The Sangha US 134 09 21 24

Video

Transcript

Dhammarato: So guys, this is Saturday morning call. It is a cool morning. It’s rain during the night here on Copenhagen, and that it’s normally Friday evening in the United States. And that’s why this call is scheduled for Friday evening. Today we’ll ramble around a couple of topics. One of them is someone is asked about seeking and the fruitlessness of seeking or desiring desirelessness. Now we can actually go right back to what the Buddha taught, which is dukkha, dukkha naroda, which means when you have dissatisfaction, when you don’t get what you want, you can change your mind right then to stop wanting stuff. Now, in the spiritual world, we have an awful lot of desire. People want to attain things. They want enlightenment, they want nibbana, they want jhana, they want arahat, they want sodapon, they want and want and want all kinds of stuff. And some of them will go to these various retreats. Many of them are called vipassana, or insight. And somehow they never get any insight into the point that looking for something and seeking spiritual attainments is there dissatisfaction right then and there. And yet they want and they want and they want. Now, in the Four Noble Truths, we can see there’s several interesting things about the first Noble Truth that dukkha exist. Now, where does a dukkha exist? It doesn’t exist in tsunamis and fires and stolen property. It exists in the mind. That’s the only place that dissatisfaction can get. I mean, long before humans, there were tsunamis. Long, in fact, really long time ago, there was nothing much but tsunamis and volcanoes and fire. Those things are natural occurrences. They’re part of the reality that we live in. Some of us call it paradise. So it’s not the tsunamis and it’s not the fires, and it’s not the loss of goods by being stolen or whatever that causes dukkha. It’s in our own minds. We’re dissatisfied with the fire, we’re dissatisfied with the tsunami, and so that dissatisfaction. Many people are so dissatisfied because they’ve got so many things to be dissatisfied about that they think life itself is dissatisfying. In fact, at one time in the 1980s, I saw many times a bumper sticker that says, “life is shit and then you die.” How many of you have seen that one? That’s an old one. Life is shit and then you die. Well, it’s not life itself that shit, it’s your attitude about it that is shit and then you die. And when you die, that’s a really a ton of shit. I Suppose because we’re already in the, in the reality of the made up reality that everything is shit. But the reaction is, or the point is that no, this is not the reality. The reality is that dukkha is something that you create your own shit. And that dukkha actually does have a cause. And that cause is all lobha, dosa, moha are the Pali words for it. Lobha, dosa, moha generally refers to greed, lust, desire, clinging, grasping, wanting. These are things that we do in the mind. For instance, you don’t like somebody, you really want to burn their house down. Or if you’re a businessman and your business, your factory is not doing as well as you would like it to, and nobody wants to buy it, then you want to burn it down with the insurance money. So we all create our own dukkha by grasping and clinging. And that in fact an important point to recognize that ill will, not liking and wanting to get rid of is just another kind of desire. Instead of wanting to bring it to you, you want to push it away. And so anytime that you hate something, that’s because you would love for it to go away. Everything is like that is a push, pull. And that we do that ignorantly. It’s a stupid thing to do that. In fact, when we don’t get our way, we often blame someone like, oh, we don’t have enough money because the taxes are too high. So I can blame the tax man for my lack, or I can blame the prices too high, all the prices are too high. And what we’re not able to see is that it’s my not liking the prices to be high that causes my dissatisfaction, not the high prices that I made it up, I made up my own dissatisfaction. Now this Second Noble Truth is actually a very powerful point in the sense that the Buddha spends a lot of time with it. I would say, in fact, that he spent more time with the Second Noble Truth than any of the other ones. That in fact dukkha is actually defined several times in several places as old age, sickness, death, lamenting, wailing, crying, and then they go to the real stuff is wanting something you don’t have or putting up with stuff that you don’t have. This is actually the definition of dukkha. And that it’s not something that happens on the outside, it’s something that happens on the inside of the human mind. But he spent most of the time talking about the Second Noble Truth. And in fact, if you’ve ever heard either from me or someone else talk about let’s call it a concept for a moment. It’s called patita samupata, or dependent origination. And a good definition of that is how does the mind work? How do we start off and how do we wind up in dukkha? And there’s this process or a sequence of events in there, and this is what defines our feelings of liking and not liking that through ignorance, graduate into I like it, I want it, I gotta have it, I’ll die without it. And we do that. And there’s a second point that’s really kind of valuable in there, and that is that if I like it and I want it, and I would be better off if I had it, because now that I want it, I’m not as good as I was before I wanted it. So if I want something, I’ve actually gone downhill because now I’m doing without something that I want. And before I wanted it, I was okay. And so wanting something is going in the wrong direction. But we can go in the really wrong direction when we can see that the things that I like and I want and I have to have and am deficient without it, those things must be good. Because if I get it, I’ll be better off. And the things that I want to get rid of must be bad, and so I can do without them. So in fact, good and bad, or the judgmental mind of good and evil, comes from feelings, not from reality. It comes from feelings in the entire society throughout history, governments and village masters and warlords and whoever it is that runs the things, makes rules based upon what he likes and doesn’t like that. In fact, all of the laws, all the rights, rules, rituals, shoulds, woulds, coulds, ideals and all of that kind of stu is based upon feelings, not reality. Isn’t that interesting, Michael? Do you have something to say about that?

Speaker B: Not much, really. It’s just that it’s true.

