OK, so let's start and the talk today.
The title of the talk is something like recognizing
mental States and what to do about it or how to what to do
something like that. And of course, the idea of
recognizing mental states is about understanding what is
wholesome and what is unwholesome, and then how to
deal with that, how to increase the wholesome and reduced
unwholesome. Yeah, this is pretty much what
the whole spiritual path is about, is about reducing the
unwholesome things and increasing the wholesome things.
And as you do that, you start to feel better about yourself.
And this is kind of the the whole point of the Buddhist
path. And one of the things, just to
start off on a kind of an overview of how the Buddha
talked about this, there's one of the very nice verses found in
the Sangyuta Nikaya. How many you know about the
sangitanic? I know some of you do something
like that. They connect the discourses of
the Buddha. Yeah.
This is one of the big collections of suitors there is
about. Some people say there's about 8
or 9000 suitors in there. I think that's an exaggeration,
but there was certainly a lot of suitors in there, maybe a couple
of thousand. Anyway, substantial suitors.
And the very first one in this large collection here is a
verse. And this is a verse where
there's a conversation between Adeva.
Adeva is like the one of the gods.
Yeah, at that time, this deva comes down to the Buddha, and
the Buddha then replies, and what this deva asks the Buddha,
He asks him, how did you cross the flood?
The flood is like the flood of Sangsara, the stream.
Yeah, the kind of the stream that drives us all, all along,
from life to life, just moving on, moving on, moving on all the
time. How did you cross this flood?
Is the answer from this question from the Deva to the Buddha?
And then what I reply is the way I cross this flood is by not
standing still and not by striving here.
That makes sense. Not standing still, not
striving. What?
What do you mean by that? And it's actually, it's actually
a very beautiful way of thinking about the dumb light.
If you stand still, obviously not going to get anywhere.
Yeah, we all, we all get that. If you stand still, nothing is
going to happen. The Buddha says if you stand
still, you just sink where you are.
You sink in your defilements, you sink in all the problems in
the world and things don't really work out for you.
So that kind of makes sense. But what about the not striving
part? How does that make sense?
And the Buddha says if you strive, you get swept away by
the flood. Yeah.
Why? Because when you strive,
basically you're often coming from a sense of ego.
Perhaps you're coming a sense from over exertion yourself,
pushing yourself forward. And because you're coming from
this ego, the force inside the driver that always drives you
on, it's the same force that takes you from life to life.
Yeah, it takes you from one birth to another one.
And by that you get swept away in the same flood as everyone
else. So what is the alternative?
And the alternative in this case is that.
But it simply says by not striving and by not standing
still, that is how you cross the floor.
What does that mean? It means that you kind of you,
you move forward, but without actually exerting yourself too
much. And elsewhere the Buddha makes
it very clear. What this means is using wisdom.
You use the wisdom to understand things.
You don't strive so hard, but you use your ability to reflect
in the right way and to think about the world in a skilful
way. And that is actually what takes
you forward on the path. And this is one of those very
significant things about the Buddhist path.
It is a path of insight, of understanding, of being wise
about things, of reflecting about things in the right way
here. And as you do that, the crossing
happens all by itself. There's a little bit of effort
there. There's the effort to think in
the right way, but there's not that striving that kind of has
always LED us on from one life to another one here.
It's a very beautiful. It's almost like a Cohen.
Yeah. Don't stand still there.
Don't. Maybe this is where the Cohen
started out from. Don't stand still, don't strive.
Just cross the floor. Wait a minute.
What does that mean? That it kind of your mind goes
still and then you kind of, you know, what actually you're
supposed to be doing here? So it's one of those slightly
cryptic little verses. And sometimes there's a lot, can
be a lot of information in those little cryptic verses.
So that is the kind of the background use wisdom power.
But before we talk about more about how to use wisdom to do
these things, first of all, I have to talk a little bit how to
recognize these things. The question is 2 things, how to
recognize the mental States and then what to do about this.
First of all, how do we recognize these things?
And this is actually a very, it may sound like a strange kind of
question to ask because usually we think that we know, yeah, OK,
I'm getting a bit upset now. I'm getting a bit kind of dull
or whatever. Often we will know about these
things. But one of the interesting
things about the Buddhist teaching is that sometimes we
don't know. We don't actually know what is
wholesome, what is unwholesome. And one of the places to see
that is when the Buddha talks about the five hindrances.
Yeah, Everyone knows the five hindrances.
Anyone does not know the five entrances.
Everyone knows the five entrances.
OK Wow. That's pretty.
That's pretty good. Yeah.
Really educated Buddhist, Right. That's really.
That's amazing. Yeah.
So 5 hindrances. OK, just very briefly.
The first one is like central desire and we have ill will.
Then you have tiredness and lethargy, then you have
restlessness and remorse. Yeah.
And we all know what those things are because these are
kind of very common things for all humans, probably for animals
as well, even for devas probably have these kind of qualities.
But the last one is in many ways the most interesting one.
The last one is doubt. And that doubt, Sometimes people
think that that doubt means doubt about the Dhamma.
Yeah. Oh, I'm not sure if I'm a
Buddhist. Yeah.
I don't sure if I believe in rebirth and all these kind of
things. Some of people think it means
that, and it can perhaps mean that in certain contexts.
Sometimes people think it means doubts about your own ability to
practice the path. Yeah, but as I'd like to say, if
you have a body and you have a mind, you can practice the path.
If you haven't got a body in mind, maybe you shouldn't be
here, right? Maybe you're a zombie or
something like that. So if you haven't got a mind,
OK, maybe now is the time to go, huh?
Anyone going? OK, no zombies here.
OK, 012 zombies over there. I'm very, very naughty.
So if all you need is a body and mind, because a body and mind
are the things that we have to deal with.
Yeah. So if you have that, you can
practice this. So what does doubt actually mean
in the five entrances? And what it means is that we
don't understand wholesome and unwholesome qualities.
That's really what it's referring to.
Yeah. So you can imagine, and this is
can be sound a little bit theoretical perhaps, but I'm
sure some of your sometimes you will see this, you sit down in
your meditation practice, you become a little bit peaceful.
Yeah. There's no clear desires that
you don't really have any ill will against anyone.
You feel quite peaceful, so not much restless and you have a
degree of clarity. So not no real kind of tiredness
either. But the meditation doesn't go
forward. It kind of stuck in this thing.
Yeah. And then you don't know what to
do because there is no problem. There's nothing to really
overcome. And I'm here, but it doesn't go
forward. I'm kind of watching.
The breath is nice and peaceful. Yeah.
And this is one of those cases where you are not seeing fully
the defilements and the problems in the mind.
There is something there that stops you from going deeper, but
you can't actually see it because it is very subtle.
What is it that actually stops in this particular case?
And usually it is things like attachments.
Yeah, you're attached to your body.
You are attached maybe to the five sentences.
You're attached to thinking, maybe a little bit of thinking
left perhaps. And these are the things, but
they are so subtle, it can be very, very hard to see here.
And this is one of the things about these definements of the
unwholesome states that we have. They are the coarse ones are
very obvious, but the subtle ones are actually very difficult
very often to see here. Or take another example.
Another example is that you are doing perhaps meta meditation.
Yeah, I people often like to do some meta meditation and I
really encourage you to do that because it tends to give rise to
lots of good qualities. It's a very happy my instead,
yeah, if you have meta towards people around you.
