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Can I be a Buddhist and still have fun? · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:11
So can I be a Buddhist and still have fun?
0:18
See, we're having fun already. So the answer, as I said in the
0:23
WhatsApp message for those who read it, the short answer is
0:27
yes. So we can all relax.
0:31
Yes, we can be Buddhist and still have fun.
0:35
But there's a longer answer to yeah, that's not the end of the
0:40
talk. There's a longer answer.
0:42
There's more to say about the theme.
0:44
I think because being a Buddhist and having fun and experiencing
0:50
pleasure and enjoyment, it's a subtle thing.
0:54
It's maybe it's an art or it's a practice that we have to learn.
0:59
So I'll, I'll talk more about that as we go on.
1:03
Yeah. So in thinking about the talk,
1:07
preparing in the week, I was remembering when I first started
1:11
coming along to a Buddhist centre.
1:13
This was back in England in a city called Leeds.
1:17
And yeah, I was very enthusiastic, got got involved
1:21
quite quickly in practicing meditation, then learning about
1:24
Buddhism and word kind of spreads, like I started to feel
1:29
myself to be a Buddhist. It's not.
1:33
There's no kind of badge. It has to be an inner feeling or
1:36
sense. And I started to feel like, Oh
1:38
yeah, this makes sense for me. I think I am a Buddhist.
1:44
Sorry. Maybe.
1:47
Anyway, I'll continue. So yeah, I began to feel that I
1:52
am a Buddhist. And yeah, word spreads.
1:54
So people in the family started to find out about this, and
1:58
people asked really interesting questions.
2:01
And a lot of the time the questions are to do with what
2:04
can you do and what can't you do?
2:07
Yeah. My grandma was like the most
2:10
inquisitive about this. So.
2:13
So my grandma's 93 back then. She would have been almost 80,
2:18
kind of late 70s. And my grandma's lovely.
2:22
She's a great feeder. So whenever you go to her house,
2:27
there's always a few bits of food laid out on the table so
2:31
that you can relax. It's lovely hospitality, like
2:34
Old Fashioned. And usually it would be things
2:37
like nuts, crisps, biscuits, cookies, maybe a bit of cake if
2:43
you're lucky. She found out that I was a
2:45
Buddhist. And then the next time I went to
2:47
her house, expecting all this, on the table there was a glass
2:52
with some sticks of carrot, and there was a glass with some
3:00
sticks of celery. And I saw them.
3:04
I said, ah, grandma, things have changed.
3:09
And she said, well, I wasn't sure what you can eat now that
3:12
you're a Buddhist. Can you eat carrots?
3:15
And can you eat celery? So I said, yeah, I can eat them.
3:18
I can also eat crisps, and I can eat biscuits and I can eat nuts.
3:22
So thankfully the next time I went, those things were
3:25
available again. And shortly after that I moved
3:31
to a retreat centre to live at a retreat centre for six years.
3:34
And this, this deepened her enquiry into what was possible
3:38
and what was not possible. I remember ringing her up on her
3:41
birthday to say congratulations, happy birthday.
3:45
She said, oh, thank you, Can you use the telephone then where you
3:48
are? I said, grandma, I'm on the
3:51
telephone. Yeah, it's fine.
3:53
I can use the telephone. So if you start to feel yourself
3:58
a Buddhist and to talk about this, you'll often get these
4:00
questions like can you do this? Can you do that?
4:05
Or, or worse, you're not allowed to do this, you can do this.
4:09
So it's a, it's an interesting thing to do to kind of come out
4:15
in that way and see what reactions you get.
4:19
So why, why do we get that kind of reaction?
4:22
Or yeah, why do people expect it shows that people have certain
4:27
expectations. Why do they expect that?
4:30
If you choose to live as a Buddhist or live a so-called
4:34
spiritual life, why do people assume that in doing that there
4:40
will be certain things you can do and certain things you can't
4:42
do? Like what's the origins of that?
4:45
I've been interested in this question over recent weeks, and
4:50
it's fair enough, isn't it? Because, yeah, if we think about
4:53
it, many spiritual traditions throughout the millennia,
4:58
throughout thousands of years, they have come up with systems
5:05
or ways of exploring living a spiritual life that often does
5:09
include not doing certain things.
5:12
Yeah, doing certain other things and not doing certain things.
5:18
And often the the issue gets associated with what we might
5:24
describe as sensory experience or sensory pleasure.
5:29
Enjoying sensory tastes, touches, sounds.
5:35
There's a kind of suspicion around that or a danger that is
5:39
identified in that. So often the assumption is that
5:44
to live a spiritual life, something has to be freed.
