Turning on the Light (1990)

0:00 This afternoon I want to welcome you all to Amaravati for the Sunday afternoon reflective talk and discussion and have a pleasant, cool, air-conditioned room today. In Report an error in the passage at 0:00 Highlight the passage at 0:00

0:34 reflecting, contemplating religion, the subject of light is somehow always related to Any religious path. And so this is ignorance is always the example of living in the dark where you can't see anything. Everything is hidden. And turning on the light then is where you can suddenly see everything clearly. Report an error in the passage at 0:34 Highlight the passage at 0:34

1:13 So in Buddhist terms we talk a lot about enlightenment. It's a word that we use in Buddhism. In Christianity they talk more about salvation, words like salvation. In Buddhism we talk about enlightenment or liberation. But what all that really means is the experience of seeing things clearly, not being deluded by the appearances, Report an error in the passage at 1:13 Highlight the passage at 1:13

1:54 way that we are conditioned to perceive and react to the sensory realm we're living in. Report an error in the passage at 1:54 Highlight the passage at 1:54

2:08 In meditation sometimes, I remember just when I was a newly ordained monk, the idea of light and dark fascinated me. So in Thailand, in the forest monasteries in Thailand where I live, we didn't have electricity. We had to depend on The most luxurious item that we could have was a torch, a flashlight with batteries. Report an error in the passage at 2:08 Highlight the passage at 2:08

2:41 And then you had to be, because the monasteries were quite poor, you had to conserve your torch. And you kept it going as long as the batteries, even you could get a glimmering out of them, you kept it. And then finally you'd give up and ask, could I have... Maybe you could buy me some new batteries. Or we had in our little huts, make just candles. Or if we were at a time where there was more support, then you'd have maybe a paraffin lamp would be a real luxury. Report an error in the passage at 2:41 Highlight the passage at 2:41

3:14 Little tiny paraffin lamp. So sometimes one just learned to live in the dark. One doesn't expect. Very much the same when the sun went down. One didn't really have the same expectations that we have in an electrified society such as our own, where as soon as it gets a little dim, we switch on the lights. Report an error in the passage at 3:14 Highlight the passage at 3:14

3:44 This is a modern mentality. As soon as anything starts getting a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit... bit difficult or unpleasant. Report an error in the passage at 3:44 Highlight the passage at 3:44

3:58 snap out of it as quickly as possible and modern technology does allow us to do that we can, have a push button civilization now, when I was a child and we used to fantasize about the future of mankind, a kind of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers American style futuristic cities where you'd Report an error in the passage at 3:58 Highlight the passage at 3:58

4:33 You're just sitting there all the time. The idea of sitting, being totally relaxed, the most effort you have to put into your life is pushing the button. And immediately, there it is. This is what you've always wanted. Report an error in the passage at 4:33 Highlight the passage at 4:33

4:49 manifests itself in a perfect form. This is a childlike vision of... The wishful filling gem, everything you wish for you get immediately. And so the modern societies tend to try to create this, manifest this vision. And we're getting more and more like that now. I mean we have the television computers and a whole lot of miraculous technology that's been developed only in the past really several decades to the extent now that we can. Report an error in the passage at 4:49 Highlight the passage at 4:49

5:24 can, say, have a fairly, a push-button type of life. Except the funny thing is that we find that the result of that is that we're getting heart attacks and all kinds of sicknesses from sitting too much, in cars and pushing buttons. Report an error in the passage at 5:24 Highlight the passage at 5:24

5:43 we have to take up exercise. we have to embed a technology around exercise. Report an error in the passage at 5:43 Highlight the passage at 5:43

5:53 how the human mind, how we can, we do, what we want, what we incline for, we can get eventually. This is a miraculous universal system we live in. It is with miracles. so now, say, what is miraculous, what would be miraculous to our great-grandparents? Report an error in the passage at 5:53 Highlight the passage at 5:53

6:23 ago. Now it's just ordinary. This ordinary bourgeois kind of thing, everybody, even if you go to the worst slummy area in any part of the world, I'm sure you'll find a television set. I remember flying over Bombay one time and all these kind of hovels in these Bombay slums, hovels, and they looked, the hovels were hideous, but every single one of them had a television area. Report an error in the passage at 6:23 Highlight the passage at 6:23

6:55 So we have now the ability to get what we want very quickly, and more and more this is spreading throughout society. You're trying to get everybody, the poor, the underprivileged, to be able to have these marvelous, these miracles of technology. Report an error in the passage at 6:55 Highlight the passage at 6:55

7:18 To be able to have electricity means that you don't have to sit in the dark anymore. You can... You can turn on the light whenever you want it. It's always there, hopefully always efficiently working for you. Report an error in the passage at 7:18 Highlight the passage at 7:18

