Culture Of The Noble Ones

Adam Mizner's Dhamma Talk on Culture of the Noble Ones. Adam Mizner has dedicated many years to the in-depth study of Daoism, western Hermetics and the Buddha Dhamma. He is initiated into and teaches methods from these traditions. He is a senior lay disciple of Ajahn Jumnien in the Thai Forest tradition of Theravada Buddhism. This deep spiritual background has a large influence on his approach to internal development teaching.

Please note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

We come from different cultures and we come here for another culture and then there's the culture of the noble ones,

The culture of the ariya.

The culture of the noble ones is compounded of two components,

Developing and letting go.

If you only have half,

The path does not work,

The culture is incomplete.

Hearing that Buddhist meditation is described as the path of letting go and words such as emptiness and detachment,

Sometimes people become wrongly empty and let go into negative states because they're not developing the positive states.

It's very important to balance the two.

It's important to balance developing and letting go.

So what do we develop?

We develop sila,

Samadhi and panyas.

Sila is our restraint,

Our conduct.

We restrain the senses,

Restrain your body,

Restrain your speech and restrain your thought.

Without restraint there's no sila.

It's not greatly important to run around doing good deeds but it's extremely important to restrain your conduct.

If every time we're unhappy with our situation,

We lash out at the people around us or we express our unhappiness,

We whinge,

We bite at people,

We're not restraining our speech and our conduct,

Then we have no sila.

We could claim that we're letting go and that we don't care but really that's not true at all.

What are we letting go of?

Good conduct.

What we need to let go of is the defilements,

The kalashas of the mind.

We need to develop samadhi.

Without samadhi the mind is busy,

Distracted and cannot be tamed.

So we can talk about vipassana and the higher qualities of recognizing emptiness,

Recognizing anatta and breaking through to nibbana.

But if the mind has no samadhi it doesn't work,

It's just scattered.

So it becomes the only philosophy and devoid of practice.

Extremely important to develop samadhi.

In the beginning this means shamatha.

Like we just did,

Any form of shamatha will do.

Any of the 40 basic meditation objects are good enough.

The ability to still the mind and to make the mind tranquil.

The ability to rest the mind on an object.

Samatha is not concentration,

It is resting the mind.

These are very different.

For years I practiced concentration.

I could concentrate very well.

I could concentrate until my nose would bleed.

But it did not give me peace because it was just a heightened and highly refined form of stress.

Samatha is tranquility to rest the mind on an object.

Like resting your hand down on your knee,

Then the hand becomes tranquil.

But if you press the hand into the knee continuously it gets tired and burns out.

It can't be maintained and it's stressful.

It's like concentrating on the object.

So when you practice shamatha,

Learn to rest your mind on the object.

That's why when we do breath meditation you have to approach the breath with metta,

With love.

You have to have affection towards your breath.

If you don't have affection towards something you won't want to rest on it.

If you imagine trying to snuggle up with somebody that you didn't like at all you wouldn't relax very much.

You'd feel tight and averse the whole time.

But if somebody that you're fond of,

It's easy to be affectionate towards you,

You can rest easily.

You have to cultivate a feeling of affection towards the meditation object.

Whether it be the breath,

A kasina,

A buddha image or anything that can evoke that feeling of affection.

Gentleness.

It's important that the meditation object is not something too special.

That's why the breath is so good.

The breath is very ordinary,

Very everyday.

Because it's so everyday,

It's always there.

We can easily be disenchanted with it or not see anything special about it.

This is the problem of the mind that's always looking for stimulation and always looking for something new.

Part of the practice is to learn how to be affectionate and to absorb into something very ordinary.

Very everyday and there is nothing more ordinary and everyday than the breath.

That's why it's a recommended meditation object.

Doing this daily we develop the beginning and basic stages of samadhi.

But this is not right samadhi,

This is not samma samadhi,

This is just basic samadhi,

Basic tranquility meditation.

It's still bound up with right and wrong,

Still bound up with the kinder,

Still bound up with self,

Therefore it's not samma samadhi.

Right samadhi is resting the mind on the middle way.

The middle way between existence and non-existence,

The middle way between good and bad.

