Good evening everyone.
Welcome to our live broadcast.
Still looking at the Anguttara Nikaya Book of Forests.
And there's a couple coming up that I think are worth mentioning, so there may not be all that much to talk about, but they're good.
good sets of things to know as Buddhists.
So the next one is Anguttara Nikaya book of fours, Sutta 31, the Chakka Sutta, on the four wheels.
So we can think of Buddhism as a vehicle
Buddhism is a transport, something that carries you or facilitates your journey.
You might even think of it like a train, because it keeps you on track.
There's no swerving in the Dhamma.
There's no getting lost.
You know that when you get on the Buddhist train, as long as you don't get off again, you'll make it to your destination.
And in order to do that, it needs wheels.
And so the Buddha identified four qualities that actually don't necessarily have anything to do with spirituality or meditation practice.
The Buddha, in fact, here says that these are things that will lead to wealth, bhoga.
Whether an angel or a human, they will attain greatness of wealth.
But wealth is both spiritual and material, so these dhammas are useful in both spheres.
The point is, I think that these don't constitute the vehicle, but they allow the vehicle to continue.
They're sort of a framework for us within which we work.
They don't directly, well, they don't go into detail about the practice, but they provide some sort of a framework,
boundaries wheels if you will wheels to the cart so what are the four patirupa desavasu this word should be familiar for those of you who have been buddhist for a while I mean those of you who were born buddhist and have heard all the chants
For those of you who have studied the metta sutta, most of these should be familiar.
Patirupa desa vaso, dwelling in a suitable environment, a suitable country.
Oh no, desa just means place, a suitable place.
Number two, sapurisa.
And here there's a variant, sapuri supa sayo, associating with good people.
Or getting support, being supported or supporting.
Sehwanang bhajanang narajanang.
Associating with good people.
Sapurisa.
Number three, atasamapanidhi.
Setting oneself beneath that.
Setting oneself up rightly.
Resolving or settling oneself in the right path.
And number four, having done good deeds in the past.
These four are the wheels.
So, quite simple.
Let's talk about these.
The first one, to dwell in a suitable location.
I mean, this is easily understood in regards to spiritual practice.
in regards to worldly pursuits as well.
Living in a place where there are good people, where there's no war or crime, famine or disease.
This is also one of the, these are, most of these are, all of these are also blessings.
But it's a reminder for us to find a suitable place.
And the Buddha wasn't complacent in this regard about putting up with an inferior situation.
I mean, there are certain places, environments that make meditation practice, spiritual practice, or worldly gain even, quite difficult.
The most obvious example is people who come to a meditation center because they find they can't meditate at home.
I mean there are sometimes people who just come here for the day because, especially in this area, we have a lot of students, university students, who if they were to try and meditate in their homes,
and find themselves quite disturbed.
Often they live in small rooms and they don't have room for walking and sitting.
They just don't have a peaceful location.
And moreover, they don't have the inspiration to push them to meditate.
But when they come to the meditation center, they find that inspiration and they find a place to
that is suitable for the cultivation of spirituality.
In Buddhist countries this is of course much more pronounced.
People go to forest monasteries or even city monasteries and try to do good deeds in the monastery or practice meditation in the monastery because they're so geared towards that and the environment is suitable, the environment is peaceful.
environment is designed for it.
But certainly there's something to be said even spiritually for the importance of dwelling in a good, having a good space.
Of course once you're enlightened, I mean we often, with many of these things we often think of ourselves as, or we often think of the practice from the point of view of an enlightened being.
We read about the Buddha and we think well then I have to be like him so I should just put up with whatever and even go around and meet with all sorts of different people.
But the opposite should be the case for someone just beginning on the path.
You should sequester yourself.
Go on a retreat.
Go off into the forest or find an empty room.
Buddha would always say there are roots of trees.
You can go and stay at the foot of a tree or there are empty spaces, empty rooms, empty huts.
empty buildings.
So this is on many levels.
I mean, on another level, being in a country or a city or a town where there are meditators and meditation centers and Buddhists and that kind of thing is, of course, a great benefit.
Traveling all the way to Asia can be a great thing if you go to a country where there is Buddhism and learn Buddhist culture and Buddhist tradition and Buddhist practice.
Buddhist practice is still much easier to do, to undertake in a country, in a place where it's valued and appreciated and supported.
So that's number one.
Number two, sab puri savasaya, or upasayo, upasaya.
associating with good people.
