Okay, everyone. So, we're going to talk about
meditation first of all, and before we talk about anything
else, did anyone have any happiness in meditation?
Anyone enjoy meditation? Was the meditation terrible?
Was it kind of fair to middling? Or was it, what was it?
Any comments on the meditation before we go on to the talk?
No? Nothing?
Yeah, uncertain? That looks like the doubtful
look over there. Everyone okay?
Okay, good. So, you are more than welcome to
ask questions about this thing, because sometimes it's nice to
be able to talk about issues, whatever it is.
But of course, sometimes it's hard even to formulate questions
sometimes. My mind was just, I don't know,
I just don't know what to say. That's perfectly okay.
Anyway, so the idea, one of the most important things in that
meditation is to talk about it for one minute maybe before we
go on, is that it's supposed to be pleasant.
It's supposed to be something nice, something that enhances
your life rather than detracts from the quality of life.
And for this reason it's important that we do it in a way
which actually does enhance life quality.
Very often it's kind of interesting, because one of the
very first teachings, and I really like to tell this to
people who do meditation practice, one of the very first
teachings of the Buddha was the teaching of the middle way.
Has anyone not heard about the teaching of the middle way?
Anyone? You're very new?
Okay, so you haven't heard about the middle way?
That's good, usually in any crowd, the first teaching here
usually is the middle way, because this was actually the
first teaching of the Buddha. And according to the Buddha,
what he starts out saying is that if you're going to have
success in your spiritual practice, you have to find the
middle way between sensual indulgence on the one hand and
torturing the body on the other hand.
And what do the vast majority of Buddhist do?
They go to the meditation center and they start torturing the
body. It's the first thing they do,
even though the first teaching of the Buddha was, please don't
torture the body. This is how we forget things,
even something that is very obvious and very simple.
We often forget these things because we haven't really
understood how to apply them. You hear the middle way and it
sounds good, but how do you actually apply it?
And you forget that you actually aren't supposed to apply it to
your meditation practice. And while we're sitting here,
very often you can't really indulge very much in sensuality.
The problem usually is one, of having too much pain, having too
much torture in the body. That's really the biggest
problem for many people in meditation practice.
But the point about meditation, and the reason why it is so
powerful, is that over time it goes deeper and deeper and
deeper. Over time it has the potential
to really transform your life radically from the way you
normally used to live. And to enable yourself to
actually realize that potential, the only way you're able to do
that is to enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, you're
not going to last very long as a Buddhist, not going to last very
long as a meditator. Before you know it, you will be
out of here. So I'm very glad nobody left the
room in the middle of the meditation.
That happens sometimes. They're gone.
You know that they're really struggling during the
meditation. It happened yesterday actually.
Just after meditation, one person left.
I was a bit bad. I'm a failure as a teacher.
No, I don't usually think that. Anyway, the topic for tonight's
talk is finding true freedom or something like that.
One of the fundamental things about the Buddhist outlook is
that it's quite different from the normal outlook that the vast
majority of people have in the world.
The place that most people try to find freedom is not the place
where Buddhists try to find freedom.
That is actually almost diametrically opposed, where
most people try to find it. If you are really on the
Buddhist path, where you try to find it.
The vast majority try to find it in worldly things.
You want to enjoy worldly things.
You want to make sure that you can do whatever you want in
life. You want to pursue all these
things, entertainments and relationships and all these
kinds of things. That is one way very often
freedom is defined in the world. On top of that, you have things
like ideas like political freedoms or freedom of thought
and these kinds of things as well.
Usually it's about external things, external phenomena, how
we relate to the world. That is where freedom is
usually, the idea of freedom for most people actually lies.
But in Buddhism it's actually very different from that.
According to Buddhism, real freedom can never be found by
just pursuing external things. Having been able to enjoy this,
being able to enjoy that, after a while it is all quite empty.
After a while it doesn't really give any real satisfaction.
After a while you realize you are running after something
continuously, again and again and again, never actually
finding any real satisfaction. You look inside of yourself and
you know that what you really want is some real satisfaction,
you want some real contentment. Something inside of you tells
you that if you keep on running after things you will get it, it
never happens. Eventually the penny drops.
Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.
It's so obvious I think when you think about it properly.
It's not very hard to see that actually if you want real
contentment, real happiness, instead of pursuing it outside
of yourself, you have to look inside.
It is a mental problem, it is not an external problem, it is a
psychological thing that has to do with our internal state of
mind. That is where the problem is.
It doesn't tell you, you don't have to have that much
introspection to realize that actually is the case.
One of the things that has always struck me is why is it
that so many people actually search for happiness in the
wrong place, in external things, a world that cannot control
phenomena, that can never really make their own in a real deep
sense. Why is it that even though it is
fairly obvious that these things are unreliable, impermanent, not
subject to the controller, why is it that so many people still
search for happiness in that way?
I think one of the problems is that people are not aware of the
potential for the development of the mind and changing your
mental attitude. The reason why we are not aware
of that, and this is a very deep and profound problem which
everyone meets at some stage on the path, that I actually offer
immediately straight away, that is the sense of self that we
have inside of us. The sense of self tells you, I
am like this, these are my qualities, this is how I define
myself. Because you define yourself
according to certain qualities and certain personal
characteristics and whatever else it is, it is very hard to
imagine that you can change it. If this is who you are, if this
is your identity, identity is solid, identity is fixed,
identity is permanent, by definition it must be permanent,
otherwise it is not identity, otherwise it is this floating
object without any kind of mooring.
Maybe that is what we are. Wait a minute.
So the point is, this is kind of the point of this non-self
doctrine in Buddhism, is the idea that this sense of self
that we have, that actually blocks us from seeing the
potential for personal development, is actually an
illusion. Once the sense of self is taken
out of the equation, once the idea that there is a permanent
aspect inside of us, that is an illusion, then of course it
opens up the possibility for mental development in a radical
way. Because there is no obstacle
anymore. The sense of self is an obstacle
because it tells you there are limits, this is me, this is who
I am, you can't go beyond that. Take the sense of self out of
the equation and certainly the potential for development
mentally, psychologically, is almost unlimited.
So I think that may be part of the problem, the delusion that
we actually cannot change all that much, so we search for
happiness in the wrong place, we search for it in a place where
we will actually never really find the true development, true
happiness and lasting satisfaction.
So this is kind of the distinction, if you want to find
true freedom in life, true liberation, you have to look in
a different place, you have to look inwards rather than looking
outwards. There is a nice little story, I
am a disciple of Ajahn Brahm, so I have to tell a few stories,
otherwise I get sucked from the monastery.
There is no point. So a few stories are obligatory.
So this particular story is from the Vinyapittika, the
Vinyapittika is the... That camera distracted me for a
second there. The Vinyapittika is the code of
conduct for the monastics and also the rules that regulate how
the monastic sangha, the monastic community operates, how
it functions. It is actually very interesting
documents in so many ways and it shows you the original way that
the sangha operated in terms of very democratic, very
decentralized, the way the sangha works.
It is actually very interesting, it is alright.
I am not going to get sidetracked too much by that
because we are going to have to wait an additional hour for this
talk. But one of the stories in there,
it is a nice little sweet little story, and this is one day there
is this monk sitting at the root of a tree in a forest grove.
He is sitting at this root of a tree and he was born in this
very high, he was born the son of a king or something like
that, he was born at the very top of the kind of social
hierarchy in ancient India. And he was sitting at this root
of a tree and he was sitting there and he was saying,
Ahosukhang, Ahosukhang. You know what that means?
What do you think? Ahosukhang means, oh what
happiness, oh what happiness. He is sitting at the root of a
tree, he is a monk, he is shamed, he has gone forth from
being a prince in a kind of large kingdom or whatever.
Now he is a monk, he is sitting at the root of a tree saying, Oh
what happiness, oh what happiness.
And then some of his friends, they are walking by, they see
him sitting at the root of a tree saying Ahosukhang,
Ahosukhang. They get a bit concerned, what
is it with our friend, Badia is the name of this monk, what is
it with our friend Badia? He sounds like he is going a bit
nuts over there saying Ahosukhang, Ahosukhang.
Could there be something wrong with him?
So they hurry up, they go off, they go off to see the Buddha.
And they say to the Buddha, well this friend of ours, Badia, is
sitting at the root of a tree saying Ahosukhang, Ahosukhang.
We are a bit concerned about him.
We think that he is now thinking back to the time when he was a
prince, he had all the pleasures of the royal palace, all the fun
in the royal palace, and he is thinking back to that.
He is dissatisfied in the monastic life.
And of course the Buddha was not better.
The Buddha says to a certain man, he says, Well go my good
man, go to Badia, actually Badia, and ask him to come into
my presence. So the man goes, he gets Badia,
and Badia comes into the Buddha's presence.
And of always, the Buddha always asks, is it true, what they are
saying, that you are sitting at the root of a tree saying
Ahosukhang, Ahosukhang. Yes master, it is true, he says
Badia. Well, why are you doing so?
And then he says, well, when I think back at life as a prince,
and how complicated it was, how difficult it was, how many
duties I had, all the things I had to do, and now I am sitting
at the root of a tree here, enjoying deep meditation,
enjoying the true freedom of the mind.
That is what we are trying to get to today.
Enjoying the true freedom of the mind.
That is why I am sitting here saying Ahosukhang, Ahosukhang.
It is beautiful in the story. Here is someone who has
everything in life, absolutely everything.
He has all the power of royalty here.
He has all the wealth of royalty here, all the enjoyment.
He is obviously a pretty nice guy as well, because he has had
success in the path of meditation.
Everything. He is probably loved by the
people around him, and yet he gives everything out, because he
understands real happiness, real freedom, real meaning is not
found there. It is found somewhere else.
