(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 this evening, but the subject is how to relate. Yes, yeah, relating. So I kind of like, what I'd like to suggest that you do is at least that you be aware of how you are relating. Yeah, how you're relating to me, for example, maybe also be aware of how I may seem to be relating to you. Just sort of being aware of that. Yeah, that, in a sense, we are always in some kind of relationship with our environment with other people, particularly, of course, and with ourselves. And of course, we've just been doing the meta-barf now, which, of course, is all about relationship and our relationships with various people. And I suppose, yeah, just be aware that everyone kind of relates to you in their own way. So I am here relating to you in my own particular way. And other speakers, of course, relate to their audiences in their own way. The way that I relate to your audiences is that I do need to have notes. I can't do this sort of thing without having some kind of some kind of reminder of where we are. Someone did suggest that I could kind of, give a talk whereby I just sort of produced thoughts, kind of randomly, as it were, but it just wouldn't kind of work. There has to be some kind of structure, I think. Anyway, what I'm going to do is I'm going to rely, basically, on the polycanum. You know, I was saying to run a problem. You know, I didn't quite know what to say in this talk. And he said, why don't you just talk about the Dharma? You know, why don't you just, so that's right what I would do. Anyway, so start off by just reading a little bit from a sort of, actually, we had a bit of last week. It's called the seagalaka. The seagalaka sutta. It's about the Buddha talking to a lay follower, a layman, a young chap. And he's just giving this chap some very straightforward ordinary advice about how to live, how to live a kind of healthy, happy sort of ordinary human life. And actually, I think a lot of Buddhism is about, you know, how to live an ordinary, happy human life. Yeah, anyway. So, and a lot of this, a lot of this sutta is about relationships. Anyway, it says, yeah, so for example, he talks about the ways in which a son, and presumably a daughter, actually, should minister to his mother and father. He says, there's the son should think, having been supported by them, I will support them. I will perform their duties for them. I will keep up the family tradition. I will be worthy of my heritage. After my parents' deaths, I will distribute gifts on their behalf. And the Buddha goes on, and there are five ways in which the parents, so minister to, by their son, will reciprocate. They will restrain him from evil. Okay, they will support him in doing good. Teach him some skill. Find him a suitable wife. And in due time, hand over his inheritance to him. Okay, and then he goes on to talk about how pupils should minister to their teachers, about how teachers should look after their pupils. So the pupils should rise to greet the teacher. They should wait on them by being attentive, by serving them, by mastering the skills they teach. And the teachers should give thorough instruction. They should make sure their pupils have grasped what they should have duly grasped, and give them a thorough grounding in all skills, and so on and so forth. And then the Buddha also talks about how husbands and wives should minister to one another. So a husband should honor his wife by not disparaging her, by not being unfaithful to her, by giving authority to her, by providing her with her adornments. And the wife will reciprocate by properly organizing her work, by being kind to the servants, by not being unfaithful, by protecting stores, and by being skillful and diligent in all she has to do. And then there are the ways in which a man should minister to his friends and companions. So you should look after their welfare by treating them like himself, and by keeping his word. (laughing) You should treat your friends as you should treat yourself. And you should keep your work and look after their welfare. And the friends and companions should reciprocate by looking after their friend when he is inattentive. That's very useful. They should look after his property when he is inattentive. So this is assuming this friend is quite an inattentive, sort of low. (laughing) And by being a refuge when he is afraid, and by not deserting him when he is in trouble, and by showing concern for his children. And then there's also some stuff about the workplace, how you should, the things you should do in your work. And there's also about how you should relate to ministers of religion. Yeah. They're funny enough, yes. Yeah, they, you know, it's just, let's see, what is it? Oh, yes, the minister of religion should restrain their flock, as it were, from evil, encourage them to do good, be benevolently compassionate towards them, teach them what he has not, what they have not heard, and point out to them the way to heaven. Yep. So all these are the ways, the ways in which the Buddha described all the different kind of relationships that we can kind of get into, and all the different kind of roles that we can play in these relationships. And of course, you might think that all that is, I should give you a minute, sit, sit down. You might think that all these kind of roles