7:36 So this becomes ordinary for us, living in, say, just with electricity and lights. And so sometimes we lose our ability to contemplate the natural flow of things. When everything becomes very artificial and and highly complicated and developed we lose our sense of the natural flow of life the changing of the seasons the changing of the Report an error in the passage at 7:36 Highlight the passage at 7:36

8:10 dawn to morning light, to noon, to afternoon, to evening, then night time. And yet in a society where... You have to live in the dark during those hours. There's a sense of communion with all that, with the way things change because you have to learn to live in the natural rhythms of the seasons and the days and the nights. Report an error in the passage at 8:10 Highlight the passage at 8:10

8:41 Here in Britain I find one of the great pleasures of living in this country is the fact that it does have these most marked Report an error in the passage at 8:41 Highlight the passage at 8:41

8:54 Changes, long days in the summer and long nights in the winter. If you contemplate this, if you open yourself to this and really observe the way things change from light to dark and dark to light, then one feels a sense of calm and peacefulness in one's mind, in one's heart. The natural rhythms, the changing of the seasons in a country like this, there's very marked changes, aren't there, of summer, autumn, winter and spring. Report an error in the passage at 8:54 Highlight the passage at 8:54

9:39 And one contemplates, one realises and awakens to dharma or to the natural flow and the way things really are in The natural laws that we are very much a part of, but which through an attachment to artificial things we forget. And when we forget that, then we become neurotic, frightened, upset, lost in a whole world that is no longer related to dharma or to anything true, but to a whole Report an error in the passage at 9:39 Highlight the passage at 9:39

10:21 The complexity of doubts and fears, anxieties that we create about having to live without, having to take care of, having to repair, having to renew, preserve, own, pay the bills, get the new model, the new fashion, and so our lives become increasingly obsessed with things that create only mental anguish and despair as a result. Report an error in the passage at 10:21 Highlight the passage at 10:21

10:50 Rather than true peacefulness, peace of mind, a serene heart, a wise understanding of things. Report an error in the passage at 10:50 Highlight the passage at 10:50

11:04 The Buddha's teaching was one pointing at the natural way of things. When we meditate on dharma, when we talk about contemplating, reflecting on dharma, this actually means that we are Observing, witnessing, just the way our body is, without vain comments about it. Just like the mindfulness of the breath, one of the basic techniques of meditation in Buddhism is to bring your attention to the inhalation-exhalation, the normal breathing of your own physical body. Report an error in the passage at 11:04 Highlight the passage at 11:04

11:48 And when you do that, then that is a natural rhythm. Breath breathing is... Report an error in the passage at 11:48 Highlight the passage at 11:48

12:03 regard our bodies very much as outside of nature. mean, we look at them, we judge them, we criticize them, we do all kinds of things to them, or we ignore them, or resent them, or reject them, because we've lost the... That wisdom and that sense of being related to nature itself, to dharma and to truth and to a higher reality than just our own particular loves and hates of the moment. Report an error in the passage at 12:03 Highlight the passage at 12:03

12:41 If you concentrate on your body with your mind, more and more the body itself responds to that. Your body will... We'll feel more relaxed, more happy, more at ease when it is accepted by the mind, when it is actually brought into a conscious state in a deliberate intending, using your consciousness to bring your body and parts of your body into your consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 12:41 Highlight the passage at 12:41

13:19 You'll find the body itself responding in a very positive. Relaxed way. We have healing, many of the illnesses of it. Or relaxing the tensions that we acquire through, say, modern life, which can be very stressful to the body. Report an error in the passage at 13:19 Highlight the passage at 13:19

13:45 When we talk about enlightenment, sometimes this we tend to look at as, say, I remember my own view when I first became interested in Buddhism, was I imagined The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree and then suddenly this enormous light came and kind of zapped him. So he's sitting there and suddenly this enlightenment, this kind of powerful radiance just engulfed the Buddha and he was consumed in this light. Report an error in the passage at 13:45 Highlight the passage at 13:45

14:21 And that was the dramatic image I had of the Buddha's enlightenment just by reading a book and how my mind would tend to interpret The idea of enlightenment, from the way my mind had been conditioned to regard the word enlightenment, it wasn't a word that one really used much, other than when you read Buddhist books, when one never thought of being enlightened really on a personal level. Report an error in the passage at 14:21 Highlight the passage at 14:21

14:52 The idea of becoming enlightened was not a concept that one would... one would think possible. But then as one meditated more, contemplated the teaching of the Buddha, and began to understand exactly what the Buddha was teaching and what he was pointing at, one began to realize that the light, enlightenment for the Buddha wasn't a kind of overwhelming, all-consuming light, but light in which you can actually see clearly. Report an error in the passage at 14:52 Highlight the passage at 14:52

