All right, so let's get started. So welcome everyone.
And tonight I'm going to talk a bit about memory and mindfulness
and the connection between the two and how to use this in
practice. And this is something that you
find in the suitors. But maybe that connection
between mindfulness, yeah, and memory may not be so clear to
you, but in the suitors, it is a very important connection
between these. And I'll come back to that in a
second. But one of the reasons I want to
talk about this is because of the workshop that we have been
doing. You may have heard about this
gradual training workshop that that Bill was mentioning before.
Where's Bill? Bill is gone.
Disappeared. Oh, there it is.
OK Way in the back over there. So.
And what is very interesting about this gradual training?
Yeah. By the way, are you coming to
the gradual training workshop? Yeah.
You're OK One of you is nodding. OK.
If you're nodding. OK.
Great. Yeah.
Good. Because this is the real world
of the Buddha. Yeah.
That's when they get the real deal.
Tonight is like more of a kind of a mixture of various things.
Yeah, but in the on the Saturday workshop, that's kind of the
real, the word of the Buddha in detail.
Anyway, you can do whatever you prefer, of course, but it's it's
nice to hear what the Buddha had to say, of course.
And one of these teachings of the Buddha I'm just mentioning
now is this idea of the gradual training, the idea that the mind
develops gradually. The practice starts in a certain
place and it ends in a certain place.
And you have to know how to apply yourself where you're at
in that gradual training. It's very important.
But what is kind of extraordinary about this gradual
training? Yeah.
It kind of starts off. Yeah.
It starts off just ordinary people kind of starting the
spiritual path, and it ends up with awakening.
It's kind of extraordinary. Yeah, kind of.
It means everyone here can get awakened.
That's what it means. Do you believe that?
Yeah. You believe?
Wow. OK.
I'm very impressed. That's good.
I'm glad to hear that because sometimes people think me get
awakened. That's impossible.
The fact that you have confidence already is a very
good sign there, because you are human.
And if you're a human being, you can't get awakened.
And that's kind of the the really good news.
But what is interesting about this path?
Yeah. You would think that this path
begins with something that you have to do because it is your
practice. It is your gradual training.
So you think it begins. OK.
It begins with coming to the Buddha society.
Yeah. That's where it starts.
You know, for some people, it starts here, right.
So you think that kind of where the path begins.
But actually, no, the Buddha says that the path begins.
And this is kind of extraordinary when you think
about it. It begins with the arising of a
Buddha in the world. That's where the path begins.
And you may wonder, what's that got to do with you?
Yeah, Buddha arise in the world's kind of a random event.
It happens every now and again. What's that got to do with you?
What's that got to do with your practice?
Got nothing to do with your practice.
And that's kind of the point. A Buddha arises in the world,
allows the insight, allows the path to exist.
Without that Buddha, there is no path.
But not only that, not only the fact that the past spiritual
practice begins with something that's got nothing to do with
you, but that is really a significant because it means not
only that aspect of it, but entire path at the end of the
day has actually got nothing to do with you.
The path is something that arises.
The path is something that kind of works on you.
And you are almost like a passive recipient of these
Buddhist teachings. And then the path works through
you because you think, OK, yeah, that makes sense.
They're probably going to make me more happy.
They're going to reduce the suffering in my life.
They're going to make, you know, the, the maybe the world a
better place or whatever, at least our private world.
And so they're worthwhile practising here.
And so it is this idea of non self, of the path being
impersonal, the path being something that happens rather
something that we do often it feels like we are doing it, but
ideally we get out of the way and we allow the path to happen.
And that is why we're just doing the meditation before.
The idea of being the passive observer, being the passenger on
the train, yeah, rather than the driver of the train is such an
important part of this practice. You allow it to happen.
You're just aware. You're just observing what is
going on. And so this is kind of the
extraordinary thing. It really only occurred to me
recently how strange it is that a gradual train and begins in
this way here. Yeah.
And I thought, wow, that's kind of fast.
And sometimes the reason you see that is because someone says to
you, OK, let's do another workshop.
What are we going to do? Gradual training?
Yeah. OK.
So then you start to look at it in your eyes because you know
you're doing this workshop and so it's all very non self
impersonal. This is this beautiful word we
have in the Pali language called Anatar, which means impersonal
or non self or something like that.
And it shows us a lot about how the Dhamma actually works.
And So what this means is that if there is no, you know, if, if
it is kind of things are working from the outside or, or working
in whatever way in a conditioned way, it means that we have to
get the conditioning right. And so that conditioning, how
does that conditioning express itself?
Well, very often it expresses itself through your memories.
What is it that you remember at any particular time?
Yeah, sometimes, if you are conditioned in the right way.
Yeah. Through maybe listening to
Buddhist teachings. This is a very Buddhist kind of
way of thinking about it. The right way, of course, means
the Buddhist teachings. We're here at Damaluka, after
all. Yeah.
So the right conditioning is Buddhist teachings.
But if you get that kind of conditioning after a while, your
memories are Buddhist memories. You remember the Dumber, you
remember how you're supposed to live.
You remember how to react in particular situations.
This is this idea of bringing memory into the practice,
allowing the Dumber to express itself through you because you
remember these things. This is the power of memory when
you do it right. And of course, that memory
requires a lot of brainwashing. Is that right?
People don't like the word brainwashing.
I think it's a beautiful word because actually that's a very
Buddhist way of thinking about things.
Yeah. You're going to get brainwashed
anyway. Might as well get some good
brainwashing. Yeah.
Yeah, that's kind of the idea here.
This is something very, very realistic about that.
Very kind of, you know, that's actually what is going on from
Buddhist point of view. So get that good brainwashing.
Keep coming here every Friday or whatever, allow kind of
ajambaram or whatever to to brainwash you or the sutas or
the word of the Buddha or whatever.
So the word mindfulness that we use in Buddhism should be imbued
with this kind of memory. And when you start to look at
the way the word mindfulness is used in the sutis, the sutas,
for those of you who I knew, is the word of the Buddha.
