I cannot taste the truth of God, but I can tell us words. Yesterday, I came away to visit Greenbelt fatigue, and I had a great feeling I can't even remember all the various places that Ayatollah Kina has been. She was born in Germany, subsequently lived in Scotland, China, and the United States. She has lived in Mexico and many other countries. She has lived in India and studied at two ashrams. She has been a Buddhist nun for five years, and has taught for seven.

[01:05]

She has established a monastery in Australia, and she has teaching centers in Sri Lanka as well. I found her utterly delightful, challenging, sharp-witted, Thank you very much for that introduction. I hope I can do it justice. I'm delighted to be here and to see that so many of you are practicing, because that's what it's all about, practicing. It's really nice to see that. I find that this is my first visit to America as what we call a Dhammaduta, a Dhamma messenger. messenger of Dhamma and it's the first time and I find that here in America there's a great interest, great upswing and people are really keen which is lovely to see, lovely to see because from where I stand it's the only hope we've got.

[02:20]

I'd like to talk to you this morning for just a short while about one of the aspects of practice which I have found to be most important. And then I'd like to give you some time to ask some questions if you like. And at the end of that, I'd like to do about 10 minutes of guided meditation with you in the same way we did yesterday at Green Gulch. One of the really important aspects of our practice needs to be our constant purification. The Buddha's teaching is often called the path of purification. In my tradition, which is a Theravadan tradition, or as you may call the southern school or whatever you want to call it, there is a book Visuddhimagga, written about a thousand years ago, the path of purification.

[03:24]

And we often call the whole teaching that. We cannot only purify ourselves by sitting on the pillow, although that is part of the purification. Even just the intention of meditation is part of purification. Whether it works or not, that's a second step. Even when the mind does not come together and it goes all over the place and has all these hopes for the future and the remembrances of the past, at least we have sat down and are trying. Good karma. Right intention. Second step on the Noble Eightfold Path. Right intention. As you may well know, one hour in the morning, one hour at night, or whatever else you may be doing, or one day coming together here, that is not our life.

[04:33]

Our life is from morning to evening, after we leave the house and until we come back in. That's also our life. And we can never divorce practice from that. Practicing Dhamma is all the time. Whether we sit with crossed legs on a Zafu or not, doesn't matter. Whether we stand behind a counter, or sit behind a desk, or wash diapers, or wash dishes, or clean up a garden, or talk to people, all that is practice. And unless the purification goes on during that practice, from morning to night, we have missed the point. Our meditation, the actual sitting, is only the training.

[05:39]

The training which we can then use in order to play the match. We all have to train. for whatever it is we're going to do. But the real test is in everyday living. Our purification during everyday living concerns our whole feeling aspect inside of us, our whole attitude towards ourselves, other people, and the world at large. The Buddha said, the whole of the universe, oh monks, lies in this fathom-long body. One fathom, something like a meter sixty or five foot nine or something like that. That's where the universe is. So when we have total attention to what's going on inside of us, we are knowing what's going on outside of us.

[06:48]

And our feeling tone that we feel, that we find inside of us, needs to be purified. Everybody experiences fear, anxiety, dislikes, rejections, anger, worry, desires, cravings, wants. Everybody experiences that. It's part of being a human being. And that's where the work starts. Knowing it. And knowing it especially when we come to confront other people. It does not mean losing our discriminatory powers. Not at all. We often hear, I often hear, people say one should be non-judgmental.

[07:50]

One should be non-disliking, but one should know what's right and what's wrong. Unless we know what's right and what's wrong, how are we going to do what's right? How are we ourselves going to purify if we don't know? If we look at everything and say, okay, it's okay, everything's fine. You can compare it to a mother with a small child. Let's say the mother has just polished the kitchen floor and it shines like a mirror. Took her about an hour and a half of work. And then her three-year-old walks in with a glass of milk and spills the whole thing on the floor. She does not like that action, but she still loves the child.

