1228-The-Awakening-of-Human-Consciousness-(191)

0:00 I want to welcome everybody to this very wonderful opportunity we have here. It seems to be an important time. It's interesting to see how we create this sense of urgency and importance in our mind because we're told it's the end of the one millennium, beginning of another, whatever that means. And of course, being Buddhist, it doesn't have quite the same significance as it does if you're Christian. And most of us were born and brought up in Christian societies, Christian backgrounds, so it has significance. Report an error in the passage at 0:00 Highlight the passage at 0:00

0:54 And to give it a significance, because where people are sharing a common perception, such as End of a century, end of a millennium, beginning of a new year, beginning of a new century, beginning of a new millennium. This brings into our consciousness this sense of time and change. And we look at the millennium and the previous one, we think back of the thousand years ago, and usually I don't... Report an error in the passage at 0:54 Highlight the passage at 0:54

1:30 I wouldn't conceive in terms of a thousand years ago. It seems so long ago in the way I perceive history or time. But then really a thousand years isn't all that long and we see the enormous kind of things that have happened in the past thousand years, both in very good ways and in very... Report an error in the passage at 1:30 Highlight the passage at 1:30

2:03 On pleasant, on wholesome ways. Report an error in the passage at 2:03 Highlight the passage at 2:03

2:08 But the thing that we have now, that I feel a subject that is now very much in the air and is very much worldwide, not just a select elite group of people, but it seems to be developing in many levels and many ways. Report an error in the passage at 2:08 Highlight the passage at 2:08

2:29 And of course, being Buddhist... When we reflect on that Buddhism is 2,543 years old, this very simple teaching of awakening was initiated by the Buddha in the form that we have it in the present age, 2,500 years ago. It's a very simple teaching because it's about waking up. about paying attention, about listening, about learning to understand, about learning, knowing, and understanding. Report an error in the passage at 2:29 Highlight the passage at 2:29

3:18 Even though in the past several hundred years, especially in the Western world where modern education has been an enormous attempt to educate everybody, have a population of literate, Well-educated people, it doesn't necessarily mean that we've actually been awake. We've often acquired kind of very rigid conditioning attitudes and assumptions that we haven't realized ourselves, but which we tend to take on from the authorities and the scriptures or the treatises that are given to us. Report an error in the passage at 3:18 Highlight the passage at 3:18

4:03 But in this awakening that the Buddha pointed to, we're not giving you a doctrine or a position to take, but encouraging a simple, imminent act of attention in the present. Report an error in the passage at 4:03 Highlight the passage at 4:03

4:25 And even though it sounds simple enough, yet our whole kind of... Cultural social conditioning tends to lead us the opposite way towards just the force of habit, towards the biases, the prejudices, the ideals that we've acquired rather than a real strength in awakened awareness in a profound realization of truth that doesn't come through Through adopting somebody else's version of it, but a direct knowing of truth. Report an error in the passage at 4:25 Highlight the passage at 4:25

5:08 So during this week we have, starting tonight, ending on the 3rd of January, whatever you can offer, in the way that you can, either through prayer or through meditation, contemplation, Report an error in the passage at 5:08 Highlight the passage at 5:08

5:33 developing this sense of trusting in this sense of awakened awareness of instead of just keeping your mind busy with thoughts and activities and speculations learn to just stop for a while and kind of open out and listen pay attention and listen to yourself Report an error in the passage at 5:33 Highlight the passage at 5:33

6:02 They're looking inward rather than just seeking answers from others, from monks or from teachers or from books. Report an error in the passage at 6:02 Highlight the passage at 6:02

6:15 We have these things like be still and be still and know, the Christian one, and the sense of stillness where we stop just the... Momentum of habitual thinking and proliferating and analyzing and creating and controlling and resisting life to a sense of an attitude of acceptance, of welcoming, of inviting, of accepting whatever. Report an error in the passage at 6:15 Highlight the passage at 6:15

7:04 In Buddhadhamma, we're not trying to control or to divide or to separate anything. All that we're experiencing in the present belongs in this present moment, whether it's feeling good or feeling bad, it's happy or miserable or elated or depressed or bored or confused, whatever. Mental states or conditions existing in the present, our relationship to them now is one of peaceful coexistence, of welcoming, of allowing things to be what they are rather than the stress that we create through trying to control, trying to get rid of what we don't like, trying to get hold and keep what we like. Report an error in the passage at 7:04 Highlight the passage at 7:04

