OK, so let us get started with a talk and we'll see what happens.
So as I mentioned at the beginning of the the meditation,
we have just finished our annual three months rainy season
retreat. Yeah, it kind of fits quite
well. It rained quite a bit.
I don't know if it rained here in Perth, but it rained in
Serpentine. I know that much.
Probably similar kind of thing. Yeah.
And it is a time in the monastery for meditation
practice and for kind of withdrawing from the usual
things that we deal with in the outside world.
That's why you haven't seen us here and you have had some
alternative speakers and variety of thing, other things happening
here. And when you go on long retreats
like that, it always leads to obviously, you know, you start
to obviously have to contemplate meditation a little bit because
that's pretty much what you do. And so you look at your
meditation and again, hopefully a deeper understanding of the
process. So what I'm going to talk about
today is the idea of letting go, what that actually means.
Yeah, how it works, How do we let go?
And it's one of those kind of tricky, one of those strange
things that people often very confused about.
How do you actually let go? Yeah, People come to you when
they come on interviews. They're on the meditation
retreat and they ask, oh, I'm trying to let go.
I can't let go. What am I supposed to do?
How do I do this? What is the trick to let go?
And you can see people are really frustrated.
They spend the whole meditation retreat trying to let go.
And they have a few times when they, you know, finally
something happens. And then they kind of they grasp
things again and they kind of have to start from scratch and
trying to let go again. And it goes on in cycles like
that. And never really finding that
kind of button that actually really, let's go fully one of
those strange conundrums. How do you let go?
People ask this question all the time as that's kind of what I
want to talk about today. Yeah.
So even though it is kind of seems tricky, Yeah.
Yeah. And even though sometimes you
can get very frustrated if you try to let go all the time,
obviously one of the answers to that is not to try to let go.
Yeah. If you get frustrated by try to
let go, an obvious answer is not to try to let go.
You're not going to get frustrated if you don't try to
let go. That's kind of kind of a start.
Good starting point, but an important point to realize is
that it is an important part of the Buddhist path.
The way the Buddha taught, he really teaches it as a path of
letting go. Yeah, it's a gradual kind of non
attachment to things. That is the whole path.
Not just the path of meditation, but all the other aspects of the
path as well. Have that kind of idea behind
them of gradually kind of allowing letting go of the grip
that you have on things in the world and things in your life.
That's kind of one way of looking at the entire Buddhist
path. You can look at it from many
different angles. You can look at it as a path of
calming down, a path of increasing happiness, a path of
compassion and loving kindness, a path of insight and
understanding, Yeah, but also a path of letting go.
And you see this in the way the Buddha describes things.
One of the beautiful things the Buddha says in the suit is, and
I'm going to check your language abilities now, see how good
Yahoo language is. The Buddha says something as
follows. It says Busagaraman and Karitva
labati samading labati chitasa E kagata.
Yeah. You agree?
Maybe it says a Pali Pali phrase.
It's a phrase that you see in the sutras in a certain places
and what it means, it means wasaga wasaga ramana means
having created a foundation through letting go.
Yeah. The foundation is letting go.
And through that foundation you gain samadhi.
You have labati samadhi. You gain samadhi through that
foundation. Labati chitasi, Kangita 1.
Pointedness of mind. So it is actually what allows
the samadhi and meditation to happen Is the process of letting
go having made a foundation through that.
Yeah. This gives you an idea of how
important it is. Madam.
The whole process of meditation is based on this idea of letting
go. It's a nice party word.
Vasanga is a party word. Yeah.
Vasanga. We have a monkey in a monastery
called Vasaga. Yeah.
You can ask him if he's living up to his name or not.
No, but don't do that. That will be very terrible.
Of course it is. At least it's trying to let go
like everyone else, I suppose. It's a nice name, Vosanga.
I like that he made a good choice.
I said, I said to him, why don't you take the whole phrase I just
mentioned before as your name? And he said, no, it's too long.
Yeah, you had to have a shorter name.
So vosanga already long enough. So vosanga is the movement of
the mind or the foundation that you build up that allows
samadhi, stillness and the deep meditations to happen here.
But it's much more than that because the very end of the
Buddhist path, you know, we're talking about the third noble
truth, which is at the end of the Buddhist path, they have
this beautiful word called Patti nisaga, which is also related to
the word vusaga. And that also means the idea of
letting go, of relinquishment, of giving up.
So the whole path to samadhi is about letting go.
And then the whole path that leads you to awakening itself to
the very end of the path, that also ultimately is about letting
go. It's just letting go upon
letting go, upon letting go. That is how important it is in
the Dhamma, this whole idea. And so for that reason it is
important to understand what we are supposed to do and how we're
supposed to do this and how it happens, especially in
meditation practice. But before I go on to kind of
discuss this more practically, I would like to kind of tell you a
few stories, one from the suitors and one from kind of a
more contemporary story. And it gives an idea of how this
idea of letting go, how it can happen in practice and what it
means, how it actually comes about.
And one of the stories is about Venerable Ananda.
Venerable Ananda, many of you will know, was the Buddha's
attendant. Yeah, for 20 years, following
around the Buddha all the time, listening to every discourse the
Buddha ever gave. He was the monk with the best
retention, memory retention. And so he was like, he heard one
suit, one disc was by the Buddha, and he retained it
basically verbatim. Yeah.
It's kind of extraordinary. I don't know how that is
possible. I'm going to test you
afterwards, see if you can remember every word I said that
during this. Like, it's very hard to imagine,
isn't it? Almost.
Maybe especially in the present day with some of the
distractions. But anyway, he was this.
He was this repository of suitors.
Yeah. You just asked him to open his
mouth, and the suitors would just pull out of him.
And it's kind of extraordinary. Yeah.
And so after the Buddha passed away, it was a very traumatic
time, obviously for the Sangha, for the monastic community and
also for the lay community. And one of the things they
realised very soon afterwards is that they needed to recite the
word of the Buddha, the suitors and the monastic code that had
been laid down for the monastics.
This had to be recited in unison.
They had to come together and do the recital to keep it alive for
future generations, otherwise it would get lost.
And not everyone had heard the same suit.
