WEBVTT
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I'll talk a little bit about
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meditation practice
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and then we can try to do some
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afterwards together.
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So, I think the most important thing
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to realise about meditation practice
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is that it's supposed to be
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a positive experience.
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Right?!
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This may seem obvious,
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because why else would you want to do it
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if it isn't a positive experience?
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It may seem obvious,
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but as a matter of fact,
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many of people don't experience
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meditation as a positive experience.
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When you start to read
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the word of the Buddha,
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and you start to see how he explains
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what you might call
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the psychology of meditation,
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how meditation is supposed to be
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experienced by yourself,
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personally
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you start to realize
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the incredible emphasis
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the Buddha has on this thing
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which is called the positive experience.
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You'll probably have a look at
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one of those suttas later on.
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But basically, one of those suttas
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which talks about the psychology
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of meditation,
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when you read it,
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it starts off with:
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okay,
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you are a virtuous person,
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this is the foundation of all meditation,
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is to practice virtue.
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One of the things that unfortunately
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is forgotten around the world,
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people talk about mindfulness
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and they forget about the virtue aspect.
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Virtue means both being kind
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and avoid doing bad things.
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That is the foundation,
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so once you have that
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you can start your meditation practice
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And then, from that virtue,
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the Buddha starts to explain
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from virtue you have non-regret,
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right?
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Non-regret is obviously
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a positive experience already.
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From non-regret you get gladness.
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From gladness you get rapture, pīti.
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From pīti you get calm,
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calm of the mind and the body.
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From calm comes even more happiness.
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Gladness, rapture, happiness, calm,
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and then from that
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comes what is called samādhi,
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which is the unification of the mind,
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when the mind goes into a profound
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state of meditation practice.
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What you can see there,
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one of the very important facts about this
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is that meditation is all about happiness!
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Almost every word the Buddha uses there
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on how were supposed to experience it
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is one type of happiness after the other
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arising through
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the right practice of meditation.
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So make sure that when you are here
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you don't do things which causes you
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to feel ill at ease,
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not relaxed
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which created too much pain
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and all these kind of things.
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Because if you do that
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there's no way you're going to be able
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to access those positive states
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that the Buddha is talking about.
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This is so important,
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and, your know,
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it sort of seems obvious,
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but I think human psychology
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often gets in the way,
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human psychology blocks you
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from seeing that.
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So,
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for this reason
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the very first thing I want to talk about
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in regards to meditation practice
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is what to do with the body.
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The physical body is really the first thing.
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What you need to know
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about how to deal
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with the physical body
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is for the body to be comfortable,
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not to sit with too much pain
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and these kinds of things.
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For this reason we have
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all these great chairs at the back.
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Don't feel shy about using the chairs.
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You know this is not competing
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with anyone else, right?
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Do what you need to do to make
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sure your own practice makes progress;
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this is what it's all about.
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So there's no competition here.
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It doesn't matter what everyone else does,
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forget about everybody else.
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Do what you need to do.
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It's wonderful
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more and more these days
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you go on meditation retreats
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you see that chairs are coming out.
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It's natural.
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Most of us have grown up
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in a society,
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in a culture,
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where we sit on chairs all the time.
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When you've grown up
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sitting on a chair all the time
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and suddenly
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you're told to sit on the floor
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it actually can be very difficult.
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So please don't be shy about
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using the chairs.
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Much better to be a little bit
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more comfortable,
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extra comfortable
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than to be a little bit on the pain side
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while you're sitting.
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That is much better, so please
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use that and please do that.
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There's so many horror stories
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that I've heard over the years of people
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who don't get this kind of very basic thing.
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One of those stories
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when I was in Singapore
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a few years ago...
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One of the things as a monk,
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you travel a lot
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it may seem strange
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but you actually travel a lot
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because there's so much demand
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for English speaking monks everywhere
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English speaking monks
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are very few and far between
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so you get ferried around the world
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by plane everywhere
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to talk to people.
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It's very nice,
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it's a very nice thing to do to
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be able to give that kind of service.
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But it means that
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sometimes you're in Singapore,
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and when you're in Singapore,
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of course, you meet Buddhist people,
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just like here,
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just like everywhere else.
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I was staying in the apartment of this man.
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He was from Kuala Lumpur originally,
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but he was working in Singapore
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and he was travelling back and forth
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and very kindly offered me
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to stay in his apartment.
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Then one day while I was there
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he comes to me and says
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"Bhante, I have a question for you,
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have you got a few minutes."
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And of course I'm staying in his apartment
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so of course I have a few minutes for him
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and he says to me that,
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"a few years ago
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I was on this meditation retreat
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and
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it was the worst experience
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of my entire life.
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It was terrible!
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I was in pain all the way through,
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I felt so
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tense
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and so non-relaxed
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and so completely ill at ease
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for nine days.
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Never, ever in my entire life do I ever
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want to go on meditation retreat again."
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I said, "ooh!
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Wait a minute,
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you're talking it too far.
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Just because you had one bad experience
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doesn't mean you should never
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ever go on meditation retreat again.
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Retreats are different.
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There are different types of teachers
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that teach in different ways.
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You can't just assume
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that everything is the same,
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that everything is so bad."
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But he insisted that, no,
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he never ever wanted to meditate again
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because the experience had been
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so terrible, was the worst thing
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he'd ever done in his life.
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I couldn't really persuade him
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so he asked me, "what should I do,"
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Well, I don't know
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what he should do in that case.
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But, essentially he was turned off for life
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in regards to meditation practice.
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That is a very unfortunate thing
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because the idea with meditation,
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the idea with the spiritual path
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is that is something
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which develops over time.
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When you keep practising these things,
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when you keep doing things
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especially in the right way,
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when you understand what morality is
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on the Buddhist path
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you practice that in the right way
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and you combine that with
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making the mind peaceful and calm
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then these things together are
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incredibly powerful.
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The longer you do it
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there's a gradual transformation
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of your entire character,
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of your entire person
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and, essentially, you are creating
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a new personality for yourself
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as you go through this.
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But the effect really is most powerful
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when you keep on doing it,
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month after month,
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year after year,
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the results become very powerful
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after a while.
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So please make sure that you do this
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in such a way that it encourages you
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to keep on doing it also in the future
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and when you feel encouraged to do it
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also in the future
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then the long term benefits
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will be incredibly powerful for you,
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and something very beneficial
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will come out of this.
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So don't do what this man in Singapore did.
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He was maybe an extreme example,
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but this is what happens sometimes
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to people.
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I know that there are certain types
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of meditation retreat where only a very
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small fraction of the people
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come back to those retreats
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precisely because of the amount of pain
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and problems and tensions that
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people experience as a
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consequence of that practice.
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So this is the first step,
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allow the body to be relaxed.
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So please use the chairs.
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Another way, if you want to sit cross-legged,
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it's nice to sit sometimes
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against the wall.
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Sit with your back against the wall.
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Sometimes when you sit with your back
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leaning against something,
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you can relax a little bit better;
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that's a nice way of doing it.
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And, especially at the beginning
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of any retreat.
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I don't know what you
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have been doing today,
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some of you have probably been working,
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you're probably tired.
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When you're tired and have been working,
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usually you need to relax first of all.
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A good way to relax
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is just to lean back.
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Some of the best meditaters I know
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they always do like that,
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they lean back, they relax.
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Many of you would know Ajahn Brahm,
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Dr. Tan you would know Ajahn Brahm,
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and Ajahn Brahm tells me that
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when he starts out meditating
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he always leans back.
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Not always,
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but when he is tired
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or has been working hard
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he always starts off by sitting back
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and leaning again the wall.
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So if Ajahn Brahm does that
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you can do that.
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Ajahn Brahm is just about
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one of the best meditaters around
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he gets into these incredibly profound
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meditations, so if he can do that
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anybody can do that,
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because it is about relaxing.
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It's about knowing what you need,
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understanding that you need
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to relax first of all.
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So sit back, lean back against the wall
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and you're okay.
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Another monk I know,
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is a good friend of mine,
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he says that every time he meditates
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every time he meditates
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he starts off with nodding.
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He nods for about 10 or 15 minutes
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and then after you have nodded
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for about 10 or 15 minutes
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the mind clears up.
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And then when the mind clears up,
00:09:31.793 --> 00:09:33.996
then his meditation starts.
00:09:33.996 --> 00:09:35.544
He's also a very good meditator,
00:09:35.544 --> 00:09:38.167
but it's natural to feel tired
00:09:38.167 --> 00:09:39.061
at the beginning
00:09:39.061 --> 00:09:40.040
because you've been active
00:09:40.040 --> 00:09:41.406
you've been socialising,
00:09:41.406 --> 00:09:43.112
you've been doing all of these kind of things
00:09:43.112 --> 00:09:44.687
which tire the mind,
00:09:44.687 --> 00:09:45.643
so it's natural.
00:09:45.643 --> 00:09:47.569
So allow the mind to be.
00:09:47.569 --> 00:09:48.479
Just relax.
00:09:48.479 --> 00:09:49.566
Allow the mind to be,
00:09:49.566 --> 00:09:51.281
don't do anything in particular.
00:09:51.281 --> 00:09:53.593
Wait for mindfulness to arise.
00:09:53.593 --> 00:09:55.967
And when mindfulness arises by itself,
00:09:55.967 --> 00:09:57.717
it becomes very powerful
00:09:57.717 --> 00:09:59.359
and very useful.
00:09:59.869 --> 00:10:04.398
So, what all of this is about,
00:10:04.398 --> 00:10:06.779
and I'm going to relate it a little bit to
00:10:06.779 --> 00:10:09.034
the teachings of the Buddha.
00:10:09.034 --> 00:10:10.346
I'm sure you have probably heard
00:10:10.346 --> 00:10:11.917
of the middle way.
00:10:12.747 --> 00:10:14.176
The middle way in Buddhism
00:10:14.176 --> 00:10:17.435
is essentially, in a way, on the one hand
00:10:17.435 --> 00:10:19.947
not to torture the body.
00:10:19.947 --> 00:10:21.857
In India in those days people would
00:10:21.857 --> 00:10:23.651
torture themselves. You know, sometimes
00:10:23.651 --> 00:10:25.690
you think that people lying on these
00:10:25.690 --> 00:10:27.550
beds of nails, you think it's some kind of
00:10:27.550 --> 00:10:29.786
cartoon caricature of India,
00:10:29.786 --> 00:10:30.542
and then you open the suttas
00:10:30.542 --> 00:10:31.476
and it says right there they were
00:10:31.476 --> 00:10:32.993
lying on beds of nails.
00:10:32.993 --> 00:10:34.602
It's actually the reality,
00:10:34.602 --> 00:10:36.170
it's actually what people where doing.
00:10:36.170 --> 00:10:39.584
So this was one of the ways that people
00:10:39.584 --> 00:10:41.551
were practising at that time.
00:10:42.361 --> 00:10:44.729
The Buddha says this is the wrong way.
00:10:44.729 --> 00:10:46.058
And the other wrong way
00:10:46.058 --> 00:10:48.298
is then to indulge the body.
00:10:50.518 --> 00:10:52.353
Here, on a meditation retreat like this
00:10:52.353 --> 00:10:53.844
you're not really going to be able to
00:10:53.844 --> 00:10:55.206
indulge the very much.
00:10:55.206 --> 00:10:57.229
Especially if you keep the eight precepts.
00:10:57.229 --> 00:10:58.999
So forget about the indulging side.
00:10:58.999 --> 00:11:01.386
The side to be careful about, is the side
00:11:01.386 --> 00:11:02.967
which has to do with experiencing
00:11:02.967 --> 00:11:05.357
too much pain, torturing yourself
00:11:05.357 --> 00:11:07.237
thinking that: "by torture, I'm going to
00:11:07.237 --> 00:11:09.200
make quick progress".
00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:10.672
This is the problem,
00:11:10.672 --> 00:11:12.977
the classical problem in meditation.
00:11:13.689 --> 00:11:16.415
What happens when you find that middle way,
00:11:16.415 --> 00:11:18.929
where you neither torture yourself,
00:11:18.929 --> 00:11:21.423
nor you indulge the body
00:11:21.423 --> 00:11:23.894
what happens is that the body becomes
00:11:23.894 --> 00:11:25.064
irrelevant.
00:11:25.474 --> 00:11:26.878
The reason why the body
00:11:26.878 --> 00:11:28.024
is important to us,
00:11:28.024 --> 00:11:29.110
is because either,
00:11:29.110 --> 00:11:31.278
we get some pleasure through the body
00:11:31.278 --> 00:11:33.114
when you get pleasure through the body
00:11:33.114 --> 00:11:34.645
the body is important because
00:11:34.645 --> 00:11:37.043
that's where you get your happiness.
00:11:37.043 --> 00:11:38.914
Or, the body is important because
00:11:38.914 --> 00:11:40.828
you get pain through the body.
00:11:40.828 --> 00:11:42.178
If you get pain through the body,
00:11:42.178 --> 00:11:44.897
there's something to be done with the body.
00:11:44.897 --> 00:11:46.491
There is a problem there, a problem
00:11:46.491 --> 00:11:48.180
that needs to be resolved.
00:11:48.180 --> 00:11:50.465
The mind will always tend to go out
00:11:50.465 --> 00:11:52.854
to the body, out into the world
00:11:52.854 --> 00:11:54.691
rather than staying inside and watch
00:11:54.691 --> 00:11:57.164
the breath, or whatever it is.
00:11:57.164 --> 00:11:58.718
So this is the idea of the middle way.
00:11:58.718 --> 00:12:01.588
The middle way, is a way where your body
00:12:01.588 --> 00:12:02.807
is no longer important.
00:12:02.807 --> 00:12:04.851
The body falls by the wayside.
00:12:04.851 --> 00:12:07.135
The body becomes irrelevant.
00:12:07.135 --> 00:12:08.384
Of course, we all know that meditation
00:12:08.384 --> 00:12:10.151
in the end is about the mind,
00:12:10.151 --> 00:12:11.641
and because the meditation
00:12:11.641 --> 00:12:12.649
is about the mind
00:12:12.649 --> 00:12:15.006
then getting rid of the body is precisely
00:12:15.006 --> 00:12:16.849
what we want to do.
00:12:16.849 --> 00:12:18.876
And that is what the middle way is about.
00:12:18.876 --> 00:12:21.167
It's kind of strange, the two extremes
00:12:21.167 --> 00:12:24.124
in a sense are quite close to each other
00:12:24.124 --> 00:12:26.390
because the two extremes are about the body
00:12:26.390 --> 00:12:28.150
and the middle way is where the body
00:12:28.150 --> 00:12:30.938
falls away and the body is irrelevant.
00:12:32.128 --> 00:12:32.818
So this is the point here,
00:12:32.818 --> 00:12:34.250
this is what the middle way is,
00:12:34.250 --> 00:12:35.830
the body is gone,
00:12:35.830 --> 00:12:37.188
and when the body falls away
00:12:37.188 --> 00:12:39.838
you feel so at ease.
00:12:39.838 --> 00:12:41.206
So watch that.
00:12:41.206 --> 00:12:43.586
If you do feel pain
00:12:43.586 --> 00:12:45.773
in your meditation practice, please
00:12:45.773 --> 00:12:47.043
change your posture,
00:12:47.993 --> 00:12:48.696
don't think that
00:12:48.696 --> 00:12:50.409
you're going to be some superhero
00:12:50.409 --> 00:12:51.945
and just get enlightened now
00:12:51.945 --> 00:12:53.902
on this retreat.
00:12:53.902 --> 00:12:55.399
It's not going to work.
00:12:55.899 --> 00:12:56.956
I know Ajahn Brahm did that.
00:12:56.956 --> 00:12:58.171
He always said that when he was
00:12:58.171 --> 00:12:59.681
a young man he would sit down and say:
00:12:59.681 --> 00:13:03.280
"okay, I'm going to sit until I get enlightened"
00:13:03.280 --> 00:13:04.611
and, of course, it didn't work.
00:13:04.611 --> 00:13:06.228
But everybody has these ideas sometimes.
00:13:06.228 --> 00:13:07.477
Please don't try that.
00:13:07.477 --> 00:13:08.869
Enjoy the practice.
00:13:08.869 --> 00:13:11.257
Sit down, if you have pain somewhere
00:13:11.777 --> 00:13:13.747
get up, change your posture,
00:13:13.747 --> 00:13:15.657
go out, do some walking instead,
00:13:15.657 --> 00:13:17.481
do something else, if you find that.
00:13:17.481 --> 00:13:19.610
These are general guidelines
00:13:19.610 --> 00:13:21.276
for meditation practice.
00:13:21.756 --> 00:13:23.513
Don't sit with pain, especially
00:13:23.513 --> 00:13:25.827
when you feel the mind gets obsessed
00:13:25.827 --> 00:13:27.662
with that pain, it goes back to it
00:13:27.662 --> 00:13:29.420
again and again, you can't deal with it,
00:13:29.420 --> 00:13:32.250
then the time is right to change the posture.
00:13:33.820 --> 00:13:35.660
So this is number one,
00:13:35.660 --> 00:13:38.520
and I am always surprised
00:13:38.520 --> 00:13:40.841
how tenacious this idea is,
00:13:40.841 --> 00:13:43.120
that it's okay to sit with pain,
00:13:43.120 --> 00:13:44.354
how many people think
00:13:44.354 --> 00:13:45.531
it is a good thing to do.
00:13:45.531 --> 00:13:46.845
I think there is something deep
00:13:46.845 --> 00:13:48.279
in the human psyche
00:13:48.279 --> 00:13:49.603
that tends to think that
00:13:49.603 --> 00:13:51.473
if you torture the body
00:13:51.473 --> 00:13:53.207
you are freeing the spirit.
00:13:53.207 --> 00:13:55.249
The body is like the sinful thing
00:13:55.249 --> 00:13:56.992
that keeps you tied to the world
00:13:56.992 --> 00:13:59.119
and if you torture that evil body a little bit,
00:13:59.119 --> 00:14:00.875
then you can free the spirit,
00:14:00.875 --> 00:14:02.947
then the mind gets developed
00:14:02.947 --> 00:14:04.919
and you get spiritual practice from that.
00:14:04.919 --> 00:14:06.827
Because it's so common in the world!
00:14:06.827 --> 00:14:08.254
In Christianity they do that.
00:14:08.254 --> 00:14:10.698
Christianity is famous in the Middle Ages
00:14:10.698 --> 00:14:13.241
for having these people who torture themselves.
00:14:14.261 --> 00:14:15.628
In Hinduism,
00:14:15.628 --> 00:14:17.614
very, very famous for all the torturing;
00:14:17.614 --> 00:14:19.142
you find that in the suttas.
00:14:19.142 --> 00:14:21.314
In Islam, apparently, you find the same thing,
00:14:21.314 --> 00:14:22.699
people torturing themselves.
00:14:22.699 --> 00:14:24.805
And then you come to the one religion
00:14:24.805 --> 00:14:26.006
where the emphasis is on getting away
00:14:26.006 --> 00:14:28.064
from suffering, it's all about happiness
00:14:28.064 --> 00:14:29.528
which is Buddhism, and then you find
00:14:29.528 --> 00:14:31.354
people still do the same thing!
00:14:31.354 --> 00:14:32.795
People still torture themselves
00:14:32.795 --> 00:14:33.950
even in Buddhism.
00:14:33.950 --> 00:14:36.077
This should be the one religion
00:14:36.077 --> 00:14:38.277
where torture is absolutely prohibited,
00:14:38.277 --> 00:14:40.208
and yet it still happens.
00:14:40.208 --> 00:14:42.665
So I think there is something in the human
00:14:42.665 --> 00:14:45.900
psyche which basically makes us feel
00:14:45.900 --> 00:14:49.373
that this is the way to develop the mind.
00:14:49.373 --> 00:14:50.866
If the body gets a bit tortured
00:14:50.866 --> 00:14:51.713
that's okay
00:14:51.713 --> 00:14:53.274
because that's just the body.
00:14:53.274 --> 00:14:55.127
But actually, no, it's the other way round,
00:14:55.127 --> 00:14:57.525
it's a hindrance for meditation practice
00:14:57.525 --> 00:14:58.452
to work.
00:14:59.615 --> 00:15:02.080
Okay, that's point number one.
00:15:02.080 --> 00:15:04.173
I've said a lot about that and the reason
00:15:04.173 --> 00:15:05.800
is because in my experience
00:15:05.800 --> 00:15:07.230
people still don't get it.
00:15:07.230 --> 00:15:09.421
Even if you talk after half an hour,
00:15:09.421 --> 00:15:11.584
it still hasn't sunk in.
00:15:11.584 --> 00:15:13.396
Sometimes it takes years before
00:15:13.396 --> 00:15:15.128
the basic message sinks in.
00:15:15.128 --> 00:15:17.314
I'm just talking from my own experience,
00:15:17.314 --> 00:15:18.696
I know how stupid I am,
00:15:18.696 --> 00:15:21.133
how stubborn sometimes you can be.
00:15:21.133 --> 00:15:22.535
It takes a while for these things to
00:15:22.535 --> 00:15:24.399
actually become clear.
00:15:26.199 --> 00:15:28.650
So that is number one.
00:15:28.650 --> 00:15:31.242
The second point in meditation practice
00:15:31.242 --> 00:15:34.840
is, once your body is at ease,
00:15:34.840 --> 00:15:37.378
the body doesn't have any pain,
00:15:37.378 --> 00:15:41.065
the next thing to do is to relax the body.
00:15:42.535 --> 00:15:44.231
This is one of the things you will find
00:15:44.231 --> 00:15:47.444
as well, is that you come into your busy life
00:15:47.444 --> 00:15:49.552
and the business of life
00:15:49.552 --> 00:15:51.149
always is felt in the body.
00:15:51.149 --> 00:15:52.957
You feel tensions.
00:15:52.957 --> 00:15:54.245
You feel tensions in the stomach,
00:15:54.245 --> 00:15:55.786
you feel tensions in the shoulders,
00:15:55.786 --> 00:15:57.459
you feel tensions in the face.
00:15:57.459 --> 00:15:59.638
The muscles tighten up.
00:16:00.548 --> 00:16:01.791
So the first thing we need to do,
00:16:01.791 --> 00:16:03.194
is to relax.
00:16:03.194 --> 00:16:05.563
Again it's about finding the ease.
00:16:05.563 --> 00:16:07.878
Not only do we not have any pain,
00:16:07.878 --> 00:16:10.238
but you want to find the ease in the body,
00:16:10.238 --> 00:16:12.380
where the body feels really nice,
00:16:12.380 --> 00:16:14.174
and really good.
00:16:14.744 --> 00:16:17.104
What is happening here,
00:16:17.104 --> 00:16:18.181
the reason why
00:16:18.181 --> 00:16:19.993
the body is tense
00:16:19.993 --> 00:16:22.579
is because the mind is tense.
00:16:22.579 --> 00:16:24.740
The mind is what controls the body.
00:16:24.740 --> 00:16:26.390
So, if you get very stressed, of course,
00:16:26.390 --> 00:16:28.358
during daily life,
00:16:28.358 --> 00:16:30.328
stress will always reverberate,
00:16:30.328 --> 00:16:31.648
or will make itself felt
00:16:31.648 --> 00:16:33.360
in the body afterwards.
00:16:33.360 --> 00:16:35.728
Mind and body are so closely connected.
00:16:35.728 --> 00:16:38.225
This idea that these are separate things
00:16:38.225 --> 00:16:40.259
is really a non-starter.
