In this week’s FBA Podcast “Life – For A Limited Time Only,” Suriyavamsa begins with the inevitability of death and some of our habitual attitudes to death and suffering, reading from contemporary poets. He brings out the Buddhist perspective that life and death are not separate, but parts of the same process. This talk was given at Parinirvana Day 2010 at the Glasgow Buddhist Centre.
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Life – For A Limited Time Only
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - We're off, right. Okay, I decided to do a talk on power of honor day and on death and it's been kind of haunting me for weeks. It's like having death following behind me for weeks and it's quite a sobering experience. The title is Life for a Limited Time Only. So I've just written some ideas and tried to string them together. I remember after I gave a talk last week, last year. Singing a generous conversation with me. That was 10 very good talks, all squeezed into an error. So I've been trying to put less of it. (laughing) Let's see how it goes. Okay, so if you're sitting comfortably. So you can if you look, if you dig around in the Buddhist tradition and in the Buddhist material and text, you can find material about living as a family and ways of making work your practice. Now a real stretch of your dig in there, you'll find material will be relevant to environmental and social issues. You can find all that, yeah. But there's no problem finding material about death. Buddhism does death well and does death big. So I'm going to try to explain why. So the first section is called The Inebitability of Death, yeah. It's a lovely essay by Sangarachita called where Buddhism begins and why it begins there. And it's in a crossing stream, it's in a series of essays that he wrote, mainly editorials for little magazines that were published in India way back in the '50s. There's some quite lovely stuff in there. In fact, you don't even have to buy it. I'm going to get trouble from Hell in A and Tommy, but you can see it. You can find a PDF of the whole book or in Sangarachita.org. And there's... - Pardon? - Pardon? - Pardon? - Oh wait, I'll throw it. Pardon, there you go. Right, I'm not going to get, I'm not going to get into trouble after all then. That's a relief. And here's a quote from it. Recognition of the first noble truth of suffering comes not as a pleasant intellectual diversion, but as a terrible emotional shock. Buddhism starts not with a concept, but with a feeling. Not with intellectual postulation, but with emotional experience. And it goes further into that. And the Buddhism starts, why it starts there, and why strength comes from that, and why that has led to survive all these thousands of years. Anyway, Buddhism doesn't begin with an abstract concept. It doesn't start with a God or a ground of being or nature or matter or society or money or capital or progress. Or the right of the individual. Or the right to the pursuits of happiness. Or the dialectic material struggle of the working class. Or class or gender or race. It doesn't start with having to adopt any of these abstract concepts and what from there. It starts with a major experience. It starts with suffering, the first noble truth. It's that classic list of what suffering is. Old age, sickness, death, grief and lamentation, being part of from what we love, having to be with what we hate. So here all is, this is part of life. And death is a fact, they never experience their life. It's real events. There are other people's deaths in a real life. So to say we're all going to die, or we're going to die, is not pessimistic. Pessimistic is where we see things. There's worse than they are, such as everything is suffering. That kind of colony that people put on to Buddhism, it's all suffering. That's pessimistic because you can just go out there and ice ice cream or eat that cake that Robert made or something. It's like, I'm enjoying this. This is not suffering, yum, yeah. So life is not, that's a pessimistic, that's worse than it is. Optimism is where we see things as better than they are. We're going to be happy all the time. One day, we're just going to be all be happy all the time, yeah. If you say you're going to die, it's just realistic. It's just a matter of fact. It's not exaggerating the issue, it's not minimizing the issue. It's just stating it mathematically. It's what is actually going to happen. In our society, with a fine health system in our country, and with a high life expectancy, for each of us out of time, it's quite probable, yeah. But death is inevitable, yeah. But no matter how developed your country is, no matter how long you can expect to live, everybody still dies once. It doesn't handle it in a fashion with period costume. You look back in old medieval texts and it's like, "They're going on a bit of death, that's the terrible society." But everyone of them died just once. And everyone of us will die just once, yeah. It's just as popular. And we prepare for retirement, yeah, because that's probably a bit of prepare for that. But do prepare for death. It's the next section's called "The physical impossibility of death "in the mind of someone living." You never thought it'd be calling the Damien Horstman. (laughing) A terrible object, we even call it art, but rather a good title, yeah. That's a big shark in the tank, haven't recalled that for a while. Death is the ultimate in ungraspability. I've been reflecting this on, like, a red years ago or something, actually. I think maybe a Hindu teacher, but he was saying that death is not something they learn to face. It's when we lose our face all together, like graphic, isn't it? But it's like, we think, like, we can be big and brave, and everything, and get over it, yeah. But death is ungraspable, it's unfixable, it's ungetable, yeah. All stories that we make are inadequate, before short, yeah. We have ideas of continuing past death. We have ideas of ceasing upon death. They're all equally abstract, yeah. They're all speculative, yeah. Maybe they're constructed on this side by us. All these constellations we make up, they're for sentimental. They're for cynical, all the fears we make up. They're all made by us here on this side of death. It's a harmless thing about me. It decides to, I could end this life with a bare boardkin, isn't