Sorry. I’m late. Do you see a meditation somewhere in the session apart from anything else I wanted to do on meditation? And then I just wanted to finish off with some basic ideas about Buddhism, just to give perhaps some sort of orienting ideas about what this course might be about. Okay, so starting from the beginning then, welcome, and my name’s Rob Hattam.
I’m going to be half coordinating this course this year, which means putting together the materials and making sure that everyone’s happy at the course and doing the communications with the other people on the center who are who are involved in this course, and particularly the Geshe who’s going to be teaching. Don’t know whether people have met the Geshe here. The resident teacher’s name is Geshe Pema Tsering, and we’ll talk a little bit about him in a moment. So the introduction to Buddhism class. I’ll just assume that people don’t know anything, so if you do, then just forgive me.
The introduction to Buddhism course is new for this center. This center’s a part of an international set of Dharma centers called the foundation for the preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition. I think there’s about twenty five countries that have Dharma centers. I think there’s an FPMT Dharma center in most capital cities in Australia. Buddha House has now been going for about twenty one years, is it?
Something like that. I think it started off in someone’s shed a few streets over here twenty odd years ago. I think it’s been here for about sixteen years. For most of that time, been lucky enough to have a fully qualified teacher in the Tibetan tradition. For about twelve years, we had one of the most highly regarded teachers in the world who’s teaching here.
He’s recently retired but still lives in Adelaide. His picture’s over there. His title’s Khensur Rinpoche. For those people who don’t know what that means, Khensur means abbot, and Rinpoche means precious, so it’s precious abbot. He was the abbot of one of the big monasteries that’s now been displaced from Tibet, and it’s now in southern India.
Anyway, the center’s offered various programs over the years. In the last four years, the center’s been offering what the FPMT call a basic study program, which in this center, anyway, going to be a five year program. We’re up to the fourth year. The first year of that program is a general introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, which follows what’s in Tibetan tradition is called the Lam Rim. The Lam Rim’s one way of understanding Lam Rim is it’s a it’s a graduated path to enlightenment teachings, which started in in the Tibetan in the Tibetan tradition in about the eleventh or the twelfth century, has been sort of handed down and developed since that time.
And then in the last year or two, some people in the FPMT decided to develop another introductory program, which is this program, Discovering Buddhism, which is based on the Lam Rim, the Graduated Path to Enlightenment, except it’s been designed for Western minds. Now the classical Lam Rim teachings, which you can read in a book like this, and this is the textbook for the Lam Rim course in the basic program. This this text is a is a translation of a of an extensive teaching of the Lam Rim that was given in the nineteen twenties by a famous lama to thousands of monks somewhere in Tibet. Notes were taken by a famous teacher of the present Dalai Lama, Trijang Rinpoche, and sometime in the 1980s and nineteen nineties, he and some of his students translated his Tibetan notes into English and converted it into this book. So this book is a description of a of a of a medieval teaching, which has been handed down from generation to generation from the eleventh century up to the well, the beginning of this century.
What’s going on in the last twenty years is there’s been an attempt to translate this this sort of medieval teaching, medieval in the sense that it was developed during medieval times, into a into a teaching that’s appropriate for, you know, postmodern Westerners. That’s us. And so I guess the discovering Buddhism course sort of comes out of that sort of experiment. Now again, I’m not quite sure what people know. The little booklet that’s got the colored mandala on the front is is it’s just got the basic information about the discovering Buddhism class, and for those people who are going to be involved in the whole thing, you’ll be able to refer to that as the as the course proceeds.
So perhaps if we can just start there. This will just be sort of reference material. So there’s the usual acknowledgments and so on, and then there’s a general introduction on page one about discovering Buddhism. And then over on page three Can you have a couple of copies, though? I I thought I’d made enough.
I thought I made forty copies. Can people share them and then see me at the end? We’ll have to get some more. I was only expecting about thirty people. Now it’s it’s it’s it’s estimated that the course will go for about two years, so if you hang in for the whole time, it should take about that long, so it’ll finish, you know, at the end of next year, okay, something like that.
So the way that the course is organized is it’s organized around fourteen modules, and if you have a look on page four, five, and six, you can see the names of those. So the first module is mind and its potential, and what what we’ve decided to do is to go for for modules that last for about a month, and some of the units go for longer than that, but so each module goes for about a month. So on Tuesday nights between seven and about ten o’clock for one month, that will be module one. For those people who who wanna get the maximum benefit out of being involved in the program, for each module, there’s there’s then going to be a one day meditation day weekend at the end of that month, probably on a Sunday, which goes over the material and gives people more opportunities to do the meditations that are sort of involved in each module. Okay?
