The Buddhist Understanding of Reality

[Music] all good morning de s today is uh Sunday the 21st of June in the year 2009 and we are in the Assembly of stars meditation Hall L Hamlet during our 101 day retreat in fact this is the last day of uh our run retreat and many of us I want the retreat to last longer it is possible why don't uh cancel your flight and stay on and we make um uh Jun R uh last until uh uh June uh July August and so on you know that uh tomorrow uh the permanent residents uh of Plum will have will begin their lazy days they will have five lazy days in a row so why don't you join us to have five lazy days and after that we resume the Rune retreat in the form of the summer opening it's possible you just telephone home and you cancel the flight you are free and uh this year uh T and uh a few doz are supposed to go to America for a teaching tour and after that we go back to PL place and continue out and on the retreat everything is possible you know that uh uh it has been Tai's dream to uh to set up a Institute of Applied Buddhism in the west and the dream has been realized and now we have the European instit you of Applied Buddhism uh in Germany uh very close to uh Colonia is at the heart of uh Europe and there is now a monastic Community La Community staying there and take care of Institute and um offering Retreats and coures on applied Buddhism that manying put dama teachers there and uh brother faan uh is the dean of The Institute uh din of studies and sister Annabel uh TR to is the din of practice and you have many other fine monastic and lers taking care of the Institute if you are a dhama teacher in Europe on America you might be uh inspired to go there and uh take sh C you can bring your uh your students and there will be uh students coming from countries of Europe like uh Germany like um Belgium uh the Netherland uh Denmark Sweden uh Italy and sou it is in the heart of Europe the istitute of uh the European Institute of uh applied Buddhism and uh you can get more information about Institute by visiting the website of The Institute uh we want uh uh the teaching of Buddhism to be applied into uh many different uh uh uh areas of Life there is a g um we offer for young people uh before they get uh uh uh married reers getting marriage is a is a well you you you you you you have a lot of risk so it's it's good to prepare yourself before you make the engagement so there is a 21 day course on the young for the young people who want to uh to succeed in their um uh contal life and our teachers will be able to help them to recognize the seats uh in them and in the other person it's bad if it's it's best if both of them can come and attend uh the course and then uh on or they can initiate it to the practice with a a course of 21 days and uh of course there is practice and uh residential uh Community there you always be there during the time of practice of sitting walking discussion so the Institute is very good uh because uh there is a s the permanent s practiceing s in it it's not like any other Institute uh in other universities and Institute that are professors teachers but they are not resident they don't practice 24 hours a day what they teach so when you come to the oran Institute of uh applied Buddhism uh you encounter the residential uh uh community that embody the practice and that uh that they will they they stay there 24 hours a day and they do the practice they they express uh they uh embody the teaching and the practice so that is the the most uh important uh uh feature of uh Institute a permanent uh uh residential uh uh community so every course is is uh supported by the S whether you are in Dharma discussion uh uh listen to a talk uh uh practiceing in breathing or sitting there is always a strong s there to do it with you and that is that is the best that the The Institute can afford uh the the course on uh uh to prepare the young people before they uh they uh they set up a family has the roots in the history Buddhism in Buddhist countries like Thailand for instance a young man has to uh to come and practice in the temple for a year or so uh it's like a military service this is a spiritual service and even the the son of the king the prince has to do it otherwise he could not be qualified to be a king so everyone has to to be trained sometime in the in the temple and uh the girl the the young lady when they are asked to marry a young man they will ask whether the young man has fulfilled that uh uh period of time in a temple otherwise they will refuse that is a kind of a turning uh uh uh it was available in the uh in the past now the training is become uh uh thinner people come to the temple for a a shter period but the tradition is still there so we hope that uh in the future in every country there will be Institute that train young people before they can get married they have a better chance to have a happy happy family and then when a young man a young woman was proposed uh um for marriage she will ask dear one do you have the certificate of I would not marry a person who doesn't have that kind of certificate and our dhama teachers uh will have to teach the go a little bit every everywhere because there are so so so many broken fames divorce so it is uh very important that we offer