The View That Frees | Ajahn Brahmali

Ajahn Brahmali guides us shortly through a meditation and talks about the right view. Buddhist practice is about learning how to steer our mind away from suffering and in the direction of freedom - whether inside or outside of meditation - and gradually align our views with the way things are. Right view at the preliminary level is the foundation of the path and helps guide our intentions and behaviour in wholesome ways. Ajahn Brahmali is a much sought-after teacher and a disciple of Ajahn Brahm.

Transcript

Let's start by doing some brief meditation together just to relax a little bit and just bring up some mindfulness just to kind of be ready for the rest of the,

What is it for me,

It's evening for the many of you it's midday but whatever it is we just start with a bit of meditation.

So sit back,

Relax,

Close your eyes and just start by feeling your body to make sure that you are at ease,

That you are relaxed,

That you are comfortable so you can allow the mind just to rest and just gradually fall to peace.

So so and instead of thinking of yourself as a meditator who is doing meditation,

Just don't think in those terms at all because once you have an idea of something you tend to do too much because you tend to do your meditation practice and instead just learn to relax and don't really do anything,

Allow the mind to float,

Allow the mind to be whatever it wants to be because otherwise you won't be able to relax properly,

You won't be able to rest the mind properly.

So just sit back as if you're just resting in a nice chair not doing anything at all and just allowing the mind gradually gradually to settle down by itself.

And as you allow your mind just to relax sometimes you just need to nudge it very gently just to remind yourself to look for the peace in your meditation and whenever you do sit down you will see that there is a degree of peace there as well in between the thinking or whatever and just notice that peace and as you focus on the peace and you enjoy it just allow it very slowly to expand in your mind.

It's automatic as long as you enjoy the peace it will expand by itself.

So so so so so so so so.

Okay everyone so that's the end of the meditation for now so please come out.

Okay so let's start the talk I suppose and the subject for the talk today suggested by Ven.

Chanda is the view that frees.

Sounds really cool,

Sounds like a nice name for a Dhamma talk I reckon and it's a very interesting subject because the idea of freeing is itself is a very gradual thing.

It's something that happens gradually over time sometimes when we think about the view that frees we might think about things like stream entry or enlightenment and that sort of thing.

When finally bang the big view comes up you get insight into reality and you see things in a brand new way that's the view that frees but the reality about views is that they develop gradually.

A view is something that kind of comes gradually and this is one of the very important aspects of this path is actually to understand how to develop the right view gradually during your practice and as you do that it will influence your path from the very beginning to the very end.

So one way of thinking about the Buddhist path is thinking about it as development of view.

The change,

Gradual changing of view from the beginning to the very end of the path.

That's one way of thinking about it.