Dhammarato: It’s quite true. Huh? But it’s a revelation. It’s a surprise. We think that the laws of the land are there because everybody likes them, or that the laws are there because we need those laws. We don’t need any laws. That was one of the things that we were kind of talking about here on this island of Copangan is that the police here are very, very lax. They don’t hardly ever arrest anybody. They don’t enforce the laws here. The laws are not needed to be enforced on this island. And that should be a model to other places like Russia, the United States. Because what defines those countries is that they do enforce the law. In fact, they’re proud of enforcing the law, which means that the law enforcement will go out of their way to harm people in their ideal of enforcing the law. And really, it’s basically only a matter of feelings. But we do have these rules. We do have these laws that, in fact, they bind us up. We’ve got standards, you know, and those standards, let us say, make construction costs sky high. That if you’re willing to live in a shack, yeah, it might fall down next year, you might have a little bit of power in there from the power company, but the power goes out because the standards are not kept. But that’s okay. Everybody can get along without power from time to time. But in the west, they want to make sure everything is absolutely correct. And yet the whole population is not nearly as happy as they are on islands that don’t enforce the law. So this is an important point about the feelings, is that it’s your feelings that drive things. And this is an important question that the Buddha is talking about with this second noble truth is that it has to do with what we like. And we don’t like all the laws. Now there are physical laws, laws of nature that we can see in effect. One of my favorites, by the way, is gravity. I really, really like it. If I didn’t have gravity, I’d float off into the air. Except that if there was no gravity, I’d plow. I’d float off into something else because there’s no air there. It floated off too. And so gravity is a good thing. But gravity has to do with natural occurrences. And yet I can see a whole lot of people don’t like gravity. I mean, Elon Musk hates gravity. Why? Because he could shoot his space rockets off into the air much easier without so much gravity. Gravity is very powerful, you know, it’s always there, it’s always watching. If you slip and don’t catch yourself, you’re going to fall. Why? Because of gravity. So little children, four year olds, they don’t like gravity, they fall down. Another group that don’t like gravity so much is Olympic champions. They don’t like gravity. How about the pole vaulters? They could pole vault 75ft or 100ft in the air if they didn’t have gravity. And so they don’t like it so much. They fight against it, high jump, all of that. But the reality is that gravity does exist, and we have a choice about whether we’re going to like it or not. Anybody here don’t like gravity? How about you, Ben? Do you like gravity or what? I do like gravity. It makes drinking things really difficult. Liquids everywhere. Yeah, you don’t have anything to drink because they’re all droplets floating through the air. Except there’s no air. There’s no dropless. They all floated away. But.

Speaker C: But some people don’t like taxes.

Dhammarato: But.

Speaker C: But it’s not going to go away. And gravity’s not going to change either.

Dhammarato: I didn’t catch that.

Speaker C: Well, gravity is not going to go away. And then some people don’t like taxes, but I feel like it’s not going to go away. I mean, I like low taxes, but there’s always going to be taxes. I kind of.

Dhammarato: I haven’t paid taxes for years. I pay taxes for many, many years. I would say offhand in my lifetime. The number of years that I filed for taxes and the number of years that I haven’t is a small number of years. I stopped paying taxes and when I was in my 30s and now I’m getting close to 80. So for the past 50 years I haven’t paid taxes.

Speaker C: Well, there’s a lot of people that don’t like taxes.

Dhammarato: Well, taxes are both optional and liking and not liking them are optional.

Speaker C: But the people that don’t like you, they’re not going to get out of paying them. So what? What’s the point of not.

Dhammarato: Yes, they can. All they have to do is quit their job. Wow, you got no more taxes.

Speaker C: That’s not what they want to get the money, but they don’t want to quit their job.

Dhammarato: Well, you see, it’s still a matter of their desire. They want the money, they want, they want, they want. And when we can figure out how to stop wanting stuff, then we’ll be a whole lot happier. This is back to that point about the spiritual desire that in fact, people who are unhappy, dissatisfied, and know it are kind of like the exceptions to the rule. Very few people are on a spiritual journey. Most people are on a physical making the payment kind of journey because they don’t realize that all of their dissatisfaction comes within their own mind. And people who are on a spiritual journey are somehow trying to figure out that they’re creating their own misery. How can they stop? And they say, oh, well, I can stop hurting and stop being miserable and stop having my dissatisfactions if I could only attain this spiritual attainment. And boy, there’s a long, long list of them. Every religion has them. Some religions have saints, but Buddhism, wow, Buddhism is the top of the list for all the kinds of things that people can desire. Long list. We’ve got Jhanas, we’ve got Arahats, we’ve got many different kinds of attainments. Sotapan, Sotagami, Anagami, Arahat, enlightenment, Bodhi, Nibbana. All of these things that people want. And so they’ll go to retreats, sit on the floor, putting themselves in bodily discomfortable situations. And then they’ll sit there for a long time waiting for the bell to ring. Somehow, with the idea that if they put in enough time sitting on the floor, maybe a hundred thousand hours, maybe 50,000 hours or whatever, then somehow or another they’ll get relief. And the. And the joke is that the common machine comes waltzing in and hits them with the shaky pot. And then they start to feel good. But they haven’t been practicing feeling good all of that time. They’ve been practicing waiting for the bell to ring. They’ve been practicing giving themselves knee problems. They’ve been practicing noting their desires, but not changing them. So there is a frame of a phrase called desiring, desirelessness. And that whenever we do have dissatisfactions, we kind of blame something else for that. Rather than recognizing that my desires, my wants are my state of mind right now. And I can change that state right now. And the more often I change my state of mind, then the better I get at changing my state of mind. I often use the reference of music, that if somebody practices music over and over and over again, partly because they like it, then they’ll get good at it. And a lot of the people in the spiritual world, they don’t understand that. Here’s a really important point, is that let us say that you were able to play the piano up to the point that you were known as a concert pianist. You had orchestras that wanted to invite you there so that they could play behind you and make you the star of the stage. And when somebody gets very, very, very, very good at playing the piano. World Class Championship of playing the piano. Do you think that they stopped practicing? Oh, I’m so good at the piano, I don’t have to practice anymore. I’ve got a concert in a month’s time, and I’m going to spend that month not practicing the piano because I already know that piece of music. More than likely I’m going to make some mistakes, and then it’s going to be a long time before I have another concert. Oh, no. When a concert pianist has a concert a month away, he’s going to be practicing and playing that piece of music over and over again every day, sometimes several times a day, to make sure that he’s got it down. So how can people in the spiritual world think that they can attain something and because they attained it because they had practice and then they stopped practicing because they attained it. Mm. Is that how it goes? Michael, you’ve heard about this. Oh, well, when do I get so good that I don’t have to practice anymore?

