The Gate to The Deathless

0:00 I want to welcome everybody here to come to these Sunday afternoon talks for reflection, contemplation. To reiterate, the Buddhist approach is to stimulate and awaken the mind rather than to condition it. So this is, I think, one of the main reasons why Buddhism is Report an error in the passage at 0:00 Highlight the passage at 0:00

0:38 An attractive religion at this time in the Western world because we no longer want to be told things. We want to be awakened. We begin to realize we have the ability to know in a more direct way than just through the grasping of somebody else's ideas or somebody else's views and words. Report an error in the passage at 0:38 Highlight the passage at 0:38

1:11 So I get this note about Venerable Nanda Maitreya, who'd passed away on the 18th of July, 102 years old, and last time I saw him, I asked him, I invited him to spend the Vasa range retreat here, and he says, oh yes, I'll do that, I'll have to find time. Report an error in the passage at 1:11 Highlight the passage at 1:11

1:39 I thought, 102, you know, but he still had it. It's kind of a... If body was 102 only, mentally, he was ageless. And then the subject for contemplation is Gate to the Deathless, which is, of course, my theme song, really. Report an error in the passage at 1:39 Highlight the passage at 1:39

2:10 Because Report an error in the passage at 2:10 Highlight the passage at 2:10

2:16 this has always been something that I felt very... Kind of intuitively this sense of deathlessness and of course we live in a realm where death is the most obvious power that we all have to face. After birth and what happens between birth and death is all subject to various other Report an error in the passage at 2:16 Highlight the passage at 2:16

3:00 so forth, but then the inevitable death is something that we all experience in the future. Report an error in the passage at 3:00 Highlight the passage at 3:00

3:11 because the human tendency is to identify strongly with the physical body being one's self, What we feel is really mine. Then the sense of death is a very strong feeling. It's something that seems, you know, this is definitely going to happen. We're all going to die. And death is, you know, something to dread or it's oftentimes looked on as something bad or something depressing. Report an error in the passage at 3:11 Highlight the passage at 3:11

3:51 Because it... It is the unknown. It's what we haven't experienced yet. So it remains the mystery in terms of experience, in terms of physical death anyway. It's something we will find out and we will all definitely experience. But between birth and death is the opportunity for enlightenment. Report an error in the passage at 3:51 Highlight the passage at 3:51

4:19 So that on a Vesakha Puja celebration in the Theravāda tradition, you have this, you celebrate the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Lord Buddha. Report an error in the passage at 4:19 Highlight the passage at 4:19

4:31 And so Western people who like to be factual and historically accurate, they don't believe that the Buddha actually could have been born, was enlightened, and died on the full moon of May. Report an error in the passage at 4:31 Highlight the passage at 4:31

4:46 You know, it's just too... Report an error in the passage at 4:46 Highlight the passage at 4:46

4:50 Sounds too neat, like a package deal rather than an actual human life. But that's not the point, is it? It's the fact that now we're experiencing the enlightenment potential, say, between birth and death. This is a reflection, of course. And, of course, we... We tend to see enlightenment as something that is maybe a very remote possibility, something that generally most people Report an error in the passage at 4:50 Highlight the passage at 4:50

5:40 regard as being something very unlikely. Report an error in the passage at 5:40 Highlight the passage at 5:40

5:50 So... Report an error in the passage at 5:50 Highlight the passage at 5:50

6:02 this is too close. Contemplate what do we mean by enlightenment, and is it something that remote, that difficult, that impossible? Report an error in the passage at 6:02 Highlight the passage at 6:02

6:20 Trouble with any religious tradition is it tends to put the religious teachings into the kind of, they're apotheosized, they're put up among the stars, they're raised up on high. So in Thailand, you even have monasteries that put all the religious books in a bookcase. They have a Buddha Rūpa, and then they have a bookcase with the Tripitaka in it. Report an error in the passage at 6:20 Highlight the passage at 6:20

6:52 And nobody reads this Tripitaka, but they bow to it. Very few would read it, but they bow to it. And they bow to the Buddha image, and they bow to the Bhikkhusanga, you know, the monk. And thinking this is paying respect to the Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha. So religion oftentimes is put into this very high position to where the average person can't relate to it as something that they can actually do or something that is something for themselves. Report an error in the passage at 6:52 Highlight the passage at 6:52

7:34 So that even though we were all born, And we know we're all going to die. Enlightenment can be seen as something that maybe the Buddha did. Somebody like the Buddha could get enlightened. Who's this sage whose apotheosis means that he's way up in the stars now. He's a special being with a fantastic history and with special qualities that none of us could possibly claim. Report an error in the passage at 7:34 Highlight the passage at 7:34

8:08 We're also informed about the age of the Kali Yuga, the age of destruction. It certainly seems like that in many cases. And then there's so many depressing ways to look at the human life at this time that we sometimes forget or don't appreciate or have never really contemplated or considered. The opportunity that we have now as living, breathing human beings at this time, no matter what yuga it is, or no matter if it's the end of a millennium, end of a century, or as far as Buddhism goes, it's the middle of a century. Report an error in the passage at 8:08 Highlight the passage at 8:08

9:00 It's 25, 40, 41. It's the middle. But if you get into the Christian, then it's the end of a century. So who's right, who's wrong? Is this relative or is it absolute or what? Report an error in the passage at 9:00 Highlight the passage at 9:00

9:17 But it does, what we can do with it is to reflect upon it, how conventions, how words, how teachings, how traditions, symbols and forms and ideas, how they affect our mind. Report an error in the passage at 9:17 Highlight the passage at 9:17

