WEBVTT 00:00:02.027 --> 00:00:05.053 Okay, everyone, so Happy New Year, first of all. 00:00:05.053 --> 00:00:07.705 I forgot to say that before, so I need to do it now. 00:00:07.705 --> 00:00:12.565 So very wonderful to see you all here. And today I am going to talk 00:00:12.565 --> 00:00:16.736 about one of the perennial themes of Buddhism, I think it is, 00:00:16.736 --> 00:00:19.534 which is about 'going against the stream'. 00:00:19.534 --> 00:00:22.738 Have you heard about the idea of going against the stream? 00:00:22.738 --> 00:00:28.638 It is a thing that you find in a number of places in the suttas, this idea, 00:00:28.638 --> 00:00:32.721 and I just want to talk a little bit about what it actually means, 00:00:32.721 --> 00:00:37.036 various angles on this idea, and also how we can use this idea 00:00:37.036 --> 00:00:40.473 to actually enhance our spiritual practice. 00:00:40.473 --> 00:00:45.904 So the idea on the Buddhist teachings about stream, 00:00:45.904 --> 00:00:47.588 stream is like a metaphor, 00:00:47.588 --> 00:00:50.652 it's like something which points to something else, 00:00:50.652 --> 00:00:55.019 and the metaphor, the thing it points to, one of the most important things 00:00:55.019 --> 00:00:57.700 is all the habits of our mind. 00:00:57.700 --> 00:01:01.739 The habits of a mind is like a stream, something that flows on, 00:01:01.739 --> 00:01:03.856 it's like self perpetuating, 00:01:03.856 --> 00:01:08.019 that's the nature of a habit, just kind of goes on whether you want to or not. 00:01:08.019 --> 00:01:10.739 And you discover that in meditation practice, right, 00:01:10.739 --> 00:01:15.562 you close your eyes, and you see these blooming habits following you along. 00:01:15.562 --> 00:01:18.980 And you think about all kinds of things whether you want to or not, 00:01:18.980 --> 00:01:22.411 actually you want to of course deep down, but whether you want to or not, 00:01:22.411 --> 00:01:25.455 it seems like these habits just take over the mind. 00:01:25.455 --> 00:01:29.157 And this is a very important part of this idea of the stream, 00:01:29.157 --> 00:01:31.573 the habits of the mind that drive you on. 00:01:31.573 --> 00:01:34.623 And you can feel this in your meditation practice, 00:01:34.623 --> 00:01:39.490 the stream of the mind, this forced inside of you that drives on by itself. 00:01:39.490 --> 00:01:44.220 This is one of the ideas of "stream" in the suttas, 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:46.439 these kinds of innate habits that we have, NOTE Paragraph 00:01:46.439 --> 00:01:49.118 not really innate, because they can be stopped, 00:01:49.118 --> 00:01:52.052 but very fundamental habits of the mind. 00:01:52.052 --> 00:01:54.835 Another interesting idea of the 'stream' in the suttas 00:01:54.835 --> 00:01:57.719 is the thing called 'viññāṇa sota', 00:01:57.719 --> 00:02:01.287 it's a Pali word, I like to use some fancy terminology always. 00:02:01.287 --> 00:02:05.785 So viññāṇa sota means.. the stream of consciousness, 00:02:05.785 --> 00:02:10.234 according to the suttas, this idea that the stream of consciousness 00:02:10.234 --> 00:02:15.072 is the mind basically which goes on from one life to another one, 00:02:15.072 --> 00:02:18.389 carries on into the future, established in this life, 00:02:18.389 --> 00:02:20.920 then gets established in the future existence. 00:02:20.920 --> 00:02:23.857 That's another stream, which is problematic, right, 00:02:23.857 --> 00:02:27.352 the stream of habits is problematic, you want to go against that. 00:02:27.352 --> 00:02:31.155 The stream of consciousness is going on from life to life, 00:02:31.155 --> 00:02:33.717 that's another really problematic one. 00:02:33.717 --> 00:02:38.569 So all of these things are things that we try to, kind of, slow down to begin with, 00:02:38.569 --> 00:02:42.289 and eventually hopefully, cut those streams entirely. 00:02:42.289 --> 00:02:44.720 But of all these things, 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:48.209 the most important kind of stream is a stream of craving. 00:02:48.209 --> 00:02:52.122 Craving is actually part of the mental habits that we have, 00:02:52.122 --> 00:02:53.488 the first thing I mentioned, 00:02:53.488 --> 00:02:55.454 mental habits are much more than craving, 00:02:55.454 --> 00:02:57.771 but craving is a very important part of it. 00:02:57.771 --> 00:03:01.192 It’s this desire that always kind of goes on and on and on, 00:03:01.192 --> 00:03:06.103 the stream of desire, the mind kind of moving on to something else, continuously, 00:03:06.103 --> 00:03:09.019 all the time, never really stopping, 00:03:09.019 --> 00:03:11.995 never really standing still, even in your meditation 00:03:11.995 --> 00:03:14.572 it's very rare that the mind becomes completely still, 00:03:14.572 --> 00:03:16.473 it's actually very difficult to do. 00:03:16.473 --> 00:03:18.871 There's always a little bit of movement there, 00:03:18.871 --> 00:03:21.811 going somewhere, looking for something deeper, 00:03:21.811 --> 00:03:26.077 once you finally get really happy in your meditation, you think, 'What's next?' 00:03:26.077 --> 00:03:29.036 That's the stream of craving in action right there. 00:03:29.036 --> 00:03:32.987 So this craving, this desire to find something more, 00:03:32.987 --> 00:03:39.125 something additional in this world is really, really problematic. 00:03:39.125 --> 00:03:43.444 Now there is a few suttas, a few discourses of the Buddha 00:03:43.444 --> 00:03:45.257 that I thought I would bring up, 00:03:45.257 --> 00:03:48.786 I always bring up some suttas, that's kind of what I've become famous, 00:03:48.786 --> 00:03:51.107 not famous for, I wouldn't call myself famous, 00:03:51.107 --> 00:03:55.341 but that's kind of what I am known for among some people here anyway. 00:03:55.341 --> 00:04:02.742 And this sutta is from one of the very nice collections in the Pali Suttas, 00:04:02.742 --> 00:04:06.043 called the Itivuttaka, have you heard about the Itivuttaka? 00:04:06.043 --> 00:04:08.687 I know some of you have, some of you maybe not. 00:04:08.687 --> 00:04:13.638 Itivuttaka literally means 'thus-saidness' or something like that, 00:04:13.638 --> 00:04:16.825 Iti-vuttaka; vuttaka - saidness, thus-saidness, 00:04:16.825 --> 00:04:20.668 and this collection of suttas is part of the Khuddakanikāya, 00:04:20.668 --> 00:04:23.765 the shorter collection, which actually is the longest collection. 00:04:23.765 --> 00:04:25.992 It is called the shorter just to confuse you. 00:04:25.992 --> 00:04:30.592 So, but in this collection is the Itivuttaka, 00:04:30.592 --> 00:04:33.075 and the very interesting thing about the Itivuttaka, 00:04:33.075 --> 00:04:38.161 that it was a collection of discourses that was transmitted by a lay woman, 00:04:38.161 --> 00:04:40.473 which is kind of fascinating, 00:04:40.473 --> 00:04:44.072 because sometimes we think about Buddhism as very kind of hierarchical 00:04:44.072 --> 00:04:47.223 with the monks and the nuns and then laymen, laywomen, 00:04:47.223 --> 00:04:51.725 but actually sometimes you find that it doesn't matter so much in Buddhism 00:04:51.725 --> 00:04:57.191 who you are, what matters is the qualities of your mind, the qualities of your heart, 00:04:57.191 --> 00:05:01.109 and if you have good teachings that people should remember, 00:05:01.109 --> 00:05:03.239 that we should keep for posterity, 00:05:03.239 --> 00:05:06.187 then you are worthwhile listening to, we should listen to you, 00:05:06.187 --> 00:05:08.833 what have you got to say? Did you hear the teachings of Buddha? 00:05:08.833 --> 00:05:11.084 lease come, we want to hear those teachings. 00:05:11.084 --> 00:05:13.705 And this is exactly what happened with this Itivuttaka, 00:05:13.705 --> 00:05:17.357 it was taught or transmitted by this laywoman, 00:05:17.357 --> 00:05:19.823 and then it was somehow given to the monks, 00:05:19.823 --> 00:05:23.455 and the monks will then carry on the chanting, maybe the nuns as well, 00:05:23.455 --> 00:05:24.792 I'm not sure, 00:05:24.792 --> 00:05:26.960 carry on the chanting of these suttas. 00:05:26.960 --> 00:05:28.839 So this is very fascinating. 00:05:28.839 --> 00:05:32.022 Sometimes we have a slightly one-sided idea of Buddhism, 00:05:32.022 --> 00:05:36.044 I think sometimes it is more inclusive than we think it is. 00:05:36.044 --> 00:05:42.244 Anyway, so one of the suttas, I think it is the109 of this collection, 00:05:42.244 --> 00:05:46.489 according to this sutta, it starts off with the Buddha saying, 00:05:46.489 --> 00:05:52.173 suppose there was a person who was going down a stream that seemed 00:05:52.173 --> 00:05:54.991 pleasant and delightful. 00:05:54.991 --> 00:05:58.692 A person going down a stream maybe sitting on a raft or something; 00:05:58.692 --> 00:06:00.390 I don't know what they're doing. 00:06:00.390 --> 00:06:04.277 Kind of Robinson cruiser of India on this river. 00:06:04.277 --> 00:06:09.907 So very happy, the stream is pleasant, the water is the right temperature, 00:06:09.907 --> 00:06:11.539 the wind is just right, 00:06:11.539 --> 00:06:15.471 maybe there is some food on this raft, I don't know what, but very pleasant, 00:06:15.471 --> 00:06:17.658 the river, going downstream. 00:06:17.658 --> 00:06:21.208 And this is kind of exactly what our lives are like. 00:06:21.208 --> 00:06:24.904 As you carry on in this stream of craving in your life, 00:06:24.904 --> 00:06:26.912 it seems pleasant, right? 00:06:26.912 --> 00:06:28.539 We think of it as pleasant. 00:06:28.539 --> 00:06:30.527 We think of the things in our life, 00:06:30.527 --> 00:06:33.009 our relationships, the things that we own, 00:06:33.009 --> 00:06:36.793 the pleasures that we kind of enjoy in our daily basis. 00:06:36.793 --> 00:06:39.859 They seem great. They seem marvelous, right? 00:06:39.859 --> 00:06:42.076 They seem wonderful. What is there to fear? 00:06:42.076 --> 00:06:43.629 There's nothing to fear, right? 00:06:43.629 --> 00:06:46.061 We're on this beautiful raft going down the stream, 00:06:46.061 --> 00:06:47.673 we have no idea where it's going, 00:06:47.673 --> 00:06:50.436 but it's a good river, it must be going into a good place. 00:06:50.436 --> 00:06:53.163 This is how our minds work. 00:06:53.163 --> 00:06:55.261 If you think about how your mind works, 00:06:55.261 --> 00:06:59.023 when you talk about the craving and going on the stream of craving, 00:06:59.023 --> 00:07:02.413 it always looks good in the future, right? 00:07:02.413 --> 00:07:04.422 When you think about where you're heading, 00:07:04.422 --> 00:07:07.918 it never looks bad, because if it were looking bad, you wouldn't go there. 00:07:07.918 --> 00:07:09.375 It always looks good. 00:07:09.375 --> 00:07:12.458 This is kind of the interesting thing about the idea of craving. 00:07:12.458 --> 00:07:15.517 When you follow that arrow of craving, 00:07:15.517 --> 00:07:20.377 the direction of craving, the result always seems positive. 00:07:20.377 --> 00:07:23.190 It always looks like you're going to a good place. 00:07:23.190 --> 00:07:26.323 This kind of relationship, that's the right person for me, 00:07:26.323 --> 00:07:28.326 that's going to be a really good one. 00:07:28.326 --> 00:07:31.238 And you stop at the point where the relationship starts, 00:07:31.238 --> 00:07:32.484 you don't go beyond that, 00:07:32.484 --> 00:07:35.073 you forget to ask "and then what?" 00:07:35.073 --> 00:07:37.737 The "and then what?", that's the interesting one, right? 00:07:37.737 --> 00:07:40.266 That's one of my favorite teachings from Ajahn Brahm. 00:07:40.266 --> 00:07:43.309 I remember that when I first came to Bodhinyana Monastery, 00:07:43.309 --> 00:07:46.410 and he taught the "and then what" teaching. 00:07:46.410 --> 00:07:50.245 I think we should write a sub commentary on the "and then what" teaching, 00:07:50.245 --> 00:07:52.659 because I don't think it was ever written, 00:07:52.659 --> 00:07:55.694 the Buddha never mentioned that. Maybe he did actually, 00:07:55.694 --> 00:07:58.877 but maybe not precisely in those terms. 00:07:58.877 --> 00:08:00.442 I think he did. Yeah, 00:08:00.442 --> 00:08:03.960 because this is exactly the point of some of the similes of the Buddha, 00:08:03.960 --> 00:08:06.575 is like this "and then what" idea. 00:08:06.575 --> 00:08:08.442 So this is a problem in our life, 00:08:08.442 --> 00:08:11.593 it looks like we're heading towards a positive goal. 00:08:11.593 --> 00:08:14.626 When we crave, we look to the future, where this is all going, 00:08:14.626 --> 00:08:17.114 it looks beautiful, it looks delightful, 00:08:17.114 --> 00:08:19.728 but we're not seeing things clearly. 00:08:19.728 --> 00:08:21.015 We are on this river, 00:08:21.015 --> 00:08:23.843 we don't really know whether the river turns right or left, 00:08:23.843 --> 00:08:27.273 what's going to be around the corner, we have no idea, but it looks good, 00:08:27.273 --> 00:08:31.809 so we hold on to it. And then as we are going down this river, 00:08:31.809 --> 00:08:37.119 there is a man who looks on and sees what is going on. 00:08:38.429 --> 00:08:42.010 So who is this man, do you think, in the suttas? 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:46.294 Okay, I'm going to tell you... you don't have to answer. 00:08:46.294 --> 00:08:47.863 The man is the Buddha. 00:08:47.863 --> 00:08:50.937 The Buddha looks on, because the Buddha sees what is going on. 00:08:50.937 --> 00:08:54.809 The Buddha is looking on at humanity, and he is seeing all of us 00:08:54.809 --> 00:08:59.310 on this river of craving, going full speed ahead with desires, 00:08:59.310 --> 00:09:03.112 with all of these kinds of things, blind, like moles, 00:09:03.112 --> 00:09:05.977 no idea where this tunnel is gonna go underground. 