James asked, recently a meditation teacher told me you don't have to give up anything to practice.
Instead, giving up will come naturally as a result of practice.
However, are certain abstinations initially needed for successful practice?
Abstentions.
He's very abstinent.
I'll take a chance and start to answer, although it's your turn.
Go ahead.
Because just today we talked about that a little bit and I agree with that teacher.
If you ordain or if you're just a yogi and a meditator at home, you don't
have to give up from the first day on everything.
Because it can be very difficult and it can happen that you have a huge drawback when you try to get rid of everything and try to really abstain from everything and then
the day comes you can't bear it anymore and you just indulge or you just
go back to your old habits because you can't bear it anymore.
So when you train your mind it will really come naturally as a result that your mind is more able to let go.
And then letting go comes easily.
And things that you have thought you
could never let go of are suddenly no problem anymore.
There was this one monk who, I mean, I watched him practice when he was a layperson and later on he became a monk and went to Burma to live with Upandita, I think.
Upandita.
And he described it to me after three months of living in this monastery, doing intensive meditation.
He said he even made it, he said, I made it all the way to Sankarupe Kanyana.
So he had these ideas about where he was.
And then he said, but once the retreat was over, I took my dayaka, my helper, and we went up to the hotel and I had a salad.
Because for three months,
It was all boiled.
All the food is boiled there.
No salad.
So I just had to.
And you think, wow, three months of intensive meditation and the guy still can't let go of his salad.
It's certainly the case that
Maybe even to go further than this, it's not only do you not have to give up anything, you can't give up anything.
You can't actively give up anything.
It's not possible to give up something that you still enjoy, to give up something that you still don't understand, to go even further.
If you still have some idea that this is beneficial to you, you will not let go.
Some people have this worry that in Buddhism we have to let go of stuff.
Does that mean I have to let go of my girlfriend?
Does that mean I have to let go of my car?
Does that mean I have to let go of my money?
What do I have to let go of here?
Not only do you not have to, you can't.
It's not possible.
So they come to the teacher and say, Oh, I'm so worried.
If I continue like this, I'm going to give up everything.
It's not possible.
You won't give up anything.
You can't give up anything.
All you can do is come to understand that these things are not worth clinging to in the first place.
and therefore not give rise to desire for them.
It's not even giving up.
It's the non-arising of desire for them that causes the mind to slip off and enter into nibbana.
It's not a rejecting.
It's a letting go.
like there's a magnetic attraction and that magnetic attraction is gone.
So once you understand, this is why I say even in a video on pornography that got so popular, once you understand the object, what it is,
you will never have attachment to it again.
The point is not to give up the desire.
The point is to watch the desire.
Watch what happens when you are attracted to something.
Even when you're indulging in something, try to do it mindfully.
And you'll find yourself just losing any interest in it.
Now, there's one thing that I think may be a part of this question, and it's an important part, is, well, what about the five precepts?
Maybe I can turn that over to you, because beginner meditators ask to give up certain things.
So the five precepts, what about them?
You're saying to practice meditation you don't have to stop killing, stealing, lying, cheating, and taking drugs and alcohol.
No, this is definitely to be kept.
not only in the meditation retreat, not only the five precepts, but the eight precepts should be kept.
I thought this is understood, that to abstain from killing, to abstain from
stealing and to abstain from well that depends if you have the five or the the eight precepts from either any sexual activity or in the five precepts from to abstain from the wrong sexual behavior so hurtful sexual behavior or so
abstain from intoxicants all these things when you're a meditator should be kept although I would say the
precept with with intoxicants should be take should be taken of course and should be kept but I always would recommend to go slow if there is
if there is not even an addiction, but if there is not the insight, as you said, the insight, the knowledge, the understanding is needed.
So if you don't understand that drinking of alcohol, for example, is a really bad thing, then
You can't give it up right away, probably.
So it might be better to start meditate and break the fifth precept.
and drink some more alcohol and during meditation one day you find out, wow, drinking alcohol is really bad.
And then just don't do it anymore then.
But to say, oh, I can't stop drinking alcohol.
I want to drink alcohol once in a while.
And then say, okay, well then I can't meditate.
That would be the worst solution you can take, I would say.
I suppose if you... I mean, the one thing that I've always said about the precepts is the point is that there are just certain things that are too strong of a negative to be allowed.
And it kind of even goes back to this music, for example, or being surrounded by the objects of your sense, of your desire, lust, for example.
why seclusion from them in the beginning is actually beneficial, but I think even more so the five precepts.
Because if you do engage in killing, it's very difficult to see the negative side of it.
The more you kill, the less you're able to see the negative side of it, because the less clear your mind is.
These are weighty things that are not
subject to clear discrimination.
And I think I would include alcohol in there tentatively.
I mean, there could be an example where, like Santati, where he drinks alcohol and then he's able to still go and learn from the Buddha.
But for the most part, when you drink alcohol, you won't have the ability to discern whether that is good or bad for you.
What you do find is that people who have practiced meditation and then do indulge, as you say, they realize the mistake in it, and they realize that they've lost a lot of mindfulness in doing that.
But to start out, you just have to be quite careful that you're not starting out with drinking and meditation, because chances are that you'll just give up the meditation or you'll develop all kinds of weird meditation practices.
So in general, just that there are things that
have an extreme effect on the mind, all five of them.
If anyone has ever killed other living beings and then practiced meditation, they can see what a strong effect it has and a prolonged effect it has on their minds and on their meditation practice.
Then they will see the important
The other thing is our inability to see this danger, to see the weightiness of them.
Because we don't understand, we aren't able to abstain from these things.
Even having done it several times, or after engaging in the activity several times, it might be difficult to see the danger of it.
So for this reason we establish it as a rule to stop this.
These are things that are clearly wrong.
And they are so extreme that even with just a little bit of meditation you should become disinclined towards these things.
So we say, don't bother with these ones.
Don't bother learning about how bad these ones are.
We'll give you that much of a head start.
Because they're so weighty that by the time you realize the problem with them, they will already have had a profound effect on your mind, I think.
There's something to that.