15:35 That makes more sense, doesn't it? I mean, if the light's too strong, you're blinded, you can't see. If there's too much light, your eyes cannot take it and you just have to close them. Like trying to look at the sun at high noon, you can't do it. Either you have to put on sunglasses or close your eyes, put your hands over your eyes, it's too strong a light. Report an error in the passage at 15:35 Highlight the passage at 15:35

16:00 But if there's enough light to see, Say, now there's enough light to see, then you can see what needs to be seen. You can see what's in the room. You can see the little details. Report an error in the passage at 16:00 Highlight the passage at 16:00

16:16 You can look into the various things that you would not be able to see if there wasn't enough light. So more and more I began to think of enlightenment more as the ability to see clearly. In a way that within this human state in which you can see how things actually are. It's not a blazing light. It's a proper amount of light to see how things really are. So then that brings the teaching into something that is very useful for us as individuals. Report an error in the passage at 16:16 Highlight the passage at 16:16

16:59 creatures because you can spend the rest of your life sitting under a Bodhi tree waiting for an enormous light to engulf you and no doubt feel very disappointed at the end of your lifetime. Somehow you missed out because maybe it just didn't happen. It only seemed to happen for the Buddha and after that it didn't. Report an error in the passage at 16:59 Highlight the passage at 16:59

17:23 Or because the story is about the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree. But then when you read The suttas and the scriptures more and more, you realize that the light of understanding, they talk about light in various aspects or ways of conveying that sense of understanding what before was not understood, or seeing that which you never saw before, or knowing that which was unknown. Report an error in the passage at 17:23 Highlight the passage at 17:23

17:58 Wisdom is a light of the mind, isn't it? When we use wisdom, it's actually the mind is naturally light. The mind isn't dark. Conditions of mind can be very dark. You can be very attached to depressing thoughts, to hatred and anger. You can be feeling guilt-ridden and depressed. These dark, ugly thoughts that we can hold on to. Report an error in the passage at 17:58 Highlight the passage at 17:58

18:33 can completely cover the light, the natural light. But when we let go of those defilements of the mind, those dark, oppressive defilements of the mind, then the natural state of the mind is as a light mind. The mind's natural state is clarity and intelligence, which is light. Light is a symbol for intelligence or clarity. Report an error in the passage at 18:33 Highlight the passage at 18:33

19:04 So reflecting on light as a symbol, as a metaphor, and light for what it is, as an actual visual experience, but as a mental experience, then it's the true nature of mind, the clarity, the wisdom, the intelligence, the being able to see and know. is what we would call enlightenment. An individual human being is seeing clearly, knowing exactly, no longer caught in the delusions, the oppressive defilements that we can create out of the basic ignorance of not understanding, not having penetrated and looked at anything at all. Report an error in the passage at 19:04 Highlight the passage at 19:04

19:58 We could live our whole lives just As a creature of habit what you've been conditioned to believe in and think and react from the time you're from your childhood you could carry that whole pattern on through a whole lifetime and not change it at all. Many people do. They just get conditioned while they're children and for the rest of their life they just react in that same way. Report an error in the passage at 19:58 Highlight the passage at 19:58

20:26 And as they get older then they think the same old thoughts. You see you talk to some All people, they just have, after a while their mind gets stuck like a broken record. They just repeat the same old thing over and over and over again. Because they've never developed an enlightened mind or a mind that they've been so identified with the conditioning of their mind. Report an error in the passage at 20:26 Highlight the passage at 20:26

20:53 Now when we talk about the conditioned mind, then we're talking about the feeling of it. The way we can perceive, the ability to remember, memory, perception, thought itself, to be able to create thought and reason, logic, all these we can train our minds to do. Report an error in the passage at 20:53 Highlight the passage at 20:53

21:26 We have imagination and we can discriminate, we have a discriminative function of mind. We can also intuit. We have an intuitive mind. Report an error in the passage at 21:26 Highlight the passage at 21:26

22:07 Now the Western world very much emphasized the discriminative functions of mind. The modern materialism, Western education, is very much based on developing reason and logic. Report an error in the passage at 22:07 Highlight the passage at 22:07

22:32 we tend to exalt in our lives. We praise people who have those capacities. When you have a PhD in logic or philosophy or science of any sort, we think that is a kind of grand achievement and attainment for a human being. But then you contemplate the result of having developed a highly discriminative discriminative faculty faculty, I don't think. what happens to you as you get older? Report an error in the passage at 22:32 Highlight the passage at 22:32