So you had to hear some suit as from animal Ananda and maybe
some of the other monks or the nuns or even sometimes the lay
people had heard different suitors.
And so they came together in this convocation called the
Council. This was soon after the Buddha
passed away. And in this council, the Pali
word is sangeeti. Sangeeta literally means to
chant together. Yeah, it's just like a communal
recitation of suitors. And in this council, they had
invited 500 Arahans, 500 fully enlightened people to recite the
suitors of the Buddha. It's that kind of cool.
Imagine 500 Arahans, 500 fully enlightened people.
Wouldn't that be awesome? Imagine the atmosphere when
there's 500 enlightened people. No one is very interested in
talking very much. Everyone is just really
peaceful. Everyone is full of compassion
and meta. Everyone is kind of has has the
highest kind of wisdom. Imagine a room, a large room,
500 people takes a large room coming together like that.
Yeah, just the sight of that is kind of extraordinary.
So. So this is what happens.
They chose this 500 people, supposedly all 500 arrows.
I don't know how they knew if they had some kind of listing
cross off here if an arrow hunt or anyone.
I'm not sure how that actually worked, but supposedly there
were 500 arrow hunts and not. Yeah.
So I some of these things a bit uncertain how they how they knew
these things. But there was one person, yeah,
who hadn't been invited and that was Vanderbilt Ananda.
And one of the reasons was because it was not yet an arrow
hunt, but they said, OK, he knows all the suit tests, so we
have to invite him even though he's not fully enlightened yet.
And so Venable Ananda was really embarrassed he got invited even
though he was not fully enlightened.
Everyone else, yeah, was fully enlightened.
He was the only one he felt, oh, oh, you know what?
What am I going to do? So he practised really, really
hard on the days before this council that we're going to
have. And he practised and practised.
I mean, he was already obviously quite highly attained.
He was a stream mentor already. His samadhi was obviously very
good, but he practised really, really hard and he didn't get
anywhere. He wasn't able to make that
breakthrough. He wanted to be the 500th around
in that assembly, but he wasn't able to make it.
And finally he gave up. And after giving up, he lies
down. And according to the suitors,
according to how this is said before his head, while his feet
was kind of still in the air, but before his head had hit the
pillow, bang, he got enlightened.
And then that council, that 500 arrowheads.
And that is very interesting because what it shows you, it
shows you something about the idea of letting go.
Yeah. He was trying and trying and
trying. And eventually, when you give
up, that is kind of when it happens.
Yeah. When finally you relax, you
realize, OK, you know, it's not going to happen this time.
OK, so let me just relax. So to be.
And then the inside comes, and then the highest kind of
understanding arises from that. And that tells you something
very important about the arising of any kind of letting go, any
kind of insight, any kind of samadhi.
It happens because you relax, because you let go, not because
you try. The trying very often comes from
the sense of self. The trying is the restless mind.
I am going to do the letting go, but you can't do the letting go.
The letting go happens by itself when the calls and conditions
are in place. You have to wait for the calls
and conditions to come into place, then the letting go
happens. That is what we have to do and
that is what I will talk about later on, how to get those calls
and conditions into place. So this is what happened with
Venerable Anand. Let's take a leaf out of his
book. Let's see if we can kind of do
something similar in our meditation so we don't get so
frustrated in the way we practice.
That was the first story, Venerable Anand.
That's actually very, I don't know, very inspiring story in
many ways. The other story is a story that
Ajam Brahm tells. It's always dangerous when you
tell the Ajam Brahm story because he usually has told
those two many, many times already.
Yeah, Yeah. Here at Amoloka Centre.
But I'm not sure when he last told this story.
This was a story from his early days in Thailand.
I don't know why all the stories are so old.
Yeah, it's only always from the kind of early days in Thailand
or early days here or early days there.
But anyway, that's kind of the way it goes.
And the story is, I'm not sure if Ajam Braham was there, but
the story, it was this novice monk.
Yeah, yeah. Novice monk looks basically
like, like Venomi, Mocha and us, except that they are novices.
Yeah. Yeah.
You can't feel it. Sometimes they're very small
because they are just kind of, they're not 20 years old yet.
They're kind of just teenagers or something here.
But sometimes they're also grown adults.
But anyway, this little novice monk, Yeah.
He was sitting there. Ajahn Shah Lumpur Shah, Ajahn
Brahm's teacher was giving a Dumber talk.
And Ajahn Shah was famous for this practice called Tordaman.
Have you had Tordaman before? What does it sound like?
Sounds like torment, right, Tordaman.
And that's exactly what it was. He was famous for the practice
of tormenting his disciples. And so very often he would give
Dhamma talks that went on. Yeah, for an hour.
And then he. Just an hour.
Not enough, right. So another hour. 2 hours.
Yeah. Actually, we can go on a bit
more. 3 hours. Yeah, and he would do this, just
carry on and on and on. And sometimes, even as Jean Bram
says, sometimes it wasn't all that interesting.
Sometimes he just did it just to really test you.
That was kind of the purpose of talking for three hours, not
actually because he had that much to say.
There's a limit to what you have to say.
If you look at the way the Buddha taught in the suitors, he
he fairly concise. Usually I didn't go, certainly
didn't go on for three hours. Sometimes very short discourses.
And so after a while, this little novice was getting really
fed up. He was getting really
exasperated and he was sitting there, When is Adhan Shah going
to stop? When is Adhan Shah going to
stop? Have you heard the story before?
When is Adhan Shah going to stop?
And it carries on like this. And suddenly after saying this
maybe for half an hour or something, because it's really
kind of hard enough, suddenly something happens in his mind.
Suddenly he thinks when am I going to stop?
And the moment he thinks when am I going to stop, then everything
shuts down. He becomes peaceful.
And then of course, everyone can sit there for as long as he
wants. He doesn't want to get up
anymore. The whole idea of Agent Shah
giving a talk that is too long is gone because he had an
insight and that insight, that understanding that if you want
to be peaceful, you cannot wait for the external conditions to
be right. You have to do something with
the internal conditions. And when the internal conditions
are right, that is when peace happens.
That is when you can sit listening to a three hour long
Dumber talk or whatever. Yeah.
So this is kind of how it it's kind of interesting.
