Ringkasan dibuat dengan bantuan AI • Belum diverifikasi
Ceramah ini mengajak pendengar untuk kembali pada kisah Buddha sebagai sumber inspirasi dalam memahami dan mempraktikkan Dhamma. Ajahn Sampasadana membuka dengan pembacaan Karaniya Metta Sutta, menekankan cinta kasih universal, kemudian mengulas perjalanan Buddha dari praktik askese ekstrem menuju penemuan Jalan Tengah dan pengajaran Empat Kebenaran Mulia. Inti ceramah adalah wawasan bahwa semua penderitaan akan berakhir dengan sendirinya, sehingga tidak perlu mencari solusi; ini adalah pemahaman kunci yang membebaskan. Melalui Anattalakkhana Sutta, dijelaskan bahwa lima khandha bukanlah diri, dan memahami hal ini melepaskan kita dari kemelekatan. Pertanyaan mendasar yang diajukan adalah 'apakah Anda siap melepas?' bukan 'bagaimana melepas', karena kebebasan sudah tersedia dan tidak perlu diperjuangkan. Dalam meditasi, ditekankan relaksasi alami, tidak memaksakan, dan menikmati ketenangan, serta praktik metta. Sesi tanya jawab membahas berbagai topik, termasuk kebebasan yang bersifat ontologis maupun peluang, mengatasi kebosanan dengan menyadari pemberontakan pikiran, melepas anak sebagai bagian dari Jalan Mulia, empati berlebihan yang perlu diimbangi dengan perawatan diri, dan penjelasan bahwa diri hanyalah konstruksi untuk navigasi, semua fenomena muncul karena kondisi. Ceramah ditutup dengan pembacaan perlindungan dan harapan baik. Pesan utama yang dapat dibawa adalah pentingnya melepas, memahami ketidak-kekalan, dan menjalani jalan tengah dengan kesadaran dan cinta kasih.
This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who knows the path of peace.
Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech,
humble and not conceited, contented and easily satisfied,
unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways,
peaceful and calm and wise and skilful, not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing that the wise would later reprove,
wishing in gladness and in safety, may all beings be happy,
whatever living beings there may be, whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
the great or the mighty, the medium.
Short or small, the seen and the unseen, those living near and far away,
those born and to be born, may all beings be happy.
Let none deceive another or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill will wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child,
let none be a burden to her child.
So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings,
radiating kindness over the entire world,
spreading upwards to the skies and downwards to the depths,
outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and ill will,
whether standing or walking, seated or lying down,
free from drowsiness, one should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding by not holding to fixed views,
the pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
being freed from all sense desires, is not born again into this world.
Okay, so one of the ones which is interesting,
because we've just come out of range retreat here,
so back to normal, back to work, how to let go.
But have we got the whole thing upside down?
Have we got the question the wrong way round?
It's quite possible.
One of the interesting things, of course, is to go back to the story of the Buddha in this case,
because it is such a complete story in a way that it really drives home bits which we kind of miss,
and it's very easy to look over these points.
So when the Buddha, Siddhartha, has left the first two teachers and is now practicing the austerities with the five monks,
you can kind of understand how it would have led to that,
because the deeper and deeper you go into it, the more determined you become,
the more fixated you become, and that is always a big, big challenge,
because when you find that these things just aren't working,
they give lovely meditations, lovely breaks and everything else,
but they don't really fix the problem.
And so sometimes out of desperation, sometimes determination,
people take on that path, and it's a very, very fixated path.
It's a very easy one to go into because it's almost like a battle of wills.
It's a very strong position, you versus the rest of the universe,
you versus yourself, and only you can do it.
But, of course, it's a very lonely position.
It's very lonely because you have to give up the rest of the world
and all your old relationships and everything else.
It's very lonely because the deeper and deeper you get into it,
the fewer people can speak your language.
You find that you specialise in things,
and very, very few people will understand what you're talking about
or will even understand the point.
But it's also very, very lonely because it's fundamentally built on a disconnect.
You have to disconnect from the very rational part of the back of your mind
that says, you don't realise this isn't going to work.
Waging war against yourself is never going to work,
and if you wage war against yourself, you become your own enemy.
And, of course, the body system and the instincts and everything else
are very attuned to dealing with enemies.
And so this is the challenge.
And they go on and on for this for several years.
We don't actually know exactly how long.
The usual story is that it's six years.
But that six years is from when the Buddha left home to the Enlightenment,
under which time he spent time with other teachers.
And the first two teachers who taught him all the deep meditations,
the jhanas and everything else.
But for all this time, it wasn't working,
as indeed it always does.
And so he has this very important moment
when he reflects back to when he was a child
on a beautiful spring day, sitting under a tree,
surrounded by family and community on a festival day,
and he was so happy and content he could just close his eyes
and go into a deep meditation.
And here he was as an adult on a beautiful spring day,
sitting under a tree, and had never been more miserable.
What had happened?
How did it come to this?
How did it come to the point that he was at the edge of dying,
having solved nothing?
And this is one of the big changes
when we kind of get that moment of clarity,
that big shift.
To say, what happened?
But at the same time, it worked because he still had
that memory of when he was young.
And he could use that under the Bodhi tree,
where he could meditate and find the freedom there.
