Good evening everyone, welcome to our live broadcast.
Today we are looking at Yungut Ranigaya Book of Fives, Sutta 48, Alabha Niyathana Sutta.
Alabhania Thana.
Thana is a... Thana means a place, but here it means a state or a case.
Alabhania means unattainable.
Un...
Unobtainable.
So there are five, the Buddha says There are these five
unattainable states, things that are unattainable.
samarne nava brahmane nava devi nava maari nava brahmanava kena jiva lokasmi By anyone in this world, by a recluse or a brahman, no matter how religious or spiritually powerful they may be, or even if they're an angel or a demon or a god,
can't obtain.
No matter how powerful you are, no matter who you are, certain things that we can't get.
And these four are, five are
In regards to things that are of a nature to get old, may they not get old.
You can't have that.
That won't come true, no matter what you do.
.
what is of a nature to get sick may it not get sick number three that which is of a nature to die may it not die that which is of a nature to
May it not be destroyed.
Decay.
That which is subject to decay.
May it not decay.
Nasa na dam mang ma na si.
Number five.
That which is subject to destruction.
So kaya is more like decay or wasting away.
Nasa na means
destruction or nullification.
The point being here, the interesting thing about this and why this is actually worth, why this is very much worth stopping at and going over is
that no matter how hard we try we can't fix and we can't perfect life there are certain realities that we have to face that we'll never be able to obtain a state of being whereby we always get what we want we always have what we want we can keep what we want and only what we want and where we aren't faced with
realities that are unpleasant to us.
That reality is not based on our desires.
So he says an ordinary person, someone who doesn't realize this, people living in the world,
But for them what is subject to old age grows old.
Their body gets old.
Their loved ones grow old.
All their possessions age.
Because they don't see that this isn't part of nature, as we were talking about last night about funerals, because we're not clearly aware of this as being a part of nature.
We suffer.
We suffer because of old age.
We suffer because of sickness.
We suffer because of death.
We suffer unnecessarily.
We suffer based not simply on the nature of the experience, but based on our expectations and our delusions that it could somehow be otherwise.
We work very hard to avoid death, to avoid old age, to avoid sickness, right?
We work very hard to escape its grasp.
People who are obsessed with health or obsessed with youth
We work very hard, people who are obsessed with life.
We fear death.
Old age sickness and death is very much a part of who we are, but also with everything, whether even those things that don't actually die.
They're still subject to dissolution, to kaya and nasana.
We have old age, sickness, and death, but also simple dissolution, destruction, and everything we hold dear.
Even besides our own body, there's nothing else that can be a refuge for us.
So this really, in an ultimate sense, especially for meditators, it's working on two levels.
The idea, the concept of death or the concept of losing what you hold dear.
The conceptual level is clear.
You can lose relatives, friends, loved ones, possessions, even your own body.
But it's all conceptual.
It doesn't actually describe what's really happening.
because we get stuck on concepts we have this idea that somehow we can achieve a state whereby our concepts are and by concepts i mean things where the things we own can last forever it seems theoretically possible right that you should work really hard so that you get to keep everything
Or you might even say, well, at least I can keep things for years.
Or you'd say, well, at least I can keep things for months or days or hours or minutes.
At least I have some good experiences that last and are dependable and are satisfying.
Unfortunately, the underlying reality even doesn't allow for that, because the second level in which this works is ultimate reality.
That death is actually something that occurs every moment.
And our suffering isn't actually
based on concepts.
It's based on ultimate reality and our inability to see how reality is working behind the scenes.
So we're unable to see how our emotions, how the objects of our emotions, the things we like and dislike, how they change so quickly.
So we like something.
What we really like is the experience, the feeling of pleasure, or the experience that we recognize as bringing us pleasure.
But then it changes immediately.
It comes and it goes.
And when it changes, we're left with stress because we no longer have what we want.
We don't get what we want.
Or we want something that we've gotten.
We wanted more.
We become attached and addicted to these things.
But the real reason why we can't keep the concepts of people and places and things is because the ultimate reality underneath it is changing moment by moment.
This is what we really see in meditation.
Not really so much about, oh dear, I will have to one day die.
It's much more visceral than that.
It's that I'm dying every moment.
Being born and dying.
Born, die, born, die, every moment.
And that reality is not something that should be clung to.
That there's no part of reality
that gives us any reason to think that it could be a refuge or satisfaction to us, because it lasts but a moment.
So this whole idea of clinging and why clinging and craving is wrong, we sometimes doubt and wonder, well, why is it wrong to like things?
What would it be like to not like things?
It's really a complete misunderstanding of the very framework of realities.
It's nothing to do really with stopping liking things or people.
Those things and people don't exist.
It's about stopping to cling or concern ourself with what really is born and dies, our experiences.
But either way, on both levels, it clearly works on both levels, and it's something that gives us a real
shock, something that gives us some sense of alarm and should give us some sense of concern.
The things that we depend upon are not dependable.
Our own life, who we are, our identity, our very soul itself is subject to change, is subject to dissolution.
