Refuge: Safety Amidst the Unsafe – Q and A

0:00 Well, thoughts are very powerful things. So that's why you try to be careful. Report an error in the passage at 0:00 Highlight the passage at 0:00

0:11 Because, you know, like we actually contemplate like you are the center of the universe. It's just a reflection. It's actually your experience of life, isn't it? From the time you were born to this present moment, you're the center. I mean, it's just an existential experience. careful. Report an error in the passage at 0:11 Highlight the passage at 0:11

0:32 It's not megalomania, but it's pointing out, as far as any one of us is concerned, this is the center point, because the world comes at us in this way, impinges on us on this form. And so how we think about it, it's not to believe the conditioning of the mind, which tends to come out of ignorance. Report an error in the passage at 0:32 Highlight the passage at 0:32

1:01 Like we were talking this morning about the inner tyrants. I mean those are conditioned into the mind through the acculturating process. And so a lot of that thinking, that proliferating thinking and emotional reactiveness is conditions that have been instilled out of ignorance, not understanding things properly. Report an error in the passage at 1:01 Highlight the passage at 1:01

1:29 Not knowing the dharma. But when you know the dharma, when there's an understanding of dharma, then your thinking is something that's a great gift and very powerful because then you're directing your thoughts in the right way. And they're in line with truth and reality rather than just habits that tend to just reinforce habits. Report an error in the passage at 1:29 Highlight the passage at 1:29

1:56 So like thinking, to me, I remember... The first year I started meditating, if I could just stop thinking. Because when you're alone with yourself for a long time, you know, your mind just goes, rattles on and on and on. At least mine did. And just this obsessed thinking and endless kind of reiteration of boring old thoughts and things just coming and, you know, kind of shut up. Report an error in the passage at 1:56 Highlight the passage at 1:56

2:31 I was quite anti-thought for a while. But then as the mind calmed down, then I began to appreciate the ability to think. Because now I know how to think. I'm not just thinking according to habits and proliferating habits of thought. But I like to think and direct thought, but not for personal reasons, just because it's a gift that we have, something to use in the right way. Report an error in the passage at 2:31 Highlight the passage at 2:31

3:46 The thing to do is to develop an attitude of mind, because sometimes the word discipline is... We think we've got to discipline ourselves and then it becomes, we make it into something we've got to do, another thing in our lives that we have to do. And discipline also can have a, you know, really kind of getting in there and forcing, willfully forcing ourselves. Report an error in the passage at 3:46 Highlight the passage at 3:46

4:23 So just noting, you know, what these words and these ideas, how they affect us. We develop an attitude to use meditation as something like a very pleasant thing to do rather than some discipline you've got to develop. Report an error in the passage at 4:23 Highlight the passage at 4:23

4:47 Like Dung Po Chaw used to say, people don't need discipline to eat food. You like to eat food. You look forward to it. Report an error in the passage at 4:47 Highlight the passage at 4:47

5:04 You always have time to eat, no matter how busy your life might be. And, you know, usually we don't think, oh, now I've got to eat. Report an error in the passage at 5:04 Highlight the passage at 5:04

5:31 Well, to develop a pleasant attitude towards bad memories. Report an error in the passage at 5:31 Highlight the passage at 5:31

5:42 Rather than, you know, like one, sometimes you can't help what comes up, but you can... See it in the right way. And so I found like I began to like bad memories I began to look at in a more benevolent way than just resenting the fact that I wanted peace and I didn't want these bad memories. Report an error in the passage at 5:42 Highlight the passage at 5:42

6:11 And then I found that they really don't have much power if you accept them. It's that resistance resisting everything that gives power to negative states. Report an error in the passage at 6:11 Highlight the passage at 6:11

6:39 Well, I can say that. And that's good advice. You know, it's a kind of guideline. And at least to say also, especially when you don't want to do it, do it. But to cling to that, it can get heavy, you know. Report an error in the passage at 6:39 Highlight the passage at 6:39

7:03 Because we, I mean, like here, one kind of feels, people feel, get very... That they've got to make themselves do things. So the tendency, say the character of people in this country tends to feel they have to do these things and feel guilty when they don't. Report an error in the passage at 7:03 Highlight the passage at 7:03

7:36 And also a lot of that is a habit of seeing yourself always as someone who needs to be some, you know, you're not good enough the way you are. You've got to... Get rid of these habits and make yourself into something that you're not. These kind of assumptions are very much how we generally relate to life. Report an error in the passage at 7:36 Highlight the passage at 7:36

8:05 And it's not that it's untrue, but that is the delusion of the mind. I'm somebody, there's something wrong with me now, and I've got to meditate in order that in the future I will become somebody who's enlightened. Report an error in the passage at 8:05 Highlight the passage at 8:05

8:20 And that's how it seems. themes, you know, and the way one thinks as a person. you can even witness that. You can see that as an assumption you're making about yourself. Report an error in the passage at 8:20 Highlight the passage at 8:20

8:36 the other is to think, there's nothing wrong with me, I don't have to meditate. That's another assumption. I'm perfectly fine the way I am. I don't have to do anything is another assumption. So be with just that kind of knowing of these things rather than Report an error in the passage at 8:36 Highlight the passage at 8:36

9:13 critical, self-critical. see yourself through very critical, negative ways, then sometimes it helps to be positive about yourself. Report an error in the passage at 9:13 Highlight the passage at 9:13

