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Very good. So the topic for this evening’s dhamma talk, which just came to my mind a few moments ago, is just recognizing and making important, what is the main purpose of monastic life, and why are you here? And I'm saying this especially for the monks and the nuns, not so much for the lay people, but hopefully you can get inspired by this. When I became a monk, I never realized what I was doing, but over those years, and being with some amazing teachers, Ajahn Chavasli, but with some of the other great monks over in Thailand at that time, it made me very clear that what is the most important part of monastic life is that stillness which abandons of five hindrances, which shall lead to seeing the dhammos, it really is.
And over all these years, I've been a monk, almost fifty years coming up soon. In those fifty years I've been a monk, just sometimes that you have to keep remembering why, you know, you gave up, I can't really say that, giving up things, simply because it is who wouldn't give up a disease, who wouldn't give up something which is always tormenting you, who wouldn't want to escape from a jail. I know that sometimes people feel that you talk as a monk about escapism, that you should have to come into the real world, sometimes people say, but often I just counter that with saying, what is the real world?
A lot of times what we see, what we hear, and what we smell, taste and touch, you know, is that real world, or is what is real to us, how we interpret it, what we add to it. Are we truly real? And that's one of the reasons why it was a great sense opening. I'm going to say mind-open, but it's not just a mind, it's all the senses to be open when you start, to be able to get into these deep meditations where the 500 says, just stop. So you don't see what you're told to see, you don't see how you've been taught to see, you see real. And that reality of the seeing is sometimes you see beauty where you don't expect it. You all know the story of seeing the contents of a toilet bowl, and it was really beautiful.
That was not just a joke, that was something which changed the way that you, it proved actually,
the way you perceive, the way you think about those perceptions is just very uncertain. And sometimes you see something which is really beautiful, and you can see it as ugly or as dangerous. Some of the most beautiful animals I saw in Thailand, especially, they were very, very dangerous. If you decided to stroke them, they might bite you and you're dead. So this is one of the reasons why it was part of what we do as monks and nuns. The important part is to be able to see clearly, hear clearly, smell clearly, and taste clearly, and just touch clearly, and most importantly to know.
We're burdened by being in a western country, because in a western country the idea is getting better now, the idea of the mind being so important and so dominant, it's fallen to most cultures. A lot of times people feel the mind, the jitter, is just a part of the brain. And that's one of the reasons why I just keep going on about what happens for the people without a brain, what happens with people whose brain is dead, and they can still open their eyes and talk on terminal lucidity. I remember I just gave a talk on terminal lucidity over recently over in Sydney, and some of the doctors, not at all, but just imagine that, some of the doctors looked it up and said, that's not what terminal lucidity means.
There's terminal lucidity is when there's still some activity of the brain. My goodness, this happens when the brain is not functioning anymore. And so I sometimes wondered why were doctors saying that? There's a highly trained doctors, why are they actually saying that this effect of terminal lucidity, when someone's about to die, they can open their eyes and recognize them and say, that's amazing stuff with clarity. Why is it not just terminal lucidity, but natal lucidity? I just made up that name. When kids are born, they can speak, some of them. I've no doubt about that. And why not? Because they haven't learned any language yet. Of course, their mind is what is conveying their information, no to their mouth to be able to speak.
And I know that's the case because, again, I've got to be careful. It's so frustrating sometimes about how you can tell about experiences based on samadhi. At that time, I'm remembering my, what's my earliest memory? The first time I did that, getting back just to early life, only this life memory as a kid. A baby, I don't know how many weeks old, but not that many weeks old, in a prime. There was no doubt about that. That was real. That's a wonderful thing about the use of deep meditation to investigate this phenomena, because you know it is actually happening and it's real. You're not just making this up. You're not deluded. Somebody asked me just a few days ago, the common questions, so what do you think about using psychedelic stuff to be able to, again, to some of these deep meditations?
