Good evening everyone, and welcome to our live broadcast.
Tonight we're looking at Anguttara Nikaya Book of Threes, Sutta 136.
or 137 in the Pali.
And this teaching is one that we know very well in Thailand, in the monastery where I was ordained anyway.
I'm not sure how common it is elsewhere.
It's an important teaching.
Important sutta to know about, to keep in mind.
And we chanted often in the morning, or we used to.
I don't know if they do anymore, but when I was newly ordained, the monk who led the chanting liked to recite this sutta.
Upādāvā bhikkavē tathāgatānāṁ anuppādāvā tathāgatānāṁ tītāvasā tātudhamma tītātādhamma niyāmatā sambhe saṅkārā ni ca
dāṅ tathāgato abhi-sambhujati abhi-samedhi abhi-sambhujitavā abhi-samedhvā ājīgati deśeti paññāpeti pāṭāpeti vibharati vibhajati tāne karuti sambhe saṅkhāra anicchāti
That's the first one.
And there's three.
Some of you should recognize part of that.
All sankharas, all formations are impermanent.
What this sutta says is that it doesn't matter what changes.
no matter what happens whether a Buddha rises in the world or not so this is a teaching that is independent of the Buddha now many of the Buddha's teachings are actually creations of the Buddha the Four Satipatthana for example the Eightfold Noble Path itself is a creation of the Buddha
You can't go and find the Noble Eightfold Path in nature.
There's nothing that says, go this way, go this way.
But there are facts of life or laws of nature.
Three laws of nature.
There are many more, of course, but the three important ones are
in this sutta.
He says, dhamma titata, the fixed dhamma, the dhamma that stands, dhamma niyamata, the certainty of the dhamma, or that which has a nature of certainty, or no, the certainty of truth, certain truth.
All formations are impermanent.
This is the first one.
What does it mean, all formations are?
Asankhara is something that is formed, so meaning it's something that arises, something that is caused.
All of our habits, for example, a really easy one is our modes of behavior.
So when we see certain things or hear certain things, we have certain experiences, we react in certain ways.
When pain arises, immediately we become upset.
But when we hear certain people's voices or when people say certain things, we react as well.
When we see certain things, some people see a spider and immediately they're afraid.
Some people see a male, a masculine individual and become attracted.
Some people see a female entity and become attracted.
These are formations because they're not intrinsic to the object.
They're formed.
They're artificial.
But everything, in fact this whole body is artificial, it's something that is formed.
In fact it ends up referring to anything that arises, because anything that arises, arises based on causes and conditions.
Nothing is an entity that is permanent or lasting, stable for all of eternity.
And that's what this first one says, is that everything that arises is impermanent.
It may seem somewhat innocuous or philosophical at best, so we think, oh yes, that's right, someday I'm going to die and that's impermanence, but that's not really it.
That's not really sufficient.
It's not really what's important about this.
What's important about impermanence is that everything, everything that we cling to, either as good or as bad, only lasts a brief moment and then it disappears, or is made up of momentary experience.
So when you feel pain, the pain is only momentary.
When you feel pleasure, the pleasure is only momentary.
Because the mind is moving so quickly.
Each experience arises, ceases, the mind's gone somewhere else.
We think of things as stable when we enjoy good food or a pleasurable experience.
We think of it as lasting.
But if you're mindful enough, if you're clear in the mind enough, you start to see that these things that we cling to, that we desire so much, actually can't satisfy us because the pleasure only arises.
You eat a good meal, you're not enjoying it the whole time.
The enjoyment is very brief.
When you feel pain, it's not painful the whole time.
It's only a painful moment.
For a moment, and then your mind is somewhere else, and then your mind comes back.
Furthermore, it's unstable, inconstant, uncertain.
And this is what a meditator experiences just after a couple of days of meditating.
You start to see that there's no good to come from clinging to anything.
All of our experiences are in chaos, arising and ceasing, unpredictable.
You can't predict what's going to happen from one moment to the next.
Pleasure, pain,
Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking.
If you cling to anything, you suffer terribly.
It's quite stressful, actually.
