The Buddha Only Taught One Thing - Anapanasati From The Beginning Patrik 1 08 19 24

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Dhammarato: Okay, so a little chat about Anapansati would be to start at the very beginning.

Speaker B: Yes.

Dhammarato: Now, at the the very beginning, we can do that one of two ways. We can do about it in the way that the Buddha did. In retrospect, we could do about it in the beginning. The way that he went about it in the beginning and the way that he went about in the beginning is referred to as the Dhamma Chakra Pavanta Sutta, which means the turning of the wheel of the Dhamma. And it’s in the Samuta Nikaya, but is generally referred to by all of the scholars as the very first sermon that he gave.

Speaker B: Is that the middle Path?

Dhammarato: That’s exactly right. Before he introduced the Four Noble Truths, he introduced the middle Path. And he introduced it in a way that most Westerners, in fact most people throughout history have misunderstood it. But if you understand the context that he was not talking to ordinary people who have ordinary extremes. He was talking to the guys who had been following him around for six years while he was trying those kind of extremes. And the middle path then winds up being don’t harm yourself with mental thoughts that are unwholesome. And don’t try for high states, okay? Those high states would be the high jhanas that the middle path is the first jhana. And the extreme on the other side would be not having any jhana at all, which would be the self flagellation, mentally. So when we start from that position, the next thing he taught was the Four Noble Truths, which is very, very similar to the other way of teaching, the way that he said, that he taught, when he said, in fact, that he only teaches one thing, both formerly and now, I’ve only taught one thing. And when he said it like that, he was talking about dukkha, Dukkha naroda, in the sense of being able to see the dukkha and then coming out of it. That’s actually the middle path, is to see the dukkha and to come out. So the middle path of that then would be the Four Noble Truths, which is the same as the dukkha Dukkha, which means let’s follow the path that gets us out of dukkha right away, immediately. And yet you’ll see in Western meditation and often even in Asian systems where they want people to practice, hardcore practice of sitting on the floor where the bird hurts and knees hurt, and sit for hours and hours and hours and getting nowhere at all, waiting for the bell to ring and waiting for the common machine to waltz in after 30,000 or 100,000 hours of meditation, splash some shock pot on them and say, now you can feel good. Yeah, but the Buddha taught, no dukkha, Dukkha naroda. Let’s work on getting the feeling good and make it a habit that has to be developed. Okay? So we can then go right into the First Noble Truth, which it’s really, really important in the sense of that if you don’t understand dukkha, you’re not going to know how to avoid it. Or another way of saying it, if you do not see that arrow flying towards you, you can’t get out of its way, it’s going to hit you. And most Westerners, they’ll find any arrows flying in the air, and they’ll stand up and make themselves a target to make sure they get hit with it. Yeah, and so that’s because they don’t understand the dukkha. They think that you’re supposed to be a target. So an example of that would be when somebody criticizes and we think they’re criticizing me. Or you think that they’re criticizing you, that standing up and being the target. Yes, that’s me you’re criticizing. And now, oops, you got me. And now I feel bad. But the fact is that criticism often comes out of the mind of one who. Criticizing who is. Actually, he doesn’t even know who he’s criticizing. And so he’s shooting in the dark, he’s shooting blindly, and yet here we are, we stand up to let him hit the hit us with that arrow. All right, so the sun is a bit in your eyes. Do you want to move a little bit under the shadow?

Speaker B: No, I think it’s better this way because otherwise I have to move to another room.

Dhammarato: All right, well, moving a little closer gets you out of the sun.

Speaker B: Maybe like this. Yeah, this is better.

Dhammarato: Yes, I could see the shadow right through one eye. All right, so if we understand it correctly, then the main thing is to be able to see the dukkha. If we can’t see it, we can’t get out of it. And now we can recognize that the Second Noble Truth is the actual cause of that suffering. In other words, we create it. The arrows that fly through the air is not the dukkha, it’s letting it hit us. That’s the dukkha. And that the way that it is expressed is our own greed, we’re getting hit by the arrow, our own ill will, we’re getting hit by the arrow. And the delusion that it’s the arrow shooter’s fault. In other words, we’re a victim to all of those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that are flying around, where in fact, we make ourselves targets by warning stuff. Okay? So if we can stop warning things, if we can stop disliking things, then that’s the end of it. We can become satisfied. So with that we can see that dukkha actually means being dissatisfied with whatever it is. Whatever it is is not the cause of our dissatisfaction. The cause of our dissatisfaction is our own liking and not liking our own feelings. That’s what causes the dukkha. And when you stop with that, you can be free from that dukkha immediately. Now, over time, you’ll develop skills in the sense of being able to remember to look for flying arrows, being able to recognize flying arrows, and being able to dodge flying arrows. Those are the three skills that we were in that analogy, which actually is the eight Bold Noble path short. The ability to look requires the ability to remember to look. And so that’s the sati, to remember to look for the flying arrows and then to be able to identify the flying arrows and then being able to dodge the flying arrows, that’s the making the change. Because normally we get hit by those flying arrows without recognizing that we’ve got a choice. We don’t have to get hit by that flying arrow at all. Okay, and so this is in the Pali, that’s sami aria ditty, right looking. Now they say it’s right noble view, but that’s kind of a mistranslation because the word view in our language is a noun. It’s a noun in the sense of a worldview, an attitude. Well, more like a concept, a world view. And that the way that the Buddha is using the word ditty is like a verb in the sense of looking, noticing, investigating. So the difference between an investigating and an investigation is that an investigating is Sherlock Holmes out there with his magnifying glass, studying everything he can find. And an investigation is a file folder in a file drawer in the police station. It’s dead. This is one of the coal files. Now that’s. That’s what a completed investigation is. And we don’t have completed investigations. We’re always in the state of investigating.

