166: Retreat Dhamma Talk 61: On the Highway to Peace

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SPEAKER_00 0:20

Last time we were talking about mental illness. We don't usually think we are mentally ill until and unless we become quite depressed. Or for that matter, need to see a psychiatrist or psychologist. Only then we think we have some mental problem. But from Buddhist perspective, everyday condition and everyday life, these mental illnesses are arising. Craving, attachment, grasping, anger, ill will, hatred. These are called mental illness. These are mental states which are ill. In our daily life, we use the words such as cruelty, bullying, bribery, corruption, war. These are the words we use on the daily life, which the Buddhists call it mental illness, arising out of mental illness. So these are the manifestations of mental disease, mental illness, spreading like wildfire due to failing to observe the mind. But they are all preventable. Okay, let's discuss with an analogy. We live or we handle in a land a lot of germs and bacteria and virus. If you wear rubber gloves, thick, good, strong quality rubber gloves, they can't contract you. The lab technicians are safe. These finders, they won't get any disease out of it. The same thing. So basically let's call it satipattana vipassana, mindfulness and sight meditation. But in one word we just call it sati mindfulness for the ease of communication. So if we wear the gloves of mindfulness and sight, we can prevent mental illness, the virus. As simple as that. So sometimes you're wearing the gloves and they become quite thin. When they become quite thin, if you are aware of it, before they break the core it breached, you can put on a new gloves. You are applying mindfulness. And sometimes or for some people, quite often, you don't have enough effort in the application of mindfulness. So what happened was the mindfulness become weak. If it is weak, pretty soon it will break. But if you are aware that it's become weak, you have to step it up. Step it up and make a strong quality mindfulness. Like having a new glove. So keep that in mind. So basically, these are two things. One thing is before it breaks, you change to a new one. In other words, you're preventing. So mindfulness has two functions. One is preventing kileta to arise. Another one was curing. If the kileta has already arisen, you put your mindfulness and it can be doused or dissolved or healed. So there are two techniques. One technique, two purpose. One is the prevention, another one is the curing or healing. So that's why guard your mind throughout the day. And if you can guard your mind throughout the day, mental illness will not arise. And this one, don't take it from me. You can actually verify yourself from your direct experience. Try it and see. Now we talk about the prevention method. Okay, we are preventing these mental illnesses coming in with the mindfulness. There are three powerful tools when you are doing this prevention process. Three powerful tools. We just use mindfulness, sati, but actually there are three. One is called varia effort. Second one is sati mindfulness. And the third tool is samadhi mental concentration. So you have to use all these three tools together skillfully in this process. And what does this varia effort do in this process? What it does is whenever you apply effort, okay, any difficulty that you are facing you can overcome. Without effort, you cannot overcome difficulty. So effort has the power to overcome difficulty. And when you put effort, one act bravely and boldly. That's what the tool of effort or warrior function is. And then also this effort, you apply this mindfulness very steadily. What is this effort for? Effort is to apply mindfulness. In practical term, you are directing your mind towards the object that is arising at the moment, one after the other. But to do that, you need effort. You have to apply that effort. First of all, you apply it steadily. And then once you become quite adjusted with it, you don't stay there. You have to step up effort. There are many techniques and means and ways, what to do, how to do. We have already discussed it. In other words, you have stepped it up, and then once you become quite skillful with the stepping up level, eventually you gradually keep on increasing. Gradually increase. Quite strong, quite powerful concentration is arising. That's how these three tools, effort, mindfulness, and mental concentration does in a practical sense. And what they do, what they do is actually the function of effort is it pushes back killis time, mental defilements. Why? We are waging war against mental defilements. So the function of effort is pushing back the mental defilements. And what is the function of sati mindfulness? Sati is it guards every gate, every little hole, every little possibility where it could be breached. Not to. Just watch closely. So that it guards the mental defilements, cannot penetrate your domain. And the third and the final one is samadhi. What does samadhi do? Samadhi we call it concentration. What it is is this samadhi, the mental concentration is it organized. It organized, so to speak, every body or everything around you. This state is called mental state. To gather together, glue together and put them into a powerful force. If a person is fighting, it's okay. Two percent stronger, three percent together, it's become very powerful. That's what somebody does. It gathers, puts together, glue together all the mental states that are working and put them into a force so that they become very powerful. And once that mental concentration does that function, there is no place, there's no place for mental defilement to arise. Totally expelled from that domain. Those are the three tools. That's how they work together in a practical field, and that's how their function is. But you have to apply this, these three tools skillfully, repeatedly, again and again. And only if you