it, and then he thinks. And there's a rub, it doesn't know what will come, and that stops him, yeah. And that is the impossibility. Inconceability, the physical possibility, you cannot conceive of death in a living mind. I've been reflecting on this poem by Philip Larkin. I was told it was pronounced obeyed, a very famous poem. It is most things may never happen. This one will, he's lying awake at four in the morning, the room's slowly becoming light, and it's a lovely, lovely, it's a very typical Larkin, gloomy picture of life. And he's sitting there contemplating death as they're facing him. He says, most things may never happen. This one will. Being brave lets no one off the grave. Death is no different find that than what's stood. So this strikes me as a brilliant poem, as poetry, in the way the works work, and the structure works as brilliant as them. It's uncompromisingly depicting the bare fact of death. So it's time with this poem on the treat that I'll be telling people who's going to be doing this talk. And they pointed out, they're an essay by Sheamus Heaney, so I dug this out in his book of Essie's The Redress of Poetry, in which he compares this poem by Larkin by a poem by Eats. And he's saying that Eats is a more creative response to death. It's like you respond to death, or you live life as a theatre, as a kind of a role. And it's much more creative, much more imaginative, and much more optimistic, and this bleak one of Larkin, that he puts the favourite of all its yeats. And it is definitely stood. And there are human creative responses to death. So hopefully I'll get round to these. Still, death is a frontier, isn't it, of any personal growth? Yeah, because a personal runs out. Your personality runs up, and goes no further. It's where the self and self-development, too, can go no further. So all we build up, self-esteem, wealth, skills, relationships, knowledge, are hard-air and opinions, we leave it behind, we leave it all behind. I was trying to think, what phrase would you have of what goes with you? Because reflecting on those contemplations, and those verses we're reading out during the meditations out there, it's like death is inevitable. Time of death is uncertain. And only the Dharma will be of use at the point of death. So something that's going on. And I thought the news to think of was, there's all these externals, all these things you pile up. The Dharma, or what does carry on, or what does make a difference. The sun a bit deeper, and the news to basically think of it was a change of heart. Yeah. Anyway. So if you're always effort into developing yourselves in all these ways, where they would decorate yourselves, like a big overloaded Christmas tree, don't you know, all these schedules, and self-esteem, and money, and connections, and other things. And then, why would we do this? Because there's nothing bigger in our culture today than me. This me has to hold everything. It's a sounding modern language where you get all these huge pan-thanes of a generation, so people would revere us miles above them. Suddenly, it's all part of our subconscious. We load it onto ourselves, yeah. The Buddha within, the inner guru, all has to be held when I was, all squeezed into me. We end up doing less and less collective things. We do less of this, while they're voting, yeah. And it's, you know, it was already doing it. 50 pups close a week in the morning. So we can't even get drunk together. We can't even go out and miss the habe together. We're losing any kind of reference beyond this me, beyond where I am. And we even do it inversely, yeah. We even sort of, some of us, by temperament, do so much, build ourselves up, just put ourselves down. I am rubbish. I'm a failure. Yeah, we're still piling all up on us, focusing all around us, you know, in a sort of dirty cell protest of the old "I'm rubbish, I can't manage it." Yeah. It's still putting up a huge weight on our individual cells. We build ourselves up with problems, we build ourselves up. We're being ill and fill our whole lives, because there's no big context with my problem, my treatment, my diet, dedicating our lives to sort of a particular thing that we attach to ourselves, that we build ourselves up. This is why death's today's taboo. Yeah. Death, me, me, meets it, and can go ill further. It's the end of me. But the thing, like, Chamegians are lovely, they're brilliant, they're very useful, because you notice they're in poking fun at things that become taboos, and as the years go by and taboos change, you see them moving at a time. There's very few of them really go towards death. Even they stand respectfully and have a fear of them approaching it. So we can't handle it. We can't have a context for it, because it's the end of this meeting is the very centre of the world, is our world. The last time I came back from India last February, I was sitting in a cafe, and I was just watching people move about. Just for those few days when you come back from a different country, you see your own place very differently. And it was awesome watching individuals who had developed so much individuality and intensity on themselves, and they had huge amounts of space around them. In India, I was just crumbling, brushing all the end of the work, and figuring out these things, and everyone's much closer together. There's a few work around them, great with some little bit of enormous space, and there's just great creatures that have put so much effort, so many resources into developing them, these towering individuals, and this enormous space that we need around us, and the amount of resources that we need to maintain this and pile this in. It was the reading that a British child has a carbon footprint 150 times a size when he's the open child. It's very costly, all this energy it takes to sort of make this marvellous me of marvellous self. So no wonder we're so stressed, we're so exhausted, we're so lonely. It's like we've been up all night, decorating the room, we're staying in, and we've forgotten it's our hotel room, and we're checking out before noon. [LAUGHTER] Just then the whole night. I want to do it in this color, isn't it? This is it, in my colors, purple, lovely, you know? And it's like by noon the child's going to be knocking the door, saying, "Excuse me, can I have my room back?" Yeah, and the good of all go is