Latest / Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast / Guhya, It means secret

Transcript

Guhya, It means secret · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:10
So today I just wanted to say something.
0:12
Well, I wanted to talk about a word, a beautiful word called
0:16
Guccia. You know, Guccia, it means
0:19
something like a secret. And those of us who have been
0:24
ordained, at least on the men's side, we get ordained at a place
0:27
called Guccia Loca, which means, well, it means secret place.
0:30
It gets translated a secret valley because it's in a valley
0:33
far away from everybody. But it's an important word.
0:38
And yeah, I thought to explore this word more, we could have a
0:45
look at. Well, we will go on a journey
0:48
with the Buddha in terms of how he evolved his own teaching, but
0:52
also maybe more importantly or as importantly, perhaps it's a
0:58
journey of depth as well. Yeah.
1:00
Because in a way, well, Buddhism starts with the Buddha, It
1:05
starts with enlightenment. And there's things you can say
1:09
about enlightenment on a conceptual level that can be
1:13
fairly helpful. Yeah, which we'll look into.
1:16
But really, when you get down to it, it's, well, it's like an
1:22
experience. It's not an experience because
1:24
it's your whole reality has been transformed and transfigured.
1:27
Yeah, enlightenment. But it's not something you can.
1:31
It's secret. It's goofier perhaps in the
1:34
sense of you can't really communicate it with somebody
1:36
else. It's impossible, you know, even
1:38
our own experience is impossible to communicate.
1:40
So let alone something like enlightenment, where according
1:43
to tradition, your consciousness has been transformed and
1:47
transfigured, you know, So by definition, it's hidden or
1:52
secret, at least to us, you know, so.
1:59
Yeah. Well, maybe to say something.
2:00
So. So the Buddha attained
2:01
enlightenment sound that rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
2:04
But the Buddha attained enlightenment.
2:06
And on a conceptual level, it's actually quite.
2:12
Well, it's actually really important to know what that
2:15
insight is, what we might call enlightenment.
2:18
Yeah. It's probably the, it's the,
2:19
it's the kind of building block, the, the, the foundation of the
2:22
rest of Buddhism. The whole of Buddhism rests on,
2:25
you might say, one thing. Yeah.
2:27
Which on a conceptual level we can grasp and then we can work
2:34
with that and transform our lives and then have what you
2:37
might call an experience at the end of that, or our experience
2:40
deepens. So on a conceptual level, you
2:44
could say the Buddha saw. I'm not going to throw in loads
2:47
of technical words, but it's an important one which may be new
2:51
to some of you. The Buddha experienced saw
2:54
what's called proteacha samhat pada, don't we?
2:57
Yeah. For teacher samit Parda, it
2:59
means something like conditioned Co production, conditioned Co
3:03
arising. None of this helps.
3:05
But what it's saying basically, or what you would say if you
3:10
were using your rational day-to-day logical mind is the
3:16
Buddha saw that nothing exists in in independent of conditions.
3:22
Yeah. There's no fixed thing anywhere
3:25
in existence that doesn't, is, is not there because jeez, there
3:31
you go. Do you know what?
3:32
Last night I bought some of these, what are they called?
3:35
Like these earbuds, you know, that put noise into your SO
3:38
because my neighbors are noisy so they, they fire noise into
3:41
your ears. They cost me a lot of money and
3:43
they didn't work. They just gave me an ear rake
3:45
and I didn't sleep. So that's my excuse.
3:47
Anyway, let me start again. OK, so things, basically
3:53
everything arises in dependence on other things.
3:56
You could say. Yeah.
3:57
So you have a cup. It's completely dependent on a
4:02
whole universe of factors that in the end come back to what we
4:06
might call The Big Bang, and maybe before that.
4:08
Yeah. And it's the same with
4:09
everything. Everything.
4:11
There's a whole load of conditions behind everything.
4:14
Yeah. So there's nothing fixed in
4:17
existence. Everything's changing,
4:20
permanently changing. That's basically what the Buddha
4:23
is saying. Everything is change.
4:24
Yeah. We don't see it like that, which
4:26
is why we suffer, because we cling on to things as if things
4:29
are actually fixed, things that you can pin down.
4:33
But they're changing all the time.
4:35
Independence on conditions, which is the important bit.
4:37
Yeah, that it's not just random change.
4:39
They're changing independence on conditions.
4:42
Nearly there. So they're they're they're
4:44
they're also affecting each other as they're changing.