So I would really encourage that.
But one of the problems there is that sometimes people feel that
they get attached yeah, you do meta towards the people around
you, you do meta to your family members, meta towards whoever it
is. And sometimes they're not sure
whether is it real meta or is it attachment to the people around
you. Yeah, one of those cases of
doubt again, what is actually going on there?
So how do we deal with that in both of these situations?
And there's two things that you really you can do in this in
this situation. The first thing here is to
investigate what is going on here.
As you investigate, as you look at your mind, as you see these
things again and again, you start to be able to separate out
the real meta from the attachment.
You start to learn skilful ways of having met that towards,
instead of just towards the people who are close to you in
your family. You have met that towards more
neutral people. And because they're more
neutral. Yeah, like maybe Ajam Brahm.
Yeah, I met that towards Ajam Brahm.
You don't have any attachment to him or do you?
I don't know. Not sure, probably not too much.
Yeah, he's like the teacher. So you have met that towards him
or you have met that towards all beings or you have met that
towards the directions, something which doesn't give
rise to the same kind of attachment.
And then your family members after, while they get included
anyway because if you have attachment, if you have not
attachment, if you have met towards all beings, then of
course your family and everyone else is going to be included as
well because they're part of all beings.
So you learn how to overcome that, to kind of find a skilful
way of differentiating between the attachment and the meta.
Meta is far more beautiful than attachment.
Of course, it's far more aloof, far more liberating here because
you're freeing yourself from some of the bonds in the world
that ultimately will create suffering for yourself.
Yeah. So you, this is one of the most
important thing, is that. And the Buddha specifically says
that the way to overcome defilements and hindrances and
problems in our meditation practice is through reflection,
through being wise to contemplating things, thinking
about them in the right way here, standing back and watching
what is wholesome, what is not. And then through that
reflection, you're able to eventually make progress.
But still, it can be difficult. Yeah, because we are often
immersed in these things. Particularly delusion can be
very hard to understand because it is so close to our hearts.
So we need something more as well.
And the other way of dealing with this is simply to keep on
practicing the Noble Eightfold Path.
And one of the things is that as you practice this, it's like you
are emerging from the sea of delusion.
Gradually, gradually, your mind is kind of getting lifted up in
your move, going beyond before you were kind of completely
immersed in delusion. And gradually you're lifting
yourself out of the delusion. And you're seeing things more
clearly here simply by practice in the noble and full path,
simply by being kind, by avoiding doing the bad things,
by purifying yourself in daily life, by going into the
occasional meditation retreat. Yeah, coming maybe down to JAMA
Grove every now and again, you know, something like that, or
maybe too much, whatever it is. And then gradually you emerge
and you can see this happening year after year.
There is like you are coming out of something, emerging from
something, getting more perspective, standing above the
jungle, seeing with the bird's eye view.
What? Before you were just enmeshed
inside of that, and now you have some understanding of what is
going on there. So this is the idea.
Yes. This is how you gradually start
to recognize these things, but it's not easy here.
There is another aspect to this. When it comes to recognizing,
one of the most important things is to remember to have
mindfulness. Yeah, actually, mindfulness
means memories. So remember to have mindfulness.
I'm not sure about that one. But anyway, you have to be
mindful. And one of the reasons for this
is because very often these, especially in daily life, the
defilements of the mind, they arise so fast.
Yes, suddenly you find yourself angry.
Suddenly you are upset with somebody.
So you have to actually have the mindfulness to see things
happening, see things coming. And the quicker you can see
things coming, the more ability you have to overcome the problem
as it arises. Once the anger or the ill will
or the irritation or whatever it is is established inside of one,
it is actually very difficult to get out of it.
It is almost like self perpetuating.
You see the vadnais and you, the mind sort of wants to see the
bad things and it can be very hard to pull yourself out again.
So mindfulness is a very important part of this.
So how can we have more mindfulness in our daily life?
This is one of those very important questions.
So how can you do that? And one of the ways of doing
this is to remember that what you are doing on the spiritual
path, what you're doing as a Dumber practice, is far more
important than all the other things that you do in your life.
One of the things I were just saying to the guided meditation,
yeah, to give give kind of emphasis to the meditation now
and understand everything else in life really is a support for
the meditation practice. So this has to do in a sense
with kind of the right outlook on life, understanding what
really matters, what really is important.
And when you understand what really matters in life, then it
is much easier to be mindful. Why?
Because you know deep inside of you that this is what actually
is important. Everything else is secondary
here. So how can we do that?
How can we kind of make the spiritual part of life more
powerful and more important and kind of make everything else
like the work and the family life, kind of make it secondary
in a way that I will show you in a second that secondary doesn't
really mean secondary. It actually means enhancing that
as well. So the way to do that is to
remember that even in your ordinary life, like your family
life, of course, family life is for most people a very important
part of life. It is where we spend so much
time with our family members. It matters enormously here, but
it's not just having family members that is important.
What really matters with our family is the quality of those
relationships. Yeah, yes, we have a mother and
father, We have children, we have a husband and wife or
whatever. But the quality is far more
important than just the fact that you have a relationship.
Just having a relationship, if it doesn't have any quality,
often it's kind of bad. Yeah, it's kind of terrible.
We don't feel, you know, enjoying it at all.
But it is the quality that we put into it that actually makes
it nice. So if you have a husband or a
wife, you want to have a good relationship.
You want to have a good relationship with your children
if you can. And children want to have a good
relationship with their parents if possible.
And when we have that, then it becomes really useful and it
becomes a support in our life, something that actually gives it
meaning. The relationship itself is kind
of meaningless. The quality of the relationship,
actually it what makes it meaningful.
And of course, by quality of relationship we mean things like
kindness for each other, understanding for each other,
caring for each other, having a sense of compassion for each
other. Yeah, that's the kind of what is
in the quality of relationships. And of course those things are
what are they? They are really spiritual
qualities there. So it is the spiritual qualities
in life that make family relationships actually
meaningful and make them useful. And This is why you should
always put the spiritual qualities, give that primary
importance, and the other things kind of then tend to fall into
place as a consequence. Yeah.
So this is what I mean by putting the spiritual life
first. It doesn't actually mean that
you forget about your family life and you become a, you know,
just get ordained straight away. It doesn't necessarily mean
that. It means that you understand how
to deal with your family in such a way that actually it becomes
very useful. Family life becomes much more
meaningful as a consequence. So in this way what we are
really doing here is that we are incorporating and integrating
the spiritual life into our ordinary existence, into our
ordinary life. And then both sides of the
equation become become more powerful, more useful, more
significant, and they actually start to work out as a
consequence. And it's not just family life,
it's also other aspects in life. It's like your work life as
well. When is work life good?
It's it's not just about making money.
Yeah. It's not just about kind of
having a career or whatever. And work life, which is really
meaningful is also has to do with how you, the relationship
you have with the people around you, your colleagues, Yeah, your
customers even, you know, your boss or the people underneath
you or whatever in your company here.
All of these relationships matter here.
And when they are good relationships that come from a
kind of a spiritual understanding, that is when it
becomes useful. So again, the spiritual life
comes first and what you're, what I'm starting to see here is
why the spiritual life actually is far more important than
anything else. Why these are the qualities that
make everything else, gives everything else value, gives
everything else significance. Why this is what the true
meaning of life is about. But it's even more than that.
