The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives
Buddhist
Hour
Script No. 368
Radio Broadcast live on Hillside 88.0
FM
for Sunday 13 February 2005CE
2547 Buddhist Era
Glossary
1. permutation: exchange,
interchange; change of state, position, form.
2. 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.
3 reification: the mental conversion of a person or
abstract concept into a thing. Depersonalisation of a person.
4.
modify: make partial or minor changes to; alter without radical
transformation. modifiability: (modifiable) able to be modified.
5.
persist: continue firmly or obstinately in or in a state, opinion,
course of action. persistence: the action or fact of persisting,
6.
illuminate. a spiritually or intellectually enlightened person; a
person claiming special enlightenment or knowledge.
7.
permutations: change of state, position form, etc. transmutation; the
action of changing the arrangement or orders which result.
8.
trait: a characteristic feature of mind or character. a
distinguishing quality, esp. of a person, culture or social group.
9. dissociate: cut off or free from association with something
else; separate in fact or thought.
Knowing Selflessness Destroys Misknowledge
and
Persistence and Constraint
We continue now with the next part in 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 read in part over the last two weeks
followed by part one of “Persistence and Constraint”.
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.
If you tuned into the Buddhist Hour last week,
Sunday 6 February, you may recall the talk ended in the following
way:
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.
We now continue on from last
week.
So in a way you might say there has never been an
existence of any sentient being past, present or future. That's
absolute Dhamma. But at the relative level there are combinations and
permutations of delusions and they experience suffering. For them,
because they love turning the unreal into their "real",
they take an unpleasant feeling, which doesn't know itself, is quite
harmless, make an unreal picture of it and then say "I am
unpleasant" or "I am this, I am that". It's a load of
rubbish.
The goal is to finish to become Arhant. The goal is
to make enough merit over enough time using those useless five
groups. Gear the lot of them towards meritorious acts, gear the lot
of them to stopping harm, stopping killing, stopping hatred, stopping
jealousy, stopping miserliness, stopping pride, stopping intoxicants
and then you will be a blessing to the world of men and women and
devas and devatas.
Even in this Dhamma-ending age, there are
still some beings who are teachable. So as long as there are
teachable beings, now what happens in two and a half thousand years
the citta opening onto this world, this human world, closes. And
that's the end of Buddha Dhamma. So you just happen to be, happen to
stumble, not by request, you just happen to stumble into a Buddha
Dhamma in this life. But for countless lives you've all been
suffering.
Now this life you must determine, "I am going
to finish the Buddha way". You are going to, what will you
finish it with? The five groups yet to appear. For however long they
appear you gear those five groups into the good action. You stop
tormenting the other beings, you stop fabricating that there is an I,
a my, or a me. You stop wingeing, you stop everything, for the sake
of the other beings.
You treat other beings as more precious
than yourself. You help them attain, you know, if they're hungry you
give them food, if they've got no where to live you give them a
house. To do this you want to become rich, you want to work, work,
work, get wealth because it's hard to practice charity if you're
poor. So you see that is the Buddha's Teaching.
Now this
personal selflessness, when it appears you see that phenomena is
selfless, you start to see correctly. When one understands
selflessness and abandons the intellectual self, which is that unreal
self, this is not accepted as even the support of misknowledge thus,
it is very strange to say that knowing selflessness will totally wipe
out misknowledge, but nevertheless it does.
Some may object
there is a contradiction in the fact that Nagarjuna states in the
Jewel Rosary that the phenomenal self-habit, the truth habit about
the aggregates is the root of the life cycle. Well it's true. The
intelligent see absolutely all the faults of the afflictions as
coming from the egoistic views because it is incorrect for there to
be two different roots of the Samsaric life cycle. There is only one
root of the Samsaric life cycle that is, the bottom root is
misinformation or conventionally called ignorance.
Because of
compassion you do Mahayana Illuminating Samadhi, you develop
compassion for others. Then you do vast Merit Accumulating Royal
Samadhi, then you do Virtue Maintaining Royal Samadhi and then you
come back to this All Powerful Samadhi. This meditation is All
Powerful Samadhi.