And what's interesting is when he goes and finds
the five monks some time later,
of course at the beginning they're completely angry with him
for leaving in the first place.
But then they're very quick to welcome him back
because to be, to follow the ascetic path
is a very, very lonely path.
And there's always a little bit of them that would have hoped,
I'm sure, that maybe he changed his ways,
maybe sort of said, yeah, had my little moment,
now we can get back to it.
Like a commander leading his army straight into the mission.
But this time he had a different message.
And what's interesting about it is that
when he first taught the five monks,
he taught them the middle way.
This is the two extremes to be avoided,
basically the ascetic path and the self-indulgent path.
The self-destructive, the self-indulgent.
And none of them got it.
It didn't make sense to either of them.
And that's because it's a very ambiguous,
it's not clear, determined, this is the path,
this is the plan of attack, this is what we're going to do.
It's just a bit abstract for him.
And so he expands to the Four Noble Truths
in which he says that another way of saying the middle way
is the Four Noble Truths.
And I didn't really get that either
until the end of it when the Buddha points out that
by purifying the mind he's reached the end of samsara.
This was his final birth.
And one of them, Kandanya,
got the realisation that everything was impermanent.
And that was his first taste of the enlightenment.
None of the others got it.
Only one of them got it at this point.
But what's interesting about this story
is it's not really clear what the connection is with impermanence.
How did Kandanya make that link?
But really what the question is,
is a big shift again.
Because everything comes to an end,
you don't have to manufacture a solution.
You don't have to create some salvation, some solution.
Because it was all going to come to an end anyway.
All your unhappiness, all your depression,
all your frustrations, all your disappointments,
everything that makes us suffer so terribly
was all going to come to an end anyway.
So all we had to do in this case
was just step out of the way.
And much like when we stub our toe or knock our elbow
or anything else, and it hurts.
But deep inside we know that, yeah, it hurts now,
but give it a few minutes and it will stop hurting.
And this is very, very empowering to understand.
Because even sitting in meditation or daily life,
all the stuff that pops into your head
and goes into your heart and drives you crazy,
it was all going to come to an end anyway.
You don't need to find a solution to it.
Because it comes to an end.
It comes in, it comes out.
New stuff comes in, new stuff goes out.
It changes all the time.
And that's very freeing.
Because part of us desperately is seeking a solution,
a way to control the solution,
to make all the unhappiness go away,
to fix our problems so we can be invulnerable,
invincible, separate.
And it was all unnecessary.
And that's a very,
very interesting position to work on.
To just sit there and know,
even when things are so painful,
they will come to an end anyway.
You don't have to find a solution to them.
You don't have to search to the end of the world,
to the end of the universe,
to the end of time,
to make a solution.
Because it was all going to come to an end anyway.
And the beauty with this is that it continues on.
Now,
according to the Vinaya,
and of course the best versions of the enlightenment story
are in the Vinaya,
they're not in the suttas,
that it took a few days,
they had a few days break,
where they talked more about dharma.
Exactly what they taught,
we don't know.
It's not recorded.
But odds are they were regaining their strength,
regaining their health,
taking a break.
And that's when the Buddha taught the next great part of it.
The Anattalakana suttas is how it's recorded as.
Where he introduced two new ideas.
Because the problem with letting go as such,
it's a lot of work.
You have to constantly be mindful,
you have to constantly evaluate,
you have to constantly try and remove these things.
It's exhausting.
And you know,
you can even bring a state of terror that
you're afraid of living with yourself,
that if you forget your mindfulness for a teeny weeny little bit,
it can traumatize you,
because you're afraid of what will happen.
What will pop into your mind,
and how to deal with it.
And yet,
the part of the Anattalakana sutta is really interesting,
because it starts off by saying that
everything is not self.
And by everything that means
the five khandhas,
the way the Buddha has classified
the universe, basically.
All materiality,
all the solids, liquids, gases and energy in the universe.
All the experiences,
all the feelings of that.
All the perceptions, the thoughts,
the analysis, the understandings,
the thinking and memory attached to that.
And then,
the sankharas,
basically, which means our agenda,
our will, our desire, our wishes,
our preferences,
what we're going to do with this,
our responses.
And then the consciousnesses that are attached to that,
which is basically everything.
And he goes through that and says,
none of them are actually what we are,
because
if they were really ours, we could control them.
In which case,
there would never have been any point to salvation anyway,
because no need to search for salvation
wouldn't have happened in the first place.
There would have been no reason to feel any unhappiness.
That disconnect, basically,
meant we didn't understand what was going on.
And so, when we get deeper into that,
because the Buddha says,
if this stuff was really what we are,
if this is truly me, truly mine, truly my property,
then I would be able to tell it what to be.
I could say, oh, I'll always be young, fit, handsome, healthy,
and always have great times
and never have any difficulties whatsoever.
And you can't do that.
And the second point is,
because these things are empty,
because these things aren't what we are,
we don't have to worry about them.
We don't have to save ourselves in that sense,
because they never really hit us anyway.
All these things, there's no owner behind them.
Stuff comes, stuff goes.
And so the real question is,
not how do I let go,
but are you ready to let go?
Finally.
And of course, that's a very, very different question.
Are you ready to let go?
