Erik Z 10, Dwight 2 3 12 21

Video

Transcript

Speaker A: Yeah, that was magic.

Speaker B: Okay, so let’s talk about the Second Noble Truth for just a moment, Dwight. And that is this. That the Second Noble Truth, the first word of the Second Noble Truth is the word cause, the cause of suffering. Now, an important point is that the Buddha is big on this word cause and causality, cause and effect. Without this, that doesn’t happen. And much of the teaching of the Buddha is based upon this word cause. For instance, how do you break down.

Speaker C: Yeah, how do you break that word? Batista samo pada. What? Because that would be like a compound word, correct? I don’t. I don’t actually know that. How it’s broke down.

Speaker B: It’s broken down this way. Paticca is the word for cause. And the word samupata, the upada is coming to be. Okay. And the sam means truly, nothing comes to be without a cause.

Speaker C: Is that up? Is that in any way related to Upadana?

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And it is also related to Donna, different from bawa. And it’s related to the word donna and it’s related to attena donna. Okay, this word donna has to do with the movement or the taking. Attenu samatiami attended means that I will not take things that are not given. Okay, so danakin means to be given. And tinodona can be taken, but that it’s taking. So upadhana means things do not come to be or can be taken without a cause. They cannot come to be, they cannot be grasped, hold up without them having to come into existence with a cause. And the teaching of Paticca Samupada is how the mind works in a kind of a cause, effect, cause, effect, cause, effect, cause, effect, relationship. Because of this, this happens. Because that this happened. Because of that, this happens step after step. And if you’ll hang with me, we’ll eventually get to that. Because in fact, the teaching of Paticca Sampada is nothing but a very deep aspect of looking at that Second Noble Truth. And the key is right there with that word cause. The cause of suffering is in fact in great expansion. The teaching of Paticca Samapada. Where does this stuff come from? Step after step we lead up to it. But in the Second Noble Truth, the generalized way of looking at it is that greed comes from. Or that. Excuse me, that dukkha comes from greed, desire, or wanting things that we don’t have. Because if we want something that we don’t have, the more we want it, then the more deficient we feel without it. If we want it only a Little bit. That means it’s not going to help us much. We get it like shopping and you see something on the shelf, do I pick it up or not? Doesn’t really matter. Maybe I’ll get it, maybe not. I might use it. Okay. And then you go into the store and you really got to have something and they don’t have it there. And then you look at the way you feel. Okay, so this is actually what we’re talking about is that it is wanting something that we don’t have. And the more we don’t want, the more we want it and don’t have it, then the morduka there is. Now the other one is ill will. The more we don’t like something and want to get rid of it, the worse we feel. And that we feel bad when we want something or we feel bad when we want something that we want to get rid of and we don’t recognize that those two things are meshed together that cause dukkha, then that’s ignorance. When we get the wisdom to recognize that all ignorance comes into play there and that’s the cause of suffering. So going back to that statement about Achan Semedo not liking the sweeping and Achahn Chah saying, is the dukkha in the broom? He’s actually pointing directly at the second noble truth. What is the cause of suffering? Oh, it’s the broom that causes the suffering, right? Or maybe it’s the stamp wave. Or maybe the cause of I’m suffering, but it still missed the point. The point is that I’m suffering while I’m sweeping because I don’t like the sweeping. I don’t like it. And when we wake up to the point, the only problem with the sweeping is that I don’t like it.

Speaker C: Well, and for me, if not the not liking it is a big part, of course, but it’s the delusion that there’s a way out. There’s. There’s the delusion that, right, okay, that because the duke is in the broom, there’s a way out. If I just didn’t have the broom, if I just didn’t have because the duke is in the job or because the Duke is here, because the dukkha’s there, I have, I, you know, I’ve got a way out. When in fact, if at the bare bones, the dukkha is in the fact that I have a body and there’s no fucking way out of that because this son of a bitch is rotting to death and there’s no there’s no way out. So regardless of what’s going on around me and where I find Suka or what I blame Dukkha for, at some point there’s going to be a catastrophic collision between the reality of Kaya and deity.

Speaker B: I mean, you know, well, that’s one way. At some point, you’re just changing prisons by saying that you can’t get out of the body because it’s actually not the body’s problem of sweeping. And that the example of that is the following. Let me tell you about the story of Tom Sawyer. It’s in the Book of Tom Sawyer, written by Samuel Longhorn Clemens, known as Mark Twain. And in the Book of Tom Sawyer, his aunt is telling him that he’s got to go paint the fence, to whitewash the fence. And he’s out doing it there. And Huckleberry Fenn or one of his friends comes by and starts teasing him and jostling him about the fact that he’s got to paint the fence. And Tom immediately picks up on that and says, oh, no, I’m really liking that. This is really interesting. Look at how I can do that. I can put my finger in the hole and do that right there. And the next thing you know, Huck wants to do it too. And Tom doesn’t want to let him do it, says, no, this is my fun. Well, okay, I’ll let you do a little bit. And then. And then Tom says, down and let Huck Finn paint the fence for him. And Huck Finn loved it.

Speaker C: Didn’t he end up charging him?

Speaker B: So now you’re trapped in the body. And that’s why the broom. It’s not the broom, is I’m trapped in the body. It’s not the body either, I guess.

