The Noble Eightfold Path Okay, so let's continue where we left
off yesterday morning. We're looking at Right View, the
first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path.
We have looked at one aspect of Right View, which is the higher
aspect, the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths.
And now we will look at what you might call the more ordinary
aspect of Right View, the Right View which is more approachable,
more understandable, because it is basically the way the Buddha
taught ordinary people before you realised the Dhamma in a
more personal sense. And this little passage is taken
from a sutta called the Brahmins of Sala, Madhyamanikaya 41.
Hopefully you should find it there.
And it is about Right View. MN 41, the Brahmins of Sala.
This is quite a nice sutta. This particular sutta is about
what is known as the Ten Courses of Wholesome and Ten Courses of
Unwholesome Actions. And it's basically where the
Buddha sets out what is morality in Buddhism in a very detailed
way. In ten courses.
According to ten factors. Three, bodily action.
Four, verbal action. And three, mental action.
And the Right View comes under mental action, or mental, if you
like, virtue or morality. So this is from that particular
sutta. And this is how the Buddha
describes Right View. So this person who was acting in
a moral way, he has Right View. There is what is given, and what
is offered, and what is sacrificed.
There is fruit and result of good and bad actions.
There is this world and the other world.
There is mother and father. There are beings who are reborn
spontaneously. There are good and virtuous
recluses and Brahmins in the world realized by direct
knowledge and declare this world and the other world.
So that is right view. And so what does this mean?
The first thing to recognize about this idea of right view is
that it's not really either you have right view or you have
wrong view. Often right view itself is a
very flexible idea. It's something you can develop,
something that can change over time, something that can kind of
move in the right direction. And you never really have, as I
mentioned last time, you never really have the full right view,
the full understanding until you see the Dhamma for yourself.
That is when really right view becomes established.
And in the meantime you have like what you might call an
approximate right view or a view that is leaning in the right
direction, which is roughly there.
So the idea of understanding right view is that it's not just
about the right view. It's about the right view.
It's actually to kind of make that right view become a little
bit more right, right? So you develop this right view.
You reflect on these things. What do these things actually
mean? And as you reflect on them, as
you understand them, that right view becomes more firmly
established. It's more like a continuum of
right view. It's not like, yes, I believe,
yes, rebirth makes sense to me or it doesn't make sense to me.
It's more like what are the implications of rebirth?
What does this actually mean for me?
What are the effects of rebirth on my practice?
What does this outlook actually entail in terms of how I think
about the world and what I should do about it afterwards?
So there is this continuum of right view, more or less right.
So please look at it that way. It's something to be developed,
something to be changed. And because right view is the
first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, then obviously
if we develop that, if we strengthen that, if we really
understand what is going on, that will have an impact for the
rest of the practice. Because each factor leads to the
next one. The more strong, the more
established right view is, the more automatic is the process of
practicing the rest of the Noble Eightfold Path.
So for that reason, I want to spend a bit of time on this and
to get some more detailed understanding.
So let's have a quick look at this first of all, and then we
will go into the details. So you have right view, right?
Undistorted vision. Again, the idea here is that
right view is the view which accords with reality.
This is how the world actually works.
It's not just a dogma. You have to believe this.
This is what I tell you. You must believe this.
It is actually in accordance with the view that accords with
reality. And if you don't have a view
that accords with reality, of course, it is going to be
problematic for you. If you have a distorted way,
looking at the world in a distorted way, you are not going
to be able to act upon reality. You are going to be acting upon
a fantasy. It's a bit like with the
scientific progress. You start to be able to control
the world. You start to be able to use your
understanding to create devices, to create technology, to use
that understanding in a way whereby you can control things
around you. If you don't understand things
according to scientific principles, then you cannot
exert that control over nature. And in the same way, if you have
right view, then you can actually practice in such a way
that it leads to your happiness, because you understand reality.
If you don't understand reality, you can't even understand what
is going to lead to your happiness.
And what isn't. So the basic understanding is
just like in science. It is essential to be able to do
things which are to your benefit.
Otherwise, you won't be able to act in a way that is beneficial
for yourself and for other people and anybody else for that
matter. Okay.
So the content of this right view.
Just skip the first one, go to the second one here.
There is fruit and result of good and bad actions.
So this is basically about what in Buddhism is known as kamma,
or the laws of kamma. The idea that whatever you do,
and it's not just whatever you do, it's whatever you do in a
certain way, whatever you have an intention to do.
Intention is a crucial aspect of kamma.
And intention can be varied. Right?
But what you do intentionally have results.
And this is kind of one of the basic understandings of how the
world works, which is essential to grasp.
And importantly, it is often conjoined with the next one
here. There is this world and there is
the other world. And what this basically means is
that life does not come to an end in this life.
But there is another world afterwards.
There is a continuity after this life comes to an end.
This is the idea of rebirth that is being spoken of here.
And these two things in combination are very powerful.
The idea that there is rebirth and there is result of actions.
Because what it means is that your future experience of a
future world will depend on your actions in this life.
So that, you know, you cannot always be in this world.
There are all kinds of experiences.
And this is kind of one of the things here.
It is not just limited to human rebirth.
It is bad enough to be reborn in difficult straits in this life.
But it can get much worse than that according to this outlook
of the world. And one way to make sense of
this idea. I know that sometimes people
find this idea of rebirth in different realms, like deva
realms and all this kind of stuff.
They find it hard to, at least when you are new to Buddhism, it
is hard to make sense of that. But one way of looking at it,
which makes it quite easy to understand, is the idea that
within the human realm there is a certain kind of variety, a
certain span of experience that you can have.
You can have from the most kind of poor person born in the very
simple circumstances, uneducated, you know, maybe very
difficult life, to the kind of most educated and kind of living
in a wealthy life, and then you have a very simple life, in good
circumstances. There is a certain span in terms
of happiness and suffering that you can have within the human
realm. Now, these other realms, all
they really do is they increase that span.
So this is kind of the limits of the human realm.
And by adding these other realms, you just increase in the
span the possibilities for experiencing happiness and
suffering. So if you get reborn in a kind
of a heavenly realm, it is not different from being a human,
really. It is just that your ability to
experience happiness is much, much greater.
You experience more happiness, more, you know, all the good
things that you can experience in this life, all those good
things, you experience more of them, whatever that might be.
And the same thing with a lower realm.
A lower realm, again, is not different from the human realm,
really, except that you experience even more suffering
than you can ordinarily experience as a human.
So it is just an expanding of the possibilities of happiness
and suffering. That is really all it is.
Apart from that, it is just you, basically, continuing in these
realms. And that is, I think, quite a
helpful way of understanding what these realms are all about.
So this is part of the Buddhist outlook, right?
This is how the Buddha says the world functions in this way.
So what about these other things here, then?
There is what is given, what is offered, what is sacrificed.
What does that mean? And it means it is in the
context of kamma and rebirth that we have seen just now, it
is in that context that this must be understood, because this
right view here is basically about kamma and rebirth.
So it means that you can give things, and it has results,
right? It matters.
When you give, it has kammic results.
Obviously, it is beneficial for the person you are giving to,
but even more important, it is really about your own personal
spiritual path. Because it is about your
personal path, it has results. When you give, it gives you
something back in return. This is what it means.
So giving is an important thing here.
And what is interesting here is that it is singled out in this
way. It is actually mentioned as a
separate factor of right view. And that obviously is very
significant. It doesn't just say that there
is good and bad actions, it specifically says that there is
such a thing as giving, as sacrificing, as offering things.
So what that means, the reason why it is singled out in this
way, is obviously because generosity then is a very
important part of the spiritual path.
This ability to be helpful, to be generous, to offer of
yourself in whatever way it is. Often it would mean material
support, but it can mean any kind of generosity really, where
you are giving of yourself in one way or another.
It is fascinating, isn't it, that this is actually singled
out in this way. And you find also other places
in the suttas a similar kind of emphasis on this idea of
generosity. It is often said to be the
foundation stone, the basic factor of good actions that kind
of lead you onwards on the Buddhist path.
So because of that, because it is singled out in this way, keep
that in mind, remember that. This is a very important part
and something that really everybody should develop in the
spiritual practice as much as possible, to be generous and
kind in this way. And this is how I regard myself
when I come here to teach a retreat.
I try to regard it as an act of generosity.
I don't really expect anything in return.
I just do it because I hopefully, it will have some
good results, right? It will be of benefit to both
myself and also to other people hopefully.
So this is how important it is that it actually is singled out
as a separate factor of right view.
And then you have, just further down, just after the Buddha says
there is this world, there is the other world, you have
another one which is interesting, right?
Which is a similar kind of idea. There is mother, there is
father. There is mother, there is
father. So again, when you read that, it
kind of doesn't really stand out.
It doesn't really mean, it doesn't seem to mean very much.
But again, because the context, the context here is about kamma,
is about the first factor of the spiritual path, about how to
move towards awakening. Because of that, it means that
the fact that there is mother and father are very significant
in the kamma context and in the context of practicing towards
awakening. So the actions that we do
towards our parents have a very significant meaning.
They have a very powerful spiritual effect.
That's basically what it means, right?
And once you understand that, you understand that it is so
important that if you're going to practice this path fully, if
you're going to expect to get the good results in meditation
practice, in terms of insight and understanding, then the
relationship that we have with our parents is one of the
factors that we have to factor in on this path, that we have to
deal with. I won't say anything more about
that now. I'll talk more about that later
on. And I recognize that people have
different relationships with their parents.
Some have difficult relationships.
Some have better relationships. But the point is that we can
always do something, right? We can't maybe not make it
perfect, but we can always do something to move in the right
direction. So again, very interesting that
this is mentioned like this, in this way here.
And it fits with what you see in other places, in the suttas.
For those of you who know the Buddhist scriptures a bit more,
you know that mother and father are talked about.
For example, you can make very extremely bad kamma.
And one of the worst kammas you can make is killing your
parents, right? And again, it's the same idea
again. The kamma that we make in
relationship to our parents is very, very powerful and very
strong. And that is why it is mentioned
here at the very beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path.
Okay. Then we have, there are beings
who are reborn spontaneously. And this one is the only one
which I think is, I'm not entirely sure why it is included
in Right View. And it is interesting that there
is, in the Chinese, parallel to this sutta, in other words,
parallel to this sutta in other languages, there is a parallel
to this sutta in other languages.
And this is the only one. And the only one is the sutta in
other languages. That is the only factor of Right
View is not actually found in those other parallels.
So this might be, it's possible this is not so important because
it isn't found in other places. But anyway, what I think it
means is again this idea that when we look at the idea of
rebirth, we are expanding the possibilities of happiness and
suffering here. And if you have a physical body,
like in the human realm or the animal realm, there is only so
much you can do. You can experience.
That body limits you in a certain way.
But if you can be reborn spontaneously, like what they
call maybe a mind-made body and these kind of things in
Buddhism, then that spontaneous rebirth, it kind of again, it
expands the possibilities of the experience of happiness and
suffering here. You are no longer limited to the
physical body, but you expand that whole range of
possibilities. That may be what is meant here.
And it allows for types of rebirth, which otherwise would
not be allowed for if you were limited to physical bodies.
And then we have the last one. There are good and virtuous
recluses and Brahmins in the world who have themselves
realized by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other
world. And the point of this is simply
to the idea that there are people in the world who have
practiced more, who have a more profound spiritual insight than
what we have. The idea that there are beings,
there are beings like the Buddha perhaps, there are other people
perhaps in the world today who have practiced this path very
profoundly. And you have some idea that this
is the case, this is true. Now if you are going to be on
the Buddhist path and practice, do the Buddhist practice, this
is what it means to have confidence in the Buddha.
Confidence in the Buddha's teachings.
Confidence that there are areas in the world, noble people, who
have penetrated the same truth that the Buddha himself
penetrated a long time ago. So this is, and this of course
is foundational. Without that, you can't even get
started on the Buddhist path. So because that is foundational,
maybe we should look at that one first of all.
The translation here is not all that accurate I feel.
It says good and virtuous. Recluses and Brahmins, really it
should be recluses and Brahmins who have practiced well and who
have achieved good results would be I think a better way of
translating that. But anyway, it's perhaps good
enough. And they declare this world and
the other world. In other words, they know that
this is the case, right? They have direct insight into
these things. And this is really the point
here. There is a knowledge, there is a
basis for this kind of declaring, this kind of right
view. It's not just a random thing.
There is a basis for this. So remember what I was saying
before. It is important to kind of
establish this right view, right?
To develop it, to bring it further.
So how do we develop this last aspect of right view here?
That there are these people in the world who have understood
more than perhaps we have. How do we develop that?
And of course the first thing is to accept that this might be the
case, right? And it really makes very good
sense. Why shouldn't there be people in
the world who have more experience than we have?
It's just like anything else. If you want to learn about
medicine, if you want to learn about law, you go to university
and you learn from somebody who knows more about these things.
It is ridiculous to think that we can know more than somebody
who is a specialist. And the same thing in the
spiritual path. In the spiritual path it may not
be perhaps quite as obvious as with ordinary learning, but it
is the same thing, right? There are people who have been
practising these things and it goes back for millennia.
They've been sitting in the forest peacefully, quietly,
contemplating, getting into deep meditations.
And it makes good sense that there should be people in the
world who have more understanding than we have.
This is kind of the first initial thing.
And that of course, once we get that sense of confidence, that
this is the case, it also leads to a sense of humility, right?
There is somebody you can learn from.
Indeed, what is interesting, if you read the biography of the
Buddha himself, this is what the Buddha did when he started out.
This is before he was the Buddha.
He started out and he looked into the world and he said, who
can I learn from? Who is there in this world who
has some kind of spiritual understanding, understanding of
life that I can actually learn from?
So he went out and he learned from...
There are a couple of people specifically mentioned in the
suttas as the teachers of the Buddha.
There's a fellow called Alara Kalama who obviously had very
good meditation. Another person called Uddaka
Ramaputa and they are mentioned specifically.
And there seems to also be other people that the Buddha learned
from in those days. So the Buddha, who became the
spiritual kind of genius, right, of our age, who started this
whole path of Buddhism, even he started off with teachers.
So it makes sense to have a teacher.
If you have a teacher, at least they can kind of guide you in
the right direction. You can see what they have to
say and they can, you know, you can...
Usually you make much quicker progress if you have somebody
who can teach you, who knows what they're talking about,
rather than having to try to figure everything out yourself.
So this is like the first obvious thing.
And the second thing, I would recommend you to do to get a
feeling for this, is to read a little bit of these suttas,
right? To see if it makes any sense to
you. I recommended a book to someone
here the other day called In the Buddha's Words.
And this is a translation. This is an anthology of suttas
translated by Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi.
And it is a very nice introduction because it is
nicely grouped according to categories, the suttas,
according to themes. And then it is introduced by
Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, who is obviously very knowledgeable
about the suttas, and nice notes at the end to explain what is
going on. Probably one of the best books
available to get you kind of access, get you started with
reading the suttas. And you will find, as with so
many things, sometimes you come across passages that are very
meaningful to you, very powerful to you.
And that will be very useful. Then you will read about the
life of the Buddha, right? How did he live?
How did he exist? And you start to get a sense of
relationship with this person who lived two and a half
thousand years ago. Was he as wonderful as people
make it out sometimes? And gradually, gradually, once
you get the feeling for this, you get this, either you will be
attracted towards the Buddhist teachings because this makes
sense to you, or you will feel that it is not right, or maybe
it isn't for you. And either way is okay.
But it is important that you have the information.
This is what Buddhism is about. And then at least you can make a
decision, right? Is it right?
Is it wrong? Should I do this?
Shouldn't I? And then this is how you then
gradually gain confidence in the Buddha, or possibly you lose
confidence. But either way, you have to
build it up in this way regardless.
This is the first one. So please read the suttas.
Please have a look at this. You don't have to read all that
much. Sometimes it is about reading
those things that inspire you, right?
Sometimes if you read everything, it might get too
much or too confusing and you think about too many things at
the same time. Sometimes take maybe one or two
suttas that really work for you. And one of the suttas that I
think is very powerful and I think would be generally useful
to most people is this particular sutta that we are
looking at right now, Madhyamanikaya 41.
Because it talks about ethics in a very, very broad sense.
And when you read that sutta, it gives you a very broad outline
of ethics in Buddhism. And ethics, of course, is the
foundation stone. I've been talking about this all
the way through now, how important it is to get your
conduct right, to get your habits, your personality, to get
that kind of aligned with the Dhamma in the right way.
Then the meditation happens by itself.
And this sutta is specifically about that, about ethics.
So I think it's very useful. Sometimes it's good to
concentrate on certain themes, right?
You don't get too much stuff, too much information, which kind
of just is floating around and you can't really...
This becomes too much to think about really sometimes.
So this is the first thing. Read suttas and do it in a wise
way. Get an overall picture and then
focus on a few things which are powerful for your practice.
And of course the other thing which is powerful, powerful to
get a sense of the essence and get a feeling for this, is just
sometimes to... You know, you have certain
teachers who you feel you have a certain amount of confidence in
because they embody the values of Buddhism, they embody the
qualities that you're supposed to achieve by practising this
path. So sometimes there will be
people in the world who think, wow, this person really has
these qualities. And then you can...
When you see that, it gives you more confidence as well.
And I have no doubt myself that there are people today in this
world who embody these qualities of Buddhism and who have
practised this path in such a way that they have achieved some
of these results, right? And that gives you a sense of it
works. Not just an ancient teaching on
paper, it actually still has an effect in the present day.
And the third way which is you start to see this path as well
is when you practise it yourself and you get some of the results,
right? You see that meditation actually
works. You see that ethical conduct
actually works. And when you do that and you
start to kind of extrapolate that into the future, where does
this lead? If I continue practising this
way, what can it actually give rise to?
You start to understand that there is a lot of potential in
this path and you start to get the feeling that indeed there
might be people who actually have seen these things in a very
profound and deep sense. So this is what this is about.
So it's important to have that. And when you have the sense that
there are beings in the world, in particular the Buddha, who
has seen these things, right? Seen this world, seen the other
world, then what happens at that point?
What happens at that point is that you have a Kalyana Mita.
This Pali word, Kalyana Mita, which basically means a good
friend. And the primary good friend in
the world is the Buddha. The Buddha precisely because he
has seen, he has understood. And because he is sometimes
called the eye of the world, right?
He has seen. And because he has seen, he is
able to teach you. And that kind of opens your eyes
a little bit as well. Because he is then pointing the
way. While we are fumbling around in
the darkness, it's nice to have somebody with a torch who can
actually show you the way. And that's basically what the
Buddha is. He's got the torch.
He can see. So you kind of take his hand, so
to speak, and he will lead you in the right direction.
So this is what this next Sutta is all about.
The next Sutta is called Half the Holy Life.
And this is about the Kalyana Mita and the importance and the
significance of having this good friend who guides you in the
right direction. So this is how this Sutta goes.
Thus have I heard, on one occasion the Blessed One was
dwelling among the Sakhyans, Sakhyans was a clan where the
Buddha was from, where there was a town of the Sakhyans named
Nagaraka. Then the Venerable Ananda
approached the Blessed One. Having approached, he paid
homage to the Blessed One, sat down to one side and said to
him, Venerable Sir, this is half of the Holy Life.
That is good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship.
Not so, Ananda, not so. This is the entire Holy Life,
Ananda. That is good friendship, good
companionship, good comradeship. When a bhikkhu has a good
friend, a good companion, a good comrade, it is to be expected
that he will develop and cultivate the Noble Eightfold
Path. So I'll just stop there.
So this is about good friendship.
It's interesting here, good friendship, good companionship,
good comradeship, right? It sounds like some kind of term
from the Soviet Union or something like that.
I think Bhikkhu Bodhi was trying to find another word which kind
of sounds like friend, right? So comrade was the only thing he
could come up with. That's why it has it in there.
It has nothing to do with communism or anything like that.
So this is interesting, isn't it?
Ananda says that this is half of the Holy Life, this idea of good
spiritual friendship. In other words, he understands
that this is really important, right?
It obviously matters a lot. And then the Buddha says, no,
it's not half the Holy Life, it's the entire Holy Life.
And when you read that, you think, is the Buddha being
serious? Is he talking kind of
metaphorically? Is he talking like, well, is he
trying to say it's really, really important?
Surely it doesn't mean that it is the entire Holy Life.
How can it be the entire Holy Life?
And I used to think like that too.
I used to think, you know, you read these things and you kind
of skip over it, and then one day you think, wait a minute,
he's actually saying it is the entire Holy Life.
What does that mean? And of course the Buddha, he
doesn't usually mince his words. He doesn't mess around when he
says things. You can be pretty sure it has
some significant meaning, right? So when he says it is the entire
Holy Life, it probably means that it is just that, the entire
Holy Life. So how can that be the case?
And to understand that, and this is the, again, this Buddhist
idea of non-self, right? Because there is, because from
the Buddhist point of view, there is no entity inside which
is permanent, it means that we have no kind of guidance inside
of us which steers us on the path, like a compass which is
always pointing in the right direction.
We haven't got that. There is no compass there.
There is nothing there which kind of is solid, which always
is reliable, always going to do what is right and avoid what is
wrong. We don't have, there is no such
thing inside of you. So, you know, the symbol that I
like to use is like, we are in a sense like a ship on the ocean,
a ship which has no engine, which has no sails, which has no
rudder, so you can't steer, you can't kind of go this direction
or that direction. Now a ship which has no steering
mechanism, what happens to that ship?
What happens to it is that it will drift whichever way, either
the currents or the wind will take it, right?
So if the wind comes from the north, the ship will go to the
south. If the wind comes from the west,
the ship will go to the east, etc., etc.
It will drift according to the prevailing conditions, right?
And in a sense, in a very real sense, we are a bit like
rudderless ships in samsara. We are rudderless people.
We have no real steering mechanism.
There is nothing inside of us which naturally points us in
this direction or that direction.
We are rudderless and we drift according to the prevailing
conditions. And what are those prevailing
conditions? They are all the conditioning
that has affected us in this life and is affecting us now and
has affected us from a Buddhist point of view also in past
lives, right? All the conditioning, all the,
like conditioning is both internal, and external.
So the conditioning from past lives is now mostly
internalized. Originally it came from outside,
but now it comes from the inside.
It is the kind of the habits you have, the way that you have
built up, the sense of identity that you have, all of these
internal things that are driving you in a certain way.
And then there is all the external things in this life,
right? Your upbringing, your schooling,
your parents, your friends, all of these things, your work,
everything in this life that you have experienced, every single
experience will have conditioned you in a certain way.
And that is what we are. We are that conditioning.
We are a sum of all the environment, all the things
around us. That is essentially what we have
become and what we are now. And then there are new
conditions coming and they will then affect us in a certain way,
right? And once you understand that,
that we are just a sum of the conditioning, then of course the
only way that you are going to get on the spiritual path, there
has to be some kind of spark. Something has to trigger that
movement onto the spiritual path.
And that trigger is then the Kalyanamitta.
That is the person who says, the eye of the world, I have seen, I
have understood, I have realized these things.
Listen, right? And then you look at this person
and you say, should I listen or should I not listen?
This is part of our job as a spiritual practitioner, is to
look at those people who are teachers and ask us whether they
are worthy of being followed. Do they have the qualities that
they are, do they have those qualities in their conduct that
they are talking about? Do they have a sense of metta, a
sense of compassion, a sense of kindness, right?
Do they have a lack of these defilements they are talking
about that we should overcome? And then this is how you then
gain confidence in the Buddha. And then you have a
Kalyanamitta. You have a good spiritual
friend. You have a light that shines in
the darkness and shows you the way.
And it is absolutely necessary. Without that, you can't really
make the breakthrough. So this is what this is all
about. And that is why it is 100% of
the spiritual life, right? Because without it, you can't
get anywhere. It is absolutely necessary.
It is the condition that drives you forward.
And it is based on that, that you then practice virtue even
better, that you practice generosity, that you meditate,
that you get insight. It all ultimately comes from
that. And yesterday you were asking
about the last saying of the Buddha, the apamadheta
sampadheta, strive on with heedfulness.
And I said that this idea of apamadha stands at the very
foundation of the Buddhist path. It is one of many things.
And I couldn't remember so many others.
But one of those is kalyanamitta.
Kalyanamitta is another thing which stands as the very
foundation stone of the Buddhist path.
Without that, you can't get started.
Apamadha is another one. Because you have to be heedful,
at the very least you have to be able to listen to those people,
right? Or to take an interest.
If you are not even interested, or you have decided that you
want to believe in another religion or whatever, and you
have no time for these recluses or whatever, there is no chance
that you will get anywhere. So apamadha, yoniso manesikara,
is another one. A wise reflection, etc.
Anyway. Okay, so then let's see what
happens then. So, and he says, it is because
of these kalyanamitta that you practice the Noble Eightfold
Path. And then, of course, he gives an
exposition of the Noble Eightfold Path.
And how, Ananda, does a bhikkhu, a monk, who has a good friend, a
good companion, a good comrade, develop and cultivate the Noble
Eightfold Path? Here, Ananda, a bhikkhu develops
right view, which is based on seclusion, dispassion and
cessation, maturing in release. He develops right intention,
right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort,
right mindfulness and right stillness, which is based upon
seclusion, dispassion, cessation and maturing in release.
It is in this way, Ananda, that the bhikkhu, who has good
friends, good companions, a good comrade, develops and cultivates
the Noble Eightfold Path. So, here, I'm not sure how much
I should talk about this, because these are very, very
profound aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path.
They have this idea that it is based upon seclusion, dispassion
and cessation. And what this means is that,
basically, your practice of the Noble Eightfold Path, especially
when it comes to the deeper aspects of the path, some degree
of seclusion is required, right? This is why we go on a retreat.
You are secluding yourself a bit from society, secluding yourself
from your ordinary chores of life, getting a little bit away.
And this is one of the reasons why you become a monk or a nun,
right? So you can seclude yourself even
more from society, and you can get away from it.
Where I live, at Bodhinyana Monastery in Perth, every monk
has a little hut in the forest. And from my hut, when I walk on
my walking path, I can't see any other huts.
So it's like I'm completely, a sense of complete seclusion,
right? It's just nature around you.
And that gives you, after a while, it gives you a sense of
peace. It gives you a sense of
distance. And that sense of distance means
you have, you know, you feel a kind of spaciousness, both
internally and externally. And that external seclusion,
being separated from other people around you, then
eventually leads to the internal seclusion, where your mind
starts to become separated from the world.
And particularly, what it becomes separated from is the
five hindrances of meditation, five hindrances that block your
practice in meditation. So seclusion, when it comes to
meditation practice, means the mental seclusion, when the mind
is free from those hindrances. So this is why seclusion is so
important, because it is based on that seclusion that this path
really starts to take off, right?
The hindrances disappear, because you are away from the
worldly phenomena, which tend to give rise to hindrances, rise to
problems, gives rise to desire, gives rise to anger, all these
other kinds of things. And then it is based on
dispersion and cessation. And what this means is that you
are, when you are practicing the Buddhist path, and you are
practicing meditation in particular, things start to fade
away, right? Things start to cease.
This is what happens in meditation practice.
More and more things fade away, they cease.
Things become simpler and simpler in your life, simpler
and simpler in your mind. Things fading away.
And this is the kind of the basis for meditation and for
insight, is this fading away of things.
And this is how the path kind of develops.
And you will get a little bit of experience of that on this
retreat, just a little bit. I mean, this thing goes very,
very deep. This kind of fading away of
things and ceasing of things is a very profound kind of thing,
and it goes deeper and deeper and deeper, until eventually, it
says here, it matures in release.
And release here really is the release from craving.
You don't crave anymore. You cease.
You see that all the phenomena in the world are impermanent.
You can't control them, right? You can't really rely on them.
There is a higher happiness to be had beyond these things.
And when you see that, craving just disappears all by itself.
It is eliminated. And that is the idea of release
or liberation on the Buddhist path.
Anyway, it's getting a bit ahead of us here.
We're kind of... This is towards the very end of
the Noble Eightfold Path, and we're still just dealing with
the first factor. But anyway, since it's there, I
thought it might be nice just to discuss it briefly here.
Okay, then the last part of this sutta.
By the following method too, ānanda, it may be understood how
the entire holy life is good friendship, good companionship,
good comradeship. By relying upon me as a good
friend, here's the Buddha speaking, you rely on the Buddha
as a good friend. The Buddha is the Kalyanamitta,
ānanda, beings subject to birth are freed from birth.
Being subject to old age are freed from old age.
Being subject to death are freed from death.
Being subject to sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure
and despair are freed from sorrow, lamentation, pain,
displeasure and despair. By this method too, ānanda, it
may be understood how the entire holy life is good friendship,
good companionship, good comradeship.
So this is just another way of looking at the Noble Eightfold
Path. The Noble Eightfold Path leads
to the end of suffering. So by practicing the Noble
Eightfold Path and by doing that, it leads you, this
Kalyanamitta leads you eventually to the highest
happiness, the ending of all problems, and the highest
happiness that is possible to attain in this world.
Okay, so there you are. That is the first, just a very
little, short little sutta about what is meant by the idea of
having confidence that there are beings in this world who have
seen something more profound, who understand this world, who
understand the ideas of rebirth and kamma, and who ultimately
understand that there is an awakening beyond ordinary
phenomena, the ordinary world. That is what is meant by that.
So now we have a little bit more time.
Now I want us to look at the next part of this Right View.
And that is the idea of rebirth and how the Buddha talks about
the idea of rebirth in the suttas.
And again, this is perhaps a bit challenging for some people
because it is quite, in the typical Buddha's way, it is
quite direct and quite straight to the point.
And sometimes when we hear things directly for the first
time that we are not used to hearing, it can seem quite
powerful. Anyway, let's see what the
Buddha has to say. This is the sutta called Tears,
Sangyutanikaya 15.3. I am not sure if the sequence
you have is maybe slightly different from what I have.
Sangyutanikaya SN 15.3. So, At Savatthi, Bhikkhus, this
samsara is without discoverable beginning.
The first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering
on, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.
What do you think, Bhikkhus, which is more, the stream of
tears that you have shed as you have roamed and wandered on
through this long course, weeping and wailing because of
being united with the disagreeable and separated from
the agreeable, this or the water of the four great oceans?
As we understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One,
Venerable Sir, the stream of tears that we have shed, as we
have roamed and wandered through this long course, weeping and
wailing because of being united with the disagreeable and
separated from the agreeable, this alone is more than the
water of the four great oceans. So that is pretty strong, isn't
it? And there are a number of suttas
like that in this Dhamma. In this particular part of the
Buddha's word. And there are others which are
perhaps even more graphic, like the amount of blood that you
have shed and this kind of thing.
And the amount of bones that you have piled up after dying so
many times, etc. But let's have a look at this in
a little bit more detail, starting from the beginning
here. So first thing here, Bhikkhus,
this samsara, samsara, is without discoverable beginning
here. So the word samsara is one of
these kind of crucial words in the Buddhist vocabulary.
And samsara is just a word which means like the faring on, the
traveling on. And it basically refers to kind
of the sequence of births and deaths going on and on and on.
This is the meaning of samsara. Traveling on, the moving on,
kind of the endless, restless, moving restlessness, moving from
one life to the next life. Going back and potentially going
forward indefinitely. No clear point of beginning, no
clear point of ending, right? Just moving on.
And once you look at it like that, if you look at only one
life, a single life can seem quite purposeful.
You are here to maybe do a good job and to kind of help society
on in the right direction. You're here perhaps to bring up
your children, if you have children, and to kind of make
them good people, and to kind of make them good people, so they
also kind of bring society forward and bring humanity
forward, and animals and whatever else.
And in this sense, in a single life, life can seem quite
meaningful. But when you start to look at
life in the broader context of life after life, of doing the
same thing again and again, right?
In one life you have done all these things.
You had your education, you had your job, you have been bringing
up children, you've been trying to do good in the world.
And then you die, and then you get reborn, and then you try to
do exactly the same thing again, right?
It's almost as if you've forgotten that you did it in the
past, and now you're doing it again.
And you're not aware of that. And then you do it again and
again and again and again and again, right?
The same thing. And after a while you wonder,
what is the point of all this? It seems so pointless.
And is it really getting somewhere?
But sometimes it's getting somewhere, sometimes it's not.
Sometimes you are helping society, sometimes you're
dragging it down. Sometimes, you know, the world
is kind of going in the right direction, other times the world
might be going in the wrong direction.
So the whole thing, when you look at it in the bigger
picture, it doesn't make so much sense anymore.
There isn't that sense of progress, there isn't that sense
of meaning. And life becomes kind of, sort
of, pointless in a sense, right? It's a terrible thing to say,
but it kind of seems pointless. You are here, you know, the
ordinary life, the ordinary world.
And that is why, I have to admit, that's one of the reasons
why I am here today. I am still a monk after all
these years. One reason is because I feel
that there is a kind of general progress in my practice all the
way through, and that makes it very meaningful.
But the other thing to me, I can't really see anything all
that meaningful to spend my life doing.
Sure, you know, you can do good in the world and all that, and
of course that is what we should do.
But without that bigger spiritual picture, without the
kind of the, some kind of bigger picture to frame it all into, to
make it meaningful, it is actually, to me, it seems quite
pointless, the whole thing. And this is, again, one of the
ideas about samsara, about this idea of rebirth.
Once you start to understand what it actually means, once you
start to understand that you have done this, right, it seems
so important, I've got to get my education.
So you strive at university and you get that education.
It seems so important until you realize that you have done this
a million times before. And it doesn't seem so
important. And it doesn't seem so important
anymore, right? I've got to get that degree.
Suddenly you have had a million degrees before.
It hasn't really gotten you anywhere.
The kind of, okay, you know, so what?
Right? And this is the kind of the big
picture. And this is why the big picture
matters. And it changes your perspective
on this life and what actually is important in this life.
And it turns you into a very new and different direction.
So I'm not saying this to make you depressed or anything.
I'm just saying it because it kind of opens up a new way of
looking at the world, right? Some of the, what is the amazing
thing is some of the happiest people I know, there are these
people who say exactly these kind of things.
Life is just pointless. And then they, ha, ha, ha, laugh
and have a good time, right? And this is, so this is not
anything to make you sad about. It's just to turn you in the
right direction and to think about life in a new way.
So, and this is the second thing here.
Samsara, it is without discoverable beginning.
And this is also quite interesting.
This is the way the, when the Buddha talks about things, he
doesn't talk about things in what you, what is often called
like a metaphysical way. The word metaphysical means like
in a theoretical or doctrinal way without any basis in
experience, right? That's what I mean by
metaphysics here. There's no basis in experience.
It's just an un-experienced, idea or a theory.
So if the Buddha had said that samsara doesn't have any
beginning, that would have been like theoretical.
It's something you can actually never know.
You cannot know whether something has beginning or not
because you can always go back further in time.
But what he says, it has no discoverable beginning, which is
very different because that is based on your own experience.
You know you can go back in time, right?
And this is what the Buddha claimed to have done.
He goes back in time, life before life before life, right?
And there is no beginning. It just goes on.
And of course one of the interesting things the Buddha
saw when he did that, he saw also that the world goes through
cycles as well, right? He talks about the world going
through these enormous cycles, a bit like perhaps the big bang in
the present day and then a kind of a big crunch kind of
following after it. So he saw, and then because he
saw this, he says, well, you know, no matter how far back I
go, no matter how many big bangs I see, no matter how many
millions of life I look backwards, there is no
beginning. It just goes further back,
further back, further back, further back.
There is no discoverable beginning.
And it shows you the Buddha's very pragmatic way, right?
He talks about what he knows. He doesn't just give empty
doctrines. And this is throughout the
suttas. It's always about what is
knowable from the Buddha's point of view.
And this is the thing about, you know, rebirth and life in
different realms, and all this kind of stuff.
It is, the Buddha says specifically, I'm teaching this
because I know it, not because I've heard it from somebody else
or it is some kind of theory or whatever.
So this again is a very important part of the Buddha's
teachings. It is experiential.
It is knowable. And then he says, a first point
is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on,
hindered by ignorance, fettered by craving, right?
There is no first point again. You can't find a beginning to
all this. Buddhism is one of those few
religions where there is no beginning.
There is no point at which the world was created.
It just goes back. And I find that quite a nice way
of looking at things. It's certainly a way that makes
sense to me. Of beings hindered by ignorance,
right? You are in the darkness.
You are ignorant. You can't see.
You are deluded. You don't understand the way the
world is. And because you are in the
darkness, you keep on wandering, wandering, wandering, not really
knowing what you are doing, going from one life to the next
one, not understanding that it is all just suffering.
You are suffering in this life, suffering in the next one, now
here, now there. You don't really know what's
going on. You have this narrow little view
of this life. You don't see the big picture.
And for that reason, you are kind of just wandering on in
darkness. So you are hindered by
ignorance. You can't see because it's dark.
And you are fettered by craving. Craving is what binds you.
That's why you are fettered by craving.
It binds you to rebirth. It binds you to the round of
existence. You get reborn because of
craving. Craving is the driving force
that takes you from one life to the next one.
So you are fettered by craving. It binds you to the round, and
you are hindered by ignorance. And of course, ignorance and
craving, again, are mutually conditioned by each other.
You crave precisely because you are ignorant.
They are also bound to each other.
There's a nice little thing, that one there, this idea of
being hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.
A powerful little understanding. It's actually a very broad thing
right there. It tells you a lot about the
Buddhist outlook and the Buddhist worldview.
Just those few little words. And then, he goes on to say what
this means. What does it mean?
What actually is it that we are missing?
And one of the things that we don't see is precisely this,
that we have cried more tears than there are waters in the
four oceans. The four oceans in those days
were the oceans around India. So it was a little bit more
limited than the kind of world oceans as we know them now.
But it's roughly the same. It's lots and lots of water.
It doesn't really matter exactly how much it is.
And this is the problem. We don't understand the scope of
suffering in this world. And then the Buddha says, Good,
good bhikkhus. It is good that you understand
the Dhamma taught by me in such a way.
The stream of tears that you have shed as you roamed and
wandered through this long course, weeping and wailing,
because of being united with the disagreeable and separated from
the agreeable, this alone is more than the water in the four
oceans. For a long time bhikkhus, you
have experienced the death of a mother.
As you experience this, weeping and wailing, because of being
united with the disagreeable and separated from the agreeable,
the stream of tears that you have shed is more than the
waters in the four great oceans. For a long time bhikkhus, you
have experienced the death of a father, the death of a brother,
the death of a sister, the death of a son, the death of a
daughter, the loss of relatives, the loss of wealth, the loss of
illness. As you have experienced this,
weeping and wailing, because of being united with the
disagreeable and separated from the agreeable, the streams of
tears that you have shed is more than the water in the four great
oceans. For what reason?
Because bhikkhus, the samsara is without discoverable beginning.
The first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering
on, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.
It is enough to experience revulsion towards all
formations, enough to become dispassionate towards them,
enough to be liberated from them.
Once you see that, you see the problem.
Once you see the scope of this, once you see what is actually
going on, you get this feeling of enough.
You get repelled by this. This is understanding suffering,
the first noble truth in a much broader sense than you have ever
seen it before. You see this vastness of samsara
now being reborn here, now being reborn somewhere else, now being
an animal perhaps. Going on and on.
And then you get this, oh, enough!
I can't take this anymore. So you get this revulsion.
This is what revulsion means in a very deep sense.
You get repelled by this whole thing called existence.
And you kind of get pushed off the wheel of samsara.
You had enough. And this is what it means,
revulsion towards all formations.
It might mean a terrible translation.
When you hear the revulsion from all formations, you think, okay,
to me it doesn't really grab the mind at all.
Formation, it says here, is the Pali word sankara.
All conditioned phenomena, right?
All phenomena of the world basically.
They're all conditioned. So yet experience, you are
repelled by all the phenomena of the world basically here.
Because you see that suffering is inherent in all this.
And it will continue like this into the future, unless you do
something about it. And that's why you feel
repelled. And then when you have that
sense of being repelled, then you become dispassionate.
You lose your interest in this world, right?
There's no interest anymore. Dispassion is the opposite of
being passionate, of being interested in something.
So you lose your interest. And when you lose your interest
completely, and that of course takes a while, but when the
interest is completely lost, then your craving disappears.
And craving disappears, and craving disappearing is the same
as being liberated. Liberation means craving having
ceased. Because when craving ceases, you
are no longer going to get reborn.
Because craving, as I said before, is that which fetters
you to the round of existence, to the round of birth and death,
of samsara. So there you are.
That is the one about the suttas on the stream of tears.
And it's a very powerful, very powerful sutta.
And if you kind of, if that sort of thing inspires you, you can
go to that particular chapter. And there's a number of suttas
there which talk about this in the same way.
If you feel it is, if you don't like it, you don't have to read
that kind of sutta. The point here is that people
are inspired by different things.
They find different things interesting.
So you read those things that interest you.
Don't just, you know, if you find something really hard to
read or you don't like it at all, don't force yourself to
read stuff you don't like. And maybe later on, you can get
back to it afterwards, once you have digested some of the other
stuff in the suttas. So that is the Buddha's way of
explaining rebirth and why. One reason, among many reasons,
why the idea of rebirth is so powerful and so important.
And I will stop there because we have been going for just over an
hour. And we will continue tomorrow
morning with a little bit more about rebirth and then about
kamma and the other factors we'll be talking about
afterwards.