Okay, so I guess we can start. Tonight I am going to talk about
lay people and Buddhism. What is, how the Buddha looks at
lay people and Buddhism, lay Buddhists, how they interact
with the monastic community, how they ideally practice.
The reason for this is because I gave a talk on the importance of
monasticism a while ago. So now I want to balance it out
by also talking about the lay side of things as well.
After I talked about monasticism, some people thought
it was too much emphasis on monasticism, I thought maybe
it's nice to kind of balance things out a little bit.
It's always a good thing to do, I think.
But the reason why I did focus on monasticism before was simply
because that sometimes monasticism may not be valued
perhaps in the Western world. People think that monasticism is
just some kind of ancient tradition that can be discarded.
Monasticism is the bath water rather than the baby, so check
out the dirty bath water, and we'll keep the baby, like the
pure Dhamma or whatever. So that was really the reason
why I talked about that. But of course when you talk
about one topic, you always give a one-sided idea of things.
So for that reason I think it's important to talk about the lay
side of Buddhism as well. Especially since obviously lay
Buddhism is much larger as well than monastic Buddhism.
Monastic Buddhism is only a tiny percentage of lay Buddhists in
this world. Look at this Buddhist society
here, I don't know how many members we have now, 2,000,
3,000, 4,000 members or something.
It's a kind of large Buddhist society.
And many more people who are not officially members, but are kind
of members by heart almost. They kind of belong to this
Buddhist society. And the number of monastics we
have here is maybe altogether counted up 40, 40 plus
monastics. So like 1% or something like
that. Obviously it matters enormously,
the lay side of Buddhism. And one of the things that I
have always found when it comes to lay people, and one of the
things that I found interesting is that as a monk I'm often
inspired by some of the lay people and how well they
practice and how they live their lives.
It's actually amazing, I think, you know, very often it looks to
me that a lot of lay people far more inspiring than some of the
monastics I know. Isn't that kind of interesting?
And the reason for that of course is that as always there's
only a small subset of people who really take the practice
seriously. But if you have a lay person who
really practices seriously, we have some very serious
practitioners here in the Buddhist society of Western
Australia, they are much better, much more wiser than the vast
majority of monastics who do not take the practice of Buddhism
seriously. So often I think, wow, these lay
people, they are amazing, how do they do it?
Juggling their job, juggling their family lives, and still
practice in the Buddhist path so well, it's difficult enough to
be a monk for goodness sake, how do they do this in lay life?
Wow, I'm really awe-inspired. And it's true, there's actually
a lot of truth to that, when I see all the goodness and the
kindness, the depth of meditation sometimes that lay
people have, it's really kind of inspiring.
So for that reason, I think it is important to consider how we
can make the most out of practice as lay people and how
we should interact with the monastic community.
And one of the first things is just to start with the basics,
and of course the basic idea if you go to a traditional Buddhist
country, one of the basic kind of relationships between the
monastic community and the lay people, and it actually is a
very important relationship, is the idea that monastics normally
tend to be like the spiritual teachers, and lay people will
often give material support to the monastics.
That is a very kind of limited view of Buddhism, there's much
more to it than that, but that is like the basic kind of view.
And because basically Buddhism would not be able to survive
without both of these things, monastic community only survives
because of the generosity of lay people, so for that reason it's
actually a very important part of the relationship between
monastics and lay people. Without all of these parts
Buddhism wouldn't survive. The Buddha talks about the four
parissa, parissa means like an assembly or a congregation or a
grouping of people, and of course the four parissa's are
the bhikkhus, the monks, the nuns, and the laymen and the
laywomen. These are the four groupings,
the four assemblies in Buddhism. And according to the Buddha,
Buddhism is only complete if all those four assemblies are in
existence, all four assemblies are there, all of them are kind
of doing their part to keep Buddhism going.
And one of the most basic ideas is this idea of lay people
supporting monastics and monastics kind of giving
teaching in return. Sometimes people think that's
unfair, monks they kind of just sit there and lay people kind of
give them food and you know, that's a bit unfair, what about,
shouldn't there be more to it than that?
And that's kind of the point, this is just the beginning,
there is much more to it than that, but it's already a very
useful starting point. I think sometimes we
underestimate the actual delight, the beauty of that
interaction between lay people and monastics.
If you think about it in the right way, it actually is very
nice and a very beautiful thing here.
I must admit when I stay in our monastery and I see all the
people coming every day here, and every day we have maybe, I
don't know, it's very rare to have less than 20 people coming
to the meal time at Bodhinyana Monastery.
Sometimes 100 people, 200 people, and it's just so
beautiful to see people driving all that way here, cooking food
from early in the morning, bringing it to the monks, and
then Ajahn Brahm telling a few jokes, a bit of Dhamma perhaps,
have you been to Bodhinyana Monastery at the meal time?
You know what it's like, and people are enjoying themselves,
they are relaxing, they are having a good time, a little bit
of Dhamma and a little bit of everything coming together, and
it's actually a very positive and wholesome and beautiful
occasion. So some of these traditional
things actually have a lot of importance, a lot of beauty in
them that is very easy to forget, even though they are
just the foundations of the path, they are still very
beautiful in so many ways. And you would be surprised I
think, if you knew how some of the people in this Buddha
society, what they do and how they live and the things they
have done in the Buddha society. We just had before here Dennis
Shepherd, he is our president, and he has been part of the
Buddha society here for, I don't know, long before I became a
member of this Buddha society, I've only been here for 25
years, that's nothing compared to some of these other people.
And Dennis Shepherd has been around forever, and he is like
everyone's grandfather in the Buddha society.
Are you hiding away somewhere Dennis?
Anyway, it doesn't matter, you can be there at the back
somewhere. It's such a wonderful thing to
have a person like that, who is always stable, always reliable,
always puts the Dhamma first, always speaks in the right way,
and kind of supports everybody, he upholds this Buddha society,
he has put half of his life into this blooming Buddha society.