To give you an example of the power of right view I will just tell you about something that happened here during the rains retreat because we have we finished a rains retreat here what is it now three months ago three and a half months ago something like that and one of the questions that often comes up during these rains retreats is people ask they say well you know the way Ajahn Brahm teaches meditation practice Ajahn Brahm says oh just relax yeah sit back don't do anything just chill you know just or have the you know and just kind of allow the whole process to happen yeah that's what Ajahn Brahm says and then people get really frustrated and they come to me yeah it's really unfair they come to me and they want to sort out the things that Ajahn Brahm says and they say to me well I do exactly what Ajahn Brahm says I just relax and what happens I fall asleep yeah or I think all the time my mind goes in kind of haywire and thinks about the past and the future and about problems and about work I have to do and everything in between all the pleasures I'm going to enjoy when I get back home from this blooming retreat yeah eight precepts too many precepts I want to etc etc and so they ask me why is it when I follow all the instructions I really just relax I really enjoy myself how come nothing happens Ajahn Brahm says that when he just sits backs and relaxes yeah what happens is that he gets peaceful his mind goes empty nimitta has come up bing yeah and then he bang on the way into deep meditation that's kind of the Ajahn Brahm way of doing things why doesn't it happen to me how come I fall asleep instead and it is a very interesting question yeah it's actually very very interesting why is it that seemingly the same instruction works really well for one person does not work for another person what is actually going on here if we can crack this if we can understand why why it works for one person not for another then we have kind of cracked the code of buddhist meditation yeah we know what we need to do to make meditation work so what I told people I said the reason why it works for Ajahn Brahm but not for you is because your mind is not inclining in the right way that is the reason why it doesn't work yeah so what does that mean it means that if you just relax and your mind is not inclining in the right way it means that your mind will incline to thoughts yeah because that's what you are interested in or if you are kind of bored the mind will incline maybe to tiredness and you fall asleep the mind will incline to whatever it is interested in that's where the mind always goes automatically it goes to what is interesting to it so the difference is the inclination of mind that is why it works for one person not for another one so if you just relax yeah don't do anything and your mind naturally inclines to peace then that is where the mind goes because you're just relaxing here but if you just relax onto anything and your mind naturally you know moves towards food or whatever it is yeah oh I want like a nice meal or whatever then of course that's where the mind goes yeah so the inclination of the mind is the critical one and then what happened I gave this answer and of course people say yeah yeah sure you know they're never 100 satisfied with the answer which is fair enough yeah of course you should never be 100 you should always think for yourself and I'm really glad people do that so they went to Ajahn Brahm and said oh Ajahn Brahmali says this yeah what do you say here and Ajahn Brahm said well the reason why what I do in my meditation yeah what I do is that I when I sit down I incline the mind towards renunciation that's what he said and when you think about it the idea of inclining towards peace and inclining towards renunciation actually very very similar things because the things that you renounce are exactly the same things that stop you from becoming peaceful yeah so it's a very similar kind of idea or if you know where peace is to be found you incline it towards peace you automatically renounce because those things that don't lead to peace you're not interested in them so you let them go it's an automatic process so these two things have a lot in common yeah the idea of moving towards peace or inclining the mind to renunciation but why is it that some people's mind incline in this way why is it that Ajahn Brahm's mind inclines towards renunciation towards giving up and why is that some people's minds don't incline that way what is the common thread underlying all of this and the common thread that underlines all of this is right view or if you wish wrong view so if you have right view if you look at the world in the right way if you think about life the world everything in the right way you will automatically and this is kind of aligned with the way the buddha saw things automatically your mind will move towards peace and renunciation why because you're just giving up dukkha you're just giving up suffering everyone wants to give up suffering it's just bleeding obvious yeah who wants to hold on to suffering so you give up the terrible suffering and you move towards happiness but if you have wrong view then you think that those things that actually are suffering you think that they are happiness and so you incline there because everyone wants to be happy you incline according to your delusion according to your wrong view so you're inclined towards oh this wonderful dinner i'm going to have when i get off this meditation course or this wonderful entertainment i'm going to you know do or all these problems at work i got to solve yeah well now my mind is feeling a little bit more clear now is the time to solve those problems no now is not the time yeah let's keep on relaxing keep on enjoying the meditation later on come back to these problems so this is the underlying problem is the idea of right view it underlie lies the entire process of meditation get it right any meditation is going to be very very powerful and it's fascinating one of the things that i noticed in the sutras the sutras are the word of the buddha for those of you who might not know and one of the things i noticed a while ago is that satipatthana practice satipatthana is one of those fundamental words you will hear about in buddhist meditation all the time satipatthana means like the establishment of mindfulness it is all about the buddhist kind of meditation if you like and one of the things i noticed fairly early on is that buddhist meditation satipatthana is founded on two things yeah and those two things are virtue morality so you have to should really be on a good kind of living well before you start practicing too much otherwise you might get into