NAMO
TASSA BHAGAVATO ARAHATO SAMMASAMBUDDHASSA
I want to talk in depth today about
the nature of Buddhism. Very often I read in newspapers and books some strange
things that are presented as Buddhism. So here, I will point out the heart of
the real Buddhist teaching, not as a theory but as an experience.
What is Not
The Heart of Buddhism.
Psychotherapy.
I know that some people still think
Buddhism is some form of psychotherapy, some way of applying wise attitudes or
skilful means in order to live more at peace in this world. Indeed, in the rich
storehouse of Buddhist teachings there are many things which do help people to
live life with less problems. Using wise attitudes and compassionate intentions,
Buddhism teaches an effective way of dealing with the problems of the world. When
these Buddhist methods actually work, they give people faith and confidence that
there really is something in this Buddhist path which is valuable to them.
I
often reflect on why people come here to the Buddhist Society on a Friday evening.
It's because they get something out of this. What they get out of these teachings
is a more peaceful life style, a happier feeling toward themselves and more acceptance
of other beings. It is in that sense a therapy for the problems of life, and it
does actually work. However that's not what Buddhism really is, that's only one
of its side affects.
Philosophy.
Some people come across Buddhism and they
find it's a marvellous philosophy. They can sit around the coffee table after
I've given a talk and they can talk for hours and still not be close to enlightenment.
Very often people can discuss very high-minded things; their brains can talk about
and think about such sublime subjects. Then they go out and swear at the first
car that pulls out in front of them on the way home. They lose it all straight
away.
Ritual.
Or instead of looking at Buddhism as a philosophy, many people
look at it as a religion. The rituals of Buddhism are meaningful, and they shouldn't
be discarded just because one thinks one is above ritual. I know people are sometimes
very proud, arrogant even, and think they don't need any rituals. But the truth
of the matter is that rituals do have a psychological potency. For example, it
is useful in society when two people are going to live together that they go through
some sort of marriage ceremony. Because in that ceremony there is something that
happens to the mind, something that happens to the heart. There is a commitment
made deep inside which echoes with the knowledge that something important has
happened. In the ceremonies and rituals of death, all of those rites of chanting,
reflection and kind words actually have a meaning for the people involved. It
does help them to come to accept with grace the passing of a loved one. It helps
them acknowledge the truth of what's happened, that a final separation from that
person has occurred. And in that acceptance they come to peace.
In the same
way, at our monastery, in order to forgive another person and to let go of past
hurt, a ceremony of forgiveness is often used. In the Catholic Church they have
the ceremony of confession. The precise details of a forgiveness ceremony don't
really matter, but what is important is that forgiveness is given, by some physical
means through some ritual or ceremony. If you just say, "Oh I'm sorry",
isn't that a lot different from also giving a present, or a bunch of flowers?
Or isn't it different from going up to them and saying "look, what I did
the other day was really unforgivable, but come out to dinner with me this evening",
or "here have a couple of tickets to the theatre"? It's much deeper
and more effective when you weave a beautiful ceremony around forgiveness rather
than just muttering a few words.
Even the ritual of bowing to a Buddha has
a great meaning. It's an act of humility. It's saying I'm not enlightened and
yet there is something that is beyond me which I am aspiring towards. It's the
same humility that a person has when they go to school, or university and they
acknowledge that the lecturers and the professors know more than they do. If you
argue with professors when you go to university, are you going to learn anything?
Humility is not subservience, which denies the worth of yourself, But humility
is that which respects the different qualities in people. Sometimes the act of
bowing, if it's done mindfully, is a ceremony, a ritual that can generate a great
sense of joy. As a monk many people bow to me, and I bow to many others. There
is always someone that you have to bow to no matter how senior you are. At the
very least there is always the Buddha to bow down to. I enjoy bowing. When there
is a monk who is senior to me, bowing is a beautiful way of overcoming ego and
judging, especially when I must bow to a really rotten monk (the good monks are
easy to bow to). This is a ritual which if done in the right way can produce so
many benefits. At the very least, as I tell people at the monastery, if you do
a lot of bowing it strengthens your stomach muscles and you don't look fat! But
it's more than that.
