At the Wat in Seattle Erik Z 8 7 9 20

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Transcript

Speaker A: Hello?

Speaker B: Yes, I’m here.

Speaker A: Okay. I thought I lost your voice for a bit. Okay.

Speaker B: Okay. So anyway, to start this video off, Robert and I are really glad that you wound up in the watch. And you said that you’ve been there for what, about two weeks now, huh?

Speaker A: Well, I think I’ve been coming here for closer to a month probably, but I’ve been staying the night for almost two weeks, so. Yeah, never really leaving the lot. I think I left one day to bring my brother or pick my brother up from the airport, but that was it.

Speaker B: Huh. Been practicing the walk now watch the monks move around a lot. And so after you’re there for a while, you’ll begin to get to know who’s resident and who’s visiting, especially since in Seattle there’s more than one watch. And so the monks will go back and forth between the two of them. But my question is, how many monks are staying at the watch that you’re at?

Speaker A: Seven.

Speaker B: Seven. Okay. And that are there any other lay people living at the Watt right now besides you.

Speaker A: Two, I believe? Yeah, I mean, I’m just. I’m just sleeping in the meditation room. I think they have actual rooms that they’re living in. Yeah, but I think there’s two of the lay people and they do work around the lot.

Speaker B: Yes, there are always a bit of activities done here and there. It’s a. You know, it’s a physical place with physical things to do, but not much. Doesn’t take much work. A couple hours a day at most, I would say. But the point that is needed to be made is the Westerners need to see that this is actually quite possible, that these actually are open and allow people to come and stay to practice the dharma as long as.

Speaker A: Yeah, as long as you’re willing to practice. Everyone’s incredibly welcoming. So I think they may have been a bit skeptical or skeptical, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but hesitant, maybe at first, until they realized how dedicated I was to actually practicing. And then everyone’s just been incredibly welcoming, so.

Speaker B: Exactly. That hesitation comes a bit from the surprise that Westerners are even curious about the Dhamma. They belong really into it. And so that kind of hesitation, which is very minor, will be there at every watt. Every watt will have that little bit of a hesitation. And that’s part of the reason why it’s good for an introduction, that an introduction is quite useful in human society, though in more modern times, it’s not so formal. But in the old days, if you didn’t have an introduction, then you were automatically ostracized. But if you have an introduction. And so I remembered several times when I would go out that Achan Po would give me a letter to take along a letter of introduction. But the better way is for him for these two senior monks to know each other or whatever like that. So because of our connection through Wat Thai Washington. Sorry, watai Washington, D.C. which is different than Watai Washington in Washington state because of our contact with him, Achahn Tenet that he knew Achan Reed in Seattle. But you’re not even at Achan Reit’s watch.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: That you got yourself into that one. That we didn’t even call that Watt because we had a different connection. And you did spend time with Achon Reed. But I don’t know the name of the Akon that you’re with now. What’s his name? Boon Leon Boonian. Okay.

Speaker A: Boom. Leon. I believe I just call him Acham Boon. That’s what he told me to call him.

Speaker B: Yes. Okay. The word bun, by the way, we is Pali language, but it’s Indo European, which means that we have a word just like that in English. So in Pali, we would say tamboon, which means to make merit. But the word boon there is used in the sense of merit, but it also has the quality of power. Now, in the French language, they have bon voyage. There’s that bon or the boon. Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Wavenu, which is German for welcome, is. Has that word boon. We also have it in the. In English in the sense of a windfall, a boon, something really magnificent happens.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Okay. And so this is. This is the background of that name that he has. So basically what you’re saying is achan bun means good or powerful or magnificent or doing meritorious. This is what the word means that will help you to understand what the. And so there’s another word in Pali called bun me. And the bun me, that’s the one that actually has the powers. And so there’s actually 10 bun mis or 10 powers. And one of those would be like generosity, gratitude, friendship, fidelity. Those are the kinds of things that would be listed as the powers.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Okay. Where is he from in Thailand?

