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- 2:26
And so just to kind of contemplate this realm that we live in as an experience because We are emotional creatures. We're beings that, we're not just kind of robots that just operate automatically without just doing things and operating in efficient and rational ways, even though many times we try to be like that. But the human realm is a realm of sensitivity.
- 6:22
And yet in spite of all that, human beings experience a lot of happiness, joy. We can even through understanding the things that affect us, we can... Realize a transcendent relationship to this sensory experience. And that's of course what the Buddha was pointing to in his teaching about suffering, its causes, the cessation of suffering and the way of non-suffering.
- 25:08
Fear, jealousy, doubt and confusion. You're changing, aren't you, from trying to get rid of those negative states to an attitude of really embracing them, really looking at them, really feeling them. Because the suffering of life isn't really the conditions we're experiencing but our reaction to it. We find...
- 32:59
Acceptance, non-aversion. a determination not to act or speak any dark position, but I found that the result of that is a kind of relief that comes from having, rather than reacted with resistance, a relief, a sense of relief that allows
- 1:02:03
So you're incorporating, your mind is opening, embracing, including, expanding, rather than becoming increasingly more narrow and focused on a particular condition that you want to hold to. So in joy and depression and with this sense of intuition, Or awareness, mindfulness. Begin to trust your own ability to do this. I mean, it's not something that's difficult in itself.
Transcript
0:00 Welcome everybody here this afternoon, this tropical weather, and Report an error in the passage at 0:00
0:20 this afternoon we have this occasion to contemplate, reflect upon the subject. Report an error in the passage at 0:20
0:31 One thing that I have been the past week at the Leicester Summer School, which is a Buddhist summer school that meets every year at the Botanical Gardens at Leicester University. Report an error in the passage at 0:31
0:47 So I've been having kind of a holiday there. It's like a Buddhist holiday camp. I see some of the people there. Report an error in the passage at 0:47
1:13 And this summer school, I find, it was established about seven years ago, and mostly quite mature adult people attend it. In fact, if you're... Sixty is probably one of the younger ones. But Report an error in the passage at 1:13
1:37 also, I find that I really like that because living with people who've experienced a lot of life, who've been, you know, had most of their life as past, and they've had a lot of experience with the ups and downs that inevitably happen to human beings in this. In this way, so in some ways it's a kind of common bond of understanding that sometimes you don't feel with young people because they're still having to learn all about it rather than remember. Report an error in the passage at 1:37
2:26 And so just to kind of contemplate this realm that we live in as an experience because We are emotional creatures. We're beings that, we're not just kind of robots that just operate automatically without just doing things and operating in efficient and rational ways, even though many times we try to be like that. Report an error in the passage at 2:26
3:00 But the human realm is a realm of sensitivity. It's a kind of continuous experience, isn't it, of being in this, in dealing with some form of agitation or irritation that is what sensitivity implies. Report an error in the passage at 3:00
3:20 Just the human body itself, the sense organs, the nature of the planet that we live on, everything that we experience has an effect. It's affecting us, irritating us in some way or another. So it can be kind of, we have these words like irritation or agitation or aggravation, words that imply that something's always happening to us in some way. Report an error in the passage at 3:20
3:54 This unsettledness, this impingement upon our minds that is happening all the time because this is the way it is. The realm, the sense realm, it means that it's a realm where this is what we have to learn to live with, learn to understand it, learn to transcend it if we're going to be liberated from just reactivity, just caught in endless reactions to the irritations, frustrations, aggravations of sensory impingement. Report an error in the passage at 3:54
4:37 Because not only from outside do we experience this irritation but also we create irritation with our minds. Minds is endlessly wanting something that we don't have or not wanting something that we have. Always thinking that things could be better even when things are probably the best we still can imagine it being better. Report an error in the passage at 4:37
5:05 We create ourselves as a personality that we irritate our consciousness with. We're always looking or thinking about ourselves in some way that is maybe worrisome. Report an error in the passage at 5:05
5:23 Something isn't good enough. We're not good enough. There's something wrong. There's something that we have to do. Something that we haven't done yet. Something that we've done that we shouldn't have done. And on and on like this so that the human condition is a very strange one indeed when you think of it like this. Report an error in the passage at 5:23
5:45 Each one of us and each human being, all 5.4, probably by now 5.5 billion of us on this planet, caught in this state of sensitivity, consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 5:45