Ahosukhang, Ahosukhang. That is a little story, just to
get you started, get you an idea that worldly phenomena are never
going to give you the thing that you require in this life, that
you really want deep down there. To start off with how to find
this true freedom, this true liberation.
One of the things that I have just been talking about before
is this idea that people think that having license to enjoy
yourself in the world, true freedom in terms of pleasures,
in terms of enjoying relationships, and the pleasures
of life, all the entertainment you have in London, all the nice
restaurants. This is why London is such a
great place, because you have so much entertainment.
So much nice restaurants and all these kind of things.
But people come to London, they travel from around the world
just to enjoy themselves in this wonderful, marvelous city here.
I have just been to the Peak District, that is even more
marvelous. London, beautiful, peaceful,
very nice, very, very wonderful. But this is what people think.
And very often, of course, the Buddhist way is that you set
certain constraints on how you can enjoy yourself.
There is already certain constraints as a lay person.
Those constraints become even more powerful if you are a
monastic obviously. You are constraining yourself.
If you just take on certain morality, it means that there
are certain pleasures you can't have, because the morality
constrains you from doing those things.
And this is one of the reasons why many people in the world,
they don't want to live a moral life, because living a moral
life is constraining you. So you can't have all the
happiness and all the enjoyment that you want.
So people throw out morality and say, let's enjoy ourselves
instead. But of course, that is
misunderstanding in a very fundamental way, where true
freedom lies. Because if you practice
morality, of course it's going to constrain you on the outside,
but it starts doing something to your mind.
What does it start to do? It starts to reduce some of the
defilements of the mind. It starts to reduce some of the
oppressive states. Anger is oppressive.
Yeah, anger is very oppressive in life.
If you can have a sense of metderm and kindness for all
people around you, even Donald Trump.
Some people would talk about Donald Trump on this retreat.
They thought, let's get out of politics, but still it had to
come up. So even if you don't like Donald
Trump, even if you don't like him, still have a sense of
compassion and metaphor in there.
If you can do that, you're getting rid of a massive
oppression inside of yourself. Restlessness, another
oppression, an oppression which kind of drives you around.
You can't sit still, you can't enjoy the peace of just watching
the breath. Having tightness and lethargy,
another oppression inside of you.
And you start to realize when you practice morality, what
happens, these defilements of the mind, they start to drop
down. They become less and you feel an
inner freedom. And that inner freedom is far,
far, far more valuable than the outer freedom of enjoying
yourself in the world outside. That inner freedom is real
freedom. The outer freedom is like a fake
freedom. Fake news, fake freedom.
This is how it goes. And it is fake because you can
see people who enjoy themselves for those kind of freedoms,
still they are miserable, still they are depressed, still they
sometimes even commit suicide. Why?
Because that outer freedom, really, at the end of the day,
is not that relevant. And there is a very nice story
that Ajahn Brahm tells. And this is a story about two
very famous monks in the northeast of Thailand.
The northeast of Thailand is where all the famous monks were.
Because that was the most boring place in Thailand.
There was nothing going on. It was the exact opposite.
It was the antithesis of London. There was no entertainment, no
restaurant, no nothing. There were just rice paddies and
water buffaloes. That's all you had.
And that is great for meditation practice.
There is nothing interesting outside.
You just find the interest inside and stay there.
So if you want to go to meditation, go to the northeast
of Thailand. That's one possibility anyway.
So the story is these two. So that is the place in Thailand
that is most famous for all the areas, the noble ones, the
Arahants and the Sotapanna, all the people who have a lot of
success in meditation practice. The northeast of Thailand.
Go to the boring places. That's where you find the
Arahants in the world, the enlightened beings.
So chances that I am enlightened is very, very small because I am
such an exciting place. It is my power.
So you go there. It was interesting.
There was one of the Aja Brahm's friends.
He also went to this particular, they went to a dana, went to
somebody's house. And when they went to this dana
in somebody's house, it was a kind of very wealthy family.
Maybe they were visiting Bangkok or something.
I can't really remember. And in this house they have an
aquarium. And in this aquarium of course
all these fish swimming around. So these two very senior and
very famous Thai monks, they were talking among each other.
And one of them said, the other one said, it's terrible.
They are capturing all these fish, and they go to the other
water tanks. They have no freedom in this
water tank. We should go and release those
fish. Actually I don't think he said
that because that would have been really bad.
You can't just go and release people's fish.
That is kind of immoral. So please don't do that when you
go to somebody's house. Don't just go to the aquarium
and start releasing the fish because it makes you very
unpopular if you do not. What was very interesting was
that the other monk said, no, you are not right about this.
This is not how it works. The way it works is that fish in
the aquarium is free of so many dangers.
There is only one type of friendly fish in the aquarium.
There are no sharks, there are no piranhas, and this kind of
fish. There is no fish eating fish.
All friendly fish in there. The food supply is always
constant. Every day they get fed at the
right time. Just to have the right body
size, not too fat, not too thin. Because fish also get fat if
they get too fat too much. So just come to the right shape,
to be in good shape and all these kind of things.
The temperature of the water is always perfect, always just
pleasant, etc. etc. etc. So he was saying, making the
point that even though these fish have certain boundaries,
they get so much in return. And those boundaries are
actually far less important than getting all these other things
in return. Actually, we don't know that
because we can't ask the fish. That's kind of the assumption
here. So actually you get so much in
return. For having those boundaries,
those four glass walls around you, quite likely it is much
better. Then we get the fish doctor come
in, if you have a disease, all this kind of stuff.
Do we have fish doctors? Probably do.
There are all kinds of doctors, fish doctors as well.
I've never met one. You meet many people in life,
I've never met a fish doctor before.
And that is exactly the same thing as with morality.
It puts certain constraints on your life, certain boundaries.
But actually, in the long run, it is far, far preferable life
to live. If you can live with certain
constraints, if you can live with kindness, you want to live
a life which is really kind of unpleasant without these very
important qualities of mind. And I'm sure you know straight
away what I mean, yeah? Because it is so obvious.
And the oppression in the mind declines.
The oppression goes down. The suffering, the problems, the
defilements, all of these things come down.
And that is where true liberation comes from.
And that is where true liberation comes in.
It's really liberation from oppression.
We're talking about ending suffering on the body's path.
And of course, suffering is the primary, is the prime oppression
in human life and any other life in that matter.
So let's have a look at some of these defilements of the mind
and try to understand why it is that they are oppressive, why
they are problematic. And one way of looking at this,
I was just giving a talk yesterday about the five
hindrances, I was talking about those now, and I was talking
about the five obstacles, I was also talking about those now as
well. It makes it easy to talk about
exactly the same thing. Two talks.
So, of the five hindrances, five hindrances for those of you who
are new to the Buddhist teachings, these are obstacles
on the meditation path. These will stop you from going
deeper in meditation, becoming peaceful, having insight, having
clarity, all these kinds of things.
And the first one of these, whoa, okay, the first one, this
is going to sound very good, mentality.
So the first one of these hindrances is called central
desire. The desire we have for all the
objects of the world and also all the attachments that we have
for the things in our life, the things we own, our
relationships, all of these kinds of things, that's part of
central desire. A very important part of it is
the objects of the material world that we attach to, that we
hold on to. Do you hear yourself there?
I'm trying to stay in the system.
Okay, maybe I put it a bit further down.
Is that going to make a difference?
Can you still? Is that too?
It's not working. Is that all right?
Yeah, okay, good. Let's try that and see what
happens. So, and what is the problem with
central desire? And one of the things that the
Buddha says in the suttas is that if you indulge in the
essential things, it is as if you are, if you still have
central desire, attachment to central object, it is as if you
have a debt. Yeah, you have a debt.
Why is it that we have a debt when we indulge too much in the
central world and we attach too much to central phenomena or
central objects, if you like? What is going on there?
This is one of those very important and very basic things
to understand on the Buddhist path.
Whenever we attach to things, we hold on to things.
Nature is always going to come at some stage and take it away
from us. Yeah, you know that this is
true. Everyone knows that this is true
because the world, of the world outside, sometimes you can hold
on to your relationships for a lifetime, sometimes much shorter
than that. That's the very most lifetime.
And when you die, when you pass away, you're going to have to
give it all up. And if you attach too much, and
nature says, now is time to take it back again.
Nature says that now your relationship has lasted for 20
years and now you're going to have a divorce.
What happens? You're going to suffer because
you were attached to those things in the first place.
So this is one of the ways of understanding the idea of all
the central... It's kind of dramatic.
This is the idea with Buddhism. Buddhism is the idea is to be
honest, yeah, but honest in a very profound sense.
Brutally honest, if you like. Seeing things really as they
actually are. This is the problem with all
these worldly phenomena, all the things that we're attached to in
the world, they are subject to change, subject to not being
controlled. And because of that, there will
come a time when you're going to have to pay back the debt of
attaching to these things. And it's kind of obvious, isn't
it, in many ways? You can kind of understand this
one day we're all going to have to pass away.
It is obvious. And the more you understand
that, the more you understand that the liberation, the freedom
of the mind, comes from developing a mind center where
these attachments gradually go down.
Yeah. And it doesn't mean that we have
to give up our relationships. It doesn't even mean that we
have to give up our possessions. The main thing it means is that
we have to develop our mind in such a way that we have an inner
strength, an inner happiness that is able to counteract these
problems when they arise. And this is the difference
between someone who has lived life really well.
If you have lived your life really well, it doesn't matter
if you are a monastic or a lay person.
It doesn't really matter exactly.
Your status in life is not the important one.
But if you have lived your life well, it means that at the end
of life, you have built up a store of independence, of
happiness, of enjoyment in yourself, of contentment.
Which means that your attachment to external things are not so
great. Then you can pass on into your
whatever future existence you may have after that.
