The Sangha US 135 09 28 24

Video

Transcript

Dhammarato: So welcome to our Saturday morning call. It’s just a little after 9:00am here in Thailand and it’s evening time Friday evening in the States. And so today we’ll open the conversation with, let us call it, a concept of forgiveness. Now the first thing to say about it is the Buddha wasn’t really big on forgiveness. There’s very, very little said about it. And one sutta mentions that there were, I think two stories will do. The first one was, is that something happened and two monks had it against each other are actually so they departed ways and that the junior monk, I think it would be the one who had done wrong. And the senior monk kind of just forgot all about it. And so it was worrying the younger monk. And so he told his friends and his friends said that he’s got to go back to this senior monk and to apologize. And so he did and there was nothing to it. There’s another story to where similar situation except that the guy was holding it against the other one and that when they got together, the other monk apologized and this guy still held it. And then they said to forget about it and to forgive him. That basically there’s a big distinction between the way that the Buddha handled it and the way that let us say Christianity handles it according to the way that Jesus did that Jesus, the big event was, is that he was on the cross and he said, father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing. Now what that means is, is that he was forgiving them while he was on the cross, but they were not there to receive his forgiveness. And so in the sense with the Buddha, the difference would be is that forgiveness in the Buddha sense is a transaction. In other words, when somebody comes to ask for forgiveness, the correct thing to do is to forgive them, make up, become friends again, give each other a hug and let it go. But generally it’s more held in one person’s mind than in another person’s mind. So there’s a big difference now. So let’s put that difference in the sense of two words. And that is there’s a big difference between forgiving someone and forgetting it. If you just simply forget it, then there’s nothing to forgive. Forgiveness has to do with the fact that you’ve got it on your mind. Okay, so Santiago, you mentioned this. The thing of it is, is that you don’t want to forgive this guy, but the problem is not that you don’t forgive him, is the fact is that you won’t forget about it. And so we can handle that with Anapanasati just like we handle everything else every time that that guy, even in the remotest kind of way, comes to mind. Exactly. Take that thought and throw it out with thoughts like, wow, if he ever comes around here, here, I’ll have something to say to him that’s kind and polite. But right now he’s not here, so let’s not have that conversation to throw him out of the mind. Pack that thought up, that thought of grievance. Now the next thing that you can do is say something like, wow, I’m glad I don’t have that kind of a situation anymore. There’s also the reverse of that, and that is our old memories of screwing up. I remember one time, and in fact, too often I remembered one time when I fell asleep in a meeting and that the boss then called me into the office because he was the one who was doing the presentation. He was doing a presentation, and I fell asleep in that meeting, and he confronted me with it. And I said, oh, I was meditating. No, I was asleep. So not only did I offend him by sleeping in his meeting, I also offended him by lying directly to him. And I could tell that he knew that I was lying to him. All right, so the reason I’m telling this story is, guess What? That was 40 or 50 years ago. And so when I get that comes to mind, the thought that will then immediately follow is, wow, I’m glad I don’t have that kind of situation anymore. Wow, what a relief it is.

Speaker B: I usually sleep better in meetings than any other place.

