1215-Make-Friends-With-Failure,-Nuns-Ordination

0:26 Yesodavantabhamunjanthusatam. Report an error in the passage at 0:26 Highlight the passage at 0:26

0:34 It's a very inspiring day. You can see they put an enormous amount of effort into organizing and memorizing. I think just to say Panya really did try to get it just so that it's flawless. I think it was flawless. Report an error in the passage at 0:34 Highlight the passage at 0:34

1:10 And it's a good beginning, and I also feel that, you know, for the Silandaras, the venue itself, I mean, and the temple as much, you know, gives it a power and importance that you couldn't really, that the Salah just didn't have. Report an error in the passage at 1:10 Highlight the passage at 1:10

1:32 So, it's very nice to have a place. The importance of a temple, really, is that it's a special place for things like this, meditation, where the more worldly aspects of life are not part of its atmosphere. Report an error in the passage at 1:32 Highlight the passage at 1:32

2:01 Because, you know, we do affect how we, you know, you realize we're living in this sensitive realm where what we do, how we live, and what we think. What we say does have its effects on the environment, on the atmosphere. Report an error in the passage at 2:01 Highlight the passage at 2:01

2:25 Living in monasteries for so long, even the power of Pāli chanting, you realize, I used to think Pāli chanting was a waste of time because you didn't understand what it meant. But then you began to realize that it doesn't matter, that it has a kind of its own vibrational Report an error in the passage at 2:25 Highlight the passage at 2:25

2:55 consciousness as in the this is the important what doing is is living in a very conscious way trying to get out of just the momentum of habit and conditioning that we're usually we usually sink into if we're not being mindful Because, you know, you get programmed by computer, and when you're young, and then you tend to just go through the rest of your life with variations on the same themes. Report an error in the passage at 2:55 Highlight the passage at 2:55

3:32 So you, with basic assumptions that have come from ignorance and delusion. So this whole attempt to go forth, It's a powerful statement for all of us to reflect on. Going forth isn't like leaving the world behind in a way of harsh judgment against it, but it's going forth into awareness, into that state of pure being in the present in which we tend to ignore it because we're Report an error in the passage at 3:32 Highlight the passage at 3:32

4:52 very interesting in Buddhism, Theravāda Buddhism, over the years trying to provide a convention for women also allow them, help support them in their spiritual It's been, you know, it's been easy. Sister Chandrasekhar is a real pioneer. the air and try Report an error in the passage at 4:52 Highlight the passage at 4:52

5:26 and going forth and having to learn from, you know, from experience mainly because there hasn't been any real precedence for women. You know, senior women who she could turn to, who understood through their own experience of the holy life. Report an error in the passage at 5:26 Highlight the passage at 5:26

5:53 so It's also, one feels now there's a maturity among the nuns, you know, they've had enough, you know, they've learned from the process of learning, you know, how to, what works, what doesn't, where their weak points are, and they get lost, they're deluded, and then... and then. Report an error in the passage at 5:53 Highlight the passage at 5:53

6:26 Learning from that so that we more and more do not, you know, not repeating the same mistakes or just getting stuck in just fixed attitudes or habits again. It's Report an error in the passage at 6:26 Highlight the passage at 6:26

6:47 a very interesting life I've led. This is my 30th year, the 31st year actually. And in monastic, Buddhist monasticism, it's been something I really appreciate, because I really love the monastic life. So I've never had any great problems about it, actually. The problems I've faced are just my own mind, my own delusions, not with the actual... Report an error in the passage at 6:47 Highlight the passage at 6:47

7:29 tradition. Report an error in the passage at 7:29 Highlight the passage at 7:29

7:34 But also, I'm at a point now where I'm experiencing the benefits of having lived in this way for 30 years. And that, say, the end of one's life is something that you look back and you feel, I feel I haven't wasted my life. Report an error in the passage at 7:34 Highlight the passage at 7:34

8:04 I've really learned what I needed to learn from it. And that's through this teaching of the Lord Buddha, with the Four Noble Truths. And this teaching of the Four Noble Truths struck me very strongly as something so profound and yet so simple in itself. Report an error in the passage at 8:04 Highlight the passage at 8:04