Yeah, that's the sutis. If you look at the way this word
is used in the Pali language, it's called sati.
Sati translate into English as mindfulness.
And so if you really want to know what it means, you have to
go and read the word of the Buddha.
And it says very often if you have good sati, you remember
things that were done and said a long time ago.
Yeah. In other words, you have a good
memory. That's what it means, yeah.
This is one of the kind of crucial, maybe the main
definition of something in the 30s, where it's defined very
precisely here, you remember, in things that were said and done
long ago. And you may see that, yeah, in
your own life, if you are, if you are feeling at ease, you're
feeling the mind has a certain degree of clarity.
Maybe after meditating here, here for half an hour or
whatever, afterwards you feel the sense of clarity and you can
see that you remember more as a consequence.
In the suitors, it also says that if you want to remember
things, like, you know, you want to recite something, maybe you
want to recite the verse from the Buddha, or you want to
remember something that you know, was, you know, you read
somewhere or whatever. That too, is done through this,
through mindfulness, the clarity of the mind.
Yeah, the memory is good. Again, this is mindfulness.
Things occur to you easily if you want to remember something.
Yeah. There's a very important part of
this idea of sati. So sati is a mixture, on the one
hand of this idea of awareness, Yeah, which which is what we're
trying to develop in meditation practice, awareness.
And on the other hand, the memory.
Memory and awareness coming together, That's really what
sati is. And when you think about it,
yeah, I was just thinking about this this afternoon because I
decided to talk about this topic.
And I thought, actually, is meditation just about awareness?
Very often we say meditation is about awareness.
You are aware of the breath, you are aware of loving kindness.
You are aware of whatever meditation object you're doing,
just aware of what is happening, you're just present.
But is it ever just awareness? And of course, the answer is no,
it is not. Not ever just awareness.
All meditation, all mindfulness is imbued with a sense of
remembering what you're doing, the instructions that you're
supposed to have. That comes with the mindfulness.
When you have clarity of mind, when you're fully aware, you're
not just that you are present, but you also have a feeling of
what you're doing, why you're doing it, Often called
sampajania in the suit. Sampajania is really a way of
thinking about bringing the memory of the teachings into
your practice. It's actually, I think it is
false when we say that mindfulness or meditation is
about awareness, is always about this mixture of awareness and
memory. Satti Sampajaniya, as you see in
the Suta sampajaniya is really wisdom, but that wisdom is the
memory and understanding and presence of the teachings of the
Buddha as you do your practice. So this is the the idea here.
Yeah, memory, bringing it into, into this whole path of practice
that we're doing. I will give you some examples of
how this works. And this is a very kind of
Broadway of thinking about it. And this is a symbol that I've
been kind of using recently. And I will tell you the symbol
again tonight. Some of you have probably heard
it before, but I think it kind of illustrates the power of
memory very clearly. Yeah.
And this simile which I started using, I don't know, about a
year ago, 2 ago or something, is the simile of someone crossing
the street. Yeah.
If you are about to cross the street, what do you do?
It's two options. Yeah, you can either, either you
can just walk straight into the street.
Yeah, like down in Perth. Yeah.
St. Georges Terrace, you can just
walk straight in the middle there.
Just walk straight in. That's one possibility.
Don't not recommend it. Right?
Too dangerous. Yeah.
If you just walk without looking or, you know, don't know what's
going to happen next. The alternative.
Yeah, the better alternative. And please take this away.
But otherwise someone might sue me for kind of malpractice or
something. Saying just walk into the street
is of course you look left and right before you go into the
street. That is the appropriate way.
How often do you see people just walking into the street?
And how do often do you see people look looking left and
right? Almost everyone looks left and
right before they walk into the street.
Unless you are maybe suicidal or something, right, you wouldn't
do that. And what is interesting about
this is that even if you are completely distracted, even if
you are kind of, you know, have your mobile phone in your hand
and you're doing all whatever. Yeah, not certainly not kind of
watching what's happening around you, walking into lampposts,
walking into people or whatever. Even if you're almost 100%
distracted, when you come to that street, you always remember
to look left and right. Isn't that interesting?
It's very interesting because even when mindfulness is very
low, we remember to do the right thing.
And so there is something that comes in addition to the idea of
awareness that is more important than awareness.
Sometimes we focus too much on the idea of awareness in
Buddhism, not enough on the idea of remembering the teaching,
having right view, looking at the world in the right way.
In many ways that is more important because even if you
have no awareness, as in this case, you're on your mobile
phone doing whatever, yeah. Then when you come to that
street, because you have been pre programmed, because you have
been brainwashed at the Mallorca Buddhist Centre enough times,
whatever it is, when you come to that street, yeah, you look left
and right. Even if you have no awareness in
your life as a Buddhist, as someone who wants to practice
the spiritual part, even if you don't call yourself a Buddhist,
you remember the Dhamma, you remember the teachings, you look
left and right before you act, before you speak, even before
you think. That is the power of having the
memory, the right of you that imbues that remnant of
mindfulness. You may not have much
mindfulness at all, but whatever remains of mindfulness is imbued
with that idea which allows to do the right thing.
Yeah, it shows you the power of right view.
The right view, when you come to that street, is the view of
danger. Cars are harder than human
bodies. If there is a kind of a
collision between the human body and the car, the car is going to
win every time. Yeah, You know what that is
like. Hopefully you don't actually,
but you get what I mean. So this is a way of thinking
about the power of memory, the power of right viewer and how to
bring that, you know, and how to use that.
And that shows you that what we have to do to kind of have that
strong memory when it is required in our practice is of
course, we have to keep on contemplating these teachings.
We have to keep on coming back to them.
We have to keep on understanding what they are about.
So that memory is strong, that right here is strong.
It is embedded deeply inside of us.
And so when you need it, it is easy to bring it out.
It is easy to know what is going on.