trouble and the other one is right view ujukadithi straight view yeah and it starts to become clear this is exactly why some people are successful and others are not so then the question arises how can we ensure that our view becomes right yeah so that we can enhance our meditation practice if we can get that right view your meditation is going to be far far more powerful so this is one of the things i want to cover tonight today whatever it is always dangerous when you talk across time zones but whatever it is yeah so for me it is tonight but so to do this i want to come back to the very basic ideas of right view i want to start at the beginning and if you you know your suit as a little bit some of you will know the teachings of the buddha quite well and you will know that on the noble eightfold path yeah which is the practice that leads to awakening or enlightenment or arahantship or whatever you want to call it on that path the first factor is right view it starts there yeah so what that means is because that is the first factor and then the subsequent factors are the factors of morality there are the factors of right effort which is like a deeper kind of morality if you like factors of meditation samma sati satipatthana right meditation and lastly the factor of stillness of deep meditation all of these things are founded on right view that is the foundation for all of these things yeah so what that means is that even your morality your ability to practice good moral conduct in the end depends on right view yeah so if you want to practice your morality well establish more right view it's kind of interesting isn't it because sometimes we try very hard to be moral we try really we kind of say yeah i got to you know get you get this uh you know at new year you takes you take on some of these uh you know you decide you're going to be more moral or whatever and you can't really do it for some reason and the reason you can't do it is because even though you strive and you put in the willpower and do all of these things that maybe ideally you should not the problem is that your view is perhaps not strong enough yeah not enough right view that might in fact be the problem even for morality so that is where it starts yeah it starts with helping out in your morality then it moves on into your mental sphere how to deal with your mind and then it goes on to the meditation practice and ultimately it comes to this venerable chanda's idea of the view that frees big time yeah the big time freeing view and that is of course where you become enlightened down the track but way long time before we reach that point right view already is very very powerful and very effective so what is that right view and you may know that the way right view is often defined in the sutas it is defined as an understanding of the four noble truths yeah so the four noble truths are obviously the noble truth of suffering the origin of suffering the end of suffering and the path that leads to the end of suffering here and of those the most important one initially is probably the first one the noble truth of suffering here because that gives us guidance on where to look for happiness in the world and where to what to avoid it because it is problematic yeah and one of the ways that this is often taught is often taught in terms of a kamma and rebirth yeah you make bad kamma you get bad results you might get a bad rebirth or a good kamma good rebirth and all of that but one of the simple ways and this is the thing i teach all the time when i teach meditation retreats one of the most simple ways of thinking about kamma is to think about kamma as something that happens within this particular life because if you think about it as something that happens within this life it means that you can actually tell whether you're making good kamma or not yeah it is not some mysterious force that kind of takes you from one life to the next one it's something you can monitor within yourself that is very useful if you can see things it leads to far more confidence and faith that there's something to this so what i would really recommend you to do is to look at yourself when you do an act of kindness towards somebody here yeah i don't know i'm sure all of you sometimes you do things out of a very good heart yeah you do an act of generosity you give something to somebody or you say some beautiful words to somebody oh i really appreciate your companion maybe say to work colleague yeah oh i really appreciate you being my colleague yeah or something beautiful like that when you really kind of you come from coming from your heart and you say something powerful and then you notice the feeling inside of you that arises with that kind action and what you will see it feels so beautiful yeah it feels so wholesome it feels so good there's something very very noble about that thing and you can know it straight away inside straight away inside you this is a noble attitude this is a you know this is the way i should live it feels spiritual it feels something that gives you a sense of self-worth you feel really good about yourself and that happens so please notice that because when you are noticing that what you are seeing is what the buddha called the dit eva dhamma kama the kama that you're creating in this very life you can see the connection between your good intention and how you feel about yourself that is kama connection between intention and how you feel and you can see that straight away very very powerful way of understanding this idea of suffering and happiness yeah the first noble truth knowing the effect of your own actions in this way but it doesn't stop there because one of the things that also becomes quite obvious when you do this is that if you do many good actions yeah again and again and again in this way and this is a very important part of the buddhist path as you do that you are accumulating this goodness and as you are accumulating this goodness you are effectively lifting up your mind or you are not really lifting up your mind but you are allowing your mind to soar yeah that's what happens with the mind you build up the helium in the balloon and the mind soars up yeah you feel light you feel bright you feel really good about yourself a kind of wholesome good-hearted goodness does not feel like ego at all it feels like something very wholesome inside of you so you are accumulating these things and that is where you really start to understand that this is a path it's not just an individual action it is the path that lifts you out of the mire lifts you out of the swamp of ordinary existence into something brighter more beautiful and powerful sounds good right and this is right view