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- 0:01
Stop sentence. That's a practice. I stop thinking in mid-thought. That's one of the higher practices.
- 8:12
The monastic life, to many people, Buddhist monasticism looks like hardship because they say it's a renunciate practice. There's a renunciation. You live by all these disciplinary rules and moral precepts. And you have to shave your head and wear these kind of robes all the time. And it looks, you know, to the average person like a kind of volunteering for hardship and making life difficult.
- 13:12
And this acceptance doesn't mean approving of life as it is. Making any criticism or judgment of it, but because at this moment life is like this, my feeling, my mood, the state of my physical condition is like this, to want it to be something otherwise is just creating suffering for myself.
- 38:36
And then, of course, we immediately think of it as being some fantastic experience. I used to imagine being zapped by something, by a thunderbolt, or some kind of blinding light, like Paul on the road to Damascus, blinded by the truth on the earth, thinking of enlightenment as some kind of fantastic, powerful experience. But in terms of...
Transcript
0:01 Stop sentence. That's a practice. I stop thinking in mid-thought. That's Report an error in the passage at 0:01
0:12 one of the higher practices. Report an error in the passage at 0:12
0:18 [chanting]
0:43 Aparūtate saṅgama Satsang with Mooji Report an error in the passage at 0:43
0:54 This is a very wonderful day to contemplate. I find it always inspiring to see people committing themselves to the holy life. I remember when I I became a monk. I ordained as a summoner in Thailand in 1966. And I thought then, because I was always a bit of a loner, and I saw myself as an eccentric person that did things no one else would ever do. Report an error in the passage at 0:54
1:37 And so I didn't know any other Western man who would ever have ever conceived. of becoming a Buddhist monk. So I thought, well, this is a one-off situation. I was quite resigned to live my life in Thailand. It was quite hermetic at the time to live in some remote mountain cave, some kind of jungly place with just monkeys and birds. Report an error in the passage at 1:37
2:18 And just meditating on the sound of the rain falling on the leaves, romantic images from these Zen books I'd been reading, writing kind of haiku poetry. Report an error in the passage at 2:18
2:31 Rain falls, mine stops, something like that. Report an error in the passage at 2:31
2:39 And then a few years later, Western men started coming to... know either. Report an error in the passage at 2:39
2:48 to Wapapong and Ubon, and never stay. I mean, they just, you know, it's the hippie time. This was late 1637. Report an error in the passage at 2:48
3:19 I didn't think anyone would be interested enough in meditation or living the holy life, at least in the Buddhist context. Report an error in the passage at 3:19
3:29 And little did I think that I'd be living in England, most unimaginable, I never thought in the wildest fantasies that I've had, somebody said, you're going to end up as a Buddhist monk in Hertfordshire. Report an error in the passage at 3:29
3:51 That's really crazy. So Report an error in the passage at 3:51
3:58 you never know what's going to happen in your life. The different forces that come together and we find ourselves living in ways that are quite surprising in many ways to what we've expected from life. I've always found a strong longing, even as a child, to understand the purpose of my existence. Report an error in the passage at 3:58
4:27 Because it always seems to me very strange being a human being and I couldn't figure out what it was all about, what it was meant to be and what the point of it is. Report an error in the passage at 4:27
4:42 Going through life, eating, sleeping, procreating, getting old, dying. What's it for? You know, just procreate the species maybe. Maybe that's all we're here to do. is just have babies and keep the human species going. And that wasn't very satisfying. I didn't particularly want to do that either. So I'm interested in just keeping the human species going. Isn't that in itself? You know, that's about evolution. Report an error in the passage at 4:42
5:17 We're somehow evolving towards something, you know, in front of the caveman into more civilized ways of conducting ourselves. Report an error in the passage at 5:17
5:29 I grew up during the Second World War, and I didn't see civilization acting in any particularly advanced way compared to the cavemen. Report an error in the passage at 5:29
5:42 So I gave up. Report an error in the passage at 5:42
5:47 Civilization doesn't really have very much depth to it, at least Western civilization doesn't go very deep, because boom, certainly can... love you. Report an error in the passage at 5:47
5:59 Be quiet, you know, selfish and violent and commit atrocities and malicious evil forces. What is the evil force? I could feel that myself. As much as I wanted to be good, I also had these other drives, you know, anger and resentment, hatred and jealousy and fear. Report an error in the passage at 5:59
