Guru Viking Ep241 Meditation Myths Dhammarato

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Guru Viking: In this episode, I am once again joined by Dhammarato, a lineage teacher in the Thai Buddhist tradition who is known for his unique one on one teaching style. Conducted over Skype, Dhammarato challenges what he sees as the widespread misconceptions about meditation practice, focusing in particular on American Buddhism and the Goenka and Mahasi methods. Dhammarato discusses issues such as the dangers of meditation retreats, the problems with sleep deprivation and other austerities, and recount stories of men he has known who crippled themselves through obsessive meditation practice in damaging seated postures. Namoratto also calls for a return to the original teaching of the Buddha, advises on how to find and keep spiritual friends, and shares his perspective on how to meditate well.

Guru Viking: So without further ado, Dhammarato. Dhammarato, welcome back to the podcast.

Dhammarato: Yes, I’m glad to be here.

Guru Viking: Well, it’s very good to see you again and we have a very interesting topic to discuss here today. In one of your recent videos on your website, you discussed this idea of formal practice and you challenged some of the assumptions we have about meditation practice. For example, it’s something to do with sitting cross legged on the floor and there’s something such as formal practice. You challenged that entire idea. In fact, you said that the Buddha did not recommend nor give a formal practice. And you also said that a lot of the ideas that people have about meditation practice are derived from Western Buddhism, which you described as the new kid on the block and the one that is furthest away from the teachings of the Buddha.

Dhammarato: Right.

Guru Viking: So I’m very curious about that. I have several questions, but perhaps you could begin by addressing this, this idea of formal practice and in what way Western Buddhism, in your view, has deviated from the teachings of the Buddha in this regard.

Dhammarato: All right. The first thing to talk about would be the middle path that everything that fits in with the teaching of the Buddha about dukkha, dukkha nirodha, seeing the dukkha and coming out of it is the real practice. And that often we find formal practice in the sense that people are not getting much value out of it. And so they try harder and try harder, put in more hours, spending a lot of time. In fact, the formal system tends to start with an hour, which almost no one that’s never practiced before is ready for. And so in fact, the formal practice that is often used actually creates dukkha rather than eliminating it right from the get go. Now, the Buddha taught, and that this is in the Dhammapada as well as the Samyutta Nikaya and other places that the teaching of the Buddha is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end, with the right phrasing and meaning and the order in which it’s taught. And oftentimes the beginners, it’s kind of like a Western mindset. We want to see the bottom line. We don’t want to read through the whole novel. We want to read the last page or looking for instant results and not recognizing that right from the beginning there is good results and the good results stay. But if we go right to the to the end in the sense of a very heavy duty practice, we’re missing all of the delight. Especially when people are starting off like at the Goenka retreat, the beginners do an hour sitting and then another hour sitting and then another hour sitting, several, five of them, six of them a day in the first day or two, which is not what the Buddha recommends. And another way of saying it is, the Buddha did not recommend anyone to go to a retreat. He said, go to the forest, go to the foot of a tree, go to an empty hut, go to a pile of straw and sit down, okay? And bring mindfulness to the poor. Which means start with sati, start with remembering, start with being in the present moment to remember to be here now and then to apply right view in the sense of looking and viewing. That right view is not a viewpoint or an attitude, it’s an investigation. We talked about this long time ago. And then with that remembering to look and to investigate comes immediately the third item. And that is right noble effort to make a change and to start