The Divine Messengers

The Divine Messengers are an integral part of the Buddhist path. The Buddha encourages us to keep an eye out to see the Divine Messengers every day, as it will be for our benefit for a long time. Never heard of the Divine Messengers? they are all around us, all you need to do is look.

Transcript

Namo tantar�,

Bhagavatorownare molecules Ma sambuddhasan Namo tantaraldehyde,

Sam 1950,

Speeds,

Sponsaramen pseudo Welcome to the third day of talks on this very unique retreat that had no theme.

Although interestingly enough,

The Bantes and I kind of chose topics that coincided a little bit.

Really the main theme of this retreat has turned into being Dhamma.

And the Dhamma that I want to go over with you today is a type of Dhamma that most people are not too thrilled to hear about.

We can hear about all the wonderful things about Dhamma and we can feel very nice and hear about the mind and all these things.

But when we come to what I'm going to talk about today,

Real deep Dhamma,

These are things that we don't want to think about these things,

We don't want to hear about these things.

So this,

What I'm going to talk to you guys about today,

I'm just going to say one word.

I'll explain it more as we go along.

But the topic is called the Divine Messengers.

The Divine Messengers are supposed to be like a punch to the gut.

They're supposed to be powerful.

And that is because we don't want to think about them and we don't want to worry about them.

So I wanted to start out with doing a brief explanation of the main qualities of Dhamma.

They went into very detail about one yesterday.

So the first one,

Sandhitiko,

Means directly visible.

Divine Messengers are directly visible.

These are not something that has to be explained with complicated words and complicated understandings.

These are eminently directly visible.

Next is akaliko,

Means unaffected by time,

Timeless.

These Divine Messengers were experienced in the same way by our ancestors thousands of years ago as they are today and as they will be in the future.

Ehipassiko means to come and see,

As Bhante explained yesterday.

I don't have to talk about that one in detail.

Calling you to come and see.

Opa-Nyako means leading onwards,

The Divine Messengers are messengers of leading on,

Leading on towards freedom.

If only we choose to look,

If only we choose to accept the message that the Divine Messengers wish to bring us,

Directly visible,

Unaffected by time,

Calling one to come and see,

Leading onwards,

And these are all to be experienced by the wise.

So don't feel embarrassed,

But raise your hand if you've never heard the story of the Buddha.

All right,

Everybody's at least heard the story of the Buddha.

Well you're going to hear it again,

Just in brief.

So as we all know,

And of course what has ended up to be the mythology of the Buddhas going forth has a lot of different takes and is said in a lot of different ways depending on the tradition,

But we're just going to go over the very basics.

So the very basics is this.

We have the Buddha being born and the parents being told by very wise seers that if this being stays in the home,

They'll be a wheel turning monarch,

Like a world conquering monarch.

Or if not,

If they go into homelessness,

Then they'll become a Samma Sambuddha,

A rightly fully awakened one.

And the father,

The traditional story has the father as being a king,

But interestingly enough we know actually that the Sakyans were a republic.

There was no kingdom,

And they were a Sakyan republic.

So we have the father,

Who didn't want their son to become some recluse,

Wandering in the woods.

So the traditional story has that the father did everything he could.

The Buddha had three palaces,

One for each of the Indian seasons,

And he had everything that he could possibly want.

All of his servants were women.

He could get everything.

He was given everything,

And there were things hidden from him.

We know what those things are,

Right?

Any kind of sickness,

Any kind of old age,

Any kind of death.

So the traditional story has all of these things being hidden from the Buddha.

And for a variety of different reasons,

The Buddha then decides that,

You know,

I'm kind of cooped up in these things,

You know,

I don't really get to see the world,

Let me go out and see my kingdom.

And the father's like,

Oh well,

Not a good idea.

But he allows it.

And so the first time the Buddha goes out,

He,

You know,

He's,

Oh this is wonderful,

Everybody's waving,

All these good things.

And he sees an old person.

And he's like,

What is that alien weird thing?

And the channa,

His attendant said this is an old person,

This is what everybody,

Every human being becomes old like this.

Even kings?

Yeah,

Even kings.

And so,

You know,

The Buddha does kind of like what a little child does after they're like exploring the world,

They get scared,

They run back to Ma,

Right?

So he runs back to the palace,

And he hides out for a little bit.

But then he goes back out again,

Eventually.

You know,

There's different time periods between these things,

Depending on the story.

And so the second time,

He sees a sick person.

What is this thing?

What is this person?

Why do they have these boils and all these kind of things?

Right?

And it's just channa again.

