Direct Path Goes Directly to Satisfaction The Sangha US 119

Transcript

All right, so this is the Saturday morning Thailand call and that it’s evening time in the United States. I’m glad to see so many good friends here today, Alex, I’m really especially glad to see you.

Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. Yes. And several of us are here in Tainan. In fact, we have Daniel and Kathleen and Michael and myself are here in Thailand.

And I suppose, in fact, damadas is in Chicago. David, where are you?

I’m in Florida. You’re in Florida? All right. And Thomas, where are you? Normally in the UK, so.

But at the moment I’m in Singapore. Okay.

So welcome, everybody. We started already talking about a term that is fairly well known but generally misunderstood, and that, in fact, it’s the. It’s the seat of the practice or the heart of the actual practice. And the word is ekaggatā. Now, ekaggatā actually can be understood to be ekka is one and gotta is the word go.

So one go means to go directly to the actual practice, or the practice is to go directly to the point of being free from Dukkha. So the Buddha’s teaching, Dukkha, Dukkha, Nirodha, is actually can be done in one go. You just do it. And that the method that we use to do that is the Eightfold noble path. But we specifically start with remembering to take a look at what’s going on.

If you can figure out where you are, then you can figure out how to get someplace else. But if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t even know where you’re going to be, which direction to go. So this is an investigation, and this is the heart or the key of the teaching of the Buddha is to investigate what’s in the mind, to investigate the thoughts, to investigate your actual attitude, to investigate your emotions. But also a better thing to talk about is to investigate your liking and not liking and also to investigate the body. And we jointly start using the body and we investigate it through the breathing.

So as you’re breathing in long, you begin to see that the belly rises, the chest rises. If you’re breathing really, really deep, even the shoulders will rise and come back down.

You can feel the touch of the cloth around the backside as your body expands because you’re breathing in, and it will contract as you breathe out. A lot of the times when people are beginning to see this, they also recognize tensions in the body. An example of that would be what we would call emotions, that all emotions have a body or a physical component. For instance, anxiety is generally a tightness in the chest, sadness is generally a belly feeling. Grief is all over the place.

Anger we can feel in the throat, in the neck. It’s actually a protection. But in fact, it’s interesting to note, I that why do lions have big lion manes? The answer is that they attack animals and they attack the throat of their dinner. And so when lions attack each other, they generally go for the throat of the other male lion.

So in evolution, the lion that has the biggest lion mane means that he’s got the most protection for his throat.

He may not be the have the longest, sharpest teeth, but at least he survived because the other lion, no matter how long or sharp his teeth were, couldn’t get to him because of his mane. So we can equate that back to ourselves in the sense of the language that we use is seeing red or red faced or red neck, that the neck will swell up with anger and rage. So if we recognize that the body holds all of these various emotions is really good, then for us to use it as a key to how we feel. A lot of times people don’t even know they’re angry while they’ve got their fist balled up, they don’t even know they’re angry. And so this is something that we can use.

Now, one of the important points is that the Buddha talks about getting into seclusion. He talks about the log and the bog in the sense that if you’ve got a log that is waterlogged in a swamp, it’s not going to be able to catch fire. You have to drag it up on the shore to get it out of the water and then eventually, fairly soon, in fact, it will dry out. But as soon as you bring it out of the water, it’s not going to be dried out yet, but through gravity pulling the water down and the sunshine evaporating the water on top of the log, it can eventually be set on fire. This is also a very good analogy for getting into seclusion.

The Buddha says, go to the foot of a tree, go to an empty hut, go to the forest, go to a pile of straw and sit down and bring sati remembrance to the poor. They use the word mindfulness sometimes, and what Sati means is to remember to be here now, remember to come to this present moment, because this present moment is where we’re going to make our investigation. We’re not going to be able to investigate Rome because all we have is just history books. But we can investigate this breath, we can investigate the feelings in the body right now. You can’t investigate last month’s breath or next year’s breath, but you can investigate this breath right here, right now, if you are in this moment.

So Sati actually has the quality of remembering to come to this present moment so that then we can do the investigation. And if we can do that investigation, then we can see what’s going on. And by seeing what’s going on, we now have an opportunity to make a change. So this eka gata that we’re talking about probably means the right effort, right noble effort to get to it, to make a go, to get one go at changing. And we can.

A lot of people say, well, what does that mean? And the answer would be that, well, things change a lot, especially the mind. The mind jumps from topic to topic to topic. Sigmund Freud called it free association, that a mind will think about a black dog, and then you’ll think about a white dog, and then he’ll think about a white cat, and then it’s got a lion that he’s thinking about. Okay?

So it jumps from one little thing to another with one little hook. And so the mind is a monkey mind. This is an old buddhist term, the monkey. The monkey mind means that the mind is jumping all over the place. Well, if it’s easy, so easy to change that it changes automatically.