making the change right from the very beginning. As soon as you recognize that you’ve got unwholesome thoughts, hindrances dukkha in the mind, change it immediately. This is what the real practice is, that you get immediate benefit by changing immediately right from the very beginning. And yet the Goenka method doesn’t teach that. The Mahasi method doesn’t teach that. The Vajyana methods don’t teach that. Nobody’s teaching that. That in fact, the closest one to come to this would be the Zen. When they say just sitting and that you’re already enlightened, just sit there, don’t try to do anything, okay? That in fact the whole idea of I’m not enlightened and I need something is starting off in dukkha. Instead of saying I’m not enlightened and I need something, we can say, well, everything’s right now is okay, so this is the place to start. And Also, the amount of time that people put into the practice, generally the mind gets dull. That’s especially true when they’re not watching their breath, they’re not watching their breathing. And so by sitting still for a long time, the breathing gets very shallow. Because it gets very shallow, the mind begins to get dull through lack of oxygen. And so at best, they’re wasting two thirds of their hour. And so they call that their formal practice. And most of it’s not of any value. And so what I recommend to students is take that hour that you have and break it into several, maybe six sessions at 10 minutes each, or maybe 10 second sessions at six minutes each, and practice correctly, which is that middle path of seeing the dukkha, seeing the hindrances, seeing the unwholesome thoughts right away. And that’s kind of subtle. Most students don’t understand about how to see the dukkha. For instance, they’ll have a thought and then they’ll say, oh, no, I shouldn’t have that thought. And that’s just another unwholesome thought rather than what the Buddha would recommend is, aha, I see you, Aha, I see you, mara. In fact, they often would use mara as the a word in the Pali that would actually point to an unwholesome thought. And so when we see the unwholesome thought by seeing, saying, aha, I see you, we’ve already made a change. We’ve already made a change, right? And so by making that change and coming out of our victimhood that we’re actually hard on ourselves, we criticize ourselves. And what we need to do is to come out of that critical thinking into nurturing thinking, everything’s going to be okay, everything’s fine. Basically singing ourselves a lullaby. But it’s a lullaby of happiness, of comfort, of safety, security. And most of all, the important point is to become satisfied with what’s happening right now. This is the change that the Buddha recommends. And by the way, you know that dukkha is well defined as dissatisfaction. So if you can get yourself into a state of satisfaction immediately, then guess what? You fulfilled all the teachings of the Buddha the first time you sit down, just like the Zen master says, you’re already enlightened. Just sit here. And yet in the Mahasi method, they talk about, oh, you got to note it, you got to see it, you got to watch it fall apart, you got to go through this. The stages, by the way, are fearfulness, misery, disgust, despair, and then a strong desire to get out of that, followed by a redoubling of the effort and then followed by the Eighfold Noble Path and the Four Noble Truths. So I’ve gone through six, starting with Fearless Fearfulness, Misery, Discuss Despair, up through number 10, a strong desire, number 11, redoubling of effort, and step 12. Then by the way, I’m talking about the 16 stages of insight. And the best place to start is step 12. You can crack off step one through 11 and be done with it, because that’s wrong practice. And many people will spend hours and hours and hours and hours noting and noting those hindrances and not changing them. So the formal practice has issues because they’re not practicing the right thing and they’re practicing the wrong thing. Really, really, in a heavy duty kind of way. This is one of the reasons why very few people come out of a Guenka retreat calling it paradise. Most of them call it boot camp. So that’s the place to start with. This is the middle path to make it really easy. The Goldilocks position. Everything’s all right, Everything’s fine. Not one extreme or the other.

