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Love, Death & Dragons in the Life (and ‘Afterlife’) of the Buddha 2 · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:11
So good to see you all today, despite the sun being out
0:14
outside. You all want to be inside to
0:18
hear the Dharma, to hear the Buddhist teaching.
0:20
So that's very good. The sun will be out later, I'm
0:23
told, so we can all enjoy that afterwards.
0:30
OK, so about a month ago I gave a talk here.
0:34
It's the last, the last talk I gave about a month ago, and the
0:38
title was something like Love, Death and Dragons.
0:44
Was anybody in the room here at that talk?
0:46
Just a quick show of hands. OK, maybe about 1/4 of you.
0:53
So I'm going to put you on the spot now and ask what do you
0:56
remember from that talk? Just just the first things that
1:01
come into your mind. Snakes.
1:05
Yeah. Any smoke?
1:07
OK. The fire he met the other
1:13
person's fire. The fire he met the other
1:18
person's fire. Creature was.
1:21
Yeah. There was a creature You burn.
1:23
I burn. Yeah.
1:24
Yeah. A not a.
1:24
Yeah. Yeah.
1:25
So this is the kind of Buddhist equivalent of a dragon.
1:28
So the Buddha met a not a. Can you remember where it was?
1:34
In a Hut. In a Hut?
1:35
Yeah, A fire chamber in the middle of a forest.
1:38
Yeah. He'd been warned not to go
1:40
there. He'd been warned not to go in.
1:41
But he went inside anyway. And the dragon produced fire and
1:45
the Buddha produced fire. Yeah.
1:48
Anything else that you can remember?
1:49
There's a different. Relationship isn't there
1:52
between, I would say, the East and the West that Buddhism
1:57
considers the argument of the Dragon's favourable thing.
2:02
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah.
2:06
I gave a comparison, didn't I, between Eastern and Western
2:09
imagination and Dragons. Yeah.
2:13
The depths. The depths.
2:14
Yeah. Yeah.
2:16
Any specific images or the things that come with that word
2:20
for you? Oh, yeah.
2:22
The teachings arrived in his hands on the depths.
2:27
Yeah. So there's this myth that the
2:29
perfection of wisdom literature of Buddhism came from the depths
2:34
of the ocean. They were protected by these
2:36
nagas, or Dragons, and they delivered these teachings up at
2:40
a time when people were ready for them.
2:42
Oh, and he got protected by 1. He got wrapped.
2:46
Yeah. The butter after his
2:47
enlightenment was wrapped by a serpent.
2:50
This is again, the myth that protects him.
2:53
So again, protective, the nagas as protectors, the Dragons as
2:57
protectors in Buddhist tradition.
3:00
OK, this is great. It it means my work was not
3:06
undone. Yeah.
3:06
Just going back to the predecessor.
3:07
It took three days for the scriptures being believers.
3:17
I didn't know that detail. OK.
3:21
Yeah. Nice.
3:22
Nice. Yeah, wisdom takes time.
3:26
Good. So yeah, I'm, I'm starting here
3:30
because I'm going to follow up the story from last time.
3:35
So, so we've had a good summary there of some of the images.
3:39
So the story was that the Buddha, after his enlightenment,
3:42
he wanders along along a Riverside and he comes across a
3:48
group of, I think 200 people practising some kind of
3:52
spiritual practice in the forest.
3:55
And they have this fire chamber, a Hut with a fire inside.
3:59
And when the Buddha asks, can I stay there, they say, well, you
4:02
can. But inside there's this great
4:04
big not a that's really angry. The Buddha goes in anyway.
4:09
And as Juliet said, that when the not a produces fire and
4:14
flames and smoke, the Buddha produces fire and flames and
4:17
smoke. But the crucial bit, remember,
4:20
was that when the Buddha did that, he did it without harming
4:24
or without the intention to cause any harm to the, the not a
4:29
who was opposite him. So I was saying in the talk that
4:34
sometimes we meet these nagas, we meet these Dragons in our own
4:38
lives, you know, whatever that might be, difficult
4:42
circumstances or situations. And we can meet them with some
4:46
intensity, but always with a sense of love and loving
4:51
kindness. That was the the gist of of what
4:54
I said last time. But just to pick up on what what
4:58
is interesting in terms of what people remember.
5:02
All of you were mainly talking in terms of images.
5:06
Smoke, fire, nagas, Dragons, snakes, depths even gives us an
5:12
image, doesn't it? So it's interesting how these
5:15
things stick in our memory. Yeah.
5:18
So I told a story, and the images that you produce while
5:22
listening to the story kind of stuck in your mind or heart or
5:28
somewhere. So when I asked the question,
5:30
what do you remember? The images come back.
5:35
Yeah. And that's really interesting,
5:37
isn't it? Because sometimes people think
5:38
stories are just a kind of entertainment.
5:43
You know, we just listen to a story or we watch a film and it
5:47
finishes after a couple of hours or whatever, and then we move on
5:50
to the next thing. But they stay with us.
5:54
Images and stories stay with us somewhere.
