So I guess we can start. So I don't know, don't really
have any Easter talk for you. I don't do.
Do you want an Easter talk? I was going to talk about a
actually fairly profound subject of the Denmark talking about
impermanence, and I think maybe that suits Easter quite well.
Easter is kind of a time of impermanence as well.
Yeah. The in Christianity, not that I
know much about Christianity, but kind of a vague memory about
things being impermanent there too.
And this is one of those very fundamental ideas in Buddhism
known as Anitsha in the Pali language.
And it's really profound that it very often it is like at the
very foundation of how we think about the Buddhist teachings.
So Anitsha, the idea of impermanence is something that
you can use from the very beginning to kind of give you a
boost of understanding, a boost in your meditation.
And it all something that goes all the way to the very end of
the path. You take it with you all the way
here, and you kind of get a deeper and deeper and deeper
appreciation of what this actually means.
And sometimes the word impermanence may not be the
ideal translation of anicha. Yeah.
I don't know. When I think about impermanence,
it leaves me a little bit cold. Impermanence.
Yeah, sure. Things come and go.
Things are changeable. It is much more profound than
that. And I often think about ideas
such as things being unreliable. Yeah.
Unreliability to me is much more an emotionally charged word than
impermanence, because unreliable.
This is something that of course we don't want things to be
unreliable because we'd like to rely on things.
So unreliable goes against kind of some of the really
foundational desires that we have as human beings.
So unreliability, I think, is a nice way of thinking about
impermanence. There's nothing that we can hold
onto, nowhere you can really stand and just relax.
Yeah. Once you start to relax,
unreliability comes and start to shake things up.
So this is kind of how why this is very often so problematic.
Yeah. So this is the idea of Anita,
something which is not always there, something which comes and
goes, something which not only is impermanent and reliable, but
something which fades away here and eventually it ceases
completely here. It doesn't exist after a while.
Yeah, it comes into existence and it disappears without a
trace. This is the idea of
unreliability and impermanence kind of when looked, kind of
seen fully for what it actually is.
And it is a very important teaching.
And one of the ways to gauge the importance of certain teachings
in Buddhism is to see where the Buddha talked about these
things. And the very last teaching of
the Buddha. Do you know the very last
teaching of the Buddha? Anyone knows it?
No, you don't. You don't know it.
OK, Very. Thank you for being
straightforward about that. That's good.
I know some of you know the very last teaching of the Buddha, but
you can imagine the very last teaching.
Yeah, this is found in one of the suta.
Suta is one of the discourses of the Buddha, if you like, and
this is called the Mahaparunibhana Suta.
It is the discourse that talks about the very last days of the
Buddha's life. And the Buddha is kind of
travelling through India on this.
He knows that his last journey, he knows that he's going to die
fairly soon. I think sometimes, you know,
that when you get very old, especially if you are a Buddha,
it helps to have a really clear mind, obviously.
And so he's on this journey here.
And because, you know, he's coming to the end of his life,
some of the most powerful teachings of the Buddha, some of
the ways to kind of let the community know how we're
supposed to live after the Buddha passes away.
Yeah. This is all, all the stuff that
comes out in this particular discourse.
So because of that, it is very significant.
Yeah. For the future of Buddhism, for
how to survive without the Buddha and all of these kind of
things. So you can imagine the last word
of the Buddha is going to be extraordinary significant.
That kind of sets the tone for everything that is taught.
It's like a summary of a lifetime of teaching the Buddha.
I said to have taught for 45 years.
Yeah, he lived when he was 18, and he basically taught till the
last moment of his life, the last breath of his life.
That was kind of how what the Buddha was like.
Why shouldn't you be allowed to die peacefully?
Yeah. Well, how how can you teach till
the very last breath? Well, that's what was the Buddha
was. That's what his life was about.
His life was about teaching. Yeah.
That's what kind of the idea of awakening is.
Awakening is an understanding of the nature of the human, what it
is to be a human being and then teaching others because you
understand, then you can also have the solution for everyone
else around you. And for the Buddha, there was no
other purpose to life apart from this.
And because that was the only purpose, he would then teach to
his very last breath. Yeah, there was even.
There's a nice story about this wanderer.
Buddha was. India was famous for all the
Wanderers, all these people wandering around.
Yeah. Having various kind of
teachings, following various kind of people and having some
ideas about what the holy life or the spiritual life was about.
Because kind of very interesting time, ancient India with all
these variety of ideas and philosophies and religions and
then meeting for debates and they will come to the Buddha.
And there was, I'm going to overthrow your doctrine in
Buddha. What do you say?
But I said, OK, let's have a let's have a discussion about
this. And this was kind of ancient
India, very interesting time to be alive.
We think that today we have like a multiplicity of religions and
a variety of choices. But in those days, it was
probably even more than it is now.
Sometimes we underestimate these ancient societies.
Anyway. So this fellow called Subada, he
comes to the Buddha and he says, oh, he wants to approach the
Buddha. But then he stopped Venable
Ananda, who's the Buddha. That tends to stop.
The Buddha is dying. You want to ask a question, you
know, leave him alone. Leave him at peace.
You know, he just, he wants to chillax.
It's the wrong time to ask the Buddha profound question.
And I guess the wonder thing. Oh, yeah, maybe you have a
point. Yeah.
But then the Buddha overhears this conversation.
The Buddha says no, I don't block people who are have a
serious and a sincere desire to understand the teaching of the
Buddha. Don't block them from
approaching. Yeah, I can tell that Subhada is
an honest person. He really seeking for the truth.
He hasn't come just to trouble me and to have an argument with
me. He actually wants to listen to
this teaching. So And then Subhada comes.
Yeah. And he allows Subhada.
This is on his deathbed, right? This is how the Buddha works.
And then he teaches Subhada. And it's actually the teaching
that he tells Subhada is very beautiful.
Do you know the teaching? He taught Subhada?
You don't. OK.
It's a nice teaching. Actually.
It's very interesting teaching. It's kind of one of those
teaching that are really special in Buddhism.
Yeah. And am I going to tell you
tonight, if I tell you everything, there's no reason to
come back, right? So this will be a secret.
So next time we come, like, I'll tell you about Subbada, whatever
it was. Subbada.
So let's now stay on the idea of impermanence.
This is how you get more kind of people coming here.
This is kind of the trick. Yeah.
So then the Buddha kind of teaches to Buddha.
And then time kind of goes on and all the people around that,
they come to pay their respect to the Buddha, said the final
goodbye. And then the Buddha knows that
he is just about to pass away. And at this point, when he just
passed away, he says to the monks, first of all, he asked,
is there any last question that anyone has?
And then of course, the monks say, no, we don't have any last
questions. We have we understand the
teaching of the Buddha and then come the last words of the
Buddha. Yeah, the probably the summary
of his entire teaching career come in this last words.
How many words do you think it needs to summarize entire
teaching here? Can you imagine how many words
108 eight words says have you hear down there?
8 words. OK, 8 words, 100,004 words.
Yeah. Is really the summary of his
teachings in these words are as follows.
Are you ready? OK, Vaya dama sankara apamadena
sampadeta. Now you know this is the parley
language, right? I'm going to translate for you.
I promise I'm going to translate even into English to make it
even more easy for you. So this is the powder language.
This is actually probably very similar to what the Buddha said.
Vaya Dhamma sankara. All phenomena have the nature to
come to an end. All phenomena have the nature to
come to an end. Yeah.
APA madena sampadeta. Strive on with hatefulness, with
carefulness. Yeah.
Practice carefully because of that.
Those are the last words of the Buddha.
And what you will notice that is two things, one thing after the
other. The first one is all things have
an end. All things kind of are subject
to cessation, if you like, or to impermanence.
Yeah. And that is like the right view,
that is the way to think about the world, right?
This is how we should see everything.
Yeah. And the consequence of seeing
things in the right way, according to the way the Buddha
has seen in the world, is that you strive on, you put an effort
with diligence, with hatefulness, with carefulness.
Because if you understand the problem properly, that actually
leads you automatically to practising this path.
That gives you an idea of the profundity of this teaching.
Yeah. If you understand the idea of
impermanence, the problem of nothing really being reliable in
this world, the fact that everything comes to an end.
That's powerful, right? Everything comes to an end.
