Tonight I'm going to talk about development of the mind, or
mental development, if you like. In a sense, this idea of
developing the mind is one of the Buddha's discoveries.
He understood that it's possible to do such a thing as developing
the mind. And you may think, of course
it's possible. But in fact, it's not as obvious
as you might think that this actually can be done.
And I will talk about that maybe towards the end of the talk, why
it is not so obvious. But the first thing is just
basically that mental development is a wonderful,
wonderful discovery. Because so many people spend all
their lives trying to develop their happiness, trying to
develop their contentment, trying to develop their lives,
always by external things, always by earning more money, by
social position, by possessions, by all these kind of things.
This is normally the things that we try to develop.
And very few people actually spend enough time working
instead directly on the mind, instead of always trying to find
satisfaction and happiness indirectly using external
things. And if you think about it, if
you're really going to be happy, it is much wiser to do it
directly by working on the mind, rather than trying to gain that
happiness through external stimuli indirectly.
First of all, it's much more efficient because you're working
directly with the mind. You're working directly with the
source of things. And secondly, if you're working
on the mind, rather than having an indirect happiness, you can
actually change the mind directly, which you never can by
external things, by using possessions or fame or whatever
else it is. That way you don't actually
change the mind. You're just giving the mind the
stimulus that makes it happy for a very short period of time.
So working directly on the mind is much wiser, much more
far-reaching, a much more powerful tool that we can use in
life. And the Buddha said that it's
possible to develop the mind. This can be done.
He said that if it wasn't possible to develop the mind, I
wouldn't give these teachings. It is because it's possible,
because it can be done, that I teach Dhamma in the way that I
do. It's possible to develop
wholesome states of mind. It's possible to develop a
luminous mind, a beautiful mind, a peaceful mind.
And it's possible to get rid of all these negative tendencies
that we have inside of us. And it's precisely because it's
possible, that I teach the way I do.
I give these teachings to you. And I have to admit in my own
life as a monk, a Buddhist monk, certainly the idea of mental
development is one of the draw cards for being a Buddhist monk.
The more highly you value the idea of developing the mind, the
more obvious it makes sense to become a Buddhist monk or a
Buddhist nun for that matter. Why?
Because that is the whole focus of the monastic life.
That is the whole purpose. The whole purpose of monastic
life. You're giving up most of the
other external things to give 100% attention to the
development of the mind instead. So what is it about monastic
life? I'm going to talk a little bit
about monastic life first of all, and talk about lay life
afterwards, how these same principles that apply to
monastic life also apply to lay life.
So what is it about monastic life that makes mental
development so much more... possible, if you like, or much
more efficient in monastic life than it is in lay life?
And there's two things in particular I want to talk about.
The first one is, of course, the idea of kalyana mita, of
spiritual friendship. This is a very important aspect
of monastic life. If you think about it, when you
live as a monk, you are surrounded by other monks all
the time. You're always reminded when you
see another monk, you think, yeah, I'm also a monk.
I'm also part of this. You always, when you talk to
your fellow monks, you tend to talk about Dhamma.
Not always, but often the conversation is about Dhamma,
because that's what all of you are doing together.
So you're always reminded. You are in the middle of the
Dhamma all your life. And because of that, of course,
you have much more inclination yourself to also practice this
Dhamma, because you're part of a group of people, everybody
practicing in the same way. That's the first thing.
The second thing is, of course, that you have the kalyana mita.
It's not a ritual. It's not only the people you're
surrounding you with. But one very important factor of
the spiritual friendship, the kalyana mita, is the teacher
that you have. It's extremely important to have
a good teacher. And ideally, the kind of teacher
you have is somebody who has a full appreciation of the
Buddha's teachings, who has insight into those teachings
that the Buddha gave two and a half thousand years ago.
So this is one of the things. If you can find a good
monastery, a good place that has a teacher, which has that sort
of insight, it is wonderful because you come into the
presence of the living Dhamma, the living teaching of the
Buddha, as he gave it two and a half thousand years ago.
Because it is those people today who realize those teachings.
They are the living example. And it's still possible to
practice those teachings two and a half thousand years after the
Buddha. So this is one of the wonderful,
wonderful things. It's great to have books, of
course, about Buddhism and read what the Buddha said.
This is very important. But sometimes if you only have
the books and you don't actually have the living example, it's as
if something is missing. It's like the moisture is
missing or something is not there, which should be there.
It's only when it comes alive in actual people that you see
around you. When you see somebody in your
life who you find inspiring, when you see somebody who lives
up to the example of the Buddha's teaching, that's when
it becomes really real. And certainly for me, that is
extremely important. So that is the second aspect of
monasteries. The third aspect of a monastic
life is that you come close to these kinds of teachers.
Ideally, you live with a teacher who has these kinds of
qualities. And you then become conditioned,
you become influenced. And slowly but surely, you're
moving in the same way. But the highest kind of
spiritual friendship that you can have in monastic life, and
this, of course, is also true for lay life, is the friendship
of the Buddha himself. And that friendship of the
Buddha himself, is reading what the Buddha said two and a half
thousand years ago. When you read what the Buddha
said two and a half thousand years ago, you're in the
presence of the Buddha. There he is right there.
Because this is what he was. This is what he was all about,
teaching these teachings. So there you have the highest
kind of spiritual friendships, right there, right in front of
you, by reading these Buddhist teachings.