Speaker C: No, no, no. What I mean by that is that, you know, the death is what I mean. You know, the broom, you can get away from the broom. You can lie to yourself enough to believe that there’s a way out of Dukkha, that I can find a way out of this. But ultimately, there’s no amount of, well, that’s not true magical thinking. There is enough magical, you know, to believe that. Well, okay, you know, man.

Speaker B: Well, now, here. Here we go. Let’s go a little deeper into this. If you can recognize if Tom Sawyer can love to paint that fence, then the only problem or the only difference between hating to paint that fence and loving to paint that fence is Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’s attitude. And your attitude you have a whole lot of control over. You may not be able to control. You’ve got to live in the body, but you do not have to hate. What the body is doing depends upon your attitude. And this was something that I was about to start on in the. In the first place. And that is that if you can change your attitude from a bad attitude to a good attitude while you’re not doing anything, then by developing a good attitude about something, you can maintain that good attitude when you do have to do something. This is why the Buddha talks about getting off into seclusion, getting off into seclusion so we can actually work on getting that attitude straightened out. And by the way, the attitude that I’m talking about here is sama Sankapa. In the Pali II of the Eightfold Noble Path, a skill to be developed is the right attitude about things. And when the attitude is right, it’s the attitude of a lion. Now, one who is sweeping and doesn’t like the sweeping is not a lion. He’s a victim. He’s a victim of that broom and he’s a victim of the dirt that he’s sweeping. But really, if you think about it, he’s really a victim in his own mind. But if he changes his attitude from being a victim to being the winner, then what’s this little old broom to me? I can sweep this stuff up and enjoy it. I can whistle while I work. There’s no problem here. And not only that, but if Achahn Tenesuro can do that, you can too. Like I said, he sweeps, he loves it. I could not establish a decent walking meditation path because he sweep it up.

Speaker C: That’s too good.

Speaker B: So this is what we’re talking about here is that there is an escape, but that the ignorant escape is that, oh, I feel bad about sweeping. Let me do something like break the broom or throw the broom out into the bushes. Or mostly, if it’s over with and I don’t have to sweep anymore, then let me go ahead and do this job of sweeping and hate doing it. At least I’ll be finished with it then. And that’s how a lot of people live their lives. In fact, often people, because in this case we’ve got an object. But let us say that someone is sitting in anxiety and they know that they feel anxiety, but they don’t know what it is or how to deal with it or anything like that. And so they’ll mull over in their mind, thinking of things in the past that need to be fixed, and then they’ll come across one of them and they’ll say, Aha. If I go do that job, if I go fix that, then I’ll feel better. And while they’re going off and doing that and thinking about doing that, they’re not even thinking about their anxiety. And so the anxiety goes away. But when they finish that and come back and sit down and recollect what’s going on in this present moment, the anxiety comes back. And it wasn’t that they did that job at all. The job didn’t help. And so both of those people are in delusion. The one who hates the sweeping says, if I get this job done, I’ll feel better. And the other one is, I’m trying to find something to feel better, and if I do something, I’ll feel better after I get it done. And both of them are still stuck with the same old bad feelings.

Speaker C: Yeah, I’ve got a lot of personal experience with this because I’ve worked a lot of manufacturing jobs where you’re making the same part a hundred or a thousand times a day. And, you know, at times I would be tempted to look at a batch of parts that I had to make, you know, and let’s say that I’ve got a number of them to do, but I know that after that I’ll get to do a number of. At least there’ll be a change and I’ll get to do a different part. I’ll catch myself getting excited about this change. And I actually, you know, I have to take an extra step to remind myself that there’s actually not an end to this. I mean, there’s going to be another batch, you know, it’s not. Well, something my dad used to say in the shop is, you know, as soon as we’re done, then we’re out of a job. Like, we don’t get done. There’s no such thing as done. You don’t get done with this job because as soon as you’re done, there’s nothing to do and we all go home, you know, you don’t get done. So it’s, you know, getting good with the idea of this job doesn’t get to get done.

Speaker B: That’s the ordinary. This is happening.

Speaker C: There’s no.

Speaker B: That’s the ordinary. That’s the ordinary, mundane way of looking at it. Okay? And along with that, if you look down at the box of parts of things that need to be done, that’s almost the same as looking over a cliff of where you could fall to. In other words, in both cases, don’t look down. Don’t look down at all this pile of work to do. And don’t look down to that place where you could fall to. Okay, so here’s where we’re talking about.

Speaker C: I mean, that smacks a little bit of avoidance, too, which you gotta be. I mean, I personally have to be careful of. I gotta be careful of. You know, am I not. Look, I gotta look right. Look right at it. Because if I, you know.

