(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. - So my talk today is on the defects of thanksara. And it's the last of the mind-turning reflections and the second of the last pair of mind-turning reflections, the law of karma and the defects of thanksara, work together to help us overcome clinging to future pleasures and encourage us towards the greater happiness of freedom. And I thought, well, we could just check in with ourselves and ask, how much of what's gone through our mind today is about looking forward to future pleasures and how much about the planting of the seeds of skillful action. And I know for myself, I've been quite tired because I've been up late writing this talk and I've been thinking a lot about a nice bath and bed and a good book to read. (laughs) So a defect is a lack or a deficiency. And I think it's important that we clarify this. We're not saying that thanksara is evil or horrible, but we're saying that it doesn't give us what we most deeply need and that it is permeated by all kinds of suffering as well as giving us pleasure. And when we talk about something being defective and it needs correcting. And thanksara is not a place that we go. It's easy to fall into this way of speaking as if it's a place we happen to find ourselves in that we loosely equate with the world. And there's another place called Nirvana that we might get to if we're very good or we work very hard at our practice. But at the same time, we're not sure that we really want to go there (audience laughs) because it does seem a bit much or it's a bit lonely or somehow sort of featureless. Thanksara and Nirvana is not somewhere that we go. It's something that we do. We samsara is. And literally it means to go round or to spin. So there are various images associated with it which have this circular or cyclical nature or character. It is like an ill-fitting chariot wheel. It's the wheel of life with the sixth round and the outer circle of becoming and re-becoming. (audience laughs) It's like water in a water wheel in which we circle helplessly. It's like bees buzzing round and round a pot. And it's like the turning of a potter's wheel. A circle is endless or it ends in itself. A cycle is recurrent, repetitive. It returns to the beginning. Nothing new comes out of it. So we create this samsara in which we go round and round. We create it initially by what we come with. We're hard-wired, as Ratnadarini put it in her talk with the four atmocletious. That sense of ourselves as center of the universe and the subject of every experience. And there's no blame in this. It's just how things are from the perspective of how we are. It's part of the human condition to experience the world in terms of subject and object. And it's part of our precious human birth that we have a self-reflexive consciousness and an ability to discriminate, which allows us to explore and question that experience. So, so far, so good it would seem. But already there is an underlying tension. Samsara is a condition in which our minds are not functioning in accordance with reality. We believe in a separate self. We believe in the importance of that self. And we are determined to protect and defend that self. At the same time on some deeper level, we know this not to be the case. Our experiences concern it and yet contradict it. For instance, other people also think they are the center of the world. They are wrong, of course. We can't all be the most important person, but that is their experience. And within it all, there's a sense of incompleteness, a lack of wholeness. So an unease, an insecurity accompanies our experience. And that unease causes us to want to become more secure, more substantial. So we feel the need to acquire things, to bolster up that sense of self. And then we think we own these things, which might be material objects, other people, skills, opinions, experiences. First, conceiving an eye, we cling to an ego. Then, conceiving a mind, we cling to a material world. Like water in a water wheel, helplessly we circle. I bow down to the compassion that arises for all beings. That's that chandra cutie. But the unease, the insecurity persists. Having feared we might lose ourselves in some way or other. The situation has been compounded. We now fear we might lose opposessions. Our standing in the world. Our points of view. As well as fearing the loss of self. Again, there is no blame. Our craving for security, for substantiality, arises out of ignorance. It's a very human response. And it causes suffering. Banksara is cyclical, because through our actions, based on ignorance, we feed that ignorance. Being objects in the world as mine, we compound that view of a separate self. Increasing that sense of alienation and insecurity, which then reaches out to draw more towards it. It's not only a cycle, but it's a vicious circle. Helplessly we circle. Digging ourselves deeper into that ignorant view. So another way of describing the defects of samsara is that it is characterized by the three marks or latchiness of conditioned existence. I'm sure you know this well. The unsatisfactory or painful dukkha, the impermanent anitya, and the emptiness of self, or essential being. Anatman. The connection of dukkha and anitya is obvious. That things are impermanent is often a cause of suffering. Anatman is less obviously connected. But emptiness of self means that we are not in control. We are a process, not an entity. We too arise day by day, moment by moment, independent on conditions. There is no self that is in control of those conditions. We can only have some influence as a part of those conditions. So there is suffering and there is no blame. I think it's