Paṭiccasamuppāda - Dependent Origination - Ajahn Brahmali - Part 1

I'll talk a little bit about

meditation practice

and then we can try to do some

afterwards together.

So, I think the most important thing

to realise about meditation practice

is that it's supposed to be

a positive experience.

Right?!

This may seem obvious,

because why else would you want to do it

if it isn't a positive experience?

It may seem obvious,

but as a matter of fact,

many of people don't experience

meditation as a positive experience.

When you start to read

the word of the Buddha,

and you start to see how he explains

what you might call

the psychology of meditation,

how meditation is supposed to be

experienced by yourself,

personally

you start to realize

the incredible emphasis

the Buddha has on this thing

which is called the positive experience.

You'll probably have a look at

one of those suttas later on.

But basically, one of those suttas

which talks about the psychology

of meditation,

when you read it,

it starts off with:

okay,

you are a virtuous person,

this is the foundation of all meditation,

is to practice virtue.

One of the things that unfortunately

is forgotten around the world,

people talk about mindfulness

and they forget about the virtue aspect.

Virtue means both being kind

and avoid doing bad things.

That is the foundation,

so once you have that

you can start your meditation practice

And then, from that virtue,

the Buddha starts to explain

from virtue you have non-regret,

right?

Non-regret is obviously

a positive experience already.

From non-regret you get gladness.

From gladness you get rapture, pīti.

From pīti you get calm,

calm of the mind and the body.

From calm comes even more happiness.

Gladness, rapture, happiness, calm,

and then from that

comes what is called samādhi,

which is the unification of the mind,

when the mind goes into a profound

state of meditation practice.

What you can see there,

one of the very important facts about this

is that meditation is all about happiness!

Almost every word the Buddha uses there

on how were supposed to experience it

is one type of happiness after the other

arising through

the right practice of meditation.

So make sure that when you are here

you don't do things which causes you

to feel ill at ease,

not relaxed

which created too much pain

and all these kind of things.

Because if you do that

there's no way you're going to be able

to access those positive states

that the Buddha is talking about.

This is so important,

and, your know,

it sort of seems obvious,

but I think human psychology

often gets in the way,

human psychology blocks you

from seeing that.

So,

for this reason

the very first thing I want to talk about

in regards to meditation practice

is what to do with the body.

The physical body is really the first thing.

What you need to know

about how to deal

with the physical body

is for the body to be comfortable,

not to sit with too much pain

and these kinds of things.

For this reason we have

all these great chairs at the back.

Don't feel shy about using the chairs.

You know this is not competing

with anyone else, right?

Do what you need to do to make

sure your own practice makes progress;

this is what it's all about.

So there's no competition here.

It doesn't matter what everyone else does,

forget about everybody else.

Do what you need to do.

It's wonderful

more and more these days

you go on meditation retreats

you see that chairs are coming out.

It's natural.

Most of us have grown up

in a society,

in a culture,

where we sit on chairs all the time.

When you've grown up

sitting on a chair all the time

and suddenly

you're told to sit on the floor

it actually can be very difficult.

So please don't be shy about

using the chairs.

Much better to be a little bit

more comfortable,

extra comfortable

than to be a little bit on the pain side

while you're sitting.

That is much better, so please

use that and please do that.

There's so many horror stories

that I've heard over the years of people

who don't get this kind of very basic thing.

One of those stories

when I was in Singapore

a few years ago...

One of the things as a monk,

you travel a lot

it may seem strange

but you actually travel a lot

because there's so much demand

for English speaking monks everywhere

English speaking monks

are very few and far between

so you get ferried around the world

by plane everywhere

to talk to people.

It's very nice,

it's a very nice thing to do to

be able to give that kind of service.

But it means that

sometimes you're in Singapore,

and when you're in Singapore,

of course, you meet Buddhist people,

just like here,

just like everywhere else.

I was staying in the apartment of this man.

He was from Kuala Lumpur originally,

but he was working in Singapore

and he was travelling back and forth

and very kindly offered me

to stay in his apartment.

Then one day while I was there

he comes to me and says

"Bhante, I have a question for you,

have you got a few minutes."

And of course I'm staying in his apartment

so of course I have a few minutes for him

and he says to me that,

"a few years ago

I was on this meditation retreat

and

it was the worst experience

of my entire life.

It was terrible!

I was in pain all the way through,

I felt so

tense

and so non-relaxed

and so completely ill at ease

for nine days.

Never, ever in my entire life do I ever

want to go on meditation retreat again."

I said, "ooh!

Wait a minute,

you're talking it too far.

Just because you had one bad experience

doesn't mean you should never

ever go on meditation retreat again.

Retreats are different.

There are different types of teachers

that teach in different ways.

You can't just assume

that everything is the same,

that everything is so bad."

But he insisted that, no,

he never ever wanted to meditate again

because the experience had been

so terrible, was the worst thing

he'd ever done in his life.

I couldn't really persuade him

so he asked me, "what should I do,"

Well, I don't know

what he should do in that case.

But, essentially he was turned off for life

in regards to meditation practice.

That is a very unfortunate thing

because the idea with meditation,

the idea with the spiritual path

is that is something

which develops over time.

When you keep practising these things,

when you keep doing things

especially in the right way,

when you understand what morality is

on the Buddhist path

you practice that in the right way

and you combine that with

making the mind peaceful and calm

then these things together are

incredibly powerful.

The longer you do it

there's a gradual transformation

of your entire character,

of your entire person

and, essentially, you are creating

a new personality for yourself

as you go through this.

But the effect really is most powerful

when you keep on doing it,

month after month,

year after year,

the results become very powerful

after a while.

So please make sure that you do this

in such a way that it encourages you

to keep on doing it also in the future

and when you feel encouraged to do it

also in the future

then the long term benefits

will be incredibly powerful for you,

and something very beneficial

will come out of this.

So don't do what this man in Singapore did.

He was maybe an extreme example,

but this is what happens sometimes

to people.

I know that there are certain types

of meditation retreat where only a very

small fraction of the people

come back to those retreats

precisely because of the amount of pain

and problems and tensions that

people experience as a

consequence of that practice.

So this is the first step,

allow the body to be relaxed.

So please use the chairs.

Another way, if you want to sit cross-legged,

it's nice to sit sometimes

against the wall.

Sit with your back against the wall.

Sometimes when you sit with your back

leaning against something,

you can relax a little bit better;

that's a nice way of doing it.

And, especially at the beginning

of any retreat.

I don't know what you

have been doing today,

some of you have probably been working,

you're probably tired.

When you're tired and have been working,

usually you need to relax first of all.

A good way to relax

is just to lean back.

Some of the best meditaters I know

they always do like that,

they lean back, they relax.

Many of you would know Ajahn Brahm,

Dr. Tan you would know Ajahn Brahm,

and Ajahn Brahm tells me that

when he starts out meditating

he always leans back.

Not always,

but when he is tired

or has been working hard

he always starts off by sitting back

and leaning again the wall.

So if Ajahn Brahm does that

you can do that.

Ajahn Brahm is just about

one of the best meditaters around

he gets into these incredibly profound

meditations, so if he can do that

anybody can do that,

because it is about relaxing.

It's about knowing what you need,

understanding that you need

to relax first of all.

So sit back, lean back against the wall

and you're okay.

Another monk I know,

is a good friend of mine,

he says that every time he meditates

every time he meditates

he starts off with nodding.

He nods for about 10 or 15 minutes

and then after you have nodded

for about 10 or 15 minutes

the mind clears up.

And then when the mind clears up,

then his meditation starts.

He's also a very good meditator,

but it's natural to feel tired

at the beginning

because you've been active

you've been socialising,

you've been doing all of these kind of things

which tire the mind,

so it's natural.

So allow the mind to be.

Just relax.

Allow the mind to be,

don't do anything in particular.

Wait for mindfulness to arise.

And when mindfulness arises by itself,

it becomes very powerful

and very useful.

So, what all of this is about,

and I'm going to relate it a little bit to

the teachings of the Buddha.

I'm sure you have probably heard

of the middle way.

The middle way in Buddhism

is essentially, in a way, on the one hand

not to torture the body.

In India in those days people would

torture themselves. You know, sometimes

you think that people lying on these

beds of nails, you think it's some kind of

cartoon caricature of India,

and then you open the suttas

and it says right there they were

lying on beds of nails.

It's actually the reality,

it's actually what people where doing.

So this was one of the ways that people

were practising at that time.

The Buddha says this is the wrong way.

And the other wrong way

is then to indulge the body.

Here, on a meditation retreat like this

you're not really going to be able to

indulge the very much.

Especially if you keep the eight precepts.

So forget about the indulging side.

The side to be careful about, is the side

which has to do with experiencing

too much pain, torturing yourself

thinking that: "by torture, I'm going to

make quick progress".

This is the problem,

the classical problem in meditation.

