the Buddha,
and you start to see how he explains
what you might call
the psychology of meditation,
how meditation is supposed to be
experienced by yourself,
personally
you start to realize
the incredible emphasis
the Buddha has on this thing
which is called the positive experience.
You'll probably have a look at
one of those suttas later on.
But basically, one of those suttas
which talks about the psychology
of meditation,
when you read it,
it starts off with:
okay,
you are a virtuous person,
this is the foundation of all meditation,
is to practice virtue.
One of the things that unfortunately
is forgotten around the world,
people talk about mindfulness
and they forget about the virtue aspect.
Virtue means both being kind
and avoid doing bad things.
That is the foundation,
so once you have that
you can start your meditation practice
And then, from that virtue,
the Buddha starts to explain
from virtue you have non-regret,
right?
Non-regret is obviously
a positive experience already.
From non-regret you get gladness.
From gladness you get rapture, pīti.
From pīti you get calm,
calm of the mind and the body.
From calm comes even more happiness.
Gladness, rapture, happiness, calm,
and then from that
comes what is called samādhi,
which is the unification of the mind,
when the mind goes into a profound
state of meditation practice.
What you can see there,
one of the very important facts about this
is that meditation is all about happiness!
Almost every word the Buddha uses there
on how were supposed to experience it
is one type of happiness after the other
arising through
the right practice of meditation.
So make sure that when you are here
you don't do things which causes you
to feel ill at ease,
not relaxed
which created too much pain
and all these kind of things.
Because if you do that
there's no way you're going to be able
to access those positive states
that the Buddha is talking about.
This is so important,
and, your know,
it sort of seems obvious,
but I think human psychology
often gets in the way,
human psychology blocks you
from seeing that.
So,
for this reason
the very first thing I want to talk about
in regards to meditation practice
is what to do with the body.
The physical body is really the first thing.
What you need to know
about how to deal
with the physical body
is for the body to be comfortable,
not to sit with too much pain
and these kinds of things.
For this reason we have
all these great chairs at the back.
Don't feel shy about using the chairs.
You know this is not competing
with anyone else, right?
Do what you need to do to make
sure your own practice makes progress;
this is what it's all about.
So there's no competition here.
It doesn't matter what everyone else does,
forget about everybody else.
Do what you need to do.
It's wonderful
more and more these days
you go on meditation retreats
you see that chairs are coming out.
It's natural.
Most of us have grown up
in a society,
in a culture,
where we sit on chairs all the time.
When you've grown up
sitting on a chair all the time
and suddenly
you're told to sit on the floor
it actually can be very difficult.
So please don't be shy about
using the chairs.
Much better to be a little bit
more comfortable,
extra comfortable
than to be a little bit on the pain side
while you're sitting.
That is much better, so please
use that and please do that.
There's so many horror stories
that I've heard over the years of people
who don't get this kind of very basic thing.
One of those stories
when I was in Singapore
a few years ago...
One of the things as a monk,
you travel a lot
it may seem strange
but you actually travel a lot
because there's so much demand
for English speaking monks everywhere
English speaking monks
are very few and far between
so you get ferried around the world
by plane everywhere
to talk to people.
It's very nice,
it's a very nice thing to do to
be able to give that kind of service.
But it means that
sometimes you're in Singapore,
and when you're in Singapore,
of course, you meet Buddhist people,
just like here,
just like everywhere else.
I was staying in the apartment of this man.
He was from Kuala Lumpur originally,
but he was working in Singapore
and he was travelling back and forth
and very kindly offered me
to stay in his apartment.
Then one day while I was there
he comes to me and says
"Bhante, I have a question for you,
have you got a few minutes."
And of course I'm staying in his apartment
so of course I have a few minutes for him
and he says to me that,
"a few years ago
I was on this meditation retreat
and
it was the worst experience
of my entire life.
It was terrible!
I was in pain all the way through,
I felt so
tense
and so non-relaxed
and so completely ill at ease
for nine days.
Never, ever in my entire life do I ever
want to go on meditation retreat again."
I said, "ooh!
Wait a minute,
you're talking it too far.
Just because you had one bad experience
doesn't mean you should never
ever go on meditation retreat again.
Retreats are different.
There are different types of teachers
that teach in different ways.
You can't just assume
that everything is the same,
that everything is so bad."
But he insisted that, no,
he never ever wanted to meditate again
because the experience had been
so terrible, was the worst thing
he'd ever done in his life.
I couldn't really persuade him
so he asked me, "what should I do,"
Well, I don't know
what he should do in that case.
But, essentially he was turned off for life
in regards to meditation practice.
That is a very unfortunate thing
because the idea with meditation,
the idea with the spiritual path
is that is something
which develops over time.
When you keep practising these things,
when you keep doing things
especially in the right way,
when you understand what morality is
on the Buddhist path
you practice that in the right way
and you combine that with
making the mind peaceful and calm
then these things together are
incredibly powerful.
The longer you do it
there's a gradual transformation
of your entire character,
of your entire person
and, essentially, you are creating
a new personality for yourself
as you go through this.
But the effect really is most powerful
when you keep on doing it,
month after month,
year after year,
the results become very powerful
after a while.
So please make sure that you do this
in such a way that it encourages you
to keep on doing it also in the future
and when you feel encouraged to do it
also in the future
then the long term benefits
will be incredibly powerful for you,
and something very beneficial
will come out of this.
So don't do what this man in Singapore did.
He was maybe an extreme example,
but this is what happens sometimes
to people.
I know that there are certain types
of meditation retreat where only a very
small fraction of the people
come back to those retreats
precisely because of the amount of pain
and problems and tensions that
people experience as a
consequence of that practice.
So this is the first step,
allow the body to be relaxed.
So please use the chairs.
Another way, if you want to sit cross-legged,
it's nice to sit sometimes
against the wall.
Sit with your back against the wall.
Sometimes when you sit with your back
leaning against something,
you can relax a little bit better;
that's a nice way of doing it.
And, especially at the beginning
of any retreat.
I don't know what you
have been doing today,
some of you have probably been working,
you're probably tired.
When you're tired and have been working,
usually you need to relax first of all.
A good way to relax
is just to lean back.
Some of the best meditaters I know
they always do like that,
they lean back, they relax.
Many of you would know Ajahn Brahm,
Dr. Tan you would know Ajahn Brahm,
and Ajahn Brahm tells me that
when he starts out meditating
he always leans back.
Not always,
but when he is tired
or has been working hard
he always starts off by sitting back
and leaning again the wall.
So if Ajahn Brahm does that
you can do that.
Ajahn Brahm is just about
one of the best meditaters around
he gets into these incredibly profound
meditations, so if he can do that
anybody can do that,
because it is about relaxing.
It's about knowing what you need,
understanding that you need
to relax first of all.
So sit back, lean back against the wall
and you're okay.
Another monk I know,
is a good friend of mine,
he says that every time he meditates
every time he meditates
he starts off with nodding.
He nods for about 10 or 15 minutes
and then after you have nodded
for about 10 or 15 minutes
the mind clears up.
And then when the mind clears up,
then his meditation starts.
He's also a very good meditator,
but it's natural to feel tired
at the beginning
because you've been active
you've been socialising,
you've been doing all of these kind of things
which tire the mind,
so it's natural.
So allow the mind to be.
Just relax.
Allow the mind to be,
don't do anything in particular.
Wait for mindfulness to arise.
And when mindfulness arises by itself,
it becomes very powerful
and very useful.
So, what all of this is about,
and I'm going to relate it a little bit to
the teachings of the Buddha.
I'm sure you have probably heard
of the middle way.
The middle way in Buddhism
is essentially, in a way, on the one hand
not to torture the body.
In India in those days people would
torture themselves. You know, sometimes
you think that people lying on these
beds of nails, you think it's some kind of
cartoon caricature of India,
and then you open the suttas
and it says right there they were
lying on beds of nails.
It's actually the reality,
it's actually what people where doing.
So this was one of the ways that people
were practising at that time.
The Buddha says this is the wrong way.
And the other wrong way
is then to indulge the body.
Here, on a meditation retreat like this
you're not really going to be able to
indulge the very much.
Especially if you keep the eight precepts.
So forget about the indulging side.
The side to be careful about, is the side
which has to do with experiencing
too much pain, torturing yourself
thinking that: "by torture, I'm going to
make quick progress".
This is the problem,
the classical problem in meditation.
What happens when you find that middle way,
where you neither torture yourself,
nor you indulge the body
what happens is that the body becomes
irrelevant.
The reason why the body
is important to us,
is because either,
we get some pleasure through the body
when you get pleasure through the body
the body is important because
that's where you get your happiness.
Or, the body is important because
you get pain through the body.
If you get pain through the body,
there's something to be done with the body.
There is a problem there, a problem
that needs to be resolved.