If you surround yourself with ordinary people, your ability to cultivate spirituality is, of course, restricted.
It's restricted by the pull that these people have on you, the involvement that they require.
It's restricted by the drag they have on your own spirituality with their
Behaviors and attitudes and emotions and problems, difficulties, stresses and immorality.
So if you're surrounded by people who are drinking and stealing and killing and lying and cheating, it's quite a drag on your own spiritual and even emotional and mental well-being.
In a meditation center, this is one of the great powers of a meditation center is that you're surrounded by people who are meditating.
You're not alone anymore.
You've left behind all of that rubbish of defilement and addiction and conflict and stress and suffering.
And everywhere you look there's someone meditating.
talking about meditation, teaching meditation, pictures of the Buddha on the wall, Buddha images on your shelves.
All right, specifically, so that's actually both of these, the greatness of the center, but also the greatness of being surrounded by good people.
If you can, going to a meditation center is a great thing.
It's a great support for your practice.
You're not surprising how great it is.
It's much more than you would think.
The psychological value of being around people, just a reminder alone.
But the great help that people give in a meditation center, we don't realize how much good we're doing for each other.
Because you think, well, I'm not actually doing anything for the other people, I'm leaving them alone.
But that's the key.
You're leaving them alone.
How rare it is to find someone who leaves you alone.
Someone who doesn't pull at you and make claim to your time and your energy.
and drag you around, drag you down, drag you into their problems and their issues.
The greatest friend, I think, is someone who leaves you alone.
The greatest friend is someone who gives you the time, the place, the space, and the support, the encouragement to do what needs to be done.
So just the greatness that all the meditators leave each other alone and don't sit around chatting with each other, that's the worst, is when you go to a meditation center and the meditators are just sitting around chatting all day, dragging each other down.
Clearly they've found people who are not good to associate with, and they're dragging each other down.
But when you find a group of people who are dedicated, like if you look at these guys here,
in this picture.
We have four meditators right now.
One of them doesn't come up for the talks, which is fine.
I'm assuming he knows about them, but maybe he doesn't.
But we're at maximum.
We're at capacity, I think, for the first time, actually.
We have four meditators all trying to finish a full meditation course.
None of these guys are here even part time.
They're all here for the full course.
which is great to see.
When you have this, there's great power that comes from this.
There's a great support.
Now, barring that, in the world, I think you could even say it becomes more important with all the, all the pulls on our mind that exist in the world, all the,
stimulus, stimuli out there, all the many different types of people, having good friends, good association, having good people around you is even more important.
as it's easy to get swept away or at the very least burnt out by the constant stress and bombardment of being surrounded by people who are not on the spiritual path, especially for a beginner, someone who hasn't ever taken the time to go all the way with their spiritual practice.
It's easy to be overwhelmed.
even for those who haven't committed to the spiritual practice.
Being surrounded by people who are spiritually inclined is, of course, one of the great reasons why people take up spirituality, because they see other people and they're given an example.
They're given the idea, the inspiration to cultivate good things.
Anyway, that's number...
It's only number two.
Number three, setting yourself in the right path.
And this is the practice.
This is a part of the, this is the third wheel.
This is really the defining.
I think this is probably the most important.
I mean, it's really the heart of the matter.
So we're talking about getting results and becoming great, attaining greatness.
It doesn't mean greatness as other people look at you, but actual greatness of mind.
You want to be, this is what we want to be, great.
We want to better ourselves.
We want better things.
We want a better state.
Greatness is, I think, desirable.
I think worth considering as a goal, or part of the goal anyway, or part of the process.
I think we maybe underestimate the greatness of a meditator because by greatness we don't of course mean someone who is rich or famous or powerful.
We mean someone who is rich spiritually, powerful in their own mind, able to overcome suffering.
There's greatness in someone who sits alone in the forest or alone in their room
There's greatness in someone who can be mindful.
There's greatness in someone who is subjective.
When confronted with pleasant and unpleasant stimuli, they don't falter, they don't waver, they don't chase after their own tail, really.
So this is the key to greatness, all four of these are, but this one especially, setting yourself on the right path, settling yourself, establishing yourself.
Don't try and succeed or try and, don't think about peace or happiness.
Don't think about gain, praise, fame, happiness in general.
until you've settled yourself on the right path because all of that can be perverted if you're not on the right path you can have great happiness and if you're on the wrong path it will all fall apart even lead you astray and lead you to addiction and that kind of thing fame of course fame that is undeserved fame for a person who is impure is a very dangerous thing if they're not on the right path you can become very famous
and it can destroy you inside.