Guru Viking: One idea I’ve heard regarding those more boot camp approaches or approaches that involve, I suppose, restricting oneself in some way or inflicting discomfort upon oneself in some way, perhaps by sitting for a long time, or sitting, as you say, again and again and again on a retreat, is that it brings up discomfort in a kind of controlled setting and then you suffer because of that. And the idea is that you notice the way in which there’s the pain of the body and then there’s the suffering created by the mind’s complaining about it and reacting to it and etc. Etc. And that by holding someone, we’re gone.

Dhammarato: Go ahead, go ahead.

Guru Viking: Well, and that by holding someone or holding yourself in that sort of a position with some degree of mindfulness or mental power, one eventually sees through the self created aspect of the suffering and liberation.

Dhammarato: But how many years do they have to take to do that? Yeah, the method would eventually work, as Daniel Ingram says, but when Daniel starts to see how it does work, he gets criticized left, right and center from those people who haven’t gotten far enough along to recognize that we need to make some very quick movements through all of that disgust, despair and all of that stuff and start practicing correctly. And that the Buddha would recommend to start correctly right from the very beginning. The Bhikkha Buddhadasa talks about it in the sense that this is a change model. You’re either stuck with your old way of doing things. Now, one of the points that I started to make a moment ago was, is that we want to follow directions, follow orders in these retreats. And by wanting to do that, what we’re actually doing is bringing in our own superego, our own rules. Oh, you’re supposed to sit still to where your body is claiming really loudly, hey, I hurt here. We need to do something. And then you say, I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to sit here. Okay, so that’s the ego or that’s the self. Just saying, I’m going to follow the orders. I’m going to get the good value out of this and that they stay sitting in pain. Now, if you follow the anapanasati sutta from the various items, I’ve started to call them items rather than steps because people get the idea that steps is like 1, 2, 3, 4, up 2, 3, 4, as well as items, is sort of like a waltz that you move here and you move here and make it very easy, very fluid. So in STEP or item 4 of Anapanasati, still concerned with the body, the whole point is to relax the body. How can one relax the body when they’re sitting in pain, trying to sit still, relaxing the body. The body doesn’t relax when it’s in pain. We have to get the body comfortable so that it will relax. Just like everybody gets in bed at night, night gets in a comfortable position, and then we can relax and then we go to sleep. Right? But if you’re sitting up in pain, if they’re putting you through a torture, if the Taliban have a hold of you and waterboarding you, it’s pretty hard to relax. And if you’re sitting still in a Taliban version of Goenka retreat, it’s very hard to relax. And the whole point of it is relax. In fact, one of the points that’s an interesting one, is that in several suttas, in a number of suttas, the first jhna has five factors, but in other suttas, it’s got six. And the additional factor is relaxation of the body. So you could say then that the anapanasati sutta, the way that it’s worded, is an indication of helping the students get into the first jhna, including the relaxation of the body. And so the formal sittings that you’re talking about generally are not oriented towards people investigating the tensions in the body. Seeing that keeping the breath strong by noting the breath in, the sense of a long breath in and a long breath out, keeping the body oxygenated. The anapanasati Sutta is actually quite healthy to where I have known. I used to keep track of them by name of monks or people who would sit for long periods of time and then actually injure their needs knees. One monk that I know of from Canada came to wat suan mokkh. He didn’t want to be at wat suan mokkh because he didn’t want to sit with all the other monks because he couldn’t sit because of his pain. And he wound up going off someplace in Malaysia and living alone in a place where some layman was supporting him and missing almost all of the best value of being around other monks. And the reason that he couldn’t sit with them is because of his leg pain. There was a German monk at what Mahatat in Bangkok who also ruined his legs. I have heard, based upon observation, Villa Maramsi before he died, he had to sit in a chair. He couldn’t sit on the floor because he spent too much time working too hard. The original one was Conte Paulo, who was an Australian who couldn’t sit because he worked too hard at trying to sit for long periods of time and wound up making it the pain in his legs so bad. So this is an extreme those kind of formal meditation practices. Another extreme would be sleep deprivation, which I think that you heard that’s one of the issues that was practiced with twim was and that the Buddha does highly recommend wakefulness. But wakefulness comes from comfort and ease and an easygoing place. So if you don’t go to sleep, you can just mindfully lay there or mindfully sit up during the night. But sleep deprivation actually robs us of mindfulness. And so these stream practices are unfit. They’re not worthy of practicing. And so these are the things that I would recommend to students is to take it easy, take it gentle, relax the body and practice coming out of the hindrances and gaining great benefit from the Dhamma immediately right from the very beginning, to have comfort and ease with comfortable, easy thoughts like everything’s okay, everything’s fine, not a worry in the world. I can sit here and be happy. No dangers you see in meditation retreats. There’s some built in dangers. You’re supposed to keep the schedule. You can’t go lay out. They want you to be in the hall. So breaking the rules is dangerous. So a meditation retreat actually goes against the teaching of the Buddha of going to the forest. Go to a foot of a tree and get yourself into a state of fearlessness. There’s actually a sutta in the Bhikkhuni section of the Samute Nakaya, where the woman was sitting in the forest in fear came up. And then what did she say? Aha, I see you, Mara. Aha, I see that fear coming up. And there is no one here to be afraid. And so she was able to dispel her fear. But very few people are able to dispel the fears when they’re in the meditation retreat settings because they can’t relax, they’re uptight, they’re trying to follow the rules or trying to do what they were told to do. So that’s in essence what the whole teaching is, is to come to the state of being safe, secure, comfortable, relaxed and satisfied. Because satisfaction is the exact opposite of dukkha. That’s the dukkha nirodhas coming to a state of satisfaction. And by practicing that over and over and over again, we become quite successful. And so after satisfaction becomes success, and that’s the real attitude. This is part of the Eightfold noble path called Sama Sankapa, which is when we change our attitude from being a victim to our meditation practice, victims to our jobs, victims to the police, victims to any and everything. And now we’re victims to the meditation retreat. And when we come out of that attitude of being a victim, then we come into that attitude of, I could do this, I can handle it, I can be successful at feeling safe and secure. And then I would add a last item on that, and that once we have success after success after success, then we would go into the state of being wealthy, that I’ve got more joy than I can possibly use, so I have to give it away. You become altruistic. This is where real metta comes in, is when you have so much joy, you can’t help but share it with others.

Guru Viking: Let’s talk a bit about posture you mentioned. There are various practitioners who damage their bodies and their legs in particular from extended sitting in per se, but also extended sitting in certain positions. And there are certain positions that are associated with meditation practice around the world. For example, full lotus is one, of course. And in there are certain traditions, even various Buddhist sects, that do put some emphasis on a particular posture. And Zen, certain types of Zen, they really do like you to have a certain.

