In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte and#8220;Peace Arising,and#8221; Candradasa describes the unskillfulness of guilt and the positive mental states of hri and apapatrapya in the process of peace arising.
Candradasa is the director of Dharmachakra, the charity that brings you Free Buddhist Audio and thebuddhistcentre.com.
From the talk and#8220;Sex and Morality: Going Beyond Puritanismand#8221; as part of the series, and#8220;Religion Without Godand#8221; given at the Portsmouth Buddhist Center, Portsmouth, NH, USA.
[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. Well, I want to finish by talking about a related thing just briefly. One of the biggest words that often comes up when you talk about religion and things like desire, sex, that kind of stuff, is guilt. It's the word. Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt, Islamic guilt, guilt from my mother, guilt from my father. Guilt that's kind of there in the background. In a religion without God, guilt is something you really have to look at. In the Buddhist tradition, feeling guilty is considered a negative mental state. It doesn't help you see things more clearly. It confuses things. We don't really have time to go into the psychological basis of guilt, but there seems to be a kind of theme generally to do with a fear of the removal of love or the removal of approval from someone who you hold in regard, and it's not in a healthy way. It's not in a healthy way. In the Buddhist tradition, particularly in the Abhidharma tradition, this is seen as really unhelpful. It doesn't help you see clearly. And Buddhism provides an alternative. So there are two terms. When you go away from here and you're looking at your behavior through the week, maybe you're paying a bit more attention to your experience of desire generally, to the kind of engine room of yourself as you move around the world. As you're looking to cultivate stillness and simplicity and contentment in your life, two new words to kind of chew around. I'll give you them in both Pali and Sanskrit because they're nice words. In Sanskrit, the words are "free" and "apatrapya" and in Pali, they're "hiri" and "autapa". If I had cats, I would call them "hiri" and "autapa". And "free" or "hiri" simply means reddening. It means reddening as in blushing. An "apatrapya" or "autapa" means fear of the censure of the wise, something like that. And these two things take the place of guilt. So the Buddha gives you a set of subtle tools for a complex universe. It's not the big, heavy hammer of guilt. It's basically recognizing that you've got a set of values and sometimes you let yourself down. Again, you probably don't need me to tell you this. Sometimes you let yourself down. And when you let yourself down, if you slow things down and open up space, you're going to notice that. We have a conscience that is something in human beings. It feels an internal sense of right and wrong, at least provisionally, or a spectrum there. And the Buddha says, "Well, when you let yourself down, you feel this reddening. This reddening happens in your being." It's almost like you spiritually blush. And that's what you might bring to confession and Buddhism. The moments where you spiritually blushed. "Oh no, I just killed that mosquito. I didn't want to kill that mosquito. It's dead now. I'll never be back." I've let myself down somewhere. And things much more gross than that. The other one, Apatrapya, Altapa, is like, you've got friends or people you look up to, whose values you aspire to share. And you know that if they knew you were behaving in a certain way, they'd probably be like, "Ah." And you have to be careful with this kind of thing that it doesn't just tip into authority figures and that kind of stuff. But I've certainly experienced this as useful. There are some people I really, really look up to. And I know sometimes, particularly with big stuff, big moral dilemmas, that I want to talk to them about it before I make a decision, before I do something rash. Because actually, it just feels right. It just feels right. The Buddha famously said, "You should test my teachings in the fire of your own experience as a goldsmith test gold. But you should also have recourse to the counsel of the wise." Basically, you don't know everything. You certainly don't know all of your own experience. You're not necessarily matured in various different ways. It's good to have some input. So having these two things, Heerian, Altapa, Free and Apatrapya, can be quite useful as a way to keep your moral compass straight as you've followed the map of the Buddhist precepts. They help us learn to work effectively with their minds and to change your behavior. They help us to leave unhelpful moral judgments and existential models behind those of St. Augustine, those of one nation under God. And most importantly, they help us slow down the impulse. They help us slow down the impulse I want and the impulse I'll have. And when you soften that, when you soften all that and slow it down, it opens up a space, that space that we're talking about between feeling and craving or feeling an aversion. Into that space comes stillness, particularly in meditation, but off the cushion as well. When you slow it down and you soften it up, into the space comes stillness. And into the space comes contentment and a sense of simplicity. And when you have those things in play, that's when things can arise. Peace of mind can arise. Peace of the heart can arise. Peace of the body can arise. And that's what the Buddha is talking about when he looks at desire and he looks at sex. And it's something we really have to try and take on in a culture that's got a very different model. Whether it's a punitive model or a generally Christian model, it's a very different model and we have a choice to make. And the religion without God represents that choice. Peace of mind, peace of heart and peace of body. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this screen. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out]
