3. Dharma Talk: Silence, Stilling, Seeing And Being

This Dharma talk was offered on an online day of meditation, on Feb 4, 2023. Essentially it is about realizing the unconditioned, the ultimate aim of all Buddhist traditions. It begins by giving a very brief history of Buddhism. This history includes the basic principles and practices of the four noble truths, some words about that which there are no words for, Nibbana, and some features of the serenity and insight aspects of meditation. It mentions some of the historic and developmental changes

Transcript

So welcome everyone,

Welcome everyone to today's talk.

And the title of today's talk is Silence,

Stilling,

Seeing and Being.

So I'll begin with a brief history of Buddhism actually,

To kind of set the scene so that we can kind of funnel down into what will be a bit of an explanation and a bit of a clarification about a practice.

The practice being silent Samadhi,

Sorry,

Silent Samadhi or Shikantaza or clear,

Silent illumination.

And the history will include,

It include,

Include the basics and the principles of Buddhism,

Which are the four noble truths or the four truths.

And this will include also a bit of an explanation about what meditation is and how we can understand meditation practice as having two aspects,

Being serenity and insight or calm and insight.

And I'll also give you,

I'll also guide you through,

Whether it's a guidance or not,

More like an explanation through the developments of Buddhism over the years,

Over the cultural changes and the changes in the practices.

Just a brief,

Just a brief overview and eventually arrive at this place where we gain insight into the unconditioned or Nibbāna,

Or Nibbāna,

Which is the ultimate aim of all Buddhist practices,

Regardless of their tradition and their place in history.

So what has come to be known as Buddhism began in about 2600 years ago,

With the awakening of Siddhartha Gautama.

As you know,

You're probably well familiar with the story of Siddhartha going,

Leaving home and going in search of enlightenment and going through six years of ascetic practices.

After he trialed some,

He got to the ultimate of various practices,

Jhāna practices,

And he realized that wasn't enough.

So he went on six years of ascetic practices,

Where there was a lot of self-mortification.

And eventually he realized that the middle way was the best way to go.

And he sat and he woke up.

What he woke up to were the Four Noble Truths.

By the way,

A Buddha means an awakened one.

So the Buddha now realized the Four Noble Truths.

And these Four Truths are,

In effect,

Two cause-effect relationships.

They are suffering,

Often translated as unsatisfactoriness.

This is dukkha.

Dukkha is the Pali term.

Dukkha,

The reality of dukkha,

The truth of suffering,

Reality of the origins of dukkha,

Being greed,

Ignorance and hatred.

Although when the Buddha talked about it,

He talked about the origins of suffering being craving,

Which is actually one of the key factors in the cycle of suffering that we find.

But the whole theme of the causes of the causes of suffering are three root causes,

Being greed,

Ignorance,

Greed meaning a clinging and attachment to pleasant experiences,

Ignorance meaning not seeing the way things actually are,

And hostility or hatred,

Meaning rejection and condemnation and pushing away or aversion of experiences,

Of unpleasant experiences.

So these are the causes.

The third truth is that he realized was the truth of the unconditioned,

Nirvana.

Nirvana in Pali,

Nirvana in Sanskrit,

And lots of other different names in different traditions.

It is this realization of the unconditioned.

I'll talk about that in a minute.

But the fourth truth that he realized was the Noble Eightfold Path or the Eightfold Path,

Which is in fact,

Right view,

Right intention,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Right effort,

Right mindfulness,

Right concentration,

Or right Samadhi.

And this has three components.

The three components are right view and right intentions,

Being wisdom,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Being ethics,

And right energy,

Mindfulness and concentration,

Being related to what's called meditation.

So coming back to this third truth,

The realization,

It involves the realization of the unconditioned.

And basically,

The experience of Dukkha has a broad spectrum.

And you probably heard me talk about this at different times.

At one end of the spectrum,

We have gross suffering,

Equivalent to the suffering that we might experience in war and with aging,

Sickness and death,

Real gross stuff,

Real distinct Dukkha Dukkha,

It's called,

Double Dukkha.

And at the other end of the spectrum,

We have these subtle experiences of unsatisfactoriness.

