Refuge: Safety Amidst the Unsafe

0:01 And this is the first of this year's reflections on the dharma or the way it is. So many of you have been, have listened to these kind of things before. But for those who haven't, the main purpose is to contemplate and reflect upon life, trying to understand the Report an error in the passage at 0:01 Highlight the passage at 0:01

0:35 Human predicament that we all share, we all have as human beings, the state of living incarcerated in a human body, conscious form on planet Earth for a lifetime, presents us with all kinds of challenges and adventures, experiences, and Report an error in the passage at 0:35 Highlight the passage at 0:35

0:59 so much of our experience of life is dealing with suffering. With loss, with anxiety, worry, with a lot of negative emotions, because it seems to be something we must learn from. Report an error in the passage at 0:59 Highlight the passage at 0:59

1:21 We're presented with situations in life that we can either be overwhelmed, destroyed, we can just never learn, or we have the ability to learn. From our experience of life, whatever it might be. Of Report an error in the passage at 1:21 Highlight the passage at 1:21

1:43 course, we all would like to have a life that is pleasant and successful, happy, secure, fulfilled, accomplished. And sometimes we have those experiences, they're not absent from our lives, but life is a mixture of all kinds of things. Report an error in the passage at 1:43 Highlight the passage at 1:43

2:09 And so as long as we... We do not understand, we don't contemplate it or try to understand this strange experience we all have. When misfortune does happen or unwanted experiences take place, then we can merely be disillusioned or shattered, destroyed by tragedy or by misfortune. But if we know how to contemplate and relate to this life and all its possibilities, both from the best to the worst of it, then whatever happens we find increasing amount of strength and wisdom to take us through to the actual death that we all experience at the end of our life. Report an error in the passage at 2:09 Highlight the passage at 2:09

3:07 So the first talk is on a refuge. Because this is a significant symbol in the Buddhist world. We use the word refuge. When people become Buddhists, they take the refuges or the three refuges. And of course, like any convention, it can be merely seen as a perfunctory custom. Report an error in the passage at 3:07 Highlight the passage at 3:07

3:46 We can just do it because it's part of a tradition, or we begin to realize that maybe it's something quite deep and profound, even though it's rather basic to the idea of being a Buddhist. Report an error in the passage at 3:46 Highlight the passage at 3:46

4:04 It's saying something very profound to us, because if we don't have a refuge, then all we can really do is worry about life. Because we can't really trust in anything. If all we think of is our own personality and oftentimes our own mental and emotional conditioning, then of course we only see the possibilities for increasing amount of misfortune or unhappiness. Report an error in the passage at 4:04 Highlight the passage at 4:04

4:41 I've noticed that when we think too much, we can make ourselves depressed. Report an error in the passage at 4:41 Highlight the passage at 4:41

5:04 scenarios before they even start doing anything and it prevents them from taking a risk. Report an error in the passage at 5:04 Highlight the passage at 5:04

5:14 some people spend their lives never daring to even try to do anything other than get by. They can conceive of all the possibilities for humiliation, failure, and the mind can. We can think whatever we plan to do, like going to the university. Remember, before I went to the university, I thought, if I go to the university, I could fail. Report an error in the passage at 5:14 Highlight the passage at 5:14

5:51 I might not be able to make it. Maybe I don't have what it takes. Maybe I'm... Report an error in the passage at 5:51 Highlight the passage at 5:51

6:32 When we think of a refuge, and I notice especially in the Western world where people become Buddhists when they're adults, they're not cultural Buddhists. Generally people in Western Europe, America, unless they're brought up or born into Buddhist families, we become Buddhists after we're adults. So we don't have a cultural kind of perception of Buddhism Report an error in the passage at 6:32 Highlight the passage at 6:32

7:04 Cultural conditioning. When you're teaching Buddhism in Thailand, you realize that the Thai people generally think of themselves as Buddhists, and the refuges in Buddha Dhamma Saṅgha are just so a part of a cultural outlook that you can take it for granted that they know what that is. It's what they get from the day they're born. It's how everyone looks at everything. Report an error in the passage at 7:04 Highlight the passage at 7:04

7:36 But in the Western world, we oftentimes become interested in Buddhadharma through interest in psychology or therapy or mental training. Report an error in the passage at 7:36 Highlight the passage at 7:36

7:47 And that sometimes is done from a very Western, materialistic, scientific conditioned mind, where we see things in terms of cause and effect and in terms of... Report an error in the passage at 7:47 Highlight the passage at 7:47

8:06 Environmental problems and personal problems and how to solve our personal problems. Sometimes we don't relate our Buddhism with anything other than a kind of therapeutic approach or personal kind of improvement, personal development, growth. Report an error in the passage at 8:06 Highlight the passage at 8:06

8:31 And the spiritual qualities, spiritual aspirations sometimes don't even occur to many Western people. Report an error in the passage at 8:31 Highlight the passage at 8:31

8:42 And of course it does. Buddhist meditation practice in ways of developing according to Buddhist ideas will help as psychotherapy. It's not that it's a waste of time or it won't have a good effect because it does. It's a very helpful, very skillful way to train oneself even just for therapeutic purposes. But when it comes to the real kind of Ultimate human experience of spiritual realization, then we need to have a sense of a refuge. Report an error in the passage at 8:42 Highlight the passage at 8:42

9:24 Because if our refuge is merely in ourself as a person, as a kind of normal, healthy, well-integrated personality, that only helps us maybe to bear with the worldly life in the society we live in. But it doesn't, when it comes to the death and oftentimes the tragedies of life and to the ultimate questions and to the spiritual aspiration, we need to, say, get out of ourselves. Report an error in the passage at 9:24 Highlight the passage at 9:24

10:01 We need to develop a relinquishment of self-interest. And we use words like abandonment, letting go, relinquishing, the self-view, the self-interest, the self-obsession. And to be able to let go of oneself, if all we have is a sense of ourselves as a person, then it's an impossibility. We just feel we can't, we have no way of just, say, letting go and just being. Report an error in the passage at 10:01 Highlight the passage at 10:01

10:38 Because we have no refuge other than the views and opinions, perceptions of ourself as a person. So in the practice of meditation, where we take this refuge in what we say the Buddha, or the pure intelligence of being. Buddha is a word that implies intelligence, knowing, consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 10:38 Highlight the passage at 10:38

11:15 when we are mindful, when we say let go of just being caught up in the conditioning of our minds and emotional reactions, when we have that sense of just being able to, this present moment, just to go of life altogether and just be. Report an error in the passage at 11:15 Highlight the passage at 11:15

11:39 we do that mindfully. We're not just doing it as a wish or an idea. Report an error in the passage at 11:39 Highlight the passage at 11:39

11:49 Ontological inclination. It's like just letting go inside of just being relaxed and present. Report an error in the passage at 11:49 Highlight the passage at 11:49

