[bell]
Dear Thay, Dear Sangha
In difficult moments, and in not difficult moments also,
we have the practice of coming back
to the island within ourself.
We have a song, “Being an Island Unto Myself”
and guided meditation “Being an Island Unto Myself”
[singing] Being an island Unto myself
as an island unto myself.
Buddha is my mindfulness
shining near, shining far
Dharma is my breathing
guarding bodhi and mind. I am free.
Being an island unto myself
as an island unto myself.
Sangha is the five skandhas
working in harmony.
Taking refuge in myself, coming back to myself
I am free, I am free, I am free. [end singing]
So this practice has been recommended to us
above all when we are in difficult moments.
But in order to be able to practice it when we are in difficulty,
we need to have a training, we need to
train ourself when it’s not difficult to come back
to ourself. So many times the Buddha taught non-self,
and now we are practicing coming back to our self.
Non-self is an idea, and self is also an idea.
Non-self is the cure, the idea to cure the idea of self.
So, primarily coming back to our self means coming back
to our body, feeling our body as it is in the present moment.
We have the layer of skin on the outside of our body,
so in a way, our body has limits, but we also know our
body depends on everything outside of our body, also.
In this practice, we come
back to our body primarily
The example that we hear the Buddha give
is the example of a turtle: has a head, four legs, and a tail.
When the turtle is in a difficult moment, the turtle will
draw back its legs, its head, its tail under its shell.
So for us, it means bringing back our eyes, ears, nose,
all those things that sense the world around us,
not letting them go out, be dispersed around us,
but coming back so we can come back inside of ourself
and be there for ourself to take care of ourself.
Because if we do not be there to take care of ourself,
we cannot really be there to take care of the other person.
When you take care of somebody who is very sick,
you know very well that the first thing you need to do
is come back and be solid and stable in yourself.
So this exercise is taught us, so that we can be solid,
and we can be stable in the present moment.
When we hear the sound of the bell, we come back to the
island in ourself. We become a refuge for ourself.
The human mind has a tendency to go out and try to
find a refuge in things around, but we know if we’re not
stable ourself, then we cannot have a place of refuge,
so also we practice coming back to be a refuge for ourself.
Being an island unto myself. Being a refuge for myself.
And my self is that island, my self is that refuge.
In Chinese and Vietnamese [C/V], self is the island, [C/V]
self is the refuge. In Pali, atta dippha, atta sharana.
Then the Buddha teaches us, to make it clearer,
the Dharma is your island, the Dharma is your refuge.
That means that when we come back to our true self,
we can find the Buddha in ourself, the Dharma in ourself
and the Sangha in ourself.
This wonderful teaching was given to Ananda, Buddha’s
attendant, three times: twice individually, and once with the
rest of the Sangha. The Buddha gave this teaching at
end of the life of the Buddha,
when the Buddha was already 80 years old.
Maybe many people, they took refuge in the Buddha;
there was the practice of the three refuges in India at that time.
People, when they came and listened to the teaching of the
Buddha, they would practice, “I take refuge in the Buddha,
I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha.”
Maybe people, when they took refuge in the Buddha,
they were taking refuge in a Buddha outside themselves,
but that Buddha, like everything else, was
impermanent, and would not be there much longer.
That is why the Buddha gave that teaching to Ananda.
The Venerable Ananda was a wonderful attendant for
Buddha. The Venerable Ananda gave all his life, all
his being, attending the Buddha.
So he did not have time so much to practice coming back
to himself.
In the last rains retreat that
the Buddha was alive
in Vaishali,
the Buddha became very, very sick.
In the sutra it says bordering on death.
The Buddha was in a lot of pain, his body became
extremely weak, and there are times when it is very easy
when the body is in so much pain, and so much
weakness, it’s easy to leave the body, to die.
The Buddha knew that at any moment, when he was
sick like that, that he could die. Knowing that, looking
deeply and knowing he had not taken leave of the Sangha
he had not said good-bye to the sangha, maybe there was
some last instructions that the Sangha still needed, Buddha
had not given. It is said that Buddha had to make a strong
resolution, strong determination, based on the
life force. A strong determination to live for
some more months in order to be able to give the
teachings that the Sangha may still need.
