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- 2:37
So in Pāli word for an unenlightened, unawakened human being, It's a word, the bhutuchana. So bhutuchana is an ordinary human being that has not awakened to anything, more or less programmed, conditioned to think and act and operate according to the cultural
- 5:07
say, is to live in the awakened state, more and more make a strong determination to mindfulness awareness and use various skillful means To keep reminding yourself to pay attention, to be in that state of attentiveness to what you're feeling, to the experiences that you're having in regards to your karma, what happens to you, good or bad, desirable or undesirable or whatever. Because the awakened state of mind isn't one where we're trying to control in
- 12:29
understanding the word understanding, like standing under or accepting the state of mind we're in, the body as it is now, whatever its quality. In this present moment is or the mood or the state of mind you happen to be in at this moment. To understand it means to accept it for what it is. Accepting and understanding doesn't mean approving but it means because we can accept and understand a lot of things that we don't approve of or that are bad or painful or miserable or terrible.
- 27:10
So the stance of a meditator is one of the Buddha, or the awakened mind, where we pay attention. Mindfulness, the Buddha emphasized mindfulness, and this is the kind of focus that the Buddha used. And mindfulness is a word that I'd never really used before I became a Buddhist. It wasn't a kind of common word or concept in my kind of cultural or social...
- 42:22
Now you notice in the retreatants, when you come on a retreat here, also you have to, you're living by the eight precepts. So you're living more in a controlled and confined way than you generally would if you just lived your ordinary life. The boundary is much more, the scope for doing what you want, saying what you want.
Transcript
0:00 Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Thassa bhagavatho arahantosamvasambhutasannam Thassa bhagavatho arahantosamvasambhutasannam Aparu chade sangamatasa thawara Yesodavantabhamunjanthusatam This is a very special evening, the New Year's Eve. The perceptions of it being special, the end of one year beginning in a few hours of the new year, 1997. Report an error in the passage at 0:00
0:53 And Report an error in the passage at 0:53
1:03 so when we... Report an error in the passage at 1:03
1:07 We can use this event as a way of contemplating it, what it really is, what it means, its significance, and how to develop mindfulness, wisdom in our lives. The following year, 1997, we can see the past year, 1996, seems to go by very quickly. Report an error in the passage at 1:07
1:37 I'm sure it wasn't just me. Maybe it was, but of course as you get older, the years go by more quickly than they do when you're young. Report an error in the passage at 1:37
1:52 But anyway, what we're moving towards is a recognition of the timeless, rather than being caught up with the perceptions of time as being the real world that we hold to and try to control in some way. Report an error in the passage at 1:52
2:26 our lives regretting the mistakes of the past, or resenting things that have happened to us the past. So in Pāli word for an unenlightened, unawakened human being, It's a word, the bhutuchana. Report an error in the passage at 2:26
2:46 So bhutuchana is an ordinary human being that has not awakened to anything, more or less programmed, conditioned to think and act and operate according to the cultural conditioning, social conditioning that he or she receives, and that without question, without investigation, without awakening the mind. Report an error in the passage at 2:46
3:15 And so we can just operate on a program that we get when we're young and then we kind of carry it on through, going through the same motions, repeating the same things over and over again until we die. Or we can awaken. And so the Buddha means the awakened one, that which is awake. Report an error in the passage at 3:15
3:41 Just because your eyes are open and you're not asleep doesn't mean you're really awake. You're just caught in a program of self-centeredness, of stupidity, of greed, of hatred, and endless delusions about yourself and the world you live in. You're not awake. You're merely a kind of a cipher in a system. You're not one who has awakened to the truth or to the dhamma. Report an error in the passage at 3:41
4:18 So this word Buddha is a very significant word in the tradition. It always implies the awakened state of mind. Buddha can be a human being. So we can have Buddha images like the one that you see is a human form, idealized human form. It represents the ability that we all share. Ajahn Report an error in the passage at 4:18
4:54 awaken to the truth. Report an error in the passage at 4:54