So these Buddhist rituals are useful, but Buddhism is
much more than that.
Meditation and Enlightenment.
When you ask what Buddhism
really is, it's a hard question to answer in a few words. You have to come back
to this process of meditation because there is the crux, the fulcrum of Buddhism,
the heart of Buddhism. As everybody who has ever come across the Buddhist teachings
would know, the Buddha was a man who became enlightened while meditating under
a tree. A few minutes ago you were doing the same meditation for half an hour!
Why where you not enlightened? That enlightenment of the Buddha was actually what
created this religion of Buddhism. It is its meaning, it is its centre. Buddhism
is all about enlightenment; not just about living a healthy life, or a happy life,
or learning to be wise and saying smart things to your friends around the coffee
table. Again Buddhism is all about this enlightenment.
First of all you have
to get some feeling or indication of what enlightenment actually is. Sometimes
people come up to me and say "I'm enlightened", and I sometimes get
letters from people saying "thank you for your teachings, please know that
I am enlightened now". And sometimes I hear other people say of teachers
or gurus "Oh Yeah, they are certainly enlightened" without really knowing
what that means. The word enlightenment stands for some opening of wisdom, some
understanding which stops all suffering. The person who hasn't abandoned all suffering
is never enlightened. The fact that a person still suffers means that they are
yet to abandon all their attachments. The person who is still worried about their
possessions, who still cries at the death of a loved one, who is still angry,
and who is still enjoying the pleasures of the senses like sex, they are not enlightened.
Enlightenment is something beyond and free from all that.
Sometimes when a
monk talks like this he can very easily put people off. Monks seem like "wowsers"
[1], as they say in Australia. They don't go to the movies, don't have any sex,
don't have any relationships, don't go on holidays, don't have any pleasures.
What a bunch of wowsers! But the interesting thing which many people notice, is
that some of the most peaceful and happy people you meet are the monks and nuns
who come and sit here on a Friday evening and give the talks. Monks are quite
different from wowsers, and the reason is that there is another happiness which
the monks know and which the Buddha has pointed out to them. Each one of you can
sense that same happiness when your meditation starts to take off.
Letting
Go.
The Buddha taught that it is attachment that causes suffering and letting
go is the cause for happiness and the way to enlightenment. Letting go! So often
people have asked how do you let go? What they really mean is, why do you let
go? It's a difficult question to answer and it will never be answered in words.
Instead I answer that question by saying "Now is the time to meditate, cross
your legs, be in the present moment," because this is teaching people what
letting go is all about. Moreover, the final moments of the meditation are the
most important. Please always remember this. In the last few minutes ask yourself,
"How do I feel?" "What is this like and why?" "How did
this come about?"
People meditate because it's fun, it's enjoyable. They
don't meditate to "get something out of it," even though when you meditate
there are a lot of good benefits to be had such as health benefits or reducing
stress in your life. Through meditation you become less intolerant, less angry.
But there is something more to it than that - it's just the sheer fun of it! When
I was a young monk that's what made me become a Buddhist. It was inspiring to
read the books but that was not good enough. It was when I meditated and became
peaceful, very peaceful, incredibly peaceful, that something told me that this
was the most profound experience of my life. I wanted to experience this again.
I wanted to investigate it more. Why? Because one deep experience of meditation
is worth a thousand talks, or arguments, or books, or theories. The things you
read in books are other people's experiences, they are not your own. They're words
and they might inspire, but the actual experience itself is truly moving. It's
truly earth shattering because it shatters that which you've rested on for such
a long time. By inclining along this path of meditation you're actually learning
what letting go really is.
Acknowledge, Forgive and Let Go (AFL).
For those
of you who have difficulty meditating, it's because you haven't learned to let
go yet in the meditation. Why can't we let go of simple things like past and future?
Why are we so concerned with what someone else did to us or said to us today?
The more you think about it, the more stupid it is. You know the old saying, "When
someone calls you an idiot, the more times you remember it, the more times they've
called you an idiot!" If you let it go immediately, you will never think
about it again. They only called you an idiot at most once. It's gone! It's finished.
You're free.
