(upbeat music) This podcast 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. - I ended that short meditation with a very simple way of putting the full drum of the harness, the four immeasurables. Maybe we all be happy and free from suffering and dwell in joy and great equanimity. And it seems like the earliest references to bodhicitta in the Buddhist texts are basically the bodhicitta at that point is a word for the four immeasurables, so a word for the dhamma bodharis. But then it gathers momentum and depth over time as the tradition unfolds. Yesterday we started in and we spent some time gathering resources and also looking at those questions, who am I practicing with and who am I practicing for? And then we looked at the blue sky and the meaning of the blue sky. Short but intense burst of exploration. And today we're going to move on to the next part of the practice. So the blue sky is in place, it's here. And now the refuges will appear. It's not quite like that, but we'll come to that. So most of today we'll be looking at what is a refuge? Which is always a good question to ask. Those basic questions, which sound like we should know the answer by now, they're often the best ones to ask. And what actually is a refuge? And then the forms that it can take in the practice and then our relation to the refuge in the practice. So that's what we'll be mainly engaged with. Along the way, there'll be one or two questions that we're going to answer. If you have questions, then please ask them via the chat or send them to me or you can unmute yourself and say, what about that, this country? We're welcome to do that, if you'd like. Okay. So once we have the blue sky, the second point in the practice says, it's important that one calls upon something beyond oneself before commencing the practice. Traditionally, the refuge tree is quickly called up. More simply, it could be shoved to mini bodhira or once yidam, or even a sense of the yorda or all around one. Yorda here, more in its transcendental aspect as the thousand armed devil of Joshua. So talking in terms of resources for taking on suffering, this is the main resource. The main resource is that we are in touch with the refugees. So where should we start with this? Good question. Start with what is a refuge anyway? So a refuge is a place of safety. It's a security, isn't it, and in this case, it's a security from suffering. We find, when people meet the Buddha and they go for refuge and then they see what he's seen, they feel that they found an island, a refuge, which is secure, which is completely reliable. And that's what we're looking for and that's what, if we're going to be of help to other beings, that's what we're going to have to keep finding more and more of in ourselves. And in the Pali Canon people meet the Buddha and he can be a refuge for them. And he can be a refuge for them for two reasons. Firstly, because he knows how things are. He knows the nature of experience, the nature of existence. He may be wrong about practical things. If you were to ask most of the awakened beings in Buddhist history, what the world was like, they'd tell you it was flat. And they'd be wrong about that. But in terms of the nature of experience, it's flowing, ungraspable, knowing nature and the nature of the mind, it's open, knowing and so on. Yeah, they're completely clear about all of that. And in terms of how not to suffer and how to be completely fulfilled, they're completely clear about that. And not only that, but they have fully developed positive qualities. So in terms of the Bodhisattva path, you have the six perfections and the six whamas on the upper meter where you really see, you know the nature of experience. But then you have the first five, in which all kinds of positive qualities are developed. And if we have to do justice to... I was going to say to Buddhism, but it's actually justice to what a human being can be to our potential as human beings, then we need to really unfold all those qualities. Yes, we can do a lot of insight work and see that there's no self and so on. But in a way, that's a preliminary, it's a kind of clearing of the ground, it's a clearing way of this understanding and the confusion that we have about life, which has been preventing the real unfolding of our love and our compassion and our generosity and our patience and our energy and our freedom. And it's those qualities that really have to unfold as well. Otherwise, we've sort of stopped part of the way on the path and yes, we've freed ourselves quite a lot. But we haven't begun to unfold all that richness. And yes, I've met quite a number of people over the years who've gone decent ways down the path. And some of them, yes, you can feel like, okay, they've got really clear about how things are and they're clear that there's no self and so on. But actually, that's great, but there's something kind of missing. And then there's been a smaller kind of handful of people that I've met in my life who I just felt completely, I walked into a grave. Yes, I don't know. It's like a great aura of sort of love. And I felt like they were completely there with me. And yes, of course, it was no self, that was obvious, but that wasn't the point. They were just completely open-hearted. And they were and I just kind of wanted to just throw myself on the ground and yeah, I really, really wanted to be like that. So it felt like those people could be much more sort of full refuge than some years who could perhaps help me to to see something of the nature of things. Fantastic though, that is, you see what I mean. So yeah, we want a complete version of the path and we want a complete refuge and a complete unfolding of how things are so that for ourselves, but so that we can really