Speaker B: Good. Right understanding be a better translation?

Dhammarato: Actually, no, no, no. Right understanding is a conclusion. Right investigating will lead to right understanding. But that right understanding will change. And if you’re not investigating, you won’t change along with it. For instance, turn it the next light and we didn’t see the light. And so we turn it the next one after that, which leads us to Chicago. All right? So we can’t just say, oh, the understanding is turn it the next light, because it depends upon the situation. And so we have to continue to investigate, which means we have to remember to investigate. And the investigation is always about what’s happening right now to where an understanding has a longer term quality to it. Like understanding reality as it is means that you’ve got reality all packaged up as a concept. The physicist and the astrophysicist and all of those guys, they thought that they had it all wrapped up. They thought that they knew until they got some new telescopes. And so that’s. Then they, they understood up to a point. And now they recognize because they’ve done further investigation that they didn’t understand. And so it’s going to require more investigation because of the. The latest investigation only proved that their understanding was wrong. But it hasn’t come up with a new understanding yet. Needs more investigation. Okay? So with that, we can tell that we really do need to keep track of what’s happening in the present moment.

Speaker B: So we have to look for the.

Dhammarato: Dukkha unsatisfaction right in our own mind. Now the, the dissatisfaction generally comes in the form of the satipatthana, which means we’ll have dissatisfaction and discomfort in the body. We’ll have dissatisfaction and discomfort in the feelings of liking and not liking. We’ll have the dissatisfaction in our attitude. Most of us have the attitude of being a victim. Even the bully has the attitude of being a victim. If he felt okay, he wouldn’t go around bullying other people, hoping that his bullying is going to get himself out of his victim’s position. All right? And so most of us, for most of our lives are in a victim’s position. We’re a victim to the government, victim to the police. The police are victim to higher police. The victim, the police are really victims to the police academy, which told them a bunch of crap. And now they’re out there being victimized by people holding cell phones and arguing with them. They become victims to lawyers. So you can see that the cop is more of a bully, but always a victim, a real winner, someone who had really good feelings about himself wouldn’t be a cop, he wouldn’t be a judge, he wouldn’t be a political official. He’d probably be just hanging out in the wat with nothing to do.

Speaker B: A dhamma bum.

Dhammarato: Yeah, a dhammabum. And so right noble viewing and right noble remembering will come to Right noble effort, which Vika Buddha Dasa then would change, would say, in the respect of right noble changing, to make a change, to get out of the way of those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, especially the ones that we sling at ourselves and sling it up others. So with that as an introduction, knowing that we’re going to be practicing the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Full Noble Path, we can now introduce Anapanosati as the Buddha’s way to practice the Eightfold Noble Way.

Speaker B: Could I just. Can we have a look at the second step of the Eight Noble Truth? Right thought or right intention. Is that a correct.

Dhammarato: That’s a bad translation.

Speaker B: That’s a bad translation too. All right.

Dhammarato: A much, much better way of talking about it would be right noble attitude.

Speaker B: Attitude, all right.

Dhammarato: Which is also the right noble intention. But you can see why that they made the mistake of translating it as to thought, because the attitude will determine the thoughts. Victims don’t have the kind of thoughts that winners have. Victims have the thoughts of, who can I blame for this mess? And real winners will say that, oh, I did that, or better still, others. Nothing to it. The right noble thought is a bad translation. Right intention is going in the right direction, but staying with right noble attitude, which basically, there are two attitudes with a spectrum between them. One is the attitude of being a victim, which means we’re victimized by our circumstances, victimized by our parents, victimized by the rules that we hold dear, by our standards, by our ideals, by the way that we want to do things, and that when we come out of that, we can come into the attitude of we’ve got this wired, there’s nothing to it, everything is easy peasy, not a problem in the world. Yeah, so what if Filezilla doesn’t work? That’s not a problem. I don’t even need it right now. I haven’t needed it for years. Why do I need it now? I don’t need it now. I’m just playing with it. So this is where we begin with Anapanosati. That in fact we’ve actually been talking about Anapan Asati in a way. And that one, let us say, issue that many people have, they think of the 16 items on the list of anapanosati are actually steps in the way that it should be done. That in fact, on one of the books that I have way over on somewhere between page 207 and page 226, the Bhikkha Buddha Dasa says, this is the first thing that you need to do. But he wrote, or actually he gave the talk in the order that Anapanasati is listed. But the Buddha listed it in the form of the Satipatthana. He took the body first, then he took the feelings, then he took the mind, and then he took the mind’s objects. But in 117, he takes the mind’s objects first. And which one?

Speaker B: Which is? Which one is that?

Dhammarato: This is the great 40s. The Majumenikaya 117 and Majumenikaya 118 are twins.

Speaker B: Look them up.

Dhammarato: Right, that’s the anapanasati sutta number 117, 118. And then 117 is the great 40, which is the exposition of the Eightfold Noble Path.

Speaker B: Okay?

