Buddhist Hour
Script No. 406
Broadcast live on Hillside 88.0 FM
on Sunday 13 November 2005CE 2549 Buddhist Era


This script is entitled:
Discourse on Refuge, Part II

Thank you for joining us. On today's program we will be sharing with you a continuation from last week’s program, called Discourse on Refuge Part two. The teaching was originally given by John D. Hughes to his students in 1984, at the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.

The topic of today's teaching is impermanence of the body, and advice on how to stop the errant mind from disturbing your meditation.

If you tuned into last week's program, you might remember John Hughes concluded by saying:

Now you, an investigation of the colors of the pigments is for one trained as a scientist. It's all very well but it has nothing to do with training the mind in meditation. If you saw a butterfly maybe your mind would go off on to some other question. Now the advice is cut them dead, in other words retract the mind to the theme of meditation. If the theme of the meditation is considering impermanence you could use the butterfly saying that butterfly will be dead probably within twenty-four hours. Maybe less if a bird eats it, so you can use the butterfly as long as you remember the theme, you were meditating on impermanence. That butterfly will be dead. Impermanent.

So, now let’s continue with Discourse on Refuge Part II taught by John D. Hughes.

This body, a meditator, one day also will be dead. Impermanent. But you notice how the mind in examining the chemical structure of the pigment of the butterfly's wing is not considering impermanence. It has lost the theme of meditation.

Now of course the mind will do things like this dependent on past kamma. You don't, unless someone is checking, checking, checking and stopping you ... what is your mind doing? Is it still on the theme? The mind will always play like this. The mind that plays like this is ordinary, worldly mind. It will never come to the finish. It will never learn anything concerning Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha if it plays like this.

So the technique is pay no attention to them, retract the mind, cut. The mind then comes inside and comes back to the theme. If the theme, say, was the theme impermanence, meditate say sitting in first or second jhana, meditate on impermanence, you try to do, see your mind is out playing. When you catch the mind playing, cut! By this time it is sometimes so absorbed, it thinks that the chemical composition, for example, of the butterfly wing is the most important thing in the world. What would your mind do if a butterfly came in to this room now?

If the theme you were supposed to be meditating on was impermanence, what would your mind do? Now, whatever your mind is doing now, it's drifted off its theme. The theme is impermanence. Start again. If you are to meditate on impermanence, impermanence, impermanence, anicca in pali. Anicca, anicca! Meditate considering impermanence. Butterfly comes into room. Now, the mind might pick up a flower, it might pick up anything and start to play with it. The advice is cut them dead, pay no attention to them and retract the mind to its former theme of meditation. This is, in other words, to be detached from them, having no part or interest in them, these external things.

Whenever the mind becomes quietened down, let the meditator fix it to that condition of quietude. Peacefulness. Refusing to be led inward, outward, into the panorama of exciting phenomenon such as, you know, there are higher and lower siddhis or iddis come up, such as the ability to levitate which is one siddhi which will arrive. To tour the celestial realms and sub human realms, that is using celestial eye. And even the naughty desires to look into other people's thoughts and moods, that is knowing the minds of others. These are siddhis which arise out of part of your practice.

All these are temptations to lead the mind astray and then to lose its way. As the siddhis develop, the magical powers or superhuman powers, however you like to translate, which will arrive, they themselves become hindrances. So all these temptations to lead the mind astray and then let it lose its way, if you're gonna get distracted by a butterfly and your body levitates you'll wanna play with that. So train the mind properly, cut! Take no interest.

So let the meditator cherish the condition of quiet mind, which means it can get bright, and the consequent bliss to clothe the mind with, but then put the mind to work, to study say impermanence. There's three things, impermanence, dukkha and anatta. So you, you consider impermanence, one of the characteristics of existence.

In that condition, putting the mind quiet, not letting it run out and play, the mind will be fully blessed and detached from all troubles and temptations. Now, as I said, if you've got refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha very strongly, almost automatically your mind will follow the instructions. If you haven't got refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha that strongly, the worldly interest of getting the mind outside and playing with the world will get so strong that you'll forget what you are doing, so it is important to get refuge. So in that condition the mind will be fully blessed and detached from all troubles and temptations. These things, or rather, abilities are not yet worth this interest and attention, at least for the moment. In other words at your intermediate level of development in meditation don't play with your magical powers, just put them aside as they develop, and get on with examining basic things like impermanence, anicca, dukkha, anatta, three characteristics of existence.