because you see it for yourself you can feel it happening yeah is this is kind of right view you are actually understanding something about suffering and happiness how to deliver happiness in your own life and how to avoid suffering yeah there's of course there's also the other side of the coin yeah that you when you do this you will you can also see the effects of your bad actions yeah i would prefer i would recommend you to look at the effect of your good action because it's more encouraging yeah it kind of feels you know it's more uplifting in a sense to look at the positive side of things rather look at the negative side of things but it can also be helpful to look at your bad actions and see how it affects your mind and you will inevitably see if you are sharp and you can see the connection again that it tends to drag you down it has the opposite effect it kind of mires you more into that swamp of the world and you can't really you get more sticky and more kind of holds you down in a sense yeah and these are the things that you can see here so this is what you a very simple way of thinking about right view and morality and how they work together in this way here so and because of course it then accumulates you can start to understand why this must also affect your rebirth yeah because if you obviously if you die with a bright mind that that bright mind is what you carry with you into the future and you can see how this whole process then kind of carries on in this way here and what one of the things that you learn from this this is one of those little beautiful little stories that you find in the sutas one of the things that you learn is that if you want to be kind to yourself if you want to be your own friend you have to be kind to others and this is the story of the one of the great kings at the time of the buddha king pasyena the of kosala very famous king anyone who has read a few sutas would have come across king pasyena and he would often go to the buddha yeah and they would have discussions and there's a whole chapter in the sanyutta nikaya the connected discourses of the buddha which are just discussions between the buddha and king pasyena and they are often quite sweet little discourses yeah one of the discourses is where the buddha gives some gives a weight loss advice to the king yeah have you did you know that the sutas had weight loss advice were you aware of that it's quite interesting isn't it so if you want to use the buddha's kind of weight loss then maybe you can you can check it out in the sutas and see what you what you think about it it's very it's uh anyway so i'll leave that for now but it's kind of um you can see how the buddha the spiritual teacher just like now they get called upon to answer all kind of questions yeah this is just the way it is to be a spiritual teacher and i'm sure venable chanda has has also recognized that and because and i suppose that in many ways everything in the world is connected to the spiritual realm yeah there's a good way of doing it and a bad way of doing it so it's kind of understandable in a certain way here anyway there's lots of little sweet little discourses like that yeah in the kosala sangita but on one occasion this king paseena de kosala he goes to the buddha and he says to the buddha he says to buddha that those people who treat others with who are who are moral in the world they are their own friends and those people who are immoral in the world they are their own enemies yeah and then the buddha looks at him and he says wow that's pretty good actually i don't think he says that but you know it that's kind of sort of you know in the kind of background there that's pretty cool yeah you're exactly right what you're saying those who live morally those who treat other people well who treat other people with kindness they are the ones who are their own friends in the world and you can see now how that makes sense yeah because as i mentioned before when you are kind you can feel the result right here in this life you actually feel better about yourself yeah so you are treating you are acting as your own friend because friends want to make themselves make the friends more happy so you're treating yourself with friendship and in the same way if you treat others badly if you treat others with lack of kindness or whatever you're treating yourself like your own enemy because enemies want to hurt their enemies and then you are hurting yourself so you are hurting yourself means you are treating yourself like your own enemy so you can see how this works so be your own friend in the world yeah and remember that the way to be your own friend is to treat everyone in the world with kindness and care and compassion and understanding and all of these positive things and as you do that you're actually being your own friend as well as of course the friend of those people too and this is so such a simple but beautiful way of thinking about life so again this is just the ways of thinking about things to establish this right view or right way of thinking about life so as to enhance our ability to practice this path there's another thing which comes to mind now because i was just doing a funeral ceremony yesterday yes yesterday and the day before actually and when you do funeral ceremonies it's actually a very i really like funerals is there anyone else like funerals over there maybe yeah i really enjoy funerals they're really cool times they're cool because there's something very solemn about a funeral ceremony people are usually more peaceful and calm than they usually are yeah it's like a serious occasion for most people except for Ajahn Brahm of course he would tell you to tell a joke at the funeral but most people don't do that it's like a solemn occasion so you what that means that people are more open to the Dhamma you can talk about Dhamma in a different way and you can tell some stories and you can talk about things in a different way and and death has this ability to bring reality into view and to see things more clearly and of course that reality is also an aspect of right view and one of the stories i usually tell at these funeral ceremonies is a story which apparently Lumpur Ajahn Shah used to tell yeah and of course Ajahn Shah when in his heyday he was the teacher of large large large groups of people and from the kind of you know the posh people in Bangkok to the local rice farmers yeah it's kind of amazing around Ajahn Shah all of these people that belong to completely different you know strata of society they all came together because he spoke to everyone on an equal level and the end of the day we're all human beings we all have the same problems we all have