Well, it's an interesting thing about this.
If we have the wisdom to realize if it's suffering, it's... I think people, I mean, start questioning reality.
Try to change reality.
Then you're going to see suffering.
That's what I would say.
People, they want to
change the reality they live in, or the experience, then you become aware that you cannot change reality in this way.
I don't know, anyone agree on this?
It's all about perception, change your perception.
That's right, yeah, that's another step.
But not reality.
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
But you just relate differently to it.
But, you know, it's just, I think, a question of reality.
First you question reality, then, you know, that's what I think.
Because it hasn't been said yet how exactly it happens.
Yeah.
Here we go.
About the mind-made body.
You have a question?
Is that an I have a question moment?
No, I was going to chime in.
Go ahead.
We're not recording, but go ahead.
I don't know if this is a Buddhist thing or not, but I think it
kind of learning to just, I think earlier, just a bit earlier, we were talking about acceptance.
And it's, you know, this is difficult, but I've learned to just kind of accept the world and accept my surroundings, and that includes even the
even the frightening things in life, even the ugly things that people say, and the violence in the world.
It's not easy, but it's a part of the world, and it's just a part of the experience.
And it goes with all of the rest of it, you know?
So the beauty and the discord are just... that's just...
you know, the way that it is.
And just, you know, not making excuses for any violent type of behavior or anything like that, but just accepting it, you know, in the general way.
Yeah, you see, I accepted they exist.
You know, you can accept they exist, but do you actually...
you don't have well you can accept and then what and then what because like what we were talking about earlier you're saying is sometimes you do want to change your life is this the deal you know what you're getting at is that well maybe sometimes you should try to escape certain situations right yeah is that what you're asking no I mean I'm all for that well kind of in general
Just kind of in general, okay, the life's bad, the life's hard, and okay, you accept it.
And then what?
It's much better to... Yeah, it's not... See, Buddhism isn't about just accepting things.
It's about giving up things and letting go of things.
So if you see that something is useless, is meaningless, then you should completely give it up.
So it's not – the important word is not quite acceptance because that doesn't really work.
If something – acceptance is in terms of not hating it, right?
Yeah, exactly.
There's a part of me that actually psychotically hates the world.
Well, then you have to learn to give that up.
And so in some sense there's an acceptance, but it's not really acceptance, it's seeing the futility of hatred.
The truth of what comes on the Buddhist path is the giving up of the hatred.
No, the seeing that the hatred is useless, is meaningless, is unbeneficial, and therefore actually giving it up.
So you do actually leave behind
things like hatred and attachment.
And moreover, you give up situations.
So this discussion about becoming a monk, I think that's very much a part of the Buddhist path to leave a situation when you see it as being useless.
When you see that the home life is useless, I think that's a very good reason.
If you're just so angry at having to deal with people, for example, and so you become a monk,
not a very good reason to become a monk.
But if you see the futility of what, you know, one might objectively argue is, might argue is objectively futile, then that's, because that's very much in meditation practice, which, what, what causes a person to realize nibbana.
The mind doesn't jump into nibbana, it lets go of everything else.
It, it, it rejects samsara.
So there is actually a rejection as a part of the attainment of enlightenment.
It's not exactly acceptance, it's understanding.
I mean, it sounds nice, and I always tell people to kind of just accept, but you have to be clear that there's another step, and it's the understanding.
Because when you really understand something, you don't accept it, you give it up.
You just discard it.
Somewhere in the layers of my mind,
there are some negative things like hatred and actually want to fight with the reality rather than accept it.
Can you get through meditation through that?
Or how you want to repair your mind?
How to get rid of it?
I mean, not get rid of it, how to transform it?
Get rid of it.
For sure, get rid of it.
You get rid of it through understanding.
Get rid of all the bad stuff.
Through the wisdom, right?
Yes.
The problem is not trying to get rid of it.
The problem is how you try to get rid of it.
Try to get rid of it by refusing it or by denying it, by rejecting it, by...
Opposing it.
No, that's not how you do it.
Being angry, okay?
Being angry.
Well, you get rid of anger by understanding that anger is useless.
That's what you do.
In Buddhism, we don't try to change anything.
We're not, you know, the core of Buddhism is not to change anything.
The core is to understand.
Understand everything.
In the sense of understanding all of ultimate realities.
And there is a question.
Why should I, why do I have to understand this stupid world first to become liberated?
Who put me in this situation?
I didn't agree on it.
I didn't say I want to be here.
Oh, but you did.
You certainly did.
No, I didn't.
As far as I know, I didn't say it.
Yes, but you don't know so much.
Do you remember a hundred years ago?
That's not a very long time, so you don't have very much to go on.
Do you not like being a human?
Do you not find food delicious or flowers beautiful?
No, I feel like, I'm 100% sure that I feel like I have some, I gave myself some purpose in life and I follow my purpose in life.
That's all I know.