Riches, praise, all of these things, all the good things in life pale in comparison to setting yourself on the right path.
So what this means is establishing an understanding about our experiences that is wholesome and pure.
Because who we are is very much our habits of behavior, habits of interaction with the world, right?
When someone confronts us with a pleasant or unpleasant speech, how we react to it.
When the world presents us with pleasant or unpleasant stimuli, how we react to them.
It's very much who we are.
If we're not settled on the right path, we react unfavorably.
We create suffering for ourselves.
So to be pure, clear, I mean these are the best words I think to use for what we're looking for.
You can only explain this so well, but I think those are the best words, because that's the sense that one should have, is that the mind is pure, the mind is clear, the mind is honest and true to itself, not crooked, not clinging, not judging, not identifying with the experience, but
relating to experience, relating to reality in a way that leads only to one's own benefit and the benefit of others.
That doesn't lead to one's detriment or the detriment of others.
That is what it means to be on the right path.
And that's what we strive for in meditation.
We're just looking to find that.
This is why we try not to
add any value judgments to the practice or statements about belief.
We don't add color or flavor to the practice.
We want to make it very, very much about what actually
presents itself through experience, through reality, rather than having any kind of idea about how things should be, what is good, what is bad.
We want to rather look and see, so that we can see for ourselves what does lead to our benefit and what does lead to our detriment.
And the same with others.
What is good and what is bad?
The claim is that you can actually see that.
It's something that I think many people don't realize, that if you look and if you find the proper way of looking objectively, not just looking without finding a good way, but if you find a way to look at things objectively, you will start to see objectively what is good and what is bad, without anyone having to tell you or having to believe anyone, without being afraid that you're being brainwashed or indoctrinated.
the right path and number four number four is a really good one i think it's one that it's really quite clever and perhaps surprising means having done good deeds in the past one of the most important qualities of a person to allow them to succeed and and prosper progress spiritually even materially is something that they have no control over because they have to have done it already
But it's true, doing good deeds often sets you back.
It's often difficult, trying, taxing.
It can be unpleasant at times.
Not exactly, but it can involve some unpleasantness as your mind revolts, as you have to deal with adversity that your mind doesn't like.
But the great benefit of having done good deeds, anyone who has done lots of good things can tell you how much good it brings to them, how heartening it is.
And that's how supportive it is.
It's supportive materially in terms of how people look at you and in terms of how the universe works for you.
If you've done things that are actually good, the definition of good things is those things that bring good results.
The idea is that there are things of that sort that you can depend upon to bring you good results.
And those good results are both material and spiritual.
Any meditator has real difficulty practicing.
Listen up, because most of us do.
It's usually because we've neglected to do great good deeds in the past.
There's nothing you can do about that.
It's not something you should despair about.
It's something you should chastise yourself, certainly, and say, boy, I've been negligent.
It's a great part of the practice because it's a lesson.
People who meditate tend to become very much inclined towards good deeds, which is really awesome.
If you see this community that we've set up, there's people volunteering for all sorts of things, helping out.
Just a real wholesomeness.
And no one's getting paid.
I'm not getting paid.
Robin's not getting paid.
And the people who made this website, how much money it would have cost us to make this website, they're doing it all completely free.
This is the sort of thing that comes from meditation.
I mean, it comes from other things as well, and many of the people here haven't done a significant amount of meditation such that we could claim that that's where it comes from, but
Certainly anyone who has done a significant amount of meditation becomes very much inclined towards good deeds because through the meditation it really punishes you for not having done good deeds.
It's not something you should obsess over or worry about, oh this means I'm a bad person because I'm suffering.
Probably does, to some extent, but we're all kind of in that boat.
We've done a lot of bad things and tortured ourselves and tortured others, and it set us in this kind of desperate state where we have to deal with it now.
It's a good reminder, because if you go to a Buddhist country, you'll meet many people who come to meditate and have very little difficulty with it.
It's impressive, really.
something you have to respect very much.
You know, often Westerners go to these countries and see these people obsessing over doing good deeds, obsessing over charity, morality, even ritual and all that kind of thing, chanting and so on.
And they think, ah, these people don't get it, they're just doing all these inferior acts.
That's true.
I mean, you have to admit that they are inferior, but
Boy, are they a great support for that which is superior.