Speaker B: Never.

Dhammarato: Oh, I just saw it on our group today. Eric was saying that I have a question. Can I get good enough so that I don’t have to practice anymore? The reality is, is that the practice becomes your life. Your practice becomes something that is part of the life, that even an arahat is an arahat because he’s practicing right now. Maybe the nature remembers to not go into the crap, remembers that life is not shit and he can have fun and he stays in that state because he remembers to practice staying in that state. And if he stops practicing staying in that state, he’s going to fall back into dukkha dissatisfaction. So whenever you see any dissatisfaction in your mind, remember that right then and there is the time to practice, to take it out of your mind again. Don’t let it remain. Now, the important part here is that we have to be on guard and start looking for the dukkha because it’ll slip right in and we don’t even notice it because we’re not skilled enough to see it when it comes. I can see that beautiful young chick down at 7:11. You know, the one that I’m talking about, the one with the a patch over one eye and a club foot. That, by the way, is a George Garland joke. So you like her, you desire her. When you leave 7 11, you’re still thinking about her and we don’t even recognize that that’s it. Why can’t we be finished with wanting and desiring her right there when we see that patch over her eye and the club foot and say, okay, enough of that. Don’t need it.

Speaker D: Michael has a question.

Dhammarato: Pardon?

Speaker D: Michael has a question.

Dhammarato: Yes, Michael, go right ahead.

Speaker B: Well, it’s going back to what you said about nobody wants things more than Buddhists do, which I agree with. So how about when.

Dhammarato: Well, I think that I said that Buddhism has so many things for people to want.

Speaker B: Yeah. So what happens when a Buddhist gets the message to such a deep degree that, you know, wanting things you don’t have is painful? That and that Buddhism is full of things to want that are. That some of them, like, okay, like the most abstract of them is nibbana itself, because nobody can agree on Whether or not nibbana is like some permanent abiding that is free of desire, if it’s just like, you know, the extinguishing of greed, hatred and delusion, and, you know, that goes away when you die or whatever. But what if somebody gets so sick of wanting something so abstract or things that take so much work that they just give up wanting altogether to the point that they don’t even want anything to do with Buddhism anymore? They don’t even want to be a Buddhist or practice Buddhism or think about Buddhism or hear about Buddhism or do anything that has to do at all with Buddhism.