6:07 This inexorable change, this changiness is in nature that relentlessly moving from this to that, from the beginning to the ending. Report an error in the passage at 6:07
6:22 And yet in spite of all that, human beings experience a lot of happiness, joy. We can even through understanding the things that affect us, we can... Realize a transcendent relationship to this sensory experience. And that's of course what the Buddha was pointing to in his teaching about suffering, its causes, the cessation of suffering and the way of non-suffering. Report an error in the passage at 6:22
6:57 It was a skillful means he used in order to allow us to see, to realize a way of... Responding and dealing with the ongoing irritations of this realm that we live in. Report an error in the passage at 6:57
7:21 interesting to see when you hear about or know so many people that suffer from depression, this seems to be one of the common diseases in affluent societies. Report an error in the passage at 7:21
7:37 the experience of depression. Report an error in the passage at 7:37
7:42 Some people say it's due to various chemical imbalances. One tries to trace it maybe as some kind of chemical problem or is it merely emotional? I don't really know myself on that level, whether it's due to some imbalance chemically or whether it's merely just an emotional problem. Report an error in the passage at 7:42
8:07 And I don't think I've ever really been depressed in the way that some people. I do remember Report an error in the passage at 8:07
8:35 when I was doing my examinations for my master's degree years ago in California and I was very You know, I felt like I had need to really, my nature in those days was a very undisciplined kind of student. So towards the time where these examinations were going to happen, I would suddenly become obsessed with studying and stay awake nights and cram and read and drive myself to acquire more and more information for these examinations. Report an error in the passage at 8:35
9:16 And then... In those days they used to have, this was before all the drugs were really fashionable, but I did find some kind of amphetamines that were mixed with some kind of tranquilizer. They were kind of green heart-shaped pills. Somebody gave me these pills and they're supposed to kind of keep you awake, make you intellectually sharp. Report an error in the passage at 9:16
9:46 I started taking these green hearts and so I didn't sleep very much and I had this sense of being, you know, alert. And I got through the examinations, passed them too. Report an error in the passage at 9:46
10:01 But then suddenly I went into depression and it was a state in which I can say it was the only time in my life I felt that there is no hope, absolutely. No hope at all, no possibility for anything other than misery for the rest of my life. That, I realized, was the aftermath of taking these amphetamines. Because, obviously, I got quite stimulated and high. Report an error in the passage at 10:01
10:41 And then the result was a sense of... That's the only time I remember having that. Utter hopelessness, utter despair, which means also in my life that I've been down in the dumps. I've felt despair and world weariness and all kinds of negative states, but there's always a measure of hope that I could depend on. Report an error in the passage at 10:41
11:11 I never saw it as total or eternal. I knew it just seemed like that. Even though when you're in a state of despair, it does seem like your whole life is going to be like that. But I realized that was just how it seemed. But the effect of this drug, these green hearts, was I didn't even have that kind of wisdom. Report an error in the passage at 11:11
11:42 It just seemed total and utter hopelessness and helplessness. Fortunately, I never wanted to take those kind of things again, because it was such, even to this day, I remember, even though that was, you know, 40 years ago or so, it's still, the memory of it is still vivid, and I never wanted to manipulate my consciousness with chemicals and drugs. Report an error in the passage at 11:42
12:22 And in the monastic life, of course, the discipline is one where you refrain from taking any kind of conscious changing substances such as liquor, alcohol, or addictive drugs. And you work with the consciousness as it is just as an ordinary conscious state of mind. You're not... You're not even trying to get into emotional highs. Monastic life is really based on rather routine and ordinary things. Report an error in the passage at 12:22
13:04 So your experience of life is really around getting up in the morning, putting on your robes, eating your food, going on your alms round. And doing things, quite ordinary experiences. It's not even like a meditation retreat where you sit for long hours, you know, and refine your conscious experience through concentration. Report an error in the passage at 13:04
13:32 In fact, in Thailand, in Ajahn Chah's monastery, he was very much encouraging us not to even do much high concentration practices, but encourage a kind of ordinariness. of monastic life, mindfulness and daily life that he felt was much more direct and useful than trying to develop the more extreme, more refined, concentrated state. Report an error in the passage at 13:32
14:04 And yet, for most of us Westerners, we wanted the high concentration states. There's a strong desire to live in a realm of of bliss as a kind of permanent state of being because we hadn't really contemplated what it is to be a human being living on the planet. We hadn't really, we just imagined that we could find something better if we practiced meditation or a state of mind that would be much more pleasant, that would stay with us all the time. Report an error in the passage at 14:04