Why is it that we imprison ourselves with our past? Why can't
we even let that go? Do you really want to be free? Then acknowledge, forgive
and let go, what I call in Australia the "AFL Code" [2] - Acknowledge,
forgive, and let go of whatever has hurt you, whether it's something that somebody
has done or said, or whether it's what life has done. For instance, someone has
died in your family and you argue with yourself that they shouldn't have died.
Or you've lost your job and you think without stop that that shouldn't have happened.
Or simply something has gone wrong and you are obsessed that it's not fair. You
can crucify yourself on a cross of your own making for the rest of your life if
you want to; but no one is forcing you to. Instead you can acknowledge forgive
and learn in the forgiving. The letting go is in the learning. The letting go
gives the future a freedom to flow easily, unchained to the past.
I was talking
to some people recently about the Cambodian community here in Perth and, being
a Buddhist community, I have had much to do with them. Like any traditional Buddhists,
when they have a problem they come and speak to the monks. This is what they have
done for centuries. The monastery and the monks are the social centre, the religious
centre, and the counselling centre of the community. When men have arguments with
their wives they come to the monastery.
Once when I was a young monk in Thailand,
a man came into the monastery and asked me "Can I stay in the monastery for
a few days?". I thought he wanted to meditate, so I said "Oh you want
to meditate?" "Oh no", he said "the reason I want to come
to the monastery is because I've had an argument with my wife." So he stayed
in the monastery. Three or four days later he came up to me and said, "I
feel better now, can I go home". What a wise thing that was. Instead of going
to the bar and getting drunk, instead of going to his mates and telling them all
the rotten things that he thought his wife had done thereby reinforcing his ill
will and resentment, he went to stay with a group of monks who didn't say anything
about his wife, who were just kind and peaceful. He thought about what he had
been doing in that peaceful, supportive environment, and after a while he felt
much better. This is what a monastery sometimes is: it's the counselling centre,
the refuge, the place where people come to let go of their problems. Isn't that
better than lingering on the past, especially when we are angry at something that
has happened? When we reinforce the resentment, are we really seeing what's going
on? Or are we seeing through the perverted glasses of our anger, looking at the
faults in the other person, focussing only on the terrible things they have done
to us, never really seeing the full picture?
One of the things I noticed about
the Cambodian community was that these were all people who had suffered through
the Pol Pot years. I know of a Cambodian man whose wife had been shot by the Khmer
Rouge in front of him, for stealing a mango. She was hungry so she took a mango
from a tree. One of the Khmer Rouge cadres saw her and, without any trial, he
pulled out his gun in front of her husband and shot her dead. When this man was
telling me this, I was looking at his face, looking at his bodily movements, and
it was amazing to see that there was no anger, there was no resentment, there
was not even grief there. There was a peaceful acceptance about what had happened.
It shouldn't have happened but it did.
Letting go of the past is so we can
enjoy the present, so the future can be free. Why is it that we always carry around
the past? Attachment to the past is not a theory, it is an attitude. We can say,
"Oh I'm not attached". Or we can say, "I'm so detached I'm not
even attached to detachment," which is very clever, and sounds very good,
but is a lot of old rubbish. You know if you're attached if you can't let go of
those important things that cause you to suffer, that stop you being free. Attachment
is a ball and chain, which you tie around your own legs. No one else ties it around
you. You've got the key to free yourselves, but you don't use it. Why do we limit
ourselves so and why can't we let go of the future, all the concerns and the worries?
Do you worry about what's going to happen next, tomorrow, next week, next year?
Why do you do that? How many times have you worried about some exam or some test,
or a visit to the Doctors, or a visit to the Dentist? You can worry yourself sick
and when you get ready to go to the dentist you find they have cancelled your
appointment, and you didn't have to go anyway!
Things never work out as you
expect them to. Haven't we learnt yet that the future is so uncertain that it
doesn't bear worrying about? We never know what's going to happen next. When we
let go of the past and the future, isn't that being on the path to deep meditation?
Aren't we actually learning about how to be at peace, how to be free, how to be
content.
