Is Life Intrinsically Meaningful? | Vajrashura

foreign [Applause] could I just asked that if if I if I if my voice drops and you can't hear me just just point upwards at the back sometimes when I get spiritual my voice drops you know um anyways thank you much Amanda for that wonderful introduction oh there you are sorry um my trabando asked big questions and um uh you know these are impossible questions to answer as you said and I think Buddhism does answer these questions but the problem is that we don't have the minds to take in the answers yeah we don't have the minds to take in the answers um I mean is life intrinsically meaningful yes I presume I could stop there but I'm going to keep going anyway um it's a really difficult question to unfold and to really give a flavor of um you might remember Ian mcgilchrist's four paths to truth he talks about how we can get to true to True science reason imagination and intuition and in one of my bandage talks he adds the body or doing those in an embodied way and um so there's lots of different things that we need to have and we need to have a certain quality of mind to really be able to get a feeling for what this question is yeah but the problem is that uh we don't always have that mind and um uh what we often do is we only maybe focus on one or two of these Pathways to truth so my background is that I'm a scientist I studied theoretical physics in college and still a master is in the same as well crashed out of a PhD because of Buddhism but I did do enough training in a two two two to learn uh to be a scientist and I love science you know I love reason um but the problem is that when we come to questions like this is life intrinsically meaningful um it's all too easy to be corralled by our our reasoning faculty our scientific function into a simplistic or uh shallow answer you know um or or we just um you know we we get lazy and we come to an easy answer that has no Nuance in it so when we approach questions like this uh reason isn't enough uh we need just a very big Consciousness to explore it and we might even need things like a contradiction Paradox uh to come to the full of Truth so I wanted to I have a few quotes from Bounty tonight and and one or two others and uh the first one I wanted to say was an aphorism of bounties where he says the meaning of life is to be found only Beyond life the meaning of life is to be found only Beyond life yeah so I have no idea what he meant I mean uh it would be foolish to say to nail down what he did actually say there I think um you know Bounty is loathes these aphorisms and they're all really pity aphorisms that you know you could Hazard a guess you know you could say well did he mean something like it's only in death that we can know what life is about or maybe he's getting at something like um you know the meaning of life can't be perceived by what we normally experience in life our normal mind in life it could be any of those things there's so many different interpretations that we could draw out of that that pity statement that aphorism the meaning of life is to be found only Beyond life yeah um and for me maybe this is uh this is uh what I really Delight in in terms of my scientific training I love aphorisms like that I love really juicy questions to chew on or to to to to to to to turn over in your mind um they're a bit like Everlasting Gobstoppers if you know what I found where every day when you keep sucking on them there's a new flavor it emerges and something points more deeply at the nature of mind so um I think so much of the Dharma is staying with these really good questions and uh you know maybe translating them or or finding ways that they get activated in you but we do have to I do have to say something about uh if life is intrinsically meaningful um so let's just look first at meaning so even the word meaning is very difficult to to to understand to say what it is here um in terms of its definition it tends to mean something like um um if something has meaning it is of significance or it is worthwhile uh it's sufficiently important to be worthy of attention that's another way of looking at it um so so you're really asking is life significant is life worthwhile yeah and interestingly the word from meaning is from the word mean which if you go back to the Indo-European languages comes from the same word as mind so you could say that the nature of mind is the nature of meaning as well for example the word Manas uh which is in some of our names here um is a word for mind that comes from the same root as meaning so perhaps the question becomes is there something in life is there something essential in life something uh sufficiently important that we should give it a lot of weight is there something that is of meaning significance and worthiness maybe that's what the question becomes and it's intrinsic to life it's not just in our life but in all life in in your life in your life and your life in all life that we meet it's not just particular to any one of us or any number of us foreign I remember being struck very much by um uh reading a survey of Buddhism which is banter's kind of classic book and in that he says at every stage of the spiritual life we are faced by the necessity of making a choice between either of two opposites on the one hand and the mean which reconciles the opposition by transcending it on the other I'll read that again at every stage of the spiritual life we are faced by the necessity of making a choice between either of two opposites on the one hand and the mean which reconciles the opposition by transcending it on the other so so to paraphrase it a bit more um what Bounty is saying is that uh again and again and again in one spiritual life one finds oneself coming coming up against these opposites that uh you could say even their extremes and uh the spiritual path is to trying to find the middle way between these two extremes the middle way it's