That is one kind of way of thinking about this.
Another way of thinking about this is another kind of little
simile that I've been using recently, gives an idea of how
to again allow the dumma to percolate through your mind.
Arise. Yeah, when you when you need it.
And this is the simile of what happens when I go back to my
little cootie here in Serpentine.
In Serpentine, that's where the monk's monastery is.
But in Yana Monastery, the nun's monastery is up in Kichaganapa.
So we are kind of two very different places.
And so if you haven't been to our monk's monastery, anyone
here who hasn't been to our monastery, everyone has been to
our monastery. OK, great.
Yay. Come more often, that's what I
say. So it's down in Serpentine,
yeah, down kind of an hour South of Perth or whatever.
And cootie is the word. I just met before.
It's like a little Hut. So we have like a little huts in
the Bush. Yeah.
Lots of trees around and all kind of things.
We have little huts and my cootie, my Hut, I have my own
little Hut. Venable.
Venable Diado has his own little Hut.
I'm sure Venable Peck has her little cootie in the Masara
monastery. My cutie is about 400 metres
away from the main building, so quite a long distance.
Yeah, we have quite large pieces of land down there.
And when I go to my cutie and Nicholas over here can vouch for
everything I say. I'm not telling any lies.
This is the true truth of the monastery.
When I go to my cutie here, I can't really see any other
cuties around. I can see one cutie far away on
the hill on the other side that's kind of 500 metres away.
I can't. I can't even see any people
there. So when I go back to my little
cutie, it's like complete, really sense of seclusion.
Yeah. You're really by yourself.
It's just you, the Kangaroos. A few ticks, of course.
Yeah, a few ticks, a few mosquitoes or whatever.
But it's actually really beautiful and peaceful.
And this is kind of how we live in our monastery here.
And I have this path going up to my cutie.
Yeah, and one of the things that I have in my QT, which probably
many of you don't have, I have a view.
I have the most magnificent view.
Isn't that right, Nick? Lissa, I have this extraordinary
view when I get my QT is kind of high up on the hill, right?
This is the darling Skype, so high up on here, maybe 200
metres above sea level. And so I look out, there's no
trees in front of my QT. It's kind of just open
landscape. And I see the plain below.
You had maybe 20-30 kilometres away.
I see the Indian Ocean if my coot is kind of facing West and
also a little bit northwest. So I look northwest and I think
to myself, wow, that's where Sri Lanka is.
I feel really happy when I remember Sri Lanka.
I love, I love Sri Lanka. I've been to Sri Lanka many
times. It's such a beautiful, green and
marvellous little island and when you go there you feel at
home. I feel at home here in Perth as
well. But there you are kind of among
other Buddhists. So I kind of look out to Sri
Lanka. Unfortunately, in case you
hadn't noticed, the earth is curved.
It's not flat. Some people came as flat.
It's actually wrong. It's curved.
If it was flat, I could see Sri Lanka, but I can't see Sri
Lanka. So I guarantee you it is not
flat. They guarantee it is curved.
And so I kind of look, I wish there was a big mirror in the
sky so I could kind of see Sri Lanka in the mirror.
I can't be coming down. But I, that's what we, maybe we
can do that one day. We can shoot up a mirror with a
rocket if we become way too wealthy as Buddhists.
So I this is the kind of view I have for my QT here.
Yeah, this is kind of how I think sometimes.
And then north of Sri Lanka, very close, is India.
Yeah. So there's India, the birth
place of the Buddha, where Buddhism kind of was so strong
for 1000 tooth for about 1500 years before they gradually
faded away. And so I look out to my QT, I
see Sri Lanka, I see India there.
I think about the Buddha. Isn't that extraordinary?
Yeah. That's kind of what I get from
my QT. Yeah.
This is how we live in
Serpentine on this beautiful hill overlooking the Indian
Ocean. In this way.
Yeah. Now one thing we also have in my
QT, because it's far away here, I have a toilet.
Yeah, because I can't go down to the main toilet.
But I can't. But it's a long way.
And sometimes business is urgent.
So you can't really, you know, you.
What are you going to do? And so behind my QT, maybe 40
meters behind my QT, I have a hole in the ground.
That's my toilet. There's no building.
Yeah, there's no, there's nothing.
There's just kind of hole in the ground or some planks or
whatever. And that's kind of my turn.
And that toilet is even higher up than the QT, so the view is
even better. So the toilet really has the
best view in the world. And I can stay again.
I can kind of look at the Sri Lanka on my toilet actually,
it's not so nice to think about with the dumb I when I go to the
toilets, I look in a different direction a little bit when I go
there. So it's kind of to make things
different. And so this is kind of the open
air toilet. Yeah.
And it's kind of exciting because you never sometime maybe
people might come by, right. Actually this is really in the
Bush. The chance of people coming by
is virtually 0. So it's kind of, it's kind of
nice, but it's kind of really, really open air.
It's really nice. But, well, the reason I'm
talking about all of this is because this is a, first of all,
to give it a feeling for what it is like to be a Buddhist monk.
Yeah. So if you like these ideas,
yeah, maybe you should consider becoming a monk or a nun.
Yeah. Because this is kind of how we
live there. And if you ever want to see how
we live in the monastery, come on the Katina day.
Yeah. After the rainy season, we have
my guided tours of the monastery.
You can see some of the QTS. You get an idea.
And maybe Nicholas will take you on a special tour to my QT.
Sorry, Nicholas, I'm just being being very naughty here.
So. But what happens, of course,
because all of this relies on path through the Bush.
Yeah, sometimes the paths grow over here.
Yeah. And I have noticed in my mind
when my path to my toilet grows up, because that path is
obviously important, often the mine gets very reactive.
OK, I got to do something about this time now is to kind of
clearing the path. Yeah, just like we clear the
noble air full path of problems or whatever.
I want to clear the path up to my toilet or maybe to the main
buildings or whatever. So the mine gets very reactive.
