114: Retreat Dhamma Talk 9: Defilements (Kilesa): The Executioner

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SPEAKER_01 0:04

Namo tasabhago samma sambodasa namasabhavato rahato sama bodasa namamo tasabhagavato rahto samma sambo dasa retreat series Dhamma talk number nine will to summarize a little bit about what we talked last Dhamma talk for the newcomer. When a person is doing an intensive meditation or retreat setting at that time, it is important to be aware of your original mental state or your habits. Some people are most people are always looking for searching for physical comfort and mental comfort. That's the nature of human beings. We always like to be comfortable and at east and pleasant. But when someone is chasing or grasping too much into this physical and mental comfort in a retreat setting, okay, when you're practicing intensely, what happened was automatically laziness set in. You are looking for comfort, so laziness set in. Whenever there's a laziness and slowly and gradually it grows into slot and torpor, we know that become sleepy and dozy, and your mind is restricted and sluggish. And when you have slot and torpor, you cannot keep your mind on the object. If you cannot keep your mind on the object, there is no mindfulness. No mindfulness means no concentration. No concentration means no inside. One leads to the other through the causal relationship. So that is very important. So you must sacrifice a certain degree of discomfort. And when you are facing with discomfort, unpleasantness, pain, you must bear it, you must have patience and tolerance. And then with determination you can go through it with a great effort. And when you put effort in your observation, what happened? Mindfulness is established. Whenever the mindfulness is established, there is concentration. Concentration arises. And when the concentration arises at that moment, that yogi or the practitioner has no mental defilements. They are away from mental defilements. Because mental defilements and concentration, they cannot coexist. If you have concentration, then there is no mental defilement or kilisa. So in a brief, that is what we discussed. It is getting rid of or do we away from this kilisa mental defilement. So what is this kilisa mental defilement? In short, it is called loba, greed, dosa, anger, and moha, delusion or not understanding or ignorant. Lobad dosa moha. That is a way you are, when you are concentrated, that mental state cannot, those mental states cannot arise. And in here one needs to understand this mental defilement, three aspects. So loba, greed and dosat. Most of the time you will hear loba and dosat, loba and dosat. In other words, greed and anger, or likes and dislikes, or hope and fear. That's it, those two words. Most of the time we just say loba and dosa, loba and dosat. But there are three, loba, dosa and moha, not understanding or ignorant or delusion or illusion, not knowing the true nature or as it is. But why do we say only two? That is important to understand. What it is is whenever this likes or loba or greed, whenever that mental state arises, automatically there is more heart, delusion, because you have that nature of greed or likes or grasping because you are ignorant about the true nature of things. So when we say loba or greed, automatically understood that his twin brother, moha or ignorance, is always there. And the same thing when we said dosa, anger, aversion, frustration, irritation. As soon as we say dosa, whenever this dosa or anger arises, there is the ignorance along with it. Moha is along with it. Without that ignorance, this anger will not arise. Without that ignorance, this loba will not arise. So most of the time you will hear that we talk and we discuss based on loba and dosak, greed and anger, greed and ganger. Understood. They are twin brother Moha ignore and is always there together. So that is very important to know because sometimes you will find we only discuss the two, likes and dislikes. We don't discuss about delusion because delusion is already there. So this mental defilement, let's call it loba and dosat. They arises. Why do they arise? Because you cannot establish concentration. If you can establish concentration, this mental defilement is not there. So let's pick up from there mental defilements. From last week, mental defilements. There's no mental defilements. You are not hook with mental defilements. So this mental defilement or killesa is also called or it's just another name. It's called Mara. Mara. You can call kilesa, you can call mental defilements, you can call lobadosa moha, or you can call mara also. Because the Buddha taught us in many different ways. What is Mara? Mara is literally translated. Bringer of death. Or the killer. Or who kills. Specifically as a job basis. The executioner. Executioner is the killer. Executioner is the bringer of death. That in Pali is called Marat. And what is marat? Mara is mental defilements. As such we should know. Because the Buddha