Okay, so we come back together today to do our group practice and first to have a talk on the Dhamma.
So we'll continue today with the discourse on blessings.
During the time that we listen to the talk, during the Dhamma talk,
begin to prepare ourselves for the meditation.
The purpose of listening to the Dhamma is for preparing us for the meditation practice.
We're not trying to take notes or pick up new ideas or new ways of thinking.
We're just trying to collect our thoughts
and bring our mind, collect our mind and bring our mind back to the reality in front of us.
We're trying to learn what is the correct method of practice and how we can develop right practice.
So this is really the meaning of the word blessing.
A blessing has to be, what we want is a real blessing.
We want these things to bless us.
It's not intellectual where you add them up and when you know them, then you know the blessings or then you've learned the teaching on the blessings.
The point is that we should really and truly put these into practice, and the more we are able to put them into practice, the more blessed our lives will be, the less suffering there will be in our lives.
So we reached the sixth stanza, I believe.
So here we're starting to get closer to the actual meditation practice.
means the abstention, the giving up of evil.
the refraining from intoxicating drinks, madhyapana jasanyamo, appamado jadhamesu, means vigilance or heedfulness, heedfulness in regards to the dhammas, in regards to the realities.
Vihitamangalam uttama.
So fairly simple teachings.
There's not much theory to go through here.
Only to use these to set our minds on the right path.
Arati virati papa is actually quite a simple teaching.
It's something that on the face of it doesn't need much explanation.
But it's something that can be explained in some great detail.
Arati, virati, to give up and to abstain.
Arati means to give up your desire for it or give up your delighting in it.
Virati means the same thing.
Vi and a means to not delight in it.
Virati.
Vi means to give up or to abstain.
To take out, aratta means delight.
So what this really means is to give up our addiction or our attachment or any desire to do evil deeds or to do evil, paapa.
Evil, in the Buddha's teaching, it's important to understand this.
It's important to understand in some detail what we mean by the word evil, and how we can even say that there is such a thing as evil.
There's a great amount of debate about whether evil even exists.
In a philosophical sense, it's very difficult to come to any
substantial or any real conclusion or any agreement about this, what is evil and whether there is evil and so on.
Because just simply logically it's hard to come to any proof that this is evil or that is evil.
So in Buddhism we have just one more theory about what is evil, and it's not the only theory.
Some people will say something is evil because it goes against the wishes of a creator god, or something is evil because it goes against the society, or it goes against the culture.
People will say something is evil because it goes against your own intentions.
So if a person, in this case, if a person wants to do evil deeds, wants to do things, perform deeds that hurt others, if they refrain from them, then that would be evil.
But in general it means if a person likes the color red, then to force them to have the color blue, this is evil because going against a person's wishes
There are many, many theories about what is the meaning of evil.
Buddhism just has one more theory.
The difference is that this theory actually has some benefit to it.
It actually has some purpose to it.
The meaning of evil in Buddhism is something that brings suffering.
And so by that definition,
The more suffering something brings, the more evil it is.
And so evil in Buddhism has three layers, three levels.
There's suffering according to the Vinaya, suffering according to the Sutta, and suffering according to...
Evil according to the Vinaya, evil according to the Sutta, and evil according to the Abhidhamma, which is based on suffering according to the Vinaya, suffering according to the Suttas, and suffering according to the Abhidhamma.
According to the Vinaya, the evil that we're supposed to give up is evil deeds.
And this is the simplest way to understand the concept of evil.
It's the basic understanding that we gain when we begin to learn and to practice the Buddhist teachings.
As we learned about yesterday, this was where this Anupubika Setiputta,
this man who practiced in order, the first evil deeds that he began to refrain, the evil things he began to refrain from was the five, the breaking of the five precepts, so killing, stealing, lying, cheating, cheating, lying, and taking drugs and alcohol.
He was refrained from this.
That was his first step.
So according to Vinaya, the deeds that lead us to suffering,
And this is the simplest way to understand what we mean by evil.
It's evil according to the Vinaya.
So we refrain from killing, we refrain from stealing, we refrain from these basic immoral acts.
But moreover, in the Vinaya, if you really learn about the Vinaya and you learn about morality in detail, it actually means the preventing of the mind from giving rise to the intentions to act.