00:09:05.977 --> 00:09:10.761 And we just carry on, digging that tunnel, carrying on in the stream, 00:09:10.761 --> 00:09:12.851 and no idea what's happening. 00:09:12.851 --> 00:09:15.410 The Buddha says, actually, where are you going? 00:09:15.410 --> 00:09:17.961 He says, if you carry on in this stream, 00:09:17.961 --> 00:09:20.822 you're going to this pool, there's a pool down there, 00:09:20.822 --> 00:09:23.659 and in that pool, what do you find? 00:09:23.659 --> 00:09:33.144 Whirlpools, waves, saltwater crocodiles, not freshwater, saltwater crocodiles. 00:09:33.144 --> 00:09:37.274 The salties is not the freshies because the salties are the scary ones. 00:09:37.274 --> 00:09:42.026 And then monsters. Monsters are kind of the fourth one. 00:09:42.026 --> 00:09:45.764 I'm not sure whether it's the monsters or the sharks or something like that. 00:09:45.764 --> 00:09:49.898 I am Australian now, so I have to know the difference between 00:09:49.898 --> 00:09:52.210 the salties and the freshies. 00:09:52.210 --> 00:09:57.259 And the fellow who did this translation, he's an Australian monk, Ajahn Sujato. 00:09:57.259 --> 00:09:59.742 So, he did this and he knew the difference between 00:09:59.742 --> 00:10:04.496 saltwater and freshwater crocodiles, he deliberately put saltwater crocodiles, 00:10:04.496 --> 00:10:06.760 so we knew this was really dangerous, 00:10:06.760 --> 00:10:11.893 not some kind of small, minor, cute crocodile like the freshwater crocodiles. 00:10:11.893 --> 00:10:13.826 So that's what he sees. 00:10:13.826 --> 00:10:16.615 If he carries-on, that's where he's gonna go. 00:10:16.615 --> 00:10:19.646 And of course, if you meet up with a saltwater crocodile, 00:10:19.646 --> 00:10:22.131 and it's lunchtime for that saltwater crocodile; 00:10:22.131 --> 00:10:24.676 that's it, you're finished. 00:10:24.676 --> 00:10:27.230 And so this is kind of fascinating, right? 00:10:27.230 --> 00:10:29.995 You're on this beautiful trip, going down this stream, 00:10:29.995 --> 00:10:31.764 everything seems so beautiful, 00:10:31.764 --> 00:10:35.627 and there's all these saltwater crocodiles waiting for you around the corner. 00:10:35.627 --> 00:10:39.629 What happens if you know that there are saltwater crocodiles around the corner? 00:10:39.629 --> 00:10:41.694 You get pretty scared, right? 00:10:41.694 --> 00:10:44.894 These are very scary beasts, these saltwater crocodiles, 00:10:44.894 --> 00:10:49.259 they are really scary, and so you become very worried about this. 00:10:49.259 --> 00:10:52.844 And of course what happens once you get worried 00:10:52.844 --> 00:10:56.045 is that you start paddling for life with your hands and feet 00:10:56.045 --> 00:10:57.808 to go against the stream. 00:10:57.808 --> 00:11:00.860 Hopefully the current isn't so strong, hopefully it's quite weak, 00:11:00.860 --> 00:11:04.859 so you can paddle faster than the stream will take you down 00:11:04.859 --> 00:11:07.646 to the saltwater crocodiles. 00:11:07.646 --> 00:11:08.864 So this is the idea; 00:11:08.864 --> 00:11:11.094 once you understand the danger of craving, 00:11:11.094 --> 00:11:13.919 why is craving so dangerous? 00:11:13.919 --> 00:11:18.666 Let's just stay with that just for a couple of moments before I carry on.. 00:11:18.666 --> 00:11:21.301 What is it about craving that is so dangerous? 00:11:21.301 --> 00:11:24.493 What is it about this sweet thing that we have in our life 00:11:24.493 --> 00:11:28.163 that seems to give us so much happiness; how can that be dangerous? 00:11:28.163 --> 00:11:33.244 And the first reason of course is that craving makes us attached, 00:11:33.244 --> 00:11:35.565 it makes us hold onto things in the world. 00:11:35.565 --> 00:11:38.210 And the moment you hold on to things in the world, 00:11:38.210 --> 00:11:42.463 you're asking for suffering. You're saying, please, may I suffer! 00:11:42.463 --> 00:11:44.844 You may not actually be saying that, 00:11:44.844 --> 00:11:47.525 but you should be saying that, that's what I'm saying. 00:11:47.525 --> 00:11:49.451 Because the moment you hold onto things, 00:11:49.451 --> 00:11:51.801 you know that those things are impermanent, 00:11:51.801 --> 00:11:54.032 you know that they are unreliable, 00:11:54.032 --> 00:11:56.082 you know you can't hold on to them. 00:11:56.082 --> 00:11:59.494 So if you grasp things that are inherently ungraspable, 00:11:59.494 --> 00:12:00.494 you have a problem. 00:12:00.494 --> 00:12:02.815 And that problem is called suffering. 00:12:02.815 --> 00:12:06.579 This is a small one, this doesn't really sound like saltwater crocodiles, 00:12:06.579 --> 00:12:09.549 maybe whirlpool, may be a wave but not really a salty, 00:12:09.549 --> 00:12:11.949 salties are too, kind of, scary for that. 00:12:11.949 --> 00:12:15.666 But it's worse than that, right? 00:12:15.666 --> 00:12:21.263 And what is worse is that in our pursuit of all the sensual pleasures in the world, 00:12:21.263 --> 00:12:24.094 we tend to do stupid things. 00:12:24.094 --> 00:12:27.915 If you look at your life when you have done something unwholesome, 00:12:27.915 --> 00:12:30.928 if I look at my life when I have done something unwholesome, 00:12:30.928 --> 00:12:34.247 very often it was in connection with some kind of sensual pleasures 00:12:34.247 --> 00:12:36.751 that didn't go my way or something like that, 00:12:36.751 --> 00:12:38.799 and you start doing things, saying things, 00:12:38.799 --> 00:12:42.260 acting in ways that are terrible, certainly thinking in bad ways. 00:12:42.260 --> 00:12:46.999 So this is the part of the problem, is that external world of the five senses, 00:12:46.999 --> 00:12:52.162 this craving that we are pursuing is inherently connected to violence 00:12:52.162 --> 00:12:56.080 and to all of these problems that we call immorality; 00:12:56.080 --> 00:13:00.198 violence, conflict, and all of these kinds of things in the world. 00:13:00.198 --> 00:13:04.347 Because we share that whole external world with other people. 00:13:04.347 --> 00:13:06.168 Because we share with others, 00:13:06.168 --> 00:13:08.781 it's inherently going to be a conflicting world, 00:13:08.781 --> 00:13:10.745 that world of the five senses. 00:13:10.745 --> 00:13:16.230 And because it is inherently involved with conflict, it is really problematic. 00:13:16.230 --> 00:13:21.247 I think this was one of those really interesting insights I had in my practice 00:13:21.247 --> 00:13:25.368 when I saw that. I thought ‘wow, this is what the sensory realm really is like. 00:13:25.368 --> 00:13:27.195 It is a realm of conflict’. 00:13:27.195 --> 00:13:30.935 You cannot divide the sensory realm, you cannot separate it 00:13:30.935 --> 00:13:35.016 from the idea of conflict, of ill will, and all of these kinds of things. 00:13:35.016 --> 00:13:38.114 They have to go together by definition, 00:13:38.114 --> 00:13:41.346 because we share a world where everyone wants more; 00:13:41.346 --> 00:13:44.665 conflict has to arise as a consequence. 00:13:44.665 --> 00:13:49.917 And once you see that, that whole world actually looks far less attractive, 00:13:49.917 --> 00:13:53.831 because you know that the moment you buy into that, 00:13:53.831 --> 00:13:58.347 you also buy into all the problems, all the immorality, all the conflict, 00:13:58.347 --> 00:14:01.581 all the pain that also comes with that world, 00:14:01.581 --> 00:14:04.212 and then you start to shift in a different direction. 00:14:04.212 --> 00:14:06.433 You think about life in a different way. 00:14:06.433 --> 00:14:10.833 You think about your goals in life in a new way because of that. 00:14:10.833 --> 00:14:15.013 So then your paddle, and you paddle, and paddle and paddle as crazy 00:14:15.013 --> 00:14:16.215 as far as you can. 00:14:16.215 --> 00:14:18.050 Where do you go when you paddle? 00:14:18.050 --> 00:14:20.913 Okay, this is the next part. Where do you go when you paddle? 00:14:20.913 --> 00:14:23.480 The first thing is that you can't just paddle. 00:14:23.480 --> 00:14:25.866 The Buddhist idea is you want to cross the stream. 00:14:25.866 --> 00:14:29.256 So first of all you paddle a little bit, and then you eventually realize 00:14:29.256 --> 00:14:32.586 you want to cross this blooming stream, but initially you paddle. 00:14:32.586 --> 00:14:38.562 So one of the other interesting suttas I'm going to bring up now, 00:14:38.562 --> 00:14:42.634 which kind of I think illustrates this point a little bit. 00:14:42.634 --> 00:14:47.734 And this is the idea, not just that the stream is dangerous, 00:14:47.734 --> 00:14:54.818 but as we go into this stream, we tend to become coarser gradually over time. 00:14:54.818 --> 00:14:58.584 It gets worse and worse, as if the stream goes faster and faster 00:14:58.584 --> 00:15:01.996 becomes more and more dangerous as we carry on. 00:15:01.996 --> 00:15:04.701 So it's not just that we are going in a stream, 00:15:04.701 --> 00:15:08.113 but the stream actually gets worse also as we go along. 00:15:08.113 --> 00:15:12.399 And I'm sure you can probably relate to that to some extent, yeah. 00:15:12.399 --> 00:15:16.718 In craving in life, sometimes we have kind of craving for refined things; 00:15:16.718 --> 00:15:20.419 and sometimes that craving kind of becomes more and more obsessive, 00:15:20.419 --> 00:15:22.055 it goes in the wrong direction, 00:15:22.055 --> 00:15:24.915 we don't really find the satisfaction that we're looking for. 00:15:24.915 --> 00:15:27.100 And because we don't find the satisfaction, 00:15:27.100 --> 00:15:30.136 we try something that's more coarse, goes further, 00:15:30.136 --> 00:15:33.250 takes the whole thing to another level, 00:15:33.250 --> 00:15:36.083 and as we take this craving further to another level, 00:15:36.083 --> 00:15:41.400 we are coarsening our minds, and we're kind of on a downward slope, 00:15:41.400 --> 00:15:44.971 making things worse and worse basically. 00:15:44.971 --> 00:15:48.400 And we can see this in the world, people are never really satisfied. 00:15:48.400 --> 00:15:52.133 People never really feel that sense of okay, I’ve reached a limit. 00:15:52.133 --> 00:15:55.937 And there's a beautiful sutta about this as well. 00:15:55.937 --> 00:16:03.216 And this is a sutta which is slightly kind of mythological in content, 00:16:03.216 --> 00:16:05.083 it's called the Aggañña Sutta, 00:16:05.083 --> 00:16:08.113 found in the long discourses of the Buddha, number 27. 00:16:08.113 --> 00:16:12.867 And this particular sutta is a sutta about beginnings. 00:16:12.867 --> 00:16:17.382 It shows how the world kind of slides down from the beginning. 00:16:17.382 --> 00:16:20.801 And of course, the world sliding down from the beginning 00:16:20.801 --> 00:16:24.653 is another metaphor for the mind also sliding down, 00:16:24.653 --> 00:16:30.033 becoming coarser, more obsessed, increasing these cravings as we go along. 00:16:30.033 --> 00:16:33.533 One of the kind of beautiful things about this sutta, 00:16:33.533 --> 00:16:37.733 it starts off by saying, this is about beginnings, right? 00:16:37.733 --> 00:16:41.933 So beginnings is usually in religion means the beginning of the world. 00:16:41.933 --> 00:16:46.733 So in Buddhism, what is the beginning of the world in Buddhism? 00:16:46.733 --> 00:16:51.469 The beginning of the world is the end of the previous world, right? 00:16:51.469 --> 00:16:52.919 That is the Buddhist idea. 00:16:52.919 --> 00:16:57.132 So this sutta begins with the ending. This is kind of cool, this is 00:16:57.132 --> 00:17:00.783 the way Buddhism talks about beginnings, it starts with endings. 00:17:00.783 --> 00:17:05.850 So the previous world comes to an end. 00:17:05.850 --> 00:17:08.167 And because the previous world comes to an end, 00:17:08.167 --> 00:17:12.822 you have all these beings that exist in a very elevated and beautiful state, 00:17:12.822 --> 00:17:16.703 because that is what happens when the world comes to an end in this way. 00:17:16.703 --> 00:17:19.438 They exist in a very beautiful, elevated state, 00:17:19.438 --> 00:17:23.133 where there is no craving, there's no desire. 00:17:23.133 --> 00:17:29.102 The beautiful idea here is that they are feeding on bliss, pītibhakkhā 00:17:29.102 --> 00:17:33.385 Isn't that a beautiful idea, feeding on bliss? 00:17:33.385 --> 00:17:36.803 It’s this idea you don't need any nutriment from the outside, 00:17:36.803 --> 00:17:39.416 you don't need any nutriment to support your body, 00:17:39.416 --> 00:17:41.318 because you feed on bliss. 00:17:41.318 --> 00:17:45.251 Bliss is what sustains you, bliss is what gives life meaning. 00:17:45.251 --> 00:17:48.003 Forget about all this coarse stuff in the human realm. 00:17:48.003 --> 00:17:50.070 This is the really refined stuff. 00:17:50.070 --> 00:17:55.622 How does it go again? I can't remember. 00:17:55.622 --> 00:18:00.549 Anyway, so starting in this very high realm, but then 00:18:00.549 --> 00:18:04.292 as the previous universe comes to an end, the new universe starts. 00:18:04.292 --> 00:18:07.196 It's like, kind of, one big bang after the other if you like. 00:18:07.196 --> 00:18:09.151 It's kind of the Buddhist idea of things. 00:18:09.151 --> 00:18:11.368 And then as the new world evolves, 00:18:11.368 --> 00:18:15.285 yeah, these beings, when kind of the world becomes available, 00:18:15.285 --> 00:18:18.805 they start to get reborn in slightly lower destinations. 00:18:18.805 --> 00:18:21.622 And in this lower destinations, because the world evolves, 00:18:21.622 --> 00:18:24.214 there is material things. 00:18:24.214 --> 00:18:26.569 And when the material things of that world evolve, 00:18:26.569 --> 00:18:30.518 part of those material things will seem delightful to these people. 