Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Ignyen examines the Noble Eightfold Path through contemporary ethical dilemmas in this 2-hour-12-minute teaching. He grounds the path in modern scenarios—doping in sport, military service, animal testing, warfare—showing how intentions and engagement in actions create karmic imprints that coarsen or refine the mind. After establishing right view and investigation of how things actually exist, he devotes sustained time to right action and livelihood, then moves through right effort, mindfulness of body and mind, and concentration. Throughout, he emphasizes that understanding requires testing ideas rigorously, not blind acceptance, illustrating the path with stories like Ashvaghosha’s discovery of a prophecy that sparked his faith. His approach is direct and practical, grounded in ethical complexity.
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File: 01 8 FT 2012 10 20.mp3
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Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y 8 Fold Truths (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2012-10-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 131.7 minutes
Words: ~8,277
So we just start oops. Now we get to the next section. I’ll write on the board as well. Might be easier. Right view.
Right. Okay. I put here investigation. Three, right speech. Right action, Right livelihood.
Right exertion, right mindfulness, right concentration. Levels. It’s a lot to say in a certain amount of time. We can overcome misconceptions about how things exist. How can that help us? afflictive emotions.
About aversion, attachment, and so on. Otherwise, because we really haven’t correctly understood how something exists. False conceptions about how things exist. How they have appeared as existing. Long process.
It’s not something that we’re gonna come to an instant understanding of. It is a bit difficult to understand this issue because When we are in a dream, we take things to be real. There may be doubts that arise at certain times about what happens in a dream that are completely impossible. But for our attachment, we just take take what happens in a dream to be plausible and so on. But I wake up from a dream, I realized that I was only dreaming.
That didn’t happen. I wasn’t being chased by an elephant or and as soon as my memory is up, the fear dissipates. You know, when we’re through the dream, when we have a dream, we wake up and and I had a bit of regret at that stage. Might stress a little bit. Ugh.
I thought I’d won a hundred million. But then it dissipates detachment is good for fictitious money and so forth. So because we have And so we’re coming to understand the very same process because we have to begin with the various conceptions of the faults of things. So this is why it takes such a long period so that we do gradually develop a deeper appreciation of the nature of how objects exist in reality, how we exist as a person, how far people exist as people. We’ve long had the habitual tendency to non-virtue that will that tends to be our situation.
Does it sound okay? Let’s do right view, right investigation. Okay. Right speech? So the four features of speech, which are lying, slander, harsh words, and gossip.
But it’s also informed by right investigation. That it feels like, let me say, it’s a bit like the direction of enlightenment or something. The force of attachment, if we talk about a loved one, it’s like, oh, my life is gone. This world has no meaning.
But the values of this world, like ourselves, who seek happiness, they have value. It’s hard for us to separate their love and their attachment. Attachment appears to be love. So I think there’s some way to do that. If we attach, that’s bad, leading to suffering, there is some attachment is not important.
And that’s how we attach to ourselves. In a sense we possess ourselves and attach to places and, of course, attach to people. But those attachments can help us. It is our refuge. That is our basis.
This is the basis of our actions. They are much more important because we experience results that are downstream as result of those. It’s nothing. Because killing the forms is a negative action. Killing is not a virtue.
But there are circumstances in which killing the other appears to become justified. Justify the war or the circumstance. So can You’re have to kill that parasite in order to get better. There’s no choice. It’s not a right choice.
But to just seek compassion for that being, that that that that that that that that little whatever. A bee hive, so I didn’t know. So I rang up and they said, look. Because you’ve lifted so long and the hive is so large, they will have to poison. Oh.
So I’ve been out talking to them. I the only thing I can think of is to try and say something to to the bees. Because I mean, what else can I do? There’s thousands of these bees. Thousands of bees.
I mean, I can’t see any way that you could move. This is Have you rung an apiarist? That’s who I’ve rung. I think the apiarist. They’re saying because there’s so many there now, they won’t be able to So we’ve dealt a little bit so far with right view, right investigation, right speech and right action.
And we’ll do the we’ll go through these again a little bit later as well. But it’s really just to get an idea of what we’re talking about with these elements. And in a way, we try to make sense of them to see how they could be related to enlightenment itself. And what we’re doing at present is the fourth one action. Right action.
