(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. - Okay, so from enchantment to trudilite, reflections on stream entry. So I recently had the good fortune to be at Karshavana witnessing the ordination of 17. I think it was beautiful, radiant women. I saw them glowing with the radiance of their true self, their effective, even perhaps real going for refuge, strongly present within them at that time. So what I was doing, I was being present at that decisive moment which we've all made when we reorientate our lives to the transcendental to awakening. That moment at our ordination, when we turn from the things of the world, we turn from samsara to what is truly real and valuable. We're turning away from the group to the three jewels. So I'd just like you to take a few moments now to connect with your own ordination, whether that was a few weeks ago, whether it was five or 10 years ago, 25 years ago or over 30 years ago. Bring to mind that moment when you went forth from samsara, when you chose to reorientate your life to the Buddha's path to awakening. Just bring to mind that moment of your ordination and the subsequent weeks that followed it, when you were very, well, hopefully you felt sort of fresh, pure, new. (silence) So that moment, our ordination, is our spiritual rebirth. And after my ordination, I can remember this very clearly. I felt absolutely wonderful for some time. I just, I was sort of glowing and life was just very easy and very positive. And there was a real sort of sense of freshness and unice, I felt free. I did actually feel, I did feel reborn actually, felt a new being, but then, and again, I can remember this very clearly. What started to happen was that very painfully old habits of mine just started to creep back. And I was, I sort of spent a bit of time in this kind of very unsatisfactory, where I kind of was still in touch with a new, but Maya that I could see these other habits kind of coming back and I couldn't really do very much bad. Well, I didn't quite know what to do about it. And then, you know, it all just settled down and I, hopefully, I was a bit different, but I was sort of very much back on familiarity with myself. So that was certainly my experience. And at that point, I had entered the most difficult phase of the spiritual life, a path from effective to real going for refuge, in which we're going against the stream. We're going against the stream of our own habits and volitions, but we're also going against the group and the whole cultural ethos in society. So we caught, you know, after ordination and for some time, years, we caught between two worlds. We caught between the pull of the conditioned and the pull of the unconditioned. And I think sometimes we forget just how difficult the task is that we've set ourselves. And I just want to take a bit of time to explore this metaphor of going against the stream. Have you ever rode a boat against the tide? Well, it's very hard work. You know, it's really hard, tough doing that. If you tried to wade upriver, if you tried to wade in a stream upriver against the current, again, you know, it's hard work. It takes a lot of effort. I live very near to the University of Sheffield and there are very wide pavements around where I live. And at certain times of day, these pavements are just full of young people surging down the hill. And if you're trying to come uphill against that sort of human tide, it's hard. And you kind of, it's like you feel slightly odd with the kind of environment you're in, because everybody else is kind of this whole momentum that way, and I'm trying to come this way. So I just think it's important to remember that the commitment that we make at Audination is to a heroic task. And that commitment is to move from a state of being fettered to one of freedom, to steadily move towards that crucial stage of our spiritual life, stream entry. The point at which we enter the stream, the point at which the pull of the conditioned, pull of the unconditioned starts to exert its influence and its force, the point of irreversibility. So just to remind you what the fetters are, well, the Buddha describes the mental states that hold us back from pure awareness as fetters. They're mental states binding us to the wheel of life. In the Adana, we find the Buddha saying, rushing madly through life, they miss what is really most important and create further fetters. Like moths falling towards the flame, they are entranced by the sights and sounds of the world. Humanity is possessed, fettered and bound by pride. Due to their arrogant opinions and ensuing arguments, they will not escape the wheel of suffering. So it's the fetters that keep us endlessly circling in rebirth after rebirth. They're deeply entrenched in our psychophysical make-up and they're the result of dualistic consciousness. They're the product of the whole cyclical mode of reactive consciousness, perpetuated by our just going with the flow. So for me, this process, it's a bit like I want X. For some reason, I decide I want X, whether it's chocolate or Vimala Bandhu's cookbook, which there are only two copies left, or a particular place