Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Choedak explores calm abiding meditation as the foundation for genuine compassion, addressing a persistent question from the retreat: how to work skilfully with pain during practice. He begins by stressing that intellectual understanding of emptiness only takes root through meditation, and that without accumulated merit and purification, realizations remain abstract. Moving into the main theme, he shows how preliminary practices—devotion, humility, loving-kindness, and the prayer “May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness”—build the mental stability and sincere intention needed for progress. He then tackles pain head-on, arguing that pain is not an obstacle to calm abiding but its raw material. Rather than resist pain through distraction or suppression, practitioners should understand its causes (chiefly craving for comfort) and transform their relationship to it—seeing pain as a teacher and friend, a gateway to compassion for all beings who suffer. He teaches the qualified round of breathing as a technique to relocate tension and offers Tonglen (taking-on) practice as an advanced method for those with strong bodhichitta. Throughout, he emphasizes that pain teaches humility, and that true calm abiding means remaining unshaken and stable in the presence of difficulty, not fleeing into false peace.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 TtT.mp3
UUID: 0bab806f-8ca4-4094-b75e-4cbf64011f7e
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Calm Abiding (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~6,599
You can see the teaching on the emptiness is not going to be possible to think in the really intelligent thinking mind unless they meditate. Otherwise it becomes intellectually just irreconcilable, I suggest, and hypothesis that they can’t understand. One who meditates can understand the teaching of emptiness in great degree of appreciation. You can see the emptiness of body, you can see the emptiness of feeling, you can see the emptiness of thought, and now you can see the emptiness of phenomena. And it doesn’t take long to to be able to see emptiness of self.
We may not be ready for that, but but it does does bring a clarity there, and then when we can see the emptiness self, it totally liberates from all, from karma and defilements in the long run. Unless one has accumulated sufficient merit and wisdom, of course it’s difficult to contain that realization of selflessness even intellectually, let alone emotionally. So that’s why we have to accumulate the stock of wholesome preliminary practices. Even when you do the calm abiding meditation, we have a lot of dullness and agitation or negative thoughts comes, they obstruct us. To get rid of those negativities, we do those preliminary practices like devotion, humility, and compassion, loving kindness, either through prayer, yeah, or through action, or through service.
Whatever we do, we find ourselves as a result of ourselves exposing to these powerful suggestions to make ourselves more fruitful with ourselves. We find ourselves more generous than we are. We find ourselves more forgiving than we have been. And happiness they provide is enormously, you know, unimaginable. You can’t imagine the sheer benefit of it.
You can’t possibly begin to think the the the long term benefit of it. Now, when you keep doing that, when you keep doing that, you find so happiness, so much happiness by doing those wholesome ways. This is a stock of merit. A faith comes naturally. One who’s faithful is easily happy, you know, is happy with what he’s got, happy with what he thinks.
He’s not craving so much. He he’s already content about it. She doesn’t go looking for things. She increases the value of things she has already. When one has stock of merit, the faith, the practice of preliminary practices such as doing prostration, reciting the prayers of refuge, reciting the prayer of the enlightenment thought.
May all beings have happiness and cause of happiness. Try to mean it really, Send it as goodwill. We all send cards to people when we when we think about them. We we send them a card and we wish them well. And actually, a card does a lot of job.
When a person receives the card, they’re happy. They know it’s empty. There’s only a card. But they’re happy and empty. Are looking at the scribble on top of that.
It says, may you be well and may you be happy. Nice gesture. Nice goodwill. I like that. It’s a merit.
Being able to have faith in this kind of power of good thoughts, kind thoughts, and destructive ability of ill thoughts, ill will, and not fall into the ill will category, but goodwill category. Therefore, the very beginning, may all beings be happy and have the causes of happiness. You might even say that hundred thousand times. Actually, the early Kadampa masters did just that. They went to Lhasa and Jokhang Monastery, sat in front of the pillar and recite this hundreds of thousand times.
Then only did they become Kadampa masters. They surely stock, you know, stock of stock means really really rich, isn’t it? You have to do it so many times to extract all the essence. And if you do, may all living beings have happiness and cause happiness. First line, when you say it first time, it it’s just a nice idea.
