The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives
Buddhist Hour
Script
No. 367
Radio Broadcast live on Hillside 88.0 FM
for Sunday 6
February 2005CE
2547 Buddhist Era
Glossary
1. transcribe: to make a copy of in
writing; transcription: the action or process of transcribing.
2.
thwarting: to run counter to, go against, oppose, hinder.
3.
perpetuating: cause to endure, continual, indefinitely, continue or
extend without interuption.
4. franchise: the authorisation
granted by a company to sell its products or services in a particular
area.
5. relativistic: characterised by or designating
circumstances in which discrepencies pertaining or based on the
theory of relativity occur.
6. utter: extreme, absolute, entire,
total; speak, show, make known.
7. obscuration: the action of
making something obscure, dim or dark; the process of becoming
obscure; a dimmed state or condition.
8. earnest: serious
intention, not trifaling, zealous, ardent.
9. immortality: endless
life or existence.
10. fabricate: entreet, form into the shape
required; manufacture; construct something material or immaterial.
invent.
11. tormenting: (torment) extreme pain or suffering;
phyiscal or mental agony.
12. permutations: exhange, interchange;
change of state, position, form.
13. transmutation: the action of
changing the arrangement, esp. the linear order of a set of items;
each of the possible different arrangements or orders which
result.
14. reification: the mental conversion of a person or
abstract concept into a thing. Depersonalisation of a person.
Knowing Selflessness Destroys Misknowledge
We continue now with the next part our series of
transcribed Buddha Dhamma talks by John D. Hughes during a five day
Bhavana course in June 1988 at the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)
Ltd.
The talk is entitled 'Knowing Selflessness Destroys
Misknowledge' which we began in part last week.
The authors
of today's script apologise for any errors or misunderstandings that
may have occurred in the process of transcribing and editing the
talks from the original audio tape recording. As a matter of policy
the names of students have been changed.
If you tuned
into the Buddhist Hour last week you may recall the talk ended in the
following way.
The infinite past is real, the infinite future
is real, this tick, tick, tick, the point where you sit now, where
past kamma is transformed by your ego to make future kamma, is
unreal.
John D. Hughes noted that 'when there is no
interruption with the past flowing into the future then you are in a
much better position. Because the activity of the mis-information is
such that you are so mad keen to experience the present that you'll
do anything including turning an unpleasant feeling that has no
nature of the fact its unpleasant, even when you pull it to yourself,
it still doesn't know it is unpleasant. But then your ego, which is
unreal, owns something and claims itself to be in a higher state than
the feeling itself.
This is the way the ego struts and
postures on stage, it says "although that unpleasant feeling has
no knowledge of itself, I, clever dick that I am, know the unpleasant
feeling to be unpleasant, and I experience the unpleasant.
He
poses the question, “What is that mind, what is that I?”
It's an unreal fantasy mind and you prefer an unreal fantasy
mind, you make that your chief, you make that your master, you become
the slave of an unreal mind holding mis-information. You've always
been like that, and unless something happens for countless lifetimes
in the future it will be the same.
Now we'll continue with
Knowing Selflessness Destroys Mis-knowledge.
And you call
that me, “Poor me” you say. Well, why do you do it? Why
did you make such a mind? Well the answer is you've had it forever.
Forever you've been in ignorance. There wasn't a time when you were
enlightened and you broke your enlightenment and somehow came to
this. It’s just a habit, you've got a very bad habit.
You're
guarding something with all your effort that's not worth a crumpet,
or a piece of toast, or a salami sandwich, or a piece of coconut ice,
or a pickled onion. It is utterly, completely, absolutely worthless.
It's thwarting to your five groups and it's thwarting to other
people.
Now, this is the situation. Your refuge is in that
unreal ego mind. That is what you place as the highest value. However
when you look at other people you see them as five groups. You refuse
to see that other people have got that unreal I, my, mine, me mind.
You listen to the stream of their descriptions of their torment and
their pain and you just say, "I don't know what they’re
bitching about. They’re well fed, they’re happy".
Now you can't see other people’s situation until you get rid of
that unreal mind.
And we went through yesterday a whole set of
events of raising the, you know how to do. So there's a method given
to you yesterday of how to do it. I'm not going to repeat yesterday.
But I'm just going to make you enthusiastic hopefully.
So
there is two situations; there is you with your five groups just like
everyone else, there’s no different to, like, every sentient
being is five groups, we're all the same in that matter except we've
got the results of our wholesome kamma and unwholesome kamma makes
our lives different. So, for example. if pleasant feeling come to me
there's no guarantee pleasant feeling will come to you at the same
time.
