Circumstances

From a Monastery talk, Ajahn urges us to practice with the most ordinary circumstances of our life, expressing how Buddha wisdom arises out of the most ordinary human experience. Ajahn guides us to accept the Way It Is and to cultivate an open mind. This informative talk includes anecdotes and light hearted wisdom, pointing us to a sense of deep acceptance in our lives.

Transcript

Now is the knowing,

Being alert,

Awake,

Wanting to know who is it that knows,

Is a,

Find that common problem with people.

They want a name,

Want to have a name for themselves,

To be able to say,

I am something rather.

Or to try to do,

To say,

To get hold of oneself as something,

Or the knowing as somebody.

But all you can do is be alert and awake,

And you can't be alert and awake to being alert and awake,

You just have to be alert and awake.

So that's where you can reflect.

Immediately you try to find out what it is that is alert and awake,

Who it is,

Is it the real me,

Or is it God,

Or is it Buddha,

Or whatever.

Then of course you desire to put a name to it.

Or is it conscious,

Is it Vijnana,

Or Sankara,

Or whatever.

Is it the five khandhas,

Or is it a transcendent?

With language all you can do is,

Language takes us only from the five khandhas,

So that it's not a transcendent vehicle.

So as far as you can go with language,

It's this far.

So thinking,

Words,

Is,

Only they have this limitation.

They can kind of point in a direction,

But they have no ability to take you to that.

Therefore you can't know ultimate reality through a definition,

Through a description,

Through any words,

Any symbols.

So then what,

The words don't do it.

If somebody can't tell you the ultimate reality,

And you can't find it as an object,

Then what possibly can it be?

And you reflect and contemplate,

Then you begin to be aware of the desire,

When they desire to know something.

Fear,

Be aware of fear that drives you to seek some kind of refuge in various things,

Various conditions.

So the way of the Buddha is the awakened one,

The alert,

The knowing one,

Knows the way it is.

And it's in the human form,

That's why you can have Buddha Rupas,

Because again,

Buddha is a kind of knowledge that human beings can use.

It's not the knowledge only for special kind of creation.

So that human beings,

You can put Buddhas into human forms.

Now that's saying something to us,

Isn't it?

That Buddha wisdom isn't a kind of super wisdom that Brahmans have,

Because they have such refined,

Radiant qualities that they know certain things that we can't possibly know.

But know that the Buddha's teaching is always about the most ordinary human experience,

Not about the most extraordinary human experience.

The Four Noble Truths start with the most ordinary,

Common experience to every single one of us,

The Dukkha.

That's significant,

Isn't it?

We contemplate it.

Why didn't the Buddha teach his teaching about the ultimate bliss of the fully enlightened being as the beginning point?

Or didn't he start with the top,

With the ultimate result of the holy life?

Why didn't he stress that?

That's more inspiring,

Isn't it?

The perfection of absolute bliss,

Eternal happiness.

There's no suffering,

No pain,

Only the pure bliss of a fully awakened,

Pure heart.

Wow.

Then there's the Dukkha,

Old age,

Sickness,

Death,

Grief,

Sorrow,

Lamentation,

Despair,

Sukhaparitavit,

Dukkatomana,

Supayasa,

Dukkha.

Starting with this,

Because this is what we must accept before we can experience the other,

Before we can know the other.

Now,

During this retreat,

Some of you hopefully are getting more accepting of Dukkha.

More willing to look at it,

More willing to bear with it,

More willing to fully be with it,

Rather than to do the usual resisting actions,

Resentments,

Creating Dukkha upon Dukkha.

Getting up at three o'clock in the morning,

Somebody might consider Dukkha.

Because when you think about these things,

Then of course they become,

If that's something you haven't done before and you have a negative reaction to it,

Then of course that is Dukkha.

You're creating Dukkha.

But the way of reflection is,

You think,

Is it something immoral?

Is it against the precepts to get up at three o'clock in the morning?

Is there a precept that you've taken that says,

I shall refrain from getting up at three o'clock in the morning?

And then you reflect,

Is your,

Are you,

Physically,

Is there anything,

You know,

Are you so ill or paralyzed or something that you can't do it?

Or is this something one must rise to,

One must put forth the effort to do this?

Now putting forth the effort,

One can just do these things.

If you really determine,

And this is what I want you to try more and more to do,

To make this determination to do it,

To get up without a second thought,

Just for the way of training yourself,

See that you can actually do that.

But you have to be very firm and not wavering in this determination.

And don't give it a second thought,

Just do it when the mind will start going into second and third thoughts about it.

But just to train oneself,

Then this will cut through that sleepiness,

Dullness of mind that so many of you have,

Where you're just caught into dull states all the time,

Because your mind tends to go into second thoughts all the time about everything,

You're not with the actual moment as they are.

When you develop a mind like a sharp sword,

It just cuts through things rather than a blunt kind of instrument,

Which just kind of mashes things up,

Bruises them.

Now this is a relatively harmless thing to do,

Getting up at three in the morning,

Not like something that is dangerous or getting into something that will cause any great problems to anyone.

It is for some people difficult to do because they have too many opinions about it,

Too much resistance to it.

So this you reflect on.

Why?

You want to know why one doesn't want to do it,

Why one doesn't feel like doing it,

Or why one resists.

Just to note that,

That there is this resistance or second thoughts about it.

So that we use it as,

Since it's something given to you,

An opportunity for you to rise to,

Then of course you can say,

I'm not going to do it,

But then what's the major is just taking advantage.

You can just go around and say,

Get up at three o'clock,

We all have to get up at three o'clock.

Well I'll show you.

You can do that.

Go on like that if you want.

But the training is rising up to the occasion.

Actually use the opportunity because if I didn't give this opportunity you'd never know,

Would you?

You wouldn't,

We wouldn't find out about getting up at three o'clock in the morning,

Leaping out of bed with alacrity.

Now in the Hampstead days,

When we were there,

The first year was a very depressing time.

In the winter everything was gray and Venerable Nando and Viridhama and I were in this grotty house and we were just getting very apathetic and depressed.

We kind of do the morning chanting,

But there was no effort.

We were just going through the motions.

And then in the day you'd kind of walk up on Hampstead Heath and you'd come back,

You'd eat and then you'd drink tea and then people would come and talk.

And there was no kind of spark to the life.

It was just a kind of depressing,

Dreary scene.

And so everything just seemed to be,

You just try and want to sleep a lot and not have to look at anything,

Just to try to avoid having to be with it very much.

So I began to contemplate,

See what was happening.

This was not a very good thing,

The way it was going.

So I decided to,

If the morning chanting had to have,

We had to put something,

Put some effort into it.

But to be able to do that you had to,

You couldn't just kind of go up at the last minute and go through the motions of chanting and just sit there in a dull state.

You had to really do something.

And so I contemplated there was a cold winter,

Everything was grey and dreary,

And London in the winter time is depressing anyway.

And it's the visual sight of a big city,

Cement city,

And all this bricks and stones and grey skies.

I contemplated that I didn't like cold,

I didn't like to be cold,

We tended to huddle around the fires in the house.

The last thing I wanted to do was to take cold showers.

But I heard that the Hare Krishnas get up and take cold showers in the early morning.

I thought,

That's what I'll do.

I'll do what I don't want to do,

Because it's better than doing what I'm doing.

So I started training myself to leap out of bed with alacrity,

And to take a cold shower means that in a cold winter's morning,

There is no heating in the shower room or anything.

You can't give it a second thought,

Otherwise you can't do it.

You can't think about it at all,

Otherwise you just don't do it.

So I realized,

If I think about whether I want to take a cold shower at four o'clock in the morning,

Of course the answer would be,

No I don't.

And somebody gave me a very nice swan-stown duvet,

And a nice little room I could keep nice and warm,

So I could kind of huddle under these blankets with the fire on and feel nice and cozy.

That was a nice feeling.

But to forego that,

To get out of it,

Rise up,

Go into the shower room,

Take my robes off,

Turn on the cold water,

Jump into the cold water,

Whoa!

So I started practicing doing that.

And it felt,

Even though it took tremendous kind of willpower,

It made me feel very good actually,

When I actually did it.

And then I felt very exhilarated,

Alert.

I could go up to the morning chanting feeling really invigorated,

Alert and bright,

Not the kind of hazy dull feelings that I was carrying with me before.

Then I'd do yoga,

I always liked to do yoga,

So I'd practice standing on my head for like twenty minutes.