4:47
Yeah. So we can, we can understand
4:48
this as petitioner Samet Parda, not particularly well put this
4:53
morning, but you can do your own work on it and you can
4:56
understand it logically. Yeah, you can understand that
5:00
there's nothing fixed anywhere. And that especially applies to
5:02
us. But obviously that is not
5:06
enlightenment. That's not the experience, is
5:08
it? It's just an idea.
5:10
Well, I shouldn't say just an idea.
5:11
It's an important idea, but it's an idea, you know, So we can
5:14
understand this idea. So we'll just start with that.
5:19
We're done away. We'll go.
5:20
We'll go a bit further, but we'll just start with that.
5:22
As the basic conceptual Petitia Samapada, everything changes
5:27
upon conditions. And as we will find out, the
5:30
Buddha said you can change your life if you understand this, You
5:34
know, you can change your conditions systematically and
5:36
intelligently, and you can transform your consciousness.
5:39
Yeah. And he says it works.
5:42
And other Buddhists would agree. So the Buddha has this
5:48
experience, you might say, well, the Buddha attains awakening,
5:50
attains enlightenment. And maybe like all experience, I
5:56
don't know about you, but you have a you realise that you
5:58
can't really communicate anything about yourself.
6:00
In a certain sense. You have an experience and by
6:03
default it's hidden, it's yours. You can't give it to somebody
6:07
else. You can give use words and maybe
6:10
they have some some idea with the words, you know, but in
6:12
terms of your actual like right now sitting here, there'll be a
6:15
texture to your experience, the whole history you've got that is
6:19
unique. And you can't really, you can't
6:21
give that to anyone else directly.
6:23
Yeah. So the Buddha experienced
6:26
enlightenment, I would say. I imagine like this, but
6:30
infinitely more so because he'd done something remarkable.
6:35
Yeah. So he'd freed himself
6:37
conclusively from hatred, greed and delusion.
6:43
His experience was transformed. No more suffering.
6:46
Yeah, which is impossible for us to imagine, perhaps, But no more
6:50
suffering. No more clinging.
6:52
No more aversion, an abundance of energy.
6:55
No more fear. Yeah.
6:58
But he did think to himself, OK, this is going to be very, very
7:03
difficult to lead other people towards.
7:06
But I do have some friends, yeah, that I was practising with
7:09
before. And so he decides, luckily for
7:13
us, he decides to try and communicate perhaps a path,
7:18
Yeah, perhaps some way of other people freeing themselves as
7:22
well and liberating themselves in the same way.
7:24
Yeah, So he goes to find his old friends who are not so far away.
7:30
And there's a whole interesting story about this, which we don't
7:34
have time to go into and all the little details of this story.
7:39
But basically he sits down with them and over the course of days
7:45
communicates with them. So he'll be communicating, I
7:49
imagine, in concepts, but also just his presence.
7:52
His presence is different. And these, his old friends, they
7:56
were really practising themselves.
7:58
They were very receptive, you know, they were very receptive
8:00
people. And something got trans, got
8:05
communicated. Yeah.
8:06
The, the, the, the, the nature perhaps of reality and the, the,
8:10
the Buddha's own liberation of freedom got communicated.
8:14
Perhaps in words, yes, but also the Buddha's example.
8:17
There'll be a, there'll be a whole, those first.
8:19
That initial communication is a bit of a mystery, but one of his
8:24
old friends gets it. Yeah.
8:25
And the Buddha is delighted. He says Kandania knows.
8:28
You know, Kandania was one of his old friends, and he gets it.
8:30
It's like, wow, someone's actually woken up as well.
8:35
You know, It's a bit. I find talking about these
8:38
things a bit depressing sometimes because I feel like I
8:40
say these things and it just sounds so kind of linear and
8:45
like we're all like, oh, yeah, yeah.
8:47
You know, trying to, if you have any, you know, you know, in your
8:51
own life, the kind of depth of your own consciousness, what
8:54
we're talking about. Obviously it's not like a kind
8:56
of neat little story. So yeah, I always find it
9:02
annoying talking about enlightenment.
9:03
So why did I choose this anyway? Let's just say that initial
9:09
communication, that initial communication would have been
9:12
quite well would have been very fluid and personalized to who
9:19
who he was talking to. And the Buddha, when he was
9:21
talking to people on a one to one basis, never lectured
9:24
people. He didn't come in and try and
9:27
rain something down. And then he'd meet them exactly
9:29
where they were almost in a, in a almost supernatural way.
