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Dhammarato: All right, this is a Sunday afternoon call. It’s morning time in the UK and here in Thailand, it’s four something in the afternoon. And I welcome everybody. We’ve got a nice crowd today. Actually. We’ve gotten several questions in the queue, which is good. We normally don’t have even one much. So I’m glad to see that people are asking questions. The first one let’s take care of easily. Thomas has asked a question about vegetarianism and veganism and that let me start off by saying that there are vegetarians and vegans here in Thailand. There’s a whole lot more of them in India, and that Jerry says that there’s even some in China. Now, it is true that Hinduism makes a big deal of vegetarianism on a lot of different levels, including their idea of a sacred cow. But the teachings of the Buddha are different than that. That. In fact, the way that I will introduce it is that that group of people that I was mentioning in Thailand, they went to intentionally pester Bhikkhu Buddhadasa about it. And his answer to them was is that he eats food. That’s an important point. He eats food. More specifically, he gives. He eats what he is given. And that’s the way that the Buddha practiced also that the Buddha would take the food that was offered rather than rejecting it to where the vegetarians and vegans are outright intentionally rejecting food because they think that there’s something wrong with it or thinking that they’ll get off better if they avoid eating animals. But there’s a balance in there someplace. One of the points is that vegetarians often are killing plants left, right and center. Now that’s kind of a chauvinistic way of saying it, is that plants don’t hold the status of animals, that you can cut plants willy nilly. And yet in the way that the Buddha operated, one of the Pattymok rules, which by the way is one of the rules that protects the monks from doing a lot of stuff, and that is that one of the Padimok rules is that the monks don’t cut plants. They don’t kill animals, but they don’t cut plants either. Then in fact, when I was staying at the Bika Buddha Dasa Wat in Chicago, I had a friend monk there. Now that Wat wound up buying a Baptist church property that had a huge amount of land that had to be cut. In fact, in the really back area of it, they had a soccer field. It was huge. And that nobody wanted to cut the grass. And yet the city required that the grass be Cut. And this one monk, who was a really good friend of mine comes from a Huachulapatan. He actually left the wat so that he would not be pressed into cutting the grass. He went, by the way, to Wat Greensboro and Watt. Greensboro has basically the same situation, except that Maha Samsak there is quite a gardener. So some monks carry that rule and some of them don’t. But the point is that if the Buddha is going out on Bendabot, he’s going to accept the food that is given to him. And that’s exactly the way that I eat. I don’t particularly tell Tam what to fix, but she does fix meat. And I do eat it because I don’t have any rules other than let’s get along. And yet it seems like vegetarians have a we are better than you are attitude and that they wear vegetarianism somewhat in the same way that Christians wear their right to life and anti abortionism, making a whole lot of trouble for a whole lot of people because they think they’re better than other people. And so that’s what I have to say about vegetarians. Aside from the fact that they do make themselves sick, they do have to be very careful with what they’re eating so that they’ll get the kind of nutrients that they need that they would have automatically if they didn’t have their rules. And so I would say offhand that the whole world would be better off if vegetarianism and veganism just never made it to the West. It was a non issue from the beginning. Now, one side point is that in general, meat is more expensive to produce. And so the food in Asia in general use meat as kind of a condiment. Like for instance, noodles will be the main thing, noodles and water in a sauce. But there will be meat in it kind of as flavoring and whatnot like that. And so what the vegans and the vegetarians really fuss about is, let us say, the Texas style meat and potato, where you’ve got a great big slab of steak and a potato and they spend, you know, the major part of the meal is one great big piece of meat to where meat’s actually more expensive. There’s another point about that, and that is that the dairy industry is very, very small here in Thailand. It was brought here by a Danish company back 50, 60 years ago. And the Thai people generally don’t buy milk. There is also no beef industry here in Thailand. All of the beef that is sold here in Thailand is imported. But they do have a whole lot of chickens, a whole lot of fish and quite a number of pigs. And so that’s the food that they eat here, but there’s no much beef. Teacher, you got your hand up. Yeah. I do get what you say about.

Speaker B: Eating, being a vegetarian and Buddhism, so.

Dhammarato: Eat what you get offered.

Speaker B: But is there anything anywhere in the Dhamma about being a modest eater? Like, not exaggerating eating, or, you know.

Dhammarato: Big, like, lush feasts of eating?

Speaker B: Is it more like be like, imbalanced?