00:16:40.259 --> 00:16:41.682
They are very, very closely connected
00:16:41.682 --> 00:16:43.237
to each other.
00:16:43.237 --> 00:16:46.264
It's a very useful way of learning
00:16:46.264 --> 00:16:47.973
how to deal with the mind,
00:16:47.973 --> 00:16:50.422
by working with the body,
00:16:50.422 --> 00:16:51.269
because with the body,
00:16:51.269 --> 00:16:53.145
it's very obvious what is going on.
00:16:53.145 --> 00:16:54.443
You know what is happening in the body,
00:16:54.443 --> 00:16:56.203
you can feel if there is any tension there
00:16:56.203 --> 00:16:58.110
you can feel if there's a problem there.
00:16:58.110 --> 00:17:00.564
With the mind, everything is a bit more
00:17:00.564 --> 00:17:02.266
difficult to pin down.
00:17:02.916 --> 00:17:04.750
So start by feeling the body.
00:17:04.750 --> 00:17:06.259
What does the body feel like?
00:17:06.259 --> 00:17:08.635
Start every meditation,
00:17:08.635 --> 00:17:10.194
every time you do this,
00:17:10.194 --> 00:17:11.376
go through the same process
00:17:11.376 --> 00:17:13.696
because then you get used to a good
00:17:13.696 --> 00:17:16.357
procedure of doing things after a while.
00:17:16.357 --> 00:17:18.878
Start off, by just feeling the body
00:17:18.878 --> 00:17:21.276
and then making the body at ease,
00:17:21.276 --> 00:17:22.801
making the body relaxed,
00:17:22.801 --> 00:17:24.433
feeling good about yourself,
00:17:24.433 --> 00:17:27.204
feeling really, really relaxed.
00:17:29.645 --> 00:17:33.027
There are many ways of doing this.
00:17:33.027 --> 00:17:36.065
One way is just to take some deep breaths
00:17:36.065 --> 00:17:37.789
and allowing yourself to relax.
00:17:37.789 --> 00:17:39.171
Make sure you sit in a comfortable
00:17:39.171 --> 00:17:41.621
posture, like leaning back so that you can
00:17:41.621 --> 00:17:43.882
actually allow the body to relax.
00:17:44.562 --> 00:17:46.902
Use a guided meditation with somebody
00:17:46.902 --> 00:17:50.555
whose instructions you trust
00:17:50.555 --> 00:17:52.220
and voice you like to listen to,
00:17:52.220 --> 00:17:54.357
again that makes you feel nice and relaxed.
00:17:54.357 --> 00:17:56.896
And the last part is the attitude you have.
00:17:56.896 --> 00:17:57.978
The attitude is probably
00:17:57.978 --> 00:17:59.708
the most important thing of all.
00:17:59.708 --> 00:18:00.765
With the right attitude
00:18:00.765 --> 00:18:01.505
you will relax,
00:18:01.505 --> 00:18:03.241
without it, it's very, very hard.
00:18:03.801 --> 00:18:05.457
Spend time doing this,
00:18:05.457 --> 00:18:07.879
spend however long it takes
00:18:07.879 --> 00:18:09.227
even if you spend the whole
00:18:09.227 --> 00:18:11.110
meditation just relaxing
00:18:11.110 --> 00:18:12.178
especially at the beginning
00:18:12.178 --> 00:18:13.239
of a retreat,
00:18:13.239 --> 00:18:14.039
that's fine.
00:18:14.039 --> 00:18:14.934
That's good.
00:18:14.934 --> 00:18:16.346
At least you feel at ease
00:18:16.346 --> 00:18:18.133
and relaxed when that happens.
00:18:18.133 --> 00:18:19.482
The idea, here,
00:18:19.482 --> 00:18:22.151
is really to take the relaxation
00:18:22.151 --> 00:18:24.160
deeper than what you normally
00:18:24.160 --> 00:18:25.374
are used to.
00:18:26.254 --> 00:18:28.720
Ordinary relaxation and ordinary life
00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:30.418
actually often isn't all that relaxed
00:18:30.418 --> 00:18:31.680
at all.
00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:32.455
And you only find that out
00:18:32.455 --> 00:18:33.731
once you start to meditate
00:18:33.731 --> 00:18:35.121
and you get into deeper states
00:18:35.121 --> 00:18:35.881
of relaxation.
00:18:35.881 --> 00:18:36.712
You start to realise,
00:18:36.712 --> 00:18:39.474
wow, this is really relaxed
00:18:39.474 --> 00:18:40.603
I didn't know it was possible
00:18:40.603 --> 00:18:41.626
to get this relaxed.
00:18:41.626 --> 00:18:43.418
I had no idea, now I understand
00:18:43.418 --> 00:18:45.531
what relaxation is all about.
00:18:45.531 --> 00:18:47.616
The deeper your meditation goes,
00:18:47.616 --> 00:18:48.403
the more you think,
00:18:48.403 --> 00:18:50.822
"whoa, this is really nice!
00:18:50.822 --> 00:18:52.764
The body feels so at ease."
00:18:52.764 --> 00:18:54.734
The idea here is to start off
00:18:54.734 --> 00:18:56.229
that process of relaxation
00:18:56.229 --> 00:18:58.096
as soon as possible.
00:18:58.096 --> 00:19:00.614
And the sooner you get that done
00:19:00.614 --> 00:19:01.722
the more easily
00:19:01.722 --> 00:19:04.510
the rest of the meditation flows along.
00:19:04.510 --> 00:19:09.051
So, get that depth of relaxation
00:19:09.051 --> 00:19:11.048
deeper than you had it before
00:19:11.048 --> 00:19:12.576
at the very beginning,
00:19:12.576 --> 00:19:14.161
by focusing on the body,
00:19:14.161 --> 00:19:15.619
by sending metta to yourself,
00:19:15.619 --> 00:19:17.005
having a sense of kindness
00:19:17.005 --> 00:19:18.586
and compassion for yourself,
00:19:18.586 --> 00:19:19.995
and you start to feel the body
00:19:19.995 --> 00:19:21.435
become so easy,
00:19:21.435 --> 00:19:23.200
so light.
00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:24.248
It becomes so light.
00:19:24.248 --> 00:19:26.814
It becomes like a tuft of cotton almost.
00:19:26.814 --> 00:19:28.947
It's almost like it starts to disappear.
00:19:28.947 --> 00:19:30.042
That's what I was talking about before,
00:19:30.042 --> 00:19:31.821
disappearing of the body
00:19:31.821 --> 00:19:34.335
which you do by not having any pain,
00:19:34.335 --> 00:19:35.980
but it disappears even more
00:19:35.980 --> 00:19:38.173
when you feel really at ease
00:19:38.173 --> 00:19:39.457
about the body.
00:19:40.257 --> 00:19:42.639
You find yourself so light,
00:19:42.639 --> 00:19:44.049
so easy,
00:19:44.809 --> 00:19:46.036
unless you fall asleep,
00:19:46.036 --> 00:19:47.127
in which case you feel heavy,
00:19:47.127 --> 00:19:48.262
that's the alternative.
00:19:48.262 --> 00:19:49.443
That's okay.
00:19:49.443 --> 00:19:50.463
If you fall asleep that's fine.
00:19:50.463 --> 00:19:51.671
Please, fall asleep,
00:19:51.671 --> 00:19:53.767
falling asleep is not a bad thing.
00:19:53.767 --> 00:19:55.180
It is very, very common,
00:19:55.180 --> 00:19:56.356
you've in very good company if you
00:19:56.356 --> 00:19:58.427
fall asleep. Allow that tiredness
00:19:58.427 --> 00:19:59.585
to wear off and then the
00:19:59.585 --> 00:20:01.446
lightness of the mind comes afterwards.
00:20:01.906 --> 00:20:03.461
So, either you feel very heavy
00:20:03.461 --> 00:20:04.948
when you do this and you fall asleep,
00:20:04.948 --> 00:20:07.735
or the mind tends to feel light.
00:20:07.735 --> 00:20:10.074
It tends to go either one way or the other.
00:20:12.134 --> 00:20:13.181
When this happens,
00:20:13.181 --> 00:20:16.091
because you are feeling so much at ease,
00:20:16.091 --> 00:20:18.148
you are feeling so good about yourself,
00:20:18.148 --> 00:20:20.415
so good in the body, good in everything,
00:20:20.415 --> 00:20:23.085
mindfulness starts to arise.
00:20:24.878 --> 00:20:25.986
What is mindfulness?
00:20:25.986 --> 00:20:27.343
Mindfulness is basically
00:20:27.343 --> 00:20:29.376
about the ability to stay in the
00:20:29.376 --> 00:20:31.820
present moment, to be aware
00:20:31.820 --> 00:20:32.640
of what is happening in the
00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:34.661
here and now, that is what mindfulness
00:20:34.661 --> 00:20:36.570
is about. Mindfulness is not about
00:20:36.570 --> 00:20:38.523
fantasizing. If you think about future,
00:20:38.523 --> 00:20:39.819
or you think about the past,
00:20:39.819 --> 00:20:41.827
or you fantasize about all kind of things,
00:20:41.827 --> 00:20:43.232
that's not mindfulness.
00:20:43.232 --> 00:20:44.846
Mindfulness is about the ability to
00:20:44.846 --> 00:20:46.362
just be here and now.
00:20:46.362 --> 00:20:47.892
Be in this present moment.
00:20:47.892 --> 00:20:48.967
Be in this room.
00:20:48.967 --> 00:20:50.607
Be right here in front of you,
00:20:50.607 --> 00:20:52.296
being able to watch the breath,
00:20:52.296 --> 00:20:54.298
that is what mindfulness is about.
00:20:54.298 --> 00:20:58.078
And mindfulness arises especially
00:20:58.078 --> 00:21:00.084
when you feel good.
00:21:00.084 --> 00:21:01.072
If you don't feel good
00:21:01.072 --> 00:21:02.770
the mind wants to escape,
00:21:02.770 --> 00:21:04.688
but if the present moment is the
00:21:04.688 --> 00:21:06.016
pleasant moment...
00:21:06.016 --> 00:21:07.357
It's an easy one to remember:
00:21:07.357 --> 00:21:09.388
present moment is the pleasant moment
00:21:09.388 --> 00:21:11.909
then the mindfulness tends to arise
00:21:11.909 --> 00:21:14.030
as a consequence.
00:21:14.030 --> 00:21:16.619
So this is a very easy path.
00:21:16.619 --> 00:21:18.219
All you have to do is relax.
00:21:18.219 --> 00:21:21.296
All you have to do is just to feel at ease,
00:21:21.296 --> 00:21:23.611
and when you do that in the right way,
00:21:23.611 --> 00:21:26.833
then mindfulness comes all by itself.
00:21:26.833 --> 00:21:28.274
This is the trick of this path,
00:21:28.274 --> 00:21:30.304
this is the trick of this whole practice,
00:21:30.304 --> 00:21:32.530
is that you don't actually have to do anything,
00:21:32.530 --> 00:21:34.144
you don't have to exert yourself,
00:21:34.144 --> 00:21:35.951
you don't have to use a lot of will power,
00:21:35.951 --> 00:21:38.276
there's not a lot of stuff that you have to do,
00:21:38.276 --> 00:21:39.677
because the whole doing business, actually,
00:21:39.677 --> 00:21:41.836
is what tires you out in the first place.
00:21:41.836 --> 00:21:44.198
All this doing makes the mind busy
00:21:44.198 --> 00:21:45.106
it makes you active,
00:21:45.106 --> 00:21:46.456
then when you come back home after
00:21:46.456 --> 00:21:48.077
a long day's work, you feel
00:21:48.077 --> 00:21:49.810
completely exhausted, that's because
00:21:49.810 --> 00:21:52.190
of all the doing that you've been doing.
00:21:52.190 --> 00:21:53.645
So this is the natural way
00:21:53.645 --> 00:21:55.457
for mindfulness to arise
00:21:55.457 --> 00:21:57.891
and when mindfulness arises naturally,
00:21:57.891 --> 00:22:00.430
it is easy, it is pleasant, it is happy
00:22:00.430 --> 00:22:03.211
and you feel so good about these things.
00:22:04.131 --> 00:22:05.931
So this is the way.
00:22:05.931 --> 00:22:08.578
And one of the things to avoid here...
00:22:09.408 --> 00:22:12.620
this is almost becoming a kind of
00:22:12.620 --> 00:22:15.871
taboo word in Buddhism, in meditation,
00:22:15.871 --> 00:22:17.861
is the word 'concentration'.
00:22:17.861 --> 00:22:20.088
I'm sure you have heard the word 'concentration'
00:22:20.088 --> 00:22:20.919
being used.
00:22:20.919 --> 00:22:22.694
People say I've got to concentrate,
00:22:22.694 --> 00:22:24.236
concentrate on the breath,
00:22:24.236 --> 00:22:25.905
concentrate on things,
00:22:25.905 --> 00:22:28.975
but be very careful with words like that
00:22:28.975 --> 00:22:31.527
because, the word 'concentration'
00:22:31.527 --> 00:22:34.054
in the English language, very often
00:22:34.054 --> 00:22:35.926
implies a lot of will power.
00:22:35.926 --> 00:22:37.567
When you go to work,
00:22:38.587 --> 00:22:40.899
or you do whatever in ordinary life,
00:22:40.899 --> 00:22:41.852
if you go to work,
00:22:41.852 --> 00:22:43.992
your employer expects you to read certain things
00:22:43.992 --> 00:22:45.305
and write certain reports
00:22:45.305 --> 00:22:46.707
and all these kinds of things,
00:22:46.707 --> 00:22:49.194
and because your employer expects that
00:22:49.194 --> 00:22:50.381
you have to do it because you
00:22:50.381 --> 00:22:52.638
have to earn your salary et cetera, et cetera,
00:22:52.638 --> 00:22:54.194
but when you're doing things
00:22:54.194 --> 00:22:55.643
that you're not really enjoying
00:22:55.643 --> 00:22:56.512
all that much,
00:22:56.512 --> 00:22:58.270
maybe it's an incredibly boring report
00:22:58.270 --> 00:22:59.694
that you have to read,
00:22:59.694 --> 00:23:01.438
you kind of have to force yourself
00:23:01.438 --> 00:23:03.566
through it, that is what concentration
00:23:03.566 --> 00:23:05.656
usually means. You're forcing attention
00:23:05.656 --> 00:23:08.699
on to something which isn't 100% natural.
00:23:09.469 --> 00:23:11.762
That is why people who have jobs
00:23:11.762 --> 00:23:14.090
that demand a very high degree of
00:23:14.090 --> 00:23:17.265
alertness, and awareness and concentration
00:23:17.265 --> 00:23:18.928
often feel incredibly tired after
00:23:18.928 --> 00:23:20.598
a long day's work.
00:23:20.598 --> 00:23:22.463
I think these flight controllers,
00:23:22.463 --> 00:23:24.794
you know - what is called? The people
00:23:24.794 --> 00:23:28.294
who sit in those tall towers at airports?
00:23:28.294 --> 00:23:29.554
Whatever.
00:23:29.554 --> 00:23:30.398
Anyway, they sit up there
00:23:30.398 --> 00:23:31.820
and they have to watch the screen
00:23:31.820 --> 00:23:33.997
to make sure none of the planes collide.
00:23:33.997 --> 00:23:36.236
If the the planes collide in midair
00:23:36.236 --> 00:23:37.763
you feel a bit bad about it afterwards
00:23:37.763 --> 00:23:40.438
So, you really have to focus on this
00:23:40.438 --> 00:23:43.629
and this is one of the biggest
00:23:43.629 --> 00:23:45.620
stress jobs, because you have to
00:23:45.620 --> 00:23:46.651
concentrate so much and people
00:23:46.651 --> 00:23:48.529
feel very tired after doing
00:23:48.529 --> 00:23:50.141
that kind of job all day.
00:23:50.156 --> 00:23:52.379
This is how we all feel to a certain extent,
00:23:52.379 --> 00:23:53.856
when you use force
00:23:53.856 --> 00:23:56.960
to watch and to be in the present moment.
00:23:56.960 --> 00:23:59.190
So there's an idea of allowing mindfulness
00:23:59.190 --> 00:24:01.067
to arise naturally, rather than
00:24:01.067 --> 00:24:02.889
to force mindfulness.
00:24:02.889 --> 00:24:04.230
If you force mindfulness,
00:24:04.230 --> 00:24:05.231
after a while
00:24:05.231 --> 00:24:06.403
you're going to feel exhausted
00:24:06.403 --> 00:24:08.145
in meditation practice and you're going to
00:24:08.145 --> 00:24:09.514
sleep for the rest of the retreat
00:24:09.514 --> 00:24:11.807
and it won't be all that interesting for you.
00:24:11.807 --> 00:24:13.204
You still may have a good time,
00:24:13.204 --> 00:24:15.190
but you lose out on all the good fun
00:24:15.190 --> 00:24:16.858
that everyone else has.
00:24:16.858 --> 00:24:19.217
So learn natural mindfulness,
00:24:19.217 --> 00:24:20.982
that is where it's all at.
00:24:20.982 --> 00:24:24.777
That is what we're trying to get to.
00:24:25.777 --> 00:24:28.815
Again, when you have no pain in the body
00:24:28.815 --> 00:24:31.116
- I'm just recapitulating very briefly -
00:24:31.116 --> 00:24:31.899
no pain in the body,
00:24:31.899 --> 00:24:34.130
and you are at ease, and you are relaxed
00:24:34.130 --> 00:24:37.866
natural mindfulness arises as a consequence,
00:24:37.866 --> 00:24:39.797
or rather I should say, it can arise.
00:24:39.797 --> 00:24:41.688
It doesn't always arise.
00:24:41.688 --> 00:24:44.324
The last reason why it doesn't arise
00:24:44.324 --> 00:24:46.688
is because the attitude.
00:24:46.689 --> 00:24:48.420
The attitude is probably
00:24:48.420 --> 00:24:50.415
the most important thing of all
00:24:50.415 --> 00:24:51.924
in meditation practice.
00:24:53.804 --> 00:24:55.382
You have to look at the world,
00:24:55.382 --> 00:24:57.578
look at the people around you,
00:24:57.578 --> 00:25:00.174
feel the situation in the right way.
00:25:00.174 --> 00:25:01.796
When you have the right attitude
00:25:01.796 --> 00:25:03.217
in this way, that is when meditation
00:25:03.217 --> 00:25:05.354
really becomes possible.
00:25:05.354 --> 00:25:07.403
It has to be a positive attitude.
00:25:07.403 --> 00:25:09.426
You have to have a sense of well wishing
00:25:09.426 --> 00:25:11.318
to the people around you.
00:25:11.318 --> 00:25:14.109
You have to have a sense of
00:25:14.109 --> 00:25:14.839
mettā,
00:25:14.839 --> 00:25:15.595
karuṇā,
00:25:16.435 --> 00:25:17.545
this means loving-kindness,
00:25:17.545 --> 00:25:18.647
compassion
00:25:18.647 --> 00:25:20.482
all of these positive qualities,
00:25:20.482 --> 00:25:21.993
a sense of friendliness.
00:25:21.993 --> 00:25:23.305
When you have all of these
00:25:23.305 --> 00:25:24.408
qualities inside of you,
00:25:24.408 --> 00:25:25.432
that is when
00:25:25.432 --> 00:25:27.096
meditation becomes possible.
00:25:27.096 --> 00:25:28.216
If you feel negative,
00:25:28.216 --> 00:25:29.914
or you are upset with somebody,
00:25:29.914 --> 00:25:31.830
or you're angry about something,
00:25:31.830 --> 00:25:34.155
absolutely no way that your meditation
00:25:34.155 --> 00:25:35.872
is going to work.
00:25:35.872 --> 00:25:37.627
So you get this out of the way first of all,
00:25:37.627 --> 00:25:39.184
and then meditation
00:25:39.184 --> 00:25:40.218
becomes possible.
00:25:40.218 --> 00:25:41.555
If we have the chance,
00:25:41.555 --> 00:25:42.819
I don't know if there will be much time
00:25:42.819 --> 00:25:44.054
during this retreat,
00:25:44.054 --> 00:25:45.943
but this is one of the most important
00:25:45.943 --> 00:25:48.609
things in the entire Buddhist path
00:25:48.609 --> 00:25:51.306
is learning how to use your mind
00:25:51.306 --> 00:25:52.544
in a skilful way,
00:25:52.544 --> 00:25:53.773
so that you can
00:25:55.343 --> 00:25:57.172
move away from the unskilful.
00:25:57.172 --> 00:25:58.906
It takes a lot of training,
00:25:58.906 --> 00:26:00.167
it takes years, often, of training for
00:26:00.167 --> 00:26:01.078
people to be able to do this.
00:26:01.078 --> 00:26:01.818
Isn't this what they call
00:26:01.818 --> 00:26:03.557
cognitive behavioural therapy
00:26:03.557 --> 00:26:05.723
in psychology?
00:26:05.723 --> 00:26:07.364
Basically, it's a similar kind of thing,
00:26:07.364 --> 00:26:08.820
but it's more intense
00:26:08.820 --> 00:26:10.536
and it's a life long process
00:26:10.536 --> 00:26:13.169
to keep on doing these kind of things.
00:26:13.169 --> 00:26:15.398
So the idea is to shift your mind,
00:26:15.398 --> 00:26:16.933
gradually, more and more away
00:26:16.933 --> 00:26:18.177
from the negative things towards
00:26:18.177 --> 00:26:19.867
the positive things.
00:26:19.867 --> 00:26:21.176
When you have a positive attitude
00:26:21.176 --> 00:26:22.548
in meditation,
00:26:22.548 --> 00:26:24.783
then it becomes very powerful.
00:26:24.783 --> 00:26:26.637
There's a nice sutta which I always
00:26:26.637 --> 00:26:28.010
like to quote.
00:26:30.170 --> 00:26:32.600
A sutta is the word of the Buddha
00:26:32.600 --> 00:26:34.522
and one sutta means one
00:26:34.522 --> 00:26:37.423
particular instance when he was giving
00:26:37.423 --> 00:26:38.735
a talk as one sutta,
00:26:38.735 --> 00:26:39.754
is basically what it means.
00:26:39.754 --> 00:26:41.156
And in this one sutta,
00:26:41.806 --> 00:26:43.686
he talks about what happens
00:26:43.686 --> 00:26:45.459
when you are a good person,
00:26:45.459 --> 00:26:46.594
when you live a good life,
00:26:46.594 --> 00:26:47.438
when you have a good heart,
00:26:47.438 --> 00:26:49.735
and you treat people in a kind way
00:26:49.735 --> 00:26:51.360
and all of these kind of things.
00:26:51.360 --> 00:26:53.225
This sutta is Majjhima Nikāya 129,
00:26:53.225 --> 00:26:55.337
for those of you who are into this.
00:26:55.337 --> 00:26:58.143
It's called The Wise And Foolish People.
00:26:59.983 --> 00:27:01.627
So if you're interested in how to be wise,
00:27:01.627 --> 00:27:02.790
and how to avoid being a fool
00:27:02.790 --> 00:27:04.105
it's a great place to start;
00:27:04.105 --> 00:27:06.247
Majjhima 129.