Who wrote this? It’s good. Okay. Okay. Yeah, it’s good.
You say the second time, it will definitely bring a new meaning. May all beings have have happiness and cause happiness. Why did I say that twice? It makes you to feel have an affinity with that, you know. It’s not the writer’s suggestion.
It’s also trying to make you to author it. You to be just as innovative and creative. Because if you don’t say more than three times, there’s not much in it. If you say more than three times, it totally becomes your own creativity, your own goodwill. You know when you say may all beings, that’s a whole lot of thing to say, you know.
May you be well and happy, it’s quite easy to say. May all beings have happiness. Do you really mean it? Now, aren’t there some exceptions? It’s quite good.
Beings. So, it it it presses the button of aversion. Not him. Wouldn’t mind, but you know what he did to me. That kind of thing, you know.
So it’s very powerful to say this many many times. It really really brings out our inability, our sincerity brings out many many times, hundreds of thousands. It’s called immeasurable thoughts. Just remember that. Say once it it accrues immeasurable merit and particularly you feel it.
It resonates in your cells and muscles and marrows and it can completely well some feelings that you never knew how to have. Unless we cultivate these things, it is quite easy to get carried away in meditation and not actually progress properly. That’s why it is important to purify those gross obscuration due to aversion and resentment and blame. Loving kindness is very powerful meditation. Whether you recite Om Mani Padme Hum, receive its transmission and do its practice.
Receive its trans or just simply recite these prayers. May all beings have happiness and cause of happiness. May they be free from suffering and cause of suffering. May they have happiness that is devoid of suffering. May they abide in equanimity free from aversion and attachment to those far and near.
And say that again, and again, and again, and again. And try to see the evocative nature of these lyrics of songs of compassion, songs of loving kindness. Only when you’re calm, you can say these things continuously. Calm abiding for what? You know, for having great compassion in one’s for oneself and to others.
Because we are not calm even compassion doesn’t register in our mind. So, calmness, yes, through sitting meditation, but outside in the world when we are out and about, we must have not only mindfulness of the phenomena, but the suffering of the phenomena, suffering of the most living beings, the phenomena of suffering. You know, we become so exposed to the phenomena of suffering. There is no real being completely intact and safe and untouched by sufferings, And that compassion, that calmness completely gives you a spacious mind which accommodates the well-being of others. Why mindfulness why we have mindfulness phenomena if we don’t understand suffering?
We’re not there to readily jumping into mind mindfulness of emptiness of all phenomena, not quite. Suffering is real for beings, and for us to be able to deal with suffering beings and ourselves included, we must be pragmatic and do something about it. You know, we can use the analogy of everything as illusion, sure, it also helps, but there must be some more effective thing you can cultivate about sufferings. When you’re deeply in calm, meditative mood, you know, when the Buddha left as a prince his home, he was not understood as a compassionate man. He was understood as a prince who didn’t want to fulfill his father’s wishes and just run away.
And when he was meditating, his five five companions abandoned him. They had a lot of bad reports about him. They said he eats too much or sleeps too much. They they were they were making all sorts of they they thought he was stick with some rules and Buddha was a bit flexible and hence his discovery of the middle way, but his disciples or companions were very rigid. But only did his prolonged years of meditation as a result of which he later on taught, he taught about noble truth of suffering, day suffering.
One must know the suffering, one must learn how to end the suffering by discovering its causes. There is a way to make the complete extinction of the suffering. So that very Four Noble Truths is not some kind of elementary teachings, it is the very fundamental teaching of compassion, because subject matter was suffering. How would the teaching of compassion feature so high if you don’t understand suffering? Compassion isn’t a teaching in itself unless you don’t unless you understand suffering.
The more you understand suffering, there’s that much room you have to give rise to compassion. So so therefore mindful ness of phenomena because mindfulness of sentient beings, their nature, their existence, how they are about, how they are faring in their life. Are they trying not every day to find happiness? Yes. They are.
Everybody getting up very early and just hold the huge highways completely blocked. Everybody’s so busy, so working so hard. You know, you know, admittedly in search of happiness. So, it’s not that beings aren’t trying. They’re putting all the effort to what they think is best.