12:03 And we can't sustain that if we don't have a sense of refuge, if we're merely doing it as a personal achievement. Because the personality view is conditioned. It's culturally conditioned. It depends on language. It depends on memory. Report an error in the passage at 12:03 Highlight the passage at 12:03

12:21 Thoughts, ideas, perceptions. And so that whole conditioning of the mind will not let it be that way until we have what we say faith in the buddho, the dhamma, the saṅgha. These three refuges is like the Buddha is the pure intelligence, knowing. Report an error in the passage at 12:21 Highlight the passage at 12:21

12:50 It's not Knowledge of things, it's not like knowledge you acquire. It's not intelligence that you've got to cultivate and get, something you don't have. It's something you take refuge in, you open to, you relax into, the state of pure awareness of being, the knowing. Because in this state we're in as human beings, human individuals, this is our experience of life. Consciousness is what we're involved with. Report an error in the passage at 12:50 Highlight the passage at 12:50

13:28 Each one of us is a separate conscious form in the universe. Report an error in the passage at 13:28 Highlight the passage at 13:28

13:35 We have to live through a lifetime, human lifetime, as a separate conscious form, a being. Report an error in the passage at 13:35 Highlight the passage at 13:35

13:48 And this being can be merely conditioned. We can be programmed. We can be... Conditioned by culture, by prejudices, biases, modern education, by religion, by politics, by the whole lot, isn't it? It's a kind of mental conditioning that takes place. Why we identify with, I am an American. You are an Englishman. I am a man. You are a woman. Buddhist, Christian, or Jew. Report an error in the passage at 13:48 Highlight the passage at 13:48

14:25 These are perceptions and conditions, there's a conditioning of the mind that we use, that we project onto life and that we identify with. Report an error in the passage at 14:25 Highlight the passage at 14:25

14:37 We have a strong sense of ourself as some kind of personality or soul, separate soul that we attach to, to say, the memories of our lifetime. Report an error in the passage at 14:37 Highlight the passage at 14:37

14:54 And we build ourselves into a kind of continuous person from the time we're born up to the present and into the future. You can think, ten years from now, if I'm still alive, I'll still be Ajahn Sumedho. I can sit here right now and think, ten years from now, I will be, and this is thinking, isn't it? Report an error in the passage at 14:54 Highlight the passage at 14:54

15:17 Ajahn Sumedho, maybe I'll be sitting here, Amaravati, ten years from now. It was 10 years ago when we came here. And I can imagine all kinds of things in the future about me as a person. Report an error in the passage at 15:17 Highlight the passage at 15:17

15:36 So the thinking process and the memory, ability to remember, and the emotional conditioning gives the illusion of a continuous separate soul or personality that is definitely me as separate from everything else. So in the refuge in Buddha, Buddha doesn't belong to anybody as such. It's not mine, as if it wasn't yours. Report an error in the passage at 15:36 Highlight the passage at 15:36

16:09 Even though we call it Buddhist, it's merely a term we use to point to the actual experience. Report an error in the passage at 16:09 Highlight the passage at 16:09

16:24 So when we have interfaith meetings or when people... We believe in the Christian God or Buddhists believe in this or that. We're merely exchanging terminologies. What is the actual experience, the religious experience? What is it as it really is rather than just the perceptions we have that we've acquired through our conditioning of being Christians or Buddhists? Report an error in the passage at 16:24 Highlight the passage at 16:24

16:56 And so to know this, to know what lies behind the perceptions, And the conditioning of the mind is mindfulness, the ability to reflect, contemplate, watch, and listen. Report an error in the passage at 16:56 Highlight the passage at 16:56

17:18 So then the terminologies used aren't so important. And I notice with Christians, they'll say, do you believe in God? And they'll say it almost in an aggressive way because they've got this idea that we're a bunch of atheists and we deny God, the existence of God. Report an error in the passage at 17:18 Highlight the passage at 17:18

17:38 And to a Christian, the idea of God's very important. The most important thing, to believe in God. And then they say, you don't believe in God. You don't have a God. You're an atheist. And because the terminologies we use aren't the same. Report an error in the passage at 17:38 Highlight the passage at 17:38

18:04 It's like the joke about the dyslectic that believed in dog. Report an error in the passage at 18:04 Highlight the passage at 18:04

18:17 But these are, God is a perception of the mind, isn't it? The word, it's a perception. Not to say that we're dismissing it or that we're denying this, but the reality of God, the reality of spiritual realization, what we call dharma in Buddhism, what we call the truth of the way it is, Report an error in the passage at 18:17 Highlight the passage at 18:17

18:44 isn't a perception of anything. It's a reality. The aim of mindfulness is the realization, knowing the reality. And so the Buddha as a refuge is the knowing of reality. So Report an error in the passage at 18:44 Highlight the passage at 18:44

19:09 it's beyond the language, the symbol, the image of any religious convention. So the religious conventions we have are expedient means. means. Report an error in the passage at 19:09 Highlight the passage at 19:09

19:27 They're to awaken, to point, to remind, to remember, rather than to just be caught in a fascination or an obsession with the symbol or the words of any religious convention. Report an error in the passage at 19:27 Highlight the passage at 19:27

19:43 So Buddha is the one who knows the dharma. The dharma is the second refuge. The dharma, the way it is, and this is an interesting way to talk, because the way it is... We think the way it is, it's something. That there's some kind of ultimate truth that you can find. It's kind of static and fixed. Like the perception of God as a kind of special being that's fixed in time that you've got to discover or find. Report an error in the passage at 19:43 Highlight the passage at 19:43

20:25 Because the perception tends to petrify life. When we're just caught in our own thoughts and views, we see life from biases, everything is filtered through these different beliefs, these different ideas. So oftentimes we don't experience the reality of our own existence because we're always looking for something that fits the symbol or looks like or... Report an error in the passage at 20:25 Highlight the passage at 20:25

20:59 is what we perceive it to be. Report an error in the passage at 20:59 Highlight the passage at 20:59

21:05 But in any kind of religious, when we investigate the religious experience from whatever religion, ultimately you realize that it's very much the same experience. Report an error in the passage at 21:05 Highlight the passage at 21:05

21:23 And it's through the letting go of the symbol, letting go of the convention. Not getting rid of, not denying or finding a better one, but in... Using the conventions we have to awaken, to remind, to remember, but not to cling, not to try to fit one's real experience of life into fixed molds or fixed ideas, doctrines, teachings. Report an error in the passage at 21:23 Highlight the passage at 21:23

22:00 So the Buddha is a conscious form. It's consciousness, knowing. consciousness with wisdom it's not just consciousness because dogs and cats are conscious snakes Report an error in the passage at 22:00 Highlight the passage at 22:00

22:19 frogs worms but and they they're conscious there there's intelligence operating and they they operate according to their their karma their conditioning their form and so the form say the form of an animal the form of of whatever And it's conscious experience determines its experience of life. Report an error in the passage at 22:19 Highlight the passage at 22:19