I'm kind of just touching the surface now.
Even more important, if you really want the bird's eye view,
if you want the kind of big view of what is going on, is to
remember that all the things that you do in this life, Yeah,
all the things that belong to this world.
And by that I mean everything you own, all your possessions,
all your relationships around you, your education level, all
the people in your life. Yeah, Remember, they end when
this world ends. They belong to this world.
You can't take it with you any further.
So remember that this is like a bird's eye view of what is going
on. The only thing that you can take
with you out of this life is going to be the qualities of
your mind, what you have developed in this very life.
So when you die, remember that. I remember.
Imagine yourself on your deathbed.
Yes. If you know that you're about to
die, this is the end of your life.
And it's not that far away. It happens very quickly.
Yeah. Before you know it, bang, you're
there. You know what I mean?
Life goes so fast. You have maybe have a time to
breathe and suddenly kind of you're already ready to go.
But yeah, So what happens when you're on a deathbed?
Imagine that. Imagine being on a deathbed if
all you have done in your life is investing in things that you
now going to have to let go of. Yeah.
If everything you have done is invest in your possessions, your
friendships, your family, your degrees or your your social
status, whatever it is, certainly now all of that is
going to have to go. So how do you feel on your
deathbed? And perhaps you've done some bad
things on the way because you wanted to get these things so
badly. How are you going to feel?
And what you feel, you feel like you have wasted your time.
Yeah. You had this wonderful
opportunity to be kind, to be caring, to do something good for
the world and haven't taken it. Instead, you have invested
everything in things that you now have to let go of.
It's a very, very powerful reflection here.
But if you feel that you have lived your life in such a way
that you have built up the kindness of your heart, you've
built up a beautiful mind, you've built up a sense of
clarity and understanding, you know, on your deathbed, you
haven't wasted your time. Why?
Because this is the only thing that you can take with you into
the future as you pass away, as you move on into your next
existence. So this is kind of the big
picture and This is why the spiritual life is far more
significant than anything else you do when you live your family
life. Remember, the purpose of the
family life really is to support your spiritual life.
The purpose of your work life is to support your spiritual life.
Everything you do in life is to support the spiritual life.
And what happens when you live like that is that your family
life also becomes better. Your work life also becomes
better. It doesn't mean you neglect
other people. Actually, the two go together.
The two kind of lift are lifted up together in a very, very
beautiful and powerful way here. So by thinking like this, what
you are doing is you are prioritizing the spiritual life,
you are giving value to the spiritual life, and you are
reducing the value of all of these other things in in your
life. And what that means is that when
you go about your daily activities, because you have
clarity about what actually really matters in life.
Yeah, it means that as soon as there is some development
arising in your mind because you know what is important, you
think, wait a minute, why do, why am I getting angry now?
Why am I getting upset about this?
What is an alternative way of looking at this particular
situation? And as you do that, you're able
to, mindfulness kicks in much more quickly precisely because
you have your priorities, right. If your priority is to kind of
seal this contract, if your priority is to, you know, make
more money or whatever, if that is number 1 and spiritual life
is number 2. If you practice meditation so
you can make more money, some people do that.
Yeah. Because I've not become really
cool. I can kind of think more
clearly. I can kind of get.
Yeah. If you have that, if that is
your kind of your priorities, then of course it's gonna make
it very. It's not gonna work.
Yeah. So you have to think differently
here. And as you do that, it's
actually going to start to work for you here.
This is one way of making yourself more mindful.
But you will notice it's not just about mindfulness.
It's about a particular way of using mindfulness.
Mindfulness on his own right is not enough.
We have to direct it in a particular way.
And when it is imbued with that wisdom, that is when mindfulness
becomes powerful because that is when it has the ability to see
what needs to be done in the present moment.
So that is about recognising the problem.
Yeah. So when we recognise the
problem, and then of course once we have recognised it, then we
have to do something about it. Yeah, we have to deal with it.
That's the next thing here. So how do we deal with it once
we see that, once we have recognised it.
And one of the things I was, as I was saying at the very
beginning of the talk, the way the Buddha deals with these
problems is through wisdom is one of the things that you see
throughout the suit. As I already told you, this
verse between the Buddha and the devata.
But actually so many suitors talks about talk about using
wisdom rather than using willpower in dealing with
problems in life. And two suitors that straight
away are very obviously about, this is 1 called the Veda Vitaka
Suta, which means the two kinds of thought.
And the Buddha specifically says in there, when you have a bad
thought, a defilement arising in the mind, the way to deal with
that is to reflect on it in the right way here.
Yeah, reflect. It leads to suffering here.
It leads to problems, it leads away.
It leads away from nirbana, it leads to more suffering in the
world. Yeah.
And by reflecting like that, understanding this in a deep
sense, you might automatically withdraws because you know that
is not going to lead to anything positive.
The reason why we have defilements in the mind is
because we think it's going to lead to something positive.
That's why we desire things. But the Buddha says, no, it
doesn't go there. It leads in the exact opposite
direction of what each and every one of us actually wants.
It always leads to suffering. So you withdraw from that.
Yeah. Using wisdom, not any, not
willpower. Another obvious famous suit as
the Buddha talks about. This is it, It's the Ubakalesa
suit, The corruptions of the mind or the defilements of the
mind. And again, this is when the
Buddha, this is actually the Buddha's biography, talks about
his own practice, which is kind of nice, isn't it?
I love that when the Buddha talks about his own practice, it
talks about his own defilements of the mind.
Actually, not the Buddha is the Buddha to be before he becomes
the Buddha. It talks about his own
defilements and his own problems.
It's kind of nice. The Buddha had the same problems
as we have. Yeah.
It's that kind of neat. It's kind of, it's kind of nice
because it means that we are all in the same boat.
And it means that if the if the Buddha had those problems.
Yeah. And he was able to overcome
them, it means we can do it too, because we are no different from
the Buddha. The Buddha was struggling with
similar kind of things that we were struggling with and in the
Ubakalesa. So he talks about his meditation
practice. He talks about seeing forms and
light. Yeah, Rupa and obasa in the and
these are very similar to what we probably called nimitas.
Now these are mental things. These are, this is the kind of
the last thing before the Buddha entered Jana.
So it's very likely to mean, like, nimitas of some kind.
And he talks about it, says, oh, I was having all these problems.
Yeah. We're having a tiredness of the
mind, excess of energy and lack of energy, too much
contemplation of forms, doubt and all of these kind of things.
Exactly the same kind of problems people have these days
in meditation practice. And what does he do?
He reflects on it. Why is this happening?
Why is my meditation not working here?
Yeah. Why can't I go further?
Why can't I attain these? Jana states that is his
reflection. Once again.
It's a bad wisdom power. So we always need to use wisdom
in our meditation practice. Wisdom just often means
reflecting wisely. Yeah, being careful in how we
reflect the bad things. So how do we do this in
practice? So good qualities and bad
qualities. Let me start with the good
qualities, because we always talk about bad qualities, kind
of depressive, isn't it? The Buddhist way was talking
about the negative things, how to omit.
It's good to talk about the positive things as well.
So what happens if you have a good quality in mind?
How do you deal with that? Do you know how to deal with the
good qualities but actually don't, don't have to do very
much. Yeah.
If you have good qualities, you can pretty much just relax.
And this is one of those nice little symbolism, the suitors.