Dhammarato: And so the Eightfold Noble Path and Anapanosati are to be practiced together. And they. Not only that, but they’re the same thing, just two different ways of talking about it. So step number nine, then would be the Anapanasatya Sutra. And I use the word step. Let us say the item on the list, the ninth item on the list is actually the looking, that is the first thing on the eight Pole Noble Path. Except that technically in reality, we have to remember to look. So sati becomes the first thing. Hence we call it Anapana sati, which means mindfulness, or actually to remember. Like you’ve heard the kids in the old, old schools, those kids that went to a grammar school as opposed to primary school were taught to mind their P’s and Q’s, which actually is saying to the kids, remember there’s a difference between a lower pace Q and a lower case p. But they’re very similar where it’s easy to remember the G because it’s got a tail on it, but the lowercase p and the lowercase q. So mind your P’s and Q’s means to remember, to know the difference between the two of them. So this is also to remember to mind your mind, to remember the difference between a wholesome and an unwholesome thought, which is also this, that item number nine on the eight, excuse me, on the Anapanasati Sutta, which is to investigate the mind. Now, in the Sutta number 118, the Anapanosati Sutra, that item number nine actually, because of the structure of the sutta and other things, is actually there talking about mind your attitude, not just the thought. And item number 10 on that list says gladdening the mind, which is also a matter of changing one’s attitude, not just the thoughts themselves. So there’s a difference between the state of mind and the thoughts that we have. But the state of mind is going to determine the thoughts that we have. And as for the beginner, a little bit different, difficult for them to actually discern the state of mind that they’re in. And in fact it’s really hard for them to discern the kind of thoughts that they have. So one of the things that I would recommend for students is to start listening to the language that you use. Because the language that we use comes out of the thoughts that we have. And the thoughts that we have are determined by the state of mind that we’re in. So you can determine your state of mind by listening to your language, the talk. Mm. So for instance, if I say you gotta practice an upon usatin, you’ll say I’ll try. That proves to be immediately that you’re a victim, that you’re expecting to fail. And there’s a big difference between all tribe versus yeah, I’ll do that. Now that’s an attitude of a winner. Also words like hard work, effort, strong effort, tension, anxiety, and all of those kind of words are coming out of the victim’s mentality. And how do I is coming out of a victim’s mentality, which is where almost everybody is almost all of the time. But when we’re practicing correctly, when we’re on our way to Nova, we begin to listen to the language that we’re saying and begin to change and modify the language that we use. For instance, when I’m talking about FTP and Filezilla, remember that I said that I was playing with it. Just cause I couldn’t get it working doesn’t make it hard. It’s not work, I don’t need it, I’m just playing with it. So you can see that that’s the attitude of a winner as opposed to oh me, I can’t get this thing to work which is that that’s the state of mind of a loser. So listen to the kind of language that you use that will determine for you to understand what kind of attitudes that you have and what kind of thoughts that you have. Then you can start investigating the thoughts directly and eventually you’ll start investigating the state of mind that you have directly leading to you being able to investigate your feelings directly and making change to all of those things. So the first thing that we’re going to do is start changing the thoughts that we have. And the thoughts that we have would be, this is hard, I gotta get some help who can help me. What’s the problem? All of those kind of unwholesome thoughts and start changing them. Aha, I see you. Unwholesome thought is actually making a change. Aha, I see you is now seeing that thought, that unwholesome thought as a toy to play with, as opposed to, oh, me, my mind wandered away. Oh, this meditation is so hard. Oh, I can’t control my mind. Oh, what a monkey mind. You see all of those bad attitudes that people have, and they can. You can hear those bad attitudes coming out and the kind of language that they speak and the kind of language that they use inside their mind. Yeah.

Speaker B: So this is putting mindfulness to the fore, like the first step in the zero step, almost.