22:50 So when we were, I was in Devon last week and we were having a meeting with the Devon Bihara Trust and the meeting began, we were sitting there, they have a little fireplace which is one of these old cottages with this huge fireplace. Report an error in the passage at 22:50 Highlight the passage at 22:50

23:12 And so we were sitting near this fireplace and the cat came in with a little baby rabbit in its mouth. And it dropped this little rabbit in the fireplace and the rabbit was squirming and writhing in this fireplace. One of the members picked it up and took it out and it died in her hands. And she came back in and she... Report an error in the passage at 23:12 Highlight the passage at 23:12

23:39 This was a nice way to begin a meeting, isn't it? I wonder if this is an omen of some sort. Unfortunately, the meeting was quite pleasant, but this is not such a good beginning. Having the cat bring in a little bunny and murder it in front of you. Report an error in the passage at 23:39 Highlight the passage at 23:39

24:18 But then, that's just being a cat. That's not immoral. That's not bad. The cat's doing what it's supposed to do. It doesn't have a choice. You can't say, now it's not nice to kill rabbits. You must not do that ever again. You can say that, but it can't comprehend. It can't think about it. You can say, now would you like a dog to come and grab you by the neck and kill you like that and do unto others as you would have others do unto you? Report an error in the passage at 24:18 Highlight the passage at 24:18

25:00 The mind isn't a reflective mind, is it? Say a cat's mind. So you can't judge the animal world by human morality because morality is something very special to our human state. We have a choice. We can decide not to kill things or we can decide to kill things. Report an error in the passage at 25:00 Highlight the passage at 25:00

25:27 We can contemplate. My mother says, now would you want somebody to come and kick you? And no, well then don't kick somebody or don't kick other creatures. And so even as a child you can think, no I wouldn't want somebody to hurt me. Well then don't hurt others. This is like reflecting the mind that can contemplate things. Because if we were merely just animals conditioned to operate according to our animal nature alone, then we wouldn't have any use for morality. Report an error in the passage at 25:27 Highlight the passage at 25:27

26:06 We'd just operate according to what we're supposed to be in the animal kingdom. But the human state is a state where we have animal Like karma, we have an animal-type body. We Report an error in the passage at 26:06 Highlight the passage at 26:06

26:28 have instincts like animals for self-preservation, for procreation, things like this. This isn't that much different from the animal kingdom. But the great gift is what we call this Buddha mind, the reflective. We can tune in to pure wisdom, pure intelligence, universal intelligence. Report an error in the passage at 26:28 Highlight the passage at 26:28

26:52 We can reflect, we can contemplate, we can choose. What is it that makes us want to not kill? What is it that when somebody says it's not nice to kick the dog, what is it that makes us say, well, I won't do that anymore? Or when we see cruelty around us, we can feel a sense of sadness. Report an error in the passage at 26:52 Highlight the passage at 26:52

27:22 What is that? Where does that come from? When we read, I've been reading these reports from Rwanda about the horrors of what's happening in Rwanda. And you cry when you read these reports because you can imagine just the horror of what's going on, of people just being driven to the limits. I don't know Report an error in the passage at 27:22 Highlight the passage at 27:22

28:13 one person from Rwanda. I've never been there. I've never met anybody yet who's... Who's a Rwandan. But I know I'm a human being. We're all human beings. We have the same problems. Report an error in the passage at 28:13 Highlight the passage at 28:13

28:38 We're of the same race. We're of the same condition. Report an error in the passage at 28:38 Highlight the passage at 28:38

28:50 The human race. Report an error in the passage at 28:50 Highlight the passage at 28:50

28:54 So we can contemplate this state of our humanity. We can understand the misery that other people experience, the sadness or the grief, even before it happens to us. We can understand it. We can empathize, sympathize. And we can choose the good over the bad. Report an error in the passage at 28:54 Highlight the passage at 28:54

29:22 And the result of that is we reflect on the result, like in Buddhist meditation. We don't just sit and kind of recondition ourselves into kind of refined mental patterns. We're not trying to become kind of ethereal and refined celestial beings. Report an error in the passage at 29:22 Highlight the passage at 29:22

29:44 And say, this coarse world out there, I don't want anything to do with it. I want this kind of nice, tranquil mental states with very refined perceptions. Report an error in the passage at 29:44 Highlight the passage at 29:44

29:55 That's not what we're doing. We're not trying to live a life, just a precious life based on refinement, but on understanding all aspects of it from the most gross and painful to the most refined. And to be able to Liberate ourselves from attachment, identification, to the conditioning, to the forms, to the conditions, both physical and mental. Report an error in the passage at 29:55 Highlight the passage at 29:55

30:29 Now form is, we have a human body, which is, say, when we look at apes, it's not that much different. Maybe a little more refined with some people. people Report an error in the passage at 30:29 Highlight the passage at 30:29

30:49 But generally we can all identify with the apes Report an error in the passage at 30:49 Highlight the passage at 30:49

30:57 in physical ways. But what seems to be the truly human form that we have is a mental one, isn't it? Is that we have the reflective mind, the Buddha, why we can have Buddha images, Buddha rūpas. Report an error in the passage at 30:57 Highlight the passage at 30:57

31:20 Why the Buddha form means something to us. When we look at a Buddha image, when you contemplate just a marble image like that, or a golden one in the back, you're looking at the form of a Buddha. What does that form say? What does it impress upon your conscious experience? And it's pointing to the human form, ape-like form. Report an error in the passage at 31:20 Highlight the passage at 31:20

31:54 But it's composed, isn't it? There's a composure, a serenity, an awareness, a wisdom. So the Buddha-rūpa, or the art form of Buddhism, is presenting the human form in the state of total awareness, receptivity. Report an error in the passage at 31:54 Highlight the passage at 31:54

32:19 And so the Buddha as the refuge knows the dharma, or the truth of the way it is. And so dharma is seen in terms of the conditioning, what arises, ceases, what begins, ends. That includes all thoughts, all feelings, physical things, what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think. The whole mental process, all the mental process and the physical through the senses is conditioning. Report an error in the passage at 32:19 Highlight the passage at 32:19

32:55 Arising, ceasing, beginning and ending. Then we take that beyond just the conditioning to the unconditioned, to space or to emptiness or to non-self, to the formless, to the unconditioned. Report an error in the passage at 32:55 Highlight the passage at 32:55

33:20 Because the condition arises and ceases the unconditioned. What is that? How do we realize that? Report an error in the passage at 33:20 Highlight the passage at 33:20

33:33 So this is dhamma, the condition, the unconditioned is dhamma, the way it is. And so we take refuge in the way it is, not in people, in personalities, in gods, in deities, in doctrines, in conventions or anything like that. Those are not the refuges. But in our ability through consciousness and this Buddha form. Report an error in the passage at 33:33 Highlight the passage at 33:33