And it's actually quite important to have some idea what
the Buddha talked about, because if you don't know that, it's
very easy to be led astray. You have no idea what people
like me, I come up here and speak to you, you don't know
what I'm saying. You know if it's true, if it's
wrong, if I'm leading you astray.
The only way you can find out if what I say is correct or not, is
by going to the suttas and check it out.
Am I saying what is in accordance with the Buddha, or
am I talking nonsense? And of course you can't take my
word for that. You have to check it out for
yourself. And it's important, and I know
that there are many people who have been led astray by teachers
in the past. And when they find out that the
teacher is not what they thought this teacher was, they become
incredibly disappointed. And sometimes they fall away
from Buddhism, they fall away from this potential of
developing themselves in a beautiful way, simply because
they placed faith in the wrong person.
So for that reason it's good to have some idea what the Buddha
taught. And the Buddha is the highest
kind of spiritual friend, because of course he had the
full insight into the teachings that he taught.
So don't neglect that. And of course in monastic life
you have these things more than you have anywhere else.
I spent a fair amount of my time as a monk to study these suttas.
I study these suttas almost every day, because I think it is
very important to know what they are.
And it's also very nice to be able to draw inspiration by
reading some of these beautiful teachings.
So these are the reasons why, one reason why I'm a monk, for
the spiritual friendship, because it pushes you along.
It gives you a sense of the spiritual world.
It gives you this extra impetus on the path.
And sometimes people think, oh I don't need the spiritual
community around me because I'm really solid, I'm an individual,
I know what is right and wrong in the world, I can do it all
myself. I'm not so dependent on the
spiritual community. But the fact is, and this is one
of the problems, we tend to overestimate our own
independence. We tend to overestimate our
sense of individuality, that we can go against the stream of the
world, what everybody else is doing, and do things our own
way. The reality is we can't do that.
The reason we can't do that is because we are 100% conditioned
as human beings. We are conditioned by the people
around us, by the things we hear, the things we see, the
things we read. And we don't have anywhere near
as much independence as we think we have.
And this is the reality of this teaching of anatta, of non-self
in Buddhism. Because there is nothing
permanent, because there is nothing permanent inside of us,
because there is no entity which controls us and steers us in the
right direction, because that is missing, we are essentially just
conditioned. And we are running around
according to our conditions. It's only because we have this
illusion inside of us, this idea that we are some kind of
separate entity, we get this feeling that we are in charge,
we are in control. Well, we are not.
And because of that, it is so important to have a spiritual
community around you, and that is as true for lay people as it
is in monastic life. Obviously, in monastic life, it
is more powerful and more easy to get.
So that is the first part of monastic life, which I value so
much, this idea of spiritual friendship.
The other aspect of monastic life, which is very beautiful,
is the idea of seclusion, that you can withdraw from society,
you can withdraw from the world around you, you can withdraw
from all these things, and just be by yourself, be completely
self-sufficient in your little cootie in the forest far, far
away. Why is seclusion so important?
Why is it so useful for practicing the spiritual path?
How does seclusion lead to mental development?
What is actually going on here? And the first thing, of course,
is simply that when you are secluded, you are away from the
noises of the world, all the traffic, the people, the
everyday things which are happening in the world all the
time, all the noise and the problems.
That, of course, is a very big help in its own right.
The second reason, which is also an important one, and this came
up quite recently, there was a young woman who came to me and
asked if she could interview me. She was doing some kind of
research, anthropological research project at one of the
universities here in Western Australia.
And she asked me, well, how do monks view the city?
What is the monk's view of the city?
She was trying to figure out something about monks and city.
And I must admit I wasn't sure what to say straight away, but
then I realized that probably the way the monks view the city
is the city is a realm of sensual desires, a realm of
sensual delights. Because that is what people do
in the city. They run around, they enjoy
themselves, they go and get entertained somewhere, they go
to the cafes and restaurants to eat nice food, they go and see
nice sights. They have a nice park to walk
in. They may do courtship with
somebody of the opposite sex. Or they may just make lots of
money, try to make more money for themselves, and get status
and get social position, all these kind of things.
So the city is essentially about sensual desires.
And this is the other thing about monastic life.
We get away from the sensual desires, because sensual desires
are the opposite of peace of mind.
They're the opposite of meditation.
They're the opposite of being able to develop your mind in the
right direction. And that is why, that is
probably the main reason why the city is not the place to be if
you're going to be really serious about practicing the
spiritual path of Buddhism. And to give you some ideas how
highly the Buddha praised the idea of seclusion, the idea of
pulling away, because I always take my references from the
Buddha himself, because he is the ultimate Buddha.
He is the ultimate teacher in this whole thing.
There's a beautiful little story in the Buddha's discourses.
These discourses are called suttas, in case you don't know.
In these suttas, there's a beautiful story of the Buddha
wandering around in India with a large retinue, a large group of
monks with him. At a certain point, they pass by
a village. And on the outskirts of this
village, they see another monk. And this monk is sitting on the
outskirts of this village in meditation.
And he looks very straight and looks very impressive.
And they walk past and they see this monk.
Later on, they walk through the forest.
And as they're walking through the forest, they see another
monk. And this monk is obviously tired
or he has nothing to offer because he's nodding as he's
meditating in the forest. Something is not quite right in
his mind. And then, having seen these two
things, the Buddha then turns to his monks and he says, first of
all, did you see that monk on the outskirts of the village?
Sitting there in meditation, in samadhi or whatever.
