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So far today I only got one request for a talk for this evening and it's nice that someone asks for me to talk some more about this thing which we call vicikicha, the doubts. It's one of the five hindrances and it's also just one of the first three of they call another lower fetters. I don't really like the word lower because all those fetters are pretty high and it will be sort of hard to overcome.
But because it was a very lovely novice monk here, asked for that, sometimes when somebody does that with a good heart, you know, one can never kind of refuse. That kindness is in the parts of my training and upbringing as a Buddhist monk and that kindness is always there and it sees the good in other monks, novices, anigarikas, bhikunis, marmanaries and anigarikas and it sees the good in so many places even in a little gecko who passed away.
That kind of cute that you know people can look at a little animal and have this softness and kindness towards them. And it's very easy to see this is totally different from attachment. You can look at a being, even a small being like that and just to see just how precarious its life is and how important it is to try and care for whatever you can care for. You can't care for everything but when you have an opportunity like that, it's nice to be able to keep that being in mind and to share loving kindness towards it.
And sharing of loving kindness towards it, you know, who knows whether that will affect that being. I would say it will because I just see that's happening just too much in my monastic life. Other people will be more doubtful, fine. But doubt does not mean that you close off the possibilities can be real. The possibilities, you know, they can be sort of justified or convinced later on in one's life.
So that's one of the reasons why the very least keep that as an open question, you know, that they can work. But I don't know that even though you can say chanting for, you know, animals who have passed away. Some people say there has no benefit at all.
But I always say that it has a benefit for the person doing the chanting and that's something you can find out very easily. If I just do some chanting for someone I know or even that somebody I've seen a picture of them, it's hard to say about all the people I know because sometimes they say this to me.
A person who comes up, I said, oh yes, I jumped round. You remember me. I was in BMIC H when you gave a conference there last year and I'm another 6,000 people as well. Of course you can't remember you. But nevertheless, it's just nice for me to give people benefit of the doubt, to be able to do whatever you can, whatever's in your power to give. And one thing I noticed, I mentioned this a few days ago, maybe the last talk, when I look at all the people which I put on that list which we chant for every Wednesday, the number on the list is getting less and less and less.
So that shows to me there must all be healing and recovering. What do you reckon?
That's one way of looking at this. Now if they died, they'll still be in the list because you've got to make merits for them in at least 49 days or six months or a year afterwards. Why not think like that? That's a possibility because then what happens, it gives you this greater sense of joy, fulfilment and happiness. That's one of the things which is one of the enemies of doubts which keep it getting stronger and stronger.
Now the fact that a lot of our culture in the West is just hypercritical. Of course you can believe too stupidly but sometimes in just little beliefs and giving things a benefit of the doubts. Some of those, that gives a much better universe in which you live. I mentioned earlier that one way I look at the world is that each one of us, even people
who live close together like in the same monastery are each in our own universes.
I got that from science many years ago. So we each have our own ideas, there's no universal truth in that sense. We can find out that our universes have some common themes to them and those common themes which we can relate to one another, we can share with one another, we call that the dumber. And I have to pay respects to Venable Bikubodi, just one page, one book which he wrote which I remember reading when I was on a rains retreat here so many years ago.
And I had the time, it's a nice meditation and that little few paragraphs where he explained what the dumber means, an underlying meaning of that term. And I just love the way he put it. It was very clear and I was always thanking for this. And he said, this phenomena right now, what you're experiencing, what you can know, just the nature of the candours, the nature of the senses, the nature of the departments, whatever it is you're experiencing right now, what is the cause of it?
Where did it come from? We're not looking so far back, we're just looking inside our own body and mind, just the way we've interpreted and remembered some of our experiences and neglected other parts of our experiences and come up with this conclusion which is the nature of how we interpret right now. And we can see where it comes from and tracing it back to where it comes from, that's called dumber, the origin of it, where it started from, why it happens.
And when you look at that you can see these processes of causes and effects, then you can understand why somebody of a different religion, of a different race, a different gender specification, that why they experience what they do, where it comes from. You're not judging anything, you're not comparing which is a better, which is the worst, you're understanding why people think like this. You know for so many years I was so arrogant that I thought how on earth can people be, please excuse me, Christians?