in the shrine room, or, well, you know, it can be a new car, a particular relationship, it's just endless. But you know, for some reason, I decide that I need X to keep me happy. And then I think what happens is I start to get anxious. I didn't have any money yesterday when I was dancing in the shop in mouth. And so now I'm thinking, well, are there going to be, is that book going to still be there when I can get to with my money? And then, so then I get anxious, and then I start to, you, all of you become, I start to feel disconnected from all of you because you're the problem who could go and sort of buy the book or, you know, you're the person who's going to take the meditation place that I need in order to have a really, really good meditation. And so then I get disconnected from other people and sort of more into my own kind of world habits self, and it just kind of goes on. But I think that's kind of the flavor, and it's happening all the time, it's happening just unconsciously, you know, we're not conscious of that process. And I find, there's a famous book by Charles Dickens called Christmas Carol. And I had a, I was giving it as a child and it's got loads of illustrations. And I find the picture of Marley's ghost, very evocative in this respect. So the main character in the Christmas Carol is, someone called Scrooge, who's a miser, and it's Christmas Eve, and he's just having nothing to do with Christmas, and he's been horrible to his employees, and he's kind of gone to bed and shut the door. And he gets visited by his old partner, his old business partner, who appears as a ghost. And this ghost is pulling this huge chain, this chain full of cash boxes and money and keys, and it's a sort of massive clanking chain, which sort of wrapped around him, in which he's dragging along. And he says to Scrooge very tellingly, I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link and yard by yard. I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will, I wear it. Is its pattern strange to you? So I think we could all claim Marley's words. You know, our chain might not be to do with money, might be to do with gadgets, I was talking to a friend of mine last night. It's interesting how many of you on the computer here but anyway, that's just a... (audience laughs) And yeah, it's a, we're forging a chain all the time, made up of craving aversion and ignorance. And I did think, you know, it might actually be good, it might be a good exercise to actually make your chain, make what you think it sort of consists of. But we are all forging a chain, and in a way, it's not something, it's not something we can avoid being human beings and being subject to dualistic consciousness. And this process has been going on since birth. You know, it's the binding power of the passions, which are, which fetter our experience. There's nothing the matter with our experience, but it's the binding of the passions. It's the binding of craving that chain. It's a problem. A few years ago, I was running the Tombola at my son's junior school. So, Tombola is where you have, there's a whole load of goods on display, and they've all got numbers on, and you buy a number. And if your number matches the goods, you get that prize. So, there was a very sort of particularly good toy. And several boys obviously felt that their lives depended on getting this toy. And some of them, there were three or four of them, he kept coming back time after time to buy another number in the hope of winning this toy. And they must have spent all their money, all their money for this fair, where there were lots and lots of different stools on this one particular, you know, trying to win this prize, which of course went to somebody who came along once and paid once and got it. But it was very striking. There were these two or three young lads who just felt that their lives, their happiness depended on getting this toy. And you know, we're very similar, it's just all a bit more sort of respectable or not. So obvious somehow. But you know, we're just the same in a way. So there's no definitive list of the fetters, but you often find 10 described. So they are self-view, doubt, dependence on rights and rituals as ends in themselves, desire for sensuous experience, ill-well, desire for existence in the ripper-laker, desire for existence in the ripper-laker, conceit so you're seeing yourself as superior inferior or equal to others, restlessness and ignorance. And I think we can recognize three levels of fetters. The first is a level to do with views and self-views. The second is a level to do with our biological conditioned responses. And the third is a level to do with experiencing ourself as a separate fixed entity who also wants to continue like that. So disentangling ourself from the first level traditionally is turned entering the stream. Weakening the second level, that is the fourth and fifth fetters of ill-will and craving, we become a once-returner and breaking this, we become a non-returner. And breaking the third level of fetters is synonymous with enlightenment. So the first level of fetters pertains to our holding onto views about