It seems like men that it ought to be easy enough for a person to intentionally change their thought from an unwholesome thought to a wholesome thought. A way of kind of thinking in then is that instead of letting the monkey mind jump all over from tree to tree is to keep the monkey in one tree, to kind of isolate the monkey into one tree to where there’s only one tree that the monkey can get to because he’s moved that tree. If we think about it in the analogy, you move that tree out of the jungle where all of the other trees are, so that the monkey is going to stay in just one tree, it’s still going to jump around. Now, here’s an important point about the monkey mind, is the reason why the monkey mind jumps from one thought to another thought is that wherever it lands, it’s still not satisfied. Now, this word satisfaction is an important word because the whole quality of the teaching of the Buddha, dukkha duka Nirodha, is that dukkha means that we’re dissatisfied.

And so actually, if we can practice being satisfied and come to a state of satisfaction, then that’s all the Buddha teaches. That’s just one thing to do, one go at ka gata, come out of being dissatisfied into being satisfied. That’s all there is to it. And yet our sculpture teaches us that when you are dissatisfied, when you want something, you gotta go buy something, you gotta go someplace, you gotta work hard. And so this would be going from a to b rather than going to from a to c.

So going to b means looking for love in all the wrong places. And one go would be to stop looking for love. You’re already okay. You don’t need anybody to love you. You don’t even need to love yourself.

You’re already okay without love.

Okay, Daniel, you got your hand up. Go ahead. When you apply and sustain the minds, isn’t that already what you’re doing? Like, aren’t you already in one goat going to the wholesome? So why is there then that extra effect there of ikagata?

Well, it’s not. It’s just another way of explaining it. It’s the same thing. Applying the mind to the wholesome is the one go and then keeping it there, that’s also the one go, come home and stay home.

Because they are listed as separate factors for the first jhana. Pardon? They are listed as separate factors, I guess, for the first jhana. Oh, all right. Well, let’s go through those factors to see that they’re all related to this one go.

The first thing that we have to do is to have the mind free from the hindrances. Now let’s define what a hindrance is. A hindrance is any kind of thought or feeling or a situation, an attitude, a body posture that is hindering you from feeling really good.

And that there are normally five. One would be restlessness and worry. Another would be doubt. I find that doubt is, in fact, the one that’s the most common in the sense that I’ll tell a student how to practice and they’ll ask a question, and I’ll tell them the answer, and then they’ll ask another question, and I’ll tell them the answer, and then I’ll ask another question. And they keep asking questions because they’re still full of doubt right then on there in our conversation as opposed to following the instructions right then and there.

And that is to drop these hindrances, drop this doubt, and practice that. In fact, the instructions are easy enough if we’re going to do it in one go. And so dropping the doubt and saying, all right, I’m going to practice. I’m going to make the change of coming out of the doubt into the state of no doubt so that would be the one go. The next point, then, is to apply the mind to the wholesome.

Well, isn’t that the same thing? To apply the mind means now, that apply it to the wholesome means that you’re not being in hindrances and then sustain the mind being. Don’t go back into the hindrances. Just stay in the state of pleasantness. All right.

Now, as we do that, it brings us into a state of sukkah. So let’s define what sukha means. Sukkah actually means to being satisfied, and it’s got several components to it. If you were afraid. If you’ve got fear, you’re not going to be satisfied.

You’re going to be trying to get away from the danger. So if you can get yourself secluded so that you’re not in any real physical danger, then the only danger left is the residue of the habits that we have of feeling like we’re in danger. So coming out of danger by telling ourselves holds some thoughts like, oh, there’s no place to go. There’s nothing to do. Everything is okay.

So we can bring ourselves out of the feeling of danger and also having thoughts of things being dangerous, that’s a hindrance. You don’t like the dangers. That’s one of the hindrances. And so, as we come out of the hindrances, we can, in fact, then come out of the feeling of fear by having right, wholesome thoughts, because almost always fear arises when we’re thinking of something dangerous, which is a hindrance. So come out of the hindrances, have good, wholesome thoughts, and then we can come to a state of feeling safe and secure and comfortable, and with that, we can feel satisfied.

Voila. This is the entire teaching of the Buddha, right there is to come out of the hindered mind by getting ourselves into seclusion. We’re getting away from all the other people’s unhappiness and dissatisfactions and hindrances. So we get away from them only to find that we brought them with us in the mind and in the form of hindrances. So now we get rid of the hindrances.

And by getting rid of the hindrances, we are allowing ourselves to be in a state of Sukha. If we continue to practice that, that will give us. Then the attitude of, I can do this. And that attitude of, I can do this goes into a, wow, I can do this. This is what called the state of pity.

The state of pity is, let us say, a really high quality recognition that everything is okay.

So where did Daniel go. Did you turn your mic or your video off? All right, so in this quality, then it’s all the same thing. In other words, these directions are really, really simple. And the one way of saying how simple it is is that one thing to do, the one goal is to change, to go someplace, to come out of the place that we are and go into a happy place, a place that has satisfaction.

And this we have to practice because everybody that I know is really, really good at being dissatisfied. Our culture teaches us to be dissatisfied, to be dissatisfied with this, that, and the other thing. And we can actually change then our state of satisfaction from being dissatisfied, dissatisfied all in just one go. But we break down this one go in the sense of, all right, let us say that one goal is to go out of this house over to the other house. Well, there’s little things like I gotta open the door and I gotta walk down the steps, and then I gotta put myself in the direction of the other house.

