Finding Peace And Compassion In A Conflictual World

This recording involves a Dharma talk offered at an online day of meditation on Nov 4, 2023. It included a discussion about the factor of the right view according to the Buddha’s 8-fold path as well as what is considered a wrong view and the thicket of views in our world. It considers the current conflicts that are in the world and suggests that peace and compassion begin with oneself. When we can find peace with ourselves and are willing to turn towards and hold our own suffering, we are better equipped to have genuine compassion toward others.

The talk concludes with the speaker singing Imagine written by John Lennon.

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

So welcome to today's talk.

The talk is entitled Finding Peace and Compassion in a Conflictual World and it's about basically how we can dwell in compassion and peace in this world as it is right now,

Which is pretty conflictual and tumultuous and quite a challenge for many of us and a warning.

I'll be talking about views in this talk.

I'll begin by exploring what right view is according to the Buddha and then I'll be inquiring into the nature of wrong view and the thicket of views that we find we often get entangled in in this world and I ask for forgiveness ahead of time if any suffering arises from what I may say in this talk.

It's not my intention but if you do feel offended with a view that may be expressed,

You're invited to look within your heart to find the root causes of your suffering.

So that's what I'd like to invite you to do.

So in many respects this talk is essentially an expression of my own processes as I've grappled with the way the world is right now with all sorts of opinions about climate change and COVID-19 and recent referendums in Australia and ongoing wars in Europe and what looks like the threat of serious war overseas in Israel and Gaza.

So it's about that that I'm trying to work this out myself and trying to come to terms with all this and where we stand in all this.

So every now and then I feel I experienced angst and despair and I must admit sometimes feelings of hopelessness and helplessness and I'm cautious about the last two because I know these are also signs of depression and I know that these states are not wholesome,

They're unwholesome.

They're states of hopelessness and helplessness and often when we're talking about depression actually we're talking about worthlessness as well but I don't feel any of that at the moment and I know these states are unwholesome and there's a fine line between what is understandable sadness and sorrow and the syndrome of depression.

Depression as a syndrome makes us feel amotivated,

Makes us feel miserable,

Makes us feel stuck,

Makes us feel hopeless and helpless and this experience is not in line with what the Buddha taught.

I mean it's part of what the Buddha taught as Dukkha but it's not in line with the Buddha's path with which I aspire to practice,

To adhere to.

So let's first talk about right and wrong view.

Right view is a factor of the Eightfold Path.

It's a factor of the,

Traditionally it's the first factor and it's called,

It's called Samma,

The prefix before all these factors is Samma,

Samma Ditti actually is right view and Samma Ditti,

Samma means right in the sense of having the right direction.

It's the right direction towards awakening.

So when we talk about the Eightfold Path we have right view,

Right intention,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Right effort,

Right mindfulness and right concentration and they are all right in the sense that they are leading towards awakening.

So traditionally right view is at the beginning of the Eightfold Path but when you consider this Eightfold Path as interconnected factors which is sometimes described as spokes on a wheel that's turning towards awakening,

Rolling towards awakening,

Right view could also be considered as the culmination of the path as well and in many ways it could be considered as right understanding and even insight,

Insight and this precedes intentions and intentions gives us the impetus to practice ethics which provides the foundation for meditation which then further produces wisdom.

And there's a discourse,

There's a discourse in the Majjhimanakaya which is this very thick text,

There's a collection of suttas,

There's a discourse called,

It's discourse number nine in that collection and it's called Samma Ditti meaning right view and this discourse is about Sariputta who was one of the foremost disciples of the Buddha,

He was considered as the right hand person,

Him and Moggallana were the two foremost practitioners.

Sariputta was foremost in kind of insight I suppose like if you think of an insight approach,

Foremost in analytical understanding of the dharma.

So in this discourse on right view it begins with saying that one with right view understands the differences between wholesome and unwholesome and it goes on to say that expressions of greed,

Delusion and hatred are at the roots of unwholesome,

The unwholesome.

And it goes on to say that the opposite of this adhering to ethical principles of non-harm or the precepts and non-greed,

Non-hatred and non-delusion or wisdom is what is considered as wholesome.