[08:59]

And that's exactly what we need to do. This is one of the great injunctions of the Buddha to everyone, to love other people as if we were their mother. And if you are a mother, You know what that means, or if you are a father. And if you're not, maybe you know how your mother feels towards you. It's a very tall order. And it does not mean that we condone, that we do not have any understanding when something goes wrong. If we did, we wouldn't bring up our children properly. We can actually think of ourselves as all being children at different stages of development.

[10:02]

The maturity which is total is not age. The maturity is enlightenment. And since we haven't reached that, we're all still children. And children need love. but children also need some disciplining. That doesn't mean we discipline others. In this case, to start out with our own purification means that we first become our own mother or father. First, we learn to love ourselves, but see all the foibles and see all the difficulties and gently but firmly do something about them. The kind of love that I'm talking about is what the Buddha called Mekta, M-E-T-T-A.

[11:04]

It's often translated into English as loving kindness. I don't particularly approve of that translation. I'm only using it in case it is familiar to you. I feel that isn't strong enough. I prefer the simple, four-letter word of love, with a lot of explanation behind it, because we have, unfortunately, made the word into something which does not denote what the Buddha meant. We have used the word in the English language in our Western civilization as something particular. as love between two people, preferably of opposite sex, or love for a group of people who happen to agree with one or look fairly similar to oneself in color and shape and size and beliefs and so forth, or love for particular

[12:20]

like a nation or a god or an ideal or something more subtle than just love between two people. But none of that explains metta. Metta, love, that kind of love, is not particular. It is a kind of feeling which is a quality of the heart. It's an education of the heart. And it has nothing to do with other people, whether they're lovable, whether they want to be loved, whether they need to be loved, whether they're going to return the love. It has nothing to do with whether there's anybody there. It is the quality of the heart which we need to cultivate and educate so that there is that feeling tone inside of oneself.

[13:22]

That is purification. And why do we have to have purification? Not just because we call the teaching that quite often, but because only a pure mirror will reflect the proper image. If you want to gain insight, into the Buddha's teachings, and obviously we all want to do that, we have to have a pure mirror to reflect that kind of image that we're looking for, where there's no personality in the way, where the ego has been wiped off, because the ego covers that mirror. It's the dust on the mirror. And only when that's gone can we truly see. The education of shahad, where we really and truly feel for others as if we were their mother or father, means that the ego is being diminished.

[14:35]

Anybody who's ever brought up any children knows that. The more ego, the more trouble in the house. But it isn't necessary to have one's own children. It isn't necessary to keep on bringing up children. The world is full of living beings, and every one of us is constantly confronted with some of them. The minute we open the door and go outside, there are other beings. Or even maybe inside the door, there are other beings. So we have a constant learning situation in front of us. It goes on from morning to night, but it needs also strong attention, namely to one's own feeling and reaction, a second foundation of mindfulness.

[15:38]

Knowing one's feelings, not blaming, not rejecting, changing if necessary. if they are wholesome, beneficial, and loving, to continue, if they're not, changing, constantly changing, until the day comes, which it can, when the heart no longer rejects and resists, but loves and has compassion for all that exists, which is the idea that the Buddha portrayed which in the Chinese tradition we find symbolized by Kuanyin, in the Tibetan tradition as Avalokitesvara. These are symbols of total compassion, which come from total purity. But we can't wait to have total purity in order to have total compassion.

[16:42]

We have to work on our love and our compassion in order to gain total purity. And that work is quite difficult. And that work denotes a proper Dhamma practitioner. Only a person who works on that is truly practicing. And it doesn't matter whether we sit one hour, hour and a half, an hour and three quarter, 45 minutes. What does it matter? But cleaning up one's heart from resistance and rejection, that matters. The more the concentration in the meditation training becomes solidified, becomes one-pointed, the more purification goes on during the meditation. When the mind is concentrated,

[17:46]

and does not waver, there is no negativity. What we call the five hindrances cannot arise. Our defilements are laid to rest for a moment. Any single moment of concentration is a moment of purification. But it's not enough. Daily living has to continue in that same vein. And it starts with oneself. It is amazing and saddening to know how many people in the world, everywhere, find it so difficult to love themselves. It's conditioning. We have misunderstood love with indulgence.