5:07 say, is to live in the awakened state, more and more make a strong determination to mindfulness awareness and use various skillful means Report an error in the passage at 5:07
5:24 To keep reminding yourself to pay attention, to be in that state of attentiveness to what you're feeling, to the experiences that you're having in regards to your karma, what happens to you, good or bad, desirable or undesirable or whatever. Report an error in the passage at 5:24
5:50 Because the awakened state of mind isn't one where we're trying to control in and influence life for our own benefit or for our own convenience it means we're we're willing to learn from what happens from both the successes the failures the the good the bad the the good health the the bad health the uh praise that we get the blame that we get and Report an error in the passage at 5:50
6:23 we're not we're not making we're not asking for favors and special privileges from above because we're now realizing the real refuge and the real gift of our humanity lies in our ability to awaken to life and to learn to understand and so the Buddha established his teaching around the common experience of suffering and so this is the most common human experience that we all share As the first noble truth, he made the most common ordinary human condition that every human being experiences in their life into a noble truth, the first noble truth. Report an error in the passage at 6:23
7:12 Why? What is the value of that? Report an error in the passage at 7:12
7:24 And so this dukkha is to be understood. In other words, we're not just trying to get rid of it and run away. avoid Avoid, get rid of, deny suffering, but to understand it. To understand anything, what do you do? You have to accept it for what it is first. If you're just reacting to it and resenting and resisting or trying to distract yourself, then how can you ever understand anything if you're just caught in your reactions to it? Report an error in the passage at 7:24
8:02 So we change our attitude towards our own suffering. Instead of just seeing it as something we want to get rid of or blame on somebody else or just feel despair and resentment, we take an interest in our own experience of suffering. And so there's a natural suffering that we all share. Report an error in the passage at 8:02
8:40 our lifetime, we have to, our loved ones separate, away, die. We all have to experience having to put up and bear with things that we don't like and don't want. Report an error in the passage at 8:40
8:57 we all want things that we don't have so these these this This suffering, this kind of suffering is common to all humanity. And it's natural, the unsatisfactoriness of the body, for instance, this aging process is just the way it is. It's born, grows up, gets old and dies. That's its nature. But whether we create suffering around Report an error in the passage at 8:57
9:30 the aging process or the pain or the sickness of it or the... Report an error in the passage at 9:30
10:04 Complications around the experiences that we're having in life. This is the kind of suffering we can let go of. Report an error in the passage at 10:04
10:17 And one Thai monk calls this what he calls akhanduka tuk, which is the kind of, akhanduka means like visiting, a visiting kind of suffering or something that comes to us. That we create onto the experience of the aging, the sickness, the pain, the natural unsatisfactoriness that we have in this realm, this sense realm that we're experiencing. Report an error in the passage at 10:17
10:54 So we contemplate in the Buddhist Vipassanā meditation, looking into the nature of things, we contemplate existence, what it really means, like being conscious, having a physical body, having... Senses, having to look at things, hear sounds, smell odors, taste with our tongue the good and bad flavors, having to feel heat and cold pleasure and pain through the body, having a mind that retains a retentive memory. Report an error in the passage at 10:54
11:30 We have to remember things. We have language and ability to create and to imagine. to reason and therefore mentally we can become very complicated to get entangled in our own thought process or our own emotional habits and get bound up in the most complicated neurotic patterns that lead us inevitably to some state of despair, depression. Report an error in the passage at 11:30
12:04 So Report an error in the passage at 12:04
12:10 in the practice of meditation then we are now Beginning to stop just being caught into the habits by listening and awakening to them, understanding them, Report an error in the passage at 12:10
12:29 understanding the word understanding, like standing under or accepting the state of mind we're in, the body as it is now, whatever its quality. In this present moment is or the mood or the state of mind you happen to be in at this moment. To understand it means to accept it for what it is. Report an error in the passage at 12:29