And the monk says, yes, Lord, we saw that monk at the outskirts
of the village. And then the Buddha says, quite
surprisingly, because this monk was meditating properly,
surprisingly, he says, I am not happy with that monk.
Why am I not happy with that monk?
Because he's sitting too close to the village.
And before you know it, he's going to be disturbed by
somebody. Somebody's going to come up to
him and say, excuse me, why are you sitting here?
Or something like that. That's what often happens.
So, and then the Buddha said, but did you see the other monk
who was sitting in the forest? And he was nodding.
And again, surprisingly, the Buddha says, I praise that monk.
That monk is praiseworthy. Why?
Because he's sitting far away from the village, far away from
the city. It would only be a matter of
time before he overcomes that tiredness, before he overcomes
the sloth and tiredness. And then his meditation will be
going really well because he's far away from the world, far
away from the city, far away from people.
And this gives you some idea of the degree to which the Buddha
praised seclusion and solitude. Another story which comes to
mind, or rather, it came to mind when I was thinking about what I
was going to say tonight. And this is a story where a lay
person comes to him. And he says to the Buddha, and
this lay person asks the Buddha, who should we place faith in in
the world? There are all these monks out
there, all these nuns, all these people.
Where should we have respect? Who should we respect?
Who should we support? Where should we place our
confidence and faith? And the Buddha answered that the
place where you should have respect, the place where you
should support, are those people, those monks, monastics,
nuns, whatever it is, who are in the forest, who meditate in the
forest, who are far away from the world.
Because it is among those monks and nuns that you will find
those who gain the deepest meditation, who gain the deepest
understanding of the Buddha's teachings.
That's where you're going to find it.
Why? Because they are far away from
sensuality. They're far away from the
troubles and sensuality of the world.
That's why you're going to find it there.
But for those who live in the village or those who live in the
city, well, those monks, there is a great chance that they will
be affected by their surroundings.
And for that reason, it's much, much more difficult for those
people to let go of sensuality, let go of sensual pleasures.
Of course, this doesn't mean that every monastic who lives in
the forest is going to be a supreme example of
enlightenment. Of course not.
All it means is that you're much more likely to find those good
monks, those good nuns, or even good laypeople sometimes, who
come to stay in faraway places. That's where you're going to
find these people who have attained these things, who have
understood the depth of the Buddha's teachings.
Sometimes, of course, this is not true.
Sometimes you can find a very good monk in a city or a
village. It's just a general principle
that the Buddha laid down. So these are some important
guides for you to see why seclusion is so important,
because you get away from sensuality.
There's another simile which the Buddha used.
And this is a very important one.
This is a simile of the fire stick.
A fire stick in ancient times, the way they made fire, was by
having two pieces of wood, and they would rub these pieces of
wood together. And by rubbing the fire sticks
together, they would produce sparks.
And in this way, eventually, they would produce a fire.
This is the way it was done a long time ago.
And the Buddha similarly, he says that it is just like a fire
stick which is lying in water, a wet and sappy fire stick, lying
in a puddle somewhere. There is no chance that you're
going to be able to use that fire stick to make a fire.
Why not? Because it's wet and sappy.
And it's just like somebody who lives in the city or a village.
Because they are surrounded by sensuality, because they
themselves enjoy sensuality, and are full of sensuality, there is
no way that they are going to get the fire.
The fire here is a metaphor. It's a metaphor for meditation.
They can't get that meditation, because they are living in the
middle of the wet sensuality of the city.
Then the Buddha says there is another type of fire stick.
This is the fire stick which lies far away from the river.
This is like somebody who has gone to the forest somewhere far
away. But it's still wet and sappy.
Wetness and sappiness here means there is still sensuality in the
mind. In other words, it's possible to
live in a monastery far away, but you still have a mind full
of sensual thoughts and sensual ideas.
And of course, again, it is useless.
This fire stick, you cannot use it to make fire, because there
is no way you can get something that is wet and sappy to make a
fire. In the same way, it doesn't help
you just to go and live in a monastery.
You have to actually abandon these sensual parts of the mind
as much as possible if you are going to have success in a
meditation practice. And of course, the only fire
stick which is useful to make fire is the one which lives far
away from the river, in other words, far away from sensuality,
and is also dry and sappy inside.
You have dried out the sensuality of the mind.
You have dried out the sensual pleasures.
And all you have left then, you have a mind, you have a stick
which can make fire. And then it is possible for you
to gain deep meditation. So this is then the requisites,
what you have to do. And this is how the monastic
life works. First of all, you go to a
secluded place far away to get away from the sensuality
surrounding you. And then the second part of the
practice is to remove the sensuality in the mind.
And then you have a chance to really go deep in your
meditation practice. So this is why the monastic life
is so useful. And this is why the monastic
life you read about, for example, in Thailand, which
always is the most famous of the Thai tree teachers, they always
lived in the forest. They always lived far away from
the city. Because this is a traditional
way that monks and nuns have always lived since the time of
the Buddha. Because it is the way to gain
deep meditation. It is the way to do it
basically. So how does this affect our life
as lay Buddhists? What can we do as lay Buddhists?
Of course, it is not easy for a lay person to find the kind of
seclusion you find in a monastery.
It is also not easy for a lay person, a lay Buddhist, to find
the kind of spiritual freedom they want.
It is the spiritual friendship that you find in the monastery.
But what it means in lay life, spiritual friendship, is still
very important. Because it is the foundation
condition which is going to make the spiritual life possible just
as much in lay life as it is in monastic life.