not just a halfway point between them but something that unifies them transcends them in a way renders them renders those extremes um or irrelevant yeah renders those extremes irrelevant so in a way um yeah and he sees the middle life outside the middle way as something we continuously need to be open to and um I thought this was a really I find this I've always found this a really interesting reflection so when I'm in any situation what extremes am I tending to here and what is the Transcendent middle way yeah just to give a small example I remember many of you are on your first or second retreation I remember on my second Retreat um finding it at times wonderful and at times hellish yeah and someone asked me on the minibus on the way home how was the retreat for you and I just had to look at him and go I can't answer that question and um what's become clear on that what became clear on that Retreat is that I I just went to extremes of joy and extremes of almost despair at times and the gap between them might only be half an hour yeah so maybe some of you are experiencing this already under its rate so that's a really interesting question then isn't it so so I think um what we have to do when we're presented with these ways of going is ask what is the middle way here yeah and the middle way for me there and that was quite practical really it was not to take too much pleasure in the joy and not to take too much despair in the hard times and try and find something that that went beyond them a deeper sense of equanimity a deeper sense of commitment to the ideals of Buddhism where it didn't matter if I was happy or sad yeah so it kind of transcended the two so that's a very practical and and every day you could say example of the middle way but I hope it gives you a sense of what I mean by um moving to these extremes and um because we have this tendency to literalism and because we tend to fall back too much perhaps at times in the rational mind um I thought it might be useful to use this Paradigm for looking at meaning and look at the I think we can learn a lot by looking at the extremes we fall into or the unhelpful polarities we fall into and then trying to find the middle way yeah and this is something the Buddha did back in the day when he was practicing so the extremes um that were present in his life if you know the life of his Enlightenment uh on the one hand one extreme was self-mortification where people would be extremely uh practice these very extreme practices of uh body crushing you're not crushing the spirit of the body uh not eating uh uh sitting in freezing cold Mountain Streams and so on to try and crush the body and stick into submission and on the other hand the Buddha's early life if you believe the stories was one of complete pleasure and opulence so the Buddha had to go and find the middle way between complete pleasure on the one hand and complete um well you could say self-denial on the other yes as complete self-indulgence on the one hand complete self-denial on the other and his middle way um yeah was was well the spiral path uh the law of karma as we'll see in a little while another extreme that we that that is traditional in Buddhism is you know do we have a soul that's Everlasting and unchanging or is there nothing after death and uh they are extremes as well that are very common and the Transcendent middle way there is seeing that there is something but it is not something that we can pin down it's ever changing it's ever flowing there's not nothing but there's not not nothing either yeah so uh again the middle way is always subtle and hard to understand with it with our everyday Minds or the other classic one in in um metaphysics is uh just the question of existence and non-existence generally and uh the answer to that is condition co-production the middle way so I'll come back to that again in a few minutes but I do find this a really interesting like I I think so much of my Dharma life has been finding really good questions to reflect upon yeah well I've I really like I've really enjoyed reflecting on as well over the years is the question of free will do we have free will yeah and the extremes we can move to here would be on the one hand we've complete Free Will and on the other hand we're completely predetermined we're like a wound up clock that are just playing itself out yeah and neither those are subtle enough neither does are true I would say if you think you have complete free will then you're probably not looking at just how much you're led by your desires by your compulsions by your addictions and so much of the time as well I don't even know what I want anyway and I'm kind of find myself doing it and rationalizing it afterwards I wouldn't call that free will yeah so so the middle way here perhaps is something of the fact that as we as we practice as we develop a more fit mind we tend to find that we have more Choice yeah we tend to find with more choice but even that is not is is not nuanced enough because as we develop a fit mind we we become less and less dependent upon a self we become less and less referenced inner self and we start to experience ourselves in ways beyond the self so what does free free will of the self mean anywhere there then so um the question of Free Will doesn't quite fit anymore in some ways so so middle the middle way is not just the midpoint between the two it's a subtle path there is always dramatically beyond the original terms of what's being laid out I hope that's clear from that example and you could say that the whole nature of mine project the whole project of Buddhism is trying to find the middle way to wisdom between these extremes that life will throw up so when it comes to whether life is intrinsic meaning it is useful to look at the extremes and then go from there so on the one hand we have the idea that life is no meaning yeah um and if that's the case then life is simply uh probably just