5:58
Yeah. Sometimes we also think stories
6:02
carry a certain message or moral.
6:05
So the Buddha goes into a fire chamber with a not a, produces
6:10
flames, but does that with love. So the moral of the story is
6:15
love people. Yeah.
6:18
And that's OK. I think stories do that.
6:20
They carry these kind of morals. But also we could just take the
6:24
story on its own and say that it has its own meaning.
6:29
In fact, it has many meanings. And what happens is we live our
6:34
lives, something happens, and for some reason the story comes
6:39
back to help us navigate the situation.
6:44
So let's say in the last few weeks, those of you who heard
6:46
the story, maybe something challenging came along.
6:50
Maybe it felt like a big angry dragon.
6:54
And maybe something of that story was just there in the
6:58
background, activated and helped you through that particular
7:03
time. Maybe, maybe not, maybe next
7:07
year, maybe in 10 years something of the story will
7:11
return. So stories kind of influence our
7:14
lives, they influence our behaviour.
7:18
And I'll say a bit more about that as we go on, but that is
7:22
all just to set up the next part of the story.
7:26
So last episode, let's say it's like I'm a Netflix channel now.
7:35
The last episode ended with the Buddha in the fire chamber with
7:38
the not a producing the flames out of love.
7:42
Then the next morning comes and everybody thinks the Buddha has
7:46
been destroyed by this not a in the fire chamber.
7:50
But then he steps out, he opens the door of the fire chamber and
7:54
he comes out and these 200 people gathered around him say,
7:59
oh, what happened? What happened to the not a?
8:02
And the Buddha holds out his begging bowl and he shows them
8:05
the not a is curled up asleep inside the begging bowl.
8:10
And he says, this is what's happened to your not a.
8:15
Now the the next part starts with the leader of the 200
8:20
forest dwellers. And his name is Kashyapa.
8:24
So he's the the spiritual leader of this group of guys in the
8:27
forest. And he sees what's happened and
8:32
he sees the not a in the begging bowl.
8:35
And he says, well, this is him thinking to himself, thinks to
8:40
himself, well this great monk, he's obviously very mighty and
8:44
powerful. If he can go into the fire
8:47
chamber, all those flames get produced and then he comes out
8:51
and has it inside his bowl. That's quite miraculous.
8:56
But he's not enlightened like me.
9:02
So then the Buddhist decides I'm going to stay around here.
9:06
These guys seem quite interesting.
9:09
There's there's nice places for spiritual practice, places I can
9:13
sit and meditate. So he decides he's going to stay
9:16
in this camp with the 200 people.
9:21
So that night he sets himself up a place to sleep and he sits and
9:27
does some meditation, presumably goes to sleep, and all the rest
9:31
of the 200 also turn in for the night.
9:33
Go to sleep, it gets dark. But then in the middle of the
9:37
night, Kashyapa, the leader of this group, he wakes up and he's
9:42
a bit disturbed. He's not sure why, but he feels
9:45
a bit disturbed. So he goes out of his own Hut
9:48
and he's just looking into the night sky.
9:51
And then to one side he just sees all these strange lights in
9:56
the sky, all different colours, red, blue, white, green, yellow
10:01
lights across the night sky. And then he realises that that's
10:07
all happening roughly where that new monk who did the stuff in
10:12
the fire chamber, that's where he was sleeping.
10:16
So he wonders what is this? What's going on?
10:19
And he tries to go back to bed and sleep, but he just can't.
10:22
It's all too strange. So he's there for hours.
10:25
But then the next morning, the the sun comes up and they all
10:30
gather. I don't know what they were
10:32
doing. We're not told this, but they
10:35
all gather and Kashiba decides to find out what was happening
10:40
in the night sky. So he goes to the Buddha and he
10:43
says, ah, did you notice that last night when it was dark,
10:48
there were all these lights above you?
10:50
And they say, ah, yeah. The Buddha says, I, I do know
10:55
that that was happening. He says, well, what were those
10:58
lights? And the Buddha says, well, that
11:01
was the four divine kings of the cosmos.
11:06
They came to me last night and I was teaching them the Dharma.
11:13
So the four great kings, this is a bit of Buddhist mythology.
11:17
The four great kings are said to be the protectors of the world.
11:23
So they're, they're a kind of class of being that is above
11:27
humans in a sense. They're kind of lower gods and,
11:31
and in Buddhism there are all these different levels of gods
11:34
in different realms. So the, the four great kings are
11:37
like the intermediaries between US and the kind of ordinary
11:41
world. And these God realms, they're,
11:45
they're said, yeah, they're said to protect the world in a
11:49
certain way, protect the Dharma. So the Buddha was teaching them
11:53
these 4 great kings. And the Buddha tells Kashyapa
11:58
this. I was teaching the four great
12:00
kings. They came to me.
12:01
It was wonderful, it was marvellous.
12:05
They all stood there like pillars of fire, great pillars
12:09
of light, and I taught them the Dharma.
