OK, good evening, everyone.
Welcome to our evening Dhamma.
We hear a lot nowadays about non-dualism, as Buddhists we do.
I think anyone who studies Buddhism has at least heard of this concept of non-dualism.
It's gained a lot of prominence.
Early Buddhism doesn't really have that concept as one of its main tenets.
I don't have a problem so much with duality.
We don't have the same sort of criticism of duality for the most part.
It's not really an issue.
There are schools of Buddhism that take non-duality as very important.
It's actually a school of Indian thought apart from Buddhism, but it became somewhat caught up or picked up by schools of Buddhism.
I want to talk today about
dualism according to our tradition.
We have a sutta in the Sutta Nipata called the Dvayatana, Dvayatanupasana Sutta.
Dvayatanupasana Sutta.
The sutta on seeing duality.
In this sutta, I think the idea here is to counter some of this philosophy.
Because as I said, it was outside of Buddhism.
There were philosophers in the time of the Buddha who held the view of non-duality, that we are all one, this sort of idea that we are one.
In fact, if you look up nirvana in the dictionary, you often get definitions like becoming one with everything.
There's a joke about the Buddhist monk who walks up to the hot dog vendor and says, make me one with everything.
Which is, as I said, it's a common philosophy in Buddhist thought, but it appears that in the time of the Buddha, or from the texts that we have,
tradition that we follow, they're sort of arguing against that.
But more importantly, this is a really sort of deep and profound teaching from a meditation perspective.
It gives us a chance to highlight some aspects of the Buddha's teaching that are quite experiential, useful for meditators.
This is a deep teaching.
This isn't a teaching about
how to treat people well or so on, or how to live well in the world.
This is a meditation teaching.
So to understand it, we should be mindful.
And let's make an attempt now to listen to the teaching mindfully.
I'm going to skim through it here.
Try to understand it from a perspective of experience, your experience right here and now in this moment.
So the Buddha asks the monks, he says, what should you tell people?
If people ask you, he doesn't ask them, he says, if people ask you, what is the purpose of learning all of these principles, skillful principles that are noble, emancipating, leading to full enlightenment, he says,
To see as it truly is, for the knowledge of, as it really is, of the dhammas, the dhammas of duality, whatever dual realities there are.
In fact, it appears to be saying that duality is quite an important concept.
You see, because there's this idea, these ideas in later Buddhism that samsara and nibbana are the same, which of course doesn't really show itself in early Buddhism, at least not in Theravada Buddhism.
So we have duality.
And the first duality, the Buddha says, how should you understand duality?
And he gives 16 ways.
And we'll go through them fairly quickly, hopefully.
The first way to understand duality is that there is suffering and there is the cause of suffering.
That's one, one part, one side of the coin.
And then there's a cessation of suffering and the path which leads to the cessation of suffering.
This is duality.
This means as you can act in certain ways, there are certain things that can be done.
And those certain things lead to suffering.
This is one way.
And the other way is really a simplification of reality.
And our whole existence can be boiled down to these two paths.
Are you increasing your suffering?
Are you doing that which causes suffering?
Or are you creating peace?
Are you removing suffering?
Are you on the path which leads to the cessation of suffering?
If you understand these two paths, the Buddha says, there's only two, well, you're on your way to become enlightened, basically, is what he says.
But then he says, well, is there another way to understand duality?
If they ask you, you can say, yep, there is actually yet another way.
Whatever suffering there is, it is caused by something called upadhi, which I think is translated often as attachment.
So let's just not get into the details of it and talk about attachment.
That's one way of understanding.
It's one part of the coin, one side of the coin.
And the other side is that the cessation of suffering is caused by freedom from attachment.
When attachment ceases without remainder, suffering ceases without remainder.
This is another duality.
Again, it's saying the same thing, but it's explaining it in a different way.
Not just understanding the two different paths you can take, but understanding cause and effect.
What is it that causes suffering?
What is it that we're saying you could do and you can engage in?
Well, it's craving.
Attachment.
Because when you attach to things,
You cultivate expectations, you cultivate partiality, you cultivate a categorization of reality into that which is and what is not the things that you attach to.
