Good evening, everyone.
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So tonight, we're looking at the number.
It's Anguttara Nikaya, Book of Sri, Sutra 61.
Looking at the idea of what you know versus what you believe.
Belief versus knowledge.
That's really the core of this.
And I've touched on this idea before, that this is really an important aspect of the Buddha's teaching, the difference between a belief and knowledge.
Because if you say, I believe something, I believe X, it doesn't say anything yet about whether X is true.
It's not a false statement necessarily.
It could easily be true that you believe something.
It doesn't mean that that something is in any way true.
And we lose sight of this with our views.
we easily fall into the trap of thinking that it's enough to believe something.
I believe this, I believe that.
And then we act according to that belief, which is somewhat dangerous and reckless.
Because a belief is in and of itself meaningless.
And it can very well be that that which you believe is false.
In which case, acting according to that belief would be troublesome, to say the least.
We have lots of beliefs.
We have many beliefs about what's right and wrong.
We have beliefs about what's true and what's false.
And beliefs about self and soul.
And we have many questions as well that we try to find answers to.
And the answers we come to come to be our views, our beliefs.
So questions about
Why?
Why things are the way they are?
One of the biggest questions for humans, right, is why?
This was always a big one for me when I was growing up.
Why?
Why do I suffer the way I do?
Why?
It's a very important human question.
And it's one that we consider to be incredibly important.
Why things are the way they are.
We want answers.
It's kind of funny, honestly, because it's not really an important question.
It's not really the most important question.
Because who cares why things are the way they are, honestly?
The real question is, how do I change things?
How do I make things better?
How do I free myself from the situation?
So there's some connection there.
If you knew why things were the way they are, you could act in such a way so that they wouldn't be this way in the future, right?
But it's funny because the answers we come up with, like the three answers that are given in this sutta,
There are some, Buddha says, there are some ascetics and Brahmins who hold a doctrine such as whatever a person experiences, whatever happens to them, good things, bad things, pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain, all that is caused by what was done in the past.
This is determinism.
Listen up, those of you who believe the universe is deterministic.
I mean, there's no proof offered that it isn't, but there's definitely a criticism of it.
As a cause is caused by that which was done before.
Everything.
All of who we are now is caused by the past.
This is what some people mistake Buddhism for.
They hear about karma and they think, well, everything's karma.
That must mean determinism, right?
No, the Buddha didn't say.
The Buddha wasn't addressing that view.
He wasn't addressing that question.
He wasn't addressing this idea of free will or determinism with karma.
He wasn't looking at the universe that way.
He didn't ever answer whether we have free will or we're deterministic.
In fact, he was just critical of these views.
And here's his criticism.
If you believe that what you experience is caused by what is done in the past, then he asks them, or he says to them, well,
And all the bad things that you do are caused by something in the past.
You have no control over whether you do bad deeds, a person who kills or steals or lies or cheats.
How could you fix things?
How could you become a better person?
There's no room for progress.
A person gets better just
like a robot, just by chance, really.
Do you happen to be the part of this deterministic universe that's going to improve?
Well, then you'll improve.
It's really a scary sort of view.
It locks you into a fate.
Why come and meditate then, right?
I mean, there's no why anymore.
You can't do anything.
It makes us impotent.
And what it actually leads to is that view changes people.
Having that view leads people to be complacent, leads people to wallow in their evil, to not improve, to not think about meditation, to not think about bettering themselves, and to actually become degraded because they
follow you know if they like something they say well that's just look at me doing what I'm set to do and thinking that way they get worse and worse just wallow in their unwholesomeness they become coarse individual determinists don't tend to don't tend towards goodness not not in general there's a real problem there
And it's only an abstraction because if you look at your experience, your reality, you can make decisions.
There is decision making.
So the question of whether that decision making is deterministic or whether there's free will is an abstract.
It's an abstraction.
It's nothing to do with what's actually happening.
It's creating something out of nothing.
The framework required to have free will or determinism is just the abstract thought.
It's not reality.
Reality doesn't admit of that sort of idea or that sort of concept.
So this is something that is not in the realm of knowledge.
It's not in the realm of experience.
So the Buddha criticizes this view.
Don't let anyone say that Buddhism is deterministic.
Buddha was critical of this.
