Lectures on The Basics of Buddhism By Jhampa Nanaimo
From Dharmaweb
By
Jhampa Nanaimo
Ten Dharma Lectures
Last week I introduced the idea of how we should realize the potential of what it means to be human, and also how we want to work with ourselves. The main focus for one's practice is one's self. In saying that, it doesn't mean that one is selfish. It means that the practice helps you to reveal your enlightenment nature, a more beneficial and kind attitude. In developing that, you should not negate any part of yourself. An example is a field being cultivated, if you say my desire and my greed are bad and the good vibes are wonderful, then it is like rejecting a certain section of the field and concentrating on only other parts. In that way if you discriminate too much, you end up having a very lopsided practice. You then have good versus bad, white versus black. This doesn't mean that you want to act out your negativity, but rather you want to develop awareness to leave it behind consciously. In developing awareness, it refers to being conscious of what is taking place in all areas of personal experience. Therefore as you become more in touch with yourself, then you understand better how to work with yourself and holistically transform your negativity. Be a holistic farmer of your spiritual growth.
Last week we talked about the ultimate nature of your being as a clear light and energy, the finest level of consciousness existence. These two aspects, clear light and energy are like two sides of a coin. The consciousness is the clear light side, and the form, whether subtle or course, is the energy side. Generally it is said that the mind is formless, something that is intangible. What the mind has though is the potential for form. As that conscious clear light manifests, then you have the body, which is a manifestation of the energy side. That form is related to the attitude and propensity of the mind. You create your own existence. In saying this it must be taken in the context of a series of lifetimes. Taking the previous lifetime, as it unfolded, I chose to act in a particular way, decided upon an attitude and approach I felt appropriate for my interactions with beings and the world. Thus I formulated my future physical being by acting out my desires and intensions. In this life those imprints draw me to certain parents that assist in creating the existence I must manifest. This aspect of individuality can be seen in a family of several children in that each child demonstrates their own individuality, even thought they are from the same parents. This is all part of the mind and its temperament and my body's response to that. Or as described at the beginning, as a manifestation of my clear light consciousness and energy. I create my future being by the manner I consciously feel and act.
In working with yourself be holistic and don't reject any section of yourself. Don't feel in your practice that there is something inside yourself to be emphasized and something else that has to be left unconscious or unrecognized. If one does that, one ends up with a splitting up of the personality. That's not good. One should rather work with just how one experiences the immediate moment of reality. Then the spiritual practice is real, and the light of awareness can deal with everything that is pertinent to our selves.
What I wanted to talk about tonight was the process of developing awareness and the capacity to allow whatever is going on inside of you to function without negatively judging it. Because in judging, you end up trying to hide from certain things, or reject certain things. In rejection, "I don't want or like this...", comes the inability to deal properly with the issue. Take the three principle delusions; ignorance (unawareness), aversion and attachment. These function constantly to disrupt our ability to experience real happiness and joy. It is for this reason we try to meditate, to gain insights into where we have mistaken conceptions about reality. From this standpoint we say meditation is a very important aspect of what we do. If we then say, I want to be a good meditator, I want to be a full of good vibes, I want to be a nicer person. Whatever we want to label ourselves. That establishes what we want and everything that is contradictory to that is to be rejected. So we say "I want to be a very together person, and I don't want to be unconscious. I don't want to be unaware, I don't want to be rude and insensitive." Those are things to reject. But if we put in our mind that we should be this certain way and we don't want to express any negativity, we then can reject any capacity to deal with these negative things. We set our selves up to want to be unconscious about our negative side. That dichotomy can make a lot of trouble for us. We get a lot of discrimination and become judgmental. From that we also can start to project our own negativity on other people, and become basically not very nice people. So it's important to realize how to work with ourselves in a holistic and wise manner.
In developing awareness we look at whatever state we have as being all right, as being what it is. Then from there we can ask ourselves questions like...."If I act out my greed, what's that do for me?" Let's say I would like to have lots of money, and so you think, "O.K. I'm going to work hard to get my money." But along in there, maybe you find that you can balance the accounts on your side, get extra money, by cheating. You can lie about the amount of hours you work, whatever... So your desire, your greed, is taking over your actions. What needs to happen is the recognition that you have those negative thoughts in yourself. It develops in simple ways too. We seldom say to ourselves 'I can leave five minutes early and get paid a full day,' but we do think that no one will notice if we leave just a little early. These are really very common things. But what you have got to look at is that...the mind is trying to ignore the negative sides of what we do. I don't want to be that way but I let little decisions and actions slip out all the time. Our unawareness then is wrong. We have to be aware of what we do, and what are the consequences.
By consequences it does not mean getting fired, rather it means that we are internally deceiving ourselves. We are not in harmony with our personal image and philosophy of goodness. The consequences are in the light of awareness, where one makes decisions. So if you are sitting there for an extra five minutes, then you say "Look, I consciously made that decision and know I've got to do this extra work." You judge your own action in the sense of weighting the consequence, really making decisions about it. What type of imprints it is leaving on your stream of consciousness. Everything is based on awareness. Therefore you are more in control. It's not negative judgments on the actions, but being aware of how we are creating ourselves in each moment of our being.
Going back inside of yourself. The principle goal of meditation is that you want to be a good person, actually an Enlightened person. But if you set it up wrong and try to ignore all the bad things you do, that is the wrong approach. Take rudeness and insensitivity. You should try to be aware of "rude" and "insensitive". Be very aware about it. For example when somebody is rude to you. You feel like getting very curt with them. But in being aware, watch what happens. Say to yourself, "Well, that was interesting. That person was just rude; if I snap back I will later have to repair that relationship. I have to go through an extra ten, fifteen minutes of patching it up. Then again if I don't try to repair the hurt I hope to inflict, it could get worse. That person will start to slander me, and even try to make more trouble. What's being said is, you just make yourself more conscious of what is happening. Then the next time you are rude, realize that I am being rude right now. Was it really worth it? Especially if you have kids. You want to discipline them, put them in their place, but when they don't do something you get really pissed off. Then you should check up and ask yourself, "O.K. I'd really like to be a together person, or whatever is the label you want for yourself. I'd like to be a neat person. I'd like to be a beautiful person. I'd like to be a nice person." And, identifying that, then say, "O.K., I've got my good and my bad sides. But I'm not going to judge them. I'm just going to be aware as I act. My actions create me in each moment. So I am going to create the better me right now." The more you have consciousness in your interactions with people and what you do with yourself, you will start to find that you'll not be involved with manipulating people or trying to be deceitful about what you do. You would rather be up front about it. And then automatically you go on the good side. It's not that you have to act in any particular way. Following the traditional religious rules, 'I must be good I shouldn't be bad. But, in acting with yourself, it is so important not to reject whatever you are. Let's say you are a very licentious person and you look at other people and you fantasize. Maybe it's someone you interact with in a very minor fashion. But you have that sort of nature. And then all of a sudden you decide you want to be a religious person. Or a more sensitive person or a meditator and then you are fantasizing sexually, and that's bad, I shouldn't be doing that. So you start fighting with those thoughts. Well you will find that it comes back twice as hard. I'm using a gross example, a very strong example, because it is a good one. What you have to do, you have to accept the fact that you are licentious, because if you don't, you will have a hell of a fight. You will have a hell of a battle, saying, "Well I shouldn't be that way, but when I look at somebody.... (For a man, looking at a woman's breasts...or maybe for a woman looking at a man and thinking he has a nice ass)...and if you put yourself down about that, you will find yourself twice as fascinated with peoples' asses or woman’s' breasts. Then you get paranoid about it. You start hassling yourself. You make a lot of trouble. You are making yourself basically neurotic. Rather than that, just let yourself be comfortable with who and whatever you are. Then when you find yourself going off into a fantasy, whether it's a sexual fantasy or whatever, rather than rejecting them, and rather than being judgmental, and rather than saying that is irreligious, just accept and be more aware and allow yourself to work with who and what you are. Now we have not really dealt with how to transform that particular negative mind, but there is a very good foundation or bottom line for your practice, then your practice can be very real as you go into yourself.
So that was a little of the philosophy of being able to accept just who and what you are, and being able to appreciate it in a light just being aware. Therefore breathing meditation is very good for this. It's simply awareness of breath. Awareness of the breath is the principle way of toning that down the internal dialogue. Whether it's awareness of the air passing through the nose or the rise and fall of the abdomen, it is immaterial. In being aware of the breathing, the mind stops thinking as intensively as it normally does.
In awareness of breathing, different areas of focus will give different results. If you focus on your forehead or on the nostrils, you will develop higher awareness and more clear mind. If we are feeling sleepy, if we have worked through the day and have been busy, and then sit down to meditate and put our attention deep down into our body, we will go to sleep quite quickly. But if you put it to the forehead or to the nostrils, you will keep aware and awake longer. Meditating in the abdomen is much more relaxing. If you are a high-strung person, you should always meditate with your abdomen, being aware of the rise ad fall of the abdomen. That tones down the emotions.
You can focus on whichever one is necessary at the time. It's not like there is one that is better. They say to develop a more constant meditation the abdomen is better. It grounds you more. But don't be fixed in that. If you find yourself sleepy go to the nostril. In saying that, people have a funny idea about awareness. Awareness in meditation isn't something strange. It's just being aware, like a feeling. Let's take the nostril. You breathe out. You feel such a little feeling of air passing through the nostril. Maybe it's touching some hair. Well that's just it, you allow your mind to focus on that. That is awareness focused. When you inhale, maybe it changes just a little bit, but allow there to be a continuity of awareness. So it's not like the air went in and then the awareness went in and the air goes out and the awareness goes out, but, rather that there is a continuity of the awareness of the mind. That there is an exhalation or inhalation is immaterial. It's the awareness of it. And so your mind becomes more conscious awareness versus being fascinated with a exhalation or that the energy has moved up a little bit in the nostril. That is being too picky. So now we will meditate.
Contents |
Two
We started off a few weeks ago with becoming more aware of human potential. Tonight will be about karmic evolution.
The objective in bringing about a transformation for oneself involves becoming more holistic in looking at ourselves in the sense of having an idea or a belief such as this is how the world is or this is how I would like to think about it and this is why I act this way. We all have a belief system. Whether it's one we are conscious of or one in which we just act, not think too much, whatever it is, we do have a belief system. But it is important to think about how we believe the world is. And see if we go inside our self, does that hit a resonance, do I feel good about that? Because if we get that we are much more authentic about ourselves, we have more confidence in ourselves and our decisions, and others do not bother us as much. We don't get shifted just because their opinion changes.
Maybe right now we are in politics. We have free trade is good free trade is bad. Well if I hear a good speaker I sort of get shifted a bit. If I hear a bad speaker that is down on it, well I think that is right. So I don't know too much, but just maybe because I don't have confidence about what free trade is all about. But I do know about myself personally and so in regards to personal decisions I can make fairly clear decisions.
Same thing for yourselves. Having an intellectual belief system and then trying to make it deeper with meditation and actually if one is a very good meditator one can gain direct experience which is beyond this intellect, beyond the concepts and such. Where your ideas and beliefs actually can be validated, or even be seen as consummated. Something very powerful, experience for yourself as personal.
