127: Retreat Dhamma Talk 22: Heedfulness with Respect, in a Seamless and Unbroken Way

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SPEAKER_01 0:03

Namo tasambhato rahato samabudasa nam tasambhato rahmato sama sambodasa nam tasambhato rahato sama bodasa retreat series Dhammatok number twenty-two hatefulness the word hatefulness in Pali it's pronounced Apamada that what is very important for Buddhist and also quite significant because that's the words that Buddha taught, those are the his last words before he passed away. So apamadea sambadeta in short live heatfully, not just simply meditate, see live heatfully, apamada. And Buddha expound and explain in many ways about this word apamada. The opposite word is called pamada heedlessness, hatefulness and heedlessness. He taught us in many different ways, many stages, but in just under that one word, heatfulness. But our elders, okay, the brilliant teachers that arise arose to in during that 2500 years, explain, expand, expound so that we can understand and practice with ease. And in here, this heatfulness divided into three divisions. One division is the fundamental or gross nature of hatefulness. Second is the intermediate or mid-level heatfulness. And the third and the final is the refined, okay? Refined or the most superior type of hatefulness. So we can look at that way in three levels. And we have been talking about the first two already. Let us recap what is the first fundamental or basic or gross form of hatefulness. In general, you can simply say it just five percepts. But our elder has expanded into ten. These ten, they are called dusri dhat. Dusrita mean suffering or stress producing dharma. Suffering or stress producing actions or habits or dharma. That's one. If you have to enumerate it, simply killing, okay, taking what is not given, sexual misconduct, and also lying, slander, rude and harsh words, and frivolous talk. Seven. Those are the physical deeds and verbal deeds or actions. And the third one is mental. Those are the ten. Those tens are called dusrida, suffering or stress-producing actions, physical, verbal, and mental actions. That's the fundamental, the basic. If you avoid them, if you avoid committing those ten, that means you are heatful. If you break them and commit them, then it is heedless. And that way one can go. And second one is the mid-level of heatfulness. Okay, medium hatefulness. That one is restraint on the senses. We all know the senses. Beautiful form, colors, shapes, which we enjoy through the eyes, the sounds we hear through the ears, the smell through our nose, and the taste through our tongue, and the touch through the body. Those are the five senses. They are always with us at all times. And all that we are doing in our daily life, most of us, is we chase after all those comfortable and pleasant things. We slay for it, we work for it, we spend most of our time to acquire it, to have it, to maintain it, to possess it. That's all that we do all the time. And in here, we don't let our mind run freely on these pleasant sensations or senses and feelings. We restraint. In other words, we try our best not to engage and live our light solely for the search. Acquire, maintaining these pleasure and senses. And if one lives that way, what happens is then you are having the mid-level of hatefulness, middle level of medium hatefulness. But if you let yourself, if you let your mind go free for the pursuits of these senses, then you are heedless. This is quite important because even if we observe all these senses, if we don't observe it, there are two ways. You literally don't do it, or you forgot to do it, or you just superficially live along with these things. And that is on a heedless mode. So when we are having the free hand on this sense of pleasure, what happens is we go for the pursuit of this pleasure. When we go for the pursuit of this pleasure, we tend to do both good, correct, or wholesome thing, or bad, incorrect or evil things. To get it, to acquire it. And most of the time is the second part. We tend to break, transgress upon others' people. We cross over the line and hurt other people, harm other people. A lot of jealousy and envy and also ill will, hatred, aversion, these kind of things. Cheating, lying, stealing, the basic form, all these things can arise again because you are not watching and observing the senses. So restraint of the senses is very important. Even in a simple thing, sometimes what happened was you are not actually hurting or harming others. Sometimes we tend to do things, okay? You want to do something very badly. Okay? Again, of course. What you want to do is actually not hurting or harming anybody. Instead, you plan or you intend to help others. That is the situation. That's what you want to do. But you are not capable to do that. You are not in a situation or condition to be able to execute that. So what happened was basically, number one, you might break the rules, okay? The gross