You know,

Somebody made a comment recently,

Which was funny,

It was like,

Channa didn't follow the king's wishes too well,

Did he?

Yeah,

Yeah,

This is it.

This is sickness.

This is the way that,

You know,

This is part of being a human being,

Even king.

And so the Buddha goes running back,

You know,

Into safety again.

Then he comes back out another time.

And what does he see the third time?

He sees a funeral pyre,

Right?

A funeral procession.

Like cremating the body near the river and all these kind of things.

So he says,

What is this?

And channa says,

This is death,

Right?

All beings lead towards death.

And so the Buddha's really freaked out,

Goes back,

Comes out again,

And he sees a fourth sight.

The fourth sight,

Which is not as important to this talk as,

But the fourth sight is a bald-headed,

Robed,

Monastic Samana at the time.

The time in the Buddha there were two essential groups.

There were the Brahmins,

Which was everybody,

Just the normal society,

And there was the people who kind of checked out of the normal society,

Went into the woods,

Shaved their heads,

And were looking for enlightenment.

Those were the Samanas.

So that's what the Buddha saw,

A Samana.

He's like,

Oh,

Maybe these people know what they're doing.

And so he decided to go and leave everything behind and search for a way.

He saw,

Oh,

Wow.

So let me get this straight.

I have to grow old,

Get sick,

Be separated from everybody I love,

And die.

And then I have to do that over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

And I've been doing that.

How the heck do I get out of this?

I need to get off of this.

I need to get off this train,

As I say it,

Right?

So that inspired the Buddha to go out on his quest.

So have you got an idea of what the divine messengers are yet?

Now to go to the suttas.

So when you read the suttas,

You tend to see what is more closer to the reality of the Buddha's teaching or Buddha's life than what has traditionally come.

But you can see where a lot of those factors come out.

So there's a sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya,

Number three,

That three six,

It's called delicate.

And in this,

The Buddha's telling a story.

The Buddha's talking about how he was raised.

And there's a few check marks in there.

For instance,

He says that,

You know,

His father had three mansions built for him.

So check,

That's in there.

That's an ancient part of the story.

And all of the attendants were women.

And he said that the father built all kinds of lotus ponds.

He was basically explaining that he had everything possible that somebody could have.

He has this very hedonistic kind of lifestyle.

Everything possible.

But he wasn't hidden away,

Per se.

At least he doesn't talk about that in this sutta.

What he does talk about,

Though,

Is that he starts to contemplate.

And he starts to contemplate what?

Old age,

Sickness,

And death.

He starts to contemplate,

You know,

If I were to become disgusted and disliking of somebody who is old because of their old age,

Then that wouldn't be proper because I'm subject to that as well.

The same thing with sickness.

If I was to become disgusted with sickness and disliking,

You know,

Somebody who's sick,

Then that wouldn't be proper either because I'm subject to sickness.

The same thing with death.

If I were to be disgusted with death of somebody who's dying or dead,

Then that wouldn't be proper because I'm subject to that as well.

I can see everybody around as looking like they've been punched in the gut already.

Tough topics,

But this is deep Dhamma.

So then the Buddha says that he had three things.

He had an intoxication.

He was intoxicated with three things.

Youth,

Health,

And life.

He was intoxicated.

Think about like drunk,

Right?

Drunk on youth.

Drunk on health.

And drunk on life.

And he said that when he reflected in such a way,

Right,

That he was subject to these things,

It would not be proper for him to be disgusted and averse towards them.

He said that his intoxication was destroyed.

He no longer became intoxicated.

This is a good way to understand the Pali word Nibbida,

Which usually translated as revulsion.

I think it's better translated as,

Not dispassion,

I'm missing the word now.

It'll come back to me.

So Nibbida,

Disenchantment.

That's what I was looking for.

So when somebody has a disenchantment towards health or disenchantment towards youth,

Disenchantment towards life,

It doesn't mean that they hate it.

I hate this.

I hate that.

No.

Nibbida is like you were drunk,

But now you're not so drunk anymore.

You've had enough.

This is enough,

Right?

So this is the Buddhist talking about in this sutta,

About how he had enough.

He had abandoned the intoxication for these three things.

And in doing so,

He did so by these reflections.

Reflecting on these complete and utter facts of life that most of us don't want to reflect on.

We want to avoid at all possible.

We don't want to deal with them.

We do all kinds of things to try to delude ourselves,

To make ourselves intoxicated,

So that we don't have to think about it,

So we don't see the reality of things.

So that leads me to a sutta literally called Devaduta.