Dhammarato: There’s a Burmese posture, there’s the half lotus, there’s the full lotus, there’s the Zen posture of sitting on your heels and having your knees extended. Yeah, there’s a lot of different postures. But one of those points about all of those postures is that they’re Asian and that The Asian children have been practicing those kind of postures by sitting on the floor for their whole lives to where Western kids are taken off the floor, putting into high chairs and then chairs and then school chairs and then car seats and all kinds of things. And their body is not used to sitting on the floor. That I actually went through a training process. This was in the early days from, let us say, 1972, 3, 4, when I started practicing strenuously up until 1982, when I met Bhikkhu Buddha Dasa that in fact, by the time that I had met Vitadasa, I was already had accomplished the lotus posture. I think that he liked that I could be in the lotus posture all right. But it was a training that I could have done without. It wasn’t necessary. What is really necessary, though, is to have a stable posture. And one of the points of the stable posture is to be able to sit up straight. That one of the techniques would be as you’re breathing in, you raise all the way up as if there was a string that was holding you up. And then when you relax, you relax and sit straight down so that your body is erect as opposed to bent over forwards or backwards or to the side. And so the example that I would use is when you’re, when your body is straight, then gravity is pulling you straight down. And there’s no possibility, or let us say, less possibility of pain. But if you’re stooped over, bent over, then now gravity is pulling you down this way, causing strain on the muscles of the back. That I did have back pain in my early days with Goenka, and I was able to accomplish being able to sit up straight. I actually had to sit against a wall to find out what sitting up straight was. And they highly, highly criticized me sitting against the wall. But after I learned to sit against the wall, I could sit up straight and then I could move away from the wall and continue sitting up straight without having back pain. But having leg pain and not moving, keeping it that way actually causes damage that if you let your legs go to sleep and then you don’t move them and there’s no oxygen in the legs, you can actually have joint problems, muscle problems, all kinds of things. And so the Buddha would not recommend to sit for extended periods of time in a particular posture. There’s no place in the suttas that I know of. And yet you see that on at every retreat. And all the people trying to do that is to sit still as long as they can in pain, because they’re Trying to accomplish something, and this is a good point to make right now, is that the whole teaching of the Buddha is not about accomplishing or gaining anything other than training. That actually the teaching of the Buddha and anyone who practices correctly, it winds up being a dead loss. You’re here to lose, you’re not here to gain. Right? What do we gain? Well, name and fame and charging high bees and being a big name teacher is what Western Buddhism seems to be about, with labels like arahat and stream entry and nirvana and enlightenment and all that kind of stuff to where really it’s all about losing stuff, losing defilements, losing dukkha, losing your heat. And when you’ve lost your heat, then you’re cool. And that’s what nibbana means. It means to not gain. Nibbana. It means to lose the heat. And so this is not about accomplishing anything. It’s about stop accomplishing and just relax, because you’ve already got everything you need. A lot of people read a lot of books. So many dhamma books. People read and read and read. Why? Because they want something. And the thing that they really need to do is to read what’s between their ears and to read it right now and to see that, oh, this is not keeping me happy and wholesome, let me just forget about that. Stop having those thoughts, stop wanting to get more information and be happy and comfortable with what we’ve got, because we already have enough. The Eightfold Noble path of remembering to look, take the right effort to cool off and do that over and over again until you’ve got a new attitude. That’s really what the practice is all about. It’s not about labels.

Guru Viking: I’ve heard some people teach about meditation postures as being more than just being upright, so that it supports a sort of awakeness, I suppose, and it’s comfortable for the body. But also I’ve heard it talked about in terms of controlling, enhancing, energetic flows and so on. For example, some of those postures that involve the lotus, they say, oh, yes, you do that. So you lock off the flows so you get more energy and it doesn’t go away. And things. And certain mudras might be held.

Dhammarato: For example, isn’t that the stuff that people want when they’re dull? You see, if the mind is bright and who needs energy? I think that all of that stuff is actually magical thinking, magical powers. The Buddha was actually quite against magical powers. He forbade the monks to do anything that was associated with gambling, like fortune telling and all of that kind of stuff. Several suttas including the brahmajala sutta in the Dinga Da number one. There’s a whole list of stuff that the Buddha says to stay away from. In fact, you’ve heard the dice have been called bones because the original bones or the original dice were actually knuckle bones and that they would throw them out to try to gain fortunes and whatever like that. And now they’ve come into being gambling items. Okay, but people want power, they want energy, they want to be able to control things because they feel out of control. But if you have the attitude that you’re the boss, you’re the winner, you’ve got this wired, you’re on top of the world, then you don’t need any magical powers, you don’t need any energy other than the energy of breathing. Well, so I’m not a fan of magical powers and energy and three years and Kundalini’s and all of that kind of stuff. But I do know that those kind of things are part of a correct practice. But the part of the correct practice is after things. They’re sort of side points or results that don’t mean very much. An example would be goosebumps or chills that come up the back and that’s actually Kundalini anyway, is the feeling of excitement, the feeling of free, is the feeling of that kind of energy coming up. And people want it. It’s one of their to do list items rather than just enjoying what’s happening with or without it. But the real teaching of the Buddha is about becoming satisfied. And all of this other stuff is the desire, the want best that comes with Westerners. They’ve heard about that. They hear about Lamborghini, they want a Lamborghini. They hear about Toyota, they want a Toyota. They hear about Nibbana, they want Nibbana, they heard about our heart, they want to be an airhead. They talk about Korea’s, I want to be a Korea, I have the Koreas. There’s, it’s all desire. And as I was saying before, the real teaching of the Buddha is about dropping all of that stuff, especially the desire wanting things that you don’t have is suffering. And so all of those talks about energy and magical powers and all of that is just an expression of Dukkha. People talk about something they don’t have and they want. Have you ever heard of Devadatta who was a cousin of the Buddha, who was known to have magical powers, but he didn’t have whatever it is that the Buddha had, which was happiness and contentment. He was really greedy. He wanted to use his magical powers to take over and be a big boss. That’s the people who want magical powers, they’re the Donald Trumps of Buddhism. They want power rather than satisfaction with no power at all. That in fact you could say that being confident, being on top of the game, being the winner of your own life, that has its own kind of power. That’s real strength. People who have to show off and demonstrate their strength really don’t have it inside. They’re trying to gain it, they’re trying to prove it to other people, so maybe they’ll believe it for themselves. But the real teaching of the Buddha that comes from practicing being safe, secure, comfortable, satisfied, successful, that brings on that attitude of we’ve got this and then we don’t need any magical power, don’t.

Guru Viking: Need energy, if that’s why people are attracted to powers and so on. What attracts people to those extremes of austerity and self mollification that are so popular, particularly in Buddhists?

