Okay, so today we come back together to continue our practice and first we have listening to the Dhamma, Dhamma Savana.
So last time we learned that this was a great blessing, Kali na Dhamma Savanam hitamang garumutamang.
It's an interesting aspect of reality of our existence that words have such power, and that they really do.
From our very young age, we develop an understanding and an association between words and language.
And so if someone says the wrong thing to us, it can lead us on the wrong path.
It can make us upset and angry and even want to hurt others or hurt ourselves, even kill ourselves.
Speech.
Speech is very powerful.
This has also to do with the
the aspect of reality that is our proliferation or our extrapolation of experience.
Because when you think of it scientifically, words are only sound.
Scientists know this and science has taught us this.
Sound actually doesn't exist.
It's actually the air vibrating.
No sound.
It's not like when I talk, sound goes to your ear.
It doesn't actually.
And so many air being disrupted by vibrations.
And yet because we extrapolate just about everything, we extrapolate what we see, we extrapolate upon what we hear, we extrapolate upon what we feel, we extrapolate on our thoughts, we extrapolate on all of our experience, we make more of it than is actually present.
And this is how we've created language.
And so the interesting thing or the special thing about speech, about sound, is that here we have a means by which to undo it, undo this extrapolation, to bring us back to reality.
This is the teaching.
Sound, it's possible to use sound to teach someone.
It's possible to use this extrapolation, to use language, to teach someone to let go of
our attachments to things like language, to see through language.
So we can use language, we can use sound as a means of helping people to understand that it's just sound.
And so there was this one teacher in Thailand who would always tell his students when he began to teach the Dhamma that you really don't have to listen to what is being said.
If you can acknowledge the sound of your ear, say to yourself, hearing, hearing, and see it just as sound that's arising and ceasing, then you've accomplished the goal of listening to the talk.
We have these stories of animals becoming pure in the mind, not enlightened, but gaining purity of mind through listening to the Dhamma, even though they didn't know what it was, because of the nature of the speech and the nature of the sound and how they extrapolated, how they conceived of the sound.
They conceived of it as being pure.
harmonious, of being melodious, of being peaceful, of being calming and soothing.
And so they gained states of concentration and were able to go to heaven after they passed away.
And so we can use speech, we can use the Dhamma, we can use these words, the right words.
We can use them to bring peace.
The Buddha said, one word that brings peace is better than a thousand words that bring no peace.
But one word that brings peace is also much better than no words.
Because for a person who has no understanding of the truth of reality,
Without that one word or without sometimes a thousand words, silence won't help them.
They won't be able to gain anything.
So we can use sights and smells and so on.
We can use these as well to train the mind.
But the one that we use the most is sound.
And so listening to the Dhamma is a very important thing.
You have to understand that
that, even though the purpose of Buddhism is not to listen and not to learn and not to gain intellectual knowledge, build up a store of intellectual knowledge.
Still before we can come to understand reality, understand that this is just words, understand that it's just sound, we have to be given the teaching.
People who have never heard the teachings, they can't be expected to just practice meditation and become enlightened.
You can see what happens if you start to teach people, you start to engage with...
If you have done any engagement with people who have practiced meditation, other types of meditation, meditation on their own, which I am often consulted about, then you know how invariably...
When people simply practice meditation without any teaching, they invariably go astray.
They cling to something, they latch on to something, and they develop wrong views and so on.
Or they simply become afraid of things that they've experienced and don't know how to deal with them, and so they stop.
So learning the Dhamma is very important, but there's something more to hearing the Dhamma.
And this is
the repetition of what has been said before.
Because there's another curious thing about words, about language, and that is the same words can have the same effect a second time.
They can bring about the same effect, even though someone has heard something.
The mind is such an interesting thing and it helps us to see non-self.
You would think that once you'd heard something once, it wouldn't have the same effect the second time.
But it can.
For example, in Thailand it's a big thing.
People will tell a joke.
And everyone laughs.
And then they tell the same joke right away again.
And everyone laughs again.
And they can tell it three or four times.
And you watch people sitting around telling the same joke three or four times.
It's quite interesting how it evokes the same response.
This is the same when we think of something funny.
We can laugh for a long time or keep laughing and coming back and laughing about it.
When we think of something sad, it makes us sad every time we think about it.
