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Key passages
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- 0:34
The approach of the Buddha was non-doctrinal. It wasn't trying to instill in us any ideas that we adopt, but the attempt to awaken the mind to its state of where wisdom starts operating, where we start using wisdom rather than just operating from the conditioning of the mind.
- 2:04
It means the ability of a human being to be awake, pay attention, not just awake in the sense of not asleep, lying down asleep, but it means where the mind is in its completely pure state of receptivity, where pure intelligence is then the foundation and wisdom then can be used in understanding The conditions that we have to bear with and live with, such as our own bodies, how to live within the changing, aging process of a human body and consciousness, what consciousness really is.
- 5:02
All the political preferences, biases that we might be very attached to then are seen in a perspective in terms of seeing them as dhamma, things that they are what they are. We're not trying to...
- 37:42
You let go of your control. You learn how to relax, to not resist. And all those tensions, those habits of a lifetime, they're still very easily overtaken. So it takes a strong determination in meditation to trust in this awareness and to keep using our experiences of life for that realization.
- 48:50
then, with that, then the ability to create isn't then coming from a sense of me as a person wanting to be creative, but from being able to respond, a spontaneous response to life. It's no longer coming from From the sense of me as somebody who wants to prove that I am a creative person or that I'm even obliged to create anything, but it's a natural way of responding to life.
Transcript
0:00 I'm doing some. Report an error in the passage at 0:00
0:05 And these are reflective reflections, really. It's not like trying to convince you or convert you or do anything other than to kind of attempt to awaken the mind to contemplate and consider the dharma. Because this is one of the... The approach of the Buddha was non-doctrinal. It wasn't trying to instill in us any ideas that we adopt, but the attempt to awaken the mind to its state of where wisdom starts operating, where we start using wisdom rather than just operating from the conditioning of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 0:05
1:02 And of course this is very much needed by all of us because our cultural attitudes, our education tends to be one that's highly programmed and conditioned by culture, by views and opinions, ideals, and so forth. And some very good, some very high-minded, some can even be twisted or distorted. but whatever. Report an error in the passage at 1:02
1:34 Whatever condition we start with, if we don't understand the nature of our mind, we end up with some kind of distortion of reality. So that the Buddha's attempt was to bring the mind, to bring our attention to the present moment. In other words, to awaken us. Report an error in the passage at 1:34
1:56 The word Buddha means the awakened one. It's a significant word in itself. It means the ability of a human being to be awake, pay attention, not just awake in the sense of not asleep, lying down asleep, but it means where the mind is in its completely pure state of receptivity, where pure intelligence is then the foundation and wisdom then can be used in understanding The conditions that we have to bear with and live with, such as our own bodies, how to live within the changing, aging process of a human body and consciousness, what consciousness really is. Report an error in the passage at 1:56
2:48 Even though we're conscious, we don't really understand our own ability, our own consciousness. We just operate. We take it for granted and we let it be influenced by all kinds of distorted views and opinions, habits. Report an error in the passage at 2:48
3:10 We begin to reflect on just the nature of the condition of our mind, our language, our memories, our emotional habits then become in a perspective that we can see them in an objective way, in a way that we can... Report an error in the passage at 3:10
3:30 bound into them, lost in our emotional habits and views and opinion, because we can see that the problems that face humanity at this time are quite unsolvable on the level of just arguing whose idea, whose opinion, whose system is the right one, and on that level, it is a hopeless situation, because The various political views, cultural attitudes, economic ideals, social ideals and so forth, when we start trying to take sides for and against something, then we inevitably get lost in our own programming, in our own biases, our own... Report an error in the passage at 3:30
4:25 cultural biases that we can't readily see because they're so influential on the very foundation of conscious experience where when we awaken the mind then we're getting to its kind of primordial preconditioned purity the natural purity of our mind where consciousness operates but it's not We're not distorting things through attachments to views and opinions, cultural attitudes, racial biases, class identities, gender identities. Report an error in the passage at 4:25
