Challenging Conditions

This track features a live talk and a guided practice by Ajahn Candasiri. She shares her experiences in her practice of the Buddhist teachings and helps listeners understand the importance of finding value in each’s respective practice until they find out what works for them. She also addresses questions from the audience, which amounts to a very enlightening listen.

Transcript

Namo etasam bhagavato arahatu sammasambuddhasam Namo etasam bhagavato arahatu sammasambuddhasam Namo etasam bhagavato arahatu sammasambuddhasam Bodhang dhammang sanghang namasami So Ajahn Sermaydo asked me if I would be willing to give the talk this evening.

He asked me yesterday evening and then he asked again this evening just to make sure.

And I said I'd be very happy to.

Partly because it gives me a chance to just express appreciation for this opportunity that we've all had.

To practice together in this really lovely retreat place.

And with excellent conditions,

Very very good support.

And just a very pleasant environment.

And the woods and nature and all of you.

And it's been very lovely actually to meet many of you in the group interviews.

And to have a chance to share some of the Buddhist teachings.

And also for us all to have the opportunity to practice with Lumpur,

With Ajahn Sermaydo.

A very great gift.

So it's nice to be able to say that publicly.

There were some,

One or two questions in the bowl.

And fortunately they were questions I could understand.

And so I thought I'd just try to kind of weave them into a series of reflections.

About the teachings,

About the way of practice.

These evening Dhamma talks,

They're always given in the spirit of an offering.

An offering of something from our own understanding,

Our own practice.

And the encouragement is to take it in,

To listen.

But you don't at all have to agree with everything.

It's more something that is offered with a view to encouraging each one in their practice.

But one of the most important things I think in this way of practice is that we actually experiment.

We find out for ourselves.

So instructions may be given and then we can try it out.

And if it works we use a particular technique.

And if it doesn't suit us so well then we can use another technique.

We can find out what works for us.

There's been quite a lot of talk about death in some of the groups that I've been in.

And it brought to mind a quotation that occurs at the end of a collection of teachings called the Sutta Nipata.

And the very last chapter is an account of 16 Brahmin students who decide to go and see the Buddha and ask him various questions.

And there was one Brahmin student called Mogaraja who asked the Buddha a question about death.

And the Buddha's response seemed to me to be very,

Very relevant to the kind of things that we've been considering over this time together.

And basically what the Buddha said,

He said,

If you are always aware Mogaraja you will look at the world and see its emptiness.

If you give up looking at yourself,

At your soul,

As a fixed permanent identity then you have given yourself a way to go beyond death.

If you look at the world like this the king of death will not see you.

So it might seem to be rather a puzzling teaching because of course we all know that we're all going to die,

These bodies are going to die.

But what exactly is the Buddha pointing to?

What exactly is the Buddha getting at?

Looking at the world and seeing its emptiness,

Contemplating oneself as having no fixed identity.

And what I take from it is very much what Lumpur has been teaching us about Sakyaditi.

That there is no sense of selfhood in the mind or the body,

This human condition that each one of us finds ourselves in.

And this demands a particular kind of awareness,

A particular kind of investigation.

And the teaching that has already been alluded to several times is something that comes up in our morning chanting in the monastery.

Where it says that looking at the causes of suffering,

And it says birth is suffering,

Birth is dukkha,

Aging is dukkha,

Death is dukkha,

Sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief and despair are dukkha.

Not getting what you want is dukkha,

Getting what you don't want is dukkha,

Being with the unloved is dukkha,

Not being with the loved is dukkha,

Not getting what you want is dukkha.

In brief,

The five focuses of the grasping mind are dukkha,

The five focuses of identity are dukkha.

And it says that the Buddha in his lifetime,

For the complete understanding of this,

The Buddha in his lifetime frequently instructed his disciples to reflect,

To consider in just this way.

So it was obviously something he felt was pretty important.

And basically what it is is challenging our sense of identity,

All the things that we stick together to make into what we call me,

The body,

Feelings,

Perception,

Mental formations and sense consciousness.

And that's what we call the five khandhas.

And I thought,

Just to say a little bit about each of them,

It's repeating what we've already heard,

But I always find that sometimes hearing things from a different voice and putting a slightly different way can sometimes help us get more of a sense of it.