And I said, one of the problems, I've never taken psychedelic stuff, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But one of the problems with it is that, yeah, you may get some interesting experiences, but you don't have that clarity of knowing this is real, this is true. It's not like overcoming the five hindrances, first of all. But when you do it through meditation, those five hindrances disappear, and part of that is that the doubt has gone. And it's weird to be able to say something, to see something, to hear something, to know something, and it's not a fragment of doubt there at all. And you're being sincere and honest, you're not trying to deceive yourself, but you know this is absolutely true.
And that is one of the reasons why some of these experiences you get after deep meditation are reliable, accurate information. You haven't been deceived, artificial intelligence hasn't bent things and created deep fakes inside of you. I hope I've got that right. But this is why, to be able to trust information, it's one of the problems of our modern world, we don't know what to trust, we don't know who to believe, we don't know what to base some important decisions on in our life. But if you can develop really nice meditations, at least afterwards, I think many of you are honest enough, you don't try to deceive yourself, you know that this is the only way of getting a truth which you can trust.
That way you see for yourself with the hindrances or gomps, you just come out of a jhana, and you can't really just fake those jhanas, maybe to others, but not to yourself. And then afterwards you know that this is real, this is true. Your perceptions and the thoughts built from those perceptions are reliable, and from that you can get right views. That's wonderful, just the way the Buddha taught the whippalazas. The whippalazas, they include what I often say, often call the perversion of the cognitive process, how you can know something. And a lot of time there's really lovely experiments we should done by psychologists, they don't go far enough, but at least they show that what you think you see is not always what's real. Just know what you perceive is not real. So when people ask you how are you, do you really know what that means, or actually how are you?
And to me I thought it was really important as a theoretical physicist starting off, you want to find out the truth, reality, how this universe works, how I work, what am I? And it's much better actually to say that when I was even young, I was young once. When I was young, I remember seeing right through the Ramakrishna's philosophy, he said his practice was based on keep her on inquiring, who am I, who am I, who am I. I kind of saw through that straight away, who am I, is assuming you are something, I wanted to change it, you know, what do you think you are, instead of who. Because what is much wider inquiry, you know, this thing which you think of as a self, what is it? What is it you take to be me?
And that's where you started figuring out, you know, what I took to me me in those days, you know, was either my Noah or my Dua. You know, I call them the two citadels of the self. That's the last refuge for illusion. That's my word for aweeja, not ignorance, because ignorance is something you can overcome by study. And when you study things, as are so many people, just can chart, you know, half the triptych or the whole triptych or by heart, and they are not ignorant of it, but they still don't understand it. So how can you really understand these things? The only way you can understand them and trust that understanding is real and true, is to be able to develop these deep meditations, and after you develop the deep meditations, then you can trust what you see.
You make an exploration. I love the word exploration rather than an inquiry, or rather than contemplate or think about, because I don't trust thought. I much more trust this bare attention, seeing things, knowing things without giving it names. I found all the names can be very, very take you off on tangents which don't lead anywhere. Instead, just to be able to see something and be quiet, don't give it a name, don't figure out where it comes from, what it does, but to know it as it is. And the only way you can really do that, if you're still enough to be able to hold it for long enough to see more deeply into it than you've ever seen before. I've given that similarly many times. I think I gave it recently over in Nolamara, just held up whatever I had, and usually it was either a gong bonger or a plastic water bottle.
And I can't do it here because many of you got your eyes closed. And I held it up and I asked people, what is this? And then they started contemplating it. And I was thinking about it, giving it names. And I said, that's not the way. Exhaust all the names. So you run out of names. Now look at it. Now what comes to your mind?
Which you explore it. Which you explore it. And so you had a bit of fun, you know, with a gong bonger. I used it to scratch my back. Because it's a gong bonger over here, actually over here, over in the dana sala. It's actually very nice. Just put it up behind your rope and give some areas of your back which you can't reach, a little scratch. It is making use of something in a way you're not supposed to. The water bottle. You know, using it as if you're going to be a rolling pin. But you can use it for so many different things. This is actually just shows a limitation of, you know, our perception and thoughts and the views which come from that.