in a flash, yeah? None of it comes with us, none of it helps at the moment of death. Retail therapy wouldn't work, yeah? It was the old phrase, when people did a few more of it about death, it was like, "There's no pockets in the shroud." So it sees a talk that was listened to for this on the four deflections by four women. I think that Taira Naloka was done with dinner, with tree, rather than in a vidro darshny, am I staying with her? We've studied it last year, some of you. You can get it all when people have studied it, I mean, Roger Darshny talks about, she said she drew the short straw, she got the one on death and the deflection we're doing earlier. And she talks a bit about her father dying recently. Not only was she shocked, but here she was at 37, and she was expecting us to happen, which was in the 50s, and then suddenly here it was a father dying. She was always quite poignant, quite personal reflections on the experience. And her watch, her father's watch was sitting there, left behind. And his vest was left behind. She'd never seen him without a vest, and there was left behind. So these very personal things all just get left. So to engage with death needs something bigger than the usual lifestyle choices, the usual politics, academic philosophies or science. They too always seem to run out on the border. These cowboy films where the posse is chasing after the bandit, usually the hero has found it, and they get the Rio Grande, and it crosses into Mexico, and the posse stops. In my experience of all these, their jurisdiction is Texas. We were just crossing over this river, like classical image, and the river sticks and all that, into this other territory, and they just pull the horses up, their jurisdiction runs out. He's something old, he's a religion, don't he? Which is equally home in Mexico or Texas. Yeah, but I've written here, but as practice, isn't that get out of jail card? It's not a way to sidestep, suffering, death, loss. I just don't want to experience quite a bit of a beginner's and meditation, but I don't want to get a blank mind, I just want to be relieved and not experienced. So I'm going to come back to this, but I'm going to measure several times. We're talking about death, it's not moving into glibness, but it's like moving deeper into the experience, deeper into the experience of loss, and growing, growing beyond. You're not really growing beyond suffering, but growing beyond the meaningless repetition of these experiences, over and over again, death, loss, grief, lamentation, finding a way of moving out from that suffering to the end of suffering. We need to be careful, we don't miss you as Buddhist teachings, we don't acquire them to suit ourselves. For example, there's particular books, as one in the bookshop I will mention, which uses the Tibetan Book of Dead as a way of establishing a continuity of consciousness, but you will continue, you will be a continuation of you. It seems to be a complete misunderstanding of what death is used for in Buddhism, and what is the Tibetan Book of the Dead. You all know that it bardles the gap, the space. It's not a little handy shuttle link between stations. What is a gap? It's an ungraspability itself. There's something no-thing can be built upon, or hooked onto. Architect students always get something thrown back to them, and the design something just won't stay up, and what is the clicker works or the guy is trying to give them a qualification saying, "There's no-ships thing, there's a sky-hook." So you make some unlikely building, and you just subconsciously thought, "I can hook it on the sky." But bardle, there's no-sings of sky-hook, you cannot hook anything. You cannot build anything, you cannot establish anything on that. There's no continuity through that space. That is why it's such a strong part of practice. It's the very gap between our subtleties. There's a noble, graspable thing there. It's not the bardgum. And the other cliche we use, it's not continuity. The other cliche we use, it just isn't adequate. That of cessation, nothing, stopping. That way of life ends. There's no continuity, there's no meaning, there's no consequence. No way one is a sentimental approach, one is a cynical approach. It's the two extreme views. One's called continuity, I think it's sassata vada, the view of continuity, and the other ones of you cutting off are chatta vada, which I don't know. And it's like, these are the extremes, in the middle way. So it passes between these, in the middle way, in the middle way, in the other way. So this is the first way that bosom does death well, it does not ignore it. Death is an aspect of the way things are. And if we're not making the effort to pay as much attention as we can to how things are, how this is, how life is, and all its facets, then, and if we're not also making the same effort to cultivate, an emotional positive, they can stay with that attention. Emotional positive, an emotional robustness, that sustains attention. And we can hardly call ourselves bosom, that's what bosom is. So we have looking and seeing life, an emotional robustness, be able to look at it and see it unadorned. Buddhist practice is bigger than death. The paraphrase bell shankly, it's not a matter of death, life and death, it's much more important than that. Yeah. So if we're serious about Buddhist practice, we use death. And Buddhist practice uses death as a precious example of something that doesn't fit into the normalised, fixed up, built up world where we're stuck with something. We've got ourselves a lot of things. It's something that's a glitch, a gap, that we can't just glide over and be in a normal fixed way. And if we're serious about this practice, if we're serious about freedom, we'll be on the lookout for such cracks, such gaps. The same way an artist, if something goes wrong in a painting, we get very interested in how it works. We see writers, when they say they get worked mixed up by accident, they love it because here's a chance to get beyond cliche and get beyond predictable and there's something new and there's something open. And Buddhist practice, you're looking at the cracks and the gaps between the normal, get out, routine. This is me, this is mine, this is that, this is this. Death is there. There's a strongest example in our lives where that doesn't fit, where that