Nature of Mind | Buddhism & The Big Questions: 'Is Life Intrinsically Meaningful?' - Vajrashura

[Applause] great could i just ask that if if i if i uh 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 microbandi for that wonderful introduction oh there you are sorry um maitrebandu 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 it's a really difficult question to unfold and to really give a flavor of um you might remember ian mcgill christ'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 michael bandus talks he adds the body are 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 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 did a master's in the same as well crashed out of a phd because of buddhism but uh i did do enough training in it to to to 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 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 uh contradiction paradox uh to come to the fuller truth so uh i wanted to i have a few quotes from bante 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 has loads these aphorisms and they're all really pithy 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 uh 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 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 just to to to to turn over in your mind um they're a bit like everlasting gobstoppers if you know that phone where every day when you keep sucking on them there's a new flavor 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 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 yeah 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 so so you're really asking is life significant is life worthwhile yeah and interestingly the word for 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 the nature of mind is the nature of meaning as well for example the word manas which is in some of our names here is a word for mind it 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 so um i remember being struck very much by um reading a survey of buddhism which is bounty'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 is not just a halfway point between them but something that unifies them transcends them in a way renders them renders those extremes um 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 retreat and i remember on my second retreat finding it at times wonderful and at times hellish yeah and uh 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 in that retreat is that 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 on the retreat 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 everyday you could say example of the middle way but i hope it gives you a sense of what i mean by 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 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 know crushing the spirit of the body uh not eating uh sitting in freezing cold mountain streams and so on to try and crush the body 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 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've seen in a little while or another extreme that we that that is traditional and buddhism is you know do we have a soul that's everlasting and unchanging or is there nothing after death and uh there 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 again the middle way is always subtle and hard to understand with it with our everyday mind or the other classic one in in 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 one one 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 have complete free will and on the other hand we're completely predetermined we're like a wound-up clock that is just playing itself out yeah and neither of those are subtle enough neither of those 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 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 we have 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 in itself and we start to experience ourselves in ways beyond the self so what does free free will of the self mean anyway 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 that 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 mind 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 um whether life is intrinsic meaning uh 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 and if that's the case then life is simply probably just going to be about gaining pleasure having pleasure as much as you can avoiding pain until the lights go out yeah which is a rather bleak picture 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 pot 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 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 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 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 to do justice to the big questions that we're trying to ask you and neither of them feel in 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 but 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 path the middle way the his central teaching in buddhism of condition co-production so he said that things do not arise randomly they don't arise arbitrarily this is another extreme to be avoided and on the other hand they're not completely mechanistic not completely predetermined 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'd pretty much answered everything yeah so um be careful of 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 independence upon a vast network of conditions and um if you've most of you i'm sure we'll have come across this teaching which comes originally from buddha gosha but has really been drawn out by bante in cebutti in the last few years which is the teaching of the nimas 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 scientific point of view to them as well which is 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 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 so we start off with uh the physical level of the universe uh the rules that i would have studied in january studied in college as part of our theoretical physics you know the laws of gravity uh 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 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 or as this biological level reaches a certain level of complexity and order something else 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 like it's as radical as the the brain of a dog is to an amoeba yeah and then once this simple consciousness has reached a certain level reached a certain level of complexity and order something new again emerged which was the self-aware individual self-consciousness the being which could be aware but also aware that they are aware yeah and this is um something as radical as you know someone on retreat cultivating mindfulness 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 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 the bi at the 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 um the level of self-awareness you can't help 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 and this is as different and as new as the mind of an enlightened being as to someone uh spending all their 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 through to the mind of the buddha there is in the universe this recurring phenomena of something radically new emerging uh from something lesser you could say or a certain uh yeah something completely unpredictable emerging uh when the conditions are right yeah and so we live in the universe which trends towards the realization of higher and higher 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 and um just as at the level of um physics at the levels of biology there's that there's the laws of thermodynamics gravity 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 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 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 us already but just to remind you again that ethics in buddhism is um we 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 it with life with other people moves us towards enlightenment um helps us feel happy open and free yeah they're