The way that we tend to create a sense of personality,

A sense of me,

That this is something that has been conditioned into us from a very early age.

We learn to think of ourselves as being an individual.

And in Western culture,

This is very prevalent,

This sense of selfhood,

Being somebody,

Being somebody special,

Being an individual.

Now I think that there are cultures where less is made of this,

Where perhaps it's more the group,

The tribe,

The family.

But in our particular culture,

It's being an individual,

Having a personality.

And so we've learned from when we were very little to be somebody special,

To be an engaging,

Interesting personality,

Somebody that people like,

Somebody that we can have a sense of our own worth,

Our own value.

A tremendous emphasis is put on this.

And we build it up.

So the body is a very significant part of it.

There's a tremendous emphasis on having a body that's okay.

So preferably young,

Vigorous,

Healthy,

Good looking,

Not too fat,

Not too thin,

The right kind of skin,

The right kind of hair.

And then we dress it in a way that to kind of enhance it,

To make it look even better,

More attractive,

More interesting.

And we can suffer enormously if our bodies are not quite right.

I mean,

I imagine that all of us have bodies that are not quite right.

And each one of us will have a different kind of not quite rightness.

And we won't go into that.

But it's very interesting,

The significance we place on the body and the way that we can suffer because of our bodies.

Certainly there is physical pain.

There is the aging process,

Which is,

Can be a source of great anguish,

Just noticing the body getting older,

Noticing how the skin changes,

Noticing that we're no longer quite so flexible,

Noticing how the eyesight changes.

We know we finally can't read the small print,

Things like that.

And along with the sort of sorrow of losing our vigor,

Our youth,

Our beauty,

There's also quite a lot of fear.

How is it going to be when I get really old?

How will I manage?

And then the fear of the death of the body,

Recognizing that this is something that's going to come to all of us at some stage.

So there's a very strong identification with the body.

It's been interesting for me because I recently turned 60 and Ajahn Samed on my birthday,

He kept saying he couldn't believe that I was 60 because we've known each other for about 30 years.

And so he remembers me when I was 30 or just and to think of me as 60.

He kept saying I can't believe that she's 60.

She only looks about 20.

Making jokes about this.

I quite like that.

And then now,

Of course,

Being 60 in Britain,

They have this thing where you become an old age pensioner.

And you get a bus pass.

You know,

In some ways I was quite excited about getting a bus pass.

I could travel on the buses without money,

Which is great news if you don't have money to be able to.

So I can,

You know,

I can now go into London without any money with my bus pass.

So,

You know,

It is quite exciting.

But then when I looked at my bus pass,

You have to have a photograph on it.

I looked at this bus pass with a photograph.

Oh,

Dear.

And then a few months ago,

I had to go in because I've been having trouble with my knees.

The doctor made an appointment to see the physio.

And so I saw the physiotherapist and she said,

Oh,

She said,

Do you walk with a stick?

And it was interesting just how unacceptable that question was.

No,

I'm not one of those people that walks with a walk.

I'm not one of those old people that has to walk with a walking stick.

And I realized that actually there was quite a strong identification with this body.

And I'm sure it's the same for all of us.

I don't think I'm alone in this.

But it was very interesting to notice and to realize that this identification is definitely something to be challenged.

And whether you're young and beautiful and strong and healthy,

Or whether you're really old and having aches and pains and difficulty getting around,

For each one of us,

It's a very helpful contemplation to say,

You know,

Is this body what I am?

Is this something that I need to identify with?

And to realize the incredible amount of investment we have in our bodies,

Whether they're OK or not,

Whether they're the way that we feel that they should be,

And just a fear around their decline.

And we're very fortunate having Ajahn Samedho as a teacher because he often talks about how wonderful it is to be getting old and how delighted he is to watch how his skin's changing and to contemplate the aging process.

And we were we were fortunate because it's actually quite a number of years ago we had an old lady living in our community and she was very comfortable with being old.

And she had these two hearing aids that she was always losing.

And she became incontinent towards the end and she didn't mind at all these kind of nappies that we had to kind of wrap her up it when she went to bed.

And she was a real character.

And,

You know,

I used to bathe her in this funny old body that I used to help her bathe.

And there was something about her sense of ease around it that I found very,

Very helpful for me.

I thought,

Well,

You know,

Maybe it's not so bad after all.

