[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited.]
Dear Sangha, this autumn the topic that
we will be looking into is the
Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing.
And last week we heard a Dharma Talk from Sister Doan Nghiem
about the origin of,... the founder of the school to which we belong in the
Plum Village tradition, called the Lieu Quan School.
And so today, we will continue by looking
at some of the foundations of ethics which
lie at the basis of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings,
in Buddhism and in the Plum Village Tradition.
So if you were here last week, you can remember that Master Lieu Quan
wrote a poem, or a gatha, which was what
we call a lineage poem, and each word of
that poem represents one generation of the
continuation of Master Lieu Quan,
his spiritual continuation in the Lieu Quan School, the Lieu Quan line.
So the first name is his own name,
and the second word... the first word is his own name,
and the second one is the name he gave his own disciples in his lifetime.
And the third word is the disciples of his disciples.
So we belong to the ninth generation,
so we are, ... we have the name "tâm", meaning heart.
If you have received the Five Mindfulness Trainings,
you'll have the name "heart" in it.
So that is the ninth word of the poem.
And now I would like to look at that line.
The poem has four words to a line.
So we now look at that line of the poem.
And today I have an opportunity to practice walking meditation.
So the source of mind penetrates everywhere.
From the roots of virtue springs compassion.
Something like that.
That is Thầy's translation that you will see if you receive the
Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings and you have the certificate,
I think in English you will see something like that.
So, it's like you have a source of water
on the mountain, and the water goes everywhere down the mountain,
and it penetrates into the earth, in many, many places.
And, here, it really says "the roots of virtue".
And this word here, "phong", this word means something like...
You have it in Vietamese or Chinese in "phong tục ?", "phong ?".
So it means something like a custom.
A custom, or a way, or a tradition.
And this word here, "từ" is usually translated as loving kindness,
but Thầy translates as compassion,
because the word stands for "từ bi",
which means loving kindness and compassion.
So, from the roots of virtue, we have
the custom of compassion, of loving kindness,
the tradition of compassion or loving kindness.
And sometimes we have a movement,
like the movement, the Wake-up movement
is called the young Buddhists and non-Buddhists for a compassionate society.
So here the idea is compassion of a whole society, compassion of a tradition,
or a custom of compassion.
Nowadays, people use the word compassion
quite a lot. And neuroscientists are very
interested in compassion.
And those neuroscientists who are familiar with Tibetan Buddhism and have
talked to the Dalai Lama,
they also are very interested in where you can find compassion in your brain.
Whereabouts compassion comes from, in your brain.
And if the human brain has compassion,
does it mean that animal brain also has compassion?
Because people used to say that human beings
are capable of ethical behavior,
human beings are capable of compassion,
and that is where they differ from animals.
But now we see that the human is really just another animal.
And so the human brain is a continuation of the animal brain.
And it's not very different from the animal brain.
So that is another thing that we need to look into.
We usually think that as human beings,
we're something quite exclusive.
And, is that better?
We're quite exclusive, and we have something special
that the animals don't have.
So I remember once, some neuroscientists were doing an experiment to prove that
rats had compassion.
So they taught the rat how to open the cage.
And they had one rat that's free, not in a cage.
And another rat is in the cage.
And they saw that the rat who was free,
he knew how to open the cage,
and he let the rat out, the other rat out.
So it was free.
So the scientist was happy, and he said,
"Oh, now we know that the animals, they also have compassion for each other.
The rat didn't want the other rat to suffer in the cage, so he let him out."
And then another scientist came along and
said, "How do you know?"
"Maybe he just wanted a friend to play with,
so he was letting it out for his own selfish motivation."
So we always can find a way to prove that
human beings are a little bit special.
But it's very important, how, how can we,
how can we found, how can we establish,
how can we help establish a compassionate society,
where the custom, the culture, is a culture of compassion.
And if compassion is something that is
innate in our brain, then we just need to
find ways in order to be able to help that,
that seed as we call it in Buddhism,
to flourish, to grow into a plant in human beings.