And I usually make the comment about not quite getting,

Not getting our soy chai latte exactly how we like it.

There's a certain sense of unsatisfactoriness about it.

You know,

Maybe the picture on the top is not the right,

The same,

Like the picture we like,

You know,

The image that comes on top of the froth,

Maybe it's just not quite right,

Or it's just a little bit too cool,

Or something like that.

There's an unsatisfactoriness about it.

Basically,

I'm talking about unsatisfactoriness Dukkha.

It has a broad spectrum.

So some of the things about Dukkha are these,

Dukkha is one of the characteristics of existence.

And things are unsatisfactory because they change,

Basically.

So,

You know,

We might have happiness for a bit,

And then it will change,

Or you might,

We might have various experiences and they change.

So there's not an enduring reliance,

We can't rely on conditioned phenomena or conditioned experience to deliver lasting happiness,

Because things change.

So Nibbāna is unconditioned,

Meaning that it doesn't change,

It's not subject to change.

So it is also not Dukkha.

So this unconditioned experience is what is described as Nibbāna or Nibbāna.

And it's often difficult to understand because it's beyond concepts.

And the Buddha often used similes and analogies to describe the experience of Dukkha,

I'm sorry,

The experience of,

He did that for the experience of Dukkha as well,

But he often used it in the descriptions of Nibbāna because you can't actually find words to describe it.

It's not describable,

It's not,

It's not,

Doesn't come in the realm of conceptual understanding.

So he was reported to have said in regards to Nibbāna,

This truth is profound,

Hard to see and hard to understand,

Peaceful and sublime,

Unattainable by mere reasoning,

Subtle and to be experienced by the wise.

So,

You know,

It's you're kind of getting the sense of this experience of this goal,

Or this aim of Buddhism as being not something you can kind of really grasp your conceptual mind around.

It's beyond that.

The word Nibbāna means,

Well,

One way I've seen it described as,

Is as unbinding or not fire.

And the way they used to talk about fire in those days was as in terms of passion.

So it's not passion.

And often it's described as,

Nibbāna is like described as the extinguishment of fire.

And one way that we can understand this is that when there's no fuel for the fire,

For a fire,

It goes out.

So the fuel or upadana for suffering is conditioned experience.

It is actually not just conditioned experience,

It is craving.

It's craving is the source.

When we crave after something,

It leads to clinging,

Grasping,

Becoming,

And a whole range of different experiences essentially related to greed,

Ignorance and hatred,

That we sort of feed into a fire of suffering with the fuel of craving,

The fuel of greed,

Ignorance and hatred.

So what Nibbāna is,

Is not that.

So it's like the extinguishment of that fire,

Extinguishment of that suffering.

So it's often described in ways that it in terms that it is not rather than what it is.

However,

Again,

He used analogies.

Sometimes it's considered as being annihilation,

Like nothing.

And the Buddha wouldn't be taken on that.

Sometimes people came up to him and asked him,

You know,

Is it nothingness?

Is it completely nothing?

And he said he wouldn't say it was.

And he wouldn't say it was anything.

So according to the commentary,

Some academics have interpreted Nibbāna as annihilation.

Rather than being a nothing,

However,

The Buddha has reported to have said in reference to Nibbāna that there is an unborn,

An unbecome,

An unmade,

Unconditioned,

Which the existence of which makes possible escape from the born,

The become,

The made and the conditioned.

So I think,

I hope you're getting a sense of this elusive understanding of my meager attempts of trying to explain Nibbāna in a conceptual way,

Which is something that can't be explained conceptually.

According to Ajahn Brahm,

Another way the Buddha described Nibbāna was as the highest happiness.

And I know from,

And you can look at my talks if you want,

I can give you availability to the talks that I've given on these days of meditation.

Sometimes I've talked,

One time I talked about some features of Nibbāna and the way it's been described.

And it's been described as ultimate peace,

Ultimate security,

Because we're no longer feeding into cycles of suffering,

And also ultimate freedom,

Because we become unbound by these conditions of our never-ending feeding into suffering.

So now the the four truths,

The four truths have noble and ennobling levels.

And the noble levels involve direct realization of Nibbāna or the unconditioned.