that uh course a little bit Everywhere by D teachers uh who have uh the capacity to show the young people the way to build a happy uh longlasting Rel relationship uh we offer uh a 20 21 day uh course for uh for young people for children who have difficulties with their parents are of a 21 day uh course for parents who are unhappy with their children they don't know how to communicate with their children and we offer a course uh for both parents and children uh to practice together and of course as D teachers uh we continue to learn uh uh also from the suffering from the experiences that uh we had during the time of teaching we offer a course for people who just discovered that they have uh uh uh incurable disease like uh like cancer Aid and so on so that they can accept their sickness they can live in peace with that and live uh many many years even if they have uh uh that kind of nness so offer a course for those who have just lost one member of their family so they can handle their grief much more easily and for families are on the verge of uh uh divorce and things like that uh we we will offer uh a course in order for them to have a chance to rebuild their relationship uh uh you offer course for S Building how to set a s in your city so that many people can uh can profit from the existence of a practices s and uh Buddhis --- something that can be applied in every uh uh uh circumstance in order to solve the problem to shed light on the situation we know the way in order to handle a specific uh situation to handle the way in such a way that uh suffering can be Rel and the way you handle should be the way of compassion and understanding and that is the essence of Applied Buddhism so there when we when we look deeply into the nature of your being we see problems like a tension in the body tension in the family tension in uh the feeling in the emotion tension in in uh uh International uh relationship we ask the question what can Buddhism do in order to release the tension when uh President Obama gave a talk in University of Cairo he was trying to use uh loving speech in order to release tension between America and uh and and the Islamic world and that is Buddhism although he does not claim that is Buddhist practice but that that is Buddhist practice because that is loving speech talking with humility recognizing the values of Islam and recognizing that uh there is a lot of goodwi on a part of Islamic people uh and uh recognizing that uh the terrorist are just a very small number of people who exploit that kind of tension so so so that kind of loving speech belong to the eight noble path that can release the tension on International affairs and there is tension in our body the practice of deep relaxation and releasing the tension in the body is it is applied Buddhism because the tension accumulated in our body will bring about a lot of sickness Des uh disease so uh the the Sutra on mindful breathing presented in 16 exercise of mindful breathing is apply Buddhism and we should be able to apply the the teaching of mindful breathing of the Sutra of mindful breathing everywhere in our family in our school in in the hospital in the Congress and so some us some of us knows that uh that we have of a retreat for Congressman in uh in Washington DC and now there are a number of congressmen who know how to practice walk in meditation on Capital H and they reported that from their office to the place where they cast their vote they always do walking meditation and release all thinking and they survive better because that kind of practice so the they can apply Buddhism in the most uh difficult um situation so apply Buddhism is a a good a good term and everyone can uh profit from the teaching and the practice of Buddhism Buddhism as a Heritage for the home guy Buddhism not for the Buddhist alone and you can tell them that Buddhism is made of non- Buddhist elements so please uh give one Happ in hand because this is our Dream The Institute the open European Institute of uh applied Buddhism is uh on the Forefront of our practice in the Forefront of our practice they are to serve uh Buddhist and non- Buddhist Al alike so if you have time if you have uh your energy your use offer them to uh uh for the benefit of uh of many people support applied Buddhism learn applied Buddhism teach applied Buddhism and help young people and grown up people to suffer less by the practice of Applied [Music] Buddhism we have invested uh many good people there like brother fa uh sister alabel uh lady to they are senior Disciples of T and they are very capable of handling the the intellectual communities and the youth communities so please uh uh get in touch with them and find out whatever you can do in order to support this uh and to make the dream uh come true uh next June we will have a 7even day Retreat there and it is cannot having enough place for everyone because it is in the in uh in the heart of Europe and European just drive in they don't have to fly and there will be maybe many thousand people for for for the for the retreat we don't know but uh we are glad that there is a monastic and lay Community uh there uh with their strong solid practice and taking care of the Institute and and uh continue to offer uh days of mindfulness uh Retreats and