00:27:06.807 --> 00:27:07.757
What he says there,
00:27:07.757 --> 00:27:11.844
is that the wise person, the wise person
00:27:11.844 --> 00:27:13.356
in Buddhism means somebody who
00:27:13.356 --> 00:27:14.936
acts well,
00:27:14.936 --> 00:27:16.403
acts with kindness
00:27:16.403 --> 00:27:18.669
avoids acting in the bad ways,
00:27:18.669 --> 00:27:19.813
speaks with kindness,
00:27:19.813 --> 00:27:21.643
avoids speaking in the bad way
00:27:21.643 --> 00:27:22.862
and crucially,
00:27:22.862 --> 00:27:24.242
thinks with kindness,
00:27:24.242 --> 00:27:27.662
doesn't think thoughts which are
00:27:27.662 --> 00:27:30.123
greedy, or angry, or full of hatred
00:27:30.123 --> 00:27:31.303
and this kind of stuff,
00:27:31.303 --> 00:27:32.606
thinks positive things as well.
00:27:32.606 --> 00:27:34.350
In Buddhism, the idea of morality
00:27:34.350 --> 00:27:36.387
is stretched the the absolute limit.
00:27:36.387 --> 00:27:39.025
It includes also morality of the mind.
00:27:39.025 --> 00:27:40.245
So in Buddhism it's about developing
00:27:40.245 --> 00:27:41.663
your whole character.
00:27:42.333 --> 00:27:44.659
The word sīla, in the Pāli language
00:27:44.659 --> 00:27:47.109
is much broader than the word 'morality'
00:27:47.109 --> 00:27:47.709
in English.
00:27:47.709 --> 00:27:50.205
It basically includes your entire character.
00:27:50.205 --> 00:27:51.671
It's development of character,
00:27:51.671 --> 00:27:53.058
development of personality
00:27:53.058 --> 00:27:54.831
it what it really is about.
00:27:55.301 --> 00:27:57.774
So what this sutta, this discourse,
00:27:57.774 --> 00:27:59.772
of the Buddha, what he says there
00:27:59.772 --> 00:28:01.530
is that, it's like a good person.
00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:04.056
In the evening, when they come back home
00:28:04.056 --> 00:28:05.226
they might be tired
00:28:05.226 --> 00:28:07.578
and they might take a while as they sit down,
00:28:07.578 --> 00:28:09.451
or they lie down on their bed
00:28:09.451 --> 00:28:10.957
or sit down on a chair, or whatever,
00:28:10.957 --> 00:28:12.624
and when they do that,
00:28:12.624 --> 00:28:14.219
and when they relax,
00:28:14.219 --> 00:28:16.469
all the good actions they have done,
00:28:16.469 --> 00:28:17.667
the fact that they have
00:28:17.667 --> 00:28:19.493
avoided the bad actions
00:28:19.493 --> 00:28:21.444
all that comes back to them.
00:28:21.444 --> 00:28:23.105
Because it comes back to them,
00:28:23.105 --> 00:28:25.965
they feel a natural sense of happiness,
00:28:25.965 --> 00:28:27.533
because a sense of happiness is basically,
00:28:27.533 --> 00:28:30.155
well, you know that you're a good person,
00:28:30.155 --> 00:28:31.706
you know that you've done the right things.
00:28:31.706 --> 00:28:33.333
You have nothing to regret.
00:28:33.333 --> 00:28:34.189
You feel a sense of,
00:28:34.189 --> 00:28:36.394
"wow, I've done good things."
00:28:36.394 --> 00:28:38.269
You feel a sense of joy about that.
00:28:38.269 --> 00:28:40.219
It is just a natural consequence
00:28:40.219 --> 00:28:41.629
of living a good life.
00:28:41.629 --> 00:28:43.863
The more you purify that good life,
00:28:43.863 --> 00:28:47.144
the more you feel that natural joy.
00:28:47.144 --> 00:28:49.678
The Buddha says it's like a mountain.
00:28:50.258 --> 00:28:52.487
In the evening, when you have a mountain
00:28:52.487 --> 00:28:55.829
and the sun goes down behind the mountain
00:28:55.829 --> 00:29:00.819
then the shadow is cast from that mountain.
00:29:00.819 --> 00:29:03.705
The entire earth in front of that mountain,
00:29:03.705 --> 00:29:04.982
the ground in front of the mountain
00:29:04.982 --> 00:29:07.413
is engulfed, is enveloped
00:29:07.413 --> 00:29:09.498
and completely surrounded by the shadow
00:29:09.498 --> 00:29:11.008
from the mountain,
00:29:11.008 --> 00:29:13.304
completely engulfed in that.
00:29:13.304 --> 00:29:14.411
In the same way,
00:29:14.411 --> 00:29:15.288
when a good person
00:29:15.288 --> 00:29:17.395
comes back a long day's work
00:29:17.395 --> 00:29:18.996
you sit down, you rest,
00:29:18.996 --> 00:29:20.348
or maybe you meditate a bit
00:29:20.348 --> 00:29:23.456
and then the mountain of good actions
00:29:23.456 --> 00:29:25.189
come back to you!
00:29:25.189 --> 00:29:26.941
Then you feel satisfied,
00:29:26.941 --> 00:29:28.891
you feel a sense of joy inside.
00:29:28.891 --> 00:29:30.171
You feel gladness
00:29:30.171 --> 00:29:31.896
because of that mountain
00:29:31.896 --> 00:29:33.344
of good actions is there.
00:29:33.344 --> 00:29:35.161
So what we have to do is
00:29:35.161 --> 00:29:37.306
build a mountain. That's what each
00:29:37.306 --> 00:29:38.789
one of us has to do.
00:29:38.789 --> 00:29:40.209
When you build that mountain,
00:29:40.209 --> 00:29:42.775
the you have that foundation
00:29:42.775 --> 00:29:44.322
of happiness and joy
00:29:44.322 --> 00:29:46.052
which also you can bring into your
00:29:46.052 --> 00:29:48.194
meditation practice.
00:29:48.194 --> 00:29:49.058
So this is what it's about,
00:29:49.058 --> 00:29:50.828
we have to build this mountain.
00:29:50.828 --> 00:29:53.208
This is what our ordinary life,
00:29:53.208 --> 00:29:55.398
if you are interested in Buddhism,
00:29:55.398 --> 00:29:57.377
or spiritual practice, or meditation,
00:29:57.377 --> 00:29:58.326
or whatever it is,
00:29:58.326 --> 00:30:01.123
this is what our whole life is really about.
00:30:01.123 --> 00:30:03.071
It's about building up this mountain
00:30:03.071 --> 00:30:04.697
of goodness inside of us.
00:30:04.697 --> 00:30:05.489
Then you have no choice,
00:30:05.489 --> 00:30:07.101
you have to feel happy!
00:30:07.101 --> 00:30:08.362
Isn't that great, you have not choice
00:30:08.362 --> 00:30:09.856
but to feel happy?
00:30:09.856 --> 00:30:11.485
I find that such a wonderful thing.
00:30:11.485 --> 00:30:13.127
You can sit back, and sometimes
00:30:13.127 --> 00:30:14.283
if you're a bit grumpy you think,
00:30:14.283 --> 00:30:15.279
"aw, I don't want to be happy",
00:30:15.279 --> 00:30:16.001
but you have no choice,
00:30:16.001 --> 00:30:17.604
happiness just comes to you
00:30:17.604 --> 00:30:19.802
and you just feel good about yourself.
00:30:19.802 --> 00:30:20.692
What a wonderful thing that is,
00:30:20.692 --> 00:30:23.098
when you have no choice about the matter,
00:30:23.098 --> 00:30:24.554
And it always comes your way.
00:30:24.554 --> 00:30:26.501
Then, of course, the spiritual path
00:30:26.501 --> 00:30:28.710
really works as a consequence.
00:30:28.710 --> 00:30:30.158
So that is one of those
00:30:30.158 --> 00:30:31.917
similes that I think are so powerful.
00:30:32.657 --> 00:30:34.342
The Buddha is a master
00:30:34.342 --> 00:30:35.841
of creating beautiful similes
00:30:35.841 --> 00:30:37.641
that are so much to the point
00:30:37.641 --> 00:30:41.460
and show you how these things work
00:30:41.460 --> 00:30:44.238
in a very beautiful way.
00:30:46.130 --> 00:30:48.641
So this is what happens
00:30:48.641 --> 00:30:49.987
when you generally speaking
00:30:49.987 --> 00:30:51.900
have the right attitude.
00:30:51.900 --> 00:30:53.011
We were talking about
00:30:53.011 --> 00:30:54.349
the precepts before
00:30:54.349 --> 00:30:56.240
and these precepts are very much
00:30:56.240 --> 00:30:58.463
about having right attitude.
00:30:58.463 --> 00:31:00.106
I will perhaps very briefly
00:31:00.106 --> 00:31:02.011
talk about them.
00:31:02.879 --> 00:31:04.284
The first precept is about
00:31:04.284 --> 00:31:06.180
not killing any living beings.
00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:08.207
Okay, so we assume that you're
00:31:08.207 --> 00:31:10.237
not killing any human beings.
00:31:10.817 --> 00:31:12.050
If you kill human beings, I would
00:31:12.050 --> 00:31:14.181
recommend you to stop that very quickly.
00:31:14.181 --> 00:31:16.587
That is going to be a big obstacle.
00:31:16.587 --> 00:31:20.043
There is another discourse in the suttas,
00:31:20.043 --> 00:31:21.813
the word of the Buddha. Actually there
00:31:21.813 --> 00:31:23.690
was a man who was killing all these beings.
00:31:23.690 --> 00:31:25.559
He was a mass murderer
00:31:25.559 --> 00:31:26.615
at the time of the Buddha.
00:31:26.615 --> 00:31:27.372
It's a very famous sutta,
00:31:27.372 --> 00:31:28.303
you may have heard about
00:31:28.303 --> 00:31:29.894
Aṅgulimāla Sutta.
00:31:30.874 --> 00:31:32.336
But he also stopped doing that
00:31:32.336 --> 00:31:33.962
and as a consequence of stopping that
00:31:33.962 --> 00:31:35.871
he actually attained very high
00:31:35.871 --> 00:31:38.788
spiritual states as a consequence.
00:31:38.788 --> 00:31:41.169
So even if you are killing human beings
00:31:41.169 --> 00:31:42.979
there's still hope,
00:31:42.979 --> 00:31:45.740
which is a very positive message.
00:31:45.740 --> 00:31:48.500
But it's not just about avoiding killing.
00:31:49.810 --> 00:31:51.552
So you avoid killing humans,
00:31:51.552 --> 00:31:54.054
you avoid killing animals and even insects,
00:31:54.054 --> 00:31:57.128
but it's about being kind as well.
00:31:57.128 --> 00:31:59.296
This is one of the most fundamental
00:31:59.296 --> 00:32:00.635
and important facts about
00:32:00.635 --> 00:32:02.352
the Buddhist idea of morality.
00:32:02.352 --> 00:32:04.375
It is not just about avoiding doing
00:32:04.375 --> 00:32:05.754
the bad stuff.
00:32:05.754 --> 00:32:08.412
It's actively doing the good things
00:32:08.412 --> 00:32:09.263
as well.
00:32:09.263 --> 00:32:10.702
Being kind.
00:32:10.702 --> 00:32:12.048
Being helpful.
00:32:12.048 --> 00:32:14.309
Being compassionate, to animals
00:32:14.309 --> 00:32:16.776
and human beings wherever you can find.
00:32:16.776 --> 00:32:18.671
This is really what gives power
00:32:18.671 --> 00:32:19.971
to the meditation practice.
00:32:19.971 --> 00:32:21.353
If you don't do the bad stuff, okay,
00:32:21.353 --> 00:32:22.649
you don't feel bad about yourself,
00:32:22.649 --> 00:32:24.265
but, if you do the good stuff you actually
00:32:24.265 --> 00:32:26.901
actively feel good about yourself.
00:32:26.901 --> 00:32:29.138
I have noticed in my own life,
00:32:29.138 --> 00:32:32.092
I try to live up to these things myself.
00:32:32.092 --> 00:32:34.054
I try not to be the ultimate hypocrite
00:32:34.054 --> 00:32:35.175
and sit here and tell you
00:32:35.175 --> 00:32:36.295
to do all these things and
00:32:36.295 --> 00:32:37.321
do nothing myself,
00:32:37.321 --> 00:32:39.022
that would be terrible wouldn't it?
00:32:39.022 --> 00:32:39.858
Of course, you don't know me,
00:32:39.858 --> 00:32:41.426
so maybe I am a hypocrite, but
00:32:41.426 --> 00:32:42.955
from my own perspective
00:32:42.955 --> 00:32:44.489
I don't think I'm a hypocrite.
00:32:45.409 --> 00:32:47.507
I have always found that
00:32:47.507 --> 00:32:49.633
it is very powerful sometimes.
00:32:49.633 --> 00:32:52.364
Sometimes you are in the right mood
00:32:52.364 --> 00:32:53.780
and you just want to be kind,
00:32:53.780 --> 00:32:55.608
and you want to be compassionate.
00:32:55.608 --> 00:32:57.800
Sometimes it's a very powerful force
00:32:57.800 --> 00:32:59.225
inside of you. Other times you don't
00:32:59.225 --> 00:33:00.602
really feel compassionate at all,
00:33:00.602 --> 00:33:02.359
but sometimes you feel very kind.
00:33:02.359 --> 00:33:04.436
And then, sometimes, when you do
00:33:04.436 --> 00:33:06.915
something kind, there's an insect that
00:33:06.915 --> 00:33:08.688
you save or something like that,
00:33:08.688 --> 00:33:09.899
something very, very small,
00:33:09.899 --> 00:33:12.274
but because you are in the right mood,
00:33:12.274 --> 00:33:13.978
and because you are mindful,
00:33:13.978 --> 00:33:15.767
and because you feel it's coming
00:33:15.767 --> 00:33:16.986
naturally from you,
00:33:16.986 --> 00:33:19.253
it often has a very powerful impact
00:33:19.253 --> 00:33:20.805
on your mind.
00:33:20.805 --> 00:33:22.434
It's like you do this little act,
00:33:22.434 --> 00:33:23.853
you think it's nothing and still
00:33:23.853 --> 00:33:25.683
you feel this joy connected with that,
00:33:25.683 --> 00:33:27.983
because it is done at the right time,
00:33:27.983 --> 00:33:29.627
at the right place.
00:33:29.627 --> 00:33:31.104
The right time and the right place
00:33:31.104 --> 00:33:33.235
is always usually...
00:33:33.235 --> 00:33:34.427
you should always do these things,
00:33:34.427 --> 00:33:36.550
of course, but the powerful times
00:33:36.550 --> 00:33:38.482
are when it comes naturally.
00:33:38.482 --> 00:33:41.031
So if you ever feel like being kind,
00:33:41.031 --> 00:33:42.895
if it comes from your heart and you
00:33:42.895 --> 00:33:44.589
want to do something kind,
00:33:44.589 --> 00:33:45.589
do it for goodness sake!
00:33:45.589 --> 00:33:47.124
Don't hold back.
00:33:47.124 --> 00:33:48.662
Don't have some cynical thought,
00:33:48.662 --> 00:33:50.191
"yeah, they don't deserve it or whatever".
00:33:50.191 --> 00:33:52.139
Please don't think like that because
00:33:52.139 --> 00:33:53.348
it's going to destroy
00:33:53.348 --> 00:33:55.851
a wonderful opportunity to do what is right
00:33:55.851 --> 00:33:56.996
and do what is kind.
00:33:56.996 --> 00:33:58.637
Always take the opportunity.
00:33:58.637 --> 00:33:59.912
If other people think
00:33:59.912 --> 00:34:01.510
you are a bit strange, so be it.
00:34:01.510 --> 00:34:03.155
It's their problem,
00:34:03.155 --> 00:34:04.931
you just do what is right.
00:34:04.931 --> 00:34:06.523
And then you find, that when
00:34:06.523 --> 00:34:08.025
you do these things again and again
00:34:08.025 --> 00:34:09.955
there are times when it becomes
00:34:09.955 --> 00:34:11.389
very powerful.
00:34:11.389 --> 00:34:13.138
Because you are mindful,
00:34:13.138 --> 00:34:14.766
you are clearly aware, you're driven
00:34:14.766 --> 00:34:17.099
by a powerful motivation of compassion
00:34:17.099 --> 00:34:17.958
inside of you.
00:34:17.958 --> 00:34:19.370
It makes a very powerful impact
00:34:19.370 --> 00:34:20.362
on the mind.
00:34:20.362 --> 00:34:21.618
You sit down to meditate
00:34:21.618 --> 00:34:23.103
and these things come back to you,
00:34:23.103 --> 00:34:24.155
because they have made a powerful
00:34:24.155 --> 00:34:25.100
impact on the mind.
00:34:25.100 --> 00:34:26.795
And then, that gives rise
00:34:26.795 --> 00:34:28.725
to the ability to meditate because
00:34:28.725 --> 00:34:30.170
you have the joy there.
00:34:30.717 --> 00:34:31.620
This is how it works.
00:34:31.620 --> 00:34:32.918
This is what kamma is all about.
00:34:32.918 --> 00:34:34.868
Kamma is about when your intention
00:34:34.868 --> 00:34:37.199
is pure, when mindfulness is strong,
00:34:37.199 --> 00:34:41.009
then the impact is very great one the mind.
00:34:41.009 --> 00:34:43.013
So when you sit down afterwards,
00:34:43.013 --> 00:34:44.803
it comes back to you very powerfully.
00:34:44.803 --> 00:34:46.639
That's the idea of kamma.
00:34:47.929 --> 00:34:50.156
Powerful presence when you do it,
00:34:50.156 --> 00:34:52.217
gives rise to a powerful result later on.
00:34:52.217 --> 00:34:53.123
You can see it for yourself
00:34:53.123 --> 00:34:54.737
happening in reality, it's very easy,
00:34:54.737 --> 00:34:56.598
very straightforward
00:34:56.598 --> 00:34:58.479
and you see how these things work.
00:34:58.479 --> 00:35:00.439
So be kind.
00:35:00.439 --> 00:35:01.606
On this retreat, if you have
00:35:01.606 --> 00:35:02.702
an opportunity to be kind
00:35:02.702 --> 00:35:03.598
to the people around you,
00:35:03.598 --> 00:35:06.195
take every opportunity, never miss
00:35:06.195 --> 00:35:08.618
an opportunity to be kind in your life,
00:35:08.618 --> 00:35:10.951
here or anywhere else, because it is
00:35:10.951 --> 00:35:12.759
incredibly powerful.
00:35:13.442 --> 00:35:14.981
And then, of course, the second factor
00:35:14.981 --> 00:35:17.293
is about not stealing.
00:35:18.182 --> 00:35:20.644
I'm sure none of you have the intention
00:35:20.644 --> 00:35:22.682
to steal anything on this retreat,
00:35:23.162 --> 00:35:25.978
but the opposite is generosity, right?
00:35:25.978 --> 00:35:28.167
Be sharing, sharing of yourself,
00:35:28.167 --> 00:35:30.142
and being generous.
00:35:30.142 --> 00:35:32.229
One of the incredibly important factors
00:35:32.229 --> 00:35:34.702
on the Buddhist path is generosity.
00:35:35.752 --> 00:35:37.575
It is something the Buddha talks about
00:35:37.575 --> 00:35:38.748
all the time. That's one of
00:35:38.748 --> 00:35:41.031
the foundation stones of the path.
00:35:41.031 --> 00:35:42.001
And generosity can be done
00:35:42.001 --> 00:35:43.781
in some many different ways.
00:35:43.781 --> 00:35:44.974
There's very little distinction
00:35:44.974 --> 00:35:46.425
between kindness and generosity.
00:35:46.425 --> 00:35:48.286
They kind of flow into each other.
00:35:48.286 --> 00:35:49.956
When we talk about generosity,
00:35:49.956 --> 00:35:52.372
we talk usually more about material things
00:35:52.372 --> 00:35:54.957
and kindness is more about helping out
00:35:54.957 --> 00:35:57.027
in a general sense, but they are really
00:35:57.027 --> 00:36:00.572
part of the same... different ends of the
00:36:00.572 --> 00:36:02.443
same spectrum, basically.
00:36:03.113 --> 00:36:04.764
So generosity.
00:36:04.764 --> 00:36:06.826
The third precept is about
00:36:06.826 --> 00:36:09.035
no sexuality on this retreat.
00:36:10.225 --> 00:36:12.746
The idea here is to turn the mind
00:36:12.746 --> 00:36:14.530
in a different direction.
00:36:15.150 --> 00:36:17.645
Usually, in the world we find pleasures
00:36:17.645 --> 00:36:19.758
through the senses, the five sense,
00:36:19.758 --> 00:36:21.626
through the food that we eat,
00:36:21.626 --> 00:36:23.821
through the relationships that we have,
00:36:23.821 --> 00:36:26.313
through music, or whatever it is.
00:36:26.313 --> 00:36:27.965
Here, the idea is instead of finding
00:36:27.965 --> 00:36:29.466
happiness in that realm,
00:36:29.466 --> 00:36:31.095
is to turn the mind
00:36:31.095 --> 00:36:32.116
in a different direction,
00:36:32.116 --> 00:36:33.325
turn it inwards instead,
00:36:33.325 --> 00:36:35.115
and find the happiness and joy
00:36:35.115 --> 00:36:37.060
inside of you instead.
00:36:37.060 --> 00:36:40.527
Now, if we indulge in the five sense
00:36:40.527 --> 00:36:42.376
it is impossible at the same time
00:36:42.376 --> 00:36:44.462
to turn inwards because they are two
00:36:44.462 --> 00:36:46.233
different directions.
00:36:46.733 --> 00:36:48.738
If you find happiness in the five sense
00:36:48.738 --> 00:36:50.776
it means your mind is going out
00:36:50.776 --> 00:36:53.199
into the world, by it's very definition.
00:36:53.199 --> 00:36:54.926
But mediation is precisely about
00:36:54.926 --> 00:36:56.896
going inside. It's about watching
00:36:56.896 --> 00:36:58.368
the breath, about being still
00:36:58.368 --> 00:36:59.556
in the present moment.
00:36:59.556 --> 00:37:01.793
It's about not being attached to the world.
00:37:01.793 --> 00:37:04.029
So, if you are finding pleasure
00:37:04.029 --> 00:37:06.100
in the five senses, it means that your are
00:37:06.100 --> 00:37:06.992
attached to them.
00:37:06.992 --> 00:37:08.377
Wherever you find pleasure is also
00:37:08.377 --> 00:37:10.040
where you are attached.
00:37:10.040 --> 00:37:11.371
Because you are attached, you can't
00:37:11.371 --> 00:37:12.637
let go, and because you can't let go
00:37:12.637 --> 00:37:15.187
you can't focus inside.
00:37:15.187 --> 00:37:16.932
These are two opposite things.
00:37:16.932 --> 00:37:19.521
It's very important to understand that.
00:37:19.521 --> 00:37:22.178
That you cannot do both at the same time.
00:37:22.178 --> 00:37:23.444
Sometimes people say, "yeah, you know,
00:37:23.444 --> 00:37:25.195
I want to get really deep meditation,
00:37:25.195 --> 00:37:26.815
I want to live a kind of ordinary life
00:37:26.815 --> 00:37:29.291
with my partner and all these kinds
00:37:29.291 --> 00:37:30.747
of things at the same time".
00:37:30.747 --> 00:37:33.179
It cannot be combined at the same time.
00:37:33.179 --> 00:37:35.733
It's impossible to have
00:37:35.733 --> 00:37:38.081
the full benefit of meditation practice
00:37:38.081 --> 00:37:39.144
on the one side,
00:37:39.144 --> 00:37:41.244
and living a completely ordinary life
00:37:41.244 --> 00:37:43.228
at the same time.
00:37:43.228 --> 00:37:46.311
They have to be separated from each other.