What a wonderful thing that is, to have people like that who
support the society so much. I'm talking about Dennis now
simply because he happens to be our current president, and
because it is a wonderful service, not only here, but many
other people do as well. So this is just one example, one
of the other examples which comes to mind because it's such
a beautiful example of the idea of generosity.
This is one of the ladies in this Buddha society who a while
ago, a few months ago, she decided to sell all her jewelry,
sell all her jewelry so she could give a donation to the
Buddha society. The thing is that many of these
people, they are not super wealthy or anything like that,
they are just ordinary people, and to be able to support the
Buddha society, their building programs, whatever it is, they
are willing to sell all their jewelry and then give the
donations to the Buddha society. So inspiring, so beautiful when
you hear things like that, isn't that marvelous?
It's like giving up something which is very dear to you to
kind of further the aims of Buddhism right here in
Australia. It's just so, I find it
personally so inspiring and marvelous it makes me kind of up
my game a little bit when I hear other people act in this way
because it's such a beautiful thing to do.
So this is the kind of things that you find right here, and I
know lots and lots of stories like this here in the Buddha
society, this is giving you a kind of basic idea of what
happens and how this Buddha society works, things that many
of you will never have seen simply because you haven't got
that overview that you have as a monk and you see kind of
everybody the way they live. So it's not to be said for this
traditional way of doing things, the connection between the lay
community and the monastic community.
But as I said, it goes much, much beyond that.
And one of the interesting kind of functions of the lay people,
functions, I don't know if you want to be function, one of the
interesting functions of the lay Buddhist community is to serve
as a check on the monastics. And this is the idea here, and
this is something that goes way back, all the way back to the
time of the Buddha, the idea here is that the lay community,
basically they observe the monastics and they understand
where support should be given and where support should not be
given. And through that, it actually is
the case that lay people have an incredible power over Buddhism,
over the Sangha, over the monastics, over the whole thing,
you're actually in a very powerful position.
You may not feel very powerful, most of us don't feel very
powerful, we'll just do our little bit and we'll see what
happens, but actually it's a very powerful position, because
if you withhold your support, well the Sangha doesn't really
function anymore. And that is a very important
safety mechanism in Buddhism. Why?
Because there's always a tendency, if you are too
independent or whatever, there's always a tendency for the dark
forces in the human mind, the defilements, the greed, the
anger, the delusion, these kind of things, there's a tendency
for these things to take over. And you see this in monasticism,
you see this in the world, you see this everywhere.
And one of the ways of counteracting that is for lay
people to channel their support in a wise way where they know
that Buddhism, or at least they have some inkling that Buddhism
is practised in the right way. It's very powerful, you have all
this power, are you aware of that?
Sometimes you don't know how much power you have, in fact in
one way it could be said that lay people have more power than
the monastics. What can you do as monastics?
You can't do very much, you can sit here and give a talk and I
could maybe tell you off and never be invited again, that's
pretty much how far my power goes, I'm not very powerful at
all. The one power that monks have,
which is interesting, I will tell you this power now because
we're talking about power. And the one power that you have
as a monk or as a nun is called the overturning the bowl power.
Have you heard about that power? This is the power if you have a
monk. If the lay people start to
criticise Buddhism in a bad way, in the wrong way, then what you
can do is you can refuse to accept alms from those lay
people. It's called, the name is a
symbol, it's to overturn the bowl, you don't actually receive
alms. This is really as far as the
monks' power go. Does that sound scary to anyone?
Yeah, overturn the bowl? If you are a traditional
Buddhist, actually this is pretty scary, this is really,
really scary. It may not sound very scary if
you are kind of new to Buddhism, you overturn the bowl, what's
the big deal? Please, carry on.
But if you are a traditional Buddhist, this is kind of a
really serious business. And one of the interesting
instances of this, was in Burma recently, when the military was
still in charge in Myanmar, and while they were in charge, they
did all kind of bad things, like the military in power maybe
tends to do. And on one occasion, the sangha,
the monastic community decided we need to do something with the
military so they don't oppress everyone, don't oppress the
sangha so much. So they decided to overturn the
bowl towards the military regime.
And that was like massive in Burma, it was really a big, big
thing. And the military was extremely
upset. Why?
Because it kind of takes away the opportunity to support the
sangha, which is that very mechanism between lay people and
monasticism that makes the whole thing function.
Once you take that way, they feel that the function has been
taken away, the ability to make good kamma, to make good merit
has been destroyed when that happens.
That is really where it comes from.
But this is pretty much the only power you have as a monk over
the lay people. Not all that much perhaps, but
very interesting. So as lay people, you have this
power. And if you look at the history
of Buddhism, and it goes back a long, long way, all the way back
to the time of the Buddha, the way that this was used, and the
idea of course is to purify Buddhism, and you will hold
support when Buddhism isn't practiced properly.
And this goes back a long way. One of the interesting stories
that touch on this is the story of what is often called the
first council in Buddhism. Council, these are historical
events that are recorded in the Pali or the ancient Buddhist
scriptures. And these were when the monastic
community would come together to recite the teachings of the
Buddha. And this story is told, and it's
a very famous and well known story.
And this story is about soon after the Buddha passed away,
people wanted to ensure that Buddhism survived for the
future. One of those very significant
and important things that Buddhism was to survive.
And the monastic community felt that it was its job, its
purpose, to ensure the survival of Buddhism.
So all these monks, especially the monks who were kind of in
charge of this chanting business, they all came together
and they recited these teachings of the Buddha.
And this is how we actually still have the Buddhist
teachings in the present day, because of that sort of
accumulation of the sutas of the early discourses of the Buddha
from the very beginning. The Buddha laid down the
foundation work, and said, you should come together frequently
to recite these texts. And as you do that, they will be
kept for posterity. And the problems, the faults
will be weeded out because you come together and chant these
texts together, or you recite them together.