So true morality is the explicit decision to avoid or to refrain.
So this is what is meant by arati virati.
The decision to refrain from an evil deed.
And this takes meditation practice.
This is really the beginning of the meditation practice because as I'll explain in terms of the Suttani Abhidhamma,
Even just moving your foot without wisdom, without mindfulness, becomes a moment of delusion, where we cling to the foot as me and mine, we cling to the movement as my movement, and we cling to the mind that creates the movement as my mind, my intention.
if we're not aware of these things, if we're not guarding the mind, as we learned about.
An evil deed can be any small act, small movement of the body.
Even simply watching the stomach rise and fall can become an evil deed.
Why?
Because it can lead to suffering.
Once you have clinging and you identify with the object, once you identify with your body, for example, then when the body undergoes change or more breaking up and the body dies, you'll feel great suffering.
You're creating the habit of clinging and the habit of ignorance and delusion.
If you cling to the feelings, then when feelings change, you'll be upset.
When suffering arises, you'll be upset.
When you feel pain, you're not mindful of pain.
If you're not clearly aware this is pain, then there will arise liking and disliking.
There will arise identification as me and mine and so on.
So the actual truth of morality
is the beginning of the meditation practice the technique of the meditation practice the using of this tool to keep yourself from acting even walking in a way that's going to create suffering in a way that's going to create attachment in terms of the thoughts clinging to the thoughts and following the thoughts and enjoying the thoughts or being afraid or upset by your thoughts we refrain from that we stop ourselves from
from giving rise to these defilements.
Otherwise, even moving your foot, even walking back and forth can be an evil deed.
Even sitting in meditation can give rise to evil.
Because what we mean by evil again is that which brings suffering.
So sitting can bring great suffering.
Sitting meditation, for a beginner meditator, is really an evil thing in that sense.
And the question is, well then, is a beginner meditator actually
actually doing a bad thing.
And what it means is that moment to moment they're doing a bad thing.
Moment to moment they're giving rise to defilement and therefore suffering.
But the point is that because they're meditating they're going to see that.
The only way to truly give up evil is to come and see that it's evil.
So when we talk about keeping the five precepts, many people keep the five precepts simply because they're Buddhist or because their teacher says to or so on.
But a sotapanna, an enlightened being, doesn't require such teaching.
They do it because they know it leads to suffering.
They refrain from evil because they've come to understand evil.
So rather than repressing or pushing away or stopping, forcing themselves, saying no, no, when they want to do something to refrain from it, they simply don't want to do it anymore.
because they've come to see it for what it is.
This can only come from actually watching the evil.
So in a sense, you require evil.
You have to see that it's evil.
You have to see that it's causing suffering.
You have to see the suffering.
And you have to let go of the suffering.
You have to be able to change your behavior.
So this is suffering according to the Vinaya.
According to the Sutta,
is the actual meditation practice, or the evil according to the suttas.
Evil according to the suttas is the states of mind that are evil, the thoughts, the thoughts of anger and thoughts of greed and so on.
the mental intention, karma, for example.
Buddha said, karma is not the actions, karma is the intentions.
So in the sutta, it's all about creating wholesome intentions, creating wholesome mind states, bhavana, kamathana, vipassana, samatha, vipassana, developing our minds, developing calm and tranquility, and developing insights.
This is the second layer of evil.
This is what we're trying to do away with here.
In meditation practice you come to understand just how many layers of evil there are and really how profound this simple teaching is on giving up evil.
How important it is to be reminded and to realize this.
Because what you realize in meditation is that whereas before we thought we were
a generally good person, we're quite perturbed by the fact that throughout our lives we've done so much, such a great amount of evil, really.
Remember how we've hurt other people.
Remember how we've hurt other beings.
Remember how we've caused stress and suffering.
we begin to add up and add up and realize the trouble that we've gotten ourselves in.
Because before we thought that an ordinary person was really on the right track, a person who has a good job and is competitive in their field and someone who is assertive, someone who has self-esteem, someone who is confident and so on, someone who has likes and dislikes and is a socially sophisticated person and so on.