How is right action connected with our ultimate goal of liberation or enlightenment? So what is suggested here is that we engage in right action such as not killing, not stealing, not engaged in sexual misconduct and so forth so that we don’t create actions that are going to be an obstacle to us in attaining enlightenment. Now even though enlightenment is a long way down the track, if we look at the perfection vehicle in Buddhism, the perfection vehicle, it takes three countless eons to attain enlightenment. So three countless eons, one countless eon is eighty great eons and so forth. Each of those great eons is a very long time.
Many, many thousands of lifetimes. So it’s a long term goal, our enlightenment. So we the question arises, what how do my actions in the present affect me attaining enlightenment in the far distant future? Future. That’s a valid point.
And if we don’t see if we don’t connect our actions with that result, then it becomes difficult to stop ourselves engaging in negative actions. If we think those negative actions are not going to have an impact they will have a result, they will have an outcome for us then there’s a tendency for us to commit negative actions without too much thought, too much reflection. So right action. Here we’re looking at at for instance not killing. Killing itself is a natural non virtue really because it’s taking that which is most precious from another being.
And by taking that from another being it harms. There’s no way we can kill without harming. So it is to harm. So here is meant killing with the intention to kill. Unintentional killing is less.
That’s not what is meant here. But here with the intention to kill to kill, with the intention to steal, steal. Sexual misconduct also is there. And that is really harming others through engaging in sexual activity and so That can be very harmful for others. That can also act as an impediment to our development.
So what is suggested here is that we don’t want to add to the obstacles that we have already. That we want to be what? To establish a clear path forward to attaining liberation. Now already we have countless imprints in our mind stream of negative actions from the past. And we have a vast number of imprints on the mind of killing others, of stealing from others, of engaging in sexual misconduct with others, of lying, of slander, of harsh words, of gossip, of wrong view, of greed, of malice and so forth.
The ten non virtuous actions. We have countless imprints already stored and just waiting in our mind stream to be awakened by the appropriate conditions. We don’t want to add to this if we can avoid it. In a sense attaining enlightenment is cleaning up the mess. It’s saying that okay I’m not going to engage in wrong actions from as much as I can from now on so that my mind does settle, my mind does become clearer and as my mind becomes clearer I can generate right view.
So we need to deal with our wrong actions not engage in those sorts of actions. So that’s pretty clear. Probably the one thing that we have at present is that we just have strong habits to act in certain ways and we need to be able to undo that area. We need to deal with those areas as well. We’re susceptible to committing wrong actions, to harming others.
So by whatever means that we can use if we can minimize this the harm for others through our actions then we should engage in that. Right. Then wrong livelihood. So wrong livelihood is really dealing with not engaging, taking up types of livelihood or means of supporting ourselves that involve harm for other beings. So this is not always easy.
But for instance being a butcher would be maybe the you know a good example if we can avoid taking on the occupation of a butcher having to slaughter animals, then that’s very good. Not being a hunter or even fishing things like this that directly involve killing others is good. Then not engaging in things like selling intoxicants is good. Now this also it might might not be very easy especially if we inherit a pub or you know we inherit something that would tend to make us you know work in that area. Now the reason for this is that we we need to purify our karma.
We need to engage in actions that are going to be part of the solution. That are going to purify the mind. And if by engaging in actions that harm others, say through directly killing others or that strongly, you know, involve attachment or strongly involve say intoxicants that lead to coarsening the mind and losing one’s discernment of what is good and what is bad and so forth such as through intoxicants then such actions should be avoided. Such livelihoods should be avoided. Better we don’t engage.
If your father is a butcher and he gives us the business, maybe better to decline. You know, I don’t want to become a butcher. So anyway, most people don’t engage in a livelihood that’s going to harm directly harm others. But this is not an easy area. For instance people become soldiers being a soldier means that you’re going be out there killing people or that you’re in the front line if that happens.
If we go to war then that’s going to be an issue. You’re going have to kill. Killing a human being is far worse than killing an animal or an insect. Technically if one can avoid being in the army then that is better for one’s long term development. But there’s a lot of issues here.
It’s not easy. I can remember being in India in the 70s and then some Tibetans who had joined the Indian Army and had gone and fought in the Bangladesh war that I would meet and they would talk about this and they were often quite traumatized by it all but they had felt a commitment to do that because India had taken them on as refugees and they wanted to support the nation. However in the aftermath they had real issues about what they had done. And this of course is the case, you know, no matter where war occurs, those that fight in the war then have to deal with the aftermath of the killing and that can be very distressing and very hard to deal with. Why is that?