So have some joy, have some sense of happiness that there is
such a thing as a Buddhist society in Western Australia.
A place you can go to find like-minded people around you.
It is very important to have like-minded people in life
because we are so conditioned by the people around us.
There is so much social pressure in life.
I know how hard it is to give up drinking, for example, if
everybody around you drinks. It is extremely difficult.
Sometimes I tell my younger brother that you should really
stop all this drinking business because it is not going to do
any good. But all his friends drink, you
know. So what can I say?
I can't really tell him to go against everybody else.
It is very hard to give up these kinds of things.
So don't underestimate the power of having a place like the
Buddhist society. Having these kinds of people
around you who are like-minded, who think in the same way, who
do the same kind of things. Search these people out.
Make sure that you have these kinds of friends because it is
going to be a tremendous support in your life as a lay person to
have these kinds of people around you.
Don't underestimate that. Remember what I said before
about the Buddha's teaching of non-self.
There is nobody in here. There is nobody controlling all
of this. There is nobody who is always
able to withstand the pressures from outside.
And because there is nobody who is able to withstand all these
pressures, because there is nobody who is able to hold on to
these things, it is incredibly important to make sure that the
external conditions condition you in the right way, that push
you in the right way. This is why it is so important.
So it is a wonderful thing to have so many friends, so many
potential friends in the Buddhist society.
Don't underestimate the power of that.
Make sure you socialize with that sort of people.
Make sure you use them. Don't abuse them, but use them
to your best of your ability so that you can actually benefit
from that spiritual friendship, that karyana mitta.
And of course the other thing is that you also have a chance of
coming here to listen to talks. And this is your chance to hear
the Buddha's teachings by coming to the Buddhist society.
Again, it is a wonderful and amazing thing.
I don't think sometimes people quite understand that a place
like the Buddhist society, Western Australia, how rare it
is in the world. You travel around the world and
you don't see places like this almost anywhere else.
My own home country is in Northern Europe, Norway, far
away. And sometimes I go back there
and I think it is so backward this place compared to Western
Australia. Or even you go to places like
Sydney, much larger city than Perth, and yet the Buddhist
scene in Sydney is nowhere near, doesn't have anywhere near the
kind of quality and cohesion as you find in Western Australia.
And this is what you see again and again around the world.
Almost wherever you travel, particularly in the West, it is
very difficult to find good spiritual friendship, the real
karyana mittas. So value this opportunity.
Value the ability to come here and listen to talks, to be
around people like Ajahn Brahm, people who have a deep
understanding of these teachings, all these other
teachers who come here and give you the teachings.
It is a wonderful, wonderful opportunity.
And then watch those teachers and see if they live up to the
standards that the Buddha said they should live up to.
And then lastly, you also, also lay people also, sometimes if
you have the chance, read a little bit of the Buddha's
teachings. There are some very good books
available now, introductory books, which get you started.
Because again, as I said before, the Buddha, he is the ultimate
spiritual friend. That is where you find the
ultimate reference for what Buddhism really is all about.
And that is when you can decide for yourself what real Buddhism
actually is. So this is the karyana mitta in
lay life. Make sure that you take
advantage of the opportunity of karyana mittas around you.
Of course, there is also the Internet these days, and the
Internet is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
The Buddhist Society has quite a good website, I understand.
I don't really know very much about these things, but I
understand it is quite good compared to other Buddhist
websites. And the wonderful thing is that
it allows people around the world, I've heard about people
who live in the middle of Christian communities, or
sometimes fundamentalist Christian communities, but they
are Buddhists, they have no spiritual friends whatsoever.
There is nobody to support them. But they have the virtual
community of the Internet. They can log on and they can
hear a good Dhamma talk. So it is a great thing, it is a
wonderful investment, I think, that the Buddhist Society has
done. To provide this service for
thousands of people around the world who don't have any good
spiritual friends. So this is one of the great
benefits and the beautiful things of using modern
technology to provide spiritual friendship far, far away.
It is an excellent thing, I think, that we are doing here in
the Buddhist Society. So that is the spiritual
friendship. What about seclusion in lay
life? How should we approach
seclusion? And there is a story, again from
the suttas, where one of the Buddha's main supporters, a man
known as Anathapindika, he was probably the main supporter of
the Buddha, he gave vast fortunes to the Sangha, to build
monasteries in particular. And he once went to the Buddha,
and the Buddha gave him a teaching, and he said to
Anathapindika, you also, Anathapindika, you also, and lay
people, you should also sometimes get away from the
city, get away from the hustle and bustle of life, and enjoy
the happiness that comes from seclusion.
The happiness that comes from the seclusion is the happiness
of the mind, the happiness that you get from meditation
practice. So the Buddha said that every
one of you here, if you are eager about spiritual practice,
sometimes take the opportunity to go away, do something, go
somewhere peaceful, go somewhere fun, go somewhere far away from
the ordinary pleasures, the hustle and bustle of life, and
do a meditation retreat, for example.
It's a wonderful thing that the Buddha Society now is building,
a meditation retreat center. I'm sure all of you have heard
about this meditation retreat center, just across from
Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine.
It's a beautiful meditation center, very peaceful
surroundings, just like being in a monastery really, the same
kind of surroundings. So if you have the opportunity,
use that meditation center in the future.
It's a wonderful and great resource.