00:18:30.518 --> 00:18:32.185 Or these beings, 00:18:32.185 --> 00:18:34.849 they are not people at this point, they are just beings, 00:18:34.849 --> 00:18:36.386 feeding on bliss or whatever. 00:18:36.386 --> 00:18:39.383 Most people don't feed on bliss, at least not all the time. 00:18:39.383 --> 00:18:41.803 Maybe hopefully sometimes, not all the time. 00:18:41.803 --> 00:18:48.068 And so the earth kind of appears, and all these material things appear, 00:18:48.068 --> 00:18:50.087 and as these things appear, 00:18:50.087 --> 00:18:53.451 they start to look out, and see ''Oh what might this be? 00:18:53.451 --> 00:18:55.053 "What is going on here?" 00:18:55.053 --> 00:18:58.989 And they go down to this earth, to this material substance, 00:18:58.989 --> 00:19:02.791 and they break a piece off, and they think what might this be? 00:19:02.791 --> 00:19:04.533 and they taste it. 00:19:04.533 --> 00:19:07.957 And the moment they taste it, because the taste is so beautiful; 00:19:07.957 --> 00:19:13.105 it's like.. the translation says, it's sweet like wild Manuka Honey, 00:19:13.105 --> 00:19:16.152 or something like that. Beautiful taste. 00:19:16.152 --> 00:19:20.152 At that moment, craving is born in that being. 00:19:20.152 --> 00:19:24.288 And that's kind of extraordinary when you think about it. 00:19:24.288 --> 00:19:28.174 Because here you have these beings who are completely content, 00:19:28.174 --> 00:19:33.336 completely happy, feeding on bliss, but because the sense of self, 00:19:33.336 --> 00:19:36.740 because there is a doer inside that makes people act, 00:19:36.740 --> 00:19:40.836 even though there's nothing to act for, but the identifying with that doer 00:19:40.836 --> 00:19:43.370 drives you on to do things. 00:19:43.370 --> 00:19:49.650 And that activity that you do then gives rise to craving as a consequence. 00:19:49.650 --> 00:19:53.607 So a person that had no craving, that was perfectly content, 00:19:53.607 --> 00:19:55.835 that didn't needs anything in the whole world, NOTE Paragraph 00:19:55.835 --> 00:20:02.718 because of the restless nature of people or beings, craving arises. 00:20:02.718 --> 00:20:06.384 And once that craving arises, because craving is coarse 00:20:06.384 --> 00:20:09.536 compared to the very contented state of human beings, 00:20:09.536 --> 00:20:12.004 their body becomes more coarse. 00:20:12.004 --> 00:20:16.567 And as their body becomes coarse, the world around them becomes coarse. 00:20:16.567 --> 00:20:22.154 Because the world around us is just a reflection of our own minds, in large part 00:20:22.154 --> 00:20:25.300 depending on how you're reborn, and all these kinds of things, 00:20:25.300 --> 00:20:28.483 but our experience of the world is reflected in our minds. 00:20:28.483 --> 00:20:32.087 So the world becomes more coarse. And when the world becomes more coarse, 00:20:32.087 --> 00:20:35.701 they get more craving, and it builds up, more and more craving, 00:20:35.701 --> 00:20:39.373 eating new things, eventually they start putting up boundaries, 00:20:39.373 --> 00:20:41.614 this is my stuff, I want to eat this. 00:20:41.614 --> 00:20:44.907 And once they put up boundaries, they start stealing from each other, 00:20:44.907 --> 00:20:47.628 when they start stealing from each other they start lying 00:20:47.628 --> 00:20:49.349 because they're gonna get penalized. 00:20:49.349 --> 00:20:53.169 You can see the coarseness is becoming worse and worse and worse, 00:20:53.169 --> 00:20:58.287 driving on, until one day they say the lifespan has declined to five years, 00:20:58.287 --> 00:21:01.737 and there's this sword, what they call the sword interval, 00:21:01.737 --> 00:21:04.684 that is when they run after each other like wild beasts, 00:21:04.684 --> 00:21:06.956 cutting each other down and killing each other, 00:21:06.956 --> 00:21:08.618 kind of reach rock bottom, 00:21:08.618 --> 00:21:11.771 and then things start to turn around and it goes up again. 00:21:11.771 --> 00:21:14.785 But the nature of the mind is kind of going downwards, 00:21:14.785 --> 00:21:16.743 spiraling out of control, 00:21:16.743 --> 00:21:20.986 not really understanding that things are heading in the wrong direction, 00:21:20.986 --> 00:21:25.852 trying to find satisfaction, when no satisfaction can really be found. 00:21:25.852 --> 00:21:30.703 So this is an important aspect of this idea of the stream. 00:21:30.703 --> 00:21:34.008 Notice that in yourself, because it can sometimes be easy to see 00:21:34.008 --> 00:21:37.684 if you are too fixed on craving. 00:21:37.684 --> 00:21:39.126 If you are not like that, 00:21:39.126 --> 00:21:42.690 you can see it in people around us in the world very often. 00:21:42.690 --> 00:21:49.118 So these are two ideas about the idea of going... this is the flow, 00:21:49.118 --> 00:21:52.952 but I'm going to come to 'going against the flow' very soon. 00:21:52.952 --> 00:21:54.300 That's really what this is all about. 00:21:54.300 --> 00:21:57.554 It’s just kind of setting the scene for going against the flow. 00:21:57.554 --> 00:22:02.154 So there's one more sutta that kind of illustrate, this point 00:22:02.154 --> 00:22:05.369 about the flow of craving quite nicely, 00:22:05.369 --> 00:22:07.204 in a slightly different way. 00:22:07.204 --> 00:22:10.606 And this is one of my really favorite suttas. 00:22:10.606 --> 00:22:13.669 Every sutta is my favorite; this is my kind of favorite favorite. 00:22:13.669 --> 00:22:16.388 Not really, they are all favorites. 00:22:16.388 --> 00:22:20.409 So this sutta is called the Raṭṭhapāla Sutta. 00:22:20.409 --> 00:22:23.387 Raṭṭhapāla is a name of a person, he was called Raṭṭhapāla, 00:22:23.387 --> 00:22:27.768 and in this Sutta this monk called Raṭṭhapāla, he goes to meet a king. 00:22:27.768 --> 00:22:29.585 This king is called Koravya, 00:22:29.585 --> 00:22:34.220 and so he meets this king, and this king is really old, he is about to die, 00:22:34.220 --> 00:22:38.307 and he looks at Raṭṭhapāla, Raṭṭhapāla is a young man, he is already an Arahant. 00:22:38.307 --> 00:22:40.545 And this King looks at this young men and asks 00:22:40.545 --> 00:22:42.005 'Why have you gone forth? 00:22:42.005 --> 00:22:45.120 You're young, you're healthy, you're in the prime of life, 00:22:45.120 --> 00:22:47.604 your family is wealthy, you have all these relatives, 00:22:47.604 --> 00:22:50.559 you have everything, everything anyone could want in life. 00:22:50.559 --> 00:22:52.687 Why have you gone forth? 00:22:52.687 --> 00:22:57.575 I would like to hear the secret behind this magic of the Buddha.” 00:22:57.575 --> 00:23:02.724 The magic of the Buddha, that's what they call it, the magic, 00:23:02.724 --> 00:23:05.019 they call it the converting magic of the Buddha, 00:23:05.019 --> 00:23:07.538 because when the Buddha speaks, it's like, wow, okay, 00:23:07.538 --> 00:23:11.204 I better become a monk straight away, or a nun. 00:23:11.204 --> 00:23:14.321 So if you don't want to become a monk or nun after this talk, 00:23:14.321 --> 00:23:19.387 it means that I have a long way to go before I reach the level of the Buddha! 00:23:19.387 --> 00:23:21.921 Probably a very long way, actually. 00:23:21.921 --> 00:23:30.522 So he speaks to Raṭṭhapāla, this king, and he says, 00:23:30.522 --> 00:23:33.289 why on earth did you go forth? 00:23:33.289 --> 00:23:36.608 This is kind of really fascinating, because if we get these teachings, 00:23:36.608 --> 00:23:40.005 then maybe the chances are that we follow suit. 00:23:40.005 --> 00:23:43.111 And the Buddha, not the Buddha, Raṭṭhapāla says, 00:23:43.111 --> 00:23:48.273 "Well, there are four summaries of the Dhamma that made me become a monastic, 00:23:48.273 --> 00:23:51.062 that made me go forth, and eventually becoming an Arahant, 00:23:51.062 --> 00:23:53.526 a fully awakened person. 00:23:53.526 --> 00:23:59.888 And he says, one of these summaries of the Dhamma is that the world is incomplete, 00:23:59.888 --> 00:24:05.972 it is insatiate, it is a slave to craving. 00:24:05.972 --> 00:24:11.772 The world is incomplete, insatiate, a slave to craving. 00:24:11.772 --> 00:24:16.429 So what does that mean? What does it mean 'the world is incomplete?' 00:24:16.429 --> 00:24:17.971 Well, the world is us. 00:24:17.971 --> 00:24:21.190 Each one of us is like the world, the world is our world. 00:24:21.190 --> 00:24:24.946 So beings are incomplete. What does that mean? 00:24:24.946 --> 00:24:28.335 It means that we feel like we are not fulfilled, right? 00:24:28.335 --> 00:24:30.861 It feels like there's something missing inside of us. 00:24:30.861 --> 00:24:34.655 It feels like there is a hole that we need to fill up somehow within us. 00:24:34.655 --> 00:24:37.288 And this is why we go out into the world. 00:24:37.288 --> 00:24:39.544 This is why we get into relationships, 00:24:39.544 --> 00:24:45.609 Relationship is precisely the idea of kind of forming something more than ourselves. 00:24:45.609 --> 00:24:50.139 It is kind of a very important aspect of this idea of falling in love and 00:24:50.139 --> 00:24:51.556 having a relationship. 00:24:51.556 --> 00:24:53.589 It is an idea of feeling more complete 00:24:53.589 --> 00:24:57.106 through someone else, with the help of someone else, 00:24:57.106 --> 00:24:59.454 even though that obviously is quite dangerous, 00:24:59.454 --> 00:25:03.527 because a relationships have to have an end to it, still that's what we do. 00:25:03.527 --> 00:25:05.848 So all of these things that we're doing in life, 00:25:05.848 --> 00:25:09.921 getting the right house, the right job, which is going to be really satisfactory, 00:25:09.921 --> 00:25:11.889 the right kind of career, 00:25:11.889 --> 00:25:14.605 all these things; getting popular in the world, 00:25:14.605 --> 00:25:18.689 a very important one, all of these things, building up, 00:25:18.689 --> 00:25:21.139 this is how we're going to feel complete. 00:25:21.139 --> 00:25:24.254 This is kind of the idea in the world. 00:25:24.254 --> 00:25:27.573 But here, Raṭṭhapāla says, the world is incomplete. 00:25:27.573 --> 00:25:30.489 All of those things that we're seeking in the world 00:25:30.489 --> 00:25:32.793 are never going to make us feel complete. 00:25:32.793 --> 00:25:35.576 There's always going to be another desire behind that one. 00:25:35.576 --> 00:25:38.626 There's always going to be more going on into the future. 00:25:38.626 --> 00:25:41.755 There is no final satisfaction in that world. 00:25:41.755 --> 00:25:44.176 In fact, there isn't any real satisfaction at all. 00:25:44.176 --> 00:25:47.804 Often it's the opposite, there's actually more dissatisfaction, 00:25:47.804 --> 00:25:51.138 because when you realize that it actually doesn't work out, 00:25:51.138 --> 00:25:53.906 you just crave even more, for even more things, 00:25:53.906 --> 00:25:57.876 things that are even more coarse, and you don't actually get anywhere. 00:25:57.876 --> 00:26:00.994 The world is incomplete. 00:26:00.994 --> 00:26:02.774 It is insatiate. 00:26:02.774 --> 00:26:05.989 There is no satisfaction, because there is no completion. 00:26:05.989 --> 00:26:08.408 There is no satisfaction. 00:26:08.408 --> 00:26:11.440 We are the slave of craving. 00:26:11.440 --> 00:26:16.097 It is a beautiful little saying, 'you are the slave of craving'. 00:26:16.097 --> 00:26:19.740 Very often, we think the exact opposite. 00:26:19.740 --> 00:26:21.650 We think we are the masters of craving. 00:26:21.650 --> 00:26:23.170 Actually we enjoy craving, 00:26:23.170 --> 00:26:27.016 because craving will get us what we want, right? 00:26:27.016 --> 00:26:30.692 If we crave, we will go into the world, we will fulfill ourselves, 00:26:30.692 --> 00:26:33.829 and we'll get what we actually want in this life. 00:26:33.829 --> 00:26:35.844 So craving is good. 00:26:35.844 --> 00:26:39.510 One of the really beautiful things the Buddha points out in another sutta, 00:26:39.510 --> 00:26:45.409 I think it's called Chachakkasutta MN 146 I think (148) if you want to look it up. 00:26:45.409 --> 00:26:50.473 And in that Sutta, the Buddha says that not only do we enjoy craving, 00:26:50.473 --> 00:26:55.824 we identify with craving. We think that we are craving. 00:26:55.824 --> 00:27:00.490 How can that be, when craving is often so painful and so restless? 00:27:00.490 --> 00:27:03.624 And the reason is why we identify with craving 00:27:03.624 --> 00:27:08.340 is because we are doers, we identify with doing. 00:27:08.340 --> 00:27:10.775 Have you ever noticed how you identify with doing, 00:27:10.775 --> 00:27:12.624 how you feel alive when you do, 00:27:12.624 --> 00:27:15.942 how you feel you are expressing yourself when you do things? 00:27:15.942 --> 00:27:19.044 This is a very important part in our modern culture, 00:27:19.044 --> 00:27:21.210 the idea of expressing ourselves, 00:27:21.210 --> 00:27:23.978 because what you are doing there is you're expressing, 00:27:23.978 --> 00:27:28.973 you are using a side of the ego that indulges in the activity of doing. 00:27:28.973 --> 00:27:31.606 We identify with the doing itself. 00:27:31.606 --> 00:27:36.130 And because you identify with the doing, craving is your friend. 00:27:36.130 --> 00:27:38.741 Because craving is what makes you do. 00:27:38.741 --> 00:27:41.492 Doing and craving are two sides of the same coin. 00:27:41.492 --> 00:27:44.791 Without the craving you can't really do very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:27:44.791 --> 00:27:48.528 So that's why we also identify with the craving itself. 00:27:48.528 --> 00:27:52.209 But the Buddha turns it around, instead of identifying with craving, 00:27:52.209 --> 00:27:55.391 craving is the slave driver. 00:27:55.391 --> 00:27:58.058 Craving is the thing that makes you restless. 