At ennobling levels,

However,

What we see is moving towards this ultimate psychological freedom,

But they don't,

These ennobling levels don't involve the realization of the unconditioned.

The cause-effect relationships demonstrated in the four noble truths,

However,

Can be understood as ennobling because they lead us to being free at a relative level.

And you know that I practice as a psychologist and often use my understanding of Buddhist practices in the way I work with people.

And the way often in daily life I use these principles for the way just to ease a little bit of suffering.

I may not be experiencing,

And my clients may not be experiencing Nibbāna,

But they're definitely experiencing a relative freedom from the suffering there they find themselves in.

And the reason I'm saying this is because if we can understand these patterns,

They can be liberating at a relative level,

As well as a noble unconditioned level,

If that makes sense.

So the fourth truth,

As I mentioned before,

Has eight factors.

And I think I mentioned it has three components,

Wisdom,

Ethics,

And meditation.

And many of you have heard me talk about the Eightfold Path before.

The practice actually usually begins with dhāna,

Believe it or not,

Dhāna meaning generosity.

So when we can have a generosity of heart,

When we can let go of what we're holding on to,

And have joy with that,

We're more able to practice and see reason in practicing ethics.

Ethics meaning non-harming of oneself and others.

When we can do that,

We have a mental stability and a kind of lifestyle stability and a composure to be able to practice meditation.

And here meditation means,

The term for meditation in Pali is bhāvanā.

It means to cultivate.

What we're doing is cultivating serenity and insight with bhāvanā.

So when we cultivate a serenity and insight,

Wisdom arises.

Wisdom comes from the cultivation of our minds.

And then the wisdom component being right view,

Right intention,

That leads on to further ethical behaviors,

Like further living in a lifestyle and adhering to the practice of non-harming,

Which leads on to further deepening our minds with meditation and so on and so forth.

This Eightfold Path is often considered as a wheel,

Where there's eight spokes.

Each spoke is supporting each other,

And the wheel moves towards liberation.

So there's a growing momentum of movement towards freedom.

So ethics provides the mental composure and lifestyle stability.

So ethics is really important.

But what I want to focus on now is this meditation and also meditation for the realization of nirvāṇa.

So in the late 70s,

1970s,

Which is a long time ago,

Probably about how long ago is it now?

50 years ago.

Is that right?

No,

Not quite 50 years,

Close to 50 years.

The late 70s is more like 45 years ago.

47 years ago,

In the late 1970s,

I ordained as a monastic and lived and practiced in the forest tradition in Thailand,

In Northeast Thailand.

It's called Isan in Thai.

That's the Northeast Thailand.

And when I went to the monasteries,

I actually didn't have much access to books.

I had a tape recorder,

I could listen to Dharma talks in Thai.

That's all I had.

I had a copy of the Vinaya,

Which is the rules of the monk,

Rules of the monks.

And I think I had a Thai English dictionary.

So I learned how to speak,

Listen to Thai.

I've forgotten lots of it now,

But I still enjoy listening to Dharma talks in Thai.

And I enjoyed practicing in that.

It was quite an ascetic practice.

We had one meal a day and it was very hot.

I mean,

This is nothing.

I'm in Northeast,

Northern New South Wales at the moment,

It's a bit hot.

But in Thailand,

It was like that a lot,

Especially in the Northeast.

It was quite uncomfortable.

But what I'm getting at is that I practiced in that tradition as a monastic for about two years.

And the meditation instructions were really simple.

They would instruct us to be mindful,

To calm and still and quiet in our minds,

And then inquire.

That was it.

I mean,

There was more to it than that.

We had a meditation practice.

The meditation practice there was to say,

Bhutthal,

And get very concentrated and get jhanas on that word Bhutthal.

But in essence,

What they're saying is still your mind,

Quieten your mind,

Quieten your mind and then investigate,

Which represents the features of serenity and insight meditation.

Serenity meditation usually focuses on samadhi or concentrating one's mind,

Usually has an object that we focus on.

It could be the breath,

It could be Bhutthal as a mantra,

It could be a reflection,

It could be any number of things.

And then we become absorbed into that thing.

We become absorbed into that object.

