Good evening, everyone.
Welcome back to Evening Dhamma.
Tonight, I'd like to look at... Oh, you know, it's one second.
So many switches.
Hello?
Can you hear that?
Is that loud enough?
Hello?
That's better?
Too loud?
That's good.
So today we'll be looking at the Bhaya Bhairava Sutta.
If you want to follow along, it's Majjhima Nikaya Sutta number four.
In this talk, the Buddha is approached by Brahmin Janasoni who basically asks whether the followers of the Buddha take after his example.
Meaning, do they practice as you practice?
Which is, basically the idea is that the students are capable of the same sort of practice as the Buddha.
Of course, in that time, or in religion in general, it can happen that the headmaster, the guru is capable of practices that the students are not capable of.
Do your students actually practice the things that you practice?
That's basically what he's asking.
Do they follow your advice?
Do they do what you do?
Are they able to keep your teachings?
And the Buddha affirms all this.
He says, yes, indeed, my students do look to me for guidance.
They take my advice and they follow my example.
which in and of itself is quite impressive because the Buddha's practice of course was quite rigorous and the Buddha himself only slept only lay down for three or four hours a night and the rest of the time was mostly actually spent in teaching but they say even those three or four hours when he lay down were
Were not actually sleeping He would actually teach them as well But the The talk here is about The talk here is about Specifically the practice of living in the jungle So Janosoni says He says wow I would think that it
It would be hard for the monks to live in the jungle.
I would think that if someone were to go off and live in the jungle alone, if they weren't focused, if they didn't have a strong mind, they'd go crazy.
Let's see what the Pali is for go crazy.
Haranti means take away the mind.
No, I don't get it.
Haranti.
to get back to that one.
Anyway, your mind will be, you'll lose your mind, basically.
And the Buddha affirms this.
He says, yes, it's hard to endure living in the forest.
It's hard to live in seclusion.
It's hard to enjoy solitude.
One would think living in the jungle would drive you crazy if you have no concentration, if your mind is not focused.
And then he goes through, why I brought this sutta up is because he goes through a bunch of qualities that are, we can say they're required for practice.
And so it well answers the question of what sort of qualities we need to develop and the sort of qualities that differentiate a person who's capable of living in seclusion and one who is not.
What's it going to take, useful for us, what's it going to take for us to be able to successfully participate and complete a meditation course?
What's it going to take for us to be able to stay alone with ourselves?
To do the work that is required to understand ourselves?
So this is what this sutta is about.
The Buddha uses himself as an example.
He says, when I was unenlightened, I thought about that.
I thought about how hard it would be, and then I thought about the qualities that I would need.
And so the first three qualities you need are purity of conduct, physical conduct, verbal conduct, mental conduct.
If you're a person who's full of corruption in body, speech, or mind, then it's not easy to stay alone with yourself.
You're going to be overwhelmed with remorse.
If you're a murderer, if you're a thief, if you're a liar, if you're a cheat, if you take drugs and alcohol, if you're addicted to this or that,
Not easy to stay alone in the forest, or to stay alone in general.
Honestly, living in the jungle is quite peaceful.
It's sort of a romantic notion that often people think about.
Hey, I'll just go off and live in the jungle.
It's not actually the jungle that's a problem.
Well, there's other reasons why the jungle is dangerous.
Sickness and dangerous animals.
Even the ants will kill you.
But as far as just living alone in the forest, I lived alone in a tent in the jungle, trying to set up a forest monastery.
And I've told this story before about how I got chased out by a tiger.
So there are those kind of dangers.
But simply living alone in the forest is quite peaceful.
It's really interesting how difficult it is for us to be at peace.
I mean, it's really at the crux of the situation.
It's not that being alone is stressful or suffering.
It's that we're not able to be at peace.
We're not at peace.
And so we find ways to distract ourselves, to avoid dealing with ourselves.
It means we have no tools, we have no means of dealing with ourselves.
And so again, this is a list of ways of coming to terms with ourselves, being able to be alone with ourselves, to go inside and to experience the here and now, to be without always getting what we want or being stimulated by delightful things that are our addictions.
And so the first three steps, the first steps are purity of conduct, morality.
It always starts with morality.