actions that are based upon love connection empathy generosity awareness kindness wisdom and then um unskillful actions are 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 worlds which tend to cut us off from each other uh which tend to make our world a slightly more dark and more paranoid place and i can really recommend savador matty's book for a thorough explanation of all this if you want to read further not about being good and um the thing i particularly haven't come from a from a catholic background the thing i love about aesthetics is that it puts the responsibility back on you firmly you have to decide you can't tell from the outside particularly maybe you can if they're like killing someone or something but it's very hard to tell a lot of the time uh if an action is 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 analogies that marty makes she's a great cook is cookery books you know you can read about you can read about cooking but until you do it until you acquire the skill of cooking you won't get better at it and 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 if buddhist ethics boils 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 have consequences uh skillful actions lead to positive consequences unskillful actions lead to negative consequences 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 it doesn't mean that everything that happens to you is your fault all those kinds of things i remember one time madonna had said something very unfortunate about karma that uh things that have happened to people it was because of something they've done in the previous life and usually when this happens your local buddhist 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 retreat 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 you can't blame people for their misfortunes the next thing to say is that 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 can have 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 um the buddha didn't invent karma any more than isaac newton invented gravity yeah he just described how it works 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 are staggering very near the edge of the precipice all the time we don't take it really seriously enough anyway it's just another reflection to think about and another way to look at um the law of karma is that we're constantly re-becoming yeah we're constantly re-becoming at every level of the nemesis at every level of those you know the physical biological simple consciousness karma dharma at 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 uh as we get older and you can on retreat really see this in your mind as well just how much everything is always changing and so we're always re-becoming uh 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 so in a way uh the buddha when he talks about conditionality in its full breath is talking about a huge river of conditions 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 fit 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 that there are two predominant ways this really coming occurs yeah so the first and banti sangrasa 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 no sooner do we gain one but the other one we find ourselves at the other one and anything we try and hold on to slips 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 uh a grey unhappiness yeah so we becoming again and again and again but then there's the other type of really becoming where we can bring an appreciative and open mind to the fruits of an appreciative and open mind yeah so so we bring an appreciative and open mind to 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 metabolism 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 banter called the spiral and the spiral can deepen and deepen and deepen we can re-become and re-become and re-become in a better and better way 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 i 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 might have this wonderful book that might have brandon put together there's a there's a great section from bounty it's in chapter 18 nihilism and eternalism uh 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 in dependence 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 yeah so and video mala tomorrow will be talking about the most mysterious instance of this is when we die yeah i'm not going to touch on that in this talk um but from day to day yeah it's a mysterious question consciousness our minds are like a flame and 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 our minds and and we ourselves were dancing flames rather than solid pieces of wood and this continual rebirthing re-becoming isn't particularly controllable yeah it's not particularly controllable we can shape and influence the kind of person we will become in the future through the law of karma but 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 with right the other thing to say is that 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 that 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 and how we relate to the world uh creates our world it creates our experience of the world so you might have heard of the the the old fable of the person at the crossroads and there's a traveler who comes to meet them and 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 at the crossroads says well what were 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 all right they're like that at the next ten as well and then the next traveler comes along a little a little bit later and uh he asked the person at the at the crossroads what are the people in the next town like and the trap and the person they're asked the traveler what would they like at the last town and and the traveler says they were decent folk actually you know they hadn't much but they they were they're open we connect with each other and had a and i had a rich time there and the person goes well they're like that at the next village too yeah 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 uh 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 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 and it stressed that very well indeed but 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 will 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 dukkha 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 each other as a spiritual community and hopefully you got to 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 spanish 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 as we keep practicing as we keep purifying ourselves at the karmic level something new can emerge so you remember in the earlier emergence and to throw in another little aphorism of bounty he says no accumulation of karma could 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 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 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 you know the buddha did teach this to his followers and uh 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 so i wanted to finish by saying that we can whoops sorry everyone on online you've got a kick of the microphone there we can test this out this week for ourselves on this retreat yeah so everything 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 a it was a lovely piece of scientific theater and um it harked back to 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 you know this one and the the experiment that taught 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 theater the commander david scott did his experiment on the moon where he took a hammer and a feather and he 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 in 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 i've always wanted to be an astronaut 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 we're trying out the law of gravity even though they knew the right answers already yeah um 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 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 we can do that okay uh [Music] thank you very