9:37 And so this deathlessness, this gate to the deathless is a symbol that to me had a lot of, I particularly found interesting because Report an error in the passage at 9:37 Highlight the passage at 9:37

9:55 for many people Buddhism is just a kind of almost a therapeutic, a form of therapy where you kind of Deal with your stuff, as they say. In Amaravati, one woman recently criticized us for saying, all you people talk about is dealing with your stuff. Report an error in the passage at 9:55 Highlight the passage at 9:55

10:20 I Report an error in the passage at 10:20 Highlight the passage at 10:20

10:27 know this is the common jargon of the age. Sometimes that's what it seems like. What are you doing today? Well, I'm just dealing with my stuff today. Report an error in the passage at 10:27 Highlight the passage at 10:27

10:50 And for many people, that's probably what they're... That's all they're doing. But as far as, say, a religious path, which takes you to the ultimate, to the perfection of humanity, of being human, maybe that's too high. Maybe I'm just being too high-minded or idealistic or unrealistic about life. And, of course, people do throw these kind of criticisms at me. Report an error in the passage at 10:50 Highlight the passage at 10:50

11:29 like this emphasis on the deathless, they find it uncomfortable or it sounds too abstract to nothing that they can see has any value because you can't see the deathless, you can't it in the way that you can prove the existence of suffering. Report an error in the passage at 11:29 Highlight the passage at 11:29

11:53 you can... You know, a conditioned experience we all can relate to very well. Any form of pain or suffering or disease, we all have a good idea of what that's about. Or happiness, success, being praised, being prosperous, development, progress. We can all relate to these kind of images as being, you know, they want to be successful and happy and healthy. Report an error in the passage at 11:53 Highlight the passage at 11:53

12:23 And that are the desires of this realm, this realm that we live in. And then the fear of everything going wrong, of being a failure, of being unhappy, of being sick, and having terrible health, of getting cancer, of losing your loved ones and your home and your job. All these are the great fears of human society and of human individuals. Report an error in the passage at 12:23 Highlight the passage at 12:23

13:00 And, of course, religion's function is this pointing at the deathless. To be a religion, it has to be a convention, a tradition whose aim is pointing directly at the deathless. Or, and this is a Buddhist way of looking at it, or say God or eternal life or whatever various salvation, liberation, freedom, vimuti, moksha, salvation, all these are words that convey that ultimate realization that's possible for the human individual. Report an error in the passage at 13:00 Highlight the passage at 13:00

13:53 So this is to be contemplated. Some Buddhists say, well, we don't believe in God and in an eternal soul. Because the Buddha deliberately refrained from using terms of that kind. The Buddha's teachings were based on the experience of suffering and the realization of non-suffering. He brought the religious path into a kind of practical experience that everybody can understand because everybody suffers, everybody has experienced suffering. Report an error in the passage at 13:53 Highlight the passage at 13:53

14:39 But deathless or the ultimate release or nibbāna or these kind of words, they stop the mind. We can't figure them out. We would like to, we'd like to say, is there a deathless, or what is it then? When you die, that means if you're enlightened, your kind of soul kind of merges with the ultimate soul, or something like this, or Buddha would never talk like that. Report an error in the passage at 14:39 Highlight the passage at 14:39

15:14 Or there's an ordinary self, and then there's an over-self. Some people talk like this, but Buddhists, we don't talk about over-self and little self. Report an error in the passage at 15:14 Highlight the passage at 15:14

15:24 We talk about self as no self. So there's a sense of trying to describe the realization of the deathless. These are various attempts at doing that. Merging with God or union with the ultimate or ultimate liberation. Report an error in the passage at 15:24 Highlight the passage at 15:24

15:49 But we don't know what they are. We can make them sound Like, they sound very good, don't they? Like going to heaven or union with God or one with the ultimate, things like that. It sounds like it might be a very desirable thing to aim for. But in terms of our own experience, we don't really know what it is. Report an error in the passage at 15:49 Highlight the passage at 15:49

16:20 Maybe a heaven state where everything is easy and beautiful and pleasant and we... We're always happy. Maybe the best we can create, a vision of the afterlife at its best, is a kind of heavenly realm. Report an error in the passage at 16:20 Highlight the passage at 16:20

16:39 Like a children's view, isn't it? The soda water fountains, mountains of ice cream. You can stay up as late as you want. Report an error in the passage at 16:39 Highlight the passage at 16:39

16:53 And everybody's nice and kind and you're with God and he's loving. And you don't hurt yourself, you don't get measles or chicken pox in heaven. Things like that must be like a child's vision of wouldn't it be nice if everything were nice, if everything were perfect. But in terms of experience, we don't know. The realm we live in is filled with a lot of pain and frustration. Report an error in the passage at 16:53 Highlight the passage at 16:53

17:26 So I remember even as a small child, you know, you fall down and Report an error in the passage at 17:26 Highlight the passage at 17:26

17:33 pain in the knee and I'd wonder why, do we have to suffer pain? know, if I were God, I would have, I would have created human beings so they wouldn't have any pain. It's the thing like that. do we have to have pain like, like a skinned knee a spraining an ankle or breaking an arm or getting the, the flu or the, the The measles or the chickenpox, why do we have to suffer with this stuff? Why couldn't God have created a world where there's no pain and no disease? Report an error in the passage at 17:33 Highlight the passage at 17:33

