(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. - In the course of the last few weeks or even in the course of the last few months, I've had occasion to participate in discussions, not only with people here, not only with people who are actually trying to follow, the path as taught by the Buddha, but discussions with other people elsewhere, people who, though they were involved in their own way, in the living of the spiritual life, the treading of the spiritual path, were not very familiar with Buddhism, even though in many cases, very interested in it. And in the course of the discussions, which I have had, which in fact I'm still having, with some of these people, in some of these groups, both formal and informal, one of the questions which has come up again and again, one of the questions in fact, which has been put to me again and again, is the question of what really makes one a Buddhist. Now obviously one is not thinking in formal, official as it were ecclesiastical terms, one is not thinking in terms of official membership, or anything like that, but one is thinking in essentially spiritual terms, thinking in terms of reality, thinking in terms of individual commitment. And the answer, which has always emerged to that sort of question, is that a Buddhist ultimately, when the question is probed, when the question is plumbed, one may say to its very depths, a Buddhist is one who goes for refuge. Now going for refuge is an act, one can even say it is the Buddhist act, the distinctive and the decisive Buddhist act, and one therefore is a Buddhist, not merely by virtue of some external membership, in some external body, not even by virtue of one's belief or one's faith, but essentially in virtue of an action, an action of going, an action of going for refuge. Now going for refuge to what? This is something also that has to be elucidated. And in traditional terms, one goes for refuge to the Buddha, to the Dharma and to the Sangha. By Buddha one means, one's own ultimate ideal of spiritual perfection. Or in a few words, the spiritual ideal. Going for refuge to the Buddha means, the acceptance for oneself, of a certain spiritual ideal, especially as embodied in the life and the teaching of the Buddha, an ideal which one takes, which one accepts as one's own, in the sense that it is this ideal that one wishes to realize oneself, to achieve oneself and embody in one's own life. In other words, it's a practical ideal, not merely something theoretical. So this is going for refuge to the Buddha, and then going for refuge to the Dharma. And this means, or this suggests, that in order to realize this ideal of Buddha hood, the supreme spiritual ideal, there must be some way, there must be some method, there must be some regular course of progress. And this essentially is what we call the Dharma, the path of the higher evolution in more contemporary terms. And therefore going for refuge to the Dharma means committing oneself to follow this path. However far it may lead, however difficult it may be, however remote the regions may be into which it leads, however trackless as it were, however intangible, but one commits oneself to following, that path of the higher evolution, that path leading to the realization of the spiritual ideal, leading to the realization of Buddha hood, one commits oneself to following it to the end. My head almost said the Buddha in, but of course the end in this case isn't at all bitter. One might say the end is very sweet, but the path itself at least in stages may be bitter, may be rugged. So this is going for refuge to the Dharma. And thirdly, going for refuge to the Sangha. The Sangha is the spiritual community. Other people who in their own way are also treading, that same spiritual path that you are treading or trying to tread, in the direction of the realization of the same spiritual ideal. So these are your fellow pilgrims, these are your companions on the way, you help them, they help you, you inspire them, they inspire you. If they stumble, you try to pick them up. If you stumble, you hope that they'll try to assist you to your feet also. So this is the spiritual community, this is the Sangha. And to the Sangha also, one goes for refuge. So in brief, in a very few words in these traditional terms, one is a Buddhist by virtue of the fact that one goes for refuge in this sense through the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. And these three, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, these are known therefore as the three refuges and also as the three jewels. And they are the three great themes, one might say, of Buddhism itself. The whole of Buddhism, vast as it is, complex as it is, and also simple as it is, can be reduced to these three, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. And inasmuch as the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha are so important, are so all important, it's only natural that in the cause of centuries, the custom should have grown up in the Buddhist east of commemorating them, celebrating them at certain stated times of the year on certain stated occasions. So we find in the Buddhist calendar, we have three great states, three great feasts, if you like, three great festivals. When we commemorate the Buddha, when we commemorate the Dharma, when we commemorate the Sangha. Buddha day is of course, Vai Shaka Purnima, the full moon day of the month, April to May, when we commemorate the enlightenment of the Buddha, when we commemorate, when we remember that which makes the Buddha, Buddha. In other words, his enlightenment. And then Dharma day, or Dharma Chakra day, is that day some two months later, corresponding to our June, July, when we remember the Buddha's first enunciation of the truth, the first teaching that he gave, after his enlightenment, the first showing of the way, the first showing of the path of the higher evolution to the rest of humanity. And then Sangha day comes later on still in the year, this comes on another full moon day, that of the month, October to November. So on these three great states, in the course of the Buddhist year, we celebrate and we commemorate and remember these three refuges, these three jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. Now in addition to these, there are many other festivals, many other celebrations, but two amongst them all, are about outstanding importance. The first of these is the Buddha's birthday. The other is the Buddha's Pari Nirvana day. Or as we would say in the case of any other person, other than the Buddha, the anniversary of his death. The Buddha's birthday falls according to the Far Eastern Buddhist calendar on April the 8th. We'll be in retreat at Haysomia this year, on that day. And we shall be having something quite special on that occasion. And the second day, the anniversary of the Pari Nirvana happens to fall today, according to the Far Eastern Buddhist calendar. Today is the anniversary of the Buddha's passing away. So today, we can say we are commemorating what, as I've said, in the case of other people, we would describe as the death of the Buddha. Now it so happens that this day falls on a Tuesday. And on Tuesdays, as most of you know, we have a meditation. Sometimes more than one meditation. So inasmuch as we are commemorating the Pari Nirvana of the Buddha, the death word of the Buddha, and inasmuch as Tuesday is usually for us a meditation day, I'm going to say something this evening on the subject of the recollection of death in general, and the recollection of the Buddha's death inverted commerce, in particular. The recollection of death, or Madhana Anusati, happens to be a particular kind of meditation practice, or meditation discipline. And I want, therefore, to begin by saying this evening, something in general on the subject of meditation. Now we find nowadays that a lot of people talk about meditation. A lot of people practice meditation, compared with the numbers practicing it before. A lot of people even teach meditation. A lot of people talk about meditation. So the word is quite well known. The word is quite current, as it were. You can even see it on posters in the underground. But what meditation essentially is? What meditation comprehends? What sort of ground meditation covers? How