14:51 Once we got it, once we really managed to get hold of it, and it would stay with us, then we would spend the remainder of our life in a state of bliss. This was the hope that many of us had. But then in the monastic life, Ajahn Chah would laugh at these kind of aspirations that we shared and all of our kind of determined attempts to try to get these states. Report an error in the passage at 14:51
15:21 And we noticed that his life was very much quite a natural existence where he himself seemed quite happy and joyful with just the ordinary flow of his life of just eating his food, being with people, instructing the monks, walking in the forest, doing whatever he was doing. Which was just ordinary stuff. He seemed to be a very joyful and relaxed and happy person without having to kind of shut everyone out and kind of control his environment to where he could attain a specially refined state of conscious experience. Report an error in the passage at 15:21
16:16 So this was quite an example to observe. Because it did reflect, say, my own desires because I dismissed that realm of ordinariness as just not being worth considering. The aim of being a monk, in fact, implied a kind of special, being a special kind of being, a special lifestyle in which you would be able to achieve special states of mind that you couldn't achieve as a lay person. Report an error in the passage at 16:16
16:52 The idea of being a hermit, of being one of these yogis that you'd read about or hear about in India, places like that where they could live in states of unmitigated bliss, walk around stark naked in the snow and still experience bliss all the time. It would be really nice to live like that, covered Report an error in the passage at 16:52
17:23 with ashes and matted hair. Report an error in the passage at 17:23
17:30 I had quite romantic images of it, of myself, matted hair, covered in ashes, and yet, you know, this idea of being out and just walking around in a state of bliss and happiness all the time. Report an error in the passage at 17:30
17:53 But yet, life is not like that in this realm. I mean, you can, you can, through... Some kind of mental exercises you can refine conscious experience and through control of environmental conditions you can kind of minimize the amount of coarse and negative and unpleasant sensory impingement through controlling. Report an error in the passage at 17:53
18:26 But inevitably the come down is that we have to face just the Report an error in the passage at 18:26
18:47 in the psychology world, the dark side of one's character manifests at various times in unwanted ways, Report an error in the passage at 18:47
18:59 so this... Even though one longs to be good and live in a state of bliss, be in communion with the ultimate and have a pure heart, pure mind, a lot of human experience is the experience of darkness or fear or anger, Report an error in the passage at 18:59
19:27 confusion and doubt, anxiety. Report an error in the passage at 19:27
19:33 So many of these negative states are part of our human experience and yet, you know, we can spend our lives trying to deny, trying to avoid, trying to repress or run away from these kind of mental experiences, not to mention physical pain or disease. Report an error in the passage at 19:33
20:04 So I used to think that if I could just get into these refined states of bliss, then I could kind of bypass the dark side, you know, the bad side of life. I could just kind of sidestep it and even if I lived to a hundred years, somehow I'd avoid all that because I'd be in this other state which was blissful and pleasant. Report an error in the passage at 20:04
20:34 But then as... I experienced my life as a Buddhist monk. I realized that that wasn't going to happen, that I wasn't going to get out of things. I wasn't going to be able to avoid the dark side or the pain or the fearsome and negative experiences of life. Because the Buddha pointed very directly to those very experiences as a noble truth. So the first noble truth of suffering is a statement, isn't it? Report an error in the passage at 20:34
21:16 There is this. This is part of our human inheritance. All human beings suffer. It's a normal, natural thing to do. This realm that we live in is like this. Report an error in the passage at 21:16
21:32 Continuous change. It's a realm that tempts us, that we create delusions about, that is always in some ways irritating and impinging on us. And how are we going to relate to this realm? Report an error in the passage at 21:32
21:54 And of course my previous relationship was avoidance, trying to refine the realm, control the realm, get out of the Report an error in the passage at 21:54
22:15 fear about if I lose control what if everything gets out of control what if the things that I depend on for feeling secure safe happy life is all right What if all these things suddenly change? What if they are all taken away? What if I lose my health? What if I lose the people I depend on, that I need, that I love? Report an error in the passage at 22:15
22:47 What if I lose all my money? I don't have any money. You can imagine the whole, even when you're at the peak of having all the best. Along with having all the best on the worldly plane comes the other, the fear of losing it. Report an error in the passage at 22:47