These are indications of what enlightenment means. It means seeing
that many of our attachments are based on sheer stupidity. We just don't need
this. As we develop this meditation deeper, we let go more and more. The more
we let go the more happiness and peace it gives us. This is why the Buddha called
this whole path of Buddhism a gradual training. It's the path that leads one on,
one step at a time, and at every step you get a prize. That's why it's a very
delightful path and the prizes get more delightful and more valuable the further
you go. But even on the first step you get a prize.
I still remember the first
time I meditated. I remember the room. It was at Cambridge University, in the
Wordsworth Room at Kings College. I'd never done any meditation before, so I just
sat down there for five or ten minutes with a few of my mates. It was only ten
minutes but I thought "Oh that was nice", I still remember that feeling.
There was something that was resonating inside of me, telling me that this was
a path which was leading somewhere wonderful. I'd discussed over coffee and over
beer with my friends all types of philosophy, but the "discussions"
had always ended in arguments and they never made me happier. Even the great professors
at the university, who you get to know very well, didn't seem happy. That was
one of the reasons why I didn't continue an academic career. They were brilliant
in their field but in other ways they were as stupid as ordinary people. They
would have arguments, worry and stress just like everyone else. And that really
struck me. Why in such a famous university, where people are so intelligent, are
they not happy? What's the point of being clever if it doesn't give you happiness?
I mean real happiness, real contentment, and real peace.
Real contentment and
peace.
The first person I saw who had real contentment and peace was Ajahn
Chah, my teacher in Thailand. There was something about that man! I saw what he
had and I said to myself, "I want that, I want that understanding, that peace".
People from all over the world would come to see him. Just because he was a monk
didn't mean that everyone was subservient, obsequious and always praising him.
Some people would go and argue with him and try to catch him out or even shout
at him. I remember a story about the first time he went to England with Ajahn
Sumedho. He went on alms round in Hampstead and as he was walking on alms round,
this was over twenty years ago, this young hooligan came up to this funnily dressed
Asian and threw a punch at him just missing his nose. Ajahn Chah did not know
this person was trying to miss. Then he tried to kick him and just missed. He
was just trying to wind up this little Asian monk in funny clothes. Ajahn Chah
didn't know when he was going to be hit. He never did get hit, because he kept
peaceful, kept cool and never got angry. Afterwards, he said England was a very
good place and that he wanted to send all his senior monks over there to really
test them out. As for Ajahn Chah, he had equanimity in practice.
It's easy
saying "I'm enlightened", but then something happens like that and you
run a mile. Another monk in Hampstead at the time was just going for a walk in
the afternoon when he passed a pub. He didn't realise at the time that there was
a big soccer match between England and Scotland on that day. It had already finished
and the Scots supporters where in the pub getting drunk. Around this period, there
was a popular TV series about a Kung Fu monk who, when he was small, was called
"grasshopper." These sozzled Scots soccer fans looked through the window
of the pub and said "Och it's wee grasshopper," and this monk took fright.
These where big Scotsmen and they were very drunk. So he started running away,
and they chased him all the way back to the Temple. "Wee grasshopper"
was running for his life. He lost it. But the sort of practical letting go that
Ajahn Chah did in Hampstead is something which gives you a sense that you are
on the road to enlightenment.
A Gradual Path.
The Heart of Buddhism is a
gradual path, one step after another step, and you do get results. Some people
say you shouldn't meditate to get results. That's a lot of hogwash! Meditate to
get results! Meditate to be happy. Meditate to get peace. Meditate to get enlightened,
little by little. But if you're going for results, be patient. One of the problems
with Westerners is that when they make goals, they are not patient enough. That's
why they get disillusioned, depressed and frustrated. They don't give their practice
enough time to mature naturally into enlightenment. It takes time, maybe a few
life times even, so don't be in a rush. As you walk each step, there is always
something you get out of it. Let go a little and you get freedom and peace. Let
go a lot and you feel bliss. This is how I teach meditation both at my monastery
and here. I encourage meditators to aim for these stages of letting go, these
bliss states called Jhana.