ourselves and the world around us and the behavior that goes with this. It's an identification of oneself as this or that permanent separate thing and believing that the world has some immutable qualities. It's the habitual conditioned behavior that goes with such identification and belief. So when we practice the Dharma, the fetters manifest as beliefs which conflict with our practice and can lead us to a doubtful, superficially motivated Dharma practice. So these first three fetters, so this is self-yued out and dependence on rights and rituals, they're largely cognitive in nature and they pertain to our psychological, social, cultural and cultural conditioning and also to our beliefs about ourselves and the stories that we tell. They also, it also includes our religious philosophical and political views. So I am a white middle-class English woman. And I was just thinking about those four words and the weight of each of those words is fairly normal. That is what I was thinking about. So, you know, I'm white, so that immediately puts me into I'm part of the whole history of the white race on this earth and its relationship. These are the other races and other people of other colors. There's the whole sort of history there. There's a fact that I'm English, although actually for me it's very important that I'm a half Scott and quarter Irish, but that's another story. You know, there's a whole story about being English and identification with England and what England is. And yeah, I'm a woman. So, this is the kind of woman that I am and how I am in relation to men and so on and middle class, so in sort of where that puts me in society. And I mean, that's in a way that's just a kind of description. You know, if I start to apply other descriptions of myself, there's a further sort of psychological way. So, just in those four words, it feels like there's this whole kind of weight of views and entanglement really creating, creating the, creating this self, this self, this being. Yeah, but the important thing about the first level of fetters is that it is largely, we're not entirely, 'cause there's a huge emotional component, but it is, it has quite a strong cognitive element and it is about views, which makes it accessible to us. And I'm coming back to that. The second level of fetters, the desire for sensuous experience and ill will, concerns being a member of a physical species in the physical world. So, it's less the sort of personal conditioning that I'm this particular kind of person. It's more about the fact that I'm a human being. I'm part of a species of a chimpanzee-like creature who have learned to think and use tools. So, the sort of craving and ill will is deeply ingrained, sort of more of a sort of biological that's not very accurate, but you know, it's more of a kind, it's a deeply ingrained habit to do with being part of the species' homosapium. And then the final five fetters are concerned with the urge to perpetuate our existence as a separate fixed consciousness, whether in the rupa or the arupa loca. So, these are the ten fetters. Most of us are concerned with the first three, and in his wonderfully down-to-earth way, in the lecture, The Taste of Freedom, Banti describes them very clearly as habit, vagueness and superficiality. So, habit corresponds to fixed self-view, vagueness corresponds to doubt and superficiality to dependence on rights and rituals. And the antidotes to those fetters, the creativity, clarity and commitment. So, the first three fetters are sort of more, as I've said, they're all kind of intellectual, and therefore they're accessible to directed thought. The remaining seven involve very deep-seated attitudes which are less accessible to conscious transformation. Banti's made it very clear on more than one occasion that breaking the first three fetters is well within our grasp. And it's a crucial stage in spiritual development. It's the point of irreversibility, that point where the pull of the conditioned is stronger, the pull of the unconditioned, is stronger than the pull of the conditioned. The tide has turned. Creative mode has become stronger than the reactive mode. And our spiritual progress is assured. We can no longer fall back. There's no more conflict or struggle. A stream entrant is one in whom perfect vision has arisen. A true individual has gained insight into the true nature of things. The language, I find the language describing stream entry, tends to imply a sudden event. You know, we talk about breaking the fetters. And we often hear in this connection, the story of Bahia of the bark garment who gained enlightenment sort of on the spot when he urged the Buddha to give him a teaching. So there is a sort of, I think there is a, there is quite a strong, you can think, well I think that you can, it's quite easy to start thinking that this is a very sudden and definite and cataclysmic event. I actually don't think it's like that. I think it's a very gradual, I think it's a gradual process for most of us. And what happens is that over the years, we file away at the fetters, wearing them down, breaking them little by little. To use a different