it is to be practiced? What its significance is? How many different kinds of meditation practice there are? All these points are not so well understood. Now very broadly speaking we can say that there are three main senses in which the word meditation can be used. And they correspond, we may say, to three excessively higher levels of experience, or if you like, successively higher levels of consciousness. First of all, there's meditation in the sense of the integration, the bringing together of all our psychic energies. This is the first level, if you like the first step. Human beings, like other living things, are embodiments of energy. That's what we essentially are. Maybe we don't look like it sometimes, but this is what we essentially are, embodiments of energy. If you like crystallized semi-crystallized energy. But unfortunately, our energy is as it were split up into all sorts of streams. Streams of energy flowing some in this direction, some in that direction, some meandering happily, others rushing and pouring and tumbling. And sometimes these different streams of energy, instead of flowing together, instead of flowing harmoniously, flow as it were in opposition. They are locked as it were in a sort of conflict. They sort of cancel each other, cancel one another, even out. And when that happens, we tend to stagnate. We're fighting with ourselves. Our energies are split. We're divided. We're divided people, divided selves, if you like. And this is a situation in which many people find themselves today. Their energies are scattered. They're distracted. They can't do very much. They can't achieve very much. Because their energies are divided against themselves. Because they are divided against their own self. So the first thing that we have to do is to bring all these energies together to collect all these scattered energies, to get them flowing as it were in the same channel, and have that channel as it were, cutting deeper and deeper and deeper all the time. And the energy is flowing more and more smoothly, more and more steadily along that one channel in the direction of their true, their ultimate goal. So this is what meditation is in the first place. Meditation in the sense of the integration of the sum total of one's cycle called, even of one's psychophysical energies, so that they flow smoothly and harmoniously, so that there's no conflict, no discord, so that one experiences peace, one experiences harmony, one experiences a great sense of integration, of everything coming together, not everything being ripped apart as it were. And then there's meditation in a still higher sense. Meditation in the sense of the experience of what we can describe as super-conscious states. These are the states which are collectively termed in the Indian tradition, Deanna's. And they are states of progressive, super-conscious, simplification, in the sense that, according to tradition, confirmed by people's experience, in the earlier, in the lower Deanna's, there are quite a number of different mental or psychical factors, as they're called, but as the experience develops, as one passes from a lower to a higher Deanna, the number of, the number of psychical factors is gradually reduced. In the first Deanna, for instance, out of the fourth, in the first Deanna, one experiences not only integration, which one carries over from meditation in the previous sense, but one experiences bliss, one experiences joy, one experiences subtle mental activity of various kinds. But as one ascends, then the mental activity gradually fades away. One does not think of anything. One does not think about anything. All mental functioning, in this sense, has entirely ceased. The mind is stilled, but at the same time, one is perfectly aware, perfectly conscious. In fact, more aware and more conscious than ever, only there's no mental activity. The whole mind becomes like a vast pool, a vast lake, on which every ripple has died away. The water has not died away. The water is still there. But instead of being rippled, instead of being tossed into waves, it's perfectly calm, perfectly level, perfectly shining, and perfectly serene. So this is what the experience is like in the second Deanna, when there's no mental activity. And as one ascends, as one goes even higher, then even the experience of joy, which is comparatively coarse, fades away. And what one has left is the integrated, cyclical contents of feeling intense bliss and intense peace, and still, of course, no mental activity. And going even further, even higher, eventually, does not even a feeling of bliss. Even that is too coarse. Even that is not refined enough for this level, or at this level. At this fourth level, all that one experiences, all that one knows, is just a sort of vast ocean, as it were, of integration, if you like, of mental harmony, with an overwhelming experience of absolute peace, which far surpasses any experience of happiness or even bliss. So in this way, the Deanna's development, in this way, in the case of these super conscious states, one goes from lower to higher and ever higher states and experiences. And on the way, all sorts of things happen. One may have other experiences, too. What I've described represents a sort of standard pattern, but there are all sorts of additional dimensions, all sorts of byways and by paths of experience, according to different people's temperaments and backgrounds, and so on. Some people have all sorts of visionary experiences. They see great archetypal images. They may see, in the course of their meditation, the sort of floating forms of landscapes. They may see jewel-like objects, mandalas. They may even see Buddhas, bodhisattvas, gods, goddesses, and so on, all emerging, as it were, from the depths of their own minds. All of these are experiences which may come to one person or another in the course of their meditation practice at this level, as they're passing one by one through these genres. And also, they may start developing various subtle, supernormal faculties. They might start finding themselves becoming extraordinarily telepathic, aware of what is happening in other people's minds, or at least much, much more sensitive to other people's emotional reactions and so on. They may even occasionally find themselves hearing and seeing things at a distance, or they might even have the odd flash of what seems to be a recollection of a previous life, a previous existence. But one is advised, when these sorts of things happen, just to leave them aside, not to become fascinated, not to pursue them, but to press on that path to try to go from the lower to the higher tiana. And in this way, extend and deepen one's experience of this level of meditation. So this is meditation in the second sense, meditation in the sense of experience of super conscious states. And then thirdly, there's meditation in the sense of insight into the true nature of existence. Now what does this mean? It means that as you ascend, as you go from lower to higher tiana states, as you go from lower to higher levels of consciousness, the experience not only becomes more integrated, it not only becomes more blissful, it not only becomes more peaceful. Also, of course, as I mentioned, there's a cessation quite early on of mental processes, but also what happens is that one's experience becomes more and more objective. You become less and less under the influence of your own subjectivity, less and less under the influence of the pleasure principle one might say. Everything becomes less and less distorted by subjective factors. And you begin as it were to get above all those things. Just like an aeroplane emerging from the clouds into the clear sky into the stratosphere, where there are no clouds and there's just the blue sky. And you begin as it were to look down on everything below, down on the earth, down in everything condition and see it just as it is, because you're clear of it, away from it, free of it. And you can see it for the first time, perhaps, or let's begin to see it much more objectively. You begin to see things as they really are. You begin to see reality. In other words, you develop the beginnings, at least, of what is called insight or wisdom, which leads directly to enlightenment, directly to nirvana. So these are the