OK, so let's start this evening's talk.
It's going to be on the idea of freedom.
And the idea of freedom is a very important one on the
Buddhist path. Yeah, it's the kind of thing
that kind of goes throughout the suit as you hear about freedom
from the very beginning all the way to the very end of the path.
And you have important words in the suit as the normal word for
freedom is vimutti. Vimutti means like liberation of
freedom. And one of the important words
you find in the suit is the idea of Cheeto vimutti, which is like
the liberation of freedom of the mind.
Yes. So the idea that the mind gets
liberated from something. Yeah, it's a very enticing and
beautiful concept in The Suitors.
But beyond the idea of Cheeto imuti, the freedom of the mind,
you also have the idea of Pandya Bimuti.
Pandya in The Suitors is the idea of wisdom.
That is the liberation by wisdom, liberation of mind,
liberation by wisdom, very beautiful ideas on the Buddhist
path. And so this is really what we
are aiming for in Buddhism. And it starts from the very
beginning and it kind of gradually develops as we go all
the way to the end of this training that we're trying to
undertake here. But of course, the idea of
liberation also has a lot of ordinary connotations to us.
Yeah. If you are lip free in in
ordinary society, it means that you are not in jail.
Yeah. Being in jail is considered a
bad thing, except if you're a monk, maybe.
Adam Bram says being in jail is a good thing.
Yeah, you know, because you get left in peace, right?
In jail, you just hang out in your cell.
You don't do anything here. Adam Bram says he would prefer
solitary confinement in jail. That would be the ideal place
for the Buddhist. It's kind of weird, isn't it,
how you. It's all about whether you want
to be there or not, whether something is a jail for you or
prison for you. So prison is like, bad.
Why is it bad? Because you can't do what you
want. You can't express yourself in
the way you want to express yourself.
You are limited. You are hind in the world is no
longer your oyster. You can't do what you want in
the world anymore. Yeah.
So imprisonment, the opposite of freedom, is a big problem even
from a ordinary social point of view.
But of course, from a Buddhist point of view, the real prisoner
is not the prison of steel bars and concrete and high security
locks and prison wardens or whatever it is.
That is not the real prisoner. From the Buddhist point of view,
the real prison is a prison of the mind.
It's the prison that almost everyone is in at all times.
You know, you get born into this world, you are in prison
straight away, and then that prison remains with you for your
entire life unless you do something about it, unless you
release yourself from that prison of the mind, the mental
prisoner. That is the real problem.
The way we limit ourselves, the way we look for happiness in the
wrong place, the ways where I deluded about the nature of
reality, the way we kind of create suffering when actually
what we really want to do is to create happiness for ourselves.
That is the problem there. So just to backtrack a little
bit, I was recently in the United States.
I was travelling across the US starting in San Francisco, going
all the way over to New York and Boston and stopping in a few
places in between. And one of the nice things about
travelling as a monastic is that there's a number.
I mean, obviously the main reason you go is to teach.
Yeah. And it's, it's always nice to
teach Duma wherever you go in the world.
And, you know, people always get inspired and they always invite
you back again. That's the biggest problem when
you travel. You always have to go back again
afterwards. That's why you never see us here
in in Australia because there's too much demand everywhere.
But so that's one of the, of course, one of the main reasons
for travelling. Yeah.
But one of the great reasons for travelling is that it gives you
new impulses as a monastic. Yeah, the Dhamma is always the
same, but every society has its idiosyncrasies and it looks at
the dumb or ask questions that are slightly different wherever
you go in the world there. So whenever you go to a new
place, and this was my first time in the United States, you
kind of get asked slightly different questions because of
the nature of that particular society here.
So when I was in Minnesota, yeah, Minnesota, a very cold
place. I was in February, it was
freezing cold. I have no idea how cold it was
over there -26° when I was there here.
Has anyone ever here been to -26°?
No, OK, you, well, you, I wouldn't recommend it, but so I
was there and it was, you know, it's kind of cool because I have
a Norwegian background in Minnesota.
All the Norwegians, Scandinavians kind of went to
the US. So kind of all these people
thought it was really cool. Like the Norwegian monk was
coming to Minnesota. So it was kind of nice, but the
talk that they asked me to give in Minnesota was about
constitutional freedoms versus Buddhist freedoms.
Yeah. And I never really thought about
that before because of course, in the United States, the idea
of constitutional freedoms are very important and significant.
One of the things they proud themselves of in the US is the
the American Constitution, which lays that lays down the kind of
basic ideas for the American Society, the foundations for
that society. And so they wanted me to talk
about, well, what about this freedom is in American Society
versus the Buddhist way of thinking about freedom there and
gives a different angle on things.
And of course, one of the interesting things in the
American Constitution, in the preamble to the American
Constitution, it starts off by talking of life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Yeah.
You know, remember that this kind of one of the kind of
famous lines from the American Constitution, they had life,
Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And one of the reasons I remember that is because when I
grew up in England, back in I was partly in England back in
the 1980s or whatever it was, there was AI think it a a
commercial on TV that was kind of the life liberty and Wrangler
jeans. I never forgot it after that.
Yeah. Like the pursuit of happiness
was Wrangler jeans. So.
And that is kind of a, it's a nice thing.
Yeah. Life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, it kind of makes good sense.
We can see why that is a positive sentiment.
Yeah. Life sounds good.
Yeah. We don't want to kind of people
to kill us. Or maybe we do.
I don't know. But usually we don't.
And then you have liberty. Yeah.
Liberty is nice, especially if you understand what it means.
Of course, most people have no idea what it means.
But anyway, this kind of general idea is nice.
And then the pursuit of happiness.
Yeah. Makes sense.
But when you think about it, yeah, life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness, this was so fun because fun to when you
go travel around, you have to have a bit of fun, right?
So it's kind of making fun of the American Constitution with
the Americans. It's always kind of you have to
have a bit of fun and games with people.
So I said there was a problem with this.
Yeah, it sounds really nice. The sentiment is good.
There's a foundation fundamental problem with the entire American
Constitution. You got to change it.