I think it's probably difficult to find anywhere else in the
world that has such a wonderful meditation retreat center as the
Buddha Society has here. So make use of that resource.
The Buddha said we should make use of this kind of resource.
So this is the kind of seclusion that you can get also in lay
life. Make sure you do that from time
to time, to test out how you're going, to test out if you're
making progress, to test out if that mind is being developed in
the way that it should be. So all of these things are
support for developing the mind. If you have that spiritual
friendship, if you have that seclusion, then developing of
the mind is going to happen. It's going to happen much faster
than it's otherwise going to do. So that was going back to where
I started. I said I became a monk largely
because of being able to live, of being able to live in a
monastic setting. I chose that because I realized
the many benefits, I think at least in part, I've realized
those benefits much more after becoming a monk actually than
initially. But that was one of my decisions
because I knew that was going to be beneficial for developing the
mind. And developing the mind made
such incredibly good sense to me.
When I looked around the world, I realized that it's the
happiness of the mind which really matters in life.
The happiness that comes from material things is not so
important. You can travel to some of the
poorest countries in the world and sometimes you see people
happy. They have beautiful smiles on
their faces even though they're absolutely dirt poor.
So that was one decision I made. And it is interesting that all
the decisions that you have to make, can make in life, or
should make in life, or have to make sometimes, all the choices
that you have to make or can make, these can always be made
according to a very natural, very simple rule of thumb.
And this is the kind of rule which I want to just mention
briefly here. We recently, just yesterday, we
had a monk in Bodhinyana Monastery who left for Sri
Lanka. And every time somebody leaves
the monastery, I think to myself, why should one leave the
monastery? What is the reason?
What is the right time to leave a place and go somewhere else?
Sometimes I myself have thought about, should I go somewhere
else? Should I start a monastery
somewhere? I was recently invited to start
a monastery actually. And the more I think about it,
the more I think, well maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't.
But what actually criteria should I use to decide this?
And the Buddha gave a very simple rule of thumb to decide
if a monk or a nun or anybody should go somewhere else.
He said that if you are improving in wholesome
qualities, if your mind is developing in mindfulness, if
your meditation is becoming better, if you are becoming more
concentrated, if you are reducing in the unwholesome
aspects of life, then you should stay where you are.
You should not go anywhere else. The Buddha went so far as to say
even if they ask you to leave this monastery, you should not
go. You should still hold on to this
place. I remember some years ago we had
a monk staying at Bodhinyana Monastery.
He said, even if I'm told to leave, I will chain myself to
the front gate of the monastery here, because this is really
working for me here. And he was right.
It was the right thing to say, because the Buddha said that you
can refuse to leave if things are going really well for you.
Of course, maybe there comes a point when you have to leave
because it becomes too difficult, but you can at least
try to refuse initially. And when you should leave a
monastery is when you are deteriorating, when you're
getting more unwholesome qualities coming up, more anger,
more desire, more jealousy. Your meditation is
deteriorating, your mindfulness is getting worse, your wisdom is
deteriorating. That is when you should leave
the monastery. The Buddha said you should leave
that very same day because it's pointless to stay in a place
where things are going down. Why?
Because the whole purpose of life is to increase the
wholesome qualities of the mind. This is what it's all about.
This is the whole point of this. If you're missing the whole
point of this life, then of course you have to do something
else. You have to leave.
You have to go to a different place.
So this is the criteria by which you should judge whether you
should go somewhere or not go somewhere.
Are things going right for you? Are you increasing in the
wholesome? Are you becoming more happy,
more contented, more satisfied? Is your mind becoming brighter?
Are you getting more wisdom? Are you getting more compassion
and kindness for the world around you?
What do you feel inside of you? Do you feel better?
If you do, then you should stay put where you are because things
are going somewhere else. Of course, grass tends to look
greener on the other side of the fence.
So you have to be very careful not to just jump over the fence
just because it looks greener. If we're doing well already,
stay where you are. Don't move on.
And the Buddha said this is not only for deciding where you
should live or whether you should move or not.
This is also about deciding anything in monastic life.
What sort of food should you eat?
What sort of robe should you wear?
What sort of hut should you live in?
What sort of choices in life? Almost anything you choose
should always be guided by whether it will increase the
wholesome in you or it will increase the unwholesome.
That is the general guiding principle.
It's a very simple way of making decisions, a beautiful way of
being able to make decisions in life.
And you can, of course, apply that also to lay life.
This is not something that only applies to monastic life.
How do you apply that in lay life?
Well, in lay life, sometimes I think we tend to forget.
We tend to sort of sometimes put the spiritual life is like in
one pigeonhole, and then our worldly life is in a different
pigeonhole. But we have to be sure that we
try to integrate the spiritual life into our worldly life.
It's very important to make our worldly life spiritual in a
certain sense. So when we make our ordinary
life more spiritual, then when we have a spiritual life, we
have to make a choice in life, particularly the really large,
the really important choices. Make sure you try to give those
choices a spiritual factor. Give it a spiritual, one of the
components, one of the things that you use to decide things in
your life. Make sure spirituality, how you
can develop your mind, make that part of the choices in daily
life. So, for example, if you are a
thing and maybe you should move houses, you want to go somewhere
else, maybe a place you think is nicer, maybe you think you're
moving overseas or interstate or whatever, then ask yourself,
what effect is this going to have on your spiritual life?
Are you going to be able to have a good spiritual community
around you? Remind yourself of the
importance of a good spiritual community.
