Good evening everyone and welcome to our live broadcast.
Today we're looking at Anguttara Nikaya Book of Fours, Sutta 113, Padoda Sutta.
Patoda is a stick that you use to, a special stick that is used to prod, prod a horse.
The stick that was designed to be used against a horse to make the horse afraid and out of fear the horse would respond.
Increase its speed, most likely.
It's where they get the term beating a dead horse.
If you use the goad or the prod on a dead horse, it doesn't have any effect.
Kind of a nasty sort of implement.
So the Buddha used this as an analogy for something nasty.
He said there are four kinds of horses.
Five kinds of horses.
When do we have the fifth kind?
I think maybe this one only has four.
There might be another sutta where there's actually the fifth one.
Anyway, for our intents and purposes, four is enough.
These four kinds of horses are called Ajjaniyya.
Ajjaniyya.
Just want to look up the word Ajjaniyya.
Ajjaniyya.
Not in the sutta.
Anyway.
It means like a thoroughbred horse.
Badro.
It's a special horse.
Four kinds.
What kinds of horses that you would say they're trainable?
What kind of horses that you can train?
The Buddha was thought it was called
Purisa Dhamma Sarati.
Sarati.
Sarati is one.
Saratai.
Saratai is a cart.
Saratai.
With a cart.
Sarati.
One who has a cart.
Sarati means a trainer.
One who trains horses.
But the Buddha was a trainer of men.
Of people.
The Buddha was able to train those who are
who were able to be trained.
Anyone who was capable of it, the Buddha was the one to train them.
This kind of imagery, this kind of analogy is common, fair in the Buddha's teaching.
But as for horses, the kind of horses that are trainable, there are four kinds.
The first kind of horse, you lift the padodha, the goad, and it just has to see its shadow.
Padodha chayang.
Having seen the shadow of the goad, it gets freaked out.
Well, it doesn't get freaked out.
It becomes moved, stirred.
agitated and knows what to do.
Second kind of thoroughbred horse, well, it sees the shadow, but it's not stirred.
But as soon as the goat touches the horse, just touches it,
touches it to the hair on its coat.
As soon as it feels the goad, it becomes agitated.
It gets a sense of urgency.
Urgency, .
And this word is a sense of urgency.
That's the second type.
The third type, you can touch it with the goat.
When it sees the goat, nothing.
When you touch it with the goat, nothing.
But if you whack it with the goat, once it feels a little bit of pain, okay, then it gets a sense of urgency.
It says, oh, better do something.
Better speed up.
Better turn right.
Better turn left.
Whatever.
And the fourth type, even if you hit it, it's not a very well-bred horse, but you hit it, you hit the hide, nothing.
But if you whack it on the bone where it really hurts, make it really hurt, then it becomes excited, agitated, moved.
These are four kinds of horses.
How is this interesting to us?
It's because in the same way there are four thoroughbred people in the world.
Four people that you can train.
Four types of people that can be trained.
So listen up.
Think of yourself as the sort of person who is
going to respond to the goad.
So you think, well, is the Buddha going to use a goad on us?
Sometimes our students get afraid.
I think the teacher is going to punish them.
They're afraid of the teacher sometimes.
But that's not what this is referring to, actually.
That's not the imagery the Buddha is providing us with.
The goad here is old age, sickness and death.
Go to suffering.
Some people see it, some people don't.
Everyone is touched by it.
Everyone is aware that it exists.
But it takes a special type of person to respond to it.
So the Buddha said there are four types of people.
For some people, like the Bodhisattva is one.
Many people.
You first hear about death.
Buddha says, in such and such a village or town, some woman or man has fallen ill and died.
That's it.
That's all it takes.
They hear about that and they say, holy crap, that could happen to me.
And so being stirred, they strive
Knowing this, having heard this, once they know this, they give rise to or they become agitated.
Being agitated, they strive on with wisdom, wisely, carefully.
And as a result, they're able to see the truth for themselves.
That's all it takes.
Think of this as someone who comes to meditate because they know that death is a part of life.
Why?
They've heard of other people dying.
Sometimes it takes a real catastrophe.
You hear about...
When I heard about the September 11th attack, which today is the anniversary, it's like what, the 15th, 16th anniversary, 15th anniversary?
When I heard about it, I was doing walking meditation.
I remember one of the other meditators came to my kutti, and one of the teachers actually came to my kutti.
said, two planes just flew into the Twin Towers.
And I was kind of like, wow, sounded like a movie.
Didn't faze me at all.
I mean, I didn't get the extent of it.
But like a year or two later, I saw a book.
These people falling from the towers.
And stories of people being crushed and
being pushed just by the throng of bodies, being pushed out windows, having ceilings collapse.
3,000 people lost their lives.
