Good evening everyone.
Welcome to our live broadcast.
Today we're looking at the Samaya Sutta in Kuturanikaya, Book of Vibes, No.
54.
So we stop here for a somewhat unique sutta.
It's one of these
teachings that stand out in their own unique way.
We have the Buddha giving I don't know if you could call it advice but listing situations where it is
Bhikkhu Bodhi says unfavorable, but the words the Buddha uses, or the text uses, are asamayo badanaya and samayo badanaya.
Samaya means occasion or time.
Asamaya means that which is not the time.
not an occasion.
So you might explain that by not being a good opportunity for something, or not being a proper opportunity for something.
And for what?
Well, padhāna.
Padhānai means for striving.
Striving being a term for Buddhist practice.
Buddhism is considered to be a type of striving.
If you ever come here to do a meditation course, you'll understand why that is.
It's hard work.
It's not like running on a treadmill or pushing rocks up a hill.
But nonetheless, it's work that you have to do.
It's a training.
strenuous for the mind.
It's quite hard work.
You're striving to be free.
And that's in a very literal sense, a very simple understanding of that.
Striving that when you experience
the objects, when you experience the world around you, to be free from them, to be free in regards to them, to not be enslaved by them, which is just a poetic way of saying to not react to them,
Do not extrapolate or expand upon them.
Let seeing just be seeing.
Let hearing just be hearing.
Let feeling just be feeling.
Let thinking just be thinking.
That's the striving we do.
So understand that yes, striving is important.
And understand that the only striving that is proper is the striving to be simply put, free.
But again, it's not like free, like a jailbreak kind of free.
It's free from the influence, free from the slavery of reality, free from slavery to reality.
Do not be a slave of reality.
So it's easy, we get the impression that, I hope you get the impression from some of the things I say that it's always good to strive, right?
It's always good to practice.
So here the Buddha is saying there are times for striving and not times for striving.
And I have to question a literal interpretation of this.
I have to hesitantly put my finger on this one and move the, I don't know what the phrase is, but I have to somehow qualify this one.
Because the Buddha doesn't go into detail.
He says, a time for striving and a not time for striving.
And it's a list of five.
Five good times for striving and five bad times.
I'll go through them and then we'll discuss about what they actually mean.
Or maybe I'll say something first about why I mean it's not to be taken literally.
We'll talk about that first.
Because the admission that there's a time for not striving is a sense that there might be a time where mindfulness would not be useful or would not be possible.
And if you're looking at these lists, and I'll go over them, it doesn't seem like any of these are times.
They don't refer to times when you're asleep, for example, or drunk.
It doesn't talk about that.
What it does talk about is what appear to be times where it would be more difficult to really apply yourself.
And so the only understanding I can get out of this as to why this is actually an important teaching to keep in mind is that all of these are dangers that we have to face, that we may be in a position
this position, this samaya, this occasion might come to us that we get into a situation where we can't practice, or where it's quite difficult to practice, more difficult to practice.
And so the first lesson is not to take for granted a good opportunity to practice, to seize the opportunity.
And you'll see why that becomes important when we talk about that.
The other thing about a good opportunity
I can't remember what I was going to say.
Ah, yes, is that some of these can be avoided, not all of them.
But at least four out of the five of these, right?
Three or four of them can be avoided.
So it may be that you find yourself in a situation that is unfavorable to practice.
And so one of the things I take from this is extrapolate on this teaching.
is that sometimes you should change your situation sometimes you shouldn't just accept your situation Buddha talked about avoiding avoiding certain things if they're going to get in the way of your practice it's true that there are certain examples of things to be avoided or even abandoned and left behind Buddha did talk about in other suttas if you practice somewhere and you don't
You don't gain positive qualities from being there.
Your mind isn't able to focus.
Then maybe you should think about going somewhere else.
So let's go through these five things that are useful to know about anyway.
It's not a terribly deep teaching, but it is a good teaching.
There's no question.
of value here.
So the five are jino hoti, jaraya bibhuto.