9:32
He'd meet them where they were and there'd be in a a
9:34
communication and a teaching that was appropriate.
9:38
Yeah. To, to them specifically,
9:40
regardless of what was going on in their life, there would be
9:42
some, there'd be, there'd be a kind of intimacy to the
9:45
communication. But the more followers that the
9:49
Buddha had, obviously, and the more of his own disciples that
9:53
had freed themselves as well, there was a necessity to make it
9:57
teachable, to make it more formulaic to it just happens
10:01
that way, doesn't it? You have something initially,
10:02
which is a bit more free form, you might say.
10:06
And by necessity, at a certain point, it needs to be codified
10:09
to some extent. It needs to be made
10:15
understandable to more and more people.
10:18
So the Buddha, the Buddha, the Buddha had a number of different
10:25
ways of talking about the path. Yeah.
10:28
So he didn't come and give people the experience.
10:30
Really. You can't do that.
10:31
You can't just. It'd be amazing if you could.
10:34
You can't just tap someone on the forehead and they attain
10:37
enlightenment. That would be great.
10:38
Although anyway, I'm not going there.
10:40
But you can just lead them in a way.
10:43
And so all the parts, the parts that the the Buddha laid out are
10:50
basically they're a development of this core idea for teacher
10:56
Samit Parda. Things are rising independent on
10:58
conditions. Yeah, everything rises in
11:01
dependence on conditions. You're not stuck, you're not
11:05
fixed. Neither is anything else.
11:06
Nothing lasts forever. All these things.
11:08
It's all a kind of, to put it very, very crudely, a kind of
11:12
flow of conditions interacting with each other.
11:14
Yeah, easy to say. The actual experience is
11:18
completely different, obviously, but let's just stay with the the
11:20
conceptual level. Yeah.
11:21
It's all flowing and it's all moving.
11:23
Yeah. And the Buddha's key insight is
11:27
that if you understand this, you can apply this on a human level.
11:31
Yeah. So us human beings, we have a
11:32
hard time a lot of the time. We suffer a lot, yeah, because
11:36
we're self reflective creatures, which is fantastic.
11:38
But we also get into all sorts of terrible states.
11:41
Because of this, life can be very painful.
11:46
In fact, it is a lot of the time or some of the time, yeah.
11:50
And so the Buddha was saying there's these.
11:54
Everything is flowing, the conditions are flowing.
11:56
And you can, by your own choice, choose conditions.
12:02
You can choose conditions. You can take certain actions.
12:06
Yeah. Which is karma.
12:07
Karma means action. Yeah.
12:08
So you can take certain actions that will lead you in a certain
12:12
direction. Yeah.
12:13
And that certain direction ends up with enlightenment, according
12:16
to the Buddha. Yeah.
12:18
So there's a whole path, you know?
12:19
So it's a path of action, a path of karma.
12:22
Yeah. So everything's changing.
12:24
Everything's flowing. And we're not just victims.
12:26
We're not just bobbing along the ocean getting swell.
12:28
It feels like that sometimes. But the Buddha saying, actually,
12:31
you can make choices in different areas of your life
12:34
that might not even bear immediate fruit.
12:37
You might not make a choice today.
12:39
And then in an hour you're like, oh, wow, it worked.
12:43
It can take time. Yeah.
12:44
So it's a bit like planting a seed.
12:47
So he had different formulations of this path.
12:50
Yeah. This path which relates to this
12:52
business of condition Co production.
12:54
Yeah. It's not a random path.
12:56
It's basically he looked at us, He looked at human beings in our
13:00
entirety, in our wholeness. And basically anywhere where
13:07
you, anywhere where you're conscious is an opportunity to
13:10
practice is an opportunity to engage with your present moment
13:15
in a certain way. Yeah, so it's quite obvious on a
13:18
basic level, if we engage with kind of irritation, hatred,
13:23
craving to an immediate experience, there's some sense
13:27
impression we have now that will have a fruit, you know, will
13:30
probably be a bit tense, grumpy. I'm not going to have a good
13:33
day, you know, So you can just kind of draw that out over a
13:37
lifetime in a sense, the more and more you get tangled up on
13:40
your own stuff, your own, Yeah, life's just not fun.
13:44
It's said to be like, actually, it's not said, but it's a bit
13:47
like being tied to a wheel, isn't it?
13:48
You're just going round this, round this wheel all the time
13:52
and it's a bumpy ride, you know? So there's different
13:57
formulations. We've been studying what's
13:59
called the eightfold path in a study group recently and I love
14:03
it. It's so good.