So it's very interesting, already that's very powerful and
very interesting because it tells us a lot about Buddhist
history. And the ability we had to
actually keep these scriptures intact over the millennia, over
the centuries, going from one culture to the next one.
But the interesting thing happened at this particular
council. And what happened was that after
all the kind of reciting of the scripture was finished,
Venerable Ananda, he pipes up. Venerable Ananda was the
right-hand disciple of the Buddha, and he had been there
throughout the last 20 years of the Buddha's life.
He had retained all of the scriptures, all of the Buddha's
scriptures in mind. He must have had a phenomenal
memory. That's why he was in charge of
reciting these things. So after everything has been
finished, he pipes up and says, well, after the Buddha told me
before he passed away that you are allowed to give up all the
minor training rules. And the monks look at him, are
you sure? What are you talking about?
The Buddha said you are allowed to give up all the training
rules. And the Buddha said, yeah, not
the Buddha, but the Buddha said, yeah, he said we can give up all
the training rules. So what does that mean?
All the minor training rules. And what it means, if you know
the difference between major and minor rules, it means that you
keep, the monks have 227 so-called rules, this is kind of
one set of rules, kind of the major rules, whatever you want
to call them, 227 rules, these are divided up into serious
important rules and minor rules. The important rules, number
exactly 17, the last 210 are called minor rules.
So it can be very tempting to chuck out all those minor rules,
we get rid of about, what is it, 90%, over 90% of the rules is
kind of boom, gone in one kind of go.
Makes life very simple. If you have somebody, it's very
tempting to say that. If the nuns, it's a very similar
kind of percentage, the nuns have actually more rules than
the monks, it's 310 rules, but the serious rules again, only
number about 25, so again, it's over, less than 10% would
remain. Imagine the temptation to chuck
them all out, if the Buddha said that.
But what actually happened is interesting.
What happened was that the sangha, first of all they asked,
do you know exactly what the Buddha meant by minor rules?
I said, no, I don't really know. It should have been obvious, you
would have thought everyone would have been able to agree on
that, but somehow they couldn't even agree on what were the
minor and the major rules. And then Venerable Mahakassapa,
one of the most famous monks at that time in the sangha, he
said, well, if we abandon all these rules, the Buddha has just
passed away, and soon as the Buddha passes away, we abandon
all these rules, what are the lay people going to say?
The lay people know our rules, they know what we are supposed
to do, and if as soon as the Buddha passes away, we give them
up, they are going to say, you dodgy monks, you scallywags,
here you are, your master has just gone, and the first thing
you do is to abandon all your rules.
Away with you, we don't want to have anything more to do with
you, you dodgy monks. This is what the lay people are
going to say. So they decided, basically out
of knowing how the lay community would react to abandoning the
rules, they decided to keep all the monastic rules as a
consequence of that. So that was an opportunity
missed. That's bad, all those rules
could have been chucked out, that's terrible, and now missed
opportunity, now we are stuck with all these rules, so we have
to live up to them. Anyway, so we can probably deal
with that. But very fascinating, and it
shows you that from the very early times, the lay people knew
the rules of the monastics. I would also advise you to
educate yourself a little bit about the rules of the
monastics, because if you do, you will be able to tell which
monastics are living properly and which ones are not.
So if you see like a married monastic, wait a minute, is that
right? Are you allowed to be married
according to the rules? Maybe not, but if you don't
know, read the rules, and it will be pretty clear that being
married is not the ideal situation for a monastic.
A little bit dodgy as they say here.
But there are more, many, many rules like that, rules like for
example, use of money. Monastics shouldn't really be
using money, and monastics should have a very pure
morality. Monastics should ideally be an
example. If you see monks who have an
immoral kind of conduct, or nuns for that matter, then of course
it is a bad idea, it is not the way it should be.
So this is how you can tell, and it's important to be a little
bit educated about what the monks and nuns can and cannot
do, and this is the way it was all the way back to the time of
the Buddha. And if you are a good monk and a
good nun, you don't really have much to fear anyway.
And it helps Buddhism to steer in the right direction.
It helps people to give support where support really is due, and
to take away sometimes support from where it is not so good to
support. One of the other interesting
things, now that we talk about the very exciting topic of
monastic rules, is that right? Very exciting.
Actually, anyway, whatever. One of the interesting things is
how these monastic rules were actually laid down.
How did they come to be? And one of the most important
ways that the monastic rules came to be, were laid down, was
because of complaints by lay people.
Lay people would go to the Buddha and say, Oh, Venerable
Sir, Bhante, Master, these monks of yours, they are hopeless,
they are just messing around. And the Buddha said, Oh yeah,
you have a point. So he would call the monks and
say, Is it true that you are doing this?
Okay, rule, okay, let down a rule.
This is how the majority of monastic rules came about.
Lay people complaining about the monks and also about the nuns,
which is interesting, and the Buddha took that seriously.
So if you have complaints about the monastic community, it is
okay to bring it up, that's what it means.
It is okay to deal with it, because then again, sometimes
you can actually weed out some of the problems in the monastic
community. So this is a very important
relationship between the monks and the lay community.
This is how we keep Buddhism pure for the future.
This is how we avoid going down the path of all kinds of
defilements and problems of corruption of Buddhism.
And there is so much corruption in Buddhism around the world,
but to minimize that, these are the kind of procedures that are
useful to keep in mind. But this is really only the
beginning of the relationship between, this is really about
the relationship between monks and lay people, but the lay
people's practice goes way, way beyond this.
And one of the most interesting passages that talks about the
four assemblies and talks about the practice of lay people, is
found in the famous Mahaparinibbana Sutta.