Someone is old and is jaraya bibhuto, become great and become overcome with old age.
Abhibhuta.
This is a time, this is a asamayopada, not a good time to strive.
And so this one really rings home the fact that you have to work.
You have to work while you're young.
So the question immediately arises, what about old people?
Can they not meditate?
Absolutely.
But there's no question that a person who is negligent when they have strength, when their body is fit,
It's not going to be easier when your body becomes weak and frail and you're bothered by all sorts of the aches and pains and the fatigue, the problems of old age.
It doesn't really just mean getting old, it means getting arthritis and
I mean, there's even, now we have to deal with things like dementia and the many sicknesses that come with old age that make you tired, that make you dizzy.
Some of these could even be, like arthritis, for example, could be a good object of meditation.
There's no question there, but it's much more difficult.
Another big thing about getting old is that you've had that much more time to cultivate unwholesomeness.
If you haven't practiced cultivating wholesome qualities in your youth, you've got that much more to deal with.
Young people often get this wrong impression in their minds, oh, when I get old, then I'll go off and do something spiritual.
Right now I'm young, I should enjoy life.
I get caught up in this idea of enjoying life.
Enjoy life.
Funny thing about enjoying life is it's not all that enjoyable.
think about it think about the times when you enjoyed life did they make you happier as a person did they make you more content what did you get out of it looking back at all the happiness we've striven for all the yearning and seeking for pleasure are we now more content because of that
And when you come to meditate, you realize, actually, I'm just a lot more attached to those things now that I've had them than before.
So that's all you get.
If you go through your whole life enjoying life until you get old to the point where you can no longer enjoy life in many of the ways that you used to.
You can no longer play sports.
You can no longer dance.
You can no longer have sex.
Then you start to come and meditate, and you find that you've got some pretty serious attachments, pretty serious habits built up.
They get quite ingrained.
They seem to be very much a part of who you are.
And so your whole outlook on the meditation practice is skewed.
For young people who come and meditate, I think you should be able to appreciate this,
you're able to cut through a lot of your bad habits and become fairly objective because your bad habits are weak but if you talk to people who are who've come to the meditation later in life their habits are actually more ingrained sometimes they have very good habits but any bad habits are really that much harder to deal with i don't want to discourage old people
And I think the Buddha was not completely trying to discourage.
It was sensitive, I think.
I don't think it was insensitive of that.
And it wasn't a sense that, you old people are useless, go away, don't come and meditate.
But there's certainly some admonishment here to be made that we've wasted so much time not meditating.
And...
It behooves us as young people, as young as possible, get people meditating when they're three years old, five years old.
They might not become enlightened, but they'll start off on the right foot.
Teach your kids not to kill, not to steal, not to cheat, not to lie, not to take drugs or alcohol.
Don't go there.
Help them on the right path.
Encourage them.
so that they don't cultivate bad habits.
That's what you see when you meditate.
You see all your bad habits, old age.
It's too late.
It's not too late, but it's that much more difficult.
That's the first one.
The second one, related, vyadhitohoti, vyadhinabhibhutto,
One is sick.
One is overwhelmed by sickness.
It's also not a good opportunity for striving.
Now, sickness can be a good object of meditation.
When a person is sick, they can be mindful of the sickness.
that really assumes that they've got some kind of training to help them deal with the sickness.
One of my old friends in Jomtong, one of my teachers, one of my first teachers, I'm not really on good terms with him, but I still respect him.
We were talking about, Mahasi Sayadaw says you should meditate like a sick person.
When you meditate, you should behave as though you're sick.
And the idea was, it's a way of, it gives you the idea of being very mindful, because sick people walk very slowly.
So he said, when you walk, you should walk like a sick person.
You shouldn't walk around
mindlessly every act a sick person when they the point is a sick person when they walk they do it very intentionally because they're in great pain and it's very hard for them to do the point being that they do everything very intentionally very gradually very carefully because they don't want to disturb the sickness in the body they're very weak and in pain so meditators should to some extent be like that should look like and act like
From a totally different reason.