When we cultivate good and we cling to the good it leads to the heavenly planes.

When we cultivate evil and we cling to the evil it leads to the lower planes.

Up or down are both stuck within samsara and not free.

Only when we don't go left or right and we traverse the middle path can we actually be released from left or right,

Be released from up and down,

Be released from samsara.

Samma samadhi is the samadhi of staying on the middle way,

Staying in emptiness,

Free from attachment,

Free from clinging to becoming and free from clinging to non-becoming,

Free from ignorance.

So we let go of the causes of stress,

The collations,

And we develop positive causes,

The perfections,

Letting go and developing continuously.

If you only let go the mind becomes empty,

And I don't mean recognizing emptiness,

I mean empty.

When it's empty new things have to fill that space.

So we release our defilements and then a new one jumps right in there,

We release one habit,

A new one jumps right in there,

We release one addiction,

We create a new one.

This is the path of the worldling trying to give up negativity,

It doesn't work.

You must develop positive qualities in its place.

When we release ill will it's no good to become dead like a piece of wood,

You have to release ill will and replace it with metta.

When we release jealousy you must replace it with mudita,

With appreciation.

Without developing letting go doesn't work.

And without letting go developing doesn't work.

The culture needs to be balanced.

Developing and letting go,

The culture of the noble ones.

So when we look at any dharmic system,

Whether it be Theravada,

Mahayana,

Or Vajrayana,

We can see the culture of the noble ones clearly there,

And then you can see the culture of the country it's existing in.

So you can see clearly what is Dharma and what is the outer trappings.

The outer trappings have a purpose.

They're like the hardwood on a tree,

They protect the core.

Without the bark and the hardwood on the outside,

The core will get damaged.

The culture of developing and letting go would not be protected.

So we have the monastic order,

We have rites and rituals,

And the culture of that tradition.

They're important to keep the teachings alive.

Without them the teachings would be lost because there'd be no Sangha.

And the Sangha are who keep the teachings.

So in your practice,

Constantly develop your sila,

Your conduct.

Look at your own conduct.

You don't need to follow the five precepts,

The eight precepts,

The ten precepts,

The two hundred and twenty-seven precepts.

Follow the ultimate precept of watching your mind.

Look at your own conduct.

Is your conduct skillful or unskillful?

Is your conduct creating stress for you or those around you?

If it is,

It is unskillful.

Therefore it is to be.

You should let go of it.

Relinguish it.

Renounce it.

From the relinquishment there is peace.

If your conduct creates stress for you or those around you,

Let it go.

And develop conduct that creates peace for those around you and for yourself.

There is not a separation.

Creating peace for those around you is creating peace for yourself.

Creating stress for those around you is creating stress for yourself.

Creating stress for yourself create stress for those around you.

Being stressed out stresses those around you.

We affect our surroundings and we are affected by our surroundings.

So it's no good to talk about,

I'm detached,

I don't care what they think,

I'm free.

What you need to be free from,

What you need to be empty of,

Is empty of the defilements.

Seeing not self is a huge part of the path.

But it's no good if you see not self and,

Okay,

I recognize now that all my atrocious mental qualities and terrible habits are not truly me,

So what doesn't matter,

I'm just going to indulge in them freely.

Or being able to enter deep Samadhi and have an empty mind,

Okay,

I can empty my mind for 12 hours at a time,

But then when I come out,

The mind still has kalashas,

It still has defilements.

The emptiness of an arahant is the emptiness,

Empty of the kalashas,

Empty of the defilements.

How do we empty our self of defilements?

By letting go and developing,

By developing and letting go.

If you continuously let go of the defilements and don't feed them,

They starve out and die.

By letting go in the small moments in life.

How do we do that?

By vipassana.

And what is vipassana?

Vipassana is the seeing of not self,

Directly seeing not self.

So in the sit we just did,

We did breath meditation,

And you allow the mind to absorb into a single object,

To rest on a single object.

When it does this,

The mind gains tranquility,

Peace,

Detachment from the body.

The body no longer creates pain for the mind.

The mind falls into a peaceful state.

But the mind is not ultimately peaceful,

The mind is bound up with trouble.

Thoughts and perceptions come and go.

