Going for Refuge with Deeper Understanding (Part 2)

Maintaining good ethical standards allows our innate goodness to blossom and shine, people trust us more and our minds concentrate easily.

Transcript

So the other part of the ceremony that we usually do of course is taking these precepts. So we take them with understanding these root defilements, Greed, Hatred and delusion have to be weakened. Even if you understand the teachings, You have the teachings, You have the methods, You know the teachers, If the power of greed and if the power of hatred is still powerful in your mind, It's not possible to realize. It's the weight of the chilesa kind of holding the mind down, Binding the mind to samsara. So those things need to be weakened to a significant degree through this training. That's what makes it possible for the mind to be liberated. A large part of what makes it possible is having restrained ourselves from doing greedy things, Angry things, Hateful things and then restraining ourselves from activities that increase and feed delusion. So that's what these precepts are for. It's not like some judgmental God saying you're not allowed to have any fun, You can't do this and this and this and this, Otherwise I'll punish you. I don't think any gods think like that anyway by the way. It's a misinterpretation. What Lord Buddha is saying is that if you kill beings, Your own life will be shortened. This is karma. You'll cause pain, Beings cherish life. They don't want to die. When you cause, The thing that can cause it being the most trauma is killing it. So if you kill beings, There's an enormous amount of trauma is occurring in their mind and then on top of it you're decreasing your own future lifespan. Sorry, You're gonna die young. So this is dangerous. Suppose you finally meet the Buddha Dharma, You're finally practicing and car crash. You know, You get sent to war. That happens a lot in samsara. The women are burdened with having babies, Not having enough time to practice, Too many kids and their husband gets sent to war. Die. Get sent and make a lot of bad karma as well. So in this life, If you've been fortunate enough not to have too many babies and if you haven't been sent to war yet, If you've got a good opportunity, That's what happens isn't it? You look back at medieval history and even recent history, Even now. So Pāṇātipāta, Where are many Ṣikāpadaṃsāmatyāma? We're gonna go through that again but we understand that Lord Buddha out of compassion, He makes it really obvious to us because he cares. He doesn't want you to make karma with hatred. It's not possible to kill a being, Even if you're hungry and you need to eat, It's not possible to kill a being without a moment of hatred. When you kill it, There is a moment of hatred. You can't kill another being without that. And people deny this, People justify it in various ways but basically if you're killing beings, There's a moment of hate involved and that's very bad karma. That means that a hateful being is going to pop up in your future and kill you. That's not a good thing. So we avoid it at all costs. Obviously the occasional insect, No need to be incredibly paranoid about that but to be, Apparently the Dalai Lama kills mosquitoes so we don't, In Thailand we don't, We have to blow them away. Train ourselves not to kill them. So it's an important practice. It's taking it seriously. I undertake the precept not to kill any beings, Not to take life. It actually forces you to practice more patience, More compassion and just. . . Okay, The mosquito wants to live, The ants want to live, The cockroach wants to live. I know people often ask monks, If my house is infested with cockroaches what do I do? Okay, Sometimes you might have to take on some karma but it's a generally good practice isn't it? To mindfully, Carefully catch the spider and take it outside. There's moments of compassion and metta, Consideration involved in that, In that process. Beautiful. So understanding, I'd like to say that precept and if you could repeat it after me but understand that this is an instruction to help restrain us from making karma with hatred and as an investment in our future long life so that when we meet Buddha Dhamma we can have a long life to practice it. Pā nā tipāta ue ramanīsikāpada samādhi āmi I undertake the precept to refrain from taking the life of any living creature. Okay, The next one adhina dhāna is not stealing and not taking that which is not given is how it's better described. So if you steal things you will be stolen from and motivated by greed usually. So once again, Trying to restrain this greed energy, Understanding that greed for pleasant experience is what thrusts us into birth after birth after birth and we're a bit tired of that and we want something better. So we're gonna try to be very scrupulous. Might be a bit tricky at tax return time. If you really want to be liberated, If enlightenment is the most important thing to you, If by law you're supposed to give it, I would give it. It's only money. It's a interesting comment actually, It's only money. How many people think it's only money? It's money. I know it's only money. If you don't have enough, It's very serious isn't it? Can be difficult. But if you understand that your virtue and your ultimate nature that you want to realize is much more valuable than money, You won't do sleazy shady crooked things in order to get it. Even little sneaky things. Another thing about is if you give things happily, Give things generously, Okay can you do that? Can you, When it comes to tax return time, Okay I happily give this to the government. And okay you might not want to support the wars and you might not want to support other things but it's okay I give this to the hospitals, I give this to the daycare, I give this you know. Think of the ways that you approve of the government spending your tax money and then happily give it because then it's like a transformative dana. Okay I have to give it, I'm gonna find a way to happily give it. There's a way is to relate to those things where we don't have to resent things. Practice of dana and then this practice of not taking what isn't given is a lead-on from each other. Not taking that which is not given is a kind of a basic foundation. You're not gonna fall into a loss and then giving a portion of what you have and then you're getting a profit okay so you're gonna protecting yourself so that wherever you turn up in samsara you have good opportunities. So those of us who've been to Bihar, There's a number of people in the room have actually been on pilgrimage with either myself or Ajahn Pavaro. We've seen many poor people, Many of them just have the clothes that they're wearing and many of them sleeping on the streets, Many of them without shoes, Very skinny, Skin and bones, Not much radiance or clarity in their eyes. Many millions of beings experiencing this. One friend asked Ajahn Anand what's the cause for these beings, Why did they get born here? Ajahn Anand said they stole or they were very stingy with what they had. So we can see the results taking what isn't given or being stingy. If you have something and you don't share it you have kind of a beggar's mind state. If you make a lot of karma with a beggar's mind state guess where you're going? Next life. So we embrace these precepts understanding that they're keeping us relatively safe within samsara so that we can work at liberating ourselves from it. So if we could take that precept without understanding. I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not given. What's the next one? Tamiya Summichar Chara, Sexual responsibility. I undertake the precept of restraint from sexual misconduct. So sexual passion, Pretty powerful phenomena. Lord Buddha said if there were two powers as powerful as sexual passion it would be impossible to be liberated from samsara. But since there's only one chilesa as powerful as sexual passion it is possible. But that says something about this force. Remembering the Buddha's insight under the Bodhi tree. Grasping at the pleasure that is available within conditioned existence. That's what binds people to the round of rebirth. You want more of that pleasure. It's important to understand that there's a certain part of the mind which is never going to feel that it's had enough of that pleasure. It's addictive, It's intoxicating, It's fleeting, It's temporary. But the thing about anything which is addictive, You want more. And the Lord Buddha explains there is no river that floods like craving. Craving in the human mind floods more than any river. So that's another very powerful metaphor. So just so that you understand, You know I have to be honest, I've been a celibate monk for 20 years and I think I'm very grateful for the monastic container because it just doesn't give you any room to wriggle. You have to keep the most strict standard of celibacy. And I find that very helpful because I have a terrible suspicion that if I was a layman I might struggle with this precept. Knowing my artist nature and greedy character. I also aware that I must have been fairly moderate and fairly well behaved or I wouldn't have had the merit to become a monk. But just seeing what goes on in my mind in moments. That fascinating promise can lose yourself in some reckless abandon, Get lost in some pleasure. That's it isn't it? It's like a temporary response wanting to get away from some suffering. Okay dive into sexual passion. What's that like? Fall in love, Have an affair. I just need to read the newspaper and you see how many people got murdered by their partners or there when they decided to do that as an experiment. Apparently Thailand, It's a little bit rude, I'm not sure if I should say it, But anyway we're having a contemplation about samsara. Thailand has the best micro surgeons that have been trained to sew penises back on. Because Thai women are somewhat renowned for chopping it off when he's asleep. And the really upset ones are sometimes fed it to a dog quickly, Flushed it down a toilet. I've even heard they've been put in