12:58 Accepting and understanding doesn't mean approving but it means because we can accept and understand a lot of things that we don't approve of or that are bad or painful or miserable or terrible. It's only through accepting them for what they are and understanding that we begin to see the way of non-suffering. Report an error in the passage at 12:58
13:26 So the Buddha taught suffering and the end of suffering. And the Eightfold Path is the end of suffering. The Eightfold Path is the fourth noble truth. The Report an error in the passage at 13:26
13:43 Buddha taught only two things, suffering and the end of suffering. Report an error in the passage at 13:43
13:50 So the end of suffering can be realized. That means to be free from the delusions, the identities with the mortal state that we are strongly attached to, such Report an error in the passage at 13:50
14:10 as your own body. If you are your body, then you're attached to a dying animal. You Report an error in the passage at 14:10
14:33 are a dying thing because we're all dying. We're all moving toward the grave, toward the crematorium. Tonight we'll go out and throw papers on a bonfire. Remember that in a few years we'll all be in that fire, these bodies. Report an error in the passage at 14:33
15:06 Now if you're attached to all your mental conditioning, what is it? What have you got to show for that? You're attached to the idea of being English maybe, being French, being upper class, working class. Report an error in the passage at 15:06
15:27 Attached to the idea of being a man or a woman. Attached to the idea of being a Tory or a Labour or a Liberal. Attached to the idea of being a Buddhist or not being a Buddhist or being a Christian. Attached to the idea of being a personality, a certain kind of person. Report an error in the passage at 15:27
15:53 To our memories, to our habits, our emotional habits. We attach, we identify, and therefore we're always in this state of feeling unstable and unsure and doubting and uncertain and despairing because we are identified with things that are basically unstable, transient, impermanent, and not real. Report an error in the passage at 15:53
16:21 Because you get the conditioning of your mind is one thing. What we get, how do we choose it? Don't we get born into, through our parents, whatever they are, we acquire a lot of their attitudes, assumptions, and the particular culture and social conditioning that we happen to get wherever we're born, what we get as our result of that birth. Report an error in the passage at 16:21
16:53 We're conditioned and we form a sense of ourself, our personality, our worth, worthlessness value or lack of it or whatever accordingly but all that conditioning is something that comes out of not understanding dharma not Report an error in the passage at 16:53
17:17 seeing things and not being awake and really understanding things they really are we we get sometimes we get quite good conditions we get born to a good family with Loving parents and social advantages and a fairly wise and generous situation and that we might inherit quite a good load of karmic conditioning. Report an error in the passage at 17:17
17:45 Or we might be born into miserable conditions right from the beginning. But whatever, no matter how good or how bad the karma, the conditions might be, The act of identifying, of being blindly attached and caught and stuck into that conditioning process means that we're attached to the changing, unstable, ephemeral mental states that fleet through consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 17:45
18:21 And of course then they're always trying to find some sense of stability and constancy in life through Maybe having lots of money or having property, having things and having kind of stable situations that give us, that make us feel everything's going to be okay. Report an error in the passage at 18:21
18:48 But in the long run, even if you're able to manipulate the world or you have the opportunity to pretty much get what you want and have all the best, There's something still frightening, unknown, mysterious, some sense of doom and pursue us, haunt us in Report an error in the passage at 18:48
19:23 our lives as human beings until we awaken. So the way out of this suffering is not through avoidance or through having particularly good karma. To get born into a better situation, the next life. But by awakening to the way things are. Report an error in the passage at 19:23
19:46 And so all of us have this opportunity. Having the opportunity to hear the dharma teaching. Now here in England there are places like this. Places where you can come and practice. You get some kind of guidance, encouragement for. Developing this way of practice in order to realize the way of non-suffering. Report an error in the passage at 19:46
20:16 The Report an error in the passage at 20:16
20:27 way of non-suffering doesn't mean you don't get old or don't get sick or your body doesn't die or you don't feel any grief when your mother dies. But it means that you are able to understand suffering and respond and not be caught. Report an error in the passage at 20:27