And to actually to break through into some sort of freedom, real understanding, you can't just rely on all that stuff you've been taught or the stuff you think you've been told it is. That's why, you know, many times I've said this to you and I really follow this if you are rebellious, then you may have what it takes to break through. Don't just believe what other people say. Don't just believe just the interpretations, you know, which translations have. So often when, you know, I was reading translations of the Vinaya, you know, in these books, some of them were just hopeless translations. I say hopeless because they cause a lot of problems for monks and nuns.
When they read these things, they didn't make any sense at all. So, you know, I made sure that I read these things in Pali. And when I read them in Pali, just it's like many parts of the Buddha's words just opened up to you. You know, one of them, you know, this is an old thing which I keep saying again and again and again, as samadhi does not mean concentration, it means stillness. Concentration is people can be much, much, much more concentrated than any monk in this room. But that's actually not the meaning. It's like stillness. How still can you be? So when you started to see these different meanings and really get into what those meanings are, and see, it was like just the whole teachings of the Buddha sort of came together and kind of made sense.
The eight, four paths is a path. It's what you do in order to create that stillness, which creates a clarity of the mind. What was it? Samadhi, Pachayaya, Yattabuddhayana, Dasana. And that's stillness. You can see things as they really are. Without that stillness, you just can't see these things. Even I just was talking to someone the other day about the Gattika Arasutra. You know, and in there it says that if you haven't experienced the Jhana, you can't really know. You know, what those five-law fetas are. It's not just you haven't overcome them. You don't realize what they are. This is some point which comes out from the sutras of the Lord.
You know, to be able to understand what even the first noble truth is. The truth of Noduka to really know it, to thoroughly know it. If you do thoroughly know it, you're at least a stream winner.
So if you're not a stream winner yet, do you really know the first noble truth? A lot of times, oh, you know the first noble truth. No, you don't. You assume you do. But, you know, there's much which you don't include as suffering. It's what I sometimes called in just trying to find similes and ways to understand these things, which I can tell others, it's just like the ultimate retirement home, you know, of the senior monks and nuns.
In other words, one place where you can keep in a little bit of yourself, you know, after you feel you enlightened. The ultimate retirement homes, you know, the sense of an original mind, or a sense of a will which is outside of the five candles, or something outside of the five candles. Do I have to give up everything? Answer, yes. Why do you have to give up everything, because nothing belongs to you? It just comes from causes, which belongs to nature, not anything else. Sometimes when people would ask you, well, you know, if there's no self or soul or owner of this body, who owns this body? And the answer is very beautifully said, as nature owns this body. Not me. It's nature's body.
Okay, that sometimes I joke and say, you know, my body is owned by all the people who put food inside of it. There's a little bit of truth into that. It's not just food, but all the teachings and the encouragement and the contacts which we have. That's kind of, you know, the causes which create this mind and your views and your understanding. And so it's maybe wonderful when you can actually go past all of that and just get into such stillness that you see things as they really are. There's nothing here. I was reminded of that story, just that when we were having tea time, we were talking about, you know, some of the ids and the psychic, they'd call it, the psychic powers were one of a better word. They're not psychic.
There's just natural things which happen when the mind becomes still. And, you know, one of those, you know, the mind reading, that story, which most of you will know, of when Ajahn Chah came to Wat Nana Chah for a sauna, and instead of going to help him at his sauna, he gave a very delightful talk. So I just went around the back of the hall to sit on the concrete and meditate for two hours. When you really get into meditation, you don't really mind if it's concrete or whatever it is you're sitting on. Because your body vanishes pretty quickly.