and so on that people take up are, you know, they're not things that we tend to do nowadays, I think, you know, people don't adopt these kind of fixed sort of roles. You know, you don't have, you know, the wife at home and her husband going to work in some quicker and very often be the opposite, or they both got to work, children and parents don't have that sort of very sort of fixed, hierarchical sort of relationship anymore, and, you know, workers and management, you know, they don't have the same sort of clearly defined sense and duties, I think. I mean, that's something that comes across, I think, from, you know, what the Buddha says is that, and I think this is one, one, maybe kind of useful general point, is that, you know, in a sense, any kind of relationship that you have with someone has a kind of specific set of sort of duties that kind of quietly go along with it. And for example, my relationship with Tara Karina, for example, involves a duty not to make a terrible mess everywhere, right? Because, yeah, that, you know, because otherwise, you know, - We have no certain ones. - Well, we have no certain. So, but, you know, so there are, with almost everyone, you have these particular little things that you want to kind of watch out for, for them, or to, you know, look out, look out for people in a particular way. So, yeah, so there are all these different kind of ways of relating that we have to different people, and the Buddha's kind of list is a little bit, maybe a little bit, kind of formulaic in a way, of all these kind of fixed roles. But I think, you know, if we can be maybe more, a little bit more aware of, the kind of things that we could be specifically looking out for in relation to the different people that we have some relationships with. I think this is, you know, a useful way of thinking about how we relate to people. And a little bit later, I'd like us to sort of just think a little bit about how we relate to one another within the Sangha. In a sense, I suppose, what, you know, what do we come to this center? What kind of relating do we look to find within the Sangha in this center? How do you, you know, what sort of, what are the particular ways that we try to relate to one another in at the center, maybe which are maybe slightly different from, you know, the ways that people relate to one another outside? I'm not saying that, you know, we always do relate to one another in a particular healthy way. But another thing I want to, I wanted to quote is, it's a story from the Buddha's time. I mean, very often, you know, I think, you know, people often say, oh, you know, you're supposed to be a Buddhist, right? So, you know, why are you, you know, relating to me in a sort of, you know, in our pleasant way or something, yeah. And I remember someone came for the door once and they said, oh, you know, can we come in and have a look around? You don't know, I was just going out, going out with some other people. I was just going, and I said, I'm terribly sorry, we're actually, we're actually not open all the time and actually we're just going out. So, maybe some other time and here's a leaflesser. And she was obviously this person, I'm just slightly sort of put out, said, that's ironic, right? And I couldn't quite count on that. But clearly what she meant was, it's ironic that you, a Buddhist, aren't kind of being incredibly sort of kind and helpful and to me, yeah. And, I mean, I think, I think, you know, people do expect certain things in terms of, you know, how we relate to them. And some people maybe have some quite extremely unrealistic, unrealistically idealistic ideas. I mean, if you go back, and I think if you read the Buddhist scriptures, you will find that the early Buddhist Sangha, you know, the first month, the first followers of the Buddha's own disciples, you know, the people who basically had the Buddha amongst them, you know, this fully enlightened, the Buddha himself, or right now, rather, their kind of, their behavior was sometimes just quite extraordinarily kind of poor. I suppose that is the word, poor, disappointing, shall we say, they were quite often amazingly sort of disappointing in the way they behaved one another. And so there was, there was this famous story about these, yeah, famous story, that's it. There was, in the kind of early sort of monastics of setup, well, no, there wasn't really monastic, but they were in the forest somewhere, they had some buildings, I think it was a park, and they had a lavatory, right? They had a sort of, a lavatory of some kind. Maybe it's a simple construction, a little door, you know, whatever. And so this, one of the monks have went into the loo, and he was a, he was an expert on the dharma, this monk who went into the loo, right? He was a, he was a, a teacher of the dharma, he went into the loo, and he came, came out, and this other chap was waiting to go in. So, you know, they can, not each one of that. And the other chap went in, and he was, the other chap who went in, he was a, an expert on the discipline, that is, the Vinaya, what's called the Vinaya, that is the, all the kind of rules of organizing the rules by which the sanger was organized. So there are all sorts of rules, right, that govern everything that you did within the sanger. The monks, or a monk still today, you know, most monks