34:05 This Buddha-like mind to see, to reflect on the patterns of arising and ceasing and to realize the unconditioned or the deathless. Report an error in the passage at 34:05 Highlight the passage at 34:05

34:20 So in this, you realize that ultimately death is just a matter of things. It's not the ultimate reality. Report an error in the passage at 34:20 Highlight the passage at 34:20

34:38 We realize that... That we're not the body, the body is not self. We realize that the memories and thoughts, the personality, the emotional conditions and all the rest is in terms of dharma. It comes and goes, it begins and ends, is born and dies, but it's conditions. And when they cease, when they're gone, then... Report an error in the passage at 34:38 Highlight the passage at 34:38

35:06 There's no sense of oneself as being anything, but there's still consciousness. There's still pure intelligence. And if we trust, if we sustain and hold, learn how to sustain awareness, learn Report an error in the passage at 35:06 Highlight the passage at 35:06

35:24 how to trust in that refuge, then we get beyond just the reactiveness and the blindness that comes through the conditioning of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 35:24 Highlight the passage at 35:24

35:41 Our being a monk for all these years, in a continuous way. Report an error in the passage at 35:41 Highlight the passage at 35:41

· · · silence, 1 minute

36:19 First of all, I was just interested in trying to calm everything down and that one could get some degree of success with sometimes. But over the years, one is actually training oneself through this mindfulness to whatever arises in the heart. At any moment, one is aware, increasingly aware of the subtleties. Report an error in the passage at 36:19 Highlight the passage at 36:19

36:51 ...of things and aware of it as what arises ceases. So that the actual realizing of the emptiness of the mind or the non-self, the anattā, or the state of desirelessness, where there's consciousness and there's awareness, there's feeling, but there's no... Report an error in the passage at 36:51 Highlight the passage at 36:51

37:50 the northern part of India, Kashmir. Report an error in the passage at 37:50 Highlight the passage at 37:50

37:56 I remember when we arrived in Delhi, it was so hot, they were having an incredible heat wave, and it was up in the 40s Celsius. Report an error in the passage at 37:56 Highlight the passage at 37:56

38:07 One day they said it was about 46. It was like 120 degrees or something. It was really, really, really hot. And of course you felt this discomfort. Report an error in the passage at 38:07 Highlight the passage at 38:07

38:25 Then to see the dharma of the situation. discomfort. Report an error in the passage at 38:25 Highlight the passage at 38:25

38:29 What do you do in a situation like that? You just accept it. Nothing else. What can you do? Complain about it. Report an error in the passage at 38:29 Highlight the passage at 38:29

38:42 Wish it were cooler. It's still going to be... Or, if this is what it is, one could bear it. It wasn't that I was fainting or, you know, I could still... It just wasn't... Feeling very good, but that was something one had been practicing through monastic training to just accept the way it is. Report an error in the passage at 38:42 Highlight the passage at 38:42

39:12 So there was a physical discomfort and innervation from heat, but one wasn't creating suffering. One had a refuge in that knowing, in that being, way of being, in which one wasn't... ...creating mental suffering over just the heat of Delhi in June. Well, that's just one example, but on the level of physical experience. Report an error in the passage at 39:12 Highlight the passage at 39:12

39:47 But also, say, in situations where when we flew to, we had to fly to Leh, and there were all kinds of problems, waiting lists and... Report an error in the passage at 39:47 Highlight the passage at 39:47

40:00 It seems so, everything is more complicated in India than anywhere else in the world. And so you always have to put up with a lot of bureaucracy there. No matter what it is, they make it more complicated than any other country. So we had trouble getting reservations because they said, sorry, but the waiting list is still August. Report an error in the passage at 40:00 Highlight the passage at 40:00

40:27 I have to be back to England on the... So they were having ordinations at Chitras on 16th of July. I can't wait till August. They made it all sound rather hopeless. And then finally we found out that they finally got you on a flight which went to Jammu in Kashmir, landed, and then we spent the rest of the day in the, which was even hotter than Delhi. Report an error in the passage at 40:27 Highlight the passage at 40:27

40:57 And then something was wrong with the airplane. We had to go back to Delhi. And before they let us back on the airplane, we had to go through I don't know how many security checks. And so they kind of heard you like goats in these lines. And then they heard you out onto the runway in the hot blazing sun, another security check, and so on. Report an error in the passage at 40:57 Highlight the passage at 40:57

41:22 And some people you can see just the anger, exasperation, just the frustration. The fatigue. But then, say, as a meditator, one was using experiences to accept. There's nothing else to do. Why create suffering around this? And so one, say, develops the way, learns how to relate to, say, the problems of human experience in a way that is patient and humble. Report an error in the passage at 41:22 Highlight the passage at 41:22

41:59 Willing to suffer, willing to be with life, but knowing how not to make suffering out of it, not how to create a problem around problems that are already existing. Report an error in the passage at 41:59 Highlight the passage at 41:59

42:21 As we get into more kind of fraught personal issues, living with family, with those close to us, or disappointing situations, unwanted... Report an error in the passage at 42:21 Highlight the passage at 42:21

42:37 or tragedies, or just downright rudeness, or lack sensitivity, or just betrayal, all these kind of human experiences, are then seen in terms of, through our refuge rather than through the sense of our personal, taking it personally. Report an error in the passage at 42:37 Highlight the passage at 42:37

43:03 when I say taking things personally, if we go on the level of just personal conditioning, then we do find, we can get very paranoid. We can think, this Indian Airlines has deliberately got it in for me. Report an error in the passage at 43:03 Highlight the passage at 43:03

43:20 you're really paranoid, you take everything, the whole world is this We all have kind of paranoid tendencies in many ways, thinking that What's happening is just aimed at me. Or how can you do this to me? How can this be happening to me? It's not fair. It shouldn't be happening. Why should it happen to anyone? Why not me? Why somebody else? Report an error in the passage at 43:20 Highlight the passage at 43:20

43:56 Because life is this way, isn't it? It's a frustrating experience. And living with human beings means that we have to put up with... With their idiosyncrasies, their own obsessions, their particular limitations, their blind spots, their virtues as well. Report an error in the passage at 43:56 Highlight the passage at 43:56

44:21 Living in a monastic community, a big one like Amaravati. Report an error in the passage at 44:21 Highlight the passage at 44:21

44:31 Wouldn't it be nice to live in a small community with a nice maybe select group of really monks that you get on with your affinities with? have to, you think of... Report an error in the passage at 44:31 Highlight the passage at 44:31

44:43 Really good friends that are really dedicated to living the life of a monk and respect you and don't cause you any problems. Wouldn't it be nice if one could just arrange life so that it could be that nice, that pleasant? Report an error in the passage at 44:43 Highlight the passage at 44:43