And then just coming out of that meditation decided I should go and see if there's something I can do to help someone who gave such a brilliant talk and go and see him. And then I realized I was too late walking towards the sauna. He was walking the opposite direction. And that's, you know, when he stopped and I stopped too. And that's when, you know, he read my mind. I keep telling people this. And the weird thing about it was, though when he was reading my mind, you could feel that. I don't know how to describe that perception. You know someone's inside your mind reading it. And of course there was no fear at all because for once I was happy. You could get inside my mind. It was nice and clean. And I was quite, you know, not in the sense of self, but I was quite happy with it.
And when he came out of my mind, you know, and sort of he told to me, Brahma wants so. And he said, why? And it's in Pali. And afterwards I said, I don't know. It's amazing that when I told that story once, it was a group of, in Singapore, that kind of a Zen group. And they started clapping and saying, sardus sardum. And I said, I don't know because that was their tradition. That being enlightened is to realize you don't know. They said, sardus sardus sardus, I said, look, this is not what I mean. Shut up. It was not, didn't know because I was stupid. Not because I was enlightened. It was the opposite. And that's when Ajahn Chah laughed and afterwards, you know, as you all know the story, he said, look, I'm going to tell you the answer. The answer to that question, why is there's nothing? There's nothing.
And that was just an amazing teaching. Not in a discourse, but just one-on-one meeting. And unfortunately I was not open enough to truly understand it, but I could never forget that. Just know the idea that in all those citadels where you try to keep the sense of something after enlightenment, you realize there were empty. There were force. You try and teach that to people, and some people say, you're crazy Ajahn Brum. There has to be something. And you can actually see there where without the power of like, you know, of a mind which has been reinforced with these deep meditations, without the lack of the hindrances, just the old habits can still distort your cognitive processes, and you don't see things as they truly are. You see things as you want to see them.
You deny what is too unpleasant for you to see. And all these sorts of things, you know, just all of the attachments which you have, you know, all of the infatuations which you can develop. You know, someone telling you that these aren't real, these are just going to be harmful. You think those people are just crazy, or they've got it in for you. They're trying to hurt you and harm you. When you really do see the dhamma, you realize what and that's what you're getting involved in. I was like this simile of the Malawa creeper. This tree got this little soft creeper coiling around it. And as this little creeper was coiling around it, the tree thought, oh, this is so soft. It's nice. And I always think, I'm just enjoying myself for a little while. I'll soon be able to shake off this creeper.
I'm a tree. This is just a very small, thin creeper growing around me. And of course, that simile is a york, no? What you think you can control, what you think is not a danger to you, what you think is very pleasant soon becomes this enormous, strong creeper twirling all around you and you cannot break it. And it just strangles you and brings you down to the earth. It kills the tree. And afterwards you think, I wish I'd have listened to those people which I should have trusted. And it causes your death. And then lots of misery. That's the trouble with sensory desires. We think we're in charge of them. We can control them, but they're not a danger to us. You have to be very, very, very careful. They are a danger. And you can see they're a danger.
Number one, it doesn't mean that they block the path. You're just celebrating, wanting, no desire. And how many times, you know, as the Buddha taught monks like myself, Ajahn Bhammali, all these other teachers teach, that desire is not to be trusted. It is to be restrained, avoided if you possibly can. Even the desires that I want to be still. Can you do that? Of course not. You know, how many times people are talking about meditation, they say, I jump around, can you please teach another type of meditation? Not just just letting go of meditation. Basically, I can't deceive you. If you really want to get Jhanas, you can try all sorts of things to start off with. But when it comes to when you really want to get deep into it, you've got to be still and let the mind open up. One of those similes, which is one of the ones I really like, is the simile of the thousand petal lotus.
And I adapted that simile simply because it shows the simplicity of the meditation process. Okay, it's not the Buddha never taught this, but the simile of a lotus is common in Buddhism. And how do you open up a lotus, which is closed at night? You have the sun comes up in the morning, and it's the warmth and the light of the sun. It makes the outermost petals open up one by one when they say the third petal is opened up. That allows the fourth layer of petals to receive the warmth and light of the sun, so they can open up in turn. And the nice part of that simile is that it shows the importance of the light, the mindfulness, and the warmth, the kindness. It's the kindness which opens up the lotus. It's the kindness which opens up your body and mind.