What happens when you find that middle way,

where you neither torture yourself,

nor you indulge the body

what happens is that the body becomes

irrelevant.

The reason why the body

is important to us,

is because either,

we get some pleasure through the body

when you get pleasure through the body

the body is important because

that's where you get your happiness.

Or, the body is important because

you get pain through the body.

If you get pain through the body,

there's something to be done with the body.

There is a problem there, a problem

that needs to be resolved.

The mind will always tend to go out

to the body, out into the world

rather than staying inside and watch

the breath, or whatever it is.

So this is the idea of the middle way.

The middle way, is a way where your body

is no longer important.

The body falls by the wayside.

The body becomes irrelevant.

Of course, we all know that meditation

in the end is about the mind,

and because the meditation

is about the mind

then getting rid of the body is precisely

what we want to do.

And that is what the middle way is about.

It's kind of strange, the two extremes

in a sense are quite close to each other

because the two extremes are about the body

and the middle way is where the body

falls away and the body is irrelevant.

So this is the point here,

this is what the middle way is,

the body is gone,

and when the body falls away

you feel so at ease.

So watch that.

If you do feel pain

in your meditation practice, please

change your posture,

don't think that

you're going to be some superhero

and just get enlightened now

on this retreat.

It's not going to work.

I know Ajahn Brahm did that.

He always said that when he was

a young man he would sit down and say:

"okay, I'm going to sit until I get enlightened"

and, of course, it didn't work.

But everybody has these ideas sometimes.

Please don't try that.

Enjoy the practice.

Sit down, if you have pain somewhere

get up, change your posture,

go out, do some walking instead,

do something else, if you find that.

These are general guidelines

for meditation practice.

Don't sit with pain, especially

when you feel the mind gets obsessed

with that pain, it goes back to it

again and again, you can't deal with it,

then the time is right to change the posture.

So this is number one,

and I am always surprised

how tenacious this idea is,

that it's okay to sit with pain,

how many people think

it is a good thing to do.

I think there is something deep

in the human psyche

that tends to think that

if you torture the body

you are freeing the spirit.

The body is like the sinful thing

that keeps you tied to the world

and if you torture that evil body a little bit,

then you can free the spirit,

then the mind gets developed

and you get spiritual practice from that.

Because it's so common in the world!

In Christianity they do that.

Christianity is famous in the Middle Ages

for having these people who torture themselves.

In Hinduism,

very, very famous for all the torturing;

you find that in the suttas.

In Islam, apparently, you find the same thing,

people torturing themselves.

And then you come to the one religion

where the emphasis is on getting away

from suffering, it's all about happiness

which is Buddhism, and then you find

people still do the same thing!

People still torture themselves

even in Buddhism.

This should be the one religion

where torture is absolutely prohibited,

and yet it still happens.

So I think there is something in the human

psyche which basically makes us feel

that this is the way to develop the mind.

If the body gets a bit tortured

that's okay

because that's just the body.

But actually, no, it's the other way round,

it's a hindrance for meditation practice

to work.

Okay, that's point number one.

I've said a lot about that and the reason

is because in my experience

people still don't get it.

Even if you talk after half an hour,

it still hasn't sunk in.

Sometimes it takes years before

the basic message sinks in.

I'm just talking from my own experience,

I know how stupid I am,

how stubborn sometimes you can be.

It takes a while for these things to

actually become clear.

So that is number one.

The second point in meditation practice

is, once your body is at ease,

the body doesn't have any pain,

the next thing to do is to relax the body.

This is one of the things you will find

as well, is that you come into your busy life

and the business of life

always is felt in the body.

You feel tensions.

You feel tensions in the stomach,

you feel tensions in the shoulders,

you feel tensions in the face.

The muscles tighten up.

So the first thing we need to do,

is to relax.

Again it's about finding the ease.

Not only do we not have any pain,

but you want to find the ease in the body,

where the body feels really nice,

and really good.

What is happening here,

the reason why

the body is tense

is because the mind is tense.

The mind is what controls the body.

So, if you get very stressed, of course,

during daily life,

stress will always reverberate,

or will make itself felt

in the body afterwards.

Mind and body are so closely connected.

This idea that these are separate things

is really a non-starter.

They are very, very closely connected

to each other.

It's a very useful way of learning

how to deal with the mind,

by working with the body,

because with the body,

it's very obvious what is going on.

You know what is happening in the body,

you can feel if there is any tension there

you can feel if there's a problem there.

With the mind, everything is a bit more

difficult to pin down.

So start by feeling the body.

What does the body feel like?

Start every meditation,

every time you do this,

go through the same process

because then you get used to a good

procedure of doing things after a while.

Start off, by just feeling the body

and then making the body at ease,

making the body relaxed,

feeling good about yourself,

feeling really, really relaxed.

There are many ways of doing this.

One way is just to take some deep breaths

and allowing yourself to relax.

Make sure you sit in a comfortable

posture, like leaning back so that you can

actually allow the body to relax.

Use a guided meditation with somebody

whose instructions you trust

and voice you like to listen to,

again that makes you feel nice and relaxed.

And the last part is the attitude you have.

The attitude is probably

the most important thing of all.

With the right attitude

you will relax,

without it, it's very, very hard.

Spend time doing this,

spend however long it takes

even if you spend the whole

meditation just relaxing

especially at the beginning

of a retreat,

that's fine.

That's good.

At least you feel at ease

and relaxed when that happens.

The idea, here,

is really to take the relaxation

deeper than what you normally

are used to.

Ordinary relaxation and ordinary life

actually often isn't all that relaxed

at all.

And you only find that out

once you start to meditate

and you get into deeper states

of relaxation.

You start to realise,

wow, this is really relaxed

I didn't know it was possible

to get this relaxed.

I had no idea, now I understand

what relaxation is all about.

The deeper your meditation goes,

the more you think,

"whoa, this is really nice!

The body feels so at ease."

The idea here is to start off

that process of relaxation

as soon as possible.

And the sooner you get that done

the more easily

the rest of the meditation flows along.

So, get that depth of relaxation

deeper than you had it before

at the very beginning,

by focusing on the body,

by sending metta to yourself,

having a sense of kindness

and compassion for yourself,

and you start to feel the body

become so easy,

so light.

It becomes so light.

It becomes like a tuft of cotton almost.

It's almost like it starts to disappear.

That's what I was talking about before,

disappearing of the body

which you do by not having any pain,

but it disappears even more

when you feel really at ease

about the body.

You find yourself so light,

so easy,

unless you fall asleep,

in which case you feel heavy,

that's the alternative.

That's okay.

If you fall asleep that's fine.

Please, fall asleep,

falling asleep is not a bad thing.

It is very, very common,

you've in very good company if you

fall asleep. Allow that tiredness

to wear off and then the

lightness of the mind comes afterwards.

So, either you feel very heavy

when you do this and you fall asleep,

or the mind tends to feel light.

It tends to go either one way or the other.

When this happens,

because you are feeling so much at ease,

you are feeling so good about yourself,

so good in the body, good in everything,

mindfulness starts to arise.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is basically

about the ability to stay in the

present moment, to be aware

of what is happening in the

here and now, that is what mindfulness

is about. Mindfulness is not about

fantasizing. If you think about future,

or you think about the past,

or you fantasize about all kind of things,

that's not mindfulness.

Mindfulness is about the ability to

just be here and now.

Be in this present moment.

Be in this room.

Be right here in front of you,

being able to watch the breath,

that is what mindfulness is about.

And mindfulness arises especially

when you feel good.

If you don't feel good

the mind wants to escape,

but if the present moment is the

pleasant moment...

It's an easy one to remember:

present moment is the pleasant moment

then the mindfulness tends to arise

as a consequence.

So this is a very easy path.

All you have to do is relax.

All you have to do is just to feel at ease,

and when you do that in the right way,

then mindfulness comes all by itself.

This is the trick of this path,

this is the trick of this whole practice,

is that you don't actually have to do anything,

you don't have to exert yourself,

you don't have to use a lot of will power,

there's not a lot of stuff that you have to do,

because the whole doing business, actually,

is what tires you out in the first place.

All this doing makes the mind busy

it makes you active,

then when you come back home after

a long day's work, you feel

completely exhausted, that's because

of all the doing that you've been doing.

So this is the natural way

for mindfulness to arise

and when mindfulness arises naturally,

it is easy, it is pleasant, it is happy

and you feel so good about these things.

So this is the way.

And one of the things to avoid here...

this is almost becoming a kind of

taboo word in Buddhism, in meditation,

is the word 'concentration'.

I'm sure you have heard the word 'concentration'

being used.

People say I've got to concentrate,

concentrate on the breath,

concentrate on things,

but be very careful with words like that

because, the word 'concentration'

in the English language, very often

implies a lot of will power.