Only if they had the wisdom and compassion, the spice of happiness is missing. So the food is very bland. Whatever they do, they feel bored, they don’t really like to do, but they have to do. There’s no urge of compassion, there’s no mighty power of loving kindness that makes them to do with love of giving to somebody, or caring, or helping people. Carpenters are not happily making the benches.
Delivery guys are just banging the truck doors, hitting the boxes on the way. They’re not happy, they’re not doing happily. They’re delivering a lot of breads every day, but not parting it with happiness, not giving it with loving kindness. I’m sure there are a lot of people do that. A lot of people do deliver letters.
One box. Another box. Another. A lot of effort. If there was a dose of loving kindness, loving kindness, very nice.
He’s doing his job. He gets his pay, but is he happy? This is the concern of the meditation on phenomena. And when you become so aware of your body and feeling and thoughts, then a calm abiding meditator cannot help but develop this amazingly empowering emotion of compassion. And your your affinity to living beings has increased in an immeasurable way.
There is no stranger to you. Your inability to touch and benefit others may be limited by time and space, but your knowledge of the suffering isn’t. And the more you have this universal self understanding of the prevalence of suffering, then that much compassion you care to cultivate. And so that the very motivation at the very beginning, may all beings have happiness, cause of happiness. And at the end of the meditation calm abiding and developing from mindful body to feeling into the thought and the phenomena.
Nature of the phenomena in the world is suffering, suffering world, nature whole world is suffering world. And then you realize how this practice of calm abiding can teach me to stop creating causes of suffering, and to try to create a possible causes of happiness. And then you can see how your own practice of calm abiding stops ourselves to to to stop creating causes of unhappiness. That’s what the reading we have got is. Yeah.
Yeah. I do, say, think so that my conduct brings no harm to others and I do not become a victim of what I do, say, and think. That’s what the end really, the gist of what we’re asking from doing pliancy on body meditation. By doing a by becoming a calm abiding meditator, which we follow thus in the words of the sages such as the fully enlightened one, Śākyamūni, by the way, word wise sages is the Buddha we’re referring By respecting the words of wisdom, that’s the teaching that the Buddha gave, the higher trainings of discipline, meditation, and wisdom. Let me remember skillful ways to apply them.
Apply what? Apply calmness. Apply to see thoughts and feelings, and not execute them before examining them carefully. In everything I do, it says, whether it’s physical act of of of the words that we might say, or thoughts that we may give rise to, whatever I do same thing. Why?
Why you have to be so careful all of a sudden is so that my conduct brings no harm to others. Now you’re considerate of others as well as and I do not become victim, I do the same thing. So there’s a huge, huge realization one one one now takes takes control of. And this kind of resolution resolution is very good to take take in everyday life situation when when you develop mindfulness though these four factors. So in that spirit, we’ll conclude here.
The schedule somewhat changed because of the the hearing session that went a little bit longer than we had time for. So therefore we have one session during which we will tonight do Avalokiteśvara practice of compassion. And before doing that, I meant to say my bit about the sharing session and also some of the questions you raised during this session. My own story to sharing is this year’s retreat is a bit unsettling for myself because they have another session going on over the other side, is quite a big, very different from what you’re doing here. So therefore, I’m sort of not having enough of myself to be at either of the two places, let alone to both places.
Not even at one place, I’m not completely there. I don’t know whether you noticed it or not. Anyway, so much of the calm abiding meditation sitting session I didn’t get to do much. So I don’t have any of the complaints about pain. And but when I’m doing the practice with them, of course, we don’t have time for pain.
We got rid of a lot of other visualization and being like this. All these tantric vajrayana practices that keep us very very busy and there’s no time for pain at all. Pain just realizes there’s all this vajrayana masters up there. Don’t go there. That’s a unique part of vajrayana practice when you do it.
It’s just you don’t have time for the dullness or agitation or pain because you just get so engrossed in what is happening. So in many ways, yeah, I I I don’t have the on the same kind of experience you have. But just to come back to some of the important points or questions that you raised, Main question really was about pain and it is to no surprise really. That’s why it’s so relevant that we do this practice of compassion tonight. Pain is prevalent whether we are meditating or not.