If you want to go inside the body, away from this achy, old, itchy, too hot, too cold, too achy body, if you want to go inside of it where you can't feel the body, that's what you do with it. You use warmth and, I mean, like, matter and mindfulness, the kindfulness. You know, we do this for years, and I notice you may have an ache or a pain somewhere, and you have this kindness towards that ache and pain, or pain. It's amazing just how it's a softens. And once it's softened enough, you can go inside of it. I use that same thing to go inside into the present moment. Many people complain, they think too much, they're restless, they've got so many important things they have to make decisions about, and they can't get inside this prison of time.
They can't get into this moment. And the way to do that is also kindfulness. Don't just be mindful, just add the kindness, and you find it's pretty simple to do. Being kind to the past, and all the actors who played their roles in that past, I'm just using Shakespeare, all the world's the stage, and all the people that play us on it. All those people you get angry about, fed up with, all the people you really like, give kindness, and then those likes and dislikes can fade away. You have this beautiful kindness instead. And to the future, if you're kind enough, you're making wonderful, good karma, and that makes beautiful karma, which means you don't have to worry about the future. But even so, people say, I can let go of the past, let go of the future, but I can't stand the present moment, because you're not kind enough to the present moment.
If you're really kind to the present moment, wherever you're kind to, it's easy to stay there if you want. And when you're kind in this moment, really kind, it gives you pleasure, delight. Only a small amount to begin with, maybe, or a lot. And that's something so important for the practice of meditation. You have to add that kindfulness, and the delight which comes from it. For years and years when I was meditating, just I never expected meditation to be so gorgeous, so delightful, so wonderful, giving you so much bliss. And when it started to happen, you just thought, this can't be right. You know, the biggest bliss that you've ever had in your existence.
And you remember that guy who came here years and years and years ago, who was heroin addict.
And he was honest about it, and he said, he's just coming here, he's not going to tell anybody where he is, to sort of see if he can, you know, just get off that heroin just by doing, just by not having it, and just not having it available for a while. And he was always checking in every day, and I was just really quite proud of him. He was doing day after day after day, he was really tough, doing the cold turkey. I don't know why they call it turkey, but he was just, you know, just enduring, just the withdrawal symptoms. And, you know, he was in a very positive place, and I don't know about the other monks here at the time. I was really rooting for him, come on, you're getting close, please carry on.
But I do remember that one time, just, you know, I was, I think, walking up the hill to go to my room, and he came running after me and said, I just, just stop for a few moments. You know how hard it is to try and have an interview with me sometimes? It's just really busy, so many of you are only one of me. And so, he said, you know, what is it? And he told me that, you know, heroin just gives you a big bliss boost, but he said, you know, he heard me say that the bliss of, you know, jhanas is better than sexual intercourse, better than orgasm. Please don't criticize me for saying this. I'm not just emphasizing, you know, the sensualitys, but he said, I have to say it this way, he said, the bliss of heroin is much better than orgasm.
And he said, the bliss of meditation, he experienced it just for a few moments, is even better than heroin. He said, he never thought he could say that, never thought he could find anything, which was even more, you know, more pleasurable than he got from heroin. And he was really stunned, and I really had high hopes with him now that he can get over this. But of course you can't maintain that sort of jhanic experience when you want it. That's the thing in which he didn't. He'd had a crack at it, and he could experience it for a little while, but actually to maintain that, they would have gone him off the heroin. But unfortunately he couldn't maintain it. And so just out of desperation he'd call one of his friends and got some more, which was, you know, it was really sad.
