How To Give Up Sense Desire

This talk is part of a series on 'How to overcome five hindrances' and it focuses on the hindrance of sense desire and how to let it go.

The five hindrances are different types of dullness, distraction and disturbance that cover and suppress our mind preventing us experiencing clear, beneficial, and peaceful mental states.

This audio introduces the hindrance of sense desire so we can understand how it functions as a negative mental condition and what skills and methods we can learn and practice to reduce sense desire, let it go, and eventually abandon it completely.

Length: 62 minutes

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

Welcome to our fourth class in our series about reducing the hindrances.

First of all,

It's lovely to see you all.

It's really good to have you.

This class we're going to be focusing on sensual design,

Which is a big issue in consumer driven economies.

So we will be discussing what sensual desire is and what it looks like and how it manifests.

And then we'll be talking about some strategies as to how to go about combating and eventually reducing our sensual desire.

Thank you.

Good.

Alright,

Lovely to see you.

Good to see you all come to our class and online.

Welcome to you.

So,

You know,

We've talked about some of the elements of the five hindrances.

We've talked about ill-will.

We've talked about flurry and worry.

We talked about sloth and torpor.

And this is the fourth class,

Which is called sense desire.

So if we're talking about ill-will,

It's not very hard to recognize why that could be considered a negative or even a hindrance.

You know,

That can manifest in so many ways that are detrimental to ourselves and others,

Our relationships and our well-being and our happiness.

But sense desire maybe isn't as obvious as to why that could be considered as a hindrance.

In fact,

For a lot of people that's actually what they are chasing,

What they can see as pleasure in their life,

The things that they might pursue for their relaxation,

Their nutrient.

So maybe it hasn't been perceived as particularly negative.

And even it could be perceived,

And I'm sure it is,

As a positive thing,

A beneficial thing.

And I think today what we're on a public holiday weekend,

Three-day weekend,

There'll be a lot of people out there chasing their sense desires full bore.

And this is a way of finding relaxation and maybe relief from their stress and their busy lives.

And yet,

From the Buddhist viewpoint,

Sense desire is considered to be a hindrance.

And the first thing to say is that it's obvious that we can get some pleasure from our senses.

It's not something that Buddhism says isn't the case.

Obviously you can enjoy things,

You can go to the movies,

You can enjoy music,

Fashion,

All so many things.

But in Buddhism we're talking about our real underlying state of well-being and happiness,

Our peace of mind,

Our contentment,

And our sense of fulfillment in our lives.

So in this way we start to look at sense desire and see how that can contribute to our peace or our contentment or our clarity or our underlying sense of happiness.

And I guess that's the prism through which we need to look further at sense desire.

And this is the context in which Buddhism recognizes sense desire as a hindrance.

But the thing about sense desire is it's more or less it's getting what we want.

It's fulfilling our wants.

So there's a level of,

You could say in Buddhism what's called craving.

It's like we crave to have our sense enjoyment.

And it's like we can't perceive things in a different way,

You know,

Due to our culture.

We've come through an upbringing,

Particularly if you're born in the West,

Where we've been able to get pretty much whatever we want.

And our enjoyment is related to those things.

But the problem is that this is kind of what our mind likes to consume.

But at the same time as we have that strength of liking to consume,

We also then get the dislike,

The things we don't like,

The things that disturb us,

The things that are uncomfortable for us.

And it sort of turns out that as we go towards the things we like,

And if we have a sort of a strong craving for those things,

Our mind also experiences a lot of dislikes,

Things we don't like.

So this is because that underneath sense desire is the mental state of craving or wanting.

And then the flip side of that is the mental state of not wanting.

They come as like a pair.

So one is kind of like the greed for the things I like,

But the back side of that is the ill will or the dislike of the things I don't like.

So we're not kind of immune from the disturbances of all the things in the world that we don't like when we're on this seesaw of like and dislike,

Or sense desire and its opposite,

Sense aversion.

It's like a seesaw.

And as much as we want the sense desire things,

We also keep bumping into the other bits that we don't like.

So the sense desire doesn't really deliver to us a very solid or stable foundation of happiness.

It's a pleasant,

It's an experience of pleasant experiences,

Or it's a set of pleasant experiences,

But they don't really amount to any real happiness.

Even the enjoyment we get is unstable,

You know,

It's dependent on having the things we like,

And it doesn't protect us from the things we don't like.

So we're kind of in this bind that to get our enjoyment,

We've got to sort of go and consume things.

But then we're also subject to the dislikes of all the things that we can bump into,

And our basic mental state by itself is not actually content.

We're caught in this craving and dislike,

That's the nature of it.

If you like,

We can call this a worldly form of happiness,

Or a worldly form of enjoyment.