00:27:58.058 --> 00:28:00.659 Craving is the thing that always drives you on 00:28:00.659 --> 00:28:03.218 from one thing to the other one, without end. 00:28:03.218 --> 00:28:05.692 You can never rest when there is craving. 00:28:05.692 --> 00:28:09.160 Craving says, do this, and you says, yes, master, please, 00:28:09.160 --> 00:28:12.508 let me run quickly to this goal, whatever it might be. 00:28:12.508 --> 00:28:16.084 And you follow along with craving without really stopping and thinking 00:28:16.084 --> 00:28:18.175 whether it's a good idea. 00:28:18.175 --> 00:28:22.358 You are the slave of craving. And how can we understand that? 00:28:22.358 --> 00:28:25.426 Well, the one of the ways of understanding that, of course, 00:28:25.426 --> 00:28:27.443 is through meditation practice. 00:28:27.443 --> 00:28:31.815 As you become peaceful in meditation, as things start to calm down, 00:28:31.815 --> 00:28:36.229 you start to understand this duality of craving and peace, 00:28:36.229 --> 00:28:38.427 and how they are two opposites. 00:28:38.427 --> 00:28:40.764 How one is really delightful, 00:28:40.764 --> 00:28:44.461 while the other one is inherently just agitated, 00:28:44.461 --> 00:28:48.345 restlessness, driving on, never being able to rest, 00:28:48.345 --> 00:28:50.714 thinking that you're going somewhere worthwhile, 00:28:50.714 --> 00:28:53.592 when actually it is just more of the same down the road 00:28:53.592 --> 00:28:55.958 again and again and again. 00:28:55.958 --> 00:28:58.110 Just occurred to me 00:28:58.110 --> 00:29:03.026 how we often get complaints that Buddhism is so pessimistic, 00:29:03.026 --> 00:29:08.252 maybe I should stop talking like this, this is kind of going really ........ 00:29:08.252 --> 00:29:10.110 We have to come to the solution, right? 00:29:10.110 --> 00:29:12.923 So much negativity, wow, that's really bad. 00:29:12.923 --> 00:29:15.276 So how do we resolve all of this? 00:29:15.276 --> 00:29:18.258 How do we kind of.. what can we do about all of this? NOTE Paragraph 00:29:18.258 --> 00:29:25.160 The slave, this idea of a stream going on and kind of moving us into the future. 00:29:25.160 --> 00:29:26.760 How can we deal with this? 00:29:26.760 --> 00:29:28.891 And how to deal with this, actually, 00:29:28.891 --> 00:29:32.909 first of all, we have to kind of understand some of these streams, 00:29:32.909 --> 00:29:35.575 and how to think about them. 00:29:35.575 --> 00:29:39.450 So, I'll talk a little bit about kind of streams from different angles, 00:29:39.450 --> 00:29:41.676 and then see what we can do about them. 00:29:41.676 --> 00:29:43.789 And then I'm going to look at the very end, 00:29:43.789 --> 00:29:46.391 towards how we can enter an alternative stream. 00:29:46.391 --> 00:29:48.238 That's where it gets really exciting. 00:29:48.238 --> 00:29:49.716 What is the alternative stream? 00:29:49.716 --> 00:29:53.201 Is there a different stream that maybe not heading towards the crocodiles, 00:29:53.201 --> 00:29:59.010 but it's heading towards happiness, joy, bliss, insight, understanding, 00:29:59.010 --> 00:30:02.462 wisdom, all of these kinds of things. 00:30:02.462 --> 00:30:05.577 That is the cool kind of stream where we really want to go. 00:30:05.577 --> 00:30:09.680 So one of the ways of thinking about the streams of the Dhamma 00:30:09.680 --> 00:30:14.294 is what is sometimes called in the Suttas the Aṭṭha-loka-dhamma; 00:30:14.294 --> 00:30:17.966 the eight worldly conditions, or the eight worldly things. 00:30:17.966 --> 00:30:22.692 And these things are, one of these things is like 00:30:22.692 --> 00:30:27.860 praise and blame is one of them, praise and blame, 00:30:27.860 --> 00:30:31.194 popularity, unpopularity, happiness and suffering, 00:30:31.194 --> 00:30:34.426 gain and loss. So these are the eight of them. 00:30:34.426 --> 00:30:39.362 So these are eight aspects of the streams of the world. 00:30:39.362 --> 00:30:43.712 And they're kind of very interesting, because they basically summarize 00:30:43.712 --> 00:30:47.344 the sort of things that we are interested in the world 00:30:47.344 --> 00:30:50.494 that make the world come alive for us. 00:30:50.494 --> 00:30:53.462 And the first one of those is praise and blame. 00:30:53.462 --> 00:30:57.283 And this is a very interesting one, 00:30:57.283 --> 00:31:02.279 because it is so addictive to be praised, and people often live to be praised, 00:31:02.279 --> 00:31:04.765 and that's what they want in their life. 00:31:04.765 --> 00:31:06.562 But of course, you realize very soon 00:31:06.562 --> 00:31:09.943 if you're trying to get praised all the time that you can't control it, 00:31:09.943 --> 00:31:12.148 and actually the world doesn't work like that. 00:31:12.148 --> 00:31:16.669 So if you are on this boat kind of rejoicing and being praised or whatever, 00:31:16.669 --> 00:31:19.546 soon enough you're going to have suffering as a consequence, 00:31:19.546 --> 00:31:22.278 because there's no way you're going to be able to sustain 00:31:22.278 --> 00:31:25.246 all that praise all the time. 00:31:25.246 --> 00:31:28.032 So one of the ways that I like to think about the idea of 00:31:28.032 --> 00:31:30.830 praise and blame in my own life is the idea that 00:31:30.830 --> 00:31:33.945 most people who praise me or who blame me, 00:31:33.945 --> 00:31:38.183 actually often that is for such superficial, irrelevant things. 00:31:38.183 --> 00:31:40.695 And most of the people who praise 00:31:40.695 --> 00:31:42.941 and blame you, what do they understand anyway 00:31:42.941 --> 00:31:46.344 about what is really worthwhile in the world? 00:31:46.344 --> 00:31:47.724 That's what I think.. 00:31:47.724 --> 00:31:50.978 I never say it, but I think it. I just said it right now. I forgot. 00:31:50.978 --> 00:31:54.443 But these are things you can think, 00:31:54.443 --> 00:31:56.579 but you have to be careful with saying them; 00:31:56.579 --> 00:31:58.845 otherwise it might become problematic. 00:31:58.845 --> 00:32:02.044 There are things in Buddhism you have to keep kind of private. 00:32:02.044 --> 00:32:04.427 But it is true though, isn't it? 00:32:04.427 --> 00:32:06.928 Most people in the world don't really understand 00:32:06.928 --> 00:32:10.228 what is really praiseworthy, and what is really blameworthy. 00:32:10.228 --> 00:32:12.715 So, very often we get praised for things and blamed 00:32:12.715 --> 00:32:16.314 that are completely irrelevant, that don't really matter at all. 00:32:16.314 --> 00:32:20.577 So why do we get attached to all of these things that don’t really matter? 00:32:20.577 --> 00:32:27.946 Someone praises you for, oh, that's a beautiful shawl you have, 00:32:27.946 --> 00:32:30.262 it is quite nice, actually. 00:32:30.262 --> 00:32:34.061 So don't attach, right? 00:32:34.061 --> 00:32:38.329 So we say these things and 00:32:38.329 --> 00:32:41.972 actually it doesn't really matter whether you have a beautiful shawl or not. 00:32:41.972 --> 00:32:43.995 It doesn't matter whatever you are doing, 00:32:43.995 --> 00:32:45.866 oh, you got a nice new car or whatever. 00:32:45.866 --> 00:32:48.147 These things are kind of completely irrelevant, 00:32:48.147 --> 00:32:50.436 yet we attach to these kinds of things. 00:32:50.436 --> 00:32:53.961 So the first thing to understand is that most people don't understand 00:32:53.961 --> 00:32:57.427 what is really praiseworthy, or what is blameworthy. 00:32:57.427 --> 00:33:02.167 And because of that, most of the time, just forget about it. It doesn't matter. 00:33:02.167 --> 00:33:04.324 What you should ask yourself, you should ask, 00:33:04.324 --> 00:33:07.581 is the praise something really useful and really good? 00:33:07.581 --> 00:33:09.764 And if it is, okay, then fine, 00:33:09.764 --> 00:33:12.014 and if it is true. Okay? No, issue. 00:33:12.014 --> 00:33:15.980 If you get blamed, ask yourself, Is there something going on there 00:33:15.980 --> 00:33:18.276 which is worthwhile, okay, then take it on board 00:33:18.276 --> 00:33:20.762 and maybe correct your direction a little bit. 00:33:20.762 --> 00:33:27.213 But lot of the time, there's no need to pay much attention to these things. 00:33:27.213 --> 00:33:30.151 The only time you really should pay attention 00:33:30.151 --> 00:33:33.697 is if someone like the Buddha praises you. 00:33:33.697 --> 00:33:37.748 If the Buddha says, 'Good on you'. 00:33:37.748 --> 00:33:40.330 He wouldn't say that, but something similar like that, 00:33:40.330 --> 00:33:42.578 'you're practicing well', then, of course, 00:33:42.578 --> 00:33:44.798 that's when you should listen, 00:33:44.798 --> 00:33:49.249 because that is someone who understands what is worthwhile. 00:33:49.249 --> 00:33:53.356 But what you find is some of the most famous teachers in the world, 00:33:53.356 --> 00:33:57.015 teachers you may think might be Arahants, 00:33:57.015 --> 00:34:00.468 might be stream enterers, might have some deep insight, 00:34:00.468 --> 00:34:04.969 they don't praise very much at all, nor do they blame very much. 00:34:04.969 --> 00:34:08.830 They encourage you more just by being kind, by being gentle, 00:34:08.830 --> 00:34:12.746 by kind of saying things that ..... sometimes they might praise you, 00:34:12.746 --> 00:34:14.837 but it's not a lot of praise coming out, 00:34:14.837 --> 00:34:18.720 nor is there much blame. It’s just a gentle kind of encouragement. 00:34:18.720 --> 00:34:20.986 How is your meditation going? 00:34:20.986 --> 00:34:23.412 Oh, I'm getting some happiness and joy. 00:34:23.412 --> 00:34:26.212 Okay, very good carry on. 00:34:26.212 --> 00:34:28.795 Ajahn Brahm says that, right? Very good, carry on! 00:34:28.795 --> 00:34:30.663 He says that all the time. 00:34:30.663 --> 00:34:32.370 So this is kind of the idea, 00:34:32.370 --> 00:34:36.095 because I think they know that if you get praised too much, or blame too much, 00:34:36.095 --> 00:34:40.062 you just attach to these things, you don't use those things too much. 00:34:40.062 --> 00:34:45.979 So, this is kind of the idea, how we deal with praise and blame in the world. 00:34:45.979 --> 00:34:49.246 We look at the person who's blaming us, or praising us, 00:34:49.246 --> 00:34:51.981 are they really worthwhile, taking them seriously or not? 00:34:51.981 --> 00:34:54.279 Most of the time, not necessarily. 00:34:54.279 --> 00:34:58.248 Let's praise each other instead for the things that are really worthwhile. 00:34:58.248 --> 00:35:02.096 So if you see people in the community who are doing well, who are being kind, 00:35:02.096 --> 00:35:05.065 that is a good opportunity to praise them 00:35:05.065 --> 00:35:08.800 for practicing the spiritual life, for doing the right thing. 00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:10.933 That is a great opportunity. 00:35:10.933 --> 00:35:14.765 I mean, praise each other for the nice shawls as well, absolutely. 00:35:14.765 --> 00:35:15.930 Be kind to each other, 00:35:15.930 --> 00:35:18.683 then it is really up to the person who is receiving it to decide 00:35:18.683 --> 00:35:20.253 whether it's important or not. 00:35:20.253 --> 00:35:23.786 Don't be afraid of praise, praising others, please do so, 00:35:23.786 --> 00:35:25.182 it's a beautiful thing to do, 00:35:25.182 --> 00:35:28.016 when we do it in the right way without any ego involved. 00:35:28.016 --> 00:35:32.183 But it's also our job to know when the praise really matters or not. 00:35:32.183 --> 00:35:36.717 The other thing of these eight worldly dhammas is the idea of 00:35:36.717 --> 00:35:42.821 being popular or unpopular, or being famous or living in obscurity. 00:35:42.821 --> 00:35:44.448 This is another one. 00:35:44.448 --> 00:35:50.246 And again, the idea in Buddhism is that a lot of the things that we think of 00:35:50.246 --> 00:35:54.666 popularity in the world, again, is very superficial. 00:35:54.666 --> 00:35:57.897 People are popular for kind of crazy things in the world. 00:35:57.897 --> 00:36:00.764 Some people are famous for being famous, as they say. 00:36:00.764 --> 00:36:03.426 They don't really have any good reasons for it. 00:36:03.426 --> 00:36:05.622 Or they are famous just for being a movie star. 00:36:05.622 --> 00:36:08.532 Ok, you are a movie star, so you become famous automatically. 00:36:08.532 --> 00:36:11.549 Or you are rich, if you're rich you become famous. 00:36:11.549 --> 00:36:13.990 If you're very poor, you also become famous, right? 00:36:13.990 --> 00:36:15.848 Like us, we are 00:36:15.848 --> 00:36:19.137 either very rich, or very poor, the two ends of the kind of scale. 00:36:19.137 --> 00:36:22.193 So someone like Ajahn Brahm, very famous, not because he's rich, 00:36:22.193 --> 00:36:27.069 but actually, in part because he's poor, right? Yes, that's true, isn't it? 00:36:27.069 --> 00:36:28.790 It's actually true that because..... 00:36:28.790 --> 00:36:34.327 he has nothing, and yet he is one of the most happiest persons imaginable, 00:36:34.327 --> 00:36:36.355 at least that I know, always very happy. 00:36:36.355 --> 00:36:39.137 That's kind of what makes life interesting, 00:36:39.137 --> 00:36:43.105 when you see that contrast between the absolute having nothing, 00:36:43.105 --> 00:36:45.077 and the happiness on the other side. 00:36:45.077 --> 00:36:49.010 That's what makes the dhamma so interesting. 00:36:49.010 --> 00:36:52.685 So again, all of this popularity is often so superficial. 00:36:52.685 --> 00:36:54.709 So if we want to be popular, 00:36:54.709 --> 00:36:57.386 you should become popular because you are a good person, 00:36:57.386 --> 00:36:59.838 because you have metta, because you have kindness, 00:36:59.838 --> 00:37:02.292 because you have compassion for people in the world. 