put it again and again for a longer period of time, hours, days, months, if you do that, it has enough power to prevent and eventually to subdue these mental defilements. So keep in mind, if you don't have sufficient sufficient amount of effort, mindfulness, and mental concentration, what happens when you are meditating, you will be missing a lot of objects. In other words, you become totally unmindful. You will be missing a lot of objects. And if you miss a lot of objects, what are you living with? You are living with the non-liberated mind. Non-liberated mind. Ah we muti chitta. That's what you are living with. So but if you can apply this continuously, continuous observation without a break, without a gap, then it will cause the liberated mind, we muti chaitta to arise. And when there's a we muti chaitha, liberated mind, there's no killisa. Very simple, but you need to work very hard. So if there is mindfulness inside, if you are practicing mindfulness inside, akusala, unwholesome actions cannot roll in. They are put to a stop. These akusala, okay, akusala, or unwholesome actions of others, akusala actions of others cannot stain you, cannot disturb you. But the akusala actions or unwholesome actions of your own will stain you and will make you a subhuman being. Let's call it subhuman being. You become a subhuman being, low character human being, lowly human being. Because these akkusula have already stained you, which is inside you, not from other people. So let's say there's a subhuman being, low character human being. That low character human being may have a great wealth, billions of dollars, great fame, great power over a lot of others. Even if you have all this great wealth, fame, and power, subhuman being is still a subhuman being. It doesn't become a decent, good human being. No wealth can change, no fame can change, no power can change. A lowly human being is always a lowly human being. But to become a true human, what do we need? We need to prevent or subdue these akusala, unwholesome actions or akusala dhamma. Unwholesome dhamma. You have to prevent them and you have to subdue them. And if you can do that, you become a true human being, a decent human being. So let's see in the scripture, it is written, it's quote from a scripture. One who doesn't know how to avoid or protect oneself from akus la dharma. One who doesn't know how to avoid or protect oneself from acusatham. That person is his or her own worst enemy. If you don't know, you are your own worst enemy. No enemy is worse than you. So this inner enemy is many times more dangerous than all the external enemies that you have. Even if they combine it, it's not as bad and as dangerous as this inner enemy. That's why we are practicing mindfulness inside meditation. And this mindfulness inside meditation is not just a talk, just a theory. It delivers the benefits. If you practice this, the Buddha mentioned about what the benefits are. It delivers the benefits right here and right now. You don't have to wait for five years later or ten years later, or next life or many lives later. You can get it right here and right now, but you have to practice with precision and great effort. And if you are with Dharma, in other words, if you live with Dharma, if you practice Dharma, that Dharma will protect you. That Dharma will protect you from all these unwholesome actions and activities. But if you fail to apply or practice this mindfulness inside, you will become the prisoner of mental defilement, Kilisa. And if you become a prisoner, what's happening to you? What's happening is you will always be dissatisfied with many conditions, many situations that is happening around you and that is happening in the world. You see with a negative attitude, with a negative outlook. Once you become a prisoner, you become impatient, you become short-tempered on all anything that is disagreeable with you. Not just simply disagreeable is disagreeable, but you become really angry and short-tempered with that. Those are the signs that you become the prisoner of Khilisa. And also you can be easily become elated and excited whenever you are facing or getting things that you like. And also resistant level to the eight highs and lows, eight loka dhamma. Gain and loss, fame and obscurity, praise and blame, and bliss and suffering. You don't have much resistance to these big loka dhamma or big highs and lows. And whenever you come in contact with them, you can you easily collapse. So this is more on a specific level, individual practice we are focusing on. Let's now change it and change our perspective. Let's look on a larger scale. Let's look at on a worldwide scale, on a social, society scale. On a larger scale, what's happening? Wars everywhere. There's not a day that you don't hear about wars on the news. Wars happening, battles raging, all sorts of confrontations are going around the world. And also people are, so to speak, verbally fighting, debating, talking, to win, just to win. At any cost, that's what is happening. These are the signs that you become the, or we become, the society has become the prisoner of the fire maps. And we must avoid these things. We must avoid these things. So let's say if there's a confrontation, use the simple word confrontation, between two people or between two groups or two countries, or two points of views, two opinions, systems, if there's a confrontation. Look at it really accurately when there is a confrontation with violence. Both sides lose, both sides suffer. Even if one group can declare as a winner, you might say, I won. But at what cost? In a war, a winner. The people from the winner side also get killed, also get shot, also get legs chopped off, hands chopped off. What you call trauma, mental distress. They come home and they live with that mental pain. The winner, but the winner actually also loses. Both sides suffer. So the only truth about wars and battles and confrontation is all participants will feel