Dhammarato: Actually, one of the things that I learned from a Ajahn Poh, and he was quite intent on telling me this on a regular basis over and over again when I was a new monk, is that monks eat like lions. Sometimes you feast and sometimes you. You don’t have hardly anything at all. That on Buddha days, the people will bring a lot of food. And on some days there’s slim pickings. Another point is that the paddy monk rules that were designed and done back in the time of the Buddha, 2500 years ago, actually, they did not in those days use utensils. And yet here in Thailand in modern times, the Thai people use spoons, sometimes forks, sometimes sticks, all kinds of eating devices that actually make it difficult then for the monks to actually live by those rules. Of the padi monk, for instance, it talks about how to take your hand into the bowl and maneuver around to get a ball of food. You mix it up together, and then you put that in, and you don’t make a ball that’s too big. And then when you’re chewing that food, you do not put your hand back into the bowl to make a new ball of food. You leave the hands alone. And so when you’re eating, you’re eating. And when you’re balling up food, you ball up the food. So the equivalent in Western times would be that when you are actually eating, put your fork and your spoon down and pay attention to what you’re eating. And when your mouth is empty, then pick it up. Now, there is a Zen tradition where the monks, and it’s not just Zen, there’s other places where they eat as fast as they possibly can, almost as if it was a race, a competition. And they eat for about five minutes and then they’re finished. And I’ve actually heard the story. Where is Cat now? Can’t see him on the screen. That Cat said that in the watch that he was at that the. A number of German monks were practicing like that, which was actually against the way that the Buddha taught how to eat food, to eat it slowly, to don’t make more food. While you’re eating, let’s not do multitasking. Let’s do one thing at a time to actually taste the food, to mull the food around in your mouth, to chew it very well and swallow it. And after you swallowed and finished, now you take your tongue and you run it all around your mouth to make sure that there’s no food left so that not even a grain of rice is left and you swallow everything. And then you put your hand back in the bowl and make another ball of food to eat. Now, I have been in Sri Lankan Watch to where the Sri Lankan monks, they still continue to do the eating with their hands, but in Thailand, they often will have spoons or chopsticks, that kind of stuff to eat with. All in all, let’s say that the right way to eat is making it easy. Let’s not have a bunch of rules, but let’s eat slowly, carefully, and watch what we’re eating. Okay? So does anybody have any questions about this? And we’ll move on to another topic. Yes, Jerry.

Speaker C: What I notice in one of one of Bhikkhu Buddha das lecture transcripts is that he tells you, he tells people not to eat bit, by which I think he means enticing food, which, I mean, is that necessary? I mean, to suggest that, you know, given the choice between a nicely prepared meal and a bowl of rice and a bit of smoked fish or something, you should go for the bowl of rice and bit of smoked fish.

Dhammarato: If there is a choice, what does he do? Yeah, well, there is no choice. This is what you’re getting.

Speaker C: Yeah, fair enough. But it seems to be that what he’s saying is, don’t go out to eat anything nice.

Dhammarato: Well, the monks are really fairly well known to not do restaurants.

Speaker C: Well, sure, but what happens if you get handed something nice from a household.

Dhammarato: You thank him for it rather than say, oh, well, I’m not supposed to eat that. I’ve got some sort of rule that I heard someplace, and I’m going to reject what you give me. How is that layman going to feel?

Speaker C: Yes, well, I knew. I knew a lady who had various people was feeding various people along with teenage children, and one of the friends, on being offered the meat, said, I’m terribly sorry to tell you, I’m a vegetarian. And her answer to that was, you’re a very lucky young man to be able to make that choice for the abashed boy.

Dhammarato: I think that might have been sarcastic.

Speaker C: It might.

Dhammarato: All right, so let’s move on a bit. The next. Let’s Go ahead and talk about the question that you had, Jerry, and get that out of the way. You were absolutely correct. When you’re talking about the higher Jhanas as a pleasant abiding, that that’s what the Buddha referred to them as, is a pleasant abiding. They’re not a goal, nor do you expect to get some super duper enlightenment out of them. And another way of talking about it is that instead of having thoughts as an object of the mind, it’s various aspects of the mind that are the objects. In other words, we in the fourth Jhna will be actually investigating perception. What is it now? One of the things that we can say about it is that when one gets into the first Jhna, in fact, it’s called the first Jhna because it has that number one quality of being a pleasant abiding. And it is free from dukkha, since it is free from dukkha, and that’s the only teaching that the Buddha gives. The first Jhna is good enough. However, in, let us say, in the ancient times of the Buddha, there was nothing much to do. I don’t think they had cell phones, they didn’t have Internet. In fact, the Internet’s kind of new. You and I and Dietary probably remember that time when there was no Internet, there was no cell phones, but we still had television. Well, guess what? They didn’t have videos, they didn’t have television, they didn’t have anything except one another to talk Dhamma to. And when they were not talking Dhamma, they had the time on their hands to experiment with looking at the mind. And it takes quite a lot of time to spend looking at the mind, to be able to remove the thoughts, to remove the feelings, and to get down to the very basics of how the mind operates. This is actually the teaching of Paticca Samapada. But that’s more of an issue of time structuring. It’s more of an issue of what do you do now that you’ve got no more problems, no worries, nowhere to go, nothing to do, everything is hunky dory. Your life is wonderful. So what are you going to do now? Well, nowadays, now we can just play with our cell phone or play with the computer, or play with tinkering around with hard drives and things like that, and enjoy our life that way. But in the time of the Buddha, all they had, the only toy they had to play with was their own mind. And yet so many people in the west are really over enthusiastic about the Jhanas I think it’s because we learned somehow in mathematics and arithmetic that the higher the number, the better. A bank account that’s got six zeros after your numbers is better than one that has only two numbers after the two zeros after all the numbers. And so this is the mentality that we get in. Oh, the fourth Jhna must be better than the first Jhna. Well, what do you mean it’s better? If, in fact, the whole teaching of the Buddha is all about the first jhana, and there are suttas where he says, why was I afraid of the sensual pleasures of the first Jhna? To where in fact, the first Jhna is not sensual pleasures at all, they’re manufactured mental pleasures. And then he says, this is the path, path that I’ve been looking for, even though I was able to do all of these higher jhanas before.

Speaker B: And.