And of course, if I line up most people,
if I spend the next six months surveying people
who come to the monastery and generally,
and ask them, are you really ready to let go?
I would say 99% going, not really.
The vast majority of people aren't ready to let go.
And if you ask most Aussies,
they give you the good old classic, yeah, no.
Which for those outside of Australia means,
yes, I hear what you're saying, but no, not interested.
But it's very, very empowering to know what this is about.
Because there's, you know,
for 2,500 years we've been talking about this.
And it's interesting to know
why we're still talking about these people,
these men and women who have found freedom
through understanding this bigger picture.
It's not just a belief system.
It's not just a superstition.
It's not just a story.
It is directly available in that sense
that all we have to do is step out of the way.
All we have to do is give up the attachment to it.
But understanding the attachment is the important bit
because the whole reason we attach onto these things
is because we're desperately trying to find
something to hold onto, some foundation,
some way to navigate the world.
It's really important for us to navigate, you know,
to have points of reference, to say this is me, this is you,
this is our relationship, this is good, this is bad,
all these metrics we use in order to survive.
It's really, really important and it's really, really useful.
Just the problem is it was all just an idea.
And so we don't have to spend our lives trying to fix our mind,
trying to fix our heart, trying to fix all the problems
that come inside of us, trying to fix our health,
as in, yes, we want to look after our health,
we want to look after our mind and everything else,
but we're never going to be able to fix it.
We're never ever going to make it perfectly immune,
that it will never screw up, that it will never be unhealthy,
it will never be miserable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It will never let us down.
But it was always going to happen that way
because that's just the nature of life.
And that is one of the weird twists is that the solution
was baked into the problem all along.
The fact that everything was always going to fall apart is freedom.
The fact that everything doesn't belong to us means that nothing stains us.
But it's connecting to that which is the challenge
because you have to experience this for yourself.
This is kind of the problem is that for the vast majority of it,
we're still operating.
We're still operating on a system based on how do I fix X, Y, Z?
How do I solve this?
How do I free myself and everything else?
When you really understand the situation,
there's no effort really required.
The vast majority of it is leading up to that realization
that you're free all along.
You didn't have to worry about this.
By freeing the mind, so to speak,
by purifying the mind, as the Buddha said,
it all comes to an end
because we're no longer being attached to things.
This is all the stuff that's in the second noble truth.
We want it to be like this or we don't want it to be like that.
And if we can't have our way, we want to find some distraction,
some way to escape some, you know,
and the way we escape is in these sense pleasures,
in pleasant tastes and sounds and exciting experiences
and all kinds of things to take us away from the present moment.
To take us away from the difficulties, from the pain,
from all the things that we have to go through in life.
And so understanding that makes such a difference.
It was always going to come to an end.
And so sitting in your meditation, just knowing that,
like when you stub your toe or knock your elbow,
when unpleasant things pop up into your mind
and thoughts just go on and on and on and on and on,
they're all going to come to an end anyway.
You don't have to worry about them.
They're just scenery.
They're just stuff that you can just forget about it
because they won't actually encroach in your space
unless you let them, unless you pull them in.
And that's the beauty of the whole picture.
You don't have to pull them in.
You can just let them slide on.
And so this is one of the big, big things.
When you're settling down in meditation,
what are you basically doing?
We're relaxing.
But a lot of the time at the beginning,
it's a forced relaxation.
It's kind of an artificial relaxation.
We're trying to calm things down to make it happen.
But realistically, as Ajahn Chah very beautifully said,
you know, it's the leaf on the tree.
When the winds blow,
the leaf moves.
But when the winds stop,
the leaf stops.
It settles down all on its own.
And that's a big, big shift
in our relationship with ourselves
because all of a sudden,
we don't have to fight to let go.
We don't have to fight to relax.
We don't have to create or manufacture some happiness.
One of the subtleties, though,
is that we kind of expect on letting go
that everything's going to be wonderful and blissful
and happy and marvelous and no troubles
and so on and so on.
Interestingly, because love and hate
are two sides of one coin,
both of them are natural.
Both of them are still possible.
It still resolves on a choice.
So it's your leaning towards these good qualities
to see the good,
and to develop it,
to see what is harmful and what is miserable,
and to let it pass by,
to not buy into it.
It's the ultimate scam artist
because it's never going to give you anything.
It's very attractive.
It's very attractive to get angry and furious
and wage war on everyone.
Oh, it's jolly attractive.
But it comes at a hell of a price.
It's just not worth it.
Compared to the happiness,
you can allow these things to rise.
And they settle down so much quicker,
so much easier.
And a meditation becomes so much enjoyable
because you don't have to create it.
You don't have to manufacture your meditation.
It's just a matter of settling in,
being in the moment,
enjoying it,
because this is a tragedy.
We're running away from ourselves all the time.
We're running away from each other all the time.
And then when we're trying to meditate,
guess what we're doing?
We're running away from ourselves again.
And we don't have to do that.
It's so wonderful to not have to run away,
that even when things are so painful,
because this is the difficulty,
is that it's a spectrum of experience.
Sometimes it's lovely and pleasant
and just happens all on its own,
which is fantastic.
But sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes it happens miserably
and you're all tense and tired
and things are going crazy.
How are you responding to this?
That's of course a big question.
How are we responding to this?
We're still looking for a solution to it.