three main senses in which one uses this word meditation. So you can see that the word meditation covers a very great deal of ground. It operates on these three vastly different levels. In the first place, there's meditation as concentration. In other words, the integration of all the cyclical contents. There's meditation as we may say, meditation. Let's keep that word for this stage, experience of the states of higher consciousness. And then, meditation as contemplation, developing insight, developing wisdom, on the basis of one's experience of the super-conscious states. So meditation in the sense of concentration, meditation in the sense of meditation, meditation in the sense of contemplation. So this is the scheme, if you like, that very broadly and roughly we establish. Now most people, in the course of their meditation practice, are concerned for a very long time with meditation in the first and second senses, meditation as concentration and meditation as meditation. It'll be usually a long time before they're ready to come to meditation in the sense of contemplation. Most people are concerned simply to begin with the integration of all their scattered energies. They want to pull themselves together. They want to be one person, not a number of conflicting selves. They want to have all the energies flowing together harmoniously. So they want to waste their energy in conflict, in eternal and external. They want to be whole, they want to be harmonious and that's the only way in which they can really deploy their energies properly and be really happy. And then after that, when that has been achieved, they're concerned with trying to raise, trying to lift their consciousness somewhat above the usual, somewhat above the so-called normal level. In other words, what most people who take up the practice of meditation are concerned with to the extent that they actually do practice and experience is to transform a lower into a higher state of consciousness. This is what essentially we're concerned with when we take up meditation or when we try to meditate. Man is essentially consciousness. We are what our state of consciousness is. Our state of consciousness is us, our overall state of consciousness. It's what we are, essentially. So in the course of our spiritual life in general and in the course of our meditation practice in particular, we're concerned with changing our state of consciousness, which isn't an easy thing to do, changing it from a lower to a higher state. This is not only not very easy for the vast majority of people, for those who are not spiritually gifted from the very beginning. This is very, very difficult indeed. There are all sorts of hindrances, there are all sorts of obstacles. We know there are plenty of obstacles outside, but there are even more obstacles, we may say, inside. There are obstacles in our own minds, obstacles in our own present state of conditioned consciousness. And the old Buddhist tradition summarizes these obstacles, these hindrances, which hold us down in a lower state of consciousness and prevent us rising to a higher state of consciousness, summarizes them under the general heading of what are known as the five defilements, which are also sometimes known as the five poisons, because they poison the whole of our existence. And if we're not careful, bring us even to spiritual death. And what are these five? The first of all, distraction. Secondly, aversion, thirdly craving, fourthly ignorance and fifthly conceit. Now, for these five defilements or poisons, for overcoming these five poisons or defilements, there are five different types of practice. And these are what we call the five basic methods of meditation. In other words, for overcoming each poison, each defilement, within our own lower consciousness, there's a specific method of meditation. And we'll advise to use these methods according to our own temperament. In other words, if one particular poison or defilement predominates, then we concentrate on the corresponding method of meditation, which remembers that. And if we find, for instance, our experience changes, if we find say that one particular defilement is predominant one week and another, defilement predominant the next week or the next month, then we can change our method of practice accordingly. So let me go briefly through these five methods of meditation, these five basic methods, and give you some idea of how these five defilements or five poisons are counteracted and overcome. First of all, there's the defilement or the poison of distraction. What does this mean? Distraction is inability to concentrate. You're in a state where your mind is very easily taken away. You're doing something or you're supposed to be doing something, but you can't concentrate on it. Thinking of something else, or you keep losing your attention, your mind is carried away, someone comes to see you, you forget all about what you're supposed to be doing, or you hear a sound, or you see something, and at once your mind is carried away by that. And to some people, unfortunately, especially under the conditions of modern life, find it practically impossible just to settle down and concentrate on one thing at a time, whatever they are supposed to be doing. That being protected is it were bombarded by stimuli, perpetually bombarded by various things which drag their attention away, and sometimes it doesn't even have to be dragged. It's very easily taken away. So this is distraction, this inability to concentrate. There's also very much tied up with what I was talking about before. This question of non-integration, your energies are not integrated, they're not all pulling in the same direction or working in the same direction in the same way. So one stream of energy, for instance, one's self as it were, wants to concentrate on something, so it does it for a little while, but then another self pops up, with its own stream of energy, wants to concentrate on something else, or at least doesn't want to concentrate on that particular thing. So it tries to take over this conflict, and in the end the first self succumbs, the other self takes over, and in terms of the first self and its interests, mind has wandered. You've become distracted, and this is going on all the time. So what is the remedy for this? How can we overcome our distractedness? How can we collect ourselves, bring ourselves together, bring our energies together? Which is the method for this? Well the method, as most of you know I'm sure already, is the method of the mindfulness of breathing. The mindfulness of breathing is especially intended to correct and overcome this defilement, this poison of mental distraction and lack of collectedness. And most of you know how we practice it, we practice it in various stages, we settle ourselves comfortably down, and we just allow the attention, the concentration, to focus on the breath, we just allow ourselves breathing in and breathing out in a quite natural manner. And we start counting, and as you know most of you, in the first stage of practice we count at the end of each in an up breath, in the second stage we count at the beginning of each in an up breath, then in the third stage we drop the counting, mind should have become pretty concentrated by this time, and we just allow ourselves to become absorbed in the flow of the breath, as it flows in and flows out, what appears to expand and contract, rise and fall, become absorbed in this sort of movement in a very rhythmical way, find the experience getting deeper and deeper and deeper, and in the fourth stage we settle down and concentrate just on that tiny, as it were tickling sensation that we experienced within the nostrils, and in the even that may go, and will be as it were suspended if you like, in mid-air as it were, with nothing to concentrate on, we're concentrated, but we're not concentrating on anything, we're just harmonious, we just like a sphere which is resting on one non-dimensional point, it's perfectly at rest and perfectly mobile at the same time, so this is our state at the end of this practice of the mindfulness of breathing, so this particular practice, the mindfulness of breathing, which the majority of you know very well, having practiced it for some time, is the remedy in particular