C they also invited to give the teaching at the Town Hall in uh high schools and so on you may still have this sheet of paper offered to you by uh brother F and uh on the first during the first week please look at the at the number four in English paragraph for English Buddhist approach this is only uh eight line eight line and we read together this both subject and object of perception manifest from Consciousness according to the principle of in being this is a real Buddhism this is a deep Buddhism not the kind of popular Buddhism we know that uh uh the notion of rebirth can be examined in many ways because uh rebirth is uh really the continuation there is continuation but continuation in the light of inter being continuation in the light of no birth and no death continuation in the light of uh uh uh uh impermanence so uh the question as whether we continue to be after the disintegration of this body is uh has been asked by so many people but there are many ways to answer according to our capacity of learning but here in our 21 Retreat we want the best best kind of answer it should be the answer of deep Buddhism and not popular Buddhism the two kind of Buddhism at least because uh many many people in Buddhist countries they practice uh more devotion than uh uh meditation so the understanding of a rebirth uh next life is quite different but here we have to use deep Buddhism the kind of Buddhism that can go together with science and that can give us uh total satisfaction uh right right in the first line both subject and object of perception manifest from Consciousness this is a very important Buddhism this is a basic teaching of Buddhism because we we uh usually believe that our Consciousness is something inside here and ready to go out and to look for the the world outside there is a objective World outside and there is the subjective uh uh world inside Consciousness and object of Consciousness right in this sentence we learn that uh we one of the things we should uh do is to transcend uh the Double grasping double grasping graa is the gra here the object of object and object of grasping that is the most uh important obstacle to overcome in budh studies and also in science I remember the time when we read from we read from wiu and uh wiu thought that there was a hostile animal and he got afraid but with the help of Christoper Robin he discovered that it his uh the footprint he found on the on the on the snow is his own Footprints so the same thing is true with uh the object of our of our inquiry the So-Cal objective uh reality of the world we think to be as some uh it to be something distinct from our Consc --- ike um when you boy potatoes you have to maintain the fire underneath at least for 20 minutes in order for the potatoes to cook if you light it and then you turn it out you can never have a b cooked potatoes so somebody is like that somebody is to keep to maintain a steady uh uh presence of of that of that insight so s scientist are capable of uh finding no self and impermanence but what they need is D somebody to maintain that throughout the day and they will be uh discovering a lot of things and that is why you have to help them because now they rely only on sophisticated uh uh instruments but they need uh the tool of uh mindfulness and concentration somebody in order to to go further to discover more and that is why it is possible for a collaboration between practitioners of meditation and scientist to discover more about ourselves both object and subject of uh Consciousness in the uh religious uh in the in the traditions of religion we tend to believe more in uh something longlasting like like the soul we know that in Buddhism the notion of Soul does not exist you can call you can call Consciousness you can imagine you can identify Consciousness with soul you you may even call Consciousness your soul with the condition that you know that it nature is only a cinematographic nature uh your Consciousness is made of Point instant uh flash manifestation and if you understand like that you are free to use any word word including soul but if you use Consciousness you think of Consciousness as something longlasting even the word Consciousness uh is wrong Consciousness as well as object of Consciousness they manifest in such a way that look like a cinema cinema and people in the in quantum physics they begin to see clearly so when we tend to believe that uh Consciousness is permanent the soul is permanent and only the body uh perish uh the soul continue like that for a long time to go to the heaven or to go to the hell that is the belief in eternalism [Applause] the view of uh permanence which is a wrong view because uh Buddhism propose impermanence and impermanence goes well with the science because science also acknowledge that everything is impermanent that exist only in one flash so that applies not only to Consciousness but to the world which is object of Consciousness and you see that uh in elementary Buddhism we learn that Dharma with a uh capital D is uh the teaching of the Buddha but dhama with a simple uh it means uh object of Mind object of mind uh knowable object of mind so we know that the word is first of all object of mind that is something you can be sure of and whether the world exist by itself