And it becomes a habit so that as soon as it arises in the mind, it creates sadness, longing.
When we see something beautiful, we see the object of sexual desire, for example, immediately evokes lust to the point where even just the hint evokes the feelings of lust, of attraction.
And so on.
So the Dhamma works actually the same.
You can hear the same thing over and over again.
And it will repeatedly bring you back to the proper path.
For instance, the four foundations of mindfulness.
Just saying this, bringing up these words, should bring people, if they're familiar with them, to remember about their practice.
To remember the body.
When we start to enumerate them, it becomes even more apparent.
Just using the word body makes everyone remember about their body.
and vedana, the feelings.
So we start to think about the pain in the body.
Just saying feelings reminds you of the feelings that you have.
Sometimes when we read the Buddha's teaching, people are confused as to why the Buddha would repeat the same thing again and again.
Often in a talk he would repeat the same thing first for the eye, then the ear, then the nose.
Because this isn't an intellectual teaching.
He's not just trying to give them information.
He's teaching the Dhamma.
He's teaching them how to see the Dhamma.
Jitta, when you think of the mind, thinking about past or future.
Just hearing these things, Dhamma, when you think about liking, disliking, drowsiness, distraction, doubt, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, just hearing about all of these things helps remind us where we are and what we're doing, and brings us back to our investigation of reality.
So, this is in regards to hearing the Dhamma, and in fact this isn't the topic of today's talk, but it's an interesting subject
What do we have?
Today we're going on with the Mangalas.
I think this is going on to the next stanza, which goes, So we have four blessings today.
Kanti means patience or forbearance.
Sovajasattva means being easy to talk to.
Samananantadasanam, seeing samanat, seeing people who are reclusive or who are philosophers or people who are ascetics.
People who are samana, shamans, the translation in English is shaman.
It's not the translation, the word that is used, the form of the word samana has become shaman, shaman.
kālīna dhamma sāgacā
so last time we had which means listening to the Dhamma from time to time this means discussing the Dhamma from time to time so having discussions about the Dhamma these are the the most special blessings among the highest blessings in life so this is what we are talking about today
Number one, kanti.
Kanti is one of the most important qualities.
So much so that when the Buddha taught what he later called the Ovadapati Moka, he started with this kanti.
Kanti paramantapoditika.
Patience is the highest form of austerity.
It's really the most important.
We have to understand what kanti means, what patience really means.
Patience is on many levels.
There's the level of being patient in terms of forbearing with something.
When there's something that you dislike, you grit and bear it, buck up, grit your teeth.
When there's something that we want, we...
We can't get it.
We stop ourselves from going after it.
So we repress the desires.
Patience in the form of repression is one type of patience.
So most people would understand patience.
But the higher level of patience that we're trying to develop here is
The ability to see things clearly while they exist.
To live with things clearly as they exist.
Because Gritting and Barrett isn't really patience, it's actually diverting the mind.
bringing about some sort of pain in the mind or some sort of aversion in the mind.
And so you're not actually patient with the object at all.
You're avoiding the object.
You're finding some way to avoid the object.
When it's something good, you find some way to stop yourself from wanting it.
When it's something bad, you stop yourself from getting angry about it, repress the feeling.
The Buddha actually recommended this.
If there's nothing else to do, he said, well, that's a good stopgap measure.
It's better than going off and chasing after things.
But it doesn't last.
It's only the last option.
As a last option, when there's no other option, you can use that one.
But the most important type of patience is to actually look at the experience.
To see that inside of your problems, whether it be a problem of something that you want or are addicted to, or whether it be something that you don't want and are averse to, averse towards,
You see, the problem is not actually the experience at all.
The problem is not the reality of what you're experiencing.
The problem is that you think there's a problem.
The problem is that you're trying to find a solution.
And so this is the meaning of kanti, the meaning of patience, is to stop that, to change that, change this habit.
Not to change the habits of liking and disliking, but to change the delusion that says it's an entity, it's a problem.
In our lives we meet with, even in monastic life, we meet with many problems.
We meet with many issues.
We'll find ourselves getting angry.
We'll find ourselves greedy and wanting things.
We'll find ourselves depressed.
We'll find ourselves overwhelmed, worried, scared, and so on.
