What Is Enlightenment and Why Should I Care? Session 3
The purpose of the Eastern meditation traditions is to bring us to a completely new way of being, known as Enlightenment, Awakening, or Liberation. What exactly does this mean? And how does this relate to us, living as we do in a 21st century technological society confronted with problems that were unheard of even a generation ago.
Here we explore the relevance of this 2500 year old Path to Awakening to ourselves, the practical attainability of its goals, and to come to an understanding of how meditation, concentration, awareness, mindfulness, and Insight that we have been cultivating as a part of our daily practices are woven together to make up this Path.
Play the recording below or right click here to save to your computer. (50 minutes)
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Culadasa: [00:00:00] Thank you and good morning once again. So let's continue on with our discussion,
to begin with there. Are there any questions, anybody have anything on their mind as a result of what we talked about last night? I Adam,
Student: from the book.
And it was talking about teachers
and saying one of them
that we would expect them not to be, which I,
Culadasa: especially
Student: the neuroticism. So is that when they talked to you, was this thinking in terms of the continuum that
we're
Culadasa: talking about in terms of the continuum? Yeah. Sorry. Repeat the question. Yes. The terms of what expectations we might have of it being one of the things is we were told that people commonly expect is they're playing would be most relatively light beings are free from neurosis, phobias and obsessions.
And you say yes, I would expect that. But if they aren't is that to do with the progression of the stages of enlightenment and the acid? Of course it is. Because once it reaches the first stage of enlightenment was for him to straight match her at that point, they will not magically lose all of the accumulated deeply angry.
Patterns and their psyche. So if they are a person who has certain kinds of phobias or certain family neurosis now
Their reaction to those phobias and those neuroticism, when they manifest, you can expect those to change and you can expect as they progress on this path, that those will be will be overcome or will be.
Transformed, but it would be foolish to accept the text back that any person reaching the first stage light is no longer subject to those because they in fact are our hearts. We can expect that, that they will have overcome phobias and probably their Neurosis and obsessions will now be more of the lines of some quirky, but perhaps rather acute or using personality characteristics, which they have, rather than things, something that creates suffering for them or problems for other people.
Student: Okay. Yeah. Good.
Culadasa: Okay. I don't even want to look into one that stayed with me this morning.
Student: More
Culadasa: deeply and to the foodist definitions and enlightened beings, their characteristics. So I will start off here. And if you follow me on page six with a description,
Student: The general description
Culadasa: of how we can expect a Buddha
roots back alluded to have a complete freedom from suffering and a happiness that is entirely unaffected by circumstances. That's pretty attractive, right?
Student: You like to sign up.
Culadasa: And as we saw last night, that is the, those are the terms in which the Buddha himself really. Defined what his path was about. The goal of his path was to do us the absolute freedom from suffering and of course, suffering dissatisfaction. The opposite of that is satisfaction, fulfillment, happiness.
And the only way that you can have freedom from suffering and and happiness that is not subject to being lost as this. It is the source of this is not from external factors was they're constantly changing unreliable. Can't be gone to, if they're applying to at all, then you're bound to lose your happiness.
And what's more be cast into some form of suffering, into dissatisfaction, a complete absence of creating every form of design university. Having been completely uprooted.
And w when we say a craving, every form of desire and aversion, there is personally craving for [00:05:00] four things and four pleasurable experiences. And there's all kinds of things that we can desire.
And we can have a version of all kinds of things of the world to have pain and illness and loss and so forth. So it is the the absence of that kind of desire, but there is a, it goes beyond that to another kind of of craving, which is described as a craving for existence and the craving for non-existence and a craving for existence.
Is it's the the craving to be, to experience this kind of separate being the experience or the doer at continued continuity of that. The craving for non-existence of course is it's like a version two to pain or loss or other forms of suffering. But it's also in its most extreme form, the craving for annihilation the desire to not to exist.
Destruction, annihilation elimination of the self of the south. Somebody who is. Extremely depressed
next to a service or somebody who feels that life itself is a life. This is so bad that their wish is to not to die and go to heaven. Not to be reborn, not very any of these. It's just my total annihilation at him too. That's the kind of pretty good too. But a Buddha is pretty of all of these kinds of treatments.
The first they are, they're free from the roots of those craving, which are which lie in the sense of being a separate. Unlimited compassion for others that do use their earthly existence with unassailable, meaning and purpose. This is an important thing because I don't know how many times people have asked the question.