6:29 And so these kind of emotions would come up in my mind and I was told that you just try to get rid of them. Just try to fight, fight off the evil forces. In that way life does become an endless struggle when you're fighting against evil and after a while it all becomes quite meaningless because it seems like the very act of fighting It seems to increase the forces. So in that way it became apparent that there were other ways of looking at life that I had not been introduced to yet, that I didn't understand. Report an error in the passage at 6:29
7:15 And when I came across Buddhism when I was about 21, it was in Japan, I was in the Navy, something struck me and something reached me very profoundly. This more reflective style of Buddhist teaching. And this I really had an intuitive understanding of this. This kind of reflection or contemplation or meditation, looking and observing, witnessing and watching. Report an error in the passage at 7:15
8:03 My life as a monk, this has been, you know, very, something that I've really enjoyed doing. The monastic life, to many people, Buddhist monasticism looks like hardship because they say it's a renunciate practice. There's a renunciation. You live by all these disciplinary rules and moral precepts. Report an error in the passage at 8:03
8:27 And you have to shave your head and wear these kind of robes all the time. And it looks, you know, to the average person like a kind of volunteering for hardship and making life difficult. Report an error in the passage at 8:27
8:47 But actually, it's rather insane. Renunciation is kind of a slap at the world by saying all those... ...pleasures and that are bad and we should never do them. It's not a rejection of the world, but a simplification, moving toward a very simple way of living and even a simple way of thinking and a way of understanding, not through grasping ideas about life or about ultimate reality. Report an error in the passage at 8:47
9:27 or anything like that, but in really an insightful understanding, something that comes from your gut, something that is profound knowledge rather than just cerebral idealism or speculation. Report an error in the passage at 9:27
9:48 So at this time, with all the millennium, end of the century, end of the millennium, the beginning of the year 2000, The third millennium begins, they say, not really until 2001. I'm not going to quibble, I like three zeros. Report an error in the passage at 9:48
10:12 And the letters from one changes to two, so you get near 2000 in just a couple of weeks. And to see, you know, just in my lifetime, the amount of interest. interest and commitment, even though compared to the world's population it seems rather insignificant in numbers, but it's still much more than I'd ever had expected. Report an error in the passage at 10:12
10:50 This life, it does seem like our human existence does have some purpose to it. There's something valuable about it. It's not just an empty kind of... ...thing that we have to put up with and die just as ignorant and silly as we were when we were born. We do learn. We have the ability to learn from experience. We have a mind that can stand back from even the body and the emotional habits we have. Report an error in the passage at 10:50
11:24 We can witness to what's really happening in the present moment. That ability to wake up and look and observe just what you are feeling, no matter what it is, whether it's a good feeling or a bad feeling, or physical sensations, or moods, emotions, and even the body. As you do body meditation, contemplate mindfully witness to the experience of your own physical body in the present. Report an error in the passage at 11:24
12:00 If you can understand your body much better, the body, if you really put forth the effort to be mindful of it, well, has its own intelligence and its own abilities to heal itself and by looking at it in the right way, I find the body does begin to feel even happy and good. Rather than just seeing the body as my body and just using it, exploiting it, and making it do what you want until it actually starts wearing out and you have all kinds of other problems, pain and whatnot to deal with. Report an error in the passage at 12:00
12:50 So what the Buddha was pointing to was this opening of the heart. The opening of the heart isn't like open heart surgery. It's not the physical heart, but being able to open to the flow of life, to watch and to accept life as it is. And this acceptance doesn't mean approving of life as it is. Making any criticism or judgment of it, but because at this moment life is like this, my feeling, my mood, the state of my physical condition is like this, to want it to be something otherwise is just creating suffering for myself. Report an error in the passage at 12:50
13:39 Because even if I'm sick, and I hate to be sick, that is... The suffering I'm creating around this experience of illness. Report an error in the passage at 13:39
13:54 In a religious life, sometimes we have these attitudes about faith, and many Buddhists have a kind of conceit that we're not faith types, we're wisdom types. You hear Buddhists saying, you know, faith people, like the Christians, they're just faith. We develop wisdom, a kind of conceit that we can have around just our own sense of, you know, holding up wisdom as something more advanced than faith. Report an error in the passage at 13:54