Speaker A: I actually don’t know.

Speaker B: You don’t know? Okay. I imagine he’s from the northeast. And so this I do know.

Speaker A: I don’t know his teacher, but I know his teacher was a student of ajon we, I believe.

Speaker B: Okay. That’s going to put him more in the. The southeast part of Thailand.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And is also fairly close to. To Achan Tenes was under a.

Speaker A: Yeah, he’s talked about Achon Punishro a couple times and he sounds like a big fan of his, so. And they’re good friends, I believe so.

Speaker B: Wow. I’m just calculating the years a chantenicero had been a monk approximately now 40 years.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: So a nicero. He’s way up there now. He’s about 40 years in. So naturally he’s going to have be well known and well respected within that tradition. But altogether, whether it’s in the south, in Thailand or the Southeast or the Northeast, or even to the somewhat less degree, all of these parts of Thailand are generally part of the Thai forest tradition.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which is different from. From the city Watts, but only a little bit, because the city watts are where the monks come from and go back to that. The forest tradition is almost like an intermediate time that when the young kid ordains, he ordains and the watch is close to his house. But after a couple of months or sometime, he will go off to the forest and spend a number of years and then later he will come back to the city Watch, generally in that tradition. That means that most of the watch in the United States, with a few exceptions, are either City Watch or they are City Watch that are trying to be also a little bit Forest watch.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Which also means that because its primary point is the city Watch. And you can see how that would occur because the reason that the Watts become there is because the Thai people want the wat close to them. So they’re going to put a wat in the place where the Thai people are, rather than way out in the wilderness. Which means that generally in the United States you’re going to have some very good monks. You’re going to have the very, very best. The reason for that is because in general, a young Thai man in the United States would probably go to Thailand to ordain anyway, especially if he’s got family and stuff like that, to where they don’t do a lot of ordinations in the United States States, but they still do them. They are still done. I would think that eventually we will in fact ordain Westerners right there in the United States or in the west without them having to go to Thailand or maybe they later will go to Thailand for a while. But the point that I’m making is that the people in the United States, and particularly you, are very fortunate to have some very senior monks around you.

Speaker A: Absolutely right.

Speaker B: And before Robert and I were telling you about this, you didn’t have a clue that Some of the best of Thailand is right next door to you. Is right there in Seattle.

Speaker A: It was like six miles from my house. Yeah, I had no idea.

Speaker B: And so thank you for participating in this experiment. I don’t know how long it’s going to take because of coronavirus, but I already know myself five or six guys that are in Seattle. Plus you also have the SPUD group. I don’t know how many people are there, but this is something that we can make a connection with.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker B: And so getting that connection basically are our next long term immediate goal or our intermediate goal would be for one of the Watts there in Seattle to actually host a retreat, maybe a weekend retreat. Only a weekend, you know, from Friday night until Monday morning is all we’re looking for in the beginning. We’re not looking for a 10 day retreat retreat or something longer, but just a weekend retreat where we can coordinate it with SPUD so that it could be fairly well attended.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Now I haven’t seen any photos from the Watt that you’re in now, but you’ve been to both Watts and I know that the meditation hall there at Wat Atom can hold oh, 50, maybe 100 people. I assume that the meditation hall there at Watt, Washington is about the same.

Speaker A: I’d assume a bit bigger, but yeah, I haven’t seen the inside of. I haven’t seen the inside of at Watam.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: But it’s at least the same size.

Speaker B: All right.

Speaker A: I spend a bit bigger.

Speaker B: Well, that’s even more. The bigger the Watt then the more likely they are to fit another group of people right in. So I’m really pleased that we’re. And I, and I appreciate you recording this so that we can send this out to give people the idea that yes, this is actually doable.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity to tell me about this because it’s been so much easier to practice and yeah, it’s been great.