The mind will always tend to go out
to the body, out into the world
rather than staying inside and watch
the breath, or whatever it is.
So this is the idea of the middle way.
The middle way, is a way where your body
is no longer important.
The body falls by the wayside.
The body becomes irrelevant.
Of course, we all know that meditation
in the end is about the mind,
and because the meditation
is about the mind
then getting rid of the body is precisely
what we want to do.
And that is what the middle way is about.
It's kind of strange, the two extremes
in a sense are quite close to each other
because the two extremes are about the body
and the middle way is where the body
falls away and the body is irrelevant.
So this is the point here,
this is what the middle way is,
the body is gone,
and when the body falls away
you feel so at ease.
So watch that.
If you do feel pain
in your meditation practice, please
change your posture,
don't think that
you're going to be some superhero
and just get enlightened now
on this retreat.
It's not going to work.
I know Ajahn Brahm did that.
He always said that when he was
a young man he would sit down and say:
"okay, I'm going to sit until I get enlightened"
and, of course, it didn't work.
But everybody has these ideas sometimes.
Please don't try that.
Enjoy the practice.
Sit down, if you have pain somewhere
get up, change your posture,
go out, do some walking instead,
do something else, if you find that.
These are general guidelines
for meditation practice.
Don't sit with pain, especially
when you feel the mind gets obsessed
with that pain, it goes back to it
again and again, you can't deal with it,
then the time is right to change the posture.
So this is number one,
and I am always surprised
how tenacious this idea is,
that it's okay to sit with pain,
how many people think
it is a good thing to do.
I think there is something deep
in the human psyche
that tends to think that
if you torture the body
you are freeing the spirit.
The body is like the sinful thing
that keeps you tied to the world
and if you torture that evil body a little bit,
then you can free the spirit,
then the mind gets developed
and you get spiritual practice from that.
Because it's so common in the world!
In Christianity they do that.
Christianity is famous in the Middle Ages
for having these people who torture themselves.
In Hinduism,
very, very famous for all the torturing;
you find that in the suttas.
In Islam, apparently, you find the same thing,
people torturing themselves.
And then you come to the one religion
where the emphasis is on getting away
from suffering, it's all about happiness
which is Buddhism, and then you find
people still do the same thing!
People still torture themselves
even in Buddhism.
This should be the one religion
where torture is absolutely prohibited,
and yet it still happens.
So I think there is something in the human
psyche which basically makes us feel
that this is the way to develop the mind.
If the body gets a bit tortured
that's okay
because that's just the body.
But actually, no, it's the other way round,
it's a hindrance for meditation practice
to work.
Okay, that's point number one.
I've said a lot about that and the reason
is because in my experience
people still don't get it.
Even if you talk after half an hour,
it still hasn't sunk in.
Sometimes it takes years before
the basic message sinks in.
I'm just talking from my own experience,
I know how stupid I am,
how stubborn sometimes you can be.
It takes a while for these things to
actually become clear.
So that is number one.
The second point in meditation practice
is, once your body is at ease,
the body doesn't have any pain,
the next thing to do is to relax the body.
This is one of the things you will find
as well, is that you come into your busy life
and the business of life
always is felt in the body.
You feel tensions.
You feel tensions in the stomach,
you feel tensions in the shoulders,
you feel tensions in the face.
The muscles tighten up.
So the first thing we need to do,
is to relax.
Again it's about finding the ease.
Not only do we not have any pain,
but you want to find the ease in the body,
where the body feels really nice,
and really good.
What is happening here,
the reason why
the body is tense
is because the mind is tense.
The mind is what controls the body.
So, if you get very stressed, of course,
during daily life,
stress will always reverberate,
or will make itself felt
in the body afterwards.
Mind and body are so closely connected.
This idea that these are separate things
is really a non-starter.
They are very, very closely connected
to each other.
It's a very useful way of learning
how to deal with the mind,
by working with the body,
because with the body,
it's very obvious what is going on.
You know what is happening in the body,
you can feel if there is any tension there
you can feel if there's a problem there.
With the mind, everything is a bit more
difficult to pin down.
So start by feeling the body.
What does the body feel like?
Start every meditation,
every time you do this,
go through the same process
because then you get used to a good
procedure of doing things after a while.
Start off, by just feeling the body
and then making the body at ease,
making the body relaxed,
feeling good about yourself,
feeling really, really relaxed.
There are many ways of doing this.
One way is just to take some deep breaths
and allowing yourself to relax.
Make sure you sit in a comfortable
posture, like leaning back so that you can
actually allow the body to relax.
Use a guided meditation with somebody
whose instructions you trust
and voice you like to listen to,
again that makes you feel nice and relaxed.
And the last part is the attitude you have.
The attitude is probably
the most important thing of all.
With the right attitude
you will relax,
without it, it's very, very hard.
Spend time doing this,
spend however long it takes
even if you spend the whole
meditation just relaxing
especially at the beginning
of a retreat,
that's fine.
That's good.
At least you feel at ease
and relaxed when that happens.
The idea, here,
is really to take the relaxation
deeper than what you normally
are used to.
Ordinary relaxation and ordinary life
actually often isn't all that relaxed
at all.
And you only find that out
once you start to meditate
and you get into deeper states
of relaxation.
You start to realise,
wow, this is really relaxed
I didn't know it was possible
to get this relaxed.
I had no idea, now I understand
what relaxation is all about.
The deeper your meditation goes,
the more you think,
"whoa, this is really nice!
The body feels so at ease."
The idea here is to start off
that process of relaxation
as soon as possible.
And the sooner you get that done
the more easily
the rest of the meditation flows along.
So, get that depth of relaxation
deeper than you had it before
at the very beginning,
by focusing on the body,
by sending metta to yourself,
having a sense of kindness
and compassion for yourself,
and you start to feel the body
become so easy,
so light.
It becomes so light.
It becomes like a tuft of cotton almost.
It's almost like it starts to disappear.
That's what I was talking about before,
disappearing of the body
which you do by not having any pain,
but it disappears even more
when you feel really at ease
about the body.
You find yourself so light,
so easy,
unless you fall asleep,
in which case you feel heavy,
that's the alternative.
That's okay.
If you fall asleep that's fine.
Please, fall asleep,
falling asleep is not a bad thing.
It is very, very common,
you've in very good company if you
fall asleep. Allow that tiredness
to wear off and then the
lightness of the mind comes afterwards.
So, either you feel very heavy
when you do this and you fall asleep,
or the mind tends to feel light.
It tends to go either one way or the other.
When this happens,
because you are feeling so much at ease,
you are feeling so good about yourself,
so good in the body, good in everything,
mindfulness starts to arise.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is basically
about the ability to stay in the
present moment, to be aware
of what is happening in the
here and now, that is what mindfulness
is about. Mindfulness is not about
fantasizing. If you think about future,
or you think about the past,
or you fantasize about all kind of things,
that's not mindfulness.
Mindfulness is about the ability to
just be here and now.
Be in this present moment.
Be in this room.
Be right here in front of you,
being able to watch the breath,
that is what mindfulness is about.
And mindfulness arises especially
when you feel good.
If you don't feel good
the mind wants to escape,
but if the present moment is the
pleasant moment...
It's an easy one to remember:
present moment is the pleasant moment
then the mindfulness tends to arise
as a consequence.
So this is a very easy path.
All you have to do is relax.
All you have to do is just to feel at ease,
and when you do that in the right way,
then mindfulness comes all by itself.
This is the trick of this path,
this is the trick of this whole practice,
is that you don't actually have to do anything,
you don't have to exert yourself,
you don't have to use a lot of will power,
there's not a lot of stuff that you have to do,
because the whole doing business, actually,
is what tires you out in the first place.
All this doing makes the mind busy
it makes you active,
then when you come back home after
a long day's work, you feel
completely exhausted, that's because
of all the doing that you've been doing.
So this is the natural way
for mindfulness to arise
and when mindfulness arises naturally,
it is easy, it is pleasant, it is happy
and you feel so good about these things.
So this is the way.
And one of the things to avoid here...
this is almost becoming a kind of
taboo word in Buddhism, in meditation,
is the word 'concentration'.
I'm sure you have heard the word 'concentration'
being used.
People say I've got to concentrate,
concentrate on the breath,
concentrate on things,
but be very careful with words like that
because, the word 'concentration'
in the English language, very often
implies a lot of will power.
When you go to work,
or you do whatever in ordinary life,
if you go to work,
your employer expects you to read certain things
and write certain reports
and all these kinds of things,
and because your employer expects that
you have to do it because you
have to earn your salary et cetera, et cetera,
but when you're doing things
that you're not really enjoying
all that much,
maybe it's an incredibly boring report
that you have to read,
you kind of have to force yourself
through it, that is what concentration
usually means. You're forcing attention
on to something which isn't 100% natural.
That is why people who have jobs
that demand a very high degree of
alertness, and awareness and concentration
often feel incredibly tired after
a long day's work.