analogy, we clear away the dirt, or we slowly purify the obscurations. In the sitters, you find progress in the practice of the Dharma is likened to the gradual deepening of the ocean. It's like the gradual refinement of gold. It's like a farmer planting and watering his crop. What we're concerned with here is a process of growth. It's not something that we can hurry. We can only create the right conditions. And an audio has an interesting section on sudden and gradual progress. And I'll just read you something that he says. Not only is it impossible to predict the precise moment when realization will take place, but from the viewpoint of actual practice, even the gradual progress towards realization does not necessarily unfold uniformly. Instead, most practitioners experience a cyclic succession of progression and regression, oscillating within a fairly broad spectrum. If these recurring cycles are considered within a longer timeframe, however, they reveal a slow but consistent gradual development with an ever-increasing potential to culminate in a sudden realization of nibana. So I certainly think, to me, that kind of rings true, that there is a sort of gradual steady, well, sort of oscillating progress. But if we look at things within a longer timeframe, we can see progress. And I've heard a couple of people face since I've been here, and it's also my experience. Conventions can be really good markers. You look back over the last two years, and you can kind of see how things are different. And last night, at supper, somebody said, was wonderful. She said, she'd been on this convention. She feels the last 30 years of her life have been very worthwhile. And that she has made progress, and I guess we are all making progress. So, you know, I think it's a gradual process. I think it's a mistake, actually, to sort of expect to be expecting some huge cataclysmic or great experience, because I don't think it's like that. And I think that, you know, if we're looking for that, then it can lead to doubt. And it probably is, I'm sure it isn't like that for some of us, but I think probably for a lot of us, it's a much more sort of gradual thing. So, yes, I was going to give you an example. I've studied the white lotus sutra well, quite a lot over the years, and I love the parables, and the one parable that I have a lot of difficulty with, which won't be a surprise to my friends, is the burning house. So, you know, when I first studied the white lotus sutra, I just thought, well, I don't really, I don't think so, I'm sorry, I was burning, I don't really want to have anything to do with that. And, you know, we do that, don't we? We put aside bits of the teaching that we don't like, and don't fit with this self-view. So, I think over time, I have appreciated more, the truth contained in that parable. And then just before I went to Akashivana this year, I was studying it with my mid-study group. I just had this real sense of frustration, I thought, for goodness sake, well, sorry, just thought, so yeah, it was interesting because some of the reactions in the group, I could really recognise as mine some time ago, you know, people are saying, well, I don't really relate to this, I don't like it. I just had this real sense of frustration with myself, and I said, for goodness sake, you know, what is it going to take to get you out of this burning house? What needs to happen for you to just get out of it? It's about time you kind of found your way out. So, I took that, well, I'm not consciously, but that had happened just before I went to Akashivana, and Akashivana is a very sort of particular and special set of retreat conditions, I think, and I am not going to rule the details. I had a sort of, I was allocated a place to sleep which I wasn't very happy with. And anyway, I moved, well, sorry. This place, well, it was the little store cupboard, which is much nicer now, it's kind of quite palatial in a sense. But anyway, I had an experience of irrational fear which really shook me, and I didn't feel able, at the particular time it happened, and given the conditions of the retreat to deal with it. So, I moved where I was sleeping. But some time after that, I just thought, well, actually, that is how Samsara is. This room that I was given, which was, well, which I imagined being full of bugs and creeping things, but well, one or two, but nothing to what my mind was doing, and which was enclosed, and where I found difficult to be, is actually how Samsara is. So, yeah. So, that is just to illustrate really, that, you know, I think there's, over time, there's a gradual process of deepening of our understanding and our emotional emotional connection with the Dharma. Yeah, and you know, I think it's really important that we remember this because, well, some of you won't remember, but inside of this, you get those lightning flashes. There was a very old mitch-tah, the very original mitch-tah, had a lightning flash on the cover, and it was all about insight. And those images, they kind of go in, don't they, and you think, well, that's what it is somewhere. But actually, I think it's, as I say, I think it's a much more