12:14
So Kashyapa hears this, and he thinks, well, this great monk is
12:19
obviously very mighty and powerful if the four divine
12:23
kings are coming to him to hear the Dharma, but he's not
12:28
enlightened like me. Yeah.
12:33
So then the next night, a similar thing happens, but this
12:37
time the lights are even more spectacular in the sky.
12:40
And Kashipa gets another sleepless night.
12:42
And in the morning he goes to the Buddha and he says, what was
12:45
it last night? So the lights were even more
12:47
spectacular. What was going on?
12:50
And the Buddha says, Oh yeah, last night, Yeah, I remember
12:54
last night, Saka, who is the ruler of the gods, and Brahma
13:00
Sahampati, who is the Lord of 1000 Worlds.
13:04
They came to me and yeah, I taught them.
13:07
The dharmati. This great monk is obviously
13:13
very mighty and powerful, The ruler of the gods and the Lord
13:18
of 1000 Worlds are coming to him to get teachings, but he's not
13:23
enlightened like me. So let's just pause here
13:29
because, because it goes on and on and on like this.
13:33
There are many of these, if you like miracles or miraculous
13:37
things that the Buddha's doing. But each time, yeah, Kashyapur
13:42
has this constant response to what the Buddha is telling him.
13:47
It's impressive. The Buddha's obviously very
13:51
great and powerful, but he's not enlightened like me.
13:56
So Kashippa keeps thinking, however special it is, I'm a bit
14:00
more special. You know, I'm above this wise
14:04
guy, this punk who's come here doing all these strange things.
14:11
So let's just pause and explore that a little bit.
14:14
What, what's going on? Like what is going on for
14:19
Kashippa? So from the outside, we're we're
14:26
listening to the story, I'm telling the story.
14:29
Or we could read this in, in one of the books.
14:32
From the outside, we know what's happening, don't we?
14:34
Because the Buddha is the Buddha.
14:37
So the Buddha, if, if we followed the story from the
14:41
beginning, the Buddha has gained enlightenment.
14:44
So it's said he's had this shattering insight, realisation,
14:50
the end of all suffering, complete freedom in any kind of
14:56
conceivable way. So we know that that's already
14:59
happened in the story and we can see that Kashipa can't recognise
15:05
that. So Kashipa, instead of
15:07
acknowledging the Buddha's enlightenment, is thinking that
15:11
it's very special. But he's not enlightened like
15:13
me. So we could say Kashipa's
15:17
problem is one of misinterpretation.
15:22
He's misinterpreting or in a sense just missing who's there.
15:29
He's missing what the Buddha is and what the Buddha's experience
15:34
is. So one, that's one way of
15:38
talking about there's a kind of misinterpretation.
15:41
We could also say there's a a view there that is stopping him
15:47
being able to see the Buddha fully.
15:50
There's a wrong view, an obstructing kind of view.
15:58
And in the Buddhist tradition, there's, I mean, you could read
16:00
a lot of stuff about views. Buddhism has a lot to say about
16:05
that. The first Sutter, the first
16:08
Buddhist text in the whole parley Canon, which is the
16:11
earliest part of Buddhist literature.
16:14
It's all about views, something like 62 wrong views or something
16:19
like that. A lot.
16:22
So obviously for Buddhism, views and wrong views and
16:26
misinterpretations of our experience, a really important
16:30
theme. Yeah.
16:33
But you could say at the root, I mean, at the root of all that we
16:36
could say is, is ignorance. So just just an inability to
16:40
see. But the real, the view that is
16:44
at the root of our problems, if you like, is what's known as
16:48
satkhaya drishti. Satkhaya drishti, which is
16:52
something like fixed self view, so a fixed view of ourselves.
17:01
So this is the you, you probably all come across this Buddhism
17:07
and what Buddhism has to say about self and what self means
17:11
in Buddhism. It's quite in a way, in a way
17:17
complex or it's quite a nuanced view, quite subtle what Buddhism
17:24
is saying about the nature of the self.
17:27
So we're not going to go into that in a lot of detail, but
17:30
it's very easy to misunderstand. So the popular misconception is
17:35
Buddhism teaches that there is no self, therefore we don't
17:40
really exist. Yeah.
17:43
So that's the kind of popular misunderstanding.
17:45
And then people have reactions about that like, oh, Buddhism
17:48
says that nothing really exists, and I don't agree with that, so
17:52
no thank you. Or Buddhism says nothing exists.
17:57
Great, then all my problems are solved, so I'll just take that
18:01
on board. But.
18:03
But it's a misinterpretation. Yeah.
18:05
So Buddhism doesn't say that things don't exist.
18:10
It's not really a question of existence or non existence.
18:14
So I like the way Lolly to Ratner always describes this
18:18
teaching. It's something like if you
18:20
chopped me up into bits, maybe I'm getting you wrong.
18:23
If you if you took me apart into bits, you wouldn't find a Lolly
18:27
to Ratner there. Yeah, but we can't say he
18:30
doesn't exist because there's someone over there.