It doesn't lead to clarity,

It doesn't lead to contentment,

Or peace,

Or well-being,

Or the happiness that we get from it is dependent on things that are outside ourselves.

So it's not an internal happiness,

It's a dependent happiness on that we can consume.

And this is,

Of course,

What we all know.

We all know that we're in a consumer world,

And that the pursuit of happiness through consuming seems to be the dictum of our culture.

And then,

Along with that,

We also see that there's a lot of people that are suffering.

Even people that have can have everything they want.

They can get as much sense,

Pleasure,

Enjoyment,

But it doesn't actually protect them from suffering.

There are people who have got all the wealth in the world and are miserable.

There are people that are depressed.

There are people with all the different mental illnesses.

So the pleasure that we get,

The enjoyment that we get,

Is kind of a band.

But it doesn't give us any underlying sense of peace or happiness,

And it doesn't protect us from suffering.

It doesn't protect us from very unpleasant mental states that we can experience.

It's not actually a foundation for happiness,

If you start to pull the bits.

But,

Yeah,

There is enjoyment that can be had.

And we're not saying,

In this teaching of sense desire,

We're not saying,

Don't enjoy things.

There's nothing wrong with things.

It's the underlying mental states that are going on beneath this idea of just fulfilling our sense desire all the time.

So you could say that this idea,

Or this behavior,

Or this habit,

Is connected also to our suffering.

That this process is part of how we suffer,

Because we don't actually have any underlying mental happiness through this process.

If we just close our eyes,

Our mental state is not necessarily happy because of our consumption of things that we crave.

In fact,

Our mental state could be anything.

Maybe we are happy,

Or maybe we're not happy.

That level of happiness is not coming from the satisfaction of sense desire.

It's coming from our internal factors that contribute to our well-being and happiness internally.

So Buddhism says that you cannot get clarity,

Or brightness,

Or wisdom,

Or contentment,

Or peace,

Or true well-being by following the sense desires,

As attractive as they appear to be,

And as habitual as our following them are.

And that's the hindrance,

That we haven't got another option,

Because we're hooked in,

By habit almost,

To the craving for sensual pleasure,

The craving for sensual well-being.

There is another option,

But we can't follow it.

The other option,

Which can be a track that you can develop your true well-being and happiness,

Is called wisdom.

That's actually a path that can bring you to deep peace and happiness,

But it's not a worldly pursuit.

It's not by following pleasure,

Or success,

Or gain,

Or all the worldly things.

The wisdom thing is 100% inside us.

That's the process.

It's to find our well-being through the cultivation of our mind and the development of wisdom.

And this is not dependent on anything outside us.

It's something that has to be found within.

And the thing about this process is,

As we learn how to purify and clarify our mind,

And quieten our mind,

We start to recognize that along with that,

We start to feel better.

We start to not be shaken around so much.

We start to see that our mental state is more stable.

It's not fluctuating.

It's not knocked about so much by the worldly events.

And the things that we used to react with dislike to,

It's like we have a bit of a buffer to those things.

It's like we have a sort of got a Teflon coating.

We don't bump into things in the world that are disagreeable with the same intensity.

And we have a lot more calmness arising because of this.

So this is the process of wisdom.

And it goes beyond that.

It actually goes to a mind which is really clear and clean and very bright.

And it starts to develop many good qualities such as compassion,

Patience,

Generosity and wisdom.

And then this combination of things is where our real happiness has a foundation actually.

You know,

The worldly happiness has no foundation.

Everything our mind depends on for happiness,

It could be a relationship,

Could be our house,

Could be our job,

They can all disappear.

They can all be gone like that.

But wisdom,

As long as we have a mind of wisdom,

That's part of our mental furniture.

It's part of the foundation of our mental well-being.

So the wisdom actually is a secure foundation for happiness.

And the sort of happiness that can come from wisdom is very extraordinary.

It's not just about pleasant feeling.

It's a wisdom of deep nourishment.

And like it's something that's not easy to even put into words.

But it's something where your mind is nourished,

Like replenished,

Rejuvenated,

Where there's a deep sense of well-being arising all the time.

And whether you've got something that you liked in the sense-desire sense or not makes no difference whatever.

It's not important because that well-being is coming internally.

It's not dependent on externals.

So in Buddhism that's more like looking after ourselves with wisdom or sanity.

So we'll just go around and see how you're going with this idea.

Since what I've found,

Especially after a seven-week holiday,

It's actually sense-desire,

Sense pleasures are actually giving a lot of tightness.

Yeah.

I feel really tired from all these senses.

Chasing around.

So you went overseas and you did a lot of hopping and bopping and running around.

Yeah.

A lot of them wasn't really part of what I would like to normally do as a family.

You kind of have to go along with a lot of things that most people chase for.