20:55 unresolved problems in your life. through this understanding that we can resolve our karma, we can liberate ourselves from the... Report an error in the passage at 20:55
21:12 not create suffering around what happens to us. Now this is very important to recognize that I found this in my early monastic life in Thailand because I entered the monastic order thinking that you're going to find some state where the whole kind of miserable stuff vanishes and there was some kind of A lot of doubts would arise because I couldn't imagine, you know, how that could possibly be. Report an error in the passage at 21:12
21:52 And then through the guidance, teaching of somebody like Lungphacha, various teachers that one meets, then you begin, and through developing and using the teachings of the Lord Buddha, then you actually begin to realize this for yourself. The way it is in terms of Being a human being, you know, in a conscious form, in a human body, on this planet, is like this. So like the feeling of, when we go outside, we feel a sharp, bitter cold. Report an error in the passage at 21:52
22:35 And so we can suffer from that cold or not suffer. I mean, there's the actual feeling, and whether, you know, that your body is receiving from, say, the cold, the sharp, bitter cold. That we're having, the cold spell that we're having at this time. And that's sensation and that's maybe unpleasant. Maybe it's an unpleasant, it makes you, you know, you want to get away, you want to get out of it. It's not a pleasant experience to be in the cold like that. Report an error in the passage at 22:35
23:14 So the natural movement is to get away from it. But also we begin to recognize that That if we grumble, complain, hate the cold, not want to be here, then we're creating suffering. We're adding to the experience of coldness and the discomfort that that brings us with mental discomfort. And with the ability to contemplate, we begin to get a sense for watching this tendency to, say, complain about the weather. Report an error in the passage at 23:14
23:54 To not want it to be cold, wanting it to be warm. Not wanting to feel cold, but wanting to feel warm. Wanting something you don't have or not wanting things to be the way they are is the suffering we create around the way it is in the present. Report an error in the passage at 23:54
24:28 We live in a society that does complain a lot. The more affluent, I think, societies become, the more they complain. And so we spend our time complaining about the government, about the way it is, about the wife or the husband, the children, the parents, the society. Report an error in the passage at 24:28
24:56 There's always, you know, the politics, the economy, the European Union, the Americans, Japanese. Report an error in the passage at 24:56
25:19 All the different things that we can end up complaining about. But this is a suffering. When we have a complaining mind, then we live in a realm of, we're creating all this negative stuff through consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 25:19
25:39 So we can contemplate this, and we can actually reflect on this emotional tendency to complain, to criticize, to find fault. To want things to be otherwise. Or if you're really happy and like the way it is now, how we dread losing or seeing it change into something else. Report an error in the passage at 25:39
26:08 So even the kind of peak moments of our sensory experience where everything is just wonderful, we can also... Be caught in the dread of losing it. So we create dread about the possibility of losing the success, the happiness, the wealth, the good relationship, the comfort, the security that we have. So that even though we have it, we create suffering around the inevitable possibilities of losing what we like and what we depend on. Report an error in the passage at 26:08
26:52 And then if we don't have it all, then we complain about the fact that it shouldn't be like this. So the mind is caught in this negative mode, which is the suffering we create. So the stance of a meditator is one of the Buddha, or the awakened mind, where we pay attention. Mindfulness, the Buddha emphasized mindfulness, and this is the kind of focus that the Buddha used. Report an error in the passage at 26:52
27:34 And mindfulness is a word that I'd never really used before I became a Buddhist. It wasn't a kind of common word or concept in my kind of cultural or social... In fact, when I first heard it, I didn't quite know what it meant. In fact, when I first started meditation, I thought it meant some kind of concentration, because I learned to do this kind of Burmese style at first, where mindfulness meant you did everything very slowly. Report an error in the passage at 27:34