And those very people, many of them, do go to meditation centers and have a lot easier time of it than many Westerners who come and have never done much good for other people or much really high-minded things.
Of course, it's not a dichotomy like that.
There are many Westerners or non-Buddhist people who have done lots of good deeds and thereby benefit from it in the meditation.
But that's the point.
Is that materially or spiritually?
You're very much supported by the good deeds that you've done in the past.
It's not a quick thing.
It's not you can say, okay, well, I better start doing good deeds and then wait for the benefit.
It's very much about the past.
You have to have done them.
It's a very curious, in a good way, it's a good turn of phrase.
Reminding us, reminding us that, uh-oh.
And did I do good deeds in the past?
And shoot.
It's kind of like, it makes you, gives you a feeling of being an investor, right?
It's not because, you know, when you invest money, oh, all the money, I can't spend any of that money.
It's like throwing money away.
Okay, you said there was actually one man recently who wanted to come meditate.
And I think because of the server problem and losing his application,
he ended up investing his money and now he's not able to come because he has no money, he can't access it.
Doing good deeds is kind of like an investment like that, to some extent.
I mean, it really should eventually feel very much, very happy about doing good deeds.
Which is why this whole group and community really makes me and I think makes all of us very happy.
The goodness we can share by
helping out and supporting the center and the website and the community.
It really makes us feel very happy, I think, as a group.
And that kind of happiness is a real, that's the happiness that's a real support for the practice.
Not all happiness is, but that kind of happiness is very much a support.
It's called unadulterated happiness.
because it's awesome.
It's happy about doing good deeds, happy about good things, happy about that which is worth being happy about.
So that's number four.
These are the four wheels, another good set of things to learn.
And again, the Buddha related this to worldly practice.
So if you want to get rich, if you want to be wealthy, if you want to be well off in the world,
And he puts it not just as a human, but as an angel.
So if you want to be great, if you aspire to greatness, even in a worldly sense, these four are your wheels.
They're the vehicle that takes you there.
And they're also something that we have to memorize for the first level Dhamma studies, so that's why I recognize them.
That's all for the Dhamma for tonight.
These guys are really tortured every evening.
They have to come up.
Well, they don't have to.
They don't actually have to come up.
It attests to their spirit that they're willing to sit still for half an hour like that.
Can you clarify something that you said?
What did I say?
The person, the potential meditator who couldn't come because he invested all his money.
I mean, what did you mean?
He didn't have money to travel because it doesn't cost money to go to the center.
I don't know.
I think that's what he was saying is that he didn't have money for travel.
Okay.
Just to clarify, charging anything
Right, I didn't mean to... Yeah, some meditation centers, they charge a lot.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Well, I hope he didn't... That's a good question.
I wonder if he actually misunderstood that he would have to donate something.
Sometimes people think, okay, it's by donation, but certainly if I go, I have to... Maybe I should remind him of that.
That's a good point.
Yeah, maybe he felt obligated and... Or not remind him, but clarify that for him.
That might be good.
I think he wanted to stay for a long time, and it looks like he wanted to drive for a long time, which may mean he'd need to have expenses or something.
That could be.
Maybe because he wouldn't be working for so long while he was at the center.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Maybe I'll write back to him.
OK, I'm ready.
living in seclusion from other people become an aversion to other people?
Did you read the second part?
He reposted it in the questions.
I often wonder if I should make myself maintain friendships that I don't want.
Oh, just a second.
I missed something.
Yeah.
Sorry, I was looking on the first page.
Test.
I'm just trying to get your audio on.
Okay, it's there.
It should be fine.
Right, so he says, I often wonder if I should make myself maintain friendships that I don't want.
Test.
Okay.
Right, so I have to answer this, right?
I mean, I think to some extent there's something that almost appears to be aversion to other people.
But, you know, it's approaching aversion, you know, because, you see,
An enlightened being doesn't just do whatever, doesn't just go with the flow all the time, because they're wise.
They go with the flow, but they don't go with the flow of the world.
They go with the flow of their wisdom.
And the flow of their wisdom often tells them to stay away from certain people.
It sounds like you're avoiding them or you have aversion towards them.
But this is the point that I think Buddhists often miss is that it's okay to follow your wisdom.
It's okay to at times make decisions and say, hey, there's no benefit from being around these people.
The problem is, most of the time it's aversion.
