(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - Thank you for having me for that very warm welcome. It's always really good to come to Bristol. And very good to see all of you, a lot of familiar faces. And it's always very good to see people that I hadn't seen before. Mr. Skreit, I have a full shrine room, just kind of numb all, good hire, and there's a nice big old numb all, big, good hire, sort of big voice behind you. Oh, this is good. So, as Kenneth Joty mentioned, over the last quite a few weeks, in this class, you've been looking at the principle of conditionality in different ways. So, I'm the, well, actually I'm a sort of an appendix or an afterthought to that series, really. It's just like it's coming down now. So, I feel like I could do something about conditionality. And I thought it would be good to do something about conditionality and meditation. Partly 'cause that's what I've been quite busy with over the last few years. I haven't done three years' meditation retreat. And also because it's important, vital, that we don't just take in the idea of conditionality, but we really make it our own. We really make it how we see things, how we see life. Because it's only if we do that, that would be in harmony with how things actually are. If everything arises in dependence on conditions, and we're not seeing life like that, and we're operating as if it doesn't, then there will be friction between how we're seeing life and how life actually is. And that friction is what we call dukkha in Buddhism. It's suffering. So yeah, I'm gonna start just by looking a little bit at the principle of conditionality. And I probably won't say anything that hasn't been covered in the course of the last weeks, but I suspect you probably weren't all here every week, and it's always good to have a reminder anyway. So the principle of conditionality is really central to what the Buddha saw when he gained awakening enlightenment by the river Narangira 2,500 years ago. It's been central to the whole way in which Buddhism has been taught and expressed ever since. And as you'll know, the central way of expressing it is something like all our experience comes about independence on particular conditions. And as those conditions change, so our experience changes. It's really, really simple as you think, well, yeah, I know that. But very often we don't. If we do know it on some level, we don't apply it to our lives in all sorts of ways. So yes, everything that arises independence on conditions, both external and internal. So for instance, what should we take? It's glass of, let's take this glass of water. This glass of water arises independence on all sorts of conditions, direct and indirect. So maybe you could, maybe between us, we could just come up with some of the conditions that have led to us having this experience of this glass of water now. Let's make it really easy. Let's start with 50. Okay, we will like to test one. Get us started, see the journal. So, rain, rain, rain, okay. Yeah, what else? - The tap work. - The tap work. - The tap work. Yeah. - I need the glass, right? - Sorry. - Somebody made the glass? - Somebody made the glass, yeah, three. - I think for the tap thing, somebody. - Somebody put the tap in so that this rain could come out of the tap, I mean to this glass that somebody made, yeah. - It makes like the drinking, but what's most important to us here? - Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. - Somebody made the measure that made the tap. - Somebody made the measure that made the tap, yeah. So, it's this chains of conditions, yeah. - You came into being? - I came into being. Am I conditioned for this? - For your whole opinion. - Oh, I see. - You've been holding it, you weren't there. (laughing) - Yes, it's six and a half. (laughing) - What in the glass if you weren't there? - That's true, okay, yes, seven. Yeah, what else? - Why would you do bonded without sitting? - Hydrogen bonded without sitting. Yeah, okay, eight. - Someone knew where the tap was. - Someone knew where the tap was, yes. In fact, in this case, I knew where the tap was. Right, nine. - People gave money to put the kitchen in to put the tap in. - Yep, 10. - You can come and talk about the vibration of the tap. - Half, 11. - Put the pipes underground to get all the feet. - Put the pipes underground, yeah, sir. - We're going to put it there. - 13? - Hydrogen bonded, that's existing first place. - 14. So where does that lead us? - Temperatures, right, so it's either steam or ice. - 15, good. (indistinct) - There's such a thing as gravity or the walls of it, you're shooting everywhere. - Yeah, yeah. - The big bang created the essence. - Yes, absolutely, 18. - What about you had a mindset I'm thirsty? - Yeah, nine two. (indistinct chatter) - Yeah, yeah. - 21. - It came from a reservoir. - So it came from a reservoir, 22? - It came from a pipe. - It was a pipe. - So it's enough all the time? - Yeah. - Somebody trained the plumber to hit the pipe. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You know the body that made wood? - Yeah. - The plumber was born. - The plumber was born, yeah, yeah, yeah. (indistinct chatter) - Yeah, yeah. Almost don't think you can think of, actually. (audience laughing) Somebody laid the road outside so the glass could, somebody could drive in a car and sort of put the glasses in the kitchen. - You might have cycled. (audience laughing) - Yeah? - But the floor is over here. - But the floor is over. Sorry? - Somebody starts out here. (audience laughing) - Maybe, yep, everyone. - Family, ball to all games, the glasses. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Okay, will you get the idea anyway? (audience laughing) - 32 went too bad. Yeah, and we could also do the same, play the same game with not just anything external, like a glass of water or anything you like to name, a mountain, spinach, whatever. It's all the same principle, conditionality. And also it applies internally as well. So, the mental state that you're enjoying or not enjoying right this moment, equally is a product of a whole lot of conditions. Going back to, walking back to the big bang from a certain point of view, 'cause we're all affected by external conditions, but also the fact that you were born and you learnt language and you've had a particular upbringing and so on and so forth, all these things are all bringing about this moment now. So, yeah, it's important to really keep almost training yourself to think in this way. And once you've got the basic principle of conditionality, then it has all kinds of implications, which I think you've probably been exploring over the weeks. So, it has implications about what's called the middle way in Buddhism. Yeah, if something arises in dependence on conditions, like this glass of water, you can't say that it's is completely sort of existing by itself because it obviously isn't. We just looked at all those conditions, which mean that it's here this moment, yeah? And it only continues to be here this moment in dependence on a whole lot of conditions. Like, for instance, we decided not to throw it out the window and smash it for one. Or, you know, there's suddenly a catastrophic increase in the air pressure or something, then it would just go pshh. So, it's obviously not kind of inherently existent by itself from itself on its own terms. But also, it's not completely non-existent either because there's something here and there. Hmm, I can drink it. So, each experience is supported by all those conditions. If any of the conditions that we came up with for this glass of water have been different, that experience would have been different. So, it's like this moment that we're having now for us to sit here right this moment and have this particular experience depends on a vast number of conditions. It's almost like there's a huge kind of wave of conditions. I don't know if you've ever seen paintings by them. There's a Japanese print called Hokusai, just some amazing paintings of these sort of giant waves. And sometimes it's just a little boat or just little sort of foams coming off it. So, this moment we're having now is just like a sort of little bit of foam that's sort of been supported by these great wave of conditions. Right, going back to the big bang. And there it is. But then all those conditions, well, they're all in the past. They've all gone. So, if there's just this kind of bubble of this moment that's been kind of been brought into existence by all that. And it's just there. It's just there and it's changing and changing and changing all the time. And as I'm talking, moment by moment it's changing as the conditions keep on changing. So, it's quite an extraordinary kind of world that we live in. It's quite sort of magical in a way. It's quite amazing. Yeah. And then this moment will support, you know, it's part of the conditions for the next moment and for all the moments after that. So, in our lives, you know, for better or worse, you've just heard me talk for the last ten minutes. And, you know, that will condition everything else that ever happens to me and all of us. So, yes, it's quite a vision, actually. So, there's this whole thing about the middle way. And then there's also the fact that you can use conditionality in a way that helps and supports you, or you can work against it, as I was saying. So, you can have either spiral conditionality where your mind becomes increasingly kind of open and free and relaxed. Or you can have what is called cyclic conditionality, where basically your mind sort of circles around and around and around certain kind of concerns, and it's very kind of limited in its scope. And I think you've probably had a talk about the needana chain that sort of links that can create that. And you've probably seen the wheel of life in Buddhism, which is sort of a picture of how samsara comes about, how realms of unsatisfactoriness are brought into existence. And at the center of that, you have a cock, a snake, and a pig. Have you seen this? Yeah. So that represents this sort of cyclic conditionality, and the pig represents a basic kind of unknowing or misunderstanding of our experience. And once you've kind of misunderstood and gone the wrong way, then this dance of the animals, this can really painful dance, where each one is kind of biting the tail of the one in front, and they're all kind of driven round, just continues and continues. So that basic misunderstanding is not seeing