14:04
It gets into every area of your life, every little kind of nook
14:09
and cranny of your life, whether it's speech, work, the way you
14:12
make effort. But the problem with the
14:15
eightfold path for me is I, I forget the 8 bits.
14:19
Yeah. So which is embarrassing.
14:22
So it's good to study these things all the time.
14:25
Yeah, it helps keep it in my mind.
14:27
But the Buddha knew there were people like me and others like
14:29
me, and he made the three fold path.
14:32
Yeah. So apparently, I don't know if
14:34
this is true. I'm assuming it is true, but
14:36
Lala Taratna said as the Buddha got older, especially closer
14:39
towards his death, he simplified the path more and more and more
14:44
and more and more. Yeah, and was keen on teaching
14:49
the threefold path towards the end.
14:51
Yeah, It's not better than the eightfold path, It's just
14:53
simpler. Yeah, in fact, it contains it.
14:56
So the threefold path is sila samadhi pranya, which means
15:04
something like ethics or behaviour.
15:09
Yeah. Your ethics or your behaviour.
15:10
That's the foundation. Yeah.
15:13
And then on top of that is meditation.
15:15
So you got ethics, you got ethical foundation, then you've
15:18
got meditation, and then you've got what's called wisdom at the
15:21
top premier. Yeah.
15:23
So most of us, most, I wouldn't say Westerners, but it's because
15:27
we're not like that anymore, is it, in this modern world?
15:28
But most modern people, we want the goodies straight away.
15:32
We want the wisdom. So we kind of leapfrog the whole
15:34
path and crash straight into wisdom and then realise, oh, I
15:39
have to go back. Oh, right.
15:41
Oh, maybe I need to change my life a bit.
15:42
And then we end up doing the path.
15:44
Yeah. So we're less traditional.
15:45
We won't go on a systematic thing, but we get there in the
15:50
end. So the reason I want to talk
15:57
about the path a little bit is because you're kind of using a
15:59
conceptual level. But I would like to say a little
16:01
bit more about wisdom in this term.
16:05
Gucia at the end. Yeah, Gucia meaning something
16:07
like secret or hidden rather than talk about wisdom in this
16:11
cognitive conceptual sense, which is a bit dead for me and
16:15
makes me feel a bit tense and like I'm, I don't know what I'm
16:17
talking about really. It can be helpful, but I'd
16:20
rather talk about it today in this term.
16:22
Gooshi. Yeah.
16:24
Alright. So the threefold path.
16:30
Yeah. So the the the ethical bit, the
16:34
behaviour bit is kind of what I was talking about before.
16:37
Yeah. So the Buddhist basically saying
16:41
you can train yourself, you know, you can train yourself.
16:45
We were talking in our study group.
16:46
Sometimes people don't like this, this business of training.
16:48
They find it, I don't know, difficult, but it is difficult.
16:56
So we're training ourselves. Yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're
16:58
sometimes going against our animal instincts.
17:02
You know, you could say it, it is said sometimes that Buddhism
17:05
is a natural religion. If you want to call it religion,
17:08
maybe it's a natural religion in a sense of it emerges out of
17:11
reality. You don't have to.
17:12
You're not forced to take on a myth or a system of rituals in
17:20
order to partake in it. It's just an observation of how
17:23
things are. Yeah.
17:24
So in that sense, it's a natural religion.
17:27
You know, seems quite straightforward.
17:28
In another sense, it's unnatural.
17:30
Yeah. In another sense of Buddhism,
17:32
you're going against the stream. Yeah.
17:34
You have all these animal instincts and tendencies and in
17:38
a way you're kind of working against them in some respects,
17:41
you know, So someone is rude to me, generally my first instinct
17:47
is to lash out at them, you know, and that can take, that
17:50
can go on any scale, can't it? It can be a kind of negative
17:52
thought or it can be a full blown violence.
17:55
Not with me, but it can be a full blown thing, can't it?
17:57
So you're, there's something natural about say someone wants
18:01
to steal something from you, you know, or you, you crave
18:06
something. You want something, you're
18:08
hungry. Yeah, maybe it's food or sex,
18:10
whatever it's and you kind of push all the other ideas, all
18:14
the other things around that thing you want out the way.
18:17
You know, if you want something, you want it, you're going to get
18:19
it. It's natural.
18:21
Nothing wrong with that. In a sense.