5:47
Yeah. Whether that's described as the
5:50
spirit, the soul, the self, the essence.
5:54
There's something in us that we might describe as spiritual that
5:58
needs to come out. But that means there's something
6:02
about us that also keeps that in.
6:05
Yeah. And often that thing is
6:07
associated with our sense experience and therefore our
6:12
body. So in a lot of spiritual
6:16
traditions and movements over the centuries, the body has
6:19
become kind of the problem. Yeah.
6:23
The body is of the world. It's it's flesh and bone.
6:26
The spirit is something else. Yeah.
6:30
So to to experience, there's something else we have to get
6:33
around the problem of the the physical sensory body that we're
6:39
kind of dragging around all the time.
6:41
Yeah, I mean, that goes way back.
6:45
You could trace that back even to something in the Western
6:48
tradition like Plato, Plato's cave.
6:52
You might know the analogy, that ordinary life is like sitting at
6:57
the back of a cave facing the wall.
7:00
Behind you there's a great fire. And further back there's, oh, a
7:04
tree on the outside of The Cave. But we're chained at the back of
7:10
The Cave. We're looking at the back wall,
7:12
and all life is happening outside and throwing shadows
7:17
because of the light from the fire.
7:19
And we think that the shadows are the reality.
7:22
So the body is chained there. The body is the metaphor for
7:26
what is chaining, and we can't see clearly, so we have to free
7:32
ourselves from the chains to go out and see what's really there,
7:35
what life is really about. So it's got a long history, this
7:40
kind of division between body and spirit.
7:44
And yeah, this critique of the body in order to free the
7:49
spirit. And Buddhism is not an exception
7:54
to that. As I've said, the Buddhist
7:57
perspective on this is quite subtle, so we'll make our way
8:00
into that. But Buddhism does also have a
8:03
critique of sense experience and bodily experience and therefore
8:09
the pleasure that comes in through the senses.
8:13
So all of you today I assume came through the main door and
8:18
massive on the wall is this amazing painting that
8:23
Artakaitu's done on the wall of the Wheel of Life from the Indo
8:28
Tibetan tradition. And right in the centre, I
8:31
noticed this morning, right in the centre of the wheel, there
8:35
are three animals. Yeah, there's the the cock, the
8:38
pig and the snake, all of which represent the three, what are
8:43
called the root poisons, greed, hatred and delusion.
8:48
So it's interesting that they're animals, isn't it?
8:50
Because that again suggests something physical, something
8:56
bodily, something well, animal like, not spiritual.
9:03
So I mean the snake's a bit of an exception here, but I don't
9:06
often think of spiritual chickens or spiritual pigs.
9:11
They're grounded on the earth animal.
9:15
So already that wheel of life is saying, yeah, there's an issue
9:18
here. Then around the that central
9:21
wheel, there's another wheel divided into 6.
9:24
And these are the so-called 6 realms of the cosmos according
9:29
to traditional Buddhism, but we could also relate to them as
9:33
different states of mind that we might get into.
9:36
And the one at the top is the God realm.
9:38
And in the God realm, it's said to be so pleasant.
9:42
There's so much pleasure, all the pleasure that you could
9:46
imagine that you fail to see if you're in the God realm.
9:50
You fail to see that there's more to life than just enjoying
9:55
the pleasure of the senses. So Buddhism has this critique.
10:01
We could go further. Even round the outer edge
10:03
there's these so-called 12 nidanas or 12 links which show
10:08
how the problem plays out and why we keep repeating the same
10:12
kind of mistakes. Or stay locked at the back of
10:16
The Cave, let's say. So we have senses.
10:20
One of the links tells us that because we have senses, we
10:23
experience things as pleasant or unpleasant or sometimes neutral.
10:28
When we experience pleasure or pain, we either reach out and
10:32
grasp for it or try to push it away.
10:35
When we do that, we get graspy and the habits are created and
10:39
the whole thing keeps going round and round.
10:42
OK, so Buddhism does have its critique of or or highlights the
10:48
danger of sense experience, sensory pleasures, and our
10:54
relationship to sensory pleasures.
10:57
But like I said, it's quite subtle and it doesn't mean we
11:02
can't have fun. So let me open that up a little
11:06
bit more. So let's turn towards the life
11:16
of the Buddha. So in the life of the Buddha,
11:19
before he gains enlightenment, he does have a period where he's
11:25
very much down on the body and sense experience and enjoyment.
11:30
In fact, he's completely against it.
