Latest / Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast / Facing Fear: Lessons from the Charnel Ground

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Facing Fear: Lessons from the Charnel Ground · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

• 0:17
  Yeah, so as Padmasagra said, there's what's called Para
• 0:20
  Nirvana Day tomorrow, which is always a kind of poignant
• 0:25
  festival. You know, sometimes, well,
• 0:27
  you're you're invited to bring photographs of people that have
• 0:31
  died recently, maybe loved ones, and put them on the shrine.
• 0:34
  And it's a kind of way of honouring not only the Buddhas
• 0:39
  passing but also maybe people in your own life.
• 0:41
  Yeah. So it's quite a can be quite a
• 0:43
  poignant festival day. So that's one reason I thought I
• 0:49
  would say something about what's called the cremation grounds
• 0:54
  today. The other reason I would thought
• 0:57
  I'd say something about it is because I've been asked to give
• 0:59
  a talk about it in the UK and I thought I would experiment on
• 1:04
  you and see if it if it flops, then I know what to change.
• 1:08
  And so, yeah, we'll see. Yeah.
• 1:13
  So I'm not actually going to say much about the Buddha's para
• 1:15
  Nirvana. Yeah, it's a bit strange.
• 1:20
  The Buddha's own death for him was not really a big deal.
• 1:23
  Yeah, it was kind of, I wouldn't say a non event, but it wasn't a
• 1:26
  particularly big deal for the Buddha because in a certain
• 1:31
  sense, his enlightenment, something had happened where
• 1:36
  actually maybe I don't, I don't even want to get technical
• 1:39
  because then you start getting into the whole area of non self
• 1:41
  and he lost his self and therefore there's no self to
• 1:43
  die. And it all sounds very
• 1:44
  technical. Let's just to say, let's just
• 1:46
  say another word for enlightenment is the deathless,
• 1:49
  which always kind of, I don't know, always has an evocative
• 1:55
  feeling for me when I hear the word deathless, the deathless.
• 1:59
  And I would say for any practising Buddha Buddhist,
• 2:04
  it's, although you can't really say much about it, it is really
• 2:09
  important. You know, there's something
• 2:11
  about this business of the deathless.
• 2:16
  The Buddha's body may have disintegrated, but something
• 2:21
  else happened at that point, you know, and there's something
• 2:23
  about that which I think is important as a Buddhist that
• 2:26
  draws you, draws you along. You know, when the Buddha
• 2:29
  passed, his enlightened disciples didn't cry, you know.
• 2:33
  So make of that what you will. To them.
• 2:36
  The Buddha's body was gone, but they didn't cry because the
• 2:39
  Buddha's not really dead in the way we think of death.
• 2:42
  All the Buddha's unenlightened disciples, they did cry.
• 2:45
  Yeah. So that would be us.
• 2:46
  We'd all be weeping because the Buddha's gone.
• 2:49
  And that's a big thing. Yeah.
• 2:50
  Big blow. The only other creature.
• 2:53
  Apparently all the animals cried as well.
• 2:55
  Yeah, they were all crying. Or the crocodiles or the lions.
• 2:58
  They were crying, actually. Maybe not lions, but all the.
• 3:01
  The only animals that didn't cry was the cats.
• 3:06
  Yeah, that's a bit. Oh, wow.
• 3:10
  This is the twist. This is the by you, you and Yu
• 3:14
  Tan. Yu Tan, you have two cats.
• 3:16
  So that's a bit biased, but that's the way.
• 3:21
  So the Buddha was cremated. Yeah.
• 3:24
  As as people are still in India. And he was cremated at a
• 3:29
  cremation ground. There's the cremation grounds
• 3:31
  in, in, in Buddhism are a huge thing.
• 3:34
  Yeah, there's, there's hundreds, maybe thousands.
• 3:38
  Well, there's thousands of cremation grounds all over the
• 3:40
  land, say 2 1/2 thousand years ago.
• 3:42
  But in a way, mythologically, they're said to be 8 great
• 3:48
  cremation grounds. Yeah.
• 3:50
  And the cremation ground is where people are taken to be to
• 3:55
  be burnt, you know, to be burnt on a pile of wood with some oil
• 4:00
  or ghee. And if, and especially in those
• 4:03
  days, if people didn't have the money to burn their relatives,
• 4:05
  they would leave them in this place.
• 4:07
  Yeah. To decompose, to be eaten by
• 4:09
  animals. And, yeah, you can imagine such
• 4:15
  a place, yeah. And, well, yogis, Buddhists were
• 4:20
  encouraged to go and practice in cremation grounds.
• 4:23
  Yeah. This was especially taken up in
• 4:26
  the later, like, tantric tradition, like, you could say
• 4:28
  medieval Indian Buddhism. But also in the Buddha's day.
• 4:32
  The Buddha would recommend if somebody was serious about
• 4:35
  meditation, he would say go to a cave, remote cave somewhere, go
• 4:40
  to a remote forest somewhere, or go to a charnel ground, go to a
• 4:45
  cremation ground. Yeah.
• 4:48
  So there's a, there's a strong advice to go there.
• 4:50
  Yeah, Preferably alone and preferably at night.
• 4:53
  Yeah. And even for long periods, you
• 4:56
  know, it could be a week, it could be a month.
• 4:58
  So you make your own way there to this cremation ground.
• 5:03
  And, well, the question is why. Yeah.
• 5:06
  And maybe the answer is twofold. 1 is to have a very direct
• 5:11
  encounter with impermanence, you know, a kind of undeniable
• 5:14
  encounter with impermanence. Yeah, because in a way, when we
• 5:19
  think of death, I don't know about you, maybe I'll say
• 5:21
  something late, but when we think of death, it's normally
• 5:24
  not going to happen to us. Usually when we think about
• 5:28
  death and if it is when, when we when we believe we are going to
• 5:30
  die, it's kind of us, but it's us also someone else in the
• 5:34
  future, maybe they're fine and then they die.
