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Culadasa: [00:00:00] It was wonderful. Seeing everybody socializing and having such a good time there on that. Greg and I almost not quiet, but I almost felt bad breaking it up.
I hope everyone's saying really well this evening. And I'm wondering wondering if anybody has any questions or thoughts, maybe some thoughts coming out of what we talked about last week or anything else that, to start off our discussion. We'll see. Yeah. So we were talking about the eighth and breaking your heart last week, right?
Yeah. Up on the side of the bank.
So
Student: if you wait, there's
Culadasa: this ideal of
Student: dispassionate we're supposed to, it's a pain, but I saw
Culadasa: I was questioning relationships where.
Student: The session seems ideal to have pattern.
Culadasa: Yeah. Okay. If yes that's what I was going to do. If I probably can try to repeat that there is, I was talking about the emotional aspect, how
Student: they being human
Culadasa: and they, the Pasos that we experienced and some positive aspects of have. And what I hear you bringing up is that there is this impression that and and spiritual practice like realism that and you used the word supposed to it, which I thought was very Significant does it see how we're supposed to develop a dispassionate?
Student: And
Culadasa: on the other hand, there is a sense that we have that passion also can be a good thing, too. And in terms of, our human and social values that our assesses in which we put a positive value on passion. So I, I think that's what you're asking about. And that's a very good thing to talk about.
Student: It is true that
Culadasa: the goal of this path is to free ourselves from,
From passions, from certain kinds of passions. See, there's different ways that we can use the word. And we do have to be clear on what we mean by passion and which passions that we're referring to. But but definitely the words that are used are dispatched to become dispassionate and to overcome our attachments will, of course we associate love and things like that as being an attachment.
And so w we're what really are we talking about? Where are we trying to go here? And let's be careful about how we use the words and also about ideas as opposed to, because also a part of the path isn't that we are supposed to somehow abolish from ourselves, certain kinds of emotions and feelings, but there are certain kinds of emotions that.
Certainly the practice. We will overcome them. They will they will disappear and there's others that will change their form. And that's really what I'd like to provide some clarification around. Sexual lust is a kind of passion greed for money is a kind of passion lust for fame and recognition.
These are passions that I don't think we have shameless Trevor recognizing that they are definitely they definitely have an unwholesome root to them
Student: and.
Culadasa: I don't think that they're there, the problem of that we're trying to interpret here, but for if we speak in terms of a Buddha or an enlightened being doesn't mean that they're completely emotionless, does it mean they're devoid of all passionates or what exactly does that mean? And there is this touchy little question of, if Buddhas see things as they really are, rather than in terms of all of the projections that our human mind normally creates, which are based in, and our conditioning how.
How do and like being CEO world and how does that compare? So it's away, but the rest of his food
Sometimes it may seem that a [00:05:00] Buddha is somehow inhuman does, if a Buddha is completely free from suffering, then how does a Buddha react to the suffering of others in the world?
So these are all the kinds of questions that come into this and that they really do deserve to be
Student: addressed.
Culadasa: Now, what is a key that can help us to untangle this of debt is the notion of a separate personal self,
Student: Which
Culadasa: I present to you as being. And illusion something that doesn't actually exist at all. Something the mind creates and something that has perhaps served the alternative purposes of our biology, but there is no such self.
We are actually,
Inseparable from however you want to regard it. But it was just saying that we are very much part of the universe and we do not have this kind of distinct separateness that we perceive ourselves to all of the kind of passions, emotions, feelings, and suffering that we were talking about.
It being desirable to be free from. And we would expect an enlightened Dane or a Buddha to be free from our specifically rooted in that delusion and that illusion that we are a substantial enduring separate
Student: entity.
Culadasa: And it's that feeling of separateness that leads to our suffering that leads to unwholesome desires and praisings and passions which in turn lead to us of behaving in ways committing acts of speech and deed that contribute to the further suffering of other things.
This is the passion that is to be overcome. Now, the one of the characteristics. I'm an enlightened being in addition to wisdom, the second main defining characteristic is compassion. There's the word passionate again, but it's in a different context. It Sam, the context of the sensitivity towards, and the caring for others, and essentially we say a Buddha is free from desire.