This is also from the debate of a taka suit.
I was just talking about before the two kinds of thoughts and
what the Buddha says that if you have good qualities in the mind,
you can be like the cow herd. And when the cow herd when, when
there is no crops around, the and the, and the cows are not
going to kind of eat the farmer's crops.
Yeah. If if you are a cow herd and the
cows eat the farmer's crops or you're in serious trouble,
you're going to get fined and punished.
Yeah, because that's your job. But if there are no crops around
and the cat like kind of was walking around grazing, you can
just chillax. Yeah.
You sit down at the root of a tree and you just have
mindfulness that the cows are there.
In the same way, if you have good qualities, you can just sit
back. You don't have to do very much.
It's quite nice, isn't it? It's one of the benefits of
having good qualities. You can just really.
OK now, finally getting there. Yeah.
Now we can really relax about things.
This is one of the good things about good qualities in the
mind. So.
But remember one of the there's more to it than just that.
There's also the fact that if you feel that you have some good
qualities, you're feeling generous and kind towards other
people. Remember also not to get
complacent about it. One of the things when we feel
like life is going well, it's very easy to get complacent.
Now I finally got it, I've understood what is going on.
And before you go it, bang, the departments come back again.
Yeah, They hit you over the head much harder than they did
before. So important point is always to
remember that whatever good state that we have acquired, it
is going to be impermanent. Yeah.
It is not going to be something that we can sustain.
And when you do that, you don't take it for granted.
You don't kind of hold on to it and think, yeah, I finally got
it. And then when it disappears
again after you start, Oh no, I had all this good states, now
it's all gone. I went on this retreat.
I had a beautiful state of meta in my heart, and now it's all
gone. I can't kind of sustain it here
in Singapore in the same way. Yeah, too many people all the
time around me here. And that, that is true.
But so remember that when you go on a RIP, remember it is
temporary here. You do this to gain more
insight, to have a more understanding of what the what
the potential of the mind is like.
But you don't do it to be able to sustain it at all times.
You know that these things too are going to have to fall away
again. And in a sense that makes you
more careful with the with this, with these states.
It means you don't grasp them so hard you see them.
You start to go with the flow of things instead.
Yeah, You know, going with the flow, this is one of the kind of
things they have in them in sports these days.
People play golf, for example. Yeah, you get into the kind of
the flow of things. And of course, the flow of
things is precisely when you just move along.
You follow whatever is happening.
You don't put in too much effort and things kind of flow
beautifully along and you play your best at that particular
point. Yeah, In the same way, you don't
really attach to the happy states.
You just go with the flow. If they have to disappear, they
have to disappear. So be it.
No point in actually holding onto these things.
And then when the bad qualities come back, you do exactly the
same thing. Yeah, these two will pass.
You go with the flow. You don't kind of adhere to
these things. You don't crave for things to be
different. You go with the flow and you
allow things gradually to come back again to a better level
afterwards. And what happens when you do
that? What happens that the good
qualities tend to last longer and the bad qualities, the bad
states, tend to last less. So this is what happens if you
cling on to these things. Actually, you tend to destroy
things and the bad times tend to be longer as a consequence.
So this is the way to deal with good qualities of the mind.
Yeah, allow them to be like that.
And the last thing how to deal with these things is, for
goodness sake, act on these good qualities.
If you feel that you want to be kind, if you feel that you want
to be generous in something, act on that.
Sometimes it's like the heart opens up to the world and you
just want to be kind. You, you know that feeling.
Sometimes you just want to be kind to someone.
Please be kind if you want to be kind, because it's a wonderful
opportunity to do something positive.
Don't just think about it. Yeah, actually do something as
well there. So remember that.
Use the good qualities inside of you in a positive way here, not
in a stupid way. Not like if you know, you go to
someone you know who's going to be nasty back.
Don't. Don't go to those.
Go to those who appreciate your kindness a little bit.
Yeah. Like the members of the Buddhist
Fellowship or whoever it is. Then you will get something out
of it. But please act on those things.
Yeah. And don't be too cynical.
Don't think that it's not going to work.
These things are always so powerful and so beautiful.
So this is how to deal with the good states on mind.
That's kind of the. If you like the easy part.
Yeah. But how do we deal with the
negative states on mind? And this is in somewhere.
Is it getting boring? Yeah.
No. OK, Sorry about that.
So how do we deal with the negative states of mind?
And this is, in many ways, some of the most interesting things
in the suitors because this shows us what can be done with
things like ill will and upset. Yeah.
And to me, I think these, and it's not that hard to do.
This is what is so interesting about it.
We think that anger may well, we have to have it.
It's very difficult to get out of it.
But the reality is each one of us is able to reduce the anger
and ill will. Yeah.
I know that because I've done it myself.
Yeah. I I actually practice this
teaching. I've been doing it for over 20
years now as a monkey. And it.
It works. Yeah.
Granted, over time, you become more cool in both meanings of
the word. Yeah, so, and, and what a
wonderful thing that is when you see these things actually work,
when you see the anger going down, you have more time for
other people, you have more care for them.
You don't actually allow yourself to get upset so easily.
It's a wonderful thing about happens.
And it's almost like you are more aloof.
You're standing back more. You're seeing life kind of
moving along around you without really being drawn into the
stream so much as it was as you were before.
It's such a beautiful thing when that happens.
So how do we do this? And, and these are the kind of
standard things I talk about every time I give a talk.
I talk about these things, yeah, because I think they're so
important. And this is the Buddha.
Actress vendor Bhasari Buddha talks about how to overcome
resentment, how to overcome ill will and one of the most
important things that he talks about is the ability when ill
will is about to arise in your mind, you catch it early because
you have that mindfulness. You know what really matters in
life and getting rid of ill will is something that really matters
in life. So you are mindful about that.
You catch yourself early. And then when the Bosari put us
says what you do is your first thing you do is to remind
yourself of the good qualities in the person who is irritating
you or who is being not or whatever it is.
Yeah. You see the other side of that
person. And this is very, very useful.
And it's very, very useful in a place like the Buddhist
Fellowship. Yeah.
Because you know that everyone who comes here is basically a
good person here. Is anyone here who's not a good
person here who's not a good person?
See, everyone is a good person. Yeah, but you can be,
Absolutely. So what's the point of coming to
the BF unless you are a good person?
You wouldn't want to come here. What's the point of sitting down
15 minutes, closing your eyes and watching the blooming breath
if you're not a good person? Yeah.
It's like torture if you're a bad person.
So you can almost guarantee that everyone who comes here, and if
they're not perfectly good, at the very least they have the
intention of becoming good. They want to move in that
direction. Yeah.
This is kind of, this is the sort of people you have here.
So remember that. And that just the very fact that
someone has the intention to be kind is where they are
celebrating here, because at least then you're moving in the
right direction. Sometimes we can't do more than
having the intention because we are starting from somewhere.
Yeah, but at least we have the intention here.
So remember that when you see someone in the Buddhist
Fellowship. And all Buddhist organisations
have their share of disharmony. Yeah, it's just the weight of
the world. There's always going to be a
degree of disharmony. So when that happens, remember
these are really good people. These are people who are trying
their best. Yeah.
And kind of move your mind in that direction.
And as you do that, you start to appreciate the big picture
rather than being trapped by the small picture, which we tend to
be so often. And the border has a very
beautiful simile for this, actually has a couple of
similars. And one of the simile is of the
rag robed monk. Yeah.