Just occasionally pleasant feeling comes to you,
pleasant feeling comes to me and then you say "Oh, I like you, I
like you". But when unpleasant feeling comes you can't see my
pleasant feeling, it's like you go blind. I'm in pleasant feeling,
pleasant feeling, pleasant feeling. Pleasant feeling, pleasant
feeling, pleasant feeling. I don't follow you. I'm not your kamma.
You are your kamma, I am mine.
How did I get like this? Well,
I did the meditation you're doing now, That's how I got here. When
you cease your ego mind you will be able to say statements like this.
"Pleasant feeling comes, pleasant feeling goes. Unpleasant
feeling comes, unpleasant feeling goes. Happiness comes, happiness
goes, praise comes, praise goes, blame comes, blame goes". You
will see in a non-relativistic way.
Whereas, you see what
happens unpleasant feeling comes and you say "something's going
wrong, yesterday I was happy. Yesterday I was happy, yesterday I was
happy. Now I'm unhappy, unhappy, unhappy". Then pleasant feeling
comes you say, "pleasant feeling comes, pleasant feeling comes,
yesterday I was unhappy now I'm pleasant. Oh, this is great mate. Oh
wow, wow, cosmic, wow, wow, wow. Then unpleasant feeling comes. "Oh
this meditation, irritating, oh, wa, wa, wa, wa". Its not the
meditation that's doing it, its your kamma.
And then you say,
this comes, "Oh body pain, body pain, body pain" and I say
"let go of your body" "Oh, I want to hang on to it".
Well, if you, anything you grab at, what does the grabbing? The ego
mind, which is unreal, doesn't even grab the correct reality. It
won't have a bar of reality. It makes, like an unreal reflection of
whatever it looks at. Because if it put a real reflection in, you
can't put a real feeling into an unreal ego mind. So you're living on
reflected fantasies.
In this sense it's true when the Buddha
says the world's mad. See if sanity is knowing reality as it is, then
what do you call people who make their life, who assert, “This
is me, and it doesn't matter what you say, I'm going to have a hard
time.” And I say to you, "You don't have to have a hard
time.” And you say, "Oh, that's alright for you, you've
done all that meditation". You fantasize. How much meditation
can I do? I can only do one second, one second, one second. In normal
conventional terms the present is real, the past is unreal.
All
I can do is sit here driven by all the results of my wholesome and
unwholesome kamma from the past. But when my unwholesome kamma comes
I just say "Ah, and I'm a tricky dickey,” I say, "What
to do, what to do? Oh, offer light to Buddha, that will shut me up.
Oh, what will I do now, offer flower to Buddha. That will shut me
up".
What do you do? "Oh. I'm unhappy, I'm unhappy.
Boo hoo, poor me, poor me, poor me. What do you want me to say?
There, there dear, your unhappiness will increase because you treat
it as so precious, you talk about it, breathe it, live it, eat it.”
What do you really like doing? Do you like having a hard time or do
you like having a fun time? Which do you like doing? Well if you want
to have a fun time, if that's really your goal, you keep five
precepts and you practice generosity and you follow the instructions.
But if you really want to have a hard time you just go on
perpetuating your unwholesome unwise dumb stupid behaviour patterns.
And if you think your behaviour pattern is virtuous, well if it was
virtuous you'd be the happiest people in the world. And I've met the
happiest people in the world, in fact I'm the East, I'm the
manufacturer of happiest people in the world. I got the East coast
distributing franchise and the West coast and the North Coast and the
South coast.
But if you taught other people what you know
habitually, what would your teachings be? See it's no good saying
life's tough and that's the way it is, that's not an answer. Life's
tough but it can become sweet. Life's dukkha but it can become
sukkha. That is the teaching of the Buddha. So the Buddha teaches
about dukkha, unsatisfactoriness, the cause of the dukkha, the origin
of the dukkha, how, what caused it and the Path leading out of the
dukkha. The net result of Buddhist practice is complete and utter
sukkha forever, parinibbana. Now what is it that forces you to,
apparently forces you to listen to your habit kamma? It is this; that
you cherish the unreal ego as your most precious possession.
Because if it vanishes what happens? Nirvana. So you sit in
nirvana now. Now if you have great compassion you see outside your
nirvana the Samsara. You see the beings in Samsara suffering,
suffering, suffering. From nirvana view all you see is oceans,
universes of suffering. If you look back into the past you will see
you had oceans of suffering. And what was the cause of it? What was
the cause of it? What was the cause? Well the cause was doing,
cultivating the unreal and not paying attention to the real. So sit
in nirvana and listen to the Dhamma.
In the introductory
commentary by Chandrakirti, Chandrakirti affirms that delusion is
misknowledge, delusion is superficial with the nature of obscuration.