23:12 So in meditation, what Lungpho Cha would call meditation, wasn't a meditation of avoidance or trying to control the mind, but in liberating the mind from fear and desire. So in order to liberate the mind, what do you do? If you're trying to... To change your mind, to make it into something that you desire, you're still operating from the same delusion. Report an error in the passage at 23:12
23:46 instead of operating from the same delusion, you change your attitude to on to what you want trying to control and protect all the things that you want and depend on and try to protect yourself from all the... negative unpleasant things to this understanding of suffering or the embracing of life and so the Buddha was actually telling us or suggesting instructing us instead of trying to avoid and run away or control to embrace to really open up to the full experience of Being agitated, being frustrated, being irritated on just the sense level of consciousness, completely open to the experiences of aging, sickness and pain, death, loss, of despair, of anguish, of grief, sorrow, open to the experience of Fear, jealousy, doubt and confusion. You're changing, aren't you, from trying to get rid of those negative states to an attitude of really embracing them, really looking at them, really feeling them. Report an error in the passage at 23:46
25:33 Because the suffering of life isn't really the conditions we're experiencing but our reaction to it. We find... You know, the human being, we're very kind of tenacious and indomitable animals and creatures. We're not just animals, are we? Or is that politically correct? Or maybe nowadays being animals is a good thing. But anyway, we have animal forms, don't we? Report an error in the passage at 25:33
26:07 The human body is an animal-type body. We're conscious, but we're not just animals in the sense of just... ...instinctually intelligent, but we also have this reflective capacity. And in religions, in all major religions, they oftentimes refer to this kind of the combination of the earth and the divine, or that which is from the heavens above, which to me is the recognition of our ability to Contemplate our own existence, our aspiration, isn't it? Why do we aspire to, say, finer things? Report an error in the passage at 26:07
26:58 Why do we want to be good? Why do we love the good? Why is there beauty? What is truth? What in most human beings is it that longs for truth and beauty and goodness? Report an error in the passage at 26:58
27:17 And of course the cynics of the present day say, human beings, they just want, you know, for selfish reasons, we want to identify with these things so we can feel safe and feel good. We can put it on a low level of just human arrogance and selfishness. But does that really ring true? To me, it doesn't. Goodness, truth and beauty to me are You know, pointing towards universality rather than towards things that arouse in me my most selfish feelings and desires. Report an error in the passage at 27:17
28:00 And religion in itself is always pointing to a universal rather than just personal experience. Report an error in the passage at 28:00
28:13 In Buddhism, the aim is the realization of the truth, isn't it? The realization of nibbāna. Report an error in the passage at 28:13
28:22 as a as a personality it in the world uh becoming powerful and rich and uh well that that kind of thing which which comes which are the the vanities of the world that uh deeply affect us as on on the ego level sense of our worth But there's also in us something that doesn't want that, that really looks down and sees the futility and hopelessness of all vanity. Report an error in the passage at 28:22
28:59 And where is that from? Where does that come from? Report an error in the passage at 28:59
29:08 Now the human mind is, the Buddha in his teachings was encouraging us to investigate experience. Report an error in the passage at 29:08
29:20 And through this investigation, it wasn't analytical in the sense of based on a premise that you operated from, some kind of basic dogmatic position. But it was on the experience of mindfulness, where the mind is in a state of natural openness. And it's not where we're coming from a place of... receptivity rather than from a prescribed position. so this is very confusing to most people because most of our civilization very much encourages us to take positions, have very fixed views, opinions, ideas about life, about religion, about politics, about everything. Report an error in the passage at 29:20
30:13 You start from some kind some kind of... of Report an error in the passage at 30:13
30:19 existing And then you interpret your experience from that. But in the Buddhist practice of meditation, it's taking the experience of suffering, which is a mundane, ordinary experience, and investigating it, not on a personal level, but as experience itself. itself to just to to allow this experience of suffering to be fully consciously accepted for what it is whether it's physical pain or emotional anguish whether Report an error in the passage at 30:19
31:07 it's physical or mental this isn't a doctrine that we operate from but it is a truth a noble truth that we're encouraged to use in order to guide us Report an error in the passage at 31:07
31:22 So that our relationship to the dark side of life, to the evil forces, to the pain, the sickness, the loss, to depression, to despair, and all of it, all that is dark and frightening and unwanted and terrifying, horrifying to the human mind, Then is, rather than rejected and denied, is open to. So the relationship is embracing. Report an error in the passage at 31:22
32:03 It's an openness to the dark. Now that can sound terrifying in itself. Report an error in the passage at 32:03
