From: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gUTJAn1XPXk

Context: Throughout this transcript, Bhante Vimalaramsi is the speaker unless otherwise indicated.

have you ever heard

of a sutta called the satypatana suta

you have oh

that's what i'm going to do tonight but

i'm going to make it a brief one

most of the time when i give this baton

a suit it takes two days

and sometimes i barely get done i have

to make

the talk longer at the end but i'll try

to make it a little bit

easier this time

thus if i heard on one occasion the

blessed one was living in nakuru

country in a town of the kurus named

casa sadama

there he addressed the monks thus monks

venerable sir they replied the blessed

one

said this monks

this is the direct path

for the purification of beings for the

surmounting of sorrow and lamentation

for the disappearance of pain and grief

for the attainment of a true way

for the realization of nibana namely the

four foundations of mindfulness

what are the four here monks

a monk abides contemplating the body

as a body ardent

fully aware and mindful having put away

covetousness and grief for the world

he abides contemplating feeling as

feeling ardent fully aware

and mindful having put away covetousness

and grief for the world

covetousness means greed

holding on and grief means

dislike

he abides contemplating mind as mind

ardent fully aware and mindful having

put away

covetousness and grief for the world

he abides contemplating mind objects as

mind objects

ardent fully aware and mindful having

put away covetousness and grief for the

world

now we're going to go into the

contemplation of the body

and this is the first part

is mindfulness of breathing

now that's not what i'm teaching for

most of you

what i'm teaching for most of you is

loving kindness

but the last two sentences

in the mindfulness of breathing also

holds true for loving kindness

and how monks does a monk abide

contemplating the body

as a body hear a mount gone to the

forest or to the root of a tree or an

empty hut

sits down having crossed his legs folded

his legs crosswise

set his body a wreck and established

mindfulness in front of him

ever mindful he breathes in mindful he

breathes out

breathing in long he understands i

breathe in long

or breathing out long he understands i

breathe out long

breathing in short he understands i

breathe in short or

breathing out short he understands i

breathe out short

now did anyone hear me

say nose

nostril tip upper lip

or abdomen

oh good you're paying attention

why because it's not in the instructions

those instructions of telling you to put

your attention on your nose or your

upper lip

or even on your abdomen come from

commentaries

it just says you understand when you

take a long breath

and you understand when you take a short

breath

you understand when your breath is fast

and when it's slow

you understand when your breath is

coarse

and when it's very fine you

understand that's the key word

it doesn't say focus on it doesn't say

only keep your attention on the breath

it just says

i understand when my breath is long or

short

now the next two sentences are where the

training is

actually being taught and this also

works for

the mindfulness or mindfulness of loving

kindness

he trains thus i shall breathe in

experiencing the whole body

he trains thus i shall breathe out

experiencing the whole body

and this is the key right here he trains

thus

i shall breathe in tranquilizing the

bodily

he trains thus i shall breathe out

tranquilizing the bodily formation

what does tranquilizing the bodily

formation mean

relax you hear that word before

now i've been practicing meditation for

35 years

for 20 years i practiced straight

vipassana

i went to burma i was there for almost

three years doing

very intensive meditation

watching the rise and fall of the

abdomen

at no time was i ever told to relax

anything this statement

is the key to the meditation this

is why a lot of people practicing

meditation

they get to a certain plateau in their

meditation and they don't go any further

if you don't have that relaxed step

that means you're not letting go

of ah

you're not letting go of craving

and what is craving craving is

the i like it i don't like it mind

now in in terms of dependent origination

you have a good working eye and there's

color

and form the good working eye hits color

and form

eye consciousness arises the meeting of

these three things

is called eye contact

with eye contact as condition

i feeling arises

we're not talking about emotional

feeling

we're talking about either pleasant

feeling

painful feeling neither painful nor

pleasant feeling

with i feeling as conditioned eye

craving arises

when the craving arises it causes

tension and tightness to occur in your

head

and in your mind

so this says on the in-breath you

tranquilize the bodily formation

on the out-breath you tranquilize the

bodily formation which is continually

telling you to relax

okay if there's a distraction

what do you do you practice the six

hours you recognize your mind is

distracted

you let the distraction be there by

itself

you release it now you relax

now you need to bring up a wholesome

object what's that

smile and then come back to your object

to meditation

and stay with your object of meditation

now with the mindfulness of breathing

your

object of meditation is

the breath you understand what the

breath is doing that's what the

instruction said

and relaxing

now if you cut out that relaxed step

you're not letting go of craving

when you talk about the four noble

truths

the first noble truth there is suffering

we don't have to have anybody tell us

that when we already

understand there's suffering in life the

next time you stub your toe

tell me it's not it doesn't hurt it's

suffering

the next noble truth is the cause of the

suffering

what is the cause of the suffering

craving

then there's the third noble truth

the cessation of suffering

every time you let go of craving

there is the cessation

now i've been telling you a lot about

this

over and over again you have to use the

six hours you continually use the six

hours any kind of distraction

that causes your mind to go away

you have to allow it to be there relax

allow it to be there release it relax

smile

why do you need to smile you need to

bring up something wholesome

the smile is an important part of the

practice

i mean all of the buddha images smile

why can't we

right

the artist is telling us that we're

supposed to be smiling because it's a

happy state

too many times people get caught up

in suffering

i went to a very fancy

meal when i was in burma i was invited

by this big monk to go with him because

it was a

special occasion

they gave him the best food i mean this

is top of the line best food that they

could possibly afford

and as he was eating it he was saying

dukkha

well to my way of thinking that's wrong

understanding it's not dukkha

it's sukkah

it was quite good

it's real important to understand that

when you

let go of this tension and tightness

in your head right after you do that

right after you relax

there's a moment where your mind

is exceptionally clear

very alert

and you have a pure observation of

the present moment

and then you take that pure mind and

bring it back to your

object of meditation

that's important now

the way that i was taught

and the way that probably 95 of the

people

in the world are taught to do meditation

your mind is on your object to

meditation that's the same

and it gets distracted that's the same

when you're practicing the way most

people are teaching

what happens is they let go

and immediately come back to the object

of meditation

and what are they doing when they do

that

they're bringing craving back to their

object of meditation

so they're not really having a pure mind

now a lot of people that come and

practice with me have been practicing

with other people first

and most of the time they're practicing

mindfulness of breathing

but what i tell them to do is i don't

want you to do that meditation now i

want you to do loving kindness and you

should hear him complain

oh i get so peaceful and calm when i do

the breathing meditation

and i just kind of shake my head and say

yeah

yeah yeah

but you're not understanding what the

buddha's teaching is all about

when they get deep enough in their one

pointed type of concentration

the depth of their concentration

stops hindrances from arising

okay they won't arise and they say well

i have a purified mine now

as long as they have is there a kleenex

around here

as long as they have

their good concentration while they're

sitting

that's right their mind is purified they

don't have any

hindrance arise but when they

lose their concentration

and they go out there

what happens to their mind hindrances

come

they don't recognize the hindrance

because they haven't worked with the

hindrance

and they suffer greatly

this is one of the reasons that a lot of

people will get to a certain place and

then they'll say well this meditation

doesn't work

i i when i first started meditating

i went to a meditation center and i met

this man

david he'd been meditating longer than i

had

and he'd been doing this meditation very

religiously

didn't matter he was just kind of keep

going

and three or four years ago i guess i

don't remember when

before maybe

he wrote an email to me because a mutual

friend of

ours had had a heart attack and died

so i wrote back to him and i started

telling him

that i was practicing a kind of

meditation that agrees more with

the suttas so we went back and forth

with a lot of weighty questions and

answers for a little while

and then finally i told him

go to the sati patana suta

look at the instructions and tell me

what

tranquilizer bodily formation means

and he went and he looked at it and he

couldn't tell me what it meant

now he'd been practicing for 30 years

or more so i told him

i found out what it meant

so i said why don't you try doing some

loving-kindness meditation

and i'll send you the instructions the

way i find it to be

uh most helpful

so that i had another version of that

little blue book

and i sent it to him and he's he came

back and he said well that's not the way

that it's being taught and i said yes i

know

but this works

so he decided he'd try it for a little

while

now because he'd done so much meditation

he had

great concentration

in a short period of time

he experienced a jhana

and he wrote back to me and i could i

could tell by the way that he was

writing that his eyes were real big

he was he was surprised

so we kept writing back and forth with

all the

philosophical things he was one of the

only people that i'd ever met

that had read the entire tapitica

yeah he knew a lot

he didn't understand it very well but he

knew a lot

so we would go back back and forth with

quoting different things and i always

came back to

the sati patana suta and the

instructions in the sati patana sutta

and i said you have to understand

that there is tightness that you've been

ignoring in your head you haven't seen

it there before

and now i'm showing you where it is and

i'm showing you that it's

there and i'm saying this

is what the way you recognize

craving simple

tension tightness in the head you relax

it it's not there

whoa now your mind is clear

there's no thoughts that are going to

distract you

there's no

unwholesomeness at all

and you bring that mind back to your

object of meditation

so you're purifying your mind when you

do that

and then he's finally started to agree

and he asked if i had any talks

that he could listen to

so we had a few talks online so i gave

him

uh the the uh website

and he started listening to the talks

and he started hearing dhamma like he

had never heard before

and it was plain and it was under

understandable and it was

easy

and when i was in malaysia

i started making a lot of

cassette plate is cassette tapes of the

talks that i gave

now he went through all of the talks

that we had online

these are the recent talks i've only

been back in this country for

since 1998

anyway the talks that i had given before

and taped they were from 1995

1996 1997 i had about a hundred of them

so he i sent them to him

and he started listening to them

and he started comparing what i had said

while i was in malaysia

to what i was saying now

and it was consistent

that's really remarkable

but the reason that it's consistent is

because

i use the suttas as my guide

it really tells me everything that i've

told you

it shows it's shown me the way the

buddha is the teacher there's

no way around it i'm not a teacher

i'm a guide i can keep you on the path

but it's the buddha's words that are so

precious

after a few months of doing this he said

i'm going to

immerse myself in only listening to your

talks

i'm not going to listen to the radio i'm

not going to watch tv

when i go to work i'm going to listen to

your talk

on the way to work at lunch i'm going to

listen to your talk

when i get home i put it on and let only

listen to your talks

and his progress in meditation was

really something spectacular

in a short period of time he was doing

things that he had never dreamed

possible because

of letting go of old

commentaries and just

using the suttas as the guide

right now i've i've got the entire

middle link sayings

in my computer and i've been working on

it for

four months

and now it's almost ready to start

editing

i still have to compare it with other

translators and that sort of thing then

i'm going to be working with

a monk in north carolina who is a true

poly scholar

and he is

he is burmese and what he does

is he listens to me say it in english

and he reads it in burmese and then he

reads the commentary

and then he reads the sub commentary to

see whether what was

translated is correct or not

so we're going to be going through this

entire

nikaya it's 152 sutas but i'm only

translating 150 two of them i don't want

to do because it doesn't have much to do

it has to do with

only heavenly realms and i i don't care

about that stuff

but when i get done it's going to be

five books there's going to be

all of the repeating that the buddha did

when he gave a discourse

then i'm going to be reading the suttas

and putting that online

and you can follow the suita

of what i'm what i'm reading and

in the book half of the page is going to

be

suta the other half is going to be blank

so you can make notes

so then you'll be able to really

truly understand what the buddha was

talking about

we're going to be adding a lot of the

sub commentaries

because they correct mistakes of the

commentary

so it's a major work that's probably

going to take another year

anyway

i haven't got much else to do why not

anyway

the importance of using the relaxed step

can't be understated

the tension and tightness that arises in

your mind

every time you have a thought every time

a sensation arises in your body every

time you

have a feeling arise

causes your mind to do this that

tightness happens

right after that first starts and that's

craving

the craving is only recognized

by the tension and tightness but it's

much easier to recognize that

than it is any of the other links of

dependent origination

it's actually i call it the weak link

in the 12 links of dependent origination

because it is so easy to recognize

now when you're practicing a loving

kindness

and that distraction arises if you

start looking at that tension and

tightness in your head you'll see that

it's there

now you have two two

lobes to your brain everybody has it

there's actually more lobes than that

but we're just talking about the big

ones

and there's a membrane that goes around

both of those it's called the meninges

injuries

that's one of the things that i put in

my book and i put

star star star couldn't think of the

name of it

that membrane that goes around your

brain contracts

every time your attention goes

outside of mind

and that contraction is the way that you

can

the way that you can recognize