Karma is always interesting subject. I want to talk on it for the next two sessions because the idea is so interesting. When people say I have good karma or I have bad karma or I am doing my karma yoga. There is all these funny words. Karma has all sorts of connotations. The way it is presented in Buddhism and then reinterpreted for westerners, I think it is very good to think of it as energy as in if you have a good perspective you are involved in good karma. i.e. your energy in the type of attitude you have, the feelings you have are productive of good karma. And you sort of feel fairly good about yourself. Bad karma is just a negative headspace where you feel down and out, life is lousy and you do various things, which cause harm for yourself, make yourself unhappy or make other people around you unhappy. So it is energy. It not sort of like I did three good karmic deeds today and five bad karmic deeds today and some kind of lump, like a brick, that I broke white bricks and black bricks. That is a really simplistic idea of karma. Karma is the energy you create. And you can create very powerful energy, weak energy depending on the objects that you interact with, your own feelings about it and such. So karma should be looked at as being activity.
Like right now we are all involved in karmic activity. You are all karmically listening and I am karmically talking, but where am I coming from and what are you feeling as you sit in the group, you know. That is sort of your own karma. And this one action, and you could say it is an action, it has a beginning, and it’s going to have an end when I finish, but that means that there is a certain amount of energy.
You came into this with a certain amount of energy. As you sit and participate and I sit and participate, we create a certain amount of energy. And then when it finishes there is some energy created. And that is the karma that you get from it. And so in this lifetime you are the evolution of the various types of energy created. And if you have a positive perspective, you have more decent good karma. If you have a negative perspective, sort of small minded, uptight, you create that sort of karma and you are the product of the way you have made yourself. It's always important to feel, to realize your own responsibility in what you have produced in yourself.
That is sort of an overview; trying to clear away some of the misunderstandings sometimes people have with karma. What I wanted to talk about tonight was rebirth because karma implies continuity as in we all have the time that we were born, how we were brought up, and we are at this point in our life, how many years have passed away. So we have that many years behind us. We can say we have sort of created or evolved ourselves to a certain level. But in karma, it's sort of why did I start my life the way I did? Why was I put together with my parents? Why did my parents do what they did? Why was it that when I was five years old I felt this way about life and when I was older this and that? These questions come about.
Well, karma isn't sort of a one-lifetime shot from a Buddhist perspective. It is a continuity of previous lifetimes energy coming into this lifetime and meets with this lifetimes experiences or people and such, and it changes, it grows, whatever happens. And at the end of this lifetime, your karmic statement that you have about yourself goes to the next lifetime and interacts with those. And if you think of it as energy, you can see that energy can get changed by circumstances a bit. I am thinking of a light bulb. You have a hundred watt light bulb. In the next lifetime you have a forty watt light bulb that is red, then it's green, a Christmas light! Like each time the electricity, energies, is the same and is just going to energize, but the way that it comes out, whether it's brilliant or dull, shadow free, or whatever, that is like the circumstances of each lifetime. But there is a way to develop a certain type of rebirth you take.
Let's talk about the rebirthing. We are all at this moment in our life at a certain point. What happens if we die. And then what is the intermediate state? And then how do we take the next rebirth? This is interesting material. I always enjoy talking about it because it is fun. I found that, I can't say I've seen my previous lives, in vivid Technicolor, nor have I been able to see what my future life will be, but this information I find interesting and it seems to apply for me personally, so I like sharing it.
We all have a certain energy right now. We are happy about what we are doing with ourselves, we have a certain feeling or we are unhappy with what we are doing right now. O.K. All of a sudden we breathe out and can't breathe in any more and we die. That's it. Death, they say, is like one breath away. And it really is, you know, all you have to do is breathe out and not breathe back in, and you're dead. Let's just say we die right now.. Alright. What we are, how we have been thinking the last little while and also how we have been building up to that moment is the energy sort of statement we have when we go into the intermediate state.
The intermediate state is almost directly equivalent to dreams. They say if you want to know what your after death state experience will be like, it will be something equivalent to how you dream. Only thing, the circumstances will be much more powerful because if you have any awareness that you are dying, obviously you are going to think about what it is all about, is there a big blackness on the other side, or is there life on the other side. If you are irreligious, or have no particular belief system, you sort of wonder. If you have a belief system, well then you have hopes that you might meet an angel or a Buddha or whatever is to be met on the other side. That you will meet some good spirits or something. Like that is the sort of thing. So there is a little difference from just the regular dreams, but it is equivalent to the dream state in the sense that you will have certain visions. You will have a certain experience. Those experiences will be very much determined by your previous lifetimes energy.
You might meet with people that you have to work things out with still. So lets say you die. You will have a certain period of just adjusting and you work out a few things like whatever your psychological state is, you carry from your previous lifetime, we work out for a little while, but that will be forgotten. It will sort of die away. It will not become a main object because you have lost your body and your body is the main reason why you identify with a certain thing, like being what you are and such. But that is no longer there. So you have a much more free form state. How you think and feel creates the astral body that you have in the intermediate state. As the sort of previous lifetimes memory fade a bit, and it can take a few days or a week or two, because you are continuously in this dream state, then the more deeper energy you have about yourself starts to predominate. If you have a deep identity with being a woman, then you will have feminine astral body. If you have a deep identity as being a make, then a male body. Then actually a few other things come in.
For example. If you are unbelievable chauvinistic or feminist, and have heavy negativity about the opposite sex, you could be in that opposite sex form because your mind was so fascinated with that form. Let's say if I am a heavy chauvinistic bastard, then I have a lot of put down on women and such, and so I have a karmic connection with women, negative connection, a lot of energy. In that sense I could create for myself, because karma can work that way, that I'd have to take a woman's rebirth. You can almost say psychological. You can psychologically set yourself up. If you are an even keeled sort of person, then chances are that your rebirth will be on the instinctual side as in being male or female. If you have a strong intellectual belief system, there are options for you to take the opposite body because you psychologically set yourself up for that. Nobody decides. Because it's the way you look at the world and look at the opposite sex and such.
Within a week you have got the sex that you are going to be in the next rebirth and you have also got all the magnetism of what your previous lifetime was with you. We talked about energy of previous lifetimes. So in the intermediate state, you don't have particulars. Like for example, I like blonde women, and I am identified with being a carpenter and this and that. That sort of energy dies down. There is a basic energy I am identifying with. I am a male. I have a certain a certain social level that I like to functioning at. I like being with working class people. Or maybe I'm a high-class person. I have lived an affluent life, been generous and such. So I have that energy with me.
That energy, which is like a magnet, magnetizes my being towards a certain type of rebirth. That's why they say that rebirths are particular. The way that you act in this lifetime, and you know what you were in your previous lifetime. If you look at the way you act in this lifetime, you will know what your next lifetime will be like. So the actions of this moment show what you were and what you will become. In that sense, how you identify what social level you are comfortable at, and other things like that, dictates what kind of energy you are going to have in the intermediate state and then what you are going to magnetized to. What that comes down to is your future parents.
So you are basically a free spirit floating through the astral realm sort of bopping around having fun. You are magnetized to a certain type of people, if average people, then you are magnetized to that area. If you are uncomfortable around affluent people because it's not your sort of type. Unless you have some special connection for wealth, i.e. you have been very generous, you won't feel comfortable in that environment so your astral body won't go there, it will go to where you feel comfortable. They say people who live very violent lives will most likely be reborn in a war zone because they have a very vicious energy and they will look for vicious places. It's sort of their natural affinity to it, they are magnetized to it. If you have a very peaceful life, you will look for more peaceful parents to have, also of course a more peaceful country to be in. These sorts of connections.
Anyway you are a spirit. You are drawn according to the magnetism of your personality to the couple or to a woman or man that you have an affinity with. And also there is a sense that they are going to produce a child. That couple that you come across have sexual interest in them self and that is attractive to you. That energy is very attractive. You are drawn to them, they are going to be young and fertile and in some way have the potentiality to produce a family, and you and perhaps other spirits hang around the area, so to speak. There is a certain sort of energy that happens. They say that if you have a male body what happens is you are very attracted when they have intercourse, you are attracted to the member of the opposite sex. It's interesting! In the Buddhist texts it talks all about this basic Freudian thing.
So as a male spirit, generally you would identify with the male side of the sexual act and it is sort of as if you are attracted to the mother, or vise versa if you are a female body. That is the general way it sets itself up by the way that you see the interaction. In that way they say you identify with it, and at the moment of intercourse you become aware that there is somebody else there. Like you are having a sort of like a dream, and in the dream you think you are making love with this person and in the middle of that you suddenly realize that there is somebody out there, i.e. the person actually making love with this other person. And they say that destroys your astral body, it breaks up the astral body. With that then, the astral body dies and you are reborn into the semen and the ovum. In Buddhist concept they say life begins at the moment of the fertilization of the semen and egg. From a Buddhist perspective, you have a sperm and an egg come together, and then to make it actually a sentient being, there has to be your spirit energy that enters into that and then it becomes fertile. You have that situation, and then of course, there is the nine months of being in the womb.
In the texts they say a male child will grow to the right side as it develops it turn so it faces back towards the mother. A female fetus faces with the head to the left side of the mother and then turns. Then of course you take your rebirth.
Now we will come back and talk about karma. You are very-very young and have karmic potential, i.e. you have a lot of energy and a lot of things that you were involved with from previous lifetimes. That energy is there as potential. It doesn't mean it is a guaranteed trip. It doesn't mean that because last lifetime you were a librarian who loved reading books that you are going to immediately have that opportunity. It is in potential. What happens is, you have a mother and father who are the ones calling all the shots for our childhood. So you have all of their energy, all of what they project on you, how they live their life, how they interact with you, working on you. It's like a field with all sorts of seeds or potentials within it. The parents are going to put a lot more energy in one area than another. It is their nature. So you as an individual will ripen from whatever potential you have but also be more influenced a lot by the parents. You can't say that karma is a closed thing. Like my karmic energy right now is interacting with all of yours. If you are all nice to me, I feel really good and I expand and feel positive. If you all attack me then I feel negative. Different things change. My karma changes because of the interactions with you!
Same thing with you and the work environment that you have, your home environment and things. Those interactions are always changing you. And so you are always a changeable being. So as a baby growing older, you are continuously under the influence of your parents. You have your potentiality in a few areas, and then you have your parents interplay with you. Then, if we get subtle on the level of karma, that actually even the genes of the mother and father will develop or suppress certain potentialities of previous lifetimes so it is a very intricate thing, the evolution of karma into this lifetime. It is not only physical, not only genes, it's much more the genes, the personality of the parents, your karmic potential all together, a holistic picture. You can also include your peers, brothers and sisters, your community, the social group that you identify with and all that develops certain potentiality.
So when you are a teenager or about twenty, you might have some strong karma from a previous lifetime start to surface because you have your own personality then, your own decisions, but it has to come to the filter of what you have been subjected to or involved with as you have grown up. That is karma in the sense of our experience of karma until we become an independent person and such. That is all I want to deal on tonight because it is quite a bit of material.