The reason is not because it's supposed to be painful, absolutely not.
Because we have to be as careful as a sick person.
But for a different reason, of course, so that we can be mindful.
If you run around like a child, your potential to be mindful is much reduced.
A sick person, if you walk around like a sick person, everything you can be mindful of.
Brushing your teeth, eating your food.
Some meditators, he was, Mahasi Sayadaw in this passage, he was praising these meditators who were doing everything very slowly.
He said, you know, we should be like them.
Doing everything very methodically, very intentionally.
And so as a result, very mindfully.
But the point of the story is he joked about this and he said, but you know, sick people are some of the least mindful people out there.
And it's true, most people when they're sick, they're just whining and complaining and unable to be objective whatsoever.
And so this is what the Buddhists, I can only assume, thinking of.
I was certainly thinking of it.
Sick people have a very hard time being mindful.
When you're sick, all you want is to relieve the pain.
Just give me something to get over it.
Once when I was in Thailand, I refused to take painkillers, but I got this, what I later found out was probably amoebic dysentery.
Dysentery.
Dysentery is an interesting disease.
It's not like a, it's like the stomach flu where you get food poisoning or something, or bacteria in your stomach, a virus, I don't know, something in your stomach that makes you throw up or makes you have diarrhea.
But it's so much worse.
It's almost instantaneous.
Within about five minutes, you're lying on your back or you're hunched over the toilet.
And it goes on for hours.
And you have pain from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet.
You feel like you're dying.
You really do.
You can't eat anything.
You can't drink anything.
The only thing I could take was salt water.
And I knew instinctively that that I could take.
And so I asked for someone to get me some hot water with salt in it.
That somehow helped.
But I ended up taking half of a paracetamol because I just couldn't take it.
Many years ago in Thailand.
Very hard to be mindful.
But on the other hand, the Buddha has said elsewhere that sickness, he said, or one of the commentaries said that sickness is, I think the Buddha said it, it's called someone who becomes enlightened with the, they free themselves from sickness and they free themselves from defilements at the same time.
So they overcome sickness and defilements together.
meaning I guess the sickness helps them get rid of defilements.
It's an instigator, helps you to let go.
And I see that as well.
I think anyone who's been sick, any meditator who's fallen sick, is able to see actually the benefit and how it tests you and challenges you.
But the definite point here is that not to wait until you're sick or to be conscious of the fact that sickness
makes it more difficult.
And the point being that, well, you're healthy.
Make the most of it.
So this whole idea of live your life, carpe diem, it's actually good, you know.
Yes, live for the now because tomorrow you may die.
It's just a question of what that means.
The best way to live your life is not to be indulgent, indolent, careless, heedless.
The best way to live your life is to bring your mind to the fullest.
Live to your fullest potential.
Strive to find freedom.
Now you have the chance
Number two.
Number three.
Let's go to the English.
There's a famine, a poor harvest.
I don't think that's quite what it says, is it?
To become Hoti.
It's hard to get food.
This might be a fairly specific problem.
Not one that...
It's one that monks run into.
and there's a sense here that you do have to somewhat be careful if you don't have a lot of food well then don't push yourself at least physically too hard it also says that you need to eat there's no question that we rely to some extent on our body and we're trapped to some extent by our body if our body is not healthy it's often our body is not
energetic and find it difficult to cultivate mental energy because they rely on each other.
The mind is very much trapped by the nature of the body.
Not entirely, but to some extent.
So bhikkhu bodhi translates unfavorable.
Yes.
I don't suppose there's too much to say there.
We're not
We're not really in danger of this.
But another point would be that any danger can come to us.
Not just famine.
Our house could be burnt down.
And that's the fourth one.
The fourth one is there could be peril, turbulence in the wilderness.
War.
Times of war, conflict.
So many different problems.
The future is uncertain.
We've just apparently passed 400 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere, which is sort of the level that scientists hoped we could have avoided passing.