I want to do things. I want to sort this out now.
Now is the time to do this. I want to go up to the main area
and kind of tell the Enigaricas, please come down to my cutie or
the nearest layperson. Yeah, maybe whoever and say, oh,
you know, I need to get things cleared.
Yeah, please chop down this branch or this tree or whatever
is in the in the way here. And so this is one of the things
we do. You may wonder why don't I cut
down the tree myself? And the reason is because we
have rules against cutting down trees.
And so instead we go to the some non monk and we say to non monk,
we can't say cut down this tree because that's kind of
tantamount to doing it yourself. So we say things like this tree
is in the way here. And then we just remain silent
and see see what happens. And if they kind of look at you,
some people are really stupid, even they give a hint like that,
they don't get it right. And they say, yeah, what it.
Yeah, it's in a way, yeah. So what?
And then they kind of walk off or whatever.
But usually when they give a hint like that, people kind of
get the idea, yeah, OK, so they maybe help you out.
But I realised that actually here, it's not a good way of
clearing a path. There's often no need for
cutting down the tree here. So I allow the reactive mind to
actually just be there. I stay with it instead.
OK, forget about the reactive mind, wait a little bit.
And what is amazing when you wait a little bit is that an
alternative view starts to arise.
You start to see, actually I don't have to cut down any
trees. There is an alternative path on
this side over here or on that side over there.
There is a dead tree over there that I can remove.
And when I remove that dead tree, there is plenty of a path,
or maybe after a while the branch falls off or whatever.
There's always alternatives. And it's exactly the same thing
on the spiritual path. Very often we just need to wait.
We shouldn't be so reactive very often.
When we are reactive, we're actually blocking the path.
Instead, we are doing too much. Yeah.
Instead of allowing things to open up in a natural way, which
is far more easy, far more beautiful, far more
satisfactory, we go in there and we cannot.
We want to destroy and take things down.
In the same way, in our spiritual practice, we try to
destroy the obstacles on the path.
We want to do something. We sit in our meditation, watch
the blooming breath, watch, watch the breath.
Get rid of that anger. Yeah, squeeze it out of the
mind. And we are too reactive.
We force ourselves too much. We don't wait long enough, we
don't sit back and allow the Dhamma to kind of arise in our
mind because you have it in your mind already.
Yeah, yeah. Most of you have been coming
here for a long time. You know so much about this
Dharma teachings. Be less reactive in your life,
wait more, be patient, allow the Dharma to arise because you have
it inside of you. And if you do that, then you'll
be have a far easier and also a far more wholesome and skilful
life. As a consequence of that, all
this doing, all this activity, the trying to kind of make the
path work, Actually, very often it does the opposite.
We end up messing things up because that doing that trying
to kind of make the path work usually comes from the sense of
self, comes from an ego. It comes from a place that is
not Dumber, not the teachings of the Buddha.
The Buddha said that the ego is a problem.
The ego gets in the way. The ego doesn't understand what
is right. The Buddha understands what is
right. And so we need to allow these
teachings to take over our minds.
And then you are on the right track.
So these are two simple ways of allowing mindfulness in our
ordinary daily life to rise in your mind.
Stop, be patient, don't react. Wait until you know what is the
right way. Allow the path to open up by
itself itself, and you see the right way of moving.
Going left, going right, taking a step backwards before you take
2 steps forwards is often the right way of going about things.
And so this changes your attitude a little bit.
Yeah, it changes the way you think about Dumba.
Don't be the doer, don't be the agent.
Don't try to make the path work. Allow the path to rise inside of
you because you already know the memory is already there.
This memory that has been fell down or put down within you over
a long period of time. You just have to allow it to
come back again. So this is how you can use it in
ordinary life, but you can also use these ideas in your
meditation practice. It's not just about owner, but
also in meditation we need to do do these things and there is
various ways of doing this. One of the most basic ways of
using the idea of memory in meditation is what we call the
recollection meditations. These are ways that Buddha
talked about and encourages to use to kind of give rise to joy
and happiness. These are called anusati.
Sati is mindfulness, anusati is recollection.
It's the same word except for anu in front, a little prefix in
front. And so we use our understanding
of the Dhamma and we recall that.
And when you recall that, it has a powerful effect on your mind.
Six different kinds of recollections.
Yeah. One of these very simple
recollections that I really recommend you to do, and it's
very, very beautiful and very powerful, and it gives you a
sense of self worth. It feels good about yourself, is
to recall your own sealer, your own virtue, your own goodness.
Yeah. You've been coming here for a
long time. Many of you are really good
people. At the very least, you are
trying really hard. And what a wonderful thing that
is that we try to do what is right in the world.
And so you remember that actually I'm trying my best.
Yes, I have conditioning that makes it difficult.
And sometimes I make mistakes. Maybe I make mistakes often, but
So what I'm trying. And then you think about the
things that you have done. You think about the precepts you
have undertaken. You think about how you treated
other people well, for the most part.
And you feel the sense of warmth inside of you because you know
that you are really, you are a good person.
This is called sealer, Nusati. Remembering your sealer.
And to be able to do that, you have to remember it, right?
You have to remember the good things.
Don't remember all the bad things you have done there.
Actually forget about the bad things you have done.
Yeah. Who cares about the bad things
that you have done there? Are you able to forget the bad,
the bad things you have done there?
It's hard. Most people complain.
Oh, I can only think about the bad things.
I can't think about the good things.
Take a leaf out of Adam Brahms book.
Yeah, ask Adam Bram. He can never remember anything
bad that he has done, right? And of course he hasn't done
many bad things, but he can't even remember anything bad
things I had done. I have done a few bad things,
right, But if I ask Adam, he's completely erased it from his
memory. Here, if I say to Adam Bram.
Oh, do you remember that this monkey did this two years ago?
No, I can't remember that at all.
Completely forgotten. All I can remember, he did this
nice thing, this beautiful thing.
Adam Bram only remembers the good things.
