OK, so maybe we can start it. So tonight I have been asked,
this is somebody asked me to give asked about a particular
topic and they asked what I can talk about the Buddha's advice
to lay Buddhists, what kind of advice the Buddha would give it
to lay people. This question came from one of
the members of the Buddha Society who lives in India.
And this is one of the kind of things I'd like about this
Buddha Society is that we are so kind of everywhere.
It's really nice. And you get a question from
India, which is the homeland of Buddhism, right?
And by the Venerable Nibuto here is also from India originally,
which I think is really nice. It kind of ties the Buddhist
world together in a very beautiful way here.
So he asked me to talk about the Buddhist advice, the Buddhist
advice to lay people. And of course I'm very happy to
talk about that. I'd like, I love to talk about
the word of the Buddha because I think the word of the Buddha is
so profound. It is so well spoken.
It is in fact so simple, right? Sometimes people say, oh, I
can't understand the suitors, they're too kind of profound or
whatever. I prefer to listen to talks and,
you know, read the books of Ajaan so and so, Aya so and so,
Master so and so, Siado so and so, and all these kind of
things. But for me, the word of the
Buddha is by far the most clear, the most consistent, the most
coherent, the most easy to understand of any contemporary
or the teacher. And that's why I find it so.
That's one of the reasons, many other reasons as well here why I
find it so inspiring to actually have a look at the word of the
Buddha. So why?
So what is the Buddha's advice to lay Buddhists?
And of course the first thing that we have to talk about is,
is there really any distinction between what the Buddha talks
about to lay people and what he talks to monastics or and if
there is a distinction, what is that distinction in particular?
And of course, the reality is that the Buddha's teaching,
which is an understanding of reality, the way things really
are, how to find happiness in the world, how to overcome
suffering, etcetera. The basic principles of that are
exactly the same whether you are a lay Buddhist or a monastic,
right? Doesn't really make that much
difference because the world functions in a certain way here.
And if you are a person, you have a mind, you have your
problems, you have your happinesses, and of course you
have to operate in the same way regardless of whether you are a
layperson or a monastic. So essentially it is the same
teaching, but of course there is a distinction.
And the reason that there is a distinction is because there is
often a difference in commitment, right?
You are hopefully most monastics are more committed, the average
monastic hopefully more committed than the average lay
Buddhist. But that is really the only
distinction. And because of that distinction,
what you find in the suit, as in the word of the Buddha, is that
the word of the Buddha tends to be to lay people a bit more on
basic subjects, right? Not kind of the highest kind of
insights very often or the deepest kind of meditations, but
often a bit more basic subjects. But occasionally you find that
there is one that is, you know, a certain layperson who has
reached some very high meditation state or whatever.
And then you actually find that even to laypeople occasionally
you find that the most profound topics are actually taught.
If there are someone who is very committed, someone who is about
to die, someone who is ready to see something profound on on the
Buddhist path. So it's all there in both camps.
It's just a matter of degree, Right.
So when you talk where they talk to lay people on monastics, it's
pretty much, it's very, in a large sense, to a large extent
very much the same thing. Yeah.
But of course, because sometimes lay people have, often they have
kind of more lay people concerns, right.
Sometimes the teachings even in the suitors are really kind of
down to earth to some lay people.
And one example of this of a really down to earth teaching.
Yeah, this is when King Paseinadi goes to visit the
Buddha. King Paseinadi, he was king of
one of the largest kingdoms in India at the time, called the
Causalan Kingdom, a very large Kingdom in the north of India,
perhaps roughly, it's very hard to say exactly how large it was,
but maybe roughly the size of Thailand or something like that.
So it's quite a large country, right?
Especially at the time where they didn't have any cars or any
planes that kind of hold it together.
It is quite large for those those times.
So he was the king of this country and he was a very
staunch disciple of the Buddha. And he would regularly go to the
Buddha to ask the Buddha various kinds of questions, right?
And some of these questions are really sweet questions.
That's why I want to talk about this because he was kind of
concerned with sometimes with very worldly, ordinary things.
And so on one occasion he comes to the Buddha and he's kind of
huffing and puffing away here. He just had a meal and he's
putting on weight writer. And then the Buddha gives him a
teaching on how to lose weight. And this is actually in the
suit. There's one of the teachings
that Buddha gave to one of the people.
Well, it's so down to earth, right?
It's a some kind of straight down the line for many people
wish to have the that kind of teaching here.
And what I like about this is that one of the problems
sometimes with Buddhism is that sometimes we tend to kind of
elevate the Buddha in the wrong way.
We regard the Buddha as some kind of somebody who is sort of
beyond humanity and is outside ordinary understanding of what
human beings are here. This kind of outside of the,
he's kind of almost like a God in a sense, or he is the Dumber
principle, which is beyond human beings, all these kind of
things. But the more you read the
suitors, the more you understand that the Buddha has all these
very human qualities, right? And this is so interesting.
Not only does he have human qualities, but the way that it
interacts with people is exactly the way that you would expect an
ordinary person to interact with somebody else.
This is how you lose weight, right?
Oh, thank you, Master. Wonderful thing.
You gave me this profound instruction on how to do this
weight. I'm so happy about that.
What a wonderful thing that is. So there's all these ordinary
teachings that come into this and it humanises the Buddha.
It makes shows us that the Buddha really is one of us.
He's a human being. He's not something entirely
different. And this is important.
I mean, of course it is crucial to respect the Buddha.
It's crucial to understand that he had understood something that
the vast majority of people do not understand.
Especially he understands the distinction between true
happiness and true suffering in life.
This is what the Buddha understands.
It is the thing that everybody is looking for.
So he has really found the answer to the meaning of life.
And this is what I find is just so powerful about the Buddha,
right? So this, this is on the one
hand, this is what makes him so powerful and on the other hand,
he is a human being just like the rest of us.
You read in the suit as he talks about his defilements that he
had before his awakening, right? He talks about ill will, he
talks about sensual desire. He talks about having wrong
view, right, looking at the world in a wrong, wrong way.
He talks about all of these ordinary things.
