Dharma Talk Aug 9, 2023. Two Realities

This recording is of a talk given at the Kuan Yin Centre, Lismore NSW Australia on Aug 9, 2023. It refers to two truths or realities described by the Buddha, conventional realities and ultimate realities. We can find relative peace and happiness in conventional realities. However, if we wish to realize Nibbana and ultimate peace, we need to orient to and become familiar with ultimate realities. This talk outlines the differences between these realities and suggests that all the meditation practices the Buddha taught are inclined to realizing ultimate realities.

Transcript

So welcome to tonight's talk,

Tonight's talk is entitled Two Realities and how to view the world if we wish to realize Nibbāna or Nibbāna.

So in the Buddhist teachings,

There's a distinction between conventional truths and ultimate truths.

A conventional truth is that today is Wednesday,

I think it's the 9th of August,

2023.

And that we're here currently in Lismore and at the Kwan Yin Center,

All meditating together.

Well,

We're listening to Dharma right now,

And I'm speaking Dharma.

It's also truthful that we have roles and jobs and occupations and responsibilities.

And we have families and life histories and live in a dualistic reality of me in here and yous out there.

So,

And there's good and bad.

There's things that we perceive as mine,

And things that we perceive as not mine.

And I also live by a diary.

I open up my diary every day and there's usually a number of events that I have to attend.

Well,

I don't have to attend them,

I choose to attend,

Mostly my clients that I'm seeing.

And that's a very practical thing to have a diary.

It outlines my day.

It gives me sort of some direction.

It is,

Of course,

Just the diary and my life and the future and the past and the events in the day and time and the future and the past.

And me,

Who was born in 1956 and has experienced all sorts of experiences,

Has a life history and has a partner,

Children,

Grandchildren,

Etc.

,

Etc.

,

Is all a concept.

It's all a concept.

It is all true at a relative level,

But it is just the concept.

If I was to go to court and,

You know,

Swear that I'm telling the truth,

All these things would be true.

But all that concept,

All that I call myself,

Is in fact illusionary.

It's a story.

It's a fiction.

And we identify with this fiction as I,

Mine,

And myself.

The Buddha said that the self,

He did not say,

Sorry,

He did not say the self did not exist.

But he did say that it was not a fixed,

Autonomous,

Individuated,

Separate thing.

He talked about not-self or anatta,

The fact that there's no abiding thing independent in all this,

In the life,

In life.

There's,

It is not-self.

And we have a tendency not to see the not-self.

And we live driven by an illusion of a self somewhere in here directing the show.

And that we own things.

There's certain things that we like and we call them mine.

Like,

That's mine.

That's my camera.

That's,

You're my friends.

We tend to identify with concepts.

And we tend to appropriate all sorts of things.

And we tend to get completely caught up with conventional realities.

It is the way we function in the world as humans.

And we can find relative happiness and relative peace and great joys in conventional reality,

In conventional truths.

However,

They can also bring great suffering.

They can also bring great suffering.

Samsara and being bound to,

And samsara and being bound to it is dominated by conventional truths.

These are also the domains of ditti,

Mana,

Tanha.

Ditti refers to views.

Mana refers to the conceit,

I am,

Or concepts.

And tanha refers to craving.

Grasping,

Clinging,

Actually refers to craving.

So these ditti,

Mana,

Tanha or views,

Concepts and craving are three types,

Sort of some three ways we can categorise the kalesa or the mental defilements.

The mental,

I prefer to call them mental distortions.

The mental distortions are what keep us bound to samsara.

And conventional truths and the ways of the world are replete with the eight worldly winds.

Praise and blame,

Loss and gain,

Pain and pleasure,

And fame and disrepute.

One way I talk about fame and disrepute also is like social acceptance and social rejection,

Which these eight worldly winds,

They blow us around because they are the ways of the world.

That's what we either yearn for or push away.

This is what is important to us when we're living in conventional realities.

If we want to find freedom from being bound to the wheel of samsara,

We need to begin to orient and become familiar with ultimate truths.

Ultimate realities are not conceptual.

Ultimate realities or ultimate truths are about experience as it actually is.

Just this moment.

The reality of this moment.

Not time.

Timeless.