There is nothing solid. There is nowhere to stand.
There's nothing to hold onto. The consequences of
understanding that is that you start practising, you start
taking the spiritual path seriously.
You don't hold on to all the phenomena in the world that are
never going to be reliable there.
That is kind of the consequence of this.
So This is why it is such a profound and such a beautiful
teaching. Yeah.
And it needs to be contemplated. These are the last words of the
Buddha. So don't forget that.
Are you going to forget it? No.
OK, OK, excellent. Thank you for saying that.
But I'll, I'll test you later on there and see.
So this is the idea of the Buddha.
Yeah. This is the insight of the
Buddha and the consequences of that insight there, and one of
the kind of extraordinary things.
It's a very simple idea, right? All things are impermanent,
everything has an end, everything must cease.
It's a very simple idea, but it is also very profound.
And sometimes we underestimate or we overestimate our ability
to understand these simple things.
If you ask an ordinary person about impermanence, there was a
yeah, yeah, I get if things are changeable.
Of course, everyone knows that. No, you don't know that.
That's the whole point. You know, it may be in a
superficial way, but you don't really appreciate what is going
on there. And there was an experiment that
was done a while ago, some kind of research.
And now we're coming into modern times.
We're leaping 2500 years forward from the time of the passing
away of the Buddha to the modern day.
And I may have said this before, but it's a really nice kind of
piece of research that was done about human beings and the
ability to see impermanence. Yeah.
To see the future, what the future is going to be like.
And what they did, they asked this group of people, I don't
know how how many hope, but it was a a significant sample.
Is that right? How long?
It has to be significant sample, otherwise it doesn't work,
right. So reason has to be done
properly. So I'm not sure how, how well it
was conducted, but hopefully it was a significant, statistically
significant sample of otherwise it doesn't work.
Yeah. And they asked them, well, if
you think back on yourself today compared to what you would like
10 years ago, can you what happened?
Can you see the change? Can you see that how you're
changed? And everyone said, yeah, I can
see the change. 10 years ago I was a really dodgy character.
And now I've really got my act together.
I understood the Buddhist treating instead of practising
well, I became having a good heart, treating other people
well, speaking the kind words. Now I can see the change.
Or maybe someone otherwise who started out really nice and they
became dodgy after a while. That also happens, right?
So usually when we look back in time, we can see the evolution
and the change now character, either for the better or for the
worse or maybe for stability for most people.
And so they could tell, yeah, this change, I say, yeah, I'm a
different person now from what I was 10 years ago.
And then they asked the same people to try to look into the
future. Yeah.
What are you going to be like 10 years from now?
And they were saying, yeah, yeah, you know, there may be a
little bit of changes. Maybe I become a little bit more
kind. Maybe I become a bit more
wealthy because I've worked really hard.
Maybe, you know, things will happen, but essentially, I will
be the same person. Essentially, there won't be any
real difference. And So what this research
pointed to is that when we look into the past, we are able to
see change. Why?
Because it's bleeding obvious. Yeah, we can see things
happening. Yeah, it actually has changed.
So you can't really avoid seeing change when you look into the
past because it has happened. But when we try to look into the
future, we are incapable of seeing change in the same way.
Yeah, we are stuck with the present.
We think the present will continue.
Somehow the way it is now is also the way it will be into the
future. And that tells you right there
the significance of contemplating the idea of
impermanence and change, the significance of contemplating
the idea of nothing really being solid, nothing being reliable.
It is significant because we don't really understand it.
We don't get it. Our sense of self, sense of
solidity of in the world tricks us into thinking the future
basically is a continuation of the present.
But of course that is wrong. View is the wrong way of
thinking about things and is rooted large part.
This is again, kind of very profound part of the Buddhist
teaching. It is rooted in the sense of
self. The sense of self doesn't allow
you to see change because the sense of self forces you to see
things as permanent in one way or another.
Yeah, it's a continuation of who you are.
And that is the reason why we can't see these things.
This is why contemplating impermanence is such such a
powerful thing to do. And so that gives you a little
bit kind of of the overview of what I kind of why this really
matters. Yeah, why this is really
important. And in many ways the, you know,
as we have seen from the Buddha's last words, etcetera,
in many ways this is perhaps the foundational contemplation in
Buddhism. Apart from meditation practice
where you watch your breath or whatever.
This is a kind of contemplation that enhances the meditation
practice the more you see this impermanence.
What is the consequences of seeing impermanence?
Why does this matter? Why should we do this?
And the answer is because it allows you to let go.
Yeah, you can. If you see things are
impermanent, you understand actually there's nothing really
worth holding onto in this. Because when you see things are
impermanent, you understand they are problematic.
You understand they will lead to suffering down the track.
Why? Because if you hold on to things
that are impermanent, it's going to be painful when it gets taken
from you. And this is basically the nature
of reality. And so seeing impermanence, you
don't even have to be told, you know straight away that this is
an aspect of suffering. This is one of the problems in
the world. And because you know it is one
of the problems in the world, you start to let go.
You start to have what is called the Nekama Sankapa.
Nekama is like renunciation. Yeah.
You let go a little bit. You take a step back.
You allow things to be more. You don't get so involved in the
world in all of these, all of these things in the world
because you know, involvement is going to lead to suffering in
the future. So seeing impermanence, yeah,
which seems so easy and simple. As you develop that perception,
you start to understand the problems in the world.
When you understand the problems in the world, that leads you
also to seeing a little bit into this idea we call non self in
Buddhism. And all of this together helps
you to let go. Then that feeds back into the
meditation. It gives rise to more joy and
happiness as a consequence. Yeah, kind of weird thing.
It sounds like contemplating impermanence is going to be
terrible, right? Seeing everything as coming and
going, nothing being reliable. It sounds awful, actually leads
to happiness. This is the extraordinary thing
on this path. So this is kind of how these
things develop together, I should say always as a matter of
care and a matter of kind of being careful with these things.
If things are too painful to observe or contemplate, if you
find that thinking about impermanence is very difficult
and it leaves you sad and depressed or whatever, please
don't contemplate it. The Buddhist path is not the
path where we want to encourage sadness and depression.
We want to. We want to allow people to come
out of sadness and depression there.
So always develop positive qualities and there's more
deeper insights developing them together.
So you have some kind of basis upon which you can stand to
actually contemplate this deeper things.
Yeah. If I see you looking too
depressed in the audience, then I will kind of encourage you to
do something else. Otherwise you're going to be
stuck in kind of in something terrible.
Yeah. Please come afterwards and
complain about me if I if it's too depressive, so I can change
the tack. But the idea is to help you, you
have to come out of this. The Buddha has some very
beautiful similes to describe the importance of this
perception of impermanence. It's a perception.
Part of this is like the developing a right view, seeing
the world in the right way. Yeah.
The Buddha says that as you develop this idea of
impermanence or unreliability in the world, you cut off all the
roots, all the roots of suffering.
Yeah. And when you cut off all the
roots of suffering, suffering can no longer arise.
It's like cutting off the roots of a plant.
Yeah, this is kind of the end point of this contemplation of
impermanence, cutting off all those foundational problems or
definements, Yeah, that drive the suffering in the world and
drive the suffering in your own life.
The Buddha says that in the same way as Jasmine, the the scent of
Jasmine is the most beautiful, considered the highest scent of
flowers. You know what Jasmine smells
like? Yeah, Jasmine is very strong,
powerful, beautiful smell. You walk through a kind of a
Bush of Jasmine flower. It's like, wow, this is great.
OK, I'll hang around here for a while.
Yeah, it's a kind of very strong and beautiful smell.
When you when you. We have a few of those in the
moment. That's why I know otherwise I
would never have known. But now I now I know.
I'm no flower expert. And in the same way as Jasmine
is the best smell of flowers, in the same way the perception of
impermanence is like the peak, yeah, the highest kind of
perception that we can develop, it takes everything else with
it. Everything else kind of is
derived from that in a certain way, in the same way as the
rafters of a house meet in the peak.
Yeah, the meet in the top in the same way.
This is the top kind, top most kind of perception that we can
develop, and it brings everything else along with it.
This is some of the ways this is described in the suitors.
So this is the idea of developing the perception of
impermanence and reliability. How can we do this in practice?
And it's incredibly simple to do in practice, at least as we
start out. And I've talked about this in
many ways here before, but I am going to repeat myself probably
a lot tonight. I love to repeat myself.
And so please forgive me for that.
But this is kind of par for the course.
But the very simple idea of contemplating impermanence is
just to see what is happening in the world around you.
Yeah, especially to see the world kind of at large, seeing
the ideas, what you see the news on television, seeing the
problems with wars in the world, seeing the problems with the
refugee crisis in the world, seeing the economic problems.
I just came back from Sri Lanka. I had 10 days in Sri Lanka, just
came back a few days ago. It was a wonderful trip, by the
way. Beautiful.
It's a beautiful island. Yeah.
It was so green. This is tropical beautiful.
Everyone is a Buddhist. Yeah.
You feel like you belong in Sri Lanka.
You look like this. Everyone sort of understands who
you are. In Australia, it's a bit more
dodgy. You never know whether someone's
going to take you as a the real deal or they're going to think
you are a Hari, Krishna, whatever.
It's kind of Australia, very uncertain.
Sri Lanka, you fit right in. It's kind of nice.
Yeah. And actually, I love to be a
monk in Australia. It's great.
But it's a different feel when you go to Buddhist country.
Yeah, it's a very beautiful place and I really enjoyed it.
But they too have been through some very difficult times in
recent years. A very big economic crisis in
Sri Lanka, and you start looking around the world and you see all
of this instability. Yeah.
They say that the modern generation, the new generation
are kind of, you know, getting more sad and depressed because
the world seems to be going wrong or whatever.
And they may have a point. Yeah.
And the blame maybe the older generation, people like me.
And they say, what have you done?
Yeah, you're destroying the world.
So I'm trying to set this right now by giving this time a talk.
Yeah. So remember that this is the
contemplation of impermanence in the world at large.
This will eventually lead you to joy and happiness.
Yeah, because you understand something profound.
As you understand something profound about the reality of
the world, you start to let go of that.
You start to look for a happiness where happiness really
can be found. The reason why you get upset
when you see all of these terrible things, when you read
the news or you watch the news on TV or whatever.
Whatever it is, you get your news.
Don't get your news from this kind of news feeds because it's
crap news. Get your news from real places.
But when you get your news, Yeah, in from the world, when
you see what's happening in the world, Yeah, it actually leads
to a turning away. It leads to turning to something
more profound, something real, the spiritual practice where
something actually can be found. Real happiness, real joy, real
meaning, real purpose, a real goal, something that actually
matters in life. This it is the beauty of
contemplating things in the right way.
It makes you a better person. Is anyone here who doesn't want
to be a better person? If you don't want to be a better
person, you might be in the wrong place.
Everyone who comes here wants to be a better person, right?
And you are already good, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
So congratulations. So this is the idea of the
beginning of contemplating impermanence.
And you know that you haven't contemplated it enough.
If you turn on the TV or you see the news and you think, oh, no,
another war. Oh, no, more people died.
Oh, no, another tsunami. Oh, no more refugees.
Oh, no, Oh, no. Oh, no.
If you think, oh, no, it means you haven't really understood
impermanence. If you say, Oh, yeah, I expect
another war, I don't say it like that.
That's kind of bit kind of too aloof and then cold maybe.
But yeah, if you expect the unexpected, as I like to see
here, you say expect the unexpected.
You don't know there's going to be another word, but you know,
unexpected things are going to happen there.
If you expect the unexpected, then you are wise.
And when you turn on the TV and you see weird things, bad
things, climate change, whatever happening, you know, of course,
this is part for the course. This is the nature of the world.
I expected that. I'm already turning away from
that world because I know it is inherently unreliable there.
That is how you know, whether you are attached or not, what
your reaction is when you see those news.
So this is like the beginning. Yeah.
This is the starting point of understanding impermanence in
the world. And this is already very, very
powerful there. If you can do this much already,
you're kind of very much on the right track.
Yeah, and you can see this also in many of the institutions in
our society. Yeah, yeah.
Australia is, I would say, a good place to live.
I, I don't really know that much about Australia.
That's kind of embarrassing. I live it for 30 years.
It's half my life in this country.
But I've been tucked away in this monastery here down in
Serpentine. I don't know anything about
them. OK.
I come here and then I go to the airport.
I'm just joking. Today I get that.
The third, the place I visited most in Australia #1 is
Bodhinana Monastery. Number 2 is Damaloka Buddha
centre #3 is Perth Airport. That's kind of where I hang out
the most. Yeah, Perth Airport is a distant
third, but still, you know, You know what?
It's like this kind of the monks life for you in a nutshell.
So but it's kind of a it's a good society in general.
I mean, lots of improvements can be done, of course, but it's not
bad when you kind of compare it to most societies in the world
and that sort of thing. Yeah, but how stable are our
institutions? How stable is our healthcare
system? How stable is, I mean, you look
at the divide between the rich and the poor in Australia has
been growing enormously over the last 50 years.
And generally speaking, if you ask a psychologist for people
who understand human happiness, I said that's bad for human
happiness. The more division you have in
this way, you create kind of an A class and AB class, you create
people who don't really understand each other anymore.
You get people who go to elite schools and people who go to
ordinary schools and it creates divisions in our society and
divisions are always bad. It leads to conflict, it leads
to misunderstandings, it leads to all of these kind of things.
So how stable are our institutions?
And you will see that over time things change.
Yeah, sometimes they change dramatically.
Now we're getting closer to home.
Now we're coming right here to Perth.
Yeah, where we rely on the institutions.
We're very lucky to live in Perth or WA It's a very wealthy
part of the world. So the services we get are
usually pretty good. Yeah.
But it won't last. Yeah, it's kind of uncertain.
It's unreliable, It's already shaking.
We don't know how long these things are going to be stable
for. And then you start to understand
the nature of impermanence. One of the ways that I like to
think about impermanence is that impermanence is really about all
kind of causes and conditions building up out of sight.
Yeah. It is like things happening.
You can't really see them happening.
They're kind of happening behind the scenes sometimes.
And the way to think about it is a bit like how earthquakes work.
Yeah. How does an earthquake work?
An earthquake is like this. Tectonic plates.
Yeah. Plate tectonics about this kind
of giant parts of the crust of the Earth moving in comparison
to each other. And then as they move a little
bit, there is this tensions building up underground, tension
building up, building up, building up.
Causes and conditions happening out of sight.
You don't really know what's happening until one day the
cause and conditions are so strong it leads to an earthquake
or it leads to a volcano. Yeah, bang.
It happens. I don't know if you've seen
those pictures from Iceland. Have you seen the picture from
Iceland? They're pretty cool, but pretty
scary at the same time, right? It's kind of interesting
combination there. And this is how our world works.
Things building up out of sight, cause and conditions suddenly
comes through. It comes through in the war in
Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, climate change, whatever
is suddenly out of control. Yeah, bang.
Impermanence and reliability. Uncertainty happens.
This is why we should always expect the unexpected.
This is kind of how the world works.
So the world at large, our society right here in Perth, is
far more uncertain than we think it is.
Yeah. Don't rely on nothing.
Yeah. Yeah.
Actually rely on nothing. Yeah.
That's the one thing you can rely on, right?
But don't rely on anything. Yeah.
Nothing is OK. Anything is not OK.
Yeah. Does that make sense?
Yeah. OK, good.
I'm glad. So you have understood the kind
of the Buddhist. Buddhist.
Not finished yet, Eddie. So hold on.
Hold on your applause there. So.
But then we come even closer to home.
Yeah. In permanence.
It has to do with our kind of very who we are as human beings,
our family, our own bodies, our job, all of these kind of
things. Yeah, life and death, illnesses,
all the age, all of these kind of things that is in premise,
that comes very, very close to us.
As the Buddha says in the suit does, everything that is dear
and beloved to us will become otherwise will become separated
from us. It's a very powerful idea of
impermanence. Yeah.
Everything dear and beloved to me will become otherwise will
become separated from me. It's kind of hard to bear even
thinking that thought. But if we don't think it, if we
don't deal with it now, we're going to have to deal with far
more when we eventually it happens.
If we deal with it now, if we try to understand what it means,
maybe we can get onto the spiritual path, think about
these things in a new way and encourage ourselves to actually
practice, do some things that counteract these kind of big
problems in life. But we know everything in our
life, yeah, is impermanent in this way.