Dhammarato: Actually, I wouldn’t say that I understand what you’re saying. And that comes generally from the simile of the rapt, which is in the majument of Kaya number 22, and it follows the simile of the snake, which is the name of the sutta, that in fact, that wanting and desires that we have to cross the shore to the other side, the Buddhist recommends that we build a raft. We gather sticks and wood and some vines and bind it together so that we’ve got a raft that we can cross over. And that raft, then somehow is the Dhamma, the building of the raft. And that once we get to the other side, we don’t let us, say, carry that raft anymore because we’ve already reached the foreign shore and we don’t have to carry that raft around. And that, in fact, much of the time after the raft is built, before they even cross the shore, they’ll turn that raft into a shrine. Oh, someday I’ll get on that raft and cross the shore. In fact, most of the temples, most of the iconographic kind of stuff at a temple is that kind of a raft, that someday my Buddha will come and save me. And yet you’re talking about here now. No, no, somebody actually got that raft and went to the foreign shore. And there we don’t set it up as a shrine. We don’t carry it around with it. We just kind of leave it. Now, that is an interesting point, because a lot of people say, oh, that means then that when I reach the other shore, I don’t have to think about Buddhism, want Buddhism or anything like that. And you use the word Buddhism, where, in fact, a better word to use would be Dhamma, because the Dhamma itself is not the raft. But in fact, the raft was. Maybe it was your environment and the teachers that you had and other things like this to help you to get to the other shore. But I have known. Let us Say, several arahats. And when I say that, I mean someone who is obviously and clearly in that kind of state, and yet they kind of spend as a bodhisattva. They keep going back and showing others how to build rafts. They’re actually quite excellent at raft building because they’ve made several of them, maybe many of them, and they teach others how to build the raft so that they too, can have the freedom from the dangerous shore. So one of the things that we can say. Then. Let’s talk about nibbana for a moment. I’ll give you an example. One guy said he didn’t have a car, he had a bicycle. And so we can use the bicycle as an example. But a better example, because people use it so much, is the example of a car. Let us say that you’re on a journey, perhaps a spiritual journey, driving your spiritual car down the spiritual road. You can drive the car down the road because it’s got friction of the tires. So, Alex, when you’re driving your car, do the tires get hot? Yes. Yes. How about the engine? Does the engine get hot? Does it even need a radiator to disperse the heat? Yes. How about the exhaust of the car? Yeah, very hot. All right. So the car gets hot when it’s traveling. Is this not true of people? When they’re on a spiritual journey, don’t they get hot? Well, let us now talk about the fact that you’ve got this spiritual car and you’ve gone down this spiritual journey, and when you arrive home and turn the engine off, does that car remain hot, or does it slowly, on its own, cool off? Doesn’t the car cool off? All right. This is actually what nibbana means. The Buddha took it from two examples in the suttas. One is the example that is, when you take the food off of the fire, nobody eats it right away. How many of you have had a yacht pizza at the pizza parlor? You sit down and you take a bag of it and you burn the roof of your mouth because the pizza is too hot. It’s actually more delicious when you let it cool off. And in fact, if you let it cool off until tomorrow, perhaps it’s cool enough. Cold pizza is actually as good as hot pizza. So we’ve gotten used to eating food hot, but the food is better off cold. When I was a first among, as a short. As a side story, the people would bring the food to the temple on a Buddha day. They would bring all kinds of stuff, let us call it casseroles and whatnot. And they would bring it piping hot, and then they would offer it to the monks. And then the monks start to chant and they chant and they chant and they chant. And they watch that food in front of them while they’re chanting grow cold. And only after the kaput is really cold and they’ve stopped chanting do they eat. They wait and eat the food when it’s cold. And being a Westerner, I didn’t like that a bit. The heck with all of this chanting. I’m. I’m ready for that hot food. I don’t like cold French fries. I want hot fries. I don’t like cold broccoli. I want hot broccoli. Making my own dissatisfaction, creating my own misery because of what I wanted and didn’t want. All right, so the whole point of Nibbana is to let things cool off. There’s another definition of the word nibbana that was used in the time of the Buddha, and that is training domesticated animals. If you’ve got a dog that barks at everything, he’s hot. But when the dog is cool, they stop barking. So this is what we mean by nibbana. When the animals. Nibbana, that means that they’re domesticated, they’re cool enough to deal with. If you go into a corral of wild horses, you may be trampled to death. If you go into a corral full of wild bulls, you may be trampled to death. But if you’ve been around that horse for years and years and the horse knows you, then he’s not going to trample you to death. In fact, he may in fact invite you to crawl on his back. So this is what we mean by domesticated. This is coolness. Coolness is when we stop our journey. Coolness is when we stop disagreeing and stop wanting things to be different and let things cool off in a way. You could say that when the journey is finished, we can cool off. When the job that’s done, that needed to be done, we go around doing all kinds of jobs, and then we go do another job and we stay hot. But if you do the job that needs to be done, then after that job is done, we can remember to not try to do another job. This is actually the end of the journey, is when you remember that you’re at the end of the journey now you don’t have to journey any further. Just cool off, sit down and enjoy your life.

Speaker C: How do you know when you’re at the end?

Dhammarato: Actually, you can do that right now. You’re already at the end, if you just stop working to get something that you want, you’re already okay. All of the work that you’re putting in is useless, worthless and of no value other than keeping you hot.

Speaker C: Is that really why they let the food cool off at the temple?

Dhammarato: Pardon?

Speaker C: Why did they actually let the food cool off at the temple?

Dhammarato: Yeah, just let the cool. Yeah, let your life cool off.

Speaker C: Is that why they let the food cool off?

Dhammarato: I don’t know why they do that. In fact, I think it’s because the people expect the chanting. It’s sort of like payback or gratitude or whatever like that. It was best done when the people actually understood the chanting. But now in Thailand, when the monks probably chant in the Pali, nobody knows what they mean. In fact, even some of the monks don’t even know what’s in the chants. Doesn’t mean that much to them. So much for tradition. And so a lot of the traditions that we have are actually quite useless. But if you don’t like it because they’re useless, then you’re hot. Can you do useless traditions happily? That’s the job that needs to be done, is to do what is needed to be done. But we can do it happily because the job is doing it and not liking it. And so this is the whole point about desiring. Desirelessness is actually working at something that you could have already had. All you have to do is just stop desiring, even stop desiring desire. Less, less. You’re already okay. So we have to remember that we’re already okay. That’s the practice. We have to remember to see those thoughts that are unwholesome, that make us not okay and stop them. That’s the job that needs to be done. And we need to practice that. Even when you get really, really good world class pianist, still practice the piano, world class dumbadudes continue to practice being okay, being happy, got no trouble, got no problems in the world, even if they continue to do activities. One of the things that Bhikkhu Buddha Dasa continued on, on and on and on. He liked to write poetry. Now the poetry that he wrote in rhyme and meter was in Thai. And when it’s translated into English, it’s like all the other poetry that’s translated. It doesn’t really mean so much that the poetry is already always best in its original language, but he enjoyed writing poetry. I’ve done some poetry too. Got a big kick out of it I think. In fact, one of the poems that I wrote is on the website. Michael, was it you that Commented on that? No, that was Brett. Brett said it’s the best thing and funniest poem that he’d ever read. And it was a lot of fun. Do you know which one I’m talking about? It’s the one that starts off, God is great, God is good, and we eat him for our food. You don’t remember that? You go, look, you’ll see it. Mikey, you know that poem? Have you seen it? Damadas. Yeah. So this is one of the things that Vika Buddha Dasa did do. He enjoyed writing poetry, but he didn’t enjoy writing books. Very, very few. In fact, I don’t think that since the 1950s, he’s actually written anything that all of the books that we have on him is by talks that he’s given, and he really enjoyed giving talks. So whatever you’re going to do, enjoy doing it. If you don’t like paying taxes, then stop paying taxes, even if that means stop making the money that you have to pay the taxes on. Just stop. Remember that you could be okay even if you don’t have all the money that the job has. I mean, how many people have heard the point of if you don’t work, you don’t eat? Does anybody here believe that? Well, let’s look at it like this. How much of the ordinary salary is paid on food? Probably less than 20%. Which means that if you’re working to eat, why don’t you only work at about 20% of what you used to work and use that money for food and then don’t work anymore? Work under the level so that you don’t have to pay taxes. Enjoy being poor. Now that’s hard for our society because our whole society is based upon greed. Is good, Money is good. They even had movies about it. I think the name of one movie was Wall Street.