Another one of those landmarks, and we just whipped past it.
And some people are saying we'll probably never see, we'll never see less than 400 parts per million.
So congratulations, another landmark in the evolution of humanity.
What that means is we're looking at some hotter times, flooding, mass displacement of peoples.
So we're definitely looking at famine and hardship, war, a lot of suffering in the future for a lot of people on earth.
Could be us.
We might feel privileged now.
Might be us in the next life.
Might be us in this life.
Lots of uncertainties about the future.
Lots of uncertainties about the present.
Another guy went into a public school to shoot people.
Which is always confusing, but...
definitely possible.
What's going to happen to us in our future, we don't know.
And it will be very difficult to meditate when you're being shot at, when your house is being burnt down.
Compared to the luxury that we have, the great opportunity that we have to
Really make the most of our good luck, the goodness that we have.
And the Buddha said, this is the time.
Make use of the opportunity.
Don't let the moment pass you by.
So that's numbers three and four.
And number five is also somewhat specific.
When the community is arguing, and there's another lesson to be learned here.
When the community is broken up, when everyone's fighting, the lesson to be learned here is don't fight.
And this works, this is probably a good lesson for, well it is certainly a good lesson for large monasteries and meditation centers.
I've been in some places, I tell you.
I remember, I don't know if I told this story online, I tell this story often to my students.
I became a monk and then I went back to Canada because part of my agreement with my parents was that if I become a monk I'd still go back to university.
So I went back to university as a monk.
Oh, I'm doing that now as well.
But yeah, I did it way back when as well.
It didn't really work out all that well.
Anyway, I ended up deciding that that was a bad idea.
It wasn't going to work.
And so I reneged on my agreement and went back to Thailand.
It's a little more complicated than that.
But anyway, I moved back to Thailand.
I just got back to the monastery and I was thinking, you know, I'm back in Asia and now I can really, now I'm in a community and I'm surrounded by these wonderful people.
And I was in there two weeks and we're sitting in the, it just gives you an example of the sorts of things you do.
We're sitting in the dining hall eating breakfast and suddenly there's a clang and
one of the monks, we all turn and look, all 40 of us, there was like 40 monks, 30 monks, sitting eating breakfast, very mindfully, very quietly.
And suddenly one of them stands up and starts wailing on another one, pounding him in the face, blood everywhere, his nose is broken.
So I got up and grabbed the monk around.
Out of all the monks, I got up
And it's not something to brag about.
I mean, the other monks, I think, were all thinking, what's this guy doing?
Can't he just be mindful and, you know, let go?
But, you know, the stupid westerner gets up, grabbed him around the chest and, you know, tried to pull him away, stop him from beating this other guy up.
That's the way we deal with things in the West.
All the Thai monks are just watching.
seeing seeing something like that anyway yeah fights break out it makes it somewhat difficult to meditate potentially yeah it's just one example but when you live in a community where there's infighting and everyone's obsessed with so many different things people can get obsessed with but it's a good lesson not to let
Not to let your irritation grow.
This will happen in meditation centers as well.
Obviously, we don't have the problem here.
It's a part of the reason why we don't like meditators to chat with each other.
It's fine to talk.
It's okay.
I always say that the best way is if you don't even learn the names of the other meditators.
I would often point and say,
You've already gone too far if you know the names of the other meditators.
I think that would be a good challenge if you could go through your whole meditation course.
I think it would be admirable if you could go through your whole meditation course without knowing the names of all the other meditators.
Because in order to learn their names, you have to chat.
What use is it to know their name?
What good is it to you?
It's only good if you want to chat with them.
And usually it involves useless
Just those concepts.
So it would be a good measure if we could sort of institute that as a suggestion, recommendation.
Because you could still say, hey, are you done with the bathroom?
Are you done with that?
And you could talk to each other.
You wouldn't learn each other's names.
Because I find it's funny, sometimes the meditators know each other much better than I know them.
They know details about each other more than I know details about them.