for distraction, wandering of the mind, and this is one of the reasons why we usually start off with this practice in our classes, because unless you can concentrate to some extent, unless you can bring at least some of your scattered energies together, you can't make any progress with any method of meditation, this comes at the beginning. So first of all therefore, the mindfulness of breathing, helping you to overcome distraction and paving the way for the practice of other methods, alright, now we overcome this first defilement, now for the second one, and this is the defilement of aversion, or if you like height, and is overcome by practicing the method of what is called maitri bhavana. Usually translated as the development of universal loving kindness, the development of an attitude towards all living beings, the development of an attitude of positive emotion, a feeling of love, compassion, sympathy, and so on. This practice to us, again most of you know, proceeds through a number of stages, first of all you develop love and good will towards your own self, you feel it, you experience it quite powerfully, then you extend that to a near and dear friend, then just some neutral person, then even to an enemy, and then you start directing it towards all living beings in ever widening circles, all the people in the room with you, all the people in the town, the city, the country, all the continents, eventually the whole world, eventually the feeling goes out towards all living beings whatsoever in all the directions of space, and this is not a thought, it's an actual feeling, you actually feel well towards all these other living beings, your heart, your whole being even eventually is filled with a warm positive glow of love and friendliness and good will and benevolence towards all other forms of life. So this is the development of my tree friendliness, which is the method for overcoming a version. Now thirdly, the defilement, the poison of craving, this is intense, powerful, if you like neurotic, desire, craving, lust to possess this, that and the other, and this is very powerful, very primordial one might say and very, very difficult to overcome. And here, there are three kinds of methods given, whereas in the case of the other defilements there's usually only one, but here there are three. First of all, the recollection of impurity, this is a rather drastic method that very, very few people have recourse to nowadays, it's usually supposed to be practiced only by monks and hermits and such like people, it consists in going to a burning ground and sitting down in the proximity of corpses in different stages of decay, and this is still practiced by some people in the east, but obviously you have very strong nerves and very strong spiritual resolutions you'll be able to practice in this way. And then, there's a recollection of death, which is the same sort of thing only milder. And thirdly, recollection of impermanence, which is still more general, and therefore milder still. Now we are particularly concerned this evening with the second of these, the second of these three methods of overcoming craving, that is to say we're concerned with the recollection of death. So let's go into this in a little more detail. According to the tradition of practice, before one actually starts practicing the recollection of death, you must practice mindfulness, you must develop mindfulness preferably, if necessary, with the help of the method of the mindfulness of breathing. In other words, when you take up the practice of the recollection of death, your mind must already be in a very integrated, peaceful, harmonious and happy state, and relatively free from discursive thought, and cogitation, and reflection, and so on. Now this is very important for a definite reason. If you take up the practice of the recollection of death without having experienced mindfulness beforehand, the likelihood is that in your practice or the recollection of death, you'll go astray, and your practice unwisely, maybe even with harmful results. For instance, if you take up the recollection of death straight away, without having achieved a very definite mindfulness first, you may start thinking of people near and dear to you who've died. And since your state is one of unmindfulness, you may start feeling sad. And this would certainly get in the way of your meditation practice. It would pull you down, you start getting depressed. Or again, if you took up the practice of the recollection of death, without having established mindfulness first, if you happens to think of someone who you disliked, who had died, you might even feel rather pleased. You might feel rather happy. Well, thank God he's gone. You see? So this would be very undesirable. This would be an unskilledful thought, a negative emotion on your part, feeling glad that sound so had died, and that would also pull you down. Or again, if you took up the practice of the recollection of death, without experiencing true mindfulness first, and if you either thought of or even actually saw people who were dead, who saw people even suffering death and the going death, and you didn't feel any particular reaction, you just felt completely indifferent about it in a purely mundane sense. That also would be bad. This would be a negative indifference, an indifference of not caring. You wouldn't feel compassion. You wouldn't feel objective sorrow for them, and this would be bad. So therefore, one is advised very strongly that before one takes up the recollection of death, you must be firmly established in mindfulness. Otherwise, you may experience feelings of depression, or you may experience feelings of an image we haven't got a word for it, but the Germans have got a word, a sort of sadistic joy, or you may just feel a very negative indifference. So one should experience awareness, mindfulness, even if possible, a higher state of consciousness first, and then take up the practice of the recollection of death. So having done that, having established one's awareness and mindfulness, and being in this state of sort of higher serene consciousness, and able to start thinking about death without any morbid feelings, without any feeling of depression, without any feeling of being rather glad that other people are out of the way, and so on, what does one do? Well, in this sort of serene, happy frame of mind, you start reflecting that death is inevitable. This may seem rather a truism, but it's a sort of thing that people acknowledge when they hear it, but which they never actually realize. You say to yourself that death will come, it's as simple as that. You recollect death in this way, in this happy serene frame of mind, you say to yourself, well, I'm going to die. Death is inevitable, and you really try to see that fact. Now one might say that, broadly speaking, other factors as it were being equal, the younger you are, the more difficult this is. When you're very young, it's practically impossible. You don't really feel that you're going to die. You've got this irrational feeling as though you're going to go on living forever and ever and ever. That's your real feeling. You can't really think, you can't really feel, you can't really experience that one day you are going to die. You might even see people dying all around you, but it may not occur to you really to apply this to your own self. You can't grasp it. You can't imagine it. It's absolutely remote, absurd, ridiculous that you are going to die. But it's a fact, and the older one gets, the more one begins to see this, and the more clearly one sees this. And you begin to see, you begin to realize that so far you've never seen it at all. You hadn't really understood this, this simple fact that you were going to die. So at the beginning of this practice, this is all that you do. In this serene, happy, concentrated frame of mind, you just say to yourself, well I'm going to die. Or, this tradition says, you can simply say to yourself, death, death. You can go on saying this like a sort of mantra, an interval, death, death. And just letting the thought of death sink in, and especially the thought that you are going to die. And the tradition of practice says, it's helpful under these sort of circumstances that this stage in your practice, it's