Okay. If a Buddha has no desires, why didn't they get up in the morning? Why can't spend you? Why? But the reason is that a Buddha has meaning and purpose because. As long as there are suffering beings, there are those that really can help. And it's the it's the it's that compassionate that replaces the other kinds of passion that gets the rest of us out of bed in the morning,
a wisdom borne and profound insight into the true nature of reality wisdom that has completely dispelled. Ignorance. So that's what you would expect to see in a Buddha rather than some of these other things where you might expect it goes around with this radiant glow one then. Yeah.
Knows what we're going to do tomorrow tells us the answers to all of our questions. Those expectations are good to set those ascites that take this description here.
And that's a Buddha. That's not going to be a stream metric. It's not going to be a once returner. It's not going to be a non returner, although with each of these stages and very clearly. Ways they are moving towards becoming this Buddha. So in Buddhism and lightened, that is the progress of light.
And that's through these stages is defined according to the progressive overcoming of camp fetters and they are listed here. The string naturally overcomes the first three of these fetters personality. Just the belief and a personal self or soul skeptical doubt, which is doubt about the validity of the teachings or the possibility of enlightenment or the reality of the enlightened state.
How many of you have skeptical doubt? Good. How many of you didn't put your hands up? App's got to go down to
And the third is wrongful adherence to rights. Richard Wilson ceremonies is attachment to the mistaken beliefs regarding the power and efficacy of rules, rights of individuals.
Student: So
Culadasa: let's talk about [00:10:00] these things here,
Student: And how they come about
personality.
Culadasa: Now
they, the belief in a personal self or soul. Now some of you may not believe in an eternal soul, but you never, the less, you have a. I have no danger of misrepresenting. Any of you by saying that you do have people leave fingered personal itself, because it's something that comes with standard equipment to be a human being with a human mind, you're going to have that.
It's part of how we're made. It's a necessary part of our night. And it is
Student: part
Culadasa: idea, part conception. And it's part feeling it has to these two parts to it. One part of it, the feeling part is you'd just you'd have this very primal, very direct sense of being an entity, a separate self.
And in addition to that, you'd have a conceptually elaborated idea of who you are, and that's linked to the feeling of self. You can explain the feeling of self in terms of these ideas, based on, you can remember your past experiences and the characteristics you've manifested and the things you've said and done, and how you react to things and what you like.
And don't like, and. Not suggesting that you have ever necessarily sat down and tried to describe yourself, but you do it automatically all the time is you generate your mind, generates a conceptual concept of who you are, a concept of self to go with this feeling that same inherent feeling or sense of being a self.
And so it has these two parts.
They performed very important purpose. When I say that they're there, there naturally. I know you have what I mean is that let's take this inherent sense of self as compared to the conceptual idea. So there are organisms who don't have large brains, with large frontal cortex is with a lot of prep capacity for abstract thought.
And for that matter seem not to be able to learn very much at all, but if you examine their behavior, they act very much as though they have this in here. It's the sense of self, right? You agree with that? And they do because animals with nervous systems, sentient beings have developed this. You know that's why we exist.
We come from billions of years of evolution of beings that, that from the time they were born or hatched very quickly developed this inherent sense of self. And as a result of that, they behaved in ways that ensured their certainty. Whether it was just the simplest form or whether more complex forms like in social organisms, they behaved in ways as is true, their survival.
They behaved in ways that ensured their ability to find a mate and reproduce themselves. And depending on the kind of organism they were, if they were a kind of organism where in Butler part of their task was to nurture their young and ensure their survival, they behaved and. And ensured that their offspring survive.
So the inherent sense of self is no trivial thing. It's a very fundamental part of the makeup of San tan Phoenix. It's there that serves a purpose and I ended up, you all have it now, organisms with bigger brains capable of learning analyzing, conceptualizing. Degraded degree, that capacity is the more likely there is that they're going to have, along with this inherent sense of self, they're going to have some conceptual idea of who they are, and what position that they occupy in terms of their relationships with other organisms.
Manchester as their idea that this is my territory, or this is my mate and it's kind of identity, or I am the [00:15:00] the alpha male in this pack that has profound effects on them. Land, a younger, stronger male comes up and displaces them. It totally demolishes. Maybe I'll be it. I primitive, sensitive conceptual, primitive, conceptual self, but it gets totally transformed and it can be destructive and, they often die.
So we see the same things that we experienced in ourselves. We see them in all kinds of other organisms and we say, oh yes, this is a part of, this is how the system works. This is how beings service. And this is how over time, the kinds of beings continue to survive. And this is how different kinds of being are transformed.