I mean, it's very much caught up in concepts as the things we attach to are bound up with people, places, and things.
But no matter whether it's reality or concepts, because it's impermanent, this is the cause of suffering.
The things that we attach to will ultimately inevitably lead to disappointment.
They can't possibly be of any value because they're subject to change, to cessation on a moment's notice.
And there's yet the third way is whatever suffering there is, all of that suffering is caused by ignorance.
And with the cessation, that's the one side.
And with the cessation of ignorance, again, there's the cessation of suffering.
And we're getting into the various ways suffering can be understood or the various links in the chain.
It's important that we understand each part of it.
A lot of this is, as you can see, it's the same sort of ideas, highlighting different dumbness.
And this is probably one of the most important ones, because Buddhism puts such an emphasis on wisdom.
It's our lack of wisdom, our lack of understanding.
It's not actually the craving that's the problem, right?
Craving is just a symptom.
Why do we cling to things?
Why do we have attachments?
Ignorance.
Not because we apply our minds wrong, and if we just pry our minds off of our attachments, somehow we'd be free.
That's not really how it works.
The only way to be free is to understand that those things that you cling to are not worth clinging to.
Hence the practice of vipassana, the practice of mindfulness.
We're not actually trying to fix anything.
We're not trying to change our minds.
We're just trying to observe and to see the corrupt state of our mind, how we judge everything, liking this, disliking that, arrogance and conceit and so on.
The states of our mind that are impure, that are so shriveled and caught up in situations and consequences.
Our own egos.
Just ignorance.
if we got rid of the ignorance, if we really understood what we were doing to ourselves, that's all it takes.
And so,
It could be said that if you're causing yourself suffering, it's because you don't yet realize that you're causing yourself suffering.
You don't yet understand.
Which seems kind of confusing, because we do keenly understand and feel like we're causing ourselves suffering.
Ordinarily, we know that we're attached to things.
We know that we get angry and cause ourselves suffering.
And so we think, I already know it's bad.
We think that.
The truth is we don't.
The truth is we haven't ever explored deeply this moment-to-moment process.
And when we finally see, when we finally look and see and remove this ignorance,
I realize it's true.
I really did think that somehow there would be some benefit from getting angry or greedy or trying to control my reality.
Ignorance is another way of understanding reality.
Understanding duality.
Ignorance and the cessation of ignorance.
And then he goes through the chain of Paticca Samopada.
So I'll go through it.
Might as well go through them because they're quite interesting.
He says, another way of understanding it is that Sankara is what leads to Dukkha.
And that with the cessation of Sankara, there is the cessation of suffering.
Sankara here refers to abhisankar, which are our, basically our ambitions, our drive to attain good things and our aversion to bad things, our good and our bad karma really.
It's our inclination.
We're ambitious.
We want to be this.
We want to be that.
It comes from ignorance.
But it's why ignorance is such a problem, because ignorance leads us to seek out things that can't satisfy us.
It leads us to run away from things that actually aren't a problem.
So we chase away pain.
We chase away experiences that we find unpleasant.
But in fact, it's the displeasure that's the problem.
Chase after pleasant experiences when in fact the chasing after is really the problem.
It's not the not getting what you want.
Sankara, then we have vijnana.
Because of sankara, then there's vijnana.
Vijnana is the cause of suffering, the Buddha says.
With the cessation of vinyāna, the cessation of suffering.
This is a little bit harder for people to swallow.
No one wants to think that freedom from suffering means no consciousness.
Very deep.
I don't want to push this one too hard because there's an interesting teaching further down, I think, near the end.
I think the last one.
I'll talk a little bit more about how to deal with this idea of how sensitive we can be about the nihilism of it all, really, right?
Without consciousness, how could you possibly be happy?
The problem is that consciousness is bound up with ignorance.
Because of the consciousness, we cling to the things that we're conscious of.
The real point to consciousness isn't actually a problem.
It's a symptom, or it's a byproduct.
And without any ignorance, of course, there's no rebirth, and there's no more consciousness.
It's still very difficult.
There's no good way to explain that to someone.
It's not something I'd want people to accept blindly.
