It's about what to do after becoming enlightened.
It says, more and more people are waking up spiritually, and for most of them the question becomes, now what?
Information about life after awakening is usually not made public, explains Ajahn Chah.
It's most often shared only between teachers and their students.
The End of Your World, that's the title of the book, is his response to a growing need for direction on the spiritual path.
It's interesting to see the question of whether you need guidance after enlightenment.
Well, that's obviously the difference, I think.
It's incredibly odd from a Buddhist point of view that an enlightened being should need any guidance.
Even in Buddhism, there's a difference between an Arahant and a Buddha, right?
But an Arahant doesn't become a Buddha.
An Arahant doesn't work to become a Buddha.
They don't have any desire left, so they don't have any intention to do anything.
They don't need guidance because they're not going anywhere.
They're just happy.
But there's a difference between an Arahant and a Buddha, right?
Yes, but not in the sense of needing guidance.
Although an Arahant would take guidance from a Buddha, but it would only be functional.
So if the Buddha said, no, don't say that, or do say this, or go do this, or go do that, they would do it, but not in order to become more enlightened or not because they were at a loss for what to do.
Maybe an Arahant may not necessarily know what to do in each situation in the worldly realm.
But that wouldn't cause them any suffering.
It wouldn't be a problem for them.
Okay, so you do have a point that there is maybe room for it, but... For rules that would benefit others, not the enlightened being.
himself or herself will be like a guidance to benefit others once you've reached enlightenment.
That could be, but not all Arahants are inclined to benefit others.
Some Arahants just go off and live in the forest.
So you could incline them to do that, or invite them to do that, or ask them to do that.
Yeah, and so there is something on there.
But it sounds much like the idea of needing guidance and so on.
doesn't need guidance.
Anyway, it just seems like an odd... It seems... The suspicion, of course, is that they're dealing with an enlightenment that we wouldn't consider to be enlightenment.
In fact, it has a chapter.
The title is interesting.
It's called... The name is I Got It, I Lost It.
It's like the experience that many people seem to have that they...
experience a kind of enlightenment or something of experience and then it fades away with time.
Yeah, that's common.
That's a sign that it's not enlightenment.
But it's also possible that you see or experience new Ghana and then you go back to normal life
Yeah, I'm sure that .
Yeah, so you may not go back to nirvana for a long time, maybe.
It's certainly possible.
But what doesn't leave you is the state of being a sotapanna, and there's some quality of the mind involved in that that doesn't disappear.
That's totally unalterable.
What's that quality?
The state of being a Sotapanna, Sotapatti Palla, the fruit of a Sotapanna.
I mean, the details of it, the Sotapanna has no envy or jealousy, stinginess or envy.
They have no wrong view about the existence of a self.
They have no attachment to rites and rituals, and they have no doubt about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha.
They're also said to keep Aryakanta Sila, the pure Sila, pure five precepts, the morality that is dear to the noble ones, which is said to be the five precepts.
So the idea is that a Sotapanna would not break any of the five precepts.
I have a question.
Is the concept of the Sotapanna present in every tradition?
I can't really say.
I have real difficulty with other tradition questions because I don't study them.
I suppose maybe I should.
I think the reason for not is you just get so disgusted by how many, not disgusted, but kind of turned off by how many traditions there are and how they just seem to just pop up every week.
So I'm much more comfortable saying I do what I do and I have no problem you doing what you do, but it's not what I do, so don't try to convert me and we'll be, we can be friends.
So is it?
I think it is.
I think from what I understand, most Buddhist schools, the ones that you hear about, are very much in line and have the same understanding.
They just tend to focus on a different aspect.
So in general, the Mahayana just focuses on becoming a Buddha.
That's really the main difference.
To go into details and talk about no but, no but,
you really get into different monasteries more than different schools because, you know, in general, Mahayana, they don't deny the teachings of the Theravada.
They just don't focus on them.
There's very little disagreement if we just talk to each other.
This was the thing we got doing this Buddhist news together, me and Lama Kunga.
You know, we really agreed on mostly everything.
We argued a little bit, but
you know, people argue, this constructive dialogue.
But, you know, we're not, you know, it kind of surprises you.
You think that you probably will be incompatible, and then you find out that actually, you know, you're really saying things very much in line with each other.
So that