[18:48]

We have confused the two. There is no indulgence in love. You're loving yourself by sitting here. That's real and true love. To sit down in meditation, even it may be uncomfortable, that's not indulgence. That's love. Knowing that as such, And loving oneself for the being one is, forgiving and forgetting that which has not been perfect in the past, with a resolution to work on it for the future, that is true love. And that kind of love for oneself then goes out to others. We can't begin to love anyone properly until we've learned to love ourselves properly.

[19:52]

The far enemy of this kind of love is, of course, hate. It's very easy to see. But the near enemy is not so easy to see. The near enemy is called affection. Because affection has inbuilt attachment. And attachment is something which holds us back because there is fear in it. Attachment means the kind of love we have towards one or several people. The fear that's embedded in that kind of love is the fear that these people may be lost, either through death or through change of mind, or through some kind of mishap. And then the idea is in there that because we may lose them, we are going to lose love.

[20:57]

Because love is the only feeling that feels secure in the heart. When it is tinged with that kind of fear, it's no longer pure. That's why affection is an enemy. to that kind of purity of love. We can use the kind of love we know in the family and in relationships as a seedbed. At least we know what it feels like to love another person, to give one's best, to be more concerned about the other person, about their well-being. than what is actually about one's own. One learns that, but then it has to go in ever-widening circles. If we use that as our seedbed, we have to make it grow. If I may use the simile of the garden once more.

[22:01]

All our resistances, all our rejections, our fears and anxieties, our worries, our blames, These are all like weeds, weeds in a garden. The higher the weeds, the less chance the beautiful flowers have. They can get no air and they get no nourishment from the soil because the weeds have taken over. In the meditation practice, we cut down the weeds. We keep on cutting because at that time, if we are concentrated, but only if, If there's concentration, those weeds do not get any nourishment. And we give room for the flowers to grow. But if we go outside of this window and do not continue that practice, the weeds are going to sprout just like they always have. If you're a gardener, you know that it's so much easier to grow weeds than it is to grow flowers.

[23:08]

And the same goes for our heart. It's so much easier. That's why we have to be constantly mindful, constantly attentive, what's going on in the garden of our own heart. You see, all of us, I'm sure I'm not wrong when I say, lament the state the world is in. We would be foolish if we didn't. But none of us can change it unless we change ourselves. We are the world. We are it. We are society. And when we start changing ourselves, we're changing the world. When we have a light, let's say a light bulb, and it's

[24:11]

dark night in here, and there's a light bulb up there, and it's covered in dirt. We can't see anything when we turn it on. And then somebody comes along and wipes off all that dirt. Then we can see right underneath it. We can see well, we can read. And then somebody else comes along and changes a 40 watt to a 400 watt bulb, then everybody can see, even maybe people sitting at the doorway. The light shines, no matter whether there's anybody there or not, as long as it's turned on. This light is in our own house. We've got to wipe off the dirt and we must make it shine. The Buddha's light shines today, two and a half thousand years later. It shines bright enough to illuminate for us the way and the direction, the path.

[25:18]

One man, one light. One man, one woman, one light, one heart. It's up to each one of us. Nobody can do it for us. The Buddha said about himself, I'm only the shower of the way." A nice story about that, when he said that. I'm only the shower of the way. That's all. There is a way. He showed it. Each one of us has this wonderful opportunity and chance to go on that path and not to forget. Mindfulness means not forgetting. Mindfulness means to remember constantly. And when we do, we are really emulating the ideal. Our Western society is very short of ideals.