00:37:02.292 --> 00:37:04.688 That is the kind of popularity we should seek for. 00:37:04.688 --> 00:37:07.372 And if you don't become popular when you live like that, 00:37:07.372 --> 00:37:09.464 then popularity is irrelevant, 00:37:09.464 --> 00:37:11.959 it doesn't matter. Let the popularity go, 00:37:11.959 --> 00:37:14.359 because actually, it doesn't matter. 00:37:14.359 --> 00:37:18.445 There are some beautiful verses in the suttas that says something like, 00:37:18.445 --> 00:37:24.494 if you can find a wise companion, then you should travel together 00:37:24.494 --> 00:37:27.546 and kind of develop together in the practice. 00:37:27.546 --> 00:37:32.076 But if you cannot find a wise companion, if all you can find is a fool, 00:37:32.076 --> 00:37:38.845 then it's better to go alone, like an elephant in the forest 00:37:38.845 --> 00:37:40.544 or something like that. 00:37:40.544 --> 00:37:44.210 This idea that all this popularity is really irrelevant. 00:37:44.210 --> 00:37:48.510 In fact, when you really understand what the dhamma is about, 00:37:48.510 --> 00:37:50.995 popularity is a hassle. 00:37:50.995 --> 00:37:55.431 You want to be more unpopular. Not me, I'm not so advanced yet, 00:37:55.431 --> 00:37:57.027 but some other people, right? 00:37:57.027 --> 00:38:01.095 Sometimes I listen to Ajahn Brahm, sometimes he says things that 00:38:01.095 --> 00:38:04.264 people would think he's crazy, it's kind of completely upside down 00:38:04.264 --> 00:38:06.379 of what you normally would think. 00:38:06.379 --> 00:38:07.864 So Ajahn Brahm says, 00:38:07.864 --> 00:38:13.029 if we do this, there will be fewer people coming to the monastery. Let's do this! 00:38:13.029 --> 00:38:14.628 (laughs) 00:38:14.628 --> 00:38:18.014 And I said "No, Ajahn don't, that's bad. We shouldn't do that. 00:38:18.014 --> 00:38:20.123 It's good that people come to the monastery". 00:38:20.123 --> 00:38:22.477 He said, no, we should have fewer people. 00:38:22.477 --> 00:38:26.728 He doesn't actually mean it 100%, right? He wants people to come to the monastery 00:38:26.728 --> 00:38:30.745 to be able to share the dhamma and, rejoice and offering together. 00:38:30.745 --> 00:38:31.977 Of course he does. 00:38:31.977 --> 00:38:36.442 But he's making a point that a lot of people is often kind of problematic 00:38:36.442 --> 00:38:38.080 from a dhamma point of view. 00:38:38.080 --> 00:38:41.060 If your meditation is really deep, you want to be in solitude. 00:38:41.060 --> 00:38:44.314 In the suttas you find cases where the Buddha says, 00:38:44.314 --> 00:38:46.865 when I come out of a deep meditation, 00:38:46.865 --> 00:38:52.712 when people come to visit me, I talk to them in a way that puts them off. 00:38:52.712 --> 00:38:55.064 Yeah, that's what the Buddha says, 00:38:55.064 --> 00:38:57.560 actually, he wants them to leave as quickly as possible 00:38:57.560 --> 00:39:00.395 because of the happiness of solitude. 00:39:00.395 --> 00:39:05.512 So, that's kind of the ultimate point of the idea of popularity and being famous. 00:39:05.512 --> 00:39:07.794 Actually, it is a hassle. 00:39:07.794 --> 00:39:10.639 There are some other beautiful suttas where the Buddha says, 00:39:10.639 --> 00:39:13.010 let me never become famous. 00:39:13.010 --> 00:39:18.612 Fame is kind of bad all the way down, because it just leads to problems. 00:39:18.612 --> 00:39:21.679 And what happened? He became famous. 00:39:21.679 --> 00:39:25.034 That's how you become famous, because you don't want to become famous. 00:39:25.034 --> 00:39:29.095 Because that is so counterintuitive. That's kind of the thing about the Buddha. 00:39:29.095 --> 00:39:33.846 So, again, understand that popularity is not really all it is cracked up to be. 00:39:33.846 --> 00:39:38.500 So how can we deal with a life? and I mentioned this here the other week, 00:39:38.500 --> 00:39:40.116 when I was here last time. 00:39:40.116 --> 00:39:45.129 How can we live a life .. we kind of are in solitude maybe, 00:39:45.129 --> 00:39:47.794 we become less dependent on people around us, 00:39:47.794 --> 00:39:50.246 we don't care about popularity so much, 00:39:50.246 --> 00:39:55.846 and we know that in the present day there's a lot of loneliness in the world. 00:39:55.846 --> 00:39:58.148 During the pandemic it was quite bad. 00:39:58.148 --> 00:40:00.296 Many young people being lonely apparently, 00:40:00.296 --> 00:40:04.267 old people being lonely sitting in an old age homes, 00:40:04.267 --> 00:40:06.411 not knowing what to do with themselves. 00:40:06.411 --> 00:40:08.667 And the answer to that is very simple. 00:40:08.667 --> 00:40:11.935 The answer is we have to develop more metta, more kindness. 00:40:11.935 --> 00:40:15.746 Because loneliness is a feeling of not being connected. 00:40:15.746 --> 00:40:17.014 That's what loneliness is. 00:40:17.014 --> 00:40:19.933 You're sitting by yourself; this small little world of mine, 00:40:19.933 --> 00:40:22.235 not connected to the world outside. 00:40:22.235 --> 00:40:26.995 But the best way of being connected to the world is not by being popular. 00:40:26.995 --> 00:40:29.461 It is not by having large amounts of friends. 00:40:29.461 --> 00:40:32.515 Because all of those things will eventually let you down. 00:40:32.515 --> 00:40:34.763 Eventually, you are with people, 00:40:34.763 --> 00:40:36.866 and sometimes they say the wrong thing, 00:40:36.866 --> 00:40:38.600 they're not kind to you or whatever. 00:40:38.600 --> 00:40:43.530 The best way of never being lonely is to have metta, the kindness, 00:40:43.530 --> 00:40:47.448 the goodness, the love, compassion in your heart. 00:40:47.448 --> 00:40:51.385 If you have that, you never feel lonely, because you don't feel separated. 00:40:51.385 --> 00:40:54.248 The idea of love is the opposite of being separated. 00:40:54.248 --> 00:40:56.862 You always feel connected to the whole world, 00:40:56.862 --> 00:41:01.494 even when you sit in your little kuti, your little hut, all by yourself. 00:41:01.494 --> 00:41:03.247 So please do that. 00:41:03.247 --> 00:41:07.381 Practice that metta and you become independent, you become powerful, 00:41:07.381 --> 00:41:11.397 you gain the ability to just be completely by yourself. 00:41:11.397 --> 00:41:12.875 Isn't that a beautiful idea? 00:41:12.875 --> 00:41:15.006 Instead of depending on people all the time, 00:41:15.006 --> 00:41:18.384 depending on relationships, depending on being popular or whatever, 00:41:18.384 --> 00:41:21.434 you can actually hang out by yourself and be completely content, 00:41:21.434 --> 00:41:24.702 actually more content than when you hangout with other people. 00:41:24.702 --> 00:41:28.468 So develop that kindness; is what the Buddha is saying. 00:41:28.468 --> 00:41:32.964 It starts off by having metta, kindness by body and speech, 00:41:32.964 --> 00:41:36.586 then kindness in thoughts, then kindness in meditation. 00:41:36.586 --> 00:41:38.980 It builds up, one upon the other, 00:41:38.980 --> 00:41:42.663 until you start to feel connected with the whole world around you. 00:41:42.663 --> 00:41:44.064 That is where you want to go. 00:41:44.064 --> 00:41:48.349 Then you are popular in a really deep sense of the word. 00:41:48.349 --> 00:41:52.850 So what about the last four of these; 00:41:52.850 --> 00:41:56.269 the happiness and suffering and gain and loss? 00:41:56.269 --> 00:41:58.516 Maybe we can look at those together. 00:41:58.516 --> 00:42:02.346 And, again, the way to think about gain and loss, 00:42:02.346 --> 00:42:05.917 which I really like, the idea of kind of getting things in life, 00:42:05.917 --> 00:42:11.246 material things or relationships, or status or whatever it is. 00:42:11.246 --> 00:42:13.580 One of the beautiful similes of the Buddha, 00:42:13.580 --> 00:42:16.417 which I always found very, very powerful; 00:42:16.417 --> 00:42:22.287 is the idea, actually it is the idea that all of these things are borrowed. 00:42:22.287 --> 00:42:24.180 These are borrowed things. 00:42:24.180 --> 00:42:27.667 We have them for a time and then they will go. 00:42:27.667 --> 00:42:33.262 There's one nice sutta which has been translated as 'themes' into English. 00:42:33.262 --> 00:42:39.719 There’s five themes, five themes, that a monk or a nun; 00:42:39.719 --> 00:42:44.488 or actually a nun or a monk, no, actually a lay woman and a lay man, 00:42:44.488 --> 00:42:47.712 a nun or a monk or a monastic whatever. 00:42:47.712 --> 00:42:50.368 That's how it goes, a laywoman and a layman. 00:42:50.368 --> 00:42:54.737 and then I think it says one gone-forth, I don't think it says nun, 00:42:54.737 --> 00:42:58.913 i think it says one gone forth, should reflect on, all the time. 00:42:58.913 --> 00:43:01.416 Abhiṇha means frequently. Five things, 00:43:01.416 --> 00:43:03.451 And one of those things, those five things; 00:43:03.451 --> 00:43:07.047 the rest of the five, they would come another time 00:43:07.047 --> 00:43:10.555 so that you will have a reason to come back to the Buddhist center here. 00:43:10.555 --> 00:43:13.081 So this is just ... So I will tell you one of them. 00:43:13.081 --> 00:43:14.732 One of them is that 00:43:14.732 --> 00:43:19.685 'everything that is dear and beloved to me must become otherwise, 00:43:19.685 --> 00:43:22.415 must become separated from me'. 00:43:22.415 --> 00:43:27.954 Everything that is dear and beloved to me must become otherwise, 00:43:27.954 --> 00:43:31.120 must become separated from me. 00:43:31.120 --> 00:43:33.049 It's very powerful saying. 00:43:33.049 --> 00:43:35.319 What is it that is dear and beloved to you? 00:43:35.319 --> 00:43:39.416 What are the things in your life that would be most difficult to lose? 00:43:39.416 --> 00:43:44.567 And, of course, one of them very often is like our closest relationships. 00:43:44.567 --> 00:43:48.444 If you have a good relationship with your boyfriend, or girlfriend 00:43:48.444 --> 00:43:51.403 or your husband and wife, if that relationship is really good, 00:43:51.403 --> 00:43:55.597 then of course, it also means very strong kind of bonding very often. 00:43:55.597 --> 00:43:58.454 And therefore the consequences down the track are often also 00:43:58.454 --> 00:44:00.421 going to be quite difficult to deal with. 00:44:00.421 --> 00:44:04.616 So what are the things that you are afraid to lose? 00:44:04.616 --> 00:44:08.147 Look at that. And then when you look at that, and you understand 00:44:08.147 --> 00:44:11.378 the problem that arises from that, you actually... 00:44:11.378 --> 00:44:16.181 and the way to do that is to have this idea of the idea of the borrowed goods. 00:44:16.181 --> 00:44:19.786 The idea of how all of these things now in our lives are actually borrowed. 00:44:19.786 --> 00:44:21.484 I only have it for a time. 00:44:21.484 --> 00:44:25.285 This is my beautiful relationship with this woman or this man 00:44:25.285 --> 00:44:30.049 or this daughter or son or this mother and father, this friend or whatever it is. 00:44:30.049 --> 00:44:33.866 It's a wonderful relationship, but it's a borrowed relationship. 00:44:33.866 --> 00:44:38.152 It will only last for so long, and then it will be gone. 00:44:38.152 --> 00:44:41.653 How do we treat borrowed things in the world? 00:44:41.653 --> 00:44:45.137 Borrowed things, you think about them in a different way, right? 00:44:45.137 --> 00:44:49.364 If you borrow a car, you rent a car compared to actually buying one, 00:44:49.364 --> 00:44:50.797 it's a different feeling. 00:44:50.797 --> 00:44:55.299 You treat a rented car different from one that...I was going to say 'is yours' 00:44:55.299 --> 00:44:59.816 but 'you think is your own' is a much better way of putting it. 00:44:59.816 --> 00:45:01.181 You treat it differently. 00:45:01.181 --> 00:45:04.516 So all the things in that world that we actually are borrowed, 00:45:04.516 --> 00:45:06.730 once you start to look at it like that, 00:45:06.730 --> 00:45:09.369 your relationship to those things is different. 00:45:09.369 --> 00:45:11.775 You don't hold on so much anymore. 00:45:11.775 --> 00:45:13.400 You look at it in a different way. 00:45:13.400 --> 00:45:17.651 You realize you're going to have to find a deeper satisfaction and happiness 00:45:17.651 --> 00:45:19.184 somewhere else, 00:45:19.184 --> 00:45:22.131 because those borrowed goods are inherently unreliable. 00:45:22.131 --> 00:45:25.587 The things in your life, your house, your car, everything you own, 00:45:25.587 --> 00:45:28.200 your career, your status in this world, 00:45:28.200 --> 00:45:30.484 all the people that are closest to you, 00:45:30.484 --> 00:45:34.585 all of those things are ultimately borrowed goods. 00:45:34.585 --> 00:45:36.668 And once you start to see that, 00:45:36.668 --> 00:45:39.131 you start to treat these things in a different way. 00:45:39.131 --> 00:45:43.835 You start to look for real meaning, completeness, satisfaction, contentment, 00:45:43.835 --> 00:45:45.718 somewhere else in life. 00:45:45.718 --> 00:45:48.453 You start to lean towards the spiritual path. 00:45:48.453 --> 00:45:51.302 And of course, the power of the spiritual path is that 00:45:51.302 --> 00:45:54.454 all of those things that are borrowed goods, 00:45:54.454 --> 00:45:58.349 they become more meaningful as well, as you practice a spiritual path, 00:45:58.349 --> 00:46:02.284 because we're able to treat them more from a spiritual point of view. 00:46:02.284 --> 00:46:04.187 It makes them more meaningful. 00:46:04.187 --> 00:46:07.386 It makes the relationships better actually down the track. 00:46:07.386 --> 00:46:11.798 It makes your ability even to enjoy the worldly goods around you 00:46:11.798 --> 00:46:15.981 more wholesome, more pure, and therefore better as a consequence. 