23:04 you begin to, that discriminative faculty begins to be, is an obsession of the mind. One of the most obvious forms of suffering in the Western world is the way that modern people tend to criticize either themselves or each other or endlessly complaining, grumbling, about the state of the world, about the people they're living with, or about themselves. So the discriminative function, instead of enlightening the mind, we become attached to that discriminative function, and it turns on us. Report an error in the passage at 23:04 Highlight the passage at 23:04

23:47 It makes our lives miserable. All we can do, we become so obsessed with what's wrong, what's wrong with ourselves, or what's wrong with the world. world, wrong with somebody else, that we have lost our sense of unitive mentality, that union, that communion, the oneness or wholeness of being is lost in that attachment to the discriminative functions of mind. Report an error in the passage at 23:47 Highlight the passage at 23:47

24:24 intuition is, I would use that term, much more as a direct function of the mind. What's wrong with somebody else? In meditation we tend to trust more in intuition. We develop our intuitive abilities more. I find that has been quite difficult because I'm very attached to the discriminative functions of my mind. I love to think and reason and figure things out with thoughts. Report an error in the passage at 24:24 Highlight the passage at 24:24

24:58 And to be able to trust in just receptivity, sensitivity. Intuition in a moment has taken a determination to surrender all that, to give it all up, to not try to figure everything out in terms of thoughts and ideas, and to just trust in just the openness of the heart and receptivity in a moment to the flow of life as is now, the suchness of this moment. Report an error in the passage at 24:58 Highlight the passage at 24:58

25:38 Now that was something that some people find, various people find not all that difficult, but the problem lies in the fact that oftentimes how we interpret our intuitive experiences can be all wrong. Like people that are intuitive sometimes interpret their sensitivity and their intuitions from a conditioned mind that is still conditioned out of ignorance and not understanding the truth sometimes Copyright © 2020 Mooji Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Report an error in the passage at 25:38 Highlight the passage at 25:38

26:23 No part of this recording may be reproduced that and from trying to talk and Use discriminative perceptions to describe something that was unitive and beyond division anyway. So we end up with what we call mystical visions or unique mystical experiences. Or they can sound just like, I mean, modern materialist attitudes are that all that is just crazy, obviously went off. Report an error in the passage at 26:23 Highlight the passage at 26:23

27:03 You've gone schitzy or something's wrong with you and they send you off to mental hospital to have some kind of medicine bring you back to normal life, normal conditioned views. Report an error in the passage at 27:03 Highlight the passage at 27:03

27:18 But I wouldn't be so ready to condemn all that and put it down as madness as trying to understand exactly how the mind works. Report an error in the passage at 27:18 Highlight the passage at 27:18

27:33 And when, say, as Buddhists, very much we're looking into the nature of our own minds. And this intuitive function of mind is what we call, through mindfulness, or sati, and then through wisdom, or paññā, we interpret. We have ways of talking and discussing about unitive reality. Report an error in the passage at 27:33 Highlight the passage at 27:33

28:02 In a way that makes sense to us as Buddhists. We have a vocabulary, a whole range of teachings and ideas that the Buddha established in which we can discuss these things like having a common language we're using rather than a highly personal language that only you seem to understand and no one else. Report an error in the passage at 28:02 Highlight the passage at 28:02

28:31 When we practice meditation we always have to relate our experiences to Dharma teachings. And I find this very important because in so much of mystical religious experiences, oftentimes religion hasn't provided a language that one can use or one has agreed on the perceptions to use in regards to these, they can be very subjective, very special. Report an error in the passage at 28:31 Highlight the passage at 28:31

29:07 intuitive experiences that if interpreted from your conditioned mind, from your culturally conditioned mind, can sound quite strange or even mad. Report an error in the passage at 29:07 Highlight the passage at 29:07

29:22 But as we learn, say, the dharma language, the language of dharma, then we have a way of talking about these, the intuitive realizations. Realizations. Report an error in the passage at 29:22 Highlight the passage at 29:22

29:41 In which, say, then more and more we can encourage each other to explore this, to investigate, to witness, and to open their mind up to life in a way that before they might have been frightened to, or afraid of opening up too much, because their tendency to interpret would lead them into very strange perceptions. Report an error in the passage at 29:41 Highlight the passage at 29:41

30:10 So that the Buddha, Emphasize that the nature of all conditioned reality is to arise and cease. And this is a way of looking at all possibilities of experience. Report an error in the passage at 30:10 Highlight the passage at 30:10

30:27 Whether it's rational or irrational, sane or insane, good or bad, right or wrong, the quality, the characteristic is always impermanent. It arises and ceases. In this way there's a willingness to look at something maybe quite unpleasant or quite frightening and to see it in a perspective of impermanence rather than to interpret it as a form of personal madness or forces from outer space trying to harm you or all kinds of possibilities of interpretation around these experiences but when seeing Only from that sense of mindful observing of the characteristic of change, by willingness to do that and investigate the nature of change and observe change and impermanence, we get a perspective. Report an error in the passage at 30:27 Highlight the passage at 30:27