It says something again about how to deal, how to actually let
go. Letting go is not something you
do. Letting go happens through,
first of all, not doing very often and often through insight,
through understanding. And that insight doesn't happen
because you try to have an insider.
That insight happens because you are standing back or sitting
back and observing what is going on.
And then at a certain point you understand what is really going
on. And then you let go because of
that understanding, because of that insider.
So this gives you some bare bones, yeah, on how this whole
idea of letting go happens. You don't do it.
It happens in a very different kind of way.
So to go a little bit further on this, what we have to do to be
able to understand what to how to actually effectuate this, how
to make this happen in our practice, what we have to do is
we have to understand what it is that we are letting go of.
What does it mean to let go? Yeah.
What what actually are we supposed to let go of?
And very often it is kind of hard to say.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, OK, so you, you, you
know, one of the kind of obvious things that you have to let go
of when you do your meditation is that you are thinking a lot.
Yeah. Has anyone here who has never
had any thinking in the meditation if?
If not, I would be very, very surprised, and I would have to
congratulate you on being an extraordinary meditator if that
was the case. Almost everyone has had thinking
in the meditation there. And so obviously one of the
things we have to do is to let go of that thinking.
Yeah, it's kind of one of the things that we have to do.
So how do we let go of thinking here?
This becomes an important point. Another thing that we sometimes
had to let go of, and you will realise in your meditation is
that you sometimes the breath is not really very attractive or
very nice or very smooth to watch because you have a feeling
that you are holding onto the breath too much.
And when there is a holding on, it's not really pleasant.
Do you know what I mean? Has anyone had that feeling?
Yeah. And again, it's this feeling I
need to let go. Right.
Because the holding on actually makes it not really nice.
That destroys the whole beauty of the meditation.
Because oneness, you let go, you feel, wow, this is what it
really means. You're just allowing the breath
to be. And that's when the breath
becomes incredibly delightful. Yeah.
Easy to watch, peaceful, soothing.
Yeah. Kind of cooling you down.
It's really positive experience once you have the ability to let
go and then further down the track, you need to let go of
more things. Yeah.
Gradually you allow the body to fade away.
Yeah. You allow the senses to fade
away. Yeah.
All of these things come further down the track.
Yeah. And eventually more and more
things in your experience are gradually let go of.
So how does this actually happen?
What is kind of the tricks behind this?
Yeah. How does this, this kind of
whole process happen there? So when it comes to the thinking
mind, yeah, one of the reasons why you are thinking or the main
reason why you're thinking, very often you will listen to Agent
Brahman. He will say, well, you have to
let go of all the activity, all the doing.
That's kind of part of it. But why is there so much
activity here? Why is there so much doing in
your mind? Why is there all that thinking?
And the reason is because you're interested in all of this stuff.
That's why it is there. And you may think, surely I
can't be interested in all this nonsense.
It's embarrassing, isn't it, to be interested in all that.
But actually this is the point. We are kind of interested in
those things, and that's why they come up.
And So what that means is that we have to kind of go to the
root of the problem. And the root of the problem is
that very interest. And that interest really is when
we talk about the first of the five hindrances, which is
basically sensual desire. That is an aspect usually of
sensual desire, an aspect of this interest in the world.
Our interest in the world is greater than our interest in the
spiritual path. You know, we haven't got our
kind of our bearings right. We haven't got the, you know, we
haven't really given it the right kind of priorities.
And because of our priorities are wrong, then we tend to think
about things in the world. And so that gives you an idea of
where we go wrong. Your priorities are wrong.
So how do you get your priorities right?
Well, the way to get your priorities right is to have what
is called right view in Buddhism.
Right view means that you see the world in a similar way as
the way the Buddha described the world.
And the Buddha tells you the things that are really valuable.
The Buddha tells you the things that will lead to happiness and
what will lead to suffering. And so by acquiring that right
outlook. The looking at the world in the
right way, in the way the Buddha taught about the world, then
your values start to get aligned with the Dhamma, aligned with
the way the Buddha saw things. Right view, the way the world
actually is, gives you the right kind of values.
And what are those values? What what values are valuing of
the spiritual path, valuing of kindness, valuing compassion,
valuing peace, valuing sitting on your bottom, watching your
breath. Yeah, you're valuing that.
It's kind of amazing that people value that.
But once you start to understand what it means, it's kind of you
understand why it is valuable. And so right view leads to right
values. And then when you have the right
values, your priorities fall into place because you
prioritise according to your values.
And then when you because you prioritise right, you sit down,
you close your eyes, you allow the kind of the noise, the
momentum of the city life, of the family life, of the work
life, you allow that momentum to run it's course a little bit.
This takes a bit of patience in the beginning, and then when
it's run its course because you have the right values, the right
priorities, the mind. Like a dutiful dog.
Yeah. Or whatever.
I'm not sure if the mind is like a dog, or maybe it is.
It'll be like a dog. Yeah.
It goes to the breath or it goes to the loving kindness
meditation where it goes wherever you want it to go
because the mind knows what is important.
Right view is a fundamental part to making this process work,
Understanding the world in the way the Buddha understood the
world. And what does the Buddha say
about the world? The Buddha says about the world.
When I said talking about the world, I mean like the world
outside, not the inner world. The inner world is what we're
trying to develop on the spiritual part, but the outer
world outsider, and that world is out of control.
That world is unreliable. That world is impermanent.
And if you rely too much on that world outside, you're going to
end up very disappointed. Yeah.
It's not really going to work your way.
And so seeing things in that way allows you to withdraw from that
and go within instead and knowing what it is, where you
should be placing your attention.
This is what I mean by right values.
So contemplating these things, yeah, is what this is about.
And so one of the critical things that you start to realise
when you start to understand this idea of letting go is that
it is a very kind of long term process.
An idea such as right view, looking at the world in the
right way is something that matures over time.
It takes a long time for these things really to penetrate
because we are used to thinking about the world in a very
different way. And so gradually, gradually the
mind turns around. Our habits are very powerful and
being able to turn around those habits is what is so difficult.
It's like a freight train, right?
Or actually, I like the idea of a super tanker.
I use assembly all the time, probably too much.