In meditation there are two styles. Quietude meditation where you just relax, become more in touch with yourself and develop concentration hopefully with no intellectual stimulation. As you learn how to become more relaxed, comfortable with yourself and in the sense develop more concentration. The second style of meditation, which is complimentary to that one, is intellectually delving into some realm of thought. As we have lots of time to think about things, it's better generally speaking for us just relaxing and being peaceful with ourselves.
Three
To continue on karma, the law of cause and effect. Last week I talked a little on the process of rebirth and it's connection with the law of cause and effect. Tonight, I'd like to talk about it in the sense of one lifetime and the energy that is generated in one lifetime's activity, how it is transferred to the next life.
In the law of cause and effect, it's important to identify that karma is your emotional participation in an activity. Your energy participation, the energy you have when you get involved in any activity. It's not like in the Christian concept of sin, a black mark in a book or something like that as a sin, and then, I guess you get your sins weighed. In the Egyptian system they weigh your heart against a feather and in that sense, if you had a pure heart you went to heaven! The idea is karma has various weight. If you create a very heinous crime, do a very heinous action; it has a heavy karmic result. They say in the realm of results that heavy negative karma will give you a rebirth in hell. Middling negative karma will give you rebirth in a ghost realm. The next lightest one, the animal realm, and then a human. If you have better activities, you get into the ansura, a power hungry demi god, and then the higher realm is the gods, they are not so power hungry, they have gone beyond that. That's sort of like the realm of existences which karma's weight can give.
But to explain how is the weight difference? Like what creates more powerful karma and what creates less powerful karma? Karma is the emotional energy and input that one has in any given situation. There is three facets. There is you, the originator of the action, there is the action being done, and the third part is the object that gets the action. The weight of karma involves those three. And the second thing it involves is consciousness. How conscious you are. For example, take ourselves. If you have no moral code of ethics, you have no morality, then your karmic energy is on a really low level in the sense that you are always like an animal. If a person had no morality, they do what they want and they act like they want, they are like an animal. When there comes an aspect of a moral code as in being nice, or a social code, a moral code, with that then comes the evolution of what it means to be human.
It indicates that there is some sense of goodness or fairness or there is a certain way, which is an appropriate way to act. And the more conscious one becomes of that one's own personal karmic creation on the positive side the better. And actually, on the negative if you degenerate or give up your morality also the karmic weight gets heavier because you so to speak, know better. In that way, personally, the karmic activities we create have weight. So if you have basically a good moral view on the world, the power of your karmic actions is greater because you have an idea of morality or ethics or whatever you want to term it. Then, if you actually take on a code, by that I mean that you actually promise to commit, to say consciously I am never going to do this sort of action any more, then there is more weight because you are defining what you consider to be an action that you would like to not do. And so there is more karmic energy involved there.
In basic Buddhist tenants there are five lay precepts that can be taken, the next set of precepts are those of being a novice monk or nun, after that is being a full monk or nun. Let's say the personal commitment that we have, beyond just basic social ethics, are personal commitments that we make. Just to sort of talk about the Buddhist ethics…There is not to kill. It applies to trying to the best that one can not to kill anything, and certainly not killing a human. There isn't sort of a definer to it in the sense that one wouldn't want to consciously be involved with the killing of animals. Insects get a little more difficult because they are small creatures and easy to kill. Difficult on that one but not to have consciously the intention to kill animals, and certainly not other humans. That is the morality not to kill.
To steal. The definer on that is taking what is not given. So anything that is not given to you or is free, you cannot take it. It's not your property or you do not have access to that. To steal would be to take something that is not freely offered just by mother nature freely or offered by another, like Herman gives us tea at the end of the meal. That is freely offered, so it's not stealing. If we went into the kitchen and took it, although we wouldn't consider that bad, but that is actually stealing. But we all know that Herman is a good and generous person. So for example on those two precepts one would make the conscious commitment that I will never kill anything to the best of my ability, or secondly, that I will not take anything that is not freely offered. So therefore one understands the activity.
The next of the precepts is adultery. It is phrased as to have sexual relations with someone who is owned, which is the definition according to Buddhism. It refers to that children are owned by their parents. But as soon as a person is old enough to make their own decisions, I guess somewhere in the teen years, whether from the child's side or the adults, anyway that then defines a free person. So that person can have any sexual relations they want. And, actually going to an extreme, in the Buddhist sense, actually it's not wrong for a husband or wife to share their partner. I think in our society it doesn't work. Spouse swapping. Most of the marriages that attempted it collapsed because they couldn't handle that. Because, I think from one sense it's because of pleasure. In Buddhism, one reason that it went that way is that in some communities, particularly in the mountain countries, there was a lot of inbreeding. And so it was very common for a traveler going through to be offered the wife of the husband. And it was for bloodlines. It had nothing to do with pleasure. And so if you were a happy go lucky traveler.... Anyway the concept of adultery is having sexual relations with someone who is not free. And so for anyone who has a bond with someone isn't free, or people already in a relationship, that's not freely offered of course. So again, it's pretty simple. If you have the intention that you want to break up a relationship and you have sexual relations with someone, then that is adultery because you are breaking up another persons relationship. Or on your side. So a person who says I won't commit adultery says unconsciously I will not step out of my relationship commitment.
Fourth one is not to take intoxicants. It is said that intoxicants take away awareness, and when one is in the state of unawareness one can create many negative actions. So therefore intoxicants are considered bad because you blow it a lot when you get drunk or whatever. Normally refers to alcohol. Some of my Tibetan Lamas referred to drugs, but they would actually make a comment like this means drugs. Lama Yeshe who was much more aware of that sort of thing would lay that heavily on certain people.
Because that was where they indulged too much. But generally the one of the intoxicants refers to alcohol. As it says, alcohol makes a lot of trouble. So one can make a conscious commitment not to drink intoxicants, take intoxicants.
And the fifth one is not to lie. Lie is to deceive as in, someone says its that big.. It is said that if the deception hurts another person, it's worse. If it misleads another person, it just means it's not very nice to do. Even if you think it's funny, that is lying, but it's a minor lie compared to something more serious like swindling money.
Those are five, just to give you an idea, conscious commitments that a Buddhist can take upon himself. As for the ones for monks and nuns, there is no need to talk about those. They get into a great deal, like a monk has 253 precepts, a nun has 340 precepts. How they came about is the Buddha lived with the people that followed him. As they made mistakes, he would say you can't do that any more. It was just one precept after another of situations, which developed. And in the book, the precepts literally go that way, At the time Buddha was residing at....
For example, after the Buddha died, those precepts were set. The Buddha never knew, in Buddhist time nobody smoked cigarettes. So Thai monks all smoke cigarettes. In the Tibetan tradition smoking cigarettes is bad because it plugs up all the nerves and the chakras and that doesn't make you meditate very well. In the Thai tradition, "Well the Buddha never talked about it so I don't worry about it." One group of people go by the books, and the others go by the ideal. I am sure that there are some Thai monks that don't smoke.
So personally taking a commitment of precepts makes oneself karmically more powerful or the karmic activities that you are involved with become more powerful in the positive and negative actions. I think if you go back to the idea of ethics and morality, being more conscious of that, appreciating how it works, so to speak, like a bigger mark in the black or white book, it's just like the power of your being is more powerful. So it's very much personal energy that is involved with it. And it means that one does it in a real manner. Not sort of saying I have precepts, I don't do these five things. Sort of a very intellectual thing. Rather it's more like your being, it does not look to harm any creature. It doesn't take anything. Just that it is part of your nature. And then the karma is real. It's not sort of you live in a tight jacket and say I can't take that because... you understand, it's the energy. Being authentic.
The second object to talk about is people you interact with. Heavier karma. Light karma. It's said for example, in interacting with other people, if they are amoral, don't have much morality, the karmic power is not a great deal. If the people have higher morality as in moral conduct about themselves, then your interactions with them become more powerful karmically. And finally if people actually have precepts, then they are even more special people. In that sense, what delineates it again, is that person has precepts. So in that way it's said, for example making offerings to people who hold an ordination or spiritual mendicants or whatever, to make offerings to them is very pure, very good. They have a high moral code.
Also to make offerings to things which symbolize that as in making offerings to churches or temples or Buddha statues, is considered very good because in your mind they symbolize something very special. Like a high morality a special goodness. So in making offerings to that you are venerating that sort of thing. For example, in acting with others, being generous with them is one way of creating karma. Therefore, that is why it is good to be generous with a monk or nun or such it has special karmic results. If there are no monks or nuns, then making offerings to people who are good people. Just that person by their goodness is a more powerful way of interacting with them. And in giving material objects, support, kindness, energy, whatever seems to work, not being too tight.
The third thing is the action. And with the action then, comes delineators about oneself. In all karmic activities that you do, if you really do it haphazardly, you don't have a lot of energy, for example you sort of think, here is a person who is panhandling, just chuck a dollar down and walk away. Your motive is very sloppy. Your mind is sloppy. It's given sloppily, and so the karma is very small. Like the energy of being a generous person, that the quality of it is low grade. And so if you are very conscious of seeing someone and you sense that they not have a a lot of money. Maybe they are not a paragon of virtue, but you sense that they are poor and they need help and such. They suffer more than you do. So that means that they are worthy of receiving something. They are needful. And in your heart you have that sense of love or compassion for that person. And consciously you give something in a nice way. You place it down you don't toss it. Or if you give it to someone's hand, you give it nicely; you don't sort of chuck it at them. Sort of I won't touch you but I'll give you something. Sort of throw it at somebody!
Then, of course the quality of the action is much better. Therefore then you can understand that the energy of yourself is much nicer. In that way there is better quality karma. That sort of activity. On one side you say the motivation is clear. Your mind is clear. You feel love and compassion. Or you feel inspired by holy people. So when you go to meet a special person that is holy, someone you venerate a lot, then in offering something to them, it could be very blissful, very beautiful. Even just other people that we venerate. In venerating them and having a sense of inspiration from them, then that is also very special karma, alright?
Motivation is clear. i.e. you inspire me, you move me with compassion or such, the mind has a clarity of feeling and thinking and takes the time. It doesn't just sort of rush by and chuck or give something. It does it with a sense of dignity and such. And then the activity, is done well, is done clearly, done properly. So in one way when we do things very quickly, it's not so good. It's better we let an activity mature so it comes properly. That pretty much covers karma on the positive side.
On the negative side, the karma we create when we have very heavy hatred or heavy jealousy or some motivating force which is heavily negative, and then they say that the karma is full if you actually see your bad motive to it's end. Same thing with positive karma. Like if you give a gift and you go and visit a Lama in Victoria or some special holy person and you make an offering. And you see the offering goes down; see them accept it, that is a full karma, means you have a fulfillment of your emotions.
Same thing if you have a very "Like I'm going to get that person!" and "I got him!" That is a full bad karma and the energy of that is better than if for example lets say, "I'm going to get you!" and you set up some nasty trick too hurt the person but you never see it happen. You don't know if it happened. Karma is not full, that karmic energy hasn't got a full round therefore you can't say that it is fully there. In that way, it's to be important also that you see the completion of your action in positive things, and in negative things. Let's say that you do feel really upset with somebody and you want to fix their wagon. And then half way through you say, I really don't want to do this. Well then that karma stops right there and actually if you feel sorry for the person, then it changes right away and you don't have that full karmic energy.