And I haven't become more successful than others. So this sense of self is, as I said, no trivial thing. It's the belief that changes for the St. Patrick's
Student: they still. I
Culadasa: have an idea of what particular collection characteristics and experiences belongs to the idea of of themselves or their identity.
And they still know, all of the accoutrements they've acquired their personal possessions and their job and their relationships, they haven't lost. But it's a difference in how that's perceived. It's perceived as a
Student: useful fiction,
Culadasa: a functional and useful fiction, rather than something to attach to and defend, to suffer when it undergoes some kind of insult or.
That's the kind of transformation that takes place. They still have very strongly the inherent sense of being but they now have a different perspective on that inherent sense of self when that's experienced. Okay.
Student: Then is it somewhat like playing a role, realizing that. Truly yourself well, playing a
Culadasa: role depending on how you mean that it's being able to function in the world.
It's be it's being able to function in the world and it's being able to experience this part of the world that is the body and the mind without being so terribly attached and vulnerable to what happens.
Student: Okay.
Now
Culadasa: what hasn't changed is a lifetime of conditioning and habits, habitual behaviors. As a strain management, it doesn't mean that stream management is never going to. Behave in an egocentric or selfish way, but it means that a stream veteran can always remember dipping the right cues. Remember that, oh, I don't have to do this anymore.
I don't have to feel this way anymore. If somebody comes and says something and they find themselves becoming a hurt and angry and defensive and things like that, those feelings are all real. All of the mechanisms in their mind degenerate. So I was still are active, but at a certain point, rather than it just gets worse and then they do more and it just keeps snowballing at some certain point they can recover.
They realize that this isn't really the way things are and they can let go of it. That's the. And, there are patterns of selfish and egocentric behavior will still come up and little ways, but, and part of the job of of string match that as it actually is for somebody who's on the path to becoming a stream measure is to be watchful and to recognize those, the differences.
Between somebody who's not yet a stream metric who is observing themselves and on guard for manifestations of selfless behavior so that they can make corrections happen, a stream natural. It was doing the same thing is that the stream entrant has undergone an internal transformation that makes this so much easier to do.
That's what the difference.
Student: Not that
Culadasa: I'm skeptical doubt, no doubt about the validity of teachings with [00:20:00] possibility and the light or the reality of being enlightened state. Yeah. Just wanted to ask, would you say that the personality structure is still there then? Oh yes. Yes. The personality structure is definitely still there. But it's not attached to, it's not believed in the same way.
And the result of that is it's much more easily modified. But the other thing is that we and somebody who's not a strain entrant tends to believe that their personality structure is far more rigid and difficult to change than it really is. And in fact for somebody who's not a stream metric, it is more difficult to change because they do have, they might think, oh, there's this one thing about myself.
Why can't I just change that? And I tried and it won't change it won't budge that's because it's connected to so many other parts of their identity and the identity as a whole is attached to an original. The strange veteran, all these connections are loosened up and so it makes it easier to make changes.
But the fact is that if we look at ourselves and our personal histories, we see that our personality structure has small. We've spent subject to change. It's always been plastic. It's just that it's just that we, on the one hand I've never systematically or rarely systematically tried to change it.
And then whenever we have. A lot of resistance and maybe often given up, but we, but circumstances often produce profound changes in personality, and we do recognize that so personality is changed. The personality structure can be altered for a street entrance. It can be altered motor gradually and more consciously and deliberately because there's less attachment to that.
I know what she'd been
Student: thinking. It can't change more easily. Now, do you do years of
Culadasa: meditation and sex therapy and self-growth work and everything, and you just get to respect how strong the structure is. But
Student: The reason I'm here is because I'm sure opening. Yeah. And it
Culadasa: can, yes,
Student: it can.
Culadasa: But you have to do a lot of work along. And one thing to ask you coming back to this point, or at least I bet you, I should have because of something important, the best way to become an enlightened being is to do your best to emulate and enlightened bang all the time from the very beginning, that's the best way
Student: to do it.
Culadasa: What that doesn't mean. And it would really be a big mistake to understand it that way is that you say, okay, and enlightened beings like this, and they're trying to force yourself to be like that, to say, oh, lightened beings shouldn't have attachment. So I'm going to force myself not to have attachment because you can't do that.
You began by making changes in your personality structure that are going to allow you to achieve this deep transformation where everything gets easier thereafter by making all the changes that you can, by saying that enlightened Dames don't use harsh speech, they don't talk. They don't. Crusaded people out there don't shallow people.