When you go to work,

or you do whatever in ordinary life,

if you go to work,

your employer expects you to read certain things

and write certain reports

and all these kinds of things,

and because your employer expects that

you have to do it because you

have to earn your salary et cetera, et cetera,

but when you're doing things

that you're not really enjoying

all that much,

maybe it's an incredibly boring report

that you have to read,

you kind of have to force yourself

through it, that is what concentration

usually means. You're forcing attention

on to something which isn't 100% natural.

That is why people who have jobs

that demand a very high degree of

alertness, and awareness and concentration

often feel incredibly tired after

a long day's work.

I think these flight controllers,

you know - what is called? The people

who sit in those tall towers at airports?

Whatever.

Anyway, they sit up there

and they have to watch the screen

to make sure none of the planes collide.

If the the planes collide in midair

you feel a bit bad about it afterwards

So, you really have to focus on this

and this is one of the biggest

stress jobs, because you have to

concentrate so much and people

feel very tired after doing

that kind of job all day.

This is how we all feel to a certain extent,

when you use force

to watch and to be in the present moment.

So there's an idea of allowing mindfulness

to arise naturally, rather than

to force mindfulness.

If you force mindfulness,

after a while

you're going to feel exhausted

in meditation practice and you're going to

sleep for the rest of the retreat

and it won't be all that interesting for you.

You still may have a good time,

but you lose out on all the good fun

that everyone else has.

So learn natural mindfulness,

that is where it's all at.

That is what we're trying to get to.

Again, when you have no pain in the body

- I'm just recapitulating very briefly -

no pain in the body,

and you are at ease, and you are relaxed

natural mindfulness arises as a consequence,

or rather I should say, it can arise.

It doesn't always arise.

The last reason why it doesn't arise

is because the attitude.

The attitude is probably

the most important thing of all

in meditation practice.

You have to look at the world,

look at the people around you,

feel the situation in the right way.

When you have the right attitude

in this way, that is when meditation

really becomes possible.

It has to be a positive attitude.

You have to have a sense of well wishing

to the people around you.

You have to have a sense of

mettā,

karuṇā,

this means loving-kindness,

compassion

all of these positive qualities,

a sense of friendliness.

When you have all of these

qualities inside of you,

that is when

meditation becomes possible.

If you feel negative,

or you are upset with somebody,

or you're angry about something,

absolutely no way that your meditation

is going to work.

So you get this out of the way first of all,

and then meditation

becomes possible.

If we have the chance,

I don't know if there will be much time

during this retreat,

but this is one of the most important

things in the entire Buddhist path

is learning how to use your mind

in a skilful way,

so that you can

move away from the unskilful.

It takes a lot of training,

it takes years, often, of training for

people to be able to do this.

Isn't this what they call

cognitive behavioural therapy

in psychology?

Basically, it's a similar kind of thing,

but it's more intense

and it's a life long process

to keep on doing these kind of things.

So the idea is to shift your mind,

gradually, more and more away

from the negative things towards

the positive things.

When you have a positive attitude

in meditation,

then it becomes very powerful.

There's a nice sutta which I always

like to quote.

A sutta is the word of the Buddha

and one sutta means one

particular instance when he was giving

a talk as one sutta,

is basically what it means.

And in this one sutta,

he talks about what happens

when you are a good person,

when you live a good life,

when you have a good heart,

and you treat people in a kind way

and all of these kind of things.

This sutta is Majjhima Nikāya 129,

for those of you who are into this.

It's called The Wise And Foolish People.

So if you're interested in how to be wise,

and how to avoid being a fool

it's a great place to start;

Majjhima 129.

What he says there,

is that the wise person, the wise person

in Buddhism means somebody who

acts well,

acts with kindness

avoids acting in the bad ways,

speaks with kindness,

avoids speaking in the bad way

and crucially,

thinks with kindness,

doesn't think thoughts which are

greedy, or angry, or full of hatred

and this kind of stuff,

thinks positive things as well.

In Buddhism, the idea of morality

is stretched the the absolute limit.

It includes also morality of the mind.

So in Buddhism it's about developing

your whole character.

The word sīla, in the Pāli language

is much broader than the word 'morality'

in English.

It basically includes your entire character.

It's development of character,

development of personality

it what it really is about.

So what this sutta, this discourse,

of the Buddha, what he says there

is that, it's like a good person.

In the evening, when they come back home

they might be tired

and they might take a while as they sit down,

or they lie down on their bed

or sit down on a chair, or whatever,

and when they do that,

and when they relax,

all the good actions they have done,

the fact that they have

avoided the bad actions

all that comes back to them.

Because it comes back to them,

they feel a natural sense of happiness,

because a sense of happiness is basically,

well, you know that you're a good person,

you know that you've done the right things.

You have nothing to regret.

You feel a sense of,

"wow, I've done good things."

You feel a sense of joy about that.

It is just a natural consequence

of living a good life.

The more you purify that good life,

the more you feel that natural joy.

The Buddha says it's like a mountain.

In the evening, when you have a mountain

and the sun goes down behind the mountain

then the shadow is cast from that mountain.

The entire earth in front of that mountain,

the ground in front of the mountain

is engulfed, is enveloped

and completely surrounded by the shadow

from the mountain,

completely engulfed in that.

In the same way,

when a good person

comes back a long day's work

you sit down, you rest,

or maybe you meditate a bit

and then the mountain of good actions

come back to you!

Then you feel satisfied,

you feel a sense of joy inside.

You feel gladness

because of that mountain

of good actions is there.

So what we have to do is

build a mountain. That's what each

one of us has to do.

When you build that mountain,

the you have that foundation

of happiness and joy

which also you can bring into your

meditation practice.

So this is what it's about,

we have to build this mountain.

This is what our ordinary life,

if you are interested in Buddhism,

or spiritual practice, or meditation,

or whatever it is,

this is what our whole life is really about.

It's about building up this mountain

of goodness inside of us.

Then you have no choice,

you have to feel happy!

Isn't that great, you have not choice

but to feel happy?

I find that such a wonderful thing.

You can sit back, and sometimes

if you're a bit grumpy you think,

"aw, I don't want to be happy",

but you have no choice,

happiness just comes to you

and you just feel good about yourself.

What a wonderful thing that is,

when you have no choice about the matter,

And it always comes your way.

Then, of course, the spiritual path

really works as a consequence.

So that is one of those

similes that I think are so powerful.

The Buddha is a master

of creating beautiful similes

that are so much to the point

and show you how these things work

in a very beautiful way.

So this is what happens

when you generally speaking

have the right attitude.

We were talking about

the precepts before

and these precepts are very much

about having right attitude.

I will perhaps very briefly

talk about them.

The first precept is about

not killing any living beings.

Okay, so we assume that you're

not killing any human beings.

If you kill human beings, I would

recommend you to stop that very quickly.

That is going to be a big obstacle.

There is another discourse in the suttas,

the word of the Buddha. Actually there

was a man who was killing all these beings.

He was a mass murderer

at the time of the Buddha.

It's a very famous sutta,

you may have heard about

Aṅgulimāla Sutta.

But he also stopped doing that

and as a consequence of stopping that

he actually attained very high

spiritual states as a consequence.

So even if you are killing human beings

there's still hope,

which is a very positive message.

But it's not just about avoiding killing.

So you avoid killing humans,

you avoid killing animals and even insects,

but it's about being kind as well.

This is one of the most fundamental

and important facts about

the Buddhist idea of morality.

It is not just about avoiding doing

the bad stuff.

It's actively doing the good things

as well.

Being kind.

Being helpful.

Being compassionate, to animals

and human beings wherever you can find.

This is really what gives power

to the meditation practice.

If you don't do the bad stuff, okay,

you don't feel bad about yourself,

but, if you do the good stuff you actually

actively feel good about yourself.

I have noticed in my own life,

I try to live up to these things myself.

I try not to be the ultimate hypocrite

and sit here and tell you

to do all these things and

do nothing myself,

that would be terrible wouldn't it?

Of course, you don't know me,

so maybe I am a hypocrite, but

from my own perspective

I don't think I'm a hypocrite.

I have always found that

it is very powerful sometimes.

Sometimes you are in the right mood

and you just want to be kind,

and you want to be compassionate.

Sometimes it's a very powerful force

inside of you. Other times you don't

really feel compassionate at all,

but sometimes you feel very kind.

And then, sometimes, when you do

something kind, there's an insect that

you save or something like that,

something very, very small,

but because you are in the right mood,

and because you are mindful,

and because you feel it's coming

naturally from you,

it often has a very powerful impact

on your mind.

It's like you do this little act,

you think it's nothing and still

you feel this joy connected with that,

because it is done at the right time,

at the right place.

The right time and the right place

is always usually...

you should always do these things,

of course, but the powerful times

are when it comes naturally.

So if you ever feel like being kind,

if it comes from your heart and you

want to do something kind,

do it for goodness sake!

Don't hold back.

Don't have some cynical thought,

"yeah, they don't deserve it or whatever".

Please don't think like that because

it's going to destroy

a wonderful opportunity to do what is right

and do what is kind.

