- Meditation: The Heart of Buddhism
- Ajahn Brahmavamso
This is an edited version of a talk
given by Ajahn Brahmavamso at
the Buddhist Society of Western Australia on the 4th February 2000.
NAMO TASSA BHAGAVATO ARAHATO SAMMASAMBUDDHASSA
I
want to talk in depth today about the
nature of Buddhism. Very often I read in newspapers and books some strange things that are
presented as Buddhism. So here, I will point out the heart of the real Buddhist teaching,
not as a theory but as an experience.
What is
Not The Heart of Buddhism
Psychotherapy
I know that some people still
think Buddhism is some form of psychotherapy, some way of applying wise attitudes or
skilful means in order to live more at peace in this world. Indeed, in the rich storehouse
of Buddhist teachings there are many things which do help people to live life with less
problems. Using wise attitudes and compassionate intentions, Buddhism teaches an effective
way of dealing with the problems of the world. When these Buddhist methods actually work,
they give people faith and confidence that there really is something in this Buddhist path
which is valuable to them.
I often reflect on why people come here
to the Buddhist Society on a Friday evening. It’s because they get something out of
this. What they get out of these teachings is a more peaceful life style, a happier
feeling toward themselves and more acceptance of other beings. It is in that sense a
therapy for the problems of life, and it does actually work. However that’s not
what Buddhism really is, that’s only one of its side affects.
Philosophy
Some people come across Buddhism and
they find it’s a marvellous philosophy. They can sit around the coffee table after
I’ve given a talk and they can talk for hours and still not be close to
enlightenment. Very often people can discuss very high-minded things; their brains can
talk about and think about such sublime subjects. Then they go out and swear at the first
car that pulls out in front of them on the way home. They lose it all straight away.
Ritual
Or instead of looking at
Buddhism as a philosophy, many people look at it as a religion. The rituals of Buddhism
are meaningful, and they shouldn’t be discarded just because one thinks one is above
ritual. I know people are sometimes very proud, arrogant even, and think they don’t
need any rituals. But the truth of the matter is that rituals do have a psychological
potency. For example, it is useful in society when two people are going to live together
that they go through some sort of marriage ceremony. Because in that ceremony there is
something that happens to the mind, something that happens to the heart. There is a
commitment made deep inside which echoes with the knowledge that something important has
happened. In the ceremonies and rituals of death, all of those rites of chanting,
reflection and kind words actually have a meaning for the people involved. It does help
them to come to accept with grace the passing of a loved one. It helps them acknowledge
the truth of what’s happened, that a final separation from that person has occurred.
And in that acceptance they come to peace.
In the same way, at our monastery, in
order to forgive another person and to let go of past hurt, a ceremony of forgiveness is
often used. In the Catholic Church they have the ceremony of confession. The precise
details of a forgiveness ceremony don’t really matter, but what is important is that
forgiveness is given, by some physical means through some ritual or ceremony. If you just
say, "Oh I’m sorry", isn’t that a lot different from also giving a
present, or a bunch of flowers? Or isn’t it different from going up to them and
saying "look, what I did the other day was really unforgivable, but come out to
dinner with me this evening", or "here have a couple of tickets to the
theatre"? It is much deeper and more effective when you weave a beautiful ceremony
around forgiveness rather than just muttering a few words.
Even the ritual of bowing to a Buddha
has a great meaning. It’s an act of humility. It’s saying I’m not
enlightened and yet there is something that is beyond me which I am aspiring towards.
It’s the same humility that a person has when they go to school, or university and
they acknowledge that the lecturers and the professors know more than they do. If you
argue with professors when you go to university, are you going to learn anything? Humility
is not subservience, which denies the worth of yourself, But humility is that which
respects the different qualities in people. Sometimes the act of bowing, if it’s done
mindfully, is a ceremony, a ritual that can generate a great sense of joy. As a monk many
people bow to me, and I bow to many others. There is always someone that you have to bow
to no matter how senior you are. At the very least there is always the Buddha to bow down
to. I enjoy bowing. When there is a monk who is senior to me, bowing is a beautiful way of
overcoming ego and judging, especially when I must bow to a really rotten monk (the good
monks are easy to bow to). This is a ritual which if done in the right way can produce so
many benefits. At the very least, as I tell people at the monastery, if you do a lot of
bowing it strengthens your stomach muscles and you don’t look fat! But it’s more
than that.