This is no time no undertake to prove the existence of these realms, or of the results of various kammas. In your training you are given, some of you have looked at past lives, have celestial eye, celestial ear, I know. Most of you are now using wisely which means you hardly use them at all. You get on to practice in the present. These are such, these questions are to such a mind at this stage of development conducive to frustration and bewilderment, some of you have got beyond that stage. It is advisable therefore that at this moment the meditator concentrates first of all on building up his meditation and insight. By which he will be able to know for himself what is virtue, what is vice, what is heaven, what is hell and what is nirvana. All of these are within the provision of the mind that is pacified and purified. It is then better than to speculate on problems.

It should also be noted that those who have taught us the truth of virtue and vice, heaven, hell and nirvana have already had a first hand experience being beyond all speculation and able to describe precisely what they have witnessed and been convinced of. But we are still something like the children who attempt to jump down from the upper floor of the house by means of a parachute, the result of course is a broken leg and an almost fatal wound. In our case there is nothing but speculation and the consequent frustration. We tend to deny the facts about these things and then to drag ourselves into the abyss, when Julie was reading me this morning she read that as abscess which made me laugh, not too bad. Drag ourselves into the abyss to our own evil, our own unwholesomeness, insisting there is nothing left after death, nothing to enjoy and so on. Those of you who have studied past lives know this.

Now the next bit, really broke us up, Julie read this to me last night or this morning. Should the combined voices of complaint due to the immense suffering of all of us be transformed into something like an audible sound, this is the winging of the meditators about their practice, they would sound like the deafening roar of thunder that should have split the planet already. In fact all of us must have been tortured more or less at some time or other by the grief of suffering in the past as well as the present and in fact in the unforeseeable future also. All these are nothing but the results of our own karma, which we have built for ourselves, both heaven and hell, and which cannot be seen or proved elsewhere but in our own mind. Instances of this is seen in the cases of the Buddha and his disciples who have done away with all their sufferings, thereby not subject to any impact or results of karma which have all this time overpowered those of us who have been complaining about suffering all the time.

It is no good complaining about suffering. First Noble Truth - life is suffering because you have a method where you can get out of the suffering forever, now all you do is you practice. And if you've got negative karma to run, run it. And if you've got positive karma to run, put it aside and you practice like that.

Emphasis should be laid on how to penetrate through the fog of delusion first of all. Such things are there to be known by all who are able to know when the time is to know them. This is to brand a lot of problems and worries which could occur through dealing with them before the appropriate time. If you've got too big a problem kick it out of the way, it will come back later, when your mind is brighter you can fix it.

It is the practice of insight which will carry the meditator through all these hindrances. This is why in the beginning the meditator should not look forward to complicated matters. If the mind is trained to concentrate on the bliss of peace, there will be little or no harassing problems. In other words if you get into the middle, bright mind, instant by instant, you will see your mind has got peace.

JDH: And that's the way to get it respectful. Not saying I'll do it tomorrow when my minds better because tomorrow your mind doesn't get better. It's doing the practice now that fixes the mind up. You see, it's not ritual.

Student: You've got that much to achieve, so to speak.

JDH: Yeah, and you're saying I won't achieve this until I can do it like this, well to get there you go boom, boom, boom, boom, step by step, and then you get there. You don't say I can't do it right, I can't do it, I can't do it! Do a little bit.

Student: One step doesn't get you to your destination.

JDH: No, but if you don't take one step, one step, one step, you'll never get to your destination. So you take one step, one step, one step. What'd you find out? What's your name tonight.

Student: Henry.

JDH: Good day, Henry!

Student: There were quite a lot of small things, and said by the others Spike. I don't know if you were reading it or if you said it, what I found was very beautiful.

JDH: Some I read and some I make up.

Student: You said to just latch on to the quietness and not to succumb, or not to be seduced by...

JDH: The razzamatazz.

Student: By the panorama.

JDH: That's right, yes, because if we practice that way we can walk around, we can practice twenty-four hours a day.

Student: We can live in the panorama but still latched on to the quietness.

JDH: The panorama changes all the time. This is due to impermanence of existence. If you latch on to the panorama you're doing what everyone else in the world does, having a trip, which doesn't get you anywhere. Keep the mind inside, seeing only. Leonard.