I think these flight controllers,
you know - what is called? The people
who sit in those tall towers at airports?
Whatever.
Anyway, they sit up there
and they have to watch the screen
to make sure none of the planes collide.
If the the planes collide in midair
you feel a bit bad about it afterwards
So, you really have to focus on this
and this is one of the biggest
stress jobs, because you have to
concentrate so much and people
feel very tired after doing
that kind of job all day.
This is how we all feel to a certain extent,
when you use force
to watch and to be in the present moment.
So there's an idea of allowing mindfulness
to arise naturally, rather than
to force mindfulness.
If you force mindfulness,
after a while
you're going to feel exhausted
in meditation practice and you're going to
sleep for the rest of the retreat
and it won't be all that interesting for you.
You still may have a good time,
but you lose out on all the good fun
that everyone else has.
So learn natural mindfulness,
that is where it's all at.
That is what we're trying to get to.
Again, when you have no pain in the body
- I'm just recapitulating very briefly -
no pain in the body,
and you are at ease, and you are relaxed
natural mindfulness arises as a consequence,
or rather I should say, it can arise.
It doesn't always arise.
The last reason why it doesn't arise
is because the attitude.
The attitude is probably
the most important thing of all
in meditation practice.
You have to look at the world,
look at the people around you,
feel the situation in the right way.
When you have the right attitude
in this way, that is when meditation
really becomes possible.
It has to be a positive attitude.
You have to have a sense of well wishing
to the people around you.
You have to have a sense of
mettā,
karuṇā,
this means loving-kindness,
compassion
all of these positive qualities,
a sense of friendliness.
When you have all of these
qualities inside of you,
that is when
meditation becomes possible.
If you feel negative,
or you are upset with somebody,
or you're angry about something,
absolutely no way that your meditation
is going to work.
So you get this out of the way first of all,
and then meditation
becomes possible.
If we have the chance,
I don't know if there will be much time
during this retreat,
but this is one of the most important
things in the entire Buddhist path
is learning how to use your mind
in a skilful way,
so that you can
move away from the unskilful.
It takes a lot of training,
it takes years, often, of training for
people to be able to do this.
Isn't this what they call
cognitive behavioural therapy
in psychology?
Basically, it's a similar kind of thing,
but it's more intense
and it's a life long process
to keep on doing these kind of things.
So the idea is to shift your mind,
gradually, more and more away
from the negative things towards
the positive things.
When you have a positive attitude
in meditation,
then it becomes very powerful.
There's a nice sutta which I always
like to quote.
A sutta is the word of the Buddha
and one sutta means one
particular instance when he was giving
a talk as one sutta,
is basically what it means.
And in this one sutta,
he talks about what happens
when you are a good person,
when you live a good life,
when you have a good heart,
and you treat people in a kind way
and all of these kind of things.
This sutta is Majjhima Nikāya 129,
for those of you who are into this.
It's called The Wise And Foolish People.
So if you're interested in how to be wise,
and how to avoid being a fool
it's a great place to start;
Majjhima 129.
What he says there,
is that the wise person, the wise person
in Buddhism means somebody who
acts well,
acts with kindness
avoids acting in the bad ways,
speaks with kindness,
avoids speaking in the bad way
and crucially,
thinks with kindness,
doesn't think thoughts which are
greedy, or angry, or full of hatred
and this kind of stuff,
thinks positive things as well.
In Buddhism, the idea of morality
is stretched the the absolute limit.
It includes also morality of the mind.
So in Buddhism it's about developing
your whole character.
The word sīla, in the Pāli language
is much broader than the word 'morality'
in English.
It basically includes your entire character.
It's development of character,
development of personality
it what it really is about.
So what this sutta, this discourse,
of the Buddha, what he says there
is that, it's like a good person.
In the evening, when they come back home
they might be tired
and they might take a while as they sit down,
or they lie down on their bed
or sit down on a chair, or whatever,
and when they do that,
and when they relax,
all the good actions they have done,
the fact that they have
avoided the bad actions
all that comes back to them.
Because it comes back to them,
they feel a natural sense of happiness,
because a sense of happiness is basically,
well, you know that you're a good person,
you know that you've done the right things.
You have nothing to regret.
You feel a sense of,
"wow, I've done good things."
You feel a sense of joy about that.
It is just a natural consequence
of living a good life.
The more you purify that good life,
the more you feel that natural joy.
The Buddha says it's like a mountain.
In the evening, when you have a mountain
and the sun goes down behind the mountain
then the shadow is cast from that mountain.
The entire earth in front of that mountain,
the ground in front of the mountain
is engulfed, is enveloped
and completely surrounded by the shadow
from the mountain,
completely engulfed in that.
In the same way,
when a good person
comes back a long day's work
you sit down, you rest,
or maybe you meditate a bit
and then the mountain of good actions
come back to you!
Then you feel satisfied,
you feel a sense of joy inside.
You feel gladness
because of that mountain
of good actions is there.
So what we have to do is
build a mountain. That's what each
one of us has to do.
When you build that mountain,
the you have that foundation
of happiness and joy
which also you can bring into your
meditation practice.
So this is what it's about,
we have to build this mountain.
This is what our ordinary life,
if you are interested in Buddhism,
or spiritual practice, or meditation,
or whatever it is,
this is what our whole life is really about.
It's about building up this mountain
of goodness inside of us.
Then you have no choice,
you have to feel happy!
Isn't that great, you have not choice
but to feel happy?
I find that such a wonderful thing.
You can sit back, and sometimes
if you're a bit grumpy you think,
"aw, I don't want to be happy",
but you have no choice,
happiness just comes to you
and you just feel good about yourself.
What a wonderful thing that is,
when you have no choice about the matter,
And it always comes your way.
Then, of course, the spiritual path
really works as a consequence.
So that is one of those
similes that I think are so powerful.
The Buddha is a master
of creating beautiful similes
that are so much to the point
and show you how these things work
in a very beautiful way.
So this is what happens
when you generally speaking
have the right attitude.
We were talking about
the precepts before
and these precepts are very much
about having right attitude.
I will perhaps very briefly
talk about them.
The first precept is about
not killing any living beings.
Okay, so we assume that you're
not killing any human beings.
If you kill human beings, I would
recommend you to stop that very quickly.
That is going to be a big obstacle.
There is another discourse in the suttas,
the word of the Buddha. Actually there
was a man who was killing all these beings.
He was a mass murderer
at the time of the Buddha.
It's a very famous sutta,
you may have heard about
Aṅgulimāla Sutta.
But he also stopped doing that
and as a consequence of stopping that
he actually attained very high
spiritual states as a consequence.
So even if you are killing human beings
there's still hope,
which is a very positive message.
But it's not just about avoiding killing.
So you avoid killing humans,
you avoid killing animals and even insects,
but it's about being kind as well.
This is one of the most fundamental
and important facts about
the Buddhist idea of morality.
It is not just about avoiding doing
the bad stuff.
It's actively doing the good things
as well.
Being kind.
Being helpful.
Being compassionate, to animals
and human beings wherever you can find.
This is really what gives power
to the meditation practice.
If you don't do the bad stuff, okay,
you don't feel bad about yourself,
but, if you do the good stuff you actually
actively feel good about yourself.
I have noticed in my own life,
I try to live up to these things myself.
I try not to be the ultimate hypocrite
and sit here and tell you
to do all these things and
do nothing myself,
that would be terrible wouldn't it?
Of course, you don't know me,
so maybe I am a hypocrite, but
from my own perspective
I don't think I'm a hypocrite.
I have always found that
it is very powerful sometimes.
Sometimes you are in the right mood
and you just want to be kind,
and you want to be compassionate.
Sometimes it's a very powerful force
inside of you. Other times you don't
really feel compassionate at all,
but sometimes you feel very kind.
And then, sometimes, when you do
something kind, there's an insect that
you save or something like that,
something very, very small,
but because you are in the right mood,
and because you are mindful,
and because you feel it's coming
naturally from you,
it often has a very powerful impact
on your mind.
It's like you do this little act,
you think it's nothing and still
you feel this joy connected with that,
because it is done at the right time,
at the right place.
The right time and the right place
is always usually...
you should always do these things,
of course, but the powerful times
are when it comes naturally.
So if you ever feel like being kind,
if it comes from your heart and you
want to do something kind,
do it for goodness sake!
Don't hold back.
Don't have some cynical thought,
"yeah, they don't deserve it or whatever".
Please don't think like that because
it's going to destroy
a wonderful opportunity to do what is right
and do what is kind.
Always take the opportunity.
If other people think
you are a bit strange, so be it.
It's their problem,
you just do what is right.
And then you find, that when
you do these things again and again
there are times when it becomes
very powerful.
Because you are mindful,
you are clearly aware, you're driven
by a powerful motivation of compassion
inside of you.
