OK, so I think we can start. OK, good.
OK, OK, OK, so we can start tonight's talk.
And tonight I'm going to talk about commitment and
perseverance on the Buddhist path.
And I think for many people, you will, those of you have been
Buddhist for a long time, you will know that this is perhaps
one of the most difficult thing is on the Buddhist path is to
really commit yourself and persevere in the practice.
It's actually one of those things that remember the idea of
Buddhism. Buddhism is like this thing
which accumulates, accumulates over time.
And the more you keep on practising, the more you keep
going on this path, the more greater are actually the
benefits of this practice. If you do a little bit, you get
a little bit of benefit. But if you keep on doing this
for like 20 years, then after a while it really, really starts
to make a big difference. So this idea of committing
oneself properly to the maximum of 1's ability and then to
persevere in that practice, keep on going and going going.
This is one of the most important things in the, in the
Buddhist teaching, probably anything in life, right?
If you want to be successful in anything, you have to commit and
you have to persevere. And Buddhist teaching is no
different from anything else. And but what is so strange about
this is how difficult it actually is to really commit and
to persevere. How hard it is to remind
yourself of what you're supposed to do moment for moment, right
one moment after the other, one day-to-day.
It's so easy to be LED astray, to go on a sidetrack, do all
kind of other things. And like mobile phones, right?
Big sidetrack in life, mobile phones.
By the way, I just should tell you that if you ever hear a
mobile phone ringing during meditation, number one, it's
unavoidable, right? There's always going to be a
mobile phone going off during meditation.
Doesn't matter how many signs you have, doesn't matter how big
the signs are, doesn't matter how many times Drew says please
turn off your mobile phones. There's still going to be mobile
phones ringing during meditation practice.
So just accept it. It's not going to be different
from that. And what the right attitude I
reckon to have if that happens is to think, whoa, I feel so
much compassion for that person whose mobile phone is ringing.
It's so embarrassing, right? You're sitting there, everybody
around is looking almost glaring and you can feel this there.
Oh, this is terrible. So please have compassion If
somebody mobile phone rings and it's very beautiful.
If you have compassion, the atmosphere in the room stays the
same and you don't and nothing happens in a meditation
practice, you don't break the. You just continue on, flow on
very beautifully. That is the right attitude to
have. So that is part of this idea of
commitment, right? It's actually very difficult to
do this. So many other things in Buddhist
life are easy. Sometimes I will talk about some
of those easy things. First of all, before I move on
to explain how we are able to really commit and persevere in
this practice. What can we do to ensure that
commitment actually is maxed out, if you like, at all times?
Some of the problem, some of the things that we often think are
difficult in Buddhism is like the intellectual side of
Buddhism, right? We think that understanding all
this word of the Buddha dependent arising, you know, the
four noble truths or whatever, all of these things, it seems so
complicated and difficult. Surely Buddhism?
Is like an intellectual teaching and we should probably sit
around contemplating Buddhism for the rest of our lives that
probably be be very profitable there and this is.
One of those ideas that people tend to have is that, you know,
thinking about this is very powerful and useful and of
course there is some truth to that.
Some reflection and contemplation is always
necessary here. But there's a tendency to take
that too far here. And I think the reason is
because it's very kind of addictive to think about things.
Our minds are already restless, right?
They're always moving around already here.
So all we do is just kind of take that movement onto the
Buddhist sphere instead, and then we keep on moving there.
So we. Kind of addicted to thinking
already, so just move that thinking into that direction
here. But please don't be too trapped
by this intellectual curiosity and always roaming about it
because in the end, it's not going to take you very far here.
I always think about one of the very funny things about Buddhist
translation. I translate quite a bit of sutas
and that sort of thing. Sutas is the word of the Buddha
and it translated from the original Pali language, Pali
language closely related to Sanskrit.
This is a language that the sutas are written down in.
And one of these very, very, very, very well known words from
the sutas is a word called Jana. Many of you have heard of Jana,
some of you probably not. Jana is a state of very deep.
Meditation, right? Extremely deep.
So deep that there's no thinking going on there.
There's complete stillness and absolute bliss in the mind.
Very, very profound and exceptionally beautiful.
And when you get there, you're already very, very close to
awakening itself. And then the early translators
who translated these, these words, right?
This wasn't in the early days. So we have to excuse them for
the kind of the the lack of understanding.
They didn't really know anything about Buddhism.
They had all this strange terms they had to render into English,
didn't didn't really know what they were doing.
And one of the famous translations for Jana, which is
this very profound non thinking state was musing.
Amusing. Oh, I wonder.
Musing, musing. Kind of.
You take out your pipe sitting in front of the fireplace.
Dependent origination. Avija Pachaya Sankara.
Delusion leads to Sankara's right.
And this you can see here how some of the most profound things
and has all to do with Buddhist meditation practice.
It's distorted into something which is more like an
intellectual exercise rather than a really deep and profound
state of meditation practice. So this is a danger, and I think
that the reason again is because our minds tend to be inherently
restless. I think a lot of Buddhist
history can be explained by the restlessness of the human mind.
One of the great beautiful things that the Buddha says in
the suit, as the Buddha talks about the handful of leaves that
it picks up in the forest, this suit, this is from, this is from
a place called the Gosinga Wood. Wood.
This is where this, this particular episode takes place.
And it picks up a handful of leaves.
And it says to the monks, well, what is more, the handful of
leaves I have here or the leaves on the forest floor, right?
It's a no brainer, of course. And the monks dutifully say, oh,
yeah, yeah, the leaves in your hands are few.
The ones in the forest floor are many here, right?
That's how it goes in the suit is.
And the Buddha says, in the same way, just as the handful of
leaves that I have here are few compared to the leaves in the
forest, in exactly the same way, what I have taught you is little
compared to what I actually know her, right?
What I have taught you is little.
Why is that so little? Because the only things that I
have taught you are those things that are conducive to the
practice, that lead to the goal of happiness and away from
suffering, eventually take you to full awakening.
That is what I have taught you. I have not taught you all the
extraneous stuff, all the stuff which is philosophical, right?
Which is like metaphysics, ideas about the world, which may be
true, but they're not really related to this.
And yet as human beings, we love philosophy, we love to sit back.
We put put light our little pipe and philosophize about the about
the world. Right.