00:37:46.311 --> 00:37:49.077
That's why we do this kind of precept
00:37:49.077 --> 00:37:51.393
on retreats like this.
00:37:51.393 --> 00:37:54.412
The fourth one is about silence,
00:37:54.412 --> 00:37:55.834
and silence is a wonderful thing.
00:37:55.834 --> 00:37:57.018
You find that it's so wonderful
00:37:57.018 --> 00:37:58.510
not to have to talk.
00:37:59.880 --> 00:38:01.927
Our society is based on communication,
00:38:01.927 --> 00:38:03.086
you have to talk all the time.
00:38:03.086 --> 00:38:04.157
It's great not to have to talk,
00:38:04.157 --> 00:38:05.450
just to be quiet.
00:38:06.970 --> 00:38:07.651
It's like you go into
00:38:07.651 --> 00:38:09.016
your own little bubble
00:38:09.016 --> 00:38:10.604
and it doesn't really matter,
00:38:10.604 --> 00:38:12.530
everybody else can do their own thing,
00:38:12.530 --> 00:38:13.046
you don't have to
00:38:13.046 --> 00:38:14.593
worry about that any more.
00:38:16.113 --> 00:38:18.132
The precept is actually not to lie,
00:38:18.132 --> 00:38:19.383
but because you are silent
00:38:19.383 --> 00:38:20.568
that's what it becomes.
00:38:20.568 --> 00:38:23.838
That's the positive aspect of that.
00:38:23.838 --> 00:38:25.564
And think of it also... sometimes
00:38:25.564 --> 00:38:27.127
people find it hard to be silent,
00:38:27.127 --> 00:38:28.129
it should be easy enough,
00:38:28.129 --> 00:38:31.035
it's only a day and a half this retreat, but
00:38:31.035 --> 00:38:32.548
sometimes people find it hard
00:38:32.548 --> 00:38:34.118
and find it oppressive.
00:38:34.118 --> 00:38:36.417
If you do find it a little bit oppressive
00:38:36.417 --> 00:38:39.559
think of it as an act of generosity
00:38:39.559 --> 00:38:41.827
to the people around you.
00:38:41.827 --> 00:38:43.492
On a retreat like this,
00:38:43.492 --> 00:38:44.745
there's always some people who
00:38:44.745 --> 00:38:46.287
get nice meditation, so think,
00:38:46.287 --> 00:38:47.548
"okay, I'm going to help you,
00:38:47.548 --> 00:38:48.797
I'm going to do this to help
00:38:48.797 --> 00:38:51.410
everyone here, to encourage you
00:38:51.410 --> 00:38:52.327
and to support you
00:38:52.327 --> 00:38:53.769
in your meditation practice."
00:38:53.769 --> 00:38:56.172
Then you have a positive attitude
00:38:56.172 --> 00:38:57.339
about silence.
00:38:57.339 --> 00:38:58.993
It becomes another positive thing.
00:38:58.993 --> 00:39:00.388
It becomes a gift
00:39:00.388 --> 00:39:01.403
to everyone around you.
00:39:01.403 --> 00:39:02.459
So you're kind of combining
00:39:02.459 --> 00:39:04.571
these precepts a little bit.
00:39:04.571 --> 00:39:05.497
The fifth precept is about
00:39:05.497 --> 00:39:07.193
not using drugs and alcohol.
00:39:07.803 --> 00:39:10.459
Again, meditation practice is about
00:39:10.459 --> 00:39:12.805
clarity, it's about presence of mind
00:39:12.805 --> 00:39:14.555
and drugs and alcohol are about
00:39:14.555 --> 00:39:16.331
the exact opposite of that.
00:39:17.571 --> 00:39:20.271
Not using a high...
00:39:21.017 --> 00:39:23.215
the next one is vikala bhojana,
00:39:23.215 --> 00:39:25.383
I have to get my sequence right here,
00:39:25.383 --> 00:39:26.176
which means not eating
00:39:26.176 --> 00:39:26.880
in the afternoon.
00:39:26.880 --> 00:39:28.425
Again, the idea is to move away
00:39:28.425 --> 00:39:30.354
from too much sensuality.
00:39:30.354 --> 00:39:31.585
It's not a major issue...
00:39:31.585 --> 00:39:32.520
There's going to be some soup,
00:39:32.520 --> 00:39:33.739
is that right, in the evening?
00:39:33.739 --> 00:39:34.539
Okay, you get some soup,
00:39:34.539 --> 00:39:36.009
so that's good,
00:39:36.009 --> 00:39:38.193
that should keep you going.
00:39:39.593 --> 00:39:41.135
Then we have the precept about
00:39:41.135 --> 00:39:43.919
not using any entertainment,
00:39:43.919 --> 00:39:45.741
or adornments of the body,
00:39:45.741 --> 00:39:47.457
which is another very useful one.
00:39:47.457 --> 00:39:49.093
Entertainment is all about going out
00:39:49.093 --> 00:39:50.263
into the world,
00:39:50.263 --> 00:39:52.372
it's about enjoying the senses.
00:39:52.372 --> 00:39:53.964
That's what entertainment is about.
00:39:53.964 --> 00:39:56.721
Again we're trying to withdraw from that.
00:39:56.721 --> 00:39:58.255
And the last precept about
00:39:58.255 --> 00:39:59.872
sleeping on a high or luxurious bed,
00:39:59.872 --> 00:40:01.696
is also, of course, about the same thing.
00:40:01.696 --> 00:40:03.295
It's about not indulging too much,
00:40:03.295 --> 00:40:05.630
but, you know, the beds here are fine.
00:40:07.843 --> 00:40:09.197
Back to the seventh one, again,
00:40:09.197 --> 00:40:11.902
the seventh precept, not adorning yourself.
00:40:11.902 --> 00:40:13.791
This is also one of the nice things
00:40:13.791 --> 00:40:15.855
about going on a retreat,
00:40:15.855 --> 00:40:18.559
just to have simple clothes,
00:40:18.559 --> 00:40:19.523
no make-up,
00:40:19.523 --> 00:40:20.223
no jewellery,
00:40:20.223 --> 00:40:22.488
no trying to impress anybody
00:40:22.488 --> 00:40:23.707
by the way you look,
00:40:23.707 --> 00:40:24.947
or anything like that.
00:40:24.947 --> 00:40:27.184
It's like you can become anonymous.
00:40:27.184 --> 00:40:29.049
You don't have to worry about
00:40:29.049 --> 00:40:30.273
all these things that we're always
00:40:30.273 --> 00:40:31.738
concerned about.
00:40:31.738 --> 00:40:33.441
It makes you self-conscious,
00:40:33.441 --> 00:40:34.531
if you always have to worry about
00:40:34.531 --> 00:40:36.280
what you look like, right?
00:40:36.280 --> 00:40:37.345
And here you can let go of that
00:40:37.345 --> 00:40:39.229
self-consciousness completely,
00:40:39.229 --> 00:40:40.349
and you can be
00:40:40.349 --> 00:40:41.449
nobody!
00:40:42.069 --> 00:40:43.327
Isn't that nice to be nobody?
00:40:43.327 --> 00:40:45.613
We always have to try to be somebody.
00:40:45.613 --> 00:40:47.221
We always have to try and live up to
00:40:47.221 --> 00:40:49.707
our own or other people's expectations.
00:40:49.707 --> 00:40:52.239
Always trying to be a certain person.
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:54.516
Now, one of the things about
00:40:54.516 --> 00:40:56.650
trying always to be somebody,
00:40:56.650 --> 00:40:58.850
is this sense of self that we have
00:40:58.850 --> 00:40:59.905
inside of us
00:40:59.905 --> 00:41:02.517
always needs to be defended.
00:41:02.517 --> 00:41:03.835
If somebody challenges us
00:41:03.835 --> 00:41:06.940
and says, "aw, okay, you are no good.
00:41:06.940 --> 00:41:08.117
What are you doing?
00:41:08.117 --> 00:41:09.379
This isn't good enough".
00:41:09.379 --> 00:41:11.287
Or somebody tells you
00:41:11.287 --> 00:41:12.426
you're not looking your best today,
00:41:12.426 --> 00:41:14.776
or whatever, we feel upset.
00:41:14.776 --> 00:41:15.727
And the reason we feel upset
00:41:15.727 --> 00:41:17.541
is because our sense of self
00:41:17.541 --> 00:41:19.009
is challenged.
00:41:19.009 --> 00:41:20.677
So this sense of self is something
00:41:20.677 --> 00:41:22.698
that always needs to be bolstered,
00:41:22.698 --> 00:41:24.374
always needs to be kept up.
00:41:24.374 --> 00:41:26.744
We need to think, how much of the time
00:41:26.744 --> 00:41:28.385
do we think about ourselves,
00:41:28.385 --> 00:41:29.230
are we concerned about concerned
00:41:29.230 --> 00:41:30.353
about ourselves.
00:41:30.353 --> 00:41:31.916
Stupid little things, right?
00:41:31.916 --> 00:41:33.008
But this is just life,
00:41:33.008 --> 00:41:34.571
everybody is like that.
00:41:34.941 --> 00:41:36.309
Now, for once, you don't have to think
00:41:36.309 --> 00:41:38.109
about yourself any more.
00:41:38.109 --> 00:41:39.327
You can start to let go
00:41:39.327 --> 00:41:40.982
of that sense of who you are,
00:41:40.982 --> 00:41:42.519
your sense of identity.
00:41:42.519 --> 00:41:44.207
How you are, who you are
00:41:44.207 --> 00:41:45.933
compared to other people.
00:41:45.933 --> 00:41:48.341
When you reduce that sense of identity
00:41:48.341 --> 00:41:49.791
what you find is that
00:41:49.791 --> 00:41:51.375
you become more peaceful,
00:41:52.335 --> 00:41:54.294
because you don't have to think about
00:41:54.294 --> 00:41:56.106
all those issues
00:41:56.106 --> 00:41:57.496
concerning yourself any more.
00:41:58.086 --> 00:41:59.561
So reducing your sense of self
00:41:59.561 --> 00:42:00.853
is actually one of the great ways
00:42:00.853 --> 00:42:04.070
of starting to feel peaceful as well.
00:42:04.070 --> 00:42:05.094
This is what you do,
00:42:05.094 --> 00:42:06.227
this is why adornments,
00:42:06.227 --> 00:42:08.414
just wearing ordinary clothes
00:42:08.414 --> 00:42:10.252
and not adorning oneself,
00:42:10.252 --> 00:42:11.877
actually is a great benefit
00:42:11.877 --> 00:42:13.549
and a wonderful thing to do.
00:42:14.326 --> 00:42:15.077
So,
00:42:17.957 --> 00:42:20.717
those are the eight precepts
00:42:20.717 --> 00:42:22.384
and they give you some idea
00:42:22.384 --> 00:42:23.595
what right attitude means
00:42:23.595 --> 00:42:25.399
in meditation practice.
00:42:25.399 --> 00:42:27.441
All this is about right attitude.
00:42:27.981 --> 00:42:29.277
So this is one of the things
00:42:29.277 --> 00:42:31.074
we try to build up.
00:42:31.584 --> 00:42:34.009
Some very general things about
00:42:34.009 --> 00:42:36.290
right attitude that I can maybe add
00:42:36.290 --> 00:42:38.241
to what I've been saying before:
00:42:38.241 --> 00:42:41.428
one of thing things I often remind myself
00:42:41.428 --> 00:42:43.958
when I do my meditation practice
00:42:43.958 --> 00:42:46.767
is that when I meditate,
00:42:46.767 --> 00:42:48.650
that is when I come closest
00:42:48.650 --> 00:42:50.533
to the meaning of life.
00:42:50.533 --> 00:42:51.895
That is where I'm touching
00:42:51.895 --> 00:42:53.643
what life is all about.
00:42:54.283 --> 00:42:56.365
This is quite radical
00:42:56.365 --> 00:42:57.276
because most people think,
00:42:57.276 --> 00:42:58.177
"yeah, I'm going to meditate
00:42:58.177 --> 00:42:59.973
so I can improve my life,
00:42:59.973 --> 00:43:00.902
so the rest of my life
00:43:00.902 --> 00:43:02.793
can become better"
00:43:02.793 --> 00:43:03.980
That's what most people think.
00:43:03.980 --> 00:43:05.669
But, no! It's actually the
00:43:05.669 --> 00:43:07.889
other way round, it's actually
00:43:08.779 --> 00:43:10.211
when you meditate you're getting
00:43:10.211 --> 00:43:12.131
closer to the very essence of the
00:43:12.131 --> 00:43:14.169
purpose of life itself.
00:43:14.554 --> 00:43:15.719
Why is that?
00:43:16.299 --> 00:43:17.148
The reason is, is because
00:43:17.148 --> 00:43:18.979
in meditation practice,
00:43:18.979 --> 00:43:20.317
what you are finding is
00:43:20.317 --> 00:43:22.354
you're finding the sort of happiness
00:43:22.354 --> 00:43:24.586
you're finding the sort of contentment
00:43:24.586 --> 00:43:26.765
you're finding the sort of satisfaction
00:43:26.765 --> 00:43:28.044
that you actually,
00:43:28.044 --> 00:43:29.223
each one of us,
00:43:29.223 --> 00:43:31.562
always is actually searching for.
00:43:32.142 --> 00:43:33.511
If you look inside of yourself,
00:43:33.511 --> 00:43:34.840
look inside of your mind
00:43:34.840 --> 00:43:35.819
you will see that we are often
00:43:35.819 --> 00:43:38.647
run by desires, all kind of things, right?
00:43:38.647 --> 00:43:39.707
From the moment you wake up
00:43:39.707 --> 00:43:40.286
in the morning,
00:43:40.286 --> 00:43:41.172
you have to choose what clothes
00:43:41.172 --> 00:43:42.122
you're going to wear,
00:43:42.122 --> 00:43:43.122
from breakfast...
00:43:43.622 --> 00:43:45.152
Everything is run by
00:43:45.152 --> 00:43:47.642
desires and cravings in our life.
00:43:47.642 --> 00:43:48.963
Those desires and cravings,
00:43:48.963 --> 00:43:50.590
they are pointing towards one thing:
00:43:50.590 --> 00:43:52.864
we want to be satisfied.
00:43:52.864 --> 00:43:54.879
That's why you want to fulfil that craving,
00:43:54.879 --> 00:43:56.533
fulfil that desire.
00:43:56.533 --> 00:43:57.913
Except that it never happens,
00:43:57.913 --> 00:44:00.268
the desire always comes back to us again.
00:44:00.268 --> 00:44:01.198
Then suddenly one day
00:44:01.198 --> 00:44:02.595
you sit down and meditate
00:44:02.595 --> 00:44:03.612
and you find
00:44:03.612 --> 00:44:05.819
that satisfaction in meditation.
00:44:05.819 --> 00:44:07.471
At least a little bit more,
00:44:07.471 --> 00:44:08.429
than you find it by running
00:44:08.429 --> 00:44:09.766
around in the world.
00:44:10.316 --> 00:44:11.332
This is what I mean,
00:44:11.332 --> 00:44:12.632
you're actually touching here
00:44:12.632 --> 00:44:14.491
the meaning of life,
00:44:14.491 --> 00:44:16.835
the purpose of all the running you do
00:44:16.835 --> 00:44:18.156
in the world, you find it,
00:44:18.156 --> 00:44:20.461
you find the result,
00:44:20.461 --> 00:44:22.001
you find what you're searching for
00:44:22.001 --> 00:44:23.772
in the meditation practice,
00:44:23.772 --> 00:44:25.665
rather than by actually getting
00:44:25.665 --> 00:44:27.453
the results in the world around you.
00:44:28.743 --> 00:44:29.861
So here you are touching
00:44:29.861 --> 00:44:30.850
the meaning of life.
00:44:31.250 --> 00:44:32.655
This is what life is all about,
00:44:32.655 --> 00:44:34.510
this is what you really searching for.
00:44:34.510 --> 00:44:35.751
This is what you have.
00:44:35.751 --> 00:44:37.255
Your innermost yearning,
00:44:37.255 --> 00:44:38.405
actually comes...
00:44:41.485 --> 00:44:43.411
that yearning actually gets fulfilled
00:44:43.411 --> 00:44:44.906
finally when you are sitting down
00:44:44.906 --> 00:44:46.467
and doing your meditation practice.
00:44:46.467 --> 00:44:47.955
Or rather it can do.
00:44:47.955 --> 00:44:49.550
Often it doesn't happen,
00:44:49.550 --> 00:44:50.820
but it can happen.
00:44:50.820 --> 00:44:51.648
And when it happens, you think,
00:44:51.648 --> 00:44:54.011
"WOW! This is really it!
00:44:54.011 --> 00:44:56.103
Now I'm coming to what everything
00:44:56.103 --> 00:44:57.412
really is all about."
00:44:57.412 --> 00:44:58.819
And that is very powerful,
00:44:58.819 --> 00:45:00.559
because when you understand that,
00:45:01.769 --> 00:45:02.725
when you understand that
00:45:02.725 --> 00:45:05.082
instead of sitting down and meditating
00:45:05.082 --> 00:45:06.753
and then fantasize about all the things
00:45:06.753 --> 00:45:08.216
you're going to do in the world,
00:45:08.216 --> 00:45:09.803
it's kind of crazy, becuase now
00:45:09.803 --> 00:45:11.280
you've got the meaning of life
00:45:11.280 --> 00:45:13.308
so why are you going to fantasize
00:45:13.308 --> 00:45:14.174
about all those things that
00:45:14.174 --> 00:45:15.030
have got nothing to do
00:45:15.030 --> 00:45:16.365
with the meaning of life.
00:45:16.365 --> 00:45:17.088
In fact, it should be the other
00:45:17.088 --> 00:45:18.179
way round.
00:45:18.179 --> 00:45:19.666
When you're running around in the world
00:45:19.666 --> 00:45:22.006
in daily life, going doing this, doing that
00:45:22.006 --> 00:45:23.167
you should fantasize about meditation
00:45:23.167 --> 00:45:23.947
practice.
00:45:24.587 --> 00:45:26.523
That's the way it should really be,
00:45:26.523 --> 00:45:27.596
because you understand
00:45:27.596 --> 00:45:30.530
that everything you do in your ordinary life,
00:45:30.530 --> 00:45:32.547
that if you can think about
00:45:32.547 --> 00:45:33.907
your meditation practice,
00:45:33.907 --> 00:45:34.917
it will give you
00:45:34.917 --> 00:45:37.597
a guide in your ordinary life
00:45:37.597 --> 00:45:38.997
to how you should behave.
00:45:38.997 --> 00:45:40.848
Is this going to lead to an improvement
00:45:40.848 --> 00:45:43.458
in meditation, which is the purpose of life,
00:45:43.458 --> 00:45:44.785
or is it not?
00:45:44.785 --> 00:45:46.338
Is it going to lead me away,
00:45:46.338 --> 00:45:47.792
or lead me in the right direction.
00:45:47.792 --> 00:45:49.467
So please fantasize a bit
00:45:49.467 --> 00:45:51.381
about meditation in ordinary life:
00:45:51.381 --> 00:45:52.900
"ooh, wouldn't it be nice
00:45:52.900 --> 00:45:54.320
if I could now go back and
00:45:54.320 --> 00:45:55.890
be on retreat and just sit peacefully.
00:45:55.890 --> 00:45:58.760
Wow, maybe as soon as I get a chance,
00:45:58.760 --> 00:46:00.485
an opportunity I will do that."
00:46:00.485 --> 00:46:03.220
And then you have this guide,
00:46:03.220 --> 00:46:05.009
to also guide you throughout life
00:46:05.009 --> 00:46:06.289
in a sense.
00:46:06.289 --> 00:46:07.207
So remember that,
00:46:07.207 --> 00:46:07.818
while you're sitting here
00:46:07.818 --> 00:46:09.114
on this retreat.
00:46:09.114 --> 00:46:10.091
This is it!
00:46:10.091 --> 00:46:11.345
You are touching
00:46:11.345 --> 00:46:12.936
the meaning of life itself.
00:46:12.936 --> 00:46:13.395
You're not going to get
00:46:13.395 --> 00:46:15.182
any closer than this probably,
00:46:15.182 --> 00:46:16.752
so this is your opportunity.
00:46:16.752 --> 00:46:19.377
Why waste that opportunity
00:46:19.377 --> 00:46:20.570
by thinking about
00:46:20.570 --> 00:46:22.703
all kind of other stuff instead.
00:46:27.719 --> 00:46:30.535
This is going to be the first talk
00:46:30.535 --> 00:46:33.861
about the theme of this retreat.
00:46:33.861 --> 00:46:37.316
The theme is dependent origination,
00:46:37.316 --> 00:46:41.058
known as paṭiccasamuppāda in the Pāli language.
00:46:43.108 --> 00:46:45.332
What I thought of doing tonight,
00:46:45.332 --> 00:46:48.540
is just to do a general overview.
00:46:48.540 --> 00:46:49.318
Is it loud enough?
00:46:49.318 --> 00:46:50.801
Can everybody hear alright?
00:46:54.111 --> 00:46:56.216
I'll just do a general overview
00:46:56.216 --> 00:46:58.211
of what this teaching is about
00:46:58.211 --> 00:46:59.974
so that we have a kind of a background.
00:46:59.974 --> 00:47:02.079
Then we can draw out the details
00:47:02.079 --> 00:47:04.785
over the few sessions after that.
00:47:05.725 --> 00:47:07.252
So that is going to be the main purpose
00:47:07.252 --> 00:47:08.892
of tonight.
00:47:09.432 --> 00:47:10.931
As I said before,
00:47:10.931 --> 00:47:12.733
if you have any questions this
00:47:12.733 --> 00:47:14.125
please write them down
00:47:14.125 --> 00:47:15.741
and put them in the basket at the back.
00:47:17.051 --> 00:47:18.081
Good.
00:47:18.081 --> 00:47:20.147
So, one of the things about
00:47:20.147 --> 00:47:21.829
dependent arising,
00:47:21.829 --> 00:47:24.263
it is well known,
00:47:24.263 --> 00:47:26.081
everybody thinks it is very profound.
00:47:26.081 --> 00:47:26.622
Everybody says,
00:47:26.622 --> 00:47:28.500
"ooh, this is very profound stuff."
00:47:28.500 --> 00:47:30.734
And, of course, there is a reason for that,
00:47:30.734 --> 00:47:32.867
and the reason for that is that,
00:47:32.867 --> 00:47:34.017
that's what it actually says
00:47:34.017 --> 00:47:35.442
in one of the suttas.
00:47:35.442 --> 00:47:37.222
I don't know if any of you read
00:47:37.222 --> 00:47:38.975
these suttas already.
00:47:38.975 --> 00:47:42.020
If you have, then you may have come across,
00:47:42.020 --> 00:47:44.045
or you probably would have come across,
00:47:45.385 --> 00:47:46.690
the way things start off
00:47:46.690 --> 00:47:49.500
in the sutta called the Mahānidāna Sutta,
00:47:49.500 --> 00:47:51.852
which is The Great Discourse on Causation,
00:47:51.852 --> 00:47:53.432
found in the Dīgha Nikāya.
00:47:54.112 --> 00:47:56.212
In that sutta, it starts off
00:47:56.212 --> 00:47:58.270
with Ven. Ānanda...
00:47:58.270 --> 00:47:59.540
Ven. Ānanda, of course,
00:47:59.540 --> 00:48:01.385
is the Buddha's right-hand man.