It’s because killing is a natural non virtue and no matter how much one can justify it in the beginning later the reality of the action which is really very heavy is not easily purified. So it becomes a burden. It becomes distressing. So really what we’re looking at here is engaging in actions that don’t cause, you know, sort of later regret or a coarsening of the mind or karma that needs to be dealt with. So there are a lot of issues here.
It’s not easy. Certainly not easy. The bottom lying is that when we accept to take on an action we are responsible. It’s not that we go to war and the commander says you know you go and you know take that area there and we if we were soldiers we went and we killed dozens of others. It’s not as if the commander takes on all of that.
It’s everyone that’s engaged of course is responsible. Everyone that affirms that action takes on that action is responsible. So this is where we have to be very careful ourselves. Even looking at TV and if we see a war in a foreign country and we think oh that’s good you know, that’s a good thing to do, that’s a good war killing those people is a good thing that also has an effect on us. Although we might not have the complete action we might have one or two parts of the action and that has an effect on us.
We need to be aware of this. Like I said that an action has four parts: the intention, then the actual engagement, the preparation, the actual engagement and the conclusion of the action. So we might not have the actual entry to the action, the preparation for it or the conclusion, but if we affirm the intention then a part of that action we take on. Taking on the action means that it affects the mind stream it lays down imprints in our mind stream. Yep.
It can, I think? It can coarsen the mind. If you start to think that you’re really killing someone and you have the intention to kill, then you can be accumulating negative propensities to kill. Right? So one needs to observe that oneself.
Why would I be interested anyway in engaging in a game that’s killing? What am I trying to achieve by this? Why am I attracted to doing this? What interest is there for me in this? As we need to be aware of that.
It’s not an easy question. It’s like paintball you know like people run around in it and it can be a fun game you know you’re shooting paintball at other people. And provided you’re not intending to kill another person you understand it’s a game there’s probably not much. Not a strong negative imprint that it would lie down but still one needs to observe, one needs the facts of actions like that. What is it?
Why am I doing this? Is it for a positive purpose or not? One needs to be aware of one’s own actions one’s intentions why one is participating in the action why one actually engages in it, why one concludes it. If all four parts of the action are present then the action becomes very strong. Like if we see an insect and we kill it.
So we have the intention to kill, we prepare to kill it, we might get a bit of wood. We actually kill it and then we rejoice in the killing after. We think: I’ve killed it. Good. In that case all four parts of the action are there and so we have a complete imprint a full potent imprint laid in our mind stream.
Let alone the fact that we’ve killed this poor insect. It was really defenseless against us but we have created a karmic seed that remains with us. And when the conditions come together in future we will experience the result of that killing. So the result of that killing can take many different forms either we get a little bit sick or maybe we get bitten by an insect and so on. There’s many different ways that that can manifest.
Now in the past we’ve killed countless insects everyone. All of us we’re you know like cohorts co conspirators in this. Everyone that we see around us we’ve all got this burden of past action. Now those past negative actions manifest continuously for beings like ourselves when the conditions arise. And so, you know, we experience we get a little bit sick, we have a bit of pain, we get bitten, we all sorts of things happen because of these past actions.
Yep. Well, they have no right to really penalize you for that. Oh, well, if the intention is out to hurt people, they’re not good. Well, it probably is, actually. There’s a certain amount here that people want to harm someone else, and that’s not good.
Although, you know, developing it can also help to develop good qualities as well, sport. Teamwork, working with others, working to a greater goal amongst a group of people, developing sense of of sportsmanship or fair play and so on. All of these things can be very good. It can train people in a good way. Some people get very competitive.
Also, used to be the case that good sportsmen didn’t take too much money for playing sport. Now it’s become very much a big business. Often people take it on as a profession. How do you mean? Yeah, yeah.
Oh no it can exactly it can create friendship between teammates and competitors. Lifelong In fact much of community activity in our culture is through sport and that’s often very positive and not only nationally but internationally. So there’s a very strong positive element there as well. On the other hand there’s doping and cheating. I mean we’re all familiar with the Lance Armstrong story and so on that goes on which is unfortunate.
But you know people can you know see the fault that lies in that course of action and I mean things like sport can be a vehicle for positive action definitely. And as a substitute for war it’s a very good thing. I mean if people were able to decide these issues through sport rather than going to war then excellent. But, yeah, we need to examine examine this as well. You know, just also to keep ourselves fit it’s probably a good thing.