5:02 All the political preferences, biases that we might be very attached to then are seen in a perspective in terms of seeing them as dhamma, things that they are what they are. We're not trying to... Dismiss, deny, or judge them even, but begin to understand them in terms of that they are conditioned phenomena. Report an error in the passage at 5:02
5:29 They're not absolutes. If we attach to them blindly, out of ignorance, and we attach to even the best ideas, we still suffer from that attachment. Report an error in the passage at 5:29
5:46 So this takes a tremendous effort on our part to... Report an error in the passage at 5:46
6:24 Buddhist meditation is about when we talk about meditation. It's not just going into a nice tranquil state of bliss and saying goodbye world, I don't care about you anymore. Report an error in the passage at 6:24
6:43 Or just our way of denial or rejection of our own bodies or our families or society or the planet or whatever. It's not an attempt to... To run away or deny, but to understand. Report an error in the passage at 6:43
7:06 So the subject, the first title is Birth, Creation and Creativity because this is the first summer's talk. So birth always conveys the beginning of something. Report an error in the passage at 7:06
7:28 And we talk of birth, say, of our own birth as something that's happened already. We're now in the process of living our lives, and in the future is the death, the death experience that will happen to all of us. And that's in the future. So this is a reflection on just the way things are at this time. Report an error in the passage at 7:28
7:57 We're sitting here, and this is the... The birth of the body has already happened which we can't remember. At least I can't remember my birth. Some people say they can remember their birth but I can't remember mine at all. Report an error in the passage at 7:57
8:15 But just by the fact that I'm conscious being and I'm an aging physical form That conveys the reality that their birth has happened, it's the past. But say, just on the level of birth in the here and now, say, we're contemplating the beginning, the sense of starting, and just beginning to notice that life as experience, every day there's all these births taking place, the awakening in the morning, The, the, um... Report an error in the passage at 8:15
8:58 Just the beginning of something and then also the death, the ending of things, the separations, the finishing off experiences that we have in daily life. Because these are births and deaths that we can contemplate and watch and begin to take an interest in. Report an error in the passage at 8:58
9:36 from all kinds of habits until we die that's the worst scenario of a human of a human life where you're just creature of habit get conditioned in the in the first few years when you're a child and then You go through the system, education, get all the right ideas, fit into the system, operate from that, and then die at age 80 without having awakened anything. Report an error in the passage at 9:36
10:08 But you start out with the actual birth, physical birth. And this also means that we start at that moment as being separate conscious beings. Report an error in the passage at 10:08
10:22 So contemplate this here. Each one of us is a separate conscious entity in this universal system, in its entirety. Each one of us operates from the time we're born, say, just from the time we're born out of our mother's womb, from that moment, then we can say we start living and experiencing life as a separate entity. Report an error in the passage at 10:22
10:57 Translation by — mean? And it means that each one of us is unique in our own way. We have to experience life from this position, from this form. Report an error in the passage at 10:57
11:10 it might be, whether it's male or female, whether it's or sickly or beautiful or ugly or whatever conditions that exist in it, we experience life as it impinges that which comes and impinges, contacts us through a lifetime. time from the the moment moment of of birth to the final death. And that's just the way it is. That's just a reflection on what conscious, what birth, Report an error in the passage at 11:10
11:58 When we recognize this, even though this is an obvious fact, really, it's quite obvious when you contemplate it, but yet how many people really understand that, have really contemplated that, to where they realize the significance of their own life, realize that for each one of us, our life is very significant, no matter how insignificant. Report an error in the passage at 11:58
12:27 We might be in terms of the masses of human beings or how you emotionally might feel about yourself. Maybe you're brought up to feel that you're a totally insignificant non-entity. Some of us have that feeling, you know, that our lives are of no significance because in terms of masses of people and that we seem to be relatively of no significant importance. Report an error in the passage at 12:27
