Hello.
Today I will be talking about a comprehensive practice according to the Buddha's teaching.
It's a common problem among Buddhist meditators and people who approach the Buddhist teaching that we are unable to get a clear picture of the entirety of the Buddhist teaching and the entire course of practice.
And so as Buddhist meditators, as Buddhist practitioners, this leads us to
have a lopsided practice or a practice that is lacking in certain qualities or that is deficient in certain ways.
And as a result, our practice, though we might have a specific practice that is set to take us towards the goal of freedom from suffering, that we're unable to achieve that goal because we're missing some of the important elements that the Buddha talked about.
As non-Buddhists, as people who are coming new to the Buddha's teaching, this creates a problem on a different level in the sense of not being able to understand what it was that the Buddha actually taught.
When you aren't able to gain a comprehensive understanding of the practice as the Buddha taught it,
you don't really understand how it's supposed to lead to its goal, or how you should set out to practice, and so you find yourself confused.
And often people actually look down on the Buddha's teaching, due to their inability to see the whole of the Buddha's course of practice.
So they will say the Buddha taught only meditation or he was unable to teach in certain ways.
He didn't teach about this or that element.
And they come to misunderstand and misrepresent the Buddha's teaching due to their own misunderstanding or inability to comprehend the whole of the Buddha's teaching.
So for this reason it's important to look at some of the ways in which the Buddha declared a comprehensive teaching or a teaching that would cover all of the bases and satisfy the need for a practice which could be carried out in the long term in all situations that would protect you from all quarters.
Because when we undertake to practice meditation, that's only one part of our life or one aspect of our development, the practice of coming to see clearly, coming to see things as they are.
There are obviously many distractions, many diversions, many requirements in our daily life that we have to satisfy.
And if we're unable to deal with these various things, various aspects of our life, then our practice, our basic practice of doing sitting meditation, doing walking meditation, of formal meditation, will not succeed, will not progress.
So, the best way that, or one of the best ways that I can think of that the Buddha declared this comprehensive practice was in the discourse that is called the Sabasava Sutta, or the discourse on all of the asava.
all of the taints or all of the defilements.
And this sutta is great because it talks about all of the different ways.
It purports to explain a comprehensive practice, declaring the way to get rid of all of the bad habits and all of the problems that exist in our mind, in our lives.
to get rid of all of those channels by which suffering might arise or unwholesomeness might arise, to cover all of the bases, so to speak.
And so in this discourse, which is the second sutta in the Majjhima Nikāya, a discourse that all Buddhists should read and one that I would recommend highly,
The Buddha talked about seven ways or seven aspects to our practice that are intrinsically important in our mental development and in our practice of the Buddha's teaching.
So for those people who think that all you have to do is sit and practice meditation, all you have to do is come to see things clearly and so on, this is an explanation or a teaching to help you to see that there's actually more to it than that.
If you really want to succeed in coming to see things as they are, you need to have a comprehensive practice.
You have to have the ability to deal with all aspects of your practice, as I'll explain.
And for those people who are coming to the Buddha's teaching new, this is a way to help them to understand all of the Buddha's teaching, all of the practice as the Buddha recommended, as the Buddha instructed.
So you'll be able to see that the Buddha taught all aspects of one's spiritual development, and it's quite comprehensive.
So the point of the sutta is to talk about how to get rid of the taints, how to get rid of those things in your mind that cause you suffering, to get rid of all of those unwholesome tendencies or misunderstandings that exist in the mind that give rise to suffering for ourselves or cause suffering for other beings, causing us to feel guilty, causing us to feel afraid or stressed.
upset and ultimately lead us to pain and suffering.
And the point of the sutta is that it's not simply from practicing insight meditation, from coming to see clearly.
There are certain unwholesome tendencies or certain parts of our life that will not be destroyed, not be done away with, simply by practicing meditation.
And the reason is that it's a very complex issue.
Our life as human beings is complex.
We can't simply sit in meditation 24 hours a day.
And so we have to deal with these aspects of our existence.
But the first of the seven deals specifically with the practice of insight meditation.
And this is the removal or the destruction of taints, of defilements, of bad things through seeing.
And so for those people who are new to the Buddha's teaching, who don't have a deep understanding of what it was that the Buddha taught, this is perhaps the most important point, and this is what I was talking about as being sort of the core, not the entirety, but the core of the Buddha's practice, and that is to see things as they are.
So the Buddha taught us to look at the reality that presents itself in front of us and to come to see it clearly.