I don't have a rag rob, unfortunately here, but it's a
rag rob monk. Yeah.
And the rag rob monk was always on the outlook for rags.
Yeah. It goes along the road.
Maybe we have rag rob nuns as well.
Not sure, but yeah, rag rob. So you look out for the rags.
And when you see a rag on the roadside, if you're a rag rob
monk, you're very happy. Yeah.
Rag. Hooray.
Yeah. You see a rag.
Most people say, OK, don't, don't touch the rag.
But for rag monks, very, very happy when they see a rag.
Guess what? You kind of you, you, you live
on that. You have to kind of have that to
survive in a sense. So you see a rag.
So what does the rag rope monk do?
Well, what he does, he he puts his foot down on one side and he
spreads it out with his other foot.
Yeah. So that he gets the overview of
the rag and he sees which parts are good, which parts are bad,
and the same thing. When you see a person, you kind
of put out all the qualities. You spread out all the qualities
of this person in your mind. You see the good qualities and
you see the bad ones. Then after spreading out the
rag, you're seeing the good part and the bad part.
You tear off the bad stuff. And what you do with the bad
stuff, you throw it out. Because it is rubbish.
You can't use it in your rag, Rob.
If it is really dirty or really rotten or whatever, you have to
throw it out. And it's exactly the same thing
with the people around you. When you have the good qualities
and bad qualities there, you tear off the side with the bad
qualities and you throw it out because it is rubbish.
It is useless. It's not going to help you in
your meditation practice or spiritual life.
You let it go and you throw it away here and then you take the
rag with you and then eventually you incorporate it into your rag
robber in the same way. You take those good qualities,
you take them into your heart and you carry them with you into
the future. So if ever in the future you see
the negative perception of that person coming up in your mind,
you turn your mind to those good qualities that you are carrying
around in your heart, and you remember that.
And you remember that is far more important than those little
negative qualities that are actually there.
Yeah. And then you can really start to
appreciate your fellow Buddhists, your fellow BF
members, your fellow monastics. Yeah.
Have to do the same thing in monastic life as well.
You know, everyone gets on a nerve sometimes, let's face it.
Yeah. So you have to use it
everywhere. So you use it everywhere, even
in monastic life. I don't know if you think
monastic life is like living in heaven, but sometimes it is, but
not always. Yeah.
So. So you use this innocent, very
powerful way. And the idea here is always to
emphasize meta. Meta is seeing the good
qualities in others. Always emphasize meta if we
possibly can. And sometimes people argue and
they say that, well, if you tear away the bad qualities and just
look at the bad ones, aren't you just deluding yourself?
Surely this person has bad qualities as well.
Aren't we supposed to see reality as it actually is?
Yeah. See both the good and the bad,
is that right? Yeah.
OK. So you agree with that one, Sir.
We supposed to see everything reality as actually.
So see both the good and the bad.
But the point here, and this is really what is the critical
issue to remember, is that we never actually know the reality.
Yeah, we think that we know the reality.
We think, oh, yeah, I can see the good qualities of this
person, see the bad ones. But then you ask someone else
and they have a completely different view of that person.
So who is right? What are the good qualities in
this person? What are the bad ones?
There is no neutral. There is no point of reference
that is final, which we can say these are the qualities in this
person and these other good ones, these are the bad ones.
We can't do that. Why is that?
Well, one of the reasons is because there is no self, Yeah,
there is no essence, there is nothing stable there which we
can always look at and say this is the person.
The person is always changing here.
So which person are you judging? The one from yesterday, the one
from last year, the one next year, the 1-2 lifetimes ago?
You can't say here. So because there is impossible
to really pin people down because there's always going to
be a degree of uncertainty. What are what are the good
qualities? What are the bad qualities?
Because that can't be done. We have to forget about seeing
things according to reality. When it comes to people's
qualities, seeing things according to reality is actually
something completely different. That is to understand suffering
in permanence and non self, which are all ever present
realities. Yeah, that is where we should
see things according to reality. But seeing people's qualities is
not one of those places. So there's a different question
we need to ask instead. Instead of asking and what the
person actually is like, we need to ask the question, what is
useful? Yeah, what is actually going to
make us progress on the path? That is what we should ask.
That is what matters. So what is useful in our
practice and what is useful in our practice is having meta
towards others. If you have meta towards others,
you're building up your good qualities and you're reducing
your bad ones, and you're going to be moving in the right
direction as a consequence. That is what matters.
And once you get that, once you get that, the purpose here is to
move you forward on the path. The purpose is not to see things
according to reality because it can't be done anyway.
Then you're able to let go of those bad qualities and you're
able to focus only on the good ones because you know that's
what matters. Yeah.
So this is one way of dealing with seeing someone's negative
qualities. Now, it is not always that you
are around the BF members. Yeah, the BF members are good
people, but not everyone is like BF members.
Yeah, those people who didn't come today.
Yeah. Or you know, but you know what I
mean, some of those people anyway, there's there's always
some people who are really difficult.
Some people that is very difficult for us to see the good
qualities in here. And if you can't see the good
qualities in someone, you need a different strategy here.
And that different strategy is 1 of compassion.
Compassion always works. If you can't have meta, you can
always have compassion instead. So how does this work?
And again, the Buddha has a beautiful simile to explain how
this works. And this is a simile of this
person who is walking alone, a desert Rd.
Yeah. Not only is this person walking
along the desert Rd. they are sick.
They have some kind of bad sickness.
But because it's a desert Rd. there's no medicine, there's no
water, there's no doctor, there's no one to help them.
So they're walking along this desert Rd., but there's no help
at hand if you are sick. And there's no help at hand,
especially if it is a serious illness, you're going to die.
Yeah. No one is there to help you.
So when you see someone who is living a bad life, someone who
cannot see any good qualities in there, what should you do?
You should see them like a sick person.
Yeah. They're like this person walking
along this road, walking towards death, walking towards very
serious suffering. Yeah, that is the right way of
looking at someone who doesn't have any good qualities.
Why is that? Because if you, if this person
really doesn't have any good qualities, what's going to
happen to them? What's going to happen to them
if they're going to suffer in the future?
They're going to suffer very seriously.
Yes. If you, you know what it's like
if sometimes you do 1 bad deed and if you're bad about it
afterwards, you know what I mean?
Yeah, sometimes you do something bad.
I think, oh, watch not then that you feel really bad about
yourself afterwards, but the person who habitually does bad
deeds, they're dragging themselves down.
They're kind of leading towards less and less happiness, less
and less brightness in the mind, and of course that you're going
to carry with you also into the future life.
They're moving towards suffering, big time suffering.
And they may be hurting you a little bit because of the bad,
bad actions, but they're hurting themselves far, far more than
they're hurting you. And they're kind of heading
towards darkness in the future. If you focus on the other person
this way, instead of focusing on your suffering, you focus on
their suffering instead, where they're heading.
Then compassion starts to rise in your heart, even with the
most difficult people, because you know that actually they are
deluded. They're blind.
They don't know what they're doing.
They want to be happy, but they're walking down the path
towards unhappiness. Yeah.
They're walking towards the casino.
Yeah. You know what?
So this is the this is the problem.
Yeah, the icon heading in the wrong direction.
And once you do that, something very beautiful happens.
