Brahma Viharas

Using samatha/concentration to steady the mind, we then to use vipassana/reflection to question ourselves. Perhaps the oldest recording of Ajahn's voice. Contains background noise.

Transcript

Definition for sati,

Partly what for sati is a mindfulness or entirely a karmic look,

Which means to reflect on.

The path of liberation is through awareness.

If you're suffering it's because of a lack of awareness.

You're not aware.

All beings suffer because they get lost in all the changing phenomena around them,

In them,

Inside them,

Outside them.

The Buddha said this is why people suffer,

All beings suffer,

Because they identify with birth and death,

With old age,

With sickness,

They identify with things that are changing.

So in order to stop that habitual identifying with all the changing phenomena,

You stop and just watch.

You learn to be aware of a changing phenomena just by watching it,

No longer attaching to it or rejecting it,

Just observing it,

Patiently sitting,

Walking,

Standing,

Lying down.

What do I mean by changing phenomena?

What do we mean by that?

Sankaras,

Another Pali word,

Which stands for compounded things in our own bodies and minds,

All our thoughts,

Feelings,

Opinions,

Views,

Sensations,

Memories,

Imagination,

Expectation and help.

Everything that we think is me is mine,

Are the thoughts we have,

All the things we love,

All the things we hate.

All that is good and all that is evil,

All that can be perceived through the senses and all that is conceived.

So we watch this.

And it starts with,

Anapanasatthi of mindfulness,

It means this is a beginning exercise,

A mental exercise,

If you develop in your daily life,

You will reap a very fine reward,

Result from it.

So I recommend doing it every day,

Whether you come here or not,

Do it in your home,

15 minutes in the morning,

15 minutes in the evening.

Do as I described,

As I led you in this past hour.

Observe the breath,

Concentrate your full attention on the breath,

Hold that attention from the beginning to the end.

Then start reflecting after the mind has calmed down,

If you develop that practice,

Where the mind becomes calm,

Just reflect,

How do I feel?

Before you start the satthi,

Or the mindfulness of breathing,

First ask yourself,

How do I feel?

Do I feel like a mess,

Confused,

Your mind absolute chaos,

Or your mind dull and boring,

Or your mind peaceful and lovely?

Allow it to be just as it is,

And observe it,

Say,

Wow,

What is my mood,

What do I really feel like?

You don't know what you feel like,

That's good enough,

You don't know what you feel like.

Then with deliberation follow the breath,

Training the mind to stay with the breath,

And then at the end of the 15 minutes stop and reflect,

How do I feel?

And observe,

It doesn't matter how you feel,

You've got tranquility,

Or you're nervous,

Uptight,

Or whatever,

Observe it.

If you're dull,

Or sleepy,

Worried,

Bored,

Discouraged,

Elated,

Ecstatic,

Stand back and just watch.

Then the real practice of what they call insight,

Observing,

Mindfully observing,

And reflecting on all this changing phenomena,

One's moods,

Feelings,

Sensations,

Thoughts,

Consciousness.

Learn to reflect,

Let things be as they are,

Do not spend your time trying to change yourself,

And make yourself into what you think you should be,

But just observe what there is now,

Whether you like it or dislike it,

Good,

Bad,

Or indifferent,

Just be one who observes patiently that which is in the present moment.

And this is the path of liberation,

Through awareness you'll understand everything.

Through heedlessness you'll have to be born and die a million more,

A billion more lifetimes probably,

At least.

It's a way of talking,

You've got to figure that one out,

Don't bother.

It's a way of saying,

If you're attached to ignorance and identify with ignorance,

Then you'll suffer with ignorance all the time,

You'll be ignorant.

But when you let go of ignorance,

Then there's wisdom.

You don't attach to wisdom,

You can't attach to wisdom,

Impossible,

Because you are wise.

There is wisdom already.

The only reason why you think you are,

Is because you identify with all that is ignorant,

Changing,

Imperfect.

You say,

This is me,

This imperfect body is me.

Can any of us say our bodies are perfect?

We look at them,

They're subject to change,

They degenerate,

They get old,

They get sick,

There's old age and death,

And yet we so strongly cling to the body,

This is me,

This is mine.

So we have to suffer when we cling to things like the body and suffer with it.

Try to keep it healthy and decorated so it looks attractive,

Don't fool ourselves into thinking that we're this attractive and healthy being.

But then it always changes,

As healthy as one can get,

One can also become that unhealthy.

As beautiful as one may try to become physically,

One can be that ugly.

So if we attach to the body,

This changing formation,

The body,

We're going to get pulled around in its change.

That means we're attached into ignorance,

We're identified with that which is ignorant,

That which is not wise.

So we let go,

We detach,

We don't attach to it.