He taught us to see the truth.
He didn't want to teach us any dogma or theory or belief.
The Buddha taught practical ways by which we can come to understand things as they are.
And this is really the core of the Buddha's teaching.
If you want to understand what it was that the Buddha taught, he taught that we should learn to see things as they are.
and more specifically to learn to come to see the experience in front of us as it is.
So not to learn about all of the various aspects of the universe and outer space and under the ocean and so on, learning about other people's lives or society, but learning simply about the building blocks of reality.
How does reality work?
how does our experience work and how does suffering arise and looking at our habits and our ways of behaving and coming to see the useful and the useless, the skillful and the unskillful habits and behaviors and being able to separate and to give up those habits which are causing us suffering, those behaviors that are unwholesome.
So the ultimate goal and the most complete and perfect method to become free from suffering is to see things as they are.
There's no running away from suffering, chasing it away.
Simply seeing things as they are is the ultimate and the supreme way of getting rid of the unwholesome tendencies that exist in our mind.
Because when you see things as they are, obviously you would never engage in unwholesomeness.
You would never engage in those things that were going to lead to your own suffering.
If you knew the truth, that this was something that led to your suffering and stress, then you would never engage in it.
So this is really the key point.
And so the Buddha said,
The first important thing is to undertake this sort of meditation where we focus on what is important, we give up what is unimportant, we don't think about worldly speculation or cosmic speculation, thinking about the universe and philosophy and so on.
We come to look at that which is important, that which is causing us suffering.
And we come to see the truth, the most important truth of what is the cause of suffering.
As a result of this, we will come to let go of those things that are causing us suffering.
We'll come to let go of our clinging.
We'll come to let go of all of the things that are unpleasant and unsatisfying.
All of those objects of the sense that we normally cling to, we will let go of them, the people, the places and the things which ordinarily we thought brought us happiness.
Once we come to understand them as they are, we will come to let go and we'll come to accept things as they are.
We won't need, we won't require, we won't wish for things to be other than what they were.
We will accept them as they are and be able to live our lives in peace, happiness.
and freedom from suffering in any case.
We'll be able to accept all of reality, not segregating it into good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable.
And so this is really the first and most important way.
This is simply the process of watching
When something arises, you look at it, you see it for what it is, you might use this mantra that I talk about, when you feel pain, simply reminding yourself, this is pain, saying to yourself, pain, pain, pain, to stop or to remove the judgments, the disliking, the aversion to the pain, and simply replace it with simply an understanding of it as it is, this is pain.
when you're thinking good thoughts or bad thoughts, to simply know that you're thinking.
When you are moving the body, when you're walking or when you're sitting, when the breath is going in, the breath is going out, simply reminding yourself of it as it is, using this mantra.
When you like something, reminding yourself this is liking.
When you dislike something, dislike.
And when you feel worried or tired or stressed or bored or scared or confused,
Simply looking at that state, the emotive state or the physical state or the mental state,
And seeing it for what it is, seeing it as it is, not judging it, but coming to understand it a little bit deeper.
Everything, whether it's a good or a bad thing, coming to understand it for what it is.
Because you don't need to judge.
Once you understand for what it is, its causes, its effects, then you will straighten out all of your life and all of your behavior.
You would never engage in those behaviors that lead to your suffering.
But this is what it means to see, to see things as they are.
And this is the first method the Buddha taught to remove the taint, to remove the unwholesomeness in the mind.
This is really theoretically enough.
And as I said, the point is that we're not able to do this 24 hours a day.
And if we don't approach the other aspects of our life in a spiritual manner, in terms of our development and cultivation of the mind, then they will become doors to allow our mind to escape and to remove our concentration, to cause us to give rise to more unwholesomeness.
And our insight meditation, our contemplation of things as they are, will not progress.
So that's why there are six other ways.
Really this first one is really the core practice.
But then we have other...
other aspects of our practice that we have to keep in mind.
These are the other ones that I'll be talking about next.
The second one is through restraint or through guarding.
Some of the bad habits that we have have to be fixed by restraining ourselves or by guarding our senses, guarding the six senses.
Ultimately we want to open the senses and look and to see things as they are, but in the beginning or even throughout our training this won't be possible if we just let everything in.
Because as soon as you see something that is beautiful and wonderful, you'll lose all of your mindfulness and you'll be off chasing after it.
When you see something unpleasant, you see a person who you don't like, you'll become angry and frustrated and you'll forget all about the meditation.
And you'll stop to look at things as they are.