• 5:38
  It's not that real in a certain sense.
• 5:40
  So the whole point is to go to a cremation ground to see death
• 5:46
  directly. And also the second point is to
• 5:49
  face fear, you know, very important.
• 5:53
  And it's interesting because I, I was speaking personally, one
• 5:56
  of the things that drew me to Buddhism is this whole business
• 5:58
  of the Buddha being fearless, you know, not fearless in a
• 6:01
  sense of like guns blazing and kind of not scared of anything.
• 6:04
  And beyond courage, you know, you could say beyond courage is
• 6:09
  just fearless. I found it incredibly appealing.
• 6:11
  And also fearlessness is kind of linked with enlightenment itself
• 6:16
  in a certain sense. Yeah, well, even just on an
• 6:19
  exponential level, when you're scared, you're gripping, You
• 6:22
  know, you're kind of clinging. Somehow your body is tensed up.
• 6:26
  And liberation in Buddhism is said to be the end of clinging.
• 6:29
  There's no more clinging, no more gripping.
• 6:31
  Yeah. So no more fear.
• 6:38
  Yeah. So like I said, I think I came
• 6:39
  to Buddhism wanting some fearlessness.
• 6:45
  And it is strange, isn't it, how sometimes things happen in
• 6:47
  dreams. I had one dream.
• 6:48
  I won't go into the dream, well, maybe a little bit, but I was
• 6:51
  really scared in this dream. And this giant horse galloped
• 6:54
  passed and another horse and all these horses, you know, so these
• 6:57
  huge white horses. And I woke up feeling, and in my
• 7:00
  dream I was completely fearless again.
• 7:02
  And I woke up feeling fearless. And it lasted for about two
• 7:05
  hours. And I've never had it since.
• 7:07
  I've never had it before. It was that, not even no hint of
• 7:10
  fear. And I thought to myself, well,
• 7:12
  if it's possible to experience this once, it must be possible
• 7:16
  to move into that somehow. Yeah.
• 7:22
  And it's, it's interesting that they were horses because horses
• 7:26
  are also to do energy. Yeah.
• 7:27
  And in Buddhism, there's representations of fearlessness
• 7:35
  that are basically linked with energy as well, which is quite
• 7:38
  interesting. Yeah.
• 7:39
  Movement. Movement and energy.
• 7:41
  Yeah. And there's actually a fear.
• 7:45
  There's a fearlessness mudra, like a hand gesture, which is
• 7:48
  basically a stop sign. I don't know what it's saying.
• 7:50
  Stop to. Maybe it stopped your own mind
• 7:53
  going around out of control. Just stop.
• 7:57
  Don't be scared. Yeah.
• 8:00
  But back to the cremation ground, back to fear.
• 8:06
  So what? It's good to I Well, maybe I
• 8:08
  just. It's like my people watch horror
• 8:10
  movies, but I quite enjoy imagining the cremation ground.
• 8:16
  And it must have been, well, incredible places.
• 8:19
  Everyone was scared to go there. Yeah.
• 8:21
  Nobody would voluntarily want to go to the cremation ground,
• 8:24
  especially not at night. Yeah.
• 8:26
  And what you would find is just bodies.
• 8:28
  There'd be all kind of bodies. There'd be bones.
• 8:30
  Maybe there'd be smouldering ashes, there'd be babies,
• 8:35
  bodies, there'd be old people's bodies.
• 8:37
  There'd be people that looked incredibly healthy, their
• 8:40
  bodies. There'd be legs everywhere.
• 8:42
  There'd be bodies half eaten, decomposed, you know, And you're
• 8:48
  faced with that. Yeah.
• 8:49
  And also maybe the ancestors. Maybe there's also other things
• 8:52
  that all the things that we like to tell ourselves are merely
• 8:56
  figments of the imagination. Maybe there's something else
• 8:59
  going on there which we can't quite put our finger on, but
• 9:01
  there's something else in that in that space.
• 9:03
  Yeah. And as a side note, I think
• 9:08
  partially, and other people have said as much, I think partially
• 9:10
  the reason most of the modern people are so terrified of death
• 9:15
  is because, well, a, we're nihilists, a lot of us, and
• 9:18
  materialists. So death to us really does seem
• 9:21
  like the end. So we just put everything behind
• 9:24
  these nice white walls and kind of keep it as far away from us
• 9:27
  as possible. Yeah.
• 9:28
  Which in and of itself, I think makes death even more scary.
• 9:32
  Yeah. And I was reflecting on my my
• 9:37
  father. I think he he, he was trying to
• 9:41
  protect me when I was young from death and from unpleasant
• 9:44
  experiences. A very good thing to do.
• 9:46
  You want to protect your children.
• 9:48
  But I remember when my grandmother died, I didn't go to
• 9:50
  the funeral. I was, I stayed at my friend's
• 9:53
  house and he was obviously very distressed.
• 9:55
  And it made it worse. I was really like, what's
• 9:58
  happened? I had no idea.
• 9:59
  I had no sense of what was happening.
• 10:00
  So pushing these things away in a way make them more difficult.
• 10:08
  So in a way I don't, there's not really many cremation grounds we
• 10:12
  can go to. Well, there's none in Berlin,
• 10:14
  are there? I mean, there's a friend of
• 10:17
  ours, Moksharati, who works in a hospital as a nurse and sees
• 10:19
  dead bodies. So that's something you could go
• 10:22
  to the cemetery. That's quite interesting.
• 10:25
  Especially old fashioned cemeteries.
• 10:27
  You have gravestones of people, you have a lot of children, a
• 10:29
  lot of people died a lot younger.
• 10:31
  There's, there's all sorts of that's a bit different, you
• 10:33
  know. So as always with Buddhism, the
• 10:36
  question is what is, how is the, how is this business of a
• 10:40
  cremation ground relevant to you, you know, relevant to us?