Dhammarato: Yes. Bringing mindfulness to the fore means begin to start watching what you’re doing, watch what you’re saying, watch what you’re thinking, watch the mental attitude. Just underline the kind of thinking that you’re having and watch how you feel. So an example of that is the student will come and says, oh, I have anxiety when I meditate. And my answer to that is actually a question in the sense of, is this anxiety new or is it old stuff? And naturally the students are going to reflect and say, well, it’s kind of old, but I only see it when I’m in meditation. And the answer to that is, great. That’s marvelous if you can begin to see it. Because before you were going around being anxious, buying cars, dating women, buying houses, fixing plumbing, writing code, going to work, all in a state of an anxiety. You didn’t even know it. You were just a victim to the world without recognizing that that was your attitude. So you can change your attitude, but the way to do that is by changing the thoughts. And as we begin to change our attitude, we can also begin to change our feelings. Because someone who has a victim’s position, the victimization is always based upon the feeling of fear, some sort of fear. Anxiety is a kind of a fear then. In fact, almost all of our negative feelings have fear as the base. When we’re frustrated, we’re afraid that we can’t get our code working, or afraid that we got ripped off, or we’re afraid we’re going to get ripped off. We’re afraid that we’re going to lose something. And then anger is obviously fear. If you’re angry, that’s because you’re afraid to you’re being mistreated or you’ve lost something or that you’re missing out on something or whatever like that. It’s all based in fear. The same thing is true of sadness, the fear of loss, grief. I’ve lost something. What will I do without my mommy? Oh, poor me, she died. Who’s going to do my laundry? And in that regard, we can see that, well, if we can come out of our fear, if we can see the fear and change it over and over again, we can begin to come out of our habit of fear. And then we’ll have the other kind of emotion, the other kind of emotion of feeling safe and secure and comfortable and satisfied, feeling like a winner, having the attitude of everything is okay, there’s no work to do, there’s nothing to be done, that everything becomes a joy, a toy to play with because there’s no fear involved. So this is the practice of Anapanasati. So now we can begin to talk about that gladdening. The mind actually is changing our attitude. And that attitude change then begins to liberate our mind. And it also begins to collect the mind into. Instead of jumping all over the place like the monkey mind, we become cohesive. If we’re afraid, we’ll jump around trying to get rid of the fear. If we’re anxious and have anxiety, we’ll jump around trying to find the solution to the anxiety. But if there’s no anxiety, no fear, there’s no jumping around, and we become unified in the mind, the mind becomes stable, steady, all right? And so then we can bring in the issue of the feelings and that the way that we talk about it is the two Pali words of sukha and pity. Now, sukha is actually the exact opposite of dukkha. Now, this language that I’m using is actually the language that was in use in the time of the Buddha. He did not invent a lot of stuff, but he did make some slight changes to the definitions of the words. All right? And so dukkha was already there, Sukha was already there. And in the Anapanasati sutta, what we’re saying is that if you can get yourself into a state of sukha, which is a state of satisfaction, then in that moment you have to fulfill the entire teachings of the Buddha, which is dukkha, Dukkha naroda. So sukha means to be satisfied, because all that we’re interested in doing is to stop being dissatisfied. Now, a whole lot of people, especially those that have been, let us say, influenced by a religion, they think that the things that are very, very good are very far away. Like heaven is in the heavens, it’s in the sky, that God is in the skies, and he’s a Sky Daddy, he watches over you. But he needs very high quality binoculars to do that because he’s way far away. And so we see then that the actual teachings of the Buddha, which is referred to as enlightenment, actually far away. But in fact, everybody from time to time, most people rarely, but everybody occasionally is satisfied. We get what we want and we’re okay for a little while, don’t want anything. But most of the time we immediately start wanting something else. Yeah, we just got an ice cream cone, but I want chocolate, not vanilla. Oh, I wanted wrapped. I want a chocolate syrup on top. Oh, now I want sprinkles on it. And now I want a cherry on top. You see how quickly we move from, well, you had an ice cream cone, why can’t you enjoy an ice cream cone? No, I want more and more and more and where’s my cake? And so that’s how we’ve gotten it. We always wanted more and more and more. And when we can come to a state of satisfaction, that means that what we’ve got is all we need. It’s okay. In fact, I’m quite all right without that ice cream cone. Don’t even need that much. And you can see how so many people then become dissatisfied when all they’ve got was ice cream. So in this regard, now we’re talking about Veda. Now remember we were talking about at one time the four foundations of mindfulness. Asadana. So we have moved around. We were talking about thought, then we were talking about attitude. Now we’re actually talking about the feeling. And so satisfaction is actually a feeling that we have from the attitude of being okay.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Dhammarato: And so we feel comfortable, safe. We feel comfortable, we feel safe and we feel secure. And with that leads our feelings into being satisfied. Now we practice that over and over and over and over again because the habits are is to take us right back into dissatisfaction. But if we keep practicing, several things will happen. One is that we’ll begin to gain confidence that I can be satisfied. Most people, when they start out, they say they see satisfaction is so far away, not recognizing that they can create satisfaction right now. And the more you practice satisfaction, the more it will grow. And then we become confident that we can in fact be satisfied. And that’s where the hot diggity dog comes in. I can do this. So you mentioned about right noble thought and right noble intention. And I changed it to right noble attitude. This is where the attitude comes in. I can do this. And that’s a wow feeling. Wow, this is great. I can do it. I’M the champion here. I’m the boss of my own feelings. This is also referred to then with the word pity. Now we don’t have this grandiose, oh, wow, things are so good often. But when we leave that grandiose feeling, wow, how great this is. We come back to the feeling of, ah, satisfaction. And so we build up and we build up and we build up with the satisfaction. Then we’ll have a peak and then we’ll have satisfaction again and then we’ll have another peak.

Speaker B: And a peak is pity, or the.