18:33
There's something going on. He's sticking his tongue out and
18:36
waving at me. I, I have a friend who we, we
18:43
started off on the Buddhist path together and he'd been married
18:47
for about 50 years. And one night after a study
18:50
group on this particular teaching, he went home and he
18:53
said to his wife, you don't exist.
18:58
And I think she either slapped him or told him to shut up or
19:03
something like that. So of course, that's a a
19:05
misunderstanding and going to an extreme.
19:10
But but the way Lalita Ratner talks about it, it's it's true,
19:13
isn't it? If you if you look, if we
19:15
actually look at what we are, look into our experience, it
19:20
becomes way more complicated than we often think about.
19:24
Yeah. So here's my body.
19:26
This is my assumption, but but I've just got a label there.
19:31
Body. What is this thing like when I
19:35
start looking into it, What is it?
19:38
Well, it's hands, it's arms, it's legs, but where does the
19:42
leg start and the pelvis begin, etcetera, etcetera.
19:47
So the more we look, the more mysterious it gets.
19:51
It's a bit like the lights in the sky above the Buddha.
19:56
So it's all a bit more mysterious in the sense that
19:59
there's definitely a flow of something.
20:02
That that I like to think of as Padmasagra.
20:06
People also describe in that way, but you would never find a
20:10
fixed thing and say this is Padmasagra's essence.
20:15
Yeah. So maybe that's enough of that.
20:22
You could go into that in a lot more detail.
20:25
There's lots of books on it in the library.
20:28
You could talk to people about it, get more information, but
20:32
I'm mentioning that because it's key to understanding what's
20:35
going on for Kashyapa. Because as soon as we start to
20:39
fix ourselves as somehow independently existing of all
20:46
the different conditions, the food I eat, the the bones, the
20:52
air that I breathe, the temperature, as soon as I start
20:56
fixing within that flow of conditions that this is
20:59
essentially me, then I can start comparing me to other people.
21:06
Yeah. So out of this satkhaya drishti,
21:10
this fixed view of self, comes the tendency to compare.
21:19
Yeah. So me and you, me and the world.
21:25
Yeah. Us and them.
21:28
Wars. Wars come out of that
21:30
fundamental misunderstanding. Us and them, Yeah.
21:36
So it creates a lot of problems. It's not that there's anything
21:41
wrong with comparing, but if we're comparing what we think of
21:45
as being fixed, then we get into some difficulties.
21:50
So that's what's happening with Kashipa.
21:53
He thinks he's the one who is enlightened and the butter is
21:59
not enlightened. So there's this comparison.
22:02
And then he can't see the kind of miraculous things that the
22:06
butter is doing. Yeah.
22:09
Or he, he doesn't see them in their entirety.
22:13
So this is one way that manifests, isn't it, Putting
22:16
ourselves above other people, a kind of superiority.
22:21
Yeah, I should say that in talking about this, it's all in
22:26
a sense, understandable and perfectly human.
22:30
So if if you think, Oh yeah, I do that, I do that.
22:35
And I think everyone in the room does that to some degree, unless
22:39
you're the Buddha. That's what's going on for us.
22:42
It's human. There are many ways of
22:46
explaining that or trying to at least begin to explain that.
22:51
You could just look at it from a modern evolutionary point of
22:54
view, that for our survival it's necessary to have a sense of our
22:59
self. We've evolved as human beings
23:02
and survived all these billions of years because we're able to
23:07
have some kind of sense of ourselves and what we need, what
23:12
we need to defend ourselves against.
23:16
So it's a kind of evolutionary tool, a necessity.
23:22
But when we take it literally rather than just a tool that's
23:26
helpful, when we take it literally, that's when we get
23:29
the the problems. Yeah.
23:32
So one of the problems is I'm better.
23:35
Yeah. I'm special and above and
23:38
superior. And that's what Kashyap is
23:43
giving us a good example of. I could give you a personal
23:47
example. I've definitely fallen into this
23:50
and still fall into this a lot of the time.
23:53
Like I know best, particularly in the kitchen.
23:59
If someone's trying to cook something I could, I think I can
24:06
do it better. It's happening all the time.
24:09
These things, even in in my so-called spiritual practice
24:14
where I'm trying to be all spiritual and yeah, no self, I'm
24:18
not putting myself above other people.
24:21
I still think I'm better than other people at certain things.
24:24
Yeah, hopefully less than I might have years ago, but that's
24:29
still happening. Yeah.
24:33
There's another way in which this manifests.
24:35
So rather than just putting ourselves above, we might also
24:39
put ourselves below. Yeah, a few people nodding.
24:44
So maybe people recognise that this whole area of lacking self
24:49
esteem or self-confidence, oh, this person's fantastic.
24:55
And I'm nowhere near that sinking.
25:00
Yeah, this kind of inferiority complex.
25:04
So a sense of not being good enough.
25:07
You know, we start meditating and we're distracted for 10
25:11
minutes. We miss the bell.
25:13
We're falling asleep. I can't meditate.
25:17
Everyone else in the room looks great.