It's not even that morality is all that important because you're not going to be killing or stealing or lying or cheating when you're here meditating.
It's more that morality is like a roadblock.
If you're not a moral, ethical sort of person, you won't even get in the door.
You won't want to come and meditate.
You'll try to sit still and you'll be completely perturbed, distracted.
Great stress will come from the sickness in the mind that's a result of unwholesomeness.
That's not to say that you can't.
Having done bad deeds, you can't meditate.
It just makes it difficult.
It might drive you crazy if you've done a lot of bad deeds.
You have to go slowly.
This is a reason why we make a determination to keep the five precepts.
One good reason is to give you confidence that, okay, I did bad things in the past, but I don't have to feel guilty because I've changed.
I understand that that was wrong and I hurt people and so on, but I've changed now.
And you get a great confidence by knowing that you're now a good person.
It's all really psychological.
That's what it's all about.
Number four is livelihood.
So livelihood relates to the first three.
He says if people are impure of action or of livelihood, means their business, their means of livelihood is corrupt, cheating others and so on, or hurting others, or
manipulating others to make a living, it's going to be hard.
They're going to go crazy if they try to be alone with themselves.
It's not going to be easy.
But he said, I'm not like that.
And so this gave him great confidence.
He says, I found great solace in dwelling in the forest.
And then he goes the next step To start to talk about Once you've talked about Your conduct Then the next thing that You have to work on is The mental states, right?
So he says some people are covetous and full of lust, great desires, addictions, wanting this, wanting that, liking this, liking that.
We don't see the danger.
I often get this question of why should we give up the things that we like?
They make us very happy.
You get your answer when you try to sit still with yourself, when you try to do this very peaceful, seemingly simple thing of just being, just sitting.
It's very difficult because your mind is tormented, really tormented.
And you wonder why meditation is so stressful.
It's not that meditation is so stressful.
It's that wanting things and not getting those things is stressful.
You can't blame the meditation for your addictions.
Other people are full of ill will or hate.
For some people their mind is on fire.
I mean a big, a good example of this is just hatred of pain.
The inability to stand discomfort.
We blame pain.
We think pain is a bad thing.
Pain is a problem.
Why should I sit with pain?
If I have pain, I should change my position.
I should go somewhere else, do something else.
The Buddha doesn't blame pain.
He says it's not the pain, it's the aversion.
It's the disliking of the pain.
Very hard to see.
But our mind in any way, inflamed with hate, if you hate, if you have anger towards other people, if you feel you've been wronged, if you're consumed by thoughts of vengeance or thoughts of anger,
Very difficult to be with yourself, very difficult to be alone.
You think about all the bad things people have done to you.
Very hard to be at peace.
Someone else is overcome by sloth and torpor, laziness.
sluggishness of mind.
The ordinary mind is weak.
Sloth and torpor is like the equivalent of a person who has never done any exercise.
Physically, they're very weak.
They're not able to lift any weights, not able to do any work.
If you give them manual labor, say, go and lift those blocks or build that wall or something, they're not able to use their bodies.
This feeling of being too weak for something, when you get that feeling in the mind, that's a sign of sloth and torpor.
The mind not being strong enough.
You want to be mindful, but your mind is not strong.
You have a feeling.
You can feel that the mind is not able to stay with the object.
It's lazy.
It gets easily distracted.
It doesn't want to put out the effort.
It's reluctant.
It's stiff.
It's unwieldy.
It's weak.
It's sloth and torpor.
Because for such a person, very difficult to stay alone in the forest.
Very difficult to stay alone because of course you get easily distracted and caught up.
And you find it very difficult to be present.
And difficult to deal with all the challenges that arise.
He says, another person is full of doubt, uncertainty.
Without an uncertainty, very difficult to stay alone with yourself, especially in the forest or the jungle.
Without the certainty, the power of mind, you easily get lost and discouraged, overwhelmed by your defilements, your wants and aversions.
very easily get overwhelmed and lose your ability to continue on with the practice.
Some meditators are so full of doubt that it's very difficult for them to progress in the meditation practice.
It's encouraging.
Some of them are able to really break through and give it up.
But it often happens that the doubt leads a meditator to stop practicing, at least temporarily.
be so discouraged and confused.
I don't know right or wrong, good or bad.