So then we have to have the tranquility of vipassana,

Where the knowing quality is separate from the peace of the mind or from the non peace of the mind.

Body separated from mind,

Mind separated from knowing.

Then when we have trouble in the body,

You can see clearly this body is not self,

And then let go of the stress and trouble that you are going to make around that feeling in the body.

So I feel a little bit sore today,

I've got back pain,

So you start whinging,

You take it out on everybody else around you,

And you're generally crabby.

So you can talk about how the body is not the self,

But the body pain is making you into an awful kind of self.

So the theory isn't helping.

You need the tranquility to separate the mind from the body so that the pains of the body don't affect you.

This can only be achieved through training.

Philosophy cannot help you.

Theory cannot help you.

Only through enduring pain,

And then separating the mind from the pain,

Can you achieve that skill.

Sitting still is a good way.

Standing still is a good way.

But still,

The deeper,

The more skilled you become with the mind,

The more skilled you become at settling the mind into Samatha,

The more you realize the nature of the mind is to be busy.

If you ask a beginner meditator,

Yes,

I'm quite my mind is to,

You ask a senior meditator,

It is the nature of the mind to jump around,

Because they can see clearly.

Beginners,

They're in such a drifting days that they miss what's going on.

People with high skill see the small movements of mind,

Perceptions,

Consciousness arising,

Falling away.

So we see the nature of the mind.

The nature of the mind to do this,

To do that,

It doesn't stay still,

It can become still in jhana and then come out of jhana and it moves again.

So the knowing has to become separate,

Separate from the mind,

So that the ongoings of the mind are not stressful for the knowing.

Then whatever happens in body or mind is not a problem.

So now the mind could be stressed out,

It could be thinking about this,

Thinking about that,

And instead of that making us crabby and affect ourselves and everyone around us,

We see mind is not self.

Everyone can intellectually understand body is not self.

But actually you're better off taking the body as a self than the mind.

At least the body will last you 80 years or so.

It changes but it's still the same body.

It's slightly reliable,

Okay?

It's still here.

The mind is not that reliable.

Your mind changes every second.

You're not the same person mentally you were five minutes ago.

The mind is completely unreliable.

So to take the mind as self is even more stupid than taking the body as a self.

Yet that's what people do.

We identify with our intellectual views,

We identify with our political views,

We identify with our intelligence,

We identify with our spiritual tradition,

We identify with being peaceful,

Being happy,

Being gentle,

Being compassionate.

All the qualities of the mind that come and go.

When they come,

See them for what they are,

Just qualities of the mind and let go.

This is letting go.

See what arises,

Recognize it for what it is,

Know it for what it is and let go.

A cause of stress arises,

You see it arising.

This is mindfulness,

Sati.

Without mindfulness you don't see it arising and you're already stressed out and you didn't see the cause arising.

This is called no sati,

No sati.

Already stressed,

No sati.

Already speaking,

Less than no sati.

Already yelling,

Less than that again.

Totally gone,

Totally attached,

Totally absorbed.

When you detach from yourself,

You have space from yourself,

You become objective.

You can see something coming up,

Oh I'm irritated.

That's sati.

Seeing irritation is sati.

See no,

Know the nature of it.

Irritation is just something happening in the mind,

It is not self.

It is separate from the sati,

Separate from the knowing.

Why get caught up?

Let go.

See,

Know,

Let go.

See,

Know,

Let go.

Pain,

Pain arises.

See pain,

Know that's just body,

That's just feeling,

Let go.

Or we don't see,

Pain arises,

We're distracted,

We're watching a movie instead.

We don't see our body or our mind.

Pain arises,

The subconscious is ticking over,

We don't see that either,

No sati.

Now we're stressed out and in pain,

Body's locked up,

Bitter,

Twisted,

Emotionally disturbed,

Not letting go.

The cause of stress for ourselves and for others.

So because of that,

Because we're very unskillful,

We turn to distraction.

TV,

Lovers,

Drugs,

Alcohol,

Sleep.

These are the primary ones.

Friends and lovers are together.

TV and movies,

Entertainment,

Sense distraction,

Distraction with people,

Drugs,

Alcohol,

Sensing and sleep.