8:02 An endless kind of stressful activity that we tend to project onto life that we're living. But when we're reflecting here, it's like using this place Amaravati, see it as a deathless realm, a little translation. translation. Report an error in the passage at 8:02 Highlight the passage at 8:02

8:32 The deathless realm, Amara, is the deathless. Māra is the Pāli word for death. And Māra, of course, in the scriptures, Tripitaka, is usually the kind of tempter or the delusion, that which causes delusion, the death-bound conditions. Report an error in the passage at 8:32 Highlight the passage at 8:32

9:01 Always they're tempting us, they entice us, they fascinate us, they delude us endlessly. So just the physical body that we have and the emotional conditions we experience and the thoughts we think and the memories, when we attach and bind ourselves to the conditioned realm, then it's always taking us to death. Report an error in the passage at 9:01 Highlight the passage at 9:01

9:31 Through this Māra, this sense of doom and destruction and decay. Report an error in the passage at 9:31 Highlight the passage at 9:31

9:44 So even though we're trying to seek maybe life by going out and trying to live it up, say at New Year's, isn't there, go out and live it up, go to Trafalgar Square and get drunk. So I bring in the new millennium completely heedless. Report an error in the passage at 9:44 Highlight the passage at 9:44

10:01 Really engaging with life, you know, really living it up to the hill. But actually, what you're doing is engaging with death. And in the Buddhist sense, that one is caught in the momentum of delusion. No matter how fascinating or enticing those conditions might be, they still arise and cease. Report an error in the passage at 10:01 Highlight the passage at 10:01

10:30 So in this... This act of awakening to the way things are, where our mind is then opening to the deathless realization, which is here and now, which is the truth, the ultimate reality that we tend to never notice, ignore, not see at all because of our endless... ...obsessions with the realm of Māra, the conditioned world. Report an error in the passage at 10:30 Highlight the passage at 10:30

11:15 When you're in the practice of meditation, I find that the true nature is peaceful and still. And this stillness and this purity is ever-present with us, but it's not noticed. It's overlooked. And so the more heedless we live, then we're always kind of looking for something, even looking for truth as if it were someplace else, or looking for purity by doing all kinds of things that we think will maybe make us pure by some kind of ceremonial activity. Report an error in the passage at 11:15 Highlight the passage at 11:15

12:04 Always looking for something that's far away. and not really waking up and noticing the ever-present Amata or Amaravati or deathless realm that we begin to recognize when we stop just this restless activity in this kind of grasping of things and moving from one thing to another. Report an error in the passage at 12:04 Highlight the passage at 12:04

12:41 So that's one reason why these precepts that we take, the refuges, the precepts, this is a convention admittedly, but they're meant to remind us to stop just seeking through restless activities and the force of habit. Just stop trying to become anything or get anything or control things. Learn to relax, to trust. Report an error in the passage at 12:41 Highlight the passage at 12:41

13:11 To open, to accept, to welcome life. I found even welcoming pain and despair and that it changes the attitude from wanting to get rid of all the things I don't like by resisting them and trying to annihilate them. Report an error in the passage at 13:11 Highlight the passage at 13:11

13:41 We chanted this evening the Karanya Mettā Sutta, which is one of the great chants in the Theravāda Buddhism, in which we're a relationship to all creatures, all conditions, whether good or bad, devils or angels, seen or unseen, whatever their quality might be, we have this attitude of mettā. Or loving kindness. So apply this both externally to the creatures that you perceive and meet through sight and sound and touch. Report an error in the passage at 13:41 Highlight the passage at 13:41

14:27 But also internally apply it. This mettā, this total acceptance, unconditioned love, loving kindness towards even the thoughts, the memories, the emotions. The feelings that we experience through our consciousness individually. So it's not exclusive, isn't it? We're not trying to have more love for what we like. But it's equalizing. Report an error in the passage at 14:27 Highlight the passage at 14:27

15:06 Everything is allowed. Everything is accepted. Everything is welcome. Report an error in the passage at 15:06 Highlight the passage at 15:06