who, you know, wear robes and so on, they still follow all these rules. And it just helps to really simplify your life, you know, if you know, you know, the bed that I sleep on has got to be like, there's got to be that, that height, and it's each at this time. And, you know, everything is very simple, and so it means you can just get on with your practice without thinking about making and choosing and thinking, well, I'll do this, I'll do that. Anyway, so one of the, so this Vinaya master teacher went in, and he went in, he went into the liver before using it, he came straight back out, and he chased after this, this Dharma teacher, and he said, look, I'll chap, you've, you left the water jug on the wrong side, you know, the water jug, the water jug, it should be, 'cause it's what they use to clean themselves, (coughing) the water, you know, you should be on the right-hand side, and you left it on the left-hand side, right? Which is, of course, you know, it's against, against the rules, isn't it? And so the Dharma teacher said, or I'm terribly sorry, I didn't realize that, I didn't realize he had to leave the water jug on the right-hand side, I'll, I will remember it. And the, the Vinaya master's, you know, he looks a little bit sort of disappointed at this, but he said, well, you know, if you, if you didn't mean to break the rules, then of course, you know, that's fine, you know, as long as you just bear that in mind in the future. So off they went. But then the Vinaya teacher, he, he just told one or two of his friends. He said, you know, this quote, what's his name? He didn't know that you've put the water jug on the left-hand, you know, on the right-hand side, you know. Unbelievable, really, you know, there he is, he's teaching people the Dharma and so on, and he doesn't, he didn't know, oh, it doesn't know. And they, they all said, yes, yeah, actually that, that's, that is poor. And so, so, you know, a bit of some gossip. We kind of went around, you know, and then the followers, the disciples, the pupils of the, the Dharma teacher, they heard about this, and they, they weren't sort of pleased that this story was going around about their teacher. You know, they started to get a bit so strongly. They said, well, you know, I don't, you know, neither he was, you know, breaking the rules, or he wasn't, you know, if the, the, the denial bloke said that he wasn't, you know, that because he didn't mean to, he wasn't, he wasn't breaking a, breaking a rule, you know, he didn't, he just didn't, didn't know what it slipped his mind. And so they, they started to get terribly kind of cross with one another. So the whole encampment was soon up in arms with each other, you know, arguing the toss, you know, and being very kind of sarcastic and unpleasant to one another. And this just went on for months, went on for months, right? And, yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a big event in the early history of the Sangha, right? The early history of the Sangha is, yes, a big, big event. And the Buddha eventually sort of tried to kind of get in there and sort of saw things, things out and couldn't, you know, even he couldn't, couldn't saw things, things out. And eventually, eventually it all kind of quietened, quietened down, I think they did manage to sort something out so that someone eventually apologized, you know. I think it was the Dharma teacher that did eventually, you know? Which one would call it? I think it was the Dharma teacher who eventually he agreed to apologize and admit that he was at fault. - After a pressure from the later on. - Yes, I was wondering, the late people were, he'd feed them, do they? - Yeah, that's it. - Yeah. So the other late people, it was under pressure of starvation really, that they had to eventually calm down. So, so I think it's worth bearing in mind that it's absolutely normal for Buddhists to relate to one another in a really stupid, unskillful way, right? It doesn't mean that you're not a Buddhist or you're not sort of practicing and so on. I mean, these people, they must have been practicing. But I think this is why this is what makes this whole area incredibly important and it's simply because it's so difficult. It's so challenging and it's in a sense, it kind of goes to the heart of one's practice, I think, to how you relate to other people. Anyway, the Buddha eventually, I think, he did give a discourse about how to develop love and respect. I think that was what he, what the Buddha eventually talked about, how to develop love and respect. So the Buddha was very concerned with harmony within the sagas. It was a kind of quite a constant subject of his discourses, how we kind of relate to one another. And it continues right after the present day, how we relate to one another in this center is, in a way, an awful, is at the heart of what we do, we do here. So, you know, when I've said one or two more things, well, I would like us to maybe spit up into a couple of groups and talk about what are the kind of, what are these, what are the ways of relating that you would look to find in the center. In a sense, it's partly what you come here for. Obviously, you know, we come here to sort of meditate and so on, but we also come here. This is, you know, we call this a Sanger class. It's actually, you know, about Sanger. It's about relating to