None of these are really a big problem.
They are obviously a problem.
They're a cause for suffering.
But the biggest problem is delusion.
The biggest problem is our attachment to the problem, our attachment to self.
Whether it be an attachment to ourselves, as in, I don't deserve this, or so on, or I do deserve this.
Or an attachment to the object, as in, this object is mine, this problem is mine, I have a problem.
Or whether it be our attachment to...
I got an email today from someone today who suffers from depression.
And the person was explaining to me how awful things are.
in their life and so they have this depression.
And they were explaining that the reason they have the depression is because they require, they have the need for a meaningful life, meaningful career.
They feel like life is meaningless now, that they aren't able to achieve what is meaningful.
And so I would say that the former is not really the problem.
The problem is this trying to find meaning in life.
Trying to cling, or not trying, but clinging to some goal as having some meaning.
And so trying to strive to achieve it.
This is delusion.
The idea that somehow something is going to satisfy you.
So
Patience is really associated with wisdom.
Patience is focusing on the object as it is, which is really the opposite of what we would normally
people would normally advise others, or how we would normally try to deal with the situation.
Normally, it's the last thing we want to do.
When you're in pain, the answer is to find some way to be without pain, because you have pain.
You have a problem.
When you have depression, the last thing you want to do is to be depressed.
It's a problem.
You have to fix it.
But it's only when you see that it's a problem, that it's really a problem.
When you see that your life is not meaningful, when you see that your life is not attached to it, and you proliferate on it.
The truth is that the depression itself can't do anything to it.
The anger can't do anything to it.
Lust can't do anything to it.
These things cannot do anything.
All they can do is create suffering in your mind.
That's what they're doing.
It's only when you decide that they have some meaning, you cling to them with delusion, and make a decision to act upon them, that they really and truly cause a problem.
The levels of defilements that we're trying to get rid of in Buddhism are on three levels.
There are the kamma kilesa, the actions that we do.
And these are really the ones that create problems for us.
The next level is the arisen defilements, the ones that exist in the mind.
These defilements are the ones that we are trying to look at, trying to understand, trying to see for what they are.
And once we see them for what they are, the underlying defilements, the ones that are the delusion ones, that have the tendency, or are the impetus for the arising of defilements, these are the ones that we want to eradicate.
Once we see clearly the experience for what it is, we see the feeling, we see the objects for what they are, we see the feelings for what they are, we see the attachments for what they are, the likes and the dislikes for what they are, we will see the suffering caused by them.
So we actually, the point is to look at the experience.
If some defilement arises in your mind, it means that you don't understand the experience.
It means that you don't see things as they are.
A person would never do something that they knew was against their best interests.
This is an interesting fact of reality.
We postulate that it is possible to know something.
If it's possible to truly know something from your experience.
If it's possible to truly know something, then when a person knows that something is against their best interests, when the mind is clearly aware of that,
the conclusion is that you would never do such a thing.
So when we give rise to liking, disliking, anger and greed, it's because we don't understand that they're bad for us.
If you say to yourself, bad, bad, bad, and if you avoid the object, you'll never come to understand it.
If you never come to understand it, you'll never really know that it's bad for you.
The truth of the experience is that you don't know that it's bad for you.
If you did, you wouldn't have done it.
You wouldn't have got greedy.
You wouldn't want something.
If you knew that wanting was truly bad for you, you wouldn't do it.
So it's useless to say to yourself, no, no, it's bad for me, it's bad for me.
Because you don't believe that.
And saying it to yourself or reading it in books or thinking about it isn't going to give you the answer.
It's only when you look and you see that the experience is a cause for suffering.
So this is the core practice of the Buddha, to see things as they are.
Once you see things as they are, it's impossible that you should give rise to greed or anger based on those experiences.
Once you uproot delusion, once you uproot ignorance, you can never give rise to greed, anger or delusion.
You can never give rise to partiality or projection.
So patience is a little bit more than how we normally think of it.
Patience is when there is the feeling of depression, for example.
You say depressed.
When there's a feeling of anger, you say angry.
When there's a feeling of wanting, wanting, wanting.
There's a feeling of fear.
Fear, for example, is a huge one.
People would be very afraid.
And a common one is the fear of not being able to sleep at night.