be of benefit so that we can really have an impact on the suffering of the world. So a person with those qualities is a full refuge. And if it's a become our own refuge, then we have to have those qualities. Over time, we have to become someone who knows from our indirect experience, how things are. And whose heart is fully opened. And yeah, it's kind of in traditional Buddhist terms. There was Panjavi Mutti and Cheeto Mutti. There's liberation by wisdom and liberation of heart. So we want that whole package together. And with that, we'll feel free and we'll feel. Yeah, really like not just that, OK, we're free of suffering, but there will be that great open liberated awareness that cares for everything and everyone, just naturally. That's the real refuge. That's what we're after. And it's so difficult these days because what we're surrounded by is views of human beings that are incredibly limited. We're surrounded by views of life that are very, very limited. I had a question about that, which I might kind of relate to this. It's taking us back to yesterday, but maybe that's all right to come out. So somebody was asking, they appreciated the practice yesterday and those questions, and it was very fruitful. I'm gaining a confidence and motivation to continue my altruistic efforts in the world. That's great. However, I feel I'm missing something. My rational mind, no doubt based on my cultural conditioning towards scientific materialism, prevents me from believing that such a practice can really, whatever that means, perhaps that's the crux of the question, can really make a difference. So my rational mind based on scientific materialism prevents me believing that such a practice can really make a difference in the world, or can have an influence on the world. So when we send Meta to some situation or some people or we practice Meta for one another, does that actually have any effect on anyone? So the question that goes on, so I was wondering whether there's any part of the practice that could be developed that would help break down that barrier. Some train of thought that could help me build some faith that the development of the Bodhi Chitta can be a force for good in the world beyond the building of confidence in myself to turn towards suffering in the world, which is of course a great benefit in itself. So there's a lot in that, and I've been triggered back to it by this sort of comment about scientific materialism, because that is the kind of context in which we tend to be living in the West, but there's life. There is this one life, and it's not that long, and then at a certain point you get that flat line on the hospital monitor, and that's the end of everything. That's it. So you have that sort of nihilistic view, and so what are you going to fill this jury time until that point comes with, well, that's an awful lot of advertising, giving you all sorts of opportunities to fill it with all kinds of things. So it's a very impoverished, sorry, some of you are working in a second language, a very sort of poor sort of view of life. So yeah, sure, Bodhi Chitta practice and Tom Lem. They are their mind-training practices, so partly they are just us training ourselves to respond creatively in all kinds of situations in life. So whether or not they have any effect out there, as the questioner says, it does have a really good effect on our own mind, and then when we meet with suffering, when we meet with something difficult, we find ourselves having been trained to sort of turn towards it in a resourceful way. So it's worth it anyway. But it does seem to be a sort of added dimension of a sort of subtle influence that these things have. But the questioner's rational mind is going, "Well, I don't see how that works." And we have to one of the integrity of our rational mind, yes? And we don't want to just believe things that aren't true, just because we'd like to feel they were true. We don't want to be deceiving ourselves in that sort of way. So our rational mind has that useful quality to it. Yeah, there is a spiritual integrity in that. We are on the path to truth, as Bodhi's. So what can help? Well, it probably is worth just if we are basing ourselves in scientific materialism, just to bring that up against our Buddhism. And very often we have beliefs that exist, they kind of coexist in us, but they don't actually kind of ever quite meet. So under different circumstances at different times, we believe completely different things. So whilst I believe that, yes, I am striving on the path for enlightenment, another little bit of me thinks that that's completely, you know, the central and they'll be able to do that because he's not the sort of person who can. And I can hold those two views. And one of them sort of subtly sabotages the other. But somehow I've gotten used to both of them because I've thought a lot of them over the years. So they both kind of carry on. So we need to bring them into relationship and go, hang on, you can't. One of you has to not be right. So can you please have the discussion and explore and find out which of you is actually right and which one we're going to base our life on. So quite often we, on one side, yes, you know, we believe that Buddha was awakened and also we have this kind of scientific materialist, nalist thing somewhere going on sort of subterranean underground. So we need to bring those together. And we need to be aware actually for the Buddha. But, you know, if you'd gone to the Buddha and explained to him about scientific materialism, he would have said, no, that's wrong. That's it's a chedivada that's right in his tone. It's a view of cutting off that everything is cut off at death. And there's nihilism. He would have completely denied that. And it