This is what we find, is that we're clinging to so much, and it's causing us a great deal of stress.
We're not flexible.
We're not able to keep up with the experience.
We cling to something as it passes, and when it's gone, we yearn for it.
Or we cling to it and we fret about something that's already passed, or something that hasn't come yet, or upset, like or dislike.
But our likes and dislikes are based on things that come and go in a heartbeat.
That's the first orderliness.
The second orderliness, of course, is that sabbe sankara dukkha.
All sankaras are unsatisfying suffering.
As a result, there's nothing that is true happiness.
Happiness can't depend on a single thing.
Usually we think our happiness depends on concepts, on constructs.
Food, food makes me happy.
Music, music makes me happy.
These things don't even exist.
They're not what's really happening.
When you think of music and music making you happy, what you're actually talking about is an experience of hearing, right?
And repeated experiences of hearing that provide you with pleasure.
And it's that pleasure that we enjoy.
We think that pleasure is happiness.
When you eat good food, the taste that's delicious, that taste is pleasure.
Or we think that pleasure is happiness.
So the cold truth is that it's not happiness.
If it were, we'd be happier because we've eaten so much and because we've listened to so much music.
We'd be happier individuals.
But people who listen to lots of music are no happier than people who haven't.
Not necessarily.
They're not happier than when they started listening to music, before they listened to music.
At best these things are a distraction from the stress and suffering of ordinary life.
But
Like everything else, they're habitual, so the attachment to the things that we like grows, but of course our ability to get the things that we want can only grow so much, and eventually it's left unsatisfied.
Eventually we're thrust back into ordinary experience.
Another big thing we find when we come to meditate is how addicted we are to pleasure.
how hard it is for us to just be.
I always ask students, what's the difference between boredom and peace?
It's a good question, I think.
What is the difference between boredom and peace?
It's not the experience.
What would you say if you wanted to feel peaceful?
Well, you'd go off into the forest and sit down.
What would you do if you wanted to feel bored?
Just about the same thing.
Sit and do nothing.
You'll feel bored.
But if you want to feel peace, it's actually the same practice.
Boredom comes from wanting to be doing something else.
Boredom comes from a lack of contentment, discontent.
Someone who is content can never be bored.
Our stress and our suffering doesn't actually come from anything, but it comes from clinging to anything.
When you cling to something, you suffer.
Why?
Because it's impermanent.
It's uncertain, unstable.
Once you learn to let go and learn to see that everything is, nothing can satisfy you, you stop stressing about things, stop obsessing about things, craving things, then true peace and happiness is second nature.
It's the natural result
That's number two.
Number three, sabhi dhamma anatta.
It switches to dhamma here.
And that's for practical purposes, it's not really important, but it's an important technical distinction because nibbana is also not self.
Now, not-self, what does it mean it's not-self?
Well, it's not-self means it's not an entity.
It's not something that is real in the sense of existing independent of causes and conditions, like existing from moment to moment as an entity.
Things are just experiences.
So when you see a cat, it's just seeing.
It's not really a cat.
When you hear the cat's meow, it's just hearing.
And even the sound is not something that really exists.
The sound arises and ceases.
But it also means that you can't control things.
It means that you can't turn things on and off.
Everything is by cause and condition.
Now that doesn't mean that you can't practice or you can't influence the future.
It just means you can't control the present.
When you feel pain, you can't turn it off.
When you feel pleasure you can't hold down the button to keep the pleasure present.
It's not under your control.
The only way you can give rise to pleasure is if you work for it.
And there's a certain type of work that leads to pleasure.
If you want to avoid pain you have to do certain things to avoid pain.
You can't just say, I'm going to do this thing but I'm not going to get the results of it.
If you hit yourself and slap yourself in the face, you can say, I'm going to slap myself in the face but not feel it.
If it was really belonging to you, if you were really in control, you could control these things.
But we can't.
We can just learn what causes lead to what effects and work from there.
But most importantly, it means they should not be seen as self.
We should let go of them.
Don't think of the pain as me or mine, because when you do, then you've got to fix it.
