Buddhist Hour
Script No. 444
Broadcast live on 3MDR 97.1FM
9 PM to 10 PM
On Friday 8 September 2006 CE 2550 Buddhist Era

This script is entitled:

"Lifetimes of Learning "
Class 11 - Exploring the Perfection of Wisdom, Part 3

Tonight we will continue the fourth Perfection, which is the Perfection of Wisdom.

Firstly we will quote a talk by a famous Sri Lankan monk named Venerable Piyadassi who has visited our centre several times, the first occasion being in 1981. The talk illustrates how we can be better equipped for life if we understand its impermanent changing nature.

Secondly, we will move on to explore the Buddhist teaching of anatta, or not-self.

Venerable Piyadassi Thera said:

"There was a man, he had a horse; suddenly the horse disappeared. Then the neighbours came and said, "Oh, you have lost your horse". And they were sympathizing with him. And this man said, "Yes, I had a horse, the horse disappeared." After some time, this horse came with another horse. Now two horses. Again these neighbours came in and said, "Oh you are a lucky man, you are getting two horses now". "Yes there are two horses". Now he had a son, the only son. He was very enthusiastic to go on horseback, to learn to go on horseback, because there were now two horses. This son, trying to go on horseback, to learn to go on it, he fell and broke his leg. Disabled for life. Again the neighbours came. "Oh what's the use of your horses, man? See what has happened to your son? Disabled for life". "Yes, this fellow's leg is broken. Let him be there". After some time there was a war. You know when a war comes, all the young people are taken to the battlefront. This I knew when I was in Saigon in Vietnam, just before this crisis came. All the males I don't see in Saigon. Very few. Old people, not young people. And they said, "Oh sir, all the students, sixteen and seventeen years of age have been sent to the battle". And this boy's leg is broken. He is at home. All the young people have gone to the battlefront. So this father can at least look at his face and be happy. See how the vicissitudes come. So he was not moved and finally he was consoled. His son is at home. This is life." (Piyadassi, 1981) 3.

So we need to develop these qualities of equanimity, tolerance, forgiveness, gratitude and kindness in order to live in the world wisely, to not be limited to just unwholesome reactions to life's unsatisfactory nature. We can rise above the difficulties of living by keeping good qualities in our heart.

One way the Buddhist Path is often described is as the cultivation of morality, concentration and wisdom, with wisdom coming at the end as the fruit of all the previous practices. Yet, when one reads the different stages of the Buddhist Path, which is called the Noble Eightfold Path, listed in sequence, Right Understanding, which is an aspect of wisdom, comes first.

"One tries to explain this by using the analogy of climbing a mountain. When one sets out to climb a mountain one has the summit in view and it is the sight of the summit that gives direction to one’s path. In that sense, even when one begins to climb the mountain, one has one’s eyes on the summit. As such, Right Understanding is necessary right at the beginning of the path. Yet in practical terms one has to climb the lower steps, scale the intermediate ridges before one reaches the summit, the attainment of wisdom. In practical terms, therefore, wisdom comes at the end of one’s practice of the path."

"Wisdom is described as the understanding of the Four Noble Truths, or the understanding of the Law of Kamma, and so forth. What this means is that when we speak of the attainment of wisdom, we are concerned with transforming these items of the doctrine from simple intellectual facts to real personal facts. We are interested in changing this knowledge from mere book learning to real living experience, and the way this is done is through the cultivation of good conduct and specifically through the cultivation of mental development. Otherwise, anyone can read in a book the explanation of the Four Noble Truths and so forth and yet this is not the same as attaining wisdom."

"When this kind of direct understanding of the truth is gained, this is equivalent to gaining enlightenment. This opens the door to freedom, freedom from suffering and to Nirvana. Wisdom is the key thing in Buddhism". 1. Buddhanet

Frank Carter, one of our Members who is here with us for tonight's 3MDR radio broadcast, gave this example from his personal experience to illustrate how insight is much deeper than intellectual understanding, when he wrote: "I remember during the early 1980's I was travelling in Tunisia and I had contracted food poisoning. Basically I had to sit in bed at the equivalent of a bed and breakfast for three or four days, as I was too sick to continue travelling. I managed to find a local book store however virtually all the books were in French or Arabic and I could only find 5 or 6 books in English. There was only one book, which appealed to me, and it was about the development of the mind and insight."

"For a couple of days I just read this book. The book itself was not very long, perhaps 80 - 100 pages but it had one section in it that was quite unique. The author was describing the Buddhist Teaching of not-self or no self (anatta in Pali). The author described the meaning of this teaching quite clearly so I thought I had understood it but then he wrote something like the following - "you may think you have understood what was just explained however, believe me, you don't really understand it at all. If you really understood this teaching right now you would be happier than you have ever been. Your mind would be free and lucid and you would have a transformed view of your own existence."