Just last year or this year, we went in New York to a memorial where they had these names of all the victims.
We did meditation there.
People think about this and they don't know anyone, they don't know any of these people, but it's a shock enough to make them think, wow, that could happen to me.
Or you hear about the tsunami in Asia.
Some of the stories you hear about suffering in Thailand, Sri Lanka.
I was in Thailand when it happened, actually.
This big tsunami in 2004 or something.
I don't remember.
Many years ago.
2006, maybe.
I don't remember.
Sometimes that's all it takes.
It makes you think, wow, that could come to any of us.
That could come to the ones I love.
That could come to me, myself.
And you decide that all of this thing, all of this busyness that we...
We thrive upon or we rush towards.
We spend so much energy on all these things that in the end are circumscribed by death.
Their meaning, their benefit.
The power is subservient to the realities that we're going to get old, sick and die.
They end up being somewhat meaningless and insignificant.
And so this sort of person takes up the practice of something that is significant.
Some way to rise above the
Above the limits placed on us by death.
Or at least to prepare oneself so that the death is with a sound mind, with a clear mind.
That's the first type.
The second type of person, that's like the horse that just sees the shadow.
It doesn't hurt.
It doesn't even feel it.
But a second type of person has to see somebody die, or has to see suffering, see someone suffering.
Not someone they know, not a family member, not someone they're especially fond of, so it doesn't hurt, but it shocks them.
They see people dying, maybe someone in a battlefield or someone in a hospital.
Maybe you're just walking down the street and someone gets hit by a car and you think, that could happen to me.
Maybe you're on a bus and someone has a heart attack.
It doesn't happen to everyone.
But when it happens, well, some people respond, some people don't.
Some people think, hmm, well, glad it didn't happen to me.
Thank God that didn't happen to me.
There but for the grace of God.
Odd saying, no?
Sounds almost vicious and cruel.
Why didn't it happen to you, right?
Some people, that's all they can think of is, oh, they feel lucky, they're glad that it happened to someone else and not to them or anyone they love.
So we live in this glass or this bubble, right?
This illusory palace.
We hear about people being robbed and murdered and just getting sick, cancer.
It doesn't come to anyone we know.
Sometimes when we see it, then it hits us, oh yes, well really this could happen to me.
It hits home for some people.
And so they think, well I better do something about that.
There's got to be something better than just running around in my hamster wheel.
And so they decide to take up spiritual practice.
The third type of thoroughbred human
Well, they might see it happen to someone else, but that wouldn't move them.
But when someone they know, someone they love, someone they care about very much, mother, father, sister, brother, husband, wife, they get sick and die, or they suffer terribly, then it hits home.
At the very least, it hits home that you can lose something very precious to you in a moment.
You're hit with mourning and loss and a sense that suffering isn't just something that happens to other people.
You get a sense of what it means to lose something.
You get a sense of how uncertain life is.
And maybe it penetrates in and they think, well, that could happen to me.
I could be next.
What am I going to do?
Watching their loved one die, how am I going to feel when I die?
How am I going to react?
How am I going to face my death?
And so they take up spiritual practice.
This is like the one that actually has to hurt.
You hit the horse with a goad and it gets hurt, feels pain.
And the fourth type of person, well, this is where it really hits home.
You get old, you get sick and you're dying.
Some people, it has to get to that point.
That's to really cut to the bone, so to speak.
Some people will only start to practice when they're actually sick or dying, when they experience great suffering.
Sometimes it doesn't take death.
Sometimes it just takes great suffering.
They have to be hit with suffering.
But taking their own suffering as a base, then they come and do something.
The fifth type of person that's not in this sutta, but I have a feeling that it's somewhere else.
This is from my memory.
It's the horse that you have to beat it until it dies.
And if you beat it until it dies, it still won't.
get up and, well, if it's dead it won't get up, but you beat it until it dies and it'll never, before it's dead it won't ever do what you say.
Like a mule perhaps, how we think of a mule.
You beat it, it doesn't help.
This is the sort of person, no matter how much suffering comes, they always look on the bright side of life
And they're not prepared for death when it comes, and they die confused and deluded, without any spiritual clarity or enlightenment.
Never thought to keep moral precepts, never thought to cultivate meditation, never thought to cultivate wisdom.
They just live their lives plodding along, doing things that in the end turn out to be meaningless, pointless, useless.
So, which of these types of people do we want to be?
Ajahn Tong, I've heard him tell this.
When I first heard it, maybe not first heard it, but many years ago, I have a recording of him talking about this sutta.
He said the Buddha liked to give us similes and analogies.
It's important for us to remember this, that anything could happen.
Sometimes we get kind of demotivated in our meditation, thinking, oh, why am I bothered?
You have to question yourself.
Are you ready for anything?
Are you equipped to handle vicissitudes of life?