25:20
Kind of like. Oh, but not me, you know?
25:23
Not me. I can't do it.
25:26
Yeah. So again, this is another
25:29
manifestation of of what I guess we would call conceit mana in
25:34
Sanskrit. I think so putting ourselves
25:37
above, but also putting ourselves down.
25:39
Putting ourselves below the other one, which is interesting,
25:44
and often we don't really talk about, there's the conceit of
25:48
assuming that we're all the same.
25:52
Yeah, that that might be a bit of a surprise because isn't that
25:55
better than thinking we're above or thinking that we're below?
25:58
We're all the same. But actually that's a
26:01
misinterpretation too, because we're not the same in some
26:06
respects. Of course we are in terms of our
26:12
sameness as human beings experiencing the human
26:15
condition. Of course we're the same in
26:18
terms of the fact that we all want to be happy, I assume, and
26:24
we all want to suffer less. Of course we're the same in that
26:28
respect. We all have the same potential
26:33
given the right conditions and the right circumstances.
26:36
Of course we're the same in terms of the fact we can become
26:39
anything. We have the potential to become
26:41
anything. I guess it's one of the great
26:45
tragedies, isn't it, of life that people don't get the same
26:50
opportunities. So if you don't get the same
26:53
opportunities as other people, then you can't activate that
26:57
potential. But we all have the same
26:59
potential, but in other respects, we're just not the
27:06
same. The fact that like, I look
27:10
around the room and I'm barring one or two people, I've
27:14
definitely got the most grey hair in this room, or I'm one of
27:21
the people with the most grey hair.
27:22
We're not the same. And you don't want that.
27:26
Trust me, you don't want that. If you're in your 20s and nice,
27:31
well, let's not go into it anymore.
27:33
I'm getting embarrassed now, and I suppose the other thing.
27:38
So I'm up here giving a talk, and presumably people are
27:43
entrusting me to sit here and say something useful to you.
27:51
There are people in the room with more experience of this
27:54
than me, but compared to most of you, I've got more experience of
27:59
what it is to practice Buddhism and how to talk about it.
28:02
So that's why I'm sat here. So we're not the same in that
28:06
respect. I'm aware there are people in
28:09
the room who are amazing at certain things.
28:13
Professional musicians, dancers, athletes, people with their own
28:19
business, fathers, mothers. And I've seen people be amazing
28:27
in those different areas, and they're better than me at them.
28:31
Yeah. You don't want me to father or
28:33
mother your child. You don't want that.
28:38
You have more experience than I do.
28:40
So in terms of our experiences and our qualities, we're all
28:44
different. Yeah.
28:47
We've all got the same potential, but that will
28:49
manifest in all different kinds of ways.
28:52
So if we say that we're all the same again, we're fixing.
28:57
Yeah. So being better, being worse,
28:59
being the same, it's too simplified.
29:02
It's too much of an oversimplified way of looking at
29:05
the world, and it leads to problems.
29:10
I mean, it's a massive effort, isn't it, to keep up.
29:15
So this is me speaking from experience.
29:18
To keep up the illusion that I'm better than somebody else at
29:21
something that takes a lot of effort, because reality keeps
29:25
showing me that. Oh, no, actually she's just
29:30
prepared a really good meal that is better than what you could
29:34
do. But then I start to tell myself,
29:36
actually, no, there's reasons. Maybe the the ingredients are
29:41
better than the ones I got last week, but the reality is
29:46
actually it just tastes better and that person has a better.
29:50
OK. So it takes a lot of effort.
29:56
It's tiring, and it complicates our relationships.
30:00
Yeah. So here we have Kashyapa putting
30:03
himself above the Buddha and in a sense, complicating his life.
30:08
It's coming from the outside. It's really.
30:11
It can produce a lot of compassion, can't it?
30:13
Like, oh, poor guy. He's just putting himself
30:16
through all this hassle and stress.
30:26
Let's let's go back to the story.
30:27
Maybe we can draw a bit more out.
30:31
So a few more examples. And if if you ever look at the
30:35
text yourself, you, you'll see it just goes on and on and on.
30:40
It's like one of those things where you just, you repeat
30:43
something so many times that it just becomes almost like comedy
30:49
and you can't help laughing. So what happens next?
30:53
Let me see if I can remember. Oh yeah, there's a big festival.
30:58
So there's going to be this big religious festival where people
31:01
come and visit Kashipa and his 200 monks, if you like, who are
31:06
practising in the forest. And Kashipa is getting a bit
31:10
worried because of this guy hanging around performing all
31:13
these miracles. And he thinks if when
31:16
everybody's here, he does something like that, then
31:20
they're all going to worship him instead of me.
31:24
It'd be better if he just didn't come to the festival.
31:29
And the Buddha knows what's going on in Kashipa's mind.
31:32
It's one of his special kind of powers.
31:35
He reads Kashipa's mind, so he knows what Kashipa wants.
31:40
So then the day of the festival comes.
31:42
Everybody arrives, but the Buddha doesn't come.
31:47
Yeah. So the Buddha's not there.
