So Bryce or Reese asks, whenever I hear or learn a new teaching of Dharma, I find a deep feeling of peace and tranquility.
Sometimes this reigns, though.
Is this normal?
How can I learn to maintain this for longer?
The reason I wanted to answer this one first is because this is exactly what got me on the spiritual path.
This exact experience.
So it must be incredibly common out there.
When I was 16, you probably will have heard this story and are bored of it by now, I was in a humanity challenge and change class, which really has nothing to do with the story, but it was a senior class.
So I was in it early.
It was a class that senior high school students would take.
for senior high school students, that junior high school students would also take.
So there were a couple of juniors in this class.
And I was one of them.
And I was sitting in the middle of the class, and these two senior students, one of them passed a book that threw me to another one.
And on the way back, I looked at it.
And it was the Tao Te Ching, an interpretation by Stephen Mitchell.
And I opened it.
And the first, just some random page, and the first thing I read from it just totally blew me away.
It just changed my life.
Because, you know, I had been looking, you know, when you're young, you're wondering why and what is the purpose of life, and you're starting to think about spiritual things and thinking about ways of bettering yourself, or ways of finding the truth, and so on.
Often have kind of high spiritual goals.
I usually get trashed in high school.
Drugs and alcohol and women and romance and so on.
But this really was like, I found it.
I found what I'm looking for.
And it brought me this incredible sense of peace and tranquility.
And so I became Taoist at that point.
And that's what led me on the spiritual path.
For the next
Five years, no, four years, I would keep this book with me.
I went to the event and bought my own copy.
I would keep this book with me and I would open it up.
And I remember sitting at university, I was 19, three years later, sitting on a bench reading this book and just finding this wonderful sense of peace and tranquility.
And then having it disappear.
Having it wait as you're sitting there.
you'll learn the new teaching oh it brings you such peace and happiness and then it disappears and then you think this is the question how can I learn to maintain this for long so this is just back on how I can relate to this question the answer to this question is that it's not the path and it's not it relates back to what I was just saying about happiness in the last video
is that this is what makes us take on the spiritual path, is the desire for happiness.
This is what makes us take on any path.
The reason why someone tries to find success in the world, becomes a business person, or becomes a doctor, becomes a teacher, becomes a lawyer, is in some way because they want to find happiness.
Because they find happiness from helping other people, or because they find happiness in money, or they think this is going to make them happier.
is the same.
We take on the spiritual life thinking it's going to bring us happiness.
The secret is that it really doesn't.
It helps us give up our desire to find this idea of happiness.
It's really interesting.
It's really hard for people to accept it.
You never want to think that you have to give up happiness.
Because we do everything for happiness.
But this is really the secret of the spiritual life.
is giving up this thing that we call happiness, giving up the stress that comes from trying to find something that doesn't exist, something that is not possible to exist, that is an idea of something that is made up of completely different things.
The idea of this being happiness that is made up of things that are
not unhappiness, but are not satisfying, cannot bring any, you know, it cannot be spoken of.
They arise in these things, and they're all mixed up, and they're all, you know, in sequence you see something, it brings a moment of pleasure, the moment of pleasure brings a desire for it, the desire brings thinking about it, how to get it, and so on, and totally lost, and striving for things, and work that we have to do, and so on, in order to get the things we want.
that in the end, it's this desire to increase this peace and tranquility that is going to eventually help you to realize that even the greatest, as the Buddha said, even the greatest feeling that you can possibly have, which is the jhanas, these tranquility meditations, even these are impermanent.
The good thing about them is that they bring you states of peace and tranquility and
The practice to attain them is the practice of samatha meditation.
The danger, the problem is that they're impermanent, that they don't last.
But actually the truth to them, the ultimate reality, is that they're impermanent, they're unsatisfying, and they're uncontrollable.
Or you say they're impermanent and they're uncontrollable, therefore they're unsatisfying.
You can't control them.
You can learn to maintain them for longer,
But that's only going to increase your delusion.
It's going to only increase the idea that they are yours, that they are controllable, that they are attainable, that they are somehow happiness, that they are somehow making you more happy.
The pleasure that you gain from them is real, but it is meaningless.
It's not true happiness.
When you finish, you're not happier.
You're not a more peaceful and more content person.