JDH: Ah yeah. Chasing butterflies? Did ya' catch one? What'dya catch when you drifted off?

Bernie? What'd ya find out?

Bernie: So easy to follow around butterflies.

JDH: I agree! Aren't they beautiful? Aren't they beautiful. Well that is what we don't do.

Student: Well, what I was thinking is if you can't leave the butterfly alone you can, um, just make it part of the meditation.

JDH: Yeah.

Student: Watch it. Just watch it without volition. Without fabricating on it. Just like...

JDH: If you, if the meditation theme is to study impermanence, say you're sitting in first jhana,

Student: You wouldn't be meditating on impermanence but you would be just watching only and something like impermanence might come up.

JDH: You see, for example, being a dye chemist in the past, all I'd have to remember is my knowledge of dye chemistry, which is vast, which I've acquired, is impermanent. One day it will be gone. I won't remember the chemical formula for any dye stuff that I ever learned. Impermanent. Now that cuts, it sobers the mind. Do you see?

Student: Something like that sort of, um, realisation is likely to arise when watching only. Watching the colours on the butterfly only. Noting only. That sort of thing.

JDH: Well, if you note the butterfly, like if you could remember, brighten the mind and see the butterfly as four great elements you'd lose interest in it. But the mind, depending on...

Student: But as long as the mind does follow it, it sees it only then, it will get something from it.

JDH: No that is delusion mind. You think, the instructions are to bring the mind inside. If you think the Buddha teaches you to follow butterflies for as long as it takes and you'll get something from it then you don't understand Buddha's teaching. That is not Buddha's teaching. That is scientist's method. That is how you study science, you follow something until you come to some knowledge about it. That is western science.

Student: You know, just seeing it with bare awareness. You're seeing only, you're not playing with it.

JDH: Well, if you can do that it's alright.

Student: I'm not, I'm saying that you keep the volitional thought out of it. That's all, you just don't play with it.

JDH: Yeah. Now that's easy to say but of course as you know from your own experience volitional thought comes in! It's what to do with that volitional thought when it arises. It's not what to do...

Student: You cut the volitional thought, seeing only.

JDH: Yeah. Now the way you cut the volitional thought is to cut the outside image and let the mind come inside and then the volitional thought stops because it has thought about something. It's thought about say a butterfly. Cut!

Student: If you've got your mind open, if you've got your eyes open and then things hanging around in front of you for a while.

JDH: It doesn't stay for long.

Student: Well, for as long as it will stay.

JDH: Butterflies don't stay hovering in front of your face for long. They fly away.

Student: It might be something else that does.

JDH: You're mind still doesn't understand. I'll say again.

Student: Well, do you know what I'm saying?

JDH: Yes, I read your mind. I hear what you're saying. Now I'll tell you again. This is what your mind doesn't understand. It understands the theory of what to do when the meditation is going well, but it doesn't understand what to do when the meditation is not going well and this is instructions of what to do when it's not going well. When your meditation is going off and your peace is disrupted by some disturbing thought what do you do?

Student: Recognise it and cut it.

JDH: Right. Now, if you wrote that out ten million times maybe it would imprint on your mind so you can make that your mantra if you like. When the volitional thought comes along cut and bring mind inside. Do it over and over again. That would train the mind.

Student: Well, it's by doing it that the one forms the correct habit.

JDH: Yeah, but every time you play with volitional thought you are training the mind to play with more volitional thought. It's like if you eat poison you'll acquire a taste for it.

Student: Yeah, what I'm saying is you just learn to cut!

JDH: Learn to cut, but know that you don't, every second you're not cutting you're training yourself in meditation. See, if you cut, you're training yourself in meditation of one sort, the correct way. If you don't cut, you're training yourself in meditation of the wrong sort.

So, you've got to see, that like that the problem's much more acute that you believe it to be. Like, if every time, if every time the mind went off you got a, you know, a four hundred volt shock through your body you'd realise it's dangerous. But when you look at a butterfly there's no immediate sense of danger. So your mind will play with it. Training the mind the wrong way and then next time you sit you say my meditation's going wacky because you laid down the cause here. In other words you've got to put viriya on top, you know, energy, and if you knew how dangerous it was to meditate in the wrong way, like if your mind could understand great danger, alright, great danger will arise if you train it the wrong way. What is the great danger? You'll have birth again and again and again and again. Suffering again and again and again. So we want to make sure we train our minds in you know, samma ditthi, Martin?