18:08 Because that's what it would seem like would be a perfect realm. If you're going to create something, why not create something perfect? Why create something that's basically imperfect? These are the moral dilemmas. And the doubts that arise in religious-minded people. Report an error in the passage at 18:08 Highlight the passage at 18:08

18:37 The Buddha never used a creation theory. And so he never, when the pandits and the Brahmins and the sages and the religious leaders of his time, you know, used to try to corner him in the scriptures. Some of these are quite amusing. They try to corner the Buddha. And then say, OK, is there a god or not a god? And what happens when you die? When the enlightened one dies, does he merge into something called the deathless? Report an error in the passage at 18:37 Highlight the passage at 18:37

19:12 Or what happens to the soul and so forth? And the Buddha remained silent. Report an error in the passage at 19:12 Highlight the passage at 19:12

19:22 And then the pandits would say, he doesn't know. He can't answer the question. If he's a Buddha, he certainly must know everything. And so he certainly would know this. If he's a real Buddha, he's obviously not a Buddha. But then silence itself is an answer to that question. Because silence is where we stop. When you go silent, you stop trying, you stop thinking, you stop struggling. Report an error in the passage at 19:22 Highlight the passage at 19:22

20:00 It's the stopping of that. Endless kind of movement of the mind, that restlessness of thinking and emotion that we get caught by, we get pulled into, we get carried away with it. Report an error in the passage at 20:00 Highlight the passage at 20:00

20:17 And that's where we find in our own society now, here in England, isn't it? So much suffering is around the restless, wandering mind, the obsessive thoughts, the negativity we have. How much we worry about everything, how many things that we can find to worry about in a society that's fairly well run, that is affluent, and yet we can spend our days just worrying about next year, or what's going to happen when I retire, Report an error in the passage at 20:17 Highlight the passage at 20:17

21:00 or things like this. Report an error in the passage at 21:00 Highlight the passage at 21:00

21:04 What's going to happen when the children grow up? Will I lose my job? This is a problem that many people worry about now, redundancy, unemployment. Report an error in the passage at 21:04 Highlight the passage at 21:04

21:20 So the mind is very much a mind that creates problems. It's a creative mind. We create endlessly. We proliferate. We bring out into it, make things exist. unemployment. Report an error in the passage at 21:20 Highlight the passage at 21:20

21:36 that are not necessarily skillful or useful or good, but habitual. We're caught in the momentum of our habits and this habitual kind of anxiety and worry seem to follow us even into a fairly safe family life, society. Report an error in the passage at 21:36 Highlight the passage at 21:36

22:10 countries, and yet what we produce out of our minds is oftentimes quite negative. Report an error in the passage at 22:10 Highlight the passage at 22:10

22:20 see what's wrong we see how things can go wrong how everything that we've given importance to every investment we've made in life can be just taken away from us or suddenly vanish in the thin air Yeah. Ajahn Viradhamma was telling me about coming back from Latvia recently where he is saying these people in the Eastern European countries like Latvia, they work hard under the Soviet system, save lots of money. Report an error in the passage at 22:20 Highlight the passage at 22:20

23:09 retire now with a good pension, suddenly your money is worthless. Just how it can just dissolve into thin air. Forty years of hard work and saving. so we recognize that life on this planet in this way is basically... It's very uncertain. Its nature is insecure. And Report an error in the passage at 23:09 Highlight the passage at 23:09

23:36 so the Buddha was pointing to this, that the conditioned realm is something not to take refuge in, not to use your life only to seek security and happiness in the conditioned world, either through finding somebody A person you love and getting dependent on them or having lots of money or political and economic systems, social systems, all of these things are subject to sudden and immediate change. Report an error in the passage at 23:36 Highlight the passage at 23:36

24:14 And so it's either through war or through economic failure or through catastrophe or natural catastrophe. There's a terrible tidal wave that hit Papua New Guinea. You know, Report an error in the passage at 24:14 Highlight the passage at 24:14

24:30 I think a thousand people, they haven't been able to count all the dead bodies yet, of a tidal wave that just completely demolished the part of Papua New Guinea. This was only a couple of days ago. Report an error in the passage at 24:30 Highlight the passage at 24:30

24:54 So this uncertainty, this insecurity, is the suffering that we tend to resist. It's like, tell me everything's going to be okay. Report an error in the passage at 24:54 Highlight the passage at 24:54

25:07 Say everything is all right. Tell me that, you know, we go to the fortune tellers or the astrologists or anything just to hope to get some good prophecy for the future of prosperity and success and happiness. And like on birthdays and things like this, you say, may you live a long life and be successful and prosperous and happy and healthy. Report an error in the passage at 25:07 Highlight the passage at 25:07

25:36 More and more years, and you don't say, may you awaken to the insecurity of this realm, that you could die almost any time and any savings you might have might suddenly disappear. Report an error in the passage at 25:36 Highlight the passage at 25:36

25:56 This is not a way to make yourself popular in life. Report an error in the passage at 25:56 Highlight the passage at 25:56

26:07 That would be more honest, wouldn't it? Report an error in the passage at 26:07 Highlight the passage at 26:07

26:13 But yet, in our hearts, we... We long for this, like a long life, which may be in some cases an aspiration for the ultimate, for the deathless. Because when you think about living a long life in a physical body, it doesn't sound very attractive, especially when you're getting old, to think of having to live 64 more years in an increasing, decrepit physical body. Report an error in the passage at 26:13 Highlight the passage at 26:13

