Suchitta explores the way we generate our own suffering, in the light of understanding accumulated through reflection on the first three reminders. This gives us a window to the world and the birth of Compassion and our potential for an Awakened Heart. There are tips on how to reorientate ourselves away from the identity project towards a life of genuine and complete selflessness. Excerpted from the talk The Defects of Samsara and Cultivating the Desire For Enlightenment given at Taraloka Retreat Centre, 2016. ***
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[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. So how do we turn the mind into an ally? The three levels of wisdom. Through hearing, contemplating and meditating on the teachings of the Buddha. The solutions are here. We have them in our heart, right in front of us. This shows up the importance of Dharma study. Through Dharmakarta, the importance of it in Pali scriptures, talking on the Dharma. In the Meghia Sutter, the importance of Dharmakarta, of talking the Dharma. Meghia, young, enthusiastic, misguided, the Buddha's young attendant. He wants to go off into the mango grove now. I'm sure there are many equivalent things of the mango grove in that Western society. But I could get on, I could go to the mango grove and I can re... Thanks, but I need to go over there and meditate. Stay a while, Meghia. Stay with me, Meghia. But I just think if I go over there, I'm really going to make progress. Just let me go into that mango grove. Stay, stay. So one of the things that the Buddha, when Meghia finally comes back, down hearted, dejected, unable to steal his mind. Didn't quite go to plan. So talking on the Dharma is one of the things that make the heart mature. So if you like memorized texts, know them by heart. And study increases our capacity to recognize what's going on, recognize what's going on round about us, as well as in us. And so you could ask yourself this question. Do I give the Dharma teachings, the attention that I could? Am I taking them really deeply into my mind and heart in the same way as when I look at a tree and reflect on the process and the commonality of that process between myself and the tree? Do I really take that in to inward reflection? So then, if you can do that, and the time is here for us to do that on this retreat, you're no longer skimming the surface, you're actually plumbing the depths. There is a saying that when meditation and the Dharma meet, it's like rock meeting bone. So generally we kind of pad out our experience. Propantu is a part of this with material comfort. And the four reminders are there to lead us away from the things that preoccupy us. So why do we keep forgetting them? Why do we? Why do we see the samsara? Why do we see them as defects? Because they're not really defects. They're just facts. I mean, as has been said, at least two other mornings, we lack emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding. Or we just settle for dukkha. Or something starts to happen to us, a recognition, a little pain, a little light enters in, a chink. And it just, we squash it somehow. It gets replaced by assumptions that come from our beautiful, lovely, well-honed identity project. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. You