such gradual process. And it's important that we're looking, that we're looking in the right places, that we're looking wisely, that our attention is on the right, right kinds of things. Otherwise, we fall prey to doubt. And then I just want to remind you, that a stream entrant is not perfect and is not enlightened. A stream entrant is still unskillful. And one characteristic of stream entrant is that they're still confessing. Banting made a mistake in his recent message paper. I think, I can't, I haven't got it with me, so I don't know the quote. But he said something like the, anyway, a stream entrant is perfect in morality or something. That is actually a mistake. A stream entrant is someone who, the minute they recognise that they've done something unskillful, they confess and they're transparent about their actions. But they're still unskillful. They're still subject to craving, to ill will. If you look at the higher fetters, you still want to exist. They're still a very subtle sense of eye, because conceit is the eighth night's better. And so, you know, there's still a sense of eye in relation to other people. There's still a level of subtle doubt, I think, because, you know, we're going into the unknown, so there's always going to be a level of anxiety, a level of doubt about that. So I think, again, it's important to remember that stream entrants are not perfect. We're not aiming for something that is perfect. We're not aiming for enlightenment. We're aiming for something where we've just seen through, seen through the self and the views that we have around that. And it is, it is attainable by us. I also think that we remain recognisable to ourselves. But, so, you know, if it's like vlogment, I was a stream entrant, I would still be sort of in this body and talking in the same way. And, you know, we sort of stay recognisable to ourselves. It's just that we've lost the construction, the sort of mental construction, and all the kind of weight of craving and anxiety that goes with that. So that's what we've become free of. So I want to use the remainder of this talk to explore how we move from effective to real, going for refuge. How can we set up the conditions to break the first three fetters? How do we make progress? And I think the crucial alchemical ingredient in this process is awareness. But I also think that faith and viria are extremely important. And the way I looked at it is that we cultivate right view, which then gives rise to faith. And then that gives us the motivation to change. And that sort of process, which is spiral rather than cyclical, is fuelled by awareness and viria. So that's kind of my map of the process of spiritual growth. That we cultivate wisdom, we cultivate insight, we cultivate right view. And that gives rise to an increased deepening of our faith. And then that gives us the motivation to change our behaviour. So we need to reflect deeply on the three latches, the three marks of conditioned existence, which are dukkha and satisfactoryness, miniature impermanence and an artman, the fact there's no changing permanent self. And we also, as Banti has emphasised, when we reflect on the electioners, we also need to bring to mind, try and imagine the corresponding vimoxia, the corresponding gateway to liberation. So we need to train ourselves with wise reflection on the true characteristics of conditioned existence. And over time, these become more and more familiar. They imprint themselves on our way of viewing experience. And they lead eventually to a change in the way we see this world, see the world. So, for example, we have an intellectual understanding of impermanence. So we regularly contemplate the arising and passing away of phenomena. And over time, our awareness of impermanence becomes more spontaneous and it exerts more of an influence on our daily experience and deepens. So that has been, reflecting on impermanence has been a sort of ongoing theme of mind for many years. It's particularly pertinent with children where you kind of think, you sort of establish a really nice routine and everything's going very straightforwardly and well. And then suddenly, it all changes 'cause they grow and change and you have to rethink. And it's just, it's impermanent. But we can see, I mean, impermanence all around us. I'm not going to say very much about it. But I think the important thing is that we create that habit of reflecting daily or habitually in our lives. And that gradually, our view of the world starts to change. And at the same time, we imagine the corresponding vimoxia. So the vimoxia's are the directionless, the sineless and shunya tar. So the vimoxia that corresponds to impermanence is the sineless, which I have quite a lot of difficulty with. So, you know, trying to get my head around the fact that awareness is sort of empty of all concepts and transcends all thoughts. That's been a real poem for me for some time. It's how can I exist, how can I be without thought? That's a sort of whole working ground. And I think we just have to play around, you know, we have to be open to those ideas and play around with them in our minds, in our experience. And