You can pass on to that with a sense of equanimity, a sense of
contentment, not being too touched by the things that you
are leaving behind. Here this is what life is all
about. This is one of the very
important things of life. You are actually achieving a
higher degree of freedom when you pass away than when you came
into this world. And this is a wonderful thing
actually. Maybe you think that this might
end up in you becoming a monastic, but you really want to
be in that relationship, so you don't want to think about that.
But don't please don't think like that.
Because one of the things that you will find out is that as
these attachments become a little bit less, usually our
relationships become better. This is kind of the strange
thing that people often say you have to have attachments to each
other. But the answer actually is no.
It is often the exact opposite. Because when you reduce your
attachments to people around you, you have less vested
interest in those relationships. If you have children for
example, we often take our children to be like an extension
of ourselves. And if our children misbehave in
good company, we feel a bit embarrassed.
Behave yourself. This is kind of my...
I have tried to bring you up for goodness sake.
If you kind of behave badly now, it's going to look really bad on
me. This is what happens to some
extent. Because we have a vested
interest in the relationships around us.
The more detached we are in a sense, the more cool we are
about these things. The more we are not so vested in
that particular relationship, the more we are able to react in
those relationships in a way that is in the best interest of
the other person, rather than being in our own best interest.
Here you see the difference there.
It's actually very beautiful. As the detachment decreases, you
have less suffering and less pain.
And you are also able to deal with the people around you in
your ordinary life. In a more neutral, in a more
skillful and in a wiser fashion. It's actually very nice when
that happens. The people in the world who
suffer the most are often the ones who are most attached.
The people in the world who shout at the children.
I always feel so terrible when I see people shouting at the
children. But sometimes it happens because
it's unavoidable sometimes. But it happens usually because
of attachments in the wrong way. This is the first thing.
This is about the idea of the debt that we often incur as a
cause of how we relate to the world around us.
So relate to the world in a different way.
This doesn't mean that you have to do anything dramatically
different in your life. All it means is that you focus
more on the process of how you live.
What is that process? What do I mean by that?
I mean how do you deal with people on a daily basis?
What is the process that you go through when you're trying to
achieve certain goals in your professional life, in your
family life? How do you try to achieve those
goals? That is the process.
That process is filled with kindness, with understanding,
with compassion, with generosity to the people around you.
That is when your life becomes better.
The process is what is important, not so much the
goals. That is almost all we need to
know. Focus on the process, don't
focus on the goals. And you are in business pretty
much. That's all we have to do.
That's really a very nice way to summarize in the spiritual life.
But I'm going to talk a bit more anyway.
So that is the first of these kind of hindrances that we talk
about. Another one, and this is
probably a far more important one for most people, that is the
hindrance of ill will. And I would really recommend you
to put a bit of effort into overcoming the negativity and
ill will of the mind. And one of the things that the
Buddha says about ill will, similarly that he uses for that,
is that you are like you are sick.
You are ill when you have ill will.
You're kind of, you know, we better put you to bed and give
you some, you know, whatever, some cold compressions, whatever
you get when you get really sick.
Put you to bed. Why is that?
And the reason is, if you get really sick, you have a high
fever, it's like you are deluded.
You see all kind of weird things, feverish kind of dreams
and all this kind of stuff. You get deluded when you are
really sick. And when you are angry, you are
also deluded. You are in a state where you are
absolutely incapable of seeing things in a straight way.
It is when you are angry that you do things that you later
regret. Yeah, right?
You know what I mean? You say something a bit too
fast. You do an act that you later
don't think, I shouldn't have done that.
Even you might even think thoughts that, no, you shouldn't
really be thinking. And when you come out of your
anger, that only then do you realize that was a mistake.
So, why is it that you did that thing when you were angry but
you actually understand afterwards that it was a
mistake? And the reason is because when
you were angry, you were deluded.
You didn't know what you were doing.
You were a bit crazy basically. You were a bit insane.
But what I say is that when you are angry, essentially you are a
little bit insane. So we are all a little bit
insane. So there is no need to have too
many kind of looked down upon people who have mental problems.
We all have a little bit of mental problems.
Except maybe the Arahant. It is a nice way of actually
remembering the problem with anger, ill will.
You are now, you are sick. You need to take the day off and
just relax because this isn't going, that's pretty good, isn't
it? Take the day off every time you
get angry. Whoa!
How many days off? Boss, I'm really sick.
The Buddha was my real doctor. He said, I'm sick today.
I'm going to take the day off. I'm giving you some terrible
ideas. You're going to be kind of, your
boss is going to come after me and give me a hard time.
So that is a very kind of simple way of thinking about anger as
illness and how troublesome and difficult it actually is.
The third of these hindrances that we're talking about, this
is the hindrance of tiredness and lethargy.
It's sometimes called sloth and torpor, which I prefer tiredness
and lethargy. And this is often the use for
that is a similarly of a prison. When you are really tired, your
mind is kind of contracted inside yourself because you
can't really formulate thoughts properly.
You know what it's like when you have tiredness and lethargy?
It feels like you're in a prison inside yourself.
You can't really reach out to the world properly.
But when you're bright, you feel that you can reach out to people
around you. You can talk to them.
You can make yourself understood properly.
And you can communicate properly with people as a consequence.
So if you want to be free of prison, out of prison, then what
you do, this is another lack of freedom obviously, what you do
is you develop a bright mind. One that is beautiful, light and
bright and has a kind of buoyancy and lightness to it,
like a balloon flowing out. One of the nice metaphors I like
is the idea of a balloon. As you live your life well,
you're filling that balloon with helium.
And as you are cutting off some of these hindrances, some of
this defilements of the mind, it's like cutting off the
tethers that tethers that balloon to the ground.
Chucking out some of the sandbags that you use for
weight. And as you chuck out the
sandbags, cut the tethers, and you fill the balloon with
helium, it soars. And as it soars, it's like your
mind is soaring. You get a lighter, more
beautiful, more buoyant mind. And as you do that, you soar
over the landscape. And you start to see things in a
different way, because you get the bird's eye view as you go
high up. And when you get the bird's eye
view, that's where you get insights.
That's where you start to understand things like wholeness
or reality. Going high up, it's like having
Samadhi, seeing things from above.
And from that Samadhi, from that stillness of the mind, that is
where the insight comes. You see the landscape below you.
It's a beautiful simile for the Buddhist path.
But the soaring happens. It happens why?
Because you let go of these defilements, these
anti-liberation, anti-freedoms that hold you down.
And then liberation happens in this way.
The next defilement is the one which is called restlessness and
remorse very often. And of course to overcome
remorse, the best way of doing that is simply to live well.
If you live generally with kindness in your life, you're
going to have less remorse and less regret.
And the restlessness part of it is often compared by the Buddha
to a slave driver. Restlessness is your slave
driver. So it means that if you are
restless, you are a slave. Do you feel like a slave
sometimes? Restlessness comes into your
mind, agitation driving you on, making you do things that you'd
rather actually just like to sit down and be still.
But then when you close your eyes and you want to be still,
your mind just moves all over the place.
The body doesn't really settle down and you actually want to
get up all the time and do something else instead.
That's restlessness. You are a slave to the
restlessness. And this is a very interesting
defilement because actually it is very, very closely connected
to the I think it's my hands, I'm waving my hands too much.
It's the defilement very closely related to the idea of desire.
Restlessness. Because when you have lots of
desires in your mind, the desires are always at that state
that is not fulfilled. You feel unfulfilled.
You want to move somewhere else. That feeling of having to go
somewhere else, obviously, is very closely related to
restlessness. So desires and restlessness are
very closely conjoined to each other.
And one of the beautiful sutras, one of the beautiful koas, I was
just reading this out on the retreat that we had up in the
Peak District last week. This is this koa, this is a
sutta called Ratapala Sutta. And in this sutta, this monk
called Ratapala, he speaks to a king.
And this king asks this monk Ratapala, he says to him, is it
okay? And this king says to this monk
Ratapala, you are young. You came from a good family.
You were wealthy. You had everything in life.
You were not saved. You had everything in life.
And still you went forth. Why is that?
Why is it that someone, usually when you are sick, you are
miserable, you lost all your possessions on the stock market,
that's when you go forth. There's no purpose in living
anymore. I didn't sell the stock market.
I didn't have a stock market in those days.
But you know. So what is the reason?
And then Ratapala gives these four reasons for why he went
forth. And one of these very
interesting reasons is that there are four teachings that he
got from the Buddha. And one of them is, life is
insatiated, incomplete, the slave of craving.
Craving is the thing that always comes after us.
Craving is very closely related to the idea of restlessness.
Because when you crave, you are restless.
Craving drives your honor. It is a very different way of
regarding the world from the way we normally regard the world.
Because usually we regard craving as something positive.
You crave and then you choose to go after the cravings.
You choose to satisfy them. Enjoy craving for goodness sake,
because that's what life is all about.
Crave, desire, then run after them and satisfy them and then
you'll be happy. But the Buddha says no, it's
exactly the exact opposite. Craving is the slave driver.
Craving is the restlessness that always makes you run around from
one thing to the next one. And as soon as you think that
you have satisfied one craving, another craving arises behind
it. There is no satisfaction in the
realm of craving. You are always driven on.
And the reason why we often feel so enticed by craving, one of
the main reasons is because we identify with the doer.
With the agent inside. You know what I mean?
You identify with the doer. When you do, you feel alive.
I'm doing things. Some people identify with the
doer in a very profound sense. They spend their whole life
running around and you start feeling alive because you do
things. I'm sure you all know what I'm
talking about. You have some idea what this is
about. And because we identify with the
doer, then when craving arises, that identity gets satisfied.
I am now expressing my identity as the doer through running
after all these wonderful things that I crave for.
I get them all, then I will be happy and satisfied.
No, you won't be happy and satisfied.
And that is precisely the problem.