Always take the opportunity.

If other people think

you are a bit strange, so be it.

It's their problem,

you just do what is right.

And then you find, that when

you do these things again and again

there are times when it becomes

very powerful.

Because you are mindful,

you are clearly aware, you're driven

by a powerful motivation of compassion

inside of you.

It makes a very powerful impact

on the mind.

You sit down to meditate

and these things come back to you,

because they have made a powerful

impact on the mind.

And then, that gives rise

to the ability to meditate because

you have the joy there.

This is how it works.

This is what kamma is all about.

Kamma is about when your intention

is pure, when mindfulness is strong,

then the impact is very great one the mind.

So when you sit down afterwards,

it comes back to you very powerfully.

That's the idea of kamma.

Powerful presence when you do it,

gives rise to a powerful result later on.

You can see it for yourself

happening in reality, it's very easy,

very straightforward

and you see how these things work.

So be kind.

On this retreat, if you have

an opportunity to be kind

to the people around you,

take every opportunity, never miss

an opportunity to be kind in your life,

here or anywhere else, because it is

incredibly powerful.

And then, of course, the second factor

is about not stealing.

I'm sure none of you have the intention

to steal anything on this retreat,

but the opposite is generosity, right?

Be sharing, sharing of yourself,

and being generous.

One of the incredibly important factors

on the Buddhist path is generosity.

It is something the Buddha talks about

all the time. That's one of

the foundation stones of the path.

And generosity can be done

in some many different ways.

There's very little distinction

between kindness and generosity.

They kind of flow into each other.

When we talk about generosity,

we talk usually more about material things

and kindness is more about helping out

in a general sense, but they are really

part of the same... different ends of the

same spectrum, basically.

So generosity.

The third precept is about

no sexuality on this retreat.

The idea here is to turn the mind

in a different direction.

Usually, in the world we find pleasures

through the senses, the five sense,

through the food that we eat,

through the relationships that we have,

through music, or whatever it is.

Here, the idea is instead of finding

happiness in that realm,

is to turn the mind

in a different direction,

turn it inwards instead,

and find the happiness and joy

inside of you instead.

Now, if we indulge in the five sense

it is impossible at the same time

to turn inwards because they are two

different directions.

If you find happiness in the five sense

it means your mind is going out

into the world, by it's very definition.

But mediation is precisely about

going inside. It's about watching

the breath, about being still

in the present moment.

It's about not being attached to the world.

So, if you are finding pleasure

in the five senses, it means that your are

attached to them.

Wherever you find pleasure is also

where you are attached.

Because you are attached, you can't

let go, and because you can't let go

you can't focus inside.

These are two opposite things.

It's very important to understand that.

That you cannot do both at the same time.

Sometimes people say, "yeah, you know,

I want to get really deep meditation,

I want to live a kind of ordinary life

with my partner and all these kinds

of things at the same time".

It cannot be combined at the same time.

It's impossible to have

the full benefit of meditation practice

on the one side,

and living a completely ordinary life

at the same time.

They have to be separated from each other.

That's why we do this kind of precept

on retreats like this.

The fourth one is about silence,

and silence is a wonderful thing.

You find that it's so wonderful

not to have to talk.

Our society is based on communication,

you have to talk all the time.

It's great not to have to talk,

just to be quiet.

It's like you go into

your own little bubble

and it doesn't really matter,

everybody else can do their own thing,

you don't have to

worry about that any more.

The precept is actually not to lie,

but because you are silent

that's what it becomes.

That's the positive aspect of that.

And think of it also... sometimes

people find it hard to be silent,

it should be easy enough,

it's only a day and a half this retreat, but

sometimes people find it hard

and find it oppressive.

If you do find it a little bit oppressive

think of it as an act of generosity

to the people around you.

On a retreat like this,

there's always some people who

get nice meditation, so think,

"okay, I'm going to help you,

I'm going to do this to help

everyone here, to encourage you

and to support you

in your meditation practice."

Then you have a positive attitude

about silence.

It becomes another positive thing.

It becomes a gift

to everyone around you.

So you're kind of combining

these precepts a little bit.

The fifth precept is about

not using drugs and alcohol.

Again, meditation practice is about

clarity, it's about presence of mind

and drugs and alcohol are about

the exact opposite of that.

Not using a high...

the next one is vikala bhojana,

I have to get my sequence right here,

which means not eating

in the afternoon.

Again, the idea is to move away

from too much sensuality.

It's not a major issue...

There's going to be some soup,

is that right, in the evening?

Okay, you get some soup,

so that's good,

that should keep you going.

Then we have the precept about

not using any entertainment,

or adornments of the body,

which is another very useful one.

Entertainment is all about going out

into the world,

it's about enjoying the senses.

That's what entertainment is about.

Again we're trying to withdraw from that.

And the last precept about

sleeping on a high or luxurious bed,

is also, of course, about the same thing.

It's about not indulging too much,

but, you know, the beds here are fine.

Back to the seventh one, again,

the seventh precept, not adorning yourself.

This is also one of the nice things

about going on a retreat,

just to have simple clothes,

no make-up,

no jewellery,

no trying to impress anybody

by the way you look,

or anything like that.

It's like you can become anonymous.

You don't have to worry about

all these things that we're always

concerned about.

It makes you self-conscious,

if you always have to worry about

what you look like, right?

And here you can let go of that

self-consciousness completely,

and you can be

nobody!

Isn't that nice to be nobody?

We always have to try to be somebody.

We always have to try and live up to

our own or other people's expectations.

Always trying to be a certain person.

Now, one of the things about

trying always to be somebody,

is this sense of self that we have

inside of us

always needs to be defended.

If somebody challenges us

and says, "aw, okay, you are no good.

What are you doing?

This isn't good enough".

Or somebody tells you

you're not looking your best today,

or whatever, we feel upset.

And the reason we feel upset

is because our sense of self

is challenged.

So this sense of self is something

that always needs to be bolstered,

always needs to be kept up.

We need to think, how much of the time

do we think about ourselves,

are we concerned about concerned

about ourselves.

Stupid little things, right?

But this is just life,

everybody is like that.

Now, for once, you don't have to think

about yourself any more.

You can start to let go

of that sense of who you are,

your sense of identity.

How you are, who you are

compared to other people.

When you reduce that sense of identity

what you find is that

you become more peaceful,

because you don't have to think about

all those issues

concerning yourself any more.

So reducing your sense of self

is actually one of the great ways

of starting to feel peaceful as well.

This is what you do,

this is why adornments,

just wearing ordinary clothes

and not adorning oneself,

actually is a great benefit

and a wonderful thing to do.

So,

those are the eight precepts

and they give you some idea

what right attitude means

in meditation practice.

All this is about right attitude.

So this is one of the things

we try to build up.

Some very general things about

right attitude that I can maybe add

to what I've been saying before:

one of thing things I often remind myself

when I do my meditation practice

is that when I meditate,

that is when I come closest

to the meaning of life.

That is where I'm touching

what life is all about.

This is quite radical

because most people think,

"yeah, I'm going to meditate

so I can improve my life,

so the rest of my life

can become better"

That's what most people think.

But, no! It's actually the

other way round, it's actually

when you meditate you're getting

closer to the very essence of the

purpose of life itself.

Why is that?

The reason is, is because

in meditation practice,

what you are finding is

you're finding the sort of happiness

you're finding the sort of contentment

you're finding the sort of satisfaction

that you actually,

each one of us,

always is actually searching for.

If you look inside of yourself,

look inside of your mind

you will see that we are often

run by desires, all kind of things, right?

From the moment you wake up

in the morning,

you have to choose what clothes

you're going to wear,

from breakfast...

Everything is run by

desires and cravings in our life.

Those desires and cravings,

they are pointing towards one thing:

we want to be satisfied.

That's why you want to fulfil that craving,

fulfil that desire.

Except that it never happens,

the desire always comes back to us again.

Then suddenly one day

you sit down and meditate

and you find

that satisfaction in meditation.

At least a little bit more,

than you find it by running

around in the world.

This is what I mean,

you're actually touching here

the meaning of life,

the purpose of all the running you do

in the world, you find it,

you find the result,

you find what you're searching for

in the meditation practice,

rather than by actually getting

the results in the world around you.

So here you are touching

the meaning of life.

This is what life is all about,

this is what you really searching for.

This is what you have.

Your innermost yearning,

actually comes...

that yearning actually gets fulfilled

finally when you are sitting down

and doing your meditation practice.

Or rather it can do.

Often it doesn't happen,

but it can happen.

And when it happens, you think,

"WOW! This is really it!

Now I'm coming to what everything

really is all about."

And that is very powerful,

because when you understand that,

when you understand that

instead of sitting down and meditating

and then fantasize about all the things

you're going to do in the world,

it's kind of crazy, becuase now

you've got the meaning of life

so why are you going to fantasize

about all those things that

have got nothing to do

with the meaning of life.