Speaker B: You’re not. That’s the whole point. No, you’re not. That’s the whole point. I’m trying to get you to look right at it. What you’re looking at when you look down at that box of parts is looking at the future, the work that needs to be done. Not this present moment. When you’re looking over the cliff to that valley below. You’re thinking about what would happen if you did jump, but you don’t. Okay, there we go. Thank you. In that regard, it is not looking at the reality. In fact, what you’re doing is you’re looking at the future and creating the reality in your mind. Look, how much work I’ve got to do. There’s another way of doing it, and that is that I like what I’m doing right this very moment. Let me take a nice deep breath and do this part well and enjoy doing this one. And then in the next breath, I’ll do something else while I’m standing in front of this lathe. And in fact, in a way, what we’re talking about is that each time that you do apart, or even more often than that, each time you take a breath at that particular time and moment when you push out the kind of thoughts like, I don’t like doing this, or look at all that big box of parts that I’ve got to do. When you throw those kind of thoughts out, that’s the work that needs to be done, not the actual turning of the lathe itself. It’s the work that needs to be done. It’s cleaning out the mind from all of the garbage of all the work that’s got to be done so that I can actually enjoy this present moment. And once you do that, you can say, now the job is well done. And now that the job is well done, I can. I can stand here at this lathe and play. Yeah.

Speaker C: If you love what you’re doing, you don’t work a day in your life. You know, everybody loves to hear that.

Speaker B: Yes. And nobody takes heed of the fact that you think that that means that I have to go change what I’m doing in Order to like what I’m doing. And the Buddha says, let’s do this in a more noble fashion. Let’s not worry about changing what I’m doing in order to find something that I like. Let me learn to like what I’m doing right now. To literally take our mind out of that hot water and put it into the cool water. Say, let me enjoy this moment right now.

Speaker C: Yeah. Happiness is a choice. It’s an action. Happiness is an action, and it’s an action that you choose.

Speaker B: Mm. Now we’re looking at what I find suffering. The. Ultimately, the cause of suffering is ignorance. Go ahead.

Speaker C: What I find is that, like, an old Johnny Cash song. I really am quite fond of the. Of the suffering. I don’t want to let go. Like, I want to hate what I’m doing. That way I can prove to everybody else how bad it is or whatever. I can. You know, it’s like, if I. If they catch me enjoying this, then I don’t make the point of how much it sucks. Like, if I’m doing this and whistling while I wash dishes or mop floors or clean toilets or run a lathe or whatever. If I’m enjoying this, then there’s got to be something fucking wrong with me, because who enjoys cleaning toilets? So there’s, like, a resentment. There’s. I hang on to that. Like, you, by God, I’ll do it. But, yeah, you’re. I’m not going to enjoy it, you know, you will not catch me enjoying this worry, you know? I know. It’s like a worry stone kind of thing. The hatred becomes my best friend, my lone companion. It’s the only one left.

Speaker B: It’s okay.

Speaker A: It’s okay to enjoy it. Give yourself permission. It’s okay.

Speaker C: Oh, hey, Eric. I’m so sorry, man. You know, I. Sometimes I forget you’re there because actually, the screens are, like, split, and your face is actually. I only see, like, one of your cheeks, and your face is kind of behind Don Lanta. So I’m sorry if I haven’t. I just.

Speaker A: It’s all right.

Speaker B: Yes, that’s something that I can tell you also, that you certainly have my permission that you can enjoy it. And you’ve already gotten Eric’s permission. All you need now is your own permission to stop listening to that kind of song. That, in fact, that song does not see the way out. He thinks that if he, in fact, enjoys doing that work, that the man’s going to give him more work to do. That’s why union shops don’t like someone who can do really good, high quality work in a hurry is because that means that the standard will be raised and everybody’s got to come up and do that amount of work. And so the fear is that if I enjoy this, I’ll just get more work to do and then I’ll hate that. And so the work, and so now the joy is not conditional upon how the state of mind that has been developed, but it’s conditioned upon how much work there is to do. Okay, I’ll sweep one sidewalk, but if I have to sweep two, then I’ll feel bad. And so that’s where that song comes from. And it also wants to, let us say, glorify the resentment and almost as if glorifying the revenge. The revenge is that, all right, I’ll do what you tell me to do, but I’m going to hate it.

Speaker C: You know?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: It strikes me as I’m sitting here in this conversation with you, you know, and like, yes, of course. Of course I know Duka. Of course I know that greed causes dukkha. But. Okay, here, let me. Let me. Let me retrack a little bit. I heard it was Ajahn Jeff to Nestro talking about. I believe it was Ajahn Fung, who was one of his teachers, talking about. Am I going too far down the line here? I don’t know. But anyway, no.

Speaker B: Okay, I know these guys.

Speaker C: He was talking.

Speaker B: He was, by the way, his name is pronounced Fuong. Were his teachers.

Speaker C: I think I. I think I’ve got them on the wall here.

Speaker B: Never. It doesn’t matter.

Speaker C: But anyway, sorry.

Speaker B: So what did Achahn T. Nisaro say about Achan Puong?

Speaker C: He was talking about. He was talking with a woman who was undergoing treatment for cancer. And, you know, I’m not familiar with that process, but as I understand, it’s incredibly painful, the chemotherapy. And just, you know, I mean, like I said, I’m not familiar with. I haven’t been close to anybody that’s gone through that. So I don’t know.

Speaker B: It really is. If she doesn’t like it, it really is painful if she is a victim to it.

Speaker C: So she was going through. And this was in an article on Access to Insight just for record. But anyway, so she’s going through chemotherapy or some kind of treatment for this cancer, and all of a sudden she developed an allergy to the pain medications, and she wasn’t able to take the pain medications anymore. And the doctor’s saying, well, you know, we need to reevaluate these treatments. We can’t there’s no way that we can continue this course of treatment without the pain medication. And she’s saying, well, actually, you know, I’m a meditator, so actually, I think. I think I can probably handle it.