So you go for food,

You go for shopping,

Sightseeing and all that sort of meeting up with friends.

It's very overwhelming for the body because you're kind of overstimulated all the time.

And in the end what I actually found that gave me more sort of pleasure.

Not pleasure but more like a balance.

I think I call it a balance.

It was just doing nothing.

Just sitting there doing nothing and just being aware of that moment was even more enjoyable for me compared to just running around doing what most people would think enjoyment would be.

Yeah.

And also I think because of how society always values these sense experiences.

For people who haven't found something different which is the Dharma,

They probably think they're behind.

You know if you're not doing this,

You're not doing that.

All these experienced people have tried and you haven't.

And they feel kind of some sort of nervousness like,

Oh I'm gonna do that.

Everyone's done it.

Yeah it's very fortunate that we have found something that is much more meaningful.

And it does create that place that you feel at home when you actually have seen it before.

But most people they still haven't found it and they're using that as their means of some sort of relief I suppose from the daily stress that they do have.

Yeah.

We're surrounded by sense desires and I think society's set up so much now too that everything,

It's like everywhere you look there's sense desires.

And I know for me the biggest ones have been food and holidays always.

And I'm trying to see things as they really are now.

Like with food,

I'm trying to change my attachment to food.

And so I'm seeing it as nourishment.

I'm eating for health.

I'm eating when I'm hungry,

Not to satisfy emotions or anything like that.

And it's really changed.

And even in terms of,

And this is something I discovered during the recent course,

Like with my car.

I have an attachment to my car.

It's the nicest car I've had and everything.

And I realise now it's just,

It's metal,

It's plastic,

It's rubber,

It's maybe leather.

Imitation leather.

And it's just and you know lots of fluids and it's designed to get me from place to place and keep me safe.

Yeah.

So I'm thinking about it like that rather than having the attachment to it that I had.

And I'm trying to try and put that lens over everything that I used to have sense desires for.

Because I'm about to go back to work after six weeks and I always dread going back to work because you know you look forward to holidays and I need my holidays and I need to rest.

But I'm trying to change my thinking about that.

Yeah.

So that there's not that disappointment as well.

Yes.

You know when the holiday finishes and then even you know I look back on the six weeks and have I done enough with my holiday and all of that kind of thing.

And I think by looking at things as they really are,

A moment by moment,

It helps to stop some of that disappointment as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm finding,

Well we'll see how it goes,

But I'm hoping to find that I'm not craving those things as much or obsessing over them.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Good.

Simon?

Yeah.

Unfortunately our mental health relies on these sorts of things which are by their nature completely unreliable.

You know we we plan a really good day.

We're gonna do this activity.

We're gonna do that activity.

It's gonna be great.

And then something happens and we can't do it and then it's like disappointment city.

Yeah.

But even like if you actually get what you want,

Like a new car or a new piece of clothing or a new tool,

Because of our attachment we get very,

It's very stressful because as soon as you get a new car you don't want to scratch it.

So that's quite,

You get quite worried about that.

You know even with you know lovely brand new tools you know they look they look so new and shiny and it's almost like you don't want to use it because it's it's so beautiful.

So it's stressful.

It's almost stressful straight away.

Even an ice cream ends.

I like to experiment with this.

I like to observe like if there's a baseline,

Right,

This baseline of happiness and then when and it doesn't matter which sense is coming into play whether it's a Tim Tam or a song or whether I'm trying to get something that's pleasurable or push something away that's not.

But I noticed that the pleasure or the happiness like you get this kind of a curve happening.

It increases and then it comes back to baseline and it doesn't matter.

And I like to observe that.

And just this morning I got in a cold pool.

Yeah.

Too cold for me.

I wanted to get out and get in the warm pool and getting into the warm pool was this oh you know and up came the pleasure.

Yeah.

And then within you know 15,

20 minutes,

Then it came again because I was then used to the warm water and back to baseline.

So this observation I find helps me with this.

So that's interesting that idea of baseline because when we're on this process where we're we may not recognize the level of addiction we have here,

Right,

But it's substantial I got to tell you.

When we're on this track which is basically a craving process,

Craving and the opposite dislike,

That's the baseline.

We're running on minds which have a lot of content of craving and ill will,

Like and dislike.

The problem is that those mental states are not enjoyable.

So the baseline is not actually pleasant.

It's a low level of dissatisfaction.

That's the baseline.

It's an underlying dissatisfaction.

So that's part of what drives that sense desire because it's like we have an inner lack of well-being because our mental states habitually are this mixture of craving and aversion.

Aversions may be better than ill will,

Like and dislike.

Those two mental states are unpleasant.

They're accompanied by unpleasant feeling,

Mentally,

Mental unpleasant feeling.

But they're kind of baseline.

They're kind of under the radar.