one another in a particular way. So maybe we could sort of think about that anyway. I'll just have mentioned, though, a couple of things, a couple of kind of fairly obvious elements that we try to, that are kind of fundamental elements in the way we relate. So the first one, I suppose, is awareness. Kind of fairly obvious. So where do you, where would you say that you experience yourself? You know, is it in the body or is it in the mind? You experience yourself, you know, as a physical sort of presence in the body, or do you experience yourself in the mind? I mean, what would you say? So, yeah, I also like between the two. Yeah, but there's another way of looking at it. I mean, I think this people, I mean, you often get this sort of dichotomy, you know, do you think of ourselves as mind, or do you think of ourselves as body, or spirit, or whatever? And I think another way of looking at us, at our experience, is as relationship, you know, that, you know, our experience of ourselves is an experience of relationship. Yeah, and I think this is why the metabarvenin is just such a great practice, because, you know, you can still be aware in your breathing and so on. And still, I think the breathing and the body is a, is a, is a, you know, is the channel in a way through which you can experience yourself in relationship with others, with yourself and with others. But, you know, my, my experience anyways, that the metabarven, with the metabarvenin of practice, I sort of feel I experience myself more kind of deeply, I suppose, than I do, if I'm just, just there, you know, with the breathing. Yeah, so, so it's about being, yeah, so awareness. So one of the things that we're aware of is that we are social animals. And if you look at, if you look at the history of Buddhism, you'll find that when people, when people are, when you read all these stories about people getting enlightened and so on, when they can get insight, it's so often in terms of relationship. Yeah, it's so often, you know, it's so often, you know, people meet the Buddha and the Buddha speaks to them, and there's something in that, the quality of that communication that sparks something off. Yeah, and with, you know, Zen masters and so on, there's something in that communication that awakens something. Yeah, that awakens something kind of deeper, I suppose. Yeah. So, yes, I mean, I think the, what you're aware of in terms, what you can be aware of in terms of relationship is actually the nature of reality itself. That if you think about the three characteristics of existence, the three characteristics of conditioned existence, does anyone know what these are? The three characteristics of conditioned existence that technically call the Laxoners. Does anyone know what the Laxoners are? So, these are the three, yeah, three characteristics of conditioned existence. These are impermanence, insubstantiality, and unsatisfactoriness. Okay, so, so this is something that the Buddha said. He said that life is, life is characterized by these three conditions. It's essentially unsatisfactory, that is conditioned existence. Conditioned existence are unenlightened existence. Is unsatisfactory, there's something inherently imperfect about our experience. Yeah. It's also insubstantial, insubstantial, that is, there's no self. And it's also impermanent. There's nothing to, there's nothing to hang on to, basically, because things are always changing. And I think one way of being aware of other people is in terms of these three characteristics. So, for example, if you can be aware of someone with an awareness of impermanence, well, this is something that the Buddha said is that those who are aware of the fact that things change, that things are impermanent, they will compose their quarrels. So, this is something that they say in the Dhammapada, that if you are really aware that, you know, we could die, you know, you know, that die tomorrow. I mean, you know, I mean, I could have an accident on my bicycle going home, right? Run over by something. And you'll never see me again, and then you'll be sorry. Then you'll be sorry. Then you'll wish you were a bit nicer. What I'm saying is that, you know, if I can be, you know, aware of someone with an awareness of our impermanence, I could die on my bicycle and therefore die and having said something, you know, unskillful or unpleasant to someone, you know, that wouldn't be a, that, you know, that could be, that would be, shall we say, in order to get a satisfactory, you know. And also, you know, if the other person were to die as well, you know, I think there would be something, yeah, something would just be sort of left there. So, you know, if one can bring an awareness of the nature of reality to one's relationship, you know, I think it does sort of transform it. So one of the other things, insubstantiality, I think one of the things here is that, yeah, there's just, there's nothing, I think if you can see someone in terms of, that actually they can't be grasped, you know, there isn't some, there isn't some kind of fixed identity there. Yeah, there isn't, I mean, very often we kind of see each other in quite sort of simple cartoonish ways. Yeah, you just see someone and you think, oh, there's old, there's old Priscilla, you know, and you think, oh, right, you know, I know who Priscilla is, you