In fact, it should be the other

way round.

When you're running around in the world

in daily life, going doing this, doing that

you should fantasize about meditation

practice.

That's the way it should really be,

because you understand

that everything you do in your ordinary life,

that if you can think about

your meditation practice,

it will give you

a guide in your ordinary life

to how you should behave.

Is this going to lead to an improvement

in meditation, which is the purpose of life,

or is it not?

Is it going to lead me away,

or lead me in the right direction.

So please fantasize a bit

about meditation in ordinary life:

"ooh, wouldn't it be nice

if I could now go back and

be on retreat and just sit peacefully.

Wow, maybe as soon as I get a chance,

an opportunity I will do that."

And then you have this guide,

to also guide you throughout life

in a sense.

So remember that,

while you're sitting here

on this retreat.

This is it!

You are touching

the meaning of life itself.

You're not going to get

any closer than this probably,

so this is your opportunity.

Why waste that opportunity

by thinking about

all kind of other stuff instead.

This is going to be the first talk

about the theme of this retreat.

The theme is dependent origination,

known as paṭiccasamuppāda in the Pāli language.

What I thought of doing tonight,

is just to do a general overview.

Is it loud enough?

Can everybody hear alright?

I'll just do a general overview

of what this teaching is about

so that we have a kind of a background.

Then we can draw out the details

over the few sessions after that.

So that is going to be the main purpose

of tonight.

As I said before,

if you have any questions this

please write them down

and put them in the basket at the back.

Good.

So, one of the things about

dependent arising,

it is well known,

everybody thinks it is very profound.

Everybody says,

"ooh, this is very profound stuff."

And, of course, there is a reason for that,

and the reason for that is that,

that's what it actually says

in one of the suttas.

I don't know if any of you read

these suttas already.

If you have, then you may have come across,

or you probably would have come across,

the way things start off

in the sutta called the Mahānidāna Sutta,

which is The Great Discourse on Causation,

found in the Dīgha Nikāya.

In that sutta, it starts off

with Ven. Ānanda...

Ven. Ānanda, of course,

is the Buddha's right-hand man.

He's always present,

always hearing the discourses

and he's the one who eventually

makes sure those discourses are

recorded, if you like,

recorded in memory for posterity.

He says to the Buddha, he says:

"It is wonderful and marvellous, Bhante,

how this dependent arising

[or if you like, dependent origination]

is so deep and appears so deep,

yet to myself it seems

as clear as clear can be.”

And then the Buddha says:

“Do not say so, Ānanda!

Do not say so, Ānanda!

This dependent origination, Ānanda,

is deep and it appears deep.

Because of not understanding and

not penetrating this teaching, Ānanda,

this generation has become

like a tangled skein,

like a knotted ball of thread,

like matted rushes and reeds,

and this generation

does not pass beyond saṃsāra

with its plane of misery,

unfortunate destinations,

and its lower realms."

So this is where it comes from,

when everybody says,

"aw, this dependent origination is so deep".

This is actually the

canonical reference to that.

It's quite interesting because Ven. Ānanda,

of course, he knew almost all the suttas,

all the discourses of the Buddha by heart.

He was also well known for

having become a stream enterer.

A stream enterer is somebody who has

penetrated and understood the teaching

on their own.

He was a stream enterer fairly early on

and here is one the Buddha's

chief disciples

saying

this is really deep, but I understand it,

and the Buddha says,

be careful what you say,

don't be so quick,

because this really is profound

and it because of not understanding this

that people are stuck in saṃsāra.

That is fascinating. It makes us wonder,

"well, what is the chance

of me understanding this if Ven. Ānanda

couldn't understand it, what is my hope?!

That's a fair question actually.

It is a fair question,

but remember the idea

with a retreat like this is not to grasp

these things absolutely fully,

in their full depth and all their details.

The idea is to get enough understanding

that you are moving in the right direction.

This is the whole gist, the whole purpose

of the Dhamma, is always to move

in the right direction.

As you keep moving in the right direction,

doing some meditation,

doing some practice,

understanding what the teachings

are about,

all of these things come together,

and one day, who knows, one day

you might also,

each one of us might also

understand the full

profundity of these teachings.

The reason why they are so profound

is basically, just what it says

at the end there:

it is because of this that people

don't make an end of saṃsāra.

What that means is that

if you are an ariya,

if you are a noble person,

who has penetrated and understood

these teachings through your own insight,

through your own understanding,

that is when you have that

full penetration.

So Ven. Ānanda, my guess is that

at this point he hadn't yet

become a stream enterer,

maybe it was later on,

or, the alternative is that

he was a stream enterer,

but even as a stream enterer you understand

the general principle for how it works,

but you make not be clear

about all the details.

This is one of the things that is so

fascinating about this teaching,

is all the details,

all the things that actually

come out of it once you

start to investigate.

There are so many aspects to this teaching.

To give you some examples

of the aspects that I'm thinking of,

this teaching,

contrary to what some people say,

it includes the law of kamma.

The law of kamma is very central to

this particular teaching.

It explains kamma in a very beautiful

and very meaningful way.

That's one of the things

I want to draw out of this teaching,

especially if you look at

the first three factors

of the dependent arising.

The first three factors are from...

I'll go through the factors latter on,

but from ignorance,

saṅkhāra, like activities,

and consciousness.

That is all really about kamma

and how kamma works.

It's very interesting to understand

how kamma works because

it's something which is very practical,

something we can use in our own lives.

So it brings out kamma

in a very detailed way.

This is one of the things

that makes in so interesting.

The second thing, which of course,

makes in very interesting,

is that it shows us how this saṃsāra,

how the process of continuous existence,

how it is sustained without a self in it.

This is one of the key things

about dependent arising,

it shows us how this is possible

that you can go on, and go on, and go on

keep on going, but there's no self in there

there's no substance,

there's no essence to it

which is always present.

This is one of the things that

makes people stop.

One of the classic counter arguments

against the Buddha's teaching,

against rebirth, is the idea that

if there was rebirth

there must be a self in there,

"and you guys,

you say you don't believe in a self

so you're contradicting yourself."

But actually, no, the point of the Buddha

is precisely that such a thing as rebirth

can exist without a self.

This is one of the things that precisely

makes it so profound.

This is found in the third and the fourth

factor of dependent arising:

consciousness and

conditions, what is some times called

name-and-form. We will discuss that term

later on, what it actually means.

But that kind of nexus between those two,

because they mutually condition each other,

shows you how this thing sustains itself

without a self in there.

In fact, the whole dependent arising,

the whole chain of factors,

is also an example of that.

So these are two very important things,

crucial aspects of Buddhism which are

explained in detail in dependent arising.

But the most important thing,

and what makes dependent arising

so interesting,

is that the overall structure

shows you...

the first factor of

dependent arising as I said before

is ignorance,

the last one of the 12 factors is suffering.

What that does

- I'll talk more about that in a second -

it shows us how suffering arises

out of lack of understanding,

out of ignorance.

This is probably the main purpose

of dependent arising

and why it is so powerful

because it shows us that,

if you don't understand things

in the right way,

you're going to suffer.

So you want to try to understand things

in the right way.

If you don't you have a serious problem.

Now, before I go into more detail

about these things,

I thought that the mistakes that people

sometimes do about dependent arising,

they think it's a very profound teaching

and people sometimes ask:

what is Buddhism? Should it be considered a

philosophy?

Is it a religion?

What is it?

How do we make sense of Buddhism?

What kind of teaching is it?

Of course, you can say it's just a

wisdom teaching, but that doesn't

really say very much.

So the first question I want to ask:

well, if it is so profound,

could it then be said to be a philosophy?

Is that an appropriate way

of regarding Buddhism?

Is it a philosophy or not?

The answer to that,

is a philosophy or not,

is that the early teachings of the Buddha,

the teachings that we talking about here,

the ones that are found in the four nikāyas

and not the later teachings,

as far as I can see,

they are not a philosophy.

The philosophy of Buddhism

is something that arises later on.

That is what the Abhidhamma is all about,

that is really philosophy.

You may have heard about very famous

simile of the Buddha, the Buddha is

in the place called the Gosinga Wood

and he takes a handful of leaves

and he says, "these handfuls of leaves

I have in my hand, compared to

all the handfuls of leaves in the forest,

which is more?"

So the monks obviously say,

"the handful of leaves in your hand are few

and ones in the forest are great

in comparison."

And then the Buddha says,

"what I have taught you

is comparable to the leaves in my hand,

but what I know is comparable

to all the leaves in the forest."

So what is going on here?

What about the rest of the stuff?

Wouldn't you guys be interested

in hearing about the rest of the stuff?

If the Buddha has all this knowledge,

it would be interesting

to hear about all the other stuff.

Why does he only teach us

these little few things?

And the point here,

remember that the purpose of the Buddha,

he is a compassionate teacher

he has understood the one thing

everybody in the whole world

wants to know about.

He has understood about

happiness and suffering to the core.