18:23
Yeah. So in a certain sense, this
18:25
whole training, you're working in a certain sense with your
18:27
with your nature. You're working with your nature,
18:29
which is why it's so difficult and challenging.
18:33
Yeah. The way you speak to people,
18:36
that's all part of it, The kind of things you think about
18:41
yourself and other people. Is there generosity in you?
18:46
Yeah. Yeah.
18:51
Are you kind of numbing yourself because you don't really want
18:54
to? You can't deal with this world.
18:56
In a sense, it's totally fair enough.
19:01
Yeah. And then there's things like
19:02
harm. Yeah.
19:03
Sometimes we just want to harm somebody, you know, this
19:05
horrible. I think for me, it's the, the
19:07
the worst thing about myself that I like the least is cruelty
19:10
in myself. I wouldn't say I'm a cruel
19:12
person, but whenever it kind of rears its ugly head and I have
19:15
some kind of cruel thought about someone, it makes me feel ill
19:19
these days, which is a good sign.
19:21
Maybe that's progress, isn't it? Because I'm not sure I would
19:24
have felt like that before. So you're working with all that.
19:28
Yeah. And you're generating the
19:29
opposite. You're generating generosity,
19:31
you know, and also you're, for example, you're generating love,
19:36
not to be a good person necessarily, but because you
19:40
free yourself, you free yourself from your own hatred, you know,
19:43
and hatred is a disgust, is a horrible feeling.
19:45
It feels horrible to hate somebody.
19:47
So if you can free yourself from that and free yourself from the
19:51
pettiness in your life, you know, we all get like that.
19:53
This is amazing. So you're doing the opposite.
19:56
Generosity, love, speaking well about people, things like this,
20:01
you know. So all this lays the foundation.
20:04
Yeah, if you're, if you're doing this on, if you're serious about
20:06
this and you take the precepts they're called, and you take
20:10
your ethical behaviour seriously.
20:11
Not to be a good person, I hasten to add, because it can
20:14
all get a bit kind of narrow and religioso.
20:17
Yeah, which is fine, but it's not quite what I'm talking
20:20
about. You're basically paving the way
20:22
for a kind of mind that is happier.
20:25
You're just happier. You probably have more friends.
20:28
I'm not saying that's a given. Maybe you lose friends,
20:32
actually, maybe you lose all your friends and then get new
20:35
friends, who knows? I think that's that's possible.
20:40
But you're basically paving the kind of mind that can meditate.
20:43
Half the problem we have when we're meditating is we're just
20:46
simply all, we're all over the place.
20:47
You know, speaking from personal experience, you can sit down to
20:51
meditate and you're a mess. You just sit there and your mind
20:54
is on this, and then you need to do some shopping and then the
20:57
Amazon delivery got delayed and you just got all this stuff.
21:00
Or maybe you were horrible to somebody.
21:02
Yeah. And it came out of your mouth
21:03
and you think I shouldn't have said that.
21:06
And so there's a whole kind of thing going on.
21:09
Yeah, which makes it very difficult to meditate
21:12
substantially. And The thing is, I think the
21:14
good thing about me at least, I realised this quite a long time
21:17
ago, which is not the good thing.
21:18
But I realised this quite a long time ago that if I was going to
21:21
be able to meditate and do the mindfulness of breathing, for
21:23
example, I'm going to have to change my whole life.
21:26
Yeah, it's not really why I came to meditate.
21:28
I just came to relax a bit and meet some nice people.
21:32
And then I realise, oh right, you have to.
21:35
I'm now going to have to change my whole life.
21:39
Not really. That wasn't on the agenda.
21:42
But that's what has to happen essentially, if you want to
21:48
meditate. And therefore lay the foundation
21:50
for what we might, we might call wisdom.
21:53
One really has to get on top of 1's behaviour.
21:56
And you've got to get your hands dirty, don't you?
21:58
So that's the foundation of the threefold path is behaviour.
22:03
Yeah. And then on, on the basis of
22:06
that or simultaneously? Simultaneously as well, we have
22:10
meditation. Yeah, meditation.
22:13
Well, like we did today, you're entering a different state of
22:16
consciousness. And I don't know, we, we had the
22:21
Friday night, Friday evening meditation yesterday.
22:25
And it's such a strange experience, isn't it?
22:26
Sometimes you, you sit there for two hours in silence meditating.