blenders. Ouch. Anyway since we're having a contemplation about samsara and what's possible in samsara and the way these precepts can protect us from painful consequences. Another thing is that part of the mind which thinks it can get away with it and have a little bit of pleasure on the side, There might be that. Maybe everybody in this room has kept their five precepts perfectly, I hope so. But in case some of you didn't, Or in case some of you think of breaking it, That part of the mind that thinks as long as they don't know. Okay I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but so I won't tell them. Oh dear. Do you want somebody to betray you in the future and not tell you? Does anybody want that? Do you want the person who you trust most, Who you share most with, To start doing things behind your back without telling you? And the problem is truth has this tendency to make itself known at some point. So the best kept secrets. There's a Jewish saying I think, If you want someone to keep a secret, Tell a dead person. When you deceive your partners, Your friends, You deceive yourself as well. So it's not just this area of being restrained with the greed and the passion that binds you to rebirth. It's not justifying it. There's this thing about these precepts. The Buddha says don't do it. It's very clear. Sexual contact with one person who I hope ideally you care for. You have an interest in their well-being which is beyond sexual gratification. I think that's what it's pointing to. And I actually think, You know, Plenty of people have told me that after a few years they get bored and they do think of having affairs or whatever and I actually think it's part of the program. You're supposed to get bored. And when you get bored, You're not supposed to try to find another way to make it interesting with someone else and get reborn into it all again. You get bored with having a lot of sex. What that means is you suddenly have spare time and energy to meditate. How wonderful. I think that's part of the deal. That's the program. It's like, Okay, It was romantic, It was fun, And a lot of energy into it for a certain amount of time and then it kind of cooled down a bit and great. Let it cool down within a container. And then, We're talking about and as we're going to explore a bit later today, Is the kind of pleasure that you can experience in meditation is superior actually. So if you are diligent with your meditation, You can experience serenity, Tranquility, Rapture and bliss, Which is of a pure quality. And that sexual passion, Which is a kind of a more dirty, In terms of what it does to the mind, It kind of darkens the mind and afterwards the mind is dull. And it feeds the passion so that even you've just expressed that energy after not very long, You want to do it again. So it's never satisfied in some respects. But the mental pleasure that comes from skillful meditation upon a foundation of having been generous and restrained, That mental pleasure is deeply nourishing to the mind. And I suppose the mind gets attached to it but it's a wholesome attachment. So you understand that attachment to your meditation practice is part of that raft that's going to help you cross samsara. So you have to attach to the skillful, The wholesome. You have to attach to something, Not yet capable of letting go of all of your attachments. So you attach to the wholesome and the skillful, The beautiful. So the pleasure that comes from meditation, Inevitably we get a bit attached to it and then there's the pain of wanting more, Craving for bliss of meditation, But to work with that. And so out of compassion for yourself, Not wanting to make. . . That's another thing isn't it? If one does break precepts in this area I think it does affect one's self-respect and dignity. So on one level you can justify it. It's normal passions, Nature, The way human beings are. The fact is if a person is promiscuous or sexually compulsive they tend not to have much self-respect, Not much dignity. They don't like themselves very much. So as a gift to yourself for your own self-respect, Dignity, In recognizing your deeper potential to experience a purer and more serene, More beautiful type of pleasure and then also in not wanting to hurt the feelings of others and in not wanting to have your own feelings hurt in the future, We kind of embrace this training as a way to evolve sexual passion, Contain it and evolve it. Sometimes this is a word called sublimation. You're taking something a lot of people think you shouldn't repress, You shouldn't repress. It's a very clumsy understanding that a sexual energy you either repress it or you express it. There's nothing else. This is very clumsy and limited understanding. Contemplatives in every tradition understand that if you're mindful of it, Practice patience with it, Train the mind to lift this energy from the base chakras into the heart chakra, From the heart chakras into the crown chakras, Then that very energy which gets expressed with its loving passion with one person or several people can become boundless loving-kindness for all beings filling space. It's not the case that if you don't express your sexual passion that you're going to become some repressed, Sick, Deviant that fantasizes in unskillful ways. You allow that energy with patient endurance and with contemplation and with applying yourself at new habits, More skillful habits, That energy comes up into the heart chakra and it's possible to love all beings with impartiality rather than a romantic infatuation with just the one that you think is beautiful, Handsome or sexy. So you don't need to worry that by not expressing this that you'll become a deviant. You can have confidence, I believe, That through skillful restraint you're allowing a certain amount of energy to build up in the mind. That's a good thing. That energy can be cultivated, Channeled, Refined, Developed and then you're in an experience very blissful boundless noble mind states. So hopefully with a little more understanding take that precept. Kaame sume cacara ue ramanisikapadamsamadhyami. Kaame sume cacara ue ramanisikapadamsamadhyami. I undertake the precept to refrain from a sexual misconduct. Oh, A different way to say it. I undertake the precept to be sexually responsible. Next one is musawada. I undertake the precept to refrain from lying. False harmful speech. This is very important. One of the things for frequent meditators, One of the things that you will notice I would assume, Is the way your speech affects your meditation. You can see that quite directly. Come to these meditation retreats or do meditation retreats or even you meditate at the end of the day and then if you said something that was unskillful, Harsh, Gossiped about somebody or. . . You know there's the part of the mind that will justify why she was wrong, Why he was wrong, Why I'm right saying what I said and why they really are. . . You know that angry judgmental energy. But there's the more sensitive part of the mind that wishes it didn't say that actually. It kind of wasn't very nice. So there is that in the mind that recognizes when we've acted on our irritation, Our aversion, Our hatred, Our impatience and also when you've told an untruth. Now truthfulness, This precept, We aspire to realize ultimate truth. We aspire to understand the nature of the world, The nature of our bodies, The nature of our minds, So that we can be liberated from delusion. You understand that the Buddha, Meeting the Buddha, Meeting the Buddha's teachings in the samsara is a difficult thing. It's not an easy thing. It's the result of, I believe, Having practiced a great deal of truthfulness and having restrained from telling lies. In part, A very significant part. You're meeting, Especially the people who have met Ajahn Chah's teachings in the lineage of Lumpur Man, I think you have very good truthfulness, Barami. Satchatamma, Satchatamma, The truth of Dhamma. Satchabarami, Truthfulness Barami. So you need to have quite a lot of this Satchabarami, I believe, To meet Satchatamma, True teachings, True wisdom teachings. So having met them, Please be really careful because deceiving yourself and deceiving others, That makes the karma where you could be separated from wisdom teachings, Teachings about the truth. And so even in the area of white lies, We have to be careful because you look at, Even in the time of the Buddha, There's all these different teachers teaching different things. And so, And in looking at Thailand now, There's ways that the Buddha said about his own teachings that they won't disappear overnight. He said they will change slowly and they'll still be called the Buddha's teachings, But they won't be what he taught. So that's a bit scary. So if the Buddha Satsana does last 5, 000 years, As some people believe it will, What people understand the Buddha's teachings to be will have changed from what the Buddha taught. And so when you have the good karma to meet the teachings of contemporary Arahants, Which I think we have met when we meet Ajahn Chah's teachings, Some of his disciples' teachings, Then talking about those practices which lead to your liberation, It's a wisdom teaching of the purest and most useful for your samsaric situation, How to get liberated. So you must have been immaculate with truthfulness in the past. There's really no other way that you meet the purest teachings on the truth without that. We believe in karma and things being dependently co-arisen as we do as Buddhists. So now we have to protect that because you're living in a time where this virtue is degenerating and where other people's standards around these things are much more wishy-washy or even poor. So we understand that because we want to continue to meet wisdom teachings about truth, Don't want to make any karma with deception, Deceiving yourself or others, Because in the future, Suppose you meet a charismatic teacher which is teaching things which sound true but if he's off a bit and then you really have a lot of faith, Then we can see what happens with suicide bombers. If