And in that process,

Our minds become very quiet,

They become very still.

They also become very powerful.

They become very powerful to be able to see into phenomena,

To see the way it actually is.

I've used lots of analogies with this.

One analogy that I can use here is like a muddy pond that stills when we don't move it around with,

You know,

When we don't stir it up.

So ethics is like not stirring up a muddy pond.

And the stilling of the muddy pond,

So the sediment settles and the water becomes very clear,

Can be compared to samadhi practices or serenity practices.

This stilling of the mind where the mind becomes so clear.

And when it's still,

You can look into the,

When the pond's still,

When all the mud has settled,

You can look into the mud and see what's at the bottom of the pond.

And I've often made references to this analogy.

It's like we can see the precious jewels we may have lost in the middle of the pond,

At the bottom of the pond.

But also we can see,

You know,

The rusty cans and broken bottles of our lives,

You know,

All the things that have happened in our lives that have become barriers for us to see clearly the way things are.

And also it caused us a lot of pain.

And with the seeing,

We can remove those dangerous objects from the pond,

Or at least we could be aware of not stepping on them and cutting our feet and causing more distress.

So basically the role of serenity meditation is to provide a mind fit for purpose to have insight.

And it is insight that is liberating,

Insight into experience.

What insight aims at is a direct realization of the four truths.

And this is a direct realization of something called dependent arising as well.

Dependent arising means,

It's quite complicated,

But it basically means when this is,

I've got a quote of it here,

It's a principle behind what happens with the Four Noble Truths.

In essence,

The principle goes something like this,

When this is,

That is,

When this is not,

That is not.

When there is craving,

There is suffering.

When there is no craving,

There is no suffering.

So that's symbolic of the Four Truths.

When there's craving,

The second truth,

There is the first truth,

Suffering.

When there is no craving,

Through practice of the fourth truth,

When there is no craving,

There is no suffering,

Meaning the third truth.

I hope I'm not sounding too complicated.

I hope I'm sounding clear.

Okay.

All right.

So the other thing that we discover or we realize with the insight practices,

With the capacity to have insight,

With our seeing or our perceiving,

I should say perceiving because I know it's an analogy related to seeing,

But it's not just in seeing,

It's a kind of a knowing and perceiving,

Are the three characteristics of existence.

Three characteristics of existence are that everything is impermanent,

All conditioned phenomena arises and passes away.

That's the truth.

Everything that we can talk about and conceive of and to touch and to feel and to taste and all the rest of it,

Except Nibbāna,

Is impermanent.

Because it's impermanent,

It is unsatisfactory.

And I explained that earlier.

Because things arise and pass away,

We can't find enduring happiness in these conditioned experiences.

And another feature,

One feature is that they're all impermanent.

The other characteristic is that they are of a nature to have dukkha.

They are dukkha nature.

The third characteristic is that they are empty.

And I could give a whole retreat based on emptiness,

Which I did a couple of months ago,

I think,

In September.

Essentially,

It was based on emptiness.

And there's lots we can say about emptiness.

But what I can say,

Maybe in a simple way,

Is that emptiness means that because things are conditioned,

There's no essential thingness in them.

They are empty of continual thingness.

They are interdependent.

That's another way of describing emptiness.

Because things are interdependent,

There's no single thingness to be found anywhere in conditioned phenomena.

They are not self.

They are empty of thingness.

And,

You know,

There's so much we can say about that.

But I'll just leave it at that for the moment.

So,

Coming back to the history.

So,

We have this process of serenity and insight working together.

Serenity provides this calmness and stillness and clarity of mind to see into phenomena.

And insight provides the realizations,

The direct realizations of experience as it is.

So,

Serenity meditations can be sublime,

It can be very blissful.

Altered states of consciousness,

Sublime perceptions,

Blissful experiences.

However,

In and of themselves,

They don't lead to awakening.

You need these two components and aspects of meditation to work together.

And there's in the texts,

There's descriptions of three pathways.

One pathway is serenity first,

Then insight,

Which is the pathway the Buddha took.

He cultivated,

He managed to attain the jhanas and then from that powerful concentrated states,

He looked into phenomena and he saw it for what it was.