But the idea of the Super tanker is the idea that the Super
tanker is enormous. Ships laden with oil or whatever
when they go 20 knots at full speed, it takes a long, long,
long time to turn that super tanker around kilometres, yeah,
20 kilometres or whatever before it turns around.
And our mines are like, are like those super tankers.
They're full of habits, full of momentum from the past.
It takes a long time to turn the mind around.
And so we need to develop this over time, the right view, the
right understanding, gaining the right values.
And as you do that, you will start to see that your mind
actually is easier. It is more naturally goes to the
right place when you sit down to become peaceful, when you sit
down to do your meditation. Yeah, the momentum now is
different. You have a different outlook, a
different way of doing things. So this is one of the things
that allows you to let go because you now understand the
world in a different way. You understand things in a
different way. You no longer hold on so much.
You don't cling to all of these things.
You don't grasp so many things in the world because you
understand their uncertainty, their unreliability.
Yeah. And even with the breath, yeah,
even when the breath is there, you don't grasp the breath so
much because that breath too is part of that world outside part
of the kind of five sense world outsider.
So the problem is all of this grasping the whole thing on
yeah, grasping the grasp, grasping the the various kind of
things and letting go of the grasping is what we are trying
to do. And that happens to his long
term development. But there are many other ways in
which we can actually avoid this grasping.
Yeah. Because as I mentioned just
before, the idea, the reason why can't, why we do all of this
grasping. Yeah.
The reason why we hold onto the breath or we hold onto the
thinking mind is because of the desires that lie behind that.
And those desires are ultimately rooted in our sense of self.
Yeah. I want these things.
These are my things. This is my world.
This belongs to me. Yeah.
This is all of these things. The me, the I is kind of one of
the things that lies behind all of this.
Yeah. It's one of the root causes of
the problems that we have. And so what's 1 of the ways of
helping to let go is to let go a little bit of the sense of self.
And I will tell you a very nice way of reducing the sense of
self. And one of the kind of beautiful
ways of giving rise, of eliminating part of the sense of
self, which may not be very obvious, is the idea of
generosity, of giving. Yeah.
One of those kind of
extraordinary things that I always like to talk about in the
suitors. And this is the the, the word
that I mentioned before. Wasaga.
Yeah. We have this monk in the
monastery called Wasaga, which means giving up.
This is also a word for generosity.
Yeah, You have the same kind of word, the idea of giving up,
letting go and generosity is the same thing.
You can see why that obviously is the case, because to be able
to be generous, well, you have to give up.
You have to let go. If you don't let go, you can't
be generous. Give it to you.
No, no. OK.
Not sure. Yeah.
Yeah, actually, you have to let go, otherwise it doesn't work.
Yeah. And so letting go begins very
often with the idea of generosity.
I think this is one of the reasons why the Buddha makes so
much of it, and why he often plays at the beginning of what
he calls the Anupuma Qatar. The gradual talk starts off with
generosity. And because the leaning of the
mind when you are generous is the same leaning as when you're
giving something up, when you're letting something go.
Yeah, the it's the elimination of the sense of self in a way.
When you give up, the sense of self is no longer holding onto
that thing. You have to let go of that sense
of self at that particular point.
And that is exactly the same thing that you have to do in
meditation. You have to let go of those
things that you hold onto in the same way the sense of self has
to let go of it's grip a little bit.
And so generosity, this idea of giving up, is one of these
beautiful ways of actually understanding what letting go
also means in meditation practice.
So be generous. Be a generous person, not only
to Buddhist causes. Be generous in your daily life,
to all the people that you meet. Say some kind words.
Do an act of generosity, simple act of generosity.
Often it is not about something big.
It's about the small things that you do again and again and again
that are really important. Yeah.
And the more you develop that, the more you are inclining the
mind towards letting go. And you'll be surprised at the
effects a simple thing like that has in meditation if you
practice it systematically. Yeah.
Letting go through generosity. Yeah.
Bosunga. Yeah.
This beautiful word. So this is one of the ways,
yeah, of understanding how letting go happens.
Another way that is very important for to help you to let
go is the idea of kindness. And one of the reasons why
kindness or morality on the path is so important is because it
gives you a kind of inner stability, an inner platform, an
inner foundation, an inner source that you can lean on.
Yeah, when you have to let go and that sense of feeling good
about yourself and feeling positive about yourself means
that there is something there that you can grasp onto, a
spiritual thing you can grasp onto, that then stops you from
having to grasp so much to the world outside.
Yeah. So this is one of the reasons
why morality is so important on the Buddhist path, because it
gives you a kind of platform, somewhere to stand, something
you can actually use when the letting go is supposed to happen
there. So again, very important part of
this. Another very important part is
this idea I just mentioned before, the idea of right view.
Yeah, because if you have right view, you understand that
certain things are not worthy of being held onto and that
understanding that they're not worthy of being held onto, The
more you understand that, the easier it is to let go.
This is why someone who is fully enlightened or awakened, while
they can get into deep meditation very easily.
Yeah, they get into meditation like that because they know
exactly where happiness is to be found and where suffering is to
be found. They understand that and that
this is all suffering. Why am I holding on to
suffering? Yeah.
If you put your hand wrongly on the hot plate, do you have to
think for a long time whether you should remove it or not?
No. Because if you think too much,
it's going to be too late. Yeah.
So bang, you take it away straight away.
So you understand the hot plates of life.
There are lots of hot plates. So remove your mind for those
blooming hot plates. And then there's a chance, yeah,
that your meditation will deepen.
This is understanding. And the mind withdraws
automatically from the pains of life, from the problems of life.
Yeah. This is an understanding of the
Dhamma. Understanding what?
The what I was talking about and there is the counterpoint to
that. And the counterpoint to that is
to understand the, the delight of the beautiful states that
come beyond the when after you let go.
And very often that depends on the kind of experiences that you
had in the past where you have let go of something and you know
how wonderful it is when you really let go.
And sometimes that can happen maybe just in daily life.
Yeah, in daily life, suddenly you feel that you let go and you
feel like you're kind of flowing through life.
You know, they have this kind of idea of flow in psychology these
days. And sometimes you can kind of
feel that in your own life, how you're kind of certainly start
to flow through things. That is an aspect of letting go.
