Dharma Reflections

Diving into some of my personal reflections on the Dharma teachings. The Buddha Dharma teachings have persisted through thousands of years. “The teachings are not the book, they’re not to be believed in…they’re really pointers towards understanding and awakening…they are not the thing in itself…”.

This talk was originally recorded during a live Zoom meditation group and the recording may contain some small imperfections. Thank you for your understanding.

Transcript

So I thought I'd talk a little bit about the teachings,

Because it sparked in me a really appreciation for the depth and the unique quality of the Buddhist teachings and how they've been preserved for these two and a half thousand years through characters like Kaguya Rinpoche and through the monastic tradition that's kept both all the Theravada,

The Pali Canon,

The Sanskrit and Tibetan versions and the Chinese versions of the Buddhist teachings.

And of course the teachings,

Although Buddhist practice as such is not a.

.

.

The teachings are not the book or they're not to be believed in.

They're really pointers towards understanding and awakening.

They're expressions of the awakened heart-mind.

They are not the thing in itself,

But they're an incredibly precious commodity and tool to inspire and to set us in the right direction if you like,

Give us areas to explore,

To see for ourselves with the guidance of the teachings.

And the teachings are helpful in.

.

.

Even if they only start with an intellectual understanding of the teachings,

It starts to light a spark if you like,

Of curiosity.

And then we're able to reflect,

The teachings are to be reflected upon.

And through that reflection,

That's what we call Dharma practice,

Those truths,

Those the Buddha Dharma,

The teachings of the Buddha deepen into our being and we find ourselves responding naturally with that awakening,

Without understanding before we even have to think about what are the teachings.

The teachings have resonated so deeply within our being that we've seen clearly within through our own experience,

The truth of the teachings and we respond naturally with that,

Through that understanding and that wisdom.

So the teachings themselves have incredible benefit.

So I thought over these months together,

I would give some of my reflections on some of them,

On the teachings of the Buddha and especially the emptiness teachings and what's called the wisdom teachings.

Teachings that we're all familiar with,

But they're still having this maturing in all of us,

I think,

This deepening resonance within each of us.

They're now starting to hopefully express itself in our relationships and in our connections with each other and our environment and our society.

And also expressing themselves in what the Buddha called the cessation of suffering.

And I'd like to talk a bit about the Dharma.

You've got to start somewhere,

You start with the Dharma,

The truth of things.

The Dharma,

The Buddha wasn't doing Buddhist practices,

The Buddha was teaching the Dharma.

The Dharma was around before the Buddha,

But the Buddha gave his own expression.

Of course,

The Buddha Dharma,

Teachings of the Buddha.

The Dharma being the truth of things,

The truth of how things unfold.

It's the natural law,

If you like,

The natural way things express themselves.

It's the Buddha Dharma is the teachings,

The teachings that express that truth.

And of course,

It's also living in accordance with that truth.

So the Dharma covers a great field.

Actually in the Theravada tradition,

In the Pali Canon,

Dharma is used in two different ways.

There's a Dharma with a capital D,

Which is referring to the ultimate truth.

And then there's Dharma with a small d,

Which is everything is a Dharma.

Everything arises,

All conditioned phenomena.

They're all Dharmas.

The difference being the ultimate reality is unconditioned and relative truth is conditioned truth.

And the Buddha said it's our exploration and our understanding of the Dharmas that will lead to or open up an understanding and a blossoming,

If you like,

An unfolding insight into Dharma with a capital D,

Which is the unconditioned,

The ultimate truth of things.

And this was what was so radical about the Buddhist teachings is that he directed our attention to the condition.

Whereas a lot of religions solely emphasize the ultimate reality of things,

The highest good or the highest that a human being can aspire to,

Be it unconditional love,

Heaven,

Earth,

Total freedom.

The Buddha's attention directly to our present day experience.

So he's looking at Dharmas,

What's our understanding of the Dharmas,

All that that arises and passes through consciousness.

What is our understanding in our relationship there?

That's where suffering arises.

That's where the gleaning occurs.

That's where the misinterpretation and misidentification happens.

And that is the curtain,

If you like,

The blocks and the insight into that unconditioned freedom.

So this looking into our conditioned existence is at the heart of the Dharma practice.

This of course in Pali language is called the sankaras,

Or conditioned phenomena,

So sankara.

So what are sankaras?

Everything we experience is a sankara.

Everything through all the senses,

Everything we see,

Hear,

Feel,

Taste,

Touch,

Smell,

Think,

Feel,

They're all sankaras.

And what's the quality,

What are the teachings say about sankaras?

They arise and pass away.

So there's no stability there.

There's no enduring quality there.

But we've developed this incredible habit of identifying with the sankaras.

Because this body is a sankara.

Every experience I ever had is a sankara.

All my memories are a sankara.

All the views I have about myself and about everybody else is a sankara.

Do I see those sankaras as they truly are?

Just naturally occurring phenomena arising due to causes and conditions.

Totally impersonal.

Nature expressing itself.

If I did see it,

Understand sankaras like that,

Then I would never take things personally.

There'd be no need to react or to judge or to criticize.

There'd be no self-criticism.

There'd be no self-consciousness.

Being self-conscious about what people think about me.

How people are reacting to this talk.

All those things that just arise naturally through our conditioning,

Through the habits of taking sankaras personally.

So this is incredibly at the heart of the wisdom teachings.

So I think dharma teaching is incredibly simple.

It's the mind that wants to complicate it all the time.

But of course we've been through our social conditioning and our education,

Our upbringing.

The tendency is to always complicate,

To always try to think things out,

To analyze,

To rationalize.

But thought is a sankara.

So we're never going to think our way through to freedom.

Of course this was expressed in the first noble truth.

Just the noble truths themselves,

The four noble truths.

What an amazing teaching that is.

We've heard them so many times that we tend to take them for granted or not really see into the incredible depth that those teachings express,

The depth of wisdom.

And in a way they encompass the whole 5,

000 volumes of the Pali Canon in those four noble truths.

And it's all in our relationship to the khandhas,

To the sakaras.

So the first noble truth,

The truth of dukkha,

Satchadukkha,

The truth of suffering.

Just the whole idea that the Buddha would term suffering as being noble is interesting to start with.

Because suffering is something we really don't know about.

It's not that we don't want it,

We don't like it.

We're chasing happiness the whole time,

Avoiding suffering,

Avoiding dukkha at all costs,

Distracting ourselves from all those even very minor sense of discomfort and unsatisfactoriness.

So to interesting label suffering as being noble.

Has incredible teaching to start off with.

And it's noble because it is the pathway to understanding.

Because it's our understanding of suffering which is where freedom arises.

It's because we have very limited understanding of suffering or incredibly distorted understanding of suffering.

Is why suffering endures.

Why we continue to suffer.

Of course in that first noble truth the Buddha advises us to understand dukkha,

To acknowledge dukkha.

And the only way we can really understand it is to be present to it.

Instead of the habit of avoiding or blaming.

To be able to be with in a way that is not caught up in,

Not avoiding.

So how do we do that?

How do we remain present with suffering?

Of course the beautiful teachings of mindfulness practices.

So we have as human beings this incredible ability to be present with our experience.

And that presence is what we call mindfulness or awareness.

So the heart of Dharma practice is just being aware of what is arising in our consciousness.

So we're all sitting here now watching,

Listening.

We can be aware of that we are sitting here watching and listening.

We all have that capability.

And it is that capability that is untouched by the experience that we're actually having.

It's not till thought enters and says,

Oh,

I like this story.

Oh,

This is a good talk.

Oh,

No,

This talk is pretty boring.

Should be watching television instead.

Or it's not till the mind moves that good,

Bad,

Like,

Dislike,

Judge,

Want,

Not want.

When the mind moves,

That's what starts occurring.

But while we're just in that awareness,

While that awareness is just present,

We're just being with our experience.

And we're all familiar with being with our experience without complicating and reacting to the experience itself.

So Dharma practice is just about noticing this and continuing to cultivate it.

And of course we get caught up.

Then we get aware that we're getting caught up.

We get aware that we're taking it personally.

We go,

Ah,

There I go again.

So in a way we need incredible patience and courage to enter into this Dharma practice.

It's a lifetime practice.

And it's through that awareness,

Through that being present with and understanding the conditioned phenomena and how it arises,

How it passes away.

It's through that presence that we get a felt sense of something greater,

Something vast,

Something that doesn't arise and pass away.

And we can call that the mere necessity of consciousness or whatever,

Nirvana,

The unconditioned,

The unconstructed,

The deathless.

The Buddha gave us about a hundred different names.

But it's always in this present experience.

It's always here and now.

See there is only here and now.

The past is just a memory in the present.

And the future is just a speculation in the present.

There is only now.

And that's where awareness is.

So that's it.

Thank you.