So we measure success and we measure happiness, we measure goodness
in a very arbitrary way or in a very partial sort of way.
When we come to meditate we lose sight of that and we begin to see what it was that we were missing through all this.
That actually the most important, the salient feature of our life was the good and the evil that we've done.
The anger that we've given rise to.
The competition that we used to think was a good thing.
the victory when we beat others.
We come to see how horrible it is actually, how much suffering we cause to others by asserting ourselves, asserting our ego and our will over them.
We come to realize even as Buddhist meditators we can do rise to these things.
We come to take stock and to bring our sensitivity to another level.
So even though we may not have killed or stolen or cheated or lied, we realize how much corruption there is in our mind and how much corruption we've cultivated in our minds.
How much greed, how much anger, how much delusion.
We have to see the thoughts that we've had, the intentions that we've had, our whole intention in life.
We see how it was wrong.
We see how our views were just
meaningless or unsubstantiated.
They have no basis in reality.
They're just views.
And we see how they've gotten us into trouble.
Views that I deserve this, I deserve that, I don't deserve this, I don't deserve that.
Self-righteousness and so on.
Conceit.
to see how we've developed enmity towards other beings, and we've developed grudges and feuds and vengeance, how we've developed addictions, how we've developed our lusts and our desires, and how our mind is now like a fire because of these things.
When you come to practice meditation, it feels like your head is on fire sometimes.
For a person with much delusion, it feels like your head is in a dryer spinning around.
It's like your mind is boiling with the water bubbling up.
With greed, it feels like your mind is in a cesspit.
It feels like your mind is slimy and dirty.
With anger it feels like your mind is on fire.
You feel this when you meditate.
Not viscerally, but these are good analogies.
This is how it appears to the meditator.
One becomes quite distressed by this through the practice of meditation.
So this is the evil that we're trying to give up.
And of course we do this.
This is the actual meditation practice.
Once you're able to clear your mind and create the clear thought, once you have turned your mind away from the projections and the judgments, the partialities, and you're just seeing things for what they are, once you can see things for what they are, the next step here is the concentration.
And this is really what the suttas focus on.
how to focus the mind, how to bring the mind into focus, where it will be able to see things clearly as they are.
And then the third level of evil is the Abhidhamma level.
It's really the most important, whether you read the Abhidhamma or learn the Abhidhamma or not.
What we mean by the Abhidhamma level is not necessarily referring to the Abhidhamma Pitika, but it means on an ultimate level, on a level of ultimate reality.
Because the suffering on ultimate reality is that everything has the characteristic of dukkha, or what we say suffering.
And so the meaning here is not that it's painful, the meaning is that it's meaningless, or useless, purposeless.
unbeneficial, unsatisfying.
And so, in fact, the truth of suffering is not that anything has to be thrown away or has to be given up, has to be moved away from.
It's that things have to be let go of, let be.
People always think of letting go as not having it arise again.
So not having suffering arise, that's the aim.
And technically speaking, it is the aim, of course, because the aim is for them to cease.
But the practice is simply seeing things as they are.
And so the truth of suffering is not these things are bad.
that they're useless, that they are what they are.
Because we have this strange question, how can it be that if an arahant is free from suffering that they still have to live their lives and have to grow old, sick and die?
They're not really free from suffering after all.
But even an arahant who's alive is free from suffering.
and is free from it, even though they have to experience these things that are dukkha, because they're not clinging to these things.
It's not the experience of these things that is stressful or painful.
It's that these things are unable to bring any benefit, nothing in anything in our life, unable to bring benefit.
Why I try to explain it like this, and it's not to say that it's not true, that the cessation of all of this is true peace.
Because with the realization of cessation of nibbana, there is no arising.
During that time, there is no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no feeling, thinking.
But the problem is that when people begin to realize that everything is meaningless and useless, they then go too far, and they take the next step and say, therefore, it should all be gotten rid of.
And many people actually feel like killing themselves.
Or they get worried and concerned that they might decide to kill themselves.
They become worried and concerned that they're going to have to radically change their lives or they're going to... or concerned that they're just going to become a zombie perhaps.
I actually have had people who have become concerned that they're going to maybe kill themselves.
As a result of this, they're afraid or they even feel the desire that they should just end their lives.