This is the other thing I learned on the course that was related to that.
discontentment how discontent even on a spiritual path you can become how you want more how you want this how you want to do that how you want to teach people how you want to build a meditation center Ajahn really he was talking to Rakita this other novice who joined us and Rakita was saying he wants to go back to England to teach and Ajahn said do it without wanting you know we teach people just because
to pay back the Buddha's or to respect the Buddha's intentions for people to learn the teachings or to respect people's intentions to learn but we should do it in a way that makes us that is comfortable for us we shouldn't make ourselves suffer go out of our way to suffer in order to spread the Dhamma or spread Buddhism or so on
that we should do things for the purpose of making us, for the purpose of our own happiness.
Because this is what everyone should do.
Everyone wants, we want to be happy.
And he didn't say for the purpose of our happiness.
But this is what got me thinking about this, is that, you know, really, why are we doing things?
Why are we, why are we chasing after, chasing after worldly things?
Or why are we even, you know, building a meditation center?
Why are we teaching people?
It's like,
And it makes you, why do we live our lives?
And this is the point, is that we live our lives because we want to find happiness.
And the realization was that really this teaching on contentment is so very important to remind ourselves that this is not the way to find true happiness.
This discontent of always wanting more and needing more and
not just being content with what is here and now.
Because here and now we are all sitting in this room.
But our minds are creating things, wanting more.
I want to explain to you what I'm saying.
I want you to understand what I'm saying.
And so I'm no longer content here and now.
Discontentment is the really
the key to finding what you might call truth and happiness is the contentment with things as they are.
And it's the peace of letting go of any search for happiness.
So the short answer to your question, and I hope others will jump in and still have something more to say, is that this isn't the point to learn to maintain it for long.
It's normal that this happens, and it's natural that it happens, because this is the nature of things.
And the answer is not to try to maintain it for longer.
The answer is to let it be and to become content to recognize the error.
I remembered being in one retreat, not this one, so much.
being in a lot of noise, being in a meditation, retreat, unfriendly environment and meditating so much that I even in this environment could find peace and tranquility
I found this is like being in the eye of the hurricane and this became something that I understood or how I can explain peace you won't find peace because it's not
existing in this world.
Peace is an idea that we have or an experience that arises sometimes, but mostly I think it's a wanting and the idea of a feeling.
And when you, as Bhante said, learn to let go of the wanting,
and when you learn that it doesn't matter when it wanes, or that it even doesn't matter if it's not there at all, that peace within you, then you can feel like kind of in the eye of the hurricane.
Everything moves round fast or slow, however it moves or however it goes.
but the peace is just there in that moment within you and this only comes when you let go of the wanting of it and this comes from the acceptance
of what is going on around you and not to go against what is happening around you.
So the wish to keep it is the one thing that prevents the peace to last longer.
But I think that is what I'm going to say in other words.
Nibbāna is what comes, of course, into my mind when I'm talking of peace.
This is probably the only thing that, as long as it lasts, is peaceful, really, truly peaceful.
I don't think so either.
Sorry.
I guess she wants to share her meditation experience.
Do you want to come back?
No, no, I can't.
Oh, you're going to come back, right?
Yes.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'll come back later.
Oh, you'll come back later?
Yes.
Okay.
go ahead I think just kind of saying the same thing probably both of you in another way is kind of especially on courses I guess it becomes really apparent that even really sort of sublime states of peace that arise
it's like it's not a stable platform to sit on you can't trust I can't trust any real state of mind that I'm aware is arising is going to last so I've become very sort of distrusting of feeling like oh this is this is
safe, this is good, this joy, this peace, this calm, because it has the two sides, like the mask, the happy-sad mask, or like the dark and the lighted side of the moon.
Sometimes being on the light side of the moon, forget that there's a dark side, even though it's there, and it just keeps
And so I really, it's almost like more peace has come from just trusting that I can't trust that this peace is worth holding on to as something real and something that I can take refuge in.
So just kind of letting go and taking more refuge and noticing that, okay, this too is not going to last and just being mindful that
as pleasant or unpleasant.
I mean, it's actually kind of depressing to think, oh, all this happiness, this peace isn't going to last.
But when you're depressed or in a total state of despair that seems completely unshakable, it's actually quite uplifting to remember, oh yeah, this isn't going to last either.
So I guess that's all I have to add.
I just wanted to add something small that kind of more relates to your actual question than we've been saying.
in regards to where this happiness comes from and where its place is because on a more mundane level to explain the problem here is that this happiness and peace is not it's just based on intellectual acceptance reflective acceptance of the truth or of the teachings of something that is wise and it's on a very superficial level
the same sort of peace and tranquility is found on a far more sustainable level through actual meditative insight.