Speaker B: Yes. Getting the people in the right environment and know that we can move in that. That’s how it has been all along. I’ve got a friend Nor who lives in Tunisia and he’s planning on coming here to watch. So I. To basically do the lifestyle that you’re in right now. But unfortunately in North Africa there are no Taiwan at all. And so it would actually be easier for him to come to Thailand than it would be for him to go to the United States. And why do that anyway, when. When we’ve got everything planned and arranged for you?

Speaker A: Oh, that’s great.

Speaker B: And so we’re. We’re doing all of the necessary things because Noor is coming from a Muslim country. It may be better for him to come into Thailand through Malaysia because Malaysia is right next door to Thailand. And so if he can get. Here’s the, here’s the plan. A one way ticket to Malaysia to Penang and then a round trip from Penang to Surat Thani is only about 15 or $30, something like that, $15 one way. And because Thailand often requires a round trip ticket. Well, if he’s coming from Penang and he’s Muslim, they’re not going to say anything at all.

Speaker A: I don’t know. They’re letting people in Thailand.

Speaker B: Not yet, but it’s going to be very soon now that Europe is beginning to open up. Thailand is one of the countries that. One of the 13 countries that Europe is opening up to because. Very good. No cases now for 30 days. No new cases.

Speaker A: Oh, that’s great.

Speaker B: But Thailand was very careful about it and they got a lot of support from the Chinese government right away. They got texting kits, they got PPE and all kinds of stuff. So the Thais were really ready for it. And so they got no cases at all. But still the airports are closed. Thailand is almost back to normal. Normal functioning except for one thing. Everybody wears a mask. They’ve even started the schools up again. But every kid is wearing a mask. And that’s, that’s how they got it. But the airport, like I said, all the international traffic is stopped. The airports are closed, but the trains and the boats and the buses are all running. But that’s. They’re going to open it up pretty soon, so nor can come that way. So I’m hoping that Noor, that Fudge can help. Not Fudge, but Open Dharma foundation has some money for scholarships. And I asked Noor to go ahead and apply for the scholarship with the Open Dharma Foundation. But I’m sure that a few of us can. If Open Dharma foundation doesn’t pay for his ticket, then I’m sure that we could find some others to get him here. And I’ve been talking with Noor for about six months now. And I know that he’s dedicated to the Dhamma and so he will fit in really well once he gets to Thailand. So this is something that we’re looking at is to get our Western culture more involved with the actual Asian part of it. One of the qualities of this pragmatic Dharma, or the west, secular Buddhism, they can see that Buddhism that’s come to the west, that there’s something wrong with it that there’s. That it’s too encrusted. And they’re trying to remove all that encrustation to get down to the original thing. But because of the way that it’s come, they have the idea that all of Buddhism everywhere is encrusted. And now up to the. The secular Buddhist or the pragmatic Buddhist to get down to the original thing. What they don’t know is that original thing is all the rage in Thailand. And so if they want the easy way out, the way to do it is to go to the Thai Watch in the United States, because there are monks in every one of these watch who really know the and are quite noble in their attitude and behavior. And so this is the right way to do it is to rather than having someone, let us say, read books and be on Reddit and dedicated to the path and not really know any of the practitioners, there is a way of getting these guys kind of off of Reddit and right in, right into the watch.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: And so you’re our first experiment, but we’ve got several plans now.

Speaker A: That’s so awesome to hear.

Speaker B: Yeah, we got a plan for Atlanta and we’ve got a plan for Chicago.

Speaker A: Great.