going to be about gaining pleasure having pleasure as much as you can avoiding pain until the lights go out yeah um which is a rather Bleak feature of the universe or another another version of this might be something like um life simply has the meaning we ascribe to it yeah life simply has the meaning we ascribe to it so this would be the more existentialist position I guess you could say and while it's part it's probably a more positive Vision than life having no meaning it's deeply problematic as well because it leads to me having my meaning and you having your meaning and you having your meaning and who's to say which is better yeah and that leads to all kinds of other problems foreign and then on the other hand the Other Extreme um well the one that occurred to me I'm sure there's lots of different ones that could come out but maybe this is my background not as a scientist but as a Roman Catholic is this kind of uh um sense that everything you do God has a purpose for you you know your purpose is laid out in every moment everything is significant and laid out for your the purpose of your life yeah and that just feels like a prison that's entirely uh not useful as well because I think sometimes just things just happen for no purpose you know so so so so so I find it interesting to reflect that those are the kind of things we can go to and neither are subtle enough to be a uh to do justice to the big questions that we're trying to ask you and neither of them feeling in in tune with Buddhism actually so so the middle way here I think in terms of meaning um well it's the answer to all the middle ways it really is the Buddha's teaching of condition co-production uh well I'll I'll break that down a bit more so I want to talk a bit about the Buddha's uh teaching the middle part the middle way the his Central teaching and Buddhism of condition co-production um so he said that things do not arise randomly they don't arise arbitrarily um this is another extreme to be avoided and on the other hand they're not completely mechanistic and not completely um predetermined um this was a very strong view in Europe by the way after the enlightenment the European Enlightenment that uh the prevailing view in scientists at the time was that we live in A Clockwork universe that we're discovering the rules of in fact there was a feeling uh after after Newton's time that we pretty much answered everything yeah so um be careful with that kind of attitude as well yeah um so instead the Buddha says that there are these recognizable patterns and Trends and tendencies in reality that we can recognize and things arise things pass away independent upon a vast network of conditions and um if you've most of you I'm sure will have come across this teaching which comes originally from Buddha Gosha but has really been drawn out by bante and sabuti in the last few years which is the teaching of the neemas or kind of um laws you could say so um I will explore them in a moment but just to mention that they're the physical level of things of conditionality biology biological simple psychological Karma and Dharma so so I want to look at these now for a little bit but I want to bring um a a scientific point of view to them as well which is that I found it very useful to bring to these this idea of emergence so emergence is this phenomena in science where something emerges something emerges that is rather unpredictable from the conditions that lead to it emerging now you see it a bit you see it a lot in biology and one of the ways of looking at it is that um it has qualities that are there and those qualities none of those qualities are present in the sum of the parts that led to this emergence yeah so um it's a it's a relatively it's a modern um way of thinking relatively modern way of thinking it's part of evolution really and and Buddhism traditionally never really talked explicitly about this or about Evolution although I think it is there quite implicitly yeah so we start off with uh the physical level of the universe uh the rules that I would have studied in janovachi would have studied in college as part of our theoretical physics you know the the laws of gravity and ordering in the universe at the physical level the physical level below the the biological and then once a certain complexity and order has come about at the physical level something new and unpredictable emerged and we we still don't quite know how uh fully which is biological life something new emerged out of that yeah as and as as new and as different as living cells are to sound yeah so if you think about the difference in living cells and sand who could have predicted uh living cells creatures from Sand or minerals or whatever and then once this biological level uh or as this biological level reaches a certain level of complexity and order something else uh emerged something quite unpredictable as well in a way which was simple Consciousness yeah and this was a radical departure as well and this you know this would be a like it's as radical as the the brain of a dog is to an amoeba yeah and then once the simple Consciousness has reached a certain level reached a certain level of complexity in order something new again emerged which was the self-aware individual uh self-consciousness the being which could be aware but also aware that they are aware yeah and uh this is um something as radical as you know someone on Retreat cultivating mindfulness uh the mind that they have compared to the person compared to the Sheep out in the field there I was watching them earlier run around uh so it's quite a radical departure and something quite different yeah so this has emerged uh out of a certain degree of you know complexity at about at the con at the level of sinful consciousness and then and we've all heard this before but then uh where this becomes something um beyond the level of science is that once and the level of self-awareness become