(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. - Okay, yeah. So I've written at the top of my notes, wait. There's five Buddhas, question mark. Yeah, so I thought I'd start there before talking about a Moby City. So this came up a little bit in my group earlier in the retreat. Sort of question like I thought there was one Buddha and he was historical and real. Who are these pretend ones? Yeah, questions like that. And one of the answers I gave, which is the way I like to, yeah, someone said this to me once, that if you imagine the Buddha, the enlightened mind, being a bright white light that you shine through a prism, just like when you shine a real light through a prism, it breaks into color. Yeah, white light breaks into beautiful color. I remember being shown this in primary school by a teacher, shining a light through a prism, and suddenly the bright white light that I knew and saw to be real became multi-colored. Yeah? And I think that's just like these Buddhas. So we've got a Moby City on the shrine. But over here, we also have that shovia, Ratna Samba and Amitabha. So some of us have been on the retreat for a while, and we've been looking at those different Buddhas. So we've had a talk on Axhovia, on Ratna Samba and on Abitaba. I think a really good way to think about these Buddhas is that following the life of the Buddha, people told stories about him. So I guess just like us, there's people in our lives, perhaps people in our lives that are no longer with us, and we tell stories about them. And as we tell those stories, they gather momentum and take on certain qualities. And I was thinking that we're actually quite used to using quite mythic language in the way that we describe things. So if someone gives a really good talk, so perhaps by the end of this talk, you might say, "Kashanti Kara, he was on fire." Yeah? "He was on fire." So you could imagine telling people down the ages, there was this talk I went to, and there was a man called Kashanti Kara, and he was on fire. And if you pass that down to your children and your children's children and your children's children, they might just think, "Kashanti Kara was fire." They might think he just was fire, yeah? And that might get quite close to what was actually going on, yeah? (audience laughing) There's a bit like that with these Buddha figures, yeah? However they come down to us, the way they come down to us is, Amitabha is red, and he's the Buddha of love. He's the Buddha of love, yeah? And Ratnasambala is yellow, and he is the Buddha of giving, of generosity, yeah? So that's sort of how they come down to us. And sometimes they're talked about as emerging out of people's meditation's experiences over history. So these figures appear to them. And I quite like the language of it emerges out of their meditation experience, but I prefer the language of being discovered, yeah? So particularly in the language of science, so you discover things, and they've always been true, and you didn't create them, you didn't invent them, you discovered them. And I think that's what these Buddha figures are getting at, these, yeah, this Buddha, this five Buddha mandala. And the last thing I thought I'd say is, yeah, so I was ordained this year, so I was on a four month ordination retreat, and it was being led by, well, now a very close friend of mine, but also a teacher, Mitra Bandu. And he regularly returned to this phrase, he was saying, as human beings, we respond to personality, yeah? We respond to personality. So we're doing the communication exercises today, and to sit in front of another human being, and just look at them, well, it can be really mysterious, really exciting, even quite frightening, yeah? And we respond to the personality of the other person, and that's just like these Buddha figures, they're a personality. They're the enlightened mind personified, so that we can move closer to them, yeah? If I say the word enlightened mind, it's quite an abstract concept. But if you look at this image of a green Buddha, well, it's still a little bit abstract, but less so, but less so, you can move towards it. It's called a personality. And, yeah, Janavartia last night was talking about Star Wars and Harry Potter. I too haven't seen the Star Wars film, and I'm slightly looking forward to it. And I was very sad when the Harry Potter films came to an end, yeah, I loved them. And at the very end of it, this is my nod to Harry Potter, at the very end of it, well, Dumbledore, yeah? People know this story, Harry Potter, yeah. Best selling, yeah. Used to be delivered on crates, yeah. Delivered on crates to Tesco. So, yeah, Dumbledore at the very end is dead, and yet Harry encounters him in a kind of dream, and they have a meaningful conversation. It's really fires Harry Potter up, ready for the final battle. And then at the end, he sort of comes round and says, "Oh, is this all in my head, or is it real?" And Dumbledore says to him, "Of course it's in your head, Harry, "but why should that mean it's not real?" Yeah, so there's a little bit of wisdom from Dumbledore. (audience laughing) Okay, so, yeah. (audience laughing) I really enjoyed making this shrine today with Adam. Adam and I met at nine o'clock, and we went right down to the end of the Pongs into a small woodland. We went into a small woodland, and I love woodlands, I love woodlands, yeah? Often I forget that while living in London, yeah? I very rarely make the time to go to woods. Quite often I leave retreat telling people, "I should camp more, I should go to forests more, "but I don't, yeah, but I don't." And growing up, I spent a lot of time in woods, actually. Every year I'd go for two or three weeks to something