Subhadramati explores forgiveness and the arising of the Bodhicitta. The ego sustains itself by blaming - forgiveness means letting go of our egoic reactions and becoming a conduit for the mind of Bodhicitta. Excerpted from Being a Conduit For the Mind of Bodhicitta during the Women's Area Order Weekend, 2018. ***
Subscribe to our Dharmabytes podcast: On Apple Podcasts | On Spotify | On Google Podcasts
Bite-sized inspiration three times every week.
Subscribe to our Free Buddhist Audio podcast: On Apple Podcasts | On Spotify | On Google Podcasts
A full, curated, quality Dharma talk, every week. 3,000,000 downloads and counting!
Subscribe using these RSS feeds or search for Free Buddhist Audio or Dharmabytes in your favourite podcast service!
Help us keep FBA Podcasts free for everyone: donate now!
Follow Free Buddhist Audio: YouTube | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Soundcloud
[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. [music] On this weekend, what I've come to realise is that we've been creating the mind of bodhicitta. And then I was thinking, everything you see in the Dharma is sort of wrong, isn't it? Because I thought, "Oh yeah, it's not creating the mind of bodhicitta." It's something like channeling the mind of bodhicitta, channeling again probably isn't quite the right word. Being a conduit for the mind of bodhicitta, that's what we've been doing on this weekend. And we've been doing that well in everything that we've been doing. We've been doing that by exploring the eight verses for training the mind. Both in our two wonderful talks and then in our chapters. We've been doing it through pranks and the bodhicitta practice. And we were just so beautifully led in that. We've been the wonderful leading of the bodhicitta practice. And we've been doing it through practicing our purges. And we've been doing it by practicing in larger numbers. And when I say practice, of course, I don't mean just meditation together in the strum. I mean, all our activities we've been doing together, whether it's the washing up. Yeah, being in our engaging so fully in our chapters and meditation in the strum here. Yeah, we've really been looking at more and more depth at the eight verses for training the mind. So I'm just going to remind us of how we've been looking at them. Straight away, Ratna Darnay in her first talk reminded us that these eight verses have got this sort of three-fold aspect of view of practice and of action. And that action is moment to moment. So again, it's not just when we're meditating in the strum or meditating elsewhere, it includes that. But it's moment to moment action. These eight verses are a direct challenge to ego clinging. They're a direct challenge, they're a direct. I was going to say a direct way of working with the outmoclesias. You can never have a direct way of working with the outmoclesias, of course, because they're below the level of consciousness. They're pre-conscious, they're not even subconscious, they're pre-conscious. So all the time, you know, what makes Dharma practice, Dharma practice and know something else, know what some other type of practice is. So we are trying to work with the outmoclesias. We're trying to work with us even quite the right word is it. We're trying to turn them around. Those pre-conscious views, beliefs about life. Those common sense views, we've got to somehow find a way of completely turning about, as we say, in the deepest sea of consciousness. That's what makes Dharma practice, Dharma practice. If it's not that, it's not Dharma practice. It might be very good practice, but it's not Dharma practice. So that's what we've been trying to do. And it's very, very strong, very, very strong practice. And as it says, completely counterintuitive. Because what we're doing is we're taking situations where it's normal to react. And actually using those reactions as a pointer to ego clinging. It's terrible exciting, isn't it? So instead of kind of making a drama over reactions or taking, it's like something like, don't take the outmoclesias personally. The outmoclesias are just why we are. So don't take them personally. They don't make a drama over them. But use them as a pointer to ego clinging here. Sibuzzi, I famously said, are reactions of where the outmoclesias break the surface. So because they break the surface, then there's an opportunity. So we cherish our reactions if we can use them properly. So the opportunity is to practice, a spiritual-death practice working in this way. That's what the opportunity is. And yet develop this new mind of bodhicitta, or let the new mind of bodhicitta flow through us. And I love that when Shanta Vadri said when we talk about the world, what we really mean is other people. That's what we really mean when we say the world. Practicing like this, we're seeing other people not as a nuisance and not as a barrier to our normal life. It's so easy to do that, isn't it? It's actually so fullness, isn't it? So silly when we think about it. But we actually believe that other people aren't just a nuisance. They're stopping us practicing. That's obviously wrong. But amazing how many times I believe it, even in the course of one day. So we realize that other people aren't a nuisance. They aren't a barrier to life, even in normal life. But they're a rare treasure. And that is why they're a rare treasure, because they give you the opportunity to overcome ego-clinging. That's what they really do. So the sort of heart of these verses is to realize that when you feel someone's heartier, even if they have, right? That's the key thing. Even if they have, they probably have. They're rotors, other people. They probably have heartier deliberately. The very people you've helped, you know, they probably have heartier. What they've actually done is they face you with your illusions. They face you with your unrealistic expectations and false beliefs. Yeah, about life. Life breaks its promise. That's what Shanti Deva tells us. In an instant, life breaks its promise. And that life is in the form of other people. They're constantly betraying you. That's our opportunity. I hope that's our sort of takeaway message, as it were, from this retreat, to use these obstacles as an opportunity. I want to say something about that. It's the we've got to realize it for ourselves. You can't hate other people over the head with either. If something's just girlfriend or boyfriends just left them. Don't say so. Don't use say so. Well, this is an opportunity for them. That's right. But if you are that person who's been betrayed, you might. And what I hope we all do more and more is ask our chapters. Ask our fellow Dharma faders to help us to use this as a Dharma opportunity, to see it in a Dharma way. And we'll need those other people to help us to see that because it won't feel like that. It'll feel like the worst thing that's ever happened. The last thing we'll be thinking is that other people can help us. It is. It's because it's so counterintuitive. It doesn't make any sense in a way. And the sort of in the mundane existence. We've doesn't make any sense in Sanxahara. Completely counterintuitive. In a way, we're moving on this moment of talks on forgiveness. Three personal talks on forgiveness. Forgiveness from the worldly point of view is counterintuitive. The ego sustains itself by blaming. That's what I was saying yesterday. In a way, you could say that's what an ego is. It's a mechanism to sustain itself. And it does that by blaming. So forgiveness means let and go of egoic reactions. It means let and go of that. So in a way that's brilliant, isn't it? Because it's a decisive way to, can't I really work with these pre-conscious, this pre-conscious clinging. But we can work through forgiveness. And it sort of filters down as Ratnadarini says. That's one very strong way to work. And in practicing forgiveness, we're making a decisive shift to the creative mind. So we have that in the region last night. The creative mind, remember, loves where there is no reason to love. And we're making that decisive shift. So practicing forgiveness is a spiritual death practice. It's definitely an insight practice. It's a practice to develop or better channel the new mind of Bodhi Chitta. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny. And thank you. (upbeat music)