Dhammarato: Well, I’m glad I don’t have meetings anymore. At least not boring business meetings. The only kind of meetings we have is dharma meetings. And they’re pretty fun, much fun. So there’s other times in Santiago when you remember that you screwed up or that you didn’t like something. I remember at one time, under my first grandmother’s and then my mother’s house, the house was built in 1920, and there was a crawl space under the house where there was a hot water heater. And it was hard to get in there to do the draining. And it needed to be drained on a regular yearly basis or something like that. The reason that I bringing it up is, wow, I am so glad I don’t have to crawl into that house to drain that hot water heater anymore. I don’t have to take care of that house anymore. Wow, right now is good enough. And so Santiago, that’s the kind of thought that you need to have Is right now is good enough. Wow. It’s a whole lot better than it used to be. But we will remember the. The offenses that we committed against other people. And when we do, you can throw those right out of the mind. And when we remember things that were hard to do or when we offended other people, the right thing to do is to see that as an unwholesome thought. It’s dwelling in the past. You can’t fix it. I cannot fix that hot water heater anymore. I can’t do it. One thing, the land and the property and that water, hot water heater, whatever’s been replaced from all those years ago don’t belong to me. It’s not mine. It’s literally on the other side of the planet somewhere in North Carolina, and I care not about it. So why should I even have thoughts about it? Well, those old random thoughts will come up. And when they do, the right thing to do is say, aha. I see that. I don’t have to think about that hot water heater. I don’t have to think about lying to my boss. I don’t have to think about any of that kind of stuff. Let’s be here now. So that’s the easy way to take care of that. Another way of looking at it is, is that if you want to talk about forgiveness, then the only thing to do is to forgive yourself, because you hold quite a lot of stuff against you. For instance, now that 50 years has gone by, 40 years, something like that. See, when that was 1973. So that was 52 years ago when I lied to that boss. The possibility is that he’s dead. The other possibility is that he’s got Alzheimer’s. He’s an old man, too. He was older than I was for sure. So he’s either dead or doesn’t remember anything, or maybe he sharpers attack. But he’s got other tacks to sharpen on. He doesn’t need to remember. He does not remember that episode when I was in his office. So why should I? That in fact, anytime that there’s a conflict, anytime that there’s some sort of event, remember that everybody sees that event differently than you do. Nobody remembers the same thing. But in fact, when I saw him nod the way he did and I knew that I had been caught in the lie, guess what? He may have not even known that I was lying to him. I might have fooled him. Oh, look at that guy. He’s a meditator. I’m glad that he’s meditating in my talk I don’t know. That’s the whole point is that we often don’t know what’s in the mind of other people. That in fact the guy that you are holding a grudge against, Santiago, he may not even remember it. He made thinking nothing to it. And here you can go grovel and apologize and plead for mercy, and he doesn’t even know what you’re talking about. You’re the one who is suffering, you are the one who is causing yourself. And then, in fact, you can say then that you’re holding a grudge because you didn’t forgive him and forget about it right there and then on the spot. So really what you’re holding against is not him offending you, you. It’s you offending you now. And you’re offending yourself with an old memory, an old grudge. This is really the hallmark of the second Noble truth is that we cannot know what is under the people’s minds. We can be sharp by seeing their behavior, but we don’t know what’s in their minds. But one thing is for sure, and that is the Dukkha that they experience is experienced inside their own mind. That you cannot cause anyone any suffering, but you have a responsibility to behave in such a way so that there’s some things that are pretty obvious, pretty, you know, like you stepped on somebody’s foot, that’s going to cause them pain, especially if they got fancy shoes on and now there’s a muddy foot. So they’re probably going to hate you for two reasons. One, their foot hurts and two, you muddied up their shoe. Right? Okay, so we can then taking this whole idea about the teaching of the Buddha being Dukkha, Duke of Naroda, is that if we cause little or no suffering to other people, they’re unlikely to try to return it to us. If you don’t offend anybody, he’s not for the next 30 or 40 or 50 years remembering how he was offended by you. Some of these offenses are long lasting. Look how long you carry this, Santiago. It’s gotten heavy. And you keep thinking about him over and over again when all you have to do is to remember, hey, he probably doesn’t even remember this. I’m the one who’s carrying this stuff. And if he’s carrying it too, that’s up to him, not you. That in fact it’s quite possible that you can go apologize to somebody over an incident that they don’t remember, but now that you bring it up, they will remember it. And now they’ll start holding grudges against you. And so in all cases, it’s best just to forget about it. Let the past go, drop it away. Be here now. Be here now with thoughts that follow those kind of thoughts. Thoughts of fixing hot water heaters, thoughts of lying to people. Any kind of thoughts like that, we can say, wow, I’m not there anymore. Well, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that anymore. Well, right now, everything is hunky dory. Right now, everything is just fine. No worries. So one of the things that we worry about is not just the stuff that we have with other people, but we worry, hold grudges and threats about our own behavior that has nothing to do with other people. An example of that would be going to a drug dealer and buying drugs. He’s not the one who’s going to feel bad. He’s glad that you were there to buy his drugs. Or if he’s feeling guilty about selling drugs, that’s still up to him. But now we go and we buy the drugs, and now we feel guilty while we’re taking the drugs, and then we feel guilty for taking the drugs, whatever they may be. My personal favorite drug is air. I tend to abuse it a lot. Pardon me while I take another hit. This is the way that we can have enough drug. Another drug that you can have would be happiness. Give yourself your own hit of dopamine. In fact, having that thought Santiago of, wow, I don’t have to do that anymore. That’s a hit of dopamine right there. Well, I’m glad I don’t have to do any of that stuff anymore. Well, everything right now is okay. So there’s a lot of stories that I could tell about drugs. In fact, the number of times that I’ve been drunk in my whole life, I think would be three. Three times. I remember having gotten drunk, embarrassingly drunk, throwing up all over somebody’s toilet, drunk. But I don’t drink anymore. Well, I’m glad I don’t drink anymore. In fact, it’s been so long since I’ve had pain to drink, I don’t like the taste of it anymore. And in fact, the reality is, is that very people, very few people actually like the taste of it. An example of that is beer. Who actually likes the taste of beer, whether it’s high quality, you actually understand that that was a developed habit. You started to like beer after you started drinking a lot of it. That beer by itself is not delicious. Neither is raw alcohol, like bourbons and scotch and old Gin, vodka, all of those things are nasty tasting. The body really rejects them. So what do we have to do? We have to sweeten it up, put some Coca Cola in it, hide the flavor of the alcohol because the taste buds in the body automatically reject it by its taste. And yet look at the industry, look at the big industry, worldwide industry of manufacturing alcohol for, let’s say, pleasant consumption to where it’s actually more pleasant to drink the stuff that you have when in that mixed drink and leave the alcohol out and just have them. Instead of having a Mai Tai with what do they put in it? I’ve forgotten. Have the Mai Tai with the pineapple juice.