When you focus on yourself, you think, oh, they are being bad
towards me. We get this self-centered
feeling, this negative feel, this kind of small feeling.
When you think too much about yourself and you are too greedy
and selfish, you feel small. You like your own little world.
Yeah. You don't have this expansive
mind that goes out to other people.
You're trapped in your own little world.
There's a barrier between you and others because if you are
greedy, you don't want other people to get it.
Yeah, this is mine. Stay away.
This is my stuff. Yeah, Don't.
Don't even look at my water because it's in my water.
And so it feels small, it feels confined.
It feels like your mind is really trapped inside of itself.
But the mind which is compassionate, the mind would
have met that embraces other people.
It embraces the world around you.
And because it embraces it, it feels large, it feels expansive,
It feels beautiful. Yeah.
People think that greed is good. You've heard that before that
greed is good. What was that, a Gordon Gekko or
something like that in the, in the kind of the Wall Street.
And also apparently people actually said that back in the
night. They still say it.
I think greed is good, but of course, completely, utterly
misguided. Greed is bad.
It makes you suffer, it makes you small, it makes you
contracts your mind inside of yourself.
So you turn around instead of thinking about yourself, you
turn the tables and you start looking at the other person
instead and you understand their suffering here.
And as you do that, something opens up inside of you.
You start to have compassion. It enables you to see the entire
world in a different way here. So this is how you develop the
meta and compassion in in your life, how you overcome the these
particular definements of anger and I'll will etcetera.
Remember, one of the very useful techniques that is really is an
important part of is that I, I always use one of the reasons
why we get angry with others is because we think that they have
free will to do whatever they want.
Yeah, So if they do something bad, they have a choice.
They could have done it differently, but they are
choosing to be evil. Yeah, you're choosing evil.
Anyone don't choose to be evil. Choose nice instead.
But it is not as simple as that. If you look at yourself and who
you are as a person, you start to recognise that a very large
part of you, maybe everything, what you are, is conditioned.
You're acting on habits, you're acting on the way you have been
brought up, maybe acting on the way you were in the past life
and all these kind of things. Yeah.
And it's not just you, it is other people too.
Essentially, to a very large degree, perhaps fully, we are
like robots. We have a programme that has
been written into US, written into US in a life or many
lifetimes, a long, long time into the past.
And because we are now, we're just playing out that programme
that was written down in the past, and we don't really have
much choice in the way we do things.
So remember that when someone comes to you, when someone does
something which isn't nice, when someone does something which is
even hurtful, remember they are like a red traffic lighter.
Yeah. With a red traffic lighter, you
don't get, maybe you do get angry.
I'm not sure you get angry with the red traffic lighter if you
do. Yeah, we all get crazy
sometimes. And sometimes maybe you get
angry. But usually we try not to get
angry with the red traffic light because we know it is really
stupid to get angry with the red traffic lights.
We kind of accept it, Yeah. People are like red traffic
lights. Yeah.
Sometimes they go red, sometimes they go green, sometimes they're
in between, they're yellow, whatever.
But because they are following a programme just like a red
traffic light, don't get angry with the people.
Yeah, Understand, they are conditioned by what they are.
They are bearing the largest brand of the suffering that
comes from the conditioning here.
And we can have compassion rather than focusing on
ourselves. So this is how to think in a
good way. This is what I mean by wisdom,
power rather than willpower. Yeah.
And as you develop these ideas, there comes a point when you
don't have much anger anymore here because you're able to see
the people around you with wisdom rather than with being
just reacting to the world as it is.
And you start flowing through the world in a very beautiful
way here, that really being always being pulled and pushed
back and forth by your emotions. Yeah.
And that is a very nice way of living here.
So that is the how to deal with the anger and ill will.
I would also just very briefly be talking for quite a while
already, but maybe just 2-5 more minutes and also very, very
briefly about how to deal. Think about the definement of
greed. Yeah, or, or, or craving and all
these kind of things, which often can be a bit more
challenging because it is more obviously greed tends to be or
craving is more related to happiness.
Yeah, in our life. And one of the ways to
understand this is the beautiful suit, which I always like to
talk about when I give them my talks.
And this is a suit I called the Samida suit I found in the
Sangyuta Nikaya, very close to the other suit I was talking
about before. And this is the suitor of this
devata. It's a deva God coming down to
venerable Samidi, who is a monk. And this deva says to Samidi,
you are a young man, for goodness sake.
He was still a young monk. Yeah, maybe in his 20s.
But you're a good young man. What are you wasting your time
being a monk when you can live, lay life and just enjoy
yourself? Yeah.
Enjoy essential pleasures. Have a wife, go to the casino.
Yeah. Eat.
Eat in nice restaurants, whatever it is.
Yeah. Or do all these nice things,
stupid. You are chasing nirbana, this
thing in the future, while you are relinquishing all the
happiness that is present right here and now.
In other words, you're not doing this stuff, but we can get right
away. And you're chasing this mirage
in the future called Jana's, called, called nirbana, all
these kind of things. And some of the things.
Yeah. Maybe you have a point.
Yeah, actually, he doesn't think that somebody is too wise to
think that, but it's kind of easy.
It kind of sounds reasonable. Yeah.
What am I doing being a monk? And I should be sitting there
next to you and this thing is there.
Yes, you can give the talk here. So what is what is going on
here? And somebody says, no, it's
actually the other way around. I'm not chasing what is in the
future. I'm chasing those things that
actually are right here in the present moment.
It is the pleasures of the world, the relationships, the
food, the whatever it is. That is what is always in the
future. That is what is not in the here
and now. It is Dumber.
The happiness of the Dumber is actually in the present moment.
And he is not entirely sure how to explain this to the devatas.
So he goes to the Buddha and he goes, yes, you're quite right,
that is exactly how it is. And the Buddha explains it in
more detail. But why is that the case?
And this one, once you get this, you start to understand the
value of the spiritual life. It is like a conundrum.
Yeah. It's like a kind of another kind
of little Cohen almost. It's like cryptic passage.
It seems to make sense that all the other happiness are
available now, but actually it's the other way around.
Why is that? And the reason why that is is
because all the happiness is of the world.
All the things that we're always chasing after in the world.
Yeah. Is always imbued with craving.
There's always craving. Part of sensual pleasure is
craving the running after things and never really finding real
satisfaction. And because you never really
find real satisfaction, there is more craving arising afterwards.
And there is no end to that. You just keep on going and going
and going, and you never find the satisfaction, the
contentment, the final sense of completeness that you're
actually looking for. It never comes.
Instead, you go on and on and on in the world.
And if you look at your daily life, yeah, how we live our
lives, it is basically always look going for something more,
chasing after something else, even if it's just kind of the
ordinary things of life. That too is imbued with that
desire, with that craving driving us forward towards
something else, whatever that might be.
But the happiness of the Dhamma is different.
Forget about the Janas and Ibana for a while, but remember that
whenever you turn your mind in the right direction, if you're
able right now to turn your mind towards kindness, towards
compassion, towards generosity, and if you use your mind in the
right way, you can do that right now, right here.
Yeah, But thinking in the right way, straight away, you feel a
sense of satisfaction, a sense of peace, a happiness that arise
in the present moment. If you are kind now, that
kindness that you have now has nothing to do with craving.
It is a satisfying happiness that actually exists right in
the present moment. And I will encourage you to
notice that distinction between the worldly happiness is
essential pleasures compared to the happiness of the path.