00:48:01.385 --> 00:48:02.529
He's always present,
00:48:02.529 --> 00:48:04.596
always hearing the discourses
00:48:04.596 --> 00:48:07.166
and he's the one who eventually
00:48:07.166 --> 00:48:09.098
makes sure those discourses are
00:48:09.098 --> 00:48:10.349
recorded, if you like,
00:48:10.349 --> 00:48:12.443
recorded in memory for posterity.
00:48:13.793 --> 00:48:15.109
He says to the Buddha, he says:
00:48:15.109 --> 00:48:18.062
"It is wonderful and marvellous, Bhante,
00:48:18.062 --> 00:48:20.221
how this dependent arising
00:48:20.221 --> 00:48:23.320
[or if you like, dependent origination]
00:48:23.320 --> 00:48:25.743
is so deep and appears so deep,
00:48:25.743 --> 00:48:27.988
yet to myself it seems
00:48:27.988 --> 00:48:31.198
as clear as clear can be.”
00:48:31.198 --> 00:48:32.950
And then the Buddha says:
00:48:32.950 --> 00:48:34.798
“Do not say so, Ānanda!
00:48:34.798 --> 00:48:36.517
Do not say so, Ānanda!
00:48:36.517 --> 00:48:39.153
This dependent origination, Ānanda,
00:48:39.153 --> 00:48:41.853
is deep and it appears deep.
00:48:41.853 --> 00:48:43.598
Because of not understanding and
00:48:43.598 --> 00:48:46.889
not penetrating this teaching, Ānanda,
00:48:46.889 --> 00:48:48.540
this generation has become
00:48:48.540 --> 00:48:50.533
like a tangled skein,
00:48:50.533 --> 00:48:52.808
like a knotted ball of thread,
00:48:52.808 --> 00:48:56.891
like matted rushes and reeds,
00:48:56.891 --> 00:48:58.773
and this generation
00:48:58.773 --> 00:49:01.906
does not pass beyond saṃsāra
00:49:01.906 --> 00:49:03.741
with its plane of misery,
00:49:03.741 --> 00:49:05.381
unfortunate destinations,
00:49:05.381 --> 00:49:07.458
and its lower realms."
00:49:08.952 --> 00:49:11.076
So this is where it comes from,
00:49:11.076 --> 00:49:11.850
when everybody says,
00:49:11.850 --> 00:49:14.160
"aw, this dependent origination is so deep".
00:49:14.160 --> 00:49:15.063
This is actually the
00:49:15.063 --> 00:49:17.202
canonical reference to that.
00:49:17.872 --> 00:49:20.435
It's quite interesting because Ven. Ānanda,
00:49:20.435 --> 00:49:23.441
of course, he knew almost all the suttas,
00:49:23.441 --> 00:49:26.718
all the discourses of the Buddha by heart.
00:49:26.718 --> 00:49:28.053
He was also well known for
00:49:28.053 --> 00:49:30.200
having become a stream enterer.
00:49:30.200 --> 00:49:31.801
A stream enterer is somebody who has
00:49:31.801 --> 00:49:34.431
penetrated and understood the teaching
00:49:34.431 --> 00:49:35.621
on their own.
00:49:35.621 --> 00:49:38.520
He was a stream enterer fairly early on
00:49:38.520 --> 00:49:39.575
and here is one the Buddha's
00:49:39.575 --> 00:49:40.575
chief disciples
00:49:41.025 --> 00:49:41.914
saying
00:49:42.434 --> 00:49:44.784
this is really deep, but I understand it,
00:49:44.784 --> 00:49:45.915
and the Buddha says,
00:49:45.915 --> 00:49:47.980
be careful what you say,
00:49:47.980 --> 00:49:49.590
don't be so quick,
00:49:49.590 --> 00:49:51.089
because this really is profound
00:49:51.089 --> 00:49:53.541
and it because of not understanding this
00:49:53.541 --> 00:49:56.987
that people are stuck in saṃsāra.
00:49:57.927 --> 00:49:59.766
That is fascinating. It makes us wonder,
00:49:59.766 --> 00:50:00.470
"well, what is the chance
00:50:00.470 --> 00:50:02.464
of me understanding this if Ven. Ānanda
00:50:02.464 --> 00:50:04.672
couldn't understand it, what is my hope?!
00:50:05.882 --> 00:50:07.351
That's a fair question actually.
00:50:07.351 --> 00:50:08.671
It is a fair question,
00:50:08.671 --> 00:50:10.697
but remember the idea
00:50:10.697 --> 00:50:13.143
with a retreat like this is not to grasp
00:50:13.143 --> 00:50:15.841
these things absolutely fully,
00:50:15.841 --> 00:50:18.175
in their full depth and all their details.
00:50:18.175 --> 00:50:20.858
The idea is to get enough understanding
00:50:20.858 --> 00:50:23.759
that you are moving in the right direction.
00:50:23.759 --> 00:50:26.299
This is the whole gist, the whole purpose
00:50:26.299 --> 00:50:28.339
of the Dhamma, is always to move
00:50:28.339 --> 00:50:30.130
in the right direction.
00:50:30.130 --> 00:50:31.672
As you keep moving in the right direction,
00:50:31.672 --> 00:50:32.974
doing some meditation,
00:50:32.974 --> 00:50:34.599
doing some practice,
00:50:34.599 --> 00:50:36.028
understanding what the teachings
00:50:36.028 --> 00:50:37.082
are about,
00:50:37.082 --> 00:50:40.359
all of these things come together,
00:50:40.359 --> 00:50:42.484
and one day, who knows, one day
00:50:42.484 --> 00:50:43.247
you might also,
00:50:43.247 --> 00:50:45.027
each one of us might also
00:50:45.027 --> 00:50:46.647
understand the full
00:50:46.647 --> 00:50:48.619
profundity of these teachings.
00:50:48.619 --> 00:50:50.826
The reason why they are so profound
00:50:50.826 --> 00:50:52.757
is basically, just what it says
00:50:52.757 --> 00:50:53.862
at the end there:
00:50:53.862 --> 00:50:55.585
it is because of this that people
00:50:55.585 --> 00:50:58.304
don't make an end of saṃsāra.
00:50:58.304 --> 00:50:59.851
What that means is that
00:50:59.851 --> 00:51:01.469
if you are an ariya,
00:51:01.469 --> 00:51:02.908
if you are a noble person,
00:51:02.908 --> 00:51:04.574
who has penetrated and understood
00:51:04.574 --> 00:51:06.662
these teachings through your own insight,
00:51:06.662 --> 00:51:08.296
through your own understanding,
00:51:08.296 --> 00:51:09.759
that is when you have that
00:51:09.759 --> 00:51:11.037
full penetration.
00:51:11.037 --> 00:51:12.692
So Ven. Ānanda, my guess is that
00:51:12.692 --> 00:51:15.416
at this point he hadn't yet
00:51:15.416 --> 00:51:16.600
become a stream enterer,
00:51:16.600 --> 00:51:18.276
maybe it was later on,
00:51:18.276 --> 00:51:20.631
or, the alternative is that
00:51:20.631 --> 00:51:22.209
he was a stream enterer,
00:51:22.209 --> 00:51:25.253
but even as a stream enterer you understand
00:51:25.253 --> 00:51:27.625
the general principle for how it works,
00:51:27.625 --> 00:51:28.938
but you make not be clear
00:51:28.938 --> 00:51:30.851
about all the details.
00:51:30.851 --> 00:51:33.224
This is one of the things that is so
00:51:33.224 --> 00:51:34.845
fascinating about this teaching,
00:51:34.845 --> 00:51:36.479
is all the details,
00:51:36.479 --> 00:51:38.078
all the things that actually
00:51:38.078 --> 00:51:39.183
come out of it once you
00:51:39.183 --> 00:51:40.618
start to investigate.
00:51:41.018 --> 00:51:44.376
There are so many aspects to this teaching.
00:51:44.376 --> 00:51:45.694
To give you some examples
00:51:45.694 --> 00:51:47.724
of the aspects that I'm thinking of,
00:51:48.134 --> 00:51:49.414
this teaching,
00:51:49.954 --> 00:51:51.980
contrary to what some people say,
00:51:51.980 --> 00:51:54.657
it includes the law of kamma.
00:51:54.657 --> 00:51:56.154
The law of kamma is very central to
00:51:56.154 --> 00:51:58.127
this particular teaching.
00:51:58.127 --> 00:52:00.741
It explains kamma in a very beautiful
00:52:00.741 --> 00:52:02.715
and very meaningful way.
00:52:02.715 --> 00:52:03.430
That's one of the things
00:52:03.430 --> 00:52:05.492
I want to draw out of this teaching,
00:52:05.492 --> 00:52:06.746
especially if you look at
00:52:06.746 --> 00:52:08.873
the first three factors
00:52:08.873 --> 00:52:10.367
of the dependent arising.
00:52:10.367 --> 00:52:12.145
The first three factors are from...
00:52:12.145 --> 00:52:13.998
I'll go through the factors latter on,
00:52:13.998 --> 00:52:16.175
but from ignorance,
00:52:17.805 --> 00:52:19.451
saṅkhāra, like activities,
00:52:19.451 --> 00:52:20.454
and consciousness.
00:52:20.454 --> 00:52:23.259
That is all really about kamma
00:52:23.259 --> 00:52:25.241
and how kamma works.
00:52:25.241 --> 00:52:26.726
It's very interesting to understand
00:52:26.726 --> 00:52:28.160
how kamma works because
00:52:28.160 --> 00:52:30.214
it's something which is very practical,
00:52:30.214 --> 00:52:32.680
something we can use in our own lives.
00:52:32.680 --> 00:52:34.164
So it brings out kamma
00:52:34.164 --> 00:52:36.173
in a very detailed way.
00:52:36.933 --> 00:52:38.117
This is one of the things
00:52:38.117 --> 00:52:40.119
that makes in so interesting.
00:52:40.119 --> 00:52:41.336
The second thing, which of course,
00:52:41.336 --> 00:52:42.506
makes in very interesting,
00:52:42.506 --> 00:52:46.083
is that it shows us how this saṃsāra,
00:52:46.083 --> 00:52:49.602
how the process of continuous existence,
00:52:49.602 --> 00:52:54.048
how it is sustained without a self in it.
00:52:54.048 --> 00:52:55.196
This is one of the key things
00:52:55.196 --> 00:52:57.008
about dependent arising,
00:52:57.008 --> 00:52:59.003
it shows us how this is possible
00:52:59.003 --> 00:53:02.206
that you can go on, and go on, and go on
00:53:02.206 --> 00:53:04.402
keep on going, but there's no self in there
00:53:04.402 --> 00:53:05.833
there's no substance,
00:53:05.833 --> 00:53:07.502
there's no essence to it
00:53:07.502 --> 00:53:09.272
which is always present.
00:53:10.062 --> 00:53:11.231
This is one of the things that
00:53:11.231 --> 00:53:12.874
makes people stop.
00:53:13.894 --> 00:53:16.282
One of the classic counter arguments
00:53:16.282 --> 00:53:18.021
against the Buddha's teaching,
00:53:18.021 --> 00:53:20.910
against rebirth, is the idea that
00:53:20.910 --> 00:53:22.364
if there was rebirth
00:53:22.364 --> 00:53:24.181
there must be a self in there,
00:53:24.181 --> 00:53:24.913
"and you guys,
00:53:24.913 --> 00:53:25.987
you say you don't believe in a self
00:53:25.987 --> 00:53:30.077
so you're contradicting yourself."
00:53:30.077 --> 00:53:32.914
But actually, no, the point of the Buddha
00:53:32.914 --> 00:53:35.502
is precisely that such a thing as rebirth
00:53:35.502 --> 00:53:38.334
can exist without a self.
00:53:38.334 --> 00:53:39.735
This is one of the things that precisely
00:53:39.735 --> 00:53:41.507
makes it so profound.
00:53:41.507 --> 00:53:45.320
This is found in the third and the fourth
00:53:45.320 --> 00:53:47.594
factor of dependent arising:
00:53:47.594 --> 00:53:49.599
consciousness and
00:53:49.599 --> 00:53:51.798
conditions, what is some times called
00:53:51.798 --> 00:53:53.698
name-and-form. We will discuss that term
00:53:53.698 --> 00:53:55.048
later on, what it actually means.
00:53:55.048 --> 00:53:58.803
But that kind of nexus between those two,
00:53:58.803 --> 00:54:01.207
because they mutually condition each other,
00:54:01.207 --> 00:54:04.728
shows you how this thing sustains itself
00:54:04.728 --> 00:54:06.682
without a self in there.
00:54:06.682 --> 00:54:08.640
In fact, the whole dependent arising,
00:54:08.640 --> 00:54:10.827
the whole chain of factors,
00:54:10.827 --> 00:54:13.051
is also an example of that.
00:54:13.051 --> 00:54:16.438
So these are two very important things,
00:54:16.438 --> 00:54:18.461
crucial aspects of Buddhism which are
00:54:18.461 --> 00:54:22.014
explained in detail in dependent arising.
00:54:22.014 --> 00:54:23.550
But the most important thing,
00:54:23.550 --> 00:54:25.458
and what makes dependent arising
00:54:25.458 --> 00:54:26.851
so interesting,
00:54:26.851 --> 00:54:29.471
is that the overall structure
00:54:29.471 --> 00:54:30.581
shows you...
00:54:30.581 --> 00:54:31.516
the first factor of
00:54:31.516 --> 00:54:32.786
dependent arising as I said before
00:54:32.786 --> 00:54:34.276
is ignorance,
00:54:34.276 --> 00:54:37.712
the last one of the 12 factors is suffering.
00:54:39.302 --> 00:54:40.360
What that does
00:54:40.360 --> 00:54:41.965
- I'll talk more about that in a second -
00:54:41.965 --> 00:54:45.344
it shows us how suffering arises
00:54:45.344 --> 00:54:47.294
out of lack of understanding,
00:54:47.294 --> 00:54:48.470
out of ignorance.
00:54:49.080 --> 00:54:52.108
This is probably the main purpose
00:54:52.108 --> 00:54:53.859
of dependent arising
00:54:53.859 --> 00:54:55.020
and why it is so powerful
00:54:55.020 --> 00:54:56.438
because it shows us that,
00:54:56.438 --> 00:54:57.522
if you don't understand things
00:54:57.522 --> 00:54:58.286
in the right way,
00:54:58.286 --> 00:55:00.107
you're going to suffer.
00:55:00.107 --> 00:55:02.230
So you want to try to understand things
00:55:02.230 --> 00:55:02.967
in the right way.
00:55:02.967 --> 00:55:06.136
If you don't you have a serious problem.
00:55:07.276 --> 00:55:11.121
Now, before I go into more detail
00:55:11.121 --> 00:55:12.337
about these things,
00:55:13.057 --> 00:55:15.437
I thought that the mistakes that people
00:55:15.437 --> 00:55:17.351
sometimes do about dependent arising,
00:55:17.351 --> 00:55:20.190
they think it's a very profound teaching
00:55:20.190 --> 00:55:21.804
and people sometimes ask:
00:55:21.804 --> 00:55:25.615
what is Buddhism? Should it be considered a
00:55:25.615 --> 00:55:26.615
philosophy?
00:55:27.045 --> 00:55:28.462
Is it a religion?
00:55:28.802 --> 00:55:29.567
What is it?
00:55:29.567 --> 00:55:31.687
How do we make sense of Buddhism?
00:55:31.687 --> 00:55:33.050
What kind of teaching is it?
00:55:34.760 --> 00:55:36.332
Of course, you can say it's just a
00:55:36.332 --> 00:55:37.551
wisdom teaching, but that doesn't
00:55:37.551 --> 00:55:39.318
really say very much.
00:55:39.318 --> 00:55:41.524
So the first question I want to ask:
00:55:41.524 --> 00:55:42.849
well, if it is so profound,
00:55:42.849 --> 00:55:45.127
could it then be said to be a philosophy?
00:55:45.127 --> 00:55:47.207
Is that an appropriate way
00:55:47.207 --> 00:55:49.043
of regarding Buddhism?
00:55:49.043 --> 00:55:50.883
Is it a philosophy or not?
00:55:52.023 --> 00:55:53.238
The answer to that,
00:55:53.238 --> 00:55:54.377
is a philosophy or not,
00:55:54.377 --> 00:55:57.552
is that the early teachings of the Buddha,
00:55:57.552 --> 00:55:59.990
the teachings that we talking about here,
00:55:59.990 --> 00:56:02.181
the ones that are found in the four nikāyas
00:56:02.181 --> 00:56:04.045
and not the later teachings,
00:56:04.565 --> 00:56:05.709
as far as I can see,
00:56:05.709 --> 00:56:07.903
they are not a philosophy.
00:56:07.903 --> 00:56:09.307
The philosophy of Buddhism
00:56:09.307 --> 00:56:11.180
is something that arises later on.
00:56:11.180 --> 00:56:13.507
That is what the Abhidhamma is all about,
00:56:13.507 --> 00:56:15.213
that is really philosophy.
00:56:16.873 --> 00:56:19.458
You may have heard about very famous
00:56:19.458 --> 00:56:21.687
simile of the Buddha, the Buddha is
00:56:21.687 --> 00:56:23.991
in the place called the Gosinga Wood
00:56:23.991 --> 00:56:26.151
and he takes a handful of leaves
00:56:26.151 --> 00:56:27.883
and he says, "these handfuls of leaves
00:56:27.883 --> 00:56:29.360
I have in my hand, compared to
00:56:29.360 --> 00:56:31.782
all the handfuls of leaves in the forest,
00:56:31.782 --> 00:56:33.511
which is more?"
00:56:34.651 --> 00:56:35.655
So the monks obviously say,
00:56:35.655 --> 00:56:37.706
"the handful of leaves in your hand are few
00:56:37.706 --> 00:56:40.381
and ones in the forest are great
00:56:40.381 --> 00:56:41.809
in comparison."
00:56:41.809 --> 00:56:42.886
And then the Buddha says,
00:56:42.886 --> 00:56:44.992
"what I have taught you
00:56:44.992 --> 00:56:48.242
is comparable to the leaves in my hand,
00:56:48.242 --> 00:56:50.177
but what I know is comparable
00:56:50.177 --> 00:56:51.619
to all the leaves in the forest."
00:56:52.329 --> 00:56:53.824
So what is going on here?
00:56:53.824 --> 00:56:55.144
What about the rest of the stuff?
00:56:55.144 --> 00:56:56.138
Wouldn't you guys be interested
00:56:56.138 --> 00:56:57.746
in hearing about the rest of the stuff?
00:56:57.746 --> 00:56:59.053
If the Buddha has all this knowledge,
00:56:59.053 --> 00:56:59.996
it would be interesting
00:56:59.996 --> 00:57:01.661
to hear about all the other stuff.
00:57:01.661 --> 00:57:02.529
Why does he only teach us
00:57:02.529 --> 00:57:03.571
these little few things?
00:57:04.501 --> 00:57:05.488
And the point here,
00:57:05.488 --> 00:57:07.315
remember that the purpose of the Buddha,
00:57:07.315 --> 00:57:10.230
he is a compassionate teacher
00:57:10.230 --> 00:57:12.159
he has understood the one thing
00:57:12.159 --> 00:57:14.078
everybody in the whole world
00:57:14.078 --> 00:57:15.740
wants to know about.
00:57:15.740 --> 00:57:16.578
He has understood about
00:57:16.578 --> 00:57:18.260
happiness and suffering to the core.
00:57:18.860 --> 00:57:19.877
Look in your heart,
00:57:19.877 --> 00:57:21.023
what is it that you want?
00:57:21.023 --> 00:57:22.966
What is it that you yearn for?
00:57:23.916 --> 00:57:27.084
We are always trying to move towards
00:57:27.084 --> 00:57:30.056
more contentment, more satisfaction,
00:57:30.056 --> 00:57:32.071
more pleasure, more happiness,
00:57:32.071 --> 00:57:34.323
less depression, less sorrow,
00:57:34.323 --> 00:57:35.706
less pain.
00:57:35.706 --> 00:57:37.083
Everybody wants that.
00:57:37.083 --> 00:57:38.225
I've never met anybody who
00:57:38.225 --> 00:57:39.413
wants more depression.
00:57:39.413 --> 00:57:41.419
Unless they are really messed up
00:57:41.419 --> 00:57:43.711
psychologically, possibly, but then
00:57:43.711 --> 00:57:45.251
they have other problems.
00:57:45.251 --> 00:57:47.199
The point is we all want to move there.
00:57:47.199 --> 00:57:48.827
And the Buddha knows, "I have the answer."
00:57:48.827 --> 00:57:52.740
So then he decides to teach
00:57:52.740 --> 00:57:54.143
out of compassion,
00:57:54.143 --> 00:57:56.554
to help people overcome their problems,
00:57:56.554 --> 00:57:58.527
and give rise to the highest happiness.
00:57:58.527 --> 00:58:00.524
That is what nibbāna is all about.
00:58:00.524 --> 00:58:02.529
So it's pragmatic!
00:58:02.529 --> 00:58:04.624
The teaching is purely pragmatic.
00:58:04.624 --> 00:58:06.810
It has a very clear purpose, and
00:58:06.810 --> 00:58:08.793
you don't want to distract that teaching
00:58:08.793 --> 00:58:10.597
with things that have nothing to do
00:58:10.597 --> 00:58:12.789
with that pragmatic goal, which is to
00:58:12.789 --> 00:58:15.208
alleviate suffering in all beings.
00:58:15.648 --> 00:58:18.602
This is why the Buddha doesn't philosophise.
00:58:18.602 --> 00:58:19.565
What is philosophy?
00:58:19.565 --> 00:58:23.099
Philosophy is about Plato,
00:58:23.099 --> 00:58:24.569
and Aristotle,
00:58:24.569 --> 00:58:26.301
and Socrates,
00:58:26.301 --> 00:58:28.309
and we find people in the present day.
00:58:28.309 --> 00:58:30.037
We find it not only in the West, of course,
00:58:30.037 --> 00:58:31.733
you find it also everywhere.
00:58:31.733 --> 00:58:32.713
This is what the later
00:58:32.713 --> 00:58:34.163
Abhidhamma people did also.
00:58:34.163 --> 00:58:36.456
It's philosophising, it's creating,
00:58:36.456 --> 00:58:38.992
it's speculating about the world.
00:58:38.992 --> 00:58:40.568
It's based a little bit on fact,
00:58:40.568 --> 00:58:41.754
because you have a little bit
00:58:41.754 --> 00:58:43.749
of science and put these kind of things,
00:58:43.749 --> 00:58:45.278
but a lot of philosophy is
00:58:45.278 --> 00:58:47.468
thinking out systems,
00:58:47.468 --> 00:58:49.378
castles in the air
00:58:49.378 --> 00:58:50.518
that are built up,
00:58:50.518 --> 00:58:52.738
often with no foundations,
00:58:52.738 --> 00:58:53.594
a little bit of foundations,
00:58:53.594 --> 00:58:54.588
but not much.
00:58:54.588 --> 00:58:57.251
This is what philosophy is all about.
00:58:57.251 --> 00:58:58.671
And the Buddha, I think he knew...
00:58:58.671 --> 00:58:59.840
I'm not saying the Buddha
00:58:59.840 --> 00:59:01.333
would have built up anything
00:59:01.333 --> 00:59:03.460
without foundation, on the contrary,
00:59:03.460 --> 00:59:05.368
he probably would have good reasons
00:59:05.368 --> 00:59:07.548
for saying what he would have said
00:59:07.548 --> 00:59:10.079
if he had said so, but he didn't.