Jhanas
Everyone wants to be happy, and the Jhanas
are how you can achieve happiness, I mean real happiness, deep happiness. The
only trouble is these states don't last very long, only a few hours, but still
they are very attractive. They arise through letting go, real letting go. In particular
they arise through letting go of will, choice, control. It's a fascinating thing
to experience a deep meditation and understand how it comes about. Through such
an experience you realise that the more you control, the more you crave because
of attachments, the less peaceful you get. But the more you let go, the more you
abandon, the more you get out of the way, the happier you feel. Now this is a
teaching of something very profound, much deeper than you can read in a book or
hear in a talk and certainly much more useful than discussing these things over
a coffee table. You're actually experiencing something. This is getting towards
the heart of religion, that which people call mysticism. You're actually experiencing
it for your self. In particular you are letting go of this "controller,"
this "doer." Now that is the prime problem for human beings. We can't
stop messing things up. Very often we should just leave things alone but we can't,
we don't. Instead we make a mess. Why can't you just relax and enjoy yourself
instead of always doing something?
It's hard to stop in meditation, but the
more you stop the more rewards you get, the more peace you get. When you let go
in meditation, let go the will, let go of the control, when you stop talking to
yourself, you get inner silence. How many of you are fed up yet with this racket
that goes on inside your head all the time? How many of you sometimes can't get
to sleep at night when there's no noise from the neighbours but there is something
even louder between your ears. Yak, Yak, Yak, Worry, Worry, Worry, Think, Think,
Think! This is the problem with human beings, when it's time to think they can't
think clearly and when it's time to stop thinking they can't be at peace. When
we learn how to meditate we get this sense of being more balanced, and we know
how to let go. We now how to let go to the point where all thoughts disappear.
These thoughts are just commentaries, they're just descriptions. The difference
between thought and reality is the difference between, say, reading a book about
New York and going to New York. Which is more real? When you're there, you smell
the air, you feel the atmosphere, you sense the character, all of which are things
you can't write in a book. The truth is always silent. The lie is always with
words.
When the Body Disappears.
Remember "con men," "con
women" as well. These con men can sell you anything! There's one living in
your mind right now, and you believe every word he says! His name is Thinking.
When you let go of that inner talk and get silent, you get happy. Then when you
let go of the movement of the mind and stay with the breath, you experience even
more delight. Then when you let go of the body ,all these five senses disappear
and you're really blissing out. This is original Buddhism. Sight, sound, smell,
taste, and touch completely vanish. This is like being in a sensory deprivation
chamber but much better. But it's not just silence, you just don't hear anything.
It's not just blackness, you just don't see anything. It's not just a feeling
of comfort in the body, there is no body at all.
When the body disappears that
really starts to feel great. You know of all those people who have out of the
body experiences? When the body dies, every person has that experience, they float
out of the body. And one of the things they always say is it's so peaceful, so
beautiful, so blissful. It's the same in meditation when the body disappears,
it's so peaceful, so beautiful, so blissful when you are free from this body.
What's left? Here there's no sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. This is what the
Buddha called the mind in deep meditation. When the body disappears what is left
is the mind.
I gave a simile to a monk the other night. Imagine an Emperor
who is wearing a long pair of trousers and a big tunic. He's got shoes on his
feet, a scarf around the bottom half of his head and a hat on the top half of
his head. You can't see him at all because he's completely covered in five garments.
It's the same with the mind. It's completely covered with sight, sound, smell,
taste and touch. So people don't know it. They just know the garments. When they
see the Emperor, they just see the robes and the garments. They don't know who
lives inside them. And so it is no wonder they're confused about what is life,
what is mind, who is this inside of here, were did I come from? Why? What am I
supposed to be doing with this life? When the five senses disappear, it's like
unclothing the Emperor and seeing what is actually in here, what's actually running
the show, who's listening to these words, who's seeing, who's feeling life, who
this is. When the five senses disappear, you're coming close to the answer to
those questions.
What you're seeing in such deep meditation is that which we
call "mind," (in Pali it's called Citta). The Buddha used this beautiful
simile. When there is a full moon on a cloudy night, even though it's a full moon,
you can hardly see it. Sometimes when the clouds are thin, you can see this hazy
shape shining though. You know there is something there. This is like the meditation
just before you've entered into these profound states. You know there is something
there, but you can't quite make it out. There's still some "clothes"
left. You're still thinking and doing, feeling the body or hearing sounds. But
there does come a time, and this is the Buddha's simile, when the moon is released
from the clouds and there in the clear night sky you can see the beautiful full
disc of the moon shining brilliantly, and you know that's the moon. The moon is
there; the moon is real, and it's not just some sort of side effect of the clouds.
