Good evening, everyone.
Welcome to our live broadcast.
Tonight we're looking at Anguttara Nikaya, Book of Fives, Sutta 29.
quite short.
I don't know if you could properly call it a sutta, though.
In a sense, that's what it is.
It's called the Cangkama Sutta.
Cangkama comes from the root
Kam meaning to go.
Chang, that's what the chang means, but it's going back and forth, going for a walk.
Chang kama is a word we use to describe walking meditation, pacing.
Maybe it's a good translation of chang kama.
So there's not much to this sutta.
And in fact, now that I think of it, most of you should know the content of the sutta from the booklet on how to meditate.
But nonetheless, the best thing about highlighting the sutta is just to reinforce the idea that it's something the Buddha taught.
walking meditation.
Most people are quite familiar with sitting meditation.
We have a sense that meditation is something you do sitting down.
I would say walking meditation is somewhat revolutionary for people.
I don't know whether it was revolutionary in the time of the Buddha.
I have to suppose it wasn't.
There are actually suttas that describe non-Buddhists
The Tevijya Sutta, I think, in the Liganikaya, that describe non-Buddhists doing pacing.
Pacing as a form of religious activity.
So perhaps not meditating, but they would talk while they were walking back and forth.
I guess another example comes to mind of the Dead Poets Society, if you ever saw that old movie.
They go walking and talking in the yard, I think, instead of class.
You could come up with lots of examples of where walking was considered to have some benefit to the mind, right?
There's something about walking that is
useful in a way that sitting meditation doesn't provide or doesn't bring to us in a way that sitting meditation isn't I think the biggest reason for it is that we are not rocks we are not dirt
We are animals and we move.
It's part of our nature.
It's a part of the makeup of our bodies.
And so the stimulation brought about by walking is very much a part of our nature.
It's maybe somewhat similar to the benefit we gain from meditating outside or in nature.
People will, especially with tranquility meditation, it's not so important with insight meditation, but meditating in nature is beneficial and I think it's because it's very much a part of us.
Living in nature is not something special about nature, it's just, it's the atmosphere we're used to, we're accustomed to, our bodies are accustomed to.
Being in cities or in even rooms can be somewhat jarring or lacking or alien to us.
And with insight meditation we're not so concerned and that's not such a big deal.
But walking I think is more integral to who we are.
because our bodies are not comfortable with just sitting.
There's, they've done studies that show that physically sitting around all day is not, it takes, apparently it reduces your life.
But walking actually, they've actually found something it does to the cells in your body, the benefits of walking.
And that some of that translates to the mind.
so not to beat the horse too much but the idea is that it's a benefit to us walking is a part of who we are so the Buddha here gives us five benefits to walking meditation and I talk about them in the book so there's really not a lot to go over but we passed by this sutta and I couldn't help but stop and make a note of it
So the five are adhana kamo.
Adhana kamo hoti.
Kamo means able to endure or patient with.
One hoti, one is a person who is patient with adhana, travels.
So this was important in the time of the Buddha, the ability to walk long distances.
It's even important today.
We're so dependent on artificial means of transportation.
For a Buddhist monk in the time of the Buddha, they actually weren't allowed to ride in carts or vehicles.
It's one of those rules that we tend to break today as monks.
unashamedly because we just couldn't get by without vehicles but the Buddha actually had an injunction against it so we really should be walking everywhere but even in the time of the Buddha it was common everyone would walk everywhere so it was important because if you sat around all day and then needed to go somewhere you really wouldn't you literally wouldn't be able to get where you were going
Perhaps you could say this one's not so important, but on the other hand, the ability to walk, the ability to travel without fatigue.
even for myself walking around university all day.
Walking meditation is a form of exercise.
When we talk about exercise, I always think of walking meditation.
I know most people would think it's not really exercise.
But honestly, there is something quite energetic about it and the effort, the energy it gives you.
It does give you the ability to use your body.
It does preserve that
quality of locomotion and ability to travel.
There's a story, there's this one monk in Thailand who apparently is now confined to a wheelchair because he spent all his time sitting teaching and not moving.
He would sit all day and teach people meditation apparently and he's now in a wheelchair.
So, it's a benefit.
It's the most important for us, especially today, but nonetheless.
Number two, padhana kamo hoti.
This is maybe more important.
Padhana means effort or exertion.
Kamo means one is able to endure or be patient with exertion.
So here's a really good benefit for ordinary life.
Walking meditation is
repetitive.
It takes some amount of effort and strength, more mental effort and mental strength, but there's a certain fortitude that's required.
The fortitude to persist with something that is monotonous.
It's difficult because of the monotony, monotone, unchanging nature, unexciting.
There's nothing outstanding about walking.
And so it's amazing, you'll find that your power, once you begin to take up meditation, and especially walking meditation, the power you have to work, to engage in menial labor, it's quite incredible what you're able to accomplish.
How you're able to dispel your
boredom and ennui, the inability to cope with day-to-day chores, find much easier to do the arduous tasks of everyday life.