People who are insomniac won't be able to sleep.
And it's actually the fear that keeps them awake.
And insomnia is a nice example because it's very easy to cure insomnia.
Simply by lying and being afraid or worried, worried.
And by making up your mind that it's really actually not a bad thing to stay awake.
And I always tell people when they're insomnia is to see it as a good thing.
When you're not able to sleep, just lie awake and do meditation.
And watch the worry, watch the fear.
And once you do that, it actually becomes quite easy to sleep because it's the fear that's keeping you awake.
Fear of anything.
When you focus on the fear and you see that actually the fear is not the problem.
The problem is that you think of the fear as a problem.
Once you see the fear simply for what it is, you can have fear in your mind and go and do what you want.
People who are afraid of going out.
It's not the fear that's stopping you.
It's the fact that you think that the fear is stopping you.
That's what's stopping you.
You say this fear is stopping me from going out.
It's actually not.
So when you say that the fear is stopping, that's what's stopping.
You can go out and be afraid.
You can deal calmly with people and be angry.
It's a matter of being mindful.
You can't actually, on an experiential level, it won't happen because once you say angry, angry, once you're aware of the anger, it disappears.
But there will be many associated states with the anger.
You'll feel upset and you'll feel the suffering of the anger.
And then you might get angry again, so you stop and say angry, angry, and then you continue on with your work or dealing with people or something.
You can be confronted with something, with the object of your desire and still be totally neutral and focused and content.
When the desire comes up, you look at the desire and you forget about the object.
And then when you see the object again, the desire comes up and you focus on the desire again.
And you forget about it again.
The desire isn't the problem.
The problem is you get upset.
Oh, what can I do?
I have to relieve this desire and so on.
I have to attain what I want and so on.
So simply focusing on reality, this is what we mean by patience.
So patience is in regards to good things and it's in regards to bad things.
Patience is, you could say it's another word for contentment, which is another one of life's greatest blessings.
But we talked about last week, no?
Contentment and patience, they go together and really have the same meaning.
The meaning is to see things as they are, to stay with things.
Patience is in a sense of staying with it and not running away from it.
When you have pain, to focus on the pain and really stay with the pain.
Until it goes away.
When it gets worse, to stay with it.
When it goes away, come back to your ordinary practice.
When it comes back again, focus on it again.
Patience means when the rising and the falling is changing.
Sometimes there, sometimes not there.
When you get frustrated, it means to stay with it and to keep trying.
To go back.
To not have expectations.
To not need things to be this way or that.
Being patient with them the way they are.
Being content with them the way they are.
This is the meaning of patience.
Very important.
So important the Buddha said this is the highest form of tapas.
Tapas means it comes from the same root as the word temperature.
It means heat.
So heating up.
When you develop patience, this is the feeling that you get when you're being patient, when you have great pain, for example.
Many meditators, when they have great pain and they're really practicing correctly, they'll find their whole body starts to shake and they can even go into convulsions through their patience.
It tortures you.
It's the greatest type of torture because tapas is a word, heat means, the meaning of the word or the use of the word was in India they would, they believed that defilements, you could burn your defilements.
Your defilements were like this wet sappiness inside and you could burn them up by torturing yourself.
So the word tapas was used to mean torture.
So people would stand on one leg or go naked or go bathing every day five times, ten times a day.
torturing themselves, saying this was burning up their defilements, this was their tapas.
But the Buddha said the best thing for burning up, the greatest form of burning up defilements is patience.
When you want something, when you have lust, focusing on it will make your whole body shake.
It will make your whole, it will become so overwhelming.
And this is what burns up the defilement.
Once you can just stay with it, then you're totally unconquerable.
Once you see the defilements and you've seen them go to their limit, and you've seen them get to the ultimate level where they are as intense as they possibly could be, and you realize that you can still deal with them, you can still live with them, you can still be patient with them, this is the highest form of austerity.
This is what makes you invincible.
This is what leads to confidence and reassurance.
The assurance that nothing can stop you.
Even though you might give rise to defilement still, they can't stop you.
They can only stop you when you turn them into a problem.
This is a little bit of discussion on patience.
Sola jasata means being easy to talk, easy to admonish.
So if you put these two together, you actually think that, well, patience is just in an ordinary sense.