If a person does bad deeds, for example, they put themselves in jail.
So then when they get to jail, they say, I didn't want to come here.
I didn't have anything to do with this.
I didn't say, please put me in jail.
What am I doing here?
Is that reasonable?
No.
I've done nothing wrong, okay?
If you had done anything wrong, you wouldn't have been reborn.
I know that you did something wrong because you were reborn.
Sorry.
This reminds me of an Alan Watts lecture.
Where he talks about being born.
And he touches on that thing that's in our core sometimes when we become really angry.
I've even said it at times.
I didn't ask to be born.
And in Alan Watts'
briefly touches on this, and he goes, well, of course I did.
I was the twinkle in my father's eye.
I was a desire, and I deliberately got involved.
I always kind of liked that.
MALE SPEAKER 1- That's interesting.
I was the twinkle in my father's eye.
MALE SPEAKER 2- Yeah.
That's exactly what I mean.
You know, just, I don't, well, I said everything about it, really.
Well, think about where you're going.
Don't think so much about where you are because that's really too subjective for us to be objective about.
But think about where you're headed now.
If you continue the way you are now without, and I'm not trying to pick on you, but if any of us continues the way we are now without developing ourselves further, where do you think you're going to end up?
And then when you look at it like that, then you should be able to look backwards and say, oh, well, that's probably what happened in this life.
That's how I got into this life.
Look at what's going to happen.
That's much easier to see.
Of course, you have the rebirth and so on and karma and so on.
But as Buddhists, we have a kind of a working faith that, oh, yeah, the Buddha probably knew what he was talking about.
Now, of course, when you practice meditation, it all comes clear and you understand it for yourself.
shouldn't be that hard to understand that you know if you do lots and lots of evil things well you're going to have to be reborn again certainly somebody should become a Buddha in our lifetime just to show us what exactly like yeah let's find someone to do that let's yeah I vote Owen oh thank you become a Buddha now and show us okay yes
If only it were so easy, no?
We need a Buddha, definitely.
You had a Buddha.
This is what they say.
Countless Buddhas have arisen in the past, and we failed.
We failed to take their teachings seriously.
You can't blame the Buddha for not arising.
The Buddha just arose merely 2,500 years ago, and you blew it.
That's why you're here now.
That's sobering.
What the heck was I doing?
I must have been drunk in a bar somewhere or living under a rock.
I was probably an earthworm at the time of the Buddha.
Otherwise, how could you miss that opportunity?
Maybe we don't believe it's possible.
You were actually there with the Buddha and then you're like,
didn't do anything and just sat around picking your nose.
That would be more embarrassing.
Like, at least if you're a worm, you have an excuse.
Well, I was a worm.
What do you expect?
There were a lot of monks in the time of the Buddha, I think.
Not all of them became enlightened.
You got a lot of bad monks in the Vinaya talks about.
Sorry, I just steamrolled over you.
What was that about?
What was that question all about?
I forget.
I'm recording it.
I can't remember what.
The last thing I remember is somebody, you mentioned a question about mind-made body.
Oh yeah, mind-made body.
I don't know, not really worth the video I suppose.
I always say that and then it turns out to be an interesting conversation.
somebody asked a funny question.
Are we still recording?
No.
But just let me touch on the mind-main-body.
I mean, the best thing would be to look in the commentaries and to find someone who really knows what they're talking about.
But it's basically what you find in an out-of-body experience.
Yeah, it's something akin to having a new body.
because remember the body is just a conglomerate of experiences so it's understood to be possible for the mind to
limit itself or limit its bodily expression to this state or to sequester itself at least in an ethereal body it's very difficult and most people aren't able but it's fairly common you have all this anecdotal talk about out of body experiences where you feel like you're in a body but you're floating around but I don't have much to talk about
Astral projection.
Where is Kapila from Japan?
Dude, I don't have a clue what you're talking about.
He was in a couple of the groups before.
Really?
Ah, Kapila.
Ah, sorry.
I was thinking about my meditators here from Japan.
I don't have anyone from Japan.
Kapila from Sri Lanka who lives in Japan.
I don't know.
He's...
Probably very busy.
Japanese people seem to always be.
No, that's horrible.
I don't know.
I think he must have lost contact because he knew that we'd stopped and just didn't get back into it.
Do we have questions coming up?
How are we doing?
Maybe we should quit while we're ahead.
10 PM.
Nice to see llamas still with us in the comments.
How are new people coming to the world?
We've been over this before.
I don't know that I've ever did a real video on it.
It's not that difficult to understand.
I mean, lots and lots of insects kind of thing.
When we escape something, it's because we are afraid of it.
Should we talk about this one?
When we escape something, it's because we are scared of suffering.
Is it really that bad then to run away from your problems?