There’s many potential positive things. Here we’re looking at right action in terms of harming others. If the intention in sport is to harm then they’re not good or even unintentionally through one’s action one harms like Lance Armstrong. I mean he’s done a lot of good through cancer charities but at the same time he’s really harmed the sport unless you know there’s some explanation you can come up with about what actually happened. Actually the actions of taking those performance enhancing drugs does harm the sport a great deal.
Oh, it really rallied the stirred up all the New Zealand ers again. Yeah. Well, probab Yeah I think that’s a very good question because it does come down to the intention there think sport does give people the opportunity to test their intentions. You have a referee who’s supposed to be keeping an eye on what’s happening and his interpretation of the intentions of the players and so on. I think it can help to train a person to deal with their anger and their frustration.
It gives them a forum in which this can occur. So it’s potentially very positive but that’s right it depends on the interest of the individuals as well. Again it depends. Are looking at the intention for the action in right action creating actions that are going to support our long term goals, short and long term goals in establishing virtue, an ultimate virtue. And then right livelihood.
So right livelihood there again is just engaging in types of actions, livelihoods that are not supported through the killing of other beings, through the harming of other beings. So then we need to understand the potential fault of different types of livelihood and gain some clarity on that. Right and then we have right exertion. Yeah. I think that can be very positive but experimentation on animals is killing.
That killing is going to be non virtuous no matter which way it goes, no matter how important the experiment is. So if it can if there’s any possible way of avoiding killing animals in the testing of products then that should be done. You know if you don’t need to kill mice or monkeys or rabbits or pigs in order to test some procedure or drug or apparatus then very good. If you do then it becomes more problematic but it doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be beneficial. Maybe for some procedures there’s no other way of doing it by killing animals.
Bottom line is that whoever kills the animal takes on those actions and whoever affirms that also takes them on. It’s just if you’re a research scientist and you’re studying mites or you’re studying anything else and you might have to kill millions of mites or billions of mites then you realize that okay I will reap the result of that at some point maybe not in this life, maybe not in ten lifetimes, maybe after a hundred lifetimes. That will come back to me. I have to take that on. That is potentially beneficial for the animal.
Still you have the karma of killing. Dedicating the merit to the animal benefits the animal but the killing is still there. It’s far easier not to lay down the karmic imprint than have to try and purify it later. Far easier to go that route. Once the imprint is laid down once that karmic seed is there and it’s potent we can destroy that seed provided we apply that four opponent powers strongly enough.
Right? But it’s harder to do it that way than not to do it in the first place. But we have the choice. I mean but what we need to do is be informed about what the choices we have are. And then then we make up our own mind about it.
Sorry. Even so, killing those insects is negative. It never has a positive outcome. Killing has no positive outcome in and of itself. However the positive motivation to benefit countless human beings that has a positive outcome.
So you have to weigh the two. That’s right. Or it might be a cosmetic, you know, you’re testing. Yeah. No.
That that’s right. It needs some the benefit has to be examined. Yeah. The benefit needs to be examined. But that’s and it’s just for us that if we engage in a line of action then are we responsible?
It will manifest for us whatever the result. But there can be different positive and negative outcomes from one type of action. So we’re often experiencing that. Yeah, we often experience that we have from a particular action we might kill something to help someone else. The motivation to help that person is positive has a positive outcome killing has a negative outcome.
So you know we have a mixture. Other times we just have a negative motivation. We kill just out of anger or hatred. So no positive. Nothing positive there at all.
So what we’re trying to do here is with this eightfold noble path is to provide a basis a firm stable basis for us to develop enlightenment. That story of the Buddha before when he was a captain of a ship in a previous life before he was a Buddha, that act of killing that pirate captain served to complete the first countless eon of merit. The positive motivation that he had to preserve that being and being willing to go to hell in order to protect that other being was sufficient to complete the first countless aeon of merit for Śākyamūni. Still the killing of that other person was negative. It could not be transformed into something positive.
Anyway, then right exertion. So right exertion is really to cultivate the antidotes to the obscurations, obstacles to be abandoned on the path of meditation over a long period without being discouraged. So right exertion means that we’re willing to engage in overcoming all the obstacles that we have for our development. Development without limit, without any limit of time placed on that that we’re willing to endure whatever it takes without being discouraged. So we engage in that sort of exertion even if it takes one complete lifetime or if it takes five lifetimes or ten lifetimes then we’re engaging in effort to purify the path to establish the path.
So effort itself is taking delight in what is virtuous. Exertion here, it really means just that taking delight or being joyful in the practice of of, virtue. So that’s important. Once one has a liking for the practice of what is positive then not much effort or energy needs to be put in from one side in a sense. It’s just one is carried along by the the liking one has for virtue itself or the delight of practicing virtue.