It's like you're going to war and you don't know how to shoot a gun.
It's not very well prepared or anything that you have to prepare for.
Are you prepared for life?
Are you prepared for death?
Most people are not.
and we suffer.
But this is the thing, until it comes to you, many people will not actually react.
It's kind of embarrassing that it takes our own suffering, and we never really thought before we suffered ourselves,
When we suffer ourselves, we leap sometimes.
Some people, many people you hear this, they leap to spiritual practice.
It's kind of embarrassing because you already knew that this was part of reality, but you were deluding yourselves and lulling yourself into a false sense of security because it hadn't happened to you or anyone you know yet.
You don't want to wait until that, you don't want to wait until you're dying yourself because it's going to come to all of us.
We're all going to get old, sick and die.
That's true.
The question is, is that what it's going to take before we actually start to prepare ourselves?
Not a very good, not a very good choice.
Congratulations to these guys.
We're down to three.
One meditator left today.
Couldn't take it, I guess.
He didn't tell me why he was leaving.
Sometimes, some people, but it's congratulations that they came out.
Much appreciation.
One meditator is just finishing tonight.
He actually kind of finished today, but I didn't, I didn't tell him.
So he gets another day because he's doing, well, he kind of, he kind of fudged last night.
So he actually got, he actually finished the course.
I'm very proud of him, but he did something wrong.
So I said, go and do it right.
So he thinks he's still not finished.
So he gets extra credit.
Anyway, that's the Dhamma for tonight.
On to questions.
Let me see.
I can hear you.
They can't.
And now hopefully they can.
Did I start this?
That started.
Go ahead.
Bunty, how do I get rid of attachment to material things?
Thinking, thinking, thinking.
Is there any other way to stop the attachment to stuff?
Everything is impermanent.
So how do I actually stop this type of attachment?
How can I live with less?
What's the insight around this?
Thank you.
Well, you watch.
You watch your interaction with these things.
That's what mindfulness is all about.
You study the nature of your attachment.
You ask, how do I get rid of these things?
Well, why do you want to get rid of them?
and that's the question you have to answer because once you've answered that question not just and see the point is we know the answer intellectually but once you've really answered that and you really know that it's better not to be attached then you won't get attached that's how the mind works it would be curious wouldn't it if we did things that we didn't want to do right we we why would you cling to something you didn't want to cling to
But that's the whole thing.
You think you don't want to.
And intellectually you tell yourself, I don't want to cling to that.
But it's not really true, is it?
You want to cling to it.
So the only way to be free from it is to stop wanting to cling to it.
Well, how do you do that?
You see that it's not worth clinging to.
This is the whole theory behind the three characteristics.
People wonder, well, what are these three characteristics?
They're the realization that nothing is worth clinging to.
Those things that we thought were stable, predictable, they're not stable, they're not predictable.
Those things that we thought were satisfying are not satisfying.
Those things that we thought were me, mind, controllable, possessable, are none of those things.
And so when you see these three characteristics,
You let go.
Or more like when you see the lack of three characteristics, you see that they're not stable, they're not satisfying, they're not controllable.
And you say, well, why the heck would I cling to that?
And you stop clinging to it.
So you just have to watch.
You have to look and you have to see that these things that you cling to are not worth clinging to.
You need the meditation practice as a means of focusing your mind and straightening the mind so that you're not looking at it with prejudice.
You're looking at it just as it objectively is.
Seeing is just seeing.
Hearing is just hearing.
Sensing and thinking are just what they are.
The other thing I might say is that, as I've been saying, is that they're habits.
So it's not something you can just turn on and off.
You've cultivated the habit of liking something again and again and again.
So you can't just get rid of it.
You have to change the habit.
So as you cultivate the habit of seeing things as they are, seeing things as not worth clinging to, unworthy of clinging to,
your habit starts to change.
You cling less until eventually you don't cling at all.
Does giving up entertainment occur naturally as one's Vipassana practice progresses, or is it simply something one has to force himself or herself to do immediately?
there's two kinds of giving up so if you give up artificially then the benefit is it's beneficial because you're not cultivating the addiction right every time you engage in addiction you're reinforcing the habit so that's bad that's a problem but the only point is that that's not actually giving it up you still might want to do it and
The real problem is not whether you should or not.
The question is whether you can.
Because you might find that if you just give it up artificially, but you don't eventually give it up in reality, that you're just going to go back and maybe even stronger than before cling to it.
So giving up is, those are two very different kinds of giving up.
It's definitely obviously beneficial not to do things that encourage the clinging.
The question is, can you?
That's why people become monks, go and live in the forest, because it's much easier.
How can I feel the effects of meditation in only two years of practice if, according to Buddhism, I've been doing everything wrong for countless eons?