He didn't say yes or no because it's not a part of reality.
It's not a part of his teachings.
The second view is some religious people hold that whatever a person experiences, this is caused by God's creative activity.
So they think that God created the universe, and some religious people believe that we're all just going according to God's plan.
Most people like to add the idea of free will, which is, we'll come to that.
But the idea that there is God's plan, we're all part of God's plan, is really
It's problematic simply from the point of view we don't have any evidence for the existence of such a being.
And beyond that, if we did, or if it was the case that this God had created everything, then they would be responsible for all the atrocities that have been committed.
The Buddha said it's due to God that you kill and steal and lie and cheat.
You're full of longing, full of ill will, full of holding wrong views.
And so again, those who believe that this is part of God's plan tend to be lazy, have no desire to do what should be done or avoid what should not be done.
Even people in Christianity, for example, really hard on the Christians.
there's the idea that Jesus died for our sins.
And so we bear our own cross, and of course Christianity is a huge religion, but for many Christians, Jesus saves you, Jesus died for our sins, so we don't have to suffer for them.
If we believe in Jesus Christ, all of our sins will be exonerated.
Which of course is an incredible thing,
incredibly irresponsible sort of belief because it opens the door to anyone to do anything and be safe in the knowledge of absolution.
That's really a terrible sort of religious view.
And it's something that we should all be quite shocked at, rather than just accepting.
This isn't a wholesome view.
This idea of absolution, of getting into heaven free, is God free.
Because while Christians might deny the fact that, well, a serial rapist would get into heaven, or maybe not.
But there are certainly many indulgences that are undertaken by Christians under the feeling that Christians and other religious people who believe in the salvation, this idea of salvation through another,
that they do engage in.
And from a Buddhist point of view, this is incredibly problematic.
This sort of idea is the breeding ground of evil, and it's certainly going to keep a great number of people out of heaven and away from freedom from suffering, away from Nibbana and Nirvana.
So that's the second view.
The third view is the view that
The view that whatever a person experiences, all that is without a cause.
And this is the idea of free will, I would say.
You could either just say it's random, but no, it seems to be uncaused.
The idea that they're uncaused, everything is uncaused.
Because free will is really an odd sort of concept.
Because pure free will would be suggesting that, as the Buddha is going to suggest to you, that there's no rhyme or reason to anything.
If you actually believe in free will, what you're saying is that we don't have any rhyme or reason for the things that we do.
And so to talk about free will is to ignore the actual causes that bring about killing and stealing and lying and cheating, greed, anger, delusion, wrong view, because these things are caused.
There are causes.
And if you ignore the cause, then you can never hope to be free from them.
If you think, like many people do, that you have the free will to get angry, the free will to have greed, Buddha says you're muddle-minded.
You don't see clearly.
And how could you possibly be free from these things?
Because they are cause.
They are instigated.
There is a reason why we get angry.
It's not something you can just turn on or off as we so erroneously think.
And what a meditator sees quite clearly, trying to turn off the pain, trying to turn off the frustration, trying to turn off the desires, the wants, the agitation, trying to turn off the mind, trying to stop the mind from thinking.
So if you've heard the reputation of these three, I think it might be a little bit confusing, because now you think, well, what does the Buddha believe?
And this is really the point of this whole discussion, is that the Buddha didn't hold these sorts of beliefs.
As far as we understand, he didn't entertain this whole framework.
He said, these are reproachable.
These sorts of views you can criticize.
Anybody who wades into this argument of free will determinism or whatever, God, self, they get stuck.
They get entangled.
And they open themselves up to censure because you can't know these things.
These things have nothing to do with reality.
So the Buddha says, I teach that which is unrefuted, undefiled, irreproachable, and uncensored by wise ascetics and Brahmins.
And that's an important claim.
And it's sort of
sense the tone of the Buddha's teaching that he is careful to stay within that which can be that which can be proven that which is free from any sort of criticism criticism by those who know those who know the truth of course anyone can criticize anything but when investigated
One can see that it's irreproachable.
That's the idea.
That's the sort of the thought with which we approach the Buddha's teaching.
We stay within that which we can prove.
And that's what meditation is all about.
Don't think or believe anything.
Look and see.
You see, I believe that I believe I have a self, a soul.
I believe in God.
I believe I can control my mind.