You find it much better able to deal with life and one of the great things about walking meditation is
how it tests you in this way against boredom and frustration, agitation, restlessness, and how it mimics real life in a way that sitting meditation doesn't.
So it teaches you how to act mindfully.
Walking meditation is much more of an act than sitting meditation.
And so it teaches you to bring, how to bring the meditation into your ordinary life.
Makes you better able to bear with work, with work that you have to do, with everyday labor, everyday life.
That's number two.
Number three, appa ba, appa, appa ba doho di.
Appa means little.
Abhada means sickness.
Yes, walking meditation is good for your body.
We've covered this, but the Buddha said it actually reduces your sickness, your illness, or improves your well-being, physical well-being.
So as I mentioned, they've done studies on people who sit around all day, but even more walking meditation, the circulation, the exertion involved, and just the movement involved.
You might think, well, it's not helping your cardiovascular health, certainly.
But if you talk to people who practice Tai Chi, for example, yoga, they'll tell you the benefits of movement.
And so, well, this is not our primary goal and I wouldn't encourage anyone to think of walking meditation as similar to most types of yoga.
From time to time we get meditators to turn it into yoga.
One meditator, I watched one meditator, it was incredible.
He would lift his legs almost horizontal and then bounce back.
I was watching him do it in the hall, and this woman just burst out laughing and had to run out of the hall because she couldn't, just watching this guy do his thing.
And we asked him, or someone asked him later why he was doing it, and he said, well, he was trying to combine, you know, because he wasn't getting any exercise, so he thought it would be an opportunity.
This we don't want.
You don't want to be too obsessed with exercise.
I remember one time,
We undertook walking meditation.
This monk invited me to do walking meditation all night, but it turned out that it was quite quick walking.
We went up to the main area in the monastery.
It was a sandy area, and we'd walk about.
I don't know, maybe 50 meters and then back.
We'd walk quickly and we would talk.
We would talk about all sorts of things.
And it was great.
It was really energetic.
I was able to stay up until like three in the morning walking back and forth for hours before actually giving in and going to sleep.
And I went to talk to Ajahn Tong about it and
And he said, what do you think of that?
He listened very quietly.
He was very still.
And then he said, that's .
I think he had the feeling that it was me and a bunch of Western people, or it was maybe my idea, because he said, that's the way.
is a bit of a derogatory term for, but it's the word they use for foreigners.
It comes from the word French.
But it means any European person.
That's the Western way, basically.
And he says that's the exercise way.
That's not the Buddhist way.
It's kind of quite derisive.
He said in the Buddha's way you have to go very slowly.
You have to be mindful.
So we have in the Visuddhimanga breaking the step up into six parts.
and being conscious of each individual part as being different because when you lift the foot it feels different from when you move the foot and when you lower the foot it feels different when you touch the floor of course it's a different sensation each piece of movement is individual so throughout the course we increase actually the complexity and so it's much less actually about walking than it is about moving
Each movement becomes a meditation in itself, becomes a meditation object.
So yeah, you don't want to get too caught up in the idea of it being physical exercise.
That's not the idea.
But there is a sense, like with Tai Chi, that it helps circulation of energy and so on.
We're not too caught up in that, but it is a benefit nonetheless.
And sitting around all day is recognized as being unhealthy.
Number three.
Number four.
What is eaten, what is drank, what is chewed, what is eaten up, and what is tasted.
What we eat and drink goes to be rightly digested.
It's a fancy way of saying it improves our digestion.
That's a big one.
Any doctor will tell you, or I've had doctors tell me that the trouble with monks is that after they eat, they do sitting meditation.
This is what a doctor, a Thai doctor told me.
She said, you know, monks could be healthy, but the problem is monks, right after they eat, they do sitting meditation.
I thought, well, you know, honestly, from what I've seen, the real problem is that after they eat, a lot of monks go to sleep.
They lie down and sleep very badly.
But Ajahn Thong, and in our tradition, there's a sense, there's a recognition that after you eat, the best thing is walking meditation.
It makes sense, right?
So it's, you know, again, something we don't want to be too obsessed with, but something we should be conscious of, especially when we do a meditation course, because it becomes your life.
And if you're not somewhat conscious of your physical health, it becomes difficult to meditate.
And one meditator who stopped eating, and all he would eat was fruit.
And I've seen other meditators try to do this.
But this meditator, near the end of the course, he came and he said he couldn't meditate anymore because he'd pulled a muscle in his leg.
And I can't help but think that that had something to do with the fact that he hadn't been eating solid food for weeks.
So care for your health is somewhat, on a basic level, is a part of the practice.
You obviously don't want to, you don't want to be obsessed with it, worried about it, or go over everything.
Like being worried about microwave food or something like that.
But you do want to be concerned to the extent that you're not just sitting around all the time.
Because it actually is quite a, quite a
It has quite an impact on your well-being and your state of energy, right?
If you eat a lot and then you sit down, it's much more likely that you're going to fall asleep.
And because we're only eating in the morning, we want to be able to digest our food well.