Distraction,

A way to blur out our mindfulness so we don't even know ourselves at all.

You're so caught up in the entertainment you forget your body and mind.

You're so blurred out from the drug or alcohol you forget your body and mind.

You forget your stresses.

So we call this no sati.

It's void of sati,

Empty of sati.

This is the wrong emptiness,

Completely wrong emptiness.

You must be full of sati,

Empty of defilements,

Empty of collations.

So we need to develop good qualities,

Like a good quality of renunciation,

Renouncing this entertainment,

Renouncing drug and alcohol abuse,

Renouncing excessive sleep,

Renouncing the distractions.

Perfect meditation is simply being completely non-distracted all the time.

If you can relinquish distraction and be non-distracted,

Then you are perfectly mindful.

Your sati becomes Maha Sati,

Great mindfulness.

When you have Maha Sati,

Your mindfulness is always there.

It's quick,

So quick that you could call it timeless.

It's right there.

When something arises in the five khandhas,

The mindfulness is right there to know it.

It sees and knows immediately.

Sees through to not self immediately.

So there's no cause and effect chain for suffering to arise.

At a very basic level,

At least we can use it to control our speech and actions.

Bare minimum,

The lowest level of skill is controlling your action.

One up from that is controlling your speech and up from that is controlling your mind.

So it's already gone right down,

But if we're actually acting physical,

Like we're in real trouble.

We must control our action by,

At the very least,

Control your action.

Restrain your actions,

Restrain your speech,

And restrain your mind.

Sila.

Restraining the mind,

Keeping the mind on one object.

Samadhi.

So Samadhi is sila.

Restraining your view into not self so that you see everything as not self.

Banya.

So you could say there is only sila,

There is only restraint.

When you let yourself run wild,

There's no restraint and there is no peace.

There is only stress.

There is no letting go.

In the beginning when people start developing the skill of letting go,

You must develop skills like a metta to balance the letting go.

Otherwise you become like an empty dead piece of wood.

Of no benefit to those around you.

Wrong letting go.

Empty but not empty of collation.

So the perfections,

Charity,

Metta,

Equanimity,

Renunciation,

These skills must be developed willfully.

They will not grow on their own.

They do not just happen as a result of meditation.

They do not just happen as a result of taking refuge or thinking that you're a Buddhist or wearing amulets or anything else.

They must be developed.

They are skills that need to be developed.

When you develop them instantly you have peace.

Instantly.

The moment you are being kind to somebody you're at ease.

If you're being an ass to somebody I guarantee you're not feeling good.

No chance.

It cannot happen.

When you're taking from somebody you don't feel good.

When you're giving to somebody you feel great.

Develop the perfections and you feel happy.

When you feel happy at ease with yourself it's easy to enter samadhi.

When you develop samadhi your mindfulness becomes quick.

When your mindfulness becomes quick you can let go quickly.

You have sati,

You don't miss the things that you need to let go of.

Correct letting go is not letting go of social values,

Not letting go of right and wrong.

No.

It's letting go of your own evil.

Letting go of your own defilements.

That's what we need to let go of.

What drives us to distraction?

That is what we need to let go of.

What makes us bitter and angry at people?

That's what we need to let go of.

Let go of anger,

Let go of greed,

Let go of delusion.

The most simple is greed,

Anger and delusion.

That's what we let go of.

We don't let go of what the wise ones think about us.

We do what is praised by the wise.

So it's no good just to let go of everything.

Like that's a sociopath.

Sociopath is let go of what other people think.

They're a long way from an arahant.

Developing and letting go,

Hand in hand,

Like climbing a ladder.

You need left and right hands.

If you try to climb the ladder just with your right hand you fall down every time.

You keep stepping onto the sand step every time.

If you don't develop it's like that.

If you don't let go it's like that.

So for your personal practice you need to decide what you want to develop because we can't develop all the good qualities at once.

I'm going to develop patience.

The way I do it this year I'm going to develop whatever quality.

That's how I do it.

Don't think you're going to do it in a week or a month or two months.

If you can do it in a year,

Well done.

And when I say this year I mean every day this year I'm going to focus on developing this quality.