Speaker B: And sure enough, that’s that attitude right there. I can handle this.

Speaker C: Of the treatment by meditating through it. And later on, she was. She was talking with Ajahn Fung and telling him how exhausting it was that she could do it. But after the treatment, it just totally wiped her out. Like, you know, she could handle the pain, but it just. It was everything she could take, and she was just totally wiped out. And his statement to her was, that is because you are using concentration. You’re. You’re using concentration, which requires, you know, maximum effort. And I’m loosely paraphrasing, I’m trying to remember here, but if you. If you were to use wisdom, it wouldn’t require as much effort. So there was the idea he was presenting wisdom.

Speaker B: Wisdom, right. Okay.

Speaker C: Yes. So. So ever since I read that, I’ve been trying to understand how can I deal with my physical pain through wisdom instead, as opposed to, you know, concentrate, like, as opposed to. What do you call it, Patient endurance. And so, you know.

Speaker B: Here’S the point is that it’s still the issue. She was dealing with concentration because she still didn’t like it, and she was trying to escape from it using the tool of concentration. You are also in that position of not liking those sensations, and so you call them pain. This is one of the things that I think is valuable with the Goenka technique is by doing strong determination cities and other things like that, the students begin to realize that these pains in the body are not pains. They’re just merely sensations in the body. The body has sensations. It’s only when it gets into the mind. When it gets into the mind, then it hurts. It only hurts in the mind. Whatever you want, man.

Speaker C: That shit hurts.

Speaker B: Well, it hurts because you don’t like it. And it hurts because you don’t like it. You’re a victim to it. You see, that’s in fact the whole point about the Second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering is that we become victims to it, that we don’t like it. We don’t like that we have to do without the things that we want. We actually don’t like it, that we have to put up with things that we don’t like. They’re hard to endure. But wisdom will say, wait a minute. That’s just a sensation. It comes and it goes. And I can still have. And I can still be happy even if I have that sensation that in fact, the strength. I can handle that. What? That sensation in the body is only this big and my brain is this big. Can a big brain like this handle a little sensation like that? It’s only a stab wound. I can handle a little stab wound. I’m a tough dude. I can stand here and die with that stab wound without blinking an eye, which is an old Zen coin or a Zen story about the general who took over that part of Japan. And as he was storming around, he stormed into this temple. And all the monks, knowing what happened, they all bowed down, bowing and scraping and bowing and scraping to this masked general that just walked in. Except one old monk. He was just standing there. And that general marched up to him and he says, don’t you know I could cut you in half with this sword without even blinking an eye? That old monk says, don’t you know I can stand here and be cut in half without blinking an eye?

Speaker C: I hadn’t heard that one. That’s nice. Nice. Thank you. I like that a lot.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: You know, to hear and see, that’s. I hear that and that. Is that real?

Speaker B: It’s an attitude.

Speaker C: I don’t. I don’t.

Speaker B: And that attitude. No, that’s all there is. That’s all absolutely was attitude. That’s that whole show, this is what Sama Sankapa is all about, is taking the right attitude. The right attitude is, I can handle this. I can stand here and get cut in half without blinking an eye. Well, after, if I get cut in hat, I don’t care what the eyes are doing, they can blink away after that. But if you can develop that attitude. That same attitude is fearlessness in the face of death. I can handle that little sensation.

Speaker C: I thought about that a lot because.

Speaker B: Don’t think about it.

Speaker C: So, you know, I’ve ran across, well, of course, some of the things that I’ve read, you know, in trying to formulate what the actual Buddhist belief, you know, what. What does it mean to be Buddhist? Like, when I first, you know, the first. The first material that I came across was actually Norton’s Anthology of World Religions on Buddhism. And it was on a bookshelf at a treatment facility I was at. And I like to read, know that kind of shit. So I just, like, I’m just out of curiosity, you know, I had no intention of any kind of a thing. I had never heard his story, extensively read philosophy.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Just never made it to Buddhist Wasn’t interested, didn’t care. But anyway, so I read his story and it’s like, wow, there’s something here. And so, you know, ever since that day, you know, it’s been like three years ago or two and a half or so, I’ve been trying to figure out what that story is. So anyway, part of. Part of what I found, Internet being my topitica, because that’s what I’ve got, I guess. But anyway, you know, you. You hear things like rebirth and, you know, being raised Christian, I’m already predisposed to magical thinking. So I latch right onto that, of course. And then I hear things like, well, your rebirth actually might be intimately connected to your mind state at the moment of death. And that scares the shit out of me because it’s like, now I’m responsible for what my mind is doing at the moment of death. And if.

Speaker B: No, that’s liberating.

Speaker C: Hollywood is right. That’s going to be really violent.

Speaker B: It’s liberating. If you say hot dog, that means it is kind of important that I prepare for death. So at that last mind moment, I’m going to be there for it. I’m going to watch what’s going on. I’m going to invite it like a dear friend.

Speaker C: Yeah, it lights a fire under your ass.

Speaker B: Mm.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: I can handle that last moment.

Speaker C: It does.

Speaker B: The question is not that it can handle the last moment, because that’s off in the future. The question is, can I handle this one? Can I handle this moment? This moment when that broom is in my hand?

Speaker C: What if it hurts really bad?