I believe I can turn off the greed, the anger.
I believe my mind continues from moment to moment.
None of these beliefs, a belief is no good to us.
Look and see.
That's all you have to do.
Once you see, you'll know.
And so what did the Buddha teach?
This is the interesting part here.
What actually did the Buddha teach that was irrefutable?
Here we have a list of actually four things that the Buddha taught.
One, two, three, four.
He taught the six elements.
He taught the six bases of contact.
He taught the 18 mental examinations.
And he taught the four noble truths.
contrast the above teachings the teachings of most religious people which turn out to be belief and view and the teachings of the Buddha what did the Buddha teach?
the Buddha taught the six elements
It's such a different type of teaching.
It's not a claim.
It's not a belief.
You taught that there are six elements.
So tell me whether you can refute this.
The earth element, the water element, the fire element, the air element, the space element, and the consciousness element.
Refute it.
You might refute and say, well, the four elements, those aren't real.
And you'd be right if you were looking at things in terms of the external physicalist point of view, right?
We've broken down the elements into hundreds of them.
And even those elements are made up of subatomic particles.
But Buddhism doesn't look at reality that way.
In Buddhism, we look at reality from an experience point of view.
And if you sit and close your eyes,
call them what you like, you'll experience three of these four elements.
The fourth one is understood.
So the air element, you'll experience tension.
When your stomach rises, there's tension.
When it falls, there's the release of tension.
In your back, there's tension.
There's tension throughout your body.
The fire element, you'll feel hot sometimes, cold sometimes.
That's the fire element.
The earth element, you'll feel hardness and softness, hardness when you're on the wooden floor, softness when you're on a cushion.
Cohesion, the water element, is that things stick together.
And you don't actually experience it, even though it appears that you can be aware of it.
The space element, well, there is space in between these elements, right?
If you lift your foot off the floor, suddenly there's no longer contact with the floor, which means there's space.
And consciousness is the awareness of things, the awareness of your foot, the awareness of your stomach, and the awareness of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking.
This is the sort of thing the Buddha taught.
I was talking to some Christians because they'd like to come up to me.
They see me as a lost sheep to be.
And they have to do their duty to try and see whether they can bring me closer to their beliefs.
It's kind of amusing, really.
Because what I said to them was, I said, well, you know, what did Jesus really teach?
How many words of Jesus are there in the Bible?
I looked it up once.
I think it was, it's not very many.
And they said, oh, there's lots of words.
You know, he taught a lot.
I said, well, the teachings of a Buddha can fill a bookshelf.
And they said, oh, well, they kind of mumbled something.
I didn't really understand that they accepted that discrepancy.
I mean, there's a real discrepancy.
The Buddha didn't beat around the bush or give some nice sounding platitudes.
There's very little of the Buddha's teaching that is quotable, right?
You wouldn't quote this on Facebook.
These are the six elements, the earth element, the water element, the fire element, the air element, the space element, and the consciousness element.
It's not a Facebook quote.
But it's so much more profound.
It's profound in a way that most people just miss.
They think, well, yeah, that's simple.
And it's a shame that they think that.
Because when you learn this, when you actually see this, if you can actually experience these elements and experience that as the truth, there's so much more to see.
Everything works itself out.
That's the first one.
The six bases of contact is the second one.
So the contact of the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind.
Refute that.
This isn't something that you can say, ah, no, that's not real.
It's not true.
You don't actually.
There's no seeing.
There's no hearing.
Smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking.
There's no contact.
The third one is the 18 mental examinations.
What the heck is that?
Well, it's based on the six senses.
When you see something with the eye, what is examination here?
I don't think examines one yeah maybe examines one cognizes or you know
gets caught up in, busies oneself with, maybe is a better one.
Ponders.
So when one sees something, sometimes it's a basis for joy.
You see something beautiful, you see a good friend, you see some delicious food.
When you see it, then there's a basis of joy.
And so one gets caught up in that.
Another sight you might see as a basis for dejection, for aversion.
You see someone you don't like, or you see a skunk, for example.
You've got a skunk on back, apparently.
It leads to fear or aversion.
And then certain things that you see are the basis for equanimity.
Most things you see just give rise to equanimity.
Same with sounds and smells and tastes and feelings and thoughts.