It arises by the power of all the good
meditators who have been around for two and a half thousand years
like Tsong Khapa. They dedicated their merits that beings who were
teachable would come to see for themselves. They did that using their
five groups. Using their mental constructs. The blessings shower over
you. A shower of blessings come from the Sangha. So even though some
of them have attained parinibbana there are these mental objects, not
of infinite duration, but floating in the Samsara ocean. And when you
run into those mental objects you get a blessing.
The only
reason, just like a magnet will pull iron to itself someone with
Refuge in Buddha Dhamma Sangha will pull the blessings automatically.
Then you don't use the blessings for egoistic self gratification. You
use those blessings to keep you up and bouncy and energetic enough to
teach others. So you get the blessings at a certain point but you
know.
And then when you make merit you go into new activities
in the Samsara, say in the twentieth century, this is 1988, you in
turn do like this, you say, "May the merits made by me now or at
some other time be shared among all beings here however many they be.
May this gift of merits help all beings know the Path, realise the
Path, follow the Path".
The mind of course is extremely
fast. The Enlightened Mind is extremely swift; it's faster than
words. So take rest. Well done, well done, well done.
May you
learn to be a blessing to the world of humans and devas.
This
concludes the talk “Knowing Selflessness Destroys
Misknowledge”.
We now continue with the next talk in
the series.
After a rest period John D. Hughes continued to
teach.
Start with the Yamantaka thing about, you know da da
da, my goals will never be achieved. Put the Yamantaka, any Yamantaka
thing on it. So this is going to be awesome.
Frank Carter, a
student, then continued.
The Yamantaka lines that we've used
here before are exactly correct for this meditation course, because
the foe that Yamantaka talks about is the very same concept that is
in our minds and causing all our troubles. And the Yamantaka is only
interested in, he is not interested in anything that will benefit the
ego. He is not interested in anything that will strengthen,
strengthen that concept.
And the extent or the clarity or the
firmness of Yamantaka's statement is an exact measure of how to treat
this unreal "I". And the statement is:
"Trample
him, trample him,
dance on the head of this treacherous concept
of selfish concern,
tear out the heart of the self-centered
butcher
who slaughters our chance to gain final release."
And it's a concept that he is talking about, it's not a real,
it's not a true.
John D. Hughes commented.
"It
would be better to say the unreal concept that stops us from gaining
final release".
Frank Carter then continued.
"So
the way that I use goals, and I sincerely try to apply the same idea
or approach or attitude to all the Dhamma, is I try to take a view of
trampling any obstacles. I really try to trample, I don't leave doors
open for the things to fall over.
So the methods that we are
taught by the precious Guru are so difficult to find and they are
jewels because they work, they succeed, they are perfect. So it's so
difficult to find something like that, I would, in my heart, I would
wish to never to throw away even one. So I still have the goals on
the dashboard of my car.
It's like ruthlessly trying to use
the methods and the practice irrespective of how difficult or how,
there are many obstacles, but the reason that I would have those
goals still there, and use them every day, and it's not just the
goals it's the planning techniques that Spike taught us. I can
honestly say of all of the major and minor goals that I have put to
paper since that meditation course I have not discarded one and there
would have been six major and in the planning stages, well over a
hundred activities that I've listed and not discarded.
So
I've kept at each individual one till it's finished. And some of them
I may have had on my list for six months but I wouldn't discard it
because it was too difficult or, I am quite fair dinkum about using
the techniques that we've been given.
John D. Hughes then
spoke saying,
My pet name for Frank, and it's the highest
praise I can ever pay out to another sentient being is I call him
fearless. Now Frank is absolutely fearless in the sense he will
conquer fear. Fear of anything. You are successful when I start to
call you fearless. None of you I can call fearless, except Frank.
Frank is absolutely fearless. So the highest quality you can develop
here, now, is to become fearless, be without fear and Frank will
explain to you what he has in his mind that is stronger than being
afraid and dropping aside. Now explain, thank you Mr. Fearless, my
friend...
Frank responded like this...I often do have fear
arise, but even though it is difficult to handle, it is not anything
that I would deliberately give up because of. I won't choose to give
up because of it. I might be conquered by it, but I won't give up.