And what is so interesting about this is that this identification
with the doer is actually a very useless and very
counterproductive kind of identification.
Because what happens, and this is what happens in meditation
practice, why meditation is so beautiful and why it is so
powerful, one of the many reasons, as you start to calm
down, as the craving, as the doing calms down, you actually
start to realize that the less doing there is, the more happy,
the more content you are. The less things are happening in
life, the better you feel about yourself.
And you start to understand that this whole idea of identifying
with the doer is a con job. What I am identifying with is
suffering. That is what you are identifying
with. If doing, if agency, if movement
of the mind, if running after craving, if all of this is
suffering, and this you can actually see that in your
meditation practice, because the more peaceful you are, the
better you feel about yourself. If that is suffering, it means
that you are identifying with suffering when you identify with
the doer, with the agency inside of you.
Isn't that kind of radical? You are new to Buddhism.
Have you heard about this before?
You see, there you are. Buddhism is why Buddhism is so
interesting, because it has some insight that is actually very
hard to combine in almost any other kind of philosophy, if you
like. But this you start to understand
that. And when you start to understand
that, you start to understand that freedom is not found in
pursuing things through your will, through your volition,
through your choice. Freedom is actually found in the
diametrically opposite direction, by letting go of all
the doing, letting go of all the choosing, and actually becoming
still inside. There is like a double wonder
there. Those things that you pursue
through choice, by through agency, through using the doer,
those things are not really worthwhile pursuing in the first
place. And on top of that, the very act
of pursuit is suffering. It's pretty bad news, yeah?
It doesn't get much worse than that.
So, because of that, you start to withdraw from the agency.
You start to withdraw from the doing.
You start to understand that doing is a problem.
And when you start to get that, it becomes so much more easy to
be peaceful in your meditation practice.
Why? Because you no longer express
the doing, because there is no point in expressing what is
actually suffering. So that is the fourth of these
five hindrances. The fifth one is the hindrance
of doubt. And doubt is often expressed in
the suttas with the simile of going through a desert, going
through a place where there is no drinking, nothing to eat,
there is just barren, there is nothing to see, there is all
these cactuses around. Actually, those cactuses are
quite nice, yeah? What is the plural of cactuses?
Cacti? Cacti?
Is it?
Okay, whatever. So, so yeah, in this very barren
place, there is kind of, there is nothing there to sustain you.
Obviously, it is kind of desert everywhere, or rocks, kind of
stupid rocks or whatever, not nice rocks, stupid rocks.
You are walking through this landscape, nothing to eat,
nothing to drink, yeah? It is kind of terrible.
And this is what it is like to have doubt.
Why is that? And the reason is, because in
life, if all you have are the ordinary things of life that
everyone has, the pleasures, ordinary pleasures of life, the
ordinary things that we attach to, yeah?
The things that everyone does, get an education, get married,
have kids, have a job, become a pensioner, die.
Yeah? Okay, wait a minute, and then
you die, and you look like, what was that all about?
Yeah? I have been doing all of this,
saying, I have been doing what everyone else does, yeah?
And now what? I am dying.
And you think back and you wonder what it was all about.
And I think a lot of people, when they come to the death bed,
they start to wonder, what was this all about?
I have been doing all of this, saying, has it got me anywhere?
Have I actually achieved anything kind of final, or any
sense of completion, anything like that?
Not really, I have just been doing all these things,
following along like a sheep in society, because everyone else
does it, and now I am here, and I wonder what it was all about.
And this is the problem with life.
If you haven't got something more to life than the mere
pursuing what everyone else pursues, and if you look at
people in general, they are not super duper happy or anything
like that, they kind of go through their lives, okay, that
may be okay, but they haven't really found the meaning of life
or anything like that. So sometimes you think, maybe I
should go a different path, maybe I should do something
else. Because when you follow, when
you walk through life, just doing the ordinary things in
life, it feels dry, it feels barren, there is nothing there
to really give you that additional kind of wetness that
makes life exciting or interesting or joyful.
You do this ordinary pleasures of the world, which don't really
lead any real satisfaction or happiness.
It's like walking through a desert, a desert free of
spiritual teaching, free of a higher purpose, free of
something which actually is really beautiful in a very
profound and deep sense. You haven't got that, and that
is so problematic. So then one day you come to the
Buddhist teachings instead, or maybe some other spiritual
teaching as well. Many spiritual teachings can be
uplifting. Personally I think the Buddhist
teaching is the superior one, otherwise I wouldn't be a
Buddhist monk, I was without saying.
It's not because I looked down upon others, just that I chose
this because I thought it was best, that's the reason.
Otherwise there has to be a reason for this.
But you find a spiritual teaching and you find that it
nourishes you in a far more profound sense.
If you practice the spiritual teaching in the right way, it
gives rise to joy on the Buddhist path, it gives rise to
contentment, it gives rise to all of these things that you
have been looking for all along. That craving told you it was
going to supply to you, but that craving never delivers.
Craving says, when you get this, I will be happy, when I get that
relationship, oh I will be so happy, because this woman, this
man, oh they are so wonderful. And of course it lasts for a
while, it's wonderful for a while, and then it isn't
wonderful anymore. Or it really is wonderful for a
long time and then you die, and then it isn't wonderful anymore.
So it kind of is problematic regardless of how it works out.
So here you go with something, you find something more
profound, something really deep, something really satisfies you
in a very very profound way. And this is why it is so
beautiful, and that is why the path, Buddhist path, is not like
walking through the desert, like walking through a lush forest
with lots of beautiful mango trees.
You just pluck off the mangoes, wow, this mango is so sweet.
Except that mangoes are sensual pleasures of course, but you
know, you get the idea. It's a metaphor, it's not meant
to be taken literally. So that is what, how this path,
why these things are also oppressive, why they are anti-
freedoms of the mind, and why they block you from actually
getting access to real liberation, real freedom in
life. And just to look at the Buddhist
path in a little bit more detail, there is one very nice
part of the Buddhist path that I really enjoyed a lot when I read
it. This part of the path is called
dependent liberation, yeah? And it shows you essentially the
process of meditation as you are freed from the world.
What is that process of meditation?
And it's a very powerful kind of teaching, and it's found in many
places in the Buddhist suttas, it is a core aspect of the
Buddhist teachings. This is one of those teachings,
you can feel very sure that the Buddha would have taught,
because it is everywhere in the suttas, he taught it to
everybody. And this sequence of dependent
liberation starts off with sila, sila being morality.
Yeah? You are moral, in a very deep
sense you are moral. You are moral not just in the
sense of not doing bad stuff, but you are moral in the sense
of deliberately doing good things, yeah?
And you're also moral in the sense of thinking kind thoughts,
and thoughts of compassion to the people around you.
Very deep sense of morality. From that deep sense of morality
comes non-remorse, yeah? Because you start to feel good
about yourself. Not in a I always have to say
this, not in an egotistical way, not in the sense I am better
than others, look at those scallywags over there they are
not moral, not like that at all. Not comparing yourself to
others, but simply acquired satisfaction knowing that you're
living your life well. Yeah?
You kind of close your eyes, you're meditating and have this
positive feeling inside of you, because you know that you're
living your life in the right way.
That is non-remorse, that is non-regret.
And from that non-regret comes the Pahmujja, Pahmujja means
gladness or joy. From the gladness or joy, this
is now we're into the meditation process, yeah?
This is what happens, you practice morality in ordinary
life, then when you sit down and meditate this is what happens.
The Pahmujja comes, the gladness or the joy in the mind comes.
From the gladness and the joy comes the Piti Piti is more
happiness, rapture often translated as rapture.
From that rapture, often felt as kind of physical rapture
coursing through the body, very kind of very pleasant at this
stage, very very nice. And the mind starts to become
peaceful. From that, as you go deeper
comes tranquility, where your mind calms down, you become
solid like a rock, you never want to move from the seat for
the rest of your life. You have to, but you don't want
to. Eventually you're going to have
to go. At that moment it feels like you
never want to do anything else. From that sense of deep
tranquility of body and mind a profound sense of happiness
arises. Happiness because of the
tranquility, because everything is so beautiful by now, you feel
this very very deep sense of happiness.
And that is what draws you to the meditation object, because
happiness is what glues your mind to the meditation object.
Happiness always attracts you, so because you are attracted to
happiness meditation becomes powerful in a very possible, in
a very powerful way. This is how meditation works,
and this is why it is so important to give rise to a
pleasant abiding in the present moment, because that will enable
you to stay with the meditation object because it is so
pleasurable. So you will notice something
about this path, it is all about happiness, more and more
profound happiness as you go along.
Why is it more and more happy? And the reason why it is more
happy is that you are letting go of burdens as you go along.
Letting go of obstacles, letting go of problems.
So as you carry on on this path, some of the very first things
that you have let go of is immorality, is bad ways of
thinking, bad ways of living, and already you feel good about
yourself, because if you feel good about yourself, you let go
of a burden, you have already achieved a certain state of
liberation. As you go deeper in your
meditation practice, the body starts to fade away, your senses
start to fade away, and as your senses fade away, you feel
inside of yourself, you feel that you are letting go of a
part of the world that actually is relatively painful compared
to the world inside. As you let go of that, the bliss
starts to arise. Why?
Because you are letting go of non-freedom, you are letting go
of a burden. You may have heard these
stories, there are these stories that you may have heard about
people having out-of-body experiences.
Have you heard about out-of-body experiences?
You probably have, if you are interested in these kind of
things, you are very likely to have.
And this was a very interesting out-of-body experience, this was
from the United States. There was a lady who had
aneurysm in the brain, like an assembly of blood or whatever,
blood happening inside the brain, and they had to operate
on her, because if it had exploded or whatever, it would
have killed her almost instantaneously.
They had to get this large blob of blood out of her brain.