grasping, that closing, that fixing can't take hold. That's why the Buddhist practice would pay attention to it. The very fact that death is inconceivable when the mind of a living makes it very valuable indeed. Next section is life is no other than death. Death no other than life. I've got a poem here from Staying Alive, it's a blood acts anthology. I've been pouring over, it's got a lovely, big, thick section in there. No wonder life's been over there. OK, Jan Kuplinsk, Estonian, it's been translated of course. Death does not come from outside. Death does not come from outside, death is within. Born, grows together with us, goes with us to kindergarten and school, learns with us to read and count, goes sledging with us and to the pictures, seeks with us the meaning of life, tries to make sense with us of Einstein and Viner, makes with us our first sexual contacts, marries, bears children, quarrels, makes up, separates, or perhaps not, with us, goes to work, goes to the doctor, goes camping, to the convalescent home in a sanatorium, grows old, sees children married, retired, looks after grandchildren, grows ill, dies with us, let us not fear them. Our death will not outlive us. So again, to paraphrase something, I'm going to paraphrase the heart, such a truth. Death is not other than life, life is not other than death. Death is only life, life only death, just to see emptiness form, life, death. Death is not something that waits at the end of life, it's part of it, yeah. Part of my research as well, is looking up, watching a good old Dan Crixshank, I'm telling, I'm an addict of documentaries, especially people at Dan Crixshank, some of the art of dying is a TV programme, he's going around looking at more memorials and different aspects of artists working with death, and one of the highlights was him interviewing Maggie Handling, you know her? Brilliant drawer, brilliant artist, and she's talking about drawing her dead lover, her dead partner, with her own zest and her real appreciation, yeah. It's like her, her creative, her own artist, so it's not so much sensibility, zest, it was you for life and for form, for art, kind of like takes in that death too, and she was showing down in the cameras the drawings. She talks about Rembrandt in Francis Bacon, and she's like, they're artists who can draw a figure so that's alive, you can also see his mortality, typically you see that with Rembrandt, you get these faces, they have middle aged women, they're middle aged men, and you can see there's a real, I think Rembrandt gets them when they're in the artist, they know there's a being there looking back, yeah. The paint lines rise out of the canvas, it's almost like you can see the eyes, the real presence of life, affectality, the unique personality and energy in life, at the same time you see the paint, and it's flesh, it's a mortality of flesh that was pointed to decay and death, and the bullet through there, they talked about that, she was so, and her drawings were like emulating and living up to what these guys could do, so both alive and dead, and there was death in life. So look, we're listening earlier to the, the, the four reminders, yeah, you've got them in the handouts there, if you missed it, the early before, dinner, some pressures of human life, death and impermanence, karma, actions of consequences, and the defects of success are unenlightened life. So we're reflecting these, the purpose of reflecting these is to improve the quality of our life, it's not a hastened death, or make us just wish it would come sooner, but to improve the quality of being alive now, yeah. Pamavadra gave us his talks recently at Pamavoka on Pamasamova, and somewhere in there, I was listening to them there, he asked himself, if he was to die right now, would he be spending his last minutes doing this? You can do this in yourself, like, it's telling them like, is this the best way of spending my last minutes? So you can reflect, what's my favourite things, sweating at a computer, you know, I just think, I'd like this to be a last minute, you know, watching rubbish on TV, this is worse than like, you remember your mother always said, make sure you get cleaned up again, in case you get run over and it's a bit like that, on a model, they're rehearsing mentally, yet again, that argument, you're never actually going to have out loud with a person, you know, it's too often to use, I go, no, no, no, please don't control it, yeah, it's like, if that was going to be our last minute, you know, would you choose differently, yeah. So why do we do these things now in this precious moment, yeah, for the stack of coins, this pound is worth as much as the last one, this moment is valuable, and is in relation to the last, and the end of them is the last one. It's not a matter of, you know, that lads magazine out, it should have, what are you trying to do before you die, is that desperation of, like, a kind of supermarket sweet grab, you know, you've got to get trying all the very best things and cram it into, have you reached 40 or something, it's no matter that, it's a matter of, um, just loving each life as if it was a lot of stuff, reflecting on the preciousness of it, yeah, because those two reflections are first out on the presciences of our human life, and the reflection and permanence and death are closely woven together, yeah, and awareness of death makes life precious, and most of us have at some moment where we're at a mere death event, and I see you selling the store, and accidentally, I remember myself, I think I'm still a teenager, but lying in a concrete floor, the bull's head digging into my chest, I was like thinking, this is it, yeah, and somehow getting up, and for a day or two, the nonsense was out, and my family was precious, and where I was was precious, and life was precious, and then the cobwebs slowly started to. But the vitality of that day after, you know, we brought on a farm, I know that, like, kills most people, machinery and bills, and there was, like, unconquered thinking, it's over. So it's that sense, you're reflecting on death, it's improved life. It was a talk to, it was a neck or something, about the grieving process, about bereavement, and a big part of that is unresolved issues that someone has with the person who's dying, and you can't let go. A big part of coming to terms with