It can be just understood in an ordinary sense, in terms of bearing with things.
But on an ultimate level, for a meditator, patience is much more, as I explained it.
Because being patient can also mean, in regards to, patient with the teachings.
We need a lot of patience in order to keep morality.
We need patience in order to develop concentration.
We need patience in order to see things with wisdom.
Most importantly with morality.
It's really the beginning and it's the most difficult one.
Patience with not killing, with not stealing.
Patience with the instruction that is given.
So patience with the meditation technique.
A good example is the meditation technique that we practice.
It's very simple, very easy to understand.
So easy to understand I'm able to explain it to people over the internet or give books out.
And people get back to me and say how it changed their lives.
Just listening to one, this instruction on meditation changed their lives.
Because it's very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice.
But very difficult to be patient with.
very difficult to be content with.
So Sowa Jasata is related to this, being easy to admonish, easy to teach, easy to instruct.
Being easy to instruct requires patience and it requires contentment.
Because things will not always be the way we want them to be or the way we expect them to be.
There was once a monk who was the absolute opposite of this.
I think I've told this story before, a monk from England.
And my teacher was very clever, and he's heard a lot, and he's studied a lot.
And this one story that, of course, he always brings up, and so I always bring it up as well, is about Tucho Potila.
Potila, this monk who knew everything about Buddhism, and yet he wasn't enlightened.
He was very conceited as well.
and so finally he went to this novice he went to this elder monk and the elder monk refused him he went to the second eldest monk and that monk refused him and all the way down all of these monks refused to teach him until the youngest monk he went to him and said please teach me meditation and this monk also saw that he was very conceited and said you see there's a seven year old novice down by the pond you go and learn from him
And so he did actually learn from him, and what the novice did was taught him how to be easy to admonish.
He said, okay, I will teach you, but you must promise to do everything that I say, do whatever I say.
And
And so he said, oh, no problem, no problem.
And then he said, okay, now go into the pond.
And so he started taking off his robe.
He said, no, no, no, with all your robes, go into the pond.
And so he gritted his teeth and bore it and went into the pond.
He said, okay, now come out, come out of the pond.
Go back into the pond, back into the pond.
Come out of the pond, back into the pond.
And then finally he became so, he let go.
This monk let go.
So you're being tested in this way.
My teacher did this with this English monk.
He said, okay, you can do a course with me, but you have to promise, because he's got so many problems and it's so hard to deal with.
You can, I'll do a course, but you must promise to do, you have to promise to do what I say.
It's been so long, I can't remember what exactly... You know, the monk was like, yes, yes, I'll do exactly what you say.
And then he says something to him.
He says, okay, then I want you to practice in this way, which was the opposite of how he wanted to practice.
And right away he says, but no, tell him I don't want to practice like... Because he didn't speak Thai, so I'm his translator.
He said, tell him I don't want to practice like that.
Oh, useless.
This is what we call mogapurisa.
Wow.
The Buddha would actually say Moga Bodhisattva.
Someone who doesn't have the potential.
We have to try our best to not be a Moga Bodhisattva.
But it's a very important thing to be... Because it does help to remove conceit.
To have to do things the way you don't want and to be challenged.
To...
to listen to the teaching.
I've been in that position as well.
And my teacher has tried to make me do things this way and that way.
I've seen, there was a monk once, I don't know how I've fared, it's hard to say about yourself, but there was one monk who, I heard the story, I wasn't there, but our teacher took him up to the top of this mountain and
in the middle of nowhere, and there was this rich monk from Bangkok, a monk from a rich family, a fairly high-class family, one of Ajahn's great supporters.
He was always favored in the monastery, and he was able to get special food.
He had a good room and his room had a microwave and so on.
All these things.
Bridge and the computer.
He was able to live fairly well.
And so Ajahn brought them to the top of this monastery.
They followed after him to the top of this monastery.
And Ajahn turned to him and said, Okay, so I want you to stay here now.
And so he...
twisting and turning in his mind.
And he came up to Ajahn a little bit later, I guess, or I just heard about it later, so I don't know how it happened.
He came up to Ajahn and he said, Ajahn wants me to stay here, right?
Yes, yes, I want you to stay here.
But I cannot stay here too, right?
And what's he going to say to that?