He talks about his body getting old and out of shape and falling
apart. He talks about having back aches
right when he gets old, all of these kind of things.
So these are the things that humanizes the Buddha, and it
shows us that the Buddha basically is just a human being,
but a human being who took the human potential to its highest
or took the human state to its highest potential.
That's what it is. So when we respect the Buddha,
it's important to respect him in a sense in the right way.
Yes, we can put the Buddha on a bit of a pedestal like this
pedestal behind here, and that's fine.
We should, we should do that because he, he really is the
supreme teacher of what everybody wants to know.
But we should not put him on the wrong kind of pedestal.
So what was that teaching that the Buddha gave on how to
overcome weight or kind of lose weight?
Are you interested in that? Is that a good interest in
teaching? Is that what you came here for
tonight? Probably not.
So what? What is the teaching that he
gave? And what he said was that the
way to do this is very, very simple, right?
Very basic teaching here. You are ever mindful here.
And when you're ever, when you are ever mindful, when you're
mindful here, you realise moderation in food.
And when you have moderation in in what you eat and in your
food, then the consequence of that is that you have less
illnesses and you'd live a long time.
And of course, because he was teaching a king, he taught this
verse to the King's attendant, right?
OK, attendant, you learn this. And every time the king has a
meal, you should say this to him, right?
You say these words to him. It's easy to be easy to be
mindful, right? When somebody tells you exactly
what you have to do. This is kind of the advantage of
being a king. You have a special man just to
tell you how to kind of lose weight.
So but it's, it's interesting because it's so simple.
It's just about being mindful and remembering some very basic
instructions. And one of the instructions
there, which I find interesting also is this idea that if you
eat in moderation, you live long, right?
You have a long life. This is one of those things that
you will see today as well. This is one of the things that
is fairly well known. I think even in the present day,
that moderation and eating tends to live to good health and a
long life. But it goes back to time of the
Buddha goes back 2 1/2 thousand years.
So this is the the first thing, right?
So I'm just starting off with some of the really basic things.
What is interesting about the Buddha's relationship to this
King Pasena de is that they were very close together and King
Pasena de would go to the Buddha on a very regular basis and ask
for advice right and one to to tell this understand, you know,
go ahead and King Pasena were all to treat bad actions.
They treat themselves as if they are their own enemies.
But those people in the world who treat other people with good
actions by body, speech and mind, they treat themselves as
if they are the friends, as if they are as as if they love
themselves, right. And so the point what he's
saying here, and this is kind of an interesting point because
it's almost in reverse psychology or how we normally
think about things. It is not just the fact that
when you treat other people well, you kind of love those
other people. When you treat other people
well, you love yourself, you are your own friend.
In the same way, if you treat other people badly by body,
speech and mind, it is not only as if you treat those other
people as enemies, you're treating yourself as your enemy.
So it's kind of entirely reverse psychology how we normally think
about this. And of course it is very obvious
from a Buddhist point of view, because if you treat somebody
else bad, who is the person who will in the long run get most
had most negative effect from that bad action towards others?
It is you, right? You will regret doing those
things, you will feel bad about it afterwards.
And this may go on for a long time into the future.
So every time you do something bad towards somebody else, you
are treating yourself as if you are your own enemy here.
And in the same way, when you do something kind to other people,
when you treat other people well, you are the one who reap
the most benefit from that. Because in the future, you will
feel happy and content from your good actions and you are
treating yourself as your friend.
So remember that, right? It's a very powerful, very
simple teaching here that when we treat others badly here, it
is not them that we hurt the most.
The person that we hurt the most is ourselves.
Do you really want to hurt yourself?
Do you want to be your own friend?
That you want to love yourself? You want to have a good
relationship to yourself? Or do you want to live to your
own detriment and drag yourself down and actually be like your
own enemy here? So when you think about that,
you're turning this thing around a little bit and it actually
makes a kind of different impression of the mind.
Be kind, because being kind means being kind to yourself,
not only to the other person. So I like this kind of little
things, that kind of reverse psychology in a sense that turn
things up, turn things around. And there is another teaching by
the Buddha also to laypeople. This was not to King Pasena on
the similar, which is nice and complementary to this one here.
And that is the idea of how as a layperson 1 should use one's
wealth, right? Whatever money, whatever assets
we have, how should we use that as a layperson?
What is the right way as a monastic?
OK, We, we also use our assets in, in in a similar kind of way,
but it's a bit more limited, right?
Haven't got that many assets. I've got this robe here and this
sitting cloth and a few things like that, but not much so.
So how do we use our assets in Aslay people?
And the answer that the Buddha says, and again, it's very, I
think, a very nice answer. It's very different from how we
are normally taught to think about this, perhaps especially
in the Western culture. And the what I say is the first
thing you do with your assets, you have probably worked hard.
Most people work hard in this life, right?
And you build up a certain amount of money and assets in
your own life. And then how do we spend that?
And the what I said, the first person that you should make
happy and who should, who you should look after when you have
enough assets is yourself, right?
That is the first person. So when you have A and it's a
foolish person who doesn't actually spend a certain amount
of wealth on themselves to make themselves happier.
And then once you have made yourself happy and pleased, then
of course you should make your parents happy and pleased, your
wife or husband and children, your other family members.
And of course also those people who are in a sense, maybe
employees in your families, right.
In those days they had kind of extended families with lots of
employees in the family, people who were, you know, servants and
workers and all these kind of things.
So that is how you use your money, first yourself and then
going down gradually down to those people who are closest to
you. And then the last place where
you use money, according to the ancient Zutas, is for charity
here. So once everybody has kind of,
you know, everybody's reasonably happy, you also use a certain
amount to charity here. In those days, that usually
meant giving to ascetics, you know, people who live the
ascetic life as you did, what it meant in those days.
So it's beautiful because it is. When you think about it, it's
actually quite logical, right? We are closest to ourselves.
If we really love ourselves and look after ourselves, of course
we should look after ourselves also.
In a way, we use our own money and use our own wealth.
Then those people who we also love when we're close to us, our
family members or whatever, we look after them.