Remember him telling me, it's like every day, it's like a thousand times you have the impulse to go and get some heroin and take a hit. And a thousand times you have to say no, and it's the same the next day and the next day. It's just torture. The suffering in the world is like that. But anyway, at least it gave him just that idea, hopefully later on, in his existence he can maybe, I'm not sure, go deeper into the meditations. At least he had a taste of what's possible. That's one of the reasons why, you know, sometimes people feel urges. It goes, I'm probably getting these Jana trips, always pushing these. That's how the Buddha taught as well. Go back to Mogulana, Suta.
You know, what type of meditation did the Buddha teach? He said, Mogulana, go back to Mogulana to Ananda. He only taught four types of meditation. First, second, third, fourth, Jana, that's all. Then, the Buddha's disciple and the ten of the twenty-five years. So this is important to be able to do this. And how do you do that? The thousand petal lotus. As long as you just do mindfulness and kindness, don't want anything. The mindfulness, the kindness, the kindness is like just a letting go and not wanting. That's why that emphasis on opening the door of your heart, no matter what happens. Unconditional mindfulness. That's kind of letting go. You don't want anything. It's unconditional.
You're not doing this if something happens. If it doesn't happen, you're giving up. You're just checking all the time. Your mindfulness. Are you wanting something? Are you scared of something? It's one of the reasons why when I used to do this meditation, if there was any blockage anywhere, that's how you felt. You know, it didn't seem to be going as deep or smooth as it kind of used to go. Why? And I always look, there must be a want there, something, a desire. Those wanting desires, not craving. Craving is just too intense a word. That's why, you know, even Dunha, instead of calling it the intense form of thirst, it's just, you know, you're a bit dry. Even smaller amounts of wanting disturb the piece of meditation.
So I look for what do I want? And that kind of came as just my antidote to any blockages in meditation. But with wanting, it's also what I don't want. You know, both of those are just the same side, two different sides of the same coin. And once I try to see those two, those were the two main problems. That's why even Satipatana, the two things are supposed to weaken. We know you're a luke of beechadominasa, and the wanting and the not wanting. Once those things have been really weakened, basically just the market becomes still really easily. And I like this the way it becomes still. How those petals open up? You know, you go inside the body. How do you get inside the body? You know, so, you know, it's like, it's a good perception. It works for me.
I'm inside the body is outside. It's like a shell, and the shell goes further and further away from me. And how that happens is I make sure my body is as relaxed as possible as as peaceful as possible. I'm a 72-year-old. It never is without some ache or pain somewhere. But I just know it. If I just sit there and be kind to it, and I don't worry about past or future, go right in this moment with this old body. After a while, it's like the body vanishes. All the feelings in it vanish. It's the feelings, the sensation of the body, which tells me the body is there. And after a while, I even like just playing around with the feeling in my butt.
As long as that's even, in other words, in the left buttock and the right buttock, there's no excess pain in either one of those. And I've got a nice posture. After a while, that feeling vanishes. It doesn't move. It doesn't get worse. It doesn't get better. It stays the same as kind of ambient. And the rest of my body is like that, too. You may have an ache in our pain and make a headache or maybe really thirsty. You just leave it alone. And because it doesn't change, it vanishes. And even did that with motties. Mosquitoes biting you. You know, you tended to look at where they were biting the skin surrounding you. It was a sheath around you. You were inside. You could kind of feel there was an irritation on the sheath on the outside.
But you were right inside. And you couldn't feel that irritation. You can know it, but it wasn't disturbing for you. And after a while, you know that old story that hundreds and thousands of mosquitoes were biting you. I mean that. I'm not exaggerating in those jungle and forest in Thailand. Once you got deep inside, you couldn't feel those mosquitoes. And after you came out of meditation, you looked at your skin and there was no bites there. you always have these little welts come up. I did anyway. Most Westerners did as well. They were little bumps, which were really itty. But there was none. I thought, wow, this samad is really good. You get like a psychic protection around you.
Much better than just the stuff you have to rub on to keep mothsies off. Samadhi rub inside and that's much more effective. But, as then later on you come back here, you read, oh, there's nothing to do with anything magical. It's just this carbon dioxide which comes out of your pores.