Dhammarato: Peak is what we call pity. That’s that wow factor that all this is so great. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the movie Gone with the Wind, but there was a point when Scarlett O’Hara was eating a potato out in the field when she says, I’ll never go hungry again. That’s the kind of feeling that we’re looking for in pity is that I’ll never get dissatisfied again. I’m going to be okay. Now this is where the Buddha talks about it in another sutta in Sutta number 48, that when the student can come out of these hindrances over and over again, they get now the new attitude of no matter how obstructed the mind gets, I can come out of it and see reality as it is. I can see the truth of the matter. Now. This is actually quite rare. And the Buddha talks about it as this is the first knowledge on the path. So this is actually the first step of sat upon. When we come to the point that I can fix this, I can get out of it. I am the winner here. No matter how bad that cop tries to mess with me, I can still be happy. No matter how many days that doctor wants to keep me in the hospital, I can handle it. Okay? This is the kind of attitude we’re looking for. The Buddha says that this attitude is noble. This attitude is in fact part of the path. And then he says this attitude that we’re having is not held by ordinary people. Ordinary people are victims. This is a real winner’s attitude. You have changed your attitude by habit to the attitude that you can live your life happily up to you, that you’re not blaming anybody anymore, that you got it, okay? And this is the first step on the noble path. So this is all anapanasati. In fact, what we have been talking about so far is only basically item number 9 and 10. And now we’ve been talking about item number 4, 5 and 6. So now let’s talk about the body, that in fact, there are several reasons why the body is there. One of them is that it’s part of reality number two, it’s part of the practice. In fact, you could go so far as to say one will never become completely satisfied unless the body is comfortable. If your body is in stress, if it’s uncomfortable, that’s hard to become satisfied. That takes a lot of training. And if we can train the body to become comfortable, that means that we got to know the body pretty well. And so we do some investigation in the body. We start looking where we’re using our hands, we start looking for the way that we’re sitting and what the body is telling us. We begin to listen to the body carefully. And with that comes in step four of Anapanasati, or the item number four is to relax the body so that we could become relaxed. Now, all of this is based upon how we’re breathing. And so the very first part of the Anapana satisu to after he gets through the preliminaries, including that the Buddha saying that anyone who practices this will gain great fruit, great benefit, then he starts talking about mindfully watching the body breathe long. Now, there’s a lot of stuff built into that that the English language translation misses out on in the sense that we know that we’re going to be developing the skill of sati, the skill of remembering. Well, if you can remember this in breath is going to be a long breath, and then remembering that this out breath is going to be a long breath, that’s developing sati. One in breath, one out breath, one in breath, one out breath. Sati. Sati, Sati. The next point is that you can’t take a long breath without the mind paying attention to it being a long breath. So you’re actually training the mind as you’re breathing. You’re developing several skills then in fact, all three of the skills of the Eightfold Noble Path that we’ve been talking about would be to remember, to look, to remember to see that you’re not breathing well. And so you make the change and start breathing nice and long and deep. With that, you also get in touch with the body. You can feel the touch of the cloth, you can feel the wind, you can feel the breeze, you can feel all kinds of sensations because you’re paying attention to what the body is doing while it’s breathing. And in fact, that’s when people begin to see the anxiety. Because why? Because anxiety is actually in the body. That’s where we recognize it. It’s a tightness in the chest, it’s a bouncing around. It’s because we’ve got too much adrenaline in the system. We want to speak of it in modern language. And so by taking deep, long breaths, we can actually dissipate that adrenaline.

Speaker B: So you encourage people to take deep, long breaths, not just letting the breathing go on by itself.

Dhammarato: Yes, yes. So we. In fact, in that way, there’s a lot of different aspects, 16 of them, in fact, with anapanosati. And so it takes a little practice, it takes a little skill to be able to watch your mind and to watch your breathing and to watch your attitude and to watch your feelings all within one breath. And we can do that. Just takes a bit of practice.

Speaker B: Yeah. I find that when I try to be mindfully aware of the breathing and the body, it relaxes kind of automatically.

Dhammarato: It does. It’s relaxing. Yeah. Well, one thing, by breathing in long, we’re actually breathing in more oxygen, and so we’re not starved for oxygen. Not only that, but by breathing out long, we’re actually purifying the blood, which means we’re purifying the bloodstream to the brain and purifying the brain also by getting rid of all of the excess, let us say coal, soot, smoke, all of that stuff that is actually full of carbon and carbon dioxide. So the body, actually, the brain is actually on fire in a way. And while it’s on fire, it needs oxygen and it produces smoke. And that smoke is input into the blood. And if we bring it back to the lungs and breathing out properly, we can breathe out that pollution. That’s why the Anapanasati sutta starts with anapanasati to be mindful of your breathing. Because mindfulness of the breathing means that you’re mindful and you’re training the mind to be mindful of the breathing as well as paying attention to the breathing means that you’re not paying so much attention to all the crap that you have been paying attention to. Like, she did it this way and I didn’t like it and it’s his fault and, wow, that’s hard. You know, all those unwholesome thoughts. And so we can. We can begin to change all of that into, wow, this is nice. Taking a deep breath and just relaxing. Everything is fine. Everything, everything is okay. And so that’s a good introduction now to Anapanosati. One last point, and that is that we can also begin to recognize through this practice of anapanasati, that nothing is stable. You’re breathing, you can’t keep breathing in, you got to breathe out. But you can’t keep breathing out. You got to breathe in again. The mind jumps around. Everything is temporary, everything. Every thought arises and passes away. So there’s no reason to cling to anything. And so the final step 16 of Anapanasati uses the English language word relinquishment. Okay? Letting go, it’s being taken away. You can see that. You see this actually on the Internet, but it’s been happening for years and years and years before YouTube and cell phone videos. And that was is that the guy came to repossess your car, and there you are standing, watching him repossess your car. And you don’t like it a little bit, but you don’t have much choice about it. You might be able to get in your car and drive around the block, but there’s another, let’s say another repossessor going to stop you and get that car anyway. You’re going to lose that car. You’re going to lose whatever it is what you have. And some people will say, well, I paid for my car. You can’t pay enough for that car to stop it from getting old. Someday you’re going to have to relinquish that car. Someday you’re going to have to relinquish your health. Someday you’re going to have to relinquish the thoughts that you keep having that don’t work. And so the practice then is to learn to relinquish, to let it go. Everything is changing, especially when you’re in the business of making a change. And that business is right noble effort. It’s right here on the eight point Noble Path. So you see how the eight of the four Noble Path and Annapanosati fit together so well that it’s actually the same practice. At one point, Vika Buddhadasa kind of got into trouble with a whole lot of monks in Bangkok when he said that the Buddha only taught one practice, which is Anapanosati. And so first off, they started disagreeing with him because they can find out in this, not in the suttas, but in old Buddhist literature, 40 different kinds of meditation. But when they actually did the research, they found that that stuff was made up centuries after the Buddha, that the Buddha really only taught one kind of meditation, if you say it that way, one practice. And that was the practice of the combination between the April no path and Anapanasati.