then, you know, when you're on retreat, you can kind of sometimes get a glimpse of how that might be. But in this connection, there's a little story about Deepa Ma. So Jack Conefield asked Deepa Ma, "What is it like?" Does everyone know who Deepa Ma is? She was, and well, a highly developed Indian woman. Jack Conefield asked, "What's it like in your mind?" Deepa Ma smiled, closed her eyes and quietly answered. "In my mind, there are three things. Concentration, loving kindness and peace." Jack, not sure if he'd heard correctly, asked, "Is that all?" "Yes, that is all Deepa Ma replied." The room was silent, then there were a few sighs and quiet laughs, followed by Jack's barely audible whisper. How wonderful. So, we need to be cultivating right view. And we need to do that in two ways, by deepening our reflections on impermanence. But also imagine playing around with what it might look like. What the homoches would feel like. And as a result of that deepening appreciation of the Laxianess, our faith deepens. And faith is the indispensable, emotional, or volitional element of any experience of insight into the nature of reality. Faith is the indispensable, emotional, or volitional element of any experience of insight into the nature of reality. And it's a precise and distinctive mental event which provides us with the basis for sustained interest that supports the application of effort. So I'm sure you'll know that there are three aspects to faith. A deep conviction of what is real, lucidity as to what has value, and longing for things which are real and are possible. So that would be longing for stream entry, longing for that point of irreversibility. And I think it's very important just to remind you that you -- faith is not the same as pleasure. You can have faith without joy. And that will eventually lead to joyful faith. I think some of us, it's quite easy to confuse faith and pleasure. So we need to recognize our faith and confidence in the dharma and in the sangha. And I think some of us do find this easier than others. But we've all got faith. You know, whatever you think of yourself, whether you call yourself a faith type or a hate type, they're just labels. For us all to be here, we all have a level depth of faith. And I think it's really important that we know that about ourselves. So getting our friends to help us get in touch with our reservoirs of faith, seeing it in us. Because it's out of that faith that we have the interest and the motivation to apply effort, to apply the energy that we need to change to grow and develop. So I'm going to explore this process of change by looking at the first three fetters. So the first fetter is fixed self-view or habit. With this tangled mass of habits and views, creating an illusion of self, constantly appropriating experience and telling stories. So I've had a very humbling example of this recently. I have an old VW Polo, and I mean, I've always had old cars. And I have an aversion to people who drive four by fours. I'm extremely critical of them, particularly in Sheffield, around private schools. But just recently, I had the good fortune to drive to the northwest of Scotland in a four by four. Which was fantastic. I have to say, it was absolutely marvelous. What happened was, I just started to rewrite the story about who I am in relation to cars and four by fours. And it was just fascinating. You know, we just, in experience comes in, and we write one story. We have one story, one narrative, another experience happens, and we just create another one. And it's just thoughts, has no truth or validity. So anyway, it was just very interesting. And now, for me, I'm in between. [ Laughter ] You know, as Banti said, we're either behaving reactively or creatively, and unfortunately, there's nothing in between. I've always thought that wasn't real. Really unfortunate. But, you know, we can't rest. We're either doing one or the other. So we can approach the task of changing our habits at a number of different levels. There's the level of sensation of sense perception, which Karen Agita described the other night. We can be really noticing in our meditation, you know, just on the level of sensation, what's happening, how we kind of maybe grow up, what happens when we -- a piece of chocolate appears in front of us. So there's things walking on the top of the shrine room. You know, what we do with that. So there's that level of sensation. So we can be present in the moment with Vaid and R, without appropriating it. And then there's the behavioral level. When we decide to change a habit, we might decide to stop swearing or stop drinking alcohol or eat differently. Then there's the psychological level where we start to disentangle ourselves from the stories we tell and any unhelpful psychological conditioning that may have arisen in our lives. So we become in hula dairinis by the wonderful phrase, capable of our own distress. You know, that's part of growing, becoming freer of our psychological conditioning. And then there's the cultural and societal level where we loosen our identity with society and with culture. I do -- some years ago now, I