31:30 We have a perspective on all conditioned phenomena. And that we carry on to every possibility, most subtle condition to the most coarse. Report an error in the passage at 31:30 Highlight the passage at 31:30

31:45 The most refined mental states or feeling states to the most gross, the most material, macrocosmic to the most subtle and microcosmic possibilities. If it arises, it ceases. If it's an instant or an eon, we're seeing it as impermanent. Where, say, from the conditioned mind and the value judgments of a materialist society, we would put, we would think of an instant as not worth very much and an eon as being something very important. Report an error in the passage at 31:45 Highlight the passage at 31:45

32:27 Or a century to us, isn't it? A hundred years. Like the decade of the 90s. Everybody's talking about what is going to happen to humanity and to the planet Earth and the world. In this last decade of this century, the 90s, because a decade to us is seemingly much more important than this particular moment right now. Report an error in the passage at 32:27 Highlight the passage at 32:27

32:57 What will be left in 1999? And what will the ozone hole be like? Report an error in the passage at 32:57 Highlight the passage at 32:57

33:07 What will Britain be like in 1999? Speculate about, because 10 years is a good chunk of time in human terms. But as a meditator, a witness of dharma, we would see that ten years or an instant is impermanent. We're not dismissing the quality as irrelevant or unimportant. We're just noticing the way it is. And this allows us to begin to look at the moment, the present moment. Report an error in the passage at 33:07 Highlight the passage at 33:07

33:45 As a significant experience, rather than waiting to see what happens in 1999. Because we could think, well, 1999 we'll find out what will happen to the world, or 2000. Imagine New Year's Eve, December 31st, 1999, and as midnight approaches suddenly, a whole century has passed from 1900 to 1999. Gone. It's only a memory. Lost. Report an error in the passage at 33:45 Highlight the passage at 33:45

34:17 And the year 2000 begins, midnight, January 1st, 2000. A great moment. But this moment here doesn't seem very important at all, does it? Report an error in the passage at 34:17 Highlight the passage at 34:17

34:34 And so we can put great importance on possibilities in the future of our retirement, the year we retire or the year we pay off our debts or whatever. It's been important. It is Report an error in the passage at 34:34 Highlight the passage at 34:34

34:55 only that. It is nothing more. look forward to or to anticipate. Report an error in the passage at 34:55 Highlight the passage at 34:55

35:23 So when we reflect and remind ourselves of the true nature of things, we begin to see in the light, see the way things really are. Report an error in the passage at 35:23 Highlight the passage at 35:23

35:36 And the way things really are is from intuition rather than from description or definition. That's why we have to use these kind of aggravating terms like suchness or the way it is. Report an error in the passage at 35:36 Highlight the passage at 35:36

35:53 Tell me, what is it? What is the truth? In the Brahman philosophers and the scriptures they're always at the Buddha saying, OK, tell us what happens to the Dattakada after death and tell us this and tell us that, wanting all the kind of answers to the big metaphysical questions. Report an error in the passage at 35:53 Highlight the passage at 35:53

36:15 But in the very moment that they were asking they were totally unaware of what they were doing. They were so caught up in their interest about the big questions. Report an error in the passage at 36:15 Highlight the passage at 36:15

36:26 metaphysical questions that they couldn't see what they didn't value the present moment of the silence that the Buddha the Buddha would never answer these questions he remains sitting there silent and of course they think well he doesn't know if he knew he'd tell us Buddha's supposed to know everything Buddha's the one who knows everything and obviously he doesn't know anything he's not a real Buddha they walk away I think somewhat relieved well we've checked him out and he's obviously not worth very much Or, the silence is always making us look at the present. Have you ever found yourself in these situations meeting somebody and then there's these deadening silences? Report an error in the passage at 36:26 Highlight the passage at 36:26

37:14 You're sitting there and then everything goes quite silent and you feel really nervous and you think, I've got to say something. Do you think the sun will come out the sun? Report an error in the passage at 37:14 Highlight the passage at 37:14

37:32 We need rain. The soil is really parched. Kind of fill up the silence because silence to us is we don't know what to do with it. So we discriminate in it. We try to fill it up maybe with polite conversation or gossip. Trying to just say, did you hear about what Maria did yesterday? Go on. Fill up the silence with With people's views and opinions. But when you open to the silence, then the intuitive ability to feel and be receptive to the way it is now, because this moment is in the natural flow of things. Report an error in the passage at 37:32 Highlight the passage at 37:32

