124: Retreat Dhamma Talk 19: What is Wisdom? (Panna)

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SPEAKER_01 0:06

Rahato samasambodasa Nam Tasambabado Rahato Sama Sambodasa Nammo Tasambabato Rahato Sama Sambodasa Retreat Series Dhamma Talk Number Nineteen Last Dhamma Talk we dealt with five different phases that one needs to accomplish to become a skillful meditator. So once you become a skillful meditator, what is the objective or the goal of it? The objective is to attain wisdom. Okay, to attain wisdom or pinya. And what is pinya? We all know in our everyday life once a child starting to grow up, go to school, primary school, high school, university, and various level degrees you attain these things. It's education. You acquire education to the highest level that one can. And in here, whenever you are studying, when you pursue, you are pursuing a subject matter that you are interested in. Arts or science, physics, maths, philosophy, and so on. A subject matter. You acquire knowledge related to a subject matter that you are interested in. That's education. We all go through that. So once you acquire this knowledge, okay, this knowledge, most of the time it's simply just knowledge. Okay, you graduate with maths or history or geography or arts. You have a lot of knowledge, information, but you cannot really apply to your life your growth. Except for a few who goes to actually technical school and learn a method, a technique to pursue a certain profession, those you can apply. Even that you simply just know how to apply. You don't know how to apply at all. Simply accumulation of knowledge. That's education. Then once you got a education, let's say it's an health profession. You got that degree, and then you start. You think you know everything, but when you start walking, you seem you found out that you don't really know much how to apply. And you walk your whole through life 30, 40, 50 years, and only then one began to understand and know how to apply the subject matter that you have studied, then you become skillful, but it needs about 30, 40, 50 years. So that is the education we are acquiring. Mostly education is simply knowledge. The same way in the same matter in Buddhism too. In Buddhistism, you follow and you acquire or you study education. You study, you go through various classes or level or Buddhist studies so that you can have to a certain level of understanding. That's also knowledge. And Buddhism is called sutta. The theoretical studies of the Buddha Dharma, it's called Sutta. What sutta means is actually hearing and seeing. Hearing and seeing. What it is is you learn through what you hear. You learn through what you see, what you read, from a book, from a class, from lectures, from internet, and so on. Everything is through go listening and hearing and seeing or reading. Same thing. Through that process, we go through that. Then you acquired a certain degree of Buddha Dharma information with you. And that part of the study is called sutta. Simply you know information, just like you acquire education in your normal life going through the grade school, same thing. Simply information that you acquired. And after you have acquired this information, Buddhism is it's not just about acquiring information or going to classes and listening to lectures and Dharma talks and so on. You put them into practice. You have to put them into practice. When you practice, what are you doing was you are actually experiencing directly, not intellectually, but experientially experiencing the Buddha Dharma that you have learnt through listening and through reading. You have an experiential knowledge of what you have learned. That experience, direct experience. That one we don't call it sutta anymore. That experience knowledge or information that you learn directly through the practice is called pinya wisdom. So that's what wisdom in Buddhism means. And that is the goal or the objective of the practice. One must put into practice again and again and again repeatedly, following exactly the roadmap that is being laid out for us by the Buddha and our elders throughout 2500 years. We practice, we experience, and then experiential knowledge we call it wisdom or pinya. So in Buddhism there are two parts. One is the theoretical knowledge, which we named it, or we don't name it, is called sutta, and the experiential information, direct information is called wisdom. And without that experiential information that you acquire directly, you will never ever understand the Buddha Dharma correctly. And that is the highest form of education in Buddhism. And from the Buddhist point of view, that kind of information or knowledge or wisdom that you have acquired is the highest one can attain. But it must be the right experiential knowledge. Wisdom or pinya, then that is the objective or goal of the Buddhist studies. So in here, what is it? That goal is called wisdom or pinya. And this wisdom or pinya you have heard and you have read. Referring to that, you will hear the word okay. In English is wisdom, in Pali is called pinya. And the same pinya or wisdom you can also heard with different names or different terms. Pinya or Vidya V I J J A Vidya or A moha. Vidya is knowing. Okay. Mo correctly is lack of ignorance, not having ignorance. It's called vidja. Ah moha. Oh moha is non-delusion, non-alusion. You heard those three under that name. They are the same meaning, all different. You will also hear the word jnana and a n-a nyana. That's also pinya. Okay, jnana we translated as insight in here. And also you will hear the word samaditi. And that's also pinya. So all these words one needs to know. Okay. Pinya, vijar, a moha, samaditi, jnana. And also dasana. D-A-S-A-N-A-Dasana. Dasana is vision. And all these words you will see it invariably used. Even though they are all different words, it means the same thing. Wisdom.