But this is really going too far.
The wisdom comes from seeing that things are meaningless.
But that's not the impetus to kill oneself.
The impetus to kill oneself is anger.
It's aversion.
The impetus to kill yourself is the aversion towards these things, which is still a form of clinging.
The point is to come to experience reality without giving rise to liking, disliking, greed, anger and delusions.
This is what it means, the ultimate level.
The ultimate level, things are not good or bad.
Experience is not good and bad.
What is bad is the clinging to it.
What is good is the letting it go.
So evil, on an ultimate level, is the moment-to-moment mind states, or you can say even more, is the ignorance.
that causes us to give rise to formations, abhija, bhajya, saṅkara, that causes us to form opinions, to form preferences and judgments, to see things as more than they actually are, to judge what you see, to judge what you hear, to judge what you feel and judge what you think and so on.
Evil is this, the evil in the ultimate sense is this diversification or making more of things than they actually are.
So when you hear something, instead of just knowing that you're hearing, as the Buddha said, sute sutta matang bhavisati.
Let it be just hearing.
When seeing, let it just be seeing.
When you go beyond this, this gives rise to suffering.
This gives rise to clinging.
It gives rise to stress.
It gives rise to distraction.
So in our meditation practice, whether it be walking meditation or sitting meditation, the purpose is only to know what's going on.
You don't have to feel some special experience or so on.
You're not going to learn anything new.
Sorry, you're not going to experience
anything new, you're only going to be able to experience the old with perfect clarity.
That's the point.
The point is not to experience something new.
The point is to experience the old with a perfect experience, with a clear experience.
So when you lift the foot, it's the same lifting that's always gone on.
And you will do it again and again and again.
It's not going to get different.
But what is different is your quality of knowing it.
You'll become better and better at just knowing this is the lifting sensation.
This is the moving sensation.
This is the placing sensation.
Or when we do sitting and we know that this is the rising sensation, this is the falling sensation.
It's nothing new.
The new is getting rid of the old, getting rid of the projections, the conceit and the views, the idea that it's me, that it's mine.
These are the evil things and the formations that arise.
The conceptual understanding or the attachment or the delusion of seeing things conceptually.
So when we hear we think of that as being a person or a place or a person or a thing.
We hear a person saying nasty things and we think that's a person who I don't like saying nasty things to me.
This is delusion.
This is conceptual.
The reality is just sound.
Even science can verify that.
When you hear a sound, there's no person.
There's just the sound.
You can't experience another person.
You can only experience the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the feelings and the thoughts.
This is the ultimate reality level.
If you can function on this level, at least during the meditation practice,
You'll be able to see what is meant by this clear state of mind.
You'll be able to see the truth of the experience, the truth of reality.
You'll be able to give up evil and find your mind naturally inclining away from things that create stress and suffering.
Just by seeing things for what they are, you'll be able to see what is stress, what is suffering, what is the cause.
It's quite simple, a simple theory, and it's quite a simple practice.
But because of our habits, our habits of clinging to things and misunderstanding things, and our habits that have been developed under blindness.
If you think back to most of our habits, we've developed them just at random.
We always complain that there's no manual to life.
And it's really because there is no user's guide that we develop our habits.
Not for any reason, not for any particular purpose.
It just happens to be the way we develop them.
And so they could be totally against our best interests.
And they generally are.
Why our habits are often totally
harmful to us is because they're being developed under the veil of ignorance and often under the influence of greed and anger as well.
So the Abhidhamma version is just the meaning to see things clearly as they are.
To see experience, momentary experience as a momentary experience.
Seeing that it is what it is.
This is the giving up of evil, the giving up of any kind of diversification, any kind of mental formation about the object.
This is what is meant by Arati Virati Bapa.
This is quite interesting really because
means giving up intoxicating drink.
It's funny how the Buddha singled this one out because it's always the one that gets singled out for exclusion.
People will often think that the first four precepts are easy to understand, not killing, stealing, lying, cheating, cheating, lying, because those four actually hurt someone else.
So people totally, completely misunderstand the purpose of the precepts, thinking that
There's nothing wrong with alcohol because you're not doing any violence to another person, so therefore it's not evil.