craving

so what do i say you have a distraction

you recognize

that your mind is distracted

you let the distraction be there

now for instance

you're sitting in meditation and you're

all peaceful and

calm and all of a sudden this pain

arises in your knee or in your back

or and it arises or

thoughts arise

let's say it's a pain and it's fairly

intense

what are you supposed to do with that

you allow the space for that sensation

to be there by itself

you don't try to control that

you just realize that this is a truth of

the present moment

and you allow the space for that to be

now you relax that tightness in your

head in your mind

and you feel your brain

kind of expand because before it got

contracted by that

meninges that membrane

and you notice that oh there's no

thoughts

there's no pain

there's only this pure mind that's alert

so you bring that mind back to your

object of meditation

after smiling

now i actually i get criticized

by people telling me the buddha never

told us to smile

well not in so many words but he did say

we're the happy ones

what's an expression of being happy

see oh one of the enlightenment factors

is joy what's an expression of having

joy when it comes you are going to smile

why because you can't help yourself it

feels so good

see those buddha images there they're

all showing

that the buddha smiled while he

meditated

because he had this joy

now when i was in burma

i would eventually get to a place that

it wasn't suffering

and i would have joy arise and i would

be real excited about that

all right this is good stuff and i went

to the teacher

and i would say you know i've been

suffering so much for so

long and now i finally have some joy and

the first thing he told me

was don't be attached

well geez i didn't want to be attached

so i pushed that joy away

now how dumb is that

how do you get attached to a pleasant

feeling

by trying to make it last longer

by grabbing a hold of it mentally and

saying you stay here this is great

and that's the fastest way to make it

disappear

pain and joy

same coin different sites

you treat pain and you treat joy

in the same way by allowing it to be

there relaxing

smiling coming back to your object to

meditation

that's the way to have it last longer

not by trying to control it there's

nothing in the buddha's teaching

about controlling

there's loving acceptance of whatever

arises in the present moment

now i was talking about the hindrances a

little bit earlier

there's five of them generally speaking

you have lust or greedy mind

i like it

you have hatred aversion might

i don't like it you have

sleepiness and dullness i'm sleepy

i can hardly walk i can hardly do

anything

you have restlessness and anxiety

this is a very painful

hindrance when it arises now

most people if they don't have any

mental development

when they sit down you'll notice that

they have trouble

sitting still their eyes moving around

or you'll see somebody shaking a leg

that means that there's restlessness in

their mind

restlessness arises as a painful feeling

and when you move then you're you don't

see that

so much and that relieves it for a short

period of time

after you practice your mental

development

you sit you stand

you look around you don't move

now after doing a few retreats

i happened to go into a

a place in big sur it was a very fancy

shop they had furniture art shop it had

furniture and all kinds of stuff

and i got interested in looking at

something and i just stood there and i

looked at it

and then i got done and i started to

turn around and walk away

a lady standing right beside me jumped

she said i thought you were a mannequin

but i didn't have any distractions

the last hindrance is doubt now this is

a big one

doubt is always arises when you don't

quite understand how the meditation

works

and you start wondering whether you're

doing it right or not

and that turns into a big distraction i

don't know

now when any of these hindrances arise

it has the craving attached to it

i am that

hindrances are not something to fight

with

they're not something to try to push

away

they're not something that you can

control

a big mistake that a lot of meditators

try to do

is stop it from coming up

and as a result bigger and more intense

pain

arises let's say that pain in the knee

when it arises

if you start thinking about that pain in

the knee

and wishing it would go away and why

does it have to bother me now

and why doesn't it just come back when

i'm not meditating

every thought about that physical

sensation

causes it to get bigger and more intense

so what do you do the first thing you do

is let go of the thinking

relax now you'll see a tight

mental fist wrapped around that

sensation

i don't like that i want it to stop i

don't want it to be there

but the truth is when a sensation arises

it's there

isn't that profound

that's the truth that's the dhamma of

the present moment

you can't fight with the dhamma you

can't control the dhamma

you can't change the dhamma to make it

be the way you want it to be

if you try to do that you're going to

cause yourself

immeasurable amounts of suffering

a lot of people try to think the feeling

away

but feelings are one thing and thoughts

are something else

the two never meet

so it's kind of fruitless this is why

many people that get depressed

wind up getting worse and worse for

periods of time until they

they finally go to the doctor and say

you've got to give me some drugs to take

care of this this is horrible stuff

and then it dulls their mind out so much

that they can't really function in the

real world

now how does depression arise

painful feeling arises

i don't like it

then you have the clinging what is the

clinging

all of your thoughts all of your

opinions

all of your concepts

your story about why you don't like this

feeling

and then where the emotional

turmoil starts happening is what we call

your habitual tendency every time

that kind of feeling arises i always do

this with it

and as it says independent origination

there's a lot of sorrow lamentation

pain grief and despair

it's painful but you keep doing it

because you don't understand how the

process works

what i'm teaching you right now is

how to recognize that and not get caught

by it

painful feeling arises

tightness in your mind tightness in your

body

lots of thoughts lots of stories about

why you don't like it

and then your habitual tendency

well i always i always try to do it this

way

don't know any other way of doing it and

what happens

that painful feeling gets bigger and

more intense

until it turns it into an amazing

emergency i just can't stand this

then you run to the doctor and get some

medicine to take care of it

but if you start practicing

the way that i'm teaching you right here

right now

you recognize that a painful feeling

arises

you might not catch it right off then

there's some craving you might not catch

that right off

then there's a bunch of thoughts in your

habitual tendency

your emotional state and trying to

control

your your

control the feeling with your thoughts

but there's a way of handling this

and that's what we call the six r's

you recognize that your mind is

distracted

you allow the space for that distraction

to be there

but you don't keep your attention on it

now you see that tension and tightness

and you relax

now you smile

now you come back to your

objective meditation sending somebody

happiness

and you stay with that as long as you

can

it's going to come back again why

because you're attached to it

you're identifying with it it's your old

habit

but every time you let go

and let go of the thoughts and allow

that feeling to be there without trying

to control it

or change it or be anything other than

it is

that feeling becomes less and less

and less why because you're not

feeding it with your attention

you're allowing it all the space it

wants to

to have to be there it's okay to have a

painful feeling it has to be okay

it's the truth right

you can't control the truth

so you have to allow the truth to be

there

as that feeling starts to

not have so much energy

because you're not putting anything to

fight against it

it starts to get weak

oh now that's nice it's getting less

the trick with the buddha's teaching

is not why did this

come up we don't care about why

psychologists can play with why

the buddha's teaching is how did this

process

work how does it arise

what happens first what happens after

that what happens after that

and when you're able to start

recognizing that then you can start

letting it go

and as you let it go then

your mind starts to stay on your object

of meditation

a little bit longer and you're starting

to see

see the distraction a little bit more

easily

a little bit quicker you're letting go

of a hindrance

now the hindrances are rather

interesting because

we have an expression in america when

somebody's down you kick them

the hindrances are like that they gang

up on you

you have a sensation in your in your

knee and of course you don't like it you

don't want it to be there

and then the restlessness starts in

and you feel like you ought to move or i

gotta scratch this

no you got to see how it arises

that's how you teach yourself

what the buddha was talking about

the buddha

said that you have to teach yourself

the dhamma he can explain it

he can show you all kinds of different

examples

but unless you do it for yourself

you're not going to know it

it was real interesting for a period of

time i got

very much involved in

some intellectual pursuits so i was

around

a lot of very intelligent people and

they'd read a lot about buddhism

and they were trying to tell me

everything they they knew about buddhism

and i was a practicer

i wasn't an intellect but i understood

how it worked

much better than they did

so i told them you know you have all

this intellectual knowledge but do you

realize how slow

that is you have to be able to recognize

what's happening and think about

what the buddha said that you're

supposed to do with it

and then you don't really understand it

because you haven't

experienced the cessation of it

but the buddha's message message to

everyone

is look for it yourself

experience it yourself

so you can see it and know what's

happening

without getting involved in taking

it personally when you take something

personally

guess who has something

that has arisen

what

craving anytime you take something

personally there is i am

that i am my thoughts i

am my feelings i am my emotions

all of these are unwholesome thoughts

anytime you don't see things the way

they

really are

you're caught by craving

and when you let go of that you

recognize that's what you're doing

you're teaching yourself absolutely

brilliant lessons

and i can sit here and talk all night

about doing it

but i can't do it for you

that's why i said last night i don't

want you to believe anything i say

i want you to try it and see if it works

for you

and then your confidence in the buddha's

teaching

starts to get real strong

anything that has to do with meditation

in any of the nikayas

i haven't found any mistakes in it

when the buddha was talking about this

stuff he really had

it he understood it completely and

totally

why because he did it

he did all of that meditation

he understood exactly how mind works

brilliant

you know there's there's some question

with a lot of monks about what

the buddha did for the six years that he

was he left the house

and then he became an ascetic and

wandered around he was looking for

the way to get rid of suffering for

everyone and he saw in his

own mind something that's really

brilliant

everybody's mind works exactly the same

way

now if you were all americans

right now your mind would be going no no

my mind isn't the same as a ties or sri

lankan or

burmese it's different

no it's not everything always

arises in the same

way

for every human being

you can see it in some animals that

things arise in that way too

you have to train yourself a little bit

but you can see it

so we have to be able to

see and recognize that tension and

tightness

in our mind and in our body

and we have to learn how to let it go

and as you do that

your mind becomes more clear

you actually become more intelligent

when i was in malaysia there was this

lady that i was teaching

and every other week she would go to

visit

her brother-in-law or something that was

very much a christian

and they would get in some kind of phys

philosophical debates

and she'd come back and tell me what

they talked about and i just sit there

and go

okay but as she started going deeper

into meditation

he started noticing that

she was becoming more intelligent she

was understanding how

mind worked and finally he mentioned to

her

why is it that buddhists are all so

smart

and she came and asked me why are we so

smart

i said because we're buddhists

because we understand how mind works

doesn't have anything to do with

religion

has to do with understanding and the

more you

understand how the process of mind

works the more intelligent you become

i'm not truly an intellectual

i play at it sometimes but my mind is

not that sharp

sometimes you can ask me a question

about something and i don't know the

answer

and i'll come out and tell you i don't

know

but what happens with my mind is

i have a very

deep thought deep thinking

i can think about something in a very

deep way

and i'll try every angle i can think of

to see it

and when i do that i know everything

about it

so you might ask me a question i might

not have the answer for a day or two

but all of a sudden the answer is there

so i'll

look you up and say okay this is your

answer

this is how it works

so as you continue

practicing and seeing

how this process works

you start letting go of little

annoyances

your mind starts to develop this

equanimity this balance

somebody comes up and they can say

something incredibly nasty to you

and you look at them and go okay

your opinion doesn't mean it's my

opinion

it doesn't matter what matters is what

you do with your mind

in the present moment

as you stop allowing that

craving to arise as you start

seeing it doing this to your mind and

you catch it and let it go

you're gaining more and more balance and

equanimity

in your life

and that leads definitely

to happiness

so it's real interesting process

that you have to take the responsibility

to see it for yourself i can tell you

about it all day that doesn't tell you

anything

you can think about it all day that

doesn't help anything

when you have the direct experience all

of a sudden there is a lot of

oh wow that occurs

i was telling kama a few years ago that

i wanted to start making a magazine

buddhist magazine i have trouble getting

published because

everybody has different ideas what

buddhism is and when i bring in the

sutas they don't like it so much

so i was thinking well we'll just make

our own

and i wanted to call it oh wow

she's trying to talk me out of it for i

don't know how long now

it's what every student says they come

to you and they say

wow so that's why

isn't it

why is your progress faster with this

kind of meditation than it is with any

other meditation you've ever seen

because every other kind of meditation

you practice

doesn't let go of the craving

and because of that

it leads to a different way

the end result isn't the same as what

the buddha was talking about

this is one of the reasons it's called

the middle path

now when when we talk about the middle

path

everybody thinks about the eightfold

path right

well i truly love the eightfold path but

i don't like the

language of the eightfold path very much

when they say in pali they say sama they

it's always translated as right

but if something is right

then there's something that's wrong that

means you're looking at black and white

right and the eightfold path isn't black

and white

so i don't really like the word sama in

there

so i put the english word

harmonious that gives you different

degrees of color