So this means engaging over many many lifetimes without being discouraged, without having a sense of defeatism or giving up or being discouraged. But seeing that it is the best way of engaging one’s own purpose and the purpose of others then to maintain energy in doing that but steady energy over a long period because this is required in order attain enlightenment. Our patience is very much involved. Being patient with others and being patient with ourselves. And realizing the more we’re able to develop right investigation and view the more we have a perspective on our situation, clearer perspective on where we are with the path.
And that also helps us to put in perspective our effort, our exertion. We realize it’s going to take a long time. These obscurations we have have been there for a long time. Many many lifetimes so they’re going to take time to remove. So we’re going to be patient.
We’re not going to expect instant results. It’d be nice if they were instant results but we need to be patient. So this is the right exertion that’s meant here having right effort and Having this lightness of practicing that is positive. This exertion here really is that type of thing it’s a lightness, it is confidence that this is the way forward. That the practice of virtue is something very positive for oneself and positive for others.
Liking virtue which is what exertion is, which is what effort is is like medicine. Really the virtue itself is the medicine. Liking the medicine is a bit like exertion. But getting us to a point where we’ll we engage in exertion takes time. And that’s because we have such strong habits. Habits for non virtue, while strong, are impermanent.
They might be strong at present but gradually bit by bit they will be overcome. Just like water dripping on a rock gradually wears the rock away. That’s how exertion is a bit like that. Just drop by drop on a hard rock. The hard rock is a little bit like our the habit for non virtue that we have.
Those drops will gradually wear away our negative habits. So then also we have right mindfulness. Right mindfulness is applying the antidotes to the obstacles to the generation of calm abiding and insight. Right mindfulness here it’s a huge issue. Right mindfulness is really it’s the four types of mindfulness.
Mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feeling, mindfulness of the mind itself, mindfulness of dharma. So they all lead to the development of the mind of serenity or quiescence or calm abiding where the mind becomes perfectly tamed. And malleable, flexible, blissful where it’s completely permeated by mental joy mental bliss and the body is permeated by physical joy then everything becomes easy in the mind. So this comes about through right mindfulness and overcoming the different distractions and obscurations that float around in our mind that are not very useful to us. Those sort of ugly, unhelpful bits.
So right mindfulness is directed to this end. So the first one there, mindfulness of the body is like mindfulness of breath. It’s included in the mindfulness of the body. So what we’re overcoming with mindfulness of breath and then mindfulness on various meditation objects like the forty meditation objects is that we’re overcoming laziness of the mind. It’s the biggest obstacle we have at present.
Mind tends to be very lazy, unworkable. And we can see it if we the current mind if we try and shift it into a virtuous state has a lot of inertia. It’s lazy. Sort of doesn’t want to, you know, move out of its current state. Doesn’t wanna become virtuous.
So we have to overcome that laziness. Death meditation is very good at this point. We think about our death, our approaching death, that can be very positive. And the necessity that we die with a virtuous state of mind. And because we don’t know when death will arise we have to continuously train our mind to be virtuous.
Overcome the laziness, the inertia it has just to remain where it is which is often probably more non virtuous than anything else. Ah that’s even subtler. Laziness is even laziness is quite coarse laxity is quite subtle. It’s overcome after you overcome laziness. First you overcome laziness then mental sinking or laxity is overcome.
It’s too subtle for us to really see it present. For us the main issue is the mind is quite lazy. It’s hard for us to even you know go off and meditate for a week or a month. It’s not that easy for us to organize it. Sometimes we do which is excellent.
But to really engage strongly in virtuous practices means that we overcome laziness. This state of inner mind that is there. We sense it’s there. And there’s also a mix. There’s different types of laziness.
There’s just the laziness of not wanting to do something positive. There’s the laziness that thinks I can’t do it. It’s beyond me. It’s too hard for me. It might be easy for other people but I can’t do it.
Then there’s this laziness which is a type of dysfunction which is sort of just doesn’t want to do anything because it doesn’t want to do These sorts of states we have to overcome. We’re not going to overcome them straight away. One of the things is we don’t see the fault in them at present. And provided we don’t see the fault then it’s hard for us to rally ourselves, you know, to overcome our laziness. But that’s okay.