And you want to bring that kind of flow also into your
meditation experience. And so this is also very helpful
because you know there's something out there that is far
superior to what you normally have.
And you allow that to be the character that kind of draws you
or to kind of moves you on and then allows the letting go to
happen as a consequence. So all of these things, yeah,
are supporting factors. All of these things have to be
developed over long period of time.
And as you develop the path, as all of these factor factors
mature, letting go happens. In your meditation, you don't do
it anymore. You stop doing it because you
don't know when these factors are going to be mature enough.
You don't know when they are ready to ripen and letting go.
There's a beautiful simile in the suit as about an axe handle.
You know someone who has used an axe for a very, very long time.
Let's say you are a kind of a one of the old fashioned timber
men or timber, I don't know if they're timber women, but timber
whatever it is. And you have an axe and you use
an axe for a long time. And after many years or decades
of using that axe, you can see the fingerprints on the handle,
on the axe handle because it has worn away.
And we look at that axe handle, you don't know how much was worn
away yesterday or the day before, but you know that now it
has worn away to this extent. It's the same thing with your
meditation. You don't know when the letting
go is going to happen, but you know, if you keep on practising
the full noble 8, full path in this way, then one day it is
going to happen, but you don't know when.
And so it means you stop trying. You stop trying sitting in
meditation and saying to yourself, let go, let go.
No, that's pointless because you don't know when it's going to
happen. And you know that, that trying
to let go with the gritted, you know, with clenching your fists
and gritting your teeth, that's going to make it worse.
That's the last thing you wanted.
That's not how you get letting go.
That's actually really holding on, right?
If you kind of clench your fists, whatever, the last thing
you want to do is clenching your fists and gritting your teeth
and pressing the tongue against the roof of the mouth.
These are all kind of similes taken from the suitors.
So that's not what you want to do.
Instead, you understand, patience is the way to patience
is the right way. That is the way to go.
And then when letting go is ready, when all these factors
come together, it will happen by itself.
So you stop stressing out in meditation, you sit back, you
learn to wait, you learn to be patient.
And then one day when the letting go happens, you think,
wow, that is how it works. And then when you know how it
works, what do you do then? Well, ideally what you do then
is you carry on doing that, but that's that's what happens.
And then you kind of grasp again, right?
Because now I've seen how it works and you grasp that and
you're back to square 1 again. You know what I mean?
That's how it works, right? That's the reality of things.
We think that now we understand, actually, we don't understand.
Then we have to kind of learn the process over again.
But ideally, we learn from that and then we kind of learn to let
go in the right kind of way. And so you wear this.
So this is how letting go happens.
Is there anything that we can actually do in our meditation?
And the answer is yes, there are things we can do in our
meditation. And what we can do is to kind of
set up the causes for letting go to happen.
Yeah, not trying to let go all the way throughout the
meditation, but setting up the causes at the beginning of
meditation very often there. So when you start out your
meditation, you set up your mind in a positive way.
You try to have a positive outlook.
Yeah, Yeah. You kind of feel the good vibes
in a place like this. You have a positive attitude to
things. Maybe you remind yourself that
you're here to practice a spiritual path.
That is what really matters. I'm not here to think about the
world and my job or whatever it is.
Whatever silly things that people think about, that's not
why, because it's not really important.
Remind yourself what is really valuable.
Remind yourself of what your priorities really are.
You can do that at the beginning of the meditation and then allow
the process to happen. But don't try because that
trying is not going to work. And if you are able just to sit
back and allow the process to happen, sometimes what happens
is that you gain little insights on the way here because you see
yourself moving in the wrong direction.
You see yourself doing the wrong kind of thing, yeah.
And then you actually letting go will happen as a consequence of
that instead. So this is kind of how letting
go happens. And then if you follow this
process, something very beautiful happens in your life.
Yeah, meditation becomes more pleasant because it's not trying
so hard anymore. And because meditation becoming
more pleasant, you become encouraged to practice this path
more as a consequence of that, because you practice the path
more, because you put into place all the foundations that are
required, Gradually, gradually, gradually, your meditation
improves. You let go of more and more and
more. And as you let go of more and
more and more, you find more and more happiness in your life.
You understand what a pain it is to hold on to things in the
world. It is really problematic.
It doesn't lead to anything good.
And so you let go and you let go and you let go.
And the final letting go, the ultimate letting go, is like
when Venable Ananda lies there, puts down his head on the
pillow, just like this young woman over here.
Yeah. Like, put in your head.
Are you enlightened already or just put your head down on the
pillow? Yeah.
And then one day, that final letting go happens.
And that is then the final awakening that comes as a
consequence of that. So that is my talk for this
evening on the idea of letting go.
And then as a consequence, hopefully enjoying your
meditation more and allowing the meditation to be letting be
rather than letting go. Yeah, as I mentioned earlier on
during the meditation at the beginning, letting be is this
beautiful idea, allowing things to be, allowing things to unfold
and then letting go suddenly happens as a consequence of
that. OK, so there you are, so good.
So if you have any, excellent. So if you have anyone has any
questions or comments, now you have the opportunity here.
I just wanted to make sure that I'm on the right path with
understanding it. But it sounds like we are
outlining is the distinction between basically a category of
action and non action. Because I'll use an example from
my life as a university student, but passing a test or an exam
doesn't really track to a distinct action that I can I can
take in the world. It's really just a set of
prerequisites that seems to be achieved.
And I just wanted to make sure that I'm understanding kind of
the letting go is a a similar kind of non action.
Yeah. So, so like when you take an
exam, you the reason why you do well in the exam is because of
what you have prepared before and exactly not because of what
you do so much on the exam. It's almost like automatic allow
your pen to flow according to what you've learned before.
And in a sense that is very similar to meditation practice,
allow the process to flow depending grounded on all the
things that we have done, you know, for years, ideally
building up all of these qualities that are there.
So similar kind of thing. Yeah.
Just as a follow up to that, when you highlight people, and
I've seen this in other people, there's this craving for this
non action. I'm wondering if other states as
well, such as like gratitude or something like that is also a
non action as well as people sometimes talk about feeling
gratitude, but is it the case that we can actually do that as
an action? Or is that actually just us
giving the space and the orienting ourselves towards that
as an expression rather than a discrete action?