reaches a certain level of refinement complexity order something else emerges a way of being which isn't rooted in a sense of self which doesn't need to have a tightly defined sense of self to operate to to and doesn't have the restrictions of self to operate in the world yeah and this is as different and as new as the mind of an enlightened being as to someone spending older days on Instagram or Twitter yeah so it's a radically new departure it's something completely different of a completely different order yeah and who knows maybe there's further emergence Beyond this you know I'd like to think that uh this is as far as we can see and there's probably even more happening than this with our limited Minds that's as far as we can see that's the Horizon to which we can currently see but maybe there's endless emergence who knows yeah so you can see already then that from the Interstellar dust that formed the Earth and and and came together uh billions of years ago all the way true to the mind of the Buddha there isn't the universe this recurring phenomena of something radically new emerging uh from something lesser you could say or or certain uh yeah something completely unpredictable emerging uh when the conditions are right yeah and so we live in a universe which Trends towards the realization of higher and higher uh States Of Consciousness which are more and more in tune with the way things are so already I think we can see that there is meaning inherent in the universe here and um just as at the level of um physics at the levels of biology just that there's the laws of uh thermodynamics gravity uh biology and so on at the level of karma we have laws as well and probably at the level of Dharma as well but they're probably a bit too hard for me to see right now from where I am but um we have the Great Law of karma at this level of self-awareness the level of of um the individual um and their actions their intended actions so this is the level of Ethics which I want to spend a little bit of time on so just to most of you will have heard this already but just to remind you again that ethics in Buddhism is um ethics is uh our intentional actions so we talk in terms of not in terms of Good and Evil but in terms of skillful and unskillful so a skillful action is an action which opens up our Consciousness uh helps us be more connected with life with other people uh moves us towards Enlightenment um helps us feel happy open and free yeah their actions that are based upon love connection empathy generosity awareness kindness wisdom and then um on skillful actions or actions which are based upon the opposite of those hatred cruelty uh selfishness uh ignorance and so on Greed and their actions which tend to close down our world which tend to cut us off from each other uh which tend to make our world a slightly more dark and more paranoid place I can really recommend Savage Marty's Book for a thorough explanation of all this if you want to read further not about being good and um the thing I I particularly haven't come from a from a Catholic background the thing I love about better Statics is that it puts the responsibility back on you firmly uh you have to decide you can't tell from the outside particularly maybe kind of they're like killing someone or something but it's very hard to tell a lot of the time uh if an action is it is is skillful or unskillful simply by its external expression it is the intention although the external expression is important too and it is a skill so it is a skill um the analogy Savannah makes she's a great cook is uh cookery books you know you can read about you can read about uh cooking but until you do it until you acquire the skill of cooking uh you won't get better at it until you live out an ethical life and try and base your actions more and more upon those positive states of mind you won't really learn what ethics is and I've put a static spoils down to one thing it's about being self less self-preoccupied yeah being less self-preoccupied being less self-orientated getting caught up Less in your own dramas and taking in other people more yep so um and all of this is described in the law of karma so the law of karma simply says that actions of consequences uh skillful actions lead to positive consequences unskillful actions lead to negative consequences um and Karma simply means action or World action yeah and we have the karma the action and the fruit and it's very very misunderstood Karma doesn't mean predestination it doesn't mean punishment it doesn't mean Destiny it doesn't mean fate it doesn't mean um that everything that happens to you is your fault all those kinds of things um I I remember one time uh Madonna had said something very unfortunate about Karma that uh things that had happened to people it was because of something they've done in the previous life and usually when this happens your local Buddha Center will get a call and I had to uh go on to the Irish National radio and explain how this wasn't the case it was my five minutes of fame and uh but anyways but um there's so many different levels of which things can operate you know it could be that you feel unwell because of your karma but it could be that you're simply sick yeah I remember a friend of mine one time being on a solitary retreation it was quite intense for him and he felt like he's processing all this pain and then he went to the doctor and he discovered he just had a collapsed lung so uh and he'd been working with us for two days so um you can never tell you can never tell you have to be very careful ascribing things to karma that's a true story I'm afraid um so that's the first thing uh you can't blame people for the misfortunes uh the next thing to say is that um all of our actions includes our thoughts and our intentions and our emotions are themselves actions as well uh and you'll see this on Retreat your intentions kind of a powerful effect on you particularly on