They didn't make any sense to me. And so I was neglecting it and quite sort of against. There's a very dangerous place to be in but because I was staying in Thailand with a bunch of other young monks it didn't really, really matter to me. Nevertheless, instead of saying something is right and something is wrong, instead we say where does it come from? We don't judge, we find out why.
The origin of it, why a person thinks like that, the causes which support how they think. When it comes like truth, I often mention this, I say this very often to people, what Ajahn Cha taught me, he said a lot of time, you know, Brahma Wang said, yeah you're right, but not correct. Well sometimes you say correct, but not right. It was very hard to pin him down, what are you talking about? You know, surely I was always thought in my youth that something was right or something was wrong.
And that's sort of caused a huge amount of problems in this world. And it was actually quite humbling at first, I always thought I was right. But then when somebody showed you and you had to admit it, you were wrong. That was a very wonderful experience. And you realized because you were wrong, you didn't explode or you didn't have to go to some jail for the next ten years, you weren't punished.
So being wrong was part of life. And you've seen me just expand upon that idea so many times with trees in the forest. And though tree is perfect, but they all belong. And the beautiful trees are those ones which survive, but they're all twisted and bent.
When you see that, you can see are those trees wrong for being bent? Why are they bent? And sometimes you can see the reason why. Another tree fell on them when they were just growing.
There was a bushfire or somebody was building a road or extending a road. And the backhoe or the backhoe just bumped into that tree and pushed it a little bit over. There's so many reasons. Instead of saying something's right or wrong, you just find out the reasons. Which means that you can't be so critical anymore. That's one of the things which you haven't noticed, of course, lots of problems in monasteries when people just go around criticizing one another. Do I ever do that to any one of you, honestly?
And the reason I stopped doing that years and years and years ago was to know that it's hard enough to criticize oneself, to know oneself. Well enough, where did that come from? Why did that happen? Instead of like just judging or putting people in boxes of good, bad, hopeless, terrible, disgusting waste of time, why did I spend so much time, those negative boxes? If I do put people in any box, I usually like to praise people.
The reason I do that is because it uplifts people. You know, that's one of the reasons we did ask people to win the ordainers a monk, what was the nun to choose your own name? If you choose your own name, you can choose something which is inspiring. And I was, you know, when one of the new novice, female novices, they asked me about their name because she was here today, Natiko. No, she's not here. But Natiko, when she said to me, is this really going to be my name?
But first of all, I thought that was a bit of a joke. The reason was is because whenever I was giving the interviews at Jana Grove, you know, sometimes there was, I don't know, eight or ten interviews in the morning or the afternoon. And sometimes they went on and on and on and on. It was very tiring, you know, to have so many interviews. So what I would sometimes do, I'd put the name down, Natiko or even Sunyo. I brought that down because that means Sunyo means empty or Natiko means like no one.
And names like that. And when somebody came in, there was always somebody down, but we can't find Natiko, where is she? And that time it didn't mean anybody. But now someone's got that name. And that's beautiful they have that name. So once I thought about it, I thought a beautiful name. So nobody, nothing don't exist, empty Sunyo. It's amazing to see the monk Sunyo, who's been in this monastery such a long time. And that's one of the reasons why he never actually puts on weight.
He's empty. But sometimes those are nice names and you try and live up to those names as best you possibly can. When you try and live up to those names, it gives you something to be praised for. Just like last thing as a monk for so many years. And I'd be happy, well done. Just all those years you've been a monk. Amazing. All the good surfships you've done. Many people, you know, they can look at the two bad bricks in the wall and want to destroy walls as if you made a mistake.
Oh, come on. I told that similarly for such a long time. And so people don't understand it. If you did understand it, then you could never criticize anybody. Only monks in this monastery or non-sedama-sara or monks in any monastery. Don't just look at their faults. One of the nice things about that is you know that over the years, over the lifetimes, those faults just disappear. That's one of the things which I remember the Buddha saying about David Datta. You know, try to kill the Buddha. And the Buddha, you know, said afterwards that in another E or not two that David Datta will become an hour out fully enlightened.
He will make it eventually. So just focusing on that rather than the faults. That's how we overcome this criticism which can be a terrible cancer in any community. It never looked down upon anybody. We could see their faults. Those things which are temporary, and it's a, but we never actually think that they're on that person all the time.