that you can see with okay

now the eightfold path the way it's

generally translated into english

is right view or right understanding

right thought right speech

right action right livelihood

right effort

right mindfulness and right

concentration

i've changed all of those words

because it helps with your understanding

a little bit more

the first one i change from right

understanding to

harmonious perspective

now what's it talking about with

harmonious perspective

harmonious perspective is

seeing that everything that arises

in your mind and in your body is part of

an impersonal process

every feeling that arises in your body

every emotion that arises

it's actually arising

because from your past

actions and the conditions

it arises right now

what you do with what arises right now

dictates what happens in the future

if you

let's say you're hammering a nail and

you miss

and you hit your thumb there's pain

right

because the conditions are right for

pain to arise

what do people normally do when they

hurt their thumb

curse

jump around shaking their hand oh

i hurt so much i hate that feeling i

wish i wouldn't have done that

now let's take a look at that

who hurt their

finger

yeah i did i hurt my finger

who doesn't like that

feeling i don't

who wants that feeling to go away right

now

i do so there's all kinds of i

i i i that arises

now we're going to go back to the pineal

gland

that our pineal gland it's a gland

right in between these two lobes of your

brain

that controls the endorphins the

endorphins are the natural

painkiller in the body

it's about 10 times stronger than

morphine it really does a good job

what stops that from releasing

those endorphins so you don't have that

pain

anger identifying with that pain

trying to control that sensation with

your thoughts

disliking that whole situation

as a result this is scientific it's it's

really for real this is the way it works

as a result the pain gets bigger and

more intense

and it will last for a lot longer than

you can believe

maybe even a week or week and a half

later

you still have that pain when you hit

your finger and pain

arises you have a choice of what you do

with that

you can hate it or you can love it

when you have pain that arises in your

body what's your body trying to tell you

to do

to hate that feeling and try to make it

go away

or is it saying and crying out to you

hey

love me

it's really what it's trying to do it's

trying to tell you

it's giving you this message

i need love right now i don't need your

anger i don't need your dislike

i need to be loved because this hurts

being a carpenter in my younger days

i went through this quite often but i

understood how mind worked

i would hit my thumb and i would go

wow that hurt

and then i would start sending loving

kindness to it

just surrounding that whole thing with

love

and in a minute or two all those

endorphins that were trapped because of

the hatred

are released because there's not that

tightness

and i go back to work and i forget about

doing it

now this only takes a couple minutes

and i don't feel the pain anymore

this is fair enough that

that works well

so at the end

of the day somebody will look at my

finger and go oh it's black and blue

down there you really got yourself a

good one

then i go what and i look down and go oh

yeah i did didn't i

no pain no throbbing

no not being able to pick things up and

do things with

my hand

it all depends

on what you do in the present

moment and whether you take it

personally

and try to control it or allow it to be

there by itself

and love it

another example

where i live i have a wood burning stove

and sometimes i'll put a piece of wood

in and something will happen and i'll

have a burn well burns hurt

so i look at that and start radiating

loving kindness

and within no

a minute all the pain is gone

it heals in a day doesn't even leave a

mark

so i decided you know this is an

interesting experiment

i'm going to try doing this not

sending any love to it and see what

happens

i'd burn myself it would blister

it would hurt it would last i'd have a

big mark across here

and it would last for two weeks

when i when i practiced loving kindness

on it

next day i couldn't even see where i got

burned now what does that tell you

how to practice loving kindness how

not to take it personally and curse at

it because it isn't the way i want it to

be

you see but it takes practice to do that

i've been practicing this stuff for

years it's more second

nature now another example when i was in

asia i used to walk barefoot

i'd go to a temple and in asia they have

this kind of annoying habit of

they have one level on the floor and

when they put the next part of the floor

in they raise it about an

inch

so you get up in the middle of the night

you have to go to the bathroom

i've broken my toe i don't know how many

times

now what happens when i hit that

my mind says there's pain

and my mind starts to say i don't like

that

and then i go no no no no no i'm going

to send loving kindness into that pain

and i kind of hobble around for a minute

or two and then i go to the bathroom

and come back lay down and go to sleep

get up the next morning and i look at my

foot and it's all bloody

i'm going what in the world happened oh

that's right i

kicked this thing

what do you do with a broken toe

you put a bow on it so you don't do it

again that's about all you can do with a

broken toe it's got to heal by

itself

never took more than three days

i've i've had x-rays on my foot and they

say yeah it's broken

and i go back three or four days later

and say take it again i haven't felt any

pain for a while

how did you do that it's healed

how did you do that nobody heals that

fast

you should be walking around

with at at least for two weeks

with this pain that's unbelievable

no why

because i didn't take that sensation

personally

i saw it for what it was it was a

painful feeling

there's no getting around it stub your

toes sometime and see if you

can agree

but i allowed it to be there by itself

and i started sending loving kindness

into it i didn't take it personally i

didn't try to control the pain with my

thoughts

i allowed that pain to be there and sent

love into that sensation

and allowed the space for it to heal

itself

so when we're talking about harmonious

perspective

the perspective is that

everything that arises it doesn't matter

whether it's a thought

or a feeling or a sensation

you see it for what it is now you say

well i'm in control of my thoughts

you sit in meditation and you think

about somebody that did something and

it got you mad all of a sudden you're

sending loving and

anger thoughts to that person

now did you ask that thought to come up

no came up by itself didn't it

what you do with what arises in the

present

moment dictates what happens in the

future

if you resist that anger and start

blaming other people for your

anger which is really absurd when you

stop and think about it

how can you how can you say he made me

mad

no you made yourself mad

by not liking what happened in the

present moment right

well stop doing that

stop making yourself suffer

there's nothing out there

that causes your suffering

you cause your own suffering

by not liking what arose in the present

moment

and fighting it and judging it and

condemning it

and wishing it was other than it is

here's another example happens at work

sometimes

you start your day off you feel great

walk in and the boss walks up to you and

he's not happy about something and he

starts yelling at you

what do you do start yelling back at him

right

you start disliking him right

you start saying things you're taking

his anger

you're making it your anger and you're

throwing

your anger back at him

so you say things that you wish you

hadn't said and done things you wish you

hadn't

done and then he walks away what do you

think about

what that no good so and so said

but another thing that happens and this

happens with couples quite a bit

they both start talking at the same time

and neither one can hear what the other

one's saying but you think you can

so you know what you said and boy i'm

right

and the other person said well i told

them this is what i said was

right and then you walk away from each

other and you start

justifying that they said this

and i said that oh i should have said

this to him

i'm right they're wrong

and then that same series of thoughts

happens again just like it's on a tape

deck

same word same order everything

who's attached

um

who's causing them self-suffering

can you blame the boss for your

suffering

most people try

but that's not taking responsibility for

yourself right

so here's another way of being able to

handle it

you get up in the morning and you're

happy

you walk into work and the boss starts

yelling at you

and you see him suffering or her

it doesn't matter and

instead of listening to what they're

yelling about

you start radiating loving-kindness to

that person because you see them

suffering

now an interesting thing about a fight

takes two when there's only one

fighting that fight disappears pretty

quick doesn't it

then you can count they calmly say okay

what's the real problem here

let's let's see if we can solve it

and then when you walk away from that

person that was angry

your mind is bright your mind is alert

you're ready for whatever else happens

now when you took it personally and you

started thinking about this and thinking

about that

and how that no good so-and-so was

saying this

about me and all of this

what happens to the next person that you

meet

you still have that anger

and you give it to them

you give them your dissatisfaction you

give them your dislike

how are you affecting the world around

you

i'm teaching you how to affect the world

around you in a positive way

okay by having

the right kind of perspective the right

kind of

view of what arises

everything that arises in it is

impersonal

doesn't have anything to do with i me or

my that's what the buddha is teaching us

he calls it anata but that's always

translated as not self

that's not a great translation

impersonal

is a better translation at least for

english

the next part of the eightfold path

they call it right thought i call it

harmonious

imaging now that sounds a little odd

but what kind of an image do you hold

you think of a person that you don't

like for whatever reason what kind of an

image are you holding of that person

are you in harmony with that image or

are you

disliking that image

a lot of times people hold negative

images of money

everybody wants more but they always

tell themselves they're broke

right as a result the universe is

very confused about what it what do you

want here

you want more money you don't want more

money

right

the image you want to hold of yourself

and the world around you

is one of lovingkindness

one of happiness one of joy

and anytime you feel that image start to

change to something negative you have to

let it go in 6r

don't allow your mind to get into the

negative

see the whole point of doing this

retreat

is learning how to have an uplifted mind

all of the time when i started giving

the instructions in the retreat i said i

don't care what you're doing

you gotta smile

why do you have to smile

because when you smile your mind has a

tendency to be more uplifted

and you can see when you lose that smile

and how you get

pulled down and you see the pain you

cause yourself

by holding this negative image

now the next part of the eightfold path

is called

right speech

and i changed that a little bit too

i call it harmonious communication

now when you stop and think that the

buddha

taught the eightfold path to the first

five aesthetics

that he was directing that eight-fold

path

towards mental development

now who do you spend more time

with than anybody else

yeah yourself

who criticizes themself more than they

do

anybody else ah

is that an uplifting wholesome

kind of communication

um so

you have to start looking at your

thoughts and letting go of the

self-criticism

right

you have to start appreciating yourself

more and more

an interesting thing that the buddha

said was

a person who truly loves themself will

never

harm another br another being

isn't that amazing how do you appreciate

yourself

how do you love yourself by letting go

of those

negative unwholesome thoughts about

yourself

the worries the anxieties that i should

have done it this way i should have been

better than i was i shouldn't have done

that

you start letting all of that go

and start appreciating your good

qualities

and you'll be surprised how much easier

you are to get along with other people

when you do that

because you start noticing that in them

you don't notice the negative qualities

you start focusing more on the positive

qualities

how are you affecting the world around

you

now the next part of the eightfold path

is called

right action it's always defined in the

suttas

as not killing not stealing not having

wrong

or have not having uh

wrong sexual activity no wrong

you're that's that's basically what it

says

but what i do is i say we're talking

about

harmonious movement

now think about it when the buddha was

talking to the first five

aesthetics did he think that they killed

living beings

did he think that they stole

did he think that they had wrong sexual

activity

no so that doesn't make sense does it

but when you change it to harmonious

movement

you don't jerk your mind around from one

thing to another

trying to ignore this and control

that you have to let all of that go

you move your mind harmoniously

that's the kind of action you need to do

with

meditation

the next one i really get a kick out of

because it's a harmonious

life livelihood

i call it harmonious lifestyle

again right livelihood

is not taking any

slaves not dealing in any weapons

not dealing in any poison that's what it

says in the suttas

well what does that have to do with

meditation

well that's just part of morality no the

buddha wouldn't have mentioned it

in the first suta if it wasn't important

for the meditation

what is harmonious lifestyle what do you

put in front of yourself

i had a friend that when i started

teaching her she read three

newspapers every day

and she was always worried about

what's in the news

so i said why do you do that to yourself

what kind of lifestyle are you really

developing for yourself here

stop doing that and stop looking at the

news on the television

you know anything that's really

important

somebody will tell you all the rest of

this stuff is

nonsense it's made to cause fear arise

in you

it's made to make you worry

don't do that to yourself

let go of the newspapers let go of the

anxiety

let go of the news president obama

he's on the news every night giving a

speech to somebody

and he doesn't say anything

why do i need to watch that

i was in burma doing a two-year retreat

it was i was very silent i didn't talk

to people

the only person i talked to was my

teacher

my meditation teacher and i only saw him

once a day i didn't stand around and

listen to what anybody else said

this was in 1990 when russia fell

i didn't know about it i didn't know

about it till 1992

i was a historian i missed the biggest

thing of last century

and i started thinking oh

what a sad thing that is

and then i started thinking about how

does it affect me

nothing's changed doesn't affect me at

all

well why do i feel like i have to know

this stuff

i guess i don't it's just mental

junk

your mind is going to become very afraid

because everything is falling apart who

knows what's going to happen the economy

is falling apart

well i better worry about it why

if you take care of the dhamma you don't

have to worry about anything the dhamma

will take care of you

sounds unreal doesn't it

it really works this way

if i want to go someplace in the world

all i have to do is direct my mind to oh

it'd be nice if i went to europe i

haven't been there for a long time it'd

be good

within a month somebody is giving me a

