Good evening everyone.
Can you hear me?
Hello?
Oh, good evening everyone.
Smaller group tonight.
I don't know, last night's talk I gave a talk about Dhamma, the word Dhamma.
I think it was particularly awful.
I got several down votes already on YouTube, and today half of our crowd is missing.
I don't know what was wrong with it, but I've driven everyone away.
There could, of course, be another explanation.
I didn't think it was particularly awful, but, oh, the internet, no?
The past is not important.
We should never dwell on the past, nor worry about the future.
Simon thinks yesterday's talk was awesome, but he thinks all my talks are awesome.
Anyway, today's talk is about the present moment.
The present moment.
There's a book that everyone says I should read or everyone asks me about.
I'm constantly asked about this book called The Power of Now by
by this famous author, speaker, motivation dude, or spiritual guide, I don't know, Eckhart Tolle.
I think he has something to do with Oprah Winfrey or something.
The Power of Now.
He's right, though.
That's a good title for a book.
It's a good subject.
It's a good phrase.
not to be taken lightly.
There's a story
Well, there's a verse that actually appears in a couple of places but one well-known place is in the Tamiya Jataka
If you don't know about the Tamiya Jataka, it's a long story.
It's a really good story.
It's one of the ten great Jatakas.
Great meaning more than it has a lot of verses, but also great in that it's one of the more powerful moving stories.
And the story goes that there was this prince who, even before he was born, he was an angel in heaven and
This king on earth needed a son and the king of the angels persuaded the Bodhisatta to be reborn as a human being.
I guess angels can sort of decide where they want to be reborn.
And so he was reborn as this prince, but
When he was very young, he was sitting on his father's lap, and his father was sitting in judgment, and these robbers came to the king, and the king sentenced them all to being stabbed with spears, impaled upon stakes, having their heads cut off, their hands cut off, and so on.
Typical king stuff.
But the bodhisattvas lying there was just horrified.
This young boy.
And as he was sitting there, it became all very familiar to him.
And he remembered his past life.
That in the past he had been a king.
And he had done this same sort of thing.
He had engaged in
Sentencing robbers and really being a fairly nasty person.
Whether the people deserved it or not.
Engaging in all sorts of nasty torture and punishment.
And as a result had been reborn in hell in this next life.
And he had lived in hell for many years and he was just starting to get on the way up when he made it to sort of the lower angel realms.
And he said, what am I doing back here?
I'm back where I started.
One day I'll be king and I'll have to do that very same thing.
And so he decided that he would pretend to be
pretend to be crippled.
He would pretend to be dumb.
He would pretend to be an invalid.
And the story goes on and on.
And for 16 years, he made as though he couldn't see or hear or he was deaf and dumb and mute and stupid.
But the doctors looked at him and they said, there's nothing wrong.
So they tried to test him and they tested him in all these ways by
When he was sitting in his playhouse, they would set fire to it.
Put him in this playhouse and then set fire to it, thinking that he'd run out.
But he'd think to himself, the fires of hell are...
These fires are nothing compared to the fires of hell.
And he would lie there and be prepared to burn, and so they'd put the fires out.
Anyway, eventually he leaves home.
Eventually they...
they decide they're going to have to just get rid of him.
And so they're going to go and bury him and kill him and just bury him.
When he gets out of the city, where this guy's going to go and kill him, he says, oh, here I am out, and they all think I'm going to die, so he just wanders off and goes and lives in the forest.
Eventually the king and all the queen and all of their retinue and the whole city follows him.
It's a long story, I really don't want to get into the details.
But when they hear he's gone forth, the king says he's going to go forth, the queen follows him, and the courtiers and the royal palace all decide to follow instead.
And when the populace hears about it, they all follow the king and everybody decides to go off into the forest and they set up a monastery, an ashram.
But when they get to the forest to find the prince, they find that he's wearing some kind of bark cloth or something and sitting and he's quite alert.
And so they talk to him and they say, you're not an invalid.
And he said, no, no.
I just knew I couldn't be king and this was my way of getting out of it.
