Foundation For The Path Desana

Adam Mizner's Dhamma Talk on Foundation for the Path Desana

Adam Mizner has dedicated many years to the in-0depth 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.

Transcript

So the direct cause of awakening is vipassana,

The I of knowing,

Seeing through to not-self,

Through emptiness and then breaking through to nirvana.

That's the cause.

When seeing through to emptiness,

Realizing not-self is also accompanied by emptiness of the kalashas being empty of the defilements of the mind,

That's what we call an arahant.

The emptiness of samatha just being empty in mind,

Empty in knowing but not empty of the kalashas did not cause awakening.

If it did,

Anyone with good samadhi would be awakened,

But it doesn't work like that.

It's through being empty of the defilements,

Empty of the kalashas that awakening is achieved.

Not just empty,

Not just the philosophical viewpoint,

Not just the meditative skill.

So the path is laid out clearly and that's the practice,

The practice of vipassana which leads to the result.

But the teachings can be found easily enough.

Some people achieve,

Some people don't.

Some people work really hard,

They train hard,

They practice hard for 30 years and don't achieve and then somebody else practices for only a month and they break through and enter the stream.

Why is it that things are so uneven,

So unfair?

If the path is known and the technique is laid out freely,

Why don't we all achieve equally?

The answer is in the support of the path.

Abhuna parami.

Parami is the perfections which we build,

Perfections of character which are the support of the path.

The fuel,

The energy which lifts us up so that we can achieve.

All awakened beings,

All arias,

All noble beings achieve through letting go all of them.

They let go into emptiness and recognize not itself in emptiness.

There's no deviation from this principle.

The path they travel to getting to that point of letting go can differ.

The moment where they're letting go can differ but it's always via letting go.

Whether they recognize something in daily activity and let go or ananda laying his head down,

About to lay his head down to go to sleep after practicing really hard and then letting go,

When he lets go he achieves.

But we all lay down every night and it doesn't work.

It doesn't make us become an arahant.

So it's not the outer form of the practice.

We can get caught up in an outer form of the practice and practice like our teacher,

Practice like this lineage,

Practice the Vietnamese way,

Practice the Tibetan way,

Practice the Thai way,

I practice only samadhi on the breath,

I practice only kasina meditation,

I practice prostrating and sitting half an hour alternating.

That's the outer vehicle.

The outer vehicle can be many styles and it varies.

But at the moment of achieving it's always in letting go.

So we learn how to let go,

See through the emptiness,

Not self.

That's the true practice.

We practice,

Practice and don't achieve.

So we need to build more support,

Build the paramitas,

Build the perfections.

The first paramita is dana paramita,

The perfection of generosity,

These character traits which we have to build in body and mind.

How do we do this?

We do this by simply doing it,

Cultivating generosity,

Being generous in spirit,

Being generous in action,

Generous with your time,

Generous with your money,

Generous with food,

Shelter,

Whatever.

Build it,

Build it and build it some more.

Perfections lift us up.

They are the energy that lifts our mind up so that when we practice vipassana,

When we try to see reality,

It actually happens.

Because the instructions are simple,

How to look at not self,

How to look at emptiness.

But you look over and over and there is no light bulb,

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens because the paramitas are not full,

The perfections are not right.

So when somebody knows how to practice they have to keep doing the practice.

But they have to keep building the perfections as well.

So one of Luangpa's students,

He was quite ripe,

His skill was very good and practicing,

Practicing,

But his perfection was not full.

So instead of doing the practice,

He had to manifest the practice in the form of the perfections,

Building temples and stuff like that,

Building bun,

Building merit.

Even though that wasn't actually the path,

That lifted him,

It gave him the fuel for that last step towards breaking through to awakening.

So we need to keep this in mind.

It's not just a cold-hearted practice of just simply sitting down and doing the path now.

You actually have to build the merit,

Build the perfections.

First one,

Dana,

Generosity.

Giving,

Giving,

Giving like a mother gives to her child.

The mother gives to their child with no thought of return.

You see the mother giving endlessly.

Very rarely do you see the child give back to the mother.

Nectar flows downstream,

Flows downhill.

This is the way it is.

So when you practice generosity,

It's important to practice generosity without thought of return.

Not,

But I've given him all this,

When's he going to return the favor?

That's not generosity,

That's tit for tat.

So purifying your own intention in cultivating the perfections is very important.

Look within.

It's easy to do it on the outside,

Practicing generosity on the outside,

But on the inside looking for return,

Looking for other people's approval.

These stain the perfections and make it so we're not cultivating the perfections at all,

But we're only cultivating worldly character traits.

Worldly character traits don't have the power to lift us beyond the world to locuter up.

Beyond the world,

Above the world,

Beyond the concerns of the world.

What is the world?

The world is these six senses,

Five senses and the mind being the sixth sense.

Cause of Dukkha.

The cause of Dukkha.

The defiled mind.

Beyond the world leading to Nibbana.

Nibbana,

What is Nibbana?

The extinguishment of the cause of Dukkha.

All beings want Nibbana.

When you have an itch,

You want to scratch it.

As soon as you scratch it and the itch has gone,

Ah,

That's pleasant.

All beings,

Christian,

Buddhist,

Muslim,

Animal,

Human being,

Deva,

Want the extinguishment of suffering.

When you have a headache,

You desperately want the headache to go away.

As soon as it goes away,

Ah,

You can sleep comfortably.

It's a constant desire.

All beings want the extinguishment of suffering,

The end of suffering.

But we need to build the perfections to lift us up,

To give us the ability to achieve that.

The second perfection is Sila,

Which is your moral conduct,

Your virtue.

Classically,

There's the five precepts,

The ten precepts,

The 227 precepts,

All these different ways to cultivate Sila.

But what's important is that you actually cultivate Sila.

How many precepts you take or how you cultivate your Sila is not such a big deal.

What matters is that you cultivate the perfection of Sila.