This is the Sutta that our president and the shepherd
mentioned just before, which we are going to talk about on
Sunday. This is like a preview, a little
bit of a preview of that Sutta. So if this really excites you,
please come on Sunday. If it doesn't excite you, then
no need to come on Sunday. So what this Sutta is about, the
Mahaparinibbana, that literally means the greater discourse on
the Buddha's passing away, or something like that.
And it is about the last days of the Buddha, the Buddha travels
across India, and he knows that he is nearing his final days, he
is getting very old and kind of fragile and all of these kind of
things, just like everyone gets old, same kind of thing
happening to the Buddha. And because he knows that his
end is coming very close, it is a very powerful emotional Sutta.
You can imagine the Buddha is about to pass away here, the
greatest spiritual genius in human history is about to pass
away here. Imagine what that feels like,
you are around at this time. It is difficult enough to lose
loved ones, but imagine if you are a monk or lay person, the
Buddha has looked after you all this time, and is about to die.
It is a very, very powerful moment.
And because it is so powerful, the Buddha realizes he has to
lay down the rules and the future for the monastics and the
lay community. And one of these encounters, and
this is probably slightly mythical, but the content, the
kind of Dhamma content is still, I think, interesting.
And this is the meeting between Buddha and Mara.
Mara is like the tempter figure in Buddhism.
Mara is the one who wants you to indulge in the world, so you
can't get liberated and all of these kind of things.
Mara is mostly the psychological thing inside, the tempter inside
that draws you in the wrong direction, towards arguments and
ill will and all of these kind of things.
So there is this conversation between this Mara and the
Buddha. And Mara comes to the Buddha and
says to the Buddha, Well, Venerable Sir, when we first met
a long time ago, when I was trying to distract you while you
were trying to get enlightened, this is one of Mara's most
important functions, to distract the Buddha to be before his
awakening. This is kind of one of the main
functions of Mara. So at that time, soon after your
awakening, you said to me that I begged you to please pass away,
because I didn't want to have Buddhas around, because Buddhas
kind of destroy my plans of keeping people in samsara.
I don't really like Buddhas very much, Maras.
Maras and Buddhas are kind of opposite forces in the world.
So Mara, please pass away straight away, please, please,
you are destroying my plan to control humanity.
The Buddha says, sorry, I'm not going to pass away.
I'm going to pass away until four things are in place.
And these four things are to have a strong monk's community,
a strong nun's community, a strong layman's community, a
strong laywomen's community. When these four communities are
strong, then I will pass away. And in this Maha Pandibbana suit
I'm talking about now, Mara comes to the Buddha and says,
Well, now all of these communities are strong.
Please, time for you to pass away.
Mara never gives up. This is the thing about Mara,
really tenacious, just like defilements, tend not to give
up. Same thing with Mara.
So the Buddha says, you have a point, actually.
Now all the four assemblies are really strong.
So what does it mean that the four assemblies are strong?
What does it mean that the laymen and laywomen are strong?
And this is quite fascinating. What it means is, first of all,
that you have a good grasp of the Buddhist teachings.
You have listened to the Buddhist teachings, you have
understood them, you have penetrated them by view so you
know what is going on. This is the first thing.
So laypeople understanding the Buddhist teachings well is one
of the kind of fundamental things that laypeople should be
doing according to this. At the time of the Buddha, there
would have been such laypeople. And if you look at the history
of Buddhism, some of the most interesting sutas, some of the
most interesting discourses by the Buddha were actually handed
down by laypeople. Were you aware of that?
Because usually when we think about the Buddhist discourses,
they were recited by the monastics, handed on by the
monastics from one generation to the next one, there is very
little talk about the laypeople. But there are a couple of very
interesting instances in the sutas of laypeople handing down
discourses. One of these is where the monks
are on their rains retreat. The rains retreat is a time when
the monks, we have it here at Bodhinyana monastery as well,
they have it at the Dhammasara monastery, when the monks stay
in the monastery. We are not supposed to go out.
But there is some exceptions when you actually can go out,
you can break your rains. And one of those exceptions is
if a layperson knows a sutra, knows a discourse by the Buddha,
and they are about to die or something, then the layperson
can send a message to the monk, and say, please come and learn
this sutra from me, so it doesn't get lost.
And then the monks should go to that layperson, learn that
discourse from the layperson, and then bring it back, and then
carry it on, and incorporate it into the canon, into the
canonical discourses. So this is an example where
laypeople are basically put on the same level as the monks as
far as remembering the sutras are concerned, and taking care
of Buddhism for the future. This is one instance.
Another instance that is very famous, is a whole compilation
of sutras called the Iti-Vuttaka.
You heard about the Iti-Vuttaka? Some of you probably have, some
of you probably have, the majority of you haven't, but the
Iti-Vuttaka is a really nice collection, full of really short
sutras with a verse, often very profound sutras, and there is a
distinction between the what is it, the Apparisesa Nibbana Datu
and the ordinary Nibbana Datu. Okay, don't worry too much about
that, but it's an important distinction, and some of these
really profound sutras are found in this collection.
And this collection was collected by a laywoman.
She was around when the Buddha was teaching her, and she
remembered these discourses, and she made it into a collection, I
suppose, and said to the monks, this is the collection, I will
recite it for you, you carry it on, and to the present day, is
known to have been collected by a laywoman from that time.
Isn't that fascinating? And then that was incorporated
into the body of sutras, and basically a laywoman who
wouldn't normally have had a very high status in that
society, her memory of the sutras was put on par with
everyone else. This is the Iti-Vuttaka
collection. So next time you read that,
remember that, and have a look at it, there's some very
beautiful sutras in there. Another example which I find is
very interesting because it inverts the relationship between
laypeople and monastics. That is a famous layman called
Uga, Uga the householder, Uga Gahapati in the sutras.