We love this and this is kind of the human state of mind.
This how we how we act as human beings.
And of course from that restlessness of the mind, from
this philosophising. Yeah, the Buddha says don't
philosophise. These are the practical
teaching. Forget about all the other
stuff. And what do the monks do as soon
as the Buddha has passed away? They start philosophising,
right? The first thing is, OK, the
Buddha has passed away. Now the problem is with the
Buddha's teaching, right? OK, he taught all of these
things. It's all very nice, all very
good, and it's all very practical, but it's not really
complete, right? There's little holes here and
there. He didn't kind of divide
everything up into absolute final terms.
He didn't kind of bring it down to the tiniest amount of time.
How many millisecond? How many bits can you divide a
second into other? Is it billion or a trillion bits
in one second? Like how many bits are there in
there, right? How many different mind states
are possible in this world? How do they all relate to each
other? The Buddha kind of said lots of
nice stuff, but it didn't lay everything down right?
So now it is our job to fill in all the gaps, fill in all the
holes in the teachings. And that is exactly what
happened after the Buddha passed away here.
And from that, the result of all this philosophising, trying to
fill in all the holes, trying to fill in all the gaps, result of
that is what is now known as the Abidamma pittaca.
Abidamma is sometimes slated translate as the higher
teachings, but they're not the higher teachings.
They're just philosophy. Here it is monks, nuns, perhaps
even some lay people were involved, mostly the monks I
think because they were the ones who kind of would dealing with
these kind of things, thinking about things, working at all out
right and eventually ending up with the Abidam Abpitika.
This is Buddhist philosophy for you.
Buddhism is not a philosophy here.
It's not meant to be a philosophy.
It's not meant to describe the state of the world in all its
aspects and all its kind of divisions.
The Buddhism is meant to be a practical path for how to make
your life better. There is a reason why the Buddha
did not philosophize, because the Buddha realised that
philosophising, it's very addictive.
Philosophising is going to take you down the wrong track.
It's going to keep on philosophising forever.
There's no end to that. And Buddhist history shows us
there is no end to philosophising.
Because then the the Terevadan sect, the Terevadans, they are
the ones who went to Sri Lanka right round the time of Ashoka.
They went to Sri Lanka and Buddhism has been in Sri Lanka
ever since. It is the most ancient Buddhist
culture still alive in the world today is what you find in Sri
Lanka. It's a very wonderful thing to
go to Sri Lanka and see some of those amazing ancient Buddhist
monuments to have there going back over 2000 years.
I've been there and it's very fascinating and very beautiful
there. But so 1 branch of Buddhist went
to Sri Lanka, Tervadans, another one went to the north, north of
India, Sarvastivadans. It means all exists there, all
exists school, right? And then they started to argue
with each other, because my abidamma is this, but your
abidamma is different. Your abidamma must be wrong,
right? Mine is always right, yours is
always wrong. That's how we tend to think as
human beings. And they argue with each other.
And I think this is precisely the.
Problem that the Buddha could foresee here.
Once you start philosophising here, there is no end to it.
So remember, as far as I concerned, Buddhism is not a
philosophy, right? People say it's a philosophy.
Well, Buddhism might be a philosophy, but the original
teaching of the Buddha were not a philosophy.
Buddhism is what we have now. The original teaching of the
Buddha are slightly different from what we have now.
They were not a philosophy. They were a practical path.
If Buddhism, I mean, is anything I would say it's a psychology,
right? It's about finding happiness in
the world, moving away from suffering towards happiness, How
to use our mind in a skilful way to move in that direction.
If anything, it's a psychology and not certainly not a
philosophy. So remember that.
Don't fall into that trap. This does not mean that we
should never study anything or never listen to any talks or
never try to understand the word of the Buddha.
But the things that you need to understand, the things that will
take you towards awakening, towards greater happiness, away
from suffering, they're actually very simple things, right?
Simple things. Be kind, be compassionate, look
at the world in such a way that you don't feel too much too
angry, you don't feel jealous, you don't have this negative
states of mind arising in you. It's difficult enough already,
but it's relatively straightforward and simple.
That is what we need to focus on.
Not so much the philosophy here. So this is like 1 sidetrack,
right? One way of going wrong, and that
is the wrong kind of commitment and perseverance.
If you like, there's another one.
And this sidetrack is a sidetrack that you find more
often in traditional Buddhist societies.
And this is the sidetrack where you do endless amount of
rituals, right? Everything becomes a ritual.
And you can see that in most Buddhist societies that have
been there for a long time, that this is very common.
And again, you can see why that happens because rituals are
relatively easy to do compared to trying to change your
attitude and change the person you are.
Often that is much more challenging here.
So again, that's another sidetrack.
Too many rituals. I think actually, sometimes I
think in the West we don't do enough rituals, right?
You get Westerners coming in here, they think, oh, this is
really scary. This Buddha statue, boy, that is
frightening. Such a large image, right?
That's kind of overpowering. And then you supposed to bow
this bowing business. That's pretty, pretty
frightening. I remember when I first had time
to bow, I thought it was pretty scary myself.
But remember that rituals are part of life, right?
We all do rituals. Everybody has to do rituals.
Every time you shake somebody's hand, for goodness sake, you're
doing a ritual. Every time you say some polite
phrases, somebody don't know, it's really a ritual.
Every time you set your table right, fork on the left side,
knife on the right side, spoon facing this way, glass over
here, it's like a ritual, right? Everything has its place.
So much of life is ritualized anywhere here.
It's not really that we're doing anything in Buddhism is just
slightly different rituals. And some of the rituals that we
do in Buddhism are actually very meaningful and very beautiful
and very powerful once we get into them in the right way here.
Like for example, coming in here and bowing down.
What is that all about? And once we get into the idea of
bowing to something, bowing to something that you feel is
larger than yourself, right? Some values that you are
aspiring for in life that maybe some other people have, but you
don't. We assume the Buddha had these
qualities, right? So when you bow down to this
piece of metal at the back here, you're bowing down to something
which represent those qualities that the Buddha had according to
the suitors. That's what you're bowing down
to. There's something very beautiful
and powerful about that. Check it out.
Don't be too frightened about these things, right?
Oh no, too scary. Please don't be scared.
And once you get into that, it also tends to lower your ego a
little bit, lower your sense of self.
