(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. - Wow. (audience laughs) - This is wonderful. I am just very, very happy, very delighted that Bentay, Latsangarachtha, accepted our invitation to come and speak at the Buddhifield Festival, to come and speak to Buddhifield. Whatever Buddhifield is, it's a bit of a question, and it's not right, I think, to characterize Buddhifield as some sort of throwback to the '60s and '70s. I think that's right. But Buddhifield does, I think, encapsulate something of that spirit of radical exploration of alternatives, I think we can say that. And I think it's a happy marriage in as much as the F.W.B.O. was born in those years, in the '60s and '70s. That's where it came about. It came out of that spirit, that radical spirit, because when Bentay started the F.W.B.O., he was able to meet that radical desire, that radical spirit, and show how Buddhism can so well help us discern what is truly radical, truly radical, and change ourselves and change the world around us. I think Buddhifield is how Buddhism can help us to find out how to do that. I think that's very important. And also how Buddhism can show us many ways that we can live together. I think that's also very important. So I'm just very, very grateful for this. I'm very grateful he's come. And I also feel it's quite an honour that he seems to have let his hair grow a little bit. (audience laughs) For this occasion, I don't know if it's deliberate, but it is a little bit longer than you should be. (audience laughs) Last night at the meditation shrine at the top of the hill, we did a white tara puja, chanting mantras for Banti's long life. And I was in there and I was meditating and I was reflecting as we chanted what it means to receive inspiration from others more experienced than ourselves. And at the same time, I was aware I'd be introducing Banti this afternoon. And the thought, the thought that kept coming into my mind was that Banti's name has always been so fitting for us, Banti's name, Sanga Rakshita. Even though it seems that he was given this name in a very arbitrary throwaway sort of way, but even so, the name itself really works. It really worked in the '60s and the '70s. For us, Sanga Rakshita meant protector of the Sanga or the spiritual community. And this translation of the name fitted out image of ourselves, I think, as a community brought together through Sanga Rakshita's vision. He was our protector, if you like. But then, many years later, relatively recently, we got some kind of update on the translation. We learned that the Rakshita part of the name is actually passive. I mean, I hope this is true, this is what I hear. And the name means protected by the Sanga, protected by the Sanga. And this is a big difference. And for me, the meaning of the name is much more interesting, much more thought provoking and even quite mysterious because, how would anyone, let alone Bante, be protected by the Sanga? How does that work? However you interpret that word, whether you interpret it as the community of practitioners or as the community of ordained practitioners or even as the community of enlightened Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, I don't know. But anyway, maybe Bante's talk this afternoon, which I think is called entering the Sanga. Maybe that's going to give us some clues. I expect they will. So, I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say. (audience applauds) - Thank you, Kamala Sheela, for those words of introduction. And I must say that I am very happy to be here on this occasion, this weekend. I've been hearing about Buddha Fields for the last 12 years. But of course, this is the first time I've actually been here and have been able to see, you know, with my own eyes, the sort of thing that I've been hearing about so much. (audience laughs) In various ways. (audience laughs) From various people in the course of that period, yes. So, it's a very special occasion for me. I must admit, though, that I haven't grown my hair, especially for the occasion. (audience laughs) It was simply that I could not get hold of my regular power, but in time. (audience laughs) So, that is, in fact, the more prosaic reason, from having my hair a little longer than usual. I'll do my best to speak louder, but don't forget, I'm an old man. (audience laughs) I can't speak so loudly as some of you younger ones are able to do. And this morning, I was very happy to be shown around and to see the various activities, related activities that are going on. I was very pleased to be able to sit in the Padma sambhava yurt and also to turn around the healing area and to have lunch in the restaurant, right? When I was thinking about this and thinking that I'd be giving a talk, I was told that I'd be giving the talk in the Dharmapala tent. So, when I heard the word Dharmapala, I thought that it meant Dharmapala. (audience laughs) Glad to say P-A-L-A, parlant meaning protector. So, I thought, oh, that's very appropriate. The protector of the Dharmap, but then I subsequently, it's not that at all. It's not Dharmapala, it's Dharmapala. (audience laughs) P-A-L-O-U-R. And that, of course, parlant is a good old-fashioned English word. We don't often use it nowadays. Sometimes we speak, of course, of the mayor's parlant, the mayor's office or surgery even. And also, I remember that whenever the child was a little nursery rhyme that we