They don't say nasty things. They don't engage in divisive speech. And by doing your best, not to do that in the case of attachments, for example, you can't make your attachments go away and you shouldn't try it and you shouldn't criticize yourself or condemn yourself because you have. But what you can do is be aware of that.
Ah, it's an attachment. What you can do is say to yourself, can I refrain from acting out of this attachment or not? And if you can't do if you can't, you just keep in mind that, okay. That's one of those things that, it's going to be around for awhile, but the
Student: more you emulate and
Culadasa: Then the easier it's going to be to become an enlightened be because you do, you have to make, you have to make the changes that you can and your personality structure to reach the point where to reach that crucial crossing point beyond which doing so it becomes much, much easier.
Student: Yeah. It seems that. Yeah, you do your very best to [00:25:00] emulate what you perceive to be an enlightened, being the characteristics of an enlightened being, then what you're actually doing is streaming into, I'm not using the same, but streaming into what already is. That's true. Yeah, because you already each one of us already.
So if you emulate that.
We are, you're just really connecting with the essence of what you already are rather than berating yourself which pummels that connection,
Culadasa: very well-put death. We all have the Buddha nature within us, which is all buried under the whole of these afflictions and habits and attachments and everything else.
And when we find some of that very, that can be removed, we should remove it. And some of it is still so strongly stuck on, we know the Buddha nature's under there. So we just need to keep chipping away at it whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Student: Yeah,
Culadasa: it is. It's a streaming out to what already.
Yes.
Student: And.
Culadasa: The obstacle is that the mind believes in its own self, which has had, has created. But the truth is that is a fiction. And because it's affection, it is susceptible to being modified. And so you're saying that sense too, you're streaming into what already is. If it weren't the fiction, if it were. Yeah.
If you yourself were in fact, I sell existing entity, if it works. So you would be pretty helpless to ever do anything about it, but it's not, it's just the fabrication and
Student: you can work with it.
Can I add one more thing? A question to that, because if. What we already are then does that imply also, I think I read it somewhere in here also that things, the world, the universe is as it is
Culadasa: for sure,
Student: but it is in terms of the strife and the turmoil in the world, the warring and the, all the rest of the day, Then does it follow them?
That it is as it is? And it says, then it's, I don't even want to say that it's okay. That it is what it is, because it's really awful and in many ways but how does one separate if we are what we already are that does it, is it logical to say that the world. This is okay, because it's streaming to what it is already is.
I don't know how to divide yourself.
Culadasa: And you're doing a very good
Student: job. Yeah. You have
Culadasa: to accept what is, because it's insanity. Not to, literally. Okay. You do not have to accept that. It will always be that way, because that would be equally insanity. Nothing stays the same. Everything will change.
Absolutely. So what makes, what is reasonable and sensible from any point of view and enlightened around enlightened is to accept what you are in the moment, because. What you are in the moment is a result of past causes and conditions and
Student: how much we all
Culadasa: know what a ridiculous waste of time it is to think about.
Only
Student: this were different.
Culadasa: If only I hadn't done that. If only I'd said this instead, if only if it is, it's so terrible that we do that. And it's so ridiculous. What is in the moment is what is in the moment, except it, it's not about it being okay or not. Okay.
Student: Okay. You're not okay. It is judging
Culadasa: that's right.
Okay. And not okay. If you say it's okay, then you make yourself vulnerable or being attached to it because it is going to change. And if you say it's not okay, then you put yourself in the position of not being able to accept what it is, which is going to greatly impair your ability to. To do anything construct about the way he is and the same thing about the world, the way the world is, it's the way that it is right now.
That's not the same thing as oh nothing I can do. It's going to always be there because it's not always going to be that way. [00:30:00] And you're not always going to be.
Student: So when you talk about that acceptance and what is in your personal life and what the world is about is the point where, it will, or when you believe it will change, whereas your point you are entering enters entrance point in being part of that change.
In other words, where's the action coming in to say, yes, I accept accepted and I do
Culadasa: something about it. As much as I think I can
Student: do or feel do at the moment. Is it then an attachment? Is it then not in existence anymore?
Culadasa: Unless you're a fully enlightened being, it's going to almost certainly involve some degree of attachment.
Yes. But that's one of the things that you need to be. That's part of accepting yourself the way you are. I can't do, I can't try to do something about the injustices of the world without developing some degree of attachment. Now that doesn't mean I don't try, but it means that I'm mindful of my attachment and I really.