Are you going to find that there?
Is it going to be as good as it is where you're staying now?
Or is it not? Make that at least one factor.
It is not wrong, of course, to travel overseas or interstate or
changing houses or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that.
But try to bring the spiritual aspect into the equation to
broaden your scope of view a little bit when you decide on
these kind of issues. I know people who have moved
close here to the Buddhist site in Dolamara to have easy access
to this place. And I think that's a wonderful
thing to do because you are showing, in a sense, that you
are very dedicated to the Buddhist path.
And it gives you a chance to increase your practice of
Buddhism. What other choices in life?
Choices about careers, for example.
Maybe you get a possibility of getting a new job with much
better salary, with better status, higher up in the
hierarchy of a company. Should you accept that job or
should you not? Well, again, there is no right
or wrong answer. It's not as if you should always
say yes or always should know. The point is more that make the
spiritual aspect one of the aspects in making that decision
for yourself. Should I accept a job or should
I not? If you think that accepting a
job with more responsibility, with higher salary, is going to
make you more stressed out, it's going to make you more...
And when you get stressed, maybe your temper gets much shorter,
maybe you start saying bad things to people around you,
well, then maybe you should have second thoughts.
What is really important in life?
Is it my spiritual progress, the fact that I can actually do
something with my mind, change my mind, develop the mind, or
are the worldly things more important to me?
Take it into... Add this to the equation of your
life and then ask yourself. You might alter things a little
bit. You might look at things
slightly different. Maybe you will decide it's not
really worthwhile taking on lots of responsibility, which might
be very stressful and might have a detrimental effect on my life,
my spiritual life. So again, I'm not saying this
because I say that there is a right or wrong answer in these
things. Just make this part of the
equation. The last thing I was thinking
about is very important in people's lives, particularly
when you are young. People think, well, should we
have children or not? And how many children should we
have? Again, ask yourself again.
It's a question of, again, there is no right or wrong answers.
But that, of course, again, the spiritual life, put that also
into the equation in deciding if you should have children and if
so, how many you should have. So these are some ways of using
the spiritual guide to make decisions in life.
And you can actually use this idea of what is going to be good
for your spiritual life in almost any kind of decision that
you take in life. So try to do this because it
might change your perspective slightly.
It might change your way of looking at things slightly from
what otherwise would be. You may come to some interesting
results in life if you do that. So these things are just a few
things to help you, give you support in mental development.
I want to talk briefly about what mental development, how we
actually do it in more practical things.
I'm not going to talk very much about this because mental
development is really just about the Eightfold Path.
Practicing all the Buddhist practices that we talk about
normally, that is what mental development is all about.
But just very briefly, mental development usually can be
divided into three aspects. You have the virtue aspect, the
morality, if you like. Then you have the meditation
aspect, and then you have the wisdom aspect.
These are the three aspects of developing the mind.
And you will find that all of these three aspects, ultimately,
they come down to the development of the mind.
If you practice virtue, what is happening if you are a good
person, if you are a moral person?
If you want to be a moral person, sometimes you have to
restrain yourself from doing things that you otherwise might
do. You have to stop maybe saying
something that you might want to say to somebody because you know
it doesn't fit with the moral code as it's prescribed by the
Buddha. So you restrain yourself, and
the restraint, of course, happens in the mind.
So it is the mind which develops when you are virtuous.
Or you decide to be kind, you decide to say something nice to
somebody that maybe otherwise you would not.
And again, of course, that impetus, that intention comes
from the mind, even though it actually is a verbal act.
So ultimately, all morality also is a mental thing.
That's why it counts as a development of the mind.
As you are being virtuous, as you are being kind, you start
feeling better about yourself. You don't have any remorse
anymore. You create a sense of beauty
inside of you. And because there is no sense of
remorse, there is less darkness in the mind, less grayness in
the mind, you start to feel lighter.
You feel more beautiful. You feel more radiant inside of
you. You feel a sense that the mind
is becoming more beautiful. And you can see this happening
if you are able to sustain that virtuous practice over a long
period of time. And essentially, the main thing
here is that you are taking away remorse.
You may think that you don't have any remorse after doing
something bad, but very often what happens is that the remorse
we often have is a very kind of subtle thing.
You may not even be able to see it inside of your mind, but it's
almost as if the mind gets slightly darker or slightly more
gloomy because we have done something negative.
And you may not even be aware of it yourself.
But the Buddha said that if you are virtuous, you take away that
remorse. And that's why the mind slowly
but surely, stage by stage, becomes more radiant, more
peaceful, more kind, more compassionate as you practice
that virtue. So virtue is mental development.
Being moral is the development of the mind.
And of course meditation then takes that mental development
even further because then you are working directly with the
mind itself. But in life in general, and this
is true both for monastic life and also for lay life, the most
important aspect in all these trainings is always the aspect
of virtue. This is so important in life
because this is like the foundation stone.
If you can be virtuous, if you can be good, then you are laying
the foundation stone for meditation to happen.
You almost don't have to meditate at all if you are in
lay life. Very often people don't have so
much time for meditation. And it's okay.
Very often people think that meditation is the essence of the
Buddhist path, so what I should really do more than anything
else is meditate. And I would say no, what you
should really do more than anything else is to make sure
that you live a kind and good life, a moral life, kindness
towards others, goodness towards others.
That should be the main priority in all life, whether monastic or
lay. Because when you do that, you
are creating the mind which will be able to meditate.