That doesn't mean necessarily having 227 precepts.

Maybe you only keep one,

Two,

Three precepts.

But you keep that perfect,

You cultivate it to a perfect quality.

So not taking life,

For example,

The first precept,

You should at least try to maintain that one.

That means under no circumstances will you take life.

Cultivating that to its ultimate level,

To the Bharamata Parami,

The ultimate level,

The highest level of that perfection is even at the cost of your own life,

You won't take another life.

That's perfection.

You have perfected the quality of not taking life.

So every perfection is divided into three levels.

The first level outside,

Cultivating it outside of yourself.

The second level is at the cost of something of yourself.

It's called the internal level,

At the cost of your blood,

At the cost of your pain.

The third level is at the cost of your life,

Bharamata Parami.

So when we take a Sila,

When we take a precept to cultivate our virtue,

Internally,

You don't need to do this in front of a monk or anything like that,

That's not important.

But internally,

You know what level you're taking this perfection,

What level are you going to cultivate this Sila.

So even at the cost of my own life,

I will never take life.

Or even at the cost of my own blood,

I will never take life or whatever level you want to cultivate it to.

This is Sila.

Not taking life being the first precept,

Not taking what is not given being the second precept.

Sounds easy.

People say,

Well,

I'm not a thief.

That's the very most,

Not stealing is the most basic level.

But it's not to not steal,

To not take what is not given is much different to not stealing.

We can easily take things for granted,

Abuse our privileges,

Taking what is not given all the time.

And to what extent will we cultivate that,

Cultivate the perfection of Sila.

The third Sila is not to not indulge in monk speech,

Lying being the most important.

So at what cost will you hold the truth,

Cultivating that perfection deeper and deeper.

Sila,

The perfection of Sila.

Pick the ones you want to cultivate and cultivate them deeply.

If you only do it in concept and thought and philosophy here and there,

It has no strength,

It has no power,

It doesn't have the energy to lift you up to the path of awakening.

So it's a personal thing what precepts you take and to what level you take them.

If you don't think you can keep a precept,

It's best not to take it.

No need to take it.

Or when you take it formally,

If you spend much time in temples and stuff like that,

You can take it for later.

I take this preset for something to cultivate in the future.

So if you drink alcohol,

Don't take the fifth preset.

No big deal,

Just don't take it.

Or take it for later.

At a later date,

I'll cultivate this perfection.

But today I'm going to cultivate not taking life,

Not taking what is not given to the ultimate level.

That's enough.

It's not about the amount,

It's about the quality,

It's about the perfection of your seelah.

Very important.

The third perfection is nekamat,

Which is renunciation,

Nekamat palamu.

Renunciation,

We naturally think of renouncing,

Becoming a monk,

Letting go of material objects.

That's an ultimate manifestation of renunciation,

But it's not the only way.

The perfections,

They reinforce each other.

So generosity,

When we give,

When we give charity,

When we give to others,

When we help,

That's a renunciation.

We're renouncing our wealth for the benefit of others.

Seelah,

We renounce negative actions in favor of positive actions.

Renunciation,

The whole path is renunciation.

It's always a letting go.

Ultimately,

You renounce the concept of self,

You renounce the feeling of self,

You renounce self itself.

So even the ultimate realization is renunciation.

From the very beginning,

The practice of generosity all the way through to renouncing self,

There's nothing but renunciation.

Letting go.

Let go,

Let go into emptiness,

Aka renounce.

When evil mental qualities arise,

Anger,

Jealousy,

Vengefulness arise in the mind and you let go of them,

You're renouncing anger,

Renouncing jealousy.

Jealousy,

I renounce thee.

Why?

Because jealousy,

Anger,

These things are the cause of dukkha.

When you're angry,

What is there?

There's an unpleasant feeling.

You cause suffering for yourself and the people around you.

What is nirvana?

It is the extinguishment of the cause of suffering.

The cause of suffering is the kalashas.

The kalashas are these negative mental states.

So we cultivate the nonciation.

Panya,

Often translated as wisdom,

Discernment,

Transcendental wisdom,

Is the next perfection.

At the mundane level,

At the lokkhi level,

It's intelligence,

The ability to problem solve.

We call these a wise person.

Skillful mental states.

The kutara level is the wisdom that sees through to not self,

Sees through to anatta,

To emptiness,

Sutta,

Nirvana.

This of course is the ultimate perfection because it's the perfection that directly causes enlightenment,

The direct cause.

But even lokkhi,

Apanya,

The worldly cultivation of wisdom is very skillful.

Without it we can't solve problems and solving problems is part of generosity,

It's part of helping people.

So all the perfections work together to lift our practice up,

To lift us up so that you become pure,

Your character becomes more pure.

We relinquish,

Let go of the defilements,

Train harder,

Defeat the defilements,

Replace them with positive mental qualities,

Not because being holy and being positive causes awakening,

It doesn't.

What causes awakening is directly seeing,

Not self and extinguishing the causes of dukkha,

The defilements.

But the positive qualities,

The paramirs,

They lift you up,

They carry you there.

Virya,

Virya is energy,

The energy of the practice,

The next perfection.

So we can talk about the practice,

We can listen to a dharma talk,

We can do a short meditation as a technique to take home and then we can feel lovely about that for a week and come back next week and pretend to do it again.

Or you can manifest the energy of practice,

Somebody that's driven,

The drive to practice,

The actual power of doing the practice,

The energy of doing the practice,

Somebody that really has that potential energy,

That's virya parami.

Some people we meet,

They can just train and practice like crazy because they have a lot of virya.

Or somebody that likes the idea of it but they're lazy,

They can't wake up in the morning,

They're slothful,

They're lazy,

They've got no power,

No virya.

It doesn't matter how much they like the idea,

How much they're fond of the idea of becoming pure,

They simply don't have the fuel.

So we need to cultivate virya over and over.