That really,

All the blood comes down into the head and everything kind of makes you feel very alert,

Very refreshed.

So I told Venerable Anando and Virajanamalai,

They didn't look terribly excited.

So I decided,

Oh I'd better put the pressure on them so I would wake them up.

And they'd have to rush into the shower.

Then we'd go and we'd do headstands for twenty minutes and then go up and do the morning chanting.

That made an enormous amount of difference to the whole tone of the day.

Just that.

It didn't take all that long to do.

Just starting out at the beginning from the time you wake up,

Putting some real effort into getting up and waking up and being bright and invigorating everything.

So that you can begin the day in a bright and vigorous state rather than in a depressed and dull way.

But it had to come from,

We had to do it ourselves.

You had to make yourself do it.

Go against the stream of resistance that was there.

There was strong resistance,

Especially if you're going in a cold shower.

The insight was that one had to say,

Sometimes life is,

Like in that time the things around were depressing.

The Inglisanga Trust,

The place we lived in,

The weather,

Everything was impinging on us in negative ways.

And just contemplate that.

You look out at a grey,

Rainy street in London and it's cold and people complain a lot.

There's arguments going on in there.

Just everything,

It was negative that first year.

There's so much depressing negative things happening around.

And these would go,

You'll be always experiencing this negative impingement.

So that the unenlightened reaction was to just maybe sleep a lot or to just try to go off alone and hide or just drink a lot of tea and coffee or indulge a bit of sensually like that or thinking about ways of getting away,

Getting out of it.

And of course the inevitable grumbling resulted.

There's always just one when things are that way,

People start grumbling.

There's this kind of grumbling feel,

Everybody kind of in this state of complaining,

Complaining about the weather,

Complaining about this or that.

So then the insight came that in a situation like this you had to rise up,

You had to be positive,

But you had to,

You couldn't depend on the things around you to do that for you.

You couldn't depend on the sun shining and a lot of positive reinforcement and confirmation and all that going on.

You had to really rise up and be positive,

Do things in a very positive way.

Otherwise you just get pulled down into this mire of negativity.

In Thailand you could,

You had a lot of sunshine.

Things were,

One could get very depressed and negative there,

But oftentimes what was surrounding you was positive.

The people tended to be very respectful and very giving and generous.

So that was a very positive feeling.

You had a lot of respect where when we'd walk out of the Hampstead Behar we'd get called names.

One time Venerable Nanda was called a drip.

Walking along Hampstead Behar's downhill this girl stopped and said,

You're a drip.

That would never happen in Thailand.

Probably depressed him today.

Get called Hare Krishna was one of the nicer names.

So you go out and you're in,

You've been living in Thailand wherever you go people respect you and then you go to London where people disrespect you.

But in another way I found it much more of a challenge because suddenly it became very clear that if I didn't rise up and put forth an effort into my life I wouldn't survive.

There's just no question anymore of just drifting along in that sea of negativity and just getting through this floating in it or getting out of it.

And getting out of it had to,

There was nobody pulling me out so I had to do it by myself.

In other words had to learn how to swim in that mire,

In that sea and get out of it.

Well that was very good practice actually to do that.

And we all benefited from having to put forth a lot of effort.

Now when we don't do that then we can sink into just complaining and negativity.

You can see it in a sangha sometimes where people start complaining and then it kind of contagious,

It just spreads through,

People are all complaining when something unpleasant happens or there's some kind of disillusionment,

Somebody does something that disappoints us.

We can just get caught up in grumbling and complaining.

Now the way of the Buddha is always by letting go of this,

The arising cause of suffering.

The Second Noble Truth,

Isn't it?

The insight into the Second Noble Truth,

The letting go or laying aside of the cause of suffering which is,

Kama dana,

Pa wadana,

Vipa wadana.

So this letting go is important,

Letting go of our opinions and views and complaints and all that,

To rise up,

To be,

To put forth effort into the situations we're in.

Now this retreat,

This is up to you to put forth effort into it,

Not to just drift along in it,

But to develop that kind of immediate rising up to the situation,

To the standard that's required,

Using it and developing it,

Working with it rather than just being conditioned by it or resisting it.

Those are the two inferior ways,

Resistance and just going through the motions without,

Just because that's easier to do than not to do it.