And because we eat a lot at one time, we don't want it to put us to sleep.
Walking is a great thing to do after you eat, or in general.
Number four, but the most important and probably the one that we're most interested in as meditators is the concentration samadhi that comes from pacing, lasts for a long time.
lasts long, stays with you for a while.
And the commentary makes the claim that the meditation, the concentration that you gain from sitting, from standing, sitting or lying, doesn't last.
It quickly disappears.
It dissipates when you switch.
When you stand still and you gain concentration, it's lost when you sit.
And when you sit and cultivate concentration, it's lost when you switch and say, lie down.
But when you walk, it gives this claim that when you then switch to standing, sitting or lying, the concentration continues.
And I'm not, I guess, convinced that that's necessarily the case, or there's necessarily that
Categorical difference that there certainly is a qualitative difference that the walking meditation because it's dynamic That there's some strength involved
And it's like charging you up and balancing your faculties and preparing you for sitting meditation.
That's why we do it first, because it actually helps to improve our sitting meditation.
Not that it doesn't have benefits of its own, and that wisdom and enlightenment don't come from walking, but
It has the added benefit of preparing you for the task of sitting still, right?
Because it's actually in many ways much more difficult to sit still and be alert.
So it prepares you for it.
And
You could also say it cultivates a unique type of concentration that's dynamic and therefore applicable not just in sitting meditation but in your daily life.
So once you do walking meditation, it gives you the habit of being focused when you do things, when you act, when you live.
So another benefit.
Now, these, as I said, will be familiar to anyone who's spent time reading my booklet, but I thought we had to stop and mention and remind ourselves of these.
So that's the Dhamma for tonight.
This is Michael, that guy sitting over in the corner in a very unmeditated position.
I don't think he knew he was on camera.
Or maybe he did, but he didn't care.
Michael, you're putting me to shame by not sitting in a meditative position.
Anyway, the Dhamma's over.
You can go.
He just got here.
He's been here a couple of days.
He's actually a friend of one of the people in my Latin class.
Good guy.
Okay, Robin.
I've reduced your audio because people are saying you're too loud.
Yes.
No, they're saying I'm too quiet.
Relatively, I'm louder than you, I think.
When I say it that way, it sounds like it's your fault, and we all know whose fault it is.
You ready for questions?
I'm ready.
I have no access to in-person Buddhism.
Can I use the online sangha?
Yes.
I forgot to click it, sorry.
Okay, go ahead.
Doesn't seem to be working.
Maybe we have to reload or something.
This is quirky, this site.
No complaints, because it's now highlighted for me.
Go ahead.
I have no access to in-person Buddhism.
Can I use the online Sangha?
Absolutely, that's what it's here for.
I'm not sure if there's something behind this question, but
I thought it went without saying that absolutely can use this.
Maybe what you're asking is, is it enough to use this?
It's certainly much better to have an in-person teacher and potentially community.
But we may do with what we have and we're certainly not going to, it's not going to be useless to stay with this community.
In fact, I know several of the people on here have gained quite a bit without ever having.
joined in any other kind of community.
I've gained quite a bit from being involved here.
But the best, those would be the people who actually did an online course with me.
So we'd meet once a week, one-on-one.
That's what that's for here.
I would recommend that as well if you're really interested in gaining benefit.
If you really don't have access to a meditation center near you, you can sign up for the online course
What are memories in regard to ultimate reality and jnan self?
Memory is a thought that arises and ceases and it creates what is called sanya.
Sanya meaning the perception that it is like something else.
So a thought will arise
Suppose you did something, now a thought that is similar to that or that non-technically or practically speaking reminds you of that.
It might just be an image or it might be a concept, it might be an idea.
And then you think, oh, I remember that thing.
But technically speaking, it's something that is similar.
Something of that kind arises.
And then there's the recognition, hey, that's like that.
I think probably what you're trying to get at is something like, how is it possible, if there's no self, no continuity,
And I mean the universe is just incredibly complex.
So exactly how memory works is interesting.
I mean a lot of memory is aided by the brain.
So now that I've worded it the way I did, the brain is able to give rise to thoughts, which are kind of like echoes.
So the brain somehow keeps imprints of our experiences and feeds them back to us.
And so that's why we're very easily able to remember things in this life.
But it's not physical.
The physical only brings something back that is similar.
That's not the memory.
That's not the whole picture of the memory, because we haven't yet, and material science, biology, neuroscience, we're very much against this explanation, but the Buddhist explanation is that it's the next step that is the memory, where you say, hey, this is like that other thing.
I remember, I'm remembering something.
You're not actually remembering, but you put it like that to yourself because of Sanya.
So it's kind of a very strange state that we're able to, that arises, that is able to compare something from the past to something that you're experiencing now.
And I think there would be the idea of if you actively, mentally try to recall something, that what you're doing is you're thinking, what was that like, that thing that I did?
And there arises in the mind something that is like what that was, that experience in the past.
And then again, there's the recognition, oh, that is like what I did, or oh, yeah.