So, I think in the newsletter that’s just gone out from the center, the the there’s a I think Sunday, June the first is down for the first meditation day, but maybe that date will change because I think there’s some Buddha’s birthday thing going on, and we might change it to the following Sunday. So then the topic after that’s how to meditate. That will go for a month, and then presenting the path goes for six weeks, and then there’s a module on the spiritual teacher, and then there’s one on death and rebirth about karma and then refuge. I think that’s where the year ends. Now if you have a look at the the single sheet that I passed out, Just for my benefit and for other people in the center, we’ve just tried to summarize how this how this course might look for the dates and so on, and what the sort of major ideas for each of the Tuesday nights has been sort of programmed out.
So you can see that there’s a course that stretches out until the sixteenth of December, and there’s sort of a main topic, and then there’s sort of some ideas about what the meditation will be for that particular night. Okay? So what are we up to? There’ll be one, two, three, four, five, six. We will have done seven of the modules.
I think the last module is the special integration experiences module. That will probably take you years to finish. Some of the senior students who are going to be attending this course as contributors, and some of us haven’t finished that particular part either. Okay. If we just go back to page three, there’s some dot points there which give some sort of idea about the sensibility that the FPMT are hoping that centers can bring to teaching this particular course.
Just as an aside, when I started coming to the center about ten years ago, the resident teacher was giving teachings on Tuesday nights, Thursday nights, Friday nights, and Saturday morning, so you could get plenty of teachings. And and the style of the style of presentation that was what that was available was you sat on the cushion, listened to the to the expert teacher who was incredibly expert, and then you snuck out of the back and went home and tried to do more reading and sort of do it on your own, and maybe ring people up that you might have known if you wanted to sort of talk about it, about some of the complex ideas with your Dharma brothers and sisters on the weekends, but there wasn’t an opportunity to actually meditate with others apart from the Sunday morning class, and there wasn’t an opportunity to sort of discuss the ideas. In the last half a dozen years, the center’s had various experiments at having sort of discussion group formats in which there’s a there’s a there’s a teaching part in which there’s someone presenting some of the ideas. There’s an opportunity to do some meditation during the session, and then there’s an opportunity to talk about, you know, what sense you’re making of these ideas.
So we’ve been using that sort of format for a few years now, and that’s the format we want to have a go at here in this class. So the way that the evenings will work in the first instance anyway, until we know there’ll be some sort of negotiation as the sort of process proceeds, given that we’ve got such a large group and there’ll be lots of feedback about what they think is working and what’s not, But the way that we’re hoping to structure the evenings at this stage is at seven, there’ll be a teaching by Geshe Pema Tsering about the topic for for that evening, and that that that teaching will go for about an hour to an hour and a quarter. He’ll probably teach for about an hour, and then there’ll be some times for questions. Then there’ll be time for a meditation, and if you have a look on the sheet, there’s you’ll see what what the mediteachings are going to be for the whole year. So on that particular on on next week, there’ll be a meditation on mind.
I think it might be on mind as clear and knowing, actually. Then the following week, there’ll be a meditation on the continuity of mind, and the week after that will be the same, and then there’ll be a meditation on precious human form or rebirth on the fourth week. So there’ll be a meditation starting at around eight twenty, somewhere around there, which will go for about half an hour, and then the class will have a short break to get tea or coffee or whatever you need to do, and then at nine o’clock the group will reconvene back in here, and there’ll be an opportunity for small group discussion about the homework or any of the ideas that are arising from the teaching on that evening, and then the small groups will reconvene back to a big group, and there’ll be some sharing of what people got up to in the small groups, and then it’ll be ten o’clock, okay? So, that’s about how it’ll work. Now, for those who want to for those who want to get more out of it than just coming along on the evening, what we’re recommiddling is doing some homework, and the homework consists of two things, doing some reading, and if you have a look at the other material, the other booklet, if you go through to there’s no proper page numbers here.
It’s about one, two, three, four, five pages in. There’s a table of contents of the readings. So we put together a collection of readings from various places. Some of them came with an FPMT prepared for this particular module. Some been found in other sources, and then there’s the two little booklets which have been handed out Becoming Your Own Therapist and Make Your Mind an Ocean.
So that’s the reading for this particular module, and if you go back to the front you’ll see that there’s a week by week description of what the readings are to be. So back on page one, week one introducing the mind. The reading for this week is these two little booklets, and there’s an extract out of a book called kindness clarity and insight by his holiness the Dalai Lama, and there’s a couple of pages called the luminous nature of mind. So if people can read those, and as as a means of being able to do more than just read them, what what we’d like you to do is to make a note of three things that seem important to you from the things that you’ve read. Now some people will make will make sort of copious notes because that’s because they because they wanna do that, and so, you know, they’ll have more than three things.
But if you can at least annotate on this on the sheet here three three really three ideas that you think are really, really important that sort of jump out at you from the from the from the things that you’ve read. Okay? And maybe a clarifying question, a question that you’d like more more about. Okay? So when you come next week, those people who want to engage in the homework will have done the reading.
And when it comes to the to the the discussion part of the session, that’s that’s what we’re going to concentrate on mostly is what sense people made of the reading. What what did you get out of it? How did you understand it? What questions have you got about it? Now there are going to be some senior students who are going to be coming along to the class, so some of those questions are going to be able to be answered right then and there.