Seeing intrinsic realities in things, seeing what isn't there if you
like, like a conjurer will produce happenings that aren't real, your
ego sees things that aren't real.
And that's the only thing it
can do. Because it's unreal itself, it can't see anything that's
real.
So when you see and reinforce the reality in things
born of conditions, which means your own present existence in the
samsara side. When you say "Oh I'm really real", and ignore
impermanence, dukkha and anatta as you see now that's what the
teacher calls misknowledge. Seeing truly and knowing well the
emptiness of phenomena, misknowledge does not occur, because by
seeing truly the misknowledge ceases.
Thereby the twelve
members cease, the steps of dependent origination when you are making
fresh kamma, ceases.
So this habit of reification of the
reality in things indicates the habitual perception of truth. You
see, the truth is, life is real, life is earnest. In fact it's just a
series of events going across your mind. The citta knows, that is the
one characteristic of the citta, the citta is enlightened mind. That
nirvana is not your property, no one owns nirvana, it's not a being,
it's not a thing, it has no taste, no smell, no touch, no mind, it's
just what it is.
In the Jewel Rosary Nagarjuna says, "As
long as there is the aggregate habit" the packet of the five
groups, churning away, churning, churning, churning, appearing and
disappearing at you, as long as there's that, now as long as you are
not in nirvana, as long as you fall out of nirvana, and touch back on
that aggregate habit, then there will be an I.
Until you
discern rupa is rupa, vedana is vedana, no owner, no one owns. No one
owns the Buddha, no one owns the Dhamma, no one owns the Sangha. The
Dhamma is not your property, or my property or the Buddha's property,
or anyone's property.
Can't own the Dhamma, can't own anything.
Now the just explained misknowledge is not a holding of
persons or things that are a hypothesis or a theory or by the
distinct beliefs of Buddhists or non-Buddhist philosophers there's no
unique permanent and independent person. We are just part of nature
if you like, like water flows into water.
We just, because of
causes, the results of wholesome and unwholesome bound to kamma, this
five groups, which is our lives, are different. We are
de-synchronized with each other. I'm happy your unhappy, you're
unhappy I'm unhappy. Unhappiness comes, whatever. So we are, we are,
the reality is we are just like bobbing corks on a big ocean not
going anywhere. The current sweeps this way we go that way. We are
like leaves blown around in the wind. Wherever the wind blows we go.
That's our five groups. None of them permanent, none of them
staying but appearing and disappearing second by second out of
nowhere - plop. Arising, arising, passing away cessation, like the
breath. So we are just a series of anythings, five anythings. And the
only reason we see them as a unity is out of misconception. There is
nothing unified, the feelings run one way, the memory runs another
and we are just scattered.
Just like a tree comes into spring
and it’s got all the leaves stuck on the tree - Autumn comes
the leaves blow anywhere. Some probably blows into the shire offices,
some blows into the street, some blows ... and there they die. So we
get a feeling, our mental objects arising and falling, totally
impermanent. And that, in other words, to be in samsara is the whole
of the efforts are, if you want to, they have no meaning inherently.
There's no inherent meaning in assembling these five groups
and the only thing to do is to escape from the continuation of their
re-forming which is called birth and scattering, which is called
death and re-forming which is called birth and scattering which is
called death. So just to dwell in the nirvana and develop that level
after level. So that's that.
When selflessness is understood,
says Chandrakirti, the "permanent self" is eliminated. It
has seen that those chaotic arising and fallings are, there is no
permanent self, there never has been past present or future.
Chandrakirti says when selflessness, anatta meaning anatta, is
understood, the "permanent self" is eliminated. But this is
not acceptable because you want the world to have meaning. You want
your five groups to have purpose. But what won't accept it? It's the
“I” habit, the unreal, I've got to be a me.
Well
there's no space in anywhere in the whole of Samsara, in all the
universes, there's no chink in reality where an unreal event can find
a foothold. Therefore to say by knowing selflessness the self
conviction is totally wiped out. This is extremely amazing. This is
the amazing, amazing thing that seeing for yourself that that's the
way it is.
In the Commentary, Chandrakirti adds, "In
order to illustrate this point of mutual unconnectedness all those
five groups they go their own way". There's nothing connecting
them except they’re driven by past kamma. To illustrate this
mutual unconnectedness with an example it is like when one sees a
snake hole in the wall of one's house and one removes one's worry by
saying there is no elephant there.
And if this were to remove
the fear of the snake, alas, how ridiculous it would seem to others.