45:09 Living in a big community also gives you many more challenges. Because you have to put up with a lot of things. You have to bear with a lot of frustrations and you don't have, you've got to kind of learn how to forgive, how to let go of your own particular viewpoints or your own wanting to do things your own way. Report an error in the passage at 45:09 Highlight the passage at 45:09

45:41 And all of this can be seen in terms of dharma. When we Report an error in the passage at 45:41 Highlight the passage at 45:41

46:00 that we're quite open to different ways of doing things or different ideas. It's not a matter of trying to get my way or people frustrating me by not going along with what I want anymore. That's the personal, how one can interpret it personally. One can begin to appreciate maybe different ways Because as we... Report an error in the passage at 46:00 Highlight the passage at 46:00

46:23 just being stubborn and difficult, one can be more patient and humble with them rather than averse and angry and rejecting. Report an error in the passage at 46:23 Highlight the passage at 46:23

46:39 as we as we Really trust, as we have this faith in the refuge, we begin to, we're no longer expecting the world to be anything or initially making demands that other people be something we want or that the society or even ourselves be something that it can't be. Report an error in the passage at 46:39 Highlight the passage at 46:39

47:06 We're beginning to Report an error in the passage at 47:06 Highlight the passage at 47:06

47:21 realize the way things are. And so the third refuge is saṅgha, or the community, the church, in Christianity, or the saṅgha in Buddhism, means community, means group, refuge in the group, in the community of Report an error in the passage at 47:21 Highlight the passage at 47:21

47:45 those who practice the dharma, those who are practicing in the right way. Report an error in the passage at 47:45 Highlight the passage at 47:45

47:53 So notice in these refuges you have You have the pure intelligence of the Buddha, you have the dhamma, the way things are, and the patterns that we perceive, that we can realize, the conditioned, the unconditioned, and then the actual practical living in communal life with other human beings, with other men, other women, in a moral way. Report an error in the passage at 47:53 Highlight the passage at 47:53

48:25 Because in Saṅgha we're... We're learning to live, we're helping each other to develop. We're trying to protect each other, trying to support each other towards what is good. And so the moral way of life means that I respect your right to, you know, I have no right to take advantage of you or to exploit you just for my own Report an error in the passage at 48:25 Highlight the passage at 48:25

48:56 or to take your things or to or insult or abuse you with speech or things like this. I have no right to do that. I'm taking responsibility for how I relate to you, how I relate to my own body, my own physical existence and my ability to speak. So the morality is that Willingness to take on the responsibility for action and speech. And this is the saṅgha or the community. People who practice in the right way. Report an error in the passage at 48:56 Highlight the passage at 48:56

49:40 And this community then isn't based on personal liking. It doesn't mean just because somebody is moral that you like them. Report an error in the passage at 49:40 Highlight the passage at 49:40

49:50 Because they can still be, moral people can still be irritating. In Report an error in the passage at 49:50 Highlight the passage at 49:50

49:59 fact, sometimes they're more irritating than immoral people. Report an error in the passage at 49:59 Highlight the passage at 49:59

50:09 But you can trust them if they have integrity and that's what their practice is to develop this way of realization of the truth. So then it's not a matter of liking or disliking but entrusting and respecting which helps us to say Report an error in the passage at 50:09 Highlight the passage at 50:09

50:36 Not make problems around just personal issues and emotional tendencies of infatuation or attraction or aversion or affinities to beings or just negative Report an error in the passage at 50:36 Highlight the passage at 50:36

50:58 reactions to the way somebody looks or the way they walk or comb their hair or whatever. Sometimes we do, isn't it? We can just feel averse to somebody because we don't like the way they comb their hair. And see, some of these modern hairstyles, this is a very old hairstyle. Report an error in the passage at 50:58 Highlight the passage at 50:58

51:23 I gave a talk down at Midhurst Grammar School the other night and a young teenage girl came up to me and she had all her hair shaved except she had a couple of braids sticking out like this. Report an error in the passage at 51:23 Highlight the passage at 51:23

51:40 Two brains just coming out of here and the rest was shaved. Report an error in the passage at 51:40 Highlight the passage at 51:40

51:48 I didn't feel aversion to it but it was a strange looking haircut. But one does. When you begin to notice the way somebody walks or smiles can you suddenly feel threatened or you feel averse or you feel feel or whatever. We are living in a state where these things affect us. How they look at us or how they present themselves physically still affect us. Report an error in the passage at 51:48 Highlight the passage at 51:48

52:25 But in terms of moral determination then we can. We develop a trust and a respect that makes life in a community pleasant. I think this is what we feel a great lack of in the present time, isn't it, in Europe, is that moral responsibility isn't an issue really anymore. It's more we're thinking in terms of things like modern life is an emphasis on getting what we can, rights, getting rights, having rights. Report an error in the passage at 52:25 Highlight the passage at 52:25

53:08 Without having any real sense of responsibility for our life here. So people are endlessly demanding things, more of this and less of that. But in the process, the society has become, we can't trust it so much. You can't be sure. You can't trust your neighbors. There's no common agreement. There's no sense of Report an error in the passage at 53:08 Highlight the passage at 53:08

53:49 have guard dogs, locks on the door, burglar alarms, and all the rest. Report an error in the passage at 53:49 Highlight the passage at 53:49

53:56 women feel increasingly unsafe because they like being attacked and being raped or abused. There's no longer the sense that people are being responsible. Men are taking responsibility for what they do. It's like you don't know what they're going to do. They might do anything. Report an error in the passage at 53:56 Highlight the passage at 53:56

54:26 So then it's much more frightening to live. It's like back in the jungle, isn't it? Survival of the fittest. So in this human realm, they contemplate this, the refuge in saṅgha, which Report an error in the passage at 54:26 Highlight the passage at 54:26

54:45 is determination to do good and refrain from doing bad, being responsible for how we live our lives as individuals, as a group, as a community, and then as people who are... We have a refuge in that which is deathless and ultimately true and not just culturally conditioned or just temporary or just fashionable in the moment. Report an error in the passage at 54:45 Highlight the passage at 54:45

55:15 So in the refuge of Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha, these are the words we use in this tradition. But don't let that... The limits you put on it, thinking I have to believe in Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha, not that, not trying to say you have to believe, but pointing to that, so you realize, you begin to trust in just your ability to be awake and aware, just Report an error in the passage at 55:15 Highlight the passage at 55:15

55:49 the moment of awake attentiveness, that listening, just this much, a kind of listening attentiveness, awakeness, trust in it, just to... To stop just trying to figure everything out and solve all the problems and just seek distractions because you can't find a solution to the problems and just get caught up into the world. Report an error in the passage at 55:49 Highlight the passage at 55:49

56:13 But learn to just stop and just try just being in just the state of alert attentiveness. Report an error in the passage at 56:13 Highlight the passage at 56:13