Yeah, it doesn't work, This Constitution.
That was kind of my point. And I said the problem with this
Constitution is that to be able to pursue happiness, what do you
need to be able to pursue happiness?
You have to know where to find happiness.
You have to know the meaning of happiness.
You have to understand what it is all about.
If you don't know where to find happiness, how can you possibly
pursue it? So I said to my audience, well,
Buddhism can help you with that. So we'll give you a few
paragraphs, Buddhist paragraphs, and you can insert those in your
American constitution, and then you have a good constitution
over here. And people, they kind of laugh.
I'm not sure if they were all that impressed, but they kind of
laughed at it because they thought it was a bit outrageous.
That would be really nice, right?
Sometimes we need to combine some of our nice worldly
sentiments with a few spiritual ideas.
And when we combine them in that way, actually that is where they
start to become really meaningful here.
Because of course, the reality is that most people, they go
into the world and they start to pursue this idea of happiness.
The liberty is there, yet that means they are allowed to pursue
it. The reality is they tend to look
in the wrong place. And of course, in America, the
idea of the pursuit of happiness is the idea of getting away from
the country that you were in. Maybe you were oppressed in that
country, maybe you're not happy or whatever, and you pursue the
ordinary happinesses of the world.
Yeah, that is actually what you have, the liberty to pursue her.
But actually, from a Buddhist point of view, it is not very
profound. It doesn't get you very far.
It gets you where it gets everyone else.
Yeah, it gets you to the grave eventually.
And then you kind of wonder what it was all about.
And that's kind of the end of the story, Not all that
exciting. Yeah.
So there is a fundamental problem there with this idea of
liberty in the world or the idea of happiness as well.
So to really have freedom, you have to really to really be able
to use freedom, we have to have some understanding of the
underlying idea. So what happened is, is what
actually the pursuit of these things really is about.
And if we get it all wrong, then it's going to be problematic.
Now, one of the aspects also of the American Constitution is the
idea you have the freedom of speech, you have the freedom of
assembly, the freedom of the press and all of these kind of
things. And these are all nice things.
Yeah. And these are things that the
the Americans will pride themselves on, that they have
this kind of liberties and freedoms in their Constitution.
Yeah, I kind of felt it put into the Constitution as one of the
fundamental things. And I think it's OK to be proud
of that. Yeah.
These are good things. These are things that keep our
society in change. To keep a balance in society
doesn't allow people to get too much power, which is always a
dangerous thing. Yeah.
So there are good things, yeah. But the problem, one of the
interesting things, of course, that once you start to look a
little bit at the Buddhist history, you start to realise
that many of these fundamental rights that people had today,
one of the rights also as active freedom of religion, many of
these things existed already 2 1/2 thousand years ago.
Yeah, we pride, pride ourselves on these ideas that that kind of
our society is very advanced and very, you know, evolved from the
kind of early days. But very often you've had these
ideas and not really ideas that belong to the present day here.
These are perennial ideas, ideas that have always been around,
always been there in society here.
And I'm sure if you would be able to look into the really
deep past, almost regardless of how far you went into the past,
if you went into your past lives eons, maybe into the past, you
will see the same ideas recurring again and again and
again. And there's nothing really all
that unique about the society we have today, I would think.
And when you even, all you have to do is go back to Indian
society and you start to look at that society, you find
democracy, You find a very high degree of freedom of religion.
Yeah, it's kind of amazing when you start reading the suitors,
you start to see the suitors of the discourse of the Buddha.
You start to see all the debates that we're having in those days,
all the kind of crazy religious ideas they had.
It makes our days insane by comparison to some of the ideas
they had in those days. And you might think there are
some religious scallywags out there today.
There were equally many religious scallywags at the time
of the Buddha. Yeah, There were lots of them
hanging around saying all kind of mad things in those things as
well here. So there was this beautiful kind
of rainbow of religions. Yeah.
All of them kind of arguing with each other, discussing with each
other. And this is one of those
beautiful things about the Indian culture here.
I don't know if you've been to India, but I I find India very
fascinating. Yeah.
You have kind of a love hate relationship with India.
It's a very fascinating society because of its religious nature.
Yeah. Yeah.
So many religious people. And of course, as a Buddhist,
when you go to India, it is almost as if you're stepping
back into history here, seeing some of those beautiful ancient
sites where the Buddha was, where the great Arahans was,
where the Bikanese Arahans of the old days were here.
Yeah. And you go back to those places
and you actually know it is the place because it looks exactly
the same way as it was described in the suitors.
Some of the details are exactly the same.
Yeah. It's a remarkable thing.
Yeah. And you go there and you feel
the sense of weird sense of belonging when you go there.
That's what I feel there. And I'm pretty sure when I look
at my life now and I look at kind of the web, what the things
I enjoy and the things I do in my life, I'm pretty sure I was
an Indian in a past life. There's so many things about
India that I kind of just adore. I think it's a so many things I
hate about India as well. Don't say that, but that's
actually true. But many wonderful things about
India here, which are really kind of, you know,
extraordinary, especially if you are a Buddhist.
And it would be surprising if many of us here had not been
Indian in the past life. Yeah.
India is a place where lots of people.
India is a place where the Buddhism was extremely strong
for 1 1/2 thousand years. So of course it is likely that
we were part of that culture anyway.
So. But India is fascinating and it
shows you when you look sometimes at how those societies
worked already 2 1/2 thousand years ago, you start to realise
that our society today is not all that special, it's not all
that unique. Yeah, these ideas that we have
now of liberty and freedom in our society have actually
existed for a very, very long time.
But coming back to the idea of freedom again there, let us
start with a simple idea of morality here.
Now I'm going to have a look at the ideas, how it is that the
Buddhism presents the ideas of freedom here.
And one of the things that I think is often misunderstood in
our world there many people think that the ideas of morality
are hindrances to freedom. The hammers in that put
boundaries on what we can do and we cannot really enjoy ourselves
in the world to the full potential there.
Why? Because morality sets limits on
us. Yeah.