It's like weightlifting or any other building of energy,

The more you do it,

The more you get.

It's not the more energy you expend,

The more tired you become,

It doesn't work like that.

The more energy you put into the practice,

The more you get.

You can keep practicing and practicing and the energy of practice builds.

The perfection,

The bun,

The karma of that practice builds and supports your practice more and more.

It's like a snowball effect.

So you become more powerful and your virya paramu becomes more full.

Then you can put that virya paramu back into your generosity.

So you're generous with a great amount of energy.

This guy's generosity is not normal,

It's unceasing.

His sila is not normal,

He has so much energy just for his sila.

If your sila is pure,

That means your generosity will be pure.

All the perfections work together.

They support each other and they support you and lift your personality,

Your ego towards enlightenment.

Ultimately you have to transcend that.

But while you have one,

You want it to be a perfect one.

You want it to be one that is fit for the path.

Fit for the path.

You need a path and somebody to travel that path.

Just like you need a road and a car.

If you don't have the road and the car travels and loses the path,

You won't find your destination.

But the path without somebody traveling it has no purpose.

So now while we have a self,

While we have an ego,

You want to manifest it in the most positive and powerful way possible.

Building these buns and building the paramu to support your practice.

Kanti palami.

Kanti palami is patient endurance.

It is very important.

When things don't go the way we like,

That's normal.

As a samsara,

Samsara there is suffering,

Body and mind suffer continuously.

There are varying levels of suffering but suffering is the innate state.

Pain,

Dissatisfaction,

Things that we want,

Things that we love fall away.

The wanting of something that we don't have is a suffering.

Suffering is ever present.

We tolerate patience for patient and we tolerate.

If you have patience and patient endurance,

You can endure.

When you can endure,

Let's say you're cultivating generosity but people don't do things the way you want them to and there's no return.

Well,

You endure your patience.

If you don't have kanti palami and there's no patience and endurance,

Well,

You're instantly going to destroy your dhanaparam.

If you have the sealer for not taking what is not given but you're somewhere and there's no food and you're starving,

You desperately want to take and you can't endure so you break your sealer.

Without endurance,

None of the other skills have any substance.

You might be super energized on and off but with no patience and endurance,

It's worthless.

Patient endurance is extremely important.

In fact,

The practice of the past is not that difficult.

What's difficult is doing it minute in and minute out,

The continual seeing is the hard part.

Doing the practice is not hard.

Doing the practice all the time is hard.

Why we fail is because we don't have kanti palami.

We don't have the patience and the endurance.

Sat-chap-parami,

The perfection of truth is the next one.

This is very simple.

This is the same as the third precept,

Not speaking falsely.

How do you practice that?

Well,

Not lying of course.

What does not lying mean?

It means speaking the truth.

So we think,

Well,

I don't tell big fat lies but how many times a day do you say something and then not follow through?

If you say something and then not follow through,

That's called having no sat-chap-parami.

So we need to cultivate this skill.

If you say something,

Do it.

That's how you practice it.

Very simple.

I'll be there at three o'clock,

Be there at three o'clock.

It's extremely painful to be there at three o'clock,

Be there at three o'clock.

Now you're cultivating endurance and sat-chap.

So it's not a philosophy.

It's not something just to read in the book or to cosmically imagine we're breathing in this perfection or do a ritual to build this perfection that doesn't work.

You build the perfections in mind and body by doing.

Awakening is an ultimate seeing of truth.

Enlightenment is the seeing and understanding of the way things are,

Seeing truth.

Now if you can't speak the truth,

You're never going to see the truth.

If you're not dedicated to truth,

You're never going to realize truth.

It's not a privilege for somebody whose whole life is built around false,

Being false.

And that's most of us.

It's difficult to cultivate truth.

So don't speak lightly.

So when we say we're going to do something,

Then we do it.

That's cultivating sat-chap-parami,

The perfection of truth,

Which by keeping that in mind,

Our mindfulness gets reinforced and the power of truth becomes strong in us.

When the power of truth is strong in you,

You can see truth more easily.

So awakening becomes possible.

They say that the Buddha,

The Supreme Buddha in his eons of practice leading up to becoming fully awakened,

Broke all of the precepts imaginable,

All except the precept of keeping truth.

He killed,

He robbed,

Did everything else,

But he never broke that.

It's the most important one in a lot of ways,

Because the essence of the path is in truth.

So these aren't something mystical.

They're very,

Very straightforward,

Something we can cultivate day in and day out.

And it gives you something to do.

It's the fun of the practice.

So there's this 10 perfections can be broken up into 30.

The three levels times by 10 equals 30 perfections.

That sounds vast.

Instead of just focus on one,

I'm just going to cultivate truth at all costs.

If I say it,

I'm going to do it.

Cultivate it.

When you start to cultivate it,

The energy builds and you get skilled at it.

When you're skilled at it,

It becomes much easier.

Then you can cultivate it deeper until it becomes not just the truth like,

Oh,

That guy's honest,

The world be truth,

But the truth of perfection of truth.

Perfection of truth is extremely powerful.

Atitana Palami.

Atitana is often translated as vow or something like that.

I like to translate it as intention.

It's your intention.

So an example of this is I intend to sit down for an hour a day to do my meditation practice.

That's your intention.

So that's why people call it a vow.

But it's not exactly the same as vowels.

It's also when you would say,

People that make amulets and stuff like that,

And when they push the energy into the amulet to charge an amulet and the amulet has an intention for protection,

The intention,

The mind intention is atitana.

So that's also what carries us to fulfill our vows,

Our resolution.

So an example of long pause practice for nine years was to not lie down,

Not to lie down for nine years.

That's what we call atitana palami.

I'm not going to lie down for one day.

Well,

That's atitana,

But it's not a perfection.

It's a weak level.

So we want to build up these powers.

So for nine years,

He didn't lie down.

The body would still sleep.

The body would fall asleep and have its little rest while sitting,

While standing.