Yeah. I mean the there is some action
all of this, there's some, but it's knowing where to put the
action and where to put the non action.
That's kind of the critical thing here.
So you don't really generate gratitude through a direct act.
The gratitude is generated through some prior idea.
The gratitude is generated because you understand, well,
someone did something wonderful and beautiful.
Yeah. And you remember that that gives
rise to the gratitude. So it's important to understand
what is the cause and what is the effect.
If you try to create the effect out of nothing, that's when you
have a problem. Some people try to create
happiness, but happiness should come from the right kind of
cause. The right kind of cause is
because you feel good about yourself, because you're living
well, because you feel you get gratitude, because you remember
something. Wow.
Ajam Braham gave all, has given one.
Talk to me every Wednesday in the monastery for the 30 years
I've been there. Wow.
Ajam Braham is just amazing. Yeah.
Whoa.
And does it do it? He does that for all of us.
Yeah. Just to help us.
Just to assist us. He doesn't get anything out of
except for hassle. He doesn't really want to give
those blooming talks, but it still gives them.
Yeah. Wow.
Azharan, he's kind of the big hero.
And then you feel kind of gratitude because you look at it
in the right way. There's knowing where to place
the action and then the result comes.
And so most of the action for letting go to happen happens
actually outside of meditation. That's where the action really
happens. It is how we live our life.
It is so important to integrate our entire life into the
spiritual path or the spiritual path into our lives, because
without that, it's just not going to work.
This show is how important it is.
And then spending a little bit of time at the very start of the
meditation to kind of Orient your mind in the right way, and
then things came to flow as a consequence.
Thank you very much. Yeah.
Please. Yeah, as you remember.
So I was wondering in the Vita, because Santa Nasuta, they say
like four or five way of letting off different thoughts, but
aren't we doing something when we are doing those things?
Yes. So, but the idea there again is
if you have done a lot of practice beforehand, it's much
easier to apply those methods. Yeah.
So the method first method there is like kind of turning it is
like putting your mind on a different kind of thought,
right. So if you're thinking something
negative, you put your mind on something positive.
But that is only possible if you have practised a lot of positive
thinking beforehand. Otherwise, it doesn't work.
If you like, you know, you have some person who maybe you find a
bit difficult. Yeah, or I wouldn't like this
very well. Difficult.
I have to deal with them and they come in, they invade your
mind. That's kind of what people do
sometimes. They invade your private space
inside, go away. The only way you're going to be
able to deal with that person is if you have learnt to have
compassion for them or you have learnt to see the good science
in them. All of that is developed outside
of meditation. You can't develop that in the
meditation. You can, but that's that's not
really what meditation is about. You develop that outside and
then because you have like all of these perceptions ready in
your mind, developed beforehand, you can kind of substitute.
Yeah, actually, let me not look at the negative things.
They don't know what they're doing anyway.
They are trapped in with this stupid conditioning.
I should have compassion for these people.
Yeah, for goodness sake. You know, they don't really,
really want to be like that, but they that's the way they are.
And so you shift over because you have done all that
beforehand. It's a very simple thing that
you're doing in your meditation. And with a blink of an eye, you
can go from having a negative mind to having a positive mind
if you do that in the right way. That is the first one.
The second one is where you see the thought.
This is the Vitaka Santana suta #20, the calming of thoughts.
Suta suta #20 in the middle length saying so the Buddha if
those who wants to look it up. Second one is where you think of
these negative thoughts as something terrible.
Yeah. It's like having a carcass of a
dog hung around your neck. Yeah, the suit has a very
graphic. Yeah, this is kind of one of the
nice things about this. I give a very graphic
description. Carcass of a dog, carcass of a
snake or a carcass of a human being.
You decide what is worse. But so.
Yeah. And so again, the ability to
understand why a thought of anger is like having a carcass
of a snake hang around your neck.
To really get that, you have to have contemplated that
beforehand. You have to know why anger is
really problematic, why you don't want to go there.
And if you just remind yourself and very quickly it will stop
because you know how it destroys the beauty of your mind?
Yeah. The mind is very beautiful when
it's developed in the right way. The mind is compared to gold in
the suitors. Yeah, it's shining, it's bright.
If you Polish it, it becomes even more beautiful.
There's something very, very attractive about the mind when
it is developed in the right way.
Yeah, gold is the most beautiful kind of worldly thing.
The mind is the most wonderful thing in the spiritual path when
you develop in the right way. And then you come to these other
factors where you learn to, you have Amanesika, asati,
Amanesika. You don't pay attention to the
thought, right? That is kind of very simple.
Instead of looking at the thought, which is disturbing
you, you just go back to your stay with the breath and you
allow that thought just to be in the background and it
disappears. Yeah.
So there's not much. You don't do very much there at
all. All you do is kind of just allow
it to disappear in the background and then you have the
idea of calming down the thought.
And the last one is you use willpower to get rid of it.
But all of those are, they are not necessarily a lot of
activity if you know how to use them in the right way here.
And all of them pretty much rely on the things that we have done
outside of meditation before you can really do them properly
here. Yeah.
You want to use the minimum amount of work in those Vitaka
Santana. If it happens in your ordinary
life, you can use a little bit more work to get rid of them.
But in meditation, you don't want to do a lot of stuff
because it just damages, stops your meditation.
So you just want to basically observe and allow it to fade
away. Very often that's the best
method in meditation. Yeah.
OK, a little bit of ill will comes up.
OK. You just kind of allow it to
fade away by just going gently back on the breath or something
like that. Happy with that.
Thanks so much. If you want the long version of
that answer, you have to come to one of my retreats.
Yeah, that's where they get the long version.
It goes for at least an hour, so.
Yeah. OK.
Yeah. OK, great.
Thank you. Anyone else here?
Everyone else here is happy. OK, good.
So let's have a look from overseas.
So we have a question from Germany.
From Wolfram. From Germany.
How can you trust a monk again? You see that even the old holy
monks in Thailand were caught living in luxury for years.
They used the money people gave to the temple.
How can you trust a monk? Well, The thing is that how can
you trust anyone? Yeah.
And the truth is that monks are human beings.