11:34
So he really comes down hard on himself in terms of, yeah,
11:39
practicing the kinds of things we might see playing out over
11:44
the centuries in, in all kinds of spiritual traditions.
11:47
So things like self mortification is the kind of big
11:54
term for it, kind of damaging the body in certain ways to try
11:59
to free the spirit from it. What else?
12:03
Things like fasting, not eating, even periods of starvation to
12:08
try to release whatever it was that he felt could be released.
12:13
I mean, it gets so bad, the Buddha's description of what his
12:18
life was like in this period. He says things like his body got
12:24
so starved and thin that when he went to touch his stomach, he
12:29
actually touched his own spine. His bum shriveled up so much
12:34
that it was like a camel's hoof. He said his scalp also withered.
12:41
He said when insects landed on him and he went to brush them
12:44
off with the hand, his hair would fall out because of
12:48
malnutrition. And yeah, the, the heat, the
12:51
sun, all these things. So it was a period of extreme
12:56
asceticism, extreme austerity and self-inflicted pain to try
13:01
to free his spirit. So in my own life, I've not gone
13:09
to those extremes. The Buddha said of himself when
13:12
he was doing those practices, no one has ever done it like this
13:16
before. He he felt he was doing it more
13:19
hardcore than anybody else he'd ever met.
13:24
But I definitely can see I've had times in my own life where
13:27
this strict Padma Sagara has appeared and imposing a certain
13:35
kind of discipline. And I think it's something I see
13:41
in, you know, just witnessing other people getting interested
13:44
in Buddhism. Sure.
13:46
There are things that we come to Buddhist life with a spiritual
13:52
practice with that probably are not helpful and are probably
13:56
creating problems in our lives suffering.
14:00
So there are things we might need to assess like is that
14:03
helpful? Is that healthy?
14:06
But one thing that can happen is we can also get a bit extreme.
14:12
So it's a danger when we're trying to work it out that we
14:15
get a bit too extreme in that. I'll give you an example from my
14:20
own life in in one of my aesthetic periods, I decided
14:26
that I wanted to give away lots of stuff.
14:30
And there was a lot of stuff that I could give away and get
14:34
rid of. That was kind of weighing me
14:37
down a bit. But one of the things that I
14:41
possess, I still have. It is a box that belonged to my
14:46
grandfather. So it's a wooden box.
14:50
And before it belonged to him, it belonged to his father.
14:53
And before it belonged to him, it belonged to his father.
14:56
So it goes back several generations in my family.
14:59
Like I said, I still have it. So it's not an entirely sad
15:03
ending. I didn't throw the box away, but
15:06
at one point I was just thinking, well, there's various
15:10
things in it that are sort of useless to me.
15:13
And there were things my grandfather and, and his
15:17
father's, they all worked at sea.
15:18
So it had things in it like bits of rope, assuming you need that
15:24
kind of thing at sea, a whistle, like a warning whistle.
15:29
They were all smokers in the past, so they used to buy the
15:32
cigarette tins that had some of those in.
15:35
And if you, well, I don't remember this myself, but maybe
15:39
you've seen them, old cigarette packets used to collect cards in
15:44
them, like pictures of ships or pictures of other things.
15:48
So he had some of those collected.
15:50
And he also had some old razors, like the cutthroat shaving
15:55
razors. And they were really old, so I
15:57
don't know if they belong to my granddad or his father or even
16:01
before that. But I felt that all this stuff
16:04
was just useless, not needed. So I threw it all away.
16:10
And I really regret that now because to have had the object
16:13
that that my granddad and maybe his father had actually like
16:18
touched their face with, I think I, it'd be lovely to be able to
16:23
connect to them, connect to my ancestors and feel the roots
16:28
through the object. And I just, I just threw it in
16:32
the bin. Yeah, so I do regret that now
16:36
going too far in that respect. Thankfully, I still have the
16:39
box. Yeah.
16:43
So in the Buddhist life, he, like I said, he goes to much
16:46
greater extremes than that, even risking his own health and even
16:50
risking his own life. So at one point in this period,
16:54
he did this for six years. Apparently one point in the
16:58
story, he goes down towards the river.
17:02
He's he's a homeless holy person practising these austerities.
17:08
He goes down to the river and I don't know exactly what he's
17:13
doing, but as he goes towards the water he just collapses and
17:18
nearly drowns. So he realises that this isn't
17:21
working. It's not freeing my spirit from
17:25
the body. It's just killing me.
17:27
It's killing the spirit. Even so, he decides to give it
17:32
up and try something else and he makes this really radical and
17:38
key discovery of another way. Before we get to that, let's
17:44
just think about why the Buddha was doing this.