So if we come back again to neuroscience.
So scientists use the word empathy.
I wanted to find out what that word is in Vietnamese, and I haven't found it.
All I found was "thấu cảm"(?).
,But I think it doesn't mean empathy, so I won't write it down.
But empathy is something that animals have in their ...
They've found the place in the brain
where empathy comes from.
And empathy means that you can feel the suffering of another person.
You can know that another person is suffering.
And it has an effect on you.
When you see another person suffering,
you also feel uncomfortable.
You don't feel happy.
So that is what is called empathy.
And you see another person happy,
you can also feel happy.
So, if we have empathy,
we have the possibility also to have compassion.
But empathy itself is not compassion.
So empathy belongs to some region of the brain, and then it's linked up with
compassion, which lights up another region of the brain.
So scientists say that empathy can result
in two different things.
And one is compassion.
And the other they call empathetic distress.
So when you have compassion,
then your feeling is directed to the other person.
And in this case, this is called self-directed.
And then, your emotion here,
where there is compassion, the emotion is one of loving kindness or happiness
or both.
So in this case, the emotion is one of stress.
And that is suffering.
And these things lead to health.
And these things lead to ill-health.
I think this is what we've heard Thầy say for a long time.
That when we have a thought of compassion,
it immediately brings us health, and it brings more health to the world.
And without compassion, we cannot have real happiness.
Compassion brings us a lot of happiness.
And when you feel compassion for another person,
the first one who benefits from that feeling
of compassion is the person who feels it,
even before they have done something
to help the other person,
they already feel better, because of
the compassion in their heart.
So, another thing they say here is "approach"
and here is "withdrawal".
So I think that it is easy for us when
we are in touch with another person who is suffering, or an animal who is suffering,
or any kind of suffering in society,
to be able to tell, what is arising in us?
Is compassion arising? Or is what is called empathetic distress arising in us?
That is, we want to withdraw.
It's too much for us: the suffering is too much for us,
of the other person.
And this is kind of when we have burn-out.
People who are working in the environmental movement, or
some other movement to help the world.
And they feel that they're not making any
progress, then rather than feel compassion
when looking at the suffering,
they feel distress.
And frustration.
So now, many psychotherapists will teach
their patients to practise loving kindness
meditation, compassion meditation.
Because they see that happiness is possible when we can feel compassion.
And they have done, neuroscientists have done research,
and even people who only practise loving kindness meditation for 7 days,
they already see a change in their neuro-pathways.
So just like mindfulness has become something very widespread
in society now, without being called a Buddhist practice,
a practice that anyone can do whether they have religion or not,
loving kindness meditation is also becoming like that.
You don't have to be a Buddhist to do it,
although it began in Buddhism.
So you know that when you do loving kindness meditation,
the first object of your meditation is yourself.
"May I be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit."
You have to really feel that for yourself.
That is something you really want.
And when you can have it, you can have a lot of happiness.
And if you don't feel it for yourself,
then it's not easy to feel it for another person.
And then the next part of the loving kindness meditation is
"May I be safe and free from accident."
That is something we all want.
We all want to be able to feel absolutely safe, where nothing can harm us.
Whether we can find a place like that or not is another matter.
But we have a deep desire to safe and free from accident.
So we have to recognize that desire.
And then we recognize that everyone else also has that desire.
And so then we go on to someone who is a friend of ours.
"May he, or may she, be happy, peaceful and light in body and in spirit."
"May he or she be safe and free from accident."
And that is also quite easy for us to do for a friend of ours.
And then we take as the object someone who is neutral to us --
somebody who you don't particularly like
or somebody you don't have any bad feeling about.
But somebody you meet from time to time.
And you wish it for them.
And the interesting thing is that is when
you wish for a person who is neutral to you,
"May he or she be happy, peaceful and light in body and spirit"
suddenly that person is no longer neutral.
That person becomes, through your meditation,
somebody you have friendly feelings to.