ticket to go to europe

why does that happen because i take care

of the dhamma

i don't have a lot of worry thoughts

and a lot of people tell me i should be

a lot more worried than i am

i don't do it so much anymore i'm

learning

it used to frustrate her con continually

because she'd come up with this big

thing oh what are we gonna

do don't worry about it

but we need this and we need that we

don't have this and we don't have that

don't worry about it take care of it a

few days later somebody would walk in

and

hand it to us that's the way monks live

they take care of the dhamma the dhamma

takes care of them

we don't have to worry about things all

we have to do is be happy

now the next part of the eightfold path

they call it

right effort right effort has four parts

to it

noticing when there's an unwholesome

state in your mind

letting go of that unwholesome state and

relaxing

bringing up a wholesome state smile

you're object to meditation and

staying with that wholesome state stay

with your object of meditation and

smiling i call it

harmonious practice

because we can carry this practice

with us all of the time

and we start losing that sense of

urgency

and that sense of high emotion about

things

as a result what happens you get happy

well isn't that what the buddha taught

us son of a gun

the next part of the eightfold path they

call it right

mindfulness i call it harmonious

observation

the reason i change the name of that is

because

for 20 years i practiced

mindfulness practice and i didn't know

what mindfulness

was i've read books where there's 40 or

50 pages describing what mindfulness is

and the person that wrote it didn't know

what it was

what is mindfulness

it's remembering to observe

how mind's attention moves from one

thing

to another simple

it's remembering to observe

a lot of people talk about mindfulness

oh my mindfulness is not good because i

did that

or did this no they don't understand

what mindfulness

is

when you start talking about observation

and starts to make a little bit more

sense

now mindfulness one of the

functions of mindfulness is to remember

i read not too long ago a couple years

ago

in an article somebody said well i want

to talk about mindfulness and they had

four teachers and they tried to describe

mindfulness and one of them said

it's to remember to remember

to remember to remember

okay to remember what

what are you talking about at the end of

the article

the guy that was interviewing these four

teachers wrote well i guess we'll find

out what mindfulness is and sometime

later

because none of them had a clue

isn't that sad it's remembering

to observe how mind's attention moves

now the last part of the eightfold path

is really kind of tricky

because they call it right concentration

and concentration although it's a

correct

word it's a misunderstood word

there's a kind of concentration that's

called one pointed concentration or

absorption concentration or ecstatic

meditation

where you're taking your mindfulness of

breathing

and you're focusing only on the breath

right here and you just

focus on that to the exclusion of

everything else around you

and eventually what happens is you'll

have

a sign arise a sign in this kind of

meditation

is like a white disc that comes up in

your mind

okay the buddha didn't really talk about

that that's talked about

in the commentaries but it's not

talked about in the suttas

so i changed the word from concentration

to collectedness why did i pick that

word

when you look it up in the dictionary it

gives you three or four different

definitions a composed mind

and alert mind a mind is very still

a serene mind

now that's closer to what the buddha was

talking about

why do i change it from this one pointed

concentration because there's

bringing the craving into that object of

meditation

people will eventually get very peaceful

and calm

while they're sitting but when they get

out of the meditation they run around

like a chicken with his head cut off

bumping into things causing themselves

so much suffering because they don't

understand

how hindrances actually work

or why the hindrances are important

the hindrances are your teacher they are

showing you where your attachment is

attachment to what

this is me this is mine this is who i

am

all of the hindrances have that eye

in front of it right

that identification that wrong idea

in a personal self and they have it with

all of their thoughts and all of their

feelings and all their

sensations and everything that happens

in life this is mine this is happening

to me

when in fact it's just more stuff

arising

and passing away

so it's real interesting

because in the

dictionary that rice david's uh wrote

he was he has a long section on samadhi

that's the pali word for this

and in that explanation of what he

thought

samadhi is

he mentioned that before the time of the

buddha

samadhi was not a word that was used

the buddha made this word up to describe

a particular kind of mental state

and a couple hundred years after the

buddha died

there was a whole bunch of brahmanas

that took on robes but they were

teaching

anything but buddhism and they started

changing definitions around

and they started calling it

concentration because that's the kind of

meditation that they did one pointed

concentration

and it's kind of stuck

but when you look in the suttas

it's real interesting because

just about every time serenity

is talked about it's talked

in the same sentence with the word

insight

so you're practicing serenity and

insight

hand in hand they're yoked together

if one of those oxen isn't pulling his

weight what happens to the cart

starts going in a circle

never goes in a straight line never goes

to where the end result is that's what

happens when you practice one pointed

concentration

doesn't work

and people now are starting to believe

that it doesn't work we're starting to

see a lot of articles about

there's something wrong with the

buddha's teaching it doesn't work the

way it says

what are we supposed to do with that i

feel like a little kid in the back of

the

back of a major group of people

jumping up and down saying i know i know

i know what you're doing wrong

but a lot of the teachers they're so

attached to the way they're doing it

they won't

look to see whether they're making a

mistake with their practice or not

they won't go to the suttas

and compare what the buddha was talking

about with their own practice

they'd rather go to another teacher

that's making the same mistake and

compare notes with

them doesn't work

when you learned how to recognize

craving

and let it go there's

real freedom there

sometimes it's only for a brief moment

but it leads to the final nibana

so

oh i forgot to tell you i call

right concentration harmonious

collectedness

i am in the process of

editing a book that i wrote

and it has a detailed description of

that so

probably within the next three four

months

by easter time maybe in april or so

we're being ambitious by saying that i

think

tell me about april spring

time

anyway

an interesting thing is

when you practice the six arts

you're practicing the entire eight-fold

path

at that time

when you smile

you're practicing the entire eightfold

path

at that time

think about it

what kind of perspective do you have

when you're smiling

impersonal what kind of image are you

holding

wholesome what kind of communication are

you giving to yourself

and other people around you

well that sounds right what kind of

movement is your mind doing it's

becoming uplifted

what kind of lifestyle are you creating

not only for yourself everybody else

around you

what kind of practice are you doing

having an uplifted mind well that sounds

right

how's your mindfulness very sharp

because you can see when your mind

starts to get heavy and you can let it

go and start over again

is your mind collected when you're

smiling

or is it excited see

that's the eightfold path right there

just with something as simple as smiling

why do i want you to smile all the time

do you see i'm really a sneaky monk

because i didn't tell you that at first

you weren't ready to hear it at first

now a lot of you are starting to

understand it's good thing to smile

look at how much clearer your mind

becomes when you smile

you're following the eightfold path

oh geez

yeah we'll get back to the sachi batana

in another time i think

got any questions

but everybody do you uh

like are you require not recommending

this inhale exhale

now or are you if you recommend

everybody has already developed some

degree

of mindfulness of breathing

and they've already developed bad habits

so i change your meditation over to

lovingkindness for two reasons

one reason is your progress with

loving-kindness meditation

is faster than it is with

any other kind of meditation that the

buddha taught

it makes your face radiant

and it's easier to practice smiling when

you're out there

it's hard to keep your mind on your

breath when you're out there

so you kind of forget it but smiling is

easy

so that's one of the reasons that i

teach it

but this is a kind

of insight meditation

and if we had time i would show you more

maybe next time i come i can show you a

lot more

but it's a mindfulness practice it's an

insight practice

and actually it was talked about

more than the mindfulness of breathing

was

in the mindfulness of breathing in the

sutures it's only mentioned eight times

there must be a hundred sutas about

loving kindness

i never sat down and and

counted them but i know in the angutri

nikaya there's

lots of sutas on on loving kindness and

it's kind of sprinkled throughout all of

the other nikaias

it will take you to the realm

of nothingness

that's as high as it will take you but

once you get to the realm of nothingness

you don't stop meditating you keep

meditating

and you'll get to the realm of neither

perception or non-perception

and then you'll get to the cessation of

perception and feeling

and this is the fast track

i'm used to giving a retreat and seeing

everybody if they follow the directions

get into a drama in the first three days

sometimes it's faster than that

depending

but when i was in thailand they were

talking about if you want to get into

adriana

it's going to take at least 15 years

and i'm showing people how in three days

of course their kind of meditation is

such that they are not letting go of the

craving

and therein lies the problem yeah

specifically something like

states that self-conquest is the best of

our conquest

right so i'm trying to connect that to

what you just said

okay listen that helps you

conquest well that's kind of a

harsh word conquest

and that

um when you're talking about a self

it gets really confusing

so i talk about the taking things

personally

or taking things impersonally

and the eightfold path definitely leads

to that

okay and it's not i guess you could call

it conquest

in a way but it's it's the kind of word

that i wouldn't choose for that kind of

uh verse

it's more of a letting

go

overcoming

loba dosa moha overcoming

you can say conquest but that that

infers that there's a pushing away or

pushing down of something

and letting go means understanding what

they are

and not being attached to them anymore

which for a lack of better word which is

in a sense conquest but you're saying

it's more of an accomplishment or

yes it is it is

just ask you there's many many other

vulgars in the dhammapada i just gave

you an example

right yeah you know and in this case he

did say

it is conquest the word conquer it is

better it is

better to it is better to conquer your

own mind and conquer

whole army yeah that's right that's the

example he gave

and that's what it means that's right so

it is it does sound harsh

yes it does and not saying anything

against

naruto that looks like his book

his english was from old english

where they used those kind of words and

they didn't necessarily mean what they

do

today so we have to kind of update the

language a little bit

soften it a little bit so it gets easier

to understand

is it is it fair to say that these poly

these poly trans translations over the

years

may need certain words not all

yeah may need some tweaking yeah

right i mean it's not because the

original

original no the original we leave alone

but we come up with a definition that

that's more in harmony with what the

buddha was actually trying to get across

and in order to do that and i appreciate

what you're doing you're going back and

reading the original sutra

in pali adiasana in sanskrit

yes there are sutas in sanskrit

but i'm just going to focus mostly on

when you let go craving while you're

doing meditation

reducing the stiffness you sort of go

back to your

objective meditation after smiling and

then you

yeah smile and when you start radiation

already or loving kindness is it

it will subside so is there any waiting

period or

naturally you go back well what happens

with the 6r is it's not

six separate steps like this it's more

of a flow

you know you'll you'll see it you'll

rely

release relax smile come back like that

it'll be like that it will happen fairly

quick

once you get used to doing it

and the brilliant thing about the 6rs is

you can use it in your daily life

well a lot of it is because of the

practice

with meta has been a one pointed

concentration

and they say you have four wishes that

you have to make

may i be happy may i be

mentally happy and physically happy may

i be well happy and peaceful

and you just repeat those over and over

again without feeling the wish

now the feeling of the wish is very very

important

and it takes the meditation away from

the one pointed concentration

and puts it back to the tranquility

kind of practice that the buddha taught

as you see can see i have a lot of

changing to do in this country

but people are starting to change it's

only taken me

12 years 12 years more

13 years

but they're now starting to change at

meditation retreats they're now starting

to tell people

to let go of the pain

relax they're starting to do that

that's amazingly fast

when i came to this country i knew i had

a big chore

ahead of me

and when i started teaching people would

get up and walk out

that's not the buddha's teaching you

gotta note it

you have to focus very intensely right

here

then i'd read the suta to them and say

well that's not quite what it says here

must be that you're using some other

reference books than what the buddha did

and finally after 13 years it's starting

to happen

some of my students tell me that they

can't believe how persistent i am

or how brave i am because of

what i've been doing and more and more

and more people are starting to wake up

to the fact that hey this

really works and it works well and it

works quickly

when i started practicing vipassana i

spent

five years of intense practice figuring

out

what it wasn't before i could start

figuring out what it was

a lot of that was because the teachers i

had didn't speak english

and i had to go through a translator and

that's that's hard

i'd go into a teacher and i'd say okay

here it is

i'd experience this and i would tell him

exactly

what i experienced and the translator

would look at

look at the teacher and give him one

line

wait a minute you didn't tell him what i

told you

and then the teacher would give oh

you know maybe maybe two or three

paragraphs worth of

instruction and the translator would

look back at me and

he said oh you only have sloth and

torpor no don't pay attention to it just

keep going

wait a minute i'm losing something here

it took me a long time to figure out how

to do the practice

and then when i was very successful with

the practice

i found out it didn't lead to where it

was supposed to lead

it had a different end result

well insight knowledges are not

mentioned in the suttas did you know

that

insight knowledges are mentioned in

commentaries

and insight knowledges that are taught

in burma they took the nine from the

vasudi maga and turned it into 16.