The questions that can’t be answered, we can then ask Geshe Pema Tsering the following Tuesday. So if it’s a really burning question, then you’ll get the opportunity to ask him at that teaching. Has anyone got any questions about any of that? Is that all pretty straightforward about the sort of format and about how it works? Yeah?
The the center has a a translator. Her name’s Ruth. Yeah. For those people who have not been to one of Geshe la’s teachings, Geshe la’s been living in a monastery in India for well, since nineteen fifty nine. Before that, he was living in Tibet.
So he spent most of his life learning learning Tibetan Buddhism as a monk in a monastery. He’s been in Australia now for is it about a year? Like two. Yeah. Year and a half.
So he came to Australia not having not having known very much English. So I I think he’s learning some English, not enough to be able to teach Tibetan Buddhism, and so in in his teachings, he he teach he teaches in Tibetan and someone who knows English and Tibetan translates. Yeah. So if you’ve never been to a multicultural teaching before, then you’ll have one next Tuesday night in which the language that’s being taught is not the language you know. The center has a translator, someone who’s been involved in a translation course that’s being offered by the Tibetan community in India.
So Ruth’s still she’s probably still feeling a bit nervous about the whole translation process, but the people who’ve been to her teachings are really, really happy with Ruth’s translation, so we we think that that works that they work as a as a great combination. For those people who’ve never heard of the never heard of a Geshe before, if you go to Tibetan Buddhist centers, then sometimes you come across someone who’s got the title Geshe in the front of their name. Perhaps the only way that I can sort of describe what a Geshe is, is sort of the English equivalent is professor, but that doesn’t quite doesn’t quite work either. To become a Geshe in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition means studying full time from when you’re when you’re, you know, generally from the age of about six or seven up to when you’re about twenty six or twenty seven, at which point if you feel like you know your stuff, then you engage in an oral exam with the abbots and the main teachers in the monasteries, and the exam goes for about two or three days, and if you pass that exam, then you become a Geshe.
If you if anyone’s read any of the histories of the present Dalai Lama for instance, the Dalai Lama is a Geshe, so he’s had that sort of monastic education in which you literally live and breathe learning dharma for twenty years, at which point you’re recognized by your community as knowing your stuff, and then you get the title Geshe. So to become a Geshe, really need to memorizing texts. So, most of the Geshe’s have memorized all the material that they teach from, debate with others from, I don’t know, the middle of the morning till late into the afternoon, and then do the mediteachings that are required, that are described in teaching. So if you happen to come across a center that’s got a Geshe, then you’re really, really lucky because you’ve actually found someone who’s, you know, an expert in Tibetan Buddhism. So we’ve for some reason or another, the Adelaide Center’s had had Geshe’s teaching here for the last fifteen years.
Khensurrr Rinpoche was the abbot, so he was a Geshe, but then took on another title of being, you know, abbot. I think generally there’s something similar to, in the Tibetan tradition, to getting first class honors, so there’s first class geshees, and the geshees we’ve had are first class geshees as well, so you know they’re the sort of top of the class ones. Anyway, we’re incredibly spoiled to have someone who’s so qualified. Now yeah, the meditation. That’s right.
The second the second part of the homework was doing some meditation. I think one of the one of the one of the things that the discovering Buddhism courses is about is it’s more than just sort of intellectualizing about the material. It’s about trying to actually put the material into practice or at least experiment with it, and the way that the way that one experiments with Buddhism is to just to try the mediteachings. Now you can I guess you can try the mediteachings out in a couple of ways? You can try it out on the cushion, which is some people sit on cushions, and that’s sort of metaphor I use to, you know, talk about meditation.
So you can practice these experiments with your mind in in a calm, quiet place for small periods of time. So, for instance, tonight, if we’re going to have a go at mindfulness of breathing meditation, some has anyone not had any meditation teaching before? Okay. So some people won’t have some people in the class won’t have won’t have even had any instructions, so we’ll give some instruction about doing some easy to describe but more difficult to do type mediteachings. So what what we’d like people to do is to have a go at least trying to experiment a few times in the intervening week.
Once a day is good, get up half an hour earlier. Now I’m saying this to myself, my partner’s sitting back in the room and she knows that I’m having a bit of a struggle, well that’s one of the reasons why I’ve decided to come to this class myself to resurrect resurrect my meditation, or else turn the TV off half an hour. I’m saying this to myself again too. Turn the TV off half an hour earlier and try doing it at nighttime. One of those or both both is even better.
Yeah. So just just trying to have a have a go at at meditating if you can. I guess the in the discussion part of the the evening, if people want to talk about how their meditation is going, then there’ll be an opportunity to do that as well. Certainly, from my experience anyway, if you want to sustain or maintain a meditation practice, then it’s highly it’s good to be able to talk about it with others so you share your experiences and find out that you’re having similar sorts of obstructions and problems or insights or whatever. The second way that you can sorry, Neil?