the same issues we want to deal with so why shouldn't we come together and that's what happened and of course then there were all the foreigners that would visit him yeah and sometimes there would be professors from university and all of these things who wanted to try to understand what these forest monks are about and then of course then they so it was a very kind of international and very sort of interesting audience for some of these talks and one of these talks that he gave which has kind of come down as famous at least to me because Ajahn Brahm tells this story he tells a story of when Ajahn Shah takes has a glass take lifts up a glass in his hand yeah and he tells his audience when he lifts up the glass he shows the audience the glass and he says can you see the crack can you see the crack in this glass no we cannot see the crack what do you mean there's a crack in that glass and he says again can you see the crack in this glass and after a while the audience obviously understands he's onto something here something something is going to happen you know something there's some kind of hidden message behind this they can't see it okay you know please let us know what what is going on here so Ajahn Shah said well the crack here signifies the idea of impermanence yeah impermanence is always going to be there this glass is not we know that this glass one day the nature of a glass is to fall to the ground maybe on a concrete floor or a tiled floor and when it falls in a concrete floor and a tiled floor it will break into a thousand pieces this is the nature of a glass eventually that's usually what happens to most glasses yeah so there is a crack in this glass in the sense that we know that it is inherently impermanent inherently unreliable we know that it was must break one day so what does that mean what does it mean when something is inherently impermanent when something is inherently fragile a glass is very fragile what does that mean well what it means is that we care for the glass we put it down gently here we put it down on a soft something soft yeah not something hard and we look after we put it away in a cupboard somewhere where it is kind of safe from falling out so we look after the glass we care for it because we know it is fragile in the same way human life is fragile this is one of those astonishing things that you realize as a monastic how fragile our existence is people die sometimes left right and center you know we have thousands of disciples down here in Perth and around the world and people die all the time and they die at any age for no apparent reason sometimes it is so fragile these bodies are so complex yeah little thing goes wrong and bang that's it you had it it's so uncertain so unreliable so what does that mean when the body is so fragile it means that we start to care for the people around us because we don't know how long they're going to last we know they might just you know drop dead the next moment maybe this is the last time you see me could be maybe because i die yeah i don't know if i got anything any kind of cancers or things in here quite possibly there is something going on but so what do we do well maybe when we remind ourselves of these things is that we care a little bit extra we have a little bit more time for each other we listen a little bit more deeply yeah we don't kind of brush it but not rush around in life quite so fast if you're going to die this evening are you going to rush around your next appointment probably not yeah you're probably going to take it more easy okay who cares but at appointment i'm going to die anyway well we're always going to die we should never really rush around too much this idea of death is so powerful if we remember the fragility of life we always take more care we become more moral we become kinder human beings and this again is just one way of allowing this idea of right view to drive us in the right way to think about things and think about the moral life and and live in a good way here so those are two little ways of kind of enhancing your ability to be moral these are right view you may wonder whether death is part of right view why i'm bringing up the idea of death but remember when the buddha gives the first noble truth yeah of suffering one of the one of the first thing he says in that noble truth is that death is suffering yeah birth is suffering all that is suffering illness is suffering death is suffering so it is right there in right view death is actually a very important aspect of what we mean by right view in buddhism so those are just a couple of ideas for you to reflect on in terms of how to think about just right view in a very ordinary way to me this kind of right view is probably the most important kind of right view because it's so practical yeah it applies to every one of us it is not so many people who end up becoming stream mentor arahants it's nice to hear about those views as well because it's nice to kind of have some idea of where we are heading but it's not as practical but this simple idea as a right view are actually really really practical because it's something that we all can apply right here and right now so see if you can take strange the kind of the kind of dichotomy we have with other people on the one hand the other people who are most important to us people yeah and on the other hand they're also the ones that create the most suffering it's complicated relationships that we have with people in the world there so how do we deal with other people if they are difficult and one of the kind of very important buddhist ideas of wrong view oh sorry of right view don't go wrong view go right view one of the very important ones is the idea that we are completely conditioned as human beings yeah what we are what our personality is how we have been formed the person you are now is a sum total of all the conditions that have worked on you in this life and also on past lives and once you understand that it's a very simple idea but once you understand that if someone treats you in the wrong way does the wrong thing towards you remember they are conditioned to be like that they are only expressing the conditioning that has happened to them over a very very long period of time and they don't really have much choice yeah you are unfortunate you were in the wrong place at the wrong time it's got nothing to do with you at all the fact that they are being difficult or whatever it has only to do with them it is never personal it is about the other person and their conditioning quite likely they want to be kind yeah i think deep down we all want to be kind in one way or another because we know that kindness works kindness is good