We're still trying to fix the problem,
to make it go away,
to become something else.
Which is all the stuff in the Second Noble Truth.
And yet, by understanding that this stuff
comes to an end all on its own,
so even when unhappy stuff comes in our meditation
and aches and pains and everything else,
like when you knock your elbow or stub your toe,
knowing that they're already going to come to an end,
you don't have to worry about them.
If you're mindful enough,
you've seen so many thoughts, so many feelings,
so many emotions passing by,
none of them are really special.
None of them are things you have to worry about.
They're all just stuff.
None of them are really something you have to worry about.
And this is what makes it interesting,
because once you can clear that away,
all of a sudden things like the loving-kindness,
the compassion, the joy, the happiness,
the heart that can contain the entire universe
was always there.
It's so easy to find it,
because there's a natural inclination towards it.
You've seen the harm in the self-destructive,
you know, waging war on yourselves.
And yet, now it's on the table.
Your preference is automatically going to go to these better states
because they're the only thing that's rational.
Everything else in this war is a lose-lose scenario
and unnecessary.
So in this, the joy becomes so natural.
It's so easy to access.
You don't have to worry about things,
even when all the crazy stuff that happens,
and I live in a pretty crazy place sometimes.
You don't have to worry about them.
Stuff comes, stuff goes.
And this was the big, big insight that Kandanya had
in hearing the Buddha's first teaching,
that the freedom was already there.
You don't have to manufacture it.
You don't have to wage war on yourself.
Because deep, deep down,
we're constantly experiencing the world.
We're seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
the whole works.
And it's painful.
It wears us out.
How many of us have, after a long day,
we just want to go into a quiet room,
switch off the light, and not see, not hear,
just disappear for a little bit,
just switch off for a little while.
Pretty much everybody at some point in time
just wants some little quiet place
where they can disappear for a bit.
And so in that, you can relax a bit.
You can recoup your energy in the meditation
and in your daily life.
Because so much of it is trying to escape from that pain
because it blocks the mind.
It dulls the mind.
It oppresses the mind.
The mind wants to be free,
and it's constantly trying to solve things.
And yet,
the freedom was already there.
Because it was all going to come to an end anyway.
So it's very, very empowering to understand
what the Buddha taught,
not just because we've been talking about it
for 2,500 years,
but also that there are so many different ideas.
There are so many arguments, so many other things,
so many fake gurus, so many promises.
And indeed, for as long as human beings have been around,
there have been people very anxious
that a mindless person and their money are very soon parted.
Whereas, being mindful in this case,
you don't have to buy into all these scams.
You don't have to worship all these false idols,
all these false promises
of some happy ever after
by buying XYZ and so on and so on and so on.
The happiness was already there.
It's just a matter of saying,
are you ready to let go?
Finally.
So, we've been going on for 29 minutes.
Shall we jump into the meditation?
Just have a little bit of things to chat with everyone first
because some people said that the voice is not loud enough.
Does anyone have this problem as well?
Ooh.
They've got it.
They put in a new microphone system.
Which is just out of the camera here.
Sounds good?
I think some people...
I think...
Mine is perfect.
Okay.
Okay.
I will...
If...
Like...
Eddie, you're still able to hear it clearly, right?
Yes, clear, but not as loud as usual.
Because you...
It was the same till last week.
Because you and Sky speak so...
So I can hear you loud.
But from the...
From the BSWA, maybe like 75% didn't use one.
Okay.
So, if it is not a very urgent problem,
I will communicate with Venerable Vosanga, I think, later on.
So, we will continue the session as usual first.
Is that okay?
Okay.
So, thank you very much.
All right.
So, as usual, everybody, please stand up.
Give yourself a bit of a stretch.
Give a wiggle.
Adjust your cushion.
Do all the things you need to do.
And that way, you can settle in.
Hopefully, none of you are doing a runner.
That was a great talk.
Okay.
Now, we can begin to settle in.
And when you're ready, you can close your eyes.
And the first thing we want to do is just check our relationship with ourselves.
Check how we feel in our chair, on our cushion.
For the first few minutes, it's perfectly okay to move as you like.
Because as you relax, the joints change shape.
They open.
They move.
So, you'll need to just settle in.
And as we relax and settle in, try to connect to the part of the mind that's ready to let go.
That's ready to relax.
That's ready to put all this down.
And link that state of mind with your breathing to help it all work together.
At the beginning, this might feel strange and awkward.
Because so many things are happening and settling down.
And that's okay.
They settle down on their own accord and connect with the state of mind that's happy to just be with the breath.
That is happy to just settle down and be here.
For that's all we need to do.
And now, imagine a beautiful garden.
A garden filled with flowers.
This beautiful, peaceful place.
And imagine picking some of these flowers.
And then imagine someone very close and dear to you.
And offer them a beautiful flower.
To say thank you for being in my life.
And I wish you all the happiness in the world.
And imagine as many people as you like.
Who you love.
And offer them a flower too.
And then imagine all the friendly and ordinary people in your life.
And share a flower with them too.
To say thank you for being in my life.
And I wish you all the happiness in the world.
This beautiful garden is filled with flowers.
They will never run out.
So imagine all the people who you have challenges with.
Who are difficult in your life.
And offer them a flower too.