That would have started off talking about rebirth all day,
sickness, death. Yeah.
These are all of these things that matter so enormously here,
and all of these things are aspects of the idea of
impermanence. You can now see why the idea of
anicha is so profound. Yeah, because it brings in all
of these other contemplations that we have on the Buddhist
path. Death contemplation is one of
the most important things that we have in Buddhism.
The Buddha teaches this a lot. Please do death contemplation.
Please remind yourself on the regular basis that you're going
to die. Yeah.
Wake up in the morning. The first thing you should think
is I'm going to die. Yeah.
That's a good start of the day, right.
That is the best start of the day.
Yeah. I'm not really joking.
Even there a lot of people I know that do death contemplation
the first thing in the morning. Yeah.
And if you do it in the right way, it sets the stage for the
day. What matters during that day?
OK, I could die today. What does that mean?
It means I'm going to treat people well.
I'm going to be kind to others. I'm going to be kind to myself.
I'm going to do the right thing. I'm going to say goodbye to my
family. And when I'm going to say
goodbye in a good way, not after an argument.
Because if I'm going to die, I don't want to die after an
argument. That's crazy.
If you are on a deathbed, are you going to argue with people
around here? Imagine being deathbed.
Yeah, I could. Haven't had that argument yet.
Yeah. OK, better.
Let's have this argument before I die quickly.
I'm going to die soon. Let's have it.
That's the last thing, right. If you're about to die, you can
say, OK, leave it. Let it be.
I'm how do. I don't want to argue with
anyone. And so the idea of contemplating
death makes us better people. Impermanence makes you a better
person. Why?
Because you remember what really matters.
You get your priorities right. This is what this really is
about, yeah. Understanding and permanence in
the world as a whole. Then on the kind of intermediate
scale in our city of Perth. Then on your personal scale, in
the family, with yourself, with your own body, that you too are
going to die and get sick before you know it.
These things that are so uncertain and all of these
things, if you do them in the right way, they have a very,
very powerful consequence. The consequence of turning away
from what I would call the world of the five senses.
All the things I have explained are really about the world of
the five senses and instead turning on to the spiritual
life, turning towards that because that is where you find
the respite, the safety, the refuge from all the problems in
the world. Let me welcome back a little
bit. I spoke before about the
Buddha's final days. Yeah.
So again, very, very beautiful teaching that you find in the
sutas called the Mahapanibana Suta.
It means the greater discourse in the passing away of the
Buddha. That's what it means.
And it's very beautiful. And I really recommend you to
study that suta, if you're interested in the Buddha's
teachings. We did a series of talks.
Actually, I did a series of talks right here at the Damaloka
Centre on this particular suita. Yeah.
It is only goes on for about 20 hours or so because it's such a
long suit and such a beautiful thing.
So it goes on for a long time. But if you're interested, you
can listen to that. But that means you have to be
really committed because 20 hours, I recognise it's quite a
bit of investment for most people there.
But anyway, in this suita. Yeah.
Where the Buddha is about to pass away.
Yeah, as he gets close to his passing away, he also has some
very severe illnesses. And as he has his very severe
illnesses, Venerable Ananda, who is his attendant, he recognised
that the Buddha is coming to the close to the end of his
lifetime, that Venerable Ananda has been with the Buddha for.
Well, actually, they are family. Yeah.
So they go back to even before they became monks.
Right. But he has been his personal
attendant for 20 years. 20 years.
Yeah. And he's always been with the
Buddha, listening to everything the Buddha has to say.
Yeah. Because he is the one who
memorized the teachings of the Buddha, always being there to
support the Buddha. Always being there if the Buddha
needs, you know, is that needs something or whatever, Ananda is
always there. And you can imagine if you are
with somebody all the time, someone who has the qualities of
the Buddha, endless kindness, endless compassion, endless
wisdom, always has a word to say about whatever the situation
might be here. Imagine having had that person
in your life for your whole life.
Difficult to get a husband or wife like that, right?
So, yeah. But yeah, I I'd best not to look
for a husband or wife quite like that because you might, you
would never, you might as well become a monk straight away or
non straight away because we're the only way to find that.
But anyway, that's the, that's kind of bit of PR for the
monastic life anyway. So, Ananda.
Yeah, you can imagine how distraught is.
Yeah. The Buddha is about to pass
away. He recognises this.
And then he goes to the Buddha and he says the Buddha.
Oh, I'm seeing, Venerable Sir, that you are sick.
Yeah. And because I see your sickness,
I can't, I'm at the directions are unclear to me.
I can't remember the teachings or anything like that.
Yeah, I your mind is completely all of the place.
You're feeling deluded, basically, And I'm sure many of
you will know what that means. If you're full of grief and
sadness, you might just. You'd lose the plot a little
bit. Yeah.
Is anyone here who has never lost the plot a little bit?
Everyone has lost the plot sometimes, Right.
This is just kind of part of what it means to be human.
And so he loses the plot a little bit.
And then the Buddha says to him, and this is kind of what is
interesting. Yeah.
It comes a little bit later in
the same suta, but the Buddha says to him, haven't I told you,
Ananda, that everything that is dear and pleasing to you must
become otherwise, must become separated from you, Ananda.
Yeah. If you're going to, if you want
a refuge in the world, you should take yourself as a
refuge. You should take the Dhamma as
refuge. You should be at the deeper
Dhamma, deeper, just teaching a bit of Pali on the way here, at
the deeper Dhamma, deeper yourself as a refuge, the Dhamma
as a refuge. Why?
Because if you take refuge in the world outside, you will
always be disappointed. Even the Buddha has to has to
pass away. So what does it mean to take
yourself as a refuge? What does it mean to take the
Dhamma? The Dhamma is a teaching of the
Buddha. What does it mean to take that
as a refuge? And then he explains what it
means to take that as a refuge is to meditate.
When you meditate properly here, this is called Satya Patana in
the power language. When you do the proper
meditation, you go within. And when you go within, when you
let go of that world of the five senses that is so unreliable and
so uncertain, when you let go of that, that is where you find the
stability inside. You find the joy inside.
You find the peace inside. You find the meaning inside, you
start to realise how devoid of meaning the world of the five
sentences is. Yeah, you start to understand
how hollow it is. There is no nothing to hold
onto. It is just kind of this turmoil
all the time going on. There's nowhere to doesn't lead
anywhere. And so it is fundamentally
problematic. But when you start to feel the
peace inside, when you start to feel the joy and happiness that
comes from letting go of those things.
And that's precisely why we have to contemplate them a little
bit. So we can't let go of them.
As you do that, the peace and happiness and joy start to build
up within. That becomes the refuge.
Why? Because it is worthy of being
called a refuge. Yeah.
Away from the world. Meaning.
And all of these positive qualities being built up inside.
That should be your refuge. And if you understand what I
mean, and some of you will understand because some of you
have been meditators for a long time, you have an idea what
these things are like. And because of that, you have
some idea what that refuge actually means.
And it is so delightful. Yeah.
It is such a beautiful thing. Yeah.
And you start to understand why giving up the world is actually
the only sensible thing to do. Yeah.
Giving it up in the sense of not being attached to it, not giving
it up in the sense of not caring.
You should always care, but you should be less attached.
That is the right attitude. And then?
When you then come onto the path of meditation, yeah, which this
really is about, you're starting to find the refuge from the
world outside, giving up the five sentences a little bit,
loosening the grip on that world so you can be more at ease and
more relaxed. Yeah, the meditation starts to
deepen. And as the meditation starts to
deepen, you start to understand the idea of impermanence and
unreliability in an even more profound way.
We only scratched the surface so far.
You know, even now, you're starting to meditate.
You're starting to kind of find joy and peace from a Buddhist
point of view, from the point of view of what the Buddha taught.
Still, only scratching the surface isn't that kind of cool.
Because if joy and peace is scratching the surface, wow.
What on earth could be further down the track?
Yeah, yeah. And this is kind of the nice
thing about this Buddhist path. It is just more joy, more
happiness, more peace building up till you come to the very end
of this path. And so as you practice in this
way, and as you start to meditate more, you start to
understand the idea of impermanence and reliability in
an even more profound way. You start to experience it in
your own mind, what it means to give you an idea and very
obvious idea. The first time you become really
peaceful in meditation, you realise thinking has gone.