All of these things that,

You know,

There's just a kind of recoiling from the prospect,

The specter,

The heavenly messenger of old age.

And I think this culture is very,

You know,

We have a lot of difficulty with coming to terms with the aging process.

But when we when we contemplate,

When we're wise,

When we practice,

The Buddha encourages us to really,

You know,

Challenge this identification.

And so we can learn how to think of our bodies in a different way,

Learn how to contemplate them and just to notice the aging process,

To take an interest in it.

You know,

Just to see,

Well,

This is just a body getting old.

I just like anything in nature that gets old,

Like contemplating,

Say,

Say,

Flowers,

Beautiful flowers.

Say,

Like,

If you see a really beautiful rose in England now,

The roses will be coming out.

I mean,

They're just so exquisitely beautiful.

And so you can you can look at the roses and sometimes people give us roses for the shrines and you just look at these roses.

They're so extraordinarily beautiful and they have a fragrance.

And you keep them for a few days and then you just notice how they begin to change and they begin to lose that that kind of radiant quality.

And gradually they they fade and then they they they they wither.

And I'm always interested in my response to that process.

You know,

The kind of feeling of I don't I don't want you to change.

I want you to stay young and beautiful.

And,

You know,

I want this radiance,

This beauty of the rose to stay.

But when we contemplate it from the point of view of Dhamma,

We see that there's actually a beauty in the aging and the withering.

And then we look at our own skin and notice how that that changes.

And you just see it's just it's just like the rose,

Just changing.

It's fading.

And eventually it will die.

And that's just what it's supposed to do.

So that's the first focus of identity,

The first khanda,

Rupa,

Physical form.

The other four khandas are all aspects of mind.

And and the Buddha,

His teaching was just so brilliant the way he was able to kind of kind of break things down,

Sort of analyze things.

And there are many teachings he gives about the khandas,

Sort of different ways of contemplating them.

The second the second khanda is feeling,

Which many of you will know is in Buddhism is not the same as emotion.

It's actually they're just we can think in terms of three kinds of feeling.

There's pleasant feeling,

There's unpleasant feeling and feeling that's neither pleasant nor unpleasant,

Neutral feeling.

So we can contemplate these as a as a focus for mindfulness.

And then perception,

Feeling is vedana,

Just to get the Pali term,

Vedana is feeling.

And then perception,

Sannyas,

Which is also sometimes spoken of as like recognition or memory.

And I was contemplating this actually in relation to the snake that we saw out there.

Well,

I saw out there and probably quite a few of you saw it.

This very big snake and I I'd not seen a snake like that before.

I'd seen pictures of the rattlesnakes that we've been asked to look out for and they have a particular kind of patterning.

And this snake sort of had a kind of pattern,

But it wasn't rattling the way that I'm told rattlesnakes rattle.

So I wasn't quite sure if it was a rattlesnake,

But I thought,

Well,

I'd better go and let the managers know.

And then the snake man came.

And because he's seen lots of snakes,

He knows about snakes.

He was able to look at it and he was able to say,

No,

That's not a rattlesnake.

That's a king snake.

So he because of his experience with snakes,

He was able to have the perception that this is a king snake.

It's not a rattlesnake.

All I could say was that I think it's probably a snake,

But I didn't know if it was a rattlesnake or a king snake.

And then the managers,

They asked me to look at some pictures of king snakes on the computer.

They've got a whole kind of library of different pictures of snakes,

Just for the purposes of identification.

And so I looked at all these pictures and I thought,

No,

That's not what it was like.

It wasn't like that.

And eventually I came to one that said,

Oh,

Well,

It was maybe like that.

And so we were all very relieved to realize it wasn't a rattlesnake.

It wasn't one of the kind that could cause us serious harm.

But it was a king snake that doesn't harm humans.

And so we could all relax.

And that was perception.

And now when I see a king snake,

I'll be able to recognize it more immediately.

But because I hadn't had the experience,

There was nothing in my memory that could recognize it.

So perception is very much linked with memory.

And those of us who've been doing the interviews have had an interesting time just sort of learning how to recognize each of you,

How to fix the right label onto you to know whether it's kind of Susan or Janice or this recognition of you all.

And I've actually met about half of you now.

And because it's a large number,

I haven't been able to actually remember all of you,

All of the ones I've met.