For us in the beginning as long as we begin to see where the fault is then the possibility of us eventually overcoming that fault begins to arise. In a sense we’ve got to be concerned but relaxed at the same time. There’s no sense in being concerned and then you know getting so tense about it all that we worry and we just end up the mind doesn’t become any better, doesn’t become any more flexible, any more joyful. It’s just that we’re sort of worried and tense about it. Then no use.
It’s as if we need a healthy concern about the fact we’re going to die but at the same time be relaxed and observe. Because it’s only the fact only the facts of our situation can help us. We can’t add anything more to our situation in a sense. It’s really we check check and continue to check on the state of our mind and then we can use these types of guidelines like the you know as ways of investigating how the mind is in the present. Right view.
Do I have right view? Right investigation? Right speech? These types of things, action. Because all of these contribute to the mind becoming lighter, more joyful, more pliable, more flexible, more workable, happier.
So which is what we need? We can’t function without the mind really being flexible. What causes the mind to be mind to inflexible? Probably all of those. Religion.
Well, religion in itself shouldn’t I mean, that’s a bit of a perhaps a neutral thing. Covers many different is religion good or bad? Bad? Both. Can something be both good and bad?
At the same time? Oh, things can’t be good or bad. At the same time, are of themselves. Aren’t they? Isn’t that a chair?
It’s just a chair. Well, could be a it could be an ugly chair. Could be a pretty chair. Yeah. True.
It’s how how we’re looking at these these things like religion that determines whether our mind is virtuous or not in relation to that object. Yes. So we need to be careful. Like with religion, is religion good or bad? They’re sort of weighted questions, so we have to be careful.
We have to be very careful these days because our views towards other religions can have serious consequences for us as well, depending on where we are and who we’re talking to. Right, what makes the mind inflexible? Alright, the ego. What do you mean by the ego? The permanent self.
Is there a permanent self? Sorry? Yeah. Although we tend to think, we tend to have a view of the permanent self or a fixed self, but true, that idea of a fixed self does lead to the mind becoming very inflexible. This the idea of a fixed self meaning as a type of self, the I not changing does lead to the mind becoming inflexible.
Anyway I think I can make that assertion. And we do tend to think that the self is fixed, don’t we? We do. We tend to think that the self of this morning is the same as the one that was here at midday. That is the same as the one now.
And when we think oh I got up this morning that I we think is the same as the one now. Don’t we? We just sort of connect the dots and we think: Oh yeah, same self! The external world may have changed and maybe I’ve changed a little bit but inside that self is the same. So that’s the view of a fixed self.
That’s said to be the view of the afflictive self. So that’s the cause that’s one of the underlying roots of saṃsāra. So that causes the mind to become somewhat very inflexible. Why? Because it’s the the very ground upon which all these other negative emotions emerge such as hatred and anger.
Hatred and anger especially make the mind inflexible and attachment. They make the mind, very inflexible. Unworkable. Is that true? Sorry?
On a relative level. True? If you disagree please disagree. In a sense you know I’m coming up with some ideas that come out of the debate manuals for instance from Sera Monastery. But these ideas they’re really useful in as much as we engage them.
There’s almost a danger if we accept them too quickly they can’t benefit us. It’s almost better that we don’t accept them because then it’s a bit like water off a duck’s back it doesn’t really penetrate. Whereas if we look at something we have to investigate really everything as the Buddha said, you know. Just as you would test gold by burning rubbing and scratching it so too test what I say don’t accept it merely out of respect. So we’re like that.
We have to test these ideas over and over so they penetrate a little bit so the meaning starts to dawn. Just having the words themselves is useful on a very superficial level but if the words are not striking up a meaning for us then that meaning can’t affect us. This used to be one of the elements of debate that we used to discuss at Ganden Shartse. But that’s very important. It’s a great insight.
This need to think carefully through. Get to the meaning. Once we got to the meaning, forget about the words. The words are only there to carry the meaning. The old man of meaning is supported by the walking stick of words.
Just like the dharma, the dharma is like a boat, like a ship that carries us across the ocean of saṃsāra to the distant island, the distant shore of liberation. Once we get to the distant shore of liberation we can forget about the dharma. We can forget about the boat. Mindfulness is not forgetting. Mindfulness means just not forgetting just keeping something in mind.
Being mindful. So there’s different types of mindfulness: mindfulness of what the body is doing. Mindfulness of the body is good. It’s just mindfulness that oh I’m sitting cross legged, I’ve hand on each knee, I’m slumped to one side, I’m moving this way, I’m about to fall asleep, I’m tense my shoulders are tense you know this mindfulness of the body just taking stock of what the body is doing tension here and so forth. I’ve got pain in the knee this mindfulness of the body just It’s just like a quick check this is the state of the body at the current moment.