That's the Buddha still holds the wish for the wellbeing and happiness of others and the end of suffering as August. We can see a distinction there. And if we go from this to the way the Buddha perceives the world and I lightened being in a human body still has a human brain and still has a mind.
That interprets the world from a human perspective.
Student: And,
Culadasa: It should be obvious that and I lied and being
Student: like that is not separate
Culadasa: from the rest of humanity, let alone from anything else in the universe. So we have to, in order to interpret and understand this well, we've had to keep that in mind.
We can't make the mistake of trying to impose certain kinds of interpretations on an enlightened wine that are based and the delusion of separateness and self-worth that we're experiencing ourselves. If we want to understand what it needs to be simultaneously free from suffering. But filled with compassion for the suffering of others.
We have to recognize that this is a being that is not experiencing segregation. So they have wisdom and compassion, what the wisdom does for them, that it has eliminated the delusion actually wisdom in the sense means the absence of the ignorance that the ignorance of cyber class and the ignorance, I think.
The wisdom also goes beyond the appearances of the world, the way that human mind constructs it, which is the appearance of being made up of separate entities. Some of [00:10:00] these entities are sent in veins. Each of these sentence ventings is a separate sentence. And each of the separate S E each a example of the separate sentence endures its own suffering and the enlightened mind sees beyond that.
So the enlightened mind recognizes simultaneously both that suffering itself is an illusion. Part of the larger delusion, but that also from the point of view of the sentience that sees itself as separate and experiences, the suffering, it is still real. So it is both real and not real simultaneously.
It's a paradoxical from not from the point of view, ordinary way of saying things, but a carried obstacle kind of situation,
Student: in a sense,
Culadasa: so glued to, to live in the world and interact with him and beings, but at the same time to be enlightened, to dwell and Nirvana. And there is a very, I think, very appropriate description that, I got it from Gretchen repor shade, but I've used it over and over again. And that's it.
Bonnie and speech have a Buddha live in the marketplace, follow the mine to the Buddha dwells Xanax. And this speaks to this sort of of by Vaillant characteristic of the Buddha's consciousness, which on the one hand is perceiving the true nature of reality, which liberates the Buddhists mind so that the Buddhist mind no longer generates the natural state of suffering
Student: and
Culadasa: also provides the Buddha's mind with the wisdom that understands the emptiness or the suffering of others, but at the same time, while not believing it to be alternate reality still knows and understands the name.
Of a re of the relative reality that is higher ordinary human experience. The Buddha's mind is still creating the representation of a world of desperate suffering entities.
Not too, this is something that we can understand too easily, but at the same time, it's, it is, was in the realm of our ability to talk about.
Student: So there are some examples
Culadasa: that can help us to see this okay. The suffering of another the compassion of a Buddha. And at the same time, the wisdom of a Buddha that, that frees them from suffering and an example you might think.
A mother and a young child and the young child for whatever reason is
Frightened or upset or, bang their knee and it hurt. And so they're crying and everything. The mother knows that there's really nothing wrong, has compassion for the fact that the child is upset and crying and comforts the child. But the mother is not suffering the way, if the child's knee were gashed open and bleeding, or if the child were, if there was some real cause for the child's suffering and upset, and the mother would experience a lot of of empathy and suffering of her own through her identity with Bishop.
And the example we're using to help us understand the relationship of the Buddha for the suffering of others. There is both the caring and compassion for the fact that the child is upset and is experiencing these emotions. But the mother, while she comforts the child has a smile on her face, perhaps even chuckles whatever, knowing that this will pass that this is it.
There's no real cause for that. There's no real harm that it is purely something that's taking place in a child's mind. And you see the kind of connection between
Student: there.
It just
Culadasa: occurs to me that maybe continuing the same type of example,[00:15:00]
Student: A loving parent
Culadasa: observes with detachment and amusement. Many of the things that the fantasies that children engage in, the things that they entertain themselves and enjoy or they things that they wrestle and struggle with that they're not the serious things of the world that us adults deal with.
And so a loving parent can observe them with detached amusement and a kind of empathy, sympathetic joy for the pleasures and so on and so forth. And I think this is also how to understand the experience of a person who is no longer
Student: subject to.
Culadasa: Believing in the ultimate reality and grasping to the ideas of good and bad, and this just is terrible.
