Suññata and the Four Elements - Fire

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado on one of the Brahma Viharas - Metta (loving kindness).

Transcript

Very well then.

We're in the midst of a series of teachings that I've put together,

I'm offering,

On the theme of Shunyata and the Four Elements.

Shunyata is a Pali word that is usually translated as voidness or absence of.

First,

Voidness or absence of,

The sense of or a belief in,

Or the manufacture of,

The notion of a permanent and abiding self.

Based on the understanding that what the Buddha called I-making and me-making is a mental function,

A mental activity that construes or construes the self on a moment-to-moment basis or on an as-needed basis.

And then sometimes when the mind gets deeply relaxed in the meditation practice,

The mind occasionally stops constructing the self.

And you can have the experience of what the Buddha called Ad-Nata,

Or not-self,

Or absence of self.

The Four Elements meditation is one that he taught first in the creative discourse on the foundations of mindfulness,

The Mahayasatakottanas,

And then kind of further explicated on in later discourses,

Mostly in the Majjhana and the Kaya,

Other language discourses of the Buddha.

What he was,

His intention in teaching the Four Elements practice,

He said,

One of the things that happens when the mind is selfing,

When it's involved in I-making and me-making,

What it basically does is to kind of weave a cocoon or create this shell,

This sense of a discrete,

Unique,

Separate,

Isolated individual,

Separate from nature,

Separate from each other.

And that when the mind so conceives of the self in that way,

It can really be a cause of suffering,

Because one feels lonely and isolated and cut off,

And not deeply networked into the web of life.

So his intention in teaching the Four Elements meditation was to help us reorient the mind's activity and attention,

Not to create itself,

You know,

With thoughts and memories and plans and whatnot,

But to simply experience ourselves as of the earth.

So he advised experiencing the air element,

Originally he talked about these Four Elements that were part of Vedic cosmology at the time,

Earth,

Air,

Water and fire.

And so he would advise experiencing the air element,

Or later he called it the winds,

Through breathing,

Through paying careful attention to the breathing.

He could experience the fire element through a sense of heat on the skin,

You know,

If we're hot.

Another way to do it is by paying attention to it,

Eventually either the way I do it is by blinking my fingers to the second joint,

Or sometimes you can do it just by paying careful attention,

Tuning into your pulse.

So you can feel the rhythms and the vibration that's keeping you alive through your pulse.

So we have breathing,

We have pulsating,

You can experience the water element through the sensation of moisture in the mouth,

It's elevated,

And experiencing the earth element through touching,

Through whatever your body happens to be in contact with,

Whether the seat you're sitting on,

Your feet on the ground when you're walking.

So he advised taking each of those as an object of meditation,

As a way of reminding us how we are all connected to nature,

How we are not a part from,

But a part of nature.

So that's the sort of intention of the teaching.

And practice done as a shamala practice,

Which means a focusing or a concentration practice,

Sometimes the samadhi can get so deep that especially if you have,

You talk when the sense of self starts to get kind of porous and soft,

He especially taught not only feeling these things internally when you're sitting,

But going out into nature.

And when you feel the wind,

The breeze in the trees or whatever,

You can be reminded of your own breath,

And reminded of the fact that you and the trees actually depend on each other.

That we're exchanging gases that we both need,

They're providing us oxygen,

We're providing them carbon dioxide,

Actually right now a great deal more than they need,

Of course,

But it's a symbiotic relationship in class.

Being aware of the water element,

If you happen to be by flowing water or any green plant where they're being planted,

There's water in there.

And just being aware of the earth,

You know,

That you see in all matter,

All seemingly solid and on and on around you.

That we are not different from those things.

And that the idea that we are,

That we suffer different or special is in some ways kind of illegal.

So,

When practiced at a really deep level,

Whether indoors or outdoors,

It just happens a fair amount actually if you're sitting outdoors sometimes.

You can just allow the body to relax into its is-ness,

Right?

So where the consciousness,

You know,

Your attention really is only resting on the breathing and the salivating and pulsating and the touching and whatnot.