And then we should take, we should take
someone who causes us difficulties.
And while we meditate,
"May he or she be happy, peaceful and light"
we come into contact with the body and the feelings of that person
that we are meditating on, and we begin
to understand them better.
We understand that just as we have a
deep need to be safe,
that person who causes us to suffer, has a deep need to be safe also.
And we will be able through that kind
of meditation to change our way of thinking
about the person who makes us suffer.
And this change, it actually can be noticed
by neuroscientists who do FMRI on the
brain of the practionner.
It is a way of developing happiness.
It's a way of developing health.
And when I first came to Buddhism,
I thought that everything we did,
every practice we did,
was to be able to help other people.
So metta meditation is not for my benefit,
but for the benefit of other beings.
And
then you realize that it is also benefitting yourself.
And now, when metta meditation is becoming
something widespread, it's really done
with the idea that it is to help yourself.
That is what comes first.
First of all, it will help you, and then,
as a kind of spinoff,
it will help other people as well.
So the motivation is a little bit different.
But however, once you begin to practise,
then your motivation also begins to change.
It's like once you begin to practise mindfulness, at first you do it
just for yourself. But then you see that
practising mindfulness, you're helping others as well,
and your motivation becomes one
to help others too --- it's what you want to do, is to help others.
In the beginning, you just wanted to help yourself.
So when I consider these things that are happening in our society,
even though we may be doing it for ourself in the first place,
I also consider that we are going in the right direction,
to try and form a compassionate society, a compassionate culture.
[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited.]
And people also talk about two kinds of compassion.
But I don't know if it's quite correct to do that.
On the one hand, compassion that is emotional and intuitive.
And on the other hand, compassion that is more rational and more explicit.
That is something that you can talk about more.
As human beings, we have both these sides to us.
We have both the rational side,
and we have the emotional side.
And as far as I understand it, compassion
should contain both of those elements.
We often have moral dilemmas.
We don't quite know what we should do
in a certain situation.
And sometimes we use our reasoning.
And sometimes we use our emotions more
when we want to decide what to do.
Not long ago, on a retreat,
my younger sister asked me
"Should I go and help this layperson?"
"Should I go on my own and help this layperson?
"Or should I stay in the retreat and be present at the Dharma Sharing?"
So, when I was asked that question,
of course my training immediately came up:
you should stay in the Dharma Sharing,
because in the Dharma Sharing you will help many people.
But if you just go on your own and help one layperson,
you will only help one person.
So with my rational mind, it was clear what we should do.
But as I followed my breathing,
and I looked, just stopped all my thinking,
then I suddenly felt there is something not right.
And, eh, I didn't know why.
But intuitively and emotionally, I felt
I should let my sister go and help that layperson.
And my sister said, " I don't mind either way."
"If you tell me to stay, I'll be happy to stay."
"If you tell me to go, I'll be happy to go."
So, sometimes, we have a moral dilemma
like that and we, we don't know whether
to use more of our rational side
or more of our emotional side.
But I have a lot trust in the Store Consciousness.
That is the more unconscious side of my mind.
Sometimes, of course, from our Store Consciousness,
we have an intuition which comes from
habit energy in our Store Consciousness.
Because we've done it like that for so long,
we intuitively want to do that out of our habit energy.
But if our mind is clear,
if we follow our breathing
and empty our mind of all thinking,
it's an opportunity for an intuitive insight to come up.
And we can sometimes use that in making a moral decision.
But we have to make sure that we are very calm, and very clear
when the insight comes up.
And then we feel, "yes, I've done my best.
I've looked into the rational side.
I've also allowed the emotional side.
And then, I've asked both sides to be quiet, and allowed the intuition to come up.
And that is the wonderful thing about
Buddhist ethics is that every situation is a little bit different.
We cannot have a blueprint and say
it's always wrong to do this;
it's always right to do something else.
And it's also the difficulty about Buddhist ethics.