We don't say it like that.
We don't perceive it, most of us, as, oh yes, this is like something I did before.
We perceive it as, I'm actually experiencing what happened before, but we're not.
This is how memory is explained, the process of remembering something.
As to why it's possible to remember something that happened a long time ago, or even in a past life, Buddhism doesn't really engage in such...
such inquiries, like how is magic possible, etc., etc.
I think the general sense is that the universe is very much based on experience and based on the mind, which has implications in our ability to cultivate magical, seemingly magical powers, or metaphysical powers, I guess, and have metaphysical experiences, like remembering things
remember things at all because we would say just remembering physical things requires something magical or something metaphysical like it's in the mind the brain as i said can can trick and trigger it by pulling up an image but the fact that we're at all we're even able to say hey that's something that happened to me in the past is beyond the physical so memory is something quite extraordinary or you know
Simply metaphysical, meaning outside of the physical.
So that helps clear it up a little bit.
But those kind of questions, you have to understand, are bordering on speculative, and certainly not worth concerning about too much.
Though the explanation I give, I think, is useful to help us align ourselves with the Buddhist understanding of experiential reality.
Dear Panthe, what do you require from meditators who wish to stay with you at Surimangalo and learn more about the practice and daily life of being a Theravada Buddhist monk?
Not much.
I require that you read my booklet.
That looks like quite a bit, I suppose.
I require that you read my booklet.
I require that you keep the eight precepts while you're here.
We require that you practice our meditation technique while you're here.
So...
We couldn't come here and practice in a different tradition, which might not be to some people's mind with their intentions.
Does an Arahant have to be a monk or a nun?
Apparently either they become a monk or a nun or they die.
It's an either or thing.
They can't live as lay people, apparently.
But they could become an Arahant while they're a lay person.
They just have to ordain after.
That happened.
There's many cases of that.
Bahia is a good example.
There's another one.
Kema, I think.
There's a queen, Queen Kema, who became an Arahant.
And then the Buddha said to the king, well, either she becomes a nun or she dies.
The king was like, oh no.
And he goes into Parinibbana and he said, don't speak of Parinibbana, let her become a bhikkhuni.
Couldn't bear to part with her.
So she became a bhikkhuni.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to meditate instead of working and that hurts my working quality and motivation.
That's clinging, yes?
Or is it an entire different thing that I should explore about my motivation towards work?
I would say it's an entirely different thing.
Buddhist meditators often have to come to terms with their duties and have to learn to see the things that they were inspired to do in a different way.
And the point being they often miss, they throw the baby out with the bath water.
So the bath water is your appreciation of the work, your attachment and your liking of it.
But the baby is your need to work.
So they say, oh, I don't like to work anymore because of the meditation.
Okay, I'll just stop.
Which is silly because the reason you work isn't because you like to work.
But once that dries up, you still have to work.
And so meditators become more aware of their duties.
And they often will enter into this conflict because they mistakenly give up their duties, because they've also given up their attachments.
So with relationships, if you're married,
Before you were very much attached to your spouse, and now you're no longer so attached, and so you think, well, I better just get a divorce.
Or not get a divorce, that would be one way, but you start to neglect your spouse and your family, your children.
Your children might be even better.
You stop taking care of them because you no longer care about them.
Sounds awful, I suppose, but...
And maybe we'd want to phrase it a little bit differently, but you still could phrase it like as being, well, you still have duties to them.
But putting it like that would make us glaringly aware that in many cases our duties are just being compassionate, being kind, being a good person.
And so I guess working would be somehow you'd have to phrase it like that, but
It's quite obvious you need to work and you shouldn't confuse these two aspects, your appreciation of something and your appreciation, your liking of something and your appreciation of the importance of it.
So it's important to keep working unless you decide to, unless you can find a
It's important to live, let's put it that way.
There are ways to go without working.
We have duties, we have requirements, and the best way is, that's important, to be able to separate that out and just keep doing it without letting it interfere with your state of mind in terms of questioning whether you want to do it or don't want to do it.
And there's another part of it that actually might have been answered in the last question.
Have you ever known a man who was enlightened and yet retained his job, family, and social life?
Or does every enlightened person naturally become a monk or a hermit, if he can, technically?
No, I mean, as you can see, as you're already realizing, the more you meditate, the less inclined you are to get involved in society.
That's why I kind of hesitated because it's not that you just keep working at your same level.
You do start to simplify it naturally.
And it does become somewhat of a dilemma.
That's quite the other question.
If you ever get to the point where you're actually an arahant, you can forget about working.
You just won't do it.
So you find it harder and harder, yes, to force yourself to do things.
It becomes more of a duty.
But the point being, when you put it in that context, you become less and less concerned with aspects of maintaining aspects of your life.
And so you start seeing that your duties can be reduced.
You don't need to work so much.
You don't need to concern yourself so much with work, as long as you can make enough to stay alive.
You know the story of Gatakara, the potter who I always go back to.