Dhammarato: I didn’t find what I was looking for. Why? Because when he came out of the four jhanas, he was back into ordinary mentality, suffering again. And so he went and tried with the Jains, playing with stealth austerities because they had the idea that, oh, if you punish yourself, then you can burn off your old comma and then you’ll be okay. And then he figured out, no, the reality is that when they’re flagellating themselves, when they’re starving themselves, when they’re harming themselves like that, they’re not burning off old bad comma, they’re creating new bad comma. Their present actions are causing new, present problems. So if we can understand that, the real point is that these jhanas were something that was done before the time of the Buddha, becoming enlightened, and that that was what people were practicing back then, because they had the time for it. With nothing else to do and no place to go, and you’re just sitting there, then it’s nice to get into recognizing how the mind works. But the whole point is that can you remove the hindrances from your mind in the first jhana so that you can get into a pleasant abiding in the first jhana? And that’s all you’re going to need to do. There’s no reason to go into the higher jhanas, as there’s certainly nothing there to be desired. But there is the point of what else you got to do.

Speaker C: But, but, but, but, fair enough. You get into the first jhana, which is itself according to this particular sutta and no doubt elsewhere. I mean, it’s a pleasant abiding It’s a very pleasant abiding, but that seems to be on your reckoning all you. And you’re going to get into this as often as you can remember to do it. But getting into it, even if you, you know, supposing you are successful with this and you get into this first jhana as often as you can remember to do it, it’s still not going to get you anywhere in the realization of Anita, Dukkha, etc.

Dhammarato: You just did that though. You just did that. You just answered that question. Of course, the first jhna gets you there. It gets you into the state of no suffering. It has that sukhaqua quality built into it.

Speaker C: But where are you getting. Where are you getting the realization of a Nietzsche out of it?

Dhammarato: Well, let us say I was in the room that you were in and I would give you an example of Anisha by slugging you or stomping on your foot because a second ago your foot was okay and now it’s got a great big bruise on it. That’s an issue you can see in each other. People see an issue without Jhna. You don’t need higher jhnas to see Anietzsche. It’s pretty obvious. You get.

Speaker C: I’m not talking about going into higher jhanas.

Dhammarato: Pardon?

Speaker C: I’m not talking about getting to higher jhanas. I’m talking about getting into the first jhana and repeatedly. Repeatedly. How is that going to. How is that going to get you the examination needed, shall we say?

Dhammarato: The examination that’s needed is the examination to remove the hindrances, to examine this as a hindrance and to remove it. So once you’re in the first Jhna, the job that needed to be done has been done and there is nothing left to investigate that’s needed to be investigated. It’s just another level of pleasant abiding. It’s actually, you heard the. I think it’s a TV series. It’s called Married with Children. Okay. Well, the first Jhna is the first jhna with a few things there, like you have thoughts, but the. But the second and the third and the fourth jhna is that pleasant abiding without thoughts. Now, the first and second jhna have feelings. But the third Jhna is when you conquer the feelings that in fact there is nothing actually magical or specific about the jhnas themselves other than what they mean. And so the first Jhna free from hindrances, the second Jhna free from thought. The third jhna is free from feelings. And the fourth Jhna then allows you to become free of perception, and that’s what those things are. And when one is free from perception, then one is free from feelings.

Speaker B: I think seeing Anitya moment by moment is not necessary, but I think it’s helpful to have the motivation to get out of here.

Dhammarato: Right now. Yes. In fact, we don’t have to have moment by moment memory of Anita, but it is happening a whole lot faster than moment by moment. And Nietzsche is happening so fast that we can’t even get a camera fast enough to take a photo of it. About the best they can do is a billion frames a second on a camera. But in nature, it’s much faster than that. They haven’t. The scientists haven’t even figured out how fast causality is. And we don’t even need to figure out how much that is. All we need to figure out is that things are constantly in flux. They’re constantly changing. Since this call started, each one of you has to have to deal ignorantly deal with hundreds of trillions of changes. How many molecules of air has touched your face? How many molecules of air have gone into your lungs and out? We don’t have to keep track of that kind of a nature, but what we have to keep track of is when it affects us. Mm. Like stomping on your toe. Hundreds of trillions of things happen. In that stomping upon the toe, hundreds of trillions of things happen. Look at all of those beautiful molecules that used to be in capillaries and now they’re all over the toe.

Speaker C: You’re going Zen there, I think. Whack me with your stick.

Dhammarato: Exactly. So we don’t have to keep track of Benicia. Now, I’ll give you this story because this question was asked from the Buddha, and his answer was, if you had someone who had lost a foot and when he hobbled, he had to hobble around on a crutch, is he aware of that foot that is missing all the time? No, he’s not. He only. He’s only missing that foot. He’s only aware of the missing foot when he needs it. And the Buddha says that. That’s true about consciousness, it’s true about Tanisha, it’s true about all kinds of things. We don’t have to be intently watching it that way because, in fact, for most people, if they’re intensely watching an issue, they’re going to wind up in hindrance and not even know that. So the better thing to do is to watch the content of the mind. And by the way, in that content of the mind, to have an unwholesome thought still takes trillions and trillions of in each of cause and effect of tiny little molecules of oxygen breaking apart and mixing with this chemical and all kinds of things like that. On the microscopic level, there’s all kinds of stuff happening and we don’t have to be aware of all of that kind of stuff. We can live quite happily without knowing all of that. But when something happens that makes an impact upon you, that’s when you need to know it. Like having the initiative of I had a wholesome thought, now I’ve got an unwholesome thought. Do I see that? If I do, let me change it back into a whole shabdar.