Sometimes I don't even remember meditators' names.
And then the meditators do.
So it was part of that.
Because if you start chatting, then you feed each other's defilements.
Because we all have issues, we can upset each other.
And this happened to me as well.
We were meditating and some guy, a real troublemaker, he started talking about his child abuse at
going on and on about how he was abused as a child, and it totally shook the rest of us up.
We're sitting there, and we're trying to deal with our problems, and suddenly we have to think of this guy and all the horrible stuff he'd gone through.
It turns out he was a bit of a, as I say, troublemaker.
He had serious issues that made it hard for him to meditate, so he liked to sit around and talk.
But yeah, there are many aspects to communal harmony.
It's not easy to find a community.
It's easy to take for granted a well-organized meditation center.
It's not an easy thing to organize.
It takes a light touch, but it takes some kind of a touch and some kind of planning.
And it takes commitment by all of its members, by all the meditators, by the teacher.
commitment to cultivating a beneficial atmosphere.
Because otherwise it makes meditation difficult.
That's the Dhamma for tonight.
Just another one of those things.
Something good to point out.
Going through the Anguttara Nikaya gives me a chance to point out, hey look at this, hey look at this.
It's like we're traveling along the path and I turn and I can show you guys some flowers by the side of the road.
How's that for poetic imagery?
All right, that's it.
Do we have any questions?
Let's see, Robin, are you still here?
You're there.
I'm here, Bhante.
Sorry, I was muted.
We have questions.
All right.
Hit me with your best shot.
Most of the time I cannot feel the rise and fall of the abdomen.
I'm not sure if this is due to stress.
I mainly note sitting or other things that I experience.
After a few minutes, if I don't feel any rising and falling, I place my hand on my abdomen.
This seems like I'm looking for an experience to note and not focusing on more obvious objects.
Also, I tend to lower my hand after a few minutes because it stops helping.
Is this correct?
Yeah, most likely due to stress.
If you lie on your back, this is how you confirm what I'm saying, lie on your back and try it.
You should, if you're an ordinary human being, I mean, I suppose there's examples, you should really feel it then.
And that's because you're relaxed when you lie on your back.
But when we sit up, our brain starts to stress.
We spend a lot of our time sitting these days, so sitting becomes the time when we do our work.
And to some extent that has to change.
I remember my first meditation course was very much like this.
I was breathing through my chest, I didn't feel anything in the stomach.
But then at one point it just went, just dropped.
I did it by itself.
Oh yeah, then I could feel my, but it was like a weight was lifted off.
I was very tense.
So over time, it will get better.
As far as putting your hand on your stomach, I mean, don't be at all concerned about looking for experience.
Yes, you're trying to.
You're putting an effort into this one because we want to get a base.
I mean, you could put effort somewhere else, but it is good to some extent to work on making the stomach...
making the stomach clear and so that means looking for it to some extent and in the beginning in the beginning you're doing everything wrong anyway you're just learning how to do it right so don't worry too much about that once you get used to it and once you start to settle down you know become more clear now it's never going to become predictable or stable it's always going to be
unstable sometimes there sometimes not so a big part of the practice is to learn to roll with the punches and be flexible if it's not there you can just say sitting sitting or something and then go back and look at it again but it's there's a lot of potential for frustration and that's important because we're learning how to deal with difficult situations and not react
So one of the big reasons why the rising and falling stops is because you've reacted and you've gotten all tense.
And so that's something you would note.
If you feel tense, you would switch and say tense, tense.
And once your mind stops tensing up, the rising and falling should often come back.
But it's meant to be challenging.
It's not meant to be something you can rely upon.
Be clear about that.
There's a reason why we're using the stomach.
And it's not because it's easy to rely upon.
It's not something that's going to be comfortable.
It's meant to be uncomfortable, to take you out of your comfort zone.
Robin, did you click on the question?
I did.
Did it work?
I think so.
I'm not sure that it clicked right in the beginning.