But then the way of the Buddha is by actually using the situation.

Now that example of Habs said was a way of using the situation,

Contemplated,

Say what is it?

Well this is the way it is,

It's like this,

It's cold,

People complain a lot,

There's a lot of unpleasant feelings going around,

People are confused,

It's wintertime,

You're in a new place,

You've never lived here before,

The future is uncertain,

This is the way it is,

So then you work with it.

Well if I just sink into that,

Just react only and resist,

If I just react to all these negative things,

Which then I just create more negativity around me,

I start grumbling,

I want to go back to Thailand,

I don't think the English can do it.

These kind of things,

One can start just grumbling about it,

The English Song of Trust or living in London.

Then one starts feeling negative,

One starts even picking at things,

Being a bit bitchy,

Complaining and just picking away and inevitably leads to quarreling.

Now the image that I can go into it,

This is all just a series of actions without thought.

It's doing it without thinking about whether you feel,

You never feel like doing those things,

You just do them.

Like going to take a cold shower,

To me it's never anything that I want to do or feel unless you're in a hot climate.

Thailand,

They're very nice,

Where you're all sweaty and hot and it's nice cool water and you pour these bowls of cold water over yourself,

It feels marvellously refreshing.

Now that sets the tone for the day so that one doesn't feel,

I mean if you just look at it,

If you do things like that you don't feel all tired and dopy and exhausted.

You're actually starting out in a very skillful way.

Setting the tone,

The way one lives one's life is just determined by these little things,

How we do things.

If we just drift through life,

It's taking the easiest way or if we put real effort into it.

Now the reflection on this is the way it is,

As you can see,

Is not a kind of apathetic kind of thinking into the way it is but a skillful alert attention to the way it is.

It's not just saying,

Well this is the way it is and go back to sleep.

Sometimes people get that impression.

It's saying this is the way it is in a kind of alert,

Attentive state so that you know what's affecting you.

You know what it is that is surrounding you,

What's coming to you,

What's affecting your mind.

If you're idealistic,

You'd be in Hampstead Vihara and you're thinking,

I shouldn't feel like this,

I shouldn't feel depressed,

I shouldn't feel apathetic,

I didn't feel this way in Thailand.

Because idealistically you should be the ideal Viku,

Alert,

Attentive,

Mindful,

Humble,

Courageous,

Good,

Fearless,

Kind,

All that.

And so then you're thinking,

I shouldn't be like this,

I don't like this,

I don't know what's wrong,

I think I should maybe go back to Thailand.

So you're not really observing how it is,

You're just reacting to it.

And therefore you're coming from an ideal of how it should be,

You're saying it shouldn't be like this.

There shouldn't be any quarrels.

We should live in harmony,

We're Buddhists.

All Buddhists should learn to live in complete happiness and harmony and metta.

There shouldn't be any quarrels,

Any fights in Buddhist circles.

And all bhikkhus should be loving friends and kind,

Help supporting each other and giving to each other,

Noble-hearted kind of men,

All that kind of stuff that you can go on about how everything should be.

And that's what we do,

Isn't it?

If we hear that somebody in a Buddhist group is having a fight,

We think,

Buddhists shouldn't fight,

It's terrible!

Idea that somehow Buddhist,

By calling yourself a Buddhist,

Gets you out of the human predicament.

I wish it did,

Actually.

I wish it was that easy.

Just go around calling myself a Buddhist and suddenly I didn't feel argumentative or resistant to anything.

I was just in a state of blissful tranquility forever.

It is aint.

I'm a Buddhist and suddenly you never feel like you want to quarrel with anyone.

You're always in harmony with everything and in a state of perfect bliss forever.

Wouldn't it be nice if it was that easy?

So that this is the way it is reflection,

Is that in any human situation,

The world,

The earth,

Planetary life,

Britain,

All these things that we're involved in now,

It's like this.

It's this way,

Which reminds us to look at it,

To observe how it is,

Not to judge it and say,

If it isn't what it should be,

We should just be critical and resistant to it.

But this is the way it is reflection,

Brings our attention to what's affecting us right now,

The good or the bad or the neutral.

Working with life as it happens to us means that we can.

We have to know how it is,

We're able to do it.

It's mindfulness,

Isn't it?