It's just happening and it's wonderful. It's happening. And the sorts of things that we normally do the combination of wisdom and compassion can doesn't need to or all of these with the combination of wisdom and compassion and this sort of polyvalent way of seeing reality in both its ultimate in relative terms can allow an enlightened being to appreciate the, all of the many different dimensions of the human experience, pres the world without attachment.
Without entering into suffering because of time and without feeling aroused, two passions of the form of trying to make things be some way, rather than the way they are out of a compulsive desire for support feminine that is not, or a compulsive perforation to the way of saying
Student: SAR,
which would
Culadasa: be conditioning, which is conditioning. Yeah. So those desires and aversions are conditioning.
So let us speak a little more. Tell me a little more of your thoughts from last weekend and how they might be the same or different after what I've just said.
Student: So now I understand
it's not a
Culadasa: refreshing, it's not a witch, you're not suppressing that's right. You're absolutely not repressing these things to the extent that they follow way following naturally by themselves as a result of the practice.
Student: But
Culadasa: the aspect of the practice of leach. So they're falling away is mindful awareness.
It's seeing them more and more as they actually are and seeing and understanding both where they come from and the kind of results that they produce. We see I, I think I. I think a good illustration of this in a sense it's almost a metaphor for all of our other suffering and life is the way we react to physical pain because we take an experience of physical pain and through our resistance to it, we make it into, we create all kinds of mental suffering that is unnecessary, and it's not intrinsic to the experience of physical pain itself.
And in meditation, this is one of the things that we have the opportunity to begin discovering fairly early on in the practice, because it is pain and discomfort associated with city. And so this gives us the opportunity to take that as an object, examine it, mindful it, and what makes the difference there is when we began to see.
Student: How
Culadasa: are our natural reaction and our resistance lakes, the makes the experience of the discomfort so much worse than it is in and of itself. And this is really the same principle that works with all of these other unwholesome mental states, emotional states is that by seeing them and understanding them as they really are and saying, where are they coming from and saying, what kind of results they produced, they can to start falling [00:20:00] away and themselves.
So we don't have to request anything. And also we don't have to expect that, that we're engaged in a process. That's going to lead us to be, some sort of flat out emotional feeling being because we, we aren't we
Student: will have, I agree,
Culadasa: Richness of human experience, but without just simply without the attachment, without the self center attachments and all of the suffering that, that brings
just you first, and then you,
Student: I think I'm going to have a little bit of difficulty
Culadasa: formulating this, but there's some relation could what to Forrest as to what you explained. And this has
Student: to do with suffering. And I'm thinking of your
Culadasa: example about the mother but I'm thinking of examples
Student: of much more extreme suffering and what brings it to mind precisely if it's the earthquake in Haiti.
And that's where ism fails me, because how could you possibly comprehend this or perceive this as a provocation of
your
Culadasa: mind? Th the, what
Student: those people are going through as a Buddhist
Culadasa: how do you approach it? And what you said about
Student: the border
Culadasa: it's mine lives and know about Nirvana and his body is in the market.
I can see some of that before for us.
Student: We're not there, you know what it does. It doesn't bring me any relief. What I know about what is in, how do you comprehend that? How can you approach it?
Culadasa: There's several different things here. First of all just to be clear before we look at the situation or the people of the suffering of the people in Haiti, what did, does it do van, if your mind makes you miserable here in Tucson,
Student: I'm thinking more about
Culadasa: there is this. Yeah, I'll get to that. But first let's just be clear that making ourselves miserable,
Because somebody else is suffering, doesn't really count down.
Okay. The one possible positive outcome that has is that
Student: it
Culadasa: arouses in us the compassionate desire to do anything that we can do. So if there's some way that we can. Contribute then that is the only positive outcome. And if you can have the compassionate desire to help without yourself feeling miserable than them, we definitely hit.
Okay. All right. Now the only way that the only way that you can
Student: really,
you have to put
Culadasa: yourself and the place of other suffering beings, and you have to do
Student: that
Culadasa: with the kind of acquired wisdom that comes from spiritual practice in order
Student: to see
Culadasa: their situation in a different way. Look at your own situation,
Student: Your own suffering
Culadasa: maybe you haven't ever been a part of a natural disaster, but you have suffered some degree of physical pain and injury in your life.