And Sariputta goes on to say right view involves understanding the four the four noble truths which is of course dukkha and the experience of unsatisfactoriness or the reality of unsatisfactoriness.

Sometimes it's translated as suffering but it's probably best understood as unsatisfactoriness and I know that sometimes people call it something like a the bummer,

The unsatisfaction of some life because it's changing and uncertain and so on.

So Sariputta talks about right view involving understanding of dukkha,

Its origins which is the second noble truth,

Its cessation which is the third noble truth and the path leading to its cessation which is the Eightfold Path actually.

So the discourse goes on further to describing the 12-link sequence in dependent origination and I won't go into saying each and every one of those links but basically dependent origination or dependent arising is the understanding of how,

Is understanding of conditionality actually.

It is the understanding that when this is,

That is.

With the arising of this,

That also arises.

With the ceasing of that,

This ceases.

So it's this understanding how things don't arise in and of themselves,

They are conditioned.

With right view one also sees emptiness and many of you have heard me talk about this little kind of phrase many times especially from my retreat,

The last retreat I did in September.

Emptiness and dependent origination essentially refer to streams of dependent arising processes and interactions,

Meaning that with right view we see things are interdependent and not things in and of themselves.

So with right view we don't thingify things.

There's a sense of it is empty of thingness.

So that's what this streams of dependently arising processes and interactions refers to.

It refers to everything is in this process of change and interaction and nothing is a thing in and of itself.

So right view includes seeing anicca,

Dukkha,

Anatta.

Anicca refers to impermanence.

Dukkha refers to,

As I just said then,

But in this case dukkha refers to how things that are impermanent are unable to bring enduring happiness because they're impermanent and it's a condition of life.

And I think I've mentioned this many times,

Like this clock,

This subject is dukkha in and of itself.

It's got the nature of dukkha because it's unable to bring me enduring happiness because it's going to change one day.

One day it'll break or you know I'll die or something like that.

So there's inevitability of unsatisfactoriness there.

So the other thing,

And anatta or sometimes usually called not-self in Theravadan Buddhism,

It's also another way of understanding emptiness,

Is the fact that there's no single thingness as I was just mentioning with that streams of dependently arising processes and interactions.

There's no sort of single thingness in all this life.

Things come about because of processes coming together and changing and interacting with one another,

With other things.

I'm calling them things here but they're really processes.

There's other insights and I think of the great venerable Buddhadasa who was a very renowned monastic in Thailand.

I actually met him in 1975 or 1976 I think and had a talk with him.

He spoke English very well and he talked about various insights that one can come to and these insights include impermanence,

Dukkha and not-self.

Other ones include conditionality,

Which is understanding that what I just spoke about with the 12 links of dependent arising,

The nature of things,

Lawfulness,

Which is kind of like an understanding.

I think that's an understanding of the way actions have consequences,

The laws of karma for example,

That things happen in a way where we can't really avoid.

When we do something it has an impact,

If that makes sense.

Some other insights he talks about is emptiness,

Which I've mentioned.

Thusness is really cool,

It's just things are just the way they are,

The reality of suchness or thusness.

Another term which takes a little bit of getting one's head around but it's really wonderful when one does more than just getting one's head around and understanding and intellectually experiencing this.

It's called unconcoctability and that means that there is a kind of awareness prior to conceptual creations or conceptual fabrications.

So this Venerable Acharn or Lungphor Buddhadasa talked about this as being the crown jewel in the insights,

Like the realization that we create our worlds,

It's fabricated and there's something,

Well there's nothing behind it all but that we can be aware of,

We can have this experience of unconcoctability.

Unconcoctability.

So that's a kind of a bit of a summary of right view,

It's pretty well straight down the line in terms of leading towards awakening.

It's the beginning of the path and it's also the end of the path,

Which is really interesting.

So right view could be considered as the opposite of wrong view.

Wrong view meaning going in the wrong direction if you want to wake up.

With wrong view you don't lead towards awakening but you go its opposite direction,

In other words entangling more and more in Dukkha,

The experience of Dukkha.