But it's important to point out that, at the very least, consciousness is something that we have to understand.
We have to see that it's our attachment to basically experiences.
Consciousness means experience.
We're attached to having this type of experience or that type of experience.
What we're actually attaching to is consciousness, one way of understanding.
I want to have this experience.
I want to have that experience.
After consciousness comes, well, we're skipping ahead here.
After consciousness comes the six senses, but we're going right ahead to context.
And with the cessation of contact, again there's the cessation of suffering.
Contact here means the contact of consciousness and the object.
When you're conscious, you're conscious of something.
So it's just a part of the chain, the contact.
Because consciousness itself wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't the contact with the object.
But when we see something, we're contacting with the light,
And that's where attachment comes from.
We see something and we like it, or we see something and we don't like it.
So rather than try to, I mean the idea isn't here to be repulsed or reject these things, not write out, it's to observe them.
The rejection comes when you see that they can't really make you happy.
And deep teaching, if you're not meditating, it's not very comfortable or interesting even.
For meditators, they can understand because they're watching this, they're experiencing, they're seeing.
Oh yes, it's all these seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting and feeling and thinking and bombarding me, not actually making me happy.
As of contact, there is vedana.
So the next way of understanding duality is that suffering is caused by vedana, by feeling.
And with the cessation of feeling, there's the cessation of suffering.
It's the feeling that is the flavor.
I mean, this is a very detailed exposition.
If you're familiar with Paticca Samuppada, you know where this is going.
So there's a detailed exposition of experience.
Every experience has all of this.
It goes from one to the other.
But the feeling is the core, it's the kernel, it's the essence of the experience.
Happy, unhappy, neutral.
Each experience has a feeling associated with it.
And based on the feeling, there is liking of it or disliking of it.
There's delusion about it.
As a result, there is suffering.
Some teachers stress very much the concept of vedana.
Because vedana is the last time where it's actually fairly objective.
Vedana itself isn't a problem.
The problem is we cling to it.
And that's the next step.
Tannha.
Tannha is yankinchi dukhang sambodhi.
Whatever dukkha there is, , all that is caused by craving, thirst.
And then we have upadana.
Because of craving, there is clinging.
So clinging is the cause.
Without any clinging, without any craving, there's no clinging, without any clinging, there's no suffering.
Then he has something called Aramba.
I've got an English translation here.
Arhambha means to get started.
It's translated here as karmic activities.
That's maybe what the commentary calls it.
But arhambha just means to initiate something, attempt.
The point here, the next one in line would be karma.
But it's the initiation, the impetus.
You want something, you go for it.
When you want something and you cling to it, then you strive for it.
The word arambha is often used in that way.
What got you going, the beginning, the initiative.
Ambition maybe is a good way, as I've already mentioned.
I already talked about this, but ambition is really the problem.
If we could be content, if we were at peace, what is the difference between boredom and peace?
Some people sit here and they're bored or they're frustrated or upset.
Other people sit and they're at peace.
Their minds are calm.
It's nothing to do with the situation.
It has only to do with our
reception of the experience.
Another way of understanding duality is that whatever suffering there is, ahara, nourishment, nourishment is a cause of that suffering.
Without any nourishment, there is no suffering.
This is an interesting sort of twist on this.
This is an important teaching.
We feed our attachments.
We think we're caught up.
We look around and we think, I'm so caught up.
I have a family.
I have commitments.
I have a job.
I have a house.
I have loans or whatever.
I'm so caught up.
People have obligations to others.
I have requirements to eat food.
We think we're so bound by so many things.
Buddhism doesn't allow for that.
That's not true attachment.
Those are not real attachments.
We might be attached by obligation and so as a duty we
in certain ways or we engage with others in certain ways.
But it's a surface attachment.
It's a surface obligation.
It's nothing to do with ultimate reality.
In reality we feed our attachments.
And mindfulness is really this alternative.
Instead of feeding our bondage, when you like something, when you want something,
Instead of going back again to the object and feeding it, increasing the desire for it until it leads you to go and get it, we change that.
We take the mind away from the fuel, the object.
If you see something and you like it, the seeing is the fuel.
So we take you away from that.
We focus on the wanting.