So these Buddhist rituals are useful,
but Buddhism is much more than that.
Meditation
and Enlightenment
When you ask what Buddhism really
is, it’s a hard question to answer in a few words. You have to come back to this
process of meditation because there is the crux, the fulcrum of Buddhism, the heart of
Buddhism. As everybody who has ever come across the Buddhist teachings would know, the
Buddha was a man who became enlightened while meditating under a tree. A few minutes ago
you were doing the same meditation for half an hour! Why where you not enlightened? That
enlightenment of the Buddha was actually what created this religion of Buddhism. It is its
meaning, it is its centre. Buddhism is all about enlightenment; not just about
living a healthy life, or a happy life, or learning to be wise and saying smart things to
your friends around the coffee table. Again Buddhism is all about this enlightenment.
First of all you have to get some
feeling or indication of what enlightenment actually is. Sometimes people come up to me
and say "I’m enlightened", and I sometimes get letters from people saying
"thank you for your teachings, please know that I am enlightened now". And
sometimes I hear other people say of teachers or gurus "Oh Yeah, they are certainly
enlightened" without really knowing what that means. The word enlightenment stands
for some opening of wisdom, some understanding which stops all suffering. The
person who hasn’t abandoned all suffering is never enlightened. The fact that a
person still suffers means that they are yet to abandon all their attachments. The person
who is still worried about their possessions, who still cries at the death of a loved one,
who is still angry, and who is still enjoying the pleasures of the senses like sex, they
are not enlightened. Enlightenment is something beyond and free from all that.
Sometimes when a monk talks like this
he can very easily put people off. Monks seem like "wowsers" [1], as they say in
Australia. They don’t go to the movies, don’t have any sex, don’t have any
relationships, don’t go on holidays, don’t have any pleasures. What a bunch of
wowsers! But the interesting thing which many people notice, is that some of the most
peaceful and happy people you meet are the monks and nuns who come and sit here on a
Friday evening and give the talks. Monks are quite different from wowsers, and the reason
is that there is another happiness which the monks know and which the Buddha has pointed
out to them. Each one of you can sense that same happiness when your meditation starts to
take off.
Letting Go
The Buddha taught that it is
attachment that causes suffering and letting go is the cause for happiness and the way
to enlightenment. Letting go! So often people have asked how do you let go? What they
really mean is, why do you let go? It’s a difficult question to answer and it will
never be answered in words. Instead I answer that question by saying "Now is the time
to meditate, cross your legs, be in the present moment," because this is teaching
people what letting go is all about. Moreover, the final moments of the meditation are
the most important. Please always remember this. In the last few minutes ask yourself,
"How do I feel?" "What is this like and why?" "How did this come
about?"
People meditate because it’s fun,
it’s enjoyable. They don’t meditate to "get something out of it," even
though when you meditate there are a lot of good benefits to be had such as health
benefits or reducing stress in your life. Through meditation you become less intolerant,
less angry. But there is something more to it than that - it’s just the sheer fun
of it! When I was a young monk that’s what made me become a Buddhist. It was
inspiring to read the books but that was not good enough. It was when I meditated and
became peaceful, very peaceful, incredibly peaceful, that something told me that this was
the most profound experience of my life. I wanted to experience this again. I wanted to
investigate it more. Why? Because one deep experience of meditation is worth a thousand
talks, or arguments, or books, or theories. The things you read in books are other
people’s experiences, they are not your own. They’re words and they might
inspire, but the actual experience itself is truly moving. It’s truly earth
shattering because it shatters that which you’ve rested on for such a long time. By
inclining along this path of meditation you’re actually learning what letting go
really is.
Acknowledge,
Forgive and Let Go (AFL)
For those of you who have
difficulty meditating, it’s because you haven’t learned to let go yet in the
meditation. Why can’t we let go of simple things like past and future? Why are we so
concerned with what someone else did to us or said to us today? The more you think about
it, the more stupid it is. You know the old saying, "When someone calls you an idiot,
the more times you remember it, the more times they’ve called you an idiot!" If
you let it go immediately, you will never think about it again. They only called you an
idiot at most once. It’s gone! It’s finished. You’re free.