26:47 It doesn't sound like an attractive prospect to me. Report an error in the passage at 26:47 Highlight the passage at 26:47

26:53 Maybe, well, modern medicine will come out with increasing, you know, take a pill and suddenly your whole, you know, it'll renew everything in your body and you'll suddenly have a young heart, a young liver, a young kidney. Everything will go young again. Report an error in the passage at 26:53 Highlight the passage at 26:53

27:11 I think, what if we reversed the whole process? You find yourself getting younger and younger and ended up as a baby. Report an error in the passage at 27:11 Highlight the passage at 27:11

27:26 That would be it. I Report an error in the passage at 27:26 Highlight the passage at 27:26

27:32 don't think I'd like that, would you? Report an error in the passage at 27:32 Highlight the passage at 27:32

27:46 In terms of, say, like Christianity, like when I was Christian, we were told God is here with us all the time. And so then you kept thinking, well, where is he then? You know, I don't see him. Well, you just have to open yourself to God and he'll be there. As I remember, when I was young, trying to do this, trying to open myself to God, waiting for something to happen, nothing happened. Report an error in the passage at 27:46 Highlight the passage at 27:46

28:18 Because I still saw God as a kind of, you know, something that was going to happen, as a condition, really, because the word God itself, that way of thinking, because Christianity so anthropomorphizes God, that you... You always think of it as like this patriarchal figure. So a part of you is kind of expecting some kind of patriarchal figure or something to happen that will say, I'm God and I'm with you all the time and some statement, you know, some voice out of inside or outside coming at you. Report an error in the passage at 28:18 Highlight the passage at 28:18

29:03 I am here, you are safe. But nothing ever happened like that. So then one tended to dismiss that possibility as just Christian way of talking and kind of convincing you, trying to convince you to believe. In the Buddhist approach, oftentimes the deathless is something that's overlooked. Report an error in the passage at 29:03 Highlight the passage at 29:03

29:38 Because it's not given a form like God the Father or given some kind of presence in some kind of anthropomorphic form. So it remains like an abstraction because deathlessness sounds like an idea rather than a reality. Report an error in the passage at 29:38 Highlight the passage at 29:38

30:00 Because everything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think is... It's transient and changing. It all ends. Everything ends. So there's this continuous beginning and ending going on as experience through the sense realm, through the conditions of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 30:00 Highlight the passage at 30:00

30:21 And so we really think of, when we try to contemplate the deathless, the mind goes quite empty. Try to think about the deathless. What kind of image? Can you get an image? Report an error in the passage at 30:21 Highlight the passage at 30:21

30:42 Maybe a big kind of like the Zen, this kind of circle with one end open. It's about the neatest form probably. That's just my impression. But then silence. Report an error in the passage at 30:42 Highlight the passage at 30:42

31:05 Because when you stop thinking, everything goes silent. Report an error in the passage at 31:05 Highlight the passage at 31:05

31:12 The ending of thought, isn't it, when a thought ceases and you don't start thinking again, the silence, the mind is very silent, still. Report an error in the passage at 31:12 Highlight the passage at 31:12

31:25 You can, we have words like infinity and eternity conveying immeasurable states that, you know, that time or timelessness or Report an error in the passage at 31:25 Highlight the passage at 31:25

31:42 distance that has no boundary, no end to it. And that we can't conceive of. We call it infinite, but it means it's just beyond our ability to see any boundary, any limitation. Report an error in the passage at 31:42 Highlight the passage at 31:42

31:56 And eternity, like time that goes on forever and never ceases. We think of it in terms of time rather than timelessness. Report an error in the passage at 31:56 Highlight the passage at 31:56

32:10 And yet in terms of experience, eternity is timeless. And I think Blake had one poem about this eternity, you know, as the here and now, this sense of the eternal, the moment, the eternal moment, the presence now, the here and now is eternity. Where Report an error in the passage at 32:10 Highlight the passage at 32:10

32:37 Before I ever contemplated that word, I kept thinking of eternity as like time that just goes on and on and on and on and on, never ends. Report an error in the passage at 32:37 Highlight the passage at 32:37

32:51 So this is where we contemplate, you know, we're considering now, just with our language, with our concepts that we use, our thoughts, what do we really mean by these words and what are they signifying, what are they pointing to? Report an error in the passage at 32:51 Highlight the passage at 32:51

33:14 So in terms of direct experience in meditation, in Buddhist meditation, what do you do when you're meditating? You know, in the formal techniques of Buddhist meditation, are around sitting still, usually, and concentrating the mind, opening the mind, being fully aware and awake in the present. Report an error in the passage at 33:14 Highlight the passage at 33:14

33:46 So that this present, because this present moment is all we ever experience. That's all there ever is for us, is the eternal present. Report an error in the passage at 33:46 Highlight the passage at 33:46

33:59 This is where the birth takes place, enlightenment and death is in the present. For us now, physical death, say, is in the future. But enlightenment is now. Enlightenment is now. I don't feel enlightened. Or, when you try to think of it and understand it through thought or analysis, you just get tangled up by it. Report an error in the passage at 33:59 Highlight the passage at 33:59

34:32 You just go around and around and there's no point in thinking or defining or trying to imagine it. But in the reality of it, the simple reality of that, We consciously experience through awareness. So that's the gate to the deathless. And this gate, you know, it's the entrance. And so it's like the human individual, each one of us is at this point, this gate, we're at this gate. Report an error in the passage at 34:32 Highlight the passage at 34:32