It makes a very powerful impact
on the mind.
You sit down to meditate
and these things come back to you,
because they have made a powerful
impact on the mind.
And then, that gives rise
to the ability to meditate because
you have the joy there.
This is how it works.
This is what kamma is all about.
Kamma is about when your intention
is pure, when mindfulness is strong,
then the impact is very great one the mind.
So when you sit down afterwards,
it comes back to you very powerfully.
That's the idea of kamma.
Powerful presence when you do it,
gives rise to a powerful result later on.
You can see it for yourself
happening in reality, it's very easy,
very straightforward
and you see how these things work.
So be kind.
On this retreat, if you have
an opportunity to be kind
to the people around you,
take every opportunity, never miss
an opportunity to be kind in your life,
here or anywhere else, because it is
incredibly powerful.
And then, of course, the second factor
is about not stealing.
I'm sure none of you have the intention
to steal anything on this retreat,
but the opposite is generosity, right?
Be sharing, sharing of yourself,
and being generous.
One of the incredibly important factors
on the Buddhist path is generosity.
It is something the Buddha talks about
all the time. That's one of
the foundation stones of the path.
And generosity can be done
in some many different ways.
There's very little distinction
between kindness and generosity.
They kind of flow into each other.
When we talk about generosity,
we talk usually more about material things
and kindness is more about helping out
in a general sense, but they are really
part of the same... different ends of the
same spectrum, basically.
So generosity.
The third precept is about
no sexuality on this retreat.
The idea here is to turn the mind
in a different direction.
Usually, in the world we find pleasures
through the senses, the five sense,
through the food that we eat,
through the relationships that we have,
through music, or whatever it is.
Here, the idea is instead of finding
happiness in that realm,
is to turn the mind
in a different direction,
turn it inwards instead,
and find the happiness and joy
inside of you instead.
Now, if we indulge in the five sense
it is impossible at the same time
to turn inwards because they are two
different directions.
If you find happiness in the five sense
it means your mind is going out
into the world, by it's very definition.
But mediation is precisely about
going inside. It's about watching
the breath, about being still
in the present moment.
It's about not being attached to the world.
So, if you are finding pleasure
in the five senses, it means that your are
attached to them.
Wherever you find pleasure is also
where you are attached.
Because you are attached, you can't
let go, and because you can't let go
you can't focus inside.
These are two opposite things.
It's very important to understand that.
That you cannot do both at the same time.
Sometimes people say, "yeah, you know,
I want to get really deep meditation,
I want to live a kind of ordinary life
with my partner and all these kinds
of things at the same time".
It cannot be combined at the same time.
It's impossible to have
the full benefit of meditation practice
on the one side,
and living a completely ordinary life
at the same time.
They have to be separated from each other.
That's why we do this kind of precept
on retreats like this.
The fourth one is about silence,
and silence is a wonderful thing.
You find that it's so wonderful
not to have to talk.
Our society is based on communication,
you have to talk all the time.
It's great not to have to talk,
just to be quiet.
It's like you go into
your own little bubble
and it doesn't really matter,
everybody else can do their own thing,
you don't have to
worry about that any more.
The precept is actually not to lie,
but because you are silent
that's what it becomes.
That's the positive aspect of that.
And think of it also... sometimes
people find it hard to be silent,
it should be easy enough,
it's only a day and a half this retreat, but
sometimes people find it hard
and find it oppressive.
If you do find it a little bit oppressive
think of it as an act of generosity
to the people around you.
On a retreat like this,
there's always some people who
get nice meditation, so think,
"okay, I'm going to help you,
I'm going to do this to help
everyone here, to encourage you
and to support you
in your meditation practice."
Then you have a positive attitude
about silence.
It becomes another positive thing.
It becomes a gift
to everyone around you.
So you're kind of combining
these precepts a little bit.
The fifth precept is about
not using drugs and alcohol.
Again, meditation practice is about
clarity, it's about presence of mind
and drugs and alcohol are about
the exact opposite of that.
Not using a high...
the next one is vikala bhojana,
I have to get my sequence right here,
which means not eating
in the afternoon.
Again, the idea is to move away
from too much sensuality.
It's not a major issue...
There's going to be some soup,
is that right, in the evening?
Okay, you get some soup,
so that's good,
that should keep you going.
Then we have the precept about
not using any entertainment,
or adornments of the body,
which is another very useful one.
Entertainment is all about going out
into the world,
it's about enjoying the senses.
That's what entertainment is about.
Again we're trying to withdraw from that.
And the last precept about
sleeping on a high or luxurious bed,
is also, of course, about the same thing.
It's about not indulging too much,
but, you know, the beds here are fine.
Back to the seventh one, again,
the seventh precept, not adorning yourself.
This is also one of the nice things
about going on a retreat,
just to have simple clothes,
no make-up,
no jewellery,
no trying to impress anybody
by the way you look,
or anything like that.
It's like you can become anonymous.
You don't have to worry about
all these things that we're always
concerned about.
It makes you self-conscious,
if you always have to worry about
what you look like, right?
And here you can let go of that
self-consciousness completely,
and you can be
nobody!
Isn't that nice to be nobody?
We always have to try to be somebody.
We always have to try and live up to
our own or other people's expectations.
Always trying to be a certain person.
Now, one of the things about
trying always to be somebody,
is this sense of self that we have
inside of us
always needs to be defended.
If somebody challenges us
and says, "aw, okay, you are no good.
What are you doing?
This isn't good enough".
Or somebody tells you
you're not looking your best today,
or whatever, we feel upset.
And the reason we feel upset
is because our sense of self
is challenged.
So this sense of self is something
that always needs to be bolstered,
always needs to be kept up.
We need to think, how much of the time
do we think about ourselves,
are we concerned about concerned
about ourselves.
Stupid little things, right?
But this is just life,
everybody is like that.
Now, for once, you don't have to think
about yourself any more.
You can start to let go
of that sense of who you are,
your sense of identity.
How you are, who you are
compared to other people.
When you reduce that sense of identity
what you find is that
you become more peaceful,
because you don't have to think about
all those issues
concerning yourself any more.
So reducing your sense of self
is actually one of the great ways
of starting to feel peaceful as well.
This is what you do,
this is why adornments,
just wearing ordinary clothes
and not adorning oneself,
actually is a great benefit
and a wonderful thing to do.
So,
those are the eight precepts
and they give you some idea
what right attitude means
in meditation practice.
All this is about right attitude.
So this is one of the things
we try to build up.
Some very general things about
right attitude that I can maybe add
to what I've been saying before:
one of thing things I often remind myself
when I do my meditation practice
is that when I meditate,
that is when I come closest
to the meaning of life.
That is where I'm touching
what life is all about.
This is quite radical
because most people think,
"yeah, I'm going to meditate
so I can improve my life,
so the rest of my life
can become better"
That's what most people think.
But, no! It's actually the
other way round, it's actually
when you meditate you're getting
closer to the very essence of the
purpose of life itself.
Why is that?
The reason is, is because
in meditation practice,
what you are finding is
you're finding the sort of happiness
you're finding the sort of contentment
you're finding the sort of satisfaction
that you actually,
each one of us,
always is actually searching for.
If you look inside of yourself,
look inside of your mind
you will see that we are often
run by desires, all kind of things, right?
From the moment you wake up
in the morning,
you have to choose what clothes
you're going to wear,
from breakfast...
Everything is run by
desires and cravings in our life.
Those desires and cravings,
they are pointing towards one thing:
we want to be satisfied.
That's why you want to fulfil that craving,
fulfil that desire.
Except that it never happens,
the desire always comes back to us again.
Then suddenly one day
you sit down and meditate
and you find
that satisfaction in meditation.
At least a little bit more,
than you find it by running
around in the world.
This is what I mean,
you're actually touching here
the meaning of life,
the purpose of all the running you do
in the world, you find it,
you find the result,
you find what you're searching for
in the meditation practice,
rather than by actually getting
the results in the world around you.
So here you are touching
the meaning of life.
This is what life is all about,
this is what you really searching for.
This is what you have.
Your innermost yearning,
actually comes...
that yearning actually gets fulfilled
finally when you are sitting down
and doing your meditation practice.
Or rather it can do.
Often it doesn't happen,
but it can happen.
And when it happens, you think,
"WOW! This is really it!
Now I'm coming to what everything
really is all about."
And that is very powerful,
because when you understand that,
when you understand that
instead of sitting down and meditating
and then fantasize about all the things
you're going to do in the world,
it's kind of crazy, becuase now
you've got the meaning of life
so why are you going to fantasize
about all those things that
have got nothing to do
with the meaning of life.
In fact, it should be the other
way round.
When you're running around in the world
in daily life, going doing this, doing that
you should fantasize about meditation
practice.
That's the way it should really be,
because you understand
that everything you do in your ordinary life,
that if you can think about
your meditation practice,
it will give you
a guide in your ordinary life
to how you should behave.