38:26 It's changing. Everything is changing. But when... When we try to perceive it as something, we forget it's changing. We tend to hold on to it as a kind of fixed entity. And then we become deluded by our attachments. We hold on to memories. We think our memories are the people that we remember. We used to remember somebody and you think that's the real person. Report an error in the passage at 38:26 Highlight the passage at 38:26

38:53 But it's only a memory, isn't it? That memory is not a person, it is a memory. And we have to remind ourselves of that. We don't really know people, we have memories of them. The only way we can know anyone else is by being receptive to them in the moment. And they're right here, and you open your heart and receive them in your mind without perceiving them as anything. Report an error in the passage at 38:53 Highlight the passage at 38:53

39:26 Then you're actually, there's a knowing, there's a knowledge taking place, an enlightened knowledge. But as long as I think I know you because I have all kinds of opinions about you, that means I have a lot of opinions about you that I think that I believe are you. Report an error in the passage at 39:26 Highlight the passage at 39:26

39:49 And then you come and you say, OK, Ajahn Sumedho, tell me who I am. And I say, well, the problem with you is you're this way and you're that way and you shouldn't be like this and you shouldn't be like that. Report an error in the passage at 39:49 Highlight the passage at 39:49

40:06 I think we've all been through this. I'm feeling totally kind of left out of the picture, like somebody does that to you, you feel, oh, you know, what a disappointment, because you realize the person doesn't know you, that they just have various views, opinions about you. Sometimes you think you know somebody because you've heard somebody talk about you. I remember somebody telling me about somebody else, and thinking, oh, yes. Report an error in the passage at 40:06 Highlight the passage at 40:06

40:41 I know that kind of person. And then when you meet them, you've already, the first thing that comes into your mind is they did this, they said that, they're done. And so immediately, if you're not mindful, if you're not aware, you're looking at them from a perception you've acquired from somebody else. Report an error in the passage at 40:41 Highlight the passage at 40:41

41:01 The memories and views that somebody else has given you about that person. And so you can see why there's so many, so why the modern society and International relations and all the misunderstandings take place in modern life. Why is it that the Americans and the old times during the good old days of the Cold War when the Soviets were real enemies to the Americans and the Americans didn't have to try to understand them they just had to Report an error in the passage at 41:01 Highlight the passage at 41:01

41:42 affirm their convictions that they were terrible people. Communists are no good. That's a prejudice, isn't it? So it's difficult to see anything good. When you've decided that somebody's bad, and you've made that determination, you're holding on to that view, it's very hard to see anything good about them. Report an error in the passage at 41:42 Highlight the passage at 41:42

42:08 Because goodness, you can't have a good and bad thought in the same moment. You have to have a bad thought and then And then that bad thought tends, if you believe a bad thought, it's hard to put a good thought in following that. Because the momentum of, say, the emotion is carrying you on into remembering all the bad things they've done. And so it's very difficult to think something good in the next moment. Report an error in the passage at 42:08 Highlight the passage at 42:08

42:42 But this is just the condition of the mind. This isn't the intuitive. Report an error in the passage at 42:42 Highlight the passage at 42:42

42:50 conditioned mind works. The emotion, if you're caught up in a strong emotional feeling of love or hate, then that emotion is conditioning your thinking process. So if it's love, if you love somebody, you're infatuated with somebody, then mind can't think of anything bad about that person. Report an error in the passage at 42:50 Highlight the passage at 42:50

43:18 The most wonderful, beautiful, sensitive, generous, compassionate, intelligent, understanding. All of the beautiful, positive words come up into your consciousness and you feel inspired because those words are very inspiring. You think of somebody, she is the most beautiful, sacrificing, Report an error in the passage at 43:18 Highlight the passage at 43:18

43:51 good cook, loves children, children, kind animals, getting very inspired, because all that's very inspiring to the mind, especially the good. And then Report an error in the passage at 43:51 Highlight the passage at 43:51

44:17 you... Report an error in the passage at 44:17 Highlight the passage at 44:17

44:23 I, you know, I've heard about her. Report an error in the passage at 44:23 Highlight the passage at 44:23

44:29 she's not really a good quote at all. Report an error in the passage at 44:29 Highlight the passage at 44:29

44:39 And then it doesn't matter, because the momentum is forgiving and positive. And then apply that to when you're angry, when you're really fed up with somebody, and the mind does the same only on the negative side. So somebody says, well, you know, even though she is that way, she's selfish and not kind animals, but she is a good cook. Report an error in the passage at 44:39 Highlight the passage at 44:39

45:10 That's not important. I've Report an error in the passage at 45:10 Highlight the passage at 45:10

45:26 contemplated just how much our society works from a position of high-minded ideas. And one sees how difficult it is to operate from an idealization of oneself or life. Report an error in the passage at 45:26 Highlight the passage at 45:26