So wrong view could include seeing things as permanent,

Seeing as permanent conditions that are not permanent.

It can include seeing conditions as self,

As not self,

Sorry seeing conditions as self that are not self and seeing impermanent conditions as providing enduring happiness when they cannot.

In other words this is kind of the opposites of those insights into impermanence,

The Dukkha nature of conditions,

The three conditions of existence,

The three universal characteristics of existence,

Anicca,

Dukkha and Asaha.

It's the opposite of that.

So there's another Sutta also in this,

It's the second Sutta in this collection and it's called,

I'll try and pronounce this correctly in Pali,

It's called Savasava Sutta.

So I think that means all,

It calls,

Talks about all,

Sava means everything or all and Asava means,

One translation of it here is fermentations,

Like the influxes,

Something that's not quite right.

So I'm just going to read something from this particular Sutta,

It's just talking about you know the fermentations,

It's talking a lot about wrong view here and hang in here with me because it's a bit of a,

I'm going to read a little bit,

I'm going to quote a little bit but if you can just kind of hang in there I'll give you some commentary about what it all means.

And there is this,

There is the case where there's an uninstructed run-of-the-mill person and this person does not discern what ideas are fit for attention or what ideas are unfit for attention.

This being so,

He does not attend to ideas fit for attention and attends instead to ideas unfit for attention.

This is how he attends inappropriately.

What was I in the past?

Was I not in the past?

What was I in the past?

How was I in the past?

Having been what?

What was I in the past?

Again,

Kind of going into this obsession with the self.

What shall I be in the future?

Shall I not be in the future?

What shall I be in the future?

What shall I be in the future?

How shall I be in the future?

Having been what?

What shall I be in the future?

Or else if he's inwardly perplexed about the immediate present,

Am I?

Am I not?

What am I?

How am I?

Where is this being coming from?

Where is it bound?

It's this,

It's this obsession with the self.

So it goes on and hang in there with me because I'm going to be talking about six different kinds of views that arise in relationship to self.

He attends inappropriately in this way.

One of the six kinds of view arises in him.

The view that I have a self arises in him as true and established.

Or the view I have no self.

Or the view it is precisely by the means of self that I perceive self.

Or the view it is precisely by the means of self that I perceive not self.

Or the view it is precisely by means of not self that I perceive self arises in him as true and established.

Or else he has the view like this.

This very self of mine,

The knower that is sensitive here and now,

Here and there,

To the ripening of good and bad actions,

Is the self of mine that is constant,

Everlasting,

Eternal,

Not subject to change and will endure as long as eternity.

This is called the thicket of views,

The wilderness of views,

The contortion of views,

The writhing of views,

A fetter of views.

Bound by fetters of views,

The uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth,

Aging,

Sickness and death,

From sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Distress and despair.

He is not free,

I tell you,

From suffering.

And the word here is stress.

That's a translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

When Thanissaro Bhikkhu translates dukkha,

He calls it stress.

So basically the Buddha,

This discourse is by the Buddha by the way,

The Buddha points out what wrong view could be and he's pointing to how we reinforce this fiction of the self with our stories.

We have this constant story going on,

I'm in the past,

I'm in the future,

You know,

What am I and so on and so forth.

And the story of the self is self-reinforcing with stories of what was,

What is and what will be.

In terms of this self,

This fictional idea,

I mean it's hard for us to kind of get a grip on this because we are so ingrained with this feeling that there's someone going through time.

But if you really look at this,

If you really ground yourself in this present moment,

Right now,

And you think about yourself,

You see that it's just thinking,

It's just this story.

And I've talked about this on other discourses and other talks,

You know,

The neuroscientists talk about it as being constructed by default mode networking and left hemispheric dominance,

Which includes the language centers.

So we create these fictional stories about ourselves.

So the stories are self-reinforced and they are just fictional mental constructs of I,

Mine and myself.

A few months ago,

I gave a talk about the relative and absolute truths.

And relative truths involve the fact that today's Saturday and we all work in various occupations and some of us don't work and we all have roles and we all have life and so on.

And we,

You know,

There's diaries and there's dates and concepts and stuff.