35:13 There's death, death-bound things are here. We're used to that. We're used to all this death stuff. All our stuff is about death. Report an error in the passage at 35:13 Highlight the passage at 35:13

35:26 And so all this stuff, we're used to that. The world, the sense of ourself, our personality, our cultural conditioning, our views and opinions, our emotional habits, our prejudices and biases, and our sense of self-importance or self-hatred. And the rest of it, the whole range of conditioned experience from A to Z is on this side of the game. Report an error in the passage at 35:26 Highlight the passage at 35:26

36:00 We're here. We feel at ease within this side because we're used to it. So sometimes you find people just absorbing themselves in various obsessive ways of just... you know, in... ...of heightening experience or through deadening experience, like the drug scene in the past 40 years in the West. Report an error in the passage at 36:00 Highlight the passage at 36:00

36:31 Before, when I was a youngster, there were no drugs. When I was in the Navy, I was in the Navy, 1953, 1957. And, you know, sailors, American sailors aren't noted for just going to missions and playing canasta when they go to port. Report an error in the passage at 36:31 Highlight the passage at 36:31

36:58 And so you find, you know, you're subject to quite a lot of temptations. And I was on a ship that was, you know, sailing all over the Pacific Ocean to the... Japan and Philippines, Hong Kong, and then west coast of the United States to Hawaii and San Francisco, San Diego, and wherever you go, there's always something, some kind of thing that they're trying to sell you. Report an error in the passage at 36:58 Highlight the passage at 36:58

37:38 So in Japan, it was brothels. As soon as you got into the port, the taxi drivers were there, and they'd take you immediately to the brothels. Report an error in the passage at 37:38 Highlight the passage at 37:38

37:50 Kong, it was the tailors. Report an error in the passage at 37:50 Highlight the passage at 37:50

37:56 Diego is the Christian missionaries. San Francisco, it was the homosexuals. Report an error in the passage at 37:56 Highlight the passage at 37:56

38:06 these specialties that each port provided to try out or to accept or refuse or whatever, but none of these ports ever to sell. This was 1953 to 1957. A lot of liquor and drink and things like that, but no drugs. And this was, so this is interesting, and after the 60s, it was always the, this drug scene developed. Report an error in the passage at 38:06 Highlight the passage at 38:06

38:47 Many young people now, Probably think of drugs as an ongoing problem, but say in the United States, I'm sure it was the same here in the UK, in the 50s this wasn't a problem for most people. Rare, a very rare individual would get caught into the drug scene, or if there was one. But now it's a very common problem because this is also a way to... Report an error in the passage at 38:47 Highlight the passage at 38:47

39:16 to Influence conscious experience. Because when we think in a certain way, when we have a lot of negative imagery, negative thoughts and emotions, and that the drugs are a very quick way to just stop it all, isn't it? To change the mental quality of experience. Either to doll it out or to heighten experience into making it... Report an error in the passage at 39:16 Highlight the passage at 39:16

40:01 the ordinary being presence here and now overlooked all the time don't awaken to the present very few people really awaken unless That's, They're in a situation that demands like a dangerous, physical danger where you have to pay attention. When you're driving a car, isn't it, you have to, there's something in you has to wake up to just know where you are and who's walking where and what cars are coming and where you are and read the signs. Report an error in the passage at 40:01 Highlight the passage at 40:01

40:37 Or climbing mountains, glaciers. Or rock climbing has become popular, where you train yourself to climb up rocky cliffs or escarpments, a sheer kind of cliffs, amazing thing that people can do just to be awake, to feel alive. Because when you're not awake and your life has no intensity to it of any sort, one easily drifts into depression. Report an error in the passage at 40:37 Highlight the passage at 40:37

41:14 One gets bored and one just cannot stand to be that way. Drink and drugs, doing exciting things, endless distractions are ways of feeding the conditioned experience to bring the extremities of experience into consciousness. But that which is neither extreme, neither pleasant or painful, neither beautiful or ugly, neither exciting or boring good or bad is something that sounds so dreary. Report an error in the passage at 41:14 Highlight the passage at 41:14

41:56 boring, so tedious, that we don't even contemplate that this is a positive Now Report an error in the passage at 41:56 Highlight the passage at 41:56

42:11 in the Buddha's path, the Buddha encouraged us to really reflect on The conditioned realm as experience is not to judge the conditioned realm. We're not going to say all the conditioned realm is just, you know, it's all impermanent and it's suffering and just kind of dismiss life in general. The conditioned experiences and sensory experience and beauty. I've heard people say beauty is impermanent, you know, just dismiss beauty as don't bother with it, it's impermanent. Report an error in the passage at 42:11 Highlight the passage at 42:11

42:50 Or love, relationships, just dismiss them as it's all suffering, all impermanent. And that's not reflecting, that's taking a stand. Report an error in the passage at 42:50 Highlight the passage at 42:50

43:02 That's using this Buddhist teaching to dismiss experience rather than to examine it. This is where sometimes the Vipassanā teachings or the emphasis on On meditation can be merely a kind of conditioning of the mind to just see things with Buddhist biases, Buddhist images. Report an error in the passage at 43:02 Highlight the passage at 43:02

43:35 But when you really examine the Buddhist teaching, that's not what he was teaching. He didn't want that at all. For us to just follow, Buddha said everything is impermanent and all beauty and all these conditioned things are impermanent. impermanent, they all are suffering, they're all unsatisfactory. Report an error in the passage at 43:35 Highlight the passage at 43:35