Whenever you feel a sense of joy in your meditation practice,
whenever you feel a sense of simple happiness just by doing
an act of kindness, it is in the present moment.
It's got nothing to do with craving here.
Whereas all the worldly happiness are always about the
future, always something you're chasing after her and not really
ever in the present moment. That is the important
distinction. And once you get that, you start
to see what is really valuable in this world, what actually is
worth following, what is worth going after.
There is no end to the worldly pleasures never actually reached
the point where you want to go. The only place to do that is in
the spiritual practice. So just to very briefly
summarize for you here, the purpose of the spiritual life is
to always improve in good qualities.
Yeah, this is kind of behind the the theme for for today's talk,
always improving good qualities decline and the bad ones.
And remember, I really recommend you at least once a year, maybe
when you go on a retreat or whenever you have an opportunity
to reflect, are you really improving in good qualities or
not? Because this is what the path of
spirituality is all about. If you are are improving in good
qualities and you are declining in the bad ones, it means you're
heading in the right direction. You're heading towards light,
you're heading towards happiness, you're heading
towards all the good things in life, all the things that you
really want, all the things that you thought you were going to
get by following, following central pleasures.
Actually, you find in a completely different way here,
all of those things are getting there.
And because it is happening here, you know you're moving
towards the goal of the spiritual life as well.
Eventually you will get there. Eventually you will get there.
Samadhi, eventually a meditation will come together.
Eventually we even go to Nirvana.
Why? Because you are heading in that
direction. This is the most important thing
here. So ask yourself this question
every now and again. And if you find that you are not
making the progress that you want to do, ask yourself why.
Because there's going to be a reason there why you're not
moving forward. And you have.
Sometimes you have to be brutally honest with yourself.
Yeah. It is not enough just to say,
you know, to If you're not going to be honest with yourself,
often, you won't actually make that progress.
You have to really look at your good qualities and bad qualities
as they are here. And then you have the
possibility to recharge that path and to practice more into
the future. And then life becomes so
meaningful. Yeah.
You feel you're doing something that really matters.
You have a real purpose. You have a real aim.
Your life is no longer just about the central pleasures, the
BMWs or whatever it is in the world.
Yeah, it's kind of despairing. If your life is about BMWs, it's
also empty at the same time. It's an empty life.
Do you want to have a life fulfilled or do you want to have
an empty life? Well, everyone of us wants to
have a life fulfilled there. So remember that by practising
in this way, this is how you find real purpose, real meaning
in life. And this is the most important
thing about the Buddhist path and the Buddhist teachings.
It actually is meaningful in a very, very profound way here.
And this is what is so beautiful about it.
So please keep on practising for a long time and maybe I don't
know, see what happens. But then if, if things aren't
going well, then not sure what to say about that.
If things like, oh, well, now you know what to do and keep on
encouraging yourself, keep on doing good things and gradually,
gradually you're moving in the right direction.
Anyway, that is enough for now. So I think we have a little bit
more time. So if there are any questions or
comments, please please feel free to to ask you.
Before I open the Q&A to the floor, for those who is too
stride to ask question in the public, we have our pen and
paper at the back. You can write it down and then
you can pass it to me. I can ask on your behalf and I
have one burning question here. Please.
Yeah. Yeah.
Is it burning? Yeah.
OK, we'll ask. My boyfriend?
The person asks. That sounds very burning, I
agree. The person has my boyfriend
suffer from a very specific form of OCD called retroactive
jealousy. Retroactive, OK.
Basically it means he is jealous of my past history within with
other guys. It's a very anxious and painful
mindset. He knows it as a delusion but he
can't seem to move past it. Any advice for him?
OK, OK, Very good. That's a very.
That's a very difficult 1, isn't it?
Yeah, So retroactive. Obviously I've learned something
new today. That's very, that's really good.
Any advice? Is it the boyfriend?
Is he here today anyway? Don't have to, don't have to
say. I think I, Yeah.
What, you know, one of the important things about Buddhism,
obviously, is to let go of the past.
Yeah. So here you're certainly not
letting go of the past. You're holding onto it a lot.
And I think one of the things is that the whole world probably
has this, this kind of past if you take into account the idea
of past lives. Yeah.
We all have kind of, you know, we all had relationships that we
might be jealous about in the past.
So basically, if that is the case, really you should be
jealous about the whole world. Yeah, because everyone has had
relationships that you could be jealous about.
So really, you start to understand that the whole idea
of being jealous about the past is actually, it's silly because
really there is no end to that. You can actually go on and be
jealous towards anyone because everyone has had maybe some
relationship that you know you you have grounds for being
jealous about. So just kind of pull back a
little bit, see the big picture, make it look a little bit
ridiculous. And when you are when it all
looks a bit ridiculous, then you can perhaps let's go over a
little bit as a consequence. So and the other thing is that I
think one of the things that we often do is that we tend to
glorify the relationships of other people.
Sometimes it may seem that other people have the really good
relationships. Yeah.
And these days, I don't know. I I I'm just told about it.
I don't know anything about it. This talk about Instagram, is
that something called Instagram? Yeah.
I, I've never even been on.
I don't know anything about Instagram.
But they said that everyone on Instagram tries to kind of
create the perfect life. Yeah.
As if everything is absolutely. Yeah.
And everyone else thinks, oh, everyone else has a perfect life
except for me, but everyone thinks that.
Yeah, everyone thinks that everyone has a perfect life.
So the problem is that we tend to glorify other relationships,
other people's life of thinking they are better than ours and we
somehow have to live up to their standard.
But actually, it isn't really like that.
Most people's life are exactly like our life.
That's the problem. Yeah.
They just kind of show us all the good side, don't see the bad
sides. But actually, it's exactly like
our life. And when you So when your
boyfriend thinks backs in those relationships, tell him about
all the bad things in those relationships.
Yeah, tell him about all the times it failed, all the time
you had an argument, all the time it didn't work out.
Remind him that what he is thinking about is some kind of
fantasy, some kind of non reality that never was there in
the 1st place. He's probably misunderstanding
the nature of those relationships.
Otherwise why would you be with him now?
Yeah, there must be a reason why you're with him.
So presumably that is because it actually is a decent
relationship in the 1st place. And maybe in this way you can
encourage him to kind of let go of this fantasy of something
that never existed in the 1st place.
Anyway, that's the best I can do, I'm afraid.
OK. You mentioned that when we live
this life, it's only the quality of mind that we will bring with
us. So quality of mind, does that
mean that if I'm highly intelligent in this world, are
we so in the next World? Or does it mean the, the value
system that we have, but value system change with time?
Or are you talking about the habits that we we have acquired
the the general habits that we have acquired or the clarity of
mind? Thank you.
Yeah. Well, these habits I think may
be the best way to think about it.
But many of those things that you're talking about are
basically habits. Intelligence is like a habit.
Yeah. You're, you're used to doing
things in a certain way. So you are intelligent.
Your, your Peace of Mind or your kindness or whatever of heart is
also habits that we developed. So in a sense, it is it comes
down to habits. And so you, and this is kind of
very interesting because if you don't do something about the
habits you have in this life and some of those habits are going
to be bad. Is that right?
Or have you got just good? Have you got some?
Most people have got some bad habits.
If you don't deal with them now, you're going to carry with them
with you in the future. Yeah.