And indeed, so sometimes that people just open their mouth too quickly and too easily to judge when really you just do not know all that's behind what they get up to what they do. So often, you know, little stories. So often there was that fellow over that retreated in what Buddha done a year ago. Well, yes, right. No. Yeah. It was what Buddha done that. And he was the one who just breathed so loudly and disturbed so many people when they were meditating.
You think, that's a good idea. Why did you let a man like that come on our retreat? We can't have peace and silence. But then when you know the full story, you don't just make judgments to rationally. The full story was he had that sinus cancer. He was dying. And fortunately, and no praise for everybody afterwards who never complained again about people making noise on a meditation retreat. Later on, he got some nice meditation and the cancer went into remission.
I felt so pleased about that. I'm very happy that he could make noises when he was meditating because the result was amazing. Although that lady years before who had come in to Dhamma Locust Center on a Friday night, then after one or two minutes, well, we started the meditation. She started, she laid down, and she started snoring. And what happened next, really loud snoring too. Now after one or two minutes, other people sitting around her got up and just poked her, woke her up, and they said it's not allowed to snore here.
And I was thankful for that because afterwards I gave the whole talk on that, that evening. And I let them know, with the lady's permission, that the reason she'd come there, and the reason she slept that evening was she was a victim of very horrendous domestic abuse. And you can imagine just another Dhamma, the cause of this, why she was doing that, when she actually did lay down. She did that because it was the first time in weeks. She felt a sense of safety.
She couldn't choose with her friends, it would not harm her. So she could lay down and close her eyes, and just nature just dragged her into sleep so quickly. She'd been without sleep for such a long time, and now she could sleep. And a little bit of snoring. When you know that she fell on the sleep, wonderful. You can have some rest.
When you have that understanding and the compassion which comes from it, you can't sort of criticize anybody anymore.
You know this beautiful sense of giving a wonderful gift to somebody, and a half an hour of safety. And for those doing metta meditation, that's a beautiful way of doing loving kindness meditation. So you understand where all this comes from, the Dhamma, and you don't criticize people, you encourage them. And I've seen that for just too often, that the criticism doesn't work. You can shout of the person, here they leave the monastery, but then, are you any better?
Does it make for a peaceful monastery? Not that many people get deep meditation that way. You can get much more deep meditation. And I think you know what I'm talking about. I don't make these things up. When you can actually just get so inspired, you're sacrificing what you want, sacrificing your own peace, sacrificing your own silence. When somebody is noisy. You don't think any ill world towards them at all.
Instead, you feel this beautiful kindness. I don't know why you had to bang the door.
But I forgive. And that forgiveness is not with candles and incense. It's with your heart.
You just let it go. Why a person needed to do that? I don't know. But there was causes for it. Causes and effects. That's what the Dhamma is. Why did it happen? But when we act in such a way, the practice of meditation gets beautiful. It gets kind.
Without that kindness, then nothing works. I've seen many people who have been very strict with their meditation. Many people go through... I don't think this monk will mind me telling you this. There was Venerable Amunindo. When we were monks together, at about the same time, I was just a little senior for a few months to him. He decided that he was going to really go for broke. So he decided to meditate all night without moving at all. Just to sit there, and even those going through a lot of pain, he wasn't going to move.
So he sat there for about 12 hours. Was that good? The following morning, we had to take him to the hospital. He had a double knee reconstruction. I thank him for that story because it showed me, taught me that just being like a doctor like a tough guy, being strict and just thinking that you can beat down pain, that is very egotistical. You can see that type of practice where you are important rather than you try to vanish and disappear.
That type of practice coming from the sense of ego itself, too many people just don't
see that. They have this idea that's what they are supposed to do, to be the tough guy or the tough nun. And just to think that that is going to break them through to Nibbana or to Jana at least. They have never seen that happen. It's always, instead of through willpower, it's always been through wisdom power. It's never been through ego power.
It's always been through letting go. I've said that to you many times. I always have to be careful when I'm giving talks. I close my eyes and not quite sure who I'm talking to, but it goes online as well. I have to be careful of not getting into trouble by making claims. I've always said that to you. Adjan Pram can't enter Jana. And that's just a nice tricky way of answering a question.
Adjan Pram can't enter Jana. I've got to disappear first. That sense of self has to vanish.