called dance camp, affectionately known as hippie camp, where, yeah, from a very early age, I'd just be let loose in a field, yeah? Let loose in a field, surrounded by a woodland, and I could just play in the woodland, yeah? Completely free. And, yeah, in my, well, early 20s, I also spent quite a lot of time going to Scotland and walking in Scotland, and there's something about the wildness, something about the greenness, something about the expansiveness of Scotland that I found really moving. It's as if it spoke to me, yeah? It's as if it spoke to me, it called to me. It was telling me something, yeah? And you can see that if I kept using the language of the forest, talk to me, it called to me, suddenly the forest is alive. Suddenly the forest is alive. And I think some of us, particularly who have been on this retreat from the beginning, have noticed the surroundings, nature around us becoming more alive. Yeah, so often after meditation and the numbers have increased as the days go by, you'll see vast swathes of people gazing into the distance, yeah? What could be construed as sort of dead matter, just sort of green stuff, becomes more and more alive? And I think actually we're aligning ourselves much more closely to the truth of things that the world is vividly alive, vividly alive. So I've got a short story about a walk through a woodland in order to just briefly introduce you to the Buddha figures that we've already covered, and then I'll tell you a bit more about Amoga City. Okay, so you're in a woodland. You're in a woodland and the sun is yet to rise. It's dark, you're frightened. You don't really remember how you ended up in the woodland in the first place, yeah? And there's little noises. Perhaps even like this shrine, there's little lights every now and again. You see little lights, yeah? And there's noises and you're frightened. But then the sun starts to rise and there's a lovely blueness to the sky, yeah? You know when the sun rises, just before it comes up, very, very vivid blue. And you start to feel more gathered, yeah? You start to remember where you are. You're in a woodland. You've been here before, you know where to go. Yeah, you feel more gathered, more contained. And so with this newfound confidence, you start to walk through the forest in a direction that you've confidently chosen. And you stumble across a empty but welcoming cottage. Yeah, you stumble across an empty but welcoming cottage. It's got a wild flower garden. There's a smell of food being cooked. You can often smell that as you walk past the kitchen here, very, very lovely smell of food being cooked. And then although there isn't anyone in the cottage, you feel very much welcomed in and well-hosted. And there's an abundance of food and drink. So you enjoy the food and drink, you feel well-hosted. And you spend the afternoon in the cottage relaxing and the sun starts to set, yeah? The thin time begins. Again, on this ordination retreat I was on this summer, much badly the man leading it, made a real point of what he was calling the thin time, the time when the sun starts to set and the time between the day and night. Well, sort of magical things can sort of happen. It's got a quality of anything could happen, yeah? So the sun is starting to set and your mood becomes more contemplative. And so you take your place at a half. You take your place at the fire in the cottage and you gaze into the red of the flames. Yeah, you're gazing into the red of the flames. Perhaps you're wrapped in a warm blanket. You feel warm and for some reason you feel loved. You feel loved. And as the evening stretches on, you kind of relax into a deep kind of meditative state, yeah? And then the clock strikes midnight, yeah? The witching hour, yeah? Midnight. I've written bong. Bong. Bong. (audience laughing) Twelve types. (audience laughing) And so having passed the evening silently, gazing into the flames in this deep contemplation, this kind of meditative state, this feeling of being loved, something has changed within you, yeah? Something has changed within you by midnight. The world, your life, your mind, your place in the cosmos feels a bit different. It feels a bit different now. You're not quite sure who you are anymore. It's a bit frightening. But you stick it out. You rest a little bit longer by the fire and once again, the sun starts to rise and you walk out of the cottage into the woodland. You're no longer unsure of where you need to go and you know what you need to do and you return to the world changed, renewed and ready to act. So that's my woodland story to introduce you to the five Buddhas. So this lovely blue, just before the sun came up and you felt this sense of being gathered, sort of integrated, that's got a quality of acchobia, the blue Buddha we've got here. And then you walk forward with that resolve and you find a cottage with a kind of generous feeling of being hosted and everything's in abundance and it's noon and that's right in the sound of that yellow Buddha. And then as you gaze into the flames, feel loved, your contemplative, meditative, some kind of deep state, that's Amitabha, this red, warm Buddha just as the sun starts to set. And then at midnight with the 12 bongs that I won't read out every time, we meet Amoga City. We meet Amoga City. Why I was in here earlier, feeling a bit nervous about this talk. It was all prepared, there was nothing left to do but I still feeling quite nervous and I thought I know what I'll do. I'll go and sit on my own in the shine room and look at the green, the quality of the green behind the Buddha Rupa. And what it struck me was it reminded me of the green of kind of Northern lights. So I've