Speaker B: But maybe it can be helpful to be quicker, to be faster, to catch the thought. Like if you see the anicia like moment by moment, then you become good at catching the thought, you know, and then change it.

Dhammarato: That’s the skill is to become fast enough to see the thoughts that as they arise. That I would say that a thought moment will last about a tenth of a second. For those who are good. Some people are quite slow. One of the ways that you can test that is with reaction time. In fact, in the old days they had whole machinery to do reaction times. They used to use it for people driving cars. What’s your reaction time? In other words, if you see. And they do that with police when they’re, when they’re walking through with their guns and then they’ll pop up a sign, they’ve got to make a very fast decision. This is friend or foe. And if he’s a foe, you shoot him and if he’s a friend, you don’t. So we can trust, we can test our reaction times on the computer. They have one that I’ve seen is that they’ll paint the whole screen red and then they’ll turn it green. And as soon as they turn it green, you click the mouse and then they can measure your reaction time. And 350 milliseconds is common. 200 milliseconds is black belt karate. 180 milliseconds is, let us say, Olympic champion. 60 milliseconds is a cat. Cats have much faster reaction times than humans. That’s why they can deal with cobras. That cobra comes and strikes, that’s gone. But for the human, that cobra comes to strike and guess what he gets flesh. Because the human’s too slow to get out of the way. So this Is what we mean then is that much of the practice that we’re practicing that we’re doing is how quickly can you see these thoughts? Because if you let the unwholesome thought grind on and on and on and on, we’re just going deeper and deeper into dukkha. But if you could catch that thought quickly, say aha, I see that, then there’s very little or no suffering. In fact, that’s exactly what we need to do in first Jhna is as a unwholesome thought arises, we can catch it and would back out without losing the jhana. But most people, especially new people, they can apply their mind enough to get it in the first jhana and then a couple of three thoughts of unwholesomeness will stir and they’ve lost their jhna. But if you can keep the mind fast then you can throw those thoughts out before they affect your feeling of survive, your feeling of suka, your feeling of well being. Yes, Michael, you got a question? Nope. Okay, does anybody have a question about all of this? So far? My mind is about. Go ahead Jamaica.

Speaker B: Yeah, about continuing what Jerry said. Is the cessation a necessary thing for realization at some point or is that just like the jhanas? Not much to it.

Dhammarato: Your realization that you need is not some great big whoop to do that you got from the new age crowd or some Hindu or some guru or something like that. Those are not the realizations that are useful. The realization of this is an unwholesome thought so that you could do something about it. The realization that this thought is unwholesome, the realization this thought is wholesome, that’s the realizations that we need. That’s what insight is that. In fact, we need to practice insight in order to get relaxed. But we need to get relaxed in order for us to have the insight, to see how we get unrelaxed. And so these two things work together from the very, very beginning. And so there’s sutta that talks about it from the point is that if you’ve got samatha and you don’t have vipassana, go get vipassana. Stop your Samantha. And if you have vipassana but you don’t have Samatha, then go get the Samatha and forget the vipassana. Now this is all said tongue in cheek because the ending of that sutta is that if you don’t have either one, go get both of them. And that’s the real point is they work hand in hand. If you can See that unwholesome thought, then you can throw it out and get relaxed. And as you relax, then you’re not going to have so many unwholesome thoughts. And so Vipassana and Samatha work together. There’s no such thing as all vipassana and no Samatha. In fact, if you get all Vipassana and no Samatha, that’s the dark night of the soul when all you see is your crap and you haven’t gotten relaxed into it at all. So that would be out of balance. And that’s in fact the way that vipassana is taught is it’s not in balance. Cat has been left.

Speaker B: Yes, he just sent me a message. He had too many connection problems.

Dhammarato: All right, well, maybe he can listen to this part of it later because this is for him. I haven’t Talked about the 16 stages of insight for a while. And then in fact, in the beginning of this talk when I was thinking about it, wow, the three things that we’re going to talk about today, one is vegetarianism, two are the higher jhanas, and number three is the 16 stages of insight. All three of them are completely useless. All three of them have absolutely nothing to do with correct practice. So let’s go for the 16 stages of insight. Now, to tell you the truth, I don’t actually remember every one of them, but I do have a good handle on the process and how it works. And so at step six of the 16 stages of insight, actually, let’s start with step five is where the student is noting and noting and noting and seeing all the changes. But that’s where the Anica, the Anica dukhanata. And they get so into seeing the Nietzsche that everything seems to be disillusioned and falling apart. And from that aspect they begin then to go into a state, number six of fearfulness. My goodness, everything’s falling apart. And then they go into misery. Oh no, everything is falling apart. And then they go in to discuss. Yuck, everything is falling apart. And after they go through that, then the next stage is, let’s say, despair. Oh no. Oh no, I’ve got nothing left. It’s all falling apart. So that’s step 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. And after they go through that step of this is these steps by, by the way, these five steps is the, what they call the dark night of the soul. Starting with fear, misery, disgust, despair. And then we come to the next point, which is a strong feeling. I’ve got to do something about this. They call it Redoubling the effort. Okay, finally. Pardon? What was that, Anna?