He just made pots from clay that he'd gathered and firewood and drift, discarded wood that he'd found in the forest.
And then he sold the pots by the side of the road, but he didn't even sell them.
He just put them out.
And if people came by and asked him how much for that pot, he would say, oh, well, you know, leave some, leave some rice, leave some beans, whatever you think it's worth.
He wouldn't even name a price.
And if you read the story, it gives you quite a good impression of what, he was an Anagami, not an Arahant.
And his mother was old and sick, so he couldn't become a monk.
And so to look after her, he made these pots, apparently.
I find walking meditation much easier than sitting meditation.
It is much more easy to focus on the mantra when walking than in sitting.
But also I find that once I say thinking or imagining, it shuts it off.
Is that a beginner's experience?
It seems like shutting up the thoughts as a background noise.
Am I doing it correctly, at least as a beginner?
Yeah, no, I mean, because it's a new thought.
When you say to yourself, thinking, that's a whole new thought, so of course the thought disappears.
That's not a problem.
What you're doing is, again with the noting, what you're doing is affirming the object for what it is, so that you don't instead affirm it as being good or bad.
You're cultivating a neutral reaction to the object.
So when you say thinking, you're telling yourself, look that's just thinking, it's not good, it's not bad, it's not something I should obsess over or worry about.
And so we do that with everything.
It's not a question of whether it continues or not.
That's not really important.
We're just trying to see that it's just a thought.
It arises, it ceases, and that's it.
It's impermanent, unsatisfying, uncontrollable.
It's not any of these things that we think it is.
It's not satisfying.
It's not sustainable.
It's not controllable.
That's all.
If you're looking for something else, some special experience, some magic or bright lights or something, to understand that's not what this is for.
Sorry, this meditation tends to turn some people off because they say, where's the fireworks?
There's no fireworks.
I had an experience in meditation where it felt like I went out of body and that my true identity was spirit.
It was incarnated into this body.
The experience was tremendously beautiful and blissful.
It left me feeling like being in this body is a sort of prison.
Does this sound like it may fit into any Buddhist interpretation?
No, it's just, I mean, it's a common experience for meditators, but it's still delusion, the idea that there's a being, an entity, a spirit.
It's the same as the feeling we have now in the body.
Yes, I'm a being, an entity, a person.
Whether you're in the body or out of the body, the truth is the only thing that's real is experience, and experience arises and ceases.
So what happens is when you have that experience, you give rise to conception, you conceive of it as being stable, lasting.
A soul, a self, a spirit, etc.
But that's just a conception and the conception as well arises and ceases.
It takes some dedication to insight meditation to be able to see that the mind and the body are both arising and ceasing momentarily.
And the experience wasn't, unfortunately, tremendously beautiful and blissful.
But your reaction to it was that this is beautiful.
And perhaps blissful, maybe.
Yes, there may have been some pleasant feelings about it.
And you found those to be desirable.
And so the Buddhist interpretation is that once you went back into your body, you suffered withdrawal from the drug that you had become addicted to.
So this drug of that wonderful, blissful experience, the experience wasn't wonderful and blissful, but your liking of it, your conception of it as being wonderful and blissful left you displeased, dissatisfied with what had previously more or less satisfied you and had not given you that discontent.
And so what you're experiencing is very much what the Buddha was talking about, that
Tanha is the cause, craving is the cause of suffering.
It's very common for meditators who have these kind of quote-unquote special experiences.
They're quite impressive.
Most people, ordinary people, will never have such an experience and will believe that, be very quite skeptical as to the truth of such an experience.
But nonetheless, when it does occur, it's quite common for meditators to become attached to them and thereby dissatisfied with ordinary experience.
So all it is is a lesson in clinging and the results of clinging.
Unfortunately, sorry, that's not the goal you're looking for.
It is a good sign, a sign of good concentration, you have to say that.
The person who's not meditating wouldn't give rise to it, but it's just a byproduct.
I have heard of Zen Buddhism.
Obviously, in Buddhism, the goal is enlightenment.
But in Zen, they have their own technique called Zazen.
Does this mean Vipassana is not the only path to enlightenment?
I don't think I can answer.
Sorry to interrupt you, but I don't think I can answer this or the other part.
It's speculative about Zazen, which, again, other religious or spiritual practices unrelated to our tradition.
I don't want to encourage speculating about other traditions, whether they're the same or different.
There are a lot of interesting questions that we don't want to entertain here, just for sake of our cohesion.
And because it's difficult to answer, it's speculative on my part.
I was putting a lot of effort into my touching, making sure I felt something at the exact touching point.
I've stopped putting so much effort in now and find that I can't always get the exact touching point too well and don't feel the touching so much.
I'm guessing that this is showing me unsatisfying.
Should I be waiting to note the touching until the mind settles on the exact correct point, not going back to the rising and falling until it does?
Yeah, it should be clear that with that particular technique it's not about whether you feel something or don't.
It's about putting your mind at that spot and you touch with the mind.
Sometimes you feel something, sometimes you don't.