My screen was a little frozen, but it was clicked before it was over.
Do some enlightened beings just retreat into solitude?
Obviously the Buddha didn't do that, but do you think he would consider that decision respectable?
Yes, absolutely.
The Buddha did do that, actually.
But then he was invited to teach.
He was asked to teach.
That's how the texts portray it.
That if he hadn't been asked to teach, he would have just retreated into solitude.
It's definitely respectable.
There's lots of monks who did it, arahants who did it.
They still would often be confronted by people wanting to learn.
Sometimes they wouldn't say anything.
They wouldn't teach.
They wouldn't throw people away.
Some monks would just go off into the forest where it was very difficult for other people to come.
Not because they were trying to escape, but because they felt comfortable.
It was somehow a part of who they were.
The Buddha was quite clear that there are many different ways to live as a monk.
I'm not trying to suggest that all ways are proper, all ways are equal, but there is no, to be clear, you don't have to do that, and it's not wrong to do that.
This kind of question, the answer is definitely yes, that it's all, many different ways are respectable.
The most important is that you're keeping proper practice.
Of course, for an enlightened person, that's a moot point, but it happens, yeah.
Oh, we're not going to answer that one because it's not about Buddhism, about our Buddhism.
Why doesn't the Theravada school believe in who we are?
Clever there.
I was almost going to think about answering that one, but no.
Dear Panthe, I am feeling less and less attached to the physical world.
I know many years ago during university I would desire to become a monk in this lifetime after practicing meditation.
I feel the time is coming near.
I have absolved my student loans.
I have money saved and many possessions I can sell and give away to make my travel to Sri Mangala.
I am happy to abide by the rules for staying at Sri Mangala you outlined last night.
am I missing anything before I make my final decision?
Yeah, I mean, no, but you have to understand that meditation is a challenge, and it challenges your outlook.
So it may very well change your mind.
That often happens.
People come here, do a course, and realize they're not ready to ordain.
I wouldn't put any
of your...waste any of your effort on the idea of becoming a monk.
That's not true in other traditions, but our tradition is somewhat specific and it's not something...it's not really...
It's a tough path, you know, and it's a streamlined path.
So we go quite deep quite quickly.
And the outcome, the person who comes out of the course may have a somewhat different outlook on things from the person going into the course.
Maybe I don't have to be so dire sounding.
Sure, you want to come or meditate, become a monk, fine.
Another thing I would say is that being a monk here, I'm just talking to, you saw...
I've forgotten his name now.
Alexander.
He was just sitting there.
We were just talking today.
He wants to become a monk and I have no qualms about him becoming a monk.
He's finished two courses now, really doing well.
I have no doubts about his ability to survive as a monk.
So what I said to him is he should come and stay here for a while and he can help out in the monastery.
And then I would ordain him.
Never done that before.
At least ordain him as a novice.
I've done that before.
But maybe ordain him even as a full monk.
And then we could send him somewhere.
Because if he ordains here, it might be easier to go other places.
If you go to other places and ask them to ordain you, well, they don't know who you are, and nowadays they're very cautious about immediately ordaining someone.
But because he's already done the prerequisites with us.
So that's an idea.
But staying here as a monk, you see, there's no monastic community here.
I mean, personally, even I'm not, I don't feel comfortable with my ability to provide a
well-rounded monastic education because I never really got one.
I can give the basics and I know quite a bit about the Vinaya but relatively speaking I don't touch money which is better than a lot but
I'd rather you consider spending your early monastic life in a place that is more traditional, because we're just in a house here.
We've got rooms just for meditators mostly.
So, if your plan is to come here and live as a monk, that's not really what I'd recommend.
But, that being said, we can help sort that all out, I think.
I think this could be something, a project Sri Mangal could start to take on.
Advanced meditators who want to become monks, we could help them find placements where they could go, because that's common.
Monks would not always stay with their preceptor.
Their preceptor, even in the Buddhist time, would send them elsewhere.
go learn from this teacher.