tried to teach us through this approach as a killer, the bringer of death, the executioner. About the basically he is talking about the mental defilements, loba, dosa and moha. So now we know one more word, the executioner or the killer or bringer of death. So whenever there is this mental defilement, let's call it loba and dosat, mental defilements, you are facing your executioner. In a real life, I think none of us have actually met face to face with the executioner. In the olden days, it's the one who chopped the head off. Nowadays, in the prison day, in what you call inject some sort of a drug, the people who get a death sentence in a place where they still allow the death penalty. That's the executioner. I don't think we have ever met any live executioner in our lives. But think quite deeply. Every day, all the time, we are facing our own executioner all the time. Every day we are face to face with the executioner. Who is that? Mental defilements, Mara, the bringer of death. Because we are dealing with this loba and dosa and loba and dosa. Wanting, grasping, clinging, attached, frustrating, anger, aversion, ill will, hatred, these are every day. One time or the other, we are experiencing this. So we can say every day we have many times face to face with our own executioner. When you understand that way, you understand this kilisa in a total different way. Total different way. And you begin to understand this is dangerous. This is disgusting. This is scornful. Who would like an executioner? Who would like a killer? Now we are facing this killer. As such we understand. This is the executioner, this is the bringer of death. In other words, this is your enemy. And if it is your enemy, how do we treat in our normal lives to the enemy? You go face to face, you fight them, you crush them with no mercy. Till the enemy is totally defeated. That is how the world treats the enemies. They crushed with no mercy. As such, we must look at it. This is our inner enemy. This loba and dosa mental definement is inside us. It is our inner enemy. We must know it as an inner enemy. We must understand it as an inner enemy. And we must crush it with no mercy till they are totally uprooted. Buddha said to that level with that intensity. Because some people understand only from that angle. So people who can be touched from that angle, the Buddha taught us that way. Crush the enemy, crush your enemy, inner enemy, the executioner with no mercy till they are totally uprooted. And one must know and one must see and one must exercise as such. So this is the mental defilements. The inner enemy, you must know exactly as they really are, and you must uproot it. You must be liberated, you must liberate yourself from the oppression of these enemies. So in here, this mental defilements. We always start with comfort. You are searching all the pleasure and pleasantness of these things. Let's say once give a free hand in your life, a free hand to these mental defilements or to these sense pleasure. Because in a way, in our culture, our cultural setting here in North America is we work hard. We earn money. We work hard and we play hard. We have worked so much and with this money we have accumulated, we deserve it. We spend our medi and we enjoy in every way we could. Of course, everybody has a different favorite things. Some people will spend on traveling, some on sport, some in clothing, some in food, some in alcohol, some in drugs. Whatever they fancy and they consider is pleasurable. That is what they are chasing. So when you give a free hand with that kind of attitude, this is my right, this is my privilege, it is my money, I work hard, I can spend any way I like it. When you have no restraint, if you give a freedom, what one will become is one will become obsessive with these pleasure. All started from the wanting a comfort. When you become obsessive with this pleasure, in other words, you are under the control of mental defilements. You are under the control of loba and dosa and moha ignorance. Automatically, you give a free hand, the skillesa totally control your life. So in here, what it is, one must have restraint, one must refrain, and one must restrain from what? From the obsessive nature or clinging and grasping into the pleasure of the six senses. Refrain, restraint, discipline, that's one come in. When one has discipline in the way one operates his life, not to become excessive, not to overdo it, not to give the free hand into the desire of the sense pleasure, then automatically one begins to have an equal level with the loba and dosa. Mental defilements cannot take control of your life. You can have a control of your own life. Of course, one of the best ways is the mind being mindful. That's mindfulness in one word, it covers everything. And here, let's say we have a discipline, we have a control, you say, we live a decent life. Okay, very decent and very, very respectable. That kind of life we choose to live. And when we choose to live that way, automatically you