• 10:44
  And in a way, that's the same question that would be asked
• 10:48
  even of the people that were in cremation ground.
• 10:50
  It's not an just an external thing.
• 10:54
  It's almost a symbol. The cremation ground of Buddhism
• 10:57
  is also a symbol for this world, you know, So you could ask
• 11:01
  yourself, what is the cremation ground for you, you know, and
• 11:04
  the cremation ground, at least in terms of a practice in
• 11:07
  Buddhism, Yes, it's fear. And we can look at some of those
• 11:13
  things, but it's it's a it's a fear that you deliberately seek
• 11:16
  out yourself, you know, so you see what scares you and you go
• 11:20
  towards it and you deliberately seek this out yourself.
• 11:22
  That's the difference. Yeah.
• 11:28
  It's anything that we want to turn away from.
• 11:30
  Yeah. Anything we're not comfortable
• 11:31
  with. Maybe right now in this moment,
• 11:33
  there's something in your experience that is
• 11:35
  uncomfortable. Yeah.
• 11:37
  Padmasar, I was, we were talking the other day and you described
• 11:39
  it as your uncomfortable edge. Yeah.
• 11:42
  So an edge of your experience you're not enjoying or you don't
• 11:44
  want. Yeah.
• 11:46
  And well, his question to me was how, how do you move towards
• 11:51
  that? How can you move?
• 11:53
  It sounds counterintuitive, but how can you move towards the the
• 11:57
  piece of you right now that is uncomfortable?
• 11:59
  Yeah. And doesn't is not happy.
• 12:03
  So I thought anyway, I thought I'd just go through these.
• 12:05
  There are no particular order, but things that might scare us,
• 12:07
  you know, as a side note, I don't know.
• 12:11
  I just as a side note, I used to go to this restaurant in West
• 12:14
  London where I was living above this Buddhist centre is a Korean
• 12:17
  restaurant. You know, I don't know if
• 12:18
  there's anyone from Korea here, but there was this poem, this
• 12:22
  Korean poem that was all over the wall.
• 12:25
  Yeah. So you have your chili noodles,
• 12:26
  you have whatever you're having in this restaurant.
• 12:29
  And there's this whole load of things.
• 12:30
  And it was afraid of mother, afraid of death, afraid of the
• 12:35
  future, afraid of happy. It was like, all over the world.
• 12:38
  This is. And it.
• 12:39
  The restaurant lasted for years. It lasted for a long time.
• 12:42
  But I thought it was kind of a strange thing to be having your
• 12:44
  noodles and, like, watching all the things you're afraid of.
• 12:49
  Yeah. It was really weird.
• 12:53
  Very good food, though. Yeah, so things we may be scared
• 12:59
  of or afraid of, regardless if we go towards them directly or
• 13:03
  not. And these are in no order.
• 13:05
  You will have your own list, But just to maybe spark things off
• 13:09
  for me, one is violence. You know, maybe war is the
• 13:11
  ultimate kind of expression of that.
• 13:14
  But violence, I think I was quite a sensitive child and
• 13:19
  ended up with a certain point of my childhood with some extremely
• 13:22
  violent people, gangsters, actually.
• 13:25
  Like, you know, those we were saying on retreat, the Guy
• 13:28
  Ritchie, you know, Guy Ritchie and his cockney gangster movies.
• 13:31
  Yeah, them, like, literally them, though.
• 13:33
  Yeah. So they scared me a lot.
• 13:37
  And I was scared of violence. And I think I saw quite a lot of
• 13:41
  extreme violence. And I felt completely
• 13:45
  incompetent, you know, I felt like I just could not deal with
• 13:49
  that world at all. So in terms of moving towards
• 13:53
  it, I ended up, I think I just ended up finding people that
• 13:56
  were more violent than these people.
• 13:58
  So I ended up with probably the most dangerous people I could
• 14:00
  find as this form of protection. And in a way, it helped me, you
• 14:05
  know, it did help me. I felt a bit more secure.
• 14:08
  But then also witnessing violence.
• 14:11
  I found that incredibly sad. You know, I would, I would, I'd
• 14:13
  feel like crying, you know, you're watching someone being
• 14:16
  kind of badly hurt basically. And I actually felt like crying,
• 14:20
  but because I was a young boy, then you shut all that down.
• 14:26
  And then after also, I think being on the receiving end of
• 14:28
  violence myself and being unable to defend myself, I think I some
• 14:34
  of a switch got flipped where I could find that darkness in
• 14:39
  myself and that violence. And I was very happy about that.
• 14:42
  I could kind of. It's good to know it was there.
• 14:44
  Yeah. And then I was kind of all
• 14:48
  right, but I wasn't all right because I was numb.
• 14:49
  And if I look at my friends, I think they weren't free of fear.
• 14:53
  I thought they were fearless, the way they were behaving in
• 14:55
  terms of just running into danger.
• 14:57
  And but they weren't free of fear.
• 14:58
  They were just numb. And unfortunately, a lot of them
• 15:01
  were just fairly stupid as well. That's the truth.
• 15:06
  So yeah, maybe violence scares you.
• 15:09
  I also had another one that came up was.
• 15:14
  Yeah, a fear of being visible in public like this.
• 15:17
  This is a common 1, isn't it? Like in public, talking
• 15:19
  apparently induces terror in people.
• 15:22
  And to be honest, before I began today, I had a strong wave of
• 15:25
  that. I thought, oh, God, I don't like
• 15:27
  being good, but it's OK. Yeah.
• 15:31
  I had another fear of being grey, like a grey man.
• 15:34
  Yeah. I had this dream, a lucid dream.
• 15:37
  And this figure walked into a room who was completely grey.
• 15:40
  He had grey skin, grey hair, grey clothes, and I jumped when
• 15:44
  I looked at him. And then when I the next day I
• 15:47
  thought, oh, I'm actually scared of being grey.