Thinking has gone. Maybe some of you didn't realise
that was possible. Yeah.
I often hear about people say, oh, I think all the time.
Yeah, all the time. I think, yeah.
And I think, wow, I feel sorry for you.
Too much thinking is dukkha. Suffering is a problem.
We know if the mind starts to kind of go too fast, it's
terrible. Yeah.
It feels very restless. It feels very, very, very bad.
Then one day in meditation, no thinking, just peace and
clarity. Yeah.
Nothing else going on. Wow.
Now I start to understand. Thinking can disappear.
Yeah. Then you understand the
impermanence of thinking. You are not the thinking.
When the thinking is gone, you are more present.
You are more alive. You feel better about yourself
precisely because the thinking is gone.
One of the main reasons why we value the thinking so much is
because it feels like the thinking is coming from you.
These aren't my thoughts. Have you noticed that in
meditation? Yeah.
When you sit down and close and feel the thinking and it feels
like they are your thoughts until one day the thinking is
gone and you are more happy and you're really, actually you
weren't those thoughts at all. Yeah.
Getting rid of the thinking is blim and marvellous.
Yeah. Get rid of those stupid
thoughts. Rid of them, yeah.
No more thinking. Yeah.
And actually, you feel all the better for it.
And so the insight that arises from that is that first of all
part of the mind is impermanent. And because that impermanence
leads to more happiness and joy, you understand the suffering of
the thinking mind. And also you understand because
the thinking mind is gone and you are still there and you are
better off as a consequence, that thinking is non self.
It hasn't got nothing to do with you.
You are not really your thoughts.
You are something far more profound than the thinking mind.
You are like the peaceful awareness.
I'm not saying you are this, but this is what it feels like at
that time. You are some kind of peaceful
awareness full of joy and happiness.
That is much better to attach a little bit to that than to
attach to the thinking mind. And in this way, meditation, as
the meditation becomes more and more peaceful, more and more
joyful, more and more happy, as you abandon more and more things
in the world, you start to see the impermanence of the mind
itself giving things up. And the more things you give up
in the mind, the less that actually remains.
The better you feel, the more happiness you have.
One of the strange things in the world, giving up, renouncing,
letting go is the best thing that ever happened to you in
your life. That is the weird thing about
the Buddhist path. And this is what you see in this
process of impermanence as I go through this.
So this is the Buddhist idea of impermanence.
And you carry on observing this, you carry on observing this
unreliability, you carry on the idea of ending in cessation.
Yeah, deeper and deeper and deeper to see how deeply it is
possible to go. Yeah, this is the idea.
And the deeper you go, the more powerful this becomes as you go
along, and the more insight you get and the more understanding
you get of the meaning of life. So let me finish off by giving
you some similarly that the Buddha had about the idea of
impermanence of a human being, just to give you some idea how
the Buddha explained this and to give us an idea of how to think
about these things. And the Buddha gave a similarly
of the impermanence of the body. Yeah.
What is the body? And the Buddha said the physical
body, he said, is like a lump of foam on the River Ganges.
If you go to a large river, I don't know about the Swan River,
but maybe the Swan River has, too, you can somehow see little
lumps of foam. They're coming down.
And the Buddha says that is your body.
And then he asked, well, what? What is the substance in a bit
of foam? Obviously no substance, right.
In the same way as a lump of foam, the body is the same.
A lump of foam is always changing.
Yeah, lumbar foam is that there are bubbles arising, bubbles
disappearing. Yeah, yeah.
And eventually one day, the whole bunch of foam will be
completely gone, changing shape, shifting over time and
eventually completely gone. That is the physical body here.
And, you know, the physical bodies like that.
Yeah. We change.
And we kind of start off when we are small and when we grow up,
become big, sometimes become a little bit too big.
Yeah. And then you, you know, you have
all these kind of things. Yeah.
And then you get old and you get wrinkly and then you get really
kind of, you know, nothing works anymore after a while, that
shaping and then, bang, you're out of here.
Yeah. The bubbles are completely gone.
This is the body for you. It's a beautiful metaphor for
the body, or similarly for the body, the lump of foam on the
River Ganges. OK, lump performer.
Are you all right there? It's hard to see, isn't it,
sometimes? But that's kind of the reality
here. Then, the symbol for feelings.
These are the symbols for the five kind of groups of
personality that we have as human beings.
The symbol for feelings. Like a bubble.
Yeah. Bubbles that come and go on the
River Ganges or on the River Swan or wherever it might be, a
bubble forms. And as soon as the bubble form,
before you know it, it is gone again.
Another bubble arises, and that bubble too, is gone before you
know it. This is the idea of feelings.
Feelings are so incredibly uncertain and reliable.
And yet feelings are the most important thing to us in this
world. Yeah, We live to have a good
feelings. We live to be able to be happy.
We live to be able to enjoy the world.
Positive feelings and avoiding the negative is really what life
is about. This is what everyone in the
world wants to do. This is what craving and desire
in the world really concerns. The idea of pursuing positive
feelings and avoiding the bad ones.
And yet when you look at them, they are so incredibly
ephemeral. The last but a fraction of a
moment and another feeling arises.
Yeah. When you are in this room, maybe
you look, you think actually it's quite a nice room.
Yeah. Quite attractive.
And so you have a good feeling. Yeah.
And then maybe you, something else happens.
I don't know. Maybe you hear something you
don't like too much impermanence.
Yeah. You don't like hear more about
impermanence. OK, Don't like that.
Then negative feeling, right? Arises 1 moment, a good feeling.
The next moment, a negative feeling.
I hope you don't have too many negative feelings about
impermanence, because then I make me feel really bad.
Yeah. What to do?
I hope you're OK. And this way, feelings arise.
You hear something you don't like, you taste something you
like, you smell something you don't like, you touch something
painful. Feelings come and go so fast,
completely out of control. And this is the reality of
feelings in this world. We try to control the
uncontrollable. That is the message of the
Buddha. Then there is the idea of
perception. And the idea of perception in
Buddhism is basically perception means our ability to make sense
of the world around us. Yeah.
Perception is something very simple, like you see a person
and you think friend or enemy. Yeah, yeah, I can see if I can
find any enemies in here. No enemies, right?
Isn't that great? Actually, we shouldn't really
have enemies as good Buddhist. If you want to be a good
Buddhist, have zero enemies. Don't worry about what other
people think about you, but you don't have any enemies.
That's what I really recommend. But yeah, so perception is these
kind of things, how we make sense of things.
This is a room. These are human beings.
This is a microphone. This is a chair.
This is a carpet. Yeah.
We make sense of the world. This is a friend.
This is the government. Yeah.
These are perceptions. These are labels.
It's the way we understand the world.
And the Buddha describes perception as a mirage.
Yeah, you know a mirage, right. When you drive on the highway in
Perth, sometimes it's really hot and it looks like there's water
on the bitumen. Have you seen that?
Yeah, it's kind of interesting. And of course, there is no water
there. You come close, you realise it's
just hot air or something like that.
There was nothing there. And the way we perceive the
world, the way we think about people in them as a friend, it's
like a mirage. It can be shifted like that if I
look at someone's bad qualities. Yeah.
Let me think about Conrad for a second.
What are the bad qualities in Conrad?
Now that's impossible. Let's see.
If you look at someone's bad qualities, Yeah.
Something negative can happen inside of you.
Then you shift your perception in a fraction of a second,
focusing from the bad to the good qualities.
The perception can change just like that.
And suddenly someone is your friend.
Yeah, and that is such a beautiful thing.
When that happens, you're moving your perceptions around and they
are so utterly unreliable, so utterly uncertain.
Everything we think of in the world, we think of thing as
fixed. We think of things being in a
certain way, we have ideas about the world.
Those ideas are very far more ephemeral than we think they
they are. And there's something very
interesting about that, something very important about
that. First of all, we shouldn't rely
on this thing. We shouldn't rely on the
perceptions we have of the world because we don't really know.
We should be far more unsure about ourselves.
People in the world are far too sure about themselves.
Right? I know this is true.
This is wrong. This is good reality.
You are wrong. I'm right.
We are not. We should be more humble.