When you hear sounds, sometimes people practice meditation and think that you need to be in complete silence.
And so when they hear sounds that are unpleasant or continuous, repetitive sounds, people talking and so on, they'll feel like their practice is unable to progress.
And they'll feel frustrated and they might even give up the meditation thinking that they don't have a suitable location to practice.
And so on.
So seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling and thinking, there are the good things and the bad, the pleasant and the unpleasant.
And they will lead us away from the meditation.
Pleasant things will lead us to chase after them.
Unpleasant things will cause us to become frustrated and upset and cause us to suffer.
Either way, we'll lose sight of the goal and we'll lose sight of our practice.
So for this reason, the Buddha said, it's important for us to understand the six senses and to guard them.
We should avoid certain sights and sounds and smells and tastes.
We should, in a sense, keep ourselves from indulging in excessive pleasures or displeasures.
So when we practice meditation intensively, we'll, for this reason, often seclude ourselves, stay away from people in general, stay away from pleasant sights and sounds and smells.
We'll give up movies and music and entertainment, because these are all things that will take away our mindfulness, take us away from our practice.
So this guarding of the senses, when we're living our lives, we should always be thinking about this.
Walking down the street, we should not always be looking around at the world around us, because it's liable to entice us into, at the very least, mental distraction, causing us to think more than is necessary, and as a result losing our focus on the ultimate reality of our experience.
We should remember this in our daily lives, and we should remember this throughout our practice as Buddhists.
It's something that we should take seriously, that when we walk we should be aware that we're walking and try to focus, not looking around, not going to places that are liable to cause us distraction.
We should try to limit our entertainment and our diversion, because it's something that will give rise to more of these unwholesome tendencies.
They, as a result, will make it too difficult for us to see things as they are.
This is the second method.
The third method, or the third aspect of our practice, which is a method to give up the unwholesome tendencies in the mind, is by using, by making use of our requisites, the belongings that we have, or the requisites of our life, those objects
that are essential in our life.
So, a Buddhist meditator should be content with very little, should be able to, or should set themselves on living a simple life, giving up pleasure and luxury, trying their best to give up the possessions that are not totally necessary.
This has to do with guarding.
This is the second one.
But the third one, those things that you have to use, that you have to engage in, how to use them appropriately.
And so we might want to limit our food intake.
This would be guarding the tongue, not eating too much food or eating food simply because it's delicious.
We should try to give up those sweets and candies and foods which are
not of any use, but simply for our sensual pleasure.
This is a way to guard our sense faculties.
But we can't give up food entirely if we're intending to practice in the long term.
We still need food to sustain our lives, and therefore sustain our practice.
So how do we use the food?
How do we use our clothes?
How do we use our dwellings?
How do we use medicines?
How do we use those things that are required for our existence?
And so the Buddha laid out very specific details on how to use these things.
simply for their purpose.
And it's kind of a reflection.
When you're using something, you should reflect on what its use is for, and thereby you can come to see whether it's really necessary or not.
The way that we come to distinguish between those things that are necessary and those things that are not is through this reflection.
So the clothes that we wear, we're simply using them for some purpose.
When we understand this purpose, then the clothes that we wear will reflect that purpose.
If we're using clothes to be beautiful, to be attractive, to gain some kind of sensual pleasure from having this beautiful clothing and so on, to make ourselves look good.
then this is obviously going to lead to our distraction and our defilement.
It's going to lead us to more attachment and more clinging and more craving.
And it will be a detriment.
It will be a hindrance in our practice.
If on the other hand we use our clothes simply to cover the body, the nakedness, if we use it to keep our body warm, to keep our body cold, to protect it from the sun, to protect it from the wind, to protect it from insects and mosquitoes and so on,
then this is a good use, this is a proper use, this is something that will not thereby lead to our affliction, will not lead to our suffering.
If we use it to guard from those unpleasantnesses, then it will make our practice more convenient, more comfortable.
And so our clothing should be useful in this way.
Our food should also be useful.
We should use food to remove the hunger and eat those foods that are not going to give us indigestion.
Just the right amount so that we don't feel over full and so that we don't feel still hungry.
Once we are full then we stop and are able to continue our meditation.
If we eat too much obviously it will be a hindrance to our practice.
If we don't eat enough it will likewise be a hindrance to our practice.
We eat those foods that are going to be of use to sustain ourselves, not those foods that are going to cause diseases, that are going to cause obesity or disease and therefore discomfort and difficulty in our practice.