• 15:49
  I'm scared of being kind of invisible and grey and boring
• 15:54
  and bit lifeless. And that actually scares me.
• 15:59
  Yeah, partially why I got into Buddhism, because I met a lot of
• 16:02
  people that were old but full of energy and very not grey.
• 16:07
  Another one might be poverty. I definitely had that and still
• 16:11
  have that sometimes. Fear of being poor and broke and
• 16:13
  destitute and all of this. So it could be poverty.
• 16:17
  Also maybe a fear of letting people into my heart, I think a
• 16:21
  fear of letting people know me. Yeah, again, probably not for
• 16:25
  being interesting enough or wild enough or exciting enough, you
• 16:28
  know, fear of not belonging. That's another one, you know,
• 16:31
  never really feeling like you belong to a specific people or a
• 16:33
  place. Fear of low status, being
• 16:36
  unattractive. Also interesting.
• 16:38
  I thought, oh, yeah. Fear of not being capable to
• 16:41
  follow, follow what I believe to be true.
• 16:43
  Yeah. In my case, the Dharma, that
• 16:45
  there there was more of a fear of not being able to practice
• 16:49
  the Dharma. Also fear of negative emotions,
• 16:52
  you know, jealousy, all the ugly emotions, you know, that, you
• 16:55
  know, don't like to admit to people your petty emotions like
• 16:58
  resentment or jealousy, these kind of things.
• 17:00
  Yeah, I don't fear of them as well.
• 17:02
  I still do sometimes. It's like, I just don't want to
• 17:04
  be like that. Fear of madness.
• 17:09
  Yeah, fear of falling. I'm not saying this as a as a, a
• 17:16
  solution people. In fact, I'm definitely not
• 17:18
  saying this in case anybody sues me afterwards and I get in
• 17:21
  trouble. But I had a very bad period a
• 17:24
  few years ago and I felt so low. And I remember I was having a
• 17:29
  walk with Padmasagra and I, and I was just like, I said, I would
• 17:31
  feel so low. Like I like really, I'm just
• 17:35
  like falling. And he said maybe there's lower
• 17:38
  to go. I was like, wow, that really
• 17:42
  helped. So this is not advice.
• 17:45
  I'm not saying like, you know, therapist, whatever, good.
• 17:49
  I'm not saying don't follow this advice, but I'm just saying for
• 17:51
  me, this whole I was scared of falling basically and descending
• 17:56
  and there was a dissent that had to happen.
• 17:58
  And I was super grateful because then every time I get away with
• 18:01
  anxiety or a wave of fear or, or feeling really low, I'd be like,
• 18:07
  ah, let's get into this. Let's just breathe it in, get
• 18:10
  into it. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:14
  A fear of hurting people through my own selfishness, which I have
• 18:17
  done. And, you know, turning towards
• 18:21
  that, that's been very transformative.
• 18:26
  A fear of time slipping away. That's a big one, especially in
• 18:29
  this day and age, I feel when I'm just fiddling around on this
• 18:32
  stupid phone. Yeah, And like, time's ticking
• 18:36
  and I say, well, what am I doing?
• 18:37
  And then I get scared. And then I start scrolling more
• 18:40
  because I'm more anxious. I think, oh, God, I hate this.
• 18:46
  So fear of time slipping away, maybe related.
• 18:51
  I think a very big one for me at least, is, is and was fear of
• 18:57
  living a trivial superficial life while knowing, while, while
• 19:02
  knowing there is so much more to life.
• 19:04
  You know, I think that was, that has been a big fear, especially.
• 19:07
  I think that's the main thing that that I would say forced me
• 19:11
  into Buddhism much more. Yeah.
• 19:13
  I was like, I just don't want to, you know, those ones.
• 19:15
  When you get a door that opens up and you where you're just
• 19:18
  like, OK, there's a lot more going on.
• 19:22
  And then you just like the lights dimmed down again and
• 19:24
  you're doing your usual stuff with your usual nonsense.
• 19:27
  Yeah. So that was a fear.
• 19:30
  And then maybe a big one was fear of death.
• 19:33
  Yeah. I was thinking, oh, when is it
• 19:36
  going to happen? Yeah.
• 19:38
  Because it as the, as the Buddha's always telling us and
• 19:41
  Buddhism's always telling us it can happen at any time.
• 19:44
  It can happen when you're a child.
• 19:45
  It can happen at any time. Yeah.
• 19:49
  And that's what the cremation grounds are a bit about in some
• 19:53
  respects. Because like I was saying
• 19:55
  earlier, we we do usually think of death happening to someone
• 19:59
  else. Usually, not always.
• 20:02
  Sometimes you get some clarity, sometimes for prolonged periods,
• 20:04
  don't you? But usually we're busy.
• 20:08
  We're too busy for death. It's like, oh, yeah, whatever,
• 20:11
  you know? And when it's.
• 20:13
  And I always used to think of it, and it was me.
• 20:15
  And I was old and serene and there was like a nice scene.
• 20:18
  And I was just like, so I was like, yeah, it's fine, You're
• 20:20
  over there, you're dying. It's fine.
• 20:23
  And somehow it's not me. Yeah, I'm not going to die.
• 20:30
  So a quick quote from Sangarachita, who's the founder
• 20:33
  of this tradition. He says the cremation ground
• 20:40
  represents A crucial situation, a situation of crisis into which
• 20:46
  one deliberately plunges oneself, a situation in one in
• 20:51
  which one must either develop or die.
• 20:54
  The cremation ground, therefore is a symbol of transformation
• 20:59
  from lower to higher, symbol of transformation of 1's whole
• 21:03
  being. So it's strong stuff, isn't it?
• 21:07
  And in a way points to the, well, actually the intensity of
• 21:12
  what the Buddha is talking about.
