But Buddhism can help the people to clear up or to go through their own karma, their own psychological process in order to become clean and clear within themselves, so that any problem can be overcome easily. And as we know now, the world is changing, and the technology of the world does not really help us to have the perfect mental health. We have all the material needs, all the conveniences, but still life is unhappy to some extent.

[01:07]

And many of us go to analysts, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, but Buddhism is the best psychotherapy if we can understand and know how to apply the teaching to the daily practice in life. Surely the Buddha was the physician, the great physician of the world, as it was said that when he was born, the eye of the world has arisen. So the eye of the world has arisen, giving light to humanity. And his way of analyzing or diagnosing the life, the problems, is always concerned with four main aspects of life,

[02:29]

of the things. The first thing is to know what it is, what it is, what is happening, to understand clearly what is happening now, to life, what is the fact. And then the second is how that fact or how that happens, what is the cause, what is the condition for the arising or the coming to be of what is, of the fact, of the event, of the situation, or whatever you like to say. Then the third aspect is concerned with the ending, the cessation of the thing that has arisen. Then the fourth one is concerned with the way, the method of remedy, the method of curing, putting an end to the difficulty, to the disease.

[03:50]

And these are technically called the Noble Truths, four Noble Truths in Buddhism. The first truth and the third truth are really closely connected. What is, is connected with the ending of it, the ending of itself. So you can see now the end begins at the beginning. And then the Buddha himself declared to all of his followers when he was in the forest one day, he was in the forest with a certain number of monks

[04:58]

and he picked up the leaves on the ground and showed them to the monks saying that what he knows is compared to the leaves of the trees in the forest. But what he teaches is compared with the leaf in his hand, just only a handful of it. He said, why? Why he does not teach all he knows? He said because many things he knows do not lead to realization, not to enlightenment, not to the ending of suffering in the world.

[06:00]

So he didn't waste his energy to teach. So the things he taught was concerned with the problems of life, the ultimate reality of life. So and then he said too, in some passage, that freedom from what one knows will bring about the ending of the difficulties. For one can really be liberated if one is free from what one knows. Now if you think about this very clearly, whether we are free from what we know, freedom from the known is more important than anything else.

[07:03]

Because if we are not free from what we know, we create attachment. We are attached to what we know, what we see, what we experience. Then we carry with us all the things we know, so our heads become very heavy. We don't travel lightly and freely. So if we can put aside all we know, then we just live with the moment of awakening, so that we can become free and light in our journey through life. Attachment is connected with fear. You know when you are not free from what you know, if you want to be free, you may feel that you cannot have security.

[08:23]

If you don't carry your knowledge, your experience, you may feel empty. We are afraid of emptiness. We are afraid of clearness. We are afraid of losing our conditioning, so that we can go on and on in circles. But if we are free, we don't have fear. The Buddha said, the one who is wise has no fear, and he has no body. It means he has no attachment. So non-attachment is regarded as a virtue in life, because it is connected with freedom, freedom to be.

[09:37]

Freedom is the only taste in Buddhism. Like the sea has only one taste, that is the salty taste. And the Buddha said in his teaching there is only one taste, that is the taste of freedom, liberation. So we have to drink it and see it for ourselves. It is not a matter of learning about it or knowing about it without experiencing it. So we can say that the aim of learning and studying Buddhism is to put it into practice, to live it in our life. Otherwise we create a big gap between what we are and what we know. Knowledge can create conflict, because one is not what one knows.

[11:00]

So what one is, is different from what one knows. Then the conflict arises in life. We can see now in life we need some kind of devotion or surrender. We have to surrender ourselves to what we do. Then we don't have conflict. When we have a bug, surrender yourself completely to having a bug. When you are working, surrender yourself to the work. So you can have complete devotion to what you do and then you can live fully in the present. That's what you do. There is no room for any conflict or difficulty to arise if one is fully in the present.

[12:04]

But again, like we live a kind of monastic life, it is a form of surrender. Surrendering oneself to the rules. It is very important to surrender oneself to the rules, to the precepts, or surrender oneself to the law, is a form of devotion. If there is complete surrendering, surely life will be very joyful and energy will not be wasted, dissipated. Then energy can be used for creative work. Creative not in the sense of creating material things, not necessarily that way. Creative in the sense of being joyful, happy, having the sense of life, the sense of living, the feeling of a person.

[13:18]

So when we have this feeling, we are creative. Creativeness embraces both action and non-action. And surely the balance between action and non-action is the balance of living. We know how to be active and how to be passive, when to act and when not to act. Then this involves the practice of life, the understanding and the constant awareness. Otherwise we cannot know when. It is not a formula. And sometimes we find it very difficult when we are in such a helpless state.

[14:29]

Because there is a tendency of longing for help, looking for external support. But Buddhism teaches us to rely on ourselves. As Buddha said, be a lamp unto yourself, be a refuge unto yourself, be light unto yourself. So you are your own light, you are your own refuge. You have the lamp with you, just use it. Then you can be free from the darkness of ignorance. You can understand when there is light there is no dark. Darkness disappears immediately when there is light. But when light has gone, darkness comes. Like the setting of the sun, disappearing of the sun creates the darkness and we have the night time.