But to see that perception is about actually being able to recognize and label,

So to give a name to people.

The first evening we met Steve and Deb.

And they came up and they introduced themselves as the managers.

And every day they've been coming to meet with us.

And so now I'm very clear about who Steve and Deb are.

But some of and people who I've met before,

I can recognize,

I can perceive you according to your conventional identity.

And these names are all conventions,

Of course.

But labels that we use,

I know that you're all human.

That's another identity,

I think.

All human beings.

So I can recognize that each one of you is a human being and I know the men and I know the women.

But as far as your actual personal identities,

I'm still learning them.

So this is what we mean by perception.

And for each one of us we have various perception,

Various labels that we can use for ourselves.

Like nun,

Layperson,

Nurse,

Doctor,

Different identities.

Another of the khandhas is sankhara,

Which is mental formations.

And this covers a whole range of things.

It includes emotions,

It includes,

Actually it includes the conceptualization.

So actually the labeling comes into that category.

The way that we describe ourselves,

The way that we think of ourselves and each other,

Our emotional responses,

Our desires,

Our longings,

Our moods.

And I think there's about 54 or maybe more sankharas and I'm ashamed to say that I don't know all of them.

But for the sake of simplicity we just call them mental formations.

And then the final of the khandhas is sense consciousness,

Which is the awareness of the different things.

Just aware of a sound,

Aware of a sight,

Aware of a fragrance or a taste,

Aware of a thought in the mind,

Aware of a bodily sensation.

So the consciousness moves very rapidly from one sense door to another.

So we can perceive things through the different sense bases,

Eyes,

Ears,

Nose,

Tongue,

Body,

Mind.

So this is the kind of package that we have,

That we find ourselves with as human beings.

And usually we don't sort of think of ourselves in that way.

Usually we just think,

Well,

I'm me,

This is me.

And if somebody comes along and says something that we don't like,

Then we can feel indignant,

Upset,

Offended,

Challenged.

And this is a sense of selfhood arising because of the identification,

The very strong identification with who and what we think we are.

So the Buddha encouraged us to keep dismantling this assembly of things.

And there are many different ways that he encouraged us to do it and the ways of contemplating the body,

Where we actually sort of take it apart anatomically,

Hair of the head,

Hair of the body,

Nails,

Teeth,

Skin,

Flesh,

Bones,

Bone marrow,

Sinews,

Intestines.

And it gets very explicit just as a way of dismantling the perception of who and what we think we are and the very,

Very strong identification with the body and mind.

So the form is impermanent,

Feeling is impermanent,

Perception is impermanent,

Mental formations are impermanent,

Sense-consciousness is impermanent.

Form is not self.

Feeling is not self.

Perception is not self.

Relatives,

Oligarchs,

Speaking people,

And being fried in a Form is not self.

Feeling is not self.

Perception is not self.

Mental formations are not self.

Sense-consciousness is not self.

All of these things that we identify with are not who and what we are.

So as the Buddha said to Mogguraja,

If you look at the world you'll see its emptiness.

See that there's no fixed self or soul,

No fixed ego identity in any of it.

This helps us,

Little by little,

To let go of all of the things that we cherish as me.

Many of you have spoken about how the retreat practices felt like quite hard work.

We tend to think of coming on retreat as a chance to come and to meditate and to experience lots of pleasant mind states,

And get blissed out and feel very calm and peaceful.

Sometimes we do have moments when it's like that.

I rather hope that each one of you has maybe had a few moments of calm and clarity and bliss and a sense of ease and well-being.

Maybe for some of you there's been lots of that.

But I'm also interested that for many of you it's felt like quite hard work.

I remember it was the second retreat I went on with Ajahn Samadho.

It was the first time I met Ajahn Sundara.

She wasn't Ajahn Sundara then and I wasn't Ajahn Chandrasuri then.

We were both lay women and we'd done this retreat together and listened to the teachings.

For me that particular retreat felt like very hard work.

After the retreat Ajahn Sundara and me,

We were walking along,

Francoise she was and I was Katie,

We were walking along together.

She said to me,

She said,

How was the retreat for you?

I said,

It was really hard work.

It was very hard work.

I said,

How was it for you?

She said,

Oh,

It was wonderful.

Oh,

I was so happy.

It was so happy.