This is what happens in meditation when you see the mind. You see clearly that
the mind is not some side effect of the brain. You see the mind, and you know
the mind. The Buddha said that the mind released is beautiful, is brilliant, is
radiant. So not only are these blissful experiences, they're meaningful experiences
as well.
How many people may have heard about rebirth but still don't really
believe it? How can rebirth happen? Certainly the body doesn't get reborn. That's
why when people ask me where do you go when you die, "one of two places"
I say "Fremantle or Karrakatta" that's where the body goes! [3] But
is that where the mind goes? Sometimes people are so stupid in this world, they
think the body is all there is, that there is no mind. So when you get cremated
or buried that's it, that's done with, all has ended. The only way you can argue
with this view is by developing the meditation that the Buddha achieved under
the Bodhi tree. Then you can see the mind for yourself in clear awareness - not
in some hypnotic trance, not in dullness - but in the clear awareness. This is
knowing the mind
Knowing the Mind.
When you know that mind, when you see
it for yourself, one of the results will be an insight that the mind is independent
of this body. Independence means that when this body breaks up and dies, when
it's cremated or when it's buried, or however it's destroyed after death, it will
not affect the mind. You know this because you see the nature of the mind. That
mind which you see will transcend bodily death. The first thing which you will
see for yourself, the insight which is as clear as the nose on your face, is that
there is something more to life than this physical body that we take to be me.
Secondly you can recognise that that mind, essentially, is no different than that
process of consciousness which is in all beings. Whether it's human beings or
animals or even insects, of any gender, age or race, you see that that which is
in common to all life is this mind, this consciousness, the source of doing.
Once
you see that, you have much more respect for your fellow beings. Not just respect
for your own race, your own tribe or your own religion, not just for human beings,
but for all beings. It's a wonderfully high-minded idea. "May all beings
be happy and well and may we respect all nations, all peoples, even all beings."
However this is how you achieve that! You truly get compassion only when we see
that others are fundamentally just as ourselves. If you think that a cow is completely
different from you, that cows don't think like human beings, then it's easy to
eat one. But can you eat your grandmother? She's too much like you. Can you eat
an ant? Maybe you'd kill an ant because you think that ants aren't like you. But
if you look carefully at ants, they are no different. In a forest monastery living
out in the bush, close to nature, one of the things you become so convinced of
is that animals have emotions and , especially, feel pain. You begin to recognise
the personality of the animals, of the Kookaburras,(Australian bird) of the mice,
the ants, and the spiders. Each one of those spiders has a mind just like you
have. Once you see that you can understand the Buddha's compassion for all beings.
You can also understand how rebirth can occur between all species - not just human
beings to human beings, but animals to humans, humans to animals. You can understand
also how the mind is the source of all this.
The mind can exist even without
a body in the realms of ghosts and angels (what we call in Buddhism Devas). It
becomes very clear to you how they exist, why they exist, what they are. These
are insights and understandings which come from deep meditation. But more than
that, when you know the nature of the mind then you know the nature of consciousness.
You know the nature of stillness. You know the nature of life. You understand
what makes this mind go round and round and round, what makes this mind seek rebirth.
You understand the law of Kamma.
The Three Knowledges.
The First Knowledge.
When the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree, according to tradition he gained three
knowledge's. The first knowledge was the memory of past lives. When you get close
to the mind, there are certain powers that come with that experience. The powers
are no more than an ability, a dexterity with the use of the mind. It's like the
difference between a dog that has been running wild and a dog that has been well
trained. You can tell the trained dog to go and pick up the newspaper. It wags
its tail and goes and picks up the newspaper for you. Some people have got their
dogs so well trained that they can actually pick up the telephone. Maybe they
could answer the telephone as well, then that would really save you a lot of time!
When
you get to these deep states of meditation often, the mind becomes well trained.
