There is a question, is it possible to remove anxiety completely, or is it just part of you?
Or part of you all?
Is it just part of you?
Yeah, it is a part of you.
You can't get rid of it.
ROMAN NURIK- Is that your answer, Lucas?
LUCAS DEMINIUK- Yeah.
No, I mean, it is part of you.
You can't get rid of it in the sense that, I mean,
I mean, I mean that you cannot actually cure yourself.
What I'm trying to say is you can become a negativist.
No, you can't.
You're condemned.
It means that you're going to reborn in hell.
I'm going to silence you again.
No, I mean that... If you can't give up anxiety, what is the point?
You can give up anxiety, but the anxiety is a part of your mind.
Well, yes, but there's no self.
It's a creation.
Yeah, it's just another... The Buddhists, they were like heaps of stuff.
And, you know, if you pull this out of the heap, it's gone.
like part of the entity I do have a question here in the ordination of bhikkhus there is a provision that says that you cannot ordain if what you are like I don't know the term we would use mentally ill in modern language but there was a problem that if you
were not fame you could not ordain and so there I guess there is a distinction between arm 0 actual organic a like problem with the thought processes through like brain damage and and and so on in with the idea that someone who actually suffers from like brain damage
Well, you can't expect them to change.
Well, first of all, in the Theravada tradition anyway, and I'm assuming that it holds for other traditions, insanity actually isn't one of the disqualifying factors to ordination, strangely enough, although given the fact that you need to go through a ceremony which requires you to answer these questions in the first place, like are you a human being?
Are you a man?
where her map or die exactly so that is not the kind of questions an insane person could probably answer but you know mental problems are not there's no mental problem that's a disqualifier to to ordination but the other thing you know that that's why I said in modern language mental illness because there was no term back then there were many rules that
where they were actually, the rules were, most of the rules, or maybe not all of the rules, are non-offenses for someone who is insane.
So you could not only be a monk, but you could break all the rules.
No, the point is that you're temporarily insane, or you went insane as a monk.
If a person goes insane, they aren't held accountable for breaking the rules.
They're just insane.
So there was a concept of it.
But the other thing you could say in response that it's not really, you know, the rules against ordination are just mainly for the purposes of keeping the Sangha going and working.
Well, my point was really coming to the...
it's going back to the anxiety issue whereas it would it have been acknowledged that there are some people that cannot control themselves and you know the Dharma really wouldn't be effective for them
No, it's interesting.
I just finished up one of my chapters in my new book, which will come out one day.
And I was just adding this part in there.
I mean, from my point of view, I'll give you sort of the lowdown of what I wrote there.
We've been talking
several times tonight or at least at one point we were talking about how the body doesn't exist and so the brain doesn't exist.
These are manifestations of habits and cause and effect and so on and are therefore completely and totally mutable.
So we shouldn't distinguish categorically between what is alterable and what is unalterable, what is hardwired and what is not.
We rather have to think in terms of degrees.
So there are certain problems which may not be solvable in this life alone.
Or to put it even broader, there are certain problems that will take a long time to solve.
And it may be that death occurs somewhere here and there, start and finish.
that doesn't make them categorically different.
And so even in terms of ordaining such people, people who have at least depression or anxiety or suicidal tendencies, can be a very good start for them, even if they die not having come to terms with the problem.
Because Buddhism doesn't ascribe to the idea that death ends with death.
Yeah, can I add one thing?
There is no such thing as being insane.
There are only things that are acceptable in society.
Oh, believe me, there are.
There's no such thing as a... Sorry?
Oh, there are.
No, I've dealt with people who are really, really crazy.
They can't tell the difference between a mountain and a molehill.
Poison and water.
Well, how is it my cubit person?
I mean, I've got anxiety, and I'm insane, but I'm all right.
No, no.
Insane is insane, where they really don't have a clue what they're doing.
That really happens.
Yeah, I know.
Meditators go insane.
There may be degrees and types, but it is quite different from you, Lucas.
I'm trying to add a little bit of humor to it.
For instance, schizophrenia is a real medical condition.
but that's just heard that's not really well no no no you have to let me know if you can get a little too real it's really you could see it on mom bram brain scan stone exists uh... it it exists conventionally conventionally yeah it just doesn't exist absolutely but uh... that's two sides of one point uh... you got a point world the face of the point can exist without the the rear of the back part of it
As in both conventions?
Ultimate reality doesn't need conventions to exist.
This is known as the two truths theory in the Dharma, where if you take the conventional view over the absolute view, that's not right view.
That's not Satyadita.
And if you take the absolute view over conventional view, that's still not Satyaditi.
Why not?
Because...
We're living, first of all, in a conventional world.
And all of our absolutist views are theoretical.
They're how we view things with the eye of Bodhi, but not with the actual material eye.
With the material eye, we see things conventionally.
With the eye of wisdom, we may, if we have that wisdom...
see things in an enlightened way which I really you know I can only tell you conventional truth you know I don't have that in Dhammapada in Dhammapada the world is mentally blind how come we can say that we are so sane are we not we are sane just because we say so
Just because we think we are... I mean, if you look at the people getting drunk every day, that person is clearly insane.
Or you can say that.
That's just sophism.
You can know that you're insane.
Some people say, hey, what?
You don't drink?
You don't go to the club today?
Oh, there must be something wrong with you.
This is post-modernism.
That's what it is, which says that you can't really say that this is better than that or this is right and this is wrong.
There is no absolute truth, basically.
But there is absolute truth.
It's part of reality.
Most of Buddhists, I mean, non-Buddhists say about Buddhists they are quite insane.
I mean, that's what, like, asceticism, mild asceticism, abstention from alcohol, music.
Some people consider it as insane.
There's something wrong with these people.
I mean, that's all just opinions.
No, I just mean to say I agree completely with what you're saying, that schizophrenia is, in a conventional sense, real.
I was just trying to open the understanding to the point that it doesn't mean anything.
It may mean that as long as this brain exists, you're not going to... I don't even think you could say not going to become enlightened.
I think it's theoretically...
possible I don't know I mean it's it's beyond any of our ability to say whether it's possible or not I would to become enlightened person who has schizophrenia because it's just a condition of the physical realm
it could also be an indication that the mind is so messed up that the knots are just going to be so tied that a hundred years is not enough to become enlightened i think we're not in a position to say that but it doesn't really matter anyway because well then take two hundred years or five hundred years worth you know millions we can't even say that because none of us reach enlightenment so we don't know how far is it so how far you are from being enlightened you know well you know somebody was
fear that i i think that someone who is legitimately insane is uh... you know the the uh... the type of karma that they create is not really based on my contention
Whereas somebody that is really malevolent and causes harm and rapes and whatever they do, kills children, rapes them, and knows what they're doing, someone that commits the five heinous crimes, they have, according to the Buddha Dharma, a whole different
set of karma that they have to deal with and you know it's interesting as to where that distinction takes place as to why it's so heinous is it because it lacks sanity or is it because it's just so cruel because I really believe if someone's legitimately insane it's like being legitimately ignorant
If you have an act committed by, say, a monk that is harmful, it's a lot worse than committed by someone that's never taken a precept, for instance.
So I just wanted to throw that in, because I think intention has a lot to do with it.
But if you have an anxiety, can you become a monk if you have an anxiety?
Absolutely.
Become a monk.
I'll take the argument.
Can you move to the UK then?
If you find me a place, I'm there.
But you also have to reassure me that I can get a passport.
At least a lifetime visa or something like that.