then they say well you're supposed to

see

either anitra three or four times very

quickly

or dukkha three or four times very

quickly in a row

or anata three or four times very

quickly

and then you'll have this blackout and

then when you come back

you'll start reviewing all of the

insight knowledges and it happens that

way

but that doesn't match up with what it

says in the suttas

it says very plainly that if you

don't see how dependent origination

arises and passes away you will

not become you will not experience

nibana

now they're caught up in

impermanence suffering and not self

one of the things that says in the maha

vaga

is you can see one or all

of the three characteristics without

ever

seeing dependent origination

but if you see dependent origination

you're going to see

all of those characteristics

what they're doing is seeing just

anitra duke and anata

and they don't they don't understand

dependent origination very well they

don't take it to mean

anything other than an intellectual

exercise

but in the samut nikaya there's 84

discourses only on dependent origination

don't you think that's kind of important

seems to me

and one of the last sutas in that

section

it says how do you find

the the proper teacher and the buddha

said

you go look for someone that can teach

you

dependent origination and how it works

that can show you that how it arises and

how it disappears

that's the kind of teacher you should

look for

makes sense to me i've been teaching you

dependent origination all week

it doesn't sound like it sometimes you

might not recognize it as such

but i have been that's why i said i'm a

sneaky monk

any other question

understanding is that self-criticism

would

make you aware of the shortcomings of

false fears and

would lead to betterment and even some

faith like repentance is

it's unwholesome because

who is criticizing themself

i am

who doesn't like what they've done

i don't

do you see how that craving

is the cause of that

are there different kinds of criticism

well there's constructive criticism

when i am around some people that have

ideas

of what the buddha taught and i find it

doesn't agree with what the buddha

taught

i might show them where it says that

and that's that's showing where there's

a mistake

but there's no name calling there's no

making it personal

there's just saying well i don't know if

that's right or not but why don't you

take a look at this and see what

how you compare with it because that's

what the buddha's words are

yeah and being constructive

it's not being critical in the way that

you're talking about because we

always cause ourselves to feel guilty

about this or that

i should have done better i should have

whatever

but when you see that you make made a

mistake you go

okay i made a mistake now let's fix it

let's not do it this way anymore you

don't have to criticize yourself

to yourself because you made a mistake

some critical and critical analysis is

different from

self-criticism the easiest example is

like your mother dies

and you didn't get there in time and you

were on the way

this is a personal experience so you

come down on yourself as

i should have done this i could have

been there i would have done it this way

and then you feel guilty and you carry

remorse

and you get really down about it and

criticize yourself

for this and that's not healthy not

constructive

exactly yes that's right but while some

mistake appears which could uh you could

by like being aware of it if you could

create it in the future you can be

you can be aware of a mistake without

criticizing the mistake

without clinging to it without clinging

to it without craving in it

okay

it'd be nice to say that we're all

perfect and never make mistakes but we

learn from our mistakes

that you don't have to criticize

yourself because it happened that way

all you have to do is say okay that was

a mistake i learned from that now i'm

not going to do it that way again

and you're aware of what's right and

what's wrong

with your job or whatever you tried this

it didn't work

okay don't do that one again try this

but you don't have to criticize yourself

and say well i was too stupid to

see that that wasn't going to work

you don't have to come down on yourself

what i'm suggesting is that you use a

wholesome

approach to yourself you can realize

that mistakes are made

you did the best you could with the

information you had at that time

you don't have to criticize yourself and

be mad at yourself because you made a

mistake

but you can learn from it say okay we

know that way doesn't work

i had a monk friend in australia and

it was the end of the range retreat and

we

the monks have to get together and sew a

robe

that's what we were doing and this one

monk

tried to make an underrobe

and he would get it all done

and he would hold it up and he'd go ah

that's not right

so he took it all apart and he did it

seven

times and every time he said we learn

from our mistakes

he didn't but eventually he did he got

it right

but he didn't get angry at himself he

just said oh that didn't work

i did i did this wrong i did that wrong

now i have to go back and redo it

he had a happy mind

but it worked

eventually

okay holy cow

may suffering ones be suffering free and

the fierce drug fearless be

may the grieving shed all grief and may

all beings find relief

may all beings share this merit that

we've thus

acquired for the acquisition of all

kinds of happiness

may beings inhabiting space and earth

devas and nagas of mighty powers share

this merit of ours

may they long protect the buddha's

dispensation

have you ever heard

of a sutta called the satypatana suta

you have oh

that's what i'm going to do tonight but

i'm going to make it a brief one

most of the time when i give this baton

a suit it takes two days

and sometimes i barely get done i have

to make

the talk longer at the end but i'll try

to make it a little bit

easier this time

thus if i heard on one occasion the

blessed one was living in nakuru

country in a town of the kurus named

casa sadama

there he addressed the monks thus monks

venerable sir they replied the blessed

one

said this monks

this is the direct path

for the purification of beings for the

surmounting of sorrow and lamentation

for the disappearance of pain and grief

for the attainment of a true way

for the realization of nibana namely the

four foundations of mindfulness

what are the four here monks

a monk abides contemplating the body

as a body ardent

fully aware and mindful having put away

covetousness and grief for the world

he abides contemplating feeling as

feeling ardent fully aware

and mindful having put away covetousness

and grief for the world

covetousness means greed

holding on and grief means

dislike

he abides contemplating mind as mind

ardent fully aware and mindful having

put away

covetousness and grief for the world

he abides contemplating mind objects as

mind objects

ardent fully aware and mindful having

put away covetousness and grief for the

world

now we're going to go into the

contemplation of the body

and this is the first part

is mindfulness of breathing

now that's not what i'm teaching for

most of you

what i'm teaching for most of you is

loving kindness

but the last two sentences

in the mindfulness of breathing also

holds true for loving kindness

and how monks does a monk abide

contemplating the body

as a body hear a mount gone to the

forest or to the root of a tree or an

empty hut

sits down having crossed his legs folded

his legs crosswise

set his body a wreck and established

mindfulness in front of him

ever mindful he breathes in mindful he

breathes out

breathing in long he understands i

breathe in long

or breathing out long he understands i

breathe out long

breathing in short he understands i

breathe in short or

breathing out short he understands i

breathe out short

now did anyone hear me

say nose

nostril tip upper lip

or abdomen

oh good you're paying attention

why because it's not in the instructions

those instructions of telling you to put

your attention on your nose or your

upper lip

or even on your abdomen come from

commentaries

it just says you understand when you

take a long breath

and you understand when you take a short

breath

you understand when your breath is fast

and when it's slow

you understand when your breath is

coarse

and when it's very fine you

understand that's the key word

it doesn't say focus on it doesn't say

only keep your attention on the breath

it just says

i understand when my breath is long or

short

now the next two sentences are where the

training is

actually being taught and this also

works for

the mindfulness or mindfulness of loving

kindness

he trains thus i shall breathe in

experiencing the whole body

he trains thus i shall breathe out

experiencing the whole body

and this is the key right here he trains

thus

i shall breathe in tranquilizing the

bodily

he trains thus i shall breathe out

tranquilizing the bodily formation

what does tranquilizing the bodily

formation mean

relax you hear that word before

now i've been practicing meditation for

35 years

for 20 years i practiced straight

vipassana

i went to burma i was there for almost

three years doing

very intensive meditation

watching the rise and fall of the

abdomen

at no time was i ever told to relax

anything this statement

is the key to the meditation this

is why a lot of people practicing

meditation

they get to a certain plateau in their

meditation and they don't go any further

if you don't have that relaxed step

that means you're not letting go

of ah

you're not letting go of craving

and what is craving craving is

the i like it i don't like it mind

now in in terms of dependent origination

you have a good working eye and there's

color

and form the good working eye hits color

and form

eye consciousness arises the meeting of

these three things

is called eye contact

with eye contact as condition

i feeling arises

we're not talking about emotional

feeling

we're talking about either pleasant

feeling

painful feeling neither painful nor

pleasant feeling

with i feeling as conditioned eye

craving arises

when the craving arises it causes

tension and tightness to occur in your

head

and in your mind

so this says on the in-breath you

tranquilize the bodily formation

on the out-breath you tranquilize the

bodily formation which is continually

telling you to relax

okay if there's a distraction

what do you do you practice the six

hours you recognize your mind is

distracted

you let the distraction be there by

itself

you release it now you relax

now you need to bring up a wholesome

object what's that

smile and then come back to your object

to meditation

and stay with your object of meditation

now with the mindfulness of breathing

your

object of meditation is

the breath you understand what the

breath is doing that's what the

instruction said

and relaxing

now if you cut out that relaxed step

you're not letting go of craving

when you talk about the four noble

truths

the first noble truth there is suffering

we don't have to have anybody tell us

that when we already

understand there's suffering in life the

next time you stub your toe

tell me it's not it doesn't hurt it's

suffering

the next noble truth is the cause of the

suffering

what is the cause of the suffering

craving

then there's the third noble truth

the cessation of suffering

every time you let go of craving

there is the cessation

now i've been telling you a lot about

this

over and over again you have to use the

six hours you continually use the six

hours any kind of distraction

that causes your mind to go away

you have to allow it to be there relax

allow it to be there release it relax

smile

why do you need to smile you need to

bring up something wholesome

the smile is an important part of the

practice

i mean all of the buddha images smile

why can't we

right

the artist is telling us that we're

supposed to be smiling because it's a

happy state

too many times people get caught up

in suffering

i went to a very fancy

meal when i was in burma i was invited

by this big monk to go with him because

it was a

special occasion

they gave him the best food i mean this

is top of the line best food that they

could possibly afford

and as he was eating it he was saying

dukkha

well to my way of thinking that's wrong

understanding it's not dukkha

it's sukkah

it was quite good

it's real important to understand that

when you

let go of this tension and tightness

in your head right after you do that

right after you relax

there's a moment where your mind

is exceptionally clear

very alert

and you have a pure observation of

the present moment

and then you take that pure mind and

bring it back to your

object of meditation

that's important now

the way that i was taught

and the way that probably 95 of the

people

in the world are taught to do meditation

your mind is on your object to

meditation that's the same

and it gets distracted that's the same

when you're practicing the way most

people are teaching

what happens is they let go

and immediately come back to the object

of meditation

and what are they doing when they do

that

they're bringing craving back to their

object of meditation

so they're not really having a pure mind

now a lot of people that come and

practice with me have been practicing

with other people first

and most of the time they're practicing

mindfulness of breathing

but what i tell them to do is i don't

want you to do that meditation now i

want you to do loving kindness and you

should hear him complain

oh i get so peaceful and calm when i do

the breathing meditation

and i just kind of shake my head and say

yeah

yeah yeah

but you're not understanding what the

buddha's teaching is all about

when they get deep enough in their one

pointed type of concentration

the depth of their concentration

stops hindrances from arising

okay they won't arise and they say well

i have a purified mine now

as long as they have is there a kleenex

around here

as long as they have

their good concentration while they're

sitting

that's right their mind is purified they

don't have any

hindrance arise but when they

lose their concentration

and they go out there

what happens to their mind hindrances

come

they don't recognize the hindrance

because they haven't worked with the

hindrance

and they suffer greatly

this is one of the reasons that a lot of

people will get to a certain place and

then they'll say well this meditation

doesn't work

i i when i first started meditating

i went to a meditation center and i met

this man

david he'd been meditating longer than i

had

and he'd been doing this meditation very

religiously

didn't matter he was just kind of keep

going

and three or four years ago i guess i

don't remember when

before maybe

he wrote an email to me because a mutual

friend of

ours had had a heart attack and died

so i wrote back to him and i started

telling him

that i was practicing a kind of

meditation that agrees more with

the suttas so we went back and forth

with a lot of weighty questions and

answers for a little while

and then finally i told him

go to the sati patana suta

look at the instructions and tell me

what

tranquilizer bodily formation means

and he went and he looked at it and he

couldn't tell me what it meant

now he'd been practicing for 30 years

or more so i told him

i found out what it meant

so i said why don't you try doing some

loving-kindness meditation

and i'll send you the instructions the

way i find it to be

uh most helpful

so that i had another version of that

little blue book

and i sent it to him and he's he came

back and he said well that's not the way

that it's being taught and i said yes i

know

but this works

so he decided he'd try it for a little

while

now because he'd done so much meditation

he had

great concentration

in a short period of time

he experienced a jhana

and he wrote back to me and i could i

could tell by the way that he was

writing that his eyes were real big

he was he was surprised

so we kept writing back and forth with

all the

philosophical things he was one of the

only people that i'd ever met

that had read the entire tapitica

yeah he knew a lot

he didn't understand it very well but he

knew a lot

so we would go back back and forth with

quoting different things and i always

came back to

the sati patana suta and the

instructions in the sati patana sutta

and i said you have to understand

that there is tightness that you've been

ignoring in your head you haven't seen

it there before

and now i'm showing you where it is and

i'm showing you that it's

there and i'm saying this

is what the way you recognize

craving simple

tension tightness in the head you relax

it it's not there

whoa now your mind is clear

there's no thoughts that are going to

distract you

there's no

unwholesomeness at all

and you bring that mind back to your

object of meditation

so you're purifying your mind when you

do that

and then he's finally started to agree

and he asked if i had any talks

that he could listen to

so we had a few talks online so i gave

him

uh the the uh website

and he started listening to the talks

and he started hearing dhamma like he

had never heard before

and it was plain and it was under

understandable and it was

easy

and when i was in malaysia

i started making a lot of

cassette plate is cassette tapes of the

talks that i gave

now he went through all of the talks

that we had online

these are the recent talks i've only

been back in this country for

since 1998

anyway the talks that i had given before

and taped they were from 1995

1996 1997 i had about a hundred of them

so he i sent them to him

and he started listening to them

and he started comparing what i had said

while i was in malaysia

to what i was saying now

and it was consistent

that's really remarkable

but the reason that it's consistent is

because

i use the suttas as my guide

it really tells me everything that i've

told you

it shows it's shown me the way the

buddha is the teacher there's

no way around it i'm not a teacher

i'm a guide i can keep you on the path

but it's the buddha's words that are so

precious

after a few months of doing this he said

i'm going to

immerse myself in only listening to your

talks

i'm not going to listen to the radio i'm

not going to watch tv

when i go to work i'm going to listen to

your talk

on the way to work at lunch i'm going to

listen to your talk

when i get home i put it on and let only

listen to your talks

and his progress in meditation was

really something spectacular

in a short period of time he was doing

things that he had never dreamed

possible because

of letting go of old

commentaries and just

using the suttas as the guide

right now i've i've got the entire

middle link sayings

