Sadhu🙏🏼 Too many teachers pander to the lay disciples, dilute the sutta points for them, and/or encourage less than the bare minimum required for attainment which gets treated essentially as unobtainium. Sotapatti becomes a carrot of eludium only for the deathbed after a life time of supporting the local Sangha. 🤔
🐟 02. A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF “LIFE”: Everything, both perceptible and imperceptible - that is, any gross or subtle object within the material universe which can ever be perceived with the cognitive faculties, plus the subject (the observer of all phenomena) - is to what most persons generally refer when they use the term “GOD”, since they usually conceive of the Primaeval Creator as being the Perfect Person, and “God” (capitalized) is a personal epithet of the Unconditioned Absolute. However, according to most every enlightened sage in the history of this planet, the Ultimate Reality is, far more logically, Impersonal Absolute NOTHINGNESS (otherwise called “The Tao”, “The Great Spirit”, “Brahman”, “Pure Consciousness”, “Eternal Awareness”, “Independent Existence”, “The Ground of All Being”, “Uncaused Nature”, “The Undifferentiated Substratum of Reality”, “The Unified Field”, et cetera). Because the Unmanifested Absolute is infinite creative potentiality, “it” actualizes as EVERYTHING, in the form of temporary, cyclical universes. In the case of our particular universe, we reside in a cosmos consisting of space-time, matter and energy, without, of course, neglecting the most fundamental dimension of existence (that being conscious awareness). Just as a knife cannot cut itself, nor the mind comprehend itself, nor the eyes see themselves, The Absolute cannot know Itself (or at least objectively EXPERIENCE Itself), and so, has manifested this phenomenal universe within Itself for the purpose of experiencing Itself, particularly through the lives of self-aware beings, such as sophisticated humans. Therefore, this world of duality is really just a play of consciousness within Consciousness. APPARENTLY, this phenomenal universe was created with the primal act (the so-called “Big Bang”), which started, supposedly, as a minute, slightly uneven ball of light, which in turn, was instigated, ultimately, by Extra-Temporal Supra-Consciousness. From that first deed, every motion or action that has ever occurred has been a direct (though mostly indirect) result of it. Just as all the extant energy in the universe was once contained within the inchoate singularity, Infinite Consciousness was NECESSARILY present at the beginning of the universe, and is in no way an epiphenomenon of a neural network. Obviously, discrete consciousness is entirely dependent on the neurological faculty of individual animals. “Sarvam khalvidam brahma” (‘all this is indeed Brahman’) - there is NAUGHT but Eternal Being, Conscious Awareness, Causeless Peace - and you are that! This is more succinctly expressed as the mathematical equation: E=A͚͚ (Everything is Infinite Awareness). HUMANS are essentially this Eternally-Aware-Peace, acting through an extraordinarily-complex biological organism comprised of the eight rudimentary elements - pseudo-ego, intellect, mind, solids, liquids, gases, heat, and ether (three-dimensional space). Everything which can be presently perceived, both tangible and immaterial, including we human beings, is a culmination of that primary manifestation. That is the most accurate and rational explanation for “karma”. Everything was preordained from the initial spark, and every action since has unfolded as it was predestined in ETERNITY, via an ever-forward-moving trajectory. The notion of retributive (“tit for tat”) karma is just that - an unverified belief. Whatever state in which we currently find ourselves, is the result of two factors - our genetic make-up at conception and our present-life conditioning (which may include mutating genetic code). Every choice ever made by each and every human and non-human animal was determined by those two factors ALONE. Therefore, free-will is purely illusory, despite what most believe. As a consequence of residing within this dualistic universe, we experience a lifelong series of fluctuating temporal pleasures and pains. Suffering and pain are NOT synonymous. Suffering is due to a false sense of personal doership - the belief that one is a separate, independent author of one’s thoughts, emotions, and deeds, and that, likewise, other persons are autonomous beings, with complete volition to do, think, and feel as they wish. Another way of stating the same concept is: suffering is due to the intellect being unwilling or unable to accept life as it manifests. There are five SYMPTOMS of suffering, all