12:55 In terms of the mass, but in terms of experience, our life is the most significant for each one of us. Report an error in the passage at 12:55
13:09 Because this is the form, these are the conditions that we're experiencing. It's the things that happen to this body and the way we interpret them that we create suffering. Because we're all going through a lifetime. A human lifetime, we're all going to experience various amounts of pleasure and pain. A whole human birth on planet Earth implies that we're going to have a lot of, we're going to have pleasure and we're also going to have pain. Report an error in the passage at 13:09
13:43 We're going to have success and failure, praise and blame, happiness and suffering as a human experience for a lifetime. Report an error in the passage at 13:43
13:58 And so this is just pointing to the overall picture of what being born as a separate entity in the universe is as experience and how we respond and relate to these experiences. We can just be caught in the habitual reactions to pleasure, wanting to grasp it, wanting our life to be happy, wanting praise, success, good health. Report an error in the passage at 13:58
14:51 with it, then the other, that's one extreme, then the other is just To fear it, to just be caught in the endless resistance and fear and paranoia and worry and anxiety and that about everything going wrong, about even when everything's right, we can still be anxious about it all going wrong. Or when things do go wrong, when we have bad health or people condemn us or... Report an error in the passage at 14:51
15:38 those are the two extreme just this desire to control so that I can feel secure and safe, or the desire to destroy. limit, to get rid of everything that I mistrust or don't like. Report an error in the passage at 15:38
16:01 the other, then usually our lives are various degrees of these attitudes. as we grow older, we develop wisdom as we experience the ups and downs of human life, don't we? We start out when we're young thinking, oftentimes being very critical. Report an error in the passage at 16:01
16:25 figures. remember my youth, and I was in the University of I was very critical of my parents, of the American government, of everything, you know, all the adult world that I could see. I developed a rather clever mind where I could see that they'd made all kinds of mistakes. And so I didn't have much compassion. Report an error in the passage at 16:25
16:56 I'd like to blame and put them down. We enjoyed that. It was fun when you're about 18, 19 years old. And then as you get older, you realize that life isn't that. You can't really, you know, that it's hard work. And whether you succeed, how much you succeed and how many mistakes you make, it's rather, you know, you become humble as time goes by because you realize that it's not. Report an error in the passage at 16:56
17:33 An easy ride. Report an error in the passage at 17:33
17:38 So now at my age I'm much more compassionate. I Report an error in the passage at 17:38
17:47 think of my mother and father now and I think they did a really good job actually. Report an error in the passage at 17:47
18:01 They were quite successful now in terms of wisdom. They were quite thoughtful and caring and hardworking and quite devoted. Report an error in the passage at 18:01
18:16 And developed a lot of determination to help my sister and I get all the good things of life. Now Report an error in the passage at 18:16
18:36 because birth and creation and this sense of creativity, in the West we have a kind of fascination for the idea of being creative. Report an error in the passage at 18:36
18:51 And so many people have criticized Buddhism as... Because it sounds to many people like we're kind of putting down creativity because of the style that we use. As we're not kind of promoting creativity as a path. We're not saying we want to develop our creativity as a kind of inspiring path in Buddhist life. Report an error in the passage at 18:51
19:22 Where there are many kind of new age... of this present age where creativity is very much the focus, trying to develop your creativity an expression of freedom and spontaneity. And these words are very inspiring words to the human heart. Report an error in the passage at 19:22
19:46 because we like to think of our life as having some significance that we have creative abilities we're not just kind of like Ciphers in a machine or busy little beavers just performing our duties and we have nothing to offer other than just go through the motions and die. So creativity, especially in a society that idealizes individuality and freedom like we do in the Western world, then creativity gets colored with a high level of personal with this sense of my creativity and then some people feel they're not very creative and other people can feel they're very creative and we want to investigate what is creativity and Report an error in the passage at 19:46
20:47 so in terms of dharma we recognize creativity is Report an error in the passage at 20:47