And often the pains that we meet in meditation are more than physical pains, more than just posture. I’m sure a lot of those physical pains may be resolved by using the techniques of exhalation and changing the posture. And quite a few of you have tips that changing postures and things that you can make a slight change or movement in your back and correcting the posture. Try to focus on something so that you are not totally too close to the pain. It’s important to look at the various ways that you can deal with the pain.
Pain definitely. There are some temporal pains, but the mental pain, the mind that resents pain is the more, the resenter is the more of the pain, the root of the pain that keeps ourselves vulnerable to even small physical sensations. When you have better things to focus, the pains become much smaller than they appear. And sometimes our mind becomes very comfort seeking mood and because of that, as soon as you want to be comfortable, the pain says, okay, this is a good time to go. And it just straight away comes in there.
It is important that that’s the very reason I mentioned that when focus enough time for the body, then use that qualified round of breathing. Because when you’re starting to have some physical tensions and difficulties, then it’s good to use that exhalation and then inhalation and then the retention, this qualified round of breathing. The very technique whether it’s taught in the yoga or whatever, the inhalation of inhaling the air that I suggest that is so white in color that you visualize. It totally sort of saturate your whole interior, fills in your whole seventy two thousand channels and particularly goes part of the body where there is a tension or pain or registers and they try to dissolve it and dissipate it and almost it becomes completely and floats on the on the upper part of the body. When the pain most of the pain seems to be lower part of the body, when you just fill in the the whole positive inhaled energy of positive thought that totally brings up and then use it as exhalation.
So this technique, when I say qualified round breathing, was particularly given as the remedy for those pains, relieving those pains. In many ways you’re trying to make the pain more impermanent, trying to assist the pain to become impermanent because you’re helping it to relocate. When your mind becomes so protective of parts of the body that is in pain, it actually swells in no time. So it is important to relocate the pain by using that inhalation, and inhalation causes the floating of the pain from the lower part to the higher part of the body. Using it is important to, if you can’t think of the inhaled air as a filling as you want it to be, just think of the inhaled air as a liquid.
The liquid just goes in and fills your whole body and whatever it was, stains or dirt, toxic in the body, which just floats up. It helps a lot to visualize that how it relocates the pain from the bottom part of the body to the upper part of body. And then you exhale, it’s lot easier to bring it out because you’re on your way out anyway. Yeah. I use this analogy of if you’re going out, take the bin out, you know.
But you have to make sure the bin is near the door because otherwise So it helps that image of doing that. Of course, the Tonglen in meditation is is is can also be used, you know. And the whole idea of when you cannot when you’re not able to release those pain by way of doing this qualified round of breathing and then you realize, oh, maybe I should reverse this by taking on sufferings of others upon myself since I already got and it wouldn’t make a big difference anyway. So, you know, let all the pain pain ripen upon me. So that’s a plan means to take, to accept pain of other people.
And so whether people are familiar with this or not is a is a matter, but those people who are familiar, you definitely can try. There’s no no harm in in trying that, but as long as you know the technique is correct and have the right motivation. Not only when you have pain, you take pain of others. It’s probably not the best kind of technique. If you are used in taking pains of others while you have no pain of your own difficulty happening in the surface, but you know there’s a lot of pain of others, then you just meditate on compassion then take the pain.
If you’re used to doing that then it wouldn’t be too difficult I think to take pain while you’ve got a pain pain on yourself anyway because otherwise it appears that you all of a sudden resorting to Tonglen in order to get rid of your own pain by excusing the thinking that you are taking other people’s pain. So it’s important to get the right kind of hierarchy of right as I would say, right step to take, you know. If you’re not so used to taking pain of others, when you know somebody is very hurt and very sick or whatever it is and when you hear the story, and then straight away you can develop compassion and use the technique of Tonglen to take their sufferings in your at your home or whenever you go, you hurt somebody’s life and difficulties in the world or whatever it is, and then you do the Tonglen meditation. Not simply to get rid of your own suffering as a purpose. So that aspect of motivation has to be correct.
Pain generally speaking is the idea of pain being transient and pain being a teacher. It’s important to give meaning to pain, significance to pain. If disapprove of the pain as if something you shouldn’t have and how can I quickly recover from this and what can I do? Maybe I should do Tonglen. If you do that then all what you’re doing is trying to think, trying to get rid of something that will never become your friend.