alone we cannot be sure but we can be sure that is the object of mind the Sun the moon the Earth the cosmos the galaxies they are all objects of mind and our body also are object of our mind and our mind also is object of our mind so there is possibility to investigate on the object of our mind and when we understand the object of our mind we understand our mind because the mind and object of mind that into are uh one cannot be with the other so uh a Right View should transcend the view of eternalism so a permanent uh Immortal soul is something that cannot be accepted either by good Buddhist or good scientist but the opposite view that after this body disintegrate you disappear all together that is another extreme dream this is another wrong view called uh alation any Helm it's okay we have to say any relationism which one is good second one anation nism so this is one is good so so this is an extreme and this is another extreme this is a wrong view this is another wrong view to say that uh you disappear all together with your body is a wrong VI it's called so as a student of Buddhism you are not caught in both uh in both uh views and uh rebirth continuation should be understood in the light of uh no eternalism no anism so the popular uh the the the Buddhism of devotion popular Buddhism may be leave something may maybe adopt a more ealistic uh uh approach they think that after the disintegration of the body the soul remain the same and will penetrate into another body an animal or a tree or a squar or a deer another person uh that person may be white may be black may be Brown and on so that is uh naive if we stand from the Viewpoint of Right View so to say that uh that uh after we die uh we continue the same person in different forms of life that's not deep Buddhism and that is not scientific because uh impermanence of way is changing the C cinematographic nature of body and mind do not allow such a kind of thinking so it's not it's neither Buddhist Buddhist nor scientific but a number of science scientists they are caught in in this View and they are not good scientist because good scientists see that nothing NE nothing can disappear nothing is born nothing die this are only continued manifestation and different kind of forms so that is a kind of uh rebirth that is kind of samsara that is a kind of continuation but in in the light of impermanence and no self and many scientists are capable seeing that so uh Annihilation is neither Buddhist nor science no and uh a good uh uh what students can uh transcend both uh these two FR views and the notion of of rebirth the notion of uh continuation is free from these two views otherwise it's not very uh Buddhist is not very scientific suppose you are a cloud and this is a to use an image for meditation you Cloud you are made of tiny uh crystals of ice or of water and you are so light so that you don't don't fall you can float and uh the huge clouds uh millions of tons of water floating like that and there is a interaction collision between these tiny uh crystals of eyes and uh they become they may become one big piece of eyes and fall down a big piece drop of water and fall down as rain but maybe halfway uh you encounter uh a block of uh hot air so you evaporate again and you come up again you go down you come up again you go down you come up so transmigration uh reincarnation uh rebirth is taking place always in the cloud a cloud does not need to become rain in order to to have a new life a cloud has a new life every moment so rebirth uh continuation take place with us in the same because every moment it produce uh thought it produce speech and it produce um uh action and that action will have an effect on us and on the world and that is our product our Karma our action karma is a very important term so look at uh that cloud and if you think that that cloud just float and be and and is the same Cloud that's not true a cloud is very active there's --- death and love was has said that nothing is born nothing died he agree completely with distinction a cloud manifest as a cloud that's not his birth because before being the cloud he had been the cloud had been the tree uh uh the ocean the heat generated by the Sun so that is only a moment of uh continuation to appear as a cloud and when a cloud become a river there's not death that is also a convolution so you can hope you can wish a cloud happy continuation it can wish each other happy continuation beautiful continuation and we know that there is a way to continue beautifully that is take care of our three aspect of of action thinking speaking and [Music] acting so on the phenomenal level there seems to be birth death being and non-being being and non-be is another couple of wrong views non being is wrong view but being is also a wrong view the absolute reality transend both being and nonbeing before you are born you not belong to the realm of non being because from being non being you cannot pass into being and when you die you cannot pass from being into non being this impossible so to be or not to be are both wrong views to inter be is better the D Dynamic Consciousness is called a Karma energy and Karma energy as we have said is not something abstract it is real it determine our state of being whether we are happy or