But no matter what,

I'm not going to lie down.

So for nine years,

He did this.

I call this the perfection of atitana.

But what else is it the perfection of?

Kanti,

Patient endurance,

Enduring tiredness.

I talked to him.

I said,

Why did you do that,

Longpaw?

So I had more time to help people.

So he wouldn't indulge in still wasting time of sleep.

So he could practice and help people all day and all night.

Even now when you spend time with him,

The only time you really see him sleeping as well he's doing a chant.

He'll sleep and chant simultaneously so as not to waste time.

That way you can cultivate the perfection of generosity,

Of helping people,

All the perfections together all the time.

So when you make your intention,

You can cultivate it to a perfect level.

But don't make vows lightly.

That's why I don't like the translation vow.

If you intend to do a practice and you break it,

Not only are you breaking that,

But you're also breaking truth.

Satchaparamita is dwindling.

You burn away the paramita.

The more you build it,

The more it supports you towards enlightenment.

Mettā,

We've talked about that substantially,

Loving kindness,

Paramita.

Included with this in our Theravāda,

They often say Mettā karuna is compassion.

Compassion,

One side of the coin,

Mettā the other side.

Compassion is feeling the pain of others.

Mettā is the kindness to relieve the suffering of others.

The two sides of the coin,

The feeling and the action.

Mettā paramita is something you have to cultivate continuously.

When you interact with people,

People that annoy you,

Okay endure and give them Mettā,

Give them kindness back.

If you don't have endurance,

Your Mettā will crack.

I couldn't endure so I just snapped at them.

You had no patience.

Generosity can be the external manifestation of Mettā.

They all self support each other.

When your Mettā is strong,

Your mind and body become at ease and you enter Samadhi easily.

When you enter Samadhi easily,

The body is at ease,

The mind is focused.

For one that enters Samadhi easily,

Vipassana is easy.

Mettā has many,

Many benefits.

Health,

Beauty,

Immunity to sickness,

Enters Jhana easily,

Protected by the devas,

Endless are the benefits of Mettā.

People that don't cultivate Mettā never enter the noble path.

It doesn't matter how good your Samadhi is or how deep your Pannaya is,

You never enter Ariya.

It can't happen.

It can't happen.

Because everything is focused on the self and you can't realize not self when you're completely focused on the self.

When you focus instead on the benefit of others,

On generosity,

On Mettā,

On helping others,

Then it's easy to see beyond yourself.

When you start to see beyond yourself in this conventional way,

The energy lifts you up so you can see the truth of not self.

So Mettā Parami is very important.

Not only that,

It's pleasant to practice.

It's easy to practice.

Every time you do it,

You feel better.

If you have kindness,

Kindness feels great,

It doesn't feel bad.

Being miserly,

Being stingy,

Being bitter,

Being angry,

Being awful,

Being jealous,

These are the things that feel bad.

These are the things that make us feel awful.

These are the causes of suffering.

There's no such thing as kindness feeling unpleasant.

There's no such thing.

Kindness feels pleasant in the here and now and in the future it bears results.

If we're kind and then we want something in return,

That's not Mettā Parami.

That's conventional worldly kindness.

Mettā is universal.

It's equal for everybody,

Not just the people we like.

We're equally giving,

Equally giving the time,

The kindness to lift up and to make other people happy.

Very important.

And the tenth is Upekka or equanimity,

Upekka Parami.

When we're kind to others,

When we're generous to others,

When we're enduring bad situations,

When we're cultivating truth but others are lying to us,

All these things and samsara changes,

There's ups and downs.

Things don't work out,

We have to have equanimity towards that.

Equanimity towards the ups and downs of life.

If you get carried along and moved by them and have no equanimity,

There's no peace.

No peace at all.

So we cultivate equanimity as a support for the path.

But actually equanimity is also a result of the path,

A result of the practice.

The fourth jhana is equanimity,

The perfection of equanimity.

Vipassana leads to the equanimity,

Lokuttara upekka.

Because you're beyond the world,

Above the world,

You're equaminous towards it.

How can you be moved by it?

You don't touch it.

You're not stained by it.

Of course it's not going to move you.

So equanimity is not only the practice,

Not only the path,

But it's also result.

It's also fruit.

So these ten perfections lift us up.

They lift us up and carry us towards attainment.

Attainment doesn't come from the perfections,

But the perfections carry us towards attainment.

Attainment comes from the eightfold noble path,

The middle way.

The middle between what?

Cultivating good leads to the heavenly planes,

The higher planes.

Cultivating negative leads towards the lower planes.

One leads to heaven,

One leads to the lower planes.

These two extremes,

Positive and negative.

The middle between those two is the path of emptiness to not self to Nibbana.

The middle way between positive and negative.

Lokuttara above and beyond positive and negative,

Not getting attached or caught up in either of them,

But you still build the perfections,

But you don't get caught,

You don't get stuck.

If you're stuck on doing good,

Stuck on doing good,

It causes suffering.

If you're stuck on the negative,

It causes suffering.

The middle way between the two,

Between positive and negative,

Between existence and non-existence,

Between self and not self.

There is body,

There is mind,

But it's like there's no body,

There's no mind because they're empty of self.

The knowing has no body,

The body has no knowing.

The activity of the mind,

The thoughts,

The memories,

Perceptions,

Mental formations,

Emotions,

Feelings,

All these things exist,

But they don't know their existing feelings,

Simply is feeling.

Feeling doesn't know.

Knowing knows feelings,

Feeling doesn't know.

The knowing quality has no feeling,

And the feeling has no knowing quality.

Pain,

Pain,

Pain,

Pain doesn't know it.

Pain,

Pain just is pain.

The knowing knows the pain.

This we call lokuttara,

To be above and beyond the five senses,

Beyond the world.

Free from the cause of duhkha,

The middle way between existence and non-existence,

The middle way between good and bad,

The middle way.