I remember one time when Thay, our teacher, was
very unwell, in Germany. Thay could not eat anything
for a long time. Thay said, “I am living by volition food.”
We know that volition food is the third kind of food.
A very important food for us.
So when the Buddha made that determination to live
for some more months, the Buddha was using volition food,
that food that comes from within, when we come back
to the island of the self. That food does not come from
without.
If you think of the five particular mental formations
the first one is zeal [...] chanda. It is really wanting
something. The second one is adimoksha, [...] and that
means determination, resolution.
We all know that in our practice, we develop
these mental formations, the mental formation of
determination, because when when we come to the practice
and maybe for many years afterwards, we have many
habit energies. If we want really to transform them
we need a strong determination, a strong
resolution. So it’s said that the Buddha resolved
on what is one of the first six universal
mental formations [...] universal mental formations
in the Theravada tradition What is that? That is
jivitandriya, the life force, the force for life that is there
in all of us, in our consciousness.
The Buddha gave his attention to that
mental formation, the life force.
Using concentration, which is another of the particular
mental formations... remember zeal, resolution
or determination is the second, and the third is
mindfulness, concentration the fourth, and the fifth is
insight. These are mental formations that we can
choose to practice or not. We can choose to use them
in a wholesome or not wholesome way. They are
called particular mental formations.
So the Buddha used concentration in order to
be able to overcome the pain and he was able to recover
from his sickness. He went outside his hut and sat
outside, and Ananda saw the Buddha sitting outside, and
Ananda was overwhelmed with joy.
“The Buddha is going to live! The Buddha is still alive!”
Ananda came to the Buddha and said, “How wonderful!
How wonderful! You are still there, you are better,
you are going to be with us.” Then Ananda said, “When the
Buddha was sick like that, my knees shook, I lost my
concentration, my mind became confused.”
The Buddha said, “That won’t do, Ananda.”
Then gave the teaching of being an island to yourself,
to find the Buddha in yourself.
Buddha said that in a short time, the Buddha will
not be with you anymore, so now is the time to practice
being an island to yourself, being a refuge for yourself,
to find the Buddha within you.
Ananda said to the Buddha, “Altho’ you were very sick,
I had quite some hope that you would get better, be
with us for longer, because you had not yet told us
what to do when you weren’t there anymore.
You had not told us who would guide the Sangha
after you were not there anymore.”
Then the Buddha said, “Oh, Ananda, why...”
Ananda said, “We were waiting for you to make
some announcement concerning the Sangha,
who would guide the sangha, who would lead the sangha.”
The Buddha said, “What more is the Sangha waiting
for? I have taught everythng, I have taught all the practices.”
The Buddha said, “I am not a teacher with a closed fist,
I don’t hold anything back, everything I practice I hand
on to my disciples. What more are you waiting for?
If you are waiting for me to tell you who’s going to lead
you, who’s going to guide you that is something I will not do,
because the Buddha never thinks, “I am in charge of
the Sangha, I direct the Sangha.”
The Buddha is only a bhikkhu like the other bhikkhus.
If the Buddha does not direct the Sangha, why should the
Buddha want to hand on to somebody else
to direct the Sangha?”
After that
the Buddha set out on his last tour,
wanting, probably, to go back to
Kapilavastu, the place he came from, where he’d
grown up. So he went from Nalanda, from Rajagriha, in
that direction. In the sutra it says that when he came to
Sravasthi, the Buddha received the news
of the death of Shariputra
and Mogallana. It’s strange, because
Shravasti is not really on the route from Rajagriha to
Kapilavastu, it’s a 200 km deviation.
Maybe it’s a mistake, he wasn’t in Shravasti, he was
somewhere else. So then...we have...if you look in
the Samyutta Nikaya, [...] in Chap. 47, which is about
the practice of mindfulness, you will find 3 sutras about
end of the life of the Buddha. The first is sutra #9, it’s called
Gelanna, it means sickness, it’s about the time when the
Buddha was sick. The second is #13, it’s called Chunda.
Chunda is the name of the attendant of Ven. Shariputra.