form of hatefulness, and then you might hurt and harm others so that you can help another group that tends to. Sometimes you might not help others, but what happened was as you are not able to do it, this is the worst part, you don't even know. You tend to hurt and harm yourself. Of course, mentally, or even in the severe places, you might even hurt yourself physically. You want it so badly, so that you want to do something good beyond your capability, beyond your reach. You began to stress your health out, you began to hurt yourself mentally and physically. Basically, it is the same as the same thing hurting and harming. Hurting and harming doesn't only apply to others. If you are hurting and harming yourself, that is also not in the line of Dharma. Those are the people in the modern words is called self-hatred. People who hate themselves. That is the buzzword, the line. Self-hatred. Self-hatred is due to your own incapability, even though you want to do good, you try to burn yourself out, hurt yourself both physically and mentally, it can go down the drain. That also can arise. And that one is so delicate in your logical mind. I'm not hurting and harming anybody, so I am okay. But you forgot and you neglect or you don't see at all that you're hurting yourself, that itself is not right. And that's on the restraint. Even if your desire is to do something good, but beyond your capability and affordability, that can also arise in the line of heedlessness, not heedfulness, must be able to create peace and harmony for others as well as yourself. That part is quite important. People tend to miss it. So in here, if you look at it, why are we doing these things? Okay, whenever you avoid things that are, let's say, bad or unwholesome or non-dharma, then you are in a heedless mode. Whenever you try to observe and avoid the ten dusrida, ten suffering producing dharma habits, then it is hateful. And do the opposite. If you tend to do, okay, instead of killing, you safeguard other people's. Instead of stealing, you give, and so on and so on. If you do opposite to these ten dusrita, automatically you are said to be doing ten dharma or ten habits that produce happiness and harmony. Tu Sarita. Sarita is the habit. So ten dusarita and then tu sarita. So why do we do these things? Okay, even though we say do this, don't do this, do that, don't do that. The Buddha clearly taught us. The Buddha's teaching is what is right and what is wrong. What is right and what is wrong, not in a sense of this religion or that religion, this race or that race, this culture or that culture. Right and wrong based on the humanity, based on the humanity, the right and wrong, the good and bad, totally drawn based on the humanity, outside culture, tradition, and religion. That is what Buddha taught us. Do good, avoid evil. And here it is not unwavering, very precisely drawn and delivered and taught us. And everything is based on humanity for human beings, all of us. So in here, why do we do these things? Why do we break? Why do we hurt other people's? Why do we harm other people's and so on? Why are we heedless? The thing is, we are ignorant. We are ignorant. What are we ignorant about? Number one, we are ignorant about what is right and wrong. You can put it that way. We are ignorant about what is this mind and what is this body. We are ignorant about the full noble truth. Those are the ignorance. But in here, in a two-level, one and a daily practical level, it is ignorant about knowing what is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing to do. And in another level, deeper level, is ignorant about what really the mind is and what really the mad body is. Body and consciousness or self about yourself. Because of those ignorance, we break these things. What happened is whenever the sense pleasure, the five senses, arose in us, which is all the time, we tend to chase and we tend to grasp on the pleasant sensations and feelings. That's one. Hatred, ill will, aversion arises. Dissatisfaction. And at that moment too, we want that dissatisfaction to go away. One thing is we want those pleasant things to be with us. And second thing is we want these unpleasant things to go away. Both are desire, desire, desire. All these desires are called tanna, craving. So, in here, whenever we are ignorant, what is happening is all the time we are in contact with the five senses. And then five senses always produce pleasant feeling and unpleasant feeling. In other words, things that you like, that you love, and things that you hate. And whenever these things arise, you crave for it, you crave to have it, you crave to avoid the unsatisfactory or dissatisfied nature of things. Craving arises, so to speak. So because of the ignorance, you do craving. Okay, craving arises. Action is done, senses arises, actions done because of that craving. These two things, this craving and this ignorance, that is one that is driving, making us to be heedful or heedless. Most