Bringing attention to the way things are,

Mainly to the character traits,

The tendencies,

The habits that one might have,

And to the group that one's living with and the society that one's living in,

To the very fact that we're living on planet.

Do we have these bodies that are planetary bodies and follow the laws of the planet?

This is the way it is.

An ideal body shouldn't be sick,

Shouldn't.

.

.

You can think of a kind of idealized human bodies that we have.

They're all kind of beautiful images in the mind.

They're usually associated with beauty and good health.

But note how that so much of more and more seeing that the body is,

It gets old,

It grows up,

It gets born,

It grows up,

Gets old and dies.

And seen with Sister Darsania,

The effect of illness,

Cancer.

Nanda was a good example of old age,

Of what happens when the body gets old.

The dupala.

Incredibly,

This is the way it is.

I think this is.

.

.

Well,

There shouldn't be cancer,

Should there?

We shouldn't have it.

It's not right that there's cancer.

On the ideal plane,

If I created the earth and made it all,

I wouldn't have created cancer actually.

Right now,

I wouldn't have created cancer.

So in going by my own views and opinions about what should and should not be,

There's a lot of things that exist that I wouldn't have created if I were God.

But,

You see,

Because I didn't have much to do,

Much to say about it,

God didn't consult me about what was worthy of creating.

And that never came to me and says,

Somedo,

Do you think I should create cancer or not?

I say,

No,

God.

Don't do that.

Create maybe some kind of thing that you get that makes you kind of the reverse of cancer,

Where the cells of your body,

Rather than getting more obstreperous and difficult,

They become more kind of ethereal and beautiful.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Then we'd all be dying to get it,

Rather than dying with it.

So whether we think,

I don't believe in a God that would create cancer,

Nothing more to do with God because he created cancer,

Some people go to that extreme.

If there was a God,

There wouldn't be any cancer because there is.

It proves that there isn't any God at all,

Or that God has somehow failed us because if he really loved us,

Like he said,

He wouldn't allow cancer to exist.

But the Buddhist position is this is the way,

Cancer is like this,

The body is in this state,

This is the way it feels,

It's like this.

See,

That is the way of a Buddha,

By reflecting,

Learning from the way it is,

Knowing how it is,

Not advising on how it should be.

So in our reflection this morning,

This is the way it is,

It's like this.

Life at Amravati,

The winter time,

The nuns,

The monks,

The community,

This is the way it is.

Then we can refrain from giving it a second thought,

In the sense of reacting to either being attached,

Infatuated or averse to it,

Or critical of it.

We have something to see,

Something to use as a background in order to see what we create onto it.

At this time,

At this place,

This is the way it is.

We can reflect,

Are we cold or warm?

Are we feeling awake or dull?

Are we feeling healthy or unhealthy?

We reflect on the way it is,

So we're noting how it is,

What it is affecting us.

If the body right now is feeling sickly and tired and all that,

Then that's the way it is.

You know that this is what's affecting the mind,

That this is going to have,

You know,

It's impinging on consciousness,

It's conscious.

Rather than thinking,

I wish it weren't like this,

One can bear with it and accept it as it is.

Thank you.

I think that's one thing that was very helpful living in Thailand,

Was that the Thai people tend to be much more that way,

The more accepting of life.

I remember when I was a novice in Nong Khai,

A Lao army general,

Air force general from a southern town in Savannaket,

Because he was angry and annoyed with the air force in Vientiane.

It was the same,

It was the Royal Lao Air Force,

It wasn't the communists.

Anyway,

This general flew up and bombed and destroyed some buildings on the air force base in Vientiane,

His own people,

His own side.

And at that time,

Laos was in a very shaky state already,

It had so many problems with the communists,

And then the Americans were there,

And in the Royal Lao military forces,

They couldn't,

They couldn't even fight it among themselves.

So,

I think that's despicable,

Terrible thing to do.

How can they do that?

That's just not right,

It shouldn't be like that.

It's going on like that,

And this monk I was talking to looked at me and he says,

But that's the way it is,

Isn't it?

It's the way life is.

He seemed so accepting of it,

And life reacted,

First thought became indignant,

He doesn't care,

He just says that's the way it is.

And then I realized what I was doing.

Suddenly in that cool reflection I saw this other silly fool that was going on,

It shouldn't be like this.

Not that I could do anything about it.