in my computer and i've been working on

it for

four months

and now it's almost ready to start

editing

i still have to compare it with other

translators and that sort of thing then

i'm going to be working with

a monk in north carolina who is a true

poly scholar

and he is

he is burmese and what he does

is he listens to me say it in english

and he reads it in burmese and then he

reads the commentary

and then he reads the sub commentary to

see whether what was

translated is correct or not

so we're going to be going through this

entire

nikaya it's 152 sutas but i'm only

translating 150 two of them i don't want

to do because it doesn't have much to do

it has to do with

only heavenly realms and i i don't care

about that stuff

but when i get done it's going to be

five books there's going to be

all of the repeating that the buddha did

when he gave a discourse

then i'm going to be reading the suttas

and putting that online

and you can follow the suita

of what i'm what i'm reading and

in the book half of the page is going to

be

suta the other half is going to be blank

so you can make notes

so then you'll be able to really

truly understand what the buddha was

talking about

we're going to be adding a lot of the

sub commentaries

because they correct mistakes of the

commentary

so it's a major work that's probably

going to take another year

anyway

i haven't got much else to do why not

anyway

the importance of using the relaxed step

can't be understated

the tension and tightness that arises in

your mind

every time you have a thought every time

a sensation arises in your body every

time you

have a feeling arise

causes your mind to do this that

tightness happens

right after that first starts and that's

craving

the craving is only recognized

by the tension and tightness but it's

much easier to recognize that

than it is any of the other links of

dependent origination

it's actually i call it the weak link

in the 12 links of dependent origination

because it is so easy to recognize

now when you're practicing a loving

kindness

and that distraction arises if you

start looking at that tension and

tightness in your head you'll see that

it's there

now you have two two

lobes to your brain everybody has it

there's actually more lobes than that

but we're just talking about the big

ones

and there's a membrane that goes around

both of those it's called the meninges

injuries

that's one of the things that i put in

my book and i put

star star star couldn't think of the

name of it

that membrane that goes around your

brain contracts

every time your attention goes

outside of mind

and that contraction is the way that you

can

the way that you can recognize

craving

so what do i say you have a distraction

you recognize

that your mind is distracted

you let the distraction be there

now for instance

you're sitting in meditation and you're

all peaceful and

calm and all of a sudden this pain

arises in your knee or in your back

or and it arises or

thoughts arise

let's say it's a pain and it's fairly

intense

what are you supposed to do with that

you allow the space for that sensation

to be there by itself

you don't try to control that

you just realize that this is a truth of

the present moment

and you allow the space for that to be

now you relax that tightness in your

head in your mind

and you feel your brain

kind of expand because before it got

contracted by that

meninges that membrane

and you notice that oh there's no

thoughts

there's no pain

there's only this pure mind that's alert

so you bring that mind back to your

object of meditation

after smiling

now i actually i get criticized

by people telling me the buddha never

told us to smile

well not in so many words but he did say

we're the happy ones

what's an expression of being happy

see oh one of the enlightenment factors

is joy what's an expression of having

joy when it comes you are going to smile

why because you can't help yourself it

feels so good

see those buddha images there they're

all showing

that the buddha smiled while he

meditated

because he had this joy

now when i was in burma

i would eventually get to a place that

it wasn't suffering

and i would have joy arise and i would

be real excited about that

all right this is good stuff and i went

to the teacher

and i would say you know i've been

suffering so much for so

long and now i finally have some joy and

the first thing he told me

was don't be attached

well geez i didn't want to be attached

so i pushed that joy away

now how dumb is that

how do you get attached to a pleasant

feeling

by trying to make it last longer

by grabbing a hold of it mentally and

saying you stay here this is great

and that's the fastest way to make it

disappear

pain and joy

same coin different sites

you treat pain and you treat joy

in the same way by allowing it to be

there relaxing

smiling coming back to your object to

meditation

that's the way to have it last longer

not by trying to control it there's

nothing in the buddha's teaching

about controlling

there's loving acceptance of whatever

arises in the present moment

now i was talking about the hindrances a

little bit earlier

there's five of them generally speaking

you have lust or greedy mind

i like it

you have hatred aversion might

i don't like it you have

sleepiness and dullness i'm sleepy

i can hardly walk i can hardly do

anything

you have restlessness and anxiety

this is a very painful

hindrance when it arises now

most people if they don't have any

mental development

when they sit down you'll notice that

they have trouble

sitting still their eyes moving around

or you'll see somebody shaking a leg

that means that there's restlessness in

their mind

restlessness arises as a painful feeling

and when you move then you're you don't

see that

so much and that relieves it for a short

period of time

after you practice your mental

development

you sit you stand

you look around you don't move

now after doing a few retreats

i happened to go into a

a place in big sur it was a very fancy

shop they had furniture art shop it had

furniture and all kinds of stuff

and i got interested in looking at

something and i just stood there and i

looked at it

and then i got done and i started to

turn around and walk away

a lady standing right beside me jumped

she said i thought you were a mannequin

but i didn't have any distractions

the last hindrance is doubt now this is

a big one

doubt is always arises when you don't

quite understand how the meditation

works

and you start wondering whether you're

doing it right or not

and that turns into a big distraction i

don't know

now when any of these hindrances arise

it has the craving attached to it

i am that

hindrances are not something to fight

with

they're not something to try to push

away

they're not something that you can

control

a big mistake that a lot of meditators

try to do

is stop it from coming up

and as a result bigger and more intense

pain

arises let's say that pain in the knee

when it arises

if you start thinking about that pain in

the knee

and wishing it would go away and why

does it have to bother me now

and why doesn't it just come back when

i'm not meditating

every thought about that physical

sensation

causes it to get bigger and more intense

so what do you do the first thing you do

is let go of the thinking

relax now you'll see a tight

mental fist wrapped around that

sensation

i don't like that i want it to stop i

don't want it to be there

but the truth is when a sensation arises

it's there

isn't that profound

that's the truth that's the dhamma of

the present moment

you can't fight with the dhamma you

can't control the dhamma

you can't change the dhamma to make it

be the way you want it to be

if you try to do that you're going to

cause yourself

immeasurable amounts of suffering

a lot of people try to think the feeling

away

but feelings are one thing and thoughts

are something else

the two never meet

so it's kind of fruitless this is why

many people that get depressed

wind up getting worse and worse for

periods of time until they

they finally go to the doctor and say

you've got to give me some drugs to take

care of this this is horrible stuff

and then it dulls their mind out so much

that they can't really function in the

real world

now how does depression arise

painful feeling arises

i don't like it

then you have the clinging what is the

clinging

all of your thoughts all of your

opinions

all of your concepts

your story about why you don't like this

feeling

and then where the emotional

turmoil starts happening is what we call

your habitual tendency every time

that kind of feeling arises i always do

this with it

and as it says independent origination

there's a lot of sorrow lamentation

pain grief and despair

it's painful but you keep doing it

because you don't understand how the

process works

what i'm teaching you right now is

how to recognize that and not get caught

by it

painful feeling arises

tightness in your mind tightness in your

body

lots of thoughts lots of stories about

why you don't like it

and then your habitual tendency

well i always i always try to do it this

way

don't know any other way of doing it and

what happens

that painful feeling gets bigger and

more intense

until it turns it into an amazing

emergency i just can't stand this

then you run to the doctor and get some

medicine to take care of it

but if you start practicing

the way that i'm teaching you right here

right now

you recognize that a painful feeling

arises

you might not catch it right off then

there's some craving you might not catch

that right off

then there's a bunch of thoughts in your

habitual tendency

your emotional state and trying to

control

your your

control the feeling with your thoughts

but there's a way of handling this

and that's what we call the six r's

you recognize that your mind is

distracted

you allow the space for that distraction

to be there

but you don't keep your attention on it

now you see that tension and tightness

and you relax

now you smile

now you come back to your

objective meditation sending somebody

happiness

and you stay with that as long as you

can

it's going to come back again why

because you're attached to it

you're identifying with it it's your old

habit

but every time you let go

and let go of the thoughts and allow

that feeling to be there without trying

to control it

or change it or be anything other than

it is

that feeling becomes less and less

and less why because you're not

feeding it with your attention

you're allowing it all the space it

wants to

to have to be there it's okay to have a

painful feeling it has to be okay

it's the truth right

you can't control the truth

so you have to allow the truth to be

there

as that feeling starts to

not have so much energy

because you're not putting anything to

fight against it

it starts to get weak

oh now that's nice it's getting less

the trick with the buddha's teaching

is not why did this

come up we don't care about why

psychologists can play with why

the buddha's teaching is how did this

process

work how does it arise

what happens first what happens after

that what happens after that

and when you're able to start

recognizing that then you can start

letting it go

and as you let it go then

your mind starts to stay on your object

of meditation

a little bit longer and you're starting

to see

see the distraction a little bit more

easily

a little bit quicker you're letting go

of a hindrance

now the hindrances are rather

interesting because

we have an expression in america when

somebody's down you kick them

the hindrances are like that they gang

up on you

you have a sensation in your in your

knee and of course you don't like it you

don't want it to be there

and then the restlessness starts in

and you feel like you ought to move or i

gotta scratch this

no you got to see how it arises

that's how you teach yourself

what the buddha was talking about

the buddha

said that you have to teach yourself

the dhamma he can explain it

he can show you all kinds of different

examples

but unless you do it for yourself

you're not going to know it

it was real interesting for a period of

time i got

very much involved in

some intellectual pursuits so i was

around

a lot of very intelligent people and

they'd read a lot about buddhism

and they were trying to tell me

everything they they knew about buddhism

and i was a practicer

i wasn't an intellect but i understood

how it worked

much better than they did

so i told them you know you have all

this intellectual knowledge but do you

realize how slow

that is you have to be able to recognize

what's happening and think about

what the buddha said that you're

supposed to do with it

and then you don't really understand it

because you haven't

experienced the cessation of it

but the buddha's message message to

everyone

is look for it yourself

experience it yourself

so you can see it and know what's

happening

without getting involved in taking

it personally when you take something

personally

guess who has something

that has arisen

what

craving anytime you take something

personally there is i am

that i am my thoughts i

am my feelings i am my emotions

all of these are unwholesome thoughts

anytime you don't see things the way

they

really are

you're caught by craving

and when you let go of that you

recognize that's what you're doing

you're teaching yourself absolutely

brilliant lessons

and i can sit here and talk all night

about doing it

but i can't do it for you

that's why i said last night i don't

want you to believe anything i say

i want you to try it and see if it works

for you

and then your confidence in the buddha's

teaching

starts to get real strong

anything that has to do with meditation

in any of the nikayas

i haven't found any mistakes in it

when the buddha was talking about this

stuff he really had

it he understood it completely and

totally

why because he did it

he did all of that meditation

he understood exactly how mind works

brilliant

you know there's there's some question

with a lot of monks about what

the buddha did for the six years that he

was he left the house

and then he became an ascetic and

wandered around he was looking for

the way to get rid of suffering for

everyone and he saw in his

own mind something that's really

brilliant

everybody's mind works exactly the same

way

now if you were all americans

right now your mind would be going no no

my mind isn't the same as a ties or sri

lankan or

burmese it's different

no it's not everything always

arises in the same

way

for every human being

you can see it in some animals that

things arise in that way too

you have to train yourself a little bit

but you can see it

so we have to be able to

see and recognize that tension and

tightness

in our mind and in our body

and we have to learn how to let it go

and as you do that

your mind becomes more clear

you actually become more intelligent

when i was in malaysia there was this

lady that i was teaching

and every other week she would go to

visit

her brother-in-law or something that was

very much a christian

and they would get in some kind of phys

philosophical debates

and she'd come back and tell me what

they talked about and i just sit there

and go

okay but as she started going deeper

into meditation

he started noticing that

she was becoming more intelligent she

was understanding how

mind worked and finally he mentioned to

her

why is it that buddhists are all so

smart

and she came and asked me why are we so

smart

i said because we're buddhists

because we understand how mind works

doesn't have anything to do with

religion

has to do with understanding and the

more you

understand how the process of mind

works the more intelligent you become

i'm not truly an intellectual

i play at it sometimes but my mind is

not that sharp

sometimes you can ask me a question

about something and i don't know the

answer

and i'll come out and tell you i don't

know

but what happens with my mind is

i have a very

deep thought deep thinking

i can think about something in a very

deep way

and i'll try every angle i can think of

to see it

and when i do that i know everything

about it

so you might ask me a question i might

not have the answer for a day or two

but all of a sudden the answer is there

so i'll

look you up and say okay this is your

answer

this is how it works

so as you continue

practicing and seeing

how this process works

you start letting go of little

annoyances

your mind starts to develop this

equanimity this balance

somebody comes up and they can say

something incredibly nasty to you

and you look at them and go okay

your opinion doesn't mean it's my

opinion

it doesn't matter what matters is what

you do with your mind

in the present moment

as you stop allowing that

craving to arise as you start

seeing it doing this to your mind and

you catch it and let it go

you're gaining more and more balance and

equanimity

in your life

and that leads definitely

to happiness

so it's real interesting process

that you have to take the responsibility

to see it for yourself i can tell you

about it all day that doesn't tell you

anything

you can think about it all day that

doesn't help anything

when you have the direct experience all

of a sudden there is a lot of

oh wow that occurs

i was telling kama a few years ago that

i wanted to start making a magazine

buddhist magazine i have trouble getting

published because

everybody has different ideas what

buddhism is and when i bring in the

sutas they don't like it so much

so i was thinking well we'll just make

our own

and i wanted to call it oh wow

she's trying to talk me out of it for i

don't know how long now

it's what every student says they come

to you and they say

wow so that's why

isn't it

why is your progress faster with this

kind of meditation than it is with any

other meditation you've ever seen

because every other kind of meditation

you practice

doesn't let go of the craving

and because of that

it leads to a different way

the end result isn't the same as what

the buddha was talking about

this is one of the reasons it's called

the middle path

now when when we talk about the middle

path

everybody thinks about the eightfold

path right

well i truly love the eightfold path but

i don't like the

language of the eightfold path very much

when they say in pali they say sama they

it's always translated as right

but if something is right

then there's something that's wrong that

means you're looking at black and white

right and the eightfold path isn't black

and white

so i don't really like the word sama in

there

so i put the english word

harmonious that gives you different

degrees of color

that you can see with okay

now the eightfold path the way it's

generally translated into english