In this way, you go down the line to all the people who mean
something in your life and eventually you look after other
people as well. It's a beautiful way of thinking
about life. But of course it is A to be a
balance between these things, right?
You don't use everything on yourself.
You find this nice balance in how these things are done.
And in this way, you you get a you, you live well in the sense.
So that is there's some basic things on the how to how to
create happiness for yourself, etcetera, and how to think about
ideas such as morality and things.
Now there's another time, OK, I'm going to come back to this
King Pasena day again because there is a whole chapter of
Surtas of Discourses where King Pasena Day is talking to the
Buddha. It's about 25 little discourses.
And if you want to, if you ever want to check it out, it's in a
collection called the Connected Discourses of the Buddha.
And you found all find all this conversations between the Buddha
and King Paseinadi. So on this other one other
occasion, he goes to the Buddha and he asked the Buddha, what is
master? What is the one thing that leads
to happiness both in this life and in future lives, right.
If there's one thing you want to single out as the most important
thing that leads to both happiness in this life and in
future lives, what is that? He asked the Buddha and the
Buddha replies that one thing is appamada, right?
OK, I mean, I promise to translate this, otherwise you're
going to be might be in trouble. Appamada is the probably word,
and that probably word means essentially it means something
like heedfulness, right? To be heedful means to be
careful. It means to be circumspect.
It means to consider things, you know, think about things,
reflect on them before you actually act.
That's what heedfulness means, right?
So the one thing which is at the base of everything else has the
Buddha is this idea of heatfulness.
Abramada in parli here. And if you read know the suit as
fairly broadly, you will know that this is actually in many
places, this is said to be the foundation for the entire
spiritual practice, entire spiritual life.
Because unless you consider things carefully here, unless
you stand back and thinks, think about things properly, unless
you are a little bit reflective about your own in life, right,
you're not going to go anywhere because you don't really
reflect. You don't consider what is
really important in life, what truly makes people happy, what
is really going to be beneficial.
You have to have that reflection in life, otherwise you're not
going to go anywhere at all. So it's fairly obvious that that
is the case once you realise that.
So what are in particular the things that we are supposed to
be a pomada or hateful about? And this then comes to the other
thing, which is I think a very important teaching to the Buddha
to lay people, to lay Buddhist generally.
And there's two things that the Buddha emphasizes usually in the
suit as to the lay people. And one is generosity here and
the other one is morality here, right?
And sometimes when you say, say to people, oh, this is what the
Buddha emphasizes for the lay people.
And people say, oh, we feel a bit short changed.
We want to hear the higher teachings as well.
We don't want to see that generosity and morality and all
these things. But I think this is really
underestimating the power of these very kind of this more
basic factors on the path, the power in terms of their scope,
their width, in terms of their profundity, right?
Once you understand the scope and the width of things like
generosity and morality here, then you start to practice these
in a slightly different way from what you're used to her.
So these things are actually very important.
They're not kind of basic things that you kind of get out of the
way and then you move on to the higher things in Buddhism, these
are actually fundamental things. So take something like
generosity, right? What does it actually mean?
The first thing I should say is that these things are not just
for lay people. It's not as if, you know, the,
the, the lay people are kind of really generous and that the
monastic community is really selfish or anything like that.
That's not really the idea. These things are universal
qualities that everybody needs to practice, whether you are a
monastic or a layperson. But the idea with these things,
the idea with generosity here is that it is something that opens
your heart up. It opens you out to a sense of
kindness, a sense of matter, of loving kindness, of compassion
to all beings around you, right? If you are generous, it takes a
certain perception of others. It takes a certain willingness
to share what you have with other people.
And that kind of opens you up in a very beautiful way here.
And I'm sure sometimes many of you will have that feeling in
life where you feel that you feel almost like this generosity
coming out of you and you want to share with all people around
you. And if you know that feeling,
you know that it is a very beautiful feeling.
It is a feeling where the mind is very pure.
The mind is very beautiful. There's no hostility there.
There's no selfishness. It's a very expansive kind of
mind state, right? When you're selfish, you're kind
of narrow down inside of yourself and there's there's a
lack kind of in this beautiful expansive mind state, isn't
there? And then when the mind expands
and it takes all, all other people there, then you feel this
kind of, you feel a powerful inspiration, a powerful sense or
something very beautiful happening inside of you.
And you know, if you are sensitive to that, you know that
this is precisely a spiritual state of mind.
This is the kind of state of mind you know, that anyone who
practising the spiritual path would be recommending because
you can feel there's something both powerful and beautiful
about that. And of course, the point here is
that if you want to go further on the path, if you want to be
more serious about meditation practice, you want to come and
do a meditation retreat at our wonderful Jana Grove Meditation
Centre or whatever it is. Then you recognise that this
kind of quality is really the foundation for meditation
practice. If you haven't got this open
hearted, open handed feeling whereby you want to really be
generous with the whole world, if you have a more like a stingy
feeling inside it, it's not going to work.
But the more open hearted you are, the more open handed you
are, the more willing you are to share and give to all beings
around you. That is the kind of mind state
that makes meditation possible. In fact, the Buddha says that it
says very specifically that if you have this state of mind,
that is when also you have access to the really deep states
of samadhi, the really deep states of meditation practice
that this path promises you here, right?
So generosity is about developing this kind of mental
attitude, this way of looking at the world and it doesn't have to
do so much with kind of, you know, if you like the size or
the, or the amount or that kind of thing, or how much you're
given these kind of things. What it has to do with, it's a
general state of mind that you carry with you in ordinary life,
the state of mind where you are, you always have this feeling of
kind of being willing to share and, and give something to
others or the, or the world around you.
It's a general state of mind. So it's more about how often we
are generous, right than about how much necessarily we do.
This is, I think, an important, very important aspect of this
thing we call generosity here. So that is the generosity side.
And this is a very important teaching that the Buddha always
teaches to lay people, and it also teaches it to monastics as
well here. So to the extent that we have
the opportunity to be generous, we try to live exactly like that
because you realise after a while that this is absolutely
required for the path to really mature and to get anywhere here.
So that is the generosity side. Then we have the morality side,
right, and very often we talk about morality or sealer.