you really believe that you get to live in a heaven realm because you blew yourself and a few other people up as an offering to God, You might believe that you might even die with a rapturous mind state if you really believe it. But unfortunately I think just a few moments after that death I think you would find that you're not in a heaven realm. So what people present to us as the truth and the kind of wisdom teachers, The wisdom teachings and teachers that we meet will depend upon how much we have deceived or not. So when it comes to maintaining this precept as purely as possible, Just remember I really respect truth. I really love truth. I really recognize it in my own practice. When I see things truthfully I suffer less. I want to be liberated by the truth. Because of that I'm gonna be really careful not to tell lies. And with the harsh speech and harmful speech, Just seeing you meditate more and more how it affects your own mind when you have harsh anger, Hatred, Energy, When you make karma with it, Your mind is hard, It's contracted, It's hot. And coming back to the self-respect, The dignity, If you don't gossip a lot and if you don't have a lot of harsh speech, Come to meditate the mind feels okay already. There's nothing pressing on it to feel bad about. And so the meditation will deepen more quickly, More easily. But if you come to your cushion and as you've been saying not very nice things, Sarcastic things and hurtful things, Nasty things, And you come and sit then it's like, Oh it's not an easy mind to sit with if you don't like yourself, You don't like what you did with your speech. So then that also comes in the area of it's not just what you say, It's what you allow yourself to listen to. So in terms of the kind of entertainment that you consume. So a lot of comedians, A lot of jokes are usually at other people's expenses aren't they? And so this affects that if you like to watch comedians and you're kind of laughing at other people. And that's not necessarily very wholesome. And so giving some attention to the kind of entertainment that you consume. Are we listening to skillful speech? Or are we listening to harsh, Harmful, Gossipy, Sarcastic speech? And try to be restrained because it's not just what you say, It's also what you ingest, What you give attention to will affect what you do yourself. So being showing some discretion with entertainment and also through association. This Buddha's, A sutta that was taught to a radiant female deva in Jetavana came down and said Lord Buddha, Devas are interested in happiness as well. What practices bring the highest blessings? The first thing he said, Don't associate with fools. The very first thing he said, Associate with the wise. This brings the highest blessing. So in terms of what the television are you watching, Are you associating with fools? Possibly. Associate with the wise. What could you be doing instead? Listen to a dharma talk, Read a dharma book. So we take that precept. I undertake the precept to refrain from lying, Harsh speech, Gossip or harmful speech. And good. The last one, Intoxication. Sura meria maja pamadatana. Sajjana Nan lived with him for a few years and he gets these different crowds of people coming into the monastery on different occasions and so for the Thai New Year people will come to make a lot of merits occurring now actually, Songkran in Thailand. Three days, People throwing water on each other and drinking quite a bit. A lot of people. A lot of road deaths unfortunately this time of year. So Ajahn An often says to that group of people, He says you guys are already drunk with your property, With your partners, With your children, With your thoughts about the past, With your thoughts about your future, With your worries. He said why would you do anything else to make your mind more drunk than it already is? Please be moderate in this area. And so the mind is intoxicated already with great hatred and delusion and if you add drugs and alcohol to it, It darkens it further. So if you understand with our current spiritual faculties that we're in a darkened room and we have a little flashlight, Okay, That's where we are now and the Ajahn's are saying there's a path there, Out the door there, Okay. But if your batteries go flat and the room becomes darker, The chances of finding that door are going to be much less. So this is what drinking does. It takes your clouded mindfulness and makes it muddy mindfulness, Murky mindfulness. And I have an example, One student and friend who used to drink quite a bit of wine and he gave it up at one point. Actually I'd been encouraging him for a couple of years and I actually told him I'm no longer going to encourage you unless you keep this precept strictly because there's no point. And he's like what? Yeah, You heard me. You don't have to keep giving quality attention to people if they don't deserve the attention. So that was a bit of harsh feedback but it was after a few years of explaining why to keep this precept. And he did. He kept the precept and he noticed that it made a huge difference to the clarity in the mind and then he had one drink and he noticed that it was about a month before his mind re-established the same kind of clarity it had before the drink. So this is the kind of thing that you'll only know if you're really strict with it. It's easy to justify. A half a glass of wine is medicine. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Who stops at half a glass? Come on. If you have the half a glass you have the whole glass here, The whole glass you have two glasses. But people still say that. Yes, But a half a glass is medicine. Great. Too much medicine kills people. It's called overdose. If you really respect the Buddha's teaching you'll even give up a half a glass. For those of you who actually stop at half a glass, Don't deceive yourself. Don't delude yourself. Be truthful to yourself, Please. So he'd had a lifetime of decades of drinking and then when he really meditated daily, Kept his precepts, Took a few months and he noticed feelings of rapture, Feelings of bliss, Feelings of tranquility arising in the mind outside of the meditation session. Now this is very interesting. This is something that people don't realize that virtue is a thing. These precepts, It's not just about all these things you can't do, Shouldn't do. It's that when you don't do these things you protect, Nourish, Support a palpable, Beautiful quality in your own heart. When you keep the precepts you have virtue. Virtue is a beautiful thing. And so when you have virtue you can feel what it's like to have virtue and you can feel what it's like when you did something to tarnish your virtue. And you train in this. You really strict with the precepts. Just as an experiment, What's it like when you really keep them strictly? Is there more happiness and contentment in the mind? Give it a good chunk of time. Okay, I'm gonna trust the Buddha. Buddha had compassion. He's teaching about how to go to heaven and beyond. He's talking about having a more subtle, More rewarding pleasure and happiness which is deeper. Maybe he knew what he was talking about. Rather than kind of justify, Allow your chalazes to tell you what the Buddha really meant, Maybe take what the Buddha said literally. He meant what he meant. Don't drink at all. And not to mention infediments and other things that affect the mind. It's not that there isn't pleasure. There is. But it's harmful. And you understand that mindfulness is a subtle quality. You understand there's a beautiful orchid that you're trying to grow in a hot house and it's growing very well. But it needs that hot house and it needs a certain amount of moisture. You take it out of the hot house and put it in the full Sun, It shrivels. So it's like you can see the precepts as being a bit like that. That they keep the mind within a container that this subtle quality of mindfulness can get clearer and stronger. But if you break the precepts, These strong energies of greed or hatred and things which delude the mind come in and kind of smash the mindfulness and you have to start again. But the thing is you can keep them strictly for a long period of time. The momentum of the virtue and the momentum of the mindfulness, The virtue gets more palpable, More established. The mindfulness gets clearer. And then you know for yourself, There's that phrase we often say, To be experienced individually by the wise. You know for yourself that when you keep the precepts more strictly you'll feel more contentment, More well-being, Your mindfulness is better and your meditation is deeper. And then it becomes obvious. Why would I do something that harms that so that I could have a lesser quality pleasure for a few moments or relieve myself from some irritation? Why would I swap the deep well-being, The feeling that I have, The foundation for blissful mind states? Why would I swap that for something else? So we take that precept. I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drink and drugs. That leads to heedlessness. Another phrase of the Buddha, Heedfulness is the path to the deathless. The heedless are likened to the dead. What that means is if you're heedless you're gonna die and die and die and die and die and die and die and no end of this rebirth business. But if you are heedful you have your path out and that your light is gonna get brighter and brighter. The path gets clearer and clearer. So that's the morning reflection on the refuge and the precepts, The training, Why we undertake it, How we undertake it, How we relate to it. And come back for another set in about 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

Reviews

Amazing. Thank you 🫶

I will listen to both part 1 and 2 over and over again. Thank you for explaining the precepts so clearly and succinctly. 🙏🏾

Clear and straight forward teaching. An inspiration.

This talk really helps to strenghten the intention to keep the precepts. Thank you for explaining this Ajahn Achalo 🙏

more about precepts than refuge per se but instructive, almost med.c. itative.