This is why he tells this story of, you know, the.
I think you know, what is it the.
Anyway, I'm not going to try to remember Adam Bram's story.
Is it going to fail utterly miserably so.
But one of the story of not picking up the chicken dung, but
just picking up what is actually valuable in the world there.
Yeah. And so train yourself to do
that. Train yourself to see the good
in other people and the good in yourself, because most people
have good aspects to them. That is what is interesting.
That is what is valuable. That is where the treasure lies.
The treasure doesn't lie in fault finding.
The treasure doesn't lie in being a clever critique.
Some people, they think I'm a clever critique.
Yeah, I criticise everything in clever and fancy ways and they
cannot take a certain pride in that.
Actually it's a very bad idea because it leaves these traces
of memory that are not usable in the future that actually drag
you down. But if you remember in the the
beautiful qualities, then when you sit down to meditate, you
can bring that recollection up, that memory up, and it makes
you, the meditation, joyful and happy because you remember the
good things, forgive the bad things that you have done.
You may have done some bad things.
Actually, almost certainly you have.
Yeah, I have. There are certain memories.
I have tried to erase my memory as well.
I'm trying to follow Adam Brahm's path, erasing all the
memories. Haven't quite succeeded yet.
Adam Brahm is kind of a long, long way ahead of it.
But I'm kind of trying to follow in the slipstream of Adam
Brahm's giant truck pulling me along in the slipstream there.
So try to follow that because it's very powerful and beautiful
when it happens. That's one way of using
recollection, memory. Yeah.
Mindfulness and memory coming together.
Another way is to remember the teachings of the Buddha.
Sometimes you may remember maybe a single verse, something very
beautiful and powerful. You have read in the suitors
something you have heard here. Yeah.
Hatred never ceases through hatred in the world.
Hatred only ceases through love. This is an eternal law.
It's a beautiful saying here. If you can remember that simple
saying like, wow, I think that's actually, and it's so true,
right? Hatred only begets more hatred.
Then there's revenge. There's more problems.
The way to end hatred is to not kind of pay it back with more
hatred, but instead to change the attitude and bring something
positive out instead. So you remember little simple
things like that. Wow, that's so inspiring.
Did the Buddha really say that? And you understand, the Buddha
has this towering spiritual genius in human history here.
To me, the Buddha's head and shoulders above everyone else,
bar none, not bar none, but bar nobody here.
I didn't mean you, I Opeka. So yeah, the Buddha is really
extraordinary here. And so just remembering those
teachings, remembering what the Buddha was about, remembering
that you're part of this here at the Buddha Society, Wow, what an
amazing thing that is. And you lift yourself up and you
use this idea of recollection to do something powerful to your
own mind, feeling a sense of joy, uplift, happiness, meaning,
purpose in life, going somewhere real, not just kind of going in
circles all the time. Something real powerful
happening in your life. So this is another way of
thinking about these recollections.
There are more where there's six recollections altogether.
I've given you 2. Imagine how exciting the other
four are when you only heard two.
You're not going to hear about them tonight.
You're going to have to come back another time to hear about
the other ones. This is how we lure you back to
the Buddhist society. Yeah, this is how the
conditioning works. So this.
I just want to give you a flavour tonight.
I don't want to kind of give you a full kind of detail of these
things. Usually when I talk about these
things in great detail is on meditation retreats.
This gives an idea what is happening.
Yeah, but that is not the end of it.
That's the recollections. There's a bit of a noise, static
noise coming through the speakers.
Maybe a microphone is on or something.
I'm not sure. Yeah, so the other way of doing
this. Yeah, another the important
part, which kind of fits in with how we're doing things here at
the Dama Loca Centre. Yeah, when we're doing like
mindfulness or breathing or just awareness in the present moment
or whatever, even then you have to remember the teachings.
I mentioned before that when we meditate.
Yeah, You have to have the memory of the teachings, like
the instructions have to be there with you.
If you forget the instructions, then you may be aware.
Yeah. And then you lose your
awareness. You are gone and you don't
really know what's happening and you forget about the
instructions. Or you are aware, but you forget
to watch the breath and you are aware of the sounds.
Or you are aware of somebody at the back of the room doing
something that shouldn't be doing, like falling asleep.
Actually falling asleep is OK. And then maybe you get irritated
by somebody. Yeah, that's the last thing you
should be doing while you please don't get irritated by anyone.
Everyone here is doing their best.
Everyone here just needs to relax and sometimes that means
you fall asleep or whatever. That's OK.
Have compassion with people when they fall asleep.
That's what I mean by not remembering the teachings.
And so you have to bring the memory of the teachings with you
while you're doing the breath meditation, while you're just
being aware, knowing what you're doing.
And if you have that clarity of the mind, it is as if the
teachings are there with you, you know whether what you're
doing is suitable, you know, whether it will achieve the
right kind of purpose. Yeah.
You are aware. OK, I'm getting a bit of ill
will. OK.
I know that that is wrong. You know, it's straight away
because you have the awareness. And this is this idea of Satya
sampajandya in the Pardi language, the knowledge of
whether whether what you're doing is right and appropriate
for the occasion or not, and that you take with you into the
meditation. And the mind state that you kind
of have when you do this is this kind of large, broad mind state.
It's not a mind state where you have kind of just just an
awareness without any kind of clarity.
It's a clarity about what is going on.
Often this is called full awareness in translation into
English, or sometimes it's translated as clear
comprehension. Some Pagania, one of my
favourite monks, translate as situational awareness.
Yeah, which is kind of a bit technical, but in other words,
you have awareness regarding the situation you are in and you
know whether what you're doing is appropriate to that
situational awareness. He has a large mind.
It's a mind that encompasses more than awareness, but has
this feeling of the presence of the Dhamma right here, right in
the present moment. Yeah, that's beautiful.
When you feel the Dhamma is with you, it's like you're carrying
it with you. And this shows you why making
too much effort in a meditation is the enemy of your practice.