And for that reason, you will find that there are many
societies in the world and many kind of maybe not societies, but
and groups of individuals who decide to live amoral lives, not
really taking morality into account, not making an important
part of their life. But why?
Because they see it as a hindrance to expression here.
But that is a misunderstanding of the idea.
Morality here, morality, if you live it in the right way, is
actually an expansion of your freedom, an expansion of your
sense of liberty within her. Yeah.
And this is such an important thing to understand because when
you live a moral life, something very powerful happens inside of
you. What happens?
You start to feel a sense of self respect because you're
treating other people well. You start to feel good about
yourself because you know that you're living a good life,
especially when you really try to perfect that virtue and
morality. You feel a sense of self value,
a self esteem. You don't have any remorse or
regrets about the past. You don't have the darkness of
the mind or the sloth of the mind because you've done bad
things before or you've done maybe a few bad things, but
generally speaking, you live a good life.
And that liberty that comes in the mind, that is a function of
that, that is far more important than the kind of liberty that
you get outside. It's the mental liberty that
really matters in the world, not the external liberty of enjoying
the senses or enjoying power or enjoying these kind of things.
And I really recommend you to notice that because that is such
a beautiful freedom of the mind. Not having the remorse, not
having the negativity speaking to you all the time and making
your life difficult. And many people who complain
about lack of self worth or self value in this world, well, if
you would really want to, to emphasize or to increase your
sense of self worth, this is one of the most important places
where you actually create that self worth for yourself.
You really start to feel good about yourself.
You don't care so much about what other people think about
you. This is like a disease in our
world, always caring about what other people think.
Who cares what other people think, right?
What do they know anyway? It's weird how often we kind of
we buy into praise. We buy into the praise of people
who haven't got a clue about what is praiseworthy here.
Why do we care about other people's praise?
If the Buddha praises you, OK, then you have good reason to
care about it. But otherwise, forget about
other people's praise. Feel good in your heart because
you know for yourself that you are a good person.
That is the first liberty of morality here.
And there is a nice story that goes with this.
I don't know if you have heard that story.
Ajam Brahm sometimes tells it. Actually there's an Ajam Brahm
story. I only retell Ajam Brahm story.
That's kind of my, that's how I get by.
And I give this down my talks. I just think what will Ajam
Brahm say? OK, he will tell this story.
OK, I'm going to tell that story.
And this is a story of from Thailand, from Ajam Brahm's
early days in Thailand here. And it's a story of two very
senior Thai monks. And they were invited to a
dhana. Dhana is like a meal offering at
someone's house usually. So they were invited to this
dhana and they went there. And this was a very wealthy
people living in this house. This is now a long time ago.
Yeah. This was probably in Bangkok
back in the 1970s or 80s or something like that.
I can't, not sure exactly when it was.
So they get to this house, they sit down and they get, you know,
treated. They get a kind of have a nice
meal or whatever. And after the meal they start to
talk to each other. And as they talk, there is a
large aquarium. Yeah, fish tank in that house.
And so one of the monks says to the other one, it's terrible
they're keeping all this fish imprisoned in a fish tank.
Yeah, just for their own enjoyment, so they can kind of
enjoy the fish swimming around. It's just entertainment,
Entertainment for them while torturing the fish in the
process. How can they do that?
This is bad morality. Yeah.
They're doing immoral stuff by torturing these fish in the
house. They should be free to swim in
the rivers, to enjoy themselves and do whatever they want in the
world. And then the other monk, he
says, but wait a minute. Yeah, he says, wait a minute.
Because actually, when you look at those fish in the fish tank
right here, they have many, many advantages over the fish in the
rivers. First of all, there are no
predators, right? The fish in the river always
have to look over their shoulder.
Do they actually not sure fish have shoulders.
But anyway, you they had to kind of look behind them, right?
Because a bit kind of scary, the fishy shoulder that they always
had to be frightened, right, Because there's always kind of
larger predators around there or the water in the river is never
really controlled. In part of the year it is too
hot. Part of the year it is too cold.
Yeah. Always problematic with the
change in temperature in the water.
Sometimes there is food in the river, sometimes there is no
food in that river. Sometimes the river dries out.
There's only little puddles left.
Yeah, and maybe they die in that little puddle.
But these fish in the fish tank, Yeah, They always have the right
temperature of the water, controlled by the owner to be
perfect for that fish. Always give them nice and
nutritious food. Yes, they kind of.
Sometimes they become a little bit too fat, maybe, But
otherwise they are healthy and nice right there.
There's no predators in that tank.
If they get sick, they call them the fish doctor.
I'm sure there must be fish doctors out there.
There's doctors of all kinds. I'm sure there's fish doctors as
well. They call in the fish doctor to
look after them. Yeah.
So they have this kind of perfect set up.
So who is worse off? Is it the ones who are limited a
little bit by the fish tank four sides?
Are they worse off because they have all these other things?
Or is it those who are free to do whatever they want, but
actually they have all these problems because of that?
And then the other monkey kind of agreed.
Yeah, you have a point. Yeah, actually, maybe the fish
in the fish tank are better off. And in the same way we are
better off by walling in, putting limits on our desires,
limits on our angry limits on our stupidity and delusion,
right. Putting some limits because we
are deluded. We don't really understand the
world properly here, and we put limits on that.
Then we experience a freedom that is far more valuable than
the freedom to just mess around in the world there.
And this is exactly the beginning of this beautiful
saying by Ajam Brahm. This was coined by Ajam Brahm.
I think the idea, the difference between the freedom of desire
versus the freedom from desire, yeah, you're moving a little bit
away from desire. It's more like freedom from
desire to some extent that you're finding here.
Whereas the freedom of desire, the pursuit of things,
regardless of the morality you might breach as a consequence,
that is a crazy kind of desire only going to let you down all
the way here. So this is how you start to
reflect. Yeah.
And this is kind of the advantage of coming into
listening to Buddhist ideas, coming into contact with
Buddhism because they allows you a new way of looking at the
world. Large part of the world doesn't
even understand such a basic idea that morality is a positive
thing here. And the reason they don't
understand it is because they haven't got access to spiritual
teachings that point them in that direction here.