Starting with right view,

The eightfold noble path is the middle way,

Right view.

Right view is the view of not self,

View of impermanence,

View of duhkha.

When you actually realize that,

That's lokuttara right here.

All the way through the eight factors,

All the way up to samma,

Sammati,

Right samadhi.

So we practiced shamatha before,

Practicing shamatha is a skillful means,

But it doesn't lead to enlightenment.

It's not samma,

Sammati.

Shamatha at its peak is jhana.

Entering the jhanas up to the fourth jhana is the ideal.

It can go up to the eighth jhana,

But the fourth jhana is the most skillful jhana,

Because it is personified by equanimity,

And equanimity is the ideal state for practicing the pasana.

But jhana is not samma,

Sammati.

Samma,

Sammati is when the mind is totally,

Totally still in the middle way,

Totally solid in the middle way,

Not deviating into existence,

Not deviating into non-existence,

Not getting stuck on the good,

Not getting stuck on the bad.

Left to and right,

Free from the two extremes,

Still in the middle.

Sammati,

What is sammati?

Sammati is single pointedness.

So every level of jhana is characterized by single pointedness.

Single pointedness and bliss,

Single pointedness and pleasure,

Single pointedness and equanimity and so on.

Single pointedness is the quality that's always there,

Because that is the primary quality of sammati.

Single pointedness of the middle way is samma,

Sammati.

So when you continuously recognize emptiness,

Not self anatta,

And release,

Relinquish the causes of suffering to break through,

Penetrate through emptiness into nibbana,

That's samma,

Sammati.

Right sammati,

The sammati that keeps the mind still on the eightfold noble path,

Right view,

Right resolve,

Right action,

All the way through everything,

All the way up to right sammati.

The culmination of the eightfold noble path is right sammati,

Samma,

Sammati.

But don't be fooled,

Samma,

Sammati is not sitting still.

Nobody has ever broken through to awakening by sitting still.

Sitting still cannot cause awakening.

How can you break through something by being still?

With breaking through to the other side,

It's obviously a movement.

Stillness is not movement.

Stillness is stillness.

So when you read the sutras and they talk about all the arahants achieving,

There's not one that achieves from sammati,

Not one.

It's always an exiting sammati,

He contemplated this,

Or whilst he was walking,

He saw this,

It's always a movement.

The movement of panyā,

The movement of wisdom,

Breaking through,

Seeing through delusion,

Seeing through avicca,

Seeing the way things are,

Seeing emptiness,

Seeing not self,

Letting go,

Releasing suffering,

Anatta,

Emptiness,

Nibbana.

Samma,

Sammati.

So maybe we can sit down and enter very good mental absorption for two hours each morning and each evening and then for the hours in between,

We forget about the middle way.

That will never lead to awakening,

It will only lead to a culmination of sammata,

Jhāna.

People that cultivate jhāna can still have all the defilements.

Not only that,

The power of jhāna is so profound,

Their sammata is so strong that they have a supercharged,

Supernaturally strong defilement.

So not only do they get annoyed,

But the power of their sammāti will lift them up so annoyed that they go and kill somebody.

So stillness is not the answer,

It's only one of the powers that lifts you towards the practice.

It's not samma sammāti,

It's simply shamata.

In the beginning we were talking about practicing this method from say the Tibetan tradition,

The Thai tradition,

The Vietnamese tradition,

The Mahayana,

The Vajrayana,

The Theravana,

These are the different methods,

Different ways to do shamata,

Different ways to do this,

To do that.

But that's not the actual dhamma,

The dhamma is the middle way,

The real practice is the middle way.

If there was only one outer way,

There would only be one way.

There are countless ways that people cultivate stillness,

But that's not samma sammāti,

That's just stillness,

That's just shamata.

And shamata is pleasant,

It's skillful,

It can give you mental powers,

Psychic powers,

The divine eye,

The divine ear,

Seeing past lives and so on.

These things are real,

They can be cultivated for sure.

If your sammāti is strong,

You can achieve these things.

But dependent on cause and condition they fall away easily.

Because they're dependent on cause and condition,

They fall away easily.

Therefore they're impermanent,

Suffering,

Not self,

Not worth cultivating.

If you cultivate lokuttara,

The path through anatta,

The super mundane path,

The super mundane is not dependent on cause and conditions and therefore does not fall away,

It's reliable.

If you achieve the divine eye from the lokuttara practice,

It will be permanent,

It will be reliable.

But worldly clairvoyance is not reliable.

You have an emotional change,

It gets blurry,

There's too much noise,

You can't enter jhana.

Life is not perfect,

It changes.

Shamata is dependent.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to practice shamata meditation.

They're using power tools,

I can't do it.

Because shamata is dependent on cause and condition,

It's dependent on quiet,

It's dependent on temperature,

It's dependent on relaxation and all these things.

Nobody can cultivate jhana with a power tool in the background,

It can't happen.

Okay,

It's too noisy,

I'll wait till tonight when it's quiet.

At ten o'clock tonight I'm going to practice shamata.

Ten o'clock at night,

Oh,

I'm so tired,

I'm going to wait till the morning.

This is the way it goes.

Anyone that's cultivated meditation has come across this problem.

That's because they're cultivating worldly shamata.

Instead we practice vipassana,

Vipassana akaliko.

Akaliko is timeless.

Timeless means can be done at any time.

Sitting,

Walking,

Lying and standing,

The four postures that the Buddha put forward,

These four postures mean all the time.

That's all they mean.

They mean akaliko all the time.

Because vipassana is timeless,

That means going to the toilet,

You can see not self.

Listening to a boring tama talk,

You can see not self.

Doing tai chi,

You can see not self.

In sickness,

You can see not self.

In great pain,

You can see not self but you can't cultivate samadhi.

In sickness,

You can't cultivate deep samadhi.

It's not going to happen,

I tell you.

Because samadhi,

Whereas in worldly samadhi,

Shamata,

Stillness,

Is not akaliko.