That qualifies yourself subjectively, person or object of the objective side, the activity, and then, the final part, your participation in the activity, your conscious awareness of the activity you are about to enact and then, how you ago about doing it and seeing it through to it's completion brings it's full extent. So I would say generally in regards to karmic activity, you want to feel relaxed and comfortable about it, you will want to see the action is done as well as you can do it at that time according to circumstances. and you want to see it drawn to conclusion, not just sort of gloat on what you have done.
This brings to mind something I did when I was in India. At one point I had an extra hundred dollars and we invited this other boy, an English man and myself decided to invite these thirty-five tantric college monks up to Tushita where we lived. And to offer a big Puja for them, a whole day of prayers. It was so inexpensive. Twenty dollars for the food for these guys because they brought a huge tub. And we had all the wood, and they just cooked up a big soup. And we had to offer another couple hundred rupees for the altar and set all that up and stuff, and then they just sat down and prayed all day. And your talking from like 9:30 in the morning until 5:00 that night they sat and prayed except for lunch breaks and tea breaks. All from memory, no books in front of them. I was blown away, had never seen that to that extent. These men has memorized so much and just really powerful people. As they prayed you could see the energy coming from their body. Like one or two of them that were high meditators, you could almost see the deities dancing around them, that they had such powerful visual consciousness. So by lunchtime I was blown away. I immediately said I hadn't given enough. So I ran around trying to get more money and that. I was really too excited by the whole thing. I remember at one point meeting with Geshe Rabten who was one of my more main teachers. He came by where we were because Tushita is a big meditation center for westerners. He came by and he saw me running around with my head chopped off and he said, slow down! Of course I said I have to do a job. He said I had done a good job. Of course I had to do a better job. So I ran around. It was alright! We gave them an extra two or three hundred rupees so I felt good. And it did come off.
But his point was right on the mark in the sense that I should have just kicked back and been happy with what I had done. If I had really just rejoiced and been happy, even if giving the guys only ten rupees, it would have been incredible karma. But I got a little bit anxious and didn't think it was adequate, sort of neurotic.
So, in one sense, I think I could have had a little better quality in that activity than I did. I learned though. I would just like to share that because that is something that I experienced. And if you ever have the opportunity to be generous, and that person was wow that person is so beautiful, and then you want to do more. Just sort of always keep yourself in check that you don't get too anxious about doing too much.
Maybe Mother Theresa came and you had the chance to offer some tea, well you try to pour too many teas, or such better quality cookies or something, you try to outdo yourself. Then the karma sort of degenerates.
The final point to mention in regards to karma and next time we will talk about it, that in all the activities you create, like very often we want our personality to continue to our next lifetime, and that is sort of like, I want me to be there, and in Buddhism that is refuted in the sense that in the activities you create in this lifetime will become part of the being of the next lifetime. And there will be a lot of the you there. So it's not like not that you have really sort of died, but you give birth to a new personality. And there has to be that metamorphosis. It's like a cocoon. You have to die to be reborn sort of thing. And so in many ways to sort of think that your personality will be reborn again, it's not going to work that way because the causes of your personality of this lifetime has so much to do with your parents, or the group you were born with, the school you went to and everything. It has a lot to do with your personality. So your personality will pass away when you die. But all of the little qualities of yourself, as in if you have been a really kind person, a generous person, all of those sort of energies will be there in the next personality.
Lets say that the next lifetime you were born in Alberta and into a certain type of family. Well you will be brought up with those families traits, mannerisms, but the quality of your being will be all of what the previous lifetime accumulated. So, in one sense, you can actually become very creative in how you create your next lifetimes being. It is wonderful, sort of like the ultimate creativity in the sense of what, like when I act and interact, I want to sort of create. Like in this lifetime when I have a big trouble, I go in my soul or go in my heart and I find strength to go on, in this lifetime when I get in a situation, I can say like this is just killing me, but I am going to find the strength now, because if I find it now in this lifetime, next lifetime that person has the same strength. Wouldn't that be nice for them to have it. Sort of like you are giving a gift to someone. Which is actually your own spiritual evolution.
I would like to say that being aware that the continuity of the next lifetime and many, actually, is something that is generated in this lifetime and you can be the very sculptor of being as you go along. And realizing what it is.
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Four==
It's not that any of us can reject I want! Or when we say, I realize that I love this person, and I want from them these things! That is like our attachments! We cannot reject those things. But maybe we should try to put at the forefront of our relationship, what can I give that person? And just make a little bit of a change. And it's not that you are going to become this incredibly selfless giving person and giving everything that that partner could want of you, like do the laundry all the time, do the dishes,... like we would want. Like I would love it if I just had to live and my whole family functioned giving everything to me! Wouldn't it be wonderful? I'm sure each one of you would love that too if your family did that for you! But it doesn't work that way.
In reverse, of course, you don't become this selfless giving person. Well you could if you were a very evolved person, but have in your mind the thought, which says that I'd like to give good things to those people. I would like to give them emotional support; I'd like to give them the possibility of growth in a relationship, that they can get good feelings from me. Confidence from me in our relationship, that they become more generous, kind hearted. And in doing that, what you do is show kind-heartedness. And that is what you do in giving to them. You support activities of love and compassion and you act them out yourself. In that way in any relationship, if you think like, what is the statement when I die? I try my best to give the best I could to the people around me.
If you have that feeling that I gave my best to my children, to my partner, my parents, relatives, friends, then you feel good about yourself. So when death shows up you don't have messy relationships left behind. You don't have a lot of what we call excess baggage or garbage there. You have a fairly clean experience of yourself. And you feel really good.
That is the thing. It's like I say, on a really mundane level, and it is sort of called the entrance to a spiritual life, to die with confidence and to die with the good feeling is the initial level of spirituality. That is that you feel that you have met life as a good statement. It's not a question of what can I get from the people that I relate to or what can I get from my material possessions, it's what can I use my material possessions for in creating a better experience for people and beings around me. What can I do with the people I interact with to give them happiness, goodness and support.
Final thing of course is our own body. In our relationship to our own body most of us have a certain sense of identity about ourselves. I'm like this and that. We also have a lot of insecurities but on the upbeat side of it we feel that we are alright. I am beautiful or pretty, these sorts of qualities about our self. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact it's good to have a positive feeling about oneself, but when it is based on a very material sense, i.e., for men I'm not so bald... the thing is, we get very obese or whatever. Something changes in our body. Well our mind which normally grasps at our self as being very capable or dynamic or whatever, is hassled by that. Our mind's image of our self when our body changes grossly or drastically is strongly agitated by that.
That means we don't have a good relationship. We have a deluded style of relationship. We have deluded our self in regards to our relationship to our body. We have to reappraise! Like, when I die, do I want to have used my body in a very positive manner or have I lived for my body.
If you think about it, what do we do when we get up in the morning. We take our body in the bathroom and clean it and flush it, wash it's face and sort of look in the mirror and say its a pretty handsome body, it's not so bad. We do a little mascara or shave, splash a little perfume, look decent, smell nice and then we go out, look at our clothes closet and ask how we want to dress my body today. And we make decisions. I want to look fairly decent or attractive. I'm meeting special people today. I want to impress them. And if you think about it, you are living for your body. That is the way it is! You are putting your body as the main thing, and then how my body is going to look, how can I hide these certain parts of myself and accent other parts of myself and this!
This is how we do it when we get up in the morning! We then take it out and drive it off to work. We drive off all shiny and clean. Then we come home and it's all dirty and we have to start all over. But the process is what we are stuck with. But our relationship to that, again we have a possibility of doing something with it. You should make it that maybe you have to clean your body, do whatever you do to make it comfortable to live in, but then when you make it beautiful or attractive, you have to have that reflection which says that no one likes to look at me as a slob! No one enjoys that. So unless there is a purpose, there is someone I could actually enlighten by being slovenly, that might be effective, but generally if I want to be a good influence on people it's nice to look attractive because that attracts people.
So all you have done is taken the same process of shaving, dressing, whatever, and put it on with a different reason. i.e. I can function better doing it that way than I could if I didn't do these things! To over do isn't necessary. The point is, you make yourself that you are attractive because in being attractive you can be effective in helping people. And influential people like being around you. And that is productive for what you are focused on. Again you can see, there is all the activities that we do exactly can be the same. Our perspective or relationship to those activities is the thing that can be different.
It is important. To come back to the beginning you really need something that is stark, lays the situation bare, to make you be able to do that effectively. And that is what death is. It is effective that way.
The point is that death is a reality. In coming to our own death we don't want to have anguish over things, which we have left our selves engaged in. If our whole life has been external manipulation and power and involved in wealth, when death comes and one is withdrawn from that and left with a big emptiness, a vacuum. And if one has spiritual teachings to draw on and think that one is going to go to hell because one has never been spiritual, etc, and one gives twenty or thirty thousand dollars to the church before one passes on hoping that will redeem one's soul... it's sort of like that.
We have to ask ourselves if we want to die like that? And each time you know somebody who dies, actually rejoice at the opportunity to be around to experience that other person's death. It is a real present to you because death is something vague or void. I remember a friend of mine in Australia who died. I thought about it. He was the same age as myself and he was dead. It bothered me for a while, then I forgot. Three days later it was out of my consciousness totally.
Think about our own relationship with each other. We all think we care and we live for inter relating with each other and things. But if one of us was to die, would you expect anyone else in the room to anguish over you for the next ten years? You wouldn't. So, when you die you will be gone. People will reflect on it a little bit, people more close will reflect for a little longer, but then you will fade away. My own father, I don't even think of him once a year if I am lucky. It's every ten years if I am lucky. The point is, when people die, one it's sad. On the other side though, it's a special moment to go in there, to go in there, and to say like you are right now giving me a special experience. Something that I normally don't want to know about. If it happens to anybody close to me, I immediately try to forget it. So as I watch you pass away, can I take something good from that from you that is I am going to have to experience this and I want to be with you when you die so that I will know how to die better myself. And it is something special. It might sound a little funny, but it is special to have someone die around you because you get a blessing from that. You get the blessing of knowing how look at your own life, knowing how to reappraise you life. And that is maybe the nicest present that someone can give to you . Is wisdom. A little bit of clarity on your life, your relationship to the things around you.
So when people do die around you, you can offer prayers for them and give them good wishes and your support and love, but also in your mind have awareness that you are going to die. And when they pass away and after, just always sort of bring it back to yourself and think of it as a blessing in the sense of how do I want to die? In regards to the things that I relate to in the world, how would I like those things to be? And you can make some very powerful decisions after someone else is dead. After someone dies you can bring some positive and very concrete decisions for yourself. Experiences to yourself which are beneficial and don't come easily.
Like right now maybe we would like to stop smoking or like to be a nicer person. We hope to be that. But we are sort of wishy-washy. We get up in the morning and say... we half-heartedly attempt these things. If someone dies around you there is nothing more incredible. It just takes them right out of your life. You can't talk to them any more, you can't say anything to them any more, they are gone. You are left all by yourself and the other person is gone. That sort of starkness is good to make you ask if you are obtaining the goals I want. It's sort of like cold water in the face that says hey, life is like that! So what can I do about myself.