Our teacher is quite kind.
He doesn't want to create bad karma with people.
What he's always said is, I don't want to create bad karma with people.
The monk came back with him.
I heard about it because he came back and they were talking about it.
but they were joking about it this other monk was saying man I could never do that you want me to stay here right yes yes I want to stay here but I don't have to stay here if I don't want right but I cannot stay here if I want right the inability to follow very difficult very difficult to follow
Because we have ideas about how things should be.
We have ideas of the right way.
It doesn't mean it's wrong, really.
It doesn't mean that this monk was wrong.
It's an interesting...
I mean, it's actually obvious in that case.
I mean, it would have been great for that monk, but we get stuck in a rut of the way we think things want to be.
And the same when I go to other monasteries.
I don't want to follow after their ways, so I leave because I have my own ideas of the way things can be.
This is a big problem.
I have to be very careful not to cling.
It's being easy to admonish, easy to teach.
It's a very difficult one.
The only time that I would say it's really, really, really a danger, well, it's always a danger, but the time where we really have to worry about it and really have to look out for it is during the time when we're on course.
When you're doing a meditation course, absolutely you have to
entrust yourself to your teacher and to the Buddha.
Normally in Thailand we would do a ceremony where you place yourself in the trust of the Buddha and the trust of your teacher.
And actually the wording is I give up this being to you.
to the Buddha and then first to the Buddha and then to the teacher I relinquish this being to you I give myself up to you put myself in your trust
And this is very important.
The Visuddhimagga actually says that the only proper student to teach, or not the only, but a perfect student to teach is the one who's willing to die for their teacher.
If their teacher tells them they should jump off a cliff, they should be ready to jump off a cliff.
or it gives the example anyway.
It says, well, it's possible to get to this extent where there was actually a student who thought this and the teacher was able to read his mind and so the teacher knew that this monk, three monks actually, one of them said, thought in his mind, if I knew it was according to the meaning of this teacher or the need of this teacher, I would jump off a cliff.
Another one said, I would grind myself on a rock
grind my body to dust if it was what should be done.
The third one, I can't remember, burn myself, immolate myself.
This is an example.
I mean, I don't suppose that many people get to that extreme or would ever dare to go to that extreme because it's very hard to trust teachers these days.
But you have to be clear.
You either have to follow the teaching or you have to leave.
This is really the way a course should go.
You should not argue with the teacher.
If you can't bear with the teaching, of course when you have problems arise, you should ask the teacher.
Tell them that you're having troubles and that you're not sure about this.
And once you listen to the answer, you have to make a choice.
Are you going to follow the teaching or are you going to leave?
But you shouldn't argue with the teacher.
This is quite a problem because that augments or reinforces the doubt.
It reinforces the uncertainty about the practice.
Either you're certain about the practice and certain about the teacher or you're not.
And so you have to either give yourself up completely to the course and to the teacher or else you have to decide that you need to go somewhere else.
And sometimes this requires contentment because the practice is not always easy and the teacher is not always perfect.
In Jomtong it was very much the same.
We had to put up with the fact that our teacher is very tired most of the time.
Sometimes the teaching would be not totally coherent because he'd fall asleep on you or something.
Sometimes I would be translating for someone.
Ajahn says something, I turn and I translate it to the person.
By the time I turn back, Ajahn is falling asleep.
he's gotten old and he's quite tired because he works a lot so this kind of we need this ability to put up with the teaching and to be content as well of course as I said this takes patience and it takes contentment you have to be able to find contentment in the teaching many people are not able to be content with this teaching
They want more.
They want magical powers or they want deep spiritual attainments or so on.
And so they miss the deepest spiritual attainment, which is Nibbana, which is freedom from all suffering.
They're looking for some kind of calm or peace that is temporary.
And then they miss the real true peace.
Samana is someone who has a peaceful mind.
In an ultimate sense, a samana means someone who has a peaceful mind.
And this is of course a great blessing.
A mind that is at peace.
This is of course the greatest blessing, to be around someone, to be near someone, to learn from someone.
Even just to see someone who has a pure mind is enough.
It's like language.
Like Sariputta Upatissa when he saw Asaji walking on Pindapad.
Asaji was walking on alms round in the city.
Just seeing him was enough to make Upatissa a Buddhist.