It's dependent.

It's not timeless.

It's dependent on time.

It's dependent on outer peace.

It's dependent.

The dependent,

The fabricated can never lead to the unfabricated.

Nibbana is the unfabricated.

Only the unfabricated,

The undependent,

The timeless can lead to the undependent,

The unfabricated and the timeless.

This makes sense,

Yeah?

But still most people practice in a way stuck on the world we practice.

I'm going to sit still for hours.

Yep,

I get the peace of stillness.

That's great but it's just a peace of stillness.

Then you get up and you leave the peace on the meditation mat.

It doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

People can do this for 50 years and not break through.

It doesn't work.

So we need to see what is the support for the practice.

The support for the practice is the perfections.

The perfections lift us up.

What is the path of practice?

The path of practice is the eightfold noble path,

The middle way.

What is the cause of realization?

The cause of realization is vipassana,

Seeing emptiness not self and becoming empty of the kalashas.

When one sees constantly emptiness,

Dhyana,

The knowing quality is ever present,

The knowing which is the quality,

The element of the consciousness,

The deepest part of consciousness element,

Dhyana,

The knowing we call buto.

Buto is knowing.

Buta is the one that knows,

The knower is buta.

Buto is impermanent.

Buta is anicca.

Buto comes in and out.

That's why they say vinyana anicca.

Consciousness is impermanent.

But then you'll hear me say consciousness is amatak,

Consciousness is the immortal element.

The I of knowing is the immortal quality.

Well,

There seems to be a contradiction.

That's because buta is permanent.

The knower is permanent,

But it doesn't always know.

The knowing,

The buto comes in and out.

When the knowing is permanent and constant,

That's buta,

That's enlightenment.

What does it know?

It knows not self,

It knows emptiness.

Through that knowing of not self and knowing emptiness,

It can relinquish,

It can renounce,

Renounce the defilements of the mind.

Let go of the defilements of the mind which are the direct cause of suffering.

So then there's knowing,

There's emptiness,

There's not so and there's no cause of suffering.

That's what an arahant is.

When buto becomes buta,

That's arahant,

That's enlightenment.

When buto is impermanent,

Well that's buto,

That's the practice,

That's the path.

When buto becomes buta,

That's the fruit of the path.

So in the sutras,

That's why vinyana is impermanent.

There's confusion here.

If it's impermanent,

What is it people say?

If consciousness is impermanent,

What achieves awakening?

Consciousness achieves awakening.

Buta achieves awakening.

When buto becomes buta,

When sati,

Mindfulness becomes,

Great mindfulness becomes mahasati,

Sati mahasati,

Banyah,

Sati mahasati banyah.

Wimut,

Mindfulness,

Great mindfulness,

Insight,

Wisdom into the nature of things,

Wimut is release,

Release from the cause of suffering.

Mindfulness,

Practicing mindfulness until it's always there,

Until it's constant.

When you're constantly mindful of reality,

You see very clearly emptiness not self.

When you see not self very clearly,

You can see the separation between the knower,

Buta or buto,

Depending on its level,

And the defilement.

So the defilement arises,

Feeling arises,

Aversion arises,

And you see there is knowing and there is aversion.

Aversion is not knowing and aversion is not,

Aversion doesn't know and knowing doesn't have aversion.

They are separate,

It's not self.

Then you can let go of the cause of pain,

The cause of suffering,

Which is classically called tanha.

Tanha or craving,

Craving for that which we want.

Bhava tanha,

Craving for things to come.

With bhava tanha,

Craving for things to go away.

And kama tanha,

Which is the craving of appreciation of the senses.

These three qualities are the direct cause,

The direct cause of samsara.

I don't want that to come,

I want that to come and enjoying this now.

So how do we cultivate this practice?

You get caught up enjoying something now,

That's kama tanha.

Kama tanha exists,

Suffering will exist because that thing will end.

Soon as it ends,

Suffering arises in its place.

I really want this to come,

I want it to come,

That's bhava tanha.

Craving for something to happen.

When you crave for it to come,

That's suffering,

The suffering of something not coming.

I can't stand this,

I really want it to end.

With bhava tanha,

The craving for something to end.

If this doesn't end,

There's suffering.

These three things constantly spin around and circle.

That's what delusion is.

Inside is seeing and being free from these three things.

Seeing,

These three tanhas are the cause of defilement.

They are the defilements essentially.

Instead we see the three real qualities,

Impermanence,

Suffering and not self.

We see the three natural state of things are rising,

Existing and falling away.

Everything arises,

Exists,

Endures,

Falls away.

Nothing stays.

Anicha,

The law of impermanence.

If you can look directly and see the law of impermanence all the time,

That's vipassana.

Ultimately you have to see through to not self.

But seeing impermanence is the antidote for tanha,

For craving.

So you see a correlation between wanting something to come,

Arise,

Wanting something to stay,

Appreciating it now.

It's in existence and it's falling away,

Wanting something to go away.

The reality of arising,

Existing and falling away is destroyed by the delusion of tanha,

Of craving.

This is the path.

Simply don't let those three tanhas arise.

Simply don't let them arise.

Whatever we do,

We follow our function.

Sitting,

Teaching,

Eating,

Sleeping,

Showering,

We have to follow our function.

You have to shower but if you desperately want to shower,

Get caught up enjoying the shower or don't want to shower,

Any of those three causes of suffering.

I really want to shower,

I can't stand the sweat that's suffering.

Ah,

The shower is so warm and all my back's released,

This is so great,

That's indulging in the sense gates,

That's karmatthana when the shower ends,

Ugh,

Suffering.

I really don't want to shower but I have to shower with our tanha suffering.

Craving,

Aversion and the indulgence in the sense gates.

Look out for these three tanha constantly.

When they arise,

Just a little bit let go,

Let go,

Just follow your function.

When you just follow your function,

There's no suffering.