It was so wonderful.

I loved it so much.

And that's kind of set the tone of our relationship.

I know she won't mind me saying this.

I mean,

She's probably told you similar stories about different people see things differently.

And I didn't mind at all that she'd had a wonderful time and I didn't mind at all that it had been hard work for me.

Sometimes it seems like hard work because what it is,

It's a progressive challenging of all of the assumptions we've made that we've grown up with,

All of the conditioning.

We need to challenge it.

We need to question it in order to come to an understanding of who and what we really are as human beings.

In our lives on this planet,

The way that we've been brought up,

We've been brought up to be deluded.

We've been brought up to see ourselves as being somebody fixed and special and to identify very strongly with our strengths and also with our weaknesses,

With the things that we do well and the things that we don't do well.

And so this retreat has been a chance for us to really challenge that identity,

The way that we think of ourselves and to break down this sense of who and what we think we are and to rather take refuge in the awareness.

Like taking refuge in Buddha,

Dhammasanga is taking refuge in present moment awareness.

The Buddha is that which sees and sees and knows clearly in this moment how things are.

What's going on here now?

Taking refuge in the Dhamma is the truth of this moment as we experience it.

Not about what's going to happen next or not what happened last year or yesterday or five minutes ago,

But what's happening here now?

Taking refuge in Sangha,

Our aspiration to live in accordance with truth.

So once we begin to get a taste of this,

And once we begin to get a taste of the Four Noble Truths,

What that really means for us,

We have actually got our work cut out for us because we need to keep applying these teachings to our experience.

So when we're feeling,

You know,

Like some of you talked about just having a lot of obsessive thinking,

And we know that,

Or we have a sense that,

Well,

I shouldn't think,

I shouldn't identify with thinking,

These thoughts shouldn't be there.

And sometimes it's very difficult just to stay present with them because our habit is to struggle with what we don't like.

So when we have a pleasant feeling coming up,

We want to hold on to it,

We want to keep it.

Like when we have a really blissful meditation,

Everything is just wonderful,

The world is dissolving,

And we're just here,

And there's the sound of silence humming away,

And it's just great,

And we're just really at ease.

And,

You know,

We'd rather like to stay there forever.

You know,

We don't want the bell to ring,

We don't want to have to get up and go and do something and eat something and,

You know,

Bathe the body and rest the body.

We want to just stay here forever.

That's the kind of grasping that can set in when we're enjoying ourselves.

And when we're feeling utterly wretched and miserable,

We have all kinds of thoughts about how useless we are and the things that we've done that we really shouldn't have done,

And the things that we've said that we shouldn't have said,

And the fears and the worries about what's going to happen when we get old and what's going to happen next,

And the sort of dread of losing those that we love.

I mean,

This is another thing that people have spoken about,

The feeling of,

You know,

How am I going to manage when the people that are dearest to me die?

You know,

Very perfectly understandable concern that can actually take a hold of us and obsess the mind.

But we do have these refuges in Buddha,

Dhamma,

Sangha.

So how do we apply these?

How do we use these in our life and in our practice?

So Ajahn Sumedha has been stressing using the sound of silence as a reference,

Because that's something that is happening here now,

You know,

That we can turn to at any time.

Using the breath or just using the question.

And one of the things I often encourage is,

You know,

To say,

Just ask the question,

How is it right now?

You know,

Not to come up with an intellectual answer,

But just to actually focus the awareness.

How is it right now?

And when I do that,

It brings my awareness right into the present.

So then I can say,

This is how it is.

So when we're dreading something,

And I used to really have a lot of dread of my parents' death,

My parents dying,

You know,

I just couldn't understand how people could survive,

How people could bear it when their parents died.

And,

You know,

Some years ago I could see what I was doing,

Because when I was with them,

There'd be this kind of anxiety and sort of,

You know,

Oh,

They're going to die.

And I thought,

This is ridiculous.

They haven't died yet.

I'm with them here.

I have a chance to be with them,

To enjoy their company.

Why didn't I do that?

Rather than spend all the time dreading something that,

You know,

Will happen at some time,

But hasn't happened yet.

Why do I spoil this very precious time by filling it with dread?

So I made a determination just to be present,

To enjoy their company as long as they were around.

And I'm happy to say that I did.

And then when the time came for them to die,

They died.

