Ajahn Jayasaro - What to do with anger?

story first yeah okay tell story maybe we sit over there just kind of turn over there we see you faster than Instant Karma more powerful than desire able to transcend suffering in a single bound look in the sky it's a bird it's a plane it's Captain Enlightenment when we last saw our hero he was sitting placidly on a purple meditation Kush counting his breaths watching the movement of his thoughts while the hands of his Zen alarm clock pointed to the present meanwhile in the thriving Metropolis of Sam Sara there lived one Herald Delian it was a typical Monday morning for Herold he had just merged onto freeway 85 on his way to work but little did Herold know that within a matter of minutes he would find himself hurtling toward a head-on collision with his mind come with me now for another episode in The Adventures of Captain Enlightenment brought to you by Redwood vihara Monastery Harold was making excellent time on his way to work at Microsoft when suddenly his worst fears were realized for just at that moment Herold slammed on on The Brak sced to a halt and found himself in snarled in Silicon Valley gridlocked a surge of anger seized herold's scattered mind he pounded on the steering wheel he laid on the horn he cursed the idiots who had the nerve to get in his way couldn't they see he had somewhere important to go and so he did the only logical thing he could do in circumstances is like this he rolled down the window screamed at those idiots and gave them a one finger wave but that did no good Harold found himself stuck with nowhere to go and nothing to do but see with road rage miles away on the outskirts of the fabled city of Nirvana mild mannered Bard D SATA heard a cry for help uncurling himself from his purple meditation cushion he sprinted down the street to the world's last phone booth and there he chanted a secret Mantra and emerged from the phone booth a wearing people purple spandex leotards and tights and a matching cape and proclaimed have no fear Captain Enlightenment is here in less time than it takes for a false thought to manifest Captain Enlightenment rose up and flew through the air in a self-driving Tesla and landed on Highway 85 directly next to Harold Delian who with that time was cursing a string of fourl words at the top of his lungs in the midst of his rage Harold noticed something out of the corner of his eye turning to his right he saw someone wearing Spandex and a cape and what's more his eyes were closed and he appeared to be meditating Herold sat there and thought I'll do the same thing and so he closed his eyes but first he said look at this Joker over here thinking he's all calm by by meditating a he looks like he looks he he he he he looks calm and stress free and so Harold closed his eyes and then he did something that only superum can accomplish he breathed in and he breathed out and when he breathed out he let all of his stress go and then he did it again and again and before long a sense of calm washed over him 20 minutes later Harold opened his eyes and something incredible happened by that time all of the traffic was moving again Harold found found himself in the Middle Lane with no obstacles in front of him the mysterious Tesla driver was nowhere to be seen But Harold made a mental note to begin a regular practice of meditation thereafter and to consider buying spandex tights and a cape or not the last anyone saw of our hero was in the modest Suburban neighborhood of mild mannered Bo d satva as for Harold he spends his day sitting in front of a zoom screen in full low disposition his mind still takes a spin on Gridlock freeways from time to time but thanks to Captain enlightenment's example he has a means by which he can apply the brakes to his anger downshift his EO ego and pull his mind over into the middle path where he can drive well below the speed limit or somewhere in the vast Dharma realm people are suffering but somewhere out there is one who hears their cries wherever Restless minds are wandering Captain Enlightenment is there doing his best to make the world safe for meditation [Applause] what's next request you to share a few words with the community um so I often uh make a point that the religions of the world can be divided into families or species and the common perception that there is this thing called religion and you can make General statements about this thing called religion that apply to all religions equally um causes much misunderstanding and I would uh suggest that the religions that grew up in the Middle East what we call the monotheistic Traditions the Judaism Christianity Islam are essentially belief systems and so the idea of religion that we are most familiar with in the west is of religion as belief system and this can be seen very very easily from the fact that the word religion and the word faith are used more or less interchangeably so we can talk about the Christian faith or the Christian religion Islamic religion Islamic faith this in itself points to the centrality of faith and belief belief in dogmas in these Traditions now the religious that grew up in India and particularly Buddhism are of a different species and I would characterize this as an education system so this is a very different concept of a religion not a relig not a belief system religion but an education system religion and a lot of the confusion that arises um when people in the west particularly look at Buddhism is because they're looking at through the lens of a belief system oh you're a Buddhist what do you believe in or maybe they look for some kind of key teaching and say oh you you're a Buddhist you believe in reincarnation these are examples of ways in which people assuming that the belief system religion is the kind of template for all religions so Buddhism as as I in my view it's it's uh a a education system kind of religion and the eight-fold path is the most comprehensive and profound and Effective Education System the world has ever seen and to use a modern phrase It's a holistic system so that means