Speaker C: We need a refrigerator.

Dhammarato: Right? I’m sorry, what was that?

Speaker C: You need a refrigerator. And then.

Dhammarato: Actually, Actually, no, that’s very interesting. We have a refrigerator and we use it wisely and it’s full of food. I mean, Mikey can tell you all about that. But it’s quite unusual the way that we use the refrigerator. Most of the refrigerators in Thailand do not refrigerate food. Most of the refrigerators in Thailand keep water cool. They’ll buy a refrigerator and pop it full of bottles of water and let yesterday’s food sit, and then they’ll throw it out, and then they’ll make some new food.

Speaker C: Well, in this country, if you have a refrigerator, then you have to have electricity. And then if you have electricity, then you have to have a house. And then if you have a house, you have to have a certain kind of house with running water and all this other stuff. So.

Dhammarato: Right. They’ve got it rigged. And not only that, but the construction industry, they don’t build adequate little houses. They want to make a profit. And so they’ll build great big houses just like the automobile industry, they can’t buy. They can build little tiny cars. They’ll do that in Europe. In the United States, they build great big utility vehicles and six passenger pickups. And sometimes you have to have a ladder to crawl into the thing. It’s so big. Okay, bigger is better. Is one of the hallmarks of America to where we don’t need a big house. This is, this, this house right here actually is a one bedroom house. And eight people live here, sometimes 10.

Speaker C: My camp in Maine doesn’t have any electricity and I have a sawdust toilet.

Dhammarato: Well, here in Thailand you can’t count on the electricity. Especially here on this island. It goes off quite frequently when there’s heavy weather. The reality is that the power plant is in the corn Sri Tamirat, 150 km from the nearest port. And then you’ve got to put the power under the sea to Koh Samui, across the island to Koh Samui and then back into the water again to get it to this island. So there’s many different places for the power to go out and it goes out on a regular basis and nobody cares so much.

Speaker C: You have ice in your refrigerator.

Dhammarato: Pardon?

Speaker C: You have ice in your refrigerator.

Dhammarato: Yeah, but sometimes it melts. Actually the power doesn’t generally go off. If you got a really good refrigerator, the ice doesn’t melt so much, but yeah, the ice melts.

Speaker C: You make your own ice, you have to buy it.

Dhammarato: Well, I don’t go shopping. I don’t go out much. In fact, who here remembers the TV series about a guy named Paladin who lived in San Francisco and he had a calling card and he says have gun will travel and that was the name of the sequence. Anybody heard of how have Gun will Travel? No, you never heard of it? It’s on YouTube. Go look for it. All right. It had a song called have Gun will Travel reads the card of a man, a knight without armor in a savage land. Now the remember, the reason that I’m mentioning that is because that, that point of have gun will travel keeps him hot. He was wealthy because of all the prices that he charged all of the farmers and Whoever was his clients to use his gun. And the and I changed that to have joy will stay. Have gun will travel versus have joy will stay. When you have joy, when you remember that you’re having joy right now, there’s no place to go. You’re already where you need to be. You’ve arrived already. Just let things cool off. That’s the real Dharma now. Once you cool off, you have to remember to cool off. You have to continue to remember to cool off. It’s our nature and our society and everything about it that. In fact, most arahats that I know, they prefer to stay alone. The only time that they’re around other people is when they’re teaching the student how to build a raft. But they normally like to be alone. Why? Because everybody that they meet generally other than other arahats are hot. And so the arahat has to remember, don’t get hot just because you’ve got a furnace burning right beside you. He’s in your cootie, running his hot mouth. Can you stay cool? Can you remember to stay cool? You don’t have to get hot because somebody else is hot. This is what arguments are all about. Can you remember to not argue with people? Because when you’re arguing, you get hot. Don’t argue, say, I gotta go, or make an excuse and get out. So, Michael, this is according to the question that you were asking before, is that, no, you don’t forget all about Buddhism. Because if you do, that’s like the pianist forgetting to practice the piano. He gets sloppy. You have to continue to practice, but you would continue to practice happily. Because part of the practice is to remember that you can practice happily, but practice is going to be something that you’re going to do right off into the future. You don’t have to carry the shrine. You don’t have to carry the raft. Then in fact, you can happily set that thing aside and remember not to pick it up again or anything else. You have to continue down that, let’s say, life’s journey, not picking up baggage. That makes all kinds of things that you can like. But you can like it, but you don’t have to want it. You don’t have to pick it up and carry it away. You can like that raft, but you don’t have to carry it with you. He got you across the foreign shore. That was the practice that you were putting into. So here’s another way of looking at it, is that There are the three Ps, practice, performance, and play. And we do that in music. But we can do that with the Dharma too. In the beginning, the student practices the piano. He doesn’t even want his money in the room while he’s practicing the piano. And then he, as a teenager, goes busking. He goes out on the street and puts his money bucket down for them to give him money. And that’s when he starts to perform. But when nobody is around, the street is empty. He starts to piddle and play with the guitar. He doesn’t perform. Or maybe he’s practicing again. But eventually we get to the point where we can play the music. It’s a playful thing to do. If you really know the piece of music and you practice it and performed it over and over again, it gets to the point of being playful. But you have to continue to play the music. So in this regard, we can stop practicing the Dhamma, but we have to continue to play the Dharma. We have to continue happily, joyfully playing with. I remember not to get hot again. Does that make sense for you, Michael?