And there's something very nice about that.
Not having, taking oneself so seriously, right?
Having your ego always boosted, but actually lowering it down a
little bit is beautiful. It's kind of feels like you're
being a bit humble and it's something that opens up your
mind. When you're more humble, you're
more receptive, you're more listening, you're not so full of
yourself. And what a wonderful thing it
is. You start to realize the ego
tends to be a burden in life. The less ego you have, the more
relaxed you are, the less vulnerable you are to for other
people challenging you, right? The ego can always be
challenged. Less ego means less challenge,
and you actually feel so much better as a consequence.
So check it out. Some of these simple rituals,
not too much, but some of them are very powerful and beautiful
there. But again, as I'm saying, if
that's all you do, it is too much, right?
You can't just do rituals again. It's the wrong kind of
commitment. Rituals should have a meaning.
They should work for you. And when they work for you in
the right way, they have a meaning.
They're very beautiful there. That is the second way here.
The third way, I think, in which we sometimes go wrong when we
try to persevere and commit is that we just do meditation
practice. This is kind of the thing you
often find perhaps in the West, right?
People go to one meditation retreat after the other, 10
days, 10 days, 10 days, one month, right?
And sometimes that's all they do.
Their whole life becomes kind of focused on meditation practice.
That's all they ever do, and they become like meditation
junkies. I'm not sure if that is a
technical word, but that's kind of a word that is used.
We become meditation junkie here.
All we ever do is meditation there.
And the danger with that is that in Buddhism, meditation is only
one aspect of a much broader path.
The meditation actually fits in there.
It has a certain purpose, but only when it fits in with these
other aspects does it actually really work.
You can meditate for your rest of your life, right?
10 day retreat here, 10 day retreat there, and never get
anywhere because you don't understand the position, the
place of meditation on the Buddhist path.
It's only when it fits in with all the other factors of the
noble hateful path, kindness, compassion, understanding, right
outlook, right, how to look at the world in the right way,
right thinking, all of these kind of things.
That's when meditation starts to work.
If you don't understand that, then this meditation is going to
stagnate. You're not going to go anywhere.
Doesn't matter how much you persevere, right?
Because you're persevering in the wrong way.
So again, there needs to be a degree of intelligence to that
perseverance, a degree of insight, a degree of wisdom, and
then things start to come together very beautifully here,
right? So remember that it's actually
far. I would say it's far more
important to be a kind, wholesome person who thinks
about other people in a nice and beautiful way, who has a sense
of compassion and care for the world, right?
This is more important because it's more basic.
And when that falls into place and you are able to change your
attitudes and become that kind of person, then guess what?
Meditation just happens, right? You sit back, you just chill,
you just woah, so beautiful to be here tonight with all these
wonderful people around me. And you really feel that inside
of you, right? And then when you feel that you
relax so nicely, and when you relax so nicely, meditation just
takes place. Meditation is so easy.
All you have to do is to be quiet.
All you have to do is relax and watch your breath.
And yet for some reason it doesn't work.
And the reason why it doesn't work is because all the other
factors of the path aren't into place.
It's not because you are so stupid you can't watch your
breath, right? Nobody is that stupid.
Everybody can watch the breath. If you can breathe, for goodness
sake, you can watch the breath. Can you breathe?
Anyone here can't breathe. Everybody can breathe, right?
So if you can breathe, you are in business, you're in the right
place. You can do this so.
Again, this is another thing that we have to be careful of
just becoming complete meditation junkies.
Sometimes they call that spiritual bypassing when you
don't really want to deal with your problems, right?
Actually, I have a bit of anger. Remember to try to overcome
that. That's exactly right.
Try to overcome that. If you can overcome your anger,
overcome your negativities, become a more positive and
wholesome person, bang, meditation is going to work.
It can be so powerful. No spiritual bypassing, no
closing your eyes to your own defilements and problems, right?
Please don't close your eyes to those things.
Be honest about yourself. We need to see ourselves for who
we are. Only when you see yourself for
who you are can you actually deal with your problems.
You've got to be brutally honest with yourself.
Sometimes that's painful, but in the end, it's going to be
incredibly useful if you can do that.
So how do we then commit and persevere in the right way, in a
good way, in a way which actually leads to something
positive in life? And to be able to understand
this, what the Buddha gives some very beautiful teachings on
this. And I'm not going to go into all
the details because if you go into all the details, all will
be a very long talk. And you will complain next week
to Ajab Ram, say, oh, this monk, please send him back to
Bodhinaya Monastery. He talks too much.
Go back. So I'm not going to do that
because it, it should be simple anyway, right?
Basic, simple teachings. And one of the things that
Buddha says is that if you want to reach awakening here, that
I'm putting the bar really, really high here, right?
But we know awakening is something good.
It's the supreme happiness. So we all want to be more happy,
so we want to at least move towards that awakening
experience. So if you want to get to
awakening, what do we have to do?
And the Buddha teaches us this beautiful causal sequence, one
thing leading to the next one, all the way up to awakening
here. This is one of the hallmarks of
the Buddhist teachings. Everything is conditioned,
everything is caused, everything relies on something else for its
existence, right? Everything has some cause, some
reason why it exists, the reason why that is the case.
And this brings us to one of the most profound aspects and most
typical aspects, hallmark aspects of the Buddhist
teachings, the idea of non self, the idea that there is nothing
there which is always there, which stands fast, that you can
hold onto. This is the real me.
The Buddha says that is a delusion.
And because that is a if that is the case, and of course I invite
you to investigate that for yourself, of course.
But if that is the case, it means that everything in the
world is conditioned by other things.
Nothing stands alone. And because of that, everything
in Buddhism has these sequences, one thing leading to the next
one, stage after stage after stage.
So awakening has a 'cause it doesn't happen as a miracle, it
doesn't happen as an act of will.
It happens when you put the causes into place.
So what is the cause of awakening here?
But this is already really exciting, right?
Right. Really exciting.
Is that the cause for awakening? What can be more exciting than
that? This is really, really exciting.
The more you understand the Buddhist teachings, you think,
whoa, this is because this is what it's all about as far as
Buddhism is concerned. What is the cause for awakening
here? The answer is deep meditation.
When you go into a very deep state of meditation, samadhi is
really the word that is used in the suit as that is the cause
for awakening here. This, you may think that this is
obvious perhaps, or maybe you think really, OK, I didn't know
anything about this, OK, thank you for telling me, but
whatever. Or something like that.
But this actually is really, really important and really
fundamental according to the Buddhist teachings.
Most people don't realise that people can have been Buddhist
for decades, not really understand that.
And sometimes they think all you have to do is kind of sit back
and watch things passing away, arising and passing away, and
that will lead to awakening. That may be helper, but really
it is deep meditation that is the answer, the cause for
awakening to happen. See this throughout the suit.
And Sir, then the Buddha takes it back, right?
Stage by stage. What is the cause for deep
meditation? What is the cause for that?
I'm not going to go through every step now, back and back
and back 10 steps until it comes to the very first step.
What is the very first step that leads to awakening ultimately
here? Isn't this exciting?
Are you excited now? Right.
This is the beginning. This is that leads to everything
else. This is really, really cool.
So the very first step is that Buddha says to hang out with the
superior people, right? Or the good people is not the
translation there? Or the noble ones is not the
translation there. That is the very first step.
Noble person number one in this world is, is not ajambram,
right? It is the Buddha.
The Buddha is #1 right? So what the Buddha is, because
the Buddha is number #1 kalyanamita.
He is like the eye of the world. He's the first one who attains
awakening, the first one who sees reality as it actually is,
and because of that, he is the eye of the world.
He tells you the truth as he has realized it, and that enables
you to practice the same path. If somebody does not awaken to
the truth, how is that? That means we're all in
darkness, right? One person is the forerunner,
everybody, nobody else comes afterwards.
And that person happens to be the Buddha.
So he is this not the only one, there may be others as well, but
he is the first and foremost of these people right at the very
beginning of path. So you want to hang out with the
Buddha? You may think, oh, are you
kidding? What do you mean hang out with
the Buddha? He lived 2 1/2 thousand years
ago. You know what?
How can you hang out with the Buddha?
And I will tell you how you can hang out with the Buddha.
It's not as hard as you may think.
Yeah. Because the thing about the
Buddha is that he bequeathed this mass of discourses that he
taught 2 1/2 thousand years ago that exists in kind of, what is
it, 25 volumes or whatever in the present day.
Very, very beautiful teachings that are available to the
present day here. And a lot of the things that I
say when I give teachings here, the Maloka Centre, are precisely
from the Buddha himself. I've already quoted the Buddha a
number of times already, right? And these are the teachings that
are so inspiring in my opinion. So that is where you go when you
read those teachings. You are literally in the
presence of the Buddha, right? The Buddha is talking to you.
Why is the Buddha talking to you?
Because when the Buddha and I, I don't know, this is the kind of
thing which I, how I like to think about the Buddha and I've
taught, talked about these things before.
But remember that when the Buddha taught these things 2 1/2
thousand years ago, he was saying, I'm setting in motion
the wheel of the Dhamma. The wheel of the Dhamma is this
teaching that rolls on in the world, and it rolls on from
century to century, century, from millennia, from Millennium
to Millennium, right? Keeps on rolling until
eventually one day it runs out of momentum and it falls over
here. But he said that he knew that
these teachings were going to keep going for a long, long time
in the future. And because he knew that he
expressed these teachings in a way that are not limited to one
particular culture, limited to one particular time.
But they are so broad that when you read them in the present
day, you can feels like this makes just as much sense that to
me today as it probably did to those ancient Indians 2 1/2
thousand years ago, right? That is the feeling you get when
you read those things. And not only do you have that
feeling, but you know that the Buddha was thinking of you,
right? He was thinking about the
future. He says this wheel of the Dhamma
will keep on rolling down the centuries.
Quite literally. He was thinking of each one of
us. Maybe he knew that there would
be an assembly of people coming together in a northern suburb of
Perth, in the far away continent of Australia, in the middle of
the desert somewhere, right? And they will be sitting there
listening to the Dhamma. Imagine.
He probably wouldn't have thought exactly that, but
something like that, right? There would be people listening
to these things. So the Buddha was thinking of
us, each one of us, when he gave those teachings 2 1/2 thousand
years ago. This kind of makes your hair
stand on end, right? If you have a hair that is.
But but it's, it's very kind of tangible.
So this is one, this is one of the ways of actually
recollecting the Buddha, understanding what he's about.
And then when you read the sutas, then when you read his
word and you know that he was thinking of you in particular,
Whoa, it really comes to life, right?
I have to tell you, when you read the sutas, when you read
the word of the Buddha, don't just read page after page as if
you're reading a novel, right? Please don't do that because the
suit does have a very different structure.
You can read whatever you like in there, whatever you enjoy.
That is what you should read. So if something makes absolutely
no sense of you or you're falling asleep or whatever, then
just turn a few pages and move on to the next one here.
This is not meant to start on Page 1 and end on page 5550,
right? It's quite long to suit that.
So no, you read whatever you enjoy, and when you enjoy it,
that is when you're able to take it on board and becomes
powerful. For you I.
Don't know, Adam Braham may have told you this here before.
Adam Braham always tells the story about this Tibetan teach a
llama or something. And he told he, he says how
you're supposed to teach the Dhamma, right?
And the way you're supposed to teach the Dhamma, Ajam Ram is
really a master of this teach Dhamma in this way.
First of all, you make everybody laugh, right?
You, you can see how what I mean, Ajam Ram is a master of
this. You make everybody laugh and
then when their mouth is a gape, you Chuck in the pillar of
wisdom, right? It's kind of nice, isn't it?
And because when you enjoy here and when you are relaxed and
you're, it is, and the same thing with the suiters, when you
relax, that is, that is when you can take things on board.
So it's so important to enjoy these things.
So this is where it all starts. And why is this so important?
Why is it so incredibly fundamental?
And the reason is, again, coming back to this idea of non self,
this very profound Buddhist idea, but there's nothing
inherently stable in human beings or anyone else, any
animals or whatever beings for that matter, because there's
nothing stable inside of us. I'm just telling you what
things, how things look from a Buddhist point of view.
You can investigate this for yourself.
But because of that, it means that we are the product of the
forces and conditions and the environment and the
circumstances that work on us, right?
If there's nothing inherently stable in you, it means you are
a product of all these things that work on you in this life,
maybe in past lives or whatever it is.
So the, the symbol that I always use, and I teach this every time
I teach the retreat is a simile of imagine yourself that you are
a ship on the ocean, but you are a ship which has no engine, has
no rudder, has no sails, has no oars.
All you have is the hull, right? Just the hull.
And you're sitting in the ship. And because there is no steering
mechanism, you are absolutely at the mercy of the conditions
around you. The wind comes from the north,
you go to the South. The wind comes from the West,
you go to the east. If the current comes from the
West, again, you go to the east. You are completely at the mercy
of the conditions around you. And human beings, we are like
that, right? We are also at the mercy of the
conditions around you. So right now you are at the
mercy of me, My mercy. I'm conditioning you, right?
Are you scared? I don't think you have to be too
scared. And I'll talk about this a
little bit afterwards. Conditioning also how we
condition things in Buddhism. But we are at the mercy of
things. And because we drift around like
that, it is so important that we ensure we get the right kind of
wind, we get the right kind of current because then we will go
in the direction we want to go. If you are in the middle of the
Indian Ocean, right? Sometimes you hear about these
crazy sailors that sail around the world or whatever, they end
up somewhere in the S Ocean somewhere.
And if you want to get to Perth, well, you have to hope for an
easterly wind, right, which pushes you towards the east.
And if you come get that easterly wind, you come to Perth
and OK, you're safe. You'll find you'll end up in
Antarctica or whatever. And this is exactly what we're
trying to do in Buddhism, get that right wind, right, get the
right currents. So we get pushed in the right
direction towards more happiness, towards less
suffering in life. And that wind, that current that
we're trying to get hold of, is precisely the Buddha's
teachings. Once you get influenced by the
truth, once you get influenced by the by in a proper way of
looking at the world, a way that takes you towards well-being and
happiness, then you will tend to drift that way.
First of all, because you recognize the truth in those
things, and secondly, because those teachings have inherent
power to take you in that direction.
So, so important, right, to actually get that right.
If you don't, you are like a blind person, don't know what
you're doing, don't know where you're going.
You have no idea what's happening.
We've all been searching for happiness in the world.
And very, very often when you look around the world, people
suffer, right? There's so much suffering in the
world, so many problems going on.
And here finally is a path that has the potential to take you in
the right direction. Get get hold of that path.
Read those suitors, understand the word of the Buddha.
Try it every time you feel a little bit down, you feel you're
losing contact with his teachings.
Come to dama Loca here, Adam Bram, tell a few jokes, right?
But remember that between the jokes, there's some very
beautiful dama teachings. They come together and then this
will lift you up, enable you to carry on on this path.
The source is seeing, hearing these noble teachings from the
noble beings. And that will then next step
then is that you will listen to those teachings from these
people. Two things happening at the same
time. You see the noble people and
when you see them, you get inspired just by the sight of
such people. And you get to hear the powerful
teachings at the same time, very, very powerful combination.
And then you get urged in the right direction, moved in the
right direction. And when that happens, what
happens then is that you start to get confidence and faith,
right? You think, wow, this is actually
very beautiful. Wow, it works.
I put this into practice. They give results.
This is why I am still a monk after 21 years or whatever it
is. Perhaps some of you think you
must be. Sometimes people think you're
nuts to be a monk for 20 years. What's the point?
It's crazy here. You're kind of giving up so much
in the world. This is why I'm a monk after 20
years, because it is a gradual inclination in the right
direction, a gradual moving into becoming more light, more easy
life, more happy, cutting off the burdens right in life and
soaring up. That is what these teachings are
about. It's so powerful.
And when you see that happening in your own life, combined with
reading these powerful teachings, boy, the faith and
the confidence starts to arise. Faith and confidence in Buddhism
is 2 things. It is the intellectual
confidence. This really makes sense.
It all fits together very beautifully.
It's like a large jigsaw puzzles, all the pieces fitting
nicely together, not in a bad way, in a very beautiful way,
but faith and confidence is. Buddhism is also an emotional
state. It's a state that when you bow
down to the Buddha, you feel that you're bowing down to
something very, very beautiful and very powerful.
And sometimes if you have the right attitude, it brings tears
to your eyes because it's so powerful, right?
The more spiritual developed you are, the more easy it is to
become tearful just by bowing down to the Buddha or by having
a profound meditation experience.
It's one of those fascinating things when you read The
Suitors, One of the things that the Buddha says in The Suitors
is that in the in his teachings, those people in the world who
have nothing to respect, nothing to Revere, nothing to defer to,
they live in suffering, right? It's powerful.
It is gives you happiness to have something in life that you
can respect, that you can look up to, that you can aspire for,
right? This gives life meaning.
It gives you a feeling of yes, there is a purpose in all this.
It makes you more happy. The Buddha said that and then
the Buddha says right here is from a Buddhist point of view,
the world's number one spiritual master, the greatest spiritual
genius that has existed as at least in known history as far as
Buddhists, Buddhists are concerned anyway, right?
He, he has obtained the highest happiness.
Let's go of all suffering. He has nothing more to be done.
And what does he say here? He says that, well, what should
I respect? What should I Revere?
Right. Because if you don't have
anything to Revere, you live in suffering.
It's what the Buddha says. I find it so astonishing when I
read that. I find it almost hard to wrap my
mind around that. How can the Buddha say such a
thing here? And it shows you how important
it is to have something in life that we can look up to and
aspire for her. And what the Buddha says is
that, well, there is no being that I know or can see that is
more attained or has a higher degree of awakening than me.
And because there is no such being, there is no person I can
respect or Revere in that way. But what I can respect and
Revere in that way is this Dumber, this discovery I have
made, this truth that I have found that I can respect and
Revere in this way. Even the Buddha says that,
right? He is essentially setting an
example for all of us that this is something very useful and
very powerful to have something in life in this way here.
So don't be afraid of faith. Don't be afraid of emotions.
These are incredibly useful on the spiritual path.
If you sit down and you meditate and you can wrap your head
around who the Buddha actually was, sometimes you can give give
rise to very powerful joy in the mind.
You have this teacher who has understood everything there is
to understand about happiness and suffering and the path to
get there, right? He has given you the gift,
essentially putting it in your hands, saying to you, if you do
this, you will be able to attain the highest happiness that is
available in the world. Isn't that the powerful?
It's the highest gift that anybody can give you.
And he has given you that gift. It is so.
You know, it's a such a, of course, to be able to grasp all
that you have to grasp the teachings.
And it's a kind of a slow, not necessarily very slow, but it is
a process to get there. And as you keep going, it
becomes more and more powerful as you move on into the future.
So remember, there is such a thing as faith and confidence
also in Buddhism, but perhaps slightly different from what you
find in certain other religions perhaps.
But anyway, it's there. What happens next?
Well, once you get faith and confidence in that Buddhist
teachings, what happens next is that you start to think
differently here. Why?
Because you start to take on board the word of the Buddha.
If the Buddha says this and you have faith and confidence in
what he's teach, what he's teaching, of course you start to
apply yourself accordingly here. If the Buddha says this is how
you overcome anger, you check it out, You try to overcome that
anger here. I think this is one of those
often far too neglected teachings of Buddhism are these
basic teachings on how to use your mind to overcome these bad
definements like anger. And I, if I get a chance, I may
talk about this in, in the near future here, right here, because
such, there's such powerful and beautiful teachings.
So you start to use your mind differently.
You look at the world differently here.
You start to prioritise things differently in life, right?
What is really important in life, this certainly starts to
change, right? Other things start to take
priority. It's not so much what you do,
it's more about how you live that becomes important.
The what is kind of secondary and then everything changes as a
consequence, right? Your mind is changing here.
You're thinking differently. What is going on?
You're getting brainwashed, right?
That's what's going on there. You're thinking differently.
Brainwashing is happening. Remember, this is a beautiful
thing when you get brainwashed in the right way here, right?
This is very nice. It's like if you want to wash
something in a nice way, you got to get the right washing powder,
a nice washing machine, right? And you wash it all and it comes
out on the other side is nice and cleaner.
And this is the same thing with a Buddhist idea.
Remember when we use a word like brainwashing, it means that we
get brainwashed anyway. We all get brainwashed, right?
Every influence on us from the outside is a kind of
brainwashing. If you are the product of the
circumstances and the situations around you, it means that right
now you are brainwashed. So make sure you get the good
kind of brainwashing. Don't get the bad one.
This is what coming here to Damaloca is all about, getting
the good brainwashing. And there was about a saying to
you before about how you feeling kind of scared sitting there
because now kind of maybe this is like brainwashing, right?
Are you, is that, are you worried about that?
I remember, oh, I remember when I first became a monk, my
parents said, oh, now you're going to get brainwashed, right?
We're going to, we're going to kind of lose sight of you and
never see you again because you're going to get brainwashed
and become a Buddhist monk. My parents didn't know anything
about Buddhism. They thought it was some kind of
crazy cult or something. And you kind of end up
committing suicide like some of these cults.
I don't think they actually believe that, but they thought
that maybe something in that direction.
You have to exaggerate a bit for effect, right?
So, so, but the point is that everything in life is really
brainwashing. So what we have to do is try to
choose that brainwashing which actually works.
Ask yourself what works. Ask yourself from your
experience, what actually goes on the right way.
And then allow that brainwashing to be happen.
It's good, right? It's good to be brainwashed if
it leads to happiness. It's good to be brainwashed if
it brings everybody forward. It's good to be brainwashed if
the suffering goes down. The brainwashing that is no good
is the one where it leads you astray, leads you down the
garden path, and you end up suffering far more than it did
before. That's the bad stuff.
So brainwashing. Yay.
More brainwashing, please. And then when you get
brainwashed, you start thinking in the right way.
From that comes then a powerful commitment to doing the right
things in life, to ethics, to kindness, to doing all of those
good things that we know are part of the Buddhist path.
I've always been astonished when I travel around sometimes, and I
travel and I see some of the great monks in the world, mostly
monks. There aren't so many nuns around
yet, but and when you meet some of these monks and you ask them
questions, right? I think I may have told the
story here before when I just about just 10 months ago,
something, I went to Thailand and I met one of these great
Thai meditation masters and he's been here to Perth and he's a
good friend of Ajam Brahm as well.
Whenever you go to see him, he always praises Ajam Brahm to the
skies, right? It's always quite, it's always
quite nice when that happens. So anyway, I went to meet this
Thai meditation master him. And when you meet him, he's like
this tiny little man, right? And he sits there on his chair,
very, very peaceful, always has a smile on his face, always a
large crowd of people around him.
He's like a magnet writer. He draws people to him.
He doesn't say anything. He just sits there and smiles
and people just come to him, right?
Isn't that kind of cool? It's just it's this feeling of
somebody who's so powerful don't need to say a word.
You just automatically, you kind of get drawn towards them.
You have no choice. Again, brainwashing Jukka, you
move forward and you just sit down.
He doesn't have to say anything because when you're there, you
just feel so relaxed. That is in His presence, right?
I can breathe right? Usually in life we cannot tense
a bit, bit nervous, might get told off, might not do our work
well enough. Here is somebody who accepts you
for you are for who you are, 100%, no judgement whatsoever.
For the first time in your life, you can really breathe easily
here. So anyway, I went to see this
monkey and I was breathing easily as well and sitting
there. And when I was sitting there,
because I was a disciple of Ajam Brahma, student of Ajam Brahma,
he really looks after me, right? It's, it's such an astonishing
thing when you go to this great meditation master and he kind of
looks after you in a special way.
It feels really almost, almost unreal in a sense.
But but, but the strange thing about these kind of meditation
masters, they are so simple. The way they speak is so down to
earth, right? It almost gives you the feeling
that when somebody is really awakened and really have the act
together, they don't say anything fancy.
It's almost like the simpler the language, the more awakened they
are in a sense, right? So when you hear a corny joke
from Ajam Braham, wow, he must be really awakened.
Perhaps it's a very simple language.
And I I said, I asked him this question because he gave me all
this time. I felt really privileged to be
honest. I felt I didn't really know what
to It was quite remarkable. And I asked him very simply, how
do you practice meta? Because he has so much meta.
Meta means kindness, right? Friendliness, love, if you like.
It's kind of streaming out of him.
How do you practice Meta? And he's told me, he said what
you have to do is that every time when you wake up in the
morning, you have to ask yourself, what can I do for the
world today, right? Nothing about sitting down or
may all beings be happy and well, right?
None of that. What can I do for the world
today? That is what you should ask
yourself. And this is not only him, I've
heard other people saying the same thing.
This is the essence of what kindness and matter and the
Buddhist path is all about, right?
Coming down to this basic, simple teachings, how can I be
kind? How can I say kind of things?
How can I think kind thoughts moment upon moment upon moment,
day upon day upon day, week in, week out, year after year,
sometimes lifetime after lifetime?
How can I keep this at the back of mind all the time so it's
always there? This is one of those crucial
aspects of the Buddhist teachings.
Because if you can do this, what you're doing is you're changing
your attitude to the people around you.
Because if you have to be kind all the time, it means that
whenever you don't feel like being kind, you have to start
thinking differently. It who changes the way you look
at people, look at the world becomes different.
You're forcing yourself into a new track, not forcing because
that's too, too harsh. You are.
You are encouraged to use your wisdom to find solutions to the
problems in life. That's what's going on, right?
So if you do this, and this is where the path really starts to
take off, when you're able to do this consistently all the time,
always remembering this is what life is all about, right?
This is the essence of living the spiritual life, living every
single moment with kindness, with compassion, with the right
outlook. At the very least when the
neutrality here, if the mind goes into a negative state, you
should ask yourself straight away, how can I change this
around? How can I move this around into
a different way here? And then it becomes
extraordinarily powerful. And if you do this consistently
all the time like this, you are changing your character very
fast. You're building up all these
good qualities, right? You start to feel really good
about yourself because you know inside, deep inside of yourself
that you are a good person, you're doing the right things.
You don't really feel any. You don't feel Vadnais about
yourself anymore. If somebody else tells you all
or says you're bad or whatever, you don't shrug your shoulders.
It's their problem. Nothing to do with me.
They can think whatever they like, right?
People are always going to think what they like anyway.
Can't do anything about that. It's their problem.
I know I'm doing the right thing.
It's no issue anymore. And then when you sit down,
right then, when you come to meditation, you're no longer
forcing it. You're sitting down.
Your mind is becoming peaceful. No thoughts are going on, or you
start to feel happiness and gladness inside.
It becomes more and more powerful.
The body calms down and becomes so beautiful and so peaceful and
so still, right? And then eventually you enter
this powerful states of samadhi. Actually, what you're doing,
you're starting to experience, to find the answer to the very
meaning of life itself. This is what you find in these
deep states of samadhi. You can even take it beyond that
into insight. But actually already at that
point, you're finding the answer to the very meaning of life,
right? And it all comes from that
practice of ethics at the basics basis of the path.
And it all leads you in that direction.
So if you want to find the answer to the meaning of life,
if you want to find the highest happiness, the commitment, the
perseverance that is required to get there, it comes basically
from the discourses, from the teachings of the Buddha.
That is the foundation work. Hang out with the Buddha, hang
out with powerful teachers like Ajam Brahm, right?
Or anyone else who is very powerful and very has an ability
to convey the Dhamma in the right way.
And there are a few people out there like that.
And as you hang out with that and you start to understand what
is going on, there's a very beautiful way that the Buddha
has a simile about this. And the simile is that it's like
the rain falling on the mountaintop, right?
And as the rain falls on the mountaintop, as it rains and
rains and rains, it merges together into little streams,
and those streams merge to get into larger streams.
They go into the lakes, and then those lakes go into the rivers,
right? And eventually the rivers go
into the ocean. The more it rains on that
mountaintop, the more powerful the larger those rivers are.
And eventually it all goes to the sea, which is the similar
here for the awakening experience itself.
So all you have to do is keep it raining, right?
Keep raining, keep raining, keep raining.
Come back to the Dhamma. Contemplate these teachings,
understand what they're all about.
Understand what it is that you have to do.
Whenever you feel a little bit down, you don't feel that you
have that initiative anymore. You don't have the inspiration
anymore. Come back here, listen to some
good teaching, take out the suitors, try to understand what
they're about. Lift yourself up, contemplate
this, these things, rain, rain, rain, larger and larger streams,
eventually building up to the rivers, right?
Eventually going to the ocean. As long as you keep it raining,
you will eventually reach that goal.
And that is what the Buddha had to say about commitment and
perseverance on the Buddhist path.
OK, that is enough for this evening.
Thank you very much. OK, that's great.
Thank you so much. OK, So are there any questions,
please from the audience tonight?
Anybody want to ask something here?
Over here. My oops sorry.
My question is to try to access the the suitors as a layperson.
Do you have like a, a recommendation of one that's a
bit easy to read? Sure.
Yeah, I do indeed. There's a number of things you
can do. One of the things we can do is a
book called In the Buddhas Words, which is an anthology of
suites, which is nicely. They're nicely put together
according to themes and they have nice introductions and
footnotes at the end explaining the suites.
Translation by Venerable Biki Bodi.
He's the number one translator of Buddha suit.
As in the Buddha as a word is a very good place to start.
Or you can come on my suit, I retreat, right?
Oh, that is really good introduction to the suit as if
you wish, if you are really committed that is, you can do
that also. Sometimes it is also very nice
just to start reading something like the middle length sayings
of the Buddha. Very nice suit as in there quite
long and they have nice context to get a feeling for the Buddha
was and all this kind of things. Also very beautiful way of
starting to read the suit as you can.
Also we do all kinds of suit readings here at the Mallorca as
well. Every Sunday we have a suit
reading here. Not every Sunday, every other
Sunday, as you can come here or download it on the Internet and
you can listen to the explanation of the pseudos can
be very useful. In the beginning, it may seem a
bit difficult to get into them, but once you kind of get a feel
for how they work, they become very useful.
So a few a few ideas for you have we should do more weekend
pseudo retreats. I really want to do more weekend
pseudo retreats. That's kind of my my aim.
But we only have so many retreats per year.
You know, it's just as part of the problem and we'll see what
we can do in the future. Anyone else want to ask anything
here? Everywhere else So happy.
Oh, OK. Yeah, that's great.
No questions. Always peace and stillness.
OK. Oh, over there.
OK, OK. Well, yes, the, the suitor I
actually tonight talk was based on is in the Anguto Nikai
attendance #61 or 60 and 61 Anguto attendance.
So if you want to read it. But it's, you know, I've added
just a little bit, you know, so just to kind of flesh it out of
it. That's basically where it comes
from here. OK, OK, so let's see what they
have from overseas. I'm going to have to take out my
glasses these days. So I just, it's always nice to
be reminded that you're getting older so you don't actually lose
that kind of groundedness. OK, so question number one,
nobody else have a question here?
OK, so we go to overseas. Question number one, this is
from Surab Singh. How do how do we know our
purpose in life and consequently commit to it?
Could one's life's purpose change?
How do you know your purpose in life?
OK, well it's not that hard actually.
But you, you have to know where to look in the 1st place, right?
Life has a very clear meaning and all you have to do is to
look inside of yourself to see what that meaning is.
And what you see, what you look when you look inside of yourself
is you see all these desires, all these cravings, all these
things that we want to do right now.
Ask yourself when you have a desire, when you have a craving,
what does that desire say to you?
It says when I get into this relationship, whoa, that will be
it, right? This person is a perfect fit for
me and I will be happy ever after.
That is essentially what craving and desire says.
They say you will be satisfied. They say you will be content.
They say the itch, which is the craving, will be abandoned once
you get the desire fulfilled. But if you are wise and if you
really look at yourself, you start to realise, no, it doesn't
actually happen that way. Yes, you pursue that craving,
you pursue the object of the desire and it doesn't actually
get you there. There's more desires afterwards.
Desire is a liar. Craving lies to you, doesn't
tell you the truth. There's another way to finding
this happiness That craving and desire promises you, and that is
the spiritual path. Kindness, compassion,
understanding other people, right?
This is the way to go if you want to find real contentment
inside of you. That happiness you get from that
is an immediate happiness in the present moment.
Nothing to do with the future, nothing to do with craving,
nothing to do with desire. And you realize once you start
to tap into that happiness, you realize I have found the very
thing that I was looking, been looking for all the time.
That craving was promising me all the time, time.
Now I have found it, but I found it through different means than
what I thought I should be used to get there, right.
So the meaning of life, the purpose of life is not very hard
to understand. We tend to look in the wrong
place, look in the right place, contemplate what will actually
get get you there, and then you're on the right track.
Can that purpose change? No, that purpose can never
really change. We all want to be happy, right?
Nobody wants. Please give me more depression
and sadness. Nobody says that, right?
Everybody wants more ease, relaxation, contentment in life.
Okay, next one. This is from Ajai Mane Mane from
India. I apologize if I'm not
pronouncing your name properly, but anyway, it is very important
to know the reason behind it, behind the commitment question
mark. What reason should I give it to
my mind to help me commit to the Buddhist practice?
Because you will be happy, you will reduce suffering, you will
reach the purpose of life, the meaning of life.
This is what it's all about, right?
If you commit to something, which is the truth, which is
reality, which is guides you towards happiness, guides you
away from suffering. Wow, so powerful.
This is what I mean by reading The Suitors.
Once you get that message, you can't, you have to commit
yourself, right? You have no choice anymore.
Your mind, your mind will drag you along into a commitment
because you understand that you have found the very purpose of
life itself. Yeah.
So this is kind of the whole point here, by studying a little
bit, the suitors, understanding these teachings, that they
actually, once you get your mind around these things, whoa, it is
so powerful and so beautiful #3 This is from Chiv in Sydney.
When given several options, how do we know which action or path
in life to commit to? OK, when given several options,
how what should we do? How do we make choices in life?
And the Buddha, as always, I always go back to the Suit
Desert. The Buddhas give some beautiful
advice on how to make right choices in life, right?
So the first thing about making choices, never make a choice if
your mind is clouded, If you are angry or upset about something,
don't do anything. Just chill.
Just relax, right? Wait for the anger to pass.
Don't make certainly don't make any choices based on anger.
If you have strong desires for something.
Don't make any choices based on strong desires.
If you feel deluded or confused, not the right time to make
decisions. The right time to make decisions
when you are really relaxed, you're at ease.
Your mind is clear. There's no definements there.
There's none of these things which distort the mind one way
or the other, right? That is the right time to make a
decision because then you will have clarity.
We often talk about intuition in life, right?
Intuition is actually a very powerful tool to use to make
decisions. But you have to know when
intuition is right. And intuition is only right when
the mind is clear and not clouded, when there's no desires
there, when there's no anger. That is when intuition is
correct and you can trust that intuition.
This is very useful advice. If you follow that, you're going
to start making some really, really good decisions in life.
Only make decisions when your mind is clear.
Sometimes it's blooming obvious what you have to do, right?
If the mind is clear, of course, I have to do this and we'll just
dilute it before suddenly everything becomes very clear to
you. This is number one.
The second grounds for making decisions in life is remember
that if you really are committed to spiritual practice, and by
that I just mean kindness, basically.
If you really are committed to being kind, compassionate,
understanding, thinking in the right way, if that is what
matters in your life, and I tell you straight away, please make
that the most important thing in life because everything else
really is completely secondary. Who cares if you have a nice
house, big house? Who cares if you climb to the
top of the corporate ladder, right?
It's all the borrowed stuff. You're going to have to give it
up when you die anyway. The only thing you take with you
beyond death is the goodness of your heart and the kindness that
you have accumulated over a long life.
That is what matters. That is where you should invest
your time and your the resources, not in all the
worldly things. It is so obvious when you start
thinking about it. So therefore what that
consequence of that is that whenever you make a choice, you
should ask yourself what is going to help me on in my
practice of kindness, in my practice of generosity, in my
practice of meditation, in my spiritual path?
What is the right choice to make me move forward on that path in
the best way? So if you're going to find a
place to live, right, what is a good place to live that is
helpful for, you know, for a spirit, maybe somewhere a little
bit peaceful, maybe somewhere not too far away from a Buddhist
centre, somewhere where you have good kalyanamitas, right?
Good friends who can support you, this kind of stuff, right?
What is the right kind of job to have?
Maybe a job that is not too stressful, Maybe a job where you
have at least a few like minded friends, right, who work with
you. These are the kind of things you
take into account, and that, again, I think is the best way
to make a decision. Of course, this is only true if
you are really committed again, right?
Commitment again, is the essential thing here.
But if you really are committed to this path, to this practice,
that is what you should be doing here.
OK, that is all for tonight. So let us pay respected Buddha
Masanga. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.