Why is it that we imprison ourselves
with our past? Why can’t we even let that go? Do you really want to be free? Then
acknowledge, forgive and let go, what I call in Australia the "AFL Code" [2] -
Acknowledge, forgive, and let go of whatever has hurt you, whether it’s something
that somebody has done or said, or whether it’s what life has done. For instance,
someone has died in your family and you argue with yourself that they shouldn’t have
died. Or you’ve lost your job and you think without stop that that shouldn’t
have happened. Or simply something has gone wrong and you are obsessed that it’s not
fair. You can crucify yourself on a cross of your own making for the rest of your life if
you want to; but no one is forcing you to. Instead you can acknowledge forgive and learn
in the forgiving. The letting go is in the learning. The letting go gives the future a
freedom to flow easily, unchained to the past.
I was talking to some people recently
about the Cambodian community here in Perth and, being a Buddhist community, I have had
much to do with them. Like any traditional Buddhists, when they have a problem they come
and speak to the monks. This is what they have done for centuries. The monastery and the
monks are the social centre, the religious centre, and the counselling centre of the
community. When men have arguments with their wives they come to the monastery.
Once when I was a young monk in
Thailand, a man came into the monastery and asked me "Can I stay in the monastery for
a few days?". I thought he wanted to meditate, so I said "Oh you want to
meditate?" "Oh no", he said "the reason I want to come to the
monastery is because I’ve had an argument with my wife." So he stayed in the
monastery. Three or four days later he came up to me and said, "I feel better now,
can I go home". What a wise thing that was. Instead of going to the bar and getting
drunk, instead of going to his mates and telling them all the rotten things that he
thought his wife had done thereby reinforcing his ill will and resentment, he went to stay
with a group of monks who didn’t say anything about his wife, who were just kind and
peaceful. He thought about what he had been doing in that peaceful, supportive
environment, and after a while he felt much better. This is what a monastery sometimes is:
it’s the counselling centre, the refuge, the place where people come to let go of
their problems. Isn't that better than lingering on the past, especially when we are angry
at something that has happened? When we reinforce the resentment, are we really seeing
what’s going on? Or are we seeing through the perverted glasses of our anger, looking
at the faults in the other person, focussing only on the terrible things they have done to
us, never really seeing the full picture?
One of the things I noticed about the
Cambodian community was that these were all people who had suffered through the Pol Pot
years. I know of a Cambodian man whose wife had been shot by the Khmer Rouge in front of
him, for stealing a mango. She was hungry so she took a mango from a tree. One of the
Khmer Rouge cadres saw her and, without any trial, he pulled out his gun in front of her
husband and shot her dead. When this man was telling me this, I was looking at his face,
looking at his bodily movements, and it was amazing to see that there was no anger, there
was no resentment, there was not even grief there. There was a peaceful acceptance about
what had happened. It shouldn’t have happened but it did.
Letting go of the past is so we can
enjoy the present, so the future can be free. Why is it that we always carry around the
past? Attachment to the past is not a theory, it is an attitude. We can say, "Oh
I’m not attached". Or we can say, "I’m so detached I’m not even
attached to detachment," which is very clever, and sounds very good, but is a lot of
old rubbish. You know if you’re attached if you can’t let go of those
important things that cause you to suffer, that stop you being free. Attachment is a
ball and chain, which you tie around your own legs. No one else ties it around you.
You’ve got the key to free yourselves, but you don’t use it. Why do we limit
ourselves so and why can’t we let go of the future, all the concerns and the worries?
Do you worry about what’s going to happen next, tomorrow, next week, next year? Why
do you do that? How many times have you worried about some exam or some test, or a visit
to the Doctors, or a visit to the Dentist? You can worry yourself sick and when you get
ready to go to the dentist you find they have cancelled your appointment, and you
didn’t have to go anyway!
Things never work out as you expect
them to. Haven’t we learnt yet that the future is so uncertain that it doesn’t
bear worrying about? We never know what’s going to happen next. When we let go of the
past and the future, isn’t that being on the path to deep meditation? Aren’t we
actually learning about how to be at peace, how to be free, how to be content.