And Uga Gahapati, he was this very, very advanced layperson,
one day he said to his wives, he had many wives like they had in
those days, especially if you were wealthy, you would have a
number of wives, okay, you better all leave because I'm not
really interested in married life anymore, so just go off and
I will help you find a nice husband for you.
So he sent all his wives away and found them nice husbands and
everything, and they all left him except for one who wanted to
be with him, even though marriage life had changed a lot
because of his insight into these teachings.
This was Uga the householder, and he, Uga the householder, one
day he went to the Buddha, and the Buddha said, well, Uga, you
are kind of an exceptional layperson, and we hear that you
have eight amazing qualities, would you like to tell us about
your eight amazing qualities? And Uga said, sure, I will tell
you about my eight amazing qualities.
And some of those qualities are like he was a non-returner,
non-returner means you're almost fully enlightened, you're kind
of on the brink of full awakening.
So basically he was the similar kind of wisdom as the monastic
community, even the pious people in the monastic community.
He had full control over his meditation, he could go into
deep states of meditation on a finger snap like that, first
jhana, second jhana, third jhana, fourth jhana, whatever
you want, yeah. And there was a number of other
amazing qualities, I can't remember them all, I haven't
looked this up before I came here, this is years ago since I
read this sutta. But the eighth quality was
always stuck in my mind because it was kind of special.
This is what Uga said, you have all these lofty qualities, and
it comes the eighth quality, and he says, well, you know, when I
invite the sangha, the monastic community to my house, which I
do all the time, well first of all, I don't discriminate among
the different monastics, I treat them all exactly the same,
regardless of whether they are Arahants or they are ordinary
people or whatever they are, even if they are just a junior
novice, I treat them the same. But the second thing is that
when I invite the monks to my house, I ask the monks to teach
the Dhamma, teach the Buddhist teachings.
And if the monks don't teach me the Dhamma, then I teach the
Dhamma to the monks. So he gets up on the high seat,
teaches the Dhamma to the monks. And it's that kind of nice,
yeah, and this kind of inverts Buddhism, it turns it around, we
are always used to the monastics being the teachers, and here you
have a lay person teaching the monastics.
And what that shows you is that it is not so important who
teaches, what it shows you is that wherever there is wisdom,
wherever there is understanding, wherever there is something
special, that is where the teachings should come from.
So, first thing, lay people should learn the teachings, and
only when they really learn those teachings fully, like they
do here, then they become one of the four pillars, one of the
four parices in Buddhist society.
This is the first thing that the Buddha says, the lay men and lay
women at that time had fulfilled.
Then, once you have learned those teachings, the second
thing is then to apply them. You use them and you practice,
you practice the Dhamma in the right way.
This is called Dhamma Nudamma Patti Patti in Pali, Pali,
practicing the Dhamma in the right way.
This really means that you fulfill all the stages of the
path, all the various factors that you have to do, the virtue
aspect, the meditation aspect, but also the wisdom aspect.
This really means that you have become a noble person.
There were many noble lay people at that time, people who had
fully penetrated this wonderful and amazing Buddhist teachings.
There were lots of them at the time of the Buddha.
This is what this Dhamma Nudamma Patti Patti refers to, this full
practice of the teachings. So you learn the teachings, you
practice them fully as a lay person.
This is also part of lay life, if you want to live it fully.
This can be done, says the Buddha, and ideally it should be
done. Then, the next one, once you
have practiced these teachings well, once you know them
properly, you should teach them. You should teach them to other
people, you should make them clear, you should analyze them,
says the Buddha, you should bring them out into the open for
other people to understand. Lay people should also be
teachers, lay people should also do these things.
It is actually a wonderful thing to be a teacher.
One of the things that I realized when I started to teach
was that you learn so much from being a teacher.
Being a teacher is this wonderful gift to yourself.
If somebody else is interested in listening to what you say,
that's fine. If nobody was here, it would
probably still be good to teach. Teach to an empty room, maybe a
few mice crawling around. Is there mice in here?
Not sure. I maybe shouldn't say that in
case there is. It is actually a wonderful thing
to do. I think that one of the things
that we perhaps should do also in modern Buddhism, to bring
back some of these early Buddhist ideas, we should
encourage also lay people to be teachers.
Because it is a beautiful thing to be able to do, to teach
others, and you learn so much from that.
I think in the modern day when there is such a vast majority of
lay people compared to the monks, sometimes you have to use
your resources wisely. You guys, you are all the
resources of the Buddhist society, because you are all
resources, we are going to use you.
Is that okay? Can we do that?
It is nice to be used sometimes if it is in the right way,
because it is a positive thing and a suitable thing.
So this is another important thing that you learn about this
paris. The ability to lay people also
should be out there teaching, also should take part in this.
The last thing the Buddha says, as part of this teaching
activity, you may be surprised to hear this, but the Buddha
says, you have to be able to refute the doctrines of others.
Can you do that? You know how to refute the
doctrines of others? This does not mean that we go
from door to door and we knock and say, what religion, are you
a Christian? Okay, you are a Christian, I am
going to refute your doctrine. It doesn't mean that.
Are you a Muslim? Okay, I am going to refute the
Islamic doctrine. I am going to show you how to be
a good Buddhist. That is not what it means,
obviously, because that creates all kinds of problems in the
world. It creates conflict in society.
What it means is that within the Buddhist community, we have an
understanding of the difference between Buddhism and other
teachings. We know what it is that makes
Buddhism special. Because you know that, we are
able, at least within ourselves, to understand that distinction
and why Buddhism is different. So what is it?
What is it that makes Buddhism different?
Do you know? What is the difference?
Have you ever considered that fully?
Many people say, all religions are the same, we are all heading
in the right way. That is a kind of nice, feely,
feely, it feels good. It feels nice to think like
that, but it is not the full picture.
There is a lot of similarities between the world's religions.
There is a lot of things in the area of ethics that are similar,
to love thy neighbour as yourself.