Speaker C: Now just hold on right there, young man. I’m sorry, but on a hot summer day there’s nothing like a nice Foster’s or a lager. No, I did not drink a lot of beer before I. And I learned to like the way it tastes. Actually, I like especially with the dinner. But you know what? One beer a night is a lot. You know, I rarely drink more than one. I can go along with the distaste for. I think a lot of some alcoholic drinks actually taste good. I’m sorry.

Dhammarato: Well, you can experiment with something then. You can have. Starting now, instead of having a whole beer, have just a glass and throw out the rest. Have just half a beer and then after a week or two or three, then bring it down to a quarter of a beer a night. And then after that you probably don’t need it anymore. But after a long time of doing without beer, when you have a beer, you won’t like the taste of it. The reason that you like the taste of it is because you’ve gotten used to it.

Speaker C: No, I disagree. I think it really does taste good. And I don’t want to reduce my consumption. I like to having that much calories along with my dinner.

Dhammarato: I’m sorry. Don’t be sorry. I don’t care.

Speaker C: But I do think that alcohol is very duck. Is dangerous and it is destructive. And yeah, I guess I might want to consider that my health might be better without it.

Dhammarato: Yes, that’s consideration. I invite you to consider that. Now let’s talk about it in a kind of a different context. And that is that there is a precept. Let’s see which one. Sura Maria macha pama tadana way Ramani sak on me. And then in fact, Syria is beer, Maria is wine and matcha is hard liquor. Now the story was in the time of the Buddha that there was a dish that is actually commonly Served even today, especially in places like Cambodia. I’ve had it in Thailand very rarely, but in Cambodia it seems to be a dish. And they take rice. In fact, I think it’s a kind of a rice that’s purplish. I don’t know where the purple color comes from, but it’s fermented rice as an eating dish, and it reeks with alcohol. And so in the time of the Buddha, there was one monk who said that he liked that. And so the other monks in his small group snickered and then went to town and told all of the people in the town that this monk really likes that particular dish. And so one morning, that’s all he got. Everybody gave him some of this fermented rice and he ate it because that’s what they were giving him. And then he came and bowed to the Buddha and was obviously and clearly drunk, intoxicated. And so the actual suit precept is not alcohol itself, but it’s the heedlessness that we get, in other words, getting drunk. So even in modern times you have a dui, which means driving while under the intoxication. So it’s intoxicating. Now, intoxicating actually means it’s a poison. But drunk is also poisoning the mind, poisoning the body, but it also affects our heedfulness. So this is what the Buddha was against, is becoming heedless. Because when we are drunk on wine, beer, those kind of spirits, we also can cause ourselves great damage being around machinery, cutting ourselves with a knife. Another one is that we’re not heedful of the lower qualities part of the mind. And so people will get into arguments much more likely when they’ve been drinking alcohol. You’ve heard the expression bar fights, right? You know what a bar fight is? Have you ever heard of a church fight? That’s unusual. People are not drunk when they’re at church, and so they’re not likely to be fighting with one another unless they’re philosophers. And then they’re drunk on their Bible, and then they’ll really be have hammer and nail with each other. But normally bar fights are caused because of heedlessness. Now, there’s one other point that we can make, and that is that on that regard, the Buddha also was not against smoking that in fact, in the Vinaya, in the medical section, there is actually a. Oh, it’s a paragraph or two that talks about having a pipe. Now, my good old friend Achon Tencero intentionally translated that word pipe into tube. But even as a tube, we Have a chillum. How many of you know what a chillum is? That’s an old, old style pipe in India. And it’s a long tube like this that has a place for what you’re smoking and that you have to hold it up like this. Okay? But a curved pipe or a curved tube for smoking is easier and better because the curvature means that now the bowl can be upright and the stuff doesn’t spill out. But in the really old days, they had the. It was a straight pipe, and so you had to intake this way. Now, the pipe that the Buddha allowed had specific things about it, just like all of the other things, like a comb or a brush or even a razor, that it cannot be made out of ivory, but it can be made out of bone. Why is that? Well, because ivory is almost always taken away from a living animal, and bone is almost always taken away from a dead animal. And a dead animal is not going to mine things made out of bone. And in the old days, bone and ivory were common in carving. You can also have a wooden pipe, but you wouldn’t want to have a metal one anyway, because metal pipes get hot and hard to use. A stone pipe would be okay, but certainly a valuable pipe. In other words, the pipe, if it’s worthwhile having, then the monk wants to keep it and it gets stolen. He may feel bad because his pipe was stolen, but if it’s easy enough just to make a new one out of mud, then there’s no problem. So what. Here’s a question for you, Nick. What did the monks in the time of the Buddha smoke if they smoked a pipe?

Speaker D: I have no idea. I was.

Dhammarato: No, it wasn’t tobacco because tobacco came from the new world, right?

Speaker B: Wasn’t hemp, it was Somalia.