We live in these relative realities and we need them to function as humans.

That's just the way it is.

I mean,

I function in a relative reality when I sent the link out for you to hop onto Zoom.

It's the way it is.

Ultimate truths,

However,

Involve the ultimate reality of this moment where there is just the experience of the six senses and everything else is just a story.

Everything else is just mental fabrications.

And if we want to wake up to Nibbāna,

We need to orient to absolute realities.

All of the Buddha's teachings,

Well,

Not all of them,

Sorry.

Some of them were talking about living in the relative world.

But I would say that most of the practices that the Buddha taught were oriented to perceiving and realizing absolute realities.

So in this Sutta,

Sutta number two,

About the Sutta about the fermentations,

The Buddha goes on to say,

The well-instructed disciple of the noble ones discerns what ideas are fit for attention,

What ideas are unfit for attention.

This being so,

He does not attend to ideas unfit for attention.

He attends instead to ideas fit for attention.

He attends appropriately.

And I'm going to be giving Tanisara Spiku's translation here.

This is stress.

This is the first noble truth.

This is the origins of stress,

Second noble truth.

This is the cessation of stress,

Third noble truth.

This is the way leading to the cessation of stress,

Fourth noble truth.

He attends appropriately in this way.

As he attends appropriately in this way,

Three fetters are abandoned in him.

Identity view,

Doubt and grasping at precepts and practices.

These,

Those last,

Those three fetters,

They're the first three fetters of what's called the ten fetters.

And there's more,

There's more,

The ten fetters actually keep us from waking up.

And those first three fetters,

When you release clinging to those three fetters,

The identity view,

The,

You know,

The belief that we,

We are people walking around,

We are things walking around and,

You know,

Separate from everything else,

That and doubt in the teachings,

Doubt in the truth of the Dhamma and grasping at rituals to wake up.

Rituals and practices in order to wake up rather than realizing these,

These insights from direct experiencing them.

These three fetters are sometimes considered as what's,

What's let go of when we enter the first stage awakening.

It's called sotapanna or stream entry and it's often described as this first stage of awakening where one is destined to wake.

It's like one enters a stream and you can't go back.

Once you enter that stream,

You know,

You're destined to awaken.

It may take,

They take,

They say in this one,

I don't know how realistic this is,

But they say no more than seven human lives.

Well,

I don't know whether you want to believe that or not,

Doesn't really matter,

But it,

It's,

It's about starting to break down our constructions of the world and ourselves in a way where we wake up.

Coming back to views,

They color our perspective.

According to the Buddha,

If our view is aligned with what is described as right view,

It will incline us to attend to things in ways where we see the features of them,

We see the absolute realities,

We see,

We develop insights.

And if we have greed,

Ignorance and hatred underlying our views,

Then they distort our realities and they influence us to act in ways that further increase suffering in the long run.

They color and filter our perceptions in an unwholesome way.

And they can arouse emotions and reactions that further narrows our perceptions.

And they further influence,

Which further influences on the way we see and how we understand things.

And in my study of emotions,

I've come to realize,

And this is,

You know,

What the emotions talk about when all the,

The gurus on emotions,

Like Paul Ekman,

For example,

Will say something like,

If we,

If we're miserable,

Our emotions will color our perceptions.

If we are miserable,

All we see is miserable,

Misery.

If we are anxious,

What we tend to,

All we tend to see is threat.

If we are angry,

All we tend to see is what's going wrong,

What's not in line with the way I want things to be.

And,

You know,

Just to balance this,

If we're happy and we can connect with a sense of happiness,

What we begin to see is the world smiling around us,

Like the whole world smiles.

I think there's a song about that,

When you're smiling,

When you're smiling,

But it's kind of true.

Like you,

You look at your,

Look at your mind every now and then and say,

When you look at things,

If you're looking at things as a threat,

You might be,

If you step back a bit,

You might be able to see anxiety in the background.

So,

On Saturday,

October the 14th in Australia,

The country had a referendum about including a voice for the First Nations people in Parliament and to change the Australian Constitution to reflect this.

To me and many others,

It was a way to recognize and acknowledge the First Nations people's plight and history in this land.