Speaker B: Yeah, it makes sense.

Dhammarato: Yeah. So we don’t carry it around like the pianist. He doesn’t carry a piano around, but he’ll sit down and pay one every time he sees one. You don’t have to carry the dharma around all the time. You can sit in silence. But when you get a piano in your room, you start to play with it.

Speaker C: Does that mean practicing is unsatisfactory where playing is more satisfactory?

Dhammarato: Well, you have been practicing dissatisfaction and playing dissatisfaction all of these years. That’s the whole point, is that you were trained in dissatisfaction. You were trained in the victim’s mentality. You were trained to have an attitude that you need things. That’s the victim. And a victim and a winner trains himself as a winner. To not need anything. You don’t need anything. You’re already okay. But we have been practicing.

Speaker C: What, in terms of music, you think, I need to get better so I have to keep playing or practicing? But then you think, well, I’m never. I’m always going to need to get better, no matter how good.

Dhammarato: Those are unwholesome thoughts. And those are the unwholesome thoughts that keeps a mediocre musician mediocre. It’s what keeps a regular Dhamma dude wanting and desiring stuff in his spiritual journey.

Speaker B: What if. What if the Domadu doesn’t want to play? But, like, what happens when somebody realizes or gains the perception that this life, this body, mind, is just something that nature is playing, and then everything’s just okay, all right?

Dhammarato: He can remember that One time he realizes that one time and then next moment, maybe an hour later, he stubs his toe. Can he remember again? Can he remember again and again and again and again and remember again that everything is okay. This is what I’m getting at. You’re saying oh, he realized something, but that was in the past. He realized that 40 years ago and he’s still stopped in his own crap today. You have to remember that right now. It’s not a realization. This is the problem with people taking that insight, is it? Oh, I had a major insight and now I’m all better again. No you’re not. You have to have that insight again right now or you go from being better again to being not okay again. You’ve forgotten your insight, you’ve forgotten your realization. Can you remember it? This is the practice is to practice remembering and remembering and remembering rather than realizing something. I realized all kinds of things 50 years ago, but there was a whole lot of time during that 50 year period when I didn’t realize those things when I needed to realize them again. This is the whole concept that we have about it’s a one time shot, oh, I have attained Arahat, therefore I don’t have to do anything anymore. Well, you can be an airhot for 10 seconds. You’ve realized all you need to realize when you’re an airhot for 10 seconds and then 10 seconds later you’ve forgotten and you’re back in suffering and misery again. So you have to 10 seconds later remember again. Does that make sense now for you, Michael? So what if you had a realization? You have to continue to practice that realization, Michael.

Speaker B: Yes.

Dhammarato: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Just I guess the recurring thought is if someone, if someone feels or their experiences that you know that this was all nature’s doing, it’s now nature’s doing. It’s always been nature’s doing. And there’s nothing really to do or to change. And even Buddhism is just another story. Then there was never anything to do and there’s nothing to do right now and there’s nothing to ever.

Dhammarato: But that’s the story. That’s the point. That’s the story. There’s nothing to do and no place to go. That’s the story. Otherwise you’re going to tell your some other story. Like oh, that cute gun girl with that patch eyed and that club foot. She’ll be delicious tonight. That’s another story. So you have to remember to keep telling yourself the correct story, the true story, the right one. You realized it once, that’s not enough.

Speaker B: What if the mind loses interest in stories altogether.

Dhammarato: Well, then you got nothing.

Speaker B: I guess that’s the question.

Dhammarato: Yeah, then you got nothing. Okay, can you remember to keep your nothing? Because when nothing is there, it’s almost like a vacuum. Something’s going to start seeping back in. Let’s make sure that it’s wholesome that sleeps back in. You can’t live in a dead vacuum. So you have to make sure that you continue to throw stuff out so that you can maintain your vacuum. But you can get really, really good at. That’s the skills that we develop is a skill to keep our vacuum in spite of things trying to slip back in.

Speaker B: I guess it seems like the stories require maintenance and the vacuum is that which doesn’t require maintenance.

Dhammarato: You will always have to maintain the vacuum. Okay, let’s talk about it in scientific terms. The scientists will create vacuums here on Earth, but they don’t maintain those vacuums without effort. The same thing would be true of an aerosol can. If you have an aerosol can, it will stay aerosol up if it’s not being opened and used. But if it’s opened and used or leaky at all, it will not remain aerosol can. It’ll dissipate. Everything rots. This is back to the. Okay, so here’s the important teaching about that is a Nietzsche watch. Everything rots, including your vacuum.

Speaker B: So is there something that doesn’t rotate?

Dhammarato: It only doesn’t rot so long as it’s maintained. Everything has to be maintained.

Speaker C: I tend to think if you have a spiritual practice and then you have a lapse and then you can go back to it even though you had a lapse, and you can try to go back to where you left off.