It was a very complicated operation, because it was
basically in the middle of her brain, so how am I going to get
this one out? And they figured the only way to
get it out, this was back in the 1980s, maybe now there are
easier ways, but it was to cool the body down, so the metabolism
of the body basically went to zero, then drain the blood out
of the brain, then open up her skull, then kind of fix the
problem, and then kind of put it all back together again and
restart the whole thing. It sounds like an absolutely
astonishing kind of operation, and the chances of success were
apparently very low, but living with the aneurysm was even
worse, so she kind of went and decided to go through it.
As she was going through this, she had this incredible
out-of-body experience. She was out of her body, and
while she was out of her body, it was so beautiful to be out of
my body. It was so nice, it was a very
common experience. This is why meditation is very
similar, as your body fades away, it becomes very beautiful.
She was out of her body, just looking at the operating
theatre, according to the story, and this operation went on for a
long time, so it was a long out-of-body experience.
Then, as often happens with these things, some voice or
something tells you, you've got to go back.
She didn't want to go back, this miserable body was lying there
all hacked up on the operation table, don't want to go back to
this body, look at this miserable body but sometimes you
have no choice, you are drawn back to your body.
She was drawn back to her body, and afterwards, when everything
was put back together, she woke up, she told the story, and she
said it was like getting back into a refrigerator, it was the
most worst experience of her life.
Her mind was drawn into this refrigerator because the body
had been taken down to 17 degrees or something like that,
really, really cool. She said now, going back to the
refrigerator was actually a terrible experience.
So if you want to get out of the refrigerator you've got to have
your meditation work properly. The antidote to that
refrigeration of the body is the bliss and the happiness that
comes as a consequence when you start to let go of the body.
This is what liberation is about, you're freeing yourself
from suffering, and as a consequence of that, the bliss,
the joy, the stillness, they are the alternative, they take the
place of the problem that was there before.
So your senses fade away, the body fades away, all the
defilements in your mind, all of these desires, all the
restlessness, all that, also fades away.
You become more and more focused until eventually, as you keep on
doing this, more and more things disappear in your mind, less and
less is actually there. Eventually comes the point when
you reach a state where the mind is completely, utterly unified,
and all there is in your mind is bliss and nothing else.
That's how good it is. You're not going to leave now,
are you? No, sorry.
I thought you were going to pick up your bottle and leave, you
see, so I was getting worried because now it gets really
exciting, so you want to stay for the excitement, otherwise it
gets really terrible. So here you are, for the first
time in your life, your mind is completely unified, there's no
more desire, there's no more restlessness, all you are
experiencing is a single experience, and that is bliss
upon bliss upon bliss, continuously, from moment to
moment to moment to moment. That is all you are
experiencing. And because all you are
experiencing is bliss, and because you have no more desire,
no more craving, anything like that, it means you are
absolutely perfectly still now, complete passadi, complete
stillness in the mind, no more movement of anything at all.
And what that means is that temporarily you have actually
experienced the answer to the very meaning of life itself.
You have found absolute freedom, it's not absolute absolute, it's
very very close to absolute freedom.
Why? Because you have no more
desires, nothing more to drive you on, nothing more to be done
in your life. If you haven't reached the
meaning of life, it means there's more to be done.
The moment you have reached the meaning of life, there's nothing
to be done, and this is what it feels like when you reach deep
samadhi, it feels like there's nothing more to be done.
Ergo, QED, you have now found the answer to the very meaning
of life itself. This is what this is about.
It's from freeing yourself from all these oppressive states by
going through the process of meditation, and then one day,
final freedom from everything, through meditation practice.
It's not entirely final because the problem is that states of
samadhi, states of meditation, they come to an end
unfortunately. So because of that, there is an
additional thing that we have to do, and this is the final
element of freedom on the Buddhist path, and that is the
element where you also have insight, you have an
understanding of what is going on there.
And when you have an insight based on that state of samadhi,
understanding where happiness is to be found, you undermine
craving, you undermine desire, 100 percent.
And desire is cut off once and for all.
And when desire is cut off once and for all, there's nothing
more to seek for, nothing more to be done in life.
It means that you have found ultimately the answer to the
very meaning of life. Nothing more to be done.
Nowhere more to go. From now on until you pass away,
all you have to do is just to experience bliss and happiness
and all these things. There's nothing more to be done,
apart from maybe teaching others a little bit, which is a nice
thing to do when you eventually reach awakening.
So this is the highest freedom you can achieve on the Buddhist
path. And very often this highest
freedom we talk about on the Buddhist path is often talked
about in terms of elimination and freedom from suffering.
And it's kind of okay, free of suffering, yeah, it's okay,
yeah, it's a good thing. You agree with that, it's good
to be free of suffering, yeah. Sounds okay.
But it doesn't sound that exciting, yeah, it sounds a bit
bland, yeah, you're free of suffering, now what, now it's
kind of boring, yeah, suffering has gone, now what?
But that's not really the point, yeah.
The point is that when you are free of suffering, you feel
incredibly happy, yeah. This is kind of the point.
So one of the important things with the Buddhist teachings is
that we have to express these things in the right way, in a
way where actually people understand what is really
happening. If you always talk about things
in terms of freedom of suffering, we actually miss the
point that this is a state of the highest happiness that is
possible to achieve as a human being, yeah.
And this is really the point here.
So total freedom, total liberation, yes, it means
liberation from suffering, but it also means at the same time
the achievement of the highest happiness that is possible for a
human being, yeah. So are you, would you like to
take part in this or not? It's your choice, you don't have
to, if you don't want to, you can leave, you know, but and for
me, this is what was so powerful for me, yeah, when I started to
really study these Buddhist teachings, and I started to
understand, at least for me, it was obvious, this is the answer
to the very question of the meaning of life.
Once you get that, once you start to get an inkling that
this is true, then that is where commitment and where
perseverance on the Buddhist path comes from.
This is why I've been a Buddhist monk now for, what is it, 22
years, something like that, yeah.
So that is kind of a while, I hope it lasts much, much longer
than that, because it's pretty cool to be a Buddhist monk
actually. Anyway, so there you are, I'm
not going to talk anymore, because I've talked for almost
an hour already, it's amazing how much you can merge, how
quickly time goes by, I suppose. But what I would like to do, one
of the things I always do on these talks, is to give people
an opportunity to ask questions and to make comments and to, if
you must complain, even complaints are acceptable, we
can even deal with that probably, yeah, so whatever you
want to say is fine. So are there any questions?
And basically, there is no limits, you can ask whatever you
like pretty much, I don't usually have any limits.
Please, yeah. Thank you for the wonderful
talk, it was really wonderful. Some things that I can't let go
of, the cranium in what I can't seem to let go of at all, is the
need to help others pretty much constantly, and it means that I
can't even meditate. So even for five minutes, I
can't feel offensive. Maybe feeling selfish, and then
there's a restlessness, and then like a really strong drive to
go, go, go constantly. And I'm not necessarily attached
to the outcome of helping with the sense of needing to do that,
and I can't make out of it, so I'm losing it.
It's a pretty good attachment, as far as cravings go, it's a
pretty good one. I can't meditate.
Well, remember, one of the ways of maybe dealing with it is to
remember that if you do some meditation practice as well,
your ability to help others will actually be enhanced.
So remember that, because you get more clarity around things,
you get more understanding of what exactly is the best way of
helping other people. So try to see it in that way.
Enhance your ability, make yourself a bit more wise first
of all, because wisdom happens through stillness and peace, and
then you're actually increasing things even more.
So one of the problems with meditation practice is that you
have been here tonight for just wasted two hours, not helping
anyone. So it shows you that it's
possible to do. Well, I've been thinking about
it for a few days. Have you been thinking about it?
I know, it just sometimes feels a little bit selfish.
Intellectually I've known that I need to be wiser and more calm,
and then I'll be able to help people.
So I help people with mental illness and who are suicidal,
and stuff like that. And it just jolts me out,
literally jolts me out of meditation after five minutes.
And then I now even want to sit down, and sleep.
It's still selfish, maybe I don't know.
What you can try to do is try to find a situation for yourself
which actually gives rise to a feeling of peace to some extent.
So first of all, one of the things to do is to have a nice
place to sit down where you can do your meditation practice that
kind of is peaceful, has a right vibe, all these kind of things.
If you like to use guided meditation, some people hate
guided meditations, and that's fine, you don't have to do it.
But if you like to do it, there's someone who kind of gets
you in the right mood a little bit.
And that's one of the things, because sometimes when you're by
yourself it can be quite difficult to get in the right
mood. So get somebody who you feel you
trust, somebody who you feel has the kind of right tone of voice
for you, who gives you instructions that are meaningful
to you. And who reminds you of the
importance of being wise before you go out.
Something like that. And then actually I can
sometimes put you in the right kind of mood to be able to do
it. These things are important.
Sometimes deliberately take some time out.
Go on a retreat for a weekend or something like that.
Just kind of go with Bela Mocanda, whatever, if she does.
Do you do weekend retreats with her?
Yeah? She does weekend retreats.
So there you are. So do something like that.
And deliberately take some time out.
Because you're not being selfish at all.
I would be extraordinarily selfish if meditation makes you
selfish. I mean we're the most selfish
people in the world probably. Ajahn Brahm would be an
exceptional selfish. He goes on a six month retreat.
All he does is kind of sitting in meditation and does
absolutely nothing else. But someone like Ajahn Brahm,
there are few people in this world who inspire more other
people than Ajahn Brahm. Just by being six month on
retreat he inspires heaps of people to meditate, to practice
the spiritual life, to do all these good things.
Just by doing nothing. Doing nothing is extraordinarily
powerful. So start to look at these things
in a different way. And you will.
You will Even if you do that, even if you continue to study
the Buddhist teachings, continue to listen to Dharma talks at
least five minutes until you feel restless.