somebody's death, coming to terms of bereavement, is resolving, and I thought, it's the same of our own lives. If we resolve our life, then death, our death, will be a definite matter. We'll be on terms with it. So we live well, so if you live well, we'll die well. So these four reminders, the practices to overcome today's big ailments. Forget everything else, the big ones we've got to watch out for are complacency and dissipation. So I was trying to tighten that aside, I'm trying to get this finished this morning, I was, I couldn't help thinking about shopping malls, they all seem for me to be the epitome of complacency and dissipation. I got anemic quality of them, so I'm more of an architecture itself. So minimal, it makes shakers look like restoration dandies. It's like steel and plainest wood, just quite, even quite, quite a bit of excite, cream walls, you know, what's a glass, you know. I just thought of that seeing the Blues Brothers, the car is trashing that shopping mall, do you remember that? I always thought it's not the best response I've seen culturally to the modern retail, the drive-in and the crashing, they come out, but you could be more elegant, couldn't you? And just, you know, something like the occurrence, there was that one on there, apparently. I think they're in twice, if I'm a father, tiresome, but you know, they're in cold cars, what are they called? Concourses or something? It's right in the middle, it's just a coffin, just sitting there, and you can put lovely irises and draperies and things on it, and of course, everyone wants to try and fit it into something, it's like, what are they selling here? You're going to try to fit it into your paddling, you're consuming it, so you'll shop, shop, shop, shop. What are you selling here? Insurance, or you know, just telling it, you're open to die, you know, the humanity of the shopping mall has been disturbed by that extra priority. It opens up, I mean, it even flies out. We could do that, but harder to arrange, yeah? You'd have to do these. What are they called? What are they called? They're called on film sets with the work of horses, Wranglers, you have to have a Raven Wrangler, right? So wake up, we're all going to die, what are you going to do about it? I always remember, there's been a badger former chairman here in the first hell walking retreat, he turns on top of cliffs and sets them. We're all going to die, what are you going to do about it? It's a bit more lively kind of hell walking retreat. The Badger Carata Sutter, I think that's in the Suttanapata, ardently doing what should be done today for who knows, tomorrow death, there is no bargaining with mortality and his mighty hoard. So these four reflections that to set her mind to practice the Dharma thoroughly for the deepest of reasons, to get below all that accumulation, and all that adding on to make ourselves into a big stacked up Christmas tree, is to get down into the change of heart, that's what they're for, to stay the Dharma till that later on. The big reasons to abandon greed, hatred and ignorance completely and to end suffering completely, not just to tinker with a few cherry-picked pieces of the Dharma for a little patch job or a little palliative therapy. I love writing that. Death is life and life is death. So let's make it a bit counterintuitive, it's the way it is. Things don't actually arise, abide and cease in discrete phases. You've been to Poseidon's Saturday morning study group, you'll have had a lot of this. So things simultaneously arise and cease. And this point, this is Poseidon's catch what isn't it, and this baffled me for years, so this is the fruits of my wacking around this. There's no fixable thing there at all at any point to do any actual abiding. A flower fades even as it comes into blue. You can watch this in the flowers in your house. It's like it's coming to something, it comes to something, it comes to something. And before it even got to full bloom, there's bits of stun to fade away again. A cup of tea, peaks and it's being drunk. There's no abiding tea. This will go brin tea, cease good here, culminates in its culmination, it ceases. This talk is unraveling work by work, minute by minute towards its end. And all the preparation culminates in its end. This talk's delivery that I've been working for and building this up, isn't very, so it's very cessation, very kind of feeding away. Last week I was down at Pyramaloka. And the first weekend I got there on that day of Friday, it snowed in Norfolk. And Sunday morning was lovely. I had a look at grounds, a few acres all straight out. Twenty years ago I started planting little trees, they made a little wood to come in these lovely little trees. Some of them get into the height of this room, even there. And the snow was all piled up on the branches of the trees. And as these kind of things, a little bit like cackens in a bush with these big bushy flower things. And those big piles just piled up on them with snow. And the sun was coming out, it's a lovely clear day. And the sun was rising, the temperature was coming up. And then the word was just this. How's the snow just flitting? Lovely visual image of just little vertical slashes of white as it is, as the snow was flitting down. Each little heap of snow was poised within a narrow range of temperature. So I've been a few degrees colder. I've been that horrible, useless, powdery snow, you can't make snowballs. I'm going to get you trying to get a stuff to come back together. I'm just going off the tree. So there's a right temperature, it's a stick, it's staying on the branches. But the temperature was rising and it's leaving the other side of this parameter. And it was becoming another conditions were no longer there, but then to remain poised on the branches. It was getting too warm for them. So they're supported. Pounds of snow were supported in the narrow range of essential conditions. And the conditions were changing and no longer supported them. This is a very simple, pure example of conditioning co-production. We're the same in a much more complex way. Our system, the system makes us up, has evolved a much higher degree of complexity. The snow has been put on five things involved in all these supportive conditions and that's not. But even with our complexity, we too are a concurrence of conditions. We're at a