you can't just take out one particular practice and develop it in isolation you can't just take out mindfulness and just practice mindfulness for example and the teaching is one of an education and a training of firstly of conduct secondly of emotion and the the heart and thirdly are wisdom thinking so let's go back to the gentleman in the gridlock in uh Silicon Valley or Bangkok wherever it might be so yes so how do we deal with anger and the Buddhist the terada Buddhist answer is we have to apply this education system in its entirety and that means we have practices um which are aimed at conduct practi is aimed at the heart and practic is aimed at wisdom and it has to we have to deal with all three areas simultaneously in order to be able to free ourselves from anger so with regard to conduct then the the tool that we use in the realm of conduct is us one of our superpowers so we can use this kind of and I and our superpower that we have is that we are not compelled to always follow our instincts so we're animals and we have animal instincts very um pretty much the same as all animals to tut to uh to live to procreate to to whatever these are basic human instincts and in the case of animals as far as We Know they are pretty much the the prisoner of their instincts they don't have any ability to reflect upon their instincts so if a cat sees a mouse it chases after the mouse instinctively immediately and I don't think a cat has any kind of moral dilemma about that and I don't think it's possible to to teach a cat you know that shouldn't do that you know it's not not a good thing to do you know um put yourself in that Mouse's shoes so as you know we I we don't know but we we're assuming that cats can't do that but human beings can so we have these strong instincts but it's it's normal um that we all experience times where we have not followed those instincts let's say we walk into an empty room and we see something valuable and something that we really want and there that that instinct we really want that thing but in most cases we don't take it it's not immediate I want that I like that I take it and that's the end of the matter in most cases we don't because we think well it's not mine it wouldn't be right or the person the owner of that person would be very upset if their treasured possession was to to disappear and so we have certain ideas ideals uh principles which can exert more influence on our action than our instincts and those overriding instincts and ideals are not fixed things they can be be strengthened and they can be trained and developed and this is the the area of Ed education in the Eightfold Path which we call CA so we're developing this mindfulness and awareness and recollection of agreements and commitments that we've made so we make a commitment for instance no matter how angry I may feel no matter how full of Rage I will not express that rage physically I will not physically or verbally abuse anyone else anybody at all under any circumstances so we're not talking about repressing Rage or pretending it's not there but we're saying we're not going to express it because once it's out there in the world then you created Kama which has consequences consequences for yourself your relationships with other people for the World At Large so this is the uh the first uh most important level we're not allowing our defilements to lead us to create bad K through action action or speech so we commit ourselves to trainings like I the precept that we take in when in the P language I undertake the precept to refrain from um hurting or harming or stealing for instance and so you have to really me maintaining that in your like in the front drawer of your mind as it were so it's right there so you can it's there immediately so when the Temptation or the pressure to express your anger arises or to steal something it's right there and you remember it and that's what mindfulness in daily life means mindfulness means your not just being in the present moment but it's recollecting what you need to recollect to keep on the path of dhama in this case the pre prep which you have undertaken voluntarily and in ethics and and training of Conduct in Buddha dhama the this is a key point it has to be voluntary if you refrain from certain actions simply because you're afraid of criticism or you're afraid of going to prison then that's better than than acting on that impulse for sure but it's not CA because it's not contributing to this overall education the the voluntary volitional element is crucial to the practice of CA so uh Now using recollection mindfulness of the first precept then you're not hammering on the on the steering wheel you're not opening your window and giving people one uh one fingered salutes and and you're not spraying four-letter words around the U around around the car so that's but you still got all this anger in your heart so so what do you do about that well the the training of the heart is based to a large degree on a very simple um basic psychological truth that is if you divide mental States into wholesome and UNH wholesome States you will observe that it's not possible for a holesome and an UNH wholesome state to coexist so what do what do we mean by wholesome and UNH wholesome skillful and unskillful so so any any thought which is um rooted in greed hatred and delusion is called an UNH wholesome mental state any mental state rooted in the absence of greed hatred and delusion would be a wholesome mental state so given that the wholesome and the unh cannnot coexist if the UNH wholesome mental state is manifesting we can perform a simple Act of replacement if you can create and cultivate a positive mental state which directly opposes the negative mental state if it reaches a certain level of intensity and power it will simply replace that UNH wholesome mental state the um here there are three kind of to simplify things so three that that we can put a lot of effort into um to great effect firstly is mindfulness secondly is patience thirdly is met or loving kindness of these three