Shariputra comes from Nalanda, and he went back to
Nalanda with the Buddha. When the Buddha and
Shariputra were in Nalanda maybe Shariputra knew that
he would not meet the Buddha again, so he came to
the Buddha, and said to the Buddha, “Of all the Buddhas
that have been there in the past, will be there in the
future, and are there in the present moment, you are the
number one, you are the foremost Buddha.”
The Buddha said to Shariputra, “How can you say that,
Shariputra? Did you know all the Buddhas in the past?
Do you know all the Buddhas in the present, and in future in
order to say I am the foremost?” Shariputra had to
admit he didn’t know all those Buddhas. But he said, “When
I look at the practice of the Buddha, how the Buddha
guards the six senses, always practices mindfulness, I
cannot think that any human being could practice better
than that, so that is why I say the Buddha is the foremost of
all Buddhas.”
Of course, the Buddhas of the past and the future, they also
practice to guard the six senses.
In the end, the Buddha said to Shariputra, “That is a good
teaching that you can give to people, that the Buddha is the
one who practices guarding the six senses at all times.”
But Shariputra was not to live for much longer.
After the Buddha had left Nalanda, Shariputra had
asked to stay behind. Shariputra also became very
sick, and died. His attendant, Chunda, after the cremation,
brought the ashes, brought the robe and the bowl, back
to the Buddha, wherever the Buddha was. First of all,
whenever Chunda arrived at where the Buddha was,
he went to Ananda. He told Ananda what had happened,
that the Ven. Shariputra had died.
Ananda said, “This is news that together we need to bring
to the Buddha.” So together Chunda and Ananda went to
the Buddha, and told the Buddha what had happened.
Then Ananda said again, “When I heard that Shariputra
had died, my knees shook, I lost my stability, I became
confused in my mind, because we had lost our
elder brother.”
The Buddha said, “When Shariputra died, did he take
away your mindfulness with him? Did he take away your
concentration and your insight?”
Ananda said, “No, he didn’t, but Shariputra was an elder
brother we all took refuge in. We knew that he could give
us the teachings that we needed. Now he’s no longer
there in the Sangha.”
Then, for the second time, Buddha taught Ananda,
“Ananda, you should be an island to yourself, you should
be a refuge to yourself. Let the Dharma be your island,
let the Dharma be your refuge, and do not take
refuge in any other person, in any other thing.
That is the second time Ananda received the teaching
on being an island to yourself.
The third time was in a sutra we are all familiar with,
because it’s part of our chanting book, which is called
the Discourse on Taking Refuge in Yourself; that is
how we translated it. If you look in the Samyukta Agama
[...] #639 You’ll see that it is called the Uposatha Sutra,
and that is because uposatha means the day when the
Precepts are recited, and it happened to be the full moon
day when the Buddha gave this sutra.
In Pali, it is in the Samyutta Nikaya [...] [Chap 47], #14,
and it is called Ukkacela, which is just the name of a
place where the Buddha gave this teaching.
“I heard these words of the Buddha one time, when the
Lord was staying in the mango grove, in the cool
shade of the mango trees, on the bank of the river Ganges,
in the forest of Magadha. The elders Shariputra and
Moggallana had recently passed away. It was the full
moon day of the Uposatha ceremony, and the Precepts
were being recited.
The Buddha spread out his sitting mat, and, facing the
community, after looking out, he said, ”As I look at our
community, I see a large space left by the
Ven. Shariputra and Moggallana.
In the Pali version, it says, “It appears to me there is an
empty space in our Sangha.” It APPEARS that there’s an
empty space, because where Shariputra and Moggallana
had been in the Sangha, we can no longer see them there.
Oo, I forgot to say that two weeks after Shariputra died,
the Ven. Moggallana died.
So by the time the Buddha gave this sutra, both
Shariputra and Moggallana had died.
So, ‘it appears to me there is a large space’, before, we
could always rely on Moggallana and Shariputra to
be there, and now we see they’re not there.
The Buddha uses the word ‘appears’, which means that it
appears, but it’s not really like that.
If you want, you can still find Shariputra and Moggallana.
“In the Sangha, these two venerable monks were the
most eloquent in giving Dharma talks, encouraging
and instructing all the other monks, nuns, and
lay people.”