Look in your heart,

what is it that you want?

What is it that you yearn for?

We are always trying to move towards

more contentment, more satisfaction,

more pleasure, more happiness,

less depression, less sorrow,

less pain.

Everybody wants that.

I've never met anybody who

wants more depression.

Unless they are really messed up

psychologically, possibly, but then

they have other problems.

The point is we all want to move there.

And the Buddha knows, "I have the answer."

So then he decides to teach

out of compassion,

to help people overcome their problems,

and give rise to the highest happiness.

That is what nibbāna is all about.

So it's pragmatic!

The teaching is purely pragmatic.

It has a very clear purpose, and

you don't want to distract that teaching

with things that have nothing to do

with that pragmatic goal, which is to

alleviate suffering in all beings.

This is why the Buddha doesn't philosophise.

What is philosophy?

Philosophy is about Plato,

and Aristotle,

and Socrates,

and we find people in the present day.

We find it not only in the West, of course,

you find it also everywhere.

This is what the later

Abhidhamma people did also.

It's philosophising, it's creating,

it's speculating about the world.

It's based a little bit on fact,

because you have a little bit

of science and put these kind of things,

but a lot of philosophy is

thinking out systems,

castles in the air

that are built up,

often with no foundations,

a little bit of foundations,

but not much.

This is what philosophy is all about.

And the Buddha, I think he knew...

I'm not saying the Buddha

would have built up anything

without foundation, on the contrary,

he probably would have good reasons

for saying what he would have said

if he had said so, but he didn't.

Even though he knew what he was talking

about, he knew that it would detract

from the actual practice,

because, once you start to present

a philosophical system

a system which explains everything

in the world,

that's very fascinating, right?

I just said before,

who of you wouldn't be interested

in hearing about all the other leaves,

Everybody went,

"yeah, that would be exciting"

I think the same,

it would be exciting for me, too.

This is the problem,

you get sidetracked.

You start to philosophise.

The Buddha would've probably

had to spend the rest of his life

answering critics, saying,

"well, you know, this doesn't make any sense",

"well, actually it does make sense"

"oh, no"

and then back and forth,

back and forth.

So you focus on the essentials.

I think this is a very important point.

This should remind us that

we should really try to be

in a similar kind of mindset,

where we don't philosophise too much.

It means that dependent arising itself,

origination itself,

is not really a philosophy.

The primary purpose of

dependent origination is pragmatic.

It is to show us that there is a problem,

that there is a solution to that problem,

and how to apply ourselves.

Of course, it also gives

a little bit more than that,

it gives a little bit of understanding

for how it all works,

which sometimes gives rise

to confidence and faith because

you feel that there is a system

which is complete.

But, essentially, it is a pragmatic thing.

It is about release from suffering

and a movement towards happiness,

and getting out of saṃsāra.

This is the purpose of this.

So the Buddha didn't philosophise.

This is the thing about the Abhidhamma,

I don't know what kind of ideas

you have about the Abhidhamma,

but as far as I am concerned,

and I read Pāli,

I have read parts of the Abhidhamma

not the whole thing

because I find it too boring,

to be perfectly honest with you,

and I've also read the suttas,

pretty much everything in Pāli, and

in English and in other languages as well,

and it is very clear to me,

that the Abhidhamma is later

than the suttas.

It arose over a long period of time,

because this is a very complex

type of literature.

It started arising

probably fairly soon after the Buddha

and went on being developed

for many centuries,

perhaps millennia

after the Buddha passed away.

I'm not going to go into that now,

if you are interested

you can ask in the Q&A,

but there are many, many good reasons why

the Abhidhamma is not

the word of the Buddha.

But the Abhidhamma is precisely

a philosophical system.

Why?

Because it is about creating

a system which explains the world

completely.

So you have this division of

mind-moments, or mind-states

96 cittas, or something like that,

and then you have the various

types of mind-factors

called the cetasikas,

which are 70 or whatever it is,

I'm not even sure how many there are,

maybe it's only 40.

Shows you how much

I know about the Abhidhamma.

And then you have

the factors of materiality,

the physical world.

There's 28, or something,

or 20 something. 24 perhaps.

First of all, it's divided up

into all the elements of reality,

and then you have all these books

that show how these things fit together.

There is a book called the Paṭṭhāna,

which is a book, basically, translated

into English as 'conditional relations'.

What that book does,

it shows you that all of these categories

I just talked about before,

how they are related to each other

through various causes.

24 causes are enumerated

in the Pāli.

And the book, the Paṭṭhāna, is so long

because there are so intricacies,

so many ways these things

can relate to each other,

it is so long that if you wrote out

the whole thing

- somebody apparently calculated this -

if you wrote out the whole thing,

the book would be so long

that it would stretch

from Sydney to Melbourne,

or something like that.

That's how big it is.

So this is thought out

by the human mind.

This is what they call philosophy.

And this is what happened

later in Buddhism.

Of course, the sad thing is that

if you travel around the Buddhist world,

you find that a lot of people,

that's what their interested in.

It's exactly why the Buddha didn't teach it.

He saw the attraction in that,

the danger in that,

creating philosophical systems,

building them up,

and it's never finished.

This is the other problem,

there's always some hole in the system.

Somebody says,

"oh, what about this?

You haven't thought about

this problem over here."

And then you have to write a new

sub-commentary to fill in that little gap.

Then somebody finds a hole

in the sub-commentary and the more

literature you have,

the more holes there's going to be.

So for every book you add,

there going to be another whole.

And it keeps on going like that

and there's no end.

This is the problem with philosophy,

it never, never stops.

So the Buddha, very, very wisely,

skipped that whole area.

So dependent origination

is not philosophy.

It's pragmatic, it's practical,

it's to be used in a practical way.

So please keep that in mind.

It's so easy to get sidetracked

with philosophising.

So what is Buddhism?

Maybe just very briefly: what it is,

because I think it is interesting

just as a point of general interest.

Is it a religion?

Is it a religion?

People say,

"aah, yeah, maybe,

maybe not it's a religion."

I think it's a fascinating question.

Personally, I think it's fascinating,

whether it's a religion or not.

Obviously, the answer is,

it all depends on how

you define the word 'religion'.

I looked up the Oxford Dictionary,

very recently,

at how that defines 'religion',

and it says any kind of system

where there is some kind of

supernatural agency is a religion.

From that point of view,

is Buddhism a religion?

I would say no, it is not, because, certainly

from an internal point of view of Buddhism

everything is part of nature.

Nothing is supernatural,

Nothing is outside of nature.

If you go to ordinary religions,

like, Christianity or Islam, of course,

the idea is that God stands outside

of nature.

That's why he can break all the laws of nature.

He doesn't have to care about

gravity or whatever.

He can just do whatever he wants.

Quantum mechanics, no problem,

he can do what he likes with the world.

He is supernatural.

But from a Buddhist point of view,

everything is part of nature.

So in that way,

Buddhism is not, really, supernatural.

But, if you're not a Buddhist and you say,

"aww, you guys believe in all kind

of weird stuff, you believe in devas,

okay; supernatural."

So from an external point of view,

maybe Buddhism is a religion,

because other people might think

that we believe in supernatural stuff.

So it depends on the angle you take.

I must admit, I prefer to be very careful

when using labels like 'religion'

on Buddhism, because the word

'religion' has so much baggage,

and a lot of that baggage does not

apply to Buddhism.

So we are taking on this baggage

by calling ourself a religion;

I'm not sure that is very suitable,

or very useful.

Sometimes it's better to say,

"yeah, I'm not sure we're a religion,

maybe we're something else."

So what is that something else?

I would say that something else is that,

Buddhism is essentially...

this is maybe something I need to

reflect a bit more about, but

it's really a type of psychology.

That's what I'd call Buddhism.

All of Buddhism is about

how to use the mind well,

how to move from suffering

to more happiness,

how to eventually end all suffering.

It's all really mental stuff.

It's all about developing the mind,

doing something with the mind.

It's a kind of psychology.

Maybe not anything like

anything we have in the world

apart from Buddhism,

it's different obviously, but it really is,

I think, at the end of the day,

possibly a type of psychology.

Although, I must admit,

I haven't really

thought about that carefully enough

to really make an absolute statement

about that.

Anyway, Buddhism is a psychology,

and, of course, that includes then

dependent origination.

So where does this fit in to this picture

of psychology?

What is it all about?

Dependent arising, the first thing,

of course, to understand about it,

is that it is an important teaching

of the Buddha.

How do you know

it's an important teaching of the Buddha?

Well, usually, you know because

somebody else says so.

That's how people often know

it is an important teaching,

"this is important because they say

it's an important teaching."

But is there any objective way

of deciding this, apart from just

listening to people like me

saying it is important?

The objective way of deciding

whether a teaching is important

in Buddhism or not, is to see how often

did the Buddha talk about this.

How many different audiences?

How many different places

did he give this particular teaching?

