Tomek has a question.
What's your opinion on other schools?
What do you think about learning the Dharma from bhikkhus practicing jhanas or even people like Zen masters or Tibetan Rinpoches?
For what point can this be beneficial?
No, I think contentment is the most beneficial.
Be content with whatever practice you have, and be content with the core of the Buddha's teaching.
I talked quite a while about this, or a bit about this anyway, in the last Mangala, I think, yeah, the last talk on the
on the blessings.
Contentment.
Contentment with the core of the Buddhist teachings.
So one, contentment with whatever tradition you find yourself in, but two, contentment with the core.
So not worrying so much about developing this or that jhana, this or that mental state, or this or that attainment, or this or that practice.
Pick one tradition that sticks to the core of the Buddhist teaching and develop that.
Don't be concerned with everything else.
Especially because in this day and age our minds are so weak and so full of confusion and delusion and defilement that we have to really just take the essence of the Buddha's teaching as best we can before it disappears.
Or even finding a good teacher, someone who can lead you through even the core of the Buddha, even just the very basics.
is difficult.
So we should be content with that.
Contentment is the most beneficial.
Be content with the core and content with one practice that is based on the core.
And I think that would apply even in the Buddhist time, that
it's the contentment with the very essence of reality that is most important because that is the essence of Buddhism is contentment with reality as it is not needing to find more not needing to make something of reality
So, in that sense, it's going to be contentment all the way down, starting with contentment for a tradition, into the contentment with the core of the tradition, the core of the practice, the core of the Buddha's teaching, and finally to contentment with everything that arises as it is, to see it come and to see it go and to not cling to it, to not want for it to come or want for it to go, and to finally let go and become free.