17:48
So I've said it's, it's common throughout history.
17:51
This kind of, I was going to say self punishment, but being,
17:57
let's just say being down on sense experience, sense
18:01
pleasure. And it was true in the Buddhist
18:03
time, it was, it was the way it was done in a sense.
18:08
It's what he saw amongst him and people around him that this was
18:12
one way in which it was done. So he was following what had
18:15
gone before him. But also if we look further back
18:19
in the Buddhist life, it was also a reaction.
18:23
So he was going to an opposite extreme of what he'd experienced
18:27
before. So in the years before he
18:31
decided to do all this, what we might perceive as crazy stuff,
18:38
he'd been living a life of pleasure.
18:43
So the accounts differ. Sometimes this pleasurable life
18:47
story is elaborated into the story that the Buddha lived in a
18:51
palace. He had all the things he might
18:54
want. He had a different dwelling
18:56
house for the summer season, the rainy season, all the
19:01
entertainment he could imagine, all the fine food, but it wasn't
19:06
enough, so that didn't work either.
19:09
The life of ordinary pleasure, satisfaction of the senses, that
19:14
hadn't worked for him. In some of the other accounts
19:18
that are a bit more, let's say stripped back, the Buddha just
19:23
describes how his life at home, the ordinary life into which
19:27
you'd been born, he described it as being cramped, you know,
19:32
restrained a bit like the back of The Cave, cramped and dusty,
19:38
so stuck, not going anywhere, like dust collecting, gathering
19:45
on furniture, for example. So it it lived the life of
19:51
sensory enjoyment, but it hadn't worked.
19:55
It fell empty of deeper meaning for him.
20:00
So that's why he'd left that behind.
20:02
And then he'd gone into the opposite extreme of this kind of
20:06
self punishment or, you know, being down on sensory pleasure,
20:10
trying to avoid pleasure in order to free his spirit.
20:15
And neither of them had worked. So he rejects them both.
20:22
That's, I think that's the radical step.
20:26
Often we can make one step. So it might be that.
20:31
I mean, even this plays out in my life, right?
20:34
So I'm not saying I'm somehow exempt from this now, but I, I
20:39
definitely can look back and see that in my own life, I was just
20:42
doing what everyone else was doing, having fun, going out
20:47
partying, going to the football on the weekend, getting a job,
20:52
earning some money, having a car.
20:55
So I lived that life too. And I'd also found that, well,
20:58
actually, it's all OK, but it's not enough.
21:03
And so I discovered Buddhism, got a bit hardcore, threw stuff
21:08
away, now regret it. So it's played out in my own
21:13
life and still plays out. Yeah.
21:15
So there are days where I'm a bit too LAX and days where I'm a
21:20
bit too strict. So it's still playing out.
21:23
So in your own lives, you might recognise some parallels in the
21:27
Buddha's life story, times where you're just kind of going along
21:31
in the ordinary stream of life, you know, doing the nice things,
21:37
but maybe it doesn't quite feel enough.
21:41
Or other times where you're like, right, I'm going to do
21:43
something, I'm going to transform myself, transform my
21:46
life. But maybe it gets a bit too
21:50
rigid, bit too strict, a bit too hard line.
21:54
So what happens when we do these kind of things is we usually
21:58
slip into the opposite extreme, don't we?
22:01
So, right, OK, I'm really going to make a change.
22:03
I'm going to meditate every morning at 7:00 before work for
22:08
the next year. That's my goal.
22:10
And maybe after a week, it's going well.
22:13
After two weeks, starting to slip a bit slower to get out of
22:18
bed and turn the alarm off. 3rd week so we can't then lapse into
22:23
meditation's not for me. Sleep is for me.
22:27
I need to be kind to myself and just sleep more.
22:31
There might be something in that, but we miss what the
22:35
Buddha would describe as the middle way because we're going
22:38
from one extreme to the other and that's OK.
22:43
I think I find a comfort in the fact that the Buddha went
22:47
through that too. Yeah, the Buddha had to explore
22:51
and go to extremes and make mistakes that we will repeat in
22:56
our own lives because we need to also find how that's going to
23:00
work for us. Yes, it's not a problem, but
23:04
it's good to know there is a middle path.
23:08
The Buddha did discover an alternative to doing whatever
23:12
the hell we like as long as it feels good versus being strict
23:19
hardline the body and sensory pleasure is the problem that we
23:23
need to free ourselves from that.
23:27
All right, So what did the Buddha discover?
23:31
That's the question. Dramatic pause.