And then sometimes you just feel yourself just kind of melt into the environment and there's no real difference between the two.

I really advise you doing sometimes,

You're walking in a park or out on a trail someplace where you find some,

What feels you like a safe place,

Do some sitting and see what happens.

So that's the nature of the teaching in very general terms.

We've spoken with some,

Well,

In great good disgust and some greater detail so far in this series,

The air element.

And last time we were together the water element.

And I want to discuss a little bit the fire element.

And then next time we'll do the earth element.

Also at that time I think I'm going to add another session because later on in the Majjhima Nikaya,

As I said,

Buddha elaborates more in this teaching and he includes not only earth,

Wind,

Water and fire,

But space.

The space within which this all happens,

Which is in some ways a kind of a return to emptiness.

And he has two guided meditations in the Majjhima,

The shorter and greater discourses on voidness,

In which he actually offers guided meditations on how to do that.

And how to kind of fire all your guns that want some explosion in the space.

So I want to speak a little bit about how the Buddha,

The various ways he used the symbolism,

Metaphors of fire in his teaching.

And then a little about how we can internalize that in our practice.

And then a little bit about his ramifications and its implications for our relationship with our environment.

So there were two principal ways in which the Buddha used the imagery of fire in his teachings.

One was in a fairly neutral and purely descriptive way where he would talk about the fire element within us.

He would talk about how,

And if you talk to anyone who's well acquainted with fire science,

They will all say that there are three things necessary for a fire.

You need oxygen,

Fuel,

And ignition.

And so what the Buddha would say in speaking about the fire element within the context of the four elements,

He would say,

Well you know this internal fire is essentially our spark of life.

It's the combustion process within it.

So the fuel is things that are provided to us by the earth element,

You know the food we eat and whatnot.

The oxygen is provided by the air element.

Okay and actually the water element is also necessary to keep us alive.

So it's the process within that makes us who we are.

It gives us vitality.

So and he would speak about this being the case.

One must carefully attend to what one consumes.

So literally what we consume in the way of fuel determines to a measurable extent who we are.

How well our body functions,

Right?

How much we weigh?

How our digestion works?

Whether we're relatively healthy or not?

Not only what we eat but how much.

Like Michael Pollan's teaching,

His three-part teaching on you know on relationship to food,

Right?

He said eat food,

Number one.

You don't eat anything a third grader couldn't pronounce,

You know,

Or that your grandmother would not recognize as food.

Eat food,

Mostly vegetables,

Not too much.

So there it is.

It's pretty straightforward advice.

Just as important,

You know,

Said the Buddha and as many teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh and others,

You know,

One must be equally attentive to what one consumes mentally.

What you take in in terms of teachings,

What you take in in terms of other forms of information,

What you take in in terms of the bioenergetic or emotional charge that goes along with what's coming your way in terms of information.

But that's every bit as important to your feelings about yourself,

Your understanding of how the world works and how you want to participate in it.

So be careful,

Be mindful.

You are what you think.

It's literally what the Buddha said,

Right?

We become what we think.

All that we are arises from our thoughts.

With our thoughts we create the world.

And so those thoughts are in turn informed by,

Fueled by,

What we agree to take in in terms of information.

And as we pointed out,

Different kinds of fires occur based upon the different kinds of fuels that they are fed by.

That a fire made of one,

Fueled by one form of fuel is not the same as a fire fueled by another in terms of its effects,

In terms of how it behaves.

The fragrance of a fire fueled by buffalo manure is not the same as the fragrance of a fire fueled by pine boughs.

I can tell you that from experience.

When I was in Vietnam during the winter time,

And we basically during the time when I was there it only rained once,

Started in October and it ended in April.

And so you are always varying degrees of weather.

And they had an intent,

And where I was based was in a fairly primitive kind of forward area where they had these little laundries that the Vietnamese,

These rural farmers that lived in the area would set up to wash our clothes for us.

They would wash them pretty much as they had been for the last 2000 years.

And so they would take them down to some river with some homemade soap and then they beat them on a rock and rinse them out and whatnot.

