[music] Dharma Bites 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] And another sita, which is also helpful in this subject, it's called the fear and dread sita. Or the fear and terror sita, sort of attractive title, isn't it? [laughter] So again, it's a Brahman who comes to the Buddha and says, "I'm my right that you're a leader of these disciples and these people are practicing. There's lots of people practicing and you're following your teaching, and you're the leader and the Buddha says, "Yeah, I'm the leader." And the Brahman says, "And you get them to go off into the forest to meditate on their own. That is impressive." Is that right? And the Buddha says, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, that's right." And then the Brahman says, "I get this one." Is it there? The Brahman says, "But Master Gautama, it's not easy to endure isolated forest or wilderness dwellings. It's not easy to maintain seclusion. It's not easy to enjoy being alone. The forest, as it were, plunders the mind of a man among who has not attained concentration." So, and the Buddha says, "Yeah, you're right. That's true. That is what happens." And the Brahman goes on and says, "Well, you know, I can think of people who've gone and done that and they've just gone mad that mind has been plundered by the forest." Interesting. Interesting phrase, isn't it? Someone's been taken from their mind. They know their stability, their purposefulness has been plundered by, you know, the fear and dread that kind of rise in the forest then the Buddha says, "Yeah. Yes, I can well understand that, but it doesn't happen to my disciples." And then he goes through, "Why not?" Well, he actually, for first of all, what he does is he says, "Those thoughts occurred to me before I was enlightened. That it was true that going into the forest to meditate was dangerous. It's a dangerous thing to do." And he says, "And then I thought, what is it that causes that danger? What's the source of that fear and dread?" And then he, so then he just goes through what are the causes and the antidotes. So he says, "Well, my first thing says is, my disciples practice ethics, and that protects their mind. If you go into the forest alone to meditate or practice and you haven't practiced ethics, yes, you're in danger of your mind being plundered by fear and dread. You're in danger even of madness." So I'll just quickly go through what he's what the Buddha says. He said of himself, who's talked about himself to begin with, and then his disciples, that they are pure, they have pure ethics. They'll practice pure ethics of body, speech, and mind. So that's how 10 priests have, some of them get mentioned by name. Also, there's livelihood. The livelihood is pure. So they're pure in ethics of body, speech, and mind, and also the ethics of their livelihood. And then they're free from the 500s of meditation. They're just laid out one by one, 500s. Being free from them, there's no need to fear the forest and being alone in the forest. So in our case, we might not be able to claim that we're free from the 500s, but we know about them. We know how to work with them. And if we put in some effort in, then we'll be able to, we'll begin to know how they particularly affect our meditation practice and get in there and get all of us and be able to work with them. So ethics, five instances, and then, an interesting one, he said of himself and his disciples. They are free from praising oneself and disparaging others. It's just really interesting that it's there. It's not very obvious to me in terms of why, in terms of being able to sit here and know, say, well, that will be because of such and such. I'm not quite clear about that one, but I have a definite response to the suggestion that a mind that is used to praising oneself and disparaging others may not be the best support in the midst of a forest where there's all sorts of things going on on these occasions for fear and dread. There's something about the mind that goes towards disparaging others that always, you know, shoot about oneself. That isn't very stable. It isn't going to be stable enough, actually. It's self-regarding. It is, indeed, it's self-regarding rather than other regarding, yeah, yeah. So praising oneself, disparaging others, and then the next one was being free from the tendency to panic. So I guess that's partly knowing yourself well and knowing that you'd know yourself well and knowing that you know how to work with yourself. You can go, okay, hang on a minute. I can do something here rather than going off. The next one is that his disciples and himself were free from desires of gain, fame, and hovering offerings made to them. They have had few wants. They have having few wants is how the Buddha put it. So that struck me as being, well, in some ways similar to the four-worldly winds and being free from them. It's also perhaps just a practical thing that if you have few wants, you can actually exist in the forest. That you're not always going to be needing to pop down to the