Well, because it's not accumulative in that sense.
You can only accumulate so much.
And you've also gone through a lot of suffering in all that time.
And so you've tempered your enthusiasm for things.
You've cultivated good and evil and you go up and down.
Sometimes you've been a very good person, a very moral, ethical, noble person.
Sometimes you've been a wicked, evil, mean person.
So it's not like you're building and building up.
It doesn't add up like that.
It just changes.
So in two years of practice, well, you may not get
You may not become an arahant, you may, but more than likely, in two years... And then the other thing is, what are you doing in those two years?
What do you mean by meditating in two years of practice?
Actually, individually, you practice quite a bit every day, so you most likely will feel the effects if you're doing it properly.
you're building up a new habit so the question of how strong your old habits is it's a good question and many of them are very very strong but they're not eons strong because over those eons a lot has changed you become a new person countless times you've changed your habits countless times as well
So how strong a habit can become is a good question.
If you do the same thing lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, it becomes very strong.
There are many habits which people will, even though they meditate, will not be able to give up lifetime after lifetime.
So even a Sotapanna can take up to seven lifetimes.
And that's a Sotapanna, someone who has already seen Nibbana.
So how long is it going to take you to actually see Nibbana?
It might take many, many lifetimes.
On the other hand, I mean, intensive meditation practice, it doesn't take very long at all.
But to be able to do intensive meditation practice, you already have to have done a lot right.
Just to be born a human being, you've done a lot right.
You haven't been doing everything wrong for countless eons.
You've actually done a lot right in order to be born, not as an animal or in hell or as a ghost, but actually as a human being who has mental faculties that are quite well advanced.
So you've already done a lot, right?
And meditation is a fairly intense habit.
And so the ability to override other sort of random habits.
And the other thing, I guess, is because meditation is so wholesome and because there's such clarity, it's got an exceptional power to it.
You could argue that.
It's all kind of theoretical in reality.
You practice for a month or so and if you practice intensively for about a month, that's about the measuring stick.
That's the standard of measurement.
A month of intensive meditation practice is about enough for an average person to gain exceptional insight into reality.
That was Mahasi Sayadaw who said this, and I think it's a very astute observation.
I'm in perfect agreement with him.
I had made a similar inquiry yesterday, but desired to rephrase it in order to better express my question.
Included our two inquiries Would it be fine to fully replace sitting or a formal meditation with lying meditation as sitting meditation is fairly uncomfortable?
Would I still receive the same benefits from the practice regardless of the posture?
I stopped there one at a time Now Lying meditation is perfectly fine But
Avoiding something because it's uncomfortable is not fine at all.
Discomfort is very much a part of the practice.
So if by fairly uncomfortable you mean excruciatingly painful to the point of insanity, then yes, okay.
Maybe sitting meditation is too much for you, or maybe you should do sitting in a chair.
But to avoid sitting just because it's fairly uncomfortable is really a bad idea.
Because it's the opposite of what the meditation is about.
It's not about coddling your partialities or your attachments.
It's about taking you out of your comfort zone.
It's supposed to be uncomfortable.
It's supposed to be uncomfortable and disturbing.
It's supposed to disturb your ordinary sense of the world as being stable, satisfying and controllable.
So in that case, it sounds like sitting meditation would probably be a really good challenge for you to learn how to let go and to not cling.
Instead, you do lying meditation, you're probably just coddling yourself and it's not going to have, I mean, it has, there's potential.
I guess that's the other problem with lying meditation is it's quite comfortable.
And so you're not likely to face great physical pain, which is a shame because it sounds like you're actually quite averse to physical discomfort and therefore are very much stuck.
You'll never be able to be free from the suffering that comes from physical discomfort.
On the other hand, if you were to do sitting meditation regularly, you would be able to let go and come to rise above physical discomfort so that it would no longer cause you suffering.
So I certainly wouldn't do that.
And I think that's a general thing.
No one should ever place too much emphasis on lying meditation because it's too comfortable.
The only people who might is people who are really sick or physical ailments or at times when you're just overstressed.
And lying meditation might help to calm you down.
But I wouldn't do it long term.
I'd try my very best to do sitting.
It's a much better position as far as dealing with ordinary aches and pains and stresses and suffering.
Should I not worry about long breaths in lying meditation that occur naturally and still say rising, falling?
Would saying rising, falling more slowly in order to correspond with the longer breaths be an issue?
Does it matter how fast or slow I say rising or falling?
Yeah, it should be according to the breath.
You're only saying it because it's reminding you of what's happening.
So rising slowly is fine.
What do you think about practicing a musical instrument, violin?
Would you categorize it the same as listening to music?
Does it hinder the vipassana practice in the same manner?
Yes.
Maybe more so.
I mean, it's different.