conditionality. It's basically seeing things in terms of fixed things. So there's a fixed "me" here, sort of separate from fixed "you" out there. And there are fixed things that I can kind of control and cling onto. And that's not seeing that everything is arising, depending on conditions, that everything is kind of a flow and a process. And although you can operate with it, you can never kind of fix it. And although there's a sense of me operating in the world, you can never kind of pin that down and find it. All that kind of then leads, that basically misunderstanding leads you to feel, "Well, yes, I can hear my separate from everything else." And the pain of that then leads you to kind of want to grasp certain things and push away other things. So you then have the cock, which represents craving, and the snake that represents a version. And once you've got that going, it just keeps on going and keeps on going, unless you really see how things are conditioned. And that takes you out of that. But as long as you have that, there's that sense of that dance of the three animals. It's driven. It's a sense of drivenness. And you can see in your own experience, and I can watch in my experience, times where it feels as if I'm being driven along by life, being driven along by my craving and the version and ignorance. And then there are other times where that isn't happening, at least to anything like the same extent, and there's a kind of an openness and a freshness to life. And my body, I can feel this in my body. If I'm driven, there's a sort of sense of my head comes forward and I'm clenching. I can feel it. But there's an alternative way of being, which is if you actually see that everything is conditioned, if you see that everything is a flow and a process, and that you're a flow and a process, it's a moment by moment, then you can start to relax and open into that flow and then things start to open out. And that drivenness is no longer there in the same kind of way. And that all starts to relax. And then you have this spiral conditionality where awareness of conditionality, awareness of that flow, then starts to take you along with how life is, rather than can against it or in friction with it. If you go into meditation and your meditation starts to open out, you start to experience the flow of the breath and the ease of that. So there's two ways of operating with conditionality or against it. Understanding it or not understanding it. And in the way all our practice is about understanding it and going with it and finding ways of developing within that. So, yeah, it's very important to be seeing life in terms of conditionality, in terms of processes and flow and seeing how things arise in dependence on conditions. Because if we don't see it like that, then naturally we tend to live. The tendency of human beings is to live in a rather clunky, blocky world of things and people that just exist in R as they are. And so that causes us suffering in all sorts of ways. Because if we really treat things as things and people are kind of unchanging, then when things change and people change, it shocks us. And we're surprised. So we can understand this to a reasonable extent, but we need to take it really into ourselves, really into our lives, really into our bones. And that's where the whole process of reflection and meditation can help us. It's not enough just to have even kind of good ideas from the Dharma. I remember in the late '80s, I was living out in Spain, you know, in Turkey Loca, one of our retreat centers. And I got news that my father got cancer. And I've been a Buddhist at that point for about 14, 15 years, I think. And I studied about impermanence. But I hadn't really taken it that deep. I hadn't really kind of reflected on it, and I hadn't really meditated on it. So although I had that idea, and I could go around, you know, telling the audience of everything that's impermanent, and everything arises in dependence on conditions, that news, because I was very close to my father, just went straight through my good Buddhist, you know, understanding, so like I'm an express train, because it just hadn't gone deep enough. It still, somewhere, made me on the level of ideas. So the process is to take what starts out as understandings until they're things which we really know of deep in our hearts, deep in our being. And you do that by living these things out in your life, but also by reflecting and meditating. So that's what we're going to be doing mainly this evening. Maybe it's worth also saying that with meditation, it's very helpful to see what happens in meditation in terms of conditionality as well. If you feel that your meditation isn't effective, then rather than deciding that you're not cut out to be a meditator, and that's one you can easily sometimes do, you just have to think, well, okay, in what way haven't I set up the conditions for the practice to work? So it may be that your posture is not kind of giving you much of a chance to practice. You just have to see what qualities aren't there, what's missing. Bring those in, we'll explore that a bit more as we go on. Seeing things in terms of conditionality also means that your whole life conditions, what happens in meditation, and