That's what attracts the mosquitoes. The more you worry about them, the more you worry about them. The more you just get a bit afraid of this dengue fever or malaria fever, it's just too which is too disturbing. The more carbon dioxide comes out because your metabolism goes up and the telling the mosquitoes, here I am, come and enjoy yourselves. But when you're really still, metabolism goes down and you kind of vanish. Even mosquitoes can't find you. So you're going inside with this kindness. And even that feels good. You can't feel your body. I remember doing that, I mentioned to people, when I had scrubbed typhus, the body was really aching.
It was about two or three weeks. I was in the hospital in Ubon. And also being injected in the backside twice a day with dull needles by this, actually it's probably quite a kind nurse, but I thought she was a sadist. She would stab you. So you didn't look forward to that at all. So you had a sore bum, an achy body, no energy. But still you could go right inside the body and just couldn't feel it. And it still got a really nice, deep meditation. That was really blissful. Because compared to where you came from just a few minutes beforehand. So all of these things, when you really start to get inside, it's delightful. And that happiness is really important to me that I say that's one of the most
wonderful parts of meditation. Because that means you just can't wait to go and sit down on your stool or cushion or anyway, don't really care to actually enjoy something that's delight again. What other delight do you get in monastic life? We don't have TVs. I do try and tell a couple of jokes every now and again. This is for the nuns, the monks have probably fed up with this by now. What do you give to someone who's got everything? What do you give to someone who's got everything? Answer antibiotics. Okay, if you don't understand that you can work it out later. Thank you for someone for laughing. So what other joy can you get in monastic life? You get nice food sometimes. You know, sometimes you get some nice food and something else goes on top of it. At that time I got strawberry ice cream on top of my spaghetti bonoed nose.
That was yucky. You get almost close to a nice meal, but it's never, never just perfect. Your fantasies are always demanding much more than this world can give. So after a while you just give up on all of that. It never really satisfies you. You get close, but not close enough. So after a while when you give up all of that, you give up the body, which is most of the desires are based somehow rather on this body. You go inside, you get inside of time, no past, no future. And you have kindness to this present moment. This is one of the weird things about even just experiencing present moment awareness for a long time. Present moment awareness. Is that hard to do? It's like putting your mind in a cage. You can't go a second earlier, a fraction of a second into the future.
You're just staying at this moment. That must be terrible. But when you actually get into it, it's like you've got all the time in the world. Infinite time. I always mention that because when you understand how just having zero time, you're in this moment. Am I going over time? Of course not. I'm in this moment. When you're really in this moment, it's like you've got infinity of time. It starts to teach you what infinity is. Infinity is when all those boundaries, those concepts, those measurements disappear. That's what happens in the present moment when there's so much freedom. It's not a prison at all. And even to know that, there's so much experience. People think, you're mugs are crazy. You nuns are even worse.
I don't know why I said even worse, they're just as crazy. You can't be distinguished. Why do you do this to yourself? Because it's so brilliant. Not being a prisoner of time. And then you get into the non-judgment, non-description, the silence of the mind. We don't give anything a name. And that's just a gorgeous state of mind. I already mentioned it's gorgeous because you really appreciate it. Now there's some people that can go and listen to some music. That's a really fine classical music and it's gorgeous. You can see tears coming to their eyes. They pay a lot of money for that. When they're listening, they can't talk to their neighbor. It's the same if any of you really like your food.
The worst thing to do if you go to a restaurant is go with somebody. If you do go with somebody, I say this to young people. If you go out there with your boyfriend, girlfriend or fancy restaurant, if you pay so much money for the food, you should tell your girlfriend to shut up. Because they're taking your attention on all this incredible food you just bought. You can talk to me afterwards, but right now I'm really enjoying my food. Sometimes I would think I should do that. So that's the lovely thing we do here. In monastics, you eat silently. You can appreciate, you can taste your food more. You're much more mindful when you're not worrying about what you have to respond to a person sitting next to you. Especially when I was at an app and I was eating a steak or something, I would go into all sorts of trouble.