And dependent arising is one

of those teachings that you see

throughout the suttas.

You see it in all the four nikāyas.

You see it in the Majjhima Nikāya.

You see it in the Dīgha Nikāya.

You see it in the Aṅguttara, in the Saṃyutta.

In the Saṃyutta Nikāya,

there is a whole section just about

dependent origination.

This is how you make a decision

about whether a sutta is important

or not.

This is actually a very useful tool,

because sometimes people say,

"ah, this is really important."

But why is it important?

"I don't know, it just is important."

There should be some objective

criteria for deciding these things.

So dependent arising is

one of those things.

The second question is then:

how does it fit in with

the rest of the teachings?

Because we need to sort of

tie it together with everything else.

One of the wonderful things

about the Buddhist teaching, is that

it all fits together into this one picture.

It's basically one picture,

then you take out a little piece here

a little piece there,

it's almost like a jigsaw.

It's not really like a jigsaw.

A jigsaw is a very imperfect simile,

or metaphor, because really, often,

the different pieces they overlap,

or one fits into another one

and it's not really quite like a jigsaw,

but still, it is an overall picture.

And it is the picture that you realise

when you awaken to the Dhamma.

When you, one day, become a stream enterer

and you get a flash of insight,

BANG!

What is it that you see?

What you see is:

the Dīgha Nikāya, the Majjhima Nikāya

the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Aṅguttara Nikāya.

All in one!

That's what you see!

Whoa!

You're head is going to explode!

Imagine seeing all that is one moment.

But the point, of course, is that

the insight is quite simple,

but when you draw out all the implications

of that one single insight,

you end up with an enormous thing.

That is what is so amazing.

So dependent origination is part of that.

It is part of that big picture,

but it is only one little thing.

So where does it fit in?

One easy way of understanding

where it fits in is to look at

the Four Noble Truths.

Noble Truth number one,

is the truth of suffering.

Usually, most people shake their head,

"okay, I'm not a Buddhist, I don't suffer."

That is number one.

Anyway, once you get passed the first one,

you say, "okay, yeah, life is a bit

unsatisfactory sometimes, okay, fair enough."

Once you get passed the first one,

the Second Noble Truth:

the cause of suffering.

The cause of suffering is taṇhā, craving,

according to the Second Noble Truth.

Now, in some suttas,

that fact that

taṇhā leads to suffering

is expanded out,

and it is expanded out

into dependent origination.

Dependent origination is what shows you

that suffering arises.

It's an alternative way of understanding

the Second Noble Truth.

So dependent origination fits,

bang in there.

It is basically another way of speaking

about the Second Noble Truth,

dependent origination.

That's already quite interesting

because normally you look at

the Second Noble Truth,

craving gives rise to suffering.

Okay, fine,

first of all maybe it's a little bit

hard to understand why that is the case,

so one thing that dependent origination

does, it spells out exactly why it is

that craving gives rise to suffering.

It puts in all the little pieces in between

to show you how this conditionality

actually works.

That's the first thing that's

interesting about it.

The second thing is,

okay, if craving is the cause of suffering

the Third Noble Truth says that

when you remove that craving

suffering ends.

But, how do you get rid of craving?

If craving is the cause of suffering,

you want to get rid of craving.

It's not very obvious, right?

Everybody has desires,

everybody has cravings in their life.

How do you get rid of that?

And this is the other thing that

dependent arising, dependent origination

shows you.

It shows you all the links,

all the causes that eventually

give rise to craving.

So it shows you have craving

can be removed.

And, of course, what it does,

it takes it all back down to ignorance

I was talking about before,

which is the first factor of

dependent arising.

So if you remove ignorance,

then everything else

starts to disappear.

Craving, and then

eventually also suffering itself.

So it fills in the gaps.

It makes it clear what is going on.

This is the power of dependent origination

in this case.

The second thing that is fascinating

about this, and often you will hear

people argue about whether

dependent origination includes

things like rebirth.

Is it about rebirth?

Is it about one life?

Is it about what happens in one moment?

People have all these different theories

about dependent origination.

I don't know about you here,

I'm not sure what you think.

I'm not going to ask you.

I, personally, don't have any doubt

that it refers to rebirth.

The rebirth process is part and parcel

of dependent origination,

and you can actually see that

if you consider the Second Noble Truth,

or at least one hint is found right there

because, the Second Noble Truth says

it is the craving that leasts to rebirth,

which is the source of suffering.

It's not just any old craving,

it's specifically called ponobhavika

Pono is from puna which means 'again'.

Bhavika means existence.

So the craving that has to do with

re-existence.

So because dependent origination

is just an expansion of that

Second Noble Truth,

dependent origination, too,

has to do with rebirth

and re-existence in the future.

It becomes very clear once you whack it

into that formula and they obviously

have to equate with each other,

it's the same thing,

so it deals with rebirth.

That's one thing I've been saying before,

I talked about the various

things that dependent origination points to

such as kamma et cetera,

of course, rebirth and kamma

are here closely connected to each other.

So this is where it is then,

it is part of the Second Noble Truth,

and straight away you see some

interesting things coming out,

just by considering that.

Third Noble Truth.

The Third Noble Truth is about

the ending of suffering.

It's great that there is a Third Noble Truth.

Without that it wouldn't be so great,

just the cause of suffering and suffering.

So the third one is like,

WOW!

This is the power of the Buddha's teaching

that we have the Third Noble Truth

and the fourth on, of course,

which is the path.

Now the third one

shows us that the cessation of suffering

comes from the cessation of craving.

Again, the sequence of dependent arising,

it has a forward order

and it has a reverse order.

And here it operates in the reverse order.

It shows you that

when you eliminate avijjā,

ignorance, at the bottom

all the factors get eliminated

until you eliminate craving

and then it fills in the gap

between craving and dukkha.

All of those factors get eliminated

and eventually suffering itself

gets eliminated.

There are two ways that

dependent arising works:

in the forward order,

which shows you how suffering arises

and the reverse order,

which shows how suffering ends

as a consequence of all the other

factors ending.

Second Noble Truth and Third Noble Truth.

I hope I'm making sense to you.

I'm not sure how much you

know about these things,

or how much you don't.

I apologise if I go too fast;

just let me know later on,

write a little complaint or whatever

and I'll try to go more slowly.

Sometimes it's hard because you have

people at different stages,

different understandings.

So this is, then, where... now you can see

why it is very much a psychology.

It's all to do with craving, desires,

how that causes suffering in the end

and about how it's ignorance,

which is another mental thing,

at the very beginning

which causes this whole thing.

It all revolves around things in our minds

and the why our psyches actually work.

Very briefly, perhaps, ignorance itself

even though we have this whole chain

of things starting with

ignorance, what about ignorance itself?

Where does that come from?

Can we say anything about ignorance?

The Buddhist idea is that ignorance

has always been there.

There is not first cause of ignorance.

I'll talk more about this later on

but this is one of those things

that always has existed

You cannot find the first cause of it.

Not really always has existed,

but you cannot find the first cause.

But, that does not mean

it cannot be eliminated.

It can still be eliminated, even though

there is no first cause to it.

So that is how it fits into

this big jigsaw puzzle.

It's directly there.

Part and parcel of the

second and the third Noble Truths.

And this becomes the importance of

dependent origination.

So now,

I thought of maybe talking,

very briefly today, just about

the various links of dependent origination,

starting from the beginning and show

just very briefly

how the whole system works.

Once we have this overview,

then we can start to focus in

on the details maybe tomorrow morning.

So let's have a look at the overview

of this whole sequence.

As I said, it begins with avijjā,

usually translated as ignorance;

not a good translation perhaps,

- I'll talk more about that tomorrow -

and it ends up with dukkha.

In between, you have ten other

factors in between.

There's 12 links in dependent arising,

and they are linked,

there's like a pair-wise linkage.

Each one of these factors is linked

to the one which comes after it,

and it's a causal linkage:

one thing leading to the next one,

leading to the next one.

So the first thing to understand is

this idea of causality that actually drives

this thing called dependent origination.

We start off with avijjā

and the point here is that once you have avijjā

the second factor comes into effect

then third factor all the way to the

twelfth factor which is called dukkha

which is suffering.

The kind of causality you are talking

about here, and this is spoken about

in brief also in the suttas themselves,

It is a type of causality you can call

sufficient causality.

Sufficient causality means that

when the factor preceding another one exists,

the factor that comes after

must also exist as a consequence.

That's what it means to be sufficient.

In other words, ignorance is sufficient

for the next factor to exist.

And then, the next factor is sufficient for the

third factor to exist, and so on

all the way to the last factor.

Each one is sufficient for the following one,

and what that means is that

if you have ignorance,

you have no choice,

you have to suffer.

From ignorance comes suffering.

What is that stupid English saying?

Ignorance is bliss.

It's completely wrong!

It's a mistake.

It's got it completely the wrong way round,

ignorance is not bliss.