• 21:13
  Buddhism isn't just a supposed to be a little plaster over 1's
• 21:16
  life. You know, you have a generally
• 21:19
  meaningless kind of life and then you sort of just plaster a
• 21:21
  bit of feel good Buddhism onto it.
• 21:24
  This really not talking about that.
• 21:26
  He's talking about turning towards something which, well,
• 21:32
  you develop or die. Yeah, maybe you could say you
• 21:35
  die inside or you literally die, I don't know.
• 21:40
  But yeah, deliberately seeking that out is quite something.
• 21:45
  It's funny, I think actually this whole in a way, that's what
• 21:51
  every Buddhist tradition is funnelling you towards.
• 21:53
  If you, if you decide to engage with any specific tradition with
• 21:56
  any level of commitment or intensity, it's basically
• 21:59
  funnelling you into that. And that's what you asked for.
• 22:01
  Yeah. So if you've asked for
• 22:02
  ordination into a tradition, it could be this one, could be
• 22:05
  another tradition. If you've asked for ordination,
• 22:08
  essentially you've asked for this, you know, you've asked for
• 22:11
  a situation where you have to develop or your life is going to
• 22:15
  go really wrong. Yeah, and that's the thing.
• 22:18
  And I think I've, I've experienced that so much being
• 22:21
  involved with so-called nice Buddhists.
• 22:23
  We are nice, but you're, you're setting up a situation where
• 22:28
  you're going to end up in a pressure cooker, you know, at a
• 22:32
  certain point. Yeah, in a certain way.
• 22:34
  And it's in a way, it's the only way you turn towards what you
• 22:36
  don't want to turn towards. Not that people are, there's no
• 22:39
  one there like groovy Zen people hitting you with sticks and like
• 22:43
  punishing you at 4:00 in the morning.
• 22:45
  It's more just like you just basically encounter your regular
• 22:47
  mind and all the things that all your reactivity and you have
• 22:53
  friends and you can't escape. And it's like, and actually, I
• 22:59
  don't know if Aryabhandu is still here, but a couple of
• 23:01
  years ago I was in one of those cremation grounds in this place
• 23:03
  here being, and, you know, running, being part of a centre
• 23:08
  like this is, it can be quite intense actually, you know,
• 23:11
  because we're a community and you don't run away for you,
• 23:15
  you're part of this. Yeah, by choice, obviously.
• 23:19
  But I wanted to leave. Yeah.
• 23:20
  And I remember sitting talking to Aria Bandu a couple of years
• 23:23
  ago and I was like, I am cooked. Yeah, I am done with this place.
• 23:27
  And he said, oh, I've got, he didn't say anything.
• 23:30
  He just said I've got 2 criteria for me to stay in a place.
• 23:34
  And he said the first one is, is it enjoyable?
• 23:36
  And I was like, no. And he said the second one is am
• 23:39
  I growing? And I was like, Oh no, Oh no.
• 23:45
  And I was. And I thought, Oh no, I was all
• 23:48
  Plaid. My suit.
• 23:49
  I was going to metaphorically had my suitcases.
• 23:51
  And I was like, OK, I'm growing. OK, good.
• 23:53
  I'll stay. Yeah.
• 23:59
  So we in, in Buddhism, a large part of Buddhism is about facing
• 24:02
  your fear. Yeah.
• 24:02
  And transforming your fear, because fear in a, in a sense is
• 24:07
  one of the strongest expressions of the unenlightened mind in a
• 24:12
  completely non judgmental sense, You know, Buddhism, Buddhism is
• 24:15
  not poking pointing fingers, but fear is an expression
• 24:19
  essentially of ignorance according to Buddhism.
• 24:20
  You know, we just don't know how things work and we're scared.
• 24:23
  We're running around. All the shadows are there.
• 24:25
  We're like, Oh my God, Yikes. Running.
• 24:30
  I don't know who says that anymore anyway, running this
• 24:32
  way. And then we go, Oh, no.
• 24:34
  And we're just scared because we're like haunted, you know, we
• 24:36
  don't really see what's going on.
• 24:40
  But the point is in a way, there's, we're not just there,
• 24:43
  we're not just turning towards fear because, you know, we're
• 24:47
  turning, we're turning towards it for a reason, you know,
• 24:53
  because there is something afterwards, you know, But before
• 24:59
  that, I think a good, it can be very helpful to in your, in your
• 25:04
  own life to, to, to reflect on impermanence.
• 25:08
  Yeah. In a, in a, in a, in a, in a
• 25:14
  regular and strong way. Yeah.
• 25:16
  So I have a friend of mine who does this interesting reflection
• 25:21
  in meditation, which I have done a fair bit.
• 25:24
  But he he basically he before he meditates, sometimes he says to
• 25:27
  himself, OK, let's really imagine that I have a terminal
• 25:32
  diagnosis, but I've got 10 years.
• 25:34
  Yeah. Just 10 years.
• 25:35
  And you're guaranteed to die in 2036.
• 25:41
  Yeah. That's just a given.
• 25:43
  What does that feel like? Interesting.
• 25:45
  How would I live? Yeah.
• 25:46
  Then he reduces the time to five years.
• 25:49
  OK, 2031. Yeah.
• 25:51
  OK. That's when I'm definitely off.
• 25:53
  Yeah. Then he reduces it further to
• 25:55
  like 6 months. I don't know why he's got these
• 25:58
  timings anyway. Six months, yeah.
• 26:00
  So you've got six months to live.
• 26:01
  Yeah. Guaranteed.
• 26:03
  Then three months. Yeah.
• 26:05
  So what does that feel like to have three months?
• 26:07
  Yeah. Then it comes down to three
• 26:09
  weeks. It's OK Well, that's a bit.
• 26:12
  And then a week, yeah. And then three days.
• 26:15
  So he just kind of edges it down and it sets you up.
• 26:20
  I've done it and it works. It sets you up differently from
• 26:23
  your day. We're so petty, aren't we?