And so they asked him about his life.
And anyway, the point of this story is it comes to this verse where they ask him, how is it?
You know, you were a prince and we had to feed you and bathe you and you lived in such luxury.
But here you are living in the forest and yet you look radiant.
You look more alive than ever.
And they asked him what he was eating and
found that he was just eating simple leaves and the coarsest of coarse food.
And so the king asked him, how on this food can you subsist and look so wonderful, so alive?
And so he told this
This rather poignant verse, he said, For the past I do not mourn, nor for the future weep.
I take the present as it comes, and thus my color keep.
There's another, and almost the same verse appears somewhere else where an angel comes to see the Buddha, I think, and asks why the monks are...
I don't know, maybe this is the same jataka, I can't remember.
Anyway, this is the verse.
And it highlights this important concept of the present moment.
And then the next verse, the verse after it says, when you worry about the past or for some uncertain future need, it dries a fool's color up as when you cut a fresh green reed.
So this is the other side of the equation, the other side of the coin.
The present moment is such a powerful concept or reality because it's real.
Because the present moment is what is really and truly occurring, which really and truly exists.
why the past and the future are inferior, and they are inferior, why they are a cause of so much problem, it's because they don't exist.
Because they arise conceptually in the mind.
And so the power, the amount of energy it takes to
To live in the past and to live in the future is far more, far greater than in the present.
And on top of that, it's much more complicated or it's much more open to complication because it doesn't exist.
The nature of concepts is they can be infinite.
They are infinite.
And you can always add something to them.
Imagination is infinite.
Possibilities are endless.
And so all of our complicated obsessions, desires, aversions, all of our egos, it's all caught up in these concepts, these and other concepts, but most especially the past and the future, what we're going to be, what we used to be.
It can also be caught up in concepts in the present.
But past and future themselves are some of the worst concepts.
Worrying about the future, reminiscing or bemoaning the past.
And so it really is like that.
You uproot yourself.
The present moment is like this rooted experience.
Where you're well connected with reality, just like a reed or grass that is well rooted in the soil.
And so it grows and it thrives.
It's just the reality of the present moment.
A person who's in the past and the future is cut off from that.
It's cut off from what's real.
And with no grounding point, right?
with no anchor, gets lost and spun around and around in concepts.
All of our theories and philosophies, all of our views and opinions, all of our likes and dislikes, all of the things we identify with or seek to escape from, all of this is caught up in concepts.
And so we waste away.
Anyone who lives in the future or lives in the past, they wither up.
They dry up.
Their energy is used up.
They don't have this color, this radiance.
They aren't alive.
They don't even feel alive.
A person who's never lived in the present moment might not realize it, but a person who has, a person who's practiced and who's seen and who's experienced what it's like to live now, will be able to tell you the clear difference.
I mean, this is the real reassurance in the practice.
Again, talking about how you know whether your practice is good.
How do you know whether meditation is actually beneficial?
How does it feel?
If you haven't yet felt the difference between the present moment and dwelling in concepts, and you haven't really meditated, then you can say you don't yet get it.
But at the moment when you're present, just that moment, in that moment you can feel the difference.
Suddenly you're powerful, you're strong, you're in fact invincible.
The present moment solves every problem.
Problems are conceptual.
When you're in the present moment any problem is immediately solved.
For that moment there is no problem because problems are not real.
Of course this conflicts with all of our conceptual desires and ambitions and relationships and our status and our ego and our personality.
So for most of us it's not
Living in the world, it's not feasible for us to always be in the present moment.
But by no means is that the fault of reality.
That's our fault for getting caught up.
Caught up in ego and identity and desires and aversions.
You get caught up in these things.
Relationships with people, places, things.
Attachments, aversions and so on.
All conceptual.
Nothing to do with reality.
Kind of makes you want to go off in the forest and just live.
Be real.
People talk about, oh, yes, it's a nice vacation.
I remember meeting the king of Uganda or something.
in Thailand.
He was a friend with the prince of Thailand.