44:05 examination, on looking into. Report an error in the passage at 44:05 Highlight the passage at 44:05

44:10 this is where in, say, vipassanā training, where you're looking into experience, you're actually observing. What you are feeling, when it's not judging, it's not criticizing anything you're feeling, it's not praising or blaming or anything, it's just noticing. It's like this. That anger is like this and greed is like this. Report an error in the passage at 44:10 Highlight the passage at 44:10

44:37 And it's not saying greed is bad. Greed feels like this. Feeling insecure is like this. And so you kind of look inward, you feel confused or uncertain, insecure, and you begin to look at it as it is, as experience, rather than just seeing it as some kind of personal stuff that you should be able to process and get rid of eventually. Report an error in the passage at 44:37 Highlight the passage at 44:37

45:12 So you're really beginning to awaken the mind to the way things are in the present, to... Through the many emotional habits we have already that we tend to just dismiss and ignore because maybe we don't like them or we can't be bothered with it or we just resist or we're programmed to resist it or to deny them. Report an error in the passage at 45:12 Highlight the passage at 45:12

45:46 So the awakened mind, waking up, listening, paying attention, Through the four foundations of mindfulness, which is the body, we all have a body, physical body now, so we start awakening to the experience of the body in the presence, like this. Report an error in the passage at 45:46 Highlight the passage at 45:46

46:11 And so you're looking at your body now in an intuitive way, rather than in like a vain way, where if you look in the mirror and say how old you are, whether you look good or not, that's vanity, but... But in terms of intuition, the body is like, you don't need a mirror. You can even close your eyes and you can still be aware of the body as experience. Report an error in the passage at 46:11 Highlight the passage at 46:11

46:37 As feeling as experience. As mental, as the mood of your mind, the state of mind you're in, you can be aware of. It's like this. So that these foundations for mindfulness being Bringing into consciousness the way it is and noting the changingness of it. Because when you really are with the condition of the present, you can't sustain, you can't kind of petrify it into being permanent. Report an error in the passage at 46:37 Highlight the passage at 46:37

47:11 It's very, you know, changeable. Report an error in the passage at 47:11 Highlight the passage at 47:11

47:18 You know, like just awareness of the body. Try to petrify a physical, the physical body as experience in the present. It's impossible. I can't do it. Or feelings of any sort. Pain. Physical pain, which oftentimes seems, you know, like it's really permanent. Report an error in the passage at 47:18 Highlight the passage at 47:18

47:44 But when you're really open to this pain, physical pain, it's very fluctuating, kind of rhythmic and up and down. And fades out and intensifies and it's movement, it's change or mood, state of mind you're in. Report an error in the passage at 47:44 Highlight the passage at 47:44

48:08 You can't hold it, you can't make it kind of fixate it and hold it for very long because it's just like once you really see it, it tends to, you're aware of its changingness, it's kind of the way it breaks up and doesn't have any core or anything that you can Hold it together, except through ignorance. Holding to the idea that I am angry or I am resentful gives it a kind of solidity and kind of gives it a permanent appearance, which is not the way it really is, but the way we can believe in it, the way we tend to think about it. Report an error in the passage at 48:08 Highlight the passage at 48:08

48:57 Contemplate this in your own life when you really... Pay attention to experience in the present. And that paying attention, then, is you can pay attention to boredom. Report an error in the passage at 48:57 Highlight the passage at 48:57

49:11 This sounds boring, usually, but paying attention to boredom isn't boring. We're not used to it. We're used to paying attention to things that are interesting, but things that are boring, then we tend to get absorbed into the things that are interesting. Report an error in the passage at 49:11 Highlight the passage at 49:11

49:34 One interesting thing is pay attention to them and then they absorb our attention. And then when they get boring, we tend to go on to something else. So boredom itself or suffering as the first noble truth is to understand it, to really feel it, know it, examine it, investigate it. Report an error in the passage at 49:34 Highlight the passage at 49:34

50:01 And then that you begin to see the, recognize the presence and then it's, Then it ceases, it's absent. So this is why this gate to the deathless, this image of the point of intersection between the timeless with time, this point of, say, to me this means like each one of us is a conscious human being who's at this point of intersection. Report an error in the passage at 50:01 Highlight the passage at 50:01

50:32 We're poised on this point where we can look at the death, And we can look at the deathless, realize the deathless. Now it's up to you to find out what that really is in terms of your own experience. Remember, experience is always now. So it's not tomorrow, it's now. So by investigating the death-bound conditions, the conditioned realm in terms of impermanence, Report an error in the passage at 50:32 Highlight the passage at 50:32

51:11 lose as we break, what that really does if done properly is break down our attachment and our belief breaks through all our cultural biases and attitudes that have been Report an error in the passage at 51:11 Highlight the passage at 51:11

51:27 influencing us all our lives as you begin to look at life in terms of these characteristics these conditions as anicca duca nata And then what? Then you can also, when you let go of the conditioned realm and no longer grasp it or believe in it, then what is left is the unconditioned. You begin to turn to the unconditioned or the deathless. And that's called a realization. Report an error in the passage at 51:27 Highlight the passage at 51:27

52:07 It's a reality. That is now, but is generally overlooked, not noticed because of our habits, which are very much formed with attachments to the death-bound condition. Report an error in the passage at 52:07 Highlight the passage at 52:07