poise, there's a poise of supportive conditions. A bit like a pyramid of performing acrobats. When these police used to do it the time used to stack up on the motorbike are completely poised and completely balanced. Supporting this consciousness that we call me. And when the conditions change and that poise falls apart, these conditions can no longer support us and they can consciousness cease, cease, this experience now, cease. What we do is we grasp, we try to hold and build upon what is temporarily come together. It's a bit like you're in the motorway and you're making patterns out of the traffic, it's going by. So you go, wow, that was four red Toyotas in a row. That must mean something. For it's just random traffic and you're making patterns out, but you're trying to make patterns and hold and trying to build significance into it. The thing is we don't get too attached to four Toyotas in a row, but we get very attached to this conglomeration. We get very attached to the conglomerations and rounders that we're close to. So we build up a sense of meaning, a sense of exhibit tape. There we go, right here. So for the recording, this is like my ponytail I just cut off. Is that mean? Was it me once? When did it cease being me? Yes, it's still getting used to putting my mouth on my case so I know I'm going to do this. And if it was once, when did it stop being me? There's all these many, many conditions, many, many things that come together and we bundle and tie and identify. A weird thing looking at you. You're just for you because it goes behind me. So there we go, exhibit tape. Damapada, verse 62. The spiritually immature person bet he some self thinking, sons are mine, riches are mine. He himself is not his own even. How then sons, how then riches. So we have to say it again at this point, yeah, buddhist practice isn't a ghetto jail card. Yes, no one exemptions from feeling. You don't get to glib answers because you somehow become spiritual. You know, so your mother has died. Oh, well, never mind, all things impairment. You get charmed out for that. Right, right. It's not a way to sidestep the human predicament, but it's a way to grow through it, to bring awareness and kindness to it, to grow through it. So here's the best poem I know in this, yeah. I've cribbed it again from Vajradashini's talk that I was talking about earlier. Isa, Japanese pure land poet. So he lost his children. I think he was a monk in his early life, but he managed to get married, his poor children, and they all died in a smallpox epidemic. And his wife died with a thing of the same disease. So this is a very famous poem, and it's, I'll just say one thing about Jew, so it's a famous, a favorite Japanese image for impairment. This kind of interest we have in Wabi Sabi, and the Sabi bit is a sort of poignant, aesthetic, refined sadness that usually comes with reflection and impermanence and things passing. And a lot of Japanese poetry sort of moves towards that, and they have these classic images, and Jew is one of them. So Jew is a symbol for tears, a symbol for sorrow. It's a symbol for, if you look at the delicate reflections, each of the Jew drops reflecting the others. So you have this symbol for the gossamer illusion of this impairment world. And then a so short lived, just like the bloke house of snow is talking about, yeah, assumed to vanish. So the symbol for this poignant femurality is a lot of things. This world, this world of Jew is only a world of Jew, and yet all and yet. So this world of Jew is only a world of Jew, and yet all and yet it was the western. It was the heart of the tender. It was the last night of all and yet you can't dismiss it with this world of Jew. Thank you. It reminded me of being down at this Christmas, and being right down to earth, and saving my thoughts, and there was ice on the drive, and the car was at the bottom and I didn't make it up, and they were going out, and they were getting into the late 70s now, and they're starting to get a bit frail and various things you're on with, and they've just caught them out the window, kind of like helping each other down across the ice. Some of these little old round, we all can become into the old round people, but we're nearly quite frail, just helping each other down across the ice. The song about that worries that we also have prepared to get older and everything, but still it was a poor in each other. It's something about the human, the tender human quality, and the midst of impairment, the frailty of being human. So the Buddha's life, the Buddha's power of vanity, it's not just about our experience of death, it's not about us, we're commemorating the Buddha's power of honor, the Buddha's own passing away, this is what the statue here symbolises. So I'll come back to this. To the degree we consider ourselves the Buddhist, we go for refuge to the Buddha, we orientate ourselves to his teachings, to the example of his life and towards his experience. What we do is we bring our own experience into alignment with the experience of the Buddha, through his teaching, through the Dharma, what we can find and read and then reflect on in the Dharma. And our response to death that we have and become more aware of comes into relation with his insight into death, and our relation to death is informed by that, our response is informed. So I'm going to look at the Buddha's two main experiences of suffering in death, there's two points where suffering and death are major or feature large. The first one's is going forth. Firstly, there's a young Buddha, well pre-Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and he sees old age, sickness and death with famous images, the stories of how we've seen the old person, the sick person, the dead person in the streets. And this is back to Buddhism beginning with the experience of suffering. This is where historically, Buddhism began in those images, those sights sinking in. He responds by going forth, he cuts off his princely hair and his beard, he takes off his jewelry, he takes off his fancy robes, he puts on rags and he leaves home, he leaves habit, custom and circumstance. He's followed the, I don't know who says it, but he's followed his advice, who's a hacker or something, if you're afraid of dying, die now and you'll never have to do it again. This is his response. So Buddhist practice