That that, those attachments that are really only going to get in my way. And that's part of accepting who you are and what you're doing. Are they good attachments as attachments? Those kinds of attachments, it was like you were saying last night, the word attachment. Okay. Now
Student: to the D
Culadasa: If you do something out of love and compassion, We tend to be attached to the outcome, to the degree that we're attached to the outcome.
We've set ourselves up for the potential for disappointment. If we can do exactly the same thing without attachment that not only are we less likely to be disappointed, but it's going to be far easier. If things don't turn out to take some further. Attachment does get in the way it creates problems, but it's going to be there too.
So that's what I mean, emulate an enlightened being, but don't try to force yourself to be what you're not. I got attachments. Okay. I'll do what I can. I'll be aware of my attachments.
Student: Can you love without
Culadasa: attachment? Of course you can love without attachment, but love is such a. Complex word. We use it in so many different ways.
It is not easy to love without attachment, because we are such attached to beings.
Student: But if I love my friends, yeah. There is a natural attachment of course, to that.
That's not something I wish to give up.
Culadasa: What do you mean by what do you mean by attachment to the friend that okay.
Student: I love Adam. If he dies, I'm going to be really messed up. That's an attachment. So it to not have any caring she's not having yeah. It's not ruin the whole thing. So to not have any caring, What would happen to him would be to not be attached to that.
And in order to do that, there's the loss of the relationship.
Culadasa: Why is it not being attached to that be the same, there's not cabinet and caring about what happens? Why are they saying? I don't know.
Student: That may be something that I think
Culadasa: they come together in our minds, but I don't think they're the same thing and they're not necessarily connected.
Okay. Could you say.
I could care very much what happens at the hour. Okay. But if something happens to have, and there's, there is nothing that I can do about it. If I accept that, then that's not being attached, but it doesn't mean I don't. About an hour because I care. And if there is anything at all I can do or could do, I wouldn't do.
Student: Okay. Okay. All right.
Culadasa: So they don't have to go together. I don't have to suffer to prove to myself or to you that I care about what happens to you. That's actually not necessary. We was talking about that yesterday about people. What to express their affection for somebody else. And so they don't worry about them to them, which makes that person worried.
People do this all the time. It is a commonly accepted form of expressing affection. I, ain't going to worry about you and demonstrate my upsetness about what might happen to you. And it just gets [00:35:00] you into a place of being worried and upset or feeling bad because I'm worrying about something.
So yes, these are learned social ways that they're part of our nature and they're a part of art. Both of behavior. We can pretend to be really worried about somebody that we don't really care about at all. And that, in fact, we don't even like them fried it's to our advantage socially to appear to care.
So we know how to create that parents we express concern, right?
Student: Okay
Culadasa: okay. This is good at this. You think about these things and you start to get in there and say, oh how does a good my mind really works and how they're eating this whole thing anyway. And if you do that, you can start to see how you can untangle these things a little bit. And this engage from the less wholesome aspects of, to a degree and focus more on the wholesome back in a truly caring about.
Is wanting the best for them, right?
You remembered I don't remember where it comes from, but I know you've all heard it. If you truly love something, let it go. Let it go. If it's not, it never was. Yeah. Now that sets your own wonderful thing. I've also broken apart in 23
Student: year old.
it's
Culadasa: true because what we really mean by love is wanting the absolute best for some other thing, But most of the time, it has this caveat wanting the best for you as long as I get by what I am. Yeah. And having you as part of that doesn't mean letting you go off with somebody else.
Student: Yeah.
I'm going to backtrack just a little when you were going through the description of the Buddha. I'm a little confused by how that. So are you saying, wanting to ask for someone, does that mean, you're saying do whatever is possible, but obviously enlightened beings as well as everybody else can't go around seeing everything.
That's right. So how does
Culadasa: compassion manifest by. Doing everything they can to fix things in the most effective way.
Student: So I
Culadasa: lightened mint, enlightened being absolutely cannot go around,
Student: fixing
Culadasa: all of the things in the sense that unenlightened being thinks they need to be fixed. And I didn't live in being says, my happiness depends on having this.
Not having to do yes. And an enlightened being camp. It would be a total waste of time for an enlightened being to go around, trying to give people what they think they need to make them happy and to spare people what they think they need to avoid. Instead, what an enlightened being can do is to help other people to the economy.
And by doing so freedom from the bondage of believing that they have to have this or that they have to avoid that's the most important and valuable thing and enlightened person can do
that is usually the the, our haunt that was studied that I mentioned last night. Turned the war shock series to a teaching. That's basically what in enlightened beings and especially our hearts. So Buddhist is that everything they do, Brits, really, every breath they take is about helping other beings to come out of their delusion and to begin the process of awakening.