8:33 And Ajahn Chah was also, he seemed to be one who was emphasizing this investigation, this meditation on the Four Noble Truths. And I noticed in so many meditation centers and Theravāda tradition or other traditions that oftentimes the Four Noble Truths are almost their kind of... I personally have felt this enormous appreciation for this emphasis on developing insight into these Four Noble Truths. Report an error in the passage at 8:33 Highlight the passage at 8:33

9:23 And suffering is what we create. And I read an article in some Buddhist newsletter, Buddhist journal recently about a Vietnam veteran in the United States who has he was involved in all kinds of killings in Vietnam and did terrible things in that war and then of course all the problems of a of those veterans when they come back and they're kind of persona non grata and they've done terrible things and they have a whole load of miserable memories and fears and anxieties that come through that kind of behavior and this man has successfully at least according to this interview kind of Learn from the suffering that he was experiencing in his mind. And he uses words like embracing the suffering, which is one of my expressions. Report an error in the passage at 9:23 Highlight the passage at 9:23

10:45 Because basically this realm is a realm of suffering. When you're dealing with a human body and sensory experience, there's always this ongoing kind of... expressions. Report an error in the passage at 10:45 Highlight the passage at 10:45

11:01 Impingement, irritation, frustration, just because of the limitations that we have to live with as a human entity, and this incessant, unrelenting impingement and irritation on our consciousness. And plus, the fact that we also develop a lot of wrong views and opinions and ideas about it all. And so we not only have the the natural Dukkha of being born, being conscious and having to bear with a lifetime of incessant, irritating impingement. Report an error in the passage at 11:01 Highlight the passage at 11:01

11:42 Then we create all kinds of reactions to it, trying to find happiness, trying to control, get rid, manipulate. Report an error in the passage at 11:42 Highlight the passage at 11:42

12:22 miserable as it can be without, say, as you might feel without such So, and then from my own meditative experiences, I just see how, you know, when you're contemplating life, you're realizing that it basically is irritating experience. Report an error in the passage at 12:22 Highlight the passage at 12:22

12:45 And, you know, like here in Amaravati or Chitras, you know, here in Britain, we live in really nice places. You can go to Devon or Haarlem or you can go to Kundersteg in Switzerland or Setse Romano. I just came back from New Zealand. That's a real paradise, New Zealand. It's as good as you'll ever get on this planet. Report an error in the passage at 12:45 Highlight the passage at 12:45

13:12 And yet people are suffering. They suffer all the time. I think one of the highest suicide rates for young men is in New Zealand. That's what they were telling me. And, you know, why? When the conditions are so, you know, you've got 3 million people in this country. 3 million, that's not very many. There's 12 million in London. Report an error in the passage at 13:12 Highlight the passage at 13:12

13:46 And yet, people complain about the traffic in Auckland, and they complain about the possums that are eating the leaves, and they complain about the Alcoholic problems and the drug problems and the promiscuous problems and adultery and broken families and marriages and the wife beating and sexual abuse and you name it. Report an error in the passage at 13:46 Highlight the passage at 13:46

14:14 They've got all those problems. There's always something to be upset or worry about. Report an error in the passage at 14:14 Highlight the passage at 14:14

14:26 I think, you know, when does it ever stop? And then Rinpoche used to say, it goes on and on, and one thing goes on to another. The only place it stops is in your mind. You've got to stop it in your mind. The world ends in your mind. And he'd say things like this when I first met him that were quite intriguing and enigmatic, and I didn't quite get it. Report an error in the passage at 14:26 Highlight the passage at 14:26

14:55 How does the world stop? It's in your mind. My mind certainly doesn't stop anything. Report an error in the passage at 14:55 Highlight the passage at 14:55

15:04 I was a kind of rabid thinker when I first started. It's just think, think, think, think. This endless inner chatter. Really, a lot of rubbish going on. I was over 30 when I became a monk. Report an error in the passage at 15:04 Highlight the passage at 15:04

15:33 You know, all those 30 years I haven't lived very skillfully and been conditioned through the whole kind of American scene and university and all the pop music and the pop Report an error in the passage at 15:33 Highlight the passage at 15:33

15:53 culture and all the four years in the military and just living a life based on trying to find happiness. Then fulfillment in worldly conditions and only to feel increasingly unhappy with a life that was basically all right, you know, in terms of family and opportunities and nice places to live. I wasn't from, you know, the slums of some miserable place. Report an error in the passage at 15:53 Highlight the passage at 15:53