Dhammarato: This desire. They want something so bad that they’re willing to go to some extreme in order to get it and they wind up not getting it and they’re disappointed. Same thing would be true from taking drugs. The really heavy stuff like ayahuasca and peyote and mushrooms and the manufactured stuff, LSD and all of that kind of stuff is because people are dissatisfied and they want something. And many of them, they keep doing those drugs because they keep wanting something and hoping the drugs will help them get it. They wind up messing, getting messed up, becoming what you would call addicted. But actually what it is is just in a state of wanting upadana, wanting something, wanting something, wanting something. And the real teaching of the Buddha is coming out of our wants and desires and being happy with the way things are.

Guru Viking: One concern about the way you’re presenting it might be, well, is this just a sort of papering over of what’s going on, this turning away to reorienting the mind in a positive direction and so on. Don’t we need to go, okay, for.

Dhammarato: The first five seconds you would be papering it over. The second five seconds you’re papering it over again. How many layers, how many 5 second layers of paper do we have to put on there until we’ve got contain all of that dukkha and all of that stuff completely buried?

Guru Viking: But the idea is that there’s something we have to see or get to that’s much deeper and we have to go through these methods, these special methods, secret methods perhaps to get we can’t just cheer ourselves up like that. That does that. That can’t be it, surely.

Dhammarato: All right, so let’s look at it first off, from the position of a tree. Most people, in fact, we’re taught in school that a very, very large, tall tree has very deep roots. But the reality is that, no, deep down is hard rock, deep down is solid mud, sandstone, and that the roots of a big, healthy tree are on the surface, not more than a few inches or maybe a foot or two feet deep. They’re on the surface. And what we’re talking about here is not stuff that’s really buried. If things are really, really buried. I mean, like, our ancestors go to a grave site where is, you know, the guy was buried in 1850. Wow. Is he dead? He’s buried. He’s gone. All right. But in fact, if he kept coming out of the grave, you’d want to bury him deeper. But he doesn’t come out of the grave. So I’ve actually seen this a lot. Let’s put it this way. It’s not the issues that are really deeply buried that’s the problem. It’s the issues that come to the surface right here, right now. So if somebody’s yelling at you and you don’t like it, it’s right here, right now. You don’t have to go deep. You can see that right here, when he’s yelling at you, you don’t like it. Can you tell yourself instead of, oh, yeah, he’s yelling, but he’s not yelling at me. I’m a moving target. I’m okay. I can take a deep breath and relax and be comfortable and happy and secure right here, right now. Everything is on the surface. Nothing is buried deep. The fact is that people are not practicing correctly in the right here, right now, right on the surface. And because they’re not practicing right here, right now, right on the surface, they think that the problem is buried very deep. And it’s not very, very deep. It comes up, the hindrances come up. And when they come up, you deal with them right then and there to throw those hindrances out. And pretty soon they don’t come up so often. And then later, they come up rarely, and eventually they don’t come up much at all. Now, coming up from what depth is kind of not important then. In fact, you can bury A seed 30ft deep, it’s very unlikely to sprout the seed that’s right there on the surface, that’s getting heat from the sun and moisture and got the that’s right on the ground. That’s the seed that will sprout and grow. And if that seeds a weed, then that’s a hindrance. And we can see it as a hindrance right here, right now. We can grab that thing and pull it right up. So that concept of things being very deeply buried is actually, let us say, a fallacy or a long way of looking at it. That I think, in fact, it doesn’t come from the teaching of the Buddha at all. It comes from Western psychology. They call it psychological archeology. Oh, this happened when I was 4 years old. And that’s why things are like that now. Okay? There’s a joke about that, and that is this really angry, uptight dude goes to this psychotherapist, and after a couple of sessions, they begin to do some psychological archeology. And he comes up and remembers that when he was four years old, his mama gave him a spanking. And that’s why he’s an all the time nowadays. But what he and the psychologists failed to understand was, is that the mother gave him a spanking because he was already an. And why did he get a spanking? Because he was not deeply buried as an. He was right there on the surface acting that way to Mom. And if he would stop acting that way right here and now, then he doesn’t have to worry about the roots of it. Just take it when it’s up here on the surface. We don’t have to dig deep. There’s no digging deep. There’s no need to dig deep. What we need to do is to watch what’s happening right here, right now, because that’s where the habits are, right there on the surface, right on those neurological pathways, like a truck gets stuck in a rut. But that rut is not 90ft deep. That rut is only as deep as the tires. So in order to get the truck out of a rut, you don’t have to dig a hole 90ft deep to find out where the cause of the rut is. The cause of the rut is right there. Him spinning his wheels right here on the surface. I hope that helps you to understand about going deep. You don’t have to go deep. There’s nothing down there. The problems are all right there on the surface. Can you deal with them right here, right now, when they come up? So the story is, is then the meditation teacher who has been meditating for all this time, she tells the student, oh, well, this came up again. And it came up again. It must be VP Buried. I’ve got to go deep to go find out why it comes up. So they’re wanting something, they want it to go away completely. And the right thing to do, the right way to practice is that when it does come up, see that it comes up and says, aha, I caught you again. Out you go. That’s the correct practice is when things come up, when they come up in the mind, we don’t have to go very deeply. What caused that thought to come up? The habits right there in the neurons, that’s what caused it to happen. Nothing is very deep. But that’s just, that’s one of those fallacies that, that would be the part to where in the middle when people have been practicing for a number of years and it’s not good in the middle because they think that it’s buried really deep. We’re in fact, nope, shit right there on the surface. Here it comes again. You didn’t catch it when it was happening before, so you’re not catching it now. So go back to square one, go back and become a beginner again and see when it comes up now, fix it now. That’s the training that we need rather than thinking that things are deeply buried.