I have so much doubt.
Buddha said, I've gone beyond doubt.
So these are the five hindrances.
And these are really our enemies in the practice.
Regardless of whether you think of them as right or wrong or dangerous or not.
They get in the way of progress in meditation.
And really they get in the way of peace.
They get in the way of clarity of mind.
They get in the way of happiness.
They're a cause for stress and suffering.
prevent us from they prevent us from succeeding so the Buddha said you know I develop uncovetousness I give up my desires I have a mind of loving kindness I am without slots and torpor I have a peaceful mind not restless
I missed one, right?
Restlessness.
After sloth and torpor we have restlessness.
So the opposite of sloth and torpor is when your mind is too active.
A hyperactive mind.
Jumping here, jumping there, not able to focus on anything.
And this is really
It's a good focus for our practice.
It's a good focus to think of these things.
I mean, this is a very big part of what we have to be mindful of.
When we practice meditation, a very large part of our practice is to try and be mindful of the hindrances, and to learn to let them go, to fix them, to straighten our minds, and to cultivate such
firmness and rectitude of mind that these defilements don't have power over us.
They don't have a chance to consume our mind.
He says some meditators, some religious people are given to self-praise and disparagement of others.
Some are subject to alarm and terror.
fearful.
They have great fear.
Some are desirous of gain, honor and renown.
Very difficult to go off into the forest if you have ambition.
Some are lazy and wanting in energy.
Some are unmindful and not fully aware.
Some are unconcentrated and with straying mind.
Here's a list of other more general qualities that are required.
Self-praise and disparagement of others.
Ego.
Ego is a real obstacle to the practice.
Because an egoist, egotist, someone who is egotistical,
requires an audience, they require praise, they require constant validation.
We love to make other people proud of us, have them look on us positively.
Very difficult to find reality that way.
Very difficult to stay with the present moment when you're consumed by
The need for praise.
Or when you're disparaging of others.
Sort of a nasty state.
Subject to alarm and terror is
Well, particularly in the forest, it's very difficult to be in the forest.
They're so peaceful at night.
But can you imagine being full of fear and dread of the forest?
I grew up in the forest, so going into the forest at night was never a scary thing.
Of course, it's kind of troublesome about snakes and scorpions and so on.
There are real dangers.
And then of course there's fear of ghosts, fear of spirits.
There were times when I was in the forest and the noises, sometimes the noises were so disturbing.
But just being alone with yourself, if you're a worry, if you're worried, someone who worries a lot,
If you have great fear, being alone can be such a fearsome, crippling experience.
If you're lazy, so I guess Latantorpa we can't call laziness, it's just a weakness of mind.
But laziness is when you really just can't be bothered.
A lazy person living alone in the jungle will not last very long.
It's not something that's going to... They'll constantly be seeking out more comfort and avoiding the cultivation of wholesome qualities.
All of the evil will seep in.
Laziness and not putting out effort, it's not actually in and of itself evil.
It just is basically saying allowing the evil to continue and grow.
Those things that cause us suffering, those things that create stress in our minds, they grow because of laziness.
You might think, well,
Why should I bother?
What's wrong with just living, right?
The problem is that we're not just living.
Our minds are full of things that cause us stress and suffering.
And our laziness is like permission for them to continue.
Some meditators are unmindful and not fully aware.
The Buddha said, I am established in mindfulness.
That's of course key.
If you're not mindful, this is where all of the problems of the mind gain hold, take control.
Why we suffer, why we're traumatized, why we react violently to experiences is because we're not clearly aware
of the nature of the experiences as they happen.
If you're mindful, you can never react improperly.
If you're truly aware, in that moment there's a pure understanding of the experience.
And because of that pure understanding, there's no reaction of liking or disliking.
There's just experience.
Some meditators are unconcentrated and with straying minds.
I am possessed of concentration, he says.
So there's things he thought to himself.
I'm not like this.
I can go off and live in the forest.
I can be alone with myself.
Finally, because I'm focused.
If your mind is not focused, again, very easy.
for your mind to stray into unwholesomeness and things that cause you stress and suffering.
By evil and by unwholesomeness, we just mean those things that cause you stress and suffering.
Just sitting here, it's not always a pleasant experience because there is desire, because there is aversion, because there's all these things.