are not under the control or desire of this obsession. Because if the kilisa has the upper hand, what happened? We become addicts. We become addicts to food. We gain and gain and gain weight. We can't control the pleasure of the pleasure of the taste. And pleasure of sound, pleasure of sights. And then some people freehand, we become addicted to intoxicants. Addict of intoxicants, we become alcoholics, you give a free hand. We become a drug addict if you give free hand. We become a sex addict if you give a free hand. Automatically your life goes in one way. For that reason, we must practice refrain and restraint. Just in general, we are not even talking about meditation. In our daily life, that is the kind of life we choose to live. If we have that, we reverse the course from the dominance of the killesaw mental defilements. And in here, we talk about restraint and refrain. When we look at it, this mental defilements again. We must look at them as enemy as an enemy. We must counter them enemy as an enemy. The first front line is restraint and refrain and restraint. And then of course the major weapon we use is mindfulness. That's a given. And in here, these kilesa, these mental defilements, they come in many different forms. We just talk about kilesa, killesa, kilesa. But let's look at them. They come in a different way. Okay? First of all, we call it the executioner. Now let's expand that word executioner there. One is called vitakama kilesa. Vitakama kilesa is the transgressive. Okay. Trangressive nature in terms of speech and deed. Trangressive nature in terms of speech and deed. You assault people, you're violent, you step over, you hurt people with your speech and with your deed. That is transgressive nature of mental defilements in terms of speech and deed. Vitakama kilesa. That's one. Out open everything you can see. That's one kind of kilesa, mental defilements. So the complete word is vitakama kilesa mara. The killer, the executioner, mental defilements, which goes out open, outfront assault in terms of speech and deed. They represent mental defilement presented in that form. Is that the only way? But there are also other ways they represent themselves. Other way is Priyutana, Kilisa Mara. So Priyogana is in terms of thoughts. You have transgression upon others in terms of thoughts. The first one is in terms of speech and deed. This is in terms of thoughts. So in other words, a lot of habitual actors come from these obsessive thoughts. When you have obsessive thoughts, it's expressed as a habit-forming personality in some cases. But in here you are transgressing over others. Trangressing over others in terms of thoughts. So this kilesa comes in all shapes and form. In terms of deed it comes, in terms of speech it comes, it comes of thoughts it comes. This thought is you cannot. You cannot actually see what others are thinking. And at the same time, what you are thinking other people don't know. But when you do in time of deep and speech, people know. And the third one, it's called anutsara killesamara. Anupsara is in English it's called latent. Latent. You are not actually thinking anything bad or you are not transgressing over others and neither in terms of speech or deed or thoughts. No. You have no negativity towards other. You have no grasping or anger or hatred or whatever that may be in any form. You don't have it. You simply look other people as normal as normal. Nothing in that kind of a negative tone in terms of kilisa, mental defilement. But why do we call it kilisa if you are like that? The reason is, yes, at this moment, at this perfect moment, okay, in a meditation hall, you are not transgressing over other in terms of deed or speech or thought. Perfect, because the setting is perfect, everybody is sitting here. But let's say you go out outside there in the outside world. Suddenly, okay, let's say you are about to park your car. You just do slowly and carefully. And then suddenly there's another guy who can really park, drive quite quick. Zoom, zoom, zoom in and take your spot. What happened? Boom, the anger arises. At that moment. Don't you see I'm here before you? I was going to park in there, I'm taking careful maneuvering. And then there goes on, there goes the conflict. So what it is is under a normal set of conditions, there is no kilisa. But when a certain situation or condition arises, okay, which promotes your greed or which promotes your anger, at that moment suddenly greed or anger arises in you. It wasn't there at all, but only a condition or situation is created and it arises. So those kind of kilesa, whether it is anger or clinging or grasping, are called latent kilisa. They lay latent inside you. You are not even aware that you have it. But when the conditions arise, those things come up. So kilisa represented in three different forms. One in a deed and speech out in the open. Second in a thought form. Okay, of transgressive thought form. And the third is not in any form, but it requires a condition. When