It's still there,

That doesn't make it go away,

But we know exactly what it is,

We reflect on it,

We observe it.

What is the nature of the body?

Is it me,

Is it mine,

Is it my soul,

Is this my eternal soul,

That which is eternal,

Perfect and whole?

Ask yourself questions like that.

Can you answer those questions?

Can anybody say their body is eternal,

Perfect?

Gots,

Views,

Opinions,

Memories,

Identifications,

Identities of all sorts.

Consciousness through the senses,

The ear,

The nose,

The tongue,

The eye,

Pleasure and pain with the body.

And you keep asking yourself,

Observing,

Watching,

Investigating,

Reflecting on.

And this is the wise one.

So while you begin to know so well the nature of the universe,

You're no longer attached to it,

You're balanced.

The wise one.

So have faith and trust in that which is wise.

Say,

I'm wise,

This is just another thought.

If you try to find wisdom,

You'll not find it,

You be wise.

And this is what Buddhist meditation is,

Being wise.

We sit here,

We're being wise when we're observing,

When we're standing back and looking,

Reflecting on.

The difference between grabbing hold of,

Trying to grab hold of,

And non-attachment,

Letting things be as they are,

Letting yourself be as you are.

The thoughts that come,

The high thoughts or the low thoughts.

Just noting the thought and the nature of thought is it's change.

There's no such thing as permanent thinking,

Permanent thought.

Permanent evil,

Permanent good,

There's no such thing.

These things come and go,

Change,

They arise out of ignorance and go back.

Can you find out where your thoughts really come from?

What is the ultimate beginning of everything?

You can't,

But you can see the beginning and the ending of all that is ignorant.

Watch,

You assume your body was born,

It is now getting old,

And it will die.

But your thoughts,

Your feelings,

Your sensations,

They're being born and dying all the time,

They're beginning and ending,

You can see that,

You can watch that,

You can observe,

You can reflect on it,

Every one of us here is capable of that kind of reflection,

We have that ability.

Human beings are beings who have the ability to reflect on themselves.

Buddhism is a religion,

The Buddha established for human beings,

Intelligent beings,

Beings that can reflect,

That can understand.

A cat cannot do that,

It cannot reflect on itself,

It can only follow its habits blindly according to how it's been conditioned,

What it's learned.

But we do that,

Most of us do that all our lives,

Most human beings aren't really much higher than a cat or a dog,

Maybe a little more intelligent,

But they perform and live their lives in the same way as an animal,

Because they never reflect on themselves,

They never ask themselves,

Who am I,

Why was I born,

How should I live my life,

What is life all about,

How do I get out of the suffering that I'm in.

This is the point of meditation,

We all are capable of doing it,

Not one of us is incapable,

This is the grandness of being born as a human being.

And even luckier,

More fortunate,

Is the fact that we're born at a time in which we can listen to dharma,

Listen to the teachings of Buddha,

Listen to the teachings of wise men.

Sometimes,

There have been ages where places in the world where people never get,

They never see wise people,

Never have wise teachers,

Never hear the dharma,

Never heard of Buddhism,

Never heard of anything,

They've had the chance to see or investigate or practice in the religious way,

The spiritual way.

But all of us here obviously do have this good fortune.

We're living at a time,

In a place,

Where religious values are beginning to become available to us all.

How we live our lives is up to us,

We each can live it foolishly or wisely,

That's up to you.

If you start reflecting on yourself,

Investigating yourself,

You'll not have any inclination to live your life foolishly anymore.

It's only that kind of ignorance that makes people foolish.

They don't know,

They've never bothered to stop and look,

They're afraid,

They're afraid of themselves,

They're afraid of what they might find.

They don't believe,

They doubt,

They don't want to be bothered,

They still have great desires to attain worldly happiness,

Become rich and famous.

But there are those who see the emptiness in all that and realize that those kind of goals are not any better than just another animal existence.

A trap,

Identification with all the ignorant,

Changing things in the universe.

So through this reflection and observation,

We put ourselves in what we call the position of the butto,

The one who knows,

The aware one,

The one who's not deluded.

In our lives though,

We live in a society,

We live with others.

Some people see Vipassana or Buddhist meditation as strictly a selfish endeavor,

Where we investigate ourselves and don't care about anybody else.

This is a way of talking,

Of getting people on instead of always to identify with things outside themselves.

I'm a man,

I'm a woman,

I'm an Englishman,

I'm an American,

I'm this class,

I'm that class,

I'm from this part of the country,

Or I'm whatever.

I like this and I don't like that.

If they start that kind of discriminating,

Making preferences,

Choosing,

Selecting,

Following one's likes and dislikes,

And just watch the whole process.

But one of the things that's most necessary in our practice is to develop what we call the paramita,

Loving kindness,

Metta.