When you're listening, when you're practicing, you can gain a lot of ego, right?
Am I good?
Am I bad?
The sense of control, forcing yourself to get better at it, pushing yourself, wanting to get better.
There's a lot of probably worse defilements than simply listening.
Listening you just feel good about it, happy about it.
But either way it depends on your state of mind.
Listening you can say hearing, hearing.
An arahant can listen to music and be unmoved by it.
So can a meditator who's emulating the practice of an arahant.
Playing the violin, less likely.
But you can be mindful of playing the violin technically.
If one is developing insight at the cost of tranquility, what is the best countermeasure to take within the Satipatthana online course or adjustment to practice to balance the two?
Could it mean I'm doing something wrong somehow?
You don't do insight at the cost of tranquility.
In our practice, we do them both together.
The tranquility comes from the mantra, really.
When you remind yourself, seeing, seeing, or even rising, falling, you're cultivating a moment of tranquility.
It's called kanika samadhi.
It's what you use for insight meditation.
I think people are too obsessed with this idea of tranquility all across the board.
People who come here, they've never heard of this meditation type.
They expect it to make them calm.
They're always worried about the fact that they're not calm, obsessed about it.
Meditators, even today I had a meditator who was just realizing that it's very much clinging to this calm state, liking it.
He wasn't noting to himself, liking, liking.
So, you're only doing something wrong if you're not meditating.
You're not saying to yourself, rising, falling, or seeing, or frustrated, or agitated, or worried, or distracted.
Don't put too much emphasis on the idea of tranquility.
Trying to see that nothing is worth clinging to.
Tranquility in many cases just makes you cling.
It's just something we cling to.
Why would it help you to feel calm all the time?
It wouldn't really.
Why do some Buddhists think Mara is a being?
It makes no sense.
This would imply that it is a permanent being and that we should blame some
outer entity for our own defilements.
Well, there's no such thing as a being, they don't exist, but in a conventional sense we talk about beings, like I am a being, you are a being, but it's just convention.
Mara is an angel, it's actually a category of angel.
So there's one group of angels that delight in the acts of others.
So when they see the Eiffel Tower or the Twin Towers in New York, they like that, they like when other beings do things, they get excited.
I don't know why, but there's one group of angels.
And so they can be kind of nasty because they try to encourage people to do things, to become things.
And they don't like Buddhists as a result because we're all about giving up and letting go.
And if everyone was Buddhist, well, there would be much less sexual intercourse.
There would be much less ambition.
There would be much less greed and much less doing things.
Society would probably fall apart.
There would be much less activity.
We wouldn't have the iPhone.
And so the Buddha called them Mara.
The Buddha said this kind of being is a Mara, is evil.
And he kept calling this Mara, kept coming after him and trying to convince him not to teach, not to become enlightened and not to teach and just to die already because he didn't want him teaching people to let go and stop building, stop creating.
And so the Buddha would always call him Mara.
But there are five kinds of Mara.
That's only one of the five, Devaputta Mara.
The other four are, well, death is evil, karma is evil,
And by evil it just means these are things that people think of as bad, that are problematic, cause suffering.
Khandas, so the body is suffering.
Our body and mind is Mara.
And we have Machu Mara, Bisankara Mara, Khanda Mara.
Kilesa Mara.
The fourth one is defilement.
Defilements are evil.
Those are the five types of Mara altogether.
Bhante, do Buddhists believe that Maras influence people?
Oh, yeah.
They trick people.
They would come up, monks would be meditating and suddenly an ox would come up and it would threaten to knock over all their bowls that were clay bowls because it would stop them from meditating, agitate them, make them go back to the lay life ideally and start doing things, start building things, making things happen.
And the Buddha said, that's Mara.
See Mara amongst the story.
Somewhere in the Vinaya, I think.
Thank you, Bhante.
In sitting meditation, I find that I have more concentration if I open my eyes.
Would you say I'm not practicing correctly that way?
Who cares about concentration?
It's another one of those things you shouldn't worry about.
We are only concerned about momentary concentration.
You notice in the Satipatthana Sutta, anyone who disagrees, I mean it sounds like such a horrible non-Buddhist thing to say, of course concentration is what leads to wisdom.
But if you notice in the Satipatthana Sutta, it's the one thing the Buddha didn't mention.
I mean he mentioned it, but very briefly, like later at the end.
But throughout the Sutta he talks about Atapi Sampajano Satima.
You need effort, mindfulness and clear comprehension.
Concentration is just assumed.
It's not the focus.
You're not sitting there trying to focus on anything.
It's not trying to concentrate.
So you better concentrate?
Well, fine.
Better for you to close your eyes and have to struggle with not being concentrated so you can learn to let go.
Because if you're always finding tricks to focus your mind, to concentrate your mind, you're never going to see impermanent suffering and non-self.