If you don't do it, you can meditate, you can meditate as
much as you want, but you will never get there because you
haven't laid down the foundation work.
That is how important it is to have a virtuous and moral life.
It's the only way that you are going to be able to have a
stable and good meditation in the future.
So this is where your focus should be.
This is the main focus in developing the mind as far as
I'm concerned. And then if you do some
meditation in life, in daily life, ask yourself, how can I
use this meditation to support my practice of virtue and
morality? If virtue and morality is so
important, what sort of meditation will support that?
And of course, you can do a little bit of compassion, a
little bit of metta meditation, so that when you have the metta
inside of you, it's so much easier to be kind and to be
moral and to be good to the people around you.
So it's a very powerful way of helping your virtue, helping
your morality. Or you can just do a little bit
of peace meditation because again, if you feel peaceful, if
you have a sense of tranquility inside of you, if you feel good
about yourself, it's so much easier to be kind and good to
the world around you. So that, I think, should be the
main purpose of meditation practice.
Use it as a support for your virtue, for your kindness in
daily life. And then if occasionally you
have a deep meditation, that's wonderful and that's great.
But sometimes it's difficult to get that really deep meditation
in lay life. If you cannot get it, don't be
too concerned about it. Use it instead just a little bit
to get that sense of feeling better about yourself, to make
it easier to be kind to the world around you.
So this is the power and the importance of virtue.
And this is the most important part of mental development.
Then, when you have a chance to go on retreat maybe, you have a
chance to go to the new meditation retreat, the retreat
center in Serpentine, then you can test yourself and see how
far your meditation, your practice of virtue has gone, and
see if it has an effect on your meditation practice.
And then maybe if your meditation is going well, then
maybe you can even start developing the wisdom aspect,
the panya aspect of meditation, or rather I should say of
development of the mind. Because then when your
meditation is going well, that is when wisdom has a real chance
to arise in the mind. So this then is what we mean
essentially by development or developing the mind.
These are the three kind of characteristics.
And when you develop this, again, what you see inside of
yourself happening is you become more peaceful, stage by stage,
slowly, slowly. You become a more peaceful
person. You become more contented.
You become more satisfied with life.
You get more self-esteem. You get more self-confidence.
You feel better about yourself. All these things.
All these things that we want in life, they come from this kind
of development of the mind. And of course it's wonderful
when that happens. And you should observe yourself,
look at yourself as you do this practice, and see if this sort
of development actually is happening.
If you look inside of yourself and you see the development is
not happening, nothing is going on, then you should ask
yourself, what am I doing wrong? Where?
What is not happening? What is going right?
Maybe there is some adjustment I can do to my practice to sort
things out so I get more mental development out of this.
And when you evaluate yourself in this way, and it's very
important to evaluate yourself, for goodness sake, don't
evaluate just from a day-to-day basis, not from week-to-week
basis. Evaluate yourself from
month-to-month, from year-to-year.
Take a very long-term approach. Because these things take a
while and they actually have an effect on the mind.
So don't be impatient. Don't think that it isn't
working just because you haven't got results straight away.
Allow it to take time. And then evaluate yourself over
periods of time, long periods of time.
And then you will see whether your practice is actually
working. You have to be patient in this
practice. Patience is extraordinarily
important as well. So, I want to go back to where I
started off on this talk. At the very beginning I said
that this is one of the most wonderful discoveries of the
Buddha, that there is such a thing as development of the
mind. And I always ask myself,
sometimes I wonder, I look around the world and I say to
myself, why is it that not everybody practices development
of the mind? Why is it that so many people
are trapped in this idea that their happiness is going to come
from outside, through relationships, through wealth,
through possessions, through all these kinds of things?
Yes, there is happiness to be gained in those things.
But the real happiness, the true happiness, comes from developing
the mind. It doesn't matter how wealthy
you are, it doesn't matter what sort of relationship you are, if
you are depressed, you are going to be miserable anyway.
So the reality is that the mind is so much more important than
all these external things. So why doesn't everybody
practice the development of the mind?
What is the reason for that? And the main reason for that, as
I can see it, is we have this sense of, this sense of self
inside. This sense of self gives us a
feeling that we are who we are. And because we are who we are,
we are not really able to understand the potential for
change that there is inside of the mind.
We are blinded, we are blocked by this thing inside of us that
we see, this sense of self, this illusion of a self.
We are blinded by this, to thinking that we cannot actually
go so far with developing the mind.
And that's why we tend to, I think, not put in as much effort
as we otherwise might do. And it's a bit, to give you the
example, it's a bit like somebody, this is from Ajahn
Brahm's book, Opening Door of Your Heart, a bit like somebody,
no, that's not the right, right symbol I want to use, it's just,
it's just as if somebody is very depressed, and they feel down,
and after a while they feel there is no hope anymore.
They feel this is the way it is, I'm depressed, and they think
maybe the only way out of this is to commit suicide.
Because this life is not worth living anymore.
Why is it that somebody commits suicide when they are depressed?
It's because there is no hope. Because they think that this
condition is permanent, they think that this is who they are,
they are this depressed thing, and the only way to get out of
it is by committing suicide. There is a sense of self again,
there is this illusion of a self, which blinds you to think
that things are much more permanent than they actually
are. But of course, depression is not
permanent. It's not permanent.