And sure,

There was loads of sorrow,

And I still feel a lot of sorrow,

But it's all right.

There's a story from the life of the Buddha about,

I think he was a wealthy merchant.

And one of his children,

I think he was a son,

Died.

And he went into a state of great grief and sorrow.

And he went to the Buddha.

And the Buddha was quite concerned because he could see that this man was very,

Very,

Very distraught,

Very distressed.

And the Buddha's response was,

He said,

Well,

He said,

Loved ones bring sorrow.

And the man didn't like this response at all.

It wasn't at all what he was expecting.

And he said,

No,

That's ridiculous.

You know,

Loved ones bring joy.

They bring happiness.

And he went and he started talking with the people who were around and said,

You know,

Did you hear what the Buddha said?

Did you hear what he said?

He said that loved ones bring sorrow.

He said,

They bring joy.

They bring happiness.

And this sort of word spread around the whole town of this thing that the Buddha had said to this merchant.

And eventually it got to the palace.

And King Pasenadi,

Who hadn't actually met the Buddha at that stage,

Spoke with his wife,

Queen Malika,

Who was a great devotee,

A great admirer of the Buddha.

And Queen Malika,

When Pasenadi asked her,

She said,

Well,

You know,

If the Buddha said it,

Then it must be true.

The Buddha's very wise and he speaks the truth.

And Pasenadi said,

Oh,

Whatever that man says,

You say,

Oh,

If he says it,

Then it must be true.

And he was a bit dismissive.

So Queen Malika,

Who was a shrewd lady,

She decided to check it out for herself.

So she sent a messenger to the Buddha and she said to the messenger,

You know,

Please go and ask the Buddha if it's true what he said.

And so the servant went and checked it out with the Buddha and the Buddha confirmed that the story was correct.

And so the servant went back to Queen Malika and said,

Yes,

That was certainly what the Buddha had said.

So Queen Malika thought a bit about it,

Pondered and went to the king,

Her husband,

And said,

Yes,

It's true what the Buddha said.

And so then she decided to kind of interpret it herself and said,

Well,

You know,

Tell me,

You know,

How about you think about your daughter,

Our daughter,

Princess Vajiri.

And obviously,

They both loved this daughter very much.

And so she said,

You know,

You know,

We both love our daughter very much,

But supposing something happened to her,

How would that be?

And the king said,

Well,

I'd be very concerned.

I'd be very upset.

And so Queen Malika then went on to enumerate other people who were very dear to them.

And little by little,

The king got the message.

And to see that if we love somebody,

Sooner or later,

There's going to be separation.

There's going to be some kind of a change.

And so inevitably,

There's going to be sorrow.

Now,

We could interpret this as being incredibly negative and pessimistic.

But I see this as being a very kind of very realistic teaching.

Actually,

I should say I'll just go back a little bit.

We could interpret it either as being very pessimistic or we could be see it as being like an instruction not to love anybody.

Because if you love,

If you're attached,

Then there's going to be sorrow.

There's going to be there's going to be suffering.

And in the old days in England,

They used this.

Well,

In fact,

There still is something called the Buddhist Society,

Where it which began in 1924,

Which is a long time ago.

And people used they would study Buddhism and often come up with an interpretation of the teachings that seemed to me to be incredibly dry and lifeless,

You know,

That you shouldn't attach.

It's wrong to attach.

It's wrong to love anybody.

You shouldn't.

You must be detached.

And I've thought about this a lot because it doesn't kind of feel right.

Somehow,

I can't imagine that the Buddha would have said you shouldn't love.

You shouldn't feel attachment.

And I think if we look into the teachings more carefully,

What we'll see is that attachment can be a source of suffering.

In the passage that I referred to that we have in the morning chanting,

Where it says,

Birth is suffering.

Birth is Dukkha.

Aging is Dukkha.

Death is Dukkha.

Sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief and despair are Dukkha.

Separation from the loved is Dukkha.

Being with what you don't love is Dukkha.

And so on.

I like to interpret Dukkha as being unsatisfactory or difficult to bear.

My sense is that when we can be present with these things,

That we don't need to suffer about them.

When we let go of the desire for things to be otherwise,

The suffering ceases.

So,

To go back to when we lose somebody that we love,

And the sorrow,

I see that the sorrow is just like an inevitable result of loving.