9:26 think of, know, how good we are and how, you know, to try to come. counterbalance the tendency to emphasize the faults and weaknesses. Report an error in the passage at 9:26 Highlight the passage at 9:26

9:44 But that's not a position to hold on to as a fixed position, but it is a way of finding a balance point. Report an error in the passage at 9:44 Highlight the passage at 9:44

9:58 Because I notice many people think they're telling the truth when they're confessing their faults. And that they're boasting when they're telling you about their good points and their virtues. We have a kind of perversity, thinking that truth is when we admit how rotten we are. Report an error in the passage at 9:58 Highlight the passage at 9:58

10:22 And that admitting any virtues is like boasting, bragging about it. Report an error in the passage at 10:22 Highlight the passage at 10:22

10:30 So we give a lot of importance to faults and weaknesses. And this is here in Britain, the tendency of the people. To give a lot of important, a lot of power to what's wrong with themselves. Report an error in the passage at 10:30 Highlight the passage at 10:30

10:54 And it's interesting, some people, you know, like, I remember one woman telling me how horrible, what a horrible person she was. And she seemed to, and I said, you know, you couldn't possibly be that bad. Report an error in the passage at 10:54 Highlight the passage at 10:54

11:19 No one's that horrible. And she was quite a nice person, actually, but she seemed to get carried away by... It's kind of, you know, exaggerating the things that she sees as weaknesses in herself. Report an error in the passage at 11:19 Highlight the passage at 11:19

11:37 It's interesting with, like, say, when I went to Thailand years ago, an American, you see, we tend to exaggerate, and English tend to understate everything. Report an error in the passage at 11:37 Highlight the passage at 11:37

11:53 So we tend to speak in superlatives, Americans. And when I was learning Thai in Thailand with Ajahn Chah, so I would speak Thai, use Thai words, but I'd speak them with American habits, like I'd make everything into superlatives. And so if something was, you know, say this is good, I'd say this is really the most absolutely fantastic, best in the world. Report an error in the passage at 11:53 Highlight the passage at 11:53

12:30 And so I never had, you know, either it's absolutely horrible and disgusting or it's absolutely fantastic and marvelous. And so I was talking like this in Thai and Ajahn Sumedho, Lungpa Chah, he says, he's kind of making fun of me. And he says, you know, he says, things aren't always absolutely horrible or absolutely marvelous. There's some things that are just, he said, there's, There's good, there's not so good, there's a little good, there's a little better than a little good, there's the best, there's the worst, there's all that. Report an error in the passage at 12:30 Highlight the passage at 12:30

13:20 Good can be just not so good or a little good or good and better, best and so forth. Oh, this is, it pointed out something to me that if you're thinking in terms of superlatives about absolutely horrible or absolutely fantastic, then you tend to see things from superlatives, which is not the way things are. Report an error in the passage at 13:20 Highlight the passage at 13:20

13:50 Very seldom is life in its superlative form. So even learning to speak properly so that you're Measuring the way you describe experience in terms of what it really is, of being a little good or it's all right or it's quite, you know, this way of speaking is also quite skillful because then you're not seeing things in terms of just total opposed extreme descriptions. Report an error in the passage at 13:50 Highlight the passage at 13:50

14:27 Some people in the saṅgha, they say, There's something absolutely devastated and totally shattered over some little thing. Report an error in the passage at 14:27 Highlight the passage at 14:27

14:44 How could that be absolutely devastating or totally shattering? But if you think like that, then life tends to have that extreme quality to it. Nothing is what it is. It's more than that. Report an error in the passage at 14:44 Highlight the passage at 14:44

15:01 But if you notice, if you really notice that life is, sometimes it goes to these extremes of it's absolutely fantastic or absolutely horrible, but most of life is neither that extreme or neither end. Report an error in the passage at 15:01 Highlight the passage at 15:01

15:18 And so we notice that. Then we can use our language, perceptual abilities to be more accurate and see things so that we can see ourselves, not in terms of... Report an error in the passage at 15:18 Highlight the passage at 15:18

15:32 It's not extreme perceptions, but just, you know, the little goodness of ourselves and the big goodness and the things like I'd contemplate, because just speaking from experience, I tended to have this habit of dwelling on the faults and exaggerating my faults. And then I found virtues a bit difficult to really get any feeling for because I tended to dismiss. Report an error in the passage at 15:32 Highlight the passage at 15:32

16:03 dismiss things or not notice. then I just, then I started realizing that basically that I'm I don't like to hurt people. I want to help. I want to encourage people. I like to... You can see things that before you could say were... Report an error in the passage at 16:03 Highlight the passage at 16:03

16:36 You could overlook for emphasizing the fault. And you think, why am I a monk? Because I'm a selfish, horrible person? Or because there's something in me that wants to live a noble life? What is that? So you begin to appreciate. Report an error in the passage at 16:36 Highlight the passage at 16:36

17:05 You're not hanging on to it and thinking of yourself. Obsessing yourself with your own goodness. But you're looking, you're admitting what's there. You're consciously accepting the way it is. In both its good side and its weak side also. But you're not exaggerating one over the other. Report an error in the passage at 17:05 Highlight the passage at 17:05

· · · silence, 1 minute

17:59 So I think it's enough for this afternoon. Report an error in the passage at 17:59 Highlight the passage at 17:59

18:08 Tomorrow I'm off to Leicester Summer School. I'll see you. See you at noon. Report an error in the passage at 18:08 Highlight the passage at 18:08