As I mentioned just earlier,

Time is a concept.

It's all kind of a relative thing.

Absolute realities or ultimate realities,

Ultimate truths,

Are timeless.

There's no future or past.

There's no me or you.

And there is just this,

Which is non-dual.

Some ways non-duality is understood is as not subject-object bifurcation.

In other words,

There's not me in here and you out there.

I've been reading a book called The Island.

It's about the islands.

It's an anthology of teachings on nirvana.

There's one term that comes up in Pali.

It's called atamayata.

I think that's the way you pronounce it.

It means non-concoctability or non-concocting.

In other words,

You're not conceiving of things.

In Pali,

When you boil it down,

It is about conceiving of me in here and you out there.

Internal and external as divided,

Separate.

When in fact,

In ultimate realities,

It is non-dual,

Non-duality.

Nirvana is an ultimate freedom,

Is an ultimate reality.

Psychological freedom can only be found within ultimate truths.

It is seeing the world according to the reality of the three characteristics of existence.

Anicca,

Dukkha,

Anatta.

Anicca refers to impermanence.

Dukkha refers to how impermanent things cannot bring enduring happiness because they're impermanent.

Anatta,

As I mentioned before,

It refers to not-self.

It also refers to emptiness.

Sometimes it's understood as emptiness.

Empty of thingness.

Seeing ultimate realities also involves being able to perceive dependent origination,

Which is the principle of how things arise and also how they disappear.

It's the Buddhist principle of how things arise and disappear.

It's quite complicated and difficult to understand,

But in the suttas it goes something like this.

When this is,

That is.

With the arising of this,

That also arises.

When this is not,

That is not.

With the ceasing of this,

That also ceases.

It's about this dependent arising or dependent origination,

The same meaning,

Is the principle behind the Four Noble Truths.

The Four Noble Truths,

Of course,

Are dukkha or unsatisfactionist,

Origins of dukkha,

The freedom from dukkha,

And the way to freedom from dukkha.

Sometimes roughly talked about as two cause-effect relationships.

But when there is craving,

Which is the origins of dukkha,

There is dukkha.

When there is not craving,

And in fact when there is the Eightfold Path,

Right view,

Right intention,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Right effort,

Right mindfulness,

And right concentration,

When there is the coming together of those factors in a noble way,

There is no craving.

And then,

Because there's no craving,

There's no dukkha,

Which is nirvana.

Two cause-effect relationships.

And this is ultimately the way we understand dependent,

Well,

Dependent origination is demonstrated in the Four Noble Truths.

So,

In seeing dependent arising,

We don't thingify things.

And we see experience as empty of thingness.

And,

Or as,

And I've,

You know,

I heard,

It's Lee Brasington,

I've got the term thingify,

I think it's a great,

Great term.

Lee Brasington has also written a book called Dependent Origination.

And he describes,

In the title of the book,

And he describes dependent origination as streams of dependently arising processes interacting.

Sotapai,

For short.

Streams of dependently arising processes interacting.

So,

With Sotapai,

We view ourselves as just processes.

And when we view others,

They're not people out there or personalities.

But streams of dependently arising processes interacting.

And we don't solidify problems as concrete,

But rather as dynamic expressions of anicca,

Dukkha,

Anatta.

And these,

And on the path to awakening,

These realizations of anicca,

Dukkha,

Anatta,

The way things are,

They become our teachers.

Also the realization of dependent arising,

It becomes our teacher.

And throughout the 45 years of the teaching of the Buddha,

He outlined the Eightfold Way,

Or the Eightfold Path,

To realize Nibbanna.

And this is,

Of course,

You know,

Right view,

Right intention,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Right effort,

Right mindfulness,

And right concentration.

And it's kind of grouped into three groups.

Ethics,

Meditation or samadhi,

And paññā,

Or wisdom.

And all of the meditation and practices instructed in were oriented towards this ultimate reality and perceiving life as it actually is.

We mostly live in conventional truths and in the world of conventional realities,

And the idea of living in a non-dual way,

Seeing emptiness everywhere,

May seem alien and even impossible.

But I do know,

However,

It is possible to have a foot in both realities.