Speaker B: And so this is where we have the opportunity to keep changing our attitude over and over and over again. The skill development of changing that attitude, Changing that attitude. But we need something as an assistant to that change of attitude. And what is that? Success. Only when we have success can we come because we’ve been spending so much time losing that we wind up feeling like a loser. So now we need some success. We need some wins in order to begin to feel like a winner. And this is a training program. This is what Anapanosati is all about, is to take those unwholesome loser thoughts out of the mind over and over again, one at a time as they occur, and put something wholesome, valuable, nourishing, delightful in the mind.

Speaker C: What? How long and how often? Wrong question entirely.

Speaker B: Yeah, the right answer to that is do it now. Yeah. Cheer up now.

Speaker C: Early and often. Early and often.

Speaker B: Exactly. Early and often is exactly the skill to be developed. Then Sati is To wakey wakey, wake up often.

Speaker C: Never mind, start again quickly.

Speaker B: Never mind, start again. Exactly. So, yes, here you are worried about the future instead of enjoying this present moment and developing the skill of being a champion of this present moment. If you can be a champion of this present moment, and you know you can do that and have the success of being finished with that work while I’m standing at that lathe and I can have that thought of, look how much work I’ve got to do. The answer is that is I’m fine right now and that’s all the work you need to do. That’s one’s right effort. One’s right effort is not to look at that box of parts and look how much work there is to do. That’s not right effort. One’s right effort is not doing all of that work and hating doing it. One’s right effort is to take unwholesome thoughts out of the mind and replace them with wholesome thoughts. That’s the only job that you’ve got to do. And it’s surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it. That’s the job that needs to be done. But most people will resist and resist and kick the lathe and storm out and break the broom and all kinds of stuff without recognizing the job is really easy. All I have to do is change my thought from an unwholesome thought to a wholesome thought.

Speaker C: Yeah, it’s that old adage of taking the energy that you dedicate to avoiding the task and just apply it to the task.

Speaker B: Well, your whole past, like mine, is full of misery. As soon as you start thinking about the past, you’ll start to feel bad because you’re a real critic and you’re always a critic of your own past. But in fact, you could say it this way, is that not only is the past in the past, but so is the person who lived that past. And I am not that one. That is not me. This is me, this moment. And this moment is joyous. This month is this week, this hour, this minute, this second is joyous. This is what Sukha is all about, is developing that sense of satisfaction, that sense of everything is all right, everything.

Speaker C: Where does the joy come from?

Speaker B: It’s natural. It was already there. You have as good a possibility as feeling good as you have a feeling bad. It’s the hormone systems, it’s the chemical systems in your brain. And you are in the habit of releasing a lot of one kind of chemicals. And you’re not in the habit of releasing A whole lot of other different kind of chemicals. And if you start changing the kinds of thoughts you’ll have, you start changing the minds and the body’s chemistry.

Speaker C: You know that sutta where the Buddha says that it’s chaitana that I call karma. Can you speak to that?

Speaker B: Say that. Say what you said. Again.

Speaker C: I can’t remember exactly how the sutta goes, but he’s basically saying, you know, listen up, Bhikkhus, it’s Chaitana. Chaitana is comma. It’s Chaitana that I call comma. Or maybe it’s the other way around, comma. No, it’s Chaitana that I. You know, Chaitana.

Speaker B: Okay. Vedana and pali and wadana in Thai.

Speaker C: No, no, no. Not, not wana. Chaitana like cheetah. Cheetah. Chaitana like mind. Cheetah. Mind, heart. Cheetah. I must be saying it wrong. It’s a word, as far as I understand, it has to do with the impulse. You know, it’s. It’s mental impulse.

Speaker B: You’re. You’re much more correct than most people when the translators translated as mind. But in fact, there are different aspects of the mind. Even in the Pali, just like in our English, we have different aspects of the mind. The citta that is in the satipatthana for the kaya nupasana, the veda nunpasana, the chitta dampassana or chitta upassana is the one you’re talking about now. And the dhamma nupassana, basically what it’s talking about is the states of mind we’re in. Is the mind sharp? Is it focused or not? Is it drowsy or not? Is it ordinary? Is it collected or not that particular.

Speaker C: No, I know where you’re coming from, but that’s not. I’m not communicating what I’m saying. The word is C E, T E, N A, C, E, T E N A. And. And the Buddha says that that’s what he calls karma. C, N A.

Speaker B: Okay, yes. Let me finish. I’m going on with that.

Speaker C: Okay, sorry, sorry.

Speaker B: Now there’s another communication.

Speaker C: I don’t.