We can't put our finger on why we don't have happiness,

Why our mind isn't content,

Why we're not peaceful.

It's like subliminal.

It's just this hidden mental baseline or mental state.

And because we've been using craving and aversion as part of our operating system all the time,

It's inbuilt into our baseline or our default mind.

So our default mind is basically at a level of dissatisfaction.

And we don't get our happiness from that.

It's not possible.

We don't get contentment from that.

We don't get deep peace or any of those sorts of things that actually is what we would really like.

If you talk about well-being and happiness,

When we've done courses in the past,

We've said to people,

Why are you coming to the course?

Generally they've said,

Because I want to find some peace.

I want to find some well-being.

I want to find something that makes me feel happy.

So if our basic mental state is dissatisfaction,

And from that we're craving sense desire as our relief,

As our thing that we could maybe feel better as a result.

So you can see how this pursuit of sense pleasure is bound up with our suffering.

That the pursuit of sense pleasure and the minds that are underlying that,

Which are craving or desire and aversion,

Themselves are unpleasant.

But we're kind of locked into them because we're using them for how we chase our enjoyment,

Our pleasure.

So it's kind of ironic that the things we're doing to get enjoyment and pleasure are also causing our dissatisfaction and our lack of contentment.

So this is a vicious circle.

And if you talk about sense desire as a hindrance,

You can see the problem.

Because not only can't we become truly happy this way,

But we're using mental states which are,

In essence,

Unbeneficial.

They're called,

In Buddhism,

Unwholesome.

And unwholesome basically means they can never contribute to our well-being and happiness.

It's impossible.

But the whole process masquerades as where we can become happy.

But the actual content of our mind,

As we go along that track,

Is not really happy.

It's essentially a mind that's lacking happiness.

I didn't ask you,

Mish,

Sorry.

Did you have any comments that you'd like to make?

Or any feedback?

How are you going with it?

Yeah,

A really good topic.

And thank you everybody for sharing.

Because it's been invaluable,

Everyone's little nuggets.

I guess the thing that I keep remembering about this topic particularly is that it's become real pop culture to chase pleasure.

You know,

Don't do it unless it makes you feel good.

That's sort of what I've had that mantra in my mind for a long time,

Probably the last decade or so.

But yeah,

Still feeling quite unsatisfied and suffering a lot from it all,

Which is the essence of what we're all talking about here.

But when you start,

You know,

Just slow it all down and focus on,

You know,

I just wonder,

Like you said,

When you get the benefit from the wisdom,

More so,

My heart just feels so much,

That space in there feels so much better.

And then it just feels more grounded.

So yeah,

That's all I really wanted to contribute.

So thank you,

Everyone.

Thank you,

Mish.

That's great.

So then we're going to go on and talk about how to reduce sense pleasure.

But there's another area of this sense pleasure of why it's considered,

Of sense desire,

I should say,

Of why it's considered a hindrance.

Say there's a monkey and it has,

Or an animal,

Let's say,

And it has some ropes that are tied to its legs,

Its arms,

So on.

And on the end of these ropes are other animals.

So you might say a rhinoceros,

A lion,

Or whatever.

And all of these animals are pulling in the direction that they want to go,

Right?

So the lion's trying to go that way and the monkey,

The rhinoceros,

Is trying to go that way.

And at any one moment,

One of these animals is the strongest.

So when that animal is the strongest,

It's like the monkey is pulled in that direction.

But after a while,

That animal gets tired and another one's the strongest.

And then the monkey is pulled in that direction.

And there's these six animals.

So the monkey is constantly being pulled one way or the other.

It's like there's this tugging going on.

The monkey is being pulled by whichever is the strongest.

And this relates back to our senses,

That actually at any given moment,

One of our senses is the strongest.

It could be hearing,

Could be seeing,

Could be tasting.

And our mind is pulled to that sensation.

So I'd say it's a loud noise.

The noise comes and our mind goes to that,

Or it's pulled by that sense base.

So if you like,

Our mind is being tugged in all different directions.

And so the problem is that the mind itself,

Because of what it has,

It's got attachment to the senses and the sense objects.

This is part of the craving,

That our mind has attachment to these objects,

To these senses.

So the mind gets pulled because of the attachment.

If the attachment wasn't there,

The mind can actually sit in peace.

And the noise comes and the mind doesn't move.

It doesn't get pulled anymore.

It just can sit.

And it hears the noise.

It must hear the noise because there's ear consciousness,

There's ear,

There's the sound.

So it hears the noise.

But because of no attachment,

It doesn't get any drag or being pulled towards that sense or that sense object.

So in that state,

The mind actually has peace.

Because it's not subject to the sensations dragging it away all the time.

So if you like,

Our mind is being disturbed by all of the different things that pull on it in this way.