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Okay.

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So one need to know all these different words because when you come across these things, you don't know what they are talking about. They are all referring to wisdom, which is the direct experiential knowledge through the practice of the theoretical aspect of the Buddha Dharma. That is wisdom. So in here, all these words come in because samaditi. Sama is correct deity. In English it's translated, samadity is right understanding or correct understanding. So in English translation is understandity. So pinya, what we call wisdom, when you translate it into English, it's known or understood as understanding. So understanding is pinya. When you understand something, you have no more problem. You are not ignorant anymore. There you go. Understanding is not being ignorant, no more ignorance. That is the translation of pinya in English, understanding. But this pinya or samadhiti, if you literally translate it, what it means is knowing and seeing. That is the meaning of wisdom or pinya. Knowing or seeing. If you know something, that means you understand. Okay. Knowing and seeing. What does it mean by seeing? When you see something, you understand even more in a deeper and profound way. That's the way we put it. We can put it. But I will represent it in a different way. What it is is, let's say you look at a painting. You look at a painting and it's beautiful and you have to describe it. You have to write an essay to describe the painting, all its qualities and beauties and everything. A page or two or paragraphs, then it described. You have to read to understand that painting. But the same thing, you go and look at it. Just by looking at it, you see it and you understand. You don't have to go through all these readings and descriptions. All these descriptions and readings are simply understanding. But when you see it in a one snapshot, you got it. That's why there's a saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. Simply one picture, you look at it, and then you see it and you understand it. That is what seeing is. Seeing is you see something and you understand right away everything comprehensively, totally in you. And also it is as if you are seeing a something. Not thinking, not reflecting, not describing. In other words, you understand the subject matter with a vision. You thoroughly understand it. Seeing means you have a vision with regard to that subject matter or an object. That's what it meant by vision. Knowing and seeing. So that way, that's why it used the word seeing, seeing, seeing. You can put it in a different word, vision. You have a vision of the whole thing. You become the master of that object. That is what it means by wisdom. You can only attain that through the direct experiential knowledge. You cannot get it any other way. You can collect as much information as you can theoretically, with logic and analytical power, still not the same. That what it means by seeing. That's why samadity, samadity, samad. Correctly, deity, you call it understanding. Sometimes you will see right understanding, sometimes you will also see the word right view. They translated as view. A view quantifies the seeing process, the vision process. Right understanding, right view. Let's use it. Break down a certain situation and see how it goes, how we can understand this seeing. Seeing correctly, seeing rightly, samaditi. Or right understanding, right view, right seeing. That is samadhiti, that is pinya. And in here, let's use an example of the word dukkat. We all understand the word dukkat. Okay, what is dukkat in general? Another person will say, no, it is birth, decay, old age, sickness, and death. It's suffering. Sorrow and lamentation and so on and so on and so on is suffering. Unsatisfactoriness is suffering. All these things you can with words and words and words and words put it many ways. They painted a certain aspect of this dukkha, the meaning dukkha. So many things. But what is dukkha? Let's look at it in this way. You can look in a different way to do means repulsiveness or repulsive nature. Repulsiveness or repulsive nature. That's do. Ka. Ka is seeing wrongly. Seeing wrongly, ka is. So dukkha is seeing wrongly the repulsiveness or the nature of repulsiveness. That is dukkha. It really truly is repulsive, but you see it wrongly. To give an example is simple. It is bad, but you think it is good. It is pleasant, but you think it is. It is unpleasant, but you think it is pleasant.

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Okay?