And this is what I think that you can’t kill a friend, you know. So to make the pain as your teacher, to make the pain as your friend, you’ve got to get to know about it very well before you destroy it too quickly. And you might be able to get rid of the cause of the pain rather than the pain itself. So it’s always going back to the four noble truths, the four noble truths. When you have pain, you ask what is the cause of the pain.
The question isn’t whether there is pain or not, where is it or where isn’t. And your mind says it’s somewhere there. But the question is whether the mind knows the cause of the pain. If your attachment to comfort, if that attachment to I want a meditation, calm and no pain and no distraction, I want to be calm and peaceful, you idolize the meditation, you become very biased to a form of meditation that’s never going to happen. And so you almost made up mind that I’m going to fight pain.
I’m going to, you know, maybe flee pain too. But neither of them work very well because you develop aversion to pain. So the whole idea is to make the pain more friendlier to yourself. You’ve got to see the meaning of pain. Buddha said noble truth of suffering, you know, is that if you know the pain it ennobles you.
It ennobles you to the extent of knowing the truth of the pain is that you know, you learn to look for the cause of the pain, the underlying cause of the pain, not just some kind of circumstantial cause of the pain. Oh, I’m sitting like this therefore I have pain, I know that. If you do that then of course you’re not dealing with the cause of the pain. Of course you will deal with it just for the temporal pain but you wouldn’t really know the root cause of the pain in that regard. So it is important to see what is the root cause of the pain, which is craving.
Craving to sit comfortably. Craving to sit well without any difficulty. And it’s never known in the world that anything can be gained without pain. And when you don’t give meaning to pain, we tend to reject it very quickly. So that’s why if you can elevate the if you can sort of promote the role of pain to a role of teacher and then you have the humility, Then you develop the humbleness and the significance of its existence, significance of its existence.
When you have that, then you see the very techniques that you have taught becomes the very tool that assists you to see it as a teacher. Because otherwise the pain becomes demonized and you’re making it very ugly as the pain continues it becomes uglier so to speak. Your aversion just grows with it. Because of that the longer you sit the less you will enjoy. And meditation must be must be that you should have a good time having a fight or having having having some disagreement with the pain, know.
Almost how much the pain is teaching me. That kind of attitude. It’s just like you see this as someone who is really challenging you and is teaching you to bring the best out of you that hasn’t come forth yet. And usually in worse circumstances presses us to bring the best in us if we have one. So if you do that, this is why it is important to give meaning to pain.
Remember the Buddha said noble truth of pain, noble truth of suffering. He didn’t say the demon of pain. He never said it. He said noble truth of pain. It teaches us the truth.
If people cherish truth it teaches us the truth meaning the origin of it. If you know the cause of it then you know you know how to stop that. And you might find it at that very level, the very origin of suffering is all craving and here I’m probably a bit too attached to having no pain and wanting to have just calm. The calm abiding itself is about dealing with pain and staying calm without losing to the pain. This is what I’m turning around your relationship with pain that was hostile and that was something you have resentment and not liking.
But turning it around and make it as a friend. And that way you realize how beneficial it is. You learn how to capitalize it. If you learn how to capitalize the pain then then of course the pain doesn’t become an obstacle. It becomes a stepping stone for the next stage of the progress.
And it is important also to have a little bit farsighted vision, the purpose for which I’m sitting. If you see how comfortable I am, how difficult I’m going now, you always need to look at what it will turn it into, what it will turn into rather than what how that almost we get this poor vision thinking it’s going to stay like this the rest of my time. When you’re doing that, of course, you’re making it, you know, grow, if you like, hatch. But when you see that it’s constantly in a constant flux, even the pain itself constantly changing, particularly if you allow the circulation of body and your visualization and your breathing, and when you invoke all those techniques, of course, you are not only learning from the pain but you are actually getting stronger with pain. In Buddhism they talk about patience of tolerance of non retaliation, meaning not resisting and not developing aversion to the cause of the immediate trouble.
And why you’re able to develop that tolerance is you’re finding reason, how you can find a reason, more reason to be tolerant than the reason you think is better to react to it. So if you can just bear with it for a few more moments, there may be an opening all of a sudden in the middle of the pain. People call it realization. In the middle of the pain they have a realization. And that realization usually is called the second one.