And then I’ve got to climb the steps and then open the door and get into the other house. But there’s just one go, as opposed to, I’m not going to go to that house first, I’ve got to go visit my grandma down the street.

But if you’re going to take one go, just one go. And that is to make that change from unwholesome to wholesome. As we do that with the body, we make the body comfortable. I know a lot of practices in the west of meditation is to sit for long periods of time in order for the body to become uncomfortable. And that’s not what the Buddha teaches.

He doesn’t teach to have the body uncomfortable. He teaches to have the body make be comfortable. So when the body is comfortable, the reality is that you’re comfortable. And so the sukha then can arise the feeling of being comfortable.

So there’s a body component to this jnana thing, and that is for the body to be relaxed. And then we have this factor of freedom from hindrances. We have this factor of applying the mind to the wholesome, sustaining the mind of the wholesome, having this state of feeling like everything is okay, that state of satisfaction. And when we have that satisfaction over and over and over again, we get that wow feeling. Isn’t it really nice that I can, in fact, be satisfied?

Because most people spend most of their time in the state of dissatisfaction when they are satisfied, it’s only for a little while. People don’t stay satisfied for very long. Okay, so we’re actually practicing sustaining that state of satisfaction. This is the one path. This is the one go.

So, Daniel, tell me about it. This reminds me of what we talked about privately last time, and that is that sometimes new practitioners, they will tell themselves like, ah, this is good enough. This is okay, but they don’t really. But then they think like, oh, yeah, but I don’t like it. I don’t feel good.

Yes, in fact, it’s that yes, but yes, I feel good, but. And that but always destroys the yes. So the applying and the sustaining is then just a small part of the one go. And the one go is about making the feelings of a bit better, the body a little bit better. Is that how I should see it?

Right. So you could say to apply the mind to the yes, and then the yes but means that now we’ve gone away from it. So be careful of when you’re saying yes but or yes. However, the yes is the applying it but not having that but allows you to apply and sustain it, rather than saying, oh, everything is okay, and I feel good, but it’s not good enough yet. That means that you applied it, but you didn’t sustain it, you didn’t keep it.

So once you arrive home, stay home. Once you’ve having a good, wholesome thought, have another, have another, have a third, have a fourth, sit down and get drunk on being okay.

So it’s the attitude change and the energy that you put into it. Yes, exactly. There is an energy, uh, build up that you get a momentum going. In the beginning, the right noble effort is a little bit hard, but if you keep pushing and keep pushing and keep pushing, pretty soon you can get on a roll.

But then if you stop applying that right, noble effort, then things are going to slow down and stop again.

So you have to keep going. You have to keep pushing and keep pushing and keep pushing and keep putting the right effort in. But that’s all the one go is just to push yourself out of unwholesome, into the state of wholesome. So, David, you got your hand up.

Yes. Thank you. You nailed it. This is exactly what my issue was. This is exactly why I asked you, and you’ve answered it.

I was landing in the situation where it was yes, but not really good enough, and I was living in the unwholesome, which then shot my wholesome experience to smithereens, and I did that. So this is perfectly answered, exactly where my trouble was. Thank you. All right, so, Thomas, you got your hand up. Yeah.

Before I joined this sangha, I would interpret practicing in kind of let’s call it an intensive way would be meditation. Right? Like sitting for long periods. Now, I know that you don’t suggest that. So what does it look like to, like, is it still appropriate to set aside time in your day to, you know, outside of trying to remember, to be mindful, you know, throughout your working day or whatever?

Do you recommend setting aside time to just sit in seclusion? And what does that look like? Does that mean making yourself a cup of tea, but just making sure you don’t go on YouTube? Like, what does it mean to sit in seclusion? All right.

Actually, it means you don’t even need the tea. Just sit. Not for long periods of time, but for just a short time. I would recommend I ten minutes a day or ten minutes at a session for six times a day, that in fact, devout Muslims, it takes about 15 minutes to do their prayers, to roll the rug out and do the bowing, and then they bow and then they stand and then they bow and lay down and prostrate and stand up again. And it takes about 15 minutes to go through that.

And as you probably know in Islam, that they do it five times a day. Now, one of the things that I have heard many, many times over and over again is that those cultures that do that and require the people to do that, they gain great benefit from doing it. Wow. I can take a few times off. I don’t have to think about that piece of code that I’m writing.

I don’t have to think about that website design. I can just sit here or stand here or kneel here and go through this little ritual. And by doing that, we’re getting our mind out of the world. Okay? This actually, that prostrations that the Muslims could do could be a whole lot better if they were doing what we’re talking about while they do it.

But for some reason, doing the prostration, so God sees you doing those prostrations or what they really are thinking is important. And really what’s really important is to get their mind away from all of the stuff that we’re doing all day, all of the bees that we were talking about and go straight to everything is okay, everything is fine. So with that idea of 15 minutes five times a day, that’s where I come up with ten minutes for six times a day. But it’s in that, in that same regard of getting away from the desk, getting away from the t, getting away from the tv, getting away from the cell phone, getting away from everything and getting this associated with other people and sit down and clean out the mind of all of those things. Those are all hindrances.