is right view or right understanding

right thought right speech

right action right livelihood

right effort

right mindfulness and right

concentration

i've changed all of those words

because it helps with your understanding

a little bit more

the first one i change from right

understanding to

harmonious perspective

now what's it talking about with

harmonious perspective

harmonious perspective is

seeing that everything that arises

in your mind and in your body is part of

an impersonal process

every feeling that arises in your body

every emotion that arises

it's actually arising

because from your past

actions and the conditions

it arises right now

what you do with what arises right now

dictates what happens in the future

if you

let's say you're hammering a nail and

you miss

and you hit your thumb there's pain

right

because the conditions are right for

pain to arise

what do people normally do when they

hurt their thumb

curse

jump around shaking their hand oh

i hurt so much i hate that feeling i

wish i wouldn't have done that

now let's take a look at that

who hurt their

finger

yeah i did i hurt my finger

who doesn't like that

feeling i don't

who wants that feeling to go away right

now

i do so there's all kinds of i

i i i that arises

now we're going to go back to the pineal

gland

that our pineal gland it's a gland

right in between these two lobes of your

brain

that controls the endorphins the

endorphins are the natural

painkiller in the body

it's about 10 times stronger than

morphine it really does a good job

what stops that from releasing

those endorphins so you don't have that

pain

anger identifying with that pain

trying to control that sensation with

your thoughts

disliking that whole situation

as a result this is scientific it's it's

really for real this is the way it works

as a result the pain gets bigger and

more intense

and it will last for a lot longer than

you can believe

maybe even a week or week and a half

later

you still have that pain when you hit

your finger and pain

arises you have a choice of what you do

with that

you can hate it or you can love it

when you have pain that arises in your

body what's your body trying to tell you

to do

to hate that feeling and try to make it

go away

or is it saying and crying out to you

hey

love me

it's really what it's trying to do it's

trying to tell you

it's giving you this message

i need love right now i don't need your

anger i don't need your dislike

i need to be loved because this hurts

being a carpenter in my younger days

i went through this quite often but i

understood how mind worked

i would hit my thumb and i would go

wow that hurt

and then i would start sending loving

kindness to it

just surrounding that whole thing with

love

and in a minute or two all those

endorphins that were trapped because of

the hatred

are released because there's not that

tightness

and i go back to work and i forget about

doing it

now this only takes a couple minutes

and i don't feel the pain anymore

this is fair enough that

that works well

so at the end

of the day somebody will look at my

finger and go oh it's black and blue

down there you really got yourself a

good one

then i go what and i look down and go oh

yeah i did didn't i

no pain no throbbing

no not being able to pick things up and

do things with

my hand

it all depends

on what you do in the present

moment and whether you take it

personally

and try to control it or allow it to be

there by itself

and love it

another example

where i live i have a wood burning stove

and sometimes i'll put a piece of wood

in and something will happen and i'll

have a burn well burns hurt

so i look at that and start radiating

loving kindness

and within no

a minute all the pain is gone

it heals in a day doesn't even leave a

mark

so i decided you know this is an

interesting experiment

i'm going to try doing this not

sending any love to it and see what

happens

i'd burn myself it would blister

it would hurt it would last i'd have a

big mark across here

and it would last for two weeks

when i when i practiced loving kindness

on it

next day i couldn't even see where i got

burned now what does that tell you

how to practice loving kindness how

not to take it personally and curse at

it because it isn't the way i want it to

be

you see but it takes practice to do that

i've been practicing this stuff for

years it's more second

nature now another example when i was in

asia i used to walk barefoot

i'd go to a temple and in asia they have

this kind of annoying habit of

they have one level on the floor and

when they put the next part of the floor

in they raise it about an

inch

so you get up in the middle of the night

you have to go to the bathroom

i've broken my toe i don't know how many

times

now what happens when i hit that

my mind says there's pain

and my mind starts to say i don't like

that

and then i go no no no no no i'm going

to send loving kindness into that pain

and i kind of hobble around for a minute

or two and then i go to the bathroom

and come back lay down and go to sleep

get up the next morning and i look at my

foot and it's all bloody

i'm going what in the world happened oh

that's right i

kicked this thing

what do you do with a broken toe

you put a bow on it so you don't do it

again that's about all you can do with a

broken toe it's got to heal by

itself

never took more than three days

i've i've had x-rays on my foot and they

say yeah it's broken

and i go back three or four days later

and say take it again i haven't felt any

pain for a while

how did you do that it's healed

how did you do that nobody heals that

fast

you should be walking around

with at at least for two weeks

with this pain that's unbelievable

no why

because i didn't take that sensation

personally

i saw it for what it was it was a

painful feeling

there's no getting around it stub your

toes sometime and see if you

can agree

but i allowed it to be there by itself

and i started sending loving kindness

into it i didn't take it personally i

didn't try to control the pain with my

thoughts

i allowed that pain to be there and sent

love into that sensation

and allowed the space for it to heal

itself

so when we're talking about harmonious

perspective

the perspective is that

everything that arises it doesn't matter

whether it's a thought

or a feeling or a sensation

you see it for what it is now you say

well i'm in control of my thoughts

you sit in meditation and you think

about somebody that did something and

it got you mad all of a sudden you're

sending loving and

anger thoughts to that person

now did you ask that thought to come up

no came up by itself didn't it

what you do with what arises in the

present

moment dictates what happens in the

future

if you resist that anger and start

blaming other people for your

anger which is really absurd when you

stop and think about it

how can you how can you say he made me

mad

no you made yourself mad

by not liking what happened in the

present moment right

well stop doing that

stop making yourself suffer

there's nothing out there

that causes your suffering

you cause your own suffering

by not liking what arose in the present

moment

and fighting it and judging it and

condemning it

and wishing it was other than it is

here's another example happens at work

sometimes

you start your day off you feel great

walk in and the boss walks up to you and

he's not happy about something and he

starts yelling at you

what do you do start yelling back at him

right

you start disliking him right

you start saying things you're taking

his anger

you're making it your anger and you're

throwing

your anger back at him

so you say things that you wish you

hadn't said and done things you wish you

hadn't

done and then he walks away what do you

think about

what that no good so and so said

but another thing that happens and this

happens with couples quite a bit

they both start talking at the same time

and neither one can hear what the other

one's saying but you think you can

so you know what you said and boy i'm

right

and the other person said well i told

them this is what i said was

right and then you walk away from each

other and you start

justifying that they said this

and i said that oh i should have said

this to him

i'm right they're wrong

and then that same series of thoughts

happens again just like it's on a tape

deck

same word same order everything

who's attached

um

who's causing them self-suffering

can you blame the boss for your

suffering

most people try

but that's not taking responsibility for

yourself right

so here's another way of being able to

handle it

you get up in the morning and you're

happy

you walk into work and the boss starts

yelling at you

and you see him suffering or her

it doesn't matter and

instead of listening to what they're

yelling about

you start radiating loving-kindness to

that person because you see them

suffering

now an interesting thing about a fight

takes two when there's only one

fighting that fight disappears pretty

quick doesn't it

then you can count they calmly say okay

what's the real problem here

let's let's see if we can solve it

and then when you walk away from that

person that was angry

your mind is bright your mind is alert

you're ready for whatever else happens

now when you took it personally and you

started thinking about this and thinking

about that

and how that no good so-and-so was

saying this

about me and all of this

what happens to the next person that you

meet

you still have that anger

and you give it to them

you give them your dissatisfaction you

give them your dislike

how are you affecting the world around

you

i'm teaching you how to affect the world

around you in a positive way

okay by having

the right kind of perspective the right

kind of

view of what arises

everything that arises in it is

impersonal

doesn't have anything to do with i me or

my that's what the buddha is teaching us

he calls it anata but that's always

translated as not self

that's not a great translation

impersonal

is a better translation at least for

english

the next part of the eightfold path

they call it right thought i call it

harmonious

imaging now that sounds a little odd

but what kind of an image do you hold

you think of a person that you don't

like for whatever reason what kind of an

image are you holding of that person

are you in harmony with that image or

are you

disliking that image

a lot of times people hold negative

images of money

everybody wants more but they always

tell themselves they're broke

right as a result the universe is

very confused about what it what do you

want here

you want more money you don't want more

money

right

the image you want to hold of yourself

and the world around you

is one of lovingkindness

one of happiness one of joy

and anytime you feel that image start to

change to something negative you have to

let it go in 6r

don't allow your mind to get into the

negative

see the whole point of doing this

retreat

is learning how to have an uplifted mind

all of the time when i started giving

the instructions in the retreat i said i

don't care what you're doing

you gotta smile

why do you have to smile

because when you smile your mind has a

tendency to be more uplifted

and you can see when you lose that smile

and how you get

pulled down and you see the pain you

cause yourself

by holding this negative image

now the next part of the eightfold path

is called

right speech

and i changed that a little bit too

i call it harmonious communication

now when you stop and think that the

buddha

taught the eightfold path to the first

five aesthetics

that he was directing that eight-fold

path

towards mental development

now who do you spend more time

with than anybody else

yeah yourself

who criticizes themself more than they

do

anybody else ah

is that an uplifting wholesome

kind of communication

um so

you have to start looking at your

thoughts and letting go of the

self-criticism

right

you have to start appreciating yourself

more and more

an interesting thing that the buddha

said was

a person who truly loves themself will

never

harm another br another being

isn't that amazing how do you appreciate

yourself

how do you love yourself by letting go

of those

negative unwholesome thoughts about

yourself

the worries the anxieties that i should

have done it this way i should have been

better than i was i shouldn't have done

that

you start letting all of that go

and start appreciating your good

qualities

and you'll be surprised how much easier

you are to get along with other people

when you do that

because you start noticing that in them

you don't notice the negative qualities

you start focusing more on the positive

qualities

how are you affecting the world around

you

now the next part of the eightfold path

is called

right action it's always defined in the

suttas

as not killing not stealing not having

wrong

or have not having uh

wrong sexual activity no wrong

you're that's that's basically what it

says

but what i do is i say we're talking

about

harmonious movement

now think about it when the buddha was

talking to the first five

aesthetics did he think that they killed

living beings

did he think that they stole

did he think that they had wrong sexual

activity

no so that doesn't make sense does it

but when you change it to harmonious

movement

you don't jerk your mind around from one

thing to another

trying to ignore this and control

that you have to let all of that go

you move your mind harmoniously

that's the kind of action you need to do

with

meditation

the next one i really get a kick out of

because it's a harmonious

life livelihood

i call it harmonious lifestyle

again right livelihood

is not taking any

slaves not dealing in any weapons

not dealing in any poison that's what it

says in the suttas

well what does that have to do with

meditation

well that's just part of morality no the

buddha wouldn't have mentioned it

in the first suta if it wasn't important

for the meditation

what is harmonious lifestyle what do you

put in front of yourself

i had a friend that when i started

teaching her she read three

newspapers every day

and she was always worried about

what's in the news

so i said why do you do that to yourself

what kind of lifestyle are you really

developing for yourself here

stop doing that and stop looking at the

news on the television

you know anything that's really

important

somebody will tell you all the rest of

this stuff is

nonsense it's made to cause fear arise

in you

it's made to make you worry

don't do that to yourself

let go of the newspapers let go of the

anxiety

let go of the news president obama

he's on the news every night giving a

speech to somebody

and he doesn't say anything

why do i need to watch that

i was in burma doing a two-year retreat

it was i was very silent i didn't talk

to people

the only person i talked to was my

teacher

my meditation teacher and i only saw him

once a day i didn't stand around and

listen to what anybody else said

this was in 1990 when russia fell

i didn't know about it i didn't know

about it till 1992

i was a historian i missed the biggest

thing of last century

and i started thinking oh

what a sad thing that is

and then i started thinking about how

does it affect me

nothing's changed doesn't affect me at

all

well why do i feel like i have to know

this stuff

i guess i don't it's just mental

junk

your mind is going to become very afraid

because everything is falling apart who

knows what's going to happen the economy

is falling apart

well i better worry about it why

if you take care of the dhamma you don't

have to worry about anything the dhamma

will take care of you

sounds unreal doesn't it

it really works this way

if i want to go someplace in the world

all i have to do is direct my mind to oh

it'd be nice if i went to europe i

haven't been there for a long time it'd

be good

within a month somebody is giving me a

ticket to go to europe

why does that happen because i take care

of the dhamma

i don't have a lot of worry thoughts

and a lot of people tell me i should be

a lot more worried than i am

i don't do it so much anymore i'm

learning

it used to frustrate her con continually

because she'd come up with this big

thing oh what are we gonna

do don't worry about it

but we need this and we need that we

don't have this and we don't have that

don't worry about it take care of it a

few days later somebody would walk in

and

hand it to us that's the way monks live

they take care of the dhamma the dhamma

takes care of them

we don't have to worry about things all

we have to do is be happy

now the next part of the eightfold path

they call it

right effort right effort has four parts

to it

noticing when there's an unwholesome

state in your mind

letting go of that unwholesome state and

relaxing

bringing up a wholesome state smile

you're object to meditation and

staying with that wholesome state stay

with your object of meditation and

smiling i call it

harmonious practice

because we can carry this practice

with us all of the time

and we start losing that sense of

urgency

and that sense of high emotion about

things

as a result what happens you get happy

well isn't that what the buddha taught

us son of a gun

the next part of the eightfold path they

call it right

mindfulness i call it harmonious

observation

the reason i change the name of that is

because

for 20 years i practiced

mindfulness practice and i didn't know

what mindfulness

was i've read books where there's 40 or

50 pages describing what mindfulness is

and the person that wrote it didn't know

what it was

what is mindfulness

it's remembering to observe

how mind's attention moves from one

thing

to another simple

it's remembering to observe

a lot of people talk about mindfulness

oh my mindfulness is not good because i

did that

or did this no they don't understand

what mindfulness

is

when you start talking about observation

and starts to make a little bit more

sense

now mindfulness one of the

functions of mindfulness is to remember

i read not too long ago a couple years

ago

in an article somebody said well i want

to talk about mindfulness and they had

four teachers and they tried to describe

mindfulness and one of them said

it's to remember to remember

to remember to remember

okay to remember what

what are you talking about at the end of

the article

the guy that was interviewing these four

teachers wrote well i guess we'll find

out what mindfulness is and sometime

later

because none of them had a clue

isn't that sad it's remembering

to observe how mind's attention moves

now the last part of the eightfold path

is really kind of tricky

because they call it right concentration

and concentration although it's a

correct

word it's a misunderstood word