So we believe that drinking alcohol is something that's not evil.
How can it be evil?
You're not hurting anyone else, right?
So we have a complete misunderstanding or an understanding of evil that is totally opposite to the Buddha's understanding, which is that it causes suffering for us.
When you kill, the problem is not that the other person dies.
The problem is the suffering that you create in your own mind.
The perversion, the amount of force and disharmony that you create in your mind.
Yourself wanting to find peace and happiness, and yet intentionally giving rise to suffering.
This has a profound impact on your life.
It's actually much more fearsome than the death.
The person who dies is actually, in some sense, far better off because their mind is not necessarily sullied by that.
It's not a nice thing to have to die not knowing where you're going next, especially to have been murdered.
But it's a far worse thing to actually be the murderer and have to carry that around for the rest of your lives.
It's something that people who have never killed before have a hard time understanding.
People who have done hunting or killed even small animals and then come to practice meditation can understand this.
And people who have studied criminals, for example, can understand the profound impact.
There was an interesting...
I think I've talked about this before, but there's one of the classic...
of literature that many people know about is this book called Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
I don't know what the Russian title is, but in English they call it Crime and Punishment.
It's an incredible book to read, even though it's fiction.
It's very easy to empathize with this if you've ever killed before, because the crime is murder.
And the punishment that this man goes through is not at all the punishment of being put in jail.
It's the punishment of his own mind and seeing how liable he is to that.
He has even some kind of theory that he can be above it.
That people like Napoleon, for example, he uses the example of Napoleon, are above evil because they're above the state.
They become conquerors.
And they create the rules.
And because they create the rules, they're above evil.
And that carries through for most of the book.
He still thinks that.
He thinks the problem is not that I did something evil.
The problem is that I'm not Napoleon.
I'm not above the rules.
I'm not strong enough to make the rules.
So for most of the book, he thinks that it's just because he wasn't strong enough that he now has to suffer horribly.
Until very near the end of the book, you get this profound realization that he has.
that he really did something, he really killed a person, he did something horrible.
Which totally destroys this theory that you can somehow be beyond the consequences of evil deeds.
And he has a breakdown and he actually, at that point, can begin to recover.
This kind of thing, if someone studies criminals or works with criminals, you can see how clearly they suffer.
After a person kills, when a person kills another person, the profound impact it has on their minds, that even will shock the person who did the killing.
Because they would have thought beforehand, it's not such a big deal.
You play video games, you shoot each other all the time, right?
Play video games with your friends, shoot each other.
It's a common thing.
Try doing it in real life.
No, don't try.
Of course, no.
By all means, don't.
You shouldn't even say such things.
not because it means suffering for others, but because it means a horror for you.
This is something to understand well before you might give rise to such an act.
So this is how we should understand suffering, or how we should understand evil.
It's that which destroys the mind, that which harms the mind.
And killing, for example, is a very horrible way of destroying the mind.
So when we come to alcohol, it's actually quite easy to see why the Buddha singled this out.
because it directly relates to the mind.
Why do you take alcohol except to affect your mind?
And the only effect that alcohol has on you is to pollute the mind, to cloud the mind.
People who have practiced meditation and then go back and try to drink alcohol are shocked by how profoundly a single
drink can affect their minds.
They would have thought before, well, surely one drink is not going to get in the way of my meditation.
And a person who's never meditated would be vehement that even a few drinks shouldn't impair you.
People who say they can still drive a vehicle under the influence of some alcohol.
And then they go further and further with that, thinking they can drive even when drunk and so on.
But a person who has practiced meditation, who goes back and tries that, will be quite amazed by how quickly the mind becomes impaired.
How difficult it is to even create an ordinary thought, let alone a clear thought.
How impossible a clear thought becomes, because goodness and evil are measured on the clarity of the mind.
Alcohol has an evil effect on the mind.
The only way you could possibly avoid it is if you were already enlightened and somehow someone were to press alcohol on you or force you to drink it or so on.
But even then the arahant, the enlightened being who would be under the influence of some drug would still not be able to create a clear thought.
They simply wouldn't be able to create an evil thought because there's no ability for the evil to arise.
There's no root.
It's like the roots have been dug out.