So I was paying attention to the steak, not what I should have to say. That's a neat joke, by the way. Anyway, so when you don't give things names, I don't know how you can't be peaceful. It's just all those names and past and future. That's what stops the mind relaxing to the max. And when I say to the max, and talk about the body relaxing, that's what he relaxed, your mind is getting still. When your mind gets really, really still. I don't know how again you can't feel the joy and the bliss. If you're really still, you can't have any wanting. Wanting needs a bit of the future.
In some place you can go to next. Eel will, in some way you're comparing in the past. When you're just, there's no past or future for you, it's just this moment.
When there's no giving things names, you can't control anything, you can't want. All you do is wait. Be patient, canty paramontopo tittica. The patience, don't call it patience in joy. Patient enjoying is one of the highest pleasures. In this moment you're not going anywhere. Just being. And the being starts to get fade away, get less heavy. You're being with all these coats, all these layers on top of you. You take them off one by one. You see this beautiful mind, all the five senses and the echoes of the five senses. The thoughts of the five senses stop. And you get this beautiful mind, the jitter. And then you really know what the jitter is.
It's right in front of you, beautiful nimeters, gorgeous. What do you do? Don't measure them. Don't be afraid of them, don't want them. of that sort of stuff is you're creating a past and future again. Don't do anything. Sometimes people criticize me, trying that for years, no you haven't. If you really don't do anything, you're just watching, not giving it a name. You're in this moment to do something, you need a past or future. And all of that is gone. You can't do anything. Just all this doing which you're so used to is kind of vanished. And that's all purpose of this, to see that you're experiencing existence in a totally different way. You can't control it. Scary for some of you who control freaks. But when you let go more and more control, you're just sitting there.
And you get so much more freedom. We control because we're afraid, things might go wrong. When you stop controlling at all, you find things don't go wrong at all. Everything is just perfect, peaceful, beautiful. And a peace keeps growing. That's a nice thing of it. You can just get into these genres, and you think the first genre, that's amazing. And then the second, oh my goodness, how many more of these? And third and fourth. And with each one of these, when you come out afterwards, you get so much more insight. Understanding your mind is powerful now. It's got umph. And so whatever it explores, you go far deeper into it, for longer. And the hindrance of doubt is gone. So you can see it.
And you know that what you're seeing is not being distorted. And then you can eventually, this thing's happened. You see things you've never seen before. The old tadpole becoming a frog and jumping out of the lake. Oh, there's no lake there now. Now you understand what these five senses were, what this body was. And all the delights and infatuation in another person's body are your own body, or things which you feel can make your body more comfortable, or make it just more respectful by others. Don't worry what other people say. Instead, you know yourself, beyond doubt, this is really high. Beautiful, pure. This is how the Buddha lived. I mentioned this. Do you want to have some insights into what enlightenment is, what Sambodi is, what it feels like?
I said this, you know, the sutra class on Sunday. What do they call first jhana? The experience of a first jhana, one of the descriptions of Buddha gave it, you're experiencing Sambodi Sutra. This is not just said once, many, many, many, many times in the sutas. Sambodi Sutra, enlightenment happiness. How many of you experience enlightenment happiness? If you want to give an understanding what it tastes like, how it feels, it's one of the highest, it is almost the highest happiness you can feel. And that's available. So once you can experience that for yourself, really experience it, of course that's going to change how you look at Buddhism. It's going to give you some confidence, whether this will pass really it's all about.
And of course that's my role as a teacher to kind of hold your hand and take you there. If I can't hold your hand, kick your backside until you get there. I don't really do that. Maybe I should. No, I can't. But anyway, somehow or other, find that opportunity so that one day you can taste those blisses, pure blisses with no doubt at all that you're on the right path. Okay, that's enough. Happy holidays.
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