Sometimes if you have what is called
a deontological ethic, which says
you have to do this or you can't do this
and you have to do that, it's easy.
You just say, "Oh, I'll do that."
But then you feel it's not quite right.
But in Buddhism, every situation
we have to use our compassion,
our deep looking,
our mindfulness, concentration and insight
in order to be able to make a decision.
And of course, to make a decision on your own is not the best thing.
It's far better to do it together,
as a Sangha.
When it's a difficult, moral dilemma,
one pair of eyes, one intuition from one Store Consciousness,
is not nearly as sure and as safe
as an intuition that comes from many, many people.
[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited.]
When I received the 14 Mindfulness Trainings in 1988,
they were very different from how they are now.
The spirit was not different at all,
but the wording was very different.
So a training would start off with
"không thể", you cannot, you should not.
And then more recently,
the trainings have been revised.
And each one begins with the word "aware".
Very often it's "Aware of the suffering..."
"Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance,
I am determined to...
I don't know .. to let go of my... I can't remember, never mind.
And then the second one,
"Aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions,
I am determined to listen deeply to other people."
And the third Mindfulness Training:
"Aware of the suffering created when I cannot, no, by forcing others to accept
my viewpoint, something like that.
"Aware of the suffering created when we impose our views on others,
and aware that lack of communication always brings suffering...
And the Ninth Mindfulness Training:
"Aware that words can create suffering or happiness...
And the Eleventh Mindfulness Training:
"Aware that great violence and injustice have been done to our environment and society...
"Aware that much suffering is created by war and by conflict...
"Aware that sex motivated by craving will create more suffering...
So, at the basis of ethics is the awareness of suffering,
the first Noble Truth.
And that is something that we can
practise rationally with our intellectual mind
to look deeply and see the suffering.
But we have to allow our emotional mind,
our emotional part, also to feel the suffering.
before we really can make the determination
to do something in order to help
alleviate the suffering that we have seen.
And every two weeks, we read the Mindfulness Trainings together,
we recite them or every month.
And every time you can become more aware
of suffering and you can become more
determined to do something to help
alleviate the suffering.
So compassion is an important part
of ethical behavior. And we can develop
compassion by our way of thinking,
our way of speaking, in our daily life.
We should never say that person has no compassion.
We should never say of ourself
"I have no compassion."
Be sure you do.
Compassion is a little bit linked to the maternal instinct.
It's the same kind of region of the brain:
maternal love and compassion.
And if you read the Discourse on Love,
we see that the Buddha did not need
to have MRI in order to be able to see that
just as a mother loves and protects her own child,
at the risk of her own life, so we should
develop compassion for all living beings.
So we all have compassion.
And what we need to do is we need
to find ways in order for the compassion
in us to be able to manifest.
And if we've given ourselves too many
opportunities to be in touch with too much
suffering, then we may have fallen into
what we saw before is called "empathetic distress".
And it doesn't matter if we've fallen
into that way.
But it is very important that we are mindful,
and that we realize that has happened,
and we do our best to take care of
the happiness. And look on the other side.
Look at what is going right, rather than
what is going wrong.
So if you are in a situation with another
person, and you feel that when you listen
to their suffering that you want to withdraw,
you feel the stress in yourself,
then you have the right to withdraw.
Because you know that you cannot help that
person. So you have to withdraw,
in order to take care of yourself.
To feel compassion for yourself.
And if possible, to find someone else
who can help the person who is suffering.
Sometimes people look at babies, and they
see the baby is compassionate.
And another time, the people look and they
see the baby is greedy and demanding.
So it depends who is looking at the baby,
what they see.
And with two-year old children, they do an
experiment, and they give one child..
They have a group of children, and they
give one child something that the other
children don't have, something that can
be shared, and the child, the two-year old,
will naturally take it around
and share it with everyone.
If you have your own grandchildren,
nieces in my case, your own children,
grandchildren, nieces and nephews,
you see that happen very often.
You give one something, and they
go around and share it with others.
