Daily Presentations Of Enlightenment

This talk explores with you how the Buddha’s journey is similar to our journey. The message and invitation of the Buddha’s enlightenment story it’s not that some guy 2,600 years ago pulled it off, something we can't. It’s our very nature to wake up. Every one of us.

Transcript

So last week I explored with you how the Buddha's journey is similar to our own journey and we looked at his early life and how he snuck out of the palace with his charioteer and he discovered what are called the four heavenly messengers.

So the four heavenly messengers are aging,

Sickness,

Death,

And a wandering ascetic.

These are the four sites that he saw outside the palace gates and in the town that surrounded the palace.

And these sites moved Siddhartha.

He was still Siddhartha Gautama at that point and it caused him to be disillusioned with palace life.

And so we talked about that how we have had events in our lives that have happened that caused kind of like that moment of like disillusionment like oh wow the moment that we realize as children that one day we're gonna die that everything dies like that's a shock for a kid because then you wonder well how do I live?

So Siddhartha was very motivated after seeing these sites and he decided that he was going to find the source of genuine freedom.

Freedom beyond sickness,

Aging,

And death.

And it was illustrated in this wandering ascetic so he's like okay I'm gonna go and check out this path see what that there's something about this person walking through the world with some ease and some peace I want to check that out for myself.

But as young people often do he didn't go about it in a very balanced and skillful way.

So I think you have to think back to when you were in your 20s and you were kind of finding your way in the world maybe just maybe you did some things that were not very skillful.

You know you might have tried out some ideas some practices that didn't really work for you.

Well same with the Buddha.

His practice was severe asceticism so he found some teachers and he followed the teachers for a period of time but he surpassed the teachers with his his level of concentration.

So he found this group that were doing these crazy practices like eating one grain of rice a day and not sleeping like his intent was to kind of beat his mind into submission like this was the idea like I won't eat he had very little social life the people that he was practicing with were also doing these same practices so those were that was his community a community of just extremists and so he was one of them.

So when we look at our life as it relates to this story you know how do we respond when we become disillusioned and it's like okay things are not going the way that I want do we do an immediate turn towards something else I know that that's kind of in my path like this isn't working anymore switch do we him and ha and debate and try to figure it out but kind of what happens for many of us is we kind of get on this like life isn't showing up the way that we anticipated especially when we were younger and so what happens is we get on this self-improvement project right like okay there's something we have this story that something's actually wrong and we have to fix it somehow so instead of going forth like the Buddha did we sign up for a gym membership or we go to therapy for the first time or we go back to grad school because that will change everything or we start a new workout or we go on a diet and it's not to say that any of these things are bad they're not bad but there is a kind of striving to fill this kind of undercurrent that there's something wrong with me there's something that's not quite right about this life I don't know what it is I can't really point to it but I'm not fulfilled and so maybe this thing this experience this will fulfill me excuse me I need to blow my nose and I apologize that I have this cold I debated as I said but I feel like sitting helps just being still helps so back to the story so when things fall apart in our life we kind of figure out what to do next we go and we like okay either again like I said join the gym we try to look good like things are falling apart but we want to like at least present like we have our shit together right and a lot of times it's that we want to be we want to be right like we are looking to kind of figure things out so that we look like we know what we're talking about and of course we're right in our views and we're very very attached to our views as you all have experienced at some point in your life we invest a lot of our energy in right and wrong and trying to do the right thing so here's a little story that illustrates what I'm talking about a little girl was talking to her teacher about whales the teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human being because even though whales are really large they have very thin throats and so they can't swallow a human whole and the little girl said well what about Jonah like the story of Jonah and the whale Jonah was swallowed whole by a whale and then the teacher reiterated well that's not possible because you can't a whale cannot physically swallow a human being whole so it's impossible so the little girl says to the teacher kind of precocious little thing well when I get to heaven I'm gonna ask Jonah and the teacher said well what if Jonah went to hell and then she said well then you ask so you can see in this dialogue how we are kind of stuck in our rightness you know and from the mouths of babes we started on how we're right we all have had that experience like I have a teenager I he is always always right so everyone has a strategy you know we all have a strategy and the Buddha had a strategy and his strategy was to to break his mind into submission to strive for something else besides the world of aging sickness and death but here he was eating a grain of rice a day as this as the myth goes and really just becoming so initiated lack of sleep practicing meditation all the time and he was just about on the point of death and he understood that you know what whatever torturous practices could be done I have done them and still I am NOT awake I am NOT free in fact I'm about to I feel like I might die so in that moment he had a memory a vision it was a memory of when he was a young boy and he was sitting under a rose apple tree kind of like the cherry trees that we have and he was in the shade of this rose apple tree and his father the king was ritually plowing the field with the other people the people that worked in the palace and he was just in the cool shade of the tree watching his father and his mind became very collected he was not disengaged with what was happening and he wasn't desiring it to be different he wasn't fascinated by anything in one thing in particular and his mind came to a place of extraordinary balance he was still and he was tranquil and he was absorbed and he was undistracted he was in the moment and he remembered this time when he was a boy and he thought well maybe this is way maybe this is the way to practice just finding a relaxed spot balanced and paying attention to what's happening right here in this moment maybe that's the way to liberate the mind and because he was a child when this happened he's like oh so this could possibly happen to children because it happened to him so he realized that he had been going around about things the wrong way just in the same way that we at some point come to realize that oh yeah this choice that I made as a young person isn't really working so what he did is he shifted gears and the first thing that he did as an act of compassion self-compassion which we'll kind of go into in the next couple of weeks was that he took in some food he had some a bowl of rice they like a milk rice fed himself he slept for a period of time well the other ascetic saw him and they were like look at Siddhartha you know they they removed themselves from this guy who was going against their their fixed way of being kind of like you know see you in hell not if they're you're there first type of thing and what he did is he just gave himself permission to relax that's it so he relaxed for a period of time that he found a different tree a Bodhi tree which is now in Bodh Gaya in India and he started practicing from this balanced mind he just sat and he was aware of his body feeling a little bit heavier from nourishment aware of the sounds around him aware of sensations fantasies pleasures and slowly but surely he woke up it was not without challenges the manifestation of challenges is depicted in the this idea of it's called Mara Mara is like the antithesis of the challenges so these are the way that the mind gets distracted so you're sitting let's say you're collecting the mind and you're at peace and at ease and then all of a sudden you're off like planning your next vacation that would be a form of Mara but he kept on coming back just in the same way that we do doing the same practice that we do up distraction back up fantasy back up memory back we're doing the same practice that the Buddha did 2,

600 years ago that's how we're like the Buddha and that's what we do each week together we come together with our own group of aesthetics maybe not in the extreme version have a cookie which is very relaxed a very relaxed thing to do have a cookie and we intentionally intentionally reconnect with ourselves you having a bit of a cold is really an interesting practice because when I'm just sitting everything clears my nose clears my body relaxes I'm gonna probably sit for the rest of the day before I go to my son's graduation and just do that because it feels so good we connect with ourselves and everything that's unresolved in ourselves the physician and biologist Lewis Thomas wrote I don't really understand the source of our great cultural sadness except to see that perhaps we've come so far without really knowing ourselves we've come so far without knowing ourselves and when we come together we're stopping to get to know ourselves with everything that we have and sometimes you know so much of our life is led we're kind of led by you know we're humans doing I mean who in this room is not a human doing we have plans and we've got things going on in our world but we come home to humans being and maybe you just do it once a week here but hopefully you do it more often than that just being so the message and the invitation is that it's not about some guy 2,

600 years ago that woke up and it's different from you and I it's in our very nature to wake up you know it's in our very nature every one of us so thank you for being here and for putting up with my my snotty nose and clogged body and but it felt like an important message to deliver it always feels like an important message to remember every one of us here is the Buddha I trust that I believe that and I hope that you can see it in this story so thank you

Reviews

So good. Thanks Lisa.

Thank you 🙏🏼