32:15 Because it, that, you know, we think that is, if we open to these things, and I used to, I was brought up with this. Very dualistic attitude. If you open to that, to the dark side, then it would take you over and you'd go crazy or you'd be taken into some evil form or you'd be killed or you would die from it. Report an error in the passage at 32:15
32:47 But actually, that's not what happens, isn't it? If you start examining the dark side with this attitude of openness, acceptance, Acceptance, non-aversion. Report an error in the passage at 32:47
33:04 a determination not to act or speak any dark position, but I found that the result of that is a kind of relief that comes from having, rather than reacted with resistance, a relief, a sense of relief that allows One's self to feel at ease with these forces in which their power, their impact and their power to delude is absent and they fade away. Report an error in the passage at 33:04
33:46 They're naturally impermanent conditions that cease. And in the cessation of those conditions you're aware also of the peace, the natural peace of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 33:46
34:03 That is with us all the time, the stillness, the purity that we can experience through consciousness when we are paying attention to life, when we're not just caught up in reactivity, in just blind reactions to the irritations and the impingement that we have throughout our daily lives. Report an error in the passage at 34:03
34:36 As we grow older, too, we have to deal with so many unresolved emotions. Report an error in the passage at 34:36
34:46 And, say, in monastic life, for example, when I was younger, a younger monk, I had a more willful approach to the life. Because I was, you know, being male is one thing, being American is another. All these are kind of... Aggressive and willful karmic conditions. Being young, male and American. Being Leo also. Being big. Report an error in the passage at 34:46
35:30 So these are quite a lot of power there, willfulness and a strong kind of determination, very strong will. And also I had contempt, a lot of contempt for weakness. There's an arrogance to that also, a real arrogance that looked contemptuously at weakness. Report an error in the passage at 35:30
36:05 And so I really, there were certain emotions that I would kind of, I could feel coming that I felt were weak. And so I would just kind of snuff them out. I don't want anything to do with these weak emotions. I'm too good for that. I'm not going to wallow in this weakness. I'm going to really go for nibbāna, full force. Report an error in the passage at 36:05
36:40 But that doesn't work. Report an error in the passage at 36:40
36:45 You end up feeling always frustrated. You think, you know, I've had several times I felt I've nearly got it, you know. And it's that one slight weak moment, one heedless moment where I gave in to weakness, it all collapsed. And then I start condemning myself as not being strong enough, you know, to be stronger. Report an error in the passage at 36:45
37:11 But no matter how much effort and how I tried to make myself stronger and stronger, that would always happen. It didn't seem to be a matter of... Report an error in the passage at 37:11
37:25 But what you can get out of just willpower based on the ego is very limited. It only goes that far and it doesn't work anymore. So then it became apparent that that wasn't the way you do it. That this isn't what the Buddha meant by strive on with diligence. That's what you say at the end of the ordination procedure. To me, when I first ordained, strive on with diligence was that kind of bloody-mindedness, willing yourself to nibbāna. Report an error in the passage at 37:25
38:08 So then I noticed that even the ideal of the forest monk, this appealed to this kind of very macho side of myself, where you, you know, the... The tough forest monk out in the jungle facing the tigers and that is, you know, it's a kind of adventure story too where, you know, those kind of fantasies are even, you know, promoted because you do have this sense of, you know, really toughing it out. Report an error in the passage at 38:08
38:45 You know, life out in the jungle with the snakes and the tigers. Not letting malaria get you down and all the rest. Report an error in the passage at 38:45
38:59 Tarzan, I guess. But Report an error in the passage at 38:59
39:10 then the reflective style of Buddhist meditation is that you're seeing, you're observing the result. And obviously the result from just willfulness and force was very disappointing. You feel incredibly kind of like there's no way. You know, either you take it personally in the sense of, I can't do it, or you use some wisdom and say, well, maybe I'm doing it the wrong way. Report an error in the passage at 39:10
39:42 And then reflecting more and more on the Buddha's teachings, you know, through the experience of meditation, then I began to look at things in different ways. I began to see just my first interpretation, my first way of looking and... Report an error in the passage at 39:42
40:11 So, then the understanding of suffering, which the first noble truth, suffering. understanding of suffering. Certainly this idea of understanding became, for me from being I thought I understood something. Everybody knows what suffering is, don't we? We all understand suffering. Why make it into a noble truth? Everybody suffers. It's obvious. Report an error in the passage at 40:11
40:39 Grief, sorrow, despair, lamentation, loss of the loved. You know that up here. You think you understand it. You maybe know about it. And you certainly suffered. But to understand it, Report an error in the passage at 40:39