mindfulness um is um most powerful because if we're mind being mindful here means being sensitive to what's happening in the body and mind being sensitive to the arising passing away of wholesome and UNH wholesome dumbers now if we have a uh like a coarse and wholesome mental state like anger it doesn't arise out of nothing it might feel that way but if you look more closely there are various indications and they begin with the physical indications and you should try to really observe the pattern of arousal in the body that is um identified correlated with anger everyone's a little bit different so it might be some tension in the shoulders or in the jaw or in the in the um in the chest or in the arms um and and because physical phenomena are much easier to observe than mental phenomena you can catch this quite soon you say oh I've got that sensation in my I'm starting to get a little bit irritated so you're on the path towards this full-blown anger but you're a long way from it yet and so if you establish mindful at that point and just breathe in and breathe out and just allow that to pass away it never progresses to that level of full-blown um four-letter words spewing anger the development of of the Brahma we haras and of Metar and compassion and and developing a facility with this and so it becomes second nature again means that the likelihood that anger and aggression will take over the mind is much reduced because if you're developing a habit of kindness and forgiveness and being able to wish others well then the likelihood that the anger and and the thoughts that that that sustain it will arise is much less or if you have lost mindfulness and the and the anger is already Arisen then bringing the Mind back to thoughts of loving kindness can reach a stage where they simply replace the anger and the anger Falls away um in the forest tradition of which I'm part then the The Virtue that we hear and know when I remember when I was first among just seemed like that hearing this word more than any other word is patience and patient endurance and uh lumos has a a wonderful definition of this is peaceful coexistence with the unpleasant so just being able to hold things that you don't like it's like an unpleasant impingement and just being able to hold it there in your mind without pushing it away and and maintaining that sense of balance even in the presence of something unpleasant and that's a real life skill to develop and that again will um inhibit the arising of anger so we're working with the emotion of anger by cultivating wholesome mental states which directly oppose it and which can PR prevent its arising in the first place or else replace it once it's Arisen this is the cultivation of the heart but ultimately we have to move on to the cultivation of wisdom because anger is always based upon a certain way of thinking a certain way of framing experiences and unless we change that basic habit of thinking that that that the kinds of frames in which we're looking at our experience will'll never be totally free of anger and so we we're developing various Reflections and there are two kinds of wise Reflections one one are are based more on dealing with the um the the thoughts and the the negative thoughts which sustain anger um by sort of outflanking them looking them in different ways for example let's let's examine anger and we can look at some of the classic um analogies would say like if you have a a huge Forest like this Redwood beara it's like hundreds of Acres of amazing redwood trees or and extending beyond that to you know all of the forest cover of U Northern California and you could destroy all of that with a single match a single flame and similarly all of the good C that you created over many lifetimes you can destroy with just one second of anger that's that's how potent and how dangerous and how frightening anger can be and and when we're angry we can do anything people are angry uh can act in ways that normally they would never act um even to the extent of uh hitting harming or even killing people they love it's that awful that terrible so we're trying to create a new kind of emotion in which we we we see anger as as dangerous and frightening and shameful this is a very skillful way of using the thinking mind but now we also looking in a more analytical way and there's a a story you may have heard and I think I really like this story is it's it's about a man who has a brand new boat he he has a little house by the lake and he likes to go out on the lake and he's bought himself a new boat and he's rowing out into the middle of the lake and he's just feeling so good and then there's what's happened some careless person has rode their boat into the back of his boat scratched all the paint workor and of course he's angry you know how could you do you know this big Lake you know and and all the places you could you could row your boat why you row the row into the back of my bat you know so he's very self-righteous and angry and uh eventually he goes home and and the uh the boat is repaired and he sets out again and would you believe it the same thing happens for a second time but but when he turns around to give the uh the rower a piece of his mind he discovers that this in the second occasion this boat has no rower it's just drifted out has become loose of its Moorings the damage to his boat however is exactly the same as on the first occasion but now the question is do you think if it was you or do do you think this person would be as angry the first time the second time is the first time given that the damage to the boat is the same on both occasions I think most people would say they'd be more Angry the first time but why is it that the second time you won't you don't feel so angry well because there's nobody rowing the B so your your perception of a a being who has is responsible for your pain um is a factor in the arising of anger so it's not the the thing that happens itself but it's caught up with your ideas about who's responsible you see so this this is like a new perspective