So you make it your go-to,

Your primary skill set.

No matter what happens in my mind or body or the minds or bodies of those around me or the situations around me I will develop patient endurance.

Kanti Palami.

That's one example.

So you can use that singular skill to deal with almost everything.

Almost everything.

You can deal with it.

Or no matter what happens in my mind or body,

The mind or body,

Mind and bodies of those around me or the situation I'm in,

I will deal with it.

I will develop Meita.

I will develop kindness towards it.

So you can patiently endure leg pain or you can have kindness towards your leg pain.

You can patiently endure those around you or you can have kindness towards them.

You can patiently enjoy the situation you're in or you can have kindness,

Gentleness towards it.

Put any of the perfections in there.

We're not Buddhas.

We don't need to suddenly manifest the ten perfections.

We can use one and become a great being.

Just one.

Just one will give you peace and peace to those around you.

But just to think,

Oh yes,

That's right.

I heard in a Dharma talk I have to develop and let go.

Okay.

It doesn't help.

You need specific training.

The training is choose what you will develop and develop it wholeheartedly for a long time.

Not a week,

Not a month.

Until it becomes who you are.

Not something you do.

Anything you do is too slow because you have to fabricate it,

Think about it,

Make it,

Fake it.

It must be as natural as taking your hand off a hot plate when you touch it.

You don't think,

Oh what's that burning smell,

You know,

What's going on,

I should take my hand off.

No.

You take it off before you even know what's happening.

It's part of,

Part of who you are.

We flee suffering that well.

You need to develop skillful qualities with that same skill and speed.

And then the skill of letting go.

So you can start by letting go of the opposite quality of which you're developing.

Because if you,

Let's say you're developing kindness but you are maintaining ill will.

So you can force yourself to develop kindness but you're not letting go of ill will.

Well it's not going to happen.

You must let go of the negative and develop the positive.

Let go of the negative,

Develop the positive,

Empty the mind,

See through to not-self.

Let go of the negative,

Develop the positive,

Empty the mind,

See through to not-self.

This is the path,

Nothing else.

So we need to consciously let go of the negative.

What is a negative about me?

Look at yourself,

Reflect nakedly at yourself,

Look at yourself.

What is my primary negative quality?

Then you have to go to war with yourself.

You must go to war with yourself.

You must annihilate that quality,

Let go of it and replace it with the positive quality.

Anything else is faking it,

Anything else is just talk.

Go to war with yourself.

We call Dharma fighting.

Battle yourself,

Battle the collations.

Ajahn Chah says,

Whatever it wants I don't give it.

It is his mind.

Whatever it wants I don't give it.

So that means when you're hungry you don't eat.

It's his practice method.

If you sit down for your one meal a day and there's any desire or hunger,

Don't eat.

Only when you're completely over it can you eat.

So that's one method.

It's not the method for everybody but it's an example of going to war with yourself.

When you go against yourself you can find peace.

Bind yourself and you shall be free.

Apparent freedom,

Free speech,

Free emotion,

Free action is actually completely bound up and chained by the collations,

Painful for self and painful for those around you.

It doesn't work.

If it worked we'd all be happy because we've all been trying that method for countless life cycles.

Not many people go against themselves.

We all go with our desires.

We all embrace our aversions.

We all be cranky when we're cranky,

Lustful when we're lustful and everything else.

But still we're here because we're innately not satisfied with life because it's unsatisfactory.

So we need to find something better.

What we need is developing and letting go.

So I ask you to choose a quality that you think will work for you and to develop it and to let go of the causes of stress as they arise.

They arise in the five khandhas,

In body,

In sensations,

In perceptions,

In mental formations and in consciousness.

They arise right here,

Right now.

We don't need to go out and find the Dharma.

You don't need to go out to search out anything.

It will come to you because it arises in this body and mind every time.

You don't need to run out to find special situations to cultivate the perfections.

Right there the people around you,

That's who you need to learn how to do it with.

With your partner,

With your parents,

With your students,

With your teachers,

With your friends,

With your workmates.

They're the ones you need to cultivate the perfections with.

We don't need to run into Africa to save the poor people.

You don't need to go out to find the Dharma.