23:47
Some of you will know the story. So the Buddha, like I said, he
23:53
has that moment where he's been starving himself.
23:56
He's so skinny, his spine, camel hoof, all that and goes down to
24:03
the water, collapses, picks himself up and realises this
24:08
isn't, this can't be the way he says.
24:12
I know that out of all the people I've seen practising like
24:16
this, I've, I've been at the top, I've done it more so than
24:20
them and it still hasn't worked. So I don't think this is the
24:24
way. So you can kind of imagine this,
24:27
can't you? Like he's given six years of his
24:30
life to these practices and he's just starting to have the
24:33
realisation that maybe it was a waste of time or maybe it was
24:39
off track all this time. So.
24:43
So there must have been a bit of an atmosphere of despair kind of
24:48
sinking. But in the in that moment, what
24:53
happens for the Buddha is a memory arises.
24:58
And yes, seemingly out of nowhere comes this memory of
25:03
when he was a boy, a young kid on a summer's day.
25:11
Underneath it's lovely, the description the in the cool
25:14
shade of a rose apple tree. So he sat beneath a tree in the
25:21
summer in the cool shade of this rose apple tree, and he's
25:24
watching his father in the field in front of him, plowing, and at
25:31
that time watching this thing unfold in front of him.
25:35
He said he just felt naturally this feeling of rapture or
25:41
enjoyment and a kind of blissful peace and calm.
25:47
Just a rose and that was it. That was the memory.
25:54
So it was just in this experience and something
26:00
naturally emerged that wasn't unhealthy, wasn't to do with
26:07
grasping after things and attaching to things.
26:10
It's just this natural healthy human experience of pleasure
26:16
emerging in his experience. And he begins to wonder to
26:21
himself, oh, why am I afraid of pleasure of that kind?
26:29
Why have I been punishing myself and and trying to stop myself
26:32
experiencing pleasure of that kind?
26:39
So the word he uses, it's really interesting because some of the
26:43
translations will say things like the Buddha thought to
26:47
himself, why am I afraid of this pleasure that does not come
26:53
through sensuality? Why am I afraid of a pleasure
26:56
that does not come through sensuality?
26:59
And sensuality, there is a translation of the Poly word
27:03
karma, right? Not the karma that you probably
27:07
all think of. So karma meaning action.
27:11
Usually we discuss karma in terms of actions having
27:14
consequences. How we act will have an effect
27:18
in the future. That's karma.
27:20
KARMA. Yeah, it's not that.
27:24
It's karma KANA. Karma KANA, which in in some
27:34
translations is described as sensuality or desire or desire
27:40
for sense experience. But I think from what I've read,
27:46
I've been doing a bit of research on this, that's not a
27:49
very good translation because this word karma Kama really
27:55
means something more like the thought of sense pleasure or
28:01
attachment to sensory pleasure. So, so to bring in my own
28:07
interpretation of that, the fantasy about certain types of
28:11
sense experience and sense pleasure.
28:14
So it's as if the Buddha is saying actually that's the
28:17
issue. There's another sort of way.
28:20
He says that the thought of desire karma, karma is the
28:26
thought of desire. The wonderful experiences
28:31
through the senses are not karma.
28:35
And he says for a wise person, the wonderful, I love this, the
28:38
wonderful experience of the senses remains wonderful.
28:43
For the wise person, the wonderful experience of the
28:45
senses remains wonderful. But what is lost is the impulse
28:51
for it going back to the wheel of life, that kind of reaching
28:56
out for it or pushing certain experiences away.
29:00
So it's not so much that sense experience and the pleasure that
29:04
comes through the senses is the problem is how we relate to
29:10
those experiences. That's where the Buddha made a
29:14
shift, OK? It's not about punishing myself
29:19
for having sensory experience. It's about investigating my
29:23
relationship to it. And that made a big change for
29:28
him. And that's what he was
29:30
describing in this moment under the Rose apple tree, the
29:33
emergence of this, just this natural sense of enjoyment,
29:40
rapture as it gets described in the text, PT and bliss sucker,
29:47
when they arise, it's not because he's trying to grasp
29:51
anything. He's just under a tree watching
29:52
his dad. And it it happens.
29:56
So something is absent there and therefore 1 could just enjoy
30:01
that type of pleasure. That was his realisation.
30:04
Maybe this type of pleasure is actually pointing the way to
30:09
enlightenment, to the fulfilment of human life and human
30:14
potential. Maybe it's an essential part of
30:18
that, an essential ingredient of that.
30:24
So he went for that, as decisive as ever.