is full of going forth, it's full of renunciation, not supportive these days, but in a way you dig through the Buddhist texts and you can't miss it. Initiation is a heart of Buddhist practice, now we've hit this ordination, we can think of, we've got our deans, we're going to get something, but we're not gaining anything in a sense, it's a going forth, it's a letting go, ordination, initiation moving deeper into Buddhist practice, isn't itself a death, it's a letting go. In a very important sense, we don't get anything, it's about to see and forth, see it as a, a going forth or letting go from what's hampering you, a going forth into the unknown, because if it was knowing, it wouldn't be going forth, we'd do a little shuttle bus with back to that bar, but we'd be sort of like going to something we know already, there's not a going forth. These are treat centers of Gucculoka, for men, a cache of honor for women, who people go on their four months retreats, three months retreats. The bit that tigers caves in the mountains, hook prints go in, nothing comes out. Usually people do come back out again, I can back out again, but it's like the attitude, the method is you're leaving and you're going into that annoying, and this is what changes. That's initiation, that's one way of looking going forth, another is love, love is going out from oneself into the unknowing. It's a giving to another, it's not a getting something. Anything fulfilling involves change, involves moving from one thing to another. It was here in recently that there's plans, magic of Guccul, in Birmingham Square, a number of people live, and I've studied retreats down there, and various activities, and there's the order office there, and it's like, and Senga actually has got his, he's got his bounty flag to one side, where he's partly sighted, and he just knows the routine round that he goes water in the garden, he'll go down the hill to the local park, and go walks with people around that, and he's just kind of like quite happy living there. There's plans to sell it up and move and build somewhere else, that's a new central place where the order can have conventions and larger meetings and such like having an area for him, and he's 84, he hardly sees, got used to his routines, and he's not that keen in going, but I heard that he said something recently about, well okay, I suppose we should never stop going forth. The Guha, oh how do you say this? Guha taka sutta, from a sutta napata. See there, floundering in the sense of mind, like fish in the puddles of a dried up stream, and seeing this live with me, and seeing this live with no mind, not forming attachment for states of becoming, subdued dark desire for both sides, comprehending sensory contact with no breed, doing nothing for which he himself would rebuke himself, the enlightened person doesn't adhere to what's seen, to what's heard, comprehending perception, he'd cross over the flood, the sage not stuck in possessions, then with our own removed, living heatfully, he longs from neither this world or the next. Just a little bit of stuff around a bit is going forth, so it's part of Anna, so we're celebrating today. Pari is a bit simply put complete utter utterly, and Nirvana is the one for blowing out, the blowing out the ending of great hatred and delusion, whereas one of the online translators, Tanisaro puts on binding, so it's complete and utter blowing out, or complete and utter unbinding. This is what when the Buddha's lying down, that he was just simple, this is him coming to the end of his life, and moving into things get tricky here, it's said that the Buddha, after it's part of Anna, is neither reborn, or not reborn, or both, or neither. In a way, it's the going forth, still continued, and to realms that we don't know what to do. The Muni Sita, Mr. Nepata says, knowing old wellings, not longing for anyone, anywhere, truly a sage, with no coveting, without greed, he does not build what he has gone beyond. The part of Anna starts to feel, this little one we've got here, which I said he brought back from Bodgaya on our pilgrimage three years ago now, or the big one you get cushioning off where the Buddha died, the Buddha had his part of Anna, which is lame. It's this length, it's almost, isn't it? It's a big length of a stone at the carriage for about a thousand miles away. It's a material all the way up to Kishinigar, and as something about the figure, it's completely at home, completely at ease, and completely at home, with that last thing, knowing old wellings, not longing for anyone, anywhere, totally ease with everything, but not holding or building or grasping to anything, at home and having gone beyond, but not gone beyond to anywhere. It isn't the Buddha death, then a really big Buddha. It's just like this ungraceable, isn't it, isn't it, anywhere, bigger than death, but not a bigger thing, not anything at all, not even nothing, but boundless, as we can get, unbinding, boundless, going forth from any grass boundary, any fixed identity, utterly beyond our little grasping might. So I want to just, I'm almost finished now, two deaths. So I looked at death being inevitable, yeah, it's not a matter of avoiding it, but the Buddha isn't not going to give you a we get a geocar that will help you avoid experience. It's a matter of which death we choose, a good one or a bad one. Negatively, we cling to what is already passing, what is going, we're like clinging to something that's already dead, for me, maybe it's living with somebody watching Bucky the Vampire Slayer. It's all these horror images of vampires, zombies, everything, it's all kind of something that should be dead, but it's still carrying on it. So that's death that are wrong, you're clinging to something that you're losing. The other is positive as the going forth, it's living with the way life is, living with the ever-changing nature of things, everything in life is impermanent, flowing over into the next. Maybe it's going with the beater of life. I couldn't help thinking of, you know, beluding a jungle bird to one of my favorite characters, he says at one point, get with a beak bagsy. There's that stuffy pants that are in the black panther, he's going to be proper in pocket English accent, and the loo's going to get with a beak bagsy here. So that's the positive, is get with the beak of life, get