The way they drive them in this place,

Where the land was always completely saturated,

Is they had these little tin huts and they'd string wires up close to the ceiling of the hut.

And then on the floor of the hut they would spread water buffalo manure and light it up.

So it was the water buffalo fire manure smoke fire that would dry our clothes.

So when our clothes were delivered to us again,

They would be free of dirt and stains.

But there was a little something extra there that most people did not find attractive.

Many in fact had some aversion to it.

Until eventually you get to where you didn't notice anymore.

But then when you go to R&R,

When you get a few days off and you go to Hong Kong or Singapore or some place like that for a few days,

And you get on one of these chartered commercial aircraft,

You could tell the cabin crew certainly noted something about you.

It was a little different.

And then after you'd been on R&R,

You got some sort of new clothes and whatnot,

You'd kind of been out in the world and you came to the back of Vietnam and it was like,

Ew!

All because of the fuel that fed the fires that was washing our clothes.

So be mindful of what you consume because that's the nature of the fire that you will host.

Not only the fire but the vessel in which it was held.

The state park where Val and I volunteer as naturalists and in my own case also as an environmental historian has just been given this teepee we're going to set up out there the first week in August so we can start teaching indigenous culture as part of the presentations that we make out there.

I've already written a couple of books about American Indian tribes and their resource rights and things but I'm kind of brushing up on my knowledge of the teepee a little bit in preparation for this.

One of the important differences between the teepee and the tent is that generally speaking it's a really bad idea to start a fire in a tent.

It's too very much tense to set them on fire and up they go.

Very different with the teepee which is in some ways just a big chimney.

And so the place can be made amazingly warm by a relatively small little fire in a circle of stones right in the middle.

They start the fire and draws the cool air in from around the edges of the teepee,

Heats the space and the smoke goes up through the smoke hole in the roof.

They don't build big roaring fires in there in part because it would make the space unbearably hot also because it's a little dangerous.

What they do instead is start small little fires and then they have logs that radiate out from the fire and they feed the ends of the logs in a little bit at a time.

So when they're inwards and they feed it some more and feed it some more and feed it some more and so they keep this relatively low profile fire going with a really nice bed of coals.

And it does a wonderful job of both eating the place in the wintertime and also cooking their food.

So but the real important thing there is balance.

You know if it's not big enough it's not going to do its job.

If it's too big then there's going to be real trouble.

Another way the hootie used the image of fire in a kind of a neutral way is when somebody asked him,

Well what happens when you die?

That was one of everyone's favorite questions because the two main schools of philosophical thought in India at the time that he was around were what are called the eternalists and the nihilists.

And the eternalists were those who were very much of the view of the Brahmanism which was the state pretty much the state religion at that time.

Which is that each of us is imbued with a permanent and abiding self that that reincarnates over and over and over again.

And if you're doing right by you know the caste system and you know observing all the rituals and you do well you get a lot of gold stars this time around and you get reincarnated in some higher birth the next time around until eventually you're united with Brahman.

So that was sort of one way of looking at things.

Then there were the nihilists who said that's a bunch of hootie.

There ain't nothing you know you're born to live you die end of story.

And that this all the stuff that the reincarnation people talk about is just a way to keep everybody in line stay within their caste and not make trouble.

So they would always ask the Buddha okay you're not a nihilist and you'd say neither.

And then they'd fight with him and go away.

Or if they were really curious about what he meant then they would say well you know you don't belong to one camp you don't belong to the other camp what camp food you belong to.

And he didn't have really much to say about any of the traditions at the time.

He said the reason I have no concern for whether free the eternalist or the nihilist is because it's not relevant to my teaching.

All I'm here to teach is why is there suffering now to be brought with me.

And so for me that metaphysical speculation is irrelevant.

It has no interest for me.

If it's your cup of tea if you kind of get off on it go do it.

But as far as I'm concerned there's no real relation to the art of cessation of suffering therefore I have no concern for it.

But at the same time you know like one of my teachers a Burmese nun Sister Dipankara was somebody who is a really skilled experienced teacher of very deep samadhi practices.