22:30
And I would say yesterday's very good, like there was some kind
22:32
of depth. And then you come out and all of
22:34
a sudden it's like you get hit with this whole thing again,
22:37
which isn't just the outside world, it's your mind doing this
22:40
normal thing. So for a couple of hours, you're
22:43
dwelling in a different space where your consciousness is
22:45
still your consciousness, whatever that means, but it's
22:47
still your consciousness. But experience differently
22:51
through meditation. Other avenues open up.
22:53
There's depth, there's, there's all sorts of interesting things
22:56
going on that you that usually we don't experience.
22:58
Yeah. In during meditation.
23:01
But then you leave meditation and all of a sudden it's not.
23:04
We sometimes describe it like, oh, the world as if there's some
23:07
terrible world out there and we've gone out into it and
23:09
experiencing the world. But really what's happening is
23:12
just your mind again, just doing what it normally does.
23:15
Yeah. So, yeah, so we have meditation,
23:20
which is a very powerful, is said to be a very powerful
23:23
karma, very powerful action, you know, so that's why it's worth
23:26
doing. It's worth doing.
23:28
It's not. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes
23:30
it's not fun, but it's a powerful action.
23:36
So you kind of in a way, you've kind of you're digging up the
23:39
soil. I'm not a gardener.
23:41
So anyway, maybe I shouldn't say this, but you're kind of, well,
23:44
the garden, you know, you, you dig the soil, you make it more
23:48
and then you put the seeds in. Yeah, I'm from London.
23:51
I don't know about these things. So anyway, so you're doing this,
23:54
you're making your mind more receptive, more fertile.
23:56
There's all sorts of interesting avenues opening up.
24:00
And on the basis of that, perhaps then you start to
24:06
develop what might, what we would call wisdom, you know, or
24:10
glimpses of insight. Sexy.
24:14
Yeah, glimpses of insight, which is what we all want and insight
24:20
in its ultimate sense, I guess you to going all the way along,
24:24
you would say is enlightenment. Yeah, but insights, quite
24:30
interesting. Is it all those little moments,
24:31
those little glimpses we all have where things just open up.
24:36
That's why I wanted to talk about it in terms of goofier,
24:39
because I'm so bored of, I'm actually quite bored of talks
24:43
about insight and wisdom and even enlightenment in a kind of
24:46
technical and cognitive sense, 'cause when I wait, I just feel
24:50
like it gets us even further away from it somehow.
24:53
Yeah, On one hand, it's helpful your brain.
24:55
Oh, this logically, this makes sense.
24:57
You need to know because otherwise you're not going to
24:59
make any effort. It's not like you need to trust
25:02
the ground you're going to walk on, don't you?
25:04
So if it won't make sense to you, logically, you're like, OK,
25:07
this makes sense logically, I'll move towards it.
25:09
Everything is in flux and changing.
25:11
I can affect it. There's the nature of reality is
25:13
like this. I can experience that all the
25:15
time. Then I'm free from craving
25:17
because there's no things to latch onto.
25:20
I stop hating people. I'm free, I'm fearless.
25:23
OK great. It's not very helpful.
25:26
Yeah, on one level so, and also I think it's important to
25:32
realise like the the Buddha himself didn't just teach in a
25:36
kind of cognitive, logical sense.
25:39
Sometimes, especially in the West, we've had with our
25:41
scientific kind of religion, we we have this whole idea that the
25:46
Buddha just that's Buddhism. Yeah.
25:50
But it's very clear that's not because the Buddha taught in all
25:52
sorts of ways. Sometimes he would teach in
25:54
images, sometimes he'd teach there was many, many ways to to,
25:59
to communicate. Yeah.
26:00
Not just logic, which is kind of what brought me to goo here in
26:05
terms of wisdom. Because it's worth somehow, it's
26:11
worth trying to feel underneath all of this, you know, in your
26:18
own time or in a quiet time. It's almost like a still point,
26:23
you know? You have the froth of your mind
26:25
and this world and the deep. You get under the still point.
26:28
There's a refuge there. There's some kind of safety
26:30
there which is almost not affected by anything else, you
26:34
know, And I think partially that's why it gets called a
26:36
refuge. You know, during the Buddha's
26:38
time, it wasn't a particularly peaceful time.
26:40
A lot, You know, there's all sorts of wars going on, all
26:42
sorts of madness. Yeah.
26:44
And the Buddha still was holding that enlightenment was the
26:47
refuge. Yeah.
26:48
Not in the sense of it's going to fix this world, but there is
26:51
a way of engaging with this world where you're kind of under
26:53
the froth, so to speak. And there's something else.
26:59
And I know it can get a bit strange talking, you know, in
27:01
terms of mystical, but yeah, what am I saying?