Speaker B: We also have, in fact, one of the ones that is really on hold is the one in wat Thai Washington D.C. because we don’t have any students in the D.C. area.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: But we do have the Wat. This, in fact, the wat Thai Washington D.C. is the connection that Robert and I have together that we didn’t know we had until we started talking, talking about it, that I spent a lot of time as a monk at Watai Washington D.C. a long time ago, and he’s been there in more recent times. And so we know that, we know that white Thai Washington D.C. is open and capable of this is probably more capable than the ones in Seattle because it’s older, it more established. I mean, really, really huge piece of land. They’ve got a building that is huge. It’s the dormitory and it’s three stories tall. They’ve got for like 30, 40, 50, 60 people. And that’s the new building on top of all of the space that they already had when I was there 20 years ago. But we don’t have anybody in Washington D.C. that we can get in there. And we’ve both Robert and already we have had zoom calls now with both Achon Reed in Seattle and also Ajahn Tenet in Watai dc. The monks are gung ho. They really like the idea. And as you tell the Monk that you have there in Seattle. Achon Bun. We haven’t even talked to him. You got him on your own.

Speaker A: Yeah, but he’s been. He’s been a great help.

Speaker B: I’m so happy for you. I’m really, really pleased that that’s working out.

Speaker A: Yeah, me too. Thank you.

Speaker B: And so now it might be a good idea if Robert and I could talk to Ajahn Bun. Does he have Zoom or does he do Skype or email or whatever? I’d like to get in touch with him.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, I’m not sure about any of that. I know. You could talk him on the phone. Maybe. I’ll. I’ll ask him if he has Skype or Zoom or something.

Speaker B: Okay. You can. You can tell him that you have friends. You probably already told him that you’ve got friends in Thailand.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so that if you’ve already told him that, you can give him the introduction to go ahead and see if he will communicate with us.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, I’ll ask him.