We use our lodging, our bedding, our room, we have this dwelling place, our home.
And many times people who become Buddhist meditators or Buddhist practitioners will give up many of the things in their home or will maybe even move to a new home that is more suitable for the practice of meditation, giving up luxury and comfort
If we use our bed, for instance, to sleep and to be lazy and to laze around and try to get as much sleep as possible, then it will give rise to more defilements.
If, on the other hand, we use our bedding and our lodging for the purpose of seclusion, for the purpose of meditation, thinking that our bedroom is a place where we can meditate, arranging things so that we have room to walk and we have a place to sit, and there's not many, many things distracting our attention and so on,
then it will be a support for our practice.
We use it obviously for the same reasons as clothes, to ward off cold and heat and wind and insects and so on.
Then this is a benefit.
This is something that will assist in our practice.
We use medicines as well.
And we use those various things that are requirements in our life.
People use cars or vehicles.
Medicine is something that we use.
All of the many instruments.
People use telephones and computers and so on for some purpose.
And all of these things should be reflected upon.
What is the purpose?
Is this a useful purpose?
Is this purpose
leading towards the goal?
Or is it complementary?
Does it fit with a spiritual practice?
Or is it contradictory towards the aim that I'm trying to reach and therefore a hindrance in regards to my practice?
And so we use all of these things, but we use them in the right way.
It doesn't mean that one has to give up one's home and one's belongings, but it means one has to separate those things that are important
and the uses of the various things that are proper uses that are going to be complementary and fit with our meditation practice.
So this is the third way by which we develop in the practice, and it's another important part of the comprehensive practice.
The fourth way is by bearing with certain things, by forbearing.
in regards to our lives, in regards to those things that are unpleasant, are difficult to bear.
So in our practice and in our lives there are going to be situations that are going to be a cause for suffering for us.
There's going to be heat, there's going to be cold, there's going to be wind and bad weather.
There's going to be painful feelings, hunger, thirst.
Even painful feelings, the Buddha said, to the point that they might kill us, they might take away our life.
Diseases and sicknesses, people have indigestion and so on, that can be very painful and a cause for great suffering.
So the question is, how do we incorporate these into our practice?
And the important thing here is to realize that
there are certain sufferings that you can't avoid.
There are certain circumstances that you can't avoid.
And when you realize this, when you're able to set your mind in this way so that you're trying to develop patience, it will then allow you to look at the object.
If you're not going to be patient with the object, you'll never look.
And if you never look, you'll never see.
So getting back to the first point is that we want to see things clearly.
In many cases what's stopping us is the intensity of the experience as being something that we can't bear, we can't stay with.
So teaching ourselves to be able to bear with difficulty will allow us to incorporate that into our practice and come to see it clearly.
If we don't understand the need for patience, the need for the ability to bear with unpleasantness, then we'll never be able to come to see it for what it is.
If, on the other hand, we are patient, we bear with it, once we come to see it for what it is, we come to look at it objectively, there'll be no need to be patient with it at all, whether it be heat or cold or painful feelings, hunger and thirst.
Any of these things, we'll come to see them simply as phenomena that have arisen, experience that arises, and the judgment will be gone.
We'll come to see that there's nothing good or bad about these or any other experience, and as a result, they won't be able to cause us suffering.
So this is another important part of our practice.
This is something that is quite important in terms of understanding what a proper meditation is.
Many times people understand meditation practice to be
a happy thing, where it always has to be comfortable, where you always have to be happy, you always have to have some sort of pleasure or calm state.
And when pain arises in the body or in any situation where it's uncomfortable, then immediately you have to change and there's some problem.
But all of these physical ailments of heat and cold and hunger and thirst and even deadly suffering are simply physical realities.
They don't have to do with your state of mind and they don't have to be suffering if you don't let them.
If you are always running away from these states, then you'll never come to fully open up to reality and your practice will never succeed.
So we should, when we practice, be open to even unpleasant situations and try to simply see them for what they are instead of judging them.
This is the fourth method or the fourth aspect of our practice.
The fifth aspect is those
Those phenomena that we do have to avoid, that some of our bad habits and so on will be, some suffering will be averted by avoiding certain things.
So it's not that the Buddha said you have to bear with everything just like a cow or an animal without any sense of judgment or reason.
It is important to avoid certain things.
And so this is another aspect of our practice as you can see there.
It's not cut and dry where you just sit and practice and sit with everything.
There are certain things that you have to avoid.