As you can see it's impermanent, it's not really under your control.
That's not really the point.
The exercise is just kind of like a mental training.
So you put your mind at the spot and you say touching and at the very least you're aware of the mind going to the spot.
So it's at the very least mindfulness of the mind.
You're watching how your mind works and you're able to see your mind sometimes behaves, sometimes doesn't and so on.
Some people are a bit confused about this exercise and why we're actually doing it.
It's just adding something extra for advanced meditators.
So I wouldn't overthink it and definitely don't have to worry about whether you feel something or not.
You can even imagine like a coin or something the size of a coin.
Yeah, even just imagine a coin touching the spot.
So it's kind of like a Samatha exercise in a sense, but
It's just a means of adding something to the basic rising and falling.
It's a basic feeling.
In brief, don't worry about feeling.
Manthe, in my experience, sitting meditation allows for deeper meditation than walking meditation.
What could be causing this?
An attachment to being still?
Yes, we're not concerned about deeper meditation.
This is Samatha or this is a different goal.
Our intention is to have an ordinary state of consciousness, natural state of consciousness.
You shouldn't even feel anything.
You look at these guys when they get to Sankalpa Kanyana, when they get to the higher states of insight meditation, you talk to them, they just feel natural, but natural in a way like they've never felt before.
It's all of ordinary people who are unnatural with their likes and dislikes.
So if sitting meditation makes you feel calm or quiet, you should note that.
In the end it won't even feel like that.
It'll just feel natural.
Hi Bruna.
Good to see you.
Well, I mean, maybe you should try doing walking meditation.
That can be even harder.
But yeah, I would recommend at the very least sitting or standing maybe is a good halfway.
Do some standing meditation.
You can also get up and wash your face.
It's a good Buddhist thing to do.
Wash your face first thing in the morning.
And just get your mind active.
Sometimes your mind is still stuck half asleep.
Your brain, I suppose.
And, no, your mind as well is kind of stuck in the trance, and so you have to kind of wake it up.
Do something to wake it up.
Walking meditation is good for that, but there are other things you can do.
Go outside, look at the stars.
Do some chanting is a good one, first thing in the morning.
You might want to take up chanting.
It's something we do early in the morning as a means of waking up
When I used to drive, I couldn't figure out a way to stay awake driving at night.
Especially as a meditator, it's very easy to enter into a state where you start to nod off, right?
So I tried chanting, and it worked like a charm.
And I realized, well, that's like when people sing to the radio, right?
You can also chant, and it really does keep you awake.
Will your meditation center be around in the next three to five years, or is this a short-term project?
Is optimal health a requirement?
Those are two very different questions, I think.
Three different questions.
I don't know if I'll be around in the next three to five years.
I'm dying, you know.
I could be dead.
I could be dead in a couple of years.
Monks have to be very careful not talking about their health, teachers anyway, because they very quickly wind up with lots of medicine.
I remember when I was sick in India, as soon as I told the other monks that I was sick, suddenly I had a handful, I remember my hands were full of medicine.
I was looking at them, you know, if I took all this, it would kill me, you know.
But everyone on the bus, I was with Wat Rampung, this big meditation center, and there were 20-some lay people, women almost entirely, and four or five monks, and everybody had medicine.
One monk, he was actually scolding me, he said, you're going to take that medicine?
Really nice guy.
He ended up taking some vitamin C and giving the rest back or throwing it out, I can't remember.
A lot of paracetamol.
Tylenol, I think.
Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, though, wasn't it?
But the future's uncertain.
And what I can say is...
Right now we're just renting a place, so I don't think in three to five years we'll necessarily be here, but maybe someday we'll have a more stable situation where we actually have a piece of land in the name of the organization.
I mean this certainly isn't, there's no sense that we're just doing this for some, for like a pastime while we, before moving on to something more important.
I don't have any future plans beyond this.
Is optimal health important?
No, not necessarily.
Sickness can be quite educational.
Sir, in one of the previous questions with regard to requiring to do your duties, you said, let's put it, it's important to live.
Why is it important to live?
You can't meditate.
Because we don't know where we're going when we die.
You might die and be born an animal.
You can't meditate as an animal.
I was at a funeral recently and couldn't be emotional with the mourners experiencing the sadness about the death of their loved ones.
I believe this is because I do not experience much emotion lately.
I don't know whether this is from the meditation practice or simply my biology, but as a result of this disconnect, it was quite awkward as it was obvious I was unaffected.
How does one deal with these tender situations?
Am I being too apathetic?
I don't think so.
Funerals are kind of funny.
Humorous.
Sounds awful to say that.
The only reason I say that is to try to shock, with a shock value.
Why aren't they humorous?
Why isn't it funny?
I don't suppose it is all that funny.
There is some sense of, you know, a funeral is a time for reflection.
Certainly there is room for severity, but it's just simply a part of life.
Death is part of this trap that we've got ourselves in.
I don't really think you should laugh at funerals.
What's most funny about funerals is how sad people get.
It's somehow incredible how blind we are to our attachments to other people.