And this is all laying the framework, laying the foundation for what's really important.
Because this is where the problems arise.
This is where the challenges, this is where the learning takes place.
It's so perfect, this foundation that the Buddha is laying down.
First he talks about reality.
Reality is the six elements.
And then based on the six elements, you have the six senses.
Based on the six senses, you have desire, aversion, joy, aversion, liking, disliking, and you have equanimity.
And as you watch this in meditation, as you see your reactions to experiences, you start to see that this is where the problem is.
And so based on this, we have the Four Noble Truths.
That all these things, the Four Noble Truths, the first one, that all these things that we experience, all of these things are unsatisfying.
just at the least, direct suffering at the worst.
They're only a cause for suffering because they can never satisfy us.
We can never fix them.
We can never be satisfied, satiated by them.
And so the reason for suffering turns out to be not the experiences that we have, but the craving for them, the attachment to them, the clinging to them, the desiring for things to be a certain way, this way or that way, when they can't, when they are not amenable to our desires.
So sitting in meditation, our experience is just experience.
If you have stress and suffering in your meditation, it's only because of your reactions.
And that's really what we're trying to change.
We're trying to see things so clearly that we no longer react to them, even seeing our reactions clearly so we don't react to our reactions.
And that leads to the cessation of suffering.
Once you let go, once you stop reacting, stop looking, stop seeking, then you have no suffering.
And so the path to freedom from suffering is just to see things clearly, to cultivate clear awareness, mindfulness, by using effort and concentration and all the other good parts of the Eightfold Noble Path.
The Buddha said, this is irreproachable.
This is unrefuted, undefiled.
Undefiled, there's no ulterior motives.
There's nothing in there that's based on someone's partiality or bias or unsubstantiated views.
It's completely based on simple experience.
The Buddha's teaching is just this simple medicine.
It's like using salt to cure a wound.
Salt is such a simple thing.
But salt is such a powerful medicine.
It's an antibiotic.
I mean, using salt as an antibiotic, for example.
Buddha's teaching is this very simple, very simple concept that ends up curing all of the sicknesses in the mind.
So there's not much to teach or explain about meditation.
There's just so much to do, so much to see, so much to investigate.
All right, so that's the Dhamma for tonight.
Thank you all for tuning in.
If you have questions, I'll take them now.
I have questions.
Hi, Bonte.
I want to keep the eight precepts once a week, as I've read that keeping them on holy days brings about a heavenly rebirth.
But for the sixth precept on not eating at improper times, is it acceptable to eat less rigid, as I tend to eat lunch late around 1 instead of 12, and not eat anything after that?
Also, how about not sleeping on high beds?
Can I still share the bed with my husband, though no precept is broken on in celibacy?
You guys can go.
No, you don't have to.
You're probably better not to stay for the questions.
keeping the holy days in and of itself won't I wouldn't say would lead to heaven but it's a really good thing and it's something that you know hedging your bets it's a good bet if you're looking to go to heaven not just because you're doing something good once a week but because you're keeping a tradition you know you're keeping an ancient
following the ancient tradition of the Buddha.
We have an ancient text.
So it gives you a great confidence to know that you're doing that.
But the problem is the rules are somewhat, with any rules, they're just artifices.
And the rules do say dawn to midday is the only time you can eat.
So if you eat after midday, you've broken the sixth precept.
So if it's less rigid, you're not actually keeping the eight precepts.
And so you're not actually following the tradition.
Now, in the West, with this crazy daylight savings time, for most of the year, you can actually eat until about 1.
And it's still midday.
Right?
I mean, it's all psychological in a sense, but there's a power to this psychology, to the tradition of knowing that you're keeping the ancient rules.
I mean, the practical
the practice is meant or the thrust of it is to eat only once in the morning it's not like nowadays where monks will it's funny in most monasteries where I used to stay as soon as the dawn comes up they'd eat breakfast and then right before midday they'd eat lunch and it's not really the point the point was sometime during the morning you eat a meal usually say 9 o'clock the best time to eat is around 9 I would say
Eat one meal at 9 and then you're good to go the rest of the day.
Now the breakfast, the whole breakfast idea was to get something right away in your stomach when you, before alms round maybe.
But something to sort of coat your stomach or get something in your stomach.