of the time it is heedless when you are in a state of this ignorance and with craving. Okay? Avidya and these two are the ones that is forcing us, driving us to perpetually doing all the physical deeds, all the verbal deeds, and all the mental deeds. That's the driving force. It's driving us to do these things. So in here, we know why we are heedless because we are ignorant of it. But if we are not ignorant of it, in other words, we are fully aware of the situation, a condition, just in a daily life, at that moment, if you are fully aware that you know what to do. That means you are, you have an understanding. And also when you are in meditating, whenever you are observing, all your observation is about this body and this mind. And if you know them exactly as it really is at the present moment of that arising, then you know. You know, you understand. You understand, you understand. When you understand things and conditions, there is no more ignorance. Ignorance is dispel because you understand. Simply by knowing, simply by understanding, ignorance, dispel. As soon as there is no more ignorance, what happened? The craving cannot arise. Through understanding, ignorance is dispelled. When the lights come in, the darkness is gone. Just like that. At that moment, when you have full understanding of this mind and body, there is no more craving to this mind or to this body or to any condition. As there is no more craving to all these feelings, what happened? The cycle simply stopped, ceased. You don't do anything anymore. So what happened is before this Vedana, Vedana is sensation. Okay, pleasant, unpleasant sensation. Vedana is the condition and what is arise, nadana craving arises. That is when you are ignorant about it. But when you are not ignorant about it, this vidana feeling, feeling always arises regardless under any situation, pleasant and unpleasant. But widana is the condition, but danna cannot arise, craving cannot arise. But what arises in that place? In that place it arises wisdom. So automatically danna is replaced by wisdom. Vidana pitya, vidana is the condition, but due to understanding the wisdom arises. That is the way it goes, and that's how one is. That is through giving. Whenever you give, you are letting that object or product go away from you. In other words, you let it go. So don't just simply think dana generosity is just simply giving, doing good, wholesome things so that I have a great good karma. In fact, you are also practicing the mental state of letting go, ability to let go, ability to shed the nature of self. That is generosity. One needs to understand as that. So if you do that properly in that way, without any expectation in return, you part with things that you own, that belongs to you, your possession, in terms of material or time or a condition, you let go. That's the generosity. By doing generosity, you are developing this kusala, wholesome, wholesomeness. And in here too, it is very important. When you let go, one must let go completely, without any expectation, without any regret. You give it to somebody, okay? And that somebody, a week later, you found that somebody turn around and give it to another person. And most of the time, people get suddenly angry or upset. I give it to that person for that to use. Now it doesn't care. Turn around and give it away. Anger can arise, dissatisfaction can arise. If that's the case, that's not the right way, you have not really let go of it yet. You let go with the condition, with the expectation. But regardless, once you give it, then whatever happened, you don't even think about it because it is not yours. Only then it is a purity in your giving. And also don't give for the purpose of fame and fortune and name so that you can get a notoriety. That is also not pure. And your deed must be pure. Only when it is pure that generosity becomes the wholesome deed, kusala dharma. Okay, so dana kusala. That is one way of developing this kusala, wholesomeness or goodness. Second one is called sila kusala, sila kusala, sila is the precepts morality. By practicing morality, you are also producing this kusala, wholesomeness. Okay? Or you can simply call it good karma. Okay. But more correctly is the wholesomeness that you are producing. You are producing wholesomeness, you're surrounding yourself with wholesomeness. You live in the domain of wholesomeness. That's what is kusala is. When it is kusala, nothing can be faulted in that action. Nothing can be blamed in that action. It is faultless and blameless. That is kusala, that is wholesomeness. If there's a spot to fault, if there's a spot to blame, that is not kusala. Spotless, blameless. So practicing sila is also another way of developing this wholesomeness, kusala, practicing precepts. That is called sila level, okay, dana and sila. And the third one is called bhavana kusala. Bhavana kusala. Bhavana is mental development or mental culture. Okay, you also can have wholesomeness developed