It's your responsibility.
If you just see it as pain and let it go at that, it's not me, it's a man.
It's not important.
When you remove self from the picture, nothing can bother you, because it's not you.
We worry about things that belong to us.
We don't worry about things that belong to others, or things that have no owners.
We don't worry about dead bodies, leaving a dead body out in the rain, or whether a dead body gets cut up or not.
But we worry about our own body, if our own body gets cut, or we lose a finger because we cling to it itself.
Likewise our possessions and our experiences.
We get upset about the pain partially because we think of it as me, as I'm feeling pain.
If you learn to just see it as pain, as a thing that just arises and ceases, it doesn't belong to anybody.
It's quite easy to let go of it and be free from it.
So these three things, this is really the base of what we're trying to learn in our practice of insight meditation.
Trying to let go of the delusion that things are stable, certain, predictable, and thereby satisfying and controllable.
in favor of seeing things as they are.
As you practice meditation, you'll start to see that everything is uncertain, unstable, unpredictable, and thereby unsatisfying, not something that you can find happiness in, and therefore not worth clinging to as me is mine, not worth trying to control.
Controlling only leads to suffering.
stress and these three things according to this sutta the Upada Sutta we always call it the Dhammanayama Sutta these are the certain a certain nature certain or stable unchanging nature of reality so when everything else changes these three things never change no matter whether a Buddha arises or not
But the only distinction is that a Buddha becomes aware of these things, becomes enlightened to these things.
And having become enlightened to them, having awakened to them, having realized them, he tells, he teaches, he establishes,
He initiates.
He opens, uncovers.
He explains.
He makes clear.
A Buddha doesn't create the truth, he just explains it.
This is truth no matter, it's not dependent on Buddhism, not dependent on the Buddha.
Impermanence, suffering, non-self.
Basically seeing that nothing is worth clinging to.
When you see that nothing is worth clinging to, then nothing can harm you.
Your happiness is independent of experience and results.
You don't need anything to be happy.
You find true peace
That's the Dhamma for tonight.
Now we can go on to questions if anyone has them.
We have Gloria here.
Gloria, you want to say hi?
She's just here for a few days.
Tomorrow, two more meditators coming.
Welcome.
Okay, so Robin is here with me.
I have questions.
Oh, why isn't your video moving?
Or maybe it is and I just don't see it.
I'm not sure.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on a second.
Oh, probably because I minimized it.
Alright, go ahead.
Your audio is breaking up.
Oh, okay.
I don't think it's, I think you might have to hang up and call again.
Hang up and join the call again, maybe.
Is that any better, Bonsai?
That is better.
Right.
I mean, even among monks, it's not...
not recommended to go about talking.
I mean, it's the kind of thing you would only want to do with someone who's very close, someone who's not likely to, you know,
misunderstand or i mean it's just there's there's big problems with talking about your meditation it's just a bad example if nothing else because it leads to you see so many people bragging about their attainments you know like it and it may not even seem like bragging to them but it's
It's like putting themselves up as some big, on a pedestal.
It's very easy for students to put people up on a pedestal.
It's just a general humble practice of humility not to, I would say.
It's nice that we can hide behind the rules, but
By that I mean, so it's not like we're trying to be humble or something.
It's not seen as being, because being humble is something you can be very conceited about.
We have the rules, so we can just say, oh, it's the rules.
But really I think the big thing is it's just a practice of humility.
People should focus more on the teachings than on the teacher.
And that's the other thing is that it falls into this kind of guru worship where people are looking at the finger, not at the path.
The finger is pointing the way.
So I'm sure there are examples where you would want to talk about these things to your fellow meditators or your students, but I would think they'd be few and far between, only for those who are really close to you or very serious about the practice.
It's just too much.
Everyone worries about, is my teacher enlightened or not enlightened?
Well, none of us are the Buddha, even if we are enlightened.
Even an Arahant can give wrong guidance.
So focusing too much on the teacher is, I mean, heck, everyone says that our teacher, Ajahn Tong, is enlightened, but there's lots of people surrounding him who aren't.