For instance,
The Buddha gave mention of a monk who's walking through the forest and comes upon a thorn patch, a patch of thorn bushes.
Well, the person who takes this sort of bearing with things literally might think you're just supposed to walk through the thorn patch and become all cut up and scratched up and
and lead to your suffering and distress.
But this is one of the things Buddha said, well this should be avoided, go around it.
And obviously don't be ridiculous.
If you see a big pit in front of you and you can just go around it, you go around it.
If there's an elephant or a wild elephant or a wild beast or so on,
Avoid the animal.
Don't just walk up and say, well, my karma will take care of me, and if I'm meant to be killed, then I'll be killed.
It's important to be circumspect about it, to be able to judge and to discern what is the right and what is the wrong course of behavior, and to avoid certain things.
More importantly, though,
we should avoid those people and those situations that are going to be a cause for our downfall, are going to be a cause for the arising of defilements.
We should avoid bars and parties
people who are engaged in immorality and drugs and alcohol and all sorts of sensuality, we should try to avoid people who, by their very nature, by their behavior or their position, will be a cause for us to fall into immorality, following after them.
We should avoid those places, we should avoid those things that will give rise to defilement and as a result suffering.
Oftentimes the practice of meditation, when taken seriously, leads people to change their lives.
It will lead them to change their circle of friends, it will lead them to change their lifestyle.
their way of finding entertainment and so on, will change so that it becomes more appropriate for one who is trying to develop their mind.
It's something that will fit in better with the meditation practice.
So there are certain things that we have to avoid, people that we have to avoid.
You should never think that you have to remain friends with people who you've been friends for a long time.
If you come to realize that they're on a bad path, you really should be careful about how much time you spend with them and with all such people.
And you should be careful in general in regards to who you spend time with and the places you go and frequent and so on.
Because these will all have some effect on your practice.
There will be a distraction and aversion and a hindrance if you engage or get involved in the wrong sorts of people, places and things.
So that's number five, the things that we do have to avoid.
There are certain things that we have to bear with, and these are unpleasant, painful things that can't be avoided.
But when they can be avoided and there is no benefit to be gained from involvement therein, then they should be avoided.
This is number five.
Number six is those things that should be destroyed.
The development of the mind through destruction.
or abandonment, giving up, that there are certain qualities of mind, certain things that exist in our mind that we should give up.
And if we are able to give them up, then it will lead to our mental development.
And this is really getting to the core now of what we're trying to do through Seeing Clearly.
But here the Buddha is more talking about those thoughts that arise, and this is like those kind of immoral or unskillful thoughts, those kind of trains of thought that we get into that will lead to the arising of more and more unskillful tendencies, thoughts based on
on desire, thinking about beautiful women and beautiful men and romantic encounters, thinking about fantasizing about this or that, about adventures and so on, thinking about getting this or that thing, thinking about the food that you're going to eat, thinking about the places that you're going to go,
thinking about all sorts of wonderful things, when engaged upon, will obviously give rise to more and more craving, more and more attachment, and will be a hindrance to your practice, may even cause you to lose track of your practice in favor of chasing after those things.
The kind of thoughts that are based on ill will,
where we get caught up in thinking about people and the bad things that they have done to us and maybe how we want to do bad things to them, how we want to hurt them, or dwelling on the ways people have hurt us.
The Buddha said dwelling in this way will obviously never lead to any end.
Engaging again and again in the ideas of vengeance and trying to get back at people who have hurt us will never lead to any benefit and will never
will never lead to the way out.
The way out of
out of the cycle of revenge or enmity, is not through vengeance, is not through trying to win, trying to beat the other person.
It's through letting go and through not clinging to these kinds of thoughts.
And obviously these kinds of thoughts will be a great hindrance to our practice.
They'll give rise to more and more anger and aversion and hatred.
And as a result will divert us from our practice and cloud our mind
and also those kinds of thoughts that have to do with delusion or identifying with things the idea of being proud thoughts of pride, thoughts of arrogance and self-righteousness thinking of yourself as a great person and how wonderful you are or thinking about how terrible you are this idea that we are less than others the feelings of low self-confidence and so on
These kinds of thoughts that have to do with identifying with a self, with the I, reifying yourself, saying, who am I, and making up this identity and creating this identity out of nothing.
This is something that also truly clouds the mind and causes us to lose sight of what is real.
Because experience has no I, it has no identity.
It simply is what it is.
There are the elements of the experience and that's it.
This idea of the I, of the me, is simply a concept that arises and it covers over the actual reality.