00:46:15.981 --> 00:46:18.989 This is the paradox of the spiritual path. 00:46:18.989 --> 00:46:21.816 It looks like I'm saying all of these negative things 00:46:21.816 --> 00:46:23.652 about all the things in the world, 00:46:23.652 --> 00:46:27.115 but actually, if you practice the spiritual path in the right way, 00:46:27.115 --> 00:46:30.588 the things of the world actually become more meaningful. 00:46:30.588 --> 00:46:34.417 They start to take on a new lease of life, so to speak, 00:46:34.417 --> 00:46:37.685 and they actually start to be able to use them in a proper way, 00:46:37.685 --> 00:46:41.415 a way that does not lead to just problems down the track. 00:46:41.415 --> 00:46:43.617 So you start living with kindness. 00:46:43.617 --> 00:46:47.768 You start living a life where you really care for the people around you. 00:46:47.768 --> 00:46:52.071 You try to say good things, kinds things, gentle things, 00:46:52.071 --> 00:46:56.119 things that unify people, things that are meaningful, purposeful, 00:46:56.119 --> 00:46:58.454 that actually go somewhere. 00:46:58.454 --> 00:47:01.472 You start to treat people with compassion and understanding. 00:47:01.472 --> 00:47:02.933 When you have an opportunity, 00:47:02.933 --> 00:47:05.348 you always do an act of kindness around you. 00:47:05.348 --> 00:47:08.469 I must admit that I'm very impressed with our president, 00:47:08.469 --> 00:47:12.920 because I'm part of the Committee of this Buddhist Society, I get all the emails 00:47:12.920 --> 00:47:14.767 being sent by the committee members. 00:47:14.767 --> 00:47:17.303 And he's really good with his words and his emails, 00:47:17.303 --> 00:47:20.334 I always think, wow, I should kind of up my game a little bit 00:47:20.334 --> 00:47:23.670 to be as good as Hock Chin. 00:47:23.670 --> 00:47:25.297 Very nice emails. 00:47:25.297 --> 00:47:26.963 If you get an email from Hock Chin… NOTE Paragraph 00:47:26.963 --> 00:47:30.092 ask him, please send me an email because it's gonna make your day. 00:47:30.092 --> 00:47:33.166 Sorry, Hock Chin.... (Ajahn laughs), 00:47:33.166 --> 00:47:35.638 I'm being naughty now. 00:47:35.638 --> 00:47:40.204 We start to think in the right way about how to use speech, 00:47:40.204 --> 00:47:43.195 how to use emails; all of these things in a positive way, 00:47:43.195 --> 00:47:44.939 to give other people a gift. 00:47:44.939 --> 00:47:49.967 I really like this idea, how speech can give gifts to people all the time. 00:47:49.967 --> 00:47:51.788 If we use speech wisely, 00:47:51.788 --> 00:47:54.838 saying something nice, saying something gentle, 00:47:54.838 --> 00:47:57.489 something that goes to the heart of other people, 00:47:57.489 --> 00:47:59.386 there's something beautiful about that. 00:47:59.386 --> 00:48:02.191 So often we speak, we have that opportunity. 00:48:02.191 --> 00:48:06.606 If that desire to speak gently is not there, hold back, don't speak now. 00:48:06.606 --> 00:48:09.691 Wait till desire actually arises. 00:48:09.691 --> 00:48:13.701 And this is how, gradually, things start to change. 00:48:13.701 --> 00:48:15.572 Things start to become meaningful. 00:48:15.572 --> 00:48:17.884 You start to think about the world in a new way. NOTE Paragraph 00:48:17.884 --> 00:48:20.033 You start to think about people in a new way, 00:48:20.033 --> 00:48:22.705 More compassion because you understand we're all trapped 00:48:22.705 --> 00:48:25.384 in this suffering together. Everyone is there. 00:48:25.384 --> 00:48:27.587 And it's no wonder people do bad things, NOTE Paragraph 00:48:27.587 --> 00:48:29.823 when they have so much suffering in their life.. 00:48:29.823 --> 00:48:31.238 Of course they do bad things. 00:48:31.238 --> 00:48:34.056 Come here, I'll give you a hug. Not me, someone else. 00:48:34.056 --> 00:48:36.151 I don't usually hug people. 00:48:36.151 --> 00:48:38.855 Well, really, I hug my mother, that's about it. 00:48:38.855 --> 00:48:44.302 So we do the right thing in this way. Thinking about the world in the right way. 00:48:44.302 --> 00:48:48.353 As we do that, this is what it means to paddle against that stream. 00:48:48.353 --> 00:48:50.169 Remember the stream in the beginning, 00:48:50.169 --> 00:48:52.614 leading to the saltwater crocodiles right? 00:48:52.614 --> 00:48:55.716 Now we're paddling away from the saltwater crocodiles. 00:48:55.716 --> 00:48:59.307 The saltwater crocodiles are fading away in the rear mirror. 00:48:59.307 --> 00:49:02.054 I'm not sure if the rafts have mirrors these days, 00:49:02.054 --> 00:49:05.486 but if it has a mirror, they're kind of fading away in the rear mirror. 00:49:05.486 --> 00:49:08.332 (Ajahn making a gesture of relief) Phew! Saltwater crocodiles. 00:49:08.332 --> 00:49:10.533 I’m getting close, that was like a close call. 00:49:10.533 --> 00:49:14.007 But anyway, so you have just made it. And you paddle against the stream. 00:49:14.007 --> 00:49:18.240 And as you paddle against the stream, the current becomes weaker. 00:49:18.240 --> 00:49:21.254 The current becomes weaker and weaker and weaker 00:49:21.254 --> 00:49:24.840 as you paddle against it... because you are reducing your defilements. 00:49:24.840 --> 00:49:26.320 You're becoming more kind, 00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:31.801 the craving, the anger, the normal habits of your mind are weakening as you do this. 00:49:31.801 --> 00:49:34.086 I don't know if you have seen this in your life, 00:49:34.086 --> 00:49:36.511 if you have lived a spiritual life for a long time, 00:49:36.511 --> 00:49:38.889 but I've seen it very clearly in my own life, 00:49:38.889 --> 00:49:41.037 how these things weaken over time, 00:49:41.037 --> 00:49:44.123 and actually you become a more good-hearted person over time, 00:49:44.123 --> 00:49:46.137 gradually, gradually developing. 00:49:46.137 --> 00:49:48.622 And then eventually there comes a day, 00:49:48.622 --> 00:49:52.483 when eventually you are so pure, it's almost no effort at all 00:49:52.483 --> 00:49:54.569 to paddle that raft anymore. 00:49:54.569 --> 00:49:58.985 And suddenly one day, you have a deep meditation, a deep insight 00:49:58.985 --> 00:50:03.023 into the nature of reality. And boom! you enter a new stream, 00:50:03.023 --> 00:50:07.021 going in exactly the opposite direction, going towards, not a 00:50:07.021 --> 00:50:12.308 whirlpool, not a shark, not a monster, not a saltwater crocodile, 00:50:12.308 --> 00:50:14.523 not even a freshwater crocodile; 00:50:14.523 --> 00:50:18.288 but going towards all the good things that you ever wanted in life. 00:50:18.288 --> 00:50:22.808 Everything you always were looking for, you've entered the stream of the Dhamma, 00:50:22.808 --> 00:50:26.767 moving in the right direction. And now there is no turning back. 00:50:26.767 --> 00:50:28.773 There's only one goal for you, and that is 00:50:28.773 --> 00:50:31.223 the highest happiness of the world. 00:50:31.223 --> 00:50:35.720 And that is where, that right stream, the stream of the Dharma 00:50:35.720 --> 00:50:38.696 as opposed to the stream of defilements, 00:50:38.696 --> 00:50:42.048 the stream that we're normally in, that is where it's heading for you. 00:50:42.048 --> 00:50:44.922 All you have to do is hang out on the path, 00:50:44.922 --> 00:50:49.937 listen to the beautiful word of the Buddha again, and again and again, 00:50:49.937 --> 00:50:52.354 and gradually make this change. 00:50:52.354 --> 00:50:57.320 One day, you too may enter that stream, heading for happiness all the way. 00:50:57.320 --> 00:51:01.736 Okay, that's the talk for this evening, thank you. 00:51:01.736 --> 00:51:06.186 Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu 00:51:06.186 --> 00:51:14.208 Okay, everyone, so are there any questions? Yes, please, Mr. President, 00:51:18.308 --> 00:51:20.872 Yeah. So for the New Year, they set goals, 00:51:20.872 --> 00:51:24.236 it can be financial, or whatever, 00:51:24.236 --> 00:51:28.724 so what is your advice from spiritual point of view? 00:51:28.724 --> 00:51:33.716 What goal we should have? Yes, that is a very, very good point, 00:51:33.716 --> 00:51:36.442 I should have talked about New Year's resolutions tonight. 00:51:36.442 --> 00:51:37.885 That was a missed opportunity. 00:51:37.885 --> 00:51:40.691 I should have talked about that; but now I have the chance, 00:51:40.691 --> 00:51:42.551 because you've asked this question. 00:51:42.551 --> 00:51:45.196 So what should be our New Year's resolution? 00:51:45.196 --> 00:51:47.646 What should be our goals as Buddhists? 00:51:47.646 --> 00:51:51.683 And increasing your bank account; I wouldn't recommend that one. 00:51:51.683 --> 00:51:53.770 It's not really a Buddhist kind of way. 00:51:53.770 --> 00:51:56.027 I mean, it's fine if your bank account increase, 00:51:56.027 --> 00:51:58.385 but that shouldn't be a goal as such. 00:51:58.385 --> 00:52:03.103 But I think, there can be many kinds of goals, 00:52:03.103 --> 00:52:06.231 but I think one of the important things when we have a resolution 00:52:06.231 --> 00:52:11.158 is to make it not too arduous, so we're actually able to fulfill it. 00:52:11.158 --> 00:52:13.462 I mean, one of the things that we see every year 00:52:13.462 --> 00:52:16.180 when people take up these resolutions, is that they fail. 00:52:16.180 --> 00:52:18.908 As soon as they start, they can; but after a week or two, 00:52:18.908 --> 00:52:20.483 too difficult, can't do it. 00:52:20.483 --> 00:52:24.532 So if you're going to do a resolution like meditation for example, 00:52:24.532 --> 00:52:27.667 start really low, put the bar as low as you can; 00:52:27.667 --> 00:52:31.831 five minutes a week, right? Everyone can do five minutes a week. 00:52:31.831 --> 00:52:34.698 And if you can't do that, okay, give up. 00:52:34.698 --> 00:52:38.465 Because the thing is that if you start low, 00:52:38.465 --> 00:52:41.995 and you have success and you enjoy it, it will encourage you, right? 00:52:41.995 --> 00:52:44.951 Then you will, of course, it's very easy to up that. 00:52:44.951 --> 00:52:47.282 And then you can do five minutes twice a week. 00:52:47.282 --> 00:52:49.579 And eventually we do 10 minutes every day maybe, 00:52:49.579 --> 00:52:51.682 and you can build up in that way. 00:52:51.682 --> 00:52:53.184 So put the bar very low; 00:52:53.184 --> 00:52:57.798 that's kind of the obvious thing, I think for New Year’s resolutions. 00:52:57.798 --> 00:53:02.563 But the most important thing on the spiritual path, 00:53:02.563 --> 00:53:05.551 the thing that kind of undergirds everything else. 00:53:05.551 --> 00:53:08.329 Actually, there's many different ways of looking at this; 00:53:08.329 --> 00:53:12.497 but the most important thing in the spiritual practice is always kindness. 00:53:12.497 --> 00:53:17.916 And the ability to live with kindness moment to moment, 00:53:17.916 --> 00:53:20.280 day in day out, year in year out, 00:53:20.280 --> 00:53:23.382 that is what is going to make this path really progresses. 00:53:23.382 --> 00:53:26.180 I'm always surprised when I read the suttas, how everything 00:53:26.180 --> 00:53:28.498 is kind of founded on kindness. 00:53:28.498 --> 00:53:33.198 Meditation is, according to the suttas, an automatic process. 00:53:33.198 --> 00:53:36.115 And you may wonder, how can that possibly be, you may wonder, 00:53:36.115 --> 00:53:38.321 because you sit down and the mind is always... 00:53:38.321 --> 00:53:41.577 not an automatic process at all, it's not going anywhere very often. 00:53:41.577 --> 00:53:43.799 Well, the reason why it isn't going anywhere 00:53:43.799 --> 00:53:47.969 is because the sīla, the virtue, the kindness is not profound enough yet. 00:53:47.969 --> 00:53:49.453 That is the reason. 00:53:49.453 --> 00:53:51.598 So one of the most important things in life 00:53:51.598 --> 00:53:54.085 for anyone who's really serious about this practice, 00:53:54.085 --> 00:53:57.752 is to put a lot of emphasis into the idea of kindness, 00:53:57.752 --> 00:54:02.467 moment to moment, verbal, bodily and mental. 00:54:02.467 --> 00:54:05.606 As soon as you see that you get a negative thought about someone, 00:54:05.606 --> 00:54:08.144 ask, 'How can I think about this person differently?' 00:54:08.144 --> 00:54:09.815 How can I see them with compassion? 00:54:09.815 --> 00:54:11.801 How can I see their good qualities? 00:54:11.801 --> 00:54:16.017 So that is what you should, that is to me, the most important one. 00:54:16.017 --> 00:54:18.623 Get that right, everything flows from there. 00:54:21.343 --> 00:54:23.849 Anyone else like to say anything here? 00:54:24.519 --> 00:54:27.749 Maybe this lady in front here, first of all. 00:54:28.369 --> 00:54:32.809 This lady in the middle, I think, in the center of the universe. 00:54:34.984 --> 00:54:44.641 (not audible) 00:54:48.221 --> 00:54:49.685 Thank you for the talk 00:54:49.685 --> 00:54:52.768 When you're talking about the stream, 00:54:52.768 --> 00:54:58.434 is it almost like a metaphor for the links of dependent origination? 00:54:58.434 --> 00:55:03.123 Dependent Origination.. yeah, I would say it is that as well, 00:55:03.123 --> 00:55:07.253 because that kind of shows you how the stream works. 00:55:07.253 --> 00:55:11.582 So, there are feelings, because we feel the world we crave. 00:55:11.582 --> 00:55:15.016 Because we crave the world we pick things up, all kinds of things 00:55:15.016 --> 00:55:16.869 metaphorically and literally. 00:55:16.869 --> 00:55:19.969 And because of that, we make kamma. 00:55:19.969 --> 00:55:23.283 Because we relate to the things that we pick up we make kamma, 00:55:23.283 --> 00:55:27.100 through that making of kamma we are reborn according to that kamma and craving. 