Speaker B: Well, you’re. You’re anxious, and that’s good. You’re enthusiastic for the dharma. That’s good. I like it when students are a step or two ahead of me. That’s good. So there’s the other kind of mind, which is normally referred to as manu. And the manu is the higher part of the brain, the man who is what gives us the word man or Human or mankind that makes us separate from the animals. So chitta is the part of them. Yikes. It’s in the Pali, but a lot of don’t because they just translate both of them as mind, because we don’t have that kind of distinction in English. But in the Pali, it’s very definite and it has some particular meanings. And that in the Thai, there is a place where it is used that it is translated not as mind but as heart. In the Thai, word is jai. Now, that’s very, very telling because the Buddha is not talking about the intellectual part of the mind or the wisdom part of the mind. He’s talking about where we store our emotions and feelings. And the key word operative here is kind of concept of the word store that in fact, this chitta is also in. Have you heard of the word sankara? Okay, chitta is directly associated with sankara. There are three kinds of Sankara. One kind of Sankara is the bodily sankara, and that would be the skills. The skill of using a lathe, the skill of basketball, the skill of playing the piano, as well as other hand and arm movements. Sports people develop the body in certain ways. And then in English, we would call it muscle memory. Okay, now the next one is the verbal. And the verbal sankara, or talking, is the concepts that we use. And in Buddhism, we would call that something in the direction of. And we’ll explain it in detail later as the sila bhatta paramasa, all of our would, shoulds, coulds, how things are supposed to be, and the dialogue that we have inside our own mind about what you should do. Okay? Like, for instance, you tell yourself, you should be brooming with this broom. And then the chitta, the deeper part of the mind, rebels against that and says, I don’t want to sleep. All right? And so you have the bodhisattva there, the guy standing there with the broom in his hand. He’s got this mental dialogue. Say you use this broom to sweep this path, and then the chitta inside is saying, oh, no, I won’t. And then the verbal will say, oh, yes, you will. And this dialogue continues right along while the sweeping is done. All right, so this chitta then that the Buddha and Bhikkhu Buddha dasa talks about is the comma of the fact that we’re behaving like kids that we did in the past when we were as kids, we were told to do something. We rebelled against it. Now we tell ourselves something in this world. And the child, the chitta inside rebels in the same way that we rebelled when we were told to do our homework. It’s the same rebellion. It’s learned memory, it’s stored and it comes up as the results of old bad actions or karma. And the Bhikkhu Buddha Dasa keeps saying, in fact, there’s a really beautiful lion’s roar. The news, the newspaper, the news magazine Lions Roar has, and there the name of it is, comma, your choice. In other words, are you going to continue to let this chitta just run on with all of the bad feelings that it knows how to have, or are you going to train this chitta to start having, let us say, more wholesome feelings? Well, we can’t get the child inside to have more wholesome feelings if we keep with the unwholesome thoughts from the verbal. But we have to change the verbal first. And when we start changing the verbal part of the mind, then we can start changing the feeling attitude about it underneath. So this is all explained in Anapanosati in the sense of that we have to gladden the mind. And in The SUTTA number 117, which I like so much, is when it’s talking about one’s right effort. One’s right effort is to remove unwholesome thoughts from the mind and substitute them with wholesome thoughts right now at this moment. Not a plan to do it when I die or a plan to do it when I actually see that broom, but I can get myself into a wholesome, happy, comfortable state right this very moment that is so long I don’t have anything pushing my buttons. That’s why the whole idea of getting into seclusion is so valuable, is cause I’m sitting alone by myself. If I can’t make myself feel good right then, with nothing to do, then I’m completely lost when it comes to being able to handle the world, right? I’ve got to get my own mind straightened out. And when I do, I can handle the world happily because I know how to handle my mind happily. That’s the teaching of the Buddha, is to sit down and literally happy up. And this is what the practice of Anapanosati is really all about. And so many people practicing meditation, for instance, noting, and they note the dukkha and they note more dukkha and they see it and they keep looking at what the mind is doing, but they’re not taking the right effort to change it from unwholesome thoughts to wholesome thoughts. And that’s the secret ingredient. That’s one of many secrets. It says to Wake up. Recognize that these are unwholesome thoughts and throw them out and put the mind back into a wholesome state. That’s the practice of the Buddha. And we practice that over and over again.

Speaker C: Why?

Speaker B: Because we have been practicing for the past 25 or more years unwholesome thoughts. And so those habits are really ground in one of the ways I like to say it is. You’ve been spending years talking yourself into feeling bad. Now it’s time to talk yourself into feeling good. Because you knew how to feel good when you were really a little kid. Mommy was nurturing, she took care of you, she changed your diaper and nourished you. And anything you did was okay until you’re about five or six years old. And now comes the whip, now comes the ABCs, and to clean your rooms and to do your homework. And now we’re beginning to feel bad, and we start rebelling from that parent. But we learned all of that language. And so now as an adult, we’re just repeating the old go do this and do that. Do what you’re told to do. And still that child inside is still rebelling against that. I don’t wanna. I don’t wanna. And so it’s all an internal dialogue. And that internal dialogue then that keeps popping up is in fact our comma. And we could put a stop to that. We could choose to stop listening to all of those critical thoughts that make us feel bad and start having wholesome, nourishing thoughts. Like, hey, everything is okay. Hey, I can handle this. Hey, I could look at what’s going on. There’s the wisdom is to wake up and take a little close look a little bit in the sense of very quick speed up, look at what you’re doing and say, hey, I don’t have to do that. I don’t have to feel bad. I can feel good over and over. We need to practice. But guess what? When we start talking ourselves into feeling good, I hear a lot of noise as maybe somebody’s holding up the microphone or the cell phone, where the microphone is. Is it mine?

Speaker A: I had to.

Speaker C: I don’t believe I’ve got anything going on here.