30:29
He tried other extremes. And in a sense he made this
30:32
another extreme, but not in the sense of this grasping after
30:38
trying to push through, but just allowing for the arising of this
30:41
pleasure and, and dwelling in it, being in it.
30:45
And then things just started to unfold.
30:53
So I'll just leave you hanging there with this possibility.
31:04
I don't know why I make notes. I can never read them.
31:11
Oh yeah, Our relationship to it. I I can see that.
31:20
So that then opens up a practical question for us,
31:23
doesn't it? So we've clarified that pleasure
31:26
is OK since experience. Actually, we can't shut it off,
31:32
can we? But but our relationship to
31:36
sense experience, enjoyment, pleasure, fun, it's our
31:41
relationship to that, that as a as a practising Buddhist, one
31:45
would need to explore. Yeah.
31:50
So practically then how do we do that?
31:54
How do we do that? I'm still asking myself the
32:00
question. That's why I'm because I think
32:05
it's key and I think it will carry us very far.
32:09
Sangarachita used to talk about how essential it was just to be
32:12
a happy, healthy human being. We can have all the grand ideas
32:16
about wisdom and great compassion and bringing all that
32:21
into the world, but needs to be on the basis of being a happy,
32:25
healthy human being. So I think for a long way down
32:29
the Buddhist path, this is the question actually, how do we
32:33
enjoy life as well as practising the Dharma?
32:37
How do we enjoy practising the Dharma?
32:40
It doesn't have to be that we enjoy certain things and we
32:43
practice the Dharma, but how do we find enjoyment in our
32:47
exploration of Buddhism? So a couple of things, like, I
32:58
think first of all, we know the difference.
33:01
I think we know the difference between the enjoyment that is
33:04
kind of natural, spontaneous, free of any kind of this, and
33:11
the experience of enjoyment and fun that has this element in it.
33:16
So I'd imagine if we all look at our experience, we'd be able to
33:23
bring up memories of one or the other.
33:25
Yeah, so I think if we are, if we experience things that are
33:31
just fun and they don't have that element in just go for it,
33:36
enjoy it, that might be the first thing.
33:40
The other thing is everything the Buddha says about this
33:45
pleasure that is natural and spontaneous, When he's teaching
33:51
people about that, usually it's in the context of meditation
33:55
where he's talking about the experience of say, going into
33:59
retreat, taking oneself away from a busy environment.
34:04
It usually presupposes that that person is is able to do that to
34:10
some extent, and also that they've already looked at their
34:15
ethical lives. So the different things they
34:19
might do on a day-to-day basis that might create, yeah, this
34:26
attachment, this grasping, or might reduce it.
34:30
That's a kind of basic Buddhist preliminary.
34:35
If you come to the Buddhist centre, to a course or a class,
34:41
if you go on a retreat with us, you will probably encounter what
34:45
we describe as the the refugees and precepts.
34:49
You know, the precepts being the five ethical principles that
34:55
actually all buddies to cross the world would recognise.
35:00
So the principle of love, loving kindness, generosity,
35:05
contentment, truthfulness, mindfulness.
35:08
So there's an assumption that if one's practising those things in
35:13
one's life, exploring those things in one's life, then one's
35:17
meditation also begins to settle so that one can open up this
35:25
exploration of deeper pleasure. Let's see.
35:32
But then the Buddha in, yeah, in this text, when he's talking
35:36
about the memory, the Rose apple tree, he's describing a kind of
35:41
meditative state. Or what it did for him was that
35:44
it allowed him then to explore in meditation this wholesome
35:50
pleasure free of grasping at ever kind of deeper levels.
35:56
So this can unfold more and more fully in his meditation.
36:01
So I'm going to take us in that direction and just explore this
36:05
in meditation because it's hard, isn't it, to like it's, it's all
36:11
well and good saying, you know, explore.
36:13
Is there a bit of this going on in the middle of something
36:17
that's enjoyable? It's like I don't want to be
36:21
eating a nice meal and stop and check.
36:26
Am I grasping after this? I I that already kills the fun,
36:30
doesn't it? The fun of the nice meal is gone
36:33
in that situation. Even food is one thing, but they
36:39
can be even bigger examples of that kind of, you can use your
36:42
imagination where things, the pleasure of things is so intense
36:46
that it's hard to tell. And sometimes we're not the best
36:50
judge, are we? So I've definitely slipped up in
36:55
this respect myself saying like, Oh yeah, I'm not attached to
36:58
this thing or this person or this experience.
37:02
No, I, I can just enjoy it and I'm not attached to it.