I'm
Student: sure you have suffered
Culadasa: loss of people that you were attached to in one
Student: form or another.
Culadasa: You have experienced uncertainty about the future. You've experienced pain and anxiety. So all of these things that we know what these people in Haiti are experiencing, you have experienced to one degree or another.
Student: Pam your problem
Culadasa: in life is that when you have those experiences and you see them and the enlightened and diluted way,
which is to say that you've seen them from the point of view of this [00:25:00] particular self, why is this happening to me or this shouldn't be happening to me, or, wishing not to be the person to him. This was happening.
Student: The
Culadasa: suffering of the people on Hyde T is due to their having exactly the same perception, perceiving themselves as a separate self. And this is happening to me. Yes. My leg is crushed it's. My daughter is. Yes, my home that's destroyed. It's my future. That's uncertain. That's my mind, but it's still the fear,
Student: right?
You may never have that
Culadasa: such for some many different severe causes of suffering coming upon you at one time as they are, but you've had all of the signs. And the problem with the human condition is that all of us are going to have these kinds of things. It's inescapable. It is part of what it means to be a human bed.
So really the only difference is to degree. It's a difference of degree.
Student: And
Culadasa: now this is part of our mistaken thinking is to recognize it. It's a matter of degree and then say I, this separate cell only had more this and less of that. In other words, it's all a question of degree. And I put myself down here the other end of the pain scale and the opposite end of the pleasure scale.
And this is what leads to the idea that, if you've got, you got the right job, more money, the right partner, these things happening, that you'll be happy. And all of our suffering comes from trying to escape from the pains and the problems are inevitably a part of life. And the more we interpret those in terms of, I need mine, this separateness, then the more painful that it
Student: becomes.
Culadasa: So you can feel compassion for the suffering of others on the basis of your own suffering. If you become, as you become more wise and you realize that your own suffering comes out of this attachment to the self, and as you began to learn to let go of that, then you also can understand how the suffering of others is created in the same way and can be overcome you the same way now.
Yes, it's hard to imagine yourself at a place where you no longer identify with the body that experiences the pain and in that special way,
Student: And that you no longer
Culadasa: have a mind that is going to. January, all of these kinds of mental suffering and response to the circumstances that this particular body mind complex finds itself.
Yeah. That may be difficult for you to imagine in its entirety, but that's where you want to go. And that's what we mean by saying things as they really are. If you see things as they really are than physical plane is just another experience. We are all going to die
Student: and that
Culadasa: probably,
And for most people, death is going to be pretty painful, as your kidneys shut down, your liver stops working when you feel safe everybody has been sick and there, what it feels like to have things in your body not going right.
But most of the time it was like, you knew, or at least hoped that was going to turn it around, but there's going to come the day where you feel the changes taking place in your body. And that you're not ever going to come back from that, the gripping pain of a heart attack and that love and a realization that is just going to keep going until it's all over with that sort of thing.
So we're all confronted with this and all of our suffering, when I use the word suffering, I'm really thinking of the suffering that the mind creates, not the physical pain, because I know that the physical. It's not really a problem. The only problem is the suffering that the mind case in response to the physical pain, in response to the various kinds of losses and fears and [00:30:00] anxieties and things like that.
Student: And so
it
Culadasa: is in that sense
Student: that
Culadasa: if I think so, the people who are going through the kind of suffering that you're thinking, I feel compassion. I feel compassion for what they are experiencing. I know that their minds are generating powerful states of suffering. I also know that some of them are discovering within themselves even while this suffering is going on.
That of nets. I'm touchable, stillness. That's going to give them the strength to come through this. And I know that is the real nature of what is happening and in that situation,
Student: I wish
Culadasa: on the one hand, but these people would not have to experience the things that they do. I would wish that no human being, no sentient being would have to experience the various kinds of pain and loss that
Student: are part of being
Culadasa: what we are, but that's not possible. I further wish that the minds of all of these sentient things could be liberated from the delusion.
Which creates all of the mental suffering as a result of this.
Student: Okay.
Culadasa: So I experience the human emotion of compassion, sympathy, a wish, and a desire,
Student: That,
Culadasa: That people be relieved of this kind of suffering and at the same time to the degree that and what are the situations, there's something that I can do to change things. And I'd like to do that. I hopefully would do that, but at the same time, I can see that their situation is exactly the same as mine.