Guru Viking: You mentioned before that this is a practice of losing in a sense, winning in another sense, but losing in a sense. And it certainly seems to be the case that meditation, mindfulness and so on are often presented as life enhancing strategies to make one more effective at, say, focusing and more able to skillfully navigate one’s inner turmoil so as to be better parent, worker, community member, etc. Right, that’s. You hear that a lot. That seems to be a way of gaining in life, actually. But you’re talking about this practice as if one is losing in life. So could you perhaps comment.

Dhammarato: Okay, all right. You mentioned a moment ago about handling turmoil, right? Well, the recognition that you’re manufacturing that turmoil right now, somebody’s criticizing you and you get into turmoil. Why don’t you stop the turmoil right now, take a deep breath and says, oh, be gone turmoil. Let me relax. No problem with the turmoil. The turmoil is not buried deep. The turmoil comes up right here, right now. And when we can get rid of the turmoil that we have right here, right now, then we’ll stop doing our side of the game that keeps the other person in turmoil, who wants to keep us back in turmoil. You can call that an argument. When you stop arguing, then the other person is left with nothing to argue about. You just agree with them or leave, but you don’t have to continue the turmoil, nor do you have to deal with it. This is why it’s a loss. It’s not life enhancing. It’s actually taking the turmoil out of the life. And so the life becomes easy, it becomes satisfied. We don’t have to enhance it beyond being satisfied, safe, secure, comfortable, satisfied and successful. The feeling of success, the attitude of being successful is all we really need. And we need to maintain that even when the turmoil comes up. Can you see the turmoil? Throw that out and come back to your state of safety, security, comfort and satisfaction. People want their life enhanced because they’re not satisfied to the way that it is. When your life becomes completely satisfying, you don’t need it enhanced anymore. And that you mentioned about Christianity. One of the strong points of Christianity is that you can’t change yourself. You’re originally broken. You’ve got original sin and you need a Jesus to fix you, or not to fix you, but to forgive you for being broken. And so they want their life to be enhanced so that they’re not broken anymore to where in fact, they weren’t broken at all. They were told they were broken, they believed that they were broken, but they were already okay. If they just believe that, they’re already okay. We don’t need to have life enhanced. What we need to do is to take the burden off of it and discover that life itself is okay just like it is. We don’t need it enhanced. What we need is to clean it up. They don’t see life as life itself. They see life that’s completely encrusted with all the crap. And they want to enhance a life this completely crusted with crap. The best thing to do is clean up the life itself. Then you don’t need it enhanced anymore. It’s like a pair of muddy boots. All you need to do is to clean the boots, the mud away. And then your boots are good. You don’t need them enhanced. You just need to get them clean.

Guru Viking: Okay, I think I have one last question for you about practice, ideas about practice. Another theme, a common theme in discussions about meditation practice is people’s struggles with practicing regularly. There’s a sense that one ought to follow a regular schedule daily, for example, perhaps a certain amount of time or something like that. And then often a great deal of time is spent discussing and ink spilt writing about how do I maintain the. How do I get the habit of practice and I keep falling off my practice and that sort of thing. Like a kind of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Dhammarato: Right.

Guru Viking: So to it. So I’m wondering what you. I’m sure you hear that a lot too, from the many people you speak with on Skype. People say that sort of. So what. What’s your perspective on that, that whole issue?