unhappy whether we continue beautifully or not so beautifully it depends our Karma so it's possible to take care of our action so that we don't suffer much now and we will continue better in the future so there is the the uh the hope the joy everything evolve according to the principle of interdependence but there is a free will and the possibility to transform there is probability and Free Will is mindfulness when mindfulness intervene we know what go is going on if we like it we allow it to continue if we don't like it we are ways in order to to change it with concentration and insight you don't want to take the path leading to e you want to take the path uh leading to the sensation of ill beinging and uh well-being so free will is possible in Buddhism because uh we know that we can handle our thinking we can handle our speech and we can handle our action we are responsible for our action and it is possible to assure a good continuation so there is a freedom and freedom uh begin with uh mindfulness and concentration and insight and with Insight you can change completely uh the landscape without with right right view we can practice right thinking you can change us ourselves you can change the world you can practice uh rice fish you can reconcile we can bring hope with right action we can help we can protect we can save life so action is possible and action underline everything and in fact everything is the fruit of action the one affects the all that you understand already and the all affects the one that is also what we have understood intervene also means impermanence nonself emptiness CA and countless World Systems the other day we said that impermanence should be understood as inter being as no self otherwise uh that is not the teaching of the Buddha in the teaching of Buddha every teaching in is with everything every uh everything are teaching so impermanence should be understood as uh no self and no self should be understood as uh interdependence no self inment are not two different things if you understand interdependence you understand no self if you understand impermanence you understand interdependence and Emptiness is the same they are the same thing they are different words but they are just the same thing right view allows right action leading to the reduction of suffering and the increase of happiness and this is uh the teaching of the four B truth and the active aspect of the teaching is the noble a power happiness and suffering into our it should not be too naive to run away to try to run away from suffering because we know that a deep understanding of suffering can bring about Insight compassion and uh understanding that is at the foundation of happiness and we realize that uh suffering ill being play a certain role and we don't we are not naive to think that there is a place where there is no suffering there is only happiness so the pure land is right here the kingdom of God is right here if you are free and then we can recognize the kingdom of God in the here and the now the treasure spoken about in the Bible is there right there in you and around you because you belong to the kingdom you need only a flash of Awakening Enlightenment in order to realize that what you are looking for is already there the kingdom of God no birth and no death happiness and suffering into a and please remember the mud and the Lotus without the mud you cannot make the lotus so we should not be afraid of suffering we know how to handle suffering we know how to handle the garbage in order to make compost and nourish the flowers is why we can accept this world with all our heart you don't need to go anywhere else this is our home and we want to manifest again and again and again in order to make this home more beautiful with the good action the out materiality transcends Notions of Good and Evil right and wrong and that is the absolute criteria for for Buddhist ethics dear friend this has been a great joy for me to be with the S during 21 day please continue when you home either in uh Europe Asia or America or Africa Australia let us uh be a torch to provide uh our friends with theight let us continue the work of the Buddha the 21 should continue on your airplane when you arrive uh please bring your smile your greeting from plumber to everyone uh we ask the monastic s to come up let us offer a shent and invoke um the great body's advice to protect all of us so that we can continue our noal uh uh task continue the work of the Buddha and our ancestral teaches Buddhism in uh eight line it's not difficult you see it's not difficult and that is deep budhism only eight line less than eight line that Mass for the day be well and the night be well may the [Music] bring and [Music] well make wondering soul Liv praise [Music] Andes of world the the of the sun sh with the of of [Music] wi every [Music] direction compassion Joy now [Music] [Music] sh [Music] he [Music] [Music] he now sh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh oh [Music] [Music] oh now more [Music] he there for [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] he by [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] h [Music] t [Music] you to be so free because I am in you and you are in me [Music] because I am in you and you [Music] are