Once you have that access, once you get a degree of faith and
confidence in this Buddhist teachings, it opens your eyes to
a new world, a new reality. And this is what this really is
about. What about other problems with
freedom? One of the problems with
freedom, one of the kind of things that we need to look at
is, well, what about this idea of free will?
How much free will do we have? Is there really such a thing as
free will? And one of the interesting
things to look at in your life is to look at your habits.
And you start to look very closely.
You start to see that we are very habitual beings.
We do things according to habits.
Yeah. And I always like to think of
myself born in Norway. You were surprised.
The kind of things I eat in Norway.
Here, you'd probably be disgusted.
Yeah. We eat things like pickled
herrings. Yeah.
We look like fish. That has been has been kind of
lying in lie. Yeah.
In alkaline solution. It's transparent, like Jelly.
It tastes like nothing. It's just kind of this weird
stuff. And you would be absolutely
disgusted if you saw these things.
Well, as I kind of lap it up, yeah.
Wow. This is the real delicacies.
And the difference is what, 1 of conditioning.
Yeah. Yeah.
Nothing more than that. We're such conditioned beings,
and if you start to look at your life, the things that you like,
the things that you want to do in your life, how your mind
works, the people you want to be around, the religion that you
choose, the work you're into, all the other things that make
up your life. And you start to look back at
the cause and conditions that make these things.
You start to see the habits in action in your life.
That was very interesting when I was in the US, coming back to
the trip to the US again, because you get some new
impulses when you go to a new place, as I said before.
So I was in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, pretty much the
coldest place in the US, Doesn't get much colder than that in the
US. And when I was there, it was
-26° I was there in my sandals, no socks.
Yeah, the sandals. I was out for maximum 30 seconds
because of that. And it reminded me of kind of my
upbringing in Norway because it got really cold in Norway as
well. And but it's so weird, though,
what kind of really kind of shocks you when you go there.
Is that these Norwegians? Yeah, come from one of the
coldest places in the world there.
Yeah. The coldest place.
Coldest time in Norway. I was was -41°.
That was the coldest. And that was really, really
cold. We can barely breathe that -41
really, really kind of terrible. And so -41 yeah.
So these Norwegians come from one of the coldest places in the
world. They travel kind of way, way
across the world, thousands of kilometres away.
Where do they go? The coldest place in that new
country here. Isn't that weird?
Isn't that kind of straight? How many habits are putting?
Go to Florida, for goodness sake.
Go to California. Go to Arizona, whatever.
Go to a hot place. Don't go to blooming Minnesota.
But of course, when you understand the human mind, you
understand why that is the case. Yeah.
It is about habit. It's about identity, it's about
feeling sense of belonging. These things are far more
important than kind of the temperature around you.
And if there's no reasons that were used to very low
temperatures, used to snow, used all these kind of things, if
they went to Florida, they would probably the the sense of
identity would dissolve. Yeah.
We can't hang out with alligators in Florida.
That doesn't make any sense. Yeah.
How is that possible? So they go to the place where
they feel at ease because the identity is attached to the
cold, attached to the snow, attached to hard work.
You have to work really hard when it's so cold, otherwise you
freeze to death and these kind of things.
So that is why you go there. That is one of the main reasons
why we're creatures of habit, because it it indulges our sense
of self. Our sense of self demands that
kind of continuity, kind of consistency in our life.
Yeah, this is kind of scary when I start to see that This is why
we do the same things again and again and again, never really
changing all that much. If we change it maybe a little
bit, but not too much, because otherwise you start to feel that
your sense of self is threatened.
So this is the idea that we are very strongly conditioned and
there isn't really such a big problem, right?
OK, So what if it can be a problem if you're conditioned in
the wrong way? So you kind of you, you know,
believe in the wrong teachings or you believe in bad things,
yes, then the conditioning can be really bad.
But the fact that whether you like, you know, Australian food,
you know, Thai food and Chinese food, French food, Norwegian
fish, whatever it is, whatever it is that you, that is not so
important. It doesn't really matter all
that much. But the point is not so much
what it is that you like or don't like.
The point is the fact that you are trapped by that conditioning
and that there is very little sense of free will there.
That is really the point. You start to really question the
idea of free will. How much do you choose?
And I think if you look at the Buddhist teachings in the right
way, you start to understand that actually free will is
mostly perhaps completely an illusion.
It is a very powerful illusion. It feels like you have free
will. It feels like we're always
choosing A&B, right? It's a very powerful illusion.
But is it really? Then I think the answer is
probably no. And if there is something, it is
a very, very attenuated and small minor aspect of our person
that is free in that way. And once you start to see that,
it starts to become scary because there are things in life
that are not innocent. And one of the thing that is not
innocent is a thing like anger. Whether you like fish or you
like, you know, potatoes or whatever, it doesn't really
matter so much. But when it comes to things like
being angry and upset with the world, it has very detrimental
effects on you and the people around you.
That is where it is scary. But if I ask you to not get
angry at all, not to get irritated at all, not to get
upset at all for the next week at all for one week, would you
be able to do it? I can almost guarantee you that
you wouldn't. Yeah.
If you can stay one day without getting irritated, that would be
a miracle already. Most people get angry or upset
or at least irritated several times a day.
When we go through all the things that we have to do to
stay for a whole week, you almost have to be enlightened.
Yeah. To not be angry for a whole
week. Yeah.
Or at least get very good samadhi, because it actually is
very difficult thing to do for most people.
And when you see that, you see that you cannot even control
your temper in this way. There's nothing you really you
can do about it. You start to understand what
that you are a bit like in machine.
You get into the wrong situation, you come with, you
hang out with the wrong people and certain things come out of
you whether you want to or not. You can't really control it.
Or if you can control, maybe you can do it once or twice.
Yeah. And then you feel exhausted and
then kind of it comes out again. And that is kind of the scary
part. This is the conditioned nature
of our reality. And we start to understand that
if there is no will, I can actually sort these things out.