[26:27]

We are very fortunate. We have an ideal. We have the ideal of Buddha nature, purity, And only with purity, only with purity, is it possible to gain the insight into that which really is Buddha nature. Buddha nature exists in all of us. We've all got it. But it's obscured. We don't see it. We have a chance to clean it up. And it's a wonderful thing to see that so many, even though we are still a small minority, but yet so many are trying. Because we will be the weight in the balance of the scales. I wish you all perfect practice.

[27:35]

And I'd like to give you a chance to ask some questions, if you will. Thank you. Yes? What kind of instructions do you give a person who is just beginning to sit in a cushion about how to approach concentration and how to keep in what to do with their mind? to a beginner, we use the breath at the nostrils. And we use that as the focus of our attention. And obviously the attention is going to be everywhere else except there. So whatever arises to be looked at and understood as for what it is, which means a thought arises. In the beginning, so many thoughts arise that people only catch every fifth or sixth one.

[28:41]

They don't catch every one. They slow down after a while. But even the fifth or sixth one to catch, look at it and give it a label. Name it. The first label that comes to mind, future, past, worry, desire, fear, whatever it may be, the very first label that comes to mind. And when you see that label, you know yourself that it's not useful, and you can much easier drop it. It's like going to a supermarket and seeing a beautiful can, all green and red stripes, and picking it up and wanting to take it home, and then you look at the label, you see it's cat foot, and you don't have any cat at home. Drop it. You leave it right there. Now, in meditation, every single thought is to be dropped, not only the useless ones, because they're all useless at that time. However, in daily living, if this practice is followed in meditation, we get habituated to watching what arises and only keeping that which is useful, that which brings happiness and benefit to ourselves and others.

[29:58]

When you learn to do that, Never be unhappy again. Only a fool gets voluntarily unhappy. So when you learn to label and drop, you can do that in daily living more and more, which means, as I call it, knowing and dropping. And it means, knowing means labeling. And in the beginning, people find that very difficult. They say, oh, I can't. They go too quick. All right, catch everyone that you can, never mind all the others that you didn't catch. If you sit for a while, they slow down. The mind, in the end, gives up. In the end, it says, all right then, okay, I'll stop. But in the beginning, labeling. And the same goes for feeling. Very, very important aspect, feeling. The first feeling that arises for people who have not practiced

[31:01]

Is discomfort in sitting, huh? Right knee starts hurting or something like that. Okay, use it. Excellent thing to use. Use it to learn what we consist of. There is touch contact. From the contact comes feeling. This is a sense contact. Touch is one of the senses. From sense contact comes feeling. This is how we live. When we see something we like, we want it. When we see something we dislike, we want to get away from it. When we hear something we like, somebody says, oh, wonderful, marvelous, you're so intelligent and your talks are so wonderful. Oh, you say, I like it, I'm wonderful, you know. And somebody says, this is all rubbish, you say, oh, terrible, want to get away. All right, okay. Sense contact brings feeling. Touch contact. discomfort, unpleasant feeling. From feeling comes the explanation of the mind, the perception, which says, this is pain, very painful.

[32:09]

And then comes the karma-making mind thought process, which says, I've got to get away from this. I've got to move. I can't stand this any longer. Must be very bad for me because it turns off the blood circulation. Very unhealthy. And then we move. All right. To watch this process going on and not react to it, but just watching it, just watching the contact, the feeling, the saying, the perception, this is pain, and then the mind saying, oh, this is dreadful, I don't like this at all, I can't stand this any longer. Watching the whole thing going on, tells one how one reacts in daily living. And if one does know this for a fact, then one also knows what goes on in daily living and one doesn't have to run away, because at this particular moment One doesn't have to change the position.