15:14 Well, let's contemplate the sense of welcoming and acceptance frees us from this endless habit of controlling and resisting, which is the cause of stress and so much mental breakdown of the present age, because one thing we notice is that the pace of life now, modern life, City like London or even in the towns around here is a very kind of speedy, a faster pace of life than say what existed 50 years ago. Report an error in the passage at 15:14 Highlight the passage at 15:14

16:00 Due to our cleverness and our ability to manipulate the material world to create all the kind of technology that we have created. It's also, it's turning against us. We're getting wound up. We're getting tight and stressed and confused by it. Report an error in the passage at 16:00 Highlight the passage at 16:00

16:28 Because it will just increase if we do not have any refuge outside of that. Now that's another reason why we find an increasing amount of interest in meditation. In yoga, in religion, all these kind of ancient teachings that used to be considered for the archaeological museum, interesting anthropological studies of religion and curious ways that people believe in things and do weird things like yoga in developing. Report an error in the passage at 16:28 Highlight the passage at 16:28

17:15 the other Funny looking postures. They're now becoming acceptable and respected because all these kind of conventions, their purpose is to lead us towards this peacefulness and stillness, towards calm, towards awakeness. Report an error in the passage at 17:15 Highlight the passage at 17:15

17:39 They're not meant to just kind of recondition us into some kind of religious person. Like with Buddhism, for example, we think to become a Buddhist, what do you have to believe in? We get asked this question here in the West, because the general attitude of religion is that you have to believe in something, and that you have to convert and become something by kind of discarding or getting rid of something else. Report an error in the passage at 17:39 Highlight the passage at 17:39

18:19 So the question of to become a Buddhist, what do we have to do? The thing is that we're not encouraging becoming Buddhists. We're not trying to grasp a convention, but the whole point of our efforts here is to make available a convention to develop awareness and mindfulness with. Report an error in the passage at 18:19 Highlight the passage at 18:19

18:51 So even the monastic forms, the Bhikkhu, the Buddhist monk, Buddhist nun, and so forth, these are not kind of measures of becoming. They're not meant to convey that, to give that message that we become these things. They're expedient means, conventions that we use for developing awareness. Report an error in the passage at 18:51 Highlight the passage at 18:51

19:21 So you can become a Buddhist by adopting all kinds of Buddhist ideas. You can become a Mahāyāna Buddhist, or Hinayana Buddhist, or Zen Buddhist, or Tibetan Buddhist, or British Buddhist, modern Buddhist. Report an error in the passage at 19:21 Highlight the passage at 19:21

19:43 That's because you maybe adopt certain Buddhist attitudes, and then that's a sense of becoming something. Report an error in the passage at 19:43 Highlight the passage at 19:43

19:56 But this is not what I would encourage. It's not an attitude that I would find liberating, because it's just like changing your clothes. You get tired of wearing certain kind of styles, so you change your clothes to a Buddhist robe or something, just because that's what you particularly fancy at the moment. Report an error in the passage at 19:56 Highlight the passage at 19:56

20:23 So it's not a matter of... of just getting rid of the old-fashioned and adopting a new one, but of awakening, awakening to the truth of the way it is, through using convention in a skillful way. Report an error in the passage at 20:23 Highlight the passage at 20:23

20:49 Also, Buddha's teaching is not a doctrinal approach, so it's not saying you have to believe in Buddha or in any kind of metaphysical... Report an error in the passage at 20:49 Highlight the passage at 20:49

21:06 It's a teaching of awakening, using suffering as the point of awakening, this dukkha, the noble truths, four noble truths, of learning to use this ordinary experience that we have all the time in our lives, some kind of suffering, using that as a noble truth to pay attention to rather than just react to. Report an error in the passage at 21:06 Highlight the passage at 21:06

21:36 to get of it. So the attitude, I say, of a Buddhist is welcoming our suffering, beginning to really understand and accept it, notice it, pay attention, and allow it to be what it is. And through that attitude, then we begin to understand the causes, how we create suffering. And we realize the way of... Report an error in the passage at 21:36 Highlight the passage at 21:36

22:05 Letting go of those causes and the way of non-suffering, not creating suffering. So the Buddha brought the human experience of suffering into this position of a noble truth. So it's not something you believe in. You don't believe in suffering, you suffer, isn't it? In terms of ultimate reality, we're not asking you to believe in some kind of ultimate reality as if it were something. Report an error in the passage at 22:05 Highlight the passage at 22:05