We say wanting, wanting.
Or we say instead seeing, seeing.
And you take away the fire.
We separate it.
There's no more fueling this chain of circle, circle of causality.
When we're anxious, then we get more anxious about it, so we feed it.
This is what the Buddha meant by nourishment.
He didn't mean that by eating rice and curries you become, you suffer.
He meant
different kind of nourishment, that we feed our attachments.
If we would ever stop clinging, we would have no bondage.
We would not be tied to anything.
There'd be nothing that could keep us suffering.
And we have one more.
Injita, movement.
Whatever suffering there is, it is caused by injita.
Injita would, in this sense, mean commotion.
There's a word, can't think of it.
But again, initiative.
the lack of stillness, which is basically what he's saying.
Because our minds are not still, we fidget mentally.
We're not able to be present.
Boating in the river of experience.
Wouldn't that be wonderful?
When we saw things we just saw, when we heard we just heard.
We could just be with the experience without reacting, without jumping every time.
Good and bad, right and wrong, me and mine.
We could just experience it as it is.
Moment by moment by moment.
Quiet.
The mind works still.
If the mind were still, we could see.
The Buddha likened a still mind to a forest pool.
If the pool is still, you can see all the fish and animals and stones on the bottom of the pool.
Just like the mind, if the mind is still, you can see everything about it.
You can understand it very well.
If the mind is not still, just like a pool in the forest that is all stirred up, muddy, you can't see anything in it.
So our practice of reversing the cycle, of breaking the cycle, is about stilling the mind.
Having the mind just be with the object.
It's not stillness in the sense of running away from experience.
Oh, well, this experience is chaotic.
Let's run away from it, because that's easy.
Most meditation is like that.
You find stillness just by running away, by escaping.
That's not what this is.
This is a stillness in experience.
When you experience things, you experience them with stillness.
Floating on the river of experience.
Not running from thoughts, not running from feeling.
But still with them.
They are what they are.
There's yet more, and they're of a little different nature.
So the next one is
This is one half.
The dependent are vulnerable.
No, it's not vulnerable.
The dependent is someone who is dependent, is perturbable maybe.
This is the one side.
And the second is the independent.
Do not waver.
A very important teaching.
It's something I bring up a lot.
And it's nice to have a clear quote of the Buddha to back it up.
So we can refer to this.
The dependent waver.
What does this mean?
It means that if your happiness is dependent on something, you're vulnerable.
You're not unshakable.
You still have some ambition, some dependency.
Hey, this will make me happy, or I need this.
If I don't have this, I can't be happy.
That's vulnerable.
That person is easily shaken.
That person is shakable, perturbable.
If your happiness depends on Zabli, if your peace of mind is dependent, if you're dependent, Buddha said again and again, one dwells independent.
One clings to nothing in the world.
Whose mind is not perturbed by the vicissitudes of life.
The worldly dhamma.
Which is why mindfulness is so powerful.
We talk again and again about mindfulness.
Why?
For this reason.
When you're mindful, you've got an answer for everything.
There's no problem that is outside of the scope of mindful meditation.
When you're mindfulness, you're imperturbable.
When you're mindful, you're imperturbable.
When you have pain and you say, pain, pain, the pain can't hurt you.
You're unshaken because happiness doesn't depend on whether the pain goes or stays.
When you see something and you like it or want it, you say seeing, seeing, you become imperturbable.
The pleasant experience can't shake you.
Two people see the same thing, one person is very much infatuated by it, the other person is clear and at peace.
Because they have no attachment to it.
That's the power of non-attachment.
We talk about it, but there's no denying how powerful it is to not have anything that you're dependent on.
The next one is sort of interesting.
The Buddha says, .
Santatara.
The formless is more peaceful than the form.
Formless is more peaceful than form.
This is a little bit, getting a little bit technical and esoteric, I suppose.
Not really, but there are two aspects of existence.
There's the form and the formless.
And so
We attach very much to form, and form is considered to be coarse.
And this is not just a Buddhist concept, it's sort of an Indian religious
philosophical concept that form is more more coarse one one outlook is this and so there's an attempt in Indian religion to attain the formless to attain states that are mind only is what I mean our existence as human beings we have physical there's there's physical reality so we talk about mind and matter
There are other states of existence that are mind only.