[33:10]

One sits. And not, and this is probably where our practice differs from your practice, not with gritted teeth and saying, if it's the last thing I do, I'm gonna sit through this, but to keep on watching. And if one needs to change, we say, admit defeat and change. Okay, that's where we differ, right? But don't just change because you want to change. That's what we always do. If the partner doesn't act nice, we find a new one. If the boss isn't pleasant, we find a new job. If the apartment we live in isn't warm enough, we find a new one. We're constantly changing. We're always getting something else. Here, we're stuck. Okay. we can learn from it. And not only that do we learn how the mind reacts, dislikes discomfort, because we are creatures of comfort.

[34:11]

Our society supports that greatly, our comfort. Not only that, but if we keep our attention focused on the feeling of discomfort, we will learn other things from it. First of all, that it constantly changes. The feeling is changing. It gets worse. It gets less strong. It moves its position. We haven't asked it to come. So why do we call it mine? It just came. Where did it come from? Why am I owning it? And also, that this body is doka. You know the word? Everybody know the word? Okay. There's nothing else to be said about this body except that it is Dukkha. It can't even lie still at night on the best mattress. It constantly moves because it wants to get out of Dukkha. And once we get that really strong in our mind, we're using every moment of our meditation in a very useful and very

[35:23]

experiential way and that's what it's supposed to be. Now when we finally get rid of all this looking at the feeling and the change and that it's not mine and that the body is dukkha and get back to the breath and then the thought arises again, label it, dropping it. And the same thing we learn from our thoughts. They came, we didn't ask them to come. If we had any say in the matter, wouldn't we stay concentrated? So who is doing all this thing that makes the mind wander all over the place? Who is this? Aren't the thoughts just coming? Nobody asked them to come? So who is thinking? Nobody's thinking. They're just thoughts. It's all very interesting, isn't it? But it's got to be experienced. And that's what happens in meditation. Experience all that. Where does the air come from? It's just there. Where do the thoughts come from?

[36:27]

I don't say this is my air. Beginning instruction. Does that answer your question? Okay, what else? Yes? Going back to what you said about up in daily life and the thoughts come up I feel more like, oh, I should totally experience discontent, just let myself be discontent. I enjoyed it? Well, I'm experiencing it. I mean, I'm seeing it totally. This was there. Well, the reason you're not dropping it is because of this inbred, this

[37:31]

for many, many lifetimes inbred attachment that we have, which are called the Pancha Upadana Khandas, the five attributes that we are, and we are stuck to them. And that's where our I notion comes from, our ego notion, our illusion of me, from that being stuck to. And that's why the dropping is not so easy. That's why you have to practice it in meditation, where it's much easier. It's much easier to drop it in meditation, because you know already you're supposed to do something else. Somebody told you, and you believed it. Okay? Right. Now, in daily living, nobody's told you you're supposed to drop this. Right? You think, it's fine, I'm going to experience this. I'm going to be this discontent. Right? Nobody told you you should drop it. So you're going to stick to it. But in meditation, you learn to drop it. Okay? The reason you're sticking to it is because we are sticking, we are hanging on to our feelings, our thoughts, our perceptions, our ideas, our explanations, what we experience, and our thought, our sense contacts.

[38:44]

This is I, this is me. So we are identifying. You are identifying with discontent. I am a discontented lady. Identification. If you were to drop it, which means that you're standing back from it and giving yourself a space where you can look at it. See, if you have your nose against the mirror, you can't see a thing, right? But if you step back, like this, you can see the image. Okay, step back, look at it. See whether you like the image. If you don't like it, change it. If you like it, be aware of it that you're really hanging on to it. So step back and look. You can experience what you want to experience. If we couldn't do that, what's the use of sitting in meditation? We can experience what we want to experience. We can change our mind. We have it inbred in the language, I changed my mind.