When you come to see for yourself the teachings, when you come to realize the teachings on a visceral level and when it really becomes a part of your core, when
What Sumedha is describing is basically Nibbita.
It's not just... One way of explaining it is not trusting it, but the way it's more explained in the meditation tradition is losing passion for it, or losing your interest in it, or realizing that this is not as exciting or wonderful as you thought it was, and giving up that.
that desire for, that attachment to this knowledge of dispassion.
And that this comes from actually seeing things as they are.
This is what
brings true peace and tranquility.
It brings contentment, it brings patience, it brings peace.
And the mind will enter into quite a similar feeling of peace and tranquility, but it will be much more sustainable.
Because suddenly, it doesn't matter what arises, and eventually this becomes more and more the case with more and more things.
And as the mind starts to understand at a more comprehensive level,
how the whole world is like this.
It starts to give up more and more and it becomes more and more content and more and more able to be with the reality of the experience in contentment without extrapolating or proliferating or projecting from the experience.
This is what brings true and lasting peace and tranquility.
So there is something to be said about true peace and tranquility
that is deeper than what you're experiencing.
And this was the problem with me trying to get it from this book.
It's really superficial.
And it's like, yeah, yeah.
But you're only getting it on a very superficial level.
And it's not really sunk into your bones based on intensive practice and realization to the point where the mind really undergoes a change.
I mean, reading the teachings and learning the teachings is a great thing.
But you have to understand that that's a very superficial part of what we're doing.
Many people misunderstand that and end up reading and listening to so many teachings and never actually practicing.
And so as a result, a good feeling comes, disappears.
It's very superficial and it's very unstable.
It's like a drop in the ocean.
So you get that peace, but then the rest of your mind is totally acting contrary to it.
Once you see it intensively, again and again and again, eventually it really permeates your whole being.
And then your mind becomes much more... I mean, it also has to do with the experience of Nibbana and so on.
I think that's basically an important thing to talk about.
That's good to do, isn't it?
Well, we've been talking a lot about this in the question, you know?
But, I mean, it has to do with expectations, too.
It's like, we took a picture at the end of this course that we just went through.
It was quite intensive for all of us.
And then you think, okay, we came to the end of the course, we should be all looking very happy now.
And you look at the pictures afterwards and you think, my goodness, these four people look like they've gone through hell.
That's wrong expectation, whatever that is.
Meditation is also like measuring.
Who's saying, I'm happy now, when am I unhappy?
It's the same like with heat.
Having these robes on, I feel always hot.
I'm always sweating.
You know, I see Bhante here.
He's always sitting there cool.
You've never seen him sweat.
And we've been running today through Chiang Mai in the morning.
And so, I mean, it's the same temperature.
He just feels different than I do with the heat.
And it's the same with happiness.
It's like, you know, I'm just saying now I'm unhappy.
When am I happy?
So this is, for me, the question sometimes
thing with expectations.
And having seen this picture, it was really like another shock.
It's like, you know, expect to see four happy creatures and we're not.
Imagine Tong was looking like, you know, happy.
But, you know, it's just me interpreting.
That's why it's interesting.
That's something important to talk about.
I was looking at those pictures thinking, oh, put these up and people would think, what did you do for 10 days?
You look like you're...
deceiving because we were really happy in that you know this has been such an uplifting experience but I've had this before people come to our meditation center and say you know you guys don't look happy we're talking about how this is going to make you happy you guys don't look happy this is why it's a different understanding there's so much you know you
And people have doubts as a result about meditation practice, but you can never convince a meditator that they're wrong.
You never say, look at you.
You're not smiling.
Don't you see that something's wrong with you?
Like my parents tried to do when I went back home.
Look at you.
You're like a zombie.
You don't play guitar anymore.
You don't tell jokes anymore.
You're no fun.
Don't you see?
You've been brainwashed.
And I was so upset.
by what they were saying, but in my mind I'm thinking, they're wrong.
These people are wrong.
They have no idea.
You know, it's not intellectual.
It's like you can't, there's nothing inside anymore that you could use to convince me that you're right.
There's no doubt that maybe I should go back and do all those things.
because you found true peace and you've understood the difference between peace and some state of happiness and some state of, you know, where you're explaining that arises.
You're talking about something that is freedom.
What we gain through the meditation is called freedom.
And freedom is really the highest sort of happiness.