of which are psychological in nature: 1. Guilt 2. Blame 3. Pride 4. Anxiety 5. Regrets about the past and expectations for the future These types of suffering are the result of improperly understanding what was explained above - that life is a series of happenings and NOT caused by the individual living beings. No living creature, including Homo sapiens, has personal free-will. There is only the Universal, Divine Will at play, acting through every body, to which William Shakespeare famously alluded when he scribed “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” The human organism is essentially a biopsychological machine, comprised of the five gross material elements and the three subtle material elements, listed above. The ANTIDOTE to all mental anguish is to discern between suffering and pain, then to achieve complete relief from that miserable state of existence, by abiding in the primordial sense of being (the unqualified “I am”, which is one’s core identity). This is the very same peace which is experienced each night during the dreamless phase of the sleep cycle. This ‘resting imperturbably as Flawless Awareness’ can be practiced on a daily (or even hourly) basis, until it is fully assimilated and integrated into one’s life. Every person, from time immemorial, has been either deliberately or unwittingly seeking such causeless peace, most commonly by practicing one of the four systems of YOGA (religion), or else in creating wealth, or in psycho-physical pleasures. That peace of mind is often referred to as “happiness”, “joy”, or “love”, and often presumed to be a temporal state, since many assume, incorrectly, that continuous peace is unavailable in this life. Following DHARMA (frameworks of authentic religion and societal duties) is not guaranteed to achieve that desired tranquility of mind, but even so, it is beneficial for individuals, since it establishes a structure which enables one to more easily elevate oneself beyond the mundane, animalistic platform (i. e. the base pursuits of eating, sleeping and mating). So, now that you understand life, and the reason why we are suffering here in this (ostensively) material universe, you are now able to be liberated from all mental suffering, RIGHT? WRONG! It is imperative to approach an authentic spiritual master to assist you to come to the above realization, by slowly undoing your past conditioning. Just as you have been conditioned over an entire lifetime to think one way, you need to be re-conditioned to think another way (in alignment with your essential identity as The Divine). Even if you adhere closely to the precepts of a competent teacher, you may still not come to a full understanding of life, but if you are sincere, humble and dedicated, you will definitely find more peace in your daily life - all of which was DESTINED to occur, of course. Furthermore, if it was ordained, you may be fortunate enough to receive discipline from one of the very few fully-enlightened spiritual masters presently on earth, and subsequently realize the aforementioned fundamental concepts, by diligently studying authoritative doctrines (especially this “Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”), serving your guru with great reverence and devotion, and by deliberately avoiding undue harm to oneself, to other individuals, to society as a whole, and to the natural environment, including other life forms. Most beneficially, go VEGAN! 🌱 Best wishes for your unique, personal journey towards unalloyed peace and HAPPINESS! “You are this universe and you are creating it at every moment because, you see, it starts now. It didn’t begin in the past. There IS no past.” ************* “A wise Rabbi once said 'If I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you'. In other words, we are not separate.” ************* "Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way". ************* “The meaning of life is life itself.” Professor Dr. Alan Wilson Watts, British-American Philosopher. (06/01/1915 - 16/11/1973). “What you seek is seeking you.” ************* “Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the worlds.” ************* “Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” ************* “We are one. Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.” ************* “The lamps are different, but the light is the same.” Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, Persian Sunni Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. (30/09/1207 - 17/12/1273).
10:10 THANK YOU for being honest about the 5-precepts being the minimum. There’s too much sentimental pandering to laypeople who want to be told that their craving and non-celibacy is conducive to anagami or arahat attainments.