learned, which went like this, "Will you walk into my parlour?" Said the spider to the fly. (audience laughs) So, here I am in your parlour. (audience laughs) Yes, here I am in your parlour (audience laughs) in the center of your web. (audience laughs) And I gather that the series of talks that you've been having and in Bishan taking part have been roughly on the subject of Sangha, as I think, Kamala Shila, also indicated. So, I thought that quite interesting. Here we are in or on Buddha field, in the Dharmapala tent. And here we all are, myself and others, talking about Sangha. So, you've got Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. That was very neat on the part of the organizers in India. (audience laughs) So, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. A few words support Dharma. Often people ask for what do we mean by the Dharma? What do we mean by Buddhism? What is it? What does it stand for? What are its teachings? And the Buddha himself, in more than one passage in the part of scriptures, has gone a little into this. The Buddha often speaks in terms of what she calls the Dharmap Vinaya. Dharmap meaning, so to speak, the more theoretical, the more principle aspect of his teaching. And Vinaya, meaning not just the monastic code, but the whole of the more practical side of his teaching. So, Dharmap Vinaya. So, on occasion, the Buddha was addressing his disciples and he wanted to explain just what his Dharmap Vinaya was like. So, he didn't give any abstract theoretical explanation. He used an image. And the image was that of the ocean. My Dharmap Vinaya, he said, is like the great ocean. And he went into the comparison in some details. He said, for instance, that just as the land slopes down gradually, little by little, into the great ocean, into its depths. In the same way, he said, in my teaching, there is no sudden penetration. You go step by step, little by little. And this is an emphasis that we find throughout the Buddha's teaching, that there is a series of steps, as is indicated, for instance, by the noble eightfold path. There are eight steps, there are eight stages, by means of which you penetrate, gradually, into the depths of the Buddha's teaching. In the same way, the Buddha said, in the great ocean, there are many treasures, those treasures of gold and treasures of silver, all sorts of jewels, all sorts of wonderful and beautiful things. And he said, in the same way, in my time of inertia, there are all sorts of treasures. And he mentioned the teaching about the four noble truths, the teaching about the noble eightfold path, the teaching about meditation, the teaching about ethics, the teaching about wisdom, the teaching about compassion. In the Buddhist teaching, in his time of inertia, there are all these treasures, as is where, these jewels. And it's not without significance that we call the Buddha Dharma and Sangha themselves, the three jewels, the three most precious things. And they are so called because of their great, their inestimable, spiritual value. Nowadays, of course, the teachings of the Buddha have become comparatively well known in the West. That is the available. We can read all about the Telavada, all about the saying, all about the song channel and the rest. It's all available. There are so many books. And in fact, there are so many sources of information. Nowadays, that sometimes we don't realize the great value of what we have, of how we go looking for something else, something additional. So, in the Buddhist number, Vinaya, there are all these jewels. And then the game of the Buddha said, from whatever part of the great ocean, you take water. It all has the taste of salt. In the same way, whatever aspect of my teaching you encounter, it all leads to liberation. It leads to freedom. It leads to mukti, the mukti. If it doesn't have that taste, it isn't my teaching. Because the Buddha's teaching doesn't make you free. It isn't really the Buddha's teaching. So, this is a very, very important characteristic of the Buddha's teaching. And it's something that we should be looking for in the Buddha's teaching. Something that we should be using, so to speak, the Buddha's teaching for, to help us to be free in the deepest and the truest sense. Of course, freedom, the word freedom, has all sorts of meanings. It can be understood on all sorts of levels. And we can't usually approach the word freedom in its deepest and truest meaning straight away. There are all sorts of, as it were preliminary meanings, that it has meanings on lower levels of experience. We talk about social freedom, religious freedom, economic freedom, freedom to think, freedom to believe. These are also important freedoms, as well as the supreme freedom of which the Buddha is talking, free mukti. I remember an incident. In fact, a serious incident, from my own experience years ago in India, which reminded me fairly forcibly of the importance of freedom to human beings. We all need freedom, just as we need air. In the period of which I'm speaking, I was in India, and it was the early 50s, or middle 50s. And you may have heard that about 50 years ago in India, there was a very widespread mass movement of conversion to Buddhism. And this movement was on the part of people living on the lowest level socially speaking, economically speaking also. It concerned the former untouchables. You must have heard, of course, of the Indian caste