31:49
They all have a great time. They do the spiritual practice.
31:53
They eat together. Then all the guests go home.
31:57
And only then does the Buddha appear.
32:01
And Kashi, because he's quite sneaky, he says, ah, you've
32:05
come. Why, Where were you?
32:07
We really, we really wanted you to be here.
32:10
You know, we saved some food. Look.
32:13
And the Buddha says, ah, yeah, I, I didn't come.
32:17
I decided instead that I would go on my arms round.
32:20
I would take my bowl and go on my arms round, and I'd go to the
32:24
northern continent of Uttara Kuru.
32:27
Now this again, this is going into Buddhist mythology.
32:30
Uttara Kuru, the northern continent is something like
32:35
24,000 Yojunas away from India. And a Yojuna is an old ancient
32:42
measuring system that's the equivalent of 300,000 kilometres
32:47
away. Yeah, which is the equivalent of
32:50
3/4 of the way to the moon. I looked this up because I was
32:54
interested 3/4 of the way to the moon.
32:57
So the Buddha went that far on his arms round on foot in a day.
33:05
And he said yes, I went to Tarakuru on my arms round and
33:10
then I decided that I would eat my arms food at Lake Anavatapta.
33:16
And Lake Anavatapta is this mythic lake in the Himalayas
33:20
which is said to be the centre of the universe.
33:24
And it's this great lake with gold and silver and precious
33:28
substances that line the banks of the lake.
33:32
And it's inhabited by a not a Raja who's a dragon king who was
33:39
bodhisattva, which means that he was only interested in, rather
33:44
than breathing fire at people interested in helping people on
33:48
the path to enlightenment. So the Buddha said, yeah, I just
33:51
chilled out there and ate my food, and then I came back.
33:57
So you know what's coming, Kashifa thinks.
34:00
Well, this great lung must be very mighty and powerful if he
34:04
can go on his arms round to Atarakuru and eat his arms food
34:08
at lake and of a tapter. But he's not enlightened like
34:12
me. So the story goes on What
34:19
happens next? The the winter comes and it
34:23
starts getting a little bit colder.
34:25
So all these 200 guys in the forest start to prepare firewood
34:31
so that they can have some fires when it gets colder.
34:35
And they start trying to chop up the wood.
34:37
And every time they try to chop the wood, their axes or whatever
34:41
they're using is just bouncing off the wood.
34:45
And Kashyap is suspicious. So he goes to the Buddha and he
34:50
says all my guys are struggling to chop up the wood.
34:54
Do you know anything about that? And he says, well, should the
34:59
wood be chopped? And Kashipa says, yeah.
35:02
And then all of a sudden, 500 pieces of wood just split open,
35:07
while the great monk must be very mighty and powerful if he
35:10
can chop up 500 pieces of wood just like that.
35:15
But he's not enlightened like me.
35:19
Then I I will cut the Long story short because we're running out
35:22
of time. So the next thing, let's say,
35:25
the next thing that happens or the next big thing that happens
35:28
is that the monsoon comes. So the rains come and the whole
35:34
of this camp of 200 people, there's a huge flood that sweeps
35:39
through and it destroys the part of the camp where the Buddha was
35:44
living, where he was staying. The others have managed to find
35:50
some higher ground, avoid the flood.
35:53
And after this great deluge, there's a kind of huge lake or
35:59
river coming through the camp, and they wonder what's happened,
36:04
like what has happened to the Buddha?
36:06
Is he OK? So Kashyapa gets himself a canoe
36:11
or a boat with a few other people, and they row out into
36:15
the middle of the water, roughly where the Buddha was staying.
36:20
And what they find as they get to where the Buddha was is that
36:25
suddenly the water just goes down like a precipice, and
36:30
there's some dry land. And then the other side is also
36:34
a huge precipice of water. So the Buddha is on dry land,
36:39
and the waters have just parted. And of course, he's making this
36:43
happen. Yeah.
36:46
So Kashipa looks down. Is that you?
36:53
And the Buddha says, ah, Kashipur, you've come.
36:55
And he says, yeah, it's me. And then he floats up in the
37:00
air, lands himself in the boat. And Kashipur thinks, well, this
37:07
great monk must be very mighty and powerful if he's able to
37:11
make the waters of the flood part and stand on dry land and
37:15
then float up into the air and land in the boat.
37:19
But he's not enlightened like me.
37:23
Now at this point the Buddha thinks, this fool, this fool,
37:31
he's just going to go on thinking, but he's not
37:34
enlightened like me. Suppose I give him a shock.
37:40
So the Buddha turns to Kashipa and he says, Kashipa, you are
37:44
not enlightened, nor are you even on the way to becoming
37:50
enlightened. In fact, there's nothing that
37:55
you do that is enlightened or leading you towards being
38:00
enlightened. Yeah.
38:06
So Kashipa is shocked, stunned, Yeah, knocked out.
38:12
And he bows down at the feet of the Buddha, and he says, please
38:17
accept me as your student. I take you as my teacher.