*Dhammapada - verse 182 & 183* Hard is it to be born a man; hard is the life of mortals. Hard is it to gain the opportunity of hearing the Sublime Truth, and hard to encounter is the arising of the Buddhas. To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to cleanse one's mind - this is the teaching of the Buddhas. With Metta 🙏🙏🙏
🐟 02. A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF “LIFE”: Everything, both perceptible and imperceptible - that is, any gross or subtle object within the material universe which can ever be perceived with the cognitive faculties, plus the subject (the observer of all phenomena) - is to what most persons generally refer when they use the term “GOD”, since they usually conceive of the Primaeval Creator as being the Perfect Person, and “God” (capitalized) is a personal epithet of the Unconditioned Absolute. However, according to most every enlightened sage in the history of this planet, the Ultimate Reality is, far more logically, Impersonal Absolute NOTHINGNESS (otherwise called “The Tao”, “The Great Spirit”, “Brahman”, “Pure Consciousness”, “Eternal Awareness”, “Independent Existence”, “The Ground of All Being”, “Uncaused Nature”, “The Undifferentiated Substratum of Reality”, “The Unified Field”, et cetera). Because the Unmanifested Absolute is infinite creative potentiality, “it” actualizes as EVERYTHING, in the form of temporary, cyclical universes. In the case of our particular universe, we reside in a cosmos consisting of space-time, matter and energy, without, of course, neglecting the most fundamental dimension of existence (that being conscious awareness). Just as a knife cannot cut itself, nor the mind comprehend itself, nor the eyes see themselves, The Absolute cannot know Itself (or at least objectively EXPERIENCE Itself), and so, has manifested this phenomenal universe within Itself for the purpose of experiencing Itself, particularly through the lives of self-aware beings, such as sophisticated humans. Therefore, this world of duality is really just a play of consciousness within Consciousness. APPARENTLY, this phenomenal universe was created with the primal act (the so-called “Big Bang”), which started, supposedly, as a minute, slightly uneven ball of light, which in turn, was instigated, ultimately, by Extra-Temporal Supra-Consciousness. From that first deed, every motion or action that has ever occurred has been a direct (though mostly indirect) result of it. Just as all the extant energy in the universe was once contained within the inchoate singularity, Infinite Consciousness was NECESSARILY present at the beginning of the universe, and is in no way an epiphenomenon of a neural network. Obviously, discrete consciousness is entirely dependent on the neurological faculty of individual animals. “Sarvam khalvidam brahma” (‘all this is indeed Brahman’) - there is NAUGHT but Eternal Being, Conscious Awareness, Causeless Peace - and you are that! This is more succinctly expressed as the mathematical equation: E=A͚͚ (Everything is Infinite Awareness). HUMANS are essentially this Eternally-Aware-Peace, acting through an extraordinarily-complex biological organism comprised of the eight rudimentary elements - pseudo-ego, intellect, mind, solids, liquids, gases, heat, and ether (three-dimensional space). Everything which can be presently perceived, both tangible and immaterial, including we human beings, is a culmination of that primary manifestation. That is the most accurate and rational explanation for “karma”. Everything was preordained from the initial spark, and every action since has unfolded as it was predestined in ETERNITY, via an ever-forward-moving trajectory. The notion of retributive (“tit for tat”) karma is just that - an unverified belief. Whatever state in which we currently find ourselves, is the result of two factors - our genetic make-up at conception and our present-life conditioning (which may include mutating genetic code). Every choice ever made by each and every human and non-human animal was determined by those two factors ALONE. Therefore, free-will is purely illusory, despite what most believe. As a consequence of residing within this dualistic universe, we experience a lifelong series of fluctuating temporal pleasures and pains. Suffering and pain are NOT synonymous. Suffering is due to a false sense of personal doership - the belief that one is a separate, independent author of one’s thoughts, emotions, and deeds, and that, likewise, other persons are autonomous beings, with complete volition to do, think, and feel as they wish. Another way of stating the same concept is: suffering is due to the intellect being unwilling or unable to accept life as it manifests. There are five SYMPTOMS of suffering, all of which are psychological in nature: 1. Guilt 2. Blame 3. Pride 4. Anxiety 5. Regrets about the past and expectations for the future These types of suffering are the result of improperly understanding