Student: And
Culadasa: to the degree that I have been liberated from my own suffering through seeing it illusory nature, I know that their suffering is likewise and inclusion. I don't know that this necessarily helps you, but I want you to understand that the Buddhist perspective is not one of dispassion and a sense of coldness for an uncaring.
It's one of seeing beyond the chair of the person's
Student: situation.
Culadasa: Does that help,
Student: Yeah,
Culadasa: It is a difficult, it is a difficult issue, but it's an important issue. Yeah.
Student: Most
Culadasa: of the examples that you use before or what people would consider negative emotional states find what we were saying. Positive emotions, joy, happiness satisfaction. In terms and, in terms of what our goal is satisfaction is a really good word to start with because,
All of our problems stem from hard being dissatisfied and what we're after is satisfaction.
What we're after is that state of contentment fulfillment satisfaction. And this is where ha this is what happiness and joy. If you think of, if you think of, I don't know, the first person said, my Knight is a Dalai Lama. He is a smiling happy baby.
Student: Yes he is. And maybe
Culadasa: that's a good illustration too, because he
Student: is
Culadasa: hugely aware of the suffering, but the prison camps and the torture and the repression of his own people and destruction as it Realty, but he is, he's still a happy, joyful vain. And so it's a video should have positive emotions, it could be,
To be freed. All of these negative emotions doesn't mean to be free to the positive emotions. I think that's what you're [00:35:00] saying. And that's absolutely true. Yeah. Yeah. Buddhas are happy games, I like the Chinese smiling, that's
That's the Hamish that that I like that. Yeah. And to put it in a, in another way, too, if you just think about,
we experienced both pleasure and pain yeah. And our
Student: life.
Culadasa: And if we accept both fully means experiencing the pleasure not even just as much as before. It means experiencing the pleasure more fully than you ever have before, because you're not clinging to it because you're not already feeling the penny of knowing that it's gone to pass away or already starting to fail, to be fully present with the pleasure, because you're already thinking about how you might repeat it or continue it or hold onto it, which is what we normally do.
So to be free from clinging and attachment and to be open and accepting of pleasure is to experience it more fully and more totally than ever. On the other hand to be completely open and accepting of pain is to have no resistance to it. And so it is just another experience and he removed that huge amplification factor that comes from our resistance, from our wanting it to stop.
He had to.
Student: Yes. I had a question about
Culadasa: just passion, this count two times 3 cent, it
Student: repeated today. So
Culadasa: on a on this coming Tuesday evening, I'm supposed to for work being two different
Student: places at two different times. So I had to tell tell a professor that I can't be there on Tuesday and they're both kind of important places to be, but I couldn't be in both.
And she was getting really upset
Culadasa: that I
Student: wasn't able to do this. And I wasn't. And it seems like the worst problem for her wasn't that she'd have to.
Culadasa: Work on Tuesday without
Student: me, but then I wasn't getting upset about
Culadasa: this.
Student: I've had this happen recently where from this practice, I'm developing this dispassion and it bothers other people
Culadasa: that they either, I think in this case she just wanted somebody, sympathetically high
Student: emotion at this problem.
Culadasa: What else, sir? It seems uncanny. So exactly that,
Student: that it's often interpreted as some negative
Culadasa: motivation or hope or just simply being uncaring, it's yeah.
Had. You're fine. She wants the sympathy she feels, but the stress and anniversary conditioning is that this is the way you're supposed to respond to these situations. So with stress, what's the matter we're here, are you talking to irresponsible that you don't even feel bad about this?
Student: Exactly.
So
Culadasa: it requires a certain sensitivity towards other people's emotional states and compassion for them,
I wouldn't suggest that you pretend to be upset, but I think that really what the other person needs is just the the sense of. Acknowledgement that, you understand the stress that that it creates.
So that you're, if you don't want to be seen as somebody that's just irresponsible and uncaring. And I said, burn the house down. Oh
Student: yeah, but
I can't help,
Culadasa: but think of something that we discussed previously and I see it as this relates exactly to it. And that's yeah. And so I think this is another reminder that, you use. I need to,
You need to remember to respond as still, fully as you can, to the
The less wholesome methyl states that others otherwise create unintended problems for an NSL
It's learning. It's learning how to share your own at attachments rather than leaving people feeling abandoned in
Student: their attachment.[00:40:00]
Culadasa: But that's, in a sense that's exactly the same thing as what you're talking about is as
Student: to not
Culadasa: to appear to be uncaring as you, because you no longer suffer sympathetically with others
Student: and
Culadasa: no back choosy, achy, breaky, heart referenced. In a sense, that's why I listened to these kinds of brokenhearted love songs,
Student: and I just
Culadasa: see it's a solid about how do we create our own suffering. The person singing the song and the person writing the song in most cases, Did maintenance that right? Although in some cases they do, there are some of those songs that are intentionally showing how we create are suffering.
But even those that are not, that's what they do, you can hear them and you say, oh yeah, I used to do that to myself too. I've been there. I've done that, but you can enjoy this vantage point of being older and wiser or whatever, and you don't have to do that to yourself anymore and realize that other people ultimately not have to do that.
Although from the point of view, where do they are right now, that may be the only
Student: thing that they can do.
Culadasa: And you didn't have to accept that. And other people, I need to have to accept that in yourself. When you find yourself doing the same series yourself, knowing that you don't need to, sometimes you just have to accept it.
I guess that's where I am. I hope I don't stay in this place for very long, but definitely,
See what happens with other people in those terms,
having in a general sense,
Student: if you think of the
Culadasa: universe as a whole, think of it holistically, every part of the is-ness and you don't need to think of this necessarily in. The university and the way to the established view at the moment, we can go beyond the established view of the moment. I say the universe in a sense of business, no matter who's saying it or how they're perceiving it, whatever there is that constitutes the nature of being
Student: that
Culadasa: part of it, that we are knowing and experienced and are experiencing is manifesting in a particular way. And we're a part of that manifestation, the most important thing about our vain or part of that manifestation is our conscious awareness
Student: and.
Culadasa: So one way that can be very helpful when looking at, the suffering of the world as a whole, not just now, but throughout its history and its future potential
Student: is that
the universe is
Culadasa: in the process of being conscious, becoming conscious of itself, becoming self aware. And each of us is like an individual part of that consciousness. And we're all exactly the same in that regard.
Student: The
Culadasa: consciousness that underlies the experience of each of us is absolutely indistinguishable in any regard from the consciousness of anyone else or for that matter.
Any other vein that we see and perceive as being conscious of it as being conscious
Student: and [00:45:00]
Culadasa: this universe, this isn't as being the complex entity that it is now, it has generated the, and it has generated you as a particular psychophysical entity capable of being conscious and capable of viewing the rest of the universe from one particular advantage point. And we already have to accept that he had.
The way that it has gone about doing that is one that makes inevitable,
Student: Pain
Culadasa: and dissolution impermanent. So the passing away, and then the larger scale of its complexity,
Student: there's
Culadasa: going to be varying degrees of the pain, varying degrees of the duration of existence of any one entity, varying degrees of the variety of experiences of which consciousness can partake from any one of these particular vantage
Student: points.
And that is just
inherent
Culadasa: in the way things are. And we can understand that and accept that when we looked at the world,
If we can stay in that view rather than coming back to this, why me pointing to
Student: view that itself,
Culadasa: that we are all the same consciousness in the same consciousness must experience this
Student: reality
Culadasa: in all of its different ways and all of its different manifestations, and that we are not this particular local eyes manifestation.
Don't identify with that.
If you can liberate yourself from all of the suffering that your mind creates,
Student: you still remain.
Culadasa: The particular conditioned entity that you are with whatever duration of existence and whatever evolution of circumstances and whatever degree of pain that is associated with what you are or what particular vantage point that you represent.
Yes.
Student: But
Culadasa: if you can't succeed in not identifying what's that as cell, but identify with the totality of what is, and most particularly with
Student: that
that
Culadasa: the consciousness itself, that is really the root of what you are. You are the consciousness. That experiences that you are not the experience, your own into consciousness. And although
Student: in
Culadasa: the temporary condition that you manifest as right now, you may not be able to access the totality of that consciousness.
That doesn't mean that you cannot recognize yourself as being a part of that.