It's good for you to have like rice soup or something.
But as far as sleeping on high beds, that one's vague.
But I would say probably you should sleep on the floor.
Probably, if you're going to keep the precepts, the meaning is probably sleeping on the floor.
Monks sleep on beds.
And monks don't have this rule exactly.
But we're not allowed to make high beds.
We're allowed to sleep in them, but we're not allowed to make them.
There's some odd sort of rules about that.
The first thing to go whenever I get a room is the bed.
I haven't slept in the, well, I've slept in the bed when I'm visiting places, but I haven't had a bed in my room in a long time.
I remember when I was at Doi Setep, they had this big iron bed, and I had to drag it out of the room.
Or maybe I didn't.
Maybe I just put it off to the side.
I can't remember.
I had a big room.
I think I got them to get rid of it.
A bed is a useless device.
It wastes space.
The only thing good about a bed, I would say, is I think it might keep you out of the dust.
Like if dust settles, it might be better for your breathing.
I don't know if that's the case, but sleeping on the floor may have a problem as far as getting dust in your lungs.
That's the only thing I can think of.
But yeah, sleeping on the floor is probably a part of the eight precepts as well.
So you can keep your precepts.
You're not keeping the traditional precepts.
But you have your precepts that are very similar.
And that's, I think, the best you can do.
Because you can't actually say you're keeping the eight precepts.
I'm sorry.
I mean, they're specific.
And yeah, there's no
Just keep your own precepts.
Say you're keeping your eight precepts.
And of course, you don't want to let everyone make up their own eight precepts.
But you can feel good about the fact that your eight precepts are very, very similar to the Buddha's eight precepts.
I think that's the best I could offer.
What if a person doesn't eat dinner, eating only lunch, for reasons such as wanting to slim down, and just happens to also meet other precepts without the purposeful intention to take eight precepts?
Is this person the same as someone who purposely takes the precepts?
No.
And I think I kind of hinted at it in the last question, the answer to the last question.
The intention to keep the precepts is a big part of why it's such a great thing, is that you have this wholesome intention in your mind.
You're intending to keep the precepts.
Now as far as meditation goes, and as far as the true reason for a meditator to keep the precepts, it's nothing to do with going to heaven.
Such a person would be in a good position to practice meditation if they were able to just by chance keep the precepts.
And you could argue, as far as going to heaven, there's a lot of good that comes from them keeping the precepts.
They avoid a lot of the problems, a lot of the defilements that come from potentially breaking the precepts.
Like suppose you sleep on the floor just because, well, you don't have a bed or something.
You're too poor to afford a bed.
Well, then you're also free from all the luxury of having a bed, right?
If you only eat in the morning for health reasons, well, you're also going to give up a lot of the attachment to food.
I grew up, our parents were very keen on health food.
And so I don't feel like I have a real strong attachment to food or ever did.
Whereas I've seen other people who grew up with a very strong attachment to food.
We ate whatever, you know, and we ate food based on its health content, not based on its flavor.
We did when we were young, we did obsess whenever we had the chance to eat something tasty, but
It never got to that extent because of the lifestyle.
So if someone has that kind of a lifestyle, I would say there is benefit.
It's not the same as actually intentionally keeping the precepts.
Because there you're doing, you're saying, you're making a determination to be a good person, to do it for this reason.
It's a real support in the practice.
Hello, Bhante.
I heard there is a rule for meditators to sleep only six hours.
When I sleep only six hours for two nights in a row, my mind gets very distracted, stressed, tired, and much more clinging arises.
It usually also leads to bad karma when I sleep less than seven hours.
How should I deal with that?
At the moment, I cling to eight hours of sleep because I can focus better on practicing during the day.
Well, these six hours are for someone who is engaging in eight, 10 hours of meditation a day, and 12, maybe more hours of meditation a day.
So there's probably quite a difference between your lifestyle and their lifestyle, for one thing.
But to some extent, we're looking for a challenge.
We're looking to put our mind in a position such that we'll be able to see these reactions.
Not sleeping doesn't lead to bad karma.
It doesn't make you stressed or clinging.
It doesn't lead to stress or clinging.
But your mind's reaction to these things
And not only your mind's reaction, but the inability to act out your desire to sleep, say.
Suppose you have this desire to sleep, but when you don't sleep, man, you really feel that desire.