21:02 will eventually be destroyed or decayed. the idea of creativity then does have an inspiring quality when we talk about creation Report an error in the passage at 21:02
21:19 Making things and developing progress, achievement, these words have a tremendous impact emotionally on us. They can inspire you a lot. When you hear the politicians, especially in American politics, you hear them talking about progress a lot and this idea of achievement and individual rights and everybody being able to get what they want. Report an error in the passage at 21:19
21:45 And these kind of... Ideas appeal to that sense of me fulfilling myself, of achieving, of attain, of being successful, of progression. And so that's one experience that we have in the human state, isn't it? We can acquire, achieve, attain, create, progress, develop. That's part of human experience. And that's oftentimes what is said the ultimate, that life should be just an experience based on progression and achievement and attainment. Report an error in the passage at 21:45
22:30 And then the problem comes, you see, with the aging population here in Britain, or any country, isn't it? With those kind of attitudes as the focus, then as you get over 60 or so, Then you're kind of dismissed in a way. Your good years are over. And so the idea that maybe now you just end up playing bridge and golf and watch television until you die. Report an error in the passage at 22:30
23:05 That's what a lot of people do, isn't it? Especially around here. They've got golf courses all over the place. Report an error in the passage at 23:05
23:15 All people out there. Pushing a ball around a patch of green. Report an error in the passage at 23:15
23:26 Nothing wrong with it, but this is certainly, you know, these are the more privileged old people, too. Around here, you know, you walk over towards Berkhamsted and Asheridge, people in pretty salubrious surroundings, people with everything. Report an error in the passage at 23:26
23:52 But in contemplation, we're contemplating the way it is so that the development, progressive experiences of life can be put in a context rather than be grasped as a kind of personal identification. Report an error in the passage at 23:52
24:14 And then the other experience of where it's aging, age, sickness, death, Loss of the loved, having to be with the unloved, not getting what you want, is what the Buddha was pointing to in his first sermon. The actual side of life that tends to be dismissed, ignored, or not appreciated, or not understood in terms of real experience. Report an error in the passage at 24:14
24:50 And so this is the first noble truth. When he established his teaching on the noble truths, the first noble truth was based on suffering or the human experience of suffering or dukkha, which then he says like old age, sickness, death, Report an error in the passage at 24:50
25:07 separation from the loved, having to be with the unloved, not getting what you want is dukkha or suffering. This is the reason why he emphasizes this in the teaching rather than, say, giving us a more inspiring approach where, say, a life is love and the idea of love and achievement and attainment and progress and security and all these can inspire the mind and uplift us and make us feel good. Report an error in the passage at 25:07
25:48 Yet, Report an error in the passage at 25:48
26:15 it's going to all fall apart, and then you... What will you do? One tends to get angry with God or think the teacher was hopeless or feel embittered or resentful. Or we might begin to look more deeply into our experience of life. Report an error in the passage at 26:15
26:39 So the emphasis on suffering as something to understand is quite unique in terms of a religious approach. Making it the kind of the first noble truth which gives it incredible importance in a religious context. But Report an error in the passage at 26:39
27:08 this suffering isn't a suffering that we're not trying to see suffering or interpret life as suffering but begin to notice the suffering that we're experiencing. Awaken to the The problems that we're having, the emotional attachments we have, just the natural discomfort of a human body. Report an error in the passage at 27:08
27:36 Because even when you're young and healthy and nothing's wrong with you, if you really look at your body, contemplate the nature of your body, you'll find it has so much restless energies in it. You get out of breath, you get tired, you get hungry. There's always something around the body from the time we're born to the time we die that is unpleasant in itself. Report an error in the passage at 27:36
28:04 And so the human body is itself a condition that can be exciting. We can get excited through it and get rapturous experiences through the physical body. And it certainly gives us a lot of pleasure. Our human bodies can give us a lot of pleasure. But then as we're more aware of them as an ongoing experience of life, we begin to see that basically they are an uncomfortable experience. Report an error in the passage at 28:04