mean, I've always been very -- I feel I'm happy to be a woman. And that some years ago, I did let in the possibility that I could, you know, be a man at another time, which was quite a revelation because I've been very attached to being a woman and think it's a very good situation to be in Britain at this particular time. But, you know, it was very interesting to think, well, actually, you know, all sorts of things possible in the future. So, yeah. So we can look at -- we can approach changing our habits, changing our fixed-year self in these sort of different ways. And in order to change habits, I think there are several things that we need. There are several conditions that we need to set up. So, first of all, we need courage. There's always an element of risk. We're moving into unknown and uncharted territory. So, Banti talks about going to a new country quite a lot. And that can be quite an unsettling experience. I think going on retreat can be can have that sort of element of finding yourself doing something different, loosening you up, particularly retreat maybe that you haven't been on before or a new retreat. So, maybe going to Butterfield, if you've never done that. Or, I don't know, whatever. But just doing something a bit different. In my own experience, I've been lucky enough to go to the Karshavana twice now. And I think both those retreats have had a very significant effect. Because I think the conditions that a Karshavana have the effect of loose -- well, they shake your ego up. And in my experience, I'm shaken down a bit differently as a result of being there. The first time I went there, because the physical conditions and environment at that point in time were quite demanding, the weather wasn't wavered, and quite a lot of us. I just found myself being able to cope with a lot more than I realized I was capable of. And I think, you know, having that experience gives you a lot of courage, and I give you confidence. And, right, so I think stepping outside of our habitual ways of doing things in whatever way you can is an important part of changing habits, challenging habits. And I think we can do that as well by just thinking or practicing, putting aside yourself. You might decide to go to a meeting with no fixed agenda about the outcome, or you might. Thank you. You might decide to just be the person who makes the tea all the time, or something. They're just putting aside your own self, your own preferences, and serving other people. That can be challenging. So, we need courage and to take risk to help us change habits. We need our imagination. We need to imagine ourselves differently, or in a new situation, a bit like I was talking earlier about imagining well, so what is it like not to have thought? Or we need to really, really identify with our sadhana, what would it be like to be living in Amitabha's Pure Land, or what would it be like, you know, how would it be to be embodying love and light and compassion, really taking that on. You know, we need a clear commitment to change. So, we need to make any changes. We want to make tangible. We need to tell our friends, tell our chapter, make vows. I'm quite a fan of diaries and charts. But, you know, doing whatever helps you to make that commitment as real and as supportive as possible. And we also need discipline and restraint. We need to be able to say no in order to say yes to our spiritual growth. So, we maybe need to say no to chocolates. They know to nights out in order to say yes to Mitch's study. And we also need to create a habit of success. And I think Shanti Deb is just amazing in this respect because he says it all, don't need to go to modern psychology. After assessing the full implications, this is on the chat room very low, by the way, after assessing the full implications, one should either begin or not begin. Surely, not beginning is better than turning back once one has begun. This is a habit that continues even in another life and from its evil suffering increases. Another life and opportunity for action both lost and the task not accomplished. So, I think if we're attempting to change our habits and some of what we're trying to do is tough, we really need to set ourselves achievable goals and bring to them a wholehearted commitment. I think it's so, so important. And, you know, Shanti Deb says, if we don't do that, if we're setting up a habit of failure, then that carries on into our future life. He goes on to say, "One should be addicted solely to the task that one is undertaking. One should be intoxicated by that task, insatiable, like someone hankering for the pleasure and fruit of love play." And he then goes on to say, you know, when you've done that, when you've changed that habit, you just go on to the next. So, I think that's crucially important. If we're sitting down to meditate, we need to do just that. If we just need to keep returning to our object of meditation and keep trying to develop awareness, rather than letting ourselves off the hook if we're sleepy or daydreaming or planning or fantasizing, you know, I'm tired or I'm meditate properly at the next sit, I think if we do find that we