on on anger and he said why is it if if it just happens without somebody that you can blame that somehow you feel less angry and then if you say oh so and so made me angry okay well you say what exactly did he do okay he did this or he said this so let's say somebody else did the same thing say it's your child your daughter or your son or your husband or your wife would the anger be of the same intensity and if you think well if it was my daughter did it or my son did probably wouldn't be so angry but if the cause of the anger was the action or the speech it would be independent of who who perform that action you see or you your yourself say somebody did something you say made you angry but is there a difference if it's one day you're really stressed out and tired and unhappy and somebody says that and on another occasion you're just feeling really happy and and the the anger is probably different so again if the anger is is the result of what that person person did or said there shouldn't be that variation it shouldn't be affected or by your mental state so these kinds of consideration lead us to see that there is a there is a difference between physical and mental suffering so if um if you were to put your hand in a flame it would burn because of the nature of skin human skin and and a murderer put his hand in the flame his hand would burn a bodh sufur an Aran put his hand in the flame it would burn because this is the nature of skin so this is the Physical Realm where it's a cause and effect relationship very clearly but somebody says something or does something really nasty and one person might be really angry another person might start crying and be you know be completely destroyed but an arahan or a bodh SATA uh would not experience any of those kinds of uh reaction so where is a physical Rea a physical impulse let's say the contact with flame is irrespective of the mind of the person some action or speech of another person will create suffering in the mind um only when you lack mindfulness and wisdom so mental suffering is a co-production there's two things involved there's the trigger from outside and there's the unenlightened ignorant reaction and so if we um are able to train our mind and we have the mindfulness and wisdom then the TR we can't ever live in a world where we're going to be free of triggers and things that encourage us or try to Incline us or tempt us or pressure us us into suffer but we can live in the world without suffering if we know how to look after our mind and so looking more and more clearly at the way the mind works and to see um the kinds of thinking which um which react to triggers from outside and result in suffering and the ways of thinking and the ways of looking and framing experience which prevent that anger from occurring this is this is the path of of Buddhist practice but we have to be doing these things together you know like shortterm like first aid kind of level is don't express this verbally or physically because then it's spread and it's hard to um put a halt to it you're taking care of your heart so you're minimizing the likelihood of anger arising and you have means to um to overcome it and to let go of it when it occurs but to deal with it at its root you need this wise reflection and ultimately what we call weasa now where you see mental States arising and passing away without owner without an owner according simply as a flow as a stream of phenomena so this is the education system of the Buddha we call Sila and suarti and the training of conduct training of emotions in the heart and the training of wisdom ask the question according to that so it mean that um as we as a human um we different than animal because animal has the Instinct they reflect they react right directly to the Instinct but we have brain and mind as a human that be different so that's why uh when like anle will be instin anger that mean reaction to anger like well no anger is not an instinct in the same way like the the instinct to keep alive the instinct to procreate these are basic animal instincts but anger is always based upon wrong thinking it's always based upon ignorance okay so like in in in some other religious Traditions you have idea of like righteous indignation and or often people this days will say that there's like good anger it means like if you're in a you're being oppressed by somebody who has so much more power than you do um and and you're fighting like a losing battle you know it's like just really hard to keep going because there's so little hope that you'll ever be successful so people will say only the only way that you can keep fighting and keep going is to make yourself angry that's your fuel to keep going when there's little hope of success but in bosom we say that that's that's foolish that doesn't that doesn't work and because anger is always coming from ignorance and distorted view of reality and as long as you have that anger you're never going to act wisely so letting go of anger where does that take you it takes you to equinity balance but that's not the end of the story it doesn't mean okay now you're okay you're balanced but balance is the ground in which wisdom can arise what what to do next what to do first what to do after shortterm plan long-term plan whatever it is what Buddhism is saying is that when you have that equinity of mind that balance of mind you make wiser decisions and that if you're motivated by anger even if it's anger in a good cause you're always like sabotaging yourself and you never get good results so it's so it's more an can be like collected in the Long View all kind of right and time could be experience in the past and all kind of thing to at the point of each person when you have I mean anger more than others yeah well you have to look at the the thinking that lies behind the anger the assumption that lies behind the anger like he shouldn't do that she shouldn't be that that way you know why not why shouldn't you you know somebody has that kind that level of intelligence that level of kindness that level of