Speaker B: Finally I have to do something.

Dhammarato: Finally. After all of that, now they’re starting to do correct practice of taking the right effort. And this is step 11 into step 12, which now is the Eightfold noble path. Well, guess what? All of these 16 stages of insight have certain qualities to it. Number one, this comes out of the vasudhimaga. And there’s quite a lot of evidence that the guy who wrote the vasudhimaga and the group that did it were Brahmans in disguise. They were spies. Their visuddhimagga was written to make it difficult to understand what the teachings of the Buddha really were. And you can also say that these 16 stages of insight is exactly how to practice wrongly. The next point is that you can also say is this is how most ordinary people practice. And so they get into meditation and they begin to get disgusted with it because they’re not getting anywhere. And so they quit. So what we can say then is that we’re going to do is we’re going to just crack this whole show out, starting at number 11, and throw all of that stuff from the beginning, all that noting and all of that despair and disgust, and. And come out back with the strong determination to make a change. And this is where correct practice starts, is to beginning to know the four Noble Truths, that this is suffering, this is the cause of suffering, this is the end of suffering, and this is the method to get there. This is what the Buddha teaches. And when we actually spend our time looking at what is dukkha and seeing what is dukkha, which would be in the case that we’ve talked about, is the unwholesome thoughts. When you see a thought as unwholesome, you change it. You don’t see it as an unwholesome thought and wallow in it and look at it and inspect it until things begin to fall apart. That’s the practice of the vasudhimaga. That’s the 16 stages of insight. The correct thing to do is when you see that dukkha as dukkha. Stop it. Throw it out. Make a change. Leave that lover. Get on the bus, Gus. Make a new plan, Stan. Don’t be coy, Roy. Just set yourself free. This is the way that we practice, is that we just get rid of that stuff immediately. Not wallowing at all. Poor me, look how hard I tried. And all I’ve got is things falling apart. That’s the 16 stages of insight. And that’s why they have this thing. In fact, let me make another point about it. And that is that Nowhere in the 16 stages of insight, nowhere in this whole big document that was done in about 450 to 500 AD, do they talk about the dark night of the soul. The dark night of the soul is a Christian concept and has nothing to do with this process of the 16 stages of insight. Now, what is the dark night of the soul? Well, it started with St. John of the Cross. And basically what we can say is that when a Christian gets to the point of talking to Jesus, asking Jesus, praying to Jesus, praying to God, wanting stuff over and over and over again, and Jesus don’t answer. He don’t say nothing. He is not doing his job. And if Jesus don’t save me, I am really stuck. That’s the real despair is there is no way out. Now in modern times. We know of someone, her name was Mother Teresa. Everybody’s heard of Mother Teresa, right? They actually dug up her memoirs from the late 90s after she had died. And in her memoirs, it pointed out, she pointed out that she had been in that dark night of the soul. Why don’t Jesus answer me? He’s asking, he’s answering all of these other monks, he’s answering all of these priests, he’s answering all of these good little lay people, and he don’t answer me. The reality is she was being honest because Jesus don’t answer anybody. They just make that stuff up.

Speaker C: Can I just make this point that I think, from what I read, that she did think that Jesus was talking to you and then he stopped. It wasn’t that she never got it. She thought he was talking back and then he stopped talking back and the poor woman had to carry on from there.

Dhammarato: Right? That’s a good point. In other words, what you’re saying is, is that she was deluded, that Jesus was talking to her and then she woke up that, no, I made that stuff up. She probably never figured out that she made it up. She just stopped making it up. And now Jesus doesn’t ask, talk to her anymore. So if that’s the dark night of the soul, guess what? There is no place to go. Cause she cannot go to some priest, she cannot go to some confessional, she cannot go to some pope or some cardinal or someone to say, jesus don’t talk to me no more. Why? Because they’re stuck in the same delusional system that she is. And so they’re not going to say, hey, forget about Jesus, go be happy. They’re not ever Going to say that they’re going to commiserate. Oh, that’s so terrible that Jesus don’t talk to you anymore. They’re going to actually push her deeper into her state of despair, and they’ll stay in that state of despair for sometimes years. Some of them stay in that state of despair until they die, and others get over it. But the likelihood of them getting over it is very rare. However, with the 16 stages of insight, all that student who was stuck in that state of sadness, actually, the list is fear, misery, disgust, despair, and a strong longing to get out of it. The strong longing to get out of it. Actually, if they go talk to a good monk who knows what’s going on, he’ll tell them, yeah, get out of it. Go take the right effort to come out of that stuff and start practicing correctly. What is practicing correctly? The four Noble Truths. Come out of your dukkha. So this is also a way of saying the distinction between ordinary people who often go through that. I mean, how many of you have gone through states of despair and anger and sadness and all of that kind of stuff? It’s. Ordinary people do this their whole lives. But when they come to the teaching of the Buddha, someone needs to tell them, stop, stop it. Come out of it. Make the right effort to put a stop to all that anguish and despair and come back and be happy. And within the Catholicism and the dark night of the soul, the dark night stays because there’s no one there to tell them that they made a mistake to go down the wrong path. But in the vasudhimaga, actually, they make that point. Yeah. At the end of that dark night, or at the end of all of that despair, why don’t you make a change? Why don’t you start doing something appropriate? Why don’t you start looking at the actual teachings of the Buddha? And yet in this Visuddhimaga, the 16 stages of insight, they wait until step 12 to start correctly. But in the tradition of Watson, Mog, in the tradition of the nobles, we just bypass those first 11 steps and start immediately with the Four Noble Truths. Let’s go for the noble part of the path right from the very beginning. We don’t have to spend 35 or 40 years getting ourselves into a dark night of the soul. We don’t have to spend 30 or 40 years sitting up tight in meditation, hoping that it’s somehow going to become a jhana someday. Then, in fact, that’s an important point, Jerry. You cannot do the fourth jhana unless you can do the third jhana. And you cannot do the third jhana until you can do the second. And you can cannot do any of them until you do the first jhana. You have to get yourself into that state of pleasure. You have to get yourself into an okay state.