• 26:24
  Yeah, He said this and she said that.
• 26:26
  And we get into this whole kind of like our little gripes with
• 26:29
  people and Oh dear, and this and this is the wrong colour and I
• 26:34
  wanted the pillow in this colour.
• 26:36
  And you get, oh, no, and now I've got my holidays cancelled
• 26:39
  and you get into all this stuff. But if I feel like if someone
• 26:43
  said to me, yeah, mate, you're going to be dead in three days.
• 26:46
  Yeah, literally, I would. I don't think those things would
• 26:49
  be so important. I wouldn't care what someone
• 26:50
  said to me did or didn't do. It's like it's irrelevant.
• 26:53
  Yeah. So in a way, that's what we're
• 26:55
  looking for with Dharma practice in general.
• 26:57
  The whole point is a sense of liberation.
• 26:59
  Yeah. Sense of freedom.
• 27:00
  Yeah. Freedom for from ourselves,
• 27:02
  essentially. Yeah.
• 27:05
  Another thing that I like to do, which I used to do a lot in my
• 27:09
  20s and 30s. Maybe I should start doing it
• 27:12
  again. But as I I, I, I like to
• 27:15
  imagine. I used to like to imagine myself
• 27:18
  as being like in my late 90s or in my 90s and basically being
• 27:22
  lying in my bed and not feeling great, basically exhausted, you
• 27:30
  know, probably with an incontinence nappy on.
• 27:32
  And just like, oh, and then just imagining if I could have one
• 27:36
  day, you know, just one day, like a time machine, like a
• 27:39
  computer game to go back to the year 2026 at the age of 48, for
• 27:44
  example, now. But you're only allowed one day.
• 27:47
  And how would that feel? And I'd be like, that would be
• 27:49
  amazing. Yeah.
• 27:50
  I still can move around a bit, like, a lot.
• 27:53
  I can do things, you know, I've got some energy.
• 27:56
  And it's like a reverse, a reverse of that kind of death
• 27:59
  reflection. So the point is to transcend
• 28:01
  fear. Yeah.
• 28:02
  So we we embrace the whole point is you turn towards what scares
• 28:04
  you. It's the same in meditation.
• 28:06
  Yeah. It's identical.
• 28:07
  They're all doing the same thing.
• 28:08
  When you meditate, you're essentially turning towards your
• 28:10
  experience, aren't you? Yeah.
• 28:12
  Whatever's going on, you turn. That's the starting point to
• 28:14
  every meditation. You turn towards what's actually
• 28:17
  happening. Yeah.
• 28:17
  There's a great part of June, you know, the movie June.
• 28:20
  There's this one bit. You know that quote.
• 28:22
  Fear is the mind killer. It's so great.
• 28:24
  This guy. He's he's he.
• 28:26
  If he experiences any fear, then he's going to die.
• 28:29
  She's going to stick something. Isn't it a bit of a tangent?
• 28:32
  Anyway, it's so great. I don't know why I said that.
• 28:35
  Let's move on. So, yeah.
• 28:39
  Antidotes. Antidotes.
• 28:40
  So, yeah. Fear.
• 28:44
  Fear. And like in, in our own teacher
• 28:47
  says in a way, there's there's various qualities of Buddhism
• 28:50
  that get emphasized and we're familiar with, yeah, compassion,
• 28:54
  tolerance, patience, all these things very important.
• 28:58
  But equally important is courage, fearlessness, which we
• 29:03
  don't often think about with Buddhism, but it's very, very
• 29:05
  important. He says.
• 29:06
  It's just as important. He also says it is probably more
• 29:10
  important, which is interesting, isn't it?
• 29:13
  We all think of compassion. We think of mindfulness.
• 29:15
  We don't think of fearlessness and courage.
• 29:18
  I think those quote UN quote heroic virtues are super
• 29:21
  important. Yeah.
• 29:23
  And there's certain people. There's certain people here.
• 29:25
  I could say, actually, things could go very wrong.
• 29:29
  Yeah. But there's a kind of attitude
• 29:31
  that one can deliberately take up.
• 29:32
  Like the rest of Buddhism. It's a training.
• 29:34
  Mindfulness is a training, compassion, becoming more aware
• 29:38
  and kind towards people is a training.
• 29:40
  Yeah, you can train in it and you can change that way.
• 29:42
  But also courage and fearlessness.
• 29:44
  Yeah. In the face of all the things,
• 29:46
  the mess that this world is and always has been, frankly,
• 29:49
  Buddhism requires a certain attitude shift, you know, which
• 29:52
  is to do with courage. So even if it's not courage
• 29:55
  again, and like Arnold Schwarzenegger, like all guns
• 29:57
  blazing and kicking doors, not that kind of courage.
• 30:00
  It's deeper than that, you know, it's like a certain attitude
• 30:03
  that you can take towards life. And if you can take that
• 30:07
  attitude, it is such a gift to give to other people.
• 30:10
  Yeah. It's, it's such a powerful gift.
• 30:14
  And I think about, I think of Ariya Bandu, for example, I
• 30:16
  think of my grandfather. He was in, he was a soldier.
• 30:18
  But Ariya Bandu has the same quality where what some
• 30:20
  something I've noticed about him is he he has, he has a certain
• 30:25
  come what may let's whatever happens, happens, you know, and
• 30:28
  we'll just deal with it and it's OK.
• 30:30
  Yeah, That is power. That's as, that's as important
• 30:33
  as compassion and as important as mindfulness.
• 30:35
  Yeah, especially now, I would say now that our cosy little
• 30:38
  bubble is popping, it's really important to have that kind of
• 30:41
  attitude for the rest of 1's life.
• 30:43
  Yeah. And you can choose it.
• 30:45
  You know, you can actually train that.
• 30:47
  You can choose it. I mean, I've done it myself.