00:55:27.100 --> 00:55:31.634 So indeed, it is very closely related to the idea of a stream; absolutely! 00:55:31.634 --> 00:55:35.868 Yeah, well done. You have passed; I was going to say 101, 00:55:35.868 --> 00:55:38.435 but this is like 104 maybe. 00:55:38.435 --> 00:55:41.734 (Ajahn laughs) That's good. 00:55:46.024 --> 00:55:49.237 Me again Ajahn Brahmali, A very interesting talk. 00:55:49.237 --> 00:55:51.768 Okay, good. 00:55:51.768 --> 00:55:55.335 Ajahn Brahmali, when you talk about streaming, 00:55:55.335 --> 00:55:59.117 you mentioned about the craving and the eight winds, 00:55:59.117 --> 00:56:03.151 is that streaming related to the stream entrance? 00:56:03.151 --> 00:56:11.207 Yes it is, exactly. Sotāpanna 'Sotā' is a stream; āpanna means attain; 00:56:11.207 --> 00:56:12.983 one who has attained the stream. 00:56:12.983 --> 00:56:14.755 So once you become a stream-enter, 00:56:14.755 --> 00:56:17.610 that is when you go the stream of the dhamma; Dhamma sotā 00:56:17.610 --> 00:56:20.200 and you head to awakening, you are heading to Nibbana, 00:56:20.200 --> 00:56:21.883 whether you want to or not. 00:56:21.883 --> 00:56:25.057 But I'm sure you will want to, so you'll be fine. 00:56:25.057 --> 00:56:27.437 What came to my mind when talking about streaming, 00:56:27.437 --> 00:56:29.305 I was thinking of the Buddha, 00:56:29.305 --> 00:56:33.257 Buddha was telling us we can read his teachings; 00:56:33.257 --> 00:56:37.755 we can hear his teaching, but that's not enough. 00:56:37.755 --> 00:56:41.769 He asked us to interact with his teachings. 00:56:41.769 --> 00:56:44.424 So the interaction is that streaming isn't t? 00:56:44.424 --> 00:56:47.437 Interact with the teachings. 00:56:47.437 --> 00:56:52.083 Our mind, our feelings, all these things that you mentioned about... 00:56:52.083 --> 00:56:54.287 you see what I mean? 00:56:54.287 --> 00:56:55.374 Yes you can interact.. 00:56:55.374 --> 00:56:57.738 I think I would just.... 00:56:57.738 --> 00:57:02.640 I would say that interaction to me is just the idea of doing the teachings, 00:57:02.640 --> 00:57:06.759 of following the teachings. That's what I would call that. 00:57:06.759 --> 00:57:08.839 And you can call it interaction in one way. 00:57:08.839 --> 00:57:13.104 One of the ways of interacting is to gain some joy out of the fact 00:57:13.104 --> 00:57:15.469 that you have the Buddha as your teacher. 00:57:15.469 --> 00:57:18.192 We don't fully understand who the Buddha is. 00:57:18.192 --> 00:57:20.269 If we really understood who the Buddha was, 00:57:20.269 --> 00:57:23.288 you would have such incredible joy that we have such a teacher. 00:57:23.288 --> 00:57:27.936 Because it is an extraordinary thing to have someone like a Buddha in the world. 00:57:27.936 --> 00:57:32.717 And that is to me, interaction, because then you're literally feeding off 00:57:32.717 --> 00:57:37.605 the fact that you have the Buddha and the Dhamma as your teachings. 00:57:37.605 --> 00:57:41.597 The reason why I asked is I also trying to link what you said..streaming... 00:57:43.087 --> 00:57:44.737 An Interesting talk, Thank you 00:57:44.737 --> 00:57:50.002 Excellent Eddy. Thank you. Anyone else? No one else? 00:57:50.710 --> 00:57:53.610 Everyone is quiet. Okay. Very good. 00:57:53.610 --> 00:57:58.654 So let's take a few from overseas. 00:57:58.654 --> 00:58:01.956 So we have a question from Gloria Wong. 00:58:01.956 --> 00:58:05.124 People always say that the Buddha is kind 00:58:05.124 --> 00:58:11.755 but I can't feel his kindness in the suttas. Why is that? 00:58:11.755 --> 00:58:17.237 Well, I think sometimes you can, sometimes you can see the kindness in the suttas. 00:58:17.237 --> 00:58:21.107 There are some very touching suttas with the Buddha, 00:58:21.107 --> 00:58:25.256 and one of them is where the Buddha finds a monk with dysentery. 00:58:25.256 --> 00:58:27.536 Dysentery is a very filthy illness, 00:58:27.536 --> 00:58:29.790 everything kind of comes out of your body. 00:58:29.790 --> 00:58:32.153 And the Buddha together with Venerable Ananda, 00:58:32.153 --> 00:58:36.435 they clean up this monk, yeah, it's kind of a very powerful sutta. 00:58:36.435 --> 00:58:38.835 So you do see that kindness sometimes. 00:58:38.835 --> 00:58:42.523 But I think a problem with the suttas is that the suttas are really just ... 00:58:42.523 --> 00:58:47.507 remember they are like distilled essence of the Dhamma. 00:58:47.507 --> 00:58:50.086 These have been refined over many, many centuries. 00:58:50.086 --> 00:58:53.974 In the beginning, the word of the Buddha was what they had, 00:58:53.974 --> 00:58:56.957 and then it was refined and systematized to some extent, 00:58:56.957 --> 00:58:59.724 and then we have the suttas coming from that. 00:58:59.724 --> 00:59:04.053 They have taken away so much of the human element in the suttas, 00:59:04.053 --> 00:59:07.817 and it has become like a kind of prose, 00:59:07.817 --> 00:59:11.237 the teachings of the Buddha on how to practice the path. 00:59:11.237 --> 00:59:15.873 There's very little kind of emotion and human interaction in the suttas. 00:59:15.873 --> 00:59:19.442 So, sometimes there is and sometimes you can see that coming through, 00:59:19.442 --> 00:59:21.124 but very often there is not. 00:59:21.124 --> 00:59:23.124 So they can often seem a bit dry. 00:59:23.124 --> 00:59:27.661 But if you look carefully, I think you will see the Buddha, the human being, 00:59:27.661 --> 00:59:29.726 the Buddha underneath the surface, 00:59:29.726 --> 00:59:33.054 and I think you're able to see a lot of kindness and compassion there, 00:59:33.054 --> 00:59:35.707 if you look at the suttas in the right way. 00:59:35.707 --> 00:59:41.208 Remember all the teachings of the suttas are an expression of that kindness really, 00:59:41.208 --> 00:59:45.516 because the Buddha is showing people the path to the highest happiness. 00:59:45.516 --> 00:59:47.621 What more can you give anyone in the world 00:59:47.621 --> 00:59:50.384 than the highest happiness? It's the highest gift, right? . 00:59:50.384 --> 00:59:53.923 You can't give anyone a higher gift than the highest happiness. 00:59:53.923 --> 00:59:57.969 So this is what every sutta is about, that gift of the highest happiness. 00:59:57.969 --> 01:00:01.674 And once you see that, you will see every sutta actually is 01:00:01.674 --> 01:00:05.017 through and through kindness. 01:00:05.017 --> 01:00:12.787 Okay, another one from someone called Ne Torre mo JD 01:00:12.787 --> 01:00:15.203 that's an interesting name. Okay, hello.... 01:00:15.203 --> 01:00:20.167 So anyway, your question is how to deal with negative cravings? 01:00:20.167 --> 01:00:24.972 Any concrete practices needed to accept and have positive thoughts of it? 01:00:24.972 --> 01:00:28.570 Often cravings bring satisfaction and happiness. 01:00:28.570 --> 01:00:32.369 I am not sure what you mean by negative cravings. 01:00:32.369 --> 01:00:34.901 Do you mean cravings to do bad stuff? 01:00:34.901 --> 01:00:38.486 Or do you mean ... what exactly do you mean by negative cravings? 01:00:38.486 --> 01:00:42.223 So I think one of the, 01:00:42.223 --> 01:00:45.356 like so many things on the Buddhist path; 01:00:45.356 --> 01:00:50.056 if it really is negative, and if it is bad kamma, 01:00:50.056 --> 01:00:53.407 then of course you just have to restrain yourself 01:00:53.407 --> 01:00:57.170 and you have to see the danger in going there 01:00:57.170 --> 01:00:59.368 and look towards the positive things, 01:00:59.368 --> 01:01:02.186 like with so many other things. Keep the five precepts, 01:01:02.186 --> 01:01:05.669 because if you don't keep the five precepts, you're gonna break them. 01:01:05.669 --> 01:01:08.286 It's like your determination to keep them basically, 01:01:08.286 --> 01:01:10.672 that's what I would call a negative craving. 01:01:10.672 --> 01:01:14.923 So if you want to kill someone, please don't kill anyone, because bad idea. 01:01:14.923 --> 01:01:17.042 And try to go even further than that, 01:01:17.042 --> 01:01:19.466 because that's not enough, just not to kill anyone, 01:01:19.466 --> 01:01:21.505 that's not going to get you all that far. 01:01:21.505 --> 01:01:22.710 Try to take it further. 01:01:22.710 --> 01:01:32.224 So first of all, try to kind of restrain those negative things. 01:01:32.224 --> 01:01:34.643 Don't follow them, know that they are bad. 01:01:34.643 --> 01:01:37.469 If you see them in your mind, just leave them in your mind, 01:01:37.469 --> 01:01:40.374 but don't follow those things. That's the first thing. 01:01:40.374 --> 01:01:42.865 The second thing is not to judge yourself. 01:01:42.865 --> 01:01:45.606 Because very often, when we say we don't want to go there, 01:01:45.606 --> 01:01:47.350 we judge ourselves very harshly. 01:01:47.350 --> 01:01:49.998 I shouldn't think like this, I shouldn't do that. 01:01:49.998 --> 01:01:51.889 But please don't do that. 01:01:51.889 --> 01:01:53.822 Because you, every one of us, 01:01:53.822 --> 01:01:58.858 we are the sum of the conditioning that has worked on us 01:01:58.858 --> 01:02:00.687 for innumerable lifetimes. 01:02:00.687 --> 01:02:02.824 We are built up to be like this. 01:02:02.824 --> 01:02:06.456 And because we have become like this, we can't really help those things. 01:02:06.456 --> 01:02:09.263 They are there. They're part of what has actually come to be 01:02:09.263 --> 01:02:11.351 through all these conditioning processes. 01:02:11.351 --> 01:02:14.379 So don't judge yourself. Instead be kind to yourself, 01:02:14.379 --> 01:02:17.373 because you are the victim of those cravings. 01:02:17.373 --> 01:02:22.148 You are the victim of those bad habits. Far better to see yourself as a victim. 01:02:22.148 --> 01:02:25.782 It's not anyone else who is the perpetrator, 01:02:25.782 --> 01:02:28.621 there is no perpetrator, but you are still the victim. 01:02:28.621 --> 01:02:30.349 And we are all a bit like that. 01:02:30.349 --> 01:02:33.515 And once you understand that you are the victim of these things, 01:02:33.515 --> 01:02:36.300 then you start to think "Well, what is the way out"? 01:02:36.300 --> 01:02:38.287 Then you can look at it neutrally. 01:02:38.287 --> 01:02:42.974 You don't react in a negative way, which destroys the ability for having insight. 01:02:42.974 --> 01:02:44.302 Instead you become neutral, 01:02:44.302 --> 01:02:48.118 and you say, let me look at this thing carefully with mindfulness 01:02:48.118 --> 01:02:50.625 and see what the cause is, what the problem is, 01:02:50.625 --> 01:02:53.887 and then when I understand that, then I can start to shift direction, 01:02:53.887 --> 01:02:58.133 I can start to understand, why is it that I have these negative cravings? 01:02:58.133 --> 01:03:00.039 What is driving this process? 01:03:00.039 --> 01:03:01.820 Maybe it's just foolishness. 01:03:01.820 --> 01:03:05.267 And one day it will just switch off like that (Ajahn snaps his fingers), 01:03:05.267 --> 01:03:09.187 because you have understood the problem. 01:03:09.187 --> 01:03:11.933 Often cravings bring satisfaction and happiness, 01:03:11.933 --> 01:03:15.233 Yes, often they do bring satisfaction and happiness, 01:03:15.233 --> 01:03:19.800 and this is part of the problem. Because this is why we follow them, right? 01:03:19.800 --> 01:03:22.183 So you have to remember the downside. 01:03:22.183 --> 01:03:26.571 It's only when you remember the downside that you can steer in the right direction. 01:03:26.571 --> 01:03:29.064 And the Buddha talks about this in the suttas, 01:03:29.064 --> 01:03:32.280 he talks about the benefit of something, the downside or something 01:03:32.280 --> 01:03:34.020 and then the escape. 01:03:34.020 --> 01:03:36.511 Asadha, adhinava, nissarana; 01:03:36.511 --> 01:03:39.351 three factors that he talks about everywhere in the suttas. 01:03:39.351 --> 01:03:42.867 And the downside is always greater than the upside. 01:03:42.867 --> 01:03:45.655 That's why we have all those saltwater crocodiles. 01:03:45.655 --> 01:03:48.957 I love the saltwater crocodiles. Don't you think they're pretty cool? 01:03:48.957 --> 01:03:50.555 I really find that really cool. 01:03:50.555 --> 01:03:53.438 Because you have to be Australian to understand that. 01:03:53.438 --> 01:03:56.803 I'm Australian enough to understand the meaning of that. 01:03:56.803 --> 01:04:00.338 I'm really kind of proud of that. So I thought that was really cool. 01:04:00.338 --> 01:04:02.737 Okay, anyway. Next one. 01:04:02.737 --> 01:04:09.136 This is someone who calls themselves Vegan Kind; Vegan Kind, okay. 01:04:09.136 --> 01:04:14.703 Is that your real name or kind of your pen name, so to speak? Anyway.. 01:04:14.703 --> 01:04:21.066 The question--when I create, I suffer as a result of identification with it, 01:04:21.066 --> 01:04:24.652 and attachment to it; the final result of a project? 01:04:24.652 --> 01:04:29.888 How can I think about things more wisely in this respect? 01:04:29.888 --> 01:04:32.352 That's a very good question. 01:04:32.352 --> 01:04:36.155 Because you identify with things and you create things then you 01:04:36.155 --> 01:04:40.803 kind of have a problem down the track. 01:04:40.803 --> 01:04:46.189 So what you have to do is that you have to do things 01:04:46.189 --> 01:04:52.723 not because you want to build something, but because you want to live well. 01:04:52.723 --> 01:04:58.277 Whenever you do something, do it because you want to be kind to the world; 01:04:58.277 --> 01:05:00.822 because you want to leave something for someone else 01:05:00.822 --> 01:05:02.653 out of generosity or kindness. 