Something like that. There is a lot of these things
that actually are similar in the world's religions.
But there also are important differences.
So what is it that is special about Buddhism?
This is kind of interesting. There are many, many things that
make Buddhism, in my opinion, very unique and special.
It takes things too often to a new level, that you may not find
in other philosophies or other areas of life.
One of the beautiful things about Buddhism is the Buddhist
idea of ethics, which is built on natural principles, rather
than someone laying down a law. It is built up from natural
principles. That is such a beautiful thing,
because it makes sense. When you hear about Buddhist
ethics, if it is taught in the right way, if it is well taught,
you think, yeah, this makes sense.
Of course, this is what ethics really is about.
It is based on natural principles of when people suffer
and when they don't suffer, etc., etc., on the intention of
the mind and these kinds of things.
This is one area where Buddhism is a little bit different, but
not really completely different, because most systems of
philosophy or psychology or religion, whatever they have,
ethics to some extent, sometimes to a very large extent.
So the one thing that makes Buddhism different from all
other teachings is the teaching of non-self.
The idea that there is nothing inherently existing in the whole
world. This is what makes Buddhism
absolutely unique. If you think about the vast
majority of religions in the world, this is precisely the
ideas that they have. They have the idea of a creator
god, some essence to the universe that is always there.
You find that in Hinduism, you find that in all the abhidhams,
you find that in all the abhidhams, you find that in
Hinduism, you find that in all the Abrahamic religions.
This is something you find almost elsewhere, almost
everywhere else. And of course, part of that idea
of an external creator god is also the internal idea of a
soul. This permanent essence in the
human being. These are mirror images of each
other, the external creator god and the internal soul inside.
So this is where Buddhism is unique.
And this is such an important thing to understand because the
tendency in human beings is always to lean towards the idea
of a permanent essence in human beings.
That is what we want to see. We want to somehow exist in a
certain way. And because we want to exist, we
tend to see something permanent and inherent inside of us.
And that is what we want to see. So this is one of the most
important distinctions. So if you ever come into this
position where you have to refute the arguments of others,
that is the core principle whereby Buddhism is different
from pretty much everything else you find in the world.
So just for your education, I thought I might take that into
it even though it is a little bit on the sideline of what we
are looking at. What this shows you is that lay
people at the time of the Buddha when the four assemblies were
really powerfully established, they were incredibly erudite.
These were people who really knew what they were doing.
They practiced the path almost all the way to the end.
They understood the idea of non-self, of anatah, anatman.
They understood these things to the core.
It was remarkable what could be done on the Buddhist path by lay
people. So that is the example that you
should all follow. This is the inspiration.
Lay people at that time who were inspiring were precisely this
kind of lay people who had these profound insights and
understanding on the path. Sometimes on the way as you do
that practice you become maybe a monastic, some people do, but
you don't have to, and even if you don't have to you still can
go a long way as a Buddhist lay person in this way.
There are some very inspiring examples in the suttas of lay
people who really had a profound appreciation of how the Buddhist
path works. Just as a precursor, one of the
inspiring people you can read about in the Buddhist discourses
was a layman called Anathapindika which some of you
will have heard about anyway. Anathapindika, he was maybe the
main patron of the Buddha and he was the first layman to talk
about the path and he was the main patron of the Buddha and he
was the one who built up the largest Buddhist monastery in
India at that time. It was found in a place called
Savatthi, the capital of the Kausalya kingdom and he bought
this large piece of land from a prince.
This was Prince Jeta and because it was Prince Jeta it was bought
from, this place was called the Jeta Vana.
Jeta Vana means like grove or forest or whatever.
This was the Jeta Grove, bought from Prince Jeta at
Anathapindika's monastery. So he bought this monastery and
it was an incredibly important supporter to the Buddha.
But of course after a while the Buddha realised someone like
that, he needs more teachings than just teachings on
generosity and kindness. He already has those pretty much
sorted out. So he tells them that you too,
being, if you are doing things in a good way, you should
sometime go into seclusion and enjoy the bliss of seclusion.
So if you are practising well, if you are already doing all the
right things, if you are keeping the five precepts, if you are
being kind and compassionate in the world, that is the
foundation. The foundation is the place.
Now when the foundation is in place you should use that to
experience the bliss of seclusion.
The bliss of seclusion is the deep states of samadhi that we
are moving towards when we practise meditation practice.
When you practise meditation in the right way, when you are able
to give up the senses and the body, give up pretty much the
entire world outside, the more you give that up, the more bliss
you are going to feel. Until you feel so much bliss
that you think I can't take it anymore.
This is the promise of the Buddha.
This is what the Buddha says to Antapindika, now is your turn to
feel that profound bliss because you had earned it through all
the basic practices of the path. Now you should be doing the same
thing. So remember that, this is there
for every one of us, every one of you to achieve.
If you are living the foundations of the path in the
right way, we now have beautiful monasteries here, we have this
beautiful centre right here, it is difficult to achieve that
powerful bliss here on a Friday night.
Maybe some of you had that powerful bliss, I don't know,
but majority maybe not because you are exhausted, more likely
to fall asleep than to find that powerful bliss.
Maybe, whatever. But the point is that we have
the facilities, we have places like Jhana Grove, we have the
monasteries and seclusion now in the present day means removing
yourself a little bit from your ordinary environment.
Go to somewhere beautiful and peaceful like the Jhana Grove
Meditation Centre, enjoy at least a weekend retreat, perhaps
a longer retreat, and see if you also can enjoy that bliss of
seclusion, the seclusion from the world outside, which you
have earned through your hard practices of all the foundation
principles of the Buddhist path. There is another example in the
suttas, which I always found very inspiring again, and this
is the example of Visakha. Visakha was the Buddha's main
lay woman disciple, and she was obviously very wise and she had
understood the teachings of the Buddha in a really profound way.