what was explained above - that life is a series of happenings and NOT caused by the individual living beings. No living creature, including Homo sapiens, has personal free-will. There is only the Universal, Divine Will at play, acting through every body, to which William Shakespeare famously alluded when he scribed “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” The human organism is essentially a biopsychological machine, comprised of the five gross material elements and the three subtle material elements, listed above. The ANTIDOTE to all mental anguish is to discern between suffering and pain, then to achieve complete relief from that miserable state of existence, by abiding in the primordial sense of being (the unqualified “I am”, which is one’s core identity). This is the very same peace which is experienced each night during the dreamless phase of the sleep cycle. This ‘resting imperturbably as Flawless Awareness’ can be practiced on a daily (or even hourly) basis, until it is fully assimilated and integrated into one’s life. Every person, from time immemorial, has been either deliberately or unwittingly seeking such causeless peace, most commonly by practicing one of the four systems of YOGA (religion), or else in creating wealth, or in psycho-physical pleasures. That peace of mind is often referred to as “happiness”, “joy”, or “love”, and often presumed to be a temporal state, since many assume, incorrectly, that continuous peace is unavailable in this life. Following DHARMA (frameworks of authentic religion and societal duties) is not guaranteed to achieve that desired tranquility of mind, but even so, it is beneficial for individuals, since it establishes a structure which enables one to more easily elevate oneself beyond the mundane, animalistic platform (i. e. the base pursuits of eating, sleeping and mating). So, now that you understand life, and the reason why we are suffering here in this (ostensively) material universe, you are now able to be liberated from all mental suffering, RIGHT? WRONG! It is imperative to approach an authentic spiritual master to assist you to come to the above realization, by slowly undoing your past conditioning. Just as you have been conditioned over an entire lifetime to think one way, you need to be re-conditioned to think another way (in alignment with your essential identity as The Divine). Even if you adhere closely to the precepts of a competent teacher, you may still not come to a full understanding of life, but if you are sincere, humble and dedicated, you will definitely find more peace in your daily life - all of which was DESTINED to occur, of course. Furthermore, if it was ordained, you may be fortunate enough to receive discipline from one of the very few fully-enlightened spiritual masters presently on earth, and subsequently realize the aforementioned fundamental concepts, by diligently studying authoritative doctrines (especially this “Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”), serving your guru with great reverence and devotion, and by deliberately avoiding undue harm to oneself, to other individuals, to society as a whole, and to the natural environment, including other life forms. Most beneficially, go VEGAN! 🌱 Best wishes for your unique, personal journey towards unalloyed peace and HAPPINESS! “You are this universe and you are creating it at every moment because, you see, it starts now. It didn’t begin in the past. There IS no past.” ************* “A wise Rabbi once said 'If I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you'. In other words, we are not separate.” ************* "Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way". ************* “The meaning of life is life itself.” Professor Dr. Alan Wilson Watts, British-American Philosopher. (06/01/1915 - 16/11/1973). “What you seek is seeking you.” ************* “Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the worlds.” ************* “Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” ************* “We are one. Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.” ************* “The lamps are different, but the light is the same.” Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, Persian Sunni Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. (30/09/1207 - 17/12/1273).
This is the kind of teaching lay practitioners need. I made a choice to marry and have children 15 years prior to practicing Buddhism. How do I manage with family and work responsibilities and also practice such that I am “progressing” on the Path and not simply making excuses because I am a lay person? Thank you for this timely teaching Bhante.
Have you heard of Dipa Ma? There is a book about her by Amy Schmidt. Dipa Ma was a very accomplished lay practitioner and also a single mother. She reputedly was an Anagami who had mastered all the jhana's. She was able to combine her motherhood with a very earnest practice of the Dhamma.
Just a few words … - Upon hearing the words “reading the suttas is not optional” one might not be pleased. However, when one begins to understand the Dhamma, one will end up saying, “not reading the suttas is inconceivable”. - Questioning one's understanding of words is of great importance, e. g. "impermanence”. - Sincerity to oneself is also of great importance. It is better to understand nothing than to fool oneself. - One may not see the need to refrain from sensual pleasures, but this will change when one keeps on reading the suttas and one's views are made straight. With Metta 🙏🙏🙏
The laywoman whose composure did not change when her son was falsely imprisoned and killed was Nanda's mother: “Venerable sir, this is not the only wonderful and amazing thing I have experienced, there is another. I had an only son called Nanda who I loved dearly.The rulers forcibly abducted him on some false excuse, and had him executed. Yet, when my boy was under arrest, when he was being arrested, when he was being imprisoned, when he was in prison, when he was being killed and when he was killed, I do not recall any disturbance in my state of mind. “It’s wonderful, Nanda’s Mother, it’s amazing that you purify even the arising of a thought!” Venerable sir, this is not the only wonderful and amazing thing I have experienced, there is another. When my husband passed away he was reborn in one of the realms of spirits. He came and revealed to me his previous life-form, and I do not recall any disturbance in my state of mind on that account. “It’s wonderful, Nanda’s Mother, it’s amazing - that you purify even the arising of a thought.” “Venerable sir, this is not the only wonderful and amazing thing I have experienced, there is another. Ever since we were both young, and I was given in marriage to my husband, I can’t recall betraying him even in thought, still less in deed.” “It’s wonderful, Nanda’s Mother, it’s amazing that you purify even the arising of a thought.” “Venerable sir, this is not the only wonderful and amazing thing I have experienced, there is another. Ever since I declared myself a lay follower, I can’t recall deliberately breaking any precept.” Venerable sir, this is not the only wonderful and amazing thing I have experienced, there is another. Whenever I want, without trouble or difficulty, free from sensuality and free from bad qualities, I can enter and remain in states of concentration up to the fourth jhana. “It’s wonderful, Nanda’s Mother, it’s amazing!” “Venerable sir, this is not the only wonderful and amazing thing I have experienced, there is another. Of the five lower fetters taught by the Buddha, I don’t see any that I haven’t given up.” “It’s wonderful, Nanda’s Mother, it’s amazing!” (AN 7.53)
but surely you see how this line of reasoning is destructive even for buddhist - What you're essentially saying, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth so correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're essentially saying is that to have _any_ level of attainment, you _must_ practice absolute sense restraint. i.e. celibacy. If this was true, how would Buddhism ever be of practical value to _any_ society? - The five precepts are not unique to buddhist ideals, any religion in the world preaches the virtue laid out in the 5 precepts. So how is/how would any of Buddhism be applicable, _except_ to monks/lay people that can accept such a steep price on their current life, all at once or nothing? We assume anyone rational trying buddhism only do so to augment their current life. Enlightenment or whatever, sure you can pin that as a lofty goal for lay people, but if you're saying that someone making effort, will have no outcome, no clarity, no result based on that effort because they _have_ to be completely celibate....Like surely you see how that's an unsustainable philosophy for any group of people bigger than 10 or 20?
@amarok, this is a hard problem that I face myself. Another teacher taught of a daily recollection in the evening, to review how one spend their day, without judging. By constant reviews, we slowly see how sensuality is affecting our lives.
Very good 🙏🏻. The Buddha didn’t have a role for guilt in the training though. Shame is different from guilt. The kind of shame the Buddha is talking about in the suttas refers to ‘hiri’ which means a healthy sense of shame-derived from self-esteem-at the idea of doing evil. As in certain a kinds of action are beneath you ie the thought ‘I am above that kind of behaviour’. Compunction (ottappa) means fear of the consequences of doing evil. The Buddha never encourages guilt as a motivation. He says that if you reflect on things that you’ve done wrong, where you’ve harmed yourself or harmed other people in the past, realize that remorse and guilt are not going to undo the harm. The best you can do as a human being living in time is to make up your mind that you’re not going to repeat that mistake. Then try to strengthen the resolve. And guilt is not one of the ways you strengthen it. There are two attitudes that the Buddha recommends. One is goodwill, which means goodwill for yourself, goodwill for others, realizing that punishing yourself is not going to strengthen you, but actually makes you weaker. If you have goodwill for yourself and goodwill for others, it’s a lot easier to act on skillful motives, to do skillful things. The foundation for genuine goodwill though is sila. So how do you develop goodwill? You remind yourself of where happiness comes from: It comes from the mind and it gets expressed through your actions. Your actions can have an influence on your happiness and the happiness of others, so you want to be very careful about what you do and don’t do. This is why the precepts are a part of goodwill, an expression of goodwill. And goodwill is a motivation for the precepts. Regarding sense-restraint: if you wait until the practice of sense-restraint is perfect before you start practicing samadhi, the Jhanas, then it’s going to be like starving yourself which likely not to go very well. In one sutta the Buddha compares the jhanas to various kinds of food in a fort the keep the people inside strong and healthy so they can defends themselves and carry out the work they need to do. Sense- restraint means giving up the pursuit of sensual pleasures, secluding the mind from that kind of food. Even though the practice of samadhi is not going to be very trustworthy food source for the mind in the beginning, the partial starving off of sensual pleasure through sila and sense-restraint encourages the trainee to become more skilful in samadhi so that kind food becomes more reliable. This in turn strengthens sense-restraint and seclusion from sensuality.
The buddah taught the middle way. He didn't teach restraining from all sensuality. The 5 precepts separate human from animal? Yea right. What does abstaining from sexual misconduct have to do with animals. What does restraining from intoxicants have to do with animals. Interesting that u didn't describe what it means to refrain from sensuality.
The five precepts separate humans from animals in that we are the only ones to have the ability to restrain through practice; whereas an animal are driven on purely impulses and desires and does not have control over their actions.
The precepts are CONDUCIVE to enlightenment but they're not like commandments set by God. If the precept such as "not taking life" was an unbreakable law without which one can not fully understand the three marks of existence then that would mean that the Dhamma is dependent and subservient upon geography. With this dogmatic view one would convert a tribe of Inuits; for example, to the Dhamma and they would all be dead within a few days.
Your logic is flawed. Are you also the military for your country? Are you also the police? Are you also the doctor? Are you also the lawyer? Are you also the engineer building roads? No. You are not everything at once. Therefore you do not need to be the one killing animals to eat them, just like you're not the one stopping criminals to live in a safe society. And not everyone has the karma to have good enough faculties to understand Right View, therefore not everyone can be an Ariya, and therefore, there will always be someone below you on the totem pole who can do the killing for you, just like the police and military do the dirty work to keep the rest of society comfortable. This is why lay people feed the monks, because the monks depend on them for survival, just like an ordinary citizen depends on farmers and military for survival. It's called Specialization, everyone specializes in one skill so they have to depend on others, and monks specialize in enlightenment.
This video was not about monks, it was about laypeople. Saying that in a Buddhist society other people other than yourself should be the ones killing is insane. What you are basically saying is that a certain part of the population need to wholly destroy themselves spiritually and karmically for countless of lifetimes to come just so the society can function. Enlightenment is through Knowledge. Not ritualism and moral rules that are like the laws of a ruthless monarch. Your guy's idea of the precepts are akin to the ritual bathing and sacrifices that the Brahmins thought was necessary for salvation. The Buddha taught the opposite of that, it is not action in the world that leads to your salvation. It is insight and knowledge into the true nature of phenomena.
It's not insane, it's reality. Not all beings are capable of enlightenment, like animals. Not all humans are capable of enlightenment, as the Buddha said. Don't mix your new age spiritualism and ideas of equality with something that is much older and timeless. There is no "Buddhist society", this is not a political ideology. There is only those who have wrong view, mundane right view, and supermundane right view. Those with supermundane right view get food from those with mundane right view, who get food from those with wrong view, who do the killing.
@@TwoFoot Let us pray that Buddhists are never able to thoroughly convince people of its doctrines then because we'd all starve and/or be put to the sword. And btw i'm not some new age guy that is advocating for equality. Wrong view = immorality. Mundane right-view is Buddhist morality. Supermundane right-view is amoral. Morality is true on a Conventional level but not on the Ultimate level. Morality/ethics is for society. Not liberation.