system. It's a very rigid system, and to a great extent it still exists. And in this system, there are high caste people, and there are low caste people. And in fact, there are not just low caste people, there are people whose caste is very low indeed. It's so low that they don't really even have a proper caste. And one of the consequences of that is that such people were, and in many cases still are, regards it as impure. So that any contact with them pollutes. So the caste, indeed, will not have any contact with someone belonging to the untouchable or ex-untouchable community. So in the old days, they were excluded from the temples, excluded from the schools, and had to engage in all sorts of menial and servile work, and weren't allowed to engage in any other kind of work. They were very seriously oppressed, and as deepest. So this is still going on to some extent. But in 1956, an event of very considerable importance took place, not only for India, but even for some of us here in the West. Among the ex-untouchables, there was a leader. Fortunately, they had a leader. And you may have been hearing something about you in the cause of the last week. And his name was Dr. Bhimra Ambedkar. He was born as an untouchable, and he suffered all the consequences of being an untouchable. But nevertheless, he was a kind of genius, and he managed to educate himself. And he rose even to a better high position in Indian political life. And he became the leader of a very large section of the ex-untouchables in central and western India. And he saw the condition of his people, how oppressed they were, how excluded, how badly treated by the caste Hindu society. And he came to the conclusion that there was no future for them within the Hindu thought. He came to a conclusion that they had to change their religion if they wanted to improve themselves in all respects. So 50 years ago, he announced his own conversion to Buddhism in Nagpur. And on that occasion, 400,000 of his followers took the same step with him. So that was a very important, a very momentous occasion. So here they were no longer Hindus, not just 400,000, but many hundreds of thousands of others followed. Here they were, they just ceased to be Hindu, they were Buddhist. So what were they to do? They looked to their leader for guidance, then he died. Then he died. So they were left without guidance, without help from a dynamic point of view. So I was there in India at that time. And with others, I decided that we should do something. So a lot of my time in the early 50s, when I myself was still quite a young man in my early and middle 30s, much of my time was spent teaching the Dharma to these new Buddhists, as they were often called. And as I moved about different parts of India, different groups of these new Buddhists giving talks, giving lectures, meeting them individually. And of course, I've reminded them very much today because they weren't all sitting on chairs. They were sitting on the floor just as you are sitting now. So this also brings me back to those days. And often I used to ask people, now that you've become Buddhist, what difference does it make to you? And I always got the same answer. Nobody ever said, well, I'm a bit better educated now. Now I can go to a Buddhist temple. No, they all gave the same answer. They all said, now that I'm a Buddhist, I feel free. They all had this sense of freedom. And this was psychologically and spiritually most important. And because they had this sense of freedom, because as Buddhists, they felt free, that they were in charge of their own lives at last. They could progress in every respect. And it's very noticeable. It's been commented on by outside observers that those ex-untouchables who became Buddhists had progressed much better in every sense, not just religiously, but socially and economically, than other ex-untouchable communities that did not convert to Buddhism. So this is very important. We can see how important it is to have knew that feeling of freedom. And I expect this is one of the reasons why people come to Buddha films, yeah? You like to get away from the city. You like to be more free as it were. To do things here, perhaps, that you wouldn't be able to do at home. I remember a few years ago, someone wrote to me a very angry ledger. He said, I've been to a Buddha field. What did I see? Hot tubs. You know, there are no hot tubs in London, no hot tubs in Birmingham. But yes, but two years later, two years later, I had another letter from him. He said, I've been to a Buddha field again, and I enjoyed a hot tub. He said, with me in the hot tub, there was a beautiful darkie knee. [LAUGHTER] So it's so simple. People feel more free. [LAUGHTER] They feel more free. And as we were brave, they were to run around, to get away from the usual rat, the usual routine. And especially, of course, it was good for the children. A problem I was hearing discussed on the radio recently was that children on any longer allowed out to play in the street is too dangerous. And I remember when I was a child, when I was 6, 7, 8, that sort of age, I was always out playing in the street. But here, of course, children are free to play. They can run around. They can run around. And I know that Buddha field has got a very good reputation with parents on account of its being such a safe place for children. And that's a really great testament to the people who have