The same with you. And for those of you who have been practicing for a long time and haven't managed to enjoy the beauty and the bliss and the sense of enormous freedom in these deep states of meditation, that's one of the reasons why. It's coming from a sense of I. I want. I want to do this.
I got close. I'm almost there. I just want. Because where there's a sense of I and ego, there's always a one thing, goes with it. That's how the Buddha said, where there's a sense of self, there's a sense of ownership. Where there's ownership, things which belong to you, then there's a sense of self. The more you think you own, the stronger that sense of self is. The utter, the sense of self gets huge. And that's the problem.
So it's nice to know you don't own anything. You don't have to get into deep meditations. You don't have to get enlightened. You don't have to do anything. Just let go and disappear and vanish. And then all those things happen all by themselves. It is the old sit down perfectly still. Have you noticed when stillness is there, when stillness happens, then things vanish. They disappear. To me, those were some of the greatest of insights.
How does meditation happen? Even so often people ask, what do you do? You say nothing. And then people say, okay, I have to do nothing. You can see the problem there. There's always, we take control. We either do something or we do nothing, but we're still doing. The idea is that thing, which initiates doing, that is seen. Like, well, so there's no doing of anything. And a lot of times people doubt.
They doubt, well, actually don't do anything. You know, how are you ever going to get enlightened? How are you ever going to get deep meditation? You've got to do something. And I kind of enjoy telling people, no, just sit there. That's the end of the instructions. Because I know that Ajahn Bodhi Daju, he just came back from Thailand and he was telling me only a short couple of words about Ajahn Gungha.
I don't know if Ajahn Gungha gives talks anymore, but he was so hard to give a talk. You know, he kept on asking him. And all he'd ever do was a beautiful dhamma. He'd say, breathe in, sub-bai. Breathe out, sub-bai. And that was it. That was his dhamma talk. If he was the abbot in this monastery and he didn't change, the talk will be over by now. Every week, same talk, same instructions.
There's brilliant. And the briefness of it and the clarity of it and the words sub-bai with its ease and happiness and joy and contentment and no efforts, just easy, like flowing, just soft and highly effective. And that was radical, a teaching like that. That's one of the reasons why that you experiment with that. A lot of meditators, they try all the difficult practices first. And then after a while, just like Ananda. I don't mean Mankanandari.
I mean, the Ananda during the time of the Buddha. It's a brilliant story. Okay, I just, you know, sometimes people, it's just one of Ajahn Brahms jokes, but it's not. It's powerful. But Ananda, trying all night to become enlightened, gave up and went to bed. Just before his head hit the pillow, he became another enlightened being. That was amazing. All that trying and the nothing worked. And eventually, he let go.
He, okay, you've tried that many times. Each one of you hasn't worked yet. But nevertheless, he knew so much done now. He'd been with the Buddha for such a long time. He understood so much on the theory. He just needed, just to appreciate that letting go. And that's the difference between doubts. You have all the words. He'd been with the Buddha for 25 years apparently, if I remember correctly, as his main attendant.
In the last years of the Buddha's life, hearing so much of how other monks and nuns became fully enlightened. Hearing all these talks, he had just probably the best understanding, the teachings that anyone possibly could have had. But all he needed was that last little bit of stopping. Letting go. Stop just looking for you to get something. He gave up. It's a wonderful thing to actually let go of this personal quest and the ownership or the failure which comes from it afterwards.
Both are very bad in the sense that they're not going to be very helpful for you. The ownership or the sense of failure, success or failure. So both of those good abandons, you need to have a being to have success or failure. One of the other things you just noticed from the lifestyle of the forest monks, now I would ever let on, you know what they were experiencing. And sometimes you look at the monks up and down the line and you didn't realize just which monks were getting very, very deep and very peaceful and very amazingly in the psychic powers and all those sorts of stuff.
But it happened. These were just amazing beings. But never, I said only that once did I see this person, this monk saying he had a psychic power and it was real. And afterwards, you know, I was there and just came to what Bob Pong the very first time. And after being there two or three days, this monk came into the dining hall and bowed to every monk in the dining hall, including me. And I said, well, I couldn't speak Thai or Esan language. If I could, I never told him, get off of here, don't bow to me.
I just ordained. I'm just really a novice.