These are indications of what
enlightenment means. It means seeing that many of our attachments are based on sheer
stupidity. We just don’t need this. As we develop this meditation deeper, we let go
more and more. The more we let go the more happiness and peace it gives us. This is why
the Buddha called this whole path of Buddhism a gradual training. It’s the path that
leads one on, one step at a time, and at every step you get a prize. That’s why
it’s a very delightful path and the prizes get more delightful and more valuable the
further you go. But even on the first step you get a prize.
I still remember the first time I
meditated. I remember the room. It was at Cambridge University, in the Wordsworth Room at
Kings College. I’d never done any meditation before, so I just sat down there for
five or ten minutes with a few of my mates. It was only ten minutes but I thought "Oh
that was nice", I still remember that feeling. There was something that was
resonating inside of me, telling me that this was a path which was leading somewhere
wonderful. I’d discussed over coffee and over beer with my friends all types of
philosophy, but the "discussions" had always ended in arguments and they
never made me happier. Even the great professors at the university, who you get to
know very well, didn’t seem happy. That was one of the reasons why I didn’t
continue an academic career. They were brilliant in their field but in other ways they
were as stupid as ordinary people. They would have arguments, worry and stress just like
everyone else. And that really struck me. Why in such a famous university, where people
are so intelligent, are they not happy? What’s the point of being clever if it
doesn’t give you happiness? I mean real happiness, real contentment, and real
peace.
Real
contentment and peace
The first person I saw who had
real contentment and peace was Ajahn Chah, my teacher in Thailand. There was something
about that man! I saw what he had and I said to myself, "I want that, I want that
understanding, that peace". People from all over the world would come to see him.
Just because he was a monk didn’t mean that everyone was subservient, obsequious and
always praising him. Some people would go and argue with him and try to catch him out or
even shout at him. I remember a story about the first time he went to England with Ajahn
Sumedho. He went on alms round in Hampstead and as he was walking on alms round, this was
over twenty years ago, this young hooligan came up to this funnily dressed Asian and threw
a punch at him just missing his nose. Ajahn Chah did not know this person was trying to
miss. Then he tried to kick him and just missed. He was just trying to wind up this little
Asian monk in funny clothes. Ajahn Chah didn't know when he was going to be hit. He never
did get hit, because he kept peaceful, kept cool and never got angry. Afterwards, he said
England was a very good place and that he wanted to send all his senior monks over there
to really test them out. As for Ajahn Chah, he had equanimity in practice.
It’s easy saying "I’m
enlightened", but then something happens like that and you run a mile. Another monk
in Hampstead at the time was just going for a walk in the afternoon when he passed a pub.
He didn’t realise at the time that there was a big soccer match between England and
Scotland on that day. It had already finished and the Scots supporters where in the pub
getting drunk. Around this period, there was a popular TV series about a Kung Fu monk who,
when he was small, was called "grasshopper." These sozzled Scots soccer fans
looked through the window of the pub and said "Och it’s wee grasshopper,"
and this monk took fright. These where big Scotsmen and they were very drunk. So he
started running away, and they chased him all the way back to the Temple. "Wee
grasshopper" was running for his life. He lost it. But the sort of practical letting
go that Ajahn Chah did in Hampstead is something which gives you a sense that you are on
the road to enlightenment.
A Gradual
Path
The Heart of Buddhism is a
gradual path, one step after another step, and you do get results. Some people say you
shouldn’t meditate to get results. That’s a lot of hogwash! Meditate to get
results! Meditate to be happy. Meditate to get peace. Meditate to get enlightened, little
by little. But if you’re going for results, be patient. One of the problems
with Westerners is that when they make goals, they are not patient enough. That’s why
they get disillusioned, depressed and frustrated. They don’t give their practice
enough time to mature naturally into enlightenment. It takes time, maybe a few life times
even, so don’t be in a rush. As you walk each step, there is always something you get
out of it. Let go a little and you get freedom and peace. Let go a lot and you feel
bliss. This is how I teach meditation both at my monastery and here. I encourage
meditators to aim for these stages of letting go, these bliss states called Jhana.
Jhanas
Everyone wants to be happy,
and the Jhanas are how you can achieve happiness, I mean real happiness, deep
happiness. The only trouble is these states don’t last very long, only a few hours,
but still they are very attractive. They arise through letting go, real letting
go. In particular they arise through letting go of will, choice, control. It’s a
fascinating thing to experience a deep meditation and understand how it comes about.
Through such an experience you realise that the more you control, the more you crave
because of attachments, the less peaceful you get. But the more you let go, the more
you abandon, the more you get out of the way, the happier you feel. Now this is a
teaching of something very profound, much deeper than you can read in a book or hear in a
talk and certainly much more useful than discussing these things over a coffee table.
You’re actually experiencing something. This is getting towards the heart of
religion, that which people call mysticism. You’re actually experiencing it for your
self. In particular you are letting go of this "controller," this
"doer." Now that is the prime problem for human beings. We can’t stop
messing things up. Very often we should just leave things alone but we can’t, we
don’t. Instead we make a mess. Why can’t you just relax and enjoy yourself
instead of always doing something?
It’s hard to stop in meditation,
but the more you stop the more rewards you get, the more peace you get. When you let go in
meditation, let go the will, let go of the control, when you stop talking to yourself, you
get inner silence. How many of you are fed up yet with this racket that goes on inside
your head all the time? How many of you sometimes can’t get to sleep at night when
there’s no noise from the neighbours but there is something even louder between your
ears. Yak, Yak, Yak, Worry, Worry, Worry, Think, Think, Think! This is the problem with
human beings, when it’s time to think they can’t think clearly and when
it’s time to stop thinking they can’t be at peace. When we learn how to meditate
we get this sense of being more balanced, and we know how to let go. We now how to let go
to the point where all thoughts disappear. These thoughts are just commentaries,
they’re just descriptions. The difference between thought and reality is the
difference between, say, reading a book about New York and going to New York. Which is
more real? When you’re there, you smell the air, you feel the atmosphere, you sense
the character, all of which are things you can’t write in a book. The truth is
always silent. The lie is always with words.
When the
Body Disappears
Remember "con men,"
"con women" as well. These con men can sell you anything! There’s one
living in your mind right now, and you believe every word he says! His name is Thinking.
When you let go of that inner talk and get silent, you get happy. Then when you let go of
the movement of the mind and stay with the breath, you experience even more delight. Then
when you let go of the body ,all these five senses disappear and you’re really
blissing out. This is original Buddhism. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch completely
vanish. This is like being in a sensory deprivation chamber but much better. But it’s
not just silence, you just don’t hear anything. It’s not just blackness, you
just don’t see anything. It’s not just a feeling of comfort in the body, there
is no body at all.
When the body disappears that really
starts to feel great. You know of all those people who have out of the body experiences?
When the body dies, every person has that experience, they float out of the body. And one
of the things they always say is it’s so peaceful, so beautiful, so blissful.
It’s the same in meditation when the body disappears, it’s so peaceful, so
beautiful, so blissful when you are free from this body. What’s left? Here
there’s no sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. This is what the Buddha called the mind
in deep meditation. When the body disappears what is left is the mind.
I gave a simile to a monk the other
night. Imagine an Emperor who is wearing a long pair of trousers and a big tunic.
He’s got shoes on his feet, a scarf around the bottom half of his head and a hat on
the top half of his head. You can’t see him at all because he’s completely
covered in five garments. It’s the same with the mind. It’s completely covered
with sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. So people don’t know it. They just know
the garments. When they see the Emperor, they just see the robes and the garments. They
don’t know who lives inside them. And so it is no wonder they’re confused about
what is life, what is mind, who is this inside of here, were did I come from? Why? What am
I supposed to be doing with this life? When the five senses disappear, it’s like
unclothing the Emperor and seeing what is actually in here, what’s actually running
the show, who’s listening to these words, who’s seeing, who’s feeling life,
who this is. When the five senses disappear, you’re coming close to the answer to
those questions.
What you’re seeing in such deep
meditation is that which we call "mind," (in Pali it’s called Citta).
The Buddha used this beautiful simile. When there is a full moon on a cloudy night, even
though it’s a full moon, you can hardly see it. Sometimes when the clouds are thin,
you can see this hazy shape shining though. You know there is something there. This is
like the meditation just before you’ve entered into these profound states. You know
there is something there, but you can’t quite make it out. There’s still some
"clothes" left. You’re still thinking and doing, feeling the body or
hearing sounds. But there does come a time, and this is the Buddha’s simile, when the
moon is released from the clouds and there in the clear night sky you can see the
beautiful full disc of the moon shining brilliantly, and you know that’s the moon.
The moon is there; the moon is real, and it’s not just some sort of side effect of
the clouds. This is what happens in meditation when you see the mind. You see clearly that
the mind is not some side effect of the brain. You see the mind, and you know the mind.
The Buddha said that the mind released is beautiful, is brilliant, is radiant. So not only
are these blissful experiences, they’re meaningful experiences as well.
How many people may have heard about
rebirth but still don’t really believe it? How can rebirth happen? Certainly the body
doesn’t get reborn. That’s why when people ask me where do you go when you die,
"one of two places" I say "Fremantle or Karrakatta" that’s where
the body goes! [3] But is that where the mind goes? Sometimes people are so stupid in this
world, they think the body is all there is, that there is no mind. So when you get
cremated or buried that’s it, that’s done with, all has ended. The only way you
can argue with this view is by developing the meditation that the Buddha achieved under
the Bodhi tree. Then you can see the mind for yourself in clear awareness - not in some
hypnotic trance, not in dullness - but in the clear awareness. This is knowing the mind
Knowing
the Mind
When you know that mind, when
you see it for yourself, one of the results will be an insight that the mind is
independent of this body. Independence means that when this body breaks up and dies, when
it’s cremated or when it’s buried, or however it’s destroyed after death,
it will not affect the mind. You know this because you see the nature of the mind. That
mind which you see will transcend bodily death. The first thing which you will see
for yourself, the insight which is as clear as the nose on your face, is that there is
something more to life than this physical body that we take to be me. Secondly you can
recognise that that mind, essentially, is no different than that process of consciousness
which is in all beings. Whether it’s human beings or animals or even insects, of
any gender, age or race, you see that that which is in common to all life is this mind,
this consciousness, the source of doing.
Once you see that, you have much more
respect for your fellow beings. Not just respect for your own race, your own tribe or your
own religion, not just for human beings, but for all beings. It’s a wonderfully
high-minded idea. "May all beings be happy and well and may we respect all nations,
all peoples, even all beings." However this is how you achieve that! You truly get
compassion only when we see that others are fundamentally just as ourselves. If you think
that a cow is completely different from you, that cows don’t think like human beings,
then it’s easy to eat one. But can you eat your grandmother? She’s too much like
you. Can you eat an ant? Maybe you’d kill an ant because you think that ants
aren’t like you. But if you look carefully at ants, they are no different. In a
forest monastery living out in the bush, close to nature, one of the things you become so
convinced of is that animals have emotions and , especially, feel pain. You begin to
recognise the personality of the animals, of the kookaburras, of the mice, the ants, and
the spiders. Each one of those spiders has a mind just like you have. Once you see that
you can understand the Buddha’s compassion for all beings. You can also
understand how rebirth can occur between all species - not just human beings to human
beings, but animals to humans, humans to animals. You can understand also how the mind is
the source of all this.
The mind can exist even without a body
in the realms of ghosts and angels (what we call in Buddhism Devas). It becomes
very clear to you how they exist, why they exist, what they are. These are insights and
understandings which come from deep meditation. But more than that, when you know the
nature of the mind then you know the nature of consciousness. You know the nature of
stillness. You know the nature of life. You understand what makes this mind go round and
round and round, what makes this mind seek rebirth. You understand the law of Kamma.
The Three
Knowledges
The First Knowledge. When
the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree, according to tradition he gained three
knowledge’s. The first knowledge was the memory of past lives. When you get close to
the mind, there are certain powers that come with that experience. The powers are no more
than an ability, a dexterity with the use of the mind. It’s like the difference
between a dog that has been running wild and a dog that has been well trained. You can
tell the trained dog to go and pick up the newspaper. It wags its tail and goes and picks
up the newspaper for you. Some people have got their dogs so well trained that they can
actually pick up the telephone. Maybe they could answer the telephone as well, then that
would really save you a lot of time!
When you get to these deep states of
meditation often, the mind becomes well trained. One of the things which the Buddha did
(and which you can do when you get into deep meditation) is tell the mind to go back to
the past. What’s your earliest memory? Go back further and further and further. Monks
who do this get early memories of their childhood. They even get memories of the moment
they were born. Sometimes people say that when you’re born, you have no consciousness
because the neuron’s aren’t developed yet, or something like that. But when you
re-experience your birth, you know that that is just not true. When the memory of your own
birth appears, it is just like you are there and you experience all feelings of that
birth. Then you can ask yourself for an even earlier memory, and then you get back into
your past lives. That’s what the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree. Through meditation
you know rebirth, you know your own past lives. This is just what happens with the mind
and you know how it happens. That was the first knowledge that the Buddha had.
The Second Knowledge. The second
knowledge was to know how you are reborn. Why you are reborn. Where you are reborn. This
is the Law of Kamma. Someone was showing me a book today which, unfortunately, we
had for free distribution but which I hadn’t seen before. It had some really weird
ideas in it about the Law of Kamma. I think what it said was that if you read one
of the Suttas while you are lying on the ground, you will be reborn with a bad
back, or something like that. Just stupid ideas! Kamma is much more complex than
that and it depends mostly upon the quality of your intention. The movement of the mind
itself is what determines the Kamma, not just the act, but why and where it came
from. You can see this in meditation, but also you can see just how that mind gets
fully liberated.
The Third Knowledge. The third
knowledge was the ending of suffering. With understanding of The Four Noble Truths, you
realise the Way and what enlightenment really means. It means freedom! The mind is
liberated, especially liberated from the body, liberated not just from the suffering of
the body but liberated from the happiness of the body as well. That means that there
is no more inclination for sexuality, no fear of pain, no grief over the destruction of
the body, no ill will and no fear of criticism. Why do people get worried about bad words
that are said? Only because of ego. They take something to be themselves. Just
imagine for a moment being free from all of those things. What would that be like, no
fear, no craving, no need to move from this moment - In other words nothing missing,
and nothing left to do, nowhere to go because you’re completely happy right here no
matter what happens! This is what we mean by enlightenment. This meditation is the
source of the Buddha’s enlightenment and the source of every person’s
enlightenment.
There is no enlightenment without that
meditation. This is why Buddhism is far more than a psychotherapy. It’s far more than
a philosophy. It’s far more than a religion. It goes deep into the nature of being,
and it is accessible to all people. You know how to meditate. Teachers are giving all the
instructions free without any charge. Do you want to do it? Usually the answer is,
"Maybe tomorrow but not today." Never the less because the seeds have been
placed in the mind, because the meditation has begun already, there is an interest.
Already there is a sense of this enlightenment, a fascination for peace, and you will not
be able to resist that path. You may be able to put it off for a while, maybe for
lifetimes, but it’s a strange thing that, as someone said to me many years ago, "When
you hear these teachings you can’t discard them." You just can’t forget
them. They aren’t telling you what to believe. They aren’t giving you a theory
which is merely rational. But they are pointing you to something which you can understand
and experience for yourself, and you get intuitions of this the deeper you go.
The Buddha was a very remarkable
person, his peacefulness, compassion and wisdom, were legendary. There is something about
enlightenment that is very attractive. In the same way there is something about freedom
that you cannot ignore. That is why little by little, you will understand what Buddhism is
all about. You won’t understand Buddhism from the books nor will you understand
Buddhism from what I say. You’ll only understand Buddhism in your own experiences
of peaceful meditation. That’s where Buddhism is taught. So have fun with your
meditation and don’t be afraid of enlightenment. Get in there, enjoy it, and you
will have no regrets.
That’s what Buddhism is. That’s
its heart – meditation and enlightenment. That’s its meaning. I hope you can
understand some of this. I can say no more because the time has gone. I’ll complete
my talk now.
Notes
[1].Wowser: n. extreme puritan, kill-joy,
teetotaller, spoil-sport."The Australian Oxford Dictionary" (New Budget
Edition). Herron Publications: West End, Qld. 1998
[2].The AFL code is also the acronym for the most
popular form of football, ‘Aussie Rules’, in Australia.
[3].Fremantle and Karrakatta are the two main
cemeteries/crematoriums serving the whole of Perth.
Sincere thanks to Dr. Binh Anson for
providing us with this article.