And that's kind of scary because eventually bad habits, they come
out again in action and speech. So if you don't take the
opportunity now, you're going to carry them with you in the
future. And the same thing with the good
qualities. So intelligence is part of it
because intelligence is just a particular way of using our mind
of being. You know, we develop a certain
sharpness, clarity, mindfulness in being investigative in a
certain way here. That's part of it as well.
But I wouldn't be too worried about intelligence.
Much more important to be wise than to be intelligent.
It's nice to be intelligent, but much more important to be wise
because you can really abuse your intelligence in some of the
different ways and use it stupidly.
And then it becomes a source for your, you know, for your
suffering instead of source for something positive.
Yeah, OK. I have one question here and the
person asks how can we make progress in our careers when the
Dharma encouraged us to let go in our practice?
OK, it, it, it depends. I, I think, you know, if I were
you, I you have to get your priorities right.
This is the one thing, one of the first things.
And if your priority is to have your career, then there's going
to be a problem. Once you sit down to meditate,
you're going to think about what you're going to do at work.
Yeah. And this is actually going to
destroy your spiritual life. And it's not going to give you
that boost that actually makes your career work in the first
place. So very often by not
prioritizing your career, but make it a secondary thing.
Yeah, you actually, sometimes that actually helps you boost
your career because you're letting it go because you don't
make it so important. So and remember that in the end,
if you are very attached to your career, yeah, you cannot really
control it. You don't know where you might
get fired soon. You don't know where you're
going to get that promotion that you want to get because you have
no control over these things. You may get very disappointed if
your career is everything you have in life.
Disappointment very often comes as a consequence.
But if you don't prioritize your career, if you put priority into
your spiritual life, then even if your career fails, you have
done something else, something more profound that gives you the
degree of happiness, that gives you something more profound.
So you have something to take with you.
And if your career fails, well, actually, you can deal with it
much better if your career is everything and it fails very,
very hard to deal with and you end up jumping off one of the
high buildings downtown. Yeah.
And because you had enough. We shouldn't joke about those
things. But, you know, you know what I'm
talking about. And one of the strange things
that I have found in my life, the most successful people are
often the ones who don't really try too hard for getting
promotions, for actually moving forward.
The most successful people are the people who are almost like,
naturally happy here, who have a degree of care for the people
around them. Yeah.
And the career kind of just comes their way.
Yeah. People want them around because
they know they're good people and career just happens to them.
And for those people, even if the career doesn't happen again,
they will be happy regardless. So get your again your
priorities right. And I think that if you really
put the spiritual life first, the career will often tend to
happen as a consequence. Thank you Banti for insightful
thought. So what I'd like to ask is about
the part about our cravings and between the spiritual path.
The last part that you mentioned in your talk, so I do not get,
I'm not, I do not understand what you mean by why we should
prioritize our spiritual path and as in as a result and not
convinced. So could you could you simplify
it or give another example about?
OK, sure. What what I'm saying, and this
is kind of, these are some of the symbols that the Buddha
gives all the time, is that there is no final satisfaction
with craving here. Yeah.
Even if you get a relation, you get into a relationship and you
have a nice job and you have a good education, you have good
social status and all of these kind of things, you have enough
money or whatever, it will never actually satisfy that hunger
which is inside of you. And the reason it won't satisfy
you is because the hunger comes from a psychological lack.
Yeah, there was something missing inside of you.
You don't feel psychologically fulfilled.
Now, that psychological lack, that lack of happiness, if you
like inside of you cannot be fulfilled by external things.
So regardless of how wealthy you are, regardless of how many nice
relationships you have, regardless of the degrees you
have, regardless of the social status, that can never fill the
psychological need or psychological absence a hole
inside of you. The only way to do that is to
develop your mind. So if you feel genuine happiness
inside of you, that is where that whole, that incompleteness
starts to be filled up. Otherwise, you're just going to
keep on craving. You keep running after the same
thing again and again. And every time the craving is
going to whisper in your ear and say, oh, if you get this, then
you'll be happy. This relationship didn't work
out, but the next one is going to be perfect.
Yeah, actually that one didn't work out either, but the next
one is going to be perfect. And you've already done that a
million times before. Yeah.
Past lives, whatever. And still you're here looking
for another one. Are you looking for another one?
So it carries on like that and you never find that real
satisfaction. So you stand back and you start
to ask yourself, how can I feel the psychological lack that is
inside of me here? So you start to be kind towards
others, and that's suddenly when you just say something kind to
someone else and you feel something inside of yourself.
This is real happiness, this is peaceful, this is nice.
And you take that further and further and further until you
get to a happiness that is completely devoid of craving,
but it's also completely fulfilling.
And this is what you can find through meditation practice and
one day in the meditation practice, because you find the
completely fulfilling happiness, there's no more craving.
When there's no more craving, you can sit there for the rest
of eternity because nothing. What you do when there's no
desire, there's nothing to be done.
And that is by definition finding the answer to the
meaning of life. If you don't want to do anything
more, you don't want to go any further, you have actually found
the meaning of life. By definition, that's the
meaning here. So you, unfortunately, that
doesn't actually end there. The path still goes further
because you have to somehow make that permanent, otherwise you
come out of it again. But that gives you an idea of
the difference between the spiritual happiness and the
worldly happiness. Make sense?
Are you still not convinced? Are you a little bit more
convinced? OK, very good.
PJ, Hi. I have a question about the
first suitor that you mentioned about the Buddha saying that the
path is about not standing still and not striving.
The question that I have is that how do we ensure that we are
when our actions then are not actually tainted by delusion
actually? Because if we were to go about
our daily lives and we think, OK, I will not strive or I will
not stand still. So there's a very strong chance
that actually our minds being as impure as they are, that
actually that's the strong delusion there.
So how do we ensure that our actions are not actually like
strongly influenced by delusion that then causes us to go back
into the whole cycle or some? Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that is, that is a
problem. Yeah.
And it's something you can't really get out of 100%.
There's always going to be that there's some some degree,
obviously. So what you have, what you have
to do is you just have to basically use whatever wisdom
you already have. But instead of striving too
hard, you try to use whatever wisdom you have already and you
apply that. And then with that wisdom also
comes feedback. Does it work or not?
Yeah. And then you build up, you kind
of gradually dig yourself out of the hole, dig yourself out of
the delusion and gradually lift yourself out of this whole thing
here. So this is this is basically
it's a gradual process of coming out of this.
And then as you as you do that, you, you know, you emerge in a
sense and one I think important point here.
And one of the things, one of the questions you very often get
as a monastic is how to make decisions in life.
People often ask this, and one of the very simple answers to
that question is that don't make a decision when your mind is
under the influence of definements.
Because yes, there is always going to be a degree of delusion
there, but that delusion is far stronger when the definements
are stronger. So if you have a degree of
desire or ill will in your mind, of course, it's a very bad time
to make any choices. So be careful when you have
those qualities in the mind and then stand back, allow your mind
to become peaceful, and then there is less delusion in the
mind. This is a fairly objective way
of knowing whether you have much lot of delusion or not.
Then you can make choices. Something like that.
Yeah, OK. 45, I still have, I have a couple of question here.
I think maybe we can keep it until 1:30 because AJAM will
still have another talk at 1:30. OK, you may like to stay back
and thank you Ajam for the enlightening talks.
Shall we say 3 big sadu to AJAM SA do SA do SA very good.