And on one particular occasion, Visakha went to the Buddha and
she said to the Buddha, I want to do all of these services to
the Sangha. I want to be the one who, when
there is a sick monk or a sick nun, to give a meal to the sick
people. I want to be the one that when
there are people who look after the sick, the upataks, the
attendants of the sick, I want to support the attendants of the
sick. When there are new monks or nuns
coming to Savatthi, which was the town where she was living, I
want to look after them because they want nowhere to get food,
because they are new. If there are monks and nuns
leaving Savatthi, they don't have to eat their last meal,
they don't have to travel hungry when they travel.
I also want to give a supply of rice porridge in the morning,
and also I want to supply bathing cloths for the nuns.
So there was a long list of things, and she says to the
Buddha, please, can you give me this boon, can you grant me this
special privilege so I can offer these things to the Sangha.
The Buddhas don't give special privileges.
Imagine the Buddha saying that to you.
The Buddha does not grant special privileges.
Okay, then you walk away. Do you think the Buddha is scary
or not scary? Is he like a teddy bear or is he
more like a stern kind of person, like a headmaster?
Probably the Buddha is not as scary as we think in our minds.
The Buddha is looking at me, I have to be careful what I say.
But the Buddha is probably actually quite not so scary.
So Visakha, she is not so easily put off.
So the Buddha asks her, well, what benefit do you see that I
should give you this special privilege?
And then Visakha shows her understanding of the Dhamma, of
this Buddhist teaching. And she says to the Buddha, if I
am allowed to give all of these things, and I hear that a monk
who has been here to Sabhati, or a nun who has been here to
Sabhati, is enlightened, or has achieved some state of samadhi,
or achieved some special advancement on the path, then I
will know that I will have fed them, at least when they came
and when they left, possibly also when they were sick.
Maybe I gave them rice porridge in the morning.
And when I think that I supported people who had these
wonderful attainments of the path, I will be joyful.
And when I am joyful, I will feel this rapture inside.
And when I feel the rapture inside, I will feel tranquility,
beautiful, powerful tranquility, when you really calm down and
you feel like a rock in your meditation practice.
Then when I feel tranquility, I will feel the sukkha, this is a
Pali word, which means the profound happiness on the path.
I will feel this profound sukkha, and when I feel the
profound sukkha, I will have the samadhi that arises out of that.
This is what Visakha told the Buddha.
And this is really profound. This is actually one of the main
teachings of the Buddha on the progress of meditation practice.
If the foundation work is in place, if you have practiced in
the right way, if you have been kind, if you have lived with
kindness and generosity in your life, you have had compassion,
understanding for people, and all of these kinds of things,
eliminated your ill will and negativity, this is the result.
And she understood the result. And this is an automatic
process. This is what the Buddha says in
the suttas, this just happens. If the foundation things are
there, this will happen to you. And she had got this.
And the Buddha says, what did he say?
Sadhu? I don't think he said Sadhu.
I can't remember now exactly what he said.
He said, wow, that's really amazing that you understand
this. You have really understood these
teachings. And of course from that samadhi,
that deep meditation, also comes the insight that makes you into
an Aryan, a noble person. So the Buddha says, well, what
can I say? If someone has such a deep
appreciation of what I teach, well, I'm going to give you that
special privilege. And so Visakha, by proving her
understanding of the Dhamma, was able to get this very special
privilege from the Buddha of supporting the Sangha in such a
profound way. Why?
Well, probably because the Buddha knew that she is going to
be a blessing for the Buddhist community, lay women, lay men,
the nuns and the monks. Yeah, for everyone, because of
how she understood the Dhamma. So this is how you get things in
the right way here. This is how you can see the lay
community basically does exactly the same thing as the
Maha-Vaidya. The lay community basically does
exactly the same thing as the monastic community.
There is a little bit of difference maybe at the very
base, at the root of how we interact, but beyond that very
root interaction that we do, beyond that, the path is the
same. As a lay person, if you support
the monastic community, if you do it in the right way, like
Visakha did, it should give you a lot of joy and happiness.
If you practice your sila, your virtue in the right way, that
too will give you joy and happiness.
If I come here and teach in the right way, if I don't say too
much nonsense, then I too might get a bit of happiness out of
teaching, feeling that I am supporting others and helping
people out. In this way, we are basically
doing the same thing but from slightly different angles.
And then we build up the path from the bottom and the path
that happens in the same way for both lay people and monastics.
What is interesting, the Buddha says in one of the suttas, this
is one of the discourses called the Mahavacca-Gotta Sutta, found
in the Majjhima Middling, saying it is the Buddha number 73, if
you want to look it up, the Buddha says, there is actually a
fellow called Vachagotta who says this, but obviously the
Buddha agreed and that is why it is there.
The Buddha says in there that it is not just that we have one or
a few Arahants among the monastics, we have many more.
It is not just that we have one or a few highly attained lay
people, they may not have been Arahants, but they were very,
very close to full enlightenment, but we have
hundreds and hundreds of lay men and lay women who have attained
all these beautiful, profound states of meditation and
insight. And if it hadn't been the case
that this was true, if all of these lay people had been
enlightened, if it hadn't been the case that this was true, if
all of these lay people didn't attain these things, then the
Buddhist religion, the Buddhist teaching would not have been
complete, would not have been fulfilled.
This is how you fulfill the Buddhist teaching, this is how
you fulfill the Parishas, this is how you fulfill what it means
to be a layman and a laywoman and a monk and a nun, by
attaining these things. Without it, it would not be
complete. So remember that.
If you want to be part of a blessing, what it means to be a
true Buddhist, take this practice very seriously, and you
too will be able to attain all these wonderful, marvellous
fruits of the Buddhist path, all the happiness you ever dreamt
of, actually far more happiness than you can possibly even
conceive. That is what the Buddhist path
has in store for everyone. So if you want to be part of
this community, then you should practice these teachings fully,
and every one of us will become a blessing for ourselves and
also for everyone else. Okay, that is the talk for
tonight. Aum, Aum, Aum.