Mindfulness of the body. Mindfulness of feeling is the second mindfulness. So that’s just being aware of physical and mental feeling in the present moment. Being able to differentiate what is physical feeling what is mental feeling. So the physical feeling then is the pain in the knee, the ache in the back or that unpleasantly warm or right, it’s the physical feeling positive, negative or neutral that arises in relation to the body in the present.
You know including the feeling of the stomach stomach is half empty half full and so forth. Just then mental feeling is like happiness, unhappiness in the current moment. Just checking what sort of mental feeling do I have at present? Often the physical feeling and the mental feeling influence each other. If I’ve got a physical pain then I might start to feel unhappy about it.
So the negative physical feeling gives rise to a negative mental conditions its arising. Similarly, it goes the other way: positive mental feeling can influence the body. You can have a positive physical feeling. So mindfulness of feeling is very important. So just taking stock of what feelings are there.
They can be very grounding as well. Just to be able to take stock. It doesn’t take long to do but just to be aware. And then the third type of mindfulness is mindfulness of the mind itself which is even subtler. Feelings the physical body is quite coarse.
Feelings are much subtler. The mind itself is much subtler again. So therefore the mind there means just mental and sensory consciousness. What’s happening? What am I thinking?
For instance which is like a mental awareness. Just taking note, oh, that’s happening. Like sensory consciousness and mental consciousness. What’s happened? But it’s very subtle, not easy for us to discern.
Then there’s a fourth one, mindfulness of dharma. So that then is dealing really with the four noble truths in the present. So those types of mindfulness, having right mindfulness. Right mindfulness the seventh one is the type of mindfulness that leads to Samādhi, leads to calm abiding, leads to developing effortless control of the mind that is blissful and extremely clear. The yeah.
Perfection of concentration, perfection of wisdom would be right view. Exertion would be the perfection of effort, not the perfection of patience and so forth. So it does. There are connections with the six perfections or the ten perfections. They’re not quite the same.
We’ll go into these again tomorrow and we’ll look at how we summarize them as well. But yeah they’re not quite the same as the six perfections. Or they can have a common basis. I think right concentration can be the perfection of concentration vice versa but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. They can have a common basis and right view can be the perfection of wisdom.
But if you’re debating it out then there’s probably four possibilities: That which is right view but not the perfection of wisdom That which is the perfection of wisdom which is not right view That which is both and that which is neither. Would be not. No, they’re separate lists. You can’t just condense them down into one list. Which is often the case.
For us it’s not really probably possible because they’re different things like mindfulness of the body. Body and feelings are different. We either look at one or we look at the other. Right? Because the body is physical.
Feelings are non physical. The feelings are mental factors and mind is main mind, so they’re different. Yeah. So probably have to do them separately. When you become a Buddha, can do them all at once.
Right. Also then we have right concentration so just we’ll just do the last one briefly right concentration which is the cultivation of antidotes to obstacles to establishing higher perceptions and so on. So concentration there is developed through right mindfulness and that right concentration leads into extra sensory perception. Area. Which one needs on the path?
One has to develop divine eye, divine ear and so on. The ability to recall one’s past lifetimes. The ability to read the minds of others. The ability to perform miraculous transformations. And so on.
The ability to see extremely long distances, to hear at very long distances and so on. So these these are said to be useful in terms of helping other beings and also to develop one’s own understanding as well. So for instance having the ability to recall our past lives is very useful. Extremely useful in understanding how we got to where we are why things happen to us. Why this happened.
What action in the past in one of my past lifetimes causes this now to happen? And often this comes up in in the sutras. The Buddha would be walking along a path on one of the lanes or pathways in northern India and something would happen. Ānanda who was the attendant of the Buddha would ask: Why did that happen? What was the cause for that?
And the Buddha would say: Well in a previous life, you know, this person was a farmer in such a such a place and he committed this action and because of that now this has happened. And so on. So the Buddha had the ability here this higher perception of past life. And then he was able to explain why certain things happened. Why many things happened.
Once he was walking along and a crow flew over and defecated on the Buddha’s robes. And Ānanda, his attendant, was quite shocked and said, what is the cause for that? And the Buddha said, that being in future will be born as a great non-Buddhist. And it happened because of previous actions, but he will be reborn as a great non-Buddhist and and defeat many of my followers in debate and convert them to his own view. But eventually he’ll be defeated and when he’s defeated he’ll be locked in a Buddhist library in Nālānda.