Insight only,

Which is basically just practicing mindfulness,

Like just seeing into the nature of things without developing a strong concentration.

You need concentration in all meditation practices,

But with the insight only path,

There's no emphasis.

The emphasis isn't on the development of samadhi.

It's about having concentration,

Right concentration at the right time,

But it's not necessarily based on consciously developing these samadhis.

And the third pathway is serenity and insight co-joined,

Sort of working together.

And I like to think of the 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing as an example of serenity and insight working together,

Because it goes backwards and forwards between relaxation and focus of attention and calming the mind,

Which are all features of serenity aspect of meditation,

As well as seeing into experience,

Seeing clearly what's happening.

And in mindfulness of breathing practice,

The emphasis is on impermanence.

When you see impermanence,

You also see the other characteristics,

By the way.

Whereas in,

For those of you who did the retreat with me in in September,

We focused on the third characteristic of existence being emptiness,

Or not self,

Emptiness and not self are considered the same things.

And that was a whole different practice and a whole different discourse.

Anyway,

Now coming on to back into the history of Buddhism,

So we can eventually get at this practice that I'm eager to talk to you about.

Not eager in a unwholesome way,

Eager in a wholesome way.

There's actually a term for this,

I think,

Because sometimes people talk about desire as being unwholesome.

Actually,

It's not unwholesome.

It's craving that's unwholesome.

And I think the term in Pali is,

Oh,

Is it Chanta?

I can't remember it exactly,

But it is this desire for awakening or desire for something good,

The desire to do something good,

Wholesome,

Chanta,

I think.

Anyway,

I won't go off on too many tangents right now.

So after the Buddha woke up,

He practiced,

He eventually traveled extensively throughout northern India.

He walked a lot,

Actually.

I'm reading a book on the life of the Buddha.

He walked thousands of kilometers throughout his history.

And he just walked all across northern India.

And he taught for 45 years.

And he passed away,

Let's say he passed into Parinirvana at the age of 18.

At first,

The teachings were transmitted orally.

And then they were written down about 400 years later,

As far as I understand,

In Pali.

But I think there's other ways they were written down,

Other languages that were written down in as well.

And as Buddhism spread,

You know,

Spread up to Tibet and over across through China,

And into Japan and down through Southeast Asia,

And so on,

It went as far as Indonesia.

And I think it went as far as Greece,

Actually,

In one direction.

But anyway,

It spread.

As it spread,

It changed according to the culture in which it was hosted.

So it took on different forms.

It took on different practices and different orientations and different emphases.

Emphasis is things were emphasized differently.

And whole different practices were developed.

So what happened,

What was happening in India is most commonly called early Buddhism.

And it's usually,

You know,

Related to what's called Theravadan Buddhism.

When it went to,

When it traveled and changed,

We have Mahayana and the Vajrayana traditions emerging in Tibet,

The Chan Buddhist practices emerging in China,

And Zen,

Which is,

Chan actually comes from the word Chana.

Jhana is a Pali term related to concentration,

Concentration that converted to Chan in China.

And then when,

By the time it got to Japan,

It turned into Zen.

So we have Zen meditation in,

In China,

In Japan.

So these,

These,

As it changed,

As I was mentioning,

There was different orientations.

And one interesting difference here is that in Theravadan Buddhism,

The Pali term for Bhavana means to,

For meditation means,

Is Bhavana,

Which means to bring into insight or to cultivate.

In other words,

We like,

We cultivate wisdom and with wisdom we see.

In the Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist traditions,

However,

The word is Gom.

I think it is Gom.

I'm not a,

I don't speak Tibetan at all.

So I think it's Gom.

And this translates as familiarization or habituating.

And in other words,

One becomes familiar with what is happening.

One becomes familiar with the awakened state and also becomes familiar with that which gets in the road of seeing awakening.

So the orientation of Theravadan Buddhism,

Where there's an emphasis on craving,

Is oriented towards waking up to seeing wisdom with wisdom and letting go of craving.

So our orientation of letting go.

Whereas with Mahayana Buddhism,

Which is the way it is in Chan Buddhism and Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism,

It's all Mahayana Buddhism.