Dhammarato: Darn right you do. That’s the whole point. And we’re talking about lapses of 5 and 10 seconds, not lapses for years. People lapse for years. Can you actually lapse for one or two seconds and then come right back? Can you maintain that vacuum and let us say one molecule of air comes in, can you throw that one molecule back out? It does take some effort, but that effort is actually becomes energetic that you be actually because of unremitting mindfulness and unremitting investigation. In other words, you’re in that vacuum. You got to watch to make sure that vacuum stays empty. And when it starts to get unempty, you’ve got all the energy you need to throw it back into emptiness again. Ben, you got a question? Go ahead. Yeah, I just wondered if what Michael was getting at Was more like awareness and sort of just resting in awareness without the stories. That makes sense. Yes, but you’re resting in awareness or you’re resting in another word would we call it would be vigilance. Guarding. Guarding the sense doors. But guarding the sense doors you see for a young monk is hard work. But guarding when the sense doors for an arahant is easy because he practice it so well. Because he knows if he looks up and sees that girl at the 7:11 so he don’t do it. He guards his senses, he guards that vacuum. But he does it easily, happily as part of his, let us say newly developed habit system. You could almost call it his nature now. But if he doesn’t keep practicing, if he starts going to all of the club footed girls in seven elevens all over town, he’s not going to be much of an air hot anymore. This was a hard lesson that I had to learn and Ajahn Poh was very specific about it that you could be a soda pod, you can be an arrowhot for a day. But you have to keep practicing to keep it.

Speaker B: Illustrated.

Dhammarato: Go ahead Michael.

Speaker B: The picture that comes to mind, it’s like it seems like there’s a theater full of people and then eventually the theater empties down to just one person. And then eventually it’s just an empty theater. Okay, and the movie, the movie continues on plane and there’s no audience.

Dhammarato: What if the movie keeps on playing? You’ve got to have a projectionist to keep the projectors running. And what happens when the screen falls down? What happens when the doors are not locked and people come wandering back in?

Speaker B: Oh, the screen. The screen falls down in front of a theater with no audience and people walk into an empty theater.

Dhammarato: Well, you can put it the other direction is before the screen falls down and before the projectionist leaves and the movie is still running, the doors are open, people are going to come back in. You have to guard against all of that. Anietzsche Wata Sankara Everything is going to continue to change. Can you watch? Can you notice that change playfully even your vacuum is going to change. Wakey wakey. Your vacuum is changing. That’s the awareness, that’s the guarding. That’s the looking. Continue to watch. Remember to watch. Remember to see if there’s any dukkha. You got to take the ender, the effort to throw it out. And for the arahat that’s so dead easy. But for the beginner he has to practice. It takes effort over and over again because his theater doors are wide open. And there’s all kinds of crowds that come in because he patched eyed girls with a club foot, they keep wandering back into the theater. And so you have to be on guard. But the guarding becomes easy because you’re so well skilled at it, because you practiced. So the arahant is one who is well skilled at avoiding dukkha, not one who is completely free from dukkha.

Speaker B: What if it feels sort of like the mind is more like the space in the theater and the dukkha is on the screen and the people are coming in and out and the space remains sort of undisturbed by all of that activity?

Dhammarato: That’s an. Actually, a better point is let things roll on. Can you remember to let things roll on without hopping on board?

Speaker B: Yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m getting at.

Dhammarato: Yeah. Can you remain in the flow without being swept away by the flow? So this is the, it’s, it’s kind of a profound, deep way to understand things is. And possibly the best key is to remember a Nietzsche. And if you can stay in Anatta, you will avoid the dukkha. But if there is a self, there is dukkha. But everything is changing. Bullets flying everywhere. We can’t stop the bullets. That’s the point about the Arahat is he does not stop the world. He just does not allow it to hit him because he’s watching. He’s very good at playing dodgeball.

Speaker E: Or.

Speaker B: He’S no longer there.

Dhammarato: Well, he’ll come back when he gets hit by that dodgeball. Like I said, even an Anatta is not permanent. Until you’re dead, you have to be on guard. But the guarding is easy. When you get skilled at it, you have to remember what kind of thoughts that you’re going to have. And having the kind of thought of, oh, I have arrived and now I don’t have to be on guard anymore. Then you’re going to get hit by one of those balls flying through the air, or as the Buddha would talk about it, an arrow.

Speaker B: That’s definitely, definitely a dangerous thought to have for sure.

Dhammarato: So don’t think that you have arrived. So then you can let us say let your guard down instead. Be well skilled at guarding. And that well skilled at guarding takes practice. So, Alex, do you have any comments? Let’s just keep watching. Everything’s pretty good. Thank you so much. How about you, Ben? You have anything to say? Nothing to say. Thank you. Don’t worry, be happy. Don’t worry, be happy. You have to remember to not worry, to be happy. There’s always something to worry about if you let it get you. How about you, Jordan?

Speaker E: I was wondering about. You keep mentioning. Remembering is very important, but remembering is a lot about thinking about the past, isn’t it?

Dhammarato: No, I’m not talking about remembering the past. That’s not noble, Sati.

Speaker E: Okay.

Dhammarato: Right. Noble satisfies to remember this moment. You don’t have to remember the past. That’s going to. That happens automatically. You have to remember to not remember the past.

Speaker E: Okay. So if you want to remember that everything’s okay, you’re not thinking to a time where you realize that everything was okay. You just remember that everything’s okay. Like, you can see the reason right now.

Dhammarato: Instead, right now, remember that’s. That’s the best anetra. Happens right now. Things are happening right now. Can you be on guard for what’s happening right now?

Speaker E: Okay, so the remembering isn’t that I knew that everything was okay right now.

Dhammarato: It’s that I can see it right now that everything is okay right now.

Speaker E: Yeah. So it’s like remembering that right now is what you need to focus on and to see that it’s okay right now. Not. Yeah, okay, I sort of. I have. I sort of understand now, but I was a bit confused about the word remember, because the way I imagine that word is like, it’s remembering the past. But remember that all you ever have.