I was at this very famous royal monastery.
All the royalty came through there and I happened to meet him.
I got to tour him around this monastery.
He was a bit of a jerk.
Very Christian and very pro-Christianity.
So he was asking me about the difference
Christianity and Buddhism.
He said, well, do you believe that Jesus is the son of God or something?
Oh, we don't have a problem with that.
What do you have a problem with?
Well, we have a problem maybe with the eternal soul, the idea of an eternal soul.
And he said, you don't believe in an eternal soul?
I said, we don't really believe in a soul at all.
It was really a bizarre conversation with this king of another country.
I don't remember what my point was.
What was I talking about?
Yeah, I know.
What was the point of that?
Oh yeah, living in the forest?
I don't remember.
I had a point, a reason for telling you about this guy.
Got caught up in my story.
Makes you want to go off and live in the forest.
How did I get talking about the king of Rwanda, of Uganda?
It'll come to me someday.
Maybe I'll replay this video back and try and remember what I was talking about.
Having to punish people?
No, it wasn't that.
There's something about him that was related to what I was just talking about.
Concepts.
Anyway, stay in the present moment.
That's the deal.
How wonderful it is to be in the present moment.
How it solves all your problems.
How there's a real power to it.
I'll figure it out.
I'll tell you a good story tomorrow.
Anyway, there you go.
That's the Dhamma for tonight.
That the mind is also impermanent.
Memory is also impermanent.
It just disappears like that.
It's non-self.
You can't control it.
Okay, thank you all.
That's the Dhamma for tonight.
I do have something else to talk about.
I'm assuming I don't...
I know some of you, some of you I think I know, some of you I don't recognize, but maybe just because of your online names.
But here's an idea.
Is Robin here?
Robin's here, no?
I was thinking, I was talking actually with May, the Thai woman who helps us out.
And she was going to come here to meditate in early May, and I said, oh, well, early May, I'm hoping to go back to, early May is my birthday, and I was hoping to go back to my place of birth for my birthday, meaning to go back to Manitoulin Island, just, I guess, to sort of say that I've been back.
But I thought, well, why not go to where I was born?
And we got talking, but I said, well, why don't we do a, what if we were to do a meditation?
She said, oh, you should bring some people up with you.
And I said, well, what if we did a meditation course up there?
And I was thinking, there are a bunch of really nice resorts up on Manitoulin Island.
And we could actually just book a resort for a week.
and invite people to come and stay at this island resort.
Now, I was looking, and it's actually not quite as cheap as I thought it would be, but we could talk about it.
And if there's people who would like to go, you know, Manitoulin is beautiful.
It's really, in May, it's the best time of year because it's not too hot.
There's no mosquitoes.
And yet it's very much in the forest.
sort of in nature.
So if people wanted to book a room at some resort, we could find the right resort and we could just get people to pay their room.
Talking about people who have money, I don't know, maybe it's a ridiculous idea.
And there are other ways we could book.
One of my friends on Manitoulin is looking into it.
Maybe we could book some cheaper space to sort of hold some kind of meditation course.
Anyway, something to think about.
If anyone's interested in that sort of idea, coming up to meditate in Manitoulin Island, or do a real forest retreat in Canada, let me know.
OK, so we do have some questions.
We'd have to take a van probably.
We'd have to drive ourselves.
Okay.
Questions from the site.
Oh, a question about offering meals and food.
Hmm.
If you're eating on campus with a food card, how would you go about adding money to that account?
Well, there's really no need because there's like almost $2,000 on that account still, so...
It's already been paid up for the next couple of years.
And I'm getting lots of food from the Sri Lankan community here.
More and more Sri Lankan people in the area are signing up to offer food.
But from time to time I still do use Subway, Tim Hortons, Pita Pit, Starbucks card.
The most useful so far has been Starbucks.
Not so far, but this year.
Because Starbucks is just the only convenient location.
Um, Starbucks is like on campus.
It's on my way to campus.
And so a Starbucks card is, and it's not for coffee.