Okay, so, wonderful, thank you very much.
Is there any other questions from the floor before we go to
the next session? The floor before we go
interstate and overseas. Anyone want to say anything
here? Nobody wants to say anything
here? Okay, good.
So in that case, you sure, last chance?
Okay, so let's move on to the questions from overseas.
So the first one is from the USA, and the question is as
follows. What is the Buddhist way for lay
people to get rid of divisions, borders, discrimination,
judgment, and learn tolerance of different cultures in the lay
society? So how do lay people get rid of
these things? And there's two answers to that
question. And the first one is that the
world, remember the world outside is out of control.
Remember that we cannot make the world outside go according as we
would like to have it. If the world outside was, if it
was possible to control the world outside in that way, that
we could have, get rid of all discrimination, all these kind
of things, it would have happened long time ago already,
because somebody would have figured out how to do it.
The whole point of the Buddhist path is that the world outside
is out of control. The whole point of the Buddhist
path is to understand, this is one of the main insights of the
Buddhist, is to understand that things are precisely out of
control. Things are precisely
impermanent. You cannot have it the way you
would like it. So when you see that there is
division in the world, when you see that there is wars going on,
when you see that there is all kinds of problems happening
around you, instead of kind of despairing too much over that,
what you should do is you should say, this is what is to be
expected, this is the way the world goes.
I will never be able to get rid of all these things.
So the answer is, the answer is not that you should stop trying
to do your best, of course you should do your best.
Of course you should help out, because when you help out, you
are doing something positive and good for the world, and you will
develop your own practice by doing something good, but at the
same time you should remember that you will never succeed
fully. You may succeed partially, and
then having succeeded partially, it may revert again back to its
old problems. So lower your expectations,
don't expect anything necessarily to happen in the
world at large. If you can help a few people,
and that can change their life, then you have already done
enormous good for human society and for everyone.
So this is the first part of the answer.
Forget about fixing the world, the world is inherently
unfixable. You can help a little bit, but
you cannot fix the world. The same old problems return
again and again and again, and it has to be like that, this is
one of the fundamental principles of the Buddhist
teachings. So learn this, and then you
start to understand a little bit about what suffering really is
about. The more you get that, the more
impetus you have to practice your spiritual life.
The other answer to this question is that healing
divisions, very often means healing divisions within
yourself. That is the most important
division that you can heal. So you, if you can eliminate
anger in your heart, if you can eliminate discrimination within
yourself, if you can see all beings, suffering beings in this
world, and have compassion for everyone, regardless of their
background, regardless of who they are, regardless of age,
education, gender, whatever it might be, then you are doing the
right thing. If you can do that in your
heart, then you are going to inspire so many other people to
do the same thing. This is why the Buddha is so
powerful. He was able to eliminate all of
these defilements and problems from his own heart.
He has inspired people for two and a half thousand years after
that. Countless of beings that have
escaped from suffering and attained so much happiness
because of that. Hundreds of millions of
Buddhists still around the world who gain inspiration from the
Buddha's teachings. Each one of us can be some of
that inspiration, follow in the Buddha's footsteps and do
similar things to what the Buddha did.
If you can do that, wow, you are doing really, really well.
So that should be the prime concern.
Eliminate discrimination in your own heart.
Purify yourself. That is actually the best way to
also change the world outside because people, I guarantee you,
they will be inspired by you if you can live like that.
Okay, second question. What is the subtle difference
between letting go and letting be, especially regarding
unpleasant thoughts and painful cessations?
Well, the difference is that letting be is like the initial
phase of letting go. Letting be means that you don't
fight it anymore. So if you have unpleasant
thoughts and painful cessations, instead of fighting those
unpleasant thoughts, you embrace them.
You say, this is part of me, I have these unpleasant thoughts,
and it's okay. What do I expect?
Of course I am not going to be perfect.
I have been conditioned through this life, I have been
conditioned in past lives. I am going to be imperfect.
It's okay if I have this kind of negative thoughts.
And there is something very interesting that happens when
you think like that because if you don't like your unpleasant
thoughts, if you push them away, it is very hard to get insight
into them because that pushing away, it destroys the neutral
ground at which insight happens. To get insight you have to be
neutral, you have to watch things without a vested
interest. But if you push them away, it's
as if you have a vested interest, the neutral ground has
been destroyed and for that reason, much more difficult to
get insight. So if you want to have real
insight, you actually have to have the letting be idea.
You let things be. You watch all the
unpleasantness, wherever is going on in your mind, you watch
that. And you start to understand how
it arises. And once you understand how it
arises, the solution becomes very obvious.
Okay, I am upset with this person, why am I upset with this
person? Well actually it's because I am
thinking about them in a silly way.
I think that they are bad, but they are not bad, they are just
conditioned for goodness sake. How can I be angry with all
these poor conditioned people who are acting against their own
self-interest? I must have compassion for them.
Letting be allows you insight into those things.
And then when you have that insight, you can let go fully,
because the insight is the thing which shows you the problem very
clearly and it shows you the solution to the problem, and
then you let go like that. This is how I see you let be.
Again, insight, sometimes very small, I am not talking about
really profound insight, I am talking about small everyday
insights that everyone can have, and then it disappears because
you understand the causes. If you really understand that
something is problematic, something is suffering, it
disappears, bang, like that, and it's gone.
Okay, enough for tonight. So let's pay respect to the
Buddha, the Ma Sangha. Nithyananda.
Arahamsa ma sambhudhava bhagavah buddhah bhagavatah bhavivadhi
svakatur bhagavatadhamu dhamma namassami suphati panur
bhagavatur sabhakatsanghu sangham namami suphati panur
bhagavatadhamu sangham namami