Offer it with the wish that we might not have got along all this time.
But maybe we can change things.
Maybe we can improve our friendship.
So thank you for being in my life.
And I wish you all the happiness in the world.
And finally, have a flower for yourself.
To keep it in your pocket whenever you need it.
A reminder of the joy and the happiness.
And thank you for being in my life.
And I wish you all the happiness in the world.
And when you're ready, you can open your eyes.
Hey, welcome back.
Hey.
Any questions?
Eric, please unmute yourself.
Thank you, Ajahn, very much.
May I ask a question?
Just to clarify.
When you were offering your wonderful talk, you mentioned several times that the peace or happiness, I'm paraphrasing, you know, is already here.
Or already, you know, present.
Or was always present.
And I'm just asking to clarify this.
Were you pointing to the opportunity?
Was the opportunity always available to us to let go in that way, as you were describing?
Or were you speaking ontologically, like there's a kind of ever present, unchanging, always, sort of imminent, peaceful, you know, ineffable something, awareness, you know, that is, or nirvanic state, so to speak, that is always there.
We just, you know, have covered it over with our ignorance.
But ontologically, it's always there.
Versus there's always the opportunity for changing causes and conditions so that the mind rests in happiness.
Or something else.
Just asking to clarify that.
Actually, it's a bit of both.
There's always the opportunity to let go.
Because as long as we keep identifying and trying to fix the problem and holding on and trying to wage war and everything else.
These problems will always arise.
Because they arise according to conditions.
When this is, that is.
With the arising of this comes the arising of that.
At the same time, that happiness and unhappiness are two sides of one coin.
It doesn't mean that there's sort of an absolute permanent happiness there that underlies everything.
Unfortunately, it's not there.
So the thing is, is that it's all empty.
And that's the thing, is that the moment that you reduce all these things down, there's less and less and less and less and less.
And for a significant part of that, that's very nice.
It's very blissful and very enjoyable.
But it does get to an interesting point.
This is a simile called the two sheaves of reeds.
That when you can refine the mind down to its finest point, it's just consciousness and its object.
And when one of them falls, and they're propped up against each other.
And when one of them falls, the other falls with it.
So essentially, this is one of the strange things about the depth of meditation.
That the ultimate state of mind is that it switches off.
Which is a bit strange.
Because if there was sort of an ineffable permanent happy ever after, it's not supposed to do that.
And that's what the deep emptiness is all about.
So in a sense, in a daily life context, the opportunity is always there.
But when you remove everything, the emptiness is sort of the ultimate level there.
So it's kind of a bit in between there.
But it's a very, very good question.
But it's a very subtle one.
So I hope that helps.
Yes, thank you.
I was...
There's a number of Buddhist...
Buddhist practitioners I know.
And some teachers who talk about it.
Not in so much in the emptiness cessation way that you've described.
But more in the...
There's a persistent, ineffable, timeless something, quote unquote.
And that's where I was trying to clarify that.
You know, there seems to be some discrepancy even in the Theravadan tradition there.
Between those talking about timeless citta or consciousness outside of time and space.
And cessation or extinguishment or emptiness.
You know, where it all comes to ceases.
And that's my own view as well.
The cessation side of it.
But was just curious, you know, in terms of clarifying that with respect to your wonderful talk.
So thank you very much for your response.
I appreciate that.
The interesting thing to add to that is in the Anattalakana Sutta, it's a very all-inclusive position.
So when the Buddha says that all states of consciousness are impermanent.
He's really laying down the law a bit there.
He's sort of saying that there's nothing other.
There's nothing outside of the five khandhas.
And that's really challenging for a lot of the modern sort of philosophical positions.
But when you read that text, you can really see he's not leaving anything out here.
So, yeah.
That's a big one.
Okay.
Oh, Eddie, go first.
Eddie, please.
Okay.
Thank you, Venerable, for your talk.
You did mention about we always run away from our feelings and try to find distraction.
My question is about how do we stay with boredom in meditation when you feel like dull or you feel like, you know, just kind of boredom?
Mm-hmm.
Stay with that feeling.
What is the best way to deal with that when you meditate for, say, one hour or so?
Hmm.
That one's a very good one to check a relationship because what the mind is bored of is nothing,
is the emptiness of just sitting here going, what am I supposed to do?
You know.
This is an interesting thing is what's really happening is that the mind is showing you
what's really there all the time.
It just doesn't want to be there with nothing.
And so it tries to escape.
It tries to get away with boredom.
Boredom is the last thing the mind wants because it starts to disappear.
And in this one, it becomes a very, very big shift in changing that relationship is to enjoy the boredom.
Because what have you got to run away from?
There's nowhere to go.
Right?
You can't get on a plane and fly to some other corner of the universe where it's going to
be okay.
Wherever you are, it's going to come with you.
So the boredom as such is sort of the mind rebelling against the present moment because
deeper and deeper, there's not a lot really happening and the mind really suffers with
that.
And yet you change it around and going, no, this is how it is.
This is life.
Life is full of boring stuff and it's full of challenging stuff.
And it's to enjoy the challenge.
To really enjoy being with whatever comes up.
To kind of expand your scopes in a way.
And that's really enjoyable.
So it's sort of that boredom is never oppressive, never is a reason to run away.