helpful if you can actually see dead bodies. But notice, if you are in, if you've already achieved this state of mindfulness and awareness as you should have done before your practice began, it's no use trying to take a look at dead bodies at corpses, if your mind is unconcentrated, it's not very calm, it's liable to depression and so on. You've got to have not only steady nerves in your movements, but real inner calm. Otherwise, if you take up this sort of practice and start looking around for corpses, you can do yourself more harm than good. But if you don't want to go so far as actually to take a look at a corpse, which many people of course in this country have never seen the course of their whole lifetime, unlike in the east, where you can see a corpse almost any day of the week if you want to, as they're passing by, being carried to the burning ground every day down the main road, not discreetly hidden away in a coffin as we have them in this country, what you can do if you don't want to go to an extent of actually seeing a corpse is, and this is what is very often done in Buddhist countries, you can keep a skull by you. You might have wondered sometimes why Tibetans have sculled cups and things like that, whether even we're ornaments of human bone and have thigh bone trumpets, it's partly with the idea of familiarizing themselves or familiarizing themselves with the idea of death, of handling things which have got to do with death, and overcoming their natural fear of death. So if you don't want to go the whole hog visit where, if you don't want actually to go and look at a corpse, then you can either keep a skull cup by you, or there's a fragment of a skull, even that will do. Some people in the Buddhist east have a rosary made even of human bone. You can't get nice round beads I'm afraid, but they have sort of discs of human bone and they use them in the same way, and it's all to bring home to themselves the fact of death. And once again I must repeat, there's nothing morbid about it, you have to be quite sure to begin with that you are already in a state of calmness and concentration and peacefulness within yourself before you begin this sort of practice. In other words, mindfulness, serenity of mind is the indispensable basis of this kind of practice, the recollection of death. Now tradition goes on to say that if the simple methods I've so far described don't seem to be very successful, if they're not enough, if they don't seem to be producing results, then there are other reflections in which one can engage to assist one's recollection of death. For instance, you can start thinking systematically of the precariousness of human life, in fact of life in general. The precariousness of it can reflect it, hanging all the time by a thread. Your life, the continuance of your life depends on all sorts of factors. You need air. If you stopped breathing for a minute or more, you just die. You're totally dependent on breath. You're totally dependent on that pair of bellows inside your chest called your lungs. If they stopped pumping air, finish. All the air was sucked out of this room, finish. It would all be gone, and in the same way, we're dependent upon warmth, dependent upon temperature. If the temperature goes up a little bit, we can't carry on living. If it goes down a little bit, we can't carry on living. If the Earth was to wander just a little bit, just a few miles out of its orbit, we couldn't carry on living. And in the same way, if we didn't get food for a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months at the most, we couldn't carry on living. Life is dependent on all these factors. It's so precarious. It's a marvel that anyone's alive at all. Life is a continuity of treading this tight rope over an abyss. And generally, there's walking along the edge of a precipice. It's so difficult to be alive, yet we are alive. We've achieved it somehow, but all the time, that life is just hanging by a threat. And then, we can reflect, again, that there are, as it were, no special conditions for death. And this is very interesting, which we don't usually realize this, there are no special set of conditions for death. It's not as though you die at night, but you don't die during the day. So that if, when during the day, at least you're safe, you know you're not going to die. It isn't like that. You can die either during the night or during the day. You can either die when you're young or when you're old. It isn't that if you're young, you can think, "Well, I'm young, so therefore I'm not going to die." You know, "I'll only die when I'm old." No. You can die either when you're young or when you're old. You can die when you're sick or when you're healthy. You can die in your home or outside, or you can die in your own country or in a foreign night. In other words, there's no sort of set of conditions, which, if you come within those conditions, you can be sure that you're not going to die. You can't be sure. Death doesn't abide by any conditions for the nose, special conditions for death. In other words, it's something you can't possibly escape. You can't go anywhere to escape it. You can't be sure at any time that because of certain substance as conditions, therefore you're not going to die that particular instant. You can never be sure of that. You never know. So this also is another subject for reflection that death does not have any special conditions. There are no special conditions for death. It can come at any time under any circumstances whatsoever. There's absolutely no foolproof barrier between you and death at any time, in any place. So this also one can reflect upon, so rather sobering thought, and also one can reflect upon the fact that everybody has died, every single member of the human race, however great, however distinguished, however noble, however famous, they all have to die one day. They might have been a great poet, they might have been a great artist, might have been a great yogi, might have been a great spiritual figure, might have been even the greatest of the disciples of the Buddha, might have been the Buddha himself, but they all had to die. So you are not going to escape. So this is another line of reflection, and this of course begins to bring us back to the actual occasion that we are commemorating today, that is the death or paranoia of the Buddha himself. But let's go on, let's go on to our next basic method of meditation, which is in respect of the defilement or the poison of ignorance, the method for overcoming ignorance, the method of meditation is that of the contemplation of the chain of conditioned co-production or dependent origination, I am afraid we are here becoming a little bit technical, but I will try to simplify as much as possible. The chain of conditioned co-production or the chain of dependent origination consists of twelve need-downers or links, as we may call them. And it's these, as some of you I am sure know, it's these twelve links that are depicted in pictorial form in the outermost circle of the real of life, where you see the twelve little pictures going round in the outermost circle. And these twelve links, these twelve little pictures, they represent the whole process as we may call it of the reactive mind, as it operates throughout this life, not only this life, but the past life, the present life and the future life. There's no time to go into details, but let me just at least enumerate and perhaps describe briefly, the twelve links of that chain. First of all, the ignorance. Independence on ignorance, by which of course it means spiritual ignorance, arise the sank scars or volitions, independence on the volitions that arises consciousness, independence on consciousness that arises, the whole psychophysical organism, independence on the psychophysical organism, that arise the six organs of sense, one mental, five physical, independence on those six organs of sense, that arises contact with an external world, independence upon that contact with an external world, that arise feelings of various kinds, pleasant, painful and neutral, independence upon that feeling, especially on pleasant feeling, arises first or craving for the repetition of that pleasant feeling. And the dependence upon that thirst for the repetition