Speaker B: So basically, Satipatthana and Anapana is the same.

Dhammarato: Yes, the Satipatthana Sutta and the Anapanasati Sutta and the Great 40, the Eight Full Noble Path are three Suttas that work very well together. In fact, in the Anapanasati Sutta, it talks about things a little bit differently than the Satyapatthana sutta, almost to the point that you can see that the Anapana Satya Sutta is a complete practice, but that the Satyapattana Sutta is an introductory practice. And the introduction is for every student. The Eightfold Noble Path and the Four Noble Truths. But in the Anapanasat Sutta, they introduce that you practice the Satipatthana for the fulfillment of the Sambojana, which is called the Seven factors of Enlightenment or the Seven Factors of Awakening. And you say, oh, no, there’s more Buddhism to learn. They’ve just got such long list of things. But the reality is, the way that it stated is that the Sambojana, the seven factors of Enlightenment, are actually the fulfillment of the Eightfold Noble Path. So that you begin to have not just introductory sati to learn, but now we’re talking about it as in the language of uninterrupted or not interrupted, but repeatedly coming back to it. Unremitting, in fact, is the word you’ve probably seen in the old days. The Energizer Bunny. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. That bunny, when he’s got good batteries, is unremitting on that drum. He keeps pounding it. Okay? That’s the way that we want to start practicing our sati. It becomes unremitting. Not that it’s there all the time. In fact, I’ll give you this example. This is a drum head, and this is a drum mallet or a drumstick. Is this the way to play the drum?

Speaker B: No.

Dhammarato: No. How about this? Better, right? Okay. Which means that there’s. There’s going to be that time that Anita, when the hand comes off with a drum, but then we remember to reapply it, and then it’s going to come off again, and then you reapply it. Now you can set it down and nobody’s playing the drum. That’s how most people live. But when you’re really, really practicing, well, you keep coming back and keep coming back and keep coming back and keep coming back. And when you have unremitting mindfulness, that is also when you begin to have unremitting investigation. And when you have unremitting investigation, that on that right noble effort becomes energetic. It’s no longer hard. It’s not an effort anymore. It’s right there. And with that you begin to have something else. And that is that Sukha. Pity that Sukha is now unremitting. It keeps coming back just as surely. As the unremitting mindfulness comes, the unremitting investigation comes, so does the energy and the feeling.

Speaker B: And then you start having right attitude.

Dhammarato: And you play with right attitude. Exactly. Which would then be the opaque and also right unification or organization of the mind and also right noble relaxation. So those are the seven factors which is actually just another statement of the Eightfold noble path. Except the Eightfold noble path, like I said, is for the beginner. And the end of the path is unremitting mindfulness, unremitting investigation, unremitting effort. This becomes energy unremitting pittiksuka, unremitting relaxation, unremitting right attitude, which just don’t bother me at all. That’s the opaque and unremitting right unification of mind. You’re not a crowd anymore, you’re not undecided. Whatever you’re doing in the moment, that’s good enough right here.

Speaker B: So that’s mindfulness in daily life. Walking, talking, working.

Dhammarato: Exactly. Now from that we can finish off the Anapanasati sutta. If we understand that if we have unremitting investigation, unremitting energy, unremitting mindfulness as the forerunner, then two qualities emerge. These two qualities is knowledge. We can see and we can see because we keep looking and keep looking and keep looking and keep looking and keep seeing and keep seeing. And we don’t come to a conclusion, we just come to a new investigation. So our conclusions are always temporary. We don’t come to hard conclusions. Like look at example is that people will learn things as a child and then keep those things for the rest of their lives. For instance, religion. People will be learned, grown up in a religion, Islam or Christianity or Baptist or Methodist. And they tend to stay that way for the rest of their lives. Also their family is Republican. They tend to vote Republican year after year after year. And they never investigate what the Republicans are doing. They just keep voting Republican. They’re not doing any investigation at all. If they would then investigate, they wouldn’t vote Republican anymore. And if they, if they investigated the Democrats, they wouldn’t vote Democrat anymore. These wouldn’t vote because anybody you vote for is probably going to be some sort of crook. So this is the way to look, is to keep investigating so that knowledge comes up. And with the knowledge, when you can see what’s going on, you can then let it. We relinquish it, drop it, throw it out in the upanishad Sutta. One translation uses the word deliverance, which is another word for freedom. You’re delivered out of the bondage, which means you’re no longer bound. Okay, this is where we can introduce the word enlightenment with some value. Because normally the word enlightenment either has to do with 1700s, war, French revolutions, guillotines, Marie Antoinette. Actually, the war was between science and religion, but it was a war. That’s what we have, the age of Enlightenment. And then the Mahayana Buddhists come along and use the word enlightenment and they throw it way up there with Jesus. I mean, talk about top tier, top shelf stuff. That’s where they put the word enlightenment. It’s so far away. But the reality is that it’s right in front of you. And so let’s define the word enlightenment within the context of what we’ve just been talking about. And that is the word enlightenment has the word light. The primary word is light. Throw a light on it, shine a light on it. We’ve got some daylight on it here. That means the knowledge we can see because we’re looking, we’re throwing light on it. And then when we can see what’s going on, we can do something about it with right noble effort. And that’s the deliverance, which means that there’s a new kind of light now. And that light is not heavy. When you drop something, it’s not heavy. An example of that is, is this coffee cup heavy?

Speaker B: Depends on how long you hold it.