52:26 So this is the challenge the Buddha gives us, to wake up, not just to sort out our stuff, but to recognize the way things really are. Whatever your stuff is, it's not yours, and it's impermanent, and it's... And it's naturally unsatisfactory, so it's not your fault. Don't feel bad because you're not perfect or you haven't got it all together and you're not... Report an error in the passage at 52:26 Highlight the passage at 52:26

52:57 Maybe you've had many disappointments. Maybe much of your experience of life has been disappointing, despairing, or hardships, or maybe you've had to suffer unfair treatment. Report an error in the passage at 52:57 Highlight the passage at 52:57

53:16 Lack of recognition and love and appreciation. These are possible. But these are not obstructions to enlightenment. Whatever karmic load you've had to bear, it's not a matter of it having to be a certain way, but whatever way it is, you investigate it in terms of... That have seen it in a highly personal way, see it in terms of the way it is or the dhamma. All conditions are impermanent. Report an error in the passage at 53:16 Highlight the passage at 53:16

53:55 And then you begin to, that awakened state is like you begin to trust it and you recognize, realize the silence of the mind, the pure state of being. Report an error in the passage at 53:55 Highlight the passage at 53:55

54:13 I remember We keep this vinaya, this monastic discipline very strictly in the kind of monastery I lived in in northeast Thailand. They're very strict on this discipline. They talk about purity in vinaya. So I remember trying to keep all these rules as strictly as possible. Oftentimes it meant, you know, taking them to the most extreme interpretation, you know, to make sure that you... Report an error in the passage at 54:13 Highlight the passage at 54:13

54:44 Your purity in Vinaya is sustainable. And so you can get really caught up into keeping all these rules, doing all these things right, in the right way, and then never feeling pure. Report an error in the passage at 54:44 Highlight the passage at 54:44

55:06 Maybe there's something I'm not really facing yet. There's endless doubts coming into the mind. You know, on the... Maybe, you know, I've got to be more strict. I've got to be, I'm not pure enough. And I've got to, you know, why is it all these years I'm not pure, really pure enough? Report an error in the passage at 55:06 Highlight the passage at 55:06

55:31 And then I began to recognize that that's not where purity is, is in keeping the rules. I began to contemplate, what is purity as experience? Am I... The Buddha said, you know, the conditioned realm is not self. So if I think I'm pure or impure, that's a sense of self, both holding to the sense of I'm pure or I'm impure. Report an error in the passage at 55:31 Highlight the passage at 55:31

56:01 So then, just by recognizing that, the sense of purity is aligned with me as a person, or impurity or purity, it's the same thing, the same problem. Report an error in the passage at 56:01 Highlight the passage at 56:01

56:17 And then as your mind stops trying to become or create an idea of purity or becoming pure, you awaken to what is really pure, which is natural to each one of us. Purity is now. It's not something that you don't have. Even if you've been living the most disreputable life, you're still basically pure. Report an error in the passage at 56:17 Highlight the passage at 56:17

56:46 And this purity... Cannot be made impure by anything you do or say or think. Do you believe me? Report an error in the passage at 56:46 Highlight the passage at 56:46

57:07 So contemplate this in terms of this purity. But it's not personal. It's not like I'm pure as a person. Because as a person there's a lot of impurities. Personality is basically impure. It's imperfect. As nobody's personality is pure. No matter how good you are, you're still not pure. So then purity then is something else. Report an error in the passage at 57:07 Highlight the passage at 57:07

57:39 It's not goodness, being good, but it's a natural state that we forget, that we separate ourselves from through ignorance. Even though we're not really separate, that forgetting it all the time, Getting caught up, being fully bound into the conditions of being somebody, being a personality, being the body you have, or becoming whatever, or whatever views you have about yourself, good or bad, that whole kind of thought, those kind of thoughts and perceptions, if you just get caught into that then It is an endless task. There's no way you can purify all that. Report an error in the passage at 57:39 Highlight the passage at 57:39

58:30 Because those conditions are basically dukkha. They're all dukkha and they're all anattā. But you're using these concepts to look at things, to reflect on them. Report an error in the passage at 58:30 Highlight the passage at 58:30

58:47 So then the purity is realized through letting go of them. You realize the true nature of being is pure. And you remember it because it's like it resonates in your heart. This is true. This isn't just me trying to convince myself of anything. Report an error in the passage at 58:47 Highlight the passage at 58:47

59:11 It's like they say, going home. It's your real home where you don't have to prove yourself. You don't have to become anything. You don't have to be anybody for anybody. You don't have to... In worldly terms, you know, the world suddenly is no longer what you're living for. You're no longer held and bound into those worldly attitudes. Report an error in the passage at 59:11 Highlight the passage at 59:11

59:41 So you're liberated from the world. It doesn't mean you've rejected the world. The world no longer deludes, no longer is your refuge or the place that you're attached to. Report an error in the passage at 59:41 Highlight the passage at 59:41

59:57 And so then you begin to appreciate your own humanity and the opportunity that we have as human beings for this realization and this liberation. Report an error in the passage at 59:57 Highlight the passage at 59:57

1:00:15 Salvation, maybe. Because you talk to Christian monks who meditate and it's not that, you know, they're doing the same thing, actually. They tend to have their own, you know, Christian terminology. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:15 Highlight the passage at 1:00:15

1:00:33 But we're getting beyond the terms, isn't it? The terminologies aren't so important anymore because it's the experience, the reality of it. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:33 Highlight the passage at 1:00:33

1:00:43 So I remember one time when Ajahn Chah was in England, the second time, and we were making this film called The Buddha Comes to Sussex for the BBC. And we went to this Anglican... Report an error in the passage at 1:00:43 Highlight the passage at 1:00:43

