Good evening everyone, welcome to our live broadcast.
So many buttons to push, I can never remember which ones.
Did I push them all?
Okay, I think we're going, I think we're good.
So tonight we have decided to look at the Abhinna Pachavekitabha Dhanasutta, Anguttara Nikaya Book of Fives, 57.
There's a bit of overlap.
You'll find that some of this is stuff we've been going over and we've talked about.
But this sutta is very well known in popular Theravada Buddhism.
Enchanted, actually.
You find it in disenchanting books.
abhinna-pacchavekida-bha, something that should be reflected upon often.
So this is a question we get, right?
What sorts of things will help me in my practice?
How should I, besides simply meditating, what are some things I can do to support my practice?
Here's a good one.
Reflect upon these things often.
This is what the Buddha said.
Pikkabodhi calls them themes.
The word is tana.
Tana just means a base.
It means it's a cause for reflection.
There's a reason to reflect often on these things.
And the other thing that's interesting about this, and quite unique, well, it stands out in the Buddha's teaching.
The Buddha says, So they should be reflected upon often.
By a man or a woman.
Okay, that's not uncommon.
It's not like men and women have different objects of contemplation for the most part.
means one who lives in a home, who holds a house.
And Babacitta is one who has gone forth, one who has left the home life.
Now that's not unique, but somewhat, how do you say, somewhat unique?
Somewhat rare in the Buddha's teaching to find a specific emphasis placed on the fact that this is for everybody.
You don't often read that.
These are things that work for both lay people and monks.
And I think the takeaway is that it's widely applicable and especially important.
So important that it works for everybody.
Now, these aren't actually all that unfamiliar, but it's an interesting list and it's, as a result, something we chant.
Monks have a group of ten.
And there's another list of ten, eventually we'll probably get to in the Anguja Nikaya, ten things that they should frequently reflect upon.
It's a bit different, but that's specifically for monks, and we'll see why if we get to it.
But here, for everybody, what should we reflect upon often?
jarādāṁ mōṁ hi jarāṁ anattīto
I am subject to old age, I am not exempt from old age.
So we catch the theme that's going to come from this.
Predictably, after that is going to be sickness.
And after that, of course, death.
The first three are familiar.
I've talked about these recently in more than one of the recent talks.
Old age, sickness and death doesn't sound like something you'd want to think about often, right?
I think the important thing to understand about Buddhism is there's a presupposition of objectivity.
So the idea, which leads to being shocked, when you don't have this objectivity, you can get easily shocked by these sorts of statements.
In this case, kind of surprised at that being something that we're expected to think about often.
Because for us, we're not objective.
Old age, sickness, and death, even in culture,
are generally thought of as evil.
Hey, the Buddha even said that death is a kind of evil, sure.
But if you step back from that, and you become practical about it, you have to accept that death is a part of our future.
Just like your first day of school or your first day on the job or you're preparing anything you prepare for.
Marriage.
Some people prepare to get married.
Childbirth.
Prepare to become parents.
We prepare for these events in our lives.
We do prepare for things.
We prepare for a trip.
We prepare for guests.
prepare for a date prepare for prepare for storms when the weather turns but unfortunately we often don't prepare for old age sickness and death why we think of thinking of them even the concept of considering these things is
morbid, undesirable.
Why would you think about death, right?
How morbid of you.
How depressing.
But it need not be.
Death doesn't have to be depressing.
Death is a profound event that changes everything, right?
But as a result, you'd think we would be spending the majority of our time preparing for it.
Maybe not the majority, because we want to say, hey, I want to live.
As ordinary people, we want to live, so we don't want to obsess about death.
True, in the end, death is just a moment.
But certainly something we should give weight to, because it's coming.
It's coming fairly quick.
50 years for most of us.
In the next 50 years, that's a long time.
It goes by pretty quickly.
But it's going to come.
That's on the way.
Old age, it's on its way.
Starting to get gray hairs, bald, turning bald.
Teeth chipped, back crooked.
Aches and pains where they used to not be.
Old age will come to us.
Sickness will come to us.
Maybe we'll get cancer.
Maybe we'll get heart disease, diabetes.
These things will come to us.
If we want to look at them as taboo topics, things that shouldn't be discussed, then okay, fine.
There's very little chance that we're going to be ready for them when they do come because they are on their way.
anything anything that you want to be prepared for anything that you know is on its way so you're ready for it so it doesn't so you don't suffer from it so it's not an evil thing
So the point being, there is something we can do to prepare.
We don't have to constantly be thinking about death, but we think about it often.
It consistently reminds us, or constantly reminds us, to do a good thing, to do the right thing, to do what is actually going to be useful.
If someone spends all their life building up wealth, building up possessions, fame, power,
This is a sign that this is what happens when you forget about death.
Because death makes all of that meaningless.