Student: This is actually the opposite of protection, right? The opposite of protecting somebody from that choose.
Yeah. We're taking, as we do this all the time. Oh, it will be fine. And you will be whatever and things like that. So how do you do that without with company. So it doesn't hurt the other when when you say helping the other on the way of looking through delusions. Yeah.
Culadasa: You have to have a certain amount of skill and wisdom and enlightened being, where do you go around, telling somebody who just got diagnosed with cancer or barrier telling somebody whose [00:40:00] child just got diagnosed with.
Oh, don't worry about it. It's empty. There's no
Student: self you're just detached.
Culadasa: That's, what's something that very naive person who read these things and said, oh that's, they might do that would be very unwise and very unskillful in. It doesn't mean that you stopped doing the things that you do now. It means you've been made changed the way you do things, or maybe modify that you may go beyond that.
Yeah. It's not excluding these things.
Student: So Jeff,
Culadasa: I'm just thinking of something. My father is an active alcoholic. He's been like for 25 years or longer. I don't know. He's not sick, not something he's interested in addressing or anything like that. And a long time ago I was talking to a therapist and she was saying, I think I was trying to figure out how should I relate to him or what should I do and so forth.
And she said, maybe, she said, I think maybe all you can do is just love him. And it was a relief. And she said that I was like, huh, I could just love him. And I was trying to figure out what does that mean? And it kinda meant I didn't really have to do anything. I'm like listen to.
Or I know there's a fine line there between enabling and so forth, but I don't know. Do you have any comments on how to handle that kind
Student: of situation?
Culadasa: I don't know the details of that situation, but it is possible for somebody to be an alcoholic and go about it insights your way that they're not really causing a lot of suffering for other people.
And it is harmful to it's harmful to the human body is saturated with alcohol constantly, and that will lead to diseases and ultimately to death,
Student: but
Culadasa: the person has to change. And all that you can do for them is love them. Always be available if they ever want to change all the way. Do anything you can to encourage them to make an improvement. It's not that different than what you would do with anybody else now, most alcoholics though, aren't that sort of pristine and harmless alcoholism tends to produce an enormous amount of collateral damage.
Enabling is where. You pick up the pieces, you repair the damage, you clean up the messes, you the person does damage to themselves and urea that's where enabling is sparing the alcoholic
Student: from
Culadasa: recognizing and having to deal with the consequences of what they do. Okay. And that's can you see the line between enabling and.
Yeah, he's living in this misery. He exudes anger and negativity and like for miles,
Student: right?
Culadasa: And he, and nobody should go out of their way to spare him the consequences of exuding anger. He should be made aware that this is what you do to other people. And this is why other people react to you and treat you the way you do because to spare.
That would be enabling that would be helping him to hide from the truth, but to be able to do that, which still be loving, then that's what you want to do.
Student: That's
Culadasa: helpful. I used to not say much, and I think that was more enabling. And now I do just say, I'm leaving or I'm not talking to you now or something.
Student: Okay. He does react to that
Culadasa: and all of our enabling comes from our protecting ourselves. We don't want we enabled because it's easier than doing the opposite.
Student: All right. Yes. It just one less thing. It seems like the loving is connected to dependent originally.
Culadasa: Loving dependent. It
Student: seems like the loving in this circumstances, like this is very connected to a deep understanding of dependent origination that you're loving someone in a circumstance.
You can see that their developmental process. This is from the time they were children, perhaps their parents, this surging forth throughout a lifetime of circumstances that contributed to this behavior, to this hatred. And this is hatred, this behavior. And so when you see an individual in a larger context, [00:45:00] there's great fodder for.
In spite of that very damaging behavior, it seems that this tremendous love possible
doesn't mean you like it. It doesn't mean that it's right in fitting, but in a way it is right in fitting. And it's a very odd it's as if there's some paradox there.
Culadasa: Isn't it so much like what we first started talking about accepting things as they are not accepting that they can't change, but accepting things as they are. And working with that. And in dependent or origination in the links of dependent origination, the key links there are that you can change.
Your ignorance can be replaced by wisdom and craving can be overcome. If you worked with those links that's where you can bring about change, but what is the result of what has been changed? And as you can love white is go beyond accepting love. What is even in spite of its shortcomings,
do you need a Yeah, let's take a break.
| Added at | Sept. 26, 2020 |
| Recording date | Jan. 3, 2010 |