I don't drink coffee at Starbucks, but they have oatmeal and they have lunch sandwiches and they have, uh, they actually have juice as well.
nice juices in the evening.
They even have salads, but the problem with the salads is they leave them out and you have to pick them up yourself, which technically isn't allowed.
I'm only allowed to do this because theoretically they're offering on behalf, they're giving it on behalf of whoever has left money with them.
But they don't give everything to you.
Anyway, but thank you Kathy for asking, but it's really fine.
There's lots and lots of support.
I'm getting enough food.
Can I move my legs if they fall asleep during meditation and should the head stay in one position?
You don't have to, because if they fall asleep, you just be mindful of it and keep sitting.
But if you need to move more for pain, pain would be something that would really cause you to want to move.
Then you would just say to yourself, wanting to move, wanting to move, moving, moving.
And the head is the head the same, if you want to move the head.
If it does move, you can just raise it back up, intending to raise, raising, raising.
Does the approach of what can this meditation give me, will it make me happy, prevent progress?
I mean, it can.
Yeah, it can certainly become a hindrance when you're worried about that or when you're doubting or unsure.
How can one ensure equanimity simply knowing the disliking frustration?
Is it not necessary to try to intellectualize it by trying to replace my wrong attitude with the right attitude?
No, right attitude has to come from wisdom.
It comes from understanding.
You can't
You can't artificially create or intellectually create right attitude.
It has to come from seeing things clearly as they are.
Once you see reality clearly as it is, the right attitude follows.
Excuse me.
My question is on free will and non-self.
With observation, I see whatever I do is because of things arising in my mind, my likes and dislikes, and judge it based on knowledge of Dhammas.
Even when I incline my mind to focus in one direction or the other, it's based on these things are happening.
The only thing that I can do is observe.
I don't get it.
I see whatever I do is because of things arising in my mind.
Okay.
Even when I incline my mind to focus on these factors, these things are happening.
The only thing I can do is observe.
You know, there is no good view about free will.
If you're worried about free will, you should say worried, worried, or speculating, or confused, or doubting, or so on.
Just let it go.
Yeah, I think you're overthinking.
You know what I'm going to say already.
I mean, it's fine.
It's normal in meditation to think.
Just remind yourself, thinking, thinking.
Present moment.
All right, do we have some questions?
Oh, here, you're copying them in.
If you want to support the monastery...
That's always good.
You don't have to give me food.
Pante, do you think King Bimbisara wouldn't have punished criminals since he was a Sotapanna?
Well, yeah, King Bimbisara would never have had anyone killed, of course.
Doesn't mean he wouldn't... No, he was in...
There were cases...
Actually, I'm not sure, but no, certainly he was a great king, a noble king.
He would never have punished.
Not in that way.
Unfortunately, his reign was cut short by his son.
But yeah, during the time that he
I mean, he wasn't always a Buddhist.
He didn't originally...
He was a king for many years before he met the Buddha.
But once he met the Buddha and then became a Sotapanna, from that time on, he would have never done anything cruel.
Not overly cruel.
You know, Sotapanna can still be mean, but not... not, you know, reason... not...
Not mean in the way most of us think, but they could still get angry and be somehow cruel to people.
And they wouldn't torture them, certainly not cause them to be put to death.
I remember what it was.
So this king of Uganda, at the last minute, after I've told him this thing about the soul and he's not really impressed by my whole philosophy,
he says to me and this other monk, and I've got a picture right before, they took a picture of us, and I've still got this picture right before he said it, then he turns to me and he says, well, enjoy your vacation in the most snide way possible.
You know, he was just totally condescending.
And so the point was,
People think of going off into the forest as a sort of vacation, a means of escaping your problems.
And the thought was that people say it's about escaping real life, right?
It's a vacation.
And real life, people often ask me, well, how can I incorporate meditation into real life?
which is kind of absurd from our point of view.
We're like, no, no, we go off into the forest in order to live real life.
The life in society is totally fake and contrived.
So there you go.
That was how the talk was supposed to end.
Thank you all.
Have a good night.