"I sat in bed reading this page over and over again because I thought I understood what was written, but there at the end of the page the author had written – ‘believe me, you don't really understand it at all’. Normally if we are just reading a book we would read on to the next page, but because I was stuck in bed I remember reading this maybe 15 - 20 times. I really wanted to figure it out! Then one time, in an instant, my mind had an understanding that the ‘self’ I had been relying on and serving for my whole life was only a concept. The thing I had the most firm conviction was "real", actually was not real. The "self" had disappeared. In its place was a luminous vibrant energy that filled mind. My sickness completely disappeared instantly and I could get up. I was happier than I had ever been, just what the author had said would happen."

"For several days I had this bright, happy, lucid view of everything but then gradually it began to dull and by another day or so I was back in bed with my sickness."

This experience in Buddhism is called insight wisdom and it is different to worldly wisdom, but still not perfect wisdom. Our mind is usually covered in cloud, which is the ignorance, and just for a short while the cloud passed off my mind and I saw what is described in Buddhism as not self or no self (anatta) .

So insight wisdom has this quality of transforming our understanding of our life so it is a much more powerful type of understanding than intellectual understanding.

"Let us look at the Four Noble Truths again for a moment. The key to transforming one’s experience from the experience of suffering to the experience of the end of suffering is understanding the Second Noble Truth, the truth of the cause of suffering. Once we understand the cause of suffering, we can then act to achieve the end of suffering".

"Understanding the cause of suffering enables one to do this. We can see this clearly in the Buddha’s description of His experience on the night of His enlightenment. When He saw the cause of suffering, when He understood that desire, ill-will and ignorance were the causes of suffering, this opened the door to His enlightenment. Ignorance, desire and ill-will are the causes of suffering". 1. Buddhanet.

So tonight we can reflect that the essence of Buddhist practice is to remove desire, ill will and ignorance from our hearts and instead practice good qualities such as those mentioned by Master Hsing Yun last week. The good heart has happiness and joy as its constant companion so it is indeed a treasure worth working towards.

When we hear about things like selflessness or emptiness for the first time, there is this paradox that these things are said to be the way things really are, the way things are in absolute reality, yet the words themselves don't seem to reflect how we experience or perceive the world for ourselves.

To explain this paradox we will consider the Buddhist teaching of selflessness or not self (anatta in Pali) as an example. The teaching says the view that we have an inner self, or soul or ego is merely an appearance, that in fact, in reality, when you examine what we are clearly with insight wisdom the self or "me" as we know it, does not exist.

The thing is, we have never done this examination ourselves with wisdom. For most of us here tonight our mind has not been still and clean enough for us to recognise accurately what is really happening in our mind.

The reality which is being described by the words selflessness or anatta is something most of us cannot see because we haven't developed our minds enough to verify what the absolute truth is. Nevertheless it is important to appreciate what is meant by selflessness.

When we watch television the appearance is that there are shapes on the screen and generally they are images of objects or persons and the appearance is that some of these objects or persons move as we watch.

We are always quite convinced about the reality of the images themselves as we watch them, even though we know they are only film images.

Yet this is not really what is happening. When we move up close to a TV screen, really close, we may be able to see the image is made up of many dots of coloured light called pixels. An image of a person is really a thousand or more dots of light. These dots of light are appearing and disappearing very fast - you can see this when you switch the dial to a channel that is not a TV channel such as channel 5 in Melbourne. When you switch to channel 5 you can better see the reality of what's really happening. Dots of light appearing for a flash and then gone! Immediately a new dot of light appearing and then gone. That's all that's really occurring. Nothing is even moving, the dots of light come and go in the same place.

Once we move back from the screen our vision is not powerful enough to keep this sight of what's really happening so we just see the people and objects again. So for the sake of this analogy, the absolute reality in this case is dots of coloured light and the conventional reality of images of people and objects which move is literally not true.

The conventional reality for sentient beings is that there is a doer apart from the doing. There is a walker apart from walking, a writer apart from writing and a thinker apart from thinking. But Buddhism says these "doers" and "thinkers" are just appearances. In reality there is just doing only, walking only, thinking only. If you are really in the present that's what you see.

A Buddhist Nun, Sister Vajira, in the Buddha's time said:

"When all constituent parts are there,

The designation cart is used;

Just so, where the five groups exist,

Of 'living being' do we speak." 2.