meditation conditions your life. Yeah, so our choices, moment by moment, leave, well, it's as if we're leaving a legacy all the time to the person that we're going to become. It's like what we do now is say that we'll subtly condition everything that happens from here on in. Yeah, it's good to be aware of that. It's like, yeah, so for instance I'm a bit tired this evening and not as fresh as I could be talking to you because last night I got very involved in reading something and got to bed a bit late and I didn't get enough sleep. And that's the me that was reading the book. I didn't really kind of appreciate that they were going to leave a legacy for the me that was going to have to talk this evening to you. And yeah, so here I am, so a bit, a bit dopey. So yes, just bearing in mind the fact that things arise in dependence on conditions and what you do now will leave legacy for the new that's coming up is really helpful in all sorts of ways. And in terms of meditation, it's one of the things that's really helpful is to, yes, you can work in meditation. You can think, well, have I got the right conditions to meditate? What happened to I produced? Could I develop a little bit more meta here so my heart was a bit more open so that the practice would go better or whatever it may be? But you can also look at your life in terms of helping your meditation practice. So for instance, anything that your mind takes in during the day, in a way has to be digested somewhere along the line in meditation. So if you watch a violin movie, for instance, you probably find some of the images from that sort of popping up in your meditation the next morning. And it's incredibly difficult these days because we all have so much coming at us in life in all sorts of different ways with a bombard with people trying to give us all kinds of information and trying to sell us anything they can. So we can still do what we can not to take in too much and at least have occasional times where we just kind of create space, where we're not taking in anything. A number of years ago, I'd been living at a retreat-century in Wales and I went up to London and I was sitting in a bus in Oxford Street. And I felt really uncomfortable and I tried to work out why it was. And then I realized that it's like there was nowhere I could look where there wasn't stuff to read. And having been, you know, doing quite a lot of meditation at that point, that may be quite sort of sensitive. It was as if all these things that I was reading were like people talking to me, which is what they were in directly. So I was sitting there kind of surrounded by all these people, you know, newspaper saying, oh, do you know what just happened in Bosnia or wherever it was? You know, you can't smoke on this bus and these jeans and they shot just down here. They're only 15 creative and it was like, I was just sort of taking in all these things. And I sometimes think that, you know, what we take in in terms of food, sooner or later you kind of see the effects of that in terms of your waistline. If we could sort of see our kind of mental state in terms of sort of diet that we eat mentally and that we have to digest, maybe we think, hmm, I really wanted to take in all that stuff. Because it's quite easy to take in the sort of mental equivalent of junk food and yeah, and all that stuff has to be processed, it has to be digested to your mind. It's a little time to take all that and digest it. So sometimes the easiest way to have a good meditation is to set up the conditions before you get anywhere near your meditation cushion by not taking in certain things so that you don't have to kind of digest them and process them when you're trying to follow the breath, say. So, yes, it's good to think in terms of setting up conditions for meditation and within meditation, looking to see whether you've got the conditions you need for the practice to be effective. Okay, we have done enough talking for now. I'd like to go a little bit further and traditionally Buddhism talks about if you really want to take something deeply into yourself, firstly, a piece of dharma, say, firstly you need to hear it and listen to it, which can take it in, you know what it is, but then you have to make it your own and first you make it your own by reflecting on it and then you make it your own by meditating on it, which really kind of takes it into the depths of your mind. So I'd like to do a little bit of both of those as we're going through the next chunk of the evening. So, yes, I'd like to do a little bit of reflection and then we'll have a few minutes break and then we'll do some meditation, which I'll guide you in. So, reflection on conditionality involves turning over that understanding, but it's not just thinking about it. Some people who don't get on very well, they don't like the idea of reflecting because they think, well, it's just kind of more my brain churning away, but real reflection actually involves the whole of you. It's a bit like you take the idea to call it that of conditionality and you bring it in relation to the whole of yourself. So, yeah, sure, you can think about it, you can reflect, you think, okay, well, as we did a little bit, yes, okay, so in order