with the way life is, the transient, ungraspable nature. And our studies of Buddhism all probably come across this with quill of life, in a spiral path. As these two modes, the negative is as exotic, the round, the endless round, the quill of life. It's cyclical, it's going round, maintained by craving and grasping, endless round of clinging and soft, clinging and soft. The neurovanic, the spiritual path, is that of this being at least to something greater, this least to something greater, this least to something more free, this least to something more free, this least to something more unbound, this least to something more unbound. Oh and it goes, yeah, opening into potential, and growing, and developing. And that is our choice, that's the heart of our Buddhism. It's why in these courses we just go over and over again, don't we? Again, of course, level two, start the metrical course, you have two metricals, you have the, we come back to these two images again again, some side, and then they're landing, yeah, living well, living badly, dying badly, living well, dying well. When Blake sums up, as usual, doesn't he? He who binds to himself with joy, does the wing of life destroy, but he who kisses the joys, it flies, lives, and eternity sunrise. Finally, compassion for all beings. So I've got another image of the week, walking greater, the part of the loca, some of the picture of, this will be the biggest Christmas present I've ever seen. A group in Taiwan at Hong Kong sent the part of her movement, the part of her order, the movement out in Nagaloka, in Nagakura, sent them a 20 meter Buddha. How long is that? Perfect, it's upright, you know, and this Buddha is striding, walking, and this is an image I think that Dr. Mbadka, nobody Dr. Mbadka who's sort of struggled to free the untouchable, his people, like Indian Buddhist, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela, out of the suffering, and he was always criticized in the monks, he was the Buddhist senior for being passive, and he thought the Buddha warped, he was interested in striding, walking, Buddha, so Nagaloka has got this picture of this. Have a look, it's probably on TVMSG to have everyone use. He wasn't getting out of a big parcel. What we got, what's this? I'm rapping it. No, not the whole dental hospital. 20 meters. But this is the Buddha responding after his awakening. The Buddha's enlightenment does not stop under the Bodhisri, it's not the culmination, it's when he gets up, it's when he walks all the way to South Earth through the heat of the main dune, well, the dune isn't a heat of what's now Bihar, and he goes to find these other people who have practiced with him before, and he communicates to them, they get the message, and that is the combination of his enlightenment. So this is a sub-kind of Buddha, isn't it? We look to the Buddha going forth, quite dynamic, we look to Parnavana, it's just active Buddha, it's an active heroic Buddha. In a way, if you want to chill, you just go across to the Buddha bar, in a dark corner, in your chill there. Buddhism is this active outgoing, outward moving tradition, an embed cover stress in there. When the Buddha decides to leave the piece of the Bodhisri, when he comes down, out of his exalted matter of states, when he comes down to reach out to others, he says, "There are those with but little dust in their eyes, open as the door to the deathless." He's going to communicate the Dharma, the Dharma followed, the Buddhist practice follows the way from death, suffering to the deathless. So his response is a Dharma, born out of compassion. It's already exalted, isn't it? The Buddha is going forth from a matter of bliss from the piece of the Bodhisri, and walking out to connect with others, to move out to those others. But in her more immediate level, her level of practice, it's practicing matter. It's going forth from that isolation, from that stacked up, inquisitive, almost not like Christmas tree figure, out into empathy, out into solidarity with others. It's moving a practice into a bigger context. It's acting out of the awareness of the preciousness of all human life, of all life. As I phrase, colloquial terms, this world is not about you, darling. I was thinking of terms in image of what a wonderful world it would be, if that's me and me and my problems. It didn't always get in the way. It's like, "But I'm a camera. You're taking lovely views." And the me always wants to get right in the middle. Endless photographs with the same face. Look at me. Whereas we don't mind them being in a picture, but just as much as the other people. There's always lovely beautiful views out there to see, always other lovely people to see. There's always me going, "What about me?" Getting and filling up the view. Rather than just being there in the scene, not hogging it. Always spoiling the scenery in every photo. Damapata. Others do not realize they were all heading for death. Those who do realize it will compose their quarrels. All living beings are terrified of punishment, all fear death, making comparison of others with oneself. One should neither kill, nor cause to kill. It's the empathy. It's like precious of one's own experience, and there's another being, so it'll be the same. Life's short, so those who realize we're heading for death compose quarrels. And the one about the, we're all terrified of punishment. We're all terrified of suffering. We all fear death. We're all in the same leaky bullet. It's like the people once a page I'm getting to get. And one more people who are on the brink of serious illness, and then get a sort of reprieve, or a kind of clear ticket again. And then think, "Oh, that's great." And then realize we're just coming down off with the gunnels into the same leaky bullet as the rest of us. The whole boat's slowly thinking. We only get an extension of life, isn't it? It's a viable extension of life. We're all in the same leaky bullet. So love, meta, is the only response to suffering, whoever is experiencing it. And love is a going forth. It's going forth from holding the grasping, the sort of, and a helpful way of living, and the unhelpful way of dying, into that help with a bigger, truer world. A world of both life and death, of unstoppable rising, and unstoppable ceasing. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [end] [BLANK_AUDIO]