And then the next day you kind of start on the next five
minutes and then after a week you go through the whole Dharma
talk. Yeah?
Something like that. So as you do that, what starts
to happen is that your attitude, your view will start to change
about the world. And you start to get what in
Buddhism is called right view. Your outlook will change.
Your values will change. And it comes simply from
listening to Dharma talks, studying the Buddhist teachings,
understanding what is truly valuable in life.
So keep on doing the right thing.
Keep on practicing this way. You will get there.
Yeah? How long have you been trying to
meditate? Difficult question.
For years.
I have phases of redoing it and then neglecting it completely.
But I'm not, when I say I'm not trying to combo the right track,
because sometimes the succession drives me to anger.
So I'm recognizing that I'm not being wise.
I just need to shift. Shift that.
You're already on the right track because you know the
problem is. So just keep on brainwashing
yourself at Dharma talks and eventually you'll get there.
Yeah, I will. Thank you so much.
You're welcome. Is there any...
Is that my turn? I have two and you have zero.
Is that right? You finished already?
Yes, please. Okay.
Anyone else want to say something?
Yes, please. When you meditate in mind
ornaments what is it that brings you back to mind objects?
Okay. So the one...
There's many reasons for that. But the main reason, because
there's not all that interest in the meditation object.
That's the main reason. The breath, yeah, yeah, the
breath. So boring.
I'd rather think about this, think about that.
All these kind of things. So there's two things that I
would recommend you do to be able to focus on whatever
meditation object you're using. The first one is you have to
make the breath interesting. And if you listen to some of the
instructions I was giving while I was going through it now, I
was saying, make the breath your friend.
Make the breath something you care for.
Something you feel gentle and kindly towards.
And when you feel gentle and kind towards something you're
actually bringing up very positive perceptions about that
thing. And you start to want to be
around that. It's like you want to be around
kind people or pleasant people. You want to be around your own
mind. If the mind is gentle, the mind
is kind, the mind has a bit of metta and compassion, all these
kind of things. So bring up these positive
perceptions. And this is one reason why
virtue, why kindness in our daily life is so absolutely
fundamental on the Buddhist path.
Because the more kind you're able to be in your daily life,
the more good you're going to feel about yourself when you sit
down. The easier it is to follow your
breath because everything feels good and nice.
So these things have to come together.
Yeah? I'm just thinking about what
part of my mind thinks about to meditate as in, my mind wonders,
and my heart thinks what I need to find out.
Yeah? So what brings it back?
What brings it back is just having mindfulness re-arises.
Yeah? That's what brings it back.
Suddenly you know, oops, I'm not watching the breath.
That's mindfulness. When that happens, what I would
recommend you do is don't just go back to the breath straight
away. Just be aware, okay, I lost the
breath. And just wait.
Because if you go back to the breath straight away, there's
always a bit of grasping there, a bit of attachment, holding on.
Instead, tell yourself, this is just a perceptual technique.
This is not really quite exactly what happens.
But the perceptual technique is to just imagine yourself waiting
for the breath to come back to you.
Instead of you going to the breath, you are waiting for the
breath to come to you. It's like being the passenger on
the train again. Yeah?
You're being passive. Instead of you being active and
doing things, you are passive. So you're waiting, you're the
passenger. When is the breath going to come
back into the window and you're not going to see the next
breath? Oh, there it is.
Okay, now I'm following the breath again.
What it does, it gives you the perception of being passive.
And this is such an important part of the meditation practice.
It leads you to passiveness. But I think the really important
question for you is how do you avoid the mind wandering in the
first place? And that is how you do that, is
precisely by seeing the breath in a positive light.
By making the meditation a priority.
One of the things is that once you start to understand the
teachings of the Buddha, if you really get that this is what
life is all about, everything in life becomes about Buddhism.
It becomes about practicing in one way or another.
Every time you open your mouth, you think, wait, how would I do
this in the right way? So it's in accordance with the
Dhamma. And this is very interesting
because your whole life, you change your perception of what
your entire life is about. And your life becomes subsumed
under the noble, hateful path. Whether it's your work life,
whether it's your family life, everything becomes part of the
noble, hateful path. And it improves your
relationships, it improves everything.
Everything becomes better as a consequence, including your
meditation practice. So this is how you do these
things in the long run. And then when you prioritize
your spiritual life in that way, when you come to your
meditation, because you already have prioritized your spiritual
life so much, you're not going to think about those silly
worldly things anymore because they're secondary.
Those worldly things are there to support your meditation, not
the other way around. Sometimes people come to
meditation class saying, yeah, if I meditate a lot, I can
become a better manager, I can become a better father, I can
become better, all these kind of things.
And because you think like that, it means your priority is being
a better father, your priority is being a better manager, your
priority is to be a better stockbroker, whatever else it
is. And if that is your priority,
when you meditate, you're going to think about it by default,
because that's what's the most important thing for you.
If you turn it around and subsume all these other things
under the spiritual life, that is the most important thing.
And when you sit down, you're not going to think about them
anymore, because they're secondary.
They have fulfilled their function.
Now you're doing what is really important.
That is doing a meditation practice.
These are just ways of thinking about it.
Everybody's slightly different to see if that works for you or
not. Was there somebody over there?
Yes, please. You're not interacting with that
into your daily life. When you're sitting, you're
peaceful, then you have to get up and do something.
Then you're just trying to keep it moving.
I wouldn't recommend that. When you go on retreat, then
enjoy the meditation and the bliss and everything else.
If you want to meditate in your daily life, it's a wonderful
thing to do. Don't expect any kind of
profound results in daily life. If I were you, use your
meditation in your daily life just to help you to have an even
better heart, if you can, to be a better person.
To say more kind things to people around you.
To let people you meet in everyday life say something you
never said to someone before. That really shocks them.
You're such a wonderful colleague.
I'm so glad you've been my colleague for the last three
years. Do people hear these kind of
things often in work life? Do people say, I love having you
as a colleague. Does that happen?
No, more people complain. So say that.
When you say that, you surprise people.
It becomes very beautiful. This is about how to use your
daily life and all the daily opportunities to actually live
really well. Use your meditation practice in
daily life not to try to be mindful, but just to be mindful
enough so that you're able to be kind.
That is enough mindfulness. Mindfulness for its own sake,
it's not really all that useful. It is useful if it is used to
enable you to reduce the defilements, reduce the anger,
improve the kindness. That is why mindfulness really
is useful. Because you're able to see what
is going on in your mind. So you can then take appropriate
reactions. But just being mindful for
mindfulness's sake isn't really all that, it doesn't really have
much power to it. This is what I would say.
I'm sure I won't really answer your question formally because
I'm not really, I'm kind of being a bit naughty.
But I hope you don't mind. You want to come back?
You want to ask me what I welcome to?
I know what you mean. Okay, good.
Anyone else want to say something?
I'd like to say something. Tonight you talked about
focusing on the process. This is something that you
discussed in a talk that you did a few weeks ago about getting
rid of sensual pleasures. Okay, maybe, yeah, okay.
That was very interesting because that's something that
really stayed with me. Because it's very, the way that
I see it, and I think you've already kind of answered my
question, but it's basically focusing on every process,
everything that we do on our daily lives.
That's probably the way, that's the way to practice, right?
Exactly, precisely. Because this path really starts
to work when you have absolute full commitment to the path and
you persevere with it. Every moment you have an
opportunity to do something good, you take every
opportunity. Every opportunity you have to do
something bad, you don't take that opportunity, you let it be.
That is when the path really starts to work.
So this is the hardest part in Buddhism, oops, is, speaking
with the microphone in the right way, the hardest part in
Buddhism is actually that commitment and perseverance to
the practice. That is the hardest part.
How do you get that? And the way you get that
commitment and perseverance in the end is just listening to the
Dhamma, coming back to the word of the Buddha, allowing that to
brainwash you in a beautiful way.
And the idea of brainwashing is actually very nice because it
all cleans out your mind on the one hand, and on the other hand
it kind of changes your views in the opposite direction.
And then it happens automatically.
But for me, what that meant also, there's a lot that I don't
know about the Dhamma and the big picture, if you like, but it
sort of like made it simpler and safer because it was something
that you can do, like you can focus on what's in front of you.
And that is a process. Good, great, wonderful, okay,
excellent. Happy to hear that, yeah.
It's wonderful. Yes.
It's a very critical question. Now, either in the Anathana
Siddhuta or the Sarvabdha Siddhuta, that's the Buddha says
establish your mindfulness in front of you.
I asked about significance of that.
And also some pages say that in the Vaisapadabhivam Anga, it
stated that there are 18 ways that you can get the Anathana.
It's mentioned. And it's also mentioned that you
should fix your attention somewhere in front of you.
And then it's not this I don't mean it's the point of touch,
but it's just a sensation somewhere in front.
I was just wondering about this. Sure, yeah.
I think that is a very important part of the Anathana Sattva
Sutta, not the Sarvabdha Sutta. Parimukha Satta Upadabettilapna.
And it means having established mindfulness Parimukha.
The question is what does Parimukha mean?
That's the big question. And of course if you go to the
commentaries and you go to what is called the exegetical
tradition of Buddhism, which is the explanatory tradition, which
is the Patisambhida Manga that you're talking about, which is
the Vasudha Manga, which is also the Abhidhamma really as well.
The way they explain that is that you should have your
attention on the breath on the upper lip or the tip of your
nose in this area here. That's what they say.
That is kind of the standard way that this is explained in the
commentaries. But whether that is correct or
not is actually very, is not really clear.
It is not very certain whether it actually is right.
And they have been studies done, like with so many things, on the
word Parimukha, what does it actually mean?