1:01:05 monastery somewhere in Sussex or some kind of theological school or some place anyway Church of England and the priest came out and they were all kind of excited to have us there and so one vicar one priest said ask Ajahn Chah if there's a Buddhist ultimate truth and a Christian ultimate truth so I asked Ajahn Chah Ajahn Chah looks and he says How can there be two ultimate truths? Report an error in the passage at 1:01:05 Highlight the passage at 1:01:05

1:01:48 Ultimate truth is ultimate, you know, not two. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:48 Highlight the passage at 1:01:48

1:01:56 This is what the aim is, to realize that ultimate truth, which is now, and which is... So present that we don't notice, like a fish in the water, isn't it? Or, you know, so here, so much now, that purity is never separate, never lost, but we don't notice it. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:56 Highlight the passage at 1:01:56

1:02:23 So we look for something else, you know, this further way that we can see or conceive of. So this is where the emphasis on meditation is always The here and now, the awakened state here and now, and learning to really trust in that. It's something that each one of us has to trust in ourselves. Because you have to trust yourself to be awake. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:23 Highlight the passage at 1:02:23

1:03:02 And it's not something that is difficult, but it's a matter of beginning to trust in it. To really do it and trust in the sense of just attentive awareness. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:02 Highlight the passage at 1:03:02

1:03:19 A kind of listening state. It's not an absorbed state into a refined sense of tranquility. It's just this much. Silence. Right now. The mind stops. It's that much. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:19 Highlight the passage at 1:03:19

1:03:38 And as you begin to To realize that more and more, the emptiness of the mind, the silence of the mind, then it becomes clearer and clearer as a real refuge. Because that refuge is a refuge. It's something you can always trust in. It will always, you know, whatever's happening to you in life, it's something that you can always trust. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:38 Highlight the passage at 1:03:38

1:04:07 It's a refuge that will carry you through difficult times. Disappointments and loss and totally impossible situations if you trust it. And it's something that you have to trust yourself to do. Nobody can make you do it. It's not something that some teacher or enlightened master can get you to do. So it's It's not given to you by something. It's the natural state of your true being. So it's a matter of remembering, reminding yourself, and trusting yourself to do it. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:07 Highlight the passage at 1:04:07

1:04:54 So I offer this as a reflection, a gate to the deathless. The gates to death are open. This is the deathless realm, Amaravati. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:54 Highlight the passage at 1:04:54

1:05:11 We've got two nice gates out there. Sometimes we close them, though. So don't depend on this deathless here. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:11 Highlight the passage at 1:05:11

1:05:25 Find it in yourself. There's only symbols, symbolic deathless. Then the second part, Yesodawantabhamunjanthusatang. Yesodawantabhamunjanthusatang. Yesodawantabhamunjanthusatang. Yesodawantabhamunjanthusatang. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:25 Highlight the passage at 1:05:25

1:05:43 Who's attentive right now. Those who hear, those who are hearing now, who are awake right now, trust in this. Vamunjanthu Satang. Satang is faith. Have faith. And Vamunjanthu is kind of rest or relax into this faith. Give yourself to this and trust in this, in that pure state of just attentive awareness in the present. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:43 Highlight the passage at 1:05:43

1:06:14 And no matter how many times you get carried away, you can always start right now. It's not like you're ever really going to fail. If you start thinking of yourself as a success or a failure, you don't believe it in terms of success or failure. It's not a worldly thing. So you lose it, get carried away, but then you remember. That point of remembering this is what you trust in. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:14 Highlight the passage at 1:06:14

1:06:43 I noticed like in... It makes things very clear also in terms of experience, like the life we live where you have to deal with maybe a lot of emotional stress, disappointing things and unpleasant things that happen to us, or unfair things, or really unwanted and unfair experiences. I can see my mind goes, Report an error in the passage at 1:06:43 Highlight the passage at 1:06:43

1:07:17 I've had enough of this. This is more than I can bear. And then I contemplate. That is not the path, following that kind of thought. But this is. This sense of trust and purity in the present. It's purity. Don't believe me, but when you begin to realize it more, it has no color. It's... It's very strong and very powerful and very natural. And it's pure. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:17 Highlight the passage at 1:07:17

1:07:56 It's intelligent. It's pure, intelligent. It's not a purity that's kind of a blank or dull. It's bright. It's pure. It's intelligent. So this is why the human birth is regarded so highly. In the Buddhist world, human birth is considered the best birth. If you're going to be born, be born as a human. I used to question that a lot. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:56 Highlight the passage at 1:07:56

1:08:26 To me, for a lot of my life, I think it's a curse being born as a human. I think being born as one of these kind of nice pedigree dogs that upper class ladies hold on their lap and take Report an error in the passage at 1:08:26 Highlight the passage at 1:08:26

1:08:44 you for nice walks on Hampstead Heath. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:44 Highlight the passage at 1:08:44

1:08:55 But that might be a nice birth for a while. Pedigree dogs suffer a lot too. They go crazy sometimes. If Report an error in the passage at 1:08:55 Highlight the passage at 1:08:55

1:09:09 they don't get their properly prepared shrimp at the right hour. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:09 Highlight the passage at 1:09:09

1:09:17 I offer this as a reflection for this afternoon. There's tea, as you can see, over on the servery. And then in 20 minutes or so, I'll ring the bell and those of you who wish to can come back for further discussion. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:17 Highlight the passage at 1:09:17