And then they come back and say, okay, now go learn from this teacher.
It wouldn't mean you couldn't stay with your preceptor, but from time to time, it's good to send them off to teachers who would teach different things.
So that's what I have to say about that.
I've noticed I am able to maintain my noting more consistently if I engage in muscle relaxation exercises before meditating.
In my case, would you recommend I add this in routinely?
What do you think, Robin?
No.
What's my answer?
No.
Your answer is you're not looking for shortcuts.
You're not looking for things to make it easier.
Make it easier, yes.
You want to make it easy?
Go ahead.
Lie down in bed.
Or sit in one of those massage chairs.
Right?
Put on some good music.
No, we're not trying to make it easy.
We're trying to make it as difficult as possible.
No, we're not trying to make it as difficult as possible.
That would be, what's the other thing called?
Right, we're not trying to make it purposefully difficult.
I don't know about that.
We're trying to leave ourselves open for challenge.
So yeah, we're not trying to make it difficult.
But the difficulty is important.
But it's like a natural difficulty.
Absolutely.
We're not trying to cultivate artificial difficulty.
But the fact that it's difficult is an awesome thing.
Yes, you're not able to maintain your noting consistently.
Do you know what that means?
It means you're not in control.
It challenges our conception of being able to force things, to being in charge, to making things stable, satisfying, controllable.
There's no way around that.
We should absolutely not try to make it easier.
We're always trying to find tricks and ways of making it easier.
The challenge is part of the practice.
And it's overcoming that challenge that is really going to build character.
To borrow a Western phrase.
I know you talked about sickness as being a barrier when it comes to meditation.
What about chronic illness?
I have had a chronic illness.
I have had a chronic illness easily treated with an IV infusion.
However, without the medication, I'd be unable to walk and be in a lot of pain.
I was just wanting your thoughts on medication and meditation in that case.
Yeah, I mean, I have no problem with the idea of taking that sort of medication, especially if it makes you able to walk.
It is good to deal with pain, so you don't want to take medication to dull your pain, for example.
And people, we have one, Elaine, who's taking, I don't know, I should talk to people.
I'm not supposed to mention people.
No, I can't talk about her because I mentioned her name.
Anyway, yeah, so people deal with...
You should be willing to deal with pain.
We have one meditator here who was talking about pain and she's really picked up on that.
They're actually dealing with pain instead of trying to escape it.
So that's one that you generally want to try not to avoid, because pain is a great teacher.
But extreme pain, there's an argument to be made for trying to be free from that.
And certainly any debilitating condition that makes you unable to walk, for example.
There's something wrong with it.
And the point of being careful about medication is avoiding challenges, avoiding difficulties.
And medication that dulls your ability to practice.
Medication can very much get in the way of your practice.
So sometimes you want a happy medium.
Sometimes you maybe take not as much medication as you might otherwise.
I don't know.
But yeah, medicine is something the Buddha allowed, so you don't have to be afraid of medicine.
I'm skeptical.
I think as Buddhists we have to be somewhat skeptical of painkillers, for reasons I've explained.
And you're all caught up on questions one day.
All right.
Well, there's someone coming to visit me in about five minutes, so I should probably go anyway.
Good timing.
I had a good conversation with one of my classmates from religious studies.
We talked for about two hours this evening about God.
I was trying to pin her down.
She's very good at eluding me.
She's got excellent, a really great outlook on life.
But she believes in, she has this, she knows that God exists.
She knows there's God.
She knows God.
But she's slippery.
Her definition of God eludes my ability to pin her down and cut off the head of the snake.
Slippery.
Like an eel.
It's an interesting dialogue.
Really good person.
She's older than me.
One of the nice things about going back to university is talking to older students who are back and have a different outlook.
And we have a similar outlook in terms of coming there, trying to gain some skills and challenge our minds.
So right now the two of us are taking French together.
And we're helping each other.
Thank you everyone for tuning in.
Thanks Robin for your help.
Have a good night.
Thank you, Bunty.
Good night.