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You do not see the true nature. It is ugly, but you see as a beauty. The true nature is ugly, but you see them as a beauty. That's how it is. That's what it means by dukkha. You see things wrongly. So let's look at life. Let's look at us. We are, okay. When we say we are, we are alive. We have a life. That's what we are. And when we have life, what happens is what does it mean by life? We have this operating nature of this body and the mind. Body and mind are in operation. Nama and rupa. Nama and rupa is life. And what is nama and rupa? The five aggregates is nama and rupa. Okay. Matter, body, and then feeling, vidana, perception, sanya, sankara, mental formation, and vainana, consciousness. Those five are the five aggregates. So life is namarupa. Life is the five aggregates. The true nature of life. What is the true nature of life? Buddha says the true nature of life is dukkha. The true nature of life is dukkha. That's the first noble truth, dukashasa. So, in other words, the five aggregates is dukasya. It's a very repulsive thing. But at the same time, how do we look at ourselves? How do we look at ourselves? How do we look at our mind and body? How do we look at our five aggregates? We look at it, this is great, this is good, this is pleasant, this is worth while holding on. We always hold on to our life. Regardless of how miserable it is, we still hold on. Around the band, around the corner, there is a pleasant point waiting for us. We always hang on, thinking that life is beautiful but not ugly. Life is what holding on because it is pleasant and great. This is how we see our life. This is how we see ourselves. Beautiful. Worthwhile holding on. Holding on to the existence. So this five aggregates is also dukasisa. Life is dukkasisa, five aggregates is dukas, but we look at it as if it is worthwhile holding on because it is beautiful, good, and pleasant. That is how we see because of dukkha sisa. And as soon as we consider this life of the five aggregators beautiful, pleasant, what happened? We want it, we like it, we want to have it, we want it, we want it, we want it, we desire it, we desire it. Because we have a view, we have a wrong view, it is beautiful and pleasant. That's why we desire it. What does it mean by we desire it? That is craving. And because of the craving, what happened? We created a life again. That is the second noble truth, Samudhya Sisa, because of the craving. And why do we crave? Why do we crave? Because we are ignorant about the true nature of life, which is a dukkha sissa. We don't see dukkha sissa in the true nature of life. Because of the ignorance we crave. Because of ignorance, we crave. Because of the craving, we created life again. The first noble truth and second noble truth. And because of this, walking heart and craving and desire due to ignorance, we go round and round in the cycle of life and death and life and death called sansara. That's how we are going. Again and again. But one thing is if we see this life, it is true nature. What is this true nature? True nature says this is repulsive. This life has a repulsive nature. You see dukkha sasha as it is. You see this life as it is. As soon as you see the life as it is, what's happening? Your ignorance is gone. Your ignorance is called avidja. When the ignorance is gone, it becomes vidya. What is vijya? Another word is vinya wisdom. So as soon as this ignorance is gone, you know it is repulsive. And as you know it is repulsive, you do not want it anymore. As you don't want it, you do not create that craving. Okay? Dana and upadana, you don't do that anymore. As you don't do that anymore, what happened? No new life is created again. That's how you get out of the sansara. In that way, when you get out of the sansara, the end of the life, cycle of life, birth and death, the end of the sansara. That is the third noble truth, niroda sisa. The third noble truth. The end of all physical and mental suffering, nioradisa. But to attain and to achieve that state, you have to go through a series of methods and techniques, which we call it eightfold noble path or eight constituents. You have to go through that eight constituents or methods or techniques to attain that. And that is the fourth noble truth. So simply here, samadhiti or wisdom, pinya, how does it come about to be? It is simply we don't truly understand what life really is, what Nama and Rupa is, what the five agribates is. They are simply repulsive and terrible. One must know as such, and then ignorance stop, and then dadna stop, and then life stop, and then suffering stop. It goes through cause and effect, cause and effect. So in here we see that how wisdoms work and why wisdom is the main goal or objective of the Buddhist or the Buddhist practitioner. That is the main objective. Because that's the one that dispel your ignorance. When the ignorance is dispel, that is vidya or wisdom. So in here we'll see and we understand. What is this? You see this body and mind, you see yourself. This true nature is repulsive. That way of seeing is tamaditi. Seeing. You have a vision now. Before it is simply no, oh yeah, this body is not good, old age sickness and death, and so on and so on and so on. But through the practice, through the experiential practice, you actually have a vision. In other words, just with one glance, one look, you know everything because of the direct experiences. That is the vision. It's the word there's yata buddha. Jnana dasana. Yatabuddha is as it really is or in its true nature. Yata buddha. Jnana is wisdom or seeing. And dasana is vision. You must know everything as it truly is and have a vision about it so that you can apply directly for yourself and for everyone else. That is yataputta nyana dasana. It is one of the inside level. If you go through the path of purification, you will see that word. So in here