been organizing and running Buddha field all these years. The fact that it has this good reputation among parents is one of its many virtues. So yes, freedom is very important. But there's an opposite to freedom, of course. And that is bondage, is restriction. It's imprisonment even. And sometimes it feels to us these days as though, well, we're living in a prison all the time. There are so many restrictions. There are so many prohibitions. So many things we can't do. So many places we can't go to. So many limitations and restrictions of every kind. And it has been said that human life itself can be compared to a prison. It's limited. There's so many things outside, so many things beyond. But here we are as you grew out in a prison. Some of us, of course, are quite happy in the prison. Perhaps don't even realize it's a prison. Sometimes people just try to make the prison a bit more comfortable rather than trying to escape from the prison. But sometimes, of course, they write things on the wall. But the prison backs maybe root things on the wall. Just to show their defiance. But it's not a real defiance because they remain in the prison. And of course, in this connection, one remembers that famous simile of Plato, the cave. The cave and the prisoners in the cave. Somewhere in his book, "The Republic," Plato describes the cave is a deep, dark cave. And people are in that cave. And they sit facing the real wall. And behind them, there is a light and a movement. And they see the shadows of things projected onto the wall in front of them. And that's all they see. They see the shadows of things. They don't see the realities of things. And according to Plato, they can't turn around and look behind them and see what is there because they're tied, they're bound, they're shackled. So all that they can see are these shadows dancing on the wall in front of them. They can't see the objects themselves, the shapes themselves. They can't see the light. They can only see the reflections. So in this way, Plato gives us a very vivid sense of our own, as it were, existential situation of being imprisoned and limited and bound and fetched. When we find this idea taken up in the Buddha's teaching, the Buddha has quite a lot to say about fetters because fetters are just the opposite of freedom, the opposite of liberty. And the Buddha has a word for fetters, a very significant word in the party and the Sanskrit. And it is Sanghyojana, roughly translatable as fetter or bond. And there's a quite a number of these. And I want to say just a few words about the first of them that we encounter and that we have to break if we want to make any progress at all on the spiritual path. The first one, the Buddha speaks about it, what he calls sakaya drishti. Now this isn't easy to understand. We have to interpret rather than translate. Literally, it may be rendered as something like fixed personality view. It's the sort of fixed view we have that we are this or that we are that. We identify ourselves as being this or being that. For instance, we think that well, I'm French or I'm Indian. And we identify very strongly with that, that is us. But of course, it isn't just as simple as that. There are other identities that we have. We have identity perhaps as a parent. We have an identity perhaps as an artist. So we think, well, this is me. And because we think that well, this is me, we tend to hold on to it. We tend to stick fast to it. And it tends to limit us. So this is fixed self view. And because we have this sort of fixed view of ourselves, it's sometimes very difficult to change. Because the fixed view militates against the possibility of change. So we have to think of ourselves as being able to change. We have to have as it were, for my sake, a creative attitude towards ourselves. That we have to have the belief that we can create or recreate ourselves as we wish. We make ourselves. A little while the guy came across an interesting book with the interesting title, "The Man Made Man." Has anyone come across this? "The Man Made Man." So what is the man made man? The man made man is the transsexual. That it will say the person who by means of surgical operations and hormone treatment affects some kind of change from his or her former sex to the opposite sex. So the man made man. I was especially interested in this book because many years ago when I was in Kalimpong, someone who had undergone this sort of change, in his case from female to male, actually came to stay with me at my Vihara in Kalimpong. And this was the first time that I had come across this particular phenomenon, which nowadays my family is not uncommon by any means. In fact, I believe we have a few transsexuals in the F.W. itself. Which just goes to show across our catholicity, one might say. So I remember having a number of conversations with this particular person and who are trying to find out what it was that it made her want to be a him. So I came to the conclusion that yes, this was a rather in a way, perhaps, unnatural way of bringing about change. It seemed rather forcible, it seemed external. I felt that it was not so much the body that had to be worked on and changed. It's the mind, it's the consciousness. And of course, we change our mind, we change our consciousness in all sorts of ways. And one of the principle ways across is meditation. Through meditation, we can transform, we can transmute our ordinary