Devas are heavenly beings.

When you see the word deva translated,

It's usually translated as gods or deities,

Which I'm not a huge fan of,

Because those words have various connotations that don't connect with deva.

So these are messengers of the gods,

Right?

Or divine messengers.

So this sutta is literally called Devaduta Sutta,

So the divine messengers.

And it starts out with somebody who has done unskillful deeds by body,

Speech,

And mind.

And they've gone to the hell realms,

The nether realms.

And in these realms they meet an interesting character named King Yama.

And they go up in front of King Yama,

And King Yama asks them some very basic,

Simple questions.

He says,

Good sir,

You seem,

You know,

Mature and intelligent.

Did you see the divine messengers?

And the person's like,

Uh,

I don't know.

And so King Yama asks the person,

Did you never see an old person bent,

Using a cane,

Shuffling around?

And he describes all these aspects of being old.

And the person says,

No,

I don't think so.

And so King Yama says,

Well,

Because of not seeing this,

You have done these deeds.

And not your mother,

Your father,

Your siblings,

Your spouse,

Nobody is responsible for your actions but you.

So you must,

You know,

You must have the consequences,

Suffer the consequences of your deeds.

So that's the first one.

So seeing,

You know,

Not seeing old age.

It's kind of funny,

There's a,

I heard a story years ago by,

Maybe some of you know Tanasarabiku,

He's an abbot of Watmata over in California.

He's a pretty well known monastic.

And I heard this story about a junior monastic that was under him.

And supposedly the story goes something to the effect of like they were out of the monastery in California.

And if you've ever been to California,

I mean the men are walking around topless,

The women are wearing bikinis,

All these kind of things.

So I mean not everywhere but it's pretty prevalent.

And so the story goes that this junior monk,

You know,

Went to Tanasarabiku,

Ajahn Jeff is his name if you know him by that.

And he says,

I can't stop seeing like,

You know,

Young beautiful women all over the place.

And so the response,

Tanasarabiku or Ajahn Jeff said,

Okay,

Well,

Look for old.

Instead of young and beautiful,

Look for old and ugly.

And then supposedly the story goes all of a sudden he saw all of these,

He was so focused on these young beautiful women that once that like was broken,

He saw the whole,

Oh,

Okay,

Yeah there's old age.

So that's us,

Right?

That's this person in front of King Yama.

Oh no,

I didn't really see it.

So then King Yama says,

Well,

Did you see the second divine messenger?

And he's like,

What's that?

And so it was a sick person.

And of course,

No,

He didn't see a sick person.

It says,

You know,

Goes through a description of,

You know,

A person who has such and such disease and has this on the skin and yada yada all these things.

And he's like,

No,

I could not,

I was negligent,

He said.

And so then he repeats the same thing.

If you read the sutras,

You know there's a lot of repetition.

So he says the same thing.

Well,

Since you didn't see these,

You are responsible for your actions.

And then the third,

Right,

The third one,

Did you see the third divine messenger?

No.

You did not see a dead person or anything?

No,

I didn't.

So these three things,

Right,

And then it goes into this whole thing like if you ever,

You know,

I was raised Catholic,

So like,

You know,

I know all about like the descriptions of hell and all the kind of things that can happen to you.

The first time I read this sutta and I saw like the description of hell,

I'm like,

Wait a second,

Maybe this is where the Catholics got it from.

You don't want to go to hell in the Buddhist hell realms,

Believe me.

So that's beside the point.

The point is that this is a very important teaching,

Right,

These three things,

This divine messengers.

And they're things that are not really,

They're kind of maybe sometimes considered either too simplistic or too simple or maybe too hard for the average person to want to deal with.

I mean,

I can see,

Usually when I give a talk,

People are laughing and all things I can see.

What I see is this when I look out,

You guys are all like,

Oh man,

But that's good.

That's the point of this,

Of doing these things.

So we understand that these divine messengers,

How they are so important,

They're so important to the practice of Dhamma that they're literally what drove the Buddha in search of awakening.

That's how important they are to understand.

And towards the end,

The last thing in this talk I'm going to give you is a practice that the Buddha tells all of us to do,

Right?

And I encourage you to do that practice on a regular basis.

But we're not quite there just yet.

So we see all day sickness and death in the story of the Buddha.

But where else do we see it?

Let's go to the first noble truth.

We know the first noble truth,

The noble truth of Dukkha.

We know Dukkha as translated as suffering or stress or unsatisfactoriness,

All kinds of ways that it can be translated as.