Sounds cruel, I suppose.
It's not just funerals.
I find on the other side, too, when there's a happy celebration, like someone's having a baby or whatever, other people get so excited about it.
And my progress over these last few years, I'm not outwardly really happy, excited, or sad.
It's just more subtle, more subtle.
Yeah, no, I mean, that's a good answer.
I was just trying to think more theoretically about, philosophically about the nature of a funeral.
But it's, you know, it's incredible.
We'll go and give talks at funerals and try and explain to people, really, there's no benefit to being sad.
It doesn't help the person who died.
It's not actually of any use to you or that person.
And then after giving this talk and you think, well, they kind of understood what I was saying, then the family gets up and cries, of course, because it's not intellectual.
It's a really deep-seated attachment.
I guess another thing is how it's... We feel sorry for people, right?
You lose a loved one, I'm sorry for your loss.
There's, I think, somewhat a sense of, you know, you brought this on yourself.
This is, it's self-inflicted.
It's like, I suppose, feeling sorry for a, it's similar to a person going through withdrawal.
It's so awful to say, but it's how a Buddhist technically would look at this, going to withdraw from a drug.
Do you say, oh, I'm sorry, you can no longer take the drug, right?
It's awful, I suppose, but that's really it.
This drug, you can no longer take this drug called your husband or your wife or your son or your daughter or your father or your mother.
That drug is no longer available to you.
Yes, there's more to it than that, but that's the only reason why you're sad.
The more to it has nothing to do with your sadness.
Your sadness, your loss, is all because of your attachment.
Attachment to pleasant sensations, memories, attachments to the concept of that person, which is often not entirely who they are, because you tend to forget all the
bad things and the problems you had with them right suppose you had a bad relationship with a person well when they die you forget all that and you're really sad that they're gone and that you couldn't have had a better relationship and so on but no when a person goes through withdrawal we say hey man you're better off no not better off uh
We sympathize with them for what they have to go through, but it's a result of the clinging to the drug.
I mean, in a sense, it's not a result of having that relationship, it's a result of attachment to them.
So I think it's important to question that.
And there's a lot you can say.
First of all, there's nothing, yes, there's nothing to be excited about someone having a baby.
It's like, oh man, another one, right?
Another human is going to have to go through all this horrible stuff that I had to go through, puberty.
education, jobs, old age, sickness, death.
That's what's in store for this kid.
When people get married, you're supposed to say congratulations.
I admit that there is potential good to marriage, but there's also a lot of rubbish involved.
Hey, you might even have kids.
Wouldn't that be horrible?
It's just interesting if you haven't been a monk all these years, and you've been a layperson who was so excited about marriage and babies and all these things, and then, you know, all these years later, it's like, oh.
Yes, which you have.
You've had all that experience, no?
You've had kids.
I mean...
Yeah, we get very much attached to them.
Very much attached to people.
I mean, that's a big, it's a big
It's a big draw to Buddhism when people realize this death.
If you look at this, this was the Buddha's realization that drew him to leave home.
He said, well, this isn't going to solve anything.
Take care of my family and live my life and become successful.
It's not going to help me.
It's not going to help them.
There's no benefit to this.
This is just the path to death.
He came to that through this anguish, this realization that, man, all these people I love are going to die.
I'm going to die.
It throws all of your hopes and dreams and ambitions out the window.
It renders them void and useless.
It turns everything, it makes everything purposeless.
You can't keep it.
If we didn't die, if we could live forever, then we could build things, right?
I don't know, that's even going too far, because it's not even true.
But certainly in a mundane sense,
It's a wisdom.
It's a mundane sort of wisdom to see that death circumscribes life and everything as a result.
Which makes heroes funny, I think, because we knew it was coming.
And why are we so sad?
Why is this such a suffering to us?
Didn't you know your family was going to die?
Didn't you know these people were all going to die?
We're kind of dumb that way, really.
There's no reason you should sympathize with these people or commiserate with these people and say, yes, yes, that's more.
What are you, blind?
All these years you didn't... Well, of course they're dead.
That's the end of life.
That's what happens.
But yeah, probably not the right thing to say at the funeral either.
No.
No, or anywhere.
Like on the internet, for example.
It's not something you'd want to spout out on the internet.
For sure.
Karuna meditation.
Am I saying the right one?
Yeah, well, karuna is sometimes overrated.
But you have to get through the funeral somehow.
Oh, absolutely.
No, but you read the Uraga Jataka, the snake Jataka.
The snake kills this guy's, bites this guy's son and none of them cry.
He doesn't cry, his wife doesn't cry, his daughter doesn't cry.
Servants don't get upset.
And they say, this is life.
We knew this was his path.
He came uninvited and he goes uninvited.
We knew this was the way of it.
It doesn't help now to get upset.
People do it because it's the accepted means of dealing with your attachment and your withdrawal.
Because we don't know a better way.
And because of having this as our way, it becomes, it takes on an importance, a sense that yes, it's right.