The second one is tolerance of acceptance of pain. When you accept pain. When you accept pain, it’s a lot easier to accept pain by thinking of the prevalence of pain, the suffering that is all different parts of the world or whatever. We are sitting and doing meditation to attain enlightenment, remember? We said may all beings have happiness, the cause of happiness.
So so if if if I may it be just for me to have a little numb legs to bring happiness to all beings, so be it. Even if I lose my leg, that’s okay. Type of courage needs to be invoked because that’s the meaning of the prayer that you said. So, you know, so we by the way said three times, you know, so it’s good to remember why we said that, you know. And and when you said it a few times, then you remember, that’s what I said that, that may all beings have free be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
Here I got the suffering. And what are the causes by the way? You said to me, all beings be free from causes of suffering. Just tell me, don’t tell me about the cause of suffering of all beings, but just for yourself. Just tell me this is the cause of suffering of yourself, mate.
Tell me. Nama, come on, tell me. And he’s, oh, that prayer was easy to say but difficult to practice, isn’t it? And then you realize, yeah, what is the cause of my suffering of this pain? You know, I’m attached to comfort.
I don’t want to sit like this. I wish I could sit anywhere I like. Why I have to sit like this if this was meditation? It’s not for me. You know, those kind of rebelliousness comes and we listen to it.
We become easily dissuaded by this childish self, the child self that we don’t want to identify ourselves with. And it is it is that it is that that one need to understand. Then the whole idea of prevalence of pain, you know, prevalence of pain is pain is suffered. We have pain wherever we are. So it’s no no no no different what what what I do.
But here I have come here to learn and to to find the causes of the pain. Calm abiding is to you only abiding calmly when you are when you are not losing your sense of stamina and resilience. Then only you’re abiding. If you’re alarmed by pain, you’re not you’re calm abiding. You’re denying calmness to occur.
You’re denying the calm. Because as soon as pain, sign of pain comes, you become totally offended by that and your calmness just doesn’t exist. So it is important to see what makes calm possible is its opposites. Agitation, pain, distraction, thoughts, all of these things are very wonderful raw material for the fire of calm abiding to burn. And when you get that, then you’re giving meaning to the pain and it is not as ostracized by you when comes.
It’s almost as a welcome. Oh, pain, please come in. I’m here waiting for you. We have a good session with you. You’ve got to have that kind of mind which actually receives the pain.
Pain shouldn’t be alarm, cause of alarm. And one should say, this is the very reason. Here are sentient beings of pain. I am meditating here to allow myself to develop compassion. And I know how difficult it is to have compassion, therefore I’m learning to develop calm abiding.
And but I get here pain instead. And so and that that then will motivate yourself to develop compassion because compassion is generated when you become exposed to pain and suffering. When you understand them though, when you fear, when you fear suffering, then the pain doesn’t generate compassion. You want it to run away. You want to deny.
You want to see how you can cover it up quickly, and it doesn’t. So you don’t know. When you fear and despise pain, the fearing and despising itself doubles the pain. It’s doubled the pain. It really makes it worse.
It’s just like you the more you push it, the more it pushes back. And that’s that denial of pain. You’ve got to have got to have some some kind of room that says, Okay, I’m going to sit in there. There will be heaps of pain and I’m going to take all the instructions that I can remember to apply it there. And not, Oh, I’m going to have a nice calm abiding session there.
And it has to be calm and peaceful. And you go in that, you complete, you know, then then your whole whole strategy is just expecting pain. You know, sort of expecting calm only and not not realizing what what is what you’re going to be did, where you’re going to go to do that. Do that, so to speak. It’s that’s it is so important to to to just just expect pain.
Heaps of pain when you start session. See how it like, how it lasts your session. It’s a change of whole strategy. I will have heaps of pain, no doubt. Let’s see how it goes up.
I got a lot of information and instructions, Have the bow in the right left hand, put put a arrow in it, and then go. And how all the instructions work or not. Make sure the all instructions got right sharp tips and all that. Because if you go, I’m gonna have calm abiding and in the police, hopefully nobody will make any noise, and hope my body will make more noise. When you have all these high unrealistic expectations, of course you get shocked by that, by the whole thing.