Dhammarato: Well, what is India and Nepal and Pakistan? Hello, Santiago.

Speaker E: That Kush, the Himalayan Kush.

Dhammarato: So, as I said, it doesn’t say what they had, but we do know that there is an injunction about cutting plants, but there is no injunction of a layman giving plants to the monk that here in Thailand, monks that are known to smoke cigarettes, the lay people will know it and give them cigarettes. Now, when I was, let us say, not a brand new monk, but let us say, at least not sophisticated in this regard, that there was a monk in North Carolina who smoked cigarettes. The only monk that I’d ever seen in the. In North Carolina, and one time I made just a gesture, just a gesture like shaking my head like that to indicate to him that I did not approve of him smoking. I didn’t Say a word. But that one gesture cost me a living resident place, because when he became the abbot of the. Of the Wat, he didn’t want me staying there because I disapproved of him, even though it was a couple of years later. And then later I found out that he was not breaking any rules at all. My gesture was the fault, not his smoking. Why is that? Because the Buddha allows smoking in the vineyard. Not only is it a smoking pipe or a tube, a chillum maybe, but also to have a storage pouch that had separate pockets in it. This is actually referred to in the vineyard. Now, what’s he going to put in the other side of the pocket? Would be probably whatever he’s putting into the pipe. Monks were also not denied fire. So we asked that question. What do you think that they smoked would be up to you, because there’s no. It could have been medical herbs. And in fact, this pipe is in the medical section. Now, how many of you have ever heard of the concept of medical use of marijuana? All right, okay. Do you know that for many, many years, because of politics, that it was a Schedule 1 drug with no medical value at all by law? But the laws have been changing, and the reality is that it does have medical usage, for one thing. It relaxes. And yet in our culture, marijuana is a great big no no simply because of those old laws that were written basically because of racism. It was because blacks and Mexicans use marijuana in the Deep South. It became a big no no for the white people. And in fact, when I was a child in Oklahoma, they had a particular name for it. They called it rabbit tobacco. How many of you have heard of the term rabbit tobacco? That’s a Southern expression for marijuana. It also used to grow in huge quantities in the south, especially down at the riverbeds. But there was an additional issue about politics, and that was DuPont in the late 1930s and 40s, was developing synthetic materials. But in World War II, almost all of the ships in the United States and in fact, all over the world, there were huge numbers of ships, Liberty ships, carriers, freighters, destroyers, battleships. But they didn’t have nylon. What kind of rope do you think that all of these tens of thousands and thousands of ships use when they moored, industrial hemp. Hemp. Precisely. Hemp was a major industry until DuPont actually had hemp outlawed in the United States and therefore worldwide. But it grows wild. In fact, it’s a very useful plant.

Speaker B: Yeah, supposedly the. One of the most useful industrial plants, has many uses.

Dhammarato: You’re speaking so low. I can’t I hear what you’re saying?

Speaker B: Supposedly industrial hemp is one of the most useful plants in existence.

Dhammarato: Yeah. And guess how much useful it is is harming literally millions of people by making it illegal. So that the cops, who probably smoke marijuana themselves can get wealthy off of harming other people by. By the fact that it’s illegal.

Speaker B: But isn’t like. Like, isn’t it inferior to rely on something to relax when it has side effects? And then you’re not meditating? Why do you need to meditate or practice on a pasade if you can just take a puff or something or. And my friends like to smoke. And she just. She says she’s nervous, so she’s relying on an external kind of means to try to relax, you know, and she spoke tobacco. But, you know, you know, you’re relying on a drug to relax. You’re not relying on meditation.

Dhammarato: Well, here’s an interesting point, is that tobacco itself, it has really no medical purposes, that in fact nicotine is downright harmful and so is ash and the particulate matter. And so smoking cigarettes is interesting that they finally began to note that. So the white people of Europe were all addicted to tobacco up until the 1960s. In the early 1960s, everybody smoked cigarettes while marijuana was banned to the black community. And so now that the laws are changing, then that’s an important point, is that ganja or marijuana was most useful as a weapon against other people of other colors. It’s a racist kind of a drug.

Speaker B: What about the Opium wars?

Dhammarato: I can’t hear you.

Speaker B: What about the opium wars?