If will isn't free here, then we have a very serious problem.
We have to recondition ourselves very slowly and very gradually
and then maybe we can escape these really big problems in our
human personalities, the anger, the delusion, the excessive
greed, all of these kind of things.
So habit is a very, very powerful thing here.
I always talk about habits as a super tanker here, you know,
super tanker, the ship going down very, maybe 20 knots an
hour or whatever, extremely heavy shape, very, very hard to
turn around. But gradually, gradually you do
turn it around and then it starts to, things become
different after a while there, but it's not something you can
do on the spot. That is part of the problem
there. So I say that there isn't really
any free will in the world. If there is free will, it is
very small. And if there isn't any free
will, well, that kind of makes this whole idea of the pursuit
of happiness, liberty look very different all of a sudden.
And I want to then move onto this idea.
Well, if there isn't any free will, what does liberty then
mean? What does freedom mean if there
is no free will? Because the answer this still is
a kind of freedom there. Yeah.
But before we go there, before I even look at that to kind of
understand what this freedom means, let us assume for a
moment that there is actually such a thing as freedom of will.
Let's assume that you can choose whatever you like in this world.
What does that actually mean? What you will start to realise
when you look at it in the right way.
Actually, even if there is freedom of will, it doesn't
really mean all that much. It doesn't really have many
positive consequences. What does freedom of the will
mean for most people? Freedom of choice, and usually
what it means, it means that in the morning when you wake up,
you can choose whether you want this cereal or that cereal.
Yeah. If you're really adventurous,
maybe you have a croissant for breakfast.
Yeah. I don't know if you have that,
have that, or if you come here for breakfast.
If you're a monkey, I'm not going to say what do you get for
breakfast because you'll be so jealous if you heard jealous if
you have breakfast over here. But regardless of what you have
for breakfast, Yeah. This is kind of the choices that
we are dealing with in the normal realm of human beings.
You can choose job A or you can choose job B.
Yeah, you can choose partner A or partner B here.
You can choose religion A or religion B here.
Religion B, always go for religion B, right?
B for Buddhism, so and so. But these are the kind of
choices we make, and most of those choices are in the realm
of the five sentences. How much difference does it make
in your life whether you choose to have an apple or an orange,
whether you choose to have pickled herring or barramundi?
Barramundi, that's kind of the local fish right there.
I see. I know a little bit about
Australia. So barramundi or pickled
herring, how much difference does it really make?
And the answer is, it makes a tiny bit of difference in your
life, but it doesn't really make all that much difference at all
there. The problem is, in our life, we
don't understand where real happiness is to be found.
That is the real problem. And because we don't understand
where it is to be found, we can't choose it.
So if you have freedom of choice, but you don't know where
happiness is to be found, what is the point of that freedom of
choice? You can only choose within a
very narrow framework of things that are really quite irrelevant
to your happiness anyway. If you don't have the bird's eye
view to understand real happiness where it actually is,
there is nothing really useful about that freedom of choice.
It becomes this stupid thing that has no relevance to your
life. The biggest problem for freedom,
the biggest problem for liberty, the biggest problem for becoming
happy, is the delusion, the misunderstanding, the wrong view
of the nature of reality. That is the real problem.
Once you start to open up the alternative view of the world,
once you start to take away the delusion in human beings seeing
the world in the right way, that is where you open up the
possibility of real happiness, because now you're seeing the
world in the right way. This is the problem for freedom.
The problem for freedom is not whether there is free will or
not. That's kind of completely
irrelevant. So what does this mean?
All it means, as I said at the very beginning, when you come to
this Buddhist teachings, you start to read the word of the
Buddha, you start to think about life in a new way.
The first thing you do is you start to realise that actually
morality is actually really important for having a sense of
internal freedom. Internal freedom cannot be had
without morality, without kindness, without care, without
looking after each other in the right way.
There is no freedom without that.
Morality is a fundamental aspect of the idea of freedom.
You start to see that, you start to practice it, you start to
feel it, the consequences come out.
But of course it goes much deeper than that.
The Buddha says if you want real freedom, the real freedom is the
freedom of the mind. Where is that to be found?
It is to be found in meditation practice, right?
You start to practice meditation, you start to feel
that the mind settles down. You start to feel there's no
more thinking going on in the mind.
You start to feel that the body fades away a little bit.
Yeah, no more pains in the body. The body is kind of irrelevant.
Your senses are becoming less important because you have your
eyes closed. There's very few sounds going on
around you, and you start to feel peaceful inside.
What does that feel like? And it feels like a kind of
freedom. You are free of many of the
irritations of ordinary life. It feels beautiful.
You start to realise that some of the ordinary thought patterns
that we have, the ill will, the desires that we have, the
restlessness in the mind, the tiredness, the lethargy, all of
these kind of things, they are not there anymore and you feel
free. As a consequence, you start to
feel happiness, you start to feel bliss.
You start to understand that an other reality is possible.
This is what you see through the meditation because initially you
just have a sense of confidence and faith in the word of the
Buddha. Yeah, this is opens up your eyes
to new reality. Now you can choose.
Now you can choose because you now you know that there is no
other reality. You know that there's something
more in this world and there's the ordinary humdrum things of
ordinary life that actually are not very interesting, actually
quite boring, that are not really real choices at all
there. So it opens up your eyes to new
possibility. Now you can start to make real
choices because you know about the alternatives that exist.
The deeper you take your meditation, the more freedom you
feel. The more you understand this
alternative reality in the world, what actually can be done
with our lives, where real freedom truly lies.
Then you have those choices. Eventually you may reach a state
of deep samadhi, deep stillness of the mind, the things that
Ajam Brahm talks about, the Jana state, the profound states of
meditation practice. And once you see these kind of
things, you understand that ordinary reality of human beings
is a very poor thing indeed, very uninteresting thing indeed.
There is something completely beyond our ordinary reality
that's so much more interesting here than what we normally are
interested in. Once you see that, you can never
turn back again because you have understood something, you have
changed your outlook, your view of the world once and for all.