Is this going to lead to an improvement
in meditation, which is the purpose of life,
or is it not?
Is it going to lead me away,
or lead me in the right direction.
So please fantasize a bit
about meditation in ordinary life:
"ooh, wouldn't it be nice
if I could now go back and
be on retreat and just sit peacefully.
Wow, maybe as soon as I get a chance,
an opportunity I will do that."
And then you have this guide,
to also guide you throughout life
in a sense.
So remember that,
while you're sitting here
on this retreat.
This is it!
You are touching
the meaning of life itself.
You're not going to get
any closer than this probably,
so this is your opportunity.
Why waste that opportunity
by thinking about
all kind of other stuff instead.
This is going to be the first talk
about the theme of this retreat.
The theme is dependent origination,
known as paṭiccasamuppāda in the Pāli language.
What I thought of doing tonight,
is just to do a general overview.
Is it loud enough?
Can everybody hear alright?
I'll just do a general overview
of what this teaching is about
so that we have a kind of a background.
Then we can draw out the details
over the few sessions after that.
So that is going to be the main purpose
of tonight.
As I said before,
if you have any questions this
please write them down
and put them in the basket at the back.
Good.
So, one of the things about
dependent arising,
it is well known,
everybody thinks it is very profound.
Everybody says,
"ooh, this is very profound stuff."
And, of course, there is a reason for that,
and the reason for that is that,
that's what it actually says
in one of the suttas.
I don't know if any of you read
these suttas already.
If you have, then you may have come across,
or you probably would have come across,
the way things start off
in the sutta called the Mahānidāna Sutta,
which is The Great Discourse on Causation,
found in the Dīgha Nikāya.
In that sutta, it starts off
with Ven. Ānanda...
Ven. Ānanda, of course,
is the Buddha's right-hand man.
He's always present,
always hearing the discourses
and he's the one who eventually
makes sure those discourses are
recorded, if you like,
recorded in memory for posterity.
He says to the Buddha, he says:
"It is wonderful and marvellous, Bhante,
how this dependent arising
[or if you like, dependent origination]
is so deep and appears so deep,
yet to myself it seems
as clear as clear can be.”
And then the Buddha says:
“Do not say so, Ānanda!
Do not say so, Ānanda!
This dependent origination, Ānanda,
is deep and it appears deep.
Because of not understanding and
not penetrating this teaching, Ānanda,
this generation has become
like a tangled skein,
like a knotted ball of thread,
like matted rushes and reeds,
and this generation
does not pass beyond saṃsāra
with its plane of misery,
unfortunate destinations,
and its lower realms."
So this is where it comes from,
when everybody says,
"aw, this dependent origination is so deep".
This is actually the
canonical reference to that.
It's quite interesting because Ven. Ānanda,
of course, he knew almost all the suttas,
all the discourses of the Buddha by heart.
He was also well known for
having become a stream enterer.
A stream enterer is somebody who has
penetrated and understood the teaching
on their own.
He was a stream enterer fairly early on
and here is one the Buddha's
chief disciples
saying
this is really deep, but I understand it,
and the Buddha says,
be careful what you say,
don't be so quick,
because this really is profound
and it because of not understanding this
that people are stuck in saṃsāra.
That is fascinating. It makes us wonder,
"well, what is the chance
of me understanding this if Ven. Ānanda
couldn't understand it, what is my hope?!
That's a fair question actually.
It is a fair question,
but remember the idea
with a retreat like this is not to grasp
these things absolutely fully,
in their full depth and all their details.
The idea is to get enough understanding
that you are moving in the right direction.
This is the whole gist, the whole purpose
of the Dhamma, is always to move
in the right direction.
As you keep moving in the right direction,
doing some meditation,
doing some practice,
understanding what the teachings
are about,
all of these things come together,
and one day, who knows, one day
you might also,
each one of us might also
understand the full
profundity of these teachings.
The reason why they are so profound
is basically, just what it says
at the end there:
it is because of this that people
don't make an end of saṃsāra.
What that means is that
if you are an ariya,
if you are a noble person,
who has penetrated and understood
these teachings through your own insight,
through your own understanding,
that is when you have that
full penetration.
So Ven. Ānanda, my guess is that
at this point he hadn't yet
become a stream enterer,
maybe it was later on,
or, the alternative is that
he was a stream enterer,
but even as a stream enterer you understand
the general principle for how it works,
but you make not be clear
about all the details.
This is one of the things that is so
fascinating about this teaching,
is all the details,
all the things that actually
come out of it once you
start to investigate.
There are so many aspects to this teaching.
To give you some examples
of the aspects that I'm thinking of,
this teaching,
contrary to what some people say,
it includes the law of kamma.
The law of kamma is very central to
this particular teaching.
It explains kamma in a very beautiful
and very meaningful way.
That's one of the things
I want to draw out of this teaching,
especially if you look at
the first three factors
of the dependent arising.
The first three factors are from...
I'll go through the factors latter on,
but from ignorance,
saṅkhāra, like activities,
and consciousness.
That is all really about kamma
and how kamma works.
It's very interesting to understand
how kamma works because
it's something which is very practical,
something we can use in our own lives.
So it brings out kamma
in a very detailed way.
This is one of the things
that makes in so interesting.
The second thing, which of course,
makes in very interesting,
is that it shows us how this saṃsāra,
how the process of continuous existence,
how it is sustained without a self in it.
This is one of the key things
about dependent arising,
it shows us how this is possible
that you can go on, and go on, and go on
keep on going, but there's no self in there
there's no substance,
there's no essence to it
which is always present.
This is one of the things that
makes people stop.
One of the classic counter arguments
against the Buddha's teaching,
against rebirth, is the idea that
if there was rebirth
there must be a self in there,
"and you guys,
you say you don't believe in a self
so you're contradicting yourself."
But actually, no, the point of the Buddha
is precisely that such a thing as rebirth
can exist without a self.
This is one of the things that precisely
makes it so profound.
This is found in the third and the fourth
factor of dependent arising:
consciousness and
conditions, what is some times called
name-and-form. We will discuss that term
later on, what it actually means.
But that kind of nexus between those two,
because they mutually condition each other,
shows you how this thing sustains itself
without a self in there.
In fact, the whole dependent arising,
the whole chain of factors,
is also an example of that.
So these are two very important things,
crucial aspects of Buddhism which are
explained in detail in dependent arising.
But the most important thing,
and what makes dependent arising
so interesting,
is that the overall structure
shows you...
the first factor of
dependent arising as I said before
is ignorance,
the last one of the 12 factors is suffering.
What that does
- I'll talk more about that in a second -
it shows us how suffering arises
out of lack of understanding,
out of ignorance.
This is probably the main purpose
of dependent arising
and why it is so powerful
because it shows us that,
if you don't understand things
in the right way,
you're going to suffer.
So you want to try to understand things
in the right way.
If you don't you have a serious problem.
Now, before I go into more detail
about these things,
I thought that the mistakes that people
sometimes do about dependent arising,
they think it's a very profound teaching
and people sometimes ask:
what is Buddhism? Should it be considered a
philosophy?
Is it a religion?
What is it?
How do we make sense of Buddhism?
What kind of teaching is it?
Of course, you can say it's just a
wisdom teaching, but that doesn't
really say very much.
So the first question I want to ask:
well, if it is so profound,
could it then be said to be a philosophy?
Is that an appropriate way
of regarding Buddhism?
Is it a philosophy or not?
The answer to that,
is a philosophy or not,
is that the early teachings of the Buddha,
the teachings that we talking about here,
the ones that are found in the four nikāyas
and not the later teachings,
as far as I can see,
they are not a philosophy.
The philosophy of Buddhism
is something that arises later on.
That is what the Abhidhamma is all about,
that is really philosophy.
You may have heard about very famous
simile of the Buddha, the Buddha is
in the place called the Gosinga Wood
and he takes a handful of leaves
and he says, "these handfuls of leaves
I have in my hand, compared to
all the handfuls of leaves in the forest,
which is more?"
So the monks obviously say,
"the handful of leaves in your hand are few
and ones in the forest are great
in comparison."
And then the Buddha says,
"what I have taught you
is comparable to the leaves in my hand,
but what I know is comparable
to all the leaves in the forest."
So what is going on here?
What about the rest of the stuff?
Wouldn't you guys be interested
in hearing about the rest of the stuff?
If the Buddha has all this knowledge,
it would be interesting
to hear about all the other stuff.
Why does he only teach us
these little few things?
And the point here,
remember that the purpose of the Buddha,
he is a compassionate teacher
he has understood the one thing
everybody in the whole world
wants to know about.
He has understood about
happiness and suffering to the core.
Look in your heart,
what is it that you want?
What is it that you yearn for?
We are always trying to move towards
more contentment, more satisfaction,
more pleasure, more happiness,
less depression, less sorrow,
less pain.