And so just like with other human beings, there are some you
can trust and some you can't trust.
The same thing with the monks. There are some you can trust and
some you can't trust. I guess the question for you now
is if you can trust me here. Because if you can't trust me,
you can't trust what I'm saying now.
And then you have a problem. Yeah.
So presumably you trust me, otherwise you wouldn't ask this
question. So you.
So there you are. You're already trusting 1 monk
already. I just proved to you that you
trust me, otherwise you wouldn't ask this question.
So, so you have to just have your eyes open.
Yeah, you have to look, you have to know, and you have to be
discerning. And some sometimes you trust,
sometimes you don't because the world is complicated and the
world is difficult. And, and sometimes what you have
to do is you have to hang out with these monks or with these
lay people over a long period of time.
Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I
have stayed with Ajambram for 30 years.
I have tremendous trust in Ajambram.
You may not have that trust in Ajambram because you haven't
seen him. I have seen him for 30 years.
I've seen the integrity. I've seen the continuation of,
you know, of remarkable actions and remarkable spiritual
qualities over long periods of time.
And that's really, really powerful when you see that.
So be discerning. Yeah.
Look, over long period of time. Yeah.
And as you do that, gradually you start to get the feeling for
who you can trust and who you isn't.
Maybe not so trustworthy. Yeah.
That's kind of the answer to that question.
So don't kind of, you know, sometimes people are so black
and white, it's either good or it's bad.
Yeah. They're either against us or
they're for us. But the world isn't black and
white. The world is in Shades of Grey.
Yeah, And these days everything seems to be black and white.
I think the Internet is kind of making the world black and
white. But the Internet is wrong.
Yeah, The world is not black and white.
Don't trust the Internet. Yeah, Internet is dodgy.
OK, question from Bolivia. Viria comes from Viro or hero,
meaning that the Buddha is a hero, which brings us tears of
joy. But shouldn't those tear be born
from Sunder and not from Viria? I'm confusing those.
So when you think of the Buddha as a hero, that's not Virya,
that's Sada. Yeah.
Because you are thinking of the Buddha as the hero.
And yeah, the Buddha is a hero. The Buddha is kind of the
greatest hero in human history. Yeah.
The Buddha is like this amazing, extraordinary person who is able
to see through the deepest kind of delusion in the human mind.
Yeah. That's kind of, like, absolutely
astonishing. Yeah.
And you know, to me the Buddha just stands head and shoulder
above everyone else in human history.
And we still have those suitors that have the word of the Buddha
in the present day. So it is incredibly, incredibly
precious because of that. And that is faith.
That is Sadda, because you see the Buddha in that way.
But what is interesting when you have that kind of faith, yeah,
that faith, first of all, is confidence, because you feel
confident after a while that the Buddha really knew what it was
talking about. But it's also faith in the sense
that it is emotional. Yeah.
Faith is emotionally supposed to bring out emotions.
That is when it's powerful. That's when you have, as you
say, tears of joy. Yeah, because those emotions, I
would allow the meditation to work.
And that is the Sundar of Buddhism, this mixture of
confidence and faith, the emotion of the emotions that
come from faith. But then when you have that
faith, the next what that leads to, and this is kind of where
what you're saying here, because interesting, what that leads to
is energy. Why?
Because when you have faith, when you have joy, yeah, the
energy comes with that joy is always energetic.
Joy is always mindful. So the joy, the pamuja, the
sati, the mindfulness and the energy are kind of three aspects
that kind of come arise together in the mind.
Yeah, these are things that kind of tend to work together in a
sense. And so in that way, you are
right. Yeah, the faith and the Virya
are closely connected to each other in that particular way.
So contemplate the Buddha by all means and see him as a for the
hero. He was this extraordinary person
who kind of went his own way and found the answer to the deepest
realities of life. It's a very lonely journey
because you are the only person who does that.
You have to reject all existing ideas in society.
You can't listen to anyone else. You are completely on your own.
Yeah, this is kind of why it is so hard.
This is why you have. It's kind of heroic.
Yeah. Because you are on your own, you
know, it starts with the Buddha kind of just walking off into
the forest and saying, OK, I'm going to find the solution to
the meaning of life. I'm going to find the end of
death. Yeah, this is kind of what it
kind of his his idea. And then he walks off to find
the end of death, the solution to the problem of dying.
And then he finds that through this very kind of, you know,
first of all, using the existing teachers, but eventually doing
it all on his own as kind of really extraordinary.
Yeah. And in this way, yes, you can
get faith in the in the Buddha. OK.
Last one, Eddie from Indonesia, I believe, Dear Arjan, you ever
mentioned about it, if mindfulness is strong, the
meditation takes off. Kindly elaborate more on that.
And how do we build strong mindfulness despite external
factor problem? Yes, external factor problem.
That's a very good point. That's a very that's a very big
problem. And so you have to build that
strength of mindfulness really comes from the other factors of
the path. Yeah.
And building those up in the right way.
Mindfulness comes because basically you feel good about
yourself. You want to be present, you want
to be here. If you feel happy about yourself
because you're living a good life, your mind will tend to be
present. There's no reason for you to
kind of want to flee the present moment, to be somewhere else,
because here is nice, here is good, here is positive.
The virtue of the morality builds up the sense of being
present. And of course, right viewer,
right view that being present is valuable.
Right view that being present is is delightful.
Yeah. If you want to be alive, you've
got to be present, otherwise you're not really alive.
If you want to be able to react appropriately to what is
happening now, you have to be mindful.
But you can't even react properly, appropriately react to
some kind of muddled thing that is going on.
Partly what's going on in your mind, partly what is happening
here. And so there's really this
integration of the noble earthful path.
And sometimes you will be confused.
Sometimes your life, because it is busy and because you're doing
all kind of things, will mean that your mind is muddled.
And that is to be expected. There is a nice suit.
There's the the Buddha's cousin called Mahanama.
You know the famous story about Mahanama and Aruda?
They were brothers. Yeah, They were the two
brothers. And this is the one of my kind
of really kind of cute little stories from the from the vigner
Pitta camp. And I told the story here
before, but such a nicely. So I'll tell it again just for
the just for those of you who are kind of sitting here and if
you want to leave it, I want to hear it.