So the tea is a hindrance. Now, when you become fairly good at this, yeah, you can sit, and while you’re making a tea, you can make it mindfully. But for the beginner, it’s best to get away from everything so that you can get away from everything. So everything on the outside allows you then to get away from everything on the inside. And everything here is the hindrance.

Everything that you, that monkey mind is all over the place. And what we want to do is isolate the mind only into the wholesome and have only wholesome thoughts. So thoughts of everything is okay, not a worry in the world. Those are things that give us the idea that we can be safe right now, that we don’t have to go do something.

We don’t have to make tea. We don’t have to use the tea to make us feel good. We can just feel good. We can feel safe and secure and comfortable. And with safe and secure and comfortable, we can then go to that big leap into satisfaction.

But if you’re uncomfortable and unsafe, you can’t make that big leap into satisfaction. And that state of satisfaction then with its attendance of safe, secure, and comfortable, that brings us then to that poly word sukkah, which is exactly opposite of the dukkha. If you’re satisfied, that means you’re not dissatisfied, that you can be satisfied. Right now, everything’s okay right now. Everything is just fine right now.

And we have to practice that because look how much time you spent your whole life being dissatisfied and needing to do something. Getting up, putting your pants on, putting your shoes on, putting your clothes on, going outside, putting the keys in the car, driving to who knows where, getting out and going into the office, getting out and going into the field and picking cotton. It doesn’t matter what it is. That’s all done because we need to do that because we’re unhappy and uncomfortable and things will be dangerous if we don’t do it. And so we spend almost our entire lives in a state of discomfort, dissatisfaction.

So now we’ve got to get away from all of that, to get away from the whole world, to get ourselves into seclusion so that we can practice being in seclusion, real seclusion, seclusion from all of the hindrances, all of the worries of the world. And we start talking to ourselves about, everything’s okay. Everything is fine. No worries. Everything is hunky dory.

Even dory is hunky. She’s still okay. Everything is just fine. Everything is beautiful. Not a worry in the world.

Everything’s gonna be okay. Wow, how nice things are.

So, Sean, you got a question? Um, yeah. Sham. Yeah, it’s Shawn. I.

I just put it as that for, like, 2003. It’s not important, but, yeah, I. What makes us forget when we’re just outside doing things that everything’s okay? Well, you’ve been trained that not okay. They picked you up off the floor when you were playing with your toys, and they gave you a pen and pencil and paper and says, all right, do your abcs, do your one two threes.

Put your little school uniform on and go to school. You’ve got no choice about it. Pick up your toys, clean your room. Do what you’re told to do. Hold mommy’s hand.

And so in that lifestyle that every child goes through, we learn to be dependent. We learn to be a victim. We are victims of school. We are victims of church. We are victims of the school uniform.

We are victims of the studies. Why? Because we don’t like it. We’re trained to. You do what you’re told to do and don’t like it.

Why are we trained to not like it? We’re trained to not like it because our parents are training us that they do what they’ve got to do and they don’t like it, but they do it anyway. And so we learn that we go and do what we’re told to do and don’t like it. And so we live our lives in a general state of dissatisfaction, which means that now we’re going to have to practice, practice, practice over and over and over again, to becoming satisfied, to start thinking everything is already okay. Whatever job there was to do when we stopped doing that job, the real job is done.

So think about it in this sense, having the thought of everything is okay. The job that needed to be done has just been done. And what is that job? Getting rid of the hindrances. Getting rid of all the other jobs that we’re supposed to do, the jobs we have to do that we don’t like doing.

We’re just going to stop thinking about all the stuff that we’ve got to do and start enjoying this moment. Wow, this is nice. Everything is okay. Not a problem in the world. Not a worry.

Everything is okay.

Dylan, glad to see you. Join us. Thank you. Glad to see you as well.

So does anybody have any more questions about this?

Kat, I can see you. Go ahead, Dylan. My question is, is the only way to eradicate doubt, to constantly tell yourself the opposite? No, no, no, no. You missed the whole point.

Let’s go again. Remember to be here now and take a look at what we’re doing. Take a look see, because if you can’t see the doubt, then you can’t change it. That, in fact, when people are trying to get rid of their doubt, they’ll just go from one doubt to the next. That’s the monkey, the monkey mind.

Just jumping from doubt to doubt to doubt to doubt. You have to actually see that you’re in the state of doubt, and then you can say, oh, I can change that doubt into everything is okay, everything is fine. I don’t have to have my questions answered. I can just relax. That’s probably the biggest issue that westerners have, is that issue of, well, what about this, and what about that?

And what about isms? And maybe I’ve got to do this before I figure out that I can just relax. And the answer to that is, stop asking questions. Stop asking these whataboutisms and just say, everything is okay already. This is what we have to practice, is just being already okay.

No questions to be asked.

That’s how you get rid of the doubt, is by seeing the question, seeing the doubt. And by the way, doubt actually has a bodily sensation. Another way of saying doubt is fear. Doubt is a kind of fear.