On the other hand, a person who is clear about death, they don't have to live a depressed life.
they can live a reassured life, a life that isn't afraid of the future, isn't living in fear behind, in a prison of their own fear, not doing this, not doing that, because they're afraid of getting sick, of dying.
They're afraid to live because they're afraid of death.
I suppose on the other hand, there's the person who
casts aside their fear of death and ignores death and just lives life to its fullest, which is also terribly foolish because, well, they end up no better off than when they started and perhaps even, most likely, even less prepared for death.
Death which prevents them, old age which prevents them from living life to its fullest, sickness, death, events that are coming in which they're not prepared for.
So Buddhism looks at these objectively.
I'm not going to get upset about this or afraid of this, but I'm going to say, hey, this is coming, and I'm woefully unprepared for it.
I don't know how I'm going to react when I get old, when I get sick.
Right now I get a little bit of sickness and I start wailing and moaning.
How am I going to deal with when I really get sick, when I really get old?
How am I going to deal with death?
Just the thought of death scares us, makes us sad, losing our life.
So the Buddha said these are the first three things, old age, sickness, and death.
But the fourth and fifth we haven't talked about much recently, I think.
Number four is sabbehi me pyehi.
We chant this.
What does it mean?
I will become separated.
I will...
I don't know, this is a bubble logic, I think.
To translate, all things that are dear to me, that I'm fond of,
What is their fate?
That all things that are dear to me, all things that I am fond of, people, possessions, experiences, they will become lost.
is a tough one.
means separated.
So become separated.
also means separated in a different way.
I will become part, I will have to part from them.
Our families, our friends, all of our possessions, even our bodies, we're renting these things, borrowing these things.
Even this body, not in a long time we're going to lose it.
We'll forget about our bodies.
everything else we hold dear.
It's a good reflection, right?
It helps us look at the things around us, the things in our lives, people, places, people, things, places, and see how much attachment there is.
See the potential for suffering because that's where it comes from.
It comes from our attachment.
If you're attached to a person, then when they're gone or when they change,
when they die and you suffer terribly from it you don't actually gain anything from the attachment either it's really the funny thing you think you gain so much from being attached to people it's like an addiction you gain a little bit of pleasure once in a while it becomes like a rush you get this rush and you want it more and you want it more it doesn't make you a better happier person
Let's take romantic couples who have sex all the time.
I'd love to do a study of this, to look at their general sense of happiness and well-being.
I guarantee they would be the ones who fight the most, who are most passionate in their anger towards each other, bitter and unhappy.
That's why the most romantic couples
involvement end up being the most bitter divorces I think you could find that I think that study would not be difficult to do since we don't want to see it we don't want to think we're surprised I would even suggest such a thing because of course intimacy, sexuality these are good things, right?
this is how you express your love
Yeah, well, interesting study.
I'm not, I used to have sex.
I used to.
And my fair share didn't make me happier.
It was awful, really.
I ended up a bit of a jerk.
Remember, it doesn't make you happy.
This is not something that I'm thinking of academically.
It just really doesn't.
But we reflect on the fact that we're going to lose everything, everything we have is going to go away.
And I think there's a more philosophical point being made there, that that therefore cannot be our goal in life, to gain things, to have all the things we want.
To what end?
Even if you said, yes, these things make me happy, okay, okay.
As long as you get what you want, you're happy, you're pleased, you're satisfied.
But to what end?
What good?
I think it's an important point that once it's all gone, you're not any better off.
You're not wiser.
You're not happier.
You're not more content.
People who are content when they get old and sick and when they're on their deathbed are people who have gone through a lot.
They've gone through good and bad.
and come to see what we try to see in meditation on a much more accelerated scale.
It's not so much about the experiences, it's about your outlook.
Old people who tend to get this in general, not all, but many old people will be very contented, not because of what they get, but contented because of their outlook.
They've stopped trying to get.
They've started to realize what we realize in a very short time in meditation.
Nothing's worth clinging to.
It's not what you get.
It's your outlook.
And so that should give a hint at what meditation is.
Meditation is about experience.
It's about gaining experience.
Objective, methodical understanding of life.
That's what this is.
You walk back and forth and sit.
That's life.
It's you living.
in a very controlled environment, sure, but it helps you understand your existence framework within which we have to live and work.
Just like getting old quickly.
Just like living your life quicker.
Maybe that's it.
It's about more living, more living, living more than an ordinary person.
Most people don't really live.
A person who has done a lot of meditation will attest to that and say, I was like dead before.
Before I started meditating, it was like I was dead.
I wasn't really living.
So that's number four.
Number four is that everything we hold dear, we will be separated from.
Number five, kama sakom hi kama daya do, kama yoni kama bandhu, kama pati sarano, yang kama karisami, kalyanang wapapakamwa, tasa daya do bawisami di,
Apologies for those of you who are not keen on me reciting long passages of Pali that you have no understanding of.
First you have to understand this is very close to what the Buddha actually said.
There's a belief that the Buddha actually said these things.
So it's nice to actually hear what the Buddha, hear things in the Buddha's own words, potentially.
But also then this is something that we chant.
I want to give you a sense of
something that might be chanted.
Because in Thailand we would chant it in Pali and then chant it in Thai, so we actually understood what was being said.
I forget the Thai by now.
Okay, so this one, I am
I am the owner of my kamma.
I am the heir of my karma.
I have kamma as my origin, kamma as my relative, kamma as my resort.
I think refuge might be better.
I will be the heir of whatever kamma, good or bad, that I do.
Whatever kamma that I do, I will become an heir to that.
a reminder that our actions have consequences.
Nobody else, no one else owns our karma.
You do bad deeds, no one can save you from it.
I always remember Udi, who's now passed away.
He's a good friend, a big Israeli monk in Thailand.
no one can escape their karma something he held I don't think he was a great monk or a great meditator he had his own goodness but boy was he strong in that in his belief or understanding certainty of karma I think that comes from meditation it comes from living
Seeing that your actions have consequences.
It's a very important Buddhist principle.
Whatever we do, we can't escape it.
It's not about other people finding out.
It's about memory.
We can remember everything we've ever done.
If you meditate long enough and powerfully enough, you can actually remember all the way back through your life, which means it's still there, which means you never escape it.
And in meditation, you see so many of our memories popping up.
That's karma.
When you feel guilty about something you did in the past, well, that feeling guilty is the bad result of that bad karma.
Of course it can become new karma by feeling guilty and getting upset about it.
But having to remember is the result of doing these deeds.
Having to experience unpleasantness.
A meditator really understands the law of karma.
Someone who's come to meditate fresh, never meditated before, realizes it.
When I first started meditating, it was a shock to me.
I realized what an idiot I had been, how foolish, how ignorant.
All the things that I had done, just wave after wave of junk.
I said, oh no, I've been so blind.
It wasn't like I was being brainwashed.
I was really just looking, opening up my mind for the first time and seeing, what have I put in here?
What have I been carrying around with me?
That's what karma is.
Kama bandhu, we are tied to our kama.
Kama yoni, we are born from our kama.
Kama pati sarna, pati sarna, pati sarna means, this is a resort, but it's our dwelling, I suppose.
It's the room that we live in.
Our karma is our house, our home.
It's our universe.
Our universe is built up of our karma.
We build up this.
Even the human body is conditioned by life after life of karma.
The Buddha then goes on to talk about how these five things, why these five things are useful.
So let's go through this a little bit.
So the first one, why should we think often about old age?
Well, it's because when we're young, we're intoxicated with youth.
And so we engage in misconduct.
We do bad things because we're intoxicated.
Because we think, ah, this will never catch up with me.
I'll be able to just escape because I'm young.
I'll be able to always get what I want.
Then we get old and we can no longer get what we want.
We are weak and people look down upon us.
Ageism, when you get old, people think of you as feeble, as unimportant.
You no longer have the same society.
They end up putting you in an old age home.
For young people as well, acknowledge that this is not going to last forever.
If you don't make the most of it and do right by it, old age will come to you.
And the same goes with health and sickness and death.
Because people, when they're healthy, they become intoxicated.
Oh, I have good health.
I never get sick.
Foolishness, foolishness.
And we feel this conceit, right?
conceit that well i'm you know i'm lucky you know i never get sick or i'm lucky boy we're lucky how healthy we are it's foolish that's not the truth it's not luck it's just circumstance sickness will come to you could come to you tomorrow and we get this false sense of security and it has consequences
Because all of this is about pigeon-holing your ability to accept.
You can only accept a certain subset of experiences.
So this is acceptable.
But all of this, you can't handle it.
So we do our best to run away from it, but it's not avoidable.
It's just a bad way to live in any way when you only are able to cope with a subset of reality.
I mean, it shows your weakness.
And for most of us, the subset is not even 50%.
We're only able to cope with less than 50% of possible experiences.
The only way to be truly happy and truly at peace is to widen that so that you're able to accept and live with and be happy with 100%.
And that's really what we're trying to do in meditation, is to experience the things that are hard to experience, bear the things that are hard to bear, and learn about the things that we'd rather avoid, so that we can free ourselves from suffering.
So sickness, death.
When people are alive, we're intoxicated.
Boy, I'm still alive.
Yes, it's great to be alive, right?
Well, you're going to be dead soon, so don't get too attached to it.
Number four, why should we worry about our karma?
Because people engage in bad deeds.
Period.
This one is simple.
Why should we focus on this?
Because we engage in bad deeds.
But when we reflect upon this, we stop doing bad deeds.
And because of that, we feel better.
We don't have the results of bad karma.
Why should... Oh, did I miss one?
Oh, I missed one.
Number four is being separated.
Why should we reflect on being separated from everything we love?
Well, because we have desire and lust in regard to those people and things that are dear and agreeable.