When you have this information, the next time someone passes away you can actually get inspired to live a more dynamic life. That is why I say it can be a blessing to you that people die because it can be inspiration to you, a good one. You can even think of it that the other person actually can be happy to think that you have taken positive steps forth from that they have died. If I was to think of people behind me after I have left, came to some very clear decisions about themselves, gave up a bit of their garbage or delusions about their life and became a little more real about themselves, that would make me happy. I am sure if you think of your relationships to other people, if they saw you become a more positive person that would make them happy. So like I say, it's almost a gift, an offering. You can make an offering back to them saying, thank you. You have given me something. And feel that they can actually rejoice in that. On the other side, you can also rejoice in that saying thank you, you have given something to me to make my life a little more clear.
It is a very good thing and it's not negative to feel that death is a positive thing. Death is a blessing for both you and that other person. Alright? Anyhow it is mostly the ideas that can be given in this. And you can think about your own death and in thinking about it in thinking about your relationship to your material possessions. In saying what are my possessions, do I own my possessions and use them as I want or do they use me? And then I get anguished every time they are broken down. And do I fret and worry over my possessions. Because if I do then I have got a lot of delusion in there. I value them more than I value my own being.
In regards to my relationships am I giving the people I relate to good experiences, positive support, or am I just giving them all my garbage, all my emotional hang ups, my emotional manipulation that I normally do. And we all do that I think if we sort of become aware of ourselves we will see that we do manipulate people emotionally. We want a little affection so we wine. We do things like that. So, say to yourself in my relationships wouldn't it be nice if I could give something beautiful to those other people. And just make the decision that that is what I would like to do.
And finally in regards to your own body say, my body is something that I have to relay on, something that I need to live this life, so might I use it in a positive way and not let it use me. Like live in my vanity of between the ages of thirty or twenty to forty five or fifty, I am feeling very wonderful and powerful saying this is my life and then get a little older and weaker and the body starts degenerating and then you feel sort of depressed because all of a sudden you are not the wonderful person you envisioned yourself to be. Use your body in a positive way and use that as a vehicle to do good things.
That is most of the topic for tonight. It's good just to reflect on it a little bit to allow death to become a part of your existence. And you can do it just when you see little bugs die, it happens all the time. You drive down the road and you run into a moth. Easiest thing to do is to say an om mani padme hum for the moth. You didn't mean to kill the little guy. But the thing is, you think that poor little moth is dead. Can't do anything more. And so then you allow yourself to think well, one day I am going to die. Am I happy with myself right now? And then you say, alright, I'd like to be happier with myself. So you make a decision to be more positive. Use what I have in a positive manner. You can do it in each moment. And then when you have something that is really big in your life, for example someone who is close to you pass away, at that time you can become, because there is much more invested in human relationships, you can really, you will get a shock. But do it consciously. And then reflect on that person's death. How they died. Reflect on how you would like to die. And how you feel about yourself. And use it in a positive sense. It is a very special moment. It will only last a little while. When someone dies you might be involved with it for a few days or a week, or a little more if the person was very close to you, but after awhile you will forget. It is not an opportunity that you have too often. So use it when it does come your way. And use it in a very conscious manner. Alright!
Five
For this evening the topic is refuge. Refuge is really just being conscious of your decisions. It really comes down to that. In making a conscious decision you could say there is an aim or focus as in when you make business decisions, you have the object that there is some profit, and that is the goal. Maybe there is a few minor things behind that goal, like good quality work that you are offering, or whatever, there are other facets, but there is that.
In introducing refuge for this evening, the whole focus is to be aware, it is just being conscious, and conscious decisions! It does go into other things, which is the secondary part, but, in talking of conscious decisions, first is its good to come in touch with ourselves in the aspect that we are always taking refuge. We are always doing it. It is part of our existence. It is in everything we do. For within our mind, when a situation arises we ask what are we going to do now? What is the thing to do in this unique moment? The question, and then making a decision is refuge. I.E., you are taking this particular course of activity, the one that seems appropriate, as the one, in a sense you could say, as the one that will protect me in the next interaction we become involved with.
If you go into a community you don't know anything about and you steel your nerves as say, whatever is going to happen in this new community I will try to be clear sighted and do things properly. Like if you go down to the U.S., to cities that are strange, and you are not sure of the new community you are going into. I think we've all talked about going down to the United States and driving into the wrong part of town, what I am trying to say is that you have a new situation, for example traveling to a new community or country, or you have just meeting with new people or confronted by an employer and they are coming on very intensively and your mind says, what should I do to protect myself in this situation? Should I be assertive or should I be sorry, or whatever? Your mind is always doing it. It is saying, if I do this, I feel secure.
What you should try to do is, each time you find yourself, and its sort of being confronted by something, find that reflex in your mind that says, what should I do to work with the situation? And when you start finding that one, when you start seeing what am I doing in the situation, then you really have the meat of refuge because you can make it an immediate thing. Very much for Buddhism, there is a philosophical discourse on taking refuge, which I will talk on in a few minutes, but the real meat of refuge is in each moment, the conscious decision you make. And it really has to be the conscious decisions because if unconsciously we always respond, then there is no refuge because you could almost say there's no life! Your existence is almost an animal level, instinctual level, and being on instinct isn't quite appropriate. For us we have the capacity to make choices, to have options on anything we are involved with. That is what being human is all about.
Getting in touch with that, like I say it is the meat of your being. Something is happening right now. My child is being crazy! What am I going to do? What am I going to rely upon to handle the situation?
My boss is attaching me! He is now upset! What am I going to do? In finding that, then you can start to say to yourself, "Alright, I am making decisions all the time. I definitely am taking refuge in one thing or another every moment. Particularly when I am being confronted. So what would I like to do, in catching that, is I am basically making the person I am, cultivating my character in each one of those movements."
So you can make yourself a defensive person. You can make yourself a very aggressive person. Whatever. You could make yourself a very open person when it comes to kindness. You actually can become aware of in your normal responses that you have been producing a type a personality, defensive, insecure, whatever. We throw up all sorts of shields to make sure we don't ever really get accessed by anybody.
What we want to do then is to say, "Each time I interact, I create a part of my character. Now I am more conscious of myself. What would I like to produce of myself?" Whether you are a parent, and although we like to think of ourselves as wonderful parents, totally know how to resolve all of our children's conflicts and questions, and that we give the best of examples for them so they turn into wonderful beings that radiated white light for everybody else to see...I don't know, this is our glorified picture, what we would like to think of ourselves. But, when you have your child in front of you and being totally berserk, you can say to yourself, "Alright, right now I have to deal with the situation. Also I am going to seek a method. Either I am going to yell, or ignore, or whatever. I am going to do something which is my refuge, is my support for dealing with this child." You should say, "Hey I'd like to be a little bit more together parent, a bit of an example, so have that in your mind. Have that "What quality can I give to the child?"
As the child grows they do make more and more of their own decisions and basically the child finally moves away from home. You don't get anything back other than what you gave. For example you gave love you get love back from the kids. But if you have always been an aggressive and intensive parent, all you will get left with is your intensity. That is what you will get left with because that is all you have cultivated. That child will go off and do whatever it will do. They will remember you and possibly act a bit like you because you were the main example. But really that child is free and you get left with is whatever you laid on them. You really have to think about it and say, I often relied upon aggressiveness and yelling because I thought it was the best way to do it, but if we come back in ourselves and think, all that leaves me with is an very aggressive personality and if I have enough control in a situation, i.e., I have a very weak person or a person who is under my thumb as in a child, that's what I am going to do with those people because that's all I know in discipline.
You can start to bring your interaction with the child into your actual spiritual practice as in what sort of person am I cultivating and such. And be aware that you are going to be left with whatever you have done with that relationship. So, what do you want to be left with? You can hassle yourself a bit. Saying do I want to be left with being an absolute aggressive disciplinarian who is a horrible authoritarian? Or do I want to have a nicer after thought when the whole situation is finished.
Then we can start to move into working with peers and other people. And think of that too in the sense, you have to remember I have moved it into the scale of what is an objective or a focus. What is the ultimate statement of your being that is going to come out of your interaction? Each time you make a decision you create yourself a little bit. In that creating, think about what the ultimate statement that produces in the long run? When you are working with other people, are you always defensive of the work that you do? "I did that the best I could! I tried my best!" Always defending yourself. What you end up becoming is a very defensive person. And if anyone questions you about anything, you might fly off the handle and defend yourself when there is no need for it. Someone might say "What is that?" And you go "I did that well! And all they were wanting to know was what that thing was.
You cultivate, because you are a defensive, a defensive personality. And it dominates or becomes a more predominant part of your character because that is something you can do. So be aware in each time you get confronted, think about when that person says "Hey what are you doing?" allow it to go in, I guarantee your automatic responses are defensiveness and a statement to throw them off. But to become more conscious of in each of these interactions, "Alright, I am cultivating a bit of myself in this exact moment when I fall back into something to be my support, I am actually creating myself. Well, what do I want to be?" So next time it happens and you are a little more conscious of that interaction, say, "I want to be a little bit more up front and I feel I did a good job, I don't need to say that." So just bringing consciousness into it so you are conscious of the movement of your mind. In that you are actually fulfilling so many aspects of your spiritual practice. One, you are conscious. Two, you are not allowing the common mundane aspects, delusions, which we rely on. Which I have been normally emphasizing defensiveness and fear, and then trying to resolve it by being aggressive and insensitive.
The more you become in touch with it, you can start to focus on what spirituality is as in the fully enlightened being. This is where refuge becomes very much Buddhism in the sense that the fully enlightened being is, one, the teacher that has shown the paths. That's why as least I am a Buddhist because I believe that the Buddha showed the right path and therefore I have taken refuge in him as the founder or presenter of the path. Nowadays of course, what we should focus on is one that is something important because we were lucky to have the Buddha. Second thing is the qualities of that being which founds the path. The Buddha they say, the enlightened being, whether it is a man or a woman, has completely abandoned all negative traits and has accomplished all positive traits. It means that the enlightened being naturally and spontaneously never falls back on any negative trait as in defensiveness or any sense of insecurity. The fully enlightened being only responds from positive aspects in the sense of having a very secure mind. There is no unknowingness in the mind. The mind is full of love, compassion, wisdom, understands it's own nature fully. So that is the being that is the founder. That is one aspect of refuge as in that being personifies the most together expression that can happen.
The second aspect of refuge in that person that was the founder is that I can become that. There is nothing from stopping me becoming that. In being aware of that is making a statement to oneself that says I can become that positive being.
There is nothing that holds me back. Just that I have always relied on unconscious traits. I have always allowed myself to be what you basically can say unconsciousness. Just, I have never really been aware of what I have been doing to myself. If I start to be more aware and make positive decisions, then I will start to naturally or spontaneously without thinking about it too hard, more natural in my expression of being secure, being wise, being peaceful, being compassionate when necessary and such.
