Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, takes us right to the heart of the matter with and#8220;Samsara and Nirvanaand#8220;, by Maitreyi. From the talk and#8220;The Defects and Dangers of Samsaraand#8221; where Maitreyi looks at pleasure and suffering in the context of samsara and#8211; compassionate responses to self and other, and how to loosen the bondsand#8230;
Talk given at Tiratanaloka Retreat Centre, 2005
This talk is part of the series and#8220;The Four Mind-Turning Reflectionsand#8220;.
[music] Dharma Vites 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. [music] So my talk today is on the defect of Sanxara. And it's the last of the mind-turning reflections and the second of the last pair of mind-turning reflections, the law of karma and the defects of Sanxara. Work together to help us overcome clinging to future pleasures and encourage us towards the greater happiness of freedom. And I thought, well, we could just check in with ourselves and ask how much of what's gone through our mind today is about looking forward to future pleasures and how much about the planting of the seeds of skillful action. And I know for myself I've been quite tired because I've been up late writing this talk and I've been thinking a lot about a nice bath and bed and a good book to read. So a defect is a lack or a deficiency, and I think it's important that we clarify this. We're not saying that Sanxara is evil or horrible, but we're saying that it doesn't give us what we most deeply need and that it is permeated by all kinds of suffering as well as giving us pleasure. And when we talk about something being defective, then it needs correcting. And Sanxara is not a place that we go. It's easy to fall into this way of speaking, as if it's a place we happen to find ourselves in, that we loosely equate with the world. And there's another place called Nirvana that we might get to if we're very good or we work very hard at our practice, but at the same time we're not sure that we really want to go there because it does seem a bit much, or it's a bit lonely or somehow sort of featureless. Sanxara and Nirvana is not somewhere that we go. It's something that we do. We samsara is. And literally it means to go round or to spin. So there are various images associated with it which have this circular or cyclical nature or character. It is like an ill-fitting chariot wheel. It's the wheel of life with the sixth round and the outer circle of becoming and re-becoming. It's like water in a water wheel, in which we circle helplessly. It's like bees buzzing round and round a pot. And it's like the turning of a potter's wheel. A circle is endless, or it ends in itself. A cycle is recurrent, repetitive. It returns to the beginning. Nothing new comes out of it. So we create this samsara in which we go round and round. We create it initially by what we come with. It's hardwired, as Ratnadarini put it in her talk, with the four atmoclatures. That sense of ourselves as centre of the universe and the subject of every experience. And there's no blame in this. It's just how things are from the perspective of how we are. It's part of the human condition to experience the world in terms of subject and object. And it's part of our precious human birth that we have a self-reflexive consciousness and an ability to discriminate, which allows us to explore and question that experience. So, so far, so good it would seem. But already there is an underlying tension. Samsara is a condition in which our minds are not functioning in accordance with reality. We believe in a separate self. We believe in the importance of that self. And we are determined to protect and defend that self. At the same time, on some deeper level, we know this not to be the case. Our experiences concern it and yet contradict it. For instance, other people also think they are the centre of the world. They are wrong, of course. We can't all be the most important person, but that is their experience. And within it all there's a sense of incompleteness, a lack of wholeness. So an unease, an insecurity accompanies our experience. And that unease causes us to want to become more secure, more substantial. So we feel the need to acquire things, to bolster up that sense of self. And then we think we own these things, which might be material objects, other people, skills, opinions, experiences. First conceiving an eye, we cling to an ego. Then conceiving a mind, we cling to a material world. Like water in a water wheel, helplessly we circle. I bow down to the compassion that arises for all beings. That's that chandra cutie. But the unease, the insecurity, persists. Having feared we might lose ourselves in some way or other. The situation has been compounded. We now fear we might lose our possessions, our standing in the world, our points of view, as well as fearing the loss of self. Again there is no blame. Our craving for security, for substantiality arises out of ignorance. It's a very human response. And it causes suffering. Banksara is cyclical because through our actions based on ignorance, we feed that ignorance. Seeing objects in the world as mine, we compound that view of the separate self. Increasing that sense of alienation and insecurity, which then reaches out to draw more towards it. It's not only a cycle, but it's a vicious circle. Helplessly we circle, digging ourselves deeper into that ignorant view. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] You You