In Buddhism. We often talk about the five
precepts, right? And of course, the five precepts
are a very important foundation for the Buddhist practice.
If you've got those, you already have a nice foundation there.
And one of the great things I think about this Buddha society
is that there are so many people here who actually practice these
five precepts. I think we have over 1000
members, right, who practice the five precepts in this Buddha
society here. That is just so inspiring,
right? It is such a wonderful thing
here. I told there's a story which
Adam Brahm always, always tell. Well, not always, but it tells
us sometimes. I can't remember when I told it
last, but there's a story from from Thailand and this is, you
know, when he was in his monastery, Ajam Shah was Ajam
Brahms teacher. As I'm sure all of you will
realize by now, Ajam Shah was one of the most famous monks in
Thailand in the 20th century. I think at his funeral they had
something like half a million people show up right at his
funeral. Absolutely massive.
I hate to I hate to kind of I think it might Adam Bram's fear
not probably going to be something something similar.
Half a million people coming right there.
We see. Can we organise that Drew out
here? Is that first?
OK? Don't tell the council.
OK, We've been in serious trouble.
Anyway, that's for the future. Hopefully that's still a long
way away because it would be a rather significant loss to say
that to, you know, to really to, to if that happened.
But anyway, this was Ajan Shah's monastery, right?
He was very, very famous monkey. And on the imposted her days,
the days of the full moon and the new moon, people will always
come to the monastery here. And of course, on the Vesak day
of the day when we celebrate the Buddha's birth and passing away
and enlightenment, the Vesak day here, the crowds were often very
large. They all come to see Ajan Shah
from all the neighboring districts and that sort of thing
here. So in one of these days when the
monastery was absolutely packed, I don't know how many people
were there, maybe 1000 people or something here.
I used the opportunity and he said, how many of you keep the
five precepts, right? And then he looked around 1000
people, right? I mean, it's this crowd here is
small today compared to 1000 people, 1000 people out there.
And he looks out and he sees two people put up the hand keeping
the five precepts. And the rest are kind of looking
a bit sheepishly looking down on the ground, right, and feeling a
bit bad about this two people, right?
This is in the heart of Thailand, one of the best
monasteries in Thailand. And yet that was the kind of
standard that often lay people would have at that time.
And now here we have the Buddhist society where over 1000
of people keep the five preserves.
It's it's wonderful thing. And sometimes people don't
appreciate enough how wonderful and how marvelous it is.
And we have so many people are so committed to the Dhamma, so
committed to practicing in the right way, and not only here in
Perth, but overseas as well, people who are part of this.
We have a, if you don't, may not be aware of this, but we have an
online facility for the BSWA website where you can take the
precepts online, right? Because you live somewhere far
away, like in Africa or in, you know, South America or in North
America for that matter, or in Europe or whatever it is.
And you have no temple around you.
So you come to the BSWA, we come to the rescue.
Here is where you can take the five precepts.
Beautiful, right? So you come here online, do it
kind of in cyberspace, take the five precept.
It's all the same thing anyway. What a wonderful thing that is.
But, and this is kind of the point here, it is not really
enough, right? It's wonderful, but it's not
wonderful enough. You can be even more wonderful
than just keeping the five precepts, and I would recommend
you to be even more wonderful. First of all, I would say to
those of you who are not keeping the five precepts, I'm not going
to ask you to put up your hands or anything like that or that
would be pretty embarrassing, wouldn't it?
But no, but I would really recommend you to take this as
the foundation stone for your Buddhist life because it is
really incredibly important if you want to be happy, if you
want to have some success in a meditation practice, if you want
to be a kind of beacon, right, for other people around you, how
to live life well, wow, this is really what you should be doing
here. But ideally, if you're really
serious about the Buddhist practice, it's not really
enough, right? Isn't that, that's a terrible
thing to say, isn't it? You probably feel really, that's
really. But the point is that even the
five precepts, after a while, they become like second nature.
You keep the five precept, you do it every day.
You know exactly what you're doing.
It kind of comes from your heart anyway.
You know that this is the right thing to do.
And because it is second nature, you don't invest a lot of
intention into that anymore. You don't invest in tension and
and your will if you like your volition into the idea of being
kind and being caring and being compassionate and being good to
the people around you. And because there isn't that
intention there, it means that the amount of good Kummer you're
making it is still great, but it's not as good as it could be
here. And you really start to realise
the limitations of these five precepts.
They are great as a foundation, but if you're really serious and
if you really want to go further, you have to actually go
beyond that. And of course, we know that the
Buddha talks about things like right speech, right?
And right speech is one of those areas that are very difficult to
speak in a way which unifies people, brings harmony in the
community, speak in a way which is gentle rather than harsh,
speak in a way which is meaningful, rather than speaking
things which are just idle chapter and all these kind of
things. These are the things that Buddha
talks about, and these are the areas where we all can kind of
do something to improve, to lift our game a little bit further,
to speak of the mind, right? Mental virtue is also an aspect
of the Buddhist path and all of these things.
When you start to look at all of these things, the breadth and
the scope of the Buddhist practice is so wide and it's so,
so much more than what most people normally think of as
morality or ethics. And why is this so important for
those of you who are interested in meditation practice,
interested in being mindful, interest in experiencing some of
the joy that is available on the Buddhist path, the Buddha
consistently says there is one thing which is the source, the
foundation, the basis upon which all meditation works.
And that source foundation basis for meditation is sealer, the
polyword sealer means precisely morality, but morality in this
very broad sense, right? You could call it character
development if you like, whereby you change your character to
lift it up and to make it something more beautiful and
something more, something more wholesome.
In a sense, your entire attitude to the world changes.
You have more compassion, more understanding, more love for the
people around you. It's in your, it's not just
external, it's in your heart. Your very heart is changing.
This is what this is about. And people often I think make a
mistake in the sense they think that you know the reason why
perhaps my meditation isn't going so well.
Why isn't that? Why am I not making quicker
progress than I am? These are the kind of standard
questions people have. I want to make progress more
quickly. Why am I stagnating?