Speaker B: Great. Great. Well, one. One last thing, and we won’t take too long with it. You going back to the question that you asked about the seven purifications. The seven purifications. In reference to your question about the organized versus the natural method, I will say this, that the seven purifications generally happen in order of the organization that’s listed. And because of that, in this case, both the organization and natural methods are the same. They’re not different. That they’re the same thing. Now, the next point about this seven purifications is that it comes out of a sutta number 24, called the chariot relay. And not a. Not a race, just a relay. That in fact, it’s not a chase with a baton being handed from one relay to another. It’s actually the king himself that’s in the relay. What does that mean the story is, or where the relay comes to this is that the king comes out of his palace in a chariot traveling by stages to go from Saranath to Rights Street. And when he comes out of Saranath is way too far to ride scree. So he goes to a relay station and a chariot. He gets new horses, everything is good. And then he goes to the next station, and then to the next station after that. And so this is what we mean by the relay is that these seven purifications do happen in order one at a time, but we have to look at the order one at a time. The time frame is. Are we talking about an instantaneous, this very moment, or are we talking about it over a long period? Of time, of development. The answer is yes, both and in the moment. Going through the seven purifications moment by moment, then put it deep to finish off the habit of the long term so that there’s a long term aspect of it. Now, the first purification is the purification of siva. Okay? The purification of S. Siva means that our behavior becomes purified. You can think of that again in two ways. One way is when the meditator just sits down on the floor in the meditation hall and he’s sitting there. His siva at that point is pure. He’s not harming anybody, he’s not killing anybody, he’s not doing anything like that. He’s just sitting there and his sila is pure. Now, when we’re talking about pure, let’s look at the issue of drinking water. That there are various levels of purity from drinking water. One of them is that water can become distilled where it absolutely is pure. But almost no one drinks pure water. In fact, the pure water, distilled water, is what they normally put into batteries or into radiators of cars. But humans, we don’t need that. But in fact, there’s various levels of purity. One of them would be like the bottled water that you have there, or the bottled water that we have that we get, and that’s not 100% pure. It’s just merely filtered. It’s still got a lot of stuff in it. But we don’t set that water out for the dogs. The dogs drink water from almost anywhere, including that. We have well water. And so the well water, you know, Thai culture, we have buckets of water in the, in the bathroom. Most Thai houses don’t have flush toilets, but they’ll, they’ll have a big bucket of water that you’ll take with a scooper and then do your own flushing out of that. Okay, so this is where the dogs of Thailand drink. They drink the well water. The well water also is not pure, but it’s pure enough. And in fact, a human can drink that water, but we can’t drink salty water. That water is impure. Okay? So now that we’re understanding that purity in this sense does not mean perfection, okay? It just means good enough. And that’s an important quality. This, these purifications then is like giving an old dirty rag a thorough washing. You put it in the washing machine and you come out. Once it comes out of the washing machine, it still may have stains on it. It still may not be completely clean. That, in fact, if you clean that shirt enough, you probably will Destroy the shirt before you actually get the stains out of it. We in fact, in the west, we tend to over wash the clothes because we’re trying to get all the stains out of it to where getting all of the flaky dirt, the ectoplasm from the body, the smell, the rancid smells and all of that is really all we need to do is to get the clothing just pure enough so that they can be worn, utilized, rather than being stinky. Okay? So now that we understand that this is what we mean by purification, that it’s not a hundred percent, we don’t need to have that kind of purification. So merely just sitting down and squatting in the meditation hall, that’s pure enough because we in fact have gotten the hindrances of the world out. We’ve done that in several ways. One, now that you’re living in the Watt, you’ve actually just by staying at the Watt, have eliminated at least half of the impurities or more. And then going into the meditation hall itself now you’re getting rid of another 40% of the impurities. And so you really get impure just by walking into the meditation hall, sitting down then and with the intention of meditation. Now we’re already good to go. Now let’s look at Sila from the long term issue. The long term issue is that especially the environment that you’re in, that you don’t have an opportunity much. Going back to the issue of eating. If your f. If your uncle has all of this food in the house, then the temptations for the eating are there to where at the what the kitchen is generally managed. And because of that you don’t have free access to the kitchen. I mean you may walk through, but generally we don’t spend much time in the kitchen at a watt the way that people spend time at the kitchen in the normal world. Okay, so there’s a long term kind of purification that by just getting into the watch setting, there’s purification done. That in fact at Wat Panana Chat, this is an important, important point is to get the student out of the world’s environment and into the temple, into the white light and getting him into the behavior of the, of the monks is like the very first step that needs to be done is you got to get the kids out of being rowdy so that they can sit down and be quiet. Okay? And so it has both this short term and long term point to it. And most people miss the short term idea. They think that oh my Sila has to be perfect. I Have to be well behaved for a long period of time before I can consider the Coela pure. The answer is no. All you have to do is shut your mouth, take your hands off of me, and your seal is pure. Right then. And so it goes like this. First is purification of siva, or bodily action. The next one is in purification of the mind. The third one is purification of view. And the fourth one is purification of doubt. Okay. And then the last one is purification by knowledge and vision of what is and is not the path. Let’s go back over these a bit. After we have the sealer, just by sitting down in the meditation hall, the next thing that we do is we start looking at removing the hindrances from the mind at that point in time. The instant that the. That the mind is free from the thoughts of hindrances, the mind is pure. Right there at that very moment. Bhikkhu Buddha Dasa spends quite a lot of time. There’s a new book that Ajahn Dhamma Vitu has done and the name of it is Void Mind. Where Bhikkhu Buddha Dasa is talking about the void mind is not that it’s void of thoughts completely. It’s not a. A mind is comatose. The void mind is void of self. It’s void of selfishness. It’s void of clinging. Any clinging. Exactly. It’s in fact. And we spend some of our time every day in that state of being free from dukkha. Everybody does. Very rarely you will find someone who is in suffering all the time. Most of us have moments in and out. What we need to do is begin to recognize that there are times when the mind is in fact pure. Pure enough because it doesn’t have hindrances in it.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. But over a long period of time, then a pure mind means someone who was not speaking spending any time much at all in hindrance because he is now having his mind trained well enough that he is in void mind much of the time. Void in the sense of void of self or selfishness. An example of that. In fact, if people can sit down in our modern society, they can sit down and watch television. And in that time, television watching, they may in fact be in void mind. Somebody can even sit there and watch and take in and listen to the news. With void mind, most people don’t. When they hear the news, they go into a state of. I don’t like that. We’ve got to get that guy out of here. You know, that kind of mentality. But if you could Just enjoy it. So an example of that would be a comedian, a standup comedian. My favorite is George Garland. That people can watch George Garland’s performance and be in a really enormously good state, but others can watch George Garland and get really ticked off because he’s so right about how bad things really are. But he makes a joke out of it and these guys can’t find a joke. So this quality of purification of mind, then we could say that there are normal states that we do it. There’s also states that we can get through great insight just by right and then an aha moment. Or we could do it through mind training in the sense of being able to take the mind and free it from the hindrances so that the mind is in a no mind state. Or the purification of the mind then could be considered the first. Jhna. So the first thing is we do is we get the body out of the world, get the world and the body separated, and then we get the world and the mind separate. And so this is the second stage. Then the third stage is purification of view. The purification of view, then is when the student begins to examine the way things are, the way that his mind works. He can see the impurities coming in and out. And this is when we have the purification of view. It means that our viewpoint is becoming more noble. And that as it becomes really noble, what happens at that point is that we can see that the real problem is selfishness. And so now our view is, instead of the ordinary person’s view is, I’m a self, and my view is to support the self. But when we have the correct purification of you, that means that selfishness is painful. Let’s not be selfish.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And when we practice that well enough, that’s when we come to the eradication of the doubt. And the doubt basically is what I think we’ve referred to before in the sense that who made this mess? Who can I get me to help me. All right. Another way of saying it, I just saw this recently, and when I did, I thought it was so funny. And that is who done it? Who done it? Who did this? You know who done it. And the answer to that is me, which means, then can I undo it? And so this undoing then is that state of purification of doubt. Because the eradication of the doubt means, yes, I can, I can do it.