This is kind of the basis of craving.

There's like a stickiness to all the sensations that appear in our mind.

And our mind gets,

It's not that it's physically moved,

But our mind gets pulled by these different sensations.

So in that environment,

Our mind actually doesn't have peace.

It's disturbed by all of these phenomena that come up.

Now you can see this really easily in meditation.

If you've never done meditation before,

You sit in meditation and what you see is that,

Or what you experience,

Is that you're trying to just sit,

Being aware of,

Say,

Your breath.

But as soon as there's a noise,

Your mind's gone to the noise.

The breath you don't even remember you're supposed to be aware of,

Your breath,

You're listening to the sound.

Then you come back to your breath.

This is the meditation.

Then the next thing,

There's a pain in your knee.

Your mind goes to the pain in your knee.

It's no longer sitting on your breath.

It's pulled away from a single point towards whatever sensation is loudest.

So say a thought comes,

Or a memory,

The mind will go to that.

It's actually,

In Buddhism,

We talk about six senses,

And one of them being the mind.

So it could go to mental objects as well as sense objects.

So the mind is unable to just sit in some sort of stable,

Quiet,

Undisturbed state.

It gets pulled out to all of these different phenomena.

So this is part of why our mind doesn't have happiness,

Why our mind doesn't have contentment.

And it's basically craving.

It's the attachment to the different phenomena that means our mind is always on call.

It's like the phone's ringing every few seconds,

Right?

Then the SMS goes off.

Then someone yells.

Then it's like a constant call of the five senses.

It has to answer all of these things,

All of these phenomena.

It has to go there and respond and see what's that,

What's happening.

Oh,

Look at that.

Oh.

But at the same time,

There's no peace in that process.

So that's sort of like a deeper level of the problem of craving.

So then our next thing is,

Okay,

Well,

What else can we do,

Right?

How do we not be subject to this battering of the different phenomena?

And how can we have a mental state which is essentially happy and peaceful,

Even when all of that phenomena is still there?

So that's where our basic practice as Buddhists is we're trying to reduce our craving.

The Buddha said craving is the cause of suffering.

So the Buddhist practices all are ultimately aimed at reducing that craving.

And the thing we don't know is what is it the mind without craving like?

What is that experience of a mind without craving?

Because we've never had that.

But basically Buddhism says the mind that has no craving,

Its very nature is it's peaceful,

It's bright,

It's luminous,

It's clear,

It has wisdom,

It has compassion,

It has love.

And it's the base of our true well-being is that mind.

So all Buddhist practice really ultimately is to come to the reduction of craving and that the mind's natural state when the craving isn't operating or when you don't have the craving consciousness,

You don't have craving you also don't have aversion because they're flip sides of the same coin.

Then we experience the true natural nature of the mind which is deep,

Deep peace.

And then you don't need the senses.

You don't need,

What I mean,

You don't need to be chasing sense desire because from that view the sense desire is like rubbish.

It's like noise.

It's like static.

And the senses can still be there but the noise goes and the static goes and the disturbance goes and you just have mind with peace.

So you can see why sense desire is a hindrance and why we'd be better off if we could reduce it.

So Buddhism says that some things,

It's a bit like a cloth,

Some things if you had a stain on the cloth,

Say if you had jam on the cloth,

You could wash that off pretty quickly and the cloth would be clean.

But there are other stains which are hard to wash out of the cloth.

They're deep and they're ingrained.

You need to do a lot of washing and craving is like that.

Anger actually is relatively,

If you've got the right practice,

It's a lot easier to overcome because it's like the stain that can be washed off,

Not too bad,

But craving it takes a lot of time.

But we've got a lot of time.

That's what human life is.

It's not like we haven't got the time.

We all got the same amount of time.

It's just how we're using it.

So it's about learning the process through which we can reduce the craving as we live,

Just as we live.

We don't have to be monks or nuts.

We just have to understand that just like our mind has been having these behaviours,

These habits which are unbeneficial,

We have to train our mind in behaviours which are more beneficial,

Will help our mind to reduce its attachment,

Reduce its craving.

So these are the practices that we teach in Buddhism.

Is that making sense,

Ashton?

It is.

I'm looking forward to the next bit,

How to combat,

That's the toughest bit.

How to combat will probably take the rest of your life.

There's no quick fix,

But it doesn't matter because as you go along this path,

The process,

You become happier and happier and happier.

So even if it takes a long time,

You're better off every step you take.

Now we know what the problem is,

So how do we go about reducing the problem?

You can't stop that problem in a quick thing,

But you definitely can reduce it over time and eventually you can stop it.

So if you start with our normal mental state,

And we already had said that there's this sense of maybe a low level dissatisfaction or agitation.

In Buddhism it's said that the mind is kind of wild.