never seen the Northern lights but a lovely kind of vivid, magnetic, mysterious green in the midnight sky. So I love that Amoga City is this Buddha of midnight and he's also green, it's got that vivid, electric, Northern lights kind of green. Yeah, what I'd like to talk about now is I think one of the ways to think about Amoga City is we've been using this language quite a bit on this retreat of going deep, of encountering your depths, challenging yourself to look into your mind, look into your heart and really see what's going on. Yeah, and we particularly use this language of going deep. I think the other day, Janavachia was talking about usually I think maybe before he came on his first retreat living just above the water line and being aware of the water underneath but not looking at it very often. So it's got this, the depth analogy is very simple. You're falling into the depths of your experience. And there's a story from the historical Buddha's life at the time of his enlightenment. So the Buddha is sitting under a tree, he's on the cusp of enlightenment, on the cusp of snuffing out greed, hatred and delusion completely within his heart. And it starts to rain, it starts to rain and he's in India, so in India, I've never been to India but I've got some friends that have and when it rains, particularly in the monsoon season, it really rains, yeah, vast droplets of water fall endlessly, yeah. And the Buddha's just sitting under a tree, the Buddha's just sitting under a tree in meditation on the cusp of enlightenment and it starts to rain, really rain and he's just outside. And a story that goes with this is well, a figure called Mucha Linda, the king of the nargas, the serpent king, a great monstrous snake, with a kind of cobra's head. It's gonna see riggles out of the ground but that doesn't quite sort of like (grunts) out of the ground, yeah? Not riggles, so I can't think of the word, but strongly emerges from the ground. (audience laughs) And what he does is he coils around the Buddha. So the Buddha's deep in meditation on the cusp of enlightenment and this huge snake, this huge naga, this serpent king coils around the Buddha and with his cobra's head shelters the Buddha from the rain, shelters the Buddha from the rain. So this image of Mucha Linda, this snake, this massive serpent, this naga, yeah, it's a really strong image of power. Well, a great, yeah, a great big snake, you know, maybe as big as this room. That would be quite frightening, wouldn't it? If that appeared right now and it'd be powerful, it'd be a powerful, visceral kind of experience. And as the, as Mucha Linda coils around the Buddha and protects him with his head, it's an image of, yeah, of power, of depth, of integration, of all of the energies of the Buddha on the cusp of enlightenment, all his energies are aligning with one single desire to free his mind, yeah? So it's this wonderful image of power and integration. And it's a bit like the image of the double Vatra. So there's a double Vatra in the hands of the Buddha and also in the hands of a bogus city down here. And so this is a single Vatra and a single Vatra as power bounty was telling us some days ago, which Akshobia holds is a very, very powerful symbol, yeah, a very, very powerful symbol. I'm not gonna say much more than that, but it's powerful and it's strong and it's full of meaning and it's mysterious. And a bogus city has a double one, yeah? A bogus city has a double Vatra, yeah? So just like this huge serpent, Muchelinda, it's a symbol of immense strength, yeah? Channeling creatively all the strength that you could summon up right from the bottom of your depths, all the ranges of emotions from anger to love, to fear, to something else positive. It's all aligned on this single wish, this single goal, yeah? So you've got a double Vatra. It's like one Vatra, but double. (audience laughing) And so what a bogus city helps us to do is to take our inner experience seriously. So you'll already be noticing when you meditate, you can start to find things out about yourself that you might not have fully known or something comes up that might be, you might, well, it might be really positive, you might be really happy, or you might be really frightened, or you might be quite surprised. And I think that Moga City, with all of this vision of, well, this double Vatra, and, well, this story of Muchelinda, this great snake, helps us to take our inner experience seriously and let it act on us, yeah? And quite often, it's not in this image, but quite often a Moga City would have nargas around him. So quite often in images of a Moga City, he'd have images of serpents, these great, kind of monstrous serpents. They're a bit like, in our mythology, we have dragons. It's a bit like that. It's a bit like the Tibetan version of dragons. And the last thing I like about this story, this story of Muchelinda and the monsoon, is so then the rain stops. The monsoon season is over, and, yeah, the Buddha has become the Buddha. He's achieved full and perfect enlightenment, and he opens his eyes. And what he would have seen is lush greenery, yeah? See if you can imagine, it's been raining for weeks. It's been raining for weeks. And then, having now achieved enlightenment, the Buddha looks out into greenless like, well, I've certainly never seen, I imagine. Greenless like I've probably never seen. This is amazing, isn't it, that these stories all start to fold in on each other. So, I'm telling a story about the historical Buddha and a serpent and a monsoon and a green landscape. But I'm linking it to the green Buddha, Emoga City and the double Vantra. Something's going on, something's going on, yeah? Something that I