I won't go into details about exactly explaining what that is at the moment.

But in Mahayana Buddhism,

The emphasis was on or is on recognizing one's Buddha nature.

And rather than cultivating something like cultivating wisdom,

It is like,

Rather than letting go of something,

Which happens,

But it's kind of framed in a different way.

It's more like pulling aside the veils of delusion so that we can realize what was already there all the time.

And then we can be that.

So it's like,

There's an analogy that I,

I got this analogy for Paul Gilbert,

But I've heard it before,

Paul Gilbert,

Sorry.

I've heard it before on talks anyway.

An analogy often used for the mind is like water and in the water,

It can contain poisons or medicine,

Sweetness or bitterness,

But it's not what it contains that is important.

In itself,

It is pure,

Clear and empty,

But it is a medium for those things.

It's a medium for,

You know,

Medicine.

It's a medium for poisons.

What happens with meditation is that we're able to tune into the nature of water itself.

It's like we're able to purify the poisons and the silt and all the rest of it out of it so that we see the nature of water rather than what it contains.

So I don't know if that's kind of clear.

It's like with the Tibetan approach,

With the Mahayana approach,

We're seeing things,

We're removing the veils of our delusions.

So we see clearly,

We see clearly,

As I said earlier,

What is already there,

Our Buddha nature,

The awakened mind.

It's like cleaning water to realize that it's been there all the time,

Clearing out the poisons and the defilements and so on.

There is a Theravada monastic called Sumedho who is highly respected and I've met him and I've actually given him a message many years ago,

Back in,

I don't know,

The late 70s,

I think,

Or early 80s.

He was in Sydney and I gave him a message and had a lovely time with him.

He's a wonderful teacher.

He's very elderly now.

He's probably in his mid 80s perhaps,

I'm not sure.

But he once used an analogy of a room and the space in the room to explain freedom,

Psychological freedom.

And in this reference,

He said something like,

Objects can come and go and even the walls of the room may topple,

Like you might have chairs and tables and all the rest of it in a room.

So we have a room,

You can see my room now and you can see a lounge and you can see a window and you can see all the rest of it.

All these things will change.

But what won't change is the space of the room.

We don't look at the space.

We normally look at the objects of a room,

But that which is here and unchangeable,

Even if there was a nuclear war and even when the planet earth explodes into the sun,

The space of this room will still be here.

And so if we compare that to the mind,

All these objects,

When we call what we have in the mind as me,

Mind and myself,

Those objects will inevitably change.

But the spaciousness of awakened awareness,

Our Buddha nature,

The Buddha mind,

That which went within all these objects appear,

Like ideas of self and our relationships and everything appear,

All those things will change,

But the space will be available as a context.

The space will always be here.

So clinging to a self that is inevitably about to change and disappear leads to suffering.

However,

Inclining towards that which is unborn,

The unconditioned,

Will always provide a space beyond that which is confined by concepts,

Beyond that which is bound by suffering.

So what we have with an awakened heart,

Awakened heart is empty of the kalesa.

Kalesa in Pali means mental distortions or mental afflictions.

You know,

We have kalesa,

Greed,

Ignorance and hatred,

Examples of kalesa.

So the awakened heart,

When it's free from that,

Free from those obstructions,

Free from those mental distortions,

Is also completely free from mental afflictions.

When there's no cause for suffering,

It doesn't arise.

Okay,

So I hope you're getting an understanding of,

Maybe a taste of what freedom can mean.

I did a weekend retreat with Venerable Anālaya and also Venerable Gyōgo,

Chan Master Venerable Gyōgo.

I really like this talk,

I mean,

I like talks by both of these monastics.

However,

Venerable Gyōgo gave a really wonderful history of the developments of Buddhism over the years.

He divided them into three developments.

The first development he spoke about was,

He called,

The path of abandonment.

And this is what happens with earlier Buddhism,

And this is the focus of earlier Buddhism.

With Theravāda Buddhism,

For example,

The whole aim is to let go,

To let go of cravings,

To let go of clinging,

To abandon those unwholesome patterns.

And in that process,

We realize the unconditioned.

So that's what we've been talking about a lot,

So I hope you understand that.