28:41 That's one reason why I think we like to sleep so much. Just to be able to forget about this body. Isn't that? And go into another realm where you don't feel the body anymore. Report an error in the passage at 28:41
29:06 Now the birth means that consciousness operates from a condition that is, you know, in terms of Buddhist definitions of consciousness, of reflection on consciousness, of vijnana, it's from the birth. So this consciousness is from this form. So then we get conditioned by what our mother, father, peers, culture, class, ethnic background, race. Report an error in the passage at 29:06
30:01 years from various ethnic attitudes or whatever we we develop a sense of ourself as a person as a member of a community member of a family as a male or a female as uh being the you know being only an only child or being One of many children, and so forth. We have all these experiences impinging upon us. The mood, say, of our mother affects us. Report an error in the passage at 30:01
30:31 Just whether our father likes us or doesn't like us, or whether they... You know, all these things, we're a totally sensitive form in the universe, so we pick up all the things that, you know, we feel, the sad, unsad moods and experiences that come to us in this form. Some of them can be very pleasant and others unpleasant and some neutral. So that's consciousness. It's like it's... Report an error in the passage at 30:31
31:09 It's a function. It's not conditioned by culture. Consciousness is a natural function. But then what gets conditioned is our ability, our memory. We have language so we can remember things. We have all these, what they call sanya or perception, ability to fix things with ideas and principles. Report an error in the passage at 31:09
31:39 And hold things in our mind. We guard things in ways that are conditioned through our cultural background. So these things become the real world for us. The views, opinions, the attitudes, assumptions of our parents, of our culture. Report an error in the passage at 31:39
32:05 This is, if we never question or get beyond this, then we tend to interpret life from these particular perceptions. Report an error in the passage at 32:05
32:16 It's like one of the problems we have at this time is that, like here in just this monastery here at Amaravati, we're all different nationalities. Report an error in the passage at 32:16
32:31 So there's so many misunderstandings taking place on the level of... of what you expect from your cultural assumptions. It's even between British and Americans. Report an error in the passage at 32:31
32:47 There's a great deal of difference on what your assumptions of life are and how you relate to things because of the difference of cultural expectation that you have, say, as an American or a British person. And then we have... There's Europeans and Sri Lankan, Thai. We have people from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Report an error in the passage at 32:47
33:21 Canadians aren't really like people from the U.S. either. They have slightly different cultural assumptions. For an American, we think everybody is like an American until you start living with them, with the others. Report an error in the passage at 33:21
33:49 Now the aim of the Buddhist practice is to get to the original state, the preconditioned mind. As we say, we develop meditation in the right way. We're actually letting go of all the interest, fascination, attachment to the conditioning of our mind to where we eventually begin to notice or identify, realize, The natural state of pure awareness that underlies everything, that isn't conditioned, it's not a cultural condition, it's not a physical one. Report an error in the passage at 33:49
34:33 It's not like a male or female. We often call it transcendence. But then it makes it sound like a state separate from everything. You know, like it's like... The rest of everything is kind of dismissed and you're living in some kind of transcendent purity but this transcendent purity includes everything. Report an error in the passage at 34:33
35:00 So it's not a denial or rejection but it gives perspective. It gives you the ability to observe. The natural patterns, the ways, the natural laws that are affecting us in the present. So this pure state of awareness is what the Buddha was pointing to. First he used the suffering as the first noble truth because suffering is what we're usually reacting to, trying to resist or get away, deny and find happiness. Report an error in the passage at 35:00
35:39 So the unawakened... Report an error in the passage at 35:39
36:11 You can stop doing it and you begin to then have this sense of relief that your life doesn't have to be just a continuous effort to resist suffering or pain or fear or desire and then wondering why, when you haven't done anything really wrong, why you're so unhappy and why happiness is so fleeting and unreliable. Report an error in the passage at 36:11