And I think my friend Venibhata Nalaiyur was kind of a scholar
of the highest caliber and who has written I don't know how
many papers on Buddhism, that's too many actually, probably, but
lots and lots and lots. Some of them are very, very
good. And he did a detailed study on
the word Parimukha. And he came to the conclusion
that in the Suttas, in the word of the Buddha, it does not
actually mean having anything to do with upper lip or the tip of
the nose. The word mukha, the word mukha
in Pali means the face or the mouth.
So basically what is kind of Parimukha, the prefix Pali often
has this feeling of all around or kind of something like that.
Sometimes it's often, prefix are a bit vague, but that's kind of
the general meaning of Pali. So something like just, you
know, in the way I think he eventually ended up translating
it was something like awareness in the present space and the
present moment, something like that.
It means, basically what it means present moment and present
space, right here, right now, if you like it.
That's what it means. And the one way of interpreting
that, and this is the way Ajahn Brahm always teaches meditation
and the way I've been following as well and I think it works
really, really nicely. And that is the idea of not
worrying about where you are watching the breath because it's
not body contemplation. If you focus about the point, it
becomes body contemplation rather than breath
contemplation. Because you're worried about in
the stomach or here or where exactly.
In the Mahasatrusha Mahasatrusha say, oh you should feel it in
the abdomen, in the other, say up here.
But it's not body contemplation, it's breath contemplation.
So all you have to do is to know whether the breath is going in
or is going out. It doesn't matter where as long
as you know it is going in. And you can know that without
reference to the body. You can know it as a purely kind
of abstracted from the body, if you like, whether the breath is
going in or breath is going out. As your mindfulness improves,
you may find that it is in a certain place.
But initially it is almost as if it is abstracted from the body.
Just the breath going in and the breath going out.
That's all you have to know. And that I think is a suitable
way of looking at the breath meditation.
Because one of the problems of narrowing it down too much,
initially especially, is that your mind can often become very
tense. And people often talk about the
Samadhi headaches. I heard about Samadhi headache.
People focusing, focusing, focusing, oh my head, oh it's
actually non-Samadhi headache. It's not really Samadhi at all.
It's the anti-Samadhi headache. But anyway, this is what people
get. And they get that precisely
because the focus is too narrow. So, ideally when you start out,
you want to have a focus which is a little bit larger.
It gives the mind a little bit more scope for movement.
So you don't feel so trapped with the meditation object.
And then gradually the focus comes down.
As you become peaceful, the focus comes down more to one
point, to one particular place. And I think that is a very
skillful way of doing the Panapanasati.
And I would forget about the Pada Samidha Magaya.
It doesn't matter so much. And follow what I think is
probably I would say, I mean it's very hard to be absolutely
sure about these things. But I think that's a better way
of looking at it. Yes, back there.
I was reading the teaching and the teacher was talking about an
Ancietation saying there is no point in giving something up
because the teacher said you should.
Because if you force yourself to give something up, you'll still
think about it and obsess over it.
And when the time comes, you'll be ready to start to do
something about it. I was wondering Yeah, it's
definitely a lot of truth about it, you know, because you can't
really force yourself. But obviously it's good to get
the teachings about what you may want to give up.
Let's get another way of putting it.
So this is what you may want to give up.
Keep the five precepts. You may want to give up killing
living beings. You may want to give up
stealing. You may want anything.
Yeah, maybe I should give up. Oh, not yet.
I don't feel like it yet. I need to steal a bit more first
of all. And then that will drag.
I will give up stealing. This is the way you do it.
And then gradually move in that direction.
But this is particularly true of very profound attachments.
And this is probably what we mean here.
So if somebody says, give up sensual pleasures, of course,
that is where it gets much more tricky.
Because these things are definitely places where you have
to be very careful. If you try to give up, but
you're not ready to give up, it's going to cause so much
suffering for yourself. So when it comes to the
pleasures of life, you know, oh, I shouldn't be playing so many
video games, or I shouldn't be kind of indulging in this or
whatever, allow that to come more naturally.
Try to get an understanding first of all why it is
problematic, why it doesn't work for you.
The deeper your understanding is, the easier it's going to be
for you to let it go eventually. So with those things, I
definitely agree. And if you want to become,
people want to become monastics, it's very interesting on this
retreat we had in the Lake, in the Peak District, a few people
were excited thinking about coming to monastics.
And I always really enjoy that. It's really cool, people want to
become monastics. But that too is very important,
that you do it when you feel it's the right time.
It has to be fairly natural. You don't force these things.
You don't have, you don't be too idealistic here, I want to be a
monk, I don't really, I can't really kind of, I'm not sure if
I can kind of do it, but I'm going to do it anyway because I
have to do it, I'm going to use willpower if nothing else works.
And that doesn't work, you're not going to last very long.
A few months down the line you're going to destroy, you're
going to be back messing around in ordinary life again.
So allow things to come naturally.
I think that is a very good point.
So thank you for that point. I think it's funny, it's quite
critical. I think it was Syngar Gustin who
in both God said, dear God, why don't we give up pleasures of
the flesh? Pleasures of the flesh?
But not yet. So I'll give you determination
before you do. Right, yeah, exactly.
I've heard about that one, yeah. Exactly, timing is very
important. And timing is about ripening
your understanding of the Dhamma.
As your understanding of the Dhamma ripens, timing eventually
becomes righter. So it's all about right view.
People often think that right view is either you have it or
you haven't got it. Yeah, I believe in rebirth, I
believe in Kama, whatever else it is.
But that isn't what right view is about.
It's not about saying I believe in this.
Right view is about investigating these things,
getting a feeling for them, making something emotional
actually mean something for you. And as you do that, as these
things become more, you know, actually start to mean something
to you, then also something inside of you is ripened.
Eventually you are ready to give up the pleasures of the flesh.
You don't even have to ask God to find help, it just happens
automatically. It's very good in Buddhism
because we haven't got it God, so it kind of comes in handy.
And then you're ready, and then it happens.
Yeah, it's a good point. Yes?
Every year we have the issue of the Buddha and the monastery.
Yeah. There's a lot of space for
people to come and then I guess between, I guess, around.
I'm just wondering whether there are recited in Kusum or in Kuhi.
This one here. Exactly.
Follow the same sort of very very engaging, light way of
teaching that you bring teaching to us so that we can engage with
the Buddha throughout the year. The internet is available, yeah.
You have so many teachers on the internet these days.
And if you like Ajahn Brahm's teachings, then you can go find
them on the internet. They're available.
So I think one of the great things about the internet is
precisely that teachings are certainly available in a brand
new way. They have never been before.
What did you say? Something about the Bodhinyana
coming? What was the word you used?
The monastery where the tradition is associated.
Coming here once a year, is that what you said?
It's very engaging. Sure, sure.
This is exactly right. This is what I found so
attractive by Ajahn Brahm's teaching.
It was very engaging. It was very easy to understand.
It was very profound at the same time.
Engaging, profound and easy to understand.
That's my kind of teaching. Many, many good things coming
together makes it very powerful and very beautiful.
So I agree with you. I think that one reason why
meditation teachers often are not like that is because
traditionally, the way Buddhism has been taught in traditional
Buddhist countries is very formalized.
Very, very formal. Many of the Western monks,
especially those who are trained in Asia, they have learned that
way of doing things and they tend to continue in that kind of
track. For me, what I think is very
important, when we bring the Dhamma to the West, and it's
still very new in the Western world, when we do that, we have
to engage differently. We have to do things in a way
which is kind of more standard way of doing things in the
Western world. People can appreciate, people
can actually enjoy in a different way.
I think that is so important. We shouldn't throw the baby out
of the bath water. We shouldn't throw away rebirth,
which is fundamental to the Buddhist teachings.
But what we can do, we can adjust some of the more
superficial things, some of the more cultural aspects of
Buddhism. They are not so important.
And re-do those a little bit for a modern era.
This is precisely what Ajahn Brahm has been so good at.
Bringing up modern problems and things, how to resolve them in
the modern era, making the Dhamma interesting and also
entertaining at the same time. Sometimes because it's a little
bit too entertaining, but I don't know about that.
It's wonderful when that happens.
It actually becomes very powerful.
I always look for ways of making the Dhamma more accessible.
One of the things that you notice is that the mindfulness
movement becomes very powerful around the world.
One of the reasons, I think, why it has been so successful is
that the teachings are in large part drawn straight from the
Dhamma, straight from Buddhism. No copyright, nothing, just take
it away. Really unfair.
Why is it successful? Because the entry barrier is so
lower. It's secular.
There's no weird road with shape and head.
It's not that kind of nonsense. You take out all the what people
consider the superstitious aspects of Buddhism and just
retain what they consider the core.
Of course, that's not what happens.
What happens is that you take away all the things that matter
at the same time. That's a different story.
Sometimes we should do the same thing in Buddhist circles.
Try to find a way to make the Dhamma so the entry barrier
isn't so great. We don't have a five-meter tall
Buddha statue, for example. This is scary.
It scares people. I remember when I started out on
the Buddhist path, I was scared of all these kind of things.
These monks in robes and these massive Buddha statues.
It was kind of intimidating. You realize, actually, there
must be better ways of doing this.
I was thinking, when I should come tonight in jeans and
t-shirt. Actually, the interesting thing
is that if you look at the world of the Buddha, there wouldn't
have been any problem with that. I could have done that.
I wouldn't really have been breaking any rules as such.
But it wouldn't have been the same.
I don't think so. I think these robes are actually
quite cool. I think we'll probably be
wearing these robes also in the future.
Because they advertise something different.
If you come in jeans and t-shirt, it looks like everyone
else. It doesn't really make a
difference. Also, once you get to my age,
you get a bit overweight. This is much better when you get
a bit overweight. That's not the reason.
We should finish up. So much for finishing up.
Any last question? I think that would be really
great. Let's take one last question
from Matt at the back. Please, Matt.