Then the Buddha uses the word...searching for, looking
for, looking for something. “Oh monks, people look for
two kinds of riches: material riches, and the riches of the
Dharma. In their search for material riches, they go to
worldly people. In their search for the riches of the Dharma,
they would go to Shariputra and Moggallana. The
Tathagatha is not searching for anything, whether it is
material or the Dharma.”
If you remember, there’s a verse in the Udanavagga in
Sanskrit, and it says the deer take refuge in the countryside
the birds take refuge in the sky, those who discriminate
take refuge in the Dharma, and the arahats, those who
have enlightenment, take refuge in Nirvana.
That is us, those who discriminate. Discriminate
here means be able to discriminate what is
wholesome from what is unwholesome, to rely on
the practice of the Precepts, mindfulness, concentration,
insight, in order to train ourselves in our daily life.
So here it says we can go for refuge to our teachers for the
riches of the Dharma, and we are always looking for the
riches of the Dharma to help us to transform our afflictions.
Those who have transformed the afflictions do not need to
search for the Dharma anymore.
Maybe they have found the Dharma within themselves.
They just practice mindfulness, concentration,
and insight.
We should remember, also, that tho’ they do not search
for anything more, the arahats always practice
mindfulness. All four pairs, and eight kinds
of holy people in the Sangha, from the stream-enterer to the
arahat, they all practice mindfulness, concentration,
and insight. When you become an
arahat, you do not stop practicing mindfulness.
Does that mean to say that when we are looking for the
Dharma, we are not able to be in touch with nirvana?
No, it doesn’t mean that. Nirvana is available
to us when we become a stream-enterer, or even
before. But, we cannot be in touch with nirvana the whole
time, so we need to keep listening to the Dharma,
contemplating the Dharma, and putting the Dharma into
practice in order to be able to be in touch with nirvana
all the time.
Then the Buddha gives the example of the tree, a very
old, large tree. Like the oak tree in the Lower Hamlet.
The Buddha said that that tree was made of heartwood,
it had very good wood inside the tree, it’s not rotten inside.
That tree is the sangha, the Sangha that has 8 kinds
and 4 pairs of holy people. The Sangha that practices
mindfulness, concentration, and insight is like a tree.
That tree, when it first starts, has two large branches. They
are the oldest branches, the elder brother, or elder sister
branches of the Sangha. Relying on all those branches
other branches also grow on the tree, just like a banana
tree has the leaves, and the first two leaves, they nourish
all the other leaves that come along afterwards.
So, Shariputra and Mogallana were like the large branches,
and when those large branches break, there are still
all the other branches, and the tree, the Sangha, is still there.
The Buddha gave that example.
In the Sangha of the Tathagatha, Shariputra and
Mogallana were the greatest students, so it’s natural that
they would enter nirvana first.
The next paragraph is about what is natural.
Actually, it says like this, if you look at the Chinese,
it says, ‘All phenomena that are either born, or arise,
or are made, or are conditioned phenomena,
all these phenomena have to disintegrate, they have to
decay. They cannot exist without someday being
decayed, without disintegrating.’
Then it says, ‘If you want any phenomena not to decay,
then that is something impossible.’
Somehow, in our mind we have an idea of something
impossible. All phenomena, that means
psychological phenomena, physiological phenomena,
physical phenomena... they all disintegrate
after a time. In our mind we have an idea
that there must be things that don’t disintergrate,
the people we love, they don’t disintegrate.
Because of that, when they do, we have to suffer
because we are not prepared.
So in our practice, what we are doing is we prepare
ourselves—like the meditation we did this
morning: I am of the nature to get sick—is a way to prepare
ourself, to face the reality of what happens, so we don’t
live in a world of things that are not possible, wanting
things that are not possible.
Here it says things that are born. When we say things
that are born, we mean living beings who are born from the
womb or the egg. Things that arise means things that arise
in dependence on other things, things that arise like
the flowers, the trees. Things that are made are
what human beings can make, those phenomena, like
the clothes we wear, are made; they also disintegrate.
There’s nothing that can escape disintegration.
Not just human beings.
And all things which are conditioned phenomena...
a conditioned phenomena is something that relies on what
is not itself in order to be there. So we are conditioned
phenomena, because we rely on the food that we eat,
we rely on those around us, in order to continue to
manifest. If we look around us, most things are
conditioned, nearly everything is conditioned dharma.