But it was because he'd allowed that psychic power to be owned by him. He got proud of it. And the only way to solve that problem, as Jan Chah told him, was that he would have to leave the monastery and just go off into the forest, find a small monastery somewhere like going on Toodong, find a nice quiet place and just live there for the rest of his life, quietly, with nobody knowing who he was. It's just like that monk, Ajahn Dam, not the young Ajahn Dam, the old Ajahn Dam. Unfortunately, we have a photograph of him over in the Dhana Salah here.
And the reason I put him up there was because I was told he was an amazing monk, an old monk. He was a monk who his story was. He was a farmer. He just happened to be selling something or buying something in Sakonakon. And when he was there, he was the funeral service of Ajahn Man. So all these forest monks were there to pay respect to their teacher. And they were giving talks. And he just happened to be listening. And he didn't understand, you know, just all of the depth of the Dhama they were teaching. We had no doubt that these were amazing monks.
Because that doubt is not based on what they say, but how they behave and how they can inspire you and how you can feel that there's something there which is phenomenal. And that's how he felt. And so this farmer, he just, you know, what he remembered, he told me. And just the teachings walk a lot, sit a lot. That's the only Dhama he heard. And so when he went back and found this old forest monastery, that's what he did. And he was one of those forest monasteries which did have a history behind it. It was the place where one of the forest monks was sitting in a hut.
And he was put on an elephant's trail. So one day the elephant came up. I wasn't very happy with having this hut built in its way. So it grabbed one of the legs of the hut and dragged the hut out of its path. And unfortunately it was a monk in there, the hut at the time. And he was quite perturbed to say the least, something nice. But nevertheless, he survived. And later on this other monk went to stay there. And that's where he was staying. And all the people in the village just thought he was an old monk to some long tower.
But then when he started talking to him, an antar and he was quite perturbed to say the least, something nice. But nevertheless, he survived. And later on this other monk went to stay there. And that's where he was staying. And all the people in the village just thought he was an old monk to some long tower. But then when he started talking to him, an antarinai used to say that he was fully enlightened. But when he started talking to him, it was amazing to actually, when he was speaking the dhamma.
And he was the one who said, Ajanya, he was asking, Ajanya, where do you come from? Where do I come from? He said, well, we're from Australia. Where's Australia?
Is that like a province of Thailand somewhere? So you know it's way south, or no way south. So how far south?
You know it's south of Nakhon Sea Tamarat. It's a long way. It's another country. Oh really? And then what's passed Australia? And that was interesting. That's when we said Antarctica. What the heck's that? Antarctica is full of ice and snow. Ice, doesn't the ice melt? No, it's just full of ice all over the place. And so it was fascinated by that. Remember this was a farmer. I don't know if he did any geography at all. But nevertheless, he was fascinated by it, and that's when in the morning time, you know, he sort of confirmed. He said, oh yeah, you're right.
Down there there's a lot of ice all over the place. He went for a visit. And the way he described it, there he'd gone, how he went. With his mind, it was a very powerful monk. But he would never actually show it. He'd like he never owned it. It was like just the nature of the mind when it's free. And those are the sorts of things which kind of impressed you. Why all of these really great monks, you don't even know where they are or who they are. They're great nuns. Who are they? Where are they? Because this is just a process. You have no doubt about if this is what happens.
You go to the source of things. You find, you know, right in the center of things, in that thousand petal lotus, you go deep within. You open up all those petals. You don't force them open. If you force them open, you're going against the point of destroying the whole process. You have to let them open. It's one of my favorite similes simply because it's accurate. You sit there and meditate. Sometimes for hours, you think you're getting nowhere because you're trying to get somewhere. You just sit. You learn. The art and doing nothing. The art of disappearing.
You, the doer, the driver at the wheel. You take the hands off the steering wheel, feet off the petals. You just go into autopilot. You totally let go. And you find it's perfectly safe. This is like meditating. It's a dhamma. And because, you know, you don't do anything, you know, just this idea of like criticizing others, praising yourself. You just, you don't know what you're talking about. So you don't criticize or praise at all. You become quiet. You don't own. You don't even own your own views. You let go. Become so peaceful. And when that sense of doing is seen for what it is, the driver of the bus, when the seat is empty.