So there is two aspects in that refuge. First, the fully enlightened being is the founder therefore worthy of being venerated. The second and more important aspect is that I can become like that. That being, taking refuge in a being like that, I have personal connection to that. It means something to me. That actually I can do something about that, become that. So it is a much more real refuge. It's not like someone is always going to have their hand on your head and saying you are a good child, where you are always in this secondary position. Rather, it means that you can become into the primary position of that actual state of being. So that makes it much more exciting rather than always being as I say, the good child or whatever. You actually can become that state of being. It makes it a real thing to strive for.
The second part of the refuge is the teaching. The fully enlightened being gave teaching and that is the path that we practice. It is something that is quite external and that we strive after as in the teachings of be pious, be good, virtuous, positive, loving, kind, generous, patient, be, be, be...That is very real. But if you bring that back to the immediate moment, as I said to be aware of every moment that you create with each decision that you make, then you don't need to be so concerned with "should be this, should be that" but rather, if you have got that sensation in our mind which says "What should I do, I'll do this," then you start to have a very real practice and it becomes much more immediate. You spirituality is very real for you.
For myself personally I like my spirituality to be real, very comfortable. It's not as in Please God bless my consciousness and something so grandiose as that. It is much more real, immediate as in the immediate moment I am creating my own enlightenment. In the immediate moment I am conscious. In the immediate moment is my opportunity to be full of love, to be full of compassion.
Again, in that way you have two types of refuge. One is the refuge as in the path I should practice. But you can also relate to that back to the refuge I practice in each conscious decision I make, each interaction I have.
Final aspect of refuge is the community. The traditional presentation of community is the spiritual community, as in those, which have a spiritual practice. The best are those, which have high realizations, or either ordained as monks or nuns or lay ordinations or such, or at lest have taken refuge in Buddhism. So they are Buddhists. That is sort of like the best of refuges as presented in the traditional presentation. Nowadays, being that we are in the west and there are not many people which we know are Buddhists, there are a few people around which express the fact that they are Buddhists, but most are agnostic or spiritually inclined, or interested in Buddhism or whatever, people who are quasi this or that, not really committed to any one thing.
In that being the state we are in, what spiritual community can mean is that you are much more aware of the friends that draw into the circle of your influence, who influence you and you influence them. It does mean that you are a little more conscious of the people you have as friends. As in you try to have friends who have spiritual interest. If not an overt spiritual interest, are certainly inclined towards being supportive, positive, kindness and such things. You just sort of try to be more attracted to those people, so that you have a nicer environment around you. An environment that easily supportive. It is sometimes difficult to find a community support, because people don't want to meditate with you, or anything like that. It is sometimes difficult. But at least they have people who have similar direction. Then you feel really comfortable with them. You feel hey, I can have that person over for tea. We will talk about a thousand things and then maybe a little bit about getting in touch with ourselves and such. So there is that sort of interest in them, and that sort of interest in me. I don't get flack from my friends like why am I interested in spirituality and meditation and that sort of thing.
Nowadays refuge in communities is perhaps just being aware of the friends that you do attract. And if you meet with someone who looks like a nice person but when you get to know them find they like to drink quite a bit, carouse, whatever. Maybe they are nice people and under ordinary circumstances you might enjoy their company but when it comes down to it all they are ever going to want you to do is go out drinking, night clubbing or something like that, then you can say, I like that person, nothing against him, and if I was more loose with myself, it would be alright. But I have a direction in my life right now, so I will be friendly and always be nice, but not make those bonding contacts like coming over for coffee. Being a little conscious. Because in doing that, you will find that you are going to have to be a little involved in their trip because very few people go out of their own thing. Most people in the world do their thing. And if you will do their thing well they will want you as a friend or include you. But if you don't do their thing...
All I am trying to say is that in spiritual community, try to be aware of those people you attract into your environment or that you get drawn together with and then being aware of if I cultivate this friendship, will it be supportive for what I like to get into or will it be something that will go in different directions. So you just be a little more aware of those things.
Question: Could you repeat those three things?
Refuge in the Buddha or refuge in the enlightened being as an immediate experience is "In the decisions I make, is that being the focus or the aim?" And it doesn't have to be too exalted as in saying, if I make a decision in being a little more quiet or more careful in my next interaction, then that is going towards the fully enlightened being. Whereas if I rely on being angry and flying off the handle because I want everyone to back off ten feet, well, the Buddha doesn't act that way so it is sort of going the other direction.
The teachings are the spiritual practice, which is love compassion, development of wisdom, peacefulness, meditative awareness or consciousness.
In the immediate situation of taking refuge is being aware of the movement of your mind and being more in touch with that. It actually ties back to what is the resultant state that will be produced by the decisions I make in each moment.
The spiritual community is the people I hang out with and are they conducive to my goals and aspirations. If there was a really good community, then you could say I take refuge in the Buddha's community. For example if I go back to India, I don't know if I'd actually refuge in the Buddha's community because there is all these weird people. Let's just say there are some people that I hold in high esteem because I think they are really good Buddhists and I would like to have them as sources of very supportive energy. So there is my real spiritual community. In general I think to be aware of the friendships you have is the real spiritual community.
My focus of my refuge is just becoming enlightened as in being a person, I try
to become a person who has all sorts of good qualities and doesn't rely on
negativity. Sort of the ideal of what a Buddha is. So that is what my focus is.
And in that focus I have nobody who is an enemy. If I really am in touch with
that, there is nobody who is outside, there is nobody who is nasty or ugly.
There are some people I don't want to hang around too much because they are not
very nice people and they sort of hassle, but I don't judge them as being bad
because the object of my refuge includes them as being an object for my
compassion, love, help.
In a literal sense my focus is enlightenment. In an immediate sense my refuge is what I practice in each second of my immediate moment. I'd say the more real refuge for me is my immediate moment. But the immediate moment in a lineal sense will arrive at enlightenment, I think...
Six
We have talked about the preciousness of life. Because we are all born and have to die we then moved into death and how one dies and takes one's rebirth. From there, into the law of cause and effect. Then we moved into the natural inclination of our mind to go for refuge, something to assist us in making our decisions and become more in touch consciously with that, more aware of the movement of our being. That finishes off one section, basically getting in touch with yourself, the essentials for being a Buddhist, or at least being spiritually inclined.
Realizing the value of our existence makes us more aware that we are something valuable and that we should really rejoice in our existence as being human. Death is very good because taken in its proper context as a positive thing, helps us create a dividing line between the activities we have taken in the sense of being able to discriminate as in... "Are my activities creative or productive towards the evolution of my character?" And in this sense the "Evolution of my character" which is moving towards becoming enlightened. And so the awareness of death and having it's viewing things in the appreciation of our own personal demise is very positive, can be very positive.
From there we moved into the process of dying and the way the law of cause and effect works. We touched on it in general terms but it did give us a format to appreciate our own karma in the sense of how we magnetize ourselves or set ourselves up for particular experiences. And how we can become more conscious of that. And then finally taking refuge is just being conscious in our decisions. That we are our own creator, we create our own existence with each decision that we make. Taking refuge in an internal experience is that where our mind sort of seeks it's support or a way to work with the situation, the way our mind works. To become more in touch with it and realize consciously how to create ourselves by the decisions that we make. This way, rather than being defensive, working in sort of the normal unconscious way I do, "Well I can consciously create the situation by motivating myself."
Tonight I want to move into the next phase dealing with the four noble truths beginning with the noble truth of suffering. In Buddhism it is important to realize the full picture of life. In that way one has a more balanced approach to life. In talking of the noble truth of suffering, sometimes Buddhism is accused of being very pessimistic, like life is suffering, life is miserable, and this and that. Whereas it's really not. But if you want to have a fuller experience of life, not want to avoid issues, and want to really live yourself to be a full being, then it is important to appreciate that in life there is suffering. So Buddha in one of his first discourses taught the noble truth of suffering which is that life does have problems in it and that life always will have various ups and downs. And the more that we appreciate that, the better it is for us in the over all picture of our self. We become a more real person.
Regarding this there are two styles of practice. And I want to touch on that philosophically. It is good to think about suffering. The reason is, in Buddhism you have what is called the lesser vehicle and the greater vehicle. Hinayana and Mahayana and in those, the vehicle is your own being.
The way that you motivate yourself is what you then create as your vehicle. The lesser vehicle is a person whose character or being says "I really want to be happy. I can't stand being unhappy any more because it is always a bummer! If it's not having to do this or that, then there is always something which brings me down. And I don't want that any more. I want to be free of all that!" For them, they seek for their own personal freedom or liberation, to be totally free of all the hassles. In seeking that, they dwell on the negative aspects of life as in they dwell on life is miserable, that in life you continually grow older, actually in each continuous moment that your life is getting shorter, that in life there is illness and when you are ill there is a lot of pain, suffering, discomfort and such. Also death in the sense that other people around one self dies, ultimately one's self has to die and all that one strives for in the material world is taken away by others... They dwell on all of this. And by dwelling on this and really getting into it, they then finally say, yuck! And they really then give it all up. And they don't want to do anything else other than meditate, free or liberate their mind, and in this way gain nirvana or ever lasting happiness. But it is very personally orientated in the sense of myself. My sufferings. The hassles in the world, and I want out! That is why it is called Hinayana or small vehicle because it is like a motorcycle with only one seat. It is just you going out! And so you drive yourself out of samsara or existence into everlasting peace.
The greater vehicle, the Mahayana Buddhism, is a style of practice, which I was schooled in and the teachings you get are in that tradition which says that it is not appropriate to work for your own sake alone because everyone else is fully equal. Whether it is an animal or we as a human or spirits or such that we cannot see easily, we all want happiness, we all don't want suffering. So because we are all equally that way, "Just as much as I don't want to be unhappy, you don't want to be unhappy!"... all of us are equal that way. So if we have that underlying realization then it is really inappropriate to work for oneself alone. Everybody equally wants to be helped, everybody wants to become liberated or free. So it is only appropriate that we try to the best of our ability to help others.
In that there is love and compassion, the chief motivating forces. How does all of that... if someone is so called trying to be an altruistic person and run around helping other people... where on earth do you have to think about suffering...."You shouldn't sort of try to avoid suffering, all you are ever trying to do is mend peoples suffering, at least that is the so called idea!" It seems that way. Really it is not. What you have to do is, if you really want to help another person, it's not easy. In fact it is almost impossible to help another person. I mean you can give a few words of advice and they might listen to it but even then they are going to take that advice and they are going to turn it their own way, because that is what people do! That's what I do when someone gives me advice! I'm sure you all do the same thing.
So where does realizing the noble truth of suffering play an important role for a person that is so called trying to be altruistic or full of love and compassion? What it does is, if you don't get in touch with your own suffering, you never can understand another person's suffering. That is the first point. It's knowing your own suffering is so important in being able to have at least a little empathy in feeling another person's pain.
Secondly, it is very important then to, because you know your own suffering, then when you are with other people even though they might not be conscious of the fact that they are unhappy or that they are suffering, you can sense it much easier because you are much more aware of that as an actual experience, as what is happening in the world around us. And so knowing the noble truth of suffering is important because when you interact with people, you can perhaps have that experience in yourself to appraise your relationships. So when someone is complaining, when someone is being difficult to get on with, someone is being overly friendly or something, if you take a step back and question what is happening, well obviously if someone is being crabby or unhappy, they are suffering! And they are not really identifying it and that is why they are letting it out on other people. It is sort of like trying to shove it onto other people.