14:33 But in the long run, what I find is the power of faith. After all these years, 33 years of mine. The main thing is that in faith and wisdom they go together. They're not like one dominate and one is more important than the other. Report an error in the passage at 14:33
14:56 But they actually support each other. They complement each other. And when I was one of those conceited type Buddhists, I'm not a faith type, after 33 years I would describe myself as a faith type, which is quite a surprise to me. Report an error in the passage at 14:56
15:18 Because just seeing how it works over the years, the effect that it's had, and the results of living this life, I've been very grateful and pleased with the results of living as a Buddhist monk. It hasn't, for me, been a disappointment or in any way something that I regret having done. Report an error in the passage at 15:18
15:51 In fact, now I just want to keep going and die in the robe. This is a great dream of a Buddhist monk, to die in the robe. In the last moments of consciousness, you have your three robes around you. Report an error in the passage at 15:51
16:10 That's very comforting. Three robes in your bowl, the bowl sitting right next to you, and then you die. I Report an error in the passage at 16:10
16:26 don't know where I'll be when I die, but that's... I haven't any other plans for, you know, to change my lifestyle. But it does, one does appreciate this tradition very much because it is a very old tradition. It's something, you know, when you think of the Lord Buddha, the historical Buddha of India 2,543 years ago. Report an error in the passage at 16:26
16:57 And to us. Modern human beings, that's a long, long time ago. If you're American, it's really a long time ago. Americans, we live with everything so new in America. At least in Europe, you do have a sense of antiquity, which we don't have in the States. But even 2,543 years is not really very long. It's not really a long time. Report an error in the passage at 16:57
17:28 But to see a convention, Report an error in the passage at 17:28
17:41 and then where, when you study the history of Buddhism, it's, you know, in some places it's been completely destroyed and then it somewhere else. And then in the 1950s and 60s, 40s, 50s and 60s, it looked to most of us like Buddhism was... Report an error in the passage at 17:41
18:12 You saw the communists take over Vietnam and Laos, Cambodia. And in 1936, the destruction of the monasteries in Mongolia, and then in 1959 and 60s of Tibet, you know, the destruction of the monasteries in Tibet. Report an error in the passage at 18:12
18:35 And it looked like, you know, like Buddhism was on its way out, and it was just being kind of, you know, the last bits of it, what remained of it were going. Report an error in the passage at 18:35
18:53 But then they find it reviving. Now you go here in Mongolia, they're reviving Buddhism again. In 1936, Stalin had all the Buddhist monks murdered. They found these mass graves in Mongolia, which was a very powerful, strong Buddhist country following the Dalai Lama of Tibet. And I was born in 1934. Two years after I was born, they were... Report an error in the passage at 18:53
19:23 They were assassinating the Mongolian Saṅgha, and now that's reviving. And in Cambodia it was reviving again. And in China and places like this, somehow it can have its low periods, but it survives. And the thing is that the pure teaching still is pure, the kind of essential teaching of the Buddha. It hasn't been corrupted in any way. Sometimes Buddhist institutions get corrupted, and Buddhist monks and Buddhist monasteries can get corrupted, but the actual teaching is not corrupted. Report an error in the passage at 19:23
20:08 It's still exactly what it was at the time of the Buddha, at least in the way, in our experience of it, Theravāda Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 20:08
20:23 So to me that says a lot, the power of a convention that has this survival ability and still speaks to the needs of modern humanity. This is another very interesting thing to recognize that why do Western people, what do they see in Buddhism anyway that would make them take an interest? I mean, very few would just be interested in it anthropologically or culturally. There are a few Western people particularly interested in maybe Thai culture or Indian civilization, something like that. Report an error in the passage at 20:23
21:04 But the ones that really want to practice are not particularly interested on that level, but on the level of understanding the meaning of their lives. And to recognize the human condition, which is the common factor that we all share with each other and we share with all human beings from the beginning, from the very beginning to the present, is the common experience of suffering. Report an error in the passage at 21:04
21:41 Now this is, Buddha pointed to this, made this in his first sermon after his enlightenment. Sermon of the Four Noble Truths, and the First Noble Truth is the statement of this, that there is this suffering. So it's something that we can all relate to, isn't it? Even in an affluent and well-run country like this one, no matter how affluent or well-organized it is, we still suffer. Report an error in the passage at 21:41
22:12 Even if this country were absolutely perfect, there's nothing wrong with it, we'd still suffer. We find something, as you say, it's too perfect. People complain about Switzerland and it's too clean, it's too well, too efficient. So it's not just the, you know, trying to create perfect utopian societies and civilizations that were out there, but in using this experience of consciousness in a human form to understand. Report an error in the passage at 22:12
22:51 Understand ourselves and understand the experience of suffering that we all share with each other. When we look at each other in this common bond that we share of suffering, then we have a way of looking at each other that is compassionate rather than just caught up in envy, jealousy, resentments about who's... Report an error in the passage at 22:51
23:37 And we create suffering all the time with our particular attachments to our own ethnic group or our own class or gender or social position or our resentments about our inferior position or whatnot. So suffering, when we see that we suffer, and even like the Queen Elizabeth suffers, and the King of Thailand suffers, and all the best, the richest, most beautiful, most gifted people suffer as well as the poor. Report an error in the passage at 23:37
24:17 And this suffering is common to us all. Now the real suffering, there are some in our life, like the three, Bodhipala, Jitapala and Dhamangala, leaving the home life for the homeless life. Report an error in the passage at 24:17
24:36 And that means they're giving up their privileges, like having their own money, having their own property, you know, having all the things that... What modern materialist living standards say we should cherish and should seek after. We should have all this money and property and insurance and guarantees for comfort and safety for the rest of our life. Report an error in the passage at 24:36
25:09 And yet, what you saw today was a renunciation of that. How irresponsible can you get? Report an error in the passage at 25:09
25:24 I mean, you should think about, you know, shouldn't be giving up these things because that's been, you know, you've got to think of the future. But the holy life is an act of faith and an act of trust. And the thing that I've found is that in my life as a Buddhist monk was that I wasn't quite all that aware when I became a Buddhist monk what I was actually doing. Report an error in the passage at 25:24
25:55 And suddenly I woke up and I realized I was, you know, a penniless beggar. And I had to spend my life trusting in the goodness of others. I thought, wow, you've really put yourself into a strange situation. And I was brought up in a very kind of materialistic attitude of, you know, look after yourself first. Report an error in the passage at 25:55
26:19 Make sure you've got yours. You're all right. Then you can start thinking about others. Report an error in the passage at 26:19
26:29 But the result of this life is that it does. The goodness of this life is a blessing. And so it blesses us all the time. And people feel blessed by it. So the centers like this, like Amaravati arise in the Chiltern Hills of Hertfordshire. A big Buddhist center. And it was like this temple was not, it was based on free will donations, on offerings, not on all kind of fundraising and kind of babbling people into coughing up their money or business practices to try to make money to build it, but in just the good will that it generates. Report an error in the passage at 26:29
28:25 This is very inspiring in itself, but to trust in it is, at first, it does seem, when I first came to live in England, I remember, many people thought it would never be possible, that you couldn't possibly survive as an Osmondican living here, because it's not even a Buddhist country. Report an error in the passage at 28:25
28:50 And so I had, you know, some trepidations about... Coming out of a country like Thailand where 98 % of the people are Buddhist and you can take a lot for granted there because people have faith and they understand what you're doing and they respect what you're doing. Report an error in the passage at 28:50
29:15 But how can I expect that in a country like this? You know, this is my doubt. Report an error in the passage at 29:15
29:25 But then the teacher, Ajahn Chah, said, you know... Wherever there are good people, you'll be able to live. You don't have to be Buddhist. It's goodness, human goodness. Report an error in the passage at 29:25
29:38 And so this is what I've recognized in my life here in England for the past 23 years, is just the amount of goodness I've seen around me in the people and the situations that I've been in. You know, the generosity and the caring and the compassion, loving qualities that are a part of our humanity and need to be made manifest, allowed to manifest and not just be caught up in the selfish obsessions of modern materialism. Report an error in the passage at 29:38