So it doesn't really help.
It's important to remind people that what's most important is that they do it for themselves.
If anyone asks you, Lumpo Jodo, he talks about this, he says, if anyone asks you, what did you get out of the meditation?
Did you become enlightened and so on?
You should say, whether I became enlightened or not, it's really not the concern.
You should go and find out for yourself.
Because it doesn't help you say, yeah, I became enlightened.
Well, half the time they're just going to not believe you.
I mean, I think, oh, this person's probably just overestimating or maybe they're even lying.
I mean, it's just, it's more trouble than it's worth.
That's my take on it.
I mean, the people that you do see claiming to be this or that tend to be the most conceited, I think.
Um...
It's not to say that just because you don't means you're not, but those people who talk about it, it's really not very beautiful.
Mahasi Sayadaw goes on about this.
He says, anyone who claims they're an Arahant is probably just a charlatan.
Because a true student of the Buddha should be humble and not...
not talk about their own attainments even though they wish only for other people to gain the same thing that they've gained.
That's basically what he says.
I think at the start of the Salekha Sutta.
Really good quote.
In what case or for what use should a yogi practice kaya nupasana, hoidana nupasana, citta nupasana or agama nupasana?
Does, for instance, the nupasana practice differ for each defilement?
Could you explain this a bit?
Well, there's the four vipalasa dhamma, which I've given a talk on them, I think.
So I've answered this question before, but the four vipalasa dhamma are subha vipalasa, the perversion.
Perversion here means a perception that is twisted.
It's not like evil.
You know, we say perversion, the word perversion in modern usage is like, ew, kind of thing, or like sick, that kind of thing.
But perversion here simply means a distortion, basically.
Maybe a distortion is better.
So the distortion of beauty.
And the second one is sukha vipalasa, the distortion of, or distorted perception.
happiness the third one is the distorted perception of permanence and the fourth one is the perverted or the perversion distorted perception of self
And each one of these corresponds nicely with the four Satipatthana.
And I think this is in the commentaries.
Maybe the Visuddhimagga that explains this.
That's why the Buddha taught the four.
Yeah, it's the commentary to the Satipatthana Sutta, I think.
If you read the commentary, you should read the commentary to the Satipatthana Sutta.
Because it will give you the answer you're looking for.
I think.
if I remember correctly.
So the first Satipatthana Kayanupasana helps straighten up the mind in regards to subha, the idea that things are beautiful, the idea that there is beauty.
It dispels that notion because the body is actually just experiences.
There's nothing existing.
There's nothing beautiful about the body.
Vedanandupasana helps overcome the idea of sukha, of happiness, because you see the impermanence of feelings, and you see the suffering in the feeling.
Nityavipalasa is overcome by jitanupasana, because the mind is so quick.
When you focus on jitanupasana, you overcome the delusion of permanence.
And atavipalasa, when you focus on dammanupasana, which is like the five aggregates, but even just the five hindrances, because that's the emotions.
Our states of mind, you see that our states of mind are just that, they're just states.
And arise and cease.
But dammanupasana breaks everything up into dammas.
So it overcomes the atavipala.
So that's one way of understanding them.
It's fairly common.
The other one is by the modes of practice.
So I've talked about this, or the types of practitioners.
If someone is passionate,
whether someone is passionate or analytical, and whether they have strong wisdom or weak wisdom, and then whether one has practiced samatha before, or whether one is purely practicing vipassana and has never really cultivated samatha.
So if one is passionate with weak wisdom, one should practice kaya nupasana.
If one is passionate with strong wisdom, one should practice vedana nupasana.
If someone is analytical with weak wisdom, they should practice citta nupasana.
If they're analytical with strong wisdom, they should practice dhamma nupasana.
If someone has practiced Samatha before, Samatayanika, and they have weak wisdom, they should practice Gayanopasana.
If they have practiced Samatha before and they have strong wisdom, they should practice Vedanopasana.
If they have pure Vipassana and weak wisdom, they should practice Chittanopasana.
And wisdom here might just be referring to one's mental faculties.
