Alright, next question.
Why don't modern day arahants let themselves be scientifically tested to show the effect of meditation?
What are we going to hear?
To show the effects of meditation on the mind.
Well, I heard that my teacher... Okay, first of all,
How do you know who is an arahant or if there are arahants around today?
Very difficult to know.
So whether there are any or where they are, they might be off in the forest meditating happily and peacefully and with no cares.
An arahant is an enlightened being.
But I heard a story that my teacher went to have himself set up with an EKG or some sort of brainwave scan.
And I've seen various meditators do these things.
When they hooked him up to it and he had sat in meditation, they couldn't find a brainwave.
This is what I heard.
So, I mean, I'm not saying anything because of that, but except that my teacher has apparently been asked and submitted to it.
So I don't think it's unheard of, of experienced meditators submitting themselves to that.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
It'd be an interesting study.
And of course they've done that with Tibetan Buddhists and they've found that true enough, all that development of compassion has made them more compassionate.
All of those years of compassion has made them more compassionate, which is what you'd expect.
But, you know, there was this question was asked, or there was this bet posed over this man who promised a million dollars or some huge amount of money to anyone who could show him a psychic power.
And he still hasn't had to pay up.
I don't know what that says about psychic powers, but in Buddhism, Buddhist monks aren't allowed to show their psychic powers.
So it's against our rules to do it in the first place, for a million or a billion or however much money.
And so from a Buddhist point of view, the answer to why no one has come forth is pretty easy.
Why no Buddhist monk has come forth is pretty easy, because first of all, they're not allowed to, and second of all, money is nothing to them.
money is something that they've decided to give up.
But as to why a person wouldn't come forth and prove to people is because of the result of it, that this sort of bragging or boasting about your attainments doesn't make people more interested in meditation, it makes people more interested in the arahant, and it brings great fame and renown to the person.
The Buddha compared it to a prostitute or a dancing striptease person who shows their private parts for money.
This is how the Buddha compared it.
So he said, this is not something that we should encourage in people.
That's not something that really helps.
The important thing is to encourage those people who want to practice, encourage them in meditation.
And the other thing is we don't go looking or trying to bring people to the practice who aren't really interested in it.
We put it out there and say this practice exists and let people come to it.
it doesn't help to show off or to put yourself out there and make a big scene about it.
So I can't see it really helping or coming to an arahant that I should do this for the benefit of Buddhism, because it's not really for the benefit.
It just makes people who are not really keen on practice come and get involved and
You know, it brings a lot of fame and gain and so on, and therefore a lot of people who are interested in fame and gain.
So I don't see it as something that an Arahant, and the other thing is Arahants have no desires, so what would it be to them?
It sounds kind of weird, like, contradictive that an Arahant would go out and
See, see.
And the other thing is an Arahant will never try to, a true Arahant, Mahasi Sayada gave this great, he wrote this great passage about the Arahant and he said an Arahant, anyone who calls themselves an Arahant, it's very hard to believe that they could be an Arahant because an Arahant doesn't have any interest in letting people know that they're an Arahant.
They want to show everyone.
In fact,
an arahant will be very much keep it to themselves and you see this carried out in the scriptures there's stories about this so whether they're true or not but if you go by the scriptures you can there's you see many stories that's where people i would ask monks and the monks would always equivocate even there was this lay woman uh i think we gave a dhammapada story about her who
who became an anagami.
And this monk came and asked her, so are you the woman who can read people's minds?
And she wouldn't answer him.
She said, can you read my mind or something?
And she said, oh, why do you ask that?
Well, you've given me everything I want, everything I want you've prepared for me.
And she said, oh, people prepare things who haven't gained magical powers.
People prepare the right things.
She said, well, I don't care about those people.
I'm asking you.
And still she wouldn't answer him.
So this is clearly from an orthodox response would be that this is not the case.
An enlightened being would never talk or even hint about their attainments.
They would act as an example to people.
But I can see an Arahant if people wanted to hook them up to an EKG.
I can see an Arahant doing that.
It's like, yeah, okay.
I don't think they would necessarily refuse or so on if people came to them.