And this of course we directed ourselves first.

I think that in Christianity they say love thy neighbor as thyself,

In Buddhism it's the same.

If we don't love ourselves at all,

That means we are identifying with all the ignorant things,

And don't have any awareness of ourselves.

If we're busy disparaging ourselves,

Guilt-ridden,

Self-hatred,

It's because we never bother to reflect on ourselves and observe.

We're just caught in emotional and mental traps without having ever reflected on our true nature.

With awareness of yourself you begin to love yourself.

This doesn't mean vanity or egotism,

It means respecting,

Having consideration for oneself,

For this being.

Learning how to use this body and this mind in a wise and useful way,

For your own benefit and for the benefit of the society you're living in.

Because once you have self-respect,

Respect yourself,

You will respect others.

You will be able to help,

Love,

And be of use to the people you live with,

The society you live in,

The country that you're a member of.

It radiates outward from your own heart.

This loving kindness is established,

Self-respect,

Contentment.

Then you can radiate that outward,

That's how you relate with all the beings around you.

With hatred and discrimination and aversion,

We always see the faults of everybody around us and ourselves.

Picking apart everybody,

This one is this way,

That one is that way,

I'm this way.

Things shouldn't be as they are.

The world shouldn't be as it is.

But with loving kindness,

Please note,

It doesn't mean we don't know the faults and the flaws in the universe.

It's just that we aren't clinging to them,

We don't identify,

We don't indulge.

Waste of time to do that.

The ugliness,

The grossness of ourselves,

We don't identify with anymore.

We don't say,

Oh I'm a gross ugly person because of gross ugly thoughts.

We just know that grossness and ugliness is change.

It's not me,

It's not mine.

So we have respect for this being,

Radiating outward to all beings.

Being considerate,

Sensitive,

Helpful,

Cooperative.

Not just indulging in selfish whims and fancies,

Totally disregarding of how it might affect the other people living with us or around us.

Taking into consideration,

Living our lives so that we're useful and helpful,

Sensitive.

So when people say,

Oh you Buddhist monks,

You live your life selfishly and have left the world,

Because they don't understand,

They think that by going on and trying to change the world through one's own wrong views is helping the world.

The world can only be helped by one helping oneself,

Setting oneself straight,

Understanding through awareness the nature of your own body and mind.

In that way you're setting the universe right,

Because that will radiate outward and affect the universe.

None of us really understand how much power we have.

We're also limited with these small little self-conceptions clinging to wrong views of ourselves,

Saying we're this way,

That way,

Identifying with all the mean nasty little things,

With all our fears and worries,

Hopes and desires.

So of course we're limited by that,

When we limit ourselves to that which is minute work.

When we think we are a very limited thing,

That's what we are,

We've created ourselves into an animal,

Into a limited form,

Into a cripple,

Into this or that.

When we let go then we find out there's no limitations.

Our heart is as grand as the universe.

There are no limits,

No boundaries.

Love is boundless.

Not reserved for just that person,

That group.

At the metta,

The love of a wise man is boundless.

No limits,

No boundaries.

Our hearts can be boundless if we liberate ourselves from attachments to all the bound and limited conditions.

And that takes awareness.

So reflect on what I've said.

Practice,

Develop this skill on the panasati,

Mindfulness of breathing.

Live your lives in a way in which you can reflect on them.

Keep asking yourself,

Who am I,

What am I doing,

How should I live my life?

Don't try to answer that with some kind of pat answer,

But just allow yourself not to know.

Remind yourself all the time.

Bring awareness into your daily life,

Into what you're doing,

What you're saying,

The work you're performing,

What you're thinking,

Why do I think like that?

Are these silly thoughts really me?

Ask yourself questions like that.

What are these silly thoughts?

Listen to that nagging,

Moaning thing inside yourself that's always saying,

You shouldn't do that,

You're a horrible person.

You're helpless.

You're lazy,

Good for nothing.

That self-disparaging thing.

Listen to it patiently and just observe,

But don't believe it,

Don't identify with it.

It comes and it goes,

It changes.

Then you're always in the position of the wise one.

And that's the only way to get beyond the ignorant is to be wise.

Reviews

🙏🏼❤️

Simply, profoundly helpful.

Profound, precious teaching in direct words.

Nice to be reassured that everyone has these racing and somewhat negative minds.
Sounds immature of me to think I’m the only person, but it’s so easy to get trapped in this cycle.

Dhamma talk is the greatest gift.

Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!
Perfect timing for this Teaching 101 for me. With a deep bow~~

Slip into a meditative mind with these wise reflections.

Beautiful grounding, uncomplicated wisdom. Thank u 🙏💝

A wonderful talk with so much good information!

Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu