Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)
Ltd.
Discourse on Nama Rupa
John D. Hughes
Recorded
Teachings
Buddhist Discussion Centre
(Upwey) Ltd.
33 Brooking St
Upwey, Victoria
Australia
3158
A.C.N. 005 701 806
A.B.N. 42 611 496
488
Phone: (03) 9754
3334
Fax: (03) 9754 3334
email: wbu@bdcu.org.au
Disclaimer
Short Talk by: Venerable Viriyananda
Continued Teaching by: John D.
Hughes
Date of recording: 26/6/88
Transcribed by Travis
Heenan & Frank Carter
Checked by Leanne Eames
CD Reference
26_06_88T5S1i
File Name: 26_06_88T5S1i_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day Meditation Course
Recording Title: "Discourse on Nama Rupa"
Venerable Viriyananda’s Talk
Friends of the Dhammas. I'm very happy to see everyone who's sitting here, with just the friend of the Dhammas. I'm very, very happy with you, all of you, with the teachers.
This is a very hard subject subject: aniccam dukkham anatta. The Lord Buddha said, aniccam; unstable, impermanent, dukkham; suffering and pain, anatta; no soul, soul-less, no self. If we say see about anatta, anatta we can not see by our eye, also we cannot have experience, because anatta is no form, no picture, no anything.
Just compare the Dhammas, the Teachings of the Buddha, like the trees, the rocks around here. If we compare the trees, the rocks, and everything around here; anatta is not like this, we cannot see by our own eyes, because anatta is no soul, no self, difficult to understand and are very hard. Paranibbana; we can compare paranibbana means anatta, no soul, no self. Finish suffering and pain. This we call anatta.
If we try to know, we must compare ours, the ultimate reality, the supreme knowledge, abhidhamma or citta, anatta means higher and higher ultimate realities. Abhidhamma, this we compare with anatta. Also still very hard to understand [for] the greatest scholars who learned about the Buddhism, Pali and Sanskrit, so long times. If say anatta, still very confused, if we attained enlightenment, become arahant, that we can understand anatta. Also, clear mind, no confusion any more.
Guru, our teacher, tried to teach you, tried to bring the Dhamma, tried to teach. Tried to give the special knowledge for everyone, and very hard, not so easy. If no energy to reach, to find out the knowledge, it’s very, very hard. Like a monk, if lazy monks never study properly, they will not know anything, only just cover the world with nothing. Must practice, must learn, must do correctly. Then we have some knowledge, but still, not the real knowledge.
The real knowledge means attain arahant. The goal of Buddhism is to attain arahant. That [is] the final goal. So, like a learner, all of us still meditator, learner, must learn, must practice all the times, until we attain ultimate reality, supreme knowledge. To achieve arahant, that [is] the final goal for us. No suffering, no pain any more. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone.
John D Hughes continues...
So although this is only a few pages, it’ll take probably five days of commentary to get you to understanding. Because what is understanding? It’s not like a parrot mind that just says, just repeats the words. You've got to get the minds that cognate what we are talking about to understand it. So we got to the point where we found, at some level, the arguments, for the fact that this world is like a mental construct. We can't see the Samsarasamsara, we can't see the world as it is. Because between there, and what we see, we have got a set of error minds, which they translate here as afflictional, meaning: making you unhappy, misknowledge, and the main affliction mind is this ego mind. This I, my, my, me, me, me, me, I, my, ego, me.
But then we found out from the text that the ‘me’ is not one mind. While you think I'm being ‘me’ and you think its one mind? You're already in error. The ‘me’ arises out of two minds hitting together like this. It’s like you take a piece of iron and you make a spark. The sparks, the clash of the two minds produces a mental formation. Ah like that. And that object is already untrue in reality. But that is what your ego says "that is me". These minds have to be found.
So there's a lot of preliminary meditation to get your mind off your body into what's called third arupa jhana, which is called Sunyata or Sphere of Nothingness. It's a different type of consciousness. So this teaching has to be taught at a very high level of mind, because low minds can't do the work. So we've got two things. We've got personal self habits, now that means we're alive in human birth. Why? Because a whole series of events happened in the past and this is the result.
If a different series of events happened we'd be born in the animal or hell being, or heavenly being or something. So we’re driven by our past actions which appear like here. So in the long infinite past, we've been everything, we've been born man, woman, heavenly being, animal, hell being. Everything is uncertain, because everything is driven by a cause, and it’s our ego mind, our stupid mind that made the causes.
So for example, at a worldly level you can say, the action of killing up there on the board brings short life. Why do some little babies, say you go to Bangladesh, little baby is born, no food, no medicine, gets sick dies, one year old? Why is that? Other people, I'm 58 this year, ohh, happy, happy, healthy, healthy, not much trouble, all my life, easy to get. Cause lay back in the past lives. I know my past lives, I know what I did, generous, generous, generous. So easy for me to get everything.
Not killing gives long life. Not harming people, means healthy. Harming people, killing insects, killing animals, killing anything at all, is harming other beings. You get illness, so illness is caused, it doesn't just happen, it … has cause. So all these conditions, say you get one human life in one thousand million lifetimes. Very hard to get a human birth because you have to have a lot of merit to get a human birth. You might have been an animal many, many times. Can't make merit, except you're, say a cow, give milk to a human. But animals are always killing, killing, killing. That's the nature of animals. Kill, kill, kill. So they can never get better.
Hungry ghosts always hungry, always starving. Have no food, couldn't give food, can't get food, not even for themselves. And then other times we get into heaven worlds, everything is perfect for a while. We are so happy we don't practice generosity. But in human birth, you can actually practice. In human birth it is possible to give other people food, and that will create a cause for your future to get food.
Now if you gave an animal food, the animal is not much merit. If you gave the same food to a very bad human being, ten times more merit. Average human being ten times, above average another ten times. If you could find a very bright being, very intelligent, very bright, very kind, gave food, better. If you could give the food to a monk who keeps a lot of precepts, better. If you could find a monk or a layman enlightened to the first stage of nirvana, better. If you could find someone second stage of nirvana, better still. And if you could find an arahant, fully enlightened being, you could give something, much better.
But there’s only eighty enlightened arahants in the world at the moment. Some in some countries, some can't meet, because some in China, some in Thailand, very difficult to get near. But if you've got good kamma, if good actions in the past, you didn't slander the Buddhists, you can get near the arahant. And because of my good kamma, I can easily meet in many countries, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand. I can meet the arahant, and because of my good karma I always have something to give them. Rich enough.
So in this life, it is easy for me to make big merit for my future. Now to get to that stage you must practice every day, for many, many lifetimes. The reason it's easy for me, is in the past lifetimes long time ago, I practiced the Buddhist Dhamma. And in this life I can remember, ahhh that’s like that. You can do that even with an ego.
Now the ego says like this, it says, I give the offerings so I will be well and happy. Well that’s sanity. But then when you get enough, bright enough, when your mind becomes bright enough, you think, "I am in suffering, other people are in suffering, how can I help the other people?" When you come to happy enough yourself, you start to change a bit.
And so all the good things you do initially are only for your ego, and all the bad things you do basically are for your ego too. So the ego is the problem. And that is a habit, very bad habit to be selfish and it's very difficult not to be stingy, because you are always thinking of yourself.
Now the Buddha instructed the lay people, he said like this, he said, and this is sound economic sense too, he said, "twenty-five percent of your wealth use for yourself". You know buy clothes buy food, buy this, buy that. "Twenty-five percent give as dana and fifty percent save for your future prosperity in business".
Now most people in Australia pay about, maybe, twenty-five percent of their income in income tax and that helps other people. But they certainly don't save fifty percent of their money. Now that is the perfect formula for wealth, prosperity, health. And you say it's not possible to do like that. Well, anything’s possible if you know what you want to do. If you know what you want to do.
If you want to get very happy, very bright, now you see other people are mad, they say, some people say, "Oh, I'll be generous, I'll give everything away" and some people actually do this, they’re insane. They give everything away, the next day they have no money. Where do they get their money from? Then people have to give them.
Now when you get good things, when something is given to you, you are using up the good merit from the past times. When you give something you are making more. To stay alive you must consume, you must use up things. So if you have got food you must eat or you will starve to death. But until your mind understands correctly what is the simple things, it's no good practising the complicated things.
So you see mothers, for their children, some mothers kill for their children, they break a precept. Other mothers lie for their children, steal for their children. Some mothers work as prostitutes sometimes. I know one woman, she had two children, she worked as a prostitute, mainly because she was lazy. There was plenty of other work around she could have done, but she worked as a prostitute to get easy money for her children. And then the intoxicants; no alcohol, no drugs.
Now until you've got the five precepts correct, for a lay person only five are needed, for monks 227, for Chinese monks 250 and then sometimes they takes eighteen Root Vows of Bodhisattva and then very high people take forty extra vows. But for five precepts for lay people, if you meditate on the precepts you will understand the Dhamma.
So when you have maintained the five precepts good enough then you find, over many lifetimes, then you find your life gets easier. I have the easiest life probably of anyone in Australia because whatever I want to do I can do, whatever I want comes. Just automatically, no trouble, I don't have any trouble. Food comes, flowers come, everything I want comes.
The monk came today. I gave him offerings. I gave him some tea. I gave him a photograph. I gave him, someone brought me some eucalyptus like medicine lolly, I gave him that. I know he's got a little cough, he didn't cough but I know he has a cough. Someone bought me some Butter Menthol
[s] like medicine. I gave him two sorts of medicine
to the Monk. The kamma of that is his health improves, my health improves.
Now when you understand
that what you do, what you give out will
come back to you. I gave the monk one newsletter so things
will come back to me. Now that is the most simplest elementary thing. It's
by not understanding the law of cause and effect that every trouble you've
ever had came.
So the first thing you’ve got to do is to understand in your mind that nothing can happen to you unless there is a cause. Nothing can happen if you like by luck. Cause effect, cause effect.
Now everyone likes to dream. You know that ladies think some handsome prince will come, millions of dollars come, and castles come. Fairy stories, not true. Other people think I will win Tatts lottery or something. Not true. If you win, because of generosity, money comes and then it’s gone. So this, what keeps you alive, why you didn't drop dead today was because of giving food at some past time, keeping other people alive.
There are four nutrients that keep you alive. Three are mental ones, one is food. One is food. Three mental nutrients. If any one of those four nutrients drop you will be dead. Just phew dead and then rebirth to wherever. Now we did a meditation the other night where we started to meditate on our body to see what is the difference between this body and a dead body. There's many ways of doing this.
The outside skin on your body, if you meditate, you meditate on the outside skin on your body now. Look at the skin. You meditate, if you meditate on the actual skin of your own body, you will realise it is dead. It is living inside, but this is dead. You can rub off dead skin. You meditate on your hair, the tips of your hair, you realise that hair is dead. That's why you can cut it with scissors without pain. You meditate on your fingernail. This part, you realise it is dead.
Now you keep meditating like that for long enough and you will realise that this body is partly dead. It is like living on the inside and dead on the outside. And you meditate powerfully enough like that, and then you start to understand something that your ego mind doesn't want to hear about. That this body is going to die. It’s going to come to death. Until you know that absolutely with insight knowledge, you can't get very far.
That this body is on the way to the cemetery. This body is going to die sooner or later. And you meditate because it is showing the marks of the death on it. Even a little baby you meditate, the same. And then if you meditate very powerfully, if you become a good meditator, you will actually see inside your body four great elements; heat element, air element, water element; you resolve the body.
And then you meditate on a body in a cemetery and your own body and you realise there's not much difference, except under the force of your mind, because remember you're not just a body, you're a mind-body. The dead body in the cemetery has no mind, just body only. But you are mind-body, nama rupa in Pali. You will realise at that point why the body can still move. It can't move of its own accord because otherwise dead bodies could move around. You will realise if you meditate enough on your body that what moves it is your mind. And that’s what the Buddha tells you; that the mind is the boss.
Now Buddhism doesn't cultivate the body. If you want to cultivate the body go down to the gymnasium. The Buddha trains the mind because the mind is chief. What the mind does, the body follows. If the mind says move, this moves. If it says stop, this stops. It is the mind that moves the body.
Now, there are meditators, some, who have done very powerful meditation. There are in Burma, there are five monks who can levitate their body in the air. They don't show ordinary people. But in the forest they can, they’ve got so much control over their body, such a powerful mind they can levitate the body. In Thailand, there is a couple of monks, there is one monk I know, he has levitated. There is another monk, this man, this monk, a waterfall, he was in the forest in Thailand, a big waterfall. He could get his body to go up the waterfall, get to the top, have a look at the top and then shoot down the waterfall without killing himself.
The mind is what is to be cultivated, not the body. The body is on the way to the cemetery. It’s only a matter of time and everyone here will be dead. But the mind travels on and then rebirth. The mind travels on and then whatever happens you are in your next birth.
So the first thing to do is to understand, when you understand that very powerfully you will want to get your body to have long life because in a human birth you can practice the Buddha Dhamma. If you're born an animal, can't, hell being, can't, hungry ghost, can't. In most heaven worlds you can't practice Buddha Dhamma, just one or two of them. As a human being you can.
So you've got to meditate enough till you know one thing. One; the body is subject to death, sickness, old age and dying; the body. You've got to know that. Now if you know that and your best friend dies you're not upset. Because what is born must die, you don't get upset. When my mother died, one tear only. When my father, died no tears. Because if you go sad when people die the dying person picks up the negatives on your mind.
You must know, when you've done enough meditation, you'll know this is like walking corpse and its destination ends in the cemetery. And then you'll realise the reason your body moves around is your mind. Until you get to that point, until you get to that understanding, you've got no basic understanding of anything. Until you know that the mind is the chief and the body is the servant you get nowhere. You're not fit to practice. But because of the ego, many people spend hours and hours a day looking after their body, and they don't cultivate their mind. So you see you've got to understand this body, this one is like a walking corpse. Where is it walking to? The cemetery.
Now when you’re clear of that in your mind, you'll stop being too neurotic about your body. If it aches you'd say "well what do you expect from a corpse?" If it gets sick you'd say "well what do you expect from a corpse?" If you think it’s something other than it is, it goes ahh creak, “what do you expect from a corpse?” You know? Stomach goes rumble rumble, “What do you expect from a corpse?”. And then you don't waste this valuable human life.
It shows, that is one way of showing the body is like a corpse. The other way of showing is like this. This is in the Buddhist texts. A corpse is decaying and smelling. You get an amine or putramine. If you've ever smelt it you'll remember it. It is a straight line amine and it's a characteristic of a dead body smell.
If you don't wash your body for a few days, does it smell sweet or does it smell funny? If something was pure, it would smell sweet. If you don't wash your body, stinks. Therefore the body is impure. And anything impure must decay. So another text, another way of looking, by examination of the body, it is impure therefore it must end up like smelly corpse. So you've got to wash it to stop the stink.
Also you say “it’s my body” but if you put under a microscope, many little bacteria inside. On this body billions of little bacteria say "this is my home, this is my body, this is my cemetery". If you analyse, if you've done a lot of biology, and you've looked in microscope slide, you'll find all little living things in your body. Millions of them. Each little living thing is a sentient being. They say "this is my home, my cemetery, my dunny". Go to toilet in your body.
There's only one of you, millions of them. If they had a vote, you're out. Can't lay claim to this body. So the Buddhist texts approach in many ways to get you to do what's called kayanupassana, meditation on the body.
Another meditation is like this. You meditate, your heart beats, your lungs pump air, but the heart doesn't know that the lungs are breathing. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. You eat food, your stomach digests the food, the heart doesn't know the stomach is digesting the food, the lungs don't know the stomach is digesting the food. You move this arm, leg doesn't know you move this arm. You move this leg, arm doesn't know you move this leg. No communication. Therefore it is a compound. Wiggle this finger, these fingers don't know, wiggle that finger, this finger doesn't know.
And if you study biochemistry, as I've done, you'll find there's whole sets of systems in the body, each of them independent of the other. So if it was "my body" you would know everything about it. But don't know. So the body is not Self, the body is not an I, a my or a me. Now if it was, you get a tooth, the toothache comes, the tooth doesn't say to the body, "Can I have permission to have a toothache?" It just happens, like rebel. You cut your finger the blood comes out. Finger doesn't say, "Is it alright if I get cut?" You have no control over your body because it is not a Self.
If it was a Self, if your body was your Self you would make it perfectly healthy, un-smelly, perfectly beautiful, and the women would look like Marilyn Monroe. Do you want to look like Marilyn Monroe? Who’s your idol, Jocelyn? Bridget Bardot? What? A Clydesdale horse? Who?
Student: Minnie’s my idol
Minnie’s your idol! Well if you had control over your body you would look like Minnie, and there'd be two of you, and I'd look like Jack Nicholson. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I'm starting to look like him, look. I'm getting thin ... is this right?
Student: He's got a pot and going bald.
Am I going bald? So if your body was your Self you
wouldn't want to have a body that aches, gets toothache, coughs,
splutters, and you wouldn't have a body that snot comes out of your nose,
and urine comes out of you. You'd make a beautiful body. So the body is
anatta, not a permanent Self. Also it changes, changes, and because it can
ache or pain if you grab it with your mind, if you don't
grab
it with your mind you won't feel pain, but it’s subject to birth,
subject to death.
So by meditation on the body, you come to one discovery; the body, which is in Pali is rupa, body or form, rupa anicca, that means impermanent, it changes, it won't stay forever, it will die; dukkha meaning unsatisfactory or troublesome or a torment or annoyance or, dukkha is a Pali word; and anatta, is not a permanent Self. Well, by meditating like this, this is a, this is already on the way to the cemetery. When it aches, I don't feel pain much because I don't grab my body. You'd say, “Well what do you expect from a bloody dead corpse?” Toothache come, hair fall out, teeth fall out, grow old, grow ugly, “What do you expect from a dead corpse?” You expect it to be beautiful? And therefore the mind, the ego mind, stops worrying.
Now if you had all the time you've spent this life combing the hair, brushing the teeth, lipstick, da, da, da, clothes, making the body beautiful, if you had all that time available, it’d be like a bonus. You'd have another 30 years on your life. You were a model, weren't you? How many bloody man hours or woman hours did you put into that, chicken? And here's your walking corpse on the way to the cemetery. It’s still hanging together all right. Right?
So you see, when you understand something perfectly, it takes that trouble off your mind, and then the mind has more time to consider what’s important. Now what is important is to train the mind, not the body. Body doesn't need to be trained. What's the use of training a corpse? Just a waste of time.
So because human beings [are] born and die, animals are born and die, heavenly beings are born and die, hell beings are born and die. There is no permanent birth that you can hold on to. So the Buddha found that out, and he wanted to find how to do and he found the method, and he got nirvana.
But the main thing is to meditate on your body and remove the ego attachment to your body. That is the first step. When you've done that thoroughly, then you can start to learn how to train the mind. But while your body is always getting in the way, you've got to meditate a lot on your body to understand that.
So because everyone loves their body you undertake a precept “no killing”. Not anything. A mosquito loves its body, you kill it - pain. If you cause pain to another being you get illness. You stop killing, you stop harming. It’s alright to eat meat. You can buy dead meat from the butcher. The Buddha ate meat, but he didn't kill. No killing. It's the butcher who gets the kamma, not you. You can't get the kamma from someone else. You can only get the kamma of your actions.
So the first thing is the one precept you can deduce from your own mind. No being likes to be killed. Therefore one precept. No killing. No being likes to be lied to. You wouldn't like to be lied to. No lying. No being likes to be robbed or stolen or conned. No stealing. Married men, married women don't like their wives, husbands to have sex on the side. No adultery, no sexual misconduct if you’re married. And also since the ultimate goal is to train the mind to be bright and clear, no intoxicants that cloud the mind, which means no alcohol, no grass, no marijuana, no heroin. You could give me a list as long as your arm, whatever. Right?
So five precepts. The kind Venerable just, we did in Pali. Recollect five precepts regularly and then that moderates your ego behavior. See the ego will steal, lie, “say stuff you Jack, I'm alright” and trample over everything. And it doesn't know that that kamma will shorten a life, make for sickness, make for poverty, make for less. So you've got to keep clarifying the mind because it doesn't know.
See there's probably only about, maybe one person in 50,000 in Australia who keep five precepts. So what happens is Australians get old and sick, and have disastrous lives ....