37:06
And then for whatever reason, it is taken away or stops happening
37:10
and then one sees, Oh, no, actually I was or yeah, it can
37:18
happen the other way, that we're so resistant and holding things
37:22
at Bay that we don't experience kind of we stay on the edge.
37:31
I've, I've hated in my life that experience of being at parties
37:35
and yeah, not not wanting to get too involved in the fun.
37:41
Yeah, I'm talking about fairly light parties here, not, not
37:47
whatever. You can use your imagination
37:48
again and just the restraint, you know, holding back like I
37:54
wish I could just, you know what I'm saying, jump in, plunge into
38:03
the fun. So it's hard to to judge if, if
38:07
we explore this theme in meditation and in the context of
38:10
meditation, we've kind of got a bit of a space then, haven't we?
38:14
An enclosed space where we can explore.
38:17
Like what's going on in my mind? When do I slip into the extreme
38:22
of it's a bit of a free for all and I just let myself go all
38:26
over the place. And when do I get into that
38:30
state of I shouldn't be doing this, I should be doing this.
38:35
Therefore I need to try harder and stay on topic and, and
38:40
usually they come together interestingly, don't they?
38:42
So we can often have the experience in meditation, it's
38:47
going OK, then we drift off, we get distracted, maybe we start
38:52
indulging in some fantasy or another.
38:55
And then we come out of that and realise that's what's been
38:58
happening. And then we immediately try to
39:01
crush that part of ourselves that has allowed that to happen.
39:06
Yeah. So we keep crushing.
39:09
And probably because we're crushing, something else jumps
39:12
in and says, ah, remember that experience or imagine this
39:18
experience that could happen. So we're kind of going between
39:21
them. So if we can find a way in
39:24
meditation of exploring how we slip into either side, maybe in
39:29
meditation we can also discover this kind of middle way, the
39:34
equivalent of this experience the Buddha has under the Rose
39:38
apple tree. So how do we do that?
39:47
So in that in that text where the Buddha describes his
39:51
experience under the Rose apple tree, the word he uses or one of
39:56
the words he uses in the description is the word Diana or
40:01
Jana. In Parle and Sanskrit, Diana or
40:04
Jana literally means meditation. Yeah, the word spreads like
40:12
after the Indian tradition and Buddhism moves to China, this
40:17
word Diana becomes Chan, and then Buddhism moves into Japan
40:21
and the word becomes Zen. So these, these words, they
40:25
literally just mean meditation, but often they're used to
40:29
describe particular types or experiences or levels of
40:34
experience in meditation. So we get this whole list in the
40:39
earliest Buddhist text of 8 Diana's.
40:47
So I'm, I'm sort of, it's interesting talking about it
40:50
this morning and experimenting here.
40:53
I've got a friend who says he never talks about Diana because
40:57
it brings out the worst in people.
41:01
He's an extreme character. He says never talks about it
41:04
because of that and I can sort of see what he means because
41:08
even now in saying there are these 8 Dianas, there are the
41:12
form, the formless Dianas are the 567 and eight, the four
41:18
Dianas and then the four formless Dianas on top of them.
41:21
And they have these exotic labels or description, the
41:26
sphere of infinite space, the sphere of infinite
41:28
consciousness, the sphere of nothingness, and the sphere of
41:32
neither perception nor non perception.
41:36
So there's this quite esoteric set of eight levels.
41:42
It's like we've got a big ladder in the room now and what can
41:46
happen? I think why my friend says it
41:47
can bring out the worst in people is that some of us in the
41:50
room, now that we're aware of this ladder, we want to jump
41:53
straight to the 8th rung at the top without wanting to know
41:59
anything about the others. Some of us, if we're
42:02
particularly technically minded, we want to know how each piece
42:06
fits together on that particular ladder before we will
42:11
necessarily get on it. Others might feel like actually
42:15
the ladder's not on the floor, but somewhere up in infinite
42:19
space S far away from our actual experience of meditation, that
42:24
what's the point? Yeah.
42:27
So it can lead to a kind of thrill seeking tech techniquism
42:33
or just dejection and like I'm not good enough.
42:39
So take your pick from those or I think maybe we can find a way
42:45
into talking about them that avoids those kind of issues.
42:50
And I think it's essential that we do like what?
42:53
What is the Buddha really talking about when he speaks of
42:56
Diana? Because wherever he does talk
43:00
about it sounds pretty important in terms of how we live a
43:04
Buddhist life and the Buddhist path.
43:08
So yeah, you get these very technical descriptions.
43:13
If you go and read one of the books, you'll find a very
43:15
technical map, which can be a bit problematic.