It's like you pour water in the soil over the tree, but the roots have been cut off.
Or you cut down a palm tree and then you start pouring water over it.
But as long as there is still some evil inside, the water is going to have the growing effect on the tree.
As long as there is still some evil inside of us,
Alcohol is a perfect cultivator for those evil stains.
It creates the habit of evil, of clouding, of delusion.
It's really for the purpose of deluding, because we don't want to see clearly.
The reason why we take alcohol is generally because we have something that we don't want to be able to see clearly.
Even when you go to a party,
If you see clearly, you see someone and you say, or you're able to think clearly, then you'll think, oh, but what if I say something stupid or so on like that?
And you'll feel self-conscious and concerned about your appearance and so on, because you can form clear thoughts.
But when you get drunk, this is why people want to drink alcohol, because you can throw that out all out the window.
You will say stupid things, but you won't care.
You're unable to see clearly.
You're unable to see when you do something stupid.
If you say something really stupid, you don't feel self-conscious.
You don't even know that you said something stupid.
You don't even realize that there are consequences with it.
You might say something to anger other people.
Often this is why drunk people get into fights.
Because they don't realize that they're harming them.
Normally when you make someone angry, you become quite afraid, right?
Oh, maybe he'll hit me.
Maybe this person will yell at me.
Now you're like, come on, bring it on.
Let's fight.
Or yelling and so on.
So the reasons for taking alcohol are really the opposite of the reasons for practicing meditation.
It's the most important one to single out.
Because it relates back directly to the mind.
Obviously it's possible to kill unintentionally.
It's possible to steal something not knowing that it's not yours.
It's only because of the intention in the mind that these things become evil.
But drinking alcohol, the very intention to drink the alcohol, it can't be mitigated.
So even if you don't know that it's alcohol, or you don't know that alcohol is going to have an effect on you, it still has an effect on you.
even if you don't drink the alcohol intentionally, and then it goes down your throat.
One time I was at someone's house and there was no water in the house or the water was contaminated or something, so we had to drink bottled water.
And I went to the fridge and there was a glass of water there, sitting there, and I was so thirsty that I drank it back.
And it turned out to be vodka, for example.
I spit most of it up, but even if you drink it in that case, it's not something you can use as an excuse.
Well, please don't make me drunk.
Please don't affect my mind.
I didn't mean to drink it.
There's no mitigating effect.
mitigating potential.
People should clearly understand.
It's a shame to hear about people who think they can practice Buddhism and still take drugs or drink alcohol.
It's totally opposite to what we're trying to do.
We're trying to create a natural and a clear state of mind, an objective and an impartial state of mind.
So trying to create any
other sort of state of mind this is opposite to our intention and the third one is of course the most important this is the clear teaching of the Buddha this is the core of the Buddha's teaching we've been going through this at the Dhammapada means vigilance or heedfulness it means having mindfulness all the time the Buddha said what does it mean to be heedful what do we mean when we say to be careful
This means being mindful at every moment.
It is important to understand that when we practice meditation, even if we practice for an hour, we can practice for a whole hour without having any benefit from the practice.
According to the Visuddhi Manga, taking three steps with perfect mindfulness is enough to become an Arahant.
There was one monk who wasn't even a Sotapanna.
He had practiced, but he had made a determination
to be reborn in the time of the next Buddha and become enlightened then.
And so he didn't exert himself for enlightenment.
As he was dying, his students asked him, and he said, Oh, I haven't gained anything from the practice.
And they said, What?
You're going to die like that?
Please, exert yourself.
So he said, Okay, then you want to see something?
Prepare the walking place.
And in front of them all he did this walking meditation, stepping, right, stepping, three steps, and he became an arahant.
Normally for most of us how it goes is we might take three steps and suddenly our mind has wandered already.
The first step might be very mindful, the second one partially mindful, and by the third one
something has already taken us, something from the second step has already taken us away.
And then we might take ten more steps without being mindful.
So a very important part, this is what it means to guard the mind.
Jitang guttang sukha vahangas.
Guarding the mind with morality.
what we mean by morality, to keep the mind from following after the thoughts, following after the pains, following after the memories, following after the sounds and the sights and the heat and so on.
