interpretations have to be resolved, of course, but still
it is quite amazing that this is what is going on.
So I personally, I don't really have much doubt that when the
Buddha spoke about these things, he basically had a very direct
understanding of how the universe operates, and it is
very similar to the ideas of modern cosmology.
So based on this, the way that modern cosmology looks at the
universe, they're trying to figure out how it all hangs
together, whether it started at the Big Bang, what's going to
happen to the universe at the end, is it just going to
dissipate forever, is there going to be a new Big Bang at
some stage, is there going to be a big crunch, all of these
matters are still up for discussion in cosmology.
There are certain favourite theories, I'm sure you've heard
about some of these, the multiverse and all this kind of
stuff. But I am going to make a
prediction, right? I'm going to be very bold and
make a prediction. It's of course madness to make
predictions, but it's nice to be mad sometimes.
So my prediction is that eventually cosmology is going to
fall back on this idea of expanding and contracting
universes, right? One Big Bang, big crunch, or if
not big crunch, one way in which the Big Bang happens over again
and over again and over again and over again.
Quite likely a Big Bang, big crunch, Big Bang, big crunch.
This is my prediction here. So I challenge you all, keep an
eye out on those scientific journals, right?
Read a little bit of my cosmology, see what happens in
the next few decades, and then let's see if science is heading
in that way. Right now, most scientists don't
believe in this, right? So it's completely out of the
scope. So if this is what happens, then
we, you know, it's very interesting.
So let's see how things pan out and how things move in that
direction here. Anyway, that's my prediction.
That's my first prediction. I'm going to make at least one
more in the course of this talk so that we can sort of, you
know, compare notes in a few years' time, here.
So this is the first thing that I find very interesting about
Buddhist cosmology, very close similarity to modern ideas of
cosmology. There's a second thing, and this
is more coming down to more small-scale cosmology.
And this is where the Buddha talks about different kinds of
world systems. And these world systems— systems
that the Buddha is talking about.
Essentially, each world system. First of all, he talks about the
planet Earth, right? The ideas of the planet Earth in
those days were very, quite simple and basic compared to
what they are now. But basically, they had an idea
of this realm, this Earth that we are on.
And then they had an idea of the moon.
And then, of course, they had the sun, right?
And the Buddha says, this is like a unit.
These three are like a unit. There's no reference to planets
or anything like that, except maybe the morning star, I think,
in a few places. But basically, that is the unit
called a world system. And essentially, it is a solar
system, and all the beings that exist depending on that world
system. And then the Buddha says, and
this is, again, very interesting from a modern scientific point
of view. He says that there isn't just
one world system out there. He says there is a thousandfold
world system. In fact, not only is there a
thousandfold world system, but beyond that, there is a
millionfold world system. And he says, if you want to know
more about the world system, you can go to the book, which is
called The World System. And he says, if you want to know
more about the world system, beyond that, there is a
billionfold world system, right? So what the Buddha is saying is
that there isn't just one solar system with suns and planets and
moons and all these things. There are heaps of solar systems
out there. And according to the Buddha, the
solar system that he's talking about are solar systems where
there is life, where there are beings of various types
connected to that solar system, right?
And again, this is very interesting, because in the
book, there is a lot of talk about the solar system.
And he says, if you want to know more about the world system, you
can go to the book, which is called The World System.
And he says, if you want to know more about the world system,
there is a millionfold world system.
And he says, if you want to know more about the world system, you
can go to the book, which is called The World System.
And again, this is very interesting, because in the
book, Europe, Europe of the Middle Ages, I don't know if you
remember your school learning about these issues.
But according to the European ideas in the Middle Ages, they
had this idea of what was known as the firmament.
Do you remember the firmament from school?
And the firmament is an idea they had before the kind of
modern astronomical revolution started to happen.
The idea that it's like a sphere, right?
Or an arc around the earth, whatever you consider the earth,
you know, here, basically. The sky is like an arc over you.
And that arc is only a few hundred meters or a few
kilometers up. And in that sphere, you have
these little light bulbs, right, that are kind of stuck in the
sphere around you. And these little light bulbs
that are stuck in the sphere around you, those, of course,
are the stars, right? Because the stars are always
fixed, right? You look up every night, and
they move according to very regular patterns.
So that's the firmament. And that was what people
believed in the Middle Ages. A very, very, very, very, very,
very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very simple.
And you could say primitive, but it makes good sense.
Because if you have no idea of space, it's a very simple
solution to the universe. And perhaps, you know, often, we
prefer the very simple solutions.
But they had no idea what was going on.
And then you move on to India, which isn't that far away from
Europe, right? You have to cross the Middle
East to go down to India. And the weird thing is that
there had been exchanges between Europe and India, going a long,
long way back to the Greeks, even prior to the Greeks.
There was an exchange of trade and ideas between India and
Europe. But of course, when Europe went
into the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages, of course, all that
knowledge was shut out. And it wasn't of interest
anymore. So amazing that 2,000 years
prior to the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, there was this
man in India, right? This man, we don't really have
much familiarity with him. He's not known as the Buddha.
He lived in India. And he said, that there are
these solar systems out there. Not only one or two, but
billions of solar systems. And they all have planets going
around. There's a sun in the middle.
There's a planet. And there's a moon revolving
around the planets. And then there are beings living
in dependence of that solar system.
It's quite astonishing. That's basically right there in
the texts. And one of the things I always
wondered about, well, okay, the Buddha saw all these beings.
He saw that there were all these world systems out there.
So basically he knew there were aliens out there, right?
There are all these aliens out there.
That's basically what the Buddha said.
There is no Buddhist word for alien.
But you wonder what kind of beings he saw.
We have this idea that aliens are kind of weird people.
Maybe I shouldn't say people. I might offend somebody if I
call them people because they're kind of green and they have
antennas and all this kind of weird stuff, right?
Kind of science fiction staple. But it's interesting.
What kind of beings did the Buddha actually see?
Who are these beings in this alien world?
And this is my second prediction.
And this is, you know, if you look at modern science as well,
people will say, yeah, it looks very likely now that there's
very likely to be life out there because we found the planets.
We know the planets are in the right place.
So if life was able to evolve on Earth, why wouldn't it also
evolve on these other planets, right?
So what are these beings? What are these things going to
be like? And I say, and I think this is
fairly obvious from a Buddhist point of view, that the beings
on these planets are going to be very much like us.
Why? Because we are in so many ways
connected, according to the Buddhist teachings.
Because we are connected often mentally, the way we think tend
to be the same way. The way we view the universe is
often the same way. Sometimes you might get reborn
on those planets, right? And they might get reborn here.
It's very inconvenient if you get reborn among a whole bunch
of green planets. Right?
Right?
any movie at all. And of course, the beings in the
movie were really weird beings, light beings with long, thin
legs and long, thin arms. Otherwise, science fiction would
be very boring if they just looked like us.
But the reality is, I think, they are going to be basically
like us. So watch that space as well.
See what happens in the area of scientific contact or how we're
kind of looking at beings out there.
And see what develops. And I predict, again, very
foolish of me to predict this kind of thing.
But still, I predict that we're going to find, eventually, we
will see that those beings out there are essentially just the
same as us. They're not really all that
alien after all, right? They're pretty familiar here.
So this is the second thing. And there's one last thing in
this kind of, not really puzzle, but one last thing, one other
discourse by the Buddha, which is also very fascinating.
OK. And this is one of the discourse
that really, I think, caught my eye, perhaps the most, about the
universe and about how the universe actually functions.
And this is a discourse where the Buddha talks about the sun
and about our specific solar system.
And he says to the monks that in the future, the Earth will warm
up, right? The sun will become hotter and
hotter and hotter. And as the sun becomes hotter,
the Earth will start to warm up. And he specifically says, OK.
The first thing is that the plants will start to die, right?
Because the plants won't be able to cope with the heat.
And of course, because the plants are the bottom of the
food chain, if the plants die, everything else also dies,
because everything else is based on those plants.
And it was interesting. I was looking up a Wikipedia
article on this particular topic just, when was it?
This morning, perhaps. I had a quick look at it.
And I googled something like the fate of the Earth, you know, as
the sun expands, some kind of thing.
And it got me to this Wikipedia article.
And I started reading. And the first thing it says,
well, you know, the sun is going to get hotter.
And then the plants will die, right?
It's almost word for word the same thing I found in this
sutta. Again, rather astonishing.
And then the sutta goes on. As the sun becomes warmer,
right? It goes through these various
stages. The water starts to evaporate.
Eventually, all the oceans disappear, right?
Everything evaporates. Nothing is left.
And eventually, it says, it becomes so hot that everything,
the whole Earth, starts to smolder and smoke and burn in
flames, right? Mountain peaks come crashing
down. Everything disintegrates.
Everything is burned into nothing.
And nothing basically remains. In one place, it even says it
just all ends up in ash and nothing is left behind.
And again, it's incredibly hard to understand how this is
possible. Because, of course, it's not
just modern cosmology, modern astrophysics, or whatever it is.
They say precisely that. The sun will expand.
And eventually, everything on this planet will burn up.
There will be nothing left. All there will be will be this
smoldering, burning planet, full of smoke and nothing more.
Right? We know that.
For us, it kind of makes sense. But how is it possible that this
exists in a text which is two and a half thousand years old,
spoken by a man in India who we don't even know who he was?
Who he was basically. Right?
He had no access to these things.
How could he possibly know this? This is like a fact.
This is something which is so easy to establish.
Right? The sun will expand.
Everything will become hot. And then the Buddha says the
same thing. Right?
And then at the end of that sutta, end of this discourse of
the Buddha, the Buddha says, who will possibly believe me?
Who can possibly believe this except somebody who has seen the
truth? In other words, the Buddha
realized that, you know, this is the truth.
This is just wild stuff for most people.
Nobody can really believe this. It's just way out there.
And because it is way out there, he had to say, you know, but who
will actually believe these things?
Because it is so different from how we're used to looking at the
world. So these are some of the things
when I read the suttas, I kind of stand out and I think are
kind of really, really, really powerful.
And I warned you beforehand, when you hear all this, you
probably think I'm some kind of religious nutcase.
Because it's the kind of the things that people will often
think. And say, right?
And often there may not be any basis for that.
So one of the things, having looked at all of that, and
having made my a few predictions about what might happen in the
future, having looked at all of that, I just want to briefly
discuss are there perhaps any alternative interpretations?
Is there a way we can explain why these things are there in
the discourses of the Buddha that do not invoke some kind of,
you know, supernatural or different way of looking at the
world? And very briefly, I want to talk
about that. And of course, the first thing
that people will often say is that, first thing is that it may
have been inserted later on, right?
This is kind of the first thing, you know, we will, a lot of the
suttas are ancient, but maybe some of these things were kind
of put in there at a later stage.
But really, it is a non starter, because these things are very,
very modern ideas of the cosmos. Most of these things were
discovered, you know, in the second half of the 20th century,
and they were not discovered until the end of the 20th
century. Some of these things in the
first half of the 20th century, it is very modern ideas.
And we know for a fact that these scriptures, this
particular sutta has gone a long, long, long way back.
The particular sutta, I will talk, all of these suttas in
fact, we can say with a great degree of certainty, go back at
the very least to the time of Ashoka, Emperor Ashoka, about
2300 years ago. These are genuinely ancient
texts, and it is very easy to show that through, you know,
comparative study of different texts and different traditions
and these things. So the idea that has been
inserted later is basically absolutely impossible.
No such thing can actually be the case.
Then, of course, there is the other possible explanation that
people may have, right? This is the explanation that all
of these things are a matter of interpretation.
We have to interpret these texts.
When you read these texts, how do you actually know that these
things are not, how do you know? How do we interpret these things
in the wrong way? How do we know that we have
understood the meaning of the Buddha in the right way?
And actually, one of the things which I find, always have found,
that stands out in the Buddha's teachings, which makes the
Buddha's teachings very different from the vast majority
of any teachings you find anywhere else, whether it is
philosophical books or books on other religions or whatever it
is, is the simplicity and the directness and the ease of
understanding of these teachings.
Right? Very often, it is very simple
prose. It is very easily explained.
You open it up, you can understand straight away what is
going on. If there is a metaphor, if there
is a simile, if there is a parable, if there is a story, it
is a simple story with often a very powerful message, but it is
easy to understand how it fits in with the surrounding texts
around it. There is usually not that much
difficulty in interpreting these texts.
It is very, very different. Right?
From the vast majority of ancient texts, which often are
stories and things which always need to be interpreted to
actually give meaning. This is not mythology.
This is somebody who very clearly talks about his own
experiences and his own understanding of the world.
And for this reason, when you read something like the sun
becoming hot, right? And eventually burning up the
whole earth, there is no doubt about what it means.
There isn't really any alternative explanation.
I know the Pali language fairly well.
I can read those ancient texts in what is pretty much very
close to the language used by the Buddha himself.
And there really isn't much doubt about the meaning of these
things. So I would say that even the
idea of interpretation actually is not really a very likely
explanation for how these things can be there.
Because it is actually quite difficult.
It is actually quite easy to interpret.
I would maybe like to add one little thing there, because I
think this is a very important point.
This idea that the Buddhist texts actually are very easy to
understand. And how many people are
sometimes scared of opening a real Buddhist book, right?
Which goes back to the very beginning, taught by the Buddha
himself. They're scared because they
think it's too difficult to understand.
It's a different culture. It's a long time ago.
It's all these kind of things. How are we going to be able to
make sense of this? Right?
Because they're kind of frightened of these ancient
books. But I say, in my experience,
that it is far easier, this may sound astonishing, but it's far
easier to understand the word of the Buddha in the most ancient
texts that we have available to us than it is to understand most
contemporary teachers. Right?
Sometimes when I read books by a contemporary teacher, not
sometimes, most of the time, I often wonder what are they
really talking about? Or sometimes.
Or sometimes I sort of think I know what it means.
Yeah, it probably means this. But I look more carefully and I
realize actually it's quite ambiguous.
What is it really talking about? Right?
So I say that if you want clarity about Buddhism, if you
want to understand the Dhamma, if you want to understand what
this is all about, go to the Buddha.
It's actually clear. It's concise.
It's structured. Beautiful similes to explain the
points. Right?
It's actually very, very powerful.
You read a modern teacher. Sometimes it's kind of
feely-feely. It's nice.
Right? It goes, kind of you feel good
afterwards. Which, of course, is nice.
I'm not, you know, I'm not, I don't want to diminish that too
much either. But to actually, for a real
understanding of what's going on, you can't really do better
than the word of the Buddha. So it's actually the reverse, in
my opinion, what most people say.
Most people say, I want to read these other books first because
they're easy to understand. No.
They're actually hard to understand.
Go to the word of the Buddha. That is what is easy to
understand. So, interpretation.
Forget about interpretation. There isn't much interpretation
required. So that, too, to me, doesn't
really work as an explanation. Now the third thing, the third
maybe, maybe, explanation that can explain these things in the
suttas, so we don't, we can avoid what some people feel
uncomfortable if it is some kind of, you know, different kind of
idea from our ordinary world views, is that it is just a
coincidence. Right?
The Buddha was talking about these things.
He had this philosophy about the world.
He said, OK, this is the way it is.
And then by some coincidence, it happens to be exactly the same
as what we have now. Right?
And, of course, that is always a possibility.
You can't discount that. But the more facts you have, the
more things that kind of fit in line with modern ideas, the less
likely, of course, the coincidence is.
And, of course, one of the main points that we can do, we can
compare these ancient Buddhist texts, and we can compare them
with ancient Buddhist texts that exist, you know, from other
cultures, other places. And, of course, it is much more
difficult to find things in those cultures that correspond
to modern ideas than it is with the Buddhist texts.
You can find it there as well, but usually it relies on much
more interpretation to be able to make sense of these things.
So, again, I don't think it is likely.
When the Buddha talks about the sun becoming warmer, it is not
likely that the sun is going to be warmer.
But when the Buddha talks about the sun becoming warmer and
eventually engulfing the, you know, burning up the earth and
saying at the end, but, you know, who will actually believe
this because it sounds so outrageous, I think, wow, this
is really astonishing. How could he possibly have known
that? So all of those things are
unlikely as far as I can see. So what does that mean?
What does that leave us with? What kind of explanation do we
have then for these things? And the Buddhist...
The one explanation that we then still have is the explanation,
of course, given by the Buddha himself, how he knows these
things. And that explanation is actually
quite simple. Of course, it takes a different
worldview. It takes a different
understanding of the world from what we're used to.
But what the Buddha says is that what I do or what I did or what
I'm still doing is recalling my past lives.
And when I recall my past lives, going back and back and back.
Right? A hundred thousand past lives.
Then eventually he starts to see how the universe functions as a
consequence of seeing his past lives.
Right? This is how.
This is the Buddha's own explanation for how he knows
these things. And you may wonder, well, how is
that possible? You know, you're a human being,
you're kind of this tiny little being in this enormous cosmos,
right? Crashing together when the big
crunch comes. How can you possibly understand
what's going on? But again, this is about...
From a Buddhist point of view, it's about the universe.
From a Buddhist point of view, it is possible to be...
There's many different kind of levels of rebirth, many
different kind of vantage points you can look at the world from.
And after a while, when you see the world from many different
vantage points, over long going back and back again and again,
from eon to eon, universe to universe, after a while, you
start to understand what's going on.
And then when you start to understand what's going on, you
start to see how this whole thing functions.
How the universe collapses together, right?
First there is the disintegration part.
Then there is the evolution part.
And how this cyclical universe keeps on going like this again
and again and again. And when the Buddha then says
that the sun in the future will engulf the earth, it's a similar
kind of principle. It's not really a prediction
about the future. What it is, is an understanding
based on his knowledge of the past.
And because of that knowledge of the past, he's able to make
the... He's able to make the inference
that this must happen again. Because this is the nature of
stars. This is the nature of this sun
that we see. He understands the nature of the
universe, how these things work. And that's why he can say this
will happen again. So this is what the Buddha is
doing, right? He's just recalling the past.
And that is the Buddhist explanation for how the Buddha
could have known these things. So what does all this actually
mean? Yeah.
Yeah.
Right? I mean, talking about all these
things, I probably do wonder now, what is all this?
Why talk about all these things? You know, okay, what has it got
to do with my practice right here, right now?
It's important to get back to those things.
Sometimes you kind of get these highfalutin ideas.
You get away from the present moment, which really is where we
have to do things and get things sorted out.
So why all of this stuff? And the first thing for me that
occurs to me when I read these things is that if you want some
good evidence for the idea of rebirth, there's lots of really
good evidence for the idea of rebirth, right?
But this is just like one more little piece that for me
actually is evidence for the idea of rebirth.
Basically, because there is no other way that the Buddha could
have known about these things. Here is a man who lived in a
very, quite a simple culture, right?
India, two and a half thousand years, very simple, no internet,
right? All those kinds of things.
Very basic things. And when you live in that simple
culture, you're just kind of sitting at the root of a tree,
right? Imagine yourself going into the
jungle in India two and a half thousand years ago, and you see
this man sitting at the root of a tree here.
And yes, you know, he's a very impressive man, right?
You see him very peaceful, very calm.
When you talk to him, you get this feeling of enormous
compassion, enormous understanding, this wisdom.
You ask a question and he answers you in very simple
terms, but with great profundity.
And you get this feeling. You know, somebody who is really
special, right? Somebody very special.
But still, it is still hard to really grasp what's going on.
But then you look at the suttas and you start to realize who the
Buddha actually was. He had this mind that
encompassed basically the whole universe.
He understood all of these things that was going on through
the recollection of his past life.
So not only is it a good evidence for the recollection of
past life, but it says something about the Buddha as a person.
It says something about the Buddha as a person.
Right? You see this man sitting at the
foot of the tree and it's like he has the whole universe in his
mind. He has this whole idea of
universal expansions of big bangs and big crunches in his
mind, understanding what's going on and relating it all to
rebirth and to aliens out there and all these other kinds of
things. And you get some feeling for
somebody who has a very different kind of viewpoint and
image and vision. Which isn't what the vast
majority of us actually have. Most of us are trapped in our
own little world, right? This is my world.
This is who I am and I'm missing this big picture of things.
And this is one of those things that makes the Buddha so
astonishing. And when I read it I think wow.
That simple man at the root of a tree actually is really somebody
extraordinarily profound with extraordinary abilities.
He has developed his mind to a point where he's able to see and
understand things that he hasn't usually done, that are beyond
his social character. So I know that somebody is just
so amazing that he might be able not to do it, but he's
absolutely astonishing. He knows more about cosmology,
at least in some areas, than we probably even know today.
So it gives that feeling of the Buddha as somebody really,
really remarkable. His enormously expansive mind.
And it's not irrelevant. You may wonder, you know, why
would the Buddha even talk about things?
But remember the Buddha's search when he went forth from the home
life and he went into homelessness and decided to
become a monk. Remember his search was a search
for finding happiness. He wanted to find an end of
suffering, an end of this round of birth and death, right?
All the problems in the world. And of course, to be able to
really fully understand happiness and suffering, you
have to understand the big picture.
You can't just look at this life and say, I understand everything
about happiness and suffering. You really have to understand
the whole universe. You have to understand the
potential. Where might I get reborn?
Is there a place where I can get reborn, where I will be safe,
where I will be last forever after?
You have to understand everything.
Only when you understand the big picture can you make a decision
about where freedom from suffering actually exists and
where true happiness can be attained.
And this is why these things actually do matter.
So, you know, when I read the sense, I start to get this
feeling about the Buddha. The Buddha is a man, right?
He's a man. He's a person, just like each
one of us here. But there's something going on
inside of the Buddha. The mind of the Buddha is
extraordinary. And this is one way of
approaching the Buddha, to see the profundity of what is going
on. At least for me, it's kind of
powerful. Even when you start to get into
deep meditation, that of course is when it really starts to come
together. But even these ideas give you
some idea of what's happening here.
But having said all that, I was recently discussing with
somebody about some similar issues on some kind of forum
somewhere. This was basically a forum where
we were discussing about the translation of suttas and these
kinds of things. And I mentioned this because I
thought, this is really powerful.
And he said, you know, why do you worry about that?
Shouldn't we really focus on the core teachings of the Buddha?
This is all kind of, you know, it's interesting, but let's go
back to the essence. And actually it's a very
important point, right? He's making, is this really to
do with the essence of the teaching?
Yes, it gives us some idea of the Buddha as some kind of
remarkable person. It gives us some sense of
rebirth perhaps. But how does it fit in with the
broader view of Buddhism? What is it really about?
Does it really matter? Is it actually something that
really we should focus on? And of course, the interesting
thing is that when you read these suttas that have these
particular explanations, the Buddha doesn't say, well, this
is my philosophy, this is my philosophy of the universe, here
is the philosophy, you know, take it or leave it.
That's not how it works. When the Buddha talks about
these things, they are like incidental matters.
These are not the core things that he talks about.
He doesn't present the philosophical view.
He doesn't present the cosmology that you have to take or leave.
What is an incidental matter to other things that he's talking
about. And those other things are the
real Dhamma. And these are just
illustrations. These are just illustrations of
that real Dhamma. And this is what is so powerful,
right? It's like, here he's saying
things that, for me at least, are absolutely astonishing,
coming from two and a half thousand years ago.
But the Buddha is only using them as illustrations for a much
more important point. So what is that much more
important point? And let us take the sutta with
the sun, right? Where the sun becomes hotter and
hotter, and eventually everything disintegrates,
everything is abandoned. Well, towards the end of that
sutta, and this is the context, right?
The Buddha says, this is how impermanent everything is.
This is how unreliable everything is.
This is how unstable all conditioned phenomena,
everything in the world is so unstable.
And then he says, it is enough to be, have a kind of repulsion,
to be repelled by this. It is enough to have dispassion
towards it. Dispassion means give up desire,
craving for these things. It is enough to be liberated
from all this. This is the bigger view, the
idea of impermanence. So this is, right, the
carry-home message, right? The idea of impermanence.
All the other stuff is kind of by the by.
It is okay, incidental things, actually quite interesting when
you look at it. But from the Buddha's point of
view, it's a side issue. The real issue is impermanence.
But of course, when we hear talks about impermanence, it's
not as exciting, right? But actually, this is the real
deal. This is the real stuff.
This is what we should focus on. Impermanence is what matters.
So let me just talk very, very briefly about impermanence.
Very, very quick, just to finish off this talk, because it is so
important. The first thing to know about
impermanence, the Pali word for this is anicca, anicca.
And it doesn't just mean impermanence.
To me, the idea of impermanence has always been a bit like, you
know, wishy-washy, not really sure what it means.
What impermanence, what this word actually means, is like
unreliable, right? Anything which is truly anicca
is unreliable. It's like an unreliable friend.
If you have an unreliable friend, and you ask them if they
can do something for you, you never know whether it's going to
be done or not, right? The world is like that.
If you ask something from the world, like Ajahn Brahm likes to
say, if you ask something from the world, it is likely it will
not happen. And yet, we are always asked, we
are always asking things from the world.
This is what attachment is all about.
When you are attached to someone, or attached to
something, you are basically asking them to be there for you,
when you need them. And of course, one day, they
won't be there. So impermanence, unreliability,
instability. Very often, when we talk about
impermanence, we talk about impermanence as something we do
in meditation practice, right? You sit down, you watch the
impermanence of all phenomena, you watch your mind, you watch
your body, and you see how things are kind of arising and
passing away. This is one of the favorite ways
of talking about impermanence in Buddhism.
But one of the interesting things, it's not that that is
wrong necessarily, but one of the interesting things is that
the Buddha actually talks, usually talks about impermanence
in quite a different way. For the Buddha, this is a big
picture thing. And very often, the Buddha would
start off with saying that all the things around you in your
life, are unreliable, they are impermanent, they are unstable.
If you are attached to them, you are going to suffer as a
consequence. Our possessions, everything we
own in this world, our friendships, our family members,
our partner in life, all of these things will eventually
have to go. Often they go before you die, at
the very latest when you pass away.
Your status in this world, right?
Our status, our sense of identity, has very much to do
with this world. Because it's this world that we
have built up this sense of identity.
It has to do with how we fit into the network of things.
This is my identity, I'm a Buddhist monk, right?
If I cling too much to that, when I die, I will be very
disappointed. Because I won't be a Buddhist
monk anymore. Because the spirit that moves on
is not really a Buddhist monk. The spirit is just a spirit.
Right? Maybe you have, I wonder, I
wonder whether the spirit has robes, I don't think the spirit
has robes on her. The spirit kind of just moves
out, right? So you lose your robes.
And you think, no! I was so happy, monk life was
actually very good. Right?
The Buddha says, cling on to those robes, because they're
going to give you a lot of happiness if you practice in the
right way. But at that point you can't
cling on anymore. That has to go.
Your status as a monk, right? Whatever that is.
Our occupation, whatever it is in this world, and so many
things, our education. Often we think about our
education, our success in business life.
All of these things. Everything we identify with, all
of that has to go. So this is the Buddha telling us
about impermanence. So don't cling too much.
Don't hold on. Otherwise you'll have serious
problems. Then he talks about death.
Death is also a serious problem. Right?
Everything again being impermanent.
But then, and this is kind of the importance, right?
The interesting thing about this sutta, with the sun kind of, you
know, becoming warmer and warmer, and disintegrating the
whole earth. Everything is impermanent.
Absolutely. Our whole civilization, the
whole planet earth, all the cities, all the things that
we're trying to build up, all the things that we've been
taking so much care to try to keep in this world.
Absolutely everything will be gone.
History will be wiped away. There will be no more history
anymore. There will be no more humans.
You know, you may, even the people who kind of create a
legacy, and are remembered sometimes for millennia
afterwards, that too will be completely wiped out.
Nobody will know anything about what happened on this planet a
few billion years down the line. Right?
Absolute impermanence. Absolute unreliability.
This is how unreliable everything is.
And then the Buddha of course says, as I was saying before,
when you see that, when you understand the absoluteness of
this unreliability, you stop desiring these things.
You give up the craving for this.
Right? You become actually repelled by
it. You think this is all suffering.
No! I don't want to have it anymore.
And when you become repelled by it, and when you let go of the
craving for all these things, this is the consequence of
seeing this. Then you gain liberation.
And that is what this really is all about.
And in the meantime, we can talk a few niceties about Buddhist
cosmology and all that, but this is the real message of the
Buddha. Very, very powerful message.
And that is the context in which everything else needs to be
seen. Okay, so there you are.
That's the talk for tonight. Okay, so now, does anybody want
to ask some tricky questions about Buddhist cosmology?
Now you have your chance to... Yes?
Is there a microphone for the speakers?
Okay. Okay.
Back there first of all. Okay.
Very good. Thank you for your talk tonight.
It was very, very interesting. First of all, about the aliens,
Ajahn Brahm actually gave us a talk on the alien abduction.
And there was a lady here at the talk that had been abducted.
And she spoke about that. And actually, I'm going tomorrow
to a talk on the support group for people that have been
abducted by aliens. Okay, good.
I haven't had any personal experiences, but just an
interesting thing. Secondly, about the sun getting
hotter. I feel that we as human beings
need to take responsibility for what we're doing, because the
sun gets hotter because we're destroying the ozone layer.
And that is so important. We're destroying the forests,
the animals are being killed. We're destroying ourselves
through our lack of responsibility and caring for
ourselves and the planet. Industry and everything is
taking over. Technology, it's actually
destroying our connection with the simplicity of connecting
with the Earth. And we're doing it.
So I think that the sun getting stronger and hotter, we're doing
it. We're actually destroying it
ourselves. Yes, I think that's a good
point. I mean, one of the things that,
you know, from my point of view, it's a moral thing, right?
It's a moral thing to look after our planet, for goodness sake.
Why? Because there are going to be
people, our children. I don't have any children
personally. But, you know, if...
But for the future generations, but it doesn't matter if I don't
have any children personally, but for the future generations,
for my nieces and nephews, I have nieces and nephews, we have
a moral obligation to look after this planet.
This is what they're going to inherit.
So these things are actually moral issues as far as I'm
concerned, and I fully agree with you that we need to do
that. But the point of this story in
the sutta is that regardless, right, of how much we look after
it, yes, we can extend the span a little bit, yes, we can do
that, and we certainly should. I fully agree with you.
But regardless of that, impermanence and unreliability
is eventually going to destroy this planet regardless.
And this is really the most important thing, you know, for
full development of the Buddhist path, as far as this is
concerned. Yes?
Thank you, but I find that I disagree myself.
Thank you. Okay.
Yeah. And the other thing about this,
I also like this idea of alien abductions, because I think that
you have to take people's ideas seriously, right?
When people have this experience, you can't just
dismiss it. Often you say that you are just
crazy or whatever. People often have this
experience. It's important to take into
account. And I think, I'm not sure
exactly what Ajahn Brahm said on that talk, I don't usually
listen to the talks that he gives here in Novamara, but I
think it is an important point. And I think that, you know, one
of the other interesting things about the early Buddhist suttas,
which I always found fascinating, and I wonder why
don't we see this in the present day, and that is there is often
the meeting between humans and beings from other realms.
You often see that in the suttas, right?
Some kind of interaction going on there.
And I think that maybe the modern-day equivalent of that is
precisely alien abductions or contact with these beings,
right? What we're seeing is not some
kind of, you know, alien coming from a planet far away.
What we're seeing are just beings that may, you know,
actually be among us already, be part of us already, but we can't
see for various reasons. And then there is that
interaction going on, right? This is pure speculation, of
course, but a bit of speculation is always fun.
So that's my understanding of alien abductions.
That's how I would see that. Ajahn, the beginning of the
universe isn't discernible. Yeah.
So I don't want to go, therefore the end of the universe isn't
discernible. I'm wondering, is this some kind
of nibbana state that exists, you know, in the universe?
Aha. That's kind of independent of
the destruction of the world and all the rest of it.
Some kind of infinity would be the word I would use.
Okay. Well, nibbana is the ending of
things, right? This is kind of the point about
nibbana. It literally means
extinguishment. Something is extinguished.
And the standard kind of simile that you find in the suttas is a
flame going out. And the first thing that goes
out are the defilements. Greed, hate, delusion go out.
And then the khandhas disappear, right?
So to say about nibbana being a state is really misunderstanding
what the point of nibbana. Nibbana is the ending of things.
And that's precisely why it is the highest happiness.
This is kind of the weird thing you write, right?
The ending of things is the highest happiness.
It's our normal grain of seeing things.
So yes, nibbana is beyond this universe.
Nibbana has nothing to do with that.
And that's the escape from this kind of whole thing.
But you can't really say that it is a state.
Once you say something like that about it, you're putting things
into it which are not actually meant by nibbana.
What about the beginning of the universe is not discernible?
It kind of implies to me some kind of infinity thing.
Well, this is the thing. It may imply that, but you don't
know. Right?
This is the thing. And this is why it's so powerful
when the Buddha says there is no discoverable beginning, right?
What he's basically saying, for all I know, it may very well go
back to infinity, but actually I can't see back to infinity.
Nobody can see back to infinity. So he says there is no
discoverable beginning. Very pragmatic, right?
Very kind of, no kind of messing around.
No theories, no metaphysics, no all this kind of stuff.
Just the bare bones of what we can actually know.
Ajahn, a short question. Somewhere I saw the previous
Buddhas were all were born in India.
And does it mean that even these previous prehistoric times that
you were talking about, the other Earths or the other
planets also had a place called India where those Buddhas were
born? Or what does it mean?
Well, the answer to that question is that you have to
understand that the... Actually I wanted to talk about
that a little bit as well. You have to understand that the
ideas in India at that time about the world were very
different from our ideas of the world, right?
The ideas of the planet Earth was very limited.
They didn't know that there was such a place as Norway, right?
That's where I'm from. I'm from Norway.
They had no idea there was such a place as Norway.
So as far as they were concerned, we didn't even exist,
right? It was very, very...
It was a very simple idea of the world.
And the idea of the world was this Jambudipa.
Jambudipa is basically a word for India.
It means the Rose Apple Island. That's what it means.
And it was surrounded by seas on three sides, which India is.
And that's what they know. And once you started to move
outside of India, it was all basically mythology.
They talk about the land called Uttarakurus.
And Uttarakuru is outside of India.
And once they start talking about it, they talk about, oh,
people who are three times as tall as ordinary beings, you
know, all this kind of stuff. You know that you are in a realm
of mythology. So for them, the Earth was
basically India. That's what the world was.
And anything outside of that was unknown.
So I understand when the Buddha talks about Jambudipa, talks
about India, he's basically talking about the Earth.
Because that was all that was known about in those days.
Maybe the Buddha knew more about the planet.
It's quite likely that he knew more.
Remember the famous simile. Actually, I should have
mentioned that during my talk, but I forgot.
There are so many things already in there.
But the famous simile, where the Buddha says that he takes up a
handful of leaves and he says, what is more, the leaves in my
hand or the leaves on the forest floor?
And of course the monk said, well, you know, the leaves in
your hand are few and the forest floor are many.
In just the same way, what I have taught you compared to what
I know, I've only taught you like the leaves in my hand.
But what I know is like the leaves on the forest floor.
Right? So the Buddha obviously has this
very extensive knowledge, but he only teaches those things that
are relevant for awakening. He doesn't teach all the other
stuff. So he may have known about that.
But in a society when nobody understands what's going on, you
have to speak the language of those people around you.
So I don't think we should think of Jambudipa as India.
I think we should think of Jambudipa as the Earth.
This is what they understood as the Earth.
So yes, you're quite right. On those other planets too, they
talk about Jambudipa. So if you take it literally,
there's India out there as well, right?
You have all this solar system and there's India out there, and
there is kind of the four great oceans and these kind of things.
But this is where you have to use your common sense to
understand how these things were understood.
And this is what I said before, there is always some degree of
interpretation because our world view is obviously quite
different now from what it was at that time.
Yeah. Happy with that?
Thank you, Edwidge. You're welcome.
Yes. Just wait, Priya.
Just get the microphone so you can hear.
We can hear you properly here. Okay, so why don't we hear first
of all. Okay.
Good evening. Yeah.
My question is, the Buddha made quite a lot of explanations of
how the work, solar systems, how the sun is heating up, etc.
I was quite surprised how you went on to explain how he
explained how he was aware of this knowledge, that he was
living the experiences of his past lives.
Yeah. So going one step further, does
he explain how he has access to this experience of his past
lives? Yes.
And why people like us don't have access?
Sure. Yes, he does actually explain
that. And that is a whole other talk,
of course, to talk about those things, but he does.
And basically the access comes through meditation practice,
right? But remember, meditation is
really what it is. It's a development of the mind.
It's not just sitting down and watching the breath.
It's actually a development of the mind.
And as you develop the mind in the right way, meditation
becomes more and more and more and more profound, until the
mind becomes so powerful. And the Buddha, this is again
found in the early discourse. All of this is found in the
early discourses. And this is kind of the core
aspects of the early discourses, not what I've been talking about
tonight. Until the mind becomes so
profound that you can direct it to basically anything you want,
any knowledge you want. Right?
The mind has the ability to recall, for example, the present
life in absolute detail. You go back in time.
You go back in time to the point you were born.
Right? And then you try to go back a
little bit further, beyond that. And then at a certain point, the
mind makes a jump. It jumps, and then it jumps back
into previous existence. And this is how you can then
continue like that. And in that way, you can
actually go on and recall the past lives.
It's just like you are recalling now.
You're recalling what you had for breakfast this morning,
right? And you know that when your mind
is peaceful and quiet, when you don't have too many things going
on, your ability to recall is greater, right?
That's very obvious. Now, you can make the mind far,
far more powerful than what you have right now, even at the most
lucid moments you have. Far, far more powerful.
So you can remember these things in much, much greater detail.
And you can make that jump into the past lives.
That's basically how it works. Yeah?
Priya over here. I think what he said is part of
what I was about to say. OK.
The fact that the modern world being what it is now, it's all
about Star Wars and other planes of existence.
The very fact that the Buddha said all this 2,600 years ago,
and purely by developing his mind, I think we just don't
publicize that enough. And the last, the perception of
the Buddha is mainly about the meditation and the world that is
involved. The last census, I think, said
that about 27% Australians said their religion was Star Wars.
Yeah, right. Jedi.
Jedi Knights or whatever. But I think it was the fact that
all this was Star Wars. I think it, yeah.
Yeah. I personally find it very
interesting. But I also know that some people
find it off-putting because they find that, yeah, this is kind of
religious talk. You know, this is not reality.
There is another explanation for these things.
Sometimes you are so, you know, we're all set in our views in a
certain way. This is just, you have to be
that. You have to have something to
stand on in life, right? Nobody's able to abandon all
views and stand on nothing. It's just impossible.
But what that means, because we are set in our views to a
certain extent, it means that sometimes you discard things
that actually have a solid foundation.
You have a solid foundation without really investigating it
properly. And to me, this stuff is really
powerful. But other people are going to be
put off by these kind of things. And I think this is part of the
problem. So I agree.
And this is what I'm talking about tonight.
So I think it's great to publicize it a little bit.
And, you know, some people will write me off as a basket case or
whatever. But I think the, you know, the
things which have to do with meditation practice, because it
is so immediately apparent, it's so obvious what's going on, it
is more easily accessible to people.
And for that reason, more broadly acceptable, possibly.
But I think you have a point. And maybe we should do something
about that. Well, the fact is they believe
all this without any actual proof.
There are all theories out there, Hollywood theories, etc.
And they are prepared to believe that.
They spend a lot of time watching all that.
So the fact that, you know, you can, that the Buddha did all
this purely by developing his mind, Yeah, it's really mind
blowing, I think. Anyway, yeah.
Okay, let's have a look at some of the overseas questions.
Okay, I will just get out my glasses because I'm getting too
old now to be able to read these things by glasses.
So let's see what this says. Okay, so this is the first one
from Dira Yupa. Hello, Dira Yupa.
I know Dira Yupa very well. She comes to the monastery quite
regularly from Thailand. Did the Buddha mention anything
that could be interpreted as a theory of evolution?
When he talked about mankind. Did he say anything that could
be interpreted as a theory of evolution?
Good question. I don't think that the Buddha
actually talked about the theory of evolution.
I don't think the theory of evolution is a problem from a
Buddhist point of view. I think it's perfectly
acceptable. I don't think that there is a
problem there. But remember that the main point
of the Buddha is the evolution of the mind, right?
How we develop the mind. That is what really matters in
Buddhism. Whether our physical bodies are
developed through evolution, through genetic mutations and
these kinds of things. I think apparently the evidence
for this is very good. So I don't have any problems
with evolution whatsoever. But I don't think it really is
the main purpose of Buddhism. Buddhism is about the mind.
And the mind has a different kind of evolution.
The evolution of the mind is explained through the laws of
kamma. They are what explain the
evolution of the mind. And that is what we want to
focus on. Because once you pass away, it
doesn't really matter whether the next generation is going to
inherit your genes or what's going to happen to the next
generation. If you pass away, you want to
continue to develop your mind and to move in the right
direction. This is what matters.
Our physical bodies are kind of incidental.
They don't really matter so much.
We try to get rid of them. Even in meditation you try to
get rid of that. So I'm not aware of anything.
And I think that quite likely the Buddha may not really have
understood that or been interested in that because it
wasn't really part of the thing that the Buddha was interested
in. Okay.
Next question from... Okay.
This is from Opul in Sri Lanka. According to Ratanasuta, it can
affect environmental conditions. Is this true?
Can chanting help people to be peaceful?
Okay. This is a very difficult
question. And I don't really know.
I mean, the Buddha... There is a little bit of
evidence. Again, what we have to do here
to be... If we're going to be serious
about Buddhism, we have to distinguish between early
Buddhism, right? The very earliest things and
later Buddhism. So is there much evidence?
Did the Buddha really talk about the chanting or the recitation
of suttas? No.
Because in those days it was more like recitation.
And there is one very interesting reference in the
suttas where the Buddha himself is ill.
He's sick, right? The Buddha is sick.
And he says to another monk, and this is quite remarkable, and
I'm not really sure how to interpret this myself, but he
says to this other monk, this monk is called Mahajunda, a very
powerful Arahant, and he says to this monk, I'm feeling sick,
right? Please recite the Seven Factors
of Awakening. Seven Factors of Awakening is
very lofty teaching, very beautiful teaching.
And then as he recites those Seven Factors of Awakening, the
Buddha becomes well, right? And this is found in a few
places in the suttas. So it is, you know, so according
to that, there is a certain power to the Dhamma.
I don't know exactly how this works, but probably something to
do with the fact that you hear about the Dhamma, and that very
hearing of the Dhamma gives rise to joy, right?
A mind which is very joyful and very happy tends to heal the
body. This is known in hospitals
around the world, known medically, that a person who is
positive, for example, will heal more quickly after an operation
than somebody who is negative. This is basically an established
scientific fact. So there is something going on
there, but there is how it actually works is sometimes very
hard to know. Personally, I do believe that
there is such a thing as mind-to-mind interaction, right?
So if I, or if the monks at the monastery, we do some chanting
and we send metta to somebody, if that person is in the right
mind state and if they are receptive, they may be able to
feel that, right? And sometimes we all have these
experiences, sometimes remarkable experiences of, you
know, feeling, meeting people in a dream and all these kind of
things. It sends that there is some kind
of mind-to-mind contact going on in the world.
Coincidences, synchronicity they call it.
Right? That is hard to explain apart
from some kind of mental thing going on.
So I think so, but it depends on many factors, you know, whether
it really works or not. And it's very hard to know.
In the end, I think we're going to, again, we can maybe do
scientific studies on this, right?
To see if it really works or not.
So can it help? Definitely.
I would say yes for at least one reason, and that is the placebo
effect. The placebo effect is
scientifically known to work, right?
So if you say you're going to chant for somebody, straight
away they will feel better, right?
Because, oh, somebody's chanting for me.
How nice that is, right? And then they will feel better
straight away. It's called the placebo effect.
So even if there isn't anything else going on, at the very
least, the placebo effect is working.
It's always good to chant for somebody.
Sorry for that slightly roundabout answer, not too
clear. I don't, you know, it's hard to
know these things with absolute certainty.
Okay, last question. Meditation from Night Dragons.
Is that your name? Okay, well, you talked about the
body feeling light in meditation.
But when I relax my body, it feels extremely tired and heavy.
Do you have any advice for those of us who feel in this way?
Okay, well, welcome to the majority, the silent majority,
who you don't normally hear from.
Actually, you hear from them all the time.
Because when you teach meditation, it's a very common
experience. Right?
You come to the Amaloka Center on a Friday night.
You've been working really hard for a whole week.
You have family. You have kids.
You feel burnt out. And all you really want to do is
rest. And the natural inclination of
the mind and the body is to go to sleep, right?
You feel tired. And it's okay.
For goodness sake, please fall asleep.
I love it when people snore during the meditation here.
It's great, you know. At least they're relaxing, for
goodness sake. And if we can't relax in
meditation, when are we ever going to relax?
Never, never going to relax if we can't relax here.
So please relax. Snore.
Snoring is like a nice rhythmic sound, right?
You take the snoring as a meditation object.
Oh, the beautiful snoring. Please don't get upset if people
snore. Have sympathy for them, right?
They need that. They're falling asleep.
And then you kind of make that a positive thing.
So, yes, it is very common. And very often in the day-to-day
meditation, that is what we're going to experience.
In fact, I have a monastic friend.
I often tell this when I teach meditation retreats.
He's been a monk. He's a very good monk.
He gets very good meditation. But he says that every time he
sits down to meditate, the first 15 minutes, he's like this,
right? Nodding away.
And then when the tiredness clears, his mind becomes bright.
And then he goes into the bright meditation state.
So please do that. Follow what some of these monks
do, right? Because some of these monks get
really, really deep meditation practice.
So do what they do. You will be happy.
You may be happy heading in the same way.
So don't worry too much about that.
Just know that as you practice the Buddhist path, all of these
factors, they tend to come together over time.
And as they come together over time, your meditation gets
lighter and brighter and more at ease.
Your body and mind feel less tired.
You feel more relaxed, right? You come to the meditation
session. And year by year, you feel
things are going better. Then you go on the meditation
retreat. And it is when you go on the
meditation retreat that you really find out whether you are
improving in your practice or not.
And then you see that your tiredness falls away, right?
Because you are away from your family.
You're away from your job. You're away from all these
burdens in the world. And people work far too much
these days. They sleep far too little.
All of these things are well known.
We need to sleep more. We need to rest more.
At the very least, when we go on retreat, we start the first few
days by sleeping. 12 hours a night or whatever, right?
Really just go for it. And then you rest nicely.
And then, when you're nicely rested, then your meditation
comes together. This is how it happens.
So notice that the only thing that matters is not how your
meditation works now. That's irrelevant.
The only thing that matters is what happens in your meditation
over the months, over the years. If you see that there is an
improvement over time, that is what matters.
That's really all you can be looking for.
Because you don't know what you're starting out with.
We're all starting out at different places.
Don't expect anything in particular.
The only thing you should expect is improvement.
And then you're on the right path.
Okay. So that is all for tonight.
So let's pay respect to the Buddha Dhamma Saga.
Thank you. Thank you.
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