16:33 Life hadn't been unkind to me like it has been to many people, but still the suffering, I suffered because of my way of thinking. I didn't think right. So the thinking was always about me, about fear about what others think, fear about feelings of inadequacy, a lot of self-aversion. Report an error in the passage at 16:33 Highlight the passage at 16:33

17:01 Anxiety about the future, regrets about the past, the whole lot just seemed to go on incessantly. And when you're alone in a kuti in a Thai forest monastery and there's no distractions, then your mind will just kind of go berserk sometimes. It'll just go rampant with the most disgusting rubbish. And so this Vietnam vet, ex-Vietnam vet, he said, And he says we embrace the rubbish. Report an error in the passage at 17:01 Highlight the passage at 17:01

17:40 And I like that. Report an error in the passage at 17:40 Highlight the passage at 17:40

17:45 Because, you know, I used to try to get rid of it all the time. This is rubbish. Don't want to think like that. Don't want to feel like this. And you're horrible and you shouldn't. And all this kind of resistance and judgment going on. And you struggle and you struggle. Sometimes you could. Through controlling situations and enduring long enough, you could get a measure of tranquility sometimes out of sensory deprivation and a lot of controlling of the environment. Report an error in the passage at 17:45 Highlight the passage at 17:45

18:23 And that was very nice, but you couldn't sustain it because then when the conditions weren't there to... To support it, then you're back in the same, even worse sometimes, the same rubbish and stupid thoughts and emotional hang-ups and things like this would keep bubbling up and kind of fulminating into your consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 18:23 Highlight the passage at 18:23

18:51 And you just try, how can I get rid of it? I want to be a good monk, I want to have peace, I want to be happy, I want to be a... Compassionate, kind, and so forth, all the ideals, and then with all this rubbish going on, just embrace the rubbish. Well, that's what I learned, that through this mettā practice is a way of accepting what one is feeling or thinking, and without judgment, just letting it be. Report an error in the passage at 18:51 Highlight the passage at 18:51

19:33 The way it is, which is neither approving, disapproving, or making any value judgment, but just knowing. And in that simple state of just awareness and being present, then these things do, they dissolve, they disappear. Report an error in the passage at 19:33 Highlight the passage at 19:33

19:51 Because you're not attaching, you're not following, you're not resisting. And so that's the magic, that's the magic moment. Where you learn to trust and to let go and to not make problems about the state of your mind. And so in the interview they asked this Vietnam, ex-Vietnam vet about, you know, he killed a lot of people in Vietnam and about the memories and terrible memories he had. Report an error in the passage at 19:51 Highlight the passage at 19:51

20:31 And he'd been into... Alcoholism and into drugs and the usual escapes from those horrible memories. And then he said, but now, he says, they asked, do you still have them? He says, oh yeah, but they're my friends now. That's a lovely way to relate. They're my friends now rather than, yeah, they still bother me. Report an error in the passage at 20:31 Highlight the passage at 20:31

20:58 You change your attitude rather than seeing them as... Ghosts that are going to haunt you and destroy the quality of your life forever, you see them as, you befriend them. And you see them in just, and your attitude is one of accepting, embracing conditions rather than trying to control it. Report an error in the passage at 20:58 Highlight the passage at 20:58

21:29 And that's very difficult to do until you really become confident in the practice. Because we're so conditioned to resist, especially if you're very high-minded and idealistic. Many of us that come into this life, monastic life, oftentimes we're very high-minded idealists. And so we've got very high standards. And so we're very, you know, we really don't like the rubbish. Report an error in the passage at 21:29 Highlight the passage at 21:29

22:08 And we just would love to get rid of it. But that doesn't work. The more you keep trying, the more persistent it gets. Until you accept and you make peace with it and change your attitude. Report an error in the passage at 22:08 Highlight the passage at 22:08

22:32 The Buddha also said, contemplate the world as the world so that you know it. You need to know what it is to be human. To have a human body like this, you have to contemplate the existential experience of a human body of having eyes, ears, a nose, a tongue, a sensitive body, a mind, intelligence, memory, creativity, reason and logic, imagination, all these functions of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 22:32 Highlight the passage at 22:32