don't understand, but I'm attempting to tell you about, yeah? (audience laughs) So, from that depth and that power, this fully integrated double Vantra quality, Emoga City is known as the Buddha of action, yeah, he acts. So, just like the Buddha who stepped away from the Bodhi tree, where he gained enlightenment into the lush green landscape, yeah, the Buddha got up and walked into the world and it wasn't long before he was teaching people, yeah? From that internal, as it were, strong meditation experience, the Buddha then gets up and acts in the world. He takes the Dharma. He takes the truth of his discovery out into the world. And in the Buddhist tradition, you quite often hear about this trend of withdrawal and engagement. So, kind of intense withdrawal and intense engagement. So, coming on a retreat like this could be an example of intense withdrawal, taking yourself away from your life, turning off your phones. I go on retreats a lot and I still find it difficult to turn off my phones, I don't have phones, phone, my phone. So, to really step away from my life and withdraw and to go inwards, to start to meditate and get my hands on my depths, my internal world, that kind of intense withdrawal. But then after that withdrawal becomes intense engagement, comes intense engagement. And Jan of Archer was describing my life a bit, mainly the good bits. And I think that was my experience of coming on this retreat. So, I came on this retreat six years ago and I completely fell in love. That was the main experience. I just loved it. The first few days I found quite difficult. I found the rituals, the poosiers, quite difficult the first few evenings. I thought this is great. We've got community, we've got meaning. There's no gods, it speaks to me. And then there was this weird thing that kept happening every evening. Well, I kind of just thought everyone was sort of pretending to be Indian, basically. (audience laughs) And I thought, I don't understand what place this has got. Let's get rid of that bit. Let's get rid of that bit. But even that, after a few days, Mike Trebando and Sebastian Matty, who were leading the retreat, a bit like Jan of Archer did yesterday, just sort of exhausted me to be like, they sort of said a similar thing of, life has so much more than reason in it. So much more, you're much more than your reason. Why don't you just trust us and give it a go? And I thought, they said lots of good things. Generally, I really like them. I'll give it a go. And I remember kind of going up for the shrine and thinking I was sort of gonna do this, sort of light the candle and sort of throw it on. (audience laughs) And I found myself as soon as I got close to the shrine, I just couldn't help but bow. I couldn't have, down I went in front of the image. And it was completely unrational. I just thought it was beautiful and I thought it was bigger than me. And I just found myself bowing. So yeah, they got this intense withdrawal, intense engagement. And the reason I was telling you that story was I went on this first retreat and it was great. And then the next year I was invited to be on the team. So yeah, my friend, Vidya Darker, invited me to be on the team and I thought, great. He just felt right. I just thought, so I went on this retreat and it was about withdrawal and I went inwards and I learned a lot about myself, such as I want to bow in front of beautiful images. That was new. (audience laughs) And then the next year I engaged, the next year I was helping. And I just thought the interplay of engaging and withdrawing was wonderful. And while being on the team that time, I, similarly, I kept meditating, I kept going deeper, but I also had to provide people with pillowcases. So I had this kind of withdrawing and engagement and there was something in it that, well, I think there's something in that tension where growth is to be found. See, our emoji city is this Buddha of action, but the point I'm trying to make is that he's not the Buddha of busyness, of getting loads of stuff done, yeah? Which when I say action to myself, I think it's about busyness and getting lots of things done. So it's not the Buddha of anxiously ticking off your to do list, yeah? It's not even the Buddha of sort of, you know, no, I don't have a thought for that. So, yeah, he's not the Buddha of busyness. In the Buddhist edition, busyness is often talked about as being lazy. So laziness isn't laying around and doing nothing. Probably is that as well. But being busy, overly doing stuff, just moving from one thing to the next and getting lots of things done, that's lazy because you're just avoiding. You're avoiding something. Yeah, so a Moga city is often talked about as the head of the karma family. So there's lots of these Buddha figures, these Buddhist figures, Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, some of which will be encountering over this retreat, some of which we've encountered already. And a Moga city is talked about as being the head of a family that's called the karma family. And, well, we could give a whole talk. Indeed, we could give whole courses, and we do at the London Buddhist center. So do sign up online. We do whole courses on karma. But basically, karma, you could just think of it as action. You could just translate karma as action. And a large part of Dharma life, a large part of the Buddhist life, is sorting skillful from unskillful actions. Skillful actions that move us towards awareness and love, and generosity and freedom, skillful, and actions that take us away from people, away from our experience, and further into delusion, unskillful action. And I'm part of a group every Sunday, call it a chapter with Dainata