for that class to award it to be there, there's all these different things, that in a way we were reflecting on the class and reflecting on conditionality. But what we really want is, for it to go deeper, is to bring all of ourselves into relation with it. So, as we're reflecting, sure we can be thinking, but we can be using our imagination, which again, in the way we were to some extent, we kind of, you imagine the big bang just for a fraction of a second, and you imagine that person cycling to the centre with their glasses and so on. Yeah, maybe you were, I was imagining that kind of wave of conditions, which just produced that kind of moment of that bubble of this very moment now. So, you can use your how come image faculty, and then you bring your body into it too. And then your body's a real source of wisdom, and as you're turning something over, you can notice your body's response to things. It's like if you're on the right track, it's almost like your body, there's a sense of an opening often in, can be around your heart centre. It can be different for different people. It's like if I'm sitting in a room with somebody and they say something, it feels like it's really true, and they've really spoken something deeply about themselves, as if I can feel that there's a sort of downward movement of my energy. It's like something changes in my body and response to that, and I've learned to trust that. So, yeah, you can sort of check in with what's happening with your body as you're reflecting. And, yeah, then you can also, yeah, have your emotions involved, you have your heart open to it. So, as you're reflecting, yeah, you might feel excited, you might feel a bit kind of uneasy, like you're not quite sure where this is leading, and you're not quite sure whether you want to go there. But you can just keep turning towards whatever you're experiencing as you're reflecting, and include, just include the whole of yourself. So, it's like you're bringing all your experience to bear, and you can bring your whole life experience to bear on things. So, you can think about, yeah, if I'm thinking about impermanence and conditionality, I can think, well, yes, there was my dad, and then he did get cancer, and then he did die, and that's part of my experience, too. So, and, yeah, all these different things. So, it's as if you bring what starts off as an abstract idea, something that you've literally put up on a flip chart, and you turn it into something which really means something to you in your life, and something that you really test out, too. Yes, you just like to start with when I was first getting involved with the Dharma, I thought, after a while, I thought, "Hey, devotee to it." And I thought, "Oh, it's really beautiful." It's wonderful that, you know, that human beings have kind of discovered this path to awakening, and so I felt very devoted to it, but in a way, I treated it a bit like some kind of precious far, or something, but I almost didn't want to risk really testing in case it turned out, you know, not to quite be real, or, you know, I found a fault in it. And so, yes, I was very devoted to it, but I didn't really want to test it. But then as time went on, I started thinking, "Well, you know, if the Dharma is really true, if it's really the truth of life, then it should stand up to whatever I can sort of throw at it, any kind of testing I like, it should be able to withstand that." After one day, I sort of picked up my kind of precious fars of the Dharma, and I started trying to see whether I could smash it or not. And when I couldn't, that was when I really, you know, my confidence in it really started to grow. So, yeah, reflection also involves being prepared to ask difficult questions, and, yeah, really sort of thing. Is that right? Could it be like that? Yeah, can I find something that is in subject to conditions? What would that be? What could that be? Just really being prepared to do that. So you laid the whole thing on the line, and you bring all your life experience into relationship with it, and if you find, okay, it holds firm and it holds true, then you've got something really wonderful that, you know, you've got another bit of certainty, if you like, about life, that's, well, and there aren't many certainties about life, other than the fact that we're going to grow old and die one day, and that's about all we've got that we really know for sure, and we tend to really hide away from those, which is kind of peculiar, really. The only things we know about, we tend to dark. So we're going to do some reflection, and as we do it, yeah, bring all of yourself into it, and the other thing is that if you find yourself, it's like you're thinking and reflecting, and then at a certain point it can be as if it drops onto a slightly deeper level, and it's almost as if you see the truth of it more deeply, or you can go, oh, it's almost as if, you know, what you knew on one level has now gone down another floor of the, if you're elevated to a more into your heart, or more into your guts even, into your being, so if you find that happening, don't just keep reflecting, just sit with that experience, just let it be there, okay? We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