You're very welcome to do so. But they were the cousins of the
Buddha. The Buddha just got enlightened
and it comes back to his home country.
Yeah. And everyone is really inspired
by the Buddha. Wow.
Our kinsmen, our family, our relative become, you know, wow,
this amazing teacher. We should all have at least one
child in every family should go forth and become a monk, as it
was before there was nuns. Yeah.
So every, every family should have at least one monk.
In those days, they had large families, so they could kind of
spare one son, right, to become a monk.
It's difficult, but they could do it.
And so so all the families, they kind of sent one young man to
become a monk. But then there was a family of
Anuruddha and Mahanama. Yeah.
And Anarudda and Mahanama, they kind of say meeting up.
And Mahanama says to Anarudda, well, all the other families are
sending one young man to become a monk.
We should do the same. Either you and Anarudda should
become a monk or I should become a monk.
Yeah. And then Anarudda says, well, I
have been kind of treated so nicely.
I've been brought up in. So such a kind of a bit, all the
kind of comforts of the world. There's no way I can be a monk.
I can't, couldn't stand it for a single day.
It's too tough. You become a monk.
That's what Andruda says. Yeah.
Really kind of slack. What kind of person is that?
Yeah. That's what you start to think.
Yeah. And then Mahanama says and Ray
says, well, if that is the case, that I should become a monk.
Yeah. Well, you have to take over the
household. What?
I don't mean household. I don't know anything about
household. All I know is about eating and
enjoying myself. Yeah.
What? You're talking about taking over
the house? Well, you have to take over all
the work in the fields. Yeah.
So at the beginning of the season, you have to plow the
fields. Yeah.
And then you have to kind of the plow them and removing all the
stocks and the stumps or whatever.
You have to make the furrows. After making the furrows, you
have to put in the seeds. After putting in the seeds, you
have to irrigate it with water. After irrigating it, you have to
drain the field. After draining the field, you
have to weed the field. And then when the crops come up,
you have to reap the crops. And then you have to kind of
thrash it and get all the junk out and kind of get the seeds.
I'm not sure what you call. And the junkyard is not a
technical term, but you know what I mean.
Yeah. So getting all the the rubbish
out the straws and the kind of husk or whatever, and then you
have to put it all in silos. And Anirudhar says, wow, that's
a lot of work. Yeah.
And then when everything is finally in the silos, yeah.
And in stores, then you are ready for the next harvest, the
next season. Yeah.
And then Andrew said, what do you mean ready for the next
season? When does the work stop?
And when I said the work never stops, Yeah.
Our fathers and our grandfathers, they died right
there while they were working in the fields.
And then Anna said, well, in that case, I will go forth.
You stay in the home life there. This is Anna Rudda.
It was a real kind of scallywag. Yeah, really dodgy.
And then it turned out to become a really, really good monk.
Of course, you can see even the kind of really bad material can
turn out really, really, really, really well, which is kind of
extraordinary. Yeah.
So this is so this is the the story of the of, of all these
people going forth. And so I'm not sure where I was
going with all of this and how it relates to the kind of the
mindfulness, the mindfulness here.
But anyway, so that was that, that is, yeah.
So forget about all of that. And coming back to the idea,
mindfulness. Mindfulness basically comes
about, yeah, through the practice of all the factors of
the noble at full path. Yeah, in in this particular way
here. And as you do that, as you build
it up, as you understand the danger of all the definements of
the mind through the daily life. Yes, and as I was saying that,
you know, you lose that mindfulness, you can expect that
just like Mahanama and Anuruda. Mahanama, even though he stayed
behind, because Anuruda finally decide to become a monk, even
though he stayed behind, he became a very powerful disciple
there. And according to the suitors, he
became a stream entry as a layperson.
So it is possible even as a layperson, to enter very deep
meditations and see the Dhamma. But then he goes to the Buddha
and he says to the Buddha, well, sometimes when I go into Kapila
Vatu, Kapila Vatu was the capital city of the second clan.
Sometimes when I go into Kapila Vatu, I feel confused because
there's so much noise and things going on.
You know, all the elephants and the horses and the Chariots kind
of running around and people, drums and trumpets.
And I don't know what is happening in Kapila Vatu.
I feel really confused. Yeah, and then the Buddha says
don't worry. Yeah, don't be concerned.
Yeah, because you have enough insight, enough understanding
that your death is going to be a good one.
In the same way, don't be too concerned if your mindfulness
sometimes go low. Don't be concerned if in daily
life it is really hard to keep your mindfulness in knowing
exactly what you're doing. You do your best.
Sometimes you will be confused, sometimes you lose maybe your
sense of direction. Sometimes you forget what is up
and what is down. Yeah, what is back and what is
forth and then but it comes back again.
It returns to you because you are on the path and you're
living in the right way. And so just make the most out of
this. Occasionally go on a meditation
retreat and do something nice like that.
And then see how your mindfulness is going.
And if it kind of turns into samadhi and it turns into good
meditation on the retreat. All right.
OK Anything else anyone wants to say here?
Anyone else is happy? Are you sure you're happy here?
Yeah. OK.
Happy enough. OK.
Very good. OK.
Yes, please. Yeah.
I heard in Singapore, Malaysia you said starting near death
experience club. Remember is it possible to do
here near death experience club? I heard you said.
OK, Yeah. Yeah.
That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah.
I, I suggest that because I think that a lot of people have
lots of stories and sometimes they are afraid of telling their
stories because they're afraid that people will laugh at them
and think they're crazy or whatever.
But this is a Buddhist community.
Yeah. And people are actually open to
the idea of near death experiences.
And so sometimes it is a good idea.
Yeah. To kind of have that kind of
group coming together and talking and telling some stories
and that that kind of thing. Yeah.
So I think it is possible. You just need someone to kind of
get it together, I suppose. And what was that?
So let's consider it and see and see what to see what happens.
Yeah. But I think it would be really,
really interesting to hear what people have to say because I'm
sure there's some very interesting stories going
available in this in our society.
So, yeah, all right. So.
OK, great. Oops.
Sorry. I apologise.
I didn't try to destroy it. I just, it just fell off.
OK, everyone. So let's display respect to the
Buddha Damasanga.