One of the things which the Buddha did (and which you can do when you get into
deep meditation) is tell the mind to go back to the past. What's your earliest
memory? Go back further and further and further. Monks who do this get early memories
of their childhood. They even get memories of the moment they were born. Sometimes
people say that when you're born, you have no consciousness because the neuron's
aren't developed yet, or something like that. But when you re-experience your
birth, you know that that is just not true. When the memory of your own birth
appears, it is just like you are there and you experience all feelings of that
birth. Then you can ask yourself for an even earlier memory, and then you get
back into your past lives. That's what the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree. Through
meditation you know rebirth, you know your own past lives. This is just what happens
with the mind and you know how it happens. That was the first knowledge that the
Buddha had.
The Second Knowledge. The second knowledge was to know how you
are reborn. Why you are reborn. Where you are reborn. This is the Law of Kamma.
Someone was showing me a book today which, unfortunately, we had for free distribution
but which I hadn't seen before. It had some really weird ideas in it about the
Law of Kamma. I think what it said was that if you read one of the Suttas while
you are lying on the ground, you will be reborn with a bad back, or something
like that. Just stupid ideas! Kamma is much more complex than that and it depends
mostly upon the quality of your intention. The movement of the mind itself is
what determines the Kamma, not just the act, but why and where it came from. You
can see this in meditation, but also you can see just how that mind gets fully
liberated.
The Third Knowledge. The third knowledge was the ending of suffering.
With understanding of The Four Noble Truths, you realise the Way and what enlightenment
really means. It means freedom! The mind is liberated, especially liberated from
the body, liberated not just from the suffering of the body but liberated from
the happiness of the body as well. That means that there is no more inclination
for sexuality, no fear of pain, no grief over the destruction of the body, no
ill will and no fear of criticism. Why do people get worried about bad words that
are said? Only because of ego. They take something to be themselves. Just imagine
for a moment being free from all of those things. What would that be like, no
fear, no craving, no need to move from this moment - In other words nothing missing,
and nothing left to do, nowhere to go because you're completely happy right here
no matter what happens! This is what we mean by enlightenment. This meditation
is the source of the Buddha's enlightenment and the source of every person's enlightenment.
There
is no enlightenment without that meditation. This is why Buddhism is far more
than a psychotherapy. It's far more than a philosophy. It's far more than a religion.
It goes deep into the nature of being, and it is accessible to all people. You
know how to meditate. Teachers are giving all the instructions free without any
charge. Do you want to do it? Usually the answer is, "Maybe tomorrow but
not today." Never the less because the seeds have been placed in the mind,
because the meditation has begun already, there is an interest. Already there
is a sense of this enlightenment, a fascination for peace, and you will not be
able to resist that path. You may be able to put it off for a while, maybe for
lifetimes, but it's a strange thing that, as someone said to me many years ago,
"When you hear these teachings you can't discard them." You just can't
forget them. They aren't telling you what to believe. They aren't giving you a
theory which is merely rational. But they are pointing you to something which
you can understand and experience for yourself, and you get intuitions of this
the deeper you go.
The Buddha was a very remarkable person, his peacefulness,
compassion and wisdom, were legendary. There is something about enlightenment
that is very attractive. In the same way there is something about freedom that
you cannot ignore. That is why little by little, you will understand what Buddhism
is all about. You won't understand Buddhism from the books nor will you understand
Buddhism from what I say. You'll only understand Buddhism in your own experiences
of peaceful meditation. That's where Buddhism is taught. So have fun with your
meditation and don't be afraid of enlightenment. Get in there, enjoy it, and you
will have no regrets.
That's what Buddhism is. That's it's heart, meditation
and enlightenment. That's it's meaning. I hope you can understand some of this.
I can say no more because the time has gone. I'll complete my talk now.
Notes.
[1].Wowser:
n. extreme puritan, kill-joy, teetotaller, spoil-sport."The Australian Oxford
Dictionary" (New Budget Edition). Herron Publications: West End, Qld. 1998
[2].The
AFL (Australian Football League) code is also the acronym for the most popular
form of Australian football."Aussie Rules"
[3].Fremantle and Karrakatta
are the two main cemeteries/crematoriums serving the whole of Perth.