Dhammarato: Well, let’s look at that for a moment. Opium actually is in several different forms depending upon what chemicals that you mix with it. And we know that heroin is downright dangerous because it’s been chemically modified. We also know that morphine is less harmful. But in the time of the Buddha, it was raw opium that they would be smoking now. Raw opium actually is just carried. They make the slit in the poppy and then go around and collect it with their hands, and it’s all covered on the side here, and they’ll take a little knife and scrape it off and roll it into a ball, and that’s what they smoked. It’s after it’s been medically or not medically chemically treated, that makes it dangerous. Recently, like in the past five or so years, the pharmaceutical industry has introduced new versions of opioids and encouraged the doctors to sell it because the opioids will actually use to mollify pain. But in fact, people do a Lot of suffering and they want to take pills in order to feel better. And so I would say then that it’s quite possible in the time of the Buddha because there were no laws. People would smoke opioids or actually opium, direct opium, raw opium, but it’s when it’s chemically treated that makes it harmful. And so there’s also a lot of brand new drugs. When LSD came on the market, actually didn’t come onto the market when it was kind of an invention. The CIA, so I hear, was directly involved with that in the way that they were looking for a pill or a drug that they could give captured soldiers to make them tell the truth. They were looking for a truth serum, a truth drug, make people tell the truth. And so some of the professors at Harvard were consulted by the CIA. And now you have the story of Timothy Leary and Robert, Robert Halper, who became Richard Albert. Richard Albert, okay, Who became Ram Dass. He took it to India and that what he found is that the sados and the Rishis that liked it were not very good gurus. But when they he gave it to though, some of them, they said, oh, nothing to it. In other words, when you can actually change and alter your mind on your own, through practice, through meditation, then you don’t need the drug, but the drug does some chemical stuff that you can do all on your own. And so these, these opioids, these drugs are dangerous in the hands of low minded people who were looking for an easy way out, easy way out of their life, easy way out of their pain. And that they have very few doctors are actually going to teach them an upon usati because there’s no profit in teaching someone an Upanishadi. The people can heal themselves, but they go to the doctor. Because that’s our culture that let us say in the time of around 1900 to 1910, most of the medical doctors were what you would call quacks, snake oil salesmen. They rode around in carriages selling ointments and things like this. One of the stories that I have is that one guy had opium and that he would use it on his dental patients. Now his dental office was nothing but the back backboard of a covered wagon. But he had an Indian chief that would prance around and dance. And the magic was that they felt no pain when they were having a tooth pulled because that Indian chief was dancing as opposed to the actual being an opioid that was relieving the pain. So you could see then that opium does have some medical advantages for those People who need it because they don’t know how to take advantage of their own medicinal practice of cleaning and purifying their own mind. So the last part then that we can talk about is, look how many people use that kind of stuff. Whether they get it on the street corner, whether they get it from a mob boss or whether they get it from a medical doctor, they still have reservations about it. They feel bad. They’ll use the medicine in order to feel good. They do feel good and then they think that it’s harmful because there’s laws against it and then they’ll feel bad. So in fact the, these drugs have a two edged sword. They wind up Santiago feeling guilty about using the drugs and yet they want the drugs they need to drug. And they’re so they begin to ruin their life trying to get the drug. And when they see what damage is doing to them, they feel bad and they feel guilty. So which is worse, taking the drug or feeling bad about taking the drug?

Speaker B: But when you feel bad, then you got to take the drug again so you won’t feel bad.