27:07
I'm just saying I'm saying what I've just said, so I'm not going
27:10
to say that. So Guccia.
27:13
Yeah. So I think it relates to life in
27:15
general. We think, for example, like I
27:17
was saying in the WhatsApp group, we think we can know
27:19
other people, don't we? Yeah, we can't.
27:23
You know, you can have some kind of impression of somebody.
27:26
You can, you can explore them, you can love them, you can be
27:29
interested in them, but you can't know them.
27:33
You can't be like, I know this person Tick because in the end
27:37
you've got something dead there. You've it's like anything 1.
27:39
As soon as you think you know something, it's finished.
27:41
It's it's a done deal. You know, Tick.
27:44
And I have to say one of the most depressing things I've
27:47
experienced in my life is people sometimes thinking they know me.
27:52
I've done it to other people as well.
27:53
But you know, when someone's like, you're like this and
27:56
you're like, am I? I don't think I am actually.
28:00
But they'll just tell you. And it's like this cage has
28:02
descended on you and you're like, it's the opposite of being
28:07
interested in somebody and being like, I don't know this person.
28:10
I actually don't know this person.
28:11
Wow. Especially when you do, like,
28:13
especially I don't know if you've ever had this when you've
28:14
done that, like with your parents, for example.
28:17
Yeah, like I with my mum, I just had a little light bulb mum.
28:20
I was like, wow, who's who's this?
28:22
Do you know what I mean? It's not just my mum.
28:24
I and then I think I've had my best times, like with her or my
28:28
dad, when I'm just like, let me just not relate to them as if I
28:31
actually know who they are. Yeah.
28:34
So it's the same with our friends.
28:36
And just to qualify this, sometimes people do know you.
28:40
Well, I don't mean like know, you know, you, you know the how
28:43
is that possible? You know, I don't know.
28:44
Normally we don't know it ourselves, but someone can like,
28:48
I think Padma Sagua said something to me the other day.
28:50
I said something, I got into a bit of an apocalyptic mind state
28:53
and he just sort of said, yeah, that's what you, you're like
28:55
there like, And I was like, alright, that's fair enough.
28:58
It was like, it was, it was a kind of anyway, so there you go.
29:04
Yeah. So you can't really know other
29:05
people so. Well, it's goofier.
29:08
People are goofier. We're hidden to each other.
29:10
And that's just the way it is. Any kind of experience, you
29:17
know, it could be. I was thinking like just taste
29:19
like taste sensation like an ice cream.
29:21
You have, you have, you're having the same ice cream, but
29:23
it's not quite the same, is it? You can't, you can't kind of
29:28
give people your experience, which is one of the points our
29:31
own teacher Sangarachita makes about enlightenment itself.
29:33
It's like it is goohier, it's hidden.
29:38
You can't give someone an experience, you know,
29:41
consciousness. And the reason I want to bring
29:44
this up because I just find it like I was listening to a talk,
29:46
not to be kind of relevant, but I was listening to an interview
29:49
with, what's his name, Geoffrey Hinton, this guy that apparently
29:53
is the godfather of artificial intelligence who's now freaking
29:55
out and saying, oh, whoops. So it was quite a quite a
30:01
shocking interview, to be honest, about artificial
30:03
intelligence. And then what else do I listen
30:05
to? I listen to some other horrible,
30:06
oh, that's where the Armageddon thing came from.
30:08
Like, I was thinking about all these different ways we can
30:10
destroy ourselves. But it was it was a really,
30:14
really interesting interview. Yeah.
30:16
And he's an intro, fascinating character talking about
30:20
artificial intelligence and super intelligence in the next 5
30:24
to 20 years, which I just thought, oh, dear.
30:26
Anyway. But then the interview said to
30:28
him, oh, So what makes humans special?
30:31
And he was like, not much. And he was like, you know, you
30:36
could replace a few brain cells with a sort of some sort of
30:39
silicone that has the same amount of neuron neural links.
30:42
And are they still conscious? And he's like, yeah.
30:45
And you could place the whole brain with a machine
30:48
essentially, and they'll still be conscious.
30:49
And he's like, oh. And his, his kind of view of
30:53
consciousness was a kind of mechanical 1.
30:55
And I found it really disappointing for someone that
30:56
had spent their whole life looking.
30:59
Maybe that's maybe that's why he developed artificial
31:01
intelligence, because he partially thought we were
31:04
machines and he could make a machine that was like us.