Basically, you could say it’s the fear of the unknown. And you heard that expression, better the devil you know than the devil that you don’t know. And the answer is, it’s better to not have devils.

No doubt about it. They’re better not to have devils. And so just throw all the devils out, all the ones that, I’ve got to make a choice between this and that. No, you don’t. You can set both ideas aside and just be happy and practice that for five, six times a day for about ten minutes, just practicing.

Everything is already okay. I don’t have to know that soup. I don’t have to know that poly word. I don’t have to know the directions to town. I don’t have to know how to make souffle.

I don’t have to figure out meditation. I don’t have to do it right. Oh, I want to do the meditation correctly. That I want to make the meditation done correctly is a hindrance.

It’s a whole set of hindrance. You’ve got desire in there. You’ve got judgments about what is good and bad, and you’ve got the desire, which is also the doubt about how to do it. So when you say, oh, I want to do meditation correctly, that’s a hindrance.

And you can say, oh, I don’t have to do it correctly. I can just relax instead. It’s already okay. Another way of looking at it is that if you can get yourself out of the hindrances, then recognize that that’s good enough. I could be satisfied, yes, but I’m not satisfied enough.

It’s just wanting more. And we can see, oh, I want more satisfaction. Never mind, let me enjoy what satisfaction I can find a little dabble do you get started with just a little bit of satisfaction and sustain that satisfaction and let it grow.

Water it, nurture it, care for it being satisfied. Everything is already okay, no doubt about it, no questions asked.

I’m all right. I’m okay. Wow, what a relief it is.

So stay with those things. Stay with those particular phrases. Keep repeating for ten minutes in a row, five or six times a day. Wow, everything is okay. Wow, what a relief.

It is no place to go, nothing to do. The job that needed to be done has been done, and now I can relax. Wow, just relax. What a relief.

And you keep practicing like that, and pretty soon you begin to get quite joyful. Wow, how great things are. Why? Because I’ve satisfied. I’ve changed my attitude, and this is an attitude changed from, I need to do this and I need to do that, and I don’t like that, and I’m afraid of this over here.

That’s all states of dissatisfaction. And when you come into a state of satisfaction, wow, what a relief it is, then that will grow.

It will grow. But if you say, I’m satisfied, but I want more satisfaction, now you’ve just destroyed. There’s that, yes, but instead of saying, oh, I see that, yes, but I can see that I’m satisfied, but I want more satisfaction. Never mind, this is good enough. A little satisfaction is good enough.

I don’t have to do anything else. Just a little satisfaction, that’ll be okay.

Don’t destroy your satisfaction. This is what we were talking about with Daniel, of applying it and sustaining it.

I’m satisfied, and this is good enough satisfaction. The wows will come later when we change that attitude from being a victim into being the winner. Wow, we got this made. Wow. I can do this.

And that will then lead to the state of wow. No matter what happens in the mind, I can clean that stuff out and come back into a state of satisfaction and see things the way they really are. Think about that. You keep practicing satisfaction, and you’ll come to the point of saying, I can’t do this. Wow, I can do this.

Doesn’t matter what kind of problems that I have, it doesn’t matter what kind of hindrances that I have, it doesn’t matter what’s going on. I can clean out that stuff and come back to the state of everything’s okay and everything is fine. Now, that’s a big state to get to. The Buddha calls that the very first real knowledge, the knowledge that you can clean out your mind, no matter how dirty it gets, you can clean it out right here, right now. You just drop it.

You come back into a state of satisfaction. You can see things the way that they really are. And then the Buddha says, this state is the first step on the real path. This is the first status of Sotapan. He also says that this is the first state of nobility, that attitude, that no matter what happens, I can fix it.

This is noble. It’s part of the path, it’s part of the progress. And as you can well figure out, very, very few people have that attitude. Very, very few. This isn’t a state of mind that only nobles have.

Ordinary people do not have this, that absolute confidence that you can clean out your mind, no matter what you’re thinking about, no matter how much you hate Granny for winning that argument, you can say, that’s okay, stop it. Granny’s all right with me. I can handle that. Everything is okay.

So that’s the first knowledge. And that first knowledge can come when we keep practicing over and over and over again, being satisfied until that satisfaction begins to settle in. And that’s your normal state. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be free from hindrances forever. No, the hindrances are going to come back.

And when they do, you can say, hot dog, I see you. I see you, mister Hindrance. I see you, Myra. That’s the word that the buddha used. Aha, I see you, Marae, which is that attitude of, I can do this, I can handle that.

I can handle Mara when Mara comes. I can handle these hindrances when they come back in the mind. No doubt about it. No questions to need to be asked about how to practice meditation. Stop asking questions about how to practice meditation and start just feeling satisfied.

That’s the practice.

How about that, Daniel?

It somehow feels a bit direct to me. Yes, it is direct, isn’t it? That’s the direct path. But yeah, for me, I still find value. Like, I get a lot of inspiration from the sutas, and it’s a nice way to structure time.