It's a red herring.
It takes us away from the goal and takes us off of the path.
These kinds of thoughts, thoughts of an unwholesome nature, the kinds of thoughts that are going to lead us to give rise to greed, anger, delusion, that are going to...
going to take us away from a clear understanding of reality.
These are to be avoided.
And we should recognize them when they come up, and we should understand that they are to be avoided, so that we're able to see what's going on clearly.
We can see the greed, we can see the anger, we can see the delusion, we can see the thinking.
and to break it apart and not get lost in that kind of train of thought.
We should have an understanding that these thoughts are not to our benefit and should be guarded against for our own benefit.
The seventh and final method by which we come to do away with the unwholesomeness in the mind and the suffering that exists in our lives is through the development, through mental development, the development that comes through seeing clearly.
As we look, as we examine reality, how our mind develops.
So this is simply talking about what happens when we look at, when we watch, when we practice meditation.
It's not enough simply to say that we're going to watch, we're going to look, we're going to see things as they are.
It's important that we do it again and again, and we do it with the aim to develop our minds, the aim to develop ourselves.
in those things that are going to lead us closer and closer to the final goal, which is realization and understanding and enlightenment and freedom from suffering.
The realization that permeates all of reality, that covers everything, whereby we understand all of experience and we realize the way things are and we don't become deluded and ignorant again.
So as we look, and as we look deeper and deeper and with more and more accuracy, we're going to develop certain qualities of mind.
The first one is the ability to see things as they are, the ability to recognize things as they are.
And this is the basic practice that we're undertaking in the beginning.
You might look at the pain and say, pain, pain, pain, but you really don't like the pain.
And so as a result, simply saying pain, pain, pain, doesn't do anything.
It doesn't have any immediate effect because there's no clarity of mind there.
There's the word and the attempt, but in the beginning it's still growing.
So this is the first one that we have to develop.
As this becomes developed, we will come to see things as they are.
We will come to see the nature of things.
So when we see the pain for what it is, we'll come to see that it is simply a phenomenon that arises and ceases.
There's nothing pleasant or unpleasant about it.
We'll come to see the anger associated with the pain that does have something unpleasant about it.
It is intrinsically unpleasant.
It is the experience of the phenomenon as unpleasant.
And so we are able to see that there's nothing wrong with the pain, but there is something wrong with anger.
And so we're able to separate these two out.
And as a result we're able to live with pain and live without anger.
We're able to change this aspect of our lives by separating the nature of the realities as we see them for what they are.
Once we're able to separate things out, then we free up this energy that we've lost.
We are able to exert ourselves and streamline our efforts.
And so as a result, our
our energy increases.
We're able to focus better and we're able to progress quicker.
As we work and work and work at seeing things clearer, we're able to streamline our efforts, we're able to
we're able to go to a higher level and to increase the effort to a greater and greater level to the point that our intensity and our clarity of mind becomes stronger and stronger and stronger.
As we do this, our mind starts to quiet down.
Once our mind starts to quiet down, then our mind becomes focused.
And eventually it gets to the point where we simply see the experience for what it is.
We might see the pain and we simply see it as pain.
There doesn't arise any anger anymore.
Once our mind focuses, our mind calms down and then focuses,
we'll come to gain this level of equanimity.
We will no longer judge things as good or bad, we'll no longer have any favorite and any kind of attachment and aversion to things.
We'll simply see things as they are.
This is really the state that we're hoping for, we're hoping to come, or we're looking for, we're aiming for.
that eventually through our practice we'll simply see things as they are and we'll look at all things as they are until we can get this, as I said, comprehensive understanding and this realization that in all of the universe there's nothing worth clinging to, that everything simply arises and ceases.
So this is what comes from the practice.
This is the final part of the comprehensive practice.
But as you can see, there are many aspects that we have to take into account.
And it's worth going over again all of these.
I encourage people to read this sutta, the Sābhāsala Sutta, the second one in Imogen and Micaiah.
It's one that I often teach from, and I think that we can all use going over again and again, something that will really and truly support our practice.
So I hope this has been useful and that you're able to put this into practice.
And I would like to encourage everyone not to be, as usual, not to be content simply with this sort of intellectual understanding that comes from listening to the Dhamma, but to actually put it into practice.
And I hope that you all are able to put this into practice.
and as a result, develop and progress in the Buddha's teaching, so that you all may realize for yourselves true peace, happiness, and freedom from suffering.
Thank you for watching, and have a good day.