But when you do sleep, well, you're just acting on it.
But the acting on it is the reinforcing.
Letting the desire come and not giving in to it.
and instead being mindful of it and just watching it, that actually changes the habit and it reduces the clinging.
So we want to put ourselves in a position where we would normally get upset and then learn to experience these things without getting upset about them, without reacting to them.
So sleeping less, even when it's difficult, is a really good challenge and a useful way of training.
This is why they say about certain work and difficult things that it builds character.
Because it challenges you to be better than that.
It challenges you to be able to deal with things that you normally can't deal with.
Sure, if you want easy, if you want comfortable, just go and sleep.
But it doesn't actually benefit you.
You're affirming your desire.
You're affirming your low tolerance for stress and suffering.
So do try to deal with these situations, these conditions, rather than sleeping lots of hours so you don't have to deal with them.
But I wouldn't worry too much about sleeping very little.
Six hours, six, seven hours is enough.
I think even for someone who's not doing intensive meditation, it's a challenge.
And then a question from a new meditator on the site.
Where can I find the live stream and when?
Yeah, well, it's supposed to they're working on it, it's going to eventually say when the next broadcast is, I think somewhere.
But the broadcasts are at 9pm.
My time.
And I put a link to the audio that should be being broadcast right now and recorded.
How should one best prepare for a meditation course?
It depends which tradition, I suppose.
If you're in a meditation course in our tradition with me, with us, you should prepare by reading my booklet, by beginning to meditate.
The best way to prepare would be to do an online course.
That's the best way.
Do an online course, and we'll go through all the steps, and then we'll take you through it again intensively.
I've done that with several people.
I mean, I guess at the very least, start to practice.
Because if you've started to practice, read my booklet, it helps.
It helps a lot when you get here.
You know what you're getting yourself into.
Other than that, there's not much to worry about.
We'll ease you into it.
We don't start off forcing you to do many, many hours of meditation.
But if you want some more practical tips on that, we do have a section on the website where a couple of us kind of did like a frequently asked question thing and gave some from our own experience what was helpful to us to kind of do ahead of time.
Like for myself, giving up caffeine ahead of time was really helpful because that's a regular habit for me and there's no caffeine in the course, that sort of thing.
When I'm doing sitting meditation, I'm aware of the different areas of my body that are rising and falling.
It's usually first my stomach, then my chest, and my arms too.
Should I be concentrating only on the stomach?
You could note feeling, feeling if you feel those things, but I wouldn't worry too much about it, unless your mind gets taken away from you.
When you watch the stomach rising and falling, there'll be other parts of your body that you'll be aware of.
Don't be too specific or concerned about it.
Just be aware of the rising and the falling centered around the stomach.
It doesn't matter whether you're aware of the rest or not.
But if it does take your attention away from the stomach, then you can focus on it and say, feeling, feeling.
I'm new to meditation and I'm having difficulties focusing because of noisy neighbors.
Can I listen to meditation sounds while I'm meditating until I'm better at it?
No.
I mean, focusing the noisy neighbors is a good thing.
The important thing is not to focus.
It's to focus on whatever you experience in that moment.
So when you have noisy neighbors, focus on that.
Focus on the sound.
You can just stay with it, say, hearing, hearing, hearing.
If you don't like it, you say, disliking.
If you're frustrated, say, frustrated, frustrated.
If you focus, if you listen to meditation sounds, you're running away from the problems.
You're creating a crutch, and that's problematic.
The intention to do that is problematic.
The fact that you like those meditation, those quote-unquote meditation sounds, there's no such thing really in our tradition.
But if you have sounds that are peaceful or calming, then you're only going to create an attachment to those sounds, an attachment to the states that they bring in your mind.
You're not going to get better at it until you learn to deal with what is really there.
There's no such thing as noisy neighbors.
There's only sound in your ear.
It arises and it ceases.
Look at the sound and look at it as separate from your reactions to it.
Fante, when you were down visiting New York City with the other monk, didn't you two go and meditate in the subways and things?
We did.
That was, I mean, the subways aren't that loud, I suppose, and it's just people walking sound.
They're just talking as well.
Oh, no, that was quite loud because there was, right next to us, there was someone on the saxophone, like across the hallway, so like 10, 15, 20 feet away.