And I voted yes.

For me and many people,

It was also an acknowledgement of the traumas and disadvantage that many First Nations people have experienced since colonization.

It was symbolic.

And there were some valid concerns expressed by the no vote.

You know,

However,

There was also much debate and misinformation leading up to the referendum.

And I think many of you,

You're all Australian here,

I think,

On this online today.

Many of you would have probably seen that.

And if you voted no,

That's fine.

There was many valid reasons for voting no.

I'm not,

You know,

I'm not going to argue against that.

But after the majority of the vote was no,

When it was clearly a majority,

I felt sad.

I felt sad.

Moreover,

My heart was broken.

It was painful and uncomfortable.

And this was also against the backdrop of the news that had been coming and streaming into our lives about the slaughter,

Terror and horror coming out of Israel,

The Israel-Hamas-Palestinian conflict.

And it's just horrible.

So that was the Saturday the 14th.

And at 2am in the morning of October the 15th,

I got out and I logged on to a meditation group that's based in the US.

That's why it's based in,

Where is it?

I think Pacific Time,

Midday or something like that.

No,

I think it's Eastern Time.

Sorry.

Eastern Standard Time,

Midday over there is 2am in the morning for us.

So I get up and I log on to these.

It's a great time to meditate.

Anyway,

So I logged on,

And we're going through the practices.

And there was an invitation to bring attention to our hearts and recognize innate goodness,

Which is a great practice.

Some of you have done this practice with me.

When I did this,

All I found was pain and sorrow.

It was not only for our First Nations people,

But also for those who have been displaced and disadvantaged.

All those First Nations people across the world who've been displaced and disadvantaged by colonization.

It was also for the Palestinian people,

As well as the Israelis who have suffered,

As well as Ukraine and the Russians.

And I sat with sorrow and tears in my eyes when I was practicing this practice.

And I opened up to the pain.

Now,

The capacity to bear and turn towards the reality of the First Noble Truth,

Dukkha,

Is at the root of compassion for self and others.

And opening up to the First Noble Truth and understanding this is also the first step to realizing the other truths.

And foremost in the other truth is the Third Noble Truth,

The reality of non-clinging,

Which is one way that Nibbāna has been described.

It's actually described by Achan Chah as the reality of non-clinging,

Which is a beautiful way of describing Nibbāna.

And the third truth,

Nibbāna,

Is complete psychological freedom.

Perfect peace is also how it's been described.

So having peace in the midst of this horrible suffering does not mean that we don't act on the needs of others.

Having peace in this horrible suffering does also mean that we don't necessarily,

We also are not necessarily driven to fix things,

But we can bear the reality of Dukkha,

Including the Dukkha of others.

And I,

Look,

Just as an aside,

I noticed that when I'm in my practice,

What really is helpful for others when they're talking about the suffering in their lives,

My practice as a clinical psychologist,

People talking about the suffering in their lives,

I notice that the most beneficial thing for them is not to go in and jump in and fix it for them,

Because often we can't fix it for them.

Often it's about disentanglement and issues that are happening in their lives.

But if we can bear the suffering that they're having with them,

If we can hold that space and be willing to sit with them in that suffering,

I think that's a healing.

It has a healing.

I think it's,

People feel it and they feel heard,

They feel held,

Because nobody can solve their suffering except for them.

And if we can sit with them and hold it and bear their suffering as well,

I think that's compassion.

And that's the healing component of compassion for another person.

So while I was sitting with my painful heart,

I just opened to it and kind of sat with it,

Like I would sit with my patients,

My clients.

And my pain is just an inkling of the type of pain that is experienced by those who were displaced,

Ancestors massacred and disadvantaged,

Of those who've been slaughtered and their families,

Of those who've been bombed by a foreign power with a foreign power's justification,

Of those who,

For those who have no fuel for their hospitals or drinking water or safe places to sleep.

These people are truly suffering.

And the suffering I was experiencing was nothing compared to that.

And I feel like I'm just one of the privileged few.

But as I opened to the pain that was there,

And the reality of the First Noble Truth,

I noticed that the response that eventually emerged was compassion.