You were to mention Neil. Oh, yeah. We’ll get to etiquette. The second the second way that you can play around with or experiment with the ideas, these meditation ideas is you can you can be you can be thinking about them during the day. So the first the first meditation that we’re going to learn next week is is to do with the mind being clear and knowing.
Mostly, we don’t spend much time witnessing the nature of our mind. We’re you know, the way the way that The way that handle my mind is it’s a bit like being a surfboard rider on the wave. Most of the time you’re on the surfboard out the front of the wave. You’re not spending much time being with the wave and the way the waves are forming and looking at being with the ocean that supports the wave. You’re mostly sort of riding the waves, and mostly you actually think that you are out there that’s what it’s all about, where in fact there’s some consciousness awareness that’s arising constantly.
So what you’re going to be doing with the first meditation is trying to spend a bit of time just being aware of your own awareness. Now that’s probably that’s probably going to be quite novel for some people because they’ve never thought of it like that, so it’s just sort of refocusing your mind just slightly backwards in on itself. So at various times during the day when you’re sitting at the traffic waiting for the light to change, you’ll be able to do the meditation, or during the ads, you’ll be able to do the meditation. You know what I mean? Like, there’s plenty of opportunities to reflect on the on the on the idea that that’s gonna be the key meditation, and the following the following week, the med the meditation is the continuity of mind, so your mind’s your mind can be understood as a stream, a continuous stream, and so you’ll be able to meditate on that in various times during the day or just to be thinking about it.
Yeah? The fourth week, you’ll be looking at how precious your human life is. You’ll have untold opportunities to be reflecting on that. Even when you’re watching the movie, you’ll be able to be reflecting on the meditation. Okay?
Everything becomes sort of grist for the contemplation. Okay. Is that okay? Did everyone have some awareness of breathing? No one went to sleep.
Hear anyone snoring. Just to some things I just forgot. I just just in terms of the the reader. Just can we just have another look at this? Not the one with a colored front.
So the first few pages there is what what what what we have in mind for people to do every week. So there’s there’s the reading. So we want you to do the reading beforehand. So in this case, there’s the two little booklets and then the one reading from his holiness, the luminous nature of mind, which you’ll find in in the reader. I think the luminous nature of mind is about halfway in.
I think it’s where the page numbers stop. It’s only a few pages, so there’s two little booklets and that little reading to do between now and next Tuesday, and then if you turn over the page on week two we want you to read one two three four, there’s five readings there, so there’s probably the probably the first fifty odd pages, and then week three we want you to do some more readings on mine which are about the next thirty pages, and we’ll show you those clearly in the time you know, on the week, and then the last week, there’s two readings which are about the last twenty pages. Okay? So tonight’s homework is the two little booklets and that one short little piece by His Holiness. Then after those descriptions of what we want you to do, with a space to put your notes if you want to, there’s a summary of the mind and its potential course, what the topics are, what the mediteachings are, what the required texts are, what some other texts are, and some videos, and so on.
So that’s taken from the FPMT’s manual on this program, then there’s the readings, and then if you go to the back, a few pages in, there’s descriptions of three mediteachings, there’s pure nature of mind, continuity of mind, and appreciating the precious human life. So those mediteachings we’ll be going over starting next week. We’ll start with the pure nature of mind. So someone’s gonna lead that meditation next week, and then if you can’t remember the meditation, then you’ve got something to refer to during the week if you want to. Yeah?
Then the following week, we’re gonna do continuity of mind. We do that for a couple of weeks, and then the last week, we’re gonna do appreciating the precious human life meditation. Okay? And then on the last page, there’s a sort of a tick the box. Yes.
I’ve done all of these things. Some people will want to some record of having done all the various bits and pieces, one of the things that the FPMT is trying to do is trying to have some way in which we can have sort of international students, so you can do this in this center and then go to another center and you’ve got some record about which bits you’ve done and so on, so those people who want to engage in that term we can do that as the course proceeds. So okay. Is that that all pretty clear? So just there’s one thing that I just had to clarify my own mind last night before I went to bed, just in terms of the meditation.
What what what we want you to do is we want you to do the reading, and if you want to do some meditation this week, do more mindfulness meditation. Okay? So what next week you’re gonna get to talk about the reading. We’re going to do the meditation on mind. I think we’re to swap week weeks two with week one.
So we’re going to do a meditation on the mind, which you then get to do the following week. Yeah. So by the time you’ve finished on week four, you’ll then do the precious human form meditation, and then those people who want to hang in, they’ll have some reading to do for the next module because we’ll just roll over to the next module. Module, so those people who want to continue there’ll be another set of readings and another booklet that will be handed out during week four to let you know what reading is for that course, so that’s how we’ll roll on from module to module. Has anyone got any questions about any of that?
About anything that’s been talked about? Everyone’s got it all under control? Fabulous. There’s this the center’s the center runs an introduction to Buddhist philosophy class on Monday nights. That class is not gonna run for the first half of this term, but it’ll start up again in the second half.