it feels right but they cannot be kind yeah think about yourself are you always able to be kind are you always able to think the right thought and the answer is no and the reason why it is no is because you're not in charge of yourself if you were able to the only way you can always be kind is if you are 100 in charge of yourself and of course you are not and that shows you how conditioned each one of us is so remember that this is such a simple idea we are all conditioned to be the way we are and when you remember that ultimately if you keep on building up that right view this is also very powerfully about right view there comes a point when you very rarely get angry with people because you realize it's not it is very useless and it's pointless instead they deserve compassion they deserve compassion because they are conditioned to do things that goes against their own well-being and their own own future happiness and then you are on the right track but let us move on to the idea the next stage on the path yeah the idea of meditation practice instead and this is what I was talking about at the very beginning when I was talking about Ajahn Brahm yeah who then goes and he has this kind of he meditates whereas other people meditate that don't have the same results and Ajahn Brahm says that he just renounces he just gives things up yeah nikama or everything gone and other people try and it doesn't work yeah so how does this happen how does actually this idea of renunciation occur in such a way that we can do a similar thing to what Ajahn Brahm does and the way one of the most important ways that it occurs is to understand the limits of the world around us the sensory world around us that things that stream in through our senses at all times understanding the limits of that and the more we understand the limits of the sensory world the more ability we have to let go of that world because we know it is also suffering ultimately yeah if you go back again I was saying before that we look at the four noble truths as the basic idea of understanding reality this is the definition of right view the first one of those four noble truths is the idea of suffering if you look at that definition of suffering one of the things it says is that not getting what you want is suffering or getting what you don't want is suffering yeah and this is what the sensory world is like it is really a lot of the time about not really getting what we want it is inherently if you like unsatisfactory and now right now is a very good time to contemplate that yeah because right now we are I don't know about you but this looks to me that when I look at the world I think oh the world is doing all kind of weird stuff yeah we have the covid thing a lot of people seem to be very traumatized by covid in the monastery we are really happy about covid yeah because things are more peaceful and quiet and not so many people coming around so we are kind of we are kind of cheering covid on a little bit we have to do it quietly otherwise people think we are nuts but you know so but you know sometimes in as in a monastic life you see things very differently because your life is so different but people are traumatized by it and you can see why because it upsets their life a lot maybe some of you have been traumatized by it as well and you certainly have my sympathy because I understand that it can it is traumatizing when your life is turned upside down so we have the covid situation we have kind of climate change yeah we're going really up the agenda these days and looking kind of worse and worse all the time and again you wonder where is the world going to go with these things what is happening you know what is happening in the next generation okay maybe I will be okay because I'm getting so old now anyway it doesn't really matter so much anymore to me I'll probably be fine but what about the next generation what about all the next generation of buddhists or whatever where is all of this going it doesn't look very good and then you have the political situation around the world yeah it kind of seems unstable and uncertain we're all kind of funny leaders and all this kind of stuff I don't need to mention any names I'm sure you have your own kind of a favorite or lack of favorite leaders whatever they are but it all seems very yeah very kind of unreliable and remember that when these things happen in your life and this is all about the external world around us it is an opportunity for insight it is about how we use these situations is far more important than the actual fact of these situations so how do we use the situations we start to understand that this is the nature of this external world it will always be give us this kind of nasty surprises this is the way it goes you know it has to be this way I was just going I went to a house dana today I went to someone's house to have lunch and usually I have a bit of dumber discussion when I go there and one of the young girls who was there she was only 18 years old and she she asked me well how do you deal with disappointment yeah it's a good question yeah because it's obviously very applicable to everyone so how do you deal with disappointment and I said to her you get used to it yeah because it's going to happen again and again and again and when you get used to the idea of disappointment the world starts to look less interesting and when the world looks less interesting because you know it will always disappoint you there will always be another covid there will always be another terrible political leader there will always be all of these things going on add infinitum into the future you become less interested in that world and that lack of interest in that world means right view yeah it means that you can let go of that world because when you understand that that world is not interesting you withdraw inwards instead and that is where you start to find your happiness and strength in the spiritual life in the meditation in the mind in living in this way so it becomes a blessing in disguise yeah and so this life has so many blessings in disguise it's like the you know the ajan brahm story of good bad who knows what is really bad in the long run well it depends on the individual is covid bad well it is neither good nor bad it depends how you react to it whether it's good or bad is climate change good or bad that too actually yeah it depends on how you react to it whether it's good or bad for many people it is bad because they react in a way that is not conducive to anything positive but for those of us who use these things well actually it's going to be a positive influence in the long run good bad who knows it really depends on how