What's going on there? And they often think, oh, I'm
not sitting enough hours, You know, I want to sit for 8 hours
a day or, or maybe I'm using the wrong meditation object, right?
Maybe I should. Should I use meta?
Should I use, you know, was loving kindness meditation?
Should it be breath meditation? Should it maybe be a super
meditation? I don't know I'm even using the
wrong meditation object, or they think I don't really know how to
use the meditation, or I'm focusing on the breath in the
wrong way, or whatever it is. But no, the Buddha never really
talks about any of those things. These things are not the reason
why the meditation isn't working.
They may have a little bit to do with it, but the only thing that
the Buddha consistently says in the suit is the cause for good
meditation practice is your sealer, your purity, your
character, who you are as a person.
That is the thing that really matters.
And now you can see when the Buddha tells the lay people to
be moral, to live well, to be kind hearted, all these kind of
things, it's actually very profound.
It is a sort of things that enables you later on in life to
come here, sit down, go to Jannah Grove and meditate and
actually get the real results. But you have to take this idea
of sealer morality to a very profound level.
And then these things really start to make make a big
difference. You start to learn how to become
a less angry as a person. You start to learn how to look
at people in such a way that anger doesn't arise anymore.
Here you start to understand other people.
They are trapped in their own personalities.
They are trapped because of their own past.
They can't really be much different from the way they are.
And then you can have compassion to them when they do stupid
things rather than being angry and upset in return.
It is very simple, basic aspects of Buddhist teachings that
enables you to become a far better person as a consequence,
right? If you look at people in the
right way, how can you ever get angry here, right?
They are trapped in the way they're doing things.
They are when they do something bad towards somebody else,
whether it's towards you or something else, it's not because
they want to do something bad. It's because they are compelled
by their own history to live out those actions.
It got nothing to do with you, had everything to do with the
other person here. And when you change your
attitude towards these kind of things in this way here,
something very profound changes inside of you here.
What changes is that you become a different person.
Your character changes and a goodness arises inside of you
which you have never seen perhaps before, maybe you have,
but maybe a long, long, long time in the past, right?
The past that you can't even recall that.
So this is the idea of Buddhist morality and This is why I think
the Buddha emphasized this not only for lay people but of
course for monastics as well because this is such an
important foundation for everything in Buddhism.
Without that, there is really no going forward.
So remember that right? And when you remember that, wow,
it gives such a wonderful and powerful booster.
So Papamada, right? Being heedful is the foundation.
The one thing that we all should do on this Buddhist path have to
have to be hateful at the very base of the Buddhist path.
From that hatefulness comes a morality and generosity because
we understand the power of these things.
But how can we beheed Fuller? This is the other interesting
question, right? It's easy to say beheed Fuller,
but sometimes we just forget. Sometimes we haven't got the
mindfulness. Sometimes we just don't know
what's happening around us. We're kind of going walking
around in the fog of life, thinking about things and
suddenly something comes in from left field, right?
And bang, it hits you and then you react to it because you
don't actually have the mindfulness to do that.
So how can we establish that heatfulness in our lives?
How can we be careful and make these things work for us in the
right way? That's pretty important, isn't
it? It's really fundamental.
And what the Buddha says is that again, this again is advice to
lay people, right? Is advice to monastics as well.
But it's also to lay people that the way to do that, the way to
remain hateful, is to make sure that we all have enough
spiritual input in our lives that will listen to spiritual
teachings, that will listens to the monastic.
You listen to the Buddha, you understand the word of the
Buddha and all these kind of things.
And if you have enough spiritual input, that will always remind
you of what you have to do. It's so easy to forget, right?
It's is it easy enough to forget in the monastery where you are
surrounded by other people who are like minded all the time,
let alone how easy it is to forget in lay life because of
all the business and all the stuff that goes on.
I've been there was a long time ago now, but I have been there
and I know what it's, I know what it's like.
I know what it's like even now sometimes.
So because of that, we need that continuous spiritual input, that
input which reminds us of what actually is important in life,
remind us of our priorities or how we should be living our
life, etcetera. So and the Buddha compares this
a very beautiful similar in the suitors that I think I spoke
here a few weeks ago as well. And it compares this to rain
falling on the mountaintop, right?
What happens when the rain falls on the mountain top?
If it keeps on falling, If it keeps on falling and falling and
falling and falling, then the rain falls into forms into
little streams, right? Those little streams then merge
and go into larger streams. Those larger streams then go
into the little lakes. The little lakes overflow, go
into the larger lakes. The larger lakes eventually
overflow, go into the big rivers.
The big rivers eventually become, you know, big and large
and they go into the ocean and they gradually they fill up the
great ocean. So if it keeps on raining on
that mountain top, right keeps on raining, raining and raining
and raining, it eventually ends up filling up the great ocean
itself. But if the rain has to continue,
it has to keep on raining here. And when that rain keeps on
going, then eventually it happens in the same way.
You have to continue to get that input in your life all the time,
that reminder of what is important in life on how to
live. And when you keep on getting
that reminder, it is as if it is raining on that mountaintop and
eventually the great ocean itself fills up.
What does it mean that the great ocean fills up?
Well, eventually what it means eventually, of course, the idea
is to reach the Buddhist idea of awakening itself.
So one day, if you keep on reigning, right, and all you
have to do is to listen to good teachings, listen to the real
Dumber, understand what the Buddha was on about.
And as you do that, you inexorably moving towards
awakening whether you want to or not, right?
There's no stopping you anymore. And if you don't want awakening,
well, remember, awakening is the highest happiness rise.
It's really worthwhile. It's a really good place to go
so inexorably, no choice moving towards awakening here just by
allowing that rain to fall on the mountaintop continuously
again and again and again. But that is the foundation, and
that is how this whole thing kind of moves in that direction
here, right? We can kind of see how these
things kind of fit together very beautifully here.
And when you understand that. And so there are really only
some very few basic things that we need to remember in our life
if you want to live well as Buddhists.