• 30:49
  I'm sure other people that have done martial arts and get into
• 30:52
  this violence thing. You can train a kind of courage,
• 30:55
  you know, where you just like, OK, I might get hurt, but let's
• 30:58
  get in. This is like that, but much more
• 31:01
  potent. Yeah, it's for your whole life.
• 31:04
  So you can choose to face fear. That's one antidote.
• 31:07
  Yeah. You can actually turn towards
• 31:08
  the things that scare you. Maybe it's something like a
• 31:10
  solitary retreat. But I remember my last solitary
• 31:12
  retreat. I was in a nice place.
• 31:14
  I was in the mountains in Spain. Yeah.
• 31:16
  There was no one around for a long diet area.
• 31:18
  There was no electricity. I couldn't see anything pitch
• 31:20
  black. But it induced terror in me.
• 31:23
  I kind of went out and I'd hear something scratching and I would
• 31:26
  think I know what if, like, a a bear escaped from a zoo or
• 31:29
  someone's, you know, and what if that noise is really a tiger?
• 31:33
  There's nothing. There's like a little mouth.
• 31:35
  There's nothing there. So you can choose to turn
• 31:38
  towards fear. I'd say it's one of the
• 31:39
  antidotes is, is an attitude where you can actually, you can
• 31:42
  actually develop that, a backbone in certain sense.
• 31:44
  Yeah. Which to be a Buddhist has to
• 31:47
  happen, I think on a certain level.
• 31:48
  The second one is love. Yeah.
• 31:50
  Meta. Yeah.
• 31:51
  So the Buddha recommended himself in terms of an antidote
• 31:55
  to fear and anxiety is love is meta.
• 31:58
  Yeah. So normally we're scared
• 32:02
  physically, we're retracted. We're like, yeah, when you're
• 32:06
  when you've got meta, when you've got love for people,
• 32:08
  you're more relaxed as a kind of expansion, expansive quality.
• 32:12
  You're not just dwelling in yourself and your little
• 32:14
  concerns and your little mind spinning around in this little
• 32:17
  kind of vortex in your in yourself.
• 32:20
  There's a there's an expansive sense which does actually
• 32:23
  neutralize fear. Some of the Thai forest monks
• 32:25
  used to do follow tiger trails, which I'm sure I've talked about
• 32:29
  others of before, which is amazing.
• 32:31
  Yeah. So you're on retreat.
• 32:32
  You're in the in the forest by yourself with your friends, and
• 32:37
  you want to test if you have meta.
• 32:39
  Yeah. So you might feel like, oh,
• 32:41
  yeah, I've got some meta. I've got some compassion.
• 32:43
  Yeah. And they really wanted to test
• 32:45
  if it was true. Yeah.
• 32:46
  Were they really loving people? Were they really kind?
• 32:49
  Did they really have this care and concern for other creatures?
• 32:52
  Yeah. And the way they did that was to
• 32:54
  go and find a tiger. Yeah.
• 32:56
  Like an actual tiger. Not in a zoo.
• 32:59
  Yeah, a tiger. So they walked through.
• 33:01
  And by the way, you did see piles of, like, orange robes
• 33:04
  with bones sticking out of them as well.
• 33:05
  So that obviously went to show that they weren't for the meta
• 33:09
  that day or the tiger was super hungry or whatever.
• 33:13
  But there was, I remember reading one example of like a
• 33:17
  tiger appearing in front and a tiger behind.
• 33:20
  And this particular monk just shot into a state of absorption,
• 33:23
  Diana and bliss and love like, and came, opened his eyes and it
• 33:28
  was like the sun was much lower and the tigers were gone.
• 33:32
  And so he was like, ah, so that worked.
• 33:35
  Yeah. And I think it's true.
• 33:37
  I think it's true. It's like, I don't know about
• 33:38
  you, but there's on a very good day as a practising Buddhist and
• 33:42
  you're in a situation where maybe there's the the
• 33:47
  possibility of violence happening.
• 33:48
  Yeah. Like it sometimes happens in a
• 33:50
  big city or any anywhere. Yeah.
• 33:52
  And somehow you on that day you can wish the wish people really
• 33:55
  love. Yeah.
• 33:56
  Not just the person who's going a bit crazy and looks like
• 33:58
  they're about to do something bad, but the person next to
• 34:00
  them. Duh, Duh, duh, duh.
• 34:02
  And it's not too much to say, oh, you're tripping on your own
• 34:05
  power, but oh, I'm so spiritual, sending out love.
• 34:08
  It's not like that, You know when it's happening and it
• 34:11
  changes the atmosphere and vice versa.
• 34:14
  You can be in a bad state and you can be with someone who's
• 34:17
  just really loving without making a show of it and they're
• 34:20
  really there and it can diffuse your hatred and your negativity.
• 34:24
  So meta is a good one for fear. Also, another one, number three
• 34:29
  I would say, is presence to actually inhabit yourself fully,
• 34:33
  because half the problem with fear is we, we just start
• 34:35
  popping off somewhere else, don't we?
• 34:37
  We get the fear and we're like retracted, you know, we try and
• 34:40
  put up some wall, we distract ourselves.
• 34:42
  We don't want to know. And then you're really in
• 34:45
  trouble because you're kind of in this freeze mode, you know,
• 34:50
  slight as a slight aside, I was staying in London over Christmas
• 34:54
  a couple of years ago. It's not quite the same thing,
• 34:57
  but just as an illustration. Yeah.
• 34:59
  And I was staying in this flat and it sounded like someone was
• 35:01
  kicking the front door off at 3:00 in the morning.
• 35:04
  Yeah. Like trying to break in.
• 35:06
  There's there was a secondary flat.
• 35:09
  Yeah. So the door, it sounded like the
• 35:10
  door was going. Then it sounded like there was
• 35:12
  feet going up and down the stairs.
• 35:14
  And it's really interesting. I jumped out of bed and I was
• 35:17
  just like, if I'm honest, I was terrified.