So that is the practice of loving kindness,
which seems to be there, already, in us.
In 1993, in Chicago, there was a World Parliament of Religions,
a conference.
And our teacher, Thầy, was invited to go there.
And there were 200 delegates, I think.
And they stayed in a very fancy hotel.
And it was the 100th anniversary of the
World Parliament of Religions.
In 1893, they had their first session,
and they have it every 3 or 2 years or something.
And in 1893, those represented were
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, different Christian schools including
the Eastern and the Russian Orthodox.
And that was about... Judaism.
That was about it.
But in 1993 they decided to ask for
representatives of the Native American spiritual paths and Shamanism.
And some of the delegates were very upset.
They said, these religions, they don't have any proper "ism",
they don't have any proper name.
And they left. Yes, they left.
So, it wasn't an entirely harmonious thing.
Thầy was there.
I think the person who kind of brought
it all together was a Swiss theologian
called Hans Küng...I think
Kung, Kung, Kung?Kung?Kung?
Not meaning to be disrespectful.
My German pronunciation is not very good.
A Catholic theologian.
This year I think he is 90...
He's about the same age as Thầy is.
90 something, 92 or something.
So really, he's dedicated his life to
reforming, trying to bring about reform in the Catholic Church.
And so's he's not...
and also into developing a global ethic.
So he has a lot of, a lot of deep motivation for a global ethic.
Thầy also.
Thầy once said in a Dharma Talk,
that when practising sitting meditation in the Upper Hamlet,
at the end of the sitting meditation session,
everybody touches the Earth three times.
And when Thầy touches the Earth,
Thầy makes the deep aspiration,
"May Thầy and the Sangha be able to contribute to a global ethic
so that we can relieve a great deal of suffering in the world.
So as I said in 1993, there were present
at the Parliament of Religions, a number
of representatives of the American Indian.
And they don't have something that is called a religion as such,
but they care very much about the Earth.
And have a lot of respect and care for the Earth, for Mother Earth.
And recently in a book,
Love Letters to the Earth,
in the appendix to that book,
Thầy says we need to find a global spirituality.
And maybe that spirituality will be based
in our reverence and our awe for the natural world, for Mother Earth,
for the galaxies, for the cosmos.
Because all human beings feel a deep kind of awe when they look at
the cosmos, at the...
So in order to find something that we
all have in common,
and then to agree on how to word it,
is not easy.
I think in that Parliament of Religions,
they all agreed about what the suffering is that we're facing.
But they could not agree on how to word,
like the Five Mindfulness Trainings
or something like that,
to help people relieve that suffering.
So that is a work that we still have to do.
And we want, we really want, to continue Thầy,
and continue this effort in
sometimes letting go of what we hold to
in order to be able to contribute to a global ethic.
And when we contribute to a global ethic,
we also need to look into other forms
of ethics than Buddhist ethics, to try and
find out what is it that the human mind
can agree on, which all humans
can agree on.
So there, in 1993, most people, nearly everybody
but not everybody, they agreed on 4 points, four commitments that they wanted to make.
And the first commitment was to protect life.
"A commitment to a culture of non-violence and respect for life."
So when we look at the 14 Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing
we see that there are roots to our inability
to protect life, there are roots to our violence.
And those things like fanaticism, dogmatism.
When we cling to a dogma, when we say that
we are right and you are wrong,
that is contribution to violence.
And so when we commit ourselves to non-violence,
on the one hand we commit ourselves
to looking deeply into the seeds of
violence we have in ourselves, and how
not to water the violence we have in ourselves.
But at the same time,
we want to find out, what is it
that makes people violent.
And when I stick to my dogma,
and you stick to your dogma,
and neither of us can accept the dogma of the other,
then that will also lead to violence
that we commit together.
And the second commitment they have
is commitment to a culture of solidarity
and just economic order.
So solidarity here means, like "đoàn kết"
it means that we stand together.
East stands together with West.
And if in the West we see that South or the East is suffering,
we know that that is also our suffering.