very important to see that we tend to equate these two states, suffering and blame. And very important that we can distinguish them. I think equating blame and guilt with suffering is probably the result of Christian conditioning in our culture. While I was brought up and atheist, I was still horrified as a child by the idea that Christ died for our sins. While we are in a culture of guilt or blame, whether self or other blame, it will cloud our ability to understand suffering and its causes. So there's many forms of suffering in Sanxara. And traditionally, there are three lists. So to begin with, and probably most encompassingly, there's three kinds of dukkha. There's the suffering of pain of unpleasant experiences, the unsatisfactory dukkha dukkha. There's the suffering of change of impermanence, and there's the existential suffering, that insecurity, lack of wholeness, and lack of fulfilment. So these three summits up really, but they have been expanded out considerably, which brings it home more to us. So there are the eight kinds of suffering. There's the suffering of birth, which is traumatic for the child, painful for the mother. There's the suffering of sickness, which we all know about to some degree. There's the suffering of aging, especially old age, loss of mobility and faculties, loss of memory and independence. There's the suffering of death, our own death and that of others. There's being separated from those who we love, which sometimes happens quite outside our control, and there's being with what and whom we dislike. There's not to have what we desire, and having what we don't desire. And then there are also the six kinds of suffering, an uncertain life span, in death and at rebirth, repeated conception, fluctuations of loss and gain, the fact that we are alone at birth and alone at death. So this isn't all. There's also the suffering underlying some kinds of pleasure, which Konza has enumerated. There's the fact that it may involve, that our pleasure may involve suffering for others. So we buy new clothes that are produced in sweatshop, in dire conditions. We're afraid of losing that, which gives us pleasure. And Konza says all that's particularly, though sometimes for wealthy people who actually struggle with guilt, about the amount of money that they own, and their fear of losing it. There's the fact that that which brings pleasure through the senses, the body, also equally brings pain. And that pleasure which derive from conditioned things, cannot satisfy the longings of the human heart, which is the existential suffering of the three kinds of dukkha. So sometimes lists don't quite do it for us. So it's also brought to mind more imaginatively in the images of the wheel of life, the suffering of the sixth realms. The realm of the animals, which is brutish, focused on food, sex and sleep. The hungry ghosts, always longing, never able to satisfy themselves. The gods, blissfully oblivious and complacent till their lotuses begin to rot. The hell-beings subject to intense physical and mental pain, anger and hatred. The assure is obsessed with jealousy and competitiveness. The human realm, where there's pleasure and pain, but happiness is temporary, and there's also pride and conceit. And we don't need either models or lists to know about suffering. We just need the experience of our own lives. The illness and physical pain which goes with having a body. The mental pain of depression and fear that goes with having a mind. The sense of incompleteness. Things change. People change. People leave us and people die. Nothing is solid and substantial and nothing can be fully relied upon. We want the world to be substantial and secure, and it isn't, and this causes us suffering. And this is our experience from a relatively fortunate existence in a relatively stable society. If we think of the sufferings of other people in wars, famine, captivity, poverty, the reflections seem endless. So what is the effect of such reflections? We can easily feel overwhelmed. I can see that looking at you. But remember, no blame, no guilt. So if we remember, no blame, no guilt, then what arises with our reflections? Maybe sadness. Empathy. Compassion. When you realize suffering for what it is, as the Buddha did, then you will be drawn into discovering its causes. That's the Dalai Lama speaking. One thing only do I teach. Suffering and the cessation of suffering. The Buddha. So the Buddha realized that suffering is a fact of the human condition caused by craving, which in turn is caused by ignorance. An ignorance which sets up the way we experience the world. And he saw how difficult it is for us to penetrate that ignorance because of the desire and attachment it gives rise to. So not long after his enlightenment experience, he's considering the weather to teach the Dharma. And it's a passage that I find very moving. I've always found very moving. He says, "The law that I have attained to is profound and hard to see, hard to discover. It is the most peaceful and superior goal of all, not attainable by mere reasoning, subtle for the wise to experience. But this generation relies on attachment, relishes attachment, delights in attachment. It is hard for such a generation to see this truth. That is to say, conditionality, dependent arising. And if I taught the law, others would not understand me, and that would be wearying and troublesome for me. I always like the way he seems to take himself into account at the end of that passage. So I want to look a bit closer at where we might be at in all of this. Certainly we are in a state of ignorance, conditioned by the Atma clashes. At the same time we have some sense of what might be going