01:05:02.653 --> 01:05:04.821 That's why you should do things in this life. 01:05:04.821 --> 01:05:08.317 Not because it is something necessarily for you. 01:05:08.317 --> 01:05:12.351 And the best example for me of this, this is in a little book called 01:05:12.351 --> 01:05:16.390 The Karuna Virus which we have published in 01:05:16.390 --> 01:05:19.939 connection with the corona pandemic and has stories about Ajahn Brahm, 01:05:19.939 --> 01:05:22.383 and one of the stories in there about Ajahn Brahm, 01:05:22.383 --> 01:05:25.840 which maybe not that many people had heard until that book came out. 01:05:25.840 --> 01:05:30.969 This is a story of the fire that we had at Bodhinyana Monastery in 1991. 01:05:30.969 --> 01:05:36.436 By 1991, Ajahn Brahm had worked on that monastery day and night, 01:05:36.436 --> 01:05:40.672 Ajahn Brahm was, he still is, an incredibly hard worker. 01:05:40.672 --> 01:05:42.786 And in those days, even more hard working, 01:05:42.786 --> 01:05:45.671 because his stomach wasn't in the way for all the hard work, 01:05:45.671 --> 01:05:48.388 so it was easier for him to kind of work properly. 01:05:48.388 --> 01:05:50.500 So he worked really, really hard. 01:05:50.500 --> 01:05:53.840 Also he is very intelligent, he picks up things very fast 01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:57.276 because of his, whatever it is background, or kamma or whatever. 01:05:57.276 --> 01:06:01.304 So he built up this monastery, worked seven days a week, sometimes 01:06:01.304 --> 01:06:06.173 having flood lights to be able to see at night, and all these kinds of things. 01:06:06.173 --> 01:06:11.372 Yeah, Main Hall, Dana Sala, and this was his life's work. 01:06:11.372 --> 01:06:14.285 Eight years of work in this monastery. 01:06:14.285 --> 01:06:16.222 And then comes the fire. 01:06:16.222 --> 01:06:18.506 Fire comes.. this is like the biggest bushfire.. 01:06:18.506 --> 01:06:24.434 That day was the hottest day so far in Perth area, 46 point something degrees, 01:06:24.434 --> 01:06:27.239 super, super hot and the fire comes. 01:06:27.239 --> 01:06:30.932 And of course when a fire comes with that heat, in Western Australia, 01:06:30.932 --> 01:06:33.503 in the middle of summer, that was the 30th of January. 01:06:33.503 --> 01:06:37.371 In the middle of summer, everything is kind of dry as bones. 01:06:37.371 --> 01:06:39.326 And really, really bad. 01:06:39.326 --> 01:06:41.907 And of course, everyone says everything is gonna go, 01:06:41.907 --> 01:06:42.906 this is it. 01:06:42.906 --> 01:06:45.905 Everything is going to be kind of gone. 01:06:45.905 --> 01:06:50.570 And of course most people, if your life's work is going to be gone. 01:06:50.570 --> 01:06:54.136 If you spent eight years or something, working day and night 01:06:54.136 --> 01:06:58.438 to build something, if that is gonna go, you feel a sense of despair. 01:06:58.438 --> 01:07:01.573 Oh, no, this is terrible. What am I going to do? 01:07:01.573 --> 01:07:04.937 And you kind of go crazy, maybe you cry, maybe you shout, 01:07:04.937 --> 01:07:08.307 maybe you do bad things as a consequence. 01:07:08.307 --> 01:07:10.754 People do bad things when these things happen. 01:07:10.754 --> 01:07:15.841 And so, what happened with Ajahn Brahm was kind of really fascinating. 01:07:15.841 --> 01:07:18.209 This is what he told me personally. 01:07:18.209 --> 01:07:20.736 Of course he might deny that is exactly what he said; 01:07:20.736 --> 01:07:23.424 but this is how I remember it anyway. 01:07:23.424 --> 01:07:28.390 What he said was ‘at that moment, when I realized what was going on, 01:07:28.390 --> 01:07:30.991 I was able to let it go, just like that. (Ajahn snaps his fingers) 01:07:30.991 --> 01:07:34.741 And when I eventually got out of the monastery to a safe place, 01:07:34.741 --> 01:07:38.541 I knew that if the monastery would burn down completely 01:07:38.541 --> 01:07:40.472 and be gone on the following day, 01:07:40.472 --> 01:07:43.807 I would just go back and start from square one. 01:07:43.807 --> 01:07:45.508 And he said the reason is, 01:07:45.508 --> 01:07:48.756 ‘because I didn't build the monastery to create a monastery, 01:07:48.756 --> 01:07:52.076 I built the monastery to create something good in the world, 01:07:52.076 --> 01:07:55.204 out of generosity, out of kindness for future generations, 01:07:55.204 --> 01:07:57.449 to build up Buddhism in Western Australia. 01:07:57.449 --> 01:07:59.091 It was an act of kindness. 01:07:59.091 --> 01:08:03.052 The result in terms of bricks and mortar was not important. 01:08:03.052 --> 01:08:05.285 What was important was the act of kindness. 01:08:05.285 --> 01:08:10.219 And that act of kindness could always be carried on, on the following day. 01:08:10.219 --> 01:08:13.322 That is the kind of attitude, right? 01:08:13.322 --> 01:08:18.419 You're doing things not because they mean anything in the material realm. 01:08:18.419 --> 01:08:21.923 You do things because they mean something in the spiritual realm. 01:08:21.923 --> 01:08:24.491 They are acts of kindness, act of generosity, 01:08:24.491 --> 01:08:26.425 acts of purity of the heart. 01:08:26.425 --> 01:08:29.970 Then you can never go wrong, then you never lose out. 01:08:29.970 --> 01:08:34.672 So if you can use a little bit of that kind of attitude in your creative work, 01:08:34.672 --> 01:08:38.278 then I think you will gradually move in a good direction, 01:08:38.278 --> 01:08:42.956 and you won't attach quite so much perhaps. So best of luck. 01:08:42.956 --> 01:08:46.819 A couple of more quick questions. 01:08:46.819 --> 01:08:48.549 Next one is from YC Tan. 01:08:48.549 --> 01:08:53.582 Dear Ajahn, how do we help siblings and parents who live together, 01:08:53.582 --> 01:08:57.754 but constantly quarrel over material things? 01:08:57.754 --> 01:09:04.396 We encourage kindness, prayer, volunteering, etc. But nothing is working. 01:09:07.176 --> 01:09:10.806 This is a standard question I get so often. 01:09:10.806 --> 01:09:13.659 How do we change other people? That's kind of the question. 01:09:13.659 --> 01:09:15.457 How do we change other people? 01:09:15.457 --> 01:09:17.508 And that's kind of always the question. 01:09:17.508 --> 01:09:21.730 So then, the best way to change others, of course is to change yourself. 01:09:21.745 --> 01:09:27.042 You are the one, the only person you can really change in the world. 01:09:27.042 --> 01:09:30.508 And this is kind of one of the harsh realities of life, 01:09:30.508 --> 01:09:35.678 is that our ability even to change ourselves is so difficult, right? 01:09:35.678 --> 01:09:40.013 If you try to change, try to be more kind, try to be less whatever, 01:09:40.013 --> 01:09:42.270 actually it's very hard. 01:09:42.270 --> 01:09:44.727 If I say to you 'be less angry', 'OK!' 01:09:44.727 --> 01:09:47.826 It takes time. It's difficult to do that.' 01:09:47.826 --> 01:09:51.057 And so even though it is so hard to change ourselves, 01:09:51.057 --> 01:09:53.206 we demand that other people change. 01:09:53.206 --> 01:09:56.022 But remember that they are in deep ruts, 01:09:56.022 --> 01:09:59.376 they are in deep habits. It is difficult for them to change too. 01:09:59.376 --> 01:10:01.540 If they are used to arguing with each other, 01:10:01.540 --> 01:10:04.155 they probably enjoy that argument to some extent. 01:10:04.155 --> 01:10:07.575 That's how people are. We enjoy an argument; we enjoy being angry, 01:10:07.575 --> 01:10:11.672 we enjoy doing all kinds of crazy stuff in this world. 01:10:11.672 --> 01:10:15.976 So the most important thing for you to do very often 01:10:15.976 --> 01:10:18.778 for other people is to be the example, 01:10:18.778 --> 01:10:20.388 the example of harmony, 01:10:20.388 --> 01:10:24.159 the example person who shows an alternative way of being. 01:10:24.159 --> 01:10:26.391 That is one of the most important things. 01:10:26.391 --> 01:10:30.741 And then as you do that, gradually, gradually, things may turn around. 01:10:30.741 --> 01:10:34.409 And of course, if you have the ability to kind of guide them towards 01:10:34.409 --> 01:10:37.010 some kind of dhamma teaching, that's wonderful. 01:10:37.010 --> 01:10:40.256 Remember, because you are the son and the sibling, 01:10:40.256 --> 01:10:43.990 very often as the son and the sibling, they're not gonna listen to you. 01:10:43.990 --> 01:10:47.339 Because parents don't often listen to the children all that much. 01:10:47.339 --> 01:10:50.491 Or siblings... yeah, you're just my brother, shut up. 01:10:50.491 --> 01:10:53.446 I don't want to hear from you. Sometimes it's a bit like that. 01:10:53.446 --> 01:10:55.934 But if you get an authority figure that they trust, 01:10:55.934 --> 01:10:58.738 this is one of the critical things. Get an authority figure, 01:10:58.738 --> 01:11:01.328 get Ajahn Bram, right? Invite Ajahn Brahm to a Dana. 01:11:01.328 --> 01:11:03.970 Actually I shouldn't say that poor Ajahn Brahm. 01:11:03.970 --> 01:11:09.042 It's very difficult to get Ajahn Brahm for danas these days. 01:11:09.042 --> 01:11:12.610 Get some.. get them to listen to an authority figure. 01:11:12.610 --> 01:11:17.390 And if you can, invite them to a dana or at least come to somewhere 01:11:17.390 --> 01:11:21.790 Ajahn Brahm is available for receiving the food. And then go up to Ajahn Brahm 01:11:21.790 --> 01:11:24.514 and give a leading question to Ajahan Brahm 01:11:24.514 --> 01:11:28.946 ''Ajahn, should there be harmony or quarreling in a family? 01:11:28.946 --> 01:11:32.365 What do you think? Can you talk about that? Something like that. 01:11:32.365 --> 01:11:34.244 And let's see what happens. 01:11:34.244 --> 01:11:36.543 And Ajahn will probably crack a few good jokes, 01:11:36.543 --> 01:11:40.491 everyone will laugh, maybe that will kind of .. and a bit of good dhamma in there. 01:11:40.491 --> 01:11:43.378 And then you might be in business; something like that. 01:11:43.378 --> 01:11:46.846 But don't expect change. I think this is the important thing. 01:11:46.877 --> 01:11:50.328 Try to help them, encourage them, but if you expect change, NOTE Paragraph 01:11:50.328 --> 01:11:54.075 you're asking for suffering for yourself. 01:11:54.075 --> 01:11:58.257 Last question, which is good, because I'm getting a bit tired now. 01:11:58.257 --> 01:12:02.462 This is from Richard Upton Pickman from Scotland, 01:12:02.462 --> 01:12:08.987 I listen to you Ajahn, I want to leave my worldly life behind and become a monk. 01:12:08.987 --> 01:12:14.326 But! ... but .. I am married. And I don't want to break my commitment. 01:12:14.326 --> 01:12:17.940 How do I reconcile these cravings? 01:12:17.940 --> 01:12:23.295 Okay, so you have to make the most; if you don't want to break a commitment, 01:12:23.295 --> 01:12:26.660 you have to make the most out of your married life. Yeah. 01:12:26.660 --> 01:12:30.575 But the ideal thing to do, and this is the ideal thing to do, 01:12:30.575 --> 01:12:35.874 your wife also wants to become a nun. She becomes a nun, you become a monk. 01:12:35.874 --> 01:12:38.864 That is the ideal. That's what I really recommend. 01:12:38.864 --> 01:12:44.945 So your main job is now to convince your wife that nuns are really cool, 01:12:44.945 --> 01:12:46.524 they are the best. Yeah. 01:12:46.524 --> 01:12:49.526 Nuns are kind of.. this is the path to the highest happiness. 01:12:49.526 --> 01:12:52.612 And that may be impossible. Maybe your wife is not up for that. 01:12:52.612 --> 01:12:54.412 But anyway, that's kind of the ideal. 01:12:54.412 --> 01:12:56.735 And we have some examples of that here in Perth. 01:12:56.735 --> 01:13:00.927 We have one monk who was a monk at Bodhinyana Monastery 01:13:00.927 --> 01:13:04.414 and a Nun at Dhammasara Monastery, and they decided to do just that, 01:13:04.414 --> 01:13:05.870 they became a monk and a nun, 01:13:05.870 --> 01:13:09.209 and I think they are much more happy now than they were before. 01:13:09.209 --> 01:13:11.711 That's kind of a good, good news. 01:13:11.711 --> 01:13:14.764 There are some very interesting stories from the suttas. 01:13:14.764 --> 01:13:17.884 According to the story, Venerable Maha Kassapa, 01:13:17.884 --> 01:13:20.228 one of the great monks at the time of the Buddha, 01:13:20.228 --> 01:13:25.994 he was married, he had this very wonderful wife before, he was (married). 01:13:25.994 --> 01:13:29.610 They decided to split up, she became a nun, he became a monk. 01:13:29.610 --> 01:13:32.980 And I think they both became Arahants, fully enlightened. 01:13:32.980 --> 01:13:35.725 So that is what I recommend you to do. 01:13:35.725 --> 01:13:37.118 And if that doesn't work out, 01:13:37.118 --> 01:13:38.615 the kind of the second option, 01:13:38.615 --> 01:13:42.175 this is a low, much, much lower option, is way down the scale. 01:13:42.175 --> 01:13:46.171 This is what you really should do if you have tried everything 01:13:46.171 --> 01:13:47.594 to make your wife into a Nun 01:13:47.594 --> 01:13:50.161 and if that doesn't work, you really have to try hard, 01:13:50.161 --> 01:13:52.918 then the second option- make the most of your married life. 01:13:52.918 --> 01:13:55.992 A married life lived well can take you a long way on the path 01:13:55.992 --> 01:13:57.514 if you do it in a good way. 01:13:57.514 --> 01:14:02.057 I see a lot of married people around the world who are very, very good people 01:14:02.057 --> 01:14:05.675 and they are using the married life to progress in the Dhamma. 01:14:05.675 --> 01:14:09.253 If you do that well, do that in the right way, you can go a long way. 01:14:09.253 --> 01:14:11.938 But still better to become a monk and nun. 01:14:11.938 --> 01:14:13.320 (Ajahn laughs) 01:14:13.720 --> 01:14:16.246 OK, Thank you everyone for this evening. 01:14:16.246 --> 01:14:18.903 So let's pay respects to the Buddha Dhamma Sangha 01:14:18.903 --> 01:14:21.564 before we call it a day.