patience got that much greed that then it's quite natural that they would act in that way it's the the the result of all of the C that they've created in the past and then when we do that then the way to handle it is first for mindful being Mindful and have patient after and then well first of all don't act and don't speak you know motivated by that anger yes and because every time you do it makes it stronger so every time you act upon anger you increase the likelihood that you will act upon anger in the future future that's the come that's the comea you make it's like you dig the the hole a little bit deeper every time it's all about practicing totic not just not just Mindful and know that but practic after to contain the cell clean not just only I mean like the question I asked you before I on so it's more like some people when they're talking I listen to so different D and talking being Mindful and what does that mean being mindful what does that mean what does it mean uh so it's more like you know the moment at the moment what you're doing so they say it's like but so so if uh if someone is like um robbing a bank yeah and they know what they're doing and they're are they mindful mindful can be Al right well I wouldn't call that mindfulness no not in the Buddhist sense because in Buddhist sense you don't take mindfulness away from all the other qualities so mindfulness is is also associated with like you know and sense of what's right and what's wrong and what's kind and what's not kind and what will be hurtful to other people this it's not just I know what know my left hand's doing and my right hand's doing you know it's that's not that's not really Buddhist mindfulness you have to have the context the whole the buddh Right View as the context in which you practice mindfulness there's any other questions and some of the men talked with me before John I wonder if you have any um perhaps uh general advice for men who are uh inspired by the monastic form of practice and have perhaps explored it a bit and are considering taking further steps I'm not sure do you have temporary ordination in in your tradition we don't quite have temporary ordination but people can come and kind of spend time in the monastery take a precepts and train and perhaps the novice precepts for a period of time but not become a for a short time noice precept yes so we all have ideas and and you know when come and live in the monastery itself and you know if you just coming for shorter periods it's like kind of like honeymoon period you know you to sort of see all the good things um so if you feel that you have that kind of vocation or it's important to come and spend a longer period of time a few months in which you will go through the ups and downs and you will have doubts and you will some things you like and some things you don't like and you have to go through all of that um as well and get a better idea of whether you're really suited for this kind of life and um in in in this tradition to take maybe the semer the novice precepts and that's a good time to check and really see well now you're living this life and you really feel that this is you know is a way forward for you um so that that would be my recommendation after you've been practicing for a while next step is to make a bit stronger commitment and to be um in the monastery and living within the the rules and regulations and following the monastic life in one form depending on on uh what the the monastery provide can provide for you um and then just go for it um yeah the Buddha says the holy life is the you know it's the most excellent way of living your life as a human being that's that's certainly my my conviction I think if you have if you don't have family UH responsibilities and and things that that you really need to attend to you have that kind of Freedom autonomy then and you have the faith in Buddha dhama then wonderful Choice best thing you could possibly do first you sh about how to translate yes I mean if uh if you ever have the the opportunity to come to Thailand I'd be very happy to um introduce you to the schools I'm working with and you can see for yourself because it's uh um uh very very briefly my coming back to what I what I mentioned just now is I see the Eightfold Path as like the ultimate education system and so the idea is to adapt that to an ordinary education system in a way in a way that's appropriate for for children and not for for children who want to become monastics but for children who going to live life in the world now from the eight-fold path we usually um summar bring that down to the three trainings of CA Samaran B I found that when we were first when I was first developing this model that these days more kind of urban um middle class people find a little bit worried if you use too many overtly Buddhist terms you know they're just worried well yeah maybe you know you just turn my son or daughter into a a monk or a nan that's not what I want you know um and there's a lot of misunder understanding about what a Buddhist model of Education would mean for me it means that um um it's a education of every area every dimension of life rather than the purely intellectual and it fills in a lot of the gaps which you which are left in most conventional educational models so I went to the sutas and read through and I was looking for some alternative way of of presenting the same material and they came across teaching what call the four kinds of PA so the word PA translates literally as cultivation but it is the word which is um also the word entires for meditation it's like paana and in the teaching on the four paana the Buddha just simply takes this three threefold training of sealer of conduct samti of the mind of the heart and B and just presents it in a slightly different way so CA is divided into two so it's the human the relationship to the material world and the second is the relationship to the social world so this is CA your conduct visis the world divided into two material world and social world world and then Sila sumati which