Suffering will arise right here.

Just sit still and see how much suffering comes up.

That's why we change.

Why do we change our posture?

We desperately run away from suffering.

A desperate attempt to flee suffering all the time.

So how do we go to war with ourselves?

Don't change your posture.

Don't change your posture.

More pain,

Don't change your posture.

More pain,

Look at it.

Okay,

There is pain.

Pain is not self.

See clearly.

I don't mean recite the formula in your head.

Learn how to see.

Look directly at it till you see very clearly that the pain is just pain.

It's just something happening.

It's just phenomena,

Natural.

It's very natural.

It's very ordinary.

See it as ordinary as that breath moving in and out.

What's the big deal?

Let go.

Don't make an issue out of it.

When you stop making issues out of everything,

Then you become a peaceful person.

Everybody likes peaceful people.

They're pleasant to be around.

Then most of the time most people around you will become more peaceful.

They become saturated with your peace because it has that effect.

And if you do not just let him go,

But you also develop the matter,

Develop compassion,

Develop appreciation,

Develop equanimity.

These affect the people around you in a very profound way.

People become peaceful around you,

Become happy around you.

Then what do you know?

You have what you're probably striving for.

Peaceful,

Happy friends and family and acquaintances and peace and happiness for yourself.

That's what most people want.

Not even talking about spiritual heights,

About basic life.

So that we can have a good life,

A good day today,

A good day tomorrow.

Develop and let go.

Try to use reflection.

Try to look objectively.

Try to use wisdom to see what needs to be developed and what needs to be what you need to let go of.

Very simple,

Easy to understand,

Easy to do.

The tricky part is the mindfulness.

You must be quick with the mind.

If your mindfulness is dull,

In other words,

Stupid if you're dull.

I don't mean non-intellectual.

I mean slow.

You miss the boat.

If you miss the boat every time,

You're slow,

You're dull,

Ignorance.

Mindfulness is not on time.

Mindfulness is a few beats behind.

Then your negative characteristics have already flared up and you're already enraged and you've already made negative karma and you've already screwed up.

You've already screwed up.

You must develop the mindfulness to be fast.

So to do that,

You need strength of mind.

How do you develop strength of mind?

By training the mind to remain still on an object,

To hold still.

When it's weak,

It flies off with every whim.

You hold it still,

It flies off with every whim.

So you think,

Okay,

I'm going to be mindful.

I'm not going to be angry.

But then you fly off with every whim because your mind has no strength because it's weak.

Because it's weak,

The mindfulness is slow.

So we need to develop some adding and be very careful of things that dull mindfulness.

Like drugs and alcohol,

Like music,

Like distraction.

These things dull your mindfulness.

So they make the mind innately weak.

When it's innately weak,

It flies off and you miss the boat every time and you act in a way that you regret later.

So you don't let go and you don't develop and you just spin around in Samsara and you're made of what you're welding forever,

Miserable.

We see a cause and effect and develop it.

It's not impossible to do but you have to make the effort to fight yourself and to control your lifestyle.

Without a controlled lifestyle,

It doesn't work.

There is no such thing as completely being stuck in habits and being mindful.

Habit and mindfulness are opposites.

Rhythm and mindfulness are opposites.

Rhythm is our enemy.

Habit is our enemy.

We want to be mindful and aware,

Free in the moment.

So let go of your negative habits that lead to dullness.

Very important step.

Replace them with positive skills,

Positive lifestyle choices,

Developing and letting go in a very basic way that leads to immediate result.

Reviews

Blunt, direct

Seize the day and listen to this talk. This touched me. Adam boils down the practice to its essence. Let go of the negative quality. Develop its opposite. Empty the mind. See through not self. Go to war with yourself. It’s easy.

Magnificent 🙏

Great talk. I like the idea of picking one Quality about myself, and going to war with it everyday. I've selected judgment.

Really liked this talk. I will listen again. Mainly it is about renouncing distractions. His manner of speaking is rich and yet still comprehensible to me. He says, “Bind yourself and you shall be free” and he tells us how we could go about doing this.

Fantastic, breaks it down and makes it easy to understand

I needed this talk right now. Thank you.