Dhammarato: To deal with is this present moment.

Speaker E: Okay.

Dhammarato: Remember that.

Speaker E: So it’s remember right now.

Dhammarato: Remember that.

Speaker E: Okay, thanks.

Speaker B: You can’t really remember the past. Yeah.

Dhammarato: You build it.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, the. The word remember means to, like, put back together. So what you’re putting back together is. Is this present moment, or at least. At least the way that the mind conceives the present moment because it’s either divided into a million pieces or it’s. It’s. It’s, you know, remembered, not divided.

Dhammarato: That’s. That’s excellent to remember. But we’re going to remember or put back together this present moment, not remembering the past, which is actually another way of re. Putting the construct. So you construct your past. Every time that you remember a past event, you reconstruct it. Let’s reconstruct this present moment with the reality of this present moment is what needs to be reconstructed is right now. Maybe that will help you, Michael, to understand that. Point is, the arrowhead is really, really excellent at reconstructing this present moment rather than going off into the past or the future.

Speaker B: Yeah. The sense that I get is that you can. You should dismember the Past. Because this moment can’t be fragmented except for when it’s, you know, fragmented by thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, fabrications about the present. So if you dismember all of that, the present is already complete as it is. Doesn’t need to be membered or remembered by George.

Dhammarato: You’ve got it. Yes. That’s the whole point. That’s the question that you were asking in the beginning. Now you recognize. And so we’ve used words like vacuum. That has to be maintained is always the issue of this present moment. So remember this present moment. Remember that this present moment is already constructed. We don’t have to remember it. Here it is. We don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to put the members back together. Here it is. Yeah. No, yeah. So the. In. In a way, the problem that we’re having with the understanding is the language that we’re using. Remember is not necessarily the best word for sati, but mindfulness is not a good word for sati either. Be here now. Doesn’t take any remembering to recreate. To hear now, here it is right now, effortless. So therefore, there’s. The energy is. We’re actually energetic because there really is nothing to do. It’s already been done.

Speaker E: Okay, yeah, that makes a lot more sense to me. I really like that Re. Member, like put together meaning with the word. But yeah, I appreciate your answer. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker B: If you went to the doctor because your limbs and your arms and your legs and your head were dismembered from your body, and they would have to remember your body.

Dhammarato: Right. You had to put things back together again. This is the unification. Everything is a whole. It’s not a duality. The arm that hurts is not different from the rest of the body.

Speaker B: But what dismembers this moment is the. Is the sense of control and ownership of this moment. That’s what dismembers it, you know?

Dhammarato: Exactly. So, yes, that’s what I was talking.

Speaker B: About with the empty theater. You know, it’s like life is. Life is happening and it’s already. It’s already has a governor. That has nothing to do with us. I call it nature. People call it different things. So if you just let nature be nature, then it’s no longer dismembered. It just. It’s already a unified.

Dhammarato: Right. So trying to get attainments, trying to get something then, as the original question was, is trying to put together that which is already together. Trying to attain something that’s already there. That’s a lot of work that people put in desiring desirelessness, when all we have to do is just stop desiring. You’ve already got everything that you need right here, right now. So, Domadass, do you have any final. No, but thank you so much for everything. Domadass, I gotta really congratulate you and thank you for doing such a great job on those other calls. Thank you. You, sir. Oh, thank you for letting me. Yes, everything is good. All right, Mikey, why don’t you take this thing home?

Speaker D: Thank you, friends, for being here today. This is a very enjoyable sangha call for people watching this on YouTube and Spotify or itunes or wherever you may be tuning in. Give a Visit to OpenSongA Foundation.org if you haven’t yet. Create an account, upload a profile picture. This website is a good place for people to connect with other Dhamma friends and find Dhamma centers near you. And also if you could, please go ahead and give our YouTube channel a subscription and give this video a like as well. Thank you.

Dhammarato: Excellent. Thank you so much. Anybody got any last final words? Thanks, everybody. Yes, Alex, give me a call. I have a question for you. Okay, I will call you. Thank you so much, guys.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

Dhammarato: So, thanks everyone. Goodbye.

Speaker E: Goodbye.

Summary of this Dhamma Talk

Dhammarato explores the paradox of seeking spiritual attainments and desiring desirelessness. He emphasizes that dukkha exists in our minds through wanting things to be different, not in external circumstances. Using various metaphors including a cooling car and a concert pianist, he explains how practice should become natural and playful while still requiring continuous maintenance. The talk concludes with teachings on maintaining present moment awareness and understanding that everything changes.

Outline of this Dhamma Talk

The Problem of Seeking and Spiritual Desire

• Seeking and desiring desirelessness is itself dukkha
• Many spiritual practitioners want attainments but miss that seeking creates dissatisfaction
• Dukkha exists in the mind, not in external events

Understanding Dukkha and Its Cause

• Dukkha comes from loba (greed), moha (delusion), and dosa (aversion)
• Wanting things to be different creates dissatisfaction
• Laws and rules are based on feelings, not reality

The Practice of Cooling Off (Nibbana)

• Like a car cooling down after a journey
• Let things naturally cool rather than maintaining heat through wanting
• Remember that you’re already okay in this moment

Continuous Practice vs One-time Attainment

• Even accomplished practitioners must continue practicing
• Like a concert pianist who keeps practicing
• Practice becomes playful rather than effortful
• Must maintain awareness moment by moment

Guarding the Mind

• Need to maintain vigilance against unwholesome thoughts
• Practice becomes easier with skill but must be maintained
• Remember to stay in the present moment
• Everything changes (anicca) - must keep watching

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