Our very being.
We are subject to death.
All of our family is subject to death.
So to run away from old age, to run away from sickness, to run away from death, not even the gods have the power to stop.
That's a part of how nature is made.
Reality is momentary experiences that constantly creating the change that we see on the conceptual level of people and places and things.
So, not to belabor the point, but
worth remembering.
It's really a good way of understanding why, why am I working so hard to better myself?
Am I trying to cultivate spiritual realization?
To free ourselves from the unreasonable expectations of youth, health, life, stability, continuity, certainty, all this.
Be able to deal with the truth of change.
That really is the big thing that we're not able to deal with.
It's really change.
If everything stayed the same all the time, well, we'd get used to it.
but we're constantly disappointed and our expectations are not met because of change, because of chaos, but mostly because of our delusion, simple delusion.
It's kind of silly.
Well, if you understood that everything changes constantly, you would never cultivate any expectation of stability or partiality.
And that's really what we come to see.
We simply see that
Reality is chaotic.
And if that is a fact of life, which it turns out to be, then we must necessarily give up expectations and our attempts to live long and be healthy and young and to keep the things that we like.
Eventually we see that even liking itself is part of the problem, really the source of our problems.
Because it means being partial to things that are outside of our control, ultimately.
We can't stop them from changing and going.
So, a good memory, a good reminder,
of what ultimately circumscribes our happiness.
These things cannot be changed by us or anyone.
There's no practice we could do or prayer we could say that would give us eternal life, eternal youth, eternal health, eternal anything.
So there you go, that's the Dhamma for tonight.
I think Robin has decided not to join tonight, which is fine.
Certainly, she acts above and beyond.
So we'll give her a night off.
But nonetheless, I have a bunch of questions, so I'll answer them.
Michael, you should go.
During sitting meditation of rising, falling, and practice of daily mindfulness, I began to hear and feel my heartbeat with more clarity.
I'm identifying it with the mantra heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat.
Is this a correct practice?
It's not terrible, but the heart is just a concept.
What you're really experiencing is a feeling.
So to be more correct, you'd want to say feeling, feeling.
You can also say something like beating, beating, but feeling works just as well.
The experience of sitting lingers for longer than one noting period.
Should I continue to note sitting until that one experience ceases?
Or instead do one noting of it and move on, even if the experience hasn't ceased on its own?
Yeah, just do it once.
Just do it once and move on.
Oh, I didn't click.
Right.
I was supposed to click, and it didn't work anyway.
No, that's useless.
It wouldn't be wrong, but it starts to get a little bit ad hoc.
I'm better off to stick to the program.
I wouldn't worry if there's still potential to focus on it more.
Just say sitting once and then move on to the next one.
But that's for that specific technique that we give to you.
Noting Morse, I'm going to click this.
When noting more steps in walking meditation, is it better to slow our pace in order to make the noting easier?
Or should we strive to speed up the noting to match the original pace?
Well, each... No, it should...
I mean, the step itself will take longer, sure.
But each movement should be an ordinary speed.
It shouldn't be too quick or too slow.
But because there's more steps in it, yeah, it will take longer.
A little bit, anyway.
I see you use the Internet quite frequently.
Are all Buddhist monks allowed to use the Internet to a reasonable extent?
It really depends on where you are and your situation.
There's obviously no rule about using the Internet, though I can understand the potential desire to circumscribe access to the Internet.
There's no question that it's problematic.
Once Nibbana is realized, how can I be certain that I will be released from rebirth cycle for good?
I'm in a depressed state, but it's as though I don't want to come back here for another life.
Well, I mean, the cause of rebirth is craving.
The benefit of seeing Nibbana is it reduces your craving.
Because you've seen true peace, and so you crave less and less, and you're more objective and neutral, in a sense.
And so that's how you know that you're not going to be reborn, is because you have no more craving left.
no more desire.
What is the difference between realization, awareness and judgment?
How do you know that what you're saying to yourself when meditate is not a judgment of your experience?
Well, judgment would be, judgment really would be adding something to it.
If you say, if you feel pain and you say to yourself, pain, pain, you're not adding anything to it.
It is pain.
Of course, if you say to yourself, pain, pain, you're adding the dislike to it.
What you're saying is, this is bad.
You're not saying it verbally, but you're cultivating that.
So there does need to be a certain quality to your noting.
It has to be neutral.
But if you were to sit there and say, bad, bad, bad, well, that would be a judgment.
A couple of questions there that I'm not going to bother posting or adding.
The questions here are meant to be about our tradition and for the benefit of people practicing our tradition.
So the ideas are about our meditation practice or some general Buddhist principles I'm happy to discuss to some extent.
But yeah, speculative or other sorts of questions, questions about other types of practice.
Not really the purpose.
Anyway, hope that was useful.
This giving of Dhamma, a little bit of a talk every night.
It's good for the meditators to hear something and to give them a reason and remind them of why they're doing it.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Wishing you all good practice.
Have a good night.