local village for a few necessities like, you know, aerograding. And then the last four things that he mentions are being free from laziness, being not muddled in mindfulness, not muddled in mindfulness, being able to concentrate well and being free from lack of discernment. Actually, those struck me as being, I think actually those are four of the five spiritual faculties, the one that's not mentioned as faith. But the other two pairs that balance faith. And I suppose the whole authorance of the Buddha is a statement of the faith that he has in himself and his disciples. And actually that one about lack of discernment is quite, actually what he says is, the thought occurred to me. Well, when other contemplatives who are resort to isolated forests or wilderness and they are drooling idiots, well that idiocy gives rise to their unskillful feel and terror, but it's not like, I am not a drooling idiot. So when I'm so I'm not subject to that, I am consummate in discernment. So that's, so on the one hand there's consummate in discernment. I think that's, that's what, that's about wisdom, isn't it? The drooling idiot is particular way of putting it, there must have been a reason. But as was it to indicate ignorance, take on their spiritual ignorance. And then at the end of every one of these statements, the Buddha says, realizing this, I felt even more undaunted about staying in the wilderness. So he describes a whole series of supports to his practice. So I think they're worthwhile, they're worthwhile thinking about. And he also describes what it, what it nevertheless, when he was in the forest, of course he felt fear. But it didn't, it didn't mean that his mind was plundered, or he lost his mind, nor did it mean that he ran out of the forest. It just meant that he had, you know, supports there that he could work with, confidence, didn't feel daunted, but did feel fear. And that's when you get, there's quite a famous, famous little statement from the Buddha about, well, if I was walking and fear of rose, I continued walking until the fear had dissolved. If I was sitting, fear of rose, I didn't stop that. I just carried on what I was doing until the fear had subsided, same with line down, meditating, whatever. So that's quite a well-known statement of the Buddha's about fear. And again, just one to take on board. Whatever he was doing, he kept on doing it with confidence that eventually the fear would subside. But it's also quite helpful that he knew very, you know, he knows very well what it is that happens when you're alone in places. It's just when he's describing it up before he got enlightenment. He thought, "What if I were to stay in the sort of places that are awe-inspiring and make your hair stand on end, such as park shrines or forest shrines and tree shrines?" So later on he tried that. And while I was staying in those sorts of places, well, for example, a wild animal might come, or a bird would make a twig fall, or the wind would rustle the fallen leaves. So that is exactly what happens when you're in solitary, isn't it? That's exactly what happens. You hear the rustling leaves, you don't think, "It's the wind!" You think, "Who's there?" Or "No, who's there?" And, you know, a bird makes a twig fall. You don't go, "Oh, it's a bird." You go, "Pops." Or a wild animal might come. Well, at least, you know, I tend to do soldiers in Scotland and Wales, and there are not very, very many terrifying wild animals, but they're wearing Indian forests, and there still are. I mean, really objective reasons for feeling fear. But even in, you know, over in Wales, you know, my mind can still become, "What's that?" It's a no. It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it all sounds like that. It was this morning noise, I would say, for my window. You know, it just happened something, and it was very much so, it's just so, it's just this morning kind of eerie, kind of eldritch noise. And I don't get very frightened about actual people, to be honest, but I do get a bit into ghost, ghosting things. And there was this eerie kind of screeching, but not terribly allowed. I mean, eventually, after a few days of the fear, I did stay in bed, pappled. [laughter] I just kind of, what I was doing, I stayed in bed. [laughter] With the blankets pulled up, but they light on, which is a funny kind of, appearing, really, isn't it? [laughter] Anyway, eventually, I discovered what I helped, the aid of a book that, that is exactly the noise that barn nails make. And there was a barn next to them, just on the edge of the house, actually, so I thought, "Okay, relax. It's a barn nail." So, when I read this paragraph, I just thought, "Yeah, I know it's entirely what that's like." So, anyway, then, the Buddha Kaizen's saying, "Well, why am..." You know, I'm getting myself even more frightened by anticipating that I'm going to be fearful. Luke, if it comes, it comes. I'll just carry on doing what I'm doing. So, I'll leave this out. It's a good thing to read. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