You just do what you do.

Don't get caught up in it.

Don't have to get busy with it.

We have to do,

We have to eat,

Sleep,

Shit,

Piss,

Walk,

Talk,

Follow our function,

Whatever it is,

Our job,

The way we interact with people,

The cultivation of the perfections becomes your function.

Mato becomes your function.

Generosity becomes your function.

Seal becomes your function.

Patient endurance becomes your function.

When you cultivate and do these things free from aversion,

Free from attraction to them and free from getting caught up in them,

Then the perfections lift you and carry you.

If you get caught up in these perfections,

You become the perfections,

They become a self,

They don't lift you and carry you to enlightenment,

Instead they hold you down.

That's what we call getting caught up in the good.

We're not in the middle way.

When you follow the middle way,

You simply do your function.

You do your function and let go,

Not self.

It's easy.

You just do,

Just do free from it.

You still reap the benefits in the good karma of doing but you're free from the pitfalls.

Follow your function.

Follow your function and see,

Watch carefully,

Don't let the mind go to good,

To bad,

To existence,

To non-existence,

That's the middle way.

But you can't sit still,

Middle scared to touch anything,

That's not the middle way,

That's fear.

You still have to live,

Right?

So we do and we follow the function but while we follow our function,

We stay in the middle,

That's samma samma ti,

The noble path.

That our function should be skillful because if we just practice with past and out,

We're probably not going to get there unless we cultivated the perfections to a great deal in the past.

So somebody that's extremely gifted,

They sit and listen to the dharma,

Bang bang,

They're enlightened,

They become an arahant.

That's because they built the perfections to such a great quality in the past.

Somebody with less perfections can listen to the dharma thousands of times and never have an inkling of awakening.

So listening to the dharma is one cause but they need to build the perfections.

So if you're really serious about being free from suffering,

Build the perfections to lift you up so that you're capable of vipassana.

When you're capable of vipassana seeing not self,

Then you can let go of the three kinds of tanha,

The three causes of craving,

The causes of dukkha.

When you're free of the causes of dukkha,

You're free from the defilements,

You see emptiness not self,

That's awakening.

The support of the path,

The pathic self and the cause of awakening.

These three,

Cultivating these three leads to happiness in the present and ultimately the supreme happiness,

Free from suffering.

The thing which all beings want is no suffering.

Everything we do is geared towards that.

The extinguishment of the cause of suffering.

It's all about the how to.

I know just about the how to but it's all about doing,

Doing the how to and doing it with diligence,

Cultivating that doing to a perfect level which means constant,

Unwavering,

Unyielding.

When you do it unyielding,

That's an arahant.

That's perfect freedom,

Bhutta.

When bhutto becomes bhutta,

The perfection of knowing.

The fruit.

Okay,

Any questions?

Who you hang with,

I say you are who you hang around with.

In the sutras are none that the Buddhas attend to.

Extremely gifted being,

Not only extremely gifted but also was there for every teaching the Buddha gave.

He's the one that his job was to memorize all the teachings.

He was the keeper of the dharma.

If there was no ananda,

There would be no dharma.

Ananda is extremely valuable.

He once uttered,

Admirable friends,

That's the Buddha's term for your teacher really and your practice partners,

Your seniors.

Admireable friends is half of the path.

And the Buddha said no,

Ananda,

Do not say such a thing.

Admireable friends is the whole of the path.

That's the Buddha's word,

Admirable friends is the whole of the path.

That's how important it is who you hang around with.

We all know this.

You don't have to philosophize,

Just think back,

You hang around rat bags,

You become a rat bag.

You hang around people that are generous,

Generosity grows within you.

You hang around people that listen to heavy metal music,

You start to see,

There's something there,

There's something there.

Whatever you hang around with,

It grows within you because there is no self,

There's nothing to your character.

There is no character.

It's just something arising dependent on cause and condition.

It changes.

You hang around Thais,

You start to enjoy Thai food.

Who you are,

Who you hang around with,

So important,

Can never be overestimated,

So vital.

You're better off to be alone than to be around negative people.

Once you've already achieved to a certain degree,

Sure you can hang around negative people to lift them up as generosity,

As metta,

As compassion,

As building the perfections.

But when you're not strong in the path,

It's a big mistake.

You need to hang around seniors,

You need to hang around teachers,

You need to hang around people that lift you up,

That support your path because you are who you hang around with much more than you think,

Much more than you think.

Every word you hear,

Every action that happens around you influences you are who you are consciously and subconsciously.

We think that we have our own ideas,

Our own philosophy,

But no,

Everything we have comes from the outside.

We see it on the news,

We read it,

We hear it,

We're taught it,

You know.

Our character is built so much when we're a teenager because that's when we socialize so much.

We socialize so much and our character is built.

If we keep hanging around the same people,

People that do that,

They're still teenagers when they're 15.

They're still hanging around as teenagers because none of them develop because they just do the circle,

Circle with the same habits.

People that lift themselves up and go try to find people that are higher minded,

Higher minded people,

Teachers,

People that are cultivated and they absorb the qualities of those people and they lift themselves up,

The practice lifts them up.

They become more like the people they hang around with.

If you want to be an exceptional cook,

Who do you hang around with?

A master chef.

If you want to be good at archery,

You hang around people that are good at archery.

If you want to be good at Dharma,

You hang around people that practice the Dharma.

If you want to be good at Tai Chi,

You hang around Tai Chi masters.

If you want to be good at Tai Chi and you hang around karate people,

Is that going to make you good at Tai Chi?

No.

It's going to make you good at karate.

You are who you hang around with.

Admirable friends is the whole of the path.

Very important.

But it's hard for people to relinquish,

To let go,

To renounce things in life that they're attached to like their unskillful friends from the past.

It's very difficult because we're attached to them because we think it's wrong.

What am I?

High and mighty.

We judge ourselves.

We do this,

We do that,

We don't let go.