Dhammarato: All right, let us put it this way. Let’s talk about playing a musical instrument, maybe a piano or a violin or something. If the student practices and practices carefully so that he can actually make music with it. He likes the music, he likes playing the piano, and so he likes practicing. But the students who are not liking what they’re playing, they’re not getting very good at it, and their practice is not yielding anything for them. That’s when it takes the strong determination. And basically what that means is that you have to follow the orders, you have to do the rules, you have to do what you’re told to do. And that means that it’s coming now out of the super ego speaking from Freud or the parent ego state talking from. From burn to where. Really, if the child inside likes the practice of meditation, then he doesn’t need that motivation by kicking him in the ass. He doesn’t need that kind of motivation. The motivation is that we’re getting great benefit out of it right now. And yet still I have seen it over and over again that even when students are practicing correctly, they get great benefit from it. And then they say, oh, I don’t have to practice anym. I’ll forget about practice. And then they stop practicing. And then the old habits will come back again. And this happens with everybody. The question is, Ken, how long does it take to see that you’ve stopped practicing? And because of that, the hindrances come back and you’re not enjoying your life the way that you were before? Now it’s time to start practice again. And this happens with students on a regular basis. They’ll call me, they’ll start practicing. Well, then they don’t call anymore because they’ve gotten what they came for. And a few minutes, a few months later, they’ll call back and say, oh, I’ve got to get started back again. Okay? This is in fact, what sangha really has a value for, is that once somebody is getting some value out of it, then he can associate with others who are gaining value, and then they can help each other. They can encourage each other to continue to practice, continue to staying in the dhamma. So we really need that sangha. And yet that seems to be the one point that’s so badly missing in Western Buddhism is everybody thinks that they’re out on their own. They’re not part of a community. That, in fact, communism is a dirty word. Socialism is a dirty word. And in fact, what that really means is family. It means your group of friends. And so Buddhism has come to the west in the sense that there’s Dhamma with a whole load of Dhamma books, not a whole lot of Buddha in there, because Buddha means to wake up. And most people are too busy reading books to actually wake up. But the one point that’s missing the most is the Sangha. That’s the community where they can work together then. In fact, I’ve got several students who were living in wats, and they’re beginning to understand what I’m talking about, that they get the real practices from, let us say, the feedback, maybe even the criticism from other monks. One point that I can make is the Dhamma. Ajahn Maitri, who is the abbot of wat rusi Pasiangtong here on this island, was telling Cathal that he doesn’t need to practice that much. He was spending hours in meditation. And what Maitri was recommending to him is spend your time in quality friendship time to spend it with the other people to talk about the dhamma, to keep the dhamma focused on the mind that no matter what we’re doing, we start thinking about the Dhamma. That, in fact, that’s the point to be made, is that stream entry means the stream of the Dhamma. You keep coming back to it and coming back to it and coming back to it, that you’re in the Dhamma because you’re thinking about the Dhamma. One of the points that is made is that though a monk will have duties like sweeping, that his mind is not on the sweeping. His mind is on the Dhamma. Just like a cow who has a young calf and she’s out grazing. She’s grazing, but she keeps one eye on that calf. So we need to keep our eye on the Dhamma. And it’s easy in our society when we’re not around people who are in the Dhamma, to think about the Dhamma and be in the Dhamma. They’re off at the bar, they’re off at whatever. That. In fact, in aa, one of the things that they recommend in AA is to stay with AA people, to have a mentor to help you to not get drunk. You stop associating with the barflies. If you want to stop drinking, don’t go to the bar, because that’s where you’ll start drinking again. And so Dhamma Folks, people who are in Western Buddhism, they need to associate with other Buddhists, not ordinary people. And they know that about Christianity. Christianity wants you to associate with Christians, Muslims want you to associate with Muslims. But dhamma people, they haven’t figured that out yet. They need to associate with dhamma friends so that when they lose their practice, they’re around other people who can help them pick it back up quickly rather than having to have a disaster before they need to pick it up again. That it’s very common for people to get some either no value at all and then quit and then come back and work really hard and get no value at all and then quit again and then come back and really start working hard and hard and hard and hard and hard and still not getting the benefits. So they’ll quit again. And so it’s in, out, in, out, in, out. But the same thing happens when people are practicing correctly. They get some value out of it and so they quit practicing and then they lose their benefit and so they’ll start to practice again. But if we can save over that time frame with noble friends and stay associated, keep calling your teacher, keep talking about the dhamma, keep being around other students, then that will tide you over. Those rough spots are those times when we don’t practice is we need the friends to help us to remember to practice, stay out of the bars, stay out of the unwholesome, practice wholesome things. That’s the teaching. And so that answers that question right there is that people who drop their practices because they don’t have the friends who are going to keep them in it.

Guru Viking: And to that point, your Open Sangha foundation is about building Sangha and enhancing that aspect and connecting people around the world. And I understand the website is very near completion and perhaps when this comes out, it will be complete. Would you mind saying something a bit about Open Sangha foundation and what your intention that is and what stage the project is at?