00:59:10.789 --> 00:59:13.183
Even though he knew what he was talking
00:59:13.183 --> 00:59:16.021
about, he knew that it would detract
00:59:16.021 --> 00:59:18.173
from the actual practice,
00:59:18.173 --> 00:59:20.438
because, once you start to present
00:59:20.438 --> 00:59:21.903
a philosophical system
00:59:21.903 --> 00:59:23.647
a system which explains everything
00:59:23.647 --> 00:59:24.700
in the world,
00:59:24.700 --> 00:59:26.203
that's very fascinating, right?
00:59:26.203 --> 00:59:27.633
I just said before,
00:59:27.633 --> 00:59:29.322
who of you wouldn't be interested
00:59:29.322 --> 00:59:30.688
in hearing about all the other leaves,
00:59:30.688 --> 00:59:31.651
Everybody went,
00:59:31.651 --> 00:59:33.302
"yeah, that would be exciting"
00:59:33.302 --> 00:59:34.670
I think the same,
00:59:34.670 --> 00:59:36.083
it would be exciting for me, too.
00:59:36.083 --> 00:59:37.423
This is the problem,
00:59:37.423 --> 00:59:38.880
you get sidetracked.
00:59:38.880 --> 00:59:40.269
You start to philosophise.
00:59:40.269 --> 00:59:41.179
The Buddha would've probably
00:59:41.179 --> 00:59:43.468
had to spend the rest of his life
00:59:43.468 --> 00:59:46.078
answering critics, saying,
00:59:46.078 --> 00:59:47.362
"well, you know, this doesn't make any sense",
00:59:47.362 --> 00:59:48.581
"well, actually it does make sense"
00:59:48.581 --> 00:59:48.978
"oh, no"
00:59:48.978 --> 00:59:50.021
and then back and forth,
00:59:50.021 --> 00:59:51.232
back and forth.
00:59:51.232 --> 00:59:53.433
So you focus on the essentials.
00:59:53.433 --> 00:59:56.118
I think this is a very important point.
00:59:56.708 --> 00:59:58.477
This should remind us that
00:59:58.477 --> 01:00:00.420
we should really try to be
01:00:00.420 --> 01:00:04.121
in a similar kind of mindset,
01:00:04.121 --> 01:00:06.643
where we don't philosophise too much.
01:00:06.643 --> 01:00:09.376
It means that dependent arising itself,
01:00:09.376 --> 01:00:10.736
origination itself,
01:00:10.736 --> 01:00:12.901
is not really a philosophy.
01:00:13.361 --> 01:00:14.459
The primary purpose of
01:00:14.459 --> 01:00:16.850
dependent origination is pragmatic.
01:00:16.850 --> 01:00:18.788
It is to show us that there is a problem,
01:00:18.788 --> 01:00:20.824
that there is a solution to that problem,
01:00:20.824 --> 01:00:23.270
and how to apply ourselves.
01:00:23.270 --> 01:00:24.390
Of course, it also gives
01:00:24.390 --> 01:00:25.398
a little bit more than that,
01:00:25.398 --> 01:00:27.080
it gives a little bit of understanding
01:00:27.080 --> 01:00:28.612
for how it all works,
01:00:28.612 --> 01:00:30.144
which sometimes gives rise
01:00:30.144 --> 01:00:31.560
to confidence and faith because
01:00:31.560 --> 01:00:33.999
you feel that there is a system
01:00:33.999 --> 01:00:35.471
which is complete.
01:00:35.471 --> 01:00:38.228
But, essentially, it is a pragmatic thing.
01:00:38.228 --> 01:00:40.729
It is about release from suffering
01:00:40.729 --> 01:00:42.461
and a movement towards happiness,
01:00:42.461 --> 01:00:44.202
and getting out of saṃsāra.
01:00:44.202 --> 01:00:46.323
This is the purpose of this.
01:00:46.893 --> 01:00:49.052
So the Buddha didn't philosophise.
01:00:49.842 --> 01:00:52.596
This is the thing about the Abhidhamma,
01:00:52.596 --> 01:00:54.181
I don't know what kind of ideas
01:00:54.181 --> 01:00:55.801
you have about the Abhidhamma,
01:00:55.801 --> 01:00:58.237
but as far as I am concerned,
01:00:58.237 --> 01:01:00.761
and I read Pāli,
01:01:00.761 --> 01:01:02.672
I have read parts of the Abhidhamma
01:01:02.672 --> 01:01:03.352
not the whole thing
01:01:03.352 --> 01:01:04.594
because I find it too boring,
01:01:04.594 --> 01:01:07.221
to be perfectly honest with you,
01:01:07.221 --> 01:01:08.616
and I've also read the suttas,
01:01:08.616 --> 01:01:10.429
pretty much everything in Pāli, and
01:01:10.429 --> 01:01:13.206
in English and in other languages as well,
01:01:13.206 --> 01:01:15.674
and it is very clear to me,
01:01:15.674 --> 01:01:17.515
that the Abhidhamma is later
01:01:17.515 --> 01:01:18.314
than the suttas.
01:01:18.314 --> 01:01:20.680
It arose over a long period of time,
01:01:20.680 --> 01:01:22.136
because this is a very complex
01:01:22.136 --> 01:01:24.020
type of literature.
01:01:24.020 --> 01:01:25.031
It started arising
01:01:25.031 --> 01:01:26.931
probably fairly soon after the Buddha
01:01:26.931 --> 01:01:28.466
and went on being developed
01:01:28.466 --> 01:01:29.765
for many centuries,
01:01:29.765 --> 01:01:30.802
perhaps millennia
01:01:30.802 --> 01:01:32.744
after the Buddha passed away.
01:01:34.724 --> 01:01:35.989
I'm not going to go into that now,
01:01:35.989 --> 01:01:36.616
if you are interested
01:01:36.616 --> 01:01:37.908
you can ask in the Q&A,
01:01:37.908 --> 01:01:39.767
but there are many, many good reasons why
01:01:39.767 --> 01:01:40.816
the Abhidhamma is not
01:01:40.816 --> 01:01:42.135
the word of the Buddha.
01:01:42.135 --> 01:01:43.675
But the Abhidhamma is precisely
01:01:43.675 --> 01:01:45.489
a philosophical system.
01:01:46.349 --> 01:01:46.855
Why?
01:01:46.855 --> 01:01:49.321
Because it is about creating
01:01:49.321 --> 01:01:51.637
a system which explains the world
01:01:51.637 --> 01:01:52.595
completely.
01:01:52.935 --> 01:01:54.089
So you have this division of
01:01:54.089 --> 01:01:56.952
mind-moments, or mind-states
01:01:58.062 --> 01:02:01.223
96 cittas, or something like that,
01:02:01.223 --> 01:02:03.043
and then you have the various
01:02:03.043 --> 01:02:05.231
types of mind-factors
01:02:05.231 --> 01:02:06.590
called the cetasikas,
01:02:06.590 --> 01:02:09.096
which are 70 or whatever it is,
01:02:09.096 --> 01:02:12.014
I'm not even sure how many there are,
01:02:12.014 --> 01:02:13.029
maybe it's only 40.
01:02:13.029 --> 01:02:13.802
Shows you how much
01:02:13.802 --> 01:02:15.382
I know about the Abhidhamma.
01:02:15.382 --> 01:02:16.847
And then you have
01:02:16.847 --> 01:02:19.001
the factors of materiality,
01:02:19.001 --> 01:02:20.256
the physical world.
01:02:20.256 --> 01:02:21.516
There's 28, or something,
01:02:21.516 --> 01:02:23.358
or 20 something. 24 perhaps.
01:02:26.138 --> 01:02:27.940
First of all, it's divided up
01:02:27.940 --> 01:02:29.984
into all the elements of reality,
01:02:29.984 --> 01:02:31.612
and then you have all these books
01:02:31.612 --> 01:02:33.859
that show how these things fit together.
01:02:33.859 --> 01:02:35.742
There is a book called the Paṭṭhāna,
01:02:35.742 --> 01:02:38.642
which is a book, basically, translated
01:02:38.642 --> 01:02:41.310
into English as 'conditional relations'.
01:02:41.310 --> 01:02:42.853
What that book does,
01:02:42.853 --> 01:02:45.217
it shows you that all of these categories
01:02:45.217 --> 01:02:46.682
I just talked about before,
01:02:46.682 --> 01:02:48.886
how they are related to each other
01:02:48.886 --> 01:02:51.801
through various causes.
01:02:51.801 --> 01:02:54.169
24 causes are enumerated
01:02:54.169 --> 01:02:55.307
in the Pāli.
01:02:55.307 --> 01:02:57.746
And the book, the Paṭṭhāna, is so long
01:02:57.746 --> 01:02:59.587
because there are so intricacies,
01:02:59.587 --> 01:03:00.551
so many ways these things
01:03:00.551 --> 01:03:02.537
can relate to each other,
01:03:02.537 --> 01:03:03.572
it is so long that if you wrote out
01:03:03.572 --> 01:03:04.638
the whole thing
01:03:04.638 --> 01:03:06.089
- somebody apparently calculated this -
01:03:06.089 --> 01:03:07.633
if you wrote out the whole thing,
01:03:07.633 --> 01:03:10.514
the book would be so long
01:03:10.514 --> 01:03:11.403
that it would stretch
01:03:11.403 --> 01:03:12.699
from Sydney to Melbourne,
01:03:12.699 --> 01:03:13.724
or something like that.
01:03:13.724 --> 01:03:14.782
That's how big it is.
01:03:15.532 --> 01:03:17.625
So this is thought out
01:03:17.625 --> 01:03:18.745
by the human mind.
01:03:18.745 --> 01:03:20.720
This is what they call philosophy.
01:03:20.720 --> 01:03:21.659
And this is what happened
01:03:21.659 --> 01:03:22.894
later in Buddhism.
01:03:22.894 --> 01:03:24.408
Of course, the sad thing is that
01:03:24.408 --> 01:03:27.167
if you travel around the Buddhist world,
01:03:27.167 --> 01:03:28.683
you find that a lot of people,
01:03:28.683 --> 01:03:30.258
that's what their interested in.
01:03:30.828 --> 01:03:32.741
It's exactly why the Buddha didn't teach it.
01:03:32.741 --> 01:03:34.165
He saw the attraction in that,
01:03:34.165 --> 01:03:35.262
the danger in that,
01:03:35.262 --> 01:03:37.217
creating philosophical systems,
01:03:37.217 --> 01:03:38.600
building them up,
01:03:38.600 --> 01:03:40.142
and it's never finished.
01:03:40.142 --> 01:03:41.375
This is the other problem,
01:03:41.375 --> 01:03:43.708
there's always some hole in the system.
01:03:43.708 --> 01:03:44.193
Somebody says,
01:03:44.193 --> 01:03:45.553
"oh, what about this?
01:03:45.553 --> 01:03:46.647
You haven't thought about
01:03:46.647 --> 01:03:47.432
this problem over here."
01:03:47.432 --> 01:03:48.865
And then you have to write a new
01:03:48.865 --> 01:03:51.574
sub-commentary to fill in that little gap.
01:03:51.574 --> 01:03:52.622
Then somebody finds a hole
01:03:52.622 --> 01:03:54.476
in the sub-commentary and the more
01:03:54.476 --> 01:03:55.587
literature you have,
01:03:55.587 --> 01:03:57.270
the more holes there's going to be.
01:03:57.270 --> 01:03:58.745
So for every book you add,
01:03:58.745 --> 01:04:00.170
there going to be another whole.
01:04:00.850 --> 01:04:01.980
And it keeps on going like that
01:04:01.980 --> 01:04:02.812
and there's no end.
01:04:02.812 --> 01:04:04.933
This is the problem with philosophy,
01:04:04.933 --> 01:04:06.416
it never, never stops.
01:04:06.876 --> 01:04:08.997
So the Buddha, very, very wisely,
01:04:08.997 --> 01:04:10.705
skipped that whole area.
01:04:12.395 --> 01:04:14.198
So dependent origination
01:04:14.198 --> 01:04:15.740
is not philosophy.
01:04:15.740 --> 01:04:17.699
It's pragmatic, it's practical,
01:04:17.699 --> 01:04:20.281
it's to be used in a practical way.
01:04:20.281 --> 01:04:21.746
So please keep that in mind.
01:04:21.746 --> 01:04:23.165
It's so easy to get sidetracked
01:04:23.165 --> 01:04:25.143
with philosophising.
01:04:26.463 --> 01:04:27.991
So what is Buddhism?
01:04:27.991 --> 01:04:29.578
Maybe just very briefly: what it is,
01:04:29.578 --> 01:04:31.311
because I think it is interesting
01:04:31.311 --> 01:04:33.829
just as a point of general interest.
01:04:33.829 --> 01:04:35.610
Is it a religion?
01:04:37.160 --> 01:04:37.738
Is it a religion?
01:04:37.738 --> 01:04:38.462
People say,
01:04:38.462 --> 01:04:39.567
"aah, yeah, maybe,
01:04:39.567 --> 01:04:40.964
maybe not it's a religion."
01:04:40.964 --> 01:04:42.944
I think it's a fascinating question.
01:04:42.944 --> 01:04:44.750
Personally, I think it's fascinating,
01:04:44.750 --> 01:04:46.327
whether it's a religion or not.
01:04:46.327 --> 01:04:47.997
Obviously, the answer is,
01:04:47.997 --> 01:04:48.969
it all depends on how
01:04:48.969 --> 01:04:50.797
you define the word 'religion'.
01:04:51.667 --> 01:04:53.158
I looked up the Oxford Dictionary,
01:04:53.158 --> 01:04:54.099
very recently,
01:04:54.099 --> 01:04:56.566
at how that defines 'religion',
01:04:57.056 --> 01:04:59.613
and it says any kind of system
01:04:59.613 --> 01:05:00.374
where there is some kind of
01:05:00.374 --> 01:05:03.671
supernatural agency is a religion.
01:05:04.471 --> 01:05:06.482
From that point of view,
01:05:06.482 --> 01:05:08.366
is Buddhism a religion?
01:05:08.366 --> 01:05:11.217
I would say no, it is not, because, certainly
01:05:11.217 --> 01:05:13.539
from an internal point of view of Buddhism
01:05:13.539 --> 01:05:14.982
everything is part of nature.
01:05:14.982 --> 01:05:16.694
Nothing is supernatural,
01:05:16.694 --> 01:05:18.811
Nothing is outside of nature.
01:05:18.811 --> 01:05:20.278
If you go to ordinary religions,
01:05:20.278 --> 01:05:23.066
like, Christianity or Islam, of course,
01:05:23.066 --> 01:05:24.834
the idea is that God stands outside
01:05:24.834 --> 01:05:25.814
of nature.
01:05:26.354 --> 01:05:28.485
That's why he can break all the laws of nature.
01:05:28.485 --> 01:05:29.613
He doesn't have to care about
01:05:29.613 --> 01:05:30.869
gravity or whatever.
01:05:31.599 --> 01:05:32.888
He can just do whatever he wants.
01:05:32.888 --> 01:05:34.661
Quantum mechanics, no problem,
01:05:34.661 --> 01:05:38.626
he can do what he likes with the world.
01:05:38.626 --> 01:05:39.843
He is supernatural.
01:05:39.843 --> 01:05:41.373
But from a Buddhist point of view,
01:05:41.373 --> 01:05:43.252
everything is part of nature.
01:05:43.252 --> 01:05:44.407
So in that way,
01:05:44.407 --> 01:05:46.424
Buddhism is not, really, supernatural.
01:05:46.424 --> 01:05:49.534
But, if you're not a Buddhist and you say,
01:05:49.534 --> 01:05:51.056
"aww, you guys believe in all kind
01:05:51.056 --> 01:05:53.563
of weird stuff, you believe in devas,
01:05:53.563 --> 01:05:55.046
okay; supernatural."
01:05:55.046 --> 01:05:57.001
So from an external point of view,
01:05:57.001 --> 01:05:58.313
maybe Buddhism is a religion,
01:05:58.313 --> 01:05:59.408
because other people might think
01:05:59.408 --> 01:06:02.234
that we believe in supernatural stuff.
01:06:02.234 --> 01:06:05.094
So it depends on the angle you take.
01:06:07.714 --> 01:06:10.619
I must admit, I prefer to be very careful
01:06:10.619 --> 01:06:12.408
when using labels like 'religion'
01:06:12.408 --> 01:06:13.857
on Buddhism, because the word
01:06:13.857 --> 01:06:16.437
'religion' has so much baggage,
01:06:16.437 --> 01:06:18.527
and a lot of that baggage does not
01:06:18.527 --> 01:06:19.962
apply to Buddhism.
01:06:19.962 --> 01:06:22.363
So we are taking on this baggage
01:06:22.363 --> 01:06:24.210
by calling ourself a religion;
01:06:24.210 --> 01:06:26.256
I'm not sure that is very suitable,
01:06:26.256 --> 01:06:27.217
or very useful.
01:06:27.217 --> 01:06:28.440
Sometimes it's better to say,
01:06:28.440 --> 01:06:30.102
"yeah, I'm not sure we're a religion,
01:06:30.102 --> 01:06:31.467
maybe we're something else."
01:06:31.467 --> 01:06:33.731
So what is that something else?
01:06:33.731 --> 01:06:35.844
I would say that something else is that,
01:06:35.844 --> 01:06:37.839
Buddhism is essentially...
01:06:37.839 --> 01:06:39.059
this is maybe something I need to
01:06:39.059 --> 01:06:40.430
reflect a bit more about, but
01:06:40.430 --> 01:06:42.563
it's really a type of psychology.
01:06:42.563 --> 01:06:44.269
That's what I'd call Buddhism.
01:06:44.269 --> 01:06:45.831
All of Buddhism is about
01:06:45.831 --> 01:06:47.517
how to use the mind well,
01:06:47.517 --> 01:06:50.077
how to move from suffering
01:06:50.077 --> 01:06:51.252
to more happiness,
01:06:51.252 --> 01:06:53.713
how to eventually end all suffering.
01:06:53.713 --> 01:06:55.650
It's all really mental stuff.
01:06:55.650 --> 01:06:57.365
It's all about developing the mind,
01:06:57.365 --> 01:06:58.778
doing something with the mind.
01:06:58.778 --> 01:07:00.373
It's a kind of psychology.
01:07:00.373 --> 01:07:02.350
Maybe not anything like
01:07:02.350 --> 01:07:04.209
anything we have in the world
01:07:06.729 --> 01:07:07.892
apart from Buddhism,
01:07:07.892 --> 01:07:10.379
it's different obviously, but it really is,
01:07:10.379 --> 01:07:11.798
I think, at the end of the day,
01:07:11.798 --> 01:07:13.593
possibly a type of psychology.
01:07:13.593 --> 01:07:14.603
Although, I must admit,
01:07:14.603 --> 01:07:15.774
I haven't really
01:07:16.344 --> 01:07:17.704
thought about that carefully enough
01:07:17.704 --> 01:07:21.049
to really make an absolute statement
01:07:21.049 --> 01:07:22.103
about that.
01:07:23.223 --> 01:07:26.757
Anyway, Buddhism is a psychology,
01:07:26.757 --> 01:07:28.320
and, of course, that includes then
01:07:28.320 --> 01:07:29.746
dependent origination.
01:07:31.178 --> 01:07:33.907
So where does this fit in to this picture
01:07:33.907 --> 01:07:35.047
of psychology?
01:07:35.787 --> 01:07:37.582
What is it all about?
01:07:39.112 --> 01:07:41.524
Dependent arising, the first thing,
01:07:41.524 --> 01:07:43.688
of course, to understand about it,
01:07:43.688 --> 01:07:45.865
is that it is an important teaching
01:07:45.865 --> 01:07:47.609
of the Buddha.
01:07:47.609 --> 01:07:48.401
How do you know
01:07:48.401 --> 01:07:50.350
it's an important teaching of the Buddha?
01:07:50.350 --> 01:07:52.293
Well, usually, you know because
01:07:52.293 --> 01:07:53.942
somebody else says so.
01:07:53.942 --> 01:07:54.913
That's how people often know
01:07:54.913 --> 01:07:56.209
it is an important teaching,
01:07:56.209 --> 01:07:57.574
"this is important because they say
01:07:57.574 --> 01:07:58.756
it's an important teaching."
01:07:58.756 --> 01:08:00.852
But is there any objective way
01:08:00.852 --> 01:08:02.355
of deciding this, apart from just
01:08:02.355 --> 01:08:03.767
listening to people like me
01:08:03.767 --> 01:08:05.160
saying it is important?
01:08:06.170 --> 01:08:08.252
The objective way of deciding
01:08:08.252 --> 01:08:10.201
whether a teaching is important
01:08:10.201 --> 01:08:12.853
in Buddhism or not, is to see how often
01:08:12.853 --> 01:08:14.981
did the Buddha talk about this.
01:08:14.981 --> 01:08:16.636
How many different audiences?
01:08:16.636 --> 01:08:18.167
How many different places
01:08:18.167 --> 01:08:20.200
did he give this particular teaching?
01:08:20.200 --> 01:08:21.702
And dependent arising is one
01:08:21.702 --> 01:08:23.104
of those teachings that you see
01:08:23.104 --> 01:08:24.817
throughout the suttas.
01:08:24.817 --> 01:08:26.773
You see it in all the four nikāyas.
01:08:26.773 --> 01:08:28.555
You see it in the Majjhima Nikāya.
01:08:28.555 --> 01:08:29.932
You see it in the Dīgha Nikāya.
01:08:29.932 --> 01:08:32.395
You see it in the Aṅguttara, in the Saṃyutta.
01:08:32.395 --> 01:08:33.774
In the Saṃyutta Nikāya,
01:08:33.774 --> 01:08:35.497
there is a whole section just about
01:08:35.497 --> 01:08:37.304
dependent origination.
01:08:37.304 --> 01:08:39.667
This is how you make a decision
01:08:39.667 --> 01:08:41.779
about whether a sutta is important
01:08:41.779 --> 01:08:42.513
or not.
01:08:43.633 --> 01:08:45.625
This is actually a very useful tool,
01:08:45.625 --> 01:08:46.743
because sometimes people say,
01:08:46.743 --> 01:08:48.098
"ah, this is really important."
01:08:48.098 --> 01:08:50.050
But why is it important?
01:08:50.050 --> 01:08:51.859
"I don't know, it just is important."
01:08:51.859 --> 01:08:53.281
There should be some objective
01:08:53.281 --> 01:08:55.488
criteria for deciding these things.
01:08:55.488 --> 01:08:56.629
So dependent arising is
01:08:56.629 --> 01:08:58.096
one of those things.
01:08:58.920 --> 01:09:00.572
The second question is then:
01:09:00.572 --> 01:09:02.328
how does it fit in with
01:09:02.328 --> 01:09:04.660
the rest of the teachings?
01:09:04.660 --> 01:09:05.974
Because we need to sort of
01:09:05.974 --> 01:09:08.219
tie it together with everything else.
01:09:08.219 --> 01:09:09.680
One of the wonderful things
01:09:09.680 --> 01:09:12.810
about the Buddhist teaching, is that
01:09:12.810 --> 01:09:15.381
it all fits together into this one picture.
01:09:16.341 --> 01:09:17.732
It's basically one picture,
01:09:17.732 --> 01:09:19.162
then you take out a little piece here
01:09:19.162 --> 01:09:19.962
a little piece there,
01:09:19.962 --> 01:09:21.506
it's almost like a jigsaw.
01:09:21.506 --> 01:09:22.435
It's not really like a jigsaw.