But as I think either Bhante or Bhanteji mentioned,

Some of these Pali words are really best left untranslated.

I don't say suffering usually anymore.

I usually say Dukkha directly.

Plus it's easy to say.

It's like an impactful Dukkha.

So Dukkha,

Right?

One of my preferred explanations of what Dukkha means is difficult to bear.

Du means difficult,

Unpleasant.

And the ka would mean to bear.

This is the explanation that is given for this.

So Dukkha is that in life which is difficult to bear.

So do you know the definition of Dukkha?

The definition that the Buddha gives?

What's the first thing?

Birth is Dukkha.

You know why birth is Dukkha?

I kind of went over it a little bit before.

Online I found this wonderful picture of a newborn baby doing its first cry.

It's a picture of this baby crying.

And then in captions it says,

Oh no,

Not again.

That's why birth is Dukkha.

Not even to mention the suffering of the mother and the child going through a traumatic process.

But birth is Dukkha.

Aging is Dukkha.

I look around.

The last time I gave this talk I was literally the youngest person in the room at age 41.

But I see a lot of younger people here.

Like some of you guys who are older,

You don't have to be told aging is Dukkha.

You're already experiencing it.

Like even Bhanteji was talking about.

But when we're younger we don't have to worry about that.

We're not thinking about it.

We're still intoxicated with youth.

So aging is Dukkha.

Birth is Dukkha.

Aging is Dukkha.

Suffering or no,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief,

Despair is Dukkha.

Death is Dukkha.

Being separated from our loved ones,

Things,

People,

Places and experiences we like is Dukkha.

So we already got the divine messengers in there.

We got old age.

Well,

He doesn't say sickness,

But we know that sickness is really Dukkha as well.

So we have these divine messengers right in there with Dukkha.

We also have this being separated from people,

Places and experiences we like.

This is also something you're going to see again towards the end of the talk.

So being separated from people,

Places and experiences we love,

We like.

And the flip side of that is having to deal with people,

Places and experiences we don't like.

Like that person at work you always try to avoid.

And then not getting what one wants.

This is Dukkha.

So we can see that this theme running through these deep currents,

Old age sickness and death,

The story of the Buddha,

The first noble truth,

These divine messengers.

So we can see that this is something that's really,

Really important.

We can see that this is something that is really integral to Buddhist practice,

To delving deep.

Interestingly enough,

When you start to look inside your mind and your body,

When you really start to look,

What do you see?

You start to see aging.

You see sickness.

You see death.

You see Dukkha.

You see all of these things.

When you really start to look inside,

As opposed to what we normally do in life,

What we normally do in life is live on autopilot.

We're just kind of going through our lives.

I had this experience a couple years ago where I was lost in something.

I don't remember what it was.

But I was lost in something and I came back to mindfulness and I realized during that time I was lost,

That I was unmindful,

There was no death.

Time didn't move.

I was so wrapped up in this thing that it was as if I just would live forever.

And then I realized,

Ah,

That's what we all do.

That's the average person does that.

That's how the average person lives their whole life until everything falls apart in the end and then they have to deal with it.

But it's so easy,

Just going back to what I was talking about,

Us youngsters.

We don't have to worry about getting old yet.

It's something really far off in the future if you make it that long.

So this Dukkha,

This all day sickness and death,

Very important.

And the other term I wanted to go over a little bit more is Anicca,

Because this plays a role in it as well.

Anicca,

Often translated as impermanence.

I'm going over two of the three characteristics of existence.

I'm not going to go over not self,

That's a whole other talk.

But these two are especially important to understand why it's important to reflect on the divine messengers.

Anicca,

Often translated as impermanence,

Bhanteji's most favorite topic to talk about,

As those of you who have been listening to him for years might well know.

This lies at the core of this reality.

Anicca,

So anicca can mean permanent or stable.

Anicca means impermanent or unstable.

And that second definition is something I always use in my talks because it was something that was very impactful and profound for me when I read it.

I had always just heard people for years and years and years say impermanence,

But then I looked up the definition in the Pali English Dictionary and I saw this other thing and I saw unstable.

Oh,

I get it.

And it was like this shock,

This amazing insight into that everything is unstable.

There's nothing in life that you can hold on to as stable.

There's nothing that is permanent,

Stable.

Your body?

No.

Your spouse?

Children?

No.

Job?

Cars?

No.

Right?

So as the Buddha loves to say,

If something is impermanent,

How can it be permanent?

There's a wonderful story in the Maha Parinibbana Sutta.