28:13 So I started doing this Mahāsi Sayadaw method, and you were supposed to do everything in a very slow, slow movement. And so I thought mindfulness meant you did everything slowly. Report an error in the passage at 28:13
28:31 Then further investigation, I began to realize it had to be more than that because you can't live, I couldn't imagine living my life just walking that slowly or doing everything in such a contrived way. Report an error in the passage at 28:31
28:48 And surely, you know, the Buddha didn't mean that we should kind of slow down to where, you know, we... We can't even catch a bus unless we leave two hours ahead of time to be able to make it to the bus stop. Report an error in the passage at 28:48
29:15 I remember in a monastery that I first started meditating in Thailand, one monk was there. He'd been there about 10 or 11 months before I arrived, and he'd been doing this slow method. Report an error in the passage at 29:15
29:30 And I watched him eat one day. He developed into a real skill. And take the food and everything was just so beautifully done. These very slow movements. And he'd been doing that for 11 months. And then a few weeks later an ambulance came and took him to the hospital. Report an error in the passage at 29:30
30:00 Because his system had broken down. He couldn't... He hadn't exercised his body for 11 months and he was constipated and everything. Report an error in the passage at 30:00
30:14 I don't think that could be just, I think mindfulness has to be much more useful than doing everything in a slow way. Report an error in the passage at 30:14
30:32 But one can be mindful doing things in a slow way. Slowness is one way, you know, is a technique. like Report an error in the passage at 30:32
30:40 You know, something to slow down and it helps to concentrate. To slow down gives you more of a sense of concentration. But mindfulness is all-inclusive. It includes fastness, slowness, every aspect of human existence and sensory experience we can be mindful of no matter how... Pleasant, unpleasant, fast or slow, good or bad it might be. Because mindfulness means to pay attention, to put yourself into that state of attentive listening, awareness, where your mind is open and embracing, where it's including everything. Report an error in the passage at 30:40
31:31 It's not just fixed on one thing by excluding everything else. Mindfulness is like intuition or intuitive awareness, words like this, convey the sense of paying attention, being in that state of awakened listening. Report an error in the passage at 31:31
31:56 Like when you're really listening, you're in that state of where your mind is kind of wide open and you're just alert, attentive, Report an error in the passage at 31:56
32:11 poised in that state of awareness. Report an error in the passage at 32:11
32:21 Before you even, and you begin to recognize this as a, you know, before you even start thinking about anything, you can, that state of poised attention, awareness, mindfulness, is Report an error in the passage at 32:21
32:37 the kind of, what we mean by mindfulness, the state of being able to include and to be able to Be aware of what's actually happening right now, both externally and internally. Report an error in the passage at 32:37
33:02 We have the four foundations of mindfulness where you actually begin to contemplate the body as it is now, your own body, not as some kind of abstract thing that you study in a book of anatomy and physiology, but just the experience of the body as it is right now, as it's breathing or sitting. Report an error in the passage at 33:02
33:27 So mindfulness is the ability to observe, to pay attention, to embrace the physical experience of your own body in this present moment. Or the sensitivity that we have through the senses, the pleasure, pain, and neutral sensations that we get through sensory activity. Report an error in the passage at 33:27
33:57 There's a That part of us which is aware of pleasure, pain, or neutral sensation, or the mood, the state of mind you're in, you can be aware of what kind of mental quality your mind's in right now, whether you feel happy, sad, high, low, peaceful, confused, excited, angry, frightened, threatened, worried. Report an error in the passage at 33:57
34:32 There's that mindfulness ability to recognize the mood as it is. It's not judgmental, not saying you should have a certain kind of mood or a certain kind of sensation, but it's the ability to understand, to embrace that which is right now, whatever quality the condition might. be and Report an error in the passage at 34:32
35:07 through that ability then of course you you begin to see things in a different way you're looking at the impermanence of these conditions rather than whether they're you they should or shouldn't be or good or bad right or wrong it's Report an error in the passage at 35:07
35:28 not a critical it's not like choosing one thing or another and and and deciding what is the best but it's recognition of The way it is now, which we begin to see it through this mindfulness and wisdom rather than through liking, disliking, picking and choosing, selecting, discriminating, which is what we usually do, isn't it? Report an error in the passage at 35:28