when you use that word it encourages people to think it's a matter of sitting with your eyes closed then it's the training of the heart and then wisdom is wisdom so our our model is like for p cultivating the human uh the children the students relationship to the material world the students Rel relationship to the social world and then the students inner world of emotion and is thinking and and wisdom faculty with regard to that first of the four kinds of powera then there some mod like sort of concentric sphere so the inner sphere is that um element of the physical world which you take immediate respon responsibility for it's your body so that developing a wise relationship to the body so that would include things like nutrition and exercise and Sport um and getting enough rest and human biology and sex education everything to do with the physical body and then the out the second Circle would be the material world which you have uh everyday contact with including technology and and uh the what we call the for requisites of clothing and shelter and and the material world directly around you and how to and then like the Material Sciences can be included in this quadrant so we're also sort of apply dividing up the academic disciplines and allotting them to these four different quadrants and then the Outer Circle would be the environment and how to uh how to um relate wisely to the to the environment so there's the body the material world around us and then the environment with regard to the social world then we're talking about how to use uh precepts regulations conventions agreements precepts as skillful tools to create the kinds of environment which are most conducive to the realization of human goals so like in a classroom you know what what kind of agreements do we need to uh as regards our conduct and our speech to create an atmosphere most conducive to learning in a family what's the kind of agreements we need to uh to create a sense of safety and Trust so on so this is the whole skillful use of precepts and and agreements in in in social groups and the second area we stress is developing communication skills and the third is developing the the wish and the skills to contribute to the larger to the to the larger community and to the society at large so more alteristic um development and then the the academic disciplines that would come here would be like social studies and history and and things like this then the the the inner the heart would be um emphasizing we call the forite efforts teaching children ways to look after their minds in such a way to prevent the arising of of unh wholesome things like um stress anxiety depression so on how do you look after your mind to protect yourself against them or if they do arise how do you deal with them and teaching meditation practices to uh cultivate wholesome mental states of mindfulness and patience and contentment and how to develop skills of self motivation and resilience and patience and and all these kinds of things and then the fourth area will start off with teaching uh creative and critical thinking skills and then going on to more specifically U Buddhist kinds of contemplations and Reflections so that that would be the the overall kind of structure of the the model one of the the there are some kind of um key um features one is um um the Buddha referred to the arahant as The Graduate the the one of us he's the one who's no longer need to study um he's done all his work so from that we can say apart from the arant or the great everyone we're still things we need to study so in the school we say we have three three groups of students there's the children the teachers and the parents and and so this idea this we're a learning community and everyone's learning the teachers are learning the parents are learning and we have idea of Kalan a mitter of good friendship and trying to create this this good friendship community and so there's a very high level of commitment expected both from teachers and parents and and in the admission um process then the the te the parents are interrog you know they um they really have to show that they're really into this and they're really going to support their child sometimes the child is really um um ready for this kind of but the parents obviously AR and they and then then we won't take them because if the parents aren't supported it just won't work what age are the student well in in in in in Bangkok there's Tosi school which is kindergarten up to grade six B and then we have the co-ed boarding school which is just down the road from my Hermitage which is uh High School from morning to M so M1 to M6 all this High School everywhere now in crisis student now I mean as the Mom myself who son in teenager and doing the classes what I'm doing not just teaching but Buddhism whatever the I have but then I try to I mean my uh what do you call that um my uh ethic kind of point of teaching is first being a teacher teaching is the most important thing to teat is to teach them to be a good human being and the subject is come later yeah my my criticism is that again you know in Thailand so much so much problem because of this assumption that that you know there are the Western values are Universal values and we have to adapt to them and Western ways of doing things so if you look at the belief system religions Christianity Islam you you have to teach the life of the founder as you know if you were to teach Christianity you teach life of Jesus if you teach Islam you teach the life of Muhammad no you have no alternative and Buddhist just assume therefore if you're going to teach Buddhism it should be based on life of the Buddha and I don't think that's that's necessary and correct it doesn't work very well um particularly if you have kids these days who are a little bit skeptical and alienated you know and then what's so what's the first thing you got these kids who are not really very committed already and you say oh the bodh SATA is born and and from his mother's womb and he Tak seven steps and pronounce I'm the greatest