43:21
So it can be a bit like in the first Diana, this arises and
43:26
this arises and then the second one, these things stop.
43:30
This one carries on a bit, this one deepens.
43:33
And the third one, these other things stop.
43:35
And it it gets very, very technical.
43:39
You also get these poetic descriptions.
43:42
So the first Diana is poetically described as being like taking
43:47
soap powder, mixing it with water until it's perfectly
43:52
absorbed. So there's no part of the soap
43:54
powder without water, no part of water without soap powder.
43:58
Second, Dion is like a bubbling spring in a pool of water.
44:02
Third is like a Lotus bud fully immersed in the water.
44:06
The 4th 1 is like a man who has just had a bath on a hot day and
44:11
wrapped himself in a perfectly pure, clean white cloth.
44:16
Yeah, so we get the technical, we get the poetic again.
44:21
Maybe the technical descriptions are very cognitive and we get
44:25
confused about what it is we're supposed to be doing.
44:29
The poetic descriptions, yeah, they're lovely.
44:33
But maybe again, they seem so far away from our experience or
44:37
just not the image we would use. But we're not so sure anymore.
44:44
So the way I want to talk about them very quickly is in terms
44:48
not of these levels. So let's just put aside the
44:52
whole business of levels and things like that and just talk
44:56
about the, again, technical language, what are known as the
44:59
Deanna factors. So the elements that might make
45:03
up, I'm going to be more poetic, say the ingredients.
45:07
We're going to be having lunch soon.
45:09
So the ingredients that make up a deonic state, there are five
45:15
of them. Bear with me with the technical
45:18
stuff and don't worry about it. One pointedness, initial
45:23
thought, sustained thought, rapture, bliss.
45:29
Yeah. So these are the traditional
45:32
words. One pointedness, initial
45:34
thought, sustained thought, rapture, bliss.
45:38
Three of those, a bit more cognitive, aren't they?
45:40
So one pointedness, initial thought, sustained thought.
45:45
The others are more to do with emotion, rapture and bliss.
45:50
Just to to kind of make it practical, cut through the
45:53
technique ISM. Basically, I think those five
45:57
things mean, first of all, being curious.
46:00
Yeah, being curious in meditation.
46:03
Second, noticing the energy when a particular thought arises or
46:09
experience arises. Yeah, after noticing the energy,
46:14
engaging with it. So engaging with whatever the
46:17
object of meditation is, whether it's the breath or something
46:20
else, 4th 1 rapture basically means enjoying it, looking for
46:26
enjoyment. And the fifth one, bliss is like
46:31
relaxing into that. So being curious, what else did
46:37
I say? Being curious, the energy that's
46:40
present, engaging, what was the next one?
46:48
Enjoyment. Thank you.
46:49
You're all listening, enjoyment and relaxing.
46:52
Like they're not so far away from our experience, are they?
46:56
Like even today already it's 1:00.
47:00
You'll have had experiences of all those things.
47:03
But when we come to meditate, are we looking for those
47:06
elements? Are we noticing?
47:09
Oh, I'm curious actually about the breath.
47:12
Oh, that there's a particular energy with that thought when I
47:17
engage that has a particular kind of intensity.
47:21
Is there enjoyment there? Can I relax a bit more?
47:27
So if, if all five of those things were present in your
47:29
meditation at one time, that would be the first Diana and the
47:35
second, the 3rd, the 4th. What happens is some of them
47:39
start to fade into the background.
47:42
The two that I think are really important is curiosity and
47:46
relaxation, the 1st and the 5th, because they stay all the way
47:51
along. So the Buddha describing how the
47:53
mind deepens and gets more absorbed and more of that lovely
47:57
pleasure arises. It happens when there's
48:00
continual curiosity and a continual sense of relaxing into
48:06
experience. So that's my if you take one
48:10
thing away from the talk, aiming at a relaxed curiosity in
48:19
meditation is a way in which we'll experience more of this
48:25
wholesome, free, spontaneous pleasure in our meditation.
48:30
So relaxed curiosity take take that away.
48:36
And I think if we can do that in meditation, if we're exploring
48:39
this relaxed curiosity in meditation, you can also flow
48:43
out into all parts of our life. Yeah.
48:47
And maybe certain things that we used to enjoy but that we got a
48:51
bit too tight with, we can either enjoy without the
48:55
tightness or we'll just stop doing because of the enjoyment
48:59
that comes through this relaxed curiosity.
49:04
So can a Buddhist still have fun?
49:07
Yes. How relaxed curiosity.
49:13
Thank you.