You're just going to see calm and tranquil and stable and satisfying and controllable.
That's not what we're trying to do.
So close your eyes.
A good reason to close your eyes is because it makes it harder to concentrate.
It's more of a challenge for you.
So you can start to see how your mind isn't under your control and you can't just make yourself concentrate.
In lying meditation, is it better to note the rising and falling of the abdomen or to know lying, lying?
From my experience, I have felt noting lying lying to be more superficial and have found noting the rising and falling of the abdomen to offer a more in-depth mindfulness.
But I'm not sure if this was the case or if there was any true advantage to noting one over the other.
I mean, in-depth mindfulness is probably a red herring.
It's probably even misunderstanding mindfulness.
But okay, let's see.
Theoretically, I can get that because the rising and falling is more real in a sense.
It's a really good object because you start to see impermanent suffering and non-self quite clearly.
Lying, lying is a little more abstract.
But when you say that, you're being aware of the tension and the pressure.
So that's also valid.
I wouldn't worry too much about that, you know.
I guess I would say if you're really inclined to be doing meditation, then you can do rising, falling.
If that becomes too much for you, you can just do lying, lying.
I guess I'd probably favor the rising and falling approach.
I mean, so I probably agree with you, and there's a sense that it does somehow, to some extent, provide, as you say, more in-depth mindfulness.
Just be careful that you're not confusing concentration with mindfulness.
But yeah, I would.
I would gravitate more towards the rising and falling than just saying lying.
But regarding the doctrine of dependent origination, I see how important this is in relation to one's spiritual progress.
But does this also relate to the origin of all things?
In other words, does the doctrine of dependent origination relate to the origins, for lack of a better word, of the universe or multiverse?
Was there a first cause?
How did this first cause arise?
In contemplating the cosmos, as I often do, I begin thinking about this.
I thank you in advance for your reply.
Yeah, I mean the Buddha was not keen to have us think about things like first cause.
I'm in fact surprised with a Dhamma name like that that you don't know that.
Okay, it's just one of the big things in Buddhism, in Theravada Buddhism anyway, most of Buddhism, is there's no sense of a first cause.
It's a very Christian sort of thing.
Buddhism and Hinduism have the sense of the universe not having a beginning or end.
The Buddha more not being concerned with the beginning or end.
He did say that you can't find the beginning.
You can't see a beginning.
And anyone who thinks like that or asks these sorts of questions, origin, beginning, the limit, and who thinks a lot about the cosmos is just going to get caught up in the thicket of views.
It's like if you know the simile the Buddha gave to a monk who was asking questions like this was of an arrow, someone who was shot with a poisoned arrow.
If you're shot with a poisoned arrow, what are you concerned with?
Will you be concerned with the poison and how to cure it?
Or will you be concerned with the arrow and who shot it?
I suppose you could argue if you want to find the person who shot it because they'll be able to tell you what sort of poison they put on it.
Much more important is specifically knowing what sort of poison is on it.
But some sort of people, they're shot with a poison arrow and they start to ask, forget about curing it.
I want to know what sort of arrow I was shot with.
And what sort of person was it that shot me?
What was their name?
Where were they from?
They said, well, you know, it's probably in your better interest to find out what sort of poison it was and figure out an antidote.
So that's why the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths.
which dependent origination is really an elaboration of the Four Noble Truths.
That's what the, that's what Paditya Sannabhadra used.
How grief effect would killing a spider have on one's progress?
I'm not sure if it is a placebo effect, but I think I hold insects by a higher standard.
Will one lose fear of insects as a result of this practice?
I mean, you can't measure.
It's not like one of those boards with beads on them.
Beam counter?
No.
Calculus?
Abacus?
Abacus.
That's what it is.
It's not like an abacus where you can one kill, two kill.
some people do a small thing like killing a spider and go to hell for it another person will kill a thousand beings, a thousand people and not go to hell at all become enlightened you can't measure it like that karma is something that's far too complex to give you an answer to your first question all we can say is that it's bad
but the karma is not the killing the karma is the intention to kill the cruel intention and it's all the fear as well the fear is also bad karma so yes absolutely you'll start to lose your fear of insects as a result of this practice it might take a while but that's very much a part as you start to say to yourself afraid afraid you'll start to teach yourself how useless it is to be afraid and you'll actually start to give it up you'll get bored of being afraid
You lose the excitement.
I have a question about the sitting posture.
The most comfortable for me is the cross-legged.
But the problem with this one, that it's not the best for the back.
And I think the lotus one is better.
So I try to meditate half lotus, which causes me to be off balance.
So I meditate on that off balance and sour that comes with it.
and it passes all right for the 15 minutes after that, I have to change back to cross-legged.
Any suggestions on how to get to full lotus or for sitting in general?