And excited by this lust, again, we engage in unawesome deeds.
We do things that cause stress and suffering.
But when we realize that we're going to be parted, well, we stop obsessing over these things.
You know, it's not something I can keep forever.
This too will change.
This too will pass.
And he talks about what happens when you reflect upon these things and it leads you to the path.
It leads you, these things help you get closer to the goal.
When you get closer to the goal, you become free from attachment.
And then he gives a poem, which is often, there's often poetry at the end of these suttas.
So whether he actually spoke these or these were meant as a summary of what was said by someone later, author, I don't know.
But we like to think that the Buddha spoke these verses as well.
I won't go into it.
It's basically a summary.
So, five things for frequent contemplation.
Don't forget them.
Good Dhamma to know for all of us who wish to live our lives in line with the Buddha's teaching.
Of course, meditation is the most important.
Being mindful throughout the day.
Remembering yourself throughout the day.
Remembering your experience.
What am I doing?
But, alas, here are some extras that are useful, especially for people living in the world who might easily get lost or get sidetracked, lose sight of what's important.
Remember, if you contemplate on these, reflect on these frequently, you're much better able to keep yourself on track.
So, that's the Dhamma for tonight.
Hello, Bhante.
I have come across a teacher's teachings which says to keep the watcher separate from the breathing and criticizing what he says is the sinking down of the mind to the abdomen.
I'm not sure what is meant by this and would like to hear your thoughts.
Thank you.
You know, if I had to answer to all these people who come up with these wacky theories, I don't have any frame of reference with which to presume that what he's saying has any basis in the Buddhist teaching.
It sounds like he's just blowing out steam.
You have to understand that watching the abdomen has become quite popular in Thailand.
It's sort of the
institutional favorite, I think, right now.
I mean, mainly because of very powerful people like Ajahn Tong, Lungpho Chodok,
Lumpa Charan is another one.
Lumpa Charan wrote many books about karma.
So if you're Thai or you know anything about Thailand, Lumpa Charan also practiced Vajrayana Rising.
He's passed away recently, I think.
Lumpa Asaphat is a Burmese monk at Vivekasom.
He's also passed away several years ago.
but a lot of work has gone into bringing this to Thailand and it's become fairly prevalent like now in Bangkok when they have and there are other teachers as well actually there are new teachers who have big followings Mae Siri is another one a woman called Mae Siri is another one a student of Lumpur Chodok but she's long passed away
I think, or she's very old.
I think she passed away many years ago.
Lumpa, there's many monks.
Ajahn, Pachak, I think is another one I practice with.
So, I don't want to say jealousy, but you know, there's a lot of
by people who practice other techniques have become, well, they've had to speak out on this at the very least.
So we might snidely suggest that they're just jealous, but there's definitely some animosity.
So you get all sorts of these weird claims like sinking down to the abdomen.
What a ridiculous thing to say, really.
What, so the bottoms of your feet are bad because they're lower?
I mean, I don't know if you're translating it exactly as it was said, but there is a sense that watching the breath around the nose is traditional for anapanasati, but that's because it calms you.
It's nothing to do with it being higher than the stomach.
The stomach is mentioned specifically as vayodhatu.
It's not actually anapanasati, although you could call it anapanasati.
It's one of the dhatus which makes it perfect for insight meditation.
So, I don't know.
I don't have much to say about this.
I'm not even sure we should entertain such questions.
Probably should just say something like, yeah, well, if I had a penny for every teacher who criticized my teaching, I'd be breaking the rule many, many times.
I'm not allowed to touch money.
Sorry, the screen seems a little frozen up.
The last question.
I clicked it.
Maybe if we both click it, it causes problems.
That may be it.
Okay.
You may have to refresh your screen.
That's what I'm doing.
I'll read this one.
Life has become unbearable after being able to see through the Western games of living.
I'm 16.
I've just come home from living in a Buddhist monastery.
Now I have to make a choice to either live in the West or go back to the monastery.
Go back to the monastery.
Duh.
I mean, all other things being equal, I don't know that there's much of a comparison.
What good would living at home be?
If you can live in a monastery, go for it.
You have to give me more information about why that might be even a question in your mind, because there are many factors to that.
attained enlightenment with concentration meditation, and after recalling a memory when he was younger, he said that jhana is indeed the path to enlightenment.
It seems contrary to what most teachers say now, which is vipassana is the path to enlightenment.
We have a challenge here.
Let's look at MN 36, the Mahasattva Kusuta.
Ah, yes, right.
Could that be the path to enlightenment?
This is indeed the path to enlightenment.
Well, the first thing we can say is he wasn't a Buddha yet, so anything he says has to be taken with a grain of salt.
there I could shoot you down but to take any such statement as being canonical like aha therefore there is no other way without entering into the jhanas right I mean what he's saying here this is a description of his this is a description of his practice as a bodhisatta where he had
where he had lived many years indulging in sensual pleasure, and then he had lived many years torturing himself.