When there's separation from what we love,

Then there's sorrow.

I'm also interested to notice,

I mean what I've noticed myself,

That there can be sorrow,

There can be grieving,

But there doesn't have to be suffering about it.

That the suffering is when we feel we shouldn't feel sorrow,

When we shouldn't feel sad.

So actually what you find,

As your practice goes on and as you become more mindful,

That you can actually stay present even with conditions which we would normally label as being very unpleasant,

Very difficult,

Very hard to bear.

But when we can bear them,

It's actually alright.

We can actually find a place of peacefulness,

Even in the midst of terrible pain,

Terrible sorrow,

Terrible anguish,

Dreadful humiliation,

Whatever.

All of the things that we fear and dread most in our lives,

When we're present with them,

We can bear it.

That the unbearableness is the fear that these things might arise,

Is the dread.

Like when I was dreading the death of my parents,

I certainly suffered at that point.

But when I was actually going through the experience of being with them as they died,

The experience of bereavement,

There was sorrow,

But I didn't suffer.

So this is something that you can contemplate in your own life and practice.

And see that,

Say when you're feeling physical discomfort,

Where is the suffering?

There's a story I often tell about when I went to the dentist one time and I had three injections for three fillings.

And certainly I didn't feel anything,

Either when they were doing the fillings or for about eight hours afterwards.

And then I got this horrible headache and then I actually felt really very unwell.

So the next time I decided not to have an injection,

The filling happened.

There was some drilling.

There were about probably 10 seconds of fairly intense pain,

But I was present for it.

I did a kind of relaxing meditation and I was present for it and it was actually quite an interesting sensation.

And I didn't have the gaspy hangover afterwards.

So I saw that it was actually the dread,

The fear of the pain that was actually much worse than the pain itself.

That when we're fully present,

There are many kinds of pains that we think we're not going to be able to bear that we find we can bear.

I'm not saying that there is not a usefulness in having help with very extreme pain.

I've also had pain that has been too difficult to bear,

Too much of a strain.

And I've been very grateful for medication that has relieved that.

So,

You know,

By all means use these things if it's really extreme,

But to realize,

To separate pain from suffering,

Whether it's pain of the mind or pain of the body,

Is quite an interesting exercise.

So our practice of awareness might seem like a kind of deadening thing,

You know,

Sort of not everything is not self.

Everything is impermanent.

We just watch,

Notice,

Don't feel anything.

But one of the things I've noticed in my practice as I've become more attuned to my own suffering,

More interested in it,

Because you remember that Ajahn Swamiji said suffering has to be understood.

And of course,

The only way we understand something is by investigating it,

By studying it,

By looking into it.

The more I've been able to do that,

To acknowledge,

OK,

I'm suffering right now,

There is a struggle going on here,

To take an interest in it rather than feeling,

No,

Everything's fine,

Stiff upper lip.

You know,

British people were very good at the stiff upper lip practice.

Everything's fine.

And we're also very good at not getting angry.

I used to think I was very placid and peaceful until I became a nun.

And I am now able to acknowledge that I quite frequently experience intense rage.

So this tendency we have to just repress,

To push things aside,

To brush things under the carpet,

Rather than to actually say,

OK,

This is difficult for me.

I'm struggling.

I'm suffering.

So as we as we attune to our own suffering,

In that way,

We actually become more alive.

Rather than this sort of repressed cardboard cutout,

Perfect Buddhist that doesn't feel anything,

That is totally detached,

No self.

What happens is that we really begin to find our true humanity.

Rather than a constructed personality,

An idea of who and what we should be that we continuously try to live up to and probably most of the time fail at and feel discouraged about,

We begin to actually be who and what we really are to find ourselves as as human beings on this planet.

We tend to become more sensitive as a result to the suffering,

To the sorrow,

To the pain of others,

Which can sometimes feel almost unbearable.

But as we as we as we cultivate more and more the sense of refuge,

The quality of presence,

Where we're actually able to to bear with,

To be with our own pain or the sorrow,

The suffering of another,

We find that we can actually be the expression like a vehicle for peace,

You know,

As we can find peace within our own hearts.

That is something is very communicable.

It's like a communicable disease,

Only it's a communicable.

But you know,

We're all human beings are sensitive,

They do pick up on each other's moods.