This is the last days of the Buddha where the Buddha is dying and becoming extinguished and it says that the people were rending their hairs and beating their breast and saying,

Oh,

Too soon has the life of the Blessed One ended.

But it also talks about there were monastics off to the side,

Being in meditation and reflecting on.

The teacher has told us that all things that arise must cease.

All things are anicca.

How could it be otherwise?

So when you see,

When you really start to see all these sickness and death,

You're staring impermanence right in the face.

You're seeing instability.

You're seeing change.

And how we react to that is what causes us our suffering.

That's what Dukkha is.

Dukkha is all on us.

Dukkha is something that we create by trying to make something that's unstable and impermanent stable and permanent.

When we get older,

We want to go out and get hair dye,

Put hair dye on.

We want anti-aging wrinkle creams,

Whatever.

Men lose their hair and it's like in a front to their,

Oh my god,

I'm not a man anymore,

I lost my hair.

All these things are happening as we get older.

Our eyes,

Maybe about six years ago I got my first gray hair.

I was like,

Oh,

This is really cool.

I got a gray hair.

And then just the last couple of years I've started to get what they call the,

When it's blurry,

Your eyesight gets blurry as you get older.

So I'm actually starting to,

Just at the cusp of starting to see these things and how it changes.

I've always loved perfect eyesight my whole life.

I'd rather not have to get reading glasses and all these kind of things.

But if I were to attach to that and say,

Oh,

Man,

I want my eyes to be a certain way and my eyes are like,

I don't care.

The eyes are just doing what they naturally do.

And so do I kind of fight that anger like this and cause myself all kinds of suffering or do I accept,

Oh,

Okay,

This is life.

So now I just have to pick out a cool pair of reading glasses.

So when we understand,

This is an important thing to understand,

To understand Anicca and Dukkha,

To understand how the Buddha is saying that everything is unstable,

Everything is impermanent.

And if you want something to be stable and permanent,

You're setting yourself up for suffering.

One of my favorite quotes that was really impactful for me years and years ago when I was a newer Buddhist,

It was by Ajahn Brahm,

The quote goes,

Suffering is asking from the world what it cannot give you.

I was like,

Whoa,

Yeah,

That is what it is.

So the first thing we ask from the world is that this whole all day sickness and death thing doesn't happen.

We want,

Oh,

Well,

We're not going to think about it.

We're not going to deal with it.

We're going to hide,

200 years ago when somebody died,

The body was in the house for a week and the wake was there and everything.

Now you don't see anything.

You don't see dead bodies.

Even if it's an open casket,

They really beautify it.

I remember I was at one funeral years ago and I heard somebody say,

Oh,

Wow,

She looks better now than she did when she was alive.

Right?

Because even we don't like death,

But we want to beautify even this,

What the Buddha would call a useless chunk of wood,

Useless corpse.

Right?

So what is the purpose of all this?

Why are we doing this?

Why do we want to make ourselves suffer by bravely reflecting on these realities of life?

Well,

It is so that we can be freed from our suffering.

This whole practice,

Meditation,

Sitting down,

Like I said in the very beginning when I was talking about the orientation,

When I was talking about the purpose,

The mindset of this,

Sitting down to meditate,

We think it's going to be all blissful and wonderful,

But then as soon as we look inside,

We start to see all the things that we hid away our whole life.

We start to see all of the things that we didn't want to see.

Right?

It's kind of like you guys probably know the matrix,

Right?

There's the red pill and the blue pill and in the matrix,

The one guy,

He doesn't like real life so much that he actually wants to go back into the matrix.

He actually wants to go back into being deluded and ignorant.

And that's us.

Like when I saw that,

I laughed because I saw myself in that.

This is well before I was a Buddhist,

But you can see that this is something that we want to do.

There's this innate drive,

This innate desire to avoid these things and to not think about them.

I can remember the first time I really realized that my parents are going to die.

I think I was like eight or nine.

And I remember like I was up in my room,

I was playing video games or something.

I don't know,

Something I remember,

But I recognized this,

Whoa,

Okay,

There's going to be a time where my parents are not going to be around anymore.

And I remember crying and running to my mom and saying,

Don't die,

Don't die,

Mom,

Don't die,

Mom.

That reality was such a shock to me as a young child that I,

You know,

To realize.

And of course I had seen some death in other relatives and stuff like that,

So I was starting to understand.

But these realities are there.

Just like that monk who was only seeing the beautiful women,

Just like that guy in front of King Yama who didn't see the divine messengers,

They're there right in front of us.

But we choose.

We don't want to see them.

We don't want to.

I've been really analyzing this in myself recently and I realized like I still don't believe I'm going to die.

I've been doing mindfulness of death practices for 10 years.

I've been meditating for 15.

I've watched people die and literally held their hand,

But I really still don't believe I'm going to die.

It's a weird thing.

And I look at myself like,

How stupid can you be?

But that delusion is so deep in there,

Right?

That delusion is so deep in there that when I really look at my mind,

My mind is,

That's so deep.

And maybe if I lived until Wambate-ji's age,

I still got another 50 years at least.

I'm good.

I'm not going to die.

So all of these things,

We delude ourselves to go away from these,

To not deal with them.

But when we practice them,

There's a whole suite of meditation practices.

You can even see in Satipaṭṭhāna under the body section,

Mindfulness of death practices,

Reflecting on old age sickness and death,

Reflecting on these things.

What's the point of these?

Is it to make us all kinds of feel morbid and fearful and scared and all these things?

Actually,

No,

That's not the point.

The point is that when you bravely,

Courageously face these realities,

Well,

Guess what?

The truth that arises in you is that,

Okay,

This is the reality.

I only have a certain amount of time left.

What do I do with the time that I have?

That's what the Buddha wants us to do.

That's what these practices are for.

They're to develop a sense of urgency,

To stop us from deluding ourselves from the reality of things.

I'm going to get sick.

I'm going to grow old.

I'm going to die.

All of these things,

We reflect on them.

And you know,

At first,

I do a whole mindfulness of death retreat,

And it gets into stuff like corpse decay and all these kinds of stuff,

The teachings that the Buddha taught.

But I always start with one thing,

And that's what I'm going to talk about after this.

I always start with this one practice called the five subjects for contemplation,

Or five themes.

Why?

Because for many people,

This is hard enough,

Let alone getting into all of these other things.

When you first start to sit down,

When you first start to practice these things,

There's a lot of fear that arises,

A lot of disgust that arises,

And you don't want to do it.

The reason why that fear and disgust arises is for one reason,

Because you haven't been doing it.

You haven't been reflecting on these things over and over and over and over again.

You haven't really been facing the truth,

Facing the realities,

Because when you start to do that,

You'll start to notice how your reaction to these things changes.

I'll give you a story.

I was,

Maybe about a year ago,

I was doing something that I've been doing for eight years,

Both as a visitor to Bhavan and then as somebody who's lived here.

I was walking on the road every day.

It's just like Bhante G did for thirty-some odd years,

Walking on the road,

Waving to people and giving them metta as they walked by,

As they drive by,

I should say.

All of a sudden,

I started to notice that for the first time in however many years I've been doing it,

I actually was starting to have a fear when I would hear a car drive up behind me.

It was going to run me over or whatever.

I would actually feel fear when I heard a car.

What I did,

I did what I trained myself to do.

Instead of being like,

Nah,

Don't worry,

Jay,

You've got at least another thirty years.

You know what came to my mind?

My death is coming for me.

So I just reflected,

Yeah,

I could die right now.

This car could run me over.

My death is coming for me.

And what do you think happened?

The opposite of what your intuition would say.

My fear went away and I was at peace.

Oh,

Okay.

Why is that?

Because I had been facing these realities for years.

I had understood that this is the reality.

Yes,

Any time I go out there and walk,

Yeah,

A car could kill me.

As far as I know,

Nobody has ever been killed walking on these roads who came to Visabavana,

But it's a possibility.

Because I had reflected on that,

Because I had done these practices for so long,

It brought me peace.

Instead of making me suffer,

It freed me.

Ah,

Yeah.

That's what these practices are so important for.

That's what they're so good for.

It's because they're just another aspect of seeing things as they are.

That's why we practice in Buddhism.

That's why we do Samatha practices and we do Vipassana practices,

Yata Buddha,

To see things as they are.

And things as they are is,

You're going to die.

You're going to get sick.

You're going to grow old.

That's normal.

That's natural.

No matter how hard you want to fight against it,

This is what's happening.

And so that leads me to the final thing.

It's called Five Subjects of Contemplation.

Or Bhikkhu Bodhi translates it as themes.

So the Buddha starts it out by making it very clear who this is for.

Whether you are a woman or a man,

Lay or ordained,

These facts should be reflected on often.

Some people say,

Oh well in this sutta,

The Buddha is just talking to monks,

So this is not talking about me.

In this sutta,

Buddha is very clear.

You can't get out of it.

It doesn't matter who you are,

Woman or man,

Doesn't matter if you're a lay person or ordained,

These apply to you and you should reflect on these often.

They should come as no surprise.

First one,

I am subject to old age.

I am not exempt from old age.

If you're there,

Then you understand that.

If you're not there,

It's this vague thing that's really far away.

You can reflect.

What I love about this is the second part is I am not exempt from old age.

What's the second?

I'm subject to illness.

I have not gone beyond illness.

The third,

I am subject to death.

I've not gone beyond death.

If you want to see the depths of my delusion,

This is probably about six years ago,

I was standing in front of that skeleton,

Which is where I do a lot of my mindfulness to death practices.

I named the skeleton Jack,

And I just recently found out about 25 years ago or so,

Bhante Rahula named it Mr.

Bones.

The skeleton's name is Mr.

Jack Bones.

I was hanging out in front of Jack and I was doing this reflection.

I was like,

I am subject to old age.

I am not exempt from old age.

I'm subject to illness.

I'm not exempt from illness.

I am subject to death.

I am exempt from death.

My mind said that.

I caught it.

I was like,

Whoa,

Wait a second there.

So I get to see my own delusion right then and there.

My mind is like a Freudian slip.

I am exempt from death.

So then the next one,

We've already seen this in the definition of a dukkha.

I will become separated from everything and everyone that I hold dear.

And then the last one,

Last one's very important.

Last one points towards the purpose of these practices.

Last one points towards what you're supposed to do about it.

Last one is this.

I am the owner of my actions,

Heir of my actions.

I have my actions as my relative.

Whatever I do for good or ill,

To that I shall be the heir.

So the Buddha is saying you're going to grow old,

You're going to get sick,

You're going to die,

You're going to be separated from everybody you love,

And you're responsible for your actions.

Oh,

God,

That's a lot to take on,

Right?

Right,

So you are the heir of your actions.

There's a wonderful sutta,

It's called Pabbatopamasutta,

Simile of the mountains.

The Buddha is talking with a king.

And the Buddha says,

Great King,

Suppose from all four directions you were to have your scouts come back and say,

Great King,

There's mountains as tall as the sky,

Moving towards here,

Crushing everything in its wake.

What could you do?

And the king says,

Practice skillfully,

Practice Dhamma.

And so the Buddha says,

I exhort you,

Great King,

Old age,

Sickness,

And death are coming in,

Crushing everything in its wake.

What can you do?

Practice Dhamma.

Right?

So there's this Buddha is saying you have a choice.

You can,

Old age,

Sickness,

And death are coming in one way or the other.

You're not stopping that.

Now,

I'm big into like astronomy and things like that.

And I read things and watch things about how they're trying to do all these kind of life extension things and stuff like that.

And there's a good chance some of us alive today might live to a thousand years old.

And you think,

Aha,

We're beating the Buddha soon.

But a thousand year old is nothing.

You can be reborn in the Buddha's cosmology,

You can be reborn as something that lives 84,

000 years.

So like,

Oh,

I can live a couple more thousand years.

You're still going to be,

You're still going to die.

You're still going to maybe even you might not grow old.

Right?

At least not in how we think of it is today,

But you're still going to die.

Even scientists say even the universe is going to die.

And so now that you know what people are thinking about already,

Even though the universe dies in trillions and trillions of years,

We're thinking about,

Okay,

Well,

How do we escape this universe and go to the next one?

That's our mind,

Right?

Well,

This universe is gone.

All right,

We got to go to the next one.

We got to keep living,

Keep surviving.

So this is this understanding,

Right?

This is the reality of life.

You have a short period of time.

How do you live?

What choices do you make?

How do you live in this life?

That's the important thing.

The Colin and Hope here,

I'm going to use you guys as examples.

They were here for a retreat and I was talking about these kind of things.

And the next time they came back,

They said,

Bonté,

We really want to thank you because you scared us so much that you really got us to practice well.

And what I was talking about when I scared them was about how the Buddha says that how rare it is to become a human.

It's extremely rare.

He uses a simile,

Suppose a lasso was thrown off into the great ocean and every hundred years a turtle,

A tortoise was to come up and put their head above water.

Sooner would that tortoise put their head in the lasso,

Then you become a human.

So being a human is a very rare,

Precious thing.

You did a lot of good deeds.

No matter how much you hate yourself or don't like things about yourself or don't like things about your situation,

You did a lot of good,

According to the Buddhist cosmology,

To become a human.

So the Buddha says after that,

Very few people who are humans now are going to be humans in the next life.

So I was like,

Whoa,

Okay.

So the Buddha is telling us all of these things so that we are encouraged to practice,

To live skillfully,

To don't forget the divine messengers.

Think about the divine messenger sutta.

Where did it start off?

Where was the person?

The person was already in hell.

They were already done.

But hopefully,

Maybe they remember in a future life because if everything is anicca,

There's no way that you can be born that's permanent.

So even in Buddhism,

You go to the hell realms,

You go to the heaven realms,

You're not there permanently.

So maybe that person in their next life remembers what King Yama asked them and they say,

Oh,

Okay,

I'm going to remember this life.

I'm going to remember these divine messengers.

So we reflect on these things.

And as we do,

We come to reality.

Take it from somebody who has seen a lot of death.

When you see a lot of death and you have a lot of loss,

You understand reality for it is,

Then you know that time is precious,

Life is precious.

What should I do?

How do I live?

That is one of the most important questions anybody can ask.

And the Buddha gives us all these methods of reflecting on that,

To understand the reality.

And knowing that once we know the reality,

Once we're not living deluded,

How do we live?

How do I choose to live?

That is the important question.

Of course,

We know what the Buddha recommends.

We're from the simile of the mountains.

This is Dhamma,

Practice living skillfully,

Doing deeds that are skillful and beneficial to yourself and others,

As opposed to harmful to yourself and others.

In doing so,

We live a life that free of remorse and regret,

Understanding the nature of reality,

Understanding how things are,

Lessening our suffering gradually,

Gradually,

Gradually,

Until one day we're free.

So I want to end with some verses from the Devadatta Sutta.

Those people who are negligent when warned by God's messengers,

A long time they sorrow when they go to that wretched place.

But those good and peaceful people,

When warned by the God's messengers,

Never neglect the teachings of the noble ones,

The Dhamma.

Seeing the peril in grasping the origin of birth and death.

There's your second noble truth,

Grasping,

Clinging.

Seeing the peril in grasping the origin of birth and death,

They are freed by not grasping with the ending of birth and death.

Happily,

They've come to a safe place,

Extinguished in this very life.

They've gone beyond all threats and perils and risen above all suffering.

So keep the divine messengers close.

Know them,

Reflect on them,

Reflect on,

Use this themes,

Subjects of contemplation every day,

As much as you can,

Reflecting on,

Don't get lost in this normal mode that we have,

This normal autopilot,

That we're not even thinking about these things.

And then one day we get sick and it's like a freight train hit and then now we have to deal with it.

One day we're about to die,

You find out you have a month to live and then you fall apart.

But no,

When you practice these things and reflect on these things and practice Dharma,

You understand,

Okay,

This is what it is.

Now how do I live?

What choices do I make?

How do I do this?

No matter how much time you have,

And you don't know,

There's still that one choice.

How do I live?

So keep these reflections in mind and don't be,

So there's a verse from the Dhammapada.

Mindfulness or heedfulness is close to the deathless.

Deathless is an epithet for Nibbāna or Nirāna.

Mindlessness is close to death.

Those who are mindful never die.

Those who are mindless are as if dead already,

Like zombies.

So don't be a zombie running around life on autopilot.

Take yourself off autopilot.

Be mindful and understand reality as it is and you will lessen your suffering and you will live more skillfully,

More peacefully,

More content.

So with that,

I'll end this talk and if you have any questions,

Put them in the box and I'll answer them at seven.

Sadhu,

Sadhu,

Sadhu.

Sadhu,

Sadhu.

Sadhu,

Sadhu.

Reviews

Profound, Inspiring, and Packed with Gems of Wisdom.
Much gratitude for your talk, Bhante.

This is an amazing teaching!

Good reminder. 🙏

Well presented. The handwriting is on the wall. Pay attention. Live skillfully.

I loved this talk. thanks 😊

Thank you for your teaching 🙏 Very grateful to you 🙏❤️

Wonderful talk. Sadhu sadhu sadhu

Really like this one, I listened twice. 🙏🏼🌿

Thank you 🙏🏼

Informative with a touch of humor. Thank you! 🙏🏼✨💖

Thank you so kindly for this❤🌠🌹🕯
Namaste 🙏🏼⚘️🦋

Wonderful reminder, thank you.

Thankyou Bhikkhu 🙏

Thanks Bhikkhu - I enjoyed this informative talk. Received with much gratitude Carol

Love ALL your teachings... namaste 🙏 🧘

An exceptional talk on how to discard autopilot mode of living by reflecting death, sickness and aging. This is a priceless talk. Thank you!

I find these speaches very humbling, with a great twist of humor.
Thank you.