So there’ll be another four week introduction to Buddhist philosophy class on Monday. Is that the one you’re talking about? Yeah. Yeah. I think Geshe la is running that this time again.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah? Which which books? We’ve we’ve we’ve handed we’re handing them out now.
So people people who are well, I guess, what? Pardon? Are they more copies? Well, we’ll we’ll see at the end whether or not some people are gonna hand theirs in because some people have come just to check it out. Okay?
Those people who who who want to be in, who want the book, who haven’t got one, if they can hang around at the end, I thought I’ve made enough, but you’ve overwhelmed us by the numbers they’ve turned out. Yeah. So what we’d I guess what what for those people who don’t don’t want want to be involved, would be really good if you can drop the books before you go because they’ve cost the center to get photocopied. We’re charging cost recovery really for the photocopying for the readers, and most people who’ve done photocopying will know that it’s not cheap. So those people who’ve I mean, a lot of you have paid, fine, you take the readers.
Those people who haven’t paid, I think the center won’t mind as long as you’re, you know, gonna come next week. If you’re not if you’re not gonna be in it, then we we’d really like it that you can give the book back at the end tonight. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.
Yeah. I mean, you know what’s involved. That’s the beauty of it, I suppose. So lots of people can’t come. You know what the reading is.
You know what the meditation is because it’s there’s an example of it. So for those people who can’t come, do the reading, take some notes, sometime next week, go to the first meditation, try that try that analytical meditation out. Now I think what we’re gonna do is we are going to do we’re gonna do meditation two and not meditation one. So if you can’t come, do so anyway, we’re gonna do meditation one, pure nature of mind. Try that meditation.
It’s it’s the mediteachings are described at the back. As one two three. So you can’t come do pure nature of mind for a week. And because you can’t come, then you’ll need to do the next lot of homework, and then you’ll get a second meditation in week two. Yeah.
So you do week one week two, yep, so read the little books and then go on and do the I think the reading for week two is about the first forty or fifty pages. That’s described in the what the readings are. Yep. We can do that. We can do that up.
Yeah. Anyone else got any other questions or concerns? Perhaps then just to just to sort of finish off, just to give you some things to think about during the week. Last term or last year, I took one of the introduction to Buddhist philosophy classes, and so I tried to I tried to come up with a small number of ideas that I thought sort of summarized, you know, my understanding of Buddhism from all the teachings that I’d taken from the various teachers here. But before I before I get on to those five points there was just something else I wanted to say.
That’s right. I think one of the things that I think is really really important is the sort of the sort of mind that you bring to to studying Dharma, Buddhism or studying anything really, but in this case we’re talking about studying Buddhadharma. The Buddha the Buddha did give some quite clear instructions to his students in various sutras about how one should go about studying Dharma. And just read I read an extract out of out of one of the sutras called discourse to the to the Kalamas. I don’t know whether people are familiar with Buddhist texts, but there’s various types of Buddhist texts.
One’s recorded teachings of the Buddha, are called sutras. So this is out of one of those. There are are commentaries of Buddha’s teachings by famous meditation masters over the centuries. That’s another version which probably the sort of teachings that are mostly going to be studied in the discovering Buddhism class of those sorts. But anyway, here’s a short sort of extract.
Yes, Kalamas, said the Buddha. It’s proper to have doubt that you have perplexity, for a doubt arisen in a matter in a manner which is doubtful. Now look you Kalamas, do not be led by reports or tradition or hearsay. Be not led by authority of religious texts nor by mere logic or inference nor by considering appearances nor by the the the delight in speculative opinions nor by seeming possibilities nor by nor nor by the idea this is our teacher. But, O Kalamas, when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome and wrong then and and bad, then give them up.
And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them. That seems to me to be quite clear advice about how one should engage with studying dharma, so it’s not because someone says it’s true or because it’s written down by someone who’s supposed to be really good, it’s all to do with whether or not it makes sense to you personally, you know, in terms of your own experience, and I think that seems to be the only way that meditation actually makes any sense. When you’re doing the analytical mediteachings anyway, what you’re trying to do with conceptualizing analytical mediteachings is bringing your own experience to bear on whether or not this makes sense to you. I can’t see how you can do anything else but that. He talked about he talked about this sort of idea in other sutras as well.
There’s sūtra called the sūtra on knowing the better way to catch a snake, in which he gave quite specific advice. In in that in that sūtra, he he presents the simile of catching a snake to distinguish right understanding. So he he compared his own teachings to a poisonous snake. Possible to misunderstand the teachings and hence just create suffering. So the better way to catch a snake involves practicing intelligently that that we should be aware of the dangers of misunderstanding.
He also he taught the need to understand both the letter and the spirit of the teaching, so it’s not just taking on sort of a superficial understanding of sort of literal understanding, but one needed to develop a deep deep understanding of the of the teachings. He also he also, in that sūtra, compared his own teachings to a raft where spiritual practices sometimes compared to crossing a torrent. In this sense, then the the teachings were were merely a device to get to the other side. So the raft the raft is was not is not the shore. They’re just a means to get to the other side.