and others, where each week I meet on a Sunday evening and I try and talk about how I've worked with karma that week. What have my actions said about my mental states? And I'll tell you, they are telling, yeah? They are telling. It doesn't take long in that chapter for me and the other men on describing our actions to learn what's going on underneath. And sometimes it's pointed out to us by our loving friends. (audience laughing) But Omega City, he doesn't need friends to point out whether his actions are skillful or unskillful. He doesn't need notes, he doesn't need books, he doesn't need any guidance. All his action is spontaneously ethical. Everything Omega City does, every action he takes moves him and those around him closer to enlightenment, closer to freedom. And often his name for this reason is translated as infallible success, infallible success. And I find, well, I was saying earlier, there wasn't either I was a bit nervous about this talk but I'd already prepared it, there was nothing else to do. So I just came and looked at Omega City for a while for about 20 minutes, so not that long. And I think, well, I experienced looking at the image, felt like a call, it felt like a call saying to me that the effort to love, the effort to be generous, the effort to plumb my depths, deliver meaningful life, is an effort worth making. It's an effort worth making. And I can agree with all of that rationally but also for some reason, looking at the green behind this Buddha confirms it for me. It confirms it for me and I don't understand why. And I don't understand how I'm able to be receptive to it but I'm really glad that I am. So as well as being the Buddha of action, Omega City is often referred to as the Buddha of fearlessness and the Buddha of courage. And this is fitting with everything I've said so far. So if we're going to engage our depths, if like this image of this giant serpent, we're gonna gather up all of our emotions from the difficult to the blissful, we're gonna need courage. In my experience, we're gonna need lots of it. Yeah, lots of courage. So yeah, I was on this four month ordination retreat this year. So I've been back a little bit longer than I was there so it's very, very fresh in my mind. Yeah, and to call it a transformative experience still feels like an understatement but we'll call it a transformative experience so I can get across something of what it was like. And well, I had no choice but to encounter my depth. Yeah, I was there for four months with 18 other people and we just followed a retreat program like this every day, every day for four months. It was one day off right near the end and it was mainly because we had to pack, yeah? So every day, just keep turning up, keep turning up, keep turning up. Yeah, and I found it terrifying. I found it terrifying. The thing I found terrifying most of all was encountering my restlessness. So I was having meditation reviews with an order member called Amla Vadra. For every few days, I'd go and talk to him about how my meditation was going. And most days, we'd talk about my restlessness. Mainly because he'd bring it up, yeah? (audience laughing) Mainly because he was sitting opposite me and we'd say things like, you're fidgeting quite a lot, aren't you? You're gonna be doing that for four months or do you wanna look at it? And the first evening, I did say to him, I don't want to look at it. (audience laughing) Anyway, a couple of weeks later, I changed my mind. Anyway, so I started to really look at this restlessness, yeah? So externally, I fidget. I move around in meditation still now, I'm afraid to say. But on this retreat, I was able to steal the external fidgeting. I found it really hard, I found it scary, but I was able to do it. But then things got more terrifying because all of that external fidgeting just was inwards. So usually, the fidgeting covers over the fact that internally, there's something going on. There's a deep restlessness within me. And I had this sort of epiphany one evening, sitting on a rock. I just had a meditation review again with Amalavadra, and once again, we were talking about restlessness. Sometimes we talk about other things. And the strength of the restlessness, the strength of the restlessness made me accidentally believe in rebirth is the way that I put it, yeah? So I sort of believed in rebirth. I sort of thought Buddhist believe in rebirth. I studied it a bit. I thought I might think about it later, because I tend to think I'm very far from death, which is a wrong view. There's a wrong view that most of us have. So I hadn't thought about rebirth much, but there was something about the strength of this restlessness within me that when I really faced it, when I sat still and faced what was going on inside, I thought this restlessness has been around for ages, yeah? Much longer than 27 years. It is too strong and too nothing to do with me. To have not come from somewhere else. Where has this restlessness come from? And the experience of that was overwhelming. In fact, I felt completely powerless. And it was the one evening on that retreat where I thought I might give up and go home. But by that point, I'd already become Kishanti Kara. People had been told, yeah? (audience laughing) My name had been sent back to the world. I would know that my friends were excited. My family would have found out. So I thought I can't leave. I can't leave, which was just as well, which was just as well. But I tell you what was most interesting, what happened next. So then I thought I can't leave. I can't leave. And I was close to going to Manly's heart and telling him that I might need to leave. And instead, well, in floods of tears and pretty overwhelmed by this restlessness, I went to the pooja. Because unlike this retreat, there were only 18 men on it. So if you didn't go, everyone would be asking about it the next day, yeah? So I had to go. So I went. And on the shrine, we had Amitabha, this red Buddha. This red Buddha of love of meditation. And interestingly, as the pooja started, I confirmed my need to leave. 