Because what is it that you're afraid of?
That's the big question.
So we just stay with that, Ajahn.
And do we need to find causes or do we need to analyze or when boredom appear in meditation,
do we just stay with that?
In a way, the challenge is that it's kind of a dualistic position.
It's the experience of this is me and I'm experiencing boredom.
And in that...
As long as you're running on that system, then it's kind of a sense of you have to learn
how to sit with it, to be familiar with it and everything else.
But ultimately, when you see that this is just a response mechanism, you don't need
to worry about it.
You really don't need to analyze it at all because it's not really going to tell you
anything other than what's already there.
And that's very freeing.
But at the same time, when the mind is really struggling,
struggling with it, then you can change it.
You can bring in more happy memories or more beautiful experiences to express the joy,
the happiness, the loving kindness, the compassion.
You can add some positivity into it.
But the biggest happiness is just to leave it alone because it was all going to come
to an end anyway.
Even boredom.
So I hope that helps.
Yes.
Thank you, Ajahn.
Okay.
Yep.
Diane.
I think Lisa has a question.
Oh.
Do you want to speak?
Lisa?
Oh.
You might be muted.
We can't hear you.
Oh, yes, we can hear you now.
You can?
Yeah.
Can Ajahn hear me?
Yep.
All good.
Oh, it's come off my headset.
Silly thing.
Is that okay?
Yeah.
Okay.
This is probably, it's a bit of a big one, Ajahn.
It was about like always searching for solutions and letting go.
Right.
So this year, I'll just give a, I just want to give a snippet because it's quite personal.
I've had probably the worst year of my life, which is not exaggerating.
So I had a lot of death this year.
And I've had my family implode, basically.
And I've got two adult, young adult sons that have been caught in the fallout of all of this.
So to the point they won't talk to me.
So there's been quite a lot of nasty stuff and cruel stuff that's gone on.
So there's been.
There's been immense suffering that I'm getting help about.
But it's been, yeah, it's been unbearable suffering at times because they've been my life, those boys.
So I had, I kept, I was the one who kept trying to find solutions.
That's the good word for it, what you said earlier.
And I've been trying to keep reaching out and be there for them and stuff.
But I keep hitting brick walls with them.
That they currently, they've got their own suffering going on and they don't want to talk.
So I thought the other, just a couple of weeks ago, because trying to keep finding solutions has caused me more suffering.
And more like getting depressed and things.
And I thought, I thought I have to let them go.
Because they're young men, they are independent.
And me keep trying to find the solutions and sort it out is making me suffer enormously.
So it's been a very tough decision because they're my sons.
So they still know they can call me and talk to me and I'm here for them.
But I, yeah, it just hit me.
I said to myself, I have to let them go.
Yeah, so that's a big thing as a mum.
Like not cutting them off.
But I have to not keep trying to find the solution here.
Because it's been unbearable.
Yeah, so that's that.
One of the big challenges is that when people, particularly young men, it's very, very difficult when they're feeling change and pain and everything else.
It's really hard for them to cope, to understand things.
And what they often do is they, they will shut down and they will rebel against it and push back.
So a lot of the time it can be that they're just struggling to find their way and to cope with the pain that they're feeling.
And there's always the opportunity that they may sort of eventually come back.
So that's, that's always a possibility.
But it's a hard one.
Yeah, it is a hard one.
But yeah, the letting go, that's, was a, those words just came to me the other week.
I have to let it, let, let them go and not try and keep, I wasn't at, at them, like intruding on them.
But it just wasn't working at all.
Yeah.
So, but, yeah, I have to let it go.
Yeah.
And this is, this is one of the hardest things about the practice as such, is that when we're not ready to let go, we won't.
And sometimes we have to try and force ourselves to find a solution.
But there does come to a point when that clarity comes in and we say, we can't fix this.
We have to let it go because trying to find that solution is just more and more and more suffering.
That's all second noble truth.
And the third noble truth is, is to let go.
But it's, it's good to keep at the same time finding that inner strength, that inner happiness, because that will help you go forward as well.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing.
I'll ask my question.
Yeah.
Thank you, Jen, for your talk.
So recently I was, how to say, really learning to be kind to myself, like under all sorts of circumstances.
I used to like, I still do, but I set myself for doing that.
I used to like really force myself a lot, like treating me really harsh.
I think I now can see how harsh I was treating myself before.
But I understand that that is also like sort of like coping mechanism that I was using without realizing it fully.
I mean, I still, I still notice that come up from time to time, but I also feel like I can be more kind to myself.
And then one thing that come up to me is like, I feel really painful.
When I interact with other people, like it has to do with the sort of people that I'm interacting with.
But like there was like always a very, a very intense sense of pain underlying all sort of relationship that I'm having.
Like they can be good or they can be like quote unquote bad in any sense.
And I was, when I was asking myself why I was feeling that, I feel like the answer is like, I'm very in tune with other people's feeling.
I do not realizing I was doing it so much, but I recently started to like be aware of how much I was doing this.
It's like the moment I'm with, together with that person, my mind is like,
my mind will go all on to that person.
Like I will start to observe different kinds of the body gesture and the facial expressions and everything, the energy and stuff.
And I will start to unconsciously, like now it's, now it's like a little bit like aware of it.