And again, when people are being overly friendly, again, it can be, it is not always, I'm talking in generalities, but it can be because they are very unhappy and so they are looking for other people to sort of let them forget! So they will be very friendly and they try to get away from their own situations. So you have a little bit of added wisdom in your relationships in understanding suffering.
This is to give you a little overview that being aware of your own suffering and being aware of the suffering that is around us in other people is very, very, instrumental for you having more love, more compassion, having also a much more balanced existence for yourself. And so it doesn't have to be the negative side like in Hinayana. It's emphasis is experience the suffering, the unsatisfactory suffering you have, and then if you realize it, go for nirvana! Well in the Mahayana it is realize your suffering, because that fuels your compassion. Realize other peoples suffering because it helps you realize where they are coming from, how to interact with them, be more helpful with them. And also, finally it makes you a much more real person. A much more whole person. Because when you are in touch with your own sufferings, and you deal with them, your whole being becomes more full, more holistic.
In being aware of suffering, suffering is that which is unsatisfactory. And so they term one type of suffering is the suffering of change. For example, you are sitting in this room, comfortably well things change. In a while, you get uncomfortable. For example, you might take the most comfortable position you can right now. Well, because things change. In a while you are not comfortable. That position has become unsatisfactory. It is not pleasant any more so you are suffering and you change. The nature of the suffering of change is that our basic nature is continuously pervaded with varieties or levels of suffering. It is like you can say we are continuously miserable but we do little things to make ourselves think that we are actually doing alright.
How it works is, in our existence we always try to change it or stimulate it because in that way we feel like we are really happy. And so when we are released from any suffering, from boredom... we are sitting around not doing anything and all of a sudden we come up with something to do, then we think "Ah, it is fantastic, I'm so enthused," and off we go running... We are actually still involved with suffering. And it is only because of the previous experience of miserable that we think that we think we are actually so happy. We think this is so good! We are happy and do our thing.
After awhile that inspiration dies down or we don't have the materials to be able to put together our trip, and so then it's no good any more and we have to find another thing, another trip to go on! And so, the suffering of change, it is said, pervades all activities because no matter how good something seems at one moment, at a later moment it will be unhappy, it will be unsatisfactory. Therefore, in all activities be should start to be aware of the suffering of change so we don't get attached to them. Like right now, I'm on the best pillow in this room, it is fantastic. Then after awhile I'll be unhappy with it, I won't be satisfied and it could be for a whole variety of reasons. One, it's not soft enough any more. Two, my greed makes me so agitated that I want her pillow! So then you see I am suffering. So change is always there. The point is to start to be aware in the movements of your being that there is this pervasive sort of sense of change. And it is the suffering of change. That when you go out in the warm sun, and it is so nice and cosy, that after awhile it is too blasted hot. Then you come in the shade. In the shade you are alright for awhile and then it gets too cold! And then you move. And then you say, I'm hungry. So you go and you eat. Then you eat a bit too much. Well, I don't want to eat food any more! So things change. What sort of starts off being bliss turns into a suffering. So, if you think about it, you just go after one thing to another, to another, to another.
Those are sort of like motivations, which continuously push us. And that is what can be termed as suffering. Actually there are two varieties of suffering. One, you have the suffering that things are always changing and you are getting put off with the situation. And secondly, you have the suffering, which is all unconscious anyway. Like you are never really realizing it. You are not in touch with yourself. Because of that you sort of bounce from one thing to another always wanting to be stimulated. Television and all of modern society is continuously feeding us that so we really think it is right, that "Yes, I should be continuously entertained!" Our kids are like that a lot! Sort of there always has to be something happening. Always have to be entertained. Finish an activity and then thirty seconds later, "I'm bored!"
It is that nature that they are continuously unconsciously looking for stimulation. In yourselves, it is sort of a downer to think about this stuff because it means that you have to sit down and realize that sometimes you are sort of like just on the upper surface of being unhappy, or another word, dissatisfied. "I'm not quite satisfied, I want to do something!" If you get in touch with that it brings you down. It makes you depressed. It makes you a little long faced, and you can get a headache and you can feel down and out about it. But, the think is, by knowing that you can also then become aware of that you don't always sort of unconsciously seek stimulation, and then always living in need for something to be happening. So you become a little more conscious of yourself, what has been motivating you, pushing you. And with that, just a little more awareness of yourself. So that is first phase, which is that, you have to become aware of your own suffering. And the pain of that suffering. It is unpleasant. It is not any fun. When you get a little in touch with that, maybe seeing that all you do is sort of ricochet off of one stimulating thing to another, then you can say, I'm not that happy with existence. And it brings you down to a little more even keel, so that the next time something more stimulating comes along, you don't just sort of grab it and go gung ho. You instead will say it is going to be fun but it is going to change after awhile.
You have, what you could say, is that little more wisdom, a bit more middle road in the sense that you don't get totally elated about things, nor do you get totally depressed about things. You have that sort of even keel about yourself. That is the first step of realization.
The second phase is that when you are with other people, you can start understanding them a little better in your relationships. That is always beneficial. Knowing what is going on. It doesn't mean that you do anything, but it means that at least when you are with other people and they are bouncing from one stimulation to another, they are always sort of complaining about the changes in their life and such, and if you can, you say something, but at least you are not going to get bugged by it. You are going to look at them as suffering beings. And that noble truth of suffering becomes more a part of your conscious awareness.
So you have an appreciation that that is sort of the underlying thing in life. They say that the only everlasting happiness, or true happiness is termed non-contaminated happiness. It is happiness, which arises from freedom in the mind, the mind not possessed by delusion. The mind is not grasped by a delusion or a projection or something like that. The mind is free. The mind is free of all it's projections and all it's illusions and things, then that mind is blissful. That mind is happy. It is free. Liberated.
So for our mind, we are always possessed by various delusions, projections about people, feelings which consume us and such. All the varieties of delusions. And if we become aware of that, tie it in with the noble truth of suffering, tie it in with for example one aspect of suffering which is the suffering of change, we just sort of become a little more low key about things. Just sort of going slowly and taking life as it comes. But in that, there comes a more inner happiness. Also your relationships with others become more real. You have a much more real way of relating. You just don't take somebody and stimulate them and get them all happy and excited and think that has been a good deed. Sometimes it's alright to let somebody wallow in their suffering because maybe they can learn from that. You can accept that.
That misconception that says if you have the bodhisattva intention, i.e. that I want to help people, like even the prayer, "May all beings be free of suffering and the cause of suffering..." Well, on a superficial level you might think you have just got to make that person happy. "I'll give them a milk shake! Take away their pain or whatever..." That is very superficial. What you really want to do is look a little deeper and say, "Well, maybe their pain is alright. I'm going to let them suffer!" And actually you have better compassion that the one who tried to stimulate the person. Because hopefully if you have a long term relationship with that person, you can at certain times give them little bits of information and help them through their suffering. And maybe they grow from it, learn from it. So just pointing out that suffering is alright and wishing all beings to be free from suffering, and yet allowing someone to just grovel in their pain is also alright. It's part of a deeper wisdom that you develop from realizing yourself.
I remember when I used to do retreats. In one way it was very hard to get my energy going to do a retreat. Maybe it's a one-month retreat, and you get very depressed and unhappy. It's no fun. And so what I used to do for the first three days was just sleep a lot. And not really care, even when I sat down to do my meditation,, to go to sleep. Because after about the third day I'd get fed up with that and then I would start to meditate quite earnestly. It was quite terrific. And so I'd let myself go into that because I knew that was what would happen to myself.
In that way you get experience about yourself, experience about your own suffering. i.e., like I had to suffer going through a retreat, but by allowing myself to really go into it and just suffer, well after awhile I came back out the other side and really had a lot of energy to meditate. Same thing for yourselves. I mean you don't have to tell everybody about it, but you just know your nature and when you know your nature you can use it for your own benefit. And I think it is really unrealistic to think you are always going to be on a high, or always filled with energy, or going to be a greatly compassionate person every moment of your existence. It's really unrealistic. You are going to be selfish and you're going to be self-centered, and you are going to be happy and charitable and all sorts of things at different times. Sort of know those things happening in you, so when you have a good time you take advantage of it and you do good things for other people. And when you get melancholy or self-centered then allow yourself to sort of see well, what comes out of this. To be conscious in that experience. And so the next time it comes around, you don't get into it so much. You have more experience and knowing how to handle yourself.
The point is that in the noble truth of suffering that suffering pervades our experiences, our existence. That our wanting to be free of suffering is a very strong motivation and to maybe get in touch with it. For example. Take that one type of suffering called the suffering of change. And become more conscious of it pushing you into various activities you are doing. And by being that, then you become a little more conscious. Maybe it hurts for awhile because you start realizing all your outpours just to sort of keep yourself happy, keep yourself out of getting too internalized and depressed, but if you allow yourself to go into it and to try to find a deeper base for yourself, then you will be more solid. As I say, the final thing that will come is that your relationships with others in appreciating that in having sensitivity, having empathy for your love and compassion, becomes much more real.
Next time I will talk about suffering again in a different way. Tonight I wanted to introduce the subject, the misery of life! It is always good to have that in mind that there are two sides to life. You can have a pervasive happiness in your existence, but have it always balanced that there is also bummers every so often.
Seven
I want to come back to fundamental awareness, which is the basis of the whole practice. All of the teachings we have gotten are aimed at helping one move towards a state of consciousness, which has clarity, and develops and understanding of wisdom. To understand how one is moving in one's own conscious realms. Into one's attitude, one's thought patterns, what is happening, what one is creating for oneself. And to give oneself a way to have insight which helps release the intoxication which sometimes comes about because we have a particular viewpoint. We have a particular view and we think that is a very real view. Then we can become intoxicated or totally influenced by that thought pattern or concepts we have. The point is, if we move into a deeper meditative position, we should be moving into that which is authentic, very real conscious position, one which is not artificial. Many of our delusions are based on artificial ideas about reality, about what other people are into projections. Therefore we limit our capacity to have compassion, to see the situation clearly, to be able to act in a natural way where we have a natural sense of love, empathy or compassion or help flow through us.
The teachings are all aimed at trying to move us into a position where we have detachment from various thoughts, feelings, and such, which go through us so we have better understanding. It is not that we have no feelings any more, or that we no understanding or something where we are in a state of stupor, it is not that at all. Rather, we have more freedom from just feelings, projections and such which go through us. And then we can be more picky about how we allow our mind to set itself up to have it's perspective, it's attitude established. We become more careful in establishing a better attitude.
This comes from conscious experience, not from philosophy. Philosophy helps one move towards that position. That the actuality is that one has conscious understand, conscious experiential awareness.