Speaker C: I think you might have misunderstood what I was originally asking, which was not to do with the higher jhanas, it was to do with repetition of getting into the first jhana.

Dhammarato: Yes.

Speaker C: Which is itself, according to the sutta that I referred to, another pleasant dividing.

Dhammarato: Yes, exactly. So. Yes, exactly. So that’s it. The first jhana is that pleasant abiding. And not only that, but there’s another way of saying it, and that is that if you’re going to do four jhanas, 90% of the work is getting into and sustaining the first jhana. The rest is not so hard. Once you’re able to sustain and sustain and sustain that first jhana, there’s basically no place else to go. In Sutta number 19, the Buddha talks about it this way. He’s got this analogy of the cow herd. Now, this cow herd is not the drovers that are taking 10,000 head of cattle to Chicago from Dallas, but rather the cow herd has only five or six cows. And so he’s got a stick, and he gets up in the morning and he takes his little group of cows down the pathway and he guards to make sure that these cows are not going to do anything wrong, because there’s going to be vendors, there’s going to be tables of food, there’s going to be children, there’s going to be laundry hanging out. And the cowherd has to whack those cows one at a time to keep them clean, to keep them from stop stealing carrots, to keep them from running over kids. And so he’s got to guide them down the path so that he can get them to the place where they’re going to graze, out to the field where there is rice stubble. Once the cows reach the cow that place, the cowherd does not have to then stand there with his stick whacking cows, because the cows are already doing what cows do. They’ve got their heads down and they’re grazing. So with that, the cow herd not only doesn’t have to whack them, there’s no reason for him to stand with the cows. And so the cowherd goes and sits under a tree. And all he has to do is occasionally keep an eye on the cows to make sure that they’re continuing to graze. Now, this is the analogy that the Buddha uses for the first and the second jhana. To get into the first jhana means that we’ve got to get those cows out to the grazing pasture. That means that we’ve got to whack those unwholesome thoughts. Kachunga, I see you, wacko. And get rid of those unwholesome thoughts. And after we get all of the unwholesome thoughts out of the mind, we can then get the cows to the pasture where we’re grazing. Now, that’s the job that the cowherd has to do, and that’s the job of the meditation student, is to get the mind free from the unwholesome states. Once they’re out there, the cowherd can go sit down and relax. And the way that then the Buddha talks about it is we have one wholesome thought after another wholesome thought after another wholesome thought. And this is the training. This is the apply the mind of the wholesome and sustain it, and sustain it, and sustain it. Which means any time that a little thought comes up, like a carrot for that cow, you’re going to whack it immediately. You’re not going to let that cow get that carrot, because there’s all kinds of hell could break loose if the people who were attending the carrot stand, they want that carrot back out of that cow. And if you can’t get your carrot back, you’ll take the cow. That’s the mentality. And so you have to be on guard to make sure that that cow doesn’t get that carrot. And this is how we apply and sustain the mind. But once the mind is clear of all of the hindrances, now the cowherd can sit down and really relax. Now, this is the idea. Then in the sutra, it says is that one wholesome thought after another wholesome thought after another wholesome thought. We can now begin to put some gaps. So you have a wholesome thought and a gap and then another wholesome thought. And the right time to do this, according to the training, is an example would be with a mantra that you have. Let us say in the beginning, the mind is all over the place. That’s like a horse that’s out in not just a pasture, but he’s out in the wild. He can go any place, including into the thickets, into the bushes, into the blind canyons, into a ravine, and he can hurt himself. So the first thing that we are going to do is to put a fence around the horse, put him in a pasture. But later we can put that horse into a corral, and then later we can put it into a stall. So this is exactly what we’re going to be doing with the mine that we’re in the beginning, we’re going to put a pasture around it so that we don’t allow the mine to have any holes in thoughts at all, unwholesome thoughts, and we keep it in a pasture. But now we can put it into a corral by keeping the mind only on the Dhamma. And then we can put it into a stall with a mantra. And so we get down to the point of a mantra of boo do, boo on the in breath, do on the out breath, boo on the in breath, do on the out breath. And after we do that a lot, as we breathe out, we breathe out with a do, but we don’t breathe back in again so quickly. Maybe four, five, six seconds later, we’ll take another in breath, and that’s when the mind will start up again with a boo. And then we’ll go an out breath with a dough. And then we’ll come back and wait a while. And so which comes first, the thought or the breath? The answer is that in order to get the mind into the second jhana, you can put those gaps in those wholesome thoughts, just like you put a gap in the breath. Now, the reason we can put a gap in the breath is because we’re already completely oxygenated. We’re already taking long, deep, good breath. And then on that out breath, we could just become empty and leave that. And this is the door. Then this is actually the beginning of the second jhna. And almost every time that that happens, the next thing that will happen will be the student that’ll have the realization that he has actually stopped his mind. And what does he do? Yeehaw, I stop the mind. In other words, he starts it up to have a moment of joy, but then he can come back again and do it again. And pretty soon he can stop the mind and be equanimous with that. So as we stop the mind over and over and over again, we become okay that the mind is stopped. It is not a great big point anymore. Just like in the first Jhna, we have that, yeehaw, I can do this. And then after we do it for so much time, we can let it relax. And so we can actually now let the mind relax while it stopped. But one thing that’s still continuing on in that second jhana is the feeling of, wow, the mind is stopped. It’s Not a thought, it’s just a feeling. The feeling of, in fact it’s a rush. It’s the kundalini rising, it’s the hair that stands on the arm. Goosebumps. The hair on the back of the neck will stand up, the flow of energy will go through the body. This is all characteristics of the second Jhna. Because you’re so happy and so glad that finally you have stopped the mind, but you haven’t stopped the feelings yet. Vehemence, while wonderful wet and wild. And so getting into the third jhna takes now a new kind of practice. And the third JHNA’s practice is to be able to settle those feelings down. And that takes practice. With the mind stopped, now we can stop the feelings, we can let them rise. The analogy by the way, is that though the lotus is in the mud and that there is fast flowing water over the lotus, still the lotus is strong enough to stand up in that flood, open its petals and it’s still dry. So even with all of that flood of energy and what not happening in the body, we can still mollify that so that we can come down into a steady state of happiness. And when we get into the third jhana, now the next thing that we’re going to do, now that we’ve gotten the all the mind is wholesome now we’ve got the mind stopped and now we’ve got the feelings and now we’re getting the feelings stopped, what’s left is perception. And so now we can begin to deal with perception. In other words, at this level we’re dealing with how the mind actually works. Now none of this is actually needed. It’s not necessary. You can figure out how the mind works when you’re in the first Jhna, but in the fourth jhana it’s going to slap you in the face. It’s so clear and so obvious that this is exactly how the mind works. But in the process of that it’s also that you’ve gotten really fast when perception arises, you can see perception. So this is the way that the four jhanas work. And if you are not skilled in the first jhana, then when one comes out of the four jhanas, they come back into the hindrances again. The question is, is can you come into the first jhana, maintain it, sustain it and keep it going. And then if you go into the higher jhanas, when you come back, you don’t crash land, you come back to the first jhana again, you come back into wholesome thoughts. And this is what the Buddha was missing when he was doing those higher jhanas. Yeah, he could do them, but it wasn’t what he was looking for. He was even looking for the end of suffering. And only the first jhana allows you to have the end of suffering if you can keep it going. And so this is where all the work is to being able to get it into a good state and then keep it there moment by moment. In, breath out, breath, happy, happy, happy, on and on. A thought comes up, out it goes. Another unwholesome thought comes up, later, out it goes. So that we’ve got wholesome thought, wholesome thought, wholesome thought, wholesome thought. Now, that is so different from the 16 stages of insight, because when they’re in that state, they’ve just got nothing but unwholesome thoughts. They’ve been practicing meditation for 30 years and all they have is unwholesome thoughts. It’s disgusting, it’s terrible. And so this is why I would say then that the 16 stages of insight is for ordinary people to waste their time on because they’re not coming to a state of joy. It is only when we practice the jhana according to the eight full noble path that we can apply the mind to the wholesome over and over and over again. So does anybody have any questions about this? David, I’m sure you’re due. You’re probably the only one left on this conversation that is following what I’m saying. You and Michael. How about you, Amrit? Glad you joined. Are you keeping up?

Speaker B: Yes, definitely. At least, at least this is what I think that I’m understanding.

Dhammarato: Good. The understanding in this case is not an intellectual thing. It’s a feeling of well being. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, I can understand that. I can understand that. Though the four JHNAs are, let us say, a pleasant dividing, they’re not necessary. At one time, I, let us say, took the opinion that one needed at least the second jhana, that you had to at least stop the mind so that you could see what the mind was when it was stopped. But I was set straight by some pretty senior monks that, no, you don’t have to stop the mind, but you certainly do have to control it. So, Thomas with an H, what do you think?

Speaker B: I’m just letting it soak in, but I love it.

Dhammarato: I always was confused by the four genres and always felt that my practice.

Speaker B: Was too shallow because I wasn’t able to go deeper.

Dhammarato: Yeah, see, they call you Dukkha. Isn’t that interesting? The very thing that you want is to feel good and feel enlightened. And when you think about Tajhnas and you can’t have them, I want it and I can’t have it. You’re actually creating Dukkha. Yeah, absolutely. I’ll let you finish. Go ahead. I was going to say it’s just.

Speaker B: A lot more accessible, the fact that at any given moment, you know, you.

Dhammarato: Can access joy, well being and simply through a wholesome thought.

Speaker B: So, yeah, it’s great.

Dhammarato: Thank you for sharing. All right. How about Thomas with you? Yeah, I think I feel good. I think I’m okay. Good one. How about Carl? Good to see you, Carl. Wow, you’re an old hand. You’ve been on a lot of these calls.