And people will actually get quite angry at you if you don't, or if you disregard, as I am doing, their grief.
People will get quite angry about it, quite upset.
Can't you see their grieving?
Well, yeah, I'd like to help them stop.
It's not helping anything.
It isn't, actually.
It's a temporary relief.
Crying apparently releases chemicals, and it's quite pleasant to cry.
So it's a relief to cry.
So it's a drug in and of itself, another addiction for us to add to the list.
Good stuff, if you notice.
Hopefully food for thought.
I'm not trying to be facetious or smarmy or overly making light of an issue.
The issue is more people's addiction than it is the sadness of the event.
Because the event is just a part of life.
It's something we all knew was coming.
It shouldn't have been a surprise to any of us.
It's quite sad that we are so sad.
That's the real problem.
So hopefully that helps, at least gives you someone on your side to say, hey, you're not wrong.
But I think, yes, Robin is absolutely correct that probably the best thing to do and what, of course, any reasonable human being would do is to express some sense of sympathy for the person's sadness and for other people's sadness and to temper your own ordinary activity.
Like you wouldn't want to at a funeral start talking about work or other things.
You have to give a sense.
And I think that's where you actually could, as a Buddhist, understand the sense of severity of the occasion, as I said.
Death is a serious thing.
It should help us all remember the fact that this is the end of life.
Not get sad, that's not the point, but to stir you and almost make you afraid.
To wake you up and say, wow, yeah, that's going to happen to me.
That's absolutely what should come.
Look at a dead person and say, man, they were here and now they're gone.
Life is so uncertain.
So you shouldn't laugh.
I didn't really mean to say it's funny.
It's curious, and they are kind of funny when you think about them, but it's not a time for humor.
I didn't mean to suggest that.
And again, you see eventually we start clicking on the buttons, and it doesn't go away.
Do you notice that?
Yeah, I don't know if my screen is frozen.
I'm just going to reload it.
The app seems to hang at some point.
I don't know why it's doing that.
Or maybe it's just overloaded by people or something.
What is the basis for calling second insight knowledge attainer as or does that mean there's no chance for the meditator to deteriorate in the present life after attaining that knowledge, even if he doesn't meditate?
That's what it means.
I don't know.
That's what the Visuddhimagga says.
We give it some weight.
We might not be entirely, I mean the Buddha never said such a thing, so we might not be entirely reliant upon it as true, but
It's certainly worth giving some attention to.
The point, if you want an explanation, the point is that the second stage of knowledge has to do with the understanding of karma.
So the idea is that a person who's attained it has an understanding of right and wrong because they've started to see, yes, good leads to good, bad leads to bad.
And that the power of that understanding is said to be enough to
The point being that it's not permanent, that knowledge.
So with death, one might completely lose sight of it.
Well, not completely, but it'll go away to some extent.
So that's why it's only for this life.
But as long as in this life, it is that that knowledge sticks with you in this life.
And therefore, when you die, it's strong enough to keep you from being born in hell.
We actually have a director's meeting.
Anthony is... Oh, okay.
Well, we've got two more questions.
Let's go quickly then.
Okay, sure.
What happens to an Arahant at death?
Arahants don't exist, and death doesn't exist either, so it's not a very good question.
I mean, it's a common question.
It's a question that actually is asked in the Buddha's teaching, but I don't have time to go into why it is, but neither an arahant nor death actually exist, so technically speaking, it's not a thing that happens.
I've been having depression for the past month due to a relationship issue.
I found your video on meditation that stated medication is the cure for the body, but meditation is the cure for the mind.
So I started doing meditation instead of going to the psychiatrist to get medicine.
I'm now getting better through meditation and dhamma listening and found out that I got a lack
I found out that I got a lack of the feeling of self-worth.
Could meditation help with growing of self-worth in practice?
No, we're not interested in self-worth.
Don't listen to people who tell you to be proud of yourself, etc., etc.
But lack of self-worth is not what you have, probably.
Most people, they describe feelings of self-hatred as low self-worth.
So now self-hatred is real.
Lack of self-worth is not a problem.
But what we do get that is a problem is self-hatred, and that's an actual state.
It's positive in the sense of actually arising.
It's not positive in the sense of being good.
But when self-hatred arises, you have to say disliking or angry or hating or so on.
Note that when you chastise yourself, when you're angry at yourself, when you abuse yourself and call yourself stupid and so on.
Meditation absolutely can help you let go of that.
But you don't need any sense of self-worth.
You're useless.
We all are.
Yep.
Worthless.
Completely worthless.
We all are.
But I have to go into detail to explain that one a bit.
It's important to say, to counteract this idea, you're worth something, you're valuable, you're special.
No, you're not.
We're all rubbish and garbage and confused and in the end you can't make, this is a sowsey or not a silk purse.
In the end you just end up letting go of yourself.
Then you're much happier, much more peaceful.
We have to go because we have a meeting.
Thank you all.
It's been productive, I hope.
Thanks for tuning in.
Thank you for your questions.
Wishing you all good practice.
Have a good night.