Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Amy Miller begins by inviting reflection on the Buddha’s life story as preparation for discussing the Four Noble Truths. She frames the Buddha’s journey as a search for answers to universal questions all beings face: Who am I? Why do we suffer? How can I be happy? What happens after death? She explores what it means to be awake — not merely the ordinary waking state, but the permanent elimination of mental disturbances and afflictions that characterize ordinary life. She contrasts the constant cycle of expectation and disappointment, irritation and agitation, with the Buddha’s achievement of nirvana and full enlightenment, where one has an expanded view of reality, an open heart, and capacity to serve others. Finally, she reflects on how most of us miss the present moment by dwelling in past or future, and how true awakeness means being fully attentive to what is happening now and to the needs of others around us.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1.07 Reflecting on the Buddhas Life Story – Copy.mp3
UUID: 41513bca-9599-43cc-a98c-6154edc78953
Teacher: Amy Miller
Collection: Nutshell no details (Amy Miller)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~747
So before we discuss the Four Noble Truths, it’s very nice to reflect on this story of the Buddha so far. And it’s interesting also to ask yourself, what sort of questions are in common to all beings? What are the big meaning of life questions that human beings face? In some cultures, people ask, Who am I? Where did I come from?
Why do we suffer? How can I be happy? What happens when I die? And how can I make my life meaningful? So just take a moment right now to reflect on this passage of the Buddha’s life up to his initial teaching and how you can relate some things in your life, your journey of exploration, your education, the mistakes you’ve made, the pain you’ve encountered, and the various discoveries it has led you to of deeper awakening.
So the Buddha’s life exemplifies this search to answer these questions. And Prince Siddhartha did not start out as a Buddha. This is also significant. But his life exemplifies a search for the answers to the big questions in life. As an ordinary being, and for many lifetimes, even before he was a prince, he was not so different from ourselves.
Some of us come from great affluence. There are many countries in the world where it’s very easy to obtain everything one wants. And what most of us want is to meet with happiness again and again and to disconnect from the unpleasant and suffering aspects of life, such as death, illness, poverty, suffering. So also to go a little bit into the name of the Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, is who Prince Siddhartha became. So Sakya was the Buddha’s clan name, sometimes called Prince of the Sakyas.
Muni means able one, and Buddha means awakened one. So let’s look. What does it mean to be awake? So we certainly understand what it means to wake up in the morning from sleeping, a very common experience of being awake. But to be fully awake, to actually be a Buddha, means you have permanently eliminated all your mental disturbances.
So you may find through your day, through your life, At times, we become irritated. At times, we become excited. We become disturbed when we don’t get what we want. We become agitated when we get what we don’t want. And all through life there are these expectations and disappointments over and over.
So to be able to permanently eliminate these disturbed states of mind can be a very, very pleasant experience. You can just imagine. This is a path where we would call attaining liberation nirvana, where you permanently bring about an end to all your mental afflictions. Some mental afflictions are very minor, and some are huge. We become enraged can be a huge disturbance.
Or we’re passing through a large store and we have some slight attraction to some of the goods there. Many different ways the mind shifts. And then building on this liberation, you also clear away subtle obscurations that still exist, that still linger, and finally reach this state of full enlightenment where you are fully awake, which means you have a completely expanded view of reality, completely open heart and mind experience. In complete service to all others, every moment you breathe. There’s a very profound state to be awake like that, like the Buddha.
Because we notice sometimes in our waking moments, when we are not sleeping, let’s say, that we’re not really very mindful, meaning we put our keys down somewhere in the house, and then we need to leave the house, and we can’t find our keys, or our glasses, or a piece of clothing, and so on. Because in the moment we placed it somewhere, we were not mindful. And the mind meaning full of the awakened state. We were not present at that moment. We missed a present moment.
When you are present, you can be fully attentive to reality, and in particular, to whomever may need help. But for most of us, we’re racing around with very little space to pay attention to the present. So we do things while our mind is elsewhere. So not really awake, not awake to the present moment. And you have an opportunity to experience a fuller potential of yourself than dwelling in the past, thinking about the future that’s not here yet, and missing out on now.
This is part of what it means to be awake.