[39:45]

If you don't like what you've got, change your mind. I wonder if what you're saying is that in formal meditation, sitting meditation, when one has a special time and place, and I think the security of practicing this way, one can begin to get the habit of separating ourselves from the things. Because for me personally, I realize how how seriously I am caught by my own negative states. I don't worry about the positive ones. They don't bother me or seem to. But the problem comes when I can't drop it. It's got me. Or I think there's some reason that it's got me. I should be paying attention. I should do something. And saying, do something, it's when I don't

[40:48]

I don't know. That's the misery. Are you talking about the meditation or are you talking about daily living? No, I'm talking about the... Daily living. Yeah. Yeah. When the negative states arise in daily living. Of course, anxiety or apprehension or a feeling of should do something but can't. Right. I'm not sure what. But the difficulty of, I mean, the whole difficulty is that one identifies when this one is that state. Right. That practice here, it helps. I mean, it has an effect. You can be conscious. It must have that effect. If you drop in meditation all the states that arise, which are all mental states, then you learn to drop them in daily living. But, there's a big but behind it, you've got to deliberately do it in daily living. You've got to deliberately tell yourself that All right, if I keep this state, I'm going to be unhappy.

[41:54]

Do I want to be unhappy? No. Okay, drop it. If it comes back, all right, same thing again. In the beginning of this practice of knowing and dropping, you need to very often knowing and substituting. You see, that dropping is not so easy because the mind hasn't got anything good to put in there. Okay, substitute. If there's a state of anxiety arising, which is the... everybody has that, it's existential anxiety, because we're all going to die. So, we... and we all know that, but we like to forget about it. So, that is there anyway, right? So, instead of anxiety about it, put in something which is positive at that time. Say, well, this is what the Buddha said. This is how the Buddha explained it. There is dukkha in this existence. Or say, but I can... have that purification of love towards other people. Change it by substituting.

[42:56]

When we become experienced at this dropping, you see it coming and you say, stop. And you don't take it. You don't take it on. And then life becomes a very smooth, a very smooth way of living. And it's this for meditation, but it has to be deliberately carried over into daily living. We can't wait for it to happen. You see, just like you deliberately sit down to meditate, you can't wait for the mind to finally concentrate. It never will. Okay? The same goes for daily living. You deliberately drop what is not, what is negative and substitute. When there's hate in one's mind or dislike towards a person, The first thing we do is we rationalize. But he is so awful, or she is so stupid, or nobody likes him. Everybody says so. We have all these rationalizations that we are quite justified in disliking that person.

[44:02]

At that time, we must immediately put into our mind anything nice we've ever heard about that person, we've ever known about that person, we've ever experienced about that person. And if we can't, because we're already too far gone in our hate and dislike. We can't think of anything nice at that time. Let's remember that that person also has lots of dukkha, plenty of it. We all do. And then compassion can arise. That doesn't mean we condone the action of spilling the milk on the just-cleaned kitchen floor, but we don't start hating the child first. We just know at three years of age one is clumsy. We just know every human being has Dukkha. And then the dislike, the resistance, the rejection, whatever it may be, turns into compassion. And that compassion makes one see far more clearly, makes one's heart feel at ease.

[45:04]

And it's the only security we can find in ourselves. That's where security comes from. Because we have become reliable in our reactions. And if we can't rely on ourselves, who are we going to rely on? Everybody tries to rely on other people. Don't you know yet that that's not possible? The only one we can rely on is ourselves, and that ourselves person has to become reliable. And reliable means our reactions can be relied on, to be compassionate and loving. Okay, what else? Yes? Well, I'm scared. are going on the same line of thinking a little bit. Can't we get into some kind of trouble if we just drop painful thoughts in everyday life the moment they come up? Or is there some comparison with the discomfort in sitting, if we feel discomfort in the knee, we look at it and try to see what it can teach us.

[46:08]

Is that not also sometimes true with painful thoughts? But you see, when you do that, you do not become the discomfort. You do not become the pain. You look at it, and you see, oh yes, that's what it's telling me. It's telling me that everything is dukkha, that I should get out of samsara as quickly as possible. That's what it's telling me. See, the Buddha said like this, the untrained, unenlightened person has two darts, or two arrows that poke them, and the trained and enlightened person has only one. The one dart, the one thing that pokes them, is pain of the body. Even the enlightened one has that. Right? But we, the unenlightened ones, have two. Pain of body and pain of mind. Body starts hurting, we say, oh, it's terrible. I feel so badly. I've got such a backache. I'm really, really terrible. Or this person is so nasty to me, I feel awful. Right?

[47:09]

pain and discomfort of the outer condition, it will always be there. When the Buddha was 80 years old, he said to Ananda, his attendant, this body, he said, is like an old cart being held together by strings and leather, leather thongs. Can't, you know, it's falling apart. But it didn't make any difference to his mind state. So you look at the pain, sure. but we don't become the pain. And that can only be learned by constantly, in meditation and in daily living, stepping back. Giving yourself that space, which is called mindfulness. Giving yourself that space where the mind looks at what's happening and saying, oh yeah, that's happening, right, okay. I'm getting unhappy from it, so I'll drop it. Or I'm getting unhappy from it and I'll change it. I'll look at it in a different way. We can look at everything in a different way. And this is also one of the great lessons we learn through the meditation practice, that we stop believing what we think.

[48:17]

Because we didn't ask these thoughts to come, and there they are. And our... One of our greatest problems, apart from the hanging on, the attachment, is that we believe what we think. We are thinking it, so it must be so. But we forget that four billion other people are not thinking that thing at that same time. So we must be the only one that's right. And that's how we get our arguments and our loss of friendship, and in the end, war. Because we believe what we're thinking. So sure, you know when pain arises, but you step back from it and look at it as the ever-pervading dook. which is everywhere. Yes? If a mother has a child that spills on the floor frequently, the mother's job is to persuade the child to be more careful.

[49:24]

Sure. But for an adult, if I don't like someone because of something that person does, which is like spilling the milk, And I feel somewhat uncomfortable trying to persuade the person to change because I feel that it's not my, I'm not the person's mother. I have trouble being the mother to people. And I really feel that it's that person's own responsibility to change. And yet if the person is continually doing that, it's hard for me to like them. Well, that's just exactly, you've just voiced exactly the problem. You have stated the problem. Because if you're... I'm only using the child as a simile. The child is doing something wrong, and you know it's doing something wrong, but you don't start hating the child. Now, if a grown-up, well, only children that have grown up a little further, I'm sorry, is doing something continually that's wrong, the only thing we can have for that person is compassion.

[50:26]

That they haven't seen that this is wrong. that they haven't actually understood that the only one they're hurting is themselves. That's the only compassion. If we don't feel justified or inclined to talk to that person, all right, that's fine. I mean, we don't have to. There's no compulsion about going around and saying, well, look, you know, oh, there has to be a relationship with that person in order to be able to do something like that. And compassion, just compassion. And then, making sure that we're not doing exactly the same thing. That's one of the very, very useful things when we see that somebody is doing something wrong. Very useful. To immediately check out, am I doing that too? I'm not? Okay, great. I am? Well, I better do something about it. Because one of the very interesting things is also the fact that we can only really see in others

[51:30]

what we know about ourselves so we must check it out or what we are afraid of in ourselves that it may turn that way so we just have some new learning experience there but changing the dislike is absolutely essential because we cannot love purely if we don't love wholly which means universally wherever there's a blockage anyone Be it one's own mother or be it the President of the United States, it doesn't matter whether it's near or far. Wherever there's a blockage in loving, there is a blockage in the heart. That doesn't mean we don't know when they spill the milk. They do. That's it. That's our purification, path to purification. Yes? I have two questions. explain what you mean by getting out of samsara, and the other is, if thoughts arise, feelings arise, there is no one thinking, no one feeling, but thoughts arise and feelings arise, who is to get out of samsara?

[52:51]

The one who thinks they're in it. Well, do you want me to explain what it means to get out of samsara? I mean, from your question, I'm assuming that you know. Well, I'm going to hear what you say. Well, it means no rebirth. Very simple. And only the enlightened one has no rebirth. So that means getting enlightened. Seeing things as they really are. Does that answer your question? If you are seeing things as they really are and you know the thoughts, you see the thoughts arise and you don't identify with them, you see their feelings arise and you don't identify with them, are you not

[53:58]

already free from samsara? Only you would know. The one who's free knows. Nobody can tell you. Maybe your teacher could, if your teacher has known you long enough. I'm not describing myself. Only you know. There's a little more to it than that, Being free from samsara means that you have no rebirth, which means you're totally enlightened. It's a long way to total enlightenment, but there are many steps on the way which bring you nearer. And if you see a person that really doesn't identify with their thoughts and feelings, never identifies with thoughts and feelings. Never. Well, never is a long time, isn't it? But does rebirth, what do you mean by rebirth?

[54:59]

Right, I want to make you aware of something. There are five hindrances and the fifth one is called skeptical doubt and that starts with but. The people who have that fifth hindrance start with but. Okay, that starts a question without but. Okay, what was the question? Does rebirth refer to what one would commonly think of, you know, being born again into the human form? Or does it mean, I mean it could mean, if you are not, supposing you are not identifying with thoughts and feelings, and then you are something. That could be like a rebirth. Anyone can understand that as being reborn into the human body?

[56:00]

No, when I used the word samsara, I was talking about rebirth. As being reborn again and again and again. I wasn't talking about the rebirth that we experience from moment to moment. We experience rebirth from moment to moment. Hardly anybody is aware of it. Very few people are aware of that. Can you say what the other four hindrances are? Yes. The first one is sensual desire. which you can also call greed, but it's a desire for sensual gratification, gratification through the senses. And the next one is called ill-will, which means anything which we have any resistance to, which includes anger and hate, but it also has the subtle things in it. The third one is sloth and torpor, or drowsiness, drowsiness and... what is another word? I can't think of the English word. Yeah, do you understand floss and chopper? Okay.

[57:01]

And the fourth one is restlessness, a distraction. And the fifth one is skeptical doubt. And they are, everybody has all of them, but each person has one as their greatest enemy. They're also called the five enemies. We have five enemies and four friends, and they're all sitting inside there. We have to cultivate the friends and look at the enemy and say, no entrance. I'm not sure if I remember. It was the Fifth Patriarch who became the Fifth Patriarch through a poem. And it seems to say something completely different from what you're saying. When Fort Patriot put up, you know, one of the Dharma heirs said, you know, asked people to write a poem.

[58:07]

And the head monk wrote a poem saying that our body is like a river and we should constantly keep and wipe off all dust. The fifth patriarch saw this poem that was posted and snuck another poem to the fourth patriarch saying, there is no mirror and there never was any dust, how can there be anything to wipe? It seems right from the beginning of your lecture that your point of view was quite different and I would just like to hear you talk a little more. You've got two different levels of understanding there. I'm talking to you from the level of understanding that I'm presuming everybody here has, namely unenlightened. That's when you have to wipe off the dust. But when there is enlightenment, there's nobody there to wipe off anything.

[59:14]

These are two entirely different levels of understanding. And when we have a group of enlightened people, we don't have to talk. Who's there to talk? What's there to talk about? So, that's quite true. I remember that story. I haven't studied the patriarchs at all, but I do remember that story. Two different levels of understanding. The fifth one was enlightened, so he said, nobody there. What's there to do? In my tradition, it's like this. There's a deed, but no doer. There's a suffering, but no sufferer. There's a path, but no one to enter. There's nirvana but no one to attain it. These are the Buddha's words. But we are on the path and we need to know what that path looks like and where it's going. That's no use trying to fly when we haven't walked it. So what I talk about is from the level of where we're at.

[60:16]

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