on. We know to some extent that happiness doesn't come through possessing things. We are not consumed by acquiring wealth and fame. We have some understanding of how suffering arises and we don't expect to avoid it altogether, if nothing else we have to die. Though rather than craving and grasping material objects or pursuing the perfect relationship, we have a more sophisticated approach. We try to fix Sanghsara. We try to organize and plan our lives, so we have the right balance of pleasure over pain. To fix our own experience of Sanghsara, so it is palatable, so it has the right ingredients, some of which will be opportunities to practice the Dharma. This can take subtler and subtler forms so that we can find ourselves using the Dharma as another way of fixing Sanghsara. I am just going to give you an example from my own experience some time ago. When I realized that I was feeling somewhat intolerant of people who happened to be other order members, who were acting in ways that didn't accord with the precepts. That is, those precepts that I would not find it difficult to keep. At some point in all of this, I recognized that intolerance was not itself a skillful mental state and is in fact a breach of the first precept. So I was struck by this and I thought, "Well, I need to explore this more fully. What is this all about for me?" Because in one way it made sense, because if we all acted in accord with the precepts, the world would be a better place, at least that FWBO corner of the world that I spend a lot of my time in. So that would be better for me. I would certainly have a more pleasant experience. But behind this is my own conditioning, my socialist conditioning. I've grown up with a strong message that the meaning of life is to make the world a better place. And again, this is subtle because on the face of it, it resonates with the Dharma. There is a desire to alleviate suffering, but at the same time it's limited. I'm still trying to fix Sanksara and to fix my own experience of Sanksara. And in so doing, I was going for refuge to ethics, albeit in a subtle way, rather than going for refuge to compassion, a true refuge, and having a compassionate response to unskillfulness. So it's not surprising that I did this. Because the longer I practice, the more aware I am of the degree to which my own conditioning affects not only the way I practice the Dharma, but affects how I hear the Dharma, what filters it comes through. I was talking about this tabante recently, and he said, towards the end of our discussion, oh well, the important thing is that you see how your conditioning affects you. That's already the beginning of change. So I was fortunate in this case to see through my fix before too long. Because when we don't, then there's frustration, disappointment, and maybe anger. We feel that we've failed. We feel inadequate. We undermine ourselves. Or we become even more determined to try another lifestyle, another job. We become frenetic in our efforts to keep all the balls in the air, to cover our backs, to be one jump ahead. Or we blame the situation, the people we've been involved with. And as those situations, those people have been the repository for our ideals, especially our spiritual ideals. Then we can feel let down to the point of betrayal. I think sometimes this happens for people in relation to the order and the movement. There's a very good article by James Hillman on the subject of betrayal. And I've read it on a number of occasions in my life. And each time I've found more depth, psychological and spiritual truth in it. He writes about the situation of primal trust, evoked in the myth of the Garden of Eden, and existing in relationship between infant and parent. He describes it as a fundamental belief that the ground underfoot is really there. And one will be contained in perfection by another who will never let one down. And he starts the essay by telling a Jewish story of a father teaching his son to have more courage by jumping down the stairs. As he jumps, the father catches him. And each time he jumps from a higher stair. But at one point, the father steps back and the boy falls on the floor. As he picks himself up crying, the father says to him, "Never trust a Jew, even if it's your own father." So the story is shocking on one level. And it's ironic on another. Hillman questions it more deeply. Why does the father betray the son who trusts him? And in the Garden of Eden, something other was needed for man than God himself. Eve had to be created out of man, which then led to a betrayal of primal trust by God. And it's important not to get into gender issues here, or we miss the point. Eden was over, and life began. So it's a many-layered essay. But the thrust of it is that betrayal of this primal trust is necessary for maturation. The story, and please remember it's a story told for a purpose, is the boy's initiation into adult tragedy. Hillman says, "If one can give oneself assured that one will come out intact, what has been given? Dad or God will catch you at the bottom of this day." So broken trust can also be a breakthrough into a new level of consciousness. Hillman also spells out the reactions to betrayal, what he calls the sterile choices, which prevent or delay this maturation. The first is revenge, which is a sort of obvious and simple one. And when I read this, I always remember an experience with a friend of mine a long time ago, whose husband went off with another woman. And in the night, she got on her bike and cycled over to the house where he was, this other woman, and threw a whole lot of eggs at the window. And I was thinking, in a way, that's quite a clean act of revenge. But at