Very deep concentration practices that would you know allow a very quickly dissolved self,

Dissolve you know enter into the voidness of non-existence period because you relax the mind at the point where it's no longer processing sensory input creating the world.

And she came to sit with the teacher the Pollock side out in southern Corona and it was because she wanted to speak with him about these experiences that she would have when she was going into deep samadhi.

And so he said well what are these experiences and she said well maybe I can share one with you.

So she goes into a very deep samadhi and then she starts chanting verbatim start to finish a really ancient esoteric little known Pali text that was only known to and practiced by a small inner circle of monastics not only as monks these were teachings these were train these are scriptures these were texts that no women ever had any access to at all in the tradition and she recited the text perfectly.

And the last time that had been rendered in writing was 200 years earlier.

So it was evident that she had tapped into something.

The Tibetan Buddhists used the word reincarnation.

They bring in a little bit of the flavor of the eternalism because they're part of their police system their understanding is that some of their Hylamas are actually reincarnations of teachers from a few hundred years ago.

In the Theravada tradition you don't hear the word reincarnation but you hear the word rebirth because it connotes something different there is no permanent by themselves that makes it one lifetime to the next.

But there is obviously people like sister to papa there is something.

What's happening right now is that intentions arise in my mind to share some teaching with you which motivates me to use my body in a way that creates vibrations in my throat my vocal cords.

And so there is a transmission of energy or fire through the air element to your eardrum and then your eardrum translates that into meaningful sound pulses that convey my intention the meaning I'm trying to convey to your mind.

It's the transmission of energy across space and time.

But they're only words they're only empty words it's not me.

It's only intention.

And in the same way one can understand what happens in this reboot process.

So what the Buddha analogized is too he said you know this fat and long body is the fuel for the consciousness the fire element consumes what we put in the body but little bit by little bit it also consumes the body right.

If you go on a diet what happens is the body starts eating itself right.

As we age gradually more and more the body is consumed in that you know no longer functions in the way that it once did okay until finally one constant end of life.

The Buddha said that's basically all good you know you burn up the fuel no more fire.

So what happened one way of understanding what happens here in the image he uses was a candle.

He said imagine the candle is about to burn out because it has no more fuel and you touch the flame on that candle to the whip of a new candle and then the new candle begins to burn.

What is transmitted he asks what is transmitted is a process not a thing and it's in that same way that he suggested we think of the universe he suggested we think about this notion of rebirth.

So those are some of the more neutral ways that he talked spoke about the fire element.

He also used it as an analogy for unquenchable suffering,

Unquenchable thirst.

You know he gave the Samyutta Nikaya there's a discourse called the fire sermon and he said all the world is on fire all the world is flat.

It is on fire with lust,

It is on fire with hatred,

It is on fire with delusion.

And the cool waters of nirvana is what are needed to put out the fire.

He also once spoke about trying to teach the Dharma can sometimes really tug at the heartstrings in that what it is like seeing a house that's on fire and that has children playing in it and you're calling out to the children you know come out you know your house is on fire but they're too distracted by their play to realize what's going on to notice what's going on around them and so they won't come forth they're having too good a time but the Buddha said one must still try and do what you can to help people wake up in the situation they're in the environment they're in and come out of it to the extent that they can.

The fires of samsara.

A few years ago when Elizabeth Taylor was hawking her own line of you know cosmetics and beauty products she had a perfume that she was selling the name of which was samsara.

I guess some marketing expert thought I had had a nice eastern ring to it.

But samsara means unquenchable thirst.

Unresolvable suffering.

Go figure.

So the fires of samsara.

The second noble the first and second noble truths.

Okay the existence of dukkha of unsatisfactoriness and the causes of dukkha.

Wanting things to be different than they are.

I just came off this retreat and for about the first three days or so on the retreat it was kind of difficult for me you know.

I was with teachers that I knew and you know really respected trusted liked you know with other uses this is a retreat for people that had a fair amount of experience already and so there's this real sense of safety and being out and whatnot but nonetheless I was really having trouble for the first period of time when I was there because of changes that were going on in my life you know.