We've never trained it in any particular way,

You know,

We trained it to do things,

But the actual mental state,

Especially this business of how it runs out to the senses,

And that we operate on some sort of foundation of craving or aversion comes a lot.

In Buddhism this is sort of like our mind is going into areas that are not beneficial or operating in a way that's not particularly beneficial,

But we've never trained ourselves to do anything other than that,

Right?

Most times.

So our mental state is that it's easily disturbed,

That our mental state is unstable,

And we don't know what it'll be like in the next minute from now.

We could be angry,

You know,

For all we know,

Because it's like our mind is on the loose.

We haven't got any process of restraint.

We haven't got any process of directing it in a particular way.

This is the untrained mind,

Basically we're talking about.

So if it's going in a direction which is stirring up trouble,

We don't have a tactic or a strategy to deal with that.

It's just we go along with it and we experience the outcome of the trouble,

Which could be anger,

It could be whatever it is,

Frustration,

Jealousy,

Or a number of things,

Depression,

Anxiety.

So the Buddhist approach is basically we have to learn how to train our mind.

We have to learn what that means and then we have to start a process of gradually training our mind.

So in a very simple way we can begin this.

One of the elements that can help is that we learn basic meditation,

Because in meditation we're just sitting with our mind.

The rest of the world is not affecting us particularly.

We're in a quiet place,

We sit quietly,

We might close our eyes.

So we're just sitting with our mental space,

Our mental state,

And in there,

In that condition,

We can start this process gradually training our mind.

So when we sit and maybe we're watching the breath,

As I said before,

We see the mind running off,

Out,

Out to any phenomena that takes our attention,

Or it could get caught up in thinking,

Or memories,

Or the pain in my knee,

Or whatever it is.

So this is the untrained mind running to the different phenomena,

The loudest phenomena.

So gradually,

Not forcefully,

We gradually bring that attention back to the breath.

There's an element where we're gradually restraining that wildness of the mind,

Directing the attention back to the one object that we've chosen to focus on.

It can be the breath,

It could be our abdomen rising and falling.

And over time,

This process of seeing the mind running off and then gently bringing it back,

And putting it back to the object,

You know,

In a relaxed way,

Is starting to tame this wildness of the mind,

Which can otherwise just go and grab anything,

Or get into anything,

Any mental state,

Just you go straight into it.

You've got no way of controlling that process.

But as we're learning to gradually restrain the mind,

Bring the mind back to the breath,

Bit by bit,

We're training the mind.

And then we add to this mindfulness,

You know,

The process of meditation is dependent on mindfulness.

Mindfulness of being able to watch the mind,

To see what the mind's doing.

So we start to see the mind leaving the breath and going off to on a journey.

And if we've got mindfulness,

The journey,

We can maybe cut that journey down from 20 seconds to five seconds.

Then we bring the attention,

Bring the attention back to the breath.

As the mindfulness grows,

It's two seconds.

And then maybe we might be right there,

And we hear the noise,

And we can see enough that the mind doesn't actually go.

It's like we've contained the awareness to the one point that we're looking at,

Gently,

You know,

It's never forceful.

This is about training the mind,

Not beating up on the mind,

Right?

You have to train the mind to not be wild.

And then this mindfulness gives us a capacity to sustain our attention on the breath for longer and longer periods.

And then the mind runs off,

But it's not a big deal.

We see it run off,

We almost can let it run off,

Because in a way we're the observer,

And we can stay in the present,

Seeing the mind go.

And there's another element of our mind that can just watch what's happening,

And can maintain that doesn't run off too,

You know what I mean?

This is all training the mind.

Then another thing is,

This is in meditation,

Right?

So we're keeping our mind contained to the volume of our body.

We're not letting it,

Listen to the kookaburra in the tree,

We're not letting it be disturbed by the chainsaw.

Our attention and our focus is on the physical body.

So we're sitting,

And we're aware of sitting.

We're aware of sitting in the chair,

We're aware of the abdomen rising and falling,

We're aware of the breath.

So our mind has got a boundary now.

It's not free to go anywhere.

We've put a limit,

And the limit is the volume of our body.

So this is,

Again,

It's a training of the mind to quieten down,

To not be so wild,

To be able to not grab at all the phenomena,

All the sense phenomena,

That before we were addicted to and couldn't not grab.

Now we can choose a little bit to not grab.

So we're learning a new mental skill,

The skill of leaving things alone,

You know,

Letting things come and go,

Not jumping onto everything and running with it.

This is training the mind.

This is overcoming the desire of the mind,

The craving of the mind for sense stimulation.

Okay,

So we're not meditating all the time,

Obviously.

We might do 30 minutes meditation a day.

What about the rest of the day?