And one is to remember to get spiritual input, you know, on a
regular basis. And the other thing, which is
very useful to keep in mind, just going back to the idea of
morality I was talking about before, is just remember
kindness, right? Remember input, remember
spiritual input and kindness. If we can remember those two
things in your life, wow, you're going to go a wrong long, long
way on the Buddhist path there. So this is, these are some of
the basic things that the Buddha talked about.
There are two lay people. There is one other thing which
is very, I think interesting in the suitors, and that is the
Buddha talks about certain recollections, certain ways to
think about the world, right? And specifically said that lay
people should also think about these things in the right way
here. So what are these recollections?
And there's 5 standard recollections the Buddha talks
about and that we should remember that illness is part of
life, old age is part of life. He talks about everything that
is dear and pleasing to me must depart from me one day.
You cannot hold on to things in this world.
Things eventually have to go. He talks about we are the heir
of heir of our Kamaha. And lastly, he talks about the
fact that we must die, right? Death is an aspect of life, and
I think this is the idea of death in all of these other
aspects are kind of, in a sense, subsumed under this idea that we
must die. But the recollection that life
eventually must end in death, I think is one of those very
important spiritual reflections that most people should do from
time to time. Because why is it so important?
Why is the Buddha? Why does the Buddha say that lay
people? Everybody should reflect on
this. And of course, the reason is
because when you reflect, when you know that you're going to
die and you don't know exactly when it's going to be right,
sometimes it happens before we would like it to happen.
When we remember that, what it means is that we start to
prioritise different in life. When we remember that we're
going to die, remember that there is a bigger picture at
stake, there is a larger thing going on.
It is not just this narrow little existence that we have
here. There's a much bigger picture
that we have to look at. And this is explained in a very
beautiful way elsewhere in the suit.
Actually, before I before I even go there, I will just, there's
another nice little simile about the kind of the nature of death
that I remember when I started reading the word of the Buddha.
It really struck me as very powerful.
And this also is about a conversation between King
Pasenade and the Buddha. And King Pasenade again comes to
the Buddha and his King Pasenade complaints all, all these
ministers and all these kind of foolish people.
You know, we've had enough of all that stuff.
And then the Buddha says to him, well, great king, he was called
Maharaja. Great king is, is that what that
what that word means? Well, great King, if a man came
to you from the South and said, a mountain is coming this way, a
mountain is walking this way, crushing all living beings in
its path, what would you do? If another man is coming from
the east, walking towards you, crushing all living beings in
his path, what would you do? If a third mountain is coming
from the north, a fourth mountain is coming from the
West, each one of them crushing all living beings in the path,
and you are in the middle just waiting for the mountain to
crush you, what would you do? And of course the king answers.
Well, if that was the case, I would just kind of get on with
my practice and do what is good and do what is wholesome.
What else can you do when death is so inevitable?
And of course then the Buddha says, I inform you, I announce
to you, death is coming right now, moving in on you, and
before you know it, it will be your life will be over here.
What will you do? Of course, what can you do
except for living wisely and to do what is good and avoid what
is badder, right? And this is kind of, and I
remember reading that when I first read that.
Hope this is really powerful. Similarly for death in our life,
how important it is and how central, when you think about it
in the right way, how it changes your attitude about things.
And one of the other symbols that the Buddha is using to kind
of drive home this point is a symbol.
He says that life is a bit like all the sensual, all the
objects, all the things that we accumulate in life, although
those things are like borrowed goods.
Everything in life is like borrowed goods, right?
If you borrow something, if you borrow something from somebody
else, you don't attach too much. Because if you attach too much
to that thing, then when you give it up again, it's going to
be very painful for you, right? So when you borrow somebody, OK,
you're borrowing something for maybe a few days or a week or a
month or whatever. Maybe you're renting an
apartment. You don't invest so much into
that apartment because you know you're going to have to give it
up very sooner. But the border says everything
in life is like that. Everything in life is like
borrowed goods. Why?
Because eventually you're going to have to die.
And when you die, you're going to have to give it all up again.
All your possessions, everything you own in this world, all your
friendships, all your relationships with your family
members, whatever it is, right? A lot of your psychological
belongings, things like your status and society, your
education, your, you know, your social position, whatever it is,
that too has to go. And of course, finally, your own
physical body has to go as well. All of that stuff is really just
borrowed goods. It belongs to this world, does
not belong to the next World. When you come to the boundary
between this life and the next life, you're going to have to
give it all up. And what are you left with at
that point? You're left with only one thing
and that is your mind. And if that mind has been
developed in a good way to be made beautiful and shiny and
powerful and happy, you bring that happiness into the future,
right? And that is what then what it
means then to basically get a good rebirth in the future life.
It means that you're bringing with you a beautiful mind that
you have created in this life, a beautiful character and that
then takes you, takes you on, take, moves you forward in a
positive way in the future life, right?
So it is all about investment. How are we going to invest our
time? What is our investment strategy
going to be like, right? How much are we going to invest
in this narrow little slice of time, which is called this life?
And how much are you going to invest instead in a much broader
picture of things, the great expanse, right, of life, moving
on from this life, moving on into the future, into a renewed
existence and possibly going on like that for a very long time?
What are you going to invest in? Right?
And this is what the idea of death tells you.
If you remind yourself you're going to die, it reminds you
where you should invest. It reminds you what is really
important in life. It doesn't mean that you stop
doing the ordinary things in life, but it means that how the
how you do deal with the ordinary things in life changes.
Yes, you still work, you still do the things that you have to
do with your family and friends, but you change the quality on
how you do those things. You do it in a different way.
You do it in more kindness or more care, more compassion to
ensure that you build up all these positive qualities inside
of you. And then you are, in a sense,
investing in the right way, right.
So this is the idea of death contemplation.
It is not bad at all if you use death contemplation in the right
way, if you remind yourself you're going to die, what it
leads to, it leads to an enhancement of the quality of
your life, more mindfulness, more ability to prioritise in
the right way, Right. And this is what death
contemplation really is about at its most basic level.
So it's a beautiful thing. Yeah.
So when you do all of these things that I've been talking
about now, right, or some of them or whatever it is, you do
some of these things anyway, then the Buddha also says, and
this is one of the teachings he gave us to another Pindica, one
of the most important lay disciples of the Buddha, who
donated large monasteries and these kind of things to the
Buddha and the Sangha at the time.