Dhammarato: Exactly. So it gets heavy over time. And the more we carry stuff around, the heavier it gets. And so if we just set that coffee cup down, it’s not heavy because I’m not carrying it, it’s not heavy. So this is the kind of enlightenment that we have, is the enlightenment to be able to see so that we can sit down the burden. Knowledge and deliverance is the whole point. And that’s the end of the Anapanosatya sutta. But guess what? That’s also the end of the great 40. That’s why they call it, in fact, great 40. It’s not an eight fold noble path at all. It’s a tenfold noble path. Why? Because we add that knowledge and deliverance on top of the eight.

Speaker B: Yeah, I’ve seen that. Yeah.

Dhammarato: So it’s a ten fold noble path, not an Eightfold noble path, because everybody’s heard of an eight fold noble path. And not only that, but a tenfold noble path. Really screws with the seven factors of enlightenment. Why can’t we come around to a seven fold noble Path? The answer to that is just the way that it’s constructed. So that’s the teaching is you practice an upon usati for the fulfillment of the sambo. Excuse me, for the satya. And we practice the satipatthana and anapanasati for the fulfillment of the sambojana, which is actually now back to the Eightfold Noble Path and the four Noble Truths. And when we practice the sambhojana, that is what brings about the knowledge and deliverance, the freedom through knowledge of investigation. Just one teaching the Buddhist did. And all that I’ve said today comes right back to that one point. I only teach one thing, and that is dukkha. Dukkha naroda. The dukkha naroda part, the naroda is the dropping, the relinquishment, the throwing it out, the deshackling, the cutting, the bonds, the fetters. The bindings are cut because we can see how to cut them. You wanted anapanosate, I gave you the whole sutta.

Speaker B: Yeah, perfect. I think it’s the best one I’ve heard so far.

Dhammarato: All right. Do you have any questions about this?

Speaker B: I think I’ve heard about. I don’t remember what sutta that is, but there’s a funny thing in it that says that anapana developing. Anapana develops the brahma viharas.

Dhammarato: Actually, the way that it can be stated is that the practice of an upanasati gains the result of the brahma baharas. That the brahma viharas are not a practice, they’re the result of correct practice. That in fact, the word upeka there is that balanced mind, the one that’s satisfied, that it’s at rest, it’s unified. But you can’t practice upeka. It’s the result of the correct practice that includes the brightening of the mind, the gladdening of the mind, the investigation of the mind, the changing of the mind, the practice of sati, the practice of sukha, the practice of pity. This is the practice. So in other words, we can also say that metta is not a practice. It’s the skill that we develop by correct practice. And in fact, the way that, excuse me, metta is practiced in many places is a lie. Have you ever heard the phrase, oh, may all beings be happy, may all beings be free from suffering. You can’t fix all beings. You don’t even know all beings. You can’t even fix your own mind. How are you going to go fix those 7 billion minds? And that’s just the humans. So that’s a little out of bounds, that whole point. You can’t fix it. It’s very, very Mahayana in the way that it’s expressed. The big boat which leads also into the Bodhisattva vow is may all beings be enlightened before me. And now you have. After 7 billion of them are already in. Now you have about ten thousand, maybe a hundred thousand bodhisattvas that are fighting with each other. No, you go next. I’m going to be the last one. Bunch of ego is out there is what I see in the Brahma. I mean, excuse me, the Bodhisattva vow. Now, there’s a difference between a bodhisattva and one who’s taken the vow. An example would be there’s a difference between a married man and one who is taking marriage vows. What’s the difference? The man who’s taking the marriage vows is probably going to break them and wind up in divorce. The married man. That’s an attitude, not a vow. And so people who take vows of silence. In fact, have you seen the movie the Life of Brian?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I have seen it many times.

Dhammarato: Okay, so you know about the scene where they’re chasing him around. Many of them have a sandal on a string held by a stick. And he’s running away from. He falls into this pit and lands on. On an old Rishi.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Dhammarato: And the Rishi says, ouch. And then he starts yelling because he had a vow of silence. And you made me break my vow.

Speaker B: Yeah, and then they’re eating his bush too.