Dhammarato: Yeah, so they take the drug and they feel bad and then they take more drugs and then you feel more bad and they take more drugs and feel even worse. It’s a cycle. In the Buddhist language we would call that samsara and the, and the word sarah does have a word close to it, like sorrow. They get really sorry, sorry state to be in. Now, where do we break the tie? Where do we cut it off? I would suggest that if they would start practicing feeling good while they’re using the drug and continue to feel good and forgive themselves for it and start to feel good, then they don’t have much use for the drug anymore. But the side effects of the drug is that they feel bad, they feel worried, the drug itself has adverse effects. But one of the best things that I can tell you about the practice of Anapanasati, of changing your unwholesome thoughts to wholesome thoughts, is that it doesn’t have any real side effects that are detrimental the way that drugs do. Now at one time, just once I have had lsd. That was actually before I became a monk. And my response to it was while I was on it, that I could really feel my mouth, I could feel my teeth. But when I came out of that state with all of the other people, they were really all crazy with it. But my, my opinion was very similar to the, to the opinion that Richard Alpert talks about that some of the gurus said there’s Nothing to this. There’s not much there. Now there’s a whole lot of drugs that I have never had. Never had Quaaludes, never had ecstasy, never had so many different drugs. I don’t even know the names of them. But I can say that people who are taking the drugs do so because they are hurting. They want something to give them relief. And if you can practice giving yourself that relief by just getting rid of your unwholesome thoughts. Wow, what a relief it is to have an easy mind. Wow, what a relief it is not to live in the past. Wow, what a relief it is to forget all of our grudges, Santiago. Just forget about them and be in the present moment. When you’re lightweight, you don’t need the drugs or their side effects. And so there’s actually an easy way out. And that’s correct practice. And when you practice correctly, you don’t have all of these side effects. The only side effect that we have with Anapanasati is happiness and joy. And perhaps one of the most dangerous things would be fearlessness. Not fearlessness in the sense that you’re going to slap or abuse a cop, but fearlessness in the sense you’re just going to make friends with him because you’re not afraid of him. He’s just a bully in a blue suit taught to lie. Boy, am I glad that I don’t live in the United States. I don’t have to ever test my skills with a copy. There are cops on this island, but I’ve never seen them anywhere other than in the police station. They kind of know where home is. But if I saw a cop, I would be happy to know it. So this is the way that we want to look at drugs, is that the drugs that we use can be used for medical purposes if you need them, and that almost all drugs, whether the prescription or street drugs, are taken by people who have a medical problem. And yet most of those medical problems can be solved by psychosomatic methods. You know what the word psychosomatic means, don’t you? An easy way of saying it is mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter that most of our physical pain is worse because we don’t like it. If we’re willing to put up with physical pain, then it don’t hurt. It’s not even pain, just stiffness of joints, sharp sensations, et cetera. Like that. And easy enough to put up with if you’re able to put up with stuff easily. And that’s a training. So why don’t we train ourselves to be in such a good state that we don’t need drugs, we don’t need alcohol, we don’t need to feed our addiction of tobacco that we’re already okay? And when you have the attitude that you’re already okay, then it’s a lot of trouble to go down to the street corner or go to the doctor. It’s actually expensive, more expensive to get a medical marijuana piece of paper than it is just to sit and feel good. So this is what I have to say about drugs. There’s nothing to it. Now, many of you would think that me being a Buddhist, I’m out there saying, oh, no, no, no, you can’t have drugs. Oh, no, no, no, no. Those people who wrote those laws must have been correct. They’re big, important politicians and they wrote those laws saying that this stuff is bad, therefore it is bad. And I can’t say that. What I can say instead is look at what you’re doing, look at what you’re doing with these drugs. Look at why you’re taking them. What do you want? What is it that the drug can do for you that you can’t do for yourself just by relaxing? And look at all the side effects that the drugs have that you don’t have to put up with, like lack of heedlessness, lack of bloody noses that you have when you’re in a bar fight. Just take it easy. So I would say off hand in that regard, the very, very best drug that you can take is air. Anapanasati. Be mindfulness. Be mindful of the air that you’re taking in. Use it wisely, use it abundantly, enjoy the air. Then in fact, if you take way, way too much of it, you’ll go into a state that’s called hyperventilation. But hyperventilation doesn’t last for very long, and it takes a long time and a lot of effort to get into a state of hyperventilation. But easy enough when you can do the short breathing, that you can in fact get your body energized, vitalized. The long breath also energizes and vitalizes the body. That almost all of the problems that people have in wanting to take medication is because they’re not getting enough air, they’re not getting enough oxygen. The body is starved with oxygen. This is what tiredness is, that when you have a lot of air, you don’t get tired. Or if you are tired and you start breathing well, you come out of your tiredness. So why to take. Why do people take drugs, Nick? Why do they take the drugs?

Speaker D: Because they’re dissatisfied in the current moment.

Dhammarato: So if you’re satisfied in the current moment, you’re less likely to take any of those drugs that may have side effects. One of the side effects is you could get killed while purchasing the drug or you could get arrested. So there’s all kinds of different side effects. Most of them are actually manufactured by a whole lot of other people who were dissatisfied. The laws were made because people were dissatisfied, not because the drugs themselves were bad. Joe Santiago, why do people take drugs?

Speaker E: Oh, I’ve heard it said that because they don’t see the great pain that is in them. Like you don’t. You have not yet recognized that there’s a lot of suffering to be had. But I don’t drink, and I don’t smoke weed, or I don’t do any. But I have a huge nicotine problem. Nicotine?

Dhammarato: Well, it’s. It’s not a problem until you say it’s a problem. Can you forgive yourself while you’re putting that cigarette down or whatever it was that you rolled? It looked like a bottle of holy water to me.

Speaker E: It’s a. No, it’s a vaporizer. I was smoking two packs a day about a month ago. Like, two packs of cigarettes a day. This at least, is a little bit cleaner, but I’m trying to titrate them and then just stop.

Dhammarato: Well, here’s the way to do that. The story that I have is basically by holding a cigarette. You can open the pack, you can take a cigarette out, you can hold it the way that people hold cigarettes. In Europe, they do it this way. In America, they do it that way. You can hold it, you can put it in your mouth, you can light it, but you don’t have to pump on it. You can have that pack of cigarettes. You don’t have to open it. You can open that pack of cigarettes, but you don’t have to take a cigarette out of it. You can take that cigarette out of it, and you can hold it, or you can take the cigarette out and just set it down. You can take the cigarette and hold it, but you don’t have to light it. You can hold a cigarette, and you can light it, and you don’t have to puff on it. And now where it comes to you, Santiago, is that after you take that puff, you can sit that thing down. You don’t have to take another puff. Be mindful of what you’re doing, telling yourself that you’re okay without that next pup. And I guess forgive yourself would be the way of saying it in English or Christian language. But don’t hold it against yourself. You don’t have to feel bad while you’re smoking, telling yourself that it’s. That it’s bad for you. My only problem. You called it a problem. Smoking is not a problem. Having problems is the problem. So stop giving yourself problems. Yes, Harry, go ahead. Oh, he was waving off, saying goodbye. So does anybody have any final things to say about this? Eric, how about you? He’s gone. How about you, Nick?