of the pleasant feeling that arises grasping, trying to hang on to the pleasant feeling, hang on to the object that creates the pleasant feeling, and then independence upon that grasping and clinging that arises becoming, which is to say the whole process of psychological conditioning, the whole process of the reactive mind itself, and independence upon that that arises birth or rebirth in the sense of a renewal of that whole kind of process of the reactive mind, and then it depends upon that further decay and death. So these are the troll of links in this chain of what is called conditioned co-production, dependent origination, as depicted in these troll little pictures in the Artemis circle of the Tibetan wheel of life. So in this particular practice, what one does is, one first of all learns them all by heart, if you like, in the original Pali and Sanskrit or in English translation, it doesn't really matter, and you say to yourself, obviously you're already in a state of concentration, you say to yourself, independence or ignorance arise volitions, independence on volitions arises consciousness, independence on consciousness arises, the psychophysical organism, and you don't just repeat the words, you don't just understand an intellectual sense, you try to see what is happening, because it's happening to you, it's happening in you, it's your own reactive mind that you're studying with the help of this formula, with the help of this framework. So when you say ignorance, ignorance, you ask it worse see if you like, or sort of great blackness, darkness, this is ignorance, there's no awareness, there's no light, it's all black and dark, consciousness hasn't arisen, awareness hasn't arisen, it's the darkness of ignorance, of unawareness, and as you sort of reflect on this, you ponder on this, you see as you were emerging out of this darkness, you see arising in dependence upon this darkness and blindness and ignorance, various sort of strivings, volitions, acts of will, already dull and dim and blind, because they arise out of that darkness and blindness and unawareness, and then you can see very clearly how all sorts of unaware actions, blind actions, thoughtless actions, thoughtless volitions arise out of that fundamental, that primordial state of unawareness, which of course is within oneself, and then you can sort of see, how is that volition or those volitions sort of stumble on, as they bump into this and bump into that they get a bit sensitive, they get a bit more aware, there's a tiny glimmering of consciousness arises, and you see that, there's just a little seed of individuality, very tiny, very frail, very flimsy, and then you see this gradually developing into a whole psychophysical organism, a mind and a body, and you can see it having its whole great history, and then you can see this mind, this body, this psychophysical organism coming in contact with the world, with objects, and then you can see the psychophysical organism sort of differentiating, developing different senses, developing a mind, a reason, developing sense consciousnesses, developing sight, developing hearing and so on, and then through these senses, you can see it coming into contact with the world, and experiencing through the world all sorts of sensations, sensations of pleasure, sensations of pain, and you can see it shrinking away from the painful sensations and liking the pleasant sensations, trying to hang on to them, becoming attached to them, finding it enslaved by them, and then becoming conditioned by them, and then it's going on in that way, as we're rolling on, even rolling downhill, the wheel taking another turn, and you can see this happening in your own mind, you can see your own mind, your own reactive mind working in this way, and the more you can see your mind working in this way, the more you can see your own psychological conditioning, the more you can see objectively as something out there as it were, at the same time that you are actually experiencing it subjectively, the more you will become free from it, you become free from your own psychological conditioning to the extent that you see that you are psychologically conditioned, you become aware to the extent that you see that you are unaware, and you can do this with the help of this traditional formula of the twelve links of the chain, is it where of conditioned co-production or dependent origination, if you like to do the same sort of thing, achieve the same sort of results with the help of perhaps a more modern or contemporary type of psychological analysis, once certainly one can do so, but what is essentially in either case is that one sees how one's mind is merely reactive, not active, not spontaneous, not creative, but reactive, machine-like, unaware, and seeing it like that, seeing it working like that, you become gradually more and more free from it. So this very, very briefly, and I'm afraid rather than adequately, is the method of meditation known as the contemplation of the chain of conditioned co-production or dependent origination, which is the method for overcoming the obstacle of ignorance, spiritual ignorance, or unawareness. Then, fifthly and lastly, the defilement of what is traditionally called conceit, mana, is also transitive pride, is more like high-mindedness, or even high-end mightiness, if you like. One its method for overcoming is what is called the contemplation of the six elements, and the six elements are earth, water, fire, air, ether, as it's translated, and consciousness. Now how does one proceed in this method? Well, you begin by concentrating yourself by having a fair degree of mindfulness, and then you, as it were, attack this whole sort of eye-feeling, especially as applied to the body, thinking of the body as 'I' and 'me', analytically, and you proceed like this. There, as it was sitting there, you are meditating, and you think earth, earth, and you start getting a sort of feeling of what earth is, is everything solid, everything cohesive, and you can think of all sorts of things in your objective world which are made of earth, which are solid. You can think of natural things like trees and rock, you can think of man-made things like houses and books, but all this is earth. And then you think, not only is there earth, not only is there the element of earth in the external world, but there's also earth, the element of earth, in that internal world, that's subjective world, which is 'me'. In me, in my physical body, the element of earth is present. In what form was it present? Well, there's my bones, there's my flesh. These are all derivatives of the element earth. So where have these come from? Where have my bones come from? Where has my flesh come from? Where has this earth element in me come from? These come from the earth element outside me. It's not mine. I've borrowed it. I've taken it from the earth element outside myself for a short time and incorporated it into my own being, my own substance, my own body, but I've only borrowed it. I'm not going to be able to keep it forever. After a few years, maybe after a few hours, I've got to give it back. The earth element in my body will be resolved into the earth element in your objective world. So how can I say of that earth element that this is mine? How can I say all right that it is me? I've got to give it back. It's not mine. It isn't me. So let it go. Let the earth element, which is in me, go. I can't claim to possess it. It's not me. I can't identify with it. And then in the same way you take up the element of water. You think water, water, something fluid, liquid, flowing. You find it outside in the world. You find it in rivers. You find it in the oceans. You find it in streams. You find it in rain. You find it in dew. You find it in all these things. So it doesn't have water element in you. There's blood. There's bile. There are tears. Et cetera. All these things are the water element in you. So where have you got that water from? Always from outside. And when you die, it's got to be rendered back. So that water element doesn't belong to you. It's not part of you. It is not you. So let it go. See to identify with it. Then fire. What about fire? There's the fire element in the external world. There's the sun, the source of all heat. All