Dhammarato: Exactly. So much for the vow.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Dhammarato: Yeah. Vows don’t mean a thing. And so may all beings be happy. That’s a meta form of kind of a vow. And you can’t fulfill that vow. The best you could do is to come out of your own misery right now. And now you can smile. And so when you see somebody miserable, you can’t help them by becoming miserable with them. Don’t have the skill, but you can smile. And the smiles are contagious. That’s what the mudita is really all about, is to recognize that things have sympathetic vibration. If someone is angry, he wants everybody to be angry. And more than likely everybody around is going to get angry. But if somebody can be happy and stay happily, all those other people are going to come out of their anger. They’re going to see how much of a joke the guy who is angry and then he’s going to come out of his anger too. It depends upon who’s got the most energy, who’s got the best right Effort does the guy who have anger, he’s got all of this pride and all of this fear and feeling powerful with his anger. But your smile is a whole lot better. It’s a whole lot safer. It’s a whole lot more powerful if you’ve got good practice. And if your practice is not good, his anger is going to overpower your smile. So that’s the whole quality. This is kind of a natural law. Sympathetic vibration. When I was in music school, we had the example of you put a violin that’s well tuned into an empty room. And then a trumpet player comes in and he plays a note like the note A. Well, the violin’s got an A. And so he leaves the room and somebody else comes in the room. And he can still hear that A because the violin is still singing that note. Sympathetic vibration. Now, in psychology, they talk about that vibration being a pecking order. So here’s a little story. The big boss fusses at the middle management boss. The middle management boss fusses at his employee. The employee fusses at the janitor. The janitor comes home and beats his wife. The wife yells at the kid, and the kid killed. Kicks the dog. In other words, because of the pecking order, we take our unhappy vibrations and take them away to someplace else. Someplace along the line somebody needs to wake up and put that stuff to a stop and maybe turn around. And the right place for it to happen is with the major big manager. Can he keep his mouth shut? Or can the middle management boss say, you’re right, everything is like, we’ll get it all fixed, no problem. And then he doesn’t have to go kick his employee. So that’s the whole point about mudita. And that the best way to have mudita is by you being in control. You’re the boss, and you have control over the way you feel, that you don’t feel the way that everybody else is feeling. You don’t pick up on their vibrations. You have your own, and yours is quite strong. And so your vibrations become the predominant vibrations if you’ve got them. So that’s what I have to say about the Brahma Baharas, is that it’s not a practice. It’s the result of good practice. If you can’t be friends with yourself, how can you be friends with others? If you can’t be kind to yourself when you’re messing up, how can you Be kind to others when they mess up. But if you’re kind to yourself, when you stop fussing at yourself because you screwed up. But by the way, screwing up is just a concept. And a better concept is, hey, we’re having fun here. Here’s another example of that Grandma who was quite wealthy, she gives her granddaughter a Barbie doll. Not a piece of plastic out of the dollar store, but a real high quality Mattel Barbie doll. $75, $150. Who knows what granny paid for that. And what does granddaughter do? She pulls the head off of the Barbie doll so she can change its dress. And what does rich granny have to say about that? She don’t like it a little bit because she only sees it from the point that she’s, you know, put money out. And now my granddaughter is the story. Granddaughter didn’t destroy anything. She’s playing with the dolls she got. She’s doing that quite happily. If granny was a really good granny, she could pull the arms off to make the dress come off even easier, get out on the floor and play with her granddaughter. Who cares how much that Barbie doll cost? So that’s the way to look at it. That’s the mudita. And it depends upon our attitude. That’s why we have to develop the right attitude in order to fulfill the Brahma Baharas. But sitting on the floor and saying, may all beings be happy when you’re far, far away from being happy yourself, that’s not going to work. May all beings enlightened. When you don’t even feel enlightened yourself, how’s that going to work? A better thing to say is, wow, Patrick, I give you the joy that you can feel as good as I do. Now that’s real Metta. May you feel as happy as I. That’s friendship. That’s kindness. Good. Metta would be on the frame of why can’t you smile? Where’s your joy? So does that answer that question? Yeah. All right. You have any others? Probably not. So why don’t we call it I’m feeling satisfied. Yeah, this is satisfying. All right, well, we’ll talk to you later then. I’m glad to see you on calls.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Dhammarato: Have you signed up for the Open Sangha foundation yet?

Speaker B: I have to do that. That’s. I will do that.

Dhammarato: Excellent.

Speaker B: So you have a like login?

Dhammarato: Yes. Sign up with a registration form that asks a lot of questions. We go so far as the best job that we can do on a website of giving you an anal cavity search, including photo.

Speaker B: Oh my God.

Dhammarato: Why? Because we’re real and we want people to be real on the website. We don’t want a lot of sock puppets and people who are occasionally that this is actually going to be a real sangha. All right, well, we’ll see you later.

Speaker B: Cheers. Thank you very much. Have a great day.

Dhammarato: We’ll see you. Bye.

Summary of this Dhamma Talk

This talk by Dhammarato explores the concept of satisfaction and its relationship to the practice of Anapanasati. He begins by discussing how people are often dissatisfied with their lives, always wanting more, and how this dissatisfaction can lead to suffering. He then introduces the concept of satisfaction as a feeling that arises from a positive attitude, and explains how this attitude can be developed through practice. Dhammarato also discusses the importance of mindfulness and investigation in developing this attitude, and how it can lead to a state of unremitting mindfulness, energy, and knowledge. He also touches on the concept of the Brahma Viharas, explaining that they are not a practice, but rather the result of good practice, and that true metta and mudita arise from a place of kindness and understanding towards oneself.

Outline of this Dhamma Talk

Satisfaction and the Practice of Anapanasati

• Dhammarato introduces the concept of satisfaction and how it is often lacking in people’s lives
• He explains how people are often dissatisfied with their lives, always wanting more, and how this dissatisfaction can lead to suffering
• He introduces the concept of satisfaction as a feeling that arises from a positive attitude

The Importance of Mindfulness and Investigation

• Dhammarato explains the importance of mindfulness and investigation in developing a positive attitude
• He discusses how mindfulness and investigation can help to develop knowledge and understanding of the present moment
• He explains how this knowledge and understanding can lead to a state of unremitting mindfulness, energy, and knowledge

The Relationship Between Anapanasati and the Eightfold Noble Path

• Dhammarato discusses the relationship between Anapanasati and the Eightfold Noble Path
• He explains how Anapanasati is a practice that can help to develop the skills of the Eightfold Noble Path
• He discusses how the Eightfold Noble Path is a path of practice, rather than a path of theory or dogma

The Brahma Viharas

• Dhammarato discusses the concept of the Brahma Viharas (loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity)
• He explains that the Brahma Viharas are not a practice, but rather the result of good practice
• He discusses how true metta and mudita arise from a place of kindness and understanding towards oneself

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