30:21 When I think of my own cultural background, you know, even though... I wasn't brought up to be selfish as such, but the society I lived in was basically self-centered. It was very much, as I said before, look after yourself and don't depend on anybody. Slightly cynical, my generation. We were quite cynical about the human nature. You know, that basically it's corrupt and you can't trust anybody. So that was a kind of modern... Report an error in the passage at 30:21
31:01 subscribed to when I was in university thinking that basically human nature is self-centered selfish and you can't trust anybody so you've just got to learn to look out for yourself Report an error in the passage at 31:01
31:19 then living in a monastic life in Thailand, noticed that this wasn't the case. That my experience, I lived in northeast Thailand, rather poor part of Thailand, wasn't the affluent part of Thailand. But there, even the poor people, even the villagers, the rice farmers and that, had this kind of goodness to them, at least towards the monks, towards the generous offerings to the Saṅgha. Report an error in the passage at 31:19
31:56 And they kind of... Interest and quality of caring for you, looking after you was very much, I was quite moved by it and appreciated it very much. But it quite surprised me in any way because I wasn't really expecting it. Well then here in England also the same thing has happened in an affluent country. Report an error in the passage at 31:56
32:23 So Report an error in the passage at 32:23
32:28 this is a reflection on getting out of the The kind of negative attitudes of the end of the millennium, end of the century, the last thousand years of European history has been amazing when you look at from 1000 to 2000, what all that has happened from the kind of days of the Holy Report an error in the passage at 32:28
32:58 Roman Empire. empire, the, in the, Beginning of the second millennium, the destruction of paganism in Europe and the kind of wars that brought Christianity into the dominant position, ruling position in most European countries. And then the development of that into these powerful countries. Report an error in the passage at 32:58
33:47 America, by the white land. that's all he'd done in the past thousand years. now we have this. Just in my lifetime, an incredible development of technology. I feel like what they call a dinosaur now because high tech has gotten way beyond me. When I see people doing these computers and internet, it boggles my mind. I'm not prepared for that, actually. Report an error in the passage at 33:47
34:26 I'm not very interested in it, but it is amazing, you know, to be able to just push buttons and just have the kind of the world literally at your fingertips. And anything you're particularly interested in, well, just by manipulating the buttons on a computer, you can get it immediately. Report an error in the passage at 34:26
34:49 So it's like the wish-fulfilling dream and everything you want, you get. But even then... The problems now that you hear is the hissing sound of the word stress. That people's minds are not peaceful. They're not content. They're not at ease with life or themselves or with who they live with. Because their mind is forever being stimulated and excited. Report an error in the passage at 34:49
35:20 And that just creates this feeling of being stressed. An endless kind of attack on conscious experience, this endless excitement, stimulation, interest. Report an error in the passage at 35:20
35:36 The interesting thing about being a monk is that you, like when the three known sinhadars, when they asked to be accepted into the saṅgha, to realize nibbāna, cross over the stream of suffering, to realize nibbāna, What does this mean? Is this just some kind of poetic image that we use, or does it really mean something? Report an error in the passage at 35:36
36:05 So in Buddhist meditation, what you're actually doing is learning to realize, recognize a stillness, an inner peace that's always with us all the time, but we don't notice it. And so we're forever being distracted. Report an error in the passage at 36:05
36:30 And the modern life at this time is such that the distractions are very intense. You know, there's just so many exciting images. You don't have to be bored for very long. As soon as you get bored or a little weary of something, you can switch it on to surf the internet or do something like that. There's so many options and choices. Report an error in the passage at 36:30
37:24 understanding them from them than just running away or dismissing or denying them. So this takes an attitude that is very different from the worldly attitude, which tends to just want to conveniently get rid of anything we don't like or don't want. Report an error in the passage at 37:24
37:47 So in monastic life you do, you go through periods of, you know, dreariness and boredom, sleepiness and dullness and despair and all that. You know, you think would make you want to leave the life, but there's something that holds you to it until you actually learn from it and get beyond it. You're free from those kind of conditions that weigh you down, that cause this stress. It Report an error in the passage at 37:47