Dhammarato: Well, for one thing, there are a lot of websites that basically there are two groups of websites. One is the group of websites where it’s about my facility, my group. This is what we do, this is our hours, these are our photos, et cetera. Like that. Most of the groups are like that. And then you’ll have a few groups like Buddha Net and Go Set. That is actually just a big long list of places. But what we’ve got this different with Open Sangha foundation is that we’re encouraging people not just to go find a list of places, but to go find one that’s close to you and go visit, go stay there, move in. Especially if it’s Theravada monks, because there’s more than 500 watts in the US and a great number of them are around. There’s ones for bikunis, there’s one for women, or there’s many for women. And what we’re encouraging is to go visit and then go visit and hang out. And then go visit, hang out and stay. And then go visit, hang out, stay and move in. And after you’ve moved in now, you can help other people who are visiting that, in fact, that’s why the Buddha had the original Sangha in the first place, was to get people to collude, to collect together. And so that’s what our website is about, is not about my facility. And it’s not about. Here’s a list of all of these places that we know. It’s about helping people go find a place and then helping them move in. We start to support our students then. In fact, you’ve known this, that we have, gosh, dozens and dozens of guys who have come to Thailand to do retreats here to move into the wats. Right now we have David is Wat Khao Tum. Michael is sitting right here on the porch. Daniel is in Chiang Mai. He’s about to ordain cats in Udon Thani about to ordain with John Mike Martin, who is at the wat of Ajahn Mun, who was a very famous monk. Okay. Eric is ordained, and he was staying at Woyette. Now he’s in someplace in Laos. And so we’re really interested in getting people into the lifestyle so that they can really make something out of it, rather than practicing today and reading a book tomorrow and forgetting about it the next day. That’s how Western Buddhism is. It’s not really solid yet. And we also need to get them out of the magical thinking and out of the traditions that have gotten established in Western Buddhism and get them right into the teachings of the Buddha so that they’re actually getting some benefit. They’re getting that Buddhahood right away. They’re getting that Dhamma because they’re practicing, not because they’re reading. They’re not reading dhamma books. They’re reading with their dhamma eye, what’s going on. And then we’re building Sangha so that we can be as a group of people together. And that makes a point about Christianity, that one of the biggest problems with Christianity is that it has nothing to do with the actual teachings of Jesus. They’re too busy making Jesus special so that he’ll forgive you of your sins rather than actually listening to the Sermon on the Mount and following the advice, become good neighbors. And in fact, Jesus taught basically the same thing that the Buddha is teaching. He just used a different language. And Christianity has completely forsaken what Jesus teaches. And now they’re off into Donald Trump, into popes, and all kinds of stuff that have really don’t have much to do with the teachings of Jesus. But they do have camaraderie, fellowship. And so while their Sangha is broken, they have a big one. Buddhism. We’ve got no Sangha. All we’ve got is expensive teachers. Oh, you want sangha? Go pay $7,000 to get an online course. That’s the way that they look at it. And what we need to do instead is to make some good dhamma friends to talk to them, communicate with them. We do a lot of side stuff. We’ve got zoom calls. Well, actually, not so much zoom, but there’s. There’s a Dhamma lit on discord called Dhamma Friends, and there’s more than 350 people on that. We also have several Skype groups. We’ve got about 400 people on Skype, and they communicate with each other individually as well as in groups. And so this is what we need to do with Open Sangha foundation is nourish, encourage people to associate with others. So we have the ability to have post and comments, messaging each other, emails, all the ways of communication. That’s what the Open Sangha foundation is really about, is putting people in contact with other people in the Dhamma, creating saga, creating friendships. You probably heard many people say, oh, well, I really like the Dhamma, but I don’t have any friends who know anything about it. Nobody at work knows anything about it. Okay, so that’s. That’s the problem, that in its infancy in the West, Buddhism is going in the wrong direction. It’s gone into a business model, a psychological model, a psychotherapeutic model, and it needs to be in a Buddha model, a Sangha model. That’s what it needs. And so hopefully our website is going to help mold Western Buddhism into a viable entity rather than a broken religion. Yet another religion. Gosh, we got so many religions, none of them work. We don’t need another religion. We don’t need another hero. What we need is friends, dhamma Friends. That’s Open Sangha Foundation. And I can’t think of a better way of ending this interview than on that Tina Turner quote, we don’t need another hero.

Guru Viking: That’s great. Well, Dhammarato, it’s always wonderful to speak with you, and it’s been very nice to speak with you today.

Dhammarato: I’m very happy to talk with you, Steve.

Guru Viking: Likewise. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to another Guru Viking podcast. For more interviews like these, as well as articles, videos and guided meditations, visit www.guruviking.com.

Summary of this Dhamma Talk

Dhammarato challenges common Western misconceptions about Buddhist practice, particularly around formal meditation and retreats. He emphasizes that the Buddha taught a middle path of immediate transformation rather than austere practices. The talk covers the importance of working with what arises in the present moment rather than “digging deep,” and concludes with a strong emphasis on the crucial role of spiritual friendship and community (sangha) in maintaining a healthy practice. Dhammarato offers practical alternatives to common meditation myths while encouraging practitioners to focus on developing satisfaction and wellbeing in the present moment.

Outline of this Dhamma Talk

The Middle Path vs Formal Practice

• The Buddha did not recommend formal practice or meditation retreats
• Start with sati (mindfulness/remembering) to be in the present moment
• Apply right view through investigation, not just as a viewpoint
• Make changes immediately when you notice unwholesome thoughts
• Hour-long sessions often create dullness - better to do shorter frequent sessions

Issues with Western Buddhist Approaches

• Boot camp mentality creates suffering rather than eliminating it
• Sleep deprivation and extreme postures can cause physical damage
• Many practitioners have injured themselves through rigid sitting practices
• Western bodies aren’t conditioned for floor sitting like Asian practitioners

The Real Practice According to Dhammarato

• Focus on becoming satisfied right now - the opposite of dukkha
• No need to dig deep - problems are on the surface when they arise
• Practice seeing hindrances and changing immediately
• Develop attitude of safety, security, comfort and satisfaction
• Success comes from repeated small victories, not long arduous practice

The Importance of Sangha

• Western Buddhism often lacks true community
• Need spiritual friends to maintain practice
• Open Sangha Foundation aims to connect practitioners
• Emphasis on visiting and staying at monasteries
• Building real relationships rather than just reading books

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