• 35:19
  Yeah. And I was like.
• 35:20
  And then I started pretending it wasn't happening.
• 35:23
  I was like, no, no, this isn't happening.
• 35:25
  And I was like, no, this is happening.
• 35:27
  Yeah. And then I just thought, what am
• 35:29
  I going to do? And then I just anyway, I picked
• 35:33
  up something which a weapon essentially, and I stood by the
• 35:38
  door and I was in gear. All of a sudden I was fully
• 35:41
  present in the experience. I was like, this is OK, let's do
• 35:44
  this. If I go, whatever, it's all
• 35:46
  right. But this is it.
• 35:47
  You know this, you know when you get into that.
• 35:48
  And so I was fully present. Your your sensors are alert,
• 35:51
  your hearing, everything is like on go.
• 35:53
  It turned out to be the neighbor like 3:00 in the morning.
• 35:57
  And my dad was like, I'm glad you didn't stab such and such
• 36:00
  such a really nice guy. You know, he was like laughing
• 36:02
  at me, like I was by the door and complete like primitive
• 36:06
  like. And this poor guy, I got
• 36:10
  confused. So I looked out the window and
• 36:11
  he was actually taking like a pram to his kind of his van.
• 36:15
  If you can make yourself present, then the fears less.
• 36:18
  Yeah. And maybe the ultimate antidote
• 36:20
  to fear is insight, wisdom from a Buddhist perspective.
• 36:23
  Yeah. So wisdom isn't some just nice
• 36:26
  add on again to a life. The whole point of all of this
• 36:29
  is liberation. We want to be liberated as
• 36:31
  Buddhists. We want to be free from fear.
• 36:34
  Yeah, Free from all of this. Yeah.
• 36:37
  So you could say enlightenment is like a destroyer of fear.
• 36:41
  Yeah. Even death, the deathless.
• 36:43
  So to finish with, what is the result of overcoming fear?
• 36:47
  Yeah, we've talked about it a bit before.
• 36:48
  The result is, is is a liberation.
• 36:51
  Yeah, you could say liberation of energy.
• 36:52
  And there's a particular figure which I'm not going to go into
• 36:56
  too much, but there's there's a figure associated especially the
• 36:59
  Tantra with cremation grounds, which is called a darkening
• 37:02
  here, which I was listening to a talk the other day by the
• 37:05
  founder of this tradition, Sangarachita.
• 37:07
  It was really interesting. The the darkening is, is an
• 37:11
  astonishing figure. Yeah.
• 37:13
  It's basically the darkening is what happens when you turn
• 37:16
  towards fear. And you could say it's a
• 37:20
  representation of the energy of enlightenment itself here.
• 37:24
  And so darkening is a female figure, completely red, naked
• 37:30
  hair in a mess, flying everywhere, covered in skulls,
• 37:34
  fire, drinking blood, just a complete freedom of movement.
• 37:38
  Yeah. And darkening apparently comes
• 37:40
  from it's to do with sky and space, you know, So it's
• 37:45
  basically this figure is moving through space and moving through
• 37:48
  the sky unfettered. Yeah.
• 37:50
  Completely free. And.
• 37:54
  Well, Banti Sangaracheti says the sky, in a way is, is is the
• 37:59
  mind. Yeah.
• 38:01
  And so you have complete freedom of energy and movement.
• 38:05
  Complete freedom of mind. Yeah.
• 38:07
  And it's energy, It's the energy of the mind itself.
• 38:10
  We often don't think about that. Yeah.
• 38:11
  We have a certain way of looking at the mind.
• 38:13
  Yeah, at least in a, in a, in a materialist sense that we think
• 38:16
  of it as a brain, as a byproduct of physical matter.
• 38:20
  But consciousness is said to be a tremendous energy itself.
• 38:23
  So you have complete freedom of movement and energy.
• 38:26
  Yeah. He says there's three kinds of
• 38:27
  darkening, which I'll say very quickly.
• 38:29
  The first kind of darkening or the is, is is the darkening.
• 38:32
  This figure is, is a female Buddha form.
• 38:36
  And he says why should the Buddha?
• 38:38
  I mean, historically the Buddha was a it was male.
• 38:40
  But he says why should why should the Buddha take a a male
• 38:44
  form? It makes no sense.
• 38:45
  Yeah, it makes other than being historical.
• 38:47
  So it's a female Buddha form. A darkeny is like a symbol, an
• 38:52
  embodiment of our own. He says upsurging energies.
• 38:56
  Yeah. Which is what we want, don't we?
• 38:58
  Sounds good. Upsurging energies.
• 39:00
  And it's also a representation, a symbol of spiritual, like
• 39:03
  companionship, like friendship. Yeah.
• 39:05
  This is what happens, Yeah. When you turn towards fear, when
• 39:07
  you turn with this courage, maybe this love, when you
• 39:11
  develop insight or wisdom that as a Buddhist there is a result,
• 39:15
  a direct result, which is liberation.
• 39:16
  Yeah. And sometimes liberation sounds
• 39:18
  a bit abstract, but if you think of this naked red woman covered
• 39:22
  in skulls and flames flying through space, it's pretty good.
• 39:27
  It's pretty good, isn't it? So, yeah.
• 39:30
  So there's death, there's fear, there's a place.
• 39:33
  Death and fear are places we are actively encouraged to go
• 39:37
  towards as Buddhists. Yeah.
• 39:39
  Not turn away from them. We can do that by developing
• 39:44
  qualities like courage, meta love, wisdom, actually.
• 39:50
  Then we can work with fear and transform it.
• 39:53
  We can be present. And in a way, if you do that, it
• 39:57
  will lead you to the heart of the Dharma.
• 39:59
  And the heart of the Dharma, well, today it could be
• 40:02
  symbolized by this figure. You know this, this liberated
• 40:05
  figure flying through space, complete freedom of movement.
• 40:09
  And I will leave it there.