This week this you know this end of this month is the end of my 30-year career on the University of Colorado faculty and so there's a real kind of sense of sadness and a poignancy to needing to kind of let all that go.

There is also some real sort of concern about the future you know just not knowing what the future holds in store.

Knowing we'll be living on a fixed income for the first time in our lives.

Not that we're going to be eating cat food living in a cardboard box under the freeway but it's going to be a little different.

It's going to require a little more discipline than before and then just kind of wondering oh who am I going to be you know once I've ceased fabricating the profile soil persona.

How am I going to be in the world?

So these things are on my mind and they were troubling me and so I was sitting in meditation at one point you know and I was and she said we just acknowledge the truth of what is it was Carol Wilson who was offering this particular teaching and as I sat I realized that I was sad.

I didn't want to be sad but I felt kind of trapped by my feelings and that I didn't want to be trapped and that the mind was troubled.

I was worried and I thought to myself you know I wish things were different than they are.

That's the literal truth of my stated mind.

I wish that I were happy not sad.

I wish that I felt free of my afflictive emotions rather than feeling as gong as I was.

I wish that my mind was at peace instead of being troubled.

Just acknowledging that that was my stated mind at the time and that the root cause of the suffering was the fact that I wanted things to be different than they were.

I've heard that teaching and read that teaching thousands of times I've offered that teaching hundreds of times.

I interviewed Carol and said this is really embarrassing.

She said absolutely and she said you know my doesn't always change.

She said it happens to all of us.

We sit around in retreats that can remind each other things we already knew.

So in that sitting having just realized that I just sat with it and sat for that hour.

As the sitting was coming to an end I realized that I was happier.

That I felt free and that the mind was calm.

Giving up wanting to feel differently from how I felt at the beginning of the sitting is what made possible that feeling.

It's as simple and as difficult as that.

So whatever it is that we really wish were different than it is is a worthy object of attention.

Of reflection upon and meditation upon.

Because it's our inability to let go of wanting things to be different than they are.

It is literally creating a suffering.

The fire of suffering.

The fire of the star.

And the third noble truth that suffering can be brought to an end is right there.

Just let me know of wanting things to be different than they are.

That's what the personal model is.

I want to spend just a very few minutes also moving these teachings out into the world in our present time.

In terms of how we make and use fire here on our Earth in the present day.

Remember the balance of the size of the fire and keeping?

So it turns out we've built a really big fire in the beginning.

And it's getting increasingly unbearably hot.

Because of the fuels that we use to make our fires with.

It's happening literally with regard to our relationship with the Earth.

You can hear the fires of hatred in our political rhetoric.

Those words burn and drip with hatred,

With contempt,

With divisiveness.

And that kind of political discourse inflicts huge suffering on all of us.

Whether we engage in it or not.

So reflecting on our relationship with the fires that we create.

Except what's going to happen,

We're not going to burn up the Earth.

We're going to burn up ourselves.

Earth's going to survive.

Earth will do.

The biosphere is going to do okay.

We probably won't.

Not too far down the road,

A great many human beings may lose their lives.

Because the planet has been made hostile to the continued survival of the human race.

There's the lack of food and the lack of water.

If we don't want that to happen,

We're just like the children in the burning house.

We have to come forth and realize that our salvation lies in letting go of the greed,

Letting go of the hatred.

Letting go of the delusion that we're not making our planet an agro.

If we want our species to make it through.

It took us a couple hundred years to build a fire this size.

And that's probably going to take another couple hundred to tamp it down.

But it doesn't mean it can't be done.

In closing,

What I want to share with you this evening is a Buddhist cowboy country western song.

Having to do with fire.

So.

.

.

So.

.

.

I'll put the mic back on a minute here.

So you may well know the chorus.

So.

.

.

The music is written by June Carter Cash.

And the lyrics are by Siddhartha Gautama and Lloyd Burden.

So.

.

.

So.

.

.

So.

.

.

So.

.

.

Have a nice cool evening.

Have a nice cool evening.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing your wisdom and perspective. 🙏🌻🙏

The more I listened the more I enjoyed. The song at the end was great

Excellent. Thank you 🙏🏻