38:22
I see that you are the enlightened one.
38:25
Yeah. So few things to say about that.
38:33
First of all, let's just, let's just touch upon it because I was
38:37
aware in speaking about parting the waters, I was thinking, oh,
38:41
this is just like a biblical story I'm familiar with.
38:46
What is the nature of these miracles that the Buddha's
38:49
performing? You know, should we just take
38:52
that literally? Did that really happen?
38:56
It's in the book, isn't it? So is is from this book?
39:01
Is this history? Are we supposed to take this as
39:04
historical fact? And that's what happened.
39:09
Did the Buddha perform all these miracles?
39:13
Well, I would say it didn't happen in the ordinary sense.
39:18
Yeah. So in the way that I'm going to
39:20
pick up this cup and drink a bit of water, I don't think it
39:26
happened in that kind of way. Maybe, maybe, but I don't think
39:32
it happened in that kind of way. But it's come from somewhere,
39:38
hasn't it? This story that I've just told,
39:40
it comes from somewhere. Maybe the Buddha told this story
39:45
himself to other people. Maybe people who knew the Buddha
39:49
told the story about him. Maybe a couple of 100 years
39:54
after the time of the Buddha, this story kind of emerged, but
39:58
it comes from somewhere. Maybe it comes from imagination,
40:04
vision, kind of inner spiritual vision.
40:07
Maybe it comes from dreams. But that doesn't mean it didn't
40:14
happen or that it's not real. It's real on another level,
40:18
isn't it? It's real on an imaginal level,
40:22
an imaginary level. Yeah.
40:27
And you all go home later and hopefully this story might
40:32
reverberate and you'll have images of the Buddha parting the
40:36
the water or with the dragon in the fire chamber.
40:40
So something of it is alive. So it has life.
40:44
The story has a life. So it's not that we can just
40:49
say, Oh no, it didn't really happen.
40:51
Therefore it's unimportant. What can I extract from it that
40:56
is going to help me in a rational way to navigate the
40:59
world? Not that that's unimportant.
41:02
The story has its own life and meaning.
41:06
So I don't think we have to take the the story literally, but
41:10
don't dismiss it either as being just the entertainment bit that
41:15
goes around the teaching. And I'm going to take the
41:18
teaching out and put that into my life in a kind of scientific
41:21
way. The story is the meaning.
41:25
Yeah, the story is the meaning. The story is the teaching in
41:29
itself. And that might bear fruit later
41:33
in some way. But let's just touch on this the
41:39
way the Buddha responds to Kashyapa.
41:42
So what did you say? Sucker punch?
41:45
Yeah, sucker punch. A shock.
41:48
AKOA knockout. He really gets him, doesn't he?
41:53
So how does that fit with what the Buddha did with the not a in
41:57
the fire chamber when he did it out of loving kindness?
42:01
He just sat there. The flames.
42:03
Duh, duh, duh. In this case, it feels like the
42:07
Buddha's been much more direct, in a sense, destructive, you
42:13
could say. So there's a cutting through the
42:17
wrong view, the misinterpretation that Kashyap
42:20
had. Yeah.
42:23
And this is quite a theme in Buddhism.
42:26
So if you haven't read the early Buddhist texts, this happens
42:29
quite often. We're not just in the early
42:32
text, but the whole Buddhist tradition.
42:35
There can be this theme of, if you like destruction or breaking
42:39
through. There's a shop, a book in the
42:43
library, I think in the shop, not trying to sell it, but it's
42:46
there. And the title is breaking
42:49
through to Buddhahood or breaking through into
42:52
Buddhahood. So this sense of breaking and
42:54
shattering, Yeah. Is there the Buddha himself
42:59
after his enlightenment, he said something like house builder.
43:05
He's talking about how he constructed his fixed self view.
43:10
Housebuilder, you are seen. Your Ridge pole is shattered.
43:15
The thing that holds up the whole building is shattered.
43:19
Never again will you build this house.
43:22
So his vision, his seeing is a kind of breaking of the old and
43:27
the ordinary. In later Buddhism, you get the
43:31
development of these archetypal figures.
43:36
I've put one on the shrine here, Manju Sri, who is holding a
43:40
sword above his head. It's not to kill people with.
43:43
This is the sword of wisdom, and it's said to cut through
43:48
delusion, cut through all the obstacles, cuts through all the
43:52
things that hold us back. Sangarachita once said.
43:57
Manju, Sri's sword, it cuts, but it never wounds.
44:02
Yeah. So this breaking through, this
44:04
cutting through is still manifestation of love and
44:10
compassion. What the Buddha does with
44:12
Kashipa is an act of love and compassion, helping him to see,
44:17
but he does it in a very direct way.
44:20
Yeah. In later Buddhism, you also get
44:25
the Zen tradition of Japan. The Chan tradition of China
44:30
takes this even further. So the Zen master might even
44:33
have a stick to kind of, yeah. So this, this is a theme within
44:40
Buddhism. Now, I don't want to give the
44:42
impression or suggest that we should all start practising this
44:46
with each other and kind of going around and breaking
44:50
through and, you know, telling people you're not enlightened,
44:56
nor are you even on the path to becoming enlightened or even
45:00
you're not very good at cooking. I'm better because if we if we
45:06
go around doing that, you've got to be very sure that your
45:13
interpretation is absolutely spot on.