the conditions come in, the latent nature of those mental defilements in you just pops up. So one should understand in such a way these how these killer, executioner relate with you. And here we call it this is a conflict. It's called Patibakka. These kind of situations, out in the open or thought, or latent form. What they do was they always create conflict. So they are the conflict creator. They are the killer, they are the executioner. We use the words killer and executioner. Let's do more deeply. Let's say a person is faultless and blameless. He doesn't do anything, bad, negative stuff, congress over others, and he dies. Then from a Buddhist point of view, that kind of death is a good death. But sometimes it is the greed that takes over. It is the anger that takes over. Some people you even hear is so angry after that it got heart attack. It takes over. It can literally kill your life. That is one way, not many. But also, that is not the only way, the way they kill you. This killer or executioner. What they do was you made a wrong deed, you made a wrong speech, verbally and physical deed. When you do that, what happened? In general, you are a very decent, very kind, very polite person, but there are times that something is totally wrong and you create it, this you lie or you cheat. You twist and turn the situation. Once you do that, that actions, that incident goes out. First of all, do your immediate people, your co-workers or friends or neighbors, and if it is a criminal situation, it even goes to the point of law. This goes out. You might be living a beautiful, decent, good life for about 30, 40 years, and suddenly you did something terribly wrong. And at that moment, what happened? The names go out. And the consequence is your honor is dead. Your virtue is dead. Nobody will talk good about you. Nobody will respect you. Nobody will keep you in a good standing animal. Oh, this guy, you should better watch out. He's a liar. He's a cheater. You might be taking a big position, honorable position, powerful position. Because of that power, people might not say anything in front of you. But because of your character of cheating and lying and deceiving, nobody respects you and they will talk and talk and talk behind you all the time. Your honor is death. So that is one of the reasons it's called executioner or the killer. They kill your honor, they kill your virtues. Who are they? Mental defilements. Maharat, the executioner. That is even what worse than the actual physical debt. Physical death is stop and go on. Nothing to go on. But in here you have to live the rest of your life with that black mark. Your honor is gone. The virtues is gone. That's why it is called Mara, the killer. One of the reasons. So in here we see three kinds of kilesa or mental define maps. Trangressive, obsessive, and latent. Three types. Let's look at transgressive one and the transgressive one. What are you transgressing? Your speech and your deed, you are doing wrong. So what kind of wrong, terrible things are you doing? One of the worst things you can do is you are a killer. Actually a killer. You kill. You kill other people. Okay? Or you kill living beings. That is one of the ways. Actually killing. When you kill, you terminate somebody else's life, you take away somebody else's life. Not only that, you hurt the whole family that is related to that person. Whether he's a good person or a bad person doesn't matter. But regardless, that family is living with grief. Living with despair. The person that you kill. Okay, so we kill in many different ways and we rationalize in many different ways. We kill in wars, okay. We are the good guys, we are the bad guys. Good guys kill okay, bad guys kill not okay. We rationalize in many different ways, but regardless, killing is killing. You take somebody else's life away. And anybody who are near and dear to the person that's been killed also hurt and live with grief and despair, and their life is totally broken. That's what it is. That is transgressive nature. You kill. And then of course, lying and cheating, all sorts of false speeches, rude and harsh words, slander, split the people, unity, and so on and so on. We hear every day on the news, especially in the world of politics, how much lying and cheating and deceiving are happening. Blatantly or slyly, in many ways, many forms. What do they do? They only create conflict, disharmony, and disaster, all that they create. That is the basically transgressive nature. And we talk about rape, okay? Trying to have a sexual misconduct. Misconduct nature of all sexuality. It creates many things. Have sexuality with people, with families. There's a great potential to break down that family unit. And also a lot of heartbroken hardship can come. And also taking what is not given. Cheating, robbing, stealing, okay, extortion, this create. I don't have to go in detail, you can expand your mind how much hardship and the despair it could create down the line. And also intoxicant. But sometimes you can overdrink, and at that moment you can transgress all the things we have just mentioned. Normally you wouldn't even touch with the ten-foot pole, but if you are under the influence of the intoxicant, whether it is alcohols or drugs or cocaines or heroins or whatever, you become very able and willing to break the first fold. Killing, lying, cheating, sexual misconduct, all these things. And these are all transgressive nature of deed and speech. That is the first kilesa, the most obvious one. And if you look at it, if you simply just look at it, what is this first killesa? It is talking basically about the five precepts. The five precepts we take all the time, every day, whenever we have a chance. Taking percepts is not simply taking percepts. Okay, I refrain myself from killing living beings, I reframe, I reframe, I reframe. Don't repeat like a parrot. At that moment, number one, mean it. Number two, at that moment, let's say you say once a day, in the last 24 hours, have I transgressed it, have I break it? It's an analysis of yourself, reflection of yourself. In that way, when you keep reflecting and analyzing and checking yourself, what you do in the 24 hours, that is how you make yourself better and better and better. That is a way of drawing your own attention, that is the way to draw your own mindfulness towards your observant of these five precepts. It's killing. These five precepts, killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, cheating, and intoxicant, they are the first executioner. We takama killesamara, transgressive nature in terms of speech and deed, which is the killer or the executioner. So in other words, the first mental defilements can be controlled, can be put under rub by observing five precepts. Simply observe the five precepts, you will control and contain the first type of transgressive nature of mental defilements in terms of speech and deed. That's why it is very important for us to observe the five percepts. That's why we say whenever we have a chance, at least once a day we say it. While we are saying this, we analyze ourselves and for the first 24 hours. And also we mean that we are going to observe at least for the next 24 hours for sure. But in here, of course, we say in here, nine precepts, we class. The reason I'm doing is so that you become familiar with the nine precepts if you want to go to retreat, both in terms of meaning as well as the sounding of the Pali. That's the reason. Let's say you take nine percepts. Doesn't matter. You say at 7 o'clock, 9 o'clock we finish a meditation. And after meditation, you just say, okay, I step down from 9% to 5%. It's everything is in your mind. Nothing to do with the teacher or saying or not saying. Everything is what is the intention in your mind. So 9 o'clock, I step down. Okay, let's go down and then let's say I will just even make up a story. About 10 o'clock, you are going to bed. Let's say there's somebody is, they just have to have a nightcap, a little whiskey or whatever, or whatever. At that moment, if you you just can't help it, you have to do it, do it. But I am going to step down to 4%. In other words, awareness, mindfulness is there. It is not that you are locked and changed with 5%, but it is important. It is important to keep 5%. Because we will live with what we do. Whatever the actions we take, we have to live with the consequences of that action. As long as we are ready to live with the consequences of that action, that's what it is. It is not a sin. Nobody will be putting you to hell and frying up in a big hot boiling oil. Simply, you do this, this is the consequence, and you live with the consequences. That's it. So if you look at this, this five percepts, look at it carefully. You don't hurt and harm anybody. First of all, you are guilt free. Your neighbor will not have any hurt and harm from you. In other words, the humanity will not have any suffering with regard to killing and hurting and harming because of you. By observing that precept, you created that environment in this humanity. The same thing. Not stealing, cheating, robbing. As you refrain and restrain yourself from that, what happened? Nobody will be ripped off whatever they own by you. The same thing with sexual misconduct. Nobody will be molested by you. Nobody will be lying. Because of your lying, nobody will be hurt or harmed. Because of your non-drunkenness, nobody will be having your rage, your rampage. That's what it is. In other words, let's see, if you observe the five precepts, you are creating a peace within yourself. You are creating a peace in your neighborhood. You are creating a peace among your friends and colleagues and friends. In other words, you are creating peace for humanity. In other words, you are creating world peace. That's how world peace can achieve. Not from the top down, from the bottoms up. Each and every one of us have to observe with that pure understanding, knowing the cause and effect, cause and effect, and wholeheartedly you