'Cause I thought this is ridiculous. What on earth are we doing? We're all up this mountain wearing robes. We've joined this kind of order. And I've got all this restlessness. I don't want to be here. I've made a mistake. I wish I'd never gone on that retreat six years ago in the first place. Yeah? (audience laughing) I mean, it was very strong, actually. It was definitely real, which is good. So that was coming up. And then we started the Amitabha mantra. The Amitabha mantra happened. And by this point, we've been chanting the Amitabha mantra exactly the same mantra every evening for about three weeks. Gosh, an Amitabha appeared, yeah? So I didn't see Amitabha or talk to Amitabha. But suddenly, everything was all right. Everything was all right. I had help. I had help. I don't understand that. But I went to bed that evening and thought, "Good, I'm glad that's over." Yeah? So by looking at the rest of this, by engaging with this thing that terrified me, I encountered something else, something otherworldly, something transcendental, yeah? But all I did was really face my restlessness to the point where I was about to break. I was about to break. But then somehow I was open enough to the Amitabha mantra. Well, I didn't exactly feel put back together again, but I thought it would happen in time. I thought it would happen in time. So Amoga City has his hand up like this in the Abaya mudra. So mudra means something like gesture and Abaya something like fearlessness. So he's bestowing on us with his hand a gesture of fearlessness, the Abaya mudra. And one thing that I've noticed, both in myself and in others on retreats like this, is once meditation starts to go a bit deeper, once we've got past day one or two, we'll start to think, hmm, maybe I'll have a shower instead, or I might go to meditation, but I think I'll go for a walk. Yeah, so walk would be much better. That's just what I need. Or maybe a biscuit. Maybe a biscuit would be good. A biscuit and a cup of tea. Maybe I'll have a look at my phone quickly. Yes, that's what I need. That will help, in fact. And then by the next meditation, I'll be ready to go. I'll be ready to go again. So I think that's telling. Yeah, I think that is often a sign for me anyway, where my meditations starting to go a bit deeper. The exhortation from the leaders of the retreat to keep turning up starts to fade into the background of my mind. I've got lots of very, very good reasons to not keep going. Just to pause the next meditation. I think I've had enough. I'm a bit tired. I'm a bit surprised by what I find. I think I'll, well, I think I'll have a biscuit. And, well, I think this points out that mainly what a modusity is giving us with his fearlessness, the fearlessness that he's willing to share with us, is so that we can be less frightened of ourselves, less frightened of our depths, of our internal world. I think particularly in modern times, we're especially frightened of our depths, of the complicated messiness of being human. Because we've got different myths now. The myths of our time are more that if you buy the next iPhone, everything's going to be fantastic. You're going to be able to take pictures like you weren't before, yeah? There's this myth, this myth of shopping, yeah? And that the myth of shopping is what we really need and it will make us happy. And then it sort of doesn't work. And then there's also lots of myths about various, there's loads and loads of different ways to do kind of self-development and lots of personal development programs and all sorts of things you can do. Most of them with the kind of message of cleaning yourself up, making yourself more presentable, hopefully landing yourself that dream job, maybe buying a nice car. So I think we've got this myth of a current times where human beings can kind of be cleaned up. They could be cleaned up, they can be pristine, presentable. And I think it's not true. I think to be human is quite a messy experience. It's quite chaotic, I think it's quite chaotic. All sorts of things go on. You know, we fall in love, that can be a nightmare. It can also be completely wonderful, it can also be completely wonderful. People die, we're going to die, yeah? And we don't think about that much and when we do, it feels uncomfortable, it's messy, it's strange, it could be terrifying. Yeah, so I think we can't edit out this sort of religiousness, the religiousness that has followed humanity throughout the ages. It's taken on different forms and merged into culture. I don't think we can fully edit it out, try as we might. And I was thinking a few people in my discussion group have been talking about how quickly the days go by. And again, on this ordination retreat, one thing that Mike Bandus said each evening was, he was pointing out the dreaminess of the day. Suddenly, we were back in the shrine room again. Had we had a day at all. And then we're going to bed and it's all over once again. There's this kind of dreamlike quality to being alive. Sometimes times takes forever, sometimes it's over in a flash. And I've been on this retreat for what feels like forever. It's about nine days, so that is an exaggeration to say forever. But I sort of lost track of which one is which and what I did on each one and which ones I enjoyed and which one I didn't. It's