45:51 How things should be. And the strange result of modern ideals of freedom, equality, liberty, fraternity, all these modern democratic ideas that we have now, the result tends to be one where either we're in Report an error in the passage at 45:51 Highlight the passage at 45:51

46:24 oppressive idealism on somebody. we tend to be so caught up in idealism we offer no practical foundation for living. So we say, what you want. You're a free individual. You're free to fulfill yourself. You're free to do everything you've ever wanted to do. Don't let anything stand in your way. Report an error in the passage at 46:24 Highlight the passage at 46:24

46:51 your heart. out in love and and follow follow your your heart. heart wherever it takes you and be completely free and don't be conditioned and don't join any organization and don't get involved in any relationship just take life as a free spirit that sounds very when you're young as a way of Report an error in the passage at 46:51 Highlight the passage at 46:51

47:19 all. It tends to be very deluding because by By trying to operate on such an ideal level, you lose your sensitivity, your intuitive mind stops functioning, because you're always thinking, I'm free to do what I want, and I can do what I want. I'm a free citizen, and I'm just as good as anyone else, and that's all that counts, is that I'm happy and I can do what I want. Report an error in the passage at 47:19 Highlight the passage at 47:19

47:51 Then, from that position, You've shut off your intuitive abilities because you've settled for a very kind of ideal. But an ideal is not a sensitive thing, is it? The ideal of being sensitive is not sensitive. The ideal of being compassionate isn't compassion. If you're trapped in a holding on to a view about compassion, oftentimes you aren't compassionate at all. Report an error in the passage at 47:51 Highlight the passage at 47:51

48:27 Because you're attached to the idea, but you've not developed the intuitive receptivity to really be compassionate in any moment. So then we feel very disappointed. We hear people, we call it hypocrisy in the West, we hear people talk about love and compassion, and the next moment they're doing something unloving and uncompassionate. Report an error in the passage at 48:27 Highlight the passage at 48:27

48:55 So we then, they're hypocrites. They talk in these very inspired and high-minded ways, but the actual way they're living their life is despicable. And then we become cynical. In modern Western Europe, it's a very cynical place. Here in Britain, the Brits are quite cynical people. Report an error in the passage at 48:55 Highlight the passage at 48:55

49:20 Because we're very idealistic. But also, we tend to Report an error in the passage at 49:20 Highlight the passage at 49:20

49:30 kind of suspicious and disappointed in the fact that the government we have isn't what it should be. And people are very selfish in these democratic systems. And the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer here in Britain. And there's all these social problems and terrible things happening and it shouldn't be like this. Report an error in the passage at 49:30 Highlight the passage at 49:30

49:56 this was a properly a properly run... run country. Functioning according to the highest ideals of democracy, these things shouldn't be going on in it. These shouldn't happen. And that idealism makes us cynical because then we feel that somehow the country, the ideal has betrayed us. Report an error in the passage at 49:56 Highlight the passage at 49:56

50:19 We've been betrayed by it. And when we feel betrayed, we no longer dare to be optimistic or idealistic. We just become cynical and embittered by it. But one needs to combine, you see, the ability to discriminate because our ability to form ideas is another miracle. Just the fact that we can actually create an idea of democracy, we can actually imagine a perfect governmental system, perfectly fair, perfectly just political system to govern our country. Report an error in the passage at 50:19 Highlight the passage at 50:19

51:00 We can imagine such a possibility. Well, that's another miracle of the mind to be able to imagine or create an image of that. Report an error in the passage at 51:00 Highlight the passage at 51:00

51:12 But then what we've lacked in, say, in our education, in our way of living in the West is we've not developed the intuitive mind at all. That's been almost rejected as hocus-pocus, untrustworthy and unreal. Report an error in the passage at 51:12 Highlight the passage at 51:12

51:32 And because of that, we don't trust our own sensitivity in any situation. We tend to mistrust ourselves. We want somebody else to tell us, what should I do next? Ajahn Sumedho, what should I do about this? What should I do about that? Tell me what to do. Because even, and these are the nine people that want me to tell them exactly what they should be doing next, aren't like uneducated people. Report an error in the passage at 51:32 Highlight the passage at 51:32

52:02 From the backwoods, there are oftentimes highly intelligent people with university degrees, but who still do not trust in their own sensitivity of a moment. They would rather somebody else tell them what they should be feeling or what they should do. With Buddhist meditation then, the whole purpose and aim of The enlightenment of the Buddha is to harmonize these different functions of mind. Report an error in the passage at 52:02 Highlight the passage at 52:02

52:39 You don't want to become anti-intellectual and condemn modern education, say we shouldn't have any at all, burn all the books, get rid of the television sets, throw out the computers, let's go back to an ideal golden age before all this happened, just like, you know, with some... Trying to annihilate what we have, condemn it, because we think that it's wrong, is not intuitive either, is it? Report an error in the passage at 52:39 Highlight the passage at 52:39