Yes. So that’s why that’s why I study it. But sometimes I do get a little bit caught up in it. So it can be a wholesome activity, but sometimes it turns, remember to keep it wholesome. Remember to keep it wholesome.

Okay, let me give you this kind of a definition. The definition between doubt and curiosity is the component of joy. We can be joyfully curious and go find out something, but we’re still in that state of pleasure. We’re still in that state of satisfaction. And I can still do research.

Doubt is different. Doubt is I gotta know. I can’t do anything until I figure it out. It’s a burning question. My mind is on fire and I have to have the answer to it.

That’s doubt. But oh, let me look that up. Let me go see what that is. Like the questions that we have on the, on the Internet. That’s good.

I would say that that’s based in curiosity.

And so follow that curiosity to the point of being satisfied. But you can be satisfied in a feeling of satisfied. Like, I don’t know the answer, but I can figure it out. I can find that.

But if you have the idea, I need to know that. That’s Dukkha, that’s doubt.

So know the difference between curiosity and doubt. One’s wholesome and the other one is unwholesome.

Yeah. Usually it starts out that I’m just thinking like, oh, what am I gonna do now? Like, I’ve been practicing a lot. I want to. Yeah, just do something else for a bit.

Yeah. Guess what? You don’t have to do anything. Stop practicing. Wow, what a relief it is.

I don’t even have to be relieved.

Oh, what a joy it is. I don’t even have to practice being joyful.

So stop practicing altogether and just be okay. The job of practicing has been done. Now I don’t have to practice. I’m all right now. That’s completely different than people getting tired of practice.

Why? Because the being tired of practice means that they’re working at something and they’re not getting the benefit.

That’s what most meditation is, is wanting something, practicing meditation and not getting it.

Here we’re practicing getting it. We’re practicing being satisfied. We’re practicing feeling safe and secure and comfortable.

It’s gonna really refresh your mind, though to just do something like a SUTa reading or go for a walk or stuff like that. Right? Just go for a walk and enjoy the walk. You enjoy thinking about going for a walk. You enjoy standing up and putting on your robes and enjoy walking out the door.

Down the steps and enjoy walking, not trying to get, oh, I’m supposed to do walking meditation now?

You can see there’s a major attitude change there.

And so, moment by moment, watch your attitude. The attitude is everything is already okay. So whatever I’m doing, it’s okay. And when one is satisfied, when one doesn’t want anything, guess what? Your sila, your morality, is more than likely perfect.

Good enough. Why? Because if you don’t want anything, you’re not going to hurt anybody to get it. If you don’t want anything, you’re likely unlikely to steal it. If you don’t want anything, you’re not going to lie to people about it.

If you don’t want anything, you’re not going to gossip about how bad that guy is because he’s got it and I don’t. Therefore, he really doesn’t have it at all.

You see, that’s, that state of satisfaction has enormous benefits. Enormous benefits in the sense that it keeps our behavior and our language quite nice. Everything is.

And whatever you see that needs to be done, you can do it happily. You don’t have to do it because it needs to be done. You can do it because you enjoy doing it.

But that takes real practice. So five times a day, six times a day for ten or 15 minutes of the session, that’s the practice that we put in so that we can get to the point of whatever you’re doing, you can enjoy. You don’t need to read that sutta now. You can just enjoy reading the sutta because you’ve already gotten the habit built up of everything is okay, everything is joyful.

So that would be the middle of the path, the beginning of the path. Then you’ve heard this. Judo’s statement of this is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end with right phrasing and meaning and timing. So the good in the beginning means that you can change the mind out of those hindrances and practice doing. So.

Practice getting into a state of satisfaction. Then the middle of the path is to be able to take that satisfaction to whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re dealing with other people, whatever activities that you have, reading the sutta, you don’t do it because you need the information, you do it because you enjoy doing it.

And then in the end, you get to the point if you just enjoy doing nothing at all, nothing needs to be done. Arahats don’t make good teachers because they don’t give a flying rip about whether the student gets any progress. Or not. You need someone there in that big, strong, happy middle cat. Does that remind you of your situation with a chance?

He just don’t give a flying rip.

Yeah, I’ve noticed. Letting him be a teacher, let him be your example. Yeah, I’ve noticed there is, like a different. A different kind of style. Some of these are teachers have.

Some are really, like, when I was at Ajahn Martin, he was quite energetic. And then some other teachers, they just don’t really say anything and they just don’t do anything and they don’t really care. But you still get, like, a wholesome sense from them. Like, it’s still a pickup on. It’s quite wholesome.

It’s not like, you know, it’s not something negative or anything, but it’s quite positive. It’s very positive nothingness. Just nothing to it. Daniel, you also mentioned that you were worried about not making it to the meditation hall for the chanting and achan santi. Well, he doesn’t care, but I don’t think he even realizes that I usually don’t go because I’m too lazy, so.

Well, you could go to the chanting because you love doing it. Some mornings I’ve had a good night of sleep, and then I’m like, oh, yeah, I can go now. I feel like, yeah, I can do that. Yeah, some mornings I really don’t want to go. Yeah.