But when you let go and you free yourself from those old habits is there's instantly a lightness of freedom from it.

Happiness comes instantly.

Relinguishment and renunciation is happiness instantly.

The moment you drop something,

Carrying things is heavy.

The moment we drop them,

You feel light.

I tell you renunciation is pleasure.

People are scared of it because they think not having things is going to be suffering but it's not like that.

Soon as you drop something,

It's a burden going,

You feel light and happy and at ease.

The same goes with friends that are unskillful that we hang around with,

They've got bad qualities,

Too many negative things,

They're not on the path,

They're this,

They're that and we're caught up in them,

It's always heavy,

Oh he lied to me,

Oh he's an alcoholic,

He's this,

He's that.

It's a burden.

When we let go,

We feel light and free.

The relinquishment and renunciation leads to freedom.

Very important to have enough courage to let go.

Just cultivating it,

Letting go,

Letting go.

Hanging on to things that are hot and burn us and cause suffering and hanging on to them because of the concept is crazy.

Hanging on to the hot coal,

It's burning,

It's burning,

Oh you let go of freedom.

The moment you drop it,

The pain goes away.

It's as simple as that,

Let go.

Letting go is as simple as that.

Unfortunately,

It's not easy.

Simple is not easy.

So yeah,

That's very important who you hang around with.

Extremely important.

Anybody else?

What's the direct cause for viria?

Viria is the direct cause for viria.

So if you want energy in the practice,

You cultivate energy in the practice.

There are other causes.

Cultivating anything is the direct cause for itself.

Example,

Big biceps,

You do bicep curls.

Using your biceps gives you big biceps.

Using your legs gives you strong legs.

Cultivating viria gives you strong viria.

But other things such as faith,

Somebody with strong faith is going to have strong viria.

Somebody that has such a strong faith,

They really want awakening,

Of course they're going to have more energy in the practice than somebody that has no faith,

That's unsure.

I'm not sure if I'm sure,

I'm just not sure.

If they're just not sure,

Are they going to be driven?

I don't think so.

So faith is one cause.

All of the perfections,

Metta for example,

Cultivating metta gives us such a massive amount of energy.

Since I've been cultivating metta with more intention,

I've noticed that my need for sleep has dropped massively.

I barely sleep much less than before.

Not because of anything else,

Simply because of the energy of metta.

So there are many causes.

All of the 10 perfections support each other.

Truth,

Cultivating truth.

So when you don't speak truth,

When you don't live up to your word,

It drains you of energy.

Lying is extremely stressful.

You have to remember all these things,

Oh it's crazy,

What did I tell that guy,

What did I tell him,

It's crazy.

It's impossible.

So much so that you end up not even knowing what's true and what's false.

And that drains you of energy so you don't have viria.

All of the perfections support each other.

All of them support each other.

Atitana,

Making the vow,

The intention.

The intention,

The driving force behind viria.

My intention is to practice this without deviation.

Viria is the energy that drives it.

But you need the intention as well.

So they work together.

They all work together.

Because they are the support as one that builds the character,

Builds the sealer that lifts you towards awakening.

Okay.

Another part of atitana,

Of the intention,

Is when you breathe in and out like we were doing the reason I did that today.

Breathing in and out the prana,

The vital energy,

The energy around you,

The chi.

Is that if your intention is strong or pure,

Even better.

How do you cultivate that?

By truth.

So somebody that always breaks their word that has no truth.

When they want to intend,

Say,

To heal something,

You want to heal something.

But you're somebody that has no truth.

So your atitana,

Your intention is weak.

You won't have the power to heal.

But if you have strong atitana and strong truth and you're dedicated to truth,

Your atitana is strong.

You cultivate it when you breathe in the intention to heal something,

Profound effects can happen.

But if you have no truth,

You don't have the power to do it.

This is very important.

So I've practiced pranayama and qigong and these kind of energy things for many,

Many years.

Years ago,

I practiced them hours and hours a day,

Really building strong samadhi and being able to manipulate a huge amount of energy.

But more recently when I've cultivated truth to a higher degree and other things to a higher degree,

It's given me much more skill with the most gentle effort and the most gentle intention I've had more result than when I bust my butt years ago.

Because the strength of atitana and the strength of satcha,

The strength of intention and truth are more cultivated when you intend something to heal yourself or something like that,

It has substance.

There's something to back it up.

So like I've told you about this wrist problem which is a karmic injury which I can't heal.

If I don't use my atitana each morning,

It comes back.

I need to use my intention and do work with prana and qi just for 10 minutes gently in the morning.

I do that each morning and my intention is to heal it and then I don't have no problems.

I don't have to have strong samadhi or do hours of qigong like back in the day because the truth and the intention is more cultivated.

So I just gently intend like I heal the heels of heels.

Boom,

No problem.

If you look with an MRI,

The problem is still there and it's drastic,

It needs surgery.

But the intention,

The perfection of the intention and all the other parameters lift the practice so that the prana can have a power.

It can have a city,

It has a power that's beyond the physical body.

So when we cultivate these things,

We can work beyond our normal limits.

We can cultivate,

We can heal ourselves and we can develop skillful means.

They all work together in self-support.

Just cultivating what we want doesn't work.

Wanting to have a lot of energy and just doing qigong and prana and cultivating samadhi,

You get powerful skills but you don't have anything to back it up.

There's nothing lifting you.

It's the purification of your character and the skillful means and helping others and all that stuff that lifts you,

Like the bodhisattva way.

It's just Buddhism.

Theravada Mahayana,

It's the same.

The outer trappings are what catch people.

The middle way,

That's Buddhism.

The middle way is the practice that leads to enlightenment.

The other stuff is the trappings,

The middle way.

Okay,

Thank you.

Reviews

Sadhu sadhu sadhu such clarity of explanation. Exactly what I needed to hear. The discussion about virya and connections was riveting 🙏🙏🙏 thank you again