the heat, all the warmth, all the light in the solar system comes from the sun. So there's heat in us, warmth in us. But where does it come from? It comes from the external world. Comes from the sun. Comes from the fire element in the external world. One day I've got to give it back. I can't hold on for long. When I'm dead, I'll just go cold. Heat will just disappear. Just leave my body. So that fire element in me, which at the moment is doing all sorts of things, digesting my food and so on, according to traditional Indian ideas, that is not mine. It is not me. It doesn't belong to me. I can't identify with it. So let it come. Let the heat element in me go back to the heat element in the universe. And then air. What about air? Well, there's air in the external world, or bristly. There's this atmosphere which envelops the whole earth. And then in me, there's the breath, the breath of life. Coming into my lungs, going from my lungs, which I'm inhaling, exhaling all the time. But I've only bothered it for a short while. It's not mine. The time will come when I breathe in and breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. And then I don't breathe in anymore. I'll be dead. And there won't be any more breath left in my body. I'll have rained it back. So I can't say of the air element in me that it's me or mine. So let it go. Don't identify with it. And then the space, or ether. What about that? Well, the body that I had present have and with which I identify myself, made up of the first four elements, it occupies space. So all right, when the earth element goes, the water element goes, the fire element goes, the air element goes from my body. What's left? Nothing. Just an empty space. An empty, me-shaped space. That's all. So what is to differentiate that me-shaped space from the surrounding space? Nothing at all. As the Indian tradition says, if you break a pot, a clay pot, the space which is inside the pot merges with the space outside the pot. There's no difference anymore. So the space which was occupied by you, by your physical body, that space, when the body disintegrates, merges back into the universal space as it were. You don't exist anymore. You're not there. So how can you hang on even to this whole physical body at the moment, occupying space? You can't. So let that space which is you, which you're occupying, merge into the universal space. And then, sixth and lastly, consciousness. Associated with your physical body is consciousness. And you might say, "Well, even if I'm not, if I'm not water, if I'm not air, if I'm not even in space, at least I'm consciousness." But not even that. Even the consciousness is borrowed. Even what you call your consciousness is a sort of reflection, a sort of gleam of sound higher, more universal consciousness, which in a sense is you, yes, but also in a sense, really definitely, is not you. You are it, maybe or it is you. But you can't say that you are it in the ordinary sense or that it is you in the ordinary sense. It's rather like a dream. It's rather like some other dimension. Sometimes you may think in the waking state that you have the dream. But when you're experiencing the dream, well, where are you? This is how the dream is having you. So it's like that in the case of this higher dimension of consciousness, which we identify with me. The consciousness is there, but the me as it were has to go. So it's as though the lower consciousness has to merge itself. So again, without being destroyed, because it is consciousness, or at least it is conscious in the higher consciousness. So even that individuality in that sense, that I sense even that ghost, there's no loss of consciousness, but consciousness is no longer centered on the eye. But again, in another sense, you were never more completely yourself. It's just paradoxical. So these now are the five basic methods of meditation to get rid of distraction, mindfulness of breathing, to get rid of a version, development of universal loving kindness, to get rid of craving, the recollection of death, to get rid of ignorance, contemplation of the chain of conditioned co-production, to get rid of conceit, contemplation of the six elements. Now I've mentioned all of these, I'm afraid very briefly, but sufficiently perhaps to give you some idea of what they're all about. But a few more words about the sixth and last of these methods, the contemplation of the six elements. As we've seen, they're earth, water, fire, air, ether, consciousness. So a few words about the first five only, especially the first four. These first four or five are symbolized by different geometrical figures. So I'm going to ask you to try to imagine and try to visualize them, try to visualize a great yellow cube. This is earth. White's a cube, white's yellow, I hope will be obvious, I'm not going to explain it. So a great yellow cube. On top of that great yellow cube, or earth, a great white sphere, or globe, that is water. Then on top of that white sphere, a brilliant red cone or pyramid. That's fire. Then on top of that cone or pyramid, which is red, balanced on the pointer, a saucer, a blue saucer. That's air. And in that blue saucer, a golden flame. That's space. That's ether. The tip of that golden flame, if you like, can be all rainbow colour. It can end in a sort of rainbow-like jewel and that will be consciousness. So these are your geometrical symbols of the five or the six elements. And when you arrange them like this, in this sort of order, one on top of another, they add up to something, they form something, they create something. And what is that? It's the stupa. The stupa. But what is the stupa, some of you may ask? This is a very long story indeed, and I'm only going to touch on it very, very briefly. But a stupa originally was a funeral monument of a rather special kind. And it sometimes contained ashes. And in the case of Buddhism, in the case of Buddhist history and tradition, the stupa is especially associated with the pariniravana of the Buddha. In fact, the stupa, in Buddhist symbolism, in Buddhist art, is actually the symbol of the pariniravana itself. It's not always appreciated that in the early days of Buddhism, there was no representation of the figure of the Buddha. There were no Buddha images for several hundred years, and the Buddhist figure was not represented in sculpture of any kind in any way. Oh, yes, you've got all sorts of beautiful sculptured scenes as at Sanchi, as in Amravati. You get the scene of the Buddha's birth, the scene of the Buddha's austerities, the scene of the Buddha's victory over Maha, the scene of the Buddha's enlightenment, the scene of the Buddha's first disc or scene of the Buddha's pariniravana, but you never get the Buddha himself depicted. You get only a symbol. In the scene of the Buddha's birth, where the figure of the infant Buddha should be, there's just a lotus flower, no figure of the Buddha. In the scene of the Buddha leaving home, going out into the jungle in Christo Truth, you see the horse charging after the palace gate, but you don't see the Buddha, there's only an umbrella over the horse's back to indicate where the figure would be. And in the same way, the great scene of the Buddha's enlightenment, you see the Bodhi tree, you see the throne, but the throne is empty. There's no figure on it, or you may have a trident representing the three jewels. And in the same way, scene of the Buddha's first discourse, you get the five monks there all listening, you get the preaching throne, you get the deer around, because it's a deer park, but you see no Buddha preaching, you just see a wheel of the dharma, just a abstract symbol. And in the same way, when it comes to the scene of the Buddha's paranoia, the Buddha's death as we say, there's no Buddha lying there dying. What do you see? You see a stupa of one kind or another, a stupa, a relic surely, if you like. And of course there is a reason for this, the early Buddhists, it seems, felt very, very strongly that the Buddha is incommensurable, the Buddha is unrepresentable, the Buddha is transcendental, that the Buddha's greatness is so great that no justice can be done to it, it cannot be described, it cannot be depicted. A Buddha, a Buddha's nature is beyond thought, beyond speech, beyond words. So all you can