So it’s important that that’s why the noble truth of suffering is very humbling, you know. I think this gentleman said he came to learn humbleness, it’s really true. When you accept suffering, that’s really humbling. And accept suffering, that is that really when you are able to accept suffering, are very honest. If you’re honest, you say, look, I don’t really want suffering, but I know I have to have it.
Life that’s life had to have it. Life had to have one thing and that’s suffering. And too bad you didn’t decide not to come. And so it’s it’s whether you meditate or whether you lie on the beach or whatever it’s suffering. And for how long you can lie on the left side and the sun shining on the right side and then a little hot then the umbrella and then all of a sudden rubbing this cream on top of your face and still wanted to lie down there Then asking the sun to burn and then the sun burns and then on this side.
Same, you know. Only thing is you don’t have to sit up alright upright in front of other people. Otherwise, look at the go to the beach. What’s going on there? All these people.
Just watch there what they’re doing. How long can anybody lie on one side happily? Just watch. Get some, go and drink, and then there’s something. Then quickly wash in the water, then again.
Looks so stupid, you know. They’re just perpetuating the suffering, you know. They’re able to sort of vary the suffering tremendously at at tremendous pace. Rally the suffering at tremendous pace and not able to accept the same thing at all. Now you’re trying to do the exactly opposite strategy.
Come to be a guy, sit with all other people, and they’ll be there. Well, how different were we? How differently we are dealing our pain when we are lying on the beach? Just just have a look. I haven’t lied on the beach, but I’ve seen people lying.
Strange. When I first went to New Zealand, I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen so many creatures lying on a beach like that, lying on a sandy place. I thought they were all buffaloes. You know?
In Nepal in Nippa, you see all the in the hot tub, all the buffaloes just go half the body is in the water. Eating still some grass in the mouth. And then the crows peek on them like this. When I first went to Auckland, and Auckland got a lot of topless beach and all that. I can’t believe it.
What’s going on? They’re trying to find happiness by going to hopeless. It’s a strange way of seeking happiness. But that looks like there are a lot of pain, you know. Not not attracting enough attention or something.
So, dealing with pain, dealing with unsatisfaction. We are very good at restless, moving, shaking, and and and the calm abiding has been a really had a a lifespan of good good good two thousand six hundred years being experimented with good to stop those restlessness. Good to stop those those those unsatisfactory mind, mind that’s completely addicted to this restlessness and and always seeking change and never dealing with this, never making them change by one’s own attitude. Because when you when you when you when you sitting primarily you have to first of work with the body and whether the mind mind sits with you or not is another matter but at least you’re keeping the body sit still, you know. And the mind may never sit for a while.
Mind will run here and there. Every now and then it visits the body and it says, oh, I never know you in such a mess. I’m going away. Aren’t you guys getting up with me? This happens all the time.
That’s what the mind is doing. And often the mind is not sitting with you. That’s true. It’s either sometimes when the mind is not running around, mind is sleeping in the body. And the wild body tried to sit up, then there there’s no support from the mind whatsoever for the body.
And mind is body is neglected there, just just keeping sitting in making to sit in this stiff position, And it’s not not there’s no support whatsoever from the mind. So but if you’re consciously doing the mindfulness of qualified round of breathing, you’re attending to those. That’s why I said don’t ignore or deny or suppress pain. Acknowledge them. Come, rise and fall.
And they come and they go. They usually go. And what makes the pain to stay long at one spot is the resentment. The resentment keeps you remembering, keeps you remembering that I had that pain, I had that pain, I can’t deal with this, I can’t deal with it. The more you think about that, the more more more labels you think about pain pain, I can’t do this, why I’m sitting like this, can’t I move?
Did he say we can’t move? You know? You also you you drum up all these kind of thoughts and it doesn’t really help. So that’s why it it is important to have those remedies in your mind and take it back and deal with it deal with it, Particularly, the qualified round of breathing. You just don’t let them stay on long.
Don’t replay them again and again and and see whether you can just focus on the object of meditation, go back to the pain, and use the pain even as a resting place. You can rest the mind on the pain. And then try to downsize the pain, I call it, downsize the pain that whether you are bigger or the