Speaker B: So is you. Yeah, yeah. When you spoke up, it. It went away. So anyway, back to what we were talking about. And that is that the practice of anapanosati actually goes in the sense of first to wake up. This is right sati. Look at what you’re doing. That’s right view. Then we take the right effort to change what is in the mind, change those Thoughts change those views. And by changing them, we set the stage so that we can begin to feel good by shutting up this parent, by shutting up the critical thoughts and starting having nurturing thoughts. Then the sita will begin to respond to that and will bring up joy, bring up sukha, bring up satisfaction, bring up the sense of safety and completeness. And this is the sukha. And if we do that often enough, then we’ll begin to develop the right attitude that, hey, I can do this. Hey, I do not have to feel bad. I can feel good because I know how to feel good. I’ve been practicing feeling good. And so this is the basic practice of Anapanosati, built around that issue of right noble effort. The noble effort is to make the mind noble. And it always happens in this present moment. So you don’t have to worry about the future at all. The only point that you have to pay any attention to is what’s the mind doing right now? If the mind is good, then we’re good, no?

Speaker C: And if it’s not.

Speaker B: Pardon? And if it’s not, then change it to something wholesome. Okay? The Buddha had the phrase that he used very early in the. In the course. In fact, he used it in the. In the process of figuring out patita samapada and actually figuring out how to see the path and talk about the path. And the phrase that he used was, aha, I see you, Mara. Now, what does that mean? Aha, I see you, Mara means aha, I woke up. I’ve just investigated and I see you, Myra. That’s what’s there. But when I say, aha, I see you, Myra, that next mind moment has now already changed from the thought of I’ve got work to do into the thought of, aha, I see you, Myra. And that’s a joyful thought already. And so then the next thought would be, out you go, I don’t know. And then the next thought is, everything is going to be all right. Everything is fine. No worries, no problems. Everything is really easy. And we can do that any moment. And when that moment comes to the next moment, we can do it again.

Speaker C: You know, I want to. So I’m sitting here thinking this through, my. I’m taking it, thinking, really trying to work on the cursing too, but that is so automatic, you know, I mean, it just comes out. And I shouldn’t be, you know, slow down. And I suppose if I could start to talk little bit slower, then maybe I wouldn’t have such trouble with what comes out of my mouth.

Speaker B: Excellent advice. Because if you can remember to slow down, you can also remember to actually put a muzzle on it. So it’s all about remembering to remember. And that is sati. To wake up and remember. Okay, so waking up and say to slow down. That’s really good advice. That’s a wholesome thought. In fact, it reminds me of an old song. Slow down, you move too fast. You gotta make the moment last. Now.

Speaker C: I don’t know that one. Shucks.

Speaker B: Skipping down the coffee. We’re feeling in love and feeling groovy.

Speaker A: That’s great.

Speaker C: Oh, yeah, that one.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Feeling groovy. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker B: That’s what we need to practice. We need to slow down and feel groovy.

Speaker C: I have a question that I’m trying to formulate and I. It’s like I get. I don’t even know the question, but it has. It’s surrounding this sense of that battle with, comma.

Speaker B: You know, it has to be battled with. We’re going to change that battle mentality. The battle is because you have to fight it off, because you’re a victim to it. But when it’s your friend, you don’t want to battle with it.

Speaker C: But the K says it is a. It’s. It’s a. It’s.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: So maybe not for all people, but for me personally, like, you know, we talk about the five faculties. What is it? Persistence. Persistence, Mindfulness, concentration. I can’t. It’s. I’m too flustered, I guess.

Speaker B: Okay, you’re using standard translations for those words or mundane translations. The actual word is strata. And sada does not mean faith. It means confidence. That’s the can do attitude. Okay. And then in fact, if you have faith, you’re not going to be persistent because faith is pretty weak. But if you’ve got confidence, if you’ve got I can do this, then you will be persistent. And what is persistence is nothing but. Never mind. Start again. Remembering. That’s the sati part. To keep remembering, to keep doing it.

Speaker C: It is a battle.

Speaker B: Sorry, what was that?

Speaker C: Oh, nothing. I’m trying to argue and I shouldn’t be. You know, I listened to a lot of Ajahn man and what’s his Ajahn? Mahabhu. And he’s your real fire, you know, Fire. I just. I love it. It’s so. And. But it resonates with me personally because I was raised by a group of people that were the Kansas equivalent of a Mahabua. Ajahn Mahabua, you know, but Christian and in the sticks so well to that, you know, we are here to fight. This is a fight for your. You know, this the only fight worth fighting. And it’s a fight against the Kileysas. It is a fight against. But the combatants, the combatants being the faculties of persistence and mindfulness and concentration and determination.

Speaker B: You know, I.

Speaker C: For some reason, they’re slipping me. But it’s, you know, it’s those things in. In my mind against this force of 37 years of Sankara. The weight. Well, no, no, see, that’s ignorance. That’s delusion. Because it’s not 37 years. It’s however long the human race has had a continuous history. You know, whether that’s been a broken lineage or not, it’s a separate debate. But, you know, if we’ve got like.