you deal with these issues so this is the message this is the thing we should learn from this yeah learn about the uncertainty of the world outside learn about the limits of sensory existence and sensory experience and as we do that we turn towards spirituality meditation starts to work you sit down you don't do anything and your mind automatically inclines towards peace towards giving up towards the breath and that is actually what you enjoy and then you start to understand what ajan brahm is talking about just chill now i understand what just chill means it means relax and the mind goes in the right place that is what it means so this is the right way of thinking about this and there is a lot in the buddhist sutas about how to deal with the sensory world around us how to think about it in the in the right way and i'll just tell you one little favorite sutta of mine one of some of these suitors i tell them all the time because i i like them so much but this one favorite sutta of mine is about this monk called samidhi and this monk samidhi he is bathing somewhere it is the famous hot springs in near rajagaha and if you travel to india today you go to rajagaha those hot springs are still there and the in local indians are still bathing in those hot springs two and a half thousand years later that kind of cool isn't it you go to india you read the suitors they're bathing in hot springs and you go there and it's exactly as if it were the suitors it's just really amazing except of course it's a bit more developed yeah because now they have tiles and they have all that kind of stuff obviously didn't have tiles at the time of the buddha but the same idea after two and a half thousand years there i find that really cool and there's a lot in india like that it's kind of has this eternal feeling about india nothing has changed for two and a half thousand years when you look at some of the buildings falling apart they look about two and a half thousand years older well not quite you know if you know what i mean but everything looks ancient over there and so this monk samidhi he's bathing in these hot springs yeah and after coming out and he's kind of drying himself and he's standing there in one robe then this devata comes down and this devata it doesn't say whether it's a male or female deva but the story becomes more interesting if it's a female deva yeah because it creates this tension a lot of buddhism is about temptation yeah just like because you know one of the problems is always to kind of uh overcome the sensual world and move towards the experience of the mind this is obviously one of the difficulties so temptation of young monastics obviously is an important thing so if you think of this as a young female deva that kind of the it makes the situation more potent if you like a more powerful so she comes down and she takes a look at samidhi and she says to samidhi wow you are young you know in the prime of life really good looking and why are you wasting your time with the spiritual life yeah this spiritual life which takes so long before i'm just paraphrasing a bit now the spiritual life which takes so long before it gives results you keep on meditating and when do the results come you have no idea when this nirvana or jhanas or when they will arrive it's all in the future but the sensual pleasures they are available now come this robe forget about this silly you know idealistic you know spiritual life instead become a householder enjoy sensual pleasures find a nice wife and just enjoy yourself and it's very fascinating and she is basically saying well the sensual pleasures they are available now you just have to go out there get the food get the wife get the entertainment and bang it's all available to you whereas this kind of spiritual life who knows when it will arrive yeah when the results will arrive so what do you think yeah is that right and there is fascinating yeah because when you think about you think yeah maybe the deva is right yeah actually it's a good point the sensual pressures are available now yeah just have to go to the fridge or i go to my computer and you know turn on the whatever and entertainment and it's all there but the spiritual life you know she has a point you know i meditate and all i do is fall asleep or think yeah maybe this maybe i should give up these robes yeah what what am i maybe i'm wasting my time it's fascinating because it seems on the surface of things it seems true yeah that that is how things are but of course it is not really correct and the reason why it is correct is actually very profound and very interesting yeah and it says something about the sensory world and it is not correct because the sensory world is always about the future is always about craving is always about moving on to something else have you noticed that in your sensory life of existence is always about kind of heading towards somewhere else some new entertainment something new kind of pleasure a new house a new car a new relationship a new religion well a new religion doesn't really come in but all of these things it's always about the future craving is always about the future and when you live a sensory existence craving is always there as part of that existence you're never actually in the present moment so the devata was actually wrong the sensual pleasures are not available right here and now because they are never available here and now they are always in the future whereas the spiritual life if you live it right yeah if you succeed in being kind if you succeed in being generous if you succeed in finding a bit of peace in your meditation practice you enjoy that experience right away right here and now straight away you feel wow this is so nice yeah it's only a matter of finding that trigger understanding it in the right way and then the right way and then the happiness comes as a consequence that is the difference this is the right view so instead of always searching in the future always moving on to something else this is another aspect of this right view come to the only place where you can find happiness in the present moment eventually building up building up building up and of course in meditation ultimately you can find the highest kind of happiness in the present moment where there's no future or past completely gone and all you experience is bliss yeah and that is where you actually find essentially the meaning of life itself because if you experience full bliss in the present moment that is synonymous at least temporarily with finding the meaning of life because there's no more craving there's no more desire you're not going anywhere that is the definition of having found the meaning of life so