through mental culture and mental development. So among these three, okay, dana kusala, generous, wholesomeness of generosity, wholesomeness of precepts, and wholesome of mental development. This wholesomeness of mental development is the highest quality. The highest quality, it can produce the greatest and highest karma, good karma, good kusala. So there's a question need to be asked. What is this? Why? The other one was giving people benefit about it, hungry people got fed, and so on and so on. Precept, you don't do anything, and nobody gets hurt and harmed. But in here, you are sitting on your butt and meditating. Why is this become considered to be the highest form of kusala, the highest form of wholesome? It's all come down to the mental states. If you truly understand your deeds and your speech, they simply don't come out. It all started from thoughts, intention. From that intention your speech arises. From that intention, your deed arises. Intention is the seed. From that seed it arises. So if you have a bad seed, bad things will grow. If you have a good seed, good things will grow. That's why if you take care of the seed, you don't have to worry about any speech and deed, any restraints and any avoidance. They are already taken care of. It starts from the mental state. Not only that, when you can develop your mental state and you progress and you become very skillful, you change. You don't have to change yourself. You don't have to purposely do anything. The way you smile changed, the way you talk changed, the way you do things change. It becomes gentle, polite, graceful, loving, kind, and compassionate. All these mental expressions, expression from these mental states, it is very obvious on that person. By looking at it, you know that person is different. Not for this moment or not for that moment, not for this meeting or that meeting. Consistently throughout time, that person is it. That is what you see, and that is what that person is. It changes in that way. In other words, that person is constantly producing love, happiness, and harmony to its surrounding, to its neighbor. In general, to humanity. And there, look at it, this hatred and ill will and anger and aversion. They are all gone because that person is totally immersed with loving kindness. When there is loving kindness, there is no aversion, no anger, no dissatisfaction. Simply contentment. Simplement. That's what it is. And also when the person has compassion, okay, that person, from that person you will never see any cruelty. From that person you will see is always moving around to help and to save people who are in a state of suffering and a state of stress. That is automatic change. You can see how much benefits come out of that person whose mental state is totally taken care of. In other words, that person's mental state has no mental defilements. What are these mental defilements? Loba. Greed or craving or grasping. Dorsat. Aversion or anger or ill will or dissatisfaction. Moha, not knowing. That person is always in a state of knowing. Always in a state of hatefulness. Heatfulness is the key. When you are heatful, you know. When you know, there's no ignorance. When there's no ignorance, craving is eliminated. When craving is eliminated, those beautiful characters and presentation of love and kindness and confession and very intelligent decision making arises in that person. That's what it is. That's why this bhavana kusala, okay, wholesomeness developed through this mental culture. Mental culture is the highest, most superior form of wholesomeness, kusala, or a good karma. For that reason it is. So if you look at it now, it is the mental development. As it is the mental development, this one is not in the basic or gross form of hatefulness. This one is not in the midland or medium form of hatefulness. This is the highest and the purest and the most superior form of hatefulness. This is the highest form of hatefulness. So if you look at this hatefulness, let's look in terms of ten dusatiya, which is ten suffering producing habits or actions. They have three groups. One is the physical three, verbal is four, and the last one is mental three. What are the last one? Abidjah, gobituousness, wanting other people, possession, property. Only on a mental level. Always in a state of jealousy and envy. And trying to scheme and plot and think bad about others. That is the only on a thought level, abidja and byabada. And the third one is deity. What is deity? Diki is wrong view. Just to narrow it down. One thing is if you believe this is the only life, I'm born, don't come from anywhere, and I die, go nowhere. It's the end of it. And if you believe there's only one life coming out of without any condition, that is called wrong view. And the other one is, well, I had lived forever and I'll be living forever, life after life after life. I'm indestructible. That also is a wrong view. If you believe in that way, then it is. It tends to move you