I don't think so, unless you did something very bad.
that's the point that you cannot escape it like that it's gonna everywhere suffering surrounding you we cannot if you could escape it would be no problem it wouldn't be here yeah i think his premise is is not is invalid that we escape something because we are scared of suffering right unless there's something in there yeah you think you can escape it i don't think we escape things because of fear um
We've already said that you escape things based on knowledge, understanding.
So the question you have to ask in response is, when you run away from your problems, do you come to understand them better?
That's, I think, the most pertinent question here.
Because if running away helps you understand reality better, then run away.
Leave.
That's why I say running away from society.
Wonderful thing.
Why?
Because you have much more time and freedom to contemplate what's really important, to understand what really exists, instead of getting caught up in all sorts of concepts and conventions and so on.
But if you think running away is just for the purpose of not having to deal with that which you're running away from, and that's the only reason for running away, then you're always going to be running away from everything.
Is it really that bad?
Well, it just makes you someone who runs, someone who runs away from things.
I don't know.
Do you like being someone who just habitually runs away from things?
Then no.
Yeah, I'll tell you something about that question.
I'm referring to this person, talking about the standard question, what is running away?
For example, I used to...
I used to live with housemates, eating meat products and animal products, and I was terrified that I'm going to be cross-contaminated with this.
And I was like renting my own place, I was changing houses and so on and so on.
It cost so much.
I couldn't run anyways.
I couldn't, you know, every, like,
Saturday in my area there is a farmers market and there's a lot of like meat and stuff around me and it's disgusting I can't run away from it I wish to live in a different world but I can't so you know you can try to escape your suffering like this you know try to escape this so geographically it's impossible even if like
I live with vegetarians now, so I have, like, okay, that's the life I can live.
But I don't – thousands of other things I don't like.
Well, I'm not able to run away with it.
I don't like people.
I don't – most of the people I don't like.
I don't like –
I think the key here, this question, is that you don't escape suffering out of fear.
Look at the Four Noble Truths, the very, very, very, very core of Buddhism.
You actually have a lot of anger.
Anger just kills fear.
You're not afraid.
Fear is a type of anger.
But the point is that the First Noble Truth is understanding suffering.
We have to get that through our skull, our heads.
Think about that.
If the first noble truth is to understand suffering, then it's antithetical to Buddhism to run away from suffering.
It's not just off track.
It's the exact opposite of learning about it and coming to understand it.
Can you understand something by running away from it?
Can you ever hope to understand it?
Because the Buddha said, not just understand, but understand completely.
means like , but is like a circle.
It means all around, or it just means completely.
means should be understood.
is to be understood completely.
So that implies something very, very different from running away from suffering.
Think about that.
Because we always hear Buddhism teaches the escape from suffering or freedom from suffering.
But that's not the path that leads to the freedom from suffering.
The path that leads to freedom from suffering is to investigate and to be very much involved in the observation and investigation of suffering in order to understand it fully.
How can you understand something fully without observing it quite closely?
So it sounds like it's going to be a lot of suffering.
Yeah.
Even like this, if you more realize that you cannot
take softly to the more you keep up yeah very much or in fact realizing that you can't escape is a very important part so basically it has to be but that you can't avoid yeah you can't avoid helps you get up and then you really do escape escape by not engaging
with it.
It's there, but you don't engage in it.
In the end, this just leads to complete disengagement of nibbana, where the mind pulls back, comes inside, and so there's no arising.
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
That's pretty cool.
When you give up something, you actually feel happy.
Because in the beginning, you don't feel happy.
After a while, you feel happy.
I mean, so that's cool.
You don't feel happy when you're not really giving it up, when you're still wanted.
Once you see that wanting is suffering, and once you understand clearly the state of wanting, then you just get bored of it.
Really, Buddhism is not about escaping.
It's about getting bored, getting disenchanted or uninterested, losing your desire for it.
Yeah, that's cool.
I can't, well, I don't know.
I had like a hard time today with my anxiety.
It happens to me once a month, I guess.
Something like I'm totally in pieces.
I just totally give up.
Cool, but it's very good, yeah.
Then you just give up.
See, it's just anxiety.
Be with it.
It's not pleasant, but really a problem.
just is what it is.
Yeah.
Good luck.
Yeah, good luck, yeah.
It's something that you have to accept in order, you know, I have to accept that that's going to happen to me.
And I'm not going to be happy.
I might not be satisfied.
I will be from time to time very unsatisfied.
Sorry?
Stop looking for satisfaction.
Stop looking for a solution.
Stop looking for an answer, a fix.
That's really the hardest thing, but it's the only answer.
Stop looking for a solution.
Stop looking for an answer.
Just say, yes, it is suffering.
And to accept that.
That's interesting.
That's what you accept.
You accept the fact that it is suffering.
It doesn't mean you accept the thing that is causing you suffering and say, well, then I'll just suffer forever.
That's fine.
No, but you accept the fact that it's suffering and that it's, in that sense, not going to make you happy and not worth clinging to, not worth even worrying about.
And then you let the object, you just discard it.
You say, it is.
It is suffering.