felt sad that people were so identified with the body and with material things. But that had dominated their whole view of life, and that they were missing so much of the richness of the mind. But we can also take, you know, we're not dismissing the scientific either. But if we really go into that, we just start to discover that things become much more mysterious and strange and unfathomable than the everyday level of things. You know, if we go onto sort of quantum level, then seems like things can affect one another. At infinite sort of distances immediately. And there's no way that you can see how that could have happened. Things like that going on. So it's not so hard to imagine that when the universe is really that strange and mysterious that we can all be affecting one another. And I think it also helps to kind of notice how we're setting ourselves up in terms of what is the authority inside us. It's like we have different faculties. You know, we have the rational mind. We have the wisdom of the body, which can be very profound. We have our whole emotional side, particularly those sort of positive emotions. We have imagination. And we have intuition, which can be a deep knowing, which isn't based on what we've got in through the senses. And the tendency is for one or another of those to be the one that we identify with and the one that's kind of in control. And it will kind of allow others in, but it's the one that decides. Well, it's actually what we want as a kind of council of all of our faculties all working together. So, yeah, I'm very often once we're identified with one, we feel a bit threatened if some other one starts to take over if we're a very rational person and strongly motion happens, then that's probably difficult. Yeah, and the rational mind likes to feel this explaining everything and everything is therefore known and therefore it's secure and we're okay. But then you can have deep sort of spiritual intuitions, which don't fit. But actually they're your experience. I have a good friend who was brought up in a sort of atheist household and then they went to uni and they did a science subject. And then they became a Buddhist and then they noticed that they still had a strong kind of materialist view of life really sort of quite embedded. So they really, you know, when it came down to it, they thought, well, life, death was the end. And then one day they sat down to meditate. And in the course of that meditation, they had an experience. And when they came out of it, they knew that death wasn't the end. And they completely turned their view around. And it wasn't that they had some kind of, oh, I must really have faith in the Buddha. And he said, it wasn't that at all. They had an experience of the nature of mind, which showed them that that, you know, they got, they called a little glimpse of the deathless. Let's put it like that. And that profound experience, just in a few minutes, a few moments almost. That's the change thing. So we have to do our best to reflect on the fullness of the human being, to reflect on the tradition. As far as I can't think of any realized Buddhist teacher over the centuries, who's ever come to the conclusion that materialism was it. And I think it's also, it's helpful to reflect on the blue sky as the nature of awareness, as the nature of mind. And just keep exploring that, feeling into that. And letting go in meditation at times of just whatever story we're telling ourselves, whether it's some kind of story about materialism or whether it's a story about how wonderful things are just coming down to our basic experience. So if we go deeply enough into that, we'll know, we'll know how things are, and then we won't have to theorize and we won't have to tell anybody or not tell anybody, we'll just know. That's the thing about the Buddhist, I was going to say the Buddhist vision of life, but it's not even, even a vision can sound a bit sort of like a bit up in the air somewhere. Jax had another of his visions, you know, maybe we should call the doctor. Yeah, it's not like that. If anything, it's what we have is the Buddhist knowing. The Buddhist knowing of how things are, we have the Buddhist knowing of experience. And that's what we all have to have for ourselves. And with that Buddhist knowing of how things are. Well, when people have that experience, they say things like, it's wonderful Lord, it's amazing. They see life in a completely different way, they see just how rich and beautiful and wonderful life can be with a liberated mind. And they see what incredible potential there is. And the Buddhist knowing about life is amazing. So, yes, we are surrounded by a culture which is saying, it's very just, can you eat it? What do I get for this? We have to somehow sort of find our way out of that. That's a large part of the samsara that in this practice, we're setting ourselves up to help beings find the way out of. So we have to work in ourselves to make sure that we're not kind of falling into the sort of being part of that problem. So, we can reflect on, yes, that modern science shows us that the world is really quite extraordinary. But the whole Buddhist tradition out of that knowing is saying, nah, materialism, nah, not likely. But we can reflect on, yeah, we can really take ourselves into the blue sky, take ourselves into what that awareness is like, that potential of our own mind, just explore that. And we can just lay aside all the stories so that we give ourselves some space in which other aspects of ourselves can flower. And we just really have a look and see them, put down all the theories, and we can come to know ourselves. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhaustaudio.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