there's a kind of concentration that's

called one pointed concentration or

absorption concentration or ecstatic

meditation

where you're taking your mindfulness of

breathing

and you're focusing only on the breath

right here and you just

focus on that to the exclusion of

everything else around you

and eventually what happens is you'll

have

a sign arise a sign in this kind of

meditation

is like a white disc that comes up in

your mind

okay the buddha didn't really talk about

that that's talked about

in the commentaries but it's not

talked about in the suttas

so i changed the word from concentration

to collectedness why did i pick that

word

when you look it up in the dictionary it

gives you three or four different

definitions a composed mind

and alert mind a mind is very still

a serene mind

now that's closer to what the buddha was

talking about

why do i change it from this one pointed

concentration because there's

bringing the craving into that object of

meditation

people will eventually get very peaceful

and calm

while they're sitting but when they get

out of the meditation they run around

like a chicken with his head cut off

bumping into things causing themselves

so much suffering because they don't

understand

how hindrances actually work

or why the hindrances are important

the hindrances are your teacher they are

showing you where your attachment is

attachment to what

this is me this is mine this is who i

am

all of the hindrances have that eye

in front of it right

that identification that wrong idea

in a personal self and they have it with

all of their thoughts and all of their

feelings and all their

sensations and everything that happens

in life this is mine this is happening

to me

when in fact it's just more stuff

arising

and passing away

so it's real interesting

because in the

dictionary that rice david's uh wrote

he was he has a long section on samadhi

that's the pali word for this

and in that explanation of what he

thought

samadhi is

he mentioned that before the time of the

buddha

samadhi was not a word that was used

the buddha made this word up to describe

a particular kind of mental state

and a couple hundred years after the

buddha died

there was a whole bunch of brahmanas

that took on robes but they were

teaching

anything but buddhism and they started

changing definitions around

and they started calling it

concentration because that's the kind of

meditation that they did one pointed

concentration

and it's kind of stuck

but when you look in the suttas

it's real interesting because

just about every time serenity

is talked about it's talked

in the same sentence with the word

insight

so you're practicing serenity and

insight

hand in hand they're yoked together

if one of those oxen isn't pulling his

weight what happens to the cart

starts going in a circle

never goes in a straight line never goes

to where the end result is that's what

happens when you practice one pointed

concentration

doesn't work

and people now are starting to believe

that it doesn't work we're starting to

see a lot of articles about

there's something wrong with the

buddha's teaching it doesn't work the

way it says

what are we supposed to do with that i

feel like a little kid in the back of

the

back of a major group of people

jumping up and down saying i know i know

i know what you're doing wrong

but a lot of the teachers they're so

attached to the way they're doing it

they won't

look to see whether they're making a

mistake with their practice or not

they won't go to the suttas

and compare what the buddha was talking

about with their own practice

they'd rather go to another teacher

that's making the same mistake and

compare notes with

them doesn't work

when you learned how to recognize

craving

and let it go there's

real freedom there

sometimes it's only for a brief moment

but it leads to the final nibana

so

oh i forgot to tell you i call

right concentration harmonious

collectedness

i am in the process of

editing a book that i wrote

and it has a detailed description of

that so

probably within the next three four

months

by easter time maybe in april or so

we're being ambitious by saying that i

think

tell me about april spring

time

anyway

an interesting thing is

when you practice the six arts

you're practicing the entire eight-fold

path

at that time

when you smile

you're practicing the entire eightfold

path

at that time

think about it

what kind of perspective do you have

when you're smiling

impersonal what kind of image are you

holding

wholesome what kind of communication are

you giving to yourself

and other people around you

well that sounds right what kind of

movement is your mind doing it's

becoming uplifted

what kind of lifestyle are you creating

not only for yourself everybody else

around you

what kind of practice are you doing

having an uplifted mind well that sounds

right

how's your mindfulness very sharp

because you can see when your mind

starts to get heavy and you can let it

go and start over again

is your mind collected when you're

smiling

or is it excited see

that's the eightfold path right there

just with something as simple as smiling

why do i want you to smile all the time

do you see i'm really a sneaky monk

because i didn't tell you that at first

you weren't ready to hear it at first

now a lot of you are starting to

understand it's good thing to smile

look at how much clearer your mind

becomes when you smile

you're following the eightfold path

oh geez

yeah we'll get back to the sachi batana

in another time i think

got any questions

but everybody do you uh

like are you require not recommending

this inhale exhale

now or are you if you recommend

everybody has already developed some

degree

of mindfulness of breathing

and they've already developed bad habits

so i change your meditation over to

lovingkindness for two reasons

one reason is your progress with

loving-kindness meditation

is faster than it is with

any other kind of meditation that the

buddha taught

it makes your face radiant

and it's easier to practice smiling when

you're out there

it's hard to keep your mind on your

breath when you're out there

so you kind of forget it but smiling is

easy

so that's one of the reasons that i

teach it

but this is a kind

of insight meditation

and if we had time i would show you more

maybe next time i come i can show you a

lot more

but it's a mindfulness practice it's an

insight practice

and actually it was talked about

more than the mindfulness of breathing

was

in the mindfulness of breathing in the

sutures it's only mentioned eight times

there must be a hundred sutas about

loving kindness

i never sat down and and

counted them but i know in the angutri

nikaya there's

lots of sutas on on loving kindness and

it's kind of sprinkled throughout all of

the other nikaias

it will take you to the realm

of nothingness

that's as high as it will take you but

once you get to the realm of nothingness

you don't stop meditating you keep

meditating

and you'll get to the realm of neither

perception or non-perception

and then you'll get to the cessation of

perception and feeling

and this is the fast track

i'm used to giving a retreat and seeing

everybody if they follow the directions

get into a drama in the first three days

sometimes it's faster than that

depending

but when i was in thailand they were

talking about if you want to get into

adriana

it's going to take at least 15 years

and i'm showing people how in three days

of course their kind of meditation is

such that they are not letting go of the

craving

and therein lies the problem yeah

specifically something like

states that self-conquest is the best of

our conquest

right so i'm trying to connect that to

what you just said

okay listen that helps you

conquest well that's kind of a

harsh word conquest

and that

um when you're talking about a self

it gets really confusing

so i talk about the taking things

personally

or taking things impersonally

and the eightfold path definitely leads

to that

okay and it's not i guess you could call

it conquest

in a way but it's it's the kind of word

that i wouldn't choose for that kind of

uh verse

it's more of a letting

go

overcoming

loba dosa moha overcoming

you can say conquest but that that

infers that there's a pushing away or

pushing down of something

and letting go means understanding what

they are

and not being attached to them anymore

which for a lack of better word which is

in a sense conquest but you're saying

it's more of an accomplishment or

yes it is it is

just ask you there's many many other

vulgars in the dhammapada i just gave

you an example

right yeah you know and in this case he

did say

it is conquest the word conquer it is

better it is

better to it is better to conquer your

own mind and conquer

whole army yeah that's right that's the

example he gave

and that's what it means that's right so

it is it does sound harsh

yes it does and not saying anything

against

naruto that looks like his book

his english was from old english

where they used those kind of words and

they didn't necessarily mean what they

do

today so we have to kind of update the

language a little bit

soften it a little bit so it gets easier

to understand

is it is it fair to say that these poly

these poly trans translations over the

years

may need certain words not all

yeah may need some tweaking yeah

right i mean it's not because the

original

original no the original we leave alone

but we come up with a definition that

that's more in harmony with what the

buddha was actually trying to get across

and in order to do that and i appreciate

what you're doing you're going back and

reading the original sutra

in pali adiasana in sanskrit

yes there are sutas in sanskrit

but i'm just going to focus mostly on

when you let go craving while you're

doing meditation

reducing the stiffness you sort of go

back to your

objective meditation after smiling and

then you

yeah smile and when you start radiation

already or loving kindness is it

it will subside so is there any waiting

period or

naturally you go back well what happens

with the 6r is it's not

six separate steps like this it's more

of a flow

you know you'll you'll see it you'll

rely

release relax smile come back like that

it'll be like that it will happen fairly

quick

once you get used to doing it

and the brilliant thing about the 6rs is

you can use it in your daily life

well a lot of it is because of the

practice

with meta has been a one pointed

concentration

and they say you have four wishes that

you have to make

may i be happy may i be

mentally happy and physically happy may

i be well happy and peaceful

and you just repeat those over and over

again without feeling the wish

now the feeling of the wish is very very

important

and it takes the meditation away from

the one pointed concentration

and puts it back to the tranquility

kind of practice that the buddha taught

as you see can see i have a lot of

changing to do in this country

but people are starting to change it's

only taken me

12 years 12 years more

13 years

but they're now starting to change at

meditation retreats they're now starting

to tell people

to let go of the pain

relax they're starting to do that

that's amazingly fast

when i came to this country i knew i had

a big chore

ahead of me

and when i started teaching people would

get up and walk out

that's not the buddha's teaching you

gotta note it

you have to focus very intensely right

here

then i'd read the suta to them and say

well that's not quite what it says here

must be that you're using some other

reference books than what the buddha did

and finally after 13 years it's starting

to happen

some of my students tell me that they

can't believe how persistent i am

or how brave i am because of

what i've been doing and more and more

and more people are starting to wake up

to the fact that hey this

really works and it works well and it

works quickly

when i started practicing vipassana i

spent

five years of intense practice figuring

out

what it wasn't before i could start

figuring out what it was

a lot of that was because the teachers i

had didn't speak english

and i had to go through a translator and

that's that's hard

i'd go into a teacher and i'd say okay

here it is

i'd experience this and i would tell him

exactly

what i experienced and the translator

would look at

look at the teacher and give him one

line

wait a minute you didn't tell him what i

told you

and then the teacher would give oh

you know maybe maybe two or three

paragraphs worth of

instruction and the translator would

look back at me and

he said oh you only have sloth and

torpor no don't pay attention to it just

keep going

wait a minute i'm losing something here

it took me a long time to figure out how

to do the practice

and then when i was very successful with

the practice

i found out it didn't lead to where it

was supposed to lead

it had a different end result

well insight knowledges are not

mentioned in the suttas did you know

that

insight knowledges are mentioned in

commentaries

and insight knowledges that are taught

in burma they took the nine from the

vasudi maga and turned it into 16.

then they say well you're supposed to

see

either anitra three or four times very

quickly

or dukkha three or four times very

quickly in a row

or anata three or four times very

quickly

and then you'll have this blackout and

then when you come back

you'll start reviewing all of the

insight knowledges and it happens that

way

but that doesn't match up with what it

says in the suttas

it says very plainly that if you

don't see how dependent origination

arises and passes away you will

not become you will not experience

nibana

now they're caught up in

impermanence suffering and not self

one of the things that says in the maha

vaga

is you can see one or all

of the three characteristics without

ever

seeing dependent origination

but if you see dependent origination

you're going to see

all of those characteristics

what they're doing is seeing just

anitra duke and anata

and they don't they don't understand

dependent origination very well they

don't take it to mean

anything other than an intellectual

exercise

but in the samut nikaya there's 84

discourses only on dependent origination

don't you think that's kind of important

seems to me

and one of the last sutas in that

section

it says how do you find

the the proper teacher and the buddha

said

you go look for someone that can teach

you

dependent origination and how it works

that can show you that how it arises and

how it disappears

that's the kind of teacher you should

look for

makes sense to me i've been teaching you

dependent origination all week

it doesn't sound like it sometimes you

might not recognize it as such

but i have been that's why i said i'm a

sneaky monk

any other question

understanding is that self-criticism

would

make you aware of the shortcomings of

false fears and

would lead to betterment and even some

faith like repentance is

it's unwholesome because

who is criticizing themself

i am

who doesn't like what they've done

i don't

do you see how that craving

is the cause of that

are there different kinds of criticism

well there's constructive criticism

when i am around some people that have

ideas

of what the buddha taught and i find it

doesn't agree with what the buddha

taught

i might show them where it says that

and that's that's showing where there's

a mistake

but there's no name calling there's no

making it personal

there's just saying well i don't know if

that's right or not but why don't you

take a look at this and see what

how you compare with it because that's

what the buddha's words are

yeah and being constructive

it's not being critical in the way that

you're talking about because we

always cause ourselves to feel guilty

about this or that

i should have done better i should have

whatever

but when you see that you make made a

mistake you go

okay i made a mistake now let's fix it

let's not do it this way anymore you

don't have to criticize yourself

to yourself because you made a mistake

some critical and critical analysis is

different from

self-criticism the easiest example is

like your mother dies

and you didn't get there in time and you

were on the way

this is a personal experience so you

come down on yourself as

i should have done this i could have

been there i would have done it this way

and then you feel guilty and you carry

remorse

and you get really down about it and

criticize yourself

for this and that's not healthy not

constructive

exactly yes that's right but while some

mistake appears which could uh you could

by like being aware of it if you could

create it in the future you can be

you can be aware of a mistake without

criticizing the mistake

without clinging to it without clinging

to it without craving in it

okay

it'd be nice to say that we're all

perfect and never make mistakes but we

learn from our mistakes

that you don't have to criticize

yourself because it happened that way

all you have to do is say okay that was

a mistake i learned from that now i'm

not going to do it that way again

and you're aware of what's right and

what's wrong

with your job or whatever you tried this

it didn't work

okay don't do that one again try this

but you don't have to criticize yourself

and say well i was too stupid to

see that that wasn't going to work

you don't have to come down on yourself

what i'm suggesting is that you use a

wholesome

approach to yourself you can realize

that mistakes are made

you did the best you could with the

information you had at that time

you don't have to criticize yourself and

be mad at yourself because you made a

mistake

but you can learn from it say okay we

know that way doesn't work

i had a monk friend in australia and

it was the end of the range retreat and

we

the monks have to get together and sew a

robe

that's what we were doing and this one

monk

tried to make an underrobe

and he would get it all done

and he would hold it up and he'd go ah

that's not right

so he took it all apart and he did it

seven

times and every time he said we learn

from our mistakes

he didn't but eventually he did he got

it right

but he didn't get angry at himself he

just said oh that didn't work

i did i did this wrong i did that wrong

now i have to go back and redo it

he had a happy mind

but it worked

eventually

okay holy cow

may suffering ones be suffering free and

the fierce drug fearless be

may the grieving shed all grief and may

all beings find relief

may all beings share this merit that

we've thus

acquired for the acquisition of all

kinds of happiness

may beings inhabiting space and earth

devas and nagas of mighty powers share

this merit of ours

may they long protect the buddha's

dispensation