stressed beyond the normal level. And all participants will suffer one way or the other. Not just the loser, also the winner. That's the truth. So I'm just talking about unwaving what's happening in the world. As we are Buddha Dharma practitioner, let's pick up something from the scripture. See at the time of Buddha, when Buddha was alive, there was a war breaking up. Between two kings. One king, his name is called King Korsala. And the another king is called King Ajatasat. Ajatasatta of the kingdom of Magattab Kingdom or Magatha Country. Actually, this second one is the nephew, the first one is the uncle. They are blood related, but they have their own kingdoms. And there's a war going on. And the reason of this war going on is they have a dispute on a little village at their border. He said, No, it belongs to me. The others said, no, it belongs to me. There's a conflict. And they decide to solve that problem with war. So the war broke out. The first time it waged the war, the uncle caused a lot lost. So he pulled back and the nephew didn't follow up. And second time we wage war again because the conflict is not resolved. Second time too, the uncle lost. Both times. So when he lost and he was quite embarrassed and ashamed, he lost to his nephew. Badly. Both times. So finally he tried to commit suicide. The news goes around, some of the monks, bhikkhus heard about it. So some bhikkhu came over and talked to the Buddha. Oh, this king is he's trying to suicide. And he's one of the supporters. In other words, they are all the supporters of the Buddha ministry. So the Buddha has a what you call responsibility for anybody who follows his teaching. So he went to the king and they gave him a sermon, a Dhamma talk. Just to summarize this in a few short sentences, what did he say to the talk? Yes. When two opposing sides confront each other, the winner creates more enemies. The winner creates more enemies. And the loser too, with the inward anger, you cannot express the anger because you lost. With the anger, that person cannot forgive and scheme behind the shadow for revenge. That's what the loser does. Okay, let's wait till the next time. So the loser actually is also making a lot of inner enemies. The winner has many external enemies. The loser has a lot of inner enemies. Both sides lose. That's the gist of the Buddha's Dhamma talk to King Kos. And of course, upon hearing it, reflecting a bit, his mental state was dissolved and no more war and live in peace. So that is one point from the scripture, King Khosala and King Ajatasasa. And the Buddhist tongue. Let's pick another story. But this is not at the Buddhist time. It's about a couple of centuries later after Buddhist. But this one is quite famous, so almost a lot of people in India and even in the world who study history knows about him. His name is King Ashoka. King Asoka. Before India has many, many kingdoms or many, many little different countries owned by their own king, ruled by the king. And Ashoka is also the control of one kingdom, but he's very ambitious. So his ambition is he's going to make all these little kingdoms into one big empire. In his mind, it's big empire, everybody prosper and peaceful. That is his thought. And he waged war. And he waged war, he waged war, and eventually conquered everybody. Everybody and become an empire. What we call the Indian continent. Indian continent. Not little kingdoms, maybe twenty, thirty kingdoms, little countries become one big empire. So he succeeded in his ambition and he ruled. But in his empire there's not much prosperity, and not much security either, not much peace. Because all these people who lost, they are always scheming and doing something, planning something against him. So there's a little rubble going on here, there. So there's no peace. As there is no peace, there's no prosperity. That's what happened. Because he ruled with fear. He conquered with violence and ruled with fear. That's what happened. But one day in his utter days, he came across a Buddhist monk by accident. To make a long story short, he was quite impressive with his composure. Eventually he became a devout Buddhist. Once he became a devout Buddhist, he really studied really hard. He has whatever he set his mind on, he really goes for it. So what happened is he really studied, he understands and become a devout Buddhist and he ruled his empire. Let's call it this way, with the constitution, which is the Buddha Dharma. He used Buddha Dharma as his constitution, so to speak, with love, with compassion. And once he ruled that way, that kingdom had peace, that empire had peace, and it prospered. It prospered in such a way, even in Indian history, you can see this is one of the great golden age of Indian continent. And he did a lot of works for the Buddha Dharma or Buddhism. He spread it around the world. That's around the taught it. Buddhism spread to Sri Lan, now it is Sri Lanka, to Burma, Thailand, and so on. He spread all around all his missionary he sends. So that was one. The same person he changed is to conflict, violence, war will never really solve anything. It'll go on and on. Just a matter of time. But love, kindness, and compassion with dialogue, through dialogue and understanding, wisdom will solve our social problem. So the key thing is one must win over yourself, not others. If you win over yourself, what happens is it creates peace and happiness. If not, you'll be hurting and harming others as well as yourself. So if you can conquer yourself, you become a credit to your society. If you can conquer yourself, you become a credit to your society. But victory with violence and power, these are associated, always associated with wicked greed and anger. Dominance over others, exercising control. That is dosha. You think you're ruling, but it's a dominion over others and exercising control over others is dosha. Basically making others subservient to you. That is the direction it goes. Not seeing the