23:13 To begin to get some perspective on them and see what they really are. And to do that, of course, we are reflecting. And I use this word a lot, as you're probably well aware. The Buddha mind is a reflective mind. In other words, it's the ability to pay attention in the present. Report an error in the passage at 23:13 Highlight the passage at 23:13

23:42 And it's a very simple thing to do. It's not like... That it's a very advanced kind of state that only great yogis have ever achieved. Because then you automatically kind of feel you can't do it unless you're a hermit in a cave in the Himalayas or something. So that we do make the path into something. We elevate it. Report an error in the passage at 23:42 Highlight the passage at 23:42

24:15 To where it's so high we can't possibly ever reach it. And yet the Buddhist teaching isn't around the high states, but around suffering, dukkha, which is a very ordinary thing. Report an error in the passage at 24:15 Highlight the passage at 24:15

24:33 It's just ordinary, daily life, mundane kind of dukkha that we have. Not even special dukkha, where you're being really mistreated. and abused by somebody else. It's just the stuff of feeling, just feeling negative or worried or anxious or wanting something you don't have or wanting to get rid of things that you have that you don't like. Report an error in the passage at 24:33 Highlight the passage at 24:33

25:11 Wanting to become somebody else, wanting to attain some level that you imagine and the feeling that you're, you know, doubt, self-doubt. Worry and self-disparagement. This kind of stuff is Christopher the Male. This is ordinary mundane dukkha. Report an error in the passage at 25:11 Highlight the passage at 25:11

25:34 In monastic life, you have a high level of moral commitment where you can see the kind of Vinaya is a very high level of common agreement of how to live with each other in a very moral and pure way so that we're not, you know, there's no intention or to harm each other or take advantage or exploit anybody. Report an error in the passage at 25:34 Highlight the passage at 25:34

26:12 And we have this high level of morality. We're obs mendicant, so that we're dependent upon the generosity and kindness from other people, and we're taking risks, you know. We're not trying to be independent operators, just getting enlightenment, but we're also including other people in our path, people that, you know, that we need for the basic requisites. Report an error in the passage at 26:12 Highlight the passage at 26:12

26:45 So we're putting ourselves right on the line, actually. And this helps us to reflect on all our social, cultural conditioning. Report an error in the passage at 26:45 Highlight the passage at 26:45

27:04 And we do create suffering, endless suffering around monastic life. Because we do, we tend to be idealistic and have high standards. And then we expect a lot. We demand a lot, really, from the monastic situation. So in that, we need to reflect on that, our own kind of demands on teachers, or on conventions, or on traditions. Report an error in the passage at 27:04 Highlight the passage at 27:04

27:41 Because inevitably, we're going to feel discontented with whoever we attach to. The aim is to It's to not attach to teachers or to traditions or to monasticism, but to use it for mindfulness. Report an error in the passage at 27:41 Highlight the passage at 27:41

28:05 It's not a becoming thing that we're doing. We'd be a cult if it was a kind of guru worship type situation or encouraging people to attach to the senior monks or nuns or to feel that they're... The tradition itself, all the meditation techniques are going to somehow purify and enlighten us. That's what they call silabatabaramatha, a kind of superstitious attitude that external things will save me or purify me in some way. Report an error in the passage at 28:05 Highlight the passage at 28:05

28:46 But we realize that that's not how it works. It's this awakeness to life, just that paying attention and learning to sustain it. Where you're in that state of listening and attentiveness in the present before you start thinking, before thought starts. Report an error in the passage at 28:46 Highlight the passage at 28:46

29:10 So when I chant the Aparuta Desanga Matasatawara, when I start this talk, the Namotasa, and then I have this little, my little homily, Aparuta Desanga Matasatawara, The gates to the deathless are open. I like that. Because that to me is a very profound, meaningful statement that was made by the Buddha. Report an error in the passage at 29:10 Highlight the passage at 29:10

29:43 That's what they say. But anyway, whoever said it, it's very profound. When you think the gates to the deathless are open, that means the deathless. Because we can see this realm that we're attached to is all about death. It's all about dying and loss. Now when you get, you know, I'm now in my 60s, so you're really feeling, you know, this sense of the end of the life. Report an error in the passage at 29:43 Highlight the passage at 29:43