So we want to help.
The North wants to help the South,
wants to stand together with the South.
That is a culture of solidarity.
And just economic order, like "?? nền kinh tế".
"?? nền kinh tế công bằng?"
So that also means that we want to
be able to let go of our consumerism.
We want to be able to let go of our material comforts
in order to be able to share our riches
with the countries that don't have
the riches we have.
And the third commitment that they nearly
came to agree with each other
is commitment to a culture of tolerance and truth.
The ability to embrace each other.
Tolerance is "bao dung".
And to be truthful, to be authentic with each other.
And the fourth is a commitment to
a culture of equal rights and partnership between men and women.
Equal rights is "bình quyền" and partnership here is ?"sự hợp tác".
Between men and women.
But in that, in the details of that commitment,
it talks a lot about sexuality and not exploiting sex,
not selling sex, that kind of thing.
So the theologian Hans Küng also
spent much of his life in talking to
business men about global ethics.
[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited.]
When we read the second chapter of the anguttara nikaya,
the Buddha says, there are two things,
monks, that protect the world, that preserve the world.
What are those two things?
They are hiri and ottapa.
So usually when you look in the Pali dictionary,
this how these two words are translated.
Maybe moral shame, moral dread, it doesn't sound very... um..
To say that these two things protect the world, preserve the world,
may not sound so positive to you.
Moral shame: it means that when I do something I recognize that it
brings about suffering for myself,
and I feel ashamed.
And so I don't do it.
And, moral dread means I'm very afraid of doing something wrong.
I'm afraid to do that.
I'm afraid to do something that will make myself suffer and make
other people suffer.
And sometimes, we're afraid to do things
because we think we will go to hell.
Or we think that we will be punished.
So, maybe you'd be afraid to rob a bank
because you think you might be put in prison.
And sometimes in Buddhist temples, you have fresco or paintings of the
terrible punishments that happen in hell.
Like being thrown in to a cauldron of oil, boiling oil or something like that.
for some wrong deed that you did.
Well, the idea about that is make you afraid
so you don't do it.
But the thing is that in Plum Village,
we don't really believe in hell,
like place you go after you die,
to be punished for what you've done while you were alive.
But we believe that hell is more like a state of mind.
And you can go there very easily while you are still alive,
if you choose to think in a certain way
or act in a certain way.
Like when you feel angry, it's a kind of hell -- you feel very hot.
But here, it means like a deep aspiration
"I don't want to suffer and I don't want to make other suffer."
So I have a ... I draw back, I draw back from doing things
And when I do something that makes me suffer and makes others suffer,
I recognize that I made a mistake.
And I feel ashamed.
And I either come and confess to somebody else or I confess to myself,
and the words I use are something like
I made a mistake; I made you suffer; I made myself suffer.
And I'm not going to do that again.
I am very sorry.
And then it is finished.
If it doesn't finish there, and I keep reminding myself,
"I did that terrible thing. I can't forget it"
then it becomes guilt.
And guilt is a complex, and
it's not something positive like shame is.
Shame is positive, because it helps me to
get over what I've done wrong and helps me not to make the same mistake again.
The philosopher Mencius,
Mạnh Tử,
said that human beings are innately good.
They have innate compassion.
And he talked about four things,
which he called four beginnings,
which lead to living a moral life.
trắc ẩn tu ô' ???
This is these two, I think.
Tu here means to be shy, to feel ashamed.
So it's like Hiri. This is Mencius.
And ô' means to hate.
So you hate, you hate doing wrong.
It's a little bit like being afraid of doing wrong.
You don't like doing wrong.
This means compassion.
These means something you can translate as compassion.
And Mencius said that if you are inside,
and you see a child climb onto the edge
of a well outside, then you immediately want
to run out and take the child in your arms
so the child doesn't fall into the well.
And if the door is locked, and you can't get out, you will be very
you will feel very bad, very frustrated.
You won't know what to do.
So that is the natural compassion that we have, that we want
to save the life of others.