Yeah. And I think the Internet makes
us particularly stupid when it comes to these kind of things.
Please don't be that stupid. And then when you are more
humble and more kind of, you realise the uncertainty of your
own judgements and knowledge of the world, actually it makes you
more easygoing as well. Yeah.
You become less prickly. There's less to defend in your
life because actually you don't have that certainty about you.
Not having so much certainty to me is a sign of wisdom.
Someone who's really certain about themselves all the time, I
reckon they haven't got that much wisdom.
But it also means, and this is kind of the beautiful thing
about this, if perception is a very uncertain thing, yeah, if
it is subject to change all the time, if we can can change it
precisely because of that, it means that we can't change the
way we think about people, the world around us.
We can have more kindness and care.
We can have more meta and love and friendliness to everyone
around us. And this is the beauty of this.
We don't have to be stuck in anger, in ill will, in
negativity, because these things are not solid.
They are just an idea built up in our mind which doesn't have
any foundation. It can be changed just like that
if we know how to do it. And what a marvellous thing that
is. Don't buy into this idea that
these things are permanent. They are not.
They are like a mirage, says the Buddha.
That is but just about as impermanent as it possibly can
get. And this is the beautiful upside
of these teachings. It means that you can start
shifting your perceptions around.
You can start to look at people in a new way.
You can build up this beautiful ideas of the world, of the
people around you. And as you do that, not only
does everything become easier in your life, but you start to feel
much, much better about yourself as well as a consequence of
that. This is if you like the upside
of impermanence. Impermanence is seeing the
danger in the world, seeing the danger within yourself,
understanding that so much of our existence is like a mirage.
It can be turned around just like that.
One of the ideas of being an Arrowhead to fully awaken being
in Buddhism is the precisely the idea that you can change your
perceptions like that. You can see something as ugly
and then seeing as beautiful in the next moment, just as an act
of will. So you is in the idea of
impermanence. Not believing that there is a
solid person inside, that we are some kind of inherent being
allows us to practice this path. Remember, the future is not set
when you may think that the future is just an extension of
the present. No, it isn't.
The future's going to be dramatically different from what
you think it's going to be here, and your job is to make sure
that you are going to be a better person through that
process into the future. And don't think that there is a
limit to how good you can be here.
You can build up your inner qualities to an extraordinary
level to become a person who is extremely kind and caring and
has a sense of love and compassion for the whole world.
That is possible on this path, and everyone here can do it if
you are committed. Don't believe the sense of self
inside of you that says no, you are stuck.
You are stuck in depression. You will always be depressed or
you're stuck in sadness. You'll always be sad.
That isn't the way the world is. Things can happen, you can
change, and it's really up to you to make it happen.
But first of all, you have to believe in this path and believe
in the idea of impermanence. And then as you practice in this
way, you start to see the miracle of change inside of you.
You start to see the miracle of impermanence in a positive light
when you do become someone else. And one day you see your life is
completely transformed. You are a different person.
In one way, you are still the same because you have the same
history here. But another way, you're also bet
you're also much better. And you feel far better about
yourself as a consequence. And then you become a real
blessing for yourself. And when you become a blessing
for yourself, you also become a blessing for the world around
you. OK, enough.
OK, everyone. So that is just a little bit
about impermanence. I'm glad no one walked out.
I'm always scared people walk out in this kind of talks.
I'm very pleased with that. So that doesn't mean you're not
allowed to walk out. You are.
But nevertheless, anyone like to ask any questions or comment on
what we talked about today? Yes, please.
Over there. Yeah, fire away.
Hi, thanks. Thanks very much for the talk.
I've been contemplating permanence for a while, so I'm
just going to kind of maybe riff on some stuff that I've been
thinking about and reflecting on in your talk.
So a niche, I mean, it is, is the ease and the peace that we
experience through meditation, through letting go is the
initia, is it seeing that we don't exist from your
perspective? Like is it that you just see
that you're nothing so that you're everything?
Or is it is, is there is impermanence, a principle of
harmony? Is there a way that things flow?
And if we let go, we fall into the flow of that.
Yeah, I would say both of those things ultimately, but take it
slowly. Don't try to go too fast, right?
Because if you try to go too fast, you're going to stumble
and fall over and hurt yourself. So be careful with that one.
But yes, it is a principle of harmony in the sense that a lot
of the reasons why we have conflict in the world is because
we hold onto things. Yeah, we hold onto my opinion on
my way or whatever. And if we are able to go with
the flow instead and kind of move with things, actually, it
tends to create less problems in the world.
It tends to create more harmony. So that's absolutely true when
it comes to the idea of impermanence in meditation
practice. It is, I mean, the idea of non
self on coming to the point where you see that everything is
important, that's extremely profound.
Yeah. And you know, see what happens
as you go along. The Buddha says yes, at the end
of the day, there is no self. There is just emptiness.
And emptiness is the most beautiful thing, the most happy
thing in the world. In the meantime, just use the
idea of impermanence to deepen your meditation.
Use it as a support. You have to make meditation to
let go more because you understand that things in the
world are not really reliable. The word of holding on.
Then come inside of yourself. Then start to observe your mind.
And as you observe your mind and your body, yeah, if you go into
a nice meditation, your body starts to disappear.
And you think, actually, Jeep, as the body is gone and I feel
much better, obviously the body is a problem.
Yeah. You start to let go of the body.
The mind has far more potential for happiness than the body has.
And so in this way you gradually see impermanence and more and
more things, and there's less and less things remaining.
Yeah, until there's only bliss kind of remains.
And when only bliss remains, So what happens after that?
That's kind of exciting, right? What is beyond bliss, so to
speak? Yeah, That's kind of where the
real kind of deal starts to happen.
The real profundity of the Buddhist path, like emptiness
and these kind of things. Sure.
Does the bliss? I mean is the is the is the
permanence to the bliss? Nothing is permanent, Yeah.
So you have to go beyond, beyond all things, is there?
Is there something that perceives the that the the the
is? Or is it just elements moving as
moving together and it's just always elements moving that
perceives that there that there isn't?
Yeah, something. Yeah, there's this movement.
I mean, there are, there are times when they go into states
that can last for long periods of time.
You know, you can go go on for long periods of time, certain
things, but in general they're just movement.
Yeah, yes, please. My question is about different
types of contemplation and just when ideas get in the way of
contemplation. So I was just thinking about
when it came to Anita and other ideas that come up in Buddhism,
that because of the overthinking mind and that sense of self,
just going too far with like some of the ideas and just going
back to what are the simple things that the Buddha actually
wants us to contemplate. Yeah, Yeah.
Well. Yeah, there's a question.
Sure. OK, good.
Yeah, I so, yeah, don't, don't overthink.
Yeah, obviously the, the idea here, contemplation is more like
observing and learning from observation.
Yeah. So you see the unreliability of
the world. I mean, it's kind of staring in
the face. You don't have to think too much
about it. Yeah.
So it often one of the kind of beautiful teachings that Adam
Bram's teacher told Adam Bram's teacher is a monk in Thailand
called Adam Shah died 30 years ago, over 30 years ago.
And one of his teachings was everything teaches you.
Yeah. So when you move around through
your daily life, you can see impermanence around you at all
times. Yeah.
It is all it is everywhere. Things, people dying, things
change, people getting sick, the world moving in various ways.
So sometimes all you need to do is have your wits about you and
see what is going on. And as you do that impermanence
kind of, you start to really feel this thing.
Yeah. And you start to feel actually,
why am I relying on this world? Why am I getting upset when I
get the bad news? I should really expect these
things to happen. This is the nature of the world.
There's all these undercurrents building up, steam, waiting for
those tectonic planes to bang, move, and then the earthquake
happens. An earthquake is like a an
example of this impermanence happening in reality here.
So it's more like observing peacefully and allowing the
wisdom to sink in. Yeah.
That's kind of what it really is about.
And then you do that first of all by observing the world and
then you do do the same thing in your local kind of your personal
sphere and then ultimately in your meditation practice and.
My final question would be is how would you know when you feel
like you have that wisdom sunk in where just because you're
always constantly observing and learning things, maybe that over
focus of like, oh, I've got to learn about a nature today, so
I'm just going to look for that. Yeah.
When does that wisdom I just. Say it's a very good, very good
question. Thank you for answering, asking
a question. It's a really good question.