01:09:22.435 --> 01:09:25.341
A jigsaw is a very imperfect simile,
01:09:25.341 --> 01:09:27.638
or metaphor, because really, often,
01:09:27.638 --> 01:09:29.319
the different pieces they overlap,
01:09:29.319 --> 01:09:31.064
or one fits into another one
01:09:31.064 --> 01:09:33.877
and it's not really quite like a jigsaw,
01:09:33.877 --> 01:09:36.981
but still, it is an overall picture.
01:09:36.981 --> 01:09:39.613
And it is the picture that you realise
01:09:39.613 --> 01:09:41.622
when you awaken to the Dhamma.
01:09:41.622 --> 01:09:43.466
When you, one day, become a stream enterer
01:09:43.466 --> 01:09:45.169
and you get a flash of insight,
01:09:45.169 --> 01:09:46.136
BANG!
01:09:46.136 --> 01:09:47.564
What is it that you see?
01:09:47.564 --> 01:09:48.106
What you see is:
01:09:48.106 --> 01:09:49.041
the Dīgha Nikāya, the Majjhima Nikāya
01:09:49.041 --> 01:09:50.662
the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Aṅguttara Nikāya.
01:09:50.662 --> 01:09:51.779
All in one!
01:09:51.779 --> 01:09:53.109
That's what you see!
01:09:53.109 --> 01:09:53.993
Whoa!
01:09:53.993 --> 01:09:55.124
You're head is going to explode!
01:09:55.124 --> 01:09:56.948
Imagine seeing all that is one moment.
01:09:56.948 --> 01:09:58.523
But the point, of course, is that
01:09:58.523 --> 01:10:01.116
the insight is quite simple,
01:10:01.116 --> 01:10:03.737
but when you draw out all the implications
01:10:03.737 --> 01:10:05.632
of that one single insight,
01:10:05.632 --> 01:10:08.308
you end up with an enormous thing.
01:10:08.798 --> 01:10:10.472
That is what is so amazing.
01:10:14.332 --> 01:10:17.295
So dependent origination is part of that.
01:10:17.295 --> 01:10:19.134
It is part of that big picture,
01:10:19.134 --> 01:10:20.407
but it is only one little thing.
01:10:20.407 --> 01:10:22.129
So where does it fit in?
01:10:23.109 --> 01:10:25.295
One easy way of understanding
01:10:25.295 --> 01:10:27.332
where it fits in is to look at
01:10:27.332 --> 01:10:28.922
the Four Noble Truths.
01:10:29.953 --> 01:10:30.726
Noble Truth number one,
01:10:30.726 --> 01:10:32.095
is the truth of suffering.
01:10:33.425 --> 01:10:35.406
Usually, most people shake their head,
01:10:35.406 --> 01:10:37.282
"okay, I'm not a Buddhist, I don't suffer."
01:10:37.282 --> 01:10:38.513
That is number one.
01:10:40.363 --> 01:10:42.574
Anyway, once you get passed the first one,
01:10:42.574 --> 01:10:44.288
you say, "okay, yeah, life is a bit
01:10:44.288 --> 01:10:46.726
unsatisfactory sometimes, okay, fair enough."
01:10:46.726 --> 01:10:48.883
Once you get passed the first one,
01:10:48.883 --> 01:10:51.398
the Second Noble Truth:
01:10:51.398 --> 01:10:53.501
the cause of suffering.
01:10:53.501 --> 01:10:56.214
The cause of suffering is taṇhā, craving,
01:10:56.214 --> 01:10:59.268
according to the Second Noble Truth.
01:10:59.268 --> 01:11:01.217
Now, in some suttas,
01:11:03.307 --> 01:11:04.977
that fact that
01:11:04.977 --> 01:11:06.883
taṇhā leads to suffering
01:11:06.883 --> 01:11:08.440
is expanded out,
01:11:08.440 --> 01:11:09.507
and it is expanded out
01:11:09.507 --> 01:11:12.095
into dependent origination.
01:11:12.095 --> 01:11:14.182
Dependent origination is what shows you
01:11:14.182 --> 01:11:15.544
that suffering arises.
01:11:15.544 --> 01:11:18.005
It's an alternative way of understanding
01:11:18.005 --> 01:11:19.882
the Second Noble Truth.
01:11:19.882 --> 01:11:22.671
So dependent origination fits,
01:11:22.671 --> 01:11:24.006
bang in there.
01:11:24.758 --> 01:11:27.503
It is basically another way of speaking
01:11:27.503 --> 01:11:29.724
about the Second Noble Truth,
01:11:29.724 --> 01:11:31.312
dependent origination.
01:11:31.312 --> 01:11:33.243
That's already quite interesting
01:11:33.243 --> 01:11:35.333
because normally you look at
01:11:35.333 --> 01:11:36.730
the Second Noble Truth,
01:11:36.730 --> 01:11:39.498
craving gives rise to suffering.
01:11:39.998 --> 01:11:41.901
Okay, fine,
01:11:41.901 --> 01:11:43.558
first of all maybe it's a little bit
01:11:43.558 --> 01:11:46.092
hard to understand why that is the case,
01:11:46.092 --> 01:11:48.458
so one thing that dependent origination
01:11:48.458 --> 01:11:51.110
does, it spells out exactly why it is
01:11:51.110 --> 01:11:53.841
that craving gives rise to suffering.
01:11:53.841 --> 01:11:56.317
It puts in all the little pieces in between
01:11:56.317 --> 01:11:58.155
to show you how this conditionality
01:11:58.155 --> 01:11:59.016
actually works.
01:11:59.876 --> 01:12:00.598
That's the first thing that's
01:12:00.598 --> 01:12:01.549
interesting about it.
01:12:01.549 --> 01:12:02.800
The second thing is,
01:12:02.800 --> 01:12:07.485
okay, if craving is the cause of suffering
01:12:07.485 --> 01:12:08.310
the Third Noble Truth says that
01:12:08.310 --> 01:12:10.061
when you remove that craving
01:12:10.061 --> 01:12:11.269
suffering ends.
01:12:12.239 --> 01:12:16.384
But, how do you get rid of craving?
01:12:16.384 --> 01:12:17.710
If craving is the cause of suffering,
01:12:17.710 --> 01:12:18.679
you want to get rid of craving.
01:12:18.679 --> 01:12:20.451
It's not very obvious, right?
01:12:20.451 --> 01:12:22.118
Everybody has desires,
01:12:22.118 --> 01:12:23.887
everybody has cravings in their life.
01:12:23.887 --> 01:12:25.341
How do you get rid of that?
01:12:25.341 --> 01:12:26.699
And this is the other thing that
01:12:26.699 --> 01:12:28.934
dependent arising, dependent origination
01:12:28.934 --> 01:12:29.753
shows you.
01:12:29.753 --> 01:12:31.230
It shows you all the links,
01:12:31.230 --> 01:12:33.732
all the causes that eventually
01:12:33.732 --> 01:12:35.235
give rise to craving.
01:12:35.235 --> 01:12:36.625
So it shows you have craving
01:12:36.625 --> 01:12:37.954
can be removed.
01:12:37.954 --> 01:12:39.553
And, of course, what it does,
01:12:40.313 --> 01:12:42.419
it takes it all back down to ignorance
01:12:42.419 --> 01:12:43.818
I was talking about before,
01:12:43.818 --> 01:12:45.530
which is the first factor of
01:12:45.530 --> 01:12:47.415
dependent arising.
01:12:47.415 --> 01:12:48.693
So if you remove ignorance,
01:12:48.693 --> 01:12:49.893
then everything else
01:12:49.893 --> 01:12:52.253
starts to disappear.
01:12:52.253 --> 01:12:53.497
Craving, and then
01:12:53.497 --> 01:12:56.824
eventually also suffering itself.
01:12:57.574 --> 01:12:59.103
So it fills in the gaps.
01:12:59.103 --> 01:13:00.759
It makes it clear what is going on.
01:13:00.759 --> 01:13:02.746
This is the power of dependent origination
01:13:02.746 --> 01:13:04.146
in this case.
01:13:04.146 --> 01:13:05.805
The second thing that is fascinating
01:13:05.805 --> 01:13:08.045
about this, and often you will hear
01:13:08.045 --> 01:13:09.860
people argue about whether
01:13:09.860 --> 01:13:12.400
dependent origination includes
01:13:12.400 --> 01:13:14.211
things like rebirth.
01:13:14.211 --> 01:13:15.384
Is it about rebirth?
01:13:15.384 --> 01:13:16.730
Is it about one life?
01:13:16.730 --> 01:13:18.956
Is it about what happens in one moment?
01:13:18.956 --> 01:13:20.222
People have all these different theories
01:13:20.222 --> 01:13:21.686
about dependent origination.
01:13:21.686 --> 01:13:23.816
I don't know about you here,
01:13:23.816 --> 01:13:25.805
I'm not sure what you think.
01:13:25.805 --> 01:13:27.381
I'm not going to ask you.
01:13:28.431 --> 01:13:30.538
I, personally, don't have any doubt
01:13:30.538 --> 01:13:32.402
that it refers to rebirth.
01:13:32.402 --> 01:13:34.899
The rebirth process is part and parcel
01:13:34.899 --> 01:13:36.578
of dependent origination,
01:13:36.578 --> 01:13:37.898
and you can actually see that
01:13:37.898 --> 01:13:40.002
if you consider the Second Noble Truth,
01:13:40.002 --> 01:13:43.049
or at least one hint is found right there
01:13:43.049 --> 01:13:44.718
because, the Second Noble Truth says
01:13:44.718 --> 01:13:48.079
it is the craving that leasts to rebirth,
01:13:48.079 --> 01:13:50.369
which is the source of suffering.
01:13:50.369 --> 01:13:52.074
It's not just any old craving,
01:13:52.074 --> 01:13:55.200
it's specifically called ponobhavika
01:13:55.200 --> 01:13:58.402
Pono is from puna which means 'again'.
01:13:58.402 --> 01:14:00.317
Bhavika means existence.
01:14:00.317 --> 01:14:02.438
So the craving that has to do with
01:14:02.438 --> 01:14:03.984
re-existence.
01:14:04.374 --> 01:14:06.089
So because dependent origination
01:14:06.089 --> 01:14:08.230
is just an expansion of that
01:14:08.230 --> 01:14:09.908
Second Noble Truth,
01:14:09.908 --> 01:14:11.380
dependent origination, too,
01:14:11.380 --> 01:14:13.858
has to do with rebirth
01:14:13.858 --> 01:14:15.683
and re-existence in the future.
01:14:15.683 --> 01:14:17.467
It becomes very clear once you whack it
01:14:17.467 --> 01:14:20.449
into that formula and they obviously
01:14:20.449 --> 01:14:21.797
have to equate with each other,
01:14:21.797 --> 01:14:23.009
it's the same thing,
01:14:23.009 --> 01:14:24.877
so it deals with rebirth.
01:14:24.877 --> 01:14:26.973
That's one thing I've been saying before,
01:14:26.973 --> 01:14:28.483
I talked about the various
01:14:29.563 --> 01:14:32.498
things that dependent origination points to
01:14:32.498 --> 01:14:33.941
such as kamma et cetera,
01:14:33.941 --> 01:14:35.685
of course, rebirth and kamma
01:14:35.685 --> 01:14:37.875
are here closely connected to each other.
01:14:39.605 --> 01:14:41.794
So this is where it is then,
01:14:41.794 --> 01:14:43.708
it is part of the Second Noble Truth,
01:14:43.708 --> 01:14:44.987
and straight away you see some
01:14:44.987 --> 01:14:46.401
interesting things coming out,
01:14:46.401 --> 01:14:47.755
just by considering that.
01:14:48.401 --> 01:14:49.672
Third Noble Truth.
01:14:49.672 --> 01:14:50.926
The Third Noble Truth is about
01:14:50.926 --> 01:14:53.067
the ending of suffering.
01:14:53.067 --> 01:14:54.709
It's great that there is a Third Noble Truth.
01:14:54.709 --> 01:14:56.438
Without that it wouldn't be so great,
01:14:56.438 --> 01:14:58.625
just the cause of suffering and suffering.
01:14:58.625 --> 01:14:59.537
So the third one is like,
01:14:59.537 --> 01:15:00.808
WOW!
01:15:01.268 --> 01:15:03.326
This is the power of the Buddha's teaching
01:15:03.326 --> 01:15:04.704
that we have the Third Noble Truth
01:15:04.704 --> 01:15:05.632
and the fourth on, of course,
01:15:05.632 --> 01:15:07.147
which is the path.
01:15:07.147 --> 01:15:08.330
Now the third one
01:15:08.850 --> 01:15:12.389
shows us that the cessation of suffering
01:15:12.389 --> 01:15:15.568
comes from the cessation of craving.
01:15:15.568 --> 01:15:18.666
Again, the sequence of dependent arising,
01:15:18.666 --> 01:15:20.090
it has a forward order
01:15:20.090 --> 01:15:22.239
and it has a reverse order.
01:15:22.239 --> 01:15:24.591
And here it operates in the reverse order.
01:15:24.591 --> 01:15:25.386
It shows you that
01:15:25.386 --> 01:15:27.346
when you eliminate avijjā,
01:15:27.346 --> 01:15:29.199
ignorance, at the bottom
01:15:29.199 --> 01:15:30.930
all the factors get eliminated
01:15:30.930 --> 01:15:32.474
until you eliminate craving
01:15:32.474 --> 01:15:34.088
and then it fills in the gap
01:15:34.088 --> 01:15:36.264
between craving and dukkha.
01:15:36.264 --> 01:15:37.896
All of those factors get eliminated
01:15:37.896 --> 01:15:40.040
and eventually suffering itself
01:15:40.040 --> 01:15:41.346
gets eliminated.
01:15:41.346 --> 01:15:42.917
There are two ways that
01:15:42.917 --> 01:15:44.598
dependent arising works:
01:15:44.598 --> 01:15:45.712
in the forward order,
01:15:45.712 --> 01:15:47.933
which shows you how suffering arises
01:15:47.933 --> 01:15:49.244
and the reverse order,
01:15:49.244 --> 01:15:51.054
which shows how suffering ends
01:15:51.054 --> 01:15:52.620
as a consequence of all the other
01:15:52.620 --> 01:15:54.228
factors ending.
01:15:55.238 --> 01:15:58.537
Second Noble Truth and Third Noble Truth.
01:15:59.477 --> 01:16:01.578
I hope I'm making sense to you.
01:16:01.578 --> 01:16:03.263
I'm not sure how much you
01:16:03.263 --> 01:16:04.256
know about these things,
01:16:04.256 --> 01:16:05.287
or how much you don't.
01:16:05.287 --> 01:16:06.736
I apologise if I go too fast;
01:16:06.736 --> 01:16:08.577
just let me know later on,
01:16:08.577 --> 01:16:10.300
write a little complaint or whatever
01:16:10.300 --> 01:16:12.230
and I'll try to go more slowly.
01:16:12.970 --> 01:16:14.740
Sometimes it's hard because you have
01:16:14.740 --> 01:16:16.697
people at different stages,
01:16:16.697 --> 01:16:18.563
different understandings.
01:16:19.390 --> 01:16:22.645
So this is, then, where... now you can see
01:16:22.645 --> 01:16:25.366
why it is very much a psychology.
01:16:25.366 --> 01:16:28.255
It's all to do with craving, desires,
01:16:28.255 --> 01:16:30.399
how that causes suffering in the end
01:16:30.399 --> 01:16:31.948
and about how it's ignorance,
01:16:31.948 --> 01:16:33.779
which is another mental thing,
01:16:33.779 --> 01:16:35.560
at the very beginning
01:16:35.560 --> 01:16:37.371
which causes this whole thing.
01:16:37.371 --> 01:16:40.302
It all revolves around things in our minds
01:16:40.302 --> 01:16:44.133
and the why our psyches actually work.
01:16:49.008 --> 01:16:52.567
Very briefly, perhaps, ignorance itself
01:16:52.567 --> 01:16:53.851
even though we have this whole chain
01:16:53.851 --> 01:16:54.984
of things starting with
01:16:54.984 --> 01:16:57.069
ignorance, what about ignorance itself?
01:16:57.859 --> 01:16:59.160
Where does that come from?
01:16:59.160 --> 01:17:01.076
Can we say anything about ignorance?
01:17:01.586 --> 01:17:03.364
The Buddhist idea is that ignorance
01:17:03.364 --> 01:17:04.687
has always been there.
01:17:04.687 --> 01:17:06.853
There is not first cause of ignorance.
01:17:08.033 --> 01:17:09.954
I'll talk more about this later on
01:17:09.954 --> 01:17:11.069
but this is one of those things
01:17:11.069 --> 01:17:12.879
that always has existed
01:17:14.389 --> 01:17:16.699
You cannot find the first cause of it.
01:17:16.699 --> 01:17:18.434
Not really always has existed,
01:17:18.434 --> 01:17:20.258
but you cannot find the first cause.
01:17:21.808 --> 01:17:23.453
But, that does not mean
01:17:23.453 --> 01:17:24.381
it cannot be eliminated.
01:17:24.381 --> 01:17:26.277
It can still be eliminated, even though
01:17:26.277 --> 01:17:28.826
there is no first cause to it.
01:17:29.326 --> 01:17:30.897
So that is how it fits into
01:17:30.897 --> 01:17:33.277
this big jigsaw puzzle.
01:17:33.277 --> 01:17:34.509
It's directly there.
01:17:34.509 --> 01:17:35.735
Part and parcel of the
01:17:35.735 --> 01:17:38.245
second and the third Noble Truths.
01:17:38.245 --> 01:17:41.496
And this becomes the importance of
01:17:41.496 --> 01:17:43.890
dependent origination.
01:17:43.890 --> 01:17:44.890
So now,
01:17:45.640 --> 01:17:47.937
I thought of maybe talking,
01:17:47.937 --> 01:17:50.701
very briefly today, just about
01:17:50.701 --> 01:17:53.198
the various links of dependent origination,
01:17:53.198 --> 01:17:55.109
starting from the beginning and show
01:17:55.109 --> 01:17:55.936
just very briefly
01:17:55.936 --> 01:17:58.117
how the whole system works.
01:17:58.117 --> 01:17:59.765
Once we have this overview,
01:17:59.765 --> 01:18:01.694
then we can start to focus in
01:18:01.694 --> 01:18:04.888
on the details maybe tomorrow morning.
01:18:04.888 --> 01:18:06.722
So let's have a look at the overview
01:18:06.722 --> 01:18:09.042
of this whole sequence.
01:18:09.042 --> 01:18:12.429
As I said, it begins with avijjā,
01:18:12.429 --> 01:18:14.253
usually translated as ignorance;
01:18:14.253 --> 01:18:15.805
not a good translation perhaps,
01:18:15.805 --> 01:18:17.158
- I'll talk more about that tomorrow -
01:18:17.158 --> 01:18:19.281
and it ends up with dukkha.
01:18:20.131 --> 01:18:22.017
In between, you have ten other
01:18:22.017 --> 01:18:23.411
factors in between.
01:18:23.411 --> 01:18:26.058
There's 12 links in dependent arising,
01:18:26.058 --> 01:18:28.417
and they are linked,
01:18:28.417 --> 01:18:30.458
there's like a pair-wise linkage.
01:18:31.048 --> 01:18:32.346
Each one of these factors is linked
01:18:32.346 --> 01:18:34.284
to the one which comes after it,
01:18:34.284 --> 01:18:35.974
and it's a causal linkage:
01:18:35.974 --> 01:18:37.888
one thing leading to the next one,
01:18:37.888 --> 01:18:39.747
leading to the next one.
01:18:39.747 --> 01:18:41.206
So the first thing to understand is
01:18:41.206 --> 01:18:46.338
this idea of causality that actually drives
01:18:46.338 --> 01:18:49.469
this thing called dependent origination.
01:18:50.689 --> 01:18:53.035
We start off with avijjā
01:18:53.035 --> 01:18:55.834
and the point here is that once you have avijjā
01:18:55.834 --> 01:18:57.831
the second factor comes into effect
01:18:57.831 --> 01:18:59.891
then third factor all the way to the
01:18:59.891 --> 01:19:02.110
twelfth factor which is called dukkha
01:19:02.110 --> 01:19:03.737
which is suffering.
01:19:04.687 --> 01:19:06.356
The kind of causality you are talking
01:19:06.356 --> 01:19:08.723
about here, and this is spoken about
01:19:08.723 --> 01:19:12.089
in brief also in the suttas themselves,
01:19:12.089 --> 01:19:14.488
It is a type of causality you can call
01:19:14.488 --> 01:19:16.692
sufficient causality.
01:19:16.692 --> 01:19:18.588
Sufficient causality means that
01:19:18.588 --> 01:19:22.638
when the factor preceding another one exists,
01:19:22.638 --> 01:19:24.219
the factor that comes after
01:19:24.219 --> 01:19:26.501
must also exist as a consequence.
01:19:26.501 --> 01:19:28.228
That's what it means to be sufficient.
01:19:28.228 --> 01:19:30.306
In other words, ignorance is sufficient
01:19:30.306 --> 01:19:33.069
for the next factor to exist.
01:19:34.009 --> 01:19:36.069
And then, the next factor is sufficient for the
01:19:36.069 --> 01:19:38.783
third factor to exist, and so on
01:19:38.783 --> 01:19:40.802
all the way to the last factor.
01:19:40.802 --> 01:19:43.944
Each one is sufficient for the following one,
01:19:43.944 --> 01:19:45.685
and what that means is that
01:19:45.685 --> 01:19:47.811
if you have ignorance,
01:19:47.811 --> 01:19:49.329
you have no choice,
01:19:49.329 --> 01:19:50.888
you have to suffer.
01:19:50.888 --> 01:19:53.516
From ignorance comes suffering.
01:19:54.746 --> 01:19:56.083
What is that stupid English saying?
01:19:56.083 --> 01:19:57.420
Ignorance is bliss.
01:19:57.420 --> 01:19:59.116
It's completely wrong!
01:19:59.116 --> 01:20:00.110
It's a mistake.
01:20:00.720 --> 01:20:02.768
It's got it completely the wrong way round,
01:20:02.768 --> 01:20:04.395
ignorance is not bliss.
01:20:04.395 --> 01:20:05.788
If it is bliss, it's a very kind of
01:20:05.788 --> 01:20:07.876
shallow form of stupid, silly bliss.
01:20:07.876 --> 01:20:11.954
The real problem is ignorance must
01:20:11.954 --> 01:20:13.649
cause suffering. That's what we mean
01:20:13.649 --> 01:20:16.136
by sufficient conditions,
01:20:16.136 --> 01:20:18.334
one must lead to the next one,
01:20:18.334 --> 01:20:19.363
one after the other.
01:20:19.363 --> 01:20:21.986
If you have ignorance, you have to suffer.
01:20:21.986 --> 01:20:22.805
It's interesting, right?
01:20:22.805 --> 01:20:24.507
It means that there is only
01:20:24.507 --> 01:20:26.248
one solution to this whole thing.
01:20:27.583 --> 01:20:28.745
But there is the other side,
01:20:28.745 --> 01:20:30.144
which I mentioned just before,
01:20:30.144 --> 01:20:31.421
and that side is that
01:20:32.031 --> 01:20:34.933
once you take away the ignorance
01:20:34.933 --> 01:20:36.625
once you give rise to knowledge
01:20:36.625 --> 01:20:38.428
and understanding instead,
01:20:38.428 --> 01:20:40.966
the second factor also disappears,
01:20:40.966 --> 01:20:43.373
also ceases as a consequence.