38:27 is an enlightening experience. And when we talk about enlightenment, you think, what is that? And then, of course, we immediately think of it as being some fantastic experience. I used to imagine being zapped by something, by a thunderbolt, or some kind of blinding light, like Paul on the road to Damascus, blinded by the truth on the earth, thinking of enlightenment as some kind of fantastic, powerful experience. Report an error in the passage at 38:27
39:06 But in terms of... My own insights, living this life, it's like being able to see more and more clearly, understanding more profoundly, rather than blazing experiences and powerful kind of sudden rapturous experiences. What has happened more is an increasing understanding. It's like the light that you can see with. Report an error in the passage at 39:06
39:39 The right amount of light to see clearly those things as they really are, rather than, like if you want to get blinded, just have somebody take a picture of you with a flash. You know, you look into the flash and it'll blind you. That isn't enlightenment. Or you can gaze at the sun at mid-noon and ruin your eyes. Report an error in the passage at 39:39
40:04 Or is it the inner light? The ability to use this conscious experience to be aware and awake. To pay attention to life. In other words, sometimes we're accused by the world of being people who are running away from reality. We refuse to live in the real world. We're running away from reality. Because to many people that seems like what we're doing. Report an error in the passage at 40:04
40:34 We can't take the problems and... Report an error in the passage at 40:34
40:44 places like this, where we somehow avoid it all. That's not what happens. You don't get out of anything, but at least the convention here is one of turning your attention towards the suffering you're experiencing. Report an error in the passage at 40:44
41:04 pointing, it's directing attention, to look at yourself other than just the... Blame your suffering on the external conditions, on the people you're living with, on the monastery you're in, on the country you're living in, on the weather. Report an error in the passage at 41:04
41:20 We tend to see suffering as caused from outside. But as we awaken more, as we begin to wake up and observe, we see suffering not as caused from outside, but something we create through our own ignorant reactions to. This life in a conscious form. So Report an error in the passage at 41:20
41:48 I want to reassure those of you who, like Sister Bodhipala's relatives and friends and Sister Jitapala's friends, relatives, and Sister Jayamangala's mother and relatives and so forth, to not see... These three nuns are sort of running away from anything, kind of trying to get out of anything, but actually a very strong determination to wake up and learn from their lives in a very direct and very profound way. Report an error in the passage at 41:48
42:28 After Report an error in the passage at 42:28
42:35 this is kind of something for you to contemplate for this afternoon and to always find these... These ordination ceremonies are inspiring because it's something so wonderful to me to see people at least trying, you know, to put fun effort into it. Report an error in the passage at 42:35
43:03 And it is, you know, when you think of especially the renunciate part, you see... uh, into, Report an error in the passage at 43:03
43:12 Young men and women giving up the pleasures of the sense world and opportunities for intimate relationships and fun-loving experiences. And for the holy life, this really impresses me as something, you know, recognizing how difficult it is to... you know how To give those things up, especially when you're young, you think, well, wait till I'm 60 years old, then I'll do it. Report an error in the passage at 43:12
43:50 But to do it while you're still young is quite an interesting thing to do and something that, to me, is well worth it because it is, you know, human life is quite short. I look back now, as I get older, it goes by very, very fast. And now a year is just like nothing. It just seems to snap of a finger. Next snap will be 2001. But you realize I'm getting old, and the remaining years in this form are... Report an error in the passage at 43:50
44:40 I keep thinking of how much I've learned and how grateful I am for having such an opportunity within my lifetime to have come across Buddhism, for one thing, to have come across a good teacher like Ajahn Chah, to have so much support from The Buddhist world, from the Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand, have been very supportive and encouraging for my spiritual development. Report an error in the passage at 44:40
45:22 And also in terms of living in Europe, the openness, the tolerance and the goodness that I've experienced in this country. Report an error in the passage at 45:22
45:42 So I offer this as a reflection for this afternoon and now we can go and greet the newly ordained sisters in the Salah, isn't it? Report an error in the passage at 45:42
Related talks
Talk by Ajahn Sumedho. Original at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ajahn-sumedho-dhamma-talks. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.
Talks of Ajahn Sumedho, archived on Internet Archive. More from Amaravati