And this means that we are ashamed to do something wrong.
And this means that we don't want, we don't like to do something wrong.
từ như ??
The last one I remember... Easy.
thị phi ... từ nhượng
So từ nhượng means that you say good-bye to something.
Like in "từ ?", you say good-bye.
You refrain, you don't do that.
You see that you can let go and not do it.
And "nhượng" means to yield.
You can let go, you don't hold on to...
If something is necessary is to be done,
you will do it.
If it is something you shouldn't do,
you can say good-bye to it and not do it.
You can refrain from doing something.
Like somebody comes to me and they say
"Oh, you know, I love very much somebody
who is my workplace. And she has a husband
and children, I have a wife and children...
But I know that I just have to give up
that love for the person, because I have
to care of my family, I have to take care
of my wife, and she has to take care
of her family and husband."
So that is to give up.
And then when we see something that needs
to be done, we do it.
And this means we have the capacity to
discriminate between what is right, and what is wrong.
But like we said before, we have to..
In Buddhism, we don't know in advance
what is right and what is wrong.
We have to use our mindfulness, concentration and insight in every
situation to know what is right and wrong.
With the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings,
the Five Mindfulness Traingings,
we have basic guidelines to help us go
in that direction.
But finally, we have to use mindfulness,
concentration, insight and the collective wisdom of the Sangha
in order to know what is right and wrong in this situation.
And that is why when we do our meditation
in the evening, we say
there is no more thought of right and wrong.
Because in your meditation,
you don't want to be thinking
oh, should I do this or should I do that?
In our meditation, we need to be able to
to come back to our breathing,
to let go of all our thinking
and then refresh our mind and
look deeply.
Yes. So that is a little bit of
talking about meta-ethics in Buddhism.
We have ethics, which is "đạo đức học"
but we also have meta-ethics
which is "siêu đạo đức học".
So what lies at the base of ethics?
And, it may be the no thought of right and wrong.
What lies at the base of ethics is the awareness of suffering,
the awareness of happiness,
and also the ability to let go of all ideas of right and wrong.
In order to be able to discover
what will lead to the greatest happiness
and the least suffering in this particular circumstance.
I think Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
in the 19th century, they talk about
the greatest happiness of the greatest number
as being the basis for ethics.
And in Buddhism we could agree also with that.
We want, that is what we feel
we want the least amount of suffering.
But we also know that suffering is
essential for there to be compassion.
And compassion is essential for
there to be happiness.
But there will always be suffering.
We don't know to worry that one day,
there will be no more suffering.
We just don't want to make more suffering
than what is already offering itself to us.
[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited.]
And I think that Jeremy Bentham and
John Stuart Mill, they talked a lot about
material happiness.
There's a lot of poverty.
There still is a lot of poverty.
And obviously to be able to eradicate
poverty would bring material happiness,
which will then lead to spiritual happiness.
Because when people are so poor,
they don't have the time, they don't
have the opportunity to develop their spiritual life.
And so that is a basic step.
But we also see that spiritual happiness
is very important.
And when I lived in India, in a place that was very poor,
I used to see the children there.
They had no clothes, really,
a few ragged clothes sometimes.
But they were happy.
They'd play with each other, although
they didn't have any toys,
they didn't have proper clothes to wear.
But they had a kind of happiness that
sometimes in children who have clothes and
have many toys, you don't see.
But that also has something to do with
our sharing our wealth, so that
everybody has enough, but not more
than they need.
One German economist said it is perfectly
possible for everyone to have a wage that
is the same -- everybody earns the same amount of money.
So during the three months of the Autumn Retreat,
we have an opportunity for us to be able
to look into how the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings affect our own life.
And how we can help, how they can help us
to develop our compassion.
And we have plenty of opportunity
in our sitting meditation to practise
loving kindness meditation if we want to
so that we can more easily bring up the
innate compassion that we all have.
[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited.]
[The small bell is awoken.]
[The small bell is invited.]