So this idea of mindfulness,

Which is fundamental Buddhist practice,

Is that we are trying to maintain mindfulness through the day as much as we can,

Particularly mindfulness of our body.

So it's said that this is four different foundations for mindfulness,

For training the mind in mindfulness.

When we're sitting,

We know we're sitting.

So I'm sitting here in a chair now.

I'm aware of my weight on the chair.

I'm aware of the feeling of the back of the chair on my skin,

My feet on the ground.

So I can maintain a level of mindfulness while I'm talking.

And this is what I'm supposed to do.

This is part of training the mind.

If I'm not training the mind,

The mind can be doing anything.

If I'm not being mindful of my body,

I'm letting my mind be out wherever it wants to be.

So there's no training happening.

There's no development of the qualities of mind that I think will help me.

So as I sit,

I'm aware of sitting.

And I don't have to be meditating for that.

I can be having dinner.

I can be driving the car.

I can be wherever I am.

I can be doing that.

When I'm walking,

I'm mindful of walking.

That's the other one.

So first we've got sitting.

Then we've got walking.

We've got standing.

And we've got lying down.

So we use our life as a process of gradually developing this quality,

This wonderful quality of mindfulness,

That we can do it anywhere.

It doesn't cost us anything.

It's not even hard.

You just have to remember.

It actually becomes easier to be mindful than not mindful.

Because mindfulness brings with it a lot of benefits.

Our mind doesn't get tired so quickly.

Our mind's clarity starts to grow.

Our mental state starts to become calmer.

We start to get less tossed around by the things that are happening to us in the world.

So that's easier than not being mindful.

We just have to remember.

And we have to train our mind like this.

Also we have to,

Like Simon said,

We have to note when our mind goes off,

Whether it be anger or whatever our mind goes to,

That's essentially an unwholesome or disturbed mental state.

We have to restrain it.

We have to know that there are antidotes to the unwholesome mental states.

So we have to do something to bring our mind back to being aware in the present.

So there might be a bit of work that we have to do as we go through the day,

Adjusting our mind to get our mind back to the present,

To not get caught up so much.

So we're training in this whole life skill of maintaining and developing our well-being through this process of training our mind.

So it's like our life becomes a process of becoming better and better,

Happier and happier,

This way.

So some of the other tools we use as precepts,

Five precepts,

Are really important because those precepts,

These are to refrain from killing,

To refrain from lying,

To refrain from stealing,

To refrain from sexual misconduct and to refrain from intoxicants,

To cloud the mind,

And to refrain from lying.

And they actually bring peace to the mind.

They sober the mind.

They stop the mind's wildness to some degree.

So we take these precepts in the present,

We recollect these precepts and we think I really need these precepts.

Because it's like giving the mind a support for its journey to quieten down that wildness.

The mind precepts are about taming the mind in wholesome things.

Simon,

You got any other comments?

We'll go around and see what everyone,

What they'd like to feedback,

They'd like to give us,

Or any questions they have.

Yes,

Well I'd like to say that life without sensual desire is far more enjoyable because you can enjoy things for real without the tension and the stress that comes along with sensual desire.

You can get a profound sense of peace without sensual desire.

So it's not,

And it's not about,

Because,

And in general,

We're not trying to stomp out our unwholesome mental activity.

What we're trying to do is just replace our mental behavior.

The unwholesome with wholesome.

With wholesome,

Yes.

So because in the beginning it's like we have a lot of unwholesome activity arising.

So you learn to be okay with that,

But the agenda is,

Well,

But I'm doing something different.

I'm replacing my sensual desire with wholesome activity.

Good,

Okay.

We'll go around.

Brooke,

How are you doing with it?

Yeah,

Exactly what Simon just said is what I'm trying to achieve at the moment,

That sense of peace,

And I've had a glimpse of what that looks like.

So yeah,

Today's teaching has been really relevant to me,

I think,

And has just sort of strengthened my resolve that I'm doing the right thing.

So thank you.

Yeah,

Thank you.

Vinci.

Thank you.

Thank you for your and Simon's teaching.

I mean,

I've been here for over eight years now,

And like still I'm trying to be mindful more than I currently am.

And every year,

And even this trip,

It makes me realize more and more like how lucky it is that we're in Australia,

Because in Asia,

To even try to practice in that hecticness,

And the bombardment of like,

You know,

Sensual pleasure times a hundred,

It's very difficult.

It's even people trying to just to get some sleep to recover,

Rather than,

You know,

Thinking there's extra time to do anything wholesome.

I haven't heard of it before.

So like,

Even just the first day coming back,

Just being like in my bed,

Lying on my bed,

Just being mindful that I'm on my bed,

Even that was like,

Like,

Really precious moment for me,

Going back to Australia.

Yeah.