the same time, it's not quite clean as it certainly ended up with dirty windows. Anyway, after revenge comes denial, we deny the value of other people, the person, the group, the teaching. And if we don't stop there, then we come to cynicism as a reaction to betrayal. Love is a cheat, causes are for sats, organizations are trapped, hierarchies are evil. And personally, we say to ourselves, "Keep sharp, go as alone, I'm alright, Jack." So broken idealism results in a tough philosophy of cynicism. But Hillman says that most damaging of all in these reactions to betrayal is self-betrayal, in which one's own ideals are rendered into dust. We stop honoring our true sense of ourselves. We rubbish our own sensitivity, values, and aspirations. So what is needed, he says, for maturation, is to take on one's own suffering, experience that, be how and what one is. So I can't do his thesis justice in this talk, but it has many resonances for me with the spiritual life. Life betrases, lets us down, pulls the rug from under our feet, disappoints our expectations. And we can choose to respond in different ways. We can try to make a better job of it, work harder, improve ourselves. That is, we can try to fix Sankara, which actually is impossible in the long term. We can fall into despair and despondency, we can just think what's the point? Which is nihilism. We can look for rewards in some future heaven realm, which is eternalism. And we can experience and recognise the suffering inherent in Sankara. We can practise to understand its causes, and so stop creating it. We can follow the Dharma. So for this last to happen, we need to allow ourselves to experience our own suffering without having that of others, without horrified anxiety, without trying to fix it or put it right in an helpful way. And at the same time, without identifying with it, either because we're experiencing it, sorry, either because we're experiencing it, or through guilt at what others are experiencing. We can proclaim towards ourselves or others. No one person can be the cause of our suffering. So it's a tall order, but it's what our practice is about or needs to be about, quite a lot of the time. It's staying in the gap with all those emotions of insecurity, embarrassment, shame, frustration, grief, all through the spectrum to extreme distress and pain. Pema Chodron writes a lot about this whole area of practice. She calls that ability to be with one's suffering, to be in the gap, the place of the spiritual warrior. So it's not a new idea or new terminology, but I find it a very helpful one. That in the experience where one might be feeling inadequate, confused, uncomfortable, out of control, by responding with attentive awareness, without identifying, one is, at the same time, a warrior in the work of the spiritual life. In her book, When Things Fall Apart, she writes about a state which in Tibetan is described as yay tang che. Apparently it's difficult to translate, but the nearest to come to it is descriptions like or translations like totally exhausted, completely hopeless, totally set up. Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone out there is to blame for our pain, she says, one has to get totally set up with these ways of thinking. It's an emotion that comes with attention to that suffering, that sense that there is no ground under our feet. It's a realization that to seek for lasting security is futile. To think that we can finally get it together is just not realistic. At this point our energy can really turn in the direction of the true refugees. At this point we have the real possibility to get off the wheel, to get out of samsara, by stopping creating it for ourselves. By stopping samsaraizing. We have the momentum to begin to see things as they really are, and from this vantage point on the spiral path, it will be possible to see the wheel, samsara, as dukkha, anitara and a natman, unsatisfactory, impermanent and empty of self. Then we can become altogether disillusioned, which leads naturally to disentanglement and dispassion. We are no longer caught up in craving, grasping and becoming. So it's important to emphasize that what comes with dis renunciation is the freedom of disentanglement and the calm and tranquility of dispassion, which flows out into love and compassion for all beings. Like water in a water wheel, helplessly we circle. I bow down to the compassion that arises for all beings. So Chandrakity is identifying with the helpless circling, as well as with the perspectives that can see clearly the sufferings of samsara, out of which arises compassion. I feel a strong response to this last line. I bow down to the compassion that arises for all beings. Being still caught up in the wheel, I can be aware of a need for compassion for myself and others. But I haven't yet seen clearly enough for that compassion to well up spontaneously. But I can bow down to it, pay homage to it, wherever it manifests, in reality, in symbolic form or in mythic imagination. I can honour and hold trust with it without fear of disappointment. So the second two mind-turning reflections work together, in that the recognition of the sufferings of samsara lead to a renunciation of cyclic existence. The knee sarinar, the knot going for refuge to samsara. Instead, we want to create the karmic conditions that give rise to insight. And reflecting on the suffering of sentient beings, engenders compassion. The desire not only to free ourselves, but to free all beings, the arising of the Bodhi Chitta. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Thank you for your contribution at FreeBuddhaS.io.com/donate. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