36:39 So this... Pure state of awareness is not something separate. It's not something you don't have now. It's now. It's not something that you get. But it's when we let go and stop resisting life and stop trying to control and manipulate and do all these things with our bodies and with our minds. When you begin to feel a sense of trust and faith in the dharma, where you can relinquish, relax, let go, then you have the first moment of realization of the natural state. Report an error in the passage at 36:39
37:29 It's a natural state. It's not a made-up state. It's not created, in other words. You don't create it, and you don't have to control it. Report an error in the passage at 37:29
37:42 You let go of your control. You learn how to relax, to not resist. And all those tensions, those habits of a lifetime, they're still very easily overtaken. So it takes a strong determination in meditation to trust in this awareness and to keep using our experiences of life for that realization. Report an error in the passage at 37:42
38:19 And it's usually, and it's from this state of emptiness that creativity takes place. Not just reproducing things, it's not just manufacturing things out of ideas, but when you talk to people who have a creative ability in terms of, say, art, for example, at least some of them seem to experience this empty state. Report an error in the passage at 38:19
38:48 And it's where... When the creation takes place, it's from that. It's not from them trying to make something following an ideal and all kinds of ideas that they're trying to control and produce, but from this emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 38:48
39:08 So creativity is seen in that way. Then it's something that you can't make it yourself. force yourself to be a creative person and the the creativity the ability to create operates when you're not there that Report an error in the passage at 39:08
39:33 means when you've let go of everything this is just for reflection by the way so Report an error in the passage at 39:33
39:49 the aim say of an artist then is to get out of the way when Report an error in the passage at 39:49
39:58 I was in graduate school in Berkeley I had one of my friends was Ajahn Sumedho was an artist, painter, and the only way he could get out of the way was getting totally drunk. Report an error in the passage at 39:58
40:14 And in those states of intoxication, sometimes he produced rather marvelous painting. Report an error in the passage at 40:14
40:23 But when he wasn't drunk, he was so full of himself all the time, a really conceited, arrogant person, that everything he produced out of that was really ugly and mediocre. Report an error in the passage at 40:23
40:41 That was just my view anyway. And he only had a couple of paintings that were really, that I thought were really brilliant and the rest were pretty awful. Report an error in the passage at 40:41
40:52 And so I asked him, I said, you know, what state of mind were you in when you did this one? I wasn't around at all. It just happened. And so he kept trying to, and something in him wanted that state more than anything. You know, that Total emptiness. And the only way he remembered that ever happened was through drinking. Report an error in the passage at 40:52
41:20 I never found out what happened to him, but he was pretty much on his way into increasing problems with alcohol. But that's a pretty hard way to do it, isn't it? Report an error in the passage at 41:20
41:42 And then the rest of your life, maybe a few moments of this, and then the rest of your life is just hangovers and looking for more. Report an error in the passage at 41:42
41:55 It's obviously not a path I would recommend. Probably better to forget about being creative. Report an error in the passage at 41:55
42:08 But just discussing the possibility of realizing the emptiness of the mind. Where the personality, the self-consciousness, all these things that influence our experience, take us over and destroy the joy of our existence. Report an error in the passage at 42:08
42:32 For example, self-consciousness destroys life a lot. Just to think, to be so conscious of yourself and worrying about what other people think of you. Report an error in the passage at 42:32
42:45 This sense of yourself, what you look like, what your appearance is, and whether people like you or don't like you or think you're intelligent or stupid or whatever. And this self-consciousness is really a kind of unpleasant underlying influence on our experience of life that can really make our lives very tedious. Report an error in the passage at 42:45
43:14 It's not like we even suffer that much. It just can be an underlying dull note in our experience of life. And sometimes, you know, you have an experience where it's gone, like mystical experience. You know, how I would describe what people talk about mystical experience, where the self, that aggravating... Report an error in the passage at 43:14
43:45 Nagging sense of self is not operating. And then there is a sense of freedom and bliss, which is when that self isn't there, kind of nagging away. Report an error in the passage at 43:45