From following after these things, reminding ourselves that this is just heat, this is just sound, this is just pain and so on.
keeping up with them, keeping the mind in this corral that we've built up.
As I said yesterday about building up this corral, this fence that lets the mind wander, but only within these things.
So as soon as the mind gets out of that, it's impossible to catch again.
You have to wait for it to come back by itself, and then you know again, oh, now I was wandering.
We've wasted all that time.
in regards to the Dhammas.
Now, this is a plural.
Dhammasu is in regards to not just the Dhamma.
It doesn't mean in regards to the teaching of the Buddha.
It means Dhammasu is the reality.
It means in regards to the experiences that we have.
When the foot moves, in regards to the sensations of moving,
The elements of the coolness of lifting your foot and the pressure in the leg.
The pressure when you move and the coolness of moving the foot.
Putting the foot down in the heat and the hardness of touching the floor.
Continuing, creating this chain of mindfulness.
where from one moment to the next you're mindful, guarding your mind like a sleeping baby, keeping the mind in its train of thought, just as trying to keep a baby asleep.
If you break the baby's sleep, if you take the baby's attention away from its sleep, right away the baby will wake up.
In the same way, if you let your mind get distracted just for a moment, let your mind cling to one thing,
forget to be mindful of one thing, whether it be a sensation or a thought or an emotion, you've lost the meditation.
So this appamado jadamme, so it's just the teaching on the meditation.
In the sitting meditation,
rising, falling.
It doesn't mean that you have to stay with the rising, falling the whole time.
Start with the rising and the falling of the stomach, and when the mind goes off, just make sure that you're there with it.
You still have these fences, this fence up.
So if it's going to go that way, you're going to be there with the fence.
Stop it.
Buddha gave this teaching, yāni sotāni lokasmiṁ sati tesang nivārayaṁ nivārayaṁ
that whatever streams, whatever outlets there are in the world, mindfulness is that which stops them, stops the mind from chasing after things, stops the arising of this outflow or leaking, whatever leaks there, leaking in the mind.
losing your presence, losing your equilibrium, unbalancing the mind.
So it is mindfulness that stops this like a gate, like a fence.
So these things are a blessing for us.
This is where we find our blessings.
We don't find our blessings in sights or sounds.
We don't find our blessings in chants or holy objects, protective charms and amulets and so on.
We don't find a blessing in gods or angels or even other people.
we find a blessing in our practice and through our practice we are able to give up evil we are able to become free from suffering through our practice we are able to develop a clear mind we are able to attain this state that is so so seemingly impossible to not be bothered by anything to be
perfectly at peace in the face of any experience.
This is where we strive for.
And we're able to attain it at every moment when we practice.
Something that seems impossible, that everyone must have their anger, everyone must have their greed.
Some people are vehement that it's impossible to give these things up.
And so as a result they think it's futile to try or else it's contrary to nature.
And if it weren't possible, you might have a reason to believe this.
Our theory and claim in Buddhism and our realization through our practice is that such a state is actually quite easily possible.
And many people are able to gain it in a very short time.
Meaning just the preliminary practice
not meaning that they're enlightened, but able to enter into this path of practice where they begin to see things just for what they are and where they're able to experience things without any liking or disliking, without any attachment.
where they're able to deal, they're able to experience things that are very difficult to experience, able to experience great suffering, physical suffering or external, external evil, when people hurt them or act in a way that is unpleasant
able to deal with difficult situations, where they may be evicted, where they may be punished, where they may be abused and so on, without suffering, without having any mental suffering.
This, I should think, is obviously a great blessing.
It's perhaps more than a blessing
It's something that sounds too good to be true, and so it's the ultimate good.
This is what we gain really by giving up evil.
We should never lose sight of this, that it's not getting what we want, it's the giving up of wanting.
It's not the freedom from the things that we don't want, it's the giving up of disliking, the giving up of evil, both deeds and thoughts and desires.
and actually all reality, giving up any attachment to any reality.
This is what we mean by freedom from suffering, freedom from evil.
So that's more on the blessings, just more food for thought, and hopefully more explanation on how we should develop the meditation practice.
So another talk for today, and now we'll continue on with our meditation.