And at a very practical level,

I think we need to act skillfully by not forgetting absolute reality,

But working as best we can to operate within the world of relationships and people and places and things with the Eightfold Path and wholesomeness in mind.

That is,

With wisdom and impeccable ethics,

Being willing to honestly look at our mental distortions,

Honestly recognize when we're being sucked in by dhītti-māna-taṇhā,

When we're feeding into our kilesa,

And not nourish the kilesa,

Not nourish the mental distortions.

Rather,

Nourish all the factors on the Eightfold Path as best we can.

And we can act in accordance to what we understand an awakened perspective to be.

We can view the world as empty without forgetting compassion,

And that there is another.

Often people get caught up in just seeing emptiness everywhere,

And as I remember,

Anāli once said,

Compassion without the realization of emptiness is exhausting,

And emptiness without compassion is toxic.

In other words,

This way of seeing the world as everything in the world is empty,

At the same time as recognizing and acknowledging there's another,

So we can have compassion.

I think for the Buddha,

When the historical Buddha interacted with people,

Places,

Things,

He acted within the realms of relative realities with compassionate wisdom.

I mean,

If someone come and asked him a question,

He would use the term I,

For example,

But he wouldn't be confused by it.

He wouldn't be confused by it.

And he would also relate to that person,

Not as an empty phenomena,

But as an individual who is suffering and he's endeavoring to free them from suffering.

He also,

So this included nourishing and being wholesome,

Benevolent and compassionate,

At the same time as seeing the world as empty and non-dual.

And this can be a challenge.

However,

A good rule of thumb is to do what one needs to do,

Acting impeccably and keeping the ultimate realities in mind.

I've just returned to work after being on a retreat for,

I was in total on a retreat for seven weeks.

And I,

You know,

Just returned to work and I,

In the last couple of days,

I've noticed the stress of multitasking creeping back,

Trying to do so many things.

And it is good to remember that when sitting,

Just sitting,

When walking,

Just walking,

And when multitasking,

Just multitasking and not forgetting the ultimate truth,

If I can.

Furthermore,

When we can keep ultimate truths in mind,

They can put the problems and the suffering we have,

We're having in conventional realities into perspective.

And in fact,

It can completely resolve them sometimes.

For example,

When I remember,

If someone's insulting me,

Or I'm worrying about how I'm interpreted by someone or what someone's thinking about me,

If I can remember it's just my ego,

It's just the conceit I am.

And it's just this fiction.

It's just my mind.

If I'm worrying about what someone else is thinking about me,

It doesn't mean I don't,

You know,

It doesn't mean I don't act ethically,

But I remember that it's just my mind.

And if I can drop the conceit I am,

If I can let my ego go for a moment,

Then there's no suffering.

There's no suffering,

There's freedom.

And if I can remember that my ego is just a fabrication,

It's just a fiction,

All my anxieties about how other people think about me seems to dissolve away.

So when and if we can withdraw from the world,

Such as what we just did in the last hour,

Moments of meditation,

Formal meditation,

Or when we go on a retreat,

And we have the space and the time to be no one,

Going nowhere with nothing we have to do,

We can endeavour to immerse ourselves in the practice and we can abide in emptiness.

Seeing so to buy.

So just to finish it up,

I was,

You know,

Mary has been sending me little quotes,

Dharma quotes and also dog jokes every morning for the last couple of months.

It's been great.

It's really a lovely practice.

And I kind of came to the,

I came to the,

What's the word?

I came to a point just yesterday,

Like I was exhausted after staying up quite late at night,

Doing all sorts of conventional reality,

Things like trying to work out to administer the retreat that I'm going to run in a little while,

Trying to organise the payments and who's getting a receipt and who's coming and who's online and who's on site and so on.

And I was getting a bit burned out.

And she sent me a lovely quote this morning.

And this is the quote.

It's a Zen quote.

When it's time to get dressed,

Put on your clothes.

When you must walk,

Then walk.

When you must sit,

Then sit.

Just be your ordinary self in ordinary life.

In ordinary life.

Unconcerned in seeking awakening.

The fool will laugh at you,

But the wise man or the wise person will understand.

And that's by Master Linji.

So thank you very much for listening to this Dhamma talk.

And I trust it may be helpful on the path to awakening and freedom for all sentient beings.