The next path he talked about,

Which is somewhat representative of what happens in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism,

Is the path of transformation,

Which involves an energetic embracing of the parts of ourselves that we struggle with,

So that they can be transformed to their opposites.

And in Vajrayana Buddhism,

I had a bit of a taste of Vajrayana Buddhism many,

Many years ago,

And we did some deity practices like visualizations of Chenrezig or Shakyamuni Buddha or the various deities,

Which represent qualities of awakening,

Such as compassion or wisdom and so on.

And it's like we become one with these qualities.

And in that becoming one,

We transform the unwholesome to the wholesome,

If that makes sense.

So that was the second path,

The path of transformation.

And the third path,

Venerable Gyogo talked about as the path of recognition,

Which involves recognizing what is already here,

Recognizing it,

Seeing it.

And this path can include,

And I don't know much about Mahamudra,

But some of you may know about Mahamudra from the Tibetan tradition.

I don't know anything about Dzogchen tradition,

But I think that's what they're talking about with Dzogchen tradition as well.

But it's also what they talk about with silent illumination,

With meditations called a meditation called silent illumination.

It's this recognition.

Sorry,

I'll come back here.

With Chan Buddhism and Zen Buddhism,

There's an aim to recognize the absolute,

To recognize the absolute,

To recognize the unconditioned,

Just like with Theravada Buddhism.

However,

In the Chan tradition and the Zen tradition,

They talk about the absolute as having two aspects.

There's the unmanifest and the manifest.

So with the unmanifest,

It's like the realization of Nirvana,

Completely unconditioned,

Unconditioned,

Nothing that we can conceive of.

But in the manifest,

It's what arises from that,

Which is this boundless interconnection between things,

Or this radiant light,

Or these feelings of being in the world and accessing the unconditioned,

But living with that realization,

Living completely as a Buddha,

For example.

So this is what we do.

Now,

Coming to these practices,

I've mentioned a little bit about them,

But in Theravada Buddhism,

One practice is called a signless Samadhi.

And what this means is that we gather our minds around something,

Our minds become concentrated,

But there's no object,

There's no object that we're focusing on.

It has no sign,

There's nothing,

There's no sign that we focus on.

Now,

Signs are understood as,

In Pali,

They're called nimitta.

And a nimitta is a way we recognize something.

Like I'm looking at you,

I can see your faces,

And I've got a concept of you in my mind.

And what I'm seeing is these shapes and colors on the screen,

But I'm recognizing the signs of each and every one of you.

So a sign is like a concept of something.

And we need signs to function in the world,

Otherwise nothing would happen.

I wouldn't be sitting in a,

I call this a room,

And I call this a TV monitor,

And I call this a microphone,

And then I can function and do what I need to do,

Dependent on those names and those concepts.

And we need these concepts,

We need signs to function in the world.

However,

What we're talking about with signless Samadhi is not having anything to focus on,

Just being completely present.

And it's similar to that instructions that were given to Bahiya.

Bahiya,

A famous teacher and ascetic that went to the Buddha and got the pith of the instructions.

And these instructions were something like this,

In the scene there's just the scene,

In the herd there's just the herd,

In the cognized there is just the cognized.

When you realize this Bahiya,

That just this is the end of suffering.

In other words,

What he's doing,

He's instructing Bahiya to have bare attention to just being present,

Completely present with what is,

Prior to conceptualizing about it,

Prior to giving it signs.

So signless Samadhi is being,

Your mind is collected,

You're very present,

And you're not feeding into concepts,

You're not feeding into the world,

In other words.

So this is the same as Shikantaza or silent illumination and Shikantaza in Zen Buddhism,

Where the instructions are,

I remember doing this with a Zen teacher,

He just go,

Just now,

Just this,

Just this,

360 degrees awareness,

Just this,

That was it.

And with silent illumination,

The instructions we got from Venerable Ngyogo was something like,

Relax,

Relax,

And just be,

Be,

Completely be present,

Just be in your body and don't make more out of it than what's there.

Rather than creating something,

We're just present with the actualities of what is here.

And the instructions with,

The instructions with silent illumination,

Signless Samadhi,

As I received them from Analia,

Is similar to the instructions I got from a,

A,

A powerful meditation teacher back in 1979.

I went and visited Venerable Lungpho Te,

Who was a very famous meditation master,

And my teacher took me to meet him.

And we had an encounter and it was pretty powerful.

But his instructions were basically,

To me,

Were to stay with your heart,

Stay with your heart.

And when you think you're staying with your heart,

You're not staying with your heart.

Staying with your heart.

Basically,

That was the instructions.

That was so powerful.

Anyway,

Coming back to the instructions with Analia,

The way we practice signless Samadhi is to not follow nimittas,

Not follow signs,

Not follow concepts,

Be completely present and aware,

Just as,

Just as the instructions with Bahiya,

Not to get into concepts.

Now,

I've been practicing with Stephen Snyder in the last,

I don't know,

Six months now.

It's been really wonderful.

And it's interesting the way he talks about this.

He talks about accessing the Absolute in two ways.

Like,

You can access the Absolute through the practice of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

Of,

The manifest aspect of it.

Like with abiding in innate goodness,

It becomes a,

A channel into the Absolute.

It comes,

It becomes a channel into that unmanifest side of the Absolute.

And through that unmanifest side,

Through that manifest side,

Sorry,

You realize the unmanifest.

Another,

Another meditation he teaches is to be completely present.

And he calls it silent illumination.

And he just says,

Like,

Like Analyon and the other,

The other instructions is just to be present with the experience.

However,

He talks about the unconditioned or the Absolute as being like deep blackness,

Nothing,

Black,

Rich,

Luminous,

Black,

And spacious.

So in some respects,

In some respects,

He's using a concept.

And I find that really helpful.

Because it kind of gives you a direction.

And he also talks about the incredible peace that comes from that.

So in this process,

What happens is you're present with experience,

You might initiate this concept of deep blackness,

But then you let the concept go.

And you start to see experience for what it is,

Rather than feeding into our creations of the world,

As we,

You know,

Create them with our concepts.

And one becomes aware of something that lies behind it.

Just like I was talking about earlier in the meditations about when we listen to sound,

So we can listen to the sound of a marketplace,

For example,

Or be in a very busy circumstance,

Listening to that.

But if you can listen to the silence beneath that,

It's very interesting.

It's like,

This is what we're talking about here.

Similarly,

When you pay attention to lots of movement,

And I'm,

You know,

I'll bring up an example of going to a busy city street,

For example,

In a marketplace,

Or in a marketplace,

Everything's happening,

Lots of things happening around us.

And our minds are kind of going with all the movements everywhere.

But if you can come back to the stillness of knowing,

That provides an example of within the movement,

There's this incredible stillness.

And it's the same with this meditation practice.

It's about when you can be completely present with conditions,

Seeing conditions as they are,

Reality of the conditions,

Rather than imposing our projected concepts onto them,

Rather than imposing our stories about them,

And the movement about them,

What we see is what also lies behind that,

Which is the unconditioned.

We see the unconditioned in the conditioned,

If that makes sense.

We see the space there,

Rather than all this stuff coming up.

And it's not like you,

You can put a concept around it,

But there's a strong knowing that that's what's there.

When I began this practice,

When I started to do this practice intensely,

Probably about six months ago,

I was sitting there and I had such a,

I have such a confidence in the reality of Nibbāna,

Reality of the awakened state,

Or such a confidence that I'll be seeing all this stuff,

My mind going all over the place.

But my confidence in it,

The trust in it,

That it's there,

It gave me a kind of a focus.

And it's so interesting because just the trust that it's there enables us to see the reality of conditions as they arise and see beyond it.

And it's,

There's a strong,

It's almost intuitive,

The way we realize this,

This space of awakening.

So look,

I think I've talked for almost an hour now.

I think it's probably time to wind up.

So I thank you for your attention.

I hope that this Dharma talk has been helpful for you.

You may,

And I trust in your own process of awakening.

And may we all realize the highest happiness and supreme peace.

So thank you very much.

And I'll just stop the recording right now.

And let's have a bit of a meditation,

Bit of silent meditation before we have some discussion and then move on to the next meditation.