fault of this loba and dosa. Greed and anger. Not seeing, not knowing the faults. It's moha. You can define moha in a different way. Not knowing the faults of loba and dosa is called moha. Delusion, illusion, uncertainty. These are the translating, translated word for moha. And this loba dosa and moha, we can call it its evil dhamma. So dharma is a very widespread word. It has different meaning based on different contexts. And these loba dhamsa and moha are called dharma, but they are evil dhamma. Wa with war and violence, it never produces a true and permanent victory. It never ends. It always goes round and round and round. When you have enough power to suppress it, it's okay. When you lost the power, they come back. It's a never-ending process. But if we conquer our inner enemy, if we conquer our enemy, we are victorious over ourselves and also victory for the society. Not only yourself, the society also win. See these loba dosa moha, mental illness, they are a great danger. This let's call it fire of loba. Or another word is called raga, greed or lust. Raga. It is immeasurable. You can't measure it so big. Dosa, the anger aversion. It's like a fire. It will burn anything and everything. Whatever touches, dosa touches, it burns. And this moha, delusion, it will make you look like a fool. You'll become a fool under the influence of moha. So these are the internal fires, lobad, dosa and moha. And these internal fires or internal enemies cannot be conquered by force, by sheer will, by suppressing it. But it can be conquered by using, let me put another word, the three trainings. We call it three trainings. What are the three trainings? Sila, samadhi, vinya. Sila morality, samadhi mental concentration, vinya wisdom. With these threes, you can conquer the inner enemy. Or if you want to use another word, it can be conquered with eightfold noble path. Eightfold Noble Path. We are not going to expand a bit into the details. Right speech, right, right livelihood. That's morality. Right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. That is samadhi group. And then right thoughts and right feel. That is the wisdom group, sila samadhi binya, expanded into eight constituents. With that, you can conquer this inner enemy. And what is this eightfold part or three trainings called in another word? It called Siddhipattana Vikasana, mindfulness and sight meditation. So if you douse these fires or enemies, inner enemies, with the water of mindfulness and sight meditation, repeatedly, repeatedly, eventually you will extinguish them. You conquer them. So this is more in a larger scale. We are looking at these mental illness and its antidotes. Mental illness, their manifestation, antidotes, and their application. So let's go back to a little more precise in detail, right to our meditation, back to our practice. If you don't note, in other words, if you don't observe, in a meditation, you are not really noting, you are not really observing. Instead, what are you doing? If you are thinking, if you are imagining of the past and future. If you don't note, if you are thinking, imagining, fantasizing about the past and the future, what you are doing is you are brief befriending a non-liberated mind. And even one is observing, observing and noting. First one is not noting, this one is observing and noting. But you are observing and noting superficially. If you are noting superficially, still these mental defilement, kilisa, can come in and attack you. You are not safe if you note superficially. These what we call discussive thinking. Thoughts. These thinkings are nothing but you are reheating the old kilesa. You have done kilesa. By thinking you are reheating it, by recalling, you are reheating it. With the memories, you are reliving it. That's what you are doing. But one, we all need to put those kilisa we have done in the past. We have put them to rest. Such things as imagining in your meditation, planning, strategizing, scheming, instead of observing, noting properly. If you are doing those things, what is happening or what you are doing is you are seeding new killes for yourself. That is the reality. So the correct knowing. You can only know correctly if you observe correctly. Correct knowing of the object on the object that is arising at the present moment. If you can do that, it will discourage or it will push away all craving. And if you don't have the correct knowing, correct observation, automatically these craving and grasping will follow instantly. And if you don't know the true nature of the mind and body, or mind and matter, you will become attached to this mind and body. If you don't know the true nature of mind and body, you will become attached to this mind and body. Attached how? You will become attached through the concept of atta, self or soul. If you don't observe it, you will become attached to your mind and to your body through the concept of atta, a self or a soul. Or you will attach to these things through conceit, mana. Through conceit or through atta you will become attached to this mind and body. If you don't know correctly what they truly are. So here it is. This is what Buddha said. Quote from Buddha. Not knowing produce attachment. Of course, not knowing what the true nature of mind and body. Not knowing produce attachment. Knowing produce detachment. That's direct from the Buddha. And only through detachment one will find peace. Without detachment, you will never be able to find peace. This is Buddha code. So we are all traveling in this highway of life. Every one of us traveling in this highway of life. But if we travel this highway of life with mindfulness, Sati. If we travel, if we live, that means it becomes a part of you. If you travel this highway of life with mindfulness, you will find peace. You will find peace. So may you be able to travel your life journey with powerful mindfulness and may you be able to find or attain peace as soon as possible. Thank you very much.