You know,

I wasn't about prepared to go and talk to the army general or put any effort into solving the problem.

Anyway,

I didn't feel that I was in a position that anyone would listen,

And I didn't really want to have to go and tell them what they should do.

But I was getting all kind of heated up and indignant over something.

And then I contemplated,

Why would that monk say that?

Because that's the way it is,

Human beings have been doing that all the time.

History of every nation is filled with incidents like that,

Of jealousies and betrayals and all that,

It's just so much a part of the human experience.

From an ideal position it shouldn't be that way.

From a real position,

That's the way it is,

These things happen.

They affect in this way.

Now when there's this understanding,

Well the ideal,

Not that we shouldn't have ideals,

But we have the ideal to guide and then reflection is for understanding how it is.

So you can move toward the ideal,

But not just blindly grasp ideas.

Like with us,

In our lives as monks and nuns,

We're not just justifying heedless and sloppy and stupid behavior by saying that's the way it is.

But we are recognizing that that's the way it is when it's present,

Not as justification or as a,

Or just,

Or as a,

That this is what we should be doing because that's the way it is.

But when we accept it and know that this is the way it is now,

We can rise up beyond that.

If our attitude,

If our behavior is not,

Say,

Worthy or good or moving toward the ideal of being the awakened,

The alert,

The all enlightened one.

There's a difference,

Isn't there?

When you say this is the way it is,

Which means justifying anything that's happening so you don't have to put forth any effort and just kind of float in it,

Or saying this is the way it is in order to see it so that you can rise up and not be just stuck in it,

Into it.

But if you're attached to ideals,

Then you're just,

You just become critical and indignant,

Exasperated with the way it is,

Which usually means you're totally incapable of doing anything about it or improving anything.

You just,

You just add to the confusion.

Things make it worse.

Somebody comes in here and sees something they don't like and they just start complaining,

It shouldn't be like this.

Then they,

What they say,

But maybe they're right.

Maybe in that way they're right.

It shouldn't be like this.

But because they don't understand how things are,

They don't really understand why it is this way,

Or that they,

They just are coming in and putting some idealistic judgment onto a situation.

And because of that they just become critical and indignant and they create more problems.

They cause more misery,

More frustration to everyone.

Where the wise,

Wise being comes in and observes,

Whenever you go to somebody else's place,

If you go to some other Buddhist monastery or religious group,

We can go with this idea of criticizing and saying it shouldn't be like this,

They shouldn't be like that,

And comparing it with ours or,

But the wise some or not will be the one who just goes with an open mind,

Just to know how it is,

To get the feeling for the way it is.

So then if there's any opportunity for suggestions to improve it and they ask,

Then we can do so.

If they want us to know how they can,

What we think or what we have any ideas for improvement,

Then we can,

We can offer them.

But it saves us from this dreadful kind of oppressive patronizing and criticizing,

Overbearing tendencies that we can easily be lost into.

Note these two,

The ideal and the real,

Are not conflicting,

Are they?

Not like you have to make a choice,

Be an idealist or realist,

But to reflect from that,

To use that they've worked together.

Realism without idealism is really boring and it doesn't,

It doesn't,

It has nothing to work for,

There's nothing to move up to.

You just kind of,

Just learn to walk in the mud forever.

There's no chance of ever getting out of it.

Idealism without,

Without understanding of the realities of the way things are just makes you critical and frightened,

Neurotic.

But working together is the way of a Buddha,

That here in Amaravati,

One can have ideals and be quite realistic at the same time.

They're not,

They're not in conflict.

Reviews

Love the humour ✨
And very reflective . And down to earth

Buddhist principles are great. I personally can't go all in this lifetime, though. I'm still going to swat mosquitos in self defense

Inspiring. Thank you.

Always a pleasure

Thank you for all the time and support you have given me over the years. My partner passed away a couple of weeks ago and we had always both found great comfort in your talks during the tough times of our lives, like I am again now. Sadu, Sadu, Sadu

Excellent indeed

Wonderful reflection on accepting life the way it is...
With gratitude and respect 🙏

Powerfully insightful, helping with wisdom about the nature of acceptance and dukkah, the human condition, and wise effort.

Excellent overall. I appreicate the humour and the pauses for reflection. 🙏

So glad to find another Sumedho talk. Thank u