[15:39]

So the same thing that when we have clear understanding, we have insight, we overcome ignorance. So this state is involved with the way of practice and the way of living. Now the way of practice in order to have light, to have clarity, to have the immediate understanding of things, and also to have a peaceful life, happy life, we have to do certain things. And in Buddhism we take meditation as the heart of the teaching.

[16:46]

Without meditation there is no wisdom. And also without wisdom there is no meditation. So both are closely connected, they go hand in hand. The wisdom is not knowledge, it is not information, it is the seeing. Seeing things as they are, without distorting or adding any opinions. It is non-verbal seeing, a clear understanding. In Buddhism we talk about meditation, which is the way of cultivating and developing calmness, insight and awareness, or mindfulness.

[17:56]

In Buddhism we have, particularly in Theravada Buddhism, we have the two systems of meditation. The first one is called Samatha, calm, tranquility meditation. And the second is called Vipassana, insight meditation. So the calm or tranquility meditation is connected with a very strong concentration. One has to go through different stages of jhana, or meditative absorption. And for the object of that form of meditation we can take many things, at least 40 objects, or 40 techniques.

[19:05]

We may take the breathing, or we may take the image of the Buddha, or we may take a color, yellow or blue or red or white. Or we may take a kind of circle, a mandala, a circle. Or we can meditate by recollecting the virtues of the Buddha, the characteristics of the Dharma and the qualities of the Sangha. Or we can meditate on death, meditate on peace. All these are in the technique of calm and tranquility meditation. Because the first aim and the final aim of it is to have calmness, tranquility, serenity, by cultivating concentration.

[20:19]

Concentration. And we will talk about this in detail in the next lecture or in the future lectures. Because it is concerned with different levels of consciousness. And then the second form which I like to say, or to explain to you tonight, is Nipassana. Nipassana technique or method is based on awareness, mindfulness. The way of insight really is connected with the way of calmness as well. Because insight will be developed within mental calmness, mental tranquility.

[21:23]

But the differences between the two systems lie in the final stage and certain techniques. Calm meditation will lead to the highest attainment of spiritual life. But yet awakening or enlightenment cannot be achieved by that system. But it can be taken as the basis for developing insight. So that we say the end of calm meditation is the beginning of insight meditation. The Buddha said we can go indirectly or directly.

[22:35]

We have a choice. But for those who would like to have a lot of experiences in the spiritual way of life, can go through the calm system of meditation. It can show many things. Even the experiences people talk about in the modern world, experiences through the psychedelic drugs, are not new in Buddhism. Because by doing meditation you can have all the experiences, both negative and positive. It's like a way of going through oneself, taking a journey through life. And we can see that in life there are so many things which we don't see with our naked eyes.

[23:39]

When we look deep into ourselves or we go into deeper and deeper levels of our existence and consciousness, we see many layers, many different levels of layers. So really we are very rich, rich beings. So if we just see our body and mind on the superficial level, then we feel we are poor. Then we have to look into ourselves to see what is contained in this life, in this form of existence. Then Vipassana meditation is a way, a direct way of approaching the ultimate truth.

[24:45]

By this meditation you don't have many experiences, but you have some. This system seems to cut off some experiences which could create attachment. I mean, when we have many experiences, we may be attached to some good experience and want to stay in it. And that hinders our progress of starting the journey. But if you are wise, experience will be just experience. Like driving along the road, you see many things, but you don't carry them with you. Sometimes you may carry some in your memory.

[25:50]

And you understand that they are there. If there is no strong attachment, then you are free. So this insight meditation is a way of mindfulness, I would say. Mindfulness or awareness can be practiced with every activity in life. It can be practiced with all the things within us and outside of us. The only thing is to be aware, to be alert and awake. So if we stay with alertness, awareness, we can see things clearly. We can overcome the perversions.

[26:56]

And this way we have three perversions, which distort reality, giving wrong information to our consciousness. The first one is perversion of perception. Perception cannot always be attractive. It can be a distorting process due to some impulses, some ideas operating in our head, in our mind. So perception also is produced through the senses. Our senses can give us the false report if there is no awareness established at the moment of perceiving. So we may perceive things according to what is going on.

[28:03]

What is going on in our mind, instead of seeing things out there as it is. But we see our reflections on things and say, this is things which could be wrong. So we have to be careful with perceptions too. And the second perversion is perversion of thought. Thinking can be a distorting process. Particularly thinking about the thing which cannot be thought about. Thinking about the unthinkable can create the false image. And sometimes we may grasp that image and stay with the false image. It becomes worse. Human mind has capacity to think.

[29:11]

But if we think in the wrong way, it becomes the greatest problem to understanding and communicating with other people. Because we say, oh, people don't think along the way I think. So I cannot understand people, people cannot understand me. This is really the greatest danger in the communication because of the way of thinking. So Buddhism advises us to think objectively. Buddhism is a kind of objective religion, objective way of seeing things. So that the ego, the self must be out of the world. And normally perhaps we think in the vertical line.

[30:19]

Or we think in the way of possibility. And thinking is very concerned with subjective idea, subjective reflection. Some people call it the ideals of reflection. Reflection of the subject. Subject is very limited in all cases. But if one allows oneself to think objectively, then the thinking will spring from understanding, from seeing. It will not become the reflection of the subject. This is a kind of real report.

[31:17]

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