Oh, I don’t want to go. And you can see, aha, I see that unwholesome thought then. No matter how unwholesome the mind gets, I can get rid of that. I can jump right up and I trot right down to that meditation hall and sit down and do that chanting and sleep there.

Yeah. Oh, we actually have, like, a separate. Separate hall now where me and Kat, we do the chanting together. So it’s like, separate from the other monks. So that’s quite nice.

Yeah. But sometimes we still don’t show up. Sometimes we just. We won’t show up because we’re just too. Yeah, we’re just like, not today, you know, I feel like the nature of these things are quite deceptive sometimes, like how these defilements come up or just sometimes quite surprising, and then I really understand this is a training, you know, like, this is a training to just keep grinding against, like, with these things.

Against these things, whatever I. To deal with them correctly, like, every time they come up over. Yeah, but you’re making a grind out of it instead of, aha, I see that. I know the wording. I know.

I know the wording. I use can be sometimes like that. I I know it’s like just the same thing every single time, but it’s the way they come up in each, each given time, it seems they’re like, to be almost like they’re little, like, deceptive or they’re almost like cunning. The way that they kind of want to hinder you again and again and again in different ways, but it’s the same thing every single time. It just seems to be different.

Yeah. Just those old habits, they sneak right in, don’t they? Yeah, I see. The quality of the SaTI is the main domain, the main objective, really. Right.

You keep practicing. I’m going to catch you next time, is the attitude. I’m going to catch you next time. I can do this. You’re not going to sneak up on me this time.

I’m going to be alert.

And that’s the attitude. The winner’s attitude, the loser’s attitude is, oh, no, here it comes again.

And the attitude of the winner. Bring it on. Hold my beer. As they say. Sometimes they talk about in the.

I was some guy, Jyn joined our chat yesterday. He was talking about the 16 stages of insight and how they reach equanimity, something like that. And. Yeah, but there’s no reason to go through the dark night of the soul. Oh, yeah.

You see, you can see, in fact, that, that looking at dissolution and dissolution until you feel bad and this frightful and this miserable and all of that kind of stuff, you don’t need to do any of that stuff. That 16 stages of insight is actually practicing wrongly for quite a while. And then you look at step eleven, and that is you redouble your effort, and then step twelve is the four noble truths. Well, why don’t we just start with the four noble truths and. Right.

Noble effort. And now we’ve just, you know, you cut out three quarters of that 16 stages. We only need four.

And guess what? Everybody starts with step 16 anyway. What is step 16 of the 16 stages of insight? Do you know which one it is? No.

Is ongoing. Watching, watching. Would that be like Sati. Some. The word satisfaction.

Like this? Yeah, that’s. Mm hmm. Just watching. Keep looking.

Keep remembering to be here now and keep watching, keep looking.

And that’s a good place to start, not a good place to end.

I think the guy who did that 16 stages of insight was probably a spy. A Brahmin in orange robes. A Buddha gosa. A Buddha Gosa, exactly.

It’s weird because, yeah, lunch has got a bomb in it.

If I. If like, you’re kind of in that mode of equanimity or something. Is there, like a. It’s almost like. Like formal practice or the motivation, the practices is.

It’s weird. Like, it sort of, like, falls away. It’s. It’s explaining, like, the motivation to be practicing this. Yeah, that’s the whole point.

Stop all of this motivation stuff and just be happy.

Yeah, but that sort of comes about itself. You know what I. This is in that state of. From the middle to the end is when you begin to lose all of that motivation. You don’t need the motivation to practice because you’re already doing it.

The beginning piano student has to be motivated to practice. But someone like Arthur Rubenstein, he’s just sitting at the keyboard praying he’s not motivated to practice. Yeah. He’s having too much fun playing the piano.

So Scaldy. You got your hand up. Go ahead.

Yeah.

I ask this or say this with a lot of hesitation, but I can’t control myself. And I know you hate this sentence, but I’m just gonna say it. So, from one side, I hear from you, do morator, that you say this whole practice is about losing. And then from another side, I hear you sometimes saying that that’s the loser’s attitude. Uh, right.

Which is the attitude that you have now. Why don’t you change the attitude? I can do this. I can be happy. I know I can be happy.

Yes. Just be happy. Just be okay. Right. Satisfied.

Absolutely. But I I’m. I’m trying to understand that.

Don’t want to call it contradiction, but what’s wrong with being a loot, having a loser’s attitude?

Okay, basically, the problem with having the loser’s attitude is you, number one, go around asking questions. What’s wrong with having a loser’s attitude? Number two, the problem with the loser’s attitude is you’ve got to ask questions of someone else, because someone else is the winner, and you’re the loser. So when you change your loser’s attitude to the winner’s attitude, you don’t need help. You don’t even need the answers to your questions.

You could just be okay, so what really is that? You can’t see that these are hindrances for you yet, so you practice, and you recognize that, hey, I don’t have to have the answer to that question. I could just relax instead.

I don’t have to be a loser with asking questions about, is it okay to be a loser?

Hot dog. I see that I have these questions, and I don’t need the answer to these questions, I could just be happy instead.