So in that sense, it became a complete it becomes a complete distortion if you treat the Buddha’s teachings, the Dharma, as the end in itself. Does everyone get the point about that? Anyway, just in terms of what I think are probably going to be well, I know there will be some sort of key ideas in discovering Buddhism over the next one and a half years, just some key ideas that I try and experiment with in my life. So probably the one that is going to come out of the first module goes something like our mental states are our responsibility. I don’t know about you, but I always try and blame someone else for my mind.
It’s always something out there that’s making me think this way. Think one of the things that you’ll find over the next four weeks is that sort of proposition gets fairly heavily challenged, that maybe there’s something else going on there that you can’t just continually be blaming the outside. My mother made me do it. Part of a part of a part of that also my second point is we we need to be examining carefully the way that we understand the nature of suffering and happiness. Again, it appears to me as though mostly I’ve got that wrong.
I seem to be continuing to produce the causes of the future suffering, the amount of happiness that I’ve got going is that big, so somehow or other my theory is not quite right, and I think the Buddha’s teachings allows you to interrogate really, really carefully your own theories about what’s the causes of unhappiness and suffering, and gives you the opportunity to go, hang on, I think I might have got that wrong, I might try something a little bit different just to try that out. The third point comes from the second one is it is possible to transform your own mind through practicing mindfulness. It appears to me as though, this is where the first module is supposedly the real beginners module, it’s about the nature of mind, and after you’ve done that then you move on to much more complicated topics, but in fact I think what you’ll find is that the idea of mind is central to the whole of the dharma. It’s all about working on your mind, it’s all about transforming your mind. In the first year of the basic program, we had to joke amongst ourselves that we could change our mind, and there’s a sort of two ways of reading that.
And a key to that sort of process transforming your mind is practicing mindfulness. Can’t see how you can do it without that, actually that is the key, where one’s trying to keep one’s mind in the present as much as you can, being mindful of what you’re doing, okay? So if you’re trying to transform your mind, then at some point you’re trying to cultivate certain things and abandon other things. If you’re going to be doing that on a sort of a moment by moment or a few times a day, then you’ve got to have your mind on a leash so to speak, it’s got be clear and pacified so that when the thing that arises that you want to abandon starts to happen then you can go nah I’m not going there, and the thing that you want to cultivate can easily be cultivated as a consequence. But if you’re just like you can just, you know, being mindful, then it’s impossible to do that.
Just on that level. So probably a second point of this idea of practicing mindfulness is around that if you want to transform your mind, then one of the things that seems to me to be really, really important is practicing ethics, having some sense about what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. The meditation with a with a wish that that whatever. You’ve got may that be sustained, and hopefully, it’ll grow. So you’re finishing up the the the meditation with that sort of idea.
Yeah. Are there any questions about any of that? So, again, you just do whatever bits of the rituals you want to engage in. You if you wanna if you if you it’s there’s there’s no there’s no there’s no Dalmat police that are gonna whip you if you’re not doing the right stuff. I guess one of the one of the the sort of simplest the simplest definition of of Buddhadharma that that I have in my mind because you can easily get confused with all the detail.
The simplest definition is if if it’s Dharma, then it’s then it’s subduing your mind. And probably if it’s doing that, then it’s not making you anxious. It’s actually trying to make you less anxious. So I think the center would be horrified if we were doing things that were making people feel more anxious. So, you know, you just try and, you know, you just relax.
You don’t have to you just do whatever whatever whatever you feel comfortable with, yeah, in terms of the rituals even though if you walk in with your shoes on, someone will probably tell you. K. Now how are going for time? Eight. Just what I thought we might do is given that some people some people in the room have put their hand up and said that they haven’t they haven’t haven’t had any instruction about meditation.
So I’m not sure what what instructions people had for meditation. What I’d like to do now then is just to talk a little bit about meditation generally, and then we’ll then we’ll do do some. I’ll just go through a quite straightforward simple one to talk about anyway. So perhaps a sort of an introduction. The this in the in the in the sort of teachings of the Buddha, the Buddha talked about engaging with with his Dharma teachings using three three practices, three key three key things that you needed to you needed to do to to be a experiment with his with his set of ideas.
You have to listen, read, so you need you need to be able to take on board some teachings. Okay? So in the discovering Buddhism course, there’s gonna be some reading and listening going on from from properly qualified resources and sources. The second the second thing you need to do on the on the basis of that is contemplating what you’re what you’re reading or listening to. And you can do that on your own, but it’s also good to be able to do those contemplations with others.
So discussing, debating, you know, checking out your understanding because that’s what you’re really after. You’re after you’re after developing a refined understanding from what you read. And on the on the basis of developing understanding, then one meditates using those set of ideas. Yeah? So there’s those three sorts of practices.