I don't think that simply sitting cross-legged is bad for your back.
I suppose you could argue that the lotus, full lotus is, makes it, puts a little bit less tension on your back maybe.
You sit full lotus.
Yeah, you probably have better posture.
I mean, I think the Buddha was
I was keen on it, but you certainly can sit with a straight back, just sitting cross-legged.
You just might feel a little more pain in the beginning.
Over time, that'll go away, but it's very much a part of the practice.
You just say to yourself, pain, pain.
On the other hand, you can sit comfortably with a little bit of a slouch back.
And the pain will still come.
But you deal with the pain and you learn to let it go.
Another thing is we're not practicing jhana or tranquility meditation.
So your body is going to be adjusting.
They will be tensing and un-tensing.
So to sit full lotus is actually quite difficult beyond, say, an hour.
So you can do it for one hour, but then the next hour, and then when you do walking meditation, it will be quite painful, because we never enter into samatha jhana.
We never focus the mind.
The mind is not fixed on a single object.
So as a result, doing the full lotus is
Not really tenable, not really doable in this sort of technique.
I would much more recommend sitting cross-legged and learning to deal with the pain in the back.
It's my understanding that a Sotapanna cannot be reborn more than seven times.
How would one know if they've achieved stream entry in a prior life?
And where does the number seven come from?
Thank you.
I don't know where the number seven comes from.
But you would know because you would be clear in your mind about the right way to become enlightened.
You would just naturally know something very true about the world.
It's more likely you'll be born in heaven, in which case you'll remember becoming a Sotapanna.
But if somehow you were born as a human being,
It's not common, actually.
But if you're born as a human being and didn't remember your past lives, I mean, it's arguable that you might well remember your past lives, but even assuming that you didn't, you would naturally not kill or steal or cheat or lie or take drugs and alcohol.
You would have perfect, have a perfect, you know,
You would have an understanding of right practice.
You wouldn't ever be inclined to wrong practice.
You'd have an innate sense of the right way to do things.
I mean you may not remember how to meditate, certainly not, but this natural sense of things would make you look at the world very different from most people and you'd start to naturally, you'd naturally be able to see the suffering and things and you'd slowly lose interest.
over lifetimes maybe but this is assuming you didn't again meet a Buddha or meet with the Buddha's teachings which I guess is more likely you'd gravitate towards the Buddha's teachings and you'd learn about them and you'd quickly be able to understand and put them into practice but assuming somehow you didn't find a Buddha or Buddha's teachings as unlikely as that probably would be you would just naturally become enlightened
So you may not know.
You may not ever know that you're a Sotapanna.
It's not like there's a tattoo somewhere on your body.
You'd be like one of those first horses.
When going to bed, should I note the rising and falling of the abdomen until I fall asleep?
And how does this differ from sitting meditation?
As in, can it be a substitute for it?
A lot about lying.
I've already talked a little bit.
So hopefully I've answered some of your question.
But yes, absolutely.
Just note rising, falling, until you fall asleep.
Other than that, I think I've already gone over some sitting, some lying stuff.
Hi, Bonte.
Some time ago, I uploaded Spanish subtitles for the second video on how to meditate, sitting meditation.
directly to youtube but they are not shown until you accept them in your channel in manage subtitles ncc when you have time can you please add them thanks guilty as charged yeah easy to get sidetracked and it's probably still in my inbox somewhere
Are you like my co-workers who have 400 unopened emails at any given time?
I'm scared to look at this point.
Dear Bhante, what is your opinion on the Dalai Lama?
Are there certain things you disagree with?
I don't know enough about the Dalai Lama to have much of an opinion.
Another one of those don't ask me questions.
Bhante, would you have any practical suggestions for meditation during long-haul flights?
Hi, so in this video...
Sorry, I'm sidetracked again.
Manthe, would you have any practical suggestions for meditation during long-haul flights?
Yeah, well, sitting meditation mainly.
Also, listening to the Dhamma can be a good sort of way of...
practicing.
Bring a lot of dhamma talks.
It's a good thing.
Just be careful with your meditation timer.
There was that awful situation where someone was meditating on a flight and they had their meditation timer and someone got freaked out and thought they were a terrorist.
It happened.
I didn't think this question was speculative.
as I'm trying to understand the context in which hatred is viewed as impure within the Buddhist teachings.
How does the Buddhist view of hatred as impure relate to hatred such as homophobia?
When one in Buddhism speaks as hatred as impure, do they also encompass things like homophobia in the real world?
Homophobia, the word is interesting because it actually implies one is afraid of homosexuality.
And that is actually how it came, how the term came about, I think, is because a lot of people are really afraid of it.
They get afraid and it starts with fear in themselves that they might be homosexual.
Fear of the whole idea of it.