So if someone is kind of a simple individual, it's not necessarily pejorative.
Some of us are simple, some of us are very intelligent.
Maybe that's a part of it.
And intelligence isn't really an intrinsically positive state.
And if someone has strong panya, then they should practice Dhamma and Vipassana, if they are Vipassana Yannika.
But read the Satipatthana commentary.
It's quite good.
Do Buddhists believe in chakras?
Oh, I think some probably do.
I don't.
Chakras are just a concept used to explain certain physical faculties.
I don't know.
It's a very different path, the idea of the chakras.
Bhante, if effort and factors causing it is non-self, impermanent, and uncontrollable, then isn't the whole cycle of development of wisdom mostly by fate or chance?
Thinking, thinking, thinks.
No.
You're still there?
Yes, but I don't believe that's your whole answer.
Why not?
Okay.
It was a simple yes or no question.
True, but you usually have a lot to say about simple yes or no questions.
Okay.
Why don't you talk much about mindful prostration?
What's to talk about?
I mean, I don't talk much about walking or sitting either.
Do I?
Maybe because our online site is set up for walking and sitting, but it doesn't mention.
We don't check off that we've done mindful prostration or anything like that.
I mean, I think it was added later because people were doing, you know, prostrating already, so the idea was to make it mindful.
Westerners don't prostrate, and we don't have that as a practice.
But, you know, that's not an excuse.
It's a great practice.
Prostrating itself is a great practice.
Mindful prostration is a great practice.
I don't know.
I mean, no one asks about it, so we don't talk about it.
There's not much to say, really.
Read the booklet.
It's got a chapter on it.
There's also a good video.
I think that's one of the good videos to watch, the one on prostration.
And then he just clarified a couple questions down, saying, why don't you talk much about it anymore?
I didn't realize I'd stopped, or that I ever really did
How do I practice at work?
I'm a software engineer, so most of the time I'm absorbed in technical tasks.
Yeah, well, that's tough.
I mean, there's things we do that make mindfulness quite difficult.
If you're dealing with constructs, logic, and so on.
It's quite difficult.
Not every type of work is going to allow you to, because many types of works require the mind to be otherwise engaged.
If your mind is otherwise engaged, then it's not free to be mindful.
The best thing is to take breaks and do short meditations in your breaks.
When I'm listening to something I really want to listen to, such as music videos, I'm in a state of listening intently, and my mind gradually wanders.
It's often intently listening to every word.
I generally have my eyes closed, and I'm not generally aware of much else except what you are saying.
Is this thinking?
If I were noting, would I be noting hearing, thinking, understanding?
If you're noting, you would note hearing, hearing.
And you might note your reactions or your inadvertent reactions, like you might be sitting there and then you might get kind of bored or you might get annoyed at something else that's happening or upset at the pain of sitting still.
I mean, if those things arise.
If you're confused about something that's being said, or you doubt something that's being said, if you like something that's being said, you don't like something that's being said, you don't know all of that as well.
But when you're listening, the big one is hearing.
That's the thing, is again, when you're listening, you're trying to understand
You can't always be meditating.
It's good to listen as well and be mindful as well because the mind can be very quick about it.
You don't have to be constantly trying to process during a talk.
I remember one of your videos when you said something about thinking in relation to teaching.
Most of my life I've been teaching.
I've always had a compulsion to pass on whatever it is I've learned or am learning.
So when I'm learning something, my mind is constantly seeking ways to explain that to someone else.
Is that just thinking and to be noted as thinking?
Thank you.
Yes, that's just thinking and should be noted as thinking.
If there's a desire to teach, which there often is, you should say wanting, wanting as well.
So you have the compulsion to pass on.
It tends to be a desire, wanting, excited about the idea of teaching to someone else.
It's enjoyable to teach that kind of thing, just if that arises, if that appears as part of it to you.
I am finding that the alarm bell starts my meditation but does not sound at the end of my meditation.
Does anyone else have this issue or know how to resolve it?
I don't know.
Maybe someone in the chat can talk about it.
I don't use the...
I just set my time and then close the app.
I don't know.