Speaker D: That was. That was good. Yeah. You basically said what I thought you’re gonna say, because I do indulge in substances, because I’m not satisfied. Worth the current whatever it is. So, yeah, good stuff.

Dhammarato: Actually, if you think about it, some of those things is a lot of work. Using marijuana, for instance, There’s a lot of work you got to go get. I don’t know how you use it. You got to go get the papers. You got to go put those papers in the little machine. Or if you know how to roll a joint this way, like they did in the old days, and it’s lopsided, you got to pound that stuff or chop it up really finely, or it. The joint that you’re making, the sticks are going to poke holes in the paper. Look how much work it is.

Speaker D: I actually, actually do. I actually do take cannabis, but medically to sleep, and it really helps. So that’s not the. That’s. That one’s not the problem. It’s other things.

Dhammarato: The problem or not, look how much time and effort and work and feelings that you put into it. That’s not the actual product itself. One of the ways of thinking about it then is that, hey, it’s just not worth my time and effort to roll a joint because the benefit that I get out of it is not all of that great anyway. Hey, I can lay in bed and I can relax and feel good whether I’m stoned or not. The stoning is just a kind of a feeling. It’s a sensation, it’s okay, but there’s nothing much to it. And when you recognize how much work it takes to roll that thing up and suck on it. Coughing, having a coughing jag, burning yourself in your clothing with the lighter. It’s just a lot of work.

Speaker E: You can move to Thailand. You can. You can use the drug money and then just move to Thailand.

Dhammarato: You can. And ganja is a whole lot cheaper here than it is in most places.

Speaker E: You can go to Phuket or Pattaya or something like that. I don’t know.

Dhammarato: This island is quite famous. They’ve got both the mushrooms and the ganja. In fact, it’s become so famous that the island doesn’t grow enough ganja. They’ve got to import it from Laos because the local stuff is just used up too quickly.

Speaker D: Is it legal there?

Dhammarato: Yes. Oh, I didn’t.

Speaker D: I’ve never been to Thailand, so I don’t know.

Dhammarato: Well, let us say this way is that the government can’t figure out exactly what they want to do with the laws. But the laws are not well enforced here. Whatever the laws are, which keep changing. So it was legal for a while, and then it became illegal in a way that the. The prime minister threatened that he was going to make a new law. I don’t think that any new law was passed to make it back illegal again. So it was just a threat of the law. But in any case, coming to Thailand, a lot of work. So look at what you’re doing. Look at how much work you’re putting in. Recognize that you can just sit there and breathe. Yeah, I know. Breathing takes a lot of work. The one thing that’s really good about being dead is at least you don’t have to breathe. But while you’re alive, you got to keep doing it. Why not do it? Well, practice. Practice getting yourself into really good mental state. And then you don’t have to. But don’t go around making laws against it for yourself. Instead, look at what you’re doing. Because if you make your own rules, your own laws. Oh, ganja is bad. Old vaping is a great big problem. Look at the rules that you’re creating for yourself, Santiago. You’re making it a problem. The vaping is not a problem. The vaping machine is not a problem. It’s the way that you feel when you’re using it. And if you feel really good, you probably don’t use it because it’s too much work.

Speaker B: What about the drug pushers? The pusher?

Dhammarato: Any drug pushers here? You pushing drugs, Lars? How much do you charge? A little poetry there.

Speaker B: I was talking about the Opium wars. They tried to corrupt the Chinese society by flooding the country with opium so they would weaken society.

Dhammarato: Anything can be used as a weapon. If you want to have a war, you can do it with sticks, you can do it with rockets, you can do it with nuclear weapons. And in that particular time, they happen to abused opium as war machine. The problem was not the opium. The problem was making war.

Speaker B: Well, it’s sneaky. Though, because, like, you know, if you use a stick. That’s too obvious.

Dhammarato: Well, law, actually spies, and I mean, warfare is sneaky. If you’ve read the Art of War by Changing Loud. No, I forgot who it was, who wrote it. It’s an old Chinese book, Sun Tzu. Right. And the whole book is about deception. War is about deceiving the other people that you’re having war with. If you’ve got few troops, look, make it look like you’ve got a lot. If you have a lot of troops, make it look like you’ve got a few. If your troops are scattered, make them look like that you’re concentrated. If they are concentrated, make them look like they’re scattered. And that book just goes on and on and on and on about deception, telling lies. Why? Because you’re at war with someone, you hate them and they hate you. Why can’t they just be friends, sit down and have an opium joint together? The British were just, you know, they were colonializing all over the place, and look what it got them. Now, little old Britain is so puny that even Putin says that it’s just a puny little country. And that used to be the largest empire in the world.

Speaker B: I think the royal family still has a lot of wealth.

Dhammarato: There are some wealthy people, but they’re not happy people. Why should you be envious large of people who have a lot of money, they’re miserable. Why can’t you just be happy? I don’t need a lot of money. I can just be happy with the little that I’ve got.

Speaker B: I was just trying to figure out how the world works, and I’m like, oh, okay, so those are the people.