56:25 And of course, you know, at first it's hard to sustain that. But if you keep... Practicing, you will be able to do that more and more. You'll find that much more. You'll be attentive. You'll hear. You'll be with what's happening, the way it is, whatever place, whatever people, whatever's happening around you. Report an error in the passage at 56:25 Highlight the passage at 56:25

56:52 You will be attentive to it. Report an error in the passage at 56:52 Highlight the passage at 56:52

56:58 And you'll be aware of what's going on in your mind. More and more you'll see. You recognize how things just come and go and what it is to be sensitive and conscious. You realize that it's not to see this as some kind of personal problem, but to see it in terms of what it really is, in terms of dharma. Report an error in the passage at 56:58 Highlight the passage at 56:58

57:35 So it's a refuge, a safe place to be amidst the unsafe, the changing conditions of the saṃsāra. In Buddhist teaching we call this saṃsāra, this kind of, this birth and death cycles. And they have a saying, you know, to see a, like delusion and ignorance, is seeing something that is very dangerous as something safe. Report an error in the passage at 57:35 Highlight the passage at 57:35

58:07 In Thai they have a saying, to see hen gong jak ben dok bua, which means a gong jak is a really dangerous. kind of destructive instrument. Report an error in the passage at 58:07 Highlight the passage at 58:07

58:21 Dong Bu is a lotus flower, the ignorance is described, to see a really dangerous, instrument as a lotus flower. I'm totally safe. Pretty. Report an error in the passage at 58:21 Highlight the passage at 58:21

58:48 And so when we don't reflect on life, we can see this realm that we're in, this human form and this planetary life, we can see it as just a kind of, see it as a lotus, you know, we don't recognize the dangers. Report an error in the passage at 58:48 Highlight the passage at 58:48

59:08 Everything's fine and we can not reflect on that this is quite a dangerous life, being born as a human being. We're subject to all kinds of dangers all the time. Report an error in the passage at 59:08 Highlight the passage at 59:08

59:25 The IRA, the way they're throwing bombs in London, not the IRA, but the fundamentalist Muslims and so forth, different terrorist groups, plus the traffic problems and who knows what. Report an error in the passage at 59:25 Highlight the passage at 59:25

59:50 The dangers of mass hysteria and blindness, stupidity. I mean this realm here is not a refuge. The human realm, not a refuge. The planet Earth is not a refuge. The human body is not a refuge. Report an error in the passage at 59:50 Highlight the passage at 59:50

1:00:14 So we take refuge in that which is... really a refuge, and it's not just an abstraction, I'm not just pointing to Buddha as some kind of religious abstract theory. See it as that right now, that point of awakeness, attentiveness. And if you begin to sustain attention and develop that, and see things in terms of their patterns, the way they are, arising and ceasing, In which you let go of the tendency to interpret always in the personal way, whether you like or don't like something. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:14 Highlight the passage at 1:00:14

1:01:01 And more and more you realize the true nature. Actually, probably you think this is a crazy thing to say, but actually you will never be born and you'll never die. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:01 Highlight the passage at 1:01:01

1:01:19 But that takes a while to really appreciate that one. one. Because the conditioning process is very much one of I was born and I'm going to die. And that's how everything looks and that's how we talk and that's how we think. That's how we feel. But as we transcend that conditioning, as we get beyond it or see it as it really is, then it's not that way anymore. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:19 Highlight the passage at 1:01:19

1:01:50 The body dies, yes. change, but it's no longer interpreted in the cultural conditioning or personal conditioning perceptions. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:50 Highlight the passage at 1:01:50

1:02:04 The Buddha knowing the Dhamma our own life as human individuals, human entities, is living our lives doing good and refraining from doing evil things. With our bodies or our speech, learning to live in a harmless way, not to harm, not to exploit, not to damage, not to take advantage of others. And so then we find this is a lovely way to live when we determine to live like this. And we begin to really appreciate our own humanity and our own situation and our opportunity. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:04 Highlight the passage at 1:02:04

1:02:58 To learn from this experience of being born on planet Earth as a human man, a human woman, in this sensitive state, with all its difficulties and complications. We transform all this from personal frustration to seeing it in terms of path knowledge, the way things are, to be free from ignorance and suffering. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:58 Highlight the passage at 1:02:58

1:03:29 So I offer this as a reflection for you this afternoon on the refuges. And we can have a break. There's tea available. So in about 15 minutes, I'll ring the bell and we can reassemble for any further discussion, questions and answers that you might have. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:29 Highlight the passage at 1:03:29

1:04:09 It's like if you contemplate consciousness. It's the subject-object experience. Like when you're born, then you become conscious. And you're, like right now I'm in your consciousness, or you're in mine, my field of consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:09 Highlight the passage at 1:04:09

1:04:31 And so you're just on a visual level, and you're like an object to my vision. And so, if I interpret this in personal ways, and I think I'm, Ajahn Sumedho and you're this man that's sitting here and we are separate and you're this way and I'm that way. And so we see each other in terms of maybe nationality or gender or age or attraction or repulsion or prejudice or indifference, whatever. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:31 Highlight the passage at 1:04:31

1:05:12 But in terms of dharma, say, then... Then if I take refuge in Buddha, then I'm seeing this in terms of this is all dharma, the coming and going, the person, the personality, my own emotional reactions of liking or disliking or being indifferent. I'm a witness, witnessing, observing it, not judging it. Like this isn't... Report an error in the passage at 1:05:12 Highlight the passage at 1:05:12

1:05:44 This isn't a discriminative thing in terms of making value judgments, but just noting the way it is. So it's pure intelligence that through consciousness it's a knowing, but we're knowing the dharma rather than this person knowing about certain things or having views and opinions through the conditioning of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:44 Highlight the passage at 1:05:44

1:06:15 And to know the difference, because we can still use the conventions, and the conventional realities are still allowable, and we're not like we're speaking only from a very transcendent position. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:15 Highlight the passage at 1:06:15

1:06:29 But we know the difference, we know what is the Dhamma and what is the world. Like when I use the word world, it means what we create in the mind. It's not just like the world that we take for granted as planet Earth and human society, but the world in Buddhist terms means what we create in the mind out of ignorance. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:29 Highlight the passage at 1:06:29

1:07:01 So we, like one of the qualities of the Buddhists, the loka vidu, the knower of the world, sees the world as the world. And the world then is the... The passions, the perceptions, the images, the conventions, the feelings, the sensitivity, all of it is what we call the worldly life, where we become attached, caught up into loving, hating, and identity with the conditioned realm, with the death realm. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:01 Highlight the passage at 1:07:01

1:07:38 And then this is like taking us, this refuge is taken outside of the death realm. Transcending the death realm, to seeing it in terms of what it really is, is dharma. So it's actually the pattern of consciousness itself, but taken to the ultimate, to pure intelligence, rather than just personal experience. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:38 Highlight the passage at 1:07:38