It's not meant to be a real timer.
It's very hard to do that in the form that it's in.
You're better off using another app for your timer.
Yeah, definitely on the phone.
I've seen a couple of our IT volunteers mention that if you're using it on your phone, you're going to have to use a different app, at least at this time.
Hello, Bonte.
How far through the process of dying is one supposedly able to note?
If the ability to note has some basis in brain activity, then one would think that this ability would be suspended at some point, yes?
Thank you.
No, it has nothing to do with the brain.
As far as I can see.
I don't know, I can't say too much else about that.
I mean, I guess the assumption is that you could do it all the way through to the moment of rebirth and beyond.
Good evening, Bhante.
During my walking meditation today, I suddenly noticed I was thinking without noting it.
The strange thing is that my feet were still moving according to the meditation instructions.
Does that mean that through the brain, the mind can multitask, in my case thinking and walking, or that the mind has zero control over the experience once risen, thus the cause of suffering is the wanting to control the experience?
It's not that the mind has zero control.
The mind is involved, but the mind is also very quick.
And so most of the mind activity is very slight.
And so you don't really register that you're thinking.
This is what people think of maybe as the subconscious, but it's not subconscious, it's just weak consciousness.
Most of our daily life is weak consciousness.
Mindfulness is a very strong consciousness.
So what you're seeing now is the difference between a weak consciousness and a strong consciousness.
A weak object and a strong object.
The weak object doesn't really take your attention, but it's enough to keep you walking.
And in fact, potentially, well, a great deal of the walking is done without interruption from the mind.
It's just the brain and the body doing their thing.
Much of our experience, I mean even speaking, it's not your mind that forces your lips to move.
Your mind initiates and the brain does all the rest.
It becomes like engrams, I think is the word.
They're trained.
The brain becomes trained to do certain things and the mind just has to say, I want to do that.
And the brain takes over.
And in fact the brain does a lot of it without interruption or input from the mind.
After I meditate certain unknown feelings arise.
Sometimes interactions with people limit influence on others or others on yourself.
I don't see that question.
Only part of it was tagged as a question, but if you open up the full panel above it, it says, After I meditate, certain unknown feelings arise.
Sometimes interactions with people leave things more open for conflict.
Is there a way to limit influence on others or others on yourself?
Steve, no?
After I meditate, certain unknown feelings arise.
Okay, sometimes interactions with people.
Is there a way to limit influence on others?
I don't understand.
Is there a way to limit influence on others or others on yourself?
Well, I mean, influence has to do with reactions.
So if you stop reacting or other people stop reacting, then it limits the influence.
Of course, if you stop doing things that cause people to react, that's also possible, but you can't always do that.
Sometimes people react to innocuous things.
You might say something that you don't mean anything by it, and someone else might explode and get upset.
The most surefire way is to learn how to not react.
But that's the thing.
You interact with ordinary people, they're most likely going to react.
They may even react to the fact that you don't react.
Sometimes that doesn't go over all that well.
Okay, when a bhikkhu enters cessation of perception and feeling, is it the stream of takes nirvana as the object?
Is it similar to a person who is in deep dreamless sleep, except that along that chittas have birth, kama nirvita as the object?
I think you're
That's the problem with Abhidhamma.
No, Bhavangajita is a specific type of jitta that doesn't take an object, really.
And what the object of a Bhavangajita is, I think it's something weird like the rebirth mind or something.
The Lakutra jittas are specific types of jitta.
It's a moment of jitta that has ceased.
Stop studying the Abhidhamma.
It's just making you confused.
Sankhu's questions are awesome.
Someday I will understand one of them.
Not today.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, they're fine.
But it's the kind of question that comes from studying Abhidhamma.
It just kind of confuses you.
With that, I think you're all caught up on that.
Hey, we got 32 people on our site.
That's like a record or something.
That's great.
How many people watching YouTube?
47.
And a whole bunch of chat going on over there.
How's the YouTube chat going?
Okay, well, that's it for this evening then.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Thank you, Robin, for helping out.
Have a good night, everyone.
Thank you, Bob.
Good night.