22:41 Something or other. But through our understanding of suffering, we free ourselves from the causes that bind us to our delusions. And then we realize the ultimate reality. It's a realization. The direct knowing of ultimate reality rather than a kind of theoretical abstraction that we might adhere to as an idea. Report an error in the passage at 22:41 Highlight the passage at 22:41

23:13 Buddhist practice, it's a very direct, very simple way of living. Report an error in the passage at 23:13 Highlight the passage at 23:13

23:25 And of course we realize that we're not simple people, we're very complicated. Report an error in the passage at 23:25 Highlight the passage at 23:25

23:34 We've got all kinds of ideas and habits, and the more educated you become, the more complicated you get. Report an error in the passage at 23:34 Highlight the passage at 23:34

23:47 So if you have a PhD, then you have... A PhD full of complications. Report an error in the passage at 23:47 Highlight the passage at 23:47

23:55 I'm not anti-education actually. I'm just trying to put how our conditioning of the mind can intimidate us endlessly through our being Report an error in the passage at 23:55 Highlight the passage at 23:55

24:17 so impressed by acquired knowledge rather than by direct knowing. Report an error in the passage at 24:17 Highlight the passage at 24:17

24:28 This direct knowing is then what we're like Buddha, what the Buddha really is in terms of, if we can think of it as a historical sage who taught the Four Noble Truths 2,500 years ago in India, was one way of looking at it. But in terms of a refuge, it really means that it's the knowing now. It's all of us. Report an error in the passage at 24:28 Highlight the passage at 24:28

24:57 When we take refuge in Buddha, we're taking refuge in this simple act of awakened awareness. So Buddha is now, it's knowing now, and it's learning to be patient, because you're not trying to know something through definition, through analysis of it, but through the direct acceptance of life as it is in the present. Report an error in the passage at 24:57 Highlight the passage at 24:57

25:27 What you're feeling, what you're experiencing, emotionally, physically, spiritually, right now, it's not criticizing anything, it's not saying that what you're feeling right now is somehow, you shouldn't be feeling it. It's a direct knowing that isn't critical of anything. But knows the way things are. And so we can call it intuitive awareness or insight into reality or realization. Report an error in the passage at 25:27 Highlight the passage at 25:27

26:19 So I think we have the opportunity to develop this temple here. is now A very special place where this is fully encouraged, the awakened mind. Report an error in the passage at 26:19 Highlight the passage at 26:19

26:47 And so it is a wonderful thing to have in a country like this at this time. We all have this opportunity during these next few days just to... To calm down is also relaxing, a sense of don't make this into a kind of forced, aggressive thing that you've got to do. Report an error in the passage at 26:47 Highlight the passage at 26:47

27:17 It's not a kind of something that you've got to prove yourself in any way, but in learning to be patient and open, to relax in the moment, to trust. Report an error in the passage at 27:17 Highlight the passage at 27:17

27:34 You're in a safe place with people. We're all here to support each other in this endeavor. We're all here to help each other to this realization. And the whole emphasis of this place of Amaravati itself is designed to encourage this physical place, a location on a map. With buildings and facilities that can accommodate us at this time in a comfortable enough way. Report an error in the passage at 27:34 Highlight the passage at 27:34

28:12 And then the rest is up to us. Our determination and our wisdom, which we're offering also, not just for selfish pleasure, for selfish accomplishment, but... Because we realize that our lives do affect each other. That we're not just isolated entities living little kind of worlds all our own without any connection to anything else. Report an error in the passage at 28:12 Highlight the passage at 28:12

28:51 The New Age ideas of interconnectedness, this kind of internet. Everything is inter, transparent inter. And no secrets, and there's no censorship, no, nowadays we have very little control of trying to even control what comes across on the internet. Report an error in the passage at 28:51 Highlight the passage at 28:51

29:22 So maybe it's not a time for controlling things, but for understanding, since that's what we can do. And that leads us toward realization rather than towards creating more delusions. Report an error in the passage at 29:22 Highlight the passage at 29:22

29:38 And creating more difficulties for the next millennium. So I want to offer this as a reflection, encouragement, and we can commence our vigil. Report an error in the passage at 29:38 Highlight the passage at 29:38