do when you come to the Buddha is just to stop speaking, to remain silent. Or when you're drawing a picture of sculpting a scene from the Buddha's life, when you come to the Buddha, you can't leave an empty space. Or put in a symbol, you can't represent the Buddha. The Buddha is beyond representation, this is the reason for this, this is why we have the stupa symbolizing the Buddha in the representation of the Para in Nirvana scene. Well, this reference through the stupa, this reference to the Para in Nirvana brings us back to the event that we are commemorating today, later to say the death inverted commas of the Buddha. But obviously, the death of the Buddha wasn't an ordinary death because the Buddha wasn't an ordinary person, as we've just seen. Not only his own immediate disciples, but those who followed for many generations felt very, very strongly that the Buddha was so great that there could be no thought of his greatness, no conception of his greatness, no representation of it even in artistic form. The Buddha's true nature was unfathomable. And even during the Buddha's lifetime, we know from the scriptures, even the close disciples where son has very, very puzzled by the question of the Buddha's nature, who the Buddha was, what the Buddha was, what happened to the Buddha, a death? We don't know why, but apparently in the days of the Buddha, quite a lot of the disciples and quite a large number of members of the public were very, very interested in this question of what would happen to the Buddha when he died. It seems to sort of fascinates them. And there was a regular way of putting it which they had. And they used to come to the Buddha himself sometimes and say, Lord, after death, those that the Thargata, that it would say the Buddha exists, or does he not exist, or both or neither? And the Buddha always gave the same reply. He'd always say, it is inappropriate to say of a Buddha that after death he exists. It is inappropriate to say of a Buddha that after death he does not exist. It is inappropriate to say of a Buddha that after death he exists and doesn't exist, exists in one sense, doesn't exist in another sense. And it is inappropriate to serve a Buddha that after death he neither exists nor does not exist. He says, all ways of telling, always of describing a totally inapplicable to the Buddha, to the Thargata. So from this we can understand that the Buddha's death is not death in the ordinary sense at all. And this is why in the Buddhist tradition it is termed usually, the Pari Nirvana. We don't say the Buddha died, we say he attained Pari Nirvana. And what does this word Pari Nirvana mean? Nirvana of course means enlightenment, Buddha hood, and so on. Pari means supreme. There is no difference at all. The only difference, a quite minor one, is that in the case of Nirvana the Buddha's physical body continues to be attached. In the case of the Pari Nirvana the physical body is no longer attached. The experience is the same. The Nirvana, or if you like the Nirvana nation of the Nirvana, remains the same. One is called Nirvana with remainder. This is the official or the traditional description. The other is called Nirvana without remainder. So from the Buddha's point of view as it were, there's no difference at all between the two states. Before death, after death, is completely the same for the Buddha. Whatever it is, which we can't describe, which we can't live. The only difference is, and this difference only affects other people, the disciples, is that in one case, the physical body is there. In the other case, the physical body of the Buddha is not there. That's the only difference. And from the Buddha's point of view, attaining as he does Nirvana, there's no difference between the two states, whatever. Now the circumstances under which the Buddha attained a Pari Nirvana, these are described at some length in the scriptures, and we'll be having readings from some passages later on this evening. Perhaps the final scenes, or the final scene of all, is best depicted, best represented, not so much in words, but in the art of the Buddhist Far East. And he's interesting to note that the scene is late in the open air. He's sometimes emphasized that the Buddha was born in the open air under a tree. He gained enlightenment in the open air under a tree, and he passed away in the open air under trees. And this is the scene which is painted by these great Chinese and Japanese artists of the medieval period. By this time, they felt able to actually represent the person of the Buddha himself in art. So you see, first of all, the beautiful forest background and the grow of cell trees. Cell trees are beautiful, straight trees, almost like telegraph poles, with beautiful big green leaves and beautiful big white flies. And there's a grow of these, not far from Qutinara in north eastern India, and at the foot of these cell trees, there's a sort of stone couch which have been built by the local people as a sort of resting place for people wandering in their growth. So on that stone couch, the Buddha laid himself down at full length. And this is the scene painted by these Chinese master painters. The Buddha lying full length on this stone couch beneath these beautiful straight cell trees which are sharding down white blossoms upon him, on all around of the disciples. The close disciples sitting near his head in their yellow robes and in Brahmin disciples, princes, ministers, ascetics, fire worshipers, merchants, peasants, traders, and even the animal world, you see all around elephants, goats, deer, horses, dogs, even the cat who, according to tradition, wasn't the least upset by at all. Even mice, even birds, had depicted all around the whole whole creation and up in the sky, clouds, gods, goddesses, everybody has come as it were to witness the Buddha's Para Nirvana. This is what these great Chinese artists depict, not just an ordinary incident in someone's life, but an event as it were of cosmic significance, the Buddha's final Para Nirvana. And as you look more closely at the picture, you notice that most of the people, most of the beings in the picture, even the animals are weeping. The elephants in particular, you notice, seem to be shedding tears. But a few of the disciples, those who are closest to the Buddha, those who are seated near his head, they're not weeping at all. They're perfectly calm because they see beyond the physical body. They see that really there's going to be no change at all, just from Nirvana to Para Nirvana, no real change whatsoever. So this is the scene. This is the scene depicted by these great masters of Chinese and Japanese Buddhist art. And this is the scene that we're commemorating that we're remembering today. And we commemorate, we remember in the first place out of gratitude to the Buddha for giving the teaching. And in the second place, because any recollection of death can only be down to our own spiritual development. And obviously, there's no question of remembering just today, but not other days, we must try to remember all the time. And we may say that the recollection of death must be constant or at least frequent. And in this way, the defilement of craving at least can be overcome. And there'll be all sorts of other side effects. There'll be more energetic, more jealous, more vigorous, less inclined to waste time because we'll realize how precious time is, less attached to material things, more generous. This is supposed to be one of the special fruits of the recollection of death. You become more liberal-minded. You hang on to things less. You share with people much more. Then you become less afraid of death, more happy, more carefree. And above all, you develop a better insight into the impermanence of all conditioned things, a better insight into the true nature of existence. So that when, there was when, that will be we don't know, when we also come to die as die we must. We too, perhaps we hope, shall go from nirvana to paren nirvana, or if that isn't possible, at least we shall be going from happiness to greater happiness, from understanding and insight to greater understanding and insight. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhist audio dot com forward slash community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