to the heatful, heedless condition. Because if you believe there's only one life, you don't care. Whether you do good or you do bad, you simply just do it. As long as I can escape, dodge the other people, deceive other people, con other people, dodge the law. So there's a high tendency to commit all these transgressive natures of actions if you believe only one life. But if you believe in eternity, if you believe in eternity too, then well, what the heck? It comes, it goes, what goes around comes around, and you don't really give much heat. Life will go up, life will go down, and it will be endlessly going round and round. And of course, based on your own belief and own religion, there's a certain way of operating within that system. But at the same time, you believe there's a past life and you believe there's a future life, past, present, and future. Okay, past life, present life, and future life. And also whatever you do, that is your property, you inherited whatever actions you make. If you believe in that, then you begin to think about things. Whatever I did before, I'll be experiencing all the consequences I'm giving. Whatever I'm doing now in the future, I have to give it back. You can look at it in two ways: carrot and stick. One is the benefits. Some people, they are more motivated by benefits. What you can get. Okay. I can be a rich human being, famous human being, intelligent human being, I can be Dewa, and so on. For those, because of those things, you tend to do more good things. And the other group of people, they are more motivated by the fear of facing the danger or disastrous states. And if that's the case, if I have killed somebody, down the line somebody will kill me. If I have deceived other people, down the line somebody will deceive me. And out of that fear of the consequences, you would tend to behave yourself. That is the benefit of it. But one thing is to be able to do that with correct attitude. Correct attitude. You are not endlessly going round and round forever. What it is is you can get out of this cycle of always behaving so that you will get a carrot or so that you will get a stick. You are behaving due to fear and desire. That is a very narrow room. But there's a room it shows you. You don't have to worry about the stick and you don't have to worry about the carrot either. The end of all these things. The end of all these things also come back down to the bhavana. Okay? Mental development and mental culture. It comes back down to it. So if you look at it, this bhavana, kusala, okay, wholesomeness produced by this hatefulness. It's all about this, the last three dusarita mental state. Mentally, okay, covetousness, and then mental ill will and the wrong view, not believing in the law of karma. It's directly related to it. That is where you take off the wrong view. When you take off the wrong view, that means wrong view means your ignorance. When you get the right view, it becomes vidya or wisdom. That's how it comes in. That's why this bhavana kusala, mental development, mental culture is the highest form of hatefulness. It is so among all these mental culture and mental development, Satipatthana Vipassana is the best. Why is it the best? Okay, everybody say, oh, we are everybody is claiming I'm the best, this is the best, this method the best, that's whose method is the best? And of course, the same thing. And here, Satipatthana Vipassana, we claim it is the best. But why are you claiming blindly? No. Because it is the easiest thing to do. You don't have to learn many techniques. Simply observe the object that is arising at the present moment. It is very easy. You are a beginner, that's what you do. You are advanced, that's what you do. You become an expert, master, that's what you do. And also it is very simple. Simply with full alertness, observing the object that is arising at the present moment. Easy and simple. And also it is very effective. You guys are practicing already. When you are observing it, what do you see? The movement arises and passes away, heat arises and passes away, coal arises and pass away. Motion arises and passes away. Anger arises and passes away. Joy arises and passes away. Mindfulness arises and passes away. So just by simply observing, you see directly the nature of all the physical and mental phenomena arising and pass away. That's why this method is very effective. It goes directly to what you need to know about the true nature of mind and matter. It is effective. Easy, simple, effective. And also the result is immediate. You don't have to wait for a long time. You observe at this moment, you're observing rising, rising, rising movement of the abdomen, falling, falling, falling movement of the abdomen. If your mind is precisely on that every little movement, movement, movement, movement, movement, movement, movement, you exactly acutely aware of it with precision. At that moment, you have no greed, wants. You have no anger, aversion. At the