1:08:15 Well, they're more like emphasis. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:15 Highlight the passage at 1:08:15

1:08:22 In the long run, it's really just mindfulness. It's just like... You're emphasizing something by saying Buddha. The emphasis is different when you say dhamma. But Buddha is also dhamma. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:22 Highlight the passage at 1:08:22

1:08:41 And so is Saṅgha. That Report an error in the passage at 1:08:41 Highlight the passage at 1:08:41

1:08:58 wasn't a stupid question either. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:58 Highlight the passage at 1:08:58

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:09:30 That's the real challenge. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:30 Highlight the passage at 1:09:30

1:09:38 Then the real kindness is to not hate them for doing it. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:38 Highlight the passage at 1:09:38

1:09:51 When one Report an error in the passage at 1:09:51 Highlight the passage at 1:09:51

1:09:58 feels compassion, in a way, I really, when you contemplate things like the Bosnian War and Rwanda, you hear these horrendous stories of brutality and butchering. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:58 Highlight the passage at 1:09:58

1:10:22 ...and torture, atrocity. And in contemplating that, you know, you can see the tendency of the mind to sympathize with the victims and to hate the victimizers and to want to get even. Like, I can see a tendency, human tendency, to want to find these people and punish them, these people that have been doing these terrible things. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:22 Highlight the passage at 1:10:22

1:10:50 And even the mind can even get so righteous, the indignant, that you'd want to torture them to do the things to them that they've done to others. There's kind of a vindictiveness that I can see in myself. It comes out of a kind of righteous indignation because one sympathizes with the victims only. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:50 Highlight the passage at 1:10:50

1:11:20 But then as you contemplate real suffering, I mean what suffering really is, then you also feel compassion for the victimizers because you realize the horror of their lives, that they've got to live the rest of their lives with the memories, the horror, the fear, Report an error in the passage at 1:11:20 Highlight the passage at 1:11:20

1:11:45 the result, even if they're never caught. Or never punished for what they've done. They still have to live with the memories. And that is one of the, that's a real hell realm. It doesn't like they're going to get away with it. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:45 Highlight the passage at 1:11:45

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:12:40 Many do, yes. I mean, it's like it's very, I mean, people get very paranoid and fear. With men who've committed violent acts, they live in a realm of fear. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:40 Highlight the passage at 1:12:40

1:12:59 I mean, it's just that kind of, you know, the karma is to be frightened, to be paranoid and suspicious. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:59 Highlight the passage at 1:12:59

1:13:17 Yes, this is where, you know, it's something Report an error in the passage at 1:13:17 Highlight the passage at 1:13:17

1:13:24 in you, you know, you can't always, I mean, you recognize that they oftentimes get boys into these wars where they have no... not enough experience, or they've not developed any personal integrity. They end up doing things that are terrible. I'd rather be killed than kill somebody. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:24 Highlight the passage at 1:13:24

1:13:55 Death is no problem as far as I'm concerned. But I have to live my life with the memories, horrible memories. I mean, it's, you know, just... Like in the life of a monk, just exaggerating something. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:55 Highlight the passage at 1:13:55

1:14:19 You know it. You know, I know if I'm exaggerating. Just, you know, for rhetorical effects or to entertain or things like this. I mean, when there's a sense of shame and knowing that the falseness or the... Report an error in the passage at 1:14:19 Highlight the passage at 1:14:19

1:14:40 That one can have in just little ways of no consequence. Well, one thing, one is very open and sensitive to things through this life. But if you notice, a lot of people have to just drink a lot or take drugs just to keep themselves from being frightened or overwhelmed with despair, fear, anxiety. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:40 Highlight the passage at 1:14:40

1:15:14 I remember one time seeing a monk, I went to this meditation monastery, and they pointed out that this monk was, this was in Laos, and he'd been in the Royal Lao Army, and he'd killed a lot of people, and then he left the army, and He'd kill people in the line of duty, I assume, you know, as being, fighting against the communists. And then he'd left the military and become a monk, and he was trying to meditate in this little place, little hut. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:14 Highlight the passage at 1:15:14

1:15:59 And he was just having, he was, day after day, he said he'd just have memory of all these people he killed. And he just was sitting there in a state of... You know, almost continuous paranoia. And he was trying to, and you know, and if he stayed with it, you know, if he'd actually, he couldn't take it, he left after, you know, shortly after I saw him. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:59 Highlight the passage at 1:15:59

1:16:25 I mean, if he did stick with the meditation, he could have eventually kind of worked through it. But it was so horrible that he couldn't stand it. And yet I assume he'd been a soldier in doing... You know, his duty is a... But still, he could remember the people he killed. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:25 Highlight the passage at 1:16:25

1:17:12 Well, I think now being a conscientious objector is not such a difficult thing. But the Second World War, I mean, that was... You were utterly disgraced if you weren't... And I remember in... Report an error in the passage at 1:17:12 Highlight the passage at 1:17:12

1:17:36 in these bombings like Dresden and and even though there was a sense of we were right and they were wrong there's still a lot of mental anguish and you know like people getting like cancer and things from just the the anguish or the Report an error in the passage at 1:17:36 Highlight the passage at 1:17:36

1:18:00 fear, whatever happens, the doubt What one has done. One thing about this kind of throwing bombs down on a place is that you, you know, you can imagine the worst scenarios. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:00 Highlight the passage at 1:18:00

1:18:18 Say at one time when war was more just soldiers in fighting with swords and things. I mean there was something even quite skilled and the warrior was a kind of exalted heroic figure. But now war is just horrible. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:18 Highlight the passage at 1:18:18

1:18:41 or good about it. The warrior, the days of the warrior are the sense of a man who's helping the maiden, save the maiden from the dragon or preserving, you know, helping the, protect the kingdom and things like this. These are, these images are no longer so, you know, know, no longer are... So much a part of our way of perceiving life. And we just see what they did to Baghdad in the Gulf War. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:41 Highlight the passage at 1:18:41

1:19:25 Just, you know, destroy it with weapons. It wasn't aimed at just the bad ones, but it was just aimed at the Iraqis, really. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:25 Highlight the passage at 1:19:25

1:19:41 I'm trying to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:41 Highlight the passage at 1:19:41

1:19:50 War is something that I'd say is something we have to relinquish. It's really horrible to put young men into such positions because it ruins their lives. It's interesting, I heard that in veterans... ...administration hospitals in the States that they have camps of ex-Vietnam veterans who live like in cardboard huts or just live on the streets because they were... Report an error in the passage at 1:19:50 Highlight the passage at 1:19:50

1:20:30 and they live near these veterans' hospitals where they can get free medical assistance if they need it. But they're kind of wasted men. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:30 Highlight the passage at 1:20:30

1:20:41 You know, who were maybe 18, 19 years old and they went to war and then they come back and they've been involved in too many horrible things to be able to just go back to Des Moines, Iowa and live a normal life. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:41 Highlight the passage at 1:20:41