35:59 We're usually caught in reactions to the mood we're in. You're in a bad mood. You tend to either indulge in it and follow it or you resist it. You're trying to get rid of it. Report an error in the passage at 35:59
36:14 Or if you see or hear something that is beautiful and you feel attracted, you kind of gravitate towards it, or if it's ugly or unpleasant and you want to get rid of it, run away from it. Mindfulness combined with wisdom allows us to embrace the experience of the present, whatever it might be. And in that attitude of embracing the suffering, then we begin to understand dukkha, the causes of it, and realize the way of, realize the ending of dukkha, the ending of suffering. Report an error in the passage at 36:14
37:21 So this particular practice, it's interesting to see how in the past 40 years or so, Amount of interest in Buddhist meditation in the Western world. I remember I became interested in Buddhism in around 1955 and then Report an error in the passage at 37:21
37:56 it was, you know, it was a really exotic foreign kind of thing. Then there was in the West Coast in California, it was becoming kind of a fashionable It was a fad. It kind of beat Zen in that time where the American occupation of Japan brought over some of the good things we received from that time was an interest in Zen Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 37:56
38:34 And at first it started more like an intellectual kind of gimmicky, fashionable thing to do. But it also brought into consciousness the Buddhist attitude, which was something that was, in a sense, there was something in it that we didn't have in our own cultural conventions. Report an error in the passage at 38:34
39:03 And what I felt, what I kind of intuitively sensed then was this embracing quality was lacking because I was brought up in the very In a very strongly discriminative tradition where you're constantly resisting evil and trying to control things. If you're in a bad mood, you're getting rid of it. Anger, you've got to get rid of it. You've got to change yourself into something by becoming better and better and trying to get rid of all your bad habits. Report an error in the passage at 39:03
39:43 And so this was kind of a feeling of despair with life because no matter how hard you tried to control and make yourself into what you thought you should be, it didn't quite work. And you're always trying to resist and deny part of yourself, part of your experience, and trying to To try to get something and hold on to something else. Where with the Zen Buddhist approach is much more the attitude of oneness, of embracing, of contemplation, of not choosing, picking or choosing, of non-resistance. Report an error in the passage at 39:43
40:40 Taking that further into becoming a monk in Thailand. Report an error in the passage at 40:40
40:47 really Making a strong commitment to a tradition and a monastic form as a guide and reference for mindfulness so that you have a lot of supportive conventions around you to refer to and kind of bounce off of because being such a kind of Free spirit before I became a monk and living quite a hedonistic life, an indulgent life, there was little ability to operate within conventions. Report an error in the passage at 40:47
41:36 There was more or less just following impulses. So going into a very conservative monastic tradition was to me an opportunity to To have some perspective on this kind of wild, hedonistic and impulsive, these impulsive habits that I developed. Report an error in the passage at 41:36
42:01 But it wasn't done as a kind of ascetic determination to make myself into something else. But it was a convention to, it is a convention to use for reflection. Report an error in the passage at 42:01
42:22 Now you notice in the retreatants, when you come on a retreat here, also you have to, you're living by the eight precepts. So you're living more in a controlled and confined way than you generally would if you just lived your ordinary life. Report an error in the passage at 42:22
42:45 The boundary is much more, the scope for doing what you want, saying what you want. following your impulses is diminished in a meditation retreat because we all agree to live within the boundaries and restrictions margins of the eight precepts Report an error in the passage at 42:45
43:11 and that also is a way of when you At first one can feel a kind of relief in a group because everybody is committed to the same standard, the same restraint, the same limitation. But if you carry on, say, for the next year within the eight precepts, you'll find a lot of resistance to it, a lot of rebellion, a lot of frustration, a lot of irritation with limitation. Report an error in the passage at 43:11