much indeed um for a very um careful exploration of karma and 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 karma is basically saying that actions have consequences and remember that buddhism is saying 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 in your head matters your actions matter and because they matter your life is intrinsically meaningful but let's um have a we're just going to rearrange the room very slightly and then we're going to conclude our evening with a short ritual because i want to make sure we keep opening up to this well this mystery of mind and we're going to open up to that in a short ritual in just a minute so you might want to if you've got need to go to the loo just do that now and then we'll we'll just start the puja [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so as i said we're going to finish the evening uh with a ritual um yeah we're exploring the nature of mind which is it's hard to think of a more profound thing to just explore and we're not trying to get to an answer we're not trying to find what the answer is we're trying to keep opening yeah and we're trying to come open to the nature of things so pooja ritual really is it's an as if practice we're trying to we're practicing a new way of imagining our mind in relationship to the world yeah what we tend to imagine is that our mind is um the epiphenomenon of our brain that um that matter creates consciousness that we and not easily from that arises the world that is meaningless uh in which death is the end uh as soon as the brain dies death is the end uh out of that whole sort of narrative we end up with a kind of world where we think of ourselves trapped in this mind and yes we can make the boasted most of it we can we can you know do as well as we can with it but it'll be destroyed on the impact of our death that is our our our deep view really um buddhism is saying that that's just not true that that's just not true yeah so what a ritual is doing and what this ritual is doing is imagining ourselves quite actively in another vision of mind so in this ritual in all ritual you're imagining that you can just let go of yourself and open up to a new kind of mind the new the mind of the buddha not just the buddha but all the buddhas on the shrine here that we live in a universe that is conscious that is um that has purpose that has intrinsic purpose and value even a universe of love yeah hard to imagine though that is so it's an as if practice in which you imagine opening up to a universe that is loving wise uh purposeful uh wanting to create benefit yeah so you we're not saying whether that's true or not in some sort of abstract and absolute way but you're opening up to that possibility and you're acting that out in a in an as if kind of way you're lighting candles to the shrine you're bowing to the shrine all of that is symbolic of opening out to a mind that goes beyond egotism a mind that goes beyond the everyday a mind that reaches out to a compassionate universe yeah but it's not you're not trying to think about that you're just acting it out yeah and we're going to be acting that out again like we did last night by doing um verses in call and response very simple verses followed by a mantra oscar i'll get you to chart the mantra again uh the same as yesterday and um i'll bring us let's some people were singing in the second there's a second part of the mantra you don't need too many voices for that second part and i'll bring that second part in as well but we don't need too many voices mostly you need the voices to follow oscar [Music] so we'll just do that we'll just do what we did last night we'll do a threefold pooja very simply we'll child the mantra i'll encourage you to come up and make offerings but the real puja is happening in your mind a sense of really actively suspending this idea of us cramped in a brain that is going to be destroyed on impact an opening to um a world of love a world of the buddhas a world of mysteries and acting that out by bowing to the shrine nobody quite knows what the source of bowing is but one tradition is that it it was what you used to do you used to show your neck to the king so they could cut your head off if they wanted to so in other words bowing is a position of complete defenselessness yeah it's where you really admit i don't know yeah it's where you really admit i actually for all my great ideas about stuff i actually really don't know and you touch your head to the ground and you you're completely defenseless in the world and because you believe in this case in this ritual that the the universe is full of love and full of consciousness yeah and you're you're bowing to the mystery of that you'll never understand that i'll never understand that we're acting out this bowing to the mystery of that there's something sacred isn't there just about touching your forehead to the ground it seems to me to be one of the great human actions is by touching your forehead to the ground you're saying i really don't know i've got all these kind of ideas but i really don't know i want to be open to all kinds of possibilities beyond my views and i want to act that out i want to act as if i live in a universe of meaning and value and love and then surprise-wise you'll start to experience yourself living in that universe so that's what we're going to do tonight very very simple way of finishing and then see if we can the mantra will fade out at the end as it usually does and what you're wanting there is the mantra fades out and you fade out into complete silence so if you need to sort of move at all you're always moving whilst the mantra is being being recited and so that's another good reason actually to make an offering so you get to move and then see if the mantra can die down to complete stillness and traditionally in that stillness the davis make their offerings of the shrine and davis are basically the buddhist equivalent of angels so that in the stillness in the rich stillness at the end in this beautiful environment in this beautiful atmosphere all these angels will come down and make their offerings and you have we need to sit in complete silence while that's happening and if you just have a bit of an imaginative sense that that's happening you can feel it deepen the atmosphere we do live in a world of magic it's just that we've closed ourselves to it and we can open ourselves to it again yeah so let's just do that so when you're ready if you'd like to close your eyes and just again prepare yourself so just as we did before coming back to your body anything genuinely imaginative is arising out of your body not just out of your your head and just see if you can imagine that by doing this ritual you're opening up to powers forces mysteries that are beautiful that are purposeful and that are loving and that we're acting that out in this ritual uh so [Music] threefold puja opening reverence [Music] we reverence the buddha [Music] the perfectly enlightened one which leads from darkness to light we reverence the sangha the fellowship of the buddha's disciples that [Music] re-reverence the buddha and aspire to follow him the buddha was born as we are born what the buddha overcame we too can overcome what the buddha attained we too can attain until the end the truth in all its aspects the path in all its stages we aspire to study [Music] the fellowship of those who tread the way. as one by one we make our own commitment [Music] never widening circle the sangha grows offerings reverencing the buddha [Music] we offer flowers flowers that today are fresh and sweetly blooming [Music] our bodies we shining within our hearts reverencing the buddha [Music] we offer incense incense whose fragrance pervades the air sweeter than incense spreads in all directions throughout the world [Music] foreign oh oh oh um [Music] oh oh [Music] oh [Music] oh 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Channel: Adhisthana Triratna

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Id: vllPrrYtYdo

Length: 80min 50sec (4850 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2022