So anyway some centuries later this being was born, Ashvaghosha, and he was he defeated many Buddhists in debate in northern India at that time became very very influential and then finally he was defeated by Āryadeva a student of Nāgārjuna and as penalty he was locked in a Buddhist library and he was a great scholar, brilliant scholar. And so he’s locked in this vast storehouse of texts and so eventually he starts reading. He can’t help himself. And eventually, he comes across this prophecy. He comes across this story that the Buddha had given a prophecy about.
And when he read that, he he developed faith in the Buddha. So then he composed a text called the Buddhacarita, the deeds of the Buddha which is still available. So this comes about through the Buddha having the ability to see what happened in past lives. And because that was recorded and placed in that library and he was able to read it, he developed faith in the Buddha at that point and and that was quite useful for him. That stems from remembering the past lives.
So the ability to remember past lives depends on right concentration. If we are able to develop Samādhi and Samādhi calm abiding and then we enhance that calm abiding we can generate that sort of higher perception or that sort of clairvoyance. What do you think? Good thing or bad thing? Right mindfulness leads to the development of calm abiding but then you enhance the calm abiding to develop extra sensory perception which is right concentration.
So that’s part of well that’s the eight. That’s roughly speaking that is the eight that we’re talking about. It’s a very rough sort of summary so far of the eight. Now it might not be apparent at present why some of them are there and some of them are not there. That’s okay.
It might not be clear why some of them are there you know as part of the causes for enlightenment But that’s fine because actually the doubts we have about this subject matter are going to take a long time to disperse, eliminate. We don’t even know the doubts we have often at present. Get to know our doubts. Probably talking with other people. Discussing these issues with other people.
Because other people are wonderful sounding board. We talk with them other people have insights that we don’t have. Other people also can have misconceptions that we don’t have. Some can bring out clarity. Well, that’s it.
I mean, those around us are like, if we bring a group of people together, you know, the combined wisdom is far greater than that of an individual. So it’s always very useful to rely on others to bring up these issues with other people get other people’s opinions. But we do that with we check, investigate what other people say. What it helps us with is that it strikes up doubts within us and probably the kind one of the kindnesses of other beings is that they help us understand what we don’t know. Extremely important because just left to our own devices often these things just don’t occur to us at all.
We’re full of ignorance. We don’t even know that we’re ignorant. And even when people tell us we’re ignorant we get annoyed at them when it’s perfectly true. We’re really quite stupid. We know very little.
We know little about ourselves let alone other people. Actually other people are very kind when they point out what we don’t know. If it wasn’t for other people pointing out what we don’t know, we’d probably never come to know we don’t know. A lot of things. So actually we depend on others for just about everything.
It’s amazing. In this life, if it wasn’t for our mother when we were born, we’d never be born. We wouldn’t survive for two or three years. We’re totally helpless. We don’t contribute to anything.
We just make a mess continuously. And then we depend on our teachers at school to teach us the language, our mother to teach us, father to teach us the language. So impart all this information. So we’re dependent on others all the time. So it’s useful for us to reflect on this regularly because otherwise we get proud about know, We have this little bit of understanding here and a little bit of understanding there and it’s as if that’s come from us but often actually it comes from other people.
We just have taken it on from other people through their kindness. And when other people see our faults, instead of rejoicing that they’re pointing out something that we haven’t quite understood, We get annoyed with them and so on. So the these things are very important to think of the kindness of other beings. Oh, look. I’ll have a look.
I’ll have a have a check on this. Yep. There’s many, many any of the sutras of the Buddha which talk about these are very, good. But I also have a a look, see if I can alright. Okay.
We might just finish there for today. And we’ll just do a quick dedication prayer on page number six. The last one on page number six. So the reason for doing a dedication of course is just to preserve any positive potential that we create. Dedicate that to the enlightenment of for us attaining enlightenment in order to enlighten every sentient being.
So if that’s our motivation then that merit will not be lost when we get angry next time which could be quite who knows when we’re gonna get annoyed soon. Becoming annoyed destroys our merit. So We have to protect it before we get annoyed. The best way to protect it is to dedicate it to everyone because every being is infinite in number. There’s no limit to beings.
Dedicating it to the benefit of everyone preserves it from even our own anger or our own impatience. Due to the merits of these virtuous actions may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception to that enlightened state. May the supreme jewel bodhicitta that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen not diminish, but increase more and more.