43:50 And so those are the things that one would begin to notice, just the frustration, the irritation, the resistance, the rebellion to restraint, to external conformity. I grew up in the kind of idea of being a non-conformist. I prided myself on being a non-conformist, an individual. A free spirit, West Coast Americans back in the 50s, kind of beatnik, bohemian, hippie, that kind of, really liked those identities. Report an error in the passage at 43:50
44:32 And to be a kind of proper Buddhist monk, forest tradition, northeast Thailand, strict rules and all that, it brought such a strong, it helped to reflect this this this this Impulsivity. So then by reflecting, by contemplating, you begin to see the suffering you create. And then the aim too, to relinquish the causes of suffering, to let go of the causes of suffering and realize the cessation of suffering means that you find contentment. Report an error in the passage at 44:32
45:17 You begin to realize an inner stillness and peacefulness and contentment. That isn't dependent upon conditions being any certain way. You really have the insight into those noble truths and you have that realization and a stillness, a kind of inner purity and stillness that's natural to us. Report an error in the passage at 45:17
46:07 We begin to let go, free ourselves from those identities. More and more you begin, you remember. Report an error in the passage at 46:07
46:18 You realize, and in that, when you have that insight, then you feel, then you begin to have a confidence in yourself. You see clearly how to practice, how to live in a way that you're no longer creating the causes for suffering in your life. Report an error in the passage at 46:18
46:49 And your refuge is always in the present, Natural purity and stillness, serenity of the heart that we keep forgetting as we get caught up into the old habits again. So we need things that remind us again because we forget, we can always remember. Report an error in the passage at 46:49
47:19 And we use this ability to recollect, to remember until... We find that kind of balance again, that state is a natural state, it's a balanced state, it's sustainable through mindfulness and with wisdom. That natural purity and stillness isn't something you create that's depending upon conditions of being very fine and very quiet and very still or outside. Report an error in the passage at 47:19
47:51 That inner stillness and purity is is indestructible no matter what's happening around the middle of a battlefield or committee meeting or traffic jam or on a mountaintop in a cave whatever isn't really you're no longer dependent on ideal situations or controlling the environment for your inner peace because That inner peace is indestructible. Report an error in the passage at 47:51
48:32 And so we call that the deathless. We realize the deathless. Report an error in the passage at 48:32
48:54 So this new year I want to encourage you to keep going. Report an error in the passage at 48:54
49:04 It's definitely something worth pursuing if you have any doubts about meditation. Meditation. Report an error in the passage at 49:04
49:14 It's something that will be of great value to you. At first it can be very frustrating because we're not used to having to change and having to limit and do things that tend to be rather boring at first. Or we get despairing or frustrated because we can't make our mind do what we want it to do. The mind is used to distraction and wandering and we don't want it to do that. Report an error in the passage at 49:14
50:00 We like to get our mind into a nice still place and make it stay there and then it won't do that. So we're always feeling frustrated or we feel we blame ourselves. We feel we can't meditate. We feel we're not capable of this high achievement that other people are obviously capable of doing. We get caught in our own sense of frustration, self-disparagement, doubt and despair. But all those are part of it. Report an error in the passage at 50:00
50:34 We keep embracing those various forms of suffering and understanding them until eventually they... Through understanding our suffering, we can let it go, we can let go of the causes. Report an error in the passage at 50:34
50:51 But it does take a strong determination and patience, humility, willing to start again, and willing to keep applying this mindfulness to, not just to a retreat at Amaravati, but... Taking what you learn, insights you have, and trying to apply them to daily life, to family life, to where you were, so that meditation is something that you begin to integrate into the flow of your life, rather than just see meditation as some special kind of thing you do at a special place. Report an error in the passage at 50:51
51:56 So I offer this as a Contemplation, reflection for you for New Year's Eve and all my best wishes for your enlightenment. Report an error in the passage at 51:56
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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