If it is bliss, it's a very kind of

shallow form of stupid, silly bliss.

The real problem is ignorance must

cause suffering. That's what we mean

by sufficient conditions,

one must lead to the next one,

one after the other.

If you have ignorance, you have to suffer.

It's interesting, right?

It means that there is only

one solution to this whole thing.

But there is the other side,

which I mentioned just before,

and that side is that

once you take away the ignorance

once you give rise to knowledge

and understanding instead,

the second factor also disappears,

also ceases as a consequence.

This is another type of conditionality.

Both types of conditionality

apply at the same time.

This is called necessary conditionality.

Sufficient conditionality

and necessary conditionality.

Necessary conditionality means that

the preceding factor is necessary

for the subsequent factor to arise.

So if you take away avijjā,

if you take away ignorance,

the second factor,

which is called saṅkhāra in Pāli,

cannot exist any more,

it must disappear as a consequence.

This is called necessary conditionality.

Take away the necessary cause,

and the subsequence effect

also has to disappear.

This is in brief what all of dependent arising

really is about.

It's about this interplay of these two causes:

sufficient causality

and necessary causality.

When you understand those two causes,

it's fairly straightforward.

When you understand what's going on

you can understand how the whole thing

comes into being and also

how the whole thing ceases

as a consequence.

So that is in brief what it is,

and it's not just dependent arising

which works like that.

There are many things in life

which work on the basis of

necessary and sufficient conditionality.

In Buddhism, as well, there are other sets.

I have included some of those other sets

in here as well.

They're not called dependent origination

because they're not the same set of 12 factors,

but the same type of causality

is sometimes relevant

for those sets as well.

Sometimes there are other types of

conditionality, which are more loose.

If you do this, then usually you get that.

Which is not as strict.

Dependent arising is a very strict kind of

conditionality.

Very, very strict.

If you have that, that must follow.

Haven't got that, that will not follow.

So that is the overview.

You get the idea of how

this process works.

Let us briefly have a look at

the various factors in this chain,

and see roughly how it works out.

The first factor is called avijjā in Pāli.

As I said, often translated as ignorance.

It basically means that you

don't understand reality as it actually is.

Reality is one way,

the world works in one way;

you think it's different.

Of course, what the Buddha is saying

is that we are all like that.

We all have this avijjā.

We all have this blockage inside ourselves,

that make us not see reality

as it actually is.

What that means is that

we are running around like blind people.

We are in the dark.

We think that we are pursuing happiness,

but actually, we're usually pursuing

suffering instead.

We have got no idea what we're doing.

This is basically what ignorance means.

Because we don't know what we're doing,

it means that we start doing

all kind of stuff which leads

in the wrong direction

this is saṅkhāra. Saṅkhāra is often

translated with this terrible translation...

this is my opinion, right,

I apologise for anybody who

likes this translation.

The usual translation is,

'volitional formations'.

At least it leaves me stone cold

when I hear 'volitional formations'.

It doesn't do anything for me at all.

I feel like I could be on Mars

when I hear that translation.

Some people maybe it means something to,

but I find it doesn't really grab you,

grab your heart when you hear that.

Basically, what it means is the

activities of body, speech and mind.

The things that we do, especially

intentional things that we do.

So saṅkhāra can be translated...

I'll talk about it tomorrow

what a proper translation is,

but I will leave it for now.

So because we don't understand,

we do all these kinds of things, right?

And all this doing that we do,

from not understanding, has consequences.

One of the consequences it has...

Because all the doing is based on craving,

it's about propelling us into the future.

One of the things it leads to,

is it always leads to rebirth.

Quite literally,

always propelling ourselves,

projecting ourselves into the future.

The saṅkhāras are always about

what we want, not about now,

it's about the future.

From this, we get the idea of viññāṇa.

Viññāṇa, which is consciousness,

then gets established as a consequence of that.

I'll take much more in detail

about this tomorrow.

This is just very kind of rudimentary.

Because viññāṇa is then established,

in this case we're talking about

established in a new life in particular,

in that new life,

depending on where that life is

you'll have certain experiences, right?

If you get reborn as a deva, a god,

wow, you have these wonderful experiences,

so much happiness, right?

If you get reborn as a kangaroo,

it's not so great.

Maybe you think kangaroos are cute,

but actually,

kangaroo life is pretty miserable.

I live in the middle of the bush,

I see what they are like.

They are greedy, they are angry,

they fight over food.

The reality of kangaroo life is pretty,

pretty bad.

So when you see a cute animal,

what you see on the surface

is only one thing.

But if could be worse, you could be

reborn as an insect.

Imagine that!

Whoa! You get reborn as a mosquito,

you're flying around, find this big

lump of flesh in front of you and then,

smack! You get swatted because of that.

All you're doing is trying to get

some nice food, right?

You're just doing what everybody

wants to do, and then that's it,

end of story.

So the point is that,

once you establish consciousness

in a certain place, your experience

of the world is set within certain limits.

That is what nāmarūpa is,

called 'name-and-form',

also called 'mentality-materiality'.

It's all our experiences, basically,

and they are set within certain limits.

Because we have name-and-form,

we have the sense basis.

You see things, you hear,

you taste, you touch things

and through that, through the sense

is how we contact the world.

All our contact through the world

is through our sense.

I see all of your, you seem me,

we see each other,

we hear the sounds,

everything is through the sense.

It's called contact in the technical term.

Phassa in Pāli.

The previous term I forgot to say in Pāli,

I don't know if you're interested,

it's called saḷāyatana, the six sense bases.

Phassa, contact in the world.

Phassa leads to vedanā.

Vedanā means the feeling tone

of experience.

Is it happy?

Is it suffering?

Is it neutral?

It leads to much more.

Contact also leads to all kind of things.

We see forms,

we have volition, will,

drives in us, will in us,

it leads to many other things as well,

but it's interesting, the Buddha here,

picks out vedanā,

this idea of the feeling tone of experience.

He picks that out specifically

because it is much more important

than the other ones.

Why is it so important?

Because, it is vedanā

which tends to drive us.

Vedanā decides if you like it or not.

If you don't like it,

you will want to get rid of it.

If you like it, you will crave for it.

So vedanā makes us act.

The feeling tone makes us act,

through craving.

So you crave and then you act

and part of that action is upādāna.

Upādāna is how we react to craving.

What do we do with craving in the world?

We do things.

We take up things.

We start things.

Almost all the things we do

are, big picture things,

come from this idea of upādāna.

Taking things up, almost in a

literal sense.

You take up having a job,

or you take up hobbies,

or you take up Buddhism,

you take up meditation.

You do things.

And then because we take up

all these things we live in a certain way.

It's called bhava, existence.

So we live in a certain way,

our mind is kind of set in a certain way.

This is very similar to what we were

talking about at the beginning

of consciousness being established.

We're established, through the way we exist,

and because of that establishment

we are reborn in accordance with that

establishment later on.

Because you are reborn,

you must die, right?

With birth comes all the problems.

With birth comes human life

and once you have human life

you have to have human experiences.

I don't know what you human experience is,

but it's a bit of everything, right?

Sometimes you are happy,

and everything is great.

Sometimes it's absolute misery.

You go through divorce,

you get fired from your job,

your closest family members

and your friends, they die,

or you get really sick yourself,

or whatever.

Life goes through all these ups and downs

all the time, there are

so many problems there.

I think it is very important

to be realistic about that.

Sometimes you hear people say,

"aww, yeah, in my life I won't have

any suffering."

It's a very shallow, to say the least,

shallow outlook.

You haven't really looked

very carefully if you think

you have no suffering.

You really haven't.

You, kind of say "aww, don't want to see,

don't want to see."

That is basically what you're saying there.

I'm a monk, you could

argue that my life is probably quite easy.

Ajahn Brahma is probably

the most happy person I can imagine.

He always is very light hearted,

he always jokes, he always messes around,

but when he talks about suffering,

he says, "life is suffering!

Life is really dukkha.

It's really, really bad."

He's the happiest person,

so if he says it's suffering,

okay, I'll believe it.

I can feel it myself anyway.

So no problems there.

Okay, so that is dependent arising in brief,

just to give you an overview.

Those are the 12 links.

All the terms and how they all

connect together.

And then, of course,

the cessation mode as well.

So that you have the opposite happening

when it ceases at the beginning,

each one of these links will cease,

until you get to the last one eventually.

So, I think I will probably stop there

because I don't want to go into any more

details about things at this particular point.

It's probably lots and lots of information

for you anyway, maybe way too much.

I've always been a bit worried about these

one hour talks.

You can say a lot in an hour,

so that's part of the problem.

Anyway, for tonight,

have a nice, good night's sleep

remember that meditation

and going on retreats is about enjoying

yourself, having a good time.

Meditate until you feel that you are tired,

have a really good night's rest,

sleep as much as you like,

you feel is necessary,

and tomorrow you'll be clear and ready

for another day.