It's a fairly comprehensive list, or it's a good list of the sorts of things that we're going to have to work on
in order to succeed in our meditation practice.
He says something else after that that's interesting.
This question of whether we should avoid unpleasantness.
He's talking particularly about fear.
He says when someone is devoid of wisdom,
then they get afraid by living in the forest they get upset living in the forest I know that's not the important point oh yeah no the last time the last one is wisdom so the final quality is wisdom if one is unwise this is the understanding if one doesn't understand reality
Take pain, for example.
Now, true understanding of pain is really that pain is neutral.
It's an experience.
If you don't have that understanding, if you haven't seen that clearly, which most of us haven't, pain is intolerable.
Pain is something to be done away with.
Why?
Because we don't understand it.
An important claim in Buddhism that I repeat often is that when you understand something, it has no power over you.
If you understand reality as it is, if you have a clear understanding of reality, it's not possible for you to be disturbed, stressed, upset.
Suffering can't arise.
Suffering is...
Suffering is a product of delusion, of ignorance.
When you experience pain, if you see it just as pain, when we say to ourselves, pain, pain, it has no power over you.
When you see something that would normally make you very angry, or you hear something that would make you very lustful or ambitious, you know, desire it.
If you're mindful, that doesn't occur.
You experience it, it arises, it ceases.
So the next thing I wanted to talk about was just as a note, because he talks about it as well in the suttas.
When these experiences arise, what should you do?
Should you do something else?
And the Buddha's practice as a bodhisattva, before he became a Buddha,
was to not run away from it.
Suppose there's something that makes you afraid.
Well, what he did is he went to forest shrines on the holidays.
It's basically the equivalent of going to a haunted house on Halloween.
In India, there would be these forest shrines where the angels or the demons, they would go to propitiate these spirits, evil spirits, good spirits.
And these spirits were said to be active on the full moon, especially active on the full moon, on the new moon.
It's superstition.
But basically it's the equivalent of a haunted house on Halloween.
It's the scariest possible situation.
I went there and I did walking meditation.
And if when I was walking I got afraid, I would say to myself, I'm not going to stop walking until this fear goes.
And if I was sitting, I would say, I'm not going to stop sitting.
Meaning he didn't even change his posture.
The point is, when the fear came, he made a promise that he would stay and deal with the fear.
It's actually just one example of the sorts of things that can arise, but it's an example of how to deal with any sort of problems.
when you're very angry.
As a meditator, you shouldn't run away from the thing that makes you angry.
In fact, to some extent, following the Buddha's example, it's good for you to be in association with the things that make you angry to the extent that you're able.
If you're strong enough to be able to change the way you look at the experience, it can be quite powerful.
And you're able to experience the same thing without getting disturbed, stressed, upset by it.
So with all these qualities, it's not something to be afraid of or discouraged by.
If you have any of these
problems that are going to get in the way of your practice, really the best way to deal with them is to spend some time being mindful of them.
If you're lazy, be mindful of your laziness.
If you're angry, be mindful of your anger.
If you want something or you're addicted to something, spend time being mindful of it in all of its aspects.
The feelings, the emotions, the thoughts, the experiences.
And then he goes through the progression of enlightenment, which is fairly standard and I won't go into it.
I thought this would be interesting to talk about these.
It gives us a chance to go over things that get in the way of our practice.
We're all very interested in learning how to stay with ourselves, how to be with ourselves, and how to have it be a productive experience.
Now this sutta does a good job explaining the ways that
The difference between a productive meditator and an unproductive meditator.
So, there you go.
That's the Dhamma for tonight.
Thank you all for tuning in, for coming out.
Saturdays now we have visitors.
It's advertised.
I also give talks Monday and Wednesday.
You're welcome to come out then.
And of course our center is open anytime.
You're welcome to just come by.
If you want to learn how to meditate, just make an appointment and we can set something up.
So questions are for Wednesday.
I'm going to try that for a while, see how that goes.
No questions tonight.
We'll save all our questions once a week.
There's too many questions.
No, there's lots of questions.
So Wednesday will be question day.
Saturday is giving an official talk based on some teaching of the Buddha.
So thank you all for coming out again.
Have a good night.