45:18
Yeah, is correct. I can't do that because I don't
45:22
trust that I have the insight of a butter and I'm able to do
45:26
that. So we have to be very careful.
45:29
Sometimes we can do it and it's necessary and it's the right
45:34
moment. In Kashyap's case, remember,
45:37
there's been all this time all these things that he's seen the
45:42
Buddha do. The Buddha has been with him for
45:44
a long time and he can see. This is the moment when I can
45:48
say, no, stop looking at it like that.
45:54
So it it requires a lot of vision and it requires a lot of
45:57
sensitivity and good timing to be able to be that direct.
46:03
So for us, we might try and find other ways both for ourselves
46:08
and starting to address our own self view, fixed view of self.
46:15
The ways that we compare, we can take a a slightly different
46:20
approach. I think one of them is with
46:23
Meta. So again, this was the teaching
46:27
coming out of the the fire chamber and the dragon.
46:30
So if we cultivate a mind of loving kindness in a sense,
46:35
we'll know what's the appropriate emotional response
46:39
to another person. Yeah, we'll we'll have the most
46:43
appropriate emotional way of dealing with the situation.
46:49
We'll see the qualities of others.
46:52
Rather than comparing and thinking we're better and
46:55
putting ourselves above. We'll actually be able to see
46:58
another person's qualities. Rather than putting ourselves
47:01
down, we'll see our own qualities.
47:06
The Buddha's performing all these miracles.
47:08
We're performing a miracle every second by being alive and having
47:14
a living, breathing body, feelings, emotion, imagination.
47:21
Like that's pretty miraculous. So if we cultivate meta, we'll
47:25
see ourselves in that way more, rather than our
47:29
misinterpretations of ourselves. Again, we'll see the qualities
47:35
of others, the uniqueness of others.
47:38
So I think meta is our way of connecting, seeing through that
47:44
fixed view of ourselves and others and how the world is.
47:49
But I want to suggest one last thing before the end, which is
47:53
that we can cultivate a mind with a Buddha in it.
47:58
Yeah. So can we cultivate a mind that
48:01
has a Buddha present? So for Kashipa, the Buddha is
48:04
there, and the Buddha talks to him and literally says no
48:08
Kashipa. Yeah.
48:11
For us, what we can do is introduce the Buddha more fully
48:15
into our minds through things like this story.
48:20
Yeah. So the life of the Buddha is
48:21
full of stories, full of examples from his life.
48:26
And if you read those stories or hear those stories, you get a
48:30
sense of how he lived, how he acted, what he did, how he
48:34
responded to people, the skill of that, the quality of that,
48:40
the clarity and the love in the life of the Buddha.
48:44
And if we read these stories and take them in, well, they're
48:46
there. And like I said earlier, then
48:49
they will just pop up. We'll be in a situation and
48:52
suddenly our this is like when that happened and the Buddha did
48:56
this. And then we might be able to
49:00
allow that to come through more in our lives.
49:03
So I'm going to give you 3 recommendations.
49:07
And I have these books here if you want to come up at the end
49:09
and write them down or something.
49:13
This is Gautama Buddha, the Life and Teachings of the Awakened
49:19
one by Vishwapani. So it's a biography of the
49:22
Buddha which draws on a lot of the early Buddhist text and some
49:26
of the later texts as well. It's very readable.
49:31
So you get the life of the Buddha all the way through.
49:33
Very good and well researched biography of the Buddha.
49:40
The other one is Warrior of Peace, The Life of the Buddha by
49:43
Jinananda. This one's more poetic.
49:48
This is if you know Tara Palita. This is his favorite book about
49:51
the Buddha. So if you trust him and his
49:56
interpretation of Buddhism, he really likes this one.
50:01
And then the last one is The Life of the Buddha by
50:04
Bikunyanamoli. Not as much of an easy read
50:09
because this is basically a collection of the earliest
50:12
texts. Yeah.
50:14
So it's not, it's not written for a kind of as a modern story.
50:19
It's drawing on the earliest texts.
50:22
But this is great if you want to look at what those early
50:24
teachings are all about. And he's put them together in a
50:28
kind of chronological order. So you get the Buddha's early
50:32
life, his enlightenment, his teaching years, some of the
50:36
Buddha's disciples, what he taught.
50:39
So that I would really recommend as well.
50:46
OK, so there you go. There's no Buddhism without the
50:49
Buddha and there's no Buddha without the Buddha's life.
50:56
It's not just what he said and how we create lists out of
51:00
things the Buddha said. It's also how he lived, what he
51:02
did, how he responded to people. So I really encourage you to
51:08
learn more about the Buddha, the Buddha's life.
51:12
It's a real life and it will influence your own life.
51:16
So thank you for listening.