So with with meditation, there’s there’s probably three types of meditation. There’s sort of a calming stabilizing kind. There’s an analytical version, and then there’s a visualizing type of mediteachings. And they all sort of blend over in some cases, but it’s possible to talk about those in distinct sort of ways. So the the calming stabilizing type of meditation, there’s lots of variations on a theme.
Usually, what you do with those calming mediteachings is you select one one object and you try and keep your mind on it. That’s really the that’s really what the calming mediteachings do. So you can you can you can do transcendental meditation by TM mantra. Keep your mind on that. You can keep your mind on a rose or you can keep your mind on a bodily sensation.
You can keep your mind on a simple visualization of a Buddha in your mind. It doesn’t really make much difference. Just you’re just you’re just staying with one object. Okay? So what what we’re gonna practice here in a moment and in the the center the center’s teaches this meditation fairly regularly during the week is mindfulness of breathing.
So the object that you can use is the bodily sensations of the breath. So you just try and put your mind on that. Okay? So because our minds I don’t know what your mind’s like, but my mind’s just like a now hang on. What is it?
There was a good metaphor in a Mandala book. It’s like it’s like a flea on a trampoline on cocaine. I thought thought that was quite a good metaphor for for the way that, you know, your mind’s just sort of jumping around. Yeah. So if you’re trying to keep it on one thing, then it’s just jumping on the trampoline and it’s off all around the place, but it’s possible that that after a while, that flea can just sort of jump a little bit less and the cocaine wears off, and then you can hold onto the object for, you know, a few seconds.
That’s good if you can do that, actually. And what you’re really doing is you’re you’re you’re sort of interfering actively interfering with your sort of habitual mental patterns. Mostly, that’s what you’re doing. You get up in the morning and away she goes. You know what it’s like.
And if the newspaper isn’t out of the front, you get really annoyed. If the milk’s not in the fridge, you get really you know what I mean? Like, it’s just going you’re just into this pattern of mind. You’re out there surfing the wave of your mind. So what you’re doing with this meditation is you’re trying to jump off the surfboard and just watch the waves rolling, not giving them not giving them quite so much energy until eventually you can you can, you know, the waves can get quite, you know, can just get quite still.
Yeah. So what you’re what you’re attempting to practice there is you’re attempting to practice holding onto one object with your mind, and it’s if if you practice diligently for six months and do nothing else almost, then you can learn how to hold on to one object for as long as you like effortlessly. We won’t we probably won’t get to that level in this class, but if you’re if you’re trying to do analytical mediteachings or any sort of mediteachings, then you have to have some capacity to be able to hold an object in your mind with some sort of peace and stillness. Yeah. So no matter what other mediteachings you’re gonna do, you really need to do the calm calming mediteachings to get a bit of to sort of still your mind a little bit.
So the second type of meditation is where you actually actively introduce some some conceptualizing. So when you’re doing calm abiding or calming mediteachings, you’re trying to stop conceptualizing. Try not to you’re trying not to give your conceptualizing mind any any energy. With analytical meditation, you you’re actively trying to introduce some conceptualizing, but it’s it’s it’s being thought out by generations of meditators and tracked back to the Buddha. Try meditating on these ideas and see what happens.
So we’re gonna try some of those. You can meditate on well we’re going to the one that perhaps people will find the easiest in this next month will be meditating on the preciousness of your own human life and so there’s an analytical meditation in which you go through how precious your life is. Mostly we just take that for granted and say we’re depressed and so on and so forth. If we just sort of turn our attention just a little bit we can see how what a wonderful opportunity we’ve got with this mind and this body and so what are we going to do with it. Other analytical mediteachings, one can cultivate more love and more compassion and so on so you get you can introduce certain concepts.
So when you go through that list that I’ve given you, you’ll see on the second on the right hand column a whole range of analytical mediteachings that we’re gonna have a try. Now I guess there’s in terms of meditation, there’s I don’t know. When I when I first started to meditate, I just I just wanted not to be so anxious during every day. I just something to help me with my feeling stressed. Yeah.
I needed something to get me through that day. Yeah. So you can have sort of a short term aim for meditation where it’s just helping you alleviate your your anxiety on a on a sort of a daily basis. And if you get your daily meditation hit then that’s probably going to be okay but it’s possible if you just do a little bit more meditation that not only will you enable you to sort of alleviate your stress and your anxiety that you’ve collected today but you might be able to work on some other sort of deeper levels so there’s a sort of a long term mind transforming process that one can engage in if you more serious about doing some meditation. Even doing what sounds like a really, really easy meditation, mindfulness of breathing, if you do that you do that really seriously for, you know, a few a few months, you’ll find that it’ll be contributing more than just getting you through the through the day.
Yeah. So you’ll you’ll you’ll start to be it’ll start to transform your mind on some sort of deeper levels. Now the other thing about meditation is that it it’s it’s it’s a practice, particularly when you’re a beginner and you’re starting off with just these sort of calming mediteachings. The way that you talk about it to yourself I think is I’m practicing meditation. So I might not be very good at it now, I’m not going to whip myself for it.