know, she's like that. No, she isn't. You know, if I can be aware of, you know, of the reality of Priscilla, then, you know, I do not know her at all, right, she's totally ungraspable. There is, there's nothing, you know, there's no, I, yeah, I, and, I mean, it's a little, yes, it's a little bit like seeing, seeing people in the way that a great sort of portrait painter would see them, you know, like, you know, you know how those, those paintings by, you know, Rembrandt, for example. You just, you just see such kind of complexity in that person. There's this, there's this bloke, I don't know if you've heard of him. There's a quite, he's quite a well-known photographer called Terry Donovan. He was kind of one of these six, swinging sixties photographers. Anyway, and I used to do Judo with, with Terry. And, well, General Mitra and I, my friend, General Mitra is another order member. We used to, we used to do Judo and Terry used to go along, go along as well. And Terry was this sort of rather sort of cockney bloke, and he was quite flat. He didn't move around much. But he could do these, these wonderful little sort of arm locks. And he just, he just put a little arm lock on you and say, "Hey guys, sweet as a nap." Ooh, he could do quite a minute. Anyway, he sort of died, actually, eventually. But, no, but he, he, the thing, you know, what I'm saying, he took, he took a photograph, my friend, General Mitra, once, and that photograph captured something about him that I had never seen before. I've known General Mitra for, you know, 30 years or so. And, he was, he's a very self-possessed confidant. He puts forward this very sort of confidant persona. And he just looked so kind of vulnerable in this photograph. It was a real quality of, yeah, vulnerability and softness. I mean, you just, you just, which he never shows anyone. And this bloke, got it anyway. So, in substantiality, and the third one is Dukka, unsatisfactorness. So, if we look at someone with a sense of unsatisfactorness, right? So, of course, you know, they aren't unsatisfactorness. So, that person, right, is, is, you know, Paul is unsatisfactory, right? I'm unsatisfactory. So, that's, so that's one way of, one way of sort of looking at it. But you can't expect a relationship to be satisfactory or fully satisfying. It is always going to be, you know, it is never going to be completely satisfying. And also, and also, you can also be aware of the other persons, that the other person's experience of life is unsatisfactory. It is one of, of difficulty. It is one of even, quite often, of pain. You know, when, so, you know, when, when, when you're relating to another person. Again, very often, you know, people do put forward this very sort of confident, strong, and sort of, you know, we, we want to go around the world looking fairly cheerful, you know? You don't want to kind of look miss, miss you call. You know, so we, we kind of look cheerful and confident. We look, we want to look as if we're sort of, you know, we're, we're sort of, you know, reasonably. Okay, you know. But actually, of course, we are, you know, we are all, we all have our own areas of difficulty and pain and anxiety and worry and problems and all sorts of so and so on. And, you know, so, so sometimes if, you know, people are kind of a bit, say someone might be rude to you, you know, in the, in the, in a shop or something. And if you can at least be aware that they have their own kind of, you know, suffering, they have their own sort of difficulty. And that, that's true for everyone. Yep, there is no one who just swans through, through life just like that. So, yeah, so I think if you know, if you can bring an awareness of the nature of reality into your, into the way that you kind of relate to others, I think, and to yourself, of course. I think this, this can kind of help. So, what else about awareness? Awareness that people have feelings? Oh, that's it, that's it. Yeah, people do have feelings. And I suppose, I want to just being aware that other people's experience of the world is very different from our own, you know, and that their experience of, of things is their experience of the world, their world even, is very often a different world from ours. Yep. And we can very often again a little bit, you know, impatient and so on because they don't seem to be getting something, you know, that is quite clear to us, you know. So if you can just be aware that the other person has their own kind of world of feelings and their own sort of, yeah, I mean, you know, it can very often be a completely different sort of emotional landscape in a way that they inhabit. Well, yeah, well, a completely different landscape in every, in every way. Asexual. Asexual even, yeah. That, um, and also kind of being aware of your feelings as well, you know, so, you know. Okay. The other thing I just wanted to mention was of course kindness. So these are the two basic kind of Buddhist qualities that one wants to ideally bring to any relationship, awareness and kindness. And kindness, there's this list of things that is often said about how one's communication should be, yeah. So your communication should be blameless or gentle, pleasing to the ear, lovable, going to the heart, courteous and pleasing and attractive to many people. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