01:20:43.373 --> 01:20:45.191
This is another type of conditionality.
01:20:45.191 --> 01:20:46.638
Both types of conditionality
01:20:46.638 --> 01:20:48.052
apply at the same time.
01:20:48.052 --> 01:20:50.514
This is called necessary conditionality.
01:20:50.514 --> 01:20:51.531
Sufficient conditionality
01:20:51.531 --> 01:20:53.491
and necessary conditionality.
01:20:53.491 --> 01:20:55.248
Necessary conditionality means that
01:20:55.248 --> 01:20:57.874
the preceding factor is necessary
01:20:57.874 --> 01:21:00.674
for the subsequent factor to arise.
01:21:01.334 --> 01:21:03.251
So if you take away avijjā,
01:21:03.251 --> 01:21:04.759
if you take away ignorance,
01:21:04.759 --> 01:21:05.508
the second factor,
01:21:05.508 --> 01:21:07.953
which is called saṅkhāra in Pāli,
01:21:08.853 --> 01:21:09.988
cannot exist any more,
01:21:09.988 --> 01:21:12.278
it must disappear as a consequence.
01:21:12.278 --> 01:21:15.094
This is called necessary conditionality.
01:21:15.094 --> 01:21:17.687
Take away the necessary cause,
01:21:17.687 --> 01:21:19.565
and the subsequence effect
01:21:19.565 --> 01:21:22.299
also has to disappear.
01:21:22.299 --> 01:21:26.056
This is in brief what all of dependent arising
01:21:26.056 --> 01:21:27.358
really is about.
01:21:27.358 --> 01:21:30.107
It's about this interplay of these two causes:
01:21:30.107 --> 01:21:31.240
sufficient causality
01:21:31.240 --> 01:21:32.957
and necessary causality.
01:21:32.957 --> 01:21:35.307
When you understand those two causes,
01:21:35.307 --> 01:21:36.634
it's fairly straightforward.
01:21:36.634 --> 01:21:38.233
When you understand what's going on
01:21:38.233 --> 01:21:39.741
you can understand how the whole thing
01:21:39.741 --> 01:21:41.307
comes into being and also
01:21:41.307 --> 01:21:43.325
how the whole thing ceases
01:21:43.325 --> 01:21:45.423
as a consequence.
01:21:47.033 --> 01:21:48.545
So that is in brief what it is,
01:21:48.545 --> 01:21:51.158
and it's not just dependent arising
01:21:51.158 --> 01:21:52.572
which works like that.
01:21:52.572 --> 01:21:53.844
There are many things in life
01:21:53.844 --> 01:21:54.876
which work on the basis of
01:21:54.876 --> 01:21:58.756
necessary and sufficient conditionality.
01:21:59.536 --> 01:22:02.261
In Buddhism, as well, there are other sets.
01:22:02.261 --> 01:22:04.915
I have included some of those other sets
01:22:04.915 --> 01:22:06.022
in here as well.
01:22:06.022 --> 01:22:08.229
They're not called dependent origination
01:22:08.229 --> 01:22:10.397
because they're not the same set of 12 factors,
01:22:10.397 --> 01:22:12.540
but the same type of causality
01:22:12.540 --> 01:22:13.819
is sometimes relevant
01:22:13.819 --> 01:22:15.141
for those sets as well.
01:22:15.651 --> 01:22:16.795
Sometimes there are other types of
01:22:16.795 --> 01:22:18.987
conditionality, which are more loose.
01:22:18.987 --> 01:22:20.977
If you do this, then usually you get that.
01:22:20.977 --> 01:22:22.488
Which is not as strict.
01:22:22.488 --> 01:22:24.670
Dependent arising is a very strict kind of
01:22:24.670 --> 01:22:25.670
conditionality.
01:22:26.350 --> 01:22:27.243
Very, very strict.
01:22:27.243 --> 01:22:29.114
If you have that, that must follow.
01:22:29.114 --> 01:22:31.333
Haven't got that, that will not follow.
01:22:32.563 --> 01:22:34.868
So that is the overview.
01:22:34.868 --> 01:22:36.241
You get the idea of how
01:22:36.241 --> 01:22:37.690
this process works.
01:22:38.250 --> 01:22:41.967
Let us briefly have a look at
01:22:41.967 --> 01:22:44.009
the various factors in this chain,
01:22:44.009 --> 01:22:48.020
and see roughly how it works out.
01:22:49.720 --> 01:22:53.747
The first factor is called avijjā in Pāli.
01:22:55.097 --> 01:22:57.940
As I said, often translated as ignorance.
01:22:57.940 --> 01:22:59.399
It basically means that you
01:22:59.399 --> 01:23:02.736
don't understand reality as it actually is.
01:23:02.736 --> 01:23:04.407
Reality is one way,
01:23:04.407 --> 01:23:05.566
the world works in one way;
01:23:05.566 --> 01:23:06.885
you think it's different.
01:23:07.425 --> 01:23:09.045
Of course, what the Buddha is saying
01:23:09.045 --> 01:23:10.573
is that we are all like that.
01:23:10.573 --> 01:23:11.788
We all have this avijjā.
01:23:11.788 --> 01:23:15.136
We all have this blockage inside ourselves,
01:23:15.136 --> 01:23:16.855
that make us not see reality
01:23:16.855 --> 01:23:18.662
as it actually is.
01:23:18.662 --> 01:23:19.728
What that means is that
01:23:19.728 --> 01:23:21.739
we are running around like blind people.
01:23:21.739 --> 01:23:22.962
We are in the dark.
01:23:22.962 --> 01:23:25.192
We think that we are pursuing happiness,
01:23:25.192 --> 01:23:26.730
but actually, we're usually pursuing
01:23:26.730 --> 01:23:28.453
suffering instead.
01:23:28.453 --> 01:23:30.403
We have got no idea what we're doing.
01:23:30.403 --> 01:23:32.836
This is basically what ignorance means.
01:23:32.836 --> 01:23:34.995
Because we don't know what we're doing,
01:23:34.995 --> 01:23:36.899
it means that we start doing
01:23:36.899 --> 01:23:37.915
all kind of stuff which leads
01:23:37.915 --> 01:23:39.387
in the wrong direction
01:23:39.387 --> 01:23:42.728
this is saṅkhāra. Saṅkhāra is often
01:23:42.728 --> 01:23:44.491
translated with this terrible translation...
01:23:44.491 --> 01:23:45.968
this is my opinion, right,
01:23:45.968 --> 01:23:47.533
I apologise for anybody who
01:23:47.533 --> 01:23:49.078
likes this translation.
01:23:50.758 --> 01:23:52.027
The usual translation is,
01:23:52.027 --> 01:23:54.258
'volitional formations'.
01:23:54.258 --> 01:23:56.586
At least it leaves me stone cold
01:23:56.586 --> 01:23:57.944
when I hear 'volitional formations'.
01:23:57.944 --> 01:23:59.719
It doesn't do anything for me at all.
01:23:59.719 --> 01:24:01.677
I feel like I could be on Mars
01:24:01.677 --> 01:24:03.993
when I hear that translation.
01:24:04.593 --> 01:24:06.651
Some people maybe it means something to,
01:24:06.651 --> 01:24:09.573
but I find it doesn't really grab you,
01:24:09.573 --> 01:24:11.860
grab your heart when you hear that.
01:24:11.860 --> 01:24:13.385
Basically, what it means is the
01:24:13.385 --> 01:24:15.773
activities of body, speech and mind.
01:24:15.773 --> 01:24:17.934
The things that we do, especially
01:24:17.934 --> 01:24:20.604
intentional things that we do.
01:24:20.604 --> 01:24:22.698
So saṅkhāra can be translated...
01:24:22.698 --> 01:24:24.014
I'll talk about it tomorrow
01:24:24.014 --> 01:24:25.454
what a proper translation is,
01:24:25.454 --> 01:24:26.755
but I will leave it for now.
01:24:26.755 --> 01:24:29.222
So because we don't understand,
01:24:29.222 --> 01:24:31.224
we do all these kinds of things, right?
01:24:31.224 --> 01:24:32.804
And all this doing that we do,
01:24:32.804 --> 01:24:35.704
from not understanding, has consequences.
01:24:35.704 --> 01:24:37.664
One of the consequences it has...
01:24:38.524 --> 01:24:41.455
Because all the doing is based on craving,
01:24:41.455 --> 01:24:43.634
it's about propelling us into the future.
01:24:44.964 --> 01:24:46.435
One of the things it leads to,
01:24:46.435 --> 01:24:47.717
is it always leads to rebirth.
01:24:47.717 --> 01:24:48.927
Quite literally,
01:24:48.927 --> 01:24:50.707
always propelling ourselves,
01:24:50.707 --> 01:24:53.826
projecting ourselves into the future.
01:24:53.826 --> 01:24:55.275
The saṅkhāras are always about
01:24:55.275 --> 01:24:57.134
what we want, not about now,
01:24:57.134 --> 01:24:58.540
it's about the future.
01:24:58.540 --> 01:25:00.817
From this, we get the idea of viññāṇa.
01:25:00.817 --> 01:25:03.002
Viññāṇa, which is consciousness,
01:25:03.002 --> 01:25:06.050
then gets established as a consequence of that.
01:25:06.050 --> 01:25:07.134
I'll take much more in detail
01:25:07.134 --> 01:25:08.103
about this tomorrow.
01:25:08.103 --> 01:25:11.908
This is just very kind of rudimentary.
01:25:12.988 --> 01:25:15.811
Because viññāṇa is then established,
01:25:15.811 --> 01:25:17.085
in this case we're talking about
01:25:17.085 --> 01:25:20.100
established in a new life in particular,
01:25:20.840 --> 01:25:22.773
in that new life,
01:25:22.773 --> 01:25:25.438
depending on where that life is
01:25:25.438 --> 01:25:27.344
you'll have certain experiences, right?
01:25:27.344 --> 01:25:30.304
If you get reborn as a deva, a god,
01:25:30.304 --> 01:25:32.390
wow, you have these wonderful experiences,
01:25:32.390 --> 01:25:34.041
so much happiness, right?
01:25:34.041 --> 01:25:35.778
If you get reborn as a kangaroo,
01:25:35.778 --> 01:25:37.013
it's not so great.
01:25:37.013 --> 01:25:38.398
Maybe you think kangaroos are cute,
01:25:38.398 --> 01:25:39.484
but actually,
01:25:39.484 --> 01:25:41.118
kangaroo life is pretty miserable.
01:25:41.118 --> 01:25:43.398
I live in the middle of the bush,
01:25:43.398 --> 01:25:44.473
I see what they are like.
01:25:44.473 --> 01:25:46.367
They are greedy, they are angry,
01:25:46.367 --> 01:25:47.708
they fight over food.
01:25:47.708 --> 01:25:49.644
The reality of kangaroo life is pretty,
01:25:49.644 --> 01:25:50.654
pretty bad.
01:25:50.654 --> 01:25:52.733
So when you see a cute animal,
01:25:52.733 --> 01:25:53.900
what you see on the surface
01:25:53.900 --> 01:25:55.163
is only one thing.
01:25:55.163 --> 01:25:56.204
But if could be worse, you could be
01:25:56.204 --> 01:25:57.804
reborn as an insect.
01:25:57.804 --> 01:25:58.773
Imagine that!
01:25:58.773 --> 01:26:02.506
Whoa! You get reborn as a mosquito,
01:26:02.506 --> 01:26:04.309
you're flying around, find this big
01:26:04.309 --> 01:26:06.077
lump of flesh in front of you and then,
01:26:06.077 --> 01:26:08.844
smack! You get swatted because of that.
01:26:08.844 --> 01:26:09.951
All you're doing is trying to get
01:26:09.951 --> 01:26:11.082
some nice food, right?
01:26:11.082 --> 01:26:12.801
You're just doing what everybody
01:26:12.801 --> 01:26:15.689
wants to do, and then that's it,
01:26:15.689 --> 01:26:17.350
end of story.
01:26:17.960 --> 01:26:19.092
So the point is that,
01:26:19.652 --> 01:26:21.686
once you establish consciousness
01:26:21.686 --> 01:26:24.734
in a certain place, your experience
01:26:24.734 --> 01:26:27.362
of the world is set within certain limits.
01:26:27.932 --> 01:26:29.371
That is what nāmarūpa is,
01:26:29.371 --> 01:26:30.663
called 'name-and-form',
01:26:30.663 --> 01:26:32.979
also called 'mentality-materiality'.
01:26:32.979 --> 01:26:34.968
It's all our experiences, basically,
01:26:34.968 --> 01:26:36.998
and they are set within certain limits.
01:26:37.468 --> 01:26:40.358
Because we have name-and-form,
01:26:40.358 --> 01:26:41.674
we have the sense basis.
01:26:41.674 --> 01:26:43.623
You see things, you hear,
01:26:43.623 --> 01:26:44.954
you taste, you touch things
01:26:44.954 --> 01:26:47.235
and through that, through the sense
01:26:47.235 --> 01:26:49.177
is how we contact the world.
01:26:50.567 --> 01:26:51.854
All our contact through the world
01:26:51.854 --> 01:26:53.168
is through our sense.
01:26:53.168 --> 01:26:54.872
I see all of your, you seem me,
01:26:54.872 --> 01:26:55.976
we see each other,
01:26:55.976 --> 01:26:56.980
we hear the sounds,
01:26:56.980 --> 01:26:58.326
everything is through the sense.
01:26:58.326 --> 01:27:01.373
It's called contact in the technical term.
01:27:01.373 --> 01:27:03.245
Phassa in Pāli.
01:27:04.175 --> 01:27:06.165
The previous term I forgot to say in Pāli,
01:27:06.165 --> 01:27:07.345
I don't know if you're interested,
01:27:07.345 --> 01:27:10.384
it's called saḷāyatana, the six sense bases.
01:27:10.384 --> 01:27:13.247
Phassa, contact in the world.
01:27:13.247 --> 01:27:15.575
Phassa leads to vedanā.
01:27:15.575 --> 01:27:17.711
Vedanā means the feeling tone
01:27:17.711 --> 01:27:19.514
of experience.
01:27:19.514 --> 01:27:20.748
Is it happy?
01:27:20.748 --> 01:27:21.828
Is it suffering?
01:27:21.828 --> 01:27:22.990
Is it neutral?
01:27:22.990 --> 01:27:24.436
It leads to much more.
01:27:24.436 --> 01:27:26.480
Contact also leads to all kind of things.
01:27:27.390 --> 01:27:28.390
We see forms,
01:27:29.260 --> 01:27:30.988
we have volition, will,
01:27:30.988 --> 01:27:33.593
drives in us, will in us,
01:27:33.593 --> 01:27:34.736
it leads to many other things as well,
01:27:34.736 --> 01:27:36.949
but it's interesting, the Buddha here,
01:27:36.949 --> 01:27:38.894
picks out vedanā,
01:27:38.894 --> 01:27:41.790
this idea of the feeling tone of experience.
01:27:41.790 --> 01:27:43.686
He picks that out specifically
01:27:43.686 --> 01:27:45.295
because it is much more important
01:27:45.295 --> 01:27:46.697
than the other ones.
01:27:46.697 --> 01:27:47.805
Why is it so important?
01:27:47.805 --> 01:27:49.217
Because, it is vedanā
01:27:49.217 --> 01:27:50.718
which tends to drive us.
01:27:51.778 --> 01:27:55.227
Vedanā decides if you like it or not.
01:27:55.227 --> 01:27:56.118
If you don't like it,
01:27:56.118 --> 01:27:57.569
you will want to get rid of it.
01:27:57.569 --> 01:27:59.335
If you like it, you will crave for it.
01:28:00.565 --> 01:28:02.577
So vedanā makes us act.
01:28:02.577 --> 01:28:04.451
The feeling tone makes us act,
01:28:04.451 --> 01:28:05.508
through craving.
01:28:05.508 --> 01:28:07.299
So you crave and then you act
01:28:07.299 --> 01:28:09.628
and part of that action is upādāna.
01:28:09.628 --> 01:28:12.989
Upādāna is how we react to craving.
01:28:12.989 --> 01:28:15.060
What do we do with craving in the world?
01:28:15.600 --> 01:28:16.618
We do things.
01:28:16.618 --> 01:28:17.468
We take up things.
01:28:17.468 --> 01:28:18.552
We start things.
01:28:20.042 --> 01:28:21.945
Almost all the things we do
01:28:21.945 --> 01:28:23.520
are, big picture things,
01:28:23.520 --> 01:28:25.118
come from this idea of upādāna.
01:28:25.118 --> 01:28:27.551
Taking things up, almost in a
01:28:27.551 --> 01:28:28.638
literal sense.
01:28:28.638 --> 01:28:32.805
You take up having a job,
01:28:32.805 --> 01:28:33.850
or you take up hobbies,
01:28:33.850 --> 01:28:34.896
or you take up Buddhism,
01:28:34.896 --> 01:28:36.368
you take up meditation.
01:28:36.368 --> 01:28:37.495
You do things.
01:28:37.495 --> 01:28:38.499
And then because we take up
01:28:38.499 --> 01:28:40.437
all these things we live in a certain way.
01:28:40.437 --> 01:28:42.466
It's called bhava, existence.
01:28:42.466 --> 01:28:44.645
So we live in a certain way,
01:28:45.495 --> 01:28:48.382
our mind is kind of set in a certain way.
01:28:48.382 --> 01:28:49.480
This is very similar to what we were
01:28:49.480 --> 01:28:51.142
talking about at the beginning
01:28:51.142 --> 01:28:53.319
of consciousness being established.
01:28:53.319 --> 01:28:56.118
We're established, through the way we exist,
01:28:56.118 --> 01:28:57.610
and because of that establishment
01:28:57.610 --> 01:29:00.916
we are reborn in accordance with that
01:29:00.916 --> 01:29:02.843
establishment later on.
01:29:02.843 --> 01:29:04.444
Because you are reborn,
01:29:04.444 --> 01:29:05.643
you must die, right?
01:29:05.643 --> 01:29:07.354
With birth comes all the problems.
01:29:07.354 --> 01:29:09.960
With birth comes human life
01:29:09.960 --> 01:29:11.071
and once you have human life
01:29:11.071 --> 01:29:13.228
you have to have human experiences.
01:29:14.588 --> 01:29:16.422
I don't know what you human experience is,
01:29:16.422 --> 01:29:18.216
but it's a bit of everything, right?
01:29:18.216 --> 01:29:19.693
Sometimes you are happy,
01:29:19.693 --> 01:29:20.686
and everything is great.
01:29:20.686 --> 01:29:22.674
Sometimes it's absolute misery.
01:29:22.674 --> 01:29:24.263
You go through divorce,
01:29:24.263 --> 01:29:25.645
you get fired from your job,
01:29:25.645 --> 01:29:28.082
your closest family members
01:29:28.082 --> 01:29:29.670
and your friends, they die,
01:29:29.670 --> 01:29:30.806
or you get really sick yourself,
01:29:30.806 --> 01:29:31.825
or whatever.
01:29:31.825 --> 01:29:33.887
Life goes through all these ups and downs
01:29:33.887 --> 01:29:34.876
all the time, there are
01:29:34.876 --> 01:29:36.452
so many problems there.
01:29:37.462 --> 01:29:38.990
I think it is very important
01:29:38.990 --> 01:29:41.313
to be realistic about that.
01:29:41.313 --> 01:29:42.593
Sometimes you hear people say,
01:29:42.593 --> 01:29:44.232
"aww, yeah, in my life I won't have
01:29:44.232 --> 01:29:45.397
any suffering."
01:29:45.397 --> 01:29:48.360
It's a very shallow, to say the least,
01:29:48.360 --> 01:29:50.555
shallow outlook.
01:29:50.555 --> 01:29:51.168
You haven't really looked
01:29:51.168 --> 01:29:52.617
very carefully if you think
01:29:52.617 --> 01:29:53.826
you have no suffering.
01:29:53.826 --> 01:29:54.736
You really haven't.
01:29:54.736 --> 01:29:56.756
You, kind of say "aww, don't want to see,
01:29:56.756 --> 01:29:57.285
don't want to see."
01:29:57.285 --> 01:29:59.241
That is basically what you're saying there.
01:29:59.791 --> 01:30:00.936
I'm a monk, you could
01:30:00.936 --> 01:30:03.131
argue that my life is probably quite easy.
01:30:03.131 --> 01:30:04.832
Ajahn Brahma is probably
01:30:04.832 --> 01:30:07.210
the most happy person I can imagine.
01:30:07.210 --> 01:30:09.495
He always is very light hearted,
01:30:09.495 --> 01:30:12.414
he always jokes, he always messes around,
01:30:12.414 --> 01:30:14.183
but when he talks about suffering,
01:30:14.183 --> 01:30:15.465
he says, "life is suffering!
01:30:15.465 --> 01:30:16.775
Life is really dukkha.
01:30:16.775 --> 01:30:17.820
It's really, really bad."
01:30:17.820 --> 01:30:19.232
He's the happiest person,
01:30:19.232 --> 01:30:20.180
so if he says it's suffering,
01:30:20.180 --> 01:30:22.678
okay, I'll believe it.
01:30:22.678 --> 01:30:24.585
I can feel it myself anyway.
01:30:25.245 --> 01:30:27.413
So no problems there.
01:30:27.413 --> 01:30:31.494
Okay, so that is dependent arising in brief,
01:30:33.124 --> 01:30:34.522
just to give you an overview.
01:30:34.522 --> 01:30:37.303
Those are the 12 links.
01:30:37.303 --> 01:30:38.823
All the terms and how they all
01:30:38.823 --> 01:30:40.400
connect together.
01:30:40.400 --> 01:30:41.008
And then, of course,
01:30:41.008 --> 01:30:42.760
the cessation mode as well.
01:30:42.760 --> 01:30:44.493
So that you have the opposite happening
01:30:44.493 --> 01:30:46.436
when it ceases at the beginning,
01:30:46.436 --> 01:30:49.282
each one of these links will cease,
01:30:49.282 --> 01:30:52.247
until you get to the last one eventually.
01:30:53.747 --> 01:30:58.609
So, I think I will probably stop there
01:30:58.609 --> 01:31:01.774
because I don't want to go into any more
01:31:01.774 --> 01:31:04.664
details about things at this particular point.
01:31:04.664 --> 01:31:06.921
It's probably lots and lots of information
01:31:06.921 --> 01:31:08.857
for you anyway, maybe way too much.
01:31:08.857 --> 01:31:09.972
I've always been a bit worried about these
01:31:09.972 --> 01:31:11.292
one hour talks.
01:31:12.552 --> 01:31:14.798
You can say a lot in an hour,
01:31:14.798 --> 01:31:16.351
so that's part of the problem.
01:31:16.351 --> 01:31:18.504
Anyway, for tonight,
01:31:19.874 --> 01:31:21.533
have a nice, good night's sleep
01:31:21.533 --> 01:31:23.032
remember that meditation
01:31:23.032 --> 01:31:25.144
and going on retreats is about enjoying
01:31:25.144 --> 01:31:27.027
yourself, having a good time.
01:31:27.027 --> 01:31:29.894
Meditate until you feel that you are tired,
01:31:29.894 --> 01:31:32.085
have a really good night's rest,
01:31:32.085 --> 01:31:34.109
sleep as much as you like,
01:31:34.109 --> 01:31:35.287
you feel is necessary,
01:31:35.287 --> 01:31:37.610
and tomorrow you'll be clear and ready
01:31:37.610 --> 01:31:38.579
for another day.