He says to him that you, even you lay disciples sometimes you
should go away, go away from the crowd, find a secluded place and
enjoy the bliss of seclusion in your own life, right.
What he's saying there is that you should not be satisfied with
just doing, being moral, not be satisfied with just living a
life of generosity and kindness. Sometimes you should take time
out and you should go to places like Jana Grove.
He doesn't actually mention Jana Grove in the Suit Desert, but he
probably would have if you had known about it.
So go to John I go, take time out and enjoy the meditation.
Enjoy the happiness that comes from living life well and living
life in a good way. Because this is the fruit,
right? One of the benefits of living
life well. So please do that.
And one of the beautiful things that you find out when you go on
a meditation retreat, right? You find out a number of things.
First of all, you find out that meditation sometimes works.
Sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes you're frustrated,
sometimes you're not. All these kind of things, of
course, but one of the things that you find out if you go on
regular retreats, say once a year or once every six months or
whatever it is, you find out whether you are living your life
as a Buddhist or as a spiritual person or whatever you want to
call yourself, whether you are living it well or not.
You actually find that out. Because if after a certain
period of time you go on retreat again and you find that your
mindfulness has increased, your somebody has increased, your
defilements have gone down, you're, you're angry, right?
You're more patient, all these kind of things.
You have a more kind heart, you have more compassion for the
people around you, if that is what you find when you go on
retreat. And especially that your
meditation is more profound. And that is one of the ways to
gauge whether you really are living your life as a Buddhist
in the right way. Otherwise, how do we know?
Sometimes, yes, we do all the right things.
We do what seems to work or whatever.
But you need some way of kind of establishing this and going on a
meditation retreat is a wonderful way of doing that.
And hopefully when you do that, sometimes you will get some of
those great results right, which are part and parcel, can be part
and parcel anyway of meditation practice.
When you really feel a sense of bliss, when you feel a sense of
inner purity and happiness, and when you do that, you start to
understand the value of living the spiritual life.
You get access to certain things that ordinary people just don't
have access to it, and you start to get closer to understanding
what the real meaning of life actually is.
And the Buddha said also lay people should also have access
to that, right? It is not just for monastics.
So if you live life well, you too can go there.
And what a wonderful thing that is if that happens.
So as you can see, that is just a a summary of some of the
teachings of the Buddha gave to lay people.
It is pretty much the same as it is for monastics.
All of the things that you have I've talked about tonight is
basically the things that you can expect the Buddha to say
almost to anyone, but still the slant, the, the emphasis is
slightly different, but that is really all there is to it.
Otherwise, it is all there and everything is there for you to
enjoy, right? So practice in the right way and
you too can take part in this amazing and wonderful things
that can happen on the Buddhist path.
OK. So that is the talk for tonight.
So, OK. So are there any questions from
the from the assembly tonight? Yes.
You want to ask a question? No, yeah, just over here.
OK. Yeah, so I was just thinking
about how being compassionate to other people and being a lay
Buddhist. And then there's a lot of
friends. I have a lot of friends who are
not Buddhist or have exposure to Buddhist teachings, but I think
that they can get a lot of benefit from it.
But it's very hard to come to people like the same as how
people feel uncomfortable when they got talk about talk about
Christianity, God and so on and so forth.
And how? People are uncomfortable to you
know, you tell like you know this would be good for you.
So how? What's something?
We can do don't tell them it's good for tell them, tell them
it's fun, right? When you come to Damaloka Centre
on Friday night, it is just it's, it's a kind of a ajam.
Brahm is really good at this because it makes it very
entertaining. You want to hear some good
jokes, come to Damaloka Centre on Friday night, right?
There's a bit of spirituality perhaps, but the main point
you're going to come is just to have some good jokes and have a
good time. And I think this is one of the
things, one of the, I think most important things of a spiritual
leader is to make the dumb accessible, right?
Especially to people who haven't got that inclination, maybe
don't really understand what it's all about.
So you make it accessible to them and any kind of people.
So it's, it's about the packaging is very important.
And then as you give the right packaging, the kind of the
spiritual input is also there here, according to Adam Ram,
there was a famous Tibetan monk many years ago who said
something to the fact that the way to teach the Dumber is that
you make people laugh, right? And when the mouth is a Gabe,
you throw in the pillow wisdom. That was that was his idea of
teaching people, right? And it's quite nice.
I think there's something to that.
You know, you make sure people have a good time.
Spiritual practice should not be a torture.
It should actually be something to make you happy and feel good.
That's the whole point of this. Sometimes people think a
spiritual practice or religion is somehow kind of, you know,
it's, it's some kind of, you know, restraint on you or
something negative. You have to really kind of be,
you have to really be nice and you have to be restrained, have
to keep all these precepts and all these things.
But the reality, of course, is that if you lead the spiritual
life in the right way, it is the exact opposite of that.
It's about happiness and joy and that all the good things.
Who doesn't want that? Everybody wants that, right?
Sometimes people just don't know where to get it, and that's the
problem. OK Anyone else wants to say
anything? Yeah.
OK. Very, very contented assembly
tonight. OK, Go in there.
So we'll. We'll stay with that
contentment. That's great.
OK. Thank you all.
OK, I'll just get my glasses out because otherwise I can't see
anything at all. And I can see some blurry black
and white stuff, but that doesn't quite cut it.
So OK, this is the first question is from Joris.
Could you elaborate on solitude as a lady devotee in the Ovada
Pattimoca? It says to dwell in seclusion.
OK, I really enjoy solitude. We find it hard to integrate in
in modern Western society here. That's great if you like
enjoying solitude, that's wonderful.
The vast majority of people don't enjoy that at all.
So that's already you are already way ahead of everyone
else pretty much. So what a great thing that is
that you like solitude. So the the way to do that, of
course is to understand that you have to do your things in
ordinary life. Life is complicated.
Life has a lot of things, demands and your
responsibilities that you have to do.
So you do those and then you take the opportunity to go into
solitude whenever you get your opportunity.