Student: Right view?

JDH: Yeah. Right view. If we get right view as first of Eightfold step, we'll end up samma samadhi. You know, right meditation. If we've got wrong view and we cultivate wrong view, wrong view says there's no harm to be done by sitting in meditation and playing with a butterfly. That is wrong view. Right view is saying we will never come to samma samadhi, right meditation, if we let our mind... the first step of the Eightfold Path is right view. If we get right view, perfected, the outcome, sooner or later, will be correct meditation. It's like we know we've got to keep five precepts. If we don't keep five precepts we've got micca, you know micca? Wrong, as opposed to samma. So you've got to train the mind this life.

Now how do you train the mind which has had an infinite time of wrong view to come to right view? Well, with great difficulty. But you've got the good human rebirth this time, Buddha Dhamma is intact. If you don't do it this life there's no guarantee you'll ever, for a thousand million lifetimes you'll ever hear Buddha Dhamma again and to go back to the beginning if you get deep refuge you'll always be locked on Buddha Dhamma.

So the problem is much more deeper than your mind realises. You understand. The magnitude of the problem. You understand there is a problem because I know your mind with it's troubles. To you, understand there is a problem but then to understand the magnitude of the problem. That's the difference.

Now Tan Acharn Mun understood the magnitude of the problem very clearly and that's why he's such a powerful teacher. Right. Now if you want powerful teaching you've got to pay the price! Powerful teaching means your negativities come up with fierce intensity, you know like twice as much in half the time! But of course the outcome is very rapid progress. And why do you need very rapid progress? Because a human life isn't that long. How many years you got to live? Do you know? Do you know? How many years Bernie, you got?

Bernie: Ah, another thirty?

JDH: How many years to live? Leonard?

JDH: How many years to live, Martin?

Martin: Oh, I don't know Spike, really.

JDH: What do you think?

Martin: What do I think?

JDH: Yeah. Have a guess.

Martin: Oh, about, uh, forty-five?

JDH: Right. Lisa? How many years to live.

Lisa: I'll probably live till I'm seventy.

JDH: Mmmhm. Michael? How many years to live?

Malcolm: Don't know.

JDH: Frank?

Frank: If I don't get it right, billions.

JDH: (Laughs) Hey! Ah, yeah! How many years to live Rog.

Roger: Ah, it changes.

JDH: Yeah, changes. I like your answer. Tell it to Michael, will you? Michael, look at this man and he'll make you laugh. Tell it, sock it to him again. I like that. Why couldn't I have said that Bernie. Do you understand that Michael, why he says that? Now what's wrong with living billions of years? Well, what's wrong, because if you stay on this planet billions of years from now it's going to be pretty terrible. Worse than it is now. If you got animal or ghost or hell rebirth certainly worse. If you got heaven rebirth your practice almost stops unless you're in Buddha heaven.

Now, without getting neurotic, practice correctly, cause it's, it takes as much effort to practice correctly as it does to practice incorrectly and the only benefit is if you practice, with the same effort you can practice correctly as incorrectly. But the outcome of correct practice is more peace, more happiness, more laughs, better life and less trouble!

Student: More mara! (laughs)

JDH: The worse you practice the more the mara. Does that make sense to you?

Student: Yeah, that's true.

May your refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, become irreversible this life.
May your mind come to right view.

May you cherish the condition of a quiet mind.

May your mind know to keep precepts always.

May all beings see the Buddha, hear the Dharma, and join the Sangha.

May you be well and happy.

May all beings be well and happy.

This script was prepared and edited by Julian Bamford, Anita Carter, Frank Carter, Helen Costas, and Alec Sloman.


References

Recording Title: Discourse on Refuge
Tape 1 Side 1
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of recording: 1984
Transcribed by Alec Sloman, Helen Costas
Checked by: Frank Carter
CD Reference: 007_00_84T1S1A.wav
File Name I:\I:\007_00_84T1S1A_JDHtranscribe.rtf

Recording Title: Discourse on Refuge
Tape 2 Side 1
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of recording: 1984
Transcribed by Alec Sloman
Checked by: Frank Carter
CD Reference: 007_00_84T2S1A.wav
File Name I:\I:\007_00_84T2S1A_JDHtranscribe.rtf


Document Statistics
Word count: 3,889


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