retreat and then the third thing to say is that these are natural laws just to really bring that home it's uh just like apples fall from trees uh Karma actions have effects yeah and the Buddha didn't invent Karma any more than Isaac Newton inventor gravity yeah he just described how it works yeah but wouldn't it be interesting though this might be another reflection for you um we take the law of gravity very seriously indeed yeah um if you want to see how seriously you take it just go up and climb up on top of the roof there and stand at the edge and see how you feel yeah and uh wouldn't it be wonderful to take the law of karma as seriously as we took the law of gravity yeah and yet karmically speaking we're probably jumping off roofs all the time you know or or it's staggering very near the edge of the precipice all the time we don't take it really seriously enough anyways just another reflection to think about I'd like to look at the law of karma is that we're constantly re-becoming yeah we're constantly re-becoming at every level of the nemas at every level of those uh you know the physical biological simple Consciousness Karma Dharma and every level of those there is constant change yeah and it's easy to see this in the physical Universe um we can be a bit more resistant to seeing it in our bodies as we get older and you can and Retreat we really see this in your mind as well just how much everything is always changing and so we're always re-becoming our minds and our our hearts are are never still and we're always um um re-becoming and the world around us is always changing that that is also also really coming all the time and um so in a way uh the Buddha when he talks about conditionality in its full breath it's talking about a huge River of conditions that that carries us on in our lives and it's very very difficult to Fathom this one needs an enlightened mind really to see this one needs a really fish broad mind to see this and a lot of the time we're swept Along by unseen currents in our lives uh karmic and otherwise and when it comes to karmic um I'll just mention briefly if there are two predominant ways this re-becoming occurs here so the first unbounty Senator actually has talked a lot about this so the first one is that we can go round and round with the same old habits predominating um this is cyclic conditionality particularly I think it becomes it's about where we're blown around by the worldly winds being preoccupied with pleasure trying to avoid pain trying to gain things trying to avoid loss and um you know sooner do we gain one but the other one we find ourselves at the other one and anything we try and hold on to slip through our fingers and you could say that um this re becoming is the re-becoming uh again and again and again in different shades of a gray unhappiness yeah so we becoming again and again and again but then there's the other type of really becoming where we can bring in a priesthood of an open mind to the fruits of an appreciative and open mind yeah uh so so we bring in appreciative and open mind to uh the happiness we feel on Retreat or the joy and and spaciousness we feel in the mindfulness of breathing or the love we feel in the matter partner and uh if we keep bringing an appreciative and open mind to an appreciative and open mind it keeps deepening and ever deepening and ever deepening and this is what Banta call the spiral and the spiral can deepen and deepen and deepen we can really become and re-become and re-become in a better and better way uh until wisdom arises and even then it continues to enlightenment so so I find this a really interesting reflection what one of the I'm always looking for good Reflections as I say and one of the I think one of the most interesting Reflections uh one can do this might just be me but is just keep asking yourself are you the same person now you were a time ago you know so are you the same person now it's only last night that we arrived on the retreat yeah it's only last night we arrived in the retreat are you the same person you were last night when you came here after negotiating the car the bus trains the flights as you are now yeah and this might want this one might keep you awake but uh when you when your head hits the pillow tonight will that be the same person who wakes up tomorrow hope I don't freak you out enough uh too much there with that and um what continues and what changes what continues and what changes yeah I want to read a bit from this lovely book that much about this wonderful book that Michael brownie put together there's a there's a great section from Bounty it's in chapter 18 milism and eternalism I'll just briefly say that read it out he says even in this present life leaving aside the question of rebirth you are a process you are constantly changing you are not the same person today as you were yesterday well you are neither the same nor different the truth of your existence can be explained neither in terms of an unchanging existence nor in terms of a non-existence nor in a combination of the two from instant to instant you are a mental state that arises on the preceding mental state and Independence upon your present mental state there arises a future mental state there is continuity with no identity or rather the continuity does not consist in the conservation of an unchanging element there is pure process there is change but there is nothing that changes there is rebirth but there is nobody who is Reborn there is attainment of Enlightenment but there is nobody who attains Enlightenment so you might want to read that again yeah and reflect upon it here so and video Mala tomorrow we'll be talking about the most um mysterious instance of this is when we die yeah I'm not going to touch on that in this talk but from day to day yeah it's a mysterious question Consciousness our minds are like a flame and uh a flame is never still it's always been it's always arising in