It is said that only one thing that is not conditioned, and
that is nirvana, because nirvana is the removal of all
concepts.
Everything we cherish and hold dear today we will have
to let go of and be separated from.
‘In not too long a time, I will also pass away. Therefore,
practice being an island to yourself. Know how to take
refuge in yourself, and not take refuge in anyone or
anything else. Practice taking refuge in the island of the
Dharma.’ The Dharma here means the practice of
mindfulness.
‘Meditate on the body in the body,
nourishing right understanding and
mindfulness.’
In this version that I have here, he just talks about
meditating on the body in the body, but if you read the
sutra, you will see that it also says meditate on the feelings
in the feelings, on the perceptions in the percep...on
the mind in the mind, and on the dharmas in the dharmas.
So it includes all the four establishments of
mindfulness.
Even tho’ the Buddha recovered from his illness,
his body was very weak and he told Ananda that
he practiced something, it’s called the animitta
cetosamadhi. It means the concentration on
signlessness.
‘Nimitta’ means a sign. Suffering is a sign, and
no suffering is also a sign. Permanence is a sign,
impermanence is also a sign. A sign means a characteristic,
a mark of how something is. In English we can call this
signlessness [of the mind concentration].
When you have pain in your body, it has to go along with
the suffering in your mind. Normally it’s like that.
As soon as there is pain in the body, the mind begins to
feel also in pain. That is why sometime we say the mind
and body suffer in unison, or the mind and the body are
happy in unison. We can say like that.
But if you practice, you can recognize that the pain in the
body does not have to be the pain in the mind.
You can take care of your mind so that the pain does
not influence your mind.
At that point, you are not caught in the sign of
suffering.
In the Vajracchedika Sutra, it just teaches about not being
caught in signs. Not being caught in phenomena, but
also not being caught in signs In the Vajracchedika we hear
about different kinds of signs like human and living being...
wait a minute...human, ah, self, human, living being and
life span. But there are many other signs as well that we
get caught in. Suffering is one of those signs that we get
caught in.
In fact, when they talk about the 3 signs in Theravada
Buddhism, suffering is one of them. Impermanence, no self,
and suffering. But suffering has an opposite, whose name
is not suffering. In terms of the Four Noble Truths, the
first Noble Truth is suffering, and the third Noble Truth is
not suffering, the end of suffering, the cessation of
suffering. If suffering is a sign, then not suffering is also a
sign. We can be caught in the sign ‘suffering’, and we can
also be caught in the sign ‘not suffering’.
According to the Buddha, we practice the Middle Way,
which is not being caught in either extreme.
By practicing this samadhi, this concentration, by not
being caught in signs, the Buddha was able to live fully
enough in the last few months of the Buddha’s life, and give
the teaching the Buddha gave on being an island unto
yourself. If the Buddha had not lived for those last
months, we may not have the teaching for being an island
to yourself, which is something that we can all
practice in our daily lives, and need to practice in our daily
lives, in order [that] when we come across difficult
moments, we can truly come back and take care of our
mind. By taking care of our mind, we can also take care
of our body.
Coming back to mindfulness of our body is the first
establishment of mindfulness. The second establishment of
mindfulness is coming back to our feelings, and taking
care of our feelings. Feelings are really what is the
suffering, what is the not suffering that is due to kinds
of feelings. When we practice the concentration on
signlessness, we have to first of all recognize that ‘this
feeling is suffering’, then we have to go beyond the sign
and recognize that that feeling just comes from what
is happening in our body, and it doesn’t have to influence
our mind. The feeling does not have a separate self, it’s
impermanent and changing at every moment.
We can concentrate on the island in ourself in terms of
our feelings and not just in terms of our body.
When we first start to island of ourself, we come back to
our body, and then we recognize our feelings.
The Buddha said that those practitioners—monks, nuns,
laymen, laywomen—who are able to come back to the
island of self, take refuge in the island of self, come back
to the island of Dharma, take refuge in the island of
Dharma, are the best practitioners, both now, while
the Buddha is still alive, and after the Buddha is no longer alive.
[bell] [BELL]