Speaker B: 10,000 years, that’s the sum total of all of the past. And it’s the sum totalizations. But you have a choice about how you’re going to now.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And so it doesn’t have to be a war with the past. And if it is a war, let me show you how to fight the war. Look at the screen. This is how you fight a war. Did you see that? I’ll show it to you again. This is how you fight a war. Stop crap. This. This is in fact the war. And when you just relax and let go. But we have to do that 10,000 times. It’s not a war to keep doing that unless you call it a war. But it’s really just letting go of that thought. And one of the points then is that this is hard, that this is a battle, this is war. And changing that attitude into the attitude. Hey, this is. Okay, I got this one.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker B: This present moment is great. I like this breath and that sense of well being. We’re going to develop a sense of well being. This sense of well being is the sukkah, as opposed to the sense of not well being is dukkha. And we have to actually develop the sense of well being. And we can’t get into a sense of well being if we have the attitude of battle that I’ve got to fight, the collation that makes not only them your enemies, but that makes you a victim to them when they win. And that in fact, while you are fighting Kalasus, that is another Khaleesa, because you are fighting. This is actually very subtle part of the noble path about making friends with that conceit, making friends with the restlessness inside.

Speaker C: Using it skillfully. It’s about using the conceit to fabricate a raft to get you through the stream. To get you to the other side.

Speaker B: Yes, you got it right. Exactly now, right? You can’t say everything’s an enemy because.

Speaker C: Ajahn Chah told me. Ajahn Chah told me I have everything I need right now.

Speaker B: Yeah, you do. To do what you need to do right now. You have everything you need right now to do what you need to do right now. Let’s not worry about the future and what the future thinks. Because if you can handle right now, you can handle whatever now it is in that future. So congratulations. You got everything you need. You have graduated. The job has been finished. The job is done. No place to go, nothing to do. And the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. And you see, that’s only an attitude. But what a marvelous attitude. No place to go and nothing to do. Any job that needed to be done has been done. And what was the job that needed to be done? Kill the guy who gives you jobs to do.

Speaker C: Hotel. Because it’s. It’s me. That’s the guy that gives me jobs.

Speaker B: No, it’s that Sankara. It is the Sila Bhatta paramasa. It is all of that list of jobs and rules and shoulds and goods and goods to do. And when you kill that thing or tame it is a better way of saying it that I wanted to get around to that. You take control over it, you tame it, you make a friend out of it, and you get it to shut up sometimes. Or you change it from a critical parent into a nurturing parent so that you nurture yourself with your own language. You talk to yourself to feel good, rather than being critical of yourself, thinking that there’s work to be done. So you tame that work giver. And when that messenger doesn’t come to give you work to do, then there’s no work to do and you’re okay in this moment. That’s the surprising teaching of the Buddha, that everything has to be done about it. In this present moment, you don’t have to worry about getting all the unwholesome thoughts out of your mind forever or even for the next 10 years or 10 years from now, just this present moment, throw those hindrances out, take a deep breath and relax with the job well done. And you keep developing that skill over and over again, and then it will be there for you when you need it most. When somebody else is trying to give you work to do, or that you’re under the delusion that someone is giving you work to do, they may just be complaining about their work but generally in my mind, when I hear somebody complaining about that work, that means they’re trying to give it to me to do for them.

Speaker C: Generally. Well, hey, man, I’m coming up against time limit here.

Speaker B: This has been great. I have really enjoyed this, Dwight. I’m glad that we had this time together.

Speaker C: Thoroughly. Thoroughly. And Eric, even though I can’t see your face, man.

Speaker A: It’S nice to meet. Right. This is been really great. Thank you.

Speaker C: The Dhamma is such a rare thing.

Speaker B: He’ll figure it out. Between the neuroscientists and the psychologists. I would assume a hundred years from now we won’t worry about how bad I AI is. We just let it do all the work and everybody sits around enjoying your life. But will all three be dead by then?

Speaker C: We’re lucky.

Speaker B: So who knows what the future is going to be, you know?

Speaker C: All right. I’m gonna have to let you go. Hey, you know what? I can’t even. I don’t. I don’t. Thank you.

Speaker B: We’ll see you later. Right. Glad to see you talk.

Speaker C: Right on. It was nice to meet you, Eric.

Speaker A: See you.

Speaker C: All right. Next time.

Speaker B: Oh, Eric. What have we got? He’s. He hasn’t left yet. Oh, there it goes.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: Ah, yeah.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker B: Shall we finish up too? Got anything left?

Speaker A: About time for sleep for me. So.

Speaker B: All right.

Speaker A: Nothing for today. Another day this is.

Speaker B: We’ll see you later. Keep me informed when you get to the border. I guess that’ll be later today. So I can talk to you tomorrow. I don’t know.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: All righty. Okay. Where are you going after that? After you get to the border? Are you going towards El Paso? Is that where you’re heading?

Speaker A: I’m going to. Yes. El Paso. And then. And then staying out of the big cities like I have been and. Yeah, I’m not. We’ll see tomorrow.

Speaker B: Okay. We’ll see you later, Eric.

Speaker A: Okay, bye.

Summary of this Dhamma Talk

Outline of this Dhamma Talk

Participate in one of our Live Sanghas (Free of Charge)

►The Sangha US, Friday 7 PM PDT Join Skype Call.

►The Sangha UK, Sunday 10AM BST Join Skype Call.

►The Sangha UK, Wednesday 7PM BST Join Skype Call.

There is nothing like direct transmission of the teachings in a one-to-one or one-to-group (Sangha) format from a skilled teacher. We encourage you to participate in our weekly Sanghas.