31:06
You know, I have, no, I don't want to speak for this person,
31:09
but I thought this is an, it's an unbelievably limited view, as
31:14
if we're mechanical. And I was listening to this
31:17
walking down the road with all these trees and like the sun was
31:20
out and I thought, no, I just don't buy it.
31:24
I'm not saying we're special as a species or anything, but
31:26
consciousness, there's something about consciousness that isn't
31:29
just linked, that isn't just wedged into the material world.
31:33
There's some kind of, there's something going on.
31:35
You know, there's, there's, there's a lot more to us.
31:41
So if that's with consciousness itself, then it's definitely
31:43
like that for enlightenment. It's something something you can
31:48
get a glimpse of perhaps, but you can never, you can never
31:52
know with your with just words and a few concepts, you know.
31:57
So maybe in a certain sense it relates to the rest of life that
32:00
you can't, I think on a on a, on a, the if you take this whole
32:05
business of things being hidden in secret, you're, I would
32:11
imagine you, your life is more interesting.
32:14
You're more alive because you don't think you know everything.
32:17
I mean, half the problem we have, or at least I have, is
32:20
that I'm assuming I know things I know, I know how it all works
32:24
and I know what things are. And really and truly we, I
32:27
don't, we don't, it's a bit like the whole, my, you know, it's
32:31
like the bandwidth. We've got this little bandwidth
32:33
here that we live on and we call reality, especially as a, as a
32:35
kind of social species, we all agree what everything is.
32:38
It's like this much. And then you get an experience
32:41
where it all kind of goes like this, whether it's through
32:43
hallucinogens or whether it's through meditative experience,
32:46
whatever you want to. And you realise, oh, I really am
32:48
living on a thin strip. And that could be expanded.
32:51
And half of that thin strip is thinking, you know, what things
32:54
are already, you know, which we can't help but do.
32:57
And that's why you have something like Buddhism, because
32:58
we're just like, Buddha literally means awake, you know,
33:01
it means awake and we're sleepwalking.
33:03
It's just the way it is. It's not a maybe it is our
33:05
fault. I don't know whose fault it is,
33:06
but we're just kind of wandering around as if table chair.
33:12
Oh, there's Tanya, you know, you're just like as if you know
33:15
everything and you're in this kind of dead state.
33:17
Yeah. And so looking to see things in
33:21
in in terms of Guccio just opens it out, you know.
33:29
So anyway, let me just wrap it up.
33:30
So basically in a, in a certain sense, we're using different
33:34
levels of the Buddha's experience in teaching.
33:37
So there is a path. And you could say we're using
33:45
what we do know, which is our intellectual understanding and
33:50
occasionally faith. But let's just leave it.
33:51
We're using what we do know to explore what we don't know.
33:54
Yeah. So use what you do know.
33:56
You say, oh, does karma work? Let me experiment with this.
33:58
Let me be, let me really try and change the way I'm acting, say
34:03
with one person or with multiple people or with a habit.
34:07
Let me just really see if this works.
34:08
Then you have faith in that and you keep plugging away.
34:11
You keep changing this thing and then you can because you know
34:15
that it works. And then eventually you come to
34:17
a point where you start exploring other other you
34:22
change. Perhaps you change in ways that
34:25
you would not even expect. And for me, I think that's
34:27
probably been the most inspiring thing in my life, But also other
34:33
people watching other people is following that path.
34:37
You sometimes things change that you would never think is
34:41
possible to change in yourself. I don't know about you, but I've
34:44
got, I've had and probably still do, but I've certainly had
34:47
aspects of myself that I was, I felt like I was cursed, like
34:51
psychologically or or emotionally.
34:53
I just thought, I'm this is not going to change.
34:55
It's so deep rooted, but it's changed.
34:59
That's the crazy thing. So, yeah, we're using what we do
35:04
know to turn to to move into something that is unexpected.
35:08
You know, maybe you turn an unexpected corner.
35:17
Yeah, why not? Anyway, last bit I was just I
35:20
was thinking like in terms of this whole knowing things, I
35:23
thought really you can only really hurt someone if you think
35:25
you know them. You know, if you think you know
35:28
who someone is, that's you can't really hurt someone.
35:32
I don't think unless you, if they're a mystery to you and
35:35
you're interested in them and you're interested in exploring
35:39
what they might be, it's quite difficult to hurt them.
35:41
But if you're if you think you kind of know someone, then you
35:45
can hurt them. Yeah, I'll leave it there.
35:50
Thanks.