And I think it's something that is of misunderstood in Buddhism.
The way, you know, is by the depth of your meditation because
if you understand impermanence, you will let go.
Yeah. And when you let go, that is
precisely what it means, that you're able to become more
peaceful in meditation. So, you know, by the ability to
achieve peace in meditation. That's how you know this things
actually work. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, John. I'm thinking, correct me if I'm
wrong, craving is craving plays a key role in the whole thing.
Craving, reduced craving will improve your letting go and then
your understanding or acceptance of the impermanence improves.
Is that right? Say again, what craving?
Craving, yeah, more craving more stuck with the impermanence and
then sadness and then suffering. Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So reduce the craving first,
which is something we think kind of the normal.
Person. Yeah, but The thing is that if
you if you do observe impermanence, one of the main
points of that is that it does reduce craving.
Yeah. Because you cannot crave for
things that are unreliable and uncertain.
So you really go the other way around.
You start with a contemplation that reduces the the craving and
the desire here. Yes, yes, yes.
It helps, of course. Yes, yes, yes.
Thank you, John. Yeah.
Thank you. I have a This may sound like a
trick question, but it's not really intended to be a trick
question. And the question is, would you
say that the voters teachings themselves are impermanent?
Like, how far does this idea of our teacher go?
And that's something that I've been thinking about for a long,
long time. Yeah.
So yes, of course they are impermanent.
The other teachings are impermanent in the sense that
the Buddha teaches. It sets in motion the wheel of
the Dumma, and the momentum of that wheel only goes for so
long, and eventually it dies out.
And then there is no Dumma in the world there.
And this is one of the things that gets you kind of, you know,
to do the right thing. Yeah.
Because you understand that actually right now we have it,
and it will not last that long. One day it will be gone.
That's kind of scary, you know, And imagine the darkness when
you don't really have any really good teachings to guide you or
whatever. So that is true.
But on the other hand, you could say that there are.
The principles of nature are not impermanent.
So there is one thing is the kind of the phenomena as they,
as you observe them through the six sentences, those phenomena
are always impermanent. But the principles that lie
behind that, the laws of nature, they are not impermanent.
So impermanence itself is not impermanent.
Yeah, impermanence is always there, dependent origination.
The laws of causality are always truer.
Yeah. The four noble truths are always
also truer. So you need to distinguish
between the phenomenon, the phenomena of the world, and the
laws behind those phenomena. Yeah.
OK. So anything else?
Yeah, over there now. OK.
Yeah, please. Yeah.
Hi, John. One of the issues I think I have
is when I think that I'm letting go or not clinging onto
impermanence, it's replaced by almost a feeling of apathy.
And, you know, I don't know whether that is a positive.
Probably not so positive. You don't know.
You don't want to be too apathetic.
Yeah. I mean, it's good to relax,
right? And that's certainly, certainly
useful. You need to try to build up some
some more joy in your meditation, something positive,
something that brightens the mind up.
Yeah. And the, the the way to do that
is always kind of this is really the foundation of the Buddhist
path. Yeah.
The idea of being kind and being generous and this kind of thing
is that to see what you can do, do with that in your life.
Yeah. How can you?
I'm sure you are very good person already.
I'm sure you had doing many of the right things.
Otherwise it wouldn't be. It's kind of bleeding obvious.
But still, what more can I do? How can I have more compassion
for people in the world? Yeah.
I mean, I think one of the biggest dangers in life is to be
judge mental over people around us in the world and to take
sides in the wars and say, ah, these are bad, these are the bad
guys, these are the good guys, that kind of stuff.
Everyone is suffering. We're all just beating each
other up in stupid ways in this world.
Everyone is worthy of compassion in one way or another.
And once you see the whole world as worthy of compassion, and
many of those people worthy of compassion, they're also worthy
of kindness and worthy of friendliness because they
actually have good qualities as well.
Yeah. Once you start to see things in
this way, then that really abolishes some of those
definements and negative things in your mind that may, may
arise. I don't know anything about your
mind, by the way, but I'm just kind of not the general trend of
human minds or what they're like.
Yeah, just working from personal experience.
So do good things. Yeah.
Do the right thing. Yeah.
Treat people with kindness. Be generous whenever you can.
Generosity often must mean small little things in daily life.
Yeah. Little, little things.
Say a kind word. A kind word is a beautiful way
of being generous. Because it's so easy.
Yeah. And, you know, just tell someone
you appreciate them. I never told you before how much
I appreciate you. But actually, you know, you've
been my friend for so long. Yeah.
I feel so lucky to have a friend like you.
Something simple. Something really, really nice.
And that is like giving a gift without, you know, just through
through words. There's so much we can do in
that area. And then you're building up
those qualities that will eventually lead to hopefully, a
mind that is more bright as you meditate.
Yeah, please, Sir. Yeah.
Adriani, it was so good to hear that you went to Sri Lanka and
had some good experiences. Would you be able to share with
us anything that was either profound or any place that you
found that was really. Yeah, of course, I'm very happy
to do that. So first of all, I have to say
that I really love going to Sri Lanka.
I also love going to India. I find both India and Sri Lanka
really nice places. I would guess that I've probably
been a monk in Sri Lanka, maybe India as well before probably,
and it's kind of nice idea. Maybe I was a nun in Sri Lanka.
I don't know what I was hard to know, but I think there is a
good some good reasons for thinking that.
And so I feel kind of natural, kind of naturally natural over
there. And we were in this beautiful
meditation centre close to Candy.
So I'm one thing I'm always afraid of in Sri Lanka is the
heat. That's kind of the one thing
that what worries me the most. But when they come up into the
hills, it kind of gets quite nice.
So morning temperature, just just beautiful here.
And then one of the things I did when I was there, I went to
visit one of the small forest monasteries in Sri Lanka.
I have a very close monk friend in Sri Lanka, Venable Damita,
who is a beautiful monk, Sri Lankan monk has been to Perth as
well before. Stayed with us for the rains
retreat. Really nice.
He, he translated all my talks while I was there.
He had a lot of work to do because I guess he talks and
went to his monastery and has a small little forest monastery on
top of this hill and it kind of rice paddies and farms kind of
round. Most of it is forest, but
there's also this rice paddies there.
Everything is so incredibly simple, right?
Beautiful simplicity, nothing fancy at all.
This is kind of, you know, basic concrete walls and a tin roof
and something like that. And you go inside is very bare
and very simple and very, very attractive.
And in the morning, I was only there for a few hours in the
morning, you kind of go out with your arms bowled.
You go down the hill, you go to the local farms and they kind of
give you some kinder baat, right?
You go on your arms around, you come back, you have your meal.
Super simple and super, kind of very, very beautiful.
And I asked him and I said to him, well, actually, you know
what if monks from Boriniana wants to come and stay over
here. Yeah.
What do you think about that? We already, he already had some
visited before from us actually. But he thought that was a really
nice idea. And you know, he doesn't have
that many cute is unfortunately, but so maybe.
So that is that was actually maybe the highlight of seeing
that monastery. Yeah.
It was very, very nice.
And and then I of course, lots of talks and that kind of
things. But yeah, very, very beautiful
trip back to the Sri Lanka. Thank you.
Wow. I join Bromley.
Yes, please fire everyone, Eddie, see what happens.
Oh. Can I?
Speak, yeah. I join Bromley.
Yeah, Thank you for tonight's priceless stock.
I repeat again, it's priceless. Yeah.
You not only cover impermanence,
you cover the heart of the Buddha's teaching tonight, you
know. OK.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'd like to make a just quick comment.
OK. And then the question.
OK. Yeah.
In my dealings with Buddhism, you know, the years of dealings
will be seminar. I've been going round and round
and round and round and round without finding the thing.
OK. Not OK and I found it in what
you meant your talk tonight that's why I found you know not
tonight. I found it every.
When you say this thing it just makes me feel.
Oh, I see it clearly OK yeah, yeah, yeah and then The thing is
the. I refer to the Buddha's the
Buddha's teaching. OK, let's hope that those there
are more, the people with less dust in the eyes who can
understand this. And we hope you can, you know,
with those with dust, you know, we hope eventually there'll be
less dust. They can see the teaching, which
you sit tonight, which is priceless.