The word "cart" is only a label for the assembly of certain parts - the "cart" has no existence. If we disassemble the cart and pile all the parts up on the floor is it still a cart? No. Yet it’s the same items exactly, nothing has been removed but now we are calling it a "pile". The new word "pile" is another label for the assembly of those parts. Neither pile or cart really exist - there is only the parts.

We give a label once we see these parts assembled in a particular way. We then believe the label is an independent thing itself.

The same is for "ourselves". We are really made up of momentary mental and physical events called phenomena or dharmas which arise and fall much more rapidly than the TV dots. There are five types of phenomena arising and falling of which four are mind and one is body. The four mental events have names in the Pali language but not in English because there are no exact equivalent terms in the English language. Words in English which are rough approximates for these four are; feelings (vedana); memories and ideas of the future, perceptions (sanna); thoughts, self images and volition (sankhara); and all the different types of consciousness (vinnanum).

Until we have developed our mind in meditation we cannot distinguish or recognise these five groups of phenomena clearly or see what they really are. What we see is the five groups and, just like the example of the cart, an additional aspect or component is added onto these five groups by our minds which is the "self". There is the appearance of a self or "me" but in fact it does not exist. There was the appearance of a cart but it did not actually exist. The self or "me" which we may think is an independent thing in itself is only a label.

The trouble with our mind believing these appearances are real is that all our suffering comes from this mistaken view of how these things really are. The appearances are that the body is permanent, that the mind and body can be relied upon and that there is a real "me" or self comprising our body, feelings and mind. Even though we can intellectually understand the body is impermanent, even though we can intellectually recognise feelings cannot be relied upon because they are always swinging back and forth, the mind itself doesn't know any of this for real - unless there is insight wisdom.

Just like the Buddha, we can undertake the training to develop our minds so they become clear and bright enough to see that all things are impermanent, unsatisfactory and not-self - anicca, dukkha and anatta.

When the mind sees all things are impermanent it stops grabbing, because it knows grabbing something which only lasts for a second or so, is futile and can never be satisfying.

When the mind sees all things are unsatisfactory or dukkha it stops grabbing. Through vipassana meditation the mind sees we are comprised of five parts, or five groups. Then the mind knows these five as they really are, which is that

1. Our body (rupa in Pali) will rot and die;

2. Our feelings (vedana in Pali) can't be relied upon, they can be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. There is no such thing as a permanent pleasant feeling;

3. Our memories and perceptions (sanna in Pali) are unreliable, and cause us to loose our clarity of the present moment if we dwell on them;

4. Our thoughts and self images (sankhara in Pali) are just arising and passing away. We have thousands of thoughts each day. They are just thoughts, some wholesome, some unwholesome. They can't be relied upon as always being the correct view. If we hold onto thoughts how will we develop wisdom, which comes from not grabbing.

5. The various types of consciousness (vinnanum in Pali) which we may experience are unreliable and come and go according to past causes.

Finally, when the mind sees things as not-self (anatta), it stops grabbing because it knows none of the components which we think of and call "us" are an everlasting self.

There is no single part of us that remains unchanged from when we were a child. We are constantly changing with nothing remaining immune to change. In other words there is no component of us outside of the law of cause and effect that has independent existence.

There is one particular mind the Buddha found, and he was the first person in this age to discover this mind, a mind which knows anicca, dukkha and anatta of all things simultaneously at one time. It is called nibbana (nirvana in Sanskrit). It is the object of the Buddhist Eightfold Path. The stage of the training during which a person develops their minds so they can see nibbana for themselves is called Right Concentration.

May you develop the Perfection of Wisdom.

May you be well and happy.

May all beings be well and happy.

1. Buddhanet.net. Wisdom. The Fundamentals of Buddhism series. Published online at www.buddhanet.net at http://www.buddhanet.net/fundbud8.htm.

2. Sayadaw U Silananda. 1999. No Inner Core. An Introduction to the Doctrine of Anatta. Published by Inward Path Publishers, P.O. Box 1034, 10830 Penang, Malaysia.

3. Venerable Piyadassi Thera. 1981. Summary of Talk Given by Piyadassi Maha Thera of Sri Lanka 31 March 1981 at the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey). Published in the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd's Annual Newsletter, Issue No. 4 June 1981.

4. Carter, A., Carter F., Sloman, A. 2006. Exploring the Perfection of Wisdom Part II. Tuesday Night Teachings Series II (Lifetimes of Learning), Volume 13. Published by Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. 33 Brooking Street, Upwey, Victoria 3158.

5. Carter, A., Carter F., Sloman, A. 2006. Exploring the Perfection of Wisdom Part III. Tuesday Night Teachings Series II (Lifetimes of Learning), Volume 14. Published by Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. 33 Brooking Street, Upwey, Victoria 3158.

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