It was enough to make him come and learn from Asaji and eventually become enlightened and become the Buddha's chief disciple.
All because he saw someone who was peaceful.
Because when he saw Asaji, he said, that must be, just not even talking to him, hearing what he had to say, just watching the way he walked, the way he held his robes, the way he looked down at the ground.
This is the greatest blessing.
And this doesn't have to be a monk or a nun or a recluse of any sort.
Seeing anybody with a peaceful mind is a great blessing.
But on an ordinary level, there's something to be said as well as seeing, for example, seeing someone who's in robes, seeing someone who is an example, who's living a life that is a good example for us.
The best example, of course, is a monk.
So even though a monk might be corrupt in mind, many people will be encouraged to practice meditation by seeing such people.
Of course, this is the problem, is that then they go to the monastery and they want to learn meditation, and they find that the monks are not practicing or teaching, and are engaged in even unwholesome behaviors.
But just seeing the example and realizing that such a thing is possible is very important.
It's something that we're lacking, of course, in most of the world.
I'm not talking about even Buddhist monks, but we don't ever have the chance to see people who have left the life, who have undertaken an alternative lifestyle.
All we see every day are people who look and act and speak just like us and think just like us, who are engaged in worldly affairs, engaged in jobs and study and marriage and household chores and so on.
Household affairs in buying things and consuming things and gossiping and fighting and idle chatter.
who are engaged in the world, in society, in politics and in social activism and so on.
So this is all we see and this is what we develop our ideas of what are right and wrong on.
Our ideas of what are right and wrong come from our parents, come from our society, come from our culture, and as a result they're
generally flawed and they generally lead only to more and more of the same repetition and more and more building up and attachment, addiction, aversion, suffering
the ways of the world, samsara, wandering on, even when we have ways of doing good things, it's only for the purpose of more, only for the purpose of getting more.
We help people, we think that we will become rich or powerful or we will even go to heaven as a result, not for letting go or giving up, because we don't have a good example.
So when we're living in the world and we're engaging with people who are in the world and then suddenly you see a monk going on alms round.
and you understand that this is someone who's not doing things the way you're doing, who has given up beautiful clothing, who has given up delicious food, who has given up a house, who has given up the comforts of life, who has given up the world, who doesn't know, who doesn't engage in business, who doesn't engage in politics, who doesn't engage in cultural affairs, who doesn't engage in marriages and funerals and
births and so on, who has left behind the world.
And so all of this busyness that we have in our life, suddenly we see the way out.
We see a way to drop it, to give it up.
And so it can be a great blessing.
Even just seeing someone who, best if they have a peaceful mind, but at least who has a peaceful life.
Someone who has given up the world.
a very useful thing so it's something that we should be happy about that we here we are living with people and we're able to interact with people who have peaceful minds it's easy to lose sight of that and to think that the monastery is full of craziness as well because there's lots of people coming and going and expressing their defilements and dealing with their defilements but if you go and live in the world you'll see how much more stressful it is out there
And you realize that even just living here in the monastery, being able to deal with, on a daily basis, people and activities that are for the purpose of leaving the world behind, is a great blessing.
Living anywhere else in the world, we don't have this.
We don't even have the memory or the remembrance, something to remind us.
of good things, of renunciation.
So here we have at least the reminder all around us of the monastery, of the Buddha images, of the monastics, and all the activities, the chanting and so on.
These are things that remind us and are a blessing for us and a blessing for other people as well.
This is something that's easy to tell when you go walking through the village for alms, when you go walking anywhere for alms.
what a change it brings over the village, how people suddenly stop thinking about the world, and now every day they're thinking about supporting those who have left the world.
And so more and more they will cultivate this, and eventually come to the monastery, and often people do come to the monastery to practice meditation once they know that there are people practicing and teaching meditation here.
This is the final one.
This is different from listening to the Dhamma because here the student has a chance to talk or students have a chance to discuss amongst themselves.
Discussing the Dhamma is a great blessing.
Not just listening to it but actually having a chance to ask and interact and to discuss the teachings.
The most obvious example is the reporting session, which we do here.
We do in this tradition.
Every day, when a meditator comes here to practice, every day they are required to have a discussion with their teacher.
Not just to listen to the Dhamma every day or every few days we have a talk.