It's like, it's like a battle where the front troops can be defeated,
but the, sitting behind there somewhere is this, I won't give up.
So it's not like um, its not like an idea that can change
much, I really can generate that without flaw. I think everybody's
got their own strengths in practice so I am not saying that there's
nothing else that will do, there's a lot of you that try extremely
hard but it's like there's a, I use the word ruthlessness, there's
just, there's got to be a real steel, I will not move from this
point. I make my goals, I will not take one step back, even if I fail
with the goals I will not give up. I will not go backwards even if I
fail many times.
I mean we come and sit in meditations, for
me it's been six years and probably the first three years it was just
a continuous battle and all the meditation was accepting failure if
you like, not being able to do it. But not giving up at the same
time. And actually this meditation is the same, the one we are doing.
It's to, to draw a line and say I'll sit on this until I see and
you've got no evidence that you'll succeed. But you sit anyway, and
if your depending on evidence then you haven't drawn the line, it's
conditional, you just stick, stick at it. It's possible. It's like
the moment the mind really becomes firm and sits and won't retreat,
then it might get more dukkha and more dukkha and more dukkha but
there's this firmness, it just looks you know to see. And that is
capable of success, that method.
Like with Melva, another
student at the teaching, there's many times I have seen her
practising and one night she said that's it, I am just gunna stick.
And normally she would go home, this was some time ago, at ten
o'clock, 11 o'clock and this night whatever her discomfort was,
however difficult, all of the excuses she produced this, I am not
moving until I get it. And she got it. So that particular night she
was successful.
So the ego minds will fight but you just
endure. And if you can develop that you can achieve your goals, if
apply the same method to your goals. If you had of applied it
completely when they were taught many of the things that you still
not even formulated as goals would have been achieved by now. There's
a lot of wasted time by not taking the teachings to heart.
And
many other teachings that are given to us we've wasted by not, not
treasuring them and not using them fully. There's no need to collect
all the techniques like hoarding them, they're not, they're useless
like that. Goal setting's useless. Planning is of no value at all,
time management, all these things we've been taught, unless they are
put with absolute sincerity into action. Is that right Michael?
Yes
he replied.
Why? Asked the Teacher.
Well, it's a
necessary aspect of achieving them. If that's not included replied
the student.
Minnie?
Yeah? She responded.
The
Teacher then asked: Is it correct what I said, and why?
There's
no point in even making goals if you're not going to act on
them.
Right. So then, why don't you act on the instructions?
If you can understand what I'm saying why can't you do it like that?
So much easier.
Thank you Spike said Frank.
My
pleasure, fearless. Thank you.
John Hughes continued...There
are two things that are absolutely vital in the practice of the
middle way. To be persistent, to persist, and to exercise restraint.
Now, why they are two separate things is persistent means, to be
consistent means, start something and don't stop. So the mind that
has persistence is one mind, it won't stop. You set it to work and it
keeps going and going and going. If it says, do this, do this, do
this it'll keep going, thats persistence. Do this, do this, do
this.
Persist means keep at it. Constraint means stop. So
persistence is an all systems go mind and constraint is an all
systems stop mind. They are two different minds. Now, if you have
persistence, if you had a machine and you could only turn it on and
you couldn't turn it off it would drive you nuts. If you had a
machine and you couldn't turn it on it would drive you nuts. So the
ability to switch on and off, you need two minds.
If your
persistence mind is very small you will start something and then
you'll over exercise constraint and you'll switch it off. So you've
already got persistent minds and constraint minds. The point is some
of you have got powerful persistent minds and some of you have got
powerful constraint minds, but you must develop both minds. It's not
a matter of; you've got to know when to start and when to stop. Two
different minds.
It's not like a light switch which you can
switch on and off and you're on the same circuit, it's not like that,
they're two different types of understanding. For example, you might
say "I will persist with, I'm going to change this attitude of
mine and I will persist". The change might have come and you
what forgot the target was. When I've changed the attitude switch
off, I've got it perfect.