is samaditi wisdom. This samadhiti is, if you want to know a little more detail, there are five kinds of samadhiti. Five kinds of samadhiti. The first is, let's say, knowing and seeing, samadhiti. What do you have to know and see? What do you have to vision about it? It's with regard to karma. Kama. Kama sasata samadhiti. You must have the right view, right vision about karma. Kama is karma is your own property. You inherit your own karma. It doesn't belong to anybody. It is your all your actions are yours and you have to live with your consequences. That is one samadhiti. And the next one is vipassana samadhiti. Kama Samadhiti. This one is vipassana samadhiti. That means you see these physical phenomena and mental phenomena. They are all anitha impermanent, dukkha, unsatisfactory, and anatta non-self. That is called vipassana samadhiti. And the third kind of samadhiti is called samata samadhiti. Samata samadhiti is they have the five jhana with that vijara viti suka e gagada. That five jhana is vipassana samadhiti. And that one too, it doesn't totally clear the moha, but it is supremely wholesome and clear. It is very precise and comma. When you have this jhana, you can see things very clearly. That is the third samadhiti. The fourth samadhiti is called mega samadhiti. The right view about the path, noble path. And the fifth one is called palat samadhiti. It is the the result that you obtain from the path. Once you get path, you got the result. Pala is result of fruition, the right view about the fruition. So there are five kinds of samadhiti. About karma, about vipassana, vipassana is anichaduka nata, about samata, about mega, and about palab. Five kinds of samadity. One must have the samadeti, right understanding and right view of all these fives. That is what we are practicing for. We practice. We practice too. Satipatana vipassana or pure insight meditation. Or you practice samatha vipassana, mixed samata and vipassana practice. And if you practice these things, you will attain these insights or the wisdom. And always, of course, we are practicing, practicing, practicing. When we practice, even that the Buddha doesn't leave us out in the wild, he gives us a little boundary that we can practice on. In fact, you have heard that in beginner class. What it is is it gives us with a simile. A gardener planting a seed or some vegetable seeds. When you're planting a seed, they grow, they start growing. When it starts growing, what do you do? First and foremost, you put a fence around it so that animals or birds cannot come and eat or break it. And after that, you have to keep watering so that they will grow. And not only watering, and there might be weeds grow, you pull out the weeds, the soils are very tough, thick, you have to soften, loosen up the soil. Then once that is done, it grows on and on, and that might be insects, and things can break down these plants. So you have to pull pesticides in a modern way it's called pesticide, and finally they keep growing, and sometimes little cobwebs and aphibs will come and you have to clear them out. By doing so, then you will have a good plant, flowers and fruits. You will grow and you will reap it. That's a simile. And here, when you plant a seed, you are planting the Buddha Dharma. You're practicing it. Putting the guard around is when you start practicing is you have to put a fence around with your sila morality precepts so that it can word away all the gross form of destructions or gross form of kilesa. So that is the first one, sila. And then you water. Watering is you listen, sutta. You listen, you read, you listen, you read. That is watering, giving more information, pouring down more water, listen and read. And thirdly, you take the weeds out and pull and soften the soil. That is where you do the discursion. Discursion, investigation, that's the third part. And the fourth part, fourth part is you pour a pesticide around so that nothing could come in and attack, which means you build samadhi. When you have the samadhi, all the kilisa cannot come and attack anymore. But even with that, okay, in an early morning spring, there will be little cobwebs or spiders or if it's things like that come. When these things come, you have to clear it out. That clearing is vipassana. So there are five aspects of it if you want it. First of all, if you want to plant seed of Dhamma and you want to read morality base, and then you listen and study, and then you discuss. After that, you build concentration, and then finally you put vipassana. Those five steps will always upgrade your quality of wisdom. We all have one level or the other kind of wisdom, but this is the way to upgrade it, to increase it. So finally, when we have the full-blown wisdom, which is the pad wisdom. Even pad wisdom, they are full level. The pad wisdom or megat jnana. When you have the mega jnana, you get the pad deity, the right and correct view of the path. And then you will have a palat samadhiti. You will have the fruition or the result of the practice sama deity. And that way one can develop your wisdom through that. So we just give a more or less a description about what is wisdom, binya, because that is the goal or the objective that we are walking towards. Binya, samadhiti, a vija, a moha. Vija, amoha, jnana. These are all the right view or the wisdom. So may all of you be able to practice satipatana vipassana meditation and may you be able to dispel all ignorance, away, and attain wisdom so that we may get out of this endless round of birth and that sansara as soon as possible. Sadhu Sadu Sadu Buddha I Maya Damanu Damabatipadya Buddhambuja Maya Tamanu Tamabatibatiya Dambujemu Damabati Patiya Sangambujami Adha imaya padibatiya Jaram Primo Chesami Idame Bunya Aswakaya Maha Idhamesilam Megapalanyana Sa Picho Imano Bunya Bagam Sabasatanam De Ma Sabesada Sukita hontu sadu sadu butambujem dham bujem Sangam Bujami