But on top of that, they have to come and talk to us as well.
Sometimes it's not so important, the discussion is not so important that the teacher knows, that you let the teacher know, but it's important that you acknowledge it yourself and that you come out with the truth, that you're able to express yourself, you're able to relieve yourself and you've come to set yourself in this way.
When you come to the teacher and explain to him your conditions, it's just like going to see a therapist.
Why did the therapist just sit there and listen?
Because it gives you a chance to reaffirm the truth.
the reality of the situation, which is very much the beginning of meditation.
As you can see, our meditation practice is just reaffirming the truth, so that the mind eventually comes to see only the truth.
It straightens out.
This is why we say pain, pain, or angry, angry, or liking, liking, or so on.
basically what you're doing in reporting.
And you start to actually realize things that you were missing in meditation.
You will come to the teacher and then explain that you have this great peaceful feeling, for example.
And the teacher will ask you, well, did you like it?
And you'll say, yes, yes, I liked it.
And then you say to yourself, liking, liking, and they'll realize that they're missing something.
So it helps you to come back to reality in another way, to be able to express yourself, because the teacher is not going to look at you and watch you and know this, this, this, and tell you all the time what needs to be dealt with.
In fact, that can often be deleterious.
It can be unhelpful or even harmful to the meditator, because often the defilements are stubborn.
So if the teacher says to the student, you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong, they'll often become angry and upset.
This is suvajasattva.
Dhuva Jasatah.
Difficulty.
Being difficult to manage.
So a much easier thing for both the teacher and the student is to let the student come and relate it to the teacher and have the teacher respond to what the student is willing to explain.
And so for this reason it's very important for the students to be forthright or forthcoming with their experiences in meditation.
When they meet with the teacher it's important that they explain everything and don't leave anything out.
Important for their own practice.
But it's also important because then the teacher does know what the situation is.
If the teacher can't read your mind or doesn't take the time to explore your situation, then it's very difficult for them to give you the right advice if you don't explain the situation of your practice.
And so this is quite necessary, quite important.
This is probably the most important example.
And really it's the only one that we would allow for someone who's on the course.
When people are doing courses here, you shouldn't expect that when you come here, we're going to let you sit around and talk to each other, even about the Dhamma.
Because even talking about the Dhamma can be harmful.
You're arguing about the Dhamma or debating about the Dhamma or conceiving or philosophizing about the Dhamma.
This can also be harmful to your practice.
What it means is really discussing your practice with your teacher and giving them the feedback or giving them the information that they can use to provide feedback on your condition.
The only way they can provide that feedback is if you give it to them.
And this is something that is a great blessing.
It's very difficult.
Often people, all they have is listening to the Dhamma.
So they content themselves and they think this is really enough to download talks from the internet or watch YouTube videos or so on.
But it's very easy to, because there's no feedback.
Because it's not directly related to your questions or your problems.
And it's not directly addressed to you.
it has very less potency than the actual discussion.
And you'll find that the discussion is actually far more important, even five or ten minutes of discussion is far more important than a one-hour talk on the Dhamma, because it's related directly to your practice.
A Dhamma talk has to, especially when you're giving it to a large audience or expecting to use it to broadcast it for a wider audience,
It has to be by necessity in general, generally applicable to all people.
But when you're giving a Dhamma discussion, when you're discussing the practice with the meditator, then you can give direct advice to the meditator and especially based on their feedback or their input.
So it's very important.
People often miss this.
They miss the importance of this.
And so they think they're going to progress on the path just as well by listening to the Dhamma, which is certainly not the case.
Without the saga, the discussion of the Dhamma, it's very difficult to progress.
Because you develop your own ideas about the practice, you misunderstand and you're unable to get a correction from the teacher.
Because you're not able to interact with the one-way teaching, even when giving a talk like this.
So discussing the Dhamma, this is a very important and it's one of life's greatest blessings.
These four are very important and very useful in our practice.
I think this is something that should be quite useful as a Dhamma talk.
And so I think, I hope that that is the case and I hope that everyone is able to get something from this teaching and that you're able to use it for your practice and help you to find greater and greater peace, happiness and freedom from suffering.
Well, thanks for listening and thanks for tuning in.
Then we'll go back to our practice.