That is really the way to do that.
And what you will find is that the better you are at dealing
with your ordinary life, the better you are at being kind and
compassionate to the people around you, the more you will
enjoy the solitude. It's a weird thing, right?
But the people who have a hard time dealing with people around
them who are not, don't really have that kindness and
compassion. Perhaps to ordinary people, when
they go into solitude, it doesn't really work because
their mind is the wrong place. But when your mind already has
been developed in the right way in ordinary life, that's when
solitude becomes incredibly powerful because you take that
sense of goodness that you have inside of you, you take it into
the solitude and that's when it gives good results.
So take the opportunity and, and come, you know, come and stay in
a monastery, go to retreat centre, go to these kind of
places whereby where you have the opportunity to do these kind
of things. And then, you know, maybe you
can take a year off, right? Take a year off somewhere and
then maybe go and stay in a monastery somewhere.
It's a nice monastery, which is like a forest monastery here and
just enjoy as much solitude as possible.
These things are possible. Or maybe you should ordain.
I don't know if you can ordain. That's a nice way to get heaps
of solitude as as a Buddhist monk, I can pretty much get as
much solitude as I want pretty much.
Well, except, you know, when you have to travel and teach that
kind of stuff. But if you have a lot of
solitude in the monastery, here in our monastery, we have like a
roster. If you want to go on retreat,
you just put your name on the roster, go on retreat any time
you want. That is how our monastery works.
So that's pretty, pretty cool, right, If you like solitude
here. So ordaining is not a bad idea
at all, though I can recommend that, especially if you like
solitude. OK, So good luck.
Jarisly. Next one is Ang Wei Chung from
Penang in Malaysia. How should a layperson find
security during old age, especially when one is single?
There is no offspring to look after you here.
OK, so how do you find security in in old age when when you are
single? And of course the best way to
find a security is always in just practising in the right
way, living life. Well, the real security is a
psychological security that you have inside of yourself.
That is what it's really is about, right?
So just keep on doing those Buddhist things that actually
lead that inner psychological security.
And even if the external security isn't there 100%, it's
a bit dicey, a bit uncertain, at least you have the inner wealth
of the heart and the inner wealth of the heart that is as
far more important than the outer wealth.
So, so, you know, live according to your means, live in the right
way. I mean, I can't tell you exactly
how to deal with the kind of financial security and these
kind of things, but if you live the right way spiritually, I
think you have done the vast, the most important thing in your
life. But this is really the way to
go. Of course, if you are inclined
that way, it is possible to go forth as well as a monastic.
If you are a strong Buddhist and you've been practising for a
long time and you feel that monastic life is for you, then
of course you can do that as well.
It is always a possibility here. Otherwise, it is good to be
reborn in a country where the Social Security is really
strong, right? So next, if you do all the right
things in this life, you hopefully get reborn in such a
country in your next life. So that is one way of doing it.
OK, so third question is from Sophia Antonis.
I probably don't pronounce that correctly, but from Portugal.
Then when I do something to try to be kind and generous, because
I am a shy person, I feel awkward and I feel that people
think I am being fake. Can you please advise her?
OK, so one of the, I think, important things in life is not
to worry too much about what other people think.
If you do that, you're never going to get anywhere in your
spiritual life. Yes, sometimes people may think
you are, you know, are a fool even for coming to the Buddhist
society. Like, why are you going there
for us kind of really nuts to go there.
What's the point of that? You can have a good time, you
know, somewhere else. Let's go to a restaurant or
something like that. But the point is that other
people often don't know. They don't understand.
They don't cannot see what is going inside of your mind.
They don't really understand what true happiness is to be
found. Don't worry about too much about
other people. Do what is right if you feel shy
about it and try to find the right way of doing things where
it doesn't make you feel even more shy.
Right, because you can get even more shy makes it even more
difficult. But try to find kind of nice
ways of being kind without kind of it disturbing you, your state
of mind. And if other people feel that
again, you are being fake. Again, if it happens only
occasionally, don't worry too much about it.
If it happens a lot, all the time, then there's always
different ways of doing this and different ways of being kind and
just try to find new ways. All you have to do here is
really just to investigate what you're doing, investigate your
situation, and as you investigate what you're doing,
there's always Ways and Means around these things, these
awkward things. But so try do that and
eventually you'll find a way. Kindness, generally speaking, in
my experience, always is rewarded in the end.
It is always has a powerful effect.
Sometimes people say, oh, I just get used by other people if I'm
too kind. But in my life, I always find
that if I'm kind, people respond so beautifully to that kindness.
Right. It's just has such a powerful
impact on people. Maybe occasionally people will
take it the wrong way, but I just shrugged my shoulders.
I don't really care about that. It is their problem if they take
it the wrong way. But the general result, I feel
is always very, very powerful. So don't give up, keep on
investigating it, see how you can do it in a good way, and
don't be too concerned about what other people do.
And then you will have a long, happy life as a Buddhist.
OK. That is all.
Eddie. Oh, Eddie.
OK. Yes.
Eddie is always reliable for a question.
So we get Eddie at the back there.
John Bramley, the Buddha, also mentioned that his teaching is
timeless. Timeless.
Yeah. I was just referring to the
modern movement. You know, I don't like this.
I take this out. I don't like that I take that
out. It's not necessary, isn't it?
Yeah, that's a good. I think it's a good point, the
idea that the Buddha's teaching is timeless and you don't, it's
not necessary so much to kind of look at the teaching and pick
certain aspects and throw away other aspects.
But actually to assume that those things that the Buddha
taught there is a complete package and all the aspects in
there are important and the way I usually recommend people to
do. Sometimes you might read
something which looks a bit strange, put it aside for now,
come back to it later on, then it'll make make much more sense
again in the future. But don't be don't kind of think
it's, you know, it's too easy to kind of Chuck out a few things.
The Buddhist, I don't like the idea of non self, so I just
throw that out. If you do that, you may end up
going really far astray as far as the Buddhism is concerned.
Thanks. Thank you, Eddie here.
OK, so let us pay respect to Buddha Masanga.