The driverless bus, simile. When you see that, what happens? Because there's no one owns anything. There's nothing to do. Therefore nothing gets done. Nothing. And the stillness has come. It's so powerfully, so beautifully, so easily. You're sitting there and it's just happening. You're just like this witness, this observer. And at the end of a deep meditation, if it really was a deep meditation, you didn't do it. It just happened. You can really take no credit for it. It is cause and effect. One of those causes, as you know, is brainwashing. That's my job.
The other one is for you to be able to let go. To relax enough. To let go of those old views. And just allow peace, stillness, the depth of meditation just to happen. And when it does, there's a teacher that's some of my happiest times when somebody comes up to you and says, they just did this again over in pinang. They come out just all gogly eyed. Hachamvah. Hachamvah. Hachamvah. Ohh. You can see by the expression on their face and their goofy speaking, they just had a nice meditation. Beautiful. So the brainwashing does work. So I know that sometimes people are like, well, just how many monks, it's just monks say.
I won't get into the nuns yet. How many monks have got Jana so far all these years?
How many nuns enter Jana? I don't say none. So I know that's not a joke. I didn't mean that. That's sort of the possibility of a joke afterwards. Zero. Could you vanish first of all? My parents come into Jana, my monks come into Jana, lay people come into Jana. But when you vanish, when there's no judging or ownership of anything, when you're kind of free, when your attitude is free, then of course the freedom just comes in. And you become free, freedom from having to own your own body, freedom from having to worry about it.
You let it go. You can't do anything else. And that's the whole way. If you don't look after, if you don't do something, there's going to be a lot of problems for you. It never seems to work that way. It's weird. I'd love to do some research on this because I've still got my scientific conditioning lurking in the background. Why is it when you let go that pain vanishes? First time that happened, the stimuli of the toothache, really, really, really, really bad toothache. Nothing works. No medicine. There's no way I'm going to go to sleep that night. It was just driving me crazy.
And I decided to try all the other options. There was no aspirin or panadol in the medicine cabinet. It really was a poor monastery. Nothing there. And charting never worked, even sitting cross-legged on my butt, watching my breath, that never worked.
The pain was too great. So you just walk and I do now. I just remembered. Let go. And I did. It's so simple. The weird thing was that for one moment you're in agony and the next moment you're glistening out. When I'm glistening out, that's what happens. Just this joy, this happiness, this sense of freedom just comes up by itself.
Well, no, it's a dark come from, but I had enough sense to let it come. Weird, but I'll question it afterwards. I'm just going to enjoy now. Maybe that's my upbringing. Not afraid of happiness. Not judging anything. Never ever say to myself, I don't deserve this. The sense of self-ad vanished. At least for the time being. That's one of the things which you always remember about these states. You don't ever do it. You can't think that you own these states or you achieve them or you possess them.
You just, you know, the dumb are behind them. You let go, you vanish, you disappear, you don't own anything. You renounce your kind. No kindness is another type of renouncing. You're the letting go. That's one of the reasons why, you know, when I tried to find ways of explaining this, the ways of loving kindness that opened the door of your heart, no matter what you ever did, the unconditional acceptance, unconditional love, unconditional mindfulness, unconditional present moment awareness, no matter what this moment is. Those are really powerful.
And you understand that once you can feel that, you feel it. So it's not an intellectual position. So it's no doubt free. It's a reality. You can feel it. And then after a while, you get to even more depth. You know, why? There's nothing. The great teaching of Ajahn Chah. Why? There's nothing. No one to keep anything, no one to own anything, no one to beat their chest and say, oh, I'm enlightened. I'm more enlightened than you are. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. All of that sort of stuff finishes. So you don't have to defend your teachings against somebody else's teachings.
My teacher is better than your teacher. No, no, no, no, no, no. That sort of stuff just is as ridiculous as it sounds. Because it's just a dumber that saw. The causes. You see those causes trace them to their origin. There's nothing there. There's this beautiful cause and effect which keeps going on. And after a while, when you see that process, not a thing, but a process, that teaches you what the dumber really is. And you know it's real when you can actually use it. And it makes you so peaceful, so still, so joyful and happy. But to me, I think that's always the best test of what's dumber and what isn't.
Try it out and see if it works and gives you an incredible peace and joy without any sense of self or ownership. That's pretty accurate. You can trust without any doubt. That's real. Anyway. That's enough for this evening.
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