So therefore the people who see correctly don't say because they know
very well that whatever they say would be taken by the ego and then
the ego would go to nihilism or eternalism or say, "Ah well why
should I try to do good?" Well why should you try to do good
because the kammic packet hasn't finished yet. And each day, each day
where the past runs into the future. You all have got future of good
things to come, bad things to come, the result of past unwholesome,
past wholesome, you go on.
Those five groups will go on,
unless knowing this nibbana with intense power you disconnect. Then
you pass away, but you don't pass away. You dwell in parinibbana
then, true immortality, but never again do you assemble or make or
touch or be in the Samsara. So in Buddhist parlance you have gone to
the furtherest shore, you've crossed the ocean of this wandering, the
Samsara is like an ocean where you just wander around aimlessly.
Crashing, falling around, sometimes happy, sometimes good, sometimes
sunshine, sometimes tornado.
You leave the ocean of Samsara
behind, you go to the furtherest shore and you are the citta, pure.
And you never, ever, ever come to birth in the Samsara any more. And
that's it. Now to make this vision stay, to make the knowledge stay,
to be able to sit in the nirvana and see correctly, it is basically
the power of your teacher, believe it or not, if you look. It's like
your Teacher is showing you by telepathy this picture. The Teacher's
mind is overpowered your unreal ego because you allowed the Teacher
to do it.
Now if you fight the Teacher to bring back your ego
packet, and it'll come back when you come out of meditation for sure,
the true term of the meditation is the shower of the way so, this
five groups, which is still in existence but has some level of
attainment because of long practice, this five groups which is not a
self, not a being, is imposing by telepathy, I'm sharing my vision of
what I see with you so there can be no doubt that such a thing is
attainable. This is not a conjuring trick. This is the way it is.
In
other words you might argue you're in a Buddha Dhamma Sangha field
true. Now the only reason that field exists is it just so happens
that two and a half thousand years ago The Buddha under the Bodhi
tree did such powerful meditation and had such goodwill and such
friendliness that this anatta being, this Teacher, was moved by the
kindness of the Buddha and took Vows, Bodhisattva Vows, Tantric Vows
under many Buddhas because from my view there are just these five
groups wandering in Samsara. But from your view you suffer.
You
see in the ultimate level you're suffering was unreal because you're
ego mind is unreal. But if you say to people who don't see, "Your
suffering is unreal," they just say, "You are being
callous, my suffering is real". But at the ultimate level there
is no true suffering anywhere in the Samsara. But at the
misinformation level for the beings who have not seen the way, not
seen the Buddha way, their suffering to them is real.
So from
the view of the Buddhas, the Buddhas see like this, there are in
existence five groups driven by ignorance, sustained by ignorance,
maintained by ignorance. The five groups are empty, Sunyata, they
have no inherent existence, there's no self to be found, but the
combination of those five groups by beings who are absolutely
ignorant, who out of that raw material fabricate delusions, which
they have been doing forever, for them they experience suffering.
Their suffering in ultimate absolute terms never happened, it was
like a conjurer’s dream.
So there is no past, no
present, no future in the nirvana. It is timeless, it is stainless,
it is pure and it will never come to an end. In other words the
higher level of the universe is just the citta, the citta is, it
doesn't, not owned by anyone. So an "I" which is unreal can
never be liberated. Now to continue the Buddha way you must make
merit, merit, merit. You must keep five precepts at least because
otherwise you'll make unwholesome kamma. So there in the ultimate
level nothing ever happened. There's no inherent reality. There’s
just a set of unreal fabrications by combinations and
permutations.
So take rest. Well done, well done, well
done.
We shall continue with the conclusion to this talk on
Knowing Selflessness Destroys Misknowledge on next weeks Buddhist
Hour.
May you have refuge in Buddha Dhamma Sangha.
May
you be well and happy.
May all beings be well and happy.
The
MP3 file and text of the original teaching read on today's program
will be available at www.edharma.org during February 2005. Today's
radio script is available at www.bdcublessings.net.au and in the
future we will be upload all our Buddhist Hour broadcasts to the
website as MP3files.
The script was transcribed, prepared and
edited by Julian Bamford, Frank Carter, Leanne Eames, Anita Hughes,
Alec Sloman and Lainie Smallwood.
References:
John D.
Hughes Collection Recorded Dhamma Teachings. Transcription Of Dhamma
Teachings
Recording Title: Knowing Selflessness Destroys
Misknowledge
Tape 6, Side 2
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of
recording: 27/6/88
Transcribed by: Frank Carter
Checked by:
Lainie Smallwood
CD Reference 26_06_88T6S2A
File Name:
26_06_88T6S2A_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day Meditation Course
27
June 1988, 1.37pm
Brown, Lesley (editor), "The New
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary", Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1993.
Words: 4,118
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