Speaker B: Just practicing, just repeating. Yeah. And go through all the motions as we speak.

Dhammarato: Yeah. Good. Alexander, how about you?

Speaker B: Thank you very much. I was wondering one thing about the sensation from the first to the second jhana, about the subtlety of sensation, like joy. Is it, is it something that. I don’t know how to phrase this question, but I feel like a subtle joy which is quite constant.

Dhammarato: Okay. In the second jhna, you mentioned that in the second jhana, the joy is not subtle, the joy is overwhelming. Yeah, this is so good.

Speaker B: But the thing is, so the first jhana would be mostly subtle and suddenly there would be this rise of this burst of joy and sensation. Right. But the first jhana would kind of be in this subtle sensation, in this. Like a volcano. I don’t know. Not to fight this question, but I had experienced this burst of joy, but most of the time I would just simply feel like a really subtle joy, which is enough for me. I don’t need this intense sensation. And I’m quite satisfied with just being with this really subtle joy.

Dhammarato: Maybe this will help. Is the distinction between the twin words, pity, suka, There is a word pitti, sukha, Then there is the word pity and then there is the word sukha. And when you’re talking about a subtle joy, that’s the sukha. Everything is okay, everything is fine. And then the pity is, wow, this is so good. Freedom at last. You know, that kind of mentality. Okay. And that is a prelude then. In fact, that’s one of the things that can help. That’s one of the pathways out of the first jhna into the second jhna. The way that I talked about it was the relaxed way. But there is another way into it and that is that when you let that joy grow so big that you can’t think about anything else other than the joy. And it’s not a thought in the. In the traditional word of thought. It’s just kind of. That’s the only noise, mentally that you’re making is that this is too good. All right. And that’s also one of the pathways into the second jhana, where the toy is just so high.

Speaker B: There’s also something that I realized that once I would experience this burst, I would kind of desire it again. But I understand is that’s the danger. Yeah.

Dhammarato: And so it happens because that’s. You see, we do the right thing to get ourselves into the first jhana. And once we get the benefit of the first Jhna, we want that benefit which now that becomes a hindrance. And we can’t have First John anymore because we want it too bad. We know what we. We know what it is. So the first times we do it, we kind of fall into it ignorantly. But now that we know what it is, I gotta have that stuff. I gotta have it. I gotta have it. And now we’re creating a whole new kind of dukkha.

Speaker B: But the experience that I have been through is like I would feel this craving, and then I would just tell myself, this is good enough, and suddenly the volcano would just rise.

Dhammarato: Exactly. The right thing to do is that, well, what I’ve got is good enough. Then we can slide back into that deep joy. That. That peak. That wow. Part of the joy. David, do you have any comments?

Speaker B: The only.

Dhammarato: The.

Speaker B: The only examination that’s needed is to examine is this a hindrance or not?

Dhammarato: Yeah, that’s the way. That’s exactly correct. Yeah, that was a good, good quote. So, Anna, do you have any last things to say? You’re looking good, babe. You’re looking good. Thank you for turning your camera on. Where are you now? Are you in Africa? Are you in France? Are you in Sri Lanka? Where are you now?

Speaker B: No, I’m in France.

Dhammarato: You’re in France.

Speaker B: Back to ordinary life. And I like it.

Dhammarato: Ordinary life is not possible for you anymore. You’ve been too much in the Dhamma. She used to. She used to live with the Goanka group. Then she was living with the nuns in Sri Lanka. So she’s not ordinary. She’s had some practice. Amoret. Do you have any last final words to say?

Speaker B: Nothing. Thanks a lot for the talk. And I will practice correctly. Just starting from the step number 12.

Dhammarato: Okay, Michael, do you have anything to add?

Speaker B: Have a good one, y’all. And if you haven’t yet, check out the survey for the OpenSonga Foundation.org website. We have a survey, we’re looking for bugs, looking for recommendations on what to do with the site, just making sure that it’s working well. So, yeah, please go ahead, check out our survey and fill it out.

Dhammarato: Yes. If you haven’t signed up for the website, please do check it out. Wow. It’s got so much stuff. It’s got video, it’s got huge amounts of audio, it’s got books, it’s got PDF files. I think one thing is we got all the Bikin Buddha Das PDFs, but the main part of it is the search because we have thousands and thousands of places and you can go look for where you live. And we’ve also got a map of all of those places or most of them, so that you can go and get all kinds of information by just honing in on the map. So please go check it out, slice it and dice it and see if you can break it. Because we’re just about ready to launch. When I say launch, that means we’re going to send out thousands of emails as a newsletter. And then, in fact, I could use some help on writing a newsletter. What should we say in our first newsletter? So anybody got any thoughts about that? Let’s hear them. Okay, guys, thank you very much. This has been a long call, but it’s been happy. We’ll see you later.

Summary of This Dhamma Talk

In this wide-ranging talk, Dhammarato discusses three main topics: vegetarianism in Buddhism (eat what’s given without making rules), the nature of jhanas (first jhana is sufficient, higher jhanas were pre-Buddhist practices), and the problematic nature of the 16 stages of insight and dark night concepts. He emphasizes practical, direct practice over complex systems and rules, encouraging students to catch and change unwholesome thoughts quickly rather than wallowing in them. The key message is that simple, direct practice focusing on the Noble Eightfold Path is more effective than elaborate systems or strict rules.

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