If you try too hard in a meditation, you block out that
awareness of the Dhamma, because the trying often comes from the
sense of self. The trying is the activity of
the ego, and it doesn't allow the Dhamma to percolate, to
shine through, to rise to the surface.
The ego is there in instead. And you know what it is like.
If you try to remember something, I'm sure you have all
been there. Oh, What is the name of that
person again? Oh, I can't remember.
It's on the tip of my tongue. Tongue.
And the more you try, the less you can remember it.
You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm sure everyone has been
there. Or maybe it's just me.
Maybe I'm just really weird. But I'm sure I'm not just the
only weird person here. Yeah, we're all a bit weird.
And then you let go. You stop trying.
Yeah. And the moment you let it go,
bang, it comes into your mind straight away.
Yeah, that is because you are allowing that memory to come
through. You're allowing it to rise in
your mind. That's exactly the same thing
with the Dumber. If you want to have success in
the meditation, instead of doing it, instead of trying to kind of
be ego based or self based, you want to reduce that as much as
possible. And the more you reduce that and
you'll be surprised how many layers of this there are.
You may think that you're not doing anything too much in the
meditation, but actually probably are doing too much
already. You're not aware that you're
even doing it. The more you let go of that
doing, the more you get out of the way, the more the Dumber
shines through, the more you have that ability to recall what
you're supposed to be doing right now, in the present.
This is one reason why we should not be trying to harden our
meditation practice, because it blocks our ability to have some
pajania, clear comprehension, full awareness, the clarity
about what you're supposed to be doing here and now.
So again, use remember. Yeah, the teachings are so
important. All of these things together
require you to understand what the Dhamma is, inquire you to
study what Buddhism is all about, require you to reflect on
what these teachings mean for you.
How should you apply them in your life?
Yeah. What does it mean in your daily
life to use the Dharma teachings?
What does it mean to use it here at the Dhamma Loca center?
What does it mean to use them when you are on retreat?
The more you understand what these things are about, the more
you have you include them in your daily life, the easier it
is to remember them when the time is right because you have
the kind of the right conditioning in your mind, the
right view, the right understanding that allows those
memories to come out what is happening here.
And so this is how you build up that thing that allows the whole
path to unfold. And this is one of the reasons,
as I mentioned many times here before, why right of you, right
understanding is at the very foundation of the Buddhist path
because this is what allows all of these other things to unfold
in the right way here. And as you keep on practising in
this way here, there comes a day here.
When maybe you too have a very deep insight into these
teachings and that deep insight into the teachings of the
Buddha, really deep. It's called stream entry.
Here you enter the stream of the Dhamma.
From now on the Dhamma is natural.
It just happens all by itself. And the reason is because now
it's no longer a memory here. What used to be a memory, what
used to be allowing the Dhamma to kind of, you know, come to
the surface in your mind, has now been integrated into your
personality because you have seen what it is all about.
It is integrated into your psyche, into your psychology.
You have, in a sense, become that Dhamma.
That Dhamma has become a very powerful part of you.
You no longer need to remember it so much.
It is a natural part of who you are as a human being.
And this is where memory turns into wisdom.
Memory turns into a final kind of faith, the full faith in the
Buddha, because you know, the Buddha was right in what he was
saying. The confidence in the Buddha is
complete. And that is where, ultimately,
this path of memory leads to the understanding, to the full
insight into the teachings of the Buddha, as the Buddha
himself taught them that. OK, so I'm going to stop there.
And so there you are. That's tonight's talk.
Yeah. All right, So now we have an
opportunity, as usual, to ask questions and to make comments.
Yeah. Mr. Prem is quick off the mark
over here. So, yeah, you know what Prem is?
Yeah. You know Prem already.
OK. Prem is known by everyone.
No one, no one does not know know how to say this.
Yeah, OK. Thank.
You so much. Yeah.
What is that by the way, Alistair?
Thanks, Alistair. Yeah.
Oh, please, Prem, just go, OK?
Recollection of 1's weaknesses or things that one could not
achieve, etc. Would that help in cutting down
or lowering the sense of self, Sakayati?
OK, so by reducing your weaknesses or whatever.
You can recollecting your weaknesses.
Yeah. You mean like your pride maybe?
Yeah. Yeah.
So you're reducing your pride because you don't think you are
such a goody goody? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that you reduce your sense of self, don't you?
I, I don't think so. I don't think that's the well, I
mean, sure, it is good to be aware of 1's weaknesses, but you
know, I mean, it's not, one shouldn't be conceited or
narcissistic and think that one is kind of the, you know, the
kind of the, an arrow hand when you're just a kind of ordinary
kind of person. Some people are like that.
But so sometimes, yeah, it is important to be have some
awareness of all weakness. I I agree with that.
But most people tend to overdo it dramatically.
And so the problem is really the other way around.
We think too much about that. We think too much not only about
ourselves. We always see the negative in
other people too, too much. Is it a rejoicing in other
people's good qualities? It's amazing anyone has any good
qualities in this world. Everyone should.
You know, it's it's remarkable, but what I would do to reduce
your sense of self and conceit is not so much thinking about
your flaws, but more thinking about yourself as a conditioned
person. It's not because of you that you
are a great person. Premier good nothing to do with
you. You're not to reason that it's
supposed to the Buddha that you are a great person.
You should thank the Buddha for that.
No need to get conceited about your good qualities.
I I have a lot of, lot of respect for you.
And I think of myself in the same way.
Why should I be conceited about this?
Yeah. What do I I mean, I'm not going
to say that I have any good, but maybe I do.
If I do have some good qualities, then I should be
grateful for the Buddha. I should be getting from a bit
to my parents. They'd be grateful to my fellow
monks and my fellow nuns for being so kind and compassionate
to me. Grateful to Ajam Brahm, Grateful
to the Buddha Society for providing me with a cutie in the
Bush. Grateful to the whole world.
Yeah, for kind of making it possible.