same time, you have a precisely precise vision of that rising movement or falling movement. In other words, at that particular moment there is no mental defilements, no loba, no dosa, no moha. That's what's happening. So there's the result. The result is immediate. At that one noting, you already got the desired result. What is the desired result? The result of our whole practice is to eliminate and uproot the mental defilements. Loba, dosa, and moha. Greed, anger, and delusion. And the result is immediate and right here and right now. So that's why this Satiparanavi Pasana, we claim it. It's easy, it's simple, it is effective, the results are immediate. And I can carry on expand. But this will be plenty enough to understand why it is good. So Satipathana Vipassana, mindfulness insight meditation. When you are practicing this, you are practicing the Dharma or the Kusala Dharma, wholesome dharma, which is the highest form. And if you want to have the highest form of kusala wholesomeness, when you are observing, it's important. You must observe it with seriousness. It is not a run of the mill, I'll do when I can. No, that's not the attitude. You give priority to it. Based on your life, of course, some people can shave the head and then take the rope and 100% go into the practice because it's condition give. But if your condition doesn't give, you still live in this life, you still have a job, you still have to make earn money, you still have to look after your family, then too, but you are still here in this room. That means you consider this is an important part of your life. That's what it is. When you give yourself this part, okay, every Tuesday from 7 to 9, I am going to be there and practice. And you do it without fail. Every day I'm going to practice half an hour. Every day I'm going to practice one hour. You decide and you do it without fail. That shows your seriousness at your level. Or if it is five minutes, that's fine. 15 minutes, that's fine. But you do it in such a way, this is a part of your life. In your daily life, in your weekly life, in your monthly life. And that is the priority. All other things are secondary at that moment that you have allotted for this practice. That's called seriousness. That call in the scripture, respect. You give respect to the practice. Once you have respect to the practice, you are doing it automatically. It becomes your habit. And also seriousness and respect. In terms of actual execution, okay, the other one is a general condition. The actual execution. Everything you do. We are practicing under the Mahasi tradition. Everything you do, everything you observe, it's in a very slowly. You move slowly, you talk slowly. Especially in meditation retreat, everything is to the point of slowness so that as if a person with a serious back injury is moving around. And if you move around at that slowness and if you have a keen observation, you will see many, many aspects of the physical and mental phenomenon with sharpness and clarity. That slowness will allow you to. Once you become skillful and become master, you can see the same kind of clarity with a little faster speed. But at the beginning, you must be extremely slow so that you can observe. That is called seriousness and respect. If you want this superior form of heatfulness, that is the way to do. And then next is you're observing. Of course, you already know we are meditating. We go to retreat, we meditate for about 14 hours, 16 hours a day. During that time, while you're observing, you observe in such a way one observation to the other, and to the other, and to the other. Every observation, try to make it become seamless. Seamless. If you do that way, it becomes a superior form of hatefulness. You are developing the highest kusala, wholesomeness. That's one way. And not only that, especially in retreat, okay, you are practicing about 16 hours a day, and for two months, for three months, after a while, something caught up with you. And you like to have a little break. You have to have a little rest. Oh, I will go and read a book. Okay, I'll stretch my back. I'll do a little yoga, and so on and so forth. This thing comes in. And whenever these things come in, what happens is you are taking a break. You are taking a break from this hateful observation. And this heatfulness must be moment to moment. And especially when you are in training, one must not take a break. Only then your hatefulness become the superior form or refined form of hatefulness. And there are many more. How to develop this kind of a superior form of heatfulness. We'll carry on in the next Dhamma talk. So may all of you be able to practice and live with heatfulness to the point of refined level of heatfulness and may you be able to live in peace and happiness as soon as possible. Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu Buddham Bujami Dhamam Bujami Sangam Bujami.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Thank you very much.