every moment yeah um it's a flame ever the same from one moment to the next and so so in a way that our minds and and we ourselves we're dancing Flames rather than solid pieces of wood and um this continual rebirthing re-becoming isn't particularly controllable yeah it's not particularly controllable we can shape and influence uh the kind of person we will become in the future through the law of karma if you're looking at the intentionality of our actions and trying to act skillfully I think the law of karma is not so useful most of the time trying to find out why you're feeling the way you are now looking back there is some use to it there but really where the law of karma is useful is in this present moment what do I need to do to set up a creative mind in the future to create a skillful uh fit mind to see the truth in the future so what do I need to do right now in this moment yeah and that's what Madonna got wrong on Friday thing to say is that um it's not just that we are re-becoming this Karma isn't just about that either Karma also talks about or at least for me it seems like Karma also talks about how we are constantly creating the world that we exist in yeah we're constantly creating the world that we exist in uh while not everything that happens to us is karma um how we relate to the world uh creates our worlds exp creates our experience of the world so you might have heard of the the old Fable of the person at the crossroads and as a traveler who comes to meet them and uh this might be one of Aesop's Fables I'm not sure where the source is but um The Traveler asked the person at the crossroads what are the people in the next town like and uh the the person that the crossroad says will forward the people at the last town like and the traveler says well they're they're all out to get me they're a bit they're trying to Swindle me of my money and they didn't seem very friendly and the traveler goes oh right they're like that at the next 10 as well and then the next traveler comes along a little little bit later and uh he asked the person at the at the crossroads what are the people in the next town line and the trap and the person they're asked the traveler what would they like of the last town and and the traveler says they're a decent folk actually you know they hadn't much but they they were they were open we could connect with each other and I had a and I had a rich time there and the person was like that at the next Village too yeah and it's a very simple story but I think it communicates something of the nature of how we really underestimate just how much we create our world with our Karma so um karma really means as well as a intentional action that we're sensitized to that in the world which reflects our karmic Tendencies yeah so we're we see in the world we're we move towards in the world where we highlight in the world we focus exclusively on in the world and we feel most comfortable we feel most comfortable in the world that which reflects our own karmic dispositions and tendencies yeah and in a mysterious way we even attract that in the world to us which reflects the karmic dispositions of our mind and we tend to block the rest of it out um traditionally in in Buddhism when we die we we karmically choose to come back with a human body because that's what's familiar to us that's what that's what freaks us out the least yeah in the face of the complete spectrum of what's possible so so even by choosing a body we probably close ourselves down to such a narrow band of what's possible to experience yeah so that could be something else you could reflect upon and the Buddha says that we dramatically underestimate just how much we create our worlds we dramatically underestimate just how much we create our worlds and he talks about how our worlds are mind made mind-led and responsive to the actions of our mind yeah so our worlds are mind made mind-led and responsive to the actions of our mind and um again I think that story of my my first or my second Retreat where at times the retreat was heaven and at times the retreat was hell illustrates that very well yeah let's race that very well indeed well so so so we live in a kind of um sometimes this can be really tiresome because you just see just how endlessly we create this world of our Karma yeah but the good news is that um no matter what world we end up creating for ourselves there is something that we can always depend in that and we can always depend upon the law of karma we can always depend no matter what kind of world we create for ourselves we can always depend that if we act uh with a skillful intention and avoid acting with an unskillful intention that we will make things better we will develop a more fit mind we'll create a more enjoyable and connected world for ourselves and a world that is more in tune with how the universe really is yeah so we can always depend upon the law of karma it's completely Dependable skillful actions will lead to Greater Freedom unskillful actions will lead to less Freedom yeah no matter what kind of world you create for yourself and the more and more we can create a fit mind in the world that comes out of that the less Ducker the less suffering we'll experience the more connection with others will experience and the and the more in a way our worlds will overlap with each other and we can work together more fully and experience connection with it with each other as a spiritual Community yeah and hopefully you get a taste that on on Retreat um in a way the world that you create with your mind becomes less important and you start to tune into something deeper and richer and shared together yeah and perhaps this is the one of the reasons to paraphrase Bounty slightly he talks about how wisdom is much more likely to arise when we're practicing together than on our own yeah but it's not just that it's also that um as we keep practicing as we keep purifying ourselves at the karmic