Then you have a real freedom of choice because now you
understand where happiness is. That is the freedom that we
want. Who cares about that ordinary
freedom of choice and ordinary life?
It's irrelevant. It's our blindness to the
possibilities in our life that is a real problem.
The path goes even further because after the ideas of
samadhi, after the ideas of the stillness of the mind, comes the
insights of the mind, and this is what we call the pandya
vimutti, as I was mentioning at the very beginning.
Yeah, the liberation through wisdom, and this is the highest
kind of freedom. When you start to see what is
going on, even in this area, you can start to choose wisdom in
your life because you start to understand that there is such a
thing as profound wisdom on the Buddhist path.
Once you see it, once you know it is there, then you can choose
it. Otherwise you can't even choose
it. So coming to the Buddhist
teaching is a profound benefit. Yeah, because it opens up your
eyes to these new possibilities. It opens up just by reading the
word of the Buddha. Yeah.
If you are, if you are open to the word of the Buddha, if you
have the ability to gain a degree of confidence in those
teachings, it is already a guide in the right direction.
This is why the Buddha is said to be the eye of the world.
Because the Buddha's eyes are open.
He sees it, tells us the reality that he has seen, and allows us
to follow the same track and reach the same kind of
liberations. This is what freedom means.
This is the idea of freedom, of Buddhist freedom of the will.
Forget it, It doesn't matter. This is this sort of freedom
that actually is what really is important in life.
But there's one. The last idea of freedom, that
is actually very fascinating and very interesting, yeah.
And this is the idea that. Well, maybe the whole idea of
choosing. Yeah.
The whole idea of willing, the whole idea that the will
actually matters all that much. Maybe that whole thing is a
problem in the 1st place. Maybe the will is a pain in the
wherever. Yeah, it's a pain.
Yeah. Maybe the wind is a problem.
And one of the kind of amazing things that you find in a
meditation practice is like anyone who has done a little bit
of meditation will realise, is that one of the great benefits
of meditation is when the mind becomes peaceful.
And when the mind becomes peaceful, one of the things that
is starting to disappear in that mind is the doing, is the will,
is the activity of the mind. It's the choices that are
actually being taken away. And the deeper the stillness of
your mind, the less will, the less choices is actually
happening in that mind. And that's just when you start
to understand that actually the problem is actually much deeper
than we thought it was in the first place.
The problem is not that we have to choose the right thing, but
the whole idea of choice is actually a problem.
The less choosing you do, the less willing you do, the more
liberated you feel. Choice is part of the prison of
Sansara. Choice is part of the prison of
personality, of living in the world.
Take away choice, take away the will.
That is where you find the most fundamental freedom of all on
the Buddhist spiritual path. And This is why when you enter a
very deep state of samadhi, a very deep state of meditation,
yeah, where the mind becomes completely still there, there's
complete unification of the mind.
Where there's no desires anymore because there's no desires,
there's nothing to do. Because there's nothing to do.
There is no willing. There is no choice.
There's nothing happening inside of you.
You're not going anywhere anymore because there's nowhere
to go if there's nothing of interest in that world.
Yeah. So you're completely content
with what you have. There's no choice at that point.
You have find found the highest happiness that you have ever
seen in your life when there's no choosing whatsoever.
This is one of those very fundamental insights in
Buddhism, when you understand that actually the idea of
freedom of choice, the idea of free will, is fundamentally
flawed because the whole idea of willing itself is actually the
problem on the Buddhist path. Give up the will.
That is where you find the most fundamental of all freedoms on
the Buddhist path. And when you give up the idea of
will, when you give up through a state of very deep samadhi,
which I would argue is one of the fundamental feelings of
finding the very meaning of life, you're actually very close
to awakening itself, very close to the idea of enlightenment.
Because the will is one of those very fundamental aspects of the
sense of self that we have. If you ask people what they
identify with, they identify with the creator, the doer, the
willing inside. We are doers in the world.
We enjoy creation, we enjoy doing.
We enjoy all of these kind of things.
We enjoy giving talks. Oops.
We should be careful here. OK, maybe sit quiet.
Is that No, OK, I'll finish off the talk here.
So, yeah. So you are very close there to
come reaching enlightenment itself, because you have seen
that one of the fundamental aspects of personality, of the
sense of self actually is an illusion, is a problem.
And once you see that, of course, you start to give it up.
That doesn't make any sense anymore to hold onto that, that
aspect of self actually starts to fall away.
So you're coming towards the very, very profound aspects of
the Buddhist path. When you see this in the right
way, that is where you start to reach the ultimate freedom of
the Buddhist path. You penetrate through the idea
of non self. You penetrate.
You see that as it actually is. And that is where of course, you
find the final truest happiness of all.
Why? Because you have right view,
delusion is gone. And when delusion is completely
gone, that is when you know where to find happiness, only by
removing the delusion from your eyes, taking it all the way to
the full inside on the Buddhist path, Then you can choose fully
in the right way at all times, because now you know finally,
once and for all, where happiness is to be found.
OK, so that is all I wish to say this evening.
Yeah. So there you are here.
So are there any questions or comments from anyone please?
This is your chance to to ask. You're very welcome to if you
that thing is don't understand or you want to challenge
something, you're very welcome to do so because that's always
nice to have. Eddie.
Oh, wow, what a surprise. OK, please find Eddie.
This is a very, very, very strong, I mean powerful talk,
you know, on freedom. Yeah.
The Buddha was telling us that we are all trapped in samsara.
Now, coming back to freedom. Yeah, the opposite of freedom is
attachment. And in Buddha was telling us
attachment brings suffering. All right, Yeah.
So if you in this way. OK, there's another angle from
what you're saying. OK, attachment brings suffering.
We the attachment comes from our minds in it.
So we have to learn to let go of the love.
All this bullshit going on, you know, you know, we've been
conditioned to think of certain ways in it, you know, which
which really brings up academic and go on for hours and hours
talk about the the, the different types of condition.