observe it. In other words, don't think, oh I'm taking fibrecepts. Sounds like so small, so simple or mechanical, but actually that is promoting world peace, bottoms up. And when you understand that, you have more energy and more confidence and more faith to observe it. That's the way understanding is very important. Once you fully understand it, you wholeheartedly embraced it. That means you live by it. As such, we should know. We create world peace. We created an environment of harmony. Look at it in a different way. What is a different way? We all know the word called mitta, loving kindness. Loving kindness, okay. What is loving kindness by definitions? It's a friendliness, okay. And um you wish always the welfare of others, treat everybody the same, all these things, okay. Loving kindness. You relate to people with midda, loving kindness, mitta, loving kindness. Why? So that nobody will be hurt or harmed. Nobody will be hurt or harmed. When you have loving kindness, you are not hurting and harming anybody. When you observe five percepts, you are not hurting or harming everybody. So you can say observing five percepts, it's you are living with loving kindness. Observing five percepts is you are wholeheartedly living with loving kindness to all. And one word can promote all peace. But you have to have a true heart. Loving kindness, in Buddhist words we call it a wet. Okay. But in English it doesn't make sense. We have to say you have to have a warm heart. Warm heart means loving heart. When you say wet heart, you don't really jive or understand. But let's go with this wet heart and dried heart. What is wet? It sticks. Throw in water into a bunch of dirt, it becomes mud and they can stick each other. But if it is very dry, no water, they got dispersed. And they become dry, they go into dispersion. No cohesion. So wet means cohesion, dry means dispersion. That is being wet. Loving kindness must be wet. In other words, loving kindness means there's a cohesion. As soon as you say loving kindness, there's a sense of cohesion. What does cohesion mean? It's unity. You create unity among people. That's loving kindness. Cohesion, unity. Do be able to have unity. Okay? With all together, all sorts of people. You cannot discriminate anybody. You cannot say everybody must live that way. Some are good, some are bad, some are intelligent, some are dumb, some are stupid, some are lazy, some are sharp. Doesn't matter. But you are creating loving kindness. You are creating unity in all sorts of personalities. And to create that kind of unity, what do you need? You need forgiveness. Without forgiveness, you cannot create that unity and harmony, which in turn give to loving kindness. See? Forgiveness, because they are all personality. Personality you like, great. Personality you don't like, you must be able to forgive forgiveness. And then do that forgiveness and unity. What you do need? Empathy. You must have empathy for those who need it, who deserve it, who requires it. Empathy. And always put yourself in somebody else's shoe. Always try and do, try and put yourself in somebody else's shoe. Putting yourself in somebody else's shoe. Having empathy, giving forgiveness, creating unity and harmony. That is loving kindness. That is mitta. And what is that? What created, what actions created that loving kindness, the five percepts. So don't underestimate this little five percepts. It has an enormous range to cover the humanity with peace and harmony. With that, we can eliminate vitakama kilisa pa mara, transgressive speech and deed that hurts and harm humanity. So we emphasize on this first one because that is what we are facing all the time, every day in our daily life. Of course, the second one is obsessive, transgressive nature. That one is you have to meditate and attain concentration, samadhi. If you have that, you can overcome this transgressive, obsessive thoughts. Second form of kilisa. And the third one, nobody even knows you have it, but only situation comes in, arises, latent one. Bury it right deep down under. To be able to uproot it that latent kind of transgression, latent form of mental defilement. There's only one that is vipassana. It is a inside meditation which will give you wisdom. Only the wisdom can uprooted the latent nature of mental defilements. So that will cover enough so that we understand what mental defilement is. Or simply call it the killer or the executioner of our life and our honor. May all of you be able to practice Satipattana Vipassana meditation and may you be able to root it out all three kinds of mental define as soon as possible. Sadu Sadu Sadu. Let's share our merit Imaya Dhamanu Damapatipatiya Buddhambuja Dhamu Damapati Patiya Dhambuja Damanu Dhamapati Pateya Shankambuj Adha imaya padipatiya premachesame Idame Bonya Aswatyahodam Megapalanyana Sa Vicham Saba Satanam De Ma Sabesada Sukida on Du Sadu Sa Du Sadu Budam Bujami Dhamam Bujemi Sangam Bujami.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

Thank you very much.