40:57 It wasn't an intellectual understanding. It was an intuitive understanding of suffering. So the Buddha was encouraging us to open that function, that attitude of intuition, which is an embracing conscious function of the mind. Because it's not an analytical function. It isn't a critical function of the mind. Intuition is always here and now. Report an error in the passage at 40:57
41:27 you don't, you know, you. It's the ability to open the mind in a receptive state to the present. And it's both in receptive to what you are feeling as an individual being as well as the atmosphere you're in. When you allow yourself to intuit, allow your intuition to operate, then you're aware. you know, aware of them. Report an error in the passage at 41:27
41:58 Particularly your own mood or the atmosphere of the place or the vibes or the atmosphere or the ambience or the state or the mood, isn't it? But it's not critical. It's not a critical function. Report an error in the passage at 41:58
42:16 But it is an embracing one because it's not divisive. It's not cutting anything out. But it allows all that is present to be... Report an error in the passage at 42:16
43:01 It all seems so neat and well packaged and on that level we do love our ability to reason and analyze our life and experience of living and the things that come to us in this life. Report an error in the passage at 43:01
43:26 But intuition isn't like that. It's not rational. Report an error in the passage at 43:26
43:42 how to deal with mindfully with experience. fairly recently, I remember having a certain problem. Report an error in the passage at 43:42
44:00 there were certain people Report an error in the passage at 44:00
44:11 reactions. so, then there's the intellect a Buddhist monk of over 30 years, which is, you know, you know, knows you should spread mettā for all living creatures. Report an error in the passage at 44:11
44:33 And you should forgive your enemies and all that. I'm very well aware of that. And yet, on the emotional plane was a feeling of aversion and resentment and anger. Report an error in the passage at 44:33
44:48 So then this oftentimes creates confusion with people because one thing on the intellectual side is quite high-minded and wants to do the right thing. Report an error in the passage at 44:48
45:18 gut level, this feeling of resentment, and oftentimes it can be quite, you know, quite angry, wanting to, you know, get even. Report an error in the passage at 45:18
45:32 intellectually, this throws us into We tend to dismiss, that we can either dismiss the emotion and say, or condemn ourselves, thinking, what's wrong with me that I feel this anger? Why can't I just forgive? Why can't I, you know, spread mettā and just forgive like that? Why do I have to feel like this, this anger, this gnawing resentment? Report an error in the passage at 45:32
46:00 And then the experience of mindfulness. Or this intuitive awareness, allowing for both to operate at the same time. Have you ever tried that? Report an error in the passage at 46:00
46:19 Well, it is, you do feel, you know, it's a kind of confusing thing, but it's like, I mean, but then you're, the awareness is allowing for this interplay of the emotional reaction and the intellectual ideal without taking sides. And because they're saying an intuitive moment is embracing both. It's not taking sides, one, you know, for the altruistic side or the emotional side. Report an error in the passage at 46:19
46:51 It's accepting both and not judging. And then I found that the thing resolved itself naturally without me, on Report an error in the passage at 46:51
47:07 the sense of having done anything about it, but merely learned to accept it and admit it. So this is, Report an error in the passage at 47:07
47:49 and the Buddha did emphasize, you know, as his kind of focus, which is quite unique in any... You know, the mindfulness is the kind of main, is the way. Mindfulness is the way you do this. And mindfulness then is, you know, we can, that word itself sometimes, maybe it's like I was saying to some people the other day, it isn't a word that actually I used very much until I became a Buddhist. Report an error in the passage at 47:49
48:29 In, you know, when I was, before I became a Buddhist monk, we didn't talk, we said, you know, should pay attention, things like that, but mindfulness was a word that we, I don't think I ever used before becoming a Theravadan Buddhist. Report an error in the passage at 48:29
48:47 And then I didn't quite know what it meant. You know, I thought it was a kind of, I would connect it with various things, like my first meditation. My experience was at a monastery in Bangkok where they did this Burmese meditation, Mahāsi Sayadaw meditation, where you do everything in very slow motion. Report an error in the passage at 48:47
49:10 So you have to do everything very, you know, you label everything that you're thinking and then when you're walking you're doing this very concentrated walk in a very slow way. And they said that's mindful walking. So at first I connected mindfulness with doing everything very slowly. So in order to be mindful you have to be very slow. Report an error in the passage at 49:10
49:40 And then a few months later I was at Samanera in Nong Khai and I was at a monastery where we were doing this kind of practice and the monk that was in a little Report an error in the passage at 49:40