Student: So
all of the
Culadasa: problems that we
Student: deal with
Culadasa: as a separate self and athlete are exactly the same problems that we're confronted with. When we look at a world made up of many separate selves and entities. And so since the problems are the same, the solutions are this. And the solutions are really the the attainment of the kind of wisdom that a lot of our ordinary limited way of seeing things,
Student: the
Culadasa: mystical experience of oneness, but not self being beyond both existence and non-existence.
That's. That's where all of the answers are. And that's where, you to be simultaneously in this place of no separate cell and at one with everything, but at the same time,
Student: Living
Culadasa: the lie of the activity that you are to the absolute fullest best possible with, [00:50:00] and the circumstances that you find yourself.
And that is really what it's all about. But Buddha, they have for 80 years, 45 of which were
Student: after a
Culadasa: attained, this realization and that body and that mind functioned in the world has this best possible expression of that individual circumstance. And in spite of the fact that the mind of the Buddha throughout the body and space of the Buddha functioned in the marketplace or in the world, but the mind is included well, enter that,
Student: That's what
Culadasa: this is all about to get
Student: to that place.
I understand
Culadasa: that the Buddha died of food poisoning at Haiti and this back-end lady. And I wondered about that since there are yogis that are able to pass poison through their systems without being affected and do things like that. I would think Buddha just would have
Student: cleaned up
Culadasa: the food. As this
Student: even Buddha's can live forever.
Culadasa: And you might need very interested in reading the Maha in Nirvana Sutra, which is it's quite a lengthy Sutra. It's poly it's a Sanskrit version is about that thick, but it's poly version is, goes on for quite a few pages. You might be interested in reading it's wonderful.
It's one of my favorite sutures, but M in the suitor he's 80 years old and remember he's been sleeping on the ground under trees for, or two of those years,
Student: and
Culadasa: he actually makes the conscious decision to to leave the world. And this is quite a while before he actually goes and is served the meal by current the Smith, which is this.
Yeah, but then the positive is there. He gave the instructions that he was to be the only one to eat that dish and that everybody else was feed other pans and whatever he had left over was supposed to be buried. No, rather than anybody eating it. So this would suggest that he knew full well, the danger of the food that he ate and that there was a conscious decision that it was time.
It's in the suture, the states that very clearly, and there's a description of him making the decision every day, but,
Yeah, Ramana Maharshi died of cancer when he was 70. For example, we could find all kinds of, th there is a book about how how great games die. That's launched to the library here. Actually you can't read it. Call I bring it back because I'm traveling, but I'll bring it back really soon, but you know what, but you can get many things from that book.
One of the things you'll get real, look at it and say, gee and widens beings die of all the same things that ordinary people, cancer, heart attacks, poisoning, just everything all sorts of things. The point of spiritual realization, isn't, isn't that you're going to live forever or even particularly longer than anyone else.
Student: I also, haven't been to India. It's pretty impressive that he could last eight years there before getting serious food poisoning.
Culadasa: that's supernatural power.
Anyway this was a very good discussion. I thought I found it interesting. Started off with saying, carry through on, I think what is an important and somewhat difficult point to, to reconcile ourselves, which is our potential for our own transcendence of all sorts. And the fact that at the same time, but world continues to be filled with suffering.[00:55:00]
Student: Well,
Culadasa: it's 8 42, so we'd probably
Student: let you go.
Culadasa: And as I said earlier, we won't be doing the class next week, but we will the week after. And I hope you'll be able to come to the to the weekend teaching X three camp, I thought, and in a sense, this was a nice warm up to, the what is that life I show, I care
able to come to the entire weekend,
Student: come to Friday night
Culadasa: and come to any part of it. Yeah.
Student: The Friday meditation for next week?
Culadasa: The Friday morning meditation. Yeah I'm not going to come in until Friday afternoon, so I guess that will be canceled as well, unless somebody else would you like to and lead it or you don't have time to stay for the whole thing? Can't do the whole thing.
So is there anybody who is pretty and would like to leave three sets on Friday morning? Okay. I should have asked earlier. Okay. All right. So I think that's it for tonight. And so thank you very much.
| Added at | Sept. 26, 2020 |
| Audio length | 0 minutes |
| Original file name | TCMC-01-14-10b.mp3 |