So there's a fear that...
that they themselves might find that they might be a pervert.
That's often what we do when someone says, hey, I like people of the same gender.
We look in ourselves and think,
So what's that like?
That would be awful, that would be evil, that would be wicked, that would be sinful.
And so it starts with fear.
That's what the word homophobia means.
Fear is a type of anger, but it's a specific sort of anger.
It's a sort of disliking of something.
It's probably mixed up with worry and anxiety.
But it's all impure.
Any type of anger, fear, it's all bad.
So, yes.
Can one use a phrase or multiple words as a mantra instead of one?
For example, drinking juice, drinking juice, or drinking water, drinking water, instead of just drinking, drinking?
I guess we...
Sorry.
I guess we can since in walking meditation we have walking right.
The real question would be which one is better.
I find that using multiple words helps focus more on the experience.
Thank you for your teachings.
No water doesn't help.
Because water isn't real.
You're not actually experiencing the drinking of water.
You're just experiencing the feeling
The only reason why you'd say drinking is because it reminds you of the act and the experience.
Better would be to say gulping or swallowing.
If you could, you'd say sucking when you suck the water in.
The feeling of the suction.
And then gulping.
Swallowing is a good one.
When you taste juice or something, you'd say tasting.
But the reason we say stepping right or stepping left is because it reminds us which one.
It reminds us where to put the, it's actually a very basic exercise.
It's not recommended for advanced meditators.
It's just to get the meditator to put their foot in the right foot.
So stepping right, stepping left is a very basic exercise we get into further.
Ultimately, we break the foot up into six steps, and they have much more to do with reality than right or left.
But drinking water, drinking juice, bad idea.
Because it's not part of the experience.
Experience is not juice or water.
It's going to be like hearing a cat.
When there's no cat, it's just hearing a sound.
As soon as you recognize it as water or juice, you're in the realm of concepts.
Right and left are concepts, but it's not about being right because there's nothing right about the foot.
It's just helps you.
It's an aid to putting your foot in the right, putting your mind in the right foot.
I think you've probably answered this already, but any suggestions on how to make sitting meditation more comfortable?
No.
Bante, would you say that Prince Sadata would have been, like, the first kind of thoroughbred horse?
I imagine he would have left Ali, like, even before seeing Satara... Satara...
If King...
Sorry?
What the heck are those?
Where did it go?
Oh.
It went down.
If King Sodadana didn't actively suppress Elnus from him
Satara peranimiti.
I don't know where you're getting those words from.
I think satara actually comes from chatura, which is four.
Pera.
I don't know what pera means.
Nimiti is not a word.
Nimita?
Yeah, you're giving me some singhala that I have no idea what it means.
I think you mean the four devadutta or the four something nimita, I guess.
Bhera, Bhera maybe, Bhera which means fearsome.
But yes, definitely the Buddha was, Prince Siddhartha was one of the four, was the first kind, absolutely.
Bhante, you said that Mahasi Sayadaw wrote a book about anecdotes of meditators that cured themselves with meditation.
Do you know the title of the book?
I don't remember it.
We used to photocopy it.
I photocopied it several times because I don't think it's on the internet.
I don't think it's published.
Probably you could find it in Burma.
I think it's something like Satipatthana Vipassana Benefits or something.
I don't remember.
Was it in English, Panthe?
Yeah.
He didn't write it.
He just collected them.
He wrote an introduction to it and then...
Maybe he did write it.
Maybe he was writing about other people.
Yeah, maybe he did write it, I think.
But he was just collecting people's stories from other teachers mostly.
Well, many different teachers, from his own students and from the students of others.
Really interesting book.
Sir, is it possible that as noting becomes easier, in other words, less number of objects to pay attention to, distraction and for hindrances take over more frequently?
Meaning, could one of the counters to the hindrances be to zoom into steps of the objects of meditation?
In other words, lifting, placing to lifting, holding, moving, placing?
Or am I being averse to the hindrances and trying to get rid of them?
You are.
You're starting to get what I'm going to, how I'm going to reply to such questions.
There's no way out but through.
You got hindrances, deal with them.
Learn to let go of them.
Don't find a way to avoid them.
I think there's five hindrances.
There are five hindrances.
You're all good about questions, one thing.
Okay.
I just did something to the second video on how to meditate that allows you to upload, but I think you have to upload the subtitles yourself.
I don't really know.
Let me know if there's a problem with uploading the subtitles.
And...
Yeah, I'll try to be a little more responsive to that.
I think I must have been in Asia or something.
I was in a weird situation when you asked, so I never actually did it.
Thank you for doing that, Fernando.
Yeah, great.
Okay, thanks everyone.
Thanks, Robin, for your help.
Have a good night, everyone.
Thank you, Pante.
Good night.