And they had an amplifier, and they were doing, you know, loud, loud music.
So, yeah, I mean, it's just noise.
It's just sound.
Related to today's talk, can we say that our experiences are caused by the five causal factors, the yamas?
No.
No, we don't say.
My point was we don't talk about such things.
We don't answer such questions.
Look at what the Buddha taught, and that's what we say.
Don't say anything else.
I know it seems too simple, and we want to come up with a view.
Don't.
Buddhism is not about views.
saying that what we experience is because of this.
No.
Think of the Four Noble Truths and don't go beyond that.
With sincerity, once dispassion is cultivated in meditation allowance and compassion then seems to arise, why is it that compassion succeeds dispassion?
Thank you.
succeeds well because we're better able to understand things objectively we're less inclined to be selfish you know
As I was talking about before, the reason why we can't have kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, or appreciation, and equanimity is because of our attachment to our own problems.
Our obsession with getting this, getting that.
And so we stop caring about others.
We stop empathizing.
We stop being aware of everything else.
Everything, you know.
You become obsessed with getting.
You look at a young child.
When they get in their mind that they want something, nothing will distract them.
Nothing will take their mind off of it.
And so we're not open to being able to help people, which is really a natural state.
If someone needs help, the natural inclination of a pure mind is to help them and do what you can.
So with dispassion, meaning giving up your passions and being equanimous or objective, you're much better able to have love and compassion and appreciation and that kind of thing.
I'm just looking back at people that maybe are new and aren't familiar with the question format.
Hello, ,, although I have been meditating for some years now, I still get these moments of anger.
Now I know this is a good opportunity to practice, and so I live with it.
But after being angry, I feel ashamed and sometimes inferior.
Did the Buddha ever say anything about shame?
Yeah, I mean, he talked about it as the bad result of anger.
I can't think of any place where he actually explained
explained how to practice in relation to it.
But I think that's because it's simply another case of anger.
What you're talking about, shame, is just a disliking of yourself.
It's actually self-hatred, right?
Which is anger.
So the Buddha talked about these things in simple terms, which is important.
It's important not to overcomplicate things.
If you're angry about the fact that you are angry,
or angry about yourself for being angry or whatever, it's still anger.
It's still disliking.
So that's how you should note it.
It makes things worse, really.
It's putting another layer of anger on top of the anger.
It's creating a habit of getting angry every time you get angry.
So that habit becomes incredibly powerful.
It's a powerful sort of anger.
It's like a double whammy.
I think that's what it means.
You've caught up on all the questions, Bonte.
All right.
Well, thanks, everyone.
I had to see we're still getting questions after questions.
We were talking.
I was just looking at some people talking about having an archive of the questions.
And I think it'd be interesting if there's some way we could get transcripts, like if there was an answer, a question and answer that somebody felt was useful, beneficial.
if they could like transcribe it and we can put it somewhere put together a bunch of text-based questions and answers that might be good yeah for sure there's the huge video archive of questions and answers but text-based would be nice yeah i mean the problem now is that we've got long videos with lots of questions and i'm not cutting them up anymore
Right?
That would be so much work with all the different questions every night.
If there was something that someone based on what the users thought, if someone said, Hey, that's a good, that's good information.
I can add it to a wiki someone doing the wiki.
Sometimes I experience wanting but I can't find an object of wanting.
Is there an object for wanting?
Wanting.
Yes, there's always an object.
How could you have wanting without an object?
What you want is happiness.
What you want is something to please you, something to stimulate you.
You're craving an experience that you've had before.
Doesn't really matter.
It's not actually important what the object is.
What's important is that you say to yourself, one thing, one thing.
But it arises based on a thought, a memory of something.
Hey, that was fun.
One thing, one thing.
Bonte, there is a good version of shame as in Hiri, right?
H-I-R-I.
I'm not sure how to pronounce that.
Yeah, it's not really shame.
Not in the way we understand it.
That's not even really the meaning.
Shame.
Hiri means...
Hearing means a disinclination to do bad deeds based on their bad nature.
is the other part of the couple is a disinclination to do evil deeds based on the result.
It's not fear and shame.
Fear and shame are unwholesome, from the English usage of the word.
OK. Good night, everyone.
Thanks, Robin.