If you're not enlightened yet, most of your decisions to avoid situations are going to be based on aversion.
It would look something kind of like this.
An Arahant would be very clear about how they were going to live their life, and they wouldn't let anyone dictate
that but on the other hand they wouldn't push people away which you would feel as an aversion.
So if someone came to the arahant who would be say living off in the forest or living in
let's say living in a monastery at least, someplace that was a spiritual place, whether it be in a city, in a town, in the country, or in the forest, on a mountain, wherever.
They would live there.
They would live in a place that was spiritual.
And they would have their space, if they could physically.
They would be inclined, or they would be disinclined to
have a communal living space and what i mean by that is they wouldn't incline towards if it was all that was available they would take it and they would be fine with it but they wouldn't look for community so most likely they would have their own room let's say at the very least and
But if people came to the monastery, they would involve themselves with it.
I mean, this is kind of the idea of an arahant, someone who is enlightened, someone who is already there.
For your situation, or my situation, or a situation of someone who is on the path,
It's a matter of sort of touch and go, or feeling your way out in the situation.
Is this person, is it beneficial for us to get involved with each other, to have a relationship?
Is there good that can come from this?
Is this a support for our spiritual path, for mine and theirs?
Is this something that is beneficial?
Or is our relationship just going to cause suffering for both of us?
And then conversely, if I leave now or go back to doing what I was doing, is that going to cause stress and suffering, right?
Is there some sort of, does this person have some sort of desire for me, wants and needs from me that I may
be best to address.
Or not address, but address in the sense of do something in regards to, not fix, not satiate their desires necessarily, but do they want me to teach them something?
Well, then teach them something.
present them with the opportunity.
I mean, for me, I'll give you an example.
Often people will come to me and they want to talk or they want to, I've had people who want to ask me all sorts of questions about all sorts of different things and
I tend to do my best to steer the conversation towards meditation and make it clear to them, look, what I do is teach meditation.
If you want to come and do a course, you're welcome to.
So I leave the door open, but I don't stand there in the door talking to them.
The door is open, you can come in if you want, metaphorically.
And then I go back to doing my own thing, right?
But the door is open.
And if they come to me and meditate, I will do the best I can to lead them through meditation.
To me that seems like the right attitude.
I don't buy into or play the game of
being there for everyone no matter what they ask because it's not usually beneficial it's just running around in circles if you want to talk a lot if you want to question and think and ponder i'm kind of over that personally so maybe i hope that helps what do you guys think of the new question
It's kind of weird having the chat somewhere else because now we have to click back and forth if we want to actually talk to each other, but I don't really mind.
It's nice to have this question with the thumbs up.
It is.
What object can we meditate on to stop ourselves from falling into despair of another's terminal illness?
As with any despair or stress, satipatthana is the way to go.
No, samatikamaya.
Soka Parideva Dukkha Domina Subhaya.
No, what is it?
Soka Parideva Nang Samadhi Kamaya.
That's the Satipatthana Sutta.
The four Satipatthana are the way to overcome Soka Parideva.
Sadness and despair and lamentation and all that stuff.
Soka Parideva Nang Samadhi Kamaya.
Because for Satipaṭṭhāna, focus you on what's real and the terminal illness is not really real.
Reality is just experience and the thoughts and the sights and the sounds.
People aren't even real.
What we are, I mean,
We're real, but that real is not real.
It's not a part of reality.
Like if you look at me, okay, if you say, I'm real.
This person, this being is real.
It's real in the sense that I'm not just going to fall apart or fly.
It's not just chance.
There's something here.
But that something is not a thing.
It's only seeing and hearing.
You see me sometimes, hear me, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking.
Not all of those usually, but some of them.
And those are just experiences.
And even my own experience.
It's not me.
It's not an I.
It's just experiences.
So if you can get into that mode, then this person who has the terminal illness, you're able to see what's really going on.
Your relationship with them, how you relate to their experiences, how you relate to your experiences surrounding them.
You're able to purify it.
And this kind of upset is distress, is just an impurity of mind.
It's not beneficial.
It's not good.
But we get caught up in it and we get attached to it and somehow have the subtle inclination that it's somehow good for us.
And so we incline in that way.
But should the protective meditations be practiced while walking?
Sometimes when the mind is distracted while walking, I'll think, may so and so be happy, healthy, and safe from harm.
Or death will occur, the faculty of life will be interrupted, and continue to walk until the mind settles down a bit, then go back to noting, stepping, right, stepping, stopping, etc.