So that's the first thing you've
got to understand, the Dhamma is like that. The Buddha has got, if
you like, the perfection of persistence and the perfection of
constraint. So, an example of the constraint of the Buddha is this;
the Buddha, if he's asked something, say he is asked a question, he
persists to get the full understanding of the question, which he
might do verbally or mentally. Then he examines carefully the
options, and with perfect wisdom constrains his choices, and then he
constrains his reply, replies and then stops. Two different
qualities.
By seeing them as two different qualities none of
them are ego qualities. Dissociate persistence from the ego,
otherwise that's ritual. Dissociate constraint from the ego otherwise
it's sloth and torpor. Two different minds.
So that's the
first thing, if you're setting up a target you must persist and you
must constrain at the right time. You mustn't let the ego mind be the
constraint on the system.
Now in fact, having said that I
want to point out to you the ego mind, if it's let loose will
constrain your persistence, and similarly if you're constraining
something, you're refraining from it. You're constraining yourself on
an action, say a precept, and then you get the green light from the
ego then the constraint is gone.
The ego destroys constraint
and the ability to persist. Now that's the first thing you must know,
if you're planning something how long you should persist for and when
you should stop. So if you get a great idea you wouldn't work on it
three days, day and night nonstop because the result is you'd
probably fall into bed exhausted and sleep for a week, and the net
result is after a week's sleep you've probably forgotten what the
idea was anyway.
Remember, it's the Middle Way. Now that's
the first way. The second thing is having developed those two you
have a trait, an innate characteristic resulting from repeated past
kamma, one of you're traits is you like to hear Dhamma. That's the
only explanation for the fact you're here. It's just a trait you've
got.
You have no idea, some of you, that the Dhamma will bring
you to Arahant fruit. I know you've heard it at a word level but you
don't know that you will. So you've got to modify traits that you've
got. So if you had a knowledge of modifiability and you've got, of a
trait, and you've got a time limit on it, then you make choices about
which one to modify within the economy of the time. Remember there's
a time limit on everything.
Now, an example is given in here
of how you go about training people within a time scale. Every thing
has got to have a time frame. And this is the example, but you can,
we'll talk about it and I'll elaborate it a bit in a minute. Suppose,
for example, that "aggressiveness", which is another name
for persistence, was discovered to be one of the primary traits
important for success in selling.
If it is found that this is
a readily modifiable trait, that is, one that can easily be developed
by means of appropriate methods. It may not be particularly important
to evaluate the trait of aggressiveness when selecting men for
selling jobs. On the other hand it may be found that verbal fluency
is also important for success in selling. But investigation may show
that this is a trait which is little, if at all, subject to
modification by training in later years.
Projects should be
formulated for throwing all possible light on the relative
modifiability of human traits and abilities. It should be noted that
the observed consistency or apparent non modifiability of a trait
does not prove actual non modifiability. Lack of knowledge concerning
effective training methods or static environmental conditions may
result in apparent non modifiability of traits at a given time in a
specific culture.
However for purposes of prediction this
distinction is unimportant until such time as discovery of better
training methods or social change result in the possibility of
modification of a particular trait.
What that means is there
are, you are in a culture. It's an Australian culture which means
it's a multicultural culture. You are in a post industrial society,
you are not in a peasant agrarian society and you have got an
enormous amount of cultural artifacts behind you. Some of which are
of benefit to you and some of which are a great hindrance to
you.
May you develop the minds of wholesome persistence and
wholesome constraint.
We now conclude this first teaching of
persistence and constraint and continue on next week's 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.
This script was transcribed, prepared and
edited by Julian Bamford, Frank Carter, Leanne Eames, Evelin Halls,
Anita Hughes, Alec Sloman, Lainie Smallwood, Julie O'Donnell and
Amber Svensson.
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
Recording Title: Persistence and
restraint
Tape 7, Side 1
Teacher: John D. Hughes, Frank
Carter
Date of recording: 27/6/88
Transcribed by: Alec Sloman,
Frank Carter
Checked by: Lainie Smallwood
CD Reference:
27_06_88T7S1A
File Name: 27_06_88T7S1A_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5
Day Meditation Course
27 June 1988, 5.18 pm
Brown, Lesley
(editor), "The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary",
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993.
Words: 3,552
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