And so his concern was, there's pleasure involved with ajanas.
Does that make it wrong?
And then he realized, no, it's not wrong.
It's not the pleasure that's the problem.
It's a very profound sort of teaching, especially at the time when all pleasure was thought to be wrong.
But pleasure is not the problem.
The problem is unwholesomeness.
And this state is without unwholesomeness.
Why am I afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unwholesome states?
And he said, well, I'm not afraid of it, since it has nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unwholesome states.
So, but to say that, I mean, it's really a technical argument because yes, technically the jhanas are necessary, but there are different ways of going about that.
And I've talked about this many times.
If you cultivate insight first, then you end up in a place where the jhanas come as a result of insight.
It's terribly dogmatic to think otherwise.
And it's kind of ridiculous because the jhanas, as they're traditionally understood, are devoid of insight, which is, you know, what does the Buddha teach?
He taught insight.
He taught the five aggregates, understanding impermanence, suffering, and non-self.
You can't understand that, depending on how you understand the jhanas, but in many cases you can't understand that.
I was just reading, I just got this book.
Here's the book.
I was just reading it.
This is by Leigh Brasington, an American.
American, so take it with a grain of salt.
There's no control F on paper books, unfortunately.
But I just happened to open it to a page.
Ah, no, it's in the introduction.
Here we are.
So, I sat with Aya for five weeks.
I learned jhanas six, seven and eight and was thoroughly enjoying running them up and running them back down.
Not too long after I gained some skill at doing this, I was again in an interview and she said, now you must do insight practice in the same sitting after you do the jhanas.
So the point is, and it goes on to talk about how this person did it, it's quite impressive that they're able to go through all the jhanas like that.
There's no question this is a great thing.
But there's also no question that doing it doesn't give you insight.
Going one to eight, I mean, wow, one to eight jhana, I have to take their word for it.
I'm actually somewhat skeptical.
It sounds a little too easy, but I didn't read the actual book.
But one to eight, up and down, up and down.
And then the teacher says, well now practice insight.
So clearly no insight came from that.
Ajahn Chah says these things are based on craving.
The Buddha says it's just vedana and it's impermanent.
So they become a base for insight, surely.
But the real point and the purpose of the jhanas is to enter into a state that's free from the defilements or free from the hindrances.
So there are many ways to get to the point where you have no hindrances.
But it's important that along with being secluded from the hindrances, you're also gaining insight.
So whether you do that before or after,
It's not really important.
What's important is that you have both insight and freedom from the hindrances.
And to some extent, they have to come together because you can only gain insight through the freedom from the five hindrances.
but there are different kinds of, I mean, there are different sort of technical differences about types of concentration that free you from the hindrances.
There's something called access concentration, which isn't a jhana.
And so it gets quite technical, but if that's what it's going to devolve into is on a technicality, you have to do this, you have to do that, it really becomes quite dogmatic and ridiculous because it doesn't hold up in experience.
To just say, oh, you need this.
It doesn't really tell you anything about it.
Seek and ye shall find.
If you go into practice, I guarantee you practice just the jhanas, you won't get anywhere.
They'll get somewhere, but it's not far enough.
Which is another reason why this idea that all practices are the same and all paths lead to the same goal is just the same goal, different practices.
As a Buddhist meditator, this is one example of how we can pinpoint that that's just not true.
There are many people who even do meditation, but will never attain enlightenment.
There's no way they could, because they never make the jump from tranquility, from samatha to vipassana.
It's very common.
And many of the religious traditions out there are just stuck in a Samatha type state, where they enter into these blissful states.
And the problem is then people say, well, you see, that's like your nirvana, right?
You have nirvana, we have rapture, we have our state.
And a big part of the Buddhist teaching was to say, no, no, I've entered into those states and they only go so far.
So if you want to ask this question, it's just one that keeps coming up.
Are not the jhanas necessary?
Technically, to some extent, yes.
But what that exactly means is very much open to interpretation.
What the jhanas actually mean, gosh.
Ten different Buddhist teachers have ten different explanations.
Really.
So you look in the commentary, which is our oldest understanding, we have two types of jhana.
Aramanupani jhana and Lakhanupani jhana.
So the Buddha here is talking about Araman Upanijana, where he enters into a tranquil state based on a fixed state of mind.
To say that that is necessary is...
Well, it turns out not to be explicitly true.
Because there are ways of getting there, to that state, that don't require the samatha, the strict samatha practice.
You want to come and do a course with me, I'll show you.
But definitely, I mean, you're suggesting that that's the path to enlightenment?
Absolutely not.
Read on in the sutta.
And elsewhere the Buddha says that Samatha meditation, the Jhanas, have a problem.
They are still just Vedana.
They are still impermanent.
The path to enlightenment.
The Buddha said what is the path.