you know you know what what more efficient way of alienating your your students you know so you know the I'm developing again with like a Buddhist curriculum my scores was um it's like practi IAL Buddhism so it's a thematic approach this and this is the way the Buddha talk so what is it that's important to kids these days what do they worry about what do they suffer what do they what are they interested in and then you take that as your basis and then you say well this is what Buddhism says about this and then you can bring stories from the life of the Buddha to illustrate but you're illustrating themes and things that really uh connect with the children rather than saying we have to learn the Buddhist life from from A to B to C and that this doesn't work it really doesn't work to you gonna say something so the so in the first quadrant or like the the relationship with the material world is like the body and then the material world directly around us the four requisit and technology and all these things and then the the environment and then the second area the relationship to society learning how to use precepts and agreements and conventions and rituals and all these things to create the kind of environments that are most um supportive for for for us as human beings second one would be commun communication skill and third the uh the motivation and the skills to help others and to go out to the wider world so the the the uh the kindergarten and primary school is in Bangkok and the the co-ed boarding school is in a place called Bak Chong which is a couple of hours to the Northeast in the countryside which is where I live and then there's a third school that follows my my model in a slightly different way it's an international school in in chenai and so that that the one in chai is called paten so if you want to uh look at the website p n y a d n uh I think it's o g doth I think but if you have P then you'll find it and then the the the two the the other two most of the um most of the material online is in Thai rather than English but um ba PR is p a n y a p p r a t w p.org and the one in Bangkok is called Tosi school is Tosi which is t h a WS I School dot dot something yeah not been old I was wishing to send my kid over to your school at that but um yeah if if you as they say if you or any of your colleagues want to friends want to come over and visit some of these schools I'd be happy to arrange it for you do we have summer call there is summer course at toi for kids yeah but that's usually in in April cu the long school holidays in Thailand are April May 27 and years old the um the Tosi school and Baden School school um Thai language and the um the one in shingai is international school so it's English English for people like us who have responsib I really how you mention about comfort and almost bra bra and muscle you have couple know citation howle how observe the style so that you know we're in the moment of things that we you know that you have the ability to say well I well I would say that even in even in a busy a busy day A busy life there are lots of short um gaps one two minutes three minutes it might be walking from your car to a building walking upstairs walking downstairs standing in the lift um and you can reclaim those short periods just to reestablish your mindfulness and generally like in a stressful day it's it's rare that there are like major stressful incidents every now and again but it's more this steady drip drip drip of of stressful inance which by that like 5 or 6 in the evening you know you're exhausted but if you can cut those off and just like come back to yourself and start again start again throughout the day then you find your your the quality of your mindfulness is um is much stronger and as I say like um standing in the lift and just watching your breath or your Mantra whatever your practice might be or uh learn walking meditation is such a good practice to develop because it's one that's just instantly in a in able to integrate into daily life when you're walking just as they say um walking from your car to a building building to your car walking across a park and um learning to just reestablish your your mindfulness again and again good thing is if your telephone rings don't pick it up immediately Breathe In Breathe Out Breathe In Breathe Out breathe in breathe out then pick up your telephone no it's I me in terms of time it's just a few seconds but it really enables you to be that much present more present when you when you speak and more mindful in speech and things like this meditation a daily meditation practice is uh really helps a lot and especially if you can meditate first thing in the morning meditating before you go to sleep is good I mean it's means you'll probably get a good night sleep and it's releases stress good thing to do but like the real work of meditation you don't it's difficult to do that at at nighttime but first thing in the morning when you get up you're fresh you slept uh just wash your F or just s get ready and and uh chant or sit for half an hour and then if you can um either have a diary or just be very observant of any changes just small because it will be incremental changes it won't be like wow kind of things you know but you'll notice just a little bit more present a little bit more patient a little bit Kinder a little bit easier to let go in daily life and when you can see that connection between a daily meditation practice and your daily life and this quality of mindfulness and so on that that motivates you to to keep going and it's and it's continuity which is the key really there some people can get really enthusiastic and go off on a retreat and get and then they just allow it all to dissipate and and that's not as beneficial as just a steady a steady practice every day um even if it's just for a few minutes just maintain that continuity

Channel: DharmaRealmLive

Views: 3,009

Keywords: DRBA, dharma, buddhist, buddhism

Id: fr6uzvOQqMQ

Length: 68min 52sec (4132 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2024