1:21:23 Yes, faith is something that without Report an error in the passage at 1:21:23 Highlight the passage at 1:21:23

1:21:30 it, life is depressing. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:30 Highlight the passage at 1:21:30

1:21:37 Because faith is... I mean, I used to think Report an error in the passage at 1:21:37 Highlight the passage at 1:21:37

1:21:44 I wasn't a faith person. You know, you have these kind of images. Because I couldn't believe in things very well. I had a very doubting mind. But I realized there is a lot of faith in the goodness of life and the beauty of it and in the universe that doesn't come from... Report an error in the passage at 1:21:44 Highlight the passage at 1:21:44

1:22:08 It's quite a natural faith. And I have to, and I trust it more and more. Where before, my conditioned mind tended to be cynical. You know, it tended to see, because so much of the information you get is about, is like the materialism, the selfishness, the mean-heartedness, the horrors of humanity. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:08 Highlight the passage at 1:22:08

1:22:39 And then in monastic life, I've experienced a very good life. I have, you know, both here in Thailand and here in England, my life has always brought out the better side of human beings. So my own experience as a monk, say the past 28 years, has been mainly quite a good one, you know, where I see the beauty in humanity. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:39 Highlight the passage at 1:22:39

1:23:11 In myself, in the people around me, in the people that I meet. So I don't have a negative experience of life as a monk. But the mass media presents you with an endless detailed versions of the nastiness of humanity. And then you think of doubling the population. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:11 Highlight the passage at 1:23:11

1:23:45 Mind boggles. So many human beings that are quite capable of brutalizing each other and it is rather terrifying. But this is what I'm trying to encourage is why I do trust in the goodness of Report an error in the passage at 1:23:45 Highlight the passage at 1:23:45

1:24:13 And the beauty and the truth of this universe that we live in, and in that which is also my experience, that in me which is that way, and which I can see in others. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:13 Highlight the passage at 1:24:13

1:24:31 So we look at each other in terms of, say, the beauty we see, or the goodness, or the potential goodness. Rather than, say, looking in the critical way or reactive way of whether we like or don't like. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:31 Highlight the passage at 1:24:31

1:24:53 And just living in a community of monks and nuns, trying to not be caught up in personal reactions, but to try to see the Buddha and all the monks and nuns and the people that live here. It's a challenge to the mind. Because the mind just easily picks up on the negative side. So one is training one's mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:53 Highlight the passage at 1:24:53

1:25:25 And to always give that, like in meditation and in teaching, teaching both the monastics and the lay people. If you notice, I'll never try to give anybody negative view of themselves. And so that one's always trying to emphasize that even their weaknesses or flaws are not self. And to give people that encouragement to let go of their tendency to dwell on their, in a negative way, about themselves or other people. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:25 Highlight the passage at 1:25:25

1:26:14 And so you're trying to... Encourage the good in others and in your own experience of life. So I can see the potential. I can see human beings as being the channels for magnificent blessings. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:14 Highlight the passage at 1:26:14

1:26:37 We're like vehicles for blessing this planet and this universe. Oh, that's a bit optimistic. Aren't you being a bit silly, Sumedho? know, the Report an error in the passage at 1:26:37 Highlight the passage at 1:26:37

1:26:54 But it's not that I... I feel that is a better way to reflect and to look at human beings only in terms of their selfish tendencies. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:54 Highlight the passage at 1:26:54

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:27:39 Well, the realization of truth. To be free from the delusions of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:39 Highlight the passage at 1:27:39

1:27:52 And it's humble. It's not like... It's not like a grand thing, like lights explode out of your head and you kind of walk on through the air. It's not like that. This is a very simple and humbling experience. Like this word hubris. Hubris is a human tendency towards overestimation, overweening pride. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:52 Highlight the passage at 1:27:52

1:28:22 And that is one of our problems, is that we have a tendency to, like this Luciferian thing, where we want to be a god. We want to know everything. We want to be in the top position. And we can't do it. We always, every time we try to do that, we crash. Report an error in the passage at 1:28:22 Highlight the passage at 1:28:22

1:28:52 You know, we can maybe get away with it for a while and kind of, you know, get up there in the heights and then suddenly we find ourselves kind of plummeting back down into the pits. Report an error in the passage at 1:28:52 Highlight the passage at 1:28:52

1:29:08 So just recognizing the human situation is learning through humility, through very simple things. Like just learning through breathing, through inhalation, exhalation, through just the mundane experience of life, rather than the kind of grand, magnificent experiences that we read about, that we'd like to have. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:08 Highlight the passage at 1:29:08

1:29:42 The kind of fantastic visions and messages from important spirits. And fantastic realizations. Notice that the emphasis on very simple, ordinary, the ordinariness of life. And because this hubris tendency is to want to be God and know everything like God does. But as a human being, we can know everything, but not like God, but from... Report an error in the passage at 1:29:42 Highlight the passage at 1:29:42

1:30:21 A very humble position of seeing things as they are within the limitations and state that we happen to be in, which is ordinary and not special. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:21 Highlight the passage at 1:30:21

1:30:35 And that takes humility to appreciate that because the pride is, oh, that's silly, that's useless. I want to, you know, really be the messiah or be the... Report an error in the passage at 1:30:35 Highlight the passage at 1:30:35

1:30:56 Be God. Be a special, fantastic creature. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:56 Highlight the passage at 1:30:56

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:31:31 It is. When we trust in it, when there is faith, and then we incline naturally to that. When there's pride, then we tend to go off into an ideal realm that isn't real. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:31 Highlight the passage at 1:31:31

1:31:53 And then, you know, you can sustain, but for only a little while, then it falls apart. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:53 Highlight the passage at 1:31:53

1:32:01 But I Report an error in the passage at 1:32:01 Highlight the passage at 1:32:01

1:32:12 don't know really what the future holds because I know the potential for humanity. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:12 Highlight the passage at 1:32:12

1:32:31 And there are many things going on that one isn't aware of. And this takes faith, really. And I think as we... Abide in that faith more and more rather than create the suspicions, negativities and complaints. That will increase that potential for humanity. And so we do. Each one of us has something to contribute. It's part of it. And we're not just kind of helpless victims lost in a different world that there's nothing we can do about. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:31 Highlight the passage at 1:32:31

1:33:17 Ignore it. I see that we can, we have, we can influence it. But to influence it from that place of humility and goodwill rather than from overweening pride or personal views. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:17 Highlight the passage at 1:33:17

1:33:42 So sometimes what we do, like just a prayer or meditation, can seem like you're not doing anything. Because in the Western world, we tend to think that it's only kind of like going out and doing something that anything's ever going to happen. But I'm not so sure about that. So many of the foreign aid programs have caused a lot of harm. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:42 Highlight the passage at 1:33:42