44:07 But then what happens is when you do have mystical experiences, then you want them again. So then you go off to India, climb the Himalayas, climb Mount Everest, become a Buddhist monk. Report an error in the passage at 44:07
44:31 You hear about some guru or avatar or enlightened master. I mean, you rush off to a Zen monastery in Japan or wherever. Now, this is the past, what, 40 years or so. It's easy. People ever go to Asia. All kinds of people looking for mystical experiences in India or wherever because there is that longing to be free from the suffering of a self and the conditioning of the mind that we get from our That we know, something in us, intuitive intelligence isn't conditioned by culture. So a part of us knows that there's something wrong. Report an error in the passage at 44:31
45:23 That a lot of the biases, attitudes, and cultural conditioning... And the things that we acquire from parents, there's something intuitively aware that there's something wrong with it, it's not right. Oftentimes we don't know how to understand it. The easiest way is to think there's something wrong with yourself. To see yourself as some kind of misfit or somebody with a screw loose in your head or something, to see it as something wrong with you. Report an error in the passage at 45:23
46:05 But when you contemplate then, you're beginning to recognize that this realm we're living in, this physical realm, sensual realm, where we're continually affected by sensory impingement, where we have a memory, retentive memory, just think how much life would, easier things would be if you couldn't remember so many things, especially the bad things that happen, if you could just forget them. Report an error in the passage at 46:05
46:36 How convenient that would be. But the bad things are the things we tend to remember. We tend to create this anxiety about the future, about what might happen, or it might happen again. So that this ability to remember is another thing that gives us a lot of suffering. Report an error in the passage at 46:36
47:04 Because wherever we are, we take our memory. You're off in India trying to find, have a mystical experience and you're still thinking about people here in England. Report an error in the passage at 47:04
47:16 Even at the top of Mount Everest, you can still be worried about what you're going to do when you come back to England. So then the sense of time, of past and future, is very much based on language and memory. Report an error in the passage at 47:16
47:38 So with meditation we're learning how to recognize, how to relinquish, how to realize this natural state of pure, intelligent, intuitive awareness. Because intuitive awareness, it's intelligent. It's not a dull state. It's not a blank wipeout. It's not a... It's not dependent upon acquired knowledge. Like you can be completely illiterate. It's still the same. Report an error in the passage at 47:38
48:18 It's pure intelligence. It's not like IQ intelligence. Or it's not something that you get through university degrees. So it's a pure intelligence where wisdom then is something that we can... and use in our particular situation, in our particular experience of So Report an error in the passage at 48:18
48:50 then, with that, then the ability to create isn't then coming from a sense of me as a person wanting to be creative, but from being able to respond, a spontaneous response to life. Report an error in the passage at 48:50
49:11 It's no longer coming from From the sense of me as somebody who wants to prove that I am a creative person or that I'm even obliged to create anything, but it's a natural way of responding to life. Report an error in the passage at 49:11
49:28 And it's coming out of that emptiness rather than from all the ideas that you might have in regards to how things should be. So in order to create in that way, the self can't interfere. You let go. And then there's a quote, Simone Weil, that I don't have it here, but it was one that particularly appealed to me because she was a Christian mystic, a very strange person. Report an error in the passage at 49:28
50:15 But she was saying in this quote, if I can give you the kind of essence of it, that she was saying, I don't feel that the need or the desire for anyone to love me or that they should even love me at all. Report an error in the passage at 50:15
50:37 I would not ask or demand that from anybody. All that I feel necessary is that... And she's thinking in terms of God. She says that all I have to do is get out of the way so that God can see from this particular angle. So it's like each one of us has this unique angle or way of looking at the universe from this point here and from this form, this conscious form. Report an error in the passage at 50:37
51:14 And that when we relinquish the self or let go of all the self-consciousness and self-importance and conceit and that, then it's like, in Christian terms, like letting God see through this form. So then her insight was, all she can do is get out of the way. And so in the Buddhist teaching of anattā, you know, the... Report an error in the passage at 51:14