And I will start to unconsciously change my behaviors.
Mm-hmm.
To adapt to, to that person.
And this is, this make me feel really, I don't know, I just feel really painful.
I think this is one, one source of suffering that I was having because I, I do like being alone a lot of the time.
But I am not able to enjoy interaction with people that I like.
I mean, spiritual friends or stuff.
And then, yeah.
And then I felt like it's, it's causing me a lot of stress as well.
But I, even though I'm aware of it, it's really hard to, I don't know what to do about it because it's like I trained for 20 years.
I trained as a professional.
I trained for this kind of stuff.
It's like just noticing and then, and then just, just like trying to, it's like there's no me in that.
Mm-hmm.
And so everything I do is like I try to get in tune with that person.
And then, yeah, I was just wondering what, what I can do about it because I, I want to, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what I can, I really don't know what I can do about it.
Yeah.
Thank you.
This is actually one of the interesting things.
Is that on one hand, when we're not being mindful, there's all this stuff that we're not aware of.
That we're doing unconsciously, subconsciously, so to speak, that we just completely aren't aware of.
And it's astonishing that a part of the mind believes that hating ourselves, punishing ourselves is a good rational coping mechanism.
But it does believe it.
It's really, really strange.
And the more and more you observe it, the more fascinating it becomes.
So a lot of this is, is sort of a good way of looking at it, that this is a real adventure going.
This is so weird.
How does the mind really believe this is going to work?
But at the same time, what's interesting and challenging for a lot of people is at the beginning we say, oh, be mindful, be aware of all this stuff.
And when people start to become more aware, one of the big questions they ask is how do we get this to shut up and go away?
And that's a big one.
Unfortunately, a lot of it is understanding exactly the scope of what's going on.
And the more and more we see it.
The more and more we can see how complex it is.
Because one of the big, big problems of human beings, unfortunately, is we love this idea that very, very complex problems and situations can be solved with very, very simple solutions.
It does not work.
Right?
So that's where it gets interesting.
Because a lot of the times we're convincing themselves that this is an easy solution.
We can find the way.
Haha.
Afraid not.
But what's really fascinating and great about this system is that when you become more and more aware of how this is empathy, this is sort of an over-empathization, when you can really be sensitive to people and then all of a sudden you feel how much suffering it is, all these things that you really struggle to get along with people, all of a sudden you can see, okay, we're going too far.
We can ease back a bit.
We can lean more back in towards the middle way.
And so we can be a bit more kind to ourselves in that way that we don't have to be hypersensitive to every little detail that things do, that people do.
And that's very, very freeing.
But a lot of it is within the mindfulness.
A huge part of this process is understanding just how all this works.
All the things that we do without realizing it.
And why we do them.
And then all of a sudden we can say, hang on a minute.
We don't have to do this at all.
There are other ways of living.
There's other ways of thinking and feeling and expressing.
And we don't have to feel these long-standing habitual ways of doing things.
Because many of our responses to people, why we want to get away with them, is habitual.
We find them stressful.
We find them painful.
We want to get away from them.
Sometimes we can be very, very sensitive.
We can see straight away, you know, the kind of patterns that people are following.
And we just have an instinct, get me out of here, you know.
And we incline towards being on our own in that situation.
Which can be a coping mechanism.
But sometimes we have to do what we have to do.
We have to be rational on this one.
But the thing is, the more you look deeply, the more you understand all the traps that we fall into,
all the things we do and have been doing that we weren't at all aware of that were really harming ourselves.
And we can start to question that.
How did it come to this?
What happened?
How did we arrive here?
And when we can really see the solution was in the problem, it becomes quite clear we can let it go very easily.
We don't have to worry about all this.
That sort of makes sense.
Yeah, I think it's like, it's the system that built up from my parents.
And fortunately, I'm no longer a child.
And they are no longer the parent back then as well.
And I'm no longer the child back then as well.
And I think it's like, I'm learning.
I'm trying to learn to be an adult.
Basically be an adult.
And stand up for myself.
When I felt like people go too far.
But I feel like it's a long journey to go.
And yeah, thank you very much for your advice.
Thank you.
Diane, please.
Thank you so much, Artan, for that wonderful talk.
So as the Buddha said, and as you say, everything that we are experiencing, all our emotions,
all our senses, our thoughts, our perceptions, just everything, everything is non-self.
If it's non-self, not self, then what is it?
And what causes, what's the cause for it all to arise?
Because it certainly feels like it's all happening to a self.
But if it's not self, then what is it?
And then what causes all these very, very familiar mind states and stuff from happening?
It's very habitual.
So yeah.
Do you understand my question?
Yeah.
It's a big one on the grounds that the self idea is really, really important to us.
Because this is how we navigate the world.
So it's really, really useful to have a sense of self.
And it's sort of impossible to not have one to an extent because all these experiences are happening within this body and mind.
It's, they're local basically.
And because we've been experiencing them so long, they're basically the same things, just different variations on them.
So it's not really like new stuff is happening or that they're very, very different.
They're just different forms of feeling sensations, feeling emotions, feeling thoughts and everything else.
And the more and more that you watch them, the more and more you find that they're not actually that special.
That's a bit of a hard one for a lot of people.
Because deep, deep down, we kind of want to feel that there is something special, something unique about us.