It's generally recommended to stop and do standing meditation because walking requires your mind, right?
Walking requires some mental input usually.
So it's recommended to stop.
You can.
There is a sense that there is walking and talking or walking and this or that.
But standing is much more recommended because then you don't have to go back and forth.
Standing doesn't take nearly as much mental activity.
So you're much better able to focus on those things.
Pante, regarding Satipatthana, what is the exact meaning of the phrase, the one-way path, or the path leading towards one's destination, or the one and only path?
You should read Soma Tera's The Way of Mindfulness.
I'm sure it's, actually I don't know if it's in Sinhalese, but read the English version.
It's on the internet.
Everyone here should read The Way of Mindfulness, or at least read some of it.
And you'll get an answer to your question.
You won't get an answer actually, but you'll see that all of those are valid interpretations.
What the Buddha actually meant by it,
I still get the sense that he intended it to mean that it's the one way.
Maybe he wasn't being quite so exclusive about it, but he wanted to say this is the way.
This is, and maybe, you know, because it's not the Eightfold Noble Path exactly, but he was trying to point out that this is the, in my mind he was trying to point out that this is the key to the path, or this is the entrance to the path.
This is how you begin to practice the Eightfold Noble Path.
It's the clear, you know, the way to the way kind of thing.
But literally it does just mean a path that goes in one direction.
Eka ayana.
Ayana means going.
Eka means one.
So it's the one going way.
It's a way that is only one going.
But going here probably means it's only going in one direction or it's
It's ambiguous, actually.
So look at, read Sombatera's translation of the commentary in that book, The Way of Mindfulness.
Excellent, excellent translation.
I mean, I don't, I'm assuming, I haven't really compared it to the Pali, but as far as the commentary goes, but excellent that we have the translation, and he did a great service by translating that.
I started meditating two months ago following Mahasi's method of anapanasati with the belly plus labeling distractions, which appears to be very similar to your method, and am interested in going on retreat in the future.
The only thing physically or financially accessible to me is a goenka ten-day vipassana retreat.
Could going on a goenka retreat lead my practice astray by confusing my current method, or might I be better off sampling a different style?
I mean meditation is good for you.
I'm not really impressed by the whole going to thing but I mean that only means in comparison to what we do.
I tend to favor what we do but
in in terms of you know a good thing to do meditation is always good even samatha is good so i wouldn't worry too much about it i mean one of the things i criticize about the goenka thing is it's a bit of a cult that's not a bit of a cult it has cultish elements to it and that can be problematic because there's nothing to do with the meditation but it becomes very much a
kind of weird feeling that you get i don't know i would i've never been on the course so i actually don't know but it's the sense i get and what i've heard i mean it seems good i would think it's good they don't do any walking meditation so that's unfortunate but i don't know i mean i can't recommend it to you
I did a video a while ago that said, I don't recommend Goenka.
But, you know, it was willfully misunderstood as meaning, no, don't go, it's a bad thing.
What I meant is, I can't recommend it, literally.
Because if I recommend it, I'd be recommending something that I don't practice and that I don't know much about or believe in, you know.
How could I recommend anything like that?
So I would only really recommend our tradition because that's all I really know.
I'm just going to stick my own two cents in there about you did mention the only thing that you're financially able, physically or financially able to.
And again, when Bhante teaches meditation, there's no cost for that.
And although it's in Canada, it's just a little bit above Buffalo, New York.
So it kind of sounds like it's farther than it is, but...
If you can make it to Buffalo, New York, you can make it to where Sri Mangala International Meditation Center is.
It's not far from there at all.
I have seen another tradition, supposedly enlightened masters being accused of several crimes like sexual harassment.
Does this mean they were not enlightened?
Thank you.
Sorry, repeat again?
Other traditions supposedly enlightened masters being accused of several crimes like sexual harassment.
Does this mean they were not enlightened?
Thank you.
Yes, that means they were not enlightened.
Well, no, being accused doesn't mean that.
Sorry, being accused doesn't mean that at all.
Having done it means they were not enlightened.
Obviously, being accused of something doesn't mean anything.
People accuse the Buddha of sexual harassment, sexual assault.
Not sexual assault, actually, just sexual activity.
I don't think anyone accused him of rape or anything, but accused him of getting a woman pregnant.
Well, he did.
He had a son.
Oh, no, I mean as a Buddha, as a monk.