Eventually, if you keep going, you will get out of that
depression. And that's why one of the most
important things is to remind somebody who is depressed, tell
them, this is impermanent, this will change, this is not who you
are. Eventually, if you just keep
holding out, keep doing the right thing, you will get out of
this. And I think everybody probably
has had times in their lives that have been difficult, most
people probably had times when they felt a bit depressed, or
down, or sad, or depressed. And we know that these things
end. This is just the way things are.
So again, we should remind ourselves that the mind is
impermanent. The way we are, the way we look
at the world, everything can change.
So when we think about developing the mind, there is no
limit to our development in mind.
There is no end to it. You can achieve states of
happiness and bliss beyond your imagination, beyond what you
think is possible. And on the way, you will change.
You will become a slightly different person.
Your outlook will change. You will look at the world in a
different way, just as you look at the world in a different way
when you are happy, compared to when you are sad.
So remind yourself of this. Remind yourself of the great
potential for spiritual development.
Don't allow yourself to be blinded by this illusion that we
all carry around with us. It's a terrible illusion because
it stops us often from being able to enjoy this spiritual
path to its maximum. Remind yourself that things are
much more changeable than you think they are.
Then you can start this path of mental development and go it
much further, much faster than otherwise you might be able to.
Okay, so that is the talk this evening.
Anybody has any questions or comments, anything you want to
say about this tonight? Yes?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . leave.
That's really all I meant by that.
Anybody else has anything they want to ask about?
Any questions? Any comments?
Anybody? Yes?
Yeah, indeed. I mean this is an extremely
important point. And this is also not only is it
in lay life, it's also in monastic life.
Sometimes monastic life can be difficult as well.
Sometimes people think that monastic life is something
completely different from lay life.
But it's just, it's basically the same.
It's just that monastic life is a slightly different emphasis.
But you still have the same problems, you know, the same
kind of thing, the same hindrances that you're battling
with. So essentially it's just a
microcosm of what's happening in the larger society in monastic
life. But sure, of course, and this is
the thing, when you come across something difficult in life,
something which is hard, sometimes it is right maybe to
move away from that, to go away. But very often the best thing to
do when you have a hard time is to ask yourself, well, why is it
so difficult? How can I look at things
differently? How can I change myself?
What can I do to actually overcome this problem?
Because the problem is usually inside ourselves.
If we have somebody, very often problems in life are personal
problems with other people. People that upset us, make us,
you know, we find very difficult to deal with, maybe bullies, I
don't know what. And of course, this, instead of
running away from that, is a chance to actually look at the
problem differently. Because wherever you go in life,
if you go somewhere else, you're always going to encounter
difficult people. There's no such thing as a
place, as a paradise, where nobody is difficult.
This is just the way the world is.
So by changing, instead of changing where you are, change
your perception instead. Change your mind.
Because if you're able to change your mind, you deal with the
problem once and for all. And you don't have it again in
the future. And this is what I, sometimes, I
do that in monastic, I try to do exactly the same in monastic
life. First of all, I look at the long
term and I say, okay, I seem to be making progress in monastic
life, so I'll just stay here at Bodhinyana Monastery, at least
for now, because it seems to be the right thing for me to do.
And then a difficulty comes up. And then I try to do exactly
that. I say to myself, okay, this is a
difficulty. This is no reason to run away.
This is a chance for me to see if I can get rid of some of my
own defilements. I can weaken some of my own
defilements. Try to have more compassion on
the people around me. Understand that if somebody is
difficult out there, there is a reason for that difficulty.
They are probably suffering. They have a hard time.
I should have compassion for them.
I should have loving kindness for these people.
How can I develop loving kindness and compassion for
somebody who is difficult? How can I look at them in a
different way? What is the right perception in
this case? Very often we are trapped in
certain ways of looking at the world, and that is one of the
problems in life. We have to somehow try to get
out of those traps, try to get out.
There's always the same person who always gives us the same
problem. It's a trap.
It's because our mind is like one track.
We can't get out of it. So we have to change these
tracks. We have to change these habits
and try to get out of those things.
So yes, I agree with you. Problem is always a great chance
for spiritual progress in life. So try the best of your ability
to change it that way. If you can't, there's also
nothing wrong with changing your position or changing your job or
whatever if you find it very hard.
If it gets too much, that can also be the right thing
sometimes. There's never any absolute right
or any absolute wrong in this. Anything to say, before we
close? Yes, sir.
You talked about the self, and you said that we stop ourselves
from developing our mind because our self is going to pull
ourselves down. Yeah.
Preserving ourselves. So does that mean that the
developed mind is the virtuous mind, the mind that has made
itself this? That's possible.
That's part of the thing.
The more developed the mind is, the less self usually you have
in there because usually if the mind is less developed, it's
usually more selfish, more self-centered, all these kind of
things. The more developed you are, the
more generous you're going to be and the more kind you're going
to be to people around you. You're going to be naturally
less self-centered. There's going to be less sense
of self there. But even if you are being
virtuous, even if you do develop the mind, you're going to be
more self-centered, and the more self-centered you are, the more
self-centered you are going to be, the more self-centered you
will be. So the way the self develops in
the development of the mind is only when you actually make a
really profound breakthrough to profound wisdom to get through
this idea of self altogether. Until you get to that point,
there's always going to be a sense that there's somebody in
here who is you, something permanent, a core.
So because of that, there's always going to be a sense of a
limitation in there because of that sense of self.
So it's always going to be with you until you get very, very far
away, a long way on the spiritual path. 73.
Thank you. Thank you.