When you see that all formations are impermanent, that's the path to enlightenment.
This is the path to purification.
Thank you for answering my question regarding what is required to stay at Saramangalo and what may be necessary when considering to ordain.
I very much appreciate your advice and believe it is wise to take part in your meditation course before making a commitment to ordain.
Are there specific dates I should plan to travel to make the best use of our time?
I don't want to be inconvenient or a burden to you or the other meditators.
I'm simply interested in learning.
P.S.
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right we should talk about this in another forum you can try contact me on my web blog utadamo.
or you can just do utadamo at gmail.com just send me an email utadamo at gmail if it's strictly the contact form I did send Ivan a link to the application for meditators and a link to the schedule we have the schedule up right people can see when we have room
Yes.
I can see and I assume other people can too.
Some of my friends ask me not to talk about my practice anymore because I sometimes talk about death and dying and they don't really understand and think it's morbid.
I'm not sure how to handle it sometimes other than just not talk about it to them anymore.
But that means I'm also not being a good example and following the Dhamma in the way of passing on information.
Do you have any suggestions for dealing with people who have fear of death and dying on faith?
Thank you.
Following the Dhamma doesn't mean passing on information.
If people are looking for it or will benefit from it.
The Dhamma is about speaking at the right time.
So obviously, it sounds like you might not be speaking at the right time.
It's not really beneficial.
It's not having a good result.
So you have to work on mindfulness.
Try to be mindful.
Get a sense.
So don't have this idea that it's necessary to pass anything on to anybody.
It's not necessary.
Necessary is to speak the right thing at the right time.
And that takes clarity of mind, takes some knowledge and understanding of reality, of the nature of things, to know when to speak and what to say.
If it's causing problems, then the best way is just to work on your own state of mind.
Or maybe that sounds harsh, but it could just be that you have this wrong idea that you have to somehow proselytize or spread Buddhism, which is certainly not the case.
People ask for your opinion.
Give their opinion.
Give your opinion.
Was it Ajahn Tong or Ajahn Chah?
I can't remember.
No, it was Ajahn Tong, he said.
So you tell them, if they ask, you give them your opinion, and if they don't agree with you, it's no problem.
He said something very simple like that.
You tell them, you give them the right advice, if they don't go for it.
Chö, I think he said chö, just be neutral about it.
Hello.
When doing walking meditation, I sometimes switch between a step with right foot to stepping in the right foot.
It's a translation thing.
It is as if sometimes I feel I am doing the stepping, and then it feels more natural to say that there is a step.
I've let this go as an experiment to see what feels more natural.
It felt right, at least.
Is that a correct form, switching between observing my action or an action?
You want to deal with that one first?
Is the other one different?
Yes.
All right.
Go ahead, Robin.
What do you think?
Okay.
First question.
I don't think...
I'm actually not sure about this.
Okay.
A new meditator is in many ways trying to find, you mentioned it last night I think, it's the same thing, it's a trick.
This person is trying to find a way to make it easier, trying to find a way to make it stable, satisfying, controllable.
What you're experiencing in your meditation when you do either of those is impermanence, dissatisfaction and lack of control.
So you'll do it one way and it doesn't feel very natural, so you'll try it another way.
What you're trying to do is find a way that you can somehow control and keep it stable.
It's not the right way to practice.
No, it's important that it's difficult.
It's important that it upsets you in the sense that it challenges you, disturbs you.
We have to shake ourselves out of this sleep that we're in, sleepwalking, thinking that things are going to be stable, satisfying, controllable.
Help us realize that you can't depend on anything.
So you're overthinking it, is what I would say.
Pick one, stick with it, even when it's unpleasant, even when it doesn't seem to be working.
doesn't seem to be working just means that you're not in control, that it's not the way you want it to be.
And that's what we're trying to see.
And trying to learn to be okay with that, to stop reacting to that, to stop getting upset about that, to learn to let go.
Does that sound, do you think Robin, does that sound reasonable?
It does, yes.
Okay.
The second one.
When transitioning to sitting meditation, I felt more appropriate to do standing meditation before going to sitting.
Because of the rhythm of walking, the sitting, it suddenly feels abrupt, as if to ease into the pace of things that arise.
Is that also appropriate?
Could be, but again, it would be more about, hey, suck it up.
You know, I mean,
It's okay if things are disturbing.
It's not a problem that you do standing meditation in between, but your reasons for doing it is to stop it from being disturbing?
You have maybe the wrong understanding of what meditation is supposed to be.
It's meant to be disturbing.
It's meant to be challenging.
In a sense, we're putting ourselves in a difficult position to see how we react to it.
So don't be afraid of adversity.
I hope that helps.
I hope it doesn't sound like I'm picking on you or something or laughing at you.
That's not really it.
I'm trying to be fairly honest.
Hopefully it's not too brutal.
I think you've also mentioned when going from walking to sitting to do it slowly, mindfully, not to really
Right.