Speaker A: Mm.

Speaker B: And so the next and. And we can have that again moment by moment. We can have that thought right now, I can do this. And then we can, over the long haul and then. And that over the long haul means that that phrase that I’ve given you before, which is that no matter how obstructed the mind gets, I can clean it out, okay? That’s when that doubt then is becoming eradicated. I no longer have doubt about the path or that I can do the path. Okay? And so the next purification then is the knowledge and vision of what is and what is not the path. Because we recognize what is not the path is in fact all of the rules, all the rights, rituals, even meditation is often done as a ritual which is not the path. Meditation itself is not the path. Waking up is the path, okay? That understanding the way that the mind works, that’s the path. So the path is not following the rules. Even though we said, wait a minute, the first rule was follow the rules, that’s Siva. And so now we’re coming to the point of wait a minute, the rules are not the path. The path is this purification of the mind that we’ve been going through. And so this is this state when we, when we have knowledge and vision of what is and is not the path. That’s the hallmark. That’s when all three of these things have been taken care of. What three things? The first three fetters, because purification of view is in fact purification of the personality view, which is the first fetter. Purification of the doubt and the knowledge and vision of what is not the path is now giving up the fetter of attachment to rights, rules, rituals, procedures, and ways to do things. And then the third one is the knowledge and vision of what is and what is not the path. So this sutra number 24, the chariot relay, is in fact talking about the various stages to soda pot. Okay. As a long term thing, but it also is talking about that which needs to be done in the mind immediately. Immediately we come to the point. Yeah, this is right. This is good. This is. This is it. And now we have actually covered five of the seven. So the last two and in the document that you sent, and then the one that Bhikkhu Buddhadasa has, this is where the Vasudhimaga really goes wild and starts plugging in holes that were left in the original sutta. Okay, so let’s look at the original sutta. The step number six is the purification by walking the path. And then the seventh purification is the purification by having walked the path. Okay? So the first five are finding the path. The first five purifications is finding the path. The sixth one is treading the path. And the seventh one is the knowledge of having tread the path. So you can imagine it like this. It’s kind of like that. You’re an alpine mountaineer and now you’re in the valley and you’ve got the mountain that you’re going to climb in view. And so what do we do in the valley? We get ready, we get all of our camping equipment, we get our canteens, we get our food, we get the mountain axe, all of the stuff that we need together. But when we do that, we’re still in the valley. But after we get all of our gear together and our gumption and all of that, and now we start climbing the valley, the first thing that we do is we leave the village. Now we’re out on our own. Now we’re up on the mountainside and from time to time, through the clearing of the trees, we can begin to look back down on the valley and see the valley below and see where we came from and recognize all of the people down in that valley. They still do not have the vantage point. They don’t have the view that I have. The view that I have is the view from the side of the mountain. Okay? This is knowledge and vision of having being on the path. Now what this means is that we do have the knowledge of learning how to live a good life, but we still haven’t seen everything yet. We haven’t completely gone through the process. Let us say that we’ve got all the school tools to eradicate pride, but we haven’t dealt with it yet. We can see it, but we haven’t finished it. We can, we can see our. We haven’t dealt with it, we haven’t finished it, but we can see it. Okay? This is basically what we’re meaning at that level of walking the path. The knowledge and vision of treading the path means that we see what needs to be done both at a moment, by moment level, and also overall and in general. Now, the last one is like getting to the top of the mountain. Now no longer do we see the village below, but now the village below is actually quite distant. But at the top of the mountain now we have a 360 degree view of things. So now our view really does become pure because we can see humanity in general as being in the state that it’s in. We’re above it all now. This is real. What we call lokatara or supramundane or really literally above the world. And that these various stages that are put into the visuddhimaga is the various purifications that we see along the way once we’ve already on the mountain. Okay, so that’s the answer to your question. Is it organized or is it natural? The answer is both, because we’re talking about a process that happens both mentally in this moment and also over a long period of time through our purification.

Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker B: All right. And so this is. This is the sutta. This is such a powerful suit, especially because it’s got a twin. The twin is the one that I normally speak out of, and that’s Sutta number 48. It’s also kind of funny. That one’s 24 and the other one’s 48. They’re exact doubles of each other. They’re covering exactly the same information in the same territory, except that this is the sutta that the Vasudhima used as an outline for the entire book.

Speaker A: I see.

Speaker B: And so naturally, if this sutta that we’re just discussed as the outline for a book, that book is going to have a whole lot of details in it that we’re not going to be able to discuss in this topic. But those details are for each individual’s discovery. This is something that needs to be seen for each individual. 1. The Dhamma is not a book. And yet in the west, because of Protestantism, we have the idea that the word of God, the Bible, is the God somehow, because it’s the word of God. The suttas are not. The suttas are just a finger pointing at the moon. Don’t suck on the finger. Look at what the finger is pointing at. And so this is a way of understanding that these suttas are various views and aspects of looking at the same thing. And the same thing is the human condition. How the human creates his own suffering and how so easily it is to come out of it, and how a joyful life each individual could have if he stopped hassling himself about having a better life than the one he’s got. All right, so anyway, I’ve answered that question for you, and I really. I gotta say it again. Robert and I both are really over the moon about.

Speaker A: That’s awesome.

Speaker B: The fact that you can. You’ve been able to do what I. What he and I have both done in the United States and in Thailand. And yet the Westerner, for some reason, they. They think that it’s a closed world, but you can see how open they are to.

Speaker A: Oh, absolutely, yeah. All right.

Speaker B: Well, is there anything you want to finish this off with? Any questions that you have?

Speaker A: Oh, no, not the moment.

Speaker B: All right, Eric, thanks for calling. I really appreciate it.

Speaker A: It’s been great to talk to you again.

Speaker B: All right, well, give me a call soon, okay?

Speaker A: I will.

Speaker B: All right. And I’m going to talk to Noah and see what we can get going on that end.

Speaker A: Okay, awesome. Bye. Bye.

Speaker B: Okay, bye.

Summary of this Dhamma Talk

Outline of this Dhamma Talk

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