And I,

I've always had this question,

I think I haven't figured out an answer.

But I suppose,

Because I'm quitting work soon,

That isn't like a big problem for me in the next few months.

But when I noticed that myself,

When I'm concentrating,

Number crunching at work,

I can't really be mindful of sitting.

So that's very difficult for me.

I've never really figured out how,

Rather than just,

Because I've got work all the time.

So like,

Where I can,

When I can,

I just,

You know,

Do some offerings.

And that's how I've been managing to squeeze a little bit more down time during my work time.

But I would love to learn like,

How you'd be able to be working,

But yet still be mindful of your body.

Because,

Yeah,

It's not easy.

Some jobs more difficult than others.

I mean,

There's some jobs you have much better conditions for that.

But when you're,

The sort of work you do,

Intense work on your accounting programs and that,

It's so,

You're so immersed in it,

That it is,

I can understand and I have the same experience myself when I do the same sort of things.

So I guess the thing is,

You know,

It's like,

The conditions can be really supportive to be developing mindfulness right through to,

It seems like it's impossible,

Right?

So the idea is you just try to colonize more and more along that,

You know,

Along that band.

That the easy times,

Can you be mindful?

Yes.

Then it gets a little bit more demanding.

Can you be mindful?

Maybe you work your way along that,

You're not going to somehow be able to fix the most difficult part of the problem,

Or the most difficult time to try to be mindful.

So you just,

Working on your mindfulness means you extend your capacity,

You extend the circumstances,

You bring mindfulness into areas where it wasn't.

And maybe the too hard basket has to be to the too hard basket until there's a point where you've moved along that,

The development process where your mindfulness is strong enough that maybe it can start to get into the work more.

But until then,

You have to work to build it in the areas you can build it.

You know,

Take the ground that's right in front of you,

Not the one right over there that's too hard.

I have the same issue,

Because teaching is very complex.

So it's difficult to be mindful.

But like you advised,

I'm sort of lucky in that I'm a secondary teacher,

So I've got period one,

Period two,

So I can have those short breaks when I change class.

So I've put mindful moments in that.

And I also found physical,

Like if I'm,

I had,

I used to walk upstairs to get to my office.

So every time I walk up my stairs,

I would reset before taking the first step on the stairs.

So it's putting it stuff like that as well.

Yes,

Exactly.

Yeah,

I think this is gold,

Frank,

You know,

These teachings,

These learnings and what Simon said just before about once you figure it out,

Once you can recognize the peace that then comes from being able to simply enjoy,

Knowing that everything comes and goes,

Like,

You know,

There'll be this delight and then it'll pass.

And instead of focusing on that,

Focus on the qualities,

You know,

Like the gratitude that Tim Tams exists.

You know,

Not just the scent enjoyment in the mouth,

That kind of thing.

Yeah,

It's just so important.

And you know that the type of enjoyment changes too,

Because there's a lot of enjoyments that can come that aren't related to the senses.

There's a lot of joy can come just from the wholesomeness of the mind.

And that's a totally different type of pleasure,

If you like.

It's more a pleasure that's associated with peace in the mind.

So the type of diet of pleasure over time is not so much focused on what we get from the senses.

It's byproduct of the development of our purity and our good heart and our wholesomeness brings with it its own enjoyment,

Its own pleasure.

And and this is what I was saying at the beginning,

That that stays in us.

It's not dependent on having to consume something.

You know,

It's a product of our mental state.

So instead of our mental state causing us to suffer,

It causes us to be happy.

So it's a totally different type of enjoyment.

So we transition away from the needing the sense pleasures.

Good.

Thank you.

So at the end,

We do a dedication of merits to share the blessings and the merit of this teaching.

Everyone who's listened has made a lot of good karma.

So we share that.

So Simon,

If you could please read.

May the merits made by me,

Now or at some other time,

Be shared among all beings here,

However many they be.

May the merits made by me,

Now or at some other time,

Be shared among all beings here,

However many they be.

May the merits made by me,

Now or at some other time,

Be shared among all beings here,

However many they be.

May this merit accrue to my mother and my father.

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all my relatives.

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to my teachers and my preceptor.

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all gods.

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all hungry ghosts.

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all enemies.

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all beings.

May they be happy.

And we'll do ancestors too.

May this merit accrue to all ancestors.

May they be happy.

May this gift of merits help all beings.

Know the path,

Realise the path,

Follow the path.

May this gift of merits help all beings.

Know the path,

Realise the path,

Follow the path.

May this gift of merits help all beings.

Know the path,

Realise the path,

Follow the path.

May I be well and happy.

May you be well and happy.

May all beings be well and happy.

May I be well and happy.

May you be well and happy.

May all beings be well and happy.

May I be well and happy.

May you be well and happy.

May all beings be well and happy.