Don't stop being mindful in between.
So when you finish walking, don't just walk back.
Ajahn Thang is quite strict on this after walking.
In fact, one time he even said you should be like an airplane.
Is that how he said it?
I think it was like an airplane.
So suppose you're doing the sixth step walking.
When you're done walking, you'll go to fifth step, and then fourth step, and then third step, and then second step, and then first step, and then you'll go to your mat.
So actually, I don't think he does that all the time, or I don't think it's something that's expected to do all the time, but it's an interesting technique.
At any rate, he's very clear on having to be mindful all the way back, and when you go to sit down, bending and so on.
Trying to be mindful.
That's just continuity.
Don't break your mindfulness.
Oh, maybe.
Sometimes they would just live under trees.
It wasn't that big of a deal.
You die, you die.
Cold, you're cold.
You're hot, you're hot.
And someone would wander into the forest to find them to bring them food?
No, they'd come out of the forest.
I mean, they wouldn't go so far into the forest that, right, they wouldn't go so far that they couldn't meet people.
But you'd be surprised, you know.
Places like India, Thailand is another.
In Thailand, you can go off in the forest, up on a mountain, and there'll still be people somewhere.
And usually they'll give you a little food.
But yeah, sometimes you have to go several kilometers to get to people.
Several miles for you Americans.
Does the Terracotta School say that enlightenment is something remote you have to attain for the existing state of affairs?
Enlightenment is something that you have to attain.
It's fairly remote.
Certainly not the existing state of affairs.
Does the rising and falling of the abdomen hint at which mental states or objects arise in the mind, so that we are sure we are noting with accuracy?
Thank you.
I don't quite understand.
If I get what you're saying, when you're doing rising and falling, are you then able to know what states arise in the mind?
I mean, mindfulness helps you do that.
Sort of your presence, sampajjanya.
I'll help you do that.
I mean, it's a skill that you start to gain the ability to know what's going on in your mind.
You're able to realize when you get distracted.
So you do rising, falling, and then you get distracted, and then you realize, oh yes, here I'm just distracted.
And then you'll note it.
I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but when you're aware of something, you'll note that, whatever it is.
Usually after we note it, we come back again to the rise and falling, so we have a kind of a base to not get too lost in the flux of experience.
Greetings, Bhante.
The Buddha said that karma is volition or will, and that is what transmigrates from life to life in the process of rebirth.
Does the moment of rebirth follow instantaneously after the death moment, or is there time in between them?
If the latter is true, can the Kama exist in other realms during this period?
Kama doesn't transmigrate.
That's a misunderstanding.
Maybe in a conventional sense it does, but nothing transmigrates.
There's no such thing in Buddhism as transmigration.
So again, you have to get into my explanation of the philosophy of rebirth, but it's not that we believe in rebirth, we just don't believe in death.
Death is something, the death that we do believe in is something that happens every moment.
So we're born and die every moment, born and die, born and die, born and die.
So your question doesn't really have much importance except in a conventional sense, that at the moment of death there is a sort of a decision making that goes on.
So apparently the spirit, and this is sort of a Mahayana thing, but Theravada tends to agree that, Theravada teachers tend to agree that the spirit might stay around for a while, so it's not really dead yet, but it's still being born and die every moment, there's still experiences.
And then there will be a moment where it departs and arises in another place.
So there is that sort of a specific, what we call patisandhi, which is linking, linking again, relinking or links to the back into samsara, in a new birth, becoming.
So whether it's instantaneous, non-instantaneous, there's nothing that transmigrates.
It's just born and die every moment.
No matter where you are, no matter what happens, there's still just moment after moment.
Does wisdom come with age?
I know that age does not guarantee wisdom, but does it increase the chances of it?
No, I don't know.
I mean,
Yes, certainly.
Because we're talking about experience, so it's about your presence of mind.
Someone with no presence of mind will get worse as they get old, right?
But generally not less wisdom, because experience is a very much important part of wisdom.
Someone who has lots of experience
They may not be very wise, but they're generally wiser than they were before.
I think that's across the board.
Even foolish people become wiser with age, I think.
Unless they're like drunk all the time.
It's a rare case, I would say, where a person gets less wise.
I mean, there's so many other factors, but generally there's a certain wisdom in the sense, you know, oh, I won't do that again.
Why?
Because it had bad consequences.
Some people don't learn much, but I think generally, I don't know, it's a somewhat speculative question.
Sir, what would you say are some of the challenges that new monks have?
Well, the four dangers, right?
Getting angry, that's the waves in the ocean.
Being gluttonous, that's the crocodiles in the ocean.
Having attachment to sensuality, that's the whirlpools that drag you down.
and women, if you're a man, if you're an heterosexual man, because they're the sharks in the ocean.
They bite and don't let go.
That's a good list.
I think the anger is a big one.
But those four really sum it up.