53:11 It's merely taking a position, another idealistic position, against modern technology or modern society or materialism. Report an error in the passage at 53:11 Highlight the passage at 53:11

53:22 But the opportunity we have now, that I see anyway, my intuitions, my feeling is, That there's increasing amount of interest and willingness of human beings now to begin to develop that unitive mind, the intuition, the ability to be mindful, to bring into the consciousness, to invite into consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 53:22 Highlight the passage at 53:22

54:03 The truth of the way things are, to inform through consciousness, reflect and contemplate and understand through this intuition, through a profound insight and understanding of dharma or the truth of the way it is. This is the enlightened mind that is possible for humanity, for any individual human being. Report an error in the passage at 54:03 Highlight the passage at 54:03

54:34 And then also one can say for humanity in general. Now I don't know if that's true or not, whether all human beings, sometimes you think that's just being terribly optimistic because you see so many human beings who seem so utterly hopeless, so Report an error in the passage at 54:34 Highlight the passage at 54:34

54:56 biased and prejudiced and opinionated and bigoted that you think no way could that person ever be enlightened in this lifetime. But I wouldn't trust that either. I wouldn't trust my opinion of anyone anymore. I wouldn't take an opinion that I form and hold on to that as anything real other than maybe that was the impression in that moment. Report an error in the passage at 54:56 Highlight the passage at 54:56

55:24 That's all it was. That person is a stupid idiot. But that was only the impression in that moment. That's not absolute fixed view. Report an error in the passage at 55:24 Highlight the passage at 55:24

55:35 Because we're all stupid idiots in various moments of our lives, aren't we? I certainly am. I hope, you know, I hope people, when I am that way, will think, well, that's only Ajahn Sumedho of the moment. Report an error in the passage at 55:35 Highlight the passage at 55:35

55:51 Some of you, he's an utter idiot forevermore. Report an error in the passage at 55:51 Highlight the passage at 55:51

55:59 Hopeless, hopeless guy. Or, the more you say, contemplate and reflect, you think that, more. Report an error in the passage at 55:59 Highlight the passage at 55:59

56:07 That those are just conditions of a moment that manifest and arise and cease. That's not a person. That's not a permanent person. Report an error in the passage at 56:07 Highlight the passage at 56:07

56:26 So turning on the light is to contemplate this. I remember looking into a dark room one night, looking into my little hut one night. It was a... Night of the new moon. There is no moon out. Pitch black. In a forest. No moon. And I didn't have my torch. I couldn't find the matches for the candle or the paraffin lamp. Looked into the dark. Report an error in the passage at 56:26 Highlight the passage at 56:26

57:05 And I contemplated. I thought, what is the darkness anyway? What is it? I have these eyes. The eyes are still here. But I'm looking at darkness now. I can see darkness. And then I thought, yes, I'm still seeing darkness. Report an error in the passage at 57:05 Highlight the passage at 57:05

57:29 So there's still the light in the mind, there's still the knowing, there's still the consciousness operating, seeing the darkness. And so that was quite a profound insight for me, to recognize, to know darkness as darkness, rather than to just react to it. Report an error in the passage at 57:29 Highlight the passage at 57:29

57:48 You know, trying to make it light again or just to close my eyes and fall asleep or just react to darkness in some habitual way. Or when you reflect on darkness, that's an enlightened mental state. Your mind is light then. It's reflective. It's observing. It's knowing. There's knowing. There's wisdom. There's intelligence operating. Report an error in the passage at 57:48 Highlight the passage at 57:48

58:15 operating. A mind that is light, even though the eyes are only seeing darkness. So sometimes in people that go through meditation, they go through periods where they only see darkness in themselves. This happens. Sometimes people have a lot of negativity in their mind. And this will come up. Sometimes it overwhelms them. Report an error in the passage at 58:15 Highlight the passage at 58:15

58:48 Endless anger and fears. And they say, oh, I'm in the dark. It's so dark here all the time. I'm living in the dark. And then you try to encourage them to observe the fear or the anger or the feeling of being in the dark. Because that which can see and know isn't dark, isn't angry, isn't fear, isn't frightened. Report an error in the passage at 58:48 Highlight the passage at 58:48

59:17 That which is pure clarity and knowing is always in the present moment. The mental state might be pitch black, might be ugly and horrible, but the knowing of it for what it is, what arises is the enlightened mind operating, observing and knowing dharma. Report an error in the passage at 59:17 Highlight the passage at 59:17

59:49 Buddha, seeing the truth, seeing the dharma. So, I've talked for an hour now, and we can have a break. Report an error in the passage at 59:49 Highlight the passage at 59:49