Everyone is born as a god, more or less, without a body and only mind, and exists for billions, millions, billions of years, just mind only.
And it's much more peaceful.
It's sublime.
It's godlike, really, unfathomable by a human being who's so caught up in what we would consider more coarse attachments.
That's one side, but the other side is that arupe hi nirodho santataro.
That cessation is yet more peaceful than the formless.
So even these gods, even this mind-only state, it's not nearly, it's categorically different from actual cessation of suffering.
One finds true peace.
This is again one of these teachings that's somewhat troublesome or distressing for people.
It only really is comprehensible or palatable for a meditator who has experienced Nibbana.
Because once you experience Nibbana, there's no denying it.
You have this sense of this glimpse and you have this recognition of that peace, this taste of freedom.
And then again and again a meditator comes, experience, comes to this experience and further and further able to see this, that it doesn't matter where you go, you still have
sankhara, there will still be suffering.
They're still arising.
They're still ceasing.
Two more, and we're done.
Buddha says, whatever people, whatever this world, whatever the world with its humans and angels and whatever beings there may be, apparently gods and all kinds of beings, whatever they see as truth, the noble ones see as false.
Not whatever, but the important things.
That which they see as true, the nobles see as false.
And that which the nobles see as false, the other side of the coin.
That which goes with... That which the world sees as false...
The nobles who see well, who see clearly, who see clearly with right wisdom, this they see as true.
And here the Buddha is talking about self.
They see what is self as not self.
They see what is not self as self-self.
It means the world sees things as being me and mine.
We see things as controllable, our body.
And when we walk, we think I am walking.
When we talk, we think I am talking.
We think of things as controllable and stable and satisfying.
We have conceptions about the world that the world is
that this room exists and I exist and I have a soul and that there's a God and so on and so on.
Wrong views of Buddhist doctrine.
And number 16 is the one that I've been referring to is that that which is regarded as pleasant, that which is regarded as pleasure by the one
is regarded as suffering by the normal.
And that which is regarded as suffering by the world is understood as happiness by those who actually know.
So here it's worth talking about the verse.
This is the Sutta Nibbata, so we've got some verses.
All the six senses, sights and sounds and smells and tastes and feelings and thoughts, all of these.
The world says these are pleasant.
These are the cause of happiness.
These are what leads us to real and true satisfaction.
When you don't get what you want, when you can't see and hear and smell and taste and feel and do the things you want, stress, suffering, when you go away, you cry.
And these people we love, these things we like, we suffer from depressed, dissatisfied, frustrated, angry.
And the same goes with, this is talking about things like Nibbana, cessation of suffering.
Ooh, the world thinks, wouldn't that be awful?
Overcome by desire for new life.
Overcome by desire for new life for things.
Unable to stand with the idea of cessation.
Unable to cope with it.
Sounds horrific.
Even just the idea of non-self is a horrific concept.
No self.
But how awful.
How scary.
Not to speak of cessation of consciousness.
Consciousness is the cause of suffering.
What would I do without consciousness?
Feeling is the cause of suffering.
How could Nibbana be peace if there's no, how could it be happiness if there's no feeling?
How could you say something is happiness without feeling?
This is very hard to understand.
And the answer, of course, is it's precisely because there's no feeling that it's happening.
food for thought, definitely a challenge and something that can be rejected by people who don't have meditation experience.
But this is why meditation, the outlook of a meditator is very much different.
You don't have these kind of attachment to views like the fear that comes from even the idea that you have to give up pleasure or you have to give up experiences.
There's only an evaluation of things because you're observing those experiences.
And if you do it enough, you're convinced of the fact that none of it's worth anything at all.
There's no benefit to anything.
There's no sense of loss when it's gone.
There's an unshakable, imperturbable peace that happens.
So that's duality according to Buddhism.
One side of the coin and the other side of the coin.
An important sutta in the Buddha is Sutta Nipata.
Sutta Nipata 312, the first sutta in the Mahalabdha.
That's the benefit of late.
Thank you.