It's got nothing to do with me. My sense of self has no wisdom.
My sense of self is stupid. The Buddha, that's where the
wisdom comes from. Everything.
Every time I do something wise, it's because of something has
been input in my life. That is a much better way of
overcoming conceit and the sense of self.
And Sakhi Aditi understandings. Nothing to do with you.
And then if you have a good quality, you can just be happy
about it without feeling conceited.
You can feel joy. Yeah.
Got this good quality. What a wonderful thing that is,
to have these good qualities. It just brings joy and happiness
in the world. I'm living well.
Marvellous. You can enjoy the goodness by
being conceited about it. That's what I would do.
Your microphone is not working, I think, Prem.
Yeah. Thank you.
Sathi and Sammasati, could you touch on the difference?
And also is there something called some memory?
Some memory. Yeah, I think there is actually.
I think you have a good point there.
It's an interesting point. The sammasati is the is the kind
of mindfulness of the Sathi patanas.
Yeah, the when you do meditation properly and that arises, 11's
mindfulness has been really established in your life.
So when you sit down, your mindfulness is clear and bright
and you are watching the breath. That's when you have some sati.
So there's this. The mindfulness is no longer
blurred. It is not.
Your mind is not kind of going off the future and the past all
the time. You don't lose your sense of
awareness. You're kind of fairly strongly
present in the here and now. Yeah.
And so much so that you're able to follow the breath quite
easily. That's summer sati.
That's the sati botana practice. Sati is broader than that.
Sati happens also earlier on the path.
Every stage of the path requires a degree of sati.
Yeah, When? When you are saying OK, Oh, I
no, maybe I shouldn't say that. Maybe it says something nice
instead. At that moment, you have sati
about the teachings, and that moment is a mixture of awareness
and summer memory, as you put it, right, because you have the
right memory. You could call it yone somana
sikara, Right? That's one way of thinking about
yone somana sikara. The wise attention is that your
attention is imbued with the memory of the teachings, with an
understanding of the teachings, with the kind of wisdom that you
have, with the brainwashing that you have achieved in the past.
Yeah. And that summer memory is
basically the memory of the Dhamma, the memory of what is
right, what is good, what is appropriate.
Yoni, Somanasikara, sampajaniya, whatever.
Yeah, sure. OK.
Please. Already have.
Yeah. John Bramley Yeah, in your top
tonight. You know, you mentioned about
memories and you also talk about the recollection of the Dharma,
right? Yeah.
Isn't the recollection of the Dharma the first of the seven
factors was enlightenment? The first of the seven factors
enlightenment is it can be that the Satya sambojanga.
Yeah, Bajangas. The mindfulness, yes, yeah.
One of the ways of of practising that is the recollection of the
Dhamma. Specifically.
You remember the Dhamma. That's one way.
There's only one way. That factor can mean different
things depending on the context. It can also just be ordinary
sati patana practice. It's also, it's also that, yeah.
So it can just be practice in the breath meditation or
whatever. That's also sati samba janga.
Or it can be recollecting the Dhamma.
So there's a recollection, but it's not so much the other
recollect. The other recollections are a
bit on the, a bit on the side of that, but.
What I'm trying to say is if it is this thing, OK, Bujangas,
it's a healer, isn't it? It's a healer.
Healer, yeah. You're collecting the past, you
know, the same factors, the different stages, those
enlightenment. The final one is equanimity,
isn't it? Committee.
Yeah, yeah. So it is the.
It was said, you know, that when Buddha was sick, Junda recited
this. Yeah.
And he gets, well, that. Was something I wanted to
mention actually during the talk, but I never got to.
And that is the the recollection of the Dhamma in the when the
Buddha recall or ask someone else to recall the factors of
awakening and he arises from illness.
Very, very powerful. Powerful.
He's powerful. Very interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
OK. Yeah, good.
So let me just take a few of these from overseas.
Maybe. Maybe it's a good idea.
So that means we can carry on here for as long as you want to
afterwards, but so that these don't have to wait for too long.
So let's have a quick look at what the people are asking here.
So question from Germany, Dean Adzan.
How do I cope with a crazy world full of insane people without
starting to hate? How can I protect myself from
this hell? The cruelty makes me angry.
What to do? OK, so I think the, the the the
word that you are the the one word, which is really useful
here. What you say is kind of crazy.
Yeah, that is really the right kind of word to think about
this, that the people, everyone is a little bit maybe not crazy,
but everyone is deluded. No one.
Very few people see clearly what is going on.
And so everyone is walking around in darkness.
And because everyone is walking around in darkness, they don't
know what they're doing. They should turn on the light
first. Turning on the light means to
come to Dhamma Loca centre. It means to practice the Dhamma.
Yeah. And gradually light goes up and
you start to see what is there and you understand how to emerge
from that darkness. So have compassion for people in
the world. Yeah, we are all deluded a
little bit, some people more than others.
And the right response to that is compassion, because they
don't know what they're doing to get angry with them doesn't make
any sense. They're not doing this out of
their own free will. They're doing it because they
haven't got a clue what is going on.
And Despite that, despite the world being full of problems and
troubles, there's still so much goodness in the world.
There's lots of goodness. Maybe I'm very especially kind
of, you know, fortunate being a British monk, because as a
British monk you meet only good people pretty much.
Or maybe not only that, maybe the occasionally once in a blue
moon and meet some dodgy people, but not not very often.
Yeah, usually meet. And there are lots of good
people in the world. The ordinary people in life.
Yeah. The ordinary people that you
meet in your, in the shops, on the street, even most of them
are going to have good hearts. They're going to be good
hearted. That's why they became human
beings in the first place. And so look for the goodness in
the world. It is there.
Forgive the people for the delusion.
Don't focus too much on the delusion because it might get
depressed. But remember the goodness.
But that lifts you up. That makes you feel better.
Yeah. This is how you overcome that.
Hate is a if you start hating, you too are becoming deluded.