I’m not going to go through all those sort of things about making myself more anxious because I’m not very good at it at the moment. So, it’s a sense of just trying to relax with yourself about it. Yeah? So don’t don’t you shouldn’t be generating anxiety about your meditation. I think that’s that’d be really, terrible.
You’re supposed to be feeling less anxious when you meditate. But beginners do sometimes tend to get you you can get more anxious. Yeah. Certainly, I’ve been on meditation days where some people end up with a headache at the end of the day. I’ve done that as well, but, you know, there are various reasons for that, but sometimes people just really, you know, think, I’m not doing it properly.
You know? Just breathe out. Just relax. Relax with it. You need you need to be able to do that.
And if you if you keep doing something regularly, then you’ll get better at it. I think that’s when you when you come across some of the some of the practices that that are being described in this particular course, you’ll go, it’s not I’m not gonna be able to do that, but then some of you have got typing speeds of ninety words a minute and golf handicaps of six and so on, so you already taught yourself amazing things because you practiced them, and you can do the same thing with meditation. In fact, I think someone someone said that to become to become a to become a Bodhisattva, which is someone who’s developed this expansive motivation, you need to put in about as much effort as it takes to learn how to be a really good piano player so if you just practice and and be enthusiastic then all sorts of possibilities open up, and we already know that from our sort of other conventional things that we do. Now let’s just do some meditation then. Are you comfortable there?
Now for those people who’ve never for those people who’ve never done meditation, this meditation is quite straightforward. As I said before, what what we’re going to try and do is probably do do we’re trying to do one thing with your body. You’re just gonna try and sit still. If you’re trying to still your mind, then fidgeting around just sort of interferes with the process, so sitting still is really important, so you need to be able to you need to be in a posture that you’re gonna be able to sit still. And then the thing that you’re gonna try and do with your mind is what you’re gonna try and do is you’re going to try and maintain an awareness of breathing in and breathing out, and what we’re talking about there is the bodily sensation of breathing in and breathing out.
You’re not thinking about breathing. You’re not conceptualizing about breathing. What you’re doing is you’re trying to you’re trying to put your mind on, the bodily sensation of breathing in and breathing out, so, your diaphragm is going up and down, your chest is going up and down, there’s, breath coming in and out of your nostrils and filling up your lungs, so there’s a there’s a whole sort of bodily sensation of breathing which mostly you’re not aware of unless you go running or so on and so forth, and perhaps you are, but mostly you’re not. So what you’re going to try and do is you’re going to try and put your mind on that. So you’re going try and breathe naturally.
You’re not going to force it. You don’t have to hear it. You’re just, with your mind, being aware of breathing in and breathing out. Now what’s going to happen is that the flea on the trampoline is going to start thinking about why you had to eat, what you think of me, what you think of this, what you think of that person, your plans for tomorrow, what happened today, whatever your mind is doing is going do it. When you remember, you come back to breathing in and breathing out.
Okay? Then your mind is going to wander, then you remember, come back to breathing in and breathing out. So everyone in this room is going to be going awareness of breath out, wander wander wander, breathing in, wander wander wander. Mostly you’ll have half the breath and then you wander, that’s what I do, for some time, and then your mind will start to relax, and then you might have breathing in and breathing out, wander wander wander, breathing in breathing out, breathing in wander. So that’s how it’s going to go.
Okay? So if you if you if you get too tense and you put too much effort in, your mind’s just gonna wander more because you’re gonna excite it. If you don’t put enough effort in, then you’re just gonna fall off and and you’re just gonna sort of wander. You’re just gonna start daydreaming. So meditation is not daydreaming.
With daydreaming, you just sort of got sort of unfocused mind wandering around. With meditation, you’re trying to do one thing with great awareness and great clarity. You’re trying to be really, really awake actually when you’re meditating just on the one object. Yeah? Wander, wander, wander.
So that’s that’s what’s gonna happen. So we’ll do that. I’ll talk you into it. We’ll have a go for about twenty minutes. You’ll hear this at the end of twenty minutes.
So just to begin with, take up a comfortable posture. Mostly, refers to just having a a straight back. Just for a few moments, spending just spending some time just being aware of the sensations in your body, just getting yourself comfortable. The books recommend just having your head slightly tilted forward. Some books describe people having their eyes just slightly open looking in an unfocused fashion off the top of their nose off to infinity.
Mostly beginners close their eyes whatever’s comfortable for you. Just having your arms and hands comfortable. You might try the right hand in the left palm with the thumbs touching. Just relaxing your shoulders. And then just for a few moments going over in your mind exactly what you’re going to be trying do.
You’re gonna try and spend as much time as you can just being aware of breathing in and breathing out. Just following the breath in and following the breath out, realizing that your mind is going to wander. When you remember, just bringing your mind back to breathing in and breathing out.