And the more and more that we investigate it, the more we realize the architecture of the mind,
it is not that impressive.
The way it's built, it makes all kinds of assumptions.
It's very energy conservative.
So it makes all kinds of little cheats.
All this information we've built up over our life, it's all secondhand information.
And we've built in, you know, bought into it.
How much of it is disinformation or misinformation or just outright nonsense?
We often aren't even aware of all the stuff that we bring in.
But it's extremely convenient.
And we want to do so.
And this is kind of the problem.
In order for us to navigate the world, we've built this idea of self.
And it's often arisen from childhood.
You know, this is your brother, this is your sister, these are your toys, clean up after, da-da-da-da-da.
Your mum and dad are telling you all the time.
So it's basically programmed into you right from the beginning.
So how it arises as such is that it's an idea that we've just taken for granted.
And that we've just run with.
Because it's so practical.
It works.
But, you know, like a screwdriver is fantastic for putting screws in the wall.
It's pretty useless for cleaning windows.
It's pretty useless to doing all these other things.
So we've basically invested in this self-identity as our most precious possession.
And it turns out it was just an idea all along.
So a lot of what's happening is that these are just...
Processes.
This is just the body and all its stuff, the mind and all its stuff.
The more and more you look at it, it's just like movies and TV shows that are on endless remakes and endless repeats.
It's the same character but, you know, different actors, different costumes.
And in that sense, all the stuff that we feel, that we think, the more and more you watch them, the more you realise that they just come and go.
They're all interactive.
They're all relative.
And this is what the dependent origination part is about.
Is that if there was truly an individual self here, it shouldn't be that way.
In the pre-Buddhist Upanishads, it says that the self is...
It consumes nothing and nothing consumes it.
Which means it's completely independent.
It's completely self-sufficient.
It needs nothing.
It is completely self-contained.
Actual, realised, et cetera, et cetera.
And the more and more you look at it, it just isn't there.
Because if we were completely independent, completely non-relative to the rest of the universe, we wouldn't be in any trouble in the first place.
Because it would be possible to say, I will never experience any unhappiness.
I will never get old.
I will never get sick.
I will never have any problems.
And that's the Anattalakana Sutta in a nutshell.
It's not possible to do that.
All this stuff arises and comes into your life without your invitation.
And that's true, isn't it?
Yeah, see, that's the challenge.
Is that because of all this stuff comes into our life without our invitation, the way we navigate it is very, very convenient to navigate it through an I, a me, a mine.
And it makes us feel safe.
It makes us feel able to function.
That we can move forward.
That we have a future.
That we can potentially even find some happiness.
If we study right and get a right career and find the right partner and X, Y, you know, so on and so on and so on.
But these are still more ideas.
And when you look at it, this body is just solids, liquids, gases and energy.
This mind is just thoughts and feelings and experiences.
And, you know.
All the rest of the candors.
What actually is there that is Diane?
I really like what you said about we're nothing special, really.
Because when you said that, I thought, oh, yeah.
So, for instance, we've had so many emotions throughout our whole lives.
The same emotions time and time and time again.
And it's like a broken record.
We just keep having them.
And I sometimes think, when is it ever going to end?
Because it's just going to be the same story, isn't it?
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And that's the problem.
That's the problem.
And that's really the whole point of the foundation of sort of the First Noble Truth is that because we have this body and mind.
This is what it's going to be.
This is what we want to do.
And that's kind of the problem.
You know, we can't switch off seeing, hearing, smelling.
We can't switch off feelings as we'd like.
So because we live in this world, we are going to experience those things.
But a lot of these thoughts and feelings that come up, when you look at what they're related to, they're related to an I, me, mine.
And the more that you study that idea.
And the more you see they're just stuff that come and go.
That they're all going to come to an end anyway.
They're not worth holding onto.
If they come, they come.
If they go, they go.
It doesn't matter.
And you can find a lot of joy in that.
It is possible to, you know, all of a sudden compassion is relevant.
The loving kindness is relevant.
And this is a big one.
So it's the more and more you, you know.
As I said before.
At the beginning, we teach people to be mindful.
To see their thoughts and feelings.
And then when they start being mindful, the question is how do I get this to stop?
And it's like, well, they don't stop.
As long as you keep on fueling them, they will keep on going.
And that's the thing.
By purifying the mind, so to speak, is just by emptying the mind.
Because it was empty already.
That's the Ajahn Chah simile with the leaf on the tree.
As long as the winds keep on moving the leaf, the leaf moves.
But when the winds stop, the leaf stops.
So there's a lot of freedom in that.
Are there any more questions?
If no, then we will call it an end to tonight.
Thank you very much, Ajahn, for joining us.
Would you mind to leave us with a blessing?
Okay.
Ngati me saranang anyang.
Bodho me saranang warang.
E te na satya waje na sotite.
Ho tu sabada.
Ngati me saranang anyang.
Dhammo me saranang warang.
E te na satya waje na sotite.
Ho tu sabada.
Ngati me saranang anyang.
Sangho me saranang warang.
E te na satya waje na sotite.
Ho tu sabada.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you, Ajahn.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You all be well and happy.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ajahn.
See you again soon.
See everyone else next week.
See you then.
See you, Scott.
Bye.
.
.
.
.