You can figure this out not because you’re in doubt. You can figure it out because you recognize. You don’t have to figure out. The figuring out is to figure out. You don’t have to figure it out.

I know that sounds strange. It’s almost a catch 22. But that’s the, that’s the one thing that has to be figured out, is that you don’t have to figure things out.

You can just be. Okay.

Can I ask something about what you just said? Do you think. Okay, sorry, if I may continue. Do you think that question that was asked about the continuation of that battle in a way, in a dream or in the dream at night, you can’t be. At least, I don’t know how to be mindful in a dream state.

The. Sorry, you want to hear that? Do you want to hear the answer to that? Yeah. All right.

Number one. This is the big one. The big number one is the buddha did not do anything about dreams. He said just to forget about them. He did not do dream interpretation.

He was not a sigmund Freud. He did not see dreams as prophetic. He was not a Joseph, but rather just to forget about the dreams. If you have a dream and it’s elusive and you can’t quite figure it out, stop trying to figure it out. Stop trying to remember your dreams, stop seeing the dreams as bad, stop seeing the dreams as good.

Stop having an attitude about dreams at all. That’s the first point. They’re not prophetic. They’re not going to help you figure anything out. It’s when the mind is just wandering around.

In fact, the mind is restless when it’s in that dream state. And sometimes you have dreams and sometimes you don’t.

For a long time I went not having any dreams.

Very rarely do I have a dream. Sometimes they’re really weird dreams, weird in the sense of where did it come from? But the point is that I don’t have to worry about the dream at all. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is, let’s get prepared for sleep properly.

Now, the way to look at it is going back to these five or six times a day for ten to 15 minutes at a session. One of those sessions can be as you climb in bed at night, you’re getting ready for bed, or in fact, you’re already in bed and getting prepared for sleep. What do we do? We start practicing. Everything is all right.

I don’t have to go to sleep. I can just lay here for the next 8 hours and just enjoy the heck out of it. Wow, this is nice. I can just get under those covers and just feel so comfortable and everything is okay and everything is fine, and that’s the way to fall into sleep. And if you don’t and you find out that you’re actually thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow, you can say, never mind, I can come out of those plans and just come back.

That, in fact, almost always a dream is a continuation of whatever worries we had during the day. And so if you don’t have any worries in the day, you’re probably not going to be doing much dreaming. The dreams are trying to figure out that which you were trying to figure out in the day and couldn’t figure it out. So if you go to sleep with the idea, I don’t have anything to figure out, everything is already done. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

We’ll have fun tomorrow and it’ll be okay. And right now I can drift off into sleep easily.

And then the dreams won’t be much of anything or they might be quite lucid. So what? Doesn’t matter. It’s just a state of mind you’re in. And often when people wake up in the morning, they wake up being bothered by their dreams or bothered by what they’ve got to do in the day.

So another time to spend one of those sixes in the morning. Just when you wake up, just as you wake up, you can wake up having the thought of, wow, this is a nice day. Wow, everything is going to go my way. Wow, everything is going to be all right. I can lay here and rest and get my day together by getting my mind together, and my mind is okay, and I’m okay.

Everything is all right. And so, practicing twice a day, once when we’re going to sleep at night, and the next one is when we wake up in the morning. And when you wake up in the morning and said, I had a dream, you said, never mind about that dream, forget about the dream. Let’s just be here in this moment.

Okay. So no reason to think about dreams, no reason to worry about the dreams. No reason to have dreams. And there’s no reason to want to not have dreams. Let the dreams become completely irrelevant whether they come or.

Or go. Not a word.

Is that a good enough answer for you?

Um, I would say for now, yes. Um, but I might have to ask more details, um, later on. No more details necessary. Just they’re not important whether it’s a flying dream or a sexual dream, or a dream about a big building or a dream about staircases or a dream about monkeys in a tree. Whatever the dream, just forget about it.

It’s not important. No, I agree with what you’re saying. But now that you’re continuing, allow me to elaborate even further and say that I agree with you. Yes, they’re not important. But again, going back to the basics, what’s.

The whole point of what we’re doing is to reduce dissatisfaction, right. And I kind of call it suffering still, but it’s suffering in the mind, not suffering outside the mind. So when, and this comes actually from experience, it’s not just some hypothetical question at all. I’ve been doing what you suggested to do and it just. Enhancing is not the right word, but it increases the pain I feel right after I wake up.

I’m not trying to interpret it. I’m not trying to be supernatural about it in any way or even expect it or anything. The more I try in the day and in fact it works during the day light, it does work. But then during night, when I’m dreaming, my dreams become extremely painful. Well, you’re calling them painful.

You’re calling them painful. That’s what makes them painful. They are the. I don’t have any other way. I mean.

What? What do you mean? I mean they’re painful to me, hence I’m calling them painful. You’re. You’re calling them painful because you don’t like them.

And yet none of those dreams have ever hurt you beyond you not liking them.

So start changing your attitude about not liking these dreams. You call them painful because you don’t like them. And there’s nothing wrong with the dreams. What’s really going on is that you’re in the victim state of I don’t like the dreams. I want to do something about them, I want to get rid of them.

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