You too will be going down the same path.
Don't do that. Have compassion there.
Have met her. That is the right way here.
OK, we have a question from Australia.
D Rajambramali, thank you for the talk.
You made a lot of valuable points.
My question is what is yoga and how does yoga relate to
Buddhism? For example, in Vajrayana, the
deity yoga, Devata yoga, OK, Deity yoga, all right, is the
fundamental practice. Are these practices exclusive to
Vajrayana Sanga members or do Tervada Sangh members also
engage in these practices? Devata yoga, so that presumably
means some kind of practice where you recall the day it is
and you can use them in visualisation and this kind of
stuff. I think that's probably what it
is. Do we have that in Theravada?
The answer is yes, to some extent we do.
And now I'm unfortunately I said I was not going to talk about
the other 4 recollections, but now I have to get into it
because the question has been raised.
And one of those recollections is the devata nusati, the
recollection of the devata. And in the Theravada tradition,
the way we do that is to remember that those qualities
that those devatas had when they were human, before they were
reborn as devatas, as devas, those qualities they had as
humans, Yeah, which made them reborn as devas.
I have those qualities now. You think, wow, isn't that cool?
These devas, these beautiful beings with.
Really pure and beautiful qualities, that kind of bright
and shiny beings, you know, whatever they are.
I'm in that heading in that direction.
Is it maybe a little tail by Insider?
Yeah, like many of you, this little tail by insider is that
beautiful? Many of you are like little
tailors. That's how I think about you
because you have all these good qualities.
You too, start to think about yourself in that way.
Yeah, It encourages you. It doesn't make you conceited.
So that is kind of the Buddhist or the Tervadan idea of deva
yoga, yoga just miss practice. I'm not talking about the yoga
kind of standing in various postures here.
We're talking about the Buddhist word yoga, which just miss
practice or exertion. You're practicing in a certain
way. That's how the word yoga is used
in the suttas in the word of the Buddha.
And so that's that's kind of one way we do that.
So that's kind of the Devata yoga in Tervada Buddhism.
So anyway, I'm not sure if that's what you wanted to hear,
but that's the reality of it there.
So then we have another question from some, I can't really read
that name, so we'll just go with a question.
I have been stuck in the same position in terms of spiritual
development. How can I keep moving
spiritually here? So what you have to do is you
have to enquire, very careful into why you are stuck.
If you are stuck. There is a reason for that.
Yeah. There is something that you
haven't been developing properly in your life.
And one of the things that I would recommend you to develop
is develop more compassion and more kindness in your life.
Really develop compassion and kindness.
Kindness. Kindness means be as kind as you
possibly can through your actions and through your speech.
Treat other people with gentleness.
You bring people together. You create harmony in the world.
Be as truthful as you can. Say meaningful things.
These are the four kind of ways of right speech.
Yeah. And do this.
Be kind. Come from goodness inside when
you speak and do this, if you feel that you are not able to
come from goodness because as you're having a bad day or
whatever, then don't say too much.
Yeah, now it's a bad day. OK, Best not to speak too much.
Don't allow the compulsion of anger, the compulsion of
negative states to drive your speech, because often these
departments can be very compelling to make you do
things. Not allow that to happen.
Do what I was saying before. Wait.
Wait for the Dumber to rise inside when you know that you're
doing the right thing. Yeah, Yeah, Develop more
compassion for the world. The world is very easy now to
complain about the world and to see, oh, everything is going
wrong. But actually, when everything is
going wrong, it's a wonderful opportunity for compassion
because people suffer more in the world when there's more
wars, when there's more problems.
Yeah, compassion is the right response to what is happening in
the world. Not now, not despair, not anger,
not I'll will. So develop these things, develop
more generosity in your life. How can you help out more?
These basic things are the most important ones.
These basic things are what will feedback into meditation and
make your meditation powerful. If your practice consists mostly
of meditation, you may very well stagnate by doing these basic
things and then bringing that into meditation.
That's where your meditation starts to work.
All right. Question from Karen Lawrence
Agen. Six months after the death of my
friend from cancer, I am troubled.
I made choices. Thank you.
I made choices that led to his dying.
Being far from peaceful, I do not feel guilt, but I do fear
that I have affected his rebirth.
Alright, So what you? What you have to remember here
is that when people pass away, it takes quite a while before
they get reborn. Most people will go through a
state and in between state. This is often called bardos in
Tibetan Buddhism or antrabhava in, in more in, in kind of Pali
language. It means a state in between.
And in that state in between, that's kind of where your Kummer
ripens. Yeah, maybe you have a live
review, remember what happened in your life and then you kind
of judge yourself or whatever. That's where your Kummer ripens.
And so whether they were a little bit not peaceful at the
moment when they died or before they died is not going to be the
most important thing. What is going to be the most
important thing is how they live their life, All of those things
coming together. In fact, exactly what happens
when you die at the moment of death may not have any impact at
all on what happens afterwards. It is your overall coma that is
what directs your rebirth into the future.
So I don't think you have to feel guilty and I don't think
you have to think that you affected that person's rebirth.
Very unlikely that you did. It is the the kind of general
come up that will affect where they went afterwards.
So then we have a question from Julian Murielty Jordan.
OK, whatever. Rodriguez, sorry.
I apologise for not being able to pronounce your name properly,
so thank you so much. Adam Ramali, a comment.
Reflection is important to turn the teachings into beliefs that
underlie our decisions. Analysing our experience and how
the teaching fits with them helps.
So yes, that is exactly right. So analyse your experiences and
see how they fit with the teachings.
Reflect on what is going on, understand the Dumber how it is
in your life and then you are going to be on the right track.
Very good. All right, So any further
questions or comments from people here?
Sorry. Thank you.
Everyone else is happy. Yeah.
Yeah, 1-2 you get a final chance not to be happy, but you are
happy. So that's kind of what can you
do? That's wonderful.
So let's just play home with the triple jam here.