For the meditation I want us to come back to that essential awareness, that we allow ourselves to sit, and when we sit to follow our breathing, allowing our mind to settle and relax, the internal dialogue to slow. And then we try to allow our mind to move into a state where our consciousness is open, that we do not cling to whatever thought pattern is moving within us right now. We often think I am me and I am meditating, ideas. We have a conceptuality, which holds to that. If you develop openness, you try to allow yourself to be bigger than that. And by that I mean, when you sit there to meditate, you will find your consciousness will grab onto the fact that I am of such and such a person, or it will hold to a feeling about itself. Or this image is what I identify with a lot. When you are very ignorant or unconscious, you will move into that pattern and feel comfortable about it. And it will make you either happy or unhappy depending on how adaptable your attitude is that you have assumed. But if you become more meditative, you try to make your mind deeper, larger, more open minded, and in that you will find that consciousness, when it is very tight and unaware, will cling to certain things about what you think you are.
With deeper concentration you will find those are things, which you do for a sense of security, but they are not always very valid. Sometimes we cling to the concept of who we are. Like I am. This will be based on the idea that I am a very capable, in control person. But, maybe we have to realize that as we get older and such, we loose some of our faculties, some of our capacity, our abilities. And I am maybe moving us ten years ahead of yourself right now. But if you think about it, you will realize that you do change as the years go by and you are not as capable or intellectually as sharp as you were, you don't have such insights as you did when you were younger and were more agile and more pensive about life.
So obviously the position that your personality takes, when it moves to a later date, will have to adapt. So you see, the position of being capable or such is not really a valid position. So for meditation you want to try to learn how to not cling, grasp to particular concepts you have about yourself, and I do not mean like intellectual philosophical concepts, just basic concepts of me and I am sitting here in this room and I am bored or unhappy or excited, or whatever. It is to try to realize that a lot of that is based on a superficial level of consciousness, which is just grasping onto particular things which are there which make it feel very secure or stable. So with meditation we try to move to a deeper position, which frees you from being caught up with little personality traits, into where you have more openness and flexibility, if you are actually working with awareness.
Really, I am talking about; you sit in meditation, in an upright posture, breathe and allow yourself to relax. You try to allow your internal dialogue to slow down with the awareness of breathing. And in doing that, you just observe your mind. In that observation, try to become conscious of, as you sit there you have an idea of who I am right now. It will be there because that is the way we are. But as you sit there and just have awareness, try to be able to see how that concept is right now. Try to be able to sense it. And become conscious of it and as soon as you become conscious of it, you have got to a broader position than what it is. In that way, it helps you free up a little. It becomes a little more open minded and having more capacity is to be consciously aware. Not to buy into particular attitudes or concepts or perspective we sometimes generate as being very real positions to be in.
So sit there, try to become more centered, and then just observe and try to be more conscious of your personality and what is the basis of it, such as age, sex, stature, intellectual capacity, and so on. In doing that, you are becoming bigger than that idea you have about yourself. That concept about self alright. It is awareness, awareness which is observant. And in being observant, try to allow yourself to become more settled, more relaxed, not so hyper and up in your head. More deeper. And it is mere observation. And in that, you will develop those three qualities I like to go back to. Clarity, openness, depth and stability.
Eight
For this evening I wanted to deal with the basic of meditation as personal awareness and awareness of one's own state of being. It is important that when one enters situation in day-to-day activities that one has clarity of one's own personal being. At least the awareness or thought of where one would like to come from as the state of awareness we have is the indicator of our state of being. To try to develop an open level of consciousness in being observant and clear, not being too calculated prejudiced or overly discriminating in an intellectual manner regarding the experiences one is having. So there has to be an open state of mind, a state of mind, which is not grasping too strongly.
The mind that grasps strongly is one, which clings, or making demands from particular sort of ideals it might have. You want to think about your consciousness when it is sitting there inside your body, is formed or motivated by your mind. But it has the capacity to be observant without the intellectual part of it dominating. So the pursuit of meditation has various objectives, principally conscious experience is crucial to the development of our spirituality. Just the assumption of philosophy or ideas does not mean anything good is happening. You are possibly becoming more educated spiritually, but it does not mean that you are working with yourself effectively.
It is important for yourselves as individuals, for sometimes we have the idea that we would like to become more spiritually educated, and that is really not that beneficial and I would recommend that although you might pursue that, the real point is how comfortable you can be just to sit here and now. Just be a person in touch with yourself, having good feelings, and be familiar with that position. Spiritual education is beneficial to help you to establish what I said, to be a more integrated person.
With that being the objective, the meditation we are going to do for now is the cultivation of awareness and trying to gain a conscious experience which allows our self to see that the intellectual formulation of ideas is not so crucial or dominate in conscious participation of life. It colors everything you experience, it throws in all the commentary as to what we experience, but that does not mean that it is right, and we find that easy to validate because we have wrong ideas about things. Or prejudiced ideas about things. Sometimes it takes strong things to break our concept or idea.
If we understand that intellectually, that is good. But when you meditate, the most important thing is that when you sit that you allow yourself to be conscious awareness. You have five doors of conscious awareness, five tactile sensations with body, eye, ear, nose, and tongue input. Those five doors of conscious experience are just that. They allow information to come into your mind. Mind sits at the center of your chest at your heart, and that is known as the seat of mind. So mind then receives that information.
There are many ways to approach meditative experience or equilibrium, but in this sense I would like to move you towards to have to try to work towards an experience of conscious awareness within the framework of saying, you have five doors of conscious awareness and the sixth, which is the mind which is appraising and viewing all of these things. We are going to take our mind and allow it to become a little more observant and not immediately color something. And this is something we do it is spontaneous for us. It is not bad, but it is to gain more depth to our conscious experience, to put a quality of depth to it, which maybe we have not developed in the past. And it helps us increase or grow a little bit further in our own personal evolution to break up strong sense of self-independent existence. So we become more open minded, less prone to prejudice into rigidity of ideas. That is the sense of the objective, to be more open-minded.
To do that you have to have the mind break up it's rigidity. The meditation technique is to take our self and say all right, my mind, which is processing the various information, which Jhampa is saying, is going to be inside. And it is going to start realizing that there is sense data, which is coming to my eyes, nose tongue and body. In one way we could say that is reality of this moment. The statement of the bank account or the condition of the house are non realities in the sense that they are things which we become very concerned and caught up with but in reality, we are sitting here and now and we do not have our bank account, we are not in our bank, we are not in our house. We are here. And we should not allow ourselves to fantasize to those areas. We should just try to be in the moment.
With that being the case, being in the immediate moment, then allow yourself to experience I am having eye ear, nose, tongue, and body sense data. I am experiencing something. And just allow your mind to try to be passive while you are observing that. While observing that, you can immediately see this personality kick in and say I have ideas about this and that. And you can say, it is just an experience. And so you allow your mind to become more open to different objects, that things are just experiences, we don't need to immediately color them with personal prejudice. And with a little personal investigation, we can experience and realize that often our own personal concepts are prejudice we might carry. It might not be as valid as we would like to believe.
If I am a chauvinistic pig, I might one day realize that being chauvinistic pig is not the only way that the world exists, there are a lot of other options in existence. So I move out of being so closed minded and chauvinistic. I am sure each one of you have your own experiences where maybe you have realized that a particular position you held is not as valid as you feel it was. As soon as you realize that, you can appreciate some of the validity of this meditation technique.
Nine
I like to come back to basics. The most basic is our own individual experience. As individuals it is important that we appreciate the experiences we have and that we try to utilize them in a positive way. Sometimes it is easy to be caught up in some philosophy or ideal which projects one to the future or some possible goal that one would like to have. Whereas the reality is in the immediate moment. And realizations, experiences, and such are all in the moment. In immediate moment where one is conscious and aware exactly of what is happening here and now.
With that thought and theme, that is what I would like our meditation involved in mostly because we often aspire towards a goal or some focus for ourselves. But in doing that we sometimes become more caught up with more of what we aspire towards and not deal well with the moment. And all we are in maybe ways is the product of our actions. It is from the view that we have of the world, and then the way we make our actions go as each day goes by that creates the type of person we are. Therefore it is crucial that we have a good appreciation of what we do with our body, speech and mind. A clear recognition of those activities because we might live in an ideal saying yes, I would like to be something beautiful and together, whatever it is, that is the ideal. But if we look at our day to day activity,, we might find we are far from reaching that goal. We have a lot of space between our ideal and our daily activity.
And certainly in the most simplistic things, just being a positive person where we look at ourselves and sort of say I would like to be good, I would like to be positive and bring good things into the world around me, in doing that, those things count on day to day activity. If we allow ourselves to get caught up in negativity, we then have a lot of space between what we idealize and what we actually do with ourselves. In this regards, it is important to have consciousness of our daily activity and that we enjoy who we are and try to work with who we are right here and now. It is funny. Like compassion, is a wonderful thing. Compassion is a terrific ideal we can respond to, we think it is a nice thing, but compassion, which is sensitivity for another, can be almost immediately expressed in any situation. Just opening the door for someone, to be kind that is an expression of compassion. If someone is hungry or thirsty, you offer a drink. And these are real expressions of compassion, which is helping someone. So we might have an ideal inside, but the day-to-day activity might we non-existent.
We should try in each moment of our life to cultivate those things. It is incredible, but there is this little flash of awareness, which says, oh, I can be compassionate right now. Or I can do something right now. To recognize the opportunity right now. The activities of compassion in the here and now are a direct manifestation of compassion and motivated from an awareness of need, therefore they are direct expression of your ideal in a very immediate way, not postponed to the future for some grand act of compassion, love, spirituality.
That is one way of talking about activities. Also there is the activities of our speech. We should remember than when we are with others we have an opportunity for our speech to be positive, to generate goodness in another. Something, which will bring changes in another person. It is more effective. If someone is stressed, rather than say this person is stressed, ask what I can do for the other person. And this completely changes the thing. Maybe it takes the stress off that person. Or, maybe it helps them work it through. For you as an individual, it puts you in a positive position. And that is the most important thing. Who are you and what are you doing? If we look at others with criticism, we will see a thousand things to criticize. But in the Buddhist perspective, we have an energy, an energy of body which is expressing compassion, we have incredible power through our speech. And if we become conscious which is unpleasant, I am not saying we should paint the world pink and say everything is wonderful, but because we have power in our speech and power to affect things, maybe we should look at what can I add which is positive to this, turn it better, bring about resolution. All criticism does is bring about more negativity to something which is already negative. That is the second level of working in an immediate way with one's own immediate karma. And it is important. If we think of the world and what we want to become, the way you become something, is by acting here and now. Now by projecting into the future.
The third thing is the level of mind. It is fine to have ideals of spiritual goals, but real spirituality is in the immediate moment, not in the thoughts or philosophy we carry. It is in the person and how we work with ourselves as individuals.
So in those three levels we should try to bring harmony with ourselves. And integration to ourselves. That our actions of body are kind, our speech invoking positive qualities around us. Communication is influence and changes things. If we can control our conversation a little and say things in a positive or inspiring way, things are changed. And in regards to our own mind, we should not have an ideal unrelated to activities of body and speech, but we should always make that when we sit, just sitting in a room, that we have some consciousness of my existence as being of benefit for sentient beings, so we have a good vibe about our self. And when an opportunity comes, we can immediately act if we can with kindness and consideration.
We have then taken our philosophy and made it very real. And that happens because of conscious awareness. So for