Dhammarato: That are the world. The world doesn’t work. The world is just a natural kind of place. The problem is not the world. The problem is people. The problem is not the people. The problem is greed. Ignorant greed. Hatred. Ignorant hatred. The problem is dukkha. That’s the problem. And they’re taking drugs, they’re having wars, they’re doing all kinds of things, thinking that they will get rid of dukkha by doing some absolutely horrific things. Now, that’s ignorance for you. You think that you’re ignorant. Look at how ignorant governments get. There is organized ignorance. Governments are nothing but organized stupidity.

Speaker D: And everyone tries to fix them by doing stuff in the world when the foundation is the. The dukkha in everyone’s mind, which is, like, the real source of the problem. So people try to make themselves feel whole by political activism when they’re probably just Making it worse.

Dhammarato: Because they’re making it worse. They’re out there being active, doing stuff that’s just harming other people. You think that you’re going to be active and that’s going to solve the problem, though. It’s going to get the other team really even more active. They’re going to hate you even more. Yeah, I mean, there was a few people. What was it? Black Lives Matter was not even a movement. People were just really, really dissatisfied at one moment altogether at the same time. And now look what the Republicans are doing. The Republicans are going around hating Black Lives Matter. And there’s no lies there in the Black Lives Matter anymore. Maybe one or two people holding a piece of paper, but Black Lives Matter doesn’t exist except in the minds of the Republicans because they’re looking for something. Hate. So you have one political party that’s based on hate. You have the other political part of this based in greed. Oh, well, let’s have free health care. Let’s have free daycare, let’s have free automobiles. Let’s get Oprah Winfrey to give everybody an automobile. And it’s just all ignorance. The Republican Party is not just full of hatred, they’re full of ignorance. The Democratic Party is not just full of greed, they’re full of ignorance. Everybody is full of ignorance. Wakey, wakey, world. Wake up. And recognizing that each one of you is suffering because you’re creating your own suffering through your own ignorance, when we recognize that, we can just sit down and be happy. Let the world do what the world’s going to do. Your only job is to clean out your mind. And when the mind is clean, the job that you needed to be done has just been done. So after you clean out the mind, you can set that vape down, you can set those pills down, you can set that opium down, you can set your politics down. Just set all this stuff down. Stop and enjoy yourself. Does anybody have any final remarks on this domadass? You have something to say? No, just. Thank you so much. How about you, Basil? I haven’t seen you. I’ve seen your wall.

Speaker D: No, I don’t have any questions.

Speaker C: Just been listening to the Dhamma.

Dhammarato: David, do you have anything to say? How about you, Patrick? So thank you all. I really enjoyed this. Let some stuff out, you know, because so many, many people who call themselves Buddhists, they hate. They really, really hate drugs. They’re making themselves miserable by saying, oh, ganja is bad. Oh, this is bad. All that is bad. Oh, you can’t do that. I mean, Buddhists are especially Western Buddhists have more rules than Christians do, making themselves miserable. So we need a few Buddhist teachers that are saying, hey, man, stop with all your hatred and just take it easy. You don’t have to hate people because they’re taking a drug. And the people who are taking drug, they don’t have to hate themselves. Everybody needs to just look at what they’re doing, put a stop to it, have fun instead.

Speaker D: Bye, all.

Dhammarato: Bye. Bye, everybody.

Speaker B: Bye.

Dhammarato: Go have some fun. Enjoy yourself.

Summary of this Dhamma Talk

Dhammarato discusses forgiveness, substance use, and the nature of problems we create through rules and judgments. He emphasizes that rather than holding grudges or creating problems through extra rules, we should focus on letting go and being present through Anapanasati practice. The talk challenges common Buddhist attitudes toward substances, suggesting that many problems come from our judgments rather than the substances themselves. The key message is to stop creating problems and instead practice being happy in the present moment.

Outline of this Dhamma Talk

On Forgiveness and Letting Go

• Buddha wasn’t big on forgiveness - very little said about it
• Forgiveness in Buddhism is more of a transaction between people
• Big difference between forgiving and forgetting
• Better to forget and let go than hold onto grudges
• Use Anapanasati to handle unwholesome thoughts about past grievances

On Drugs, Alcohol and Harmful Substances

• Buddha’s precept wasn’t against alcohol itself but against heedlessness
• Smoking was allowed in medical context in Vinaya
• Most drugs become harmful through chemical modification and laws
• People take drugs because they’re hurting and seeking relief
• The best “drug” is air - Anapanasati practice

On Creating Problems Through Rules and Laws

• Many problems with substances come from laws and rules we create
• Don’t make problems by creating extra rules for yourself
• Look at what you’re doing rather than making judgments
• Government laws often based on racism and ignorance
• Better to focus on cleaning your own mind than judging others

The Solution - Practice and Present Moment

• Practice feeling good in the present moment
• Don’t need external substances when you can relax naturally
• Anapanasati has no harmful side effects - only happiness and joy
• Stop creating problems and just enjoy being here now
• Let go of past grievances and future worries

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