30:12 And you realize in a few more years, you know, you're getting older and older and then you'll die. And there'll be this sense of loss. There's a sense of loss always with this life. That what... is that what What we're attached to, what we love, we're going to lose. And at the end, we lose everything, isn't it? Report an error in the passage at 30:12 Highlight the passage at 30:12

30:40 The death, the house, the loved ones, the Mercedes. Report an error in the passage at 30:40 Highlight the passage at 30:40

31:01 So in the idea of dying before you die, of this letting go. Report an error in the passage at 31:01 Highlight the passage at 31:01

31:18 In one of Shelley's, in one of his own conditioning that we're feeling, the sense of our self or our cultural assumptions and attitudes and prejudices and so forth that come up into consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 31:18 Highlight the passage at 31:18

31:38 But you're aware of all that arises, ceases. And the cessation of conditions, they... Follow where all is fled. It's like Third Noble Truth. Go where everything goes. Follow where everything ends. The nirodha of the Third Noble Truth. Go to the ending of things. The end of the world is in the mind. Follow where all is fled. Report an error in the passage at 31:38 Highlight the passage at 31:38

32:11 And this is so that you die if thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek. I like that. Follow where all is fled. And these poetic statements are very helpful kind of ways of remembering that. The ending of things is in the mind. The end of the world. The world ends in the mind. If you're looking for the end of the world out there, It just goes on and on and on. Even when you straighten everything out, solve every problem, there's ten more problems to solve. And then the temple's finished and everything is going well and then there's going to be something else happen. Report an error in the passage at 32:11 Highlight the passage at 32:11

33:07 And somebody is always, you know, the threat, the possibilities of disaster and anxiety, endless. You know, in this realm, you know, changes of governments, the European Union, the new currency with its bright colors, should Britain use a common European currency or not? Will we lose our national identity if we get kind of homogenized into European Union? Report an error in the passage at 33:07 Highlight the passage at 33:07

33:55 Endless, isn't it? Where does it end? And when will it ever stop? But you can stop it in the mind, because then you're the gates to the deathless. This is transcending all these worldly unsatisfactory conditions of cultural identity, gender identity, class identity, political identity. Report an error in the passage at 33:55 Highlight the passage at 33:55

34:26 Racial identity, all of it, is, you know, it's all trivial, and one can accept it for what it is, but it's no longer anything one creates suffering about, because you know it, and you've awakened to life in the present. Report an error in the passage at 34:26 Highlight the passage at 34:26

35:01 So now it's 4.50. And we all gathered here at 3.50. I'm a very kind of time-conscious person. There's someone that talks about the timeless. But anyway, that's enough for you to contemplate today. And I just want to... What I say is repetition all the time. It's the same thing over and over again, really. Report an error in the passage at 35:01 Highlight the passage at 35:01

35:36 That's all there really is to say. Encourage and keep reminding you because that helps to be reminded because we do forget. The world does grab us and pull us around and then we have moments where we stop. Report an error in the passage at 35:36 Highlight the passage at 35:36

35:57 And that's an important moment when you suddenly realize you just wound up. At that moment when you realize you're wound up. Then you're awake at that moment. Don't follow it with, oh, here I go again, wound up, hopeless case. Report an error in the passage at 35:57 Highlight the passage at 35:57

36:16 Determine to not create suffering around all the mistakes and failures of your life. All you need to do is be aware at that point, just when you wake up and you realize you're wound up, start anew. That's all you need to do. It doesn't matter if you fail all the time, as long as you... You're accepting the failure. Make a friend of your failures rather than starting, oh, I'm a hopeless case. Report an error in the passage at 36:16 Highlight the passage at 36:16

36:46 I can't do it. Here I go again, getting lost in my moods. Poor me. And you wallow in that. You just, you know. But if you do that, then there's that point where you suddenly realize and stop there. The sense of stopping and just listening to. I offer this as a reflection for you today. And Report an error in the passage at 36:46 Highlight the passage at 36:46

37:39 there are some calendars and posters. So Report an error in the passage at 37:39 Highlight the passage at 37:39

37:52 if you want to... I mean, many of you have these already. If you don't, or if you'd like some more, this is the place to come. Report an error in the passage at 37:52 Highlight the passage at 37:52