So rather than conveying a sense of anger or agitation or irritation or whatever,

When we cultivate a sense of peacefulness with the conditions that arise within our own hearts and bodies and minds,

That is something that we can bring to the world.

But years ago,

People coming to the monastery and sort of saying,

Oh,

It's so peaceful here.

So wonderful.

You all look so peaceful.

And we'd be going through real traumas and dramas and many of us weren't feeling very peaceful.

But what we were doing was that we were cultivating a sense of peacefulness with conditions that weren't particularly peaceful.

So for all of us during this time of retreat,

It's been an opportunity for us to to make peace with conditions,

Whatever it might be,

Pleasant conditions,

Wonderful conditions,

Hellish conditions,

Horrible conditions,

Confusing conditions,

The doubt,

The self-disparagement,

Whatever,

Just to be able to bear with it,

To notice it's arising.

Or if we haven't actually noticed it's arising,

To actually notice it,

That it's there,

Notice its presence and then notice when it's no longer there.

And in this way we cultivate a sense of confidence.

You know,

It's all very well to hear the teachings,

To study the teachings,

But it's actually only by doing it,

By bearing with what sometimes seems totally unbearable,

Seeing that we can bear it and seeing how it changes,

That we actually know form is impermanent,

Feeling is impermanent,

Perceptions are impermanent,

Mental formations are impermanent,

Sense consciousness is impermanent,

Because we've seen it.

This great insight the Venerable Khandhanya had after the Buddha presented his first sermon,

That everything that has the nature to arise has the nature to cease.

So everything,

All of the conditions that we stick together to make into me,

All of our gifts,

Our attributes,

Our interests,

All of our achievements,

Our worldly successes,

Our spiritual triumphs,

Whatever,

All of these things that are there as part of the package,

When the time comes for us to die,

All of them will cease.

We can't take them with us.

So it's a good idea to cultivate this letting go and this challenging of these assumptions,

So that when the time comes for us to die,

We can actually just leave them all behind,

Without a sense of anguish or wanting to hold on or wanting to kind of take rebirth in some realm or other.

This was brought home very clearly to me just a few months ago when I was able to accompany a friend through her dying process.

This was somebody who I'd known for many years and she'd been practicing as a Buddhist for many years and had had a very good life.

She'd been sick,

She'd been diagnosed with leukemia about 13 years ago and given seven years to live and somehow or other had kept going and had lived life to the full according to her capacity.

I think very few people realised just how sick she was when the time came for her to die because she'd kept going and had many,

Many interests.

It was interesting just to help her to let go as she was dying because you could feel that she was still concerned about this person,

About that person and just to say to her,

Don't worry,

It's alright,

The Dhamma will take care of these things.

Then to chant the lovely chant that we do when people die,

Just Kusla Dhamma,

Kusla Dhamma,

Abhyakata Dhamma,

Just going through all the list of all of the things that as human beings we can experience in this realm that must be let go of.

So the encouragement is to use this opportunity,

This human existence to keep challenging the assumptions that we make about who and what we are and just to keep letting go.

It doesn't mean that we don't pick things up,

It doesn't mean that we don't contribute in whatever way we can to the wellbeing of humanity and it doesn't mean that we don't practice generosity,

Kindness and use this human existence in the best,

Best possible way but to realise that sooner or later we're going to have to let it go.

And is this going to be a moment of terrible,

Terrible anguish,

I sort of,

Oh no,

I don't want it to go or is it going to be a sense of,

Ah,

I've done my best and now I can put it all down,

Leave it be.

So I offer this for your contemplation this evening.

I offer this for your contemplation.

Arhang Sama Sampo Dho Pagawa Pothang Pagawantang Nabiwademi Suwakato Pagawatadhamodhamang Namasami Supatipanno Pagawato Svaka Sangho Sanghang Lamami Arhang Sama Sampo Dho Pagawatadhamang Nabiwademi

Reviews

LOVELY, and GREATLY APPRECIATED

Very helpful thank you🙏🏻

🙏🙏🙏

Finding this teaching today was not by chance! ♥️🙏🏼♥️

Simply wonderful and charming 🙏! Blessings

Wonderful. Thank you for the insights😊

This comforted me. I found out yesterday that my Dad’s stomach cancer metastasized to his chest. ❤️🙏