all sort of, it's crumbled, it's gone away. And I think that's frightening, that time melts away. Yeah, that everything changes, that everything passes us by. And there's a mystery in it. There's a mystery in that dreamlike quality of what it is to be alive. This messiness of what it is to be human. The fact that we don't know and we don't understand. So the other evening, I think it was, well again actually, it wasn't the other evening, I think it was about a week ago. I remember going outside and walking around, yeah, the Berry Wall mound of Sangarachita, the founder of this tradition. And I looked up at the sky and well, I could see so many stars. You know, sometimes you have an evening where you can see more stars than you thought there were. And I just have this really strong sense of I don't know what's going on. What on earth is going on? I'm walking in a circle around this mound and then I've accidentally looked up and there's these stars. And at some point someone told me that there are balls of gas somewhere over there. That might be true. I think we suspect it probably is. But for me they were just dots in this great black vastness. And I was just walking around in a circle. I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to communicate to you. Other than I didn't really care what the stars were in some kind of balls of gas off in the distance, I much prefer to leave it as a mystery. And that felt much more true, that felt much more true. And yeah, I think our instinct is to ignore all of this messiness, all of this mystery. It can be complicated and confusing. I remember being a bit frightened on my second retreat, that it might ruin my life. But I might enjoy it so much that I want to follow it so it ruins my life, even though I wanted to follow it. But there's just this fear, so I had this faith response. But then I was frightened that something would be ruined. And I think once again, I think in Mogher City, with bestowing on us fearlessness, giving us courage, encourages us to just keep moving closer and closer to freedom. To step deeper and deeper into the mystery, to emerge ourselves in this green light, to step into the green light. I've got two more points, so I will say them. So, well, the last thing I thought I'd say is, an ultimate thing I'd say rather, is linked to this. So, yeah, it's frightening to move towards freedom. I think it's frightening to move towards freedom, to move towards the enlightened mind, to move towards these figures can be frightening, as well as beautiful. And I think that's, again, why Mogher City bestows on us courage, bestows on us fearlessness. Because to go forth, to move away from life as we know it, into something different, well, is an act of bravery. It's an act of bravery. To put down our distractions, even just as simple as to commit to coming to all the program on this retreat, it's brave, because you don't know what the program of this retreat is going to do to you. So, you're stepping into the unknown. You need bravery. And if you're brave enough to ask a Mogher City for bravery, then you'll be very brave indeed. And so, yeah, I was referring to it with this kind of crumbling nature of this day, this dreamlike quality to the days, to time. And I think that is true also of ourselves. It's certainly true of me. The more I've practiced meditation, the more who I think I am slips through my fingers. The more who I think I am slips through my fingers. The more I commit to working on my mind, the more my identity loosens. The more my identity loosens. Slowly, I sort of give up and move away from who I think I am. Which has this double edge to it. So, partly, that is a description of freedom, yeah? So, moving away from who you think you are, letting go of things is, well, leaving things behind you and walking towards freedom. But a lot of the time, I quite like who I am and all the stuff I have. I was about to say all the money I have, but I still really like it. I still really like it. And to give that up, to move away from it, again, very, very frightening. I find it very, very frightening. I think especially since I was ordained. So, I've been given this new name, "Kashanti Kara". It's about eight or nine months old. Yeah, and so I've been renamed. So, I don't know who I am anymore. Yeah? I don't know who I am anymore. And it's having a very, very strong effect. It's having a very, very strong effect on me. It's thrilling, yeah? And it's beautiful and it's frightening. Those things go together much more than we're led to believe. Things that are thrilling, things that are beautiful, things that are worth doing, they're frightening. Okay. So, on the shrine next to Amoga City is an image of green tara. So, we have an image of green tara on the shrine. So, if you can't see it now, then you'll have no choice but to come up and light a candle so that you can see green tara. So, green tara is down here. And green tara is very, very closely associated with Amoga City. Very closely associated with Amoga City. So, like Amoga City, she's green. Yeah, she's called green tara. So, the clue is in the name. She's green. And, yeah, she's very, very beautiful. Very, very beautiful. More beautiful than anything you can imagine. More beautiful than anything you can imagine. So, yeah, when I was ordained, I was given the name of Kishanti Kara by Vidya Dhaka. And then he also gave me a meditation practice. And the meditation practice is the green tara practice. And he gave me this green marla. So, on marlas, we, well, we, I, some of us, count mantras as we make them. So, we've been chanting mantras each evening. And on this marla, I, well, it probably just looks like I fiddle