49:55 He'd been there about 11 months before I arrived. And I'd watch him, you know. He'd eat and he'd just do everything so beautifully, you know. Each very slow motion was mindful and excruciatingly slow, you know. It took him, you know, he'd have to start eating his meal about 9 o 'clock to finish by 12. Report an error in the passage at 49:55
50:25 And he walked, but he'd been doing that for 11 months. And then one day I noticed an ambulance was there and they had to rush him to the hospital because he hadn't been able to, you know, he's constipated and in a terrible state. I hadn't enough exercise. Mindfulness has to be, you know, more practical than just doing everything slowly and premeditatedly. Report an error in the passage at 50:25
51:00 And so then I realized that that was the kind of samādhi, a concentrated style. With Lungphacha, it was very much mindfulness wasn't a matter of speed, but an attitude of this awakeness in the present. Report an error in the passage at 51:00
51:20 And that was very much how he taught us always to know what we're feeling in the present. To beware what we're doing, what we're feeling, what's happening. And then, of course, one understands that theoretically, but to do that takes years of constant kind of reminding yourself to do that. Report an error in the passage at 51:20
51:56 I was in France a couple of weeks ago. ago see Venerable Giannodaro who's a We went to India together in 1974 and he has a monastery. We arrived in Europe about the same time and he established a monastery in the south of France. And he's lived pretty much a life very much on his own and with a lot of kind of Report an error in the passage at 51:56
52:34 Meditation, more hermetic, hermetic style meditation. And then I've been involved with this whole thing here in England for the past 21 years, you know, with monks and then nuns and then monasteries and branch monasteries and then going to Thailand every year and, you know, just an endless kind of focus of so many people. Report an error in the passage at 52:34
53:01 People having to relate to so many people all the time. Report an error in the passage at 53:01
53:09 that we were talking about this. He said, Ajahn Chah wanted me to, you know, he insisted that I live this, and he was talking about himself. Report an error in the passage at 53:09
53:24 My foot's going to sleep. He's talking about himself. Ajahn Chah advised him to live a more hermetic life. And so that's what he's done. And so I thought, why did Ajahn Chah not advise me to do that? Because that's what I really wanted to do. Report an error in the passage at 53:24
53:54 And then we realized, you know, I realized that that was probably what I didn't need to do, because I wanted to do it. And this having to To open to other people. It's kind of having to take on responsibility. Having to be with people all the time. Being the focus of attention. And being responsible were all conditions that I greatly dreaded when I was a lay person. Report an error in the passage at 53:54
54:33 It was something that I would have avoided. avoided I followed my desires. Report an error in the passage at 54:33
54:48 I noticed that when I went to stay with Ajahn Chah, he would always kind of direct me out of, when I'd get into these very kind of leave me alone, I'm practicing, he would pull me out of those situations and throw me into something that was irritating me. Report an error in the passage at 54:48
55:06 you're usually doing things in groups. Report an error in the passage at 55:06
55:13 One time we... One year we were, there's this beautiful place in the northern part of the province there in Ubon and it was completely kind of out in the wilderness and a wealthy woman had offered to build a big pavilion on top of this hill if Ajahn Chah could figure out how to build a road up to the top of this hill. Report an error in the passage at 55:13
55:40 So I went with Ajahn Chah to this place and we spent a couple of weeks there and every morning he'd go out and he'd look. With some of the village men and they'd kind of circle around this mountain and look at these things and they'd come back with ideas of, they'd brought engineers from Bangkok and all kinds of advisors on how to build this road and it sounded like it would just be too expensive a project. Report an error in the passage at 55:40
56:08 But eventually he found a way, a route to the top of this hill. That wouldn't involve a great expense. And guess who would be the ones who would build it? The monks. So we all had to go there and build this road for about six months. Slave labor, like these road gangs you see in China or someplace like that. So I ended up carrying rocks and things like that. Report an error in the passage at 56:08
56:42 We camped out in the... In the open, and when we had to go on our alms round at dawn, and then we had to come back, we still kept all the monastic routine going. And in the afternoon, and with the help of the villagers, we built this road. And I remember the first, when he first asked me if I was going to go and help, my first reaction was, no, I didn't come here to build roads. Report an error in the passage at 56:42
57:09 I came here to meditate. I'm a serious meditator. Report an error in the passage at 57:09
57:15 I didn't come here to do that kind of laboring work. That's the arrogant kind of graduate student Sumedho. Report an error in the passage at 57:15
57:32 But then I felt embarrassed by that. I realized I wasn't very proud of myself for thinking like that. So I thought, well, I'll go and help a little bit and do what I can. I went and I spent there. I really enjoyed it. Whenever I go back, I look at that road and I remember the good old days. It was a heck of a lot of fun, actually. Report an error in the passage at 57:32