Basically, anger and greed.
I think you did a really good talk on that, that was transcribed in the Lessons in Practical Buddhism, right?
Right.
So you can read that.
Some people don't know about that.
I actually did.
That book came of a conversation I had with a novice in Sri Lanka.
They were saying, you know, how can we drum up support for the monastery?
I said, you should write a book.
So I started transcribing some talks to make a book.
It was to drum up money for the monastery, though, did you say?
Not money particularly, just support, interest.
Get people involved with the place.
No, we weren't going to sell the book or something.
It's just publicity to get people to know more about us.
He was saying that people like books.
Many people look for Buddhist books.
It's a good book.
I've read it a few times.
It's on the website.
That's good to hear.
It's a kind of book that what was neat about it is I could just add to it, right?
I could still add more chapters to it just because it's just miscellaneous stuff.
And I think it came, people actually transcribed some of my talks.
I think it was people were helping out with it, transcribing, and then I just converted it into book form.
It's not, some people, someone was criticizing, it's not very well converted into a book, so it still sounds a little bit informal, but yeah.
I think it's very informative.
Good.
Sorry, my screen is stuck again.
I got it.
Sankha's got a question.
Can a monk staying in the forest consume fruits falling from trees?
Is that allowed in Vinaya?
No.
No, there is an exception, which is an odd exception, but if one sees fruit...
in the forest, one is allowed to bring the fruit to a lay person if there is a famine.
So it's an odd allowance, but I guess the idea is that desperate times, it would be silly to leave the fruit.
So a monk may pick up the fruit, bring it to a layperson, and if the layperson chooses to share it with the monk, the monk can eat it, which is actually normally against the rules.
But in the case of a famine, there's an allowance.
That's what I remember.
But no, even if you're standing under the tree and you catch it as it falls, right?
No, not allowed.
I think you're caught up, Ante, but I'm sorry, my screen is still frozen, so I can't say for sure.
You've got another one here.
Mindfulness meditation can cure severe social anxiety.
It's said to have a chemical component.
No.
You have to be able to separate the chemical component from the mental component.
There's a very physical component to anxiety.
I was just talking about this tonight.
I've done several videos on anxiety.
So I'm just going to repeat and be repeating, but that's fine.
If you're ever interested in specific topics, go to video.sirimongolo.org.
We've made an attempt to categorize some of my old videos that were actually one video, one topic.
So you might find some answers there.
But in brief...
The physical component, even chemicals, it's something you can experience, and it's not the actual anxiety.
Anxiety is a mental thing, so you actually experience being anxious.
But it's not the whole story.
The anxiety comes and goes, but there's many physical components, results of being anxious, or instigators of anxiety.
But as with anything else, physical, they need not be a cause for anxiety.
But what usually happens is we're anxious, and then it affects our body, and then that makes us more anxious.
And so it becomes a cycle, it becomes a habit.
But the chemical component that you're talking about is something you can be mindful of.
The chemical component is...
Yeah, I'm not sure what the chemical component would be, but there's a brain, definitely a brain component.
But with work, you can learn to experience those brain stimuli without getting anxious about them.
Absolutely.
Don't listen to Western understanding.
What do Westerners know?
But they would just say that, with mindfulness meditation, it can change your perspective of what you worry about, perhaps you're not as worried what people think of you, perhaps that can use some anxiety.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that.
Yeah.
Right.
Um,
You know, that sort of falls under the many types of wisdom that you gain from meditation, understanding that gives you a better perspective.
But no, that's a different kind of understanding.
I guess it would fall under sort of the more theoretical or intellectual or maybe the bigger picture of what happens when you're more mindful, right?
But on a technical, microscopic or momentary level, we're talking about seeing the experiences that normally make you anxious and not getting anxious about them.
So basically what you're saying, but it's not so much.
On a technical level, it's not so much about how you look at yourself or other ways of talking about it, but technically it's just experiences that give rise to the habit of anxiety, based on all this garbage that we have, the baggage that we have about them, and the baggage of self and so on, to see them clearly and rather to not get anxious about them.
Yeah, it's all in there.
Because it makes you less attached to self, less worried about what people think of you, right?
The reasons why you're not worried about what people think of you, the best reason is because you lose sight of you.
You lose sight of the self.
And it becomes just about experiences.
But your way of putting it probably makes it better understandable to people.
I just like to do very technical.
I mean, I found that just...
you know i i often think you know several years ago i couldn't be here on a live stream you know even participating and helping like this i was extremely socially shy and self-conscious and meditation has helped in just practical ways very well put because i often
neglect to highlight those aspects, what it really means practically.
It's nice to have a place to hear that.
You can often get tiresome, I suppose, hearing again and again about moments of experience that don't resonate, right?
What resonates is hearing how it affects your life.
Thank you, Robin.
I think we're all done.
Thank you, Bonte.
Good night.
Thanks, everyone.
Have a good night.