with it. But let's say I solemnly count mantras on it. Something that sounds a bit more religious. Anyway, the marla. And I count the mantras on it. And I think it's got this wonderful quality of, so with my speech, I'm calling a mantra. With my mind, I'm thinking the mantra. And with my body, I'm counting it. Yeah, and when Vidya Dhaka gave me this marla and gave me the green tara practice, he said to me that this marla is green because you've taken the tara practice. But also because green is the color of nature. And nature grows, nature grows. And he knows me very well and knows that I can get into, well, sort of negative states. Just like you. Makes me feel better by saying that. And he said, "I'm giving you this marla because then whenever you see it, you'll remember that no matter how you're feeling, no matter how low you are, you can always grow. You can always grow." And, well, there's something in Amoga City and green tara that calls to us to grow. And something that, yeah, it's particularly striking about green tara is she has one leg, her left leg in meditation posture and her right leg stepping out into the world. So just like I was talking with Amoga City, that from meditation, from the depth of experience, from gathering all of our disparate parts of ourselves, all of our emotions into a single wish, we're then able to act. So the image of tara gives us a wonderful active dimension to that. One leg meditating in deep meditation and one leg ready to step out into the world to help, to love. And green tara loves in a way that you've never been loved before. Yeah? Loves in a way that you've never been loved before. And she loves everyone in that way. In my experience of doing this meditation practice where I call to mind green tara, so green tara is beautiful. She's green. She loves. And yet I find her terrifying. So I conjure up green tara in my mind and I'm frightened. I'm frightened to be loved in a way that I've never been loved before. It goes completely outside what I'm used to. It goes completely outside of who I think I am. Which is really good. Because, well, before I encountered the dharma, before I encountered Buddhism, I think I probably had a good idea of who I was. I had a good idea of who I was, and it would mainly revolve around making CVs. Yeah? I really liked making CVs, curriculum vites. And they really told me who I was. And in my second year of university I decided to bin off theatre producing, which was my actual dream, and the theatre market here, which was a much more achievable dream. Because it made me more clear about who I was. I could make a website. I made a website. And I was very clear about who I was. Whereas now I don't particularly know who I am anymore. Yeah, I don't know who I am anymore. And, well, it creates a crack. It creates a crack. And I was reminded by Sirio Gupta, actually, a few days ago of the Leonard Cohen song, where there's a crack, there's a crack in everything, and a crack is where the light gets in. So I don't know who I am, which creates a crack, which allows the light, which allows the love of Green Tara to get in. And I think it's interesting that, for me, it's not really the darkness of my depths. It's not really my anger, or my restlessness, or my hatred, or the dark thoughts in my mind that are frightening. It's not the darkness so much. It's the light. It's the light that I find frightening. And it'd be so much better if I had the courage to let this light come through the crack. Yeah, that'd be so much better. So I'm going to end by reading you a poem. I'm going to end by reading you a poem. And the poem is from this collection of poems called "The Call of the Forest." It's from "The Call of the Forest," which is a short selection of poetry by Sanger Atcheter, who founded this tradition, and who some of you will know is buried now in the mound behind us. So I'm going to end with this poem because, well, I think it explains to me why I love forests. Yeah? And explains to me why Tara, Green Tara, and Amoga City, and their greenness is beautiful and exciting and alluring and yet frightening. So I'll read you this poem. It's called "The Call of the Forest." "The Call of the Forest," what does the forest whisper with every wind-stirred leaf, from many-centred oak tree to our old blossom sheaf? What does the forest whisper when nightingales are dumb? When sicadas full silent, the forest whispers come. What does the forest whisper in sunshine and in shade? Down every moss-hung alley in every deer-hunted glade? What does the forest whisper when full or crescent moon steeps nodding crests in silver? The forest whispers soon. What does the forest whisper from depths primeval, where a sound is lost in stillness, as clouds dissolve in air? What does the forest whisper when from the darkling bow? Drop one by one the dead leaves, the forest whispers now. But the whispers are dream whisper, for years on years have flown, since oak and ash and holly could call the land their own. The whispers are dream whisper, for cities of the plain, usurp the once-green kingdom of forests they have slain. The whispers are dream whisper, for forest is a dream, of days when man through nature had sense of a supreme. The whispers are dream whisper, of a time when he could feel, in the presence of the actual, a touch of the ideal. The whispers are dream whisper, but dreams are of the soul, and soul itself a forest beyond the mind's control. The whispers are soul whisper, that like a muffled drum, calls from your mind-built cities, oh man, to freedom come. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freeputus.io.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (gentle music)