yeah this is just a it's an interesting little story because it is like a little paradox it's like little Cohen almost yeah we don't have Cohen's in Theravada Buddhism this is maybe as close as we come to a Theravada Cohen go be careful now what I say because maybe someone won't like the idea of Theravada Cohen's but this kind of cool idea so it's like a Theravada Cohen almost so this is how you gradually learn to let go of the world outsider you understand its limitations you understand how it will always disappoint you it will never give you what you want yeah it always promise things but the promise is always empty here it doesn't actually deliver the goods and that is why you get upset when you see the news that is why you get upset when you see about climate change that is why relationships always in one way or another they must end in this in a problematic way either because people die or because of breakup or because of whatever and this is the nature of that world so you draw inside you let go of that world and this is how you gradually build up that right view within it it's very powerful these things you know and they are very profound and I don't know if you're able to understand and see these things properly but I'm sure most of you maybe all of you are able to see some of this you know that there must be some truth to what I'm saying here because it is just so obvious when you think about it but to build it up allow it to come over time none of these things happen straight away the idea is that you build up in your mind you change your view gradually over time and gradually gradually gradually you are deepening your meditation by thinking in this way so whenever you have a problem in life think of it as an opportunity here and then you are thinking in the right way you are thinking in the right way so what we do all of these things and then eventually we come to the point where our meditation is really going very very well and things are really coming together and there comes a point when the real right view that frees start to come into focus it starts to become a possibility so let me just very very briefly in a couple of minutes talk about that final right view that happens when we become stream mentors when we see the Dhamma one of the complicated things about the buddhist teaching one of the things that seems to be it seems like we are trapped in samsaric existence yeah is a very beautiful teaching is a teaching that that was mentioned by Venerable Chanda before and this is the problem that our mental make our mental our the way we think about the world the way that our mind works we are trapped actually in a certain outlook and that outlook is the idea of a self and the sutras explain this that when you have a certain perception of the world yeah then that drives your thinking because you perceive the world in a certain way it drives your thinking process now that thinking process in turn when it consolidates and it becomes a you know a has a certain direction it drives our views yeah how we think about the world and those views in turn they determine our perceptions which determine our thought that determine our views that our perceptions thought views perception thought views round and round and round and it looks like there is no escape because it's like everything is conditioning each other so what is the problem why is it that these things condition each other in this way and we are trapped into this kind of circular wrong view driving itself on and the thing behind all of this is the sense of self yeah that i exist that i am somebody this is the problem behind all of this and this is what drives this process going round and round and round so the really deep view that frees you ultimately once you have used the view in the right way to become a better person then to find deep satisfying blissful meditation experiences and then eventually you come to the point where now you're ready for the big insights the big insight that you get at this point is when you see that all of these things are problematic and suffering not only the world outside is problematic and suffering but actually it is also true of the world inside and when you see that at that point you're able to let go of the delusion of a self because the delusion of a self needs a place within where it finds happiness but it hangs on to as permanent and happy if you see that that doesn't actually exist there is no such thing inside it is all impermanent and changing then bang that view of the self is abandoned inside and when that we of the self is abandoned inside then you break the cycle and suddenly you gain this profound react view of reality it is like a revolution in consciousness when suddenly you see the world in an entirely new way upside down from what it was before yeah it's like 180 degree change in view and that is what stream entry is all about this sudden shift in reality and there is no sense of self anymore the sense of self the view that there is a self is gone and because of that you no longer seek for happiness in the wrong place and now at that point you have internalized the noble eightfold path you have internalized right view yeah this is the really the right view that frees you up entirely and because you have internalized all of these things you are incapable of thinking about the world in the wrong way then gradually all of this works itself out and it works itself out until eventually you reach the full enlightenment itself so that is just a very brief view of the higher ideas of right view i personally i find the more ordinary ideas of right view to be more interesting because they are more practical there are things that we can apply right now i think often when we teach about right view in buddhism we say right to you is rebirth and kamma and of course it is those things but it is much more subtle than that what does it actually mean when we talk about kamma and rebirth and those things that i've been talking about today are really the you draw out the information from these things you make it more clear what these things actually imply so that you can use them in your life to enhance your life enhance your kindness your morality your support or everyone around you your compassion all of these things and then really make the path work for you because this is the foundation of the spiritual path get right view right get right view right yeah get yeah get right view right and then everything comes as a consequence okay so there you are that's my little dama talk for you so i hope i hope you're okay with that

Reviews

Wonderful, thank you.!

Thank you, I am grateful for this talk and the insights into Right View.