Everybody wants that.
I've never met anybody who
wants more depression.
Unless they are really messed up
psychologically, possibly, but then
they have other problems.
The point is we all want to move there.
And the Buddha knows, "I have the answer."
So then he decides to teach
out of compassion,
to help people overcome their problems,
and give rise to the highest happiness.
That is what nibbāna is all about.
So it's pragmatic!
The teaching is purely pragmatic.
It has a very clear purpose, and
you don't want to distract that teaching
with things that have nothing to do
with that pragmatic goal, which is to
alleviate suffering in all beings.
This is why the Buddha doesn't philosophise.
What is philosophy?
Philosophy is about Plato,
and Aristotle,
and Socrates,
and we find people in the present day.
We find it not only in the West, of course,
you find it also everywhere.
This is what the later
Abhidhamma people did also.
It's philosophising, it's creating,
it's speculating about the world.
It's based a little bit on fact,
because you have a little bit
of science and put these kind of things,
but a lot of philosophy is
thinking out systems,
castles in the air
that are built up,
often with no foundations,
a little bit of foundations,
but not much.
This is what philosophy is all about.
And the Buddha, I think he knew...
I'm not saying the Buddha
would have built up anything
without foundation, on the contrary,
he probably would have good reasons
for saying what he would have said
if he had said so, but he didn't.
Even though he knew what he was talking
about, he knew that it would detract
from the actual practice,
because, once you start to present
a philosophical system
a system which explains everything
in the world,
that's very fascinating, right?
I just said before,
who of you wouldn't be interested
in hearing about all the other leaves,
Everybody went,
"yeah, that would be exciting"
I think the same,
it would be exciting for me, too.
This is the problem,
you get sidetracked.
You start to philosophise.
The Buddha would've probably
had to spend the rest of his life
answering critics, saying,
"well, you know, this doesn't make any sense",
"well, actually it does make sense"
"oh, no"
and then back and forth,
back and forth.
So you focus on the essentials.
I think this is a very important point.
This should remind us that
we should really try to be
in a similar kind of mindset,
where we don't philosophise too much.
It means that dependent arising itself,
origination itself,
is not really a philosophy.
The primary purpose of
dependent origination is pragmatic.
It is to show us that there is a problem,
that there is a solution to that problem,
and how to apply ourselves.
Of course, it also gives
a little bit more than that,
it gives a little bit of understanding
for how it all works,
which sometimes gives rise
to confidence and faith because
you feel that there is a system
which is complete.
But, essentially, it is a pragmatic thing.
It is about release from suffering
and a movement towards happiness,
and getting out of saṃsāra.
This is the purpose of this.
So the Buddha didn't philosophise.
This is the thing about the Abhidhamma,
I don't know what kind of ideas
you have about the Abhidhamma,
but as far as I am concerned,
and I read Pāli,
I have read parts of the Abhidhamma
not the whole thing
because I find it too boring,
to be perfectly honest with you,
and I've also read the suttas,
pretty much everything in Pāli, and
in English and in other languages as well,
and it is very clear to me,
that the Abhidhamma is later
than the suttas.
It arose over a long period of time,
because this is a very complex
type of literature.
It started arising
probably fairly soon after the Buddha
and went on being developed
for many centuries,
perhaps millennia
after the Buddha passed away.
I'm not going to go into that now,
if you are interested
you can ask in the Q&A,
but there are many, many good reasons why
the Abhidhamma is not
the word of the Buddha.
But the Abhidhamma is precisely
a philosophical system.
Why?
Because it is about creating
a system which explains the world
completely.
So you have this division of
mind-moments, or mind-states
96 cittas, or something like that,
and then you have the various
types of mind-factors
called the cetasikas,
which are 70 or whatever it is,
I'm not even sure how many there are,
maybe it's only 40.
Shows you how much
I know about the Abhidhamma.
And then you have
the factors of materiality,
the physical world.
There's 28, or something,
or 20 something. 24 perhaps.
First of all, it's divided up
into all the elements of reality,
and then you have all these books
that show how these things fit together.
There is a book called the Paṭṭhāna,
which is a book, basically, translated
into English as 'conditional relations'.
What that book does,
it shows you that all of these categories
I just talked about before,
how they are related to each other
through various causes.
24 causes are enumerated
in the Pāli.
And the book, the Paṭṭhāna, is so long
because there are so intricacies,
so many ways these things
can relate to each other,
it is so long that if you wrote out
the whole thing
- somebody apparently calculated this -
if you wrote out the whole thing,
the book would be so long
that it would stretch
from Sydney to Melbourne,
or something like that.
That's how big it is.
So this is thought out
by the human mind.
This is what they call philosophy.
And this is what happened
later in Buddhism.
Of course, the sad thing is that
if you travel around the Buddhist world,
you find that a lot of people,
that's what their interested in.
It's exactly why the Buddha didn't teach it.
He saw the attraction in that,
the danger in that,
creating philosophical systems,
building them up,
and it's never finished.
This is the other problem,
there's always some hole in the system.
Somebody says,
"oh, what about this?
You haven't thought about
this problem over here."
And then you have to write a new
sub-commentary to fill in that little gap.
Then somebody finds a hole
in the sub-commentary and the more
literature you have,
the more holes there's going to be.
So for every book you add,
there going to be another whole.
And it keeps on going like that
and there's no end.
This is the problem with philosophy,
it never, never stops.
So the Buddha, very, very wisely,
skipped that whole area.
So dependent origination
is not philosophy.
It's pragmatic, it's practical,
it's to be used in a practical way.
So please keep that in mind.
It's so easy to get sidetracked
with philosophising.
So what is Buddhism?
Maybe just very briefly: what it is,
because I think it is interesting
just as a point of general interest.
Is it a religion?
People say,
"aah, yeah, maybe,
maybe not it's a religion."
I think it's a fascinating question.
Personally, I think it's fascinating,
whether it's a religion or not.
Obviously, the answer is,
it all depends on how
you define the word 'religion'.
I looked up the Oxford Dictionary,
very recently,
at how that defines 'religion',
and it says any kind of system
where there is some kind of
supernatural agency is a religion.
From that point of view,
is Buddhism a religion?
I would say no, it is not, because, certainly
from an internal point of view of Buddhism
everything is part of nature.
Nothing is supernatural,
Nothing is outside of nature.
If you go to ordinary religions,
like, Christianity or Islam, of course,
the idea is that God stands outside
of nature.
That's why he can break all the laws of nature.
He doesn't have to care about
gravity or whatever.
He can just do whatever he wants.
Quantum mechanics, no problem,
he can do what he likes with the world.
He is supernatural.
But from a Buddhist point of view,
everything is part of nature.
So in that way,
Buddhism is not, really, supernatural.
But, if you're not a Buddhist and you say,
"aww, you guys believe in all kind
of weird stuff, you believe in devas,
okay; supernatural."
So from an external point of view,
maybe Buddhism is a religion,
because other people might think
that we believe in supernatural stuff.
So it depends on the angle you take.
I must admit, I prefer to be very careful
when using labels like 'religion'
on Buddhism, because the word
'religion' has so much baggage,
and a lot of that baggage does not
apply to Buddhism.
So we are taking on this baggage
by calling ourself a religion;
I'm not sure that is very suitable,
or very useful.
Sometimes it's better to say,
"yeah, I'm not sure we're a religion,
maybe we're something else."
So what is that something else?
I would say that something else is that,
Buddhism is essentially...
this is maybe something I need to
reflect a bit more about, but
it's really a type of psychology.
That's what I'd call Buddhism.
All of Buddhism is about
how to use the mind well,
how to move from suffering
to more happiness,
how to eventually end all suffering.
It's all really mental stuff.
It's all about developing the mind,
doing something with the mind.
It's a kind of psychology.
Maybe not anything like
anything we have in the world
apart from Buddhism,
it's different obviously, but it really is,
I think, at the end of the day,
possibly a type of psychology.
Although, I must admit,
I haven't really
thought about that carefully enough
to really make an absolute statement
about that.
Anyway, Buddhism is a psychology,
and, of course, that includes then
dependent origination.
So where does this fit in to this picture
of psychology?
What is it all about?
Dependent arising, the first thing,
of course, to understand about it,
is that it is an important teaching
of the Buddha.
How do you know
it's an important teaching of the Buddha?
Well, usually, you know because
somebody else says so.
That's how people often know
it is an important teaching,
"this is important because they say
it's an important teaching."
But is there any objective way
of deciding this, apart from just
listening to people like me
saying it is important?
The objective way of deciding
whether a teaching is important
in Buddhism or not, is to see how often
did the Buddha talk about this.
How many different audiences?
How many different places
did he give this particular teaching?
And dependent arising is one
of those teachings that you see
throughout the suttas.
You see it in all the four nikāyas.
You see it in the Majjhima Nikāya.
You see it in the Dīgha Nikāya.
You see it in the Aṅguttara, in the Saṃyutta.
In the Saṃyutta Nikāya,
there is a whole section just about
dependent origination.
This is how you make a decision
about whether a sutta is important
or not.
This is actually a very useful tool,
because sometimes people say,
"ah, this is really important."
But why is it important?
"I don't know, it just is important."
There should be some objective
criteria for deciding these things.
So dependent arising is
one of those things.
The second question is then:
how does it fit in with
the rest of the teachings?
Because we need to sort of
tie it together with everything else.
One of the wonderful things
about the Buddhist teaching, is that
it all fits together into this one picture.
It's basically one picture,
then you take out a little piece here
a little piece there,
it's almost like a jigsaw.
It's not really like a jigsaw.
A jigsaw is a very imperfect simile,
or metaphor, because really, often,
the different pieces they overlap,
or one fits into another one
and it's not really quite like a jigsaw,
but still, it is an overall picture.
And it is the picture that you realise
when you awaken to the Dhamma.
When you, one day, become a stream enterer
and you get a flash of insight,
BANG!
What is it that you see?
What you see is:
the Dīgha Nikāya, the Majjhima Nikāya
the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Aṅguttara Nikāya.
All in one!
That's what you see!
Whoa!
You're head is going to explode!
Imagine seeing all that is one moment.
But the point, of course, is that
the insight is quite simple,
but when you draw out all the implications
of that one single insight,
you end up with an enormous thing.
That is what is so amazing.
So dependent origination is part of that.
It is part of that big picture,
but it is only one little thing.
So where does it fit in?
One easy way of understanding
where it fits in is to look at
the Four Noble Truths.
Noble Truth number one,
is the truth of suffering.
Usually, most people shake their head,
"okay, I'm not a Buddhist, I don't suffer."
That is number one.
Anyway, once you get passed the first one,
you say, "okay, yeah, life is a bit
unsatisfactory sometimes, okay, fair enough."
Once you get passed the first one,
the Second Noble Truth:
the cause of suffering.
The cause of suffering is taṇhā, craving,
according to the Second Noble Truth.
Now, in some suttas,
that fact that
taṇhā leads to suffering
is expanded out,
and it is expanded out
into dependent origination.
Dependent origination is what shows you
that suffering arises.
It's an alternative way of understanding
the Second Noble Truth.
So dependent origination fits,
bang in there.
It is basically another way of speaking
about the Second Noble Truth,
dependent origination.
That's already quite interesting
because normally you look at
the Second Noble Truth,
craving gives rise to suffering.
Okay, fine,
first of all maybe it's a little bit
hard to understand why that is the case,
so one thing that dependent origination
does, it spells out exactly why it is
that craving gives rise to suffering.
It puts in all the little pieces in between
to show you how this conditionality
actually works.
That's the first thing that's
interesting about it.
The second thing is,
okay, if craving is the cause of suffering
the Third Noble Truth says that
when you remove that craving
suffering ends.
But, how do you get rid of craving?
If craving is the cause of suffering,
you want to get rid of craving.
It's not very obvious, right?
Everybody has desires,
everybody has cravings in their life.
How do you get rid of that?
And this is the other thing that
dependent arising, dependent origination
shows you.
It shows you all the links,
all the causes that eventually
give rise to craving.
So it shows you have craving
can be removed.
And, of course, what it does,
it takes it all back down to ignorance
I was talking about before,
which is the first factor of
dependent arising.
So if you remove ignorance,
then everything else
starts to disappear.
Craving, and then
eventually also suffering itself.
So it fills in the gaps.
It makes it clear what is going on.
This is the power of dependent origination
in this case.
The second thing that is fascinating
about this, and often you will hear
people argue about whether
dependent origination includes
things like rebirth.
Is it about rebirth?
Is it about one life?
Is it about what happens in one moment?
People have all these different theories
about dependent origination.
I don't know about you here,
I'm not sure what you think.
I'm not going to ask you.
I, personally, don't have any doubt
that it refers to rebirth.
The rebirth process is part and parcel
of dependent origination,
and you can actually see that
if you consider the Second Noble Truth,
or at least one hint is found right there
because, the Second Noble Truth says
it is the craving that leasts to rebirth,
which is the source of suffering.
It's not just any old craving,
it's specifically called ponobhavika
Pono is from puna which means 'again'.
Bhavika means existence.
So the craving that has to do with
re-existence.
So because dependent origination
is just an expansion of that
Second Noble Truth,
dependent origination, too,
has to do with rebirth
and re-existence in the future.
It becomes very clear once you whack it
into that formula and they obviously
have to equate with each other,
it's the same thing,
so it deals with rebirth.
That's one thing I've been saying before,
I talked about the various
things that dependent origination points to
such as kamma et cetera,
of course, rebirth and kamma
are here closely connected to each other.
So this is where it is then,
it is part of the Second Noble Truth,
and straight away you see some
interesting things coming out,
just by considering that.
Third Noble Truth.
The Third Noble Truth is about
the ending of suffering.
It's great that there is a Third Noble Truth.
Without that it wouldn't be so great,
just the cause of suffering and suffering.
So the third one is like,
WOW!
This is the power of the Buddha's teaching
that we have the Third Noble Truth
and the fourth on, of course,
which is the path.
Now the third one
shows us that the cessation of suffering
comes from the cessation of craving.
Again, the sequence of dependent arising,
it has a forward order
and it has a reverse order.
And here it operates in the reverse order.
It shows you that
when you eliminate avijjā,
ignorance, at the bottom
all the factors get eliminated
until you eliminate craving
and then it fills in the gap
between craving and dukkha.
All of those factors get eliminated
and eventually suffering itself
gets eliminated.
There are two ways that
dependent arising works:
in the forward order,
which shows you how suffering arises
and the reverse order,
which shows how suffering ends
as a consequence of all the other
factors ending.
Second Noble Truth and Third Noble Truth.
I hope I'm making sense to you.
I'm not sure how much you
know about these things,
or how much you don't.
I apologise if I go too fast;
just let me know later on,
write a little complaint or whatever
and I'll try to go more slowly.
Sometimes it's hard because you have
people at different stages,
different understandings.
So this is, then, where... now you can see
why it is very much a psychology.
It's all to do with craving, desires,
how that causes suffering in the end
and about how it's ignorance,
which is another mental thing,
at the very beginning
which causes this whole thing.
It all revolves around things in our minds
and the why our psyches actually work.
Very briefly, perhaps, ignorance itself
even though we have this whole chain
of things starting with
ignorance, what about ignorance itself?
Where does that come from?
Can we say anything about ignorance?
The Buddhist idea is that ignorance
has always been there.
There is not first cause of ignorance.
I'll talk more about this later on
but this is one of those things
that always has existed
You cannot find the first cause of it.
Not really always has existed,
but you cannot find the first cause.
But, that does not mean
it cannot be eliminated.
It can still be eliminated, even though
there is no first cause to it.
So that is how it fits into
this big jigsaw puzzle.
It's directly there.
Part and parcel of the
second and the third Noble Truths.
And this becomes the importance of
dependent origination.
So now,
I thought of maybe talking,
very briefly today, just about
the various links of dependent origination,
starting from the beginning and show
just very briefly
how the whole system works.
Once we have this overview,
then we can start to focus in
on the details maybe tomorrow morning.
So let's have a look at the overview
of this whole sequence.
As I said, it begins with avijjā,
usually translated as ignorance;
not a good translation perhaps,
- I'll talk more about that tomorrow -
and it ends up with dukkha.
In between, you have ten other
factors in between.
There's 12 links in dependent arising,
and they are linked,
there's like a pair-wise linkage.
Each one of these factors is linked
to the one which comes after it,
and it's a causal linkage:
one thing leading to the next one,
leading to the next one.
So the first thing to understand is
this idea of causality that actually drives
this thing called dependent origination.
We start off with avijjā
and the point here is that once you have avijjā
the second factor comes into effect
then third factor all the way to the
twelfth factor which is called dukkha
which is suffering.
The kind of causality you are talking
about here, and this is spoken about
in brief also in the suttas themselves,
It is a type of causality you can call
sufficient causality.
Sufficient causality means that
when the factor preceding another one exists,
the factor that comes after
must also exist as a consequence.
That's what it means to be sufficient.
In other words, ignorance is sufficient
for the next factor to exist.
And then, the next factor is sufficient for the
third factor to exist, and so on
all the way to the last factor.
Each one is sufficient for the following one,
and what that means is that
if you have ignorance,
you have no choice,
you have to suffer.
From ignorance comes suffering.
What is that stupid English saying?
Ignorance is bliss.
It's completely wrong!
It's a mistake.
It's got it completely the wrong way round,
ignorance is not bliss.
If it is bliss, it's a very kind of
shallow form of stupid, silly bliss.
The real problem is ignorance must
cause suffering. That's what we mean
by sufficient conditions,
one must lead to the next one,
one after the other.
If you have ignorance, you have to suffer.
It's interesting, right?
It means that there is only
one solution to this whole thing.
But there is the other side,
which I mentioned just before,
and that side is that
once you take away the ignorance
once you give rise to knowledge
and understanding instead,
the second factor also disappears,
also ceases as a consequence.
This is another type of conditionality.
Both types of conditionality
apply at the same time.
This is called necessary conditionality.
Sufficient conditionality
and necessary conditionality.
Necessary conditionality means that
the preceding factor is necessary
for the subsequent factor to arise.
So if you take away avijjā,
if you take away ignorance,
the second factor,
which is called saṅkhāra in Pāli,
cannot exist any more,
it must disappear as a consequence.
This is called necessary conditionality.
Take away the necessary cause,
and the subsequence effect
also has to disappear.
This is in brief what all of dependent arising
really is about.
It's about this interplay of these two causes:
sufficient causality
and necessary causality.
When you understand those two causes,
it's fairly straightforward.
When you understand what's going on
you can understand how the whole thing
comes into being and also
how the whole thing ceases
as a consequence.
So that is in brief what it is,
and it's not just dependent arising
which works like that.
There are many things in life
which work on the basis of
necessary and sufficient conditionality.
In Buddhism, as well, there are other sets.
I have included some of those other sets
in here as well.
They're not called dependent origination
because they're not the same set of 12 factors,
but the same type of causality
is sometimes relevant
for those sets as well.
Sometimes there are other types of
conditionality, which are more loose.
If you do this, then usually you get that.
Which is not as strict.
Dependent arising is a very strict kind of
conditionality.
Very, very strict.
If you have that, that must follow.
Haven't got that, that will not follow.
So that is the overview.
You get the idea of how
this process works.
Let us briefly have a look at
the various factors in this chain,
and see roughly how it works out.
The first factor is called avijjā in Pāli.
As I said, often translated as ignorance.
It basically means that you
don't understand reality as it actually is.
Reality is one way,
the world works in one way;
you think it's different.
Of course, what the Buddha is saying
is that we are all like that.
We all have this avijjā.
We all have this blockage inside ourselves,
that make us not see reality
as it actually is.
What that means is that
we are running around like blind people.
We are in the dark.
We think that we are pursuing happiness,
but actually, we're usually pursuing
suffering instead.
We have got no idea what we're doing.
This is basically what ignorance means.
Because we don't know what we're doing,
it means that we start doing
all kind of stuff which leads
in the wrong direction
this is saṅkhāra. Saṅkhāra is often
translated with this terrible translation...
this is my opinion, right,
I apologise for anybody who
likes this translation.
The usual translation is,
'volitional formations'.
At least it leaves me stone cold
when I hear 'volitional formations'.
It doesn't do anything for me at all.
I feel like I could be on Mars
when I hear that translation.
Some people maybe it means something to,
but I find it doesn't really grab you,
grab your heart when you hear that.
Basically, what it means is the
activities of body, speech and mind.
The things that we do, especially
intentional things that we do.
So saṅkhāra can be translated...
I'll talk about it tomorrow
what a proper translation is,
but I will leave it for now.
So because we don't understand,
we do all these kinds of things, right?
And all this doing that we do,
from not understanding, has consequences.
One of the consequences it has...
Because all the doing is based on craving,
it's about propelling us into the future.
One of the things it leads to,
is it always leads to rebirth.
Quite literally,
always propelling ourselves,
projecting ourselves into the future.
The saṅkhāras are always about
what we want, not about now,
it's about the future.
From this, we get the idea of viññāṇa.
Viññāṇa, which is consciousness,
then gets established as a consequence of that.
I'll take much more in detail
about this tomorrow.
This is just very kind of rudimentary.
Because viññāṇa is then established,
in this case we're talking about
established in a new life in particular,
in that new life,
depending on where that life is
you'll have certain experiences, right?
If you get reborn as a deva, a god,
wow, you have these wonderful experiences,
so much happiness, right?
If you get reborn as a kangaroo,
it's not so great.
Maybe you think kangaroos are cute,
but actually,
kangaroo life is pretty miserable.
I live in the middle of the bush,
I see what they are like.
They are greedy, they are angry,
they fight over food.
The reality of kangaroo life is pretty,
pretty bad.
So when you see a cute animal,
what you see on the surface
is only one thing.
But if could be worse, you could be
reborn as an insect.
Imagine that!
Whoa! You get reborn as a mosquito,
you're flying around, find this big
lump of flesh in front of you and then,
smack! You get swatted because of that.
All you're doing is trying to get
some nice food, right?
You're just doing what everybody
wants to do, and then that's it,
end of story.
So the point is that,
once you establish consciousness
in a certain place, your experience
of the world is set within certain limits.
That is what nāmarūpa is,
called 'name-and-form',
also called 'mentality-materiality'.
It's all our experiences, basically,
and they are set within certain limits.
Because we have name-and-form,
we have the sense basis.
You see things, you hear,
you taste, you touch things
and through that, through the sense
is how we contact the world.
All our contact through the world
is through our sense.
I see all of your, you seem me,
we see each other,
we hear the sounds,
everything is through the sense.
It's called contact in the technical term.
Phassa in Pāli.
The previous term I forgot to say in Pāli,
I don't know if you're interested,
it's called saḷāyatana, the six sense bases.
Phassa, contact in the world.
Phassa leads to vedanā.
Vedanā means the feeling tone
of experience.
Is it happy?
Is it suffering?
Is it neutral?
It leads to much more.
Contact also leads to all kind of things.
We see forms,
we have volition, will,
drives in us, will in us,
it leads to many other things as well,
but it's interesting, the Buddha here,
picks out vedanā,
this idea of the feeling tone of experience.
He picks that out specifically
because it is much more important
than the other ones.
Why is it so important?
Because, it is vedanā
which tends to drive us.
Vedanā decides if you like it or not.
If you don't like it,
you will want to get rid of it.
If you like it, you will crave for it.
So vedanā makes us act.
The feeling tone makes us act,
through craving.
So you crave and then you act
and part of that action is upādāna.
Upādāna is how we react to craving.
What do we do with craving in the world?
We do things.
We take up things.
We start things.
Almost all the things we do
are, big picture things,
come from this idea of upādāna.
Taking things up, almost in a
literal sense.
You take up having a job,
or you take up hobbies,
or you take up Buddhism,
you take up meditation.
You do things.
And then because we take up
all these things we live in a certain way.
It's called bhava, existence.
So we live in a certain way,
our mind is kind of set in a certain way.
This is very similar to what we were
talking about at the beginning
of consciousness being established.
We're established, through the way we exist,
and because of that establishment
we are reborn in accordance with that
establishment later on.
Because you are reborn,
you must die, right?
With birth comes all the problems.
With birth comes human life
and once you have human life
you have to have human experiences.
I don't know what you human experience is,
but it's a bit of everything, right?
Sometimes you are happy,
and everything is great.
Sometimes it's absolute misery.
You go through divorce,
you get fired from your job,
your closest family members
and your friends, they die,
or you get really sick yourself,
or whatever.
Life goes through all these ups and downs
all the time, there are
so many problems there.
I think it is very important
to be realistic about that.
Sometimes you hear people say,
"aww, yeah, in my life I won't have
any suffering."
It's a very shallow, to say the least,
shallow outlook.
You haven't really looked
very carefully if you think
you have no suffering.
You really haven't.
You, kind of say "aww, don't want to see,
don't want to see."
That is basically what you're saying there.
I'm a monk, you could
argue that my life is probably quite easy.
Ajahn Brahma is probably
the most happy person I can imagine.
He always is very light hearted,
he always jokes, he always messes around,
but when he talks about suffering,
he says, "life is suffering!
Life is really dukkha.
It's really, really bad."
He's the happiest person,
so if he says it's suffering,
okay, I'll believe it.
I can feel it myself anyway.
So no problems there.
Okay, so that is dependent arising in brief,
just to give you an overview.
Those are the 12 links.
All the terms and how they all
connect together.
And then, of course,
the cessation mode as well.
So that you have the opposite happening
when it ceases at the beginning,
each one of these links will cease,
until you get to the last one eventually.
So, I think I will probably stop there
because I don't want to go into any more
details about things at this particular point.
It's probably lots and lots of information
for you anyway, maybe way too much.
I've always been a bit worried about these
one hour talks.
You can say a lot in an hour,
so that's part of the problem.
Anyway, for tonight,
have a nice, good night's sleep
remember that meditation
and going on retreats is about enjoying
yourself, having a good time.
Meditate until you feel that you are tired,
have a really good night's rest,
sleep as much as you like,
you feel is necessary,
and tomorrow you'll be clear and ready
for another day.