57:58 One of my duties, since I was one of the most stupid monks in regards to doing practical things, was carrying rocks. Report an error in the passage at 57:58
58:17 And that was good for me. I'd spend hours in the afternoon carrying rocks from one place to another. And then the village, the town and village people were great. They'd come and they'd bring cases of carbonated drinks and ice. Report an error in the passage at 58:17
58:40 We'd always be having these parties, you know. It was a real treat in northeast Thailand in those days where these things were real luxuries. To have like Pepsi-Cola, iced Pepsi-Cola was a real big treat, a real luxury. And so we were getting iced Pepsi-Colas every day. And then the Chinese shopkeepers in the town would come out with... Report an error in the passage at 58:40
59:08 Really good Chinese food every day. Really delicious Chinese food. And so the meals were good and we had this kind of esprit de corps. Everybody was between the village people and the monks and the Thai nuns would come and help cook food and everything was just really this wonderful sense of everybody working together. Report an error in the passage at 59:08
59:37 I never really experienced life like that before in terms of such a large community working together. So it was a very enjoyable memory now. Well, I did learn from that. I saw that my first reaction was the idea of working, laborious work out in the hot sun, doing something that I didn't think was terribly important. Report an error in the passage at 59:37
1:00:03 of building this pavilion on top of the hill didn't even appeal to me the that it was a wealthy woman who wanted to build it i thought well just tell her to go keep her money and just and if she the belt, she should pay for the road too. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:03
1:00:22 All my kind of views and opinions about it all, what I thought and felt about it, didn't seem to matter in the end. And, of course, it... Report an error in the passage at 1:00:22
1:00:34 It was a lesson in mindfulness too, both as I saw my own arrogance, my own unwillingness to cooperate, my own views about what meditation practice is. I saw all that kind of disappear and dissolve as I began to really appreciate Ajahn Chah's grander, more all-encompassing view of life. that I found very inspiring, which I've tried to develop in my own life. So here in Britain, for example, with this, say, like Amaravati, this was another kind of stepping out into an unknown area of taking on the responsibility of such a place. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:34
1:01:29 And yet... There was a basic trust through my own practice. And then over the years, we've been here 13 years now, the things that happen, being able to use my emotional reactions and my experiences as dharma practice, rather than seeing Amaravati as something that's preventing me from meditating or doing what I think is meditation, it is meditation. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:29
1:02:03 So you're incorporating, your mind is opening, embracing, including, expanding, rather than becoming increasingly more narrow and focused on a particular condition that you want to hold to. So in joy and depression and with this sense of intuition, Report an error in the passage at 1:02:03
1:02:35 Or awareness, mindfulness. Begin to trust your own ability to do this. I mean, it's not something that's difficult in itself. It's not like a very refined state that you have to develop under special conditions. It's quite a natural ability, too. And we do it in extreme conditions, usually like when there's danger. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:35
1:03:06 In a dangerous situation, the intuition operates much more immediately than when our life is seemingly secure and comfortable, where we can get really neurotic, can't we? In the comfort of our lovely home, with lots of money in the bank, we can drive ourselves into a mental breakdown. But when life becomes difficult, sometimes we're forced into this more total awareness. But as a religious path, then it is not depending upon the external conditions, but on our willingness and our own determination to trust ourselves to open up. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:06
1:04:03 to this embracing of both the ideals that we have and the emotional reactions we have and to trust in our abilities to sustain and accept what we're feeling and allow it to be what it is and it will naturally cease. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:03
1:04:27 We allow things to go through their, live their proper lifespan. lifespan. not trying to kill off or cut off anything. This attitude is much more benevolent and patient open to life as we experience it on this planet, in this form. It's irritating qualities, challenges, it's frustrations, dark. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:27
1:04:59 of it it's the way the way the middle way is not Separating from it, but embracing it. So I offer this as a reflection for today. And then it's now time for tea. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:59
1:05:16 Lada, the usual dependable woman that always makes tea for these occasions, has it all ready for us. So I invite you all to have a cup of tea. And then in about 20 minutes, if you want, you can... Come back and we can discuss this further. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:16
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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