For myself and others,

And for all beings caught up in this crazy wheel,

These crazy wheels of samprara.

So I found compassion as one of the ways we can bear that which is difficult.

And it also aligns with the right view and inclines us to act for the betterment of humankind and the easing of suffering in the world rather than fueling it.

In my view,

It seems very wrong to me to balance killing with revengeful killing.

In the late 1970s,

I was actually living in Thailand at this time.

I was a monastic at this time.

In the late 1970s,

When the Pol Pot regime was committing genocide,

Thousands of refugees with relatives murdered in the killing fields of Cambodia were gathering in refugee camps across the border in Thailand.

And they were visited by some Buddhist monks.

Not being sure what to do,

These Buddhist monks just started chanting.

And they chanted this,

Hatred is never appeased by hatred.

By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased.

This is an eternal law.

This is actually the first,

The fifth verse of the Dharmapada.

And the Dharmapada has been derived from stories that come out of the Buddhist time.

And non-hatred here refers to states of loving kindness,

Compassion,

Benevolence,

Equanimity,

And understanding.

Interestingly,

The Buddha lived 2600 years ago.

In a sermon given at the Dexter Baptist Church on November 17th,

1957,

Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Spoke similar words.

He said,

Darkness cannot drive out darkness.

Only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate.

Only love can do that.

So coming back to the monks chanting in the refugee camp,

Apparently hundreds,

If not thousands of refugees joined in.

And it was pretty phenomenal.

These people that had suffered so much,

Seeing their relatives murdered.

I visited Cambodia probably about 10 years ago.

It's a really,

It's a wounded place.

I mean,

It's so sad.

I visited some of the killing fields.

Oh,

So,

So horrible.

But for those people to be able to chant that,

It's so powerful.

And of course,

It didn't change the situation immediately.

I mean,

Eventually that changed around.

But at that point in time,

I think it seemed to provide some peace and light at a time of horrible despair and psychological darkness.

It's really distressing to see the news.

I mean,

I just wonder why can't people get along?

Why can't they be kind to another?

And,

You know,

It gets me really distressed.

But I realized that it's just my view,

Which I feel is right.

I think it's a right view,

But it's,

It's just my view.

The Buddha was clear about right view as aligning with absolute realities and how wrong view leads to dukkha.

And in the monastics,

With the monastics and the Buddhist teachings,

It's pretty clear cut.

You know,

This is wholesome and it's unwholesome.

But sometimes in worldly matters and relative truths,

Right view and wrong view is also clear cut,

But other times it's not.

It's very clear cut.

It's very,

It's very kind of difficult to work out what's right and wrong.

And if one's family and home and children and grandchildren were being attacked,

What would you do?

I'm not sure completely what I would do,

But I would probably protect them.

Well,

I'd certainly protect them and I might possibly become aggressive.

So I was on retreat with Analia at the beginning of,

The beginnings of the Ukraine war.

And Analia was earnestly asking the question in a very inquiring way.

He really wanted to know because he was trying to work out.

He says,

He asked the question,

What is right action when we are confronted with injustice?

And when you're on retreat and when you're not faced with it in your face,

When it's not in your face,

It's much easier to maintain the precept of non-killing,

For example,

On retreat.

But when one's faced with the protection of one's grandchildren,

As an example,

To what extent are we willing to break the precepts?

When the no vote won the referendum and leading up to the referendum,

I was really trying to understand the no perspective.

In addition,

As I've watched TV with the ongoing Ukraine war,

I've been trying to understand Putin's position.

Why did I do this?

There must be,

There must be,

They're thinking that they're right and everyone else is wrong.

Because everyone thinks that their own view is right and the opposite is wrong.

People do things like,

Do things that seem incredibly wrong to me and others.

And in my view,

Views,

My view,

This is my view,

Views that are fueled by hatred and tribalism that extends to nationalism often creates wars.

And when we're presented with lots of information and need to make decisions,

We easily take sides and form an opinion.

Our views push us to act with conviction.

We feel we're always right and the opposite is wrong.

However,

Situations are not always black and white.