I have a question. I have a question about how to
integrate from repeats. I remember after my first
retreat, I think it's hard to take away the world generated
factors of enlightenment away. Because I say they've got
abstraction and they're so busy. But I thought you just consider
it an oblique loop. A good portion of it is just
what you and the process and where mindfulness comes in much
later down. A lot of the factors about
managing how we interact with other people and kindness.
If you say, I like kindness. The reason you can take away any
sort of beautiful almost as if the world is free, but you can
take away. So I wrote an article the
weekend and I was noticing myself to be more behind my
thoughts of the lead through the end work.
So mentioning that I was trying to think.
I think even more sometimes we get a sense of how liberation
could be achieved. Because we take some steps
towards that happiness. We experience that happiness and
it's something you've never experienced before.
And I think that gives rise to a lot of right view about how
liberation would be in terms of the and that all this is with
you. I think that I think that the
book was written because he remembered the title of the book
and he stayed with him and he remembered it and he was most
probably the most powerful thing.
Yeah, I fully agree with all that.
That's certainly true. So you take away those things
that you have to leave behind, those things that are difficult
to take with you. Anyway, I'm going to just say,
I'll say it a little bit faster. One of the reasons I have come
to the England, UK, I'm here is because I was invited by Quinta
Matanda. All of you know her already?
Yeah, okay. She is trying to establish a
monastery for fully ordained nuns, big communities in the UK.
There is no such monastery in the UK at the moment, is that
right? Correct, yeah, that's correct.
There is only one bikini as well.
And the idea behind this is to kind of give a level playing
field between nuns and monks as far as possible and also to give
women the chance to ordain in the Buddhist sasana, the
Buddhist the Buddhist thing here.
The Buddhist sangha, to ordain in the Buddhist sangha so that
they have the best possible situation to also reach all
these wonderful things that I've been talking about tonight.
Liberation of the mind, liberation and wisdom, all of
these wonderful things. It is a remarkable and wonderful
thing that she is doing. It is actually very difficult.
She is by herself, not having any support is very, very hard.
Monastic life is really a life where you are supported by your
fellow monastics. To be by yourself is actually
very difficult. And this is why she comes to
Australia and stays close to Bodhidharma monastery every year
for three months, just to be with Ajahn Brahm and to have a
chance to kind of develop her meditation properly down there.
So it is a very difficult thing that she is doing and she really
needs all the support that she can have to make this vision
into a reality. So I am just letting you know
that so that you understand the situation.
So that if you want to support in one way or another that would
be a wonderful and marvelous thing.
Supporting something really quite historical, something very
useful, hopefully, would be very, very useful for Buddhism
in the UK in the future. Ok, Venerable, now do you want
to say something? So first I just want to thank
you Ajahn Brahmani. You said that it is rare to hear
kind words or powerful words, but I want to thank you for
being a wonderful Kalyan Amitra on this path.
I feel like I have gained so much in terms of personal
support during this time. And I think that bringing the
early Buddhist teachings to England in the way you have and
being able to elucidate them with so much clarity and
inspiration has just been really moving for many people.
Many people have told me that it was the best retreat they have
ever done. Which is quite a big thing to
say. And a lot of people came for the
first time to that retreat. It was their first experience of
meditation. They came specifically because
they knew that this would put them on the path in a really
clear way. In a way that they can
understand and have that direct relationship to the Buddha.
So thank you very much. It's difficult to express with
words. But Leah just asked about the
bikini project and where we are up to with that.
Now normally I go into all this kind of technical, sort of
mundane stuff. But this evening I just got so
touched to kind of look at everybody here.
I had my eyes open most of the time.
And I felt like this is where we are at.
I mean I know half the people in this room, many of you have been
key supporters right from the beginning.
And not just supporting the project, but supporting me also
with a lot of love and a lot of warmth.
And without that it wouldn't be possible.
So in a sense people here have been my spiritual friends, also
my spiritual colleagues, also my supporters.
And it's not me that you're supporting actually.
It's the development of Buddhism in England.
So yes it's for the Bhikkhuni Sangha.
But through supporting the Bhikkhuni Sangha and also
offering a residence eventually. Because all the donations are
going to go towards building up a place to stay.
We can have a presence in this country.
And that means of course more regular teaching.
So I'm just starting out teaching, but I'm really
confident I have excellent teachers.
And so at least I have some kind of understanding of where this
path is going and how to proceed along it.
And I think like Hajin Bumali said it's not so much the goal
but the process. So yes for me the process is
very much about kindness, very much about making peace with
everything that arises in our mind and in our practice and
really allowing a natural kind of unfolding of the Dhamma.
So I mean this for me is very exciting and I feel we're all in
it together really. And so this isn't something that
I'm doing for others, it's something we're all doing
together. And so in a sense this is the
monastery right now. You know the people in this
room, the atmosphere that we have together, you know the love
that's here, the sense of spiritual friendship that's here
is the monastery. And hopefully over time we'll
find conducive places to develop that.
And not only can women train but lay people, men and women, can
come and stay. So you know the more property we
have, the more acres we have, the more opportunity there is
for that. And I just want to thank if
that's okay without embarrassing people, a few people in person
because here we have an on-campus treasurer, Tehany.
So I want to really thank you Tehany.
Do you want to stick your hand up?
Because you'll be coming for the Reigns retreat.
She's coming smiling and playing with me.
And this is going to really strengthen the whole project
because when we have people involved who really practice,
that gives a different energy to the whole thing.
Amina's here and Amina's been with me right from the very
beginning for the first couple of years doing pretty much
everything that I couldn't do online.
And yeah, specifically helping with the tours but also helping
us with getting registered as a charity.
And that was a huge milestone for us.
She did such a good job with the help of some of the colleagues
as well, the trustees, that we got registered within a month of
our application. Which one is she?
Amina. She's the one that giggles a
lot. And it's a taboo display and
it's very contagious. And there's several other people
here who've hosted me many times.
Rita at the back here. I just want to thank her for
being here tonight because I know Rita's really not so well.
And for you to turn up to a Dharma talk like this, you know,
despite the physical difficulties that you're going
through, it just shows such devotion to the Dharma.
And I want you to really appreciate that in yourself.
Because that's huge. That's actually huge.
And Anna also, she's part of the Bidwood Buddhist Society.
There's a few people here. Richard's here.
Richard met Ajahn Chah a long time back.
Really? Okay.
Wow. And Liz is here, next to him.
And the Bidwood Buddhist Society have been supporting me as a
group, really. Inviting me to teach.
Also developing some nice little fundraising initiatives to
spread Dharma. So little bags and some books.
So tonight at the end, we've only got about 10 minutes before
we have to leave. But there'll be some books
available at the back with some of Ajahn Brahmali's poignant
quotes and some nice photographs of very Dharma places in the
world. So they're available for
everybody to take. Yeah.
And yeah, Kirsty also is supporting us, helping me with
the newsletter and uploads of YouTube.
And many other people are involved.
So it's really for everybody. So yeah, hopefully by January
next year we might have a small base.
But it'll be small. It'll be just a business where I
can have a bit of rest. And there'll be a room for
someone to come and stay with me.
Maybe not someone for the whole period, but have a few people
coming and just experiencing how that feels.
I think the first step will be a little bit interesting and maybe
a bit tricky because it won't feel like a monastery straight
away. It'll be more like a little
vihara. So you live together and just
find a little bit of a balance between some structure and some
solitary time to practice. But eventually when we get the
team more strong and cohesive, then we'll move into something
bigger and more normal. But even in the beginning I've
decided to have this place in the countryside because
countryside living, forest, it's much more conducive to practice
and a much more style I think. And we just spent a month,
almost a month with Radita who's here from Latvia.
In Limegeis on the south coast. And what was really lovely there
was not only of course being supported by someone who came
over specifically for that purpose, to support not me but
the sangha. Was also finding that about
seven days at least we had people coming to offer dharma.
And that's in a small town on the south coast which is not
that accessible. But there are people all over
the place actually who want this to happen.
So that really inspired me and I think that gives me confidence
that we can actually start in a way we need to continue.
So avoid London. That's the key thing.
Because actually I've been like, yeah, start in London.
So that's how we're going to start.
So thank you very much to everybody.
There'll be an opportunity to give donations at the back and
to have the books and whatever else.
And hopefully see you all again somewhere into the next year.
Thank you. Oh yeah, I just met him.
I just met him. I just met him.
Yeah, sure, sure.
So the dharma tour is going on. Westfield, Fulham, and Tidham.
And Tidham is having a nice event.
Great, wonderful. I'm very glad to hear that.
It's a wonderful event. Are you from the...
Is it Rackingback? Yeah, Rackingback.
I was raised in Hatton. It didn't make sense.
But I've been doing things with UNZ.
Oh, really? I see.
I met somebody recently who had the same environment.
So just live well. Do the right thing.
That's the best thing you can do.
So, dharma is the most important thing.
It's more important, you guys. Mind, core.
Exactly, the whole thing. So just keep on doing that.
And making the best of it in a difficult situation.
Because it is difficult. I'm learning a lot.
Okay, great. Good, yeah.
Good luck with everything. Yeah.
Very good. Okay, very good.
It's different, Mike. Yes, I guess.
It's different. It's different.
Yeah, the teaching is different. You live over here or do you
live in here? I live here now.
You're living over here. I'm listening every day in
YouTube. Okay.
As a browser? Yeah.
But it's sometimes. Sometimes.
But today I'm studying. Good, I'm glad to hear that.
Okay, good luck. I really just wanted to say that
it's great to meet you. I think the talks are wonderful.
And that last talk for some reason really hits something
It's strange. Sometimes it really hits home.
Sometimes it really works. It's not like that.
You have to be in the right mood.
It has to be the right talk at the right time.
It's a bang. And ... ... ... ... ...