level something new can emerge so remember in the earlier emergence and to throw in another little aphorism of bounty he says no accumulation of karmac get you to Nirvana yeah no accumulation of karma can get you to Nirvana so so um uh that's not meant to be discouraging by the way it is important to accumulate Good Karma or to accumulate a pure and fit state of mind but what he's saying is that uh after a certain point something else begins to emerge the dharmic level of things a mind less and less rooted in you doing certain things and more about just aligning with the good in the universe you could say to put it very poetically and this state of mind is as far beyond your everyday mind as your everyday mind is beyond those sheep in the field yeah but we can start to experience threads of that emerging uh even on your first Retreat even in your first meditation yeah so anyways to start to wrap up um uh so we're talking about is life does life have intrinsic meaning and we're trying to avoid the extremes that life has no meaning on the one hand or life only has the meaning that we that we give to it in our minds in our in our imagination or on the other hand everything um you know an objective meaning given by an authority site so karma the law of conditionality sorry conditionality the law of karma points to a different kind of universe something intrinsic in the universe where um when the conditions are right something unforeseen can emerge something of the deepest meaning and significance and value can emerge this is what Buddhism is pointing to it's not really an answer as such you know you can't there's no answer this is the meaning of life but what it does point to is where a life of meaning lies it points to a kind of a a better way into the question of meaning in the universe and where we can move towards it and where we can find it yeah and we can trust in karma we can trust that near the Buddha did teach this to his followers and it's a natural law in the universe just as apples fall from trees uh this kind of deeper and deeper emergence is fundamental to the universe foreign so I wanted to finish by saying that we can whoops sorry everyone on on online you gotta pick up the microphone there um we can test this out this week for ourselves on this Retreat yeah so everything in in Buddhism is meant to be tested out for yourself you're meant to bring it into your experience and I wanted to share a story uh it's a science story I love these science stories so um back in 1971 the astronauts of Apollo 15 landed on the moon uh I think it was one of the last moon landings and they did a completely unnecessary and wonderful experiment it was it was a lovely piece of scientific theater and um it harked back to uh Galileo in the late 16th century where he was positing that um uh gravity in gravity uh any mass will fall at the same speed on Earth yeah you've studied physics as well do you know this one and um the the experiment that The Story Goes that they were dropping different size cannonballs from the the the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa uh it's it's probably they probably actually never did that but that's the story so um as a piece of t-shirt the commander David Scott did his experiment on the moon where he took a hammer and a feather and they dropped them at the same time and they both fell to the the surface of the Moon exactly at the same speed and hit the it hit the ground at the same time because on the moon there's no air so there's no air friction to get in the way of the feather falling at the same speed as the hammer and um and demonstrating that Galileo's theories were true they knew that anyway again it was just a piece of theater to illustrate something and you can watch this on YouTube but not on this retreat but when you get back and it's a very grainy video and at the end you just hear David Scott saying how about that in a really amazed Voice or to translate it from the American I think he's saying isn't that incredible isn't that incredible yeah um so we're like astronauts on this Retreat we've gone to the Moon yeah we're in this beautiful moonscape I would love to go to the moon and see the Moon by the way I think it's just it's uh I've always wanted to be an astronaut but this is the closest I've got but um uh going to the Moon in your mind but this week we're in a magical moonscape where the normal frictions of Life aren't there yeah and we can really try these things out we can really try out the law of karma just as those astronauts in the Apollo 15 were trying out the law of gravity even though they knew the right answers already yeah um we're we can look at the workings of karma operating in our lives be they as light as a feather or as heavy as a hammer yeah and uh we can set up the conditions for some kind of deeper meaning to the universe that's intrinsic to the universe to unfold and again isn't that incredible that we can do that okay [Music] thank you very much indeed um for a very um careful exploration of karma there's so much to say about Karma I wanted just to reiterate what you said there at the end about well we can just try out you know actually put it into practice I mean the law of Commerce basically saying that actions have consequences and remember that what does it mean that some of the most important actions are the actions that happen inside your head yeah um so basically it says that your actions matter you know your actions matter and you can really watch that here on this Retreat that your actions matter how you meditate matters how you talk to people matters how you talk to yourself and your head matters your actions matter and because they matter your life is intrinsically meaningful yeah but let's um have a

Channel: Adhisthana Triratna

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Id: JQWqKHC1imI

Length: 44min 20sec (2660 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2022