everyday consciousness into something higher, into something more sublime. So this is the first fetcher that has to be broken. The idea that we are what we are, and that's what we are, and that's what we're going to stay as, that sort of attitude. But even if sometimes we think or say that we want to change, we want to develop deep down, that is very, very strong resistance. Radical change, radical transformation is not nearly so easy to effect, as many people think. So once you decide really to change, radically change, you have a battle on your hands. And that is what the spiritual life in a way, from the word it's going to give, is all about. This radical change, this radical transformation, this transformation of consciousness and will itself. Well, that's only the first of the fetters, but there are others, there are others. And, well, I don't know if you mentioned two more. That's quite enough, probably, because of the time being. The next one is the original word is Silo Brata Paravarsha, which is a bit of a mouthful. But it's sticking to, it's usually translated as attachment to rules and observances. But the real meaning is, perhaps, paraphrased best as just going through the motions. You all know how it is. Well, most of you, I'm sure, know how it is. Maybe you take up a religious practice, you take up the practice of a puta or a meditation, and maybe you do it every day. For the while, you go on doing it every day. But perhaps you then become conscious that you're not really doing it. You're just going through the motions. And you think it's a good thing just to do it in that way, just to go through the motions. But that is a fetter. That is something that holds you back. No religious practice, no religious observance, will do you any good unless you can do it with your whole heart and your whole soul? So this is what this second fetter is all about. It's the fetter of doing things just half-heartedly, especially any religious practice or meditation or puta, doing it not whole-heartedly, not putting the hold of yourself into it. There's a verse I remember in the Bible. I do sometimes quote the Bible. Whatever your hand finds it to do, do it with all your might. And I think that's very important. That's the secret of succession also feels, including, of course, the spiritual field. If you take up meditation, put your whole heart into it. If you take up the study of the Dharma, put your whole heart into it. It doesn't necessarily mean that you devote a lot of time to it, so whatever time you do devote it to it, during that time, you just do it whole-heartedly. You really believe in it. So you do it with the whole of yourself. And it's only that sort of practice that can affect change, that can break this fetter of Sila Rata Babamarsha. So that's the second one. The third and last fetter I'm going to say anything about, and then draw to a close, is usually called what in parley or south grid is bhichikitsa. And this is usually translated as doubt, but it's much more than doubt. It's a sort of skeptical doubt. That's one of the translations, skeptical doubt. You don't just doubt. You don't really want in your heart or heart to find out the truth of that particular met. You're resistant. And you put forward all sorts of excuses, and your mind wavers. And you go from this idea to that. You change your mind. For instance, you may be engaged in some kind of, let's say, meditation. But you start having doubts about the efficacy of that meditation. And you start wondering, well, maybe some other meditation would be better. Maybe some other practice altogether. So the doubt produces a sort of wavening, a sort of uncertainty, which prevents you. Again, from committing yourself wholeheartedly to what you are doing. So all these sort of things, all these sort of wrong attitudes are fetters. And all of them can inhibit our practice of the Dharma and prevent us in the end, from realizing the mutit of freedom. So I like to give my own essay to a version of these three fetters, not just one version of the three fetters, but their positive counterparts. So I've come up with what I call three seeds. I want you to try to be first of all creative, committed, and clear. Creative in the sense of constantly working on oneself, and trying to create and recreate oneself. A better self, a higher self, a kinder self, a more universal self, a more spacious self. Try to create from day to day that kind of self. So be creative and then committed. Whatever you do, commit yourself to it. Especially any form of religious practice, any form of meditation, any relationship or friendship. Commit yourself to it wholeheartedly without reservations. Be committed and then clear. Try to clarify your ideas. Don't be fuzzy in your thinking. Don't be vague, don't be wooly. Don't allow yourself to be overpowered by doubts, especially skeptical doubt, but be clear. So if you can be on higher and higher levels, creative, committed, and clear, then you can be sure that before long you'll be able to achieve the much freedom in the highest spiritual sense. And if you achieve that freedom, then of course you'll have a deep understanding into the meaning of the Buddhist teaching. And we are able to benefit from that understanding yourself and benefit others with it. (audience applauds) (audience chanting) (audience applauds) - We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