can't meditate, then we need to make a conscious choice and say, "Okay, I'm going to use this time to do acts, but I'm going to stop the meditation and then do acts." Otherwise we're just in this sort of mishmash of failure. And, of course, we need awareness for all of this. So, filing away at the feta of habit requires us to act decisively to change habits by having confidence in our ability to change, intelligently setting up the conditions for success and then acting in a disciplined way. So, I'll just deal much more briefly with the last two fetters. So doubt, well, it's indecision or vagueness. This isn't doubt in the intellectual sense. It means an unwillingness to commit ourselves as a sort of wavering, hesitation, and willing to take the plunge, we sit on the fence, the yes, but sort of attitude. We need to be willing to think things through, think clearly, sort out our priorities, be clear about them, make up our minds and fill ourselves in. I find, if I'm clear about my intention, then other things fall into place around that. For example, we've never had a television. And as far as the children's gone, that's been a very straightforward decision that hasn't caused any problem. But I'm a lot less clear about the computer, and that is currently a cause of quite a lot of conflict and tensioning I have. I think if you have a clear intention, then other things sort of fall into place around that. It's when we're not clear and we're vacillating that Mara steps in, and the reactive mind is at work, and the worldly winds are blowing strongly. I will just mention this example. A few years ago at work, I got seduced by status and the possibility of more money, and I applied for a job, which fortunately I didn't get. Currently, I'm fortunate to have a job that pays me enough and supports my practice. But it's not very comfortable because I'm at a lower level than I should be than my peers are at. So I find myself currently being overtaken by younger colleagues who actually I've kind of trained up. But when I'm clear about the fact that my going for refuge is central to my life and that I need the conditions and the energy for practice, then it's not a problem. It's when I somehow get sort of a bit seduced or sidetracked that at all point I can get a bit sort of fuzzy. So I think if we're clear, if we're clear, then things are very straightforward. Doubt and vagueness is corrosive, and we have a responsibility to ourselves and to each other to clarify doubts when we become aware of them. And I think that is particularly true in relation to the order, which is a very precious, unique and marvellous entity, but it only exists by our own efforts. Now I think if we have doubts about our practice, or about our order, or our friends do, we have a real responsibility to clarify those. And then the final fetter of superficiality, we're just acting from part of ourselves from our surface, and we counteract this by acting wholeheartedly by committing ourselves. We simply can't afford to waste time by going through the motions of our spiritual life. Whatever is happening in our lives, we need to address it wholeheartedly. So those are the three fetters, habit, doubt, and superficiality, which we file away at over years. We patiently file away with faith, awareness, and viria. And as we weaken these fetters of habit, vagueness, and superficiality, we become progressively freer of the mind-forged monocles. Lakes term. But we are up against it in this process, and we need all the help we can get. So I think as order members, we could find it helpful to create our own coolers, which is something a friend of mine did recently, which was very mutually beneficial. And of course we can use our chapters as well, but I think the sort of cooler model, getting together two or three friends to discuss your own progress towards stream entry, or however you wish to think about it, can be really beneficial. Stream entry is within our grasp, and if we just keep making an effort and stay aware, then a day will come when the first three fetters are broken. We'll see through the spells, enchantments, and lures, lures, lures of samsara. We'll see things as they really are, and we'll fulfill that potential, that we glimpse, that our ordination. We become free of conflict emancipated from the group. Our commitment to our spiritual path is like a flood within us, although there's no longer a sense of a separate sense of self. So there's just this kind of tide of spiritual momentum. And we have a creative orientation of becoming. So the whole movement and tendency of our being is expansive, spiraling creatively, outwards and upwards. So just finally, let us gladly embrace the challenge of growing towards stream entry, the point of irreversibility, confident in our capacity and our practice. Confident that this is what we were destined for, and in the words of from the Sittany parta. So now I will go, I will go into the struggle. This is to my mind delight. This is where my mind finds bliss. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] We hope you enjoyed the talk. 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