So we're exploring the foundational teachings of the Four Noble Truths.
We started on Tuesday,
So this week and next week.
And the way we're going through it is,
We're going about it through the four elements.
And so,
The way I want to approach this topic is from this perspective of how these four truths relate to the four elements of earth,
Fire,
Water,
And air.
So the First Noble Truth that we looked at on Tuesday is that there is suffering,
And it is part of life.
It's part of earth.
Stress is a factor of being alive.
And the cause of stress,
The second truth,
Which we'll talk about today,
Is fire.
The fire of clinging.
The third truth is that the fire can be put out.
And this truth is related to water.
There is a way that you can extinguish it.
And the way to put it out is this path.
The Noble Eightfold Path.
The Path of Air.
The Path of Breath.
So many of you,
Including myself,
Have heard these Four Noble Truths many,
Many times.
So as we explore these together,
Please consider suspending your knowing of them,
Whatever your understanding.
And stay attuned to your knowing,
But also maintain a curiosity.
So on Tuesday,
We looked at the First Noble Truth that there is suffering,
And it is to be understood.
And we went on to understand this truth through the earth element,
Which is represented in the solidity of our body.
We looked at suffering from the perspective of the earth,
What it looks like.
And today,
The Second Noble Truth is that there is a cause to suffering.
And the cause is clinging.
The cause is the fire of grasping,
Of greed.
The Buddha gave a discourse called the Fire Sermon,
And it said that it was his third talk after awakening.
So it's considered to be pretty significant.
And he gave this talk to a thousand newly ordained monks,
New students,
Who had previously been fire worshippers.
And as the story goes,
They were walking along through the countryside,
And they saw a large forest fire burning in the valley down below them.
And the Buddha said,
All is burning.
Everything is burning.
So these monks,
In their former training,
Looked towards fire and heat as synonymous with goodness and strength.
And the Buddha,
He turned it around and he said that everything is burning with greed,
With hatred and ignorance.
His assertion was that when we grasp onto what we see,
What we hear and taste and touch and smell and think,
When we hold on to these six senses in an unskillful way,
Then the heart burns with greed.
It burns with aversion and delusion.
So he isn't being a nihilist.
Rather,
He's just pointing out how our habits,
When we get caught up in our attractions,
Or what annoys us,
Or what we're scared of,
These habits can easily turn to clinging.
So when the Buddha talks about suffering in the early text,
He uses this metaphor of fire.
Over and over again,
You can see this in the suttas.
So dukkha,
Dukkha is the pain of life,
The stress of this life,
Is sometimes seen as the fire that's burning us.
We are burning,
The world is burning in a certain way.
These fires within us hurt.
This suffering,
This dukkha that we have,
It hurts.
You can notice it so directly when you're sitting and you're just with the breath,
And then you get distracted by some wanting or some not wanting some story in the mind.
The experience in the body often is a contraction.
It's a pain.
If you look around the world,
The world is on fire.
Maybe not in this moment here in the United States,
But there's so much pain.
There's so much distress.
There's so much stress that people are living under.
And over and over in the text,
We read about the fires of greed,
The fires of hatred,
And the fires of delusion.
He's talking about these powerful mental attitudes and motivations.
And when they are very compulsive,
Very strong,
When there's not mindfulness,
They're like fires that can destroy our lives.
So the metaphor for suffering is fire.
What fuels your fire?
The teaching is that clinging is the fuel for the fire.
Clinging fans the flames of our suffering.
Holding on,
Clinging is what keeps the fire going.
And we can call clinging reactivity.
That's adding more fuel to the fire.
Clinging to thought,
Clinging to view.
Suffering arises from clinging.
And if we cling to what's impermanent,
Which is pretty much everything,
We will suffer.
In the fire sermon,
The Buddha goes through each of the six senses in a systematic way.
So the Buddha is turning towards and looking at how we perceive our experience,
How we cling.
And he starts with the eyes.
He says the eyes are burning.
So how you experience the world with your eyes,
With your seeing,
Is burning with greed,
Is burning with hatred and delusion.
And then he goes through each sense in kind of a rhetorical way.
The ears are on fire,
How we hear.
They're on fire with greed,
Hatred and delusion.
Listening for what we want,
What we don't want.
And how we are right and others are wrong.
The nose is on fire,
The taste is on fire,
The body's on fire.
So he's going through this in a very repetitive way.
The mind is on fire.
And the repetition of it,
I think,
Is meant to be somewhat dramatic,
Sort of to get hammered into us.
The air is burning,
The tongue is burning,
The body is burning.
Everything is burning with the fires of clinging.
That's how rampant it is.
So we tend to experience the world through our senses and they are the fuel for our fire.
We cling to the body and our feelings and our perceptions and our mental formations,
Even consciousness.
And they're constantly changing and unfolding.
So when they're in a state of change and if we cling to them,
Then we suffer.
But if we allow the sort of psychosomatic ways that we see ourselves just to flow,
Just to flow,
Then we can find ease.
So when the Buddha gave the fire sermon,
It said that all thousand people listening to his teaching became totally enlightened.
So it was a really good talk.
But after he finished going through all the senses,
He used this phrase,
Seeing thus,
Seeing thus,
Indicating that seeing clearly all that is ablaze and its causes are enough to sort of turn the whole process around.
Simply asking the question,
What's the cause of this distress that I am feeling?
Seeing thus,
The question can open up a whole field for us.
He continues,
Seeing thus,
The wise become dispassionate towards the senses and the fires die down.
The heart becomes cool.
So coolness is related to the word nibbana or nirvana,
Which some of you understand as enlightenment.
Cooling is the transformative element.
So transforming the energy,
The element of fire into the element that we'll talk about next time,
Which is water.
Seeing thus,
Seeing how it is,
Is a powerful phrase in our practice.
It's mindfulness of our mental states and moods.
And we cultivate mindfulness by being still,
By not getting involved in our thinking,
By being still in our body.
So in mindfulness practice,
We're looking and asking the question,
What is the cause of my stress?
What am I clinging to?
And with practice,
What I've noticed for myself is that I don't even ask the question.
It doesn't even require us to find the cause or the condition.
There's just a letting go,
Just letting go of clinging,
Letting go of clinging.
There's no story.
The story disappears.
What we start to understand is that it's all just changing and in constant and impermanent.
That's the nature of suffering.
So letting go of clinging,
Cooling the fires.
Thank you for your kind attention.
I'll open it up now for discussion.