And there are so many contingencies.

Sometimes I just don't know.

I just don't know what to do.

But when I don't know,

I don't say no.

Rather,

I inquire at the root of my suffering.

And what I discover is at the root of my suffering is clinging,

Clinging to views,

Concepts and experiences.

What I can know for sure is a link between clinging and suffering.

So when things don't go my way and the way,

When things don't go the way I think they should go,

I know it hurts.

And I know it hurts with inquiry because I'm clinging,

I'm clinging to something.

I've heard that Acharn Chah once said this,

Peace is within oneself to be found at the same place as agitation and suffering,

Not in a forest or on a hilltop,

Nor is it given by a teacher.

When you experience suffering,

You can also find freedom from suffering.

Try running away from suffering.

And it actually,

You're actually,

Sorry,

Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run towards it.

Very,

Very good.

And the Buddha taught the path to freedom from suffering.

Where we have suffering,

We can deal with it there and then.

It doesn't mean we deny and ignore the suffering of others.

However,

When we cut open to the reality of Dukkha,

The first noble truth,

Our own discomfort and stay with it,

It is there we find peace as well as compassion.

The Buddha taught and pointed to waking up.

It's my dog over there.

He's trying to protect me,

Letting me know something's changing.

He's sitting on the chair outside my room.

Anyway,

I'm coming back to what I'm talking about.

The Buddha taught and pointed to waking up.

He instructed his disciples to not engage in conversations about food,

Markets,

Wars,

Kings and politics,

And many other things actually.

And this continues to be a practice in the monasteries.

I know that this is,

You don't go and buy the newspaper and have a read of it.

No,

You don't get on YouTube and see all the stuff that's going on.

You kind of stay within these confines,

Not confines,

But the protection of staying within absolute realities as much as possible.

When the Buddha instructed not to talk about food,

Markets,

Wars,

Kings,

Politics,

And so on,

He was basically encouraging people or the monastics to not get entangled in the thicket of views,

As this separates us from the realities of absolute,

Of the absolute,

Including Nibbāna.

So sometimes when I'm confronted with difficult circumstances,

Injustices and various horrors of the world,

I ask myself,

How would the Buddha,

One who is completely free from psychological suffering,

View atrocities,

Horrors and injustices in the world?

And I consider that he would view them with equanimity.

That's my point,

That's my thoughts.

Seeing the reality of the situation as it is,

He would see the results of causes and conditions coming together,

Streams of dependently arising processes and interactions.

Seeing these advanced examples,

Seeing these events as examples of the truths of impermanence,

Dukkha and not-self,

And he would be at peace with it.

He would be at peace because it would be the reality of what is happening.

At the same time,

He would act with compassion in whatever way he was capable.

I notice that when I become obsessed with bad news,

I become really miserable.

And when I go on retreats,

I try to insulate myself from the woes of the world.

And,

You know,

I try not to read the news too much.

Well,

Sometimes you can't avoid it,

But I try to not engage in that stuff.

And it's not that I deny the reality of the world out there,

But I can begin to focus on the realities of the absolute realities of dukkha and its causes within my own heart.

When I can see this,

It puts me in a better position to open to the realities of the world around me.

And with equanimity,

We become more capable of realizing what is wholesome and what is unwholesome and work in ways,

Work in compassionately healthy ways,

Helpful ways to resolve conflict and deal with conflict.

So I thought I'd like to finish this talk by singing a song.

And it's Imagine by John Lennon.

Imagine there's no heaven.

It's easy if you try.

No hell below us,

Above us only sky.

Imagine all the people living for today.

Imagine there's no country.

It isn't hard to do.

No greed or hunger and no religion too.

Imagine all the people living life in peace.

You may say I'm a dreamer,

But I'm not the only one.

I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one.

Imagine no possessions.

I wonder if you can.

Nothing to kill or die for.

A brotherhood of man.

Imagine all the people sharing all the world.

You may say I'm a dreamer,

But I'm not the only one.

I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one.

So thank you for your attention and thank you for listening.

Let's have a few minutes in silence.

Reviews

Wonderful talk enjoyed the song and the insights. Bows