51:44 This is what it means. It's not a denial of self as a kind of basic premise that there is no self as a doctrine, but it's pointing to the relinquishment of all the conditioned selves, the ego, the self-consciousness, the self-importance, the self-hatred, all the ways that we... Report an error in the passage at 51:44
52:11 ...reproduce ourselves in habits and ideas, relinquishing those habits until that pure state, natural state of awareness that we can realize in our human condition. It's not a created state, so it's open. Report an error in the passage at 52:11
52:41 It's available to us all. It's not mine or a special quality that I have that somebody else may not have. It also gives you the sense of oneness and unity because you realize it's not like in your brain or it's not like inside you. It's not like you're... That this pure intuitive awareness is something that's inside your body, but it's like the body is more like a vehicle, like a radio or a radar system. Report an error in the passage at 52:41
53:32 So this is something that is merely a tool for, say, reflection and for the development of wisdom in this universe. And so when we begin to look at humanity in a way, in its great potential, then every human being is of equal importance. Report an error in the passage at 53:32
54:00 In a time where we've got 5.4 billion, it's probably 5.5 billion by now since last year. Remember last year I was saying it was 5.4. Report an error in the passage at 54:00
54:11 This year it's probably 5.4. Report an error in the passage at 54:11
54:32 ecological system, the whole, you know, how are we going to feed them, and only homeless children, and the social problem. Report an error in the passage at 54:32
54:41 Worse than ever in the whole history of the planet seems more hopeless than ever before. And when we think of it in terms of a very limited conditioned attitude, it can seem hopeless. But let's contemplate it in terms of potential. And I'm not trying to be just optimistic in that. We're trying to encourage a different way of reflecting. Report an error in the passage at 54:41
55:12 And a way of beginning to look at humanity and individuals, both those near us, family and those living around us, to all human beings on this planet at this time, in terms of their natural purity, rather than in terms of their crimes, their differences and things we don't like. Report an error in the passage at 55:12
55:47 Because then we can, you know, then when we respect each other in terms of that potential, more and more that potential can be realized. The worst thing we can do to each other is fix each other in our prejudiced, biased views and our conditioned attitudes. Then we tend to promote and fix these biases, these problems. Report an error in the passage at 55:47
56:16 And reinforce them all the time in the society, in the families we live in, in the society we live in. So Report an error in the passage at 56:16
56:32 taking to the most optimistic scenario is 5.5 billion enlightened human beings. But Report an error in the passage at 56:32
56:51 it does give you a sense of the potential for a human being, for your own potential. And that's where... We have to, the work has to come from inside us and we can't make someone else enlightened. It's totally impossible. I've been trying to do it here and it doesn't work. Report an error in the passage at 56:51
57:18 You just have to realize all you can do is do it within yourself. It's the only possible way. But that also makes us, I mean gives us that sense of what we can do with our lives. What's really worth doing and what is our right to do, our potential, no matter what the conditions you might have to exist with might be in terms of physical health or family problems, social problems, whatever. Report an error in the passage at 57:18
57:55 These are then not the main thrust and given the main significance in your life. All the family problems, personal problems. problems, social problems then. There's a context for those. And you begin to find the refuge, say, within yourself rather than endlessly try to solve all the problems that surround you in the world. Report an error in the passage at 57:55
58:23 Because that's a sure way to total exhaustion, isn't it? Trying to solve all the problems for all these 5.5 billion people. Report an error in the passage at 58:23
58:38 Or even for just one other person can wear you out. Report an error in the passage at 58:38
58:45 So anyway, that's enough for this afternoon on the formal side for reflection. And obviously there's tea over there on the servery waiting for you. And so they take a break for about 15-20 minutes and then those of you who are still interested we can if you have any questions then we can reassemble and then I'll try to answer your questions. Report an error in the passage at 58:45
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Talk by Ajahn Sumedho. Original at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ajahn-sumedho-dhamma-talks. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.
Talks of Ajahn Sumedho, archived on Internet Archive. More from Amaravati