Chinchamanika, Chinchamana.
It's one of the Dhammapada stories.
I think it's a Dhammapada story, and we haven't gotten to it yet.
Bhavika, you said Satipaṭṭhāna is not exactly the equal noble path, but isn't it what
Oh, yeah, I just meant that it's only one of the Eightfold Noble Paths.
So if you say the Satipatthana is the Eightfold Noble Path, well, it's not.
It's only one of the eight factors.
But it kind of is, and that's, I think, why it's not actually saying this is the only way, because the only way is the Eightfold Noble Path.
The Buddha said, This is the path there is no other.
Of course, people also interpret that differently as meaning not those others, but whatever.
The Eightfold Noble Path is the way.
The Satipatthana is taking that way and saying, look, this is the direct way to practice the way, kind of thing.
I think that's the sense I get of that word Ekayana.
It's the direct way to practice the way, the Eightfold Noble Path.
I have read that story about that serial killer becoming enlightened.
What happens to all of the bad karma when this occurs?
Okay, this is something we have to clear up often.
Karma means action.
Okay, I mean, it's nitpicking, but let's be clear because it's easy to think of karma as being this bank or karma being this big bag that you carry over your shoulder.
Karma is something you did.
This is very real.
You did things.
There's no escaping that.
That's true.
We do lots of things.
But you did certain things that were ethically unwholesome, ethically charged, whether positively or negatively.
And we say they're ethically charged because they have some kind of emotional power and they cause suffering or they cause happiness.
But they're done.
Those are done and gone.
But they have a result.
They have an effect.
They change your reality.
So there's not karma that you're carrying around that suddenly disappears.
there's the results of karma, which is called vipaka.
And those results are felt in an infinite number of different ways.
Everything, your whole universe changes with everything you do.
And so all that, when you become enlightened,
It doesn't change your situation.
So the karma doesn't go anywhere.
The actions have been done, but the results are still there.
So any results that resulted from that, say him going into the village for alms and being beaten, which apparently happened,
People saying nasty things about him, people being afraid of him, him having to relive those horrible things, all of that is still there.
But he doesn't react to it anymore, he doesn't react to any of it.
He gets beaten when he goes on alms and he doesn't get upset about it.
People say nasty things or are afraid of him, he doesn't feel guilty or bad about it, he doesn't feel upset.
He doesn't cling to it.
It's gone.
He doesn't feel good about it or proud of what he did.
He knows it was wrong, but he doesn't get upset about it.
And even when he thinks of all the things that he's done, he doesn't feel guilty or upset or bad about it.
He just knows that that was a wrong thing to do.
I mean, clearly, why obsess over it?
It was wrong.
I did it.
There's no question.
I deserve all that comes from it.
That's all.
Next, let's move on, right?
Let's get on with our lives, or maybe not even like that, but just an acceptance of that's the way it was.
That's all.
There's no karma bank, and there's no karma.
Karma doesn't last.
Karma is a thing you did.
That's what karma means.
It means when you do bad things, they have bad results.
When you do good things, you have good results.
But all that means is it changes your reality.
Wow, this interface is pretty neat.
And did you notice there's only one Anamodana button?
If you go to the meditation tab, you click on one button and it gives everybody a thumbs up.
That's really cool.
No more lots of clicking.
Very nice.
They did a great job.
One thing I noticed on YouTube, it looks like actually the last two nights of your broadcast wasn't there.
I think they've stopped recording it.
They've stopped...
I don't know.
That's all I can think is that they're just no longer...
They're just no longer archiving these for us.
But it's funny because in the stream options here it says I have an option to make the archive unlisted when complete.
But I don't want that.
But why would I have that if it wasn't... Google just doesn't have their act together.
They're so mixed up in so many different ways.
I mean, if they weren't a multi-billion dollar company, I wouldn't hold it against them, but they got a lot of money.
It's kind of a shame that their core product...
These are people who aren't paying attention to the Buddha's advice on how to be
how to be successful in a worldly sense.
They're clearly not doing everything right anymore.
All right, it's almost 10 o'clock.
I think we'll stop there.
Hopefully this will be archived.
If not, well, there's already 1,300 of my videos up on YouTube.
Maybe that's enough.
Impermanence and all.
Yeah.
The audio archive should be there, hopefully, on our site.
Anyway, thank you, Robin, for your help.
Thanks, everyone, for tuning in.
We've got 47 people watching.
Have a good night, everyone.