And I urge people to, I'm going to put this specially in the
tape, OK, And refer to it all the time, especially.
Yeah. Can I ask you, you know, you
know the when you talk about contemplation, contemplation,
short question, Yeah, contemplation.
Yeah. Do we contempt like, you know,
like when you're up, the time is hard to contemplate, you know.
So only when you're down, you're looking for answer then, you
know, you people to play this tape, you will see a lot of
wisdom down there, I think, you know.
So we should be contemplating on the talk tonight.
You know all most of the times in it, but you can't do it when
you're up. Of course you can.
You know. You can always do it.
And this is the thing, you know, sometimes, as you say, when
things are going too well, you get complacent.
You can become stupid because the world is going too well.
And then only when you kind of things are going badly, you
start contemplating. But we should we should learn
from those experiences. We should learn.
Yeah, Yeah. And then?
We should contemplate at any all times.
Yeah, We should put it in our mind all the time, OK itself.
Like when you're going to shoot, you dig the hole, you know, they
say, you know, and then you know, you should dig the hole
in, you know, in advance this thing, you know, to help us
through this thing. Thank you, Eddie.
Thank you so very much. Priceless stock.
OK, excellent. So this is Eddie.
Eddie, the most famous Buddhist in Perth apart from the apart
from. Anyway, let's go on.
Question number one is from Sri Lanka.
Dear Ajammade, is there a purpose behind Buddhist chanting
apart from tradition? I feel if it is done correctly
it can hold great power. Thank you ever so much.
Purpose of Buddhist chanting that the original idea of
Buddhist chanting is to remember the word of the Buddha.
Yeah, that's why people chanted these teachings.
So it really is a way of understanding the Buddhist
teachings if it is done in the right way.
That is the main purpose. Unfortunately, we often do the
chanting in Pali. So that means you have to learn
Pali. That's the only downside.
Learn a bit of Pali or we can do the chanting in English or
whatever. Chanting.
Apart from that, does it have any power?
Probably, yeah. Because the world is a
interesting place and sometimes you can kind of, you know, the
mind is a very powerful thing. Yeah.
And sometimes we can touch other people just by our mind.
So doing chanting and then develop in the mine at the same
time can be very powerful and useful there.
So the answer is yes, but don't do too much chanting.
Yeah, sometimes you do too much. You do too much, it becomes
counterproductive. You just start yawning and
falling asleep and this kind of thing.
So question #2 this is from Martha in Germany.
Hello, Martha. Hi, Venerbach and Ramali.
What would be a useful thought at the moment of death?
Thank you. Sadhu, Sadhu, sadhu.
You thought Marvel is chillax? Yeah, That's the best kind of
thought. When you're dying, just relax,
take it easy, enjoy the journey. Don't try too hard to think
anything in particular. If you try too hard to think in
a guaranteed, you're going to mess things up.
Dying should be a peaceful, nice process.
I always, you know, sometimes you hear in the Theravada
Buddhist circles the idea that when you die, you should have a
good state of mind. You shouldn't kind of think
anything bad. Yeah, but that creates a lot of
pressure when you're dying. Yeah.
Don't think any bad. I'm dying.
No, I'm thinking bad thought. No.
What am I going to do? You can imagine, you know how
terrible this is Like saying something.
Don't think about the white elephant you have.
No, you have no choice, right? Don't think any bad thoughts.
OK, You, you're going to think those bad thoughts.
But I think that whole idea about thinking the right thing
when you're dying is actually a misunderstanding of the Dumber.
That's not what it is about because the death process is not
as it is found in the in the Abidama Pitika, it is not kind
of 1 moment you are here, next moment you're in the next life.
No, there is an intermediate life and all of these kind of
things. And so there is time for that
process to take shape. So just relax.
Yeah. Just enjoy the journey.
Dying is usually a very pleasant thing to do.
If you are ready. Yeah.
If your mind is peaceful, you are at ease, you have lived
Well, then dying is great. Why?
Because most people who die, they have a miserable body.
Yeah. The body is just really
suffering. Many people, they want to go off
to these kind of clinics that kind of end your life anyway.
Dignitas in Switzerland or whatever they're called.
Yeah. So sometimes dying, if you do it
right, is very pleasant and very nice thing.
Yeah. You just have to make sure
you're ready. What matters is what you do now
in this life, not what you do at the moment when you die.
If you're going to really chillax, Yeah.
When you die, then get someone to come to your hospital bed or
whatever and tell you a few jokes.
Yeah. Say, have you heard the one
about the the Irishman, the Scotsman and the Englishman
there or the Aussie and the Kiev?
I don't know what what kind of how this is.
Yeah. Anyway.
And so, you know, this is kind of the thing.
And Ajam Brahm always says that he goes to hospital and he kind
of tells a joke on the hospital bed.
No one else does that. Everyone else goes to cry.
Ask those people to cry, not to come too close to your passing
away. Yeah.
Get those nice friendly people, those people who are kind of
upbeat instead. Yeah.
That's kind of the Buddhist ideal of dying.
Yeah. Anyway, question from Bolivia.
Hello, Bolivia. Not sure if that's your name,
probably not. But anyway, what is sense
restraint? If I restrain myself in asking
someone about his university grades because I don't want to
be jealous about that, is that sense restraint?
Maybe The idea of a sense restraint is that you avoid
doing things that would give rise to bad mental qualities.
So if jealousy obviously is a bad mental quality.
So if you do something to avoid jealousy, then it is good,
right. I'm not sure if this is the
right way to avoid jealousy. I would suggest that, you know,
if someone gets better grades. OK.
You know, have Mudita Have. Yeah.
Wow. Well done.
You did really well. I did much worse.
Good on you. Yeah.
Something like that. And it's OK to do worse.
It's OK. There's always going to be some
people who are smarter than you, people who are more clever.
And the world is full of, you know, these kind of things.
So get used to not being the winner all the time.
That's OK. Yeah, and then you're fine.
The idea, since since it's a void, the bad qualities of mine
from arising to be aware of what is happening in the present.
And then when you see bad qualities, especially anger
arising, you take a countermeasure before it's too
late. You see, you're getting angry
with somebody, you remember their good qualities, and the
anger is abolished like dew before the sun.
All right. Next one also from Germany.
So Germany is here today. Enforcer.
Dear Azan, did the Buddha give instructions to lay or monastic
patricians? About how many hours per day
would be the ideal to do formal practice?
How many hours did the Buddha meditate per day?
Here the formal practice. I don't like this idea of formal
practice and informal practice. Practice is just what is what is
what is practice. Well, the main thing is just to
be kind and to live well. You should do that all at all
time is, is that informal, formal.
It's just whatever it just is, you just do it.
And then when you meditate, you sit down.
You do your best to meditate. Don't make it formal.
It sounds too, too tiring to me. If everything's going to be
formal, just just meditate. Just enjoy.
Sit back, relax, watch the breath.
Do whatever you have, whatever it needs.
Do what you enjoy. Yeah.
Don't do things that don't work as a minimum.
Do maybe 15 minutes. Yeah, in the morning, whatever
you can. It depends on how your mind
state is like, depends on how developed you are through
previous practices. It depends on all of this kind
of thing. Depends on how busy you are on
that day. Don't have too many strict ideas
about what is appropriate. If you do, it's going to be
really hard. Yeah.
So don't, don't try. And then when things feel well
and you're going really well, then you can extend the
meditation a little bit. Don't try to have two fixed
ideas about this, but say a minimum of 15 minutes a day,
right? Every day or five days a week or
whatever it is that is convenient for you as a minimum.
If you can do more, great. How many hours you should do?
There is no should do. How many hours are the Buddha
meditate? We don't know.
We have no idea. Probably he took every
opportunity he had someone. He didn't give teachings.
He would probably just close his eyes and go into some deep bliss
very quickly. That's probably what the Buddha
would do. So, yeah, remember, the path of
meditation should be enjoyable. If it becomes stressful, you are
already on the wrong track. Yeah.
So do what is enjoyable there, try to sit down and meditate
everyday, but if it doesn't work for whatever reason, then stop.
Yeah, and don't, don't carry on pushing yourself through too
much pain or too much problems or whatever sort.
OK, Good luck with that and see what happens.
So that is all for tonight everyone.
So let's just pay homage to the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha.