Monday's Questions & Responses

0:00 Time now for some questions. And I see Carlita is here, ready to ask her. Yes, indeed. Good to see you again, Joseph. Good to see you, Saṅgha. All right. We have many questions that have come in. Thank you so much to each of you who have been bringing those in. Since this is our last day of formal practice, I did want to bring in some of those that have to do with continuing the momentum. So one of the questions that came in is how important or critical is it to sit in formal meditation every day? Is four or five days out of the week enough? And if so, is there a set period of time that you'd recommend a minimum of 20 minutes or more? Any guidance on that would be dearly appreciated. As a general principle, the more the better, because it will keep the momentum of the practice going. But as a general guideline, I think it is really helpful to have a commitment to sitting every day, but one also does not need to become obsessive about it. So if there are some days, for whatever reason, It just proves too difficult not to be judging oneself for that, and it's just to pick it up on the next day. But to have the regular daily practice, I find essential. It's really important for myself even after all these years because it's a way just of disengaging from the entanglements and the busyness of our lives. And really refreshing ourselves, refreshing our whole energy system by the daily say. So one suggestion for people who may be finding it difficult to do that, somebody once offered a suggestion which I found really helpful. So this is for an extreme case of finding it difficult. And that is they found it for themselves. What they found helpful was to make the commitment to at least get into the meditation posture each day. So that anybody could do, no matter how busy we are. The commitment is just to get into the meditation posture. And what they found was that once in the posture, it wasn't that difficult to sit for some period of time. But the difficulty was more in the disengagement from the busyness, you know, of our lives. And so, again, to have a general aspiration to sit every day and to find a time generally, the same time every day is helpful because then we get into that habit of it. But if we happen to miss that time, of course, it could be helpful to sit at any other time in the day. And if it's super difficult to just get into the posture and then see what happens. But at least in that way, you're fulfilling your commitment. And again, the regularity of practice is really important. How long? You have to see for yourself, really. If it's possible to sit for an hour a day, that's great. Or even longer. You know, some people make a commitment to sit an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening. That probably for many people might be more challenging. If you find that an hour is just beyond what you can do at this time in terms of regular practice, see what makes sense for you. I think it would be good to at least try to sit a half an hour at a time, you know, kind of as a minimum base. So this is some just general guidelines. I would really encourage you to try to establish a daily sitting practice. It is just super important and will make your life a bit more easeful. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Joseph. And another question that we had that came in had to do with the refuges and precepts. We've been chanting those refuges and precepts each morning. And the question has to do with. What do you think about reciting the refuges and precepts in English? Would that detract at all from the meaning and the practice of doing so? Is there an advantage perhaps in doing it in the original versus in one's native language, whether it's English or something else? I would say to just experiment and see what is the most meaningful for you, you know, and it might be different for different people. Some people might be enchanting the Pāli. They might feel some kind of energetic connection just through the ancient Pāli language and realizing that this has been enchanted for thousands of years. So for some people, that can be really meaningful. For other people, if they do it in English, they may feel like they're... Connecting more deeply with the meaning of the refuge. And so really either way is fine. I would see what is most, what feels most meaningful to you. And you could experiment, you know, sometimes perhaps do it in the Pāli, sometimes in English. Yeah, there's no, I would say there's no hard and fast rule for that. It's really to see what moves one the most. Wonderful. Thank you so much. All right, another question. It's kind of a large one. But the question is, how do you understand enlightenment? How important is it? Okay, so I'm going to give a Joseph definition and a more classical definition. I may have mentioned this in an earlier session. One of my favorite understandings of enlightenment of these days. It's lightening up. We're in a process of lightening up, which really means lightening up from our deeply ingrained self -referential habits. So we're really cultivating a kind of selflessness in this process of lightening up, not taking our minds and our experiences. Quite so seriously. And again, as I've mentioned before, in meditation, I found for myself, having a certain sense of humor about what's going on in my mind is really helpful. And that is a way of lightening up a little bit. Okay, so that's kind of Josephism. More classically, enlightenment really means And the Buddha framed this in a really simple way. He said the roots of all unwholesome mind states are greed and hatred and delusion. And so the process of enlightenment is real. And it's accomplished through the very practice we're doing by becoming mindful of what's arising and not holding on, seeing the impermanent nature of it all. As we weaken these forces of greed and hatred, delusion in the mind, we suffer less. And at different stages in our practice, and there are levels which are called the stages of enlightenment that happens. For most people, not all at once, but progressively over time. And at different of these levels, different of the defilements are uprooted. So I think it's really helpful not to think of it as some kind of esoteric, abstract notion. It really has to do with the suffering or freedom from suffering in our own minds. And that's what becomes a great motivation for us, both to free ourselves and as best we can to share our understanding with other people. So for me, enlightenment is a very meaningful aspiration because it can be related to the immediacy of our own experience. Thank you so much, Joseph. I have another question that's coming in and kind of touches into that, maybe getting more into the how perhaps of that. So the question reads, I feel like with practicing mindfulness, I can distance myself from difficult emotions more and more, but they still arise. And I believe it's because I am attached to certain things with the self at the center. How do you transcend your attachments? So that difficult emotions don't arise in the first place. Well, I would frame it a little differently in terms of the unfolding of the path. Suggest a fix for the passage at 0:00

10:23 Rather than kind of being attached to the idea that we want to prevent the difficult emotions from arising. I think it's more helpful to frame our practices being open to a way of relating to them so that we're not identified with them when they arise. Because different emotions are going to come and unpleasant or emotions that cause suffering will come to some extent or another until we're fully enlightened. Until all the unwholesome roots are uprooted from a mind stream. So for most of us, that'll be a little way off anyway. We could expect these emotions to arise at different times due to the different circumstances and conditions of our lives. The key for our practice is can we relate to them in a way that doesn't cause us as much suffering. And this has to do with how we're relating to them. For example, the difference between, you know, if anger arises, which is an unpleasant emotion, if we're caught in the story of it, there's a lot of suffering. If we are mindful of the anger and exploring the experience of the energy of anger, we're taking interest in that particular experience with mindfulness and we're being with it without identifying. With it as being I or mine, seeing it as an impersonal arising appearance due to certain conditions, and we take interest in it, then our relationship to it has really changed and we become much more easeful. So there's one image which is a little unusual, but it's striking. It's a paraphrase from a Tibetan text. Talking about how thoughts and emotions wander through the mind like clouds in the sky. And so can we be with them and really be resting in the awareness of the sky? Seeing these as just appearances coming and going in that space. What happens is that we root the clouds through identifying with them. Claiming them to be my anger or I'm angry. But the my or the I is extra. So the image is a little bit amusing. See, when we are identified with an emotion like that, it's like having a cloud, having a root come down from the cloud to the earth. Of course, that's a ridiculous image, but what we're doing. When we are identified with these difficult emotions, it's not the emotion itself that's the real problem. And as I say, they are going to arise until our minds are completely purified. But we can learn how to relate to them in an increasingly freer way. Okay to feel them if we're mindful, if we're not caught up in them. And here, the noting is a real help. And particularly the quality of interest. So just for myself, over all these years, I've learned, it's a phrase I use these days, not to waste my suffering. Meaning when the mind is upset in one way or another, it piques my interest. It's like, okay, something's going on in my mind that's causing distress of one kind or another. Can I investigate? Can I take interest in what's going on in the mind that's creating that suffering? And there is something, you know, there's some way we're relating that is not skillful. So that interest really is a very freeing attitude because when we're interested, we're no longer caught or identified with it. Excellent. Thank you so much, Joseph. All right. One of the next questions that we have. Going in a different direction here has to do with, since many of our practitioners are obviously lay people, people have jobs or moving forward and other pursuits in their lives, and it has to do with the question of setting goals. So the question reads, how do you set goals or be ambitious while at the same time being non -attached? Can you have both? Suggest a fix for the passage at 10:23

15:31 So one of the very first connections I had with kind of the understandings of the wisdom from the East happened when I was in college. And I didn't know anything about Buddhism. But I was taking a course in Eastern philosophy and we were reading the Bhagavad Gita, which is this great Hindu text. And one line just... Jumped out at me. And again, I was young. I didn't know anything about any of this. But for some reason, this one line resonated. And it's really the essence also of the Buddhist teachings. And the line said, act without attachment to the fruit of the action. Act without attachment to the result. So it doesn't mean that we don't have aspirations and we don't have goals. Because we can. But can we realize that a lot of conditions are outside of our control? And so we can devote a lot of energy and effort to our aspiration, realizing that the outcome will be what it is. And if we can let go of... Or attachment to the outcome, which doesn't mean not having an aspiration for it. It just means realizing that we are not in complete control of how things unfold. And there's a lot of freedom in that. There's a freedom, and it actually frees up a lot of energy that may have been bound up in attachment to having the goal be realized. And that energy we can use in the pursuit of the aspiration. And we're doing it then in a much freer mind space. And it makes our mind, I think, more creative and more flexible as a particular path for whatever it is that we're aspiring to unfold. So I think that's really the key. The problem is not having an aspiration because we all do. It's the reason we do things, right? Because we'd like to see some kind of outcome. But can we hold it more lightly? Still with the energy to achieve it, but not with that attachment or might say obsessive attachment to the result. And for me, that has just been... Very, very freeing. Joseph, one more thing. I'll relate it actually to our meditation practice because we can have the aspiration for awakening, for enlightenment. We can have the highest aspiration. But if we have expectation, which is another word for attachment, if we have expectation in each of our sittings for the sitting to be a certain way, It's a lot of suffering because as I'm sure you've all realized by now, the dharma has a life of its own in our sitting experience. Many ups and downs and they will not always fit our expectation of what we'd like the next sitting to be. So we still have the aspiration which sets us, it sets the direction for where we're going. And then we stay free. In our experience of how that particular pursuit unfolds for us. So this is true both in meditation practice and also into our more worldly aspirations. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Joseph. And then next we have another question that touches upon equanimity. So the question is, will you speak to the relationship between equanimity and dispassion? Well, um... I think if we are in a dispassionate state, the mind will naturally be in that quality of equanimity and impartiality because it's not being conditioned by attachment or by aversion. But it's important. Suggest a fix for the passage at 15:31

20:36 It's important to understand from a Buddhist perspective what dispassion means, because in English, again, we may have all kinds of connotations with it, of that word of meaning not caring or perhaps indifference. And that's not really what dispassion means in the Buddhist sense. It means being free from the craving, you know, of greed. of clinking, of grasping. So there's a coolness in compassion that is still very connected with our experience, but it's connected in a very open and impartial way. So again, I think I spoke about this in my talk on equanimity. Be watchful that you don't infer from these words. Some sense of disengagement. Because it's not that way. We are fully there and fully with each experience. But the mind is not being reactive to what's arising. And I think that's really the meaning of this passion. And it's the quality of equanimity. Thank you so much, Joseph. And in addition, we've had a number of questions come in regarding no self. One of these questions reads, would you please elaborate on no self? It's here that my practice comes to a screeching halt. It seems self -focused to use habits of mind to shift hindrances. The hindrances are appearing to quote me and affect quote my experience. Where is the no self in this? Okay. Suggest a fix for the passage at 20:36

22:34 This could definitely be at least an hour talk and then maybe many, many more hours. But I'll just highlight a few things. Because even in the way the question was asked, Suggest a fix for the passage at 22:34

22:52 the I in the mind was extra. So, for example, hindrances are arising. There can be the experience of the hindrance, the knowing of anger, the knowing of desire. Claiming either the knowing or the particular hindrance as I or mine is a whole extra process. So we can be in the experience free of that identification with it. And then the question is, well, I'm the one who's seeing that it's a hindrance and wanting to remove them. Again, the I is extra because. We could understand it as the wisdom factor of mind, understanding that the hindrances are unwholesome and the cause of suffering. And so we could say it's the wisdom which leads to the decision to do a kind of practice which will minimize or weaken the force of the hindrances. So we can begin to see it all as an impersonal process. It's just the working out of... Different mind states and different mental factors, each serving their own function. So one way of encapsulating this, just in language, might be to say, it's the thought that is the thinker. And it's not that the thought belongs to me. The thought itself is arising out of different conditions, and the thought is the thinker. We could say that it's anger that angers. It's love that loves. It's fear that fears. So each of these qualities and aspects of experience are each manifesting in their own way, having their own effect. But we have been strongly conditioned to identify with each of these. And that's where the creation of the felt sense of self comes about. It's not that there is a self there in the first place. There's just all of these impersonal sensations of the body, thoughts and emotions of the mind, all manifesting their own nature. And then there's another mental process, which is also impersonal, but that process identifies with what's happening. And in that process of identification, there is that felt sense of self. So that's one way, that's one frame for understandings. Another frame for understanding selflessness, and it points to an important aspect of this discussion. It's an example I've used very often. And that is, if you think of a rainbow, you know, there's a rainstorm and then, you know, after the rain, the sun may come out and sometimes we see this beautiful rainbow in the sky. Suggest a fix for the passage at 22:52

26:18 We all enjoy it. We take the light, usually, in that experience. It's beautiful. But with some interest, we could ask the question, well, what actually is a rainbow? And we see that a rainbow is an appearance that arises when certain conditions of air and light and moisture come together in a certain way. So there are these elements of experience, elements of nature, coming together. And when they come together, a rainbow appears. But there's no thing in and of itself, which is a rainbow, independent of those conditions. Rainbow is an appearance coming out of the conditions. So we could say that self is like the rainbow. It's not something that exists in and of itself, but there is an appearance. When certain conditions of mind and body come together. Suggest a fix for the passage at 26:18

27:27 So this is summed up by another Tibetan teacher. And somebody was asking basically this question, is the self real? And this teacher had a great response. He said, yes, it is real. And that's like, yes, we all have the experience of the rainbow. So the rainbow is real in that sense. So he said, yes, the self is real, but it's not really real. And I think that points to the relative, we could say the relative truth or the relative experience of the self as a conventional designation for all of these conditions coming together. But when we investigate what that designation refers to, Rather than just getting attached to the designation of self. When we start to investigate, okay, self is a designation for a combination of different mind -body elements. All of which are in constant change and flow and flux. And so when we really take interest and investigate what it is that we're calling self. That's when we begin to experience the three characteristics and the empty nature, the empty of self nature of all of this phenomenon. But still on the relative level and the conventional level, we use the word self and we often have some experience, some felt sense of it. So it's real in that sense, but it's not really real. And we can discover the not really real part. Through the investigation that we've been doing. So I think that may be a good note to end on, because that really gets to the heart of what our practice is about. You know, and referring back again to the question of enlightenment and awakening and the path and daily practice, it's summed up in one teaching of the Buddha where he said, Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as I or mine. Whoever has heard this has heard all of the teachings. Whoever practices this has practiced all of the teachings. Whoever realizes this has realized all the teachings. So everything we do and all the various methods and techniques and suggestions are really in the service of this very profound understanding of the nature of our minds and bodies of who we are. Nothing whatsoever, not in the mind, not in the body, not externally, not internally, nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as I or mine. Everything is simply what it is, and the I and mine is extra. And so whoever has practiced this and realized this has realized all the teachings. And this is what makes this practice so liberating. So thank you all. And see you later this evening. Suggest a fix for the passage at 27:27