You know, we have to learn to let go of all this nonsense, you
know, you know, in order to free ourselves, you know, it comes
all of mind. So each time when we have
problem we have to work this way.
Isn't it individually? Yeah, you're right.
Of course. The attachment is a very big
problem because when you attach then you you see things in the
wrong way, you have delusion. So it causes suffering.
You're right. But you know, one of the things
is that about the Buddhist path is that attachment is a
hierarchy. Yeah.
You cannot, you cannot avoid attachment if you have an
ordinary mind. The world in mind of ordinary
people has to attach because that's the nature of a sense of
self is that it will attach in various ways.
So sometimes you can work another attachment.
You can work and work and work. And actually after many years
you come back to square one because you didn't deal with the
underlying problem. So more important than trying to
deal with the attachment directly is to practice the
Noble Air Full path, practice kindness, practice morality.
I think you're it's coming with you get a bit of feedback
through your microphone, Eddie. Yeah, So, and, and that is the
problem. So instead of trying too hard to
overcome attachments, you get a little bit of that you can do.
Yeah, because it's good to reflect a little bit.
But more important is actually to practice the Noble Air full
path. And the automatic consequence of
practice in Noble Air Full path is that the attachments will be
reduced to, yeah, being kind, being moral, thinking, words of
kindness, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah.
So yes. Thank you.
All right. Anyone else want to say
anything? Yeah, we have over here, please.
Just going back to the fish in the tank.
OK. Yeah, good.
If you were one of those fish, yeah.
Would you choose to stay there or leave given the choice?
Depends on how wise the fish is, right?
Well. Who knows?
If it is an unwise fish, it might actually want to go back
into the river. But if it is a wise fish that
understands the Buddha's teaching, it will stay in the
tank. Yeah, well.
It sounds very similar to the Buddha's early life, doesn't it?
Say again. It sounds very similar to the
Buddha's early life. Was he not a fish in a tank?
What do you mean here? Well.
Before he jumped the wall and nicked off, he found
enlightenment. Wasn't he?
Like a. Fish, I think.
I think it was a fish in the river before that.
Yeah, he was a fish in the river.
His early life when he was a Prince.
Yeah. He was like a fish in the tank,
he was protected and everything. Like that, I would say he was a
fish in the river at that time. There was only after he became a
the Buddha that he became a real fish in the tank, because that's
when he got that's when the morality really becomes strong,
right? He was still kind of, kind of
slightly wild before that. He hasn't.
He hadn't yet tamed all the wild impulses in himself.
Yeah, I, I agree. Yeah.
But it's very similar to his early life.
He was wrapped up in a blanket in in the castle and all that.
Yeah, Yeah. I, I mean, yeah, I mean there's
many points to that. You can.
I mean, one of the problems with that is that even if you are, no
matter how wrapped up you are in the kind of in the castle and
kind of cuddled and looked after, whatever the the reality
of life is always going to be there.
Yeah, the problems of life are always going to be there and
there's always going to be behind you.
And it's really only when you become the Buddha and you kind
of become enlightened and you practice the spiritual part that
actually those deep seated problems of life actually become
overcome. As long even if you are looked
after like the Buddha was, still you can't really get away from
the problems of life. So yeah, Anyway, I got a
question to the last part that you said.
Yeah, please. And you were talking about
creating things. And as I understood it, I
mentioned we should first go into ourselves before creating
anything, as I understood you correctly.
At what point would you suggest getting active as some sort of a
creator? When is the content good enough
to the sound is really bad. It's kind of a bit hard for me
to hear. Can you please try again?
Would you mind? Sorry about that.
Yeah. And you mentioned that maybe a
turn around and you mentioned that being a creator, we should
not get too early into the stage of creating stuff.
So rather look into ourselves and wait until the content is
good enough. Or how would you could you
explain that a bit more? What what what I was saying was
that I was just talking about the idea of the will and choice
and these kind of things that the, you know, so much of our
life is kind of based on the idea.
We want to create things in the world.
We want to do things in the world.
And whenever you do something, yeah, you feel good, feel good
that we created something. Yeah.
I'm the creator. We identify with the doer.
We identify with the creator inside of us.
You see some people who are compulsive doers always doing
things continuously because that is how the sense of self is
gratified in a certain way. But there is a profound problem
with that, and that is that actually the whole idea of doing
and creating and using the will is actually a state of
suffering. Yeah, that was my point.
When you can only see that when you go into a very deep state of
meditation, when the will starts to subside and the will is
completely gone, that is when you start to find the real
meaning of life. You start to find profound sense
of happiness. And that's when you understand
that the whole idea of creating yourself into happiness is a
delusion. That's what we try to do.
We try to create ourselves into happiness by creating things.
But actually the creating itself is a state of suffering.
So that's why it is delusion here.
Is that what you're asking here? Something like that.
OK, so that was kind of the point I was trying to make.
And so This is why the states of meditation, one of the reasons
why they are so extremely pleasant, it's precisely because
you're giving up the whole idea of doing and and creating and
agency and all these kind of things over here.
Bill Hap. Thank you for a really really
inspiring talk. It was very enjoyable and very
deep and profound. It actually helps to take me
back to my Christian upbringing as a Catholic because that's
what we were brought up with, that it wasn't our will, it was
God's will. And also in all the the
addiction, the seven step programs, they say give.
There is a higher power, you must give to the higher power.
It's not thy will. So yes, thank you for helping me
to understand more deeply the actual, the jewel of
Christianity that I never understood.
So thank you. I think, OK, so let me just
respond to that very briefly because I think there's a slight
difference there and that I, I agree with you.
The idea that, you know, there is no personal will, that is, is
the same way. But I think this, this slight
difference of course would be, and I'm sure, you know, this
already would be that from Buddhist point of view, we don't
see that as kind of a higher will that works through us.
We just see that as the will being conditioned.
Yeah. So the will comes about or the
choice comes about through conditioning, not through a
higher power. Yeah, that would be the
difference there. Yeah.
I'm sorry but I disagree because you're talking about the Buddha
being the higher power, no? Not really.
Because we, we, we're following his teachings for, for our
salvation, so to speak. OK, there is a way in in which
you're right about that. I would agree with you, because
of course the Buddha's teaching does influence our will,
obviously, because that's why we're practicing the Buddhist
path there. But as a general principle, if
you look apart from, you know, if you look at any person,
whether they are Buddhist or an atheist or an agnostic, or they
worship for an Odin, my other favorite gods apart from
Buddhism, or they worship whatever, whatever region they
belong to, whatever the outlook, whoever they are, there's one
principle that unites all of them, and that is the principle
of conditioning. Yeah.
The will is conditioned. Choice is conditioned.
It's universally applicable in that sense.
Yeah. Thank you.
All right, so let's anyone else know.
Everyone happy? OK, so let's just have a quick
look at some questions from outside of here.
So we have Wolfram Garby from Germany.
I'm seriously ill and that makes my loved one sad to see here.
What can I do to ease her worries and fears and give her
joy and peace and contentment and strength instead?
How can I help her? OK, so the way to help people
when you are seriously ill or even if you are dying is to
remind them that you know your death.
If you are a good person involved from I, I'm sure you
are a good person because you have been around for a long
time. You're practising in a good way
and good people always have a good future.
Regardless of whether you die, regardless of whether you're
sick, you have a good future if you are a good person.
That's such a beautiful way of thinking about life, because it
means that all the problems in the world become far less of a
burden on us when we understand that we have a good future,
regardless of what happens in the world, regardless of what
happens to our body. So tell your loved one that you
will be good. Yeah, you will be fine.
And she can, if you were to have even worse sickness or maybe you
were to die or whatever, that your future is safe so she can
be happy on your behalf, that you are going into a good place.
And maybe where you are going, maybe you will be able to kind
of, you know, wave to her and say carry on with your life.
Yeah, I'm fine. Just, you know, just chill.
There's no problems here at all. And that kind of way of thinking
about death makes it far less daunting and far less painful
experience. So something like that, I, I've
had family members, close family members die and I never really
felt very sad about it. And I because I knew that they
had been good people living in the right way.
And I thought they were probably just waving down to me and say,
OK, good on you for being a Buddhist monk.
Yeah, carry on with that. That's the right, right approach
because they were very happy with me as a Buddhist monk,
especially towards the not in the beginning, but after a
while. Yeah.
OK, let's go on to the second question here.
This is from Smith Tenzin from India.
That's really cool. Hello.
Hello there. In India, I'm thinking freedom
from fear is probably the biggest freedom of all of your
thoughts because all attachments arise from fear.
Even attachment to food is the innate fear of not getting
enough. What should we do to overcome
that? Freedom from fear is probably
the highest freedom. Yeah, yeah, it goes, I think.
I would say it goes deeper than that.
It's quite possible to have full freedom from also from other
things that are even more profound, like the sense of self
and these kind of things. Or or not.
All the attachments come from fear.
Some attachments just come from wanting to enjoy the world.
There's a number of different things there, but how do you,
how do you get to the freedom of fear, presumably is what you're
asking from here. And the main way of overcoming
free fear is basically that fear is always about the future.
Anxiety is always about the future.
So it is best by living well and starting to understand that you
are creating a happy future for yourself by living well.
And it's almost an intuition, you know that you're going to be
OK if you live well. It's almost like it feels like
that, yeah. If you come from kindness, if
you act from kindness, if you treat other people well, if you
have met the compassion for the world, all of these things that
you just naturally have a good sense about yourself.
So just live well, understand that your future is bright if
you are a good person. And then fear starts to subside.
And then also you need to attach to food and all of these kind of
things will also subside as a consequence.
It all comes back to the same basic principles of practising
the spiritual path. Then we have Q from Borneo.
His name or her name is Q, just AQ.
OK, That's like the letter Q in the alphabet.
That's interesting here. So hello Q.
How are thoughts, feeling and mind connected?
Are monks allowed to have emotions or feelings?
What kind of feeling is allowed? I don't think you have much
choice about having feelings and emotions, whether you are
allowed. If you weren't allowed to have
that, you have a serious problem, I think.
Yeah. So I can guarantee you that all
monks, all nuns, all human beings, even the Buddha had
emotions and feelings. So how are they connected?
Well, thoughts are just one particular aspect of the mind.
The word mind, chitta impale, is like a umbrella term, which
means all the, all the mental content you have, that's mind.
Within that mind, many things go on.
One thing that goes on is thought.
Thought is like the movement. Yeah, it's like verbalisation or
pictures, the movement of the mind, things moving on.
That's kind of thinking, yeah. Feeling is the depending what
you mean by feeling. If you mean emotions, then it is
kind of the emotional aspect of experience, Yeah.
Whether you whether you feel good or you feel bad or you're
angry and all of these kind of things.
Or it can be like the raw sense of whether you dislike or like
something, which is more like the Buddhist ideal feeling.
Yeah, but this too is within the mind.
It's part of the mind. It's a content of the mind.
It's an aspect of the mind. Yeah.
The mind can be divided into all of these kind of sub aspects.
So the idea on the Buddhist path then is to steer our emotions
and feelings in a positive direction.
You know, to overcome the negative emotions and feelings
and steer the mind towards a positive emotions and feelings.
That is the job of the path. It is not to stop having
emotions and feelings, but to develop the right kind of
emotions and feelings. That is the right approach, the
way to think about this because emotions and feelings are a
fundamental aspect of being a human being.
Yeah, last question from High Ton from Perth.
If there is no free will, are we still responsible for our coma?
Whether you are responsible or not, you have to deal with the
consequences. Yeah